Part 3 (2/2)
This new immediacy is the deepest possible immediacy, it is an immediacy of experience where the self comes into contact with its own vital principle--the Universal Spiritual Life--and brings about a fundamental change in the life of the individual. The inner life is no longer governed by sense impressions and impulses, but the outward life is lived and viewed from the standpoint of the inward life.
But a new immediacy is not all that follows in the train of the negative movement--on the contrary, the highest possible rewards are gained, for freedom, personality, and immortality are all brought within the range of possibility.
Once a human being decides for the highest he is on the highroad to complete freedom. The freedom is not going to be won in a moment, but must be fought for by the individual through the whole course of his life. His body is always with him, and will at times attempt to master him--he must fight continually to ensure conquest. Difficulties will arise from various quarters, but he is not going to depend only upon his own resources. All his activity involves in the first place the recognition of the spiritual world, but more than this, he appropriates unto himself of the spiritual world--this in itself is an act of decision. And the more we appropriate unto ourselves of the Universal Spiritual Life, the more we decide for the higher world, the freer we become. Indeed, ”it is this appropriation ... of the spiritual life that first awakens within the soul an inward cert.i.tude, and makes possible that perfect freedom ... so indispensable for every great creative work.” By continually choosing and fighting for the progress of the Universal Spiritual Life, it comes to be our own in virtue of our deed and decision. Hence man has attained freedom--the lower world no longer makes successful appeal. He has become a part of the spiritual world, and his actions are no longer dictated by anything external, but are the direct outcome of his own self. He has freely chosen the highest, and continually reaffirms his choice--this is perfect freedom.
Man gains for himself, too, a personality in the true sense of the term.
Eucken does not mean by personality ”mere self-a.s.sertion on the part of an individual in opposition to others.” He means something far deeper than this. ”A genuine self,” says Eucken, ”is const.i.tuted only by the coming to life of the infinite spiritual world in an independent concentration in the individual.” Following a life of endeavour in the highest cause, and continual appropriation of the spiritual life, he arrives at a state of at-one-ness with the universal life. ”Man does not merely enter into some kind of relation with the spiritual life, but finds his own being in it.” The human being is elevated to a self-life of a universal kind, and this frees him from the ties and appeals of the world of sense and selfishness. It is a glorious conception of human personality, infinitely higher than the undignified conceptions of naturalism and determinism.
And if man wins a glorious personality, he may gain immortality too.
Unfortunately, Eucken has not yet dealt fully with this question, but he is evidently of the opinion that the spiritual personalities are immortal. As concentration points or foci of the spiritual life, he believes that the developed personalities are at present and in prospect possessors of a spiritual realm. But there will be no essential or sudden change at death. That which is immortal is involved in our present experience. Those who have developed into spiritual personalities, who have worked in fellows.h.i.+p with the great Universal Life, and become centre-points of spirituality, have thus risen supreme over time and pa.s.s to their inheritance. Those who have not done so, but have lived their lives on the plane of nature, will have nothing that can persist.
Hence it is that the negative movement leads to freedom, personality, and immortality; the neglect to make the movement consigns the individual to slavery, makes a real ”self” impossible, and at death he has nought that a spiritual realm can claim. The choice is an all-important one; for, as a recent writer puts it, ”In this choice, the personality chooses or rejects itself, takes itself for its life-task, or dies of inanition and inertia.”
CHAPTER VII
THE PERSONAL AND THE UNIVERSAL
In the last chapter the ascent of the human being from serfdom to freedom and personality was traced. In doing so it was necessary to make frequent reference to the Universal Spiritual Life.
When we turn to consider the characteristics of the Universal Spiritual Life, many problems present themselves. How can we reconcile freedom and personality with the existence of an Absolute? What is the nature of this Absolute, and in what way is the human related to it? What place should religion play in the life of the spiritual personality? These are, of course, some of the greatest and most difficult problems that ever perplexed the mind of man, and we can only deal briefly with Eucken's contribution to their solution.
Can a man choose the highest? This is the form in which Eucken would state the problem of freedom. His answer, as already seen, is an affirmative one. The personality chooses the spiritual life, and continually reaffirms the decision. This being so, it is now no longer possible to consider the human and the divine to be entirely in opposition. And the more the spiritual personality develops, so much the less does the opposition obtain, until a state of spirituality is arrived at when all opposition of will ceases--then we attain perfect freedom. ”We are most free, when we are most deeply pledged--pledged irrevocably to the spiritual presence, with which our own being is so radically and so finally implicated.” Thus freedom is obtained in a sense through self-surrender, but it is through this same self-surrender that we realise spiritual absoluteness. Hence it is that perfect freedom carries with it the strongest consciousness of dependence, and human freedom is only made possible through the absoluteness of the spiritual life in whom it finds its being.
