The way to personality; a study in Christian values

Preface

(IN TIME OF WAR)

There are men who tell us that this unparalleled war has written on the wall the doom of Christianity. Those whose Christ is not after the flesh know that it is not so, but there are some, to whom Christ is still Lord, who wonder if Jesus was not in some things pertaining to His teaching a child of His time, and whether He would give the same counsels if He were amongst us in the body to-day. And there are others by whom Jesus and His counsels have been definitely dismissed, if not condemned, as being no longer equal to the occasion.

We shall certainly have to make up our minds about these things if we desire to be sure that never again shall such a calamity be sprung upon an unprepared Christian Church.

Has the teaching of Jesus any real and final value for the complex relationships of life in the present day ? This book attempts to answer that question.

GEORGE B. ROBSON.

Christmas, 191 5.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Part I.— The Will To Personality

I. THE LADDER TO THE STARS - - - -13

II. THE AGE-LONG QUEST ----- 23

III. THE HERO OF HEROES ----- 30

IV. SONS OF GOD ------ 41

V. THE SON OF MAN - - - - - 48

VI. THE CHRISTIAN END ----- 55

Part Ii.— The Christian Type I.— The Beatitudes ------ 63

II. THE FIRST STEP TO LIFE ----- 69

III. DIVINE DISCONTENT 76

IV. THE WAY THAT SUCCEEDS 82 V. THE PASSION FOR RIGHTNESS 89

VI. CONSIDERATENESS -5 96

VII. THE SENSE OF DIRECTION - 103

VIII. THE PEACEMAKERS - - K>8

IX. PAYING THE PRICE ----- 114

X. THE RESULT - Il8 io Contents

CHAPTER PACS

Part Iii.— The Way To Personality

I. ANOTHER LOOK AT JESUS HIMSELF ~ - - I29

II. A NEW BEGINNING - 136

III. PERSONALITY BY ADVENTURE - I44

IV. PERSONALITY BY FAITH - - - - l62 V. PERSONALITY BY WORSHIP AND PRAYER - - 1 69

VI. PERSONALITY BY FELLOWSHIP- - I76

APPENDIX A.— By Way of Application.

I. THE NEED FOR CHRISTIAN THINKING - - - 187

II. THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY - 189

III. CHRISTIANITY AND WAR - I96

IV. CHRISTIANITY AND INDUSTRY - 201

APPENDIX B.

ON NIETZSCHE ____-- 208

Part I. The Will To Personality

" That Man must still to some new worship press Hath in his eye ever but served to show

The depth of the consuming restlessness Which makes man's deepest woe."

Matthew Arnold.

" When we become the enfoldevs of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then ?

" No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond."

Walt Whitman.

Chapter I

There is no satisfactory definition of Man. Wise men have described him as the clothes-wearing animal, the tool-using animal, the laughing animal. But I heard one day in the street a description that went deeper than those of the wise men. A mother was addressing her small son from the door step.

" You are a discontented little animal," she declared, " That's what's the matter with you. '

She was nearer the truth than she realised. That is what is the matter with mankind generally. The clothes and the tools of man are but the expression of his discontent, and even his laughter, often so near to tears, springs from his sense of the gulf between what is and what might be.

William Blake has pictured him finely in the few inches of a woodcut — a morsel of unrest at the foot of a ladder whose top is among the stars. His cry goes out into space, " I want ! I want ! "

That ancestor of yours, sitting at the door of his cave a hundred thousand years ago, contemplating the possibility of making the first handled tool by tying a sharp stone to a stick, — it was true of him. The one thing we can say with any certainty about him is that he wanted something more than he had. Whatever he got suggested something better, and perhaps the next would be the finally satisfying thing. But it never was. And as, by the time he had carefully finished his tool he had begun to outgrow it, so, when at last he wrought his dreams into thoughts, and his thoughts into speech, there was always something from the dream left over in his heart. It is so still.

In time he found a means of saying what words cannot utter, and the plaint of the reed and the throb of the drum tell the tale of his longing. Is it not the secret of music that it whispers to us of the way we have come, and grips our hearts with that same unrest which first set man on his adventure ? It is the homesickness of the soul which cries out on the violins. The oboe tells the story of all our wanderings and sorrows. The trumpets are surely the echo of that challenge to things which rings within us. And the noblest of all music, in which strife and unrest are ended and only pure joy remains, is it not a hint of the song we shall sing when at last we shall have won home ?

