Skip to main content

Full text of "The Open court"

See other formats


We 

OPEN  COURT 

Devoted  to  the  Science  of  Religion, 
the  Religion  of  Science,  and  the  Exten- 
sion of  the  Religious    Parliament  Idea 

FOUNDED    BY    EDWARD    C.     HEGELER 


MAY,  1931 

VOLUME  XLV  NUMBER  900 

"Price  20  Cents 


^TBe  open  Court  *Tublishing  Company 

Wieboldt  Hall,  339  East  Chicago  Avenue 
Chicago,  Illinois 


We 

OPEN  COURT 

Devoted  to  the  Science  of  Religion, 
the  Religion  of  Science,  and  the  Exten- 
sion of  the  Religious    Parliament  Idea 

FOUNDED    BY     EDWARD    C.     HEGELER 


MAY.  1931 


VOLUME  XLV  NUMBER  900 

•Price  20  Cents 


Wjie  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 

Wieboldt  Hall,  339  East  Chicago  Avenue 
Chicago,  Illinois 


r 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL 
REVIEW 

EDITED  BY 

FRANK  THILLY 
and  G.  WATTS  CUNNINGHAM 

OF  THE  SAGE  SCHOOL  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY 
WITH  THE  CO-OPERATION  OF 

fiTIENNE  GILSON  (Paris)  GEORGE  SANTAYANA  (Rome) 

ARTHUR  LIEBERT  (Berlin)  A  E.  TAYLOR  (Edinburgh) 

W.  A.  HAMMOND  (Washington) 

ASSOCIATE  EDITOR 

HAROLD  R.  SMART 
OF  THE  SAGE  SCHOOL  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY 

Contents  for  July,  1931 

I.     An  Anonymous  Treatise   Lynn  Thorndike 

IT.     Some  Descriptive  Properties  of  Relations  (1)   . .  .Henry  Lanz 

HI.     Discussion 

"The  Paradox  of  the  Time-Retarding  Journey" 

Evandler  Bradley  McGilvary 

On  Negative  Facts  A.  Ushenko 

IV.     Reviews  of  Books 

W.  M.  Urhan's  The  Intelligible  World:  by  A.  P.  Brogan— 
C.  J.  Ducossc's  The  Philosophy  of  Art :  by  DeWitt  H.  Parker 
Thomas  Munro's  Scientific  Method  in  Aesthetics:  by  C.  J. 
Ducasse — D.  L.  Evans's  New  Realism  and  Old  Reality:  by 
Donald  Gary  Williams — Scott  Buchanan's  Poetry  and  Mathe- 
matics :  by  E.  T.  Mitchell — Margaret  Storrs'  The  Relation  of 
Carlyle  to  Kant  and  Fichte:  by  Ellen  Bliss  Talbot — H.  B. 
Alexander's  Truth  and  the  Faith:  by  Rufus  M.  Jones — /.  E. 
Turner's  The  Nature  of  Deity:  by  Eugene  W.  Lyman — 
Robert  Latta  and  Alexander  MacBeath,  The  Elements  of 
Logic:  by  E.  T.  Mitchell. 

V.     Notes 

George  H.  Mead.  The  Second  International  Hegelian  Congress. 
The  Oxford  translation  of  Aristotle.  The  Creighton  Club. 
The  Kant-Gesellschaft.    Current  philosophical  periodicals. 

PUBLISHED  EVERY  TWO  MONTHS 

LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  COMPANY 

LANCASTER,  PA. 
55  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 

SINGLE  NUMBERS  $1.00  i")!.).      PER  ANNUM  $5.00  (25»). 


The  Open  Court 


Volume  XLV  (Xo.  5)  MAY,  1931  Number  900 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Frontispiece. 

The  IiiHiieiice  of  the  Theory  of  Preformation 

on  Letbnic'  Metaphysics,    salvatore  russo 257 

The  Social  Philosophy  of  Jesus,    clarence  erickson   268 

Detenniiiism,  Egotism  and  Morals,  joiin   heintz    287 

Explaining  Einstein,    henry  charles  sutter   291 

Will  Peace  Ever  Conic  to  Our  JVorld.    iiarold  berman   299 

Science  and  Religion — Another  Attempt  at  Reconciliation 

\'iCTOR  yarrows    309 

A  Gossip  on  Emerson's  Treatment  of  Beauty. 

clarence  gohdes    315 


Published  monthly  by 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

337  East  Chicago  Avenue 
Chicago,  Illinois 

Subscription  rates :  $2.00  a  year ;  20c  a  copy.  Remittances  may  be  made 
by  personal  checks,  drafts,  post-office  or  express  money  orders,  payable  to  the 
Open   Court  Publishing  Company,   Chicago. 

While  the  publishers  do  not  hold  themselves  responsible  for  manu- 
scripts sent  to  them,  they  endeavor  to  use  the  greatest  care  in  returning 
those  not  found  available,  if  postage  is  sent.  As  a  precaution  against  loss, 
mistakes,  or  delay,  they  request  that  the  name  and  address  of  the  author 
be  placed  at  the  head  of  every  manuscript  (and  not  on  a  separate  slip)  and 
that  all  manuscripts  and  correspondence  concerning  them  be  addressed 
to  the  Open  Court  Publishing  Company  and  not  to  individuals. 

Address  all  correspondence  to  the  Open  Court  Publishing  Company,  237 
East  Chicago  Ave.,  Chicago. 

Entered  as  Second-Class  matter  March   26,    1897,   at   the  Post  Office   at   Chicago,   Illinois, 
under  Act  of  March   3,    1879. 

Copyright  by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company,   1931. 
Printed   in   the   United  States  of  America. 


_. _. ^ uy_,,H_,m_nH.^n«_M.._..ii_.iH^««^i«_iiii_nu .lu «„ at, iiu^nu nu nn ml— HI »4t 

'■■^"■■^"■■"^■"  ■■  ■■  ■■  N  >IP  II  n  iiH  iin  UK  im  im  im  iin  iih  >ih  mb  iih  iik  -»- 

I  ! 

I       THE  HISTORY  OF  MATHEMATICAL 

!  NOTATIONS 

I 

I  By  FLORIAN  CAJORI 

Vol.    I — T^otations  in  Elementary  l^/lathematics 
Vol.  II — Js[otations  Mainly  in  Higher  Mathematics 

Price,  Cloth,  ^6.00  each 

I  "The  first  volume  deals  with  the  history  of  notations  from  the  days  of  the 

j  ancients  and  by  nations  as  far  apart  as  the  Babylonians  and  the  Aztecs,  Egyp' 
I  tians  and  Chinese,  Arabs,  Germans,  Italians  and  English.  The  second  volume 
I  gives  a  history  of  the  symbols  that  have  accompanied  the  great  advance  of 
mathematics  from  the  days  of  Newton  to  the  present  times. 

"Professor  Cajori's  book  will  be  indispensable  to  the  historian  of  mathe- 
matics."^— The  Times  Literary  Supplement,  London. 

"The  amount  of  research  that  this  work  represents  is  extraordinary  and 
the  history  will  be  of  great  usefulness  to  mathematicians." — Journal  of  the 
American  Institute  of  Electrical  Engineers. 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  CO. 
Chicago  London 


SUBSTANCE  AND  FUNCTION 

And  Einstein's  Theory  of  Relativity 

By 

Ernst  Cassirer 

Translated  by  W.  C.  and  Marie  C.  Swabey 

"A  logical  discussion  of  the  concepts  of  things  and  relations;  a 
j  metaphysical  treatment  of  relational  concepts  and  the  problem  of  real- 

i  ity;   and   an   epistemological   examination   of   the   theory   of   relativity 

j  ...  A  work  deserving  the  closest  study  on  the  part  of  logicians,  natural 

I  scientists  and  philosophers.   .   ."     his. 

i 

j  Pp.  465.     Price  cloth  ^3.75 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
Chicago  London 


BOOKS  FROM  THE  PAUL  CARUS 
LECTURE  FOUNDATION 

THESE  books  represent  the  publication  of  the  biennial  series  of 
lectures  established  by  the  Paul  Carus  Foundation  and  published 
by  The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company.  The  lecturers  are  chosen 
by  committees  appointed  from  the  Divisions  of  the  American  Philo- 
sophical Association  and  the  lectures  present  the  most  significant  of 
contemporary  work  in  philosophy.  The  books  by  Professor  John 
Dewey  and  Professor  A.  O.  Lovejoy,  listed  below,  are  both  publica- 
tions of  Paul  Carus  lectures.  The  next  pubhcation  from  the  Foun- 
dation will  be  a  book  by  PROFESSOR  GEORGE  HERBERT 
MEAD  of  the  University  of  Chicago. 

THE  POINT  OF  VIEW:    in  the  work  of  Paul  Carus. 

This  book  presents  the  point  of  view  of  the  distinguished  philosopher 
who  founded  The  Open  Court  and  edited  The  Monist.  ''The  name  of 
Paul  Carus  will  always  be  associated  with  his  life  work  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  science  in  the  fields  of  religion  and  philosophy/' — Press 
note. 

Beautifully  printed  in  two  colors  throughout.   Boxed  $2.50 

THE  REVOLT  AGAINST  DUALISM. 

An  Inquiry  Concerning  the  Existency  of  Ideas. 

By  Arthur  O.  Lovejoy, 

Professor  of  Philosophy,  The  Johns  Hopkins  University. 

The  last  quarter  century  will  have  for  future  historians  of  philosophy 
a  distinctive  interest  as  the  age  of  the  great  revolt  against  dualism,  a 
phase  of  the  wider  revolt  of  the  20th  against  the  17th  century.  THE 
REVOLT  AGAINST  DUALISM,  Dr.  Lovejoy 's  long  awaited  book, 
reviews  this  most  characteristic  philosophic  effort  of  our  generation. 

Price  $4.00 

EXPERIENCE  AND  NATURE. 

By  John  Dewey. 

Irwin  Edman  writes:  ''The  wish  has  long  been  expressed  that  John 
Dewey  would  some  day  produce  a  book  making  clear  and  explicit  the 
metaphysical  basis  of  his  singularly  humane  and  liberalir;ing  philosophy 
of  life.  .  .  With  monumental  care,  detail,  and  completeness  Professor 
Dewey  has  in  this  volume  revealed  the  metaphysical  heart  that  beats  its 
unvarying  alert  tempo  through  all  his  writings      Price  $."^.00  * 

*  A.  L.  A.  recommendation. 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
Chicago  London 


Fourth  Carus  Mathematical  Monograph 

PROJECTIVE  GEOMETRY 

By 
JOHN  WESLEY  YOUNG 

Professor  of  Mathematics,  Dartmouth  College 
Price,  ^2.00 

Projective  Geometry  may  be  approached  by  various  routes:  postulational 
or  intuitive,  synthetic  or  analytic,  metric  or  purely  projective.  In  a  mono' 
graph  which  is  to  give  a  first  approach  to  the  subject  it  has  seemed  to  me 
that  the  treatment  should  be  based  on  intuition,  should  develop  the  sub' 
ject  by  synthetic  methods,  and  should  keep  projective  properties  sharply 
distinguished  from  the  metric  specializations.  The  reader  will  accordingly 
find  in  the  first  five  chapters  a  systematic  and  thoroughly  elementary  treat- 
ment of  the  most  fundamental  propositions  of  projective  geometry,  cuh 
minating  in  the  theorems  of  Pascal  and  Brianchon  and  the  polar  system 
of  a  conic.  My  purpose  in  these  chapters  has  been  to  develop  on  an  intui' 
tive  basis  the  concepts  and  the  properties  of  projective  space,  without  any 
admixture  of  metric  ideas.  Only  in  this  way,  I  believe,  can  the  reader 
gain  a  clear  impression  of  what  the  word  projective  means.  [Extract  from 
Preface.} 


THE  RHIND 
MATHEMATICAL  PAPYRUS 

Chancellor  Arnold  Buffum  Chace,  of  Brown  University,  is  render- 
ing signal  honor  to  the  Mathematical  Assocl^tion  of  America  by  pub- 
lishing under  its  auspices  his  Rhind  Mathematical  Papyrus. 

Volume  I,  over  200  pages  (ll|/4"x8"),  contains  the  free  Translation, 
Commentary,  and  Bibliography  of  Egyptian  Mathematics. 

Volume  II,  140  plates  (ll|/4''xl4"')  in  two  colors  with  Text  and  Introduc- 
tions, contains  the  Photographic  Facsimile,  Hieroglyphic  Transcription,  Trans- 
literation, and  Literal  Translation. 

This  exposition  of  the  oldest  mathematical  document  in  the  world  will  be 
of  great  value  to  any  one  interested  in  the  work  of  a  civili::ation  of  nearly 
4,000  years  ago. 

LIMITED  EDITION 

^20.00  Plus  Postage 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

Chicago 


-   ■♦ 


AMERICAN  MATHEMATICAL  SOCIETY 

COLLOQUIUM  SERIES 

Published  in  December,  1930: 

S.  Lefschetz,  Topology.  10  +  410  pp.  $4.50.  (Volume  XII  of  the 
Colloquium  Series.) 

EARLIER  VOLUMES 

Volume  I.  Linear  Systems  of  Curves  on  Algebraic  Surfaces,  by 
H.  S.  White;  Forms  of  Non-Euclidean  Space,  by  F.  S.  Woods; 
Selected  Topics  in  the  Theory  of  Divergent  Series  and  of  Con- 
tinued Fractions,  by  E.  B.  Van  Vleck.  (Boston  Colloquium.) 
New  York,  1905.    $2.75. 

Volume  II.     Out  of  print. 

Volume  III.  Fundamental  Existence  Theorems,  by  G.  A.  Bliss;  Dif- 
ferential-Geometric Aspects  of  Dynamics,  by  Edward  Kasner. 
(Princeton  Colloquium.)     New  York,  1913.     $2.50. 

Volume  IV.  On  Invariants  and  the  Theory  of  Numbers,  by  L.  E. 
Dickson;  Topics  in  the  Theory  of  Functions  of  Several  Complex 
Variables,  by  W.  F.  Osgood.  (Madison  Colloquium.)  New  York, 
1914.    $2.50. 

Volume  V,  Part  I.  Functionals  and  their  Applications.  Selected  Top- 
ics, including  Integral  Equations,  by  G.  C.  Evans.  New  York, 
1918.    $2.00. 

Volume  V,  Part  II.  Analysis  Situs,  by  Oswald  Veblen.  Second  edi- 
tion in  press. 

Volume  VI.  The  Logarithmic  Potential.  Discontinuous  Dirichlet 
and  Neumann  Problems,  by  G.  C.  Evans,  New  York,  1927.    $2.00. 

Volume  VII.  Algebraic  Arithmetic,  bv  E.  T.  Bell.  New  York,  1927. 
$2.50. 

Volume  VIII.  Non-Riemannian  Geometry,  by  L.  P.  Eisenhart.  New 
York,  1927.    $2.50. 

Volume  IX.  D\namical  S\stems,  by  G.  D.  Birkhoff.  New  York 
1927.    $3.00.' 

Volume  X.  Algebraic  Geometry  and  Theta  Functions,  bv  A.  B.  Coble. 
New  York,  1929.     $3.00. 

Volume  XL  Theorv  of  Approximation,  bv  Dunham  Jackson,  New 
York,  1930.    $2.50. 

Orders  may  be  sent  to  the  American  Mathematical  Society, 
501  West  116th  Street,  New  York  City,  or  to 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
337  East  Chicago  Avenue  Chicago,  Illinois 


..— .+ 


« — ^ 


JOURNAL  of 

PHILOSOPHY 


!  This  periodical  is  the  organ  of  active  philosophical  dis- 

!  cussion  in  the  United  States.    There  is  no  similar  journal  in 

!  the   field   of   scientific   philosophy.     It   is   issued   fortnightly 

i  and   permits   the   quick   publication   of   short   contributions, 

I  prompt  reviews  and  timely  discussions. 

! 

j  Edited  by  Professors  F.  ].  E.  Woodhridge, 

1  ■                        W.  T.  Bush,  and  H.  W.  Schneider, 

of  Columbia  University 


515  WEST  116TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 
U  a  Year,  26  Numbers  20  Cents  a  Copy 

LOGIC  AND  NATURE 

By  Marie  C.  Swabey,  Ph.D. 

Assistant  Professor  of  Philosophy 
in  New  York  University 

To  vindicate  logic  as  the  method  of  metaphysics  and  to  show  its 
appHcabihty  to  current  problems  of  science  and  nature,  is  the  purpose 
of  this  volume.  This  involves  a  demonstration  of  the  priority  of  logic 
to  experience  and  a  discussion  of  the  nature  of  reason.  Hypothetical 
judgments,  non-syllogistic  arguments,  the  paradoxes  of  Russell,  the 
relation  of  the  form  and  matter  of  inference,  the  nature  of  postula- 
tional  systems,  the  problem  of  truth,  and  the  theory  of  universals  are 
among  the  logical  topics  considered. 

"A  strong  case  for  the  primordiality  of  logic." — Professor  Cassius  J. 
Keyser,   Columbia   University. 

"Marked  by  a  fine  capacity  for  logical  analysis  and  reasoning.   .   .   . 
It   holds   the    attention    continuously." — Professor    Robert   MacDougall. 
"The  book  is  founded  on  a  detailed,  lucid,  and  convincing  criticism 
of  naturalism.     Its  positive  thesis  ...  is  closely  and  vigorously  argued. 
The  book  is  written  in  a  style  unusual  for  its  clarity  and  brevity,  and 
I  reveals  the  wide  reading  of  its  author  in  classical  and  in  contemporary 

j  modern   philosophy." — Professor  Mary  Whiton   Calkins. 

I  8vo,  xiv  -f-  384  pages.    Bound  in  blue  cloth,  gold-lettered.    Price  $4.00. 


1 

i 


The  Open  Court  Publishing  Company 
337  East  Chicago  Avenue  Chicago,  111. 


T     Giilicliiuis    Harvcus 


(Ic 


Ciciiciatioiie  Aiumaliiun 


JUPITER  OPENING  THE  COSMIC  EGG 

The  frontispiece  from  the  first  edition  (1651)  of  William  Harvey's 
Gencrationc  Animalium. 


Frontispiece  to  The  Open  Court. 


The  Open  Court 

A   MONTHLY  MAGAZINE 

Devoted  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  tlie  Religion  of  Science,  and 
the  Extension  of  the  Religious  Parliament  Idea. 

COPYRIGHT  BY  OPEN   COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY   1931 

Volume  XLV  (No.  5)  May,  1931  Number  900 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  THEORY  OF  PREFORMATION 
ON  LEIBNIZ'  METAPHYSICS 

BY   SALVATORE  RUSSO 

H(  )\V  Leibniz,  tbe  eclectic  pbilosopher,  solved  his  dual  prob- 
lem of  substance  has  not  been  adequately  explained  and  still 
requires  attention.  His  metaphysics  is  a  curiously  colored  tapestry 
in  which  we  can  trace  the  varied  threads  of  hi^  predecessors  ;  we 
know  that  he  inherited  the  problem  of  substance  from  the  atomists 
on  the  one  hand,  and  from  Descartes  and  Spinoza  on  the  other. 
But  there  is  something  in  his  philosophy  which  has  hitherto  de- 
fied genesis ;  something  which  was  new  in  philosophy  and  not  to 
be  found  in  the  mathematics  and  mechanics  of  his  age.  By  virtue 
of  an  internal  principle  he  maintained  the  reality  both  of  the  part  and 
the  whole,  the  many  and  the  one.  How,  then  are  we  to  account  for 
this  notion  of  immanence  which  harmoniously  combined  the  two? 
Preformation,  a  biological  theory  prevalent  in  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  offers  the  solution:  by  the  application  of  this 
theory  Leibniz  evolved  his  Monadology.  The  obvious  role  that 
mathematics  and  physics  played  in  his  system  has  often  been  re- 
hearsed, but  somehow  this  biological  influence  has  not  been  ade- 
cjuately  acknowledged,  and  the  relation  of  the  one  to  the  other  has 
been  strikingly  misunderstood. 

Of  course  it  has  long  been  known  that  Leibniz  accepted  the  theory 
of  preformation,  but  historians  in  general  and  commentators  such 
as  Latta,  Dewey,  and  Russell  have  not  clearly  understood  this  di- 
rect influence.  They  have  maintained  that  the  sole  function  of  this 
theory  in  his  philosophy  was  to  explain  the  problem  of  generation. 


258  THE  OPEN    COURT 

Even  Leibniz  himself  does  not  admit  how  significant  it  is  in  his 
thought.  The  only  commentator  who  has  understood,  in  part,  the 
relation,  is  Professor  Carr,  who  contends  that  if  the  microscope  did 
not  suggest,  it  certainly  confirmed  Leibniz'  principle  of  Pre-estab- 
lished Harmony.  1 

More  erroneous  still  is  the  belief,  current  at  the  close  of  the  last 
century,  that  the  theory  of  preformation  was  original  with  Leibniz. 
Mr.  Russell  seems  to  suggest  this  when  he  writes.  "Leibniz  sup- 
ported his  theory  of  preformation  by  reference  to  the  microscopic 
embryology  of  his  day. "2  No  less  a  commentator  than  Professor 
Cassirer  makes  the  same  historical  error ;  evidently  he  believed  that 
Leibniz  created  the  theory,  and  that  it  was  later  applied  to  biology. 
Thus  he  declares : 

"The  most  decisive  empirical  result  which  arises  from  the  appli- 
cation of  the  concept  of  the  monad  to  biological  problems  lies  in 
the  idea  of  preformation.''-'^ 

This  unfortunate  and  misleading  error  was,  in  part,  fostered  by 
the  biologists  themselves,  who  were  careless  in  their  references. 
Mr.  Osborn,  for  example,  in  his  From  the  Greeks  to  Darwin,  makes 
a  statement  to  this  efifect,  though  other  references  show  that  he 
was  aware  of  the  time  sequence.  Speaking  of  preformation, 
he  writes  that  Charles  Bonnet  "derived  it  from  e-z'oho  to  ex- 
press his  remarkable  theory  of  life,  which  was  an  adaptation  of 
Leibniz'  philosophy  to  embryology."  It  is  true  that  Leibniz  influ- 
enced a  host  of  men,  Robinet,  Bonnet,  Reamur,  Diderot,  Maupertuis, 
Linnaeus,  Cuvier,  and  others,  but  he  received  his  inspiration  from 
the  embryology  of  his  contemporaries.  This  obvious  mis-conception 
has  been  corrected  by  Locy : 

Although  it  was  a  product  of  the  seventeenth  century,  from  several 
printed  accounts  one  is  likely  to  gather  the  impression  that  it  arose 
in  the  eighteenth  century  and  that  Bonnet,  Haller,  and  Leibniz  were 
among  its  founders.  This  implication  is  in  part  fostered  by  the 
circumstances  that  Swammerdam's  Biblia  Naturae,  which  contains 
the  germ  of  this  theory,  was  not  published  until  1737 — more  than 
half  a  century  after  his  death — although  the  observations  for  it  were 
complete  before  Malpighi's  first  paper  on  embryology  was  pub- 
lished in  1672. 

We  have,  likewise,  been  so  much  concerned  with  Leibniz'  rela- 

''^Lcihnic,  by  H.  W.  Carr 

-The  Philosophy  of  Leibniz,  page  154 

'■i Leibniz'  System,  by  Ernest  Cassirer,  page  410. 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF  THE  THEORY  OF  PREFORMATION  259 

tion  to  the  physicists  and  mathematicians  of  his  time,  Kepler,  New- 
ton, Huygens,  Pascal,  Bernonilli,  and  Robert  Boyle,  that  we  have 
considerably  underestimated  this  other  influence.  His  interest  in 
scientific  discoveries,  and  his  immortal  contribution  to  mathematics 
are  well  known,  but  his  relation  to  the  biologists  of  his  day,  William 
Harvey,  Marcello  Malpighi,  Robert  Hooke,  Jeremiah  Grew,  John 
Swammerdam,  Francesco  Redi,  and  Anthony  van  Leeuwenhoek, 
from  whose  work  he  took  much,  should  not  be  undervalued.  These 
men  laid  a  foundation  that  made  biology  as  great  an  influence  in 
philosophy  as  were  mathematics  and  the  physical  sciences.  Its  vital 
presence  in  the  philosophies  of  such  men  as  Hegel,  Schelling,  Spen- 
cer, Schopenhauer,  Nietzsche,  Bergson,  and  S.  Alexander,  give  evi- 
dence of  this.  The  philosophical  importance  of  the  sciences  was  at 
its  height  in  the  times  of  Bacon,  Descartes,  and  Spinoza ;  the  de- 
cline of  the  mathematical  influence  began  with  Kant,  who  contended 
that  the  method  of  mathematics  was  not  applicable  to  philosophical 
problems.  Leibniz  was  the  first  modern  philosopher  to  give  biology 
a  prominent  place  in  his  system ;  thus  biology  is  doubly  important  in 
a  study  of  Leibniz.  Our  purpose  is  to  show  especially  the  influence 
that  the  theory  of  preformation  had  on  his  metaphysics. 