English philosophers have dealt at length with the question of the possibility of reconciling the independence of personality and the existence of an Absolute. From Eucken's point of view the difficulty is not so serious. When he speaks of personality he does not mean the mere subjective individual in all his selfishness. Eucken has no sympathy with the emphasis that is often placed on the individual in the low subjective sense, and is averse from the glorification of the individual of which some writers are fond. Indeed, he would prefer a naturalistic explanation of man rather than one framed as a result of man's individualistic egoism. The former explanation admits that man is entirely a thing of nature; the latter, from a selfish and proud standpoint, claims for man a place in a higher world. There is nothing that is worthy and high in the low desires of Mr. Smith--the mere subjective Mr. Smith. But if through the mind and body of Mr. Smith the Absolute Spirit is realising itself in personality--then there is something of eternal worth--there is spiritual personality. There will be opposition between the sordidness of the mere individual will and the divine will, but that is because the spiritual life has not been gained.
When the highest state of spiritual personality has been reached, then man is an expression--a personal realisation of the Absolute, is in entire accord with the absolute, indeed becomes himself divine.
This does not rob the term personality of its meaning, for each personality does, in some way, after all, exist for itself. Each individual consciousness has a sanct.i.ty of its own. But the being-for-self develops more and more by coming into direct contact with the Universal Spiritual Life.
Here, then, we arrive at something that appears to be a paradox. We have the phenomenon of a being that is free and existing for itself, yet in some way dependent upon an absolute spiritual life. We have, too, the phenomenon of a human being becoming divine. How is it really possible that self-activity can arise out of dependence? Eucken does not attempt to explain, but contends that an explanation cannot be arrived at through reasoning. We are forced to the conclusion, we realise through our life and action that this is the real state of affairs, and in this case the reality proves the possibility. ”This primal phenomenon,” he says, ”overflows all explanation. It has, as the fundamental condition of all spiritual life, a universal axiomatic character.” Again he says, ”The wonder of wonders is the human made divine, through G.o.d's superior power.” ”The problem surpa.s.ses the capacity of the human reason.” For taking up this position, Eucken is sharply criticised by some writers.
When we approach the problem of the nature of the Absolute in itself, the main difficulty that arises is whether G.o.d is a personal being. G.o.d, says Eucken, is ”an Absolute Spiritual Life in all its grandeur, above all the limitations of man and the world of experience--a Spiritual Life that has attained to a complete subsistence in itself, and at the same time to an encompa.s.sing of all reality.” The divine is for Eucken the ultimate spirituality that inspires the work of all spiritual personalities. When in our life of fight and action we need inspiration, we find ”in the very depths of our own nature a reawakening, which is not a mere product of our activity, but a salvation straight from G.o.d.”
G.o.d, then, is the ultimate spirituality which inspires the struggling personality, and gives to it a sense of unity and confidence. Eucken does not admit that G.o.d is a personality in the sense that we are, and deprecates all anthropomorphic conceptions of G.o.d as a personal being.
Indeed, to avoid the tendency to such conceptions he would prefer the term ”G.o.dhead” to ”G.o.d.” Further considerations of the nature of G.o.d can only lead to intellectual speculations. For an activistic philosophy, such as Eucken's philosophy is, it would seem sufficient for life and action to know that all attempts at the ideal in life, originate in, and are inspired by, the Absolute Spiritual Life, that is by G.o.d.
We cannot discuss fully the relation of human and divine without, too, dealing with the ever urgent problem of religion. This is a problem in which Eucken is deeply interested, and concerning which he has written one of his greatest works--_The Truth of Religion_--a work that has been described as one of the greatest apologies for religion ever written.
What is religion? Most people perhaps would apply the term to a system of belief concerning the Eternal, usually resting upon a historical or traditional basis. Others would include in the term the reverence felt for the Absolute by the contemplative mind, even though that mind did not believe in any of the traditional systems. Some would emphasise the fact that religion should concern itself with the establishment of a relations.h.i.+p between the human and the Divine.
But Eucken does not find religion to consist in belief, nor in a mere att.i.tude towards the mysteries of an overworld. In keeping with the activistic tone of his whole philosophy he finds religion to be rooted in life, and would define religion as an action by which the human being appropriates the spiritual life.
The first great concern of religion must be the conservation--not of man, as mere man, but of the spiritual life in the human being, and it means ”a mighty concentration of the spiritual life in man.” The essential basis that makes religion possible is the presence of a Divine life in man--”it unfolds itself through the seizure of this life as one's own nature.” Religion must be a form of activity, which brings about the concentration of the spiritual life in the human soul, and sets forth this spiritual life as a s.h.i.+eld against unworthy elements that attempt to enter and to govern man.
The essential characteristic of religion must be the demand for a new world. ”Religion is not a communication of overworld secrets, but the inauguration of an overworld life.” Religion must depend upon the contradiction and opposition that exists in human life, and upon the clear recognition of the distinction between the ”high” and the ”low” in life. It must point to a means of attaining freedom and redemption from the old world of sin and sense, and to the possibility of being elevated into a new and higher world. It must, too, fight against the extremes of optimism and pessimism, for while it will acknowledge the presence of wrong, it will call attention to the possibility of deliverance. It must bring about a change of life, without denying the dark side of life; it must show ”the Divine in the things nearest at hand, without idealising falsely the ordinary situation of life.”
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