Part 14 (1/2)
Science requires, therefore, that there should be a real Purpose in the world... . It appears from the investigation of science, from investigation of the method of scientific procedure itself, that there must be a Will in which the whole world is rooted and grounded; and that we and all other things proceed therefrom; because only so is there even a hope of attaining the intellectual satisfaction for which science is a quest.
Reason is obliged to confess the hypothesis of a Creative Will, although it does not admit that man has in any way perceived it. But is this hypothesis, which is essential to science, to be left in the position of Mahomet's coffin? Is it not to be investigated? For if atheism is irrational, agnosticism is not scientific--”it is precisely a refusal to apply the scientific method itself beyond a certain point, and that a point at which there is no reason in heaven or earth to stop.”
To speak about an immanent purpose is very good sense; but to speak about a purpose behind which there is no Will is nonsense.
People, he says, become so much occupied with the consideration of what they know that they entirely forget ”the perfectly astounding fact that they know it.” Also they overlook or slur the tremendous fact of spiritual individuality; ”because I am I, I am not anybody else.” But let the individual address to himself the question he puts to the universe, let him investigate his own pressing sense of spiritual individuality, just as he investigates any other natural phenomenon, and he will find himself applying that principle of Purpose, and thinking of himself in relation to the Creator's Will.
If there is Purpose in the universe there is Will; you cannot have Purpose or intelligent direction, without Will. But, as we have seen, ”to speak about an immanent will is nonsense”:
It is the purpose, the meaning and thought of G.o.d, that is immanent not G.o.d Himself. He is not limited to the world that He has made; He is beyond it, the source and ground of it all, but not it. Just as you may say that in Shakespeare's work his thoughts and feelings are immanent; you find them there in the book, but you don't find Shakespeare, the living, thinking, acting man, in the book. You have to infer the kind of being that he was from what he wrote; he himself is not there; his thoughts are there.
He p.r.o.nounces ”the most real of all problems,” the problem of evil, to be soluble. _Why is there no problem of good?_ Note well, that ”the problem of evil is always a problem in terms of purpose.” How evil came does not matter: the question is, Why is it here? What is it doing?
”While we are sitting at our ease it generally seems to us that the world would be very much better if all evil were abolished... . But would it?”
Surely we know that one of the best of the good things in life is victory, and particularly moral victory. But to demand victory without an antagonist is to demand something with no meaning.
If you take all the evil out of the world you will remove the possibility of the best thing in life. That does not mean that evil is good. What one means by calling a thing good is that the spirit rests permanently content with it for its own sake. Evil is precisely that with which no spirit can rest content; and yet it is the condition, not the accidental but the essential condition, of what is in and for itself the best thing in life, namely moral victory.
His definition of Sin helps us to understand his politics:
Sin is the self-a.s.sertion either of a part of a man's nature against the whole, or of a single member of the human family against the welfare of that family and the will of its Father.
But if it is self-will, he asks, how is it to be overcome?
Not by any kind of force; for force cannot bend the will. Not by any kind of external transaction; that may remit the penalty, but will not of itself change the will. It must be by the revelation of a love so intense that no heart which beats can remain indifferent to it.
All this seems to me admirably said. It does at least show that there are clear, logical, and practical reasons for the religious hypothesis.
The mind of man, seeking to penetrate the physical mysteries of the universe, encounters Mind. Mind meets Mind. Reason recognises, if it does not always salute, Reason. And in this rational and evolving universe the will of man has a struggle with itself, a struggle on which man clearly sees the fortunes of his progress, both intellectual and spiritual, depend. Will recognises Will. And surveying the history of his race he comes to a standstill of love and admiration before only one life--
a life whose historic occurrence is amply demonstrated, whose moral and spiritual pre-eminence consists in the completeness of self-sacrifice, and whose inspiration for those who try to imitate it is without parallel in human experience.
Love recognises Love. ”I am the Light of the World.”
I will give a few brief quotations from Dr. Temple's pages showing how he regards the revelation of the Creative Will made by Christ, Who ”in His teaching and in His Life is the climax of human ethics.”
Love, and the capacity to grow in love, is the whole secret.
The one thing demanded is always the power to grow. Growth and progress in the spiritual life is the one thing Christ is always demanding.
He took bread and said that it was His body; and He gave thanks for it, He broke it, and He gave it to them and said, ”Do this in remembrance of Me.” ... Do what? ... The demand is nothing less than this, that men should take their whole human life, and break it, and give it for the good of others.
The growth in love, and the sacrifice which evokes that growth in love, are, I would suggest the most precious things in life. Take away the condition of this and you will destroy the value of the spiritual world.
One may form, I think, a true judgment of the man from these few extracts.
He is one who could not move an inch without a thesis, and who moves only by inches even when he has got his thesis. His intellect, I mean, is in charge of him from first to last. He feels deeply, not sharply. He loves truly, not pa.s.sionately. With his thesis clear in his mind, he draws his sword, salutes the universe, kneels at the cross, and then, with joy in his heart, or rather a deep and steady sense of well-being, moves forward to the world, prepared to fight. Fighting is the thing.
Yes, but here is neither Don Quixote nor Falstaff. He will fight warily, take no unnecessary risk, and strike only when he is perfectly sure of striking home.