After  the  work  of  Hippocrates  and  Aristotle,  the  most  important 
problem  of  biology,  that  of  generation,  remained  untouched  until 
Fabricius  published  his  De  Formato  Foeiu  in  1600.  His  beloved 
pupil,  William  Harvey,  whose  work  in  embryology  is  often  con- 
sidered as  important  as  his  physiological  discovery,  continued  the 
experimental  work  of  his  teacher,  and  with  the  aid  of  a  simple  lens 
brought  it  up  to  a  point  from  which  little  departure  has  been  possible. 
In  his  Exercitationcs  dc  Gciicratioiie  Animalhim,  he  advanced  a 
theory  of  epigenesis  which  described  development  as  a  process  of 
gradual  differentiation  of  the  primordium  of  the  parents.  He  main- 
tained that  all  the  characteristics  are  produced  in  the  embryological 
development ;  that  they  were  not  there  before.  This  radical  theory, 
anticipated  by  Aristotle,  was  little  entertained  until  revived  by  Wolf 
in  1759,  who  later  abandoned  it  for  the  preformation  theory  of  his 
contemporaries.  The  theory  of  epigenesis  was  not  accepted  again 
until  1827. 

Our  interest  here  is  not  in  Harvey's  theory  of  epigenesis  but  rather 
in  the  biogenetic  aphorism,  Ofiine  vivum  ex  ovo,  which  he  made  pop- 
ular.   The  belief  that  the  ^gg  is  the  common  beginning  of  all  ani- 


260  THE  OPEN    COURT 

mals  (Ovum  esse  primordium  commune  omnibus  anUnalum)  be- 
came basal  to  biology.  Cviriously  enough,  the  first  edition  of  Har- 
vey's Gencratione  AnimaUum  is  provided  with  an  allegorical  fron- 
tispiece embodying  this  idea  of  the  origin  of  life  from  the  ovum.'* 
It  represents  Jupiter  opening  a  round  box  or  egg  bearing  the  in- 
scription "ex  ovo  omnia" :  from  the  box  issue  all  forms  of  life,  in- 
cluding man. 

In  direct  opposition  to  Harvey,  Swammerdam  and  Malpighi  ex- 
pounded a  theory  of  "evolution"  which  was  later  called  the  theory  of 
preformation  or  encasement  (emhoitement) .  This  use  of  the  word 
evolution  in  its  true  etymological  meaning  of  unrolling  or  unfolding 
to  describe  a  supposed  method  of  organic  development  must  not  be 
confused  with  the  later  biological  and  metaphysical  usage  of  the 
word.  Preformation  taught  that  the  pre-existence  and  predelinea- 
tion  of  the  organs  of  the  chick,  for  example,  are  present  in  the  egg 
before  incubation :  there  is  no  differentiation  during  the  embryonic 
stage,  but  only  an  unfolding  of  what  was  already  there."'  The  phe- 
nomenon of  growth  is  simply  an  expansion  and  enlargement  by  con- 
tinuous development  of  the  enfolded  embryo.  The  homunculus  was 
thought  to  have  been  discovered  at  last,  with  its  head  bowed  and 
its  limbs  flexed.  Each  ovum  contained  an  animalcule,  a  miniature 
of  the  adult,  complete  in  every  detail,  and  re([uiring  only  nourish- 
ment to  reach  maturity.  It  was  the  old  problem  of  being  and  be- 
coming, and  Heraclitus  was  denied.  "There  is  no  such  thing  as 
becoming,"  wrote  Haller  in  his  Elements  of  Physiology.  "No  part 
was  formed  before  another ;  all  were  created  at  the  same  time  .  .  . 
The  caterpillar,  for  instance,  contained  in  itself  the  pupa,  and  the 
pupa  the  butterfly,  therefore  the  butterfly  w^as  already  present,  as 
such,  in  the  caterpillar." 

But  there  was  another  aspect  to  Preformation  which  was  des- 

-^It  must  he  remembered  that  the  ovum  studied  and  referred  to  was  chiefly 
that  of  a  chick.  The  mammahan  ovum  was  not  discovered  until  1827  by  Ernst 
von  Baer.  For  a  long  time  it  was  believed  that  the  female  sexual  organ  se- 
creted a  fluid  called  "testes  muliebres" ;  the  term  ovarian  was  invented  by 
Stensen  in  1667.  In  jthe  same  year  Regaier  de  Graff  published  a  description  of 
the  follicles  which  bear  his  name  (Graffian  follicles)  and  thought  that  these 
follicles  were  the  ova.  Von  Baer  showed  that  the  Graffian  follicles  were  not 
the  ova.  and  that  the  ovum  was  a  minute  body  imbedded  in  the  follicular 
epithelium. 

•"'Malpighi's  belief  in  this  matter,  which  materially  affected  the  theory 
of  preformation,  was  founded  upon  an  unfortunate  error.  Apparently  some  of 
the  eggs  that  he  studied  were  incubated,  for  he  thought  he  saw  slight  traces 
of  the  future  organism  in  the  egg. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  THEORY  OF  PREFORMATION  261 

tilled  to  be  even  more  significant.  This  was  the  tlieory  of  emhoitc- 
uicnt,  which  maintained  that  the  germs  of  all  coming  generations 
were  accounted  for  on  the  supposition  that  the  human  ovum  con- 
tained nrmberless  other  ova,  each  containing  an  individual  in  minia- 
tures, and  within  these  others,  like  a  nest  of  Chinese  boxes.  'Tn 
the  extension  of  this  box-within-box  doctrine  ( EinscJiachtcIinigs- 
Ichre)  the  distinguished  physiologist  Haller  calculated  that  God 
created  together,  6.000  years  ago,  on  the  sixth  dav  of  his  creatorial 
labors,  the  germs  of  200,000,000,000  men,  and  ingeniously  packed 
them  in  the  ovaries  of  our  venerable  Mother  Eve.'"'"* 

Humorous  as  this  may  seem,  it  was  one  of  the  first  expressions 
of  the  theory  of  the  continuity  of  germ  plasm  that  had  in  Arthur 
Weismann  its  latest  exponent.  In  answer  to  the  doctrine  of  ac- 
c|uired  characteristics  advanced  by  Darwin  and  Lamarck,  Weismann 
said  that  the  germ  plasm  alone  is  inherited.  This  is  accomplished 
by  the  reproduction  of  germ  tissue  from  generation  to  generation, 
everything  being  present  at  conception.  This  sounds  like  a  modern 
theory  of  preformation,  and  the  continuity  of  the  human  race  from 
the  seed  of  Adam  has  its  counterpart  in  the  study  of  the  heredity  of 
such  families  as  the  Jukes,  Kallicacks,  and  the  Kdwards. 

Twenty  years  after  Harvey  had  published  his  book,  Ludwig  Ham, 
a  medical  student  in  Leyden,  discovered  the  spermatozoon,"  and 
thereby  divided  the  preformationists  into  two  groups.  Ham  showed 
these  little  bodies  to  his  teacher,  Leeuwenhoek,  who  began  to  study 
them  with  such  zeal  and  enthusiasm  that  he  postponed  the  further 
study  of  eggs  for  a  long  time,  declaring  that  the  spermatozoa  were 
the  essential  germs,  and  that  in  them  were  the  beginnings  of  fu- 
ture souls.  Carried  on  by  his  fancy,  he  thought  he  saw  the  com- 
plete outline  of  both  the  maternal  and  paternal  individuals  in  the 
spermatozoa,  and  went  so  far  as  to  make  sketches  of  them.    They 

^Biology,  General  and  Medical.  By  McFarland.  Erasmus  Darwin  ridiculed 
his  scholastic  element  in  his  Zoonom'ia.  "These  embryons  .  .  .  must  possess 
a  greater  degree  of  minuteness  than  that  which  was  ascribed  to  the  devils 
who  tempted  St.  Anthony,  of  whom  20,000  were  said  to  have  been  able  to 
dance  a  saraband  on  the  point  of  a  needle  without  in  the  least  incommoding 
each  other. 

"Most  books  written  about  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  state 
that  it  was  Leeuwenhoek  who  discovered  the  spermatozoon  instead  of  Ham 
(also  spelled  Hamm,  Hamen,  and  Hammen.)  Latta  makes  this  error  and  so 
does  Osborn  in  his  book  From  the  Greeks  to  Darn'in.  He  also  credits  Degraff 
with  the  discovery  of  the  ovum  in  1678.  This  misunderstanding  may  be  due 
to  the  fact  that  it  was  Leeuwenhoek  who  announced  the  discovery  of  the 
spermatozoon  to  the  Royal  Society  in  London  in  a  letter  dated  November  1677. 


262  THE  OPEN    COURT 

were  made  out  to  be  minute  animals  of  both  sexes,  capable  of  co- 
ition. Thus  Leeuwenhoek,  together  with  Hartsoeker,^  who  main- 
tained that  the  ovum  was  merely  a  nidus  in  which  the  sperm  de- 
veloped, began  a  movement  contending  that  the  sperm  rather  than 
the  ovum  was  the  miniature  of  the  human  foetus. 

The  Ovists  took  the  matter  with  comparative  indifference.  Some 
believed  that  the  spermatozoon  was  a  parasitical  animalcule,^  others 
believed  that  it  possessed  simply  a  stimulating  force  which  helped 
the  growth  of  the  egg.  Both  factions  agreed,  however,  that  the 
whole  race  was  contained  in  a  seed,  and  that  there  was  some  contact 
between  the  sperm  and  the  ovum.^^ 

It  now  became  a  contest  between  the  Spermatists  and  the  Ovists 
to  prove  whether  the  future  was  contained  in  the  ovum  or  in  the 
sperm,  whether  the  human  race  was  originally  put  in  Adam  or  in 
Eve.  Leibniz,  who  was  at  first  an  Ovist,  now  sided  with  their  op- 
ponents in  believing  that  the  origin  of  the  human  race  lay  in  the 
sperm.  He  was  as  impressed  with  the  idea  of  continuity  as  he  was 
with  the  idea  of  uninterrupted  development  within  the  germ.  But 
he  did  not  agree  with  Swammerdam  who  predicted  that  the  end  of 
the  human  race  would  take  place  when  the  last  germ  of  this  miracu- 
lous series  had  been  unfolded  ;  he  believed  that  the  germ  was  immor- 
tal because  it  did  not  contain  within  it  the  seeds  of  destruction.  Only 
an  act  of  God  could  destroy  it. 

In  summing  up  the  theory  of  preformation,  which  was  accepted 

as  the  biological  dogma  of  Leibniz'  time,  we  find  that  it  consisted  of 

five  main  points: 

L     That   all   life   is   biogenetic  and   all   generation   comes 
from  pre-existing  germs. 

2.  That  all  life  was  created  and  predelineated  by  God  in 
the  beginning. 

3.  That    encasement    {cmhoitement)    gave    continuity   to 
life. 

•^Hartsoeker,  qui  voyait  dans  I'animalcule  la  larve  humaine,  plaga  tout 
I'homme  dans  sa  tete ;  il  reserva  la  queue  pour  la  cordon  ombilical.  Sa  meta- 
morphose s'operait  dans  la  cicatricule,  qui,  selon  lui,  n'etait  qu'une  cellule 
unique  de  la  capacite  du  zoosperme.  Archives  du  Museitiii  d'Hisfoire  Nafurelle 
Paris  1839.    Tome  IV,  p.  2,50. 

i^The  name  spermatozoa  itself  (seed  plus  animal)  was  chosen  to  indicate 
that  it  was  an  internal  parasite  of  the  sperm. 

If^Long  before  Aristotle,  the  principle  of  syngenesis,  or  formation  of 
the  embryo  by  the  union  of  elements  from  both  the  parents,  was  rightly  un- 
derstood by  Empedocles. 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF  THE  THEORY  OF  PREFORMATION  263 

4.  That  development  was  from  within,  precluding  all  in- 
fluence or  change  from  without. 

5.  That  these  germs  were  immortal. 

Let  us  now  see  how  this  theory  influenced  Leibniz. 

In  the  Moiiodology  we  are  told  that  the  monad  is  a  simple  sub- 
stance which  enters  into  compounds.  By  simple  he  means  indivisi- 
ble and  without  parts ;  by  compounds  he  means  bodies.  The  en- 
tire universe  is  composed  of  monads,  either  simple  or  in  com- 
pounds. Determined  in  no  way  from  without,  the  monad  experi- 
ences all  its  changes  from  its  own  inner  necessity,  which  is  one  of 
unfoldment  or  evolution. 

I  assume  also  as  admitted  that  every  created  being,  and  conse- 
quently the  created  iMonad,  is  subject  to  change,  and,  further,  that 
this  change  is  continuous  in  each. 

It  follows  from  what  has  just  been  said,  that  the  natural  changes 
of  the  ^lonads  come  from  an  internal  principle,  since  an  external 
cause  can  have  no  influence  upon  their  inner  being.  ^^ 

The  life  and  individual  history  of  the  monad  is  the  result  of  re- 
alizing what  is  latent  and  inherent  within  the  monad.  The  invisible  is 
made  visible,  and  implicit  explicit,  the  potential  actual,  and  the  un- 
conscious conscious. 

.  .  .  every  present  state  of  a  simple  substance  is  naturally  a  con- 
sequence of  its  preceeding  state,  in  such  a  way  that  its  present  is 
big  with  its  future. ^- 

Each    monad    contains    the    principle    of    perfection    within    itself, 
and  also  the  degree  to  which  it  may  achieve. 

And  this  reason  can  be  found  only  in  the  fitness  or  in  the  de- 
gree of  perfection  that  these  w^orlds  possess,  since  each  possible 
thing  has  the  right  to  aspire  to  existence  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  perfection  it  contains  in  germ.^^ 

The  scale  or  gradation  of  monads  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest 
is  characterized  by  a  degree  of  perception.  Both  inanimate  objects 
and  plant  life  possess  an  unconscious  perception  ;  the  perception  of 
the  stone,  resembling  sleep  in  human  life,  is  obscure  and  confused, 
while  that  of  a  plant  is  such  that  it  reminds  us  of  a  comatose  state. 
Animal  life  is  marked  by  a  clearer  perception  accompanied  by  mem- 
ory, which  is  called  conscious  perception.  In  man  this  perception 
or  reflective  knowledge  is  self-conscious ;  it  is  apperception,  to  use 
Leibniz'  term.    These  degrees  of  perception  are  accompanied  by  a 

l^.MoiiadoIogy,  sections  10  and  11. 
^-Ibid,  section  22. 
^^Monadology,  section  54. 


264  THE  OPEN    COURT 

corresponding  degree  of  appetition,  unconscious  impulse,  instinctive 
desire,  and  will. 

Concerning  the  origin  of  life — and  "there  is  nothing  fallow,  noth- 
ing sterile,  nothing  dead  in  the  universe" — Leibniz  adopts  the  theory 
of  preformation. 

Philosophers  have  been  much  perplexed  about  the  origin  of  forms, 
entelechies,  or  souls ;  but  nowadays  it  has  become  known,  through 
careful  studies  of  plants,  insects,  and  animals,  that  the  organic 
bodies  of  nature  are  never  products  of  chaos  or  putrefaction,  but 
always  come  from  seeds,  in  which  there  was  undoubtedly  some 
preformation  ;  and  it  is  held  that  not  only  was  the  organic  body  al- 
readv  there  before  conception,  but  also  a  soul  in  this  body,  and,  in 
short,  the  animal  itself  ;  and  that  by  means  of  conception  this  ani- 
mal has  merely  been  prepared  for  the  great  transformation  involved 
in  its  becoming  an  animal  of  another  kind.  Something  like  this  is 
indeed  seen  apart  from  birth  (generation) ,  as  when  worms  become 
flies  and  caterpillars  become  butterflies.^'* 

In  his  Principles  of  Nature  and  Grace,  which  is  supposed  to  be 
something  of  an  earlier  version  of  the  Monadology,  Leibniz  says 
about  the  same  thing: 

^lodern  research  has  taught  us,  and  reason  confirms  it,  that  the 
living  beings  whose  organs  are  known  to  us,  that  is  to  say,  plants  and 
animals,  do  not  come  from  putrefaction  or  chaos,  as  the  ancients 
thought,  but  from  preformed  seeds,  and  consequently  from  the 
transformation  of  pre-existing  living  beings.  In  the  seed  of  large 
animals  there  are  animalcules  which  by  means  of  conception  ob- 
tain a  new  outward  form,  which  they  make  their  own  and  which 
enables  them  to  grow  and  become  larger  so  as  to  pass  to  a  great 
theatre  and  to  propagate  the  large  animal.  It  is  true  that  the  souls  of 
human  spermatic  animals  are  not  rational,  and  that  they  become 
so  only  when  conception  gives  to  these  animals  human  nature.  ^-^ 

In  the  Preface  to  the  Thcodicce,  Leibniz  acknowledges  this  again: 

God  has  preformed  things,  so  that  new  organisms  are  nothing  but 
a  mechanical  consequence  of  a  preceding  organic  constitution :  as 
when  butterflies  come  from  silkworms,  which  M.  Swammerdam  has 
shown  to  be  merely  a  process  of  development. 

Consistent  with  this  theory,  Leibniz  denies  the  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis which  has  been  sustained  by  certain  philosophers.  He 
writes : 

There  is  no  such  passing.  And  here  the  transformations  noted 
by  MM.  Swammerdam,  Malpighi,  and  Leeuwenhoek,  who  are  among 
the  most  excellent  observers  of  our  time,  have  come  to  my  aid  and 

^^Monadology,  section  74. 

^''Principles  of  Nature  and  Grace,  pp.  6 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF  THE  THEORY  OF   PREFORMATION  265 

have  led  me  the  more  readily  to  admit  that  no  animal  nor  any  other 
organic  substance  comes  into  existence  at  the  time  at  which  we 
think  it  does,  and  that  its  apparent  generation  is  only  a  development 
and  a  kind  of  growth.  I  have  noticed  also  that  the  author  of  the 
Recherche  de  la  Verite,i''  M.  Regis,  M.  Hartsoeker,  and  other  able 
men  have  not  been  very  far  from  this  opinion. i'^ 

He  repeats  this  idea  in  the  same  essay : 

And  thus,  since  an  animal  has  no  first  birth  or  entirely  new  be- 
getting (generation)  it  follows  that  it  will  have  no  final  extinction 
or  complete  death,  in  the  strict  metaphysical  sense,  and  that  conse- 
quently, in  place  of  the  transmigration  of  souls,  there  is  nothing  but 
a  transformation  of  one  and  the  same  animal,  according  as  its  or- 
gans are  difi^erently  enfolded  and  more  or  less  developed. ^'^ 

Death  is  only  a  dissociation  of  the  body,  the  composite  or  com- 
pound, as  Leibniz  called  it,  and  not  the  annihilation  of  the  monad 
or  soul ;  mirroring  the  universe,  its  activity  is  never  completely  in- 
terrupted :  death  is  merely  a  slumber,  a  state  in  which  perceptions 
become  temporarily  confused,  waiting  again  to  be  "re-developed" 
by  another  awakening  or  so-called  birth.  It  is  impossible  to  create 
monads  or  destroy  those  already  existing. 

What  surprises  me  is  that,  having  recognized  that  the  animal  can 
only  have  its  origin  with  the  origin  of  the  world,  and  that  generation 
only  affects  change  and  development,  we  have  not  also  recognized 
that  the  animal  must  endure  while  the  world  endures,  and  that 
death  is  only  a  diminution,  and  envelopment,  not  extinction. ^^ 
He  seeks  to  support  the  immortality  of  the  monad  by  asserting  that 
it  is  physically  impossible  even  for  fire,  our  most  destructive  agent, 
to  annihilate  completely  the  monad. 

i6Malebranche  also  seems  to  have  believed  in  Preformation:  "Theo- 
dore. We  see  quite  well,  that,  if  we  do  not  wish  to  have  recourse  to  an  extra- 
ordinary Providence,  we  are  bound  to  believe  that  the  germ  of  a  plant  contains 
in  miniature  the  plant  which  it  engenders,  and  that  the  animal  contams  in  its 
organs  the  creature  that  will  come  out  of  it.  We  understand  even  that  it  is 
necessary  that  every  seed  should  contain  the  whole  species  which  it  can  pro- 
duce, that  every  grain  of  corn,  for  example,  contains  in  miniature  the  ear 
which  it  will  eventually  produce,  every  grain  of  which  in  turn  contains  the  ear, 
all  the  grains  of  which  again  can  always  be  just  as  fruitful  as  those  of  the 
first  ear.  .  .  .  God  was  able  to  preform  within  a  single  bee  all  those  bees 
which  were  to  come  out  of  it,  and  to  adjust  the  simple  laws  of  the  communi- 
cation of  movement  in  such  a  wise  manner  to  the  design  which  He  had  of 
making  them  increase  insensibly  and  of  producing  them  each  year  that  their 
species  could  never  die  out."  Dialogues  on  Metaphysics  and  on  Religion.  Tenth 
Dialogue. 

I'lVrzc  System  of  the  Nature  of  Substance.    Paragraph  6. 

^^Ibid.,  paragraph  7. 

isprom  a  letter  to  the  Electress  Sophia  of  Hanover,  dated  6  Feb- 
ruary, 1706. 


266  THE  OPEN    COURT 

As  the  minuteness  of  organic  bodies  may  be  infinite  (which  may 
be  seen  from  the  fact  that  their  seeds,  enclosed  in  one  another, 
contain  enfolded  a  continual  succession  of  organized  and  animate 
bodies),  it  is  easily  seen  that  even  fire,  which  is  the  most  penetrat- 
ing and  violent  agent,  will  not  destroy  an  animal,  since  it  will  at 
most  reduce  it  to  such  smallness  that  fire  can  no  longer  act  upon  it.^o 

In  answer  to  Locke's  statement  that  nothing  can  exist  in  the  mind 
which  was  not  first  in  the  senses,  Leibniz  substitutes  the  dictum, 
nothing  can  exist  in  the  senses  which  was  not  first  in  the  mind.  Since 
nothing  can  be  materially  gained  from  without,  the  monad  can 
neither  increase  nor  diminish  its  content  except  in  obedience  to  its 
preformed  arrangement.  The  principle  of  Pre-established  Harmony 
accounts  for  the  harmonious  relation  between  the  monads,  since  it 
was  prearranged  that  a  change  in  one  monad  would  be  accompanied 
bv  an  adjustment  in  the  others.  To  these  death-denied  monads  com- 
merce and  intercourse  are  impossible,  for  they  have  no  windows 
through  which  anything  can  come  in  or  go  out.  The  external  world 
can  serve  only  as  a  stimulus  to  quicken  and  awaken  what  is  already 
immanent  in  the  monad. 

The  qualitative  internal  principle  which  binds  the  part  and  the 
whole  to  each  other,  consists  of  two  elements,  perception  and  ap- 
petition.  The  perception  of  each  monad,  which  is  a  unity  as  w^ell  as  a 
unit,  determines  objectively  its  place  in  the  scale  of  monads,  and  in- 
ternally reflects  within  itself  the  Avhole  system,  giving  us  the  manifold 
in  unity.  The  scale  itself  is  not  due  to  an  arrangement  or  design 
from  without,  but  is  due,  rather,  to  the  inner  development  of  the 
procreative  monads  themselves.  The  idea  of  a  scale  most  likely 
came  from  Aristotle,  yet  the  inner  perception  reflecting  the  whole 
system  came  from  this  theory  of  generation  which  insisted  that 
everything  was  a  part  of  the  series  of  a  preformed  scheme. 

The  life  of  the  monad,  written  as  if  with  invisible  ink,  on  a  scroll 
miraculously  wo'.ind,  a  reel  that  needs  but  to  be  unrolled,  is  expressed 
bv  appetition.  Appetition  accounts  for  the  change  within  the  monad 
according  to  a  preformed  design ;  its  method  of  producing  change 
entirely  from  within  according  to  an  internal  preformed  principle 
is  obvious,  and  shows  more  clearly  than  the  nature  of  perception, 
the  direct  application  of  preformation  to  the  monad.  The  following 
quotation  sums  up  both  influences : 

I  hold  that  the  souls  which  are  to  become  some  day  the  souls  of 
men  existed  already  in  the  seed,  that  they  have  existed  always  in 
-^Monadology.    Paragraphs  72  and  7Z,  first  draft. 


