PART II INTERPRETATION OF PRACTICE
CHAPTER FIVE The Essential Ideal
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IN OUR ANALYSIS of the proccsscs concerned in the birth of religion in the individual we found the most important factor to be a volitional tendency, operating as a constituent element of the individual self but directed toward the good of other selves. We saw how the resultant conflict within the self led to the conviction that the demands of this altruistic will are demands of some superhuman agency, something divine. And we have seen how reflection on this experience has gradually expanded the concept of duty. From a few negative precepts concerning the avoidance of injury to others it has developed into ideals of positive service involving, if necessary, the ultimate sacrifice.
Equally remarkable has been the expansion of the notion of the extent of the circle of those whose good it is believed the divine being would have us seek. First, it is the narrow social group — my neighbor, so long as he is neighborly. Then there is included the stranger within the camp, the guest who has partaken of our salt. Gradually a broader answer is given to the question. Who is my neighbor? and a more positive answer to the question. Am I my brother’s keeper? In the course of time “my neighbors” comes to include the whole tribe, the nation, and neighbor nations; but still with the same proviso, “so long as they are neighborly,” and usually also with differentiations concerning race, sex, caste and creed. Then finally, through the life and work of the Galilean teacher, there dawns on the world the ideal that would eliminate the [ p. 124 ] last proviso and break down every barrier. It makes no difference whether my neighbor is neighborly or not. God would have me love even mine enemy. Every man is my neighbor, and I must seek his good equally with my own.
The extraordinary thing is that, though the modern man scarcely does more than lip service to this ideal in its completeness, it yet commends itself to his moral judgment. Nor is this simply acquiescence before the force of tradition or acceptance of a principle on authority, for those who are foremost in criticism of tradition and rejection of its authority still acknowledge the ideal and are often among its strongest supporters. To say that it appeals to their reason is to say that their reflective moral judgment endorses it as a true expression of their own inner experience. The prophets of religion have not simply created an ideal and then persuaded men to adopt it. They have rather, in their progress through the centuries that culminated in Jesus, gradually succeeded in seeing that the true nature of the purposive process that works within the individual is not merely a will to his own good, but rather a disinterested will that seeks, in and through him, to produce the good wherever it may be possible. They expressed this by saying that this type of conduct alone is right. When once this doctrine was taught — the fact explicitly pointed out — other people, when they reflected calmly in their best moments, came to see that their own moral consciousness endorsed it. Thus the doctrine spread. It became commonplace — at least as theory. Today it is the most universally accepted principle of moral philosophy, even among those who refuse to follow the prophets in calling the will that demands it divine.
It is when the disinterested will to the good is not reconcilable with egoistic desires that the conflict arises that has issued in the religious interpretation. When it is in harmony with the egoistic impulses the individual naturally accepts it as [ p. 125 ] entirely his own. But the sharp dichotomy that the religious interpretation thus developed between the will of God and the will of man is an error. The altruistic will is not always superior to the egoistic. It is not necessarily right. The intelligent, reflective moral consciousness does not grant it authority over the egoistic desire simply because it is altruistic, but only when the good with which it is concerned is greater than that involved in the goal of the conflicting egoistic desire. The egoistic will is entirely right, and has an equal claim to be called divine, so long as it is pursuing the greatest good that seems, to the individual concerned, to be possible in the circumstances, taking into equal consideration his own good and that of others. If there is to be a distinction here between a human and a divine will it certainly must not be too sharply drawn; for, obviously, the human is in the divine and the divine in the human.
The distinction can be clarified only by the concept of human personality (and this is the typical modern concept) as a system of purposive habits and tendencies, developed in and through a particular organism in the course of its individual and genetic history and directed toward typical situations of positive or negative value. In brief, each particular human self is a bundle of habits and other volitional tendencies. It is a system of specific responses to the values of typical situations. This system is temporal; it has a brief terrestrial life. But in organic relation with it (as a fundamental constituent of it) there is a tendency to seek the good disinterestedly, breaking through the individual system of habits where necessary. The particular habitual tendencies to respond to particular values are particular fixations of this general tendency. It is because of their particular fixity that they constitute the system we call a personality or self. And it is this particular fixity that differentiates them from the general tendency of the disinterested will. This growth of habit contributes the [ p. 126 ] efficiency that makes possible the pursuit of higher and wider values. But its particularity and fixity bring the human system into occasional conflict with the general and disinterested tendency to the good which we have called divine.
Whether this “divine” activity is more than temporal we need not yet decide. But we should note that it is not possible to distinguish between the divine and the human until the individual has developed the capacity to distinguish between the self and other selves, between a good-for-me and a good-for-that-other-but-not-for-me. Prior to that the unified conative drive of the organism simply responds to whatever of value, or good, appears to its limited vision. Will (if at this stage it may be so called) is shortsightedly responsive to the values immediately felt, or envisioned as possibilities of feeling, by the organism in which it is active. At this stage will is neither self-interested [1] nor disinterested. The distinction between human and divine is latent in the creative process and manifests itself only when thought has developed the capacity to see the possibilities of value being realized in other selves. Then, while “habit” responds to the familiar nearer values, “will” shows its essentially disinterested character by responding to this further good. When the good that may be realized in others seems greater than that toward which the particular tendencies of the self are directed, and there is conflict, then the general and disinterested tendency manifests that peculiar kind of constraint over the self that we call the sense of obligation — a constraint that calls for acquiescence but does not compel.
