IF THE ANALYSIS of our earlier chapters is sound then religion arises from the experience of a disinterested will, within the individual, seeking the good of some other person or persons in circumstances which conflict with natural egoistic tendencies. This altruistic will is thus an immanent personal agency, seeking the conformity of the whole individual to the general good; it is the source of that sense of inner peace and joy that comes when such harmony is attained, of the sense of obligation that impends when it is threatened, and of the sense of sin or guilt that imposes itself when it is broken. There are other sources of the feelings of peace, obligation and sin, but they are secondary, being largely the result of inadequate and unjustified interpretation of the primary experience. At its origin, and in its most clearsighted and intelligent expression, harmony with the disinterested will is what men have called harmony with God. We are therefore justified in saying that the disinterested will is God as immediately and normally present in human experience. As such God is a personal agent (for personality is essentially a system of will) and is immanent in every human being.
But man has rarely been content to regard his God as merely a part of himself, even though the most fundamental and noblest part. Nor is there any special reason, immediately evident, why he should do so. His physical organism is part of a larger physical order, out of which it has developed its own distinctive existence, and within which it still remains [ p. 245 ] an organic part. There is no a priori reason why this should not also be the case with the spiritual, or mental, part of his total organism. Unsophisticated common sense, however, has found this extension of the spiritual order not altogether simple. It conceives the physical as too substantial and the mental too much in terms of the conscious contents of individual minds. It thinks of personality, therefore, as an isolated consciousness inhabiting a distinct substantial body. So, in these terms, if God is to be thought of as more than a part of human personality he has to be conceived either as impersonal or else as anthropomorphic, i.e., as an isolated consciousness inhabiting some sort of body.
This results in an inadequate conception of God. If he is regarded as personal his relation to man becomes merely social, the closest analogy being that of the family, with God as father. This conception however, though rich in poetic value, does not do justice to the reality of the divine immanence; for how can one isolated’center of consciousness (such as personality is ordinarily conceived to be) be an immanent part of another? Neither does it fit any better the concept of the divine transcendence; for how can a localized center of consciousness be as omnipresent as religion requires God to be? With such a conception of personality man’s early belief in divine transcendence readily became polytheistic; and when the inadequacies of polytheism became manifest the new monotheism had to help out its concept of the divine activity by surrounding the deity with a host of angels and other semidivine beings. Christian theology, from its inception, has wrestled with the problems of immanence and transcendence without finding a solution that can be harmonized with the common-sense notion of the isolated personal consciousness and its associated, traditional, physical substantialism.
When personality is interpreted as a systematic organization of will, however, these difficulties disappear. As pointed [ p. 246 ] out in the previous chapter, the human organism consists of a multitude of subsidiary organisms (cells) each of which is itself a systematic organization of “mental” (in the broadest sense) or vital as well as physical processes and tendencies. And what we call our consciousness achieves its unity and apparent isolation only by the process of exclusion which, at the level of deliberate control, we call attention. The striving processes thus excluded from our consciousness are not, therefore, to be regarded as entirely devoid of feeling; abnormal psychology very clearly indicates this. Consequently, our own personalities, we are now forced to recognize, involve highly complex systems of “mental” process, containing subsidiary centers of more or less experiential activity in a hierarchy of many grades. None of these organized centers of experience is entirely self-contained. They are organic to each other. Each to some extent lives its own life, yet all share in a common life. All, together, constitute a person. Yet each has, in a sense which is not entirely metaphorical, a personality of its own.
If the personality of God includes anything more and greater than that element of human personality we have called the disinterested will, then our relation to this transcendent divine person must be of an organic character, for, as we have seen, the disinterested will is the root of human personality and also the determining factor in its complete and well integrated growth. And, on the analogy of the animal organism, it is quite intelligible that our personalities should be organic parts of a larger organic whole. The analogy is, of course, not exact. We should not jump to the conclusion that God is a very large animal, of which we are living parts and the inanimate world a sort of skeleton. But the analogy is more suitable to the modern understanding of personality, and better fits the facts of religious experience, than that of the family. This latter — the fatherhood of God and the [ p. 247 ] brotherhood of man — is aesthetically and emotionally more appealing, but that of the organism (which also may be given aesthetically beautiful expression, as in the parable of the True Vine and in Paul’s metaphor of the church as the body of Christ) is probably intellectually more accurate. But both are metaphors. There is a very loose organic relation between the members of a family, and a very close one between the parts of a living body. If the personality of God transcends its presence in man then our relation to him would appear to be organic rather more in the latter sense than in the former.
