Seeing life whole; a Christian philosophy of life; the Deems lectures for 1922, New York University

Front matter

COPYRIGHT DEPOSm

A Christian Philosophy of Life

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Preface

This book had its origin in an invitation from New York University to give the lectures for 1922 on the Deems Foundation. The character of the Lectureship, growing out of “The Institute of Christian Philosophy,” practically determined the scope of the lectures, as indi¬ cated in the secondary title of the book—A Christian Philosophy of Life. At the same time this determination of general subject has made it impossible for me alto¬ gether to avoid traversing ground covered in certain of my other books. But I have sought a fresh treatment throughout in the presentation of material both by the special consideration of questions just now pressing upon many minds, and by applying to the entire discussion the much needed principle of “seeing life whole.” This prin¬ ciple thus constitutes the main title of the book. In a practical application of that principle, it will be seen, I have aimed to give a sixfold approach to the problem of a Christian philosophy of life—the scientific approach, the psychological approach, the value approach, the personal and ethical approach, the philosophical approach, and the Biblical and Christian approach. It has been hoped so to show the close and vital relations of the most signifi¬ cant lines of modern thought to Christian living and think¬ ing. This has compelled in preparation a many-sided review of material, that in so brief a discussion has been vi Preface

reflected perhaps even more in what has been omitted than in what has been said. All that one can do in such an attempt is to say as honestly as he can how these questions best come home to himself.

CHAPTER II The Significant Breadth of the More Modern Psy¬ chology .29

No Quarrel with Such a Definition of Psychology 30

Behaviorism in Psychology.32

Great Practical Inferences from Modern Psychology 35

The Moral and Religious Significance of These Great Inferences.37

The Psychological Inferences Are Indubitably Chris¬ tian Emphases.40

Psychology Has Much Help to Give to Practical Religion—The Psychological Conditions of Self- Mastery .41

The Christian Mastery of One’s Fears and Anxieties 46

vii viii Contents

Chapter III

I. The Importance of the Point of View of Value .

II. We Are Commonly Introduced into the Values of Life Through the Testimony of Others ....

III. The Necessity of Absolute Honesty.

IV. The Necessity of Modesty.

V. Staying Persistently in the Presence of the Best

VI. A Broajd Analogy Between the Realms of Value

Chapter IV

I. The Principle of Reverence for Personality .

II. Our Whole Constitution Looks to Personal Rela¬ tions .

III. Reverence for Personality Includes Self-Respect

IV. Respect for the Liberty of Others.

V. Reverence for the Sanctity of the Other’s Inner Personality.

Chapter V

I. Tendency to Underrate Philosophy.

II. Definitions of the Sphere of Philosophy ....

III. Fundamental Philosophic Points of View ....

x 1. The Organic View of Truth.

2. The Tests of Truth or Reality.

3. The Three Spheres of Reality—the Is , the Must ,

and the Ought .

4. The Three Great Ideals of Truth, Goodness, and

Beauty.

5. The Mission of Mechanism.

IV. The Problem of the Possible Harmony of Process and

Meaning.

V. Two Further Philosophical Considerations

1. One’s Own Self the Best Key for Understanding

of the Universe.

2. The Seeming Unreality of the Spiritual Life .

PAGE

Contents

Chapter VI Page

I. The Christian View of the Bible .133

II. Present-Day Obstacles to a Biblical Approach to a

Christian Philosophy of Life .137

1. The Doctrine of the Inerrancy of the Scriptures . 137

2. An Extreme Apocalypticism.143

3. Spiritualism .144

4. Christian Science.148

5. A False Type of Mysticism.148

III. The Christian Way of Seeing Life Whole. “By Every Word That Proceedeth Out of the Mouth of God” .151

1. Not by Bread Alone.152

2. Not by Marvel and Ecstasy Alone.155

A Christian Philosophy of Life

A Christian Philosophy of Life

There is always needed a constantly renewed apologetic for the ideal life,—for all our ideals, for truth, goodness and beauty, for religion, for the Christian view of God and the world. All ideals are alike concerned. Persist¬ ently and with every change in knowledge men press the vital questions: Have the world and life abiding meaning and value? Can w T e, in the midst of an evolving world, ' keep our faith in the conservation and the progress of values ? This is the problem of this Lectureship.

i

Such an ever renewed apologetic for the great values of life is needed for several reasons.