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In naturalistic ethics there is a strong tendency to seek to show that this sense of an obligation to pursue the good of others may be derived from some ultimately egoistic ground.[2] Commonly it is argued that “ought” here can mean only that we ought to consider the welfare of others because it is, in general and in the long run, in our own interest to do so. If, however, the individual is regarded as adequately described in the terms commonly used to account for the organized self, or personality — i.e., those we have recognized as constituting the “ego” — then this position is untenable. Such a self or ego is an organization of tendencies directed toward specific types of situation in which satisfaction has been found; and these are in turn rooted only in the biological drives tending to survival of the individual and perpetuation of the race. Only a few of these tendencies, whether the primary or secondary, are altruistic, and they are directed toward the welfare of limited groups in reaction with which these habits have been developed. If the problem of the development and integration of these tendencies were the whole problem of personality, then complete integration could be most easily achieved on a relatively low level of altruism, and personal development could go forward with almost complete inner satisfaction in the expression of the almost unlimited egoistic and very limited altruistic tendencies of the self. Complete personal development of such a self would require only a minimum of attention to the needs of others. Narrow, rather selfish and self-satisfied persons of this type do exist. But even though fairly well integrated they cannot be regarded as well developed personalities. Still more important is the fact that an ethic based on the cultivation of personalities of this type could not logically teach the higher ideals of service [ p. 128 ] to the community. For these demand a readiness to serve even to the point of self-sacrifice.
The fact that the moral consciousness of man does, at its best, demand such service reveals the inadequacy of any interpretation of human personality that does not recognize the primary importance of the disinterested will. For this high ideal is not something peculiar to a limited tradition preserved within a single institution, such as the Christian church. It reached its culmination in the teaching of Christ, but this was preceded by a steady growth toward the universalistic ideal in every part of the civilized world. The best ethical teaching of Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism is not very different from that of the Hebrew prophetic and wisdom literature. The literature that becomes “classical” is the literature that appeals to what human beings feel to be their own best judgments of value. And the classical literature of the moral and religious life, developing in China, India and around the Levant through a period of several thousand years in which these three centers of civilization exercised very little influence upon one another, manifests in each case the same type of moral development. From primitive notions in which the sense of social responsibility is manifested in little more than a few fundamental prohibitions, such as the Ten Commandments or even less, it grows into positive ideals of high devotion to a broad public good.
Such a development could not possibly have occurred if human beings were merely egoists cannily calculating their own advantage. Nor is it sufficient to point to the fact that such egoism is modified by natural impulses of the type often called instincts of the family and the herd. Altruistic idealism goes far beyond these impulses. And its broad extension is due not so much to emotional expansion of natural impulses under the influence of suggestion as it is to calm reflection on what is morally fitting and logically implied in the best moral [ p. 129 ] judgments. Emotional extension of natural impulses, and habits inculcated by particular groups to suit the purposes of those groups, are the factors that develop the inconsistencies and prejudices of the moral tradition. Rational reflection breaks them down. But in doing so rational reflection does not take us back to egoism, except in such temporary and decadent movements as Epicureanism. Instead, as is shown by the development of the classical [3] literature of the moral consciousness in all countries, it leads on to a wider vision of the moral horizon, toward universal brotherhood, equity, freedom, and ideals of high devotion.
The fact that human nature, when it has the chance to be intelligent and is not unduly blinded by emotional factors, grows away from the egoism with which it necessarily begins, shows that the determining principle of that growth is the disinterested will. Enlightened self-interest and social pressure in the directions the group finds useful can create a solid and respectable citizenry — with the limitations and the tolerance of certain social sores that such citizenry usually manifests. But they could not create the dynamic idealism, ever renewing the revolt against such limitations and tolerance of evil, that is manifested in the classical religious and moral literature of all the world.[4]
These facts indicate that the sense of obligation [5] is rooted, not in the interests of the ego, but in the disinterested will to the good. This will to the good, however, exerts its constraining influence not only on behalf of the greater good of others against the lesser good of the self, but also for the [ p. 130 ] greater good of the individual (if it is seen) when the particular habits and impulses of the self drive toward some lesser good in the pursuit of which the greater would be lost. Yet there is no omniscience in the judgment as to what constitutes the greater good, either of the self or of others. That judgment is formed out of the experience of the individual, and is influenced not only by immediate experience but also by tradition, precept and example. It is subject to all the fallibilities of memory, the distortions of perspective, and the blindness of passion and prejudice. Yet it gradually disentangles moral truth and error by learning, by experiment and by calm reflection.
