And now, in turning to what religion may have to say to the question, I
come to what is the soul of my discourse. Religion has meant many
things in human history; but when from now onward I use the word I mean
to use it in the supernaturalist sense, as declaring that the so-called
order of nature, which constitutes this world's experience, is only one
portion of the total universe, and that there stretches beyond this
visible world an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive,
but in its relation to which the true significance of our present
mundane life consists. A man's religious faith (whatever more special
items of doctrine it may involve) means for me essentially his faith in
the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of
the natural order may be found explained. In the more developed
religions the natural world has always been regarded as the mere
scaffolding or vestibule of a truer, more eternal world, and affirmed
to be a sphere of {52} education, trial, or redemption. In these
religions, one must in some fashion die to the natural life before one
can enter into life eternal. The notion that this physical world of
wind and water, where the sun rises and the moon sets, is absolutely
and ultimately the divinely aimed-at and established thing, is one
which we find only in very early religions, such as that of the most
primitive Jews. It is this natural religion (primitive still, in spite
of the fact that poets and men of science whose good-will exceeds their
perspicacity keep publishing it in new editions tuned to our
contemporary ears) that, as I said a while ago, has suffered definitive
bankruptcy in the opinion of a circle of persons, among whom I must
count myself, and who are growing more numerous every day. For such
persons the physical order of nature, taken simply as science knows it,
cannot be held to reveal any one harmonious spiritual intent. It is
mere _weather_, as Chauncey Wright called it, doing and undoing without
end.
Now, I wish to make you feel, if I can in the short remainder of this
hour, that we have a right to believe the physical order to be only a
partial order; that we have a right to supplement it by an unseen
spiritual order which we assume on trust, if only thereby life may seem
to us better worth living again. But as such a trust will seem to some
of you sadly mystical and execrably unscientific, I must first say a
word or two to weaken the veto which you may consider that science
opposes to our act.
There is included in human nature an ingrained naturalism and
materialism of mind which can only admit facts that are actually
tangible. Of this sort of mind the entity called 'science' is the
idol. {53} Fondness for the word 'scientist' is one of the notes by
which you may know its votaries; and its short way of killing any
opinion that it disbelieves in is to call it 'unscientific.' It must
be granted that there is no slight excuse for this. Science has made
such glorious leaps in the last three hundred years, and extended our
knowledge of nature so enormously both in general and in detail; men of
science, moreover, have as a class displayed such admirable
virtues,--that it is no wonder if the worshippers of science lose their
head. In this very University, accordingly, I have heard more than one
teacher say that all the fundamental conceptions of truth have already
been found by science, and that the future has only the details of the
picture to fill in. But the slightest reflection on the real
conditions will suffice to show how barbaric such notions are. They
show such a lack of scientific imagination, that it is hard to see how
one who is actively advancing any part of science can make a mistake so
crude. Think how many absolutely new scientific conceptions have
arisen in our own generation, how many new problems have been
formulated that were never thought of before, and then cast an eye upon
the brevity of science's career. It began with Galileo, not three
hundred years ago. Four thinkers since Galileo, each informing his
successor of what discoveries his own lifetime had seen achieved, might
have passed the torch of science into our hands as we sit here in this
room. Indeed, for the matter of that, an audience much smaller than
the present one, an audience of some five or six score people, if each
person in it could speak for his own generation, would carry us away to
the black unknown of the human species, {54} to days without a document
or monument to tell their tale. Is it credible that such a mushroom
knowledge, such a growth overnight as this, _can_ represent more than
the minutest glimpse of what the universe will really prove to be when
adequately understood? No! our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea.
Whatever else be certain, this at least is certain,--that the world of
our present natural knowledge _is_ enveloped in a larger world of
_some_ sort of whose residual properties we at present can frame no
positive idea.
Agnostic positivism, of course, admits this principle theoretically in
the most cordial terms, but insists that we must not turn it to any
practical use. We have no right, this doctrine tells us, to dream
dreams, or suppose anything about the unseen part of the universe,
merely because to do so may be for what we are pleased to call our
highest interests. We must always wait for sensible evidence for our
beliefs; and where such evidence is inaccessible we must frame no
hypotheses whatever. Of course this is a safe enough position _in
abstracto_. If a thinker had no stake in the unknown, no vital needs,
to live or languish according to what the unseen world contained, a
philosophic neutrality and refusal to believe either one way or the
other would be his wisest cue. But, unfortunately, neutrality is not
only inwardly difficult, it is also outwardly unrealizable, where our
relations to an alternative are practical and vital. This is because,
as the psychologists tell us, belief and doubt are living attitudes,
and involve conduct on our part. Our only way, for example, of
doubting, or refusing to believe, that a certain thing _is_, is
continuing to act as if it were _not_. If, for instance, {55} I refuse
to believe that the room is getting cold, I leave the windows open and
light no fire just as if it still were warm. If I doubt that you are
worthy of my confidence, I keep you uninformed of all my secrets just
as if you were _un_worthy of the same. If I doubt the need of insuring
my house, I leave it uninsured as much as if I believed there were no
need. And so if I must not believe that the world is divine, I can
only express that refusal by declining ever to act distinctively as if
it were so, which can only mean acting on certain critical occasions as
if it were _not_ so, or in an irreligious way. There are, you see,
inevitable occasions in life when inaction is a kind of action, and
must count as action, and when not to be for is to be practically
against; and in all such cases strict and consistent neutrality is an
unattainable thing.
