Problems of Immanence Part 3

Such concurrence of testimony from two such different quarters is as remarkable as it is significant; and this brings us to our point. The question with which we are confronted to-day, and which our civilisation must either answer aright or perish, is not whether an individualist or a socialist state would be more conducive to the individual's self-realisation, but whether Christianity is right or wrong in its doctrine of the individual's paramount importance. The issue, as we shall try to show, lies between Christianity on the one hand and Monism on the other. From the Christian point of view the individual matters supremely; from that of Monism the beginning of wisdom is that the individual should recognise and acquiesce in his utter insignificance.

As in our last chapter we glanced at the monistic ethics, so in the present one we propose to inquire briefly first into the social and then into the religious implications of this theory, which it must be remembered is receiving a good deal of support, and meeting with a large measure of acceptance just now. Turning, then, to the social side first of all, no one, of course, would say that Socialism as such was monistic; on the other hand it is easy to understand the attraction of Socialism for those whose philosophy is Monism. They will embrace the economic teachings of Collectivism the more {67} eagerly in exact proportion to their root-conviction that the only thing that matters is the totality of things, while the individual, _per se_, does not count at all. That is the conception which underlies the Socialism of a writer like Mr. Wells, who is in nothing more emphatic than in a.s.serting that the individual as such has no value at all. "Our individualities," he says, "are but bubbles and cl.u.s.ters of foam upon the great stream of the blood of the species." "The race is the drama, and we are the incidents." "In so far as we are individuals . . . we are accidental, disconnected, without significance." And when we ask for what we should strive and labour, if not for the good of individual men and women, his answer is that we ought to work for the Species, for the Race, for what he calls a great physical and mental being, to wit, Mankind.

Now we believe that this philosophy, consistently embraced, is utterly devoid of the dynamic which can generate any great social reform. The smallest and forlornest actual slum baby appeals to our sympathy immeasurably more than a vast, dim aggregate of indistinguishable items called the Race; for we have actually met the slum-baby, and we have never met--what is more, we shall never meet--the Race. This tendency to treat the individual as negligible is as futile as it is inhuman; in the long run it will be found that he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love {68} the Race which he hath not seen. No matter by how many times we multiply nothing, the result is still--nothing. If the individuals do not count, neither can the species which is made up of such individuals. Or, if "the Race is the drama, and we are the incidents," it must be observed that no great and n.o.ble drama can be strung together out of trivial and unmeaning incidents. All the talk about Mankind as the greater being, "the great and growing Being of the Species," "the eternally conscious Being of all things," is only the old, thin, unsatisfying idolatry of Positivism. If we wish to be social reformers in earnest we must take care of the individuals, and the race will take care of itself.

That the monistic denial of all individual significance should lead to the denial of a future life is only what we should expect; for if man, as such, does not _matter_, why should he _survive_? On the other hand, the more we care for the individual, refusing to regard him merely as "an experiment of the species for the species," the more irresistibly shall we be impelled to believe that this life is not all.

It is the inestimable achievement of Christianity, by its insistence on the infinite value of the soul, to have given the strongest impetus and support to belief in personal immortality. That, however, is an aspect of our subject which demands, and will subsequently come up for, separate treatment.

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What, for the present, we must yet once more point out, as we did in the preceding chapter, is this--that wide as is the influence of a non-Christian writer like Mr. Wells, the danger of such teaching is intensified when it is given by those who profess Christianity.

Doubtless, Bousset is right when he points to the closer contact between East and West as one of the causes of the growth in our midst of a type of religion in which "the human ego is put on one side and almost reduced to zero." Doubtless, also, he is correct in saying "the adherents of this kind of religion will be chiefly found in circles where people do not regard religion seriously, where they desire and accept religion as aesthetic enjoyment." Nevertheless, the evil attending this type of teaching is, to our thinking, great and serious, designed to undermine selfhood and to set up a species of dry-rot at the very centre.

Let us again show what we mean by quoting from an actual utterance: "G.o.d," we read, "is supposed to be thinking more about us than about anything else--a rather arrogant a.s.sumption when we come to think of it, considering what specks of dust we are amid these myriads of stars and suns whirling through s.p.a.ce like motes in a ray of light--and the great object of His solicitude is to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness." If this view be the true one, the writer went on to ask, why do questions like unemployment, the Budget, {70} the uprising of nationalism in Turkey, etc., bulk so largely in our thought? These topics, he says, have "little or no relation to the question of saving the individual soul, as commonly understood." How, he demands, does the actual life of every day fit into "that view of the scheme of things which bids us believe that the silent G.o.d above us is princ.i.p.ally anxious about just one thing, the moral recovery and ingathering of these individual souls one by one"? The answer is given with characteristic confidence: "It does not fit into it at all; _if G.o.d be as anxious about that as we are a.s.sured He is, He has a queer way of showing it_."