A fairly good analogy, but still inadequate in many respects, is the relation of the white corpuscles in the bloodstream to the organism as a whole. These corpuscles live a very independent life, moving freely about in the performance of their functions and responding to various stimuli which direct them in their activity. Yet they are a part of a larger, living whole, drawing from it their comparatively independent existence, contributing to its good and finding their proper function in doing so. If each of these cells had as much intelligence as is possessed by the whole human organism in which they live, they wotild probably find themselves in much the same puzzling position as to the meaning of their lives as we do. They could explore the whole body without finding any organisms with capacities for free and intelligent behavior greater than (or equal to) their own. They would find their world to consist (like ours) of an inanimate structure, a structure of fixed living organisms, and a more limited number of freely moving living organisms. But they would find no supraindividual consciousness above that of organisms like themselves. Their only inkling that they belonged to any such larger life would be in the teleological structure and relations of function within the whole, and in the experience that they found their own profoundest impulse to be, not merely a securing of their own needs, but a devotion of themselves to a [ p. 248 ] kind of activity which they might discover to be to the good of the whole.
It must be recognized that there are no very obvious facts that indicate the reality of a divine transcendence. Yet it has been a generally accepted belief in almost all religious circles; indeed, of the two features of divinity, it is that of immanence that has been more often rejected or overlooked. We must therefore ask the reason for the origin and persistence of the belief in spite of the difficulties involved in it and the lack of clear evidence for it. This is not the same as to ask what arguments religious thinkers have brought forward in proof of it, for arguments are often ingeniously discovered to support beliefs that rest on mere tradition and vague intuitions; and this is certainly the case with the belief in a transcendent God. What we must do is to go back to that experience of the altruistic will in which religious belief originates and inquire what there is in this experience that suggests that its datum presents an indication of the existence of something much more than that which is immediately given in experience. We can then take up these features or associations of the immediate datum to see whether, in reflective and enlightened examination, they justify the belief to which they have led. Finally we can pass beyond the range of religious experience to test our conclusions by seeing whether they fit what is known of reality from other sources and whether there is anything in these further ranges of experience that suggests the same conclusions.
This is the same procedure as has to be adopted in testing the validity of our beliefs in a physical world and in other minds. We begin with the relevant experience from which those beliefs arise, particularly our sensory-dynamic experience, and we inquire what features of that experience suggest [ p. 249 ] the existence of a larger reality than that immediately given and indicate its nature. We then submit these suggestions and indications to reflective and enlightened examination and, so far as they seem justified, test the conclusions by comparison with knowledge from other ranges of experience, such as logic and ethics. In regard to both the physical and the mental (or spiritual) , I think, the evidence is such as to justify the conclusion that the little order of processes immediately experienced is but a part of a larger order of processes of both kinds. If so, our knowledge of God and of the physical world rests on essentially the same kind of evidence. With this introduction, we shall turn first to an inquiry as to what are those features of religious experience which lead to a belief in divine transcendence, and then to the specific re-examination of those features to see whether they justify the belief founded on them.
The first feature of the disinterested will that suggests that it is more than merely a part of the individual human personality is its conflict with the ego. A man’s egoistic tendencies are obviously his own, directed toward what he conceives as his own good. But the disinterested desire for another’s good sometimes issues in serious conflict with the ego, and it is the cases of conflict that suggest that its power is derived from some agency beyond the self. In our analysis of the religious experience and practice of the primitive we saw this internal conflict at work, and also in the cases of modern conversion crises. Where the internal conflict is strongest the conviction of the divine transcendence tends to be most vivid. To a very large extent, however, human personality becomes so integrated that the conflict is slight. Also, such conflict as there is concerns chiefly the will to the good of members of our own family and other close personal groups, and these tend to be so closely identified with the self that we hardly distinguish between their good and our own unless some unusual personal [ p. 250 ] sacrifice is involved. In these normal conditions the altruistic will does not strike us as other than our own. Also, so far as it merely points to ideals which are so much a part of the social tradition that it would seem unnatural to do anything different, the “otherness” of the disinterested will does not strongly impress us.
