Problem of human peace : studied from the standpoint of a scientific Catholicism /

Front matter

Section

THE PROBLEM

OF

Contents

CHAP.

I. Science and the Problem of Peace

II. The Meaning of a Human Peace

II

Considering the Problem of Human Peace in the temper and from the standpoint of science, I come to the conclusion that the great natural instrument for its attainment and maintenance is the Catholic Church, bringing to bear on the organization and direction of human life a Scientific Catholicism. It is necessary that these important terms should be precisely and clearly understood. By the expression “ the Catholic Church ” I mean, to begin with, the Church of Rome — its doctrine, its worship, its institutions, including, of course, the Papacy. These things constitute Catholicism. I mean by it also, however, for the purposes of the present work, all other Christian Churches, in proportion as they actually contain within themselves Catholicism and wield its force. All of them contain something of it — some of them much, some little. All of them, in principle at least, exist to bring that ideal, or Divine, Humanity which was given to the world by Christ into the life of man ; all of them, in degree, and in whatever form, employ in doing this a system of teaching, a system of worship, a system of discipline, or life. The non-Catholic Churches are in this sense Catholic, The true Catholic, or Roman, Church is the whole of which the different non-Catholic bodies — Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other — are separated and unrelated parts, holding varying portions of the total truth of Catholicism. It may be considered that it would be better, instead of “ Catholic Church ” and “ Catholicism,” to use the words “ Christian Church ” and “ Christianity.” That, however, is not so. In a strict scientific sense there is no such thing as “ the Christian Church,” considered as an organic, unified religious society. In the same way, there is no such thing as “ Christianity,” considered as a definite, uniform system of belief, representing all who call themselves Christian. We cannot reason scientifically with such terms, which constantly change their meaning according to changing points of view. We can reason scientifically with the term “ Catholic Church,” understood as representing the Church of Rome, and we can reason scientifically with the word “ Catholicism,” understood as denoting the doctrine, worship, and discipline of that Church. Further, having before us in Catholicism this definite type, or order, of religious theory and practice, we can see how far the non-Catholic bodies are in relation with it and represent it. For the sake of simplicity and convenience, therefore, I shall generally throughout this treatise use the words “ Catholic Church ” and “ Catholicism ” as indicating the Church of Rome, considered, not exclusively, but as representing the non-Catholic Churches, in proportion to their actual correspondence with it. It follows that what I have to say of the Catholic Church, in its strength and weakness, applies, mutatis mutandis, to the non- Catholic Christian bodies.

The explanation which I have given of my use of the word “ Catholicism ” sheds a natural light upon the expression “ a Scientific Catholicism.” According to a conception which I have elsewhere more fully unfolded,* the religious synthesis which is to direct the future of mankind will be formed by the transforming operation of the Modern Mind upon the whole content of Catholicism — its theology, its liturgy, its morals and social policy, its ecclesiastical order. That transforming operation will be, in a positive sense, at once critical, preservative, and developmental. It will demand an effort of both analysis and construction. It is, as I hold, to this transformed, developed, and completed Catholicism that we must look as the great instrument for bringing in and maintaining a Human Peace. Such a Catholicism I shall, for purposes of simplicity and convenience, here call a Scientific Catholicism. This expression, however, standing alone, might be misleading. It might suggest some wholly new Catholicism— supposing such a thing to be possible — suddenly springing into existence, and consciously and deliberately systematic throughout its entire range. It is necessary to guard against such a misapprehension. By science, in one view of it, we mean a precise and orderly interpretation of experience, in its various categories, expressing itself in verifiable statements,

* “ Catholicism and the Modern Mind ” : London, Edward Arnold.

and subserving, in the field of action, the ends of practice. It is evident, however, that experience — man’s observant and discriminating relation to the order of Nature, including the facts of his own sensibility and consciousness — precedes the formal scientific interpretation of it, and expresses itself intuitively, empirically and symbolically before it can express itself analytically and systematically. An uncultivated mother, nursing her children, has no formal theory of love, or of parental duty, or of the various physical processes which she employs, but her experiences, outer and inner, are, within their range, real, and her intuitive and empirical expressions of them have the value of aU spontaneous utterance concerning the known facts of life. The biologist and the moralist, dealing afterwards with such expressions analytically and systematically, determine how far they are an accurate representation of real experiences, and, for their own purposes, substitute for them their own forms of statement. Science, as Huxley said, and as Comte had said before him, is only systematized common sense.

