In Memorium

Or. T. N. SHIVAPURI

Chemisi'ry D e p a r t m e n t
Allahabad Universify
ALLAHABAD

Born . • l6th February, 1919

Joined Service . . 11th October, 1949
Died . . 10th November, 1961

A PREFACE TO MORALS

Bv IF ALTER LI PPM ANN

PUBLIC 0 PI MON
THE GOOD SOCIETY
THE METHOD OF FRFFDOM
IXTrRPRFTATIOVS, X93I-I932
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
DRIFT A\D MA‘STERY
THE STAKES OF DIPLOMACY
LIBERTY A\D THE NEWS
THE PHANTOM Pt BLIC
MAN OF DFSTINY
AMERICAN INQUISITORS

WALTER LIPPMANN

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE, MUSEUM STREET, W.C.l

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

VI, Lost Provinces 84

1. Business . , 84

2. The Family ... 88

3. Art ... 94

a. The Disappearance of Religious Paint-

ing 94

b. The Loss of a Heritage .... 96

c. The Artist Formerly 98

d. The Artist as a Prophet , . . . 101

e Arc for Art’s Sake 104

f. The Burden of Originality . . . 106

VIL The Drama of Destiny 112

1. The Soul in the Modern World . . . . 112

2. The Great Scenario 115

3. Earmarks of Truth .... . . 118

4 On Reconciling Religion and Science . . 121

5. Gospels of Science 125

6. The Deeper Conflict , . .... 131

7. Theocracy and Humanism , . . 133

5. iiarmarks of Iruth . . . . . . xi...*

4. On Reconciling Religion and Science . . 121

PART II

THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMANISM

Introduction 143

VIII, Golden Memories 145

IX. The Insight of Humanism 152

1. The Two Approaches to Life . , . . 152

2. Freedom and Restraint 153

3 The Ascetic Principle ...... 158

4 Oscillation between Two Principles . . .164

5. The Golden Mean and Its Difficulties . . 166

6. The Matrix of Humanism 171

CHAPTER

CONTENTS

PAGE

7 The Career of the Soul 175

8. The Passage into Maturity 1^-5

9 The Function of High Religion 191

X. High Religion and the AIodlrn World 19“i

1. Popular Religion and the Great Teachers 19*^'

2. The Anstocracic Principle 197

3. The Peculiarity of the Modern Situation 200

4. The Stone Which the Builders Rejected 203

PART III

THE GENIUS OF MODERNITY

XL The Cure or Souls . , . 213

1. The Problem of Evil , . , . ,213

2. Superstition and Self-Consciousness , . 217

3. Virtue . ... 221

4. From Clue to Practice , . . , . 226

XII. The Business of the Great Society . . 232

1. The Invention of Invention , . 232

2. The Creative Principle in Modernity 235

3. Naive Capitalism . 2*11

4. The Credo of Old-Style Business . . . 2r4

5. Old-Style Reform and Revolution . . 247

6. The Diffusion of the Acquisitive Instinct 252

7. Ideals 257

XIIL Government in the Great Sooety . , . 260

1. Loyalty ... 260

2. The Evolution of Loyalty 26 >

3. Pluralism 267

4. Live and Lee Live 269

5. Government in the People 2^2

6. Politicians and Statesmen 279

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

XIV. Love in the'Creat Society 284

1, The External Control of Sexual Conduct . 284

2* Birth Control . . 288

3. The Logic of Birth Control 293

4. The Use of Convention 299

5. The New Hedonism 301

6* Marriage and Affinity 307

7. The Sdiooling of Desire 311

XV. The Moralist in an Unbelieving World . . 3i4

1. The Declaration of Ideals 314

2. The Choice of a Way 320

3. The Religion of the Spirit 326

Appendk: Acknowledgments and Notes . . . . 331

Index 339

cviin

PART I

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ANCESTEIAL ORDER

ts King, having driven out Zeus ”

Aristophanes,

A PREFACE TO MORALS

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM OF UNBELIEF
1. Whirl is King

\mong those who no longer believe in the religion of
tiieir fathers, some are proudly defiant, and many are in-
different. But there are also a few, perhaps an inaeasing
number, who feel that there is a vacancy in their lives.
This inquiry deals with their problem. It is not intended
to disturb the serenity of those who are unshaken in the
faith they hold, and it is not concerned with those who are
still exhilarated by their escape from some stale orthodoxy.
It is concerned with those who are perplexed by the con-
sequences of their own irreligion. It deals with the prob-
lem of unbelief, not as believers are accustomed to deal
with It, in the spirit of men confidently callmg the lost
sheep back into the fold, but as unbelievers themselves
must, I think, face the problem if they face it candidly
and without presumption.

"When such men put their feelings into words they are
likely to say that, having lost their faith, they have lost the
certainty that their lives are significant, and that it mat-
ters what they do with their lives. If they deal with young
people they are likely to say that they know of no com-
pelling reason which certifies the moral code they adhere
to, and that, therefore, their own preferences, when tested
by the ruthless curiosity of their children, seem to have no

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sure foundation of any kind. They are likely to point to
the world about them, and to ask whether the modern man
possesses any critenon by which he can measure the value
of his own desires, whether there is any standard he really
believes in which permits him to put a term upon that
pursuit of money, of power, and of excitement which has
created so much of the turmoil and the squalor and the
explosiveness of modern civili2ation.

These are, perhaps, merely the rationalizations of the
modern man’s discontent. At the heart of it there are
likely to be moments of blank misgiving in which he finds
that the civilization of which he is a part leaves a dusty
taste in his mouth. He may be very busy with many
things, but he discovers one day that he is no longer sure
they are worth doing. He has been much preoccupied;
but he is no longer sure he knows why. He has become
involved in an elaborate routine of' pleasures; and they
do not seem to amuse him very much. He finds it
hard to believe that doing any one thing is better than
doing any other thing, or, in faa, that it is better
than doing nothing at all. It occurs to him that it is a
great deal of trouble to live, and that even in the best of
lives the thrills are few and far between. He begins more
or less consciously to seek satisfactions, because he is no
longer satisfied, and all the while he realizes that the pur-
suit of happiness was always a most unhappy quest. In
the later stages of his woe he not only loses his appetite,
but becomes excessively miserable trying to recover it.
And then, surveying the flux of events and the giddiness
of his own soul, he comes to feel that Aristophanes must
have beien thinking of him when he declared diat "Whirl
is King, having driven out Zeus.”

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2. False Frophedes

The modem age has been rich both in prophecies that
men would at last inherit the kingdoms of this world,
and in complaints at the kind of world they inherited.
Thus Petrarch, who was an early viaim of modernity,
came to feel that he would "have preferred to be bom
in any other period” than his own; he tells us that he
sought an escape by imagining that he lived in some
other age. The Nineteenth Century, which begat us,
was forever blowing the trumpets of freedom and pro-
viding asylums in which its most sensitive children could
take refuge. Wordsworth fled from mankind to rejoice
in nature. Chateaubriand fled from man to rejoice in
savages. Byron fled to an imaginary Greece, and William
Morris to the Middle Ages. A few tried an imaginary
India. A few an equally imaginary China Many fled to
Bohemia, to Utopia, to the Golden West, and to the Latin
Quarter, and some, like James Thomson, to hell where
they were

gratified to gain
That positive eternity of pain
Instead of this insufferable inane.

They had all been disappointed by the failure of a
great prophecy. The theme of this prophecy had been
that man is a beautiful soul who in the course of history
had somehow become enslaved by

Scepters, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,

and they believed with Shelley that when "the loathsome
mask has fallen,” man, exempt from awe, worship, degree,
the king over himself, would then be "free from guilt or

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

pain.” This was the orthodox liberalism to which men
turned when they had lost the religion of their fathers.
But the promises of liberalism have not been fulfilled. .
We are living in the midst of that vast dissolution of
anaent habits which the emancipators believed would
restore our birthright of happiness. We know now that
they did not see very clearly beyond the evils against which
they were rebelling. It is evident to us that their prophe-
cies were pleasant fantasies which concealed the greater
difficulties that confront men, when having won the free-
dom to do what they wish — ^that v/ish, as Byron said:

which ages have not yet subdued
In man — to have no master save his mood,

they are full of contrary moods and do not know what
they wish to do. We have come to see that Huxley was
bright when he said that “a man’s wotst difficulties begin
When he is able to do as he likes.”

The evidences of these greater difficulties lie all about
us: in the brave and brilliant atheists who have defied the
Methodist God, and have become very nervous; in the
women who have emancipated themselves from the
tyranny of fathers, husbands, and homes, and with the in-
termittent but expensive help of a psychoanalyst, are now
endurmg liberty as interior decorators; in die young men
and women who are world-weary at twenty-two; in the
multitudes who drug themselves with pleasure; m the
crowds enfranchised by the blood of heroes who cannot
be persuaded to take an interest in their destiny; in the
millions, at last free to think without fear of priest or
policeman, who have made the moving piaures and the
popular newspapers what they are.

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These are the prisoners who have been released. They
ought to be very happy. They ought to be serene and
composed. They are free to make their own lives. There
are no conventions, no tabus, no gods, priests, princes,
fathers, or revelations which they must accept. Yet the
result is not so good as they thought it would be. The
prison door is wide open. They stagger out into trackless
space under a blinding sun. They find it nerve-wracldng.
''My sensibility,’* said Flaubert, "is sharper than a razor s
edge; the creaking of a door, the face of a bourgeois, an
absurd statement set my heart to throbbing and com-
pletely upset me." They must find their own courage for
battle and their own consolation in defeat. They com-
plain, like Renan after he had broken with the Church,
that the enchanted circle which embraced the whole of
life IS broken, and that they are left with a feeling of
emptiness "like that which follows an attack of fever or
an unhappy love affair." Where is my home? cried
Nietzsche: "For it do I ask and seek, and have sought,
but have not found it.* O eternal everywhere, O eternal
now'here, O eternal in vain.’*

To more placid temperaments the pangs of freedom are
no doubt less acute. It is possible for multitudes in time
of peace and security to exist agreeably — somewhat inco-
herently, perhaps, but without convulsions — to dream a
little and not unpleasantly, to have only now and then a
nightmare, and only occasionally a rude awakening. It is
possible to drift along not too discontentedly, somewhat
nervously, somewhat anxiously, somewhat confusedly,
hoping for the best, and believing in nothing very much.
It is possible to be a passable citizen. But it is not pos-
sible to be wholly at peace. For serenity of soul requires

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some better organization of life than a man can attain by
pursuing his casual ambitions, satisfying his hungers, and
for the rest accepting destiny as an idiot’s tale in which
one dumb sensation succeeds another to no known end.
And it is not possible for him to be wholly alive. For
that depends upon his sense of being completely engaged
with the world, with all his passions and all the faculties
in rich harmonies with one other, and in deep rhythm
with the nature of things.

These are the gifts of a vital religion which can bring
the whole of a man into adjustment with the whole of his
relevant experience. Our forefathers had such a religion.
They quarrelled a good deal about the details, but they
had no doubt that there was an order in the universe which
justified their lives because they were a part of it. The
acids of modernity have dissolved that order for many of
us, and there are some in consequence who think that the
needs which religion fulfilled have also been dissolved.
But however self-sufficient the eugenic and perfectly edu-
cated man of the distant fumre may be, our present ex-
perience is that the needs remain. In failing to meet
them, it is plain that we have succeeded only in substimt-
ing trivial illusions for majestic faiths. For while the
modem emancipated man may wonder how anyone ever
believed that in this universe of stars and atoms and mul-
titudinous life, there is a drama in progress of which the
principal event was enaaed in Palestine nineteen hundred
years ago, it is not really a stranger fable than many which
he so readily accepts. He does not believe the words
of the Gospel but he believes the best advertised notion.
The older fable may be incredible to-day, but .when it

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was credible it bound together the whole of experience
upon a stately and dignified theme. The modern man
has ceased to believe m it but he has nor ceased to be
credulous, and the need to believe haunts him. It is no
wonder that his impulse is to turn back from his freedom,
and to find someone who says he knows the truth and can
tell him what to do, to find the shrine of some new god, of
any cult however newfangled, where he c^n kneel and be
comforted, put on manacles to keep his hands from trem-
bling, ensconce himself in some citadel where it is safe
and warm.

For the modern man who has ceased to believe, without
ceasing to be credulous, hangs, as it were, between heaven
and earth, and is at rest nowhere. There is no theory of
the meaning and value of events which he is compelled to
accept, but he is none the less compelled to accept the
events. There is no moral authority to which he must mrn
now, but there is coercion in opinions, fashions and fads.
There is for him no inevitable purpose in the universe, but
there are elaborate necessities, physical, political, eco-
nomic. He does not feel himself to be an aaor in a great
and dramatic destiny, but he is subject to the massive
powers of our civilization, forced to adopt their pace,
bound to their routine, entangled in their conflias. He
can believe what he chooses about this civilization. He
carmot, however, escape the compulsion of modern events.
They compel his body and his senses as rathlessly as ever
did king or priest. They do not compel his mind. They
have all the force of natural events, but not their majesty,
all the tyrannical power of ancient instimtions, but none-
of their moral certainty. Events are there, and they

191

2

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power him. But they do not convince him that they have
that dignity which inheres in that which is necessary and
in the nature of things.

In the old order the compulsions w^ere often painful,
but there was sense m the pain that was inflicted by the
will of an all-knowing God, In the new order the com-
pulsions are painful and, as it were, accidental, unneces-
sary, w^anton, and full of mockery. The modern man does
not make his peace with them. For in effect he has re-
placed natural piety with a grudging endurance of a series
of unsanctified compulsions. When he believed that the
unfolding of events was a mamfestation of the v/ill of God,
he could say: Thy will be done. ... In His will is
our peace. But when he believes that events are deter-
mined by the votes of a majority, the orders of his
bosses, the opinions of his neighbors, the laws of supply
and demand, and the decisions of quite selfish men,
he yields because he has to yield. He is conquered
but unconvmced.

3. Sorties and Retreats

It might seem as if, in all this, men were merely going
through once again what they have often gone through
before. This is not the first age in which the orthodox
religion has been in conflia with the science of the day.
Plato was born into such an age. For tw'O centuries the
philosophers of Greece had been critical of Homer and of
the popular gods, and when Socrates faced his accusers,
his answer to the accusation of heresy must certainly have
sounded unresponsive. *1 do believe,” he said, ''that
there are gods, and in a higher sense than that in which

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my accusers believe in them Thar is all very well. But
to believe in a '"higher sense*' is also to believe in a dif-
ferent sense.

There is nothing new in the fact that men have ceased
to believe in the religion of their fathers In the history
of Catholic Christianity, there has always existed a tradi-
tion, extending from the authors of the Fourth Gospel
tlirough Origen to the neo-Platonists of modern times,
which rejects the popular idea of God as a power aaing
upon events, and of immortality as everlasting life, and
translates the popular tl'^eology into a symbolic statement
of a purely spiritual experience. In every civilized age
there have been educated and discerning men who could
not accept literally and simply the traditions of the ancient
faith. We are told that during the Periclean Age
"among educated men everything was in dispute- political
sanctions, literary values, moral standards, religious con-
victions, even the possibility of reaching any truth about
anything." When the educated classes of the Roman
world accepted Christianity tliey had ceased to believe in
the pagan gods, and were much too critical to accept the
primitive Hebraic theories of the creation, the redemption,
and the IMessianic Kingdom which were so central in the
popular religion. They had to do what Socrates had
done; they had to take the popular theology in a "higher”
and therefore in a di&rent sense before they could use it.
Indeed, it is so unusual to find an age of active-minded
men in which the most highly educated are genuinely
orthodox in the popular sense, tliat the Thirteenth Cen-
tury, the age of Dante and St. Tliomas Aquinas, when
this phenomenon is reputed to have occurred, is regarded

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

as a unique and wonderful period in the history of the
world. It is not at all unlikely that there never was
such an age in the history of civilized men.

And yet, the position of modern men who have broken
with the religion of their fathers is in certain profound
ways different from that of other men in odier ages.
This is the first age, I think, in the history of mankind
when the circumstances of life have conspired with the
intellectual habits of the time to render any fixed and
authoritative belief incredible to large masses of men.
The dissolution of the old modes of thought has gone so
far, and is so cumulative in its effect, that the modern
man is not able to sink back after a period of prophesying
into a new but stable orthodoxy. The irreligion of the
modern world is radical to a degree for which there
is, I think, no counterpart. For always in the past it
has been possible for new conventions to crystallize, and
for men to find rest and surcease of effort in accepting
them.

We often assume, therefore, that a period of dissolution
wiE necessarily be followed by one of conformity, that the
heterodoxy of one age will become the orthodoxy of the
next, and that when this orthodoxy decays a new period of
prophesying will begin. Thus we say that by the time
of Hosea and Isaiah the religion of die Jews had become
a system of rules for transacting business with Jehovah.
The Prophets then revivified it by thundering against the
conventional belief that religion was mere burnt offering
and sacrifice. A few centuries passed and the religion
based on the Law and the Prophets had in its turn become
a set of mechanical rites manipulated by the Scribes and
the Pharisees. As against this system Jesus and Paul

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preached a religion of grace, and against the "letter” of
the synagogues the "spirit” of Christ. But the inner light
which can perceive the spirit is rare, and so shortly after
the death of Paul, the teaching gradually ceased to appeal
to direct inspiration in the minds of die believers and
became a body of dogma, a "sacred deposit” of die faith
"once for all delivered to the saints.” In the succeeding
ages there appeared again many prophets who thought
they had widiin them the revealing spirit. Though some
of the prophets were burnt, much of the prophesying was
absorbed into the canon. In Luther this sense of revela-
tion appeared once more in a most confident form. He
rejected the authority not only of the Pope and the clergy,
but even of the Bible itself, except where in his opinion
the Bible confirmed his faith. But in the establishment
of a Lutheran Church the old difficulty reappeared: the
inner light which had burned so fiercely in Luther did not
burn brightly or steadily in all Lutherans, and so the right
of private judgment, even in Luther’s restricted use of the
term, led to all kinds of heresies and abominations. Very
soon there came to be an authoritative teaching backed by
tlie power of the police. And in Calvinism the revolt of
the Reformation became stabilized to the last degree.
"Everything,” said Calvin, "pertaining to the perfect rule
of a good life the Lord has so comprehended in His law
that there remains nothing for man to add to that sum-
mary.”

Men fully as mtelligent as the most emancipated among
us once believed that, and I have no doubt that the suc-
cessors of Mr. Darrow and Mr. Mencken would come to
believe something very much like it if conditions per-
mitted them to obey the mstinct to retreat from the chaos

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of modernity into order and certainty. It is all very well
to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard,
and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the
captains of their souls for any extended period of their
lives. Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred
authority with the consoling assurances and the economy
of effort which it brings. "If, outside of Christ, you wish
by your own thoughts to know your relation to God, you
will break your neck Thunder strikes him who exam-
ines.” Thus spoke Martin Luther, and there is every
reason to suppose that the German people thought he was
talking the plainest commonsense. "He who is gifted
with the heavenly knowledge of faith,” said the Council
of Trent, "is free from an inquisitive curiosity.” These
words are rasping to our modern ears, but there is no
occasion to doubt that the men who uttered them had
made a shrewd appraisal of average human namre. The
record of experience is one of sorties and retreats. The
search for moral guidance which shall not depend, upon
external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledg-
ment of some new authority.

4. Deep Dissolution

This same tendency manifests itself in the midst of our
modem uneasiness. We have had a profusion of new
cults, of revivals, and of essays in reconstruction. But
there is reason for thinking that a new crystallization of
an enduring and popular religion is ynlikely in the mod-
ern world. For analogy drawn from the experience of the
past is misleading.

When Luther, for example, rebelled against the author-

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ity of the Church, he did not suppose the way of life for
the ordinary man would be radically altered. Luther
supposed that men would continue to behave much as
they had learned to behave under the Catholic discipline.
The individual for whom he claimed the right of private
judgment was one whose prejudgments had been well
fixed in a Catholic society. The authority of the Pope
was to be destroyed and certain evils abolished, but
there was to remain that feeling for objeaive moral
certainties which Catholicism had nurtured. When the
Anabaptists carried the practice of his theory beyond this
point, Luther denounced them violently. For what he
believed in was Protestantism for good Catholics. The
reformers of the Eighteenth Cenmry made a similar
assumption. They really believed in democracy for men
who had an aristocratic training Jefferson, for example,
had an instinctive fear of the urban rabble, that most
democratic part of the population. The society of free men
which-he dreamed about was composed of those who had
the discipline, the standards of honor and the taste, with-
out the privileges or the corruptions, that are to be found
in a society of well-bred country gentlemen.

The more recent rebels frequently betray a somewhat
similar inability to imagine the consequences of their
own victories. For the smashing of idols is in itself such
a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the icon-
oclast to look clearly into a fumre when there will not
be many idols left to smash. Yet that fumre is begin-
ning to be our present, and it might be said that men
are conscious of what modernity means insofar as they
realize that they are confronted not so much with the

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necessity of promoting rebellion as of dealmg with the
consequences of it. The Nineteenth Century, roughly
speaking the time between Voltaire and Mencken, was
an age of terrific indictments and of feeble solutions.
The Marxian indictment of capitalism is a case m point.
The Nietzschean transvaluation of values is another; it
is magmficent, but who can say, after he has shot his
arrow of longing to the other shore, whether he will find
Caesar Borgia, Henry Ford, or Isadora Duncan? Who
knows, having read Mr. Mencken and Mr. Sinclair Lewis,
what kind of world will be left when all the boobs and
yokels have crawled back in their holes and have died of
shame?

The rebel, while he is making his attack, is not likely
to feel the need to answer such questions. For he moves
in an unreal environment, one might almost say a^ parasitic
environment. He goes forth to destroy Caesar, Mammon,
George F. Babbitt, and Mrs. GrOndy. As he wrestles
with these demons, he leans upon them. By inversion
they offer him much the same kind of support which the
conformer enjoys. They provide him with an objective
which enables him to know exactly what he thinks he
wants to do. His energies are focussed by his indignation.
He does not suffer from emptiness, doubt, and division of
soul. These are the maladies which come later when the
struggle is over. While the rebel is in conflia with the
established nuisances he has an aim in life which absorbs
, all his passions. He has his own sense of righteousness
and his own feeling of communion with a grand purpose.
For in attacking idols there is a kind of piety, in over-
throwing tyrants a kind of loyalty, in ridiculing smpidities

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an imitation of wisdom. In the heat of battle the rebel
is exalted by a whole-hearted tension which is easily mis-
taken for a taste of die freedom that is to come. He is
under the spell of an illusion. For what comes after the
struggle is not the exaltation of freedom but a letting
down of the tension that belongs solely to the struggle
itself. The happiness of the rebel is as transient as the
iconoclasm which produced it. When he has slam the
dragon and rescued the beautiful maiden, there is usually
nothing left for him to do but write his memoirs and
dream of a time when the world was young.

What most distmguishes the generation who have*
approached maturity since the debacle of idealism at the
end of the War is not their rebellion against the religion
and the moral code of their parents, but their disillusion-
ment with their own rebellion. It is common for young
men and women to rebel, but that they should rebel sadly
and without faith in their own rebellion, that they should
distrust the new freedom no less than the old certainties —
that is something of a novelty. As Mr. Canby once said,
at the age of seven they saw through their parents and
charaaerized them in a phrase. At fourteen they saw
through education and dodged it. At eighteen they saw
through morality and stepped over it. At twenty they
lost respea for their home towns, and at twenty-one they
discovered that our social system is ridiculous. At twenty-
three the autobiography ends because the author has run
through society to date and does not know what to do
next. For, as Mr. Canby might have added, the idea of
reforming that society makes no appeal to them. They
have seen through all that. They cannot adopt any of

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the synthetic religions of the Nineteenth Century. They
have seen through all of them

They have seen through the religion of nature to which
the early romantics turned for consolation. They have
heard too much about the brutality of natural seleaion
to feel, as Wordsworth did, that pleasant landscapes are
divine. They have seen through the religion of beauty
because, for one thing, they are too much oppressed by
the ugliness of Main Street. They cannot take refuge m
an ivory tower because the modern apartment house, with
a radio loudspeaker on the floor above and on the floor
below and just across the courtyard, will not permit it.
They cannot, like Mazzmi, make a religion of patriotism,
because they have just been demobilized. Tliey cannot
make a religion of science like the post-Darwmians
because they do not understand modern science They
never learned enough mathematics and physics. They do
not like Bernard Shaw’s religion of creative evolution
because they have read enough to know that Mr. Shaw’s
biology is literary and evangelical. As for the religion
of progress, that is pre-empted by George F. Babbitt and
the Rotary Club, and the religion of humanity is utterly
unacceptable to those who have to ride in the subways
during the rush hour.

Yet the current attempts to modernize religious creeds
are inspired by the hope that somehow it wilFbe possible
to construct a form of belief which will fit into this
vacuum. It is evident that life soon becomes distraaed
and tiresome if it is not illuminated by communion with
what William James called *'a wider self through which
saving experiences come.” The eager search for new reli-

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gions, the hasty adherence to cults, and the urgent appeals
for a reconciliation between religion and science are con-
fessions tliat to the modern man his activity seems to
have no place in any rational order. His life seems mere
restlessness and compulsion, rather than conduct lighted
by luminous beliefs. He is possessed by a great deal of
excitement amidst which, as Mr Santayana once remarked,
he redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim

For in the modern age, at first imperceptibly with the
rise of the towns, and then catastrophically since the
mechanical revolution, there have gone into dissolution
not only the current orthodoxy, but the social order and
the ways of living which supported it. Thus rebellion
and emancipation have come to mean something far more
drastic than they have ever meant before. The earlier
rebels summoned men from one allegiance to another,
but the feeling for certainty in religion and for decorum
in society persisted. In the modern world it is this very
feeling of certainty itself which is dissolving. It is dis-
solving not merely for an educated minority but for every-
one who comes within the orbit of modernity.

Yet there remain the wants which orthodoxy of some
sort satisfies. The natural man, when he is released from
restraints, and has no substitute for them, is at sixes and
sevens with himself and the world. For in the free play
of his uninKibited instincts he does not find any natural
substitute for those accumulated convictions which, how-
ever badly they did it, nevertheless organi2ed his soul,
economized his effort, consoled him, and gave him dignity
in his own eyes because he was part of some greater whole.
The acids of modernity are so powerful that they do not

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tolerate a crystallization of ideas which will serve as a
new orthodoxy into which men can retreat. And so the
modern world is haunted by a realization, which it
becomes constantly less easy to ignore, that it is impossible
to reconstruct an enduring orthodoxy, and impossible to
live well without the satisfactions which an orthodoxy
would provide.

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CHAPTER II

GOD IN THE MODERN WORLD
1. Imago Dei

By the dissolution of their ancestral ways men have
been deprived of their sense of certainty as to why they
were born, why they must work, whom they must love,
what they must honor, where they may turn in sorrow
and defeat. They have left to them the ancient codes
and the modern criticism of these codes, guesses, intui-
tions, inconclusive experiments, possibilities, probabilities,
hypotheses. Below the level of reason, they may have un-
conscious prejudice, they may speak with a loud cocksure-
ness, they may act with fanaticism. But there is gone that
ineffable certainty which once made God and His Plan
seem as real as the lamppost.

I do not mean that modern men have ceased to believe
m God. I do mean that they no longer believe m him
simply and literally. I mean that they have defined and
refined their ideas of him until they can no longer hon-
estly say that he exists, as they would say that their neigh-
bor exists. Search the writings of liberal churchmen, and
when you come to the crucial passages which are intended
to express their belief in God, you will find, I think, that
at just this point their uncertainty is most evident.

The Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick has written an
essay, called “How Shall We Think of God?”, which ilius-

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trates the difficulty. He begins by saying that "believing
in God without considering how one shall picture him is
deplorably unsatisfaaory.*' Yet the old ways of piauring
him are no longer credible. We cannot think of him as
seated upon a throne, while around him are angels playing
on harps and singing hymns. "God as a king on high —
our fathers, living under monarchy, rejoiced in that image
and found it meaningful. His throne, his crown, his
scepter, his seraphic retinue, his laws, rewards, and punish-
ments— ^how dominant that piaure was and how persistent
is the continuance of it in our hymns and prayers! It was
always partly poetry, but it had a prose background r^there
really had been at first a celestial land above the clouds
where God reigned and where his throne was m the
heavens.*'

Having said that this picture is antiquated, Dr. Fosdick
goes on to state that "the religious man must have imagi-
nations of God, if God is to be real to him.’* He must
"picture his dealing with the Divine in terms of personal
^relationship." But how? "The place where man vitally
. finds God ... is within his own experience of good-
ness, truth, and beauty, and the truest images of God are
therefore to be found in man’s spiritual life." I should
be the last to deny that a man may, if he chooses, think
of God as the source of all that seems to him worthy in
human experience. But certainly this is not 'the God of
the ancient faith. This is not God the Father, the Law-
giver, the Judge. This is a highly sophisticated idea of
God, employed by a modern man who would like to say,
but cannot say with certainty, that there exists a personal
God to whom men must accommodate themselves.

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2. An lndefi72ite God

It may be that dear and unambiguous statements are
nor now possible m our intellectual climate. But at least
we should not forget that the religions which have domi-
nated human history have been founded on what the
faithful felt were undeniable faas. These facts %vere
mysterious only in the sense that they were uncommon,
like an eclipse of the sun, but not m the sense that they
were beyond human experience No doubt there are pas-
sages m the Scriptures written by highly cultivated men
m which the Divine nature is called mysterious and
unknowable But these passages are not the rock upon
which the popular churches are founded. No one, I
think, has truly observed the religious life of simple
people without understanding how plain, how literal,
how natural they take their supernatural personages to be.

The popular gods are not indefinite and unknowable
They have a definite history and their favorite haunts,
and they have often been seen. They walk on earth, they
might appear to anyone, they are angered, they are
pleased, they w^eep and they rejoice, diey eat and they
may fall in love The modern man uses the w'ord ' super -
natural’ to describe something that seems to him not quite
so credible as the things he calls natural. This is not
the supernaturalism of the devout. They do not distin-
guish two planes of reality and two orders of certainty.
For them Jesus Christ was bom of a Virgin and w'as
raised from the dead as literally as Napoleon w^as Emperor
of the French and returned from Elba.

This is the kind of certainty one no longer finds m the

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utterances of modern men. I might cite, for example,
a typically modern assertion about the existence of God,
made by Mr. W. C. Brownell, a critic who could not be
reproached with insensitiveness to the value of traditional
beliefs. He wrote that "the influence of the Holy Spirit,
exquisitely called the Comforter, is a matter of aaual
experience, as solid a reality as that of elearo-magneasm.”
I do not suppose that Mr. Brownell meant to admit the
least possible doubt. But he was a modern man, and
surreptitiously doubt invaded his certainty. For elearo-
magnetism is not an absolutely solid reality to a layman’s
mind. It has a questionable reality. I suspect that is why
Mr. Brownell chose this metaphor; it would have seemed
a little too blunt to his modern intelligence to say that
his faith was founded not on electto-magnetism, but as
men once believed, on a rock.

The attempts to reconstrua religious creeds are beset
by the modern man’s inability to convince himself that
the constitution of the universe includes facts which in
our skeptical jargon we call supernatural. Yet as William
James once said, "religion, in her fullest exercise of func-
tion, is not a mere illumination of faas already elsewhere
given, not a mere passion, like love, which views thmgs
in a rosier light. . . . It is something more, namely, a
postulator of new facts as well.’’ James himself was
strongly disposed toward what he so candidly described
as "overbeliefs’’; he had sympathy with the beliefs of
others which was as large and charitable as any man’s
can be. There was no trace of the intellectual snob in
William James; he was in the other camp from those thin
argumentative rationalists who find so much satisfaaion

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in disproving wh'at other men hold sacred. James loved
cranks and naifs and sought them our for the wisdom
they might have. But withal he was a modern man who
lived toward the climax of the revolutionary period. He
had the Will to Believe, he argued eloquently for the
Right to Believe. But he did not wholly believe. The
utmost tliat he could honestly believe was something
which he confessed would "appear a sorry underbelief”
to some of his readers. “Who knows,” he said, "whether
the faithfulness of individuals here below to their own
poor overbeliefs may not actually help God in turn to
be more effeaively faithful to his own greater tasks?”
Who knows? And on that question mark he paused and
could say no more.

3. God in More Senses Than One
But even if there was some uncertainty as to the exist-
ence of the God whom William James described, he was
at least the kind of God with whom human beings could
commune. If they could jump the initial doubt they
found themselves in an exciting world where they might
live for a God who, like themselves, had work to do.
James wrote the passage I have quoted in 1902. A
quarter of a century later Alfred North Whitehead came
to Harvard to deliver the Lowell Lectures. He undertook
to define God for modern men,

Mr. Whitehead, like William James, is a compassion-
ate man and on the side of the angels. But his is a wholly
modernized mind in full command of all the conceptual
instruments of scientific logic. By contrast with the
austerity of Mr. Whitehead’s thinking, James, with his

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

chivalrous offer of fealty to God, seemS like one of the
last of the great romantics. There is a God in Mr. White-
head’s philosophy, and a very necessary God at that.
Unhappily, I am not enough of a logician to say tliat I
am quite sure I understand what it means to say that
"God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete
actuality.” There have been moments when I imagined
I had caught the meaning of this, but there have been
more moments when I knew that I had not. I have never
doubted, however, that the concept had meaning, and
that I missed it because it was too deep for me. Why
then, it may be asked, do I presume to discuss it? My
answer is that a conception of God, which is incompre-
hensible to all who are not highly trained logicians, is
a possible God for logicians alone. It is not presumptuous
to say of Mr. Whitehead’s God what he himself says
of Aristotle’s God: that it does "not lead him very far
toward the production of a God available for religious
purposes.”

For while this God may satisfy a metaphysical need in
the thinker, he does not satisfy the passions of the believer.
This God does not govern the world like a king nor
watch over his children like a father. He offers them
no purposes to which they can consecrate themselves; he
exhibits no image of holiness they can imitate. He does
not chastise them in sin nor console them in sorrow. He
is a principle with which to explain the faas, if you can
'’understand the explanation. He is not himself a per-
sonality who deals with the facts. For the purposes of
religion he is no God at all; his universe remains stonily
unaware of man. Nothing has happened by accepting

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Mr. Whitehead^s definition which changes the inexorable
character of that destiny which Bertrand Russell depicted
when he wrote that

we see, surrounding the narrow raft illumined by the dicker-
ing light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose
rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; from the great
night without, a chill blast breaks m upon our refuge, all
the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concen-
trated upon the individual soul, which must struggle alone,
with what of courage it can command, against the whole
weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and
fears.

It is a nice question whether the use of God’s name
is not misleading when it is applied by modernists to
ideas so remote from the God men have worshiped.
Plainly the modernist churchman does not believe in the
God of Genesis who walked in the garden m the cool
of the evening and called to Adam and his wife who had
hidden themselves behind a tree; nor in the God of
Exodus who appeared to Moses and Aaron and seventy
of thf Eiders of Israel, standing with his feet upon a
paved walk as if it were a sapphire stone; nor even in
the God of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah who in his
compassion for the sheep who have gone astray, having
Turned everyone to his own way, laid on the Man of
Sorrows the iniquity of us all.

This, as Kirsopp Lake says, is the God of most, if not
all, the writings in the Bible. Yet '’however much our
inherited sentiments may shrink from the admission, the
scientists are to-day almost unanimous m saying that the
universe as they see it contains no evidence of the exist-

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ence of any gnthropomotphic God whatever. The experi-
mentalist modernist) wholly agrees that this is so.
Nevertheless he refuses as a rule, and I think rightly —
to abandon the use of the word 'God.’ ” In justification
of this refusal to abandon the word 'God,’ although he
has abandoned the accepted meaning of the word. Dr.
Lake appeals to a tradition which reaches back at least
to Origen who, as a Christian neo-platonist, used the word
'God’ to mean, not the King and Father of creation, but
the siun of all ideal values. It was this redefinition of the
word 'God,’ he says, which "made Christianity possible
for the educated man of the third century” It is this
same redefinition which still makes Christianity possible
for educated churchmen like Dr. Lake and Dean Inge.

Dr. Lake admits that although this attractive bypath
of tradition "is intelleaually adorned by many princes of
thought and lords of language” it is "ecclesiastically not
free from reproach.” He avows another reason for his
use of the word 'God’ which, if not more compelling, is
certainly more worldly. "Atheist” has meant since Roman
times an enemy of society; it gives a wholly false impres-
sion of the real state of mind of those who adhere to the
platonic tradition. They have been wholly without the
defiance which "atheism” connotes; on the contrary they
have been a few individuals in each age who lived peace-
ably within the shelter of the church, worshiping a some-
what different God inwardly and in their own way, and
often helping to refresh the more mundane spirit of the
popular church. The term "agnostic” is almost as unavail-
able. It was invented to describe a tolerant unbelief in
the anthropomorphic God. In popular usage it has come

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to mean about the same thing as atheist, for the instinct
of the common man is sound in these matters. He feels
that those who claim to be open-minded about God have
for all practical purposes ceased to believe m him. The
agnostic's reply that he would gladly believe if the evi-
dence would confirm it, does not alter the fact that he
does not now believe. And so Dr. Lake concludes that
the modernist must use the word 'God' in his own sense,
'^endeavoring partly to preserve Origens meaning of the
word, and partly shrinking from any other policy as open
to misconstruction.''

I confess that the notion of adopting a policy about
God somehow shocks me as intruding a rather worldly
consideration which would seem to be wholly out of
place. But this feeling is, I am sure, an injustice to
Dr. Lake who is plainly and certainly not a worldling.
He is moved, no doubt, by the conviction that in letting
'God' mean one thing to the mass of the devout and
another to the educated mmority, the loss of intellectual
precision is more than compensated by the preservation
of a community of feeling. This is not mere expediency.
It may be the part of wisdom, which is profounder than
mere reasoning, to wish that intellectual distinctions shall
not divide men too sharply.

But if it is wisdom, it is an aristocratic wisdom. And
in Dean Inge's writings this is frankly avowed. "The
strength of Chrisriamty," he says, "is in transforming the
lives of individuals — of a small minority, certainly, as
Christ clearly prediaed, but a large number in the aggre-
gate. To rescue a little flock, here and there, from
materialism, selfishness, and hatred, is the task of the

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Church of Christ in all ages alike, and there is no likeli-
hood that It will ever be otherwise.”

But in other ages, one thing was otherwise. And in
this one thing lies the radical peculiarity of the modern
difficulty. In other ages there was no acknowledged
distinction betw'een the ultimate beliefs ot the educated
and the uneducated. There were differences in learning,
in religious genius, m the closeness of a chosen few to God
and his angels Inwardly there were even radical differ-
ences of meaning But critical analysis had not made
them oven and evident, and the common assumption was
that there was one God for all, for the peasant who saw
him dimly and could approach him only through his
patron saint, and for the holy man who had seen God
and talked with him face to face. It has remained for
churchmen of our era to distinguish two or more different
Gods, and openly to say that they are different. This
may be a triumph of candor and of intelligence. But
this very consciousness of what they are doing, these very
honest admissions that the God of Dean Inge, for exam-
ple, IS only in name the God of millions of other pro-
testants — that is an admission, when they understand it,
which makes faith difficult for modern men.

4. The Protest of the Fundamentalists

Fundamentalism is a protest against all these definitions
and attenuations which the modern man finds it necessary
to make. It is avowedly a reaaion within the Protestant
communions against what the President of the World’s
Christian Fundamentalist Association rather accurately
described as "that weasel method of sucking the meaning

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out of words, and then presaiting the empty shells in an
attempt to palm them off as giving the Christian faith
a new and another interpretation/' In actual practice
this movement has become entangled with all sorts of
bizarre and barbarous agitations, with the Ku Klux Klan,
with fanatical prohibition, with the *'anti-evolution laws,^"^
and with much persecution and intolerance. This in
Itself is significant. For it shows that the central truth,
which the fundamentalists have grasped, no longer appeals
to the best brains and the good sense of a modern com-
mumty, and that the movement is recruited largely from
the isolated, the inexperienced, and the uneducated.

Into the politics of the heated controversy between
modernists and fundamentalists I do not propose here to
enter. That it is not merely a dispute in the realm of
the spirit is made evident by the President of the Funda-
mentalist Association when he avers that 'nothing" holds
modernists and fundamentalists together except "the bil-
lions of dollars invested. Nine out of ten of these dollars,
if not ninety-nine out of every hundred of them, spent
to construct the great denominational umversities, col-
leges, schools of second grade, theological seminaries,
great denominational mission stations, the multiplied hos-
pitals that bear denominational names, the immense pub-
lication societies and the expensive societies were given
by fundamentalists and filched by modernists. It took
hundreds of years to collect this money and construct
these institutions. It has taken only a quarter of a cen-
tury for the liberal bandits to capture them. ..."

Not all the fundamentalist argument, however, is
pitched at this level. There is also a reasoned case against

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the modernists. Fortunatel;^ this case has been stated in
a little book called Christianity and Liberalism by a man
who is both a scholar and a gentleman. The author is
Professor J. Gresham Machen of the Princeton Theological
Seminary. It is an admirable book. For its acumen, for
its saliency,' and for its wit this cool and stringent defense
of orthodox Protestantism is, I think, the best popular
argument produced by either side in the current contro-
versy. We shall do well to listen to Dr. Machen.

Modernism, he says, "is altogether in the imperative
mood,” while the traditional religion "begins with a tri-
umphant indicative.” I do not see how one can deny
the force of this generalization. "From the beginning
Qiristianity was certainly a way of life. But how was the
life to be produced? Not by appealing to the human will,
but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the nar-
ration of an event.” Dr. Machen insists, rightly I think,
that the historic influence of Christianity on the mass of
men has depended upon their belief that an historic drama
was enaaed in Palestine nineteen hundred years ago dur-
ing the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. The veracity of
that story was fundamental to the Christian Church. For
while all the ideal values may remain if you impugn the
historic record set forth in the Gospels, these ideal values
are not certified to the common man as inherent in the
very nature of things. Once they are deprived of their
root in historic faa, their poetry, their symbolism, their
ethical significance depend for their sanaion upon the
temperament and experience of the individual ^liever.
There is gone that deep, compulsive, organic faith in an
external faa which is the essence of religion for all but

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that very small minority who can live within themselves
in mystical communion or by the power of their under-
standing. For the great mass of men, if the history of
religions is to be trusted, religious experience depends
upon a complete belief in the concrete existence, one
might almost say the materialization, of their God. The
fundamentalist goes to the very heart of the matter, there-
fore, when he insists that you have destroyed the popular
foundations of religion if you make your gospel a sym-
bolic record of experience, and reject it as an actual record
of events. ^

The liberals have yet to answer Dr. Machen when he
says that "the Christian movement at its inception was
not just a way of life in the modern sense, but a way of
life founded upon a message. It was based, not upon
mere feelmg, not upon a mere program of work, but on
an account of facts.” It was based on the story of the
birth, the life, the ministry, the death, and the resurreaion
of Jesus Christ. That story set forth the facts which
certify the Christian experience. Modernism, which in
varying degree casts doubt upon the truth of that story,
may therefore be defined as an attempt to preserve seleaed
parts of the experience after the faas which inspired it
have been rejeaed. The orthodox believer may be mis-
taken as to the faas in which he believes. But he is not
mistaken in thinking that you cannot, for the mass of men,
have a faith of which the only foundation is their need
and desire to believe. The historic churches, without
any important exceptions, I think, have founded faith
on clear statements about matters of faa, historic events,
or physical manifestations. They have never been con-

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tent with a symbolism which the believer knew was
merely symbolic. Only the sophisticated in their private
meditations and in esoteric writing have found satisfac-
ytion in symbolism as such.

Complete as was Dr. Machen s victory over the Prot-
estant liberals, he did not long remain in possession of
the field. There is a deeper fundamentalism than his,
and It is based on a longer continuous experience. This
is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. From a
priest of that church, Father Riggs, has come the most
searching criticism of Dr Machen' s case. Writing in the
Commomueal Father Riggs points out that ‘'the funda-
mentalists are well-nigh powerless. They are estopped,
so to speak, from stemming the ravaging waters of agnos-
ticism because they cannot, while remaining loyal to the
(Protestant) reformers ... set limits to destructive
criticism of the Bible without making an un-Protestant
appeal to tradition.** Father Riggs, in other words, is
asking the Protestant fundamentalists, like Dr. Machen,
how they can be certain that they know these ]acts upon
which they assert that the Christian religion is founded.

They must reply that they know tliem from reading the
Bible. The reply is, however, unsatisfying. For obvi-
ously there are many ways of reading the Bible, and there-
fore the Protestant who demands the right of private judg-
ment can never know with absolute certainty that his
reading is the correct one. His position in a skeptical
age is, therefore, as Father Riggs points out, a weak one,
because a private judgment is, after all, only a private
judgment. The history of Protestantism shows that the
exercise of private judgment as to the meamng of Scrip-

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ture leads not to universal and undeniable dogma, but
to schism within schism and heresy within heresy From
the point of view, then, of the oldest fundamentalism of
the western world the error of the modernists is that
they deny the facts on which religious faith reposes; the
error of the orthodox Protestants is that although they
affirm the facts, they reject all authority which can verify
them ; the virtue of the Catholic system is that along with
a dogmatic affirmation of the central facts, it provides a
living authority in the Church which can ascertain and
demonstrate and verify these facts,

5. In Man's Image

The long record of clerical opposition to certain kinds
of scientific inquiry has a touch of dignity when it is
realized that at the core of that opposition there is a very
profound understanding of the religious needs of ordinary
men. For once you weaken the belief that the central
facts taught by the churches are faas m the most literal
and absolute sense, the disintegration of the popular
religion begins We may confidently declare that Mr.
Santayana is speaking not as a student of human nature,
but as a culavated unbeliever, when he writes that *'the
idea that religion contains a literal, not a symbolic, rep-
resentation of truth and life is simply an impossible idea."
The idea is impossible, no doubt, for the children of the
great emancipation. But because it is impossible, religion
Itself, in the traditional popular meaning of the term, has
become impossible for them.

If it is true that man creates God in his own image, it
is no less true that for religious devotion he must remain

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unconscious of that fact. Once he knows that he has
created the image of God, the reality of it vanishes like
last night’s dream. It may be that to anyone who is
impregnated with the modern spirit it is almost self-
evident that the truths of religion are truths of human
experience. But this knowledge does not tolerate an
abiding and absorbing faith. For when the truths of
religion have lost their connection with a superhuman
order, the cord of their life is cut. What remains is a
somewhat archaic, a somewhat questionable, although a
very touching, quaint medley of poetry, rhetoric, fable,
exhortation, and insight into human travail. When
Mr. Santayana says that * 'matters of religion should never
be matters of controversy” because "we never argue with
a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just,
for knowing so human a passion,” he expresses an ulti-
mate unbelief.

For what would be the plight of a lover, if we told him
that his passion was charming,^ — though, of course, there
might be no such lady as the one he loved.

[36]

CHAPTER III

THE LOSS OF CERTAINTY

1. W^ays of Reading the Bible

It is important to an understanding of this matter that
we should not confuse the modern practice of redefining
God with the ancient use of allegory.

From the earliest days the words of the Bible have been
embroidered with luxuriant and often fantastic meanings.
In Leviticus it says, for example, that the meal offering
may be baked in an oven, fried in a pan, or toasted on a
plate This passage, says Origen, proves that Scripture
must have three meanings. It came to have any number
of meanings. Thus St Augustine explained that Eden
meant the life of the blessed, and its four rivers the four
virtues; farther on in the same chapter he declares that
Eden is the Church, and that its four rivers are the four
Gospels.

In the same manner Wyclif in a later age preached a
sermon explaining the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho rep-
resents Adam and Eve; the robbers are the fiends of hell;
the priest and Levite who went by on the other side are
the patriarchs, saints, and prophets who failed to bring
salvation;' the Good Samaritan is Jesus; the wine which
he pours into his wounds is sharp words to prick men
from sin, and the oil is hope. . , . Savonarola, we are

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told, preached during the whole of Lent, 1492, taking as
his text Noah’s Ark and "giving each day a different inter-
pretation of the ten planks of which the Ark was com-
posed.”

By this method of interpretation the devout adapted
the Bible to their own uses, smoothing away its contra-
dictions and explaining away passages, like the command
in Genesis to kill uncircumcised children, which, read lit-
erally, would have seemed to them barbarous and
immoral. We must be careful, however, not to misunder-
stand this method of thought. When they said that the
beautiful woman in the Song of Solomon was the Church,
they were not conscious, as we are, that this is a figure
of speech. There had not entered into their habits of
thought the kind of analytical precision in which one
thing can mean only one thing. It is no contradiction to
say that the allegory was taken literally; certainly there
was no sense of unreality about it, as there is for us.
"These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suit-
ably put ...” says St. Augustine, speaking here to the
educated minority, "without giving offense to anyone,
while yet we believe the strict truth of the history con-
firmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts.”

But at last men became too analytical and too self-
conscious to accept the naive use of allegory. They
realized that allegory was a loose method of interpreta-
tion which lent itself easily to the citing of scnpture in
order to justify heresy. If the ten planks in Noah’s Ark
could mean a different set of truths on each day in Lent,
there was no telling what they might come to mean in
the end. It was clear, therefore, that allegory was danger-

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ous and might, as Luther said, '"degenerate into a mere
monkey game’’; it was wanton, like "'a sort of beautiful
harlot who proves herself spiritually seductive to idle
men.”

This danger was a result of tlie general loosening of
organic faith which was already evident m Luther’s day.
To men who had the unconscious certainties about God
and his universe, allegory was a perfectly safe method of
interpreting the Bible because all the interpretations, how-
ever fantastic, were inspired by the same pre-judgments
and tended therefore to confirm the same convictions.
The allegories of simple men are like many-colored
flowers in one garden, growing from the same soil,
watered by the same rams, turning their faces toward the
same sun. But as men became emancipated from their
ancestral way of life, their convictions about God and
destiny and human morality changed. Then the method
of allegory ceased to be the merely exuberant expression
of the same ancient truths, and became a confusing
method of rationali2mg all kinds of new experiments.
It promoted heresy because men had become heretical,
where once, while men were devout, it had only embroid-
ered their devotions.

"To allegori2e is to juggle with Scripture,” said Lu'ther,
The Protestant Reformers could not tolerate that. For
they lived in an age when faith was already disintegrat-
ing, and they had themselves destroyed the authority of
an infallible source of religion. "We must,” wrote
Calvin, "entirely rejea the allegories of Origen, and of
others like him, which Satan, with the deepest subtlety,
has endeavored to* mtroduce into the Church, for the

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purpose of rendering the doarine of Scripture ambiguous
and destitute of all certainty and firmness.”

The insistence of the Reformers on a literal interpreta-
tion of the Bible had, as Dr. Fosdick points out, two
unforeseen results. It led to the so-called Higher Criticism
which in substance is nothing but a scientific attempt to
find out what the Bible did mean literally to those who
wrote It. And this in turn made it pracucally impossible
for modern men to believe all that the Bible literally
says. When they read the Bible as allegory they found
in it unending confiirmation of what they already believed.
But when they read it literally, as history, as astronomy,
and biology, and as a code of laws, it contradicted at
many crucial points the praakal working conviaions of
their daily lives. "The consequence is,” says Dr. Fosdick,
"that we face the Biblical world made historically vivid
over against the modern world presently experienced, and
we cannot use the old method (i.e. allegory) of accom-
modating one to the other.”

2. Modernism: Immortality as an Example

This predicament forced modern churchmen to seek
what Dr. Fosdick calls "a new solution.” They could
not believe that the Bible was taken down, as John Donne
put it, by "the Secretaries of the Holy Ghost.” Yet they
believed, as every sane man does, that the Bible contains
wisdom which bears deeply upon the conduCT of human
life. Their problem was to ^d a way of picking and
choosing passages in the Saipmres, and then of inter-
preting those which were chosen in such a way as to make
them credible to modem men. They had to find some

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way of setting aside the story that God made Eve out
of Adam's rib, that God commanded the massacre of
whole populations, and that he enjoyed the slaughter of
animals at the sacrifice; but they had at the same time to
find a way of preserving for the use of modern men the
lessons of the ministry of Jesus and the promise of life
everlasting.

The method they employ is based on a theory. It is a
theory that the Bible contains * ‘abiding messages" placed
in a “transient setting." The Bible, for example, is full
of stories about devils and angels. Now, modern men do
not believe in devils and angels. These are “categories"
which they have outgrown. But what the devils and
angels stood for are evils and blessings which modern
men still encounter. We have, therefore, only to “decode"
the Bible, and where it speaks of devils to see temptations,
sin, disease, pain, and suffering, which have a psychic
origin; where it speaks of angels to remember that sense
of unseen friendliness which may help us at a crisis in
our lives. The old wine is still good, but it needs to be
put in new bottles. “The modern preacher's responsi-
bility is thus to decode the abiding meanings of Scripture
from outgrown phraseology."

This is not so difficult a thing to do for the devils and
the angels. But a little refleaion will show, I think, that
in dealing with the major themes of religion, the soluuon is
not so easy. The real difficulty appears when Dr. FosJick
attempts to decode the biblical promise of immortal life.

He begins by rejeaing completely the resurrection of
the flesh and any kind of immortality which is imagined
as the survival of the physical person. Yet he believes

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in "the persistence of personality through death.” For
he maintains that without this belief the final victory of
death would signify "the triumphant irrationality of exist-
ence”; not to believe in immortality is to submit to
"mental confusion.” Speaking quite frankly, however, he
cannot easily imagine "a completely disembodied exist-
ence.” Yet It is obviously not easy to imagine the persist-
ence of personality through death once you have made up
your mind not to imagine a concrete heaven inliabited by
well-defined persons

Modern churchmen, like Dean Inge for example, who
have faced the difficulty more boldly than Dr. Fosdick
does, arrive at an intelligible explanation of what they
mean by immortality But they mean something which
is not only very difficult to understand, but extremely
difficult for most men to enjoy when they have under-
stood It. They inject intelligible meaning into the word
"eternal” by employing it in a sense which is wholly
different from that which the common man employs.
By immortality he means life that goes on age after age
withoyt stopping. But the modern churchmen who have
really clarified their minds are platonists. They apply
the word "eternal” to that which is independent of time
and existence. Between the two conceptions there is the
profoundest difference, for in the commonsense of the
worldling existence is so precious that he wishes it to
continue for ever and ever. But to the platonist exist-
ence, or embodiment, is transient, accidental, irrational;
only that is permanent which is timeless. Commonsense
demands that if we are immortal we should meet our
friend again later and continue our friendship; the pla-

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tonist loves the memory of his friend after death as he
loved an ideal image of him during his life. In com-
muning with his memories and his ideals he knows him-
self to be in touch with eternal things. For not even the
gods, says Homer, can undo the past; no accident of
mortality can destroy anything which can be represented
in the mind. Heroes die, but that such heroic deeds were
done is a chapter forever, as Mr Santayana says, in any
complete history of the universe. The thinker dies, but
his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men
are mortal ; but ideas are immortal.

I do not know whether I have known hov/ to state
clearly what is meant by this platonic view to which, in
varying degrees of clarity, all emancipated minds turn
when they talk of immortality. But, at least, it is clear
that it is a conception which calls for a radically different
adjustment to life than that to which the worldling is
accustomed. He desires objects to love, goods and suc-
cesses that are perishable, and he wishes them not to
perish. Before he can enter the platonic world, before
he can even attain to a hint of its meaning, he must
abandon the very desires of which his hope of immor-
tality IS the expression. He must detach himself from
his wish to acquire and possess objects that die; he must
learn what it means to possess things not by holding
them, but by understanding them, and to enjoy them as
objects of eflecnon. He must not only cease to desire
immortality as he conceives it, but the material embodi-
ment of things as well. Then only, when he has
renounced his love of existence, can he begin to love the
forms of existence, and to live among imperishable ideas.

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Then, and in this sense only, does he enter into eternal
life.

The ordinary man, when he hears this doctrine
expounded, is almost certain to say with the Indian sage:
"the worship of the Impersonal laid no hold upon my
heart.” His heart is set on the enjoyment .of worldly
goods, and the doctrine, for all but a few exceptional
spirits, requires a radical change of heart. It is forbid-
ding except to the few in whom "the intellect (is) pas-
sionate and the passions cold.” For it demands a con-
version of their namral desire to possess tangible things
into a passion to understand intangible and abstract
things. This philosophy is ascetic, unworldly, and pro-
foundly disinterested.