First of all, such a new apologetic is needed to express the reality and meaning of our ideal interests in the terms of our own times; even though there be no essential change in viewpoints. For each period has its ow r n favorite ways of putting things, and one of the best evidences of the vitality of a man’s ideal or religious convictions is to be found in his desire constantly to re-translate these con¬ victions into immediately current terms. These changing i terms may trouble those who are quite content with the old terms, and they may wish that the changing genera¬ tion were alike content. But in fact such changes in the putting of a man’s beliefs are real causes for congratula¬ tion for all; for they mean genuine independent interest in the great values, and no mere indifferent willingness passively to take over the formulas of others.

A changing apologetic for all our ideals is also needed because of constantly growing knowledge , and the con¬ sequent wisdom, if not the necessity, of relating the ex¬ pression of our ideals to this whole of knowledge. One of the best justifications of any ideal interest is its ability to adapt itself to changing conditions. And this needs to be repeatedly shown for our full peace of mind.

An ever renewed apologetic is demanded, too, to meet incidentally any special new questions arising; although these questions are generally new chiefly in form, when we look deeply enough into them. In this discussion, then, we are to seek to meet as clearly and definitely as possible the present-day obstacles to a Christian philosophy of life. These obstacles come both from within and from without the ranks of intentional defenders of the faith. For the worst enemies of a cause are sometimes to be found among its unwise friends. The new present-day questions, too, grow naturally right out of the new inner world of thought—the world of modern science and its evolutionary point of view, of the historical spirit, of the new psychology, of sociology, of comparative religion. A perfectly enormous mass of new knowledge and new points of view—illustrated in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics—has thus poured in upon the men of the last hun¬ dred years; and it is not strange that the ideal interests have even yet not been able wholly to assimilate it. We cannot evade facing this new inner world of thought, and seeing what it means for our ideal interests, and espe¬ cially for our religious and Christian faiths.

An adequate meeting of the questions so raised—it is more and more plain—requires not simply a lean-to for our traditional philosophy and theology, but to some extent a reorganization of the whole architectural plan of our apologetic for the ideal and religious interests. Too largely men tend to keep their ideas, old and new, in water-tight compartments, not introducing them to one another, and so attaining no organic unity in their living and thinking. And this is likely to be particularly true, where many fields of knowledge and questions of faith are concerned. In such a case, certainly, the ideal apologetic cannot be simply an offensive attack; it must be openminded toward all the facts, and be able to explain the difficulties felt, and to embody the full measure of truth the new knowledge contains. For on both sides, where men have tenaciously insisted on a position taken, we may be sure there is some element of vital truth involved, which needs fully to be taken into account.

Moreover, the problem for both theoretical and practi¬ cal faith is constantly a new and critical one; as, for example, both Romanes and Huxley illustrated, from dif¬ ferent points of view, in their moral and religious diffi¬ culties with the evolution theory. Lotze long ago put the matter with precision: “We can never look on indiffer¬ ently when we see cognition undermining the foundations of faith, or faith calmly putting aside as a whole that which scientific zeal has built up in detail.” 1 Either course brings inevitable rupture into a man’s inner life. There are great values to be preserved on both sides. Christian Science gives an almost perfect example of the second danger Lotze names: “Faith calmly putting aside

1 Mxcrocosvms, p. xi.

as a whole that which scientific zeal has built up in detail.”