THE   INFLUENCE  OF  THE  THEORY  OF  PREFORMATION 


267 


organized  form  in  the  ancestor,  back  to  Adam,  that  is  to  say,  to  the 
beginning  of  things. 

Thus  we  find  that  the  five  main  points  of  Leibniz'  metaphysics  are : 

1.  That  the  monad,  which  is  the  unit  of  substance,  con- 
sists of  activity  or  Hfe. 

2.  That  everything  was  prearranged  by  God    (expressed  by 
his  principle  of  Pre-estabHshed  Harmony).  _ 

3.  That  the  monads  comprise  a  continuous  series  graded 
according   to   their   perception. 

4.  That  all  development  and  expression  moves  in  accord- 
ance with  an  internal  principle,  which  contains  the 
principle  of  perfection. 

5.  That  the  monads  are  immortal. 

The  direct  relation  and  indeljtness  of  his  metaphysics  to  the  theory 
of  preformation  should  now  be  clear:  the  five  main  elements  of  the 
one  corresponding  to  those  of  the  other  to  a  marked  degree.  By  the 
judicious  application  of  this  embryological  concept,  by  which  all  pos- 
sible development  was  made  immanent  within  the  monad,  Leibniz 
was  able  to  solve  the  baffling  problem  of  substance,  preserving  both 
the  multiplicity  and  the  unity  apparent  in  the  universe. 

^Moreover,  the  monads,  now  completely  endowed  with  both  a 
molecular  nature  and  a  cosmic  perspective  and  teeming  with  a  pre- 
destined future,  enabled  Leibniz  to  evolve  an  ethics  and  an  original 
epistemology,  as  well  as  to  effect  a  harmonious  resolution  of  the 
diametrically  opposed  features  of  substance,  which  had  thus  far 
been  the  stumbling  stone  of  metaphysics. 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY   OF   JESUS 

CLARENCE    ERICKSON 


MANY  and  of  astonishing  variety  have  been  the  interpretations 
placed  upon  the  semi-mythical  personality  and  teachings  of 
Jesus,  as  presented  in  the  Books  of  the  New  Testament.  Most  of 
these  interpretations  of  the  words  of  the  reputed  founder  of  Christ- 
ianity have  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  one  another.  Some 
of  them  are  exceedingly  far-fetched  and  frankly  amusing. 

Witness  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  that  prophet  of  the  spirit  of 
modern  business,  Bruce  Barton,  to  transmogrify  Jesus  into  a  hand- 
shaking, go-getting  club  member.  An  astonishing  miracle  of  scrip- 
tural exegesis  indeed,  to  discover  a  spiritual  likeness  between  the 
guileless  other-worldliness  of  Jesus  and  Business — with  its  motive  of 
profit  shamelessly  betraying  itself  beneath  its  too-transparent  eu- 
phemism,  "Service"! 

Amazing  in  number  and  diversity  are  the  religious,  social,  and 
ethical  movements  that  have  claimed  possession  of  the  only  true 
insight  into  Jesus'  message.  The  Ana-baptists,  the  Mormons,  the 
Christian-Socialists,  the  Salvation  Army,  the  Dukhobors,  the  Tol- 
stoyan  Anarchists,  are  only  a  few  of  the  hundreds  of  cults  having 
a  social  significance  that  have  arisen  since  the  Reformation  intro- 
duced freedom  of  scriptural  interpretation. 

All  of  the  Western  nations,  with  the  exception  of  Russia,  call 
themselves  Christian,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  there  are  great  social, 
political,  and  economic  differences  among  them.  It  is  interesting  to 
see  how  proposed  changes  of  any  sort  in  countries  having  the  most 
dissimilar   institutions,   uniformly   draw   the   same   kind   of   protest 


THE  SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY  OF    JESUS  269 

from  the  pulpit — the  proposed  reforms  are  un- Christian,  and  the 
existing  state  of  things  is  the  only  Christian  one.  The  divine  right 
of  kings,  the  institution  of  slavery,  are  but  two  examples  drawn 
from  history  of  decaying  social  institutions  seeking  justification  in 
religion.  Even  to-day,  in  our  own  America,  we  hear  no  end  of  argu- 
ments on  prohibition,  capital  punishment,  marriage  and  divorce 
problems,  claiming  to  be  based  on  the  Scriptures  and  the  teachings 
of  Jesus. 

What  is  the  reason  for  this  Babel  of  conflicting  social  interpreta- 
tions of  the  saying  of  Jesrs?  The  answer  is  that  Jesus  had  no 
consciously-held  social  philosophy.  His  teachings  and  sayings,  scat- 
tered through  the  four  Gospels,  do  not  form  a  finished,  rounded- 
out  social  program.  They  consist  rather  of  ethical  commandments 
delivered  to  the  individual,  not  to  society  as  a  whole.  A  social  phi- 
losophy representing  the  teachings  of  Jesus  does  not  exist  ready- 
made  from  the  hand  of  the  Master  Himself.  The  various  teachings, 
addressed  to  the  individual  only,  must  be  interpreted  and  scanned 
for  their  social  implications.  Interpretations  of  sacred  writings  usu- 
ally take  on  a  form  calculated  to  fit  in  with  the  interests  and  pre- 
conceived notions  of  the  interpreter.  Hence,  it  is  not  strange  that 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  have  been  aligned  with  so  many  conflicting 
social  philosophies.  Allegorical  writings  are  usually  sufficiently 
vague  to  allow  several  conflicting  interpretations  to  be  drawn  from 
them.  The  words  of  Jesus  have  been  treated  as  allegories,  and 
have  thus  been  made  the  divine  props  of  a  great  diversity  of  so- 
cial institutions  and  social  movements. 

Properly  speaking,  it  is  misleading  to  speak  of  the  social  philo- 
sophy of  Jesus.  Jesus  was  not  a  sociologist,  but  a  teacher  of  indi- 
vidual morality.  He  lacked  entirely,  or  else  ignored,  the  conception 
of  the  individual  man  being  a  part  of  an  organic  whole.  Society,  to 
which  he  has  clearly  defined  obligations.  Morality,  to  Jesus,  was  not 
the  subordination  of  the  wayward  individual  to  the  collective  good. 
The  ethics  of  Jesus  is  almost  entirely  individualistic  in  tone.  It 
appeals  to  the  man,  not  as  a  member  of  a  social  body,  but  as  an 
individual  morally  responsible  only  to  his  Maker,  his  God.  The  in- 
dividual conscience,  the  God-given  light  wnthin,  was  the  guide  to 
the  morally  right  action  with  Jesus.  The  conception  of  moralitv  as 
being   founded  on  social   necessity  or  utility  was   foreign  to  Him 

Hence,    lesus  was   not  concerned   with   the  establishment  of  an 


270  THE  OPEN    COURT 

ideal  society,  directly  at  least.  He  was  more  or  less  indifferent  to 
the  condition  of  earthly  institutions.  His  great  concern  was  the 
salvation  of  the  individual  soul.  The  object  of  being  good  was  to 
enter  the  kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  other-worldliness  of  Jesus, 
then,  prevented  His  having  a  conscious  social  philosophy,  designed 
towards  bettering  conditions  as  they  existed  on  this  earth. 

That  Jesus  had  no  desire  to  institute  any  social  or  political  re- 
forms, that  he  was  not  a  revolutionist  and  a  social  agitator  as  has 
sometimes  been  maintained  by  radicals  seeking  to  set  up  Jesus 
as  one  of  their  number,  is  proved  by  His  refusal  to  allow  the  priests 
and  scribes  to  draw  forth  any  seditious  utterances  from  Him.  "  Ts 
it  lawful  for  us  to  give  tribute  unto  Caesar,  or  no?""  asked  one 
of  the  scribes.  Jesus  answered,  "  'Shew  me  a  penny.  Whose  image 
and  superscription  hath  it?'  they  answered  and  said  'Caesar's.'  And 
he  said  unto  them,  'Render  therefore  unto  Caesar  the  things  which 
be  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  which  be  God's'."  (Luke 
20:22.) 

Jesus  did  not  seek  to  reform  man  from  without,  by  reforming  his 
social,  economic,  and  political  institutions.  His  method  was  to  re- 
form the  individual  man  from  within.  H  society  ever  were  to  be 
bettered,  thought  Jesus,  the  change  was  to  be  brought  about  from 
within,  by  the  moral  regeneration  of  the  separate  individuals  of 
which  society  is  composed. 

Jesus,  instead  of  offering  a  direct  remedy  to  cure  the  injustices 
and  abuses  of  human  society,  gave  merely  a  balm  to  assuage  the 
pain  of  the  victims  of  the  cruelly  functioning  social  machinery.  He 
offered  consolation  to  the  unsuccessful  and  lowly  in  such  sayings 
as  "Blessed  be  ye  poor:  for  yours  is  the  kingdom  of  God.  Blessed 
are  ye  that  hunger  now :  for  ye  shall  be  filled.  Blessed  are  ye  that 
weep  now :  for  ye  shall  laugh.  .  .  .  But  woe  unto  you  that  are  rich ! 
for  ye  have  received  your  consolation.  Woe  unto  you  that  are  full ! 
for  ye  shall  hunger.  Woe  unto  you  that  laugh  now !  For  ye  shall 
mourn  and  weep."   (Luke  6:20.) 

This  implies  that  those  who  are  wretched  in  this  life  will  be 
happy  in  Heaven,  and  that  those  who  are  happy  now  will  suffer  in 
the  hereafter.  The  future  state  is  to  be  a  reversal  of  the  mundane 
state.  The  happy  and  the  miserable  will  exchange  places.  It  is  easy 
to  see  how  the  asceticism  of  medieval,  and  some  forms  of  modern, 
Christianity  could   have   had  one   root  at  least   in   such   teachings. 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY   OF    JESUS  271 

Happiness  in  this  worlfl  virtually  carried  with  it  a  penalty  in  the 
hereafter  ;  hence,  suffering  and  misery  were  deliberately  cultivated 
for  future  blessedness. 

Addressed,  then,  to  the  individual,  and  not  to  society,  and  de- 
signed to  console  and  give  comfort  to  the  former  rather  than  to 
reconstruct  the  latter,  the  teachings  of  Jesus  can  hardly  be  said 
to  constitute  a  consciously-held  social  philosophy.  His  teachings  are 
a  set  of  commandments  that  the  individual  must  follow  to  win  the 
blessing  of  God,  and  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  Heaven. 

But  while  Jesus  cannot  be  said  to  have  had  a  conscious  social  phi- 
losophy. His  various  teachings  are  full  of  social  implications.  If 
these  teachings  were  universally  accepted  by  all  men,  society  would 
undergo  a  radical  transformation.  The  social  philosophy  of  Jesus, 
then,  for  our  purpose,  will  consist  of  the  hidden  social  consequences 
latent,  but  unexpressed,  in  His  message  to  the  individual. 

As  before  intimated,  various  attempts  have  been  made  to  con- 
struct a  complete  social  philosophy  out  of  the  sayings  of  Jesus. 
But  almost  invariably  these  constructions  have  been  made  by  the 
partisans  of  seme  preconceived  religious  or  social  creed.  Far-fetched 
and  ingenious  distortion  of  the  meaning  of  the  scriptural  texts  ;  the 
taking  of  isolated  passages  out  of  their  context,  thus  destroying 
their  original  meaning ;  and  allegorical  interpretation  are  some  of 
the  means  by  which  the  sayings  of  Jesus  have  been  made  to  fit  such 
a  large  and  conflicting  variety  of  movements  and  cults. 

A  disinterested  tracing  of  the  social  implications  in  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus,  up  to  the  present  day,  has  scarcely  been  made.  All 
the  existing  social  interpretations  have  been  biassed  by  special  in- 
terest on  the  part  of  the  interpreters.  Even  the  official  interpretations 
of  the  Church  itself,  during  the  early  history  of  Christianity,  and 
the  Middle  Ages  up  to  the  time  when  the  Reformation  gave  the 
individual  the  right  of  private  interpretation,  were  bent  to  the  so- 
cial and  political  requirements  of  the  particular  time  in  which  thev 
were  made.  All  too  often  the  Christian  religion  became  a  super- 
natural sanction  for  all  sorts  of  injustices  and  abuses  on  the  part  of 
rulers,  feudal  barons,  and  church  dignitaries. 

This  paper,  as  far  as  is  humanly  possible,  will  be  a  disinterested 
study  and  research  into  the  inner  sociological  meanings  of  the  mes- 
sage of  Jesus.  No  attempt  will  be  made  to  make  the  teachings 
of  Jesus  conform  to  any  particular  creed,  whether  religious,  eco- 


1/1  THE  OPEN    COURT 

nomic,  political,  or  ethical,  of  the  present  time.  The  words  of  the 
Scriptures  will  be  taken  at  their  face  value,  and  not  treated  as  so 
many  cryptograms  in  which  the  true  meaning  of  Jesus  is  supposed 
to  be  hidden.  The  tendency  toward  excessive  reading  between  the 
lines  when  interpreting  the  Bible  has  ever  been  dictated  by  precon- 
ceived interests.  Ingenious  interpreters  have  ever  made  the  sa- 
cred texts  mean  whatever  they  personally  wished  them  to  mean,  or 
whatever  their  sect  or  cult  wished  them  to  mean.  The  sayings  of 
Jesus  in  the  New  Testament  will  be  the  sole  source  of  material  used, 
so  that  no  ideas  foreign  to  the  mind  of  Jesus  will  be  allowed  to  creep 
in. 

Our  plan  of  procedure  will  be  to  take  the  various  teachings  and 
sayings  of  Jesus,  and  show  what  sort  of  a  social  order  would  result 
if  every  individual  took  these  teachings  into  his  heart  and  actually 
lived  them.  First  we  shall  examine  our  present  society  and  show 
the  ways  in  which  it  runs  counter  to  the  social  tendencies  inherent 
in  the  message  of  Jesus.  And  then  we  shall  give  a  brief  sketch  of 
the  truly  Christian  society,  in  which  every  person  puts  the  princi- 
ples of  Jesus  into  practice. 

II 

This  is  an  era  of  the  deification  of  business  and  the  business 
man.  Some  years  ago,  a  prominent  business  man,  in  an  interview 
published  in  one  of  our  leading  chains  of  newspapers,  was  asked 
to  set  forth  his  ideas  as  to  the  nature  of  God.  He  said  that  to  him 
God  was  Business,  with  its  spirit  of  mutual  helpfulness  and  service! 
This  calls  to  mind  Francis  Bacon's  Essay  of  Superstition,  in  which 
he  says,  "It  were  better  to  have  no  opinion  of  God  at  all,  than  such 
an  opinion  as  is  unworthy  of  him.  For  the  one  is  unbelief,  the 
other  is  contumely :  and  certainly  superstition  is  the  reproach  of 
the  Deity." 

But  however  our  religious  susceptibilities  (if  we  have  any  in 
this  advanced  age)  may  be  shocked  by  such  an  arrant  piece  of  ir- 
reverence, the  fact  remains  that  to-day  the  business  man  gets  the 
largest  share  of  the  material  goods  of  life,  and  all  too  often  the 
spiritual  goods  as  well — however  unable  to  appreciate  them  he 
mav  be. 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY  OF    JESUS  273 

The  attitude  of  Jesus  towards  business  is  unmistakable.  Any 
attempt  to  prove  that  business  is  Christian,  or  based  on  Christian 
principles,  is  a  most  transparent  bit  of  sophistry.  Every  one  must 
be  familiar  with  the  story  of  Jesus  and  the  money-changers  who 
turned  the  temple  into  a  place  of  business.  Jesus  chased  the  bankers, 
money-lenders,  merchants,  or  whatever  they  were,  out  of  the  tem- 
ple, saying,  "It  is  written,  My  house  shall  be  called  the  house  of 
prayer;  but  ye  have  made  it  a  den  of  thieves."  (Matthew  21:13.) 
It  has  been  claimed  by  apologists '  for  business  men  that  the  men 
Jesus  expelled  from  the  temple  were  usurers,  but  the  Scripture  is 
quite  clear  on  this  point.  It  is  written  that  Jesus  "cast  out  all  them 
that  sold  and  bought  in  the  temple."  Even  if  we  regard  Jesus'  at- 
tacks as  addressed  only  to  usurers,  and  not  to  business  men  or 
merchants  as  such,  we  must  remember  that  in  the  time  of  Jesus, 
and  indeed  until  only  a  few  centuries  ago,  a  "usurer"  was  not 
only  one  who  took  exorbitant  interest,  but  one  who  charged  any 
rate  of  interest  whatsoever.  All  forms  of  interest  constituted  "us- 
ury" to  Jesus,  so  that  banking  and  investment  in  general  would 
fall  under  the  disapproval  of  Jesus,  and  would  in  His  eyes  be  sim- 
ply robbery.  It  must  be  plainly  apparent  to  any  unprejudiced 
thinker  that  Jesus  regarded  business,  that  institution  of  helpful- 
ness and  "Service",  as  a  form  of  robbery. 

^Modern  business  is  certainly  no  whit  better  than  the  business  of 
the  time  of  Jesus.  That  its  essential  nature  has  remained  un- 
changed is  shown  by  the  character  of  the  teachings  given  students 
in  schools  of  commerce  and  business.  It  is  only  necessary  to  cite  the 
remarks  of  a  professor  in  a  business  school  of  good  repute,  who, 
in  the  first  lecture  of  all  the  various  courses  he  taught,  was  in  the 
habit  of  telling  his  students  that  the  fundamental  principle  of  sound 
business  practice  was  to  regard  every  one  with  whom  one  has  deal- 
ings as  a  potential  "crook".  Do  not  trust  your  own  brother,  do 
nothing  without  all  the  necessary  written  agreements,  receipts,  con- 
tracts, etc.,  are  other  fundamental  axioms  of  modern  business. 
These  rules  exist  only  because  of  the  dishonesty  and  unreliability 
of  men  in  general  in  their  business  dealings.  The  essence  of  suc- 
cessful business  is  the  obedience  to  the  letter  of  the  laws  while  their 
spirit  is  being  violated. 

Imagine  business  men  endeavoring  to  follow  the  Golden  Rule 
in  their  practical   dealings   with  their  customers   and   competitors ! 


274  THE  OPEX    COURT 

"But  I  say  unto  you,  That  ye  resist  not  evil :  but  whosoever  shall 
smite  thee  on  thy  right  cheek,  turn  to  him  the  other  also.  And  if 
any  man  vi^ill  sue  thee  at  the  law,  and  take  away  thy  coat,  let  him 
have  thy  cloke  also."  (Matthew  5:39.)  If  such  precepts  as  these 
were  put  into  practice,  what  a  plight  business  would  be  in ! 

It  is  certain  that  business  as  we  know  it  would  soon  vanish  if  all 
men  were  suddenly  to  accept  and  live  the  philosophy  of  Jesus. 
Accumulation  of  wealth  and  Capital  would  be  impossible.  "Give  to 
him  that  asketh  thee,  and  from  him  that  would  borrow  of  thee  turn 
not  thou  away,"  said  Jesus.  (Matthew  5:42.)  Obviously,  no  man 
could  ever  acquire  any  capital  if  he  practised  such  unbusinesslike 
principles. 

Oi^r  economic  system  depends  for  its  distribution  of  the  goods 
produced  by  agriculture  and  industry  upon  certain  men  having 
in  their  possession  goods  which  they  themselves  have  no  inten- 
tion of  consuming.  These  goods  they  acquire  for  the  purpose  of 
conveniently  passing  them  on  to  the  ultimate  consumers,  or  to  still 
other  distributors.  For  the  service  of  forming  a  chain  linking 
the  consumer  with  the  actual  producer,  these  distributors  get  a  re- 
muneration in  the  form  of  profits.  The  distributors  of  the  ma- 
terial goods  of  society,  and  the  financiers  who  control,  or  try  to 
control,  the  workings  of  the  monetary  exchange  and  credit  sys- 
tem, make  up  the  class  engaged  in  what  is  called  business.  Their 
services  are,  of  course,  very  necessary,  for  without  distribution  and 
a  smoothly  functioning  system  of  monetary  exchange,  production 
would  be  of  no  use  except  to  the  immediate  producers  themselves 
and  their  near-by  neighbors.    Business  is  a  necessary  evil. 

But  while  business  is  thus  socially  necessary  in  a  society  in 
which  the  principle  of  the  division  of  labor  exists,  the  fact  that 
the  men  engaged  in  business  get  their  recompense  for  their  serv- 
ices in  the  form  of  profits  is  the  unfortunate  circumstance  which 
leads  to  the  intolerable  abuses,  chicanery,  veiled  deceit,  and  hy- 
pocrisy characterizing  the  business  of  Christ's  time  as  well  as  our 
own.  The  profit  system  leads  to  an  unjust  reward  for  services 
performed  in  all  but  exceptional  cases.  Either  the  profits  are  far 
too  much,  or  else  far  too  little,  for  the  relative  value  of  the  service 
rendered  to  society.  In  the  mad  scramble  for  large  profits  all  ideals 
and  restraints  are  cast  aside.  The  man  with  high  ideals  of  justice 
and  honesty  entering  business  is  at  such  a  great  disadvantage  in 


THE  SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY  OF   JESUS  275 

competing  with  those  who  act  only  from  motives  of  material  gain, 
that  by  a  process  of  natural  selection  the  idealists  are  weeded  out, 
and  only  the  Pharisees  and  hypocrites  remain.  Thus  it  happens  that 
business  has  its  double-faced  character,  its  hiding  of  the  motive 
of  material  gain  beneath  a  cloak  made  of  such  shibboleths  and 
by-words  as  "Service",  "Integrity",  "Probity",  "Square-dealing". 
It  is  said  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy.  In  reality,  the  business 
which  gives  the  outward  appearance  of  honesty,  while  secretly  vio- 
lating the  spirit  of  honesty,  succeeds  best.  The  proverb  should 
be  amended  to  read.  "The  outward  appearence  of  honesty  is  the 
best  policy."  Jesus  observed  these  same  facts  nineteen-hundred 
years  ago,  hence  his  calling  of  the  business  men  "thieves". 

Jesus  constantly  reproached  the  Pharisees  for  their  hypocrisy,  so 
that  the  word  "pharisaical"  has  come  to  stand  for  the  practice  of 
observing  the  letter  of  the  laws  while  violating  their  spirit.  Busi- 
ness, driven  by  the  main-spring  of  profit,  is  the  example  par  ex- 
cellence of  the  pharisaical  spirit.  Jesus  said  that  no  one  whose 
righteousness  did  not  exceed  that  of  the  Pharisees  could  enter  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven.  Hence,  if  men  became  really  Christian,  ac- 
cording to  the  true  meaning  of  Jesus"  message,  business  as  we 
know  it  would  disappear,  and  society  would  be  vastly  different. 

But  Jesus,  with  His  system  of  individualistic  ethics,  and  His 
attempt  to  better  the  world  only  by  morally  regenerating  the  indi- 
viduals that  make  up  society,  was  mistaken  in  attacking  the  busi- 
ness men  themselves.  Business  is  evil  not  because  the  men  en- 
gaged in  it  are  evil ;  on  the  contrary,  the  men  engaged  in  business 
are  Pharisees  because  business  under  the  profit  system  corrupts 
them  and  makes  them  Pharisees.  The  men  engaged  in  business 
must  become  Pharisees ;  if  they  remain  idealists  they  will  be  at 
such  a  disadvantage  that  natural  selection  will  soon  eliminate  them. 

Social  institutions  cannot  be  reformed  through  the  medium  of  the 
individual  conscience.  Human  nature  is  as  much  a  product  of 
existing  social  institutions  as  institutions  are  a  product  of  hu- 
man nature.  Moral  reformers  are  prone  to  see  only  one  phase  of 
this  double  truth,  and  have  ever  confined  themselves  to  the  hope- 
less task  of  reforming  society  from  within,  through  the  individual 


276  THE  OPEN    COURT 

conscience  alone.  Man  cannot  be  reformed  from  within  alone ; 
he  must  be  reformed  from  without,  through  the  medium  of  the  so- 
cial institutions  which  constitute  the  influences  determining  and 
shaping  his  character. 

Hence,  it  is  futile  to  attempt  to  idealize  business,  or  any  other 
human  institution,  by  threatening  the  individual  business  man  with 
Hell-fire  and  damnation,  for  the  business  man  is  not  a  sinner 
through  free  will,  but  through  the  shaping  influences  of  the  social 
institution  Business.  The  doctrine  of  the  freedom  of  the  will  is  thus 
seen  to  be  partly  responsible  for  the  mistakes  of  moral  reformers 
in  trying  to  bring  about  reforms  by  individual  regeneration  alone. 
Business  men  and  business  can  be  reformed  only  by  ridding  business 
as  an  institution  of  the  moral  canker  that  makes  it  an  evil.  That  can- 
ker is  the  profit  system.  It  is  up  to  would-be  reformers  to  find  a 
satisfactory  substitute  for  the  present  main-spring  of  business,  the 
profit  motive. 