At some time the unceasing pressure of man's unrest, his sense of the never filled gap between dream and deed became articulate, and he made an account of it. The story of Eden and the fall, and similar attempts, come out of the deepest consciousness of our race. Wise men do not laugh at them. They are as true as Blake's picture and mean much the same thing.

When man enters history, and from then until now, the story is woven about the names and deeds of those in whom the spirit of unrest found the readiest listeners. They stand out in every page, these pioneers, and in every field of achievement, and not only for deeds reckoned good. Even the ' bad" has won admiration when it was big enough and savoured sufficiently of life. Men have honoured the doer, the thinker, the finder, the maker, because in him they saw fulfilled a little of what they craved after. His victory was their victory ; he had enlarged the bounds of life for them. If they could not lead, at least they could follow. The one thing they could not comfortably do was sit still.

What is this spirit of unrest, this driving force which urges us on without ceasing ? What is it we want ?

Thinkers of one sort and another have answered our questions.

Plato, you remember, put down our unrest to the fact that we are of heavenly birth, and that, despite the heavy layer of earthliness which clings to us, a memory of our origin now and then struggles through. Poets have followed him.

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.

The answer of the poet-philosopher and the philosopher-poet, put into clumsier words, would seem to be that the unrest of man is just a spiritual home- sickness. Like Eden to Adam, the gates we came out of are guarded by flaming swords. But if we go right away round we are sure that we shall find an open gate and a welcome at the other side and enter again into that free life where man gives names at his will to all creation. And may be we shall find the ancient taboo removed, and eat not only of the tree of knowledge, but also of the tree of life.

When poetry and philosophy join forces, they can present a strong case.

Another answer from philosophy without poetry The driving force behind our demand for something more is the Desire for Happiness. This is not a dispute about words, but if we take them at their ordinary valuation that answer does not cover the ground. Happiness is an accompaniment, a by-product a follower that like other followers has sometimes to take his own chance of coming in at the end. Not that he is not always welcome, but he could not always be kept in mind while the main business was being done.

A philosopher who had no faith in happiness at all has told us that what urges us on — or at least keeps us going — is the Will to Live. He makes it sound quite reasonable until we think of splendid and terrible things done by men with an exaltation of spirit which makes the Will to Live look poor and shrunken. Then we look for something that sounds more hopeful.

Is it the Will to Power ?

" Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power. . . .

" He certainly did not hit the truth who shot at it the formula : ■ Will to existence,' that will doth not exist !

" For what is not, cannot will ; that, however, which is in existence — how could it still strive for existence?

" Only where there is life, is there also will : not, however, Will to Life, but— so I teach thee— Will to Power 1 "*

There is one weakness in this answer. It is not sufficient as it stands. Power is of no use until it is applied, and when Nietzsche tells that the driving force behind our discontent is Will to Power, we are bound to ask, if we wish to be clear, Power, — to what ? It is the more important because his phrase is meant not only for an explanation but for an ideal, so that to get wrong at the beginning is to be wrong all the way. We will all agree with Nietzsche's answer if we can fill in the "to what ? " in our own way.

We are told that the idea flashed upon the mind of Nietzsche as he watched a regiment of artillery

* Thus spake Zarathustra, II., 34.

thunder past him, gay with the brilliant uniform of 1870. Perhaps the source of his inspiration, coupled with the fact that he himself was of sickly body, and but for that would have been actor rather than spectator, explains why " Will to Power " came to carry for him the meaning, power to appropriate, to injure, to exploit others, — in short, the Will to Bully. He was wrong in finding that in every living thing, for we have good reasons for believing that within the bounds of the same species and even beyond them there is no such universal exploitation, but a large measure of co-operation. In any case, however, the rule of the jungle need not be a rule for us.

It is one of Nietzsche's fundamental errors, due, it would seem, to a sentimentalism which so often leads him to mistake violence and swagger and impudence for power, and to demand that virtue shall carry itself with the air of a truculent drill sergeant.

Not power to exploit, but power to ?

Perhaps we can come to a better understanding if we try our second question. What is it we want ? I will speak for myself as an ordinary man.

