Babbitt, “is that according to Aristotle one is to get his general
nature not on authority or second hand, but is to disengage it directly
for himself from the jungle of particulars that he has before his eyes.
He is not, says Aristotle, to imitate things as they are, but as they
ought to be. Thus conceived, imitation is a creative act. Through all
the welter of the actual one penetrates to the real and so succeeds
without ceasing to be individual in suggesting the universal.” The
consideration above is not purely literary. The Humanist with his
practical attitude toward the leading of “the good life” tries to form
a model before his eyes of what normal representative human nature is
and to imitate that. Out of human nature as it actually is he tries
to make a general picture of what it ought to be, and to hold that
up as a guide for his efforts to become more representative in his
own person. Since many people apparently find it hard to receive much
meaning from such abstract statements as the preceding, since they
are not at once and vividly conscious of the vast difference between
a standard of human nature and the average of human nature, I may be
pardoned for urgently recommending a close study of Charles Maurras’s
explicit account of how the normal (or perfect) man appears to his mind
and imagination. It is hard to over-estimate the importance of such an
attempt as Maurras’s. Classicism, if it is to be a life, must be more
than a set of ideas and a discipline for actions: it must rally the
emotions and make use of their great driving force. It happens that
our emotions can be appealed to by images, and hence the desirability
of forming as concrete an image as possible of what the classical
man, man _par excellence_, is like. In his _Prologue to an Essay on
Criticism_, Maurras has said: “Good taste is the taste of the perfect
man.” He then goes on:
“There is such a thing as a perfect man. I mean that it is not
difficult to conceive a man who should fulfil exactly the idea of our
common condition and who could serve as a model for all of us. I hope
I shall be excused for not bestowing upon this fictitious creature
(fictitious but true) the nickname of _Beau Idéal_: that name crops up
whenever people want to talk German or abandon a subject in favor of a
vague terminology. People who argue about the ideal do not mean by that
the total of the characteristics that build up and complete a being,
but, as they say in their jargon, something over and above. The perfect
man fulfils the definition of man, the ideal man deforms it here and
there; I hasten to add that in the ideal man excesses are balanced by
defects, and extravagances by omissions.
“By the perfect man I do not mean a mediocre figure in which virtues
and faults are balanced. I am thinking of the limit of human power.
Monsters and prodigies do not exceed that limit, as is commonly said.
They are very well within it, like the mediocrities. Man conceives
nothing beyond that limit, beyond which live the gods.
“In a few words, man is a reasoning animal. This old definition seems
to me the only satisfactory one. Neither morality, nor sociability,
nor, to be sure, feeling is peculiar to man. He is distinguished only
by reason; that is what distinguishes him, without separating him,
from the rest of creation. Created nature is completely represented
in him. In his body which has weight, number and measure as have the
metals, organization like the plants, sensibility and movement like
the animals, and which thus appears as the achievement of our earth.
His reason is incessantly nourished, sharpened, enlivened, illuminated
by the tribute which the world pays him through these three channels.
Reason, thus conditioned by the whole of nature, must develop the
fulness of its energies in the exact measure in which that can work
no ill to the perfect expansion of a flourishing body; reason pushed
to the point of parching the animal would exhaust its own sources of
being; as for the exclusive culture of the body, that would coarsen the
soul and deprive it of reason. So the most subtle of the Athenians used
to drain bowl after bowl of wine without confusing his brain, and would
then reason like a god. His companions admired him all the more.
“To express the natural harmony of these two powers, we commonly use
a very vicious figure of speech: we speak of ‘equilibrium’ as if the
objects on the scale were equivalent! _Order_ is what we should call
this conformity of a being to all the elements of its fate.
“What should be the critical sense of a human being composed in
such a way that his instincts, his impressions, his feelings, his
passions, when brought to the highest point, are guided and ruled by
an intellect more powerful, itself fortified, sustained and nourished
by the abundance of nature? His animal ardors will never usurp the
seat of control which belongs exclusively to judgment and reason; but
will reason abandon a nature which is too robust, in order to follow
vain imaginations? No dessication, no flaccidity either; forms full
and well-nerved; philosopher and on occasion even metaphysician, but
rigorously; a sense of real and true poetry; infused with all human
warmth, but firm and secure against it if need be: such is the general
idea that is possible of the good taste of an accomplished man.”