This disinterested responsiveness to value is not a mere adventitious accretion to human personality. As our discussion proceeds it will become clear that it is rather its fundamental feature. The particular interests (appetites, impulses, instincts, habits, sentiments, attitudes) are the subsidiary developments. The disinterested, unparticularized response to the greatest value presented in experience is the fundamental active tendency. This would seem to be the source of its peculiar constraining influence, the sense of obligation. To allow the subsidiary, semiautomatic habits, etc., by their sheer impulsive power to carry the day against the primary tendency to respond to what seems the greatest good, is a disorder in the structure of the self. It is disintegrating, and is felt as such. It is a wrong trend in the development of personality. To act in harmony with the most fundamental trend not only tends to realize the greatest good objectively, but it is integrative and constructive, advancing the upbuilding of that system of will and habit we call personality — the system whereby greater efficiency, scope and power are achieved for the continued pursuit of further values. It is a right trend in the development of personality. And this is the most fundamental sense in which anything can be right or wrong.
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Here we must point out the important distinction between moral goodness and other forms of good.[6] Morally, the disinterested pursuit of the good is always good, and the degree of its goodness depends only upon the energy with which all the resources of the personality (especially its intelligence) are utilized in the pursuit. The degree of moral goodness does not depend upon the success of the pursuit, or upon the correctness of the judgment as to what objective situations constitute the greatest good and therefore ought to be produced or maintained; lack of success and incorrectness of ethical judgment are occasion for moral blame only when they are due to lack of vigor and completeness in the disinterested pursuit of the good. Nevertheless (the point needs emphasizing) intelligent inquiry, with whatever resources of intellect and information we can command, is a vitally important part of the activity of the disinterested will to good. For the dull, prejudiced or lazy adherence to first impressions, traditional principles and accepted institutions is the commonest source o*f error in ethical judgment.
If moral good is found in the disinterested pursuit of the good, then what is this latter “good,” the good pursued? For convenience we may call it “natural good” or, following Professor Nicolai Hartmann, the “situational value.” It would take us too far into the general field of ethics to enter on an adequate discussion of this question, but a few points must, even at the danger of appearing dogmatic, be made clear. In the first place, the will aims primarily at physical and psychological situations, not at pleasure.[7] The situations aimed [ p. 132 ] at, or wanted, seem pleasing or satisfying in prospect simply because we want them; and for the same reason the progressive pursuit of them is pleasant. In the second place, those objectives that involve intellectual, aesthetic and moral satisfaction have, we generally recognize, a satisfying quality that cannot be compared with ordinary pleasure. John Stuart Mill recognized this difference of quality among what he still uniformly called “pleasures [8] but in doing so, it is generally admitted, he surrendered the essential principle of hedonism — the theory that the good is simply a matter of pleasure. Nicolai Hartmann calls these distinctions of quality in our experience of values, differences of “scale”;[9] there is a “value scale” in which some values are seen as “higher” and so as values that ought to be preferred. In the third place, these value qualities actually exist only in the experience of individual human beings: there is no other good at which we may aim, save that which is enjoyed by ourselves and our fellows; there is no good of the state or of God that we can pursue, save the good of the individuals who have their being in the state and (it may be) in God. ,
The “natural good” at which the disinterested will aims is, as we have seen, a physical or psychological situation (e.g., food, knowledge, the erection of a building, the organization of a club, the winning of a game) in which value qualities are realized in the immediate experience of individuals. And in aiming at the greatest good this will aims at the situations in which, for all concerned, there is the greatest experience of such values. In the measuring of the greatest value the distinctions of scale are, for the developed moral consciousness, of primary importance. But the values that pertain to situations are very complex; every situation has consequences beyond itself that contain values and disvalues; and the attain [ p. 133 ] merit of the situation requires the adoption of means that entail other values. So the values of the total situation, inclusive of means and consequences, have to be considered. Of these values some are positive and some negative (e.g., pleasures and pains) , and they differ in intensity and in longevity and in certainty as well as in quantity and scale. Thus the task of estimating the greatest value is often very difficult, although commonly very plain.
The problem of evaluation is enormously complicated by the facts that people differ so from each other and that the realization of most values (and especially the highest, the intellectual, aesthetic and moral) depends upon the active response of the persons concerned in the situation. We cannot spoon-feed the higher values into the lives of others. All we can do, in most cases, is help to create the conditions and the stimuli which give them the opportunity to realize those values.
Here there is a broad principle that comes to our aid. The higher values (and the realization of these requires and tends toward the realization of most that is important among the lower) are realized in activity that involves personal development, physical, intellectual, aesthetic and moral. So our task resolves itself into creating for others the conditions helpful to personal development, such as economic opportunity, education, freedom, wholesome social restraint and inspiring example. The natural good which is the objective goal of the disinterested will can thus be broadly stated as the conditions of personal development of all concerned. And, since personal development needs must be in harmony with, and involve the expansion of, the disinterested will to the good, the achievement of natural good is seen to involve the achievement of moral good also.