Modern  preachers,  of  course,  do  not  stress  those  teachings  of 
Jesus  which  damn  business  men,  for  the  Church,  both  Protestant 
and  Catholic,  depends  upon  the  support  of  wealthy  contributors. 
It  would  be  poor  diplomacy,  to  say  the  least,  for  a  minister,  with 
the  wealthy  donors  to  his  church  sitting  in  their  pews,  to  quote 
such  sayings  of  Jesus  as  "How  hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God!  For  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go 
through  a  needle's  eye,  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  God."  (Luke  18:24). 

Since  the  Church  is  so  indebted  to  wealthy  patrons  and  business 
men,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  attempts  among  theologians  to  re- 
concile the  practical  ethics  of  business  and  society  with  the  obvious- 
ly conflicting  teachings  of  Jesus.  Some  time  ago,  a  prominent  Ro- 
man Catholic  divine,  noted  for  his  profundity  in  matters  of  church 
doctrine,  advanced  in  a  newspaper  devoting  a  weekly  department 
to  the  views  of  prominent  clergymen,  an  ingenious  ethical  theory 
designed  to  vindicate  to-day's  ethical  practices.  He  put  forth  a 
double  standard  of  ethics.  One  was  based  on  the  old  Mosaic  law, 
and  was  termed  the  "minimum  requirements  of  religion."    To  se- 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY   OF    JESUS  277 

cure  salvation,  and  escape  damnation,  it  was  only  necessary  to  ob- 
serve the  ten  commandments.  The  much  more  advanced  require- 
ments of  Jesus,  according  to  this  authority,  were  not  absolutely 
necessary  for  salvation.  They  represented  a  higher  set  of  religious 
requirements,  the  "maximum  requirements  of  religion".  They 
were  for  intensely  spiritual,  ideal  natures,  who  would  not  be  satis- 
fied with  the  "minimum  requirements"  of  Moses. 

Now,  the  chief  distinction  between  the  old  Mosaic  law  and  the 
law  of  Jesus  is  as  follows.  The  law  of  Moses  was  directed  toward 
overt  acts,  while  the  law  of  Jesus  goes  to  the  inner  man  and  ques- 
tions his  motives.  A  man  might  observe  all  the  commandments  of 
Moses,  and  still  be  a  very  bad  man.  Take  for  example  the  command- 
ment. Thou  shalt  not  lie.  A  man  with  an  evil  motive  might  tell  the 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  but  tell  it  in  such  a  context,  or  with 
such  an  inflection,  or  in  such  circumstances,  that  it  would  deceive 
and  mislead  the  listener,  and  have  the  same  effect  as  a  deliberate  lie. 
Indeed,  the  most  dangerous  kind  of  a  lie  is  the  half-  truth.  Judged  by 
the  old  Mosaic  code,  the  man  thus  using  truth  in  the  interests  of 
an  evil  motive,  is  not  sinning,  since  he  is  not  guilty  of  the  overt 
act  of  lying.  But  judged  by  the  law  of  Jesus,  the  man  is  a  sinner, 
because  his  motive  is  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  commandment. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  theory  of  "minimum  and  maximum  re- 
quirements of  religion"  allows  for  the  escape  of  business  men  and 
the  wealthy  from  damnation.  They  are  safe  so  long  as  they  fol- 
low the  crude  rule-of-thumb  ethics  of  the  ten  commandments,  with 
their  innumerable  loop-holes.  The  author  of  the  theory  did  not 
try  to  explain  what  Christ  had  in  mind  when  he  so  unequivocally 
said  that  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle 
than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  Heaven. 

The  teachings  of  Jesus  unmistakably  imply  that  no  man  can  be 
both  a  capitalist  and  a  Christian  at  the  same  time.  This  is  proved 
by  the  story  of  the  rich  man  who  came  to  Jesus  asking  him  what  he 
must  do  to  win  salvation  and  eternal  life.  Jesus  said  to  him,  "Thou 
knowest  the  commandments.  Do  not  commit  adultery,  Do  not  kill. 
Do  not  steal.  Do  not  bear  false  witness.  Defraud  not,  Honour  thy 
father  and  mother.  .  .  One  thing  thou  lackest:  go  thy  way,  sell 
whatsoever  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have 
treasure  in  heaven :  and  come,  take  up  the  cross,  and  follow  me." 


278  THE  OPEN    COURT 

(Mark  10:19.)  The  man  went  away  downcast,  according  to  the 
Scripture.  It  is  thus  clear  that  in  a  social  order  based  on  the  Chris- 
tian teachings  there  could  be  no  capitalism  and  capitalists. 


in 

Perhaps  the  most  salient  feature  of  modern  society  is  the  efificien- 
cy,  complexity,  and  enormous  extent  of  industry.  Primitive  man 
lived  from  hand  to  mouth,  never  caring  for  the  future,  while  modern 
man  produces  goods  to  satisfy  his  wants  sometimes  years  in  ad- 
vance. More  and  more  man  harnesses  Nature  to  his  purposes, 
wresting  ever  greater  security  and  abundance  of  living  from  her, 
whereas  he  once  depended  upon  her  free  gifts,  which  were  niggard- 
ly and  frequently  withheld  altogether  for  long  periods,  leading  to 
hardship  and  famine. 

But  if  men  turned  Christian  and  lived  up  to  the  commandments 
of  Jesus,  our  wonderful  industrial  system  would  vanish,  along  with 
business  and  capital.  Jesus'  sayings  on  this  point  leave  no  room  for 
doubt.  "Therefore  I  say  unto  you,  Take  no  thought  for  your  life, 
what  ye  shall  eat,  or  what  ye  shall  drink  ;  nor  yet  for  your  body, 
what  ye  shall  put  on.  Is  not  the  life  more  than  meat,  and  the  body 
than  raiment  ?  Behold  the  fowls  of  the  air :  for  they  sow  not,  neither 
do  they  reap,  nor  gather  into  barns ;  yet  your  heavenly  Father 
feedeth  them.  Are  ye  not  much  better  than  they?  .  .  .  Take  there- 
fore no  thought  for  the  morrow  ;  for  the  morrow  shall  take  thought 
for  the  things  of  itself.  Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof." 
(Matthew  6:2.^.)  ^lan,  then,  said  Jesus,  is  to  stop  providing  for 
his  sustenance  and  material  well-being,  for  God  will  feed  him  as 
He  feeds  the  birds. 

The  contention  that  has  been  advanced  that  Jesus  was  a  So- 
cialist is  thus  seen  to  be  erroneous.  The  Socialist  aims  at  the  es- 
tablishment of  an  industrial  social  order  in  which  the  industrial  ma- 
chinery and  means  of  production  are  publicly  owned.  But  Jesus 
considered  industry  superfluous.  God  alone  was  to  look  after  and 
provide  for  the  wants  of  His  creature,  i\Ian.  The  social  order  that 
would  result  from  the  universal  application  of  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  is,  then,  a  non-industrial  one. 

The  modern  trends  in  the  relations  of  the  sexes  are  also  utterlv 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY   OF    JESUS  279 

contrary  to  the  views  of  Jesus.  Divorce  is  constantly  becoming  more 
free  and  easy,  and  the  divorce  rate  is  increasing  at  a  pace  that  has 
aroused  the  fears  of  sociologists  and  thinking  people  in  general 
for  the  continued  existence  of  the  family.  John  B.  Watson,  the 
behavicrist  ps}chologist,  has  gone  so  far  as  to  predict  that  marriage 
as  an  institution  will  disappear  in  another  fifty  years. 

The  teachings  of  Jesus  in  regard  to  marriage  are  as  clear  and 
unequivocal  as  his  other  teachings,  when  they  are  taken  at  their 
face  \alue,  and  without  any  preconceptions.  Divorce  and  re-mar- 
riage were  absolutely  banned  by  Jesus.  "Whosoever  putteth  away 
his  wife,  and  marrieth  another,  committeth  adultery:  and  whoso- 
ever marrieth  her  that  is  put  away  from  Jier  husl)and  committeth 
adultery."  (Luke  16:18.)  In  this  one  respect,  at  least,  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  is  true  to  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

Our  religious  institutions,  with  their  often  immense,  sumptuous 
palaces  of  worship,  their  elaborate  rituals  and  formal  services, 
are  also  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  alleged  founder  of  the  form 
of  worship  practised  in  them.  How  many  so-called  Christians  go  to 
church  only  to  keep  up  the  outward  appearance  of  piety,  to  con- 
form to  convention !  "And  when  thou  prayest,  thou  shalt  not  be 
as  the  hypocrites  are :  for  they  love  to  pray  standing  in  the 
synagogues  and  in  the  corners  of  the  streets,  that  they  may  be  seen 
of  man.  \'erily  I  say  unto  you,  They  have  their  reward.  But  thou, 
when  thou  prayest,  enter  into  thy  closet,  and  when  thou  hast  shut 
thy  door,  pray  to  thy  Father  which  is  in  secret :  and  thy  Father 
which  seeth  in  secret  shall  reward  thee  openly.  But  when  ye  pray, 
use  not  vain  repititions,  as  the  heathen  do :  for  they  think  that  they 
shall  be  heard  for  their  much  speaking."   ([Matthew  6:5.) 

Neither  was  the  attitude  of  Jesus  toward  the  priesthood  or  min- 
istry one  of  sympathy  and  approval.  He  warned  His  apostles  not 
to  be  as  the  scribes  and  rabbles  of  the  time.  "For  they  bind  heavy 
burdens  and  grievous  to  be  borne,  and  lay  them  on  men's  shoulders ; 
but  they  themselves  will  not  move  them  with  one  of  their  fingers. 
But  all  their  works  they  do  for  to  be  seen  of  men :  they  make  broad 
their  phylacteries,  and  enlarge  the  borders  of  their  garments,  and 
love  the  uppermost  rooms  at  feasts,  and  the  chief  seats  in  the  syna- 
gogues, and  greetings  in  the  markets,  and  to  be  called  of  men.  Rab- 
bi, Rabbi.   But  be  not  ye  called  Rabbi :  for  one  is  your  Master,  even 


280  THE  OPEN    COURT 

Christ ;  and  all  ye  are  brethren.  .  .  Neither  be  ye  called  master :  for 
one  is  your  Master,  even  Christ."  (Matthew  23:24.)  The  simple, 
straightforward  doctrine  of  Jesus  required  no  long  years  of  study 
of  the  laws,  the  sacred  book's,  and  theology.  His  disciples  never 
studied  for  the  priesthood.  The  long  arduous  studies  of  the  priests, 
then  as  now,  were  due  to  the  necessity  of  their  learning  to  inter- 
pret the  sacred  writings  properly ;  that  is,  to  twist  and  misconstrue 
the  words  of  the  laws  and  commandments,  so  as  to  make  them  fit 
the  practical  ethics  of  the  particular  time. 

Jesus  cast  some  aspersions  on  the  missionary  work  of  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees  that  are  strikingly  relevant  to-day  to  our  modern 
Chritian  missions.  "Woe  unto  you,  scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypo- 
crites !  for  ye  compass  sea  and  land  to  make  one  proselyte,  and 
when  he  is  made,  ye  make  him  twofold  more  the  child  of  hell  than 
yourself."  (Matthew  23:15.)  All  too  often,  along  with  our  so- 
called  Christianity,  we  introduce  to  the  frequently  contented  and 
peaceful  heathen  people  we  convert,  ideas  of  warfare,  deceit,  vice, 
and  drunkeness.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  among  students  of  the  va- 
rious races  of  mankind'  that  many  tribes  of  savages  have  a  much 
higher  morality  among  themselves  than  we  supposed  Christians. 
Lying,  stealing,  and  murder  are  often  practically  unknown  among 
these  simple  folk.  They  obey  all  the  commandments  of  Moses  and 
Jesus  without  actually  knowing  them.  But  how  different  is  the 
story  when  the  white  man  takes  hold  of  the  savage  and  tries  to 
civilize  him !  He  soon  learns  all  the  vices  of  his  Christian  brothers, 
and  is  exploited  and  cheated  out  of  his  land  and  possessions  by  the 
Christian  imperialist  country  that  sent  the  missions. 

Needless  to  say,  if  all  men  became  true  followers  of  Jesus,  there 
would  be  no  more  wars.  All  resistance  and  force  are  forbidden  by 
Jesus.  Even  self-defense  is  un-Christian,  for  did  not  Jesus  say. 
Resist  not  him  that  is  evil,  and  Turn  the  other  cheek?  In  our 
society,  the  only  instance  known  of  any  one  turning  the  other 
cheek,  is  that  of  the  bribed  prize-fighter  who  allows  himself  to  be 
"put  away"  for  a  consideration.  Patriotism  and  defense  of  one's 
country  would  be  non-existent  in  a  society  truly  Christian. 

Not  the  least  of  the  ways  in  which  our  society  runs  counter  to 
the  will  of  Jesus  is  the  manner  in  which  its  work  of  charity  is  con- 
ducted.  "Take  heed  that  ye  do  not  your  alms  before  men,  to  be  seen 


THE  SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY  OF    JESUS  281 

of  them :  otherwise  ye  have  no  reward  of  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven.  Therefore  when  thou  doest  thme  ahns,  do  not  sound  a 
trumpet  before  thee,  as  the  hypocrites  do  in  the  synagogues  and 
in  the  streets,  that  they  may  have  glory  of  men.  Verily  I  say  un- 
to you,  They  have  their  reward.  But  when  thou  doest  alms  let  not 
thy  left  hand  know  what  thy  right  hand  doeth  :  That  thine  alms 
may  be  in  secret :  and  thy  Father  which  seeth  in  secret  himself 
shall  reward  thee  openly."  (Matthew  6:1.)  The  ostentation  and 
pomp  with  which  a  great  deal  of  our  charitable  work  is  performed, 
indeed,  remind  one  of  the  sounding  of  a  trumpet.  The  names  of 
the  givers  of  large  gifts  to  charity  are  conspicuously  displayed  on 
the  front  pages  of  newspapers,  and  unusually  large  gifts  draw 
forth  the  thunderous  applause  of  the  press.  However,  it  is  not  ne- 
cessarily a  condemnation  of  the  really  valuable  work  carried  on 
by  our  charitable  organizations,  that  they  should  be  so  ostentatious 
in  their  work  of  almsgiving.  Perhaps  this  open  display  and  glori- 
fication of  the  alms-givers  is  as  necessary  to  charity  as  the  profit 
motive  is  to  business,  at  the  present  time  at  least. 

In  a  purely  Christian  social  order,  our  present  system  of  law 
and  justice  would  of  necessity  vanish.  For  Jesus  taught  that  judg- 
ment and  punishment  should  be  left  to  God  alone.  "Judge  not.  that 
ye  be  not  judged."  Thus  all  our  human  institutions  of  law  and 
justice,  our  entire  system  of  trial  and  judgment,  are  against  the 
teachings  of  Jesus.  Likewise,  the  means  of  executing  and  en- 
forcing the  decrees  of  our  judicial  institutions  are  denied  us  by  the 
unmistakable  import  of  Jesus'  message.  All  compulsion,  force,  and 
resistance  are  contrary  to  the  will  of  Jesus.  Resist  not  evil,  and 
Do  unto  others  as  you  would  have  others  do  to  vou,  clearly  exclude 
the  sanction  of   force  and  compulsion  in  a  truly  Christian  society. 

The  enforcement  of  justice  depends  ultimately  upon  force,  or  the 
threat  of  force.  When  a  man  convicted  by  our  courts  of  justice  is 
taken  away  to  have  his  punishment  given  him.  if  he  resists,  he  is 
taken  by  force,  perhaps  at  the  point  of  arms.  If  he  submits  peace- 
ably in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  it  is  only  because  he  realizes 
that  force  will  be  applied  to  him  if  he  does  resist.  In  our  human 
system  of  law  and  justice  might  is  used  to  enforce  the  right,  or 
rather  what  we  think  to  be  the  right.  Unfortunately,  might  is  not 
always  on  the  side  of  the  right. 


282  THE  OPEN    COURT 

It  follows  from  the  impossibility  of  a  human  system  of  law  in  a 
truly  Christian  society  that  government  and  State  would  also  have 
no  place.  The  power  of  the  State,  in  the  final  analysis,  depends 
ultimately  on  might  and  compulsion,  on  the  police  and  the  militia, 
to  be  specific.  The  State,  in  a  democratic  form  of  government,  re- 
presents, in  theory  at  least,  the  will  of  the  majority  of  the  peo- 
ple. But  there  must  always  remain  a  minority  r.nsatisfied  with  the 
decrees  of  the  majority.  It  is  only  the  force  held  in  reserve  by 
the  State,  that  prevents  a  disgruntled  minority  from  using  violence 
to  gain  its  ends.  The  rarity  of  the  occasions  where  the  State  is  forced 
to  use  its  might  to  protect  itself  does  not  mean  that  the  State  could 
dispense  with  force.  It  is  the  constant  threat  of  force  that  main- 
tains peace  and  order  within  the  State. 

Government  and  the  State,  being  thus  based  upon  actual  or  po- 
tential compulsion  of  man  by  man,  are  absolutely  against  the  spirit 
of  Christ. 


IV 

What  sort  of  a  society,  what  sort  of  a  social  philosophy,  is  real- 
ly implied  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus?  We  have  seen  that  if  Jesus' 
teachings  were  really  followed  by  all  men  there  could  be  no  govern- 
ment and  no  State :  no  compulsion  of  man  by  man ;  no  law,  at 
least  no  law  that  depended  upon  coercion  for  its  enforcement ;  no 
accumulation  of  wealth  or  property :  no  industrv  :  no  war  or  strife 
of  any  kind  :  and,  of  less  importance,  no  divorce  and  remarriage. 
We  have  also  seen  that  our  religious,  charitable,  and  business  in- 
stitutions would  be  profoundly  different,  if  not  absent,  in  a  hypo- 
thetical  Christian   society. 

Inasmuch  as  there  could  be  no  State,  the  social  order  built  upon 
the  philosophy  of  Jesus  would  be  an  Anarchial  society.  Jesus  was 
then  an  Anarchist.  But  He  was  an  Anarchist  unwittingly,  of 
course,  for  He  did  not  trace  the  social  consequences  hidden  in  His 
message  to  the  individual. 

The  word  "Anarchist"  carries  with  it  to  the  general  mind  con- 
notations of  a  violent  criminal  with  long  whiskers  who  carries 
bombs,  with  which  to  blow  up  public  buildings,  kings,  government 
officials   or    other   personages   wdio   have   incurred   his    displeasure. 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY   OF    JESUS  283 

Needless  to  say.  this  is  not  the  real  meaning  of  the  word,  but  only 
one  of  the  nonessential  traits  that  have  unfortunately  accompanied 
a  certain  type  of  Anarchist  known  as  the  "direct  actionist".  By 
definition,  Anarchy  merely  means  a  form  of  society  in  which  there 
is  no  State  or  government.  There  are  many  difiterent  kinds  of  An- 
archy, having  in  common  only  the  idea  of  a  social  order  in  which  the 
State  has  been  abolished. 

The  t}pe  of  Anarchy  suggested  !)}•  the  principles  of  Jesus  wouU. 
be  a  very  simple  and  primitive  one  indeed.  Unlike  most  other  forms 
of  Anarchy,  the  Anarchy  of  Jesus  would  have  no  industry,  because 
Jesus  believed  that  we  should  make  no  efifort  to  provide  for  our  food 
or  clothing,  since  God  would  care  for  us  as  he  cared  for  the  birds. 
Men  would  live  together  in  simple,  peaceful  brotherhood,  sharing 
all  possessions  alike,  and  living  ofif  the  gifts  of  nature  only.  So- 
ciety would  revert  to  the  condition  called  by  economists  the  "direct 
appropriation  stage",  in  which  man  appropriated  the  free  gifts  of 
nature,  and  subsisted  without  the  aid  of  agriculture  and  industry.  A 
description  of  the  type  of  society  latent  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus, 
in  one  phrase,  would  be  Non-industrial  Anarchial  Communism. 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  of  all  the  interpreters  and  followers 
of  Jesus,  Tolstoy  has  come  nearest  to  catching  1  lis  true  spirit.  Tol- 
stoy advocated  a  communal  brotherhood  of  men.  living  a  life  of  sim- 
ple toil.  In  two  important  respects,  however,  Tolstoy  differs  from 
Jesus.  Tolstoy's  simple,  Anarchial  society  was  to  be  agricultural, 
while  Jesus  made  no  provision  for  any  kind  of  employment  for 
His  followers,  believing  as  He  did  that  the  Heavenly  Father  would 
care  for  them  as  he  did  for  the  birds  and  beasts  of  the  field. 
Also,  if  Tolstoy's  proposals  were  followed,  the  human  race 
would  die  out  in  a  generation,  for  he  advocated  strict  celibacv. 
even  among  the  married.  Jesus  did  not  go  to  such  an  extreme  as 
His  follower,  Tolstoy,  however,  in  this  matter.  He  merely  spoke 
against  adultery  and  divorce. 

As  we  have  already  intimated,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the 
social  order  that  would  result  from  the  universal  application  of 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  was  the  conscious  object  of  His  efforts. 
Jesus  had  no  social  ends  in  view.  liis  purpose  was  a  purely  in- 
dividualistic one,  the  salvation  of  souls,  the  pointing  out  of  the 
means   by   which   the   individual   could    win   the   approval   of   God. 


284  THE  OPEN    COURT 

The  object  of  living,  with  Jesus,  was  merely  to  win  blessedness  in 
the  hereafter.  If  some  of  His  teachings  have  a  high  ethical  or  so- 
cial value,  it  is  only  because  He  deemed  them  commandments  of 
God  which  must  be  followed  to  secure  salvation.  It  is  significant 
that  the  first  great  commandment  of  Jesus  was,  "And  thou  shalt 
love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul, 
and  with  all  thy  mind,  and  with  all  thy  strength :  this  is  the  first 
commandment."  (Mark  12:30).  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as 
thyself"  was  placed  second. 

Jesus  was  not  an  Anarchist  in  the  sense  that  He  wished  to  con- 
struct a  new  and  better  social  order.  But  He  v.^as  an  Anarchist  in 
the  sense  that  if  His  teachings  were  adopted  by  all  men,  a  simple 
fraternity  of  men,  under  the  fatherhood  of  God,  would  result,  in 
which  government,  law,  and  compulsion  would  have  no  place. 

Jesus  never  intended  His  aims  to  be  brought  about  through  ac- 
tive antagonism  to  the  existing  government.  "Render  unto  Caesar 
the  things  which  be  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  which  be 
God's".  If  Jesus'  teachings  were  followed,  governments  and  all 
the  present  legal  and  political  machinery  would  disappear,  be- 
cause of  there  being  no  man  willing  to  exercise  the  compulsion  up- 
on his  fellowmen  demanded  of  a  ruler,  official,  or  judge. 

V 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  such  a  social  order  as  that 
implied  in  the  message  of  Jesus  has  never  existed,  and  never  will 
come  into  existence.  The  teachings  of  Jesus  have  always  been  only 
partially  accepted,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  this  will 
not  always  be  the  case,  as  long  as  men  continue  their  pretense  of 
being  Christians. 

There  are  two  senses  in  which  the  teachings  of  Jesus  have  been 
only  partially  accepted:  a  part,  and  not  the  entire  body  of  people, 
mav  accept  the  Christian  ethic,  allowing  exceptions,  in  the  shape  of 
rulers  and  exploiters ;  a  part  of  the  Christian  teachings  may  be 
accepted,  but  enough  ignored  so  that  the  true  spirit  of  Christ  is 
lost.  Both  of  these  methods  of  partial  acceptance  have  been  prom- 
inent in  the  history  of   Christendom. 

Alas,  how  often  have  rulers,  exploiters,  and  "strong"  men  of  all 


THE  SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF   JESUS  285 

descriptions  used  Christianity  as  one  of  their  instruments  of  con- 
trol of  the  exploited !  How  well  adapted  to  the  purpose  of  tyrants 
and  exploiters  are  the  admonitions,  Resist  not  evil,  Turn  the  other 
cheek,  and  Do  unto  others  as  you  would  have  others  do  unto  you ! 
When  Christianity  became  the  official  religion  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire and  rulers  and  emperors  adopted  it,  what  a  transformation  and 
perversion  took  place  in  the  doctrine  which  once  had  been  the  sole 
source  of  comfort  of  the  slaves,  the  oppressed,  ?nd  the  lowly!  The 
religion  of  brotherly  love  and  equality  of  all  under  God  the  uni- 
versal Father ;  the  religion  which  had  had  no  place  for  compul- 
sion and  force,  became  an  instrument  of  social  control,  used  by 
rulers  tio  help  hold  the  masses  in  unresisting  subjection.  The  ori- 
ginal Christian  doctrine  was  sufficiently  tampered  with  to  make  it 
a  supernatural  support  for  the  divine  right  of  kings,  of  feudal 
barons ;  and  in  our  own  day,  the  divine  right  of  property,  capital, 
or  what  not.  While  the  lowly  and  the  righteous  followed  the  teach- 
ings of  Jesus,  burly  sinners  ruled,  and  are  still  ruling,  the  world. 

