God and man; philosophy of the higher life

Preface

ALL awaking natures are interested in the Higher Life. Such life is our supreme human concern. The reality of it is an increasing fascination ; the process thereof, a growing inquiry. The present work attempts to show how we enter upon and actually live the Higher Life. It is not a metaphysic, although an ultimate view of things is implicit in it. Nor is it an apologetic, though again it is hoped that it may reveal the Rock under our feet and the Sky that arches over our heads. Rather, it is a philosophy of life on its higher planes.

So far from there being nothing new, every human life is unique, every experience has something new in it. The great Revelation is not ended, and will not be. God has much more to show the wondering eyes of men. And every life that deeply lives sees a fresh vision, and joyously walks in a brightening light. The Spirit of truth is not merely repeating itself. In this work, the new view contained is the vision of man's Great Environment, and of man himself as veritably set into it, and forever living his Higher Life in relation thereto. Modern science vi Preface

has discovered anew man's lower environment, and for the first time in the history of thought, seriously has set man therein and thoroughly related his life thereto. What remains is that religious philosophy should discover man's Higher Environment anew, and with equal thoroughness set him into it, and seriously implicate his nobler life therewith. In the whole progress of science, there has been no more inclusive achievement than the first. What then, in the advance of religion, may the second prove?

Out of life this book grew; to life it makes its call. Fourteen years ago the germinal idea of it sprang from the grapple with human needs. Six years ago its background was presented as a Doctor's thesis at Yale University. The book has been, I am free to say, a costly work. During Harvard days, my interest was already philosophic, looking to the deeper analysis of the religious life. During the Princeton and New York (Gen. Theol. Sem.) periods, that interest deepened. Afterward at Berlin, philosophy of religion became central. And later at Yale, the inquiry had crystallized into what now has grown to the present work. In the intervening pastorates, our interpretation has been held close to palpitating life. Every chapter and stage of the book has been vivid with experience.

The old quarrel between philosophy and poetry,

Preface vii

of which Plato speaks, was composed in his fair pages, when philosophy became beautiful with life, and poetry became deep with wisdom. The poets were right, when they shrank from the pale systems, and felt that without the warmth and colour of reality men were not dealing with life at all. And the philosophers were right, when they held aloof, and somewhat superiorly insisted that without the solid framework of truth neither things nor men were thinkable. For unless truth rises into beauty, and unless beauty springs out of truth, both alike are faulty and unreal. Truth and grace meet together in every perfect thing. We shall then seek for truth indeed as for pearls of great price, but we shall know that we hold the precious gems in our hands, when they shine with living and during beauty.

Human life has become too subjective to be satisfied without explanation. We want to know the secret of things, the "how" of the Higher Life. We have lost, perhaps forever, the naivete of our childhood. We shall win, I think, a new and higher simplicity. For subjectivity is not the end, nor explanation. A higher objectivity is the true goal. But for the present, our stage of progress seeks and needs a philosophy of life. Through it, we shall pass enriched into a new and larger faith and peace.

viii Preface

Some such approach to the great Realities, and some such philosophy of life as lies before us, I deeply believe, is the future path of the human mind.

E. E. S.

Cambridge, Mass.

God and Man: Philosophy of the Higher Life

Chapter I

MAN AS SET INTO THE UNIVERSE; OR, THE WORLD ALL IN ITS MANY SPHERES AS IT ENFOLDS MAN

A. The Physical Spheres That Enfold Man

OUR total Environment that enspheres us is so ever-present that we do not reahse its presence. We do not know the primal fact of things. We are unconscious of what is. If we could begin life by waking with adult consciousness at darkest midnight, and have that moment as the beginning of conscious experience, we should be in a condition no doubt for a revelation of the truth of things as it is. We should discover our body and that we are shut up within it. We shoiild become aware of our head and that we live in it, enclosed by it as by a nutshell. When day broke, our eyes would open to a stupendous scene. We should step forth into an encircling Universe. The earth would be under our feet; the sky wotild arch over our head; we should be ensphered. The solid earth would impress us as a mighty fact, and we should realise that we were standing upon it. But wherefore stand upon this solid mass of earth? We might try to raise one foot from it, and of course succeed. We might then attempt to raise both feet from it, and of course fail. This would be strange. The earth would seem to have hold of us. We might try to leap up from it. Up two feet we might jump, but back we should come. The earth surely would appear to have us in its grasp. All our strength might be put forth in a mightier leap. But back again we should come. In vain would all such attempts be repeated. The earth would grasp us still with resistless might. Here would be stubborn fact. This would be the beginning of the revelation of what is. The conclusion would be quite irresistible that we are held within the unbreakable grasp of earth.