By the expression “ a Scientific Catholicism,” therefore, I do not mean a whoUy new Catholicism ; I mean the persisting positive contents of historic Catholicism — the actual experiences of Nature and human nature which it has intuitively, empirically, and symbolically expressed — discerned, and incorporated for practical purposes into a full synthesis of human knowledge, according to the developed powers of the Modern Mind and the systematic methods of science. It is for science, become mature and complete — embracing the total experiences of man’s social and moral life, as well as the phenomena of the external world — to determine how far Catholicism represents real experience, and to correct and supplement it where it fails to do so. In this special relation, and for the practical purposes of human life, science — the ordered manifestation of the Modern Mind — is, as I have elsewhere said, sovereign, and Catholicism is subordinate. We may express this canonically by saying that Catholicism, throughout its whole extent, — in doctrine, worship, and discipline — must live or die according to its ratification by modern science. If we were to assume that the verdict of science — the tested experience and mind of man — would be ultimately against Catholicism, then we should have to conclude that Catholicism, including aU forms of Christianity, would disappear, as ancient European “ Paganism ” disappeared. It is, however, upon the contrary supposition that I am now proceeding. I hold that there is, by reasonable presumption, a universal positive content in Catholicism, spontaneously expressed in empirical and symbolic forms. Upon this content — an order of mind — science, in its completeness, can operate, precisely as it operates upon the order of Nature ; and in the one case, as in the other, it will accept in order to operate, and operate to interpret and supplement.

Ill

It is, then, neither to Catholicism, as it exists in contemporary life, or as it has shown itself in history.

nor to some wholly new Catholicism, that we must look as the great instrument of a Human Peace, but, once more, to a Scientific Catholicism, both continuous and progressive. As this principle is fundamental and governing in the following pages, it is necessary to set it in a clear light, and to consider not only what may be said for it, but what may be said against it.

And, first, as to historic or unscientific Catholicism — using the word “ unscientific ” to denote, not something in which there is no content of experience and reason, but something in which that content has not been verified and systematized, according to the processes of the Modern Mind. What is it that we mean by this Catholicism, in a positive and practical conception of it — such a conception of it as admits of being demonstrated and rationally discussed, as we demonstrate and discuss any proposition of astronomy or biology ? We mean by Catholicism, in this positive conception of it, a continuous and organized attempt, individual and social, to realize in the life of man an ideal, or type, of Perfection, considered as being given and symbolized in Christ, either as He is represented in the New Testament poems, or as He had established Himself, a fixed yet developing Image, in the early Christian minds which produced those poems. Such an attempt demanded — ^what religion for its purposes always demands — -a system of doctrine, a system of worship, a system of conduct, or life. The threefold system which we call Catholicism— and which was called Catholicism for no other reason than because it eventually won for itself a certain relative “ universality ” — was a slow and progressive construction of the human mind, operating with a limited knowledge of the world and man, with imperfect and untested methods of investigation and proof, and in accordance with the then existing state of intelligence.

It is to the constructive human mind, occupied with the thought of Christ — a “ human mind ” constituted by a co-operation, conscious and unconscious, of men and women of every degree of capacity and incapacity, of knowledge and ignorance — that we owe, first, the Christian Scriptures, and the establishment of their relation with the Jewish Scriptures ; secondly, the conception of Christ as God, and the consequent development of the idea of the Trinity ; thirdly, the creeds, the elaboration of Christian theology, the exaltation of the Blessed Virgin, the doctrine of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, the veneration of the Saints, the Mass, the Sacraments, the growth of the Christian life, the organization of the Church, and the order of the Catholic Hierarchy, under the supremacy of the Pope.

