that is eternally subjected to the regenerative process of spiritual
interpenetration, and the result is organic life.
What is spirit? The creative power of the Logos, in the sense in which
St. John interprets and corrects the early, partial, and therefore
erroneous theories of the Stoics and of Philo. God the Son, the Eternal
Word of the Father, "the brightness of His glory and the figure of His
Substance." "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten,
not made, being of one substance with the Father: by Whom all things
were made." Pure wisdom, pure will, pure energy, unconditioned by
matter, but creating life out of the operation of the Holy Spirit on and
through matter, and in the fullness of time becoming Incarnate for the
purpose of the final redemption of man.
Now since man is so compact of matter and spirit, it must follow that he
cannot lay hold of pure spirit, the Absolute that lies beyond and above
all material conditioning, except through the medium of matter, through
its figures, its symbols, its "phantasms." Says St. Thomas: "From
material things we can rise to some kind of knowledge of immaterial
things, but not to the perfect knowledge thereof." The way of life
therefore, is the incessant endeavour of man sacramentally to approach
the Absolute through the leading of the Holy Spirit, so running parallel
to the slow perfecting of matter which is being effected by the same
operation. So matter itself takes on a certain sanctity, not only as
something susceptible, and in process, of perfection, but as the vehicle
of spirit and its tabernacle, since in matter spirit is actually
incarnate.
From this process follows of necessity the whole sacramental system, in
theology, philosophy and operation, of Christianity. It is of its
_esse;_ its great original, revolutionary and final contribution to the
wisdom that man may have for his own, and it follows inevitably from the
basic facts of the Incarnation and Redemption, which are also its
perfect showing forth.
Philosophically this is the great contribution of Christianity and for
fifteen centuries it was held implicitly by Christendom, yet it was
rejected, either wholly or in part, by the Protestant organizations that
came out of the Reformation, and it fell into such oblivion that outside
the Catholic Church it was not so much ignored or rejected as totally
forgotten. Recently a series of lectures were delivered at King's
College, London, by various carefully chosen authorities, all
specialists in their own fields, under the general title "Mediaeval
Contributions to Modern Civilization," and neither the pious author of
the address on "The Religious Contribution of the Middle Ages," nor the
learned author of that on "Mediaeval Philosophy," gave evidence of ever
having heard of sacramental philosophy. It may be that I do them an
injustice, and that they would offer as excuse the incontestible fact
that Mediaevalism contributed nothing to "modern civilization," either
in religion or philosophy, that it was willing to accept.
The peril of all philosophies, outside that of Christianity as it was
developed under the Catholic dispensation, is dualism, and many have
fallen into this grave error. Now dualism is not only the reversal of
truth, it is also the destroyer of righteousness.
Sacramentalism is the anthithesis of dualism. The sanctity of matter as
the potential of spirit and its dwelling-place on earth; the humanizing
of spirit through its condescension to man through the making of his
body and all created things its earthly tabernacle, give, when carried
out into logical development, a meaning to life, a glory to the world,
an elucidation of otherwise unsolvable mysteries, and an impulse toward
noble living no other system can afford. It is a real philosophy of
life, a standard of values, a criterion of all possible postulates, and
as its loss meant the world's peril, so its recovery may mean its
salvation.
Now as the philosophy of Christianity is purely and essentially
sacramental, so must be the operation of God through the Church. This
"Body of Christ" on earth is indeed a fellowship, a veritable communion
of the faithful, whether living or dead, but it is also a divine
organism which lives, and in which each member lives, not by the
preaching of the Word, not even by and through the fellowship in living
and worship, but through the ordained channels of grace known as the
Sacraments. In accordance with the sacramental system, every material
thing is proclaimed as possessing in varying degree sacramental
potentiality, while seven great Sacraments were instituted to be, each
after its own fashion, a special channel for the inflowing of the power
of the Divine Actuality. Each is a symbol, just as so many other created
things are, or may become, symbols, but they are also _realities,_
veritable media for the veritable communications of veritable divine
grace. Here is the best definition I know, that of Hugh of St. Victor.
"A sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly,
representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, and
containing from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace."
This is the unvarying and invariable doctrine of historic Christianity,
and the reason for the existence of the Church as a living and
functioning organism. The whole sacramental system is in a sense an
extension, in time, of the Redemption, just as one particular Sacrament,
the Holy Eucharist, is also in a sense an extension of the Incarnation,
as it is also an extension, in time, of the Atonement, the Sacrifice of
Calvary.