The need of an ever new apologetic for the ideal in¬ terests corresponds , also , to the importance of new vari¬ ations in organic evolution. For as Hoffding suggests: “If new variations can arise, not only in organic but per¬ haps also in inorganic nature, new tasks are placed before the human mind.” Darwin “has shown us forces and tendencies in nature which make absolute systems im¬ possible, at the same time that they give us new objects and problems. There is still a place for what Lessing called ‘the unceasing striving after truth, 5 while ‘absolute truth 5 (in the sense of a closed system) is unattainable so long as life and experience are going on.” 2

All this quite fits man as himself a growing creature, and as having in each case an individuality which itself may become a “favorable variation. 55 From this point of view an adequate apologetic for Christianity, for ex¬ ample, should be and can be no mere logically skilful defense of long settled formulas; but should help rather to a constantly enlarging and deepening and progres¬ sively successful putting of the Christian values,—to the constructive task of making clear Christianity’s power of adaptability to changing environments, power to grow as science itself grows.

n

Now such a conception of a Christian apologetic neces¬ sarily involves a constant endeavor to see life steadily and to see it whole.

In one of his early sonnets, addressed to a friend w r ho

2 Evolution in Modern Thought, pp. 211-213; Essay by Hoffding on The Influence of the Conception of Evolution on Modern Philosophy.

asked him who “prop” his mind, “in these bad days,” Matthew Arnold expresses gratitude to Homer and Epic¬ tetus, but most of all to Sophocles whom he characterizes as one

Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

There have been few definitions of rational thinking and living more suggestive or more adequate than this char¬ acterization of Sophocles. For to see life steadily and to see it whole might be called a definition of philosophy in its entirety, and of both the end and the process of edu¬ cation.

We are to make sure, then, above all, in any adequate apologetic for life’s greatest values, that we are not ignoring whole spheres of life, or any of its essential facts. It is illustrative of this danger that, when thirty writers recently undertook to discuss “The Civilization of the United States,” and in many lines to point the way for • the rest of us, it did not seem to the group worth while to deal independently with religion at all. As the editor said in his preface: “They were not interested in the topic.” Had not Norman Thomas reason for saying, “The omission and the apology for it are a measure of the superficiality of the work as a whole”?

The need of seeing life steadily and seeing it whole is both a scientific and an ideal contention. On the one hand, it is a part of science’s insistence on facing the facts (not simply theories) and all the facts, since we cannot be sure a 'priori which facts may prove themselves most important;—the insistence on making room in one’s hypothesis for all the facts which are to be accounted for.

On the other hand, this determination to see life whole is the essence of all ideal views; for these all deal with the unity and meaning of the entire world, and hence cannot leave out of account the whole. All the ideals require somewhere this vision of wholeness. It is a poet who in these troublous days has lost this faith, who thus explains his own present dumbness: “A synthesis of some sort is behind all good verse. Poetry lives in a cosmos. A spiritual order is its soil.” So Professor Irving Babbitt too says: “The final test of creative work is the whole¬ ness and centrality of its vision.” In like manner, religion must say with ever renewed emphasis, as Dr. Newman Smyth prophetically put it years ago: “The whole man, in the entirety of his being, is the organ of spiritual, as * he is, also, of earthly feelings and experiences.” 3

There can be, thus, no adequate putting of the great values in any narrow provincial fashion. There can be no exclusiveness. For the dangers of breadth are best guarded against by still greater breadth—by wholeness. Men are far more likely to be right in what they affirm than in what they deny.

m

In the interests of wholeness, then,—to insure seeing’ life steadily and seeing it whole,—in this constructive task of putting the great values especially of religion in their full setting, we may well attempt a variety of approaches to our problem.

The following approaches to our study of the abiding significance of religion in both thought and life are thus naturally suggested: the general scientific approach; the psychological approach; the value approach; the per¬ sonal and ethical approach; the philosophical approach; the Biblical and Christian approach.

The general scientific approach should point out the 8 The Religious Feeling, p. 142.

positive contributions of modern science to the ideal in¬ terests, and face the difficulties felt in the evolution point of view.

The psychological approach—as a particularly signifi¬ cant part of the general scientific approach—should sug¬ gest the great practical and ideal inferences from modern psychology, and deal with the questions arising from behavioristic psychology.

The value approach should indicate the significant, uni¬ fied way into all the great values of life, bringing out thus the unity of all these values, and the way to constantly enriching life, personal and social.