And, after all, is not this duty of neutrality where only our inner
interests would lead us to believe, the most ridiculous of commands?
Is it not sheer dogmatic folly to say that our inner interests can have
no real connection with the forces that the hidden world may contain?
In other cases divinations based on inner interests have proved
prophetic enough. Take science itself! Without an imperious inner
demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies, we
should never have attained to proving that such harmonies be hidden
between all the chinks and interstices of the crude natural world.
Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact
ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and
blood, to gratify an inner need. Whence such needs come from we do not
know; we find them in us, and biological psychology so far only classes
them with Darwin's 'accidental variations.' {56} But the inner need of
believing that this world of nature is a sign of something more
spiritual and eternal than itself is just as strong and authoritative
in those who feel it, as the inner need of uniform laws of causation
ever can be in a professionally scientific head. The toil of many
generations has proved the latter need prophetic. Why _may_ not the
former one be prophetic, too? And if needs of ours outrun the visible
universe, why _may_ not that be a sign that an invisible universe is
there? What, in short, has authority to debar us from trusting our
religious demands? Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she
can only say what is, not what is not; and the agnostic "thou shalt not
believe without coercive sensible evidence" is simply an expression
(free to any one to make) of private personal appetite for evidence of
a certain peculiar kind.
Now, when I speak of trusting our religious demands, just what do I
mean by 'trusting'? Is the word to carry with it license to define in
detail an invisible world, and to anathematize and excommunicate those
whose trust is different? Certainly not! Our faculties of belief were
not primarily given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they
were given us to live by. And to trust our religious demands means
first of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the
invisible world which they suggest were real. It is a fact of human
nature, that men can live and die by the help of a sort of faith that
goes without a single dogma or definition. The bare assurance that
this natural order is not ultimate but a mere sign or vision, the
external staging of a many-storied universe, in which spiritual forces
have the last word and are eternal,--this bare {57} assurance is to
such men enough to make life seem worth living in spite of every
contrary presumption suggested by its circumstances on the natural
plane. Destroy this inner assurance, however, vague as it is, and all
the light and radiance of existence is extinguished for these persons
at a stroke. Often enough the wild-eyed look at life--the suicidal
mood--will then set in.
And now the application comes directly home to you and me. Probably to
almost every one of us here the most adverse life would seem well worth
living, if we only could be _certain_ that our bravery and patience
with it were terminating and eventuating and bearing fruit somewhere in
an unseen spiritual world. But granting we are not certain, does it
then follow that a bare trust in such a world is a fool's paradise and
lubberland, or rather that it is a living attitude in which we are free
to indulge? Well, we are free to trust at our own risks anything that
is not impossible, and that can bring analogies to bear in its behalf.
That the world of physics is probably not absolute, all the converging
multitude of arguments that make in favor of idealism tend to prove;
and that our whole physical life may lie soaking in a spiritual
atmosphere, a dimension of being that we at present have no organ for
apprehending, is vividly suggested to us by the analogy of the life of
our domestic animals. Our dogs, for example, are in our human life but
not of it. They witness hourly the outward body of events whose inner
meaning cannot, by any possible operation, be revealed to their
intelligence,--events in which they themselves often play the cardinal
part. My terrier bites a teasing boy, for example, and the father
demands damages. The dog {58} may be present at every step of the
negotiations, and see the money paid, without an inkling of what it all
means, without a suspicion that it has anything to do with _him_; and
he never _can_ know in his natural dog's life. Or take another case
which used greatly to impress me in my medical-student days. Consider
a poor dog whom they are vivisecting in a laboratory. He lies strapped
on a board and shrieking at his executioners, and to his own dark
consciousness is literally in a sort of hell. He cannot see a single
redeeming ray in the whole business; and yet all these
diabolical-seeming events are often controlled by human intentions with
which, if his poor benighted mind could only be made to catch a glimpse
of them, all that is heroic in him would religiously acquiesce.
Healing truth, relief to future sufferings of beast and man, are to be
bought by them. It may be genuinely a process of redemption. Lying on
his back on the board there he may be performing a function
incalculably higher than any that prosperous canine life admits of; and
yet, of the whole performance, this function is the one portion that
must remain absolutely beyond his ken.
Now turn from this to the life of man. In the dog's life we see the
world invisible to him because we live in both worlds. In human life,
although we only see our world, and his within it, yet encompassing
both these worlds a still wider world may be there, as unseen by us as
our world is by him; and to believe in that world _may_ be the most
essential function that our lives in this world have to perform. But
"_may_ be! _may_ be!" one now hears the positivist contemptuously
exclaim; "what use can a scientific life have for maybes?" Well, I
reply, the {59} 'scientific' life itself has much to do with maybes,
and human life at large has everything to do with them. So far as man
stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his
entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a
victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done,
except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a
scientific exploration or experiment or text-book, that may not be a
mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another
that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an
uncertified result _is the only thing that makes the result come true_.
