The Freedom of Science Part 25

With the denial of a personal G.o.d and of the immortality of the soul, true _religion_ is abandoned. Of course, there is much said and written about religion in our days: the scientific literature about it has grown to tremendous proportions-to say nothing of newspapers, novels, and plays.

One might welcome this as a proof that this world will never entirely satisfy the human heart. But it is also a sign that religion is no longer a secure possession, but has become a problem-that it has been lost. Even on the part of free-thought it is not denied that "only unhappy times will permit the existence of religious problems; and that this problem is the utterance of mental discord." Yet they do not want to forego religion entirely, for they feel that irreligion is tantamount to degeneration. But what has become of religion? It has been degraded to a vague sentiment and longing, without religious truths and duties, a plaything for pastime.

For _Schleiermacher_ religion is a feeling of simple dependence, though no one knows upon whom he is dependent: according to _Wundt_ religion consists in "man serving infinite purposes, together with his finite purposes, the ultimate fulfilment whereof remains hidden to his eye," which probably means something, but I do not know what. _Haeckel_ calls his materialism the religion of the true, good, and beautiful; _Jodl_ even thinks, "As the realm of science is the real, and the realm of art the possible, so the realm of religion is the impossible." Religion having been degraded to such a level, it is no longer astonis.h.i.+ng that religion is attributed even to animals, and in the words of _E.

von Hartmann_, "we cannot help attributing a religious character, as far as the animal is concerned, to the relation between the intelligent domestic animals and their masters."

What, finally, has become of the old standard of _morals_? A modern philosopher may answer the question.

_Fouillee_ writes: "In our day, far more so than thirty years ago, morality itself, its reality, its necessity and usefulness, is in the balance.... I have read with much concern how my contemporaries are at fundamental variance in this respect, and how they contradict one another. I have tried to form an opinion of all these different opinions. Shall I say it? I have found in the province of morals a confusion of ideas and sentiments to an extent that it seemed impossible to me to ill.u.s.trate thoroughly what might be termed contemporaneous sophistry" (Le Moralisme de Kant, etc.).

Where is left now to liberal science a single remnant of those great truths on which mankind has. .h.i.therto lived, and which it needs for existence? There was a G.o.d-but He is gone. There was a life to come, and a supernatural world; they are lost. Man had a soul, endowed with freedom, spirituality, and immortality; he has it no longer. He had fixed principles of reasoning and laws of morals; they are gone. He possessed Christ, full of grace and truth, he possessed redemption and a Church; everything is lost. Burnt to the ground is the homestead. In the blank voids, that cheerful cas.e.m.e.nts were, sits despair; man stands at the grave of all that fortune gave!

The names alone have survived; now and then they speak of G.o.d and religion, of Christianity and faith, immortality and freedom; but the words are false, pretending a possession that is lost long since. They are patches from a grand dress, once worn by our ancestors; ruins of the ancestral house that the children have lost. They are still cherished as the memories of better times. People thus acknowledge the irreparable forfeiture which those names denote, without realizing how they p.r.o.nounce their own condemnation by having destroyed these possessions.(16) _Dissipaverunt substantiam suam._

The son came to his father. In his heedless anxiety for freedom he would leave the father's house, to get away from restraining discipline and dependence. "Father, give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me."

And he departed into a far country. Soon he had spent all and had nothing to appease his hunger.

Despairing of Truth.

These, then, are the achievements liberal research can boast of in the fields of philosophy and religion: Negations and again negations; temples and altars it has destroyed, sacred images it has broken, pillars it has knocked down. Free from Christianity, free from G.o.d, free from the life to come and the supernatural, free from authority and faith-it is rich in freedom and negation. But what does it offer in place of all the things it has destroyed? What spiritual goods does it show to the expectant eyes of its confiding followers? The most hopeless things imaginable, namely, despair of all higher truth, mental confusion, and decay. One other brief glance at the consequences and we shall be competent to judge of the fitness of liberal freedom of thought for the civilization of mankind.

As far as it is inspired by philosophy, modern science confesses the principle: "No objective truth can be positively known, at least not in metaphysics"; restless doubt is the lot of the searching intellect. We have amplified this elsewhere in these pages. This result of the modern doctrine of cognition is not infrequently boasted of. It was good enough, say they, for the ancients to live in the silly belief of possessing eternal truth; they were simple and unsuspecting; we know there is in store for man only doubt and everlasting struggle for truth.