We might have noticed ere this that we breathed. The wind might have blown upon us and we have become conscious of the atmosphere. It might now flash in upon us that we breathed this atmosphere. We might perceive that we breathed it regularly and kept on doing so. "But what is this air?" we might ask, "and why breathe it? It is a mere nothing. The earth is a solid

The Physical Envelops 3

fact, but this atmosphere is unsubstantial nothingness. We'll breathe it no more." Speedily however there would be a growing inducement to breathe again just this nothingness. We should discover a "powerful weakness" in not doing so; discover that this subtle, invisible, intangible something all about us is indispensable; that it is the life of our life; that when it pours itself into us, we live; and that when we breathe it not, we die. Here is another revelation of what is. Here is a new fact, different from the mighty fact of earth, but, in its way, just as stupendous and resistless. We move about and explore this new fact. We go backward; it is there. We go forward, and sidewise ; it is there, and there. We descend into a valley; it is there. We go up to a hilltop ; it is there also. Everywhere and everywhere it is present. It enfolds us. It might be suggested to us that it is like an ocean and that we are like fish; that we move about within it as fish swim about in the sea; that we continually breathe it and feed upon it as fish breathe and feed upon the water. It might ftirther be suggested that this atmospheric ocean belongs to the earth just as the watery ocean does; that it is in reality part of the earth just as that is. Then we should at length realise that this material sphere is not only under us but also over us, and around us — yes, and in us ; that we are in it, are ensphered by it perpetually;

that we are held in its grasp, go not out from it, live and move and have oiir being in it.

The primal facts are now before us. We are ensphered by the globe of the head — a narrow world. We are ensphered by the earth with its power. We are ensphered by the air. Or, putting all these together, we are ensphered by the material world. Within these spheres we always live, making no excursions beyond them.

It begins to grow apparent by this time what the fact about man's place in the Universe is. He lives his life within many envelopes. Many concentric spheres, so to speak, enfold him. He lives within them. He feeds out of and upon them in many ways. They pour themselves into him perpetually. He is a part of them, of the spheres that encircle him.

But let us go on to think of other spheres.

Our thoughtful observer will not thus have grown intelligent about body, earth, and air without having noticed the glory of the sunlight that floods the world. His eyes before this will have followed the sunbeams up to the sun. He will have noticed that he is enveloped in light, and that earth and sky as well are filled with light flowing forth from the sun. He may close his eyes and discover how all the world is then shut out as by a curtain. In this way he may learn how light is poured into his eyes and how dependent sight is upon it. Without light, earth, sky,

The Physical Envelops 5

a Universe would be curtained from vision. He might feel also the warmth of the sun's rays. Someone might inform him, however, that he had not yet discovered a tithe of the meaning of this to him new phenomenon of light. He might tell him that without it earth and he alike would be swathed in eternal ice and snow; that all forms of life would pass away; and that death would hold uninterrupted reign. As though this were not wonder enough, he might tell him how distant the orb and source of all this light is; how this boundless sphere of light ever goes forth from the sun, and is and remains essentially a part of the sun. Hereupon our learner would discover that being enswathed by light was being ensphered in reality by the sun. That far-away orb was yet so near, encircled him, and after its own fashion held him in its mighty grasp. It poured light into his eyes, warmth into his body, and, with food, vitality into his very marrow-bones.

Here then is a new envelope. Man is ensphered by the sun. Within this greater sphere he lives his life, and, after a different sort, feeds out of and upon it. In manifold ways it pours itself into him and conditions all his life.

Already we are led to think that it is not alone or chiefly what man does within his spheres, but also what his spheres do within him. As we go on it will appear that man is held within many ensphering worlds, and that what they do to him and in him is much more than what he himself does.

Though man is ensphered by the earth, he is encompassed also, as we now have seen, by the sun. Thus far considered this last is in subtle and intangible but powerfiil forms. There is more truth to learn about this last, however. The sun holds both man and world in its grasp. Our learner will be told that the earth itself holds not him with more irresistible power than the sun holds the earth and all that is thereon. The earth and all its belongings, he will be told, is flung out into space and attracted by the sun about its appointed orbit unceasingly, ever in obedience to the central sim. With perfection of power the earth is ensphered and held fast. All that takes place on the earth comes to pass within the enveloping control of the solar system. This very solid globe itself knows how to do nothing but haste to obey. It makes no excursions beyond its appointed path. It is ever receptive of a thousand influences. It is grasped by the sun.