I do not say I regard the above as the best depiction of the perfect
man to be encountered, but Maurras indubitably proceeds along the
right lines, using his imagination to catch a glimpse of the universal
and at the same time not sacrificing his own individuality. He has
succeeded in visualizing a model with fair claims to normality,
representativeness, soundness, for his own personal imitation or
emulation. Note that the logic by which Maurras has made his conception
is the logic of probability, commended so often in the New Humanist
books, and not simply a flight into the improbable.
(c). Decorum. What a fate has befallen this noble word! It is, in my
opinion, impossible for the New Humanist to raise it from its low
estate. Babbitt has exposed the way in which in the eighteenth century
it came to mean etiquette: as he well says, the Neo-Classical writers
made the bad mistake of confusing the language of the nobility with
the nobility of language. This blunder Wordsworth recoiled from in
his advocacy and use of plain diction: the Romantics hated decorum
because it had become a stiff and formal and external affair. But worse
degradation awaited the word, and at the present time in America it
seems to mean, so far as I can judge from the writers who object to it,
the “genteel” manners, the prudish code of behavior which it is the
fashion to attribute to the past generation. As I think, the word is
beyond rescue: it is drowned in its present debased associations. But
is that an excuse for those whose profession it is to read critically
to charge classical scholars like More and Babbitt with attaching
merely a “genteel” significance to the term?
How could Babbitt, for instance, have made it plainer than he did in
the next passage I shall quote that decorum for him does not mean
empty formalism, or a mere veneer of manners, but is inward and to be
understood in a large way? I resort to italics, for truly they seem
necessary to combat our habitual associations with the word. “Whoever
has succeeded in bridging the gap between the general percept and some
particular emergency has to that extent achieved the fitting and the
decorous. _Decorum is simply the law of measure in its more concrete
aspects._ For every type of humanist decorum is, in Milton’s phrase,
the ‘grand masterpiece to observe.’ _Actually this observation may rest
on deep insight_, as it did in the case of Milton himself, or it may
degenerate into empty formalism. The adjustment of which I have spoken
between the variable and the permanent elements in human experience
requires _spiritual_ effort and most men are spiritually indolent. For
genuine adjustment they tend to substitute outer conformity so that
decorum itself finally comes to seem a mere veneer, something that has
no deep root in things. Moreover the notions of decent behavior to
which men have conformed at any particular period have always been
more or less local and relative. It is easy to take the next step and
assume that they have been _only_ local and relative, an assumption
subversive not merely of decorum but of humanism itself.”
But in spite of Babbitt’s care in expressing his meaning, he has been
constantly defeated by his readers’ different sense of the term, and
not even his using the phrase “a sense of proportion” as equivalent to
decorum has enlightened most of them. Yet all that decorum means is the
activity of our sense of proportion: it means the carrying out of what
it is seemly for a man to do. It is not seemly for a man to whine, we
say: not seemly for him to shirk the offices of the mind: not seemly
to be an utter fool in practical affairs. Notions of fitting behavior
vary from place to place and time to time, as Babbitt observes, but
above all the varying notions there remains a permanent sense of how it
is appropriate for a man to live. He should face the facts: he should
put away childish things: he should deal with the difficulties of
existence intelligently, courageously, forcefully: he should realize
his innermost being. The indecorous is simply the inappropriate, the
disproportioned, whether it occurs in art or in conduct. Bathos is
indecorous: sentimentality, the gush of emotion far in excess of the
fact, is indecorous: the intrusion of the purely private into public
discussion is indecorous. The things named are either inappropriate or
unmeasured.
To close the subject: Decorum, or a sense of proportion, is simply the
law of measure in its more concrete aspects, it is the law of measure
in actual operation in the shifting tangle of daily existence.
