day, a yellow leaf lets go its hold upon the branch over my head and
comes softly down upon the open book I am reading. It is a perfect
leaf, but it has had its day. The huge family of leaves of which it
was a member are still rank and green and active in sustaining the
life of the tree, but this one has dropped out of the leafy ranks.
There are a few small dark spots upon it, which, I see with my pocket
glass, are fungus growths, or else some germ disease of apple-tree
leaves, perhaps, like pneumonia, or diphtheria, or tuberculosis among
men. One leaf out of ten thousand has fallen. Was Fate cruel to it?
From the point of view of the leaf, yes--could a leaf have a point
of view; from the point of view of Nature, no. The tree has leaves
enough left to manufacture the needed chlorophyl, and that satisfies
the law. If all the leaves were blighted, or were swept off by insect
enemies, or stripped by hail and storm, that were a calamity to the
tree. But one leaf, though all the myriad forces of Nature went to
its production, though it is a marvel of delicate structure and
function, though the sun’s rays have beaten upon it and used it, and
been kind to it, though evolution worked for untold ages to bring its
kind to perfection--what matters it? It will go back into the soil
and the air from which it came, and contribute its mite to another
crop of leaves, and maybe it has rendered the molecules of carbon and
hydrogen and oxygen of which it is composed more ready and willing to
enter into other living combinations. And the fungus germs that have
preyed upon it, they, too, have had their period of activity, and
have justified themselves. Nature thus pits one form against another,
and her great drama of life and death goes on. Are her stakes more in
the one than in the other, since she favors both? Yes, she has more
at stake in health than in disease. If disease always triumphed, all
life would go out. Of course, in the sum total of things, the life
of this old tree counts for but little, but if it failed to bear
apples, its chief end would be defeated. Evil is limited; it is a
minor counter-current, but it is just as real as the good; it is a
phase of the good; we have evil because we first have good. Both are
relative terms. We are prone to speak of good and evil as if they
were something absolute, like gravity or chemical affinity. But are
they any more absolute than heat and cold, or than big and little?
What pleases us, and is conducive to our well-being, we call good,
and its opposite we call evil. We are not to make our wants and
dislikes, our pleasures and our pain, the measure of the universe, as
we do mathematics and physics. We can think of things in terms of art
and literature, of beauty or ugliness, or in terms of morality and
religion, or we may think of them in terms of science and of exact
knowledge. When we say they are good or bad, we are thinking of them
in terms of morals or of religion; when we say they are beautiful or
ugly, we are describing them in terms of æsthetics; when we say they
are true or false, real or delusive, we are talking of them in terms
of science.
This sere and prematurely ripened leaf appeals to my literary and
imaginative faculties through its beauty and its symbolic character;
it appeals to my understanding, my love of accurate knowledge, by
reason of the blight that caused its fall.
Our going out of the world seems equally fortuitous and haphazard in
infancy, youth, middle life, old age; before we have fairly lived, or
after life has lost its value, or in the height of our powers, or in
the decrepitude of old age: which shall it be?
The naturist sees all life as a whole. Man is not an exception,
but part of the total scheme. The life principle is the same in
him as in all else below him--the principle that organizes matter
into countless new forms; that crosses and uses the mechanical and
chemical forces, and begets numberless new compounds; that develops
organs and functions, and separates the living world so sharply from
the non-living. In the weed, the tree, and in man, the principle is
the same. What has set up this organizing power and so impressed it
that it goes on from lower to higher forms, and unfolds the whole
drama of evolution through the geologic ages, is the mystery of
mysteries. To solve this mystery, mankind invented God and acts
of creation. But a God apart from Nature is to me unthinkable,
and science finds no beginning of anything. It finds change,
transformation, only. When or where did man begin? Where does the
circle begin? Self-beginning--who can think of that? Can we think
of a stick with only one end? We can think of a motion as beginning
and ending, but not of substance as beginning and ending. When the
metabolism of the body ceases, death comes. Do we think of life,
or the organizing principle, as then leaving the body? It ceases,
but does it leave the body in any other sense than that the flame
leaves the candle when it is blown out? And is this any different
in the case of man than it is in the case of a tree or a dog? We
postulate what we call a soul in man, which we deny to all other
forms of life--an independent entity which separates from the body
and lives after it. But we run into difficulties the moment we do so.
