Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

the World War, has left us confused in of transition. We have been armed with the rapid pace set by crence and with the conciseness of her terances and have expected from shiosophy and religion an equal fa

an assimilating the new material when she has given us, and an equal sary of speech. Such expectations wait ignorance of the nature of the terpretative humanities. The speed with which science has caused us to meve ist our modern life has unconwasy come to be taken as an index Ja worth as has her mass production. But philosophy and religion move wet jedberate tread. Where value uvients are concerned, there can be neak of speed; and for religion, at verbal utterance is not always the west happy or the most adequate. sodat we are loath to allow for hypotheses in the interpre*e humanities as we do in the sciTee, when scientific theories on wat subject are changing so rapidly wat always unanimous, philosoand religion have nothing left to do await a more general agreement wentists. And lastly, this readBy with which Nature yields her seper me the scientific method, the satisattending discovery, and the te use to which invention can rewults obtained, have caused turn with impatience from the tous and apparently unre1 of seeking 'meanings.' Poing this, they immerse 'more science,' where the quicker and more tangible. me of the difficulties which mselves, and they suggest onditions whose fulfillment wunderlic the most successful

iment.

het of the conditions has to do He presuppositions and the attiwed with which we face the

problem. Obviously, if we hope for a readjustment, the thing to do is to believe that it is possible and worth the attempt. Our sense of values has indeed received a jolt, and we are seeking new foundations for it. One ounce of pessimism exhibited under more hopeful conditions has in the present critical transition era the weight of a pound. We might almost speak of the spiritual obligation to be optimistic in times like the present. 'If at the last, all the universe and all our striving should be revealed as having been blundering nonsense, write me down as one who was unwilling to admit it.' Such an attitude need not be mere empty braggadocio, and will certainly hasten readjustment.

But can we talk of hastening readjustment in view of the disparity in pace between science and the interpretative humanities and the present handicap under which the latter labor? We are overwhelmed by reason of too much knowledge and too many devices. Our present despair and spiritual inertia may be due to an intellectual, moral, and spiritual malassimilation and indigestion. If things remain as they are, the outlook seems serious enough to justify some drastic expedient for restoring our lost equilibrium, and 'for making the ends meet in the scale of human life. There is point, therefore, to the proposal of a holiday in the field of applied science - except in that of pathology and kindred branches. It is for us now to learn how to master rather than to be mastered by the powers and the tools already placed at our disposal by modern science, to develop the moral and the spiritual intelligence necessary to their salutary and not their destructive employment. So to do might make for more rapid 'progress' in the long run, and there need be no fear of 'lost arts.' We have developed sufficient speed

capacities, sufficient physical comforts and conveniences, to last us for some time to come and sufficient noise! It behooves us now, in any event, to consider bearings, meanings, interpretations, significances, universals, 'characters,' values, appreciations, and the like, whether in philosophy or in religion, whose work this is, and not that of science. To entrust to science alone the solution of our intellectual and spiritual difficulties or our problems of readjustment is to admit the validity of Mr. Krutch's despair. In fact it is unjust to science to assume its adequacy for all things - to make of it a modern philosopher's stone. Mr. H. L. Mencken's prattle to the effect that philosophy cannot survive facts, and is the pursuit of infantile minds, reveals the need not of less, but of more and better philosophy; reveals also a common misconception of the function of the modern philosopher and prophet, men whose relation to facts is like that of the cartographer to the terrain with which he is so thoroughly familiar that he can chart for others the safest course to follow, the pitfalls to be avoided, and the like- whose function, in a word, is directive.

It seems clear that any interpretation of life which is to claim and to hold the respect of the 'serious mind searching for some terms upon which it may live' cannot ignore the new facts concerning the external universe which modern science has been giving to us. Neither can it ignore, as we have attempted to show, the 'findings' made by the human spirit. Both are data furnished by human experience and are equally deserving of consideration.

There can be little hope of readjustment unless a world dominated by an exaggerated estimate of the all-sufficiency of science is also willing to listen with respect to the voices of philosophy and religion; is willing to grant them

the time and the opportunity to invent new and more representative terms and categories, and also the right to speak in their own tongues. Whatever readjustment is made must be one which will be inclusive of the experience of man in his totality. If we conceive of man in his entirety as being rooted in Nature, then, if we may learn from Spengler, we cannot scorn 'the base degrees by which he did ascend,' his contact with the soil, his physical roots, out of which ultimately have sprung the unique blossoms of human culture, which Nature has taken such pains to produce. If his transcendental cravings be also recognized as a very vital part of his life, then they too can ill afford to be passed over in making up the final account. The roots and the blossoms again are not mutually exclusive, but belong together in this universe, as the sturdy earthly roots and the soaring blossoms belong together in the reprise of the Meistersinger Prelude. It is false to suppose, because the data here concerned are different in kind, that they are therefore necessarily in conflict, although a mutual adjustment between the data given by science and those given by the human spirit may indeed be very difficult to effect.

