{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_52245/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_52245","id":"gutenberg_52245","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52245","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Science - Physics","Religion and science"],"text":"------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                           WHERE SCIENCE AND\n                             RELIGION MEET\n\n\n\n\n                             WHERE SCIENCE\n                              AND RELIGION\n                                  MEET\n\n\n                                   BY\n                          WILLIAM SCOTT PALMER\n\n         \"Il para\u00eet juste de voir dans la vie le trait d'union\n                   de la science et de la religion.\"\n\n                                                       _\u00c9mile Boutroux._\n\n                          HODDER AND STOUGHTON\n                      LONDON   NEW YORK   TORONTO\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n'We are still, as in Plato's age, groping about for a new method more\ncomprehensive than any of those that now prevail; and also more\npermanent. And we seem to see at a distance the promise of such a\nmethod, which can hardly be any other than the method of idealized\nexperience, having roots which strike far down into the history of\nphilosophy. It is a method which does not divorce the present from the\npast, or the part from the whole, or the abstract from the concrete, or\ntheory from fact, or the divine from the human, or one science from\nanother, but labours to connect them. Along such a road we have\nproceeded a few steps, sufficient, perhaps, to make us reflect on the\nwant of method which prevails in our own day. In another age, all the\nbranches of knowledge, whether relating to God or man or nature, will\nbecome the knowledge of \"the revelation of a single science,\" and all\nthings, like the stars in heaven, will shed their light upon one\nanother.'\n\n                                JOWETT: _Plato_, Introduction to _Meno_.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                                  NOTE\n\n\nI have not named my authorities or given references to any passages in\ntheir books. My critics, friendly or unfriendly, may complain of this\nomission. But I hope they will not. I hope they will see that I have\ngathered my materials together for a clearly shown purpose with which\nparticular references and frequent defined quotations would have\ninterfered. I wanted to build a wayside cottage for travellers who are\nin haste and will soon pass on, not a museum for the leisurely student.\nI hope, then, that my critics will criticize the cottage to their\nhearts' content\u2014I shall do my best to learn from them,\u2014but I beg them\nnot to treat it as a museum whose curator has either not had the sense\nor not taken the trouble to ticket its contents.\n\nIn place of references I have given in an appendix two short lists of\neasily accessible books which will give technical support to the\nsubstance of this little work. I have learnt much from them and\ntaken\u2014all but quoted\u2014much. I make no apology for including, among books\nfrom which I have learnt, two of my own. Nothing teaches as solidly as\ntrying to teach. And the record of a learner sometimes helps learners,\nwhen the oracles of the learned fail. But I must acknowledge here my own\ngreat indebtedness to two of those learned, my old instructors, Sir\nEdward Sch\u00e4fer and Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, whose admirable lessons in\nthe biological sciences of which they are distinguished professors laid\na scientific foundation in me for all my subsequent study.\n\n                                                        W. SCOTT PALMER.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                                 PART I\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n      The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:\n      The moon is within me, and so is the sun.\n      The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me;\n          but my deaf ears cannot hear it.\n                                                          _Kabir._\n\n\nDeep in every one of us there is a passion of desire to understand, just\nas there is of desire to enjoy and of desire to be somehow or other 'in\nthe right.' I say deep in us, because we are in the habit either of\nburying these desires beneath a pretence of satisfying them or else of\ndiverting our attention from them and thus letting them sink out of\nsight. So we live our life in the pursuit of other ends than those\nlikely to be reached through understanding and rapture and\nrighteousness. We falsify ourselves and our desires; yet unless we ruin\nthe life within us they persist, waiting their hour.\n\nThere are moments when it becomes almost impossible for any man who has\nseen something of the marvel of every-day affairs to believe that he\nmight spend time in vain if he were to try to convince his next-door\nneighbour that there was anything hard to understand about the crooking\nof a finger. Yet that is his experience when he tries. Just because\nevery man who has a healthy finger in a healthy body and a healthy mind\ncan and does crook it, there is nothing to wonder at. The whole affair\nis plain; it is familiar, happens every day. Familiarity lulls to sleep\nboth the desire for understanding, and the sense of not understanding.\n\nConsequently there is little that should provoke surprise on our part in\nthe fact that not one man in (say) ten thousand is consciously puzzled\nby any of the deeper problems of life, not one in (say) a hundred\nthousand has his imagination either stirred or stunned by the green\nblades of the corn, the leaves of the tree, the grass in his fields or\nthe sheep and cows that are eating it. There is nothing new about all\nthis, nothing strange; it is familiar\u2014therefore it is understood or\nthere is nothing that calls for understanding. Yet in these green blades\nand leaves is the junction-point between the living and the not-living,\nbetween the plant and animal on the one hand and what we call 'inert\nmatter' on the other, between the radiant energy of the sun and\nourselves. And we do not understand, nobody understands, how that\njunction-point works. It is called chlorophyll; it is found in little\nliving bodies called chloroplasts; and it is wonderful 'beyond all\nwhooping'. Yet we do not even whoop. We do not get even thus far. We are\nnot surprised, we are not enraptured. The thing is at once both too\nfamiliar and too obscure for us.\n\nWe cannot do away with the familiarity; but at least, as reasonable\nbeings possessed of that passion of desire which is a cry of the spirit\nwithin us and which we so often do our utmost to suppress, it will be\nwell for us to make an attempt to find out how and even why this green\nstuff of the plant is so highly distinguished among the wonders of the\nworld.\n\nBut first let us ask ourselves a searching and pertinent question\u2014let us\nask ourselves what it means to be alive. A man is alive, but so are the\ncells of his own blood, so is the grass in the fields, so are the small\njellies we call amoebae and the still smaller rods and specks we call\nbacteria and 'germs.' Can we say anything about life that will at once\nfit these and distinguish them from all else that does not live,\naccepting for the moment the distinction between living and not-living\nthat we ordinarily make?\n\nThere are several things that we may say about them. For example, they\ngrow. But a crystal grows and so does a heap of sand. There are, then,\ndifferent ways of growing. The sand heap grows when the wind scatters\nparticles of sand over it or the sea drives them; or the river, or a\nsmall boy with a barrow, deposits them. It grows by mere addition. The\ncrystal grows without any such aid and in a different way. If you want\nto see an alum-crystal grow you must offer it more alum, dissolved; you\nmust offer it its own material and it will then grow without other help.\nIt will grow by what we may call formative accretion. On the other hand\nthe grass and the corn and the trees grow neither by mere addition nor\nby formative accretion, but by converting, assimilating and\nincorporating nitrogen, carbon, and so on, compounded either by their\nown effort or by the micro-organisms of the soil. They are magicians,\nthese live creatures. And of all their magic the magic of their green\nleaves is chief in our eyes. For it takes the carbonic acid of the air,\na stable compound of one atom of carbon with two of oxygen, and tears it\nto pieces, using for that enormous work the radiant energy of the sun.\nThis carbon, now potent with the potency of the sun, is then united with\nother elements to make sugars that nourish the tissues of the plant. In\nthese sugars power is stored as it is stored in an explosive like\ndynamite or trinitrotoluol. But in the plant, power is under strict\ncontrol; it is liberated by degrees as it is wanted and is replaced as\nit is used; it is controlled, used, replaced in a discriminating,\nselective and determining way. The ability to make use of physical\npower, within a body, in this discriminating, selective and determining\nway and thus to grow is (among other things) what is meant by being\nalive.\n\nThe chemist in his laboratory can make explosives, chemical compounds\nthat will easily break down and in breaking down will liberate, for good\nor ill, great power. He makes nitroglycerin and trinitrotoluol. He can\nalso make very elaborate and more stable compounds than a plant makes,\nfor instance, indigo or madder-red, though for such as these he does not\nusually begin like the plant with chemical elements; he begins half\nway\u2014with lesser compounds, ready made\u2014and thus, or even sometimes by\nbuilding up from the bottom, from elements, like the plant, he makes\nwhat are known as 'organic' substances of many sorts and uses. Is it\npossible that he will ever make that organic substance protoplasm, the\nlife-jelly of living things? He has not done so yet. Suppose he did,\nsuppose he went on from making indigo to make the indigo-maker itself.\nThere is nothing of a chemical kind in the indigo-plant which his\nlaboratory does not contain; there are just the carbon, nitrogen,\noxygen, salts and the rest, with which he deals so successfully\nelsewhere. He has all the materials to hand. Why should he not make its\nliving stuff? Again, suppose he did, for perhaps he will. What then?\nWill he have made life, as well as built up the material substance of a\nliving thing? That is a question of questions.\n\nWe know life here only in association with its jelly. What is the\ncharacter of that association? Granted that life depends on the jelly,\nin what way does it depend? If we can answer these questions we may know\nhow to answer the one about the chemist's making or not making life, if\nand when he makes the jelly.\n\nThere are different ways of being dependent, as there are different ways\nof growing. The steam depends on the boiler and the boiler-fire. In this\ncase the dependence is one of being _produced_. The boiler and its fire\nproduce the steam. So we say, in the ordinary way of speaking of such\nthings. Again\u2014when I press the trigger of a rifle the bullet is shot\nout. I have only pressed the trigger; you can hardly say I have produced\nthe bullet. What I have done is to release an explosive power that\ndrives the bullet. That is another kind of dependence, dependence on the\n_release_ of power. There may be still, there certainly have been, men\nwho would tell you that life is produced by protoplasm as steam is\nproduced by the boiler, or that it is released from a chemical compound\nby some chemical or physical trigger action. They might, once they did\nin large numbers, say that consciousness is produced by or released from\nthe brain, and that this must be so because it depends upon the brain.\n\nThese two assertions, one about life and the other about consciousness,\nstand or fall together; and we can begin to see that they may be made to\nfall, as soon as we see that there is a third kind of dependence to be\nconsidered besides the dependence of the bullet and the steam. There is\nthe dependence of light in a room on the existence of a window. Without\nwindow no light in that room; with window as much light as window\npermits to pass. There is a dependence of _transmission_, and\ntransmission may occur in many wide and fundamentally differing ways. At\na stroke you see the whole question and series of questions take on a\nnew aspect. If the chemist makes life-jelly he may have made not\nsomething to produce or to release but something to transmit life. He\nmay doubtless have imitated what there is good reason to think must have\ntaken place on the earth's surface long ago and may indeed be taking\nplace now; but in doing this he may only have made a material substance\ncapable of allowing spiritually potent life to be manifest in it and to\nendow it with a share in promoting the purposes of life. He may have\nmade for the peculiar potency of life a door of entrance to a house, or\nrather, since this house is not passive, to a body in which it and the\nbody will be distinguishable as a living being, an example of life and\nmatter living and at work together. Why not? The supposition of some\nsuch dependence of the superior power of life upon a body seems quite as\nreasonable, even at no more than a first glance, as the other\nsuppositions made by men who do not acknowledge the specific character\nof life. And it accords far better with both knowledge and experience,\nwhen these are taken at their widest and their most profound. The other\nsuppositions accord only with chosen parts of knowledge and chosen bits\ncut out of experience\u2014the parts and bits cut out and chosen by the man\nwho restricts himself to the specialism and the very right and proper\nsuperficiality of certain sciences. Even there they accord but ill,\nbecause in their inception they trespass beyond the borders of all\nscience.\n\nLiving creatures are the subject of the mere biologist's merely\nscientific inquiry\u2014not life. When a biologist, speaking as biologist,\ntries to tell us both _that_ life is and _what_ it is, he is\nphilosophizing. Life is in fact an ultra-scientific problem. We have to\ncall in philosophy before we can even state the problem. And when either\nthe biologist or the physicist or the chemist talks of life as a mode of\nphysical or chemical energy, or as a product of things, he is playing at\nphilosophy, not soberly working at his science. The biologist shall\nteach us about living creatures, the physicist and the chemist about\nphysical and chemical things and powers; but the philosopher must help\nus in our enquiry about life. And this, not because a man shall not be\npermitted to transgress boundaries we lay down, but because his chosen\nmethods preclude his walking safely except within boundaries they\nthemselves build up. Of every specialist this is true. We must transcend\nspecialism if we would have 'all things, like the stars in heaven,' shed\n'their light upon one another.'\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n\n        Time hath endless rarities, and shows of all varieties;\n        which reveals old things in heaven, makes new\n        discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery.\n                                            _Sir Thomas Browne_.\n\n\nThe green leaf of the tree, the blade of the wheat that gives me bread\u2014I\nlook at them and tell myself, as many a man has told himself before,\nthat if I could read their secrets I should know, as from the 'flower in\nthe crannied wall,' 'what God and man is.' So I might, but only as far\nas their secrets go. If I could read my own I should go farther and know\nmore. I am man and hold far greater secrets in being man. And I have the\ninestimable advantage of being inside myself, of being alive, besides\nlooking on at living, of both growing and watching growth. There is no\nother live creature on earth who can possibly tell me as much as I can\ntell myself about what it means to be alive. And if the blade of wheat\nis wonderful beyond words, what am I?\n\nThink of it: I have a history; indeed I am a history, I am time alive,\ntime that accumulates and lasts. I have a past that is not past, because\nit is at work in my present and is writing its indelible signature on my\nfuture. There is no least action in my past that has not left its\nimpress on me, made me different from what I should have been without\nit, and therefore will make my future different too. My whole history is\nalive, active and changing in my actions and my change. The history of\nmy forefathers, too, is alive in me and in my character and powers. I\nhave an inheritance from their living; I am as and what I am, in part\nbecause they were as and what they were. But I have power and I use it\nto create myself and recreate my inheritance through an impetus\ntransmitted to me in the transmission to me of my life. Therefore every\nmoment of my life is a unique and original moment of a unique and\noriginal history, mine and mine alone, never to be repeated, never to be\nwholly predicted, even by me. The evolutionist philosophy tells me that\nI endure, I _last_, and that all my changes and experiences endure,\nlast, in and with me, changing in themselves and among themselves as\nthough they were alive to influence and interpenetrate each other.\nIndeed they are alive in me and in my life or they could not endure.\nThey would pass like the stages in the height of a sand heap as it\ngrows, as the little heap it was is merged and lost in the larger heap\nit is. They would be lost as the flowing tide is lost when the ebb\nsucceeds it. Such changes are mere successions, displacements and\nreplacements; they are not history. They enter history only in sharing\nthat of the universe which itself endures, lasts, and within which they\nare parts.\n\nI, on the other hand, have a life of my own; I am a maker, shaper,\ncreator. I am a master-worker and freeman in a world of relative\nnecessity. Yet my wonderful living body, through which I do my work,\ndepends for its support on the green blades of grass and corn and the\ngreen leaves of the trees. Further\u2014every cell of the millions and\nmillions in my body is like the amoeba and the cells of the plant in\nconsisting of protoplasm. Further still\u2014I began my own life as a speck\nof protoplasm, and if I could trace all the steps of my pedigree to the\nfirst display of life on earth, from which I am sure I am descended, I\nshould (I dare to say) find another protoplasmic speck with which every\none of the cells of the vast cellular republic whereby and wherein I\nlive is in historical continuity. Bodily I am immensely complicated; I\nam a congeries and a commonwealth of cells. But the first cell was also\ncomplicated although it was but one. Nothing that lives is simple, no,\nnot even if we carry the idea of life far beyond the arbitrary\nboundaries commonly set to it now. There is unplumbed mystery in the\nconjunction of two atoms of hydrogen with one of oxygen to make a third\nand different substance, water; there is unplumbed mystery in every\nelement and every happening of the world. But some mysterious things are\nscientifically more complex than others, and among the most complex is\nthis thing, protoplasm. Yet it seems that before life could be manifest\nin the world the molecular complexity of protoplasm must have been\nattained. By storing power in building up the atoms of the chemical\nelements from electrons, and making that power useful by the union of\natoms in molecules; then, by a further delicate union between molecules\n(much after the fashion of widely branching, but only slightly\ntenacious, magnets) forming larger and ever larger groups, a condition\nof such plasticity of matter and ready discharge and restoring of power\nhas been attained as makes it fit for the rank of a recognized life. The\ngrouped and complicated molecules, each charged with power, are set as\nwith a double-acting hair-trigger, so ready are they to let go energy in\nheat and work as these are wanted; so ready also for their rebuilding in\nthe peculiar power of the life with which they are imbued.\n\nThere are examples of highly complex union to be seen in the chemist's\nlaboratory and elsewhere which are never called living matter. The\nchemist speaks of some of them as colloids (we should naturally call\nmany of these jellies, or gums) and he calls protoplasm a colloid too.\nThey have remarkable properties, and the new bio-chemist thinks he may\nsome day make that elaborate colloid with more remarkable properties,\nwhich we know as protoplasm. He thinks also that we do ill to confine\nthe first production of life-jellies to the age of steaming seas and\ncloud-shadowed lagoons, before the Pre-Cambrian geologic times. He tells\nus that in his opinion it may always be going on and always have gone on\nsince the earth was cool enough to permit of it. He thinks that if all\nthe living creatures we are aware of were swept out of the world to-day\nthere would still be living stuff remaining on it of which we are\nignorant now; and that in the course of millenniums this would people it\nonce more. The beginnings of the life-jelly must be so small as to be\nfar out of the reach of our microscopes and every other tool we can\nbring to bear, as yet, he says. And there, doubtless, he is right.\n\nLet us suppose that he is right, too, in his main contention. Let us\nlook at inorganic matter with a new eye, seeing in its evolutionary\nchange the forerunner of greater change and greater evolution, the\npreparer of the narrow pathway by which life approaches to its display,\nand at last enters on possession of a body that in union with it shall\nbe the germ of lives to come\u2014enters the realm of physical forces and the\nrelative necessity of material things, where and by use of those forces\nit will subdue necessity to the purposes of freedom. This indeed seems\nto be the manner and purposing of life as it extends from the single\ncell to the assemblage of cells that constitutes my body. There is\ncontinuity from first to last; and yet the differences between me and\nthe primitive jelly-speck are even more striking than the resemblances.\nStudents of the cell itself and students of my body as merely composed\nof cells are, naturally, cytologists, histologists, physiologists,\nembryologists, and the like. But unless there are others, unless\nstudents of psychology, ethics, aesthetics, social science, history, and\nmany more, bring their minds to bear on me, I am studied to little sense\nand in small part. I am obliged to regard myself as not only physical\nbut psychical; I seek after, and sometimes find, goodness and truth and\nbeauty. I admire, I hate or love. I am a hero or a criminal, or both. I\nsin. In the advance of life from the minute and primitive colloid lump\nto me amazing things have happened. When I see life making its humble\nappearance by that speck of jelly, I must in my mind's eye connect it\nwith what I am, and see there in its almost inchoate wonders the promise\nof myself. And still I must look behind even that first living thing and\nconsider matter as well as life; for the physical potency of that thing\nwas long of building up; and this physical potency has its place in me.\nThe material pathway of life is the pathway of my powers, and it\nstretches far back into cosmic happenings smaller or (it depends how you\nlook at these high matters and what you see in them) greater still.\n\nWe have no need to stretch imagination unaided; we may watch changes\ngoing on which indicate or, maybe, reproduce, stages in the creation\nof our own world and of its very elements. There are stars in which\nmaterial elements are being either made or destroyed; it is hard for\nus to say which. In the constellation Argo there are two suns\u2014furnaces\nof immeasurable heat\u2014in which hydrogen, the lightest and simplest of\nour elements, is either being born or disintegrated before our eyes.\nThere are other stars where hydrogen is in the same state as that in\nwhich we know it here, and more complex elements (for the elements of\nthe chemist are in reality complex; they are only elements for him,\nbecause he cannot disintegrate them) are being born or, again, are\nbeing destroyed. There are stars in all stages up to the stage of our\nown sun and beyond, in age and powers; and there are elements of many\ndegrees of complexity. In the series of those stars there is a series\nof changes which, taken together, mark for us either an ascent of\nmatter from the immaterial, or a descent towards it. There is iron in\nits very infancy to be seen in some\u2014proto-iron we call it\u2014which we are\nable to produce ourselves by exposing ordinary iron to the intense\nheat of the electric vacuum spark and there disrupting it into a\nsimpler mode which the spectroscope detects as it detects it in a\nstar. We are entitled to say that in these changes material elements\ndeclare themselves to be things that somewhere and somehow are born\nand grow, whether in any one stage that we watch they are moving in\none direction or another, from birth or down towards death. Indeed the\nmost probable thing is that in the solar furnace-fires both movements\nare going on together; elements are being born and elements annulled.\nThey have an origin, these elements. Some scientific men suggest to us\nthat they issue from the universal ether that fills the interstellar\nspaces and the spaces of the stars themselves, of our own bodies, of\nall things in all worlds. Here the first stones of the pathway on\nwhich life travels may have (in their belief) been shaped. And neither\nchemist nor physicist can even guess at anything beyond. We stop here,\nas men of science only. It is at a place full of marvels that we are\narrested. This ether is so marvellous that some rash men have deemed\nit competent to replace God. They have asked what need we have of any\nother God. And, truly, if the creations of worlds that are no more\nthan physical were all a God was needed for, this amazing source of\nworlds would seem, not so unreasonably, to be enough. Whether the\nether is immaterial or not, we might say the same. There are those who\nhold that it is the first and finest of the elements of matter. For\nmen who know most about it, it is no kind of matter. But its power and\nfertility remain, however this may be; it is held to be the medium of\ncommunication everywhere, between small and great, distant and near;\nand the womb of the worlds. Undoubtedly it may serve the\npseudo-physicist-philosopher in place of God, while he is no more than\nthat.\n\nThe pathway for life has been traced back and back to the utmost of the\nregressive journey of science. We have seen (perhaps) the first stones\nbeing fashioned in the fires of the suns; at least we may believe that\nin some such place and way they have been and are being fashioned. We\nknow\u2014radium has shown us and the proto-iron\u2014how chemical elements can be\ndisintegrated and brought down to lower states of material complexity.\nIn radio-active matter there is more than a hint that they may be\nbrought lower still, returned to the fecund mother from which they came,\nrestored, let us say, to the ether.\n\nWe may have learnt\u2014that depends on our prepossessions\u2014we may have learnt\nin studying this regress to see in what the chemist calls the 'affinity'\nof one element for another, and in its 'valency' (that is, its ability\nto grip one or another and even several to itself and take part in\nbuilding up compounds), a likeness or a congruity with living stuff. And\nwe have seen a living thing as compounded physically of the compounds of\nthe chemist, though not, as yet, compounded by him. Unless our\nprepossessions form in us irrational prejudice we may gladly follow the\nclue science puts in our hands, and confess a continuous advance in\norder upon order of nature from the womb of the ether to ourselves.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n           There the Eternal Fountain is playing its endless\n           life-streams of birth and death.\n                                                    _Kabir._\n\n\nWe have followed the physicist and the chemist to the farthest point\nthey have reached in their research. They cannot show us anything\nbeyond, and we, unsatisfied, must look elsewhere. The problems of life\nremain. We ourselves stand on the great pathway, its continuous road of\nrising orders, and from our place of vantage we contemplate the first\nliving thing. A profound discrepancy, or what seems like one, stares us\nin the face, the discrepancy between our mastery over things and our\nself-conscious, self-creative abilities on the one hand, and, on the\nother, that first humble yet awe-inspiring revelation by elements\ngenerated, perhaps, within a white-hot star. Science has nothing to do\nwith meanings and purposes and values in our lives or with our concern\nfor them. Indeed it has nothing to do, in strictness, with meanings and\npurposes and values anywhere. This is the business of philosophy and of\nall ordinary men.\n\nWe have learnt a lesson as we followed the men of science from step to\nstep, and heard nature respond to their questions with intelligible\nanswers. We have learnt that, so far as it has been examined, the\nuniverse, like ourselves, is rational and has a history. It moves,\nchanges, grows; it is real and its history is real too. And though\nscience is not concerned with its meaning, we are. We hold fast to our\nscience, but we care for more than science. We cannot help it, for we\nare aware of meaning in ourselves; as the man of science is when he is\nnot being only scientific. We are aware too of purpose and of values; we\nare aware of making and shaping and creating; we know what it is to\nchoose and direct, to arrange and rearrange, to produce novelty. Both\nsides of our knowledge and our caring, the scientific side and the\npersonal side, make a difficulty for us in regard to the philosophers\nwith whom we shall put ourselves to school. Our chosen teachers must\nreckon with life as we know and possess it in ourselves; but they must\nreckon too with every word of the scientific man. Nothing less will\ncontent us now. The philosophers we shall follow must not be playing a\ngame among themselves, using thoughts like pieces on a board, to be\nmoved according to rules they have laid down. Neither must they resolve\nthe great drama of real things and real history into a phantasmagoria of\nmind; nor try to educe mind, consciousness, the spiritual activities of\nman, from the interplay of parts of a material machine. In our view both\nthe material and the spiritual are real. It is for the philosopher, so\nwe think, to show us the real relation between them. To do him justice,\nthe philosopher has been thoroughly aroused of late years to the\nimportance of reckoning with science. Consequently he draws to his side\nthinking ordinary men as they have perhaps never been drawn before,\nexcept when Socrates at Athenian banquets and in Athenian streets 'made\nhimself a fool that others by his folly might be made wise.' We have no\ndifficulty now in finding a philosopher, indeed many philosophers, to\nour mind. Philosophy is alive, sitting at our banquets, walking in our\nstreets, even writing books that ordinary men, living each his own\nextraordinary life, can read. We are able to call in our philosopher,\nthen, as we have called in the bio-chemist, knowing him to be one who\nreckons to the full with science, that he may tell us what he can and\nwill concerning life and living.