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If we recognize the primary importance of the disinterested will, in the sense that it occupies so fundamental a place in human nature that continuous personal development and complete integration of personality require that personal development shall always occur in harmony with it, then there will, in general, arise no conflict between our efforts to secure the good (personal development) of an individual and our efforts to secure the good of all other individuals in the group to which he belongs. Similarly there will, in general, be no conflict between our pursuit of the good of our own group and of other groups. For any contribution to the development of a personality dominated by the disinterested will must tend to work through him to the good of the group; and no contribution to the seeming good of an individual that would be unfair to the group can, in the last analysis, be a contribution to his true good, since it must tend to encourage him to accept and pursue advantages contrary to the good of the group, and thus hamper the growth and integration of that personality under control of the disinterested will.
It must be admitted, however, that this general tendency to harmony of the true good of the individual (which includes his moral good, or harmony with the disinterested will) with the true good of the group and of human society as a whole, is no more than a general tendency. Specific cases will arise when the good of society, or of the greater number, can be achieved only by measures that deprive some individuals of important opportunities of self-development — and opportunities that would seem in no way to discourage their moral development. In such cases we must seek to achieve the greatest balance of good over evil for all concerned, giving due weight to the more fundamental considerations, such as life itself. In those cases, however, where the individuals who suffer for the larger good of others do so of their own free moral will, the loss they suffer is often, perhaps always, offset [ p. 135 ] by the gain to the inner strength, growth and integration of personality achieved in their self-sacrificing action.
Once it is clearly recognized that the disinterested will to the good is the ultimate determining principle [10] of the growth of human personality, it becomes evident that not only the natural good of the individual, but also his moral good, may be expressed in terms of personal development. Personal development involves living activity, and all living activity is a natural good for the individual so far as it constitutes a constructive contribution to his further living activity, toward the complete or abundant life. In so far as it has the reverse effect it is a natural evil. And, in that the effect of most of our activities is mixed, they (and the factors instrumental to them) are to be accounted as good or evil according to the major tendency of their effects. It is at the production of such natural good, wherever opportunity affords, that the enlightened and disinterested will aims. Since the complete and abundant life or full and true personal development must grow under the increasing dominance of the disinterested will, to aim at the natural good of an individual is, in general, to aim at his moral good also.
The only exception is the case where the disinterested will of that individual would demand of him his life or, perhaps, some other very great personal sacrifice; for it can scarcely be contended that every act of personal sacrifice for the greater good of others means so much to the moral development of the individual as to tend on the whole to produce that capacity for the more abundant life in which personal development, as a natural good, consists. Certainly this is not the case in the sacrifice of life itself, unless man is immortal. However, since the disinterested will seeks the good of all individuals concerned, it does not have to attain the sometimes impossible [ p. 136 ] feat of achieving a result in which none shall suffer loss. But in seeking to produce the greatest possible good it seeks to induce all concerned to contribute their utmost to that same goal in the same disinterested manner. Thus the pursuit of the natural good of the social whole involves the pursuit of the moral good of its members also.
While the natural good of the individual then consists in that personal development which makes for the more abundant life, his moral good consists in that kind of personal development which alone can be continuous and perfectly integrated because in harmony with the most fundamental element in personality — the disinterested will to good. In general, the natural good is, in the long run, achieved most fully by adhering to what is morally good also, for departures from the fundamental principle of personality must in the end lead to self-stultifying conflict which inhibits further development until rectified. So, if the “long run” of life were eternal, to be true to the morally good would also entail the greatest natural good, not only for others but for the performer of the moral action also. It is this faith that lies behind the concept involved in the paradoxical saying of Jesus: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”[11] The “salvation” of the individual consists in the fullest possible realization of all the potentialities of his personality; and the way to that self-realization lies, not in the careful preservation of all his capacities and resources for his own needs, but in selfless devotion to the ideal of human service as presented in the person of Christ.
Moral goodness, as our analysis has revealed it, involves active growth of personality in harmony with the disinterested [ p. 137 ] will. Its activity is directed toward that constructive modification of the environment which makes possible “the completest life for all.” Moral goodness is thus not a static but an active condition. And personality, as we have seen, is a system of will. Thus moral personality, if it is to survive, must survive not as a mere passive consciousness — not even as a passive contemplation of divine perfection — but as a system of constructive activity.
The concept of an immortality of static perfection is the product of an inadequate analysis of the nature of personality and its moral good. It is, unfortunately, a very serious error, for it presupposes the sudden and miraculous transition of personality from a state of imperfection to one of perfection. Or, even if it rejects this hope, it looks for the process of perfecting to come through external influences, such as a course of purgatorial purging. Such conceptions are fundamentally immoral if morality is, as we have contended, a process of active and disinterested seeking of the good. They suggest, as Marx, Dewey and many other critics have pointed out, that the realization of the complete moral good of mankind can be divorced from the pursuit of his natural good in this life. Such a belief can be used, and has been used, as an “opiate of the proletariat” and an excuse for the toleration of social ills.