The Incarnation and the Redemption are not accomplished facts, completed
nineteen centuries ago; they are processes that still continue, and
their term is fixed only by the total regeneration and perfecting of
matter, while the Seven Sacraments are the chiefest amongst an infinity
of sacramental processes which are the agencies of this eternal
transfiguration.
God the Son became Incarnate, not only to accomplish the redemption of
men as yet unborn, for endless ages, through the Sacrifice of Calvary,
but also to initiate and forever maintain a new method whereby this
result was to be more perfectly attained; that is to say, the Church,
working through the specific sacramental agencies He had ordained, or
was from time to time to ordain, through His everlasting presence in the
Church He had brought into being at Pentecost. He did not come to
establish in material form a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or to provide
for its ultimate coming. He indeed established a Spiritual Kingdom, His
Church, "in the world, not of it," which is a very different matter
indeed, as the centuries have proved. His Kingdom is not of this world,
nor will it be established here. There has been no _absolute_ advance in
human development since the Incarnation. Nations rise and fall, epochs
wax and wane, civilizations grow out of savagery, crest and sink back
into savagery and oblivion. Redemption is for the individual, not for
the race, nor yet for society as a whole. Then, and only then, and under
that form, it is sure, however long may be the period of its
accomplishment. "Time is the ratio of the resistance of matter to the
interpenetration of spirit," and by this resistance is the duration of
time determined. When it shall have been wholly overcome then "time
shall be no more."
See therefore how perfect is the correspondence between the Sacraments
and the method of life where they are the agents, and which they
symbolically set forth. There is in each case the material form and the
spiritual substance, or energy. Water, chrism, oil, the spoken word, the
touch of hands, the sign of the cross, and finally and supremely the
bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist. Each a material thing, but each
representing, signifying and containing some gift of the Holy Spirit,
real, absolute and potent. So matter and spirit are linked together in
every operation of the Church, from the cradle to the grave, and man has
ever before him the eternal revelation of this linked union of matter
and spirit in his life, the eternal teaching of the honour of the
material thing through its agency and through its existence as the
subject for redemption. So also, through the material association, and
the divine condescension to his earthly and fallible estate (limited by
association with matter only to inadequate presentation) he makes the
Spirit of God his own, to dwell therewith after the fashion of man.
And how much this explains and justifies: Man approaches, and must
always approach, spiritual things not only through material forms but by
means of material agencies. The highest and most beautiful things, those
where the spirit seems to achieve its loftiest reaches, are frequently
associated with the grossest and most unspiritual forms, yet the very
splendour of the spiritual verity redeems and glorifies the material
agency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality,
of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal
that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute
essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his
powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative.
This is the true Humanism; not the fictitious and hollow thing that was
the offspring of neo-paganism and took to itself a title to which it had
no claim. Held tacitly or consciously by the men of the Middle Ages,
from the immortal philosopher to the immortal but nameless craftsman, it
was the force that built up the noble social structure of the time and
poised man himself in a sure equilibrium. Already it had of necessity
developed the whole scheme of religious ceremonial and given art a new
content and direction through its new service. By analogy and
association all material things that could be so used were employed as
figures and symbols, as well as agencies, through the Sacraments, and
after a fashion that struck home to the soul through the organs of
sense. Music, vestments, incense, flowers, poetry, dramatic action, were
linked with the major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture, and
all became not only ministers to the emotional faculties but direct
appeals to the intellect through their function as poignant symbols. So
art received its soul, and was almost a living creature until matter and
spirit were again divorced in the death that severed them during the
Reformation. Thereafter religion had entered upon a period of slow
desiccation and sterilization wherever the symbol was cast away with the
Sacraments and the faith and the philosophy that had made it live. The
bitter hostility to the art and the liturgies and the ceremonial of the
Catholic faith is due far less to ignorance of the meaning and function
of art and to an inherited jealousy of its quality and its power, than
it is to the conscious and determined rejection of the essential
philosophy of Christianity, which is sacramentalism.
The whole system was of an almost sublime perfection and simplicity, and
the formal Sacraments were both its goal and its type. If they had been
of the same value and identical in nature they would have failed of
perfect exposition, in the sense in which they were types and symbols.