The foundation of this great construction — a construction of various minds, of various countries, of various ages — was, of course, the conception of Christ as God. The word “ God,” as is obvious, does not represent an outward constant physical fact, such as we may see with our eyes, or hear with our ears. It immediately represents an inner image of man’s social mind — an image which feeling, reason, imagination, and will, in relation to human experience, external and internal, all co-operate in creating. This image varies with varying stages of culture and mental development. The Jews had one such image ; the Greeks, Romans, and other “ Gentile ” nations a number of different ones. The immediate outward foundation of it may be a river, or a tree, or the sun and moon, or an animal, or a human being, or the infinite universe, including man as at once a constituent and interpreter of it. Whatever the nature of its foundation, that foundation is a fact of experience, external or internal, transformed by the shaping mind of man, according to its progressive knowledge and development, anthropomorphically conceived of as a being of intelligence, feeling, and power, and invested with the name, or symbol, “ God.” Man, who is the lord of language, calls things what he will, and thinks of them in virtue of such capacity of thought as he possesses, in the different stages of his mental evolution. Catholicism, scientifically and historically speaking, owes its existence to the fact that at a given point in time man, who had called many things and many beings “ gods,” named with the name of God, and invested with the attributes of a God, the image of the Man Jesus Christ which had progressively and in different ways established itself in his mind. From this root sprang the living, widespread tree which we call ChristendonL

Christ, who is God according to Catholicism, is, as we say, an Image of Perfection — of a perfect man, and, as a consequence, of a perfect human society. Man, who gives to words their meanings, gives its meaning to the word “ perfection,” as to the word “ God.” It means what he decides that it shall mean, and what he decides that it shall mean depends upon his own variations in experience and culture. It certainly lies within his capacity to form a conception — a progressive conception — of a perfect human being, transcendently complete and beautiful in physical form, in love, in intelligence, in will, and in the capacity to accomplish his ends, external and internal. He may if he pleases — and he frequently does — take any one constituent of this many-sided Perfection and concentrate special attention upon it, to the temporary exclusion, or subordination, of the others. He may, in this way — and he frequently does — thus concentrate attention upon moral, or intellectual, or practical perfection, and yield to it a predominant homage. For a complete perfection of personal humanity, however — and, therefore, for a complete social perfection — what is necessary is the due development of all the distinctive sides of human nature in an active co-operation and harmony, determined by the subordination of the lower to the higher. This ideal harmony, or unity, is never actually and absolutely realized by man, but it is always pursued by him. It is the character of the Divine, or God-like. It rests on a synthesis of feeling, knowledge, and action. In other words, it rests on religion, in which man proposes to himself an ideal Perfection, and follows after it — more or less consciously and with more or less fidelity and power — in worship, doctrine, and discipline.

Now Christ is, in Catholicism, God. That is to say. He is an Image and Symbol of Divine, or complete, Perfection — a coalescent, transcendent perfection of Love, Wisdom, Will, and Power — ^held in the mind of man to establish a corresponding type of humanity, individual and social. The chief external presentation of this Image is contained in the New Testament poems, and Catholicism, in its historic working, is the continuous and developing attempt, individual and social, to convert this Image into an order of mind and life. In relation to this Image, in relation to the representation of it in the New Testament poems, and in relation to Catholicism, as an attempt to bring man into correspondence with it, the Modern Mind — -let us say the mind of Western humanity in the twentieth century, complete in experience and culture — occupies a position of sovereign authority. It can, if it pleases, decide not to have a “ religion ” at all — that is, not to follow after an ideal Perfection by the way of a systematic doctrine, worship, and discipline. A very large number of men and women in the modern world have, as we know, in this sense, ceased to be “ religious.” A stiU larger number may conceivably follow their example. Again, the Modern Mind may decide that it will still follow after Perfection, and, therefore, remain “ religious,” but that it can no longer accept Christ as its God, or as the Image and Symbol of Perfection. It is as free to do this as were the Jews, Greeks, and Romans of primitive Catholicism to turn from the ancient conceptions of the Divine, and embrace a new conception. As a matter of fact, a considerable number of persons at the present time occupy exactly this position. They are “ religious ” ; they follow, in their own way, after an ideal Perfection ; but they say that Christ no longer represents it. In other words. He has, for them, ceased to be “ God.”