I enjoy life well enough to want to continue in it, and I prefer to be happy. But I do not want these things naked, so to speak. There are some things without which existence would be intolerable, and I am quite prepared to risk happiness in trying for them. There are things I want to do, things I see could be done. I want to do them — in my way if possible, or help in the doing of them if they are beyond my single strength. At any rate, to see them done. I want my sense of fitness and beauty and fair-dealing satisfied in the world of things and activities and men. I want to have the discords resolved and the story make a good ending. There are things I want to be. I want to be master in my own house ; to be free. I want to know. I want to get round the next corner. In a word, I want to express myself completely in life.

I may be foolish in my wants, but I do not think I am singular.

The driving force behind this desire, behind all human life, now comes more clearly into view. It is a stirring moment to stand and watch the guns sweep by, and Nietzsche was led astray by it. Had he been less susceptible to mere noise and display he would have gone a step further and hit upon a more real world than the one he discovered.

The driving force behind human life is Will to Personality.

It was true of the first man. The dawning of Personality was the beginning of his unrest. What disappointed him all the time was that he never got himself quite expressed in anything he did or experienced. Not that he knew what he wanted or even thought about it. You are a long way on the road to getting what you want when you know just what it is. Even the idea of Personality is comparatively new. But every new experience of man added something to him, though it did not always make him happy. Everything he acquired promised him a longer reach, though it sometimes became an additional burden to carry. When he ate the heart of his enemy he had a dim idea that he absorbed some thing vital and himself became something bigger thereby.

" The history of mankind," says Mr. H. G. Wells, " is the history of the attainment of external power." It is more than that, it is the story of his long journey towards Personality. All his tragedies come out of the fact that he has so often missed the way.

Our individual bodies, we are told, go through a sort of resume of the physical history of our race. Is is not also true of ourselves as persons ?

" It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother

and father, it is to identify you. . . . Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed

in you, You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes. . . And I have dreamed that the purpose and essence of the known

life, the transient, Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the

permanent, "f

God, the old stories tell us, made man in His own image. He compounded him of the dust of the earth and gave him life, not as to the rest of the animals, by a word, but by breathing into his nostrils the breath of life — His own breath. I think they were quite deliberate also when they pictured man as being made alone, carefully, in a special day's work, for he is the greatest of God's experiments. Man became a living soul and started on his journey to the stars.

When I have told Eastern villagers this story they have said in reply, " Then the real part of man has the same nature as God." We may leave it at that.

" And now," you say, " please define Personality." I am reminded of the story of Socrates. " How shall we bury you ? " said Crito. " As you please," was the answer, " only you must catch me first."

That is the difficulty about defining Personality ; we have not caught it yet. There was a time when it was freely defined in such ways as this : — " Personality is that self-hood which shuts itself up against everything else, excluding it thereby from itself."

t Walt Whitman : To Think of Time.

The philosopher opened box after box of the puzzle until he came to the last. That is the magic box, which will not open until you know the trick, and when it is open turns out not to be a box at all, but a door into fairyland. The philosopher thought it was solid ; it was his mistake. What he denned was the self-consciouness out of which Personality has to grow.

Wise men are rather shy of defining Personality now. They tell us that complete Personality belongs only to God, that it is not a hard and dead thing, but a living thing, and for us an ideal ; that it is possible that only a small part of our personality has managed so far to find expression. They use the figure of an iceberg, of which the greater part is submerged. They have spoken of the subconscious mind, a reservoir of unknown powers.

If that suggestion has been to some extent discredited because the subconscious seems also to be the fount of our most foolish and wayward dreams, it is only to make way for the better suggestion that our personality cannot be sharply marked off at either end, that there is a super-conscious area also, from which spring those ideas which we cannot positively define or imagine but which, none the less, form the background of our thinking. Man is discontented. Why should he be ? How explain his idea of a perfect world, of a complete personal life, of things infinite ? Only by assuming that they are the steadfast background against which he can perceive the changes and limitations amongst which he finds himself. He sees, but he cannot analyse or define what as yet is beyond his reach.

We shall only know what complete Personality is when we have reached it. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be." For the present we can only describe Personality — not define it — as, that within us which takes hold of life and environment and uses them for self -organisation and self-expression.

