The truths we live by

Preface

This book is the outcome of two very different sorts of experience : one, the teaching of philosophy in a typical American university; the other, the frequent discussion of problems of philosophic import before the larger public. Both of these experiences have convinced the writer that what our time sorely needs is an ethical reconstruction in the light of the new intellectual trends of the day, — a new grounding of the great verities of life and mind that will be convincing to the men who actively participate in contemporary civilization.

Such an ethical reconstruction is made directly necessary by the fact that modem science has seemed slowly and effectively to have destroyed many of the old beliefs that were once the safeguards of the moral order. How many, indeed, of those acquainted with the meaning of scientific progress can retain any sure confidence in such intangible things as the Moral Ideal, or Immortality, or God, or the Freedom of the WiU? In general men of to-day are divided into two great classes in their attitudes toward such matters; they either accept the agnosticism of science, or they take refuge in a faith that presumes to ignore science. Both attitudes have one thing in common, — a grievous lack of appreciation of the importance of the great veri-

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ties for practical life as expressed in the individual and in his social institutions.

These attitudes of the contemporary mind are unfortunate, and ultimately disastrous. For what we are accustomed to call the great verities are of immense practical significance; a faith in them which takes no account of modern scientific thought will end in inevitable doubt; and, while the agnosticism of science is sound so far as science goes, it is not final, since it happens that the logic of science is not the only logic there is. The difficulty is that most men of culture tend to think so. For the chief reason for the prevalent skepticism concerning life's fundamental problems is the widespread belief that the range of natural science and of human reason are synonymous ; that not only what science demonstrates is true, but that what it cannot or does not demonstrate is either beyond decision or is thereby disproved.

One of the principal aims of this book is to show the utter falsity of this position. No one values the achievements of natural science more than the writer. No one is less desirous of disputing a single scientific fact or law. But he, in common with any one else who has investigated and taught scientific method, is naturally more cautious than is the average man either in drawing sweeping conclusions from scientific hypotheses, or in assuming that reason has had its utmost say when natural science has given its last word. Eeason is larger than the reason of that special enterprise called science; it has other methods of proof precisely as cogent as

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PREFACE

are science's demonstrations. It is through such a reason that the writer undertakes to prove the truths we live by, — the truths which many men have practically abandoned, not so much because they have thought as because they have not thought enough. Grant if you please that many of the old arguments for the great verities are now foolish, this does not render the great verities themselves foolish, provided there are other reasons, in harmony with science, that demand them and amply justify them.

The writer begins with the concrete conflicts of our own day because they strenuously demand the great verities for their solution, and because out of them has already begun to emerge a desire, however vague, for the spiritual reconstruction of civilization. Such a reconstruction is then attempted in an argument for a definite sort of moral order, followed by proofs of the truths essential to confidence in it — ^namely. Immortality, God, and Freedom of Choice. Then follows the discovery that the moral order reached is no more or less than what we mean by modem democracy when significantly interpreted. The final problem is to trace how far present tendencies, especially in current religion and in the general temper of the American people, are toward such a moral order and its great faiths. In discussing religious tendencies, the writer has avoided matters of religious controversy, and has addressed himself to religion only as it touches practical concerns. He has tried to make clear the invaluable function of religion in civilization; and it may be

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that his message will be of help to those in religious doubt, as well as to those who teach the great verities in the name of religion, and who face the many logical difficulties now in their way.

Obviously, this book is not written for professional philosophers. It is written for men and women of average education who have not specialized in philosophy, but who are, nevertheless, interested in life's greater problems. There are not many technicalities. Yet, the intention has been to be exact ; and when the choice has been between ease of style on the one hand and precision on the other, the latter has been favored. Beneath all that appears in these pages there is, of course, a systematic philosophy of things, a world-view, which is the deeper foundation for what is here visible.

J.W.H.

AiGKAir, Fbaxcb

Part I Moral Conflict And Skepticism Chaptbb Pagh

I. The Present Conflict of Ideals 3

24 51 58 69 92

II. A Solution Proposed

III. The Conditions of Moral Confidence .

IV. The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Prophet

V. Modern Science and the Great Verities .

VI. The Proof of the Truths We Live By .

Chapter I The Present Conflict Of Ideai^

There have been ages of moral conflict, and there have been ages of moral skepticism. This age is both. Practically, men are resolutely fighting for a multitude of ideals, so there is moral conflict ; theoretically, they are in great doubt, and there is moral skepticism. For the man of to-day tends to regard the truth about life's ideals as merely a point of view; and are there not many points of view, each justified in its own way? Uneducated men may still believe that there is a never-changing distinction between right and wrong, — that is, between good and bad ideals of life ; but the mind attuned to modern culture is inclined to think that right and wrong and the ideals they serve are chiefly matters of convention. What is clearer than that all morals grew out of the passing stress of circumstance ; that what is good in one age is bad in another ; and that even in the same age morality varies with race and country?