They were not this, for while six of the explicit seven were
substantially of one mode, there was one where the conditions that held
elsewhere were transcended, and where, in addition to the two functions
it was instituted to perform it gave, through its similitude, the clear
revelation of the most significant and poignant fact in the vast mystery
of life. I mean, of course, the Holy Eucharist, commonly called the
Mass.
If matter is _per se_ forever inert, unchangeable, indestructible, then
we fall into the dilemma of a materialistic monism on the one hand,
Manichaean dualism on the other. Even under the most spiritual
interpretation we could offer--that, shall we say, of those today who
try to run with the hare of religion and hunt with the hounds of
rationalistic materialism--matter and spirit unite in man as body and
soul, and in the Sacraments as the vehicle and the essence, but
temporally and temporarily; doomed always to ultimate severance by death
in the one case, by the completion of the sacramental process in the
other. If, on the other hand, the object of the universe and of time is
the constant redemption and transformation of matter through its
interpenetration by spirit in the power of God the Holy Ghost, then we
escape the falsities of dualism, while in the miracle of the Mass we
find the type and the showing forth of the constant process of life
whereby every instant, matter itself is being changed and glorified and
transferred from the plane of matter to the plane of spirit.
If this is so: if the Incarnation and the Redemption are not only
fundamental facts but also types and symbols of the divine process
forever going on here on earth, then, while the other Sacraments are in
themselves not only instruments of grace but manifestations of that
process whereby in all things matter is used as the vehicle of spirit,
the Mass, transcending them all, is not only Communion, not only a
Sacrifice acceptable before God, it is also the unique symbol of the
redemption and transformation of matter; since, of all the Sacraments,
it is the only one where the very physical qualities of the material
vehicle are transformed, and while the accidents alone remain, the
substance, finite and perishable, becomes, in an instant of time and by
the operation of God, infinite and immortal.
It is to sacramentalism then that we must return, not only in religion
and its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firm
foundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help us
to achieve the "Great Peace." Antecedent systems failed, and subsequent
systems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, is
there safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed will of God.
III
THE SOCIAL ORGANISM
Society, that is to say, the association in life of men, women and
children, is the fundamental fact of life, and this is so whether the
association is of the family, the school, the community, industry or
government. Everything else is simply a series of forms, arrangements
and devices by which society works, either for good or ill. Man makes or
mars himself in and through society. He is responsible for his own soul,
but if he sees only this and works directly for his soul's salvation,
disregarding the society of which he is a part, he may lose it, whereas,
if he is faithful to society and honourably plays his part as a social
animal with a soul, he will very probably save it, even though he may
for the time have quite ignored its existence. Man is a member of a
family, a pupil under education, a worker and a citizen. In all these
relationships he is a part of a social group; he is also a component
part of the human race and linked in some measure to every other member
thereof whether living or dead. Into every organization or institution
in which he is involved during his lifetime--family, school, art or
craft, trade union, state, church--enters the social equation. If
society is ill organized either in theory or in practice, in any or all
of its manifestations, then the engines or devices by which it operates
will be impotent for good. Defective society cannot produce either a
good fundamental law, a good philosophy, a good art, or any other thing.
Conversely, these, when brought forth under an wholesome society, will
decay and perish when society degenerates.
In its large estate, that is, comprehending all the minor groups, as a
nation, a people or an era, society is always in a state of unstable
equilibrium, tending either toward better or worse. It may indeed be of
the very essence of human life, but it is a plant of tender growth and
needs delicate nurture and jealous care; a small thing may work it
irreparable injury. It may reach very great heights of perfection and
spread over a continent, as during the European Middle Ages; it may sink
to low depths with an equal dominion, as in the second dark ages of the
nineteenth century. Sometimes little enclaves of high value hide
themselves in the midst of degradation, as Venice and Ireland in the
Dark Ages. Always, by the grace of God, the primary social unit, the
family may, and frequently does, achieve and maintain both purity and
beauty when the world without riots in ruin and profligacy.