Here we have a conception of man and his place in the sum of things fundamentally at one with that of Mr. Wells, and as utterly irreconcilable with that of Christianity. Not only does the individual not matter in himself; he does not even matter to G.o.d. The idea of the soul's infinite value to G.o.d is held up to derision, and so is the idea of G.o.d's interest in individual character; man, the atom, must not think that the Creator is specially anxious for his fate, and is bidden to measure his insignificance against the vastness of the heavenly bodies; and in conclusion we are pertly told that if G.o.d really cares about the individual as such, "He has a queer way of showing it." In this view--the view of Monism--it is indeed true that "the individual withers, and the world is more and more."

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We say that the issue is plain; it lies between Monism and Christianity; if the one is true, the other must be rejected. On which side shall we cast our verdict? For a warning example we have only to glance at the case of Buddhism, in which, the value of human individuality having been steadily lowered, "the other main factor is religion, belief in G.o.d, was likewise lost" (Bousset). But, turning to a more detailed examination of the statement just quoted, it is hardly necessary to discuss the astounding suggestion that man must not take himself too seriously by the side of the immensities of suns and stars.

Such a view merely betrays a spiritual perception miles below that of the Psalmist, who saw man, to all appearance a negligible speck, yet in reality made by the Almighty little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honour. Neither need we combat at length the strangely superficial notion that such questions as unemployment, the Budget, etc., have little or no relation to that of saving the individual soul, as commonly understood. If they have no relation to _that_ subject, they are hardly worth considering; but the fact is that the regulation of industry, the distribution of wealth--these and all other questions derive their importance solely from the manner in which they affect individual men, women and children, fitting or unfitting them for the life that now is and that which is to come. A good deal might be said of {72} the temper which makes fun of the idea of G.o.d's "solicitude to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness"; but we may leave that unhappy phrase to be its own comment.

The att.i.tude of Christianity to our question is perfectly clear.

Christianity, in teaching each frailest, poorest human unit to address G.o.d as Father, affirms in unmistakeable accents the Eternal's personal interest in and care for the individual soul, and by so doing enn.o.bles every human life that falls under the sway of the Gospel. It is Christianity's master-thought that to the Father from whom all fatherhood is named each one of His children is personally dear, and that His desire is for the salvation of each one. To the cheap and ugly sneer that G.o.d has a "queer way" of manifesting His concern for us as individuals, the Christian consciousness has its own answer; how, in any case, such a sneer could come from the same source from which we previously quoted the statement that "nothing can happen to any of G.o.d's children which is not in some way the sacrament of G.o.d's love to us," we do not profess to understand. We are not mere individual organ-stops, each without use or significance apart from the rest, waiting for our mutual dissonances to be swallowed up in some "music of the whole," but members of a family, each with a place in the Parent's heart and thought. Finally, to the Christian there is one last, {73} crowning proof of the soul's value for G.o.d, and G.o.d's yearning for the soul; that proof is Calvary. To the Christian there is one experience which settles this problem fully and finally for him; it is the experience which Paul embodied in the cry, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me."

For Monism the individual is a mere surface ripple on an infinite ocean, alike impermanent and impersonal; for Christianity the soul is a child of the Father of all souls, loved with an everlasting love.

Between these two conceptions we have to choose, remembering that each utterly excludes the other. There is no third alternative.

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CHAPTER V

THE DIVINE PERSONALITY

While in our last three chapters we have been dealing with certain theories which implicitly or explicitly deny the Divine Personality, and while an impersonal G.o.d can be, as we have already seen, of no value for religion, there is no mistaking the fact that this very question--whether, _i.e._, it is possible and legitimate for us to think of G.o.d as personal--const.i.tutes one of the most typical of modern "difficulties." It is probably correct to say that this difficulty, like others we have reviewed, dates practically from the collapse of Deism, a creed which possessed a certain hard lucidity satisfying to many for the very reason that it required no very profound insight for its understanding. That a Deity localised in a far-away heaven, seated on a celestial throne and surrounded by an angelic court, should be a person, like any other sovereign, presented no problem to the understanding; but if G.o.d was not merely transcendent but also immanent--not merely somewhere but in some indefinable manner everywhere--then to predicate personality of {75} such a One seemed a very paradox. In one of Feuillet's novels there occurs a phrase which sums up in a few expressive words a very common spiritual misadventure: the hero says, "_J'avais vu disparaitre parmi les nuages la tete de ce bon vieillard qu'on appelle Dieu_"--"I had seen the head of that good old man called G.o.d disappear amongst the clouds." His nave material conception of the Eternal had dissolved--and dissolved into nothingness. May we not surmise that nine times out of ten this is precisely what has happened when we hear the question asked, "But how _can_ G.o.d be personal?"