So, theoretically, the contemporary man tends to be a moral skeptic. Of course he is ready to insist that this does not mean the breakdown of morals, or that any one may do as he pleases. There are ways of living to which every sensible person will conform. The sensible man will regard the customs and institutions of his country with a decent respect ; otherwise the welfare of society would not be secure for one moment. Yet if asked further just what this *^ welfare of society'' really means, this same sensible man is not certain to the point of defining it; and surely he does not desire to be pressed regarding it. In fact he very much fears that any attempt at close definition may lead to moral dogmatism, — ^which he considers a very bad thing for that most praised of modem intellectual virtues, open-mindedness.

When any one, opposing this skeptical view, insists upon discovering any hard and fast distinction between what is right and what is wrong, he straightway risks being dubbed ** old-fashioned,'' hopelessly behind those who count themselves among the ** liberated" and the * ^ enlightened. " For the enlightened man of to-day knows something of history. He looks back over thousands of years and views a bewildering panorama of quite various moral ideals bitterly battling with one another for recognition ; conquering one by one ; going down to defeat one by one ; dominating this civilization and that in turn; each passing to f orgetfulness ; each superseded; eaoii rising again; and ail surviving inexplicably to continue the never-ending struggle in his own civilization. He may well ask,

Where is any certain tune Or measured music in such notes as these?

If there is any absolute moral standard, what is it? Custom? But there are all sorts of conflicting customs. Which of them is right? Laws of nature? But even laws of nature change with man^s knowledge; and besides, one cannot violate a law of nature anyway, even if one would. And where one can do no wrong no morals are at stake. Laws of men? But legislators are fallible and legislatures differ, and men have never held much moral awe for them. Laws of God? But there are many supposed revelations of God's will, and each has its multitudinous interpretations. Conscience? But people's consciences differ surprisingly, and even the conscience of the same person is bafilingly uncertain and often inconsistent at different times. Is happiness tbe true ideal of men ? But what is happiness ? How is it measured? And how can one foretell what deeds will bring happiness or misery in the long run? Is it asceticism, the mortification of the flesh? Perhaps. But this, or such other prominently urged ideals as the life of reason, or the glorification of the will in the life of deeds, are either very vague or insist upon fighting with each other and with all the rest.

I

If one should choose from aU these various conflicts one example for conspicuous emphasis, one miglit select the current conflict between the moral motive of pleasure on the one hand and that of self-sacrifice on the other, — ^both prominent and contradictory motives of contemporary life. The contradiction of hedonism and sacrifice, of the pleasure-seeker and the ascetic, is of course not new; it has furnished one of the most picturesque contrasts to be found in history. It has afforded light and shadow for many a dramatic use, and has dominated the meaning of entire civilizations. These two contradictory spirits, the worldly and the unworldly, are ever with us. We very frequently find them in our own persons, each clamorous for expression, each denying the other. The story of the Puritan and the Pagan, both living in the same body, ever warring with one another, one looking out on the world with the eye of duty, the other with the eye of beauty, going to the same grave together, by whose gray stone grows the red rose, — such a story has a strangely intimate appeal to such Americans as seriously embody their country's moral history. From one point of view our age is i ndubitably an age of pleasure-seeking. Ours is the hedonistic creed. One way of finding the temper of a people is to observe the social sets that are looked up to for guidance and emulation. Now, it is clear that American social sets exist not primarily for intellectual or even esthetic culture, but for the achievement of pleasure.

For society in America, this has become a strenuous social business, and has almost assumed the character of a social art. This hedonistio ideal is the real meaning of the insistence upon such personal qualities as pleasing manners, geniality, cleverness, aud savoir faire. The highest compliment that one person can yield another is the hedonistic tribute that he or she is ''charming.'' Again, this ideal is the real reason why foreigners find that among us such topics as religion, business, and politics are discouraged in polite conversation. For conversation must possess the hedonistic charm of freshness, vivacity, wit, and an engaging and sympathetic intelligence which leads thought in pleasant places without requiring intellectual work. This hedonistic ideal needs wealth to make it possible, and is the deeper meaning of wealth as a social advantage. Such hedonism is expressed in the dress of the American woman, causing her to be considered by many as the best dressed woman in the world. This hedonism, requiring wealth for its satisfaction, is most of all to be found in the ''social function." Here it is that society as a hedonistic art comes to its expert expression. And the people at large tend, within their limits of opportunity, to adopt this same search for pleasure as a secondary religious creed. They take it so seriously that it is hard, nay, almost impossible for Americans to cultivate the virtue of thrift. It is this hedonistic ideal that causes them to live beyond their incomes.