Now It can be argued that this is precisely what the
Gospels teach as to the meaning of salvation. Excellent
authority can be cited from the Gospel of John and the
Epistles of St. Paul to justify this form of the Christian
tradition: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God” . . . "the things that are seen are temporal,
but the things that are not seen are eternal” ... "I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of
my mind.” It can hardly be denied, as Dean Inge says,
that "we are able to carry back to the fountain-head that
Christian tradition” which may quite accurately be
described as die religion of the spirit. But mixed with
it in the Scripture, there is the other tradition, the popular
tradition which may be called the religion of common-
sense. Out of this latter have grown the institutions of
the church and the faith of the mass of men. The religion
of the spirit has been reserved for a few, "a succession

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of lives which have been sheltered rather than inspired by
the machinery and statecraft of a mighty institution/' and
while the few who lived the life of the spirit have
undoubtedly done much to inspire the popular religion
with new insight, they have been, on the whole, a group
apart.

Yet those who belonged to these two distinct traditions
did use the same churches and the same symbolism.
There was an even deeper bond of unity between them.
Both believed that renunciation and self-discipline are the
way of salvation — in the religion of the spirit as the way
to enter now into love of eternal things; in the religion
of commonsense as a rather heavy price paid to God in
return for everlasting happiness after death -It may be
argued, therefore, by churchmen like Dr. Fosdick, that
the "'abiding message" of the Bible about immortality is
that men must renounce the world in order to win eter-
nity. That some men mean by eternity a bnd of per-
petual motion and others a kind of abstraction is merely
a difference in their habits of thought, and does not impair
the validity or the importance of the central experience.
If they will renounce their worldly passions, they will find
what the idea of eternity has to give, no matter what they
imagine it to mean.

Bur although Dr. Fosdick implies that this solves the
difficulty, it can be shown, I believe, that it does not.
What he has succeeded in doing is to disentangle from
the Bible a meaning for immortality which has a noble
tradition behind it and is at the same time intelleaually
possible for a modern man. But the history of religion
ought to put us on guard against assuming too easily

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that a statement of the purest truth is in itself capable
of affecting the lives of any considerable number of
people Dean Inge, who is a very much more clear-
headed churchman, says quite frankly that "a religion suc-
ceeds, not because it is true, but because it suits the
worshippers” Merely to tell men, however fervently,
that they may conquer mortality by renouncing the
flesh, will not go far toward persuading many of them
to renounce the flesh There must be, as there has been
in all the historic religions, something more than a state-
ment of the moral law. There must be a psychological
machinery for enforcing the moral law.

For diose who are suited to the religion of the spirit
no machinery is needed. But for the mass of men who
are not naturally suited to it, a machinery which compels
this conversion is indispensable. Jesus in his time, and
Gautama Buddha before him, taught a moral law which
was addressed to those who could receive it. They were
not many. Buddhism and Christianity became world
religions centuries after the death of their founders, and
only when there had been added to the central message
a great organized method of teaching it.

The essence of such an organization is the title to say
with apostolic certainty that the message is true. Church-
men, like Dr. Fosdick, can make no such claim about
their message. They reject revelation. They reject the
authority of any ciiurch to speak directly for God. They
rejea the literal inspiration of the Bible. They reject
altogether many parts of the Bible as not only umnspired,
but false and misleadmg. They do not believe in God
as a lawgiver, judge, father, and spectator of human life.

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When they say that this or that message m the Bible is
'permanently valid/' they mean only that in their judg-
ment, according to their reading of human experience,
it is a well-tested truth. To say this is not merely to
deny that the Bible is authoritative in astronomy and
biology, It IS to deny equally that it is authoritative as
to what is good and bad for men. The Bible thus becomes
no more than a revered collection of hypotheses which
each man may reject or accept in the light of his own
knowledge.

The lessons may still be true. But they are robbed
of their certainty. Each man is thrown back upon his
own resources ; he is denied the support which all popular
religion offers him, the conviction that outside himself
there is a power on which he can and must lean for
guidance In the ancient faith a man said- 'T believe
this on the authority of an all-wise God.” In the new
faith he is in effect compelled to say. 'T have examined
the alleged pronouncements of an all-knowing God , some
of them are obviously untrue, some are rather repulsive,
others, however, if they are properly restated, I find to be
exceedingly good ”

Something quite fundamental is left out of the mod-
ernist creeds. At least something which has hitherto been
quite fundamental is left out. That something is the
most abiding of all the experiences of religion, namely,
the conviaion that the religion comes from God. Sup-
pose It were true, which it plainly is not, that Dr Fosdick
by his process of selection and decoding has retained 'pre-
cisely the thing at which the Bible was driving.” Still
he would be without the thing on which popular religion

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has been founded. For the Bible to our ancestors was
not simply, as he implies, a book of wisdom. It was a
book of wisdom backed by the power of God himself.
That IS not an inconsiderable difference. It is all the
difference there is between a pious resolution and a moral
law.

The Bible, as men formerly accepted it, contained wis-
dom certified by the powers that govern the umverse. It
did not merely contain many well-tested truths, similar in
kmd to those which are to be found in Plato, Aristotle,
Montaigne, and Bernard Shaw. It contained truths which
could not be doubted because they had been spoken by
God through his prophets and his Son. They could not
be wrong. But once it is allowed that each man may
selea from the Bible as he sees fit, judging each passage
by his own notions of what is “abiding,” you have stripped
the Scriptures of their authority to command men’s con-
fidence and to compel their obedience. The Scriptures
may still inspire respea. But they are disarmed.

3. What Modernism Leaves Out
Many reasons have been adduced to explain why people
do not go to church as much as they once did. Surely
the most important reason is that they are not so certain
that they are going to meet God when they go to church.
If they had that certainty they would go. If they really
believed that they were being watched by a Supreme
Being who is more powerful than ail the kings of earth
put together, if they really believed that not only their
aaions but their secret thoughts were known and would
be ranembered by the aeator and ultimate judge of the

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universe, there would be no complaint whatever about
church attendance. The most worldly would be in the
front pews, and preachers would not have to resort so
often to their rather desperate expedients to attract an
audience. If the conviction were there that the creed
professed was invincibly true, the modern congregation
would not come to church, as they usually do to-day, to
hear the preacher and to listen to the music. They would
come to worship God.

■ Religious professions will not work when they rest
merely on a kind of passive assent; or on intricate reason-
ing, or on fierce exhortation, or on a good-natured con-
spiracy to be vague and highflown. A man cannot cheat
about faith. Either he has it in the marrow of his bones,
or in a crisis, when he is distracted and in sorrow, there
is no conviction there to support him. Without complete
certainty religion does not offer genuine consolation. It
is without the strength to compensate our weakness. Nor
can it sanction the rules of morality. Ethical codes cannot
lay claim to unhesitating obedience when they are based
upon the opinions of a majority, or on the notions of
wise men, or on estimates of what is socially useful, or
on an appeal to patriotism. For they depend then on
the force which happens to range itself behind them
at a particular time; or on their convenience for a moment.
They are felt to be the outcome of human, and therefore
quite fallible, decisions. They are no necessary part of
the government of the universe. They were not given
by God to Moses on Smai. They are not the command-
ments of God speaking through his Infallible Church.

A human morality has no such sanaion as a divine.

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The sanaion of a divine morality is the certainty of the
believer that it originated with God. But if he has once
come to think that the rule of conduct has a purely
human, local, and temporal origin, its sanction is gone.
His obedience is transformed, as ours has been by knowl-
edge of that sort, from conviction to conformity or cal-
culated expediency.

Without certainty there can be no profound sense that
a man's own purpose has become part of the purpose of
the whole creation. It is necessary to believe in a God
who is active in the world before a man can feel himself
to be, as St. Paul said, **a fellow laborer" with God. Yet
this sense of partnership with a Person who transcends
the individual’s own life, his own ego, and his own
capacities, is fundamental in all popular religion. It
underlies all the other elements of religion. For in the
certainty that he is enlisted with God, man finds not only
comfort in defeat, not only an ideal of holiness which
persuades him to renounce his immediate desires, but an
ecstatic mobilizing of all his scattered energies in one
triumphant sense of his own infinite importance.

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CHAPTER IV

THE ACIDS OF MODERNITY
1. The Ktngly Pattern

What I have said thus far can be reduced to the state-
ment that it IS difficult for modern men to conceive a
God whom they can worship. Yet it would be a crude
misunderstanding of religious experience to assume that it
depends upon a clear conception of God. In truly reli-
gious men the experience of God is much more intensely
convincing than any definition of his nature which they
can put into words. They do not insist on understanding
that w^hich they believe, for their belief gives them a con-
sciousness of divinity which transcends any conviction they
could reach by the understanding. They are not oppressed
by the conflict between reason and faith because the tes-
timony of faith is irresistible. It may become so irre-
sisuble that any attempt to understand is finally held, as
It was by John Chrysostom, to be an impertinence.

St. Chrysostom, who is described by the Catholic Ency-
clopedia as the most prominent doctor of the Greek
Church and the greatest preacher ever heard in a Chris-
tian pulpit, is a striking example of how in other ages
a man who was both learned and devout was able to
surmount the intellectual difficulties which to-day cause
so much trouble for modernists and fundamentalists alike.
Chrysostom was born at Antioch in the middle of the
Fourth Century and grew up m a time when the intel-

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lectual foundations of Christianity were intensely disputed.
The Catholic theology had not yet emerged victoriously,
and Antioch was the theatre of fierce struggles between
Pagans, Manichasans, Gnostics, Arians, Jews, and others
These struggles turned in considerable measure upon just
such attempts to define and comprehend God as now
confuse the teaching of the Protestant Church. Among
the sectarians there were some who claimed that it was
possible "to know God exactly” and it was against them
that Chrysostom preached that "he insults God who seeks
to apprehend His essential being.” For "the difference
between the being of God and the being of man is of
such a kind that no word can express it and no thought
can appraise it. . . . He dwells, says St. Paul, in an
unapproachable light.” Even the angels in heaven are
stupefied by the glory and majesty of God: "Tell me,”
he says, "wherefore do they cover their faces and hide
them with their wings? Why but that they cannot endure
the dazzling radiance and its rays that pour from the
Throne?”

Here in language so eloquent that the author became
known as Chrysostom, "the golden-mouthed,” we have the
doarine that "a comprehended God is no God,” that
"God is incomprehensible because He is blessed and
blessed because He is incomprehensible.” But if we look
more closely at what Chrysostom actually says, it is appar-
ent that he has a much clearer idea of God than he knows.
He conceives of God as the creator, the ruler, and the
judge of the universe. When he says that God is incom-
prehensible he means that it is impossible for a human
being to* imagine what it would be like to be God. But

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that does not prevent Chrysostom from knowing what
it IS like to be the creature of the incomprehensible God.
He is very definitely on his knees before the throne of
a divine king whose radiance is so dazzling that he cannot
look his Lord in the face.

There is thus a very solid intelleaual conception
embedded in the faith of this great teacher who staked
everything on the assertion that it is impossible to con-
ceive God. The conception is there but it has not been
isolated and realized. It is unconsciously assumed. We
find the same thing in Luther when he said venture
to put my trust in the one God alone, the invisible and
incomprehensible, who hath created Heaven and Earth
and IS alone above all creatures For in spite of the
fact that Luther calls God incomprehensible, he is able
to make a number of extremely important statements
about him He is able to say that God is the only God,
that he created the earth, that there is a heaven, that God
created heaven, and that God alone is above all his crea-
tures. To know that much about God is to comprehend
the function of God if not his nature.

Now if we examine the religious difficulty of modern
men, we find, I think, that they do not lack the sense of
mystery, of majesty, of terror, and of wonder which over-
whelm Chrysostom and Luther. The emotional disposi-
tion is there. But it is somehow inhibited from possessing
them utterly. The will to believe is checked by some-
thing in their experience which Chrysostom did not have.
That something is the sense that the testimony of faith
is not wholly credible, that the feeling of sanctity is no
assurance of the existence of sacred powers, that awe and

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wonder and terror in the breast of the believer are not
guarantees that there exist real objects that are awful and
wonderful. The modern man is not incapable of faith,
but he has within him a contrary passion, as mstinctive
and often as intense as faith, whidi makes incredible the
testimony of his faith.

It IS that contrary passion, and not the thin argumenta-
tion of atheists and agnostics, which lies, I think, at the
root of what churchmen call modern irreligion. It is
that passion which they must understand if they are ever
to understand the modem religious difficulty. For just
as men could surmount any intellectual difficulty when
their passion to believe was whole-hearted, so to-day,
when the passion to disbelieve is so strong, they are unable
to believe no matter how perfealy their theological dilem-
mas are resolved.

We must ask ourselves, then, what there is in modern
men which makes the testimony of faith seem more or
less incredible to them. We have seen in the citations
from Chrysostom and Luther that the testimony of faith
really contains a large number of unconscious statements
of fact about the umverse and how it is governed. It is
these statements of faa which we are no longer able to
assume unconsciously, and having become conscious of
them they are rather incredible. But why are they no
longer unconsciously assumed and why are they incredi-
ble? The answer is, I thmk, that they have ceased t.
be consistent with our normal experience in ordinary
ajffairs.

The faitli of Chrysostom and Luther is entangled with,
and supported upon, the assumption that the universe

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was created and is governed by a father and king. They
had projected upon the universe an imaginary picture
which reflected their own daily experience of government
among men. These pictures of how the universe is gov-
erned change with men’s political experience. Thus it
would not have been easy for an Asiatic people to imagine
the divine government in any other way but as a despot-
ism, and Yahveh, as he appears in many famous portraits
in the Old Testament, is very evidently an Oriental mon-
arch inclined to be somewhat moody and very vain. He
governs as he chooses, constrained by no law, and often
without mercy, justice, or righteousness. The God of
mediaeval Christianity, on the other hand, is more like
a great feudal lord, supreme and yet bound by covenants
to treat his vassals on earth according to a well-established
system of reciprocal rights and duties. The God of the
Enlightenment m the Eighteenth Century is a constitu-
tional monarch v/ho reigns but does not govern And
the God of Modernism, who is variously pictured as the
Han vital within the evolutionary process, or as the sum
total of the laws of nature, is really a kind of constitu-
tionalism deified.

Provided that the piaure is so consistent with experi-
ence that It is taken utterly for granted, it will serve as
a background for the religious experience But when
daily experience for one reason or another provides no
credible analogy by which men can imagine that the uni-
verse is governed by a supernatural king and father, then
the disposition to believe, however strong it may be at
the roots, is like a vine that reaches out and can find
nothing solid upon which to grow. It cannot support

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itself. If faith is to flourish, there must be a conception
of how the universe is governed to support it.

It is these supporting conceptions — the unconscious
assumption that we are related to God as creatures to
creator, as vassals to a king, as children to a father — that
the acids of modernity have eaten away. The modern
man’s daily experience of modernity makes instinctively
incredible to him these unconscious ideas which are at
the core of the great traditional and popular religions.
He does not wantonly rejea belief, as so many churchmen
assert. His predicament is much more serious. With the
best will in the world, he finds himself not quite believing.

In the last four hundred years many influences have
conspired to make inaedible the idea that the universe is
governed by a kingly person. An account of all of these
influences would be a history of the growth of modern
civilization. I am attempting nothing so comprehensive
or so ambitious. I should like merely to note certain
aspects of that revolutionary change which, as Lord Acton
says, came "unheralded” and "founded a new order of
things . . . sapping the ancient reign of continuity.”
For that new order of things has made it impossible for
us to believe, as plainly and literally as our forefathers
did, that the universe is a monarchy administered on this
planet through divinely commissioned, and, therefore,
unimpeachably authoritative ministers.

2. Landmarks

In a famous passage at the beginning of Heretics,
Mr. Qiesterton says that "nothing more strangely indi-
cates the enormous and silent evil of modern society than

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,the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the
word 'orthodox/ In former days the heretic was proud
of not being a heretic. It was the kingdom of the world
and the police and the judges who were heretics. He
was orthodox. All the tortures born out of forgotten
hells could not make him admit that he was heretical.
But a few modern phrases have made him boast of it.
He says with a conscious laugh, 'I suppose I am very
heretical,’ and looks around for applause. The word
'heresy’ not only means no longer being wrong; it practi-
cally means being clear-headed and courageous.”

Mr. Chesterton goes on to explain that this change of
attitude has come about because "people care less for
whether they are philosophically right than they used to
care.” It may be so. But if they cared as much or more,
it would not help them. To be orthodox is to believe
in the right doctrines and to follow the ancient rules of
living deduced from a divine revelation. The modern
man finds that the doctrines do not fit what he believes
to be true, and that the rules do not show him how to
condua his life. For he is confronted at every turn with
radical novelties about which his inherited dogma teaches
-him something which is plainly unworkable, or, as is even
more often the case, teaches him nothing at all.

In the old world there were, of course, novelties, too.
But the pace of change was so slow that it did not seem
to cause radical change. There was ample time to make
subtle and necessary revisions of the fundamental assump-
tions of right and wrong without seeming to challenge
the distinaion between right and wrong. Looking back
at it in long perspective we can see now that there was

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a constant evoluuon of the Christian faith from the
Apostles to the later councils of the Church. But in
relation to the life of any individual the change was so
slow that men could honestly believe that the Catholicism
of Hildebrand was identical with the Christianity of Paul.
Men had few means of reconstructing the past, and few
ways of knowing how great was the variety of belief at
any one time within the frontiers of Christendom. Within
their horizon, change came too slowly to seem like change,
because only that seems to move which moves rather fast.

For that reason the large changes which took place were
not vividly realized. The small, quick changes, of which
men were conscious, could therefore easily be made to
seem, especially since men were not too exact and observ-
ant, as inevitable deduaions from unchanging premises.
Even in the great arguments over the namre of Christ,
die tights of Church and Empire, the meanmg of grace
and transubstantiarion, both sides appealed in theory to
the same premises. Each side asserted that it was follow-
ing the true revelauon. And since ordmary men for the
most part never heard the other side, except from their
own priests and doaors, they had no reason for doubting
that the side on which they happened to find thanselves
was absolutely tight. They did not have to choose
between competing creeds; they had merely to defend
their creed, which was the true one, against the enemies
of God. And so if they were disturbed by the quarrel,
they were not disturbed much by doubt.

The grand adjustments were taken for granted, and
within that framework men could make the minor adjust-
ments patiently and elaborately, letting them become

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habitual and well-worn. This, perhaps, is the secret of
the charm that an old civilization has for us to-day. We
feel that here is a way of life which men have had time
to refine and to embellish. The modern man in a pro-
gressive commumty has neither the time nor the energy
for this delightful superficiality. He is too busy solving
fimdamental problems. He is so free to question his
premises that he is no longer free to work out his con-
clusions. His philosophy of life is like the skyscraper;
it is nine-tenths structure. So much effort has gone into
constructing it, and making it fit to bear the strains, it
is so neAr and yet it will so soon be out of date, that
nobody is much interested in the character of it. But a
mediaeval cathedral, like the mediaeval philosophy, was
built slowly over generations and was to last forever; it
is decorated inside and out, where it can be seen and
where it cannot be seen, from the crypt to the roof.

The modern man is an emigrant who lives in a revolu-
tionary society and inherits a protestant tradition. He
must be guided by his conscience. But when he searches
his conscience, he finds no fixed point outside of it by
which he can take his bearings. He does not really believe
that there is such a point, because he himself has moved
about too fast to fix any point long enough in his mind.
For the sense of authority is not established by argument.
It is acquired by deep familiarity and indurated associa-
tion. The ancient authorities were blended with the
ancient landmarks, with fields and vineyards and patri-
archal trees, with ancient houses and chests full of heir-
looms, with churchyards near at hand and their ancestral
graves, with old m^ who remembered wise sayings they

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had heard from wise old men. In that kind of setting it
is natural to believe that the great truths are known and
the big questions settled, and to feel that the dead them-
selves are still alive and are watching over the ancient
faith.

But when creeds have to be proved to the doubting
they are already blighted; arguments are for the unbe-
lievers and the wavermg, for diose who have never had,
,and for those who have lost these primordial attachments,
taith is not a formula which is agreed to if the weight
of evidence favors it. It is a posture of man’s whole
being which predisposes him to assimilate,^ not merely
to believe, his creed. When the posture is native to him,
in tune with the rhythm of his surroundings, his faith is
not dependent upon intellectual assent. It is a serene and
whole-hearted absorption, like that of the infant to its
mother, in the great powers outside which govern his
world. When that union of feeling is no longer there,
as it is not there for a large part of our talkative funda-
mentalist sects, we may be sure that corrosive doubting
has begun. The unlovely quality of much modern religi-
osity is due to these doubts. So much of its belief is
synthetic. It is forced, made, insisted upon, because it
is no longer simple and inevitable. The angry absurdities
which the fundamentalists propound against "evolution”
are not often due to their confidence in the inspiration of
the Bible. They are due to lack of confidence, to doubt
resisted like an annoying tune which a man cannot shake
out of his head. For if the militant fundamentalists were
utterly sure they are right, they would 'exhibit some of
that composure which the truly devout display. Did they

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really trust their God, they would trust laws, politicians,
and policemen less. But because their whole field of con-
sciousness is trembling with uncertainties they are in a
state of-fret and fuss; and their preaching is frousy, like
the seduaions of an old coquette.

3. Barren Gwund

The American people, more than any other people, is
composed of individuals who have lost association wnth
their old landmarks They have crossed an ocean, they
have spread themselves across a new continent. The
American who still lives in.his grandfather s house feels
almost as if he were living in a museum. There are few
Americans w^ho have not moved at least once since their
childhood, and even if they have staid where they were
born, the old landmarks themselves have been carted away
to make room for progress. That, perhaps, is one reason
why we have so much more Americanism than love of
America. It takes time to learn to love the new gas
station which stands where the wild honeysuckle grew.
Moreover, the great majority of Americans have risen in
the world. They have moved out of their class, lifting
the old folks along with them perhaps, so that together
they may sir by the steam pipes, and listen to the crooning
of the radio. But more and more of them have* moved
not only out of their class, but out of their culture; and
then they leave the old folks behind, and the continuity
of life is broken. For faith grows w^ell only as it is passed
on from parents to their children amidst surroundings
that bear witness, because nothing changes radically, to a
deep permanence in the order of the world. It is true,

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no doubt, that in this great physical and psychic migration
some of the old household gods are carefully packed
up and put with the rest of the luggage, and then
unpacked and set up on new altars m new places. But
what can be taken along is at best no more than the tree
which IS above the ground. The roots remain m the soil
where first they grew.

The sidewalks of a dty would in any case be a stony
soil in which to transplant religion. Throughout history,
as Spengler pomts out, the large aty has bred heresies,
new cults, and irreligion. Now when we speak of modern
civilization we mean a civilization dominated by the cul-
ture of the great metropolitan centers. Our own civiliza-
tion in America is perhaps the most completely urbamzed
of all. For even the American farmers, though they live
in the country, tend to be suburban rather than rural. I
am aware of how dominating a role the population outside
the great aties plays in American life. Yet it is in the
large cities that the tempo of our civilization is deter-
mined, and the tendency of mechanical inventions as well
as economic policy is to create an irresistible suction of
the country towards the city.

The deep and abiding traditions of religion belong to
the countryside. For it is there that man earns his daily
bread submitting to superhuman forces whose behavior
he can only partially control. There is not much he can
do when he has ploughed the ground and planted his
seed except to wait hopefully for sun and rain from the
sky. He is obviously part of a scheme that is greater than
himself, subjea to elements that transcend his powers and
surpass his imderstanding. The dty is an add that dis-

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solves this piety. How different it is from an ancient
vineyard where men cultivate what their fathers have
planted. In a modern aty it is not easy to mamtain that
"reverent attachment to the sources of his being and the
steadying of his life by that attachment.” It is not natural
to form reverent attachments to an apartment on a two-
year lease, and an imitation mahogany desk on the thirty-
second floor of an office building. In such an environ-
ment piety becomes absurd, a butt for the facetious, and
the pious man looks like a piauresque yokel or a stuffy
fool.

Yet without piety, without a patriotism of family
and place, without an almost plant-like implication in
unchangeable surroundings, there can be no disposition to
believe in an external order of things. The omnipotence
of God means somethmg to men who submit daily to the
cycles of the weather and the mysterious power of nature.
But the city man puts his faith in furnaces to keep out
the cold, is proudly aware of what bad sewage his ances-
tors endured, and of how ignorantly they believed that
God, who made Adam at 9 a.m. on Oaober 23 in the
year 4004 B.C., was concerned with the behavior of Adam’s
children.

4. Sophisticated Violence

Much effort goes into finding substimtes for this rad-
ical loss of association. There is the Americanization
movement, for example, which in some of its public
manifestations has as much resemblance to patriotism as
the rape of the Sabine women had to the love of Dante
for Beatrice. There is the voaferous nationalism of the

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hundred percenters which is always most eloquent when
it is about to be most rowdy. There are the anxious out-
cries of the sectarians who in their efforts to, revive the
religion of their fathers show the utmost contempt for
the aspirations of their sons. There is Mr. Henry Ford
hastily collecting American antiques before his cars
destroy the whole culmre which produced them. There
is Mr. Lothrop Stoddard looking every man in the eye
to see whether it is Nordic blue. There are a thousand
and one patently artificial, sometimes earnest, often fan-
tastic fundamentalist agitations. They are all attempts
to impose quickly by one kind of sophisticated violence
or another a posture of faith which can be genuine only
when It belongs to the unquestioned memories of the soul.
They are a shrill insistence that men ought to feel that
which no man can feel who does nor already feel it in the
marrow of his bones.

Novelties crowd the consciousness of modern men.
The machinery of intelligence, the press, the radio, the
moving picture, have enormously multiplied the number
of unseen events and strange people and queer doings
with which he has to be concerned. They compel him
to pay attention to faas that are detached from their
backgrounds, their causes and their consequences, and are
only half known because they are nor seen or touched
or actually heard. These experiences come to him having
no beginning, no middle, and no end, mere flashes of
publicity playing fitfully upon a dark tangle of circum-
stances. I pick up a newspaper ^t the start of the day
and I am depressed and rejoiced to learn that: anthracite
miners have struck in Pennsylvania; that a price boost

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plot is charged; that Mr. Ziegfeld has imported a blonde
from England who weighs 112 pounds and has pretty
legs; that the Pope, on the other hand, has refused to
receive women in low-necked dress and with their arms
bare; that airplanes are flying to Hawaii; and that the
Mayor says that the would-be Mayor is a liar. . . .

Now in an ordered universe there ought to be place
for all human experiences. But it is not strange that the
modern newspaper reader finds it increasingly difiicult
to believe that through it all there is order, permanence,
and conneaing principle. Such experience as comes to
him from the outside is a dissonance composed of a thou-
sand noises. And amidst these noises he has for inner
guidance only a conscience which consists, as he half sus-
pects, of the confused echoes of earlier mnes.

5. Rulers

He cannot look to his betters for guidance. The
American social system is migratory, revolutionary, and
protestant. It provides no recognized leaders and no
clear standards of conduct. No one is recognized as the
interpreter of morals and the arbiter of taste. There is
no social hierarchy, there is no acknowledged ruling class,
no well-known system of rights and duties, no code of
manners. There are smart sets, first families, and suc-
cessful people, to whom a good deal of deference is paid
and a certain tribute of imitation. But these leaders have
no real authority in morals or in matters of taste because
they themselves Have ^ew standards that are not the
fashions of a season. They exercise, therefore, an almost
autoaatic power over deportment at the country club.

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But what they believe about God, salvation, or the destiny
of America nobody knows, not even they themselves.

There have been perhaps three ruling classes in Amer-
ica, the Puritan merchants, the Knickerbocker gentry, and
the Cavalier planters of the South. Each presided for a
few generations over an ordered avilization. But the
New Englanders uprooted themselves and went west, and
those who have been left behind are marooned in a flood
of aliens. The Knickerbocker squirearchy dissolved in the
commercial greatness of New York, and the southern
aristocracy was overthrown and ruined by a social revo-
lution which culminated in the Civil War. They have
left no successors, and unless and until American society
becomes stabilized once more somewhere for a few gen-
erations, they are not likely to have any successors.

Our rulers to-day consist of random collections of suc-
cessful men and their wives. They are to be found in the
inner circles of banks and corporations, in the best clubs,
in the dominant cliques of trade unions, among the polit-
ical churchmen, the higher manipulating bosses, the lead-
ing professional Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Irish,
Germans, Jews, and the grand panjandrums of the
secret societies. They give orders. They have to be con-
sulted. They can more or less effeaively speak for, and
lead some part of, the population. But none of them is
seated on an assured throne, and all of them are forever
concerned as to how they may keep from being toppled
off. They do not know how they -happen to be where
they axe, although they often expl^n what are the secrets
of success. They have been educated to achieve success;
few of them have been educated to exercise power. Nor

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do they count with any confidence upon retaining their
power, nor of handing it on to their sons. They live,
therefore, from day to day, and they govern by ear. Their
impromptu statements of pohcy may be obeyed, but
nobody seriously regards them as having authority.

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CHAPTER V

THE BREAKDOWN OF AUTHORITY
1. God’s Government

The dissolution of the ancestral order is still under
way, and much of our current controversy is between
those who hope to stay the dissolution and those who
would like to hasten it. Tlie prime fact about modernity,
as it presents itself to us, is that it not merely denies the
central ideas of our forefathers but dissolves the disposition ’
to believe in them. The ancestral tradition still lives in
many corners of the world. But it no longer represents
for us, as it did for Dante and for St. Thomas Aquinas
seven hundred years ago, the triumphant wisdom of the
age. A child born in a modern city may still learn to use
the images of the theological drama, hut more or less
consciously he is made to feel that in using them he is
not speaking of things that are literally and exactly true.

Its dogma, as Mr. Santayana once said, is insensibly
understood to be nothing but myth, its miracles nothing
but legend, its sacraments mere symbols, its bible pure
literature, its liturgy just poetry, its hierarchy an admin-
istrative convenience, its ethics an historical accident, and
its whole function simply to lend a warm mystical aureole
to human culture and ignorance* The modern man does
not take his religion as a real account of the constitution,
the government, the history, and the actual destmy of the

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universe. With rare exceptions his ancestors did. They
believed that all their activities on this earth had a sequel
in other activities hereafter, and that they themselves in
their own persons would be alive through all the stretches
of infinite time to experience this fulfilment. Tlie sense
of actuality has gone out of this tremendous conception
of life; only the echoes of it persist, and in our memories
they create a world apart from the world in which we do
our work, a noble world perhaps in which it is refreshmg
to dwell now and then, and in anxiety to take refuge.
But the spaces between the stars are so great; the earth
is now so small a planet in the skies; man is so close, as
St. Francis said, to his brother the ass, that in the daylight
he does not believe that a great cosmic story is being
unfolded of which his every thought and act is a signifi-
cant part. The universe may have a conscious purpose,
but he does not believe he knows just what it is; humanity
may.be acting out a divine drama, but he is not certain
that he knows the plot.

There has gone out of modern life a working conviction
that we are living under the dominion of one supreme
ideal, the attainment of eternal happiness by obedience
to God’s will on earth. This conviction found its most
perfect expression in the period which begins with St
Augustine’s City of God and culminates in the Divine
Comedy of Dante. But the underlying intuitions are to
be found in nearly all popular religion; they are the
creature’s feeling of dependence upon his creator, a sense
that his destiny is fixed by a being greater than himself.
At the bottom of it there is a conviction that the universe
is governed by superhuman persons, that the daily visible

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life of the world is constitutionally subjea to the laws
and the will of an invisible government. What the
thinkers of the Middle Ages did was to work out m
elaborate detail and m grandiose style the constitutional
system under which supernatural government operates. It
is not fanciful, and I hope not irreverent, to suggest that
the great debates about the nature of the Trinity and the
Godhead were attempts to work out a theory of divine
sovereignty; that the debates about election and predesti-
nation and grace are attempts to work out a theory of
citizenship in a divine society. The essential idea which
dominates the whole speculation is man*s relation to a
heavenly king.

As this idea was finally worked out by the legists and
canonists and scholastics

every ordering of a human community must appear as a
component part of that ordering of the world which exists
because God exists, and every earthly group must appear
as an organic member of that Ctvt^as Det, that God-State,
which comprehends the heavens and the earth. Then, on
the other hand, the eternal and other-worldly aim and
object of every individual man must, in a direaer or an
indirecter fashion, determine the aim and objea of every
group into which he enters.

But as there must, of necessity, be conneaion between
the various groups, and as all of them must be connected
with the divinely ordered Universe, we come by the further
notion of a divinely instituted Harmony which pervades the
Universal Whole and every part thereof. To every Being
is assigned its place in that whole, and to every link between
Beings corresponds a divine decree. . . .

There is no need to suppose that everyone in the Middle
Ages understood the theory, as Gierke describes it here,

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in all its architectural grandeur. Nevertheless, the theory
is impliat in the feeling of simple men. It is the logical
elaboration of the fundamental belief that the God who
governs the world is no mere abstraaion made up of hazy
nouns and a vague adoration, but that, as Henry Adams
says, he is the feudal seigneur to whom Roland, when he
was dying, could proffer "his right-hand glove” as a last
act of homage, such as he might have made to Charle-
magne, and could pray.

O God the Father who has never lied.

Who raised up Saint Lazarus from death,

And Daniel from the lions saved,

Save my soul from all the perils
For the sins that in my life I did’

2. The Doctrine of the Keys

The theory of divine government has always presented
some difficulties to human reason, as we can see even
in St. Augustine, who never clearly made up his mind
whether the City of God was the actual church presided
over by the Bishop of Rome or whether it was an ideal
and invisible congregation of the saved. But we may be
sure that to plainer minds it was necessary to believe that
God governs mankind through the agency of the visible
church. The unsophisticated man may not be realistic,
but he is literal; he would be quite incapable, we may
be sure, of understanding what St. Thomas meant when
he asked "why should not the same sacred letter . . .
contain several senses founded on the literaP” He would
accept all the senses but he would accept them all literally.
And taking them literally he would have to believe that

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if God governs tlie world, he governs it, not in some ob-
scure meaning of the term, but that he actually governs
it, as a king who is mightier than Charlemagne, but not
essentially imlike Charlemagne.

The disposition to believe in the rule of God depended,
therefore, upon the capacity to believe in a visible church
upon earth which holds its commission from God. In
some form or another all simple people look to a priestly
caste who make visible the divine power. Without some
such actualization the human imagination falters and be-
comes vagrant. The Catholic Church by its splendor and
its power and its universality during the Middle Ages must
have made easily credible the conception of God the
Ruler. It was a government exercising jurisdiction over
the known world, powerful enough to depose princes, and
at its head was the Pope who could prove by the evidence
of scripture that he was the successor to Peter and was the
Vice-gerent of God. To ask whether this grandiose claim
was in fact true is, from the point of view of this argu-
ment, to miss the point. It was believed to be true in the
Middle Ages, ^cause it was believed, the Church
flourished. Because the Church flourished, it was ever so
much 'easier to be certain that the claim was true. When
men said that God ruled the world, they had evidence as
convincing as we have when we say that the President is
head of the United States Government; they were con-
vinced because they came into daily contact with God’s
appointees administering God’s laws.

It is this concrete sense of divme government which
modem men have lost, and it may well be that this is
where the Reformation has exercised its most revolution-

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ary effea. What Luther did was to destroy the preten-
sions not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but of any
church and of any priestly class to administer God's gov-
ernment on earth. The Protestant reformers may not have
intended to destroy as deeply as they did; the theocracies
established by Calvin and Knox imply as much. But,
nevertheless, when Luther succeeded in defying the Holy
See by rejecting its claim that it was the exclusive agent* of
God, he made it impossible for any other church to set up
the same claim and sustain it for any length of time.

Now Christ says that not alone in the Church is there
forgiveness of sms, but that where two or three are gath-
ered together in His name, they ‘shall have the right and
the liberty to proclaim and promise to each other comfort
and the forgiveness of sins. . We are not only kings
and the freest of all men, but also priests forever, a 'dignity
far higher than kingship, because by that priesthood we are
worthy to appear before God, to pray for others, and to teach
one another mutually the thmgs which are of God.

This denial of the special funaion of the priesthood did
not, of course, originate with Luther. Its historical ante-
cedents go back to the primitive Christians; there is quot-
able authority for it in St. Augustine. It was anticipated
by Wyciif and Huss and by many of the mystics of the
Middle Ages. But Luther, possibly because the times
were ripe for it, translated the demal of die authority of
the priesthood into a political revolution which divided
Christendom. When the Reformation was an accom-
plished faa, men looked out upon the world and no
longer saw a single Catholic Apostolic Churdi as the vis-
ible embodiment of God's government. A large part of

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mankind, and that an economically and politically power-
ful part, no longer believed that Christ gave to Simon
Peter and his successors at the Roman See the Keys of the
Kingdom of Heaven with the promise that "whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and
whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven.”

3. The Logic of Toleration
As a result of the great religious wars the governing
classes were forced to reaii2e that unless they consented
to the policy of toleration they would be ruined. There
is no reason to suppose that except among a few idealists
toleration has ever been much admired as a principle. It
was originally, and in large measure it still is, nothing but
a praaical necessity. For in its interior life no church can
wholly admit that its rivals may provide an equally good
vehicle of salvation.

Martin Luther certainly had none of the modern notion
that one church is about as good as the next. To be sure
he appealed to the right of private judgment, but he made
it plain nevertheless that in his opinion "pagans or Turks
or Jews or fake Christians” would "remain under eternal
wrath and an everlasting damnation.” John Calvin let it
be known in no uncertain tone that he did not wish any
new seas in Geneva. Milton, writing his beautiful essay
on liberty, drew the line at Papists. And in our own day
the Catholic Encyclopedia says in the course of an elo-
quent argument for praaical civic toleration that "as the
true God can tolerate no strange gods, the true Church
of Christ can tolerate no strange churches beside herself,

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or, what amounts to the same, she can recognize none
as theoretically justified/’ This is the ancient dogma that
outside the church there is no salvation — extra ecclesiam
77ulla salus. Like many another dogma of the Roman
church, It is not even in theory absolutely unbending.
Thus It appears from the allocution of Pope Pius IX,
Singulari quadam (1854), that 'Those who are ignorant
of the true religion, if their ignorance is invincible (which
means, if they have never had a chance to know the true
religion) are not, in this matter, guilty of any fault in the
sight of God.”

As a consequence of the modern theory of religious
freedom the churches find themselves m an anomalous
position. Inwardly, to their communicants, they continue
to assert that they possess the only complete version of the
truth. But outwardly, in their civic relations with other
churches and with the civil power, they preach and prac-
tice toleration. The separation of church and state in-
volves more than a mere logical difficulty for the church-
man. It involves a deep psychological difficulty for the
members of the congregation. As communicants they are
expected to believe without reservation that their church
IS the only true means of salvation; otherwise the multi-
tude of separate sects would be meaningless. But as citi-
zens they are expeaed to maintain a neutral indxiterence
to the claims of all the sects, and to resist encroachments
by any one sect upon the religious praaices of the others.
This is the best compromise which human wisdom has as
yet devised, but it has one inevitable consequence which
the superficial advocates of toleration often overlook. It
is difficult to remam warmly convmced that the authority

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of any one sea is dmne, when as a matter of daily ex-
perience all sects have to be treated alike.

The human soul is not so divided in compartments that
a man can be indifferent in one part of his soul and firmly
believing in another. The existence of rival sects, the
visible demonstration that none has a monopoly, the habit
of neutrality, cannot but dispose men against an unques-
tioning acceptance of the authority of one sect. So many
faiths, so many loyalties, are offered to the modern man
that at last none seems to him wholly inevitable and fixed
in the order of the universe. The existence of many
churches m one community weakens the foundation of all
of them. And that is why every church in the heyday of
its power proclaims itself to be catholic and intolerant.

But when there are many churches in the same com-
munity, none can make wholly good the claim that it is
catholic. None has that power to discipline the individual
which a universal churcn exercises. For, as Dr. Figgis
puts it, when many churches are tolerated, "excommum-
cation has ceased to be tyrannical by becoming futile.”

4. A Working Compromise
If the rival churches were not compelled to tolerate
each other, they could not, consistently with their own
teachmg, accept the prevailing theory of the public school.
Under that theory the schools are silent about matters
of faith, and teachers ate supposed to be neutral on the
issues of history and science which bear upon religion.
The churches pernut this because they cannot agree on the
dogma they would wish to have taught. Tire Catholics
would rather have no dogma in the schools than

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Protestant dogma; the fundamentalists would rather have
none than have modernist. This situation is held to be a
good one. But that is only because all the alternatives
are so much worse. No church can sincerely subscribe to
the theory that questions of faith do not enter into the
education of children.

Wherever churches are rich enough to establish their
own schools, or powerful enough to control the public
school, they make short work of the 'godless*' school.
Either they establish religious schools of their own, as
the Catholics and Lutherans have done, or they impose
their views on the public schools as the fundamentalists
have done wherever they have the necessary voting
strength. The last fight of Mr. Bryan s life was made on
behalf of the theory tliat if a majority of voters in Ten-
nessee were fundamentalists then they had the right to
make public education in Tennessee fundamentalist too.
One of the standing grievances of the Catholic Church
in America is that Catholics are taxed to support schools
to which they cannot conscientiously send their children.

As a matter of fact non-sectarianism is a useful political
phrase rather than an accurate description of what goes on
in the schools. If there is teaching of science, that teach-
ing is by implication almost always agnostic. The funda-
mentalists point this out, and they are quite right. The
teaching of history, under a so-called non-sectarian policy,
is usually, in this country, a rather diluted Protestant ver-
sion of history. The Catholics* are quite right when they
point this out. Occasionally, it may be, a teacher of
science appears who has managed to assimilate his science
to his theology; now and then a Catholic history teacher

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will depart from the standard textbooks to give the Cath-
olic version of disputed events during the last few hundred
years. But the diief effect of the non-sectarian policy is
to weaken sectarian attacliment, to wean the child from
the faith of his fathers by making him feel that patriotism
somehow demands that he shall not press his conviaions
too far, that commonsense and good fellowship mean
that he must not be too absolute. The leaders of the
churches are aware of this peril. Every once in a while
they make an effort to combat it Committees composed
of parsons, priests, and rabbis appear before the school
boards and petition that a non-sectarian God be wor-
shipped and the non-controversial passages of the Bible
be read. They always agree that the present godless
system of education diminishes the sanaions of morality
and the attendance at their respeaive churches. But they
disagree when they try to agree on the nature of a neutral
God, and they have been known to dispute fiercely about
a non-controversial text of the Ten Commandments. So,
if the seas are evenly balanced, the practical sense of
the commumty turns in the end against the reform.

5. The Effect of Patriotism
Modem governments are not merely neutral as between
rival churches. They draw to themselves much of the
loyalty which once was given to the churches. In faa it
has been said with some truth that patriotism has many
of the charaaeristics of an authoritative religion. Cer-
tainly it is true that during the last few hundred years
there has been transferred to government a consider-

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able part of the devotion which once sustained the
churches.

In the older world the priest was a divinely commis-
sioned agent and the prince a divinely tolerated power.
But by the Sixteenth Century Melanchthon, a friend of
Luther’s, had demed that the church could make laws
binding the conscience. Only the prince, he said, could
do that. Out of this view developed the much misunder-
stood but essentially modern doctrine of the divine right
of kings. In its original historic setting this doctrine was
a way of asserting that the civil authority, embodied in
the king, derived its power not from the Pope, as God’s
viceroy on earth, but by direa appointment from God
himself. The divine right of kings was a declaration of
independence as against the authority of the church.
This heresy was challenged not only by the Pope, but by
the Presbyterians as well. And it was to combat the
Presbyterian preachers who insisted on trying to diaate
to the government diat King James I wrote his True Law
of Free Monarchy, asserting the whole doctrine of the
Divine Right of Kings.

In the Religious Peace of Augsburg an even more de-
structive blow was struck at the ancient claim of the
church that it is a universal power. It was agreed that
the citizen of a state must adopt the religion of his kmg.
Cmus regio ejus religio. This was not religious liberty
as we understand it, but it was a supreme assertion of the
civil power. Where once the church had admimstered
religion for the multitude, and had exercised the right to
depose' an heretical king, it now became the prerogative

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of the king to determine the religious duties of his sub-
jects. The way was open for the modern absolute state,
a conception which would have been entirely incompre-
hensible to men who lived in the ages of faith.

We must here avoid using words ambiguously. When
I speak of the absolute state, I do not refer to the consti-
tutional arrangement of powers within the state. It is
of no importance in this conneaion whether the absolute
power of the state is exercised by a king, a landed aris-
tocracy, bankers and manufacturers, professional politi-
cians, soldiers, or a random majority of voters. It does
not matter whether the right to govern is hereditary or
obtained with the consent of the governed. A state is

absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims

*

the right to a monopoly of all the force within the com-
munity, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life,
to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define
crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to
supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to
censor opinions. The modern state claims all these
powers, and in the matter of theory there is no real dif-
ference in the size of the claim between communists,
fascists, and democrats. There are lingering traces in the
American constitutional system of the older theory that
there are inalienable rights which government may not
absorb. But these rights are really not inalienable because
they cin be taken away by constitutional amendment.
There is no theoretical limit upon the power of the ulti-
mate majorities which create civil government. There
are only practical limits. They are restrained by inertia,
and by prudence, even by good will. But ultimately

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and theoretically they claim absolute authority as against
all foreign states, as against all churches, associations,
and persons within their jurisdiaion.

The viaory of the civil power was not achieved every-
where at the same time. Spasmodically, with occasional
setbacks, but in the long run irresistibly, the state -has
attained supremacy. In the feudal age the monarch was
at no time sovereign. The Pope was the universal law-
giver, not only in what we should call matters of faith,
but in matters of business and politics as well. As late as
the beginning of the Seventeenth Cenmry, Pope Paul V
insisted that the Doge of the Venetian Republic had no
right to arrest a canon of the church on the charge of fla-
grant immorality. When, nevertheless, the canon was
arrested, the Pope laid Venice under an interdia and
excommunicated the Doge and the Senate. But the
Venetian Government answered that it was founded on
Divine Right; its title to govern did not come from the
church. In the end the Pope gave way, and "the reign
of the Pope," says Dr. Figgis, “as King of Kings was
over.”

It was as a result of the loss of its civil power that the
Roman Church evolved the modern doarine of infalli-
bility. This claim, as Dr. Figgis points out, is not the
culmination but the (implicit) surrender of the notions
embodied in the famous papal bull, JJnaTn Sanctam. The
Pope could no longer claim the political sovereignty of
the world; he then asserted supreme rights as the religious
teacher of the Catholic communion. "The Pope, from
being the Lord of Lords, has become the Doaor of Doc-
tors. From being the mother of states, the Curia

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has become the authoritative organ of a reaching
society.”

6. The Dissolution of a Sovereignty
Thus there has gradually been dissolving the conception
that the government of human affairs is a subordinate part
of a divme government presided over by God the King.
In place of one church which is sovereign over all men,
there are now many rival churches, rival stares, voluntary
associations, and detached individuals. God is no longer
believed to be a universal king in the full meamng of the
word king, and religious obedience is fio longer the central
loyalty from which all other obligations are derived Reli-
gion has become for most modern men one phase in a
varied experience; it no longer regulates their civic duties,
their economic aaivities, their family life, and their opin-
ions. It has ceased to have universal dominion, and is now
held to be supreme only within its own domam. But there
is much uncertainty as to what that domain is. In actual
affairs, the religious obligations of modern men are often
weaker than their social interests and generally weaker
than the fiercer claims of patriotism. The conduct of the
churches and of churchmen during the "War demonstrated
that fact overwhelmingly. They submitted willingly or
unwillingly to the overwhelming force of the civil power.
Against this force many men claim the right of revolution,
or a«i least the right of passive resistance and conscientious
objeaion. Sometimes they base their claims upon a reli-
gious precept which they hold sacred. But even in their
disobedience to Caesar they are forced to acknowledge that
loyalty in the modern world is complex, that it has become

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divided and uncertain, and that the age of faith which was
absolute is gone for them. However reverent they may be
when they are m their churches, they no longer feel wholly
assured when they listen to the teaching that these are the
words of the mimsters of a heavenly kmg.

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CHAPTER VI

LOST PROVINCES

1. Bustness

In any scheme of things where the churches, as agents
of God, assert the right to speak with authority about the
condua of life they should be able to lay down rules about
the way busmess shall be carried on. The churches once
did just that. In some degree they still attempt to do it.
But the attempts have grown feebler and feebler. In the
last SIX hundred years the churches have fought a losing
battle against the emancipation of business from religious
control.

The early Christian writers looked upon business as a
peril to the soul. Although the church was in itself,
among other things, a large business corporation, they did
not countenance business enterprise. Money-making they
called avarice and money-lending usury, just as they spoke
of lust when they meant sexual desire. They had sound
reasons of their own for this attimde. They knew from
observation, perhaps even from introspeaion, that the de-
sire for riches is so strong a passion that men possessed by
it will devote only their odd moments to God. The objec-
tion to a business career was like the objection to fornica-
tion; it diverted the energies of the soul.

There were, no doubt, worldly reasons as well which
account for the long resistance of the medkeval Church

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to what we now regard as the highest form of capitalistic
endeavor. The Church belonged to the feudal system.
The Pope and his bishops were m fact great feudal lords.
They thrived best in a social order where men lived upon
the land. They had a premonition that the rise of capital-
ism, with its large cities, its financiers, merchants, and pro-
letarian workers, was bound to weaken the secular author-
ity of the church and to dissolve the influence of religion
in men’s lives. They failed in their resistance, but surely
one can hardly say that their vision was not prophetic.
The drastic legislation of the church against business
was enacted in the early days of capitalism; it was
inspired, like the English corn laws and many another
agrarian measure, by a determination to preserve a landed
order of society. Thus in discussing whether money might
properly be loaned out at interest Pope Innocent IV ar-
gued that if this were permitted '*men would not give
thought to the cultivation of their land, except when they
could do naught else . . . even if they could get land to
cultivate, they would nor be able to get the beasts and im-*
plements for cultivating it, since the poor themselves
would not have them, and the ricli, both for the sake of
profit and security, would put their money into usury
rather than into smaller and more risky investments.” The
argument is the same as that which the American farmer
makes when he complains that the bankers in Wall Street
prefer to lend money to business men and to speculators
rather than to farmers.

But the solid reasons which once inspired the church’s
opposition to business do not concern us here. The oppo-
sition was unsuccessful, the reasons were forgotten, and

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the old pronouncements against usury were looked upon
as quaint and unworldly. For the new economic order
which displaced feudalism, the Catholic Church, at least,
had no program. It did not adapt itself readily to the
spirit of commercial enterprise which captured the active
minds of Nortliern Europe. The Protestant churches did
adapt themselves and contrived to preach a gospel which
encouraged, where Roman Catholicism had discouraged,
the enterprising business man. They preached the divine
duty of labor. *'At the day of doom,*' said John Bunyan,
’’men shall be judged according to their fruits. It will not
be said then, Did you Believe^ But, were you Doers, or
Talkers only?’' As this preaching became more concrete,
to be a doer meant to do work and make money. Baxter
in his Christian Directory wrote that *hf God show you a
way in which you may lawfully get mote than in another
way (without wrong to your soul or to any other) , if you
refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one
of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’s
.steward.” Richard Steele in The Tradesman's Calling
pointed out that the virtues enjoined on Christians — dili-
gence, moderation, sobriety, and thrift — are the very qual-
ities which are most needed for commercial success. For
”godly wisdom . . . comes in and puts due bounds” to
his expenses, ”and teaches the tradesman to live rather
somewhat below than at all above his income.”

However edifying such doarme may have been, it was
clearly an abandonment of the right, once so eloquently*
asserted by the church, that it had the authority to regu-
late business in the interest of man’s spiritual welfare.
That right is still sometimes asserted. Sermons are still

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preached about business ethics; there are programs of
Christian socialism and Christian capitalism. Church-
men still interest themselves, often very effectively, to re-
form some flagrant industrial abuse like the sweating of
women and children. But the modern efforts to moralize
business and to subordinate profit-seeking to humane ends
are radically different from those of the mediaeval church.
They are admittedly experimental — that is to say, debat-
able— since they do not derive their authority from reve-
lation. And they are presented as an appeal to reason, to
conscience, to generosity, not as the commandments of
God. The Council of Vienna in 1312 declared that any
ruler or magistrate who sanctioned usury and compelled
debtors to observe usurious contracts would be excommu-
nicated; all laws which sanctioned money-lending at inter-
est were to be repealed within three months. The
churches do not speak in that tone of voice to-day

Thus if an organization like the Federal Council of
Churches of Christ is distressed by, let us say, the labor
policy of a great corporation, it inquires courteously of
the president's secretary whether it would not be possible
for him to confer with a delegation about the matter.
If the churchmen are granted an interview, which is
never altogether certain, they have to argue with the busi-
ness man on secular grounds. Were they to say that the
eight-hour day was the will of God, he would conclude
they were cranks, he would surreptitiously press the buz-
zer under his desk, and m a few moments his secretary
would appear summoning him to an important board
meeting. They have to argue with him, if they are to ob-
tain a hearing, about the effect on health, efficiency, turn-

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over, and other such matters which are worked up for them
by economists. As churchmen they have kindly impulses,
but there is no longer a body of doctrine in the churches
which enables them to speak with authority.

The emancipation of business from religious control is
perhaps even more threatening to the authority of the
churches than the rivalry of seas or the rise of the civil
power. Business is a daily occupation; government meets
the eye of the ordinary men only now and then. That the
main interest in the waking life of most people should be
carried on wholly separated from the faith they profess
means that the churches have lost one of the great prov-
inces of the human soul. The sponsors of the Broadway
Temple in New York Qty put the matter in a thoroughly
modern, even if it was a rather coarse, way when they pro-
claimed a campaign to sell bonds as "a five percent invest-
ment in your Fellow Man’s Salvation — Broadway Temple
is to be a combination of Church and Skyscraper, Religion
and Revenue, Salvation and 5 Percent — ^and the 5 percent
is based on ethical Christian grounds.” The five percent,
they hastened to add, was also based on a gilt-edged real-
estate mortgage; the salvation, however, was, we may
suppose, a speculative profit.

2. The Family

The family is the inner citadel of religious authority
and there the churches have taken their most determined
stand. Long after they had abandoned politics to Caesar
and business to Mammon, they continued to insist upon
their authority to fix the ideal of sexual relations; But
here, too, the dissolution of their authority has pro-

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ceeded inexorably. They have lost their exclusive right
to preside over marriages. They have not been able to
maintain the dogma that marriage is indissoluble They
are not able to prevent the remarriage of divorced persons.
Although in many jurisdictions fornication and adultery
are still crimes, there is no longer any serious attempt to
enforce the statutes. The churches have failed in their in-
sistence that sexual intercourse by married persons is a sin
unless It IS validated by the willingness to beget a child.
Except to the poorest and most ignorant the means of pre-
venting conception are available to all. There is no longer
any compulsion to regard the sexual life as within the
jurisdiction of the commissioners of the Lord.

Religious teachers knew long ago what modern psychol-
ogists have somewhat excitedly rediscovered, that there is
a very intimate connection between the sexual life and the
religious life. Only men living m a time when religion
has lost so much of its inward vitality could be shocked at
this simple truth, for the churches, when their inspiration
was fresh,, have always known it. That is why they have
laid such tremendous emphasis upon the religious control
of sexual experience, have extolled chastity, have preached
continence after marriage except where parenthood was m
view, have inveighed against tornication, adultery, divorce,
and all unprocreative indulgence, have insisted that mar-
riages be celebrated within the communion, have upheld
the parental authority over children. They were not prud-
ish That is a state of mind which marks the decay of
vigorous determination to control the sexual life. The
early teachers did not avert their eyes. They did not mince
their words. For they knew what they were doing.

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Men like St. Paul and St. Augustine knew in the most
direct way what sexual desire can do to distract the reli-
gious life; how if it is not sternly regulated, and if it is
allowed to run wild, it intoxicates the whole personality
to the exclusion of spiritual interests. They knew, too,
although perhaps not quite so explicitly, that these same
passions, if they are repressed and redireaed, may come
forth as an ecstasy of religious devotion. They were not
reformers. They did not think of progress. They did nor
suppose that the animal in man could somehow be refined
until It was no longer animal. When Paul spoke of the
law of his members warring against the law of his mind,
and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin, he had
made a realistic observation which any candid person can
verify out of his own experience. There was no vague
finical nonsense about this war of the members against the
inward man seeking delight in the law of God.

If the sexual impulse were not deeply related to the reli-
gious life, the preoccupation of churchmen with it through-
out the ages would be absurd. They have not been pre-
occupied in any comparable degree with the other physi-
ological functions of the body. They have concerned
themselves somewhat with eating and drinking, for glut-
tony and drunkenness can also distract men from religion.
But hunger and thirst are minor passions, far more easily
satisfied than lust, and in no way so pervasive and imperi-
ous. The world, the flesh, and the devil may usually be
taken to mean sexual desire. Around it, then, the churches
have built up a rimal, to dominate it lest they be domi-
nated by it. Tenaciously and with good reason they have
fought against surrendermg their authority.

