Man's social destiny in the light of science

Front matter

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Preface

In the spring of 1927 the Faculty of the Vanderbilt University School of Religion elected Dr. Charles A. Ellwood as the Cole Lecturer for 1929. It was the judgment of the Faculty that the present trend in our social, scientific, and religious affairs called for a further utterance from the prophetic voice that spoke so effectively in ‘‘The Reconstruction of Religion.’’ After careful consideration of several subjects for discussion in harmony with the purpose of the Cole Foundation, Dr. Ellwood, with the prompt approval of the Faculty, chose to study the problem of human progress under the theme, _“™Man’s Social Destiny.”

It was especially fortunate that Dr. Ellwood was privileged to spend the academic year of 1927-28 in Europe and thus was enabled to enrich his lectures with material gathered in direct observation of conditions among our neighbors across the sea. As a result the Cole Lectures for 1929 provide a constructive and critical study of the major values and prospective permanence of our present-day civilization. The lectures show especially the next steps that must be taken by our social, scientific, and religious leaders if they are to further the progress of humanity toward its God-given goal.

Dr. Ellwood insists that a worthy social science will not only have an adequate method and program of research, but as well a passion for the service and saving of mankind. As to physical science, he indicates that, if it is to prove a blessing and not a curse, it will be not merely concerned with the quantity of material assets which it places in man’s hands, but equally concerned with the moral quality in men which makes them safe trustees of extraordinary power. ‘‘Our civilization is imperiled to-day simply because it is ill-balanced. Our spiritual culture lags so far behind our material culture in its development that we have no adequate control over the latter.’”’ Here we have the mutual task of science and religion. Dr. Ellwood’s estimate of the task of the Christian Church is clear and impressive. “The building of a Christian civilization will ‘be, equally with the saving of individual souls, the concern of the Church.”’

It will be seen from these suggestions that Dr. Ellwood’s lectures make a volume which radiates a much-needed Christian optimism—an optimism tested in the fires of sincere scientific criticism and justified in the light of life’s best-accredited realities. We publish these lectures with great confidence in their exceptional timeliness and abiding value.

O. E. Brown, Dean, Vanderbilt University School of Religion.

Contents

CHAPTER

I. PRESENT SOCIAL PESSIMISM .

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Chapter I Present Social Pessimism

WE are often told that it is more profitable to describe present conditions than to speculate about the future. The fashion in the scientific world just at present is to decry any attempt to predict the future. .Let us remember, however, that the greatest masters of science have pointed out repeatedly that the whole structure of scientific knowledge is based upon the aphorism, ‘‘See in order to foresee,’” and that a science becomes exact in proportion as it is able to predict.

Perhaps it is this feeling which has led a number of popular writers recently to attempt to weigh the social tendencies of the present and to sketch the probabilities of the immediate future.!- Undoubtedly the stronger motive in these attempts to peer into the social future of mankind, however, is to be found in the perplexities and pessimism of the present and in the felt need of restoring faith in the possibilities of life. This was once, let us note, one of the functions of religion; but now science, in its more humanistic aspects, seems about to undertake to perform the same function.

1See, for example, ‘‘Whither Mankind,’’ edited by Charles A. Beard. 1928.

In these lectures we shall not be concerned with the immediate social future, but rather with the remoter social destiny of man which seems to be indicated by our scientific knowledge of human nature and human history. Is man’s social destiny thus indicated in harmony with the vision of idealistic religion, and especially with that of the Christian religion? Is the Christian utopia of a peaceful world ruled by active sociai good will and by loyalty to the highest ethical principles as divine commands a reasonable human possibility? Or are scientific facts and the principles of social development such as to render the realization of such a goal improbable and unreasonable? Are the ascertained facts of human nature and of human society opposed to this dream of the ages and such as to indicate that we should reconcile ourselves to a very different social development?