It is out of the cases of strong conflict that the conviction arises in a man that he is faced with something within himself which is greater than himself. The prophet whose unique experience and thought have left him in the grip of a great new ideal feels it. The follower, whom the prophet inspires to strive to realize that ideal in spite of the lethargy and opposition of the community, also often feels it. The sinner, who awakens to despise the mean and sordid ego he has developed and from which he can scarcely escape, recognizes it. Any one of us, faced by unusual circumstances which constitute a moral crisis, may tend to experience it. In brief, it is the fact that the disinterested will can set itself in opposition to the whole familiar body of tendencies we are accustomed to recognize as constituting the self (even to the point of demanding the sacrifice of life itself) that gives man the impression that it proceeds from beyond himself. Probably all of us have felt its “otherness” to some extent, and to some the experience has had an overwhelming intensity. It has been something too great, too high, too difficult and too much opposed to the desires of the familiar self to be felt as their own will. They may or may not have fought against it. But, when they have consented to it, it has been a surrender of the familiar self to something higher. It has conveyed the feeling expressed in the saying, “Not my will but Thine be done.”
Closely attached to this tendency to conflict with the ego is the second of those features of religious experience which suggest [ p. 251 ] that the disinterested will is rooted in something beyond the individual self. This is the positive feeling-tone and the access of personal power that come with the surrender of the ego and the identification of the self with the larger purposes of the disinterested will. The experiences of St. Paul, Tolstoi and the Sadhu Sundar Singh, referred to in an earlier chapter, furnish typical examples. But religious biography is full of records of this experience. It is as natural as the emotional exaltation of falling in love. Like this latter, it varies enormously in intensity in different cases but always brings an access of personal vigor and a sense of deep and real values attained. And in both cases the conviction is inescapable that something of the deeper meaning of life is revealed in such experience, that a man enters here into touch with a reality greater than himself, that it is fitting and proper and in accord with the true nature of things that he should so act and so feel. If the nature of things is such as to provide such a reward for an inner spiritual adjustment, it is very natural to interpret that adjustment as an adjustment to something spiritual in the nature of things. As the values experienced in love impress us, not merely with the co-operation of another body, but also with the kinship of another soul, so the values experienced in religion suggest that the world in which we live and strive contains something more akin to our striving than the obvious, dead matter of it appears to be.
The third feature of religious experience that suggests a spiritual presence transcending our own is also closely connected with the inner conflict. It is the sense of obligation. We may follow Sir David Ross[1], in taking the notions of “right,” “ought to be” and “moral obligation” as practically synonymous; but these terms are extremely difficult to [ p. 252 ] define.[2] We are inclined to define what “right” means by presenting a theory as to why certain actions are right; e.g., that they “will produce the greatest possible amount of good in the Universe.” [3] But the very fact that egoists, nationalists and others deny any such obligation shows that this is not simply the meaning of the term. To argue “that only that action which produces the greatest good possible in the circumstances is right” is not a mere tautology. It is to say of a certain kind of action that it “ought to be done.” And this “ought” has reference to an ideal of behavior. As Professor M. C. Otto remarks, “In every day speech ‘ right ’ has a specific connotation by reference to an ideal order set over against nature.” [4] Bentham regarded the word, used in this sense, as really meaningless.[5] And Otto suggests that there is probably no justification for any such moral philosophy. But he adds: “Yet it is beyond question that this much at least is what right means in the popular and even in the cultivated mind.” Few will question this statement; and most moralists today will also agree that G. E. Moore’s statement describes the kind of actions that really conform to the requirements of the ideally right as formulated in their own minds.
We have referred particularly to Moore and Otto because both refuse very definitely to connect their ethics with any theistic metaphysics. Yet they have defined for us exactly what the enlightened religious consciousness also declares — the duty to seek the good, not of ourselves alone, but also of our fellow men. The disinterested will, which puts the [ p. 253 ] greater good of others before the lesser good of the self, asserts itself within our consciousness with a peculiar authority. It furnishes the clearest and strongest examples of the experience we call the “sense of obligation.” The order of behavior to which it points determines, for all save the egoist, the dominant features (if not, directly and indirectly, the whole) of that ideal order we call “right.” Even if, like the tribal moralist, we limit the circle of those to whom we will recognize obligations, it is still the concept of the good of the recognized group that tends to dominate the system of moral ideas. Even the egoist, to justify his theory, usually feels it necessary to argue that by wisely pursuing his own good each person will contribute much (or most) to the general good.[6]
With greater or lesser extent and tenacity this sense of obligation imposes itself on the individual. He may disobey its mandates and sometimes he may ignore it. But he cannot think about his relations with his fellows without feeling it; and when he disobeys or ignores it, it often comes back to inflict upon him a sens6 of remorse. He cannot change it at will; and the more he reflects upon it the wider and stronger its claims tend to grow. Yet he can trace it to no origin that can explain it away. It is not merely the voice of his own deeper interests, for it often impels him to go against what he believes to be his own interests. It is not merely the pressure of society, for it often impels him to resist social pressure. It is a still, small voice in his own heart, making demands that are contrary to those of the will he recognizes as his own. He may resist it passionately, and yet feel that it “ought” to be obeyed. He does not feel it as a strong desire. Perhaps he hardly recognizes that he desires its goal at all. It is a demand that voices itself within him and claims authority over him. Yet often it does not appear to be any human demand, and it
[ p. 254 ] exerts itself within him as no human demand can do. Is it surprising that men who have struggled thus with conscience have become convinced that it is the voice of God? Whence, otherwise, could this weak desire gain so much authority?