The situation is very different if the survival of personality after death is looked upon as the continuation, in a new set of circumstances, of a process of personal development begun here., The” saving of souls” then no longer presents the alternatives between a sudden and unearned static perfection [ p. 138 ] and an absolute loss or a loss only retrieved through external influences or purgings. It becomes instead a matter of degree. It is the potentialities of personality that are “saved,” and they are saved by being actively developed. The faith in immortality then becomes the faith that this process of personal development begun in this life does not necessarily cease with death, but goes on to the realization of further goals, making good its deficiencies so far as it is willing to learn from past experience. And it means that both the natural and the moral good attained in this life — the whole personal development — contribute to the initial stages of the life beyond.
We shall not yet pause to inquire whether such a hope is reasonable or probable; what we are here concerned to show is that it is socially valuable — a stimulus to every good work rather than a distraction from the serious problems of life. Also it is morally helpful in our view of the moral life, since, as already shown, it would imply that the natural and the moral good of the individual are in all cases ultimately one. These conclusions it is important to establish before commencing the inquiry, which we shall later undertake,[12] into the possibility of immortality; for there has been a strong tendency in recent decades to decry all attention to the possibilities of the next life as a fruitless distraction from the facing of the stern realities of this. This criticism is valid as against many of the traditional interpretations of the doctrine of immortality and has been useful in exposing their unfortunate influence, though it has probably greatly exaggerated their bad effects. However, to such an interpretation of the hope of immortality as grows most naturally out of the analysis of personality and morality developed here, such criticism does not apply. An immortality that is but a continuation of the progress of personality made here only makes that progress more important [ p. 139 ] to attain. It offers a hope that stimulates every effort to make the most of every opportunity; and when progress proves difficult and slow, and when losses are endured, its larger vision sustains the spirit that might otherwise surrender in despair.
(a) John Dewey. — As with the doctrine of immortality, so with that of the divine transcendence — its practical value as well as its truth has in recent decades been strongly called in question. This is almost entirely a modern argument against religion. Before the later days of the nineteenth century even the opponents of religious belief recognized its moral value as a support of the social order, and many expressed concern at what would be the effect upon society should there ever occur a general abandonment of religion. The new line of attack has developed in part because religion had been too much conceived as supporting morality merely with a system of supernatural sanctions, such as the fires of hell, and these conceptions have rapidly been losing their grip on the modern mind. A deeper reason, however, lies in the fact that religious support of the moral order, on account of traditional forms of religious belief and expression, has tended to be conservative and has stood in the way of the zeal of modern reformers. This is certainly one reason why Marxian socialism has set itself against theism, and it is also one of the strong objections raised by Professor Dewey.
A contributing factor in the development of this attitude has been the optimistic faith in the continuing “ascent of man” generated by the theory of evolution. This faith in human sufficiency has received some severe shocks through the war, the depression and the rise of totalitarianism, and there has been a tendency among many religious thinkers to reassert man’s dependence upon some special aid from a tran [ p. 140 ] scendent deity.[13] In spite of the sorry exhibition made by human nature in recent decades Dewey’s faith, however, has undergone little change. His Terry Lectures at Yale, published in 1934, reiterate the charge that the search for evidence for the existence of what he calls “the supernatural” is something that “diverts attention and energy from ideal values and from the exploration of actual conditions by means of which they may be promoted.” In place of this he urges that men and women should be “actuated throughout the length and breadth of human relations with the faith and ardor that have at times marked historic religions,” though he admits that “to achieve this faith and elan is no easy task.” And again, he admits the novelty and difficulty of his naturalistic program when he says: “One of the few experiments in the attachment of emotion to ends that mankind has not tried is that of devotion, so intense as to be religious, to intelligence as a force in social action.”[14]
So far as Dewey’s protest is directed against those types of theology which deprecate human effort and intelligence and teach a reliance upon divine interposition, and those which exaggerate human sinfulness to such an extent as to destroy the hope of improvement through reform of human institutions, his position is justified by our own analysis. Human nature cannot be hopeless if its fundamental feature is a disinterested will to the good of all. But Dewey himself recognizes, in the passages quoted, that the supreme historic manifestations of human idealism have occurred in the lives of those who have believed their own ideals to have their source in some transcendent [ p. 141 ] moral personality. The virtues of urbanity, tolerance, generosity and zeal for the common good are not difficult for the intelligent modern man to cultivate. But high devotion, self-sacrifice and zeal for a good we can never share in, call for a rare loftiness of spirit. In particular it is hard to stir the masses of men to have faith in an ideal which experience seems to brand as “impractical” if they believe that it has no deeper authority than the sweetness and fond aspiration of some kindly human spirit. Yet the chains of harsh custom, prejudice and fear are riveted so firmly upon the popular consciousness that without high courage and faith we can never break them. Those who lead in that great human enterprise must be able to believe in the possibility of the apparently impractical and in the validity of an ideal that seems too good to be true.