I have taken the problem of the organization of society as the first to
be considered, for it is fundamental. If society is of the wrong shape
it does not matter in the least how intelligent and admirable may be the
devices we construct for the operation of government or industry or
education; they may be masterly products of human intelligence but they
will not work, whereas on the other hand a sane, wholesome and decent
society can so interpret and administer clumsy and defective instruments
that they will function to admiration. A perfect society would need no
such engines at all, but a perfect society implies perfect individuals,
and I think we are now persuaded that a society of this nature is a
purely academic proposition both now and in the calculable future. What
we have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely varied
personalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel and
compassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynical
and emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful in
their degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by the
franchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in every way the
process whereby they themselves work out their own salvation. You cannot
impose morality by statute or guarantee either character or intelligence
by the perfection of the machine. Every institution, good or bad, is the
result of growth from many human impulses, not the creation of
autocratic fiat. But growth may be impeded, hastened, or suspended, and
the most that can be done is to offer incentives to action, remove the
obstacles to development, and establish conditions and influences that
make more easy the finding of the right way.
Now it seems to me that the two greatest obstacles to the development of
a right society have been first, the enormous scale in which everything
of late has been cast, and second, that element in modern democracy
which denies essential differences in human character, capacity and
potential, and so logically prohibits social distinctions, and refuses
them formal sanction or their recognition through conferred honours. In
questioning the validity and the value of these two factors, imperialism
and social democracy, and in suggesting substitutes, I am, I suppose,
attacking precisely the two institutions which are today--or at all
events have been until very recently--held in most conspicuous honour by
the majority of people, but the question is at least debateable, and for
my own part I have no alternative but to assert their mistaken nature,
and to offer the best I can in the way of substitutes.
The question of imperialism, of a gross and unhuman and therefore
absolutely wrong scale, is one that will enter into almost all of the
matters with which I propose to deal, certainly with industrialism, with
politics, with education, with religion, as well as with the immediate
problem of the social organism, for not only has it destroyed the human
scale in human life, and therefore brought it into the danger of
immediate destruction, but it has also been a factor in establishing the
quantitative standard in all things, in place of the qualitative
standard, and this, in itself, is simply the antecedent of well-merited
catastrophe. In considering the social organism, therefore, we must have
in mind that this is intimately affected by every organic institution
which man has developed and into which he enters in common with others
of his kind.
The situation as it confronts us today is one in which man by his very
energy and the stimulus of those cosmic energies he has so astonishingly
mastered, has got far beyond his depth. I say man has mastered these
energies; yes, but this was true only of a brief period in the immediate
past. They now have mastered him. It is the old story of the
Frankenstein monster over again. Man is not omnipotent, he is not God.
There are limits beyond which he cannot go without coming in peril of
death. An isolated individual here and there may become super-man,
perhaps, though at grievous peril to his own soul, and it is conceivable
that to such an one it might be possible to live beyond the human scale,
though hardly. If one could envisage so awful a thing as a community
made up entirely of super-men, one might concede that here also the
human scale might be exceeded without danger of catastrophe. With
society as it is, and always will be, a welter of defectives and
geniuses in small numbers and a vast majority of just plain men, with
all that that implies, the breaking through into the imperial scale is
simply a letting in the jungle; walls and palings and stockades, the
delicate fabrics of architecture, the clever institutions of law, the
thin red line of the army, all melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrush
of primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now the
eternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blot
out the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and the
jackal and the python come again into their heritage.
Alexander and Caesar, Charles V and Louis XIV and Napoleon and Disraeli
and William III could function for a few brief years beyond the limits
of the human scale, though even they had an end, but you cannot link
imperialism and democracy without the certainty of an earlier and a more
ignominious fall.
I have already spoken of the malignant and pathological quality of the
quantitative standard. It is indeed not only the nemesis of culture but
even of civilization itself. Out of this same gross scale of things come
many other evils; great states subsisting on the subjugation and
exploitation of small and alien peoples; great cities which when they
exceed more than 100,000 in population are a menace, when they exceed
1,000,000 are a crime; division of labour and specialization which
degrade men to the level of machines; concentration and segregation of
industries, the factory system, high finance and international finance,
capitalism, trades-unionism and the International, standardized
education, "metropolitan" newspapers, pragmatic philosophy, and churches
"run on business methods" and recruited by advertising and "publicity
agents."
Greater than all, however, is the social poison that effects society
with pernicious anaemia through cutting man off from his natural social
group and making of him an undistinguishable particle in a sliding
stream of grain. Man belongs to his family, his neighbourhood, his local
trade or craft guild and to his parish church: the essence of wholesome
association is that a man should work with, through and by those whom he
knows personally--and preferably so well that he calls them all by their
first names.