Obviously the whole future of Christianity as a social program and the whole future of our civilization depend upon our answer to these questions. Even the religious and ethical life of the individual depends upon our answer to these questions; for, as has often been said, it is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness. But the very form of our questions implies that we must seek their answer in the actual trends of our human world, and not in speculations about God and the universe. Especially must we face without flinching the facts of our present social world and see whether current social pessimism is justified. Let us present this social pessimism, examine the facts, and then see if our knowledge of human history and human society helps us to see our way through the tangled affairs of our world to the probability of a better and happier future.

“IT believe thoroughly in only one thing,” said a friend to me in Vienna last spring, ‘‘and that is, in the wickedness of men.’’ He might just as well have been a friend in London, New York, or Chicago as in Vienna. He merely expressed the disillusionment which is common everywhere in our civilization since the Great War. Our faith in humanity, whether we were on the victorious or the defeated side, has been rudely shocked. We no longer talk much about ‘‘The Unfinished Program of Democracy” or ‘The Christian Reconstruction of Modern Life,’’ because we recognize that faith in democracy and in Christianity as a social program has been so undermined that we must first of all restore faith in democracy and Christianity before we can talk intelligently of carrying through their programs. We must face without flinching this disillusionment in the ideas of democracy and Christianity which is now so widespread in Western civilization, and the resulting social pessimism and cynicism, because they are significant social facts, even though they may prove to be but temporary. Just as we foolishly thought before the Great War that the evolutionary view of the world was firmly established, so too we foolishly thought that the democratic and Christian ideals of life were established as ideals in our civilization. But all these have now been rudely challenged; and we now see that the battle is not won, but must be fought all over again. ;

First, we must see what the social and moral condition of Europe is, because as Europe goes, so will probably go Western civilization; and as West- - ern civilization goes, so will probably go our human world for some time to come. I want to quote to you, therefore, one or two of the more pessimistic of recent European writers, in order that you may ask yourselves how far the statements which they make are also true of certain sections of American society. Strangely enough, these pessimistic writers are peculiarly abundant in France, the land of victory. France, and especially Paris, epitomizes modern civilization, and the French of to-day, even as the French of the eighteenth century, have a keen eye as to their own defects.

In a work on “The Morals of the Age,’”’? M. Paul Gaultier, secretary of the Union Francaise and a leading publicist of France, calls attention to the

*Published by Perrin & Company, Paris. 1928.

moral disintegration brought about by the war and the return of European peoples to the moral standards of paganism. With the utmost pessimism he says of present moral conditions, ‘‘Morality is dying, is dead, or nearly so, at least in the big cities, one may say, if one takes into account only appearances, or more exactly the spectacle, which the privileged classes afford.” ‘‘For a long time morality has been undergoing a crisis which the war has aggravated to disquieting proportions.’”’ But it is not France alone which is suffering, but every country. “One of the distinctive traits of modern society in every country,” M. Gaultier tells us, “ds the sinking of the moral ideal in the minds and life of the people.” ‘“‘All ages,’’ he acknowledges, ‘“‘have been more or less corrupt even while knowing that they were so. The peculiarity of our age,”’ he tells us, “‘is that it is corrupt and does not know it.’ “Long before the war morality, duty, began to disappear from our serious preoccupations.” But the war aggravated all this, because ‘‘the war was in every respect a vast school of demoralization. Every rule of morality, public and private, was openly infringed.”’

Another influence working in the same direction, M. Gaultier believes, is materialistic science. ‘‘Under the influence of a science as superficial as proud,” he tells us, “‘old beliefs have been turned into ridicule, conscience is treated as a superstition, and 2 honesty as a prejudice.’’ ‘‘Self-interest alone remains as a motive, and pleasure as the sole end of life.’’ These tendencies, though sponsored by the elders, have particularly affected the young. For many of them “evil consists, not in infringing social laws, but in getting caught.” ‘‘Vice and virtue are for them words without meaning. Morality, duty, figure in their eyes as so many prejudices out of fashion and vestiges of centuries gone by.” “They are not immoral,’ he concludes, ‘since morality presupposes an ideal from which one swerves; they are a-moral.’’ A-moralism, he thinks, is the end toward which the present crisis in morals tends and is the distinctive trait of modern societies. Even the family, he points out, in certain circumstances ‘‘has given way under the pretext of tolerance or tenderness to the cultivation of even the worst instincts.” Consequently the ‘crimes of the young multiply with disquieting rapidity.