(a) Kropotkin and McDougall. — These three features of religious experience seem to me to be chiefly responsible for the tendency to interpret its object, the disinterested will, as having its roots in a spiritual reality transcending that of the individual mind having the experience. Our next task is to examine each of them in the light of all our scientific knowledge, to see whether this natural and common interpretation is justified.
The first feature to be examined is the fact of internal conflict. There are many conflicts that arise within a personality which certainly do not imply that any of the discordant elements is related to a spiritual source outside the organism. Is there anything unique about the conflict of the ego with the disinterested will that it should do so? In reply, it must first be recognized that egoistic desires are readily intelligible as direct or indirect expressions of the needs of the organism. They spring from appetites and other natural tendencies serving biological needs, and have been developed into their various forms in the mature personality through interaction with the material and social environment. But the desire for the good of some other person is not so readily intelligible. Until very recent decades moralists were inclined either to seek to explain it away as ultimately derived from egoism or to attribute it to some peculiar divine grace in the human heart. Setting aside these explanations as too often shown to be unsatisfactory, we must attend to more modern theories.
The modern explanation attributes altruistic desires either to instinctive impulse or to processes of social conditioning. [ p. 255 ] The former view has been championed by Kropotkin and McDougall. Kropotkin [7] pointed to the fact that many species, including man, owe much of their success in the struggle for existence to the development of tendencies to mutual aid. Thus spontaneously appearing impulses of the family and the herd have been strengthened by natural selection until they attain great force. McDougall [8] developed this theme by showing how natural instinctive tendencies, by force of association of ideas, become extended to a wide range of objects beyond those to which they originally respond, and argued that in this way the parental instinct to care for the weak and needy has become the source of all altruism. Most psychologists today doubt the reality of such fixed instinctive patterns as this would imply.
But even if they be admitted, the explanation seems very far-fetched when applied to the wider range of altruism. Disinterested social service is by no means merely a sympathetic response to the weak and needy. It is often a desire for lofty ideal goods to enrich the life of the general community. It is also too reflective, too analytical and intelligent, to be the mere result of an illogical extension of emotional impulses to regions to which they are not naturally appropriate. Nor can altruism be any more plausibly explained as arising from a mere fellow feeling of the herd. Rich and powerful though these feelings are, they are very narrow in scope, attaching themselves to a group that is differentiated from other groups, and are therefore by their very nature incapable of universalization.[9] And altruism so overrides these divisions, through a logical thinking that denies their significance, that it can hardly be due to an impulsive extension of emotions based [ p. 256 ] upon them. Much of our merely impulsive altruism may certainly be traced to these instinctive tendencies. But the deliberate verdict of duty obtained when we sit down in a cool hour, and the rational extension of our desire for human good wherever men are found, are so far beyond mere animal impulse, and yet manifest such power to set aside the animal impulses of the ego, that their roots must go far deeper into the nature of personality than these biological theories would allow.
(b) Westermarck and Dewey. — The predominant current tendency in social psychology treats fixed instincts as of comparatively little importance in human motivation compared to the effect of social influences upon the growing personality, and attributes all our higher altruism to this latter source. Among the most influential proponents of this view are Westermarck,[10] C. H, Cooley,[11] and Dewey.[12] Westermarck regards altruism as due to “retributive kindly emotion,” which he describes as a friendly feeling toward those who are found to be a cause of pleasure. But if all our motives were egoistic, except so far as we tend to reciprocate with a desire to give pleasure to those who give pleasure to us, this would fall far short of explaining the range and strength of the human desire to advance general human welfare. Further, is it not the case that the more closely we examine this desire in ourselves the more obvious it becomes that it is not merely because others have given us pleasure, or that we expect that they may do so, that we want them to be happy? Rather, we want other human beings to enjoy welfare and security simply because we like them to be in that condition. To desire the good of others is just as natural to man as to [ p. 257 ] desire his own good, and is just as incapable of further explanation, though the egoistic desires are usually the stronger.