But, again, the Modern Mind may hold that Christ still remains for it an eternal Image and Symbol of transcendent and complete Perfection — that He is still its “ God ” — but that the historic conception and realization of that Image are defective, and that a new conception and realization are called for. Such a view may find expression in the rejection, or supposed rejection, of Catholicism, and the adoption of some form, or modification, of “ Protestantism,” or in the acceptance of Catholicism itself, subject to its scientific interpretation and development, throughout its whole domain, by the Modern Mind. Another view, again, rejecting all the doctrinal principles of all historic religions, may find, or endeavour to find, for itself expression in entirely new symbols — such, for example, as Comte constructed in his “ Religion of Humanity.” What is of fundamental importance, in connection with these and other similar alternatives, is to recognize that the Modern Mind, in the fulness of its experience and culture, has a natural freedom and sovereignty. It summons all the religions of mankind to its judgment seat. It sees in all of them modes of representing and pursuing an ideal of human perfection, personal and social. It compares one with another, just as it compares creations in poetry and art, schools of philosophy, national literatures, or methods of industrial production. It has its own indefeasible power of deciding for itself which of them is in most complete relation to the ideal of perfection which it is the business of religion to pursue, and how far each has failed in pursuing it. It can, in principle, dismiss them one and all much more completely than ancient Paganism was dismissed from the mind of Christianity, for it has a fuller and surer knowledge of itself, a wider social and historic outlook, and more accurate instruments of rejection and selection than the early Christians possessed. But it can also decide that one or other out of the various religions of mankind has, by its conceptions, doctrines, modes of worship, and practical institutions, made the greatest contribution to human perfection, and that progress towards a fuller perfection wiU best be accomplished by correcting that religion where it needs correction, and completing it where it needs completion.

It may be said that in this view of the relation of the Modern Mind to the different systems of religion there is an implication that man has a natural power to choose his God, or to choose whether he shall have a God at all. Undoubtedly there is, and undoubtedly he has. As a matter of fact, in this region of ideas, men, from the beginning of recorded history to the present time, have done little else than choose their gods. There are many things that they do not and cannot choose. They do not choose their own earth, or their own sun and moon, or the sea and sky.

or whether fire shall burn, or water wet, or whether they shall eat and drink and propagate their species — supposing they decide, what they certainly have the power to decide, that they shall live rather than die. But there are also many things which they can choose. Amongst them is whether they will have a God, and if so, what kind of a God it shall be. The early Christians exercised this power when they passed from “ Paganism ” or Judaism and chose Christ as their God. Christian missions at the present day depend on no other principle than the power of a Hindu, or Buddhist, or Confucianist, or Mohammedan to choose one God rather than another. The creeds of Catholicism are, in one view of them, formulas of religious choice. When we say “ I believe ” we say “ I choose.” Further, for the individual mind, in relation to the social mind— or the mind of the Church — such a declaration means, to begin with, not the construction of an Image of God for itself, but the acceptance of an Image proposed to it. Similarly, the recital of a historic creed in any one age means that that age continues to accept the Image proposed to it by the past. The early Christians, as is well known, had to defend themselves against a charge of “ atheism,” and this because “ belief in God ” then practically meant, as it always means, acceptance of some dominant social Image of God, and “ unbelief ” rejection of that Image.

We come back, then, to this obvious principle — that the mind which says “ I believe ” can also say “ I do not believe,” or that the mind which says “ I choose ” can also say “ I refuse.” The Modern Mind — the mind of Western man in the twentieth century — is no more bound to continue to worship Christ than the mind of the first century was bound to continue to worship Jehovah or Apollo. That Mind, moreover, unlike the mind of antiquity, is free to decide whether it will worship a God or not, and what kind of a God — that is, to say what kind of an Image of Perfection — if any, it shall choose for itself. The modern “ Theist,” or Unitarian, dismisses, or supposes himself to dismiss, the Divinity of Christ, but he clothes Divinity in some way with an image of his own. The religious Positivist similarly shapes a new symbol for Perfection, and calls it, not “ God,” but “ Humanity.”