* * * * *
In describing the discipline worked out by the New Humanists I have
striven for extreme simplicity of statement. My aim has been to
concretize as much as possible the technical formulations in Humanist
literature. I was moved to do this, because I have sometimes read
that the More-Babbitt doctrine and discipline are academic in the bad
sense of the word. Babbitt and More advocate, it is said, notions that
are narrow and have a freezing effect on the “spirit.” They are, most
damning accusation, puritanical. But what, when correctly understood,
is evilly academic about their conception of man and the means they
advocate for true self-fulfilment? What is narrow about their ideas
when they are distinguished at the source and not “interpreted” by some
overworked journalist? How can the law of measure possibly freeze up
the springs of personality, if one has any personality to begin with?
And are they puritanical? I cite Babbitt’s critical position toward
Puritanism for a sufficient reply.
“The crucial point in any case is one’s attitude toward the principle
of control. Those who stand for this principle in any form or degree
are dismissed by the emancipated as reactionaries or, still graver
reproach, as Puritans. Mr. Mencken would have us believe that the
historical Puritan was not even sincere in his moral rigorism, but
was given to ‘lamentable transactions with loose women and fiery
jugs.’ This may serve as a sample of the assertions, picturesquely
indiscriminate, by which a writer wins immediate notoriety at the
expense of his permanent reputation. The facts about the Puritan happen
to be complex and need to be dealt with very Socratically. It has been
affirmed that the point of view of the Puritan was Stoical rather than
truly Christian, and the affirmation is not wholly false. The present
discussion of the relationship between Puritanism and the rise of
capitalism with its glorification of the acquisitive life also has its
justification. It is likewise a fact that the Puritan was from the
outset unduly concerned with reforming others as well as himself, and
this trait relates him to the humanitarian meddler or ‘wowser’ of the
present day, who is Mr. Mencken’s pet aversion.
“Yet it remains true that awe and reverence and humility are Christian
virtues and that there was some survival of these virtues in the
Puritan. For a representative Puritan like Jonathan Edwards they were
inseparable from the illumination of grace, from what he terms ‘a
divine and supernatural light.’ In the passage from the love and fear
of God of an Edwards to the love and service of man professed by the
humanitarian, something has plainly dropped out, something that is very
near the center. What has tended to disappear is the inner life with
the special type of control it imposes. With the decline of this inner
control there has been an increasing resort to outer control. Instead
of the genuine Puritan we then have the humanitarian legalist who
passes innumerable laws for the control of people who refuse to control
themselves. The activity of our uplifters is scarcely suggestive of
any ‘divine and supernatural light.’ Here is a discrimination of the
first importance that has been obscured by the muddy thinking of our
half-baked intelligentsia. One is thus kept from perceiving the real
problem, which is to retain the inner life, even though one refuse to
accept the theological nightmare with which the Puritan associated it.
More is involved in the failure to solve this problem than the Puritan
tradition. It is the failure of our contemporary life in general. Yet,
unless some solution is reached by a full and free exercise of the
critical spirit, one remains a mere modernist and not a thoroughgoing
and complete modern; for the modern spirit and the critical spirit are
in their essence one.”
To me it is a jest at the expense of the last decade that while so
many of us have been marching behind the drums of Menckenism, round
and round the same old circle of naturalistic ideas, there has issued
forth from the despised quarter of university thought the most truly
modern system of all, a system far more in accord with the spirit of
Goethe, who spoke, says Babbitt, not as a Puritan but as a clear-eyed
man of the world, than all the humanitarian and romantic panaceas that
are so solemnly discussed in our liberal weeklies. Goethe said that
everything that liberates the spirit without a corresponding growth in
self-mastery is pernicious.
* * * * *
As a matter of fact, the New Humanist like the historical Humanist
revolts against Calvinism. But he has hit upon an interesting
substitution for the Christian dogma of Original Sin or Depravity.