It is the most important thing about us, this something which Socrates felt could not be caught, which we cannot exactly define ; so important that instinctively we turn to it as the measure and test of value for everything else.

There have been teachers to tell us that we are wrong in so doing, religions which tell us that our idea is an illusion, organisations whose object is to override us, but they have not yet succeeded in killing that instinct, nor is it likely that they will. They would have been better employed in helping us to understand it and in guiding us into right ways of fulfilling it. The greatest personality our race has seen, and still the most discussed, appealed to his hearers and said, " Why do not even ye yourselves judge what is right ? " When he wanted to find a phrase for the most hopeful thing that ever happened to one of his characters, he said, " He came to himself." It was not the end of his journey, but it was the beginning.

The Indian goldsmith carries in his equipment a small black stone upon which he rubs what is offered to him for gold. He seems by its use to be able to tell fairly accurately what proportion of gold is in any alloy you may give him.

We will use what we know of Personality for our touchstone.

That which best answers my Will to Personality, which is found finally to give the greatest field to it or, in other words, what most enlarges life for me, is good.

That which thwarts my Will to Personality, which denies it expression, which limits life, is evil.

That method of living which tends most to the enlargement of life and the deliverance of Personality from hindrances and entanglements and illusions will be the wise way of living.

And since, so far as we can discover, the production and development of Personality, is the final reason for the existence of this world, or, in other words, that my Will to Personality is derived from some infinite Personality, since we must attribute Personality to that which makes us persons, then such way of living will be what religious people call the Will of God, and ultimately, therefore, the only successful way of living.

That religion or view of the world which gives Personality the greatest value, which brings it into the largest place without losing it by the way, will be the truth for me.

Chapter II The Age-long Quest

If we are right in thinking that our achievement of Personality is the end of the Creative Will, of which we are, so far, the highest expression, will not the way of achievement be obvious ? Will it not be the line of least resistance ? There are good reasons against such a conclusion. Experience suggests to us, — No resistance, no achievement. Every stage of life, from the lowest upwards, involves the overcoming of resistance. The only things we can use or even know in the external world are those which offer some resistance.

Take the aviator as a parable. His ambition is to fly ; his object is to overcome the downward pull of the earth and the resistance of the air. He makes his machine as light as possible and as little wind-resisting. He finds that even so small a matter as the shape of a wire affects his speed. Yet, without the pull of the earth he dare not go up, for he might not be able to get down again, and without the resistance of the air he could not get up or fly when he was there. The line of least resistance would be to leave flying to the birds.

Is the way, then, the line of most resistance ? I do not quite know what that would be in aviation, and, indeed, it sounds rather a foolish question, but the line of most resistance has practically been suggested as the way to the highest good. To exploit, to use other persons as tools, to be master by brute force, to win, not by co-operation but by compulsion, that has been tried and advocated, and to some people still seems the true way. It does not work ; it never has worked, and when carried out to the end means self-destruction.

The achievement of Personality is a greater adventure than the conquest of the air.

Apart from such reasons, however, the history of man suggests that the way is narrow and the gate strait. What have seemed obvious ways have not been a great success. The defects in the present order of the world scarcely need detailing. Every now and then some one arises to declare passionately that all our knowledge, all our discoveries, have but left man in the same old bondage to things. There seems to be some queer kink in the nature of man by which he manages to pervert the greatest gift to evil and destructive uses. We sometimes talk as if progress was automatic and certain, but it is not so certain as the fact that things left to themselves do not get better, and that every gain has not only to be won but also maintained at great cost and by unceasing vigilance. And when we have done bragging of our Progress, the uncomfortable thought creeps in : — What is the good of it all if it does not result in the production of finer and yet finer personalities ? Do the ways we have individually or corporately tried do this ?

Yet we can picture Utopias. It has been a favourite recreation of man. But when we said, " Yes, beautiful, Now show us how ! " the trouble began. Blake's picture of the ladder to the stars seems to have one defect. Should he not have left the ladder out ? Is there anything so obvious as a ladder about the way to Personality ? It seems more like the search after the Holy Grail. It was somewhere, waiting to be found, but only rare souls ever caught sight of it, and they blazed no way for others to follow.