In by far the greater number of cases, that is to say, the problem arises simply and solely from the questioner's failure to dissociate _personality_ from _materiality_; a "person" suggests to him a tangible, visible, ponderable form, with arms and legs and organs of sense--and when he has reflected sufficiently to understand that such a description cannot apply to G.o.d, he concludes that _therefore_ G.o.d cannot be personal. The next step is usually that, having seen this visibly outlined Deity disappear _parmi les nuages_, he pa.s.ses into absolute unbelief; for somehow an impersonal "Power," while it may possibly inspire awe, cannot move us to wors.h.i.+p, cannot present to us a moral imperative, cannot, above all, either claim our love or give us its affection. It is really the identical difficulty, stated a little {76} more pretentiously, which the "rationalist" author of _The Churches and Modern Thought_ presents to us by remarking that in all our experience that which makes up personality is "connected with nerve structures," so that we cannot attribute such a quality to "a Being who is described to us as devoid of any nerve structure." "I know of no answer," he quaintly adds, "that could be called satisfactory from a theistic standpoint." [1]

It is evident that Mr. Vivian does not remember the famous pa.s.sage in the _Essay on Theism_ where John Stuart Mill explains that "the relation of thought to a material brain is no metaphysical necessity, but simply a constant co-existence within the limits of observation," and concludes that although "experience furnishes us with no example of any series of states of consciousness" without an accompanying brain, "it is as easy to imagine such a series of states without as with this accompaniment." [2]

According to Mill--hardly a champion of orthodoxy--there is no reason in the nature of things why "thoughts, emotions, volitions and even sensations" should be necessarily dependent upon or connected with "nerve structures "; so that Mr. Vivian's argument palpably fails.

But what about this popular notion which identifies personality with materiality, and {77} therefore denies the former attribute to G.o.d? One would think that even the most circ.u.mscribed experience, or reflection on such experience, must suffice to dispose of such a misapprehension; let us use the most obvious of ill.u.s.trations for showing where the error lies. We have only to imagine one of those everyday tragedies that make a short newspaper paragraph--say, the case of a man pa.s.sing a house in process of erection, and being killed on the spot by a piece of falling timber. He is left as a material form; he is decidedly not left as a person. Something has disappeared in that fatal moment that no one had ever seen or handled--his self-consciousness, his intelligence, his will, his affections, his moral sense: _with_ these he was a person; _without_ them, he is a corpse. If, then, it is these unseen, intangible qualities, and not flesh and bones, muscle and "nerve structure," that const.i.tute _human_ personality, is it not rather childish to argue that, unless G.o.d possesses a body of some sort, the _Divine_ Personality is a contradiction in terms? If we can validly affirm in the Deity qualities corresponding to those which in human beings we call consciousness, intelligence, etc., we shall obviously be compelled to a.s.sign personality to Him; the question is, Have we sufficient grounds for making such an affirmation?

But before we are allowed to answer that question, we have to meet another preliminary {78} objection; for it seems that we are in conflict with philosophy--or, to be more exact, with a certain philosophy which, while no longer perhaps in the heyday of its influence with students, still enjoys a good deal of popular vogue. We are, of course, referring to the Spencerian system, in which the word "Absolute" is used as a synonym for what we should call the Deity; but, argues the Spencerian, since "Absolute is that which exists out of all relation," [3] whereas "even intelligence or consciousness itself is conceivable only as a relation," it follows that "the Absolute cannot be thought of as conscious." But if G.o.d cannot even be thought of as conscious, how much less can He be thought of as personal!

Such an inference would, indeed, be irresistible if only the premises on which it rests were sound. But is it legitimate, we ask, to identify G.o.d with "the Absolute," or is not this merely a way of begging the question?

