AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE S. Radhakrishnan Being the Hibbert Lectures for 1929 London George Allen & Unwin Ltd Museum Street FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1 93 2 REVISED SECOND EDITION 1937 THIRD IMPRESSION (SECOND EDITION) 1947 All rights reserved PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAl^I BY BRADFORD AND DICKENS, LONDON, W.C.I TO S. PREFACE THIS volume contains the Hibbert Lectures given under the title "An Idealist View of Life" in the University of Manchester in December 1929 and in the University College, London, in January 1930, substantially as they were delivered, though I have added some passages which were not used in the actual delivery. I have also utilised parts of the material used in the Principal Miller Lectures of Madras University and the Third Krishnarajendra Silver Jubilee Lecture of Mysore University, which I had the honour to deliver in February 1931 and October 1930 respectively. I have retained the informal, even occasionally conversational style employed in addressing a general audience for the simple reason that the time necessary to recast the lectures into a more severe literary form is difficult to get for one who is actively engaged in teaching and latterly administrative work. The First Lecture attempts to set forth the modern challenge to religion, scientific and social. The Second out- lines the lengths to which we are willing to go in order to escape from the impasse. The Third states the claims of the religious consciousness, while the Fourth argues that scientific certainty is not the only kind of certainty available to us. The Fifth points out that non-conceptual or intuitive appre- hension is at work in all creative thought, whether in philosophy, art or morality, and we attain to a genuine apprehension of reality in religion. The Sixth and Seventh Lectures are devoted to a brief account of a scientific or empirical view of the universe and the concluding Lecture gives a view of ultimate reality, which, I believe, will safe- guard to some extent the great spiritual interests of man- kind. The book is not a defence of any specific religion but only a tentative attempt to discover truth and discuss its io AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE bearings on the general religious attitude. I am aware that the full implications of the problem are not followed out in detail. To the Hibbert Trustees I wish to express my very grateful appreciation of the honour they did me and the opportunity they gave me by their kind invitation to give the lectures. My friend, Professor J. H. Muirhead, very kindly read the proofs and I am greatly indebted to him. S. R. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE 9 CHAPTER I THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 13 -W^aLiS-Idealism ? The Upanisads, Plato, Hegel The Chal- lenge of Science Scientific Method Achievements of Science, Physics, Astronomy, Biology, Psychology, Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis, Sociology Comparative Religion. .and^Higher Criticism Proofs forj[heism ^Practical Inefficiency of Religion' Religion ancTTolitics The Socialist Protest The General Unrest The Present Need. CHAPTER II SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 52 Naturalistic Atheism Agnosticism Scepticism Humanism Religion and Humanism Pragmatism Modernism Authori- tarianism Lack of the Spiritual Note. CHAPTER III RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 84 WMUs, Philosophy* * Religion ?-~The^sjgJj^^of^ Religion- Personal Experience of God Its Character and Content Expe- rience and the Variety of Expressions God and Self The World a Harmony Self-Recognition and the Way to It The Life of the Reborn Rebirtli Salvation Summary. CHAPTER IV INTELLECT AND INTUITION 127 The Eastern Emphasis on Creative Intuition The Western Emphasis on Critical Intelligence Different Ways of Knowing Bradley, Bergson and Croce on Conceptual Knowledge Intuitive Knowing Self-Know ledge - 6amliara, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Schopenhauer, Bergson -J^ntuition and Imagina- tion Intellect Hegel and Bergsof**^The Need for Intuition ^ in Philosophy Pla^o Aristotle Descartes Spinoza Leibni z Pascal Kant Hegel. 12 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE CHAPTER V PAGB THE SPIRIT IN MAN 175 Intuition and Scientific Genius Artistic Achievement Poetry Artistic Knowledge Intuition and Ethical Life Religious .Consciousness And the other values Creative IntuitfoTi=Tlle Spirit in Man Self-integration (nst^tjaj&4IutuUjon Yoj, Psychoanalysis Religious Life Argument from Religious Experience. CHAPTER VI MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 222 Belief and Certainty Science and Philosophy Limitations of Scientific Knowledge The Conception of Samsara Matter Space Time Relativity Substance and Cause Order and Progress Physical Science and Subjectivism Eddington, Jeans and Whitehead Life Vitalism Evolution Mind and its Significance 1 CHAPTER VII HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 262 Self-Consciousness and Consciousness Behaviourism, Psycho- analysis and Gcstalt-theorie The Self an Organised Whole The Self as Subject The Self and the Environment Karma and Freedom Future Life Personal Immortality Conditional Immortality Rebirth Spiritual Reality Salvation and its, Character. ^ CHAPTER VITI ULTIMATE REALITY 312 "The World we Live in" Naturalism Holistic Evolution of Smuts Emergent Evolution of Alexander and Lloyd Morgan Ingressive Evolution of Whitehead God Absolute. INDEX 348 THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 31 lgjiring of tfrfS* Hnrfrinpc rm th* r^jgjrmc ^^f^J^ profound. If "the mind, the spirit and the soul are mani- festations of the living brain jas.t a&JLh&Jlame is the manifest when the brain is destroyed there is an end of it all. The gradual evolution of the human species under the influence of natural forces shows that man is of a piece with the rest of nature. are only the dreams of a being witJL, an, ape^ pedigree. So cautiousfa thinker as Darwinobserved in his Autobiography (1887): "But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions ?" Jhe human mind is a product of jhg_jtruggle j[g_gjggt food-seeking instrument which^learns the _ rigfat by a process of trial and error. Ksjyrorking is ^ expeninental, jts]3^ Accordingto psychoanalysis, conscious reasoning plays an inconsiderable part even in highly advanced beings. And the most fundamental activities of the hi^ryi^n mind are "A"- rational. Thinking isjrnore rationalisation than reasoning. We adduce reasons in support of opinions held on grounds other than the reasons adduced. Th4)ersonaUfey~e~imir is the playground of instincts ^}\^_^^^^^^JT^_^rk fry repre^sive^'lfifluences ansin^j^jdy.JL^^^ religious beliefs. If the depths of the unconscious contain the dynamic drives, then ethical Driving and_xeligious aspiration are only illusions^ Treason isTln many cases, used to defend the action of deep-seated instincts and desires. imaginary jrek^ functions of our irrational aot seem to be quite agreed on what psychology affirms. In an important work called Psychologies of 1925 (published by Clark University, 1926), six different schools of thought are dealt with, and they by no means exhaust the rich variety. To give an illustration, even psychoanalysis is not considered in that bfok. 32 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE najjjie. Religious ideas are consoling devices produced by the mechanisms of projection and regression and do not refer to any objective reality. jpd ..is. .hnt a Junction of the unconscious. Quite in conformity with the dQCi.iine..QL4>an- Sexu;^^ mere mi_srej^serrta^ and even higher religions are fu^^Mdealised sex emotions. The mystic ex- perience^ the^grojectjons of the jnprbid cravings of the ]?552^ When we look upon God as a loving father, we have a regressive idea. In infancy and childhood we look to our parents to supply our wants and protect us from harm. When we grow to maturity we imagine that, as the parental providence governs the home, a patri- arch king who knows and cares for us all paternally provides that things shall ultimately end happily for his children. 1 So even when we are faced by the stern facts of life, we delude ourselves into a state of sentimental security. Though you slay me, yet will I trust in you. We are grown-up infants and God is a sort of ' Vet-nurse _" t o humanit y. The idea of God, which, the anthropologists say, has had an unbroken sway from the most primitive ages of human history, is thus given a psycjiQ][QgicaJ exlanation. Religious thedread of God, tbe^shame,pOhe, sinner jire sj^mil^^e^^med. Freud is definite that _religipn_is an illusion incident to a particular gfagfi to th e psyhfliog?.ca1. ct^^kiprngi;* of mankjnd. Society is in the process of casting it off, as its men of intelligence are rapidly outgrowing the stage of intellectual immaturity to which it belongs. 4 1 Cp. Jung: "The idea of the masculine creative deity is the derivation, analytically and historically psychologic, of the 'Father Imago/ and aims, above all, to replace the discarded infantile father transference in such a way that for the individual the passing from the narrow circle of the family into the wider circle of human society may be simpler or made easier." Psychology of the Unconscious (1922), p. 29. * M. Reinach argues on independent grounds that the history of religion is nothing else than a history of illusions and errors which have played an THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 33 At the moment there is great insistence on the . Though Wundt w^ thq founder of the uf leligien, ito chief ropse- f rom America, Willjam James &T\$ Stanley ^ HaJLTStarBuck and Leuba, Coe andJPratt. Condu^ons ^ hostile to the reality of the religious especiaJl^Jby^those who are^under the i is^ .. jective state andJts.implicatiQii,is^an illusJQnjy^y. insistent, perhaps, but nevertheless an illusion. The aberrant and the uneducated mistake the dreams which spring from below for the voice from above. The voice that reaches us from the heavens is obviously a human^voice.* Its utterances are not messages from visiting gngfiln hnt-rlfiarly hiimiliijrnl^ W<eJsyjtes^^ When life around chills native zeal and integrity, supernatural assurances become popular. The feeling of certainty accom- f doubtful value when the visions often conflict with onejtnother. If. the function of. -teligien when we . are .iace. toface^KitJLgr a ve crises and are_aJrjaid of what is^in^store^for us, thra it works through suggestion andlmagination. In the East and the West techniques calculated to develop the sensorial imagina-, tionJiave, beenjairly ^oQunoriuajaaQng ^ rd^i ws J[Tgen used from the beginning fo^caxrying on the sociaj organisation and conserving the secular values, for religjoul sanctions seem to be more effective for kegp>ipg men JQyg3 nnr^ 'Ta^aKlHing than prrorm^ji^H pnjjf.fl CQlUl fg T?f>1iginr> is tfie^ device to give 1m e^ gr >fia11y beneficent activities. As the social group is something over and beyond the^ individuals whom it includes, its forms possess for the individual a relatively independent or objective character, A typically social product like language is not framed by the individual but is absorbed by him and yet language is only a human product. SiD^flyjreligious belief from the intention of mapy jrynHs arid i* njnjy ^ La^^ Gald ritual, The stories recorded in religious literature are by no means divinely revealed, and if we still cling to them it only shows that errors die hard. 1 "Yes, and if oxen and horses and lions had hands and could paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the images of their several kinds t The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed, the Thracians say theirs ha\e blue eyes and red hair." Burnet : Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed. (1920), p. 119. Spinoza says: "A triangle, if only it had the power of speech, would say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle would say that the Divine Nature is eminently circular, and in this way each thing would ascribe its own attributes to God and make itself like unto God, while all else would appear to it de- formed." Correspondence of Spinoxa, ed. by Wolf 0*928), p. 288. THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 37 No god^ems to be final and no religion perfect. There was a time when vast temples were built for Moloch and Baal, mighty in their own day with crowds of worshippers, gods wjip uttered commands and prohibitions jnter preti?ig_ which numerous priests spent their long lives. To doubt their power an3~pFesetice^was to be condemned as a heretic and thousands suffered death and persecution, but who is so poor to-day as to recognise them, much less do them reverence ? What has happened to the jEgyption Ra and the jBabylonian Shamash, to Isis and Ashtoreth, Zeus and AtheneTT^us'anH Vesta, who ranked a few millenniums back with Yahveh himself, go3s mentioned with fear and trembling and believed in by e andJJieiiLaltars.smoke na-mere. ^ We can only smile atthe naivete of those who assume that while all other gods will pass away their own will abide for ever. The broken jdols of the past seem to have no lessons for them. The history of religion is the record j^Lthe conflicts oiLcpntradictory systems, each of them claiming dogmatic a claim made apparently absurd ~~ plurality of : claimant^, L If comparative religion tells us anything it is that every religion is moulded by fallible and imperfect Jiuman instru; qient^andj J:>uek~aQ absolutely perfect being piust exist, for no^gxisterio^wouldHe" anTmperfectlori an3 which exists could be imagined. But such a proposition is^lspposed "to Thfe first principle with vhich the argument started. Therefore, PQ^J affetfi Kant >oints out that existence is not an attribute like goodness >r wisdom and cannot be involved in the conception of any dea in our minds. There are many things which exist only in our imagination. We have an idea of a perfect circle, but that does not mean that a perfect circle exists. The idea of God is no exception and God's existence cannot be deduced from the conception of God. * Richard Wi&elm: The Soul of China, E.T. (#28), p. 77. 