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With equally great insight they have kept the closest
possible association with family life especially during the
childhood of the ojffspring. Here again they anticipated
by many long ages the discoveries of modern psychologists.
They have always known that it is in the earliest years,
before puberty, that tradition is transmitted. Much is
learned after puberty, but in childhood education is more
than mere learning. There education is the growth of the
disposition, the fixing of the prejudices to which all later
experience is cumulative. In childhood men acquire the
forms of their seeing, the prototypes of their feeling, the
style of their charaaer. There presumably the very pat-
tern of authority itself is implanted by habit, fitted to the
model presented by the child’s parents. There the as-
sumption is fixed that there are wiser and stronger beings
whom, in the nature of things, one must obey. There the
need to obey is fixed. There the whole drift of experience
is such as to make credible the idea that above the child
there is the father, above the father a king and the wise
men, above them all ar heavenly Father and King.

It IS plain that any change which disturbs the consti-
tution of the home will tend profoundly to alter the
child’s sense of what he may expect the constitution of
the universe to be. There are many disturbing changes
of which none is more important surely than the emanci-
pation of women. The God of popular religion has
usually been an elderly male. There have been some fe-
male divimties worshipped in different parts of the world
as there have been matriarchal societies. But by and
large the imagination of men has conceived God as a
father. They have magnified to a cosmic scale what they

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had seen at home. It was the male who created the child.
It was his seed that the mother cherished in her womb.
It was the male who provided for the needs of the fam-
ily, even if the woman did the hard work. It was the
male who fended off enemies. It was the male who laid
down the law. It was the name of the male parent which
was preserved and passed on from generation to genera-
tion. Everything conspired to fix the belief that the true
order of life was a hierarchy with a man at the apex.

This general notion becomes less and less credible as
women assert themselves. The child of the modern
household is soon made to see that there are at least two
persons who can give him orders, and that they do not
always give him the same ones. This does not educate
him to believe that there is one certain guide to condua
in the universe. There are likely to be two guides to
conduct in his universe, as women insist that they are in-
dependent personalities with minds of their own. This
insistence, moreover, tends rather to disarrange the notion
that the father is the creator of the child. An observant
youngster, especially in these days of frank talk about sex,
soon becomes aware of the fact that the role of the male
in procreation is a relatively minor one. But most disturb-
ing of all is the very modern household in which the
woman earns her own living. For here the child is de-
prived of the opportunity, which is so conducive to belief
in authority, of seeing daily that even his mother is de-
pendent upon a greater person for the good things in life.

Although women, by and large, are by no means able
to earn as much money as men, the fact which counts is
that they can earn enough to support themselves. They

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may not actually support themselves. But the knowledge
that they could, as it becomes an accepted idea in society,
has revolutionary consequences. In former times the
woman was dependent upon her husband for bed, board,
shelter, ^ and clothing. Her whole existence was deter-
mined by her mating, her sexual experience was an inte-
gral part of her livelihood and her social position But
once it had become established that a woman could live
without a husband, the intimate conneaion between her
sex and her career began to dissolve.

The invention of dependable methods of preventing
conception has carried this dissolution much further.
Birth control has separated the sexual act from the whole
series of social consequences which were once probable
if not inevitable. For with the discovery that children
need be born only when they are wanted, the sexual ex-
perience has become increasingly a personal and private
affair. It was once an institutional affair — for the woman.
For the man, from time immemorial, there have been two
sorts of sexual experience — one which had no public con-
sequences, and one which entailed the responsibilities of a
family. The effect of the modern changes, particularly of
woman's economic independence and of birth control, is to
equalize the freedom and the obligations of men and
women.

That the sexual life has become separated from parent-
hood and that therefore it is no longer subject to external
regulation, is evident. While the desires of men and
women for each other were links in a chain which included
the family and the household and children, authority, and
by that token religious authority, could hope to fix the sex-

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ual ideal. When the chain broke, and love had no conse-
quences which were not too subtle for the outsider to
measure, the ideal of love was fixed not by the church
in the name of God, but by prudence, convention, the
prevailing rules of hygiene, by taste, circumstances, and
personal sensibility.

3. An

(a) The Disappearance of Religious Painting
To walk through a museum of Western European art is
to behold a peculiarly vivid record of how the great
themes of popular religion have ceased to inspire the imag-
ination of modern men. One can visualize there the whole
story of the dissolution of the ancestral order and of our
present bewilderment. One can see how toward the close
of the Fifteenth Century the great themes illustrating the
reign of a heavenly king and of the drama of man’s sal-
vation had ceased to be naively believed ; how at the close
of the next century which witnessed the Reformation and
the Counter-Reformation, the beginmngs of modern
science, the growth of cities, and the rise of capitalism,
religious pamting ceased to be the concern of the best
painters; and finally how in the last hundred years
painters have illustrated by feverish experimentation the
modern man’s effort to find an adequate substitute for the
organizing principle of the religion which he has lost.

It has been said by way of explanation that painters
must sell their work, and they must, therefore, paint what
the rich and powerful will buy. Thus it is pointed out that
in the Middle Ages they worked under the patronage of
the Church; in the Renaissance their patrons were pagan-

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ized princes and popes, and artists made piaures which,
even when the theme was religious, were no longer Chris-
tian m spirit. Later in the north of Europe the bourgeoisie
•acquired money and station, and the Dutch painters did
their portraits, and made faithful representations of their
kitchens and their parlors. A little later French painters
at the Court of Versailles made pictures for courtiers, and
in our time John Sargent painted the wives of million-
aires. To say all this is to say that the ruling classes in
the modern world are no longer interested in piaures
which illustrate or are inspired by the religion they profess.

This attempt at an explanation in terms of supply and
demand may or may nor be sound for the ordinary run of
painters. It leaves out of account, however, those very
painters who are the most significant and interesting. It
leaves out of account the painters who, by heroic refusal
to supply the existing market, deserve universal respect,
and in many cases have won an ultimate public vindica-
tion. These men do not fit into the theory of supply and
demand, for they endured poverty and derision in order
to paint what they most wanted to paint. They are not of
the tribe, which Mr. Walter Pach calls Ananias, who be-
tray the truth that is in them. But for that trudi they did
not draw upon the themes nor the sense of life which
almost all of them must have been taught when they were
children. They did not paint religious pictures. They
painted landscapes, streets, interiors, still life, heads, per-
sons, nudes. Whatever else they perceived and tried to
express, they did not see their objeas m the perspective of
human destiny and divine government. There is no
reason, then, to say that religious painting, even in the

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broadest sense of the term, has disappeared because there
is no effective demand for it Obviously it has dis-
appeared because the will to produce it has disappeared.

(^) The Loss of a Heritage
In setting the religious tradition aside as something
with which they are not concerned when they are at work,
artists are merely behaving like modern men. It is plain
that the religious tradition has become progressively less
relevant to anyone who as painter or sculptor is engaged in
making images. This is a direct result of .that increasing
sophistication of religious thought which was signalized
in Europe by the iconoclasm of the Protestant reformers
and the puritanism of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
Before the acids of modernity had begun to dissolve the
organic reality of the ancient faith, there was no difficulty
about picturing God the Father as a patriarch and the Vir-
gin Mary as a young blonde Tuscan motlier. There was
no disposition to disbelieve, and so the imagination was
at once nourished by a great heritage of ideas and yet
free to elaborate it. But when the authority of the old
beliefs was challenged, a great literature of controversy
and definition was let loose upon the world. And from
the point of view of the artist the chief effect of this effort
to argue and to state exactly, to defend and to rebut, was
to substitute concepts for pictorial ideas. When the nature
of God became a matter of definition, it was obviously
crude and illiterate to represent him as a benign old man,
Thus the more the theologians refined the dogmas of their
religion the more impossible they made it for painters to
express its significance. No painter who ever lived could

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make a picture which expressed the religion of the Rev.
Harry Emerson Fosdick. There is nothing there which
the visual imagination can use.

Painters have, therefore, a rather better reason than
most men for having turned dieir backs upon the religious
tradition. They can say with a clear conscience that the
contemporary churches have removed from that tradition
those very qualities which once made it an inexhaustible
source of artistic inspiration. They need only point to
modern religious writing in their own support: at its best
it has the qualities of an impassioned argument and more
often it is intolerably flat and vague because in our intel-
lectual climate skepticism dissolves the concreteness of the
imagery and leaves behind sonorous adjectives and opaque
nouns.

The full effects of this separation of the artist from the
ancient traditions of Christendom have been felt only in
the last two or three generations. It is no doubt true that
the modern disbelief had its beginnings many generations
ago, perhaps in the Fifteenth Century, but the momentum
of the ancient faith was so great that it took a long time,
even after corrosive doubt had started, before its influence
came to an end. The artists of the Seventeenth and Eight-
eenth Centuries may not have been devout, but they lived
in a society in which the forms of die old order, the hier-
archy of classes, the sense of authority, and the general
fund of ideas about human destiny, still had vast prestige.
But in the Nineteenth Century that old order was almost
completely dissolved and the prestige of its ideas de-
stroyed. The artist of the last two or three generations has
confronted the world without any accepted understanding

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of human life. He has had to improvise his own under-
standing of life. That is a new thing in the experience of
arusts.

(c) The Artist Formerly

In 787 the Second Council of Nicasa laid down the
rule which for nearly five hundred years was binding upon
the artists of Christendom;

The substance of religious scenes is not left to the initia-
tive of the artists, it derives from the principles laid down
by the Catholic Church and religious tradition. . . . His
art alone belongs to the painter, its organization and
arrangement belong to the clergy.

This was a reasonable rule, since the Church and not the
individual was held to be the guardian of those sacred
truths upon which depended the salvation of souls and the
safety of society. The notion had occurred to nobody that
the artist was divinely inspired and knew more than the
doctors of the church. Therefore, the artist was given
careful specifications as to what he was to represent.

Thus when the Church of St. Urban of Troyes decided
to order a set of tapestries illustrating the story of St.
Valerian and of his wife, St. Cealia, a learned priest was
deputed to draw up the contraa for the artist. In it he
wrote among other specifications that: "there shall be por-
trayed a place and a tabernacle in the manner of a beauti-
ful room, in which there shall be St. Ceciha, humbly on
her knees with her hands joined, praying to God. And
beside her shall be Valerian expressing great admiration
and watching an angel which, being above their heads,
should be holding two crowns made of lilies and of roses,

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which he will be placing the one on the head of St. Cecilia
and the other on the head of Valerian, her husband. . . .”

The rest, one might suppose, was left to the artist’s
imagination. But it was not. Havmg been given his sub-
jea matter and his theme, he was bound further by strict
conventions as to how sacred subjeas were to be depiaed.
Jesus on the Cross had to be shown with his mother on
the right and St. John on the left. The centurion pierced
his left side. His nimbus contained a cross, as the mark
of divinity, whereas the samts had the nimbus without a
cross. Only God, the angels, Jesus Christ, and the Apostles
could be represented with bare feet; it was heretical to de-
pia the Virgin or the Saints with bare feet. The purpose
of these conventions was to help the speaator identify the
figures in the picture. Thus St. Peter was given a short
beard and a tonsure; St. Paul was bald and had a long
beard. It is possible that these conventions, which were
immensely intricate, were actually codified in manuals
which were passed on from master to apprentice in the
workshops.

As a general rule the ecclesiastics who drew up specifi-
cations did not invent the themes. Thus the learned priest
who drafted the contraa for the tapestry of St. Cecilia drew
his material from the encyclopedia of Vmcent de Beau-
vais. This was a compendium of universal Imowledge
covering the whole of history from Creation to the Last
Judgment. It was a source book to which any man could
turn in order to find the truth he happened to need. It
contained all of human knowledge and the answer to all
human problems. By the Thirteenth Century there were
a number of these encyclopedias, of which the greatest was

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the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. From these books
churchmen took the themes which they employed their
artists to embellish. The artist himself had no concern as
to what he would paint, nor even as to how he would paint
It. Thar was given, and his energies could be employed
without the travail of intellectual invention, upon the task
of depressing a clear conception in well-established forms.

It must not be supposed, of course, that either doarines,
lore, or symbolism were uniformly standardized and
exactly enforced. In an age of faith, contradiaions and
discrepancies are not evident; they are merely variations
on the same theme. Thus, while it may be true that en-
thusiastic mediasvalists like M. Male have exaggerated
the order and symmetry of the mediaeval tradition, they
are right, ■surely, on the mam point, which is that the or-
ganic character of the popular religion provided a con-
sensus of feeling about human destiny which, in conjunc-
tion with the resources of the popular lore, sustained and
organized the imagination of mediaeval artists. Because
religious faith was simple and genuine, it could absorb
and master almost anything. Thus the clergy ruled the
artists with a relatively light hand, and they were not
disturbed if, in illuminating the pages of a Book of Hours,
the artist adorned the margins with a picture of Bacchus
or the love of Pyramus and Thisbe.

It was only when the clergy had been made self-con-
scious by the controversies which raged around the Refor-
mation that they began in any strict and literally-minded
modern sense to enforce the rule laid down at Nicsea in
787. At the Council of Trent in 1563 the great liberty of
the artist within the Christian tradition came to an end:

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The Holy Council forbids the placing in a church of any
image which calls to mind an erroneous dogma which might
mislead the simple-minded. It desires that all impurity be
avoided, that piovocative qualities be not given to images
In order to insure respect for its decisions, the Holy Council
forbids anyone to place or to have placed anywhere, and
even m churches which are not open to the public, any
unusual image unless the bishop has approved it

In theory this decree at Trent is not far removed from
the decree at Nicsea nearly one thousand years earlier.
But in fact it is a whole world removed from it. For the
dogmas at Nicaea rested upon naive faith and the dogmas
at Trent rested upon definition. The outcome showed the
difference, for within a generation Catholic scholars made
a critical survey of the lore which mediaeval art had em-
ployed, and on grounds of taste, doctrine, and the like,
condemned the greater part of it. After that, as M.
Male says, there might still be artists who were Christians
but there was no longer a Christian art.

(d) The Artist as Prophet

Whether the necessity of creating his own tradition is a
good or a bad thing for the artist, there can be no doubt
that it is a novel thing and a burdensome one. Artists
have responded to it by proclaiming one of two theories:
they have said that the artist, being a genius, was a
prophet; when they did not say that, they said that reli-
gion, morality, and philosophy were irrelevant, and that
art should be practiced for art’s sake. Both tlieories are
obviously attempts to find some personal substitute for
those traditions upon which artists in all other ages have
been dependent.

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The theory of the artist as prophet has this serious de-
fea: there is praaically no evidence to support it. Why
should there be? What connection is there between the
capacity to make beautiful objects and the capacity to dis-
cover truth? Surely experience sho^s that it is something
of a marvel when a great artist appears who, like Leonardo
or Goethe, is also an original and important thinker. In-
deed, it is reasonable to ask whether the analysis and ab-
straction which thinking involves are not radically difiter-
ent psychological processes from the painter’s passionate
appreciation of the appearance of things. Certainly to
think as physicists think is to strip objects of all their sec-
ondary characters, not alone of their emotional signifi-
cance, but of their color, their texmre, their fragrance, and
even of their superficial forms. The world as we know it
through our senses has completely disappeared before the
physicist begins to think about it. And in its place there
is a colleaion of concepts which have no pictorial value
whatsoever. These concepts are by definition incapable
of being visualized, and when as a concession to human
weakness, his own or his pupil’s, the scientist construas a
mechanical model to illustrate an idea, this model is at
best a crude analogy, and in no real sense the portrait of
that idea.

Thus when Shelley made Earth say;

I spin beneath my pyramid of night.

Which points mto the heavens . . .

he borrowed an image from astronomy. But this image,
which is, I think, superb poetry, radically alters the orig-
inal scientific idea, for it introduces into a realm of purely

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physical relations the notion of a gigantic speaator with a
vastly magnified human eye. There are, no doubt, many
other concepts in science which, if poets knew more
science, would lend themselves to translation into equally
noble images. But these images would not state the scien-
tific truth.

The current belief that artists are prophets is an inher-
itance from the time when science had no critical method
of its own, and poets, being reflective persons, had at
least as good a chance as anyone else of stumbling upon
truths which were subsequently verified. It is due in some
measure also to the human tendency to remember the
happy guesses of poets and to forget their unhappy ones,
a tendency which has gone far to sustain the reputations
of fortune-tellers, oracles, and stockbrokers. But above
all, the reputation of the artist as one who must have wis-
dom is sustained by a rather gemal fallacy: he finds ex-
pression for the feelings of the speaator, and the speaator
rather quickly assumes that the artist has found an expla-
nation for the world.

Yet unless I am greatly mistaken the modern painter
has ceased not only to depict any theory of destiny but has
ceased to express any important human mood in the pres-
ence of destiny. One goes to a museum and comes out
feeling that one has beheld an odd assortment of nude
bodies, copper kettles, oranges, tomatoes, and zinnias,
babies, street corners, apple trees, bathmg beaches, bank-
ers, and fashionable ladies. I do not say that this person
or that may not find a picture immensely sigmficant to
him. But the general impression for anyone, I think is
of a chaos of anecdotes, perceptions, fantasies, and little

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commentaries, which may be all very well in their way,
but are not sustaining and could readily be dispensed
with.

The conclusive answer to the romantic theory of the
artist as prophet is a visit to a collection of modern
paintings.

(^) Art for Art^s Sake

This brings us to the other theory, which is that art has
nothing to do with prophecy, wisdom, and the meaning
of life, but has to do only with art. This theory must
command an altogether different kind of respect than the
sentimental theory of the artist as prophet. This indeed
is the theory which most artists now hold. *1 am con-
vinced,” says Mr. R. H. Wilenski in his book The Modern
Movement in Artj ”that all the most intelligent artists
of Western Europe in recent centuries have been tor-
mented by this search for a justification of their work and
a criterion of its value; and that almost all such artists
have attempted to solve the problem by some consciously-
held idea of art; or in other words that in place of art
justified by service to a religion they have sought to evolve
an art justified by service to an idea of art itself.”

The instma of artists in this matter is, I think, much
sounder than the rationalizations which they have con-
structed. As working artists they do not think of them-
selves as seers, philosophers, or« moralists. They do not
wish to be judged as thinkers, but as painters, and they
are justifiably impatient with the Philistines who are inter-
ested primarily in the subject matter and its human sig-
nificance. The painter knows quite well that in the

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broadly human sense he has no special qualifications as
story-teller or wise man. What he is driving at, there-
fore, in his expression of contempt for the subject matter
of art is the wish that he might again be in the position
of the mediffival artist who did not have to concern himself
as artist with the significance of his themes. The inmi-
tion behind the theory of art for art’s sake is die artist’s
wish to be free of a responsibility which he has never
before had put upon him. The peculiar circumstances of
modernity have thrust upon him, much against his will
and regardless of his aptitudes, the intolerably heavy bur-
den of doing for himself what in other ages was done
for him by tradition and authority.

The philosophy which he has invented is an attempt to
prove that no philosophy is necessary. Carried to its con-
clusion, this theory eventuates m die belief that painting
must become an arrangement of forms and colors which
have no human connotation whatsoever for the artist or
the spectator. These arrangements represent nothing in
the real world. They signify nothing. They are an
esthetic artifice in the same sense that the more esoteric
geometries are logical artifices. This much can at least
be said of them: they are a consistent effort to practice
the arts in a world where there is no human tradition
upon which the representative arts can draw.

This absolute estheticism is not, however, art without
philosophy. Some sort of philosophy is implied in ad
human activity. The artist who says that it is delightful
above all other things to realize the pure form of objects,
regardless of whether this object is a saint, a lovely
woman, or a dish of fruit, has made a very important

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statement about life. He has said that the ordinary
meanings which men attach to objects are of no conse-
cjuence, that their order of moral values is ultimately a
delusion, that all facts are equally good and equally bad,
and that to contemplate anything, it does not matter what,
under the aspect of its esthetic form, is to realize all that
the artist can give.

This, too, is a philosophy and a very radical philosophy
at that. It is in faa just the philosophy which men were
bound to construct for themselves in an age when the
traditional theory of the purpose of life had lost its mean-
ing for them. For they are saying that experience has
no meaning beyond that which each man can find in the
intense realization of each passing moment. He must
fail, they would feel, if he attempts to connea these pass-
ing moments mto a coherent story of his whole experience,
let alone the whole experience of the human race. For
experience has no underlying sigmficance, man himself
has no station in the universe, and the universe has no
plan which is more than a drift of circumstances, illu-
minated here and there by flashes of self-consciousness.

(/) The Burden of Originality
As a matter of faa this doarine is merely the esthetic
version of the rather crude mechanistic materialism which
our grandfathers thought was the final conclusion of sci-
ence. The conneaion is made evident in the , famous
Conclusions to The Renaissance which Walter Pater
wrote in 1868, and then omitted from the second edi-
tion because "it might possibly mislead some of those
young men into whose hands it might fall.” In this

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essay there was the startling, though it is now hackneyed,
assertion that "to burn always with this hard, gem-like
flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life," and
that "of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of
beauty, the love of art for art’s sake, has most; for art
comes to you professing frankly to give nothing but the
highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply
for those moments’ sake.” What is never quoted, and is
apparently forgotten, is the reasoning by which Pater
arrived at the conclusion that momentary ecstasy is the
end and aim of life. It is, if we turn back a few pages,
that scientific analysis has reduced everything to a mere
swarm of whirling atoms, upon which consaousness dis-
cerns impressions that are "unstable, flickering, incon-
sistent.” It was out of this misunderstanding of the
nature of scientific concepts that Pater developed his
theory of art for the moment’s sake.

I dwell upon this only in order to show that what
appeared to be an estheticism divorced from all human
concern was really a somewhat casual by-produa of a
fashionable misunderstandmg at the time Pater was writ-
ing. We should find that to-day equally far-reaching
conclusions are arrived at by half-understood populariza-
tions of Bergson or Freud. I venture to believe that any
theory of art is inevitably implicated in some philosophy
of life, and that the only question is whether the artist
IS conscious or unconscious of the theory he is acting upon.
For unless the amst deals with purely logical essences,
provided he observes and perceives anything in the outer
world, no matter how he represents it or symbolizes it or
comments upon it, there must be implicit in it some atti-

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tude toward the meaning of existence. If his conclusion
IS that human existence has no meaning, that, too, is an
attitude toward the meaning of existence. The mediaeval
artist worked on much less tangled premises. He painted
pictures which illustrated the great hopes and fears of
Christendom. But he did not himself attempt to formu-
late those hopes and fears. He accepted them more or
less ready made, understanding them and believing in
them because, as a child of his age, they were his hopes
and fears. But because they existed and were there for
him to work upon, he could put his whole energy into
realizing them passionately. The modern artist would
like to have the same freedom from preoccupation, but
he cannot have it. He has first to decide what it is that
he shall passionately realize.

In effect the mediaeval artist was reproducing a story
that had often been told before. But the modern artist
has to undergo a whole preliminary labor of inventing,
creating, formulating, for which there was almost no
counterpart in the life of a mediaeval artist. The modern
artist has to be origmal. That is to say, he has to seize
experience, pick it over, and drag from it his theme. It
is a very exhausting task, as anyone can testify who has
tried it.

That surely is why we hear so much of the storm and
stress in the soul of a modern artist. The craftsman
does not go through agonies over the choice of words,
images, and rhythms. The agony of the modern artist
lies in the effort to give birth to the idea, to bring some
intuition of order out of the chaos of experience, to
create the idea with which his art can deal. We assume,

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quite falsely I think, that this act of 'creation’ is an inher-
ent part of the artist’s task. But if we refrain from using
words loosely, and reserve the word creation to mean the
finding of the original intuition and idea, then creation
is plainly not a necessary part of the artist’s equipment.
Creation is an obligation which the artist has had thrust
upon him as a result of the dissolution of the great
accepted themes. He is compelled to be creative because
his world is chaotic.

This labor of creation has no connection with his gifts
as a painter. There is no more reason why a painter
should be able to extemporize a satisfactory interpretation
of life than that he should be able to govern a city or
write a treatise on chemistry. Giotto surely was as pro-
foundly original a painter as the world is likely to see;
it has been said of him by Mr. Berenson, who has full title
to speak, that he had "a thoroughgoing sense for the
significant in the visible world ” But with ail his genius,
what would have been Giotto’s plight if, in addition to
exercising his sense of the significant, he had had to
create for hiinseif all his standards of significance? For
Giotto those standards existed in the Catholic Christianity
of the Thirteenth Century, and it was by the measure of
these standards, within the framework of a great accepted
tradition, that he followed his own personal sense of the
significant But the modern artist, though he had Giotto’s
gifts, would not have Giotto’s freedom to use them. A
very large part of his energies, consciously or uncon-
sciously, would have to be spent in devising some sort of
substitute for the traditional view of life which Giotto took
for granted. For there is no longer an accepted view of

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life organized m stories which all men know and under-
stand.

There is instead a profusion of creeds and philosophies,
fads and intellectual experiments among which the mod-
ern painter, like every other modern man, finds himself
trying to choose a philosophy of life. Everybody is some-
what dithered by these choices: the busmess of being a
Shavian one year, a Nietzschean the next, a Bergsonian
the third, then of being a patriot for the duration of the
war, and after that a Freudian, is not conducive to the
serene exercise of a painter’s talents. For these various
philosophies which the artist picks up here and there, or
by which he is oftener than not picked up and carried
along, are immensely in dispute. They are not clear.
They are rather personal and somewhat accidental visions
of the world. They are essentially unpictorial because
they originate in science and are incompleted, abstracted
teachings for the meamng of things. As a result the art
in which they are implicit is often uninteresting, and
usually unintelligible, to those who do not happen to
belong to the same cult.

The painter can hardly expect to invent for himself a
view of life which will bring order out of the chaos of
modernity. Yet he is compelled to try, for he is engaged
in setting down a vision of the world, and every vision
of the world implies some sort of philosophy. The effects
of the modern emancipation are more clearly evident in
the history of painting during the last hundred years than
in almost any other activity, because in the galleries
hang in frames the successive attempts of men, who are
deeply immersed in the modern scene, to set down their

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statements about life. Mr. Wilenski, who is an astute and
well-informed critic, has estimated that during the last
hundred years in Pans a new movement in painting has
been inaugurated every ten years. That would correspond
fairly accurately to the birth and death of new philoso-
phies in the advanced and most emancipated circles.

What was happening to painting is precisely what has
happened to all the other separated activities of men.
Each activity has its own ideal, indeed a succession of
ideals, for with the dissolution of the supreme ideal of
service to God, there is no ideal which unites them all, and
sets them in order. Each ideal is supreme within a sphere
of Its own. There is no point of reference outside which
can determine the relative value of competing ideals.
The modern man desires health, he desires money, he
desires power, beauty, love, truth, but which he shall
desire the most smce he cannot pursue them all to their
logical conclusions, he no longer has any means of decid-
ing. His impulses are no longer parts of one atatude
toward life; his ideals are no longer in a hierarchy under
one lordly ideal. They have become differentiated. They
are free and they are incommensurable.

The religious synthesis has dissolved. The modern
man no longer holds a belief about the universe which
sustams a pervasive emotion about his destiny; he no
longer believes genuinely in any idea which organizes his
interests within the framework of a cosmic order.

[Ill]

CHAPTER VII

THE DRAMA OF DESTINY

1. The Soul in the Modern World
The effect of modernity, then, is to specialize and thus
to intensify our separated aaivities. Once all things were
phases of a single destiny: the church, the state, the fam-
ily, the school were means to the same end; the rights
and duties of the individual in society, the rules of moral-
ity, the themes of art, and the teachings of science were
all of them ways of revealing, of celebrating, of applymg
the laws laid down in the divine constitution of the uni-
verse. In the modern world institutions are more or less
independent, each serving its own proximate purpose, and
our culture is really a colleaion of separate interests each
sovereign within its own realm. We do not put shrines
in our workshops, and we think it unseemly to talk busi-
ness in the vestibule of a church. We dislike politics
in the pulpit and preachmg from politicians. We do not
look upon our scholars as priests or upon our priests as
learned men. We do not expea science to sustain
theology, nor religion to dominate art. On the contrary
we insist with much fervor on the separation of church
and state, of religion and science, of politics and historical
research, of morality and art, of business and love. This
separation of activities has its counterpart in a separation
of selves; the life of a modern man is not so much the

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history of a single soul; it is rather a play of many charac-
ters within a single body.

That may be why the modern autobiographical novel
usually runs to two volumes; the author requires more
space to explain how his various personalities came to
be what they were at each little crisis of adolescence and
of middle age than St. Augustine, St. Thomas a Kempis,
and St. Francis put together needed in order to describe
their whole destiny in this world and the next. No doubt
we are rather long-winded and tiresome about the com-
plexities of our souls. But from the knowledge that we
are complex there is no escape.

The modern man is unable any longer to think of him-
self as a single personality, approaching an everlasting
judgment. He is one man to-day and another to-morrow,
one person here and another there. He does not feel
he knows himself. He is sure that no one else knows
him at all. His motives are intricate, and not wholly
what they seem. He is moved by impulses which he feels
but cannot describe. There are dark depths in his nature
which no one has ever explored. There are splendors
which are unreleased. He has become greatly interested
in his moods. The precise nuances of his likes and dis-
likes have become very important. There is no telling
just what he is or what he may become, but there is a
cenain breathless interest in having one of his selves
watch and comment upon the mischief and the frustra-
tions of his other selves. The problems of his character
have become dissociated from any feeling that they involve
his immortal destiny. They have become dissociated from
the feeling that they deeply matter. From the feeling that

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they are deeply his own. From the feelmg that there is
any personality to own them. There they are: his inferi-
ority complex and mine, your sadistic impulse and
Tom Jones’s, Anna’s father fixation, and little Willie’s
pyromania.

The thoroughly modern man has really ceased to believe
that there is an immortal essence presiding like a king
over his appetites. The w’^ord 'soul’ has become a figure
of speech, which he uses loosely, sometimes to mean his
tenderer aspirations, sometimes to mean the whole collec-
tion of his impulses, sometimes, when he is in a hurry,
to mean nothing at all. It is certainly not the fashion
any longer to think of the soul as a little lord ruling the
turbulent rabble of his carnal passions; the constitutional
form in popular psychology to-day is republican. Each
impulse may invoke the Bill of Rights, and have its way
if the others will let it. ‘ As Bertrand Russell has put it;
"A single desire is no better and no worse, considered in
isolation, than any odier; but a group of desires is better
than another group if all of the first group can be satisfied,
while in the second group some are inconsistent with
others,” but since, unhappily as is usually the case, desires
are extremely inconsistent, the uttermost that the modern
man can say is that the victory must go to the strongest
desires. Morality thus becomes a traffic code designed
to keep as many desires as possible moving together with-
out too many violent collisions. When men insist that
morality is more than that, they are quickly denounced,
in general correctly, as Med^esome Matties, as enemies
of human liberty, or as schemers trying to get the better
of their fellow men. Morality, conceived as a disapline

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to fit mai for heaven, is resented; morality, conceived as
a discipline for happiness, is understood by very few.
The objeaive moral certitudes have dissolved, and in the
liberal philosophy there is nothmg to take their place.

2. The Great Scenario

The modem world is like a stage on whidi a stupendous
play has just been presented. Many who were in the
audience are sail spellbound, and as they pass out into
the street, the scenario of the drama still seems to them
the very clue and plan of life. In the prologue the earth
was without form and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. Then at the command of ‘God the sun,
the moon, the stars, the earth, its plants and its animals,
then man, and after him woman, were created. And in
the ^ilogue the blessed were living in the New Jerusalem,
a city of pure gold like clear glass, with walls laid on
foundations of precious stones. Between the darkness
that preceded aeation and the glory of this heavenly city
which had no need of the sun, a plot was unfolded which
constitutes the history of mankind. In the beginning man
was perfect. But the devil tempted him to eat the for-
bidden fruit, and as a punishment God banished him from
paradise, and laid upon him and his descendants the curse
of labor and of death.

But in meting out this punishment, God in his mercy
promised ultimately to redeem the children of Adam.
From among them he chose one tribe who were to be the
custodians of this promise. And then in due time he
sent his Son, bom of a Virgin, to teach the gospel of
salvation, and to expiate the sm of Adam upon a cross.

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Those who believed in this gospel and followed its com-
mandments, would at the final day of reckoning enter into
the heavenly Jerusalem; the rest would be consigned to
the devil and his everlasting torments.

Into this marvelous story the whole of human history
and of human knowledge could be fitted, and only in
accordance with it could they be understood. This was
the key to existence, the answer to doubt, the solace
for pain, and the guarantee of happiness. But to many
who were m tlie audience it is now evident that they
have seen a play, a magnificent play, one of the most
sublime ever created by the human imagination, but never-
theless a pla/, and not a literal account of human destiny.
They know it was a play. They have lingered long
enough to see the scene shifters at work. The painted
drop IS half rolled up; some of the turrets of the cetestial
city can still be seen, and part of the choir of angels.
But behind them, plainly visible, are the struts and gears
which held in place what under a gentler light looked
like the boundaries of the universe. They are only human
fears and human hopes, and bits of antique science and
half-forgotten history, and symbols here and there of
experiences through which some in each generation pass.

Conceivably men might once again imagine another
drama which was as great as the epic of the Christian
Bible. But like Paradise Lost or Faust, it would remain
a work of the imagination. While the intelleaual climate
in which we live is what it is, while we continue to be
as conscious as we are of how our own minds work, we
could nor again accept naively such a gorgeous fable of
our destiny. Yet only five hundred years ago the whole

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of Christendom believed that this story was literally and
objeaively true. God was not another name for the evo-
lutionary process, or for the sum total of the laws of
nature, or for a compendium of all noble things, as he is
in modernist accounts of him; he was the ruler of the
universe, an omnipotent, magical King, who felt, who
thought, who remembered and issued his commands.
And because there was such a God, whose plan was
clearly revealed in all its essentials, human life had a
definite meaning, morality had a certain foundation, men
felt themselves to be livmg within the framework of a
universe which they called divine because it corresponded
with their deepest desires.

If we ask ourselves why it is impossible for us to sum
up the meaning of existence in a great personal drama,
we have to begin by remembering that every great story
of this kind must assume that the universe is governed
by forces which are essentially of the same order as the
promptings of the human heart. Otherwise it would not
greatly interest us. A story, however plausible, about
beings who had no human qualities, a plot which unfolded
itself as utterly indiflferent to our own personal fate,
would not serve as a substimte for the Christian epic.
This is the trouble with the so-called religion of creative
evolution: even if it is true, which is far from certain,
it is so profoundly indifferent to our individual fate, that
it leaves most men cold. For there are very few who are
so mystical as to be able to sink diemselves wholly in
the hidden purposes of an unconscious natural force.
This, too, as the Catholic Church has always insisted, is
the trouble with pantheistic religion, for if everything is

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divine, then nothing is peculiarly divine, and all the dis-
tinctions of good and evil are* meaningless.

The story must not only assume that human ideals
inspire the whole creation, but it must contain guarantees
that this is so. There must be no doubt about it. Science
must confirm the moral assumptions; the highest and
most certain available knowledge must clinch the convic-
tion that the story unfolded is the secret of life.

3. Earmarks of Truth

Religious teachers who were close to the people have
always understood that they must perform wonders if they
were to make their God convincing and their own title
to speak for him valid. The writer of Exodus, for exam-
ple, was quite clear in his mind about this;

And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not
believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say,
The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.

And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand?
And he said, A rod.

And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on
the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from
before it.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and
take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught
it, and it became a rod in his hand:

That they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, hath appeared unto thee.

Even in the wildest flights of his fanqr the common
man is almost always primarily interested m the prosaic
consequences. If he ^lieves in fairies he is not likely

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to imagine them as spirits inhabiting a world apart, but
as litde people who do things which affea his own affairs.
The common man is an unconscious pragmatist: he
believes because he is satisfied that his beliefs change the
course of events. He would not be inspired to worship a
god who merely contemplates the universe, or a god who
created it once, and then rested, while its destiny unfolds
itself inexorably. To the plain people religion is not
disinterested speculation but a very practical matter. It
is concerned with their well-being in this world and in
an equally concrete world hereafter. They have wanted
to know the will of God because they had to know it if
they were to put themselves right with* the king of
creation.

Those who professed to know God’s will had.to demon-
strate that they knew it. This was the function of mira-
cles. They were tangible evidence that the religious
teacher had a true commission. 'Then those men, when
they had seen the miracle (of the loaves and the fishes)
that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that
should come into the world.” When Jesus raised the dead
man at the gate of the city of Nain, "there came a fear
on all: and they glorified God, saying. That a great
prophet is risen up among us; and. That God hath visited
his people.” The most authoritative Catfiohc theologians
teach that miracles "are not wrought to show the internal
truth of the doctrines, but only to give manifest reasons
why we should accept the doarines.” They are "essen-
tially an appeal to knowledge,” demonstrations, one might
almost say divine experiments, by which men are enabled
to know the glory and the providence of God.

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The Catholic apologists maintain that God can be
known by the exercise of re^on, but the miracle helps,
as it w'ere, to clinch the conviction. The persistent attach-
ment of the Catholic Church to miracles is significant. It
has a longer unbroken experience with human nature
than any other institution in the western world. It has
adapted itself to many circumstances, and under the pro-
fession of an unalterable creed it has abandoned and Aen
added much. But it has never ceased to insist upon the
need of a physical manifestation of the divine power.
For with an unerring instinct for realities, Catholic church-
men have understood that there is a residuum of prosaic,
matter-of-facmess, of a need to touch and to see, which
verbal proofs can never quite satisfy. They have reso-
lutely responded to that need. They have not preached
God merely by praising him; they have brought God
near to men by revealing him to the senses, as one who
is great enough and good, enough and sufficiently inter-
ested in them to heal the sick and to make the floods
recede.

But to-day scientists are ever so much superior to church-
men at this kind of demonstration. The miracles which
are recounted from the pulpit were, after all, few and far
between. There are even theologians who teach that
miracles ceased with the death of the Apostles. But the
miracles of science seem to be inexhaustible. It is not
surprising, then, that men of science should have acquired
much of the intellectual authority which churchmen once
exercised. Scientists do not, of course, speak of their
discoveries as miracles. But to the common man they
have much the same charaaer as miracles. They are"

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wonderful, they are inexplicable, they are manifestations
of a great power over the forces of nature

It cannot be said, I think, that the people at large,
even the moderately educated minority, understand the
difference between scientific method and revelation, or
that they have decided upon refleaion to trust saence.
There is at least as much mystery in science for the com-
mon man as there ever was in religion; in a sense there
is more mystery, for the logic of science is still altogether
beyond his understanding, whereas the logic of revelation
is the logic of his own feelings. But if men at large do
not understand the method of science, they can appreciate
some of its more tangible results. And theSe results are
so impressive that scientific men are often embarrassed by
the unbounded popular expectations which they have so
unintentionally aroused.

Their authority in the realm of knowledge has become
virtually irresistible. And so when scientists teach- one
theory and the Bible another, the scientists invariably
carry the greater conviaion.

4. On Reconciling Religion and Science
The conflicts between scientists and churchmen are
sometimes ascribed to a misunderstanding on both sides.
But when we examine the proposals for peace, it is plain,
I think, that they are in effea proposals for a truce.
There is, for example, the suggestion first put out, I
believe, in the Seventeenth Century that God made the
umverse like a clock, and that having started it running
he will let it alone till it runs down. By this ingenious
metaphor, which can neither be proved nor disproved,

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It was possible to reconcile for a time the scientific notion
of natural law with the older notion of God as creator
and as judge. The religious conception was held to be
true for the beginning of the world and for the end, the
scientific conception was true in between. Later, when
the theatre of the difficulty was transferred from physics
and astronomy to biology and history, a variation was
propounded. God, it was said, created the world and
governs it; the way he creates and governs is the way
described by scientists as 'evolution.’

Attempts at reconciliations like these are based on a
theory that it is feasible somewhere in the field of knowl-
edge to drav/ a lirie and say that on one side the methods
of science shall prevail, on the other the methods of
traditional religion. It is acknowledged that where
experiment and observation are possible, the field belongs
to the scientists; but it is argued that there is a vast field
of great interest to mankind which is beyond the reach
of practical scientific inquiry, and that here, touching
questions like the ultimate destiny of man, the purpose
of life, and immortality, the older method of revelation,
inspired and verified by mtuition, is still reliable.

In any truce of this sort there is bound to be aggres-
sion from both sides. For it is a working policy rather
than an inwardly accepted conviction. Scientists cannot
really believe that there are fields of possible knowledge
which they can never enter. They are bound to enter all
fields and to explore everything. And even if they fail,
they cannot believe that other scientists must always fail.
Their essays, moreover, create disturbance and doubt
which orthodox churchmen are forced to resent. For in

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any division of authority, there must be some ultimate
authority to settle questions of jurisdiaion. Shall sci-
entists determine what belongs to science, or shall
churchmen? The question is insoluble as long as both
claim that they have the right to expound the nature of
existence.

And so while the policy of toleration may be tem-
porarily workable, it is inherently unstable. Therefore,
among men who are at once devoted to the method of
science and sensitive to the human need of religion, the
hope has arisen that something better can be worked out
than a purely diplomatic division of the mind into spheres
of influence. Mr. Whitehead, for example, in his book
called Science and the Modern argues '‘there are

wider truths and finer perspectives within which a recon-
ciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle science
will be found.'' He illustrates what he means in this
fashion. Galileo said the earth moves and the sun is
fixed; the Inquisition said the earth is fixed and the sun
moves; the Newtonian astronomers said that both the
sun and the earth move. “But now we say that any one
of these three statements is equally true, provided you
have fixed your sense of 'rest' and 'motion' in the way
required by the statement adopted. At the date of Gali-
leo's controversy with the Inquisition, Galileo's way of
stating the faas was beyond question the fruitful pro-
cedure for the sake of scientific research. But at that
time the concepts of relative motion were in nobody's
mind; so that the statements were made in ignorance of
the qualifications required for the more petfea truth.
. . , All sides had got hold of important truths.

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But with the knowledge of those times, the truths
appeared to be inconsistent.”

This is reconciliation through a higher synthesis. But
I cannot help feeling that the scientist has here produced
the synthesis, and that the churchmen have merely pro-
vided one of the ideas which are to be synthesized. Mr.
Whitehead argues in effect that a subtler science would
confirm many ideas that were once taken on faith. But
he holds unswervingly to the belief of the scientist that
his method contains the criterion of truth. In his illus-
tration the reconciliation between Galileo, the Inquisition,
and the Newtonian physicists is reached if all three parties
accept "the mbdern concept of relative motion.” But the
modern concept of relative motion was reached by sci-
entific thought, and not by apostolic revelation. To Mr.
Whitehead, therefore, the ultimate arbiter is science, and
what he means by reconciliation is a scientific view of the
universe sufficiently wide and sufficiently subtle to justify
many of the important, but hitherto unverified, claims of
traditional religion. Mr. Whitehead, it happens, is an
Englishman as well as a great logician, and it is difficult
to resist the suspicion that he conceives the church of
the future as enjoying the dignities of an Indian Mahara-
jah, with a resident scientist behind the altar.

A reconciliation of this kind may soften the conflia
for a while. But it cannot for long disguise the faa that
it is based on a denial of the premises of faith. If the
method of science has the last word, then revelation is
reduced from a means of arriving at absolute certainty to
a flash of insight which can be trusted if and when it is
verified by science. Under such terms of peace, the reli-

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gious experiences of mankind become merely one of the
instruments of knowledge, like the microscope and the
binomial theorem, usable now and then, but subjea to
correction, and provisional. They no longer yield com-
plete, ultimate, invincible truths. They yield an hypothe-
sis. But the religious life of most men has not, until this
day at least, been founded upon hypotheses which, when
accurately stated, included a coefficient of probable error.

5. Gospels of Science

Because its prestige is so great, science has been
acclaimed as a new revelation. Cults have attached them-
selves to scientific hypotheses as fortune-tellers to a cir*»
CdS. A whole series of pseudo-religions have been hastily
constructed upon such dogmas as the laws of nature,
mechanism, Darwinian evolution. Lamarckian evolution,
and psychoanalysis. Each of these cults has had its own
Decalogue of Science founded at last, it was said, upon
certain knowledge.

These cults are an attempt to fit the working theories
of science to the ordinary man s desire for personal sal-
vation. They do violence to the integrity of scientific
thought and they cannot satisfy the byman s need to
believe. For the essence of the scientific method is a
determination to investigate phenomena without conced-
ing anything to naive human prejudices. Therefore, gen-
uine men of science shrink from the attempts of poets,
prophets, and popular lecturers to translate the current
scientific theory mto the broad and passionate dogmas of
popular faith. As a matter of common honesty they
know that no theory has the kind of absolute verity which

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popular faith would attribute to it. As a matter of pru-
dence they fear these popular cults, knowing quite well
that freedom of inquiry is endangered when men become
passionately loyal to an idea, and stake their personal
pride and hope of happiness upon its vindication. In
the light of human experience, men of science have learned
what happens when investigators are not free to discard
any theory without breaking some dear old lady*s heart.
Their theories are nqt the kind of revelation which the
old lady is seeking, and their beliefs are relative and pro-
visional to a degree which must seem utterly alien and
bewildering to her.

• Here, for example, is the conclusion of some lectures
by one of the greatest living astronomers. I have itali-
cized the words which the dear old lady would not be
likely to hear in a sermon:

I have dealt mainly with two salient points — the problem
of the source of a star’s energy, and the change of mass
which must occur if there is any evolution of faint stars
from bright stars. I have shown how these appear to meet
in the hypothesis of the annihilation of matter. I do not
hold this as a secure conclusion,, I hesitate even to advocate
it as probable, because there are many details which seem
to me to throw considerable doubt on it, and I have formed
a strong impression that “there must be some essential point
which has not yet been grasped. I simply tell it you as the
clue which at the moment we are ttying to follow up — not
knowing whether it is false scent or true. I should have
liked to have closed these lectures by leading up to some
grear climax. But perhaps it is more in accordance with
the true conditions of saentific progress that they should
fizzle out with a glimpse of the obscurity which marks the
frontiers of present knowledge. I do not apologize for the

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lameness of the conclusion, jor jt is not a conclusion, I
wish 1 could feel confident that it is even a beginning.

This great climax, to which Dr Eddington was unable
to lead up, is what the layman is looking for. We know
quite well what the nature of that great climax would be:
It would be a statement of fact which related the destiny
of each individual to the destiny of the universe That
is the kind of truth which is found m revelation It is
the kind of truth which men would like to find m science
But it IS the kind of truth which science does not afford
The difficulty is deeper than the provisional character of
scientific hypothesis; it is not due merely to the inability
of the scientist to say that his conclusion is absolutely^
secure. The layman in search of a dogma upon which to
organize his destiny might be willing to grant that the
conclusions of science to-day are as yet provisional. What
he tends to misunderstand is that even if the conclusions
were guaranteed by all investigators now and for all time
to come, those conclusions would still fail to provide him
with a conception of the world of which the great climax
was a prophecy of the fate of creation in terms of his hopes
and fears.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely m
the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all
popular religion, that the forces which move the stars
and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the
human heart. The science of Aristotle and of the School-
men, on the other hand, was a truly popular science. It
was in its inspiration the instinctive science of the unsci-
entific man. "They read into the cause and goal of the
universe," as Dr. Randall has said, "that which alone

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justifies it for man, its service of the good.” They pro-
vided a conception of the universe which was available for
the religious needs of ordinary men, and in the Divine
Comedy we can see the supreme example of what science
must be like if it is to satisfy the human need to believe.
The purpose of the whole poem, said Dante himself, "is
to remove those who are living in this life from the state
of wretchedness, and to lead them to the state of blessed-
ness.” Medieval science, which follows the logic of
human desire, was such that Dante could without violence
either to its substance or its spirit say at the summit of
Paradise:

To the'^igh fantasy here power failed; but already my
desire and will were rolled — even as a wheel that moveth
equally — by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

This is the great climax which men instinctively expect:
the ability to say with perfect assurance that when the
truth is fully evident it will be seen that their desire and
will are rolled by the love that moves the sun and the
other stars. They hope not only to find the will of God
in the universe but to know that his will is fundamentally
like their own. Only if they could believe that on the
basis of scientific mvestig^tion would they really feel that
science had 'explained' the world.

Explanation, in this sense, cannot come from modern
science because it is not in this sense that modern science
attempts to explain the universe. It is wholly misleading
to say, for example, that the scientific picture of the world
is mechanical. All that can properly be said is that many
scientists have found it satisfying to think about the uni-
verse as if it were built on a mechamcal model *Tf I

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can make a mechanical model/' said Lord Kelvin, 'T can
understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical
model all the way through, I cannot understand it." But
what does the scientist mean by "understanding it"? He
means, says Professor Bridgman, that he has "reduced
a situation to elements with which we are so familiar that
we accept them as a matter of course, so that our curiosity
rests." Modern men are familiar with machines. They
can take them apart and put them together, so that even
though we should all be* a little flustered if we had to
tell just what we mean by a macliine, our curiosity tends
to be satisfied if we hear that the phenomenon, say, of
electricity or of human behavior, is like a machine.

The place at which curiosity rests is not a fixed point
called ‘the truth.' The unscientific man, like the School-
men of the Middle Ages, really means by the truth an
explanation of the universe in terms of human desire.
What modern science means by the truth has been stated
most clearly perhaps by the late Charles S. Peirce when
he said that "the opinion which is fated to be ultimately
agreed to by all those who investigate, is what we mean
by the truth, and tlie object represented in this opinion
is the real." When we say that something has been
‘explained' by science, we really mean only that our own
curiosity is satisfied. Another man, whose mind was
more critical, who commanded a greater field of experi-
ence, might not be satisfied at all Thus "the savage is
satisfied by explaining the thunderstorm as the capricious
aa of an. angry God. . . . (But) even if the physicist
believed in the existence of the angry god, he would not
be satisfied with this explanation of the thunderstorm

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because he is not so well acquainted with angry gods as
to be able to predict when anger is followed by a storm.
He would have to know why the god had become angry,
and why making a thunderstorm eased his ire.” But even
carrying the explanation to this point would not be carry-
ing It to Its limit. For there is no formal limit. The
next scientist might wish to know what a god was and
what anger is. And when he had been told what their
elements are, the next man might be dissatisfied until he
had found the elements of these elements.

The man who says that the world is a machine has
really advanced no further than to say that he is so well
satisfied with this analogy that he is through with search-
ing any further. That is his business, as long as he does
not msist that he has reached a clear and ultimate picture
of the universe. For obviously he has not. A machine
IS somethmg m which the parts push and pull each other.
But why are jhey pushing and pulling, and how do they
work? Do they push and pull because of the action of
the electrons in their orbits within the atoms? If that
is true, then how does an electron work? Is it, too, a
machine? Or is it something quite different from a
machine? Shall we attempt to explain machines electri-
cally, or shall we attempt to explain electricity mechani-
cally?

It becomes plain, therefore, that scientific explanation
is altogether unlike the explanations to which the com-
mon man is accustomed. It does not yield a certain
picture of anything which can be taken naively as a rep-
resentation of reality. And therefore the philosophies
which have grown up about science, like mechanism or

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creative evolution, are in no way guaranteed by science
as the account of creation m Genesis is guaranteed by
the authority of Scripture. They are nothing but pro-
visional dramatizations which are soon dissolved by the
progress of science itself.

That is why nothing is so dead as the scientific religion
of yesterday. It is far more completely dead than any
revealed religion, because the revealed religion, whatever
may be the defeas of its cosmology or its history, has
some human experience at its core which we can recog-
nize and to which we may respond. But a religion like
scientific materialism has nothing in it, except the pre-
tension that It IS a true account of the world. Once that
pretension is exploded, it is wholly valueless as a religion.
It has become a colleaion of discarded concepts.

6. The Deeper Conflict

It follows from the very nature of scientific explana-
tion, then, that it cannot give men such a clue to a plan
of existence as they find in popular religion. For that
plan must suppose that existence is explained in terms
of human destiny. Now conceivably existence might
again be explained, as it was in the Middle Ages, as the
drama of human destiny. It does not seem probable to
us; yet we cannot say that it is impossible. But even
if science worked out such an explanation, it would still
be radically different from the explanations which popular
religion employs.

For if it were honestly stated, it would be necessary
to say first, that it is tentative, and subject to disproof
bv further experiment; second, that it is relative, in that

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the same facts seen from some other point and with some
other purpose in mind could be explained qmte differ-
ently; third, that ir is not a picture of the world, as God
would see it, and as all men must see it, but that it is
simply one among many possible creations of the mmd
into which most of the data of experience can be fitted.
When the scientist had finished setting down his qualifica-
tions, the essence of the matter as a simple, devout man
sees it, would have evaporated. Certamty, as the devout
desire it, would be gone; verity, as they understand it,
would be gone; objectivity, as they imagine it, would be
gone. What would remain would be a highly abstracted,
logical fictiOR, suited to disinterested inquiry, but utterly
unsuited to be the vehicle of his salvation.

The difficulty of reconciling popular religion with sci-
ence is far deeper than that of reconciling Genesis with
Darwin, or any statement of faa in the Bible with any
discovery by scientists. It is the difficulty of reconcilmg
the human desire for a certain kind of universe with a
method of explaining the world which is absolutely
neutral in its intention. One can by twisting language
sufficiently "reconcile” Genesis with "evolution.” But
what no one can do is to guarantee that science will not
destroy the doarine of evolution the day after it has been
triumphfintly proved that Genesis is compatible with the
theory of evolution. As a matter of faa, just that has
happened. The Darwinian theory, which theologians are
busily accepting, is so greaJy modified already by science
that some of it is almost as obsolete as the Babylonian
myth in Genesis, The reconciliation which theologians
are attempting is an impossible one, because one of the

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faaors which has to be reconciled — ^namely, the scientific
theory, changes so rapidly that the layman is never sure
at any one moment what the theory is which he has to
reconcile with religious dogma.

Yet the purpose of these attempts at reconciliation is
evident enough. It is to find a solid foundation for human
ideals in the facts of existence Authority based on reve-
lation once provided that foundation. It gave an account
of how the world began, of how it is governed, and of
how It will end, which made pain and joy, hope and fear,
desire and the denial of desire the central motives in the
cosmic drama. This account no longer satisfies our curi-
osity as to the namre of things; the audio rity which
certifies it no longer commands our complete allegiance.
The prestige, which once adhered to those who spoke by
revelation, has passed to scientists. But science, though
it is the most reliable method of knowledge we now
possess, does not provide an account of the world in
which human destiny is the central theme. Therefore,
science, though it has displaced revelation, is not a sub-
stitute for it. It yields a radically different kind of knowl-
edge. It explains the faas. But it does not pretend to
Justify the ways of God to man. It enables us to realize
some of our hopes. But it offers no guarantees that they
can be fulfilled.

7. Theocracy and Humanism
There is a revolution here in the realm of the spirit.
We may describe it briefly by saying that whereas men
once felt they were living under the eye of an all-powerful
speaator, to-day they are watched only by their neighbors

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and their own consciences. A few, perhaps, aa as if
posterity were aware of them; the great number feel
themselves accountable only to their own consciences or
to the opinion of the society in which they live. Once
men believed that they would be judged at the throne of
God. They believed that he saw not only their deeds
but their motives; there was no hole deep enough into
which a man could crawl to hide himself from the sight
of God; there was no mood, however fleeting, which
escaped his notice.

The moral problem for each man, therefore, was to
make his will conform to the will of God. There were
differences o^ opimon as to how this could be done.
There were differing conceptions of the nature of God,
and of what he most desired." But there was no difference
of opinion on the main point that it was imperative to
obey him. Whether they thought they could serve God
best by burnt offerings or a contrite heart, by slaying
the infidel or by loving their neighbors, by vows of pov-
erty or by the magnificence of their altars, they never
doubted that the chief duty of man, and his ultimate
chance of happiness, was to discover and then to culti-
vate a right relationship to a supreme being.

This was the major premise upon which all human
choices hinged. There followed from it certain necessary
conclusions. In determining what was a right relation-
ship to God, the test of rightness lay in a revelation of
the putative experience of God and not in the actual
experience of His creatures. It was God alone, therefore,
who really understood the reasons for righteousness and
its nature. "The procedure of Divine Justice,” said

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Calvin, too high to be scanned by human measure
or comprehended by the feebleness of human intellect/’
That was good which man understood was good in the
eyes of God, regardless of how it seemed to men

Thus the distinction between good and evil, including
not only all rules of personal conduct but the whole
arrangement of rights and duties in society, were laws
established not by the consent of the governed, but by a
king in heaven. They were his commandments. By
obedience men could obtain happiness But they obtained
it not because virtue is the cause of happiness but because
God rewarded with happiness those who obeyed his com-
mandments Men did not really know '^hy God pre-
ferred certain kinds of conduct; they merely professed
to know what kind of conduct he preferfed They could
not really ask themselves what the difference was between
good and evil That was a secret locked in the nature
of a being whose choices were ultimately inscrutable.
The only question was what he willed. Even Job had
to be content without fathoming his reasons.