The Churches, also, M. Gaultier declares, seem powerless, at least temporarily, in this crisis. They ‘dare no longer, for fear of frightening away their flocks, present moral obligation in all its rigor.” The teachings of religion are modified and bent to meet the contemporary indifference to spiritual values. Religion is no longer presented as ‘“‘a strait and narrow way.’ It has become a broad path. “The decline of religious beliefs, skepticism in regard to everything which is not directly perceptible, the preponderance of hygiene, war—the apotheosis of physical force—have placed the body upon a pedestal to the detriment of everything spiritual and have transformed it into an idol.”

It is women, in particular, next to the young, Gaultier believes, who are affected by this decadence in our morals. Modern women have become emancipated, but have lost their interest in spiritual things and are devoted to sports, fashions, and the elegant life. They wish to be loved, but not to love, and selfishly avoid the responsibilities entailed by children and home. Like men, they have returned to practical paganism in the exaltation of the body and of a life of self-indulgence. ‘“‘Consequently,’’ Gaultier says, ‘‘modesty has almost totally disappeared.” ‘‘Habituated to nudity through the exigencies of sport, the most virtuous women, the most carefully brought up young girls, do not hesitate to exhibit themselves upon the athletic tracks, or all day upon the seabeaches, clad in the most scanty tights,’’ and he adds that in France “no one is astonished to see upon the stage of our music halls women completely nude.”

M. Gaultier points out how the moral problems of our civilization are aggravated by the difficulties of living, the complexity of life, and the conflicts and confusion of the modern world. He does not make the mistake of presenting moral problems apart from the concrete conditions of living, but on the contrary points out that the triumph of materialism among us is due to the fact that our age is an age.of machines and of physical science, which temporarily, at least, have crowded into the background all spiritual values.

Whether we recognize this picture of contemporary society drawn by M. Gaultier as true or not, those of us who have been much about in the world, especially in the great centers of population, have to admit that he has drawn his picture from verifable facts, facts which seem to some of us altogether too common. M. Gaultier of course also sees the brighter side, and predicts a renaissance of religious faith. Whether again his general picture of our civilization is true or not, the things which he pictures, we must admit, should be the concern of all practical-minded religious people.

Even more disturbing in a way is the picture which another French writer, M. Julien Benda, draws for us in a book entitled ‘‘The Treason of the Intellectuals’’;? for M. Benda pictures our civilization as betrayed by its natural leaders. Our clergy, our literary men, our professors, and our scientists, he tells us, have given themselves over to the political passions of the hour, and instead of seeking to moderate these with reason and charity,

*Translation published by William Morrow & Company. 1928.

they have intensified and universalized them. Moreover, they have exalted war, sport, material success, and even cruelty, or they have retired to their studies and been indifferent to the problems of the hour and have thus deprived the world of their leadership at the very time when it was most sorely needed. Thus the intellectual classes of the modern world have doubly failed; either they have weakly sided with the selfish passions of their groups, or they have failed to assume the responsibility of leadership which naturally belongs to them. Some even “proclaim the high morality of egoism and denounce humanitarianism as moral _ decadence.’’ Agreeing substantially with M. Gaultier, M. Benda concludes: “‘Europe of the Middle Ages did evil, but honored the good; while modern Europe, with its teachers who proclaim the beauty of brute instincts, does evil and honors evil.’’

