Humanism, even humanism of the distinctly individualistic type I have
been outlining, may, as I have already suggested, work in harmony
with traditional religion. In that case there must be a careful
determination of boundaries. Though humanism and religion both lie
on the same ascending path from the naturalistic flux, one must
insist that each has its separate domain. It is an error to hold that
humanism can take the place of religion. Religion indeed may more
readily dispense with humanism than humanism with religion. Humanism
gains greatly by having a religious background in the sense I have
indicated; whereas religion, for the man who has actually renounced
the world, may very conceivably be all in all. On the other hand, the
man who sets out to live religiously in the secular order without
having recourse to the wisdom of the humanist is likely to fall into
vicious confusions--notably, into a confusion between the things of God
and the things of Cæsar. The Catholic Church has therefore been well
inspired in rounding out its religious doctrine with the teaching of
Aristotle and other masters of the law of measure. It can scarcely fail
to recognise that the position of the positive and critical humanist
is sound _as far as it goes_. It follows that the Catholic and the
non-Catholic should be able to co-operate on the humanistic level.
A like co-operation should be possible between the humanist and the
members of other Christian communions who have not as yet succumbed
entirely to humanitarianism.
I have tried to show that the weakness of humanitarianism from both
the humanistic and the religious point of view is that it holds out
the hope of securing certain spiritual benefits--for example, peace
and brotherhood--without any ascent from the naturalistic level. The
positive and critical humanist would seem to have a certain tactical
superiority over the religious traditionalist in dealing with the
defects of the humanitarian programme. In the battle of ideas, as in
other forms of warfare, the advantage is on the side of those who
take the offensive. The modernists have broken with tradition partly
because it is not sufficiently immediate, partly because it is not
sufficiently experimental. Why not meet them on their own ground
and, having got rid of every ounce of unnecessary metaphysical and
theological baggage, oppose to them something that is both immediate
and experimental--namely the presence in man of a higher will or
power of control? I use the word experimental deliberately by way of
protest against the undue narrowing of this word by the scientific
naturalists to observation of the phenomenal order and of man only in
so far as he comes under this order. One should also protest against
the restriction of the term reality to observation of this type.
Some of the most monstrous mutilations of reality that the world has
ever seen are being perpetrated at this moment--for example, by the
behaviouristic psychologists--in the name of the “real.” At all events
everything in the modernist movement will be found to converge either
upon the rôle of feeling or upon the rôle of experiment, and the final
question raised in either case is that of the will. As a result of the
combined influence of the various types of naturalists, the present age
is at once more emotional and more mechanical than any other of which
we have historical record. By mechanical I refer primarily not to the
multiplication of machines in the outer world but to the mechanising
of mind itself. An effective procedure is, as I have said, to meet the
mechanist on his own ground and point out to him that he is unduly
dogmatic, if he holds that his hypothesis is absolutely valid even for
the natural order, and that, if he goes further and seeks to make it
cover the whole of experience, to impose a deterministic nightmare on
the human spirit itself, he is abandoning the experimental attitude for
an even more objectionable form of dogmatism.
Similarly one should meet the emotionalist on his favourite ground
of immediacy. Inasmuch as the higher immediacy has been largely
associated in the Christian occident with the operation of God’s will,
the substitution for it of the lower immediacy has meant practically
the setting up of a subrational parody of grace. In order to make this
parody plausible, the emotionalist has had recourse to the usual arts
of the sophist, chief among which are a juggling with half-truths and
a tampering with general terms. I have commented elsewhere on the way
in which words like “virtue” and “conscience” have been so twisted from
their traditional meaning as to eliminate the dualistic element that
both humanism and religion require. If there is to be any recovery
of the truths of dualism, at least along critical lines, a battle
royal will need to be fought over the word “nature” itself; here, if
anywhere, one needs to practise a Socratic dichotomy.