Suppose, for instance, that you are climbing a mountain, and have
worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is by a
terrible leap. Have faith that you can successfully make it, and your
feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself, and
think of all the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of
maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all unstrung and
trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair, you roll in
the abyss. In such a case (and it belongs to an enormous class), the
part of wisdom as well as of courage is to _believe what is in the line
of your needs_, for only by such belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse
to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably
perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save
yourself. You make one or the other of two possible universes true by
your trust or mistrust,--both universes having been only _maybes_, in
this particular, before you contributed your act.
Now, it appears to me that the question whether life is worth living is
subject to conditions logically {60} much like these. It does, indeed,
depend on you _the liver_. If you surrender to the nightmare view and
crown the evil edifice by your own suicide, you have indeed made a
picture totally black. Pessimism, completed by your act, is true
beyond a doubt, so far as your world goes. Your mistrust of life has
removed whatever worth your own enduring existence might have given to
it; and now, throughout the whole sphere of possible influence of that
existence, the mistrust has proved itself to have had divining power.
But suppose, on the other hand, that instead of giving way to the
nightmare view you cling to it that this world is not the _ultimatum_.
Suppose you find yourself a very well-spring, as Wordsworth says, of--
"Zeal, and the virtue to exist by faith
As soldiers live by courage; as, by strength
Of heart, the sailor fights with roaring seas."
Suppose, however thickly evils crowd upon you, that your unconquerable
subjectivity proves to be their match, and that you find a more
wonderful joy than any passive pleasure can bring in trusting ever in
the larger whole. Have you not now made life worth living on these
terms? What sort of a thing would life really be, with your qualities
ready for a tussle with it, if it only brought fair weather and gave
these higher faculties of yours no scope? Please remember that
optimism and pessimism are definitions of the world, and that our own
reactions on the world, small as they are in bulk, are integral parts
of the whole thing, and necessarily help to determine the definition.
They may even be the decisive elements in determining the definition.
A large mass can have its unstable equilibrium overturned by the
addition {61} of a feather's weight; a long phrase may have its sense
reversed by the addition of the three letters _n-o-t_. This life is
worth living, we can say, _since it is what we make it, from the moral
point of view_; and we are determined to make it from that point of
view, so far as we have anything to do with it, a success.
Now, in this description of faiths that verify themselves I have
assumed that our faith in an invisible order is what inspires those
efforts and that patience which make this visible order good for moral
men. Our faith in the seen world's goodness (goodness now meaning
fitness for successful moral and religious life) has verified itself by
leaning on our faith in the unseen world. But will our faith in the
unseen world similarly verify itself? Who knows?
Once more it is a case of _maybe_; and once more maybes are the essence
of the situation. I confess that I do not see why the very existence
of an invisible world may not in part depend on the personal response
which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, in
short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our
fidelity. For my own part, I do not know what the sweat and blood and
tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this. If
this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained
for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private
theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it _feels_ like a
real fight,--as if there were something really wild in the universe
which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to
redeem; and first of all to redeem our own hearts from atheisms and
fears. For such a half-wild, half-saved universe our nature is
adapted. The deepest thing in our {62} nature is this _Binnenleben_
(as a German doctor lately has called it), this dumb region of the
heart in which we dwell alone with our willingnesses and
unwillingnesses, our faiths and fears. As through the cracks and
crannies of caverns those waters exude from the earth's bosom which
then form the fountain-heads of springs, so in these crepuscular depths
of personality the sources of all our outer deeds and decisions take
their rise. Here is our deepest organ of communication with the nature
of things; and compared with these concrete movements of our soul all
abstract statements and scientific arguments--the veto, for example,
which the strict positivist pronounces upon our faith--sound to us like
mere chatterings of the teeth. For here possibilities, not finished
facts, are the realities with which we have actively to deal; and to
quote my friend William Salter, of the Philadelphia Ethical Society,
"as the essence of courage is to stake one's life on a possibility, so
the essence of faith is to believe that the possibility exists."
These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe
that life _is_ worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
The 'scientific proof' that you are right may not be clear before the
day of judgment (or some stage of being which that expression may serve
to symbolize) is reached. But the faithful fighters of this hour, or
the beings that then and there will represent them, may then turn to
the faint-hearted, who here decline to go on, with words like those
with which Henry IV. greeted the tardy Crillon after a great victory
had been gained: "Hang yourself, brave Crillon! we fought at Arques,
and you were not there."
[1] An Address to the Harvard Young Men's Christian Association.
Published in the International Journal of Ethics for October, 1895, and
as a pocket volume by S. B. Weston, Philadelphia, 1896.
[2] Quoted by George E. Waring in his book on Tyrol. Compare A.
Bérard: Les Vaudois, Lyon, Storck, 1892.
{63}