Up to the present we have seen man ensphered by his body, ensphered by the earth, ensphered by the sun. He does not hold his spheres, they hold him. What he does is something. What they do to him and in him is much more. He lives his life within them. They in a broad sense may be said to live their life into him.

The Physical Envelops 7

When we picture man standing upon the earth, and the earth flying at a thousand-mile-a-minute rate through space, circHng in unbroken obedience around the sun; and then when we picture sun, earth, and man as enveloped by the Universe, we are beginning to make real to ourselves the actual truth and fact of things. As we see the sky arch over us and sweep round our world, so we see the vaster universal heavens sweep round and ensphere our solar system. We are held sphere within sphere, the less enfolded in the greater, out to the greatest. We are ensphered by the Universe.

Nor is this to be acknowledged as fact and then straightway made naught of. As though it were indeed an infinite truth, but touched not our lives — ^just as the broad heavens are it is true above all our heads, but seem to unthinking men to have little moment for us. On the contrary, the seeming indifferent sky is quite our first concern. Within this universal sphere, we have our existence, think our thought, do our work, and develop our personality.

Vast symbol all this of the being of God. Perhaps more than symbol; perhaps expression in part of the reality. Perchance the infinite Universe that enfolds us is, in some sense, the infinite God enfolding us. Perchance our thousand-fold connection therewith is in reality thousand-fold connection with God. Perhaps we, in a way, rest upon God when we stand upon the earth, are encircled by God when enveloped by the air, breathe in God when we breathe the atmosphere ■ in some sense, feed upon God when we feed upon bread, are vitalised by God when quickened by sunlight, and are held in the power of God when held in the grasp of earth, sun, and Universe. Such, one may well be persuaded, is the deepest interpretation and truth of things. Living thus within the Universe is in reality living, moving, and having one's being in God. And the ten thousand laws of the mighty system that lay hold of us and work day and night upon and in us are all powers that go forth from Him. In the vast Universe, therefore, that enspheres us, we see the infinite God ensphering us ; and in the myriad laws that work in us we see the myriad influences of God working out His will. All envelopes are divine envelopes in the last meaning of them. First and last we are held within an infinite enfolding Life ; we are ensphered by God.

We live within the body; we live within the encircling earth ; we live within the ensphering sun | we live within the all-enfolding Universe. This is what we have seen. In the deepest meaning of it all, we live within the enfolding Life of God.

These are some of the envelopes by which man is ensphered. He lives perpetually in vital mutual commerce with all these envelopes. Really he is feeding upon them, in the broad sense, aU

The Physical Envelops 9

the time. They are the life of his life. One needs to see clearly all the envelopes ; then to see that man is really set into them all; then to see how he actually lives his life within these spheres ; — better, how the All lives its life into him, and how he co-operates with the All ; — or, once more, how the All inflows into him and how he lives by and out of the feeding Absolute.

It is now apparent that we are set vastly deeper into this system of things than we know. We have infinitely more vital and real relationships, connections, commerces with the Universe than we realise. The way we are bedded and rooted into this world and all things, in legionary vital connection with all, is wonderful yet is the sober truth . We are not like an island floating in infinite emptiness alone and dissevered, but we are like a tree rooted down into everything and branched out into ever3rthing. The earth is not more really set into million-fold connection with the Universe than are we. This is what is. This is the primal and fundamental fact of things. We seem as disconnected as an eagle floating in mid-heaven. We forget that every solar system, every star, every satellite, every mote of matter in the wide Universe sends a line of influence through the centre of the eagle's body, and a million forces focus and balance there. The eagle knows it not. It only floats in freedom. So we each seem separated and disconnected, but the truth and fact lo God and Man

is that we are set into things, are a living part of things, in deeper and more vital relationship than V\^e shall ever comprehend. All that is breathes in us, sends its life-blood through us, vitalises us. The total system of beings and powers lives and pulses in us. We are held in truth in an infinite network of influences and laws ; as though a vast spider-web stretched across space and we were entangled in ten-million meshes. So, and more so, are we knit into this marvellous and multiform World-All.

If this is the fact and scientific truth of things ; if the life of man is a sort of infinite thing, acted upon in infinite ways and again acting in infinite ways upon the universal environment, how can the meagre field of consciousness ever know more than a fraction of what is taking place? Only the infinite Mind can know the endless involution and detail of the process. Vastly more is going on in man than he knows or can ever know. In the main he carries not himself, but is borne on the bosom of things. In the main he lives not his own life, but the World- All lives its life in him. So deep, so real, so vital, so mutual, so constant, so multiform, so mysterious is this commerce between man and his world.