\n\nA philosopher of that mind and reckoning has presented us with a picture\nin which we see life coming (may be from very far, coming, we may think,\nalthough concealed, by the material pathway from the ether that science\nhas revealed to us) as an enormous impetus which finds the first of its\nadvantages that are discernible by us, in that colloid assembly of\ncompounded, complicated, delicately-strung, hair-trigger-hung elements,\nthe protoplasmic stuff. We plainly see a new beginning which, in\nphilosophic truth, is a continuance in new manners upon this earth of\nthat which has no beginning; we see a living thing which lives because\nan impulsive and propulsive life, not material but spiritual, has raised\nmaterial elements from the rank of dust, and has found a means of using\nmaterial powers to purposes and ends. And this philosopher tells us that\nfrom its marvellous but humble first appearing in matter life advances,\nnot like the trickle of a single stream, but like the bursting forth of\na potent, spreading fountain whose waters part in a thousand directions\nto make a thousand streams, each purposive, each at first seeking, but\nmany of them unsuccessfully, to fulfil some part of the purpose of the\nwhole. And in regard to this frequent unsuccess, we find the philosopher\nborne out by the palaeontologist, whose 'general picture ... of the\nevolution of the animal kingdom is accordingly that of an immense number\nof ... lives which evolve parallel to one another, and without\ncoalescing, throughout longer or shorter geological times,' each of\nwhich 'culminates sooner or later in mutations of great size and highly\nspecialized characters, which become extinct and leave no descendants.'\nAt the heart of life, as in the philosophic mirror we watch its advance,\nthere seems one guiding and supreme purpose, which is manifest in the\ncontinuous effort 'to engraft on the necessity of physical forces the\nlargest possible amount of indetermination,' that is, of freedom in\nchoice. But this purpose is evidently very hard to fulfil, and as we\nsee, often fails of being fulfilled.\n\nWe may in mind and imagination walk in company with these teachers of\nours; we may see the stages of the past of living creatures marked out\nin the geological strata, learning thus how life has grown from less to\nmore, how its divergent streams have turned this way or that, and how\nsome have been frustrate, as in the giant saurians and labyrinthodonts.\nWe may learn too from the biologist that in our own day others (for\ninstance perhaps those in the elephant and the ostrich and the whale)\nare in like manner drawing near to frustration by that impressive\nwearing out and perishing of a race, which is so clearly illustrated in\nthe geological record. We discover that when impulsive life, seeking a\nfree way, finds advance only through an excessive increase in the size\nof some creature, that creature's fate is sealed, and that manner of\nadvance is barred. Size extending much beyond a certain range normal in\nthe particular kind of animal is (perhaps in consequence of purely\nmechanical influences) to all the main intents and purposes of life no\nbetter than a blind alley. A like impulse, finding its outlet in the\nelaboration of nervous apparatus ranging from an all but indiscoverable\nstructure to that definite and complex yet indefinitely mobile organ of\nan indefinitely extending choice\u2014that living instrument for overcoming\nmechanism, that 'veritable reservoir of indetermination'\u2014the human\nbrain, finds there and there alone a road to great and full success. Yet\nit finds a road to minor and circumscribed successes in the lives of\nplants and animals which, interacting together, become of immeasurable\nvalue for the whole realm of life and the well-being of its citizens\u2014for\nthat realm of interlacing purposes and ends, where partial failure is so\noften converted to a new and a remoter triumph.\n\nIt seems as though in many, indeed in most instances, a life current,\ninstead of driving on towards either greater freedom or complete arrest,\nmet with a resistance able to constrain it, as it were, into eddies,\nwherein it circles as creatures living out either in a relative\nindependence or in a parasitic state (sometimes of primary development,\nat others of degradation from a higher mode) their restricted lives.\nThey are being fulfilled according to their restricted wants; they are\nneeding no more of life than they have, and therefore seek no further\nthan they are. And they have their co-operative value in the whole.\nThese are the minor, yet many of them\u2014and that in spite of dangers and\npain and death\u2014the delightful, successes of life. Everywhere upon this\nearth now, it seems, except in man, we may justly picture the\nlife-currents as either coming to an end or circling round and round in\nsome such eddy, at most curving out a little way to change a little in\nshape, to form new varieties within a species or, rarely, new species\nwithin a genus. There is in lower animals than ourselves, and in the\nplants, a certain contentment, on which tired men have sometimes been\nknown to look with envy. The realm of nature is well served by servants\nsuch as these, and natural delights, in spite of natural pains, are won.\nBut not all that life can do and be is represented in those finished\nforms. In the plants it seems to be asleep. There the protoplasmic stuff\nhas built a wall about its soft body, the casing of cellulose behind\nwhich it sleeps, working in sleep, in great measure cut off from the\nvaried stimulus and many-tongued summons, the resistances and\nopportunities, of an outer world. And some of the animals that are now\nextinct owe their extinction, not to their gigantic size, but to their\nhaving sought safety rather than adventure, and imprisoned themselves in\ntheir mechanical armour of defence. They too were in their measure cut\noff from the stir and help and moving oppositions of associated lives.\nIn truth and in regard to the supreme purpose manifested in life, all\nthe non-human creatures of the earth have, within themselves and for\nthemselves, in one fashion or another barred its advance; although very\nmany of them are furthering its purposes, indeed giving them\nindispensable support, elsewhere. Those which have not been extinguished\nand still maintain their place in the world are too complete, too\nwell-adapted to a satisfying but narrow sphere, for progress to a wider.\nLife is not bearing them on; their nervous organ, that structure of\ninter-related cells by which they use their world, selecting and\ndetermining this or that, has not like ours capacity for indefinite\nchange. Theirs is exactly fitted for their narrow use of it, and they\nand it are constrained together.\n\nWhen we look at man through the eyes of the philosopher we see life\nclearly as a _spiritual_ impulse, an impulse of a higher order than the\nanimal, at least as much higher as that is than the material, and ever\ndriving on. Man is not content; he is not fulfilled. He is fully awake;\nand he is not only conserving his long past but peering into the\ndistances of his future. His brain is flexible, and able to provide a\nmultitude of new structural arrangements; it is therefore an instrument\nof such choice as gives him leave to shape his future. And it is an\nactive instrument; it brings to him through extending perception a field\nfor his own spiritual activities that stretches out to match them, and\nenables him to become a ruler among circumstances. It allows him to\nworship beauty and even to create it; and to seek and worship truth; to\nadore goodness and be good. It permits desire to grow and the spirit\nwithin him to reach limit after limit, using each limit as an\nopportunity for further growth. All this the brain of man allows and\npromotes; and on this earth his brain alone. There is nowhere so\nmagnificent and marvellous a bodily organ; for in it and by means of it\nphysical things and physical laws are subdued to the purposes and ends\nof a free enduring creation.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IV\n\n           Listen to the moaning of the pine, at whose roots\n           thy hut is fastened.\n                                                    _Kabir._\n\n\nThe divergent streams of that primaeval fountain of life as they spread\nout upon the earth, in the earth, in the air, in, under and upon the\nwaters, have given to it the endless variety of its creatures. In this\nvariety, and of those streams, there are three and no more than three\nmain currents; there are three directions and grouped characters and\nqualities of life. Each of these in its turn branches into minor streams\nand differences of creatures. The main currents are those of the plants,\nthe insects, and the vertebrate animals.\n\nWe have seen that one function of the life of plants gives to the whole\nworld of living creatures access to the energy of the sun. Yet as\nregards intelligence and conscious relation with other creatures the\nplant may be said to be asleep; it carries on its vital functions and\nbuilds up its manifold and admirable structures, working as though in\nsleep. Its whole activity, varied though it be, is like that of a\ndreamer. Confined within a wall of cellulose, the plant-cell works out\nits life as though, for its awareness, no other creature lived.\n\nWith the insect-world we enter on a widely differing scene. There, in\nthe highest insects, we discover what may well rouse a salutary\ndiscontent with ourselves. The life-current which finds its eddying\ntermination in the wasps and bees and ants has one, and that its chief,\ncharacter pointing to grave but happily not irremediable deficiency in\nmost of us, if not to some extent in all. The wasp seems to know other\ncreatures' life, to understand it sympathetically, to touch and feel it\nfrom within, in a manner that to us is marvellous. Life manifests\nthrough this little winged thing a power we call instinct, perfected for\ncertain uses to a degree not attained outside the insect-world. There\nare wasps which sting caterpillars with admirable though not invariable\nprecision in their nerve-centres, so that they go on living but cannot\nmove, and thus are made to serve as living larders for the wasp-grubs.\nObservers have found that different wasps, seeking different kinds of\nprey, sting three times, nine times, in three or nine centres, according\nto the number in the body of their selected victim, and that the Scolia\nstings the larvae of the rose-beetle in one point only, just where the\nmotor-ganglia are concentrated. Other observers have noticed some\nfailures and occasional irregularities. But listen (it may be once more\nand after many times) to this well-known story, the story of the\nSitaris, if you want to see what life can do in a fashion for which the\nintellectual work of man offers in his experience no parallel. This tiny\nbeetle lays its eggs in the doorway of the underground passages dug by a\ncertain bee, the Anthophora. When an egg is hatched the grub awaits an\nopportunity to spring upon the male bee as it comes out. You may deceive\nit with a substitute, and no doubt it often is deceived without your\nhelp. Nevertheless, if not thus deceived it clings to the bee until the\nnuptial flight occurs, when it seizes some chance of shifting from the\nmale to the female. Now clinging to the female, it waits until the\nbee-eggs are as usual laid upon honey. Then it leaps again, this time\nupon an egg which serves it at first as a raft on the honey. By degrees\nit eats up the egg; then uses as its raft the empty shell. It changes,\nundergoes a metamorphosis, and becomes able both to float and feed on\nhoney, where it remains until it changes for the last time into the\nperfect insect, a Sitaris ready in its turn to set going this amazing\ncycle of life. It is a life that seems to involve knowledge of things\nwhich, by any knowing such as our intellectual experience provides,\ncould not be known. Untaught, unaided, without previous experiment, the\ncreature displays what looks like, but cannot be, true forethought, as\nwell as ingenuity and adaptive skill; what looks like, but cannot be, a\ncontinued adjustment of reflectively chosen means to reflectively\nrecognized ends. There can be no question but that all this, under such\nconditions, would be beyond the reach of our intellectual powers, and\nbeyond our reflective thought. We may justly say that it is beyond the\nreach of any powers that are merely of reflective thought. Not thus does\nintellect carry on its conceptual work. It analyses and reflects, it\nseparates, compares, and puts together. That is not the way of the grub\nof Sitaris, neither is it the way of the solitary wasp. There appears to\nbe for these and for others of their tribe, in 'perceptual\nconsciousness,' some mysterious sympathy between the life of the\ncreature using and the life of the creature used, akin to that sympathy\nof digestive secretions with digestible food by means of which our\nbodies are nourished, or the process by which the cell becomes the\norganized and completed creature. There seem to be also motor-habits\nstored up by repetition in forbears, which facilitate the active\nexpression of this sympathy. When the wasp stings the nerve-centres of\nthe caterpillar as accurately, as on the whole he does, it seems to us\nas though in the mere presence together of wasp and caterpillar two\ncongruous activities, not two beings, met\u2014the wasp-activity perceiving\nrather than thinking about the caterpillar-activity, perceiving it and\nattacking it through certain established instrumental means as though\nentering into a familiar relation to it. You might be inclined to say\nthat the sting of the wasp picks out the nervous ganglia of the\ncaterpillar as a magnet picks out fragments of steel from the dust.\nInstinct no doubt means perceiving in sympathetic relation, and has more\nthan a mere likeness to reflex actions in the body. Like these it may\nfind its bodily support in a motor tradition, borne from reproductive\ngerm to reproductive germ, as a structural record of bodily movements\ningrained by the incessant repetition of certain actions through many\ncontinuous generations. But unlike these it may work with and for the\nintellect in all its grades.\n\nWe may well desire a sympathetic relation with other life, a perceptive\nunderstanding keener, quicker, more direct, more inclusive and more\npenetrating. And let us hasten to assure ourselves that we may attain\nwhat we seek, though in ways very different from the insect's, and for\nends very different too. No life-current in any creature is of one\ncharacter alone; none but has in it, in some proportion or another and\nwith this or that degree of emphasis, all characters. The intuitive\ncharacter and power of life in perceptive experience and perceptive\nconsciousness, which though highly emphasized in some creatures becomes\nnarrowed to their instinct, is not the exclusive prerogative of any one\nkind, even of the insects, though within their narrow bounds they have\ncarried it almost to inerrancy of use; any more than reflective thought\nis the exclusive prerogative of man, though he has carried it farther\nand wider and deeper than any other creature of the earth. The problem\nfor us is in great part one of emphasis and proportion. We have\ncultivated our reflective thinking more than our perceptive awareness,\nour conceptual more than our intuitive power. Because thought exercised\nupon external things has given us what we most wanted in the external\nworld, and is giving us more and more, we have over-emphasized it. We\nhave strained unceasingly to understand and to manage not life but those\nexternal material things. We are great geometers and artificers; we are\ngreat in our understanding of material things; but there is another\ngreatness, a perceptual greatness, to which most of us have not\nattained, although it lies open to us, in fulness matching the fulness\nof our intellectual endowment.\n\nWe are not without plain indications of the existence in ourselves of\nthat intuitive power, which as instinct is amazing to us in the accurate\nyet constrained lives of the beetles and the wasps. It is amazing\nchiefly because it is not that which we desire and are aware of desiring\nor needing to use. There is in every one of us, latent or declared, a\ntrue intuition of life, a truly intuitive awareness, a touch within, a\nperceptual knowledge sympathetic in the pure sense of the word, reaching\nfar beyond the insect's. We may know it for what it is because in us\ngiving rather than gaining is its secret spring, although gain,\nassuredly, comes by giving. Such, for example, is the knowledge of the\nartist, won only in his giving of himself to the object of his worship,\nin his placing himself by an artistic sympathy within it. Thus he\nobtains by sympathetic intuition an understanding that is like a\nspiritual touch, that is perceiving not thinking about, that, by\nimmediate contact with the individual thing, is a knowledge of it in its\nown reality. Such again is the intuition of the true lover, who gives\nhimself to the beloved and in that giving wins a knowledge like the\nartist's. They are akin, these two, artist and lover. Their kinship is\ngrounded in their use of that intuitive character of life which for\nhumanity as a whole has been cast into the shade by the more practically\nuseful manners of intellect, and which in the insect-tribe is confined\nto the immediate needs of a fixed and narrow mode of existence.\n\nYet there is in truth a real difference, in these respects, between man\nand the insect or any other creature. In the perceptive consciousness of\nthe insect, restricted by the fixed character of its nervous system, the\nintuitive potency of life has shrunk and hardened, as it were, into a\nrestrained power which deals, and can deal, only with a very small part\nof life and the world. This power is forced to work in the windowless\nprison of a completed life. Man's life is not completed; in him\nconsciousness, stretching out ever farther and farther, has passed one\ntemporary limit after another, function impelling structure to match\nitself, mind seeking to go beyond itself. The consciousness of man has\nbeen always opening up for him new fields, adapting itself to new\nobjects, moving among them, making a way through them, and in all its\ngrowth and change advancing in freedom. To attain this freed human\nconsciousness seems, we may say, the motive principle of the evolution\nof life through man's forerunners. Its driving impulse is both carried\nindefinitely further in that consciousness and revealed as what it\nreally is. Herein lies the difference in order between every animal,\nevery plant, the most skilful of the beetles or the wasps, and man.\nTheir way is closed. His lies before him wide open. He _is_ the open\nway, the one open way on earth for life in its harmony of intuitive and\nintellectual power both fulfilled. And if hitherto we and our\nforefathers have in practice over-emphasized conceptual thinking and the\nintellect, our over-emphasis and its practical results have set us in a\nplace where sympathetic intuition in perceptive experience has a new\nadvantage. In us it will not, or rather it need not, be narrowed down.\nIt may stretch out into every field that discursive and reflective\nthought has opened up, and it may pass beyond them to lead them on. The\nattainment by man of his high calling and of the destiny of which he is\ncapable depends in truth on this expansion of his life. So the\nphilosopher assures us. So, also\u2014and this is noteworthy\u2014does the\npsychologist: 'with the development of \"psychical integration\" both\nsides develop, and their relation, that is experience, therefore expands\ninto a meaning inclusive of more and more, till, in the human being, it\nmay be inclusive of all things actual and possible, the universe in\nspace, and history in time from the remotest past, and, in imagination,\nto the most distant future.' The psychologist too, is not without his\nvision.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n         If any one should care to say that unless I have\n         bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I\n         could not do what I would, that is well enough:\n         but to say that I act as I do because of them, and\n         that this is the way in which my mind acts, and not\n         from choice of the best, why, that is a very careless\n         and idle way of speaking.\n                                                      _Plato._\n\n\nThere are signs that the life of the body is even in the lower animals\nto some extent imbued with the free creative spirit. There are creative\nefforts of determination, changes of direction, triumphs over\ncircumstance, that find their enlightening context in the more\nemancipated life of man.\n\nA sea-urchin's egg, for instance, begins its development by dividing\ninto two cells. Normally these cells, by a like division, share between\nthem the making of the respective halves of the creature's body. If you\nremove one cell after the first division of the egg you may expect (you\ncertainly should and will if you take your stand with the mechanistic\ntheorists) to find that you have mutilated the creature. You may or will\nexpect to see the remaining half of the egg grow to a half-embryo. Under\nsome circumstances you will see what you expect; but if you are very\nskilful and are acquainted with the new methods you will have the\ndisturbing joy of seeing the half-egg\u2014you may even see a\nquarter-egg\u2014take on the work of the whole, and grow to a complete though\nsmall embryo; and not only to an embryo but to a larva. You may do the\nsame with a newt's egg or a frog's. With your mind's eye, then, you may\nif you like, and if you thus interpret things, watch the sea-urchin's,\nthe frog's, or the newt's life, overcoming, according to a 'primary\npurposiveness' of its own, your effort to thwart its intention. You may\nwatch it determining new contrivances from within to meet an unexpected\nemergency that threatens to mar the complete whole it means to be,\nchanging a normal to an abnormal course of activity, that it may still\nattain its end\u2014in short 'working out its own salvation,' as a\nmorphologist remarks, 'upon original and individual lines.'\n\nIt would seem difficult not to recognize in these changes a likeness\nto what you know in yourself as intelligent action. Studying them it\nis hard for any but a confirmed mechanist to resist the contention\nof men who tell us that the vital _is_ the intelligent. Whereas\npurely material changes, if they are left to themselves, follow the\nway of least material resistance, life, whether in the cell or in\nthe organism, moves in an opposite direction. The living vegetable\ncell raises carbon and other elements from relative inertness to a\ncondition charged with newly available power. And in these\ndevelopmental changes the organism seems to manifest itself as in\nvery truth 'a living, active, responsive thing, quite capable of\nrelinquishing at need the beaten track of normal development,' like\nourselves as we make our bodily, intellectual, moral and spiritual\ndecisions. The mechanist is ready with his retort when we say this,\nbut it is a poor retort. He tells us of mysterious 'specific\norgan-forming substances' which are not ordinary chemical substances\nof any kind; and which no research is able to detect, except it be\nas pictured behind the very processes of growth that are telling\n_us_ of the organ-forming determination of a specific mode of life.\nFor both us and the mechanist there is the same process and result.\nHe sees, but only with his mind's eye, these utterly mysterious\n'substances' he has himself invoked; we see, with our mind's eye,\nthe sea-urchin's, or the newt's, life issuing in that purposeful\nendeavour which always and everywhere, we say, is a mark of the life\nwe know. We may even admit the possibility of the existence of his\norgan-forming substances, but only as conditions of life's\norgan-forming, not as effective causes\u2014a distinction of fundamental\nimportance for the careful thinker not content to be arrested by the\nlook of things, however scientific. We cannot rest in a mechanical\ninterpretation which at best only thrusts the problem one stage\nfarther away, as does the pseudo-physicist-philosopher's ether-God.\nLife to us seems effective, and under all conditions determining,\nwithin the limits of those conditions. Organ-forming substances\nthere may be; but they are either the co-operative servants of life\n(if they exist at all) like other substances, or they are no better\nthan names for the modes in which life is at work. To us life seems,\nfrom its first entrance into possession of a body, when it gave to\nmaterial substances a higher status, to have worked always towards\ndominance over the established laws and customs (that is the habits)\nof matter, as no substances have ever worked. At first it did little\nmore with matter than lift physical or chemical elements upward in\nheightening states of energy, within a body, against physical or\nchemical tendencies that would take them downward to their physical\nor chemical equilibrium; later it went on, through the organizing of\nan ever more and more complex and variable nervous system, to a\nman's brain, where the control of intelligence over the living\ninstrument that is its very active servant became strong enough to\nguide into ever-widening relations and possibilities an activity\nseeking spiritual advance. An activity, straining for liberation\nagainst some resistance by which nevertheless it was itself made\neffectual, could\u2014we are driven to think\u2014do no other than find its\nway imperfectly and by slow degrees; yet on its way it has shown\neven in very lowly creatures signs of what it really is. That any\n'substance' the mechanist can acknowledge has done this of its own\nmotion and power, we take leave to doubt. And we have learnt to\nunderstand the mechanist.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf the train of reflexion thus suggested is followed up, some of us will\nfind ourselves compelled to readjust certain beliefs in regard to\nspiritual life as related to the life of the body, and in regard also to\nbodily life as related to the life of the spirit. We shall perhaps learn\nthat in looking upon spirit as altogether separate from matter or as\nconnected with matter only by some fortuitous or indeed unhappy link, we\nmay indeed have kept it safe from the attacks of the materialist, but\nonly at the cost of emptying it of value for ourselves, except in so far\nas it is, perhaps, an all but invisible _point de rep\u00e8re_ round about\nwhich our vague religious sentiments are grouped. Just as in the\nevolution of elements and compounds afterwards united in the marvel of\nlife-jelly, we traced the preparation of a pathway for life moving\ntowards its first manifestation, so we should trace in the successive\nphases of that manifestation a development of co-operative relations\nbetween spirit and matter, a development rendering matter more and more\nplastic to spirit, and spirit more and more responsive to the character\nof the far from inert instrument through which its purpose is effected.\n\nThe evolutionist philosopher has told us that we may picture life as a\nrising wave opposed by the contrary movement of matter towards\nstability. The greater part of the whole volume of the wave, after\nreaching one height or another, is arrested; and going no further it\nis at each several height converted into the whirling eddies, the\ncontented plants and animals of which we have already spoken. At one\npoint only, where it rises highest, does the wave find a free passage\n(and of this too we have spoken) along which it carries with it,\nconverted to its further purpose, the material obstacle, condition,\nand means that will, in a sense and for a time, still in some degree\nencumber, but cannot now arrest, its advance. The life-current\ncontinues to flow, a gathering wave of conscious life grown to\nself-consciousness and world-consciousness. It flows on from this\npoint of conquest through generation after generation of men in and to\nwhom its spiritual character is now plainly revealed. For each man it\nis a rill from the great human river of life\u2014life natural and\nspiritual, spiritual because so fully natural\u2014which has become his own\nand is indeed himself. For each the material but living brain is the\nchief instrument and helper by means of which he himself stretches\nforth towards wider and wider relations, not only with material\nobjects but with other spiritual beings. And as the spirit of a man\nthus expands, amassing life and becoming, by the sympathetic spiritual\ninclusion of other lives, greater in its reach and in itself, it is\nconfirmed and consolidated in its self-ownership. You may say that as\na self-knowing, self-governing, creative being, an owner of means and\na seeker after ends, man's life has at last taken possession of the\nkingdom of itself, and that it has reached this all-important status\nthrough the medium and condition of a body and by the experience of an\nearthly world.\n\nWe will let the philosopher tell us the gist of this in his own words:\u2014\n\n'While we watch the birth of consciousness we are confronted, at the\nsame time, by the apparition of living bodies, capable, even in their\nsimplest forms, of movements spontaneous and unforeseen. The progress of\nliving matter consists in a differentiation of function which leads\nfirst to the production and then to the increasing complication of a\nnervous system capable of canalizing excitations and of organizing\nactions: the more the higher centres develop, the more numerous become\nthe motor paths among which the same excitation allows the living being\nto choose in order that it may act. An ever greater latitude left to\nmovement in space\u2014this indeed is what is seen. What is not seen is the\ngrowing and accompanying tension of consciousness in time. Not only, by\nits memory of former experiences, does this consciousness retain the\npast better and better, so as to organize it with the present in a newer\nand richer decision; but, living with an intenser life, contracting, by\nits memory of the immediate experience, a growing number of external\nmoments in its present duration, it becomes more capable of creating\nacts of which the inner indetermination, spread over as large a\nmultiplicity of the moments of matter as you please, will pass the more\neasily through the meshes of necessity. Thus, whether we consider it in\ntime or in space, freedom always seems to have its roots deep in\nnecessity and to be intimately organized with it. Spirit borrows from\nmatter the perceptions on which it feeds, and restores them to matter in\nthe form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.'\n\nAny philosopher, after writing or speaking some such words as these, may\nwell ask us to consider\u2014when we have watched the hard-won triumph of\nlife over so great difficulties and so many obstacles, when we have\ndiscovered what seems to us clear evidence that it has for age upon age\npursued with immeasurable power and resource a purpose which the\nspiritual consciousness of man is alone competent to fulfil, and that it\nhas thus attained in man a position of supreme advantage for this\nfulfilment\u2014whether we ought not to regard ourselves as paltering with\nreason if we expect that pursuit and that attainment both to be in vain.