With multitudes of people the right to achieve pleasure is even the fundamental moral duty, and its achievement the supreme test of the successful life. But current life presents a contradiction to all this, that challenges such an estimate of the American people as utterly false. The American is no soft player of lutes in a couri: of fountains. He is a fighter; and his capacity for quiet sacrifice and heroic suffering is one of his conspicuous traits, and one which he admires most in the men that have made America what it is. Fortunate has been the public man who could point to the humble log cabin as his birthplace; it is the symbol of struggle and privation. No people in the world are more susceptible to the appeal of great causes that demand the devotion of combat and self-abnegation. If the cause is great enough they will **give until it hurts*' of money, of comforts, yes, of flesh and blood. There is something deeper than the search for pleasure in American life, something that contradicts such a search as small and low and superficial. It is to be found in the strenuous hardness and courage of its millions of business men and women, of its thousands of teachers who subsist on little pay, and endure much privation for the conviction of a work worth while. While the American is too sober of mind to seek anything so fantastic as martyrdom, he is of the spirit of which martyrs are made. Even much of his play is the play that demands capacity for hardship, as prize-fighting and football. A transcontinental air-race, involving accident and death, appeals to the American as a sport supremely of his mood. It is a reflection of his hardy ideal of Ufe.

This, as well as the other contradictory outlooks upon life, occur to-day not only in different sets of men opposing one another; they are just as likely to belong to one and the same man. John C. Van Dyke mentions that the Italian of the Renaissance was a paradoxical being, full of the most surprising contradictions. **One side of his nature was often aspiring, inventive, artistic, philosophical ; the other side was quite as often skeptical, treacherous, immoral, polluted. He could doubt and he could believe with equal freedom; he could be cultured and yet debased; he could saturate himself with crime and corruption, yet rhapsodize over things esthetic and kneel at the altar of Christianity. Our nineteenthcentury wonder at this strange marriage of Beauty and the Beast is perhaps pardonable. How a man could be enlightened, refined, devout, brave, and yet break almost every one of the ten commandments we fail to understand.'' ^ The American, while fortunately not this undesirable blending of good and evil, is yet as contradictory in his own way. The same man is rational and credulous, practical and idealistic, a pleasure-seeker and a heroic exemplar of impossible sacrifice. In him are apt to be all the contradictory ideals that we have named. And like the man of the Renaissance, he knows not that it is he himself, that it is these very contradictions in himself, that are at the bottom of most of the problems he now struggles with and futilely seeks to

solve. Indeed, it is manifest that up to quite recently most men were relatively unconscious of even the existence of these glaring contradictions of their times ; and even now only the few realize them and are prepared to confront them belligerently. For to say that there is any absolute distinction between right and wrong is to raise unwelcome difficulties. It seems the same as to say that some one of this host of conflicting ideals has an absolutely proved precedence over all the others. For conduct can be said to be right only as it leads to whatever is the true ideal, and wrong only as it leads away from it. But who knows enough to settle what is this true ideal? To attempt to do so would be arrant presumption, would it not?

Even if it were decided quite rationally- that one of these moral standards is the only true one, as, for example, the ideal of pleasure, the crucial question of modem times would still remain: Do we mean the pleasure of society or of the individual? Which is first? In actual practice the world is greatly divided on this question. To-day the most glaring contradiction of all in every civilized country is the contradiction between the individual and society, between personal liberty and social control. On the one hand, it appears to be an age in which the individual has at last found himself and asserts himself