If a man believes that his ideals are merely the effects upon him of a process of social conditioning he is likely to deem it the path of wisdom to shake off those effects when they impel him toward a line of action that is very inconvenient. If he believes that they are merely the effect of some sympathetic tendencies and herd impulses of his nature which are of no deeper significance than many other natural tendencies within him, then the rational thing for him to do is to seek to control all these natural tendencies in what seems to be his own selfinterest. But if he believes that the disinterested will to the good of all is the most fundamental tendency of his nature, that it is the expression of that which is eternal within him, the link of his own spiritual life with a wider spiritual activity which is the ultimate source of his being and in harmony with which his personality can alone attain its utmost fulfillment, then the ideals toward which that disinterested will aspires become the most significant features of his whole world. They then define the goal of his most rational endeavor, his “reasonable service.” They help to give him courage, assurance. [ p. 142 ] and a zeal that will not be denied. One must not exaggerate their effect, of course, for he is still a creature of habits, passions and traditions. But he has a weapon of reason against these fettering conditions that no nontheistic philosophy could give him. This does not prove that the doctrine of transcendence is true, but it does show that, thus interpreted, it is morally wholesome. And the effort to justify faith in the superhuman origin of our ideals of disinterested service, far from being a waste of time and useless distraction, as urged by Dewey, is a much needed contribution to the support of the human spirit in the pursuit of those ideals.
The reason why a belief in their superhuman source gives power to human ideals may be seen from Dewey’s own analysis of religious experience.[15] The term religious, applied to modes of human behavior, means, as he says, much more than belief in supernatural sanctions of the moral law. It refers to “changes in ourselves in relation to the world” that are “inclusive and deep seated.” These “pertain to our being in its entirety,” are “enduring, … a composing and harmonising of the various elements of our being.” The religious " includes a note of submission. But it is voluntary, not externally imposed.” It is “outgoing,” “ready and glad.”” It is a change of will conceived as the organic plenitude of our being, rather than any special change in will.” These phrases very aptly describe the experience normally involved in that breaking forth into conscious prominence of the disinterested will, and the reorientation of life under its influence, which we have described as the birth of religion in the individual. Its effect Dewey describes equally well. Moral faith, he says, is religious in quality “only when the ends of moral conviction arouse emotions that are not only intense but are actuated and supported by ends so inclusive that they unify the self.” [16] “There is such a thing,” he claims, “as [ p. 143 ] faith in intelligence becoming religious in quality.” Yet the admission follows: “Lives that are consciously inspired by loyalty to such ideals . . . are still comparatively infrequent to the extent of that comprehensiveness and intensity which arouse an ardour religious in function.”[17]
Here it is frankly admitted that belief in the superhuman source of our ideals is so commonly accompanied by a farreaching inner change of will and unification of personality under their influence, resulting in the intensification of those ideals and their growth in comprehensiveness, that these changes are commonly regarded as the effects of such belief. However, Dewey denies this conclusion and points out that such personal adjustment is sometimes attained without such a belief. Nevertheless, he admits that in that case it rarely reaches the same “comprehensiveness and intensity.” Now this distinctively “religious” development of character is certainly not due to fear of supernatural sanctions, hope of eternal rewards, or belief that the ideal is eternally accomplished without our efforts. But it is too distinctively associated with faith in the suprahuman source of our ideals not to be causally related to that faith.
The psychological reason for this development is not difficult to detect. Wholehearted loyalty[18] and devotion depend upon the expansion of what William James called the “empirical self”[19] to include the larger group so that we make its cause our own. It is fairly easily achieved in small group loyalties and national patriotism, but it is difficult for it to transcend the divisions of class, creed, party, race and nation. The loyalties of the rational man grow out of the factual unities of life and their logical implications, and they [ p. 144 ] tend to be limited by the factual divisions. In what sense is the brotherhood of man a fact if his groupings are merely assemblies for mutual advantage in the struggle for existence against neighboring groups? Even the growing mutual economic and cultural dependence of classes and nations is too much shot through with rivalry and exceptions, too tardy and remote, to develop a widespread and living sense of unity that can overcome narrow interests and traditional prejudices. Mankind today, as in every age, deeply needs that sense of human brotherhood which comes from a faith that we are all, in some very real sense, children of one Father. And man has within him a persistent witness to the reality of that bond in the disinterested will that seeks in and through each the good of all.
Ideals that are merely ideal — the product of human imagination — have small power to mold personality in opposition to the brutal facts of man’s inhumanity to man. But an ideal that is the logical implication of the persistent and inescapable promptings of a man’s own heart is a different matter. Loyalty is an identification of the self with others. As such it must be more than a figure of speech. Only when it is felt as a living reality can it attain that intensity and comprehensiveness which Dewey rightly calls “religious.” And nothing contributes so much to such an inner adjustment of personality as the conviction that our unity of spirit with all the human race is the deepest of realities through our sharing in the universal life of God, who is over us and in us all, the source of all our ideals, and the pledge of their fulfillment if we understand them truly and seek them earnestly.