In the biologic history of man, when and where did the soul appear?
Did the men of the old Stone Age, of whom Professor Osborn writes
so graphically and convincingly, have it? Did the Piltdown man, the
Neanderthal man, the Java man of Dubois, have it? Did our ancestral
forms still lower down have it? Do babies have it? Do idiots and
half-witted persons have it?
All we can claim for man above the lower orders is higher
intelligence, greater brain power, the power of reflection, and
the logical process. His dog has perceptive intelligence, but not
reflective; animals act from inherited impulse; man from impulse,
thought, ideation. Man’s instinctive impulses are guided or
restrained by thought; his emotions--anger, love--wait upon thought;
his migratory instinct waits as that of the lower animals does not.
But when this extra power began, who can say? It had no beginning,
it dawned by insensible degrees, as do all things in Nature. We have
only to heighten our conception of Nature and matter to see the
difficulties vanish--and the stigma of materialism loses its terrors.
In these later centuries mankind has steadily grown bolder and
bolder in dealing with its deities and its devils. A few heroic
spirits have always questioned the truth of the popular creeds, but
in our day a very large majority question or even deny them. Fear of
the wrath above or the wrath below has fled. Men are fast coming to
see that devotion to the truth is the essence of true religion, and
that the worst form of irreligion is the acceptance of creeds and
forms without examining them, or upon the sole authority of some book
or sect. The truth-loving man is the God-loving man. We no longer
talk of God-fearing men--this negative attitude has given place to
the positive attitude of love and enjoyment. The wrath of God no
longer makes us tremble. The swift and sure vengeance of violated
law, both in the physical world without us and the physiological
world within us, we understand and appreciate, but the fury and
revenge of the offended gods no longer disturb our dreams. Nature
has no mercy, is no respecter of persons, is one to the just and
the unjust. Only the moral nature of man knows right from wrong;
only the reason of man knows truth from falsehood. When or how man
got this moral and intellectual nature is a question upon which
men themselves will never agree. Did it come from without or from
within--through evolution or revelation? The naturalist or naturist
is bound to believe that it came from within through the long
process of evolution. Whatever favored man’s development became a
biological law and had survival value. Without some degree of right
conduct and fair dealing--some degree of perception of the true and
the false--the race of man could never have attained its present
high position in the scale of animate nature. Through some inherent
impulse or tendency in matter, man arose out of the earth, climbing
through the many lowly forms to his full estate of a rational being.
It has been a long and toilsome and painful journey. But here we are,
and when we look back through the geologic vistas we are incredulous
that we came that road. We incline to the short cut through the
Garden. But the study of the ways of Nature as we see them in all
living things opens our eyes to the truth of evolution. Of course the
great puzzle and mystery is, Who or what stamped upon matter this
organizing and developing impulse and caused the first unicellular
life in the old Azoic or Palæozoic seas to branch and grow and
increase in complexity till it gave birth to all the myriad living
forms, high and low, that now fill the earth? But here again I am
using the language of half-truth--the language of our experience,
which makes us think of some external agent as stamping an impulse
upon matter. If we say the impulse was always there, that it is
inseparable from matter and the laws of matter, just as creation is
without beginning and end, center or circumference, we come no nearer
speaking the unspeakable. But it seems to me we do, in a measure,
satisfy the reason; we make it see or realize its own limitations;
reason guides reason.