I proceed here, however, upon the assumption that the Modern Mind, in the exercise of this its indefeasible power and freedom, will continue to choose Christ as its God, and Catholicism — the doctrine, worship, and discipline of the Roman Church — as the individual and social fulfilment of Christ. But it will do this according to its own development and culture, and for its own practical ends. The Modern Mind, as I here conceive it, is, in a complete sense, scientific. It is consciously and systematically synthetic. While, therefore, it has the same freedom as was possessed by the ancient world when it rejected Apollo and accepted Christ, it will not make the same use of its freedom. The rise of Christianity was a revolution. It was, in principle — although, of course, not in practice — the subversion of the existing religious order. The Modern Mind — according to the view of it which I am endeavouring to establish — does not aim at a revolution but at an evolution. It sees in Catholicism an order not to be subverted, but to be developed. It brings to bear on it principles of criticism and comparison, of rejection and acceptance, as it brings them to bear on any other religion, or on any other product of culture. It sees it in its relation to the total mind and life of man, and, finding in it truth amidst error, goodness amidst evil, weakness amidst strength, ugliness amidst beauty, and acquisition of real experience and reason expressed spontaneously and symbolically, it exercises its own analytic and constructive power to discern, to preserve, and to complete. In other words, it “ chooses ” to retain Catholicism, but chooses also to make it scientific.

IV

We come now to consider the bearing of such a Catholicism upon a Human Peace. By a Human Peace, once more, we mean a peace universal and continuous — not such a temporary cessation of strife as comes at the end of every war, and as is due to victory in arms, or to the common exhaustion of all the combatants, or to mere weariness of bloodshed. By a Human Peace we mean a peace deliberately chosen and planned, as a common good of mankind, and maintained through policy and co-operation by the predominant nations of the world. Now, assuming such a Peace to be possible at all — possible, that is, in view of man’s situation and continuous nature — what reason, it may be asked, have we to suppose that it can be brought in and upheld by the Catholic Church, in any conception of it ? An answer to this question must be found, and it must be given not according to the methods of ecclesiastics and theologians— ^who commonly limit themselves to affirming propositions which they cannot prove and denouncing evils which they cannot prevent — but according to the methods of science, which at least confesses its ignorance when it does not know, and acknowledges its incapacity when it is powerless to act.

First, if a Human Peace — defined as I have defined it — is, as we assume, a great human good, it is a good which does not stand by itself, out of relation with the various other ends which man, as a being of affection, reason, and will, living in the social state, proposes to himself. It is plain, for example, that so long as we have nations following after what they consider some good of the “ State ” — such as industrial ascendency, or territorial expansion, or dynastic aggrandizement, or political overlordship — ^we cannot have a Human Peace. It is plain, too, that these common causes of war are in close connection with the ordinary needs and desires of men and women in their physical, intellectual, and moral life. Stating the same truth more generally, but not less obviously, man is a complex whole, and the various parts of his nature act and react one upon another. If, then, we are to consider a Human Peace as a good, and as a good to be brought about and maintained by choice and policy, it is a good which enters into that continuous but developing ideal of Perfection, individual and social, which, as we have seen, it is the business of religion — or of man as a religious being — to pursue.

Secondly, Catholicism, scientifically considered, is a continuous organized effort, individual and social, to realize in the life of man the Divinity, or Perfection, of Christ. But Catholicism is not an accomplished Perfection. It is the pursuit of an ideal ; it is not its fulfilment. By “ Catholicism,” practically understood, we simply mean a continuous company of human beings, a succession of generations, following after a certain end, according to their conception of it, and with such instruments and methods as, at given stages of their progress, they have thrown up. But of the end itself which they pursued — Perfection in Christ — Catholics, being ordinary men and women, have had only an imperfect conception. This was inevitable. Catholicism — the acknowledgment of Christ as “ God,” the confession of His Perfection as a rule of life — arose in an age when it was not possible for men to have an orderly and complete view of the universe in which man lives, and of man in relation to that universe. They had, some of them, great gifts — intuitions of genius, imagination, poetic sensibility and power, an instinct for moral beauty, a right feeling for what was noble in man and woman, a sense of the greatness and mystery of human life, moments of profundity, moments of spiritual ardour, moments of ecstasy, a capacity for subtle dialectic and metaphysical refinement, and also a power of heroic self-sacrifice and religious effort.