The moral commandments based upon divine authority
were, in the nature of things, rather bro^d generalizations
Obviously there could not be special revelation as to the
umque aspeas of each human difficulty The divine law,
like our ordinary human law, was addressed to typical
rather than to individual cases. Nevertheless, for much
the greater part of recorded history men have accepted
such law without questioning its validity. They could
not have done so if the rules of morality had not, at least
m some rough way, worked It is not difficult to see why
they worked. They were broad rules of conduct imposed

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upon people living close to the soil, upon people, there-
fore, whose ways of living changed little in the course
of generations. The same situations were so nearly and
so often repeated that a typical solution would on the
whole be satisfactory.

These typical solutions, such , as we find in the Mosaic
law or the code of Hammurabi, were no doubt the deposits
of custom. They had, therefore, become perfected in
practice, and were solidly based upon human experience.
In the society in which they originated, there was nothing
arbitrary or alien about them. When, therefore, the law-
giver carried these immemorial usages up with him on to
Sinai, and br^^ught them down again graven on tab-
lets of stone, the rationality of the revelation was self-
evident. It appeared to be arbitrary only when a
radical change in the way of life dissolved the premises
and the usages upon which the authoritative code was
established.

TJiat dissolution has proceeded to great lengths within
the centuries which we call modern. The crisis was
reached, it seems, during the Eighteenth Century, and in
the teaching of Immanuel Kant it was made manifest to
the educated classes of the western world. Kant argued
in the Critique of Pure Reason that the existence of God
cannot be demonstrated. He then insisted that without
belief m God, freedom, and immortality, there was no
valid and true morality. So he insisted that God must
exist to justify morality. This highly sophisticated doc-
trine marks the end of simple theism in modern thought.
For Kant*s proof of the existence of God was nothing
but a plea that God ought to exist, and the whole temper

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of the modem mtellect is to deny that what ought to be
true necessarily is tme.

Insofar as men have now lost their belief in a heavenly
king, they have to find some other ground for their moral
choices than the revelation of his will. It follows neces-
sarily that they must find the tests of righteousness wholly
within human experience. The difference between good
and evil must be a difference which men themselves rec-
ognize and understand. Happiness cannot be the reward
of virme; it must be the intelligible consequence of it.
It follows, too, that virtue cannot be commanded; it must
be willed out of personal conviction and desire. Such
a morality may properly be called humanism, for it is
centered not in superhuman but in human nature. When
men can no longer be theists, they must, if they ate
civilized, become humanists. They must live by the
premise that whatever is righteous is inherently desirable
because experience will demonstrate its desirability. They
must live, therefore, in the belief that the duty of man
is not to make his will conform to the will of God but
to the surest knowledge of the conditions of human
happiness.

It IS evident that a morality of humanism presents far
greater difficulties than a morality premised on theism.
For one thing, it is put immediately to a much severer
test. When Kant, for example, argued that theism was
necessary to morality, his chief reason was that since the
good man is often defeated on earth, he must be per-
mitted to believe in a superhuman power which is "able
to connea happiness and morality in exaa harmony with
each other.” Humanism is not provided with such

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reserves of moral credit; it cannot claim all eternity in
which Its promises may be fulfilled. Unless its wisdom
in any sphere of life is demonstrated within a reasonable
time in actual experience, there is nothing to commend it.

A morality of humanism labors under even greater
difficulties. It appears in a complex and changing society;
it IS an atutude toward life to which rational men neces-
sarily mrn whenever their circumstances have rendered a
theistic view incredible. It is just because the simpler
rules no longer work that the subtler choices of humanism
present themselves. These choices have to be made under
conditions, like those which prevail in modern urban
societies, where the extreme complexity of rapidly chang-
ing human relations makes it very difficult to foresee all
the consequences of any moral decision. The men who
must make their decisions are skeptical by habit and
unsettled amidst the novelties of their surroundings.

The teachers of a theistic morality, when the audience
is devout, have only to fortify the impression that the
rules of conduct are certified by God the invisible King.
The ethical problem for the common man is to recognize
the well-known credentials of his teachers. In practice
he has merely to decide whether the priest, the prince,
and the elders, are what they claim to be. When he has
done that, there are no radical questions to be asked. But
the teachers of humanism have no credentials. Their
teaching is not certified. They have to prove their case
by the test of mundane experience. They speak with no
authority, which can be scrutinized once and for all, and
then forever accepted. They can proclaim no rule of
conduct with certainty, for they have no inherent per-

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sonal authority and they cannot be altogether sure they
are right. They cannot command. They cannot tmly
exhort. They can only inquire, infer, and persuade. They
have only human insight to guide them and those to whom
they speak must in the end themselves accept the full
responsibility for the consequences of any advice they
choose to accept.

Yet with all its dif&culties, it is to a morality of human-
ism that men must turn when the ancient order of things
dissolves. When they find that th'ey no longer believe
seriously and deeply that they are governed from heaven,
there is anarchy in their souls until by conscious effort
they find ways of governing themselves.

C139J

PART n

THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMANISM

The stone which the builders rejected j
The same is become the head of the corner?

Luke XX, 17.

INTRODUCTION

The upshot of the discussion to this point is that
modernity destroys the disposition to believe that behind
the visible world of physical objects and human instim-
tions there is a supernatural kingdom from which ulti-
mately all laws, all judgments, all rewards, all punish-
ments, and all compensations are derived. To those who
believe that this kingdom exists the modern,spirit is noth-
ing less than treason to God.

The popular religion rests on the belief that the king-
dom is an objective fact, as certain, as definite, and as
real, in spite of its invisibility, as the British Empire; it
holds that this faith is justified by overwhelming evidence
supplied by revelation, unimpeachable testimony, and
incontrovertible signs. To the modern spirit, on the
other hand, the belief in this kingdom must necessarily
seem a grandiose fiction projected by human needs and
desires. The humanistic view is that the popular faith
does not prove the existence of its objects, but only the
presence of a desire that such objects should exist. The
popular religion, in short, rests on a theory which, if true,
IS an extension of physics and of history; the humanistic
view rests on human psychology and an interpretation of
human experience.

It follows, then, that in exploring the modern problem
it is necessary consciously and clearly to make a choice
between these diametrically opposite points of view. The

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choice is fundamental and exclusive, and it determines
all the conclusions which follow. For obviously to one
who believes that the world is a theocracy, the problem
is how to bring the strayed and rebellious masses of man-
kind back to their obedience, how to restore the lost
provinces of God the invisible King. But to one who
takes the humanistic view the problem is how mankind,
deprived of the great fiaions, is to come to terms with
the needs which created those fictions.

In this book I take the humanistic view because, in the -
kind of world I happen to live m, I can do no other.

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CHAPTER VIII

GOLDEN MEMORIES

It will be granted, I suppose, that there would be no
need for certainty about the plan and government of the
universe if, as a matter of course, all our desires were
regularly fulfilled In a world where no man desired
what he could not have, there would be no need to regu-
late human condua and therefore no need, for morality.
In a world where each man could have what he desired,
there would be no need for consolation and for reas-
suring guarantees that justice, mercy, and love will ulti-
mately prevail. In a world where there was perfect ad-
justment between human desires and their environment,
there would be no problem of evil: we should not know
the meaning of sin, sorrow, crime, fear, fnistration, pain,
and emptiness. We do not live m such a well-ordered
world. But we can imagine it by making either of two
assumptions: that we have ceased to desire anything which
causes evil, or that omnipotence fulfills all our desires.
The first of these assumptions leads to the Nirvana of the
Buddhists, where all craving has ceased and there is per-
fect peace. The second leads to the heaven of all popular
religions, to some paradise like that of Mohammed per-
haps where, as Mr. Santayana says, men may ”sit in well-
watered gardens, clad in green silks, drinking delicious
sherbets, and transfixed by the gazelle-like glance of some
young girl, all innocence and fire.*'

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Among educated men it has always been difficult to
imagine a heaven of fulfilled desires. For since no two
persons have exactly the same desires, one man s imagina-
tion of heaven may not suit another man’s. In general,
the attempts which have been made to picture the Chris-
tian heaven reflect the temperaments of highly contem-
plative spiiits, and it is customary nowadays to say that
this heaven would be a most uninteresting place No
doubt It would be to those who are not contemplative.
But the objectors have missed the mam point, which is
that no one is supposed to pass through the pearly gates
who is not suited to dwell m Paradise. That is what St.
Peter is there for, to see that the unfit do not enter; the
other places, Purgatory and the Inferno, are available to
those spirits who could not be happy in Heaven. There
are, by definition, no uncongenial spirits in Heaven.
There were once, but Satan and his followers were thrown
out headlong, and they now live in places which are suited
to their temperaments. A devout man may quite prop-
erly, therefore, advise those who do not think they would
enjoy Heaven to go to Hell.

The attempt to imagine a heaven is an attempt to con-
ceive a world in which the disorders of human desire no
longer exist. Now it is in their prayers that men have
sought to come to terms with their disorders, and their
prayers reveal most concretely how much the hunger for
certainty and for help is a hunger for the fulfillment of
desire. For prayer, says Fadier Wynne, is ‘’the expression
of our desires to God whether for ourselves or for others.”
In the higher reaches of religion “the expression is not
intended to instruct or direct God what to do, but to

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appeal to His goodness for the things we need; and the
appeal is necessary, not because He is ignorant of our
needs or sentiments, but to give definite form to our de-
sires, to concentrate our whole attention on' what we have
to recommend to Him, to help us appreciate our close
personal relation with Him.” But in order to know what
to pray for, we need grace, that is to say, God Himself
must teach us what to ask Him for. We can be sure that
we should pray for salvation, but in particular we need
guidance from God "to know the special means that will
most help us in any particular need.” But besides the
spiritual objeas of prayer “we are to ask also for temporal
things, our daily bread and all that it implies, health,
strength, and other worldly or temporal goods . . ; we

are to pray also for escape from evils, "the penalty of our
sins, the dangers of temptation, and every manner of physi-
cal or spiritual affliction.”

There has, however, always been a logical difficulty
about offering petitions to an all-wise and all-powerful
Providence. Thus in the Dialogue of Dives and Pauper,
which was published in 1493, the question is put: "Why
pray we to God with oure mouth sithe he knowyth alle
cure thoughte, ail our desire, al our wyi and what us
nedeth?” To this question the only answer which was
not evasive came from the mystics who led a life of con-
templation. Prayer, they said, is not mere petition; it is
communion with God. It is not because prayer gives a
man what he wants, but because it "ones the soul to
God,” that it is rational and necessary. This, too, is the
conception of prayer held by a liberal pastor like Dr. Fos-
dick who looks with scorn upon "clamorous petition to an

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

anthropomorphic God” and says that "true prayer . . .
is to assimilate . . . (the) spirit which is God (that) .
. . . surrounds our lives.” The same idea, stated in some-
what more precise language, is set down by Mr. San-
tayana when he says that "in rational prayer the soul may
be said to accomplish three things important to its welfare:
it withdraws withm itself and defines its good, it accom-
modates Itself to destiny, and it grows like the ideal which
it conceives.”

But, of course, this is not the way the common man
through the ages has conceived prayer. In fact he must
have prayed before he had any clear conception of what a
prayer is or '"of whom it is addressed to. Thus we are
told that in Arcadia the girls invoked Hera by the title
of "Hera the Girl,” the married women prayed to "Hera
the Married One,” and the widows prayed to "Hera the
Widow.” Sometimes the prayer is a spontaneous expres-
sion of sorrow or of dehght, a lyrical cry which has no
ulterior purpose and is addressed to no one. Sometimes
prayer is a magical formula which compels the deity to
listen and to obey. The subjea is both complicated and
obscure. But this much at least is clear: along with ele-
ments which can be described only as spontaneous and
lyrical, with traces of magic, and at times with a purely
dismterested desire to commune with God, simple people
have looked upon prayer as “an instrument for applying
God’s illimitable po'Cver to daily life.”

Popular discussion of prayer has often been extremely
practical: "How can prayer be made most efficient? Is it
by ordinary Masses or by other offices? Is it by the elabo-
ration or the multiplication of services?” Lady Alice

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West who died in 1395 ordered 4400 Masses "in the most
haste that it may be do, withynne xmi nyght next after
my deces.” Thomas Walwayn who died in 1415 left
orders for 10,000 Masses "with oute pompe whycKe may
not profyt myn soule.” John Plot, however, wished his
Masses said "with solempne seruise that ys for to sayn
wyth Belle Ryngyng.” There was debate as to whether
prayers were most effeaive if said in Rome or in the Holy
Land ... by certain priests rather than by others . . .
by the friars rather than by the priests . . . whether there
were more potent prayers than the Pater . . . whether
prayers should be addressed to the Father, the Son, -or to
St. Mary . . . whether St. Mary could be apploached best
through her mother, St. Anne. . . .

It IS not necessary to dogmatize by saying that prayer
is magic, or soliloquy, or commumon, or petition for this
and that, in order to see that it is the expression of a hu-
man need. The quality of the need varies. It may be
anything from a desire for rain to a desire for friendship
with unseen spirits, but always it illustrates the saymg that
"all men stand in need of God.”

If we ask ourselves what we mean by 'need,’ we must
answer, I suppose, that the resources of our own natures
and the power we are able to exercise over events are m-
suffident to satisfy the cravmgs of our natures. We must
eat, but we cannot be sure that drought will not destroy
the crops. We are beset by enemies, and we are not sure
we can conquer them. We are threatened by earthquake,
storm, and disease against which we cannot wholly protea
ourselves. We become deeply attached to other persons.
But they must die and we must die, and we cannot stay

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the doom. In brief, we find ourselves in a world in which
our hopes are defeated.

Somehow we ar'e so constituted that we demand the
impossible. There is in us somewhere an intimation that
we ought not to be defeated. But where did this intima-
uon come from? How is it that we are not born satisfied
with our mortality, content with our fate? Why is it that
the normal fate of man seems to us abnormal? What
is there in the back of our heads which keeps telling us
that life as we find it is not what it ought to be?

The biologist might answer, I suppose, that this craving
for a. different kind of world is, simply our own conscious-
ness of that' blind push of natural forces which create the
variations on which natural selection works to produce
the survival of the fittest. Nature, he might say, is wholly
indifferent to the outcries of the individual; this vast
process of which each of us is so insignificant a part,
keeps going because there is in all the parts a superabun-
dant urging to go on. There is no human economy in it
and no human order. Man, for example, has far more
sexual desire than is needed for the rational propagation
of the species. But there is no rational plan in nature.
It works here, and everywhere, on the principle that by
having too much there will surely be enough; the seeds
which do not germinate, the seedlings which perish, the
desires which are left over, are no concern of nature’s.
For nature has no concern. There is no concern except
that which we ourselves feel, and that is a mere flicker
on the stream of time, and will soon go out.

While there is no way of gainsaying that this explana-
tion is true, it is true only if we look at life from the par-
ticular point of view which the biologist adopts. I#, how-

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ever, we look inwardly upon ourselves, instead of survey-
ing our species from the outside, we find, I think, that this
sense that the world ought not to be what it is seems to
originate in a kind of dim memory that it once was what
we feel it ought to be. Indeed, so vivid is this memory
that for ages men took it to be an account of historical
events; in absolute good faith they constituted for them-
selves the picture of a Golden Age which existed before
evil came into the world. Hope was, therefore, a kind of
memory; the ideal was to achieve something which had
been lost. The memory of an age of innocence has
haunted the whole of mankind. It has been a light behind
their present experience which cast shadows, upon it, and
made it seem insubstantial and not inevitable Before
this life, there had been another which was happier And
so they reasoned that what once was possible must some-
how be possible again. Having once known the good, it
was unbelievable that evil should be final.

Even after criticism has dissolved the beautiful legends
in which it was embodied, this memory of a Golden Age
persists. It persists as an intimation of our own inward
experience, and like an uneasy spirit it intrudes itself upon
our most realistic efforts to accept the world as we find it.
For it takes many shapes, which sometimes deceive us,
appearing then not as the memory of a happiness we have
lost, but as the anticipation of utopia to come.

It is an intimation that man is entitled to live in the
land of heart’s desire. It is a deep conviction that happi-
ness is possible, and all inquiry into the foundations of
morals turns ultimately upon whether man can achieve
this happiness by pursuing his desires, or whether he must
fiirst learn to desire the kind of happiness which is possible.

[151}

CHAPTER IX

THE INSIGHT OF HUMANISM

1. The Two Apptoaches to Life

The land of heart’s desire is a place m which no man
desires what he cannot have and each man can have what
he desires. There have been great differences of opinion
among, men as to how they could best enter this happy
land.

If they thought their natural impulses were by way of
being lecherous, greedy, and cruel, they have accepted
some form of the classical and Christian doctrine that man
must subdue his naive impulses, and by reason, grace, or
renunciation, transform his will. If they thought that man
was naturally innocent and good, they have accepted some
one of the many variants of liberalism, and concerned
themselves not with the reform of desire but with the
provision of opportunities for its fulfilment.

There are differences of emphasis among liberals, but
they all accept the same premise, which is that if ©nly
external circumstances are favorable the mternai life of
man will adjust itself successfully. So completely does
this theory of human namre dominate the field of con-
temporary thought that modern men are rarely reminded,
and then only by those whom it is the fashion to ignore,
that they are challenging the testimony not merely of their
maiden aunts, but of ail the greatest teachers of wisdom.

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Yet if the modem man is an optimist on the subject of his
impulses^ the reason is to 'be found less m his own self-
confidence than in his distrust of men and in his intoxica-
tion over thmgs.

Owing to the dissolution of the ancestral order he has
learned to distrust those who exercise authority. Owing
to the progress of science he has acquired an unbounded
confidence in ins capacity to create desirable objects He
is so rebellious and so constructive that he has still to ask
himself whether the free and naive pursuit of desirable
objects can really produce a desirable world. Yet m ail
the books of wisdom that is the question which confronts
him There it is written in many languages and in the
idiom of many different cultures that if man is to find hap-
piness, he must reconstruct not merely his world, but,
first of all, himself.

Is this wisdom dead and done with, or has it a bearing
upon the deep uneasiness of the modern man^ The an-
swer depends upon what we must conceive to be the
nature of man.

2. Freedom and Restraint

It is significant that fashions in human nature are con-
tinually changing There are, as it were, two extremes:
at the one is the belief that our naive passions are evil, at
the other that they are good, and between these two poles,
the prevailing opinion oscillates. One might suppose that
somewhere, perhaps near the center, there would be a
point which was the truth, and that on that point men
would reach an agreement. But experience shows that
there is no agreement, and that there is no known point

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

where the two views are perfectly balanced. The fact is
that the prevailing view is invariably a rebound from the
excesses of the other, and one can understand it only by
knowing what it is a reaction from.

It IS impossible, for example, to do justice to Rous-
seau and the romantics without understanding the dead
classicism, the conventionalities, and the tyrannies of the
Eighteenth Century. It is equally impossible to do justice
to the Eighteenth Century without understanding the
licentiousness of the High Renaissance and the political
disorders resulting from the Reformation. These in their
turn become intelligible only when we have understood
the later coJisequences of the mediasval view of life. No
particular view endures. When human nature is wholly
distrusted and severely repressed, sooner or later it asserts
Itself and bursts its bonds ; and when it is naively trusted,
It produces so much disorder and corruption that men
once again idealize order and restraint.

We happen to be living in an age when there is a severe
reaction against the distrust and repression practiced by
those whom it is customary to describe as Puritans. It is,
in fact, a reaction against a degenerate form of Puritanism
which manifested itself as a aiisposition to be prim,
prudish, and pedantic. For latter-day Puritanism had be-
come a rather second-rate notion that less obvious things
are more noble than grosser ones and that spirituality is
the pursuit of rarefied sensations. It had embraced the
idea that a man had advanced in the realm of the spirit
in proportion to his concern with abstractions, and cults
of grimly spiritual persons devoted themselves to the wor-
ship of sonorous generalities. All this associated itself

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with a rather preposterous idealism which insisted that
maidens should be wan and easily frightened, that
draperies and decorations should conceal the essential
forms of objects, and that the good life had something
to do With expurgated speech, with pale colors, and
shadows and silhouettes, with the thin music of harps
and soprano voices, with fig leaves and a general con-
spiracy to tell lies to children, with philosophies that de-
nied the reality of evil, and with all manner of affectation
and self-deception

Yet m these many attempts to grow wings and take off
from the things that are of the earth earthy, it is impossible
not to recognize a resemblance, somewhat m the nature of
a caricature, to the teaching of the sages There is no
doubt that in one form or another, Socrates and Buddha,
Jesus and St, Paul, Plotinus and Spinoza, taught that the
good life is impossible without asceticism, that without re-
nunciation of many of the ordinary appetites, no man can
really live well. Prejudice against the human body and
a tendency to be disgusted with its habits, a contempt for
the ordinary concerns of daily experience is to be found
in all of them, and it is not surprising that men, living in
an age of moral confusion like that associated with the
name of the good Queen Victoria, should have come to
believe that if only they covered up their passions they had
conquered them. It was a rather ludicrous mistake as
the satirists of the anti-Victorian era have so copiously
pointed out. But at least there was a dim recogmtion in
this cult of the genteel that the good life does involve
some kind of conquest of the carnal passions.

That conception of the good life has become so repul-
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A PREFACE TO MORALS

sive to the present generation diat it is almost incapable of
understanding and appreciating the original insight of
which the works of Dr. Bowdler and Mrs. Grundy are a
caricature. Yet iMS a fact, and a most arresting one, that
m all the great religions, and m all the great moral
philosophies from Aristotle to Bernard Shaw, it is taught
that one of the conditions of happiness is to renounce
some of the satisfactions which men normally crave This
tradition as to what constitutes the wisdom of life is sup-
ported by testimony from so many independent sources
that It cannot be dismissed lightly. With minor varia-
tions It is a common theme in the teaching of an Athenian
aristocrat like Plato, an Indian nobleman like Buddha, and
a humble Jew like Spinoza, in fact, wherever men have
thought at all carefully about the problem of evil and of
what constitutes a good life, they have concluded that an
essential element in any human philosophy is renunciation.
They cannot all have been so foolish as Anthony Com-
stock. They must have had some insight into experience
which led them to that conclusion.

If asceticism in all its forms were as stupid and cruel as
It is now the fashion to think it is, then the traditions of
saintliness and of heroism are monstrously misleading
For m the legends of heroes, of sages, of explorers, in-
ventors and discoverers, of pioneers and patriots, there is
almost invariably this same underlying theme of sacrifice
and unworldlmess. They are poor. They live danger-
ously By ordinary standards they are extremely uncom-
fortable They give up ease, property, pleasure, pride,
place, and power to attain things which are transcendent
and rare. They live for ends which seem to yield them

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no profit, and they are ready to die, if need be, for that
which the dead can no longer enjoy And yet, though
there is nothing m our current morality to justify their
unworldlmess, we continue to admire them greatly
In saying all this I am not trying to clinch an argument
by appealing to great names There is much in the teach-
ing of all the spiritual leaders of the past which as wholly
obsolete to-day, and there is no compulsive authority in
any part of their teaching. They may have been as mis-
taken in their insight into the human soul as they usually
were in their notions of physics and history To say, then,
that there is an ascetic element in all the great philosophies
of the past is not proof that there must be 6‘ne m modern
philosophy. But it creates a presumption, I think, which
cannot be ignored, for we must remember that the least
perishable part of the literature and thought of the past is
that which deals with human nature. Scientific method
and historical scholarship have enormously increased our
competence m the whole field of physics and history But
for an understanding of human nature we are still very
largely dependent, as they were, upon introspeaion, gen-
eral observation, and intuition. There has been no revolu-
tionary advance here since the hellenic philosophers That
is why Aristotle's ethics is still as fresh for anyone who
accustoms himself to the idiom as Nietzsche, or Freud,
or Bertrand Russell, whereas Aristotle's physics, his biol-
ogy, or his zoology is of interest only to antiquarians.

It is, then, as an insight into human nature, and not as
a rule authoritatively imposed or highly sanaioned by
the prestige of great men, that I propose now to inquire
what meaning there is for us in the fact chat men in the

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past have so persistently associated the good life with
some form of ascetic discipline and renunciation. The
modern world, as it has emancipated itself from its ances-
tral regime, has assumed almost as a matter of course that
the human passions, if thoroughly liberated from all tyran-
nies and distortions, would by their fulfilment achieve
happiness. All those who teach asceticism, deny this
major premise of modernity, and the result is that the
prevailing philosophy is at odds on the most fundamental
of all issues with the wisdom of the past.

3. The Ascetic Principle

The average man to-day, when he hears the word
asceticism, is likely to think of St. Simeon Stylites who sat
on top of a pillar, of hermits living in caves, of hair-shirts,
of long fasts, chastity, strange vigils, and even of tattoo-
ing, self-mutilation, and flagellation. Or if he does not
think of such examples, which the modern man regards
as pathological and for the psychiatrist to explain, the
word asceticism may connote some such attitude of mind
as Herbert Asbury has recorded in the biography of his
kinsman, Bishop Asbury, the founder of American
Methodism, of whom a friend, who knew him well, wrote:
"I never saw him indulge in even innocent pleasantry.
His was the solemnity of an apostle, it was so interwoven
with his conduct that he could not put off the gravity of
the bishop either in the parlour or the dining-room. He
was a rigid enemy to ease; hence the pleasures of smdy
and the charms of recreaaon he alike sacrificed to the more
sublime work of saving souls. ... He knew nothing
about pleasing the flesh at the expense of duty; flesh

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and blood were enemies with whom he never took
counsel "

If asceticism meant only this sort of thing, it might be
interesting only as a curiosity But apart from the
asceticism of primitive peoples and of the pathological,
there is a sane and civilized asceticism which presents a
quite difference face There is, for example, the argument
of Socrates m the Phcedo that the body is a nuisance to a
philosopher in search of truth It is, he says, ‘'a source of
endless trouble to us by reason of the mere requirement
of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and
impede us in the search after true being, it fills us full of
loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and
endless foolery, and m fact, as men say, takes away from
us the power of thinking at all Whence come wars,
and fightings, and factions? Whence but from the body
and the lusts of the body^ Wars are occasioned by the
love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake
and in the service of the body; and by reason of all these
impediments we have no time to give to philosophy, and,
last and worst of all, even if we are at leisure and betake
ourselves to some speculation, the body is always breaking
in upon us, causing us turmoil and confusion in our in-
quiries, and so amazing us that we are prevented from
seeing the truth/*

Plato, in pursuing the argument in this particular dia-
logue, concludes that because the body is such a nuisance
the only pure philosopher is a dead one It is, perhaps, a
logical conclusion- But in other places, particularly in
the Republic^ Plato described a system of education which
he thought would produce philosophers: the neophytes

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were pur through a stern discipline of hard living and
gymnastics and learning, were compelled to live in tents,
to own nothing which they could call their own, and to cut
themselves off from ail family ties.

When the description of this regime provokes Adei-
mantus to remark that “you are not making the men of
this class particularly happy,'’ Socrates is made to reply
that while it is not his object to make any class particularly
happy, yet it would not surprise him if m the given cir-
cumstances even this class were very happy. When we
look further for his meaning, we find it to be that the
guardians arg trained by their ascetic discipline to aban-
don all private aims and to find their happiness in an
appreciation of a perfectly ordered commonwealth. If we
understand this we shall, I believe, understand what
civihaed ascetism means. We shall have come back to the
original meaning of the word itself, which is derived from
the Greek doxsco, 'T practice,” and “embodies a metaphor
taken from the ancient wrestling place or palaestra, where
victory rewarded those who had best trained their bodies/'
An ascetic in the original meaning of the term is an ath-
lete; and it was m this spirit that the early Christians
trained themselves deliberately as “athletes of Christ” to
bear without flinching the tortures of their martyrdom.

When asceticism is irrational, it is a form of totemism
or fetich worship and derives from a belief that certain
things are tabu or that evil spirits can be placated by
human suffering. Or without any coherent belief what-
soever asceticism may be merely a perversion arising out
of that ambivalence of the human passions which often
makes pain, inflicted on others or self-mfiicted, an ex-

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-^quisite pleasure. But when asceticism is rational, it is a
discipline of the mmd and body to fir men for the service
of an ideal. Its purpose is to harden and to purify, to
suppress contrary passions, and thus to intensify the pas-
sion for the ideal. chastise my body,” said St Paul,
"and bring it into subjection ” Tiie Church, especially
in the earlier centuries, was compelled to fight continu-
ally against irrational asceticism, and as late as the Mid-
dle Ages, the Inquisition pursued sects which regarded
marriage as the "greater adultery” and practiced seif-
emasculation The rational view was the view of St
Jerome. "Be on your guard when you begin to mortify
your body by abstinence and fasting, lest you imagine
yourself to be perfect and a saint, for perfection does
not consist m this virtue It is only a help , a disposition ,
a means, though a fitting one, for the attainment of true
perfection.”

Now when St Paul said that he had to bring his body
into subjection, when Aristotle defined the barbarians'
ideal "the living as one likes,” when Plato made
Socrates say that the soul is infected by the body, when
Buddha preached the extinction of all craving, when
Spinoza wrote that because we rejoice m virtue we are
able to control our lusts, they accepted a view of human
nature w’^hich is quite diametrically opposed to one which
has had wide currency m our civilization since the
Renaissance.

This contrary view was undoubtedly provoked by the
evils which came from the attempt to put the ascetic prin-
ciple extensively into practice. Rabelais is by all odds
the most convincing of the moderns who revolted, for

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Rabelais not only talked about the natural man but actu-
ally knew him and delighted in him. Thus when Viilers
writes to Madame de Stael that in her work "primitive,
incorruptible, naive, passionate nature” is "in conflict with
the barriers and shackles of conventional life,” we feel, I
think, that neither Villers nor the lady would really have
cared very much for primitive nature in all its naivete
The natural man that they were talking about lived in
Arcady and his passions were as violent as those of a lap-
dog; throughout the romantic movement, with rare ex-
ceptions, the talk about passion and impulse and instinct
has this air of unreality and of neurotic confusion. There
is not in it, as there is in Rabelais, for example, an honest
gusto for the passions that are to be liberated from the
restramts imposed by that "rabble of squint-minded fel-
lows, dissembling and counterfeit saints, demure lookers,
h3^ocrites, pretended zealots, tough friars, buskin-monks,
and other such seas of men, who disguise themselves like
masquers to deceive the world.”

Rabelais advised his readers that if they desired to be-
come good Pantagruelists, "that is to say, to live in peace,
joy, health, making yourself always merry — ^never trust
those men that always peep out through a little hole.”
And in establishing the Abbey of Theleme, Gargantua
furnished it magnificently and barred the gates against
bigots, hypocrites, dissemblers, attorneys, barristers, usur-
ers, drunkards, and cannibals; he invited in all noble
blades and brisk and handsome people, faithful expound-
ers of the Scripmre, and lovely ladies, proper, fair, and
mirthful. "Their life,” he says, "was spent not in laws,
statutes, or rules, but at their own free will and pleasure.

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They rose from bed when they thought good, drank, ate,
worked, slept, when the desire came to them. None did
awaken them, none constrained them either to drink or
eat, nor to do any other thing: for so had Gargancua estab-
lished It The Rule of their order had but one clause:
Do What Thou WtltT

But there was a catch in this rule. Not only had
drunkards and cannibals been excluded in the first place,
but Rabelais assures us that those who were admitted, be-
cause they were 'Tree, well born, well educated, and ac-
customed to good company, have by namre an instinct
and spur which prompts them to virtuous acts and with-
draws them from vice. This they call honor.” And in
another passage Rabelais limits the propensities of the
natural man even more radically when he speaks of “a
certain gaiety of spirit cured in contempt of chance and
foaune.”

There is always a catch in any doctrine of the natural
goodness of man. For mere passive obedience to impulse
as It comes and goes, without effort to check it or dtrea
It, ends in something like Alfred de Musset's Rolla, of
whom it was said:

It was not Rolla who ruled his life,

It was his passions, he let them go

As a drowsy shepherd watches the water How.

So even Dora Russell at the crisis of her assault upon
the Christian tradition advises us to 'live by instinct and
intelligence," which must mean, if it means anything, that
intelligence is to be in some respects the master as well as
the servant of instma. That this is what Mrs. Russell
means is abundantly plain by her fury at capitalists, im-

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penalists, conservatives, and churchmen, whose instincts
lead them to do things of which she does not approve.
For like her distinguished husband she trusts those im-
pulses which are creative and beneficent, and distrusts
those which are possessive and destructive. That is to say,
like every other moralist, she trusts those parts of human
nature which she trusts.

4. Oscillation between Two Principles

These cycles of aaion and reaction are disastrous to the
establishment of a stable humanism. A theocratic culture
depends upon an assured view of the way in which God
governs the universe, and as long as that view suits the
typical needs of a society made stable by custom, the theo-
cratic culture is stable. But humanism arises in complex
and changing societies, and if it is to have any power to
make life coherent and orderly, it must hold an assured
view of how man can govern himself. If he oscillates
aimlessly between the belief that he must distrust his
impulses and the belief that he may naively obey them,
it IS impossible for him to fix any point of reference for
the development of his moral code, his educational plans,
his human relationships, his politics, and his personal
ideals.

It is not hard to see, I think, why he oscillates in this
fashion between trust and distrust. He cannot obey every
impulse, for he has conflicting impulses within himself.
There are also his neighbors with their impulses. They
cannot all be satisfied, for the very simple reason that the
sum ojf their demands far outruns the available supply of
satisfactions. There is not room enough, there are not ob-

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jects enough in the world to fulfill all human desires. De-
sires are, for ail practical purposes, unlimited and insatia-
ble, and therefore any ethics which does not recognize the
necessity of putting restraint upon naive desire is inher-
ently absurd. On the other hand, it is impossible to dis-
trust every impulse, for the only conclusion then is to com-
mit suicide. Buddha did, to be sure, teach that craving
was the source of all misery, and that it must be wholly
extinguished. But it is evident from an examination of
what he actually advised his disciples to renounce, that
while they were to be poor, chaste, unworldly, and incuri-
ous about the nature of things, they were m be rewarded
with the highest of all satisfactions, and were to be "like
the broad earth, unvexed, like the pillar of the city gate,
unmoved; like a pelluctd lake, unruffled” For Nir/ana
meant, as Rhys Davids says, the extinction of a sinful,
grasping condition of mind

Confronted by two opposed views of human nature,
neither of which can be taken unreservedly, moralists have
had to pick and choose, deciding how much or how little
they would trust the different impulses. But there is no ,
measure by which they could decide how much of an im-
pulse IS virtuous, how much more is intemperate, and how
much more than that is utterly smful The attempts to
regulate the sexual impulse illustrate the difficulty Shall
the moralist call the complete absence of all conscious
sexual desire virtue^ Then he disobeys the commandment
to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. Shall
he then limit virtuous desire to that wffiich is felt for a law-
ful mate? That implies that man and woman must mate
With the first person for whom they feel any sexual desire.

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But this cannot always be arranged. The first person may
be otherwise engaged. It becomes necessary then to per-
mit a certain amount of promiscuous, tliough unfulfilled,
sexual desire in the process of sexual selection. And then
having somehow gotten past that difficulty, and with two
persons safely mated, a whole new series of problems arise
out of the question of how far sexual satisfaction depends
for its virtue upon its being the successful means to, or
more subtly still, the intended means to, procreation. I
shall not pursue the matter further. The attempt to
measure the degree in which impulse is to be permitted to
express itself is obviously full of difficulties.

The moral |>roblem remains utterly insoluble as long as
men regard it as an attempt to separate their good impulses
from their bad ones, and to decide how much their good
impulses are to be encouraged. Morality, if it is not fixed
by custom and authority, becomes a mere matter of taste
determined by the idiosyncrasies of the moralist.

5. The Golden Mean and Its Difficulties
Aristotle faced this fundamental difficulty of humanism
m the Ethics. He had expounded the theory that happi-
ness is due to virme, and that virme is a mean between
two extremes. There must, he said, be neither defea nor
excess of any quality. We must, in brief, go so far but no
further in obedience to our impulses. Thus between rash-
ness and cowardice the mean is courage; between prodi-
gality and niggardliness it is liberality; between inconti-
nence and total abstinence it is temperateness; between os-
tentation and meanness it is magnificence; between empty
boasting and little-mindedness it is magnanimity; between

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flattery and moroseness it is friendliness; between bash-
fulness and impudence it is modesty; between arrogance
and false modesty, it is truthfulness.

So runs the Aristotelian catalogue, and probably no code
ever described so well the ideal of a gentleman Bur hav-
ing laid down his general precepts, Aristotle, unlike most
moralists, faced the difficulty of applying them He recog-
nized that It is one thing to accept the theory of a golden
mean, and quite another to know where that mean lies.
'Tor in each case it is difficult to find the mean . . . thus
it is easy, and in every man's power to be angry, and to
give and spend money; but to determine the person to
whom, and the quantity, and the time, and the motive,
and the manner, is no longer in every man’s power, nor is
it easy; therefore excellence is rare, and praiseworthy and
honorable." For while the mean between excess and
defect is excellent, "it is easy to miss a mark, but difficult
to hit it."

If we look at the matter more closely in order to find out
why moral codes are, as Aristotle says, so hit and miss, we
must, I think, come to the conclusion that there is an unde-
tected fallacy in most moral thinking which renders moral
insight abortive. It is that fallacy which I now propose to
examine.

A moral code like Aristotle’s, which we may fairly re-
gard as the rational prototype of all humanistic codes, con-
sists of an inventory of good and bad appetites and of good
and bad satisfactions. All conventional moralizing, which
does not rest on the sheer fiat of public opinion, custom,
or God, assumes the existence of some such inventory of
permissible desires and permissible fulfilments. But what

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does the making of such inventories mean? It means that
good and evil are believed to be objeaive qualities of the
natural world like weight, dimension, and motion, that
certain desires are mherentiy good, certain others are in-
herently bad, and that the same is true of the different ob-
jects of desire But this is nothing but what is known as
the pathetic fallacy For surely each desire and each ob-
ject as such, taken separately without relation to anything
else, is as innocent and as neutral as the forces that move
the planets.

The categories of good and evil would not apply if there
were no sentient being to experience good and evil. In
such a world no object would be any better or any worse
than any other object; nobody talks about good and bad
electrons. All electrons are morSlly alike because no senti-
ent being can tell them apart. Nor would the categories
of good and evil apply to a world in which each impulse
was m a vacuum of its own. In such a world all our im-
pulses would be like our digestive tracts on a day when we
do not know we have a stomach. If our impulses did not
impinge upon each other and upon objects there would be
no problem of good and evil. Therefore the quality of
good and evil lies not in impulses as such, nor in objects as
such, but in the relationship between impulses and objects.
Therefore the making of inventories is fundamentally mis-
leading.

There is another fallacy which is closely associated with
this one. We make lists of our impulses. A standard list
which is much used comprises the following: flight, repul-
sion, curiosity, pugnacity, self-abasement, self-assertion,
parental, reproductive, gregarious, acquisitive, construc-

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rive. Whether this is a good list or not is neither here nor
there. Through the ages men have been making such lists
in the fond belief that they were analyzing the human char-
aaer. No doubt these terms describe something; we all
recognize that these words are the names of impulses that
move us. But if we consider them further, we must also
recognize that these impulses do not move all persons the
same way, nor any one person the same way at all times in
his life and under all circumstances.

It is hardly necessary, I am sure, to labor the point very
much. There is the instinct to be curious: it disposes one
man to measure the diameter of Betelguese when he is
forty years old; when he was a child it disposed him to
find out whether he could hang up a cat by its tail ; that
curious child’s companiorT in the experiment on the car
was disposed, when he grew up, to take much trouble in
finding out how much income tax his neighbor paid and
whether his employer was faithful to his wife. The par-
ental instinct of one man is to launch his child on the
world as an independent human being; in another man the
instinct manifests itself as a determination to have children
who Will depend upon him and cater to him all his days
long So when we make lists of our impulses we really do
not know enough about them to pass judgment. For
desires are complex, and their greatest complexity lies in
the fact that they change

The objects of desire are no less complex Take, for ex-
ample, a jade goddess. To a Chinese coolie it is an object
With mysterious powers, a part of the mechanism which
governs the universe. But the jade goddess is now in a
Fifth Avenue shop window, and a policeman on his beat

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sees It. It is a green stone figure to him. The dealer
inside knows that it is rare and is worth a thousand dol-
lars. The collector could enjoy it immensely if he pos-
sessed It. The connoisseur finds intricate pleasure m it as
a work of art and an elaborate interest in it as a memento
of a whole culture The objects of desire, then, are not
simple thmgs. We help to create them. We say that this
man desires that woman But what, in fact, does he
desire.^ A few moments of ecstasy from her body, some-
thing which a thousand women could give him equally
well, or an intimate union with so much of her whole
being that for that very reason she is unique to him? The
quality of hic passion and the character of his mistress will
depend in a very large degree on how much of her being
he takes into account. It depends also, I hasten to add, on
how^ much there is to take into account.

At any moment in our lives we desire only those objeas
which we are then capable of desiring and in the way we
are then capable of desiring them. But our desires do not
remain fixed from the cradle to the grave. They change.
And as they change the desirability of objects about us
changes too. It is impossible, then, to make lists of good
and evil desires and of good and evil objects. For good
and evil are qualities in the relationship between vari-
able desires and variable objects of desire.

The attempt to construa moral codes on the basis of
an inventory is an attempt to understand something
which is always in process of change by treating it -as a
still life and taking snapshots of it. That is what moral-
ists have almost always attempted to do. They have tried
to capture the essence of a changing thing in a colleaion

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of fixed concepts. It cannot be done. The reality of
human nature is bound to elude us if we look only at a
momentary cross-section of it. To understand it, there-
fore, for the purposes of moralizing, we have to revise
our intellectual apparatus, and learn to look upon each
moment of behavior not as the manifestation of certain
fixed elements in human nature, but as a stage in the evo-
lution of human namre. We grow up, mature, and de-
cline; being endowed with memory and the capacity to
form habits, our conduct is cumulative We drag our past
along with us and it pushes us on. We do not make a nevv
approach to each new experience We approach nev^
experiences with the expectations and habits 'developed by
previous experience, and ufider the impact of novelty these
expeaations and habits become modified.

6. The Matrix of Humanum
Tlie conception of human nature as developing be-
havior is, of course, accepted by all modern psycholo-
gists If they study the child they are bound to consider
him as potentially an adult If they study the adult they
are bound to regard him as originally a child Abnormal
psychology makes sense only insofar as it can be under-
stood as an abnormal development of the personality, re-
gardless of whether that abnormality is traceable to pre-
natal variations, to organic disease, or to functional dis-
turbance Folk psychology, whether or not one accepts
the interesting but speculative hypothesis that there is a
parallel between the devdiopment of the individual and
the development of the race, is another mode of investi-
gating the evolution of behavior. The concept of devel-

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opment is thoroughly established m psychology as the
major clue to the understanding of human nature
The moralist, since he is concerned with human nature,
IS compelled to employ this concept. But he employs it
somewhat differently than the scientist. Being a moral-
ist, he IS interested in understanding the principles of
behavior in order that he may understand the principles of
right behavior. The psychologist, as such, is interested in
the development of behavior, regardless of whether that
development leads to misery or to happiness. He studies
the various processes no matter where they lead. For in
science the concept of development implies no judgment
as to whether there is a good or a bad development. The
development of an idiot and of* a genius are on the same
footing, and are theoretically of equal interest. But to the
moralist the study of development is focussed on the ef-
fort to discover those processes of development which
can be made to produce right relationships between the
individual and his environment, and by a right relation-
ship he is bound to mean one in which there is an har-
monious adjustment between desires and the objects of
desire. How often, and how nearly, it is possible for hu-
man beings to approximate such perfeaion is an unan-
swerable question. The proof of that pudding lies in the
eating of it, and it is not the funaion of the moralist un-
der humanism to guarantee the outcome. His function is
to point out as clearly as it is possible to do so the path
which presumably leads toward the good life.

In describmg that path he is bound to depehd upon the
best available insight into the processes by which good
and bad adjustments are made. In the present state of

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our knowledge this means that he must rely to a very
large degree upon his own intuitions, commonsense, and
sense of life. Great progress has been made in scientific
psychology withm the last generation, enough progress, I
think, to supplement m important ways our own unana-
lyzed and intuitive wisdom about life But it would be
idle to suppose that the science of psychology is m a stage
where it can be used as a substitute for experienced and
penetrating imaginative insight. We can be confident
that on the whole a good meteorologist can tell us more
about the weather than even the most weatlier-wise old
sea captain. But we cannot have that kind of confidence
in even the best of psychologists. Indeed, an acquaintance
wnth psyciiologists will, I think, compel anyone to admit
that, if they are good psychologists, they are almost certain
to possess a gift of insight w^hich is unaccounted for by
their technical apparatus. Doubtless it is true that m all
the sciences the difference between a good scientist and a
poor one comes down at last, after all the technical and
theoretical procedure has been learned, to some sort of
residual flair for the realities of tliat subject. But in
the study of human nature that residual flair, which seems
to be composed of intuition, commonsense, and uncon-
sciously deposited experience, plays a much greater role
than It does m the more advanced sciences.

The uses of psychology to the moralist are, therefore, m
confirming and correcting, m broadening and organizing,
ins insight into human nature. He is confronted, of
course, with a great deal of confusion There is, to begin
With, no agreed terminology, and therefore it is often
almost impossible to know whether two psychologists

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using the same word mean the same thing. Anyone who
has stumbled about amidst words like instina, impulse,
consciousness, the unconscious, will know how confusing
It all IS. Psychologists are still using a literary language
in which the connotations of words tend to overwhelm
their precise signification. To make the confusion greater
there is the elaborate system-making, the headstrong gen-
eralizing, and the fierce dogmatism which have produced
the psychological sects. But all of this is characteristic of
a young science, and if that is borne in mind, there is
nothing disconcerting about it The Eighteenth Century
in dealing with the Newtonian physics, and the Nineteenth
in dealing With the Darwinian biology, went through a
hullabaloo similar to that which we are now going
through in connection with behaviorism, psychoanalysis,
and the so-called gestalt-theone. Our only concern here
IS to ask whether underneath all the controversy there is
not some trustworthy common ground on which the
moralist can stand.

I have already said that there was common ground in
the concept of development. We cap go further than
that, however, and say, I think, that with the help of
psychology we are in position now to construct reliable
and useful pictures, which confirm and correct our own
intuitive understanding, of the infantile and of the mature
approach to experience. We can, as it were, fix these
two poles and regard the history of each soul as the his-
tory of its progress from infantilism to maturity. We are
by no means able as yet to describe all the phases of de-
velopment between these two poles; we know that prog-
ress is often temporarily interrupted, often completely

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arrested, and sometimes turned into a rout But insofar
as we are. able to realize clearly what a fully matured
character is like, the word progress has a meaning because
we know what we mean by the goal of moral effort. That
goal IS maturity. If we knew all the stages m the devel-
opment to maturity, and how to control them, we should
have an adequate science of education, we could deal suc-
cessfully with functional disorders, we should have a very
great mastery of the art of life For the problems of edu-
cation are at bottom problems m how to lead the child
from one stage of development to another until at last
he becomes an harmonious and autonomous personality:
the functional disorders of the character are ’problems m
the fixations and repressions on the path to maturity; the
art of living is to pass gracefully from youth to old age.
and, at last, as Montaigne said, to learn to die
It is this progress which we have to understand and
imaginatively to conceive. For in conceiving it we con-
ceive the matrix of humamsm. In this conception is to
be found, I believe, the substitute for that conception of
divine government which gives shape and form to the
theocratic culture. To replace the conception of man as
the subject of a heavenly king, which dominates the
whole ancestral order of life, humanism takes as its domi-
nant pattern the progress of the individual from helpless
infancy to self-governing maturity.

7. The Career of the Soul

If our scientific knowledge of human nature were ade-
quate, we could achieve in the humanistic culture that
which all theologies have tried to achieve: we could found

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our morality on tested truths. They would be truths about
the development of human nature, and not, .as m the
popular religions, truth of physics and of history. But
our knowledge of human nature is inadequate, and there-
fore, like the teachers of popular religion, we have in place
of exaa knowledge to invent imaginative fictions m the
hope that the progress of science will confirm and correct,
but will not utterly contradict, our hypotheses. We can
claim no more than this: for our understanding of human
nature we are compelled to use our insight and the best
available psychological science of our age, exactly as
Dante, for his understanding of the divine constitution of
the universe, had to use the accepted astronomy of his
day. If our psychology turns out to be wrong, the only
difference will be that we shall have to discard an hypoth-
esis whereas our forefathers had to discard a revealed
dogma.

The sketch which I am about to make of the progress
from infancy to maturity is to be taken, then, not as tested
scientific truth, but as an imaginative construction. It will
be, if you like, a modern fable which symbolizes rather
than describes, as the- primitive legends of the sun god
symbolized, rather than described, the observed faas. Be-
cause it is an imaginative construction, the same meamng
might be expressed in other ways and with many varia-
tions of detail. But though the fiction itself is of no con-
sequence, the meaning it conveys is of the highest conse-
quence, and it is confirmed, as I shall attempt to show,
not only by ordinary insight but by the deepest wisdom
of the greatest teachers.

Freud, in a famous paper, has described the passage
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from infanqr to maturity as a transition from the domin-
ion of momentary pleasure and pain to the dominion of
reality. This theory is not peculiar to psychoanalysis m
any of its several schools, and it does not depend upon
the controverted points of doctrine. It is, in fact, more
or less of a commonplace m psychological thought I am
employing it here because a distinguished colleague of
Freud’s, Dr S Ferenczi of Budapest, has made an at-
tempt to indicate the chief stages m the development be-
tween these two poles of experience. It is a most useful
bit of speculation, and while I believe it could be dupli-
cated in terms either of behaviorism or of the gestalt-
theone, I do not happen to have come across any portrait
of the idea which is as vivid as Dr Ferenczi’s

The first stage of human development, says Ferenczi,
takes place m the womb where the embryo lives as a para-
site of the mother’s body. An outer world exists for it
only in a very restricted degree; all it needs for protection,
warmth, and nourishment is assured by the mother Be-
cause everything is there which is necessary for the satis-
faction of the instincts, Ferenczi calls this the Period of
Unconditional Omnipotence.

It IS, therefore, rather disagreeable and perhaps terri-
fying to be born, for with the detachment from the mother
and the "'rude disturbance of the wish-less tranquillity he
had enjoyed in the womb,'’ the trouble of living begins,
and evokes feelings which might perhaps be described as
a longing to recover the perfect pre-natal adjustment.
Nurses mstinaively recognize this longing, says Ferenczi,
and as soon as the infant expresses his discomfort by
struggling and crying, they deliberately create a situation

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which resembles as closely as possible the one he has just
left. They lay him down by the warm body of the mother,
or wrap him up in soft, warm coverings, shield his eyes
from the light and his ears from noise. The illusion is
more or less complete, for, of course, the infant is un-
aware of the aaivities of the nurse. For all he knows
nis wishes are realized simply by imagining the satisfac-
tion of them.” Ferenczi calls this the Period of Magical-
Hallucinatory Omnipotence.

But this period does not last very long, since the nurse
is unable to anticipate every desire that the growing infant
feels "'The hallucinatory representation of the wish-ful-
filment soon proves inadequate to bring about any longer
a real wish-fulfilment.” So the infant has to give sig-
nals, and the more complicated his wishes become the
more signals he has to give. He begins to use a gesture-
language, and if there is a willing nurse always at hand
without too many new-fangled notions, the child gets
what he wants for the mere trouble of expressing his
wants. Ferenczi calls this the Period of Omnipotence by
the Help of Magic Gestures.

But as time goes on and as the number of his wants
increase tliese gestures lose some of their magic. The
number of the conditions increase to which he has to
submit. *The outstretched hand must often be drawn
back empty. . . . Indeed, an invincible hostile power
may forcibly oppose itself to this gesture and compel the
hand to resume its former position.” At this point his
sense of reality begins; the sense, that is to say, of some-
thing outside himself which does not submit to his
wishes. 'Till now the 'ail-powerfuF being has been able

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to feel himself one with the world that obliged him and
followed his every nod, but gradually there appears a
painful discordance in his experiences ” Because all ex-
periences are no longer incorporated in the ego, Ferenc2i
calls this the Projection Phase.

But though the child has now begun to discern the
existence of reality, his sense of that reality is still quite
imperfea. At first, perhaps, he regards this outer world,
though it opposes his wishes, as having qualities like his
own. Ferenczi calls this the Animistic Period. The child
then begins to talk and to substitute for gestures actual
statements of what he desires. Provided he lives in a
household bent on fulfilling his wants as soon as possible,
he retains to a very great degree the illusion that his
wishes are sovereign. Ferenczi calls this the Period of
Magic Thoughts and Magic Words.

Finally, if he matures successfully, he passes into the
last period where he is no longer under the domination
of the pleasure-principle: the feeling of omnipotence gives
way to the full appreciation of the force of circumstances.
Now unfortunately neither Freud nor Ferenczi, nor, so
far as I know, any other psychoanalyst, devotes much at-
tention to this last phase of maturity m which the sense
of reality has become perfeaed. They are preoccupied
with pathology; that is to say, with the problems which
arise out of a failure to attain this last stage in which the
adult makes a complete adjustment with his world because
his wishes are matured to accept the conditions which
reality imposes.

Yet it is this last stage which plainly constitutes the
goal of moral effect, for here alone the adult once again

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recovers that harmony between himself and his environ-
ment which he lost in that period of infancy when he first
discovered that his wishes were no longer -sovereign. It
IS the memory of that earliest harmony which he carries
With him ail Ins days. This is his memory of a golden
age, his intimation, as Wordsworth says, of immortality.
But insofar as he expects by an infantile philosophy to
recover that heaven which lay about him in his infancy,
he is doomed to disappointment. In the womb, and for a
few years of his childhood, happiness was the gratification
of his naive desires. His family arranged the world to
suit his wishes But as he grows up, and begins to be an
independent personality, this providence ministering to his
wishes disappears. He can then no longer hope that the
world will be adjusted to his wishes, and he is compelled
by a long and difficult process of learning and training to
adjust his wishes to the world. If he succeeds he is ma-
ture. If he is mature, he is once again harmonious with
the nature of things. He has virtue. And he is happy.

The process of maturing consists then of a revision of
his desires in the light of an understanding of reality.
When he is completely infantile there is nothing in the
world but his wishes. Therefore, he does not need and
does not have an understanding of the outer world It
exists for him merely as gratification or denial. But as
he begins to learn that the universe is not composed of
his wishes, he begins to see his wishes in a context and in
perspective. He begins to acquire a sense of space and to
learn how much there is beyond his reach, until at last he
realizes how small a figure he is on this earth, and how
small a part of the universe is the solar system of which

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ours IS one of the smaller planets. He has learned a lot
from the days when he put out his hand and reached for
the moon. He begins, also, to acquire a sense of time and
to realize that the moment in which he feels the intense
desire to seize something is an instant in a lifetime, an
mfimtesimal point in the history of the race He acquires
a sense of birth and decay and death, a knowledge that
that which he craves, his craving itself, and he himself
who feels that craving, did not have this craving yesterday
and will no longer have it to-morrow He accpires a
sense of cause and effea, a knowledge, that is to say, that
the sequences of events are not to be interrupted by his
preferences He begins to discern the existence of other
beings beside himself, and to understand that they too
have their preferences and their wishes, that these wishes
are often contrary to his own, and that there is not room
enough in the world, nor are there things enough, to
gratify all the wishes of everybody.

Thus to learn the lessons of experience is to undergo
a rransvaluation of the values we bring with us from the
womb and to transmute our naive impulses The break-
down of the infantile adjustment m which providential
powers ministered to every wish compels us either to flee
from reality or to understand it. And by understanding
it we create new objects of desire. For when we know a
good deal about a thing, know how it originated, how^
it is likely to behave, what it is made of, and what is its
place amidst other things, we are dealing with something
quire different from the simple object naively apprehended

The understanding creates a new environment The
more subtle and discriminating, the more informed and

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sympathetic the understanding is, the more complex and
yet ordered do the things about us become. To most of
us, as Mr Santayana once said, music is a pleasant noise
which produces a drowsy revery relieved by nervous
thrills But the trained musician hears what we do not
hear at all; he hears the form, the structure, the pattern,
and the significance of an ideal world. A naturalist out
of doors perceives a whole universe of related life which
the rest of us do not even see. A world which is ordi-
narily unseen has become visible through the understand-
ing. When the mind has fetched it out of the flux of
dumb sensations, defined it and fixed it, this unseen world
becomes more real than the dumb sensations it supplants.
When the understanding is at work, it is as if circum-
stance had ceased to mutter strange sounds and had begun
to speak our language. When experience is understood,
it is no longer what it is wholly to the infant, very largely
to youth, and in great measure to most men, a succession
of desirable objects at which they instinctively grasp, inter-
spersed with undesirable ones from which they instinc-
tively shrink. If objects are seen in their context, in the
light of their origin and destiny, with sympathy for their
own logic and their own purposes, they become interest-
ing in themselves, and are no longer blind stimuli to
pleasant and unpleasant sensations.