Dewey would seem to agree with this. But, following out and developing the sociological theory of human nature propounded by Cooley, he regards all our distinctively human behavior as rooted in habits arising from interaction with the social environment. Habit, he says, means “will it is “an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of response,” a standing predilection or aversion rather than a specific act; and because every man is born into a family and a social group these, from the beginning, shape his habits. “Conduct is always shared; this is the difference between it and a physiological process. It is not an ethical ‘ ought ’ that conduct should be social. It is social, whether good or bad.” [13] “Now, obviously, the word “social” is here used in two senses. When people say that conduct ought to be social they mean that it ought to be consistent with social welfare. When Dewey says that all conduct is social, whether good or bad, he means merely that it is conditioned by society and affects society. But he also assumes that, since conduct is social in this second sense, it will, if only it is sufficiently intelligent, be social in the first sense also.
Dewey is well aware that intellect can be misdirected, turned to a mere seeking of “the instrumentalities of success” or to an “apology for things as they are.”[14] But these activities are not sufficiently intelligent to be truly good. “Good consists in the meaning that is experienced to belong to an activity when conflict and entanglement of various incompatible impulses and habits terminate in a unified orderly release in action.” A” superficial compromise” or “a victory of a temporarily intense impulse over its rivals” is only a “seeming unification” which will end in further complication, [ p. 258 ] inhibition and dissatisfaction.,[15] There are no separate instincts. Life is essentially active. Desire is simply “activity surging forward to break through what dams it up.” Its goal is the object which “would secure re-unification of activity and the restoration of its ongoing unity.”[16] Intelligence seeks this solution of every problem; and Dewey is so convinced that the only really adequate solutions to be found by the individual must always tend in the long run to be” social” in both the senses we have distinguished that he is prepared to sum up our social obligation in the present day as that of fostering and developing the spirit of scientific inquiry.[17]
We are here concerned not to decide whether this optimism is sound, but with the question whether all altruistic desires can be explained in Dewey’s way — as due to situations wherein the” life-activity” of an intelligent organism, socially conditioned in its development, finds that the reunification and ongoing of its activity require that certain goods should be obtained by others. Now if it were supposed that the lifeactivity is originally directed only to satisfaction of its own organic needs or its own pleasure, this would merely be another of the oft-refuted attempts to derive all altruism from egoism. But Dewey’s life-activity is in itself neither egoistic nor altruistic, but devoid of desire.” When the push and drive of life meets no obstacle, there is nothing which we call desire. There is just life-activity.”[18] Nevertheless it is, initially, only the push and drive of a single organism. Its concern for the unification and ongoing (the good) of other organisms is not, so far as Dewey indicates, a disinterested will to obtain this good for all, such as we have posited. Its altruistic tendencies are simply habits due to its reaction to social pressure and example.
[ p. 259 ]
When we consider the nature of this social pressure and example we cannot but feel that this view is not really tenable. It posits an aggregation of organisms each striving to maintain a unified and expanding life-activity. In doing so each often finds it necessary and helpful to adjust its behavior in ways which allow others to do the same. Thus they develop habits of mutual response and adjustment involving co-operation and occasional sacrifice of their own self-expression to that of others. They even grow to desire the self-expression, or good, of others in situations they have found to contribute to their own, and these desires become habitual. But can we imagine habits thus formed becoming extended to the point where one finds a genuine satisfaction in changes that promote the welfare of utter strangers, foreigners, and even of people whom one dislikes? Still further, can we explain in this way the abiding satisfaction a man may have in such measures even when they are known to be contrary to very important interests of his own? And when we consider that the social conditioning to which most people have been submitted directs their attention only to the good of narrow groups, and even cultivates animosities toward others, can we believe that a mere intelligent seeking of the best way to maintain the unity and ongoing of an activity thus conditioned can sufficiently explain the way in which many such people have, at great cost to themselves, set aside the narrow traditions in which they have been trained and devoted themselves to the good of the alien race or class? Again, consider the history of the individual, and how egoistic his early set of habits necessarily is before he becomes aware of the possibilities of similar satisfactions and dissatisfactions on the part of others. Can the rapid response he makes to the needs of others when he becomes aware of them, the flaming idealism that youth so readily manifests, be due simply to an intelligent perception that his own good is bound up with that of these others, or to [ p. 260 ] habits formed by a mere uncritical acceptance of the suggestions of impractical idealists? When the implications of Dewey’s theory are thus pointed out its inadequacies become obvious.