They had, however, along with these high qualities, ignorance of many things that are now commonly known— of the earth, of its inhabitants, of its history, of the solar system into which it enters, of the physical and vital forces which surround man, and of man himself, in his nature, powers, limitations, and destiny. Further, an immense proportion of the men who became “ Catholics ” — ^who in some sense and degree received into their minds the Image of Christ — were rude, barbaric, violent, superstitious, sensual, and selfish — or perhaps raised only a little above mere animal torpor ; and this great persisting social body constituted a predominant force, which told not only upon the practical fulfilment of the Divine Perfection, but also upon the conception of that Perfection.

This is all elementary. Catholicism — either as we see it in history, or as it shows itself in contemporary life — does not represent a perfection perfectly realized, or even a perfection perfectly understood. Intellectually considered^ — allowing for individual intuition and genius— it represents something infantile, immature, empiric, incomplete^ — a vague and limited view of man and his universe, and therefore of “ God,” or Perfection ; practically considered, it represents, along with a partial empirical success, both the failure necessarily resulting from the want of science and the failure due to the pressure of passions and inclinations antagonistic to the Perfection confessed. With this latter kind of failure we are not here immediately concerned. It is, in varying degree, inevitable, and would, in a certain measure, remain inevitable even if Catholicism became, what it is necessary for it to become, scientific. Men who are dishonest or drunken or unchaste commonly sin in this way, not because of their want of “ science ” — because they are unaware, for example, that drunkenness and dishonesty are evils, and carry with them certain evil consequences — but because of the strength of their lower inclinations, and the absence, or relative weakness, of the higher. This ordinary failure of men to come into correspondence with an ideal, or law, which they yet acknowledge must be allowed for in any just historic estimate of Catholicism, on its practical side.

What we are now concerned with, however, is not the failure of Catholicism to realize its own vision of Perfection, such as it has been, but its failure in vision itself — its failure, in other words, in science and motive, in the capacity to represent to man the true nature of the order of things in which he is placed, and his own nature, as an active, modifying constituent of that order. This failure in science and motive of course has in part been compensated for by intuition, genius, common sense, and empirical wisdom, learning from its actual discharge of the tasks of life. Nevertheless, it has been a failure, and one of a fundamental character, the effect of which has been necessarily felt not only in the region of theory, but in the region of practice also. This is what the Modern Mind — the mind of a fuller experience, of a complete development, constituted by the religions, the sciences, the arts, the industry, the social expansion of the whole of humanity — is now able to see. It recognizes that in its conception of Perfection — that is to say, of God in Christ, and consequently in its scriptures, doctrines, creeds, sacraments, system of worship, and system of conduct — Catholicism has largely been the expression of a human nature ignorant, immature, untrained, misconceiving itself, and its world in relation to itself. By Catholicism we here mean the whole order of the Catholic Church, theoretic and practical, from the earliest apostolic age to the Council of Trent and the subsequent definitions of the Vatican Council. This whole order, we say, rests on spiritual intuition, on religious genius, on empirical wisdom, on a partial experience, inner and outer. It represents, spontaneously and symbolically, a provisional and incomplete synthesis — the synthesis of undeveloped but developing man. It must be converted into a complete synthesis — the conscious and systematic synthesis of developed man. Once more, it must become, what it may become, scientific. It must no longer remain the religion merely of the ancient mind, or of the medieval mind, but must become the religion of the Modern Mind, entering into the ancient and medieval minds, understanding them, interpreting them, and making all their positive acquisitions its own. It is not for the less developed to impose its law on the more developed ; it is for the more developed to follow its own law and impose it on the less developed.