Thus far we have come to this. Here are many spheres enfolding man. Here is man enfolded by all the spheres, yet a part of them. As a part, man lives his life within the spheres. All these

The Physical Envelops ii

spheres also live their life, so to speak, in man. Life is a constant renewal out of the envelopes, a perpetual feeding out of and upon the spheres. The feeding envelopes perpetually feed man. What man does is something. What the envelopes do is much more. Man therefore, one may say, lives a fed life within feeding worlds that enfold him and of which he all the time forms a part; the deepest interpretation of all this being that man lives his life within the enfolding Life of God.

In endeavouring to get at and realise man's place in the cosmos we must not overlook the influence upon him of the succession of day and night, of the ever recurring seasons, the distance of his home from the equator, the elevation of it above sea-level, and the topography of the land wherein he lives. Man builds no houses on the Matterhorn, and makes no gardens on the summit of the Himalayas. He achieves no great civilisations at the poles or at the equator. And the pervasive and powerful influence of the seasons and of the succession of day and night is incalculable. What is more subtle than climate? or than springtime? or than the influence of light? The extent to which man is held within the power of these is not to be measured by the space that here can be given to them. They form other atmospheres, so to speak, within which man lives out his life.

Here let it be noted that it is not our purpose to attempt a precise statement or assessment of the influence of these various factors upon man. It is our object merely to call up the conditioning atmospheres with the multitude of facts that each readily suggests. It is not our interest critically to enumerate the facts, setting down no more no less, but rather to open our eyes to a million patent facts, and to take them into the account in working out our philosophy of life. Accordingly we simply ask, for our purpose, that the multiform influence upon man of the succession of day and night, the recurring seasons, etc., be realised. Thus we hope to see man set into his worlds and to see the complexity of those worlds, and thus we hope to produce the impression of the myriad-sided relationship of the World-All to man.

Chapter II The Enfolding World-all In Its Many Spheres

B. The Human Spheres That Enfold Man

WE now have seen man set into and enveloped by diverse physical worlds. We have seen him bound up with them by invisible bonds that run from the centre of his being to the centre of all and every being. We have seen perpetual action and reaction, inflow and outflow, comparable to ceaseless inhalation and exhalation of the many world-atmospheres that enfold him. We have seen him sustaining to the All much the same relation that the eye sustains to light, the lungs to air, the fish to the ocean, or the tree to nature. We have realised how involved and complicated his life is with the World-All, and how the vast Whole ceaselessly breathes into him the breath of life ; how it is thus and not otherwise, that he lives and must ever live ; and how this is the unchangeable fact and reality of things. Finally we have thought that this most primal and fundamental fact, which is the background against which all the other facts are set, must on no account be disregarded. One might as well disregard the sunlight in springtime and then try to make out the secret of growth, as try to determine the nature of man's higher life without setting him into his spheres and seeing how he lives his life out of and upon the feeding worlds.

In the main we have spoken hitherto of physical spheres. But man is ensphered by other worlds than physical. He is ensphered by life-worlds, by society-worlds, by mind-worlds, and by truth-, beauty-, ideal-, and spirit-worlds. Besides being held in the grasp of earth and atmosphere, sunlight and sun, universe and law, climate and topography, day and night, summer and winter (barring the equator), man is held in the grasp also of these Human, and of these Higher worlds.

Now, therefore, let us turn from man's physical first to man's human spheres, and see him set into the home, the community, the race, and humanity, reserving for later survey man's higher spheres. We need to discover and appreciate the magnitude of these and see the intimacy and extent of their influence upon him ; for he is held within them and conditioned by them to an unguessed degree.