We may conclude, therefore, that if the life-activity were social only in the sense of being socially conditioned, it could never have developed altruism as we know it. It must be social also in the deeper sense of being directed toward social welfare, or it could never have developed more than spasmodic tendencies, in the majority of individuals, to pursue the good of others except so far as this seemed conducive to their own. If it is true, as Dewey claims, that between ‘‘ unscrupulous pursuit of self-interest” and “beaming benevolence . . . the difference lies in the quality and degree of the perception of ties and interdependencies,”[19] then the “lifeactivity” of each organism cannot be ultimately concerned only with its own expanding life. The clearest perception must link the present interest with the ultimate interest of the life-activity, setting aside all habits that do not minister to it. And if, as is true, our clearest and most penetrating perceptions of our own deepest interest, when divested of passion and prejudice, reach out disinterestedly to concern themselves with the good of all men, then the simple “life-activity,” which is the core of our whole organic life, can be no mere expression of the struggle of a single organism to maintain and expand itself amidst its fellows. It must be a constructive activity with a deeper source and a wider reach, creatively expressing itself in the initial development of organic life, becoming absorbed in the limited experience of each organism developed, and reaching out to a wider “social” constructiveness through the individual as individuals become aware of each other’s presence and needs. Thus our critical examination of the altruistic will in its conflict with the ego leads us [ p. 261 ] to a conclusion that substantially endorses that of unsophisticated common sense: that the roots of altruism lie in a spiritual agency — i.e., an agency responsive to values — beyond the individual organism, an agency that is concerned with the good of all.
(a) The Place of Values in the World. — The second of the features of religious experience from which belief in a transcendent deity is derived is, as indicated above, a value experience. Now it is fashionable in some quarters today to describe values as merely constituents of emotion. This is too loose a use of the term “emotion” for exact psychological purposes, but we need not press that objection here. What needs emphasis is the utter futility of any suggestion that by characterizing values as emotions we can thereby dismiss them from scientific consideration. This attitude is reminiscent of the Cartesian-Newtonian world view which cast everything subjective — everything with which the physical sciences cannot deal — out into another world. But this bifurcation of the world is bad science and worse philosophy. The psychological subject and all its contents are as much a part of the world as the body and the earth it stands on. Emotional changes are as fully integral to the world order as summer and winter. There are no degrees of reality among concrete facts; and the value qualities of our inner experience are as much a fact as any other. Indeed they are the most important of all facts, for it is only in relation to them that other facts have importance. An argument as to the nature of the world drawn from value experience is therefore an argument based upon the only intrinsically important facts in the world, and is the most important of all considerations for understanding the world.
Sensations of sight and touch have a fairly distinct spatial [ p. 268 ] character which permits of measurement, and thereby of the discovery of an order of events of a nonsensory character which has a considerable permanence. But this order is no more real than the sensory qualities of sight and touch that reveal it. And the sensory qualities of sight and touch are no more real than the qualities of smell, taste, beauty, ugliness, pleasure, pain, joy and sorrow, which have no spatial character. All are equally transitory. They appear within the range of consciousness, disappear and reappear in a most mysterious manner. Something of the order of their going and coming we do learn. But where they go and whence they come, who knows? Whither do our joys and sorrows fly when we fall asleep, and where do all the pretty colors go when the light blinks out? These questions of a child are the profoundest problems of philosophy. All we can say for certain, and perhaps all we need to say, is that they are latent characters of our world which the world thrusts within our actual experience according to the way we behave in relation to the other active agencies of the world. We, as active systems of experiencing will and physico-chemical motion, are an organic part of the world; and the content of our experience is a part of it. To some of our activities the rest of the world responds by presenting a vision of color and beauty, to others with an excruciating pain, to others again with a sense of inner peace and joyful confidence. To interpret these responses of the rest of the world as entirely deliberate is a stupid anthropomorphism; to interpret them as entirely devoid of purpose is an equally unwarranted “physiomorphism.”
Man is a psycho-physical organization, organic to a larger world. It would be strange if all the rest of the world were akin to only one phase of the human series of activities. Such a hypothesis becomes still stranger when we consider that every new phase of the development of life is met by a response from its world manifesting new qualities — qualities [ p. 263 ] which, on the whole, tend to help and encourage further development and to discourage and destroy developments that stand in the way of the general onward movement. Thus each new specialization of the sensory nerve endings has discovered some new quality hitherto (so far as the life we know is concerned) latent in its world, yet usable for the refinement of distinctions in experience. Even pain has played a useful part in the direction of the onward movement of life. At the human level each refinement of the organization of personality has discovered new distinctions of value manifesting themselves to the moral consciousness, leading us on from the few rough virtues of the primitive savage to the finer graces of cultured personality and saintly living.