For when our desires come into contact with the world
created by the understanding, their character is altered.
They are confronted by a much more complex stimulus
which evokes a much more complex response. Instead
of the naive and imperious lust of our infantile natures
which is to seize, to have and to hold, our lusts are offset

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by other lusts and a balance between them is set up.
That is to say, they are ihade rational by the ordered
variety with which the understanding confronts them.
We learn that there are more things in heaven and
earth than we dreamed of m our immature philosophy,
that there are many choices and that none is absolute,
that beyond the mountains, as the Chinese say, there are
people also. The obviously pleasant or unpleasant thus
becomes less obviously what we felt it was before our
knowledge of it became complicated by anticipation and
memory. The immediately desirable seems not quite so
desirable and the undesirable less intolerable Delight is
perhaps not so intense nor pain so poignanCas youth and
the romantics would have them. They are absorbed* into
a larger experience in which the rewards are a sustained
and more even enjoyment, and serenity in the presence
of inescapable evil. In place of a world, where like
children we are ministered to by a solicitous mother, the
understanding introduces us into a world where delight
is reserved for those who can appreciate the meaning
and purpose of things outside ourselves, and can make
these meanings and purposes their own.

8. The Passage into Maturity
The critical phase of human experience, then, is the
passage from childhood to maturity; the critical question
IS whether childish habits and expectations are to persist
or to be transformed. We grow older. But it is by no
means certain that we shall grow up. The human chaXr
acter is a complicated thing, and its elements do not neces-
sarily march m step. It is possible to be a sage m some

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things and a child m others, to be at once precocious and
retarded, to be shrewd and foolish, serene and irritable.
For some parts of our personalities may well be more
mature than others; not infrequently we participate in
he enterprises of an adult with the mood and manners
of a child.

The successful passage into maturity depends, there-
fore, on a breaking up and reconstruction of those habits
which were appropriate only to our earliest experience.

In a certain larger sense this is the essence of education.
For unless a man has acquired the character of an adult,
he IS a lost soul no matter how good his technical equip-
ment. The^ world unhappily contains many such lost
souls. They are often m high places, men trained to
manipulate the machmery of civilization, but utterly
incapable of handling their own purposes in any civilized
fashion. For their purposes are merely the relics of an
infancy when their wishes were law, and they knew
neither necessity nor change.

When a childish disposition is carried over into an
adult environment the result is a radically false valuation
of that environment. The symptoms are fairly evident.
They may appear as a disposition to feel that everything
which happens to a man has an intentional relation to
himself; life becomes a kind of conspiracy to make him
happy or to make him miserable. In either case it is
diought to be deeply concerned with his destiny. The
childish pattern appears also as a deep sense that life
owes him somethmg, that somehow it is the duty of the
universe to look aft^r him, and to listen sharply when
he speaks to it. The notion that the universe is full of

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purposes utterly unknown to him, utterly indifferent to
him, IS as outrageous to one who is imperfectly matured
as would be the conduct of a mother who forgot to give
a hungry child its lunch. The childish pattern appears
also as a disposition to believe that he may reach out
for anything m sight and take it, and that having gotten ,
it nobody must ever under any circumstances take it away.
Death and decay are, therefore, almost an insult, a kind
of mischief in the nature of thmgs, which ought not to be
there, and would not be there, if everything only behaved
as good little boys believe it should. There is indeed
authority for the belief that we are all being punished
for the naughtiness of our first grandmother; that work
and trouble and death would not really be there to plague
us but for her unhappy transgression; that by rights we
ought to live in paradise and have everythmg we want
for ever and ever.

Here, too, is the source of that common complaint of
the world-weary that they are tired of their pleasures.
They have what they yearned for; yet having it they are
depressed at finding that they do not care Their inability
to enjoy what they can have is the obverse of the desire to
possess die unattainable: both are due to carrying over the
expectations of youth into adult life. They find them-
selves in a world unlike the world of their youth; they
themselves are no longer youths. But they retain the
criteria of youth, and with them measure the world and
their own deserts.

Here, too, is the origin of the apparent paradox that as
men grow older they grow wiser but sadder. It is not a
paradox at all if we remember that this wisdom which

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makes them sadder is, after all, an incompleted wisdom.
They have grown wiser as to the character of the world,
wiser too about their own powers, but they remain naive
as to what they may expect of the world and themselves.
The expectations which they formed in their youth persist
as deeply ingrained habits to worry them in their maturity.
They are only partially matured; they have become only
partially wise. They have acquired skill and information,
but the parts of them which are adult are embedded in
other parts of their natures which are childish. For men
do not necessarily mature altogether and in unison; they
learn to do this and that more easily than they learn what
to like and^what to reject. Intelligence is often more
completely educated than desire; our outward behavior
has an appearance of being grown up which our inner
vanities and hopes, our dim but powerful cravings, often
belie. In a word, we learn the arts and the sciences long
before we learn philosophy.

If we ask ourselves what is this wisdom which experi-
ence forces upon us, the answer must be that we discover
the world is not constituted as we had supposed it to
be. It IS not that we learn more about its physical
elements, or its geography, or the variety of its inhabitants,
or the ways in which human society is governed. Knowl-
edge of this sort can be taught to a child without in any
fundamental way disturbing his childishness. In fact, all
of us are aware that we once knew a great many things
which we have since forgotten. The essential dis-
covery of maturity has little if anything to do with
information about the names, the locations, and the
sequences of faas; it is the acquiring of a different sense

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of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature
of things.

A boy can take you into the open at night and show
you the stars, he might tell you no end of things about
them, conceivably all .that an astronomer could teacn.
But until and unless he feels the vast indifference of the
universe to his own fate, and has placed himself m the
perspective of cold and illimitable space, he has not
looked maturely at the heavens. Until he has felt this,
and unless he can endure this, he remains a child, and m
his childishness he will resent the heavens when they are
not accommodating. He will demand sunshine when he
wishes to play, and rain when the ground is' dry, and he
will look upon storms as anger directed at him, and the
thunder as a personal threat.

The discovery that our wishes have little or no authority
in the world brings with it experience of the necessity
that is in the nature of things. The lesson of this experi-
ence is one from which we shrink and to which few ever
wholly accommodate themselves. The world of the child
is a kind of enchanted island The labor that went into
procuring his food, his clothes, his toys, is wholly invisible
at first His earliest expeaations are, therefore, that
somehow the Lord will provide. Only gradually does
the truth come home to him how much effort it costs
to satisfy his w^ants. It takes even longer for him to
tinderstand that not only does he not get what he wants
by asking for it but he cannot be sure to get what he
wants by working for it. It is not easy to accept the
knowledge that desire, that prayer, that effort can be
and often are frustrated, that in the nature of thmgs

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there is much fumbling, trial and error, deadlock and
defeat.

The sense of evil is acquired late; by many persons it
is never acquired at all. Children suffer, and childhood
IS by no means so unreservedly happy as some make it
out to be. But childish suffering is not inherently tragic.
It IS not stamped with the irrevocability which the adult
feels to be part of the essence of evil. Evil for the child
IS something which can be explained away, made up for,
done away with. Pretentious philosophies have been
built on this fancy purporting somehow to absorb the
evil of the world in an all-embracing goodness, as a
child's tears ire dried by its mother's kisses. The dis-
covery that there is evil which is as genuine as goodness,
that there is ugliness and violence which are no less real
than )oy and love, is one of those discoveries that the
adult IS forced somehow to accept in his valuation of
experience.

And then there is the knowledge, which only experi-
ence can give, that everything changes and that every-
thing comes to an end. It is possible to tell a child about
mortality, but to realize it he must live long enough to
experience it. This knowledge does not come from
w^ords; it comes in feeling, in the feeling that he himself
IS older, in the death of km and friends, m seeing well-
known objects wear out, in discarding old things, in
awakening to the sense that there is a whole new genera-
tion in the world which looks upon him as old. There
is an intimation of immortality m our youth because we
have not yet had experience of mortahty. The persons
and the things which surround us seem eternal because

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we have known them too briefly to realize that they
change. We have seen neither their beginning nor their
end.

In the last analysis we have no right to say that the
world of youth is an illusion. For the clnld it is a true
picture of tlie world in that it corresponds to, and is
justified in, his experience. If he did not have to grow
older, It would be quite sufficient because nothing m his
experience would contradict it. Our sense of life as we
mature is quite different, but there is no reason to think
that It has any absolute finality Perhaps if we lived
several hundred years we should acquire a wholly different
sense of life, compared with which all our Mult philoso-
phy would seem quite callow.

The child’s sense of life can be called an illusion only
if It is carried over into manhood, for then it ceases to
fit his experience and to be justified by events. The
habits formed in a childish environment become progres-
sively unworkable and contradictory as the youth is thrust
out from the protection of his family into an adult environ*
ment. Then the infantile conviction that his w^ants will
somehow be met collides with the fact that he must pro-
vide for himself. The w'orld begins to seem out of joint
The child’s notion that things are to be had fo^ the asking
becomes a vast confusion in which w'ords are treated as
laws, and rhetoric as action The childish belief that each
of us is the center of an adoring and solicitous universe
becomes the source of endless disappointments because
we cannot reconcile what w^e feel is due us with what
we must resign ourselves to The sense of the unreality
of evil, which our earliest experience seemed to justify,

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becomes a deep preference for not knowing the truth,
an habitual desire to think of the world as we should
prefer ir to be; out of this rebellion against truth, out
of this determination that the facts shall conform to our
wishes, are born all manner of bigotry and uncharitable-
ness. The child’s sense that things do not end, that they
are there forever, becomes, once it is carried over into
maturity, a vain and anxious effort to possess things for-
ever. The incapacity to realize that the objeas of desire
will last only a little while makes us put an extravagant
value upon them, and to care for them, not as they are
and for what they can actually give us, but for what
we foolishly insist they ought to be and ought always
to give us.

The child’s philosophy rests upon the assumption that
the world outside is in gear with his own appetites. For
this reason an adult with a childish character will ascribe
an authority to his appetites which may easily land him
in fanaticism or frustraaon, in a crazy indulgence or a
miserable starvation. And to the environment he will
ascribe a willingness to conform to him, a capacity to be
owned by him, which land him in all sorts of delusions
of grandeur. Only the extreme cases are in the asylums.
The world is full of semi-adult persons who secretly nurse
the notion that they are, or that by rights they ought to
be, Don Juan, Croesus, Napoleon, or the Messiah.

They have brought with them the notion that they
are still as intimately attached to nature and to society
as the child is to its household. The adult has to break
this attachment to persons and things. His world does
not permit him to remain fused with it, but compels him
to stand away from things. For things no longer obey

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his wishes. And therefore he cannot let his wishes become
too deeply involved in things He can no longer count
on possessing whatever he may happen to want And
therefore he most learn to want what he can possess He
can no longer hold forever the things at which he grasps ,
for they change, and slip away And therefore he must
learn to hold on to things which do not slip away and
change, to hold on to things not by grasping them, but
by understandmg them and by remembering them Then
he IS w^hoily an adult. Then he has conquered mortality
in the only way mortal men can conquer it. For he has
ceased to expect anything of the world which it cannot
give, and he has learned to love it under th^ only aspect
m which it IS eternal.

9. The Function of High Religion
In the light of this conception of maturity as the ulti-
mate phase m the development of the human personality,
we are, I think, in a position to understand the riddle
which we set ourselves at the beginning of this chapter
I asked what sigmficance there was for us in the fact
that men have so persistently associated the good life
With some form of ascetic discipline and renunciation
The answer is that asceticism is an effort to overcome
immaturity. When men do not outgrow their childish
desires, they seek to repress them. The ascetic discipline,
if It is successful, IS a form of education; if it is unsuccess-
ful, It is an agonized conflict due to an imperfect educa-
tion or an incapacity to grow up By the same token,
moral regulations imposed on others, insofar as they are
at all rational, and not methods of exploitation or expres-
sions of jealousy, are attempts to curb the social dis-

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orders which result from the activities of grown-up
children.

It foUows that asceticisms and moralities are at best
means to an end; they are more or less inadequate sub-
stitutes for the educational process and the natural growth
of wisdom. They are often confused with virtue, but
they are not virtue. For virtue is the quality of mature
desire, and when desire is mature the tortures of renun-
ciations and of prohibitions have ceased to be necessary.
'"Blessedness,’' says Spinoza, "is not the reward of virtue,
but virtue itself; nor should we rejoice in it for that we
restrain our lusts, but, on the contrary, because we rejoice
therein we ca"n restrain our lusts." The mature character
may be attained by growth and experience and insight,
or by ascetic discipline, or by that process of being reborn
which is called conversion; when it is attained, the moral
problem of whether to yield to impulse or to check it,
and how much to check it and how much to yield, has
disappeared. A mature desire is innocent. This, I think,
is the final teaching of the great sages. "To him who has
finished the Path, and passed beyond sorrow, who has
freed himself on all sides, and thrown away every fetter,
there is no more fever of grief," says a Buddhist writer.

The Master said,

“At fifteen I had my mind bent on learning.

“At thirty, I stood firm

“At forty, I had no doubts

“Ac fifty, I knew the decrees- of Heaven.

“At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception
of truth

“At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without
transgressing what was right. “

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

To be able, as Confucius indicates, to follow what the
heart desires without coming into collision with the stub-
born facts of life IS the privilege of the utterly innocent
and of the utterly wise. It is the privilege of the infant
and of the sage who stand at the two poles of experience;
of the infant because the wwld ministers to his heart’s
desire and of the sage because he has learned what to
desire. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he told
his followers that they must become like little children

If this IS what he meant, and if this is what Buddha,
Confucius, and Spinoza meant, then we have here the
clue to the function of high religion m human affairs
I venture, at least, to suggest that die function of high
religion is to reveal to men the quality of mature experi-
ence, that high religion is a prophecy and an anticipation
of what life is like when desire is m perfect harmony with
reality. It announces the discovery that men can enter into
the realm of the spirit when they have outgrown all child-
ishness.

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CHAPTER X

HIGH RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD

1. Popular Religion and the Great Teacheu
In popular thought it is taken for granted that to be
religious IS to accept m some form or other the theocratic
view that God governs the universe. If that assumption
IS correct then the orthodox who inveigh against the god-
lessness of cohtemporary thought and the militant atheists
who rejoice in this godlessness are both right when they
insist that religion is disappearing. Insofar as religion
is identical with a belief in theocracy, it has indeed lost
much of its reality for modern men.

There is little doubt, I think, that popular religion has
been always and everywhere theocratic in principle. If,
then, w^e are to define as religion that which the over-
w^helming majority of mankind have cherished, it would
be necessary to concede at once that the dissolution of
the belief m a supernatural government of human affairs
IS a dissolution of religion itself. But if that is conceded,
then It IS necessary to concede also that many w^hom the
world recognizes as its greatest religious teachers were
not themselves religious men. For it could be demon-
strated, I think, that m the central intuition of Aristotle,
of the author of the Fourth Gospel, of Buddha, of Spinoza,
to name only originating minds, the theocratic principle
is irrelevant. No one of these teachers held the belief,

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which IS at the heart of theocratic religion, that the rela-
tionship between God and man is somehow analogous
with that of a king to his subjects, that the relationship
IS in any sense a transaction between personalities involv-
ing, however subtly, a quid pro quo, that God's will and
the human will are interacting forces.

In place of the popular conception of religion as a mat-
ter of commandments and obedience, reward and punish-
ment, in a word, as a form of government, these great
teachers placed their emphasis upon the conversion, the
education, and the discipline of the human will Such
beliefs as they had about God were not in the nature of
oaths of allegiance to a superior, their concern was not
to placate the will of God but to alter the will of man.
This alteration of the human will they conceived as good
not because God commands it, but because it is intrinsi-
cally good for man, because by the test of experience it
yields happiness, serenity, whole-heartedness. Belief is
not, as It IS in popular religion, an act which by creating
a claim upon divinity insures man’s salvation; the force
of belief, as Mr Whitehead has put it, is in ‘cleansing
the inward parts." Thus religion becomes "the art and
the theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends
on the man himself and on what is permanent in the
nature of things."

The difference between religion conceived as the art
and theory of the internal life of man and religion con-
ceived as cosmic government is the great difference
between the religion of these great sages and the religion
of the multitude. Though in matters of this kind the
distmction is not always absolutely clear m every case,

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on the whole it cannot be disputed, I believe, that the
difference is real and of fundamental importance. If we
observe popular religions as they are administered by
ecclesiastical establishments, it is overwhelmingly plain
that their mam appeal rests upon the belief that through
their offices the devout are able to obtain eternal salva-
tion, and even earthly favors, from an invisible king. But
if we observe truly, I think, we shall see also that side
by side with the popular religion, sometimes in open con-
flict with It, sometimes in outward conformity with it,
there is generally to be found in cultivated communities
a minority to whom religion is primarily a reconditioning
of their own souls. They may be mystics like Eckhart,
they may be platonists like Ongen or Dean Inge, they
may be protestants like St. Augustine and Luther in
certain phases of their thought, they may be humanists
like Erasmus and Montaigne; as of Confucius, it may be
said of them that *‘the subjects on which the Master did
not talk were: extraordinary things, feats of strength,
disorder, and spiritual beings."' They may be inside the
churches or outside them, but in intention, m the inner
meaning of their religion, they are wholly at variance with
the popular creeds. For in one form or another they
rejea the idea of attaining salvation by placating God;
m one form or another they regard salvation as a con-
dition of the soul which is reached only by some kind of
self-discipIine.

It must be obvious that religion, conceived in this way,
'*as the art and theory of the internal life of man," is not
dissolved by what I have been calling the acids of
modernity. It is die popular religion which is dissolved.

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But just because this vast dissolution is destroying the
disposition to believe in a theocratic government of the
umverse, just because men no longer find it vvhoiiy cred-
ible that their affairs are subject to the ordinances of a
heavenly king, just because they no longer vividly believe
m an invisible power which regulates their lives, judges
them, and sustains them, their only hope of salvation lies
m a religion which provides an internal discipline

The real effect of modernity upon religion, therefore,
IS ro make the religion wdiich was once the possession of
an aristocraq^ of the spirit the only possible kind of
religion for all modern men.

2. The AnstocraUc Pitnciple
To those who want salvation cheap, and most men do,
there is very little comfort to be had out oi the great
teachers Spinoza might have been speaking for all of
them when he said:

If the way which I have pointed out . seems
exceedingly hard, it may nevertheless be discovered Needs
must it be hard, since it is so seldom found How would
It be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and
could without great labor be found, that it should be b}
almost all men neglected^ But all things excellent are as
difficult as they are rare

But why, w^e may ask, is salvation by almost all men
negleaed^ The answ^'er is that they do not desire that
which they have never learned to desire. ' One cannot,”
as Voltaire said, "'desire that which one does not know^”
Can a man love good wine when he has diunk nothing
but gmger beer? Did we have naturally and instinctively

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a taste for that which constitutes the happiness of the
saved, we should already be saved, and their happiness
would be ours. We lack the taste, which is, I suppose,
another way of saying what the theologians meant when
they spoke of original sin. To be saved, m the sense
which the sages had in mind, is by conversion, education,
and self-disciplme to have achieved a certain quality and
harmony of the passions. Then the good life is possible.
But although men have often heard this said, and have
read about it, unless in some measure they already desire
It, the whole teaching remains mere words and abstrac-
tions which are high, cold, and remote. As long as they
feel that the* way to happiness is through a will other
than their own, and that somehow events can in this
fashion be made to yield to their unregenerate wishes, in
this world or another, the wisdom of the sages will not
touch their hearts, and the way which is pointed out will
be neglected.

Wisdom Will seem inhuman. In a sense it is inhuman,
4or it is so uncommon. Those who have it speak a strange
language, of which the words perhaps have a familiar
sound, but the meaning is too high and abstract; their
delights are strange delights, and unfathomable, like a
passion which we have never known. And if we encounter
them in their lives or in their writings, they seem to us
a mixture of grandeur and queerness. For they are at
once more deeply at home in the world than the transients
who make up most of mankind; yet, because of the quality
of their passions, they are not wholly of the world as the
worldling understands it. But unless the worldling is
entirely without the capaaty to transcend himself, he is

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bound in such an encounter to catch a glimpse now and
then of an experience where there is a serenity he himself
has never known, a peace that passes his understanding,
an ecstasy exquisite and without regret, and happiness so
clarified that it seems like brilliant and kindly light

Yet no teacher has ever appeared in the world who
was wise enough to know how to teach his wisdom to
all mankind. In fact, the great teachers have attempted
nothing so utopian They were quite well aw^are how
difficult for most men is wisdom, and they have confessed
frankly that the perfect life w^as for a select few It is
arguable, in fact, that the very idea of teaching the highest
wisdom to all men is the recent notion of a humanitarian
and romantically democratic age, and that it is quite
foreign to the thought of the greatest teachers. Gautama
Buddha, for example, abolished caste within the religious
order which he founded, and declared that the path to
Nirvana was open to the iow^est outcast as well as to the
proudest Brahman. But it was necessary to enter the
order and submit to its stringent discipline. It is obvious
that Buddha never believed that very many could or would
do that. Jesus, whom w^e are accustomed to think of as
wholly catholic in his sympathies, spoke the bitter w^ords:
*’Give not what is holy to the dogs and cast not your
pearls before swnne " In Mohammedanism that which
is mystical is esoteric- *‘ali those emotions are meant only
for a small number of chosen ones . even some of
the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to
an aristocraq’', and accept the ignorance of the multitude
as an irremediable e\ii.''

There is an aristocratic principle in all the religions
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A PREFACE TO MORALS

which have attained wide acceptance. It is significant
that Jesus was content to leave the governance of the
mass of men to Caesar, and that he created no orgamza-
tion during his lifetime beyond the appointment of the
Apostles. It IS significant, because it shows how much
more he was concerned with the few who could be saved
than with arranging the aJffairs of the mass of mankind.
Plato, who was a more systematic teacher than either
Jesus or Buddha, did work out an elaborate social order
which took account not only of the philosophers, but of
all the citizens of the state. But in that very attempt
he rested upon the premise that most men will not attain
the good life, and that for them it is necessary to institute
the laws. *'The worthy disciples of philosophy will be
but a small remnant,’* he said, . . the guardian . . .
must be required to take the longer circuit, and toil at
learning as well as at gymnastics, or he will never reach
the highest knowledge of all which is his proper calling.**
Perhaps because they looked upon the attempts as hope-
less, perhaps because they did not know how to go about
it, perhaps because they were so wise, the greatest teachers
have never offered their full wisdom to the multitude.
Like Mr. Valianr-for-truth in T/?e Ptlgnm^s Progress they
said: *'My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in
my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that
can get it.”

3. The Peculiarity of the Modern Situation
But because the teaching of the sages was incompre-
hensible, the multitude, impressed but also bewildered,
ignored them as teachers and worshipped them as gods.

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In their wisdom the people were not mterested, but in the
legends of their power, which rumor created, there was
something understandable. And thus, the religions which
have been organi2ed around the names of great spiritual
teachers have been popular in proportion, one might
almost say, to the degree in which the original insight
into the nece;s»ty for conversion and self-discipline has
been reduced to a system of commands and promises
which the common man can understand.

For popular religion is suited to the capacities of the
unconverted. The adherents of a popular religion neces-
sarily include an enormous number of people who are
too young, or too feeble, too dull or too \iolent, too
unstable or too incurious, to have any comprehension
whatsoever of anything but the simplest scheme of
rewards and punishments. An organized religion cannot
neglect them if it has any pretensions to being universal.
The great ecclesiastical establishments have often shel-
tered spiritual lives, and drawn new vitality from them.
But fundamentally the great churches are secular insti-
tutions; they are governments preoccupied inevitably with
the regulation of the unregenerate appentes of mankind.
In their scriptures there is to be found the teaching that
true salvation depends upon internal reform of desire.
But since this reform is so very difficult, in practice the
churches have devoted themselves not so much to making
real conversions, as to governing the dispositions of the
unconverted multitude.

They are immensely engaged by the task of adminis-
tering their moral codes, persuading their congregations
With promises, and threatemng them with punishments

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if they do not keep their childish lusts within bounds.
The fact that they use rewards and punishments, and
appeal even to Caesar, is evidence enough that they are
dealing with the unconverted. The fact that they invoke
authority is in itself evidence that they are speaking to
the naive. The fact that they pretend to have certain
knowledge about the constitution of the universe is evi-
dence that they are interested in those who are not wise
enough to understand the limitations of knowledge. For
to the few who are converted, goodness is pleasant, and
needs no sanctions. It needs no authority, for it has been
verified by experience. But when men have to be coerced
into goodness, it is plain that they do not care for it.

Now although the great teachers saw clearly enough
the difference between the popular religion and their own
insight, they were under no great compulsion to try and
overcome it. They accepted the fact that the true
religion was esoteric and for the few. They saw that it
demanded the re-education of desire, but they had no
systematic and tested knowledge of how new habits can
be formed. Invincible as was their insight into the prin-
ciple of happiness, they were compelled to depend upon
introspection, and to generalize from a limited observa-
tion. They understood that the good life was m some
degree an acquired disposition; they were aware that it
is not easily or naively acquired.

For those who somehow had the disposition, the
teachers instituted stern disciplines " which were really
primitive experiments in the re-education of desire. But
there was no very urgent practical need which impelled
them to search for ways of making disciplines more

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Widely available. Those who submitted to them were
in general individuals who were already out of the ordi-
nary. The mass of mankind lived solidly within the
framework of custom and the psychological compulsions
of theocracy. There was no pressing reason, as there is
to-day, now that this ancestral order is dissolved, why
anyone should seek to formulate a mode of life by which
ordmary men, thrown upon their own resources, can find
their way without supernatural rules, commands, punish-
ments, and compensations. In the past there were a few
men here and there who had somehow, for reasons which
we do not understand, outgrown the ancestral society in
which they lived. But -the society itself relnained. It
sheltered them. And it ruled the many.

The peculiarity of our modern situation is that multi-
tudes, instead of a few, are compelled to make radical
and original adjustments. These multitudes, though they
have lost the ancient certainties, have not outgrown the
needs to which they mmistered. They need to believe, but
they cannot They need to be commanded, but they can-
not find a commander. They need support, and there is
none. Their situation is adult, but their dispositions are
not. The religion of the spirit would suit their needs,
but it would seem to be beyond their powers.

4. The Stone Which the Bmlders Rejected
The way of life which I have called high religion has
in all ages seemed so unapproachably high that it has
been reserved for a voluntary aristocracy of the spirit.
It has, in faa, been looked upon not only as a kind of
splendid idiosyncrasy of a few men here and tliere, but

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as mcompanble, in essence, with the practical conditions
under which life is lived It is for these reasons, no doubt,
that the practice of high religion has almost invariably
been associated either with a solitary asceticism or with a
specially organized life in monastic establishments. High
religion has been regarded as something separate from
the mam concerns of mankind.

It is not difficult to see why this was so if we realize
that the insight into the value of disinterestedness, which
is the core of high religion, was not a sudden discovery
nor a complete one, anywhere or any time. Like all
other things associated with evolutionary man, this insight
must have hafl very crude beginnings ; it would be possible
tQ show, I think, that there have been many tentative and
partial perceptions of it which, under the clarifying power
of men of genius, have at times become coherent. When
we remember that we are dealmg with an insight into
the qualities of a mature ' personality, there is no reason
to suppose that the full significance of this insight has
ever been completely exhausted. It seems far more likely
that the sages demonstrated the existence of the realm
of the spirit, but that it still remains to be thoroughly
explored.

If that IS true then the attempt to live by these partial
insights must necessarily have presented inordinate prac-
tical difficulties Pythagoras, for example, seems to have
grasped the idea that the disinterested study of mathe-
matics and music was cleansing to the passions and also
that in order to be disinterested it was necessary to have
purity of mind. So when he established his society in
Southern Italy he evidently attempted to .combine the

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serious pursuit of science with an ascetic discipline. But
the pursuit of science was too much for the mass of the
faithful who assumed that '*to follow Pythagoras meant
to go barefoot and to abstain from animal flesh and
beans.'* And this in turn was too much for the dignity
of the learned who proceeded to dissociate themselves
from the disciplinary aspect of the Pythagorean teaching.
It IS a fair conclusion, I think, that the breakdown of
this early experiment must have been due fundamentally
to the fact that Pythagoras could not have known any
tested method either of equipping his followers tg^ appre-
ciate science or anything beside a crude asceticism as a
means of moral discipline. If this is true, then the reason
for the failure lay in the fact that though the original
insight was marvelously good, it was not implemented
with the necessary technical knowledge for applying it.
Only a few, we may suppose, who were already by the
accidents of nature and nurture suited to the Pythagorean
ideal, can ever have successfully applied it.

In the Chrisnan pursuit of the higher religious life the
practical difficulties presented themselves m a different
way. In its beginning Christiamty was a sect of obscure
men and women who were out of touch widi the intel-
lectual interests of the Roman world. They were per-
secuted aliens both in Palestine and elsewhere, and they
came to the conclusion that the Roman Empire and all its
concerns was the Kingdom of Satan. This, together with
the widespread belief in the Second Coming of Christ,
dissociated the Christian life at the outset from the life
of the world. Later on, when Christianity became the
official religion of the Empire, and the Church a great

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secular institution which concerned itself with govern-
ment and property and diplomacy and war, those who
wished to live as nearly as possible according to the origi-
nal meaning of the Gospels were quite evidently com-
pelled to Withdraw and live a separated life. 'If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not m him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the
Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away,
and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
abideiii forever.”

Although for some centuries the monasteries were the
centers of what learning there was, the impressions left
by monasticism on mankind seems to have been that the
highest type of religious life is not disinterested in human
affairs, but uninterested; that it requires not merely the
renunciation of worldly desires, but of the world itself.
The insight was imperfect, and therefore as an example
to mankind the praaice was abortive and confusing. Yet
only an uncomprehending person can fail to see that the
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience proceeded from
a profound, if partial, understanding of human nature
and Its most perfect harmony. Plainly all manner of
disorder both in society and in the individual result from
gieed, uncontrollable sexual desire, arrogance, and imperi-
ousness. That was so plain to the early Christians, and
on the other hand it was so little plain how those power-
ful passions could be avilized, that the monastics in effect
gave up and attempted to excise them entirely from their
natures. In this they did not succeed.

Had they known any way of curmg the fever of human
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passion except by attempting to excise it, the insight
of high religion would have had some practicable mean-
ing for those who did not withdraw from the world But
no way was known, and therefore the practice of high
religion had to mean separation from human society and
violence to human nature. But why was there no other
way known of overcoming the chaos of the passions^
Was It because there is no other way^ If that were so
then the world is as hopeless as the early Christians
thought It was; indeed it is more hopeless because it does
not show any signs, as they believed, of coming ^o an
end Was it because the early Christian Fathers were
not wise enough to discover a way? It is always a good
rule, I think, to discard any idea based on the premise
that the best minds of another age were congenitally
inferior to our own. My conviction is that necessity is
the mother of discovery and invention, and that the reason
why the insight of high religion and the methods of
practicing it were so imperfectly developed, is that there
was no practical necessity for developing them.

The mass of men lived in an ancestral order which was
regulated by custom and authority, and made endurable
by usage and compensatory consolations The orgamc
quality of that society into which they fitted took care of
their passions; those who had outgrown such a society, or
were so constituted that they did not fit it, were the excep-
tions. From them came the insight of high religion; for
them a separated life was a possible solution of their
personal problems. There 'was nothing in the nature of
things to compel men to work out a way of life, I won't
say for all men, but at least for many men, by which

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they could govern their own natures. Behind any such
effort there would almost certainly have to be an urgent
need For the inertia of the human race is immense.

It IS my thesis that because the acids of modernity
have dissolved the adjustments of the ancestral order,
there exists to-day on a scale never before experienced by
mankind and of an urgency without a parallel, the need
for that philosophy of life of which the insight of high
religion is a prophecy. For it is immature and unregen-
erate desire which creates the disorders and the frustra-
tions that confound us. The preoccupation of the popular
religion has been to find a way of govermng these dis-
orders and of compensating for their frustrations. The
preoccupation of high religion is with the regeneration of
the passions that create the disorders and the frustrations,
Insofar as modernity has dissolved the power of the pop-
ular religion to govern and to compensate, the need for
a high religion which regenerates becomes imperative, and
what was once a kind of spiritual luxury of the few has,
under modern conditions, become an urgent necessity of
the many. The insight of high religion which has hitherto
indicated a kind of bypath into rare experiences is now
a trail which the leaders of mankind are compelled to
take.

There is implied in this a radical displacement in the
field of morals. The mam interest of the praaical moral-
ist in the past has been to interpret, admimster, and
enforce a moral code. He knew what was right. The
populace acknowledged that he knew what was right.
His task was to persuade and compel them to do what
was right. There was a tacit assumption, which was

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quite correct, that very often the populace and even the
moralist himself would much rather have done what was
wrong. Very often they did it. Then they were pun-
ished in this world or m the next. But to-day the moralist
finds himself in a different position. He is no longer
absolutely sure that he knows what is right. The popu-
lace, even if it respects him, is disinclined to believe that
a thing is right simply because he says it is. The populace
continues very frequently to prefer what was once
regarded as wrong. It no longer knows whether it is
right or wrong, and of course it gives itself the benefit
off the doubt. The result is that there no longer exists
a moral code which the moralist can interpret, administer,
and enforce. The effect of that is moral anarchy within
and without. Since there is no principle under modern
conditions which authorizes the re-establishment of a
moral code, the moralist, unless he revises his premises,
becomes entirely ineffectual. To revise his premises can,
under the circumstances, mean only one thing- that he
occupies himself with the problem of how to encourage
that growth into maturity, that outgrowing of naive
desire, that cultivation of disinterestedness, which render
passion innocent and an authoritative morality unnec-
essary.

“ The novelty of all this lies in the fact that the guardians
of morality among the people are compelled at last to
take seriously what the teachers of wisdom have taught.
The insight of high religion may be said, then, to be a
discovery in the field of human experience comparable
with those prophetic conceptions in the natural sciences
which, after being looked upon for long periods as a

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A PREFACE TO MORALS

curiosity, are at last, because circumstances are ripe, seen
to be the clue to otherwise insoluble perplexities. The
concept of evolution was discovered by sheer insight
innumerable times before the time of Darwin. Not much
came of it until the rapid evolution of human affairs after
the industrial revolution had somehow brought this neg-
lected insight into focus with men’s interests. There are
many conceptions in the science of the Greeks which are
true intimations of what modern physicists have found.
But an insight of this sort comes into its own only when
circumstances conspire to make it inevitably appropriate.
It is my contention that in the field of morals circunf-
stances are producing a somewhat analogous condition:
that the insight of the sages into the value of dis-
interestedness has become the clue to otherwise insoluble
perplexities.

[210}

PART III

THE GENIUS OF MODERNITY

Where ts the way where light dwelleth?

Job 33.19,

CHAPTER XI

THE CURE OF SOULS
1. The Problem of Evd

The greatest of all perplexities m theology has been
to reconcile the infinite goodness of God with his omni-
potence. Nothing puts a greater strain upon the faith of
the common man than the existence of utterly irrational
suffering in the universe, and the problem •which tor-
mented Job still troubles every devout and thoughtful
man who beholds the monstrous injustices of nature. If
there were no pain in the world except that which was
felt by responsible beings who had knowingly transgressed
some law of conduct, there would, of course, be no prob-
lem of evil. Pain would be nothing but a rational pun-
ishment. But the pain which is suffered by those who
according to all human standards are innocent, by chil-
dren and by animals, for example, cannot be fitted into
any rational theory of reward and punishment. It never
has been. The classic attempts to solve the problem of
evil invariably falsify the premises. This jfalsification
may for a time sansfy the inquirer, but it does not settle
the problem. That is why the problem is forever pre-
senting itself again.

The solutions which have been proposed neglea one
or the other of the attributes of God: tacitly or otherwise
either his infinite power or his infinite love is denied

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In the Old Testament, at least in the older parts of it,
the power of God is exalted 'at the expense of his good-
ness. For it IS simply impossible by any human standard
and within any intelligible meaning of the words to
regard Yahveh as wholly good. His cruelty is notorious
and his capriciousness is that of an Oriental despot. It
IS admitted, I believe, by all but the most literally-minded
of the fundamentalists that there are innumerable inci-
dents in the Old Testament which have to be expurgated
if the Bible is to be used as a source book of conduct
for impressionable children. Now for the ancient
Hebrews who conceived God in their fashion, the prob-
lem of evil did not exist because it had not occurred to
them that a ruler should be just and good as well as
great and powerful.

As men came to believe that God must be )ust,
beneficent, and loving, the problem soon presented itself.
And in the Book of Job, which is supposed to date from
the Fifth or Fourth Century B.C., we have a poignant
effort to solve it. Job’s conclusion is that the goodness of
Jehovah is among the '*thmgs too wonderful for me.” He
accepts the judgments of God, and acknowledges their
goodness by attributing to God a kind of goodness which
is unlike the human conception of goodness. He holds
fast to the premise that God is omnipotent — ”1 know that
thou canst do all things” — and the other premise that God
is beneficent he redefines. Job’s mind was satisfied, and it
is reported that he prospered greatly thereafter. What
had really happened was that Job gave up the attempt to
prove that God was like Job, that the world was as Job
wished it to be, and so piously and with his mind at
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rest he made the best of things, and went about his
affairs

In Job the solution is reached by claiming that what
seems evil to us would really be recognized as goodness
if our minds were not so limited. To the naive this is no
solution at all, for it depends upon using the word 'good’
in two senses; actually it was a perfea solution, for Job
had resigned himself to the fact that God and the universe
in which he was manifest are not controlled by human de-
sires. Those who refused to accept this solution involved
themselves in intricate theorizing. Some of them argued
that evil IS an illusion. This theory has been widely held,
though It is rather difficult to see how, if evil^is an illusion,
good is not also an illusion. The one seems as vividly
real as the other. It has also been argued by some that
evil is not important. This, of course, does not solve the
theoretical problem. In fact it ignores the problem and is
really a piece of advice as to how men ought to condua
themselves in the presence of God. Many have argued,
also, that evil exists in the world to test human character,
that by bearing it and conquering it men prove their
worth. There is a core of truth in this observation as there
is in the theory that many things are not so bad as they
seem. But it does not explain why a good and all power-
ful Deity chose to make men go through a school of
suffering to achieve goodness, when he might have created
them good in the first place.

These theoretical difficulties have furnished the material
for endless debate, I shall not pursue the matter in all
its intricacies, but I venture to point out that what is at-
tempted in ail these solutions is ultimately to make plain

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why the ruler of the universe does not order things as we
should order them if we had his power. Once we con-
fess, as Job finally did, that the plan of the universe is not
what we naively wish it would be, there is no problem of
evil For the whole difficulty arises because of our desire
to impute to the universe itself, or to the god who rules it,
purposes like our own; failing to find them, we are dis-
appointed, and are plunged into elaborate and intermin-
able debate.

The final insight of Job, though it seems to be con-
sistent with the orthodox popular religion, is really wholly
inconsistent with the inwardness of popular religion. The
God of the JBook of Job does not mimster to human de-
sires, and the story of Job is really the story of a man’s
renunciation of the belief in such a God. It is the story
of how a man learned to accept life maturely. The God
whose ways Job finally acknowledges is no longer a pro-
jection of Job’s desires. He is ‘like the God of Spinoza
who cannot be cajoled into returning the love of his wor-
shipper. He is, in short, the God of an impersonal reality.

Whether God is conceived as a creator of that reality,
who administers it inexorably, or whether he is identified
with reality and is conceived as the sum total of its laws,
or whether, as in the language of modern science, the name
of God is not employed at all, is a matter of metaphysical
taste. The great divide lies between those who think
their wishes are of more than human significance and
those who do not. For these latter the problem of evil
does not arise out of the difficulty of reconciling the
existence of evil with their assumptions. They do not as-
sume that reality must conform to human desire. The

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problem for them is wholly practical. It is the problem
of how to remove evil and of how to bear the evil which
cannot be removed.

Thus from the attempt to explain the ways of God in
the world as it now is, nature and human nature being
what they are, the center of interest is shifted to an attempt
to discover ways of equipping man to conquer evil. This
displacement has in fact taken place in the modern world.
In their actual practice men do not try to account for evil
in order that they may accept it; they do not deny evil in
order that they may not have to account for it; they explain
It in order that they may deal with it.

2. Superstition and Self-Consciousness

This change of attimde toward evil is not, as at first
perhaps it may seem, merely a new way of talking about
the same thing. It alters radically the namre of evil
Itself. For evil is not a quality of things as such. It is a
quality of our relation to them. A dissonance in music is
unpleasant only to a musical ear. Pain is an evil only if
someone suffers, and there are those to whom pain is
pleasure and most men’s evil their good. For things
are neutral and evil is a certain way of experiencing
them.

To realize this is to destroy the awfulness of evil. I
use the word 'awful’ in its exact sense, and I mean that in
abandoning the notion that evil has to be reconciled with
a theory of how the world is governed, we rob it of
universal significance. We deflate it. 'The psychological
consequences are enormous, for a very great part of all
human suffering lies not in the pain itself, but in the

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anxiety contributed by the meaning which we attach to it.
Lucretius understood this quite well, and in his superb
argument against the fear of death he reasoned that death
has no terror because nothing can be terrible to those who
no longer exist. Before we were born, he says, "we felt
no distress when the Poem from all sides came together to
do battle. . . . For he whom evil is to befall, must in his
own person exist at the very time it comes, if the misery
and suffering are haply to have any place at all.'’ St.
Thomas defines superstition as the vice of excess in reli-
gion, and in this sense of the word it may be said that the
effect of the modern approach is to take evils out of the
context cff superstition.

They cease to be signs and portents symbolizing the
whole of human destiny and become speafic and distin-
guishable situations which have to be dealt with. The
effect of this is not only to limit drastically the meaning,
and therefore the dreadfulness, of any evil, but to substi-
tute for a general sense of evil an analytical estimate of
particular evils. They are then seen to be of long dura-
tion and of short, preventable, curable, or inevitable. As
long as all evils are believed somehow to fit into a divine,
if mysterious, plan, the effort to eradicate them must seem
on the whole futile, and even impious. The history of
medical progress offers innumerable mstances of how
men have resisted the introduction of sanitary measures
because they dreaded to interfere with the providence of
God. It IS still felt, I believe, in many quarters, even in
medical circles, that to mitigate the labor pains in child-
birth is to blaspheme against the commandment that in
pain children shall be brought forth. An aura of dread

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surrounds evil as long as evil situations remain entangled
with a theory of divine government.

The realization that evil exists only because we feel it
to be painful helps us not only to dissociate it from this
aura of dread bur to dissociate ourselves from our own
feelings about it. This is a momentous achievement in
the inner life of man. To be able to observe our own
feelings as if they were objective facts, to detach ourselves
from our own fears, hates, and lusts, to examine them,
name them, identify them, understand their origin, and
finally to judge them, is somehow to rob them of their
imperiousness They are no longer the same feelings.
They no longer dominate the whole field of con:Jciousness
They seem no longer to command the whole energy of
our being By becoming conscious of them we in some
fashion or other destroy their concentration and diffuse
their energy into other cliannels We cease to be pos-
sessed by one passion; contrary passions retain their vital-
ity, and an equilibrium tends to establish itself.

Just what the psychological mechanism of all this is I
do not pretend to say It is something to which psycholo-
gists are giving increasing attention But since Hellenic
times the phenomenon which I have been describing has
been well known. It was undoubtedly what the Sophists
meant by the injunction: know thyself It was in large
measure to achieve control through detachment that
Socrates elaborated his dialectic, for the Socratic dialectic
is an instrument for making men self-conscious, and there-
fore the masters of their motives. Spinoza grasped this
principle with great clarity. ''An emotion,” he says,
"which IS a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we

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form a clear and distinct idea of it.” He goes on to say
that “insofar as the mind understands all things as neces-
sary, it has more power over the emotions, or is less pas-
sive to them.”

The more recent discoveries in the field of psychoanaly-
sis are an elaboration of this principle. They are based
on the discovery of Freud and Breuer at the close of the
last century that a catharsis of emotion is often obtained if
the patient can be made to recall, and thus to relive by
describing it, the emotional situatioil which troubles him.
The release of the psychic poison is known technically as
an abreaction. Where the new psychology supplements
the insights t)f the Sophists, of Socrates, and Spinoza, is in
the demonstration that there are powerful passions affea-
mg our lives of which it is impossible by ordinary effort of
memory “to form a clear and distina idea.” They are
said to be unconscious, or more accurately, I suppose, they
are out of the reach of the normal ‘consciousness Freud
and his school have invented an elaborate technic by
which the analyst is able frequently to help the patient
thread his way back through a chain of associations to the
buried passion and fetch it into consciousness.

The special technic of psychoanalysis can be tested only
by scientific experience. The therapeutic claims made by
psychoanalysts, and their theories of the functional dis-
orders, lie outside the realm of this disc-ussion. But the
essential principle is not a technical matter. Anyone can
confirm it out of his own experience. It has been discov-
ered and rediscovered by shrewd observers of human na-
ture for at least two thousand years. To become detached
from one’s passions and to understand them consciously

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IS to render them disinterested. A disinterested mmd is
harmonious with itself ^and with reality

This IS the principle by which a humanistic culture be-
comes bearable. If the principle of a theocratic culture is
dependence, obedience, conformity in the presence of a
superhuman power which administers reality, the prin-
ciple of humanism is detachment, understanding, and dis-
interestedness in the presence of reality itself.

3 Vtrtue

It can be shown, I think, that those qualities which
civilized men, regardless of their theologies and their al-
legiances, have agreed to call virtues, have disinterested-
ness as their inner principle. I am not talking now about
the eccentric virtues which at some time or other have
been held in great esteem, I am not talking about the vir-
tue of not playing cards, or of not drinking wine, or of not
eating beef, or of not eating pork, or of not admitting that
women have legs. These little virtues are historical acci-
dents which may or may not once have had a rational
origin. I am talking about the central virtues which are
esteemed by every civilized people. I am talking about
such virtues as courage, honor, faithfulness, veracity, jus-
tice, temperance, magnanimity, and love.

They would not be called virtues and held in high
esteem if there were no difficulty about them. There are
innumerable dispositions which are essential to living that
no one takes the trouble to praise. Thus it is not ac-
counted a virtue if a man eats when he is hungry or goes
to bed when he is ill. He can be depended upon to take
care of his immediate wants It is only those aaions which

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he cannot be depended upon to do, and yet are highly
desirable, that men call virtuous. They recognize that a
premium has to be put upon certain qualities if men are
to make the effort which is required to transcend their
ordinary impulses. The premium consists m describing
these desirable and rarer qualities as virtues. For virtue is
that kind of conduct which is esteemed by God, or public
opinion, or that less immediate part of a man’s personal-
ity which he calls his conscience.

To transcend the ordinary impulses is, therefore, the
common element in all virtue. Courage, for example, is
the Willingness to face situations from which it would
be more of less natural to run away. No one thinks it is
courageous to run risks unwittingly. The drunken driver
of an automobile, the boy playing with a stick of dynamite,
the man drinking water which he does not know is pol-
luted, ail take risks as great as those of the most renowned
heroes. But the fact that they do not know the risks, and
do not, therefore, have to conquer the fear they would
feel if they did know them, robs their conduct of all
courage. The test is not the uselessness or even the un-
desirability of their acts. It is useless to go over Niagara
Falls m a barrel. But it is brave, assuming the performer
to be m his right mind. It is a wicked thing to assassinate
a king. But if it is not done from ambush, it is brave,
however wicked and however useless.

Because courage consists in transcending normal fears,
the highest kind of courage is cold courage; that is to say,
courage in which the danger has been fully realized and
there is no emotional excitement to conceal the danger.
The world instantly recognized this in Colonel Lind-

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bergh's flight to Paris. He flew alone; he was not an
impetuous fool, but a man of the utmost sobriety of judg-
ment. He had no companion to keep his courage screwed
up; he knew exactly what he was doing, yet apparently
he did not realize the rewards which were m store for him.
The world understood that here was somebody who was
altogether braver than the average sensual man. For
Colonel Lindbergh did not merely conquer the Atlantic
Ocean; he conquered those things in himself which the
rest of us would have found unconquerable.

The cold courage of a man like Noguchi who, though
in failing health, went into one of the unhealthiest parts
of Afnca to study a deadly disease, could come only from
a nature which was overwhelmingly interested m objects
outside itself. Noguchi must have known exactly how
dangerous it was for him to go to Africa, and exactly how
horrible was the disease to which he exposed himself.
To have gone anyway is really to have cared for science
in a way which very few care for anything so remote and
impersonal. But even courage like Lindbergh’s and
Noguchi’s is more comprehensible than the kind of cour-
age which anonymous men have displayed. I am thinking
of the four soldiers at the Walter Reed Hospital who let
themselves be used for the study of typhoid fever. They
did not even have Lmdbergh’s interest in performing a
great feat or Noguchi’s mterest in science to buoy them up
and carry them past the point where they might have
faltered. Their courage was as near to absolute courage
as it is possible to imagine, and I who think this cannot
even recall their names.

To understand the inwardness of courage would be, I
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think, to have understood almost all the other important
Virtues. It is *'not only the chief est virtue and most dig-
nifies the haver,” but it embodies the principle of all
virtue, which is to transcend the immediacy of desire and
to live for ends which are transpersonal. Virtuous action
is condua which responds to situations that are more ex-
tensive, more complicated, and take longer to reach their
fulfillment, than the situations to which we instinctively
respond. An infant knows neither vice nor virtue because
It can respond only to what touches it immediately. A
man has virtue insofar as he can respond to a larger
situation. ^

He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct
though it IS inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to
do so. He has veracity if he says and believes what he
thinks is true though it would be easier to deceive others
or himself. He is just if he acknowledges the interests
of all concerned in a transaction and not merely his own
apparent interest. He is temperate if, in the presence of
temptation, he can still prefer Philip sober to Philip drunk.
He is magnanimous if, as Aristotle says, he cares ”more
for truth than for opinion,” speaks and aas openly, will
not live at the will of another, except it be a friend, does
not recollect injuries, does not care that he should be
praised or that others should be blamed, does not com-
plain or ask for help in unavoidable or trifling calamities.
For such a man, as the word 'magnanimous’ itself implies,
is "conversant with great matters.”

A man who has these virtues has somehow overcome
the inertia of his impulses. Their disposition is to respond
to the immediate situation, and not merely to the situation

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at the moment, but to the most obvious fragment of it, and
not only to the most obvious fragment, but to that aspect
which promises instant pleasure or pain. To have virtue
is to respond to larger situations and to longer stretches
of time and without much interest in their immediate
result m convenience and pleasure. It is to overcome the
impulses of immaturity, to detach one’s self from the ob-
jects that preoccupy it and from one’s own preoccupations.
There are many virtues in the catalogues of the moralists,
and they have many different names But they have a
common principle, which is detachment from that which
is apparently pleasant or unpleasant, and .,they have a
common quality, which is disinterestedness, and they
spring from a common source, which is maturity of
character.

Few men, if any, possess virtue in all its varieties
because few men are wholly mamred to the core of their
being. We are for the most part like fruit which is partly
ripened: there is sourness and sweetness in our natures.
This may be due to the casualness of our upbrmging; it
may be due to unknown congemtal causes ; it may be due
to functional and organic disease, to partial inferiorities of
mind and body. But it is due also to the fact that we can
give our full attention only to a few phases of our experi-
ence. With the equipment at our disposal we are forced
to specialize and to neglect very much. Hence the mature
scientist with petty ambitions and ignoble timidities.
Hence the realistic statesman who is a peevish husband
Hence the man who manages his affairs in masterly
fashion and bungles every personal relationship when he
is away from his office. Hence the loyal friend who is a

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crooked politician, the kind father who is a merciless
employer, the champion of mankind who is an intoler-
able companion. If any of these could carry over into
all their relaaohships the qualities which have made
them distinguished m some, they would be wholly
adult and wholly good It would not be necessary
to imagine the ideal character, for he would already
exist.

It IS out of these practical virtues that our conception of
virtue has been formed. We may be sure that no quality
is likely to have become esteemed as a virtue which did
not somewhere ^and sometime produce at least the appear-
ance of happiness. The virtues are grounded in experi-
ence; they are not idle suggestions inadvertently adopted
because somebody took it into his head one fine day to
proclaim a new ideal. There are, to be sure, certain
residual and obsolete virmes which no longer correspond
to anything in our own experience and now seem utterly
arbitrary and capricious. But the cardinal virtues corre-
spond to an experience so long and so nearly universal
among men of our civilization, that when they are under-
stood they are seen to contain a deposited wisdom of
the race.

4. Prom Clue to Practice

The wisdom deposited in our moral ideals is heavily
obscured at the present time. We continue to use the
language of morality, having no other which we can use.
But the words are so hackneyed that their meanings are
concealed, and it is very hard, especially for young people,
to realize that virtue is really good and really relevant.

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Morality has become so stereotyped, so thin and verbal,
so encrusted with pious fraud, it has been so much
monopolized by the tender-minded and the sentimental,
and made so odious by the outcries of foolish men and
sour old women, that our generation has almost forgotten
that virtue was not invented in Sunday schools but derives
originally from a profound realization of the character
of human life.

This sense of unreality is, I believe, due directly to the
widespread loss of genuine belief in the premises of
popular religion. Virtue is a product of human experi-
ence* men acquired their knowledge of the value of
courage, honor, temperance, veracity, faithfulness, and
love, because these qualities were necessary to their sur-
vival and to the attainment of happiness But this human
justification of virtue does not carry conviction to the im-
mature, and would not of itself break up the inertia of
their naive impulses Therefore, virtue which derives
from human insight has to be imposed on the immature
by authority; what was obtained on Sinai was not the
revelation of the moral law but divine authority to
teach It.

Now the very thing which made moral wisdom con-
vincing to our ancestors makes it unconvincing to modern
men. We do not live m a patriarchal society. We do not
live in a world which disposes us to a belief in theocratic
government. And therefore insofar as moral wisdom is
entangled with the premises of theocracy it is unreal to us
The very thing which gave authority to moral insight for
our forefathers obscures moral insight for us They lived
in the kind of world which disposed them to praaice

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virtue if it came to them as a divine commandment. A
thoroughly modernized young man to-day distrusts moral
wisdom precisely because it is commanded.

It is often said that this distrust is merely an aspect of
the normal rebellion of youth I do not believe it. This
distrust is due to a much more fundamental cause. It is
due not to a rebellion against authority but to an unbelief
in it. This unbelief is the result of that dissolution of the
ancient order out of which modern civilization is emerg-
ing, and unless we understand the radical character of
this unbelief we shall never understand the moral confu-
sion of this age We shall fail to see that morals taught
with authority are pervaded with a sense of unreality be-
cause the sense of authority is no longer real. Men will
not feel that wisdom is authentic if they are asked to
believe that it derives from something which does not
seem authentic.

We may be quite certain, therefore, that we shall not
succeed in making the traditional morality convincingly
authentic to modern men. The whole tendency of the age
is to make it seem less and less authentic. The effort to
impose it, nevertheless, merely deepens the confusion by
converting the discussion of morals from an examination
of experience into a dispute over its metaphysical sanc-
tions. The consequence of this dispute is to drive men,
especially the most sensitive and courageous, further away
from insight into virtue and deeper and deeper into mere
negation and rebellion. What they are actually rebelling
against is the theocratic system in which they do not be-
lieve. But because that system appears to them to claim a
vested interest in morality they empty out the baby with the

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bath, and lose all sense of the inwardness of deposited
wisdom.

For that reason the recovery of moral insight depends
upon disentangling virtue from its traditional sanctions
and the metaphysical framework which has hitherto sup-
ported It. It will be said, I know, that this would rob
virtue of its popular prestige. My answer is that in those
communities which are deeply under modern influences
the loss of belief in these very traditional sanctions and
this very metaphysical framework has robbed virtue of its
relevance. I should readily grant that for communities
and for individuals which are outside the orbit of modern-
ity, it IS neither necessary nor desirable to'* disentangle
morality from its ancient associations. It is also impos-
sible to do so, for when the ancestral order is genuinely
alive, there is no problem of unbelief. But where the
problem exists, when the ancient premises of morality have
faded into mere verbal acknowledgments, then these
ancient premises obscure vision. They have ceased to be
the sanctions of virtue and have become obstructions to
moral insight. Only by deliberately thinking their way
past these obstructions can modern men recover that inno-
cence of the eye, that fresh, authentic sense of the good
in human relations on which a living morality depends.