From the time when as an ovum the individual parted from the ovary of his mother and as a sperm from his father's body, to the time when he was born, on to the time when he leaves the parental circle to form, himself, half of a new homesphere, and to become the generator of children, sprung from his own body, he is knit into vital and manifold relationship with the home. No words can set forth the vitality of his connection with the family. He gets his being in the beginning from a parent. He springs out of the parent body as a bud from a tree. For months he is held within and enclosed by the mother-life. He is fed out of and upon it. Her circulation almost is his, her life, even. His life is enclosed within and is a part of a larger life. — And what if this, man's first beginning and connection with the larger life of the parent, be the symbol of his eternally true and unchanging connection with the World-All, or with God. What if it be that from the beginning, man is held within and forever fed out of an enfolding infinite Life. — ^And after he is born he is still, in a changed but no less real way, held within the encircling life of the parent. He is fed still from his mother's body. And this is no misfortune, but the true and happy process of the child's self-realisation. — ^Type once more it may be of the true and everlasting process of man's self-realisation. — Nor does the mother-life merely feed the child-life. In ways past finding out, ways subtle, life-giving, and formative, she, along with the father, enfolds the child-life with unceasing care, affection, thought, and spiritual influence. The parent-life touches the child-life at a thousand points. Through the open instincts, through the open senses, the open activities, the opening affections and mind, through the ever3rwhere open life of the child, the personality of the parent finds entrance. It may well be doubted whether any of us has ever more than begun to guess the subtlety, manifoldness, and vitality of the influences that go forth from parent to child. The whole gamut of parental being is ever at work. And the wide ranges of heart-, mind-, and soul-life, in inscrutable ways, work upon it. Influences flow into it through every open pore. The nature, the temperament, the tone, the tastes, feelings, thoughts, ideals, beliefs, aspirations, activities, experiences, and character of the parent enfold and penetrate the child with the subtlety and power of atmosphere and sunlight. A cloud of anger passing over the spirit of a mother affects the very milk her child nurses. Surely mental and spiritual influences could tell of a variety and delicacy that material influences can only approximate. Yet how delicate and subtle are even the material influences.

Such is the child as he is set into the bosom of the family. Only the infinite complexity and subtlety of the influences that work upon and in him have not been half expressed. The life of Tennyson, for example, with his rich and intricate personality, found scores of ways of entering and affecting the life of his son. In innumerable ways, from the first giving of being to him, to the incalculable parental influences that never ceased to work, on to the thousand-fold variety of influence that permeated and leavened his growing life, on to the end, his great rich personality enfolded the child-life and poured itself in upon it. The child received these influences coming through all these channels, and, after its own child-fashion, acted upon them. He knew how to get at his father through many doors besides that of knowledge. In the beginning that door did not exist. Yet a thousand other doors stood open. He was enabled through every open pore of his nature to absorb the enfolding life. As a leaf with its ten thousand open mouths breathes in the encircling atmosphere, so the child breathed in the parental influence; so the parent-personality breathed the breath of thousand-fold life into the child. The child knew it not. For months he knew not at all. For years the gateway of knowledge was only a narrow gate indeed, but broad and many all the while were the other ways. So much for the enfolding life of the home. Even strong statement has done it scant justice.

Out beyond the family is the community. Man is set into that environment as well. A living being set into a life-giving society — so runs the truth of things. We must conceive facts more vitally. If we know not of a hundred beating hearts of different kinds, and of as many lifebloods, all different, circulating through all things and especially through human life, our understanding of Reality is as yet external and wooden. Our minds must vitalise our worlds in order to make the first beginning at discovery of what the real nature of things is. Man set into society therefore is a vital and not a mere mechanical and dead fact. He is knit into society in living connection with it. There are other connections besides joints and ligaments. The body is not the most alive thing in the world. As alive and quivering with vitality as flame is, so alive are feeling and thought and the activities of spirit. Into these atmospheres and sunlights and electricities and spiritual climates and gravitations the life of man is set. Society encompasses him with many life-giving atmospheres. What has been said of the child as held in the bosom of the home is true of man as set into society. He is shot through with as many influences as beams of sunlight. The whole wide gamut of social forces plays incessantly upon him. As complex as is our mysterious humanity, as wide as is the range of human faculty, so multiform are the currents of influence that flow through the being of each of us. A flower blooming in the sunlight seems attached to nothing but its stem. But a score of thousands could not number the subtle influences that have wrought upon it. It is as though it were attached to and had grown upon a thousand stems instead of one. So a life grafted into society has flowing through it a hundred saps, a hundred dews fall upon it along with a myriad raindrops; and countless sunbeams of influence pierce it through. And when we discover this we simply open our eyes to what is. However disconnected a life superficially may seem, it is notwithstanding infinitely connected. In mutual give-and-take, in numberless actions and reactions, it lives and grows and comes to self-realisation. This is the profound ever-operative fact of things. A life may appear to be fastened to society as simply as a tree seems to be fastened to the earth — the single trunk seems to run down into the ground, and that is all. But dig away the surface of the soil and see a very network and tangle of roots. The tree is fastened to the earth with thousand-fold vital connection. So a life, only much more intimately and complexly, is connected with society. The atmosphere at noonday is hardly more full of rays of light than the world of society is full of powers. There are no idle sunbeams. So there are no idle social powers. They all work upon man. How subtle, deep, and varied that working is only recent study has begun at all adequately to reveal.