Most attempts men have made at an objective critique of the human race
have wound up in the conclusion that there is something radically wrong
with it, that there is a Moby Dick loose in the ocean of humanity which
must be hunted down and captured before the race can achieve peace. It
is as though we all existed under some curse, as though we had been
cheated of some birthright. Take the opening pages of _Walden_. Thoreau
is trying for an objective view of mankind. He finds fault after fault
sweeping through the race. He finds it indeed a very odd race, doing
penance in a thousand singular ways for existence. Why is it thus? He
is led to make one master indictment of human beings:--they are torpid!
The humanistic view almost coincides, it amounts to saying the main
trouble with mankind is torpor. Original Indolence in place of Original
Sin! The criticism is reinforced by Buddhistic teachings. For the
doctrine of original depravity to Babbitt is not thoroughly acceptable:
it rests on rather metaphysical grounds and seems hard to verify
practically. The Buddhist doctrine of the original laziness of human
nature, however, appears to come closer to the ascertainable facts.
“The greatest of vices according to Buddha is the lazy yielding to the
impulses of temperament (_pamāda_); the greatest virtue (_appamāda_)
is the opposite of this, the awakening from the sloth and lethargy of
the senses, the constant exercise of the active will.” By this stroke
Babbitt once again frees his doctrine of theology, and as always makes
his appeal to verifiable experience. The New Humanism, to offer still
another definition, is a warfare on man’s original indolence. We may
be said to be born with a “won’t”: the Humanist tries to oppose a
“will” to this “won’t.”
What the New Humanism has to say about the Will is another borrowing
from Eastern philosophy. The Will is regarded as anterior and superior
to the Intellect: to it and not to the Intellect as in St. Thomas
Aquinas is given the primacy. But you will find all this treated
exhaustively in the works of Babbitt, More and their followers.
What I wish to say is that the problem of the Will is the very
crux-problem of all our civilization. I am convinced that Babbitt
has put the supreme question to our times, and that all debate over
American Humanism is beside the main point until that question is
fully faced. “Here at all events is the issue on which all other
issues finally hinge; for until the question of moral freedom--the
question whether man is a responsible agent or only the plaything of
his impulses and impressions--is decided, nothing is decided; and to
decide the question under existing circumstances calls for the keenest
critical discrimination.”
But how uncritical and impractical we are about this problem! Vague
and futile! If anything is plain, it is that the Will presents first
a psychological problem and only after that a metaphysical question.
But we argue and theorize endlessly about the Will. Hardly ever do
we think of a practical self-demonstration, and if we do it is some
such ineffably silly demonstration as saying, “I _will_ to open this
window.” But did you will to move all the muscles that shifted when you
did so, including the numerous unnecessary movements that accompanied
the action? The truth is that Will can only begin where Behaviorism
leaves off, but very few have digested Behaviorism. Why do we not howl
with laughter when we read in William James: “My first act of free will
shall be to believe in free will”? Or take this piece of naïveté upon
which my eye has fallen while writing this chapter. A young critic
is telling his audience that “the philosophic implications of the
quantum theory, the writings of Whitehead, Eddington, C. J. Herrick
and Millikan, and the spectacle of American artists recovering from
paralysis of the will, had all combined to revive a sense of free will
in certain Americans.” It may be a sense of free will, but if it was
arrived at by these means, by reading, we may be positive that it is an
illusory sense. As if the same critic had listed a number of authors
who had proved to him that he had what he was not previously sure of,
a mind. We say we have minds because they demonstrate themselves to
us beyond any possible doubt. If we indeed have Wills, they also will
be self-demonstrating: no one need prove to us we have what we cannot
doubt we possess. Where there is doubt, there is no Will. Where there
is no doubt, let it be added at once there still may be no Will.
One thing we know: Will is not to be associated, as is often done, with
desire. Our desires come and go and fight among themselves: we commonly
act, not on _a_ desire, but on the resultant of our various contending
desires. But Will, in the very nature of the case, is distinct from and
independent of desire. Not in the region of desires but of efforts
should we look for the roots of Will. On this the New Humanist is
absolutely clear-headed.
And perhaps there we had better leave the discussion for the present.
