Part 10 (1/2)

188: ”The Realm of Ends,”, p. 411.

189: _Ibid._, p. 389.

190: _Ibid._, p. 428.

The moral arguments for a future life are bound up with an estimate of the worth of human personality, but are ultimately rational as well. If death ends all, not only are we of all creatures most miserable, but G.o.d also, if in this case He exists, is mocked, and the world whose highest ideals are not and cannot be fulfilled is without ultimate meaning. We have then the dilemma: ”Either the world is not rational or man does not stand alone and this life is not all. But it cannot be rational to conclude that the world is not rational, least of all when an alternative is open to us that leaves room for its rationality--the alternative of postulating G.o.d and a future life.”[191]

191: ”The Realm of Ends,”, pp. 409 f.

A belief in transmigration is with Ward organically connected with his pluralism and pampsychism. For the pluralist ”all the individuals there are have existed from the first and will continue to exist indefinitely”;[192] and it follows that ”'metempsychosis' in some form seems an unavoidable corollary of thoroughgoing pampsychism, so long as we look broadly at the facts of life as a whole.”[193] The same doctrine that ”all the individuals there are have existed from the first”

affects, it should be noticed, the quality of Ward's theism. G.o.d is not transcendent in time, for we cannot conceive G.o.d without the world. He is not transcendent as being in His existence independent of the world, for a G.o.d who is not a creator is an abstraction.[194] Again He is not transcendent in the sense that He can now exercise creative power, for there can be no new creation since the beginning.

192: ”The Realm of Ends,”, p. 204.

193: _Ibid._, p. 213.

194: _Ibid._, p. 245.

Before pampsychism, with its ”unavoidable corollary” of metempsychosis, is adopted this theory itself should be subjected to a closer examination. While pampsychism has undoubted advantages as a philosophical theory, it has serious difficulties as well. It appears to have but slight relation to the progress of science in any of its lines.

The whole scheme of evolution, from the inorganic through the vegetable to animal and man, is seriously modified. The movement is from consciousness to what is called matter, but consciousness seems to have suffered a sort of a ”fall”; for in the geologic and astronomic ages before the introduction of life consciousness was at any rate reduced to the vanis.h.i.+ng point. What, then, of the reality of those processes which geology and astronomy describe? Their reality as more than an imaginary prelude to human or animal life is open to question. The physiologist, moreover, will contend that there is no evidence of the presence of consciousness except in connection with a nervous system, or will at most admit a kind of diffused consciousness in all organic matter. The astronomer, finally, will think it strange to be told that while ”we cannot, of course, affirm that a star or a meteor or a cl.u.s.ter of particles is an individual,” we must as pluralists believe ”that the real beings these phenomena imply have some spontaneity and some initiative.”[195]

195: ”The Realm of Ends,” p. 455.

Both pampsychism and mechanism may be accused of pus.h.i.+ng the principle of continuity too far. It is an error to reduce all objects and all activities, all thinking beings and all objects of our thought, to mechanism and its products and by-products, thus explaining away the peculiar nature of man as a conative and cognitive being. But it is equally an error in the other direction, it may be contended, to reduce all of reality, by an exaggeration of anthropomorphism and a return though in a refined form to the method of primitive animism, to the a.n.a.logy of social intercourse.

It is hazardous to stake the interests of theism upon a technical theory of knowledge such as that upon which pampsychism is based. One may gratefully appreciate the cogency and value of Ward's theistic argument in its general aspects without being convinced that the doctrine of pampsychism is the only, or indeed the firmest, basis upon which theistic belief can be reared.

IV. ROYCE AND THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY

Our American philosopher, Josiah Royce, has always been occupied with the religious aspects of philosophy, but has of late shown a special interest in the philosophical interpretation of the doctrines of the Christian Faith. His mature views are expressed in his essay on ”What is Vital in Christianity?” in his volume, ”William James and Other Essays”

(1911), and in his Lowell lectures, ”The Problem of Christianity”

(1913).

Royce believes that if there is to be a philosophy of religion at all, such a philosophy must include in its task ”the office of a positive and of a deeply sympathetic interpretation of the spirit of Christianity, and must be just to the fact that the Christian religion is, thus far at least, man's most impressive vision of salvation, and his princ.i.p.al glimpse of the homeland of the spirit.”[196]

196: ”The Problem of Christianity,” I, p. 11.

In Christianity Royce finds a religion of loyalty, defined as ”the practically devoted love of an individual for a community.” Christianity is in its essence ”the most typical, and so far in human history, the most highly developed religion of loyalty;”[197] and it was in Pauline Christianity that the Christian ideas of the community, the lost state of the individual and of atonement or grace first received their full statement, though not their complete formulation. Paul's addition to the doctrine of love, thought by himself to be inspired by the Spirit of the Ascended Lord, consisted in his placing love to the church side by side with love to G.o.d and to one's neighbour. ”Christian love, as Paul conceived it, takes on the form of Loyalty. This is Paul's simple but vast transformation of Christian love.”[198]

197: ”The Problem of Christianity,” I, pp. xvii. f.

198: ”The Problem of Christianity,” I, p. 98.

The reduction of what is vital in Christianity to the so-called pure gospel of Christ, as recorded in the body of the presumably authentic sayings and parables, is to Royce profoundly unsatisfactory. ”If He had so viewed the matter, the Messianic tragedy in which His life-work culminated would have been needless and unintelligible.”[199] What is most vital in Christianity ”is contained in whatever is essential and permanent about the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement.”[200]

199: ”William James and Other Essays,” pp. 140 f.

200: _Ibid._, p. 155.