As  for  the  second  of  the  methods  of  partial  acceptance  of  the 
teachings  of  Jesus,  we  have  already  seen  how  the  teachings  detri- 
mental to  the  interests  of  the  privileged  classes  are  carefully  ig- 
nored or  expurgated  by  the  ministry  and  the  priesthood.  Such 
ingenious  doctrines  as  the  theory  of  maximum  and  minimum  re- 
c{uirements  are  advanced,  in  the  attempt  to  render  Christianity 
not  too  obviously  incompatible  with  the  ethical  practices  of  modern 
Christians. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  true  Christian  society  can  never  appear 
as  long  as  some  men  remain  who  do  not  accept  Christianity.  These 
latter  will  have  a  tremendous  advantage  in  the  pursuit  of  life  over 
the  followers  of  the  true  Christian  ethic,  and  will  inevitably  rise 
to  the  position  of  mastery.  Since  it  is  now  more  impossible  than 
ever  that  all  men  should  become  miraculously  converted  to  Chris- 
tianity, we  may  consider  the  realization  of  a  social  order  based  on 
the  teachings  of  Jesus  an  absolute  impossibility.  Man  no  longer 
has  the  simple  faith  that  God  looks  after  us  and  cares  for  us  as  He 
does  the  birds.  In  fact,  we  know  that  even  the  birds  are  not  thus 
cared  for.  They  must  struggle  and  compete  with  other  birds  for 
their  living  the  same  as  men,  and  the  apparently  well-cared-for 
birds  we  see  are  merely  the  survivors  of  a  process  of  natural  se- 
lection. 


286  THE  OPEN    COURT 

These  last  reflections  suggest  an  explanation  of  the  hypocrisy, 
the  glaring  contrast  between  ethical  theory  and  ethical  practice, 
which  pervade  modern  life.  In  a  society  only  partly  Christian,  we 
have  seen  how  the  believers  will  be  at  a  marked  disadvantage  in 
the  struggle  for  life  with  those  who  disregard  the  Christian  ethic. 
Hence,  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  will  cause  great  numbers 
of  believers  to  violate  the  teachings  of  their  religion.  But  respect- 
ability demands  that  they  remain  nominal  ChrisSians.  Besides, 
many  people  have  a  sentimental  regard  for  the  religion  in  which 
they  were  brought  up.  The  world  becomes  filled  with  nominal  be- 
lievers, who  through  economic  pressure  no  longer  practise  Chris- 
tianity.   But,  as  Kipling  would  say,  that  is  another  story. 


DETERMINISM,  EGOTISM  AND  MORALS 

BY   JOHN    HEINTZ 

THERE  is  probably  nothing  so  destructive  of  human  egotism 
as  the  idea  of  determinism.  Even  the  theory  of  evohition, 
with  its  long  line  of  brutish  ancestors,  leaves  a  way  of  escape  open 
for  the  salvaging  of  this  universal  and  often  useful  attribute.  But 
the  one  hundred  per  cent  determinist  gets  little  satisfaction  in  the 
way  of  self-applause  due  to  noteworthy  performance. 

The  old  saying  of  virtue  being  its  own  reward  fits  admirably 
into  his  system  of  philosophy  but  even  here  the  glow  of  satisfaction 
which  the  free  will  advocate  may  experience  is  denied  him,  or  at 
least  is  largely  mitigated,  by  the  belief  that  his  virtuous  acts  are 
simply  so  much  ethical  phenomena  in  which  he  plays  the  part  of 
a  link  in  an  endless   chain  of   cause  and  efifect. 

One  is  tempted  to  ask,  therefore,  what  use  can  there  be  in  such 
a  theory  of  conduct  if  the  result  of  possessing  it  is  the  dampening 
of  such  a  stimulating  motive  as  egotism?  One  answer  which  has 
been  given  is  that  for  a  sound  moral  theory  good  conduct  must  de- 
pend upon  character,  which  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  if  a  man 
cannot,  merely  by  the  exercise  of  free  will,  go  against  the  dictates 
of  his  conscience  we  have  something  which  constitutes  a  real  and 
permanent  basis  for  a  moral  theory.  However,  while  this  may  be 
a  step  in  the  direction  of  determinism  it  does  not  disprove  the 
idea  of  free  will  except  in  an  absolute  sense ;  it  does  put  brakes  on 
it,  conditions  it,  but  it  does  not  dispose  of  the  claim  of  the  free  will 
advocates  that  a  moral  theory  to  be  real  must  allow  for  a  certain 
amount  of  free  choice  in  the  individual,  that  we  possess  such  a  free- 
dom of  choice,  and  that  a  moral  act  consists  in  the  right  exercise 
of  it  more  so  than  in  the  good  efifect  of  the  action  itself. 

It  will  immediately  be  seen  that  the  notion  that  over  and  above  all 


288  THE  OPEN    COURT 

influencing  circumstances,  both  objective  and  subjective,  we  pos- 
sess an  element  of  dissociation  which  leaves  us  free  to  choose  a 
course  of  conduct  and  which  assigns  egotism  to  an  important  po- 
sition in  the  system  of  free  will,  and  that  determinism,  in  denying 
this  element  of  dissociation  automatically  removes  egotism  from 
its  philosophy.  In  other  words,  in  free  will,  credit  for  good  con- 
duct is  earned ;  in  determinism,  it  is  unearned.  Getting  back  to 
our  question  then  if  conditioned  free  will  is  not  discredited  by  a 
moral  theory  which  bases  good  conduct  upon  character  and  if  it 
retains  by  its  ideas  of  dissociation  a  subtle  element  of  egotism 
which  makes  it  appear  desirable  what  claims  can  determinism  ad- 
vance for  possessing  a  sounder  theory  of  morals? 

Probably  the  best  claim  that  determinism  can  advance  is  that  it 
can  be  shown  that  it  is  logically  related  to  the  kind  of  a  universe 
which  science  has  revealed  to  us.  Free  will  naturally  associates  it- 
self with  the  deductive,  or  intuitive,  theory  of  morals.  It  coincides 
with  its  assumption  that  we  have  within  us  a  perceptive  faculty 
which  enables  us  to  sense  right  from  wrong  and  that  this  intuitive 
gift  is  originally  innate  in  the  constitution  of  our  nature.  Out  of 
this  innate  moral  insight  conscience  springs  and  here  again  we  come 
across  the  notion  of  dissociation  which  we  found  to  be  essential 
to  free  will.  Now  such  an  assumption  of  innate  conscience,  so 
suggestive  of  divine  origin,  naturally  presupposes  a  reason  for  its 
being  which  can  be  no  other  than  that  it  was  implanted  in  us  as  a 
guide  to  conduct  and  this  in  turn  consistently,  if  not  necessarily, 
suggests  a  free  choice  in  the  matter. 

Determinism,  on  the  other  hand,  while  it  is  not  absolutely  incon- 
sistent with  the  idea  of  innate  moral  perceptions,  links  itself  up 
more  logically  with  the  inductive,  or  utilitarian,  theory  of  morals. 
The  notion  that  morals  were  originally  based  on  utility  and  by  a 
successive  association  of  ideas  became  metamorphosed  into  ideals 
coalesces  readily  with  the  belief  that  conscience  is  not  innate  but  is 
subject  entirely  to  the  laws  of  heredity  and  therefore  is  a  variable 
phenomenon  forming  a  link  in  a  chain  of  causes  and  effects.  Thus 
determinism,  because  it  views  every  moral  and  immoral  act  as  a 
perfect  result  of  foregoing  causes,  of  which  the  type  of  conscience 
exhibited  constitutes  one,  is  the  logical  corollary  of  the  utilitarian 
theory. 

As   for  the  claims   for  truth  of  these  two  opposing  theories  of 


DETERMINISM^  EGOTISM  AND  MORALS  289 

morals  I  believe  that  the  theory  of  evolution  and  the  researches  of 
modern  psychology  have  made  a  damaging  case  against  the  school 
of  lUitler  and  Cudworth.  Unquestionably,  utility  is  the  basis  of 
morals.  It  is  requesting  too  much  of  the  modern  intellect  to  ask  it 
to  believe  that  our  brute  ancestors  of  former  geologic  ]:)eriods  pos- 
sessed an  innate  conscience  and  if  they  did  not  its  sudden  appear- 
ance in  the  human  race  defies  explanation.  The  truth  is  that  con- 
science has  been  a  result  of  ages  of  slow  development.  In  no  oiher 
way,  consistent  with  the  known  physical  facts  of  our  world,  can 
its  presence  be  accounted  for.  In  no  way,  save  by  heredity,  can 
the  infinite  variety  and  gradations  of  conscience  be  explained. 

Thus  determinism,  because  it  is  the  logical  outgrowth  of  the 
theory  of  morals  which  gives  the  best  explanation  for  conduct 
in  the  kind  of  world  which  science  has  revealed  to  us,  afifords 
the  best  promise  of  establishing  human  conduct  on  a  scientific  ba- 
sis. It  strikes  a  blow  immediately  at  the  conception  of  equalitv  im- 
plicit in  free  will  which  it  has  been  the  misfortune  of  religion  to 
emphasize.  Thus  the  sinner  can  save  himself  if  he  only  will.  Failure 
to  do  so  is  due  to  obstinacy  or  indifference  on  his  part.  Left  out  of 
consideration  are  such  psychologically  important  things  as  heredity, 
emotional  stability,  meagre  subliminal  activity.  Congenital  obsta- 
cles in  the  way  of  reform  never  mitigate  the  censure  of  the  religion- 
ist for  the  unregenerate. 

With  such  conceptions  of  an  innate  ef[uality  of  moral  insight  de- 
terminism can  make  no  compromise.  It  is  committed  to  the  be- 
lief that  all  conduct,  good,  bad  and  indifferent,  can  be  entirely  ex- 
plained by  the  antecedent  conditions  of  which  inequality  of  con- 
science and  will  are  themselves  results  of  causality. 

Now  it  is  this  attempt  to  get  at  the  rock-bottom  facts  underlying 
conduct,  instead  of  assuming  that  man  possesses  an  innate  moral 
faculty  which  his  remote  physical'ancestry  refutes,  that  causes  de- 
terminism to  appear  so  promising  when  it  comes  to  placing  hu- 
man conduct  upon  a  scientific  basis.  It  declares  that  were  the  an- 
tecedent causes  leading  up  to  an  individual's  choice  completely 
known,  it  could  be  predicted  with  as  sure  a  certainty  as  the  chemist 
can  predict  results  in  his  laboratory.  All  the  psychological  theories 
as  to  the  influence  of  environment  and  other  determining  factors 
in  normal  and  subnormal  life  are  based  ultimately  upon  this  be- 
lief which  in  turn  rests  upon  the  knowledge  that  nature  is  perfect. 


290  THE  OPEN    COURT 

For  an  imperfect  result  cannot  emanate  from  nature.  A  cripple 
is  a  perfect  cripple  according  to  time  and  conditions.  The  ante- 
cedent causes  in  his  case  having  been  thus  and  thus  he  is  the  per- 
fect result.  So  with  conduct ;  every  act  must  be  a  perfect  result  of 
objective  and  subjective  causes.  Here  then,  considered  in  the  large, 
is  the  justification  for  the  sacrifice  of  egotism  by  determinism :  it 
affords  an  approach  to  the  exceedingly  difficult  problem  of  conduct 
that  is  based  on  things  as  they  are  ;  not  as  we  would  like  them  to 
be  and  therefore  assume  so.  Thus,  of  the  two  theories  of  morals, 
determinism,  not  free  will,  belongs  in  the  promising  category  of  an 
experimental  science. 

As  to  the  individual  reaction  to  the  loss  of  egotism  the  question 
has  to  do  with  a  morally  superior  and  inferior  viewpoint.  Egotism 
often  plays  a  beneficent  role  in  human  conduct  and  must  be  given 
a  place  by  determinism  in  the  chain  of  antecedent  causes.  Thus 
the  desire  to  be  well  thought  of  by  his  fellowmen  impels  an  individ- 
ual to  virtuous  actions.  Still  such  an  incentive,  however  practical 
or  efficacious  it  may  be,  is  an  egotistical  one,  because  the  individ- 
ual is  seeking  credit  for  something  he  could  not  help  but  do.  From 
the  deterministic  view-point  pride  over  conduct  is  related  to  con- 
ceit over  good  looks.  A  large  element  of  humanity  has  reached  the 
intellectual  stage  where,  inasmuch  as  they  realize  that  good  looks 
are  but  an  accident  of  birth,  vanity  with  respect  to  them  arouses 
their  derision.  For  while  good  looks,  rather  than  ugliness,  is  to  be 
desired  we  feel  that  no  credit  accrues  to  the  possessor. 

Such  is  the  attitude  of  the  deterniinist  towards  his  own  good 
conduct.  Like  the  Sufi  who  give  all  credit  to  the  Creator  for  their 
virtue  the  deterniinist  attributes  his  moral  acts  altogether  to  im- 
pelling causes.  He  has  a  high  regard  for  good  conduct  and  acts 
in  accordance  with  his  ethical  convictions  but  takes  no  more  credit 
for  such  acts  in  the  last  analysis  than  for  good  looks  if  he  is  for- 
tunate enough  to  possess  them.  His  compensation  for  the  loss  of 
egotism  is  that  he  has  reached  an  intellectual  position  where  he  is 
beyond  the  egotistical  need  of  the  applause  of  his  fellowmen.  A 
pure  and  unadulterated  incentive  to  good  conduct  is  the  last  word 
in  morals. 


EXPLAINING  EINSTEIN 

BY    HENRY    CHARLES    SUTER 

NOT  a  few  people  are  experiencing  some  difficult}-  in  under- 
standing Einstein's  theories.  We  can  realise  how  that  may 
be  in  the  land  of  the  laity  with  their  limitations  of  learning.  How- 
ever many  students  also  experience  the  same  difficulty  in  this  re- 
spect and  seek  to  have  Einstein  explained  and  simplified,  so  that 
they  may  interpret  his  theories  to  others  in  an  understandable  way. 
Therefore  let  us  spend  a  little  time  in  dealing  with  Einstein,  in 
the  Socratic  method,  and  thus  from  the  student  standpoint. 

"Long  before  you  became  any  sort  of  student  do  you  remem- 
ber your  first  experience  in  an  elevator?" 

"Yes!  as  a  child  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  got  into  a  little  room 
and  the  upstairs  came  down !" 

"That  is  so,  and  even  Einstein  would  quite  approve  of  such  a 
statement,  since  he  asserts  the  dependence  of  natural  law  upon 
the  movement  of  the  observer.  In  a  word,  we  judge  all  that  hap- 
pens about  us  from  the  standpoint  of  our  own  system  that  is  stop- 
ping as  it  were  and  that  is  at  rest.  There  is  but  one  exception  to 
this  and  that  is  the  velocity  of  light,  which  travels  constant  and 
certain,  no  matter  how  we  may  be  moving." 

"But  as  a  student  I  find  Einstein  so  paradoxical.  In  fact  the  haunt- 
ing fear  of  paradox  seems  to  me  to  be  the  bane  of  all  science.  It  is 
not  so  with  mathematics  you  know.  From  the  conceptual  con- 
clusions arrived  at  there  and  the  logical  terminations  met  with  in 
mathematics  there  seems  from  such  a  standpoint  to  be  a  position 
continually  taken  that  is  impregnable.  But  while  I  was  a  dunce 
at  mathematics.  I  delighted  in  its  definite  decisions  and  was  glad 
when  it  constantly  showed  up  the  absurdities  of  science,  some- 
thing that  I  more  or  less  hated." 


292  THE  OPEN    COURT 


"Ah,  as  a  student  of  science,  no  doubt  you  had  your  troubles, 
and  when  you  considered  the  theory  of  relativity,  you  found  that 
very  full  of  paradoxes." 

"Why !  yes !  when  first  introduced  to  Einstein,  I  felt  like  Alice 
Through  the  Looking-Glass.  I  had  supposed  that  a  yard  was  al- 
ways and  everywhere  thirty-six  inches  long ;  that  time  was  accur- 
ately measured  by  clocks  and  watches  ;  that  an  object  weighing  a 
pound  in  one  place  would  weigh  sixteen  ounces  in  another  place ; 
and  that  when  you  had  measured  the  length,  breadth  and  thickness 
of  an  object,  you  could  state  the  volume  with  confidence.  But  Ein- 
stein tells  us  that  there  are  circumstances  in  which  a  yard  may  be 
contracted  to  a  span,  an  hour  may  shrink  to  a  mere  fraction  of  six- 
ty minutes,  and  an  object  which  started  weighing  a  few  ounces 
may  come  to  weigh  a  ton.  All  that  is  necessary  to  accomplish  these 
miracles  is  to  get  the  objects  moving  fast  enough,  approaching  the 
velocity  of  light,  which,  it  may  be  said,  is  the  fastest  thing  in  the 
world.  He  tells  ns,  moreover,  that  there  is  a  fourth  dimension, 
namely,  time,  and  that  no  measurements  are  correct  which  leave 
this  out.  In  Einstein's  world,  cause  and  effect  have  no  meaning, 
except  for  purposes  of  explanation ;  there  are  no  straight  lines ; 
space  is  curved  and  imparts  its  curvature  on  to  the  movements 
of  objects  in  space.  Newton's  famous  apple  then  for  instance, 
did  not  fall  to  the  ground  because  a  mysterious  power  called 
gravitation  drew  it  down.  Circles  exist  without  tangent,  and  the 
ratio  between  the  diameter  and  circumference  of  a  circle  varies 
from  time  to  time,  depending  upon  whether  the  circle  is  rotating  or  at 
rest.  Why,  in  such  a  world  as  Einstein  depicts  to  lapse  into  a  little 
levity,  I'm  reminded  of  the  reason  why  Pat  preferred  a  train  wreck 
to  a  shipwreck.  "In  a  train  wreck,"  he  said,  "there  you  are;  bui 
in  a   shipwreck,  where  are  you?" 

"Ah !  but  the  worst  of  it  ever  seems  to  be  that  Einstein  proves 
that  what  he  states  in  his  seeming  contradictions,  is  true.  His  world 
is  not  the  conceptual  world  of  mathematics,  but  rather  a  real  world 
of  experience.  In  fact  he  followed  the  example  of  his  great  fore- 
runner, Galileo.  Up  to  the  time  of  this  great  physicist,  it  used  to 
be  thought  that  a  heavy  weight  would  fall  faster  than  a  light 
one.  Had  not  Aristotle  said  so,  and  no  one  thought  of  disputing  with 
such  a  man  as  Aristotle  did  they?    But  one  day  Galileo  ascended 


EXPLAINrj>IG    EINSTEIN  293 

the  leaning  tower  of  Pisa,  and  let  two  objects  of  unequal  weight 
fall,  and  they  reached  the  ground  at  the  same  time.  In  similar  man- 
ner Einstein  based  his  conclusions  upon  the  observance  of  ac- 
tual events." 

"Well  while  Einstein  has  somewhat  disturbed  my  student  mind, 
I  must  admit  that  he  has  strengthened  my  confidence  in  the  de- 
liverance of  experience.  The  curse  of  formal  education,  from 
which,  like  other  lads,  I  suffered,  is  that  it  takes  a  lad  out  of  a 
world  rich  in  experience  and  introduces  him  to  a  world  of  author- 
thoritv.  He  is  taught  that  one  and  one  makes  two  figuratively,  but 
in  the  world  of  experience  it  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  two 
lads  placed  together  will  perform  twice  as  much  work,  because 
experience  shows  that  they  will  probably  be  swapping  yarns  and  the 
result  of  the  sum  total  of  work  done  may  not  be  equivalent  to  that 
of  even  one.  Scientifically  one  and  one  do  not  always  make  two, 
for  instance,  as  in  the  case  of  the  two  drops  of  mercury,  nor  na- 
turally in  the  case  of  two  birds  in  a  nest,  or  fish  in  a  pool.  Then 
again  he  is  taught  that  a  straight  line  is  the  shortest  distance  between 
two  points,  and  then  that  only  one  straight  line  can  be  drawn  be- 
tween two  points,  while  on  the  globe  before  him  he  can  see  plainly 
a  large  number  of  lines  passing  through  the  two  poles  by  the  shortest 
distance  possible  on  the  surface  of  the  earth." 

''Ah,  the  world  of  experience  is  full  of  movement,  but  in  Euclid's 
world  the  movement  has  no  place,  in  fact  it  is  a  static  world." 

"True,  for  I  remember  what  a  shock  I  got  v/hen,  in  the  fourth 
proposition  of  his  first  book,  Euclid  proposed  to  make  his  proof 
by  lifting  one  triangle  and  depositing  it  on  the  other.  It  seemed 
a  sadly  improper  thing  to  do.  In  fact  I  felt  that  Euclid's  world 
was  not  even  a  concrete  world.  It  is  a  world  of  points  and  lines 
and  planes  which  you  cannot  make  concrete.  As  soon  as  you  at- 
tempt to  do  so,  as,  for  instance,  when  you  put  a  point  on  the  black- 
board, it  vanishes,  for  the  point  has  magnitude,  which  Euclid's  de- 
finition denies.  Even  his  propositions,  such  as  the  one  that  the 
interior  angles  of  a  triangle  are  together  equal  to  two  right-angles, 
is  only  true  in  a  flat  world,  which  we  do  not  inhabit." 

"Yes,  it  is  only  too  true,  and  even  I  remember  how  some  years 
ago,  I  was  awakened  from  the  dogmatic  slumber  into  wdiich 
my   formal   education   had   plunged   me   when   my   little   lad   came 


2y4  THE   OPEN    COURT 

to  me  with  a  sliver  of  wood  and  cried,  ''Show  me  the  inside,  Dad- 
dy." I  promptly  took  a  penknife  and  spHt  the  sHver  in  two.  But 
my  lad's  mind,  in  spite  the  fact  he  had  not  yet  started  school,  was 
too  acute  for  me.  "But  that  is  the  outside  now,"  he  cried  with 
glee ;  "show  me  the  inside."  It  was  then  I  first  realized  dimly 
what  Bergson  later  taught  me  to  see,  namely,  that  the  mind  can- 
not penetrate  into  the  inner  heart  of  things,  but  must  be  content 
with  surface  only.  That  then  is  the  reason  why  nature  is  so  full 
of  paradox,  and  Einstein's  word  to  us  is  just  simply  this,  the  data 
of  experience  must  be  accepted  no  matter  how  paradoxical  they 
may  seem." 

"It  is  so.  How  different  the  real  every-day  world  which  we  ex- 
perience is  from  the  world  of  science  and  mathematics." 

"Yes,  but  we  recognize  that  we  are  not  here  referring  to  the 
world  of  atoms  with  their  protons  and  electrons,  for  that  is  an- 
other story  as  Kipling  would  say.  But  take  the  ideas  of  space  and 
time,  with  which  relativity  is  chiefly  concerned.  We  move  to  and 
fro ;  we  let  our  eyes  wander  and  thus  we  get  the  conception  of 
space.  We  put  our  finger  on  our  pulse,  and  count  its  beats.  We  re- 
member that  a  short  time  ago  we  heard  the  clock  strike,  and  are 
reminded  that  in  half  an  hour  we  have  a  date  with  someone.  Thus 
we  get  the  idea  of  time.  Then  in  the  interests  of  formal  knowl- 
edge, we  invent  standards  and  instruments  for  measuring  time  and 
space,  clocks  whose  faces  are  divided  into  sections  of  twelve  and 
sixties  (which  it  is  to  be  noted,  are  really  space  measurements)  and 
measuring  sticks  which  are  divided  into  feet  and  inches.  This  is 
public  time  and  space,  and  very  useful  when  we  wish  to  communi- 
cate with  one  another  or  make  plans  for  buildings  or  keep  en- 
gagements. But  is  it  not  the  height  of  absurdity  to  say  that  an 
hour  spent  in  agreeable  company  is  the  same  length  as  an  hour 
spent  at  an  isolated  station,  waiting  for  a  late  train,  or  that  a  mile 
in  a  motor  car  is  the  same  distance  as  a  mile  in  an  ox  cart?" 