The personal and ethical approach points out the su¬ preme significance both for morals and religion of the principle of reverence for personality, as the basis for both a true individualism and a true socialism.

The philosophical approach—for philosophy is the primary interpreter of the facts which science in the broadest sense brings us—attempts to put into brief compass the fundamental philosophical points of view, especially as concerns religion, and to face the philo¬ sophical difficulties for the religious viewpoint, just now most felt.

The Biblical and Christian approach takes up the pres¬ ent-day obstacles to a Christian philosophy of life, gath¬ ering especially about the Scriptures and other religious viewpoints, and strives to bring out the wholeness of Christ’s vision of life, and his abiding significance for the race.

Chapter I I

We need to be clear, to begin with, exactly what the viewpoint of modern science is.

In the first place, the growth and triumphs of modern science are due in no small degree to the threefold self¬ restriction of its field: 1 the restriction to phenomena, “the thing as it appears,” abandoning all attempt to reach ultimate reality; the restriction to the tracing of purely immediate causal connections, to the question of the How, not the Why, to process not meaning; the restriction to experience, abandoning all a priori deter¬ mination. These three self-restrictions of modern science, . strictly defined, mean that modern science turns over all questions of ultimate reality , all questions of ultimate origins , all questions of final meaning to Philosophy or Theology or some other form of ideal view.

This delimitation of the field of modern science illus¬ trates and carries with it also the conception of the scien¬ tific spirit. For the restriction to experience will yield results only in the degree in which one is absolutely true to experience. The scientific spirit so required, therefore, may be said to be the habitual determination to see the facts straight, without bias or prejudice; to report ex¬ actly the phenomena so found; and in the whole experi-

^f. Lotze, Microcosmus, Vol. II, pp. 342 if.; Thomson, Outline of Science, pp. 1172-1175.

ence to give an absolutely honest reaction upon the situ¬ ation under examination. It is a rigorous ideal, only partially attainable at best, and we shall need to return to it again.

The field and spirit of modern science naturally lead on to the scientific method. Its essence is in accurate observation and directed experiment; but it needs a fuller characterization, if it is to be clearly understood. The scientific method may be said to begin in accurate obser¬ vation of the phenomenon under examination, to get at the raw facts; to go on by sagacious analysis to a pre¬ liminary classification of similar data; to discern the forms of behavior of these classified groups; so to frame an hypothesis that aims to include all the facts; then to verify and to develop this hypothesis by directed experi¬ ment (or to find that the hypothesis must be abandoned) ; to get at, thus, the laws which are found to hold for the phenomenon investigated; to perceive the conditions in¬ volved in these laws; to fulfill these conditions; and so to be able to come to practical mastery of the forces and resources of the field under investigation.

It is to be noted that this conception of modern science does not at all confine it to the physical sciences. The whole viewpoint—field, spirit, method—may be applied, as we shall see, to any sphere of human experience—to psychology, to history, to the study of social phenomena, to the history of religions, etc.

n

With such a view of modei'n science, we naturally begin •with the scientific approach to our entire problem, for several reasons.

First of all, our age is preeminently a scientific age , and has been particularly influenced by scientific conceptions. Moreover, many of the most difficult questions for the ideal interests, and especially for religion, rise right out of modern science and its evolutionary point of view.

Modern science, too, deals with one of the two great all-inclusive problems of understanding the world in its entirety , which we need to have clearly in mind from the start. For there are two questions which may always be asked concerning any phenomenon: First, How did it come to be?—the question of process, of immediate causal connection, of mechanical explanation—the question of science; second, What does it mean?—the question of meaning, of ideal interpretation—the question of philoso¬ phy, and of all the ideal interests. Take, for example, Paulsen’s illustration of a printed page, or Lotze’s illus¬ tration of a drama. Concerning each, two all-inclusive questions may be asked: How did it come to be? What does it mean?—the question of process and the question of meaning. Concerning the printed page we may ask all the questions involved in the process of its production— questions of paper making, of typesetting-machine, of manufacture and working of the printing press, of the mechanical preparation of the “copy” for the page, etc. These are entirely proper and important questions, but after they have all been asked, there is another entirely different question to ask: What does the page mean, what were the ideas which the writer had in mind in the prepa¬ ration of his copy, what meaning did he intend to convey to his readers? The answer to the question of process does not at all answer the question of meaning. In like manner, one may know all the mysteries of stage ma¬ chinery and production from first to last, and have no answer to the question of the meaning of the drama so staged—of the idea or impression the dramatist meant to get over the footlights to those who witnessed his play. So everywhere in scientific research—in physics, chem¬ istry, biology, etc.—science, if it truly confines itself to the field of science, is dealing solely with questions of fact and process, leaving the question of meaning to the ideal viewpoints. Philosophy and religion, on the other hand, as such, have nothing to do with these questions of fact and process. All these data they take from science and undertake the interpretation of their meaning . 2