The half-truth that has been used to compromise religion in particular
is that, though religion is in itself something quite distinct from
emotion, it is in its ordinary manifestations very much mixed up with
emotion. I give an example of this error in its latest and fashionable
form. In a very learned and, in some respects, able book,[15] the
Rev. N. P. Williams seeks to show that St. Augustine’s experience of
grace or, what amounts to the same thing, his love of God, was only a
“sublimation” of his “lust.” St. Augustine was a very passionate man
and his passionateness no doubt enters into his love of God. But if
it could be shown that the love of God was in St. Augustine or any
other of the major saints merely emotion, sublimated or unsublimated,
religion would be only the “illusion” that Freud himself has declared
it to be. The psycho-analytical divine, who is, I am told, a fairly
frequent type in England, is about the worst _mélange des genres_ that
has appeared even in the present age of confusion.
One may be helped in escaping from this confusion by considering, so
far as possible from a strictly psychological point of view, what the
exercise of the higher will has actually meant in genuine religion.
One must admit at the outset the difficulty of determining what is
genuine religion. Religion, not merely to-day but always, has been
subject to extraordinary perversions. It has ever been the chosen
domain of self-deception and “wishful” thinking. When one reflects
on the fanaticism, casuistry, obscurantism, and hypocrisy that have
defaced the history of Christianity itself, one is tempted at times
to acquiesce in the famous exclamation of Lucretius.[16] Yet one must
insist that religion is in its purity the very height of man. As to
where this pure religion is to be found, we should keep in mind the
saying of Joubert that in matters religious it is a bad sign when one
differs from the saints. Let us then turn to the saints in whom there
is some authentic survival of the spirit of the Founder. This spirit
surely appears in the author of the _Imitation_ when he writes: “Know
for certain that thou must lead a dying life; and the more a man dies
to himself the more he begins to live in God.” Moreover the author of
the _Imitation_ is at one here not only with Christ but with Buddha,
the chief source of sanctity in the Far East.
The point on which Christ and Buddha are in accord is the need of
renunciation. It should be abundantly plain from all I have said that
the higher will is felt in its relation to the expansive desires as a
will to refrain. The humanist does not carry the exercise of this will
beyond a subduing of his desires to the law of measure; but it may
be carried much further until it amounts to a turning away from the
desires of the natural man altogether--the “dying to the world” of the
Christian.
With this background in mind, we should know what to think of the
humanistic and religious claims of the modernist movement. This
movement has, from the eighteenth century and in some respects from
the Renaissance, been marked by a growing discredit of the will to
refrain. The very word renunciation has been rarely pronounced by those
who have entered into the movement. The chief exception that occurs
to one is Goethe (echoed at times by Carlyle). Any one who thinks
of the series of Goethe’s love affairs prolonged into the seventies,
is scarcely likely to maintain that his _Entsagung_ was of a very
austere character even for the man of the world, not to speak of the
saint. The humanitarians in particular, whether of the utilitarian
or of the sentimental type, have put slight emphasis on the inner
control of appetite. They have encouraged, either directly or through
the ineffectiveness of the substitutes they have offered for this
control, a multiplication and complication of desires that is in flat
contradiction with the wisdom of the ages. Judged by the standards of
the great traditional faiths, the religion of “progress” or “service”
or “humanity” merely illustrates on a vast scale the truth of the
old Latin adage that “the world wishes to be deceived.” The various
naturalistic philosophies that have been built up on the ruins of
tradition should, at all events, whatever their merits or demerits, be
made to stand on their own feet. It should be one’s ambition to develop
so keen a Socratic dialectic, supported by such a wealth of historical
illustration, that it will not be easy for the Walter Lippmanns of
the future to propose some form of naturalism as the equivalent of
“humanism” and “high religion.”
In his attempt to show the inadequacy of humanism apart from dogmatic
and revealed religion, Mr. T. S. Eliot has painted a picture of the
humanist exercising in a sort of psychic solitude self-control purely
for the sake of control. It is evident however that the real humanist
consents, like Aristotle, to limit his desires only in so far as this
limitation can be shown to make for his own happiness. This primary
reference to the individual and his happiness is something with which
we are nowadays rather unfamiliar. Our preoccupation, one is almost
tempted to say our obsession, is, at least in our official philosophy,
with society and its supposed interests. A study of humanism from
the sociological point of view would call for a separate essay. I
may, however, indicate briefly the main issue: the individual who is
practising humanistic control is really subordinating to the part of
himself which he possesses in common with other men, that part of
himself which is driving him apart from them. If several individuals
submit to the same or a similar humanistic discipline, they will become
psychically less separate, will, in short, move towards a communion. A
group that is thus getting together on a sound ethical basis will be
felt at once as an element of social order and stability.