"Absolute is that which exists out of all relation," we were just told, and such a genuine Absolute would be genuinely "unknowable," because its very existence could not be so much as guessed at; but the Spencerian Absolute is the most certain of certainties, described by Professor Hudson as "the one Eternal Reality, the corner-stone of all our {79} knowledge"--otherwise as "the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." But the corner-stone of all our knowledge can be such only because, so far from being unknowable, it is intimately related to all our experience--which is tantamount to saying that it is not absolute at all; and again, if G.o.d be the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed, that Energy must be thought of as related to all things--in other words, it is the very reverse of absolute. And hence the imaginary impossibility of thinking of the Deity as conscious and intelligent vanishes at one stroke. If G.o.d were really absolute, in the sense of the definition quoted above, it would certainly be, as Professor Hudson says, "from the standpoint of philosophical exactness" quite inadmissible "to speak of the Divine Will, or a Personal Creator, or an intelligent Governor of the universe"; but as we have seen that this absoluteness is purely fict.i.tious, it follows that we may legitimately inquire whether consciousness, intelligence, will--and hence personality--are predicable of G.o.d, without heeding a veto which rests on imaginary foundations.

It is true Professor Hudson raises two further objections; these, however, will not long detain us. We are informed in the first place that "the further progress of thought 'must force men hereafter to drop the higher anthropomorphic characters given to the First {80} Cause, as they have long since dropped the lower'"; but since our guide, a few pages later, quotes with approval the dictum that "unless we cease to think altogether, we _must_ think anthropomorphically," we may be pardoned for declining to believe that "the further progress of thought must force men hereafter" to "cease to think altogether." Such a suicide of thought would furnish an odd comment upon philosophic "progress." We shall, of course, continue to think anthropomorphically of G.o.d; our thought will thus inevitably fall short of the Reality, but it will be truer than if we did not think of Him at all. Again, Divine Personality is declared to be a self-contradiction because

"Personality implies limitation, or it means nothing at all. To talk of an Infinite Person, therefore, is to talk of something that is at once infinite and finite, unconditioned and conditioned, unlimited and limited--an impossibility."

To this plea there are, however, two answers. The first may be made in the unprejudiced words of Mr. Vivian, who observes,[4]

"We must not forget that in philosophy and theology the word 'person'

simply implies 'a nature endowed with consciousness,' and does not involve limits."

But secondly, without committing ourselves to Professor Hudson's dictum that personality implies limitation, we have to point out that we are not concerned to defend any inference that might be drawn from the infinity, in the sense {81} of the "allness" of G.o.d. We do not deny, but on the contrary affirm, that in the act of creation G.o.d imposes limitations upon Himself; so that this last obstacle also is disposed of.

So far, then, we have dealt with the _a priori_ arguments against the Personality of G.o.d, and have seen why none of these--neither that from His non-materiality, nor from His alleged absoluteness or infinity--raises any real bar to His being thought of as personal. We are now in a position to inquire positively whether there is sufficient ground for regarding Him as conscious, intelligent and purposive; if He possesses these qualities, we repeat that He certainly possesses that of personality.

The method by which we must proceed is obvious, and will at once occur to the reader who recalls our opening chapter; the question resolves itself simply into this--Are the phenomena of nature such as to indicate intelligence and directivity in their Cause? We submit that incontrovertible proof of the _absence_ of such directive intelligence would be furnished, if the world were, as a matter of fact, chaotic--if it disclosed neither regularity nor continuity--if, in a word, we could never be sure what would happen next. True, in such a state of things life itself could not be sustained, for life is only possible in a world of orderly sequences and uniform laws; but seeing that as a matter of fact such orderly sequences and uniform laws meet us everywhere {82} in nature, is not the inference fairly inevitable? Let us be quite clear on one point: there are two ways, and two only, in which any phenomenon can be accounted for--design or chance; what is not purposed must be accidental. Does, then, nature impress us as the outcome of chance? If we saw a faultlessly executed mathematical diagram ill.u.s.trating a proposition in Euclid, should we really be satisfied with the statement that it represented the random pencil-strokes made by a blindfolded child ignorant of geometry? On the other hand, if a fretful baby is allowed to divert himself by hammering the piano keys, is the result ever remotely akin to a tune? We know perfectly well that we never get harmony, order, beauty, rationality by accident; and there is only one other alternative--design, purpose, guidance. Professor Fiske quotes a quaint observation of Kepler's ill.u.s.trating this very point, which we may be allowed to reproduce:--

Yesterday, when weary with writing and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad was set before me. "It seems then," said I aloud, "that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of oil and vinegar, and slices of eggs, had been floating about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad." "Yes," says my wife, "but not so nice and well-dressed as mine is!"

