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THE PHILOSOPHICAL
REVIEW
EDITED BY
FRANK THILLY
and G. WATTS CUNNINGHAM
OF THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY. CORNELL UNIVERSITY
WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF
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ASSOCIATE EDITOR
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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.
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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
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Science and Religion — Another Attempt at Reconciliation
\'iCTOR yarrows 309
A Gossip on Emerson's Treatment of Beauty.
clarence gohdes 315
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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
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This non'sectarian periodical provides for
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of modern religious thought. It attempts to
reveal the inner reality of religion, rather
than to defend a doctrinal system. It con'
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interrelationship of religious life and social
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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
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terly at the subscription price of $3.00 a year.
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- "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.)
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