There are involved in this progress not merely new combinations of mental activity and physical motion, but new qualities that are felt. One feels different if one can manage to be brave, from the way one feels in giving way to fear. One feels the difference between overcoming anger in forgiving an injury, and planning a spiteful revenge. And these qualities of feeling that enter into us are bits of the world stuff. Out of the manifold resources of that stuff we are made. This complex gyroscope of electrons and protons and mental acts that we call our “body-and-mind” performs its evolutions in a few cubic feet of space and gathers out of the world order all the qualitative richness of experience — color and sound, the beauty of holiness and the misery of pain and guilt. Do we create these qualities ex nihilo at every moment of conscious existence, and drop them into nothingness again? And if not — if they are somehow part of the permanent resources of the world — is the world-whole, which is full of such marvelous potentialities, devoid of all power to realize and respond to them, save that which runs its brief course on the surface of this planet? To say " Yes” is to make a tremendous assumption based on nothing but our ignorance. To say we [ p. 264 ] have no facts on which to base an answer is to ignore not only certain metaphysical considerations, but the evidence of that religious and moral experience which is the actual root of faith. We are dealing with the second of three features of this experience. An analogy will help to make its significance clear.
(b) Value as Revealing the Range of Mind. — We cannot directly observe the activities of other minds. We infer them primarily[20] from the fact that the other minds communicate with us, guide us and reveal their will to us in the changes of experience they succeed in imposing upon us. Can any reflective person say that the changing course of his inner experience of values, which the world thrusts upon him, suggests or reveals to him no wider will in the world than the human? It is not quite like a human will, for it is not vacillating and inconsistent. The hierarchy of our values is somewhat vague and it does change — as when we learn that mercy is better than vengeance. But when the vagueness clears and the changes come, the new value scene is not seen as a change in the relative quality of the values themselves. It seems rather that we see better the values as they really are, and that the former view was due to our blindness — that mercy always was better than vengeance, and only the hardness of our hearts prevented us from seeing it before. When we pay attention to the fact of the changes in the value scheme it suggests that it cannot reveal the will of God, simply because it changes. When we pay attention to its fixity it suggests that it manifests, not a will at all, but a part of the eternal world order.[21] But when we reflect that every change in our value scheme comes to us as a clearer insight into an order of values that we had not seen clearly enough before, we realize [ p. 265 ] that our value experience is best interpreted as our partial understanding of an order of values that is stable and objective. And we see that that stable and objective order of values is just what we should expect if it reveals the will of God.
But why should we connect values with will? The answer is that experience connects them with will. All the empirical philosophies of value, from Aristotle to Spinoza and to Ralph Barton Perry,[22] have emphasized the connection of value with want and desire. The difficulties that have arisen in their interpretations have been due to the fact that the hierarchy of our wants is so complex, and that they have not realized that its ultimate roots lie, not in the ego,[23] but in a will that transcends the ego to seek its creative expression in and through the good of all. Every positive value quality felt is experienced in the attainment of, or movement toward, some goal of the living organism.[24] And every goal is but the end of a stage, and a new beginning in the ongoing of life. This nonfinality and instrumental character of all our particular values is the truth so well emphasized by Professor Dewey, and it has done much to enhance the influence of his teaching. Yet, as Aristotle saw, values cannot all be instrumental. There must be some ultimate end. So we can bring together the insights of Aristotle and Dewey in the recognition that life itself is the ultimate end — “that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” And life is creative activity.
But if we assume that all our wants and desires, in the pursuit of which our particular value experiences are felt, are ultimate goals, or if we assume that they are ultimately instrumental only to the good (the onward-going life) of the particular organism we each call “myself,” then sooner or [ p. 266 ] later our world thrusts upon us a negative value experience that tells us of our mistake. It is not only that positive wrongdoing tends to bring pain and punishment, but in so far as we live for self the game is not worth the candle. The experience of the young Tolstoi is peculiar here only in his thoroughness and his sensitivity to the barrenness of the result. It is as we take an interest in other individuals and the larger life of the social order that we discover those subtler and more satisfying qualities of value entering into life. These are not the intenser pleasures. It is as interests more worth while that they are felt. Our world is rewarding us for reaching out to pursue a good that is not our own. It encourages us with a new sense of the worthwhileness of life as we devote ourselves less to our own ends and more to the common good. There are those who have grown up in a community whose vision of the common good was narrow and exclusive, bound in by barriers of race, caste, creed, or personal resentments; and yet they have somehow broken those barriers and given themselves to the cause of justice and reconciliation. In return, their own community often has made them suffer; and perhaps those they served have been ungrateful. But the world that is wider than the men and women in it has responded in another way; the world reality that is immediately felt — as color and sound, beauty and guilt are felt — has pressed upon their souls a new experience: not just a pleasure, though sweet enough to compensate for the pain, but a sense of the abiding value of the thing that they have done. Then, sometimes, they have had the gifts and the courage to become prophets of a new way in the relationships of men. And then, most wonderful of all, when others, following, have tried the new way, the felt reality of its value has pressed itself upon them too.