"Ah  you  said  something  and  so  did  Burns  when  he  wrote: 

"How  slow  ye  move,  ye  weary  hours. 

As  ye  were  wae  and  weary ; 
•  It  was  not  sae  ye  glinted  by 

When  I  was  wi'  my  dearie." 


EXPLAINING    EINSTEIN 


295 


That  is  not  only  experiential  but  is  decidedly  experimental  let  me 
tell  you  as  a  student." 

"Indeed,  and  thus  in  Einstein's  world  space  by  itself  and  time 
by  itself  sink  to  shadows,  and  only  a  union  of  the  two  preserves 
reality.  And  this  is  true  of  experience — we  live  every  day  in  a 
world  not  of  three  but  of  four  dimensions  and  the  fourth  dimen- 
sion is  time.  What  we  experience  in  daily  life  is  not  objects  but 
events.    Things  not  only  are:  but  they  happen  also." 

"Well  now  that  you  explain  it  thus,  it  seems  that  Einstein  to  my 
student  mind  certainly  emancipates  me  from  the  dominance  of 
merely  spacial  ideas,  and  reveals  to  me  more  fully  the  world  of 
time." 

"Indeed  he  has  taught  us  to  hear  what  the  years  and  the  centuries 
have  to  say  against  the  hours  and  the  minutes,  to  resist  the  usurpa- 
tion of  particulars  and  penetrate  to  their  universal  sense." 

"Ah  that's  a  lesson  as  a  student  of  life  that  I  sadly  need  to  learn 
to-day.  I  am  too  largely  led  by  spacial  conceptions.  I  talk,  like 
everybody  else  about  bigness  and  swiftness  ;  big  business,  big  bus- 
ses, big  buildings  ;  swift  autos,  swift  planes,  swift  ships.  While  we 
have  annihilated  space,  we  say.  nevertheless,  space  still  rules  our 
minds." 

"Yes,  then  there  is  another  test  to  which  we  must  put  these  big, 
swift  things.  JVill  they  last?  That  is  the  test  you  will  remember 
Paul  put  the  big  things  of  his  day — Prophecy,  the  big  thing  of 
the  Hebrews  ;  Knowledge,  the  big  thing  of  the  Greeks  :  and  Tongues, 
the  big  thing  of  the  Christians.  The  fault  Paul  found  with  these 
big  things  was  that  they  did  not  last.  Prophecies  fail,  tongues  cease, 
knowledge  vanishes  away ;  only  Love  endures.  Bergson  teaches 
that  duration— the  time  we  feel — is  the  very  heart  of  reality,  and 
Einstein  would  seem  to  agree  with  that.  He  even  refuses  to  ac- 
cept the  idea  of  an  infinite  universe.  He  thinks  the  universe  is 
finite,  and  yet  it  has  no  boundaries.  Its  magnitude  depends  upon  its 
density.  If  it  were  of  the  density  of  water,  it  would  measure  not 
more  than  three  hundred  and  fifty  million  miles  in  diameter;  but 
we  know  there  are  stars  so  distant  that  the  light  we  see  to-day  started 
hundreds  of  thousands  and  perhaps  millions  of  years  ago  :  so  the 
universe  must  be  much  larger  than  that.  Some  have  estimated 
its  diameter  to  be  four  hundred  trillion  miles,  but  we  need  not 


296  THE  OPEN    COURT 

bother  about  that.  Einstein  thinks  the  universe  is  curved  like 
a  sphere,  or  perhaps  Hke  a  cyHnder." 

"It  is  all  interesting  and  I  feel  Einstein  has  strengthened  my 
student  intellectual  desire  for  unity.  All  philosophers  have  ever 
sought  to  bring  all  phenomena  within  a  single  formula.  One  found 
it  in  water,  another  in  air,  another  in  fire.  Pythagoras  said  man 
was  the  measure  of  all  things." 

"True,  and  in  seeking  to  bring  the  world  of  physical  phenomena 
within  one  category — one  supreme  equation — Einstein  is  again 
following  the  pathway  of  his  fellows  in  the  past.  Tycho  Brahe 
brought  harmony  into  the  Aristotelian  scheme  of  the  universe. 
The  position  of  Mars  in  the  solar  system  refused  to  conform  to 
Aristotle's  mechanism  by  an  amount  as  great  as  eight  minutes  of  the 
arc.  "Out  of  these  eight  minutes,"  said  Kepler,  "we  will  construct  a 
new  universe  that  will  explain  the  motions  of  all  the  planets."  In 
like  manner  the  orbit  of  Mercury  refused  to  conform  to  the  New- 
tonian mechanism,  and  was  found  to  be  rotating  in  its  own  plane 
at  the  rate  of  forty-three  seconds  a  century.  Out  of  these  forty-three 
seconds,  Einstein  revolutionized  our  nineteenth-century  concep- 
tions not  only  of  astronomical  mechanics,  but  also,  as  we  have 
seen,  of  the  nature  of  time  and  space,  and  the  fundamental  ideas 
of  science,  and  in  doing  so,  he  has  brought  nevv^  unity  into  the  uni- 
verse. His  theories  have  carried  us  to  a  height  of  knowledge  which 
surpasses  all  elevations  hitherto  reached  in  the  past  thinking  of  the 
race.  From  this  lofty  peak  we  find  ourselves  contemplating  na- 
ture with  an  insight  such  as  no  one  has  ever  had  before." 

"Had  we  not  already  discovered  that  matter  is  made  up  of  elec- 
trons, and  that  radiant  energy  is  electro-magnetic?" 

"Yes,  but  before  Einstein,  it  was  regarded  as  probable  that  all 
physical  phenomena  except  gravitation  were  manifestations  of  the 
electro-magnetic  field.  Xow  Einstein  has  brought  gravitation  it- 
self within  the  same  structure.  Gravitation  is  no  longer  a  mysterious 
force  acting  at  a  distance,  but  a  fundamental  property  of  things. 
What  philosophy  has  tried  to  do  in  the  past  Einstein  has  done  for 
science.  He  has  for  the  first  time  brought  mechanical,  electro-mag- 
netic and  gravitational  phenomena  into  one  structure." 


EXPLAINING    EINSTEIN  297 

"That  is  a  great  achievement,  and  in  the  reahns  of  religion,  ought 
to  strengthen  our  faith  in  "one  God,  one  law,  one  element."  It 
makes  me  want  to  be  more  tolerant — to  live  and  let  live." 

"Indeed,  he  teaches  us  that  there  are  different  orders  of  knowl- 
edge, and  the  reality  we  are  seeking  has  different  forms.  These 
orders  we  must  be  careful  to  distinguish  and  not  to  confuse.  We 
must  not  forget  that  truth  in  terms  of  one. order  may  not  necessarily 
be  a  sufficient  guide  in  the  search  for  truth  in  another  order." 

"Ah,  as  a  student,  I  find  much  is  said  to-day  about  the  conflict 
between  science  and  religion,  and  Christian  apologists  have  not  al- 
ways been  wise  in  seeking  to  belittle  this  conflict.  I  suggest  that 
it  were  far  better  to  realize  frankly  that  science  and  religion  be- 
long to  different  orders  of  truth  and  reality." 

"Yes,  indeed,  for  some  of  the  critics  may  be  competent  authori- 
ties in  mathematics,  but  that  does  not  give  them  the  right,  which 
they  frequently  assume,  to  speak  with  authority  about  the  futility 
of  religious  belief.  There  are  five  natural  senses  we  know  well, 
but  there  is  also  a  sense  of  sin  that  comes  of  another  order  and  of 
a  spiritual  nature  that  came  in  the  consciousness  of  sinfulness  when 
the  Hebrew  poet  prayed,  "Create  in  me  a  clean  heart,  O  God !"  He 
was  probably  ahead  in  his  search  for  truth  than  many  a  modern 
critic.  On  the  other  hand  one  need  not  think  that  Christian  apolo- 
gists are  following  the  course  of  wisdom  by  nailing  the  flag  of 
the  newer  physics  to  their  masthead.  Since  no  matter  how  much 
you  may  attenuate  matter,  you  do  not  in  that  way  reach  spirit. 
There  is  an  infinite  diameter  between  the  dance  of  electrons  and 
a  sense  of  beauty  or  of  purity  of  heart  which  sees  God." 

"After  all  you  say  of  Einstein,  it  seems  he  teaches  us  to  be  criti- 
cal of  our  own  categories.  We  are  shown  the  direction  in  which 
we  may  possess  our  souls  with  tranquillity  and  courage.  Certain 
spectres  which  frequently  obtrude  themselves  on  the  pilgrim's  path, 
and  the  student's  stride,  such  as  materialism,  scepticism  and  ob- 
scurantism, alike  fade  away  and  vanish  into  thin  air.  There  comes 
to  us  a  contentment  and  a  peace  that  passeth  understanding." 

"Yes,  we  know  that  those  whose  frame  of  reference  differs  from 
ours  may  see  things  differently  from  what  we  do.  Maybe  they  are 
right  and  we  are  wrong,  but  our  right  is  satisfactory  to  us,  and 
surely  that  is  the  main  thing." 


298  THE  OPEN    COURT 

"Yes,  indeed,  and  thank  you  for  your  patient  explaining  of  Ein- 
stein to  my  student  mind,  for  I  feel  with  Browning: 
"All  that  I  know  of  a  certain  star, 
Is  it  can  throw   (like  the  angled  spar) 
Now  a  dart  of  red  and  now  a  dart  of  blue ; 
Till  my  friends  have  said  they  would  fain  see  too 
My  star  that  dartles  the  red  and  the  blue ! 
Then  it  stops  like  a  bird,  like  a  flower  stands  furled ; 
They  must  solace  themselves  with  the  Saturn  above  it. 
What  matter  to  me  if  their  star  is  a  world? 
Mine  has  opened  its  soul  to  me :  therefore  I  love  it." 


WILL  PEACE  EVER  COME  TO  OUR  WORLD? 

BY  HAROLD  BERMAN 

MAX,  say  the  apologists  for  War,  has  alwa\'s  been  a  fighting 
animal.  Ever  since  his  first  appearnce  on  earth,  at  some  re- 
mote and  unascertained  pre-historic  day,  he  has  been  fighting  his 
fellow-hiimans.  At  all  times  there  were  the  group  and  the  clan,  the 
tribal  and  the  national  feuds  to  enliven  the  monotony  of  an  other- 
wise drear  existence  for  a  simple  and  crude  aggregation  of  men, 
and  not  infrequently  a  means  to  furnish  the  only  worth-while  and 
honorable  occupation  for  the  healthy  manhood  of  a  tribe ;  or,  later 
on,  for  a  certain  class  within  the  particular  ethnic  group.  From  these 
premises  many  superficial  observers,  predisposed  to  the  belief  that 
a  practice  or  an  institution  is  right  because  it  is,  the  mere  fact  of  its 
existence  proving  it  essential  to  our  being  as  well  as  congenital  to 
human  nature,  have  come  to  the  ready  conclusion  that  war  as  an 
institution  as  well  as  a  legitimate  implement  in  human  relationship 
was  just,  and  was  with  ns  to  stay  for  all  time.  It  zvas  and  is:  Ergo, 
it  z^'ill  be  ;  blithely  overlooking  the  poignant  fact  that  slavery  was 
and  is  with  us  no  longer ;  that  polygamy  was  and  is  no  longer ;  that 
autocracy,  and  the  stake  and  faggots  for  religious  transgressors 
also  were  with  us  and  are  so  no  longer.  These  worshippers  of  the 
Status  Quo  have  not  studied  the  cultural  history  of  the  human  race. 
If  they  had,  they  would  know  that  this  history  represents  a  con- 
stant forward  progression,  and  that  the  integrated  Philistine  respect- 
ability of  today  was  the  decried  revolutionism  and  innovation  of 
yesterday,  and  hadn't  even  been  dreamt  of  the  day  before  yester- 
day. 

There  is  a  fundamental  difi^erence  however,  between  all  the  wars 
of  history  and  those  fought  by  the  modern,  industrialized  democra- 
cies during  the  past  fifty  years  or  so :  barring,  of  course,  the  Balkan 
Nations  in  the  Sixties  and  Seventies  of  the  past  century,  who  fought 


300  THE  OPEN    COURT 

for  their  independence,  and  Czaristic  Russia  which  was  a  purely 
Mediaeval  State  in  every  essential.  Or,  if  you  wish  to  state  it  thus, 
the  difference  between  the  wars  waged  before  the  advent  of  the  In- 
dustrial Revolution — which  includes  practically  the  annals  of  the 
entire  human  race,  up  to  the  beginning  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 
in  England,  and  considerably  later  in  most  other  countries  — ,  and 
those  fought  since  by  the  Industrialized  Nations  of  Europe  and 
America.  Primitive  man,  resembling  in  most  attributes  and  essen- 
tials his  four-footed  fellow  creatures,  fought  for  meat  pure  and 
simple.  His  pastoral  descendants  fought  for  fat  grazing  lands  for 
their  flocks,  while  those  who  came  upon  the  stage  of  history  later 
on,  men  who,  by  some  way  or  other,  had  acquired  the  mysterious 
and  revolutionizing  art  of  soil-cultivation  as  a  means  for  increasing 
artificially  the  grudging  and  uncertain  food  supply  of  nature  and 
the  chase,  fought  for  and  invaded  lands  that  proved  more  fertile 
than  their  own  and  assured  them  a  more  bountiful  as  well  as  a 
more  dependable  harvest.  Of  such  origin  was  the  migration  of 
tribes  and  nations  in  all  countries  in  historic  and  pre-historic  times, 
traces  of  which  migrations  are  found  in  all  countries  of  the  globe 
even  at  this  late  day.  As  the  tribes  were  gradually  welded  into  Na- 
tions, and  these  again  came  to  be  ruled  over  by  Kings,  Princes,  Em- 
perors or  Dukes,  possessed  of  the  pride  of  place  and  powder  and  ob- 
sessed by  dynastic  ambitions,  these  rulers  decreed  wars  and  made 
peace  in  accordance  with  these  same  ambitions,  grudges  and  interests. 
These  wars  frequently  were  fought  by  Mercenaries,  or  by  levies  on 
the  peasantry  and  the  retainers  of  the  various  feudal  lords,  the  peo- 
ple at  large  never  being  consulted  at  either  occasion,  it  being  as- 
sumed to  be  none  of  their  business  what  their  divinely-appointed 
rulers  did  or  abstained  from  doing  at  any  particular  time  and  at 
their  own  sweet  pleasure. 

The  .World  truly  was  a  big  place  in  those  days.  It  held  many 
mysterious,  still  unexplored,  regions.  The  means  of  communica- 
tion were  no  better,  (if  not  much  worse)  than  they  had  been  in 
the  days  of  the  Romans,  of  Alexander  of  Macedon,  or  when  Hani- 
ball  crossed  the  Alps  to  attack  Rome  in  her  stronghold.  Napoleon 
had  to  wait  for  weeks  for  a  favorable  wind  before  he  could  set 
afoot  his  long-cherished  invasion  of  Britain.  Though  his  galleys 
were  properly  manned,  provisioned  and  munitioned  for  the  ven- 
ture, yet  when  the  winds  refused  to  accommodate  him  and  change 


WILL  PEACE  EVER   COME  TO  OUR  WORLD  301 

their  course,  he  suffered  his  most  ambitious  project  to  go  by  the 
board,  even  as  a  warrior  of  an  earher  millenium  would  have  been 
obh'ged  to  do.   There  was  no  help  for  it.   Nature  was  the  master. 

Each  nation,  in  those  simple  and  happy  days,  practically  was  self- 
sufficient,  producing  what  it  needed  and  getting  along  in  the  main 
without  the  product  of  the  others.  Imports  were  confined  to  lux- 
uries, craved  for  and  enjoyed  by  a  small  fracl^ion  of  the  populace, 
the  nobility  and  the  court  circles  mainly.  The  yeoman  raised  his 
crop  of  eatables,  reared  the  animals  that  furnished  the  motive  power 
for  his  labor,  meat,  milk  and  leather,  his  women  folk  spun  the  wool 
and  wove  the  cloth  out  of  which  his  garments  were  made,  rendered 
the  tallow  for  his  candles  and  soap,  and  so  on  and  so  forth.  He 
was  a  self-supporting  and  self-sufficient  individual — the  "sturdy" 
yeoman"  of  our  early  writers — whose  fate,  next  to  Nature's  va- 
garies, lay  in  his  own  hands,  and  in  his  own  hands  only.  The  towns- 
man was  not  much  more  cosmopolitan  than  the  peasant  in  his  physi- 
cal interests. 

The  conditions  that  held  true  in  the  realm  of  economics  held  true 
as  well  in  the  realm  of  ideas  and  beliefs.  The  average  man  knew 
next  to  nothing  of  the  things  that  went  on  bevond  the  borders  of 
his  own  country,  and,  frequently,  not  much  of  the  transpirings  in 
a  neighboring  province  or  district.  Rumors,  myths  and  all  sorts  of 
fairy-tales  could  easily  spring  up  and  be  as  readily  believed,  about 
the  foreigner,  his  mode  of  living,  his  faith,  his  general  conduct  and 
his  actions.  For  it  is  axiomatic  in  human  life  that  the  deeper  the  .de- 
gree of  ignorance  about  any  given  subject,  the  more  fertile  the  crop 
of  rumors,  and  the  greater  the  room  for  the  romancing  fictioneer  and 
for  the  wilfuU  libeler.  It  was,  in  brief,  an  ideal  atmosphere  for  the 
breeding  of  mistrust  and  its  offspring,  hatred,  for  the  hatching  of 
all  sorts  of  plots  and  counterplots.  There  was  no  need,  then,  for 
the  artificial  stimulation  of  hatred  through  the  creation  of  "propa- 
ganda bureaus",  in  charge  of  slick  and  prostituted  press  agents  well 
versed  in  the  manufacture  of   non-existent  atrocities  and  horrors! 

Now  consider  the  world  of  today,  since  the  advent  of  the  ma- 
chine and  the  mechanical  means  of  communication  and  production. 
The  globe  has  shrunken  tremendously  in  size,  while  self-sufficiency 
has  been  tracelcssly  lost  to  the  human  race,  excepting  perhaps  to 
the  most  backward  portion  of  it,  which  is  negligible.  Our  stock  of 
knowledge — in    the    physical    realms,    at    any    rate — has    been    im- 


302  THE  OPEN    COURT 

measurably  increased,  while  our  physical  comforts  have  multiplied 
and  our  general  well-being  enhanced.  But  all  these  have  been  se- 
cured at  the  cost  of  our  former  self-sufficincy  and  sturdy  indepen- 
dence. The  farmer  no  longer  produces  things  primarily  for  his  own 
needs  and  barter,  nor  does  the  artisan  produce  any  longer  your 
cloak,  your  boot,  your  table  or  your  bed  in  his  cottage-work-room 
and  to  your  demand.  The  Texan  or  Argentinian  ranger  grows  a 
steer  whose  flesh  is  destined  for  consumption  in  New  York,  Lon- 
don or  Berlin.  Another  man  pastures  a  flock  of  sheep  in  Nevada, 
Australia  or  New  Zealand,  destined  to  nourish  a  Manchester  spin- 
ning-mill employee,  while  their  wool  may  find  its  way  into  the 
Far  FJast  or  the  furthest  West.  He  doesn't  know,  and  doesn't  care. 
A  man  digs  coal  in  Wales  which  is  to  furnish  heat  or  motive  power 
for  an  electric-generating  station  in  Bulawayo  or  Syria.  A  hide  is 
tanned  into  leather  in  Kansas  City,  is  turned  into  shoes  in  Bingham- 
ton,  N.  Y.,  to  be  worn  in  Czecho-Slovakia  or  in  Turkey.  At  your 
breakfast  table  each  day  you  drink  cofl^ee  grown  in  Brazil  or  Porto- 
Rico,  sweeten  it  with  sugar  raised  in  Cuba  or  Haiti,  cut  yourself 
a  slice  of  bread  made  of  wheat  raised  in  Minnesota,  the  Dakotas 
or  perhaps  in  Argentina  or  Russia,  and  smear  it  with  butter  made 
out  of  the  milk  of  an  Iowa  cow,  or  with  jam  made  in  England  out 
of  oranges  grown  in  Spain  or  Italy.  When  you  get  ready  to  go 
out,  and  if  it  happens  to  be  cloudy,  you  put  on  your  feet  rubber 
shoes  made  of  the  gum  of  a  tree  growing  in  the  Jungles  of  the 
Congo  or  Malaysia,  and  you  may  also  put  on  a  coat  made  of  the 
same  foreign  substance.  A  few  hours  later  you  may,  if  you  so 
desire,  lunch  on  fruits  gathered  in  from  a  dozen  South  and  Central 
American  Countries,  not  counting  the  varied  products  of  your  own, 
far-flung,  native  land.  And  it  is  the  same  way  with  your  means  of 
livelihood,  the  tools  and  materials  that  you  employ  in  the  process 
and  the  product  of  your  skill  or  efTort.  All  these  have  ceased  to 
be  individual,  but  have  become  a  composite  of  the  human  race.  It 
is  interlocked  and  intermingled  with  the  product  and  the  need  of 
peoples  scattered  all  over  the  face  of  the  globe. 

But  do  not  think  for  a  moment  that  these  variegated  boons  are 
vours  for  the  asking,  a  free-will  offering  from  kind-hearted  ^Mother 
Nature.  You  have  paid  for  them,  and  paid  dearly.  You  have  paid 
for  them  with  your  independence,  your  self-sufificiency,  your  skill 
as  a  worker,  creator  or  independent  trader.    You  have  given  your 


WILL  PEACE  EVER  COME  TO  OUR  WORLD  303 

hostages  to  fortune,  hostages  most  hkely  never  to  be  accorded  their 
liberty  again.  You  have  given  them  in  exchange  for  these  en- 
hanced comforts  and  your  lessened  ignorance!  You  have  become 
the  Faustus  of  the  legend.  You  have  bartered  away  your  calm 
of  mind  and  repose  for  a  brief  taste  of  youth  and  ease! 

Even  the  joy  and  the  thrill  of  the  early  machine-days  are  gone. 
To-day  man  no  longer  feels  like  a  conqueror,  like  the  discoverer  of 
some  hidden  power  or  force.  Man  no  longer  dominates  the  machine, 
but  really  is  dominated  by  it  whether  he  knows  it  or  not.  and  I 
rather  think  that  he  does  know  it  only  too  well  now,  in  these  days  of 
technological  unemployment  and  widespread  misery  due  to  this 
very  domination  of  his  life  by  the  machine.  While  human  energy 
is  capable  only  of  moderate  increase,  the  power  of  the  machine  may 
be,  and  is,  constantly  increased  in  ways  and  in  degrees  without  end. 
In  the  Malthusian  dialectic  it  would  perhaps  be  proper  to  say  that 
while  the  one  increases  in  an  arithmetical,  the  other  in  a  geometrical 
ratio.  The  machine  lends  itself  to  repeated  improvements,  to  the 
almost  endless  enhancement  of  its  productive  abilities,  and  to  its  own 
supercession  again  and  again  by  newer  and  better  machines.  Every 
day  various  plans  are  being  tried  out  for  the  increase  of  the  produc- 
tive capacity  of  each  unit,  the  Taylor  System  of  an  earlier  day  and 
the  mass  production  of  the  present  day,  for  example. 