In regard to the betrayal of the masses to political passions by their leaders, it is well known that in many circles of the modern world patriotism and religion have become nearly identified, greatly to the detriment of religion. This is perhaps especially true in France, where, as Sir Philip Gibbs, the English journalist, tells us, ‘‘the word ‘France’ means to the average Frenchman far more than God or Jesus Christ.’’* Christianity as a social program

4Gibbs, ‘‘The Day After To-Morrow,”’ p. 213.

has little chance under such circumstances. We may note that the worship of the state began with the Romans. Every Roman citizen was expected to worship the power and authority of the Roman state, and this was the peculiar paganism against which early Christianity had especially to contend. The Roman Empire has disappeared chronologically, but its psychology still dominates Europe. Instead of one Roman Empire we now have a half-dozen or more, each aiming at world dominion and each setting itself up as the supreme object of the affection, loyalty, and reverence of its citizens. The foolish pride, the unreasoning fear, and the exaggerated self-interest which characterized pagan Rome still dominate most of the nations of the continent of Europe. Probably it is in the light of this fact that we must interpret the remark of a liberal religious leader in Italy to me last winter. He said, “Italy was pagan, Italy has been pagan, Italy is pagan’’; and after a moment’s thought he added, “The present rulers of Italy are not influenced by Christian ideals to any appreciable extent.”” He might, of course, have made the same remark of other countries and, indeed, of the whole world; but he was generous enough to apply it only to his own country. His last remark showed that he was thinking not so much of the private religious life of the people as of the lack of any social expression of Christianity in their civic life and relations.

Similar expressions are not wanting among English writers. A former teacher of mine, now a professor in Oxford University, Prof. F. C. S. Schiller, one of the best critical minds of our age, has said: “‘Humanity is still Yahoo-manity. Alike in mentality and morality, man is still substantially identical with his paleolithic ancestors. He is still the irrational, emotional, foolish, destructive, credulous creature he always was.’’® Another Oxford professor, a physical scientist, after emphasizing that the present age is an age of great mechanical power and of low morals, says: ‘‘Human ideals have not progressed to keep pace with the growth of science. They are ideals that cannot exist with science without wrecking the world.’’”®

Europe, at least, has cause to be alarmed over its spiritual condition, but it seems at a loss to find a remedy. Meanwhile, Italy has abolished all freedom of thought within its borders, while Russia officially sanctions irreligion and approves a system of sex relations lower than any sanctioned by the lowest African tribe.’ The paleolithic savages, so far as we know, had no such practices. Yet Europe

5Quoted by Gibbs, op. cit., p. 44. STbid., p. 44. Italics mine.

7See the account by a friendly critic, Theodore Dreiser, in Curreni History for January, 1929, pp. 535-543, remains unwilling to examine its ideals in the light of social facts; and to confirm M. Benda’s charge, that it has been betrayed by its intellectual classes, one has only to note how a plenty of intellectuals can be found to affirm that Italy is all right, or that Russia is all right, or that France is all right, or that Germany is all right; just as we have in this country those who affirm that the United States is all right. It seems impossible at the present moment for the thinkers of the world to divorce themselves from partisanship.

Even Professor Whitehead, who can scarcely be counted as a pessimistic thinker, in speaking of the religious and ethical condition of Europe, remarks that ‘on the whole, during many generations, there has been a gradual decay of religious influence in European civilization. Each revival touches a lower peak than its predecessor, and each period of slackness a lower depth. The average curve marks a steady fall in religious tone. Religion is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.’’®

We, of course, cannot separate the destiny of our United States from the destiny of the rest of the world, and especially not from that of Europe. Still, it is of interest to raise the question how far these statements of European thinkers apply to

8**Science and the Modern World,”’ p. 269.

American conditions. Are we better than the rest of the world? We like to think so; but the kindliest of our European critics tell us that we are dominated by materialistic aims in practically every phase of our life.’ We may be a little freer from certain traditions than some European peoples. But how have we used our freedom? Are we using it to build up a more humane and Christian civilization, or are we still pursuing the pagan models which have come to us from old Europe? There is, of course, no doubt that, just like Western civilization generally, we are badly divided between conflicting ideals of life. Prof. John Dewey, our most critical philosophical thinker, has recently said: “‘If ever there was a house of civilization divided within itself and against itself, it is our own to-day. . . . If one looks at the outer phenomena, the externally organized side of our life, my own feeling about it would be one of discouragement. We seem to find everywhere a hardness, a tightness, a clamping down of the lid, a regimentation and standardization, a devotion to efficiency and prosperity of a mechanical and quantitative sort.’’! A leading American magazine" has said that the ®*According to Professor Siegfried, we are ‘‘a materialistic society, organized to produce things rather than people, with output as a god.”’