THE AGE-LONG QUEST 25

In connection with the description of Personality the phrase " self-expression " was used. But which self are we to express ? As someone plaintively said, " There are such a lot of me ! " We remember Whitman's " I contain multitudes." I find in myself animal desires and instincts, desires of the mind, capabilities, limitations, timidities, hopes, aspirations, aversions, odd peculiarities of temperament, a certain general condition of bodily health, — a miscellaneous assortment indeed, often not on the best of terms with one another. That they all condition the possibilities of Personality there can be no doubt, and what is more, any of them seem capable, on small encouragement, of claiming to be the self which is to be expressed.

Personality is the kingdom I am to win. It is clear that if any one of these things is in control and denies the rest, or if there is no control, but only anarchy and disorder, if there is continuous civil war or crises of revolution with a new president after each, I must expect the weakness that follows such things. Is there in me that which has the right to be master, which all will acknowledge and serve if it makes its proper claim ?

Is there anyway at all, or is this a purely individual adventure in which no man can help another or even pass on a useful hint or two to save him from the worst mistakes ? Somehow we cannot quite accept that as it stands. We continue to be invincibly hopeful. We build our Utopias, our castles in the air, each generation trying to improve on the picture. The fact that we can, or think we can, improve on the picture is encouraging. And each man of every generation tries to realise for himself some little corner of security in which he may have leisure and freedom to express himself. How pathetic that after all these years of corporate life, of learning how to live, it should still be to countless thousands of men the summum bonum, — a little security, a little space to turn round in, where one may feel the dignity of personal being before going to the grave !

Is there any universal way to Personality ? In detail, perhaps not. That would seem to be the failure of all codes of laws. The more detailed they are, the more certainly they are out of date before the ink on them is dry. The more exacting they are, the more free men resent them as an insult to their dignity. Freedom is part of our demand and, like Personality, is a thing to be won. The code of laws chokes us. Our personality wilts and shrivels or else violently rebels in that air.

Yet surely if there is a right and true end, there will be a right and true way. It may turn out to be quite simple, missed by men for that very reason. Maybe part of our difficulty is that we do not form right or clear conceptions of what the thing we seek is. It is of the nature of the case that we cannot say of perfect Personality that it will contain just these qualities and attributes and no more, but is there any sort of standard, anything to measure by at all ? Can we liken the perfect Personality to anything else ?

We took, for a working description of Personality, that it is that within us which seeks self-organisation and self-expression in life and environment. I do not say that we can describe God in that way, but we must attribute something like that to the Creative Will, however far short of the truth it may come ? If there is truth in that, it suggests, as has been remarked before, that we shall have to look Godwards for our idea of Personality. This seems like going round in a circle, or explaining the little known by the unknown, but I am not sure that it is. My own| inclination is to think that we really know God better;

THE AGE-LONG QUEST 27

than we know anything else. Our difficulty is that we do not recognise our knowledge as knowledge of God, because we have so often made up our minds beforehand what God ought to be, and so get lost in arguments and reasons, instead of following the impulse of our nature. We are afraid to let ourselves go. That is the trouble with most of us. Meanwhile let it be said that " man apart from God " is a theological invention.

There is, however, another way, which it may be wiser to take for a beginning, though we may find it lead into the one we are leaving. If the achievement of Personality is the end of the natural order, it would seem right to argue that perfect Personality must be something in the Creative Will which seeks expression in our personalities, and that there might in the course of history be attempts at achievement which would help us, revelations of Personality which would serve as guides for us. Is not that the direction in which we must look ? Remember the wise words of Plato : " The really brave man will either learn or discover the truth ; or if that be impossible he will take the best of human words and the most irrefragable, and, carried on that as on a raft, will sail through life in continual jeopardy, unless he shall find some secure position, some divine word, if it might be."

And if the divine word could be a shining example, how much better ! It is an example we want. We begin all things by the imitation of what appeals to us. There is no other way, for we come into a world which is already a great inheritance and stand upon the shoulders of countless generations. We do not dream of beginning at the beginning and working out everything for ourselves. We awake to science, to art, to music, to poetry, to discovery, by contact with others, above all by contact with those who have been great enough to make a universal appeal. Our very language has been made for us. We have to learn it by imitation. We take thankfully all that has been won for us and use it ; we improve on it if we can ; we apply it in new directions if the occasion arises. That is how we keep moving on and succeed in pushing back a little farther the limitations and mysteries that surround us.