The infinite knows neither time nor space, neither extension nor
duration; it knows only the here and the now. It does not wait for
time to pass or for eternity to begin. Eternity is now. Man, and all
that has arisen out of him, is a part of universal nature. Are we not
held to the sphere? Can we disturb it in its orbit? Can we banish
one atom from it or add one atom to it? We are a fragment of it, its
laws pervade our minds, and we cannot get away from the necessity of
putting our thoughts and emotions in the terms of our experience as
dwellers upon this astronomic globe. We may fancy that we get away
from it in moments of abstract thought, but we do not; we do not get
away from ourselves any more than we can outrun our shadow. We can
let our imaginations course with the spheres that circle through
the abysmal depths of space, but we can put our emotions only in
the words that we have invented to describe our experiences in this
little three-dimensional corner of creation. If our terms were formed
from our experiences amid the spheres, we might be able to give some
hint of the Infinite. We might learn how to describe our sensations
when emancipated from the standards and limitations of the world in
which we live.
Conventionally religious persons shrink from having their spiritual
life discussed in terms of psychology, because psychology smacks of
science and science acts like a blight upon religion. It dispels
mystery and lets the light of day--the garish, irreligious day--into
the twilight or the darkness of religious emotion. We do not want
our relation to the spiritual world explained in terms of our common
knowledge--such is our hankering after the unknown, the mysterious,
the transcendent.
One side of our nature fears the Infinite, and we experience a
chill when the methods of this world obtrude themselves there. We
have convinced ourselves that the part of our inner life which we
call the soul is something more sacred and mysterious and nearer
to the Infinite than our ordinary faculties. What victims we are
of words! What is the value of this feeling, and how did it arise?
Our appreciation of the beautiful, in art and nature, is equally
extra and transcends our practical faculties. Man’s belief in
another world--an ideal world of the absolute good--is, of course,
the result of his strong reaction from the pain, the struggle, the
incompleteness of this world. Evolution is a hard road to travel.
Being born is evidently not a pleasant experience for the baby, and
in this world man is constantly struggling through new experiences
into a higher and larger life. His measure of happiness is never
full and he looks for compensation in another and better world.
He does not see that there can be no better world--that pain and
struggle and disappointment are necessary for his development, and
that to long for a state in which these things do not exist is like
the stream longing for a dead equilibrium. All power and all growth
come from a break in the repose of the physical forces. There is
no power in a uniform temperature, nor in water at a dead level.
Mechanical power comes down an incline, vital power is a lift on
an up-grade--all growing things struggle upward; the vegetable and
animal world lift the earth elements up against gravity into an
unstable equilibrium. Mechanical things run down the scale toward a
stable equilibrium.
Our life goes on by virtue of some principle or force in matter that
tends constantly to break up the stable into the unstable, to force
the elements into new chemical combinations. Our machines dissipate
energy in doing work; the living body conserves energy in the same
process. It grows strong by the obstacles it overcomes, up to the
limits of its powers. The clock runs down, the energy we put into it
in winding it up is dissipated; but the growth of a living body is
a winding-up process, a drawing-in and a storing-up process. In the
wood and coal we burn is stored up the heat of the sun. In burning
them and driving machinery by means of the heat developed, the energy
is dissipated. In manual labor the human body dissipates energy
also, and it is the same solar energy that the engine dissipates,
and it does it in the same mechanical way; and it is constantly
replenished from without through the food consumed. But the human
or living engine stokes itself. It is a clock that winds itself up,
a gun that loads and points itself. Because the living body in its
final analysis turns out to be a machine as absolutely dependent upon
mechanical and chemical principles as any other machine, there are
those who see no radical difference between the mechanical and the
vital.
I conclude that it is equally up-grade from the vital or
physiological to the psychical. How the two connect we can never
know, but that the thinking man dissipates energy there is no doubt.
The body and the soul are one in a way past our finding out. When
we discuss these things in terms of metaphysics, we launch upon a
boundless sea and reach no real port.