That  machine  or  personnel  whose  capacity  for  producing  com- 
modities is  increased,  needs  in  turn  a  larger  quantity  of  raw  ma- 
terial to  work  with,  as  well  as  new  and  enlarged  outlets  for  the 
things  produced.  This  modern  Homunculus — the  machine  pro- 
duced and  compounded  in  the  modern  Frankenstein  lal:)oratory — 
now  came  to  dominate  as  well  as  to  frighten  its  creator,  keeping 
his  nerves  frayed  and  on  edge  day  and  night,  as  truly  happened  to 
his  celebrated  prototype  in  the  story.  The  Homunculus  is  growing 
larger  day  by  day.  He  keeps  man  in  a  state  of  fear.  What  is  he 
to  do  with  him?  He  can't  kill  him.  He  can't  undo  him,  and  per- 
haps doesn't  want  to ;  but  where  will  he  find  the  food  day  after  day 
with  which  to  appease  his  ever-increasing  appetite?  When  the  mon- 
ster is  hungry,  as  he  now  is,  man,  his  feeder,  too.  is  hungrv,  and 
with  no  prospect  or  outlook  for  appeasing  thai  hunger.  And  what, 
again,  will  he  do  with  his  plethora  of  honey — goods — into  which 
this  monster  transmutes  the  feed  that  we  dole  out  to  him?  "I 
must  hasten",  says  Frankenstein,  "to  find  some  more  backs  on  which 


304  THE  OPEN    COURT 

to  place  these  additional  coats,  heads  to  wear  these  hats,  feet  to 
put  into  these  additional  pairs  of  shoes!  I  must  fi.nd  people  to 
drive  these  cars,  to  listen  to  these  phonographs  and  radios,  to  smoke 
these  million  upon  million  packs  of  cigarettes  and  to  chew  these 
useless  heaps  of  gum.  /  must  teach  the  people  to  zvant  these  and 
more  of  their  kind.  I  must  inculcate  in  them  new  habits,  make 
them  desire  the  things  that  they  have  no  normal  craving  for  and 
would  be  better  and  happier  without.  I  must  do  it,  or  be  devoured 
b}^  my  Homunculus.  And  I  must  not  only  teach  my  own  people  to 
acquire  these  habits,  but  must  also  become  a  schoolmaster  in  other 
and  distant  lands.  The  Chinaman  must  be  taught  to  smoke  Vir- 
ginia cigarettes,  the  Filipino  must  be  made  to  chew  gum  made  in 
Chicago,  the  Malays  must  be  tai^ght  to  use  the  phonograph  and  the 
radio,  while  the  Kaffir  in  his  Kraal  must  be  told  to  carry  a  Kodak 
and  eat  American  pork,  as  otherwise  I'd  be  overwhelmed  by  my 
Homunculus,  there'll  be  a  panic  and  misery  in  the  land,  and  the 
monster's  erstwhile  servitors  will  stand  shivering  in  the  bread- 
line, waiting  for  a  dole  of  charity  soup".  Parenthetically,  and  by 
way  of  concrete  illustration,  the  rampages  of  this  angry  Homun- 
culus are  all  too  evident  in  the  world-wide  crisis  we  are  even  now 
experiencing,  and  the  misery  that  it  brought  to  untold  and  be- 
wildered millions. 

In  plain  and  simple  language,  industrial  civilization  has  really 
reduced  itself  to  the  simplest  essentials  ;  to  the  double-edged  form- 
ula of  raw  materials  for  production,  and  ever-increasing  markets 
for  the  ever-increasing  amount  of  produced  things.  And  this  is  the 
sum  total  of  all  foreign  policies,  of  all  diplomacy,  of  our  modern 
imperialism  and  "economic  penetrations",  of  war  and  peace  as 
waged  and  signed  today. 

We  no  longer  wage  war  for  fertile  fields  and  pastures.  It  is  no 
longer  a  fight  of  hungry  men  for  loaves  and  fishes.  The  world  to- 
day sutlers  from  a  plethora  of  commodities  that  the  machine  could, 
and  does,  produce.  There  are  no  hungry  tribes  in  our  midst  waiting 
to  descend  on  their  neighbors  and  despoil  them  in  their  own  desper- 
ate hunger,  as  all  lands  now  are  equally  fertile  and  equally  barren 
by  the  fiat  of  the  new  economic  order  and  the  ready  means  of  trans- 
portation. Nor  are  there  any  longer  any  innate  tribal  hates  or 
jealousies.  During  the  World  War  the  various  nations  engaged  in 
the   silly  and  wasteful   struggle  had   to   create   and  maintain  their 


WILL  PEACE  EVER  COME  T(J  OUR  WORLD  305 

propaganda  bureaus  in  order  to  foster  hatred  artificially,  and  had  to 
stimulate  it  day  l^y  day,  for  fear  that  it  would  die  a  natural  death 
if  let  alone  for  any  length  of  time.  And  it  is  the  testimony  of  these 
men  and  women  who  mingled  with  the  soldiers,  or  were  soldiers 
in  the  late  war  themselves,  that  these  fighters  were  singularly  pas- 
sionless and  free  from  all  hatred  towards  the  enemy,  but  fraternized 
with  him  whenever  the  opportunity  ofit'ered,  and  when  not  expressly 
forbidden  to  do  so  by  their  panicky  officers  ;  while  as  for  dynastic  ri- 
valries, they  have  become  almost  negligible,  conspicuous  mainly  by 
their  total  absence  among  the  masses  of  people,  who  fight  the 
modern  bloody  wars  and  are  called  on  to  make  the  supreme  sacri- 
fice in  them. 

Xow  as  to  the  specfic  causes  of  this  new  tension  in  post-war 
Europe.  They  are  traceable  indirectly  to  our  machine  civilization 
and  more  directly  to  the  division  of  the  spoils  following  the  great 
war.  Of  all  the  nations  that  participated  in  the  World  War  on  the 
allied  side,  Britain  gained  the  most,  in  a  territorial  sense,  at  the 
time  when  the  small  group  of  aging  buccaneers  carved  up  the 
World  between  them.  She  annexed,  under  the  guise  of  the  newly- 
invented  "Afandate"  system  that  deceived  no  one  except  a  cer- 
tain elderly  and  unsophisticated  American  autocrat,  all  the  former 
German  Colonies  in  Africa,  "took"  Palestine,  Mesopotamia  and 
Trans-Jordania,  and  tightened  still  further  her  death-grip  on  Egypt. 
She  almost  "walked  ofi:*""  with  Turkey,  and  would  have  if  she  had 
only  succeeded  in  capturing  betimes  the  person  of  Kemal  Pasha. 
Then  she  would  most  unhesitatingly  have  put  a  noose  around  his 
neck- — as  she  so  unceremoniously  did  to  so  many  other  Turkish  and 
Egyptian  patriots  in  1921^ — or  would  have  transported  him  to  some 
Island  prison  to  pine  away  and  languish  for  the  remaining  few 
years  of  his  life — as  she  also  had  done  to  some  others — ,  and,  pres- 
to !  "the  Empire  on  which  the  sun  never  sets"  would  have  become 
enriched  by  another  rich  province  or  colony.  That  she  didn't  suc- 
ceed wasn't  really  her  fault.  She  was  willing  enough  to  become  the 
strangler  of  one  more  nation,  but  was  denied  the  chance  bv  the 
mere  flip  of  the  dice  in  Fate's  ironic  hands. 

At  the  present  time,  and  as  a  result  of  this  too  liberal  appropri- 
ation of  the  spoils,  her  prestige  in  the  World  is  considerably  en- 
hanced, the  fear  of  her  among  the  subject  and  non- white  races  great- 
ly increased.    She  now  rules  over  territories,  and  exerts  an  influence 


306  THE  OPEN    COURT 

through  her  "Diplomatic  Agents'",  "Commissioners"  and  "High 
Commissioners"  and  what  not,  over  ever  so  many  more  territories 
and  lands  as  to  cause  Rome  in  her  most  flourishing  period  to  look- 
like  some  tiny  Principality  alongside  of  her. 

Rut  for  all  that,  she  has  hecome  the  Midas  of  these  Post-War 
days.  Midas  had  more  gold  than  anyone  else  in  creation.  The  Gods 
had  granted  his  prayer  to  turn  everything  he  touched  into  gold,  in- 
cluding most  maliciously,  his  bread  and  water,  so  that  he  starved 
to  death  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  wealth  ever  brought  together 
by  man.  Britain,  which  before  the  War  had  been  "the  workshop  of 
the  World"  now  is  so  no  longer.  Two  to  three  millions  of  her  young 
and  vigorous  sons  are  chronically  idle — not  because  they  want  to 
be,  but  because  they  have  to— drawing  a  weekly  "dole"  to  keep 
bodv  and  soul  together.  Her  one  million  or  so  of  coal  miners  in 
South  Wales  are  unemployed  and  unemployable,  because  the  de- 
mand for  the  coal  that  they  used  to  dig  is  gone,  its  place  having  been 
taken  by  the  coal  dug  in  the  Ruhr  and  Upper  Silesia.  These  later 
mines  were  there  before  the  War  too,  it  is  true,  and  their  coal  was 
not  exactly  allowed  to  stay  hidden  away  in  their  bowels ;  but  it  is 
now  being  dug  more  feverishly,  in  greater  abundance  and  with 
half-starved  labor.  Why  is  this  so?  Because,  as  regards  the  Ruhr, 
Germany  has  become  the  galley  slave  of  the  World.  She  must 
work  not  only  to  support  herself,  but  to  support  France,  England, 
Belgium,  Italy,  Japan,  the  U.  S.  A.,  and  a  few  other  nations.  She 
must  produce  so  many  millions  of  tons  annually  to  give  away  as 
a  free-will  offering  to  her  late  open,  and  at  present  secret,  enemies. 
She  must  produce  some  more  to  meet  her  own  domestic  needs,  and 
still  some  more  for  export,  so  that  she  have  the  wherewithal  to  pay 
for  her  imports  as  w^ell  as  to  find  the  money  with  which  to  satisfy 
the  International  Sheriff'  standing  guard  at  her  door.  All  in  all,  she 
is  obliged  to  drive  her  workers  to  the  very  last  ounce  of  their 
strength  and  to  the  fullest  capacity  of  the  machinery,  and  at  a  wage 
reckoned  at  the  barest  subsistence  level, ^  in  order  to  provide  for 
all  these  natural  and  artificial  needs.  The  result  of  this  German  su- 
per-efficiency in  production,  and  the  semi-starvation  of  her  serfs,  is 

iWages  in  the  Ruhr  a  few  months  ago  were;  60  Pfennigs  per  hour  for 
unskilled  labor  and  78  Pfennigs  (19  cents)  for  skilled  labor.  40  per  cent  work 
57  hours  weekly,  while  60  per  cent  work  60  hours  weekly.  The  production  of 
iron  ore  has  increased  27  per  cent,  of  steel  42  per  cent  over  1913 !  Two  mil- 
lion draw  the  "dole". 


WILL  PEACE  EVER  COME   TO  OUR  W(JRLD  307 

that  the  miner  in  South  Wales,  and  to  a  certain  lesser  extent  in  some 
other  countries,  finds  his  calling  slipping  away  from  him ! 

Or  take  the  case  of  Upper  Silesia,  as  an  example:  This  territory 
has  been  awarded  to  Poland  after  the  so-called  and  trickily-manipu- 
lated Plebiscite  of  1921.  Poland,  a  new  and  inexperienced  country 
fighting  hard  against  threatened  bankruptcy,  is  working  her  mines 
day  and  night — under  the  efficient  tutelage  of  the  Americans  and 
the  French  —  in  order  to  produce  wealth  for  the  American  bond- 
holders of  her  many  loans,  aside  from  finding  the  means  where- 
with to  run  her  own  government.  And  her  laborers  receive  a1)out 
one-half  the  wage  of  their  English  confreres,  so  that  she  could 
easily  undersell  them  in  the  World  market. 

What  is  true  of  the  mines  is  true  also  of  the  factory  and  work- 
shop. Germany,  for  example,  must  produce  not  only  for  the  needs 
of  her  own  sixty-five  million  people,  but  for  the  use  of  a  dozen  more, 
major  or  lesser,  Powers. - 

Add  to  the  above  the  fact  that  the  source  of  raw  materials — her 
colonies — have  been  taken  from  Germany,  and  that  she  is  obliged  to 
buy  all  her  raw  supplies  in  the  competitive  open  market,  and  you 
have  a  very  pretty  picture  indeed  of  the  present  situation.  The 
German  Homunculus — the  machine — is  geared  up  to  a  feverish 
and  neck-breaking  state  of  efficiency,  with  the  result  that  the  British 
Golem  finds  his  own  strong  arms  dropping  limply  to  his  side,  and  the 
entire  International  economy — an  artificial  economy  at  best — is 
put  out  of  joint.  For,  while  it  was  entirely  possible  in  ancient  and 
mediaeval  days  for  the  conqueror  nation  to  enslave  the  vanquished 
nation,  keeping  it  at  work  while  it  lolled  in  idleness  itself,  it  could 
no  longer  be  done  to-day  after  man  has  been  displaced  by  the 
machine,  and  his  skill,  individuality  as  well  as  his  self-sufficiency 
have  been  taken  from  him ! 

And  even  Britain,  victorious  Britain,  is  not  entirely  free  from 
war-time  obligations.  She  has  to  pay  back  her  borrowings  to  Un- 
cle Sam  ("Uncle  Shylcck"  some  of  her  sons  have  dubbed  him)  ; 
and  she  has  her  war  pensions  and  indemnities,  and  the  rehabilita- 
tion of  her  disabled  ones  among  her  own  subjects  to  pay  for! 

There  is  Middle  Europe.  Austria  and  Hungary  have  been  plucked 
and  dismembered,  and  their  neighbors  given  unduly  large  portions 

2The  interest  payments  on  her  loans  for  her  Dawes  Plan  pr.yments 
amounted  to  One  Billion  Marks  yearly  !  A  little  less  under  the  Young  Plan. 
Despite  of  long  hours  and  steady  work,  791,000  families  are  homeless ! 


308  ■  THE  OPEN    COURT 

of  the  bleeding  carcass.  The  former  can't  live,  and  they  nurse  their 
resentment,  while  the  others  are  bloated  and  misgovern  themselves 
and  others.  More  recently  the  new  Russian  menace— not  in  the  re- 
volutionary sense,  but  in  the  recovered  economic  field — has  appeared 
like  a  spectre  on  the  World's  horizon.  She  is  producing  goods  in 
great  quantities,  is  selling  them  to  other  nations  at  reduced  rates. 
For  these  blessings  she  is  roundly  abused  and  cursed,  abused  and 
cursed  as  the  menace  to  all  fellow-nations!  A  generation  ago — 
previous  to  the  coming  of  the  machine  age — she  would  have  been 
blessed  by  all  for  it! 

And  here  is  where  Russia  comes  into  the  picture.  If  either  or 
both  of  these  rich  Anglo-Saxon  nations  had  not  continued  to  play 
the  Pecksniffian  role,  had  agreed  to  abandon  the  holier-than-thou 
attitude  towards  the  Soviet  Government,  recognized  the  fait  accom- 
pli and  adopted  the  simple  shop-keeper's  attitude  towards  her  (and 
they  have  that  opprobrious  term  thrown  at  them  all  the  time,  any- 
how!) then  they  could  both  appease  their  hunger  to  a  considerable 
extent  by  trading  with  her,  reduce  their  own  unemployment  and 
restore  their  respective  sets  of  nerves  to  a  less  frayed  state.  But 
they  won't  do  it.  As  a  result  of  it,  we  have  about  six  million  peo- 
ple unemployed  now  in  the  United  States ;  two  to  three  million 
drawing  the  dole  in  the  United  Kingdom,  while  there  is  no  ghost 
of  a  chance  for  any  of  the  Welsh  miners  to  be  absorbed  in  any 
other  industry,  when  there  is  no  room  in  it  for  the  old  workers ! 

And  so  chaos  continues  and  will  continue  to  predominate  over  the 
afifairs  of  the  helpless  and  enmeshed  man,  with  no  other  prospect 
but  war  to  disentangle  them  for  a  while,  preparatory  to  their  re- 
entanglement  the  moment  actual  hostilities  are  ended  and  the 
Homunculus  set  to  normal  working  again. 


SCIENCE  AND   RELIGION— ANOTHER   ATTE^IPT 
AT  RECONCILIATION 

BY    VICTOR    S.    YARROS 

RECENT  developments  in  science,  notably  physics  and  astron- 
omy, have  led,  most  naturally,  to  new  attempts  at  effecting  a 
reconciliation  between  religion  and  exact  science.  We  have  been 
assured  by  many  that  the  majority  of  the  modern  physicists  are 
Idealists,  not  Materialists  or  Mechanists,  and  that  science  has  ac- 
quired a  new  humility  by  reason  of  the  universal  abandonment  of 
the  old  conception  of  matter.  We  have  been  assured — by  Gilbert 
Chesterton  among  others — that  Agnosticism,  Rationalism  and  Dis- 
belief have  run  their  course  and  are  fading  away,  making  room  for 
a  revival  of  religion  and  faith. 

What  more  logical  and  comprehensible,  then,  than  a  new  effort  to 
establish  an  entente  cordiale  between  Science  and  Religion? 

In  this  paper  we  shall  examine  the  contribution  to  that  effort  of 
Prof.  Julian  S.  Huxley,  grandson  of  the  great  Professor  Thomas 
H.  Huxley,  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly  for  March.  As  the  editor 
of  the  magazine  remarks,  this  contribution  is  the  more  interesting 
and  significant  because  of  the  difference  between  its  spirit  and  tenor 
and  those  of  the  contribution  of  the  grandfather  to  the  same  sub- 
ject in  another  era  and  another  intellectual  atmosphere. 

"Religion  Meets  Science"  is  the  title  of  the  paper  we  are  about  to 
consider  and  comment  upon.  For  the  most  part,  the  paper  is  admir- 
able and  thoroughly  sound.  It  dwells  on  the  adjustments  religion 
has  to  make  in  the  light  of  modern  astronomy,  modern  physics, 
modern  cosmology.  The  notions  expressed  in  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  are  too  dead  to  deserve  even  passing  references.  We 
have  new  views  of  the  world,  of  space  and  time,  of  evolution  and 
dissolution.    We  cannot  indulge  anthropomorphic  fancies.    We  can- 


310  THE  OPEN    COURT 

not  talk  seriously  about  Jesus  sitting  at  the  right  hand  of  God.  We 
cannot  talk  of  heaven  as  a  place  somewhere  in  space.  We  cannot 
talk  of  prayer  and  miraculous  intervention  in  response  to  prayer. 
All  this,  we  see.  is  naive  and  childish,  and  w^e  must  put  away  all 
puerile  ideas  about  God,  the  next  world,  individual  immortality. 

But  if  we  do  put  these  things  away,  do  we  not  also  put  away  re- 
ligion ? 

No,  answers  Prof.  Huxley.  Science  may  destroy  certain  theolo- 
gies, even  certain  rigid  and  unprogressive  religions,  but  it  cannot  de- 
stroy religion,  which  "is  the  outcome  of  the  religious  spirit,  and  the 
religious  spirit  is  just  as  much  a  property  of  human  nature  as  is 
the  scientific  spirit". 

These  words  obviorsly  call  for  a  definition  of  the  term  religion 
and  the  phrase  religious  spirit.  Prof.  Huxley,  aware  of  this,  fur- 
nishes the  definitions,  but  in  a  rather  indirect  and  distinctly  unsatis- 
factory way. 

"The  practical  task  of  religion,"  he  says,  "is  to  help  man  to  live 
and  to  decide  how  he  shall  use  the  knowledge  and  the  jjower  science 
gives  him".  Again :  "\\'hat  religion  can  do  is  to  set  up  a  scale 
of  values  for  conduct  and  to  provide  emotional  or  spiritual  driving 
force  to  help  in  getting  them  realized  in  practice". 

Science,  reasons  Prof.  Huxley,  is  morally  and  emotionally  neu- 
tral. It  has  no  scale  of  valves,  apart  from  the  value  of  truth  and 
Inowledge,  which  of  course  it  emphasizes  and  upholds.  What  we 
are  to  do  with  facts,  ideas,  opportunities  supplied  by  science,  it  is 
the  duty  and  privilege  of  religion  to  determine. 

This  is  oerfectly  clear,  if  not  at  all  new.  But  let  us  glance  at 
Prof.  Huxley's  assumptions.  Science,  he  premises,  is  morally  neu- 
tral and  has  no  scale  of  values,  aside  from  the  value  of  truth  and 
knowlc^dge.  But  to  what  sciences  does  this  generalization  refer? 
Physics  has  no  scale  of  values.  Astronomy  and  chemistry  are  moral- 
ly neutral.  So  are  several  other  sciences  we  call  natural  or  physical. 
But  is  it  a  fact  that  ethics,  economics  and  politics  are  morally  and 
emotionally  neutral  sciences?  Is  history  neutral  and  sans  a  scale  of 
values?    Is  sociology? 

The  answer  assuredly  is  that  today  no  progressive  thinker  will  ad- 
mit for  a  moment  that  the  social  sciences  are  neutral  morallv  and 
emotionally.   Prof.  Huxley  is  sadly  behind  the  times. 

Take  the  science  of  economics.    Since  Adam  Smith  it  has  been 


SCIENCE    AND   RELIGION  311 

held  that  economics  has  its  scale  of  values  and  is  morally  quite  par- 
tisan. Its  business  is  to  promote  the  material  welfare  of  nations, 
to  do  away  with  unmerited  poverty,  unjust  inec[uality,  lack  of  fair 
opportunity.  It  is  bound  to  point  the  way  to  economic  justice  and 
to  permanent  general  prosperity.  It  has  principles,  postulates,  ob- 
jectives, ideals.  Its  exponents  are  not  neutral,  cold,  objective.  They 
take  sides ;  they  attack ;  they  defend ;  they  fight  for  what  they  consi- 
der the  right  solutions  of  problems. 

Now,  men  of  science  who  fight  and  work  for  objectives  possess 
driving  force.   They  do  not  have  to  borrow  it. 

What  is  true  of  economists  is  true  of  ethicists,  sociologists, 
workers  in  political  science.  They  severally  have  their  respective 
ideals  and  standards- — scales  of  values.  They  fight  for  these.  Hence 
they  are  not  morally  neutral.  What  becomes  of  Prof.  Huxley's 
whole  argument  if  his  major  premise  is  false — as   it   is? 

True,  he  may  rejoin  that  the  militant  men  of  science  just  referred 
to  are  also  religious,  and  that  it  is  religion,  not  science,  that  fur- 
nished the  driving  force  they  display  and  apply.  But  that  plea  would 
beg  the  whole  question.  If  science  has  scales  of  values,  it  does  not 
require  any  aid  from  religion.  And  science  is  merely  descriptive  if 
it  does  not  set  goals  and  predict  results.  The  social  sciences  have 
long  since  ceased  to  be  merely  descriptive.  Any  knowledge  of  econ- 
omics, politics,  ethics,  sociology  as  taught  for  a  century  or  more 
leaves  no  doubt  upon  the  point. 

It  is  sufficient  to  mention  srch  names  as  Mill,  Spencer,  Toynbee, 
Comte,  George,  Ward,  Proudhon,  Hobson,  Keynes,  Dewey,  Taw- 
ney.  And  one  hardly  needs  adding  that  the  radicals  among  the 
economists,  sociologists  and  ethicists  have  never  failed  to  stress  the 
moral  and  human  aspects  of  their  sciences.  Indeed,  Prof.  Huxley's 
own  grandfather,  who  wrote  much  on  political,  social  and  ethical 
questions,  even  though  they  were  not  strictly  within  his  special  pro- 
vince, and  who  was  a  militant  Agnostic,  was  never  morallv  neutral 
or  indiiTerent  to  social  and  spiritual  values. 

So  much  for  facts.  Dealing  with  the  matter  theoreticallv,  is  it 
not  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  social  sciences  could  dispense  with 
scales  of  values,  with  standards  and  ideals?  Science  is  based  on 
experience  and  observation.  The  human  race  has  lived  on  our  globe 
long  enough  to  have  discovered  that  societies,  economic  systems, 
political  organizations  cannot  possibly  exist  without  codes  of  con- 


312  THE  OPEN    COURT 

duct,  principles  of  co-operation,  restraints  upon  instinct  and  appetite. 
Science  formulates  and  explains  these  codes,  rules  and  standards. 
Laws,  in  truth  worthy  of  the  name  are  discovered,  not  arbitrarily 
enacted.  They  grow  out  of  conditions  and  necessity.  Religion  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  them. 

To  quote  George  Santayana,  "the  principle  of  morality  is  natural- 
istic. Call  it  humanism  or  not,  only  a  morality  frankly  relative  to 
man's  nature  is  worthy  of  man". 

If  all  theologies  and  religions  were  abandoned  tomorrow^  morality 
and  hence  ethical  science  and  ethical  philosophy  would  remain. 
Morality  changes  with  conditions  and  circumstances,  precisely  be- 
cause it  is  human  and  relative  to  human  needs  under  the  dictates  of 
association  and  co-operation,  as  of  competition  and  permissible  con- 
flict. 

Thus  Prof.  Huxley's  basic  assumption  collapses  under  inquiry. 
Religion  is  not  necessary  to  morality. 

It  is  not  necessary,  either,  to  the  arts  and  to  the  appreciation  or 
cultivation  of  beauty.  Religion  has  sought  the  aid  of  art  and  l^eauty, 
and  for  good  utilitarian  reasons.  But  the  sense  of  beauty  is  natural 
to  man.  as  it  is  in  some  degree  to  the  lower  animals,  and  would  be 
cultivated  and  fostered  in  societies  devoid  of  all  religious  institu- 
tions or  ideas. 