\nIs life, just where it seems in sight of final triumph, to be overcome\nat the last by death? Why should it be overcome by this when it has\nvanquished so much else? Why, if the world is rational, should we expect\nall the ages of preparation to be brought to naught, and the splendour\nof man's promise to be laid low in the grave?\n\nWe have to confess, I think, that reason is against this, and that when\nwe allow ourselves to expect or to fear such an anti-climax we are\ninfluenced rather by prejudice, conscious or unconscious. Prejudice is\nborn of our every-day dealing with things and our every-day notions\nabout causes and about bodies. We think spirit is dependent upon matter,\nnot as upon a living and responsive instrument of transmission and\nself-development to a certain necessary point of self-consolidation; but\nas most things we deal with depend upon other things, which, as we say,\ncause them, produce them, or make them do and be and happen. We suppose\nall too easily that just as steam ceases when the boiler-fires are\ndrawn, so when the body dies life, its product, ceases too. We see the\nleaves fall from the trees to perish. _Tout passe, tout casse, tout\nlasse,_\u2014it is the common lot of things and men. It is familiar\u2014what more\nneed be said? The burden of proof lies on the man who would tell us of\nexceptions to the rule.\n\nYet, if and when we come to examine things and men, do we discover any\nsuch rule applicable to men? Are we not all but compelled, reading the\nastounding story of evolution in the light cast upon it by its\nculmination in man, to question every uncriticized and easily formed\nopinion on a subject so complex and profound? If indeed there is\nevidence to show that life is neither produced by nor released from\nmatter, but is in some sort conjoined with matter, lifting it from its\nown level, and using its powers in a way altogether different from their\nnormal material course; if there is evidence that these powers are made\nto fulfil a purpose that can be no other than a purpose for life; then,\nobviously, matter, in the order of power and of nature, is life's\nsubordinate. We must, indeed, as reasonable beings, correct those easy\nopinions\u2014these things being thus. The similes and illustrations of every\nday do not fit the case. Intimate as is the relation between spirit and\nmatter, there is no more reason to think life is produced by a material\nsubstance than to think the boiler-fire is produced by the steam. Both\nthoughts are equally absurd, and perhaps the chief cause of our thinking\nso easily the one and of our being quite unable to think the other is\nthat we can see and touch boilers and the like, and cannot see and touch\n'spirit and life.'\n\n           'Lamps burn in every house, O blind one! and you\n               cannot see them.\n\n           One day your eyes shall suddenly be opened, and\n               you shall see: and the fetters of death shall\n               fall from you.'\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER VI\n\n           Within this earthen vessel are bowers and groves,\n              and within it is the Creator:\n           Within this vessel are the seven oceans and the\n              unnumbered seas.\n                                                    _Kabir._\n\n\nWhen the brain dies it is resolved in the ordinary way gradually, or may\nbe resolved in a laboratory quickly, into its constituents, which the\nchemist may collect as water, carbonic acid and so forth, together with,\nroughly, a few pinches of ash. Nothing is lost of what, as we say, it\nwas made of. After death it is left to fall from its temporary high\nestate of power, and travel along the line of least physical and\nchemical resistance to the low estate from which life had raised its\nmatter-stuff. Material necessity, such as we picture it, then resumes\nits sway; physical laws, that is, let us say, established physical\nhabits, dominate once more.\n\nBut this brain, while human life employed and profited by it, was in\nvital and structural continuity with the first life-jelly that appeared\nupon the earth. You may trace, in the pictorial scientific way, all its\nmany cells to the germ-cell or egg from which the whole body sprang.\nAgain, and in the same manner, you may trace this germ-cell, this egg,\nto another from which it was derived. Some scientific men will tell you\nthat in every developing egg, during the very first stages of its\ndivision, cells are set apart as germ-cells to continue the race in the\nnext generation. There runs, they will say, through the generations of\nmen a continuous underground river-system of protoplasm, a continuous\nstreaming of cells from which are thrown up at intervals jets, as it\nwere, of living material which become individual lives. Or we may put it\nthat as in certain plants there is a creeping root-stock hidden\nunderground and giving origin here and there to new specimens of the\nplant, so there is (according to this opinion) a root-stock of\ngerminative material passing on and giving rise to body after body,\nthrough all mankind. The source of this branching, interlacing\ngerm-structure is in the beginnings of the world, and the beginnings of\nthe world are\u2014where? In the ether, the physicist may say. In the place\nand state from whence my elements have come, the chemist says. At\npresent we, studying in these pages, are content to say that whatever\nthe scientific details may be, the pathway of life that we see is one,\nfrom wherever the chemist and the physicist allow of a beginning to the\nplace where both must own themselves confounded, the brain of man.\n\nIt is well to study that brain more carefully and try to relate it with\nthe germ-cells of the protoplasmic streams from which it arose. We have\nto consider how it is that the brain of a son comes to resemble the\nbrains of his parents, when the carrier of his parents' lives to him was\nonly that fertilized germ-cell, a jelly with a nucleus, to all\nappearances no more. Here we must confine our study to one problem, that\nof memory, partly because we have no space for more, but chiefly because\nmemory is an 'Open Sesame' to many wonders. We may if we please link it\nwith heredity, with that passing on of characters and habits from\nparents to child through the comparative, but only comparative and very\nmisleading, simplicity of the germ-cell.\n\n'The man who could penetrate into a brain,' it is said, 'and watch what\nhappens there would very likely see it full of sketched-out movements,\nthere is no evidence that he would see anything else. He would have no\nmore knowledge of what was going on in the corresponding consciousness\nthan we should have of a play were we watching the comings and goings of\nthe actors on the stage without hearing a word of it. If the play were\nno more than a pantomime the movements of the players would tell us\nnearly everything about it; if it were a comedy of life and manners they\nwould give us next to nothing.' It has been said, too\u2014and the simile is\nilluminating\u2014that the brain is like a sort of central telephone\nexchange, permitting, delaying, or arresting communication. It is an\ninstrument of analysis, of hesitation and of choice; but its office is\nsaid to be limited to the transmission and division of movement,\nmovement started by things outside the body and movement started from\nwithin the body. The body is the conductor of these movements to and fro\nbetween objects acting upon it and objects upon which it acts.\n\nOnly in the form of motor contrivances do brain and body, we are told,\nstore up the action of the past. This is a point of great importance in\nregard to both our own lives and our inheritance from our forerunners.\nWe may distinguish two kinds of memory; one graven as it were in the\nliving stuff of our body; another enshrined and active in the fluent\npersonal history we ourselves most really are. Let us see what the\nevolutionist philosopher has to tell us about this. Let us illustrate\nour subject after his fashion.\n\nIn the matter of learning by heart, for example, there are two facts to\nbe noted and two memories to be distinguished. When I know a poem by\nheart and can repeat it I say that I remember it. But I say also,\nperhaps, that I remember the stages by which I came to learn it. I\nremember, or may remember, occasion after occasion of my more or less\nsuccessful repetition of the poem while I was learning it. I can recall,\nor may recall, step after step of my advance towards perfectly\n'remembering' it. When it is learnt I say that it is imprinted on my\nmemory; but I may also say that the steps of my progress towards knowing\nthe poem are in like manner imprinted on my memory. Yet a very little\nthought shows that these are two kinds of memory, not one; and that\nthere are two kinds of imprinting, not one. The memory of the poem\nitself has every mark of an acquired habit, even that of the disastrous\neffect of an interruption. When I have repeated a poem for the twentieth\ntime without mistake I may be thrown out of my declamatory stride by the\nbanging of a door, and become unable either to tell myself how far I had\ngone in the poem or to pick up its broken thread. About a memory like\nthis there is the mechanical look of an ingrained and almost unconscious\nhabit. It is bodily, like the memory of a sonata for the pianist as he\nis playing, a memory which seems to him rather in his fingers than in\nhis mind. But the memory of the steps and process by which I gradually\nlearnt my poem is quite different. That is a history, not a habit. Each\nstage occurred only once; no one was graven into permanence by\nrepetition, indeed no one was, or could be, ever repeated. Each was\nunique and had its own date in the history of the process and of my\nenduring life.\n\nHere is a difference indeed to be reckoned with. There is a kind of\nmemory that _represents_ our past to us; and there is another kind (if\nit is memory at all) that _acts_ it. I say, emphatically, if it is\nmemory at all, this latter; for it does not really preserve the past, it\nonly continues into the present an effect or a result of happenings of\nthe past. In true memory history is preserved; the history of our whole\nlives is preserved in our true memory. But only the effects or results,\nonly indeed certain effects and results, of the living real happenings\nin our living and real duration are graven in the body stuff as habits,\nas, if we like to call them so, habit-memories. The establishing of\nthese memories is an affair of training and practice. The brain and body\nhave to be forced into them; structure has to be shaped and taught, that\nit may carry on automatically, or all but automatically, some particular\nmode of action. And we note that the more nearly automatic these\nhabit-memories are the better they work. When the nerve-paths in the\nstructure of the brain and body are beaten smooth by treading and\nretreading the work goes easily and well.\n\nThere is nothing whatever of this kind about the true and unlearnt\nmemory of events in our history, the memory which represents them. But\njust because the habit-memory is more immediately and constantly useful\nto us we notice it more. Indeed we frame on it our familiar conception\nof what memory really is, and come to regard the true memory of\nspontaneously arising recollections as only a bad example of the other.\n'We ignore the fundamental difference,' so we are told, 'between that\nwhich has to be built up by repetition and that which is essentially\nincapable of being repeated.'\n\nNo doubt the two intermingle in every-day life and are therefore the\nmore easily confused, not only by our every-day and usually careless\nselves but even by some careful thinkers. The confusion is dangerous for\nthe thinker and the thinker in consequence becomes dangerous for us. Out\nof it has come in great part the unreasonable belief that a material\nbrain is the storehouse of immaterial recollections, and that these\nafter becoming either material or, in the physical sense, 'energetic'\n(as they must be to be stored in a material or 'energetic' way), in some\naltogether miraculous fashion at times take on consciousness and, as\nonce more immaterial recollections, carry us into our own past. To say\nthat motor-habits, with which when they are established consciousness\nmay have little to do, can be registered in a flexible motor instrument\nand _acted_ over and over again, is reasonable enough; but that\nconscious recollections can thus be registered is not only a gratuitous\nassumption unsupported by the facts of matter or energy or life, but is\nstrictly incredible by any man who really knows and faces those facts.\nIt is better to know and face them with the philosopher, and confess the\nreality of a spiritual life in which history endures, as well as the\nreality of a living instrument in which habits are established. No doubt\nan effort is required if we are to distinguish between the spontaneous\nand the habitual memories, between the memory of spirit and the\nhabit-memory of its living instrument, the brain and body which together\nwith the spirit are the man; but the effort is well worth making. It\ngives us a key to unlock many close-shut doors. When we try to learn\nsomething (as we are now about to do) concerning the problem of the\ntransmission, through the succession of germ-cells, of the characters\nthat mark out men\u2014the problem of heredity\u2014we find a conspicuous and very\ninteresting use for it. But it has many uses besides that. We can use it\nwith advantage in dealing with all the problems concerning the relations\nof spirit with matter.\n\nBefore we go on to deal with heredity we should note the value for our\nown lives of our ability to establish habits at all, to inscribe records\nof action in our instruments of body and brain which shall be capable of\nan almost automatic repetition. That is the way in which intellectual\nand bodily skill makes progress. We build a stairway too for our minds\nand spirits as well as for our bodies, when we lay down step after step\nof habitual action, handing over to it the carrying-on of what at first\nwe had to think out, and then by degrees learnt to do skilfully and well\nalmost without thought at all. That is the stairway by which the pianist\nadvances towards a perfect execution of his music and the skater mounts\ntowards perfect execution of a figure which at first was beyond his\npower. Throughout our lives we are handing actions over to be conducted\nby our bodies and brains as effects of work done consciously before, to\nbe acted over and over again and pass beyond the need of conscious\nintervention, and in the end to be carried on the better without that\naid. A man skates, or plays his violin, or writes a poem, or rides a\nhorse, or walks, or dances, all the better when and if he does not have\nto think about the appropriate movements of his hands or feet or legs,\nor the necessary letters of his words, to all of which he once had to\ngive minute attention. Perceptive and creative consciousness is thus set\nfree. His mind, in its originality of creation and perceiving, is\nenabled to pour itself into the instrumental habit it has laid down and\ninfuse it with his spirit, his poetic, musical, or athletic spirit. He\nmay endow his motor instrument with his graces now that it works without\nhis conscious aid.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe approach the problem of heredity from a new direction and with new\neyes. Let us picture to ourselves (as has been suggested), instead of a\nsuccession of lives, a single life which goes on like the continuous\ngerm-plasm of some biologists, and never grows old or dies. This one\ncontinuous life would pass through every stage of the succession of\nlives from the jelly-speck onwards. One immortal developing creature\nwould accomplish (in our picture) the whole evolution from the original\nprotoplasm to man. And this development would be effected by forming\nhabits and rising step by step in and through and upon them. Is this in\nfact what actually has been done along the path of the ascent of\nspecies? That is the question which at once springs to our lips. Is\nheredity akin to the habit-memory which is preserved in our brains and\nbodies? There are men who tell us that the best conception of heredity\nthey can form is something of this kind. They tell us that they think of\nindividual lives as inscribing on germ-cells, by constant repetition,\neffects of what they have done. They tell us that the habit-memory of\nancestral and thus communicated experience enables the baby to pump food\ninto its mouth with that accurate adjustment of muscular means to\nexterior conditions and the principles of hydrostatics which it always\nshows. They go even farther and tell us that the development of any\nembryo from any egg is on the same lines of unfolding the habit-memories\nessential to its living as it does. Life in progressing from the single\ncell learnt, they think, by degrees, and consolidated its lessons into\nmotor-habits graven in living stuff. Sometimes they point to the nucleus\nof the germ-cell as possibly the instrument for preserving these habits\nfor other members of the race as the brain preserves less established\nhabits for the man; sometimes they say that the cytoplasm acts in the\nsame way. And whether we accept these suggestions or reject them we may\nrecognize with some satisfaction that throughout the whole plan there\nruns the belief (or assumption\u2014what you will) that function is primary,\nnot structure, though structure once organized is the instrument and\ncondition that contributes to the shaping of specific character.\n\nAgain we find ourselves both ready and called upon to emphasize the\nreality and the conservative office of matter, yet to regard it as\nsubordinate to the reality and the initiative of life. We acknowledge\nonce more the immeasurable import for life of its relations with matter.\nWhen structure is organized for function, when habit-memories become\ninstrumental for life, function and life are in turn shaped by their\ninstrument. Hence, probably, we have that condensed and fragmentary\nrepresentation by the developing embryo of stages through which life\npassed slowly in epochs long ago, and during which (according to this\nhypothesis) it registered the fruits of its effort, by repetition after\nrepetition, in the cell. The embryo chicken, the embryo child, both show\nin the course of their development signs (for instance the gill-clefts\nof the fish) of stages through which life had to pass before it became\nchicken or child life. But they pass very quickly from sign to sign. 'It\ntook thousands of years to produce the first chicken, but the hen's egg\nreaches the same level in three weeks.' Each is obliged to pass these\nstages, it seems; the 'organ-forming substances' (as some say) of the\ngerm-cell compel it, or (shall we carry our thought farther and say) the\nhabit-memories recorded in it must be worked out lest the creature be\nbrought to confusion; as the habit-memories of a pianist are and must be\nwhen he gives aright his rendering of the music he had learnt.\n\nThe memory-hypothesis concerning heredity does not involve the idea of\ncompulsion or doom, it leaves room for the creature to work out its 'own\nsalvation' on a basis inheritance supplies. It does not of itself regard\nthe creature as doomed; whether the child or the chick is or is not\ndoomed depends on what it is, that is to say, upon the character not\nupon the mode of its inheritance. Chick-character is one of doom; not so\nchild-character. The child, starting from the point his race has reached\nas a race, may go on in virtue of an endowment of impulsive and creative\npower and a flexible brain and body absent in the chick. He may build\nhis house of life, adorning or disfiguring his inheritance with a\nnew-made character that is his own. This fruitful and interesting\nhypothesis of memory-inheritance may or may not stand tests that are to\ncome. But we may accept it provisionally as what it is, sure that if it\nis displaced its successor will be more welcome still. That is the way\nof science; we pass always from good to better, from a guess that holds\nfor one range of facts to another that holds for more.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VII\n\n          And is this life but the child of death? Then\n          blessed also be the word Death, the mother of life;\n          I will no more call thee Marah, but Naomi; for thou\n          art not bitter, but sweet; more pleasant, though\n          swifter in thy gait, than roe or hind.\n                                            _Henry Montague._\n\n\nIn a world of creatures where the interests of each kind are focused on\nthe preservation of the species, and each individual's attention and\npowers are in the main concentrated on the pressing need for\nreproduction, and for food and shelter to maintain life in itself and\nits young progeny, conflict must ensue, a conflict of both ends and\nmeans. Because, too, in these creatures the way of life is not open, as\nin man, habit-memories may be taken as being the chief agents for\nensuring both species-life and individual life, and as dominating both\ntheir history and their character. Indeed the contracted world and the\ncompleted character of such creatures with rare exceptions shuts out the\ninterests of other species. Hence the struggle for existence. Hence a\nnature 'red in tooth and claw,' despite the general signs of a love that\nof itself is ample prophecy of an enlargement beyond the bounds of such\nrestricted interests; despite also a general and very obvious enjoyment\nof life for life's own sake. We must not exaggerate either pain or its\nsignificance in creatures who have neither our sensitive nervous system,\nnor our ability not only to look forward and see consequences and\nimagine our pain prolonged and growing, but to increase that very pain\nby dwelling on it and exercising in regard to it, more than it deserves,\nthe magical power of attention. Yet if we do not exaggerate, neither\nmust we ignore. Suffering, conflict, death are there and must be\nreckoned with.\n\nThat the biologists of the latter part of the last century should\nmagnify beyond due measure the place of natural selection in one regard,\nthat of the origin of species, was to be expected. It was a great\ndiscovery; it filled men's minds. That they minimized, where they did\nnot deny, the importance of the selective, determining and creative\npower of life itself was also to be expected. All this last was for the\ntime obscured for want of evidence. Few men indeed, and those not\nbiologists, then kept a level head. It is for this century to bring\nabout a much needed balance in reckoning and in esteem.\n\nNatural selection means for the most part a struggle ensuring the death\nof the weak and the 'unfit.' The survival of the fittest means that\nthose creatures survive who are best adapted to all their circumstances,\nwhether these are favourable or unfavourable to the maintenance of a\nhigh standard of living. That 'nature' may carry out selection it is\nnecessary that there shall be no outside interference, say of man, able\nto stave off death, whether of the individual or of the race. Death, you\nsee, is the protagonist in this biological play, or rather the\nmainspring of the machine. And, undoubtedly, death is not only\nconspicuous in nature but is of profound significance for life. Is it or\nis it not also of value in a sense surpassing that which the biologist\nacknowledges? Ought we to look upon it as the enemy or as the friend of\nlife?\n\nOne thing is plain. Those men of science who saw it as protagonist were\nright in thinking that by the death, that is, by the natural selection,\nof the unfit from among the fit, the survival of useful variations may\nbe assisted. Death, of course, cannot have anything to do directly with\nthe originating of better lives (that is of better accommodated lives),\nbut once they have come into being it can help to keep them in the\nascendant as begetters of their kind. Natural selection has its\nuse\u2014shall we say its value?\u2014for the advance of life.\n\nNeed we be surprised at this, we who have a more than scientific sense\nof values and have discovered purpose? Need we be surprised to find\ndeath a friend to life, seeing it everywhere? Matter is life's friend as\nwell as means and hindrance. So too is death.\n\nLet us consider the beginning of death on the earth; that is, of\nnatural, not of merely accidental death. For it had a beginning, not\ncoeval with the coming of life. There are living creatures now who\nnormally escape it, who die only by accident, are, in fact, if they die,\nalways killed. There are creatures alive now whose years are to be\nnumbered by thousands upon thousands upon thousands, yet who have never\ngrown old. The Pyramids of Egypt are of yesterday compared with the\namoeba in the nearest pond.\n\nThe manner of life of a one-celled creature is this: it grows, and when\nit has grown to a size presumably inconvenient it divides into two\ncreatures, both of which, obviously, are the same age. The creature\nitself becomes two instead of remaining one. The two creatures who were\none repeat the process and become four. The four become eight and so on\nto the end of the earth. None die naturally, and when or if the end of\nthe earth and of themselves is reached they will all be killed and every\none of them will be of the same age; but none will be aged. They will be\ncut off, these naturally immortal creatures, in unimpaired maturity and\nthe perfection of their structure and functions. But, you observe, if\nlife on earth had not passed beyond the one-celled condition it would\nnever, to our minds (if our minds could have been arrived at in some\nother sphere), have been worth living. All the potency and promise of\nlife which have slowly been revealed through the improvement of its\ncreaturely medium would have remained hidden behind the screen of those\nimmortal jellies. Life began to create a new engine of advance when cell\nand cell were built up together, and the many-celled creatures started\non their mortal and masterful career. For, note, the aggregation of\ncells in an organized body precludes their individual immortality. They\nbecome differentiated and associated for special purposes and they lose\nthe opportunity of preserving life by continuous division. They are\nmutually imprisoning, they grow old, in time they die\u2014they must die.\nLife, in beginning this advance, embraced inevitable death. Death, if\nyou like, is the price\u2014if indeed it should be counted a price and not a\nboon\u2014that we pay for freedom to live as what we are and to become what\nwe shall be. The immortal amoeba is after all a slave. It is this\ncreature that manifestly pays a price, one at which no man of us would\nbuy immunity from death.\n\nThere are many values and orders to be considered; and for the highest\nvalues and order of living, for the magnificent possibilities open to\nspiritual attainment, who would not barter an earthly immortality which\nshould erect a barrier that spirit could not pass? But then we come to\nanother consideration. Is death itself a barrier spirit cannot pass? All\nthat I have written hitherto in these pages is directed towards an\nanswer to that question. What should make us change the cumulative 'No'\nwhich our study of the processes and character of life forces to our\nlips? Already we human creatures, incomplete though we are, reveal life\nas an impulsive, enriching and creative power given in us and become\nourselves\u2014a power by which we may continue the line of a direct advance\nand pass on in a creative evolution which reasonably should have no end.\nWhat wonders may we not reveal, what wonders may we not discover thus,\nin that advance? But only if for the true life that is ourselves, the\nlife which as ours is manifest in its use of body and brain and of the\ninheritance they bring, there is a triumph over the last of the many\nobstacles it encounters upon earth. For, let there be no mistake, the\nimmortality of the race upon earth, even if it be possible, is not\nenough to satisfy reason and accord with the promise of every individual\nman as what he is for himself, and in his own special relation and\ncontribution to the well-being of the whole. Each man becoming as he\nshould become has his own peculiar value, each his own spontaneity and\ncontinuous creative power. If he is lost all this comes to an end, and\nthe world of men is the poorer for want of what he might have given.\nThere is no shifting of our reasonable demand for the conquest of death\nfrom the individual man to his race, even if (as is not so much as\nprobable) his race does not die in the cooling or drying or heating of\nhis earth.\n\nAfter all, what is 'this body of death' from which every man must part?\nIt is, we declare, his medium of transmission and the motor and sensory\ninstrument and condition by means of which he had both inherited a\nfoundation upon which to build his own life, and entered into relations\nwith an outside world of things and persons. Chemically and physically\nit is a stream of particles always passing away, always being renewed,\nat one rate or another. The few particles unchanged during his life are\nnot actively sharing his life; they are only its physical supports.\nWhatever shares his life changes. This stream that his food and the air\nand the water make, he takes up, transforms, uses and dismisses. All his\nlife long he is dying bodily, and is growing, or should be growing,\nspiritually. Death is for him the finishing of a process in his body\nthat has always gone on, the final casting away of material elements he\nhas always cast away when he had done with them. And meanwhile, in the\nspiritual duration of his life, its minister the body has consolidated\nhis self-conscious unity, so that he dies, or should die, a true owner\nof his real and true and valuable self. For this end earthly life seems\nto the eye of reason ever to have been striving. Is its striving to be\nfinally in vain? Everything that we have considered in these pages\ndeclares the unlikeliness of that.\n\nIs a man then to pass from this world bodiless, as some of the ancients\nthought? To be able to offer a tentative answer to this question we must\ngo back to one of our earlier chapters and remind ourselves of the ether\nwhich, the physicist says, interpenetrates all the molecules of our body\nnow, and is the medium of communication everywhere through the systems\nof the worlds. May I think of the ether, then, as being in my body the\nmedium of communication between me, as spiritual life and consciousness,\nand the material elements and structures of my body? If the\ncomparatively coarse granular matter of the chemist's colloids and the\nprotoplasmic speck shows such a congruity with my life as makes it fit\nto live in me and be the bearer to me of ancestral habits, may I not\nthink that a still closer congruity exists between this ether and my\nlife? And, again, is it not possible, or even likely, that it is through\nthe ether of my body that I influence its matter and its matter\ninfluences me? If these things are so, then my ether-body is more fully\nmine and more closely bound to me than is my matter-body. I think of\nmyself passing at death into, or discovering myself in, an ethereal\ncountry where my ethereal body shall serve me even better than my\nmatter-body serves me in this matter-country. And if this thought seems\nthe plain man's plain thought about the physicist's hypothesis and is\ncondemned for that, I retort that the plain man through his rejection of\nconstraint by specialism, and by ideal or abstract schemes which flout\nthe wholeness of experience, is coming now into his own in science, in\nphilosophy and in religion. He has his rights and is taking possession\nof them in a new fashion and with new significance.