40 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE The causal argument is not more satisfactory. It proceeds on a series of untenable assumptions : tbat^th^.cau6al-eoncept isj/ahd^^that it applies not merely to parts of the world but to the world as a whole, that we can hfr ve a fi r ?t cause; which somehpw is .an fixfifiptinn * n *h&Jaw of succession irst cause is God. An infinite series of causes and effects is not impossible to conceive. If causality is inter- preted as meaning that the contingent implies the necessary, it begs the whole question. Jffiejtajce^thewprld as created and tjiei^jrgiiejthat it must have had a creator. If God is con- reivejjK^nfo possible uponjiie world itsdf .as- infteit^ Again, causality relates happenings in nature and we cannot by means of it go outside of nature and reach the creative source of things. The given world is a contingent fact. It is conceivable that there may be no world at all or only an irrational and fortuitous one. It is therefore conceivable that there may be no God. At best, for causality, God is only a contingent being. But the God of religion is an absolute being in no sense fortuitous. We have already seen that the moral argument fails since attempts are made to account for the development of the moral sense by a process of natural selection. The argument from design is profoundly affected by the development of the theory of biological evolution. The question of the purpose of human life is liffi The universe does not seem to have any definite purpose which it is attempting to realise. To be born, to live, to die and to begin all over again, until all things have disappeared as though nothing had ever been accomplished, such is the process of the universe, such its destiny. Even if the world lends itself to the realisation of purposes, we cannot infer the reality of a purposing mind. We are thrown back on a naturalistic view with its insistence on mechanical determina- THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 41 tion, the insignificance of man*, the irrelevance of personal immortality, the repudiation of personal freedom and the cosmic sanctions for moral standards and indifference to a responsive spirit. While the intellectuals question the founda- tions of religion and make it difficult even for the religious- minded to entertain the larger hope, the idealists dispute its practical value and efficiency. PRACTICAL INEFFICIENCY OF RELIGION By postulating a p^rf^t g^j who i government of tltejii^EEas^^ edge^fronTHhical striving. For Plato, the Good which is the True and the Real shines everlastingly like the sun in the high heaven. Man, dwelling in the cave of his ignorance, bound in the chains of his stupidity and selfishness, takes the shadows thrown upon the farthest walls by the light of his own passions as realities, knows not that the Good is there, the eternal source of all light and life. If his eyes are cleared up, he will see the Real. There is nothing to fight against except the doubts in his mind and the shadows of his errors. What ought to be already is. "The consummation of the infinite end," says Hegel, "consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem yet unaccomplished. The good, the absolutely good, is eternally accomplishing itself in the world; and the result is that it need not wait upon us, but is already by implication as well as in full actuality accomplished." 1 Religion is an isness and not an oughtngss, as Baron von Hugel lovgd to repeat. It is concerned with what is actually environing and penetrating us and we are saved if we recognise it. Religion insists on the apprehension >f what already is and not on the achievement of what is lot. The realisation of goodness is not a future contingency >ut an eternal and necessary reality. Such a view of religion Wallace's *Logic of Hegel. E.T. (1892), pp. 351-352. 42 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE as adoration and not creativity makes us insensitive to the woes of the world in which we live. By divorcing eternity from time, spiritual realisation from earthly life, we kill the only eternity of which we have knowledge, the eternity characteristic of intense living. Salvation is interpreted as having a reference to the next world and not the building of the kingdom of God on earth. Religion is more world-fleeing than world-seeking or world- penetrating. Religion asks us to separate the things of God from those of Caesar. Its principles should not be allowed to interfere with the free play of selfish impulse in a secular order. If religion asks us to adopt brotherly love, avoid force, disregard wealth, the religious people seem to emphasise war, success and efficiency. Such a judicial separation between the two means the degrading of both the secular and the sacred. Rgligion is not doctrinal obedience or ritualistic display, but Tls self-sacrificing love and redemptive might. Those, who tell us that we are not a nation of Christs and it is no use trying to imitate his example and seek martyr- dom by disbanding our armies and scrapping our navies, that religion is not meant for practice, are helping to destroy religion altogether. .1 In the depths of religion there is ever a negation of life, 4 renunciation carried to the point of death itself. Great gods a number of them and in all parts of the world are said to have died for us and we are now called upon to die for them. 1 "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised unto Jesus Christ were baptised unto his death. " Paul's strictures on sex, expressed in the well-known words, "For I would that all men were even as I myself/' that is, celibate and continent, finds its parallel in other religious scriptures. Religious teachers the world over seem to reproach God for making us warm-blooded and not simply sexless neuters, 1 Sir James Frazer: The Dying Colt (1912). THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 43 bodiless ghosts. Human nature is regarded as a vile thing that must be hacked and twisted out of its shape in order to become endurable in the eyes of God. jFteligiouj*^ to have developed unduly the instinct for being unhappy. They seem to have a perverted ingenuity for finding put new contents for sin. 1 Religion with its 'Thou shalt renounce" is, the direct opposite of the new commandment, 'Thou shalt enjoy/' on which all our major and minor prophets are agreed. 2 Religion believes that all needful truth is given to man and there is no need for further enquiry and search. It breeds the delusion that could inspire Tertullian's boast that the Christian mechanic will give a ready answer to problems that puzzled the wisest philosophers. JE^eligio^ is suspicious of enquiry and criticism. The fear of knowledge is as old as the Garden of Eden. Prometheus who dared to steal know- ledge and reveal it to men was chained to a rock. The story of Faust testifies to the widespread belief in the alliance between the men of knowledge and the powers of darkness. When we assume that we have the beginning and the end of all spiritual wisdom and direction for all time and all l""HBi r m.i.,i.. j-nra-rn > jiujiiu__^____^_i__ mankmdQrjbecomes our jJutxJoLpo s lJt^^ o thers by f qrceof arms ofTts subtler substitutes. In the namcTof religion men and women were put to death for not believing that evil spirits inhabit human bodies, for misunderstanding the 1 Bertrand Russell says: "The qualities which make for happiness vary inversely in proportion to the amount of a man's religious belief." "Reply to Mr. Wood," Literary Guide, March 1929. The new attitude to life is well brought out in the following extract from Professor Bateson's Presidential Address at the British Association in August 1914. "Man is just beginning to know himself for what he is a rather long-lived animal with great powers of enjoyment if he does not deliberately forgo them. Hitherto superstition and mythical ideas of sin have predominantly controlled these powers. Mysticism will not die out; for these strange fancies knowledge is no cure, but their forms may change and mysticism as a force for the suppression of joy is happily losing its hold on the modern worjd. Returning to a freer or, if you will, simpler conceptions of life and death, the coming generations are determined to get more out of this world than their forefathers did/' 44 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE mystery of the Trinity, for doubting the verbal inspiration of the scriptures and such other innocent departures from orthodox doctrines. Spiritual absolutism is responsible for the judicial murders of some of the divinest figures of antiquity It exalts orthodoxy above holiness of life. While the economic and political forces are bringing people closer together, religions are doing their utmost to. maintain the inner barriers that divide and antagonise peoples. To the Hindus the Buddhist^are heretics, even as the early Christians were atheists to the polytheistic Romans. Catholics would sooner see one an atheist than an Anglican. ReligJQn enfiende^ a great love for a great hate. Every religion^has^its popes and crusades, idolatry and^j^grgSX: hunting. The cards and the game are the same, only the names are different. Men are attacked for affirming what men are attacked for denying. Religious piety seems to destroy all moral sanity and sensitlveliumanism. It is out to destroy other religions, not for thesake of Asocial betterment or woridTpeaceTbut because such an act is acceptable to one's ^^^alous^ god. The more fervent the worship the greater seems to be the tyranny of names. By a |atal logic, J:he jealous god is supposed to ordain the destruction^! those who worship him under^ other names. The view that God has entrusted his exclusive revelation to any one prophet, Buddha, Christ, or Mohammad, expecting all others to borrow from him or else to suffer spiritual destitution, is by no means old-fashioned. 1 Nothing is so hostile to religion as other religions. We have developed a kind of patriotism about religion ^jvith a code and a^ flag, and a hoistile afctitndq Cowards other men's codes and creeds. The free spirits who 1 The Bishop of London, in his book on Why am I a Christian ? published in the year 1929, says: "That one little candle was put into our hands by the Child at Bethlehem, and it is the only candle there is in the world. I can say this, because I have been round the world, and have seen at close quarters the other religions of the worjd. They have certainly got no candle to light them on their way." THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 45 have the courage to repudiate the doctrine of chosen races and special prophets and plead for a free exercise of thought about God are treated as outcasts. No wonder that even the sober are sometimes tempted to think that the only way to get rid of religious fear, conceit and hatred is to do away with all religion. The world would be a much more reHgiaus pUicejJLall the RELIGION AND POLITICS The political side of modern civilisation is derived from the Greek City State. With all its incomparable values the Greek mind had not a clear perception of the distinction between politics and religion, public duty and individual perfection. To it, Athens and Athene, later Caesar and God, were identical terms. The individual Jhtjghe&t gpod i^ in the seryjcfLoL tho State. The Greek thinkers tried to dis- tinguish between the good man and the good citizen and struggled to base the State on moral foundations. But they did not realise fully the claims of th^inrlividitrrHrniil nnd so identified the Church and the State. It is true that Socrates met his death y^jphH 1 '** 1 ^ tq...r. nns cif nr - ft nr> ^ Arlstntte allowed a~fow ^v^n^H i^^^nals a n inpfriJdigjiiil^ the CQncerRS~e4fee-GUy- State. But all these fade into insig- nificance by the side of the great tradition that a man who does not participate in the civic life is either a god or a beast. When the Greek tradition got mixed up with the Eastern ideals of loving enemies, despising riches, taking no thought for the morrow and paying more attention to another world than this, confusion has resulted which has not yet cleared up. ^ ^^^ jffiipion toflny Jjs a b^nch of statecraft^ a plaything of 1 In one of Strindberg's plays, a nurse who is an ardent Christian seeks to convert a captain who is an atheist. She talks to him about the love oi God. He replies, "It is a strange thing that you no sooner speak of God and love than your voice becomes hard and your eyes nil with hate." 46 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE gglitic. QujL-sease-fyf wuisliipr~te*^shifted to our country, which to most of us is a sacre^ symbol with its own creeds and ritual, demanding sacrificial living. The last war gave a pointed demonstration of the feeble claims of religion as Icompared with the imperious demands of patriotism. 