I have tried in these pages to do that for myself. I am
under no illusion as to the present value of the concep-
tions arrived at, I regard them simply as a probable clue
to the understanding of modernity. If the clue is indi-
cative, the more we explore the modern world the more
coherence it will give to our understanding of it, A true
insight is fruitful; it multiplies insight, until at last it not

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only illuminates a situation but provides a practical guide
to conduct I believe the insight of high religion into the
value of disinterestedness will, if pursued resolutely, un-
tangle the moral confusion of the age and make plain,
as It is not now plain, what we are really driving at in our
manifold activity, what we are compelled to want, what,
rather dimly now, we do want, and how to proceed about
achieving it. To say that is to say that I believe in the
hypothesis. I do believe in it. I believe that this valua-
tion of human life, which was once the possession of an
elite, now conforms to the premises of a whole civilization.

The proof of that must lie in a detailed and searching
examination the facts all about us. If the ideal of
human character which is prophesied in high religion is
really suitable and necessary in modern civilization, then
an examination ought to show that events themselves are
pregnant with it. If they are not, then all this is moon-
shine and cobwebs and cashes in the air. Unless circum-
stance and necessity are behind it, the insight of high
religion is still, as it has always been hitherto, a noble
eccentricity of the soul For men will not take it seri-
ously, they will not devote themselves to the discovery
and invention of ways of cultivating maturity, detachment,
and disinterestedness unless events conspire to drive them
to It.

The realization of this ideal is plainly a process of edu-
cation in the most inclusive sense of that term But it will
not do much good to tell mothers that they should lead
their children away from their childishness; an actual
mother, even if she understood so abstruse a bit of advice,
and did not reject it out of hand as a reflection upon the

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glory of childhood, would insist upon being told very
concretely what this good advice means and how with a
bawling infant in the cradle you go about cultivating his
capacity to be disinterested It is not much better to
offer the advice to school teachers; they will wish to know
what they must not do that they now do, and what they
must do diat they leave undone. But the answers to
these questions are no more to be had from the original
concept than are rules for breeding fine cattle to be had
from the theory of evolution and Mendel’s law. By the
use of the concept, psychologists and educators may, if the
concept is correa and if they are properly encouraged,
thread their way by dialectic and by experiment to prac-
tical knowledge which is actually usable as a method of
education and as a personal discipline.

If they are to do that they will have to see quite clearly
just how and in what sense the ideal of disinterestedness
is inherent and inevitable in the modern world. The
remaining chapters of this book are an attempt to do that
by demonstrating that in three great phases of human
interest, in business, in government, and in sexual rela-
tions, the ideal is now implicit and necessary.

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CHAPTER XII

THE BUSINESS OF THE GREAT SOCIETY

1. The InvenUon of Inventwn
One of the charaaeristics of the age we live in is that
we are forever trying to explain it. We feel that if we
understood it better we should know better how to live in
It, and should cease to be aliens who do not know the
landmarks of a strange country. There is, however, a
school of philosophic historians who argue that this sense
of novelty in the modern world is an illusion, and that as
a matter of faa mankind has passed before through the
same phase of the same inexorable cycle. The boldest of
them, like Oswald Spengler, cite chapter and verse to
show that there have been several of these great cycles of
development from incubation through maturity to decay,
and that our western civilization ^hich began about 900
A.D. is now in the phase which corresponds with the cen-
tury after Pericles in the classical world.

That the analogy is striking no reader of Spengler will
deny who can endure Spengler* s procrustean determina-
tion to make the evidence fit the theory. We can see the
growth of towns at the expense of the farms, the rise of
capitalism, the growth of international trade and finance,
a development of nationalism, of democracy, attempts at
the abolition of war through international organization,
and With it all a dissolution of the popular religion, of

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the traditional morality, and vast and searching inquiry
into the meaning of life. There is little doubt that the
speculation of the Greek philosophers seems extraordi-
narily fresh to us, because they were confronted with a
situation in many respects remarkably like our own

But however nicely such analogies are worked out they
are superficial and misleading. There is something radi-
cally new in the modern world, something for which there
is no parallel in any other civilization. This new thing is
usually described as power-driven machinery. Thus Mr.
Charles A. Beard says that 'what is called Western or
modern civilization by way of contrast with the civilization
of the Orient or Mediaeval times is at bottom acivilization
that rests upon machinery and science as distinguished
from one founded on agriculture or handicraft commerce.
It is in reality a technological civilization . . . and . . .
it threatens to overcome and transform the whole globe.'’
By way of illustrating how deeply machinery affects
human life, Mr. Beard says that because they are un-
touched by this machine civilization "there are more
fundamental resemblances between the culture of a peas-
ant in a remote village in Spain and that of a peasant in a
remote village in Japan than between the culture of a
Christian priest of the upper Pyrenees and that of a Baptist
clergyman in a thriving manufacturing town in Illinois.”

Mr. H. G. Wells uses much the same argument to
show that in spite of the apparent similarities there is an
essential difference between our civilization and the later
phases of the classical. "The essential difference,” he
says, "between the amassing of riches, the extinaion of
small farmers and small business men, and the phase of

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big finance in the latter centuries of the Roman republic
on the one hand, and the very similar concentration of
capital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on the
other, lies in the profound difference in the character of
labor that the mechanical revolution was bringing about.
Tlie power of the old world was human power; every-
thing depended ultimately upon the driving power of
human muscle, the muscle of ignorant and subjugated
men. A little animal muscle, supplied by draft oxen,
horse traction, and the like contributed. Where a weight
had to be lifted, men lifted it; where a rock had to be
quarried, men chipped it out; where a field had to be
ploughed, «men and oxen ploughed it; the Roman equiva-
lent of the steamship was the galley with its banks of
sweating rowers. . . . The Roman civilization was built
upon cheap and degraded human beings; modern civiliza-
tion is being rebuilt upon cheap mechanical power.''

These differences are genuine enough, and yet it is
doubtful whether Mr. Wells has described the really
''new thing in human experience." After all a great deal
of cheap man power is still used in conjunction with cheap
mechanical power; it is somewhat of an idealization to
talk as if the machine had supplanted the drudge. What
Mr. Wells has in mind, of course, is that in the Roman
world a vast proportion of mankind were doomed to
"purely mechanical drudgery" whereas in the modern
world there is tangible hope that they will be released
from it. They are not yet released from it, however, and
their hope of release rests upon die really new element in
human experience.

The various mechanical inventions from James Watt's
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Steam engine to the electric dishwasher and vacuum
cleaner are not this new element. All these inventions,
singly or collectively, though they have revolutionized the
manner of human life, are not the ultimate reason w^hy
men put such hope m machines. Their hope is not based
on the machines we possess. They are obviously a mixed
blessing. Their hope is based on the machines that are yet
to be made, and they have reason to hope because a really
new thing has come into the world. That thing is the
invention of invention.

Men have not merely invented the modern machines.
There have been machines invented since the earliest days,
incalculably important, like the wheel, like sailing ships,
like the windmill and the watermill But m modern
times men have invented a method of in\entmg, they have
discovered a method of discovery Mechanical progress
has ceased to be casual and accidental and has become
systematic and cumulative. We know, as no other people
ever knew before, that we shall make more and more per-
fect machines. When Mr. Beard says that "the machine
civilization differs from all others in that it is highly
dynamic, containing within itself the seeds of constant re-
construction,'' he is, I take it, referring to this supreme
discovery which is the art of discovery itself.

2. The Creative Principle in Modernity
Although the disposition to scientific tliought may be
said to have originated m remote antiquity, it was not
until the Sixteenth Century of our era that it ceased to
appear spasmodically and as if by chance The Greeks
had their schools on the shores of the zEgean, in Sicily,

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and in Alexandria, and in them some of the conclusions
and much of the spirit of scientific inquiry was imagina-
tively anticipated. But the conscious organized effort to
relate “general principles to irreducible and stubborn
facts/’ as Mr. Whitehead puts it, began about three hun-
dred years ago. The first society chiefly devoted to science
seems to have been founded by della Porta at Naples in
1560, but It was closed by the ecclesiastical authorities.
Forty years later the Accademia dei Lmcei was founded at
Rome with Galileo among its early members. The Royal
Sc3ciety of London was chartered in 1662. The French
Academy of Sciences began its meetings in 1666, the
Berlin Ac^emy in 1700, the American Philosophical
Association was proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1743
and organized in 1769.

The active pursuit of science is a matter, then, of only
a few hundred years. The practical consequences in the
form of useful inventions are still more recent. New-
comen’s air-and-steam engine dates from 1705, but it was
not until 1764 that James Watt produced a practicable
steam engine It was not until the beginning of the Nine-
teenth Century that invention really got under way and
began to transform the structure of civilization. It was
not until about 1850 that the importance of invention had
impressed itself upon the English people, yet they were
the first to experience the effects of the mechanical revo-
lution. They had seen the first railway, the first steam-
boat, the illumination of towns by gas, and the application
of power-driven machinery to manufacture. Professor
Bury fixes the Exhibition of London in 1851 as the event
which marks the public recogmtion of the role of science

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in modern civili2ation. The Prince Consort who orig-
inated the Exhibition said in his opemng speech that it
was designed “to give us a true test and a living picture
of the point of development at which the whole of man-
kind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting-
point from which the nations will be able to direct their
further exertions.’*

But this public recognition w'^as at first rather senti-
mental and gaping. The full realization of the place of
science in modern life came slowly, and only m our gen-
eration can It be said that political rulers, captains of in-
dustry, and leaders of thought have actually begun to
appreciate how central is science in our civilization, and
to act upon that realization In our time governments
have begun to take science seriously and to promote re-
search and invention not only in the art of war, but in
the interest of trade, agriculture, and public hygiene.
Great corporations have established laboratories of their
own, not merely for the perfecting of their own processes,
but for the promotion of pure research. Money has be-
come available in great quantities for scientific work in
the universities, and the educational curriculum down to
the lowest grades has begun to be reorganized not only
in order to train a minority of the population for research
and invention, but to train the great majority to under-
stand and use the machines and the processes which are
available.

The motives and the habits of mind which are thus
brought into play at the very heart of modern civilization
are mature and disinterested. That may not be the pri-
mary intention, but it is the inevitable result. No doubt

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governments encourage research in order to have powerful
weapons with which to overawe their neighbors ; no doubt
industries encourage research because it pays; no doubt
scientists and inventors are in some measure moved by the
desire for wealth and fame; no doubt the general public
approves of science because of the pleasures and conveni-
ences It provides, no doubt there is an intuitive sense in
modern communities that the prospects of survival both
for nations and for individuals are somehow related to
their command of scientific knowledge. But nevertheless,
whatever the motives which cause men to endow labora-
tories, to work patiently in laboratories or to buy the
products, tfie fact remains that inside the laboratory, at
the heart of this whole business, the habit of disinterested
realism in dealing widi the data is the indispensable habit
of mind Unless this habit of mind exists in the actual
research, all the endowments and honorary degrees and
prize awards will not produce the results desired. This is
an original and tremendous fact in human experience:
that a whole civilization should be dependent upon tech-
nology, that this technology should be dependent upon
pure science, and that this pure science should be depend-
ent upon a race of men who consciously refuse, as Mr.
Bertrand Russell has said, to regard their '‘own desires,
tastes, and interests as affording a key to the understand-
ing of the world.*'

When I say that the refusal is conscious I do not mean
merely that scientists tell themselves that they must ignore
their , prejudices. They have developed an elaborate
method for detecting and discounting their prejudices. It
consists of instruments of precision, an accurate vocabu-

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lary, controlled experiment, and the submission not only
of their results but of their processes to the judgment of
their peers This method provides a body m which the
spirit of disinterestedness can live, and it might be said
that modern science, not m its crude consequences but
in Its inward principle, not, that is to say, as manifested in
automobiles, electric refrigerators, and rayon silk, but in
the behavior of the men who invent and perfect these
things, is the actual realization in a practicable mode of
conduct which can be learned and practiced, of the insight
of high religion. The scientific discipline is one way in
which this insight, hitherto lyrical and personal^ and apart,
is brought down to earth and into direa and decisive
contact with the concerns of mankind.

It is no exaggeration to say that pure science is high
religion incarnate. No doubt the science we have is not
the whole incarnation, but as far as it goes it translates
into a usable procedure what in the teaching of the sages
has been an esoteric insight. Scientific method can be
learned. The learning of it matures the human character.
Its value can be demonstrated in concrete results Its im-
portance in human life is indisputable. But the insight of
high religion as such could be appreciated only by those
who were already mature; it corresponded to nothing in
the experience and the necessities of the ordinary man. It
could be talked about but not taught; it could inspire only
the few who were somehow already inspired. With the
discovery of scientific method the insight has ceased to be
an intangible and somewhat formless idea and has become
an organized effort which moves mankind more pro-
foundly than anything else in human affairs. Therefore,

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what was once a personal attitude on the part of a few
who were somewhat withdrawn and disregarded has be-
come the central principle in the careers of innumerable,
immensely influential, men.

Because the scientific discipline is, in fact, the creative
element in that which is distinctively modern, circum-*
stances conspire to enhance its prestige and to extend its
acceptance. It is the ultimate source of profit and of
power, and therefore it is assured of protection and en-
couragement by those who rule the modern state. They
cannot afford not to cultivate the scientific spirit: the
nation which does not cultivate it cannot hold its place
among the nations, the corporation which ignores it will
be destroyed by its competitors. The training of an ever
increasing number of pure scientists, of inventors, and of
men who can operate and repair machinery is, therefore,
a sheer practical necessity. The scientific discipline has
become, as Mr. Graham Wallas would say, an essential
part of our social heritage. For the machine technology
requires a population which in some measure partakes of
the spirit which created it.

Naturally enough, however, the influence of the scien-
tific spirit becomes more and more diluted the further one
goes from the work of the men who actually conceive, dis-
cover, invent, and perfect the modern machines. From
Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz who did the chief work
which made possible the wireless it is a long way to the
broker who sells radio stock or the householder with his
six-tube set. I have not been supposing that these latter
partake in any way of the original spirit which made the
radio possible. But it is a fact of enormous consequences,

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cumulative in its effect upon the education of succeeding
generations, that the radio, and all the other contrivances
around which modern civilization is constructed, should
be possible only by the increasing use of a scientific
discipline.

3. Naive Capitalism

The application of science to the daily affairs of men
was acclaimed at first with more enthusiasm than under-
standing. '"That early people,” said Buff on, speaking of
the Babylonians, 'was very happy, because it was very
scientific.” Entranced with the success of the Newtonian
physics and by the dazzling effea of inventions, the intel-
lectuals of the Eighteenth Century persuaded themselves
that science was a messianic force which would liberate
mankind from pain, drudgery, and error. It was believed
that science would somewhat mysteriously endow man-
kind with invincible power over the forces of nature,
and that men, if they were released from the bondage of
religious custom and belief, could employ the power of
science to their own consummate happiness. The mechani-
cal revolution, in short, was inaugurated on the theory
that the natural man must be liberated from moral con-
ventions and that nature must be subjugated by me-
chanical instruments.

There are intelligible historical reasons why our great
grandfathers adopted this view. They found themselves
in a world regulated by the customs and beliefs of a
landed society. They could not operate their factories
successfully in such a society, and they rebelled fiercely
against the customs which restricted them. That rebellion

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was rarionaiaed in the philosophy of laissez-faire which
meant in essence that machine industry must not be inter-
fered With by landlords and peasants who had feudal
rights, nor by governments which protected those rights.
On the positive side this rebellion expressed itself in
' declarations of the rights of man. These declarations
were a denial of the vested rights of men under the old
landed order and an assertion of the rights of men, par-
ticularly the new middle-class men, who proposed to
make the most of the new industrial and mechanical order.
By the rights of men they meant primarily freedom of
contract, freedom of trade, freedom of occupation — those
freedoms, that is to say, which made it possible for the
new employer to buy and sell, to hire and fire without
being accountable to anyone.

The prophet of this new dispensation was Adam Smith.
In the Wealth of Nations he wrote that

All systems either of preference or of restraint . . .
being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple
system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord
Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice,
is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way,
and to bring both his industry and capital into competition
with those of any other man, or order of men.

The employing class in the early days of capitalism
honestly believed, and indeed its less enlightened mem-
bers still believe to this very day, that somehow the gen-
eral welfare will be served by trusting naively to the
acquisitive instincts of the employing capitalist. Thus at
the outset the machine technology was applied under the
direction of men who scorned as sentimental, when they

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did not regard as subversive, that disinterestedness which
alone makes possible the machine technology itself. They
did not understand science. They merely exploited cer-
tain of the inventions which scientists produced. What
they believed, insofar as they had any philosophy, was
that there exists a preestablished harmony in the uni-
verse— an ''obvious and simple system of natural liberty,’*
in Adam Smith’s language, "which establishes itself of its
own accord” — ^by which if each man naively pursued his
primitive impulse to have and to hold in competition with
other men, peace, prosperity, and happiness would ensue.

They did not ensue. And the social history of the last
seventy-five years has in large measure been concerned
with the birth pains of an industrial philosophy that will
really suit the machine technology and the nature of man.
For the notion that an intricate and delicately poised in-
dustrial mechanism could be operated by uneducated men
snatching competitively at profits was soon exposed as a
simple-minded delusion.

It was discovered that if each banker was permitted to
do what seemed to him immediately most profitable, the
result was a succession of disastrous inflations and defla-
tions of credit; that if natural resources in oil, coal, lum-
ber, and the like were subjected to the competitive prin-
ciple, the result was a shocking waste of irreplaceable
wealth ; that if the hirmg and firing of labor were carried
on under absolute freedom of contract, a whole chain of
social evils in the form of cliild labor, unsuitable labor for
women, sweating, unemployment, and the importation of
cheap and unassimilable labor resulted; that if business
men were left to their own devices the consumer of neces-

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sary goods was helpless when he was confronted with
industries in which there was an element of monopoly.
There is no need here to recount the well-known story of
how in every modern community the theory of free compe-
tition has in the course of the last generation been modi-
fied by legislation, by organi2ed labor, by organized busi-
ness Itself. So little has laissez-faire worked under actual
experience that all the powers of the government have
actually had to be invoked to preserve a certain amount of
compulsory "free -competition.” For the industrial ma-
chine, as soon as it passes out of the early phase of rough
exploitation in virgin territory, becomes unmanageable by
naively competitive and acquisitive men.

4. The Credo of Old-Style Business

It was frequently pointed out by moralists like Ruskin
and William Morris, and by churchmen as well, that this
"obvious and simple system of natural liberty” by which
"every man was left perfectly free to pursue his own in-
terest his own way,” was not only contrary to the dogmas
of the popular religion but irreconcilable with moral wis-
dom. The credo of the unregenerate business man was
utterly atheistical in its premises, for it displaced the no-
tion that there is any higher will than his own to which
the employer is accountable. It was more than atheistical,
however; it was, in Aristotle’s sense of the word, barbar-
ous in that it implied "the living as one likes” with vir-
tually complete acquiescence in the supremacy of the
acquisitive instina.

There is no reason to suppose that such theoretical
comments on the credo of naive capitalism did more than

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rub off a little of its unction. Capitalism may be, as Mr.
Maynard Keynes has said, ‘^absolutely irreligious . , .
often, though not always, a mere congeries of possessors
and pursuers/’ Were the credo workable in practice,
some way would have been found of anointing it with
attractive phrases. The real reason for the gradual aban-
donment of the credo, proclaimed by Adam Smith and
repeated so steadily since his day, is that the credo of naive
capitalism is deeply at variance with the real character of
modern industry. It rests upon false premises, is therefore
contradicted by experience, and has proved to be
unworkable.

The system of natural liberty assumes thar^if each man
pursues his own interest his own way, each man will pro-
mote his interest. There is an unanalyzed fallacy in this
theory which makes it utterly meaningless. It is assumed
that each man knows his own interest and can therefore
pursue It. But that is precisely what no man is certain to
know, and what few men can possibly know if they con-
sult only their own impulses. There is nothing m the
natural equipment of man which enables him to know
intuitively whether it will be profitable to increase his
output or reduce it, to enter a new line of business, to buy
or to sell, or to make any of the other thousand and one
decisions on which the conduct of business depends.
Since he is not born with this wisdom, since he does not
automatically absorb it from the air, to pursue his own
interest his own way is a fairly certain way to disaster.

The fallacy of the theory of natural liberty is undetected
in a bonanza period of industrial development. Where
the business man has unexhausted natural resources to

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draw upon, where there is a surplus of customers compet-
ing for his goods, he can with naive and furious energy
pursue his own interests his own way and reap enormous
profits. There is no real resistance from the outside; there
are no stubborn and irreducible faas to which he must
adjust himself. He can proceed with an infantile phil-
osophy to achieve success. But this bonanza period when
the omnipotence of the capitalist is unthwarted, and his
omniscience therefore assumed, soon comes to an end. In
advanced communities the mere multiplication of indus-
tries produces such a complicated environment that the
business man is compelled to substitute considered policies
for his intumons, objective surveys for his guesses, and
conferences world without end for his natural liberties.

What has upset the idea of the old-style business man
that he knows what's what is that the relevant facts are
no longer visible. The owner of a primitive factory
might have known all his working men and all his cus-
tomers; the keeper of a little neighborhood shop may still,
to a certain extent, know personally his whole business.
But for most men to-day the facts which matter vitally to
them are out of sight, beyond their personal control, in-
tricate, subject to more or less unpredictable changes, and
even with highly technical reporting and analysis almost
unintelligible to the average man.

It IS, of course, the machine process itself which has
created these complications. Men are forced to buy and
sell in markets that for many commodities are world-wide:
they do not buy and sell in one market but in many mar-
kets, in markets for raw materials, m markets for semi-
finished goods, in wholesale and retail markets, in labor

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markets, in the money market. They employ and are
employed in corporate organizations which are owned
here, there, and everywhere. They compete not only with
their obvious competitors in the same line of business, but
with competitors in wholly different lines of business,
automobiles with railroads, railroads with ships, cotton
goods with silk and silk with artificial silk, pianos with
furs and cigarettes with chewing gum. The modern en-
vironment is invisible, complex, without settled plan,
subtly and swiftly changing, offering innumerable choices,
demanding great knowledge and imaginative effort to
comprehend it.

It is not a social order at all as the Gre^ city state or
the feudal society was a social order. It is rather a field
for careers, an arena of talents, an ordeal by trial and
error, and a risky speculation. No man has an established
position in the modem world. There is no system of
rights and duties to which he is clearly subject. He moves
among these complexities which are shrouded in obscurity,
making the best he can out of what httle it is possible for
him to know.

5. Old-Style Reform and Revolution

Naive capitalism — that is to say, the theory of each for
himself according to such light as he might happen to
possess — ^produced such monstrous evils the world over
that an anti-capitalist reaction was the inevitable result.
What had happened was that the most intricate and con-
sequential tedinology which man has ever employed on
this planet was given over to the direction of a class of
enterprising, acquisitive, uneducated, and undisciplined

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men. No doubt it could not have been otherwise. The
only discipline that was known was the discipline of cus-
tom m a society of farmers, hand-workers, and traders.
The only education available was one based on the
premises of the past. The revolution in human affairs
produced by the machine began slowly, and no one could
have anticipated its course. It would be absurd, therefore,
to complain in retrospect over the fact that no one was
prepared for the industrial changes which took place.
The only absurdity, and it is still a prevalent one, is to go
on supposing that the political philosophy and the '‘eco-
nomic laws** which were extemporized to justify the
behavior of tiie first bewildered capitalists have any real
bearing upon modern industry.

But it is almost equally absurd to take too seriously the
'‘reforms** and “solutions** which were devised by kind-
hearted men to alleviate the pains suffered by those who
were hurt by the results of this early capitalist control of
the machine. These proposals, when they are examined,
turn out almost invariably to have been proposals for
coercmg or for abolishing the then masters of industry.
I do not mean to deny the utility of the long series of leg-
islative enactments which began about the middle of the
Nineteenth Century and are still being elaborated. The
factory aas, the regulatory laws, the measures designed
to protect the consumers against fraud were, looked at
singly, good, bad, or indifferent. As a whole they were
a necessary attempt to police those who had been left free
to pursue their own interest their own way. But when
it has been said that they were necessary, and that they
are still necessary, it is important to realize just what they

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imply. They imply that the masters of industry are on-
regenerate and will remain unregenerate. The whole ef-
fort to police capitalism assumes that the capitalist can
be civilized only by means of the police. The trouble with
this theory is that there is no way to make sure that the
policemen will themselves be civilized It presupposes
that somehow politicians and office-holders will be wise
enough and disinterested enough to make business* men
do what they would not otherwise do. The fundamental
problem, which is to find a way of directing industry
wisely, is not solved. It is merely deposited on the door-
steps of the politician.

The revolutionary programs sponsored by the socialists
in the half century before the Great War were based on the
notion that it is impossible to police the capitalist-em-
ployers and that, therefore, they should be abolished. In
their place functionaries were to be installed. The theory
was that these functionaries, being hired by the state and
being deprived of all incentive for personal profit, would
administer the industrial machine disinterestedly. The
trouble with this theory is in its assumption that the re-
moval of one kind of temptation, namely, the possibility
of direa personal pecuniary profit — ^will make the func-
tionaries mature and disinterested men.

This is nothing but a new variant of the ascetic prin-
ciple that it is possible to shut off an undesirable impulse
by thwarting it. Human nature does not work that way.
The mere frustration of an impulse like acquisitiveness
produces either some new expression of that impulse or
disorders due to its frustration. It produces, that is to say,
either corruption or the lethargy, the pedantry, and the

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ofEciousness which are the diseases of bureaucracy the
world over. The socialists are right, as the early Chrfs-
tians were right, in their profound distrust of the acquisi-
tive instinct as the dominant motive in society. But they
are wrong in supposing that by transferring the command
of industry from business men to socialist officials they
can m any fundamental sense alter the acquisitive instinct.
That can be done only by refining the human character
through a better understanding of the environment. I do
not mean to say that a revolution like the Russian does not
syveep away a vast amount of accumulated rubbish, I am
talking not about the salutary destruction which may ac-
company aTevolution, but of the problem which confronts
the successful revolutionists when they have to carry on
the necessary affairs of men.

When that time comes they are bound to find that the
administration of industry under socialism no less than
under capitalism depends upon the character of the ad-
ministrators. Corrupt, stupid, grasping funaionaties will
make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid,
selfish, and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
There is no escape from this elementary truth, and ail
social policies which attempt to ignore it must come to
grief. They are essentially utopian. The early doarine of
laissez-jaire was utopian because it assumed that unre-
generate men were destined somehow to muddle their way
to a harmonious result. The early socialism was utopian
because it assumed that these same unregenerate men,
once the laws of property had been altered, would some-
how muddle their way to a harmonious result. Both
ignored the chief lesson of human experience, which is

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the insight of high religion, that unregenerate men can
only muddle into muddle

A dim recognition of this truth has helped to inspire
the procedure of the two most recent manifestations of
the revolutionary spirit I refer to bolshevism and to
fascism. It is proper, I believe, to talk of them as one
phenomenon for their fundamental similarities, as most
everyone but the bolshevists and the fascists themselves
has noted, are much greater than their superficial differ^
ences. They were attempts to cure the evils resulting
from the breakdown of a somewhat primitive form of
capitalism In neither Russia nor Italy had modern indus-
trialism passed beyond its adolescent phase! In both
countries the prevailing social order for the great mass
of people was still pre-machine and pre-industnai In
both countries the acids of modernity had not yet eaten
deeply into the religious disposition of the people. In
both countries the natural pattern of all government was
still the primitive pattern of the hierarchy with an abso-
lute sovereign at the top. The bolshevik diaatorship and
the fascist dictatorship, underneath all their modernist
labels and theories, are feudal military organizations
attempting to subdue and administer the machine tech-
nology.

The theorists of the two dictatorships are, however,
men educated under modern influences, and the result is
that their theories are an attempt to explain the primitive
behavior of the two dictatorships in terms which are con-
sistent with modern ideas. The formula reached m both
instances is the same one. The diaatorships are said to
be temporary. Their purpose, we are told, is to put the

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new social order into effect, and to keep it going long
enough by dictation from on top to give time for a new
generation to grow up which will be purged of those
vices which would make the new order unworkable. The
bolshevisrs and fascists regard themselves as ever so much
more realistic than The old democratic socialists and the
Utssez-jat^e liberals whom they have executed, exiled, or
dosed with castor oil. In an important sense they are
more realistic. They have fecognized that a substitute
for primitive capitalism cannot be inaugurated or admin-
istered by a generation which has been schooled m the
ways of primitive capitalism And therefore the oligarchy
of dictators,'' as a conscious, enlightened, superior, and
heavily armed minority, propose to administer the indus-
trial machine as trustees until there is a generation ready
to accept the responsibilities.

It would be idle to predict that they will not succeed.
But It IS reasonable, I believe, to predict that if they suc-
ceed It will be because they are administering relatively
simple industrial arrangements. It is precisely because
the economic system of Russia is still fundamentally pre-
capitalist and pre-mechanical that the feudal organization
of the bolshevists is most likely to survive. Because the
economic system of Italy is more modern than Russia s,
the future of the fascist dictatorship is much less assured.
For insofar as the machine technology is advanced, it
becomes complex, delicate, and difficult to manage by com-
mands from the top.

6. The Diffusion of the Acquisitive Instinct
While both the bolshevists and the fascists look upon
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themselves as pathfinders of progress, ic is fairly dear,
I think, that they are, in the literal meaning of the term,
reactionary. They have won their victories among the
people to whom modern large scale industrial organiza-
tion is still an unnatural and alien thing. It is no accjdent
that fascism or bolshevism took root in Italy and Spam,
but not in Germany and England, m Hungary but not
in Austria, in Poland but not m Czechoslovakia, in Russia
but not in Scandinavia, in China but not in Japan, in
Central America but not in Canada or the United States.
Dictatorship, based on a military hierarchy, administering
the affairs of the community on behalf of the "nation”
or of the "proletariat,” is nothing but a return to the
natural organization of society in the pre-machine age.
Some countries, like Russia, Mexico, and China, for
example, are still living in the pre-machine age Others,
like Italy, had become only partially industrialized when
they were subjected to such strains by the War that they
reverted to the feudal pattern of behavior. Unable to
master the industrial process by methods which are appro-
priate to it, the fascists and the bolshevists are attempting
to master it by methods which antedate it. That is why
military dictatorship in a country like Mexico may be
looked upon as the normal type of social control, whereas
in Italy it is regressive and neurotic Feudal habits are
appropriate to a feudal society; in a semi-industrialized
nation they are a social disease. It is the disease of
frightened and despairing men who, having failed to
adjust themselves to the reality of the industrial process,
try, by main force and awkwardness, to adjust the machine
process to a pre-machine mentality,

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The more primitive the machine process is — that is,
the more nearly it resembles the petty handicrafts of
earlier days — the better are the chances for survival of a
bolshevist or fascist dictatorship. Where the machine
technology is really established and advanced it is simply
unmanageable by militarized functionaries. For when
the process has become infinitely complicated, the sub-
division of function is carried so far, the internal adjust-
ments are so numerous and so varied that no collection
of oligarchs in a capital city, however much they may look
like supermen, can possibly direct the industrial system.
In Its advanced stages, as it now exists in England, Ger-
many, or the United States, nobody comprehends the sys-
tem as a whole. One has only to glance over the financial
pages of an American newspaper, to look at the list of
corporations doing business, to try and imagine the myriad
daily decisions at a thousand points which their business
involves, in order to realize the bewildering complexity
of modern industrial society To suppose that all that
can be administered, or even directed, from any central
point by any human brain, by any cabinet of officeholders
or cabal of revolutionists, is simply to have^ failed to take
it in. Here is the essential reason why bolshevism and
fascism are, as we say, un-American. They are no less
un-Belgian, un-German, un-English. For they are umn-
dustrial.

The same reasons which make dictatorship unworkable
are rapidly rendering obsolete the attempts to reform
industry by policing it. Every year as the machine tech-
nology becomes more elaborated, the legislative control
for which the pre-war progressives fought becomes less

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effective. It becomes more and more difficult for legis-
latures to make laws to protect the workers which really
fit the rapidly changmg conditions of work. Hence the
tendency to put the real law-making power in the hands of
administrative officials and judges who can adjust the
general purpose of the law to the unciassifiable facts of
industry. The whole attempt to regulate public utilities m
the interest of the consumer is chaotic, for these organiza-
tions, by their intricacies, their scale, and their constant
revolutions in technology, tend to escape the jurisdiction
of officials exercising a local jurisdiaion. The current out-
cry against the multiplication of laws and the meddling of
legislatures is in part, but not wholly, the oufcry of old-
fashioned business men demanding their old natural lib-
erty to pursue their own interest their own way The
outcry is due no less to a recognition that the industrial
process is becoming too subtly organized to be policed
successfully by the wholesale, uninformed enactments of
legislatures.

Yet the very thing which makes an advanced industrial
organization too complex to be directed by a dictatorship,
or to be policed by democratic politicians, is forcing the
leaders of industry to evolve forms of self-control When
I say that they are being forced to do this I am not
referring to those ostentatiously benevolent things which
are done now and then as sops to Cerberus. There is a
certain amount of reform undertaken voluntarily by men
who profess to fear 'bolshevism,* and if not bolshevism,
then Congress. That is relatively unimportant. So also
is the discovery that it pays to cultivate the good will of
the public. What I am referring to is the fact that the

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sheer complexity of the industrial system would make it
unmanageable to business men, no less than to politicians
or dictators, if business men were not learning to organize
its control.

It is the necessity of stabilizing their own business, of
directing technical processes which are beyond the under-
standing of stockholders, of adjusnng the supply and
demand of the multitudinous elements they deal in, which
is the compelling force behind that divorce between man-
agement and ownership, that growing use of experts and
of statistical measurements, and that development of trade
associations, of conferences, committees, and councils,
With which modern industry is honeycombed. The cap-
tain of industry m the romantic sense tends to disappear
in highly evolved industrial organizations. His thunder-
ing commands are replaced by the decisions of executives
who consult with representatives of the interests involved
and check their opinions by the findmgs of experts. The
greater the corporation the more the shareholders and the
directors lose the actual direction of the institution. They
cannot direct the corporation because they do not really
know what it is and what it is doing. That knowledge
is subdivided among the executives and bureau chiefs and
consultants, all of them on salary; each of them is so
relatively small a factor in the whole that his personal
success is in very large degree bound up with the success
of the institution. A certain amount of jealousy, intrigue,
and destructive pushing, of office politics, in short, natu-
rally prevails, men being what they are. But as compared
with the old-style business man, the ordinary executive
in a great corporation is somethmg quite strange. He is

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SO little the monarch of all he surveys, his experience is so
continually with stubborn and irreducible faas, he is so
much compelled to adjust his own preferences to the
preferences of others, that he becomes a relatively disin-
terested person. The more clearly he realizes the nature
of his position in industry, the more he tends to submit his
desires to the discipline of objective information. And
the more he does this the less dominated he is by the
acquisitiveness of immamrity. He may on the side gamble
acquisitively in the stock market or at the race track, but
in relation to his business his acquisitive instinct tends to
become diffused and to be absorbed in the job itself.

7. Ideals

It is my impression that when machine industry
reaches a certain scale of complexity it exerts such pres-
sure upon the men who nm it that they cannot help
socializing it. They are subjea to a kind of economic
selection under which only those men survive who are
capable of taking a somewhat disinterested view of their
work. A mature industry, because it is too subtly organ-
ized to be run'by naively passionate men, puts a premium
upon men whose characters are sufficiently matured to
make them respea reality and to discount their own
prejudices.

When the machine technology is really advanced, that
is to say when it has drawn great masses of men within
the orbit of its influence, when a corporauon has become
really great, the old distinction between public and pri-
vate interest becomes very dim. I think it is destined
largely to disappear. It is difficult even to-day to say

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■whether the great railways, the General Electric Company,
the United States Steel Corporation, the bigger insurance
companies and banks are public or private institutions.
When institutions reach a point where the legal owners
are virtually disfranchised, when the direction is m the
hands of salaried executives, technicians, and experts who
hold themselves more or less accountable in standards of
conduct to their fellow professionals, when the ultimate
control is looked upon by the direaors not as "business”
but as a trust, it is not fanciful to say, as Mr. Keynes has
said, that "the battle of socialism against unlimited private
profit is being won in detail hour by hour.”

Insofar a# industry itself evolves its own control, It
will regain its liberty from external interference. To say
that is to say simply that the "natural liberty” of the
early business man was imworkable because the early
business man was unregenerate: he was immamre, and
he was therefore acquisitive. The only kind of liberty
which is workable in the real -world is the liberty of
the disinterested man, of the man who has transformed
his passions by an understanding of necessity. He can,
as Confucius said, follow what his heart desires without
transgressing what is right. For he has learned to desire
what is right.

The more perfealy we understand the implications
of the machine technology upon which our civilization
is based, the easier it will be for us to live with it. We
shall discern the ideals of our industry in the necessities
of industry itself. They are the direaion in which it must
evolve if it is to fulfill itself. That is what ideals are.
They are not hallucinations. They are not a collection

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of pretty and casual preferences Ideals are an imagina-
tive understanding of that which is desirable m that which
is possible As we discern the ideals of the machine
technology we can consciously pursue them, knowing that
we are not vainly trying to impose our casual prejudices,
but that we are m harmony with the age we live in.

£2593

CHAPTER XIII

GOVERNMENT IN THE GREAT SOCIETY
1. Loyalty

The difficulty of discovering an industrial philosophy
which fits machine industry on a large scale has proved
less trying than the discovery of a political philosophy
which fits the modern state. I do not know why this
should be sft unless it be that, as compared with politicians,
business men have had a closer opportunity to observe and
more pressing reasons for trying to understand the trans-
formation wrought by machinery and scientific invention.
Certainly even the best political thinking is notably
inferior in realism and in pertinence to the economic
thinking which now plays so important a part in the
direction of industry. To a very considerable degree the
writer on politics to-day is about where the economist was
when all economic theory began and for all praaical pur-
poses seemed to end with Robinson Crusoe and his man
Friday. Nobody takes political science very seriously, for
nobody is convinced tliat it is a science or that it has any
important bearing on politics.

In very considerable measure political theory in the
modern world is sterilized by its own ideas. There have
been passed down from generation to generation a collec-
tion of concepts which are so hallowed and so dense that
their only use is to exate emotions and to obscure insight.

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How many of us really know what we are talking about
when we use words like the state, sovereignty, independ-
ence, democracy, representative government, national
honor, liberty, and loyalty? Very few of us, I think,
could define any of these terms under cross-examination,
though we are prepared to shed blood, or at least ink,
in their behalf. These terms have ceased to be intellectual
instruments for apprehending the facts we have to deal
with and have become push buttons which touch off
emotional reflexes.

As good a way as any to raise the temperature of
political debate is to talk about loyalty. Everybody
regards himself as loyal and resents any impufation upon
his loyalty,, yet even a cursory inspection of this term
will show, I think, that it may mean any number of
different things It is clearest when used in a military
sense. A loyal soldier is one who obeys his superior
officer, A loyal officer is one who obeys his commander-
in-chief. But just exactly what is a loyal commander-in-
chief cannot be told so easily. He is loyal to the nation.
He is loyal to the best interests of the nation. But what
those best interests may be, whether they mean making
peace or carrying the war into the enemy’s country, is an
exceedingly debatable question. When the citizen’s loy^
alty is in question the whole matter becomes immensely
subtle. Must he be loyal to every law and every com-
mand issued by the established authorities, kings, legis-
lators, and aldermen? There are many who would say
that this is the definition of civic loyalty, to obey the
law Without qualifications while it is a law. But such
definition puts the tamt of disloyalty on almost all citizens

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of the modem state. For the fact is that all the laws on
the books are not even known, and that a considerable
portion are entirely disregarded, and many it is impossible
to obey The definition, moreover, places outside the pale
many who rank as great patriots, men who defied the
law out of loyalty to some principle which the lawmakers
have rejected. But what makes matters even more com-
plicated IS the fact that in modern commumties the prin-
ciple IS accepted that the commands of the established
authorities not only may be criticized but that they ought
to be.

At this stage of political development the military
element in k)yalty has virtually disappeared. The idea
of toleration, of freedom of speech, and above all the
idea of organized opposition, alters radically the attributes
of the sovereign. For a sovereign who has to be obeyed
but not believed in, whose decisions are legitimate matters
of dispute^ who may be displaced by his bitterest oppo-
nents, has lost all semblance of ommpotence and omnis-
cience. '’He has sovereignty,” wrote Jean Bodin, ’who,
after God, acknowledges no one greater than himself.”
Our governors command only for the time being — and
within strict limits. Their authority is only such as they
can win and hold. Political loyalty under these condi-
tions, whatever else it may be, is certainly not unqualified
allegiance to those who hold office, to the policies they
pursue, or even to the laws they enaa. Neither the
government as it exists, nor its conduct, nor even the con-
stitution by which it operates, exercises any ultimate claim
upon the loyalty of the atizen. The most one can say,
I think, IS that the loyal citizen is one who loves his coun-
try and regards the status quo as an arrangement which he

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is at liberty to modify only by argument, according to
well-understood rules, without violence, and with due
regard for the interests and opinions of his fellow men.
If he IS loyal to this ideal of political conduct he is as
loyal as the modern state can force him to be, or as it
is desirable that he should be.

2. The Evolutton of Loyalty

Broadly speaking, the evolution of political loyalty
passes through three phases. In the earliest, the most
primitive, and for almost all men the most natural,
loyalty is allegiance to a chieftain; in the middle phase
it tends to become allegiance to an institution — that is to
say, to a corporate, rather than to a human, personality;
and in the last phase it becomes allegiance to a pattern
of conduct. The kind of government which any com-
munity is capable of operating is very largely determined
by the kind of loyalty of which its members are
capable.

It is plain, for example, that among a people who are
capable only of loyalty to another human being the politi-
cal system is bound to take the shape of a hierarchy, m
which each man is loyal to his superior, and the man at
the top is loyal to God alone. Such a society will be
feudal, military, theocratic. If it is successfully organized
it will be an ordered despotism, culminating, as the feudal
system did, in God’s Vice-gerent on earth. If it is unsuc-
cessfully organized, as for example, m the more backward
countries of Central America to-day, the system of per-
sonal allegiances will produce little factions each with its
chief, all of them contending for, without quite achieving,
absolute power. This type of organization is so funda-

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mentally human that it prevails even m communities
which think they have outgrown it. Thus it appears m
what Americans call a political machine, which is nothing
but a hierarchy of professional politicians held together
by profitable personal loyalties. The political boss is a
demilitarized chieftain in the direct line of descent from
his prototypes.

T^e modern world has come to regard organization on
the basis of human allegiances as alien and dangerous
Yet the political machine exists even in the most advanced
communities. The reason for that is obvious. With the
enfranchisement of virtually the whole adult population,
political po\5fer has passed into the hands of a great mass
of people most of whom are altogether incapable of loy-
alty to insatutions, much less to ideas. They do not
understand them. For these voters the only kind of politi-
cal behavior is through allegiance to a human superior,
and modern democracies are considered fortunate if the
political leaders and bosses on whom these human allegi-
ances converge are relatively loyal to the insatutions of
the country. This, for example, is the meaning of the
dramatic speech in whicli President Calles on September 1,
1928, voluntarily renounced the continuation of his own
dictatorship. "For the first time in Mexican history,”
he said, "the Republic faces a situation/' (owing to the
assassination of General Obregon) whose doirunant note
is the lack of a military leader, which is gomg to make
it finally possible for us to direct the policy of the country
into truly institutional channels, striving to pass once for
ail from our historical condition of one-man rule to the
higher, more dignified, more useful, and more civilized
condition of a nation of laws and institutions.” • It is

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hardly to be supposed that President Calies thought that
the Mexican people as a whole could pass once for all
from their historical condition of one-man rule. What
he meant was that the political chieftains to whom the
people were loyal ought thereafter to arrange the succes-
sion and to exercise power not as seemed desirable to
them, or as they might imagine that God had privately
commanded them, but in accordance with objective rules
of political condua.

The conceptions of sovereignty which we inherit are
derived from the primitive system of personal allegiances.
That is why the conception of sovereignty has become
increasingly confused as modern avilization has become
more complex. In the Middle Ages the theory reached
its symmetrical perfection. Mankind was conceived as a
great organism in which the spiritual and temporal
hierarchies were united as the soul is united with the body
in “an inseverable conneaion and an unbroken interaction
which must display itself in every part and also through-
out the whole.” But of course even in the Middle Ages
the symmetry of this conception was marred by the fierce
disputes between the Emperors and the Popes. After the
Sixteenth Cenmry the whole conception began to dis-
integrate. There appeared a congeries of monarchs each
claiming to rule in his territory by divine right. But
obviously when there are many agents of the Lord ruling
men, and when they do not agree, the theory of sov-
ereignty in its moral aspeas is in grave^ difficulties.

As time went on, limitations of all lands began to be
imposed upon sovereigns. The existence at the same time
of many sovereigns produced the need of international
law, for obviously there could have been no international

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law in a world where all of mankind, barring infidels who
did not have to be considered, were under one sovereign
power. The limitations imposed by international law
from without were accompanied by limitations imposed
from within.

These limitations from within were based on quite
practical considerations. There grew up slowly in the
Middle Ages the idea that the State originated "in a
contract of Subjection maSe between People and Ruler.”
The first modern writer to argue effectively that govern-
ment was based not on a warrant from the Lord, but
on a "social compaa” is said to have been Richard Hooker,
a clergyman *of the Established Church, who held, in 1594,
that the royal authority was derived from a contract
between the king and the people. This idea soon became
popular, for it suited the needs of all those who did not
participate in the privileges of the absolute monarchy.
It suited not only the Church of England, when as in
Hooker’s time it was assailed, but also the dissenting
churches, and then the rising middle class whose ambi-
tions were frustrated by the landed nobles with the king
at their head. The doctrine of the social compaa was
expounded in many different forms in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries by men like Milton, Spinoza,
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

As an historical theory to explain the origin of human
society it is of course demonstrably false, but as a weapon
for breaking up the concentration of sovereign power and
distributing it, tfie idea has played a mighty role in his-
tory. It is almost certain to appear wherever there is an
absolutism which men feel the need of checking. But the

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theory of the social compaa disappears when power has
become so widely diffused that no one can any longer
locate the sovereign , That is what is happening in the
advanced modern communities. The sovereign, whom
It was once desirable to put under contract, has become
so anonymous and diffuse that his very existence to-day is
a legal fiction rather than a political fact And loyalty by
the same token is no longer provided with a personal supe-
rior of indubitable prestige to which it can be attached.

3. Plurahsm

The relationship between lord and vassals in which each
man attaches himself for better or worse to ^me superior
person tends gradually to disappear in the modern world.
Its passing was somewhat prematurely announced by the
Declaration of the Rights of Man; it did not wholly dis-
appear by the dissolution of the bonds which bound one
man to another, for the psychological bonds are stronger
than the legal. Nevertheless the effect of modern civi-
lization is to dissolve these psychological bonds, to break
up clannishness and personal dependence. Men and
women alike tend to become more or less independent
persons rather than to remain members of a social
organism.

The reason for this lies in the diversification of their
interests. Life in the ancestral order was not only simpler
and contained within narrower limits than it is to-day, but
there was a far greater unity in the activity of each indi-
vidual. Working the land, fighting, raising a family, wor-
shipping, were so closely related that they could be gov-
erned by a very simple allegiance to the chief of the tribe

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or the lord of the manor. In the modern world this
synthesis has disintegrated and the activities of a man
cannot be directed by a simple allegiance. Each man
finds himself the center of a complex of loyalties. He
IS loyal to his government^ he is loyal to his state, he
IS loyal to Ins village, he is loyal to his neighborhood.
He has his own family He has his wife's family. His
Wife has her family. He has his church. His wife may
have a different church. He may be an employer of
thousands of men. He may be an employee. He must
be loyal to his corporation, to his trade union, or his pro-
fessional society. He is a buyer in many different markets.
He IS a seller *in many different markets. He is a creditor
and a debtor. He owns shares in several industries. He
belongs to a political party, to clubs, to a social set. The
multiplicity of his interests makes it impossible for him
to give his whole allegiance to any person or to any
institution.

It may be, in fact for most men it must be, that In
each of these associations he follows a leader. In any
considerable number of people it is certain that they will
group themselves m hierarchical form. In every club, m
every social circle, in every trade union, in every stock-
holders' meeting there are leaders and their lieutenants
and the led. But these allegiances are partial. Because
a man has so many loyalties each loyalty commands only
a segment of himself. They are not, therefore, whole-
hearted loyalties like that of a good soldier to his captam.
They are qualified, calculated, debatable, and they are
sanctioned not by inherent authority but by expediency
or inertia.

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The outward mamfesration of these complex loyalties
of the modern man is the multitude of institutions through
which the affairs of mankind are directed. Now since
each of these corporate entities represents only a part
of any man’s interest, except perhaps m the case of the
paid executive secretary, none of these institutions can
count to the bitter end upon the undivided loyalty of all
Its members. The conflicts between institutions are in
considerable measure conflicts of interest within the same
individuals. There is a point where the activity of a
man’s trade union may so seriously affect the value of
the securities he owns that he does not know which way
his interest lies. The criss-crossing of loyalties is so great
in an advanced community that no grouping is self-
contained No grouping, therefore, can maintain a mili-
tary discipline or a military character. For when men
strive too fiercely as members of any one group they
soon find that they are at war with themselves as members
of another group.

The statement that modern society is pluralistic cannot,
then, be dismissed as a newfangled notion invented by
theorists. It is a sober description of the actual faas.
Each man has countless interests through which he is
attached to a very complex social situation. The com-
plexity of his allegiance cannot fail to be reflected in his
political conduct. ’

4. Live a^td Let Live

One of the inevitable effects of being attached to many
different, somewhat conflicting, interdependent groupings
IS to blunt the edges of partisanship. It is possible to

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be fiercely partisan only as against those who are wholly
alien. It is a fair generalization to say that the fiercest
Democrats are to be found where there are the fewest
Republicans, the most bloodthirsty patriots in the safest
swivel chairs. Where men are personally entangled with
the groups that are in potential conflict, where Democrats
and Republicans belong to the same country club and
where Protestants and Catholics marry each other, it is
psychologically impossible to be sharply intolerant. That
is why astute directors of corporations adopt the policy
of distributing their securities as widely as they can; they
know quite well that even the most modest shareholder
is in some mi^asure insulated against anti-corporate agita-
tion. It is inherent in the complex pluralism of the mod-
ern world that men should behave moderately, and experi-
ence amply confirms this conclusion.

There is little doubt that in the great metropolitan
centers there exists a disposition to live and let live, to
give and take, to agree and to agree to differ, which
is not to be found in simple homogeneous communities.
In complex communities life quickly becomes intolerable
if men are intolerant. For they are in daily contact with
almost everybody and everything they could conceivably
wish to persecute. Their victims would be their cus-
tomers, their employees, their landlords, their tenants
and perhaps their wives’ relations.* But in a simple
community a kind of pastoral intolerance for everything
alien adds a quaint flavor to living. For the most part
it vents itself in the open air. The terrible indictments
drawn up in a Mississippi village against the Pope in
Rome, the Russian nation, the vices of Paris, and the

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enormities of New York are in the main quite lyrical.
The Pope may never even know what the Mississippi
preacher thinks of him and New York continues to go
to, but never apparently to reach, hell.

When an agitator wishes to start a crusade, a religious
revival, an inquisition, or some sort of jingo excitement,
the further he goes from the centers of modern civiliza-
tion the more following he can attraa. It is in the back-
woods and in the hill country, in kitchens and in old
men’s clubs, that fanaticism can be kindled. The urban
crowd, if it has been urban for any length of time and
has become used to its environment, may be fickle, faddish,
nervous, unstable, but it lacks the concentration of energy
to become fiercely excited for any length* of time about
anything. At its worst it is a raging mob, but it is not
persistently fanatical. There are too many things to
attract its attention for it to remain preoccupied for long
with any one thing.

To responsible men of affairs the complexity of modern
civilization is a daily lesson in drie necessity of not pressing
any claim too far, of understanding opposing points of
view, of seeking to reconcile them, of conduaing matters
so that there is some kind of harmony in a plural society.
This accounts, I think, for the increasing use of political
devices which are wholly unknown in simpler societies.
There is, for example, tlie ideal of a civil service. It is
wholly modern and it is quite revolutionary. For it
assumes that a great deal of the business of the state
can and must be carried on by a class of men who have
no personal and no party allegiance, who are in faa
neutral in politics and concerned only with the execution

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of a task. I know how imperfealy the civil service works,
but that It should exist at all, and that the ideal it embodies
should be generally acknowledged, is profound testimony
as to how inherent in the modern situation is the concept
of disinterestedness. The theory of an independent judi-
ciary arises out of the same need for disinterested judg-
ment. Even more significant, perhaps, is the use in all
political debates of the evidence of technicians, experts,
and neutral investigators. The statesman who imagined
he had thought up a solution for a social problem while
he was in his bath would be a good deal of a joke; even
if he had stumbled on a good idea, he would not dare to
commit himself to it without elaborate preliminary sur-
veys, investigations, hearings, conferences, and the like.

Men occupying responsible posts in the Great Society
have become aware, in short, that their guesses and their
prejudices are untrustworthy, and that successful decisions
can be made only in a neutral spirit by comparing their
hypotheses Vith their understanding of reality.

5. Government in the People
It has been the cause of considerable wonder to many
persons that the most complex modern commumties,
where the old loyalties are most completely dissolved,
where authority has so little prestige, where moral codes
are held m such small esteem, should nevertheless have
proved to be far more impervious to the strain of war
and revolution than the older and simpler types of civi-
lization. It has been Russia, China, Poland, Italy, Spain,
rather than England, Germany, Belgium, and the United
States which have been most disorderly in the post-war

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period. The contrary might have been expeaed. It
might well have been anticipated that the highly organ-
ized, delicately poised social mechamsms would disinte-
grate the most easily

Yet it is now evident why modern civilization is so
durable. Its strength lies in its sensitiveness The effect
of bad decisions is so quickly felt, the consequences are
so inescapably serious, that correaive action is almost
immediately set in motion. A simple society like Russia
can let its railroads go gradually to wrack and rum, but
a complex society like London or New York is instantly
disorgamzed if the railroads do not run on schedule. So
many persons are at once affected in so m^ny vitally
important ways that remedies have to be found immedi-
ately. This does not mean that modern states are gov-
erned as wisely as they should be, or that they do not
neglea much that they cannot really afford to neglect
They blunder along badly enough in all conscience.
There is nevertheless a minimum of order -and of necessary
services which they have to provide for themselves.
They have to keep going They cannot afford the luxury
of prolonged disorder or of a general paralysis. Their
own necessities are dependent on such fragile structures,
and everyone is so much affected, tliat when a modern
state is in trouble it can draw upon incomparable reserves
of public spirit.

'1 made ninety-one local committees in ninety-one local
communities to look after the Mississippi flood,'’ Mr.
Hoover once explained, ''that’s what I principally did.
. * . You say: 'a couple of thousand refugees are com-
ing. They've got to have accommodations. Huts.

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Water-mains. Sewers. Streets. Dining-halls. Meals.
Doaors. Everything.’ ... So you go away and they
go ahead and just simply do it. Of all those ninety-one
committees there was just one that fell down.” Mr.
Hard, who reports these remarks, goes on to make Mr.
Hoover say that; "No other Main Street in the world
could have done what the American Main Street did in
the Mississippi flood; and Europe may jeer as it pleases
at our mass production and our mass organization and our
mass education. The safety of the United States is its
multitudinous mass leadership.” Allowing for the fact
that these remarks appeared in a campaign biography
at a time ^tvhen Mr. Hoover’s friends were rather con-
cerned about*demonstrating the intensity of his patriotism,
there is nevertheless substantial truth in them. I am
inclined to believe that "multitudinous mass leadership”
will be found wherever industrial society is firmly estab-
lished, that IS to say, wherever a people has lived with die
machine process long enough to acquire the aptitudes that
it calls for. This capacity to orgamze, to administer
affairs, to deal realistically with necessity, can hardly be
due to some congenital superiority in the American people.
They are, after all only transplanted Europeans. That
their aptitudes may be somewhat more highly developed
is not, however, inconceivable; the new civilization may
have developed more freely in a land where it did not
have to contend with the institutions of a military, feudal,
and clerical society.