Now both these questions—of process and meaning— are essential, and neither in any way excludes the other; rather are they naturally supplementary, and not con¬ flicting. But the first question—that of process—is much the simpler, is necessarily preliminary, and can be clearly discriminated from the other question—that of meaning. Our whole problem will be helped by sharply distinguish¬ ing from the beginning these two questions and points of view in all our preliminary inquiries; although we may not stop finally with an ultimate dualism here. But the philosophical problem of unifying both points of view plainly belongs more appropriately to the philosophical approach to our entire problem.

hi

In turning now to the contributions of modern science to the ideal interests , it is worth noting, in the first place, how the scientific and the ideal points of view tend to fit into each other; for that will give us hope of a final solu¬ tion of the relations of modern science and the ideal in¬ terests.

We may well take for our starting-point Herrmann’s definition of the moral law, as an idealist’s definition of the *Cf. Thomson, Outline of Science, pp. 1175-1179.

ideal: “Mental and spiritual fellowship among men and mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual—that is what we can ourselves recognize to be prescribed to us by the moral law.” 3 But while this definition of the moral law is, as has been said, an ideal' ist’s definition of the ideal, it still can be seen to express the essence of the scientific spirit and method. For on the one hand, Herrmann expresses for workers in the ideal realms what is essentially the method of Christ—the method of fellowship and independence, the method of the contagion of the good life, of the life sound at the core, of salt that has not lost its saltness, of light that has not gone out. At the same time he is also expressing the essential method for workers in science, with its demand for the open mind and absolute fidelity to the facts, cor¬ responding to mental and spiritual independence on the one hand; and its use of world-wide cooperation among scientific workers, corresponding to mental and spiritual fellowship on the other hand.

Let one think, for example, of the way in which any scientific discovery, like that of the Roentgen rays, is tested and developed. As soon as the discovery was an¬ nounced probably the great majority of laboratories all over the world, which were equipped for this particular investigation, repeated Roentgen’s experiments to test the accuracy of his statements, and to see if further significant facts might be discovered in this new realm. This is the method of cooperative fellowship in the pursuit of the truth. At the same time, if this wide-spread repe¬ tition of the experiments of Roentgen were to be anything more than mere mechanical repetition, it was necessary that the experiments should be performed as critically as by Roentgen himself in his original discovery. Each 8 Faith and Morals, p. 129.

investigator must be able honestly to testify out of his own experience to the confirmation of Roentgen’s results. This is the method of independence. The very fact that an idealist’s definition of the ideal can be thus taken as expressing at the same time the essence of the scientific spirit and method, suggests at least the possibility of much closer and more harmonious relations between mod¬ ern science and the ideal interests than men have com¬ monly supposed.

Moreover, modern science is perhaps the sphere of man’s completest success in mastering those great ideal tasks which the mind sets itself—the tasks of thinking the world through into unity in various kinds of terms. Modern science has succeeded in solving in unusual degree one of these tasks—that of thinking the world through into unity in mathematico-mechanical terms. And the very fact that men have succeeded at this one point gives hope, as James suggests , 4 of increasing success in those other parallel tasks which the mind sets itself, of thinking the world through into unity, for example, in esthetic and ethical and religious terms.