We  are  brought  back,  however,  to  the  question :  What  essentially 
is  religion?  Can  it  be  completely  shed  and  renounced?  Since  Prof. 
Huxley  does  not  help  much  in  our  search  of  adequate  definitions 
and  clear  ideas,  let  us  turn  to  Prof.  Nathaniel  Schmidt  of  Cornell 
University  and  his  book  on  "The  Coming  Religion".  According  to 
him,  religion  is  "devotion  to  the  highest" — the  highest  truth,  the 
highest  duty,  the  highest  beauty.  Science,  Prof.  Schmidt  holds, 
agreeing  in  this  matter  with  Prof.  Huxley,  seeks  knowleedge  for 
its  own  sake,  without  regard  to  its  applications  or  effects,  and  by 
purelv  intellectual  processes.  Religion,  like  science,  seeks  knowl- 
edge and  truth,  but  it  seeks  these  in  the  realm  of  what  is  felt,  de- 
sired and  conceived  as  the  highest  good". 

Now,  there  is  no  serious  objection  to  giving  the  name  Religion  to 
the  sentiment  of  devotion  to  the  highest,  but  it  is  plain  that  this  is 
an  arbitrary  proceeding.  It  does  no  grave  harm,  but  no  good,  either. 
It  would  seem  to  be  more  sensible  and  more  scientific  to  call  senti- 
ments and  emotions  by  their  own  names.    If  I  long  for  the  highest 


SCIENCE   AND    RELIGION  313 

in  music— for  Bach,  Beethoven,  Brahms,  say — I  do  so  because  this 
music  gives  me  the  deepest  and  keenest  pleasure.  It  exalts  and  stirs 
me,  and  I  like  to  feel  exalted  and  moved.  But  why  call  this  state  of 
mind  religious,  and  what  do  we  gain  by  so  calling  it?  We  only 
confuse  issues  by  so  doing.  If,  again,  I  want  to  know  the  highest 
truth  attainable  in  regard  to  my  duty  to  others,  or  to  society,  I 
consult  the  best  ethical  teachers  and  guides.  I  may  wish  to  be  just, 
but  the  sentiment  of  justice  is  not  enough — definite  ideas  and  con- 
cepts of  justice  are  necessary  to  right  conduct.  Prof  Schmidt  talks 
of  one's  feelings,  but  feelings  are  not  always  right.  And  even  when 
right,  they  need  interpretation  and  direction. 

Prof.  Schmidt  falls  into  the  same  error  as  Prof.  Huxley  in  assert- 
ing that  the  processes  of  science  are  purely  and  strictly  intellectual, 
and,  therefore,  science  is  not  interested  in  applications  or  effects. 
The  sciences  that  have  to  do  with  human  welfare  and  human  pro- 
gress are  decidedly  interested  in  applications  and  effects,  and  the 
workers  in  these  sciences,  as  we  have  seen,  are  not  incapable  or 
ashamed  of  emotion  when  they  enforce  a  truth  or  oppose  a  fallacy 
or  falsehood. 

We  must  conclude  that  religion  cannot  rationally  lay  claim  to  a 
monopoly  of  devotion  to  the  highest  good.  Men  not  in  the  least  re- 
ligious are  devoted  to  the  highest  good,  and  this  because  they  are 
human  and  all  things  human  are  natural  to  them. 

Let  me  try  to  offer  a  different  definition  of  religion.  It  is  a  name 
for  one's  attitude  toward  the  unknown,  the  mysterious,  the  unknow- 
able, possibly.  Contemplation  of  space,  time,  space-time,  the  stuff 
of  the  universe,  the  evolution  and  dissolution  of  the  manifold  forms 
that  stuff"  has  assumed  and  is  assuming  including  what  we  call  life 
and  mind,  fills  one  with  wonder  and  awe.  After  all,  science  solves  no 
ultimate  problem.  It  does  not  pretend  to  be  able  to  do  so.  It  ob- 
serves, classifies,  generalizes,  theorizes,  verifies,  modifies  its  theories 
and  finally  formulates  so  called  laws.  But  it  has  its  limits,  and  has 
no  hope  of  transcending  them. 

The  emotions  aroused  by  contemplation  of  the  great,  unfathom- 
able mysteries  may  be  called  religious  emotions.  That  begs  no 
question.  But  we  must  recognize  that  those  emotions  are  unaccom- 
panied by  definite  ideas.  We  marvel,  we  sigh,  we  ask  questions, 
but  no  answer  comes.  Religion  remains  emotional.  The  explana- 
tions offered  by  the  theologies  are  crude,  inadequate,  or  even  mean- 


314  THE  OPEN    COURT 

ingless.  We  have  outgrown  all  the  theologies.  We  have  reached 
Agnosticism,  and  there  we  stick. 

It  is,  therefore,  neither  necessary  nor  possible  to  reconcile  science 
and  religion.  There  is,  in  truth,  no  conflict.  Religion  is  an  emotion, 
and  it  is  common  to  all  human  beings.  Science  cannot  get  rid  of 
it,  and  does  not  desire  to  get  rid  of  it.  It  is,  moreover,  an  ennobling 
emotion.  It  engenders  humility  and  modesty.  It  makes  for  better 
science  and  better  conduct. 

But  when,  in  the  name  of  religion,  some  theologian  essays  a 
theory  of  cosmic  evolution,  of  life  and  destiny,  science  immediately 
steps  in  and  simply  asks  for  the  evidence.  Feelings  are  facts ;  the- 
ories are  prepositions  to  be  demonstrated.  No  religion  now  pro- 
fessed, no  theology  now  expounded,  is  able  to  demonstrate  its  propo- 
sitions. It  :s  preposterous  to  ask  us  to  accept  mere  propositions  on 
faith.  Why  should  we?  How  can  we  and  remain  reasonable  be- 
ings? Suppose  some  one  claims  to  have  had  a  revelation.  The 
claim  itself  implies  a  theory  that  has.  to  be  proved.  A  revelation 
from  whom?  By  what  sign  do  we  distinguish  revelations?  Are 
they  real  or  imaginary?  The  prophets  who  have  claimed  revelations 
had  preconceived  notions  to  control  their  thinking.  They  had  naive 
ideas  of  psychology  and  of  the  nature  of  evidence.  Those  ideas 
today  provoke  a  smile,  and  yet  we  are  expected  to  adhere  to  the- 
ologies and  religious  systems  based  on  those  primitive  and  puerile 
ideas ! 

We  refuse  to  abdicate  and  stultify  ourselves.  We  insist  on  study- 
ing religious  beliefs  and  institutions  scientifically,  and  when  we  do 
this,  we  are  apt  to  conclude  that  religion  is  an  emotion  and  nothing 
else,  and  an  emotion  compatible  with  Agnosticism.  The  Agnostic 
knows  where  science  stops,  but  he  also  knows  that  emotions  are  not 
ideas,  and  that  intellectual  honesty  and  clear,  sincere  thinking  are 
indispensable  to  all  genuine  human  progress. 


A  GOSSIP  OX  EMERSON'S  TREATMENT 
OF  BEAUTY 

UY    CLARENCE    GOHDES 

ISAYE  that  beawtie  cnmmeth  of  God,  and  is  like  a  circle,   the  goodnessc 
wherof  is  the  Centre.    And  therefore,  as  there  can  be  no  circle  without  a 
centre,  no  more  can  beawtie  be  without  goodnesse"  (Hoby's  Transla- 
tion of  The  Courtier  of  Castiglione). 

Any  attempt  to  determine  the  canons  of  esthetics  underlying 
Emerson's  "expositions  in  poetry"  is  bound  to  result  in  failure 
because  of  his  unmitigated  eclecticism,  as  well  as  his  mystical  at- 
titude toward  the  "things  of  the  spirit."  So  many  inconsistencies 
are  in  evidence  in  all  his  writings  that  in  basing  conclusions  upon 
them  one  is  apt  to  stumble  into  a  quagmire,  or,  at  least,  to  cross  over 
in  a  gingerly  fashion  on  the  stepping-stone  of  a  cautious  'perhaps'. 
In  his  essay  on  Thoreau,  Lowell  aptly  remarks  that  the  artistic 
range  of  Emerson  is  "narrow."  This,  however  true,  does  not  sig- 
nify that  his  Icve  of  bcarty  was  bounded  by  the  limits  of  a  narrow 
imagination,  or  even  of  a  moderately  developed  artistic  sensibility. 
To  accuse  him  of  being  a  mere  dilettante,  masking  an  uncultivated 
taste  beneath  a  spurious  interest  in  art  is  to  fail  utterly  in  an  ap- 
preciation of  his  character.  Few  men  have  ever  had  a  greater  capa- 
city for  appreciation  than  he.  The  frequent  occurrence  of  the  term 
hcmity  and  its  significant  bearing  upon  all  that  went  to  make  up 
character  and  morality  for  him  are  sufficient  indication  of  the  im- 
portant place  that  beauty  held  in  his  thoughts,  as  recorded  in  his 
journals. 

Emerson's  use  of  the  term  beauty  indicates  not  onlv  that,  for  him, 
at  least,  beauty  has  a  place  in  the  field  of  ethics  as  well  as  esthetics, 
but  that  it  has  various  significations  even  within  that  latter  field. 


316  THE  OPEN    COURT 

"Strange,"  he  writes,  "that  w.hat  I  have  not  is  always  more  ex- 
cellent than  what  I  have,  and  that  Beauty,  no,  not  Beauty,  but  a 
beauty  instantly  deserts  possession,  and  flies  to  an  object  in  the  hori- 
zon" (Journals,  Vol.  VI,  p.  202).  The  word  with  the  capital  let- 
ter, no  doubt,  meant  to  his  mind  that  spiritual  exaltation  which  he 
chose  to  identify  with  truth  and  goodness — the  refinement  of  Pla- 
tonic idealism  that  filled  the  imagination,  and  at  times  passed 
through  the  pens  of  such  delicate  emotionalists  as  Shellev  and 
Spenser.  I  wonder  if  the  Sage  of  Concord  would  have  been  able 
to  recognize  his  chaste  love  of  abstract  beauty  in  that  which  re- 
vealed itself  to  Rossetti  in  the  eyes  of  one  of  the  mystical  hourris 
immortalized  in  his  sonnets.  Intrinsically,  the  beauty  that  Emerson 
sought  to  find  in  an  autumn  sunset  or  a  wooded  hill  is  the  same 
as  that  which  Rossetti  glimpsed  in  the  perfection  of  a  woman's 
throat  or  the  spontaneous  gesture  of  her  arm.  The  word  in  the 
passage  quoted,  written  with  a  small  letter,  on  the  other  hand, 
meant  a  mere  phase  of  this  all-embracing  Beauty,  a  specialized 
manifestation  of  a  lower  order,  and,  as  such,  akin  to  "a  nature 
passed  throvigh  the  alembic  of  man" — namely.  Art.  It  is  in  regard 
to  this  latter  that  Lowell's  remark  applies. 

Setting  aside  his  understanding  and  appreciation  of  literature, 
Emerson's  journals  reveal  the  fact  that  their  author  was  little  in- 
terested in  the  various  types  of  creative  artistic  genius.  Music,  for 
example,  appears  to  have  meant  surprisingly  little  to  him.  Despite 
the  fact  that  he  glorified  the  eye  as  the  most  perfect  member,  he 
shows  very  little  appreciation  for  plastic  art.  One  has  merely  to 
read  the  accounts  of  his  impressions  gained  abroad  to  see  that  his 
genius  did  not  admit  of  a  full,  or  even  proper,  interest  in  the  host 
of  glories  shut  up  in  the  galleries  of  Europe.  Two  reasons  for  this 
appear  to  suggest  themselves :  first,  his  eye  was  of  that  inner  kind, 
"which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude" ;  and  second,  his  New  England  back- 
ground was  rather  barren,  if  not  altogether  bleak,  so  far  as  any 
cultivation  of  the  fine  arts,  other  than  letters,  is  concerned.  There 
is  something  wistful,  if  not  whimsically  pathetic,  in  Emerson's 
comparison   of   the   tasteless   churches   of    Massachusetts    with   the 


A  GOSSIP  ON  Emerson's  treatment  of  i'.eauty  317 

hoary  cathedrals  of  France  and  Italy,  crystallizing  in  their  pon- 
derous towers  and  stained  windows  the  artistic  aspirations  of  ages. 

Much  has  heen  made  of  Emerson's  lack  of  knowledge  and  true 
appreciation  of  plastic  art — in  fact,  too  much.  When  aroused,  his 
broad  sympathies  and  profound  insight  into  essentials  enabled  him 
to  do  the  fullest  justice  even  to  painting.  "The  head  of  Washing- 
ton," he  writes  in  the  eighth  volume  of  his  Journals  (p.  300), 
"hangs  in  my  dining  room  for  a  few  days  past,  and  I  cannot  keep 
my  eyes  ofif  of  it.  It  has  a  certain  Appalachian  strength,  as  if  it 
were  truly  the  first-fruits  of  America,  and  expressed  the  country. 
The  heavy,  leaden  eyes  turn  on  you,  as  the  eyes  of  an  ox  in  a 
pasture.  And  the  mouth  has  a  gravity  and  depth  of  quiet,  as  if 
this  man  had  absorbed  all  the  serenity  of  America,  and  left  none  for 
his  restless,  rickety,  hysterical  countrymen.  Noble,  aristocratic  head, 
with  all  kinds  of  elevation  in  it,  that  come  out  by  turns.  Such  ma- 
jestical  ironies,  as  he  hears  the  day's  politics  at  table.  We  imagine 
him  hearing  the  letter  of  General  Cass,  the  letter  of  General  Scott, 
the  letter  of  Mr.  Pierce,  the  efifronteries  of  Mr.  Webster  recited. 
This  man  listens  like  a  god  to  these  low  conspirators."  Could 
Gilbert  Stuart  say  that  he  ever  put  more  into  a  picture  of  his  fa- 
mous subject  than  Emerson  got  out  of  this  one?  How  well  does 
this  passage  illustrate  his  critical  principle,  "Art  requires  a  living 
soul"  (\^ol.  VII,  p.  33):  or,  as  he  elsewhere  expressed  the  idea, 
" — there  is  that  in  beauty  which  cannot  be  caressed,  but  which  re- 
quires the  utmost  wealth  of  nature  in  the  beholder  properly  to  meet 
it"  (\"ol.  VI,  p.  446).  That  "wealth  of  nature,"  so  necessary  to  the 
best  criticism,  was  surely  his  to  an  eminent  degree.  His  acquain- 
tance with  Ruskin's  works  was  close  enough  to  admit  of  no  doubt 
as  to  his  appreciation  of  the  problem  of  plastic  art  in  elevating  na- 
tural beauty  to  its  place  above  the  conventional.  Again,  he  refers 
to  plastic  art  in  these  words,  'T  adhere  to  V^an  Waagen's  belief, 
that  there  is  a  pleasure  from  works  of  art  which  nothing  else  can 
yield"  (Vol.  VIII,  p.  253). 

How,  then,  can  one  reconcile  with  this  seeming  understanding 
and  appreciation  such  an  eloquent  tirade  as  the  following:  "Art  is 


318  THE  OPEN    COURT 

cant  and  pedantry.  .  .  A  grand  soul  flings  your  gallery  into  cold 
nonsense,  and  no  limits  can  be  assigned  to  its  prevalency  and  to  its 
power  to  adorn"  (Vol.  V,  p.  488)  ?  The  answer  is  that  this  mystic- 
moralist  is  not  only  juggling  with  words  as  mere  inept  symbols  for 
ultimate  verities,  but  that  he  desires  to  indicate  the  subordinate 
place  of  traditional,  finite  conceptions  of  beauty,  in  view  of  that 
cosmical  exaltation  of  the  'Reason,'  vmbounded  by  time  and  space, 
and  experienced  to  the  full  only  in  rare  moments  of  ecstatic  union 
with  the  oversoul.  This  is  the  beauty  that  "cannot  be  clutched," 
that  identifies  itself  with  goodness  and  truth,  that  requires  a  finely 
developed  spiritual  apprehension  upon  the  part  of  the  beholder. 
"Imagination  transfigures,  so  that  only  the  cosmical  relations  of 
the  object  are  seen.  The  persons  who  rise  to  beauty  must  have 
this  transcendency"  (Vol.  IX,  p.  279).  Accordingly,  the  "great 
soul,"  the  transcendentalist,  alone  can  be  the  true  judge  and  critic 
of  this  higher  beauty,  this  phase  of  the  all-pervading  spirit.  Thai 
clever  half-truth,  "Art  requires  a  living  soul,"  is,  accordingly,  the 
essence  of  the  Emersonian  esthetics,  if  one  dare  apply  the  term  to 
such  emotional  egotism.  Glorified  individual  appreciation — denial 
of  the  reality  of  objective  beauty — is  to  be  the  criterion  of  true 
beauty.  This  is  the  mystical  aspect  of  Emerson's  love  of  the  beau- 
tiful. Eortunately,  Emerson  possessed  a  poet's  appreciation  of 
concrete  manifestations  of  this  spiritual  force.  The  manly,  ex- 
periential side  of  his  nature  saved  him  from  being  carried  too 
far  away  by  the  Pegasus  of  refined  idealism. 

It  remains  now  to  attempt  a  consideration  of  the  reasons  un- 
derlying a  poet's  repudiation  of  art.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that 
his  moral  penchant  made  the  secular  nature  of  most  artistic  cre- 
ations incompatible  with  his  own.  Those  pages,  already  referred 
to,  which  record  his  experiences  upon  his  first  trip  to  Europe,  in- 
dicate his  lack  of  full  appreciation  for  the  purely  sensuous,  as  does 
also  his  fierce  assertion  that  "there  is  no  greater  lie  than  a  volup- 
tuous book  like  Boccaccio"  (Vol.  Ill,  p.  456).  It  is  quite  true  that 
his  staunch  New  England  ancestry  with  its  rigorous  adherence  to 
a  Puritan  sense  of  decorum  narrowed   his   scope  of   appreciation  ; 


A  GOSSIP  ON  Emerson's  treatment  of  beauty  319 

yet  one  must  seek  further  for  a  more  fundamental  reason — in  the 
man's  own  character,  not  in  his  surroundings.  Traditional  religion 
he  threw  overboard  with  a  gusto:  yet  he  chose  to  exalt  the  beauty 
of  moral  perfection  above  art,  although  he  was  a  literary  artist 
iirst  and  last.  Why  did  this  champion  of  individual  submission  to 
mood  and  whim  not  allow  the  fine  frenzy  of  creative  genius  to 
sweep  him  along  with  its  current? 

The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  his  many  attempts  to  describe  in- 
effable moments  when  a  wood,  or  skyline,  or  bird-note  ushered  in 
a  torrential  flood  of  mystical  beauty  so  powerful  in  its  grip  upon 
the  imagination  that  time  and  space  rolled  back  like  a  scroll  and, 
despite  the  passivity  of  sense  perception,  a  belief — no.  a  knowledge, 
of  an  all-pervasive  unity  thrilled  the  spirit  of  the  man.  Why  seek 
through  art  to  obtain  indirectly  a  mere  aspect  of  beauty,  when  the 
glories  of  nature  oft'er  a  means  of  direct  contact  with  it  in  its  en- 
tirety? The  answer  is  simplicity  itself.  How  can  we  live  art  when 
"we  can  love  nothing  but  nature"?  Since  art  is  a  mere  imitation  of 
nature,  those  who  pursue  it  as  a  motivating  force  in  life  are  but 
choosing  a  reflection  of  a  reality  for  a  reality.  A  beauty  becomes 
Beauty  when  it  detaches  itself  from  the  object  and,  freed  from  all 
mundane  trammels,  exhibits  itself  as  a  mere  aspect  of  the  cosmic 
entitv — the  spirit.  As  a  creator  of  beauty — as  an  artist — Emerson 
knew  the  beauty  of  expression  with  all  its  implications,  at  least  so 
far  as  literary  art  is  concerned ;  however,  he  chose  to  subordinate  at 
times  the  poet's  function  of  creation  to  the  mystic's  function  of 
passive  acceptance  of  the  beauty  of  the  "Spirit."  And  beneath  his 
interests  in  the  creation  and  reception  of  beauty,  one  must  remem- 
ber, there  was  an  insistent  conscience  that  tried  to  bend  all  the 
thoughts  and  activities  of  his  life  in  the  direction  of  "the  moral  sen- 
timent." 

Although  Emerson  did  not  see  fit  to  "make  rules  out  of  beauty," 
he  would,  in  all  probability,  have  endorsed  Woodberry's  principle 
of  art  for  life's  sake.  Possibly  he  would  have  preferred  to  word  it, 
"Art  for  character's  sake."  "But."  he  insists,  "there  will  always  be  a 
class  of  imaginative  men,  whom  poetry,  whom  the  love  of  Beauty 


320  THE   OPEN    COURT 

leads  to  the  adoration  of  the  moral  sentiment"  (Vol.  X,  p.  9). 
There  is  something  eminently  worthy  in  this  belief  that  "culture 
is  for  the  results"  (Vol.  VIII,  p.  539),  a  belief  that  immediately 
■turns  art  from  the  small  shrine  of  an  esoteric  cult  to  the  broad, 
green  Druid  temples  of  humanity.  Carp  as  one  may  at  his  incon- 
sistency and  his  emotional  egotism,  the  fact  rem.ains  that  he  made 
a  most  noble  attempt  to  make  the  love  of  beauty  a  source  of  com- 
fort and  discipline  to  all  men.  His  incapacity  for  making  a  proper, 
objective  estimate  of  human  potentialities  makes  the  essential  no- 
bility of  his  purpose  no  less  striking.  It  is  unfortunate  that  Emer- 
son i^attered  mankind  with  the  belief  that  his  own  mind  and  heart 
were  typical  of  the  lot. 


For  Leaders  — 


^JOURNAL  OF  REUGION 


To  read  The  Journal  of  Religion  is  to  keep 
in  the  vanguard  of  those  who  are  thinking 
about  the  problems  of  present  day  rehgious 
life. 

This  non'sectarian  periodical  provides  for 
its  readers  an  unprejudiced,  critical  account 
of  modern  religious  thought.  It  attempts  to 
reveal  the  inner  reality  of  religion,  rather 
than  to  defend  a  doctrinal  system.  It  con' 
sistently  avoids  cant,  dogma,  technical 
abstruseness;  and  constantly  emphasi2;es  the 
interrelationship  of  religious  life  and  social 
environment. 

This  scholarly  journal  is  indispensable  to 
the  serious  reader  interested  in  religion  as  a 
living,  spiritual  reality  in  society,  in  history, 
and  in  individual  experience. 

The  Journal  of  Religion  is  edited  by  Shirley 
Jackson  Case  with  the  cooperation  of  the 
Divinity  Faculty  and  Conference  of  the 
University  of  Chicago.  It  is  published  quap 
terly  at  the  subscription  price  of  $3.00  a  year. 

If  you  wish  to  examine  The  Journal  of 
Religion  a  sample  copy  will  be  mailed  you 
free  upon  request. 


THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    CHICAGO    PRESS 
5750  ELLIS   AVE.     .     .     .     CHICAGO,   ILLINOIS 


-   "I' 


THE  LOGIC  OF  DISCOVERY 

By 

ROBERT  D.  CARMICHAEL 

Head  of  the  Department  of  Mathematics 
University  of  Illinois 

The  main  aspects  of  the  process  of  discovery  are  skillfully 
discussed  in  a  manner  to  interest  the  non'technical  reader. 

Three  of  the  chapters  have  previously  been  published  in 
The  lAonist,  Scientia  and  The  Scientific  Monthly. 

TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Chapter 

I  The  Logic  of  Discovery 

II  What  is  the  Place  of  Postulate  Systems  in  the  Further  Prog' 
ress  of  Thought? 

III  On  the  Nature  of  Systems  of  Postulates 

IV  Concerning  the  Postulational  Treatment  of  Empirical  Truth 

V  The  Structure  of  Exact  Thought 

VI  The  Notion  of  Doctrinal  Function 

VII  Hypothesis  Growing  into  Veritable  Principle 

VIII  What  is  Reasoning? 

IX  The  Larger  Human  Worth  of  Mathematics 
Index 

Pp.  280,  cloth.    Price  ^2.00 

By  the  same  Author 

A  DEBATE  ON  THE  THEORY  OF  RELATIVITY  with  an  intro- 
duction by  William  Lowe  Bryan,  Indiana  University. 

Favoring  the  Theory:     Robert  D.  Carmichael,  University  of 
lUinois,  and  Harold  T.  Davis,  Indiana  University. 

Opposing  the  Theory:     Wihiam  D.   MacMillan,  University 
of  Chicago  and  Mason  E.  Hufford,  Indiana  University. 

(First  Impression  in  1925,  Second  Impression  in  1927.) 
Cloth,  ^2.00 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
Chicago  London