Making effort is always unmistakable to us. It has a psychological
taste, if I may say so, so strong that we cannot delude ourselves
into thinking we are not engaged in effort. Our desires on the other
hand have quite another taste, and many times as is well known we are
only dimly conscious of them. The use of Will then could never be
unconscious, could never be a mere matter of believing theories. Will
would make itself felt in the psychological realm as indubitably as our
bodies feel kinæsthetic strain in hauling a heavy boat up on shore.
Everything in American Humanism depends ultimately upon the Will as an
undeniable fact, not as an assumption. We may start with the assumption
but unless we can convert it into a fact for ourselves as patent as the
fingers on our hands we are playing with an illusion.
There is a practical problem of the Will: a practical approach to
it: and perhaps a practical solution. The New Humanists project this
key problem to the place where it belongs: in the front of all our
dilemmas and puzzles as to how to lead “the good life.” Should we all
try seriously to work at the key problem, there would occur in American
life a revolution that would be unimaginable.
* * * * *
The New Humanist not only associates Will with effort, but--what is a
great advance over his opponents’ muddled notions about Will--with
a particular type of effort: work on oneself, a work that takes the
form of knowing oneself, harmonizing oneself, disciplining oneself.
And in this lies the secret of the devotees of Humanism. It is,
however, an open secret, older than Aristotle and still advertised
today. It is that happiness comes not from psychological inertia but
from psychological work. Once again I shall quote from Babbitt: “this
sluggishness and slackness of spirit, this mere drifting and abdication
of will, may, as Chaucer’s parson suggests, be the crime against the
Holy Ghost itself.” The agreement is with Aristotle who conceived “of
happiness in terms of work. All types of temperamentalists are from
the human point of view passive. The happiness that they crave is a
passive happiness. A man may pursue power with the energy of a Napoleon
and yet remain ethically passive. He may expand his sympathies until,
like Schiller, he is ready to ‘bestow a kiss upon the whole world,’
and yet remain ethically passive. A man ceases to be ethically passive
only when he begins to work in the Aristotelian sense, that is when he
begins to put the brake on temperament and impulse, and in the same
degree he tends to become ethically efficient.”
And now let one of the ancients, “the subtlest of the Athenians,” the
hero of the Platonic Dialogues, have the final word. “The best man is
he who most tries to perfect himself, and the happiest man is he who
most feels that he _is_ perfecting himself.”
The reader may think it strange that such a doctrine and discipline as
we have been sketching should arouse the violent and oftentimes abusive
antagonism that flared up in the winter and spring of 1930. Whatever
its ultimate deficiencies may be, the New Humanism wears commonsense on
its face, and its thought is both broad and elevated. Nevertheless it
provoked a storm.
It is explicable. In the first place, much random opposition to
American Humanism springs up because of the specific attitudes
Humanists take in respect to art, literature, science, education,
politics, and so forth. Stemming from the parent attitude of
responsibility toward the natural self are a variety of consequential
attitudes when the Humanist looks out upon the world around him. And it
is these consequential (or possibly only contingent) attitudes which
have caused some individuals to hurl their thunderbolts. An admirer
of the cumbersome novels of Theodore Dreiser, let us say, reads some
detached article by a New Humanist in which his hero is held up as an
exemplar of “romanticism going on all fours”: he inquires no further
into the basis of American Humanism but immediately rushes to the
defence of Dreiser and current American literature. And so with the
advocate of Professor John Dewey’s educational ideas. A criticism by
a Humanist of these ideas is sufficient to incur the hostility of the
disciple of Dewey: the system of the attacker on Dewey is of no moment,
for his ideas on education are objectionable and so must be his whole
outlook. There have been many such quarrels over specific opinions,
which have naturally led to a condemnation without examination of
Humanism itself. The New Humanists work out their critique of modern
life on many fronts. They advance a new-old program on the same number
of fronts. It is easy to see then how, being comprehensive, they manage
to stir up so many enemies. In the next three chapters I shall examine
the Humanist attitude toward modern science, educational impressionism,
and politics, and no doubt the reader will then easily comprehend why
the New Humanism has provoked so much heated debate.