\n\nOne thing more I think of. The physicist says that what he calls 'bound\nether,' that is ether within the spaces of a material thing, differs in\nits character from the free ether of the interstellar spaces. He has\nbeen able to prove this, he says, by experiments on the transmission of\nlight through ether 'bound' in water.\n\nWhat more do I want? The ether changes in character from association\nwith matter in a body. I see it in my mind's eye changed by constant\nassociation with my brain and limbs and with my active consciousness as\nit could never be changed in water. Am I right, I wonder? Shall I see\nsome day how it has been changed? Shall I see my more intimate body\nrevealed and know it and myself raised to high estate?\n\nHowever this may be, the life that made for itself body after body on\nearth, conquering the habits and reluctances of matter that it might use\nit for a spiritual purpose, is possessed of a creative and organizing\npower to which no man should dare to set bounds, and which by me at\nleast shall be trusted to the end. That which builds from the egg the\nchicken, and from the first jelly-specks all the races of the globe,\nmust still be capable of looking after me\u2014if I am worth it.... I am bold\nenough and plain man enough to say with the poet,\u2014\n\n         'Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss\n         where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall\n         take this harp of my life.'\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VIII\n\n                 The soul needs only to open the door.\n                                             _Boehme._\n\n\nBy the establishing of habit-memories in the nervous structures of man\nconsciousness is liberated for another and, if the man will, a nobler\nuse. The instrument may be forgotten, the work goes on. This liberation\nof the spirit from attention to modes of activity and actions that can\nbe automatically or almost automatically carried on is among life's\ngreatest triumphs. And the triumph is indefinitely extended in man's\npeculiar relation to his tools, and through the peculiar character of\nboth his tools and his tool-making.\n\nAn animal's tools are parts of its body; they are stings, claws, fangs\nand so on. Some of the tools of man are also parts of his body; but\nthere are others, not his natural organs, by which its instrumentality\nis extended\u2014and that, you may say, without signs of coming to an end. It\nseems as though life had a sort of prophetic instinct in this business;\nfor primitive man was driven to search for these new tools by his lack\nof organic armament of either the offensive or the defensive kind. He\nhad no protective shield like the armadillo or the crab; and even the\nscanty covering of hair, which contrasted so ill with the close fur of\nhis cousins, grew scantier still, until it became altogether useless\nagainst rain or cold or storm. He had no claws, no tusks, worth\nconsidering as weapons of offence; but he had a desirous and adventurous\nmind, and both by his necessities and his mind he was driven to the\nmaking of tools. He owned also one very remarkable natural tool. He had\nan archaic five-fingered hand inherited from his amphibian ancestors,\nwhich had not been specialized into a wing or a shaft ending in a hoof\nor a paw\u2014a hand plastic, mobile, delicate and sensitive, a very\n'instrument of instruments' for a creature opening wide the gate for\nlife.\n\nWe are apt to think of this beautiful tool of ours as highly\nspecialized. It is not; it was preserved unspecialized from the\namphibian stage throughout a long pre-human history, as though life had\nindeed foreseen just what was coming and knew that its versatility would\nmake it the worthy partner of man's versatile brain. Let us put it that\nway. (Or let us say that it was a happy accident. As you please; anyhow\nthe fact remains.) The result was that man possessed a natural tool\nbeautifully adaptable for making and using many and various artificial\ntools. And there was not another creature upon earth that had not either\nspoilt its hand for those various uses by specializing it for some\nnarrow use, or like the monkeys and the apes, had no brain to match. Man\nspecialized his feet, as the monkeys and the apes did not; he left his\nmultifarious hand alone.\n\nBy means of this hand he projected into space the powers of his body and\nhis mind. He began, no doubt, with sticks and stones; he went on to\nstrings; and from sticks and stones and strings he passed to telescopes\nwith which he reached new stars, spectroscopes with which he saw what\nthey were made of, telegraphs and telephones through which his speech\nand hearing stretched out from land to land, and destructive machines by\nwhich his delicate fingers shattered and blasted with the power of a\nthousand storms. These things and more he has done; and all the tools he\nhas used are extensions of both his body and his mind. So too are the\nindustrial machines by which he manufactures (note the word) what his\nnewly-complicated needs demand of clothes and food and furniture and the\nlike. So too are the astounding machines which make for him other and\ndifferent machines. And everywhere we see that in the advance of his\ntool-devising he draws nearer to making those which will work either\nwithout his aid or with very little of it. His tools grow more and more\nautomatic, more and more saving of the labour of mind. He makes, you may\nsay, artificial habit-bearers, motor-structures by which the devices of\nhis mind are carried into action independent of his mind, as other\ndevices are through his nervous system and his muscular limbs. Thus he\nfollows the example set him by life in its organizing of living tools.\nAnd we ought to tell ourselves (parenthetically) at this point that the\none reasonable and worthy use of all our machinery is just this\u2014to\nfollow the example of life not only in the actual organizing but in the\npurpose and meaning of organization. We ought to acknowledge to\nourselves that unless our machinery liberates the mind and spirit of man\nto serve better and more freely his spiritual needs it will of a\ncertainty enslave him. At present, because most of us are in the dark as\nto the direction in which life strives to conduct us, machinery is used\nto emancipate the few and to enslave the many. We do not know what we\nare doing, we do not understand what the primacy of spirit means or\nshould mean for us all. We do not know how we ought to grow, every one\nof us, in the natural, that is, in the spiritual way.\n\nWhy do I venture to say that in the spiritual way we _ought_ to grow?\nAnd what in fact is that spiritual way? Do life and experience point out\nthe way and emphasize the 'ought'? Here we come to the gist of our whole\ninquiry.\n\nIf in looking back along the road on which, in these chapters, we have\nbeen trying to pick out stage after stage, we discern a governing\npurpose and the foreshadowing of an end; and if we also discern not only\nthe possibility but also the means, through intellect and intuition,\nthrough action and feeling and thought, of identifying ourselves with\nthat purpose and throwing the energy of our own lives into furthering\nit, we shall see both the ought and the way. We shall dimly discern,\ntoo, the promise of the end, although we do not and cannot yet know what\nwe shall be. From the moment when the life-current driving onward and\novercoming one by one the reluctances of matter along the genealogical\nascent to man, reached him\u2014_homo faber_, the skilful tool-maker, _homo\nsapiens_, the able thinker\u2014from that moment the sublime purpose of all\nthat had gone before began to be revealed.\n\nThe advance of life's main stream in all its variety of operation shows,\nfrom the beginning until now, one character and motive-principle. It\nbegins, as we have said, by subduing to its purpose the inveterate\nhabits of material elements, those habits we speak of as physical\nnecessity and law, raising their status that they may be servants in new\npower to a freedom foreign to themselves. From subduing and assembling\nelements within cells it passes to the assembling of cells and lifts up\nthese in their turn to higher place. They play their part in a\ncommonwealth; they are servants whose habits, like those of matter,\nfurther the cause of a freedom they cannot reach. Their own relative\nnecessity is subdued and used through their co\u00f6perating. They promote\nwhat they neither see nor know. Finally they reach their highest\nfunction in a man's brain, where they co\u00f6perate to carry power to an\nincalculably various use. There it is that life, by a very splendour of\nnew emancipation, passes, as the philosopher says, 'through the meshes\nof necessity,' passes through that net the cords of which it has itself\nboth spun and knotted from the refractory substance of material things.\n\nMan comes into his heritage. He inherits, we may allow ourselves to say,\nfrom the habits of elements and from the habit-memories of cells, single\nand corporate. He inherits from the habit-memories of every living\ncreature in his ancestry. And each habit-memory of them all has\ncontributed to his setting free. Now he is so far master that life has\nput into his hands the choice between a greater freedom still towards\nwhich its impulsive purpose has been directed from the first, and a new\nslavery that the man himself is able to make for himself. For\u2014and surely\nwe need to note this for our warning\u2014the conduct and determination of\nlife, which is in some small measure in the power of every creature\nwithin its manner of life, is given over to man; and the next step in\nemancipation is for him to take or leave as he will. He may dominate the\nwhole chain of habits and go forward; or he may wind it about him and\nentangle his spirit in its fetters.\n\nMatter, his body, the habits or habit-memories he inherits or makes for\nhimself, all these may either be instruments of his growing liberation\nor machines that turn him to the likeness of themselves. The pianist who\nhas wrought his music into the living instrumentality of his fingers may\nleave his fingers to work as mechanism, or he may pour into their\nestablished habit the riches and beauty of an artistic soul. Thus it is\nwith all the heritage and possessions of a man. He may submit to them as\nto a constraining mechanism and grow mechanical himself, or he may\ninfuse them with his spirit and raise them and himself to that further\naltitude which spirit seeks. We may well say of some men that they are\nthe slaves of habit; we may well think more than we do of the many kinds\nof habit to which men may be slaves.\n\nTo look on heredity as an affair of transmitted habit-memories is to\ndiscover our true relation with it, once we have come to see what the\nspiritual memory of an enduring and accumulating spiritual life, lived\naccording to its proper meaning, may be for man. In the chick the\ninherited habit-memory of its race is as the boundary wall of cellulose\nis for the plant-cell; in the child it is a standing ground from which,\nwhile his creative spirit stirs within him, he surveys the kingdoms of a\nworld. In the man, like the habits he himself builds up, it may come to\nbe a hill-top from which he looks down upon all those kingdoms and their\nglory. Life incurred death when first the cells were summoned out of\nsolitude to work together in a body. And here, too, it is as though it\nforesaw what was coming, saw in a vision a creature come to being who\nshould have life in himself and be divinely discontent, seeking to go\non. It is hard to think that a creative impulse beginning so low down,\nso humbly, and yet purposive enough and skilful and potent enough to\nreach the immeasurable wonder and promises of man, should ever have been\nblind, or in the last resort should be no more and no greater than\nhimself.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IX\n\n         The human animal desires to escape from its\n         animal prison by means of all kinds of love, by\n         freedom of emotion no less than of action and thought.\n         And it attains to the freedom of emotion when it is\n         aware of beauty. It cannot be aware of beauty\n         except in self-forgetfulness, and it cannot produce\n         beauty except in self-forgetfulness.\n                                        _Arthur Clutton-Brock._\n\n\nNo doubt the great question for any man in regard to himself\u2014if he is\nable and willing to put one so searching\u2014is whether he is or is not on\nthe way to aid in the fulfilment of the promise of life. It is a\nquestion hard to answer, for the promise of life grows ever greater in\nour eyes once we have begun to see it at all. There was a time when for\nour ancestors of the caves it must have called for little more than\nstrength and skill, courage and perseverance, in attack or in defence\nand in the procuring of shelter, food and wives. The bitter struggle in\nwhich they were engaged was a real struggle for existence in which every\nman must fight for his own hand, or at best for his little group of near\nkindred. There were not many differences then between the practical\ndemands of the daily life of men and those of the daily life of the\nhyenas or the wolves. But there were other differences, and they were\ngreat and significant. One in particular has left a wealth of evidence\nbehind it, evidence graven and painted in certain caverns. There are\nbisons, for example, painted by some of the men whom we call primitive,\nor savage, which are of the truest art. There is no such difference and\nno such likeness between those bisons and the artistic work of to-day as\nthere is between the flint-headed arrow and the machine-gun. The arrow\nand the gun are products of an intellectual ingenuity, practising and\nbecoming expert through practice and concentrated on the external\nrelations of thing with thing; the painting comes of a direct intuition\nof the reality and the essential beauty in a bison's life. They are\nalive for us, those bisons, and they are beautiful. Their creator was a\ntrue artist, able to throw himself into the object he wished to\ndiscover, to feel and to depict; and he was able to endow his picture\nwith the bison's life and his own. If you are in aesthetic sympathy with\nhim you can feel the creature he paints as you feel the man painting.\nThe intellect that devised the arrow has always to travel onward by an\naccumulating process, from step to step; the intuition that felt the\nbison arrived at once. No doubt there is not only intellect but\nintuition in the arrow; and there is not only intuition but intellect in\nthe painting; but the emphasis and the proportion are contrasted in the\ntwo.\n\nWhy did this primitive artist paint at all? There are those who suggest\nthat he had some practical end in view to be reached by the magic of\nrepresentation\u2014an idea perhaps of thus ensuring luck for his hunting.\nBut at least that can hardly be true of the graceful form and the\nconventional adornment he gave to some of his tools. It is far more\nlikely that even if he began with magic and a practical end he went on\nto paint for the pure joy of it, the pure spiritual joy of inspired\nadmiration glowing to a creative act, and winning admiration in its\ndisplay. That is the manner of art\u2014even to the delight in its being\nadmired by those to whom it is made known\u2014and this man's work is the\nwork of an artist. I should say these men's work is the work of artists,\nfor there were many of them in many generations. There was not merely a\nsingle eccentric genius\u2014though even one would have sufficed us for a\nrevelation. Here then, in these caverns, we have a kind of work done by\nmany men, who, however much they looked for admiration from their\nfellows, worked in something of the self-forgetfulness of an artist; so\nwe may presume. The man who pursued it did not in any lesser way profit\nby it (unless his fellows were self-forgetful enough to pay him for the\njoy he gave, and that only extends and strengthens the case); but he\nassuredly profited in his spirit, which there found its outlet as\ncreative, there showed its self-forgetting love of something beyond\nself, there in consequence found its joy. The true artist paints or\nsings for the love of it, and because he must; and wins his joy, even\nthough in and with the artist's pain, and the man's self-seeking. The\nspirit within him drives him on; no outward necessity, no carnal\nattraction, no mere self-seeking, is adequate to force or draw him. Art,\nhowever skilled and taught, however marred by human weakness, is\nspontaneous as love. We are in presence here of that of which only faint\nadumbrations can be discerned in any other creature than man. There are\nadumbrations; and there is at least a plain foreshadowing of love. But\nfull and lasting self-forgetfulness is to be attained only in man, and\ntrue art and true love, like true joy, depend upon it.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe declared promise for the further advance of life in us demands and\ndisplays growth in self-forgetfulness. The man who strikes us as being\nabove other men is one who shows us powers other men either have not or\ndo not use, and uses them as other men very often do not use them. He is\nalways stamped with the stamp of spirit. He is creative and he is\nself-forgetful. We do not really, or at least readily and spontaneously,\nadmire any man who does things from self-interested motives. We may\nadmire the things he does, but we do not admire the man. If, for\nexample, we are religious ourselves, and however much we wish other\npeople to be so too, we do not admire the man who, we know, is religious\nbecause he sees his profit in religion either for this world or the\nnext. We do not admire the kind of artist who clutches at beauty because\nit feeds that deadly appetite which is no other than aesthetic greed. We\nwant him to admire a beautiful thing for its own sake, because it is\nwhat it is and is altogether admirable. And no lover holds our respect\nif for him his beloved is merely a curio to be proud of or a\nsatisfaction of the flesh. We say justly that he is only a lover of\nhimself. To command our admiration a man must stretch out his desire and\nenlarge his interests beyond the boundary of self; he must give himself,\nnot necessarily without reward\u2014for the joy set before him often\ncomes\u2014but without making the attainment of it a motive spring.\n\nThat simple fact proves the spirits that we are. And it is shown in\nstrange places. Even the leader of the gang of thieves wins admiration\nby his carelessness of personal gain. Robin Hood is always both\nhonourable and honoured, though he steals.\n\nThink then how much life had gained in power of expression when the\npainters of the caves were reached. Yet the philosopher reminds us that\nindeed this gain began with the beginning of love. Self-forgetfulness\nbegan before man came to show himself called by spirit and life to die\ndaily. Yet in and by him they call with an emphasis and solemnity new in\nthe tale of creation. He is to die to the struggle and the desire to\nlive; he is to give himself and grow by self-giving. That is his proper\nway.\n\nNot without reason does the philosopher tell us that the supreme secret\nof life begins to be revealed in the plant which surrenders its own life\nfor its seed. But if we ignore the far plainer voice of man, how can we\nhear what has been whispered by the plant? If we are made mechanical by\nslavery to our own tools how can we discern either? And unless we listen\nwith the ears of our intuitive soul we shall never hear what it is that\nthey are saying. Unless we immerse ourselves in the current of the\nspirit, unless we confide ourselves to the life that would bear us on,\nwe shall miss the fulfilment of our promise. The whole long weary road\nof life has been travelled on our behalf in vain, unless through the\nadventure of self-giving we become unceasing spiritual creators of\ngreater selves than those we are now.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER X\n\n         If thou hast union now, thou shalt have it hereafter.\n                                                      _Kabir._\n\n\nWithout social life no one of the peculiarly human powers of a man comes\nto fruition. He may chatter, for example; he cannot speak. He has all\nthe necessary organs and all the necessary power, but man-language is\npart of an inheritance stored up for him in community life. It is stored\nup there, just as clinging with his hands and sucking with his lips are\nstored up ready for him at birth, in his body. Society is for him an\nimmense extension of his body, and therefore a further means of\nextension for his spirit. It is also an immense extension of the bodies\nand spirits of other men with whom he may enter upon relations. You may\nlook on it as supplying a brain common to all men which all may use\ntogether, and in which their activities should find not only a recording\nmedium but an unfailing stimulus and contributory aid. But the social\nbrain is in a peculiar sense men's own making, as free and capable\ncreators. They have come to be owners of life and directors of its\ncourse in a degree they certainly had not attained when their bodily\nbrains were slowly growing to be what they are. This brain of theirs,\nused in community, is as truly built by their own efforts as are the\nhouses in which they live. The evolution of man has to all intents of\nspirit ceased to advance by changes in his body, but it goes on by\nincessant change and enormous amplification in his community life.\n\nHere, too, in this many-bodied and many-souled community, as well as in\nthe individual man's life, function determines structure. But function\nhas there become self-conscious and world-conscious, aware of the many\nbodies and the many souls, aware of their needs and dangers, aware of\ntheir giving and their gaining. Men have societies within the community\nsuch as on the whole their conscious desires and purposes, their\nattitude towards their fellows, their sense of responsibility and\nobligations, their aims and ideals, demand. We have indeed the societies\nwe deserve. We may well ask ourselves why we deserve to have them as\nthey are; we may well say to ourselves\u2014'\"Prisoner, tell me, who was it\nthat wrought this unbreakable chain?\"' And the answer is clear,\nconvicting not only of error but of what some of us have learnt to know\nas actual sin, sin against the call and promise of life. '\"It was I,\"\nsaid the prisoner ... \"when at last the work was done and the links were\ncomplete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.\"'\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are other societies besides those of men. Some are far more\ncompletely organized. The bees and the ants have carried social\norganization to a state of harmony and of adjustment to ends which is as\nstrongly marked in its contrast with any that human societies present,\nas is the triumphant surgery of the solitary wasp by contrast with the\nblunders of an untrained man. In 'the civility of these little citizens'\nsociety is carried to a completeness corresponding with that of the life\nof the creatures who are its parts. In an ant-hill or a hive we have\nbefore us, some may say, a model of what a society should be. Perfect\nco-operation, complete subordination of individual to social ends, the\nhighest possible working efficiency of each and all\u2014it sounds well, and\nno one can deny that for bees and ants it works well. Would it work\nequally well for men?\n\nThe answer we give to this question will depend on two things. It will\ndepend first on whether we think that men are or are not competent to\nadvance, and are aided to advance, as beings not only spiritual in\nessential character and purpose, but self-creative and so able to reach\nboth an efficiency beyond all constraint by institutions and machines,\nand an enlargement of community-life which shall embrace society upon\nsociety in all their diverse modes. Secondly, it will depend on whether\nwe are or are not willing to organize any society by what used to be\ncalled biological methods, that is by the methods of the arena\u2014of the\n'gladiators' show.' If we decide on the gladiators' show and a social\nefficiency with no further outlook than a highly superior human\nant-hill's, we pronounce ourselves believers that in principle the\nant-hill manner of life with its isolation of society from society will\nwork for men. We may be wrong even in a short view or a narrow view of\nman's capacities and existence; we are certainly wrong if spiritual\nprogress lies before him as a glorious prospect not only for this man or\nsociety of men here, or another there, but for all men as members of an\nall-containing community made one only by an all-containing principle.\nIn face of the promise and adventure of life we are as certainly wrong\nin giving consent to the ant-hill principle for society as we should be\nif we consented to exchange our own pregnant incompleteness for the\nperfection of the ant. Yet we of the modern civilized nations of Europe\nand America have been far too much influenced of late years, not only by\nour animal inheritance and the passions that we share with 'ape and\ntiger,' but by what is now a powerful tradition and in the last century\nwas a new force\u2014the mechanistic conception of social life. Our reasoning\nabout society, our social science, even our social practices, have by\nthis tradition been made not only more materialistic\u2014many of us know\nthat\u2014but more plausibly mechanistic. It has seemed to us that we have\nscience and nature both on our side, in trusting less to the initiative\nof life and more to its organization of circumscribed institutions and\nordered means. We have taken a biological hypothesis far too seriously.\nAnd no doubt we have done this in great part because it has enabled us\nto leave uncriticized, or even to justify, habitual ways of acting and\nthinking which have about them still the taint of the pit from which we\nhave been digged. These ways of ours were laid down for us in the long\neffort of each man to keep his footing on earth for himself and for the\nfew he recognized as his own; but we have made them both more difficult\nand more dangerous by loading ourselves with a burden of perverted or\nartificial needs which not only call for perverted or artificial means\nto satisfy them, but set us in opposition to other men from whom we\nwrest their satisfaction. Those ways and this burden are proper to a\ncreature who in very truth is seeking so to encumber life as to prevent\nits carrying him on, so to contract his own life as to prevent its\nintermingling with the lives of others. In short they are proper to one\nwho is arresting life in himself as it has been arrested in the tiger or\nthe ant. It will be arrested at a higher point\u2014that is all; and it will\nbe consciously arrested by the conscious building up of an obstacle far\nmore serious than death. Therefore it is no mere failure; it is sin\u2014sin\nagainst the true nature of human life.\n\nThe mechanistic theories of biology, which have helped to confirm men in\nan evil course, are fast being discredited. With them will go a false\nphilosophy which has been widely current of late and has had an\ninfluence reaching far beyond an acquaintance with its authors' names.\nCritical and careful biologists are now undoubtedly doing much to effect\nthis salutary change. Yet, may be, we shall be driven to call some of\ntheir opponents (as has been prophesied) by the bad name of\nnecrologists, that we may perhaps shock them into self-knowledge. It is\na name only too grievously appropriate now, since the picture of natural\nevolution they have, all innocently, drawn has not only foreshadowed,\nbut contributed to fill, the grave-yard of the peoples dug in the great\nwar.\n\nWe are changing this baleful picture; we are learning too, partly in\nconsequence, that the self-interest of utilitarian economists and the\nruthless search for individual advantage which social mechanists have\ncommended are not the mainsprings of evolution. Of far greater, more\nlasting, and more profound significance and effect than the\nself-interested struggle for existence among animals and plants has been\nthe species-interest to which self-interest has been subordinated. A\ncreature must first eat and only afterwards reproduce; but this in no\nway justifies us in thinking that competition for food is charged with\nmore meaning in the long story of life than the protective care of\nparents for their offspring and the eminently natural self-sacrifice it\ninvolves. Progress among both animals and vegetables has been secured\nmore by 'species maintaining' efforts than by a mere self-seeking\nstruggle for self-restricted ends. It is a recognition of this fact that\nmakes a distinguished biologist say, 'The ideal of evolution is thus no\ngladiator's show, but an Eden; and although competition can never be\nwholly eliminated ... it is much for our pure natural history to see no\nlonger struggle, but love as \"creation's final law.\"'\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                                PART II\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER I\n\n          If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything\n          would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has\n          closed himself up, till he sees all things through\n          narrow chinks of his cavern.\n                                                      _Blake._\n\n\nAs we looked at chlorophyll, at colloids and the sea-urchin's egg, so\nlet us look at Christian habits and beliefs. And in the first place we\nwill fix our attention on the central 'mystery' of worship in the\nChristian Church. All the world over and from the first days of\nChristian apostles and brethren, a man going into one of their places of\nassembly would at some hour or another find their devotion apparently\ngathered about common, familiar, bread and wine, or, sometimes, bread\nalone. They would tell him that this bread 'is no longer common bread.'\nNevertheless, in the ordinary or the scientific sense, it is, just as\nmuch 'common bread' as chlorophyll is the common colouring matter of the\ngreen wheat. They will tell him, too, that it is a 'sacramental' means\nof communion between God and themselves and between them and Christ, the\nAnointed Son of God. Just as we insist scientifically upon the fact that\nchlorophyll is the meeting-point between the power of the sun and our\nliving selves, so Christians insist that the sacramental bread, whatever\nelse it is or does, constitutes a meeting-point between them and God and\nhis Christ. No doubt (they may say, if they understand such matters),\nfor the mathematical physicist, bread, like everything else, may be\nfinally reduced to a series of dynamical equations. Or it may be taken\nas ether and electrons; or as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and so forth; or,\nroughly, as what it comes to be at last, gases, water, and dust, like\nthe bodies of us all. But each of these ways of looking at bread\nmanifestly, even to the mind of that scientific man, leaves out\nsomething of its richness and fails to reckon with its use and purpose\nfor life. By ordinary persons it is known as the 'staff' of life; and\nthese ordinary persons, when they say it is this, are speaking poetry.