10 Recent Gains in American Civilization,” p. 257. UThe Century Magazine, August, 1928.

four things which the American people worship to-day are: physical strength, personal beauty, intellectual power, and financial success. One must remark of course that these things, if they are the highest values of the American people, are pagan and not Christian. The citizen of pagan Rome would probably also have held that these are the supreme values of life.

Another American magazine, substantially confirming the view just cited, has said of the young men on the make at present in our colleges and universities that they ‘“‘develop a point of view which is wholly materialistic. They become overanxious for money. They are transformed, long before they are graduated, into the very type of citizen America now has to excess. They are selfish, hard, and ambitious. Such principles as dignity and honor soon fade to secondary importance.’’”® Perhaps nearly the same might have been said with equal justice of the young women on the make in our colleges. At least another contributor to this same magazine, a prominent journalist, has gone so far as to say in effect of American women that they break all statutes from those requiring standing in line at registration to the law against murder— and with a clear conscience because to them every problem of conduct is fundamentally personal.”

2 Harper's Magazine, January, 1929, p. 156. 3 Tarper’s Magazine, February, 1929, pp. 312-319.

Another contributor to the same magazine, a prominent business woman, says that ‘‘women have not as yet laid a feather’s weight of distinctive influence (for good) upon the business world except in its most superficial aspects.’’* She denies that the women who have entered business have in any vital way altered or bettered the business world. Another woman contributor, speaking of the widespread cult of youth and beauty among American women, says: “‘The beauty of the body is getting to be too important. It wants to be a religion, and it belongs on the dressing table and not on the altar. It is a very false god, indeed, and it keeps thousands of its worshipers in terror, as false gods are apt to hey, 748

There is much in American literature and life which seems to show that the popular periodicals just cited nearly hit the mark. The literature of disillusionment and pessimism is as abundant in America as in Europe. It will be impossible, however, to do more than to select three or four books as outstanding examples of this trend in our culture.

The first book which I shall mention is a satire on some of the more intimate phases of our social life, but strangely enough it is usually taken only as a work of humor. The young people with whom it is popular quite generally fail to see that it has

4 Flarper’s Magazine, December, 1928, p. 16. 16 Harper’s Magazine, October, 1928, p. 562.

any serious implications. The book is Miss Anita Loos’s ‘‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’’ It pictures the flapper of the period as a criminaloid, as belonging to ‘“‘the powers that prey,” and practically all men as fools. The book is one of the bitterest satires of contemporary social life, and its pessimism is relieved only by the humorous vein in which it is written.

Even more symptomatic of the trend of American social life are the works of Prof. John Erskine, especially his “‘ Private Life of Helen of Troy’’ and ‘Galahad.’ Both books preach and teach immoralism with a seductiveness which would make Nietzsche envious. They are read by people for their piquant style and for their humor. They are particularly popular among college students, among whom I have found them to be a source of extreme demoralization. Yet most of those who read them do not seem to appreciate that they are a subtle attack upon Christian moral standards; for young people of the present often do not seem to have any clear idea of Christian moral standards. Erskine’s “‘Galahad”’ openly ridicules all Christian standards, and even ordinary pagan ones, proclaims that we do not know the difference between right and wrong, and that morality is simply our effort to put over our wishes on other people. Moral skepticism is the predominant note of the book. The deep cynicism and pessimism that is implied in all this we need hardly enlarge upon. It is nothing less than a plea, like Rousseau’s, to return to original nature. Only Rousseau’s conception of nature was moral as compared with Erskine’s. If this is ‘‘the new freedom,’’ then we must agree with Prof. C. E. Ayres that “it is the dissolution of civilization— the whole of it and the only one we have.”’