The essential point is that as the machine technology
makes social relations complex, it dissolves the habits of
obedience and dependence; it disintegrates the centraliza-

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tion of power and of leadership ; it diffuses the experience
of responsible decision throughout the population, com-
pelling each man to acquire the habit of making judg-
ments instead of looking for orders, of adjusting his will
to the wills of others instead of trusting to custom and
organic loyalties. The real law under which modern
society is administered is neither the accumulated prece-
dents of tradition nor a set of commands originating on
high which are imposed like orders in an army upon the
rank and file below. The real law m the modern state
is the multitude of little decisions made daily by millions
of men.

Because this is so, the character of government is chang-
ing radically. This change is obscured fct us m our
theorizing by the fact that our political ideas derive from
a different kind of social experience. We think of gov-
erning as the act of a person; for the actual king we
have tried to substitute a corporate king, which we call
the nation, the people, the majority, public opinion, or
the general will. But none of these entities has the
attributes of a king, and the failure of political thinking
to lay the ghosts of monarchy leads to endless misunder-
standing. The crucial difference between modern politics
and that to which mankind has been accustomed is that
the power to act and to compel obedience is almost never
suffiaently centralized nowadays to be exercised by one
will. The power is distributed and qualified so that
power is exerted not by command but by interaction.

The prime business of government, therefore, is not
to direct the affairs of the community, but to harmonize
the direction which the community gives to its affairs.

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The Congress of the United States, for example, does not
consult the conscience and its God and then decree a
tariff law It enacts the kind of tariff which at the
moment represents the most stable compromise among
the interests which have made themselves heard The
law may be outrageously unfair. But if it is, that is
because those whose interests are neglected did not at that
time have the power to make themselves felt. If the law
favors manufacturers rather than farmers, it is because
the manufaaurers at that time have greater weight in the
social equilibrium than the farmers That may sound
hard. But it is doubtful whether a modern legislature
can make- laws effeaive if those laws are not the formal
expression Of what the persons actually affected can and
wish to do.

The amount of law is relatively small which a modern
legislature can successfully impose. The reason for this
is that unless the enforcement of the law is taken in hand
by the citizenry, the officials as such are quite helpless.
It is possible to enforce the law of contracts, because the
injured party will sue; it is possible to enforce die law
against burglary, because almost everybody will report
a burglary to the police But it is not possible to enforce
the old-fashioned speed laws on the highways because
the police are too few and far between, the pedestrians
are uninterested, and motorists like to speed. There is
here a very fundamental principle of modern lawmakmg:
insofar as a law depends upon the initiative of officials
in detecting violations and in prosecuting, that law will
almost certainly be difficult to enforce. If a considerable
part of the population is hostile to the law, and if the

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majority has only a platonic belief in it, the law will
surely break down For what gives law reality is not
that It IS commanded by the sovereign but that it brmgs
the organized force of the state to the aid of those citizens
who believe m the law.

What the government really does is not to rule men,
but to add overwhelming force to men when they rule
their affairs The passage of a law is in effect a promise
that the police, the courts, and the officials will defend
and enforce certain rights when citizens choose to exercise
them. For all practical purposes this is just as true when
what was once a private wrong to be redressed by private
action in law courts on proof of specific injurj^has been
made by statute a public wrong which is preventable and
punishable by administrative action. When the citizens
are no longer interested in preventing or punishing specific
instances of what the statute declares is a public wrong,
the statute becomes a dead letter. The principle is most
obviously true in the case of a sumptuary law like pro-
hibition. The reason prohibition is unenforceable m the
great cities is that the citizens will not report the names
and addresses of their bootleggers to the prohibition
oliicials. But the principle is no less true m less obvious
cases, as, for example, m tariffs or laws to regulate rail-
roads. Thus it is difficult to enforce the tariff law on
jewels, for they are easily smuggled. Insofar as the law
is enforced it is because jewelers find it profitable to main-
tain an organization which detects smuggling. Because
they know the ms and outs of the trade, and have men
in all the jewelry markets of the world who have an
interest in catching smugglers, it is possible for the United

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States Government to make a fair showing in administer-
ing the law The government cannot from hour to hour
inspect all the transactions of its people, and any law
which rests on the premise that government can do this
is a foolish law. The railroad laws are enforced because
shippers are vigilant. The criminal laws depend upon
how earnestly citizens object to certain kinds of crime.
In fact it may be said that laws which make certain kinds
of conduct illicit are effective insofar as the breach of
these laws arouses the citizenry to call in the police and
to take the trouble to help the police. It is not enough
that the mass of the population should be law-abiding.
A minority can stultify the law if the population as a
whole is not also law-enforcing

This IS the real sense in which it can be said that
power in the modern state resides not in the government
but in the people. As that phrase is usually employed it
alleges that The people/ as articulated by elected officials,
can govern by command as the monarch or tribal chieftain
once governed. In this sense government by the people
is a delusion. What we have among advanced communi*
ties is something that might perhaps be .described as gov-
ernment in the people. The naively democratic theory
was that out of the mass of the voters there arose a cloud
of wills which ascended to heaven, condensed into a
thunderbolt, and then smote the people. It was supposed
that the opinion of masses of persons somehow became
the opinion of a corporate person called The People, and
that this corporate person then directed human affairs
like a monarch. But that is not what happens. Govern-
ment is in the people and stays there. Government is

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their multitudinous decisions in concrete situations, and
what officials do is to assist and facilitate this process
of governing. Effective laws may be said to register an
understanding among those concerned by which the law-
abiding know what to expect and what is expected of
them; they are insured with all the force that the state
commands against the disruption of this understanding
by the recalcitrant minority. In the modern state a law
which does not register the inward assent of most of those
who are affeaed will have very little force as against the
breakers of that law. For it is only by that inward assent
that power becomes mobilized to enforce the law. The
government in the person of its officials, its pafcry inspec-
tors and policemen, has relatively little power of its
own. It derives its power from the people in amounts
which vary with the circumstances of each law. That
is why the same government may act with invincible
majesty in one place and with ludicrous futility in
another.

’6. PoUtktans and Statesmen
The role of the leader would be easier to define if it
were agreed to give separate meanings to two very com-
mon words. I mean the words "politician” and "states-
man.” In popular usage a vague distinaion is recog-
nized: to call a man a statesman is eulogy, to call him a
politician is to be, however faintly, disparaging. The dic-
tionary, in faa, defines a politician as one who seeks to
subserve the interests of a political party merely; as an
afterthought it defines him as one skilled in political
science: a statesman. And in defiining a statesman the

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dictionary says that he is a political leader of distinguished
ability.

These definitions can, I think, be improved upon by
clarifying the meanings which are vaguely intended in
popular usage. When we think ofifhand of a politician
we think of a man who works for a partial interest.
At the worst it is his own pocket. At the best it may
be his party, his class, or an institution with which he
IS identified. We never feel that he can or will take
into account all the interests concerned, and because bias
and partisanship are the qualities of his conduct, we feel,
unless we are naively afflicted with the same bias, that
he is not t<r be trusted too far. Now the word 'statesman,’
when It IS not mere pomposity, connotes a man whose
mind is elevated sufficiently above the conflia of contend-
ing panies to enable him to adopt a course of action
which takes into account a greater number of mterests
in the perspective of a longer period of rime. It is some
such conception as this that Edmund Burke had in mind
when he wrote that the state "ought not to be considered
as nothing better than a parmership in a trade of pepper
and cofifee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low
concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest
and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. ... It
is a partnership in a higher and more permanent sense —
a parmership in all science; a partnership in all art; a
partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As tlie
ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many
generations it becomes a partnership not only between
those who are living, but between those -who are dead
and those who are to be bom.”

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The politician, then, is a man who seeks to attain the
special objects of particular interests. If he is the leader
of a political party he will try either to purchase the
support of particular interests by specific pledges, or if
that is impracticable, he will employ some form of decep-
tion. I include under the term 'deception the whole art
of propaganda, whether it consists of half-truths, lies,
ambiguities, evasions, calculated silence, red herrings,
unresponsiveness, slogans, catchwords, showmanship,
bathos, hokum, and buncombe. They are, one and all,
methods of preventing a disinterested inquiry into the
situation. I do not say that any one can be elected to
office without employing deception, though I ^m inclined
to think that there is a new school of political reporters
in the land who with a kind of beautiful cruelty are
making it rather embarrassing for politicians to employ
their old tricks. A man may have to be a politician to
be elected when there is adult suffrage, and it may be
that statesmanship, in the sense in which I am usmg the
term, cannot occupy the whole attention of any public
man. It is true at least that it never does.

The reason for this is that in order to hold office a man
must array in his support a varied assortment of persons
With all sorts of confused and conflicting purposes.
When then, it may be asked, does he begin to be a states-
man.^ He begins whenever he stops trying merely to
satisfy or to obfuscate the momentary wishes of his con-
stituents, and sets out to make them realize and assent to
those^ hidden interests of theirs which are permanent
because they fit the faas and can be harmomzed with
the interests of their neighbors. The pohtician says: "I

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will give you what you want.” The statesman says:
"What you think you want is this. What it is possible
for you to get is that. What you really want, therefore,
is the following.” The politician stirs up a following;
the statesman leads it. The politician, in brief, accepts
unregenerate desire at its face value and either fulfills
it or perpetrates a fraud; the statesman re-educates desire
by confronting it with the reality, and so makes possible
an endurmg adjustment of interests within the community.

The chief element in the art of statesmanship under
modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused
and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of
governmem, It is an ability to penetrate from the naive
self-interest 6f each group to its permanent and real
interest. It is a difficult art which requires great courage,
deep sympathy, and a vast amount of information. That
is why it is so rare. But when a statesman is successful
in converting his constiments from a childlike pursuit
of what seems interesting to a realistic view of their
interests, he receives a kind of support which the ordinary
glib politician can never hope for. Candor is a bitter
pill when first it is tasted but it is full of health, and
once a man becomes established in the public mind as a
person who deals habitually and successfully with real
things, he acquires an eminence of a wholly different qual-
ity from that of even the most celebrated caterer to the
popular favor. His hold on the people is enduring
because he promises nothing which he cannot achieve;
he proposes nothing which turns out to be a fake. Sooner
or later the politician, because he deals in unrealities, is
found out. Then he either goes to jail, or he is tolerated

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q^^nically as a picturesque and amiable scoundrel; or he
retires and ceases to meddle with the destinies of men.
The words of a statesman prove to have value because
they express not the desires of the moment but the con-
ditions under which desires can actually be adjusted to
reality. His projects are policies which lay down an
ordered plan of action in which all the elements affected
will, after they have had some experience of it, find it
profitable to co-operate. His laws register what the
people really desire when they have clarified their wants.
His laws have force because they mobilize the energies
which alone can make laws effective.

It is not necessary, nor is it probable, thatj^a stateman-
like policy will win such assent when it is first proposed
Nor IS it necessary for the statesman to wait until he has
won complete assent. There are many things which
people cannot understand until they have lived with them
for a while. Often, therefore, the great statesman is
bound to aa boldly in advance of his constituents. When
he does this he stakes his judgment as to what the people
will in the end find to be good against what the people
happen ardently to desire. This capacity to act upon
the hidden realities of a situation in spite of appearances
is the essence of statesmanship. It consists in giving the
people not what they want but what they will learn to
want. It requires the courage which is possible only in
a mind that is detached from the agitations of the moment.
It requires the insight which comes only from an objec-
tive and discerning knowledge of the facts, and a high
and imperturbable disinterestedness.

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CHAPTER XIV

LOVE IN THE GREAT SOCIETY

1. The External Control of Sexual Conduct
While the changes which modernity implies affea the
premises of all human conduct, the problem as a whole
engages the attention of relatively few persons. The
larger number of men and women living within the orbit
of the Gr^t Society are no doubt aware that their
inherited beliefs about religion, politics, business, and sex
do not square entirely with the aaual beliefs upon which
they feel compelled to aa. But the fundamental altera-
tions in political and economic ideals which the machine
technology is inducing come home to each man only indi-
rectly and parually. The consequences are subtle, delayed,
and what is even more important, they are outside the
scope of the ordmary man’s personal decision. There is
little that is urgent, immediate, or decisive which he can
do, even if he understands them, about the changes in the
structure and purpose of industry and the state. Most
men can manage, therefore, to live without ever attempt-
ing to decide for themselves any fundamental question
about business or politics. But they can neither ignore
changes in sexual relations nor do they wish to. It is
possible for a man to be a socialist or an individualist
without ever having to make one responsible decision in
which his theories play any part. But what he thinks

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about divorce and contraception, continence and license,
monogamy, prostitution, and sexual experience outside
of marriage, are matters that are bound at some point
in his life to affect his own happiness immediately and
directly. It is possible to be hypocritical about sex. But
it is not possible for any adult who is not anaesthetic
to be indifferent The affairs of state may be regulated
by leaders. But the affairs of a man and a woman are
inescapably their own

That obviously is the reason why in the popular mind
it is immediately assumed that when morals are discussed
It IS sexual morals that are meant. The morals of the
politician and the voter, of the shareholder ^d executive
and employee, are only moderately intefestmg to the
general public: thus they almost never supply the mam
theme of popular fiction. But the relation between boy
and girl, man and woman, husband and wife, mistress
and lover, parents and children, are themes which no
amount of repetition makes stale. The explanation is
obvious. The modern audience is composed of persons
among whom only a comparatively negligible few-» are
serenely happy in their personal lives. Popular fiction
responds to their longings: to the unappeased it offers
some measure of vicarious satisfaaion, to the prurient an
indulgence, to the worried, if not a way out, then at least
the comfort of knowing that their secret despair is a
common, and not a umque, experience.

Yet in spite of this immense preoccupation with sex
It is extraordinarily difficult to arrive at any reliable
knowledge of what acmal change m human behavior it
reflects. This is not surprising. In fact this is the very

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essence of the matter. The reason it is difficult to know
the actual facts about sexual behavior in modern society
is that sexual behavior eludes observation and control.
We know that the old conventions have lost most of their
authority because we cannot know about, and therefore
can no longer regulate, the sexual behavior of others.
It may be that there is, as some optimists believe, a fine
but candid restraint practiced among modern men and
women. It may be that incredible licentiousness exists
all about us, as the gloomier prophets insist. It may be
that there is just about as much unconventional conduct
and no more than there has always been. Nobody, I
think, really knows. Nobody knows whether the con-
versation aboht sex refleas more promiscuity or less
hypocrisy. But what everybody must know is that sexual
conduct, whatever it may be, is regulated personally and
not publicly in modern society. If there is restraint it is,
in the last analysis, voluntary; if there is promiscuity, it
can be quite secret.

The circumstances which have wrought this change
are* inherent in modern ways of living. Until quite
recently the main conventions of sex were enforced first
by the parents and then by the husband through their
control over the life of the woman. The main conven-
tions were: first, that she must not encourage or display
any amorous inclinations except where there was prac-
tical certainty that the young man*s intentions were seri-
ous; second, that when she was married to the young man
she submitted to his embraces only because the Lord
somehow failed to contrive a less vile method of per-
petuating the species. All the minor conventions were

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subsidiary to these; the whole system was organized on
the premise that procreation was the woman’s only sanc-
tion for sexual intercourse. Such control as was exercised
over the conduct of men was subordinate to this control
over the condua of women. The chastity of women
before marriage was guarded; that meant that seduction
was a crime, but that relations with "lost” or unchaste
women were tolerated. The virtuous man, by popular
standards, was one who before his marriage did not have
sexual relations with a virtuous woman. There is ample
testimony in the outcries of moralists that even in the
olden days these conventions were not perfectly adminis-
tered. But they were sufficiently well adn^mistered to
remain the accepted conventions, honorecF even in the
breach. It was possible, because of the way people lived,
to administer them.

The woman lived a sheltered life. That is another way
of saying that she lived under the constant inspeaion of
her family. She lived at home. She worked at home.
She met young men under the zealous chaperonage of
practically the whole community. No doubt, couples
slipped away occasionally and more went on than was
known or acknowledged. But even then there was a
very powerful deterrent against an illicit relationship.
This deterrent was the fear of pregnancy. That in the
end made it almost certain that if a secret affair were
consummated it could not be kept secret and that terrible
penalties would be exaaed. In the modern world effec-
tive chaperonage has become impraaicable and the fear
of pregnancy has been virtually eliminated by the very
general knowledge of contraceptive methods.

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The whole revolution m the field of sexual morals turns
upon the fact that external control of the chastity of
women is becoming impossible.

2. Birth Control

The Biblical account of how Jehovah slew Onan for
disobeying his father’s commandment to go to his
brother’s widow, Tamar, and ‘‘perform the duty of an
husband’s brother,” shows that the deliberate prevention
of conception is not a new discovery. Mr. Harold Cox
must be right when he says “it is fairly certain that m
all ages and in all countries men and women have prac-
ticed various devices to prevent conception while con-
tinuing to indulge in sexual intercourse.” For while I
know of no positive evidence to support this, it appears
to be self-evident that the human race within historical
times has not multiplied up to the limits of human fecun-
dity. Since it is hardly probable that this has been due
to the continence of husbands, nor wholly to infanticide,
abortion, infant mortality, and postponement of marriage,
It is safe to conclude that birth control is an ancient
practice.

Nevertheless, it was not until the Nineteenth Century
that the practice of contraception began to be publicly
advocated on grounds of public policy. Until the indus-
trial age the weight of opimon was overwhelmingly in
favor of very large families. Kings and nobles needed
soldiers and retainers; “As arrows in the hand of a mighty
man, so are the children of youth. Happy is the man
that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be
ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the

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gate/* Fathers of families desired many sons. The early
factory owners could use abundant cheap labor. There
had been men from Plato’s time who had their doubts
about the value of an mdefimtely growing population
But the substantial opinion down to the end of the Eight-
eenth Century was Adam Smith’s that: 'The most decisive
mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of
the number of its inhabitants.”

Apparently it was the sinister character of the early
factory system, and the ominous unrest which pervaded
Europe after the French Revolution, which rather suddenly
changed into pessimism this bland optimism about an
evergrowing population. Malthus published the first
edition of his Essay on Population in 179S*. This book
is undoubtedly one of the great landmarks of human
culture, for it focussed the attention of Europe on the
necessity of regulating the growth of population. Mal-
thus himself, It seems, hoped that this regulation could
be achieved by the postponement of marriage and by
continence. It is not clear whether he disapproved of
what is now called neo-Malthusianism, or whether he did
not regard it as practicable. Nevertheless, within less
than twenty-five years James Mill in the Encyclopcedia
Bntanntca had in guarded fashion put forward the neo-
Malthusian principle, and shortly thereafter, that is m
1823, an active public propaganda was set on foot,
most probably by Francis Place, by means of what were
known as the "diabokcal handbills.” These leaflets were
addressed to the working classes and contained descrip-
tions of methods for preventing conception Some of
them were sent to a good lady named Mrs Fildes, who

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indignantly, but mistakenly from her point of view,
assisted the nefarious propaganda by exposing it in the
public prints. Fifty years later Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs.
Besant had themselves indicted and tried for selling an
illustrated edition of Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy.
After that advertisement, neo-Malthusian principles and
praaices were known and were, therefore, available to all
but the poorest and most illiterate.

No propaganda so threatemng to the established moral
order ever encountered such an ineffective opposition.
I do not know how much money has been spent on the
propaganda nor how many martyrs have had to coerce
reluctant judges to try them. But it is evident that once
it was known that fairly dependable methods of contra-
ception exist, the people took the matter into their own
hands. For the public reasons by which neo-Malthusian-
ism was justified were also private reasons. The social
philosopher said that population must be adjusted to the
means of subsistence. Man and wife said that they must
have only as many children as they could afford to rear.
The eugenist said that certain stocks ought not to multiply.
Individual women decided that too many children, or
even any children, were bad for their health. - But these
were not the only reasons which explain the demand for
neo-Malthusian knowledge. There was also the very
plain demand due to a desire to enjoy sexual intercourse
without social consequences.

On this aspea of birth control the liberal reformers
have, I think, been until recently more than a little dis-
ingenuous. They have been arguing for the removal of
the prohibitory laws, and they have built their case on two

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main theses. They have argued, first, that the limitation
of births was sound public policy for economic and
eugenic reasons; and second, that it was necessary to the
happiness of families, the health of mothers, and the
welfare of children All these reasons may be unimpeach-
able. I think they are But it was idle to pretend that
the dissemination of this knowledge, even if legally con-
fined to the instruction of married women by licensed
physicians, could be kept from the rest of the^adult pop-
ulation. Obviously that which all married couples are
permitted to know every one is bound to know. Human
curiosity will make that certain. Now this is what the
Christian* churches, especially the Roman CatJ^olic, which
oppose contraception on principle, instanuy recognized.
They were quite right. They were quite right, too, in
recogmzing that whether or not birth control is eugenic,
hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary prac-
tice in the history of sexual morals.

For when conception could be prevented, there was an
end to the theory that woman submits to the embrace
of the male only for purposes of procreation. She had
to be persuaded to co-operate, and no possible reason
could be advanced except that the pleasure was reciprocal.
She had to understand and inwardly assent to the principle
that it is proper to have sexual intercourse with her hus-
band and to prevent conception. She had, therefore, to
give up the whole traditional theory which she may have
only half-believed anyway, that sexual intercourse was an
impure means to a noble end. She could no longer believe
that procreation alone mitigated the vileness of cohabit-
ing with a man, and so she had to change her valuation

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and accept it as inherently delightful. Thus by an inevi-
table process the practice of contraception led husbands
•and wives to the conviction that they need not be in the
least ashamed of their desires for each other.

But this transvaluation of values within the sanctity of
the marital chamber could hardly be kept a secret. What
had happened was that married couples were indulging
in the pleasures of sex because they had learned how to
isolate th^m from the responsibilities of parendiood.
When we talk about the unconventional theories of the
younger generation we might in all honesty take this fact
into account. They have had it demonstrated to them
by their owvi parents, by those in whom the administering
of the conventions is vested, that under certain circum-
stances It IS legitimate and proper to gratify sexual desire
apart from any obligation to the family or to the race.
They have been taught that it is possible to do this, and
that it may be proper. Therefore, the older generation
could no longer argue that sexual intercourse as such
was evil. It could no longer argue that it was obviously
dangerous. It could only maintain that the psychological
consequences are serious if sexual gratification is not made
incidental to the enduring partnership of marriage and a
home. That may be, in fact, I think it can be shown to be,
the real wisdom of the matter. Yet if it is the wisdom
of the matter, it is a kind of wisdom which men and
women can acquire by experience alone. They do not
have It instinctively. They cannot be compelled to adopt
it. They can only learn to believe it.

That IS a very different thing from submittmg to a
convention upheld by all human and divine authority.

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3. The Logic of Birth Control

With contraception established as a more or less legiti-
mate idea in modern society, a vast discussion has ensued
as to how the praaice of it can be rationalized. In this
discussion the paee is set by those who accept the apparent
logic of contraception and are prepared boldly to revise
the sexual conventions accordingly. They take as their
major premise the obvious fact that by contraception it
is possible to dissociate procreation from gratification, and
therefore to pursue independently what Mr. Havelock
Ellis calls the primary and secondary objects of the sexual
impulse. They propose, therefore, to sanai(jA two dis-
tinct sets of conventions: one designed to' protect the
interests of the ofiFspring by promoting intelligent, secure,
and cheerful parenthood; the other designed to permit
the freest and fullest expression of the erotic personality.
They propose, in other words, to distinguish between
parenthood as a vocation involving public responsibility,
and love as an art, pursued privately for the sake of
happiness.

As a preparation for the vocation of parenthood it is
proposed to educate both men and women in the care, both
physical and psychological, of children. It is proposed
further that mating for parenthood shall become an alto-
gether deliberate and voluntary choice: the argument here
is that the duties of parenthood cannot be successfully ful-
filled except where both parents cheerfully and knowingly
assume them. Therefore, it is proposed, in order to avert
the dangers of love at first sight and of mating under the
blind compulsion of instina, that a period of free experi-

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mentation be allowed to precede the solemn engagement
to produce and rear children. This engagement is regarded
as so much a public responsibility that it is even proposed,
and to some extent has been embodied in the law of cer-
tain Jurisdictions, that marriages for parenthood must be
sanctioned by medical authority. In order, too, that no
compulsive considerations may determine what ought to
be a free and intelligent choice, it is argued that women
should be economically independent before and during
marriage. As this may not be possible for women without
property of their own during the years when they are bear-
ing and rearing children, it is proposed in some form or.
other to eoilow motherhood. This endowment may take
the form of a legal claim upon the earnings of the father,
or it may mean a subsidy from the state through modiers’
pensions, free medical attention, day nurseries, and kinder-
gartens. The principle that successful parenthood must
be voluntary is maintained as consistently as possible.
Therefore, among those who follow the logic of their idea.
It IS proposed that even marriages deliberately entered into
for procreation shall be dissoluble at the will of either
party, the state intervening only to insure the economic
security of the offspring. It is proposed, furthermore, that
where women find the vocation of motherhood impraai-
cable for one reason or another, they may be relieved of
the duty of rearing their children.

Not all of the advanced reformers adopt the whole of
this program, but the whole of this program is logically in-
herent in the conception of parenthood as a vocation
deliberately undertaken, publicly pursued, and motivated
solely by the parental instincts.

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The separate set of conventions which it is proposed to
adopt for the development of love as an art have a logic
of their ovsm. Their function is not to protect the welfare
of the child but the happiness of lovers. It is very easy
to misunderstand this conception. Mr. Havelock Ellis,
in faa, describes it as a "divine and elusive mystery,” a de-
scription which threatens to provide a rather elusive
standard by which to fix a new set of sexual conventions.
But baffling as this sounds, it is not wholly inscrutable,
and a sufficient understandmg of what is meant can be
attained by clearing up the dangerous ambiguity in the
phrase "love as an art.”

There are two arts of love and it makes a ^nsiderable
difference which one is meant. There is the 'art of love as
Casanova, for example, practiced it. It is the art of seduc-
tion, courtship, and sexual gratification: it is an art which
culminates in the sexual act. It can be repeated with the
same lover and with other lovers, but it exhausts itself in
the moment of ecstasy. When that moment is readied,
die work of art is done, and the lover as artist "after an
interval, perhaps of smpor and vital recuperation” must
start all over again, until at last the rhythm is so stale it is
a weariness to start at all; or the lover must find new
lovers and new resistances to conquer. The aftermath of
romantic love — that is, of love that is consummated in
sexual ecstasy — ^is either tedium in middle age or the com-
pulsive adventurousness of the libertine.

Now this is not what Mr. Ellis means when he talks
about love as an art. “The aa of intercourse,” he says,
"is only an incident, and not an essential in love.” Inci-
dent to what? His answer is that it is an incident to an

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"exquisitely and variously and harmoniously blended” ac-
tivity of "all the finer activities of the orgamsm, physical
and psychic.” I take this to mean that when a man and
woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is
energized and victorious. They walk better, their diges-
tion improves, they think more clearly, their secret worries
drop away, the world is fresh and interesting, and they
can do more than they dreamed that they could do. In
love of this kind sexual intimacy is not the dead end of
desire as it is in romantic or promiscuous love, but peri-
odic affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading
an aaive life Love of this sort can grow, it is not, like
youth itseif^^a moment that comes and is gone and remains
only a memory of something which cannot be recovered.
It can grow because it has something to grow upon and
to grow with; it is not contraaed and stale because it has
for Its objea, not die mere relief of physical tension, but
all the objeas with which the two lovers are concerned.
They desire their worlds in each other, and therefore their
love IS as interesting as their worlds and their worlds are
as interesting as their love.

It is to promote unions of this sort that the older lib-
erals are proposing a new set of sexual conventions.
There are, however, reformers in the field who take a
much less exalted view of the sexual aa, who regard it,
indeed, not only as without biological or social signifi-
cance, but also as without any very impressive psycho-
logical sigmficance. "The praaice of birth control,” says
Mr. C. E. M. Joad, for example, "will profoundly modify
our sexual habits. It will enable the pleasures of sex to
be tasted without its penalties, and it will remove the most

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formidable deterrent to irregular intercourse.” For birth
control "offers to the young ... the prospect of shame-
less, harmless, and unlimited pleasure ” But whether the
reformers agree with Mr. Ellis that sexual intimacy is,
as he says, a sacrament signifying some great spiritual
reality, or with Mr. Joad that it is a harmless pleasure,
they are agreed that the sexual conventions should be re-
vised to permit such unions without penalties and with-
out any sense of shame.

They ask public opinion to sanction what contraception
has made feasible. They point out that "a large number
of the men and women of to-day form sexual relationships
outside marriage — ^whether or not they ultima^sly lead to
marriage — ^which they conceal or seek to conceal from
the world.” These relationships, says Mr.^ Ellis, differ
from the extra-marital manifestations of the sexual life of
the past in that they do not derive from prostitution or se-
duaion. Both of these ancient practices, he adds, are
dimimshing, for prostitution is becoming less attractive
and, with the education of women, seduction is becoming
less possible. The novelty of these new relations, the
prevalence of which is conceded though it cannot be
measured, lies in the fact that they are entered into volun-
tarily, have no obvious social consequences, and are alto-
gether beyond the power of law or opimon to control.
The argument, therefore, is that they should be approved,
the chief point made being that by removmg all stigma
from such unions, they will become candid, wholesome,
and delightful. The objection of the reformers to the
existing conventions is that the sense of sin poisons the
spontaneous goodness of such relationships.

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The actual proposals go by a great variety of fancy
names such as free love, trial marriage, companionate
marriage. When these proposals are examined it is evi-
dent they all take birth control as their major premise, and
then deduce from it some part or all of the logical conse-
quences. Companionate marriage, for example, is from
the point of view of the law, whatever it may be sub-
jectively, nothmg but a somewhat roundabout way of
saying that childless couples may be divorced by mutual
consent. It is a proposal, if not to control, then at least
to register, publicly all sexual unions, the theory being
that this public registration will abolish shame and fur-
tiveness afid give them a certain permanence. Com-
pamonate marriage is frankly an attempt at a compro-
mise between marriages that are difficult to dissolve
and clandestine relationships which have no sanaion
whatever.

The uncompromising logic of birth control has been
stated more clearly, I think, by Mr. Bertrand Russell than
by anyone else. Writing to Judge Lindsey during the
uproar about companionate marriage, Mr. Russell said:

I go further than you do: the things which your enemies
-say about you would be largely true of me. My own view
is that the state and the law should take no notice of sexual
relations apart from children, and that no marriage cere-
mony should be valid unless accompanied by a medical cer-
tificate of the woman’s pregnancy. But when once there are
children, I think that divorce should be avoided except for
very grave cause. I should not regard physical infidelity as
a very grave cause and should teach people that it is to be
expected and tolerated, but should not involve the begetting
of illegitimate children — ^not because illegitimacy is bad in

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Itself, but because a home with two parents is best for chil-
dren I do not feel that the main thing in marriage is the
feeling of the parents for each other, the mam thing is
cooperation in bearing children.

In this admirably clear statement there is set forth a
plan for that complete separation between the primary
and secondary function of sexual intercourse which con-
traception makes possible

4, The Use of Convention

"It is one thing, however, to recognize the full logic of
birth control and quite another thing to say that conven-
tion ought to be determined by that logic. ^0ne might
as well argue that because automobiles can be driven at a
hundred miles an hour the laws should sanction driving at
the rate of a hundred miles an hour. Birth control is a
device like the automobile, and its inherent possibilities
do not fix the best uses to be made of it.

What an understanding of the logic of birth control
does IS to set before us the limits of coercive control of
sexual relations. The law can, for example, make divorce
very difficult where there are children. It could, as Mr.
Bertrand Russell suggests, refuse divorce on the ground
of infidelity. On the other hand the law cannot effectively
prohibit infidelity, and as a matter of fact does not do so
to-day. It cannot effectively prohibit fornication though
there are statutes against it. Tlierefore, what Mr. Russell
has done is to describe accurately enough the actual limits
of effective legal control.

But sexual conventions are not statutes, and it is im-
portant to define quite clearly just what they are. In the

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older world they were rules of conduct enforceable by the
family and the community through habit, coercion, and
authority In this sense of the word, convention tends to
lose force and effect in modern civilization. Yet a con-
vention IS essentially a theory of conduct and all human
con3uct implies some theory of conduct. Therefore, al-
though It may be that no convention is any longer coer-
cive, conventions remain, are adopted, revised, and
debated. They embody the considered results of experi-
ence: perhaps the experience of a lonely pioneer or per-
haps the collective experience of the dominant members
of a community. In any event liiey are as necessary to a
society whidi recognizes no authority as to one which
does. For the inexperienced must be offered some kind
of hypothesis when they are confronted with the necessity
of making choices: they cannot be so utterly open-minded
that they stand inert until something collides with them.
In the modern world, therefore, the funaion of conven-
tions is to declare the meaning of experience. A good
convention is one which will most probably show the
inexperienced the way to happy experience.

Just because the rule of sexual conduct by authority is
dissolving, the need of conventions which will guide con-
duct IS increasing. That, in faa, is the reason for the im-
mense and urgent discussion of sex throughout the modern
world. It is an attempt to attain an understanding of the
bewilderingly new experiences to which few men or
women know how .to adjust themselves. The true busi-
ness of the moralist in the midst of all this is not to de-
nounce this and to advocate that, but to see as clearly as
he can into the meamng of it, so that out of the chaos of

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pain and happiness and worry he may help to deliver a
usable insight.

It is, I think, to the separation of parenthood as a voca-
tion from love as an end in itself that the moralist must
address himself. For this is the heart of the problem;
to determine whether this separation, which birth control
has made feasible and which law can no longer prevent,
IS m harmony with the conditions of human happiness

5. The New Hedonism

Among those who hold that the separation of the pri-
mary and secondary functions of the sexual impulse is
good and should constitute the major premi^ of modern
sexual conventions, there are, as I have already pointed
out, two schools of thought. There are the transcendent-
alists who believe with Mr. Havelock Ellis that '^sexual
pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the
stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted ac-
tivities,'* and there are the unpretentious hedonists who
believe that sexual pleasure is pleasure and not the stimu-
lus or liberator of anything important. Both are, as we
say, emancipated: neither recogmzes the legitimacy of
objeaive control imless a child is born, and both reject
as an evil the traditional subjective control exercised by
the sense of sin. Where they differ is in their valuation
of love.

Hedonism as an attitude toward life is, of course, not a
new thing in the world, but it has never before been tested
out under such favorable conditions. To be a successful
hedonist a man must have the opportunity to seek his
pleasures without fear of any kind. Theodorus of Cyrene,

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who taught about 310 b.c., saw that clearly, and therefore
to release men from fear openly denied the Olympian
gods. But the newest hedonism has had an even better
prospect than the classical: it finds men emancipated not
only of all fear of divine authority and human custom but
of physical and social consequences as well. If the pur-
suit of pleasure by carefree men were the way to happi-
ness, hedonism ought, then, to be proving itself trium-
phantly in the modern world. Possibly it is too early to
judge, but the fact is nevertheless highly significant, I
think, that the new hedonists should already have arrived
at the same conclusion as the later hedonists in the classi-
cal world. Hegesias, for example, wrote when hedonism
had alreadf had a great vogue: he was called, rather
significantly, the "persuader to die.” For having started
from the premise that pleasure is the end of life, he
concluded that, since life affords at least as much pain
as pleasure, the end of life cannot be realized. There is
now a generation in the world which is approaching mid-
dle age. They have exercised the privileges which were
won by the iconoclasts who attacked what was usually
called the Puritan or Viaorian tradition. They have exer-
cised the privileges without external restraint and without
inhibition. Their conclusions are reported in the latest
works of fiction. Do they report that they have found
happiness in their freedom? Well, hardly. Instead of the
gladness which they were promised, they seem, like
Hegesias, to have found the wasteland.

"If love has come' to be less often a sin,” says that very
discerning aitic of life and letters, Mr. Joseph Wood
Krutch, "it has come also to be less often a supreme privi-

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lege. If one turns to the smarter of those novelists who
describe the doings of the more advanced set of those who
are experimenting with life — to, for example, Mr. Aldous
Huxley or Mr. Ernest Hemingway, — one will discover in
their tragic farces the picture of a society which is at bot-
tom in despair because, though it is more completely ab-
sorbed in the pursuit of love than in anything else, it has
lost the sense of any ultimate importance inherent in the
experience which preoccupies it; and if one turns to the
graver of the intellectual writers, — ^to, for example, Mr. D.
H. Lawrence, Mr. T. S. Eliot, or Mr. James Joyce, — one
will find both explicitly and implicitly a similar sense that
the transcendental value of love has becon^ somehow
attenuated, and that, to take a perfectly concrete example,
a conclusion which does no more than bring a man and
woman into complete possession of one another is a mere
bathos which does nothing except legitimately provoke
the comment, 'Well, what of it?’ One can hardly imagine
them concerned with what used to be called, in a phrase
which they have helped to make faintly ridiculous, 'the
tight to love.’ Individual freedom they have inherited
and assumed as a right, but they are concerned with some-
thing which their more restriaed forefathers assumed —
with, that is to say, the value of love itself. No inhibi-
tions either within or without restrain them, but they are
asking themselves, 'What is it worth?’ and they are cer-
tainly no longer feeling that it is obviously and in itself
something which makes life worth the living.

"To Huxley and Hemingway — I take them as the most
conspicuous exemplars of a whole school — love is at times
only a sort of obscene joke. The former in particular has

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delighted to mock sentiment with physiology, to place the
emotions of the lover in comic juxtaposition with quaint
biological lore, and to picture a romantic pair 'quietly
sweating palm to palm.’ But the joke is one which turns
quickly bitter upon the tongue, for a great and gratifying
illusion has passed away, leaving the need for it still there.
His characters still feel the psychological urge, and, since
they have no sense of sm in connection with it, they yield
easily and continually to that urge, but they have also the
human need to respect their chief preoccupation, and it is
the capacity to do this that they have lost. Absorbed in
the pursuit of sexual satisfaction, they never find love
and they are scarcely aware that they are seeking it, but
they are far^rom content with themselves. In a generally
devaluated world they are eagerly endeavoring to get
what they can in the pursuit of satisfaaions which are
sufficiently instinctive to retain inevitably a modicum of
animal pleasure, but they cannot transmute that simple
animal pleasure into anything else. They themselves not
infrequently share the contempt with which their creator
regards them, and nothing could be less seductive, be-
cause nothing could be less glamorous, dian the descrip-
tion of the debaudieries born of nothing except a sense of
the emptiness of life.”

This "generally devaluated world,” of which Mr.
Krutch speaks, what is it after all, but a world in which
nothing connects itself very much with anything else? If
you start with the belief that love is the pleasure of a
moment, is it really surprising that it yields only a momen-
tary pleasure? For it is the most iromcal of all illusions
to suppose that one is free of illusions in contracting any

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human desire to its primary physiological satisfaction.
Does a man dine well because he ingests the requisite
number of calories? Is he freer from illusions about his
appetite than the man who creates an interesting dinner
party out of the underlying fact that his guests and he
have the need to fill their stomachs? Would it really be a
mark of enlightenment if each of them filled his stomach
in the solitary and solemn conviction that good conversa-
tion and pleasant companionship are one thing and
nutrition is another?

This much the transcendentalists understand well
enough. They do not wish to isolate the satisfaction of
desire from our ''finest and most exalted aaivities.” They
would make it "the stimulus and the libeiator" of these
activities. They would use it to arouse to "wholesome
aaivity all the complex and interrelated systems of the
organism." But what are these finest and most exalted
activities which are to be stimulated and liberated? The
discovery of truth, the making of works of art, meditation
and insight? Mr. Ellis does not specify. If these are the
aaivities that are meant, then the discussion applies to
a very few of the men and women on earth. For the ac-
nvities of most of them are necessarily concerned with
earning a living and managing a household and rearing
children and finding recreation. If the art of love is to
stimulate and liberate activities, it is these prosaic activi-
ties which it must stimulate and liberate. But if you
idealize the logic of birth control, make parenthood a
separate vocation, isolate love from work and the hard
realities of living, and say that it must be spontaneous
and carefree, what have you done? You have separated

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ic from all the important aaivities which it might stimu-
late and liberate. You have made love spontaneous but
empty, and you have made home-building and parenthood
efficient, responsible, and dull.

What has happened, I believe, is what so often happens
in the first enthusiasm for a revolutionary invention. Its
possibilities are so dazzling that men forget that inven-
uons belong to man and not man to his inventions. In
the discussion which has ensued since birth control became
generally feasible, the central confusion has been that the
reformers have tried to fix their sexual ideals in accord-
ance with the logic of birth control instead of the logic of
human nature. Bmh control does make feasible this
dissociation o!^ interests which were once organically
united. There are undoubtedly the best of reasons for
dissociating them up to a point. But how completely it
is wise to dissociate them is a matter to be determined not
by saying how completely it is possible to dissociate them,
but how much it is desirable to dissociate them.

All the varieties of the modern doarine that man is a
collection of separate impulses, each of which can attain
its private satisfaction, are in fundamental contradiaion
not only with the traditional body of human wisdom but
with the modem conception of the human charaaer. Thus
in one breath it is said in advanced circles that love is a
series of casual episodes, and in the next it transpires that
the speaker is in process of having himself elaborately
psychoanalyzed in order to disengage his soul from the
effeas of apparently trivial episodes in his childhood. On
the one hand it is asserted that sex pervades everything
and on the other that sexual behavior is inconsequential.

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It IS taught that experience is cumulative, that we are
what our past has made us and shall be what we are mak-
ing of ourselves now, and then with bland indifference to
the significance of this we are told that all experiences are
free, equal, and independent.

6. Marriage and Affinity

It is not hard to see why those who are concerned in
revising sexual conventions should have taken the logic
of birth control rather than knowledge of human nature
as their major premise. Birth control is an immensely
beneficent invention which can and does relieve men and
women of some of the most tragic sorrows which afflict
them: the tragedies of the unwanted child7 the tragedies
of insupportable economic burdens, the tragedies of ex-
cessive child bearing and the destruction of youth and the
necessity of living in an unrelenting series of pregnancies.
It offers them freedom from intolerable mismating, from
sterile virtue, from withering denials of happiness. These
are the facts which the reformers saw, and in birth con-
trol they saw the instrument by which such freedom
could be obtained.

The sexual conventions which they have proposed are
really designed to cure notorious evils. They do not
define the good life in sex; they point out ways of escape
from the bad life. Thus companionate marriage is pro-
posed by Judge Lindsey not as a type of union which is
inherently desirable, but as an avenue of escape from
corrupt marriages on the one hand and furtive promiscu-
ity on the other. The movement for free divorce comes
down to this: it is necessary because so many marriages

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are a failure. The whole theory that love is separate from
parenthood and home-building is supported by the evi-
dence m those cases where married couples are not lovers.
It is the pathology of sexual relations which inspires the
reformers of sexual conventions.

There is no need to quarrel with them because they
insist upon remedies for manifest evils. Deep confusion
results when they forget that these remedies are only
remedies, and go on to instimte them as ideals. It is bet-
ter, without any doubt, that incompatible couples should
be divorced and that each should then be free to find a
mate who is compatible But the frequency with which
men and women have to resort to divorce because they
are incompatible will be greatly influenced by the notions
they have before and during marriage of what compati-
bility is, and what it involves. The remedies for failure
are important. But what is central is the conception of
sexual relations by which they expect to live successfully.

They cannot — I am, of course, speaking broadly —
expect to live successfully by the conception that the pri-
mary and secondary funaions of sex are in separate com-
partments of the soul. I have indicated why this concep-
tion is self-defeating and why, since human nature is
organic and experience cumulative, our activities must, so
to speak, engage and imply each other. Mates who are not
lovers will not really cooperate, as Mr. Bertrand Russell
thinks they should, in bearing children; they will be dis-
tracted, insufficient, and worst of all they will be merely
dutiful. Lovers who have nothing to do but love each
other are not really to be envied; love and nothing else
very soon is nothing else. The emotion of love, in spite

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of the romantics, is not self-sustaining; it endures only
when the lovers love many things together, and not merely
each other. It is this understanding that love cannot suc-
cessfully be isolated from the business of living which is
the enduring wisdom of the institution of marriage. Let
the law be what it may be as to what constitutes a mar-
riage contract and how and when it may be dissolved.
Let public opinion be as tolerant as it can be toward any
and every kind of irregular and experimental relationship.
When all the criticisms have been made, when all super-
natural sanctions have been discarded, all subjective inhi-
bitions erased, all compulsions abolished, the convention
of marriage still remains to be considered a§^ an interpre-
tation of human experience. It is by the test of how
genuinely it interprets human experience that the con-
vention of marriage will ultimately be judged
The v/isdom of marriage rests upon an extremely unsen-
timental view of lovers and their passions. Its assump-
tions, when they are frankly exposed, are horrifying to
those who have been brought up m the popular romantic
tradition of the Nmeteenth Century. These assumptions
are that, given an initial attraction, a common social
background, common responsibilities, and the conviction
that the relationship is permanent, compatibility in mar-
riage can normally be achieved. It is precisely this that
the prevailing sentimentality about love denies. It as-
sumes that marriages are made in heaven, that compati-
bility is instinaive, a mere coincidence, that happy unions
are, in the last analysis, lucky accidents in which two
people who happen to suit each other happen to have met.
The convention of marriage rests on an interpretation of

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human nature which does not confuse the subjective feel-
ing of the lovers that their passion is unique, with the
brutal but objective fact that, had they never met, each of
them would m all probability have found a lover who was
just as unique "'Love,'* says Mr. Santayana, *'is indeed
much less exacting than it thinks itself. Nine-tenths of its
cause are in the lover, for one-tenth that may be m the
object Were the latter not accidentally at hand, an almost
identical passion would probably have been felt for some
one else; for, although with acquaintance the quality of an
attachment naturally adapts itself to the person loved,
and makes that person its standard and ideal, the first
assault and njysterious glow of the passion is much the
same for every object

This is the reason why the popular conception of roman-
tic love as the meeting of two affinities produces so much
unhappiness. The mysterious glow of passion is accepted
as a sign that the great coincidence has occurred; there
IS a wedding and soon, as the glow of passion cools, it is
discovered that no instinctive and preordained affinity is
present. At this point the wisdom of popular romantic
marriage is exhausted. For it proceeds on the assumption
that love is a mysterious visitation. There is nothing left,
then, but to grin and bear a miserably dull and nagging
fate, or to break off and try again. The deep fallacy of
the conception is in the failure to realize that compatibility
is a process and not an accident, that it depends upon the
maturing of instinctive desire by adaptation to the whole
nature of the other person and to the common concerns
of the pair of lovers.

The romantic theory of affinities rests upon an immature

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theory of desire. It springs from an infantile belief that
the success of love is m the sausfactions which the other
person provides. "What this really means is that in child-
like fashion the lover expeas his mistress to supply him
with happiness. But in the adult world that expectation
is false. Because nine-tenths of the cause, as Mr. Santayana
says, are m the lover for one-tenth that may be in the
object. It is what the lover does about that nine-tenths
which is decisive for his happiness. It is the claim, there-
fore, of those who uphold the ideal of marriage as a full
partnership, and reject the ideal which would separate love
as an art from parenthood as a vocation, that in the home
made by a couple who propose to see it through, there
are provided the essential conditions under which the pas-
sions of men and women are most likely to become
mature, and therefore harmonious and disinterested.

7. The Schooling of Desire

They need not deny, indeed it would be foolish as well
as cruel for them to underestimate, the enormous difficulty
of achieving successful marriages under modera condi-
tions. For with the dissolution of authority and compul-
sion, a successful marriage depends wholly upon the
capacity of the man and the woman to make it successful.
They have to accomplish wholly by understanding and
sympathy and disinterestedness of purpose what was once
in a very large measure achieved by habit, necessity, and
the absence of any practicable alternative. It takes two
persons to make a successful marriage in the modern
world, and that faa more than doubles its difficulty. For
these reasons alone die modem state ought to do what it

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would none the less be compelled to do: it ought to pro-
vide decent ways of retreat in case of failure.

But if It is the truth that 'the convention of marriage
correctly interprets human experience, whereas the sep-
aratist conventions are self-defeating, then the convention
of marriage will prove to be the conclusion which emerges
out of all this immense experimenting. It will survive not
as a rule of law imposed by force, for that is now, I
think, become impossible. It will not survive as a moral
commandment with which the elderly can threaten the
young. They will not listen. It will survive as the domi-
nant insight into the reality of love and happiness, or it
will not survive at all. That does not mean that all per-
sons will live under the convention of marriage. As a
matter of fact in civilized ages all persons never have.
It means that the convention of marriage, when it is clari-
fied by insight into reality, is likely to be the hypothesis
upon which men and women will ordinarily proceed.
There will be no compulsion behind it except the com-
pulsion in each man and woman to reach a true adjust-
ment qf his life.

It is in this necessity of clarifying their love for those
who are closest to them that the moral problems of the
new age come to a personal issue. It is in the realm of
sexual relations that mankind is being schooled amidst
pain and worry for the novel conditions which modernity
imposes. It is there, rather than in politics, business, or
even in religion, that the issues are urgent, vivid, and
inescapable. It is there that they touch most poignantly
and most radically the organic roots of human personality.
And it is there, in the ordering of their personal attach-

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ments, that for most men the process of salvation must
necessarily begin

For disinterestedness m alf things, as Dean Inge says,
IS a mountain track which the many are likely in the fu-
ture as m the past to find cold, bleak, and bare, that is why
"the road of ascent is by personal affection for man By
the happy ordering of their personal affections they may
establish the type and the quality and the direction of
their desires for all things. It is in the hidden issues
between lovers, more than an)nvhere else, that modern men
and women are compelled, by personal anguish rather
than by laws and preachments or even by the persuasions
of abstract philosophy, to transcend naive desire and to
reach out towards a mature and disinterested partnership
with their world.

CB13]

CHAPTER XV

THE MORALIST IN AN UNBELIEVING WORLD

1 The Decimation oj Ideals
Of all the bewilderments of the present age none is
greater than that of the conscientious and candid moralist
himself ^The very name of moralist seems to have become
a term of disparagement and to suggest a somewhat pre-
tentious and a somewhat stupid, perhaps even a somewhat
hypocritical, meddler m other men's lives. In the minds
of very many in the modern generation moralists are set
down as persons who, in the words of Dean Inge, fancy
themselves attracted by God when they are really only
repelled by man.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is an
historical accident. It so happens that those who adminis-
tered the affairs of the established churches have, by and
large, failed utterly to comprehend how deep and how
inexorable was the dissolution of the ancestral order.
They imagined either that this change m human affairs
was a kind of temporary corruption, or that, like the eighty
propositions listed in the Syllabus of Pope Piux IX, it
could be regarded as due to ''errors'* of the human mind.
There were, of course, churchmen who knew better, but
on the whole those who prevailed m the great ecclesiastical

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establishments could not believe that the skepticism of
mmd and the freedom of action which modern men exer-
cise were due to, inexorable historic causes They declined
to acknowledge that modern freedom was not merely a
Wilful iconoclasm, but the liquidation of an older order of
human life

Because they could not comprehend the magnitude of
the revolution in w^hich they were involved, they set them-
selves the task of impeding its progress by chastising the
rebels and refuting their rationalizations This was de
scribed as a vindication of morals The effect was to
associate morality with the vindication of the habits and
dispositions of those who w^ere most thoroughly out of
sympathy with the genuine needs of modern men

The difficulties of the new age were much more urgent
than those which the orthodox moralists were concerned
with. The moralists insisted that conduct must conform
to the established code, what really worried men was ho'N
to adjust their conduct to the novel circumstances which
confronted them When they discovered that those who
professed to be moralists were continuing to deny that
the novelty of modern things had any bearing upon human
conduct, and that morality was a word signifying a return
to usages which it was impossible to follow, even if it w^ere
desirable, there was a kind of tacic agreement to let the
moralists be moral and to find other language in which to
describe the difference betw^een good and bad, right and
wrong Mr Joad is not unrepresentative of this reaction
into contempt when he speaks of 'The dowagers, the
aunts, the old maids, the parsons, the town councillois,
the clerks, the members of vigilance committees and purity

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leagues, all those who are themselves too old to enjoy sex,
too unattractive to obtain what they would wish to enjoy,
or too respectable to prefer enjoyment to respectability
Thus for many the name of moralist came to be very
nearly synonymous wuth antipathy to the genius and the
Vitality of the modern age.

But It IS idle for moralists to ascribe the decline of their
influence to the perversity of their fellow creatures. The
phenomenon is world-wude. Moreover, it is most in-
tensely present at precisely those points where the effect
of science and the machine technology have been most
thoroughly manifested. The moralists are not confronted
with a 5fandal but with history. They have to come to
terms with a process in the life of mankind which is work-
ing upon the inner springs of being and altering inevitably
the premises of conduct. They need not suppose that
their pews are empty and that their exhortations are
ignored because modern men are really as wilful as the
manners of the younger generation lead them to conclude.
Much of w'hat appears to be a tough self-sufficiency is
protective: it is a brittle crust covering depths of uncer-
tainty. If the advice of moralists is ignored, it is not
because this generation is too proud to listen, or unaware
that it has anything to learn. On the contrary there is
such curiosity and questioning as never before engaged so
large a number of men. The audience to which a genuine
moralist might speak is there. If it is inattentive when
the orthodox moralist speaks, it is because he seems to
speak irrelevantly.

The trouble with the moralists is in the moralists them-
selves, they have failed to understand their times. They

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think they are dealing with a generation that refuses to
believe in ancient authority. They are, m fact, dealing
with a generation- that cannot believe m it. They think
they are confronted with men who have an irrational
preference for immorality, whereas the men and women
about them are ridden by doubts because they do not know
what they prefer, nor why. The moralists fancy that they
are standing upon the rock of eternal truth, surveying the
chaos about them. They are greatly mistaken Nothing
in the modern world is more chaotic — not its politics, its
business, or its sexual relations — than the minds of ortho-
dox moralists who suppose that the problem of morals is
somehow to find a way of reinforcing the sanctions which
are dissolving How can we, they say in effect, find for-
mulas and rhetoric potent enough to make men behave^
How can we revive in them that love and fear of God,
that sense of the creature’s dependence upon his creator,
that obedience to the commands of a heavenly king, which
once gave force and effect to the moral code?

They have misconceived the moral problem, and there-
fore they misconceive the function of the moralist An
authoritative code of morals has force and effect w^hen it
expresses the settled customs of a stable society the
pharisee can impose upon the minority only such conven-
tions as the majority find appropriate and necessary. But
when customs are unsettled, as they are in the modern
world, by continual change in the circumstances of life,
the pharisee is helpless. He cannot command with
authority because his commands no longer imply the
usages of the community: they express the prejudices of
the moralist rather than the praaices of men. When that

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happens, it is presumptuous to issue moral command-
ments, for m fact nobody has authority to command It
IS useless to command when nobody has the disposition
to obey It is futile when nobody really know.s exactly
what to command In such societies, wherever they have
appeared among civilized men, the moralist has ceased to
be an administrator of usages and has had to become an
interpreter of human needs For ages when custom is
unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy The moral-
ist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what
can be taught He has to seek insight rather rhan to
preach.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due
at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this
one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to
be good but to elucidate what the good is The problem
of sanctions is secondary For sanctions cannot be artifi-
cially constructed, they are a product of agreement and
usage Wliere no agreement exists, where no usages are
established, where ideals are not clarified and where con-
ventions are not followed comfortably by the mass of
men, there are not, and cannot be, sanctions. It is pos-
sible to command where most men are already obedient.
Bur even the greatest general cannot discipline a whole
army at once. It is only when the greater part of his
army is with him that he can quell the mutiny of a faction
The acids of modernity are dissolving the usages and
the sanctions to which men once habitually conformed.
It IS therefore impossible for the moralist to command
He can only persuade. To persuade he must show that
the course of conduct he advocates is not an arbitrary pat-

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tern to whidi vitality must submit, bur that v/hich vitaliry
Itself would choose if it were clearly understood He
must be able to show that goodness is victorious vitality
and badness defeated vitality; that sm is the denial and
virtue the fulfilment of the promise inherent in the pur-
poses of men The good, said the Greek moralist, is
'That which all things aim at”; we may perhaps take this
to mean that the good is that- which men would wish to
do if they knew what they were doing

If the morality of the naive hedonist who blindly seeks
the gratification of his instincts is irrational in that he
trusts immature desire, disregards intelligence and damns
the consequences, the morality of the pharisee is no
less irrational It reduces itself to the wholl)^ arbitrary
proposition that the best life for man would be some
other kind of life than that which satisfies his nature.
The true function of the moralist in an age when usage is
unsettled is what Aristotle who lived m such an age de-
scribed It to be. to promote good conduct by discovering
and explaining the mark at which things aim The
moralist is irrelevant, if not meddlesome and dangerous,
unless in his teaching he strives to give a true account,
imaginatively conceived, of that which experience would
show is desirable among the choices that are possible and
necessary If he is to be listened to, and if he is to deserve
hearing among his fellows, he must set himself this task
which is so much humbler than to command and so much
more difficult than to exhort he must seek to anticipate
and to supplement the insight of his fellow men into the
problems of their adjustment to reality He must find
ways to make clear and ordered and expressive those con-

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cerns which are latent but overlaid and confused by their
preoccupations and misunderstandings.