"We confess that we do not know whether there are for mankind as a whole, and for the individual, tasks and goals that extend beyond this earthly existence" (_Jodl_). "There is no scientific philosophy of generally recognized standard, but only in the form of various experiments for the purpose of defining and expressing the harmony and the idea of the active principle; consequently there cannot be a final philosophy, it must be ready at all times to revise any point that previously seemed to have been established" (_Paulsen_). "Only to dogmatism," says another, "are the various theories of the world contradictory; to science they are hypotheses of equal value, which, as they are all limited, may exist side by side, the theistic as well as the atheistic, the dualistic, the monistic, and whatever their names may be. Man, who conceives these hypotheses, is master over them all and makes use of them, here of one, there of another, according to the kind of the problem he is occupied with at the time. Thus, he is independent of any view of the world" (_L. von Sybel_). Again we are told: "There has been formulated a free variety of metaphysical systems, none of them demonstrable.... Is it our task, perhaps, to select the true one? This would be an odd superst.i.tion; this metaphysical anarchy is teaching, as obviously as possible, the relativity of all metaphysical systems" (_W.

Dilthey_). Therefore, nothing but impressions and opinions, and not the truth; indeed, for the cognition of transcendental, metaphysical truths, they often have only words of disdain.

"The fact should be emphasized," says _G. Spicker_, "that philosophy really is devoid of any higher ideal; that, through its doubt of the objective cognizability of things above us, outside and inside of us, it has fallen prey to scepticism, even if philosophers do not admit it and try to evade the issue with the phrase 'theory of cognition.' "

A science cannot sink to a lower level than by the admission that it has nothing to offer and nothing to accomplish. It is tantamount to bankruptcy. This science undertakes to nourish the human mind, but offers stones instead of bread; it wants to uplift and to instruct, and confesses that it has nothing to tell. _Amphora coepit inst.i.tui, currente rota urceus exit._ In the beginning a proud consciousness and the promise to be everything to mankind; at the end mental pauperism and scepticism, a caricature of science.

This, then, is the terminal at which the free-thought of subjectivism has arrived: the loss of truth, without which man's mind wanders restlessly and without a goal. That is the penalty for gambling boldly with human perception, the retribution for rebelling against the rights of truth and for the vainglorious arrogance of the intellect, which would draw only from its own cisterns the water of life, while alone those lying deep in the Divine may offer him the eternal fountains of objective truth.

Scepticism is gnawing at the mental life of the world. A scepticism cloaked with the names of criticism and research, and of positivism and empiric knowledge, but which, nevertheless, remains what it is, an ominous demon, liberated from the grave into which has been lowered the Christian spiritual life, the spirit of darkness now pervading the world.

In All Directions of the Compa.s.s.

They have lost their way, puzzled by mazes and perplexed with error they are in hopeless confusion; a correlative of individualistic thinking. If the absolute subject and his experiences of life are the self-appointed court of last resort, the result must be anarchy and not accord. This is manifest; moreover, it is frankly admitted by the spokesmen of freethought.

This anarchy is described in vivid words by Prof. _Paulsen_, recently the indefatigable champion of freest thought: "We no longer have a Protestant philosophy, in the sense of a standard system. _Hegel's_ philosophy was the last to occupy such a position. Anarchy rules ever since. The attempted rally around the name of _Kant_ failed to put an end to the prevalent anarchy, or to the division into small fractions and individualisms. Then there is the mental neurasthenia of our times, the absolute lack of ideas, especially noticeable among so-called educated people.... Billboard art has found a counterpart in billboard-philosophy. Here, there, and everywhere we meet the cry: here is the saviour, the secret ruler, the magic doctor, who cures all ills of our diseased age.... After a while, the mob has again dispersed and the thing is forgotten" ("Philosophia Militans").

"There is no uniform philosophic theory of the world, such as we, at least to a certain extent, used to have," says _Paulsen_ elsewhere, "the latest ideas are diverging in all directions of the compa.s.s." When one buildeth up, and another pulleth down, what profit have they but the labour? (Ecclus. x.x.xiv. 28). "We have no metaphysics nowadays," says _R. Eucken_ in the same strain, "and there are not a few who are proud of it. They only would have the right to be so if our philosophy were in excellent shape, if, even without metaphysics, firm convictions ruled our life and actions, if great aims held us together and lifted us above the smallness of the merely human. The fact is an unlimited discordance, a pitiful insecurity in all matters of principle, a defencelessness against the petty human, and soullessness accompanied by superabounding exterior manifestation of life."

This is the status of modern philosophy and also of liberal, Protestant, theology. Of views of the world, of notions and forms of Christianity, of ideas, essays and contributions to them, there is choice in abundance.

Here, materialistic Monism is proclaimed, warranted to solve all riddles.