Throughout most of the range of our value experience we are clearly aware of the wants or desires in the service of which [ p. 867 ] our experience of value is found. Where there is a will to attain an end there is a sense of value (more or less permanent) to be found in the attainment of it. Where there is a sense of value in the attaining of a result there is somewhere, however hidden, a will to its attainment. But the sense of value is not permanent unless the result, and the will that achieves it, are in harmony with the more ultimate purposive tendencies of the organisms that are affected. Our values form a hierarchy defining goals in which one is instrumental to another, and that to yet another, and all at last to the creative forward movement of life. And the only values that are permanent are those whose goals fit into the purposive scheme of the whole. Here we have the key to the ultimate organization of life. For when we make the goal the mere expression of our own psycho-physical organism alone, its values rapidly perish. When we take for our goal the common good to which all selfish ends must be subordinated, the sense of value in life as a whole deepens, strengthens and grows richer.
Thus from our value experience the organization of our human personality grows clear. Its ultimate root lies, not in the will to self-expression of the individual organism, but in a principle of creativity common to all organisms, which, as through one organism it becomes conscious of another, concerns itself with the creative expansion of the life of all. This principle of creativity is so organic to the world as to be responsive to the scale of values with which the world presents it. Thus here again, through the analysis of our highest value experience, we find our own being to be rooted in that disinterested will to the good to which we have given the name of God. And we see how the unfolding value experience of man reveals to him the nature and aim of the divine will.
But something of still deeper significance emerges from [ p. 268 ] our analysis of the place of value qualities in the world order. We have seen that, though their felt qualities may be called a part of the content of an emotion, that does not make them any less essential features of the world. We have seen the organic relation of these qualitative potentialities of the world to our own life-activity and, above all, to the disinterested will present in us all. We have seen that disinterested will revealed as not dependent upon our organisms, but as that on which our organisms depend and from which they rise to pursue their independent way. We have found a principle of creativity that must be antecedent to the kind of organic life we know, and we have been able to trace its identity with the higher will within ourselves. And we have seen that we never lose touch with this higher will, nor can we, with all our independence, pass beyond its influence; for it is the ultimate determining factor in all our value experience, guiding and encouraging us in those developments consistent with the whole onward movement of individual and social life. In our lives is the experimentation, the failure, and the triumph. Beyond and within us is the abiding Will to universal good. It never controls us, but reveals itself to us in its ultimate determining influence upon what, in the long run, we shall find most truly good.
The Right and the Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 1930), chap. 1. ↩︎
In a strict sense of “definition” they cannot be defined, but can only be indicated, as when we define” a color by its place in the spectrum. I would certainly agree with those who say that ethical terms cannot be defined in nonethical terms. But it seems to me possible that “right” and “good” may yet be successfully defined in terms of each other. ↩︎
George Edward Moore: Principia Ethica (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1903) , p. 147. ↩︎
Things and Ideals, p. 94. ↩︎
Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. 1, section 10. ↩︎
Epicurus, for example, placed great importance on friendship and asserted that justice is necessary to a life of true pleasure. ↩︎
P. A. Kropotkin: Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution (London, 1900) . ↩︎
An Introduction to Social Psychology. ↩︎
Henri Bergson: Morality and Religion, translated by Andra and Brcreton (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1935) . ↩︎
Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas and Ethical Relativity (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co… 1932 ) . ↩︎
Social Organization (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909 ) and Human Nature and the Social Order (Scribner’s, 1902 ) . ↩︎
Especially Human Nature and Conduct. ↩︎
Ibid, pp. 42, 17. ↩︎
Ibid, p. 258. ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 210-11. ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 249-50. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 389. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 249. ↩︎
Ibid., p. 317. ↩︎
Secondarily, we infer their existence from the teleological control over their bodies manifested by them. We shall refer to this again below. ↩︎
The point of view of Hartmann’s Ethics. ↩︎
The General Theory of Value (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926). ↩︎
This term is used in the sense defined in chap. 2. ↩︎
Cf. my Reality and Value, chaps. 6-9, especially pp. 221-27. ↩︎