Science, for example, would apparently require of any philosophy or religion entitled to respect the willingness to adopt new categories and conceptions, or at least those characterized by a certain fluidity, so that they might be readily adjusted to an ever-changing and an ever-developing science. It would demand of the interpretative humanities the recognition that a monistic basis is the only one possible in any interpretation of Reality; that whatever support man receives for his human values must come from within the universe and not from without. However, the 'will to readjust is the important thing. Se

[ocr errors]

privilege of making mistakes and later of correcting them, of discarding false views for newer and truer ones, without a shade of discredit to the authority of science, but which stigmatizes with the labels 'superstition,' 'mythology,' 'illusion,' 'delusion,' what powers either to 'make' or to 'break' we have conferred upon labels! - the corresponding earlier interpretations of Reality made by the human spirit, and adduces as evidence conclusive of the general unreliability of religion its occasional sloughing off of formulations which experience has proven to be untrue in favor of newer and truer views. The fair name of science emerges unsullied from the wreckage of mistaken hypotheses by which, nevertheless, it has been enabled to rise, while the mistaken hypotheses of religion have placed it, at least for some, in a position from which it may never again hope to show its head without discreditit must continue to bear the brands 'superstition,' 'mythology,' 'illusion,' 'delusion.'

2. A second unwarranted assumption is that scientific methods and categories are interchangeable. So successful have certain sciences been in dealing with three-dimensional matter and with the forces of external Nature that it has been assumed that the same methods which obtain in the physical sciences will also prove to be equally efficacious when applied in the realm of human experience. If in his treatment of life, for example, the biologist or the psychologist can discover nothing but measurable physicochemical results, that is only because with physicochemical methods it is difficult to see what other results he could obtain, and 'constitutes no proof that there is nothing in life that is not physicochemical.' Similarly, methods which have proven successful in dealing with animal behavior can be expected to appertain

only to animal behavior in men, and the results thus obtained constitute no proof that there is nothing in human experience that is not animal behavior. If human behavior is adequately to be described, we must at least have methods and categories of kind. Surely the present diversity of opinion between animist, introspectionist, vitalist, Freudian, behaviorist, and Gestaltist gives little basis here for either scientific dogmatism or certitude.

3. A third gratuitous assumption has been hinted at in the above. It consists in the belief that science - here psychology-is perfectly capable of rendering a true, exhaustive account of human experience. It goes back to the spilling-over process just mentioned. When, after analyzing a situation, psychology synthesizes the elements obtained and tells us the result, the reconstruction is usually lacking in precisely those qualities which make it a human experience: the significance of the original total reality grasped in one act; the essential meaning of the original experience; the place of the experience in the totality of things; the evaluational, the appreciative, the purposive elements these are not matters for scientific method as we know it to-day. If the time ever comes when psychology will talk anthropomorphically of man, taking cognizance of the conative human powers with which of all things we are most familiar, then it may also talk more adequately of him.

[ocr errors]

A psychology of religion, in so far as it employs a technique and uses methods borrowed from the physical sciences, can hope to deal only partially with life in its religious aspects. Any claim on the part of science to show how man's transcendental cravings were born, in the endeavor by so doing to prove them a delusion, proceeds upon the assumption that science is in possession of a method thoroughly adequate

to deal with the experiences of the human spirit not only in its earthly but in its cosmic bearings. Nor does the 'uncovering' of the lowly origin of a human institution discount its present attainment, else science too falls under the same condemnation. Unfortunately for the human defeatist, when the investigations of such scholars as Durkheim and Frazer reveal certain elements having to do with the beginnings of religious beliefs, obviously such revelations concern only beginnings. Even if we assume that we have reliable data and a method adequate to give us an authentic account of institutional origins, the value of a human institution is not to be measured in terms of its origin. Its significance and its reality lie in the whole trend of the evolutionary process by means of which it became what it has become, in its social achievement, in the eminence to which it has attained, and in its future possibilities. In dealing with present realities, we hold a thing to be what it is, including its inherent potentialities, and not what it came from.

