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Page 29
We approach, then, the third and final level of experience to which we
referred in the first lecture. We have seen that the humanist accepts
the law of measure; he rests back upon the selected and certified
experience of his race; from within himself, as the noblest inhabitant
of the planet, and by the further critical observation of nature he
proposes to interpret and guide his life. He is convinced that this
combined authority of reason and observation will lead to the _summum
bonum_ of the golden mean in which unbridled self-expression will be
seen as equally unwise and indecent and ascetic repression as both
unworthy and unnecessary. It is important to again remind ourselves
that confidence in the human spirit as the master of its own fate,
and in reason and natural observation as offering it the means of this
self-control and understanding, are essential humanistic principles.
The humanist world is rational, social, ethical.
Over against this reasonable and disciplined view of man and of
his world stands naturalism. It exploits the defects of the classic
"virtue"; it is, so to speak, humanism run to seed. Just as religion
so often sinks into bigotry, cruelty and superstitition, so humanism,
in lesser souls, declines to egotism, license and sentimentality.
Naturalism, either by a shallow and insincere use of the materialistic
view of the universe, or by the exalting of wanton feeling and
whimsical fancy as ends in themselves, attempts the identification of
man with the natural order, permits him to conceive of each desire,
instinct, impulse, as, being natural, thereby defensible and
valuable. Hence it permits him to disregard the imposed laws of
civilization--those fixed points of a humane order--and to return
in principle, and so far as he dares in action, to the unlimited and
irresponsible individualism of the horde. Inevitably the law of the
jungle is deliberately exalted, or unconsciously adopted, over against
the humanist law of moderation and discipline.
The humanist, then, critically studies nature and mankind, finding in
her matrix and in his own spirit data for the guidance of the race,
improving upon it by a cultivated and collective experience. The
naturalist uncritically exalts nature, seeks identification with it so
that he may freely exploit both himself and it. The faith of the one
is in the self-sufficiency of the disciplined spirit of mankind; the
unfaith of the other is in its glorification of the natural world and
in its allegiance to the momentary devices and desires of the separate
heart. It will be borne in mind that these definitions are too
clear-cut; that these divisions appear in the complexities of human
experience, blurred and modified by the welter of cross currents,
subsidiary conflicting movements, which obscure all human problems.
They represent genuine and significant divisions of thought and
conduct. But they appear in actual experience as controlling emphases
rather than mutually exclusive territories.
Now, the clearest way to get before us the religious view of the world
and the law which issues from it is to contrast it with the other two.
In the first place, the religious temperament takes a very different
view of nature than either romantic, or to a less degree
scientific, naturalism. Naturalism is subrational on the one hand or
non-imaginative on the other, in that it emphasizes the _continuity_
between man and the physical universe. The religious man is
superrational and nobly imaginative as he emphasizes the _difference_
between man and nature. He does not forget man's biological kinship to
the brute, his intimate structural and even psychological relation to
the primates, but he is aware that it is not in dwelling upon these
facts that his spirit discovers what is distinctive to man as man.
That he believes will be found by accenting the _chasm_ between man
and nature. He does not know how to conceive of a personal being
except by thinking of him as proceeding by other, though not
conflicting, laws and by moving toward different secondary ends from
those laws and ends which govern the impersonal external world. This
sense of the difference between man and nature he shares with the
humanist, only the humanist does not carry it as far as he does and
hence may not draw from it his ultimate conclusions.
The religious view, then, begins with the perception of man's
isolation in the natural order; his difference from his surroundings.
That sense of separateness is fundamental to the religious nature. The
false sentiment and partial science of the pagan which stresses the
identification of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist
and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them sanctions
this perversion of thought and feeling which either projects the
impressionistic self so absurdly and perilously into the natural
order, or else minimizes man's imaginative and intellectual power,
leveling him down to the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much
more," said Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of the greatest
of English humanists was Matthew Arnold. You remember his sonnet,
entitled, alas! "To a Preacher," which runs as follows:
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