(b) Nicolai Hartmann. — Another type of moral objection to faith in the divine transcendence is urged by Professor Nicolai Hartmann. His Ethics, first published in Germany in 1926, has received wide recognition as one of the most significant contributions to the subject in the twentieth century. [ p. 145 ] It categorically rejects formalism, utilitarianism and subjectivism and presents a realistic theory of an order of moral values inherent in the structure of reality and open to human discernment in and through unbiased reflective analysis. But although the universe is thus recognized as a moral, as well as a physical, order Hartmann refuses to regard that superhuman moral order as personal. He rightly recognizes that personality is essentially free in relation to the objective values presented in its experience, and that it acquires its own distinctive moral value or disvalue according to its selective, purposive response to these values. In a word, pensonality is “teleological,” and this freedom and responsibility inherent in genuinely purposive behavior are essential to the moral nature of man. Without them he would not be a moral being and our whole moral experience would be a tragic illusion. But this freedom and responsibility of man, argues Hartmann, imply the negation of any theory of cosmic teleology, and therefore of any superhuman personality as the source of our moral ideals. “The Aristotelian philosophy,” he writes,
which gave to cosmic teleology its classic form, was rooted in a metaphysic of organic nature. From that it transferred the thought to the whole of inorganic nature, to motion itself; and it ultimately included everything in one single teleological cosmic principle, in the pure energy of the " first mover.” . . . But [he objects] such a metaphysical primacy of axiological determination means a perfect determination, in which man is deprived of all range for any determination emanating from himself. . . . He is handed over unconditionally, in a bondage not of his choosing, to fixed cosmic ends. . . . For ethics this view … is nothing short of catastrophic.[20]
We must, I think, admit that this or any other form of thoroughgoing determinism, which denies the reality of all [ p. 146 ] human freedom and responsibility, involves a flat denial of the essential features of our moral experience and should therefore be rejected; for our moral experience has as much claim to validity as our sensory experience. Fortunately, both theological and materialistic determinism have largely disappeared from modern philosophy.
But Hartmann is certainly not justified in assuming that there is no middle ground between such an assertion of the sovereignty of God as robs man of all true freedom and responsibility, and a complete abandonment of all superhuman, or cosmic, teleology. In our analysis we have found that God is primarily known to man as the altruistic will that seeks, in and through each individual, the good of all. If this purposive agency within us is regarded as a manifestation of a greater purposive agent beyond us, it would be contradictory to suppose that greater agent to have all the universe so much in his control that the very ego which opposes the altruistic will is also completely controlled by the external agent. That, and any denial of human freedom, would be a contradiction of religious experience rather than an interpretation of it. Indeed, as Hartmann shows, it is not as an interpretation of our moral and religious experience that the notion of an allencompassing cosmic teleology arises, but from metaphysical speculation upon external nature, seeking prematurely to fill the gaps in our scientific knowledge. What religious experience suggests is that God, as found in man striving toward the good, is not a product of human striving but rather the source of all that is good in it; that his being therefore transcends the human and may guide and sustain ours. But the relation of God, so far as he transcends man, to the rest of nature remains a question to be decided in the light of all the rest of our experience; and it is only the premature, partly scientific speculations of certain philosophers, and the emotional but uncritical exaltation of their God by certain prophets, priests [ p. 147 ] and theologians, that have led to the extension of the principle of superhuman teleology to the extreme which Hartmann so rightly condemns.
Our analysis of the nature of the good as found essentially in personal development emphasizes the importance of freedom. There is no development of personality that does not spring spontaneously from within in response to values felt or anticipated. External pressures do not develop personality, though they may deform it. Pressure would have no place at all in the educative process were it not that the natural and social world inevitably exerts certain pressures to which the person must adapt himself or be seriously injured. Educative pressure is a pressure applied with good will, discrimination and understanding, which prepares the person to make these adjustments to nature and society. It does not contribute directly to personal development, but only indirectly in that it saves from disaster. Actual personal development comes through the positive response from within. It flourishes most, therefore, where pressure is least.
Now the social groupings of mankind always involve a certain amount of pressure. The family, the local community, the church and the state all set limits to the freedom of the individual and make demands upon him. This raises the question of the value of the religious group, the church. The local community is inevitable, and few question the necessity of the family and the state. But there are many who believe that religion might well become a purely individual matter and so would remove the church as an unnecessary restriction upon freedom. It becomes a matter of great importance, therefore, to consider the place of the church in the religious life of the individual and in the social life of the community. To these questions we turn in the next two chapters. We [ p. 148 ] must inquire why the church exists as a distinct grouping within the complex modern community. We shall see that it constitutes a natural and inevitable group so long as man gives any expression to religious feeling. We must consider its function in relation to the individual and the state. In particular, we must consider the significance of the insight into the nature of man’s religious life that we have gained in our analysis, for the interpretation of the church’s proper attitude to the problems of modern society. We shall see that the weight of the church’s influence must be placed on the side of freedom and shall inquire how this is to be done.