\nIn fact if you are to do justice to bread you must be something of an\nartist; you do it gross injustice\u2014that is, you leave out of your account\nthe most valuable thing about it\u2014when you do not go beyond the\nscientific man's idealistic or abstract summing up. The poet's vision\ndoes better when he mates in the corn and the grape the glories of the\nsun and the expectancy of earth, and sees the bringing forth and\nrevealing and communicating, through the grain and the wine, of a\nconcealed and straining life. But the philosopher also has his\ncontribution to a fulness of justice. He insists, after his manner, on\n'spirit and life'; he disdains mechanism; he opens gates that science\ncannot pass, and shows that all real things have depth it cannot reach\u2014a\nthird dimension where it has discovered only two. He solidifies the\nschematic diagrams of the scientific man and gives reasons for the faith\nof the religious man, who goes further still.\n\nHere in the Christian Sacrament, where the Christian says that the\nfullest justice is done to bread and wine in lifting them up to be a\nmeans of communion between God and man, science and philosophy, religion\nand art, may meet together.\n\nFor nearly two thousand years Christians have seen in 'this bread' of\ntheirs matter impenetrated by spirit, and raised by it into another and\na higher order. They have held to a doctrine of both in which neither\nwas despised, or thought of as deceiving or unreal. Materialistic\nthought and theory, abstract spiritualism, all theories or doctrines\nthat cut the world of experience in two with a rationalizing hatchet,\nhave been powerless to loosen their hold. Matter informed and\ntransformed by spirit; spirit pre-eminent over and including\nmatter\u2014these have been cardinal and inevitable implications in the\nsacramental worship of Christians. Cardinal and inevitable, too, is, in\nconsequence, their view of the world as an affair of order superposed on\norder in a nature capable of being raised to the height of that which\nthey call the supernatural, an earth that may become a new earth, a city\nof men that should rise to the noble state of a City of God.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe look back on the chemist's colloid that becomes, as protoplasm, no\nlonger common colloid but one from which a world of living creatures has\narisen. We see again a wonderful life informing and transforming matter,\npre-eminent over it yet dependent on and manifesting through it. We see\nthe chlorophyll of the plant raising chemical elements to a new order of\nbeing, and life in its onward march from order to order of manifesting\nconsciousness, attaining at last man, creative in his spiritual freedom\nand dominance. We see that a Christian might point to man himself as the\nsumming up of outward and visible signs and an inward and spiritual\ngrace which science has made known, as reasonably as he may take bread\nas the central symbol of his worship. And he may tell us, or we may tell\nhim, that these things are one\u2014that there is everywhere 'continuity of\nprocess with the emergence of real differences' in a world that is\n'sacramental' from its lowest to its highest order, from the speck of\njelly to man. He and we both may see it as a world of outward and\nvisible signs, each manifesting what the Christian names 'an inward and\nspiritual grace,' and we name\u2014how do we name it? So far, only _life_,\nmysterious and mysteriously potent, communicating and communicated life.\n\nWe are encouraged to consider, further, this name and its meaning for us\nand above all in us. In us, we justly say, life is really different from\nwhat it is in the plant. We are 'persons'; plants are not. Life in us is\npersonal, in the plant it is less than personal. But it is life, all the\nsame and all through, from the impersonal to us, different though we\nassuredly are from the impersonal. And we can hardly escape asking\nourselves whether, as they are now, men are of the highest order of real\ndifference among the different orders embraced in the potency of life.\nCan life do no more and better, seeing that it has done so much? Is it,\nin itself, no more and better? The Christian answers these questions\nwithout one moment of hesitation. He says that 'the Holy Ghost,' the\ndivine Spirit and Lord, is the 'Giver of Life'; and that there is an\norder of life in which this Lord and Giver is brought into personal\nrelations with us, communicating with and communicated to us; so that by\nthis communication we are raised beyond the state of children of earth\nand of the merely earthly life, to the high place of Sons of God, who\nknow their Father and are at one with each other and with him.\n\nIf there is a thorough-going evolutionist anywhere it is the Christian.\nAnd it is his sacramental doctrine that gives consistency and\npersistence to his evolutionary convictions, if and when they are\nconsistent and persistent. At times they are neither. At times the\nChristian, like the rest of us, fails to see the grandeur and\nuniversality of his own deepest principles. And then he belies them in\nword and deed; and his picture of the world of men and things is false\nto them and to himself.\n\nIt is these deepest principles that the enquirer should search out. When\nhe has caught one glimpse of them he should thereby be strengthened\nagainst the falsifications that are offered him either by Christians or\ntheir contemners. Great principles are there, for his vision and\nenlightening. And in them he will find his own raised to a higher power.\nHis evolution is then carried beyond the point where it so abruptly and\nunsatisfactorily breaks off. His potent life is there borne upward to\nthe meeting-place with a Lord and a Giver of life. His personal,\nself-conscious and world-conscious, loving and self-sacrificing man, the\ncrown of his evolutionary process, comes face to face with the source\nand fulfilment of all that he is and all that he so brokenly promises to\nbe. Man himself crowns the sacramental world and is its greatest\nsacrament, revealing as in a glass darkly and by foretelling, the\nfulness of beauty and glory in all its grace. And the Christian points\nto one man as above all other men in the revealing office of mankind. He\nsays that this man in no way distorts the beauty and glory given him;\nthat in him very God is made known in and as very man. Here, plainly,\nthe sacramental principle reaches its supreme height, and is taken\nbeyond detail after detail to a wholeness covering every detail. If any\none man is thus the unclouded revelation of God in terms of man, then it\nis true\u2014as the Christian says it is\u2014that the whole world of men and\nthings is best, most faithfully and fully, stated, reasoned about,\ninterpreted, through this man. Every particle of the bread we eat\nbecomes for us no longer 'common bread.' It is bread shown for what it\nreally is in the plan and process of God as these are made present to\nus, alive, pregnant of glory and beauty and power, in the living\nrevelation of Jesus Christ.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Christian sets his consecrated bread apart from all the rest of\nbread and things, and, we must own, he does well. For men see all things\nas in a glass darkly, and we are, most of us, the slaves of habit and\nvictims of familiarity. What is everywhere and always soon comes to be\nnowhere and never for our interest and our attention. If the Christian\nhad not kept as a rare thing, a thing enthroned, the bread that is for\nhim no longer common bread, he would of a certainty often, if not for\never, have lost hold on the sublime principle it enshrines for him and\nfor the world. The conflicting currents of speculative thought, as well\nas the weaknesses of his mental grasp, would have made him loose his\nhold upon it. Just because it stands there as the central symbol\ngathering up and establishing his worship and its sanctifying\nassociations, it has lasted through the centuries, preserving its own\ngreat principle, a witness, a token and a sign not empty but\n'effective'\u2014_signum efficax_ not only for thought but for all human life\nin its amplitude.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER II\n\n         Can you think at all and not pronounce heartily\n         that to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem,\n         and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem\n         and her builders?\n                                                      _Blake._\n\n\nFor the Christian a man is a being capable of receiving and assimilating\nlife as no other creature can, and as the biologist has no biological\nreason to believe. The Christian declares that he has reason, good and\nample. He _knows_ whom he believes. This is a matter of living religious\nexperience to which generations after generations have borne witness.\nThere is a ladder of spiritual reality, he says, up which men are\nclimbing and upon which some have reached great heights. The biologist's\nladder, despite its many steps and its length along the ages, is too\nshort for him. Or rather (so he will tell you when he understands what\nthe biologist means) his own ladder is a legitimate and even a natural\nextension of that, as of all others of the sort that men have anywhere\nset up.\n\nIs this advance of man, then, an affair of a single departmental\nbusiness\u2014the religious business? Or, let us ask, can there be kinds of\nknowledge that are not really knowledge of God? Is it reasonable to\nregard biological knowledge, or chemical or physical, as knowledge of\nsome alien reality not embraced in God? The supposition is monstrous. If\nGod is, then all truth attained by man is truth of him. If I learn that\nthe world advances from the ether to my brain I shall have learnt\nsomething about God. So the Christian should maintain, if he is true to\nhis Christian principles. The advance of man towards communion with God\nin knowledge is not a mere affair of some one department of knowledge\ncalled religious, although it is now for the most part carried on\ndepartmentally. Although men separate off for their practical\nconvenience the study of plants from the study of animals, and a\nspecialist may separate off the egg of the newt and study nothing else,\nand even think, at least seriously, of nothing else; although we may not\nonly speak of religion, or knowledge, or philosophy as separate one from\nanother but act as though they were, yet if the Christian and the\nphilosopher and the scientific man are right in holding that there is a\nunity in the multiplicity of things, a 'uniformity of nature,' an\n'Absolute,' or 'One God,' then religion and science and philosophy are\nonly separated, if separate at all, by an artifice or a convention. You\ncannot really _separate_ knowing, in a man's activity, from his feeling\nand acting, nor his feeling from acting and knowing, nor his acting from\nknowing and feeling, nor his activity from himself; although you can\n_distinguish_ each from the others. They are different, but their\ndifference is embraced within a oneness. So it is with religion and\nscience and philosophy. They are all results of man's activity in\nrelation to a reality of innumerable aspects and unfathomable depth; and\nthey may all be means by which he ascends the ladder of his experience\nof God.\n\nTherefore the Christian does his own sacramental and incarnational\nprinciples a grave injustice if and when he tries to turn away from\nscience and philosophy. Not only this\u2014he cannot really do it. When he\nsucceeds in turning away from that which he believes to be all there is\nof science and philosophy, he does not cut out from his creed and his\ntheology the science and philosophy incorporated in them\u2014a science and a\nphilosophy which undoubtedly need correction that they may move and grow\nwith the movement and the growth of experience. It is only the science\nand philosophy grown to new ripeness and new truth since the day when\nthe great bulk of his Christian tradition was laid down in written words\nto be transmitted to him, that as a matter of fact he is rejecting. And\nhe is able to reject these just and only because he has already in this\ntradition such science and philosophy as serves to make for him some\nsort of a _Weltanschauung_, a world-picture, you may say. It is useless\nto protest that a man can be religious without having a world-picture;\nhe cannot even be a man without one. And the only question for him is\nwhether it shall or shall not be as wide in its extent and as good as he\ncan make it, whether he shall or shall not include within it all the\nknowledge and vision of God he might include.\n\nPlainly\u2014that is, plainly to the Christian\u2014if the scientific man or the\nphilosopher does not include in his view of the world what the Christian\nknows and sees, he is the loser. His picture is not all it might be. But\nthe same, _mutatis mutandis_, is true of the Christian. For all is God's\nand of God. And if we never before discovered this, we see it when we\ndiscover the point where science and religion meet, where the scientific\nknowledge of the world passes into the sacramental, and the scientific\nknowledge of man, as part of the world, passes into the incarnational;\neach to be crowned there, each to be interpreted and fulfilled.\n\nTo this discovery there is only one theoretic obstacle which is\ninsuperable. It is the acceptance of mechanism as a root-principle in\neither science or religion. I say nothing of philosophy, because there\nis now-a-days no mechanistic philosophy (that is, no materialistic\nphilosophy) that need be feared. But in science and in religion\nmechanism is still a danger, and the acceptance of it as the fundamental\nprinciple of working and construction in a world-picture is an obstacle\nthat cannot be passed. There is nothing to be done except to overturn\nit.\n\nIn regard to science much (as we have seen) has already been done; more\nis being done. How is it in regard to religion? What about mechanism\nthere?\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER III\n\n           The religions of all nations are derived from each\n           nation's different reception of the poetic genius,\n           which is everywhere called the spirit of prophecy.\n                                                     _Blake._\n\n\nThe Christian has not escaped the dangers of the common lot. He too,\ndespite his own contrary principles, has, from the beginning of the\nChristian Church, been tempted as we all are to trust to mechanism and\neven to sacrifice in its favour the powers of life. We ought not to be\nsurprised; what else can reasonably be expected? A good machine, whether\nit be made of steel and brass, or of language, or of settled formulae\nand plans, or of any other product of life, is an admirable servant. It\nis convenient; it brings satisfaction to widespread and deeply-rooted\nneeds of life itself. Moreover there is nothing mysterious (so it\nseems), or even problematic, about it. The plain man is not called upon\nto question or wonder or speculate in regard to anything behind it, any\npowers or vague connexions with powers, not understood. The good machine\ndoes what it has to do and there's an end of it. A man knows where he is\nwhen he has such a thing\u2014or when it has him. There is even a sense of\ncomfort and security in being ruled and cared for by it, as, for\nexample, in the case of the machinery of a State.\n\nIn this difficult world there seems, indeed there is, need for something\nof the kind to supply a considerable part of our religious demand. We\nare social beings; we are, as we are beginning to see more plainly,\nbrothers in a community; we must organize our religion as we organize\neverything else in which the community of persons has its common\ninterest. And God, the Christian may say, and has said, would not leave\nus, has not left us, to uncertainty and to our questioning and wondering\nand speculative adventure. He has provided answers to our questions,\nfacts in response to our wondering, an open view for our speculation.\nOr, to put it in another way, he has given us a 'plan' or 'scheme,' or\nan ecclesiastical apparatus, of salvation; he has revealed religious\ntruth to us and marked out an established method of approaching him and\nsecuring our own safety in respect of his judgement and our destiny at\nhis hands. Nothing of so great importance has been left, could have been\nleft, in the hands of men, to find out or not find out\u2014poor creatures\nthat we are.\n\nNow, there is truth behind this, both as to the part of God and as to\nthe part of man in the matter. We are social, we are brethren, we must\norganize. God, so all Christians say and many philosophers, no more\nleaves us to ourselves than he leaves to itself any part of his worlds.\nBut Christians formally declare in their Creed that he is no\nmachine-maker; he is Lord and Giver of Life. They complain, too, against\nscience on the ground that (as they have come to believe) it must of its\nconstant character set material mechanism above life in the order of the\nworld. They are pledged to oppose this; and when they complain against\nscience for a fault and failure which is soon\u2014so many biologists and\nphilosophers declare\u2014to be a fault and a failure of the past, they are\nfaithful to their pledge. But they are men, with the faults and failures\nof men. Habit has its snares for them; the complication of needs that\nmeets them in their effort to maintain themselves, body, mind and\nspirit, in the world, entangles them. The short cut, the provided means,\neverything and anything that seems to make matters easy or safe\u2014in\nshort, the logical or legalistic or institutional machine\u2014is attractive.\nAnd for most men this machine in any of its protean forms, is perhaps\nonly the more attractive the more valued is the treasure it seems to\nensure or to protect. The faith once for all delivered\u2014how precious that\nis! Salvation in this world and the next\u2014can anything be of greater\nimport for man? Let us make these things secure, whatever else we risk.\nOnly fools or the reckless would embrace chances of adventure where so\nmuch is at stake.\n\nSo, in spite of the Christian avowal of the superiority and the\nsupremacy of life over its instruments, Christianity has everywhere\ngiven disastrous place to the letter and the tool.\n\nAgainst this the first prophet and the last, in every religion, must\nalways protest. It is the enemy of enemies for all prophets. You can see\nwar waged against it in the Old Testament; you can see that war carried\nto the utmost in the Gospel of the New. Now the challenge rings among us\nmore clearly than it has rung for this long time. And, as ever, it has\nnew notes and a new phrasing of its music.... That, perhaps, is why so\nmany of us fail to recognize it for what it is. That, certainly, is why\nthe due honour paid to prophets of the past does not prevent men from\nstoning or neglecting those of the present. The voice is always\ndifferent, because it is the voice of life.\n\nThe use and need for the prophet is a fact not only in religion but in\nall the arts and in philosophy. He alone keeps any one of these in touch\nwith life, or rather recalls it to life when it has been encumbered or\nperhaps even arrested by that which life has made. He is, in very deed,\nthe voice of the encumbered spirit making itself heard, proclaiming in\none fashion or another that the pursuit of beauty and truth as well as\nof holiness is of the spirit, and must have the spirit's liberty or it\nwill altogether fail. In the arts and in philosophy we do not call him a\nprophet, but often, in the arts, we speak of him (when we have recovered\nfrom the shock he gives) as 'inspired,' and in philosophy we call him\n'great.' Great he is and inspired\u2014we could hardly choose better and more\ndeeply significant words. He is the enlarger of life and the bearer of\nthe spirit, whether he uses the language of philosophy, of poetry,\npainting or music, or of religion. But always he comes waging war upon\nour superstitious devotion to the things that have once been made,\nproclaiming either divine truth or divine beauty or divine holiness\n(according to his mission), as that for the sake of which they must ever\nbe remade.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe who have learnt our lesson from science as well as from philosophy\nshould be sure friends to the prophet. We have learnt enough of the\nstory of life to see that from its beginning on the earth it strove\ntowards liberty, towards the indetermination by circumstance and the\nfreedom of choice that man has reached. We have seen life lost in mere\nmaterial size and crushed by the weight of material protective armour;\nand we know what these things mean. We know, too, what entanglement in\nhabit means for our own selves. We are good and sure friends of the\nprophet. Or we may be, if we will.\n\nIt is high time that he should find such friends\u2014men ready to meet him\nwith that in their minds which prepares his way before him. He has too\nlong been the voice driven to cry in the wilderness. Too long and too\noften he has found men opposing him with a settled prejudice in favour\nof the vested interests\u2014the sanctified, it may be, and glorified vested\ninterests\u2014of law and order and creed, of institution and crystallized\nopinion. It is time that a new atmosphere should be made about him and\nthat these things should be visibly set in their right place and held at\ntheir right value. When this is done the secret materialism of his\nopponents will be brought to light. For, however it may be disguised,\nall overvaluing of the instrumental product of life's activity comes of\nthe undue depreciation of living spirit and the undue appreciation of\nits means. Science and philosophy, in teaching us now to seek for the\ntrue relation of matter and spirit, are also teaching us to lend a\nwilling ear to the prophet. When we have learnt to see in man the\nbeginning of a synthesis of order and freedom in a vital harmony not\nmanifest in those starry heavens to which men point as the standing\nwitness of God against prophets of new freedom, we are ready to confess,\nif we have found our God, that in him that perfect synthesis is declared\nand in man it is foreshadowed and to be pursued.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IV\n\n           Hearken to me, ye children of the Immortal,\n           dwellers of the heavenly worlds, I have known the\n           Supreme Person who comes as light from the dark\n           beyond.\n                                           _Isha Upanishat._\n\n\nStudying at its best the Christian view of the world of life\u2014and it is\nnot worth any man's while to study it at less\u2014we find that Jesus Christ\nstands there always as greatest among prophets, though 'more than a\nprophet.' He is in the line of the prophets but at their head; he is\ntheir culmination and their fulfilment. He knew himself to be a prophet,\nand to have the lot of one who 'is not without honour save in his own\ncountry.' He lived and taught, and he and his teaching were received,\nafter the manner of the prophets that had gone before. Like Isaiah and\nJeremiah he spoke the language of drama and poetry, and gave body in\nparable and pictorial visions to his message. Like them he spoke and\npreached always with passion and as being conscious of a very wall of\nopposing forces. For him as for them the exaltation of religious\nmachinery above religious life, and all self-satisfaction through mere\nforms and ceremonies, meant an onset of spiritual death. To use these\nthings as a shelter within which a man might follow his self-seeking\nbent, whether of greed or of fear, was the worst (but one) of sins.\n'Hypocrites,' that is, 'play-actors', 'generation of vipers,' he said of\nthe professionally religious of his time. That there was for him one sin\ngreater than such play-acting is of his own supreme greatness. No other\nprophet recognized and denounced as he did the sin that cannot be\nforgiven; for no other prophet had as he had the full personally\nrealized revelation of an indwelling God whom man, consciously, might\ncast out. This, with his marvellous balance of judgement in regard to\nthe letter or the machine and the spirit\u2014the organ and the life that\nshapes and uses it\u2014is a marked element in his _differentia_ among\nprophets. And we, who are friends to them all in so far as they protest\nagainst depreciation of spirit and life, and against men who make of the\nproducts of life from which life has departed obstacles to the urgency\nof the present, have to consider whether we can go with him as far as he\ngoes, or whether this element of difference between him and the rest is\nin any way to weaken our alliance with him. He is not only one among his\nfellows; he is also unquestionably different from them. Is there\nanything about this difference that should make us who are friends of\nthe prophets quarrel with the Christian who accepts and welcomes it?\n\nFirst, let us look at his attitude towards the instruments of religion\nas compared and contrasted with that of other prophets of his race.\n'_Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth_,'\u2014that is the\nnote of the elder prophets. '_The Sabbath was made for man, not man for\nthe Sabbath_'\u2014that is his. The prophet of old was contemptuous of\ninstitutional and ceremonial religion; he suffered, as we say, from\nreaction and went to extremes, reprobating the instrument as well as the\nspirit that misinterpreted and misused it. Jesus taught in the\nsynagogue, cleansed the temple from those who had made the historic\nhouse of prayer to be a den of thieves, sent the leper to show himself\nto the priest, and in general accepted the institutions of religion, and\nthe hierarchical organization, of the place and people that were his\nown. Yet no man can say he overvalued these. His insistence on the\nspiritual freedom of man and the pre-eminence of spirit and life was\nboth constant and passionate. The institution he accepted, as he\naccepted the tools of his carpenter's trade, the food and furniture of\nlife as he found it, the language and the manners of his people. Freedom\nand unity, love, truth, beauty and holiness, as realities in the life of\nGod and man, for these he pleaded, preached, worked, suffered and died.\nYet those other things were not to be despised or left undone. He came\nand he lived not to destroy but to fulfil. In this he is pre-eminent\namong, apart from, the religious prophets who went before him. His\npiercing and balanced judgement was the primary source of Christian\nsacramentalism. He despised nothing of the earth and the body; he found\na place for all in the life of the spirit. He was the first preacher to\npoint to loveliness in the flowers of the field; and for twelve hundred\nyears no other, in any nation or kind of religion, did the like. Then\nFrancis of Assisi, his true follower, sang the Song of the Sun. The long\nhistory of Christian sacramentalism spreads out far and deep and gathers\nup in itself from all quarters the pursuit of beauty is well as the\nhunger and thirst after righteousness and truth; but its pure source is\nplain to see in the Gospels. There the fine adjustment of the relation\nbetween matter and spirit, life and its organs, is maintained. There the\nvalue and the meaning and pertinence of life's own instruments to its\nuser, of the body to the soul, is as clearly insisted on as is the\nsupremacy in both meaning and value of life itself. There is none of the\nabstract spiritualism that is one of the prophet's most dangerous\nsnares. There is none of the contempt and the blinding reaction which so\noften disfigure and discredit his utterances. And for this, we who have\ncome fresh from learning our new lesson about the movement of organic\nlife and its difficult striving upon the earth may dare to praise him.\nIt is a beginning for us. Not in this respect, at least, shall we stand\naloof from him or complain that science or philosophy has built a\nbarrier against him. That Christians the world over have lost touch with\nhim in this regard as in others is for the moment nothing to us. We know\nthat they are feeble and fallible like ourselves and that his way of\njudgement is hard. To keep the balance even, never to allow a secret\nmaterialism to be brought into the scale, or a protest to sink into\nrepudiation\u2014this is hard indeed. And we know that a thousand other\ntemptations have beset the Christian during the centuries that have gone\nby and that, being as he is and just as we are ourselves, he has\nsuccumbed to not a few of them. We know all that; but we are seeking to\nfind out what greatness it is that lies behind all the faults and\nfollies, the absurdities, the crimes even, of Christians, and keeps\nChristianity alive and potent. We begin to see, perhaps, that this\ngreatness is Christ\u2014that it is 'Jesus the prophet of Nazareth in\nGalilee.'\n\nOf this greatness and its character he himself had an unique\nconsciousness which was a most important and most marked element in his\ndifference from the Hebrew prophets before him. He 'spoke with authority\nand not as the Scribes,' not as those theologians and jurists whose\nstrength rested on tradition and the letter of the past; he spoke, in\nshort, as a prophet. So the people discovered. The voice of the prophets\nwas characteristically authoritative and neither showed respect for\ntradition nor claimed its support. But the note of the prophets of old\nwas '_Thus saith the Lord_'; and the note of the prophet of Nazareth was\n'_I say unto you_.' Both came among men with an authority lacking to the\nfollowers of tradition; but by the first it was thought of as delegated,\nin the second it was recognized as inherent. Not, '_the Lord said unto\nme_,' but '_I say unto you_.' The difference is enormous; it is also\nprofound in significance and implications. It means, to begin with, a\ndifferent knowledge of God. No longer is God only speaking to his\nmessengers across a dividing space, speaking as a king upon his throne\nmight to a subject at his feet, charging that subject with a mission.\nThe message is no longer carried and reported by a man; it is originated\nin him and given by him. Jesus is conscious that the life and spirit of\nGod are become his own life and spirit. He knows the indwelling God\ngiven to be made man in co-operative union with man, knows him in and\nthrough and as himself, the prophet of Nazareth in Galilee. He does not\nneed to refer either to a God, or to a tradition, that is extraneous to\nhimself. Therefore his prophetic authority exceeds not only that of the\nScribes but that of all the prophets. It gave this impression to those\nof his contemporaries who had eyes to see and ears to hear. To such men\nit gives the same impression now. And if there are Christians who\nexplain the impression and reason from it, erroneously, have we any\nright to be surprised? Consider the height to which we have been carried\nand the problems that open up before us as we survey this man. Consider\nthe habits of interpretation most usual among us. Consider the\ntangibility and conspicuousness of _things_, the intangibility and, to\nthe senses and the mind itself, the elusive mysteries of personality, of\nnature, of consciousness, even of knowledge and every other manifest\nactivity. We cannot fairly blame Christians for what has been done among\nthem in an attempt to explain and reason about Jesus Christ. The attempt\nhas been honest enough and successful enough to hold the allegiance of\nthinking men for generations.