When we project ourselves into Nature out of which we came, or when
we see ourselves there objectively,--our virtues, our aspirations,
our vices, and our wickedness,--we sow the seeds of our religion. We
grow a crop of gods and of devils, and heaven and hell become fixed
realities to us. So do we make the world in which we live, and it in
turn makes us. So does the divine in us keep pace with the divine we
see in Nature. So does the beauty of our own characters grow as we
see beauty in the character of others. So do our love, faith, hope,
charity, develop and augment as we see these things in the world
about us. The universe is thus constituted, and that is all we can
say about it.
That right, human right, in the end and on a large scale, prevails, I
believe to be true; the right that in long periods of time means, or
rather secures, the well-being of the race--the greatest good to the
greatest number.
In discussing the final problems of the universe, we are attempting
to describe the Infinite in terms of the finite--an impossible
task. We think and speak of God as a person, because our experience
gives us no other terms in which to conceive Him except in terms
of personality. He sees, hears, plans, governs, creates, loves,
suffers, is angry, we say,--in fact, has all human attributes and
characteristics vastly magnified. He is an omnipotent and omnipresent
man. He is the creator and organizer and director of the universe,
and hence is responsible for everything in it, the evil as well
as the good. Our attitude toward Him is that of a subject toward
his sovereign, or toward a supreme judge. We must praise, exalt,
supplicate, propitiate Him. There is lying upon my table a recent
volume of sermons by an English divine called “The Justification of
God”--his justification in the face of the terrible World War which
he might have prevented. Thus, just as soon as we conceive of God in
terms of our human nature, these baffling problems thrust themselves
upon us. We must seek some grounds upon which we can excuse or
vindicate or justify this supreme man for permitting the terrible
happenings which darken the world. As this is not an easy task, men
say in their hearts, and often with their lips: “There is no God.”
Better no God than a being who would permit the sin and suffering we
see daily all about us, and that history reveals to us.
The only alternative I see is to conceive of God in terms of
universal Nature--a nature God in whom we really live and move and
have our being, with whom our relation is as intimate and constant
as that of the babe in its mother’s womb, or the apple upon the
bough. This is the God that science and reason reveal to us--the God
we touch with our hands, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and
from whom there is no escape--a God whom we serve and please by works
and not by words, whose worship is deeds, and whose justification
is in adjusting ourselves to his laws and availing ourselves of his
bounty, a God who is indeed from everlasting to everlasting. Of
course in the light of the old theology this is no God at all. It was
to emancipate us from the rule of this God that the old conceptions
of a being above and far removed from Nature were formulated. Nature
is carnal and unholy. Our theory compels us to say to matter and
the laws of matter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” We struggle and
suffer in this debasing world for a season, and then escape from
it to a higher and better one. In all the dark, prescientific ages
during our own era--dark in regard to man’s real relation to the
universe in which he finds himself, but often luminous with flashes
of insight into the nature of man himself--these conceptions ruled
man’s religious aspirations. In our own times they still largely
rule in various modified forms. The old theological dogmas are more
or less discredited, but a religion founded upon science makes
little headway with the average man. We are shaping our practical
lives--our business, our social, our economical relations, more and
more according to scientific deductions. We seek more and more a
scientific or naturalistic basis for our rules of conduct, for our
altruism, for our charitable organizations, for our whole ethical
system. Any principle that squares with natural law is indeed founded
upon a rock. The stars in their courses fight for the cause that is
founded upon natural right, which in human relations does not mean
the right of the strong to trample upon the weak, but the right of
all to their full measure of free development.
Right and wrong are, of course, finite terms, and apply only in the
human sphere. Universal Nature, as it appears among non-living bodies
and forces, knows neither right nor wrong; it knows only might.
As it appears among the orders below man, it knows neither right
nor wrong. Physics and chemistry have no consciousness; neither
have beasts or bacteria; but man has, and this fact will in time
determine the whole course of human history. Naturalism makes for
righteousness, or right-mindedness, as surely as it makes for health
and longevity.