Ayres’s own book, “‘Science the False Messiah,”’ however, is far more radical in its pessimism, because it attacks the very foundations of knowledge, and so of all culture. Erskine is content to direct his contemptuous skepticism against Christian moral standards; but Ayres directs his against the whole body of scientific tradition. Curiously enough, for this reason many religious people have hailed the book as an aid to religious faith. But religious faith will hardly profit in the long run through undermining our faith in tested knowledge. As a matter of fact, radical skepticism regarding everything human is the dominant note of Ayres’s book. So far as it is merely an attack upon scientific dogmatism to show that it is no better than religious dogmatism we must all sympathize with the aim of the author. But there is nothing constructive in the book. All the traditions of civilization—religion, government, and morals not less than science—are treated as so much “ Folklore.’’’*®

Op, cit., Chapter I.

The center of the attack, however, is upon modern science, which is represented for the most part as merely modern folklore. Trustworthy scientific knowledge is possible only where we can employ instruments of precision, and this is possible only in the mechanical realm. Science, he tells us, ‘‘begins in machinery and ends in machinery.’"” But the mechanical is not the whole of reality. Particularly objectionable to Ayres is the idea of social science, though the very vocabulary of the book is borrowed from Sumner’s ‘‘ Folkways.’ Most modern science is, therefore, of the character of folklore. It is unverifiable, because we have no instruments of precision to test it. ‘‘Folklore becomes holy,” the author tells us, ‘‘by the same process by which the mores become holy: because the folklore make it SOh se

The book as a whole is the deepest expression of disillusionment which our post-war period has produced, because it attacks faith in our own intelligence, not superficially, but radically. Apparently Dr. Ayres has not even the faith of my Viennese friend who said that he believed thoroughly in the wickedness of men, because that is a very considerable faith; but Ayres’s faith is apparently only in the absolute foolishness of men, and that is a more radical form of disbelief; one which has been common, to be sure, since the age of Hume, but which has

17‘‘Science the False Messiah,’”’ p. 54. 48Jbid., p. 30.

Present Social Pessimism aL never, so far as I know, been expressed in quite the form which Ayres has given it. Hume’s radical skepticism has at length been popularized by one who has the pen and the wit of a brilliant modern journalist. As Mr. Bertrand Russell has said, “This skepticism is a canker at the heart of science, affecting, as yet, only a few leaders, but capable, in time, of paralyzing the activities of the whole army of scientific workers.’ It is therefore something to be reckoned with in any attempt to prognosticate the future expansion and influence of science. Much more moderate in their pessimism are two other American thinkers, with whom I find myself nearly in agreement. One is Dr. Raymond B. Fosdick, whose book, ‘‘The Old Savage in the New Civilization,’’ is a challenge to those working in the religious field as well as those in the social sciences. “In spite of his new weapons and of his increased powers,’ says Dr. Fosdick, ‘‘man himself remains as he was and always has been—irrational, impulsive, emotional, inherently conservative to change, bound by customs and traditions which he will not analyze, the victim of age-old conventions and prejudices. Except for a certain urbanity, the good temper of the herd, modern man is probably not far removed from his paleolithic ancestors. Kept normally in control by the pressure of social in-

19 Whither Mankind,”’ p. 65.

stitutions, he is easily tempted to throw off the restraint, and all that is cruel or credulous or destructive in his inheritance wells up like a fountain of wine to intoxicate him. Science has exposed the paleolithic savage, masquerading in modern dress, to a sudden shift of environment which threatens to unbalance his brain. It has given him power and weapons which the utmost wisdom could scarcely be trusted to use aright.’’”°

Dr. Fosdick is, however, hopeful for the future if the social sciences can be properly developed, even though ‘‘the accepted conclusions of the social sciences are always made to run the gauntlet of tradition and prejudice.”’

The other American thinker referred to is Prof. Harry F. Ward. He is frankly pessimistic about the trend of civilization in the United States. “In the past,’’ he says, ‘‘the term America stood for some other things besides machines and moneymaking. And it stood for those other things first, anywhere in the world. America was different from Europe in their minds as well as ours. And the difference was not the fusion of the conglomerate in the melting pot. For that was Europe, with its barriers down, modifying itself. America meant more than that, to itself as well as to the Old World. It meant freedom, and it meant equality... .