In all this interworking of the scientific and the ideal, what now has modern science definitely to contribute to the ideal interests?

First of all, it is to be seen that modern science has enormously increased the resources available for the ideal interests ,—resources of knowledge, of power, and of wealth. It is literally true to say, in the light of the tri¬ umphs of modern science, that one can set no limit to achievements that may still be made in all these three realms,—in knowledge, in power, in wealth. Because of what modern science has here done, possibilities are now reasonably within reach which were hardly dreamed of 4 Psychology, Vol. II, p. 671.

earlier. In spite of defective distribution, men can look forward with hope to the abolition of paralyzing ignor¬ ance, of hopeless drudgery, and of inevitable deficit,— to a time when a man’s life shall be possible for every man. But great as the resources are which modern science can make available, we need to remember that what modern science here offers is simply possibilities, not basic as¬ surance. Whether these possibilities are to become actual realities depends on the honest cooperative work of many groups of men.

In these possibilities, then, modern science brings a great challenge to the ideal interests , and particularly to education. It confronts our age with questions like these: Can you rise to these possibilities? Are you training men worthy of these stupendous powers and trusts, or have these come too soon? Is discipline keeping pace with democracy? In all this an especial challenge is brought to education and to all the moral and religious forces. For an age preeminent in power and wealth must be also preeminent in self-control or world disaster impends. And this means in turn that it belongs to the ideal forces to make sure that men are filled with interests and enthusi¬ asms great enough and ideal enough to dominate all the resources of knowledge and power and wealth which science makes available. Men caught glimpses, at any rate in the Great War, of the tremendous possibilities of cooperation even in great international projects, and we cannot remain satisfied to have scrapped all such in¬ spiring cooperation. We must not finally fail to carry over into the tasks of peace some, at least, of the great cooperative constructive agencies which the war forced upon us.

Moreover, it is not less important to see that modern science has given to the ideal interests the vision of a far larger and more significant world , 5 —a world infinitely enlarged, scientifically unified, constantly evolving, immanently law-abiding,—a world that constitutes an organic whole. In every one of these w^ays, the world has become a new and glorified world. It is impossible to overstate the greatness of the opportunity which modern science, in this vision of a new world, has given to men inspired with the ideal spirit. So far is this new world—enlarged, uni¬ fied, evolving, law-abiding, organic—from belittling man, it rather reflects its glory back upon man at every point. For the vision is one of his own creation and every new discernment is at the same time a disclosure of possible power. The vision of such a world means not less than this,—the possibility for all men of entering intelligently and unselfishly into the world-life and into the all-em¬ bracing plans of God. It was this ideal contribution of modern science of which Eucken was thinking, when he wrote of science: “Its effect is not exhausted in the abun¬ dance of particular achievements; by the objectivity of its work it has brought the world much nearer to us, has led our life to greater clearness, has made us more alert, and given us a secure dominion over things. Science, therefore, must also be a factor in the determination of a philosophy of life, and must raise the whole position of man.” 6

Once more, then, in the light of all its conquests over external nature, modern science points the ideal in¬ terests to the one great method of scientific mastery over the forces of nature , now conceived in their widest scope; and so gives hope of constantly enlarging achievements in all the realms of man’s experience and endeavor.

The significance of the gift of modern science at this

• Cf. King, Religion as Life, pp. 178-184.

a Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideal, p. 345.

point may be seen in the contrast between the oriental and the occidental sense of law. For the Oriental, law means only an all-embracing fate, tending to paralyze all effort; for the Occidental, it means discernment of the laws of the universe, and so a key to the mastery of its forces. For men must bring to the complex problems of individual and social development and progress the same method of scientific mastery which has so splendidly served them in the conquest of the forces of external na¬ ture—so far as it can be here applied. This is the significance of the “social survey” in our attempt to mas¬ ter sociological problems. It is the interpenetration of the scientific spirit and method with the social con¬ sciousness. The social consciousness sets the goal; the scientific spirit and method indicate the indubitable way to the goal. We study the field. We discover the laws which are there at work. We fulfill the conditions in¬ volved in those laws, and so master the situation.