There, spiritualistic Pantheism is retailed in endless varieties. Yonder, Agnosticism is strutting: no longer philosophy, but facts and reality, is its slogan. Then comes the long procession of ethical views of life: "Contemplations of life; theories of human existence surround us and court us in plenty; the coincidence of ample historical learning with active reflection induces manifold combinations, and makes it easy for the individual to draw pictures of this kind according to circ.u.mstance and mood; and so we see individual philosophies whirling about promiscuously, winning and losing the favour of the day, and s.h.i.+fting and trans.m.u.ting themselves in kaleidoscopic change" (_Eucken_). _Hegel_, although he lectured with great a.s.surance on his own system, lamented: "Every philosophy comes forth with the pretension to refute not only the preceding philosophy, but to remedy its defects, to have at last found the right thing." But past experience shows, that to this philosophy, too, the pa.s.sage from Holy Writ is applicable: "Behold, the feet that will carry thee away are already at the threshold." Indeed, often it has come to pa.s.s that these philosophers themselves bury their ideas, preparatory to entering another camp. Consider the changes that men like _Kant_, _Fichte_, _Sch.e.l.ling_, _Strauss_, _Nietzsche_, have essayed in the short course of a few decades, and we are justified in a.s.suming that they would again have changed their last ideas had death not interfered.

Now and then such confusion of opinions is considered an advantage, the advantage of fertility. To be sure, it is fertility,-the fertility of fruitless attempts, of errors, and of fancies, the fertility of disorder and chaos. If this fertility be a cause of pride for science, then mathematics, physics, astronomy, and other exact sciences, are indeed to be pitied for having to forego this fertility of philosophy, and the privilege of being an arena for contradictory views.

Without Peace and without Joy.

After the hopeless s.h.i.+pwreck of the modern, G.o.dless thought, can we wonder at meeting frequently the despondency of _pessimism_? Is not pessimism the first born of scepticism? At the close of the nineteenth century we read, again and again, in reviews of the past and forecasts of the future, how the modern world stands perplexed before the riddles of life, confessing in pessimistic mood that it is dissatisfied and unhappy to the depth of its soul. With proud self-consciousness, boasting of knowledge and power of intellect, they had entered the nineteenth century, praising themselves in the words: How great, O man, thou standest at the century's close, with palm of victory in thy hand, the fittest son of time! With heads bowed in shame these same representatives of modern thought make their exit from the same century.

Of the number that voiced this sentiment we quote but one, Prof.

_R. Eucken_, who wrote: "The greatness of the work is beyond doubt. This work more and more opens up and conquers the world, unfolds our powers, enriches our life, it leads us in quick victorious marches from triumph to triumph.... Thus, it is true, our desired objects have been attained, but they disclosed other things than we expected: the more our powers and ideas are attracted by the work, the more we must realize the neglect of the inner man and of his unappeased, ardent longing for happiness.

Doubts spring up concerning the entire work; we must ask whether the new civilization be not too much a development of bare force, and too little a cultivation of the being, whether because of our strenuous attention to surroundings, the problems of innermost man are not neglected. There is also noticeable a sad lack in moral power: we feel powerless against selfish interests and overwhelming pa.s.sions: mankind is more and more dividing itself into hostile sects and parties. And such doubts arouse to renewed vigour the old, eternal problems, which faithfully accompany our evolution through all its stages. Former times did not finally solve them, (?) but they were, at least to a degree, mollified and quieted. But now they are here again unmitigated and un.o.bscured.

The enigmatical of human existence is impressed upon us with unchecked strength, the darkness concerning the Whence and Whither, the dismal power of blind necessity, accident and sorrow in our fate, the low and vulgar in the human soul, the difficult complications of the social body: all unite in the question: Has our existence any real sense or value? Is it not torn asunder to an extent that we shall be denied truth and peace for ever?...

Hence it is readily understood why a gloomy pessimism is spreading more and more, why the depressed feeling of littleness and weakness is pervading mankind in the midst of its triumphs."

Similar, and profoundly true, are the words spoken some years ago by a noted critic in the "Literarische Zentralblatt" (1900): "A painful lament and longing pervades our restless and peaceless time. The bulk of our knowledge is daily increasing, our technical ability hardly knows of difficulties it could not overcome ... and yet we are not satisfied. More and more frequently we meet with the tired, disheartened question: What's the use? We lack the one thing which would give support and impetus to our existence, a firm and a.s.sured view of the world. Or, to be more exact, we have found that we cannot live with the view of the world which in this century of enlightenment has stamped its imprint more and more upon our entire mental life. Materialism, in coa.r.s.er or finer form, has penetrated deeply our habits of thought, even in those who would indignantly protest against being called materialists; the name seemed to imply scientific earnestness and liberal views.

