Theology and the Social Consciousness Part 2

It may be said at once that it is, undoubtedly, the very best ill.u.s.tration of these social relations that we can draw from nature, and it is of real value. It has had, moreover, as already indicated, a most influential and largely honorable history in the development of the thought of men. Its cla.s.sical expression is in the epoch-making twelfth chapter of I Corinthians, which makes so plain the ethical applications of the a.n.a.logy.

II. THE INEVITABLE INADEQUACY OF THE a.n.a.lOGY

1. _Comes from the Sub-personal World._--But it ought clearly to be seen, on the other hand, that, considered as a complete expression of the social consciousness, it is necessarily inadequate; and it is of moment that we should not be dominated by it. Too often it has been made to cover the entire ground, as though in itself it were a complete expression and final explanation of the social consciousness, instead of a quite incomplete ill.u.s.tration. For, in the first place, the very fact that the a.n.a.logy comes from the physical world, from the sub-personal realm, makes it certain that it must fail at vital points in the expression of what is peculiarly a personal and ethical fact.

We cannot safely argue directly from the physical ill.u.s.tration to ethical propositions.

2. _Access to Reality, Only Through Ourselves._--Moreover, in this day of extraordinary attention to the physical world, it is particularly important that we should keep constantly in mind that we have direct access to reality only in ourselves; that man is himself necessarily the only key which we can use for any ultimate understanding of anything; or, as Paulsen puts it, "I know reality as it is in itself, in so far as I am real myself, or in so far as it is, or is like, that which I am, namely, spirit."[13] We are not to forget that, in very truth, we know _better_ what we mean by persons and personal relations, than we do what we mean by members of a body and by organic relations; and, further, that in point of fact, all those metaphysical notions by which we strive to think things are ultimately derived from ourselves; and that then we illogically turn back upon our own minds, from which all these notions came, to explain the mind in the same secondary way in which we explain other things.

3. _Mistaken Pa.s.sion for Construing Everything._--Natural science, with its sole problem of the tracing of immediate causal connections, naturally provokes a persistent, but nevertheless thoroughly mistaken, "pa.s.sion," as Lotze calls it,[14] "for construing everything,"--even the most real and final reality, spirit; which wishes to see even this real and final reality explained as the mechanical result of the combination of simpler elements, themselves, it is to be noted, finally absolutely inexplicable. Such perverse attempts will be widely hailed, by many who do not understand themselves, as highly scientific. And one who refuses to enter upon such investigations will be criticized by such minds as "hardly getting into grips with his subject."

But it is a false application of the scientific instinct that leads one to seek mechanical explanation for the final reality, or that urges to precision of formulation beyond that warranted by the data.

It is from exactly this falsely scientific bias that theology needs deliverance. "For," as Aristotle reminds us, "it is the mark of a man of culture to try to attain exactness in each kind of knowledge just so far as the nature of the subject allows." There is a wise agnosticism that is violated alike by negative and by positive dogmatism. It is often overlooked that there is an over-wise radicalism that a.s.sumes a knowledge of the depth of the finite and infinite, quite as insistent and dogmatic as the view it supposes itself to be opposing. "I know it is not so," it ought not to need to be said, is not agnosticism.

The guiding principle in a truly scientific theology is this, as Lotze suggests: Just so far as changing action depends upon altering conditions, we have explanatory and constructive problems to solve, and no farther. No philosophical view can do without a simply given reality. And we shall never succeed in understanding by what machinery reality is manufactured--in "deducing the whole positive content of reality from mere modifications of formal conditions."[15]

We shall not allow ourselves to be misled, therefore, by the scientific sound of the _detailed_ application of the a.n.a.logy of the organism to the facts of the social consciousness. And it is a satisfaction to see that the clearest sociological writers are coming to agree that there is strictly no "social mind" that can be affirmed to exist as a separate reality, supposed to answer to society conceived in its totality as an organism.

III. THE a.n.a.lOGY TESTED BY THE DEFINITION OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

When, now, we test the a.n.a.logy of the organism by its competency to express the full meaning of the social consciousness, as it has been defined, we must say that the a.n.a.logy but feebly expresses the likeness of men; it best expresses the inevitableness of mutual influence, though even here there is no understandable ultimate explanation; it fairly expresses the desirableness and indispensableness of mutual influence, but, of course, with entire lack of ethical meaning; and it quite fails to express the sense of the value and the sacredness of the person, the sense of obligation, and the sense of love. We need to see and feel exactly these shortcomings, if we are not to abuse the a.n.a.logy. There is no social consciousness that will hold water that does not rest on what Phillips Brooks called "a healthy and ineradicable individualism," in the sense of the recognition of the fully personal. We are spirits, not organisms, and society is a society of persons, not an organism, in a strict sense.

Why should we wish to make society less significant than it is?