THE PEESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALS

and clamors for his rights. The individual has become so conscious of himself that it sometimes seems that he is conscious of nothing else. American civilization has always meant an unprecedented emphasis upon the value of the individual ; and this has meant an unprecedented emphasis upon his possibilities and his rights. In any country, men have ever wanted what they had not; but the individual's right to want things, and more, his right to get his wants fulfilled, have never been stressed as in America. This stress has been achieved in various ways. The average American has been gradually attaining a new self-appraisement through democratic education, which ever breeds introspection, and through the democratic spread of the numerous modern agencies that lift even the wage-earner's thoughts beyond his sphere, and the visions of the ordinary business man beyond his desk and counter. The theater — ^not least the moving-picture theater — the novel, increased travel, the magazines and the newspapers, and now, at last, a new world-outlook, are among the obvious means by which has been awakened in almost every man an appreciation of the life he might be living, compared with the life he actually lives. To this same man, American democracy comes with its gospel of the equality of all men, verified now not only through the practical sovereignty conferred with the ballot, but by the recent vision of suffering and death for democratic ideals. Through this startling sacrifice, the individual not only knows his value as a theory, but proves it as a triumphant fact. It is his supreme vindication ; through it he is utterly awakened. The ^^commonwealth of kings'' is no longer a poetical flourish. The recent American feels his power; his desires have become demands and his ideals edicts. Yes, the late world-conflict, by its emphasized issues and by the nature of its victory and ensuing peace, has ushered the individual into a sudden, self-conscious maturity. True, it achieved social solidarity as never before; this was a war-time asset of priceless worth. But how was it achieved? By a paradox. By a new and unprecedented stress upon the dignity and rights of the individual man. This stress survives while the new social solidarity wanes as a transient phenomenon. The latter failed to' attain the dignity of a fundamental motive.

Yet, in spite of this arrant individualism, never was there such an age of social organization and insistence upon imperative social obligations that nullify the boasted rights that belong to the individual as such. Never was individual liberty so threatened by social constraint. Never was there such a passion for making laws to curb the individual; even what he shall eat and drink is prescribed, or at least proscribed! Yet, on the other hand, never was law more ignored and defied and contravened. Has the individual at last asserted his sovereign rights even in industry, and is he eloquent concerning the coming industrial democracy? Well, social organization in the form of government has been known to enjoin him even from the sacred right of striking. This reign of social imperatives reaches to conscripting by public opinion the individuaPs contributions to what he used to consider as ** charity," a purely voluntary thing to which he might or might not give, as he freely chose. For the idea of charity has given way to that of social justice, and the modem ^^ drive'' for contributions has the immense weight of the social force behind it. Never was the individual so boldly clamorous; yet never was the individual so utterly annulled ! It is by contradictions like this that social orders are revised or destroyed.

So crucial has this conflict between the individual and society come to be, especially in politics and in economics, that to many it seems to threaten the dissolution of democracy. How far may social organization, political or other, encroach upon the individual? How far do inalienable personal rights extend, — rights which no social obligation, no social force, may justly ignore? Is there, after all, any solution to this now acute question except the temporary solution of compromise after compromise, each trembling upon the edge of an unstable equilibrium that means revolution ? This skeptical attitude is quite prevalent. To many, a resolute attempt to solve this problem seems premature. The world is still young. It is prudent to wait for the further evolution of civilization.

III

Thus, the attitude of the contemporary man toward the ever-present conflict of these and other moral ideals continues to be one of skepticism. Theoretically, that is, he is not prepared to prove absolute and abiding moral convictions. Practically, he is fairly loyal to institutions as they are (if they are not too much in his way), with a faith in their inherent power to progress somehow and to achieve something v»'orth while for him as time goes on. Practically, he will fight with all his soul for what he deems to be right, else the present practical conflict of ideals would not be so healthily vigorous. But bring him to the realm of theory, and he is suddenly uncertain. It is not that the modern man is without ideals, but his is an idealism whose ideal is left undefined, in the mood that says with a somewhat splendid faith,

Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill.

To give all the reasons for the advent of this moral conflict and its accompanying skepticism would be impossible. Of course it is partly the result of our large inheritance of accumulated conflicts of history. One very obvious cause is the quite sudden fruition during the last century of a bewilderingly versatile civilization, which took us unawares and challenged into life exceedingly contra-

U dictory traits in human nature, which have not yet had time for proper organization and adjustment. But there are two immediate causes that especially stand out. I refer to the influence of modern science on the one hand, and of the World War on the other. The former has meant a theoretical revision and the latter a practical revision of many of our attitudes toward life. It is well to consider these two influences briefly.