However, there was still left a considerable fund of old, idealistic values, and as long as we could draw upon them we saw in materialism only the power to clear up rooted prejudices, and to open the road for progress in every field. To the newer generation, however, little or nothing is left of this old fund, hence, having nothing else but materialism to depend upon, they are confronted by an appalling dreariness and emptiness of existence. And ever since the man on the street has absorbed the easy materialistic principles, and looks down from the height of his 'scientific' view of life contemptuously upon all reactionaries, we have become aware of the danger that imperils everything implied by the collective word 'humanism.' This explains the plethora of literature which in these days deals with the questions of a world philosophy." Who is not reminded after reading this mournful confession of the words of _St. Augustine_: "Restless is our heart, till it finds rest in Thee"?

If it be true, then, that philosophical thought stands in closest connection with civilization, determining the latter in its loftier aspects, then the freedom of thought of modern subjectivism has proved its incompetence as a power for civilization; it can produce only a sham-civilization, it can incite the minds and keep them in nervous tension, until, tired of fruitless endeavour, they yield to pessimism.

However painful it may be to admit it, this freedom of thought is and remains the principle of natural decadence of all the higher elements of a culture that is not determined by the number of guns, by steam-engines, and high-schools for girls, but which consists, chiefly, in a steadfast, ideal condition of reason and will, from which all else obtains significance and value. What further proof of intellectual and cultural incompetence can be demanded which this principle has not furnished already?

If this be the fact, then it follows in turn that in the life of higher culture, where the health of the soul and the marrow of mental life is at stake, there can rule but a single principle, the _objectivism of Christian thought_, the principle of absolute submission, without variance and change, to a truth against which man has no rights. The submission of Christian thought to a religious, teaching authority, recognized as infallible in all matters pertaining to its domain, while not an exhaustive presentment of this principle, is its perceptive and concrete effect.

A Rock in the Waters.

The history of human thought of all ages, but especially of the last centuries, proves how necessary a divine revelation is to man; viz., the clear exposition of the highest truths in the view of world and of life, emphasized by a divine authority, which links the human mind to the one immutable truth; not only in ignorant nations, not only in the man of the common people, but also, and more especially, in the educated man and in the scientist, he, namely, who, through the moderate studies of a small intellect, has collected a little sum of knowledge that is apt to confuse his limited understanding and to rob him of modesty. It is just as manifest that revelation alone does not suffice, that there is needed also the enduring forum of a teaching Church, which in the course of centuries gives expression to truth with infallible, binding authority.

The full truth of this is felt even by those unfavourably disposed toward this authority. A recent champion of autonomous freedom of thought, the Protestant theologian, _F. Troeltsch_, makes this concession in the words: "The immediate consequence of such autonomy is necessarily a steadily more intensified individualism of convictions, opinions, theories, and practical ends and aims. An absolute supra-individual union is effected only by an enormous power such as the belief in an immediate, supernatural, divine, revelation, as possessed by Catholicism, and organized in the Church as the extended and continued incarnation of G.o.d.

This tie gone, the necessary sequel will be a splitting up in all sorts of human opinions."(17)

This is to the Catholic a caution to appreciate the ministry of his Church ever more highly, and to cleave to it still closer. He will not agree with those who think that in our time the principle of Authority must retire.

The more his eyes are opened by the present situation, the more clearly he realizes where thought emanc.i.p.ated from faith and authority has led, the more he will affirm his conscious belief in authority. His foothold upon the rock of the Church will be the firmer the more restless the billows of unsafe opinions rise and roll about him. The Catholic of mature, Catholic, conviction would consider it folly to abandon the rock for the restless and turbulent play of the waves. Many, indeed, who are looking for a safe place of truth, we see for this reason taking refuge in a strong Church; many are impressed by the stability of Catholic authority.(18)

The present situation is similar socially to that of the ancient world at its close, and also in regard to the spiritual life. Then, as now, there was learning without idealism, corroded by scepticism, without harmony and cheer. Then, as now, there was but one power to offer rescue. Faith and Church. A longing for help is now also prevailing in the world. It feels its helplessness. If they only had the conviction of a _St. Augustine_, who prayed for deliverance from his errors: "When I often and forcefully realized the agility, sagacity, and ac.u.men of the human mind, I could not believe that truth was hidden completely from us-rather only the way and manner how to discover it, and that we must accept these from a divine authority" (_De utilit. credendi_, 8).