\n\nThe truth is that we are learning, as we never learnt before, to\nquestion the manner of our own thinking about these high matters. We\nhave become aware, as we were not, of the insidious materialism of our\ninstruments of thought. We have learnt that to apply a logic of things\nand their qualities to problems of the nature of God and man is to\nensure misunderstanding. So when Christians tell us that the person of\nJesus Christ is divine and that he had, or was, or is, a human nature\nand a divine nature, and a human will and a divine will conjoined in the\ndivine person, we see plainly that they are applying to the truth of him\nthat logic of things and their qualities which they have acquired\nthrough dealing easily and habitually with things. They are trying to\nexplain him by taking human nature as one thing or set of qualities, and\ndivine nature as another, and they are joining them by a third. You see\ntwo vertical stones and one across the top. And if the stones are alive\nand the top one 'hypostatically' effects the union between the other\ntwo, stones they still are; or sets of qualities conceived as things,\nwhich is all the same.\n\nThe mighty consciousness of Jesus escaped entanglement by these logical,\nspatial, materialistic nets. He knew by experience the activity of a\nwill in which the will of God and the will of man were united and\nengaged at once in one purpose. He knew, felt, lived, God and man as one\nin himself. And in the fulness of this he differed from all other\nprophets, for whom it was at best, and that but rarely, an unrealized\nideal.\n\nShall we say, then, that for us and for Christians it is well not to\nreason about the problems he presents to thought? Even if we do, we\nshall reason and so will they. Neither we nor they can help it. But we\nmay put our reasoning together, and learn each from the other. There is\na meeting-place here, inviting us to join hands.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER V\n\n            Where Love is the Lover, Love streaming from\n            the Lover is the Lover; the Lover streaming from\n            himself, and existing in another Person.\n                                                 _Traherne._\n\n\n_Aut Deus aut homo non bonus_\u2014so Christians have said and believed. The\ndilemma, though comfortable for not a few among them, and having about\nit a certain truth, often involves a false conception of both man and\nGod. The truth it holds is not their comfort; they do not know that.\nWhat most people mean when they use the dilemma is that the prophet of\nNazareth was either as a person God and not as a person man, or he was\nas a person man and a bad one. It seems conclusive, this either-or. But\nthere is no logical weapon more fatal to our discovery of the truth of\nspirit and life. 'Either-or' comes from a field of interest where things\nstand out conspicuous and apart, and cannot be thought of as\ncommunicating virtue and riches and themselves one to another. It brings\nwith it an insinuating suggestion, if not assertion, that the affairs of\nspirit and life are in the same case. Personality, which is an affair of\nspirit and life, seems no more to admit of such intercommunication than\ndoes materiality. Two persons can no more communicate themselves to each\nother than two stones. Which, on the crude exposed face of it, is\nnonsense. They can, they do; and we know it.\n\nUnquestionably the great prophet spoke with the authority which lesser\nprophets attributed to God. He made claims, very high claims. Was he\nonly an arrogant and blasphemous man? (He might, perhaps, have been\ndeluded, though the dilemma ignores that possibility\u2014as well it may.) Or\nwas he God? There is no half-way house of vital identity between man as\nperson and God as person, any more than there is a half-way house of\nmaterial identity between a diamond and a pebble off the beach.\n_Either-or._ So this dilemma goes. It is very simple, all too simple. It\napplies beautifully to pebbles and diamonds; why not to living persons?\nParticularly and excellently, why not to man and God?\n\nNow, as a matter of fact, I am trying to communicate to you at this very\nmoment something that is mine. My knowledge (or my ignorant opinion) is\nwritten down on the paper before you, and you will or may receive it\u2014to\ndo with it what you choose. Henceforth it is, or may be, yours as well\nas mine. Again, I try to communicate to you the content of my will for\nyou. You know and feel that I want your will to be brought to coincide\nwith mine, so that my will and yours shall be vitally identical in\nregard to what I am writing about. In some degree or another you and I\nmay become one in this regard. I shall then have communicated my\nknowledge (or my ignorant opinion) and my will to you and they will to\nsome extent or another be both yours and mine. This communication and\nco-operation is a matter of our choosing to enter into it and be and\nwork together. We have it in our own hands. It is quite different from\nthe relation we have to each other as being parts in the universe, or\nelements in God looked upon as the pantheist looks upon him, which makes\nhim no more than the universe. We can't help that relation. We share it\nwith the stones as well as with each other and with God. It is a purely\nabstract business and belongs to 'the night in which all cows are\nblack.' Our cows, on the other hand, are of every sort of colour; and we\nfind, we actually do find, that we can pass on our colours to each\nother, dye the different cow to our tinge and in turn be dyed. We are\nconcrete, not abstract; and our vital identity one with another is\nconcrete too. It may be and might not be. We choose whether it shall be\nor not. And, happily, we choose that it shall be, up to a point, far\nmore often and more steadily than we choose that it shall not. Hence the\nexistence of a human community in common knowledge and reason and common\nwill\u2014up to a point.\n\nI give you here in these pages, or at least proffer you, as I have said,\n'something of mine.' That is what it looks like. But, enquiring further,\nI ask whether as a matter of fact 'I' am separate from 'something of\nmine,' as, let us say an engine is separate from the power it produces\nand the work it does. Do I produce thought and knowledge as an engine\nproduces so much horse-power? Is my will or my reason a sort of thing\nthat produces activity as a flower produces its scent? The scent is not\nthe flower; the horse-power is not the engine. There is always a\nproducing _thing_ behind such products. Is there a producing thing\nbehind my knowledge and activity? And the only reasonable answer we can\ngive to this question is that there is not. In my spirit and life there\nis nothing in the least like a thing or a machine; and when we reason\nabout spirit and life as though there were we plunge into a very sea of\nconfusion. My reason and my will _are_ myself. I am not a thing and I do\nnot produce like a thing. I give and I communicate my very self in\ngiving and communicating my knowledge, my purpose, my will. And in so\nfar as you receive these and take them into yourself you receive\nme\u2014spirit and life\u2014as person. By harmony between us our wills and\nreason, our selves, coalesce; they become identical in the concrete,\nvital identity peculiar to persons, impossible to things, and dependent\nfor its maintenance on the maintenance of harmony by their own free\nactivity. Very partial it is, no doubt, seen by all of us 'as in a\nmirror darkly'; but it points, with a finger that should draw all eyes,\nto a great fulfilment. That fulfilment is 'the goal, not the\nstarting-point of human endeavour.' The blank identity of co-existence\nin a universe is, you may say, a starting-point for reflexion; but real\nconcrete mental coalescence between each and all of us is a real\nconcrete starting-point of life in a personal world. The goal lies far\nahead, where that union of persons foreshadowed in our fragmentary\nintercourse and the low beginnings of our community of life shall be won\nthrough that which alone can give it, our union and communion with God.\nThis is more or less a philosopher's way of putting the matter; but it\nmeans the same as the Christian's.\n\nNow there is a question that forces itself upon us here. Can there be a\ncoalescence of mind and will, an identity, between God and man, of this\nliving, spiritual\u2014that is, real, concrete\u2014kind? Or is God so different\nfrom man as to be incommunicable to him? Is he remote from man in his\nown nature or, indeed, not only remote but alien? The answer to this is\nthat if he is even remote, not to say alien, he is nothing to us and we\nmay ignore him.\n\nThe Christian's God certainly is not remote; he is all men's lover and\nfather and they are all his beloved and his sons. The philosopher's God\nis sometimes made blankly, abstractly, identical with us, and then we\nmay ignore him; because a blank identity simply is, as conceived in\nthought, and like the alien God it means nothing for us. But more often\nnowadays the philosopher's God is like the Christian's in that he both\ntranscends his universe and indwells it; for the philosopher has begun\nin good earnest to reckon with life and with science and human\nexperience at large. God indwelt Jesus Christ, and he knew God as lover\nand father both. He spoke as though God had communicated himself to him\nin a fulness we do not know among ourselves. There was an identity of\nwill, it seems, recognized by him, between himself and God, and an\nidentity of reason and knowledge. And if God is Spirit and Lord and\nGiver of life, then, if the prophet was right, in this identity by\nfulness of communication, this personal coalescence of reason and will,\nGod, very God, gave himself to very man, and very man entered into\npersonal union with very God. The transcendent God indwelt the man, was\nimmanent within him as the man's own self; and the man's own self was\nlifted up into the self of God. The intercommunication of person with\nperson, which we see as the prerogative of persons, was complete.\n\nWe have confessed this to be the goal of human endeavour; let us allow\nourselves to think that in regard to us it may be the goal, also, of\ndivine endeavour, and that in the man who offered no opposition to God\nit was attained. As long as we do not indulge in the secret materialism\nof regarding a person as a thing _producing_ knowledge or activity,\ninstead of as _being_ that knowledge and activity, we shall have no\ndifficulty in recognizing the fact that where knowledge and will in two\npersons coincide, there also the persons coincide. We shall be able to\nsee that a man is identical with God, in the only sense identity can\nhave for personal beings, when he fully knows the mind of God and his\nwill is bent on the same ends as the will of God. Then this man is both\nman and God in one, for God indwells him by that activity which he truly\nis.\n\nIf we object, as we frequently do, that no man can fully know the mind\nof God, we must tell ourselves that if a man knows the essential,\npermanently valuable truth of life which wise men have ever sought as\nwisdom, then all that is worth while in knowledge, all that upon which\nparts and kinds of 'knowledges' must be built up, is his, included\nwithin his _Weltanschauung_, his living view of the world. The\nprinciple, the ground, of all truth, and therefore of all knowledge, he\nknows and has.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe think of the writer of the Fourth Gospel giving us, as a prayer of\nJesus, the aspiration that 'they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in\nme and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.' He has the goal of\nour endeavour in plain sight; he must have felt that impulse of the\nspirit towards it which is not exhausted, never can be exhausted, by any\none man.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER VI\n\n          Thy judgment is in the mute pain of sleepless love;\n          In the blush of pure hearts;\n          In the tears of the night of desolation;\n          In the pale morning-light of forgiveness.\n                                       _Rabindranath Tagore._\n\n\nWe are going far with the Christian. Life is indeed a bond; it is\nmaterialism that divides the seekers after truth. The secret materialism\nof the Christian and his trust in religious machinery must bring him\ninto conflict with those who put their trust in other kinds of machines.\nWe who are trusting life, and are trying not to interpret it in terms of\nthe logic of things, find ourselves side by side with those Christians\nfaithful enough to their supreme leader and their own principles to do\nthe same. So we may walk willingly with them and hear what they have to\nsay in more intimate talk than there can be when the spirit of community\nis wanting.\n\nIn this matter of personality and its self-communicating power they have\nbeen beforehand with us, as in so many other matters. Jesus has been for\nthem a fountain of wisdom and insight, and while they have kept close to\nhim his wisdom and his insight have been-imparted to them. He has been\nin them a well-spring wanting to the negligent world. 'Whosoever\ndrinketh of the water that I shall give him,' the disciple hears him\nsay, 'shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be\nin him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.' That is what\nit means to be indwelt by God, 'the fountain of living waters,' as the\nolder prophet calls him. And we think of what we have learnt about\npersonality and the inseparability of the spirit from its own content of\nknowledge and volition, of love, too, and righteousness, and joy in\nbeauty and truth. We think of the intercommunication of man with man and\nof men with God and his 'Christ'\u2014that is, the man 'whose individuality,'\nas a Christian philosopher says, 'is identified with God in the unity of\nall his thought and action with the divine knowledge and the divine\npurpose.' All these come to mind when we hear of a fountain of living\nwaters becoming a well-spring for those who drink of it.\n\nBut it may be that we turn away with a sigh from such intimate talk,\nknowing how far we are ourselves from the union with God which the\nChristian depicts. And it may be, too, that there dawns upon us the\nthought that when this Christian speaks of 'atonement' he means, most\nlikely, some process of God by which that union is accomplished, and the\nneglect or opposition of men is overcome. What difference is there, we\nmay be inclined to ask, between divine incarnation, as the Christian\nsees it,\u2014God's communication of himself, the fountain of living waters,\nto men\u2014and an atonement between him and them? Is not the union of\nincarnation the very act and process of atonement? Is not the redemption\nof man effected in and through the self-expression of God in him? When\nhe is one with God he is 'redeemed' from the neglect and opposition of\nsin, and of the rejection of God; and then God is manifest and expressed\nin him. Is this a question of words? Perhaps, rather, it is a question\nof emphasis on one or other side, man's side or God's.\n\nBut if, for the moment, we lay emphasis on the side of man and speak of\natonement and redemption instead of speaking of incarnation and our\ncommunion and union with God, there are certainly elements of special\ndifficulty to be encountered. The explanations of Christians are by no\nmeans as trustworthy as their insight and the knowledge they derive from\ntheir great 'Redeemer.' They explain in legalistic terms, or\nmaterialistic, or in terms of a despotic rule, a process and an act of\nlife given and received. They are prone to ignore the prophet in favour\nof the Scribe or the Pharisee. And once again the prophet may justly put\ninto the mouth of God the old reproach\u2014'My people have committed two\nevils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed\nthem out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.' They build\nup their inventions and hide beneath them the sublimity of living fact;\nand we who ask them concerning the fact are shown the ruins of those\ninventions. We ask them for bread and they give us the stones they have\nput together. There is hardly a religious problem or question, or fact\nand process, more encumbered than this with that tradition which makes\nthe word of God of none effect. No doubt there are Christians who are\nboth able and willing to help such men and women as are likely to ask\ntheir help; the difficulty is to find such Christians. Let us see, now,\nhow we can work out for ourselves an understanding of what is really\nmeant by atonement between men and God, what Christians really mean when\nthey express themselves so ill about it, what it really is that really\nhappens.\n\nAtonement between God and men undoubtedly implies the forgiveness of\nsinful men by God. They cannot possibly enter into union with him unless\nthey are forgiven. When they sin against their fellow-men they cannot be\nunited or re-united with them on any other condition than that their\nfellows forgive them. But, we must insist, it is immoral to forgive them\nunless they at least _will_ to cast away their sinfulness. It is always\nimmoral, too, not to punish, that is, not to condemn, sin and\nsinfulness; and therefore (since a man and his activity are one) the\nsinner. How then can God at once condemn (or punish) and forgive the\nsin, sinfulness and the sinner? Are not condemnation (or punishment) and\nforgiveness mutually exclusive? If we condemn or punish do we not fail\nto forgive? If we forgive, must we not remit punishment and cease to\ncondemn?\n\nNow here is a difficulty that reflexion should remove. For it comes of\nwhat happens in the lower stages of man's social relations and spiritual\ngrowth. We think of punishment as somehow the expression of\nvindictiveness, while forgiveness alone is the expression of love. So it\nis in us beginners. So it begins to cease to be, even in us, as we grow\ninto new life and a new spirit. Let us think how we should behave to an\nevil-doer if we loved him to the utmost of our power of love. Should we\ncondone his evil-doing by withholding that condemnation which is\nexpressed in punishment, whether of look or word or deed (as\ncircumstance demands), and extend to him an artifice of forgiveness in\nwhich the moral disunion between him and ourselves shall be concealed?\nWould that truly represent our faithful love for him, that love which\nmust seek not an appearance but a reality of harmony, and for his sake\ntolerate no encouragement, not even the slightest possibility of\nderiving encouragement, for his evil doing? Obviously it would not. For\nhis sake we should unmistakably condemn, making known to him in look or\nword or deed our condemnation. It would be the expression of our love\nand, with forgiveness, is of the nature and property of love. We should\nfeel no shadow of vindictiveness. In our relation with him the\nforgiveness and the condemnation of love would be one.\n\nWe encounter here a false antithesis in a matter of spirit and life.\nForgiveness and punishment in God or in the man of God can neither be\nantithetical nor need to be reconciled. In the life of love they are not\ndivided. God, who is love as he is spirit and life, forgives and\ncondemns by one consistent act of love. There is no immoral condonation\nin his forgiveness, no vindictiveness about his punishment. And this the\nChristian knows both by his own experience and by the life and lessons\nof his redeeming Lord. 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and\nscourgeth every son whom he receiveth.' No true Christian would have it\notherwise.\n\n'If forgiveness means\u2014as it properly does\u2014the wise and patient care for\nthe criminal's welfare, for his regeneration and recovery into the life\nof a good society, then there is no distinction whatever between\nforgiveness and punishment.' That, precisely, is what forgiveness ought\nto be made to mean, and punishment likewise. But again we see in a\nmirror darkly and are confused by our history and our own shortcomings.\nTherefore even Christians misjudge God, or make for themselves 'broken\ncisterns'\u2014a false God who is no fountain of living waters, pouring forth\na never-failing, self-consistent, self-giving love; but a judge, a king,\na despot, after the pattern of the world, a God aloof administering\npunishment or forgiveness, both alike unworthy and misplaced. There is\nno difficulty at all in this question of punishment and forgiveness if\nwe remember perfect love and its aim, as Jesus shows them.\n\nMoreover, we must bear in mind, nothing about God who 'is spirit' is\neither an artifice or a machine. So his punishments, his expressed\ncondemnations, are never artificial, never mechanical. They arise\n'naturally,' as we say; and in large part we provide them, we men,\nourselves. There are certain 'natural' consequences, miscalled\npunishments, which are entailed upon the body as, for instance, when a\nchild puts his hand into the fire or a man disregards what we call the\n'laws' of health. The due and true moral punishment of persons by\npersons is just as natural. The nature of persons is spiritual in the\norder of their uplifted life, and is one with that life. Their nature\nis, in fact, no other than that life and those persons. We cannot\nseparate, though we may sometimes in word distinguish, between the man\nand his nature. Consequently all due and right punishment by persons\n(punishment by love, which is the same as forgiveness by love) is wholly\nnatural. It is a natural consequence of sin, the reaction against sin\nwith which good persons or a good society must encounter it. There is no\narbitrary infliction of punishment, and no arbitrary forgiveness, by the\ngood man, the good society, or the good God. Nor should there be in\nregard to his own sins or sinfulness by the man who newly rejects them,\nthe newly penitent man. He, the new man, reacts according to his new\nnature, and in one and the same activity should condemn and forgive\nhimself. He must be penitent but he should not be remorseful. If he does\nnot forgive himself as well as condemn himself, it may be because he is\nnot humble enough and penitent enough to bear with the fact that he has\ndeserved his condemnation.\n\nWe must remind ourselves, however, that it is of spiritual nature in\nourselves to _choose_. The activity of love is chosen and determined by\nthe good man, with its forgiveness and its punishment. And although the\nperfection of God must preclude choice between alternatives, although\nfor perfect wisdom there can never be more than one course open, yet\nthere is no automatism, there cannot be automatism of the mechanical\nkind, in God who, as the Christian maintains, _is_ love. His love is\nwilled though not chosen. It is of the vital, intelligent, voluntary\nactivity of a spiritual being. And so both punishment and forgiveness\nare willed, in God or in man; and as the man approaches full union with\nGod so does his choice approach that inevitable wisdom for which there\nis no longer consciousness of choice. This is the manner of spirit and\nlife; that which is personally real in any man, all that is in God, is\nnot merely consented to or assented to but is always actively willed,\nnever compulsorily or mechanically apportioned. So it is right and\nreasonable to say that God or the man of God punishes and forgives. It\nis not right to say that the punishment and forgiveness of either,\nthough it is wholly natural, is in any kind of way automatic with the\nautomatism of a machine, or even with that relative automatism of\nmaterial things which we speak of as natural law. Without the activity\nof love there can be no true punishment and no true forgiveness; there\nis only vindictiveness or condonation.\n\nThe treatment we have given our wrong-doers in the past is not fitted to\nthrow clear light on Christian atonement and the ways of God with man.\nOn the contrary, it has obscured both. But we are learning. Truth,\nexperience, and the _Gesta Christi_ work for our learning. Or, as the\nChristian says, the divine spirit works for it and 'strives' with us,\nthat is, works with us that we may work out our own salvation.\n\nWe have begun to say to the children we are training\u2014'Come now, this is\n_wrong_; let's see how we' [_we_, mark you] 'can set it right.' We have\ndiscovered that unless the child works with us our punishment fails, and\nour forgiveness fails, of any real effect for goodness. But Christians\nknew this from their beginning, though many of them forget they did. In\nthe last resort it is why Christ died.\n\nWhen, carrying with us our new method, we have passed from the child to\nthe criminal, and extend to him that 'wise and patient care' for his\nwelfare, which is forgiveness and punishment in one, we shall be in a\nbetter position for seeing what Christian atonement really means and\nis\u2014how real it is and how it depends on co-operation between the Saviour\nand the offender; how, always, the Saviour must win the offender first\nif he is to save him. Then we shall read the Gospels of the Christian\nwith new eyes and a new understanding.\n\nIf you want to see punishment and forgiveness both in one, turn to the\nparable of the prodigal son. Could any punishment be more salutary or\nmore piercing to the man whose penitence had shown him his utter\nunworthiness? Could forgiveness be more complete, more gracious, than\nthat which he received? Consider how his penitence must have been\ndeepened, and his sense of unworthiness increased, when he found himself\nin his father's arms, and his father's house, honoured, rejoiced over,\nfeasted? In proportion to the depth and fulness of penitence do these\ntwo, punishment and forgiveness, given in love, become distinguishable\nonly by the reaction to them of the penitent. He alone knows how love\nhurts and heals in one and the same act and moment.\n\nThen, if you want to learn the many forms punishment may take, seek\nfurther. Look at the story of the woman taken in adultery. 'Hath no man\ncondemned thee?' ... 'Neither do I condemn thee: go, and _sin no more_.'\nPunishment and forgiveness imparted in one profound paradox of love's\njudgement. What do you think was its effect on the woman who had looked\ninto the prophet's eyes as he lifted them from the dust? 'Hath no man\ncondemned thee?' 'No man, Lord,' she said; and they were the words\nhumility and shame would choose.\n\nA degree further\u2014consider the picture of a final judgement, with the\n'Son of man in his glory' and the nations gathered before him to be\nshown their union with him, or their disunion, in a clearness none could\nmistake. 'Come, ye blessed,' he says, 'inherit the kingdom prepared for\nyou from the foundation of the world'\u2014the kingdom in which all men are\none with the Holiest, with the living Truth himself and Beauty 'in his\nglory'\u2014come with me. For I was an hungred, thirsty, a stranger.... Naked\nand ye clothed me, sick, in prison, and ye came unto me.... And yet\nthese blessed had never known what they did. It was not he, so far as\nthey knew, that they had succoured. Not for his sake but for love's they\nhad done it; not even, indeed, at the heart of it, for love's sake, but\nbecause they loved, because in them the well-spring of love streamed\nforth and they gave their very selves to those others who had only need\nof them. They were of love and were love's own. Love as shown to these\nwho needed it was not distinguishable, even by their reaction to it,\ninto punishment and forgiveness. It was but love.\n\nThen those others\u2014'Depart from me,' he says\u2014and there was a vision\npainted of the unutterable horrors of a state of separation and\nloneliness and self-embittered remorse\u2014'I was an hungred and ye gave me\nno meat.' They also, had not known\u2014'Lord, when saw we thee an hungred?'\nIf they had known they would assuredly have hastened to him with their\nmeat, asked him to their feasts, lavished all upon him. But for what\nsake? For no other than their own. Love had no place in their hearts,\nnor had the Lord. Only self-seeking. They were their own Lords and Gods.\nAnd thenceforth they had to know it. In their impenitent, disappointed,\ncheated (they would say) and remorseful hearts there was no room for\nanything but the sense of punishment. Their inevitable reaction to the\nvoice of love, as it reproached their lack of love, shut out both\nforgiveness and all possibility of the sense of it.\n\nSo we come to the extreme of distinction between the ways of the showing\nof love. Here is all punishment, it seems, to the sinner. But it is he\nwho makes love so. It is very love that punishes, a consistent,\nunwavering love which, in the sinner's last extremity, shows itself to\nthe utmost he can receive and in the only way he can receive. What, I\nask you, would a man like this make of a love that should express itself\n(if in the nature of love it could thus express itself) as condoning the\nwant of love and professing oneness in so complete an alienation? Not\nonly does the nature of love forbid such an expression, but the nature\nof the self-worshipper, who cannot receive it.\n\nThere is a very marvellous knowledge of the hidden heart shown in these\nprophetic teachings. As we converse with the Supreme Person of the\nGospels we feel him searching out our bones and marrow. To him there\nlies open the secret of disunion among us personal beings and the secret\nof the utmost furtherance, and the means towards furtherance, of the\nconversion of our will from self-seeking to love-finding. This utmost\nfurtherance necessarily falls short of the compulsion love can never\neven contemplate or man endure. A man compelled to love is unthinkable.\nWords, mere empty words these are that so speak of him. He cannot be. If\nhe could be compelled he could not be man; if the semblance of love were\nforced upon him it would not be love. But the atonement in which the\nChristian believes shows the love of God working to further love in man\nto an utmost God alone can reach. Punishment and forgiveness work\ntogether as that love, and the life of Jesus and the Cross on which he\ndied are at once their final showing-forth, their clearest call to man,\nand the tremendous acceptance by man of all that they entail and are.\n\nHere, indeed, is the fountain of love in its fulness. We need not wonder\nthat the disciple, having in mind his living and triumphant Lord, hears\nhim say to us who desire to drink of the waters of love\u2014'Whosoever\ndrinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the\nwater that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up\ninto everlasting life.'\n\nChristian atonement means restoration to the only real and full union\nand communion of persons, that of divine love.