[12] Cf. King, _Op. cit._, pp. 92 ff., 179.

[13] _Introduction to Philosophy_, p. 373.

[14] _The Microcosmus_, Vol. I, p. 262.

[15] Lotze, _The Microcosmus_, Vol. II, pp. 649 ff.

CHAPTER III

_THE NECESSITY OF THE FACTS, OF WHICH THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE REFLECTION, IF IDEAL INTERESTS ARE TO BE SUPREME_

I. THE QUESTION

With this positive and negative definition of the social consciousness in our minds, a third question immediately suggests itself to one who wishes to go to the bottom of our theme. Why must the facts, of which the social consciousness is the reflection, be as they are if ideal interests are to be supreme? What has a theodicy to say as to these facts? Why, that is, from the point of view of the ideal--of religion and theology--why are we const.i.tuted so alike? so that we must influence one another? so that the results of our actions necessarily go over into the lives of others? so that the innocent suffer with the guilty and the guilty profit with the righteous? so that we must recognize everywhere the claim of others? so that we must respect their personality? and so that we must love them?

II. OTHERWISE NO MORAL WORLD AT ALL

The answer to all these world-old questions may perhaps be contained in the single statement, that otherwise we should have no moral world at all. There would be no thinkable moral universe, but rather as many worlds as there are individuals, having no more to do with one another than the chemical reactions going on in a set of test-tubes.

1. _The Prerequisites of a Moral World._ For our human thinking, a.s.suredly, there are certain prerequisites, that the world may be at all a sphere for moral training and action. What are these prerequisites for a moral world? There must be, in the first place, a _sphere of universal law_, to count on, within which all actions take place. In a lawless world, action could hardly take on any significance--least of all ethical significance. That freedom itself should mean anything in outward expression, there must be the possibility of intelligent use of means toward the ends chosen.

There must be, in the second place, some _real ethical freedom_, some power of moral initiative. We need not quarrel about the terms used; but, as Paulsen intimates, no serious ethical writer ever doubted that men have at least some power to shape their own characters.[16]

Without that a.s.sumption, we have a whole world of ideas and ideals--many of them the realest facts in the world to us--that have no legitimate excuse for being, that are simple insanities of the most inexplicable sort. The very meaning of the personality, indeed, which the social consciousness must demand for men, is some real existence for self, that is, some real self-consciousness and moral initiative.

And freedom is not enough; there must be also _some power of accomplishment_. To ascribe mere volition to man seems, it has been justly said, sophistical. Results are needed to reveal the character of our acts, even to ourselves--to make that character real. Lotze's charge that the world is imperfect because it might have been so made that only good designs could be carried out, or so that the results of evil volitions would be at once corrected,[17] is itself similarly sophistical. Such a world, in which the outward results of action never appear, would be but a play-world after all--only a nursery of babes not yet capable of character. It could be no fit world for moral training.

And still more, not less, must this law of the necessary results of actions hold in our relations to other persons. There can be, least of all, a moral universe where we are not _members one of another_.

Character, in any form we can conceive it, could not then exist. Our best, as well as our worst, possibilities are involved in these necessary mutual relations. Moral character has meaning only in personal relations. The results, therefore, which follow upon action, if the character of our deed is to have reality for us, must be chiefly personal. The realm of character has fearful possibilities.

This _is_ no play-world. We can cause and be caused suffering, and our sin necessarily carries the suffering, if not the sin, of others with it.

2. _The Ideal World Requires, thus, the Facts of the Social Consciousness._--All this could be changed in any vital way only by shutting up every soul absolutely to itself, and with that result life has simply ceased.

For we cannot really conceive a person as having any reason for being without such relations. He would be constantly baffled at every point, for he is made for persons and personal relations. Love, too, the highest source of both character and happiness, requires everywhere personal relations. Religion itself, as a sharing of the life of G.o.d, would be impossible without some relation to others; for G.o.d, at least, could not be separated from the life of all. That is, persons, love, religion, in such a world, have gone.

This, then, simply means that the ideal world ceases to be, with the denial of the facts that the social consciousness reflects. We must be full persons, social beings in the entire meaning demanded by the social consciousness--hard as the consequences involved often are--if ideal interests are to be supreme. Indeed, the very moral judgment, that incessantly prompts the problem of evil for every one of us, is required, for its own existence, to a.s.sume the validity of the relations about which it questions. For it complains, for the most part, of those facts that follow inevitably from the necessary mutual influence of men; but the chief sources of the joy it requires, that it may justify the world, lie in these same mutual relations. It a.s.sumes, thus, in its claims on the world, the validity and worth of the very relations of which it complains in its criticism of the world. Or, slightly to vary the statement, the major premise, even of pessimism, is that a really justifiable world must have worth in the joy it yields in personal life, impossible out of the personal relations of a real moral universe. And there can be no moral universe without the facts reflected in the social consciousness. The ideal world requires, then, the facts of the social consciousness.