Mrs. Kepler's shrewd, homely remark gives its last touch of absurdity to the suggestion {83} that a world which we see to be pervaded by unfailing law has come together by sheer, incalculable accident. Not so much as a salad of respectable calibre could be accounted for upon such a theory; how much less credible is it that the universe began with a cosmic dance of unconscious atoms whirled along by unconscious forces, and happening so to combine as to produce order and sequence, life and consciousness, will and affection!

But not only does the universe exhibit a sublime order which is the very contrary of what we can a.s.sociate with the blind workings of chance; not only do the circling immensities of the stars and the microscopic perfections of the snow-crystals alike point to a shaping and directing Mind and Will: what nature reveals--what is implied in the very term evolution--is not merely order but progress. As Fiske has it, "Whatever else may be true, the conviction is brought home to us that in all this endless multifariousness there is one single principle at work, that _all is tending towards an end that was involved in the very beginning_." In other words, the supreme certainty brought home to us by the researches of modern science is that all creation is thrilled through by an all-encompa.s.sing Purpose. We really ask for no more than such an admission; that, in short, is our case. We can clinch the whole argument with one quiet sentence of Mr. Chesterton's: "Where there is a purpose, {84} there is a person." If Mr. Spencer's "Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed" is purposive, that is equivalent to saying that G.o.d is what we mean by personal.

But ought we not to have shown first of all that He is conscious? No, for the greater includes the less, and purpose is unthinkable apart from consciousness. In saying this we are aware that a philosopher like Eduard von Hartmann speaks of "the wisdom of the Unconscious," of "the mechanical devices which It employs," of "the direction of the goal intended by the Unconscious," etc., etc.; but this, we are bound to say, is to empty words of their meaning. To intend, to direct anything requires at least that the one so doing should be conscious of what it is he is doing. And consciousness, intelligence, directivity are const.i.tuents never found apart from personality. But, we are told, "the choice lies, not between personality and something lower, but between personality and something inconceivably higher." [5] We reply that we have already made the acquaintance of this idea of a "super-personal"

Deity, and found that for all practical--_i.e._, religious--purposes the super-personal is simply the impersonal under another name.[6] And when we remember that the "inconceivably higher than personal" ultimate Reality of the agnostic possesses neither {85} consciousness, nor will, nor intelligence, we simply fail to see how a Power lacking these attributes could be even personal, to say nothing of its being _more_ than personal. Be this, however, as it may, the decisive fact remains that we are persons, and therefore personality is the highest category under which we can think; and if we, the children of the Eternal, are endowed with personality, it is sufficient for us to know that a cause must be at least adequate to produce the effects that have flowed from it. Nothing can be evolved but what was first involved. On this ground alone, whatever else G.o.d may be, He is at least personal; and that is all we were anxious to establish.

That is all--but it is also all-important; for it cannot be too emphatically insisted that without a personal G.o.d religion simply ceases to be. It is a strange and delusive fancy on Professor Hudson's part, and that of a good many people, that "the religious emotions" will survive the de-ethicising, depersonalising of the Deity, and that men will remain "deeply religious" even when it is recognised that the "Great Enigma," the "eternal and inscrutable energy," the "ultimate Reality"

cannot be spoken of as "a Personal Creator, or an intelligent Governor of the universe." For our own part, we find it difficult to believe that such a forecast could have been framed by anyone possessing a first-hand knowledge of what "the religious {86} emotions" are; we say with the utmost confidence that no such emotions can be felt towards a Power which "cannot be thought of as conscious," let alone as benevolent or personally interested in us. We well know that we can be nothing to such a Power--nor can It be anything to us; for a G.o.d who does not care, does not count. We cannot commune with this chill and awesome Unknown; we can only pray to One who hears; we can only love One who has first loved us.

In the last a.n.a.lysis, an "impersonal Deity" such as one hears occasionally spoken of, is a mere contradiction in terms, the coinage of confused and inaccurate thought. Where the meaning of personality is so much as understood, doubt as to the Divine Personality vanishes; and least of all will that truth be doubted by those who see the supreme revelation of G.o.d in Jesus Christ. He, the Incarnate Son, has shown us, not a Power but a Person--the Person of the Father--and, to-day as of old, "it sufficeth us."

[1] _The Churches and Modern Thought_, by Philip Vivian, p. 231.

[2] _Three Essays on Religion_, R.P.A. reprint, p. 85.

[3] This and subsequent quotations are taken from pp. 108-119 of Prof.

Hudson's _Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer_.

[4] Op. cit., p. 231.

[5] Hudson, _op. cit._, p. 116.

[6] _Supra_, p. 46.

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