Indubitably this is an age of science. In terms of science it is tliat we hope at last to interpret and master both nature and ourselves. Through science man has at length approximated to the ** rational animaP' that Aristotle somewhat prematurely said he was. In science we trust ; science that has become synonymous with reason. Nature once had her unexplored regions, — regions of mystery where the gods still hid. But now all regions are either science's own, or are in the process of becoming her own. By science, even society has been relentlessly rationalized in its economics, its politics, and its history. There is no further room here for mere traditions, however sanctified by time. And this science of which we boast does not stop in its conquest with the formation of theory; it invades all practical affairs under the name of '^efficiency,'' which is reason applied beyond what we think to what we do. Even the arts, the last refuge of inspiration and the divine afflatus, have not escaped the scientific analysis that would strip naked the empty pretention of their mysteries and reveal them in their anatomy. Down into the very depths of consciousness has science probed in the name of psychology, until at length, the most sacred emotions and the most complex functions of imagination and dreams have been duly analyzed into their elements, catalogued, and numbered. By this same science the portals of religion have been stormed, and the pulpit now argues from premises of a religion scientifically assayed. By the reasoning spirit of this same science the stronghold of patriotism has been taken, its old loyalties dissected, and the blind passion that warred against a world of enemies has been transmuted into the rationalization of discordant nations in a world-league. Yes, it is indubitably an age of science.

How has this triumph of scientific reason affected morals'?

Moral ideals were once accepted on faith from age-long tradition. Tradition was enough. But through the influence of modem science, tradition, which once bequeathed immutable faiths, has lost much of its sanctity. A moral ideal that is based merely upon tradition and custom is now regarded as quite insecure. It may be a broad tentative guide to right living, since it is a summing up of the accumulated experiences of the race; but scrutinized modemly it yields nothing certain. For science reminds us that the customs of men that eventuate in moral laws are nothing more than the products of

K\ the struggle for existence, and depend upon such prosaic contingencies as the particular conditions under which a people happens to live, as climate, soil, topography, and the natural foes and social retardations that must be overcome to make life possible. Change the circumstances and you change the customs; and casual inspection shows that the circumstances change vastly with a shift of locality or with the lapse of a few centuries.

Nor will science any longer allow morals to find an immutable foundation in divine revelation. The general impression is that science considers revelation irrelevant because it involves that unscientific impossibility called a miracle. At any rate, speaking most conservatively, revelation true or false is utterly outside accepted scientific method and demonstration ; and to say this is to say that for many cultured minds revelation is growingly doubtful as an approved source of moral truth.

Nor does the authority of conscience fare any better. Analyzed by scientific race-psychology, the conscience of the individual is shown to be merely the unconscious summary of the traditions of the society of which he is a product. The seemingly imperative nature of its commands is easily accounted for by the fact that conscience is the long creation of heredity and of environment, including the countless influences of the society into which one happens to be bom. As in the case of custom, so with conscience,

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncoTith.

Other moral standards have shared the same fate at the hands of science, as we shall see later.^

The result of all this upon the man of modern culture is insidiously subtle. He has learned to put faith in science's deliverances as final. And since science cannot justify the moral standards to which most men have been accustomed, he tends to feel skeptical about the demonstrableness of any moral standard whatever.

Long before the World War, science had already achieved the theoretical break-up of traditional beliefs ; it remained for the war to make a tremendous practical revision of them. For most men it was a cataclysm of such suddenness and of such immensity that they tended to lose what fragments of faith they still had in the inherent triumph of righteousness, and to transfer their allegiance to materialistic efficiency, with its logic of force, as the only real guarantee and meaning of the right. Further, the war had the effect of undermining the stability of institutions c'enturies old, as if their foundations were built upon the sands of caprice instead of upon the rock of rational authority. The result is tha,t the great masses of men have now far less reverence for the social order and its apparently impregnable guarantees.

And finally, out of the war an age of reconstruc-

»C7/. Chapter V.

tion has come, eager enough and hopeful enough, but motived by such a bewildering chaos of divergent social purposes that moral caution and doubt have gained respectability as the safe and sane attitude of reasonable men.

IV

What are the bearings of this widespread conflict of ideals and of this moral skepticism upon the welfare of the contemporary man? What are its effects upon contemporary social institutions and the state! Is moral skepticism a good thing? If it were a skepticism of despair, it might seek a way out of an intolerable situation, and so be a skepticism of promise ; but suppose it is a skepticism of indifference?

Such a skepticism of indifference means an arrest at the very center of moral progress, namely, the arrest of the progress of moral truth. It also means an arrest of practical progress along any certain highway, at a time when significant moral problems are demanding immediate solution as never before. Every institution of mankind is involved in the present warfare of ideals. It is found in thei competing purposes of even those who are by profession the moral instructors of the times, the preachers and educators, evinced in widely divergent public preachments and in lustily jousting ideals of education. It reveals itself in the vastly varying interpretations of society and of the history of society;