XII
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
I
How has the problem of evil tried men’s souls! How have their
gods failed to live up to the character they have given them! How
have they confused our moral standards! The trouble lies in a
misconception of the nature of evil, and in a false idea of the
universe itself.
There is no problem of evil until we have made or imagined an
unnatural and impossible world. When we have enthroned in the
universe a powerful man-made God who is the embodiment of all we
call good and the contemner of all we call evil, then we have our
insoluble problem. To help ourselves out we invent another being who
is the embodiment of all we call evil and enthrone him in regions
below. Upon him we saddle the evil, and thus we try to run the
universe with these two antagonistic principles yoked together, and
no end of confusion in our religious ideas results.
The moment we postulate an all-loving, all-merciful, all-wise, and
just being to rule the affairs of this world, and place him in such
intimate relations with it that not a sparrow falls to the ground
without his will and cognizance, then, indeed, are we in troubled
waters and have lost our reckoning. We cannot excuse such being on
the ground that his ways are inscrutable and past finding out. A
creator who sends into the world the malformed, the half-witted, the
bestial, the naturally depraved, and then holds them to high ethical
standards, is condemned by the ideals which he has implanted within
us.
Now the naturalist has no such trouble. He sees that good and evil
are only relative terms; that they both grow on the same tree; that
we should not know good were there no evil; that there would be no
development were there not what we call evil. Pain and suffering
are inseparable from the human lot. They are a part of the price
we pay for our place in the world. All struggle we look upon as
evil. Disease, failure, death are looked upon as evil, but they
are conditions of our lives. Through sickness we learn the laws
of health. The lower animals have no such troubles--no sickness,
intemperance, or war or avarice. They know without reason how to
live, but man has reason, and the joy of its exercise and the peril
of its failure. Are we not all willing to pay the price?--to take it
on these terms rather than to change places with the brutes?
What a troublesome time the good orthodox brethren have with their
God! He does, or permits such terrible things. Only yesterday He sent
a cyclone through the State of Illinois that killed hundreds of
innocent persons, and destroyed hundreds of peaceful homes, wiping
out at one blow the results of long years of human labor. A few years
ago He sent or permitted the scourge of infantile paralysis that
desolated tens of thousands of homes and left a trail of thousands
of crippled and enfeebled children. Again He sent or permitted the
influenza to sweep over the land, claiming more victims than did
the Great War; and so on. How our fathers, rocked in the cradle of
the old creeds, wrestled with this problem! How could a paternal
and all-loving God do these things? The naturalist reads nature
differently. His god is no better than Nature. In fact, his god and
Nature are one and inseparable. Nature goes her way and her ways are
not our ways. We take our chances in the clash and war of physical
forces. They have developed us and made us what we are.
It was only a few years ago that the President of the United States
asked all good people to assemble in their respective places of
worship and pray to God to stop the tornado of war and crime that
was then devastating Europe. Is it possible to conceive of a being
anywhere in the universe, with power to stop such a world calamity,
who would complacently look on and wait till the sufferers could
unite in a petition to him? What a false man-made god such a
conception holds up to us! No wonder the World War shattered this
conception in thousands of minds, and left them without any faith at
all!
Rogers said in regard to evil that Sir John Mackintosh and Malthus
and another philosopher whose name has escaped me, all agreed that
the attributes of the deity must be in some respects limited, else
there would be no sin and misery in the world.
We use the words “good” and “evil” in a narrow, personal sense. To
the farmer the frost that blights his crops is an evil, but not to
the squirrels who are waiting for the nuts to fall, or to the man who
suffers from hay fever. Rain is a blessing, but how easily it becomes
a curse! A cold wet spring cuts off the insect pests, but delays the
plowing and planting. It is hard on the insectivorous birds, but the
plants and trees profit. The grasshoppers that eat up the farmer’s
pasturage make good provender for his flock of turkeys.