[16] _System of Ethics_, pp. 467 ff.

[17] _Philosophy of Religion_, p. 125.

CHAPTER IV

_THE ULTIMATE EXPLANATION AND GROUND OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS_

The most important and fundamental inquiry as to the possible help of theology to the social consciousness still remains: What is the ultimate explanation and ground of the social consciousness? This question includes two: (1) How can it be metaphysically that we do influence one another? (2) What is required for the final positive justification of the social consciousness as ethical? Theology's answer to both questions is found in the being and character of G.o.d, the creative and moral source of all.

I. HOW CAN IT BE, METAPHYSICALLY, THAT WE DO INFLUENCE ONE ANOTHER?

First, then, how can it be that we do influence one another? What is the final explanation of the constant fact of our reciprocal action?

For in our final thinking we may not ignore this question.

1. _Not Due to the Physical Fact of Race-Connection._--It may be worth while saying, first, that the physical fact of race-connection, if that could be proved, would be no sufficient explanation. The race may, or may not, be dependent upon a single pair, but in any case this is not the essential connection. The race is one by virtue of its essential likeness, however that comes about. Men might have sprung out of the ground in absolute individual independence of one another, and yet if there were such actual like-mindedness as now exists, the race would be as truly one as it now is, and as capable of reciprocal action, and its members under the same obligation to one another. No ideal interest is at stake, then, in the question of the actual physical unity of the race as descended from one pair.

One may say, of course, that the physical unity of the race would naturally result, according to the laws apparently prevailing in the animal world, in likeness. And this may, therefore, seem to him the most natural proximate explanation. But, even so, it is well to know that our entire _moral_ interest is in the essential likeness and mutual influence of men, however brought about, and not in the physical unity of men. Theology has no occasion to continue its earlier excessive and quite fundamental emphasis upon this physical unity. Moreover, such an explanation is necessarily but proximate.

Back of it lies the deeper question, Why just these laws, and modes of procedure?

2. _We are not to Over-Emphasize the Principle of Heredity._--Nor can theology, from any point of view, afford to over-emphasize the principle of heredity if it wishes to keep human initiative at all. It is a dangerous alliance which the old-school theology with its racial sin in Adam has been so ready to make with the principle of heredity.

That principle, as they wish to use it, proves quite too much; and careful thinkers, really awake to ideal interests, may well rejoice in the comparative relief which science itself, through the probably somewhat exaggerated protest of the Weismann or Neo-Darwinian school, seems likely to afford from the incubus of a grossly exaggerated heredity. The main interest for the ideal view lies right here. We can see why this law of the "inheritance of acquired characteristics," in Professor James' language, "_should not_ be verified in the human race, and why, therefore, in looking for evidence on the subject, we should confine ourselves exclusively to lower animals. In them fixed habit is the essential and characteristic law of nervous action. The brain grows to the exact modes in which it has been exercised, and the inheritance of these modes--then called instincts--would have in it nothing surprising. But in man the negation of all fixed modes is the essential characteristic. He owes his whole preeminence as a reasoner, his whole human quality of intellect, we may say, to the facility with which a given mode of thought in him may suddenly be broken up into elements, which re-combine anew. Only at the price of inheriting no settled instinctive tendencies is he able to settle every novel case by the fresh discovery by his reason of novel principles. He is, _par excellence_, the educable animal."[18]

To over-emphasize the principle of heredity, then, is to strike at one of the most fundamental distinctive human qualities, and so to endanger every ideal interest. The growing like-mindedness of men and their mutual influence are not forthwith to be ascribed to an omnipotent principle of heredity.

3. _Not Due to a Mystical Solidarity._--Nor is the mutual influence of men to be explained by any mystical solidarity of the race considered as a _finite_ whole. It is a simple and reasonable scientific demand, that we should not a.s.sume a mysterious, indefinable and incalculable cause, where known and intelligible causes suffice to explain the phenomena in question. Do we need, or can we intelligently use, a mystical solidarity? The only solidarity of the race which we seem really to need, or with which we seem able intelligently to deal, is the actual like-mindedness and the actual personal relations themselves--the reciprocal action of spirits--the only kind of reciprocal action which we can finally fully conceive. Any other finite solidarity than this, though it has often figured in theology, seems to me only a name without significance. In any case, we need to insist in theology, much more than we have, upon that unity of the race which is due to the actual likeness of men and their actual mutual personal influence. Such a unity we know and can understand, and it is of the highest ethical and spiritual importance. But to make much of the physical unity is to ground the spiritual in the physical; and, on the other hand, to take refuge in a mystical solidarity--and this is often felt to be a rather deep procedure--for whatever theological purpose, is to hide in the fog of the obscure and unintelligible.