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VII\n\n         Nature, in a fashion whose details are still only\n         faintly hinted to us men, constitutes a vast society.\n                                                      _Royce._\n\n\nThe Christian shows in his root principles, we are bound to confess, a\nprofound sense of personality and of the relations of persons. That this\ncomes of his relation to the Supreme Person from whom he has derived\nthem can hardly be denied. It is in a person, Jesus Christ, that he has\nseen God and learnt about him; and the judgements and love of God that\nhe discerns he discerns in Christ. As the spirit of Christ becomes one\nwith his spirit so do his own judgements and his own love become those\nof God in him, and his principles are embodied in his life. All wisdom\nis divine, and all love, the Christian says. And, undoubtedly, men who\nare earnestly and disinterestedly seeking these, and discovering how in\nthat search they penetrate into the truth and reality of moral and\npractical affairs of life, must find that the Christian is worth\nlistening to, perhaps even worth watching. That is, when he has 'the\nmind of Christ.' Otherwise he confuses judgement and blurs, if he does\nnot efface, his principles. In 'the mind of Christ' he is for us 'a\nwell-spring of water'; without that, if he only calls himself by the\nname and is either the Scribe, the Pharisee, or the false prophet, he is\nfar more helpless, far more misleading and misled, than they are who\nhonestly seek truth and know they have not found it.\n\nIn the last chapter we heard what the man with the mind of Christ had to\nsay about punishment and forgiveness as between persons. And one\ndifficulty that disturbs others, many others, besides those who approach\nthe Christian religion from the direction of science, has surely been\nlessened by him. But besides this, in that chapter we referred, in\npassing, to the calamities of what we narrowly call 'nature,' the burnt\nchild, the man of ruined health; and we said that these were not\nstrictly affairs of punishment. But, undoubtedly, they are often\nregarded as punishment by religious men, by Christian men. We may turn\nto our Christian, whose best has been so good, and ask him what the mind\nof Christ is on this matter. Does the Lover and Father of Jesus inflict\nplague and pestilence, earthquake and fire, on evil-doers, as a human\njudge inflicts prison or the hangman's cord, and once inflicted\nmutilation and torture? The God of the Old Testament, so his prophets\nsaid, was not unlike our judges. What is the God of the New, as Jesus\nshowed him? The answer is not far to seek.\n\n'Ye have heard that it hath been said'\u2014'But I say unto you.' He maketh\nhis sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the\njust and on the unjust.' ... 'those eighteen, upon whom the tower in\nSiloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all\nmen that dwelt in Jerusalem?' And then the warning words\u2014'I tell you,\nNay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.' Warning,\nthese last words are, and, it may be, puzzling. They seem to imply\npunishment, doom, in this falling of a tower, though no sinners were\nspecially selected from others for the death it brought. What is there\nbehind this? Let us think, and bring to bear on the problem what we have\nlearnt about the world (and therefore about God) elsewhere. And let us\nconsult with the Christian. He is our authority now on his own affairs,\nas the philosopher and the scientific man are on theirs. Well, in the\nfirst place it is plain that no one of our authorities countenances\narbitrary enactment. Thus much is plain about the events of nature\n(usually so-called), that they are no more arbitrary than the\njudgements, or the punishment and forgiveness, of a just man or a just\nGod. What we want to know is the way in which their order is related to\nthe order of justice between persons. That a tower falls on eighteen\nsinners who are not worse sinners than those upon whom it does not fall\nlooks bad for justice and consequently for love. But is it bad?\n\nWe are opening up one of the most formidable of problems. Let us bear in\nmind, however, that we have seen one thing precluded by the mind of\nChrist\u2014a belief on our part that the man who suffers or dies from an\n'accident' or catastrophe of nature is thereby pointed out as punished\nby God. The selective, though equally natural, punishments of God are of\nquite another order; they single out unerringly, with the utmost\nsubtlety and fineness, man from man. They are determined for himself by\neach man; he works out his own damnation as he works out his own\nsalvation, God working with him for both. And that is why the adjustment\nis so accurate between the man who will not be saved and the doom that\nfalls upon him. The calamities of earth are far too rough and ready to\nbe God's instruments of selection. When (or if) one Grand Duke is the\nsole survivor of a wrecked ship and a Te Deum is sung in thankfulness to\nGod, the mind of Christ is ignored, his plain words are ignored. 'Think\nye that this Grand Duke was a man of God above all men that were on that\nship?' we hear him ask. And we do not hear him say that if we all repent\nwe shall all likewise be rescued. The kingdom of heaven is neither\nbought nor sold, and no repentance will purchase safety upon earth.\n\nAll this lies on the face of these illuminating words spoken from the\nmind of Christ. But there is more to be learnt about them and from them.\nWe are thrown back upon the mystery of the fundamental relation between\nmatter and spirit. And if we cannot do more, we can at least consider\nwhat experience shows us every day concerning that relation and what we\nfind when we reflect upon it. There is that tower now. Towers may be\nbuilt to stand for centuries, perhaps thousands of years. There is no\nindication that the fall of this particular tower was due to an\nearthquake, against which its strength would have been useless. We may\nreasonably suppose that it was not strong, that there were faults in its\ndesign, or building or material, or all three or any two. A tower well\ndesigned, well built and of good materials may, perhaps, outlast mankind\nupon this earth. And at least it will not fall; it will only wear away\nand crumble. This tower fell through the fault of sinners. Was the fault\nmoral, or was it, as we say, merely intellectual? Was there anything of\nthe spirit about it? And we must answer that as it was fault in a human\nbeing, a spiritual and moral person, there certainly must have been\nmoral fault. The intellectual element is not separate from the moral.\n\nThink\u2014if all the men concerned in building that tower had been\ndisinterested seekers after goodness and truth and beauty, would it have\nfallen as it did? What, you may say (but I am assured that you will not,\nif you have read thus far), what is the connexion between a love of\ngoodness, truth and beauty, and the building of a tower? What, in fact\n(and this you may well ask), is the true relation between spirit and\nlife on the one hand, and the successful use of material things on the\nother? Does a man use them better, that is, more successfully, because\nhe is as God would have him be, morally and spiritually?\n\nThe narrow outlook of some religious men, and their abstraction of\nreligion from the wide range of its concerns into the narrowness of\ntheirs, blinds them to the wide range of goodness, of beauty, and of\ntruth. The man who is as God would have him be (according to the mind of\nChrist), if he had to build a tower, would seek as he seeks salvation to\nfind out the truth of towers, of their materials, of their design and of\ntheir building. He would not only know that this was his duty, but he\nwould know or feel that it was his heart's desire. He would throw\nhimself into the pursuit of this truth because he was a lover of truth.\nAnd in loving truth he would show his love of God. Therefore he would\nuse good materials, not bad, good stone, good mortar, and he would put\nthese together with due regard to their characters, their truth. And his\nlove of beauty would conspire with his love of truth to bring about the\nstrength and stability of his tower. Beauty in these things is a\nguarantee of truth, or rather its evidence. So closely are the three\nlinked in the love of them and the realization of them, that we may know\nthem to be one. They are to be distinguished, but they cannot be\nseparated, one from another. And so those builders of our tower who\nshould be disinterested in their worship of the three in one, would (we\nmay well say) have set up at Siloam a tower very different from that\nwhich fell. It might have endured, like the Tower of David, to this day.\n\nSin, then, that is, the refusal to follow after truth, beauty and\ngoodness, and thus after God made known to the soul, had a very real\nconnexion with the fall of that tower. But in this respect of sin its\nbuilders were no worse than other men 'who dwelt at Jerusalem.' All\nthese men had come short of full devotion to God as they saw God, to the\nlight they perceived, the truth they might attain, the beauty that\nsummoned them and the goodness that should have been theirs. Not in this\nregard is the fall of the tower selective. Indeed there is nothing to\nshow that it fell upon a single one of its builders, any more than that\nit selected the worst of the sinners. It may have caused to 'perish' a\nparty of mere sight-seers.\n\nOnly through that solidarity of man which links 'the crimes of each to\nthe sorrows of all' is the fault of the builders linked with the\nperishing of those eighteen. And again we have testimony against any\nselection of the bad from the good by the calamities of earth. Not even\nthe retribution of the kind of badness which bad building is falls, by\nGod's determination, upon the evil-doer, through instruments of the\nearth. They are far too rough, these things, too indiscriminating. They\ndo not pierce to the joints and the marrow; they hit like a blind man's\nbludgeon.\n\nYet this they assuredly are not. As the personal punishment and\nforgiveness of God seek and find the sinner himself in the depths of his\nbeing and to the utmost of his activity, so these things, Towers of\nSiloam, Armageddons, plague and pestilence, search out our corporate sin\nand sinfulness, reach the community of sinners in their interaction. By\npain and sorrow for all, they bring to light both the sins and the\nshortcomings of each. Our responsibility for Armageddon extends over the\ndevastation it has wrought, as the responsibility of those builders of\nthe tower made the deaths of the eighteen it killed their own work. In\nthe community of life is community of crime and suffering and all their\nconsequences. There is an identity one with another among men, which\nthey cannot escape. They are one body even when they are not one spirit,\nand every member of the body may entail disaster on the rest, as he may\nbring redemption. If we could not hinder life we could not help it. And\ntherefore that word of Christ which was no doubt primarily addressed to\nthose men of Jerusalem whose sins were inviting doom, has other points\nof significance we need to note. 'Unless ye repent, ye shall all\nlikewise perish.' All\u2014the community; likewise\u2014through aid from the\ncalamities and catastrophes of that outer world of things and persons\nwith which we are so closely bound, as well as from the snares and the\nbeguiling, the temptations and betrayal, we make for ourselves in our\nmisuse of it.\n\nWe are one with the earth\u2014let us remember that. And even those\ncatastrophes of earth for which we seem to have no responsibility, storm\nand flood and earthquake, are not cut off from a relation with ourselves\nthat may some day be more clear. We are but beginners in the task of\nentering upon our heritage of earth. And when we try to look deep into\nthe mystery of matter and spirit what we see makes us think that they\nare not unlike the red and violet ends of a spectrum, which between them\npasses from colour to colour, but which, when our analytical stretching\nout is over, returns to the multiplicity in unity of white light. The\nChristian, by his sacramentalism and his emphasis on incarnation,\nconfesses their kinship, as does the artist when out of three sounds he\nframes 'not a fourth sound, but a star,' and out of mud or marble, a\nvision.\n\nWe cannot penetrate this mystery; but when we recognize the solidarity\nof man with man, we may try to remember that it must reach beyond man,\nnot only above him but below.\n\n                  *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen the Christian sends us to the tower of Siloam he does us good\nservice. If all Christians had learnt their lesson from that instead of\nfrom an older tradition and many superstitions, there would have been no\nneed to send us. We should have known long ago what it tells of the\njudgements of God and the heavy responsibilities of men. And if the\nobjection is made that the immediate application of the words of the\nprophet was far narrower than this to which we have carried it, our\nanswer is that the mark of prophetic teaching is its inexhaustible\nrichness of meaning and its proof that wisdom, of its essence, applies\nto life in every aspect and mode that life may display.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER VIII\n\n          Notre libert\u00e9, dans les mouvements m\u00eames par\n          o\u00f9 elle s'affirme, cr\u00e9e les habitudes naissantes qui\n          l'\u00e9toufferont si elle ne se renouvelle par un effort\n          constant.\n                                                    _Bergson._\n\n\nIt is quite true that to be popular a religion must be corrupt. The fact\nis noted both by its critics and enemies and by its friends and\ndevotees. They express their minds in different terms but they agree.\nThere is, however, a difference running through their agreement, at\nleast in many cases. The critics who are also enemies regard the\ncorruption not strictly as corruption but as the clearer manifestation\nof the true character religion has from the beginning. The religious man\nmeans precisely what he says when he calls it corrupt. There is a\nreality, true, beautiful, good, which men in the multitude do not find\nattractive, but which may be adapted, one way or another, overlaid,\ndelicately or barbarously perverted, to suit them.\n\nJesus Christ was not popular, nor were his principles. For a time, no\ndoubt, people heard him gladly. He went about among them doing good,\nhealing, compassionate. But when they realized how discordant with\nthemselves his prophetic message really was they hounded him to death.\n'Not this man but Barabbas,' they cried. Barabbas was far more popular\nthan this prophet without honour in the country that should have known\nhim best, and did know enough of him to be sure that he and his\ninterests were alien from them and theirs.\n\nIt is this that stands in the gate of popularity over against an\nuncorrupted Christian religion, this separation from the people and\ntheir interests as they commonly are. The kingdom for which Jesus lived\nand died, the community of wisdom and love and self-giving, is not\ndesired by the societies in which narrower self-interests reign. 'Change\nyour minds,' the prophet must always say to his people, 'repent, change\nyour minds about everything in the world, about yourselves, and about\nGod.'\n\nCan we wonder that bit by bit compromise creeps in? Anything so\nsubversive must be accommodated here and there to things as they are,\nfor things as they are have to remain\u2014somehow. The popular conception of\nright government and right morals, the popular craving for magic and for\nroyal roads and easy-going machines, for an assured salvation or an\ninfallible guide, permeates insensibly the religion which a poetic\nreligious genius has revealed. The divine voice is drowned in the\nshouting of men who will be heard and listened to. So, whether great\nRome or the little Bethel be established in popularity, the Christian\nreligion must have been corrupted in it to meet the desires and condone\nthe sins and errors of the people who have so disastrously been won\nwithout being transformed.\n\nChristianity became popular. Shall we, then, look for its truth in\npopular presentations of it? If science were popular, should we seek its\ntruth that way? Or do we take popular philosophy, or the view of the\nworld or of the British Constitution presented in newspapers, as our\nguide to the truth of these things? Yet it seems that when a man studies\nthe Christian religion he does just what he would regard himself as a\nfool for doing in regard to any other serious matter. He takes it in its\nestablished and popular or once popular guise, and then says\u2014'this,\nthis, is what the Christian religion is.' And if another presentation is\noffered him, say that of the Gospels or the great mystics, prophets,\nsaints, who have been nurtured in the true faith, and fed by the divine\nwisdom of Christ, he says it is not Christianity at all, because\nChristianity is and must be taken as the religion of Christians in the\nmultitude, not as the private discoveries or inventions of certain\ngifted or peculiar men\u2014those saints, prophets, mystics\u2014or even as Jesus\nChrist himself, living, dying, living for ever, whom Nietzsche took to\nbe the only Christian.\n\nIf a man is more careful, he seems to himself to have been as careful as\nhe need be when he goes to the official presentation of religion by\ntheologians and doctors, and in the organized procedure of religious\ngovernment and institutions. That, he says, must show me what\nChristianity really is. That is Christian orthodoxy. And, undoubtedly,\nif he carries his investigations far he will find there much that is\nmore valuable and more difficult to dispose of easily, than what he\nfinds current in the multitude. Yet here he needs more caution than he\nusually shows, however careful he is to distinguish between the official\northodoxy and the unofficial representation of it. He needs to learn or\nto recall continually the manner of life and thought everywhere in\nregard to life's effects and tools and products. He needs to tell\nhimself that just as in the monsters of bygone epochs on the earth life\nwas overwhelmed in monstrosity, and in the armoured beasts it was\nchecked by the very instruments that seemed its best protection, so in\nall human organizations (and every Church, whatever else it may be, is a\nhuman organization) there is an ever-present danger to the spirit and\nthe life they have been designed, well or ill, to serve. 'Automatism\ndogs our steps; the formula crystallizes the living thought that gave it\nbirth, the idea is oppressed by the word, the spirit overwhelmed by the\nletter.' And if to this ever-present danger to religion there is added,\nas there very frequently is, the insidious influence of the\nworldly-world, of ambition, political intrigue, the pressure of popular\ndemands and of a narrow but immensely powerful self-interest, the\nreligious institution, if it persists unchanged, easily\u2014one may dare to\nsay inevitably\u2014ceases to bear faithful witness to the religious life.\n\nAgain, the procedure of theologians, and above all the procedure of\n'theologizers,' is open and always has been open to serious question.\nThey are aware that their work is one of science; but as it began in a\ntime when science had not learnt its best methods, nor the necessity of\never relating itself anew to living experience, theirs is a science very\nfar from being what we have come to know and trust as scientific.\nMoreover, although it does change and move and grow, far more than most\nof us or of its professors see or acknowledge, it has never formally\nadopted change and movement and growth as in principle and fact\nnecessary for its well-being. The theologians who claim to represent the\northodoxy of by far the great majority of Christians, those of the\nChurch, Eastern or Western, are in the main determined to make every\neffort to abide in the old paths, and with more or less ingenuity accord\nthemselves with a past supposed unchanging. That the present changes,\nthey too often deplore, that in and by their own work the past has been\nchanged, they seem not to know. And their own reluctance to change both\ndisguises the fact that despite themselves they have done so, and\nmilitates against the value for other people of their change. The man\nwho looks to them as representing the Christian religion takes them at\ntheir own estimate as in the main unchanging, and judges what they give\nhim as being 'that which was from the beginning.' Along the Christian\nages Christian theologians have changed into their own likeness the\n'faith once delivered to the saints' and they have but rarely been\nsaints.\n\nIt is to the saints and the prophets that we must look for the Christian\nreligion, rather than to its doctors. But more than to any of these it\nis to the Supreme Person, Christ himself, saint and prophet above and in\nall others.\n\nWe have already found our advantage in this for the discussions of these\npages. We have caught glimpses of the depth and range of some of the\nprinciples embodied both in the teaching and in the life of Jesus. The\nGospels have brought us riches, although we have only taken grains of\ngold from their mine here or there. The Christian whom we are using as\nour authority for the time being is one who has sat at the feet of\nChrist and has the mind of Christ. He is one, happily, among many of all\nages. And if for us he has no name, no concrete existence, nevertheless,\nas he is he is a witness whose testimony we can put to proof. He brings\nhis documents, and better, he appeals to the witness in ourselves as\ntruthseekers. He makes an appeal to which some of us at least find\nresponse within us. There are moments when what he says appears to be\nself-evident, so firmly rooted in us is a belief in those living facts\nof freedom and dependence, holiness and sin, love and its rejection, of\nwhich he speaks; so little is there, if there is anything, in what we\nhave learnt from science and philosophy, that disputes them.\n\nAs to his documents\u2014they too both carry and call forth their witness. We\nhave those Gospels from different men; they speak in different voices\nand each with its own predilection, even prejudice, and its own\ncolouring of thought, of knowledge or ignorance, of desire. Yet which\namong these writers could invent his subject? Which has succeeded in\nseriously defacing it? Behind them all he stands, the prophet of\nNazareth, Jesus\u2014God and man, the Christian says\u2014and draws men to\nhimself.\n\nNo doubt the Christian has much more to tell us than we can ask him for\njust now, or admit to our discussion. He has a great deal to say in\ndefence of his institutions and his theologians, which may well be said\nand listened to. But it remains true that for us who are now asking, not\nfor justification of these though ample justification there may be, but\nfor the deepest principles of the Christian religion, it is to the mind\nof Christ and to him who has that mind that we must turn. Jesus built up\nno institution, gave no laws, announced no established plans, erected no\ninfallible authority. He gave principles, living and spiritual\nprinciples. 'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they\nare life.' So his great mystical interpreter hears him say. And men have\nindeed found response to his words in the opening out of their own life\nand spirit.\n\nWe seek the truth and reality of spirit and life, we who are seeking\nhere. And in this search we find ourselves more and more at one with the\nChristian. The view that he and his fellows take of the Christian\nChurch, that organization which is at least meant to foreshadow the\nkingdom Jesus preached, lies beyond the scope of this enquiry. All that\nneeds to be said here is that we must not and do not foreclose an\nenquiry that shall include it. We stand now upon the very threshold of\nthe kingdom; and, may be, we look with longing eyes.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER IX\n\n         There is nothing said of man throughout all scripture\n         but what supposes him to stand, in nature,\n         under a necessity of choosing something that is\n         natural, either life or death, fire or water.\n                                                _William Law._\n\n\nSo far-reaching a confession of the spiritual freedom and the spiritual\ndependence of man as is shown in the principles of Christian incarnation\nand atonement has never been popular. As they passed through the popular\nmind incarnation was often and widely made to seem a thunderclap from on\nhigh and atonement a transaction of the heavenly courts. All generations\nhave clamoured for signs; and because none, such as they desired, has\nbeen given they have invented signs for themselves. The spiritual union\nof person with person in a coincidence of knowledge, will, aims, and\nmutual love, is at once too natural to be remarked in ordinary life and\ntoo remote from what is remarked to focus attention. It is much easier\nto think of a God disguised in manhood than of one who has taken manhood\ninto himself and is 'made man' by a communication of himself to the\nman's own self. A king can masquerade as a beggar\u2014that is a simple\naffair; but for the king to become a beggar and the beggar a king, the\none remaining, nevertheless, beggar and the other king, is beyond belief\nby men whose belief is bounded by the behaviour of things that can be\nseen and handled, and by the logic of space. And it is much easier to\nthink of salvation as bargained for, or bought, or handed over, than as\nattained only in the union of love and the co-operation of persons. In\nthis corruption of religion human freedom has too often either been lost\nsight of or made a fixed character of man as man, a mark distinguishing\nhim from other creatures and things. He is supposed to be free, but not\nto have the capacity to grow in freedom. 'Freedom of the will,'\naccording to this, is like the right to a vote. It is a thing-character,\nready-made, in a man, as the right to a vote is a thing-character\nassured to a man of a certain age and standing. A man does not advance\ntowards spiritual freedom and grow in it; he has it as a diamond has a\ndegree of hardness that enables it to cut glass. It is, in fact, a\nnatural quality, not a growing achievement of growth that still goes on.\nTherefore it does not need to be fostered either by the man himself or\nby God. And it cannot be lost. So men too often have said.\n\nOn the other hand we have seen, in our enquiry, that life in its\nprogress from its first entrance upon earth seems to have had as its aim\ngrowth towards and in spiritual freedom. The force of life, in the\nchannel that led to man, seems to have been directed towards securing\nthe maximum of choice and of field of choice for him, the minimum of\ndetermination and of hindrance from without. We said that the brain is\nan organ of indetermination; we might have said that it is the organ of\na spirit seeking its fulfilment through freedom in growth, and growth in\nfreedom. No religion which does not show congruity with what we have\nlearnt about life can seem to us in truth of touch with it. The popular\nforms of Christianity do not show this congruity. Even the officially\ninstituted forms have, according to the manner of institutions, overlaid\nthat truth and encumbered spiritual and moral life with tradition,\nhabit, heritage that are become its burdens instead of its instruments\nof expression. Therefore we have to go to the prophet and learn of him,\ndrink from his clear fountain of living waters. There, unquestionably,\nwe find what we seek, religion in touch, in more than touch, with life.\nIt is one with life, this religion given and shown us in the prophet of\nNazareth.\n\nThen and there we see that the Christian doctrines of incarnation and\natonement should properly have an unmistakable connexion both with our\nown lives, their needs and aspirations, and with truth we have come to\nknow through men of science. Those doctrines are, to begin with, an\nexplicit recognition of a promise of freedom which the force of emergent\nlife has striven for and secured, and which men are called upon to\nrealize for themselves. That men shall fulfil their destiny more and\never more of life, it seems, must become theirs. That is, more and more\nof the spirit and life of God must become in very fact, not merely their\nown, but themselves. This the Christian speaks of as the incarnation or\nthe extension of the incarnation of God in man. And, plainly, there is\nnothing in the teaching of Jesus, or in his work and person, which\nimplies that this process is mechanical or that, being spiritual, it can\nbe inevitable. God in the nature of things, of himself, cannot\u2014will not,\nif you like, it is the same\u2014compel union with him. Therefore men can\nescape their destiny of union with God by rejecting his proffer of more\nand greater life. They have their fate in their own hands; they may\nchoose amiss.\n\nThen, the Christian says, that other aspect of the love of God, which in\nfact is only other because we speak of it as though it were and look at\nit in a special point of view, his atonement or reconciliation of man\nwith himself, comes into play. Here, too, love seeks to win love, will\ninvites the co-operation of will, and wisdom pleads. No mechanism, no\ncompulsion, nothing arbitrary or even commanding. 'Come unto me,' he\nsays. And every effort love can make that man may be won is made, even\nto that of the agony and death of the lover that the loved one may be\nrescued from slavery to self, and brought into the life of love and the\nliberty wherewith Christ would make him free.\n\nA deepening enslavement by sin, or a growing liberty in vital union with\nthe Christ of God\u2014these are the alternatives put before us in the\nChristian religion. And again we see life\u2014or shall we say God?\u2014striving\nto give freedom, yet with no preordained success. As in the plants and\nbeasts life found no open way for that advance, so, although in man the\nway was found, men can bring it to an end merely by desiring and seeking\nno more than gratification of the narrow interests of a self that is\nbounded by self-seeking. It seems that life can be as effectually\nchecked by this as, in a lower order, it was checked by the coating of\ncellulose on the vegetable cell. It is possible for a man so to imprison\nhimself in self as to shut out God, so to build a wall about himself as\nto cut off from his life that fountain of living waters on which its\nadvance and true continuance depend. He contracts into an eddy, a\ncircling stream narrowed within set boundaries of himself. He becomes as\nthe lower beasts, but worse than they because he is no beast.\n\nThe Christian says that when this process of cutting off and shutting\nout reaches completion, the man is in hell. And the language of symbol\nand pictorial imagination has spent itself in trying to express what\nthat really means. Naturally, the symbolism and the painting have varied\nwith the character of imagination at different times and in different\nnations. What we must tell ourselves is that they are no more than this,\nand that they may well both falter and fail before a horror so extreme.