With regard to the relation of the church to the individuals within it, we shall see that the emphasis on freedom becomes of still greater importance. The greatest mistakes of well meaning religious people have been made in the worse than futile effort to do good by shaping personality under pressure. In no sphere of religious activity is this more disastrous than in that of thought. We can conform our conduct deliberately to social demands, and usually it is best to do so. But we cannot deliberately conform our thought. It may conform naturally through the influence of suggestion. But if it does not we do ourselves injury if we try to believe what does not seem to us to be true. And we do ourselves and others injury by pretending to believe what we do not. And society does injury by putting pressure on anyone to believe or to pretend to believe (as one does when he hides his belief) what he cannot honestly believe. For this reason, probably the greatest wrong that the church has done to society, and to its own members, is in the establishment of creeds, and in the effort to enforce them by attaching to them the threats of religious penalties, social sanctions and, even worse, the sanctions of law and economic disability.
Complete religious freedom means more than the absence of legal and economic pressure. It means the absence of social [ p. 149 ] and religious pressure. This means that religious people must attach no moral stigma or religious disability to any form of belief. The real moral stigma and religious disability attach to simulated beliefs and to the efforts to force others to hide and simulate beliefs. The churches, undoubtedly, have done much good. But in this respect, unfortunately, they have certainly done much harm; they have blighted the free personal development (the truest good) of their own members and of many outside. They have done this in part because of a belief that correctness of doctrine is essential to personal salvation, and in part because unanimity on doctrine seemed necessary to the unity and efficiency of the church in all its work, so that the exclusion of the dissenter and unbeliever seemed the lesser of two evils.
If our analysis of the essential nature of religion is accepted as sound then I believe that both these assumptions can be shown to be false. This will involve us in an examination of the relation of the church to society and to the individual. In that inquiry we shall see that the church can and, if it is best to fulfill its function, must, be a free-thinking community.
This does not mean that it must be a community of “freethinkers” in the current negative sense of the term. But it does mean that it must have room in full fellowship for all people, whatever their opinions on theological questions. We shall examine the essential nature of the church, its psychological structure, its ethical function and (for Christianity) its historical roots. And we shall see that such a free religious community is the logical outcome of its nature and origin, the true way to restore its lost unity and its waning influence. Our examination will show the world’s need of such a church and its value for the personal development of people of all creeds and none. It will, I think, show too that, by the exercise of a wise mutual tolerance, persons of all [ p. 150 ] shades of belief may share the spiritual helpfulness of such a church, and that all persons of genuine good will could find in it an instrument and a sphere of work for the good of mankind.
This further interpretation of the practical religious life constitutes, then, the theme of our next two chapters. In the remainder of the book we turn our attention to the two most important questions concerning the theoretical significance of religious experience for the whole meaning of life. These problems — of God and immortality — are of tremendous importance even for the practical religious life. Yet it is plain that that life must go on without first reaching certainty and unanimity on such ultimate questions of belief. We leave the discussion of them to the last because we wish to show how far the practical religious life can go forward with unity and value without attaining reasoned certainty on these matters and without seeking to impose uniformity of opinion where no obvious objective ground for it exists.
By “self-interest” here is meant an interest in the self, i.e., an interest in a good as a good-for-me. All interests, of course, are “self-interests " in the sense that they are interests of the self. But some interests are “disinterested " in the sense that the person, though aware of the distinction between good-for-me and good-for-another-but-not-for-me, rejects this reference to self as no valid basis for choice, choosing to pursue the greater good without special concern for self. ↩︎
Some specific examples of this theory are discussed in chap. 10. ↩︎
It should be remembered that the literature that becomes classical is the literature that expresses clearly and well the values that the inarticulate multitude only vaguely feel. It is therefore an excellent indicator of the nature of the deepest human values. ↩︎
For an account of the earliest known literature of this type, which arose in ancient Egypt, see Breasted: The Dawn of Conscience. ↩︎
For a critical examination of alternative conceptions of obligation see chap. 10 . ↩︎
Compare the distinction between moral values and situational values in Hartmann’s Ethics. ↩︎
For a critique of the theory, known as “psychological hedonism," that the will aims primarily at pleasure, cf. Hastings Rashdall: Theory of Good and Evil (2nd ed., 2 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1924) , Vol. I, chap. 2. ↩︎
Utilitarianism, chap. 2. ↩︎
Ethics, especially Vol. II, chaps. 3, 4, 5. ↩︎
I.e., developments that are out of harmony with it ultimately lead to disintegration and stultification of personality. ↩︎
Matt. 16:25. ↩︎
Chap. 8. ↩︎
This has been especially the case among those influenced by the Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. A moderate and stimulating presentation of this point of view is to be found in the writings of Professor Reinhold Niebuhr, e.g., Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932) and The Nature and Destiny of Man (Scribner’s, 1941) . ↩︎
Dewey: A Common Faith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1934) » PP- 46, 79 » 80-81. ↩︎
Ibid., pp. i6, 17. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 22. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 27. ↩︎
For an analysis of love and loyalty see my earlier work, The Mind in Action: A Study of Motives and Values (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1931) , pp. 123-44. ↩︎
Principles of Psychology (New York: Longmans, Green & Co.) . ↩︎
Ethics, I, 283, 287. ↩︎