Could he do that with perfect lucidity he would nor
need to summon the police nor evoke the fear of hell: hell
would be what it really is, and what in all inspired morali-
ties it has always been understood to be, the very quality
of evil itself. Nor would he find himself in tire absurd
predicament of seeming to argue that virme is highly de-
sirable but intensely unpleasant. It would not be neces-
sary to praise goodness, for it would be that which men
most ardently desired. Were the nature of good and evil
really made plain by moralists, their teachings would
appear to the modern listener not like exhortations from
without, but as Keats said of poetry: "a wording of his
own highest thoughts and . . . almost a remembrance.”

2. The Choice of a Way

What modernity requires of the moralist is that he
should see with an innocent eye how men must reform
their wants in a world which is not concerned to make
them happy. The problem, as I have tried to show, is not
a new one. It has been faced and solved by the masters
of wisdom. What is new is the scale on which the prob-
lem is presented — ^in that so many must face it now —
and its radical charaaer in that the organic bonds of
custom and belief are dissolving. There ensues a con-
tinual necessity of adjusting their lives to complex
novelty. In such a world simple customs are unsuitable
and authoritative commandments inaedible. No prescrip-
tion can now be written which men can naively and obedi-
ently follow. They have, therefore, to reeducate their

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wants by an understanding of their own relation to a
world which is unconcerned with their hopes and fears.
From the moralists they can get only hypotheses — distilla-
tions of experience carefully examined — ^probabilities, that
is to say, upon which they may begin to aa, but which they
themselves must constantly correct by their own insight.

It is difficult for the orthodox moralists to believe that
amidst the rums of authority men will ever learn to do
this. They can point to the urban crowds and ask whether
anyone supposes that such persons are capable of order-
ing their lives by so subtle an instrument as the human
understanding. They can insist with unanswerable force
that this is absurd: that the great mass of men must be
guided by rules and moved by the symbols of hope and
fear. And they can ask what there is in the conception
of the moralist as I have outlined it which takes the char-
acter of the populace into account.

What I take into account first of all is the' faa, which
it seems to me is indisputable, that for the modern popu-
lace the old rules are becoming progressively unsuitable
and the old symbols of hope and fear progressively un-
real. I ascribe that to the inherefit character of the
modern ways of living. I conclude from this that if the
populace must be led, if it must have easily comprehended
rules, if it must have common symbols of hope and fear,
the question is how are its leaders to be developed, rules to
be worked out, symbols created. The ultimate question is
not how the populace is to be ruled, but what the teachers
are to think. Ibiat is the question that has to be settled
first: it is the preface to everything else.

For while moralists are at sixes and sevens in their own
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souls, nor much can be done about morality, however high
or low may be our estimates of the popular intelligence
and character. If it were necessary to assume that ideals
are relevant only if they are universally attainable, it
would be a waste of time to discuss them. For it is evi-
dent enough that many, if not most men, must fail to
comprehend what modern morality implies. But to recog-
nize this IS not to prophesy that the world is doomed
unless men perform the miracle of reverting to their ances-
tral tradition. This is not the first time in the history of
mankind when a revolution in the affairs of men has pro-
duced chaos in the human spirit. The world can endure
a good deal of chaos It always has. The ideal inherent
m any age is ne\er realized completely Greece, which we
like to idealize as an oasis of rationality, was only in some
respects Hellenic, the Ages of Faith were only somewhat
Christian. The processes of nature and of society go on
somehow none the less. Men are born and they live and
die with some happiness and some sorrow though they
neither envisage wholly nor nearly approximate the ideals
they pursue.

But if civilization is to be coherent* and confident it
must be known in that civilization what its ideals are
There must exist in the form of clearly available ideas
an understanding of what the fulfilment of the promise of
that civilization might mean, an imaginative conception
of the good at which it might, and, if it is to flourish, at
which It must aim. That knowledge, though no one has it
perfectly, and though relatively few have it at all, is the
principle of all order and certainty in the life of that
people. By it they can clarify the practical conduct

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of life in some measure, and add immeasurably to its
dignity

To elucidate the ideals with which the modern world
is pregnant is the original business of the moralist Insofar
as he succeeds in disentangling that which men think they
believe from that which it is appropriate for them to
believe, he is opening his mind to a true vision of the good
life The vision itself we can discern only faintly, for we
have as yet only the occasional and fragmentary testimony
of sages and saints and heroes, dim anticipations here
and there, a most imperfect science of human behavior,
and our own obscure endeavor to make explicit and
rational the stresses of the modern world within our oun
souls But we can begin to see, I think, that the evidence
converges upon the theory that what the sages have
prophesied as high religion, w^hat psychologists delineate
as matured personality, and the disinterestedness which
the Great Society requires for its practical fulfilment, are
all of a piece, and are the basic elements of a modern
morality. I think the truth lies in this theory

If It does, experience will enrich and refine it, and
what is now an abstract principle arrived at by intuition
and dialectic will engender ideas that marshal, illuminate,
and anticipate the subtle and intricate detail of our actual
experience. That at least can be our belief In the mean-
time, the modern moralist cannot expect soon to construct
a systematic and harmonious moral edifice like that which
St Thomas Aquinas and Dante constructed to house the
aspirations of the mediaeval world He is in a much
earlier phase in the evolution of his world, in the phase of
inquiry and prophecy rather than of ordering and har-

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monizing, and he is under the necessity of remaining close
to the elements of experience in order to apprehend them
freshly. He cannot, therefore, permit the old symbols of
faith and the old formulations of right and wrong to
prejudice his insight. Insofar as they contain wisdom
for him or can become its vehicles, he will return to them.
But he cannot return to them with honor or with sincerity
until he has himself gone and drunk deeply at die sources
of experience from which they originated.

Only when he has done that can he again in any honest
sense take possession of the wisdom which he inherits.
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is
nothing if the audience is deaf. In the great moral sys-
tems and the great religions of mankind are embedded
the record of how men have dealt with destiny, and only
the thoughtless will argue that that record is obsolete and
insignificant. But it is overlaid with much that is obsolete
and for that reason it is undeciphered and inexpressive.
The wisdom it contains has to be discovered anew before
the old symbols will yield up their meaning. That is the
only way in which Bacon’s aphorism can be fulfilled, that
"a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but
depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to reli-
gion.” The depth in philosophy which can bring them
about is a much deeper and more poignant experience
than complacent churchmen suppose.

It can be no mere settling back into that from which
men in the ardor of their youth escaped. This man and
that may settle back, to be sure; he may cease to inquire
though his questions are unanswered. But such con-
formity is sterile, and due to mere weariness of mind and

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body. The inquiry goes on because it has to go on, and
while the vitality of our race is unimpaired, there will be
men who feel with Mr. Whitehead that ”to acquiesce in
discrepancy is destruaive of candor and of moral cleanli-
ness/' and that ’ht belongs to the self-respect of intellect
to pursue every tangle of thought to its finat unravel-
ment.” The crisis in the religious loyalties of mankind
cannot be resolved by weariness and good nature, or by
the invention of little intellectual devices for straighten-
ing out the dilemmas of biology and Genesis, history and
the Gospels with which so many churchmen busy them-
selves. Beneath these little conflicts - there is a real
dilemma which modern men cannot si^ccessfully evade.
''Where is the way where light dwelleth.^" They are com-
pelled to clioose consciously, clearly, and with full realiza-
tion of what the choice implies, between religion as a
system of cosmic government and religion as insight into
a cleansed and matured personality: between God con-
ceived as the master of that fate, creator, providence, and
king, and God conceived as the highest good at which they
might aim. For God is the supreme symbol in which
man expresses his destiny, and if that symbol is confused,
his life is confused.

Men have not, hitherto, had to make that choice, for
the historic churches have sheltered both kinds of religious
experience, and the same mysteries have been the symbols
of both. That confusion is no longer benign because men
are no longer unconscious of it. They are aware that it
IS a confusion, and they are stultified by it. Because the
popular religion of supernatural governments is under-
mined, the symbols of religion do not provide clear chan-

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nels for religious experience They are choked with the
debris of dead notions m which men are unable to believe
and unwilling to disbelieve The result is a frustration
in the inner life which will persist as long as the leaders
of thought speak of God m more senses than one, and
thus render all faith invalid, insincere, and faltering

3 The Religion of the Spirit
The choice is at last a personal one. The decision is
rendered not by argument but by feeling Those who
believe that their salvation lies m obedience to, and com-
munion with, the King of Creation can know how whole-
hearted their faith is by the confidence of their own hearts
If they are at peace, they need inquire no further There
are, however, those who do not find a principle of order
in the belief that they are related to a supernatural power
They cannot be argued into the ancient belief, for it has
been dissolved by the circumstances of their lives. They
are deeply perplexed They have learned that the absence
of belief is vacancy, they know, from disillusionment and
anxiety, that there is no freedom in mere freedom They
must find, then, some other principle which will give
coherence and direction to their lives.

If the argument in these p2-ges is sound, they need not
look for and, m fact, cannot hope for, some new and
unexpected revelation. Since they are unable to find a
principle of order in the authority of a will outside them-
selves, there is no place they can find it except in an ideal
of the human personality. But they do not have to invent
such an ideal out of hand. The ideal way of life for men
who must make their own terms with experience and find

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then own happiness has been stated again and again It
IS that only the regenerate, the disinterested, the mature,
can make use of freedom This is the central insight of
the teachers of wisdom We can see now, I think, that it
IS also the mark at which the modern study of human
nature points We can see, too, that it is the pattern of
successful conduct in the most advanced phases of the
development of modern civilization The ideal, then, is
an old one, but its confirmation and its practical perti-
nence are new. The world is able at last to take seriously
what its greatest teachers have said And since all things
need a name, if they are to be talked about, devotion to
this ideal may properly be called by the na^e which these
greatest teachers gave it; it may be called the religion of
the spirit At the heart of it is the knowledge that the
goal of human effort is to be able, in the words I have so
often quoted from Confucius, to follow what the heart
desires without transgressing what is right.

In an age when custom is dissolved and authority is
broken, the religion of the spirit is not merely a possible
way of life. In principle it is the only way which tran-
scends the difficulties It alone is perfectly neutral about
the constitution of the universe, m that it has no expecta-
tion that the universe will justify naive desire Therefore,
the progress of science cannot upset it Its indifference
to what the facts may be is indeed the very spirit of scien-
tific inquiry A religion which rests upon particular con-
clusions in astronomy, biology, and history may be fatally
injured by the discovery of new truths But the religion
of the spirit does not depend upon creeds and cosmolo-
gies , It has no vested interest in any particular truth It is

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concerned not with the organization of matter, but with
the quality of human desire.

It alone can endure the variety and complexity of
things, for the religion of the spirit has no thesis to defend.
It seeks excellence wherever it may appear, and finds it in
anything which is inwardly understood; its motive is not
acquisition but sympathy. Whatever is completely under-
stood with sympathy for its own logic and purposes ceases
to be external and stubborn and is wholly tamed. To un-
derstand IS not only to pardon, but in the end to love.
There is no itch in the religion of the spirit to make men
good by bearing down upon them with righteousness and
making then^^ conform to a pattern. Its social principle is
to live and let live. It has the only tolerable code of
manners for a society in which men and women have
become freely-moving individuals, no longer held in the
grooves of custom by their ancestral ways It is the only
disposition of the soul which meets the moral difficulties
of an anarchical age, for its principle is to civilize the pas-
sions, not by regulating them imperiously, but by trans-
forming them with a mature understanding of their place
in an adult environment. It is the only possible hygiene
of the soul for men whose selves have become disjointed
by the loss of their central certainties, because it counsels
them to draw the stmg of possessiveness out of their pas-
sions, and thus by removing anxiety to render them har-
monious and serene.

The philosophy .of the spirit is an almost exact reversal
of the worldling’s philosophy. The ordinary man believes
that he will be blessed if he is virtuous, and therefore vir-
tue seems to him a price he pays now for a blessedness he

[ 328}

A PREFACE TO MORALS

will some day enjoy. While he is waitmg for his reward,
therefore, virtue seems to him drab, arbitrary, and mean-
ingless. For the reward is deferred, and there is really
no instant proof that virtue really leads to the happiness
he has been promised. Because the reward is deferred, it
too becomes vague and dubious, for that which we never
experience, we cannot truly understand. In the realm of
the spirit, blessedness is not deferred: there is no future
which is more auspicious than the present; there are no
compensations later for evils now. Evil is to be overcome
now and happiness is to be achieved now, for the kingdom
of God is Within you. The life of the spirit is not a com-
mercial transaction in which the profit has to be antici
pared; it is a kind of experience which is inherently
profitable.

And so the mature man would take the world as it
comes, and within himself remain quite unperturbed.
When he acted, he would know that he was only testing
an hypothesis, and if he failed, he would know that he had
made a mistake. He would be quite prepared for the dis-
covery that he might make mistakes, for his intelligence
would be disentangled from his hopes. The failure of his
experiment could not, therefore, involve the failure of his
life. For the aspect of life which implicated his soul
would be his understanding of life, and, to the understand-
ing, defeat is no less interesting than viaory. It would be
no effort, tlierefore, for him to be tolerant, and no annoy-
ance to be skeptical. He would face pain with fortitude,
for he would have put it away from the inner chambers of
his soul. Fear would not haunt him, for he would be
without compulsion to seize anything and without anxiety

[329]

A PREFACE TO MORALS

as to its fate. He would be strong, not with the strength
of hard resolves, but because he was free of that tension
which vain expectations beget. Would his life be unin-
teresting because he was disinterested? He would have
the whole universe, rather than the prison of his own
hopes and fears, for his habitation, and in imagination all
possible forms of being How could that be dull unless
he brought the dullness with him? He might dwell with
all beauty and all knowledge, and they are mexhaustible.
Would he, then, dream idle dreams? Only if he chose to.
For he might go q^uite simply about the business of the
world, a good deal more effectively perhaps than the
worldling, in that he did not place an absolute value upon
it, and decefve himself. Would he be hopeful? Not if
to be hopeful was to expea the world to submit rather
soon to his vanity. Would he be hopeless? Hope is an
expectation of favors to come, and he would take his
delights here and now. Since nothing gnawed at his
vitals, neither doubt nor ambition, nor frustration, nor
fear, he would move easily through life And so whether
he saw the thing as comedy, or high tragedy, or plain
farce, he would affirm that it is what it is, and that the
wise man can enjoy it.

[330]

APPENDIX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At the suggestion of the publishers, the references which
follow have been segregated in an appendix instead of
being scattered as footnotes through the text. They felt,
rightly enough, I think, that in a book of this charaaer the
purpose of the notes was to acknowledge indebtedness
for the material cited rather than to support die argument,
and that the reader would prefer not to have the text
encumbered by the apparatus of a kind of scholarship to
which the author makes no pretensions.

While these notes, except in a few instances, refer only
to matter actually used in the text, they are also an approx-
imate bibliography of the works which I have consulted.
I wish I could adequately acknowledge the obligation I
owe to my teachers, William James, George Santayana,
and Graham Wallas, though that perhaps is self-evident.
I should like to thank Miss Jane Mather and Miss Orrie
Lashin for help in the preparation of the manuscript. I
am under special obligation to my wife, Faye Lippmann,
without whose assistance I could not have completed the
book.

W. L

New York City, January, 1929.

<>«) #

[3313

NOTES

PAGE LINE

4 32 Quoted in Irvmg Babbitt, Rousseau and RomanUcismt p, 181«

5 4 John Herman Randall Jr., "The Maktng of the Modern

Mind, p 118

5 21 . From 7 he Ctty of Dreadful Night, cited, Babbitt, op cit ,

p 332.

5 24 For discussion of this theme, cf Babbitt, op. cit passim

5 29 Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Act III, Scene IV

6 12 From Byron, The Island, cited, Babbitt, op. cit, p 186

6 16 From T H Huxley, Address on Unwerstty Education,

'delivered, 1876, at the formal opening of Johns Hop-
kins University I am indebted to Mr. Henry Hazlitt
for the quotation

7 11 Cited, Babbitt, op cit, p 341.

7 20 N;etzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, LXIX, cited. Babbitt,

op. cit , p 261

11 12 Cf W. R Inge, The Platonic Tradttton tn English Religious

Thought.

11 19 W. C Greene, Introduction to Selection from the Dialogues

of Plato, p, XXIV.

13 27 Calvin, Institutes, Book IV, Chapter X, Paragraph 7,

cited A C, M’Giffert, Protestant Thought Before Kant,
p 90

21 32 Harry Emerson Fosdick, Adventurous Religion, p. 59.

24 8 W. C Brownell, Scribner’s Magazine, Vol XXX, p 112,

cited in footnote, William James, The Varieties of
Religious Experience, p. 115.

24 25 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,

p. 518.

25 12 James, op, at., p 519.

26 7 Alfred North '^itehead. Science and the Modern World,

pp. 249-250.

27 12 Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship, in Mysticism and

Logic, p. 54

27 27 Kirsopp Lake, The Religion of Yesterday and Tomorrow.

30 2 W. R. Inge, Science, Religion and Reality, p. 388.

[ 332]

NOTES

PAGE LINE

31

3

34

18

35

25

37

22

40

2

42

5

44

10

44

23

47

30

51

22

56

21

70

29

71

14

72

18

73

IS

74

7

Cf. W B. Rliey, The Fanh of the Fundamentalists, Times
Current History, June, 1927

Fundamentalism and the Faith, Commonweal, Aug 19,
1925.

George Santayana, Reason tn Religion, p 97

The material in this section is taken from Harry Emerson
Fosdick, The Modern Use of the Bible.

Fosdick, op cit , p. 85.

Fosdick, The Desire for Immortality, in Adventurous
, Religion.

W R Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, Vol 11, p 166

W. R. Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious
Thought.

Fosdick, The Modem Use of the Bible

Cf. Rudolf Otto, Chrysostom on the Inconceivable in God,
in The Idea of the Holy Appendix I, cf also the
Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, p 452 , cf. also Wil-
liam James, The Varieties of Relig-^us Expedience,
Leaure III.

Lord Aaon, inaugural Lecture on the Study of History, in
Lectures on Modern History.

Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages — ^Trans-
lated by F. W. Maitland, p. 7.

From the Song of Roland, cited, Henry Adams, Mont-
SatnuMtchel and Chartres, p. 29

For an analysis of the texts on which this claim was based,
cf James T. Shotwell and Louise Ropes Loomis, The
See of Peter.

Cited in A. C. M’Giffert, Protestant Thought Before Kant,
p. 44.

For a comprehensive condemnation by the Holy See of
modern opinions which undermine the authority of the
Roman Catholic Church, see the Syllabus of Pius IX
(1864) and the Syllabus of Pius X (1907) The Syl-
labus of 1864 lists and condemns eighty principal errors
of our time, and is described by the Catholic Encyclo-
pedia (Vol. XIV, p 369) as opposition "to the high
tide of that intelieaual movement of the Nineteenth
Century which strove to sweep away the foundations
of all human and Divine order," The Syllabus of 1907
condemns sixty-five propositions of the Modernists which
would "destroy the foundations of all natural and super-
natural knowl^ge.’* (Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol, XIV,

[333]

NOTES

PAGE UNE

75 2

76 20

79 4

80 20

85 24

86 13
98 6

102 28

104 23

109 10

109 18

111 4

116 4

p 370 ) It should be noted that tliere is difference
of opinion among Catholic scholars as to the binding
power of these t'svo pronouncements, and also that their
meaning is open to elaborate interpretation

Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol XIV, p 766

J N Figgis, Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century ^
Cambridge Modern History, Vol III, p 743.

Cf. J N Figgis, op cit , p 742

For an able recent exposition by an American of this theory
of absolutism, cf Charles C. Marshall, The Roman
Catholic Church in the Modern State.

Cited R H Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalismt
p 44.

Cited Tawney, op cit , p 243

The facts cited in this section are from* E. Male, VArt
Religteux du XUleme Steele en France, and LArt
Religieux de la Fin du Moyen-Age en France. But cf.

^ G. G. Coulton, Art and the Reformation

Prometheus Unhound, cited A. N. Whitehead, Science and
the Modern World, p 119.

R. H Wilenski, The Modern Movement tn Art, p. 5.

Cf. Diego Rivera, The Revolution in Fainting, in Creative
Art, Vol. IV, No. 1 “And there is absolutely no
reason to be frightened because the subject is so essen-
tial On the contrary, precisely because the subject is
admitted as a prime necessity, the artist is absolutely
free to create a thoroughly plastic form of art. The
subject IS to the painter what the rails are to a locomo-
tive He cannot do without it In fact, when he

refuses to seek or accept a subjea, his own plastic
methods and his own esthetic theories become his sub-
ject instead And e\en if he escapes them, he himself
becomes the subject of his work. He becomes nothing
but an illustrator of his own state of mind, and in
trying to liberate himself he falls into the worst form of
slavery That is the cause of all the boredom which
emanates from so many of the large expositions of
modern art, a fact testified to again and again by the
most different temperaments."

Bernard Berenson, The Florentine Painters of the Renats^
sance, p. 19

Cf. R. H. Wilenski, The Modern Movement in Art, p. 119.

Cf. George Santayana, Reason in Religion, pp. 92 et seq.

C 334]

NOTES

PAGE

LINE

119

28

123

17

127

2

128

1

128

9

129

3

129

23

130

4

135

2

137

31

146

29

147

29

148

3

148

9

148

17

149

14

159

2

160

20

161

17

162

5

162

19

163

6

163

25

163

28

164

5

165

17

166

22

177

3

177

10

192

13

192

23

192

31

195

25

Cf. Catholic Bncyclapedta, Voi. X, p 342.

Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 257.

A. S Eddington, Stars and Atoms, p 121.

John Herman Randall Jr., The Making of the Modern
Mind, p 100

Epist. ad Can Grand, ated in footnote to Paradiso in the
Temple Classics

Cf. P W Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, p. 45.

C. S Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear in^Chance, Love
and Logic edited by Morns R Cohen
Bridgman op cit , p 38

Cited L R Farnell, The Attributes of God, p 275
Cf M C Otto, Natural Laws and Human Hopes, pp 32
et seq

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol XII, p 345
C£ B L. Manning, The Peoples Faith in the Time of
Wychf

Fosdick, Adventurous Religion, p 85 et seq*

Santayana, Reason m Religion, p 43

L. R Farnell, The Attributes of God, p 15.

Manning, op. cit.

Herbert Asbury, A Methodist Saint, The Life of Bishop
Asbury, p. 265.

Cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, '’Asceticism ”

Cf Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 768

Quoted m Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, p 45

Rabelais, Book II, Chapter 34.

Cited Henry Osborn Taylor, Thought and Expression in the
Sixteenth Century, Vol. I, p. 330.

Babbitt, op. cit , p. 161.

Cf- Dora Russell, The Right to be Happy,

Cf. Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals.

T W. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 111.

Ethics, Book II, Chapter 9.

S. Freud; Formulterung uher die zwei Prinzipien des
psychtschen Geschehens, 1911, Jahrb, Bd , I, s 411.

S. Ferenczi, Stages in the Development of the Sense of
Reality, 1913. In Contributions to Psychoanalysis,
translated by Dr. Ernest Jones.

Spinoza, Ethics, Part V, Prop. XLII.

Cf. T W. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 110.

Confuctan Analects, Book II, Chapter 4.

A. N Whitehead, Religion m the Making, pp. 15-16.

[ 335 ]

NOTES

PAGE

LINE

196

20

197

24

199

19

199

30

200

18

205

5

218

9

220

1

220

4

224

28

232

18

233

25

234

17

235

30

236

10

237

7

238

16

238

26

240

19

241

12

242

24

245

4

265

19

266

9

266

12

267

7

274

11

280

31

Analects VII, XX.

Ethics, Part V, Prop. XLII.

Cf. T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 84.

C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mohammedanism, p. 82.

Republic, VI, 495, 504.

Cf. J. Burnet, Philosophy in The Legacy of Greece, edited
by R. W. Livingstone, p. 67.

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book Third, Transla-
tion by H. A. J. Munro.

Spinoza, Ethics, Part V, Prop. III.

Id , Parc V, Prop. VI.

Aristotle, Ethics, Book IV, Chapter III.

Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West,

C. A. Beard, Is Western Civilization tn Peril? Harper’s
Magazine, August, 1928.

H. G Wells, The Outline of History, VoL II, pp. 394-5

A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p 4.

W. '^T. Sedgwick and H. W. Tyler, A Shon History of
Science, p 269. Cf. Martha Ornstein, The Role of
Scientific Societies tn the Seventeenth Century,

J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, p. 330.

Bor a most illuminating description of the behavior of a
great scientific investigator, cf. Claude Bernard, An
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine,

Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, p. 42.

Cf. Graham Wallas, Our Social Heritage, Chapter I

John Herman Randall Jr., The Making of the Modern Mindf
p. 279.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 9

Oted in R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capital^
ism, p. 286.

Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, Trans-
lated by F. W. Maitland, p. 23.

Id., p. 88.

Cf. J. W. Garner, Introduction to Political Science, p. 92.

For a discussion of the concept of sovereignty in the modern
world, cf. Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle
Ages; J. N. Figgis, Churches tn the Modern State; Lord
Aaon, History of Freedom and Other Essays; H. J.
Laski, A Grammar of PoUucs; Kung Chuan Hsiao,
Political Pluralism,

William Hard, Who^s Hoover? p. 193.

Refiecttons on the French Revolution, cf. Gamer, op, dt^
p, 112.

[336]

NOTES

PAGE LINE
288 6

289

1

289

9

295

6

295

21

297

3

297

15

299

4

302

18

304

24

310

14

313

6

320

15

Genesis XXXVIII; cf Harold Cox, The Problem of Popula-
tion, pp 208-211, for an interpretation of the story of
Onan in the light of Deut XXV, which shows that the
crime of Onan was not the spilling of his seed, but a
breach of Jewish tribal law m refusing ’'to perform
the duty of a husband's brother" with his brother’s
widow

Psalm 127, cf. Cox, op. cit.

The historical data are from A. M. Carr-Saunders, The
Population Problem^ Chapter I,

Havelock Ellis, Love as an Art, in Count Hermann Keyser-
ling’s The Book of Marriage, p. 388

Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. II, p. 10.

C. E. M. Joad, Thrasymachus, or The Future of Morals,
pp 54-55.

Havelock ElHs, The Family, in Whither Mankind, p. 216.

Quoted in Judge Ben B. Lmdsey and Wainwright Evans,
The Companionate Marriage, p. 210. ^

Cf. Alfred Weber, History of Philosophy, p. 72.

Love — Or the Life and Death of a Value, Atlantic Monthly,
August, 1928.

Reason in Society, p 22.

W. R. Inge, The Philosophy of Plotinus, Vol. II, p 161.

John Keats, Letters to John Taylor, Feb. 27, 1818 — m
Oxford Book of English Prose, No. 379.

1:337 1

INDEX

Absolute state, 80
Absoiuusm, 266
Accademia det Lincet, 236
‘Acids of modernity.” See Mo-
dernity.

Acquisiuve instina, 250
Acton, Lord, 36
Adams, Henry, 71
Adeimantus, 160
Adultery, S9
“Agnosuc,” 28, 77
Agnostics, 29, 54
Agnosticism, 34

Allegiance, 263, 265, 267, 268-269
Allegory, 37, 38-40
American farmer, 85, 276
Americanism, 61, 63, 274
American Philosophical Associa-
tion, 236
Anabaptists, 1 5
Analysis, scientific, 107
Ananias, 95
Anarchy, moral, 209
Anne, St, 149
Anthropomorphism, 28, 148
Anti-evoiunon laws, 31
Antioch, 51, 52
Apostles, 58, 99, 120, 200
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 11, 68, 71,
100, 218, 323
Arcadia, 148, 162
Arians, 52
Aristoaacy, 15
Aristophanes, 4

Aristotle, 26, 48, 127, 156, 157,
161, 166-167, 194, 224, 244, 319
Art, 112; Christian, 101; for art's
sake, 101, 104-105, 107
Artist, modern, 108-109
Artists and the Catholic Church,
98-101, 104
Asbuty, Bishop, 158

Asbury, Herbert, 158
Asceuasm, 155, 156-161, 191, 192,
204, 205

Astronomers, Newtoman, 123
Atheism, 28, 324
“Atheist,” 28, 29
Atheists, 6, 54, 194
Augsburg, Peace of, 79
Augustine, St., 37, 38, 69, 71, 73.
113, 196

Authority, 13, 14, 166, 202, 262,
272, 317, 326, divine, 135, ec-
clesiastical, 14-15, 35, 76, 93,
133, 236, moral, ^

Bacon, 324
Baxter, 86

Beard, Charles A, 233, 235
Beauty, religion of, 18
Beauvais, Vincent de, 99
Behavior, 171-172, 186
Behaviorism, 174, 177
Belief, childish, 185, 189, 190
Berenson, 109
Bergson, 107
Berlin Academy, 236
Besant, Mrs , 290
Beteiguese, 169

Bible, 13, 23, 27, 34-35, 37, 38-
39, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47-48,
60, 78, 121, 131, 132, 162, 214,
288, epic of, 116, 117
Biblical world, 40
Bigotry, 190
Bill of Rights, 114
Biologists, 150-151, 325
Birth control, 93, 285, 287, 289-
291, 292-293, 296-297, 298-299,
301, 305-306, 307
Bishop of Rome, 71
Bodm, Jean, 262
Bolshevism, 251-253, 254-255

[339 3

INDEX

Bradlaugh, 290
Breuer, 220
Bridgman, Prof , 129
Broadway Temple, 88
Brownell, W. C., 24
Bryan, 77

Buddha, 46, 155, 156, 161, 165,
193, 194, 199, 200
BuiJon, 241
Bunyan, John, 86
Bureaucracy, 249-250
Burke, Edmund, 280
Bury, Prof John B , 236
Business, 231, 284, and the Cath-
olic Church, 84-88, organized,
244, stabilization of, 256
Byron, 5, 6

Calles, 264, 265
Calvin, 13, 39, 73, 74, 135
Calvinism, 13
Canby, Henry Seidel, 17
Capitalism, 16, 85, 245, 247-248,
250-251, primitive, 251-252; rise
of, 232, 245-246

Capitalists, 242, abolition of, 249-
250, coercion of, 248-249
Capitalistic credo, 244-245
Caste, 199

Catholic Church, 7, 15, 34, 35, 37,
38, 39, 49, 58, 72, 73, 77, 81,
84-85, 8C 94, 98, 117, 120, 16I,
205-206, 291

Catholic Encyclopedia, 51, 74
Catholicism, 11, 15, 35, 58, 78,
81, 86, 109
Catholics, 74, 76-77
Cause and effect, 181
Ceaiia, St., 98-99
Certainty, feeling of, 19, 21, 322
Cenainty, moral. See Moral cer-
tainty.

Chateaubriand, 5
Chesterton, G, K., 56-57
Children and the churches, 91, 93
Christ, 13, 14, 23, 29-30, 33, 58,
74, 99, 205. See also Jesus.
"Christ, athletes of,” 160
Christian capitalism, 87
ChfhtUn Directory, 86

Christian doarine, 152, 163
Christian Fathers, 207
Christianity, 8-9, 11, 29-30, 32, 34,
55, 58, 205-206, 250, founda-
tions of, 51

Christianity and Liberalism, 32
Christian socialism, 87
Chrysostom, St , 51-54
Church and state, 75, 79-80, 112
Church attendance, 48
Church councils, 58
Church of England, 266
Church of St Urban, 98
City of God, 69, 71. See also *'CiV‘
Has Dei/'

Civilization, cycle of, 232, modern,
4, 9, 62, 230, 233-234, 237,
240, 241, 265, 267, 271, 273,
300, 327, Roman, 233-234, tech-
nological, 233, 238, 240
Civil service, 271-272
Civil War, 66

Civttas Dei, 70. See also ''City
of God/'

Commeraal enterprise, 86
Commonsense, religion of, 44, 45
Commonweal, 34

Communities, homogeneous, 270-
271

Competition, 247, free, 244
Compulsions, old and new, 9-10
Comstock, Anthony, 156
Conceptions of God, 51 ; Eight-
eenth-Century, 55, Luther’s, 53;
mediaeval, 55, 71-72, Modernist,
55, Oriental, 55, St. Chrysos-
tom’s, 52-53
Concepts, fixed, 171
Conclusions to T/he Renaissance,
106

Condua, human, 145, 230, 284,
323

Conformity, 12, 324-325, 328
Confucius, 193, 196, 258, 327
Conventions, new, 12
Conversion, 192, 198
Council of Vienna, 87
Counter-Reformation, 94, 96
Courage, 222-223
Cox, Harold, 288
[340}

INDEX

Creation, 99, theory of, 11
Creative evoiution, 18, 117, 131
Creator, dependence on, 69
Credulity, modern, 8-9
Creeds, profusion of, 110
Critique of Pure Reason, 136
Cults, modern, 9, 14, 125-126
Culture, theocraac, 164, 175, 221
Curia, 81

Curiosity, 129-130
Custom, 166, 167, 241, 327

Dante, 11, 68, 69, 128, 323
Dar>Mn, 210

Darwinism, 125, 132, 174
Darrow, Clarence, 13
Davids, Rhys, 165
Decoding the Bible, 41, 47
Della Porta, 236
Democracy, 15, 264, 278
Desire, reform of, 201, 202, 282,
320-321

Desires, human, 145, 146, 165,
167-170, 172, 180, 182, 186,
190, 193, 206, 216, 310-311,
319

Desany, human, 133, 184, 218,
324

Development, concept of, 171-172,
174, 191, industrial, 245-246,
252, 253-254, 255, 257, 258
Dialogue of Dives and Pauper, 147
Diaatorship, military, 253, 2^
Disciplines, 202, 203, 205
Disillusionment, 17, 326
Disinterestedness, 204, 206, 209,
210, 221, 225, 230-231, 237,
238-239, 243, 258, 272. 281.
283, 311, 313, 323, 327, 330
Disorders, social, 191-192, 206
Disposition to believe, 143
Divine Comedy, 69, 128
Divine government, sense of, 72,
95, 194, theory of. 71-72, 82.
175

Divme right of kings, 79, 265
Divorce, 299, 308
Doge, 81

Dogma, 13, 96, 125, 133, 176, 244
Domain of religion, 82

Donne, John, 40
Doubt, freedom from, 16

Ecclesiastical establishments, 196,
201, 314-315
Eckhan, 196

Economic order, new, 86, 246-248
Eddington, Dr , 127
Eden, 37

Educaaon, 175, 184, 191, 192, 198,
230

Eighteenth Century, 154, 174, 266,
289

Pdan vital, 55
Eliot, T. S, 303

Ellis, Havelock, 293, 295-296, 297.
301, 305

Emancipation, 19, of women, 91-
92

Emotions, 220

Encyclopedia Britannica, 289
England, 253-254, 272, 273
Environment, 145, 172, 180, 181,
184, 189, 190, 247, 250
Epistles of St. Paul, 44
Erasmus, 196
Essay on Population, 289
Escheticism, 105, 107
Ethical codes, 49, 165
Ethics, 166

Evil, problem of, 145, 156, 213,
214, 216-217, 218, 329; sense
of, 188, 189, 218-219
Evils, social, 243

Evolution, 60, 117, 122, 125, 132,
171, 210, 231. See also Creative
evolution.

Excommunication, 16
Executives, modern business, 256-
257

Exhibition of London, 236-237
Existence, 108, 117, 123
Exodus, 27, 118

Experience, Christian, 33; estheuc,
106, lessons of, 181, 182, 183,
186, 188, 189, 192, 195, 227,
scienufic, 220

Eaitfa, age of, 83, 322, questions of,
77

C341}

INDEX

Fallacy, 167, 16S
Family, 88, 91-92, 93
Fanaticism, 271
Faraday, 240
Fascism, 251-253, 254
Faust t 116

Federal Council of Churches of
Christ, 87

Ferenczi, Dr. S., 177-179
Fetich worship, 160
Feudal system, 85-86, 242, 252,
253, 263, 266-267
Figgis, Dr., 76, 81
Fildes, Mrs., 289-290
Flaubert, 7
Ford, Henry, 64
Fomicauon, 89

Fosdick, Rev Harry Emerson, 21-
22, 40, 41, 42, 45-46, 47, 97,
147-148

Fourth Gospel, 11, 44, 194
Francis, St., 69, ift
Franklin, Benjamin, 236
Freedom, 17, 136, 242, 262, 315,
326, 327; religious, 75
French Academy of Sciences, 236
Freud, 107, 157, 176, 177, 179,
220

Fruits of Philosophy, 290
Fundamentalism, 30-31, 34-35, 64
Fundamentalists, 31, 33-34, 51, 60,
77

Galileo, 123-124, 236
Gargantua, 162-163
Genesis, 27, 38, 131, 132, 325
Geneva, 74
Genteel, cult of, 155
Gentleman, ideal of, 167
Germany, 254, 272
Gestalt-theorte, 174, 177
Gierke, 70
Giotto, 109
Gnostics, 52

God, attributes of, 213-214, 215-
216

Gods, Greek, 10, 302
Godlessness, 194

Gods, popular. See Theology, pop-
ular.

Golden Age, 151
Golden mean, 166-167, 180
Good and evil, 135, 137, 153, 168,
170, 172, 214-215, 320
•’Good life," 156, 172, 191, 202,
319, 323

Good Samaritan, 37
Gospels, 37, 44, 206, 325
Government, 231, 275-276, 278-
279

Grace, meaning of, 58, religion of,
12

Greek Church, 51

Hammurabi, code of, 136
Happiness, pursuit of, 4, 153, 166,
198, 328-329
Heaven, Christian, 146
Hedonism, 301-302, 304, 319
Hegesias, 302
Hellenism, 322
Hemingway, Ernest, 303
Hera, 148
Heretics, 56
Heroism, 156
Hertz, 240
Heterodoxy, 12, 62
Hierarchies, 92, 263, 265, 268
Higher Criticism, 40
"Higher sense," il
High religion, 193, 203-204, 207,
208, 230, 239, funaion of, 193,
insight of, 207-208, 209, 230,
239, 251
Hildebrand, 58
Historians, philosophic, 232
Historical scholarship, 157
History, 143, 157
Hobbes, 266
Holy Land, 149
Holy See, 73, 74
Homer, 10, 43
Hooker, Richard, 266
Hoover, 273-274
Hope and fear, 321, 330
Hosea, 12

Human development, 177, 234
Humanism, 137-139, 143-144, 164,
166, 167, 172, 175, 196, 221
Humanity, religion of, 18

[342}

INDEX

Human nature, 157, l6l, 164,
165, 169, 171-172, 175, 175-
1*"6, 185-184, 207, 227, 306,

327

Huss, 73

Huxley, Aldous, 303
Huxiey, Thomas Henry, 6

Iconociasm, 17, 96, 315
Iconoclasts, 15, 302
Idealism, debacle of, 17
Ideals, foundation of, 133, 224,
323, succession of, 111
Ideas, crystallization of, 20
Idols, smashing of, 15, 16
Illusions, 8, 189, 232
Immortality, 11, 41-43, 45, 122,
136, 180, 188

Impersonal, worship of the, 44
Impulses, 165-166, 168, 169, 192,
222, 224, 227, 306
Industry, ideals of, 258-259, mod-
ern, 248, 251, 255-256, 260, 273-
274 288

Inertia, human, 208, 227
Infallibility, 81

Infantilism, 174, 175, 176, 177,
178, 181, 182, 184, 185, 189-
190, 191
Inferno, 146

Inge, Dean, 28, 29-30, 42, 44, 46,
196, 313, 514

Inquiry, disinterested, 132, free-
dom of, 126
Inquisition, 125-124, I6l
Inspiration, 13, 46
Intelligence, 186, machinery of,
64

Interests, diversification of, 267-
268, 269-270, 274^ 328
Internal life, 152, 195, 196
Invention of invention, 235
Inventions, mechanical, 234-235
Iireligion, modern, 12, 53-54
Isaiah, 12
Italy, 251-253, 272

James I, 79

James, William, 18, 24-26
Jefferson, 1 5

Jehovah, 12, 214, 288 See also
Yahveh

Jerome, St, 161

Jesus, 12, 46, 99. 119, 155, 193,
199, 200 See also Christ,

Jews, 52

Joad, C E M, 296, 297, 315-316
Job, 213-216
Job, Book of, 214, 216
John, Gospel of. See Fourth Gos-
pel.

John, St , 99
Joyce, James, 303
Judaism, 12

Judgment, private, 15, 34

Kant, Immanuel, 136-137
Keats, 320
Kelvin, Lord, 129
Keynes, Maynard, 245, 258
Knowledge, limitations of, 202
Knowhon, 290 *

Knox, 73

Krutch, Joseph Wood, 302-303,
304

Ku KIux Klan, 31

Labor, organized, 244
Laissez^jasre, 242, 244, 250, 252
Lake, Kirsopp, 27-29
Lamarckism, 125

'‘Land of heart’s desire,” 151-152
Last Judgment, 99
Law enforcement, 277-278
Law, international, 265-266
Lawrence, D H , 303
Leadership, mass, 274-275
Legislation, modern, 275-276, 279
Lent, 1492, 38
Leviticus, 37
Lewis, Sinclair, 16
Liberalism, 6, 152
Liberals, Protestant, 34; religious,
21, 33

Liberty, natural, 243, 244-246, 258
Life, an of, 175, 326-327, medie-
val view of, 154, 523, wisdom
of, 156, 330

Lmdbergh, Col. Charles A., 222-
223

[ 343]

INDEX

Lindsey, Judge, 298, 307
Locke, 266

Love, art of, 293, 295, 501, 303.

305, 308-309, value of, 302-304,

306, 310

Lowell Lectures, 25
Loyalty, 261-263, 268-269. 272,
325

Lucreuus, 218

Luther, 13, 14-15, 39. 53-54. 73-
74, 79, 196
Lutheran Church, 13
Lutherans, 77

Machen, Prof. J. Gresham, 32, 33-
34

Machine process, 246, 253-254,

274

Machine technology, 242-243, 247.
251, 252, 254, 257, 258-259,
274, 284, 316
Male, 100, 101
Maithus, 289
Manich2Eans, 52
Man, nature of, 152, 243
Manner of life, 235
Markets, 246-247

Marriage, 89, 286, 288, 289, 291,
309, 310-311, 312, compan-

ionate, 298, 307
Marxianism, 16
Mary, St. See Virgin Mary.
Masses, 148-149, 278
Matriarchal societies, 91
Maturity, 174-175, 176-177, 179-

180, 183-184, 185, 186, 189,

190, 191-192, 204, 209, 225,

230, 237, 239, 313, 323, 325,

327, 328-329
Maxwell, 240
Mazzini, 18
Meaning of things, 183
Mechanism, 125, 128, 130-131
Medical progress, 218
Melanchthon, 79
Mencken, H. L., 13, l6
Mendel’s law, 231
Messianic Kingdom, 11
Methodism, 6; American, 158
Mexico, 253, 265

24idd!e Ages, 70-72, 73, 94, 129,
131, 161, 265, 266
Mill, James, 289
Milton, 74, 266
Minority, recalcitrant, 279
Miracles, 118, 119-120
Mississippi flood, 273-274
Modernism, 18, 32, 33, 59. 77,
117, 217

Modermsts, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35,
42, 51

Modernity, 5, 8, 14, 15, 19, 56,
68, 96, 105, 110, 112, l43, 158,
196-197, 208, 229, 251, 284,
316, 318, 320, 321
Modern man, 4, 8-10, 12, 19, 21,
24, 40, 41, 51, 54, 57, 59, 94,
111, 112, 113, 114, 152, 153,
158, 161, 194, 203, 227-228,
315, 316

Modern men. See Modem man.
Modern Movement in Art, The,
104

Modern spirit, 36, 110, 143
Modern state, 260, 262-263, 267,
272-273, 275, 279, 311
Modern world, 14, 19, 20, 268-269,
270, 300, 311, 322-324
Mohammed, 145
Mohammedanism, 199
Monasticism, 204-206
Montaigne, 48, 175, 196
Moral certainty, 9-10, 15, 115
Moral codes, 3, 49, 135, 167, 170.

171, 201, 208-209, 226, 228,
272, 317, 319

Moral confusion, 155, 228, 230
Moral elfea, 179-180
Moral elfort, 175
Moral guidance, 14, 205
Moral insight, 227-228, 229
Moralists, 164, 165, 166, 167, 170,

172, 173, 208-209, 225, 244,

300, 314-315, 316-319, 320-

321, 323

Morality, 114-115, 117, 136, 137-
139, 145; divine, 49-50; sanc-
tions of, 78, 166, 176, 228, the-
isDc, 138. See also Morals
Moral law, 46, 48, 191, 233

[344]

INDEX

Moral phiiosophies, 156
Moral problem, 134, 166, 168, 192,
229, 312, 317

Morals, 17, 112, 151, 157, 192.
208, 210, 227*228, 229, 241,
322. See also Morality.

Moral values, 106
Morns, William, 5, 244
Mortality, 188, 191
Mosaic law, 136
Moses, 49
Moving piaures, 6
Music, 182

Musset, Alfred de, 163
Mystics, 147, 196

Nain, 119
Naples, 236
Nationalism, 63-64, 232
Natural goodness, 163
Natural man, 19, 162, 163, 241
Natural seleaion, 18, 150
Nature and science, 241
Nature, laws of, 117, 122, 125,
150, 165, 195, religion of, 18
Necessity, experience of, 187
Need to believe, 125, 203
Neo-Malthusianism, 289-290
Neo-Platonism, Christian, 28
Neo-Platonists, modern, 11
New Jerusalem, 115, 116
Newspapers, popular, 6, 64-65
New York, 66, 271, 273
Nicaea, Second Counal of, 98, 100,
101

Nietzsche, 7, 157
Nietzscheanism, 16
Nineteenth Century, 5, 16, 18, 174,
288, 309

Nirvana, 145, 165, 199
Noah’s Ark, 38
Noguchi, 223
Non-seaarianisra, 77*78
Novels, autobiographical, 113

Objeaivity, 132 •

Obregon, Gen , 264
Old Testament, 55, ’2 14
Onan, 288

Order, ancestral, 68, 153, 207, 208,
228, 267, 314, 322, cosmic, 8,
195, 202, 216, mdusmai, 242
Origen, 11, 28, 29, 37, 39, 196
Original sin, 198
"’Orthodox,” 57, 122
Orthodoxy, 10, 11, 12, 19-20, 32,
35, 194, 216
"’Overbeli^s,” 24

Pach, Walter, 95
Pagans, 52

Painting, religious, 94-96, 97-98
Pantagruelists, 162
Pantheism, 117-118
Paradise, 128, 145, 146
Paradise Lost, 116
Parenthood, 292-294, 301, 305
Paris, 111, 223

Passions, harmony of, 198, 206,
208

Pater, 1 49 •

Pater, Walter, 106-107
Patriotism, 18, 78, 82
Paul, St., 12-13, 50, 52, 58, 90,
99, 155, 161
Peace of mind, 7-8
Peirce, Charles S., 129
Periclean Age, 11, 232
Personality, persistence of, 42
Peter, St., 72, 74, 99, 146
Petrarch, 5
P&ado, 159

Pharisees, 12, 317, 319
Philisanes, 104

Philosophers, Greek, 10, 159, 233,
235-236

Philosophy, 324; industrial, 243,
260; modern, 157, 158, poliucal,
260

Physiasts, 102, 124, 129
Physics, 143, 157, 174, 241
Pilgrim* s Progress, The, 200
Place, Francis, 289
Plato, 10, 48, 156, 159, 161, 200.
289

Platonic uadition, 28
Platonism, 43
Platomsts, 42-43, 196
Pleasure and pain, 177, 179, 302

1:3453

INDEX

Plot, John, 149
Plotinus, 155

Political conduct, 264-265, 284
Political machine, 264
Politician, the, 279-282
Pope, the, 13, 15, 72, 79, 81, 85,
265, 270-271
Pope Innocent IV, 85
Pope Paul V, 81
Pope Pius IX, 75
Population, growth of, 289-291
Post-Darwinians, 18
Pragmatism, 119
Prayer, 146-149
Pre-machine age, 253
Presbyterians, 79
Priesthood, 73
Primitive peoples, 159
Procreation, 166
Progress, religion of, 18
Prohibition, 31^^277
Propaganda, 281

Prophet, artist as, 101-102, 103,
104

Piophets, 12

Protestantism, 15, 30, 32, 34, 52,
77, 86

Protestants, 34-35
Pseudo-religions, 125
Psychiatry, 158, 159
Psychoanalysis, 6, 125, 174, 177,
179, 220

Psychology', 145, 171, 172, 173,
174, 220, abnormal, 171, folk,
171, popular, 114, scientific,
173, 176

Public interest, 257-258
Public opimon, 167
Public schools, 76-77
Public utilities, regulation of, 254-
255

Purgatory, 146
Puritanism, 154, 302
Purpose, cosmic, 9
Pythagoras, 204-205

Rabelais, I6l, 162-163
Randall, Dr., 127-128
Rauonalists, 24-25
Rationalization, 39

Reality, 177, 179, 180, 193, 216,
272, 312, 319
Reason and faith, 51, 121
Rebellion, 16-17, 19, 190
Rebels, 15-18, 19
Reconstruction, essays m, 14
Redemption, 11, 115
Reformation, 13, 72-73, 94, 154
Reformers, Eighteenth-Century, 15,
Protestant, 34, 39, 40, 73, 96
Relative motion, 124
Religion, 8, 10, 17, 18-19, 23,
112, 123, 131, 284, 324, aris-
tocracy in, 197, 200, 202, 203,
need of, 123, of the spirit, 44,
46, 196-197, 203, 205-206, 327-
328, popular, 14, 32-33, 47, 50,
69, 91, 94, 127, 131-132, 143,
145, 176, 194, 195-196, 201, 202,
208, 216, 227, 232, 244, 325
(See also Theology, popular) ,
traditional, 122, 124, 203
Religious experience, 33, 90-91,
125, 325-326

Religious synthesis, 111, 124
Religious thought, 96
Religious wars, 74
Religious writing, 97
Renaissance, 94-95, l6l, High, 154
Renan, 7

Renunciation, 45, 156, 157, 191,
192, 206

Republic, 159-160
Revelation, 124, 126, 127, 133,
134, 135, 136, 137, 143, 318,
326; logic of, 121, sense of, 13
Revivals, 14

Revolution, French, 289, indus-
trial, 210, 248, meclianicai, 19,
234, 236, 241, 248, 289, Rus-
sian, 250-251, spiritual, 133-
134

Rewards and punishments, 201,
202, 213
Riggs, Father, 34
Righteousness, sense of, 16
Right of revolution, 82
Right to believe, 25
Rights of men, 242, 267
Roland, 71

[346]

INDEX

Roman Catholic Chiifch. See
Catholic Church
Roman Empire, 58, 205
Romantics, IS, 26, 154
Rom.e, l49, 236
Rousseau, 154, 266
Royal Society of London, 236
Ruskin, 244

Russell, Bertrand, 27, 114, 157,
238, 298-299, 308
Russell, Dora, 163
Russia, 250-253, 272, 273

Sages, teaching of, 198, 200, 210,
239

Saintliness, 156

Salvation, 75, 88, 147, 195-197,
198, 201, 313

Santayana, George, 19, 35, 36, 43,
68, 145, 148, 182, 310, 311
Sargent, John, 95
Savonarola, 37
Schoolmen, 127, 129
Saence, 10, 18, 19, 112, 120, 123,
153, 176, 205; and religion,
123-124, 132-133, concepts in,
102-103, 107, 122, Greel^ 210,
logic of, 121, medi£evai, 128,
method of, 121, 122, 123, 124,
125, 157, 239, modern, 127,
128, 236-237, 239, 316; popu-
lar, 127; pure, 237-238, 239
Saence and the Modem World,
123

Scientific discipline, 239-240, 241
Scientific explanation, 130, 131
Scientific hypotheses, 125, 126-127
Scientific inquiry, 35, 123, 236
Scientific materialism, 131
Saentific metliod. See Saence,
method of.

Scientific research, 236-237, 238
Saentific spirit, 240, 327
Saentific theory, 133, 209
Scribes, 12
Saiptures. See Bible
Self-disapline, 45, 196-197, 198
Serenity, 7-8

Sex, 284-285, 288, 299-300, 306,
308, and religion, 89-90

Sexual conventions, 299-300, 301,
307-308

Sexual ideal, 93-94, 293, 301, 305-
306, 307

Sexuality, 150, 165-166, 303-304
Sexual relations, 231, 284-287,

288-289, 291-292, 295-296. 297,
299, 308, 312

Shaw, George Bernard, 18, 48, 156
Shelley, 5-6, 102
Simeon Scylites, St., 158
Sinai, 136, 227
Smith, Adam, 242, 243, 245
"Social compact,” 266-267
Socialism, 249-250, 258
Socialists, 249, 250, 252
Social system, American, 65-67,
273-274

Society, 19, 190, 206, 207, 241,
250, 266, 276, 284, 322. opin-
ion of, 134

Socrates, 10, 11, 155, 159, 160,
161, 219, 220
Song of Solomon, 38
Sophists, 219, 220
Sophisticated violence, 64
Soul, 114, 196

Sovereignty, conception of, 265,
267

Space, sense of, 180
Species, propagation of, 150
Speculation, philosophic, 233
Spengler, 62, 232
Spmoza, 155, 156, 161, 192, 193,
194, 197, 216, 219, 220, 266
Spirituality, 154, 197, 204, 329-
330

Staei, Madame de, 162
Statesman, the, 279-283
Steele, Richard, 86
Stimuli, 182
Stoddard, Lothrop, 64
Suffermg, irrational, 213
Summa, 100

Supernatural kmgdom, 143, 325-
326

Superstition, 218
Survival of the fittest, 150
Syllabus of Pope Pius IX, 314
Symbolism, 34, 45, 68, 100, 325

[347]

INDEX

Tabu, 160
Tamar, 288
Tariff, 276-277
Ten Commandments, 78
Tennessee, 77
Theism, 136, 137
Theocraqr, 194, 195, 197, 203,
227, 228

Theodoras of Cyrene, 301-302
Theology, Catholic, 51, 119, pop-
ular, 10-11, 23 (see also Reli-
gion, popular)

Thirteenth Century, 11
Thomas a Kempis, 113
Thomson, James, 5
Thought, contemporary, 194, scien-
tific, 125, 235
Time, sense of, 181
Toleration, 74-77, 123
Totenusm, l60
Towns, rise of, 19, 232
Tradesman's Calling, The, 86
Traditions, religious, 61-62, 96, 97
Transubstantiation, 58
Trent, Council of, 14, 100-101
Trinity, 70

True Law of Free Monarchy, 79
‘ Truth, the," 129

Unam sanctam, 81
Unbelief, 3-20, 28, 228, 229, 326
Understanding, 181-183, 191, 206,
321, 329

Uneasiness, modern, l4
United States, 253-254, 272, 274,
276, 277-278
Universe, 8, 128, 129, 145
Usury, 84, 85> 86, 87
Utopia, 151

Valerian, 98-99

Values, transvaluation of, 16, 181
Versailles, Court of, 95
ViccgtiQnt of God, 72
Victoria, Queen, 155, 302
View of iite, traditional, 109
Vilieis, 162

Virgin Mary, 96, 99, 115, 149
Virtue, 166, 192, 221-225, 226-
227, 228-229, 320, 329, concep-
tion of, 226, 318, 319, 324
Voltaire, 16, 197

Wallas, Graham, 240
Walter Reed Hospital, 223
Waiwayn, Thomas, 149
War, abolition of, 232
Watt, James, 234, 236
Wealth of Nations, 242
Weils, H G, 233-234
West, Lady Alice, 148-149
Whitehead, Alfred North, 25-27,
123-124, 195, 236, 325
Wilenski, R. H, 104, 111
Will, human, 195
Will of God, 10, 195
Will to believe, 25, 53
Wisdom, 185-186, 198-199, 201,
226-228, 229, 244, 320, 324
Woman, economic independence
of, 93

Women, chastity of, 286-288, 291
Wordsworth, 5, 18, 180
World, character of, 186
World's Christian Fundamentalist
Association, 30, 31
World War, 17, 253, 272-273
Wyclif, 37, 73
Wynne, Father, 146

Yahveh, 55, 214. See also Jehovah.

1348-}