\n\nThe shutting-down, the extinction, of a man\u2014for this is what it amounts\nto\u2014who is capable of an indefinite advance in freedom and life, in love\nand wisdom and knowledge\u2014that is, in God and fellowship\u2014is a catastrophe\nwith which the blotting-out of all the mighty beasts of the past is\nincomparable. Consider, if he were the only man? Yet is he the less what\nhe is because he is one of millions? For one man, the Christian says,\nChrist would die, though it is for all men that he died. 'The very hairs\nof your head are numbered.'\n\nOne man in hell\u2014think of it. One man who might have been united with God\nin an influx of inexhaustible new life lifting him from order to order\nof glory\u2014that is what the Christian sees and what leads him, or has led\nhim often, to describe such a loss in terms from which we shrink to-day.\nBut if we learn to see what it is the Christian means, can we say that\nhe goes too far? Or shall we not say that if we had at our command words\nfit to depict his meaning they would go even farther? No doubt we see\nplainly the absurdity of material fires and the religious and\npsychological falsity of the picture of human beings vainly desiring\nGod, when we know that, as has been said by a great Christian, 'the sun\nmeets not the springing bud that stretches toward him, with half that\ncertainty, as God, the Source of all good, communicates himself to the\nsoul that longs to partake of him.' But the fact remains that to lose\nlife in 'the second death,' to pass out of all fellowship whether with\nman or God, to shrink into an ever-shrivelling creature who cares for\nnothing outside its ever-narrowing and concentrating self-love, is for\nany live, loving, healthy-minded man or woman as terrible and repulsive\na fate as ever a painter or poet or theologian of old times attempted to\ndescribe.\n\nYet it seems reasonable enough. If we will not live we shall not live.\nIf God, the Christian says, is permitted by us to reconcile us with\nhimself, he will reconcile us. If we do not bar out his fountains of\nlife they will live in us as well-springs. We are wholly dependent upon\nreceiving more of his life, but we cannot be compelled to receive it. We\nmay even decline freedom and lose what we had of it, employing it amiss;\nit is not an inalienable character stamped upon us. We have grown into\nenough of it to be able to refuse to have more. 'Whosoever hath, to him\nshall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away\neven that which he seemeth to have.'\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER X\n\n        A religion that is not founded in nature is all fiction\n        and falsity, and as mere a nothing as an idol.\n                                                 _William Law._\n\n\nThe gain or the loss of life\u2014this is what the Christian religion calls\nus to face. Will you be a slave to the life you have and in the end lose\nit, or at least all that makes it worth living? Or will you, in the\nliberty wherewith Christ makes you free, take up your heritage of more\nlife in union with him?\n\nThere is a good deal in our experience that may be read with advantage\nas commentary on this challenge of religion. There are men (we have\nknown them) who grow smaller before our eyes. We say that they are\nwrapped up in themselves. There are others who as plainly grow larger.\nTheir interests expand; they take in more of the concerns of other men\nand, as we put it, make them their own. These, obviously, far from being\nwrapped up in themselves, are for ever breaking down barriers and\npassing beyond them. If we do not see them for some time we find them\nhappily different. They are caring about ideas and aims and persons they\nwere not interested in before; they have been learning; they have, in\none word, grown. And those others will have shrunk. A man grows by the\nspiritual food on which he feeds. And if such a statement sounds remote\nfrom ordinary experience (which it is not), let us say that the more he\nreally has the more he really is.\n\nNow religion acknowledges this and interprets it. In the eyes of a\nreligious man such growth means a growth in God. And he points out that\nit happens only where a man has sought for its own sake, not for his,\nwhat he has won. He says that the way of life is a way of\ndisinterestedness in regard to self and interestedness in all else. And,\nas usual, he sends us to the Gospel for the fundamental principle\nunderlying what experience shows. 'Whosoever will save his life shall\nlose it.' That is the kernel of the matter. Because love is the secret\nof growth in spiritual life, whether intellectual, moral or aesthetic,\ngreed shall not procure its fruits. In the nature of things it cannot.\nThat is why growth in 'spirit and life' seems so paradoxical. When I\nwant food to eat I may be as greedy as I please. This will not prevent\nme from having it. When I want food of the spirit greed will only take\nme out of my true path and I shall find husks that the swine eat and\nDead Sea fruit.\n\nI cannot even discover truth or beauty or holiness, much less win them\nto myself, if I do not seek them for their own sake. I cannot see what\nanother man is, and I cannot make him at one with me in a real\nfellowship, unless I care about him (as we say) because he is what he\nis, and so make his interests mine. If I use any human being as a mere\ninstrument to serve my purpose I lose that human being, though I may\nkeep the instrument. Men and women, like goodness and truth and\nbeauty\u2014and God\u2014cannot be made mine unless I give myself to them.\n\n'It is very hard to be a Christian.' It certainly is. The man who\nhusbands life forfeits it, and yet life is dear. 'Die to live, the\nphilosopher advises, as his counsel of prudence. But how is a man to lay\ndown life from nothing more than prudence? How can a man be a prudent\nand careful adventurer of life? He may prudently and carefully be a\nmerchant, but never an adventurer. And true religion has no truck with\nmerchandise or merchants of the spirit. Its watchword is love\u2014the love\nthat gives, the love God is, the love royal that seeks no gain, the love\nof Christ.\n\nSo according to religion the way of giving is, in truth and experience,\nthe way of gain; but if we try to follow it for gain we find ourselves\naltogether outside the way, not giving and therefore without gain. It is\nhard to be a Christian. It is exceedingly hard to love as God loves. In\nfact we cannot, unless God shall become man in us. He is the supreme\ngiver and our supreme gain. Inasmuch as we love the things and persons\nGod loves, for their own sake (which, naturally, we shall do when he\ndwells in our hearts and our desires), we shall win them to ourselves;\nwhether they are, for instance, goodness, truth and beauty, or our\nfellow-men. And in thus and to that extent winning the objects of our\nlove we shall unveil that reality we either call by those abstract\nnames, or find revealed in our fellows\u2014the reality which is God. Under\nthose mere names God himself lies concealed. 'I am the way, the truth\nand the life'\u2014I myself, he says to the men who are discovering beauty or\nholiness or truth, am that which you ignorantly worship. 'When saw we\nthee?' they still may ask. Yet they knew him when through self-giving\nthey knew these. And names are nothing, where reality is tasted, touched\nand handled.\n\nAs God communicates himself or gives himself to us men, in sheer love of\nus, so must we communicate or give ourselves to all we seek. This is the\nway of that life the Christian calls eternal. No man follows it unless\nGod be with him; but every man may follow it, and will, unless he\nrefuses God.\n\nWhat, then, is it to refuse God? The answer is always the same. It is to\nenclose the life of self within a prison of self-seeking, to shut\noutside anything that seems likely to disturb this concentrated worship,\nto try to drag inside anything likely to profit its narrow interests, to\nuse things and persons as its instruments of self-guarding and\nself-seeking. And if self-guarding and self-seeking extend to the use of\nthe instruments of religion, as well they may in men and women of due\nprudence and ambition, we have the type of Pharisee whom Jesus\ndenounced, or the type of priest who judged him and condemned him as the\nenemy of God. All these are in some degree refusers of God. And a\nreligion that panders to self-guarding and self-seeking and encourages\ngreed or makes play with fear may be popular, but however\nwell-established, must be corrupt. So far as this goes, life is not in\nit, and it does but help men to disguise from themselves their loss of\nlife.\n\nThe incarnation of God and the atonement of man with man and with God in\nChrist are wrought by self-giving, that is by love. The whole process of\nnature is a sacrament of God's self-giving, rising to the full\nrevelation of love. These things are one. It is profoundly true that 'a\nreligion that is not founded in nature is all fiction and falsity, and\nas mere a nothing as an idol.' Yet the Christian religion, pre-eminently\nfounded in nature though it assuredly is, has been perverted, over and\nover again, to be an organized means by which men falsify a nature that\nis capable of an utmost self-giving to man and to God. The greedy and\nthe fearful have too often captured its organization, and the adventurer\nof love has been driven out. But both beyond and within those built-up\nwalls the true religion of Christ has always lived and is lasting now.\nLike the ferment in the meal it is everywhere alive in those who,\ndespite all the religious self-seeking around them, share the\nself-sharing of God. These have always had the alchemist's touch; they\nhave turned dross to gold and have used it to ends of God. Like the\ndivine powers they overrule the errors of men. But the pity is that this\nvery fact not rarely hinders both the detection and the setting right of\nthose errors. 'See,' men say, 'this is the nursery of saints.' And\nconfusion of judgement goes on. It is a pragmatic test that shows the\ndanger of pragmatic tests. Let us get back to principles, for who shall\ndare to say whether this or that is the nurture of saints. All things\nwork together for their good, as all things work together for the\ntruth-seeker's truth and for beauty in its discerner's eyes. For these,\nnothing is common or unclean.\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                               CHAPTER XI\n\n        Now whence was it that a religion, so serious in\n        its restraints, so beautiful in its outward form and\n        practices, and commanding such reverence from all\n        that beheld it, was yet charged by Truth itself with\n        having inwardly such an abominable nature? It\n        was only for this one reason, because it was a religion\n        of self.\n                                                 _William Law._\n\n\nAs heaven or hell depends on the choice between self-giving and\nself-seeking, so does the worship of the true God or the false. Names\nmay be mockeries here. The self-seeking Christian, worshipping, as he\nmay tell us, the God and Father of his Lord Jesus Christ, is doing\nnothing of the kind. He is worshipping that which he serves. If he could\nreally use the true God as a means towards the end he has at heart, that\nis, make God serve him, he would do so. This, in fact, is what he tries\nto do. Naturally he cannot succeed. And the God whom he thinks he\nworships is fiction and an idol; it is one who is his instrument in\nself-seeking, and that is a fictitious God. 'God is a Spirit; and they\nthat worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.' 'Thou shalt\nlove the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and\nwith all thy mind, and with all thy strength.' Here is the first clue to\nChristian worship. And the second is 'like unto it':\u2014'Thou shalt love\nthy neighbour as thyself.' The Christian comment on this is\ncharacteristic:\u2014'He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how\ncan he love God whom he hath not seen?' And the test is crucial. There\nis no true worship without love, and no love of God without love of the\nbrother-man. So the argument works itself out and finally excludes the\nconsistent and impenitent self-seeker from the worship of God.\n\nIndeed, in the nature of life in man, this exclusion is inevitable.\nUnless a man makes his neighbour and that neighbour's interests his own,\nhe necessarily excludes him from himself. In the nature of living\npersonal beings this must be, for only in harmony do persons coincide,\nonly by the stretching out of my interests and myself to embrace do I\ninclude. I must grow if my neighbour is to become for me 'as myself' and\nbe loved as myself. So that love of myself which is evil when confined\nto interests solely mine, becomes good as it expands. So the contracting\nof life within my narrow boundaries is escaped, and although I still\nlove myself I love a self that grows out and forth to the inclusion of\nall, even to the inclusion of God, whom then I shall love with the\nardour which in the contracted self is the very torment of its hell.\nOnly the directing of that ardour beyond the self can prevent it from\nbeing a consuming fire within the self. Therefore unless I learn to\nworship God (and here again words, names may mock at realities), I shall\n'perish' in my own flame.\n\nWorship is no pious luxury: it is a necessity of the spiritual life.\nEvery man who is growing in the spirit is a worshipper of God. He may\nnever use the name, he may be one of those who would say 'Lord, when saw\nwe thee?' but his love is showing him the true God in his own spirit and\nhis own truth, and, in showing him too the divine way of Love with men,\ncommands his worship. He has discovered the marvel of self-giving, and\nin that discovery the marvel of the divine way he cannot but adore; his\nlife, in fact, is adoration.\n\nFrom other men this way is hidden; and a God that may command their\nworship must be a different God and take another way. He must declare\nhimself in a power they can recognize, that kind of power which has\nkinship with the forces of men's machines and has uses like the uses of\nmachines. This God, who may perhaps, through what seems to them worship,\nbe made a means towards their own ends, is above all a God of an all but\nmaterial power. So, may be, they cringe before him, pour out praises,\nmake sacrifices, pay a dutiful service such as a supreme power of that\nkind may well call forth in the men they are. And then, if there comes\namong them a prophet, he pleads with them in God's name, 'I will have\nmercy and not sacrifice.' 'To what purpose cometh there to me incense\nfrom Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt offerings\nare not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.'\n\nJust such men as these self-seekers came to Jesus, asking for a miracle,\na sign. 'An evil and adulterous generation,' he said, 'seeketh after a\nsign.' Why 'evil and adulterous'? Surely because in seeking a sign such\nas would please them they were blind to the divine truth in the presence\nof which they stood, and, open-eyed for their own interests, were in\ntheir hearts trafficking with a false God.\n\nThat the craving for such signs, such miracle, is always evil and\nadulterous can hardly be said. Yet truly it partakes, in large measure,\nof the nature of sin. And at best it is blindness, blindness to the true\nmarvels of God in his manifestation through 'the things that are made'\nand are being made. We who have learnt of the history of earth have our\nsouls filled with marvel, and with mystery too. It is not easy for us to\nsee how any generation that looks for more, while it has that, can be\nother than evil and adulterous. But the fact is that familiarity does\nblind men to both marvel and mystery. If it did not, the very stones we\ntread under foot would proclaim their witness to God, and every moment\nof our own life would call forth adoration of him.\n\nIn regard to this matter there is a pressing need for the meeting of\nscience and philosophy with religion. Science and philosophy tear away\nthe veil with which familiarity hides from us the mysteriousness and\nmarvel of all things and of our own personal and common life. They show\nus unfathomed depths for wonder where we had seen nothing but a smooth\naccustomed surface. But it is religion that shows us God in all those\ndepths, God made known even by the very surface, and turns our wonder\ninto worship. It is science and philosophy that shall purge religion of\nthe taint it has derived from both the ignorant, and the evil and\nadulterous, generations after generations who have made it seem what it\nseems. I say 'seem what it seems,' for this is not what it is. That is\nno true religion, certainly no religion after the mind of Christ, which\npasses over the marvels of the lily of the field and of the man indwelt\nby God and one with God, taking them as things that are of course; while\nmaking much of signs interpreted as 'intervention' and therefore taken\nas the only signs of a God who is nowhere and nothing to us unless he\nintervenes.\n\nWe stand amazed, we who have learnt now to see God everywhere. Can any\nreligious man open his eyes, we ask, and not see signs of God? Can he\nsearch in any human life without finding signs in abundance there, signs\nof the life-giving presence or of the dreadful death-dealing absence of\nGod? What more can he ask or desire? 'Lord God of hosts,' we exclaim,\n'heaven and earth are full of thy glory!'\n\nThen we turn to history, the long history of man, and the long history\nof the Christian religion which goes back, beyond the sublime figure who\nproclaimed it in Palestine, to the beginnings of the worship of God. We\ndiscover those beginnings in the first men who turned their eyes from\nself to the brother. We look along the ages and cease to be surprised.\nIn his long-drawn education man has but slowly learnt to find God in\nmore and more of his own life and the world. Step by step he has felt\nhis way, led by the spirit given him, to the knowledge of the God and\nFather of Jesus Christ, the incarnate and redeeming God of all men, the\nGod who comes to indwell all things. Only now, in a new fulness of time,\nare the teaching of Jesus and the revelation of his life and death\nfinding a new context in new knowledge and reflective thought. Only now\nare we beginning to see why, if knowledge and reflective thought have so\nfar done their work, it may well be an evil and adulterous generation\nthat seeks for any other signs than those which they and Christ reveal.\nJust what the earthly presence of the God-revealing Jesus was to that\ngeneration\u2014a test of their single-mindedness and will to receive and\nwelcome divine truth\u2014so, when his life and witness meet with a new\nemphasis in the less but concurrent witness of new knowledge, this\ngeneration of religious men is put to the same test. Will they receive\nnew witness to his truth and to God? or will they reject it because it\nhas no likeness to those signs that to their minds are alone fitted to\nshow God? Will they or will they not have humility enough to learn of\nscientific and philosophic 'builders of Jerusalem' concerning the true\nmethods of God?\n\nWe cannot tell; that is, of this generation. But we may trust in the\nprevailing strength of truth. Generations pass, but that endures. And\nthe prophet's word goes on:\u2014'the hour cometh, and now is, when the true\nworshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.'\n\n                                -------\n\n\n\n\n                              CHAPTER XII\n\n                  Nel suo profondo vidi che s'interna,\n                  legato con amore in un volume,\n                  cio che per l'universo si squaderna.\n                                              _Dante._\n\n\nFor the Christian the barrier that finally checks the advance of life is\nnot death but a self-concentrated self. It is freedom misused and lost,\nfreedom turning against the life that has striven to bring it to birth.\nPerversity builds that barrier and human life cannot pass it or\u2014shall we\nnot say with the Christian?\u2014God cannot pass it. This alone thwarts the\ndivine purpose for man and brings about the 'second' and only true\ndeath.\n\nWe have nothing to urge against this teaching of religion; we see the\nsecond death beginning in every man who is perverting freedom from its\nlife-furthering office. We see in him that which he seems to have being\ntaken away. Moreover, we are prepared to believe that the first death,\nwillingly accepted (as we have also seen) as an element in purposive and\npotent life, is but the gate through which men pass to more of life. We\nmay have our moments of doubt, because we cannot see with our eyes the\nother side of that gate, and the sense-habit is strong within us; but\nreason demands, as the Christian religion declares, that life that is\ngrowing here and is big with promise unfulfilled shall go on there.\n\nThe Christian seems to know much of the other side of that gate that\nother people do not know. He talks of heaven, of paradise, of hell. We\nunderstand him when he talks of hell; there is so much evidence of that\nhere and now. But we are less clear about his paradise, less clear still\nabout his heaven. What does he really mean when he speaks, all too\npositively and definitely (we think), about these two?\n\nUndoubtedly most Christians have meant a good many things at which not a\nfew of them will smile now. They have meant things that were certainly\nnot of the mind of Christ, but of the unilluminated and uncriticizing\nand biased minds of other men. Sometimes they have pictured a man who\nis, even to our eyes, a mere beginner in the divine art of life,\nplunged, as it were, into a very sea of God, sent with all his mere\nbeginnings to live as he may amid God's unveiled glories. That is not a\npicture which instructed and enlightened Christians favour now. Our\nfriend to whom we so constantly appeal will tell us of Paradise, where\nJesus and the thief were to meet together. He will speak of\n'intermediate' purifying and enriching states through which the beginner\npasses, learning his art of life. He will assure us that he knows of\nvery few who even to his poor vision seem fit to 'go to heaven,' fit,\nthat is, to endure the full glory of beauty and holiness and truth\nresplendent and realized in the 'beatific vision' of God. And in this he\ncommends himself. He is an evolutionist of the coming worlds, this\nbeliever in an advance through them towards the splendours of the City\nof God. And after all he has the collective voice of Christendom\nspeaking with him. Only a minority of Christians from the beginning\nuntil now have not been evolutionists of the worlds to come.\n\nNo doubt the Christian arranges his pictorial conceptions of those\nworlds too systematically, and marks off grades as life never does. But\nin the main life has kept its hold upon him and he has been unable not\nto see that it must go on, move, change, grow, on the far side of death.\nWe have no quarrel with his principle in this regard, though we may\ncontest the mechanical fashion in which, not rarely, he applies it. And\nwhen he speaks of the 'beatific vision' of the City of God, our hearts\nare stirred in response. We too seek a 'continuing city' of life in its\ngrandeur. We, too, see the promise of that city here, even in the very\nfailures of our own. And when the Christian tells us of his Lord's\nPrayer\u2014Thy kingdom come, as it is in heaven, we feel that heaven is not\nalien from us or from our desires and our hopes. If heaven is indeed the\ncrown and consummation of personal and social life on earth, then it is\nto heaven we ourselves are looking forward, looking, fearing, longing.\nWe, too, have our vision of a kingdom where love shall be the king, and\nself-seeking, with all its dreadful consequences, be done away. We can\nsee it is this that ruins our cities of earth, this alone. And where\nthis is not, there indeed will be our kingdom come, as well as God's.\n\nAn Eastern's imagination may depict the 'holy city, the new Jerusalem,'\nin her 'light,' as 'pure gold, like unto clear glass'; he may exhaust\nthat imagination in details of chalcedony and emerald and pearl; that is\nhis way. But when he says that 'the nations of them which are saved\nshall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their\nglory and honour into it,' he gives speech to our mind through his. For\nthis, this, is the 'goal of human endeavour' for us. We have watched the\nadvance of life towards our own cities and in turn watching them have\ndiscovered what they lack and what, in their poverty of attainment and\nabundant promise, they foretell if life goes on beyond the gates of\ndeath. So, sharing the Christian's faith that indeed it does, we share\nhis vision.\n\nOnly as a social being is any man a man at all. Only when the promise of\nother men is fulfilled, is his promise fulfilled. No man (we see that\nplainly) can be 'saved' alone; he must be saved in his nations, by true\ncommunity in a life grown to be harmonious with life everywhere, in and\nwith the source of all life. Only in God can any man fulfil his destiny\nas a man among men who must be one with them if he is not to 'perish\neverlastingly.' We and the Christian agree\u2014once we see what he means and\nhe sees what we mean. And it is through Jesus Christ that we discover\nthe meaning of the Christian. We may, perhaps, not unsuitably, urge him\nto try to discover ours in the same way. For it is only when he has\nwandered from the side of Christ and forgotten or misinterpreted the\nmind of Christ that there is trouble between us.\n\nIt is easy to forget and misinterpret, very easy to substitute for\ndivine spirit and life and the divine 'word,' a machinery of logic or\ntradition or institutional arrangement. But it is destructive of the\npossibility of mutual understanding between us. Again, we must urge, it\nis machine-like scheming that divides, not real religion or knowledge of\nlife. 'Ye have made the word of God of none effect through your\ntradition' is a prophet's saying of the widest application in the\naffairs of men. But when we recognize this, even on one side only of a\ndividing line, the process of correction has begun. And as a matter of\nfact there is recognition now on both sides, and day by day it extends\nitself and its influence. Science and philosophy and religion are met\ntogether as they have never in the history of the world been met before,\nopen-eyed, conscious of the common heritage of training in the battle of\nthe world and in the struggles of practical life, which has biased every\none of us and been the chief agent in turning the common search after\ntruth by men of good will into a war of opinions.\n\nTo confess that we are all, in so far as we are honest seekers,\n'builders of Jerusalem' after our own manner and degree, is the first\nand perhaps the hardest step to take towards full co-operation between\nus. What children we are, that we do not know it! Yet, in truth, we\ncannot know it until on both sides we give up the fond belief, the\ndelusion, that we are not seekers but have either attained or received,\neither attained the full truth of the world and ourselves by knowledge,\nor received it through an external and externally given revelation. Once\nwe know that we are all pilgrims and that the divine city lies ahead for\nevery one of us, both in knowledge and in life, we may travel together.\n\nWith the Christian we may work for the divine kingdom. We share his\nbelief and his trust in the omnipotence of redeeming love. Nothing, we\nsee, can redeem this earth but love. There is love to be seen faintly,\namid dark and conflicting shadows, in the biologist's picture of a\nworld-Eden, where it is after all and in spite of all 'creation's final\nlaw.' But the fulness of its glory is unveiled only in the love of\nChrist, passing our knowledge.\n\n\n\n\n    'Conceiving our life in this manner, the material evolution of the\nworld becomes the incarnation and the expression of a spiritual meaning,\nof a divine event which is actually in process of coming to pass. No\nlonger, for example, do we think of the earth's movement round the sun\nas a meaningless rotation: we think of it as preparing the conditions\nwhich enable life to rise to its sublimest height, we see the whole\ncreation saturated in sunlight. Not in vain are the heavens starred with\ninnumerable fires. They speak to us of worlds to which they give life\nand being, warming them with their heat, brightening them with their\nbeams. And the end to which all these lives are moving, of every flower\nthat blooms, of every bird that sings, is also the central principle of\nthe entire evolution of the universe\u2014the embodied Word of God. For the\npurpose of the whole is nothing other than the incarnation of the\ndivine, the participation of the created in the eternal life of the\nuncreated, of which the God-man is the perfect revelation.... If God be\nindeed the end of all existence, he must needs fill all things with his\nbeing. If God is love, his arms are round the entire universe, and there\nis no creature anywhere unloved by him.'\n\n                                              PRINCE EUGENE TROUBETZKOY.\n\n\n\n\n                                APPENDIX\n\n\n                    BOOKS ON THE SUBJECTS OF PART I.\n\n B. MOORE. _The Origin and Nature of Life._ (Home University Library).\n\n J. A. THOMSON and P. GEDDES. _Evolution._ (Home University Library).\n\n A. R. HINKS. _Astronomy._ (Home University Library).\n\n R. MELDOLA. _Chemistry._ (Home University Library).\n\n J. WARD. _Heredity and Memory._\n\n OLIVER LODGE. _The Ether of Space._\n\n A. RUHE and N. M. PAUL. _Henri Bergson; An Account of his Life and\n Philosophy._\n\n SAMUEL BUTLER. _Life and Habit._\n\n H. BERGSON. _Time and Freewill._\n\n H. BERGSON. _Matter and Memory._\n\n H. BERGSON. _Creative Evolution._\n\n J. WARD. _The Realm of Ends._\n\n H. DRIESCH. _The Science and Philosophy of the Organism._\n\n W. JAMES. _Principles of Psychology._\n\n E. S. RUSSELL. _Form and Function._\n\n A. D. DARBISHIRE. _An Introduction to a Biology._\n\n J. S. HALDANE. _Organism and Environment._\n\n                   BOOKS ON THE SUBJECTS OF PART II.\n\n T. R. GLOVER. _The Jesus of History._\n\n A. CLUTTON-BROCK. _The Ultimate Belief._\n\n A. CLUTTON-BROCK. _What is the Kingdom of Heaven?_\n\n W. S. PALMER. _Providence and Faith._\n\n W. S. PALMER. _The Ladder of Reality._\n\n WILLIAM LAW. _The Spirit of Love._\n\n WILLIAM LAW. _The Spirit of Prayer._\n\n G. TYRRELL. _Lex Orandi._\n\n G. TYRRELL. _Lex Credendi._ _Faith and Freedom_\u2014(edited by C. H. S.\n Matthews).\n\n R. G. COLLINGWOOD. _Religion and Philosophy._\n\n ALEXANDER NAIRNE. _The Epistle of Priesthood._\n\n A. S. PRINGLE-PATTISON. _The Idea of God in the Light of Recent\n Philosophy._\n\n FRIEDRICH VON H\u00dcGEL. _Eternal Life._\n\n FRIEDRICH VON H\u00dcGEL. _The Mystical Element of Religion._\n\n A. C. TURNER. _Faith, Prayer and the World's Order_ (Essay in\n _Concerning Prayer_\u2014edited by B. H. Streeter).\n\n   _Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_.\n\n\n\n\n                          Transcriber's Notes.\n\nThe cover was produced by the transcriber and is placed in the public\ndomain.\n\nThe original spelling and punctuation has been retained.\n\nVariations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.\n\nItalicized words and phrases in the text version are presented by\nsurrounding the text with underscores.","title":"Where Science and Religion Meet","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":43895}