No doubt a still more perfect communion may be achieved on the
religious level. There are however differences of dogma and
ecclesiastical discipline that make a meeting on this plane difficult
even for the various denominations of Christians. If one’s survey
is extended, as it should be in these days of universal and facile
material communication, to include Mahometans and Hindus and Chinese,
the obstacles in the way of a union among men that is primarily
religious are seen to be well-nigh insuperable. It might, for example,
be conducive to the peace of the world if everybody, East and West,
accepted the authority of the Pope. The chances of such universal
acceptance are, however, short of some very “visible upset of grace,”
practically negligible. One can scarcely remind oneself too often that
the great traditional faiths, notably Christianity and Buddhism,[17]
have their humanistic side where closer agreement may be possible. If
the leaders of the various national and cultural groups could bring
themselves to display in their dealings with one another moderation,
common sense and common decency, they would accomplish a great
deal--vastly more than they have been accomplishing of late. The
difficulties in the way of an understanding, even on this humanistic
basis, not to speak of any deeper religious understanding, have been
augmented by the fact that large numbers in the Christian occident as
well as in the orient, especially in China, are falling away from their
traditional disciplines into spiritual anarchy. The dangers of this
anarchy, combined, as it is, with the accumulation of a formidable mass
of machinery that, in the abeyance of any higher will, is likely to be
pressed into the service of the will to power, are appalling.
The first step, if there is to be an effective opposition to spiritual
anarchy of the current type, must be, as I remarked at the outset,
right definition. The idea is becoming fairly widespread that there is
needed at present a reaction from the romantic movement and that this
reaction should assume a religious or a humanistic character. This
idea will not in itself take us very far. Even Benedetto Croce, whose
philosophy would seem to be in its underlying postulates almost at the
opposite pole from a genuinely religious or humanistic position, has
declared that we need a “new Christianity” or a “new humanism,” if we
are to escape “from intellectual anarchy, from unbridled individualism,
from sensualism, from scepticism, from pessimism, from every aberration
which for a century and a half has been harassing the soul of man and
the society of mankind under the name of Romanticism.”
Occasional humanists may appear under existing conditions, but if there
is to be anything deserving to be called a humanistic movement, it
will be necessary that a considerable number of persons get at least
within hailing distance of one another as to the definition of the word
humanism itself and the nature of the discipline that this definition
entails. This preliminary understanding once established, they could
then proceed, in the literal sense of that unjustly discredited term,
to work out a convention. Their next concern would almost inevitably
be with education. Education is, as Professor Gass has remarked,
the one altruistic activity of the humanist. The reason is that if
the humanistic goal is to be achieved, if the adult is to like and
dislike the right things, he must be trained in the appropriate habits
almost from infancy. The whole question should be of special interest
to Americans. Economic and other conditions are more favourable in
this country than elsewhere for the achievement of a truly liberal
conception of education with the idea of leisure enshrined at its very
centre. In the meanwhile, our educational policies, from the elementary
grades to the university, are being controlled by humanitarians. They
are busy at this very moment, almost to a man, proclaiming the gospel
of service. It will be strange indeed if dissatisfaction with this
situation is not felt by a growing minority, if a demand does not arise
for at least a few institutions of learning that are humanistic rather
than humanitarian in their aims. One is at all events safe in affirming
that the battle that is to determine the fate of American civilisation
will be fought out first of all in the field of education.
Note.--For a humanistic view of the field of education, the reader
may be referred to an article by Irving Babbitt, “President Eliot
and American Education,” in the _Forum_, January, 1929, or to his
book on _Literature and the American College: Essays in Defence
of the Humanities_ (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1908). See also Norman
Foerster’s recent book, _The American Scholar: A Study in Litteræ
Inhumaniores_ (University of North Carolina Press, 1929).--Editor.