4. We are rapidly becoming enlightened as to the falsity of the supposition that the specialist in any particular science is ipso facto also well qualified to speak with equal authority on religion and philosophy. Our ideas on transfer of training, on specialization of field, and the sad results of such trust are leading us to abandon this assumption. We have learned to distinguish between the scientist talking as scientist and the scientist talking as philosopher or religionist. Doubtless there are some men qualified to act in the double capacity, but they are

rare.

5. A futile phrase is that quasitriumphant one of a spiritually iconoclastic science: 'Let the facts speak for themselves!' Would that they could, and did! Would that the data pre

our own

sented to us by the animal and the physical realms spoke so unequivocally of Reality as to make our conflicting scientific theories and our epistemological squabbles needless! But, since they are mute, only we articulate ones can lend them tongues tongues, which they use in a representative way, and speak many diverse things. Yet it will ever remain the inalienable privilege of all, not only of the scientist, thus to make fact vocal, nach Belieben. Is disposition or fact superior here? And what is 'fact'? Greater unanimity of interpretation is to be hoped for only to the degree that scientist, metaphysician, and religionist will agree to work together, considering facts and experiences in their totality.

6. By far the most serious false assumption underlying the new dogmatism of science is our willingness to regard scientific methods and categories as the only valid and legitimate ones both for the discovery of truth and for its explanation and description. The reason for this is not far to seek. The statements of the natural sciences are clear-cut, definite, and capable of verification by experience; scientific results are for the most part tangible, concrete, measurable, in the limited field which each science marks out for its province. Not only has the modern scientific complex led us to demand proof as a condition of the acceptance of any Reality, but it has deluded us into believing that the only proof worthy of the name, adequate and true, is proof set up in scientific formulæ. The interpretative humanities on the other hand, and especially religion, must often utter their voices, if they would be articulate at all, in a medium not always adapted to that which they would express - namely, in language. Hence the use of simile, metaphor, analogy, symbol, allegory, statements and

[ocr errors]

rationality or order whatsoever, and hold rationality to be an attribute of man alone, both of which Mr. Krutch seems inclined to do, then must we hold the scientist to be par excellence the one who with his own scientific categories gives us at best but his reflection of Nature, and we can base no arguments under these conditions upon the 'certitudes of science.' It is only upon the assumption, in faith, by the scientist that there is a rational basis in Nature which will validate his own rational methods and categories that he can hope to arrive at anything more than the mere projection of his own rationality upon Nature. Moreover he assumes, also in faith, that the human reason is a dependable and a trustworthy tool to use in the search for truth. But more of this later.

terms often vague and indistinct, meet for aspects of experience for which articulateness and exact presentation are indifferent matters. But it is becoming increasingly necessary to ask in virtue of what fiat it is that the procedure and the conceptions of modern science have attained to such sanctity that they must be regarded as the exclusive legitimate agencies for the discovery and the explanation of truth. And must we say that only that which lends itself to scientific description and explanation is the real and the true, and limit experience therefore only to the commensurable? The formulæ of science are symbols, between which and the things they represent the scientist has faith to believe exists an exact correspondence. But scientific methods and categories are neither eternal, divinely inspired, infallible, nor immutable; they are modern, man-made, and subject to error and change to such an extent that a scientific text of a decade past may even now be outmoded. Indeed, investigation might well disclose a greater unanimity and constancy of method, image, concept, and category among the mystics of all ages and races than among the methods and categories of science.

In their entirety these are based upon an unproved postulate, the uniformity of natural processes a postulate unproved because, strictly speaking, there are no absolutely identical repetitions. Even the scientist's 'most useful conceptions, like atom, energy, gravitation, are hypothetical and acceptable only as they serve to systematize thought and permit deductions verifiable in experience.' It is not for him who trusts in the validity of scientific findings to reproach the mystical philosophers, as does Mr. Krutch, with the accusation that they have made Nature over in their own image, and thus have found oneness with her. For if we deny to the rotting earth' any

Thus the mystic and the scientist both ultimately rest their cases upon faith. Both use tools for their ‘invest gations' which are given by Nature, and in the same faith the one, the transcendental cravings; the other, the reason. Both use fallible human methods and categories- those of the mystic are of long standing and are possessed of a certain constancy and universality of character, and find language an imperfect medium of expression; those of the scientist are relatively modern and are subject to constant change in the light of experience. Both find answers' of kind given to their questionings by Nature, hence an assurance which makes for the persistence of both types. But they differ widely as to the definiteness with which they articulate. Science affords one way of getting at certain varieties of truth; the easy assumption that it is the only way ignores wide and important areas of human experience.

7. Appendant to the above, yet perhaps separate from it, might be mentioned the serene confidence which

« ZurückWeiter »