1 Where religion has not been herself the oppressor upholding darkness by violence, she lends her authority to the oppressors and sanctifies their pretences. That religion is worth little, if the conscience of its followers is not disturbed when war clouds are hanging over us all and industrial conflicts are threatening social peace. jReligionhas weakened man's social ggasgience and moral sensitivity by jeparatin^the things of God from those of CaesStr/The socially oppressed are seduced tT$f hopes of final aBjjistment in a celestial fatherland, a sort * J^kn^to* 1 Jj^therhood/* *No wonder religion is con- demned as a plee ~oi cajj|tapstic propaganda. The workers and wage-earners have come to discover themselves and are demanding an opportunity for a fuller and deeper life. Anxious as they are for a new social order based on justice and creative love, they stand out of religious organisations which preach contentment and status quo. T^he^social rem; hit jonaries contend that reljjgonblocks^theway to all progress. It is a bourgeois prejudice and s^grs^^ rooted out at any cost. 2 Spiritually an external or ceremonial te^, ^. __... . ^.^^^-Ji.*"" 1 """"* "5**""" 1 *- -'-*. -~ .r.-JSr*'-'-'""-' .~^t~~>~- * - . , ,,-* v^ 1 It is sometimes asserted that religion saved the Middle Ages from the ^Tfifi nf ^atj^iialinfl] See, however, Dr. Coulton: "One ofHEhe first steps of the newborn University of Paris, in the twelfth century, was to divide its students into nations, just as Bologna University separated them at perhaps an earlier date. At Qxfor4, n^tJjonfrUsiin. wa ^S"g_l^ e ^ ess t> ane: f u l ^> r dividmg ;,Jtk5L. Ei^ish"^" no,! ^jtoin^JJl^CCMiliS^ TjI^^^^^l^J^S^" Eiogl&man^l^jrn^jifl^^^ QxJorditsfiJf . Dr. Rashdall was probably right in surmising that there may be no single yard of its High Street which has not at some time run with a student's blood." Quarterly Review, July 1931, p. 108. * "Under the head of combating bourgeois prejudices and superstitions, the first place is to be taken by the fight against religion, a fight which must be carried on with all requisite tact and all caution, especially among those sections of workers in whose daily life religion has hitherto been deeply rooted." Towards a Communist Programme (iQ2i). sec. 2 ff* THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 47 ^ for nothingijnateriallv it hassled to stop the stf ong man from exploiting his weakertrother ; psycho- logically it has developed traits which are anti-social and anti-scientific. As for its aesthetic and metaphysical satis- factions, TEey can easily be fostered by the spread of science and art, morality and social service and a living faith in human 'brotherhood. Communism i^ th^iewn^ligioA,; Lenin Karl Marx's j2!H^ i n * ^ e ^ys.tic_sojL^f Russia lias become aj-eligion practising sanctified methods for its propagation. The artiy jtgencies ofjthgjcpmmunistic parties, UieJRed Army t the schools, the press and the platform, jtrejtruggliiig: to rid the countr^oi[^nj^eHgiQn % The driving force of Bolshevism is faith, mysticism and willingness to sacrifice even unto death. It is moved by dreams of a new heaven and a new earth even as were the believers in Jewish apocalypse. If the socialist declares, "We are not opposed to religion. Neither are we supporting it. We are simply cutting out religion. Our socialist idea of a universal brother- hood is more important than God or Jesus Christ or any religion,"* we must confess that he is more truly religious than most worshippers of God or Christ. It is no answer to say that these admirable ideas are found in ancient scriptures, for it is equally beyond doubt that the official exponents of religion dismissed them as too ideal for an unideal world. Religion has been given a fairly long trial and the socialist fceeks for an opportunity to experiment with his new creed. He asks for a fair chance before he is judged. When he argues that if only socialism had, as organised religion has, huge establishments, temples, mosques and churches whole-time paid agents, thousands of honorary workers, millions of rank 1 On the walls of the Moscow club-house are found such placards: "Nobody knows when the world was made, but everyone knows that a new world was born in October 1918." "Take the gods out of the skies and remove capitalism from the earth. Make way for the youth of communism." *- 1 Quoted from Basil MattAews: The Commonwealth of Youth (1928), p. 65, 48 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE and file, it would put to shame the leaders of religion by making the world ring from end to end with the courageous gospel of fight against poverty and disease, war and crime, oppression and exploitation of every kind, we may or may not agree with his hope, we may dissent from his drastic methods of reform, but we cannot deny the force of the accusation that organised religion with all its resources, actual and potential, has failed. If it is still tolerated, it is due to ignorance and indifference, and we cannot afford any more to be either ignorant or indifferent. 1 The age has lost the living sense of the truth which it once held. The spirit which revolted against divine rights* and sanctified tyrannies in politics, which protested against the iniquity of social abuses and established conventions, which, in the Reformation, expressed itself in the claim to determine the sense of the scripture and ritual, which gave to modern Europe in the Renaissance the free curiosity and the intellectual scrutiny of the Greek mind and the practical sense of equity of the Roman, is to-day expressing itself in the demand for the sway of science and social idealism. Here is the truth of things which does not depend on any doubtful scripture or fallible human authority but which all who have the intellectual power to observe and honesty to judge will accept. A life of joy and happiness is possible only on the basis of knowledge and science. GENERAL UNREST The present confusion and disorganisation are not confined to Europe and America. Though there are fundamental dis- tinctions between the East and the West, the striking feature at the moment is the extent to which the cultural life of the 1 For an analysis of the present tendencies and future prospects of religion, especially in the Christian world, see Joad: The Present and Future of Religion (1930). THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 49 peoples is getting unified. Turkey is turning its back on Islam for the sake of national efficiency and progress. 1 What is true of Turkey is more or less true of other Moslem states, Persia, Egypt and Afghanistan. In China and India venerable structures built by the patience and effort of unnumbered generations are attacked from all sides. Religion is set down as the cause of our intellectual and national bondage, of our failure and lack of vitality. Many of the Indian leaders are convinced that orthodox fundamentalism, which is still the creed of the majority of the people, has cost us a lot in struggle and suffering, in stunted manhood and deformed spiritual growth. When we find men of undoubted piety range themselves against common sense and scientific knowledge, against the dictates of humanity and the demands of justice, all in blind obedience to laws whose infallibility is a myth, our leaders are getting tired of religion and think it is time we part with it. The country wants to-day not so much salvation from sin as social betterment, which will transform the mass of people wlicTare ill-^, ^i-fil^thed and fr*>f> romrn^nit^flf well-rftg^lated families, living not in luxury, but in moderate comfort with no fierce or unhealthy competition. Freedom is the rallying cry. It is inevitable that the challenge of freedom means often a rude handling of old loyalties and a hasty dismissal of venerable beauty in symbol and ceremony. But freedom asks for its price. THE PRESENT NEED The present unrest, it is cledr, is caused as much by the moral ineffectiveness of religion, its failure to promote the best life as by the insistent pressure of new knowledge on traditional beliefs. There are a few intellectual snobs with 1 Mustapha Kemal said in a speech to the convention of the people's party in the autumn of 1927, "The provision in the constitution that Turkey is a Moslem state is a compromise destined to be done away with at the first opportunity." O 50 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE whom it is a sign of accomplishment to ridicule religion. To care for religion is to be old-fashioned; to be critical of it is to be in the movement. A reading democracy which is necessarily imperfectly educated feels it its duty to reject traditional control when it does not understand the reasons for its claims. Scepticism does not cost us much. It is faith that requires courage nowadays. Besides these denying spirits we have the much larger number who have outgrown the faith but are unwilling to break away for fear of the pharisees. Our concern, however, is with those who find themselves while willing, yet incapable of belief. Their souls have grown more sensitive and so their difficulties are deeper and their questions more insistent. Their doubt is an expres- sion of piety, their protest a kind of loyalty. In the depths of the human soul lies something which we rationalise as the search for truth, a demand for justice, a passion for righteousness. This striving for truth and justice is an essential part of our life, ffle do not need an Aristotle to tell us that the pitfsuil^jpl^ sible excesses are the excesses of the intellect. The to the bondage of the human spirit. This is not the first time in the history of the world that the age was felt to be transi- tional and religion held to be untenable. It is said though I cannot vouch for its authenticity that the first words uttered by Adam to Eve as they stepped out of the gate in the garden of Eden were, "We live in times of transition. 1 ' Every period is one of transition. Through discord and con- fusion lies progress. It happens in the sub-human level; it is willed in the human. Direction of the jnatcb. The invention of what is needful at a particular moment, of the device which will help us to adapt ourselves to the new situation has the same significance as the development at the right time of the new variation which alone is adapted to the altered conditions. At a time THE MODERN CHALLENGE TO RELIGION 51 when humanity is struggling to rise from a state of sub- jection to authority to one in which perfect self-determination is possible, we need the assistance of creative minds. J.he Epphet souls and not the priest minds, the original men pi understanding and not the iflechanical iinitaf^ftt nf tv>p inherited habits^are needed to to^ fashion a goal for itself. Prophecy Js insight. It ^ vson, IHs anticipating experienceTTt \$ seeing the present so fully asTcTforesee the future. CHAPTER II SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION Naturalistic Atheism Agnosticism Scepticism Humanism Religion and Humanism Pragmatism Modernism Authori- tarianism Lack of the Spiritual Note. THOSE who are assailed by religious doubts are devising several ways to escape from the present confusion. In the absence of any definite direction from the leaders, they are taking to crude and amazing cults. They are finding substi- tutes for religion in Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Christian Science, New Thought and such other adventures of the human mind. But the more thoughtful are not satisfied with these sentimental substitutes and their constructive pro- posals range from dogmatic denial to dogmatic affirmation. NATURALISTIC ATHEISM Lucretius, who took refuge in the high indifference of atoms storming through the void according to eternal law, has many followers to-day. 1 It is no use exaggerating the extent of the reaction against crude materialism It still remains the belief to which most people tend when they begin to reflect, and many who are fascinated by the conquests of science do not leave it.* For the emancipated intellectuals I hate the word highbrows the universe is the product of unconscious, mechanistic energy towards which we jcannot have any feeling of reverence or worship. Man is essentially a part of nature, and though his peculiarity is that he thinks, it does not make him a privileged being. He "My own view of religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of iear and as a source of untold misery to the human race" (Bertrand Russell: Rationalist Press Association Annual, 1930). * See the article on " Scientific Humanism" by^ Julian Huxley, Contem- porary Review, July 1931. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 53 is but a specific type among living forms, and it is quite possible that nature may produce a more exciting type with [vastly superior powers, or extinguish all life. Whatever may happen, nature is not likely to be deeply stirred. Human beings are an accident, and they will shortly dis- appear in the cosmic upheaval which is destined to destroy this universe. We have felt in our pulses the pain and misery of the world, but the love and grace of God are only our dreams. The silence that answered Jesus' prayer in the garden of Gethsemane to spare the cup of sorrow and shame is all that the noblest of us can expect in the hour of doom. We are in the grip of nature, which did not ask us whether we would like to be. It gave us corruptible bodies and suffering hearts without asking whether or not we would like to have them. It selected for us the scene of our exist- ence, the conditions of our life, and left us to discover what they are, but yet is quite ready to crush us if we ignorantly cross its purposes. If we scrutinise the truth of religion, this central fact comes out. In Christianity, for example, the salvation of man is mythical. The human individual, who is a victim at once of his own blindness and order of nature, cannot be saved. Since man cannot face this truth, he invents a divine force transcending the careless chaos, from whom salvation comes as an act of grace on the ground of pity. Strictly speaking, we cannot and do not deserve to be saved. In the spirit of Lucretius, Bertrand RusseJLexherts us to give up the gorgeous consolations of religion and those dreadful thoughts of the invisible which had incited men to kill themselves and kill others. According to him, the future religion will consist of two parts: a worship of the ideal conceived merely as the ideal, and a worship of the actual merely as actual or existent. The first involves the goodness, but not the existence, of its object, and the second involves the existence, but not the goodness, of its object. 1 We must 1 "The Essence of Religion," Hibbert Journal, October 1912. 54 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE accept the universe as it is and expect nothing from it. It is more manly to believe in the actual and suffer it than revel in the absurd. We cannot deny that there is an element of sublimity in this stoicism, which submits to the great laws of existence, necessity or chance, without inventing trivial consolations. But it is difficult to maintain an attitude of noble despair to an uncaring universe. From sublime stoicism to neo- paganism the transition is easy. If the universe is a huge machine, which goes on its way regardless of the hopes and fears of humanity, and if the human individual is but a sorry accident looked at from the cosmic perspective, there is no reason why we should add to the sum of human misery by denying ourselves the few precarious joys which life offers. While the stoic teaching is too modest in its promises and too difficult in its practice to attract large numbers, neo-paganism, which justifies and encourages the major temptations of the age, has multitudes of followers. But both stoicism and neo-paganism are ways of escape, devices adopted when we lose our faith in life. The one saving grace of life is, as Seneca said, though it has but a single entrance it has many exits and one can always choose the time and manner of one's going out. 1 Any moment we feel that the game is not worth the candle, we may return God, in the words of Ivan Karamazov, "the entrance ticket." In dark- ness there will be no disappointment. Pessimism is a strangely powerful creed, whose immense vogue is an indication that we are sick with despair. When Diogenes found the Greek liberties disappear under the Macedonians, he warned his compatriots to fear nothing, desire nothing, possess nothing, for then no malicious ingenuity of life can disappoint us. J Art and reflection are sometimes suggested as substitutes 1 Epictetus bade his disciples remember that after all the door is open; like boys at play when we are tired of the gamg we can decide to end it, and while this alternative remains it is not fair to continue and complain. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 55 for religion. Russell exhorts us to "cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble our little day." In the age of Buddha in India and the last days of paganism in Europe, when the old sanctions and faiths were attacked, men sought and found in philosophy the consolations which traditional religion could no longer offer. If disinterested reflection reveals to us the hideous thing life is, we may at least dream a little and build within ourselves a shrine where we can worship our ideals. We can thus find imaginary satisfactions for our unfulfilled desires, and play in fancy the roles we have missed in life. Art becomes a sort of mental self-indulgence, a distraction that takes away the horrid taste of the real. The intellectual aristocrats of our time profess a creed which is a blend of the different views of naturalism, stoicism, paganism and pessimism. As a substitute for religion the stoic-pagan creed is rather weak. We cannot live if we do not recover our faith in life and the universe. It is true that we should oppose a passion- less disillusion to the lies which cripple our minds. Ration- ality is essential, but so is religion if disintegration is to be averted. It may be that religion does not rest on purelj speculative grounds. But it is not enough to be logical. We have also to be reasonable. Loyalty to life requires us to know the creative mystery and serve it to the best of our power. If we feel ourselves to be unwanted in the universe, we # may try to cover up our inner crisis by family attach- ments or civic duties, but the essential loneliness of the soul is worse than solitary confinement. The felt solitude of the human soul, its strange isolation in an incomprehensible world, breaks the vital rhythm that sustains the world. The prophets of disillusion call upon us to seek truth, create beauty and achieve goodness. We cannot strive for these ideals if we are convinced that we are unimportant accidents in a universe which is indifferent, if not hostile, to them. If the nature of the ^orld is malign, our duty is to defy. 56 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE It is only fair to ask where the urge to do these noble things comes from. If the strivings after truth, goodness and beauty are a part of the cosmic plan, then it is not unfriendly to us. Russell admits, "It is a strange mystery that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolution of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space has brought forth at last a child, subject to her power, but gifted with sight and knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking mother." 1 We cannot leave this stupendous fact as a "strange mystery." We set apart nature as a flat and lifeless background of irresponsible energy against which the drama of human life is played, and then insist on the contrast. If science teaches us any-j thing, it is the organic nature of the universe. We are one with the world that has made us, one with every scene that] is spread before our eyes. In a metaphor common to the Upani$ads and Plato every unit of nature is a microcosm reflecting in itself the entire all-inclusive macrocosm. If there is law, if there is order in the universe, our life and consciousness are not accidents. We are solid with the world and are deeply rooted in it. We are not merely spectators^ of the universe but constituent parts of it. Besides, the real is not so unsatisfying as we are asked to believe. It is not fair to blot out the lights and deepen the shadows. The world contains wonderful achievements of man, his heroisms and beauties, his imaginations and inven- tions. Even if the order of the world is created by our minds, our minds are a part of the universe. The ideals we cherish may be still remote and unaccomplished, but the fact is we possess the ideals, and love them so much as to condemn the world because it does not conform to them.* Our judg- 1 Mysticism and Logic (1918), p. 48. * "We grant that human life is mean/' wrote Emerson, "but how did we find out that it is mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness, of this old discontent? What is the universal sense of want and ignorance but the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim?" Emerson is SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 57 ments of value, our convictions of truth, our appreciations of beauty, our experiences of love are the proof that we are not the products of merely physical forces. Those who plead eloquently for the maintenance of values cherish the dim hope that, after all, man is not a victim of the massive necessities, physical and economic, bound to their routine and entangled in their conflicts. He is an actor in the drama capable of forcing destiny and controlling the compulsion of things. The man who, even when conquered by the caprice of the world, remains unconvinced points to his own innate dignity and superiority to nature. The judgment on the world is passed on the unconscious assumption that the pleasure of man is the end of life. Egotism, legitimate when kept within bounds, is highly misleading when it produces the habit of taking oneself too seriously, as a sort of self-appointed judge of the universe. In complaining against the world, we are not seeking truth, and are lacking in the larger charity of the universe. If we look at life as it is, without ignoring or exaggerating any of its tendencies, we shall see that this stupendous movement is not at work for our private benefit. It has its own vast design, which it is seeking to fulfil, compared with which our highest aims are petty. That the world is not a pleasure garden, but is full of pain and suffering, is not a new discovery. The prophets of religion admit this fact and account for it by avidyt or ignorance or original sin, in which humanity is said to be somehow implicated. They also imply that happiness can be attained by the right use of human personality. Happiness here paraphrasing Descartes' statement that we should not be conscious of finiteness if we did not have the idea of infinity all the time within us. A sense of spiritual want is a witness to our relation with spirit/ 'What is strange/' Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, "what would be marvellous is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as ryan. So holy it is. so touching, so wise and so great credit it does to man." 58 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE is not to be confused with pleasure. It consists in harmony, in unity with oneself, in the consciousness of an affirmative attitude to life, in the peace resident in the soul. Nature tends to perfect each thing or each species after its kind. Pain and suffering may be in the process, but if we are wise we will accept it all with joy and work for the consummation of each one's real nature. When a man seeks pleasure and avoids pain, he is on a lower level. The pursuit of truth and the striving after goodness may entail penalties and sufferings, even death of the body, and yet they may contribute to the greatness of the spirit which is real happiness. After all, it does not seem to be a lonely or a love-starved universe. Even those engaged in the grim struggle of life may build up a sense of comradeship on the basis of respect for each other's suffering. Fellowship in suffering redeems the suffering as well. Russell tells us that fear is the source of all religion. It only means that there is a lack of understanding between man and the universe around him. To understand life is t possess it as a whole in the unity of thought. Primitiv| man lived in vital unself-conscious union with natur< When his critical intelligence develops, a dualism is set up between man and the rest of reality. This dualism is the source of fear. Religion tries to remove fear, give us fearless ness, by restoring the lost unity between man and nature the sense of communion with the All. Naturalism asks to endure truth and reverence reality, but we cannot do if there is a cleft between man and nature. Religion, b; insisting on an organic connection between the world of nature and the world of values, delivers us from our isolation and transiency. It therefore takes us deeper than intellect, and re-establishes the vital relationship already at work between man and nature. Atheism belongs to the intellect. When we sink back SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 59 into the inmost core of our lives, we are compelled, whether we like it or not, to accept the universe. Atheism is conl trary to the ultimate instinct of life. That life is good andf is to be made the most of is the act of faith, the unanalys- able ultimate for which no reasons could be given. All degrees of atheism belong to the surface of the mind. Life is much more exultant and mysterious than our intellects can comprehend. Russell's philosophy does not prove the failure of man, but only the inadequacy of intellect as against the truth that is proved in our pulses. The animal instinct which urges man to live and accept the world becomes a reasoned faith in him, that the nature around us is trust- worthy and will respond to our efforts. Russell and his followers protest , against a supernatural world. If it is conceived as existent and not merely logically thought, then it must have active relations with the world in which we live. Miracles, incarnations, ascensions are invoked to bring the natural and the supernatural worlds into intimate union. If the two are bound together according to fixed laws, there is no reason why we should break up reality into the two opposite camps of nature and super- nature. It is all nature ; only we should not confine the term to the obvious facts and forces noticed by our imperfect science. The natural and the supernatural are a distinction within reality, and not between a world we know and another we do not know. If the supernatural is opposed to the natural, it is sometimes confused with the chaotic as distinct from the ordered It is full of chance novelties and incalcul- able accidents. Such a kind of supernatural is repudiated by science. The true conception of the supernatural is however different. Nature has an order of its own. The supernatural is the natural in her true depths and infinity. It is not anything different from nature. i 60 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE AGNOSTICISM Agnosticism admits the mystery and holds that we .do not know and we cannot know. That which transcends us is none of our affair. Life has been compared in an old allegory to a bird that flies out of the darkness into a lighted chamber and, after flitting about there for some time, disappears into the darkness again. We know not the beginning of things, we know not whither they tend, we know just a part of their middle course. Why, then, should we worry about it all? 1 Even if the cosmic process has a purpose, we cannot know what it is. The agnostic does not deny that I there is a reality behind the phenomena. If he does, then he is not an agnostic, for he knows that we know all the] reality there is. If, on the other hand, he holds that there is something behind the phenomena, though we cannot be certain of its nature, even this is inconsistent with agnosti- cism, for he knows that there is something whose nature is such that it can never be known by us. We cannot be certairi that we could not know any more of that of which wd admittedly know so much that it is unknowable. To be ignorant is not the special prerogative of man ; to know that he is ignorant is his special privilege. The latter implies an ideal of knowledge which sets limits to one's ignorance as well as to knowledge. Besides, it is vain to urge men to turn away from the pursuit of the real. SCEPTICISM Some of those who are impressed by the variety of philosophical opinions are inclined to scepticism. They find all opinions interesting, and they are too cultured to have any convictions. Nothing is serious to them, neither art nor philosophy, neither politics nor religion. The world 1 Cp. Bhagavadgltd, II. 28. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 61 does not seem to have any purpose for the many little purposes that we may discover are so much in conflict with one another that we may well regard the world in its entirety as devoid of any purpose. The part of wisdom is to drift along confusedly, hoping for the best, expecting little and believing in nothing very much. Scepticism thrives most in periods of transition. When the Hellenic culture and morality were breaking up under the impact of a wider civilisation, the Sophists appeared. The age of the Buddha and the period of amkara in India were most friendly to the growth of scepticism. Scepticism brings out the sense of loneliness in a world which is robbed of all point. Consistent scepticism is an impossible attitude. HumeJ:ellsjjis . h$w he left h^, scepticism iflJiis etudy^ata. safe distance fronLlife. Though a sceptic is expected to doubt the possibility of knowledge, he always admits the truth of his own position. A scepticism which is in earnest with itself cannot rest in mere scepticism. It affirms the doubter and the doubt. It doubts because it has an ideal of certainty. As a method, scepticism is one thing, as a metaphysics, quite another. The famous^ sceptics of the world adopted it onJjLas a method, ^scajjteg ^ travelled fromjoubt tp.dogmarr^Jume did not impugn knowledge. Balfouj>defended "philosophic doubt" only to establish the "ftrOndations of belief .'MlfeusselJ has faith in the method of science. 1 It is difficult toTinS a sceptic who has not his superstitions. Protestantism which began as a protest ended as a religion. To-day, many of those who deny God are unable to dispense with ghosts. ^Negation is never mere negation. We^deny a thing because we believe something else with which it is inconsistent. We discover the illusory character of knowledge only by reference to something else of which we claim to have knowledge. Generally, the sceptic 1 His Sceptical Essays (1928) is an eloquent plea for the application of the scientific temper to the problems of human life. 62 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE is at war with the faith of his generation. The function of scepticism is in relation to the dogmatism which it criticises. 1 But scepticism cannot be the final resting-place of human thought. If the old faith has become impossible, a new must be found. The sceptic is seeking for a way of life which is worth following, a belief that might be honestly held, and a social order in which we can find shelter. The deepening of doubt is a sign of spiritual growth. HUMANISM A more positive attitude is adopted by what is sometimes Called humanism. It holds that it does not matter what we think about the ultimate nature of reality if only we are prepared to do the proper thing. Religious theories may be mere speculations. We cannot be sure what is true, or whether anything is true at all. Life at any rate is something certain and definite, and so let us occupy ourselves with the im- provement of life. Humanism is a protest against naturalism on the one side and religion on the other. The soul of man is not a thing of nature ; nor is it a child of God. Devotion to values would be inexplicable, if men were entirely products of nature. As against religion, humanism contends that this world is our chief interest and perfection of humanity our one ideal. The ultimate harmonious interrelation of all individuals with one another is the aim of humanism. Loyalty to the great community, as Royce said, is our highest duty. The humanist has no sympathy with all religious taboos which tend to drive away the blood from our veins. Morality is not meaningless self-mutilation. x Socrates, when accused of heresy, declared: "I do believe that there are gods, and in a higher sense than that in which my accusers believe in them." Buddha believed in a god different from the popular ones in which his contemporaries trusted. To break down the images oi the gods we worship is not always an act of unbelief: it is the announcement of a higher sense of God. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 63 While excessive asceticism is encouraged by religion, humanism believes in balance and proportion. It is based on the Greek doctrine of inner harmony and the Roman sense of decorum. Humanism is not to be confused with what is sometimes called the gospel of a good time. It does not admit that all modes of thought and activity are equally valid or justified by the mere fact of their existence. The composite self which is an unstable collection of diverse elements requires to be worked into a full and balanced whole. In the nature of things some propensities cannot be allowed full play, for when let go they create conditions in which the freedom of self-expression is curtailed. Besides, man is planted in a social environment which imposes limitations on his life. And these are not felt as a restriction as the individual gets in return a sense of peace and satisfaction. Professor Irving Babbitt, of Harvard University, the leading representative of the American type of humanism, in his book on Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), admits that human society and its progress depend on the control which men exercise by means of the will over the natural human instincts. He recognises an inner check which is the principle of inhibition, His quarrel with religion is due to his reading of religion as something which puts the principle of control outside man, while humanism places it within man. We can realise the humanist's ideal by means of the inner discipline without reference to any supernatural power. Humanism, which is more a tendency than a system, has had a long history. In the East, Confucius held that the highest good was the proper maintenance of a well-balanced system of human relationships. "Our moral being is the great reality (literally 'the great root') of all existence, and the moral order is the universal law of the world." I When 1 Confucius quoted in Rufus Jones: New Studies in Mystical Religion (1927), p. 180. 64 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the Brahmanical faith was undermined by its own ascetic excesses, Buddha insisted on the majesty of the moral law and mercy to all creation. The Greek view of life was essen- tially humanistic, with its insistence on measure, order and proportion. In the Renaissance we had a widespread revival of humanism. Kant defends a rational and ethical life as against a mystical religion. 1 Morality is, for him, a categorical imperative, a command about which there is nothing contin- gent or conditional. Our consciousness of moral obligation is something absolutely different from any other experience, and is ultimate and self-explanatory. The obligation of duty ij one and the same for all rational beings. The absolute claim of the moral law on our obedience results in the recognition of the equality of all who are aware of a like claim upon them, who constitute a kingdom of ends, a spiritual commonwealth, in which the moral law is supreme. Kant's attitude to moral law is deeply religious, full of that feeling of awe and self-abasement, but it is not religion. The positivists identify religion with the service of humanity. The ethical movement is inclined to equate God with the moral ideal. The French school of Emile Durkheim and his followers treats religion as a social phenomenon.* Many of our sceptical thinkers to-day adopt humanism as the creed of common sense. It has a natural appeal to the human mind when it is uncertain of the source of life and its nature. It has its strongest representatives in America, where it is felt "The delusion that we can effect something by attempts at a supposed intercourse with God is religious fanaticism. Such a feeling of the immediate presence of the supreme being and such a discrimination between this feeling and every other, even moral feeling, would imply a capacity for an intuition which is without any corresponding organ in human nature." Quoted in Selbie: The Psychology of Religion (1924), p. 247. "The god of the clan, the totem ic principle, can be nothing else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem" (Durkheim: Elementary Forms of Religious life, E.T., p. 206). According to Ames, religion is nothing more than ' the consciousness of the highest social values" (Psychology of Religious Experience, ch' viii). SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 65 to be the only hope of salvation for a world dominated by the tyranny of scientific ideas and threatened by a mechani- sation of spirit. American humanism draws upon the Greek, the Buddhist and the Confucian traditions. 1 Humanism seems to be religion secularised. The self- sufficiency of the natural man, the belief that the onljj values that matter are human values is the central faith oj the humanists. Plato and Aristotle, from whom this faith derives its inspiration, are clearly aware that the deeper needs of the soul require to be satisfied. 2 We are not really human if we do not feel that we are related to something that transcends the finite and the conceivable. We want not a mere improvement of the world, but an ideal trans- figuration of it. If the humanists regard the enhancement of personality as the chief end of life, our personality cannot be reduced to either physical manhood or economical well- being, or instructed mind, or sensitive conscience. We 1 "It is only proper that I acknowledge my indebtedness to the great Hindu positivist; my treatment of the problem of the One and the Many, for example, is nearer to Buddha x han to Plato" (Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), p. xx). Professor P. E. More is a student of Plato and the Upani- sads. See his Shelburne Essays (1904-1928) and the Greek Tradition (1904-1928). A section of American Unitarians distinguished themselves from the more conservative members of that body by adopting the creed of humanism. See Reese: Humanist Sermons (1927). "While I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and the teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet and saying to him after my manner, you, my friend, a citizen, of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom, truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?" (Apology, 29). In a recently discovered fragment of one of Aristotle's lost dialogues, the inadequacy of mere economic pros- perity is well brought out. "Be assured that the good of man does not depend upon abundance of possessions, but upon the right inner quality. Not even the body is regarded as in a happy condition, merely because it is decked out in resplendent robes, but only if, though wanting in finery, it is well developed and in good health. Likewise one should call only that man fortunate whose soul is ethically developed rather than the man who is rich in outward possessions and is worth nothing in himself. Even a horse is judged by its actual virtues. If it is a poor horse, it is not rated higher because it has a gold bit in its mouth and a costly harness on its back" (quoted by M. C. cAto: International Journal of Ethics, January 1929. p. 302)- K 66 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE cannot live up to the full height of our potential being without drawing upon the deeper resources of spirit. The roots of man's being are in the unseen and eternal, and his destiny is not limited to the duration of his life on earth. 1 Humanism is confessedly rationalistic, and ignores elements in life which cannot be dealt with in intellectual terms. There is a story about the visit of an Indian philosopher to Socrates. Aristoxenes reports that Socrates told the Indian stranger that his work consisted in enquiries about the life of men, and the Indian smiled and said that none could understand things human who did not understand things divine. Humanism demands a disciplined life and insists on wholeness and harmony. But it sets the moral and natural elements of man in sharp opposition. It is the essence of the moral will to check the free play of natural impulses and desires. If the dualism between man and nature is radical, the ideal of harmony cannot be attained. Besides, is the controlling will a mere negative check or has it any positive content ? If it is the former, it has no content : if it is the latter, whence is its content derived ? The higher will in man becomes identified with the spirit in him. Without the recognition of such a spiritual centre, which will help us to co-ordinate the variety of unlike elements of which human nature consists, our life will have no integrity. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle lays down the golden mean, a balance between two extremes as the rule of life. He promises a fair share of earthly pleasures for a life of virtuous activity. And modern humanists adopt a similar view. It is not easy to determine what exactly is the mean between too much and too little. What is the course of self-respect which steers clear of slavish obsequious- 1 Cp. Aristotle: "We should not give heed to those who bid one think as a mortal, but so far as we can we should make ourselves immortal and do all with a view to a life in accord with the best principle in us" (Nichoma- chear hthic^, 1177 b). SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 67 ness and arrogant airs? Where does decency lie between ascetic purity and sensual indulgence ? When is violence not strength? Between the right and wrong it is not a mere quantitative difference. Aristotle himself admits that it is difficult to hit the mean though easy to miss it. We cannot apply a mere mechanical rule. We must develop a living adjustment, a sure taste in any concrete case. The difference between mechanical morality and true virtue is determined by the delicate insight into the realities of the situation. Aristotle recognises that it is only the sense of something stable and unitary beneath the shifting experiences of life that can help us in seeing the right in any context. We must first gain entrance into the kingdom which is not of this world if we want to build it on earth. Enlightened humanism seems to ignore this essentially non-worldly character of a truly spiritual life. Durkheim is not quite fair when he identifies religion with social morality. In all religions there is a trans-social reference. No religion can fulfil its social functions adequately if it is only social. Virtue is not a mere balancing or nice calculation. An ancient critic spoke of Aristotle as "moderate to excess/' He gives us good form and not holy fervour, cold efficiency and not constructive passion. For a balanced humanist, non- violence is as much anti-social and unpractical as an indis- criminate use of violence. The middle course may perhaps be the law of retaliation. Moral heroism is a jealous god and not a judicious compromise. The saints aim at righteousness, not respectability. They burn with a passion, an adventurous enthusiasm that is reckless of life. Humanism lacks that indefinable touch, that ilan of religion which alone can produce that majestic faith whose creativity is inexhaust- ible, whose hope is deathless, and whose adventures are magnificent. Those who keep their eyes close to the ground and accept the counsel of the Delphic oracle to follow "the usage of the city" may conform to the code of humanism, 68 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE but they are not moral heroes. It is all the difference between being a gentleman and being a religious man. It is more easy to be a gentleman than to be a Christian, to have sufficient self-respect and self-control, to be decent and good than to hunger and thirst after righteousness. 1 The saints invariably overstep the boundaries. Their saintliness consists in overstepping. Socrates and Jesus overstepped the bound- aries. Though they died for their love of truth and justice, they live for ever, echoes and lights unto eternity. They change the minds of men and illumine the otherwise dark pages of human history. Real love or will to good expresses itself in various forms, from sacrifice of oneself for one's neigh- bour to the acceptance of even those who offend us cruelly. All this is possible only if we do not sacrifice the mystical to the moral. The truly religious live out of a natural profundity of soul; their effortless achievements are not primarily directed to a refashioning of this world. Their faith is essen- tially life-transcending, and as a result, life-transforming. However ingeniously we might plan and organise our society and adjust human relationships, so long as the world is what it is, the best of us cannot escape sorrow and suffering. Socialism cannot remove human selfishness. Even if we by some stroke of good fortune escape from the usual annoy- ances of life, we cannot free ourselves from death. Our bodily organism has in it seeds of dissolution. Mortality seems to be native to our world. Can humanism make death trivial and service significant ? It is easy to ask us to draw on our capacity for endurance and heroism and go down into the valley, strong, alone and conquering, but when we are 1 Dean Inge said recently that "even a bishop would display Christian meekness if he were told that he had not behaved like a Christian; he would not be at all meek if he were told that he was no gentleman." We may not like the version of the eighteenth-century epitaph, which described a gentleman as "uniting a rational enjoyment of the pleasures of this world with a confident expectation of those of the world to come." Cp. also Chesterfield's definition of decorum a the act of combining the useful appearance of virtue with the solid satisfaction of vice. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 69 uncertain of the meaning of the world such advice is stupid. In the second book of the Republic, Plato tells us of an absolutely just man who yet passes for an unjust one, and suffers the most severe penalties with no hope of relief in this life and no expectation of reward in the next. When Socrates is asked whether such a one tortured on the rack and crucified can yet be happy, he answered in the affirma- tive, simply because he was not a mere humanist, but believed in the spirit in man and the significance of the world. Humanism has no consolation for those who bear in pain the burden of defeated hopes and suffer sorrow and con- tempt. Kant's chief argument for theism is that since the good man is often defeated on earth, we require a super- human power to adjust virtue and happiness. When the foundations of life are shaken, when the ultimate issues face us demanding an answer, humanism does not suffice. Life is a great gift, and we have to bring to it a great mood; only humanism does not induce it. When the humanist admits the ultimateness of the values, he is implicitly accepting the spiritual view of the universe. For him the ethical self is a power above the ordinary self in which all men may share, in spite of the diversity of personal temperament and to which our attitude must be one of subjection. The question is inevitable whether the ethical ideal is a mere dream or has the backing of the universe. Is man ploughing his lonely furrow in the dark or is there a transcending purpose that is co-operating with him in his quest for ideals, securing him against the ultimate defeat of his plans? Are the values mere empirical accidents, creations at best of the human mind, or do they reveal to us an order of being which is more than merely human, a spiritual reality which is the source of the significance of what happens in the temporal process? Does human life point beyond the contingent to another world, absolute and eternal though in Contact with the human, and exerting a 70 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE transforming influence on it ? Professor Alexander is of opinion that the world of values arises as a secondary emergent product out of a simpler ultimate existent. For him values are "incidents in the empirical growth of things, within what is really the primary reality of space-time/' I Alex- ander denies priority to value, but finds it difficult to account for the development of space-time without the postulation of a nisus. The nisus is not space-time. If it were, it could not serve the purpose for which it is assumed; if, on the other hand, it is something that makes space-time move on to higher forms, it is something different from space-time and prior to it. The principle of explanation seems to be space- time and the nisus, the void and God, to use Old Testament terminology. Kant's ethical theory shows that we glimpse the spiritual reality superior to the human by means of the ethical consciousness. Though Kant distinguishes religion from ethics as an independent activity of the human spirit, somewhat subordinate to the ethical, his system as a whole sets right the balance. While virtue is good in its own right, it is not the whole good, which is virtue combined with happiness. Perfect virtue and perfect happiness are two sides of the unconditioned good which the practical reason sets before itself. Our moral consciousness is offended if there is a divorce between the two. Perfect happiness, however, is dependent on natural causes which do not seem to have any direct relation with virtue. A proper adjustment of happiness to virtue is possible only if we assume a divine being who is able to bring the cosmic into conformity with the moral and regulate the combination of happiness and virtue. Our moral consciousness postulates God, who is adequate to the realisation of the summum bonum. Kant is convinced that this world is not all, and that the dispropor- tion between the claims of virtue and the rewards of life will be set right. If we do not accept the postulate of God, Space Time and Deity, vol. ii (1920), p. 314. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 71 we shall be faced by a dualism between the moral law which claims our allegiance and a universe which is apparently indifferent if not hostile to the demands of morality. If the authority of the moral law is to be justified, if the ultimate- ness of man as a moral being is to be vindicated, then the world process which has resulted in the formation of human personalities has significance and the structure of things is spiritual. Humanism thus leads to a view of itself as rooted in a reality deeper and more comprehensive, in which it finds its completion. Humanism is concerned with value; religion relates value to reality, human life to the ultimate background against which it is set. However crude and mis- conceived the savage's religion may be, it gives him the security that the real is friendly to his values, and is not indifferent to his welfare. From the totemic principle of the savage to the absolute spirit of the philosopher, there is right through a confident belief that man is a fragment of the larger scheme of things which contains the secret of his life and his surroundings and exerts a mysterious power over his destiny. The great humanists see the abiding element of the one in the infinite flux of the many. Plato admits the Immutable Idea and Aristotle the last Immaterial Form. In early Buddhism we have a religion which does not insist on an eternal God, and yet makes a strong appeal to the conscious- ness of evil, the need for holiness and the conquest of greed and sensuality. Early Buddhism had implicit trust in an eternal right that dwells in the constitution of things. The structure of the universe is ethical. It is dharmabhuta. Even Matthew Arnold, for whom religion was morality tinged with sentiment, believed in some kind of relation and response to "the more than ourselves that makes for righteousness," the more than the finite and the finished, in submission to which is our peace. For the American humanists, Babbitt dhd More, humanism and religion are 72 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE two stages on the same path. Naturalism is right in its insistence on man as body ; humanism is right when it exalts man as mind; but man is not merely body or mind, but is spirit as well. So humanism cannot do duty for an adoring life which is identified with the mind of God, and manifests itself in service and self-loss. There is no conflict between religion and a reasonable humanism. The truly religious act in this world; the inner feeling of the relation between God and man is bound to issue in the service of humanity. While what matters is works or fruits of religious life, its social productivity, the most efficient servants of society are those who cultivate anxiously the interior life. A religion whose centre is man and not God is never a strong one. RELIGION AND HUMANISM The attacks of humanism and social idealism are directed against the force of reactionary ecclesiastical systems with their warnings of afterlife and future settlements. Thanks to the spread of the humanist revolt, religion is becoming more and more an instrument of social reform. Within the Christian Church we come across reformers who invoke the religion of Jesus for the programme of Moscow. We are reminded of Jesus' definition of those who called on his name and yet neglected to feed the hungry, and his declara- tion that what is done to the least of his brethren is done to himself, of St. James* remark on religion pure and undefiled, and of St. John's protest, "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom [he hath not seen?" Harnack's works and Seeley's Ecce Homo proclaim a humanitarian type of Christianity. The vogue of Christian science is due to its insistence on the practical character of Christ's mission. In India, under the influence of thinkers like Dayanandi Sarasvati and Vive- SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 73 kananda, Gandhi and Tagore, a social gospel is becoming popular. The Bhagavadgttd, with its insistence on work, has become the most important Hindu Scripture. In religion accent is the vital thing, and it is now shifted to social reform. But we cannot forget that in essence religion is spiritual redemption and not social reform. Sanctity and holiness may imply service and fellowship, but cannot be equated with them. 1 Religion to-day has to fight not only unbelief and secularism, but also the subtler rival in the guise of social reform. PRAGMATISM Sometimes the modern challenge to religion is met by a somewhat pragmatist view. Pragmatism rejects absolute truth as a myth, and holds that all truths are human and relative. A truth is tested by the value of its consequences. In science, e.g., we adopt and act on suitable hypotheses even before they are tested and proved. Similarly we can make spiritual experiments in religion. We have to ascertain the value of religious views not by their objective truth, but by their ethical and spiritual results. It does not matter whether a particular dogma like the Incarnation was realised in the person of Jesus or not, so long as the idea is a living reality in the community. The Christ of experience, the metaphysical and theological Christ, is not in any manner affected by the Jesus of history. When we say "God is our father," we are not so much stating a truth about the nature of God as indicating a way in which we. should act towards one another. Even if we do not believe, we must act as if we believed. It is useful to live as though there were a God. Socip 1 efficiency seems to require theistic belief. This view is traced to Kant's doctrine that the idea of God is a regula- Cp. the criticism made gf Kenan's Life of Jesus by a French girl, "What a pity that the story did not end with a marriage." 74 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE tive one, a methodological fiction which helps us to regard objects of our thought as connected parts of a systematic whole. In its insistence on the conative or teleological character of experience, and in its protest against the divorce of know- ledge from practice in the concrete life of mind, pragmatism is quite in conformity with traditional idealism and its principle of the priority of the ideal. Its defect is in the narrow view of teleology which it adopts. The criterion of working must be applied in the larger context of the whole experience. The idea has value if it works not for a casual desire or temporary purpose, but for the whole relevant situation. It must satisfy critical intelligence. Profound needs of the soul seem sometimes to be satisfied by dangerous illusions. If we accept beliefs on the ground that they add to our mental health and happiness, many superstitions will become justified. The pragmatist seems to agree with the psychoanalyst in holding that religious beliefs compensate for the harshness of actual existence. If the object of belief were only imaginary, created in order to satisfy our needs, then the belief itself would in time wither away. We mean by God something more than the idea of God. The vital essence of religious conviction is that its faith is not a mere idea. If fictions helped many generations, it is because they were not known to be fictions. They lose their power when their character is recognised. No man can worship perman- ently what is untrue. When we affirm that the only founda- tion of faith is the need or the desire of man to believe, we are expressing an ultimate unbelief, It is our duty to seek the truth, however uncomfortable and fugitive, instead of clinging to phantasies which are uplifting and consoling. God is not what a man wishes to be true for the sake of an easy time, but what he knows to be true, even though it means sacrifice and self-denial. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 75 MODERNISM What is called modernism is an attitude of mind which is very ancient and ic to be met with in all religions. Each generation is called upon to reconcile its experiences and fit them into a systematic scheme. To-day the modernists are engaged in reconciling religious traditions with the new needs which have emerged in the process of development. In the Christian world, the modernists point out that even the central truths of Christianity are products of growth. The Jesus of the Gospels is different from the Jewish Messiah, the Greek Logos, or the Protestant Christ. The Jesus of the twentieth century bears the marks of Jewish piety, Greek philosophy, Roman legalism, German realism, and French logic. It is our duty to distinguish what is permanent from what is transitory in religious belief, and reconcile the permanent by means of re-interpretation with the new knowledge and aspiration. Dogmas are reduced to myths, miracles to legends, sacraments to symbols and sacred books to literature. Modernists are of all degrees, and it is impossible to deal with them all. One or two striking illustrations may be taken. Harnack's famous distinction between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus gives a clue to liberal Protestantism. The suffering of Jesus is significant only if Jesus is a human sufferer. In submitting to suffering for the love of man, Jesus reveals God more than in the other acts of his life. The statement, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son," is a poetic representation of the simple intuition that to love is to suffer. The more we love, the more we suffer. Infinite love is infinite suffering. According to this view Jesus taught a higher ethics than a mere pharisaism. He is a man become God rather than God become man. The latter is as empty to the educated modernist as primitive magic is to the missionary. Dean Inge claims that the Christian faith is a religion of 76 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE spirit and not one of dogma, which can be defended and imposed. Religion is love and worship, not of what God did or will do, but what he is doing to-day, revealed now as much as ever, a light which the soul receives and reflects in more or less of radiance according to its powers of feeling and understanding. Jesus shows us the highest reflection of this radiance in practical life. The religious truth is found in Plato and the Upanisads. Its highest embodiment is in the life of Jesus. So Dean Inge 1 claims that he is an adherent of the Platonic tradition in Christian thought. Its characteristics are "a spiritual religion, based on a firm belief in absolute and eternal values as the most real things in the universe a confidence that these values are knowable by man a belief that they can nevertheless be known only by wholehearted consecration of the intellect, will and affections to the great quest an entirely open mind towards the discoveries of science a reverent and receptive attitude to the beauty, sublimity and wisdom of the creation as a revelation of the mind and character of the Creator a complete indifference to the current valuations of the worldling. The Christian element is supplied mainly by the identification of the inner light with the spirit of the living, glorified and indwelling Christ/' Professor Kirsopp Lakes dwells on the permanent characteristics of a pure religion of spirit and is indifferent to Jesus' embodiment of them. His interpretation takes away the distinctively Christian elements from Christianity and effects its identification with a pure mysticism. The modernist attempt to relate the content of the faith to contemporary knowledge deprives the orthodox religion of its distinctiveness and therefore does not have the sympathy of the multitudes who have also their rights in the matter. 1 The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought (1927), p. 9. * Ibid., pp. 33-34- i The Religion of Yesterday and of To-morrow (1925). SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 77 It is believed to be a sort of flat and vague aspiration after a higher life, somewhat academic and negative in character. 1 Since the modernists occupy a somewhat middle position, they are exposed to attack from both sides. The naturalists are dissatisfied since they feel that religion is getting a fresh lease of life by the modernist attempts. The traditionalists contend that by dragging into half light matters that would be safe in their obscurity, they are endangering religion itself. We must either leave them in obscurity and so lapse into faith or lead them forth into full light and thus accept secularism. Modernism seems to occupy an untenable half- way house. AUTHORITARIANISM The prophets of the new creeds seldom have an audience, much less a following. They have no bond of union except a common unbelief. In the confusion of counsels, the seeker is lost. He wants but does not get a standard to live by, an ideal transcending himself to which he can submit. Anarchy is the best support for authority. Despotism is next door to anarchy. Formless confusion carries us into the arms of fixed forms. Tired of the effort of thinking, frightened by the difficulties of doubt, we fall back on authority with a sigh of relief. It is a refuge from scepticism, if not its substi- tute. Liberty and reason are no doubt great ideals, but there can be no liberty without discipline and no reason without faith. The orthodox Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant, both take their stand on authority. It is authority that is exalted whether of Pope or of Council or Cp. Filter Ronald Knox's caricature of the Modernist's prayer: "O God, forasmuch as without Thee We are not able to doubt Thee, Help us all by Thy Grace To teach the whole race We know nothing whatever about Thee." 78 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of Book. Rome made Galileo recant. Calvin's Geneva might have burned him. Tennessee would have put him in prison. 1 The principle of free inquiry which lay behind the appeal to scriptural authority is still an unfulfilled ideal. The spiritual genius who can think out a religion for himself is one in a million. The large majority are anxious to find a shrine safe and warm where they can kneel and be comforted. For them it is a question of either accepting some authority or going without religion altogether. It is Catholicism or com- plete disillusion. The leaders enlarge on the beauty and richness of the worship, the antiquity and order of the tradition, the opportunity for influence and service which the historic church offers. If we are not to languish as spiritual nomads, we require a shelter, and the church which is majestically one in creed, ritual, discipline and language, a corporation in which racial and national barriers are obliterated, a kingdom without frontiers, attracts the large majority. The importance of authority and the value of tradition are great. If we are not to lapse into individualistic ration- alism and ultimate negation, if we are not to be led astray by our wandering whims, if our personal intuitions are to be guided by the accumulated wisdom of the race, only tradition can help us. It takes centuries of life to make a little history, and it takes centuries of history to produce 1 It is doubtful whether an infallible church or an infallible book is more favourable to real religion. However corrupt the church may be, it is a live organism responsive to the new influences. A book embodying a revelation supposed to be completed for all time to which no spiritual experience can add anything of value, is perhaps more damaging. It is true that Luther allowed to the individual liberty to examine the scriptures, and admitted that the General Council is not infallible. But Luther's logic ultimately ended in identifying truth with his own view of it. There is not in this matter much to choose between Catholic Authority and Protestant Orthodoxy. Nor can we be certain that the Protestant Reformation means the advance of a rational faith. It is arguable that there is far more intellec- tual strength in the mediaeval scholastics than cap be found in the emotional utterances of a Luther or a Calvin. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 79 a little tradition, and we cannot lightly set it aside. Mankind does not begin completely afresh with each individual. The first principles need not be proved by each of us. There is a body of accepted knowledge, a deposit of faith on which we can all draw. Though religion is in a sense each individual's personal affair, it is dependent on past tradition and grows out of it. But loyalty to tradition is one thing, and bondage to it quite another. Complete conformity is contrary to life. Only the dead are completely conforming. Progress is a law of life, and the power of change is essential to conservation. No tradition is final and absolute. The past helps us to reach more elevated heights from which, as the ages move, we may gain a clearer vision of the relations of God and man. Authoritarianism is useful as a warning against the claims of scientific knowledge. There are aspects of reality where science is insufficient. It does not mean, however, that science and religion are opposed, and what the one affirms the other denies. "If the wisdom of this world were really foolishness with God/' said Goethe, "it would not be worth while to live three score years and ten." 1 In the wake of authoritarianism, which distrusts reason, superstition is growing stronger. All sorts of irrational ideas born of fear and ignorance are becoming fashionable. The sale of lucky mascots, the interest in astrology, and the faith in mediums show how near we are to the magicians and medicine men of ancient times. In some quarters religion itself is being transformed into a superstition, with the result that men of real piety and integrity of mind are repelled by it. a Strange esoteric sects, whose prophets believe them- 1 Maxims and Reflections, 618; Goethe and Faust, by Stawell and Dickinson (1928), p. 6. * Cf. Professor J. S. Haldanc: "The materialism with which orthodox theology is at present shot through and through is the whole source of the weakness of religious belief in presence of the sciences and of the alienation between religious belief and the sciences" (The Sciences and Philosophy 80 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE selves to be the only living recipients of divine revelation, are attracting the credulous. 1 The problem facing us is whether we have faith in our- selves or not. If we have, we must possess the freedom to explore, the only limitation being that we should not inter- fere with others who are engaged in similar pursuits. Our faith is worth little if we are not sure that the individual will discover truth, through the exercise of his reason and conscience. Emerson said, "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose; take which you please, you can never have both/' Respect for man requires us to possess faith that his powers of thought and spiritual dis- covery guided by his experience of the past will not lead him to error and confusion. There is the risk that we may be betrayed into error if we think freely, but the faith which does not face this risk is not true faith. Despotism and anarchy, an infallible authority and a disruptive subjectivism, are not the only alternatives either in politics or in religion. They are twin branches of one stem, comple- mentary sides of experience which become opposed to each other when developed in fanatical abstraction. Neither is adequate to the fulness of human nature. The new authori- tarian does not provide the forms into which men could throw themselves with confidence and joy. The pioneers and the path-finders flouted authority and declared what their deepest being found true. Each one of us has a super- ficial intellectual self and a deeper individual one. A dynamic religion discovers the individual and engages the depths in us. Our responses then will not be of a routine character. The authoritarian tickles us into acquiescence in the name of numbers. True religion lifts us out of our ruts, treats us (1929), pp. 31 1-312). Even the liberal schools are unwilling to shake off the materialism associated with theology in the way of supernatural revela- tions, interferences, miracles and such other superstitions. While scientific materialism is retreating, theological materialism is advancing. 1 See Ray Strachey: Religious Fanaticism (1928}. SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 81 as individuals and not units in a crowd. Those who are suspicious of free and personal religion and wish to impose on all a divinely guaranteed dogmatic creed endanger the interests of truth and stability which they are so anxious to conserve. Extremes meet. Authoritarianism implies a sort of scepticism. In affirming that religion should be defended from human reason, that its God should be ap- proached with eyes coloured by faith, that its systems should not be regarded too closely, authoritarianism seems to harbour a secret scepticism. It can have little appeal in an age remarkable for its criticism of creeds of all shades. Only those who have never known the meaning of doubt can accept authority. The many thinking men who are still hoping to discover a warrant for their faith which traditional dogmas cannot give, even when they undergo the violent distortion of allegory and exegesis, can only be restive under an authority that is merely external. The authoritarians show a somewhat imperfect acquaintance with reality. When John Wyclif and his followers translated the Bible into English about 1382, the study of the scdptures was no longer confined to the priests who knew Latin, but was extended to those who could read English. Every subsequent event emphasised the equality of all men in the sight of God and their right to serve God in their own way without dictation from popes or priests. Even in backward India, the old days in which the priest was often the only educated person in the village are over. An increasingly large number of people are familiar with the best thoughts of other religions and the great achievements of science. The intellectual classes are generally well informed, and if the priests are to interpret for them the momentous truths of spiritual life, they must appeal to their reason and persuade those whose minds are torn by doubt that the faith they are called upon to accept is a reasonable one. We cannot turn all men into F 82 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE machines even in religion. Dogmatic affirmation is as one- sided and unreasonable as dogmatic denial. LACK OF THE SPIRITUAL NOTE I do not want to weary the reader by dealing with the many other ways of escape which our age is adopting, such as the cult of the superman, the worship of the eternal feminine, spiritualism, etc. 1 The different attempts to accommodate God to the needs of the modern mind are not quite successful in their ambition. Their one lesson is that, notwithstanding the transformation of life, the shifting of moral values and the preoccupations of the time, the primal craving for the eternal and the abiding remains inextinguishable. Unbelief is impossible. Along with a deep discontent with the standard forms of religion there is a growing seriousness about it. The forms are dissolving but the needs persist. The millions who neither dare to have a religion nor do without one are rushing hither and thither seeking for direction. The philo- sophical fashions of naturalism, atheism, agnosticism, scepticism, humanism, and authoritarianism are obvious and easy, but they do not show an adequate appreciation of the natural profundity of the human soul. In the Eastern religions, the energy of the depth of the soul is something before which external existence pales into insignificance. While the tendency to emphasise the inward spirit as all that counts and treat life itself as an indifferent illusion is one-sided, to ignore spiritual life and confuse it with the physical or the vital is equally one-sided. If, in spite of our ethical culture and rationalistic criticism, we feel that our lives have lost the sense of direction, it is because we have secularised ourselves. Human nature is measured in terms of intellection. We have not found our true selves, and we know thr,t we have not. It is a self-conscious age in which we 1 See Ferguson: The Confusion oj Tongues (1929). SUBSTITUTES FOR RELIGION 83 live. Philosophers and professors of philosophy are speaking to us of what is wrong with us in the heavy tomes of a Keyserling or a Spengler and the slight pamphlets of the To-day and To-morrow series. Never was man's need to come to an understanding with life more urgent. We may be busy seeking for wealth, power and excitement, but we are no longer sure that it is all worth doing. We have no certain aims and no definite goals. Life is fragmentary and futile. Nothing means much or matters much. Anxious and en- quiring minds are doubting and discussing, groping and seeking for the more precious meaning of life, its profounder reality, for the synthetic view which will comprehend the scepticisms and the certainties, the doubts and the realities of contemporary life. Our division is profound and no organised religion is able to restore the lost unity. We are waiting for a vital religion, a live philosophy, which will reconstruct the bases of conviction and devise a scheme of life which men can follow with self-respect and creative joy. 1 Salvation is self -recovery, release from distraction. The BhagavadgUd tells us that the trained understanding is not distracted by details or divided in aims. 2 It has a sense of the whole, an integrity of life, a stable anchorage which helps us to face the gravest crises. It is the function of philosophy to provide us with a spiritual rallying centre, a synoptic vision, as Plato loved to call it, a samanvaya, as the Hindu thinkers put it, a philosophy which will serve as a spiritual concordat, which will free the spirit of religion from the disintegrations of doubt and make the warfare of creeds and sects a thing of the past. 1 Cp. "Men think they can do without religion; they do not know that religion is indestructible, and that the question simply is, Which will you have?"(Amiel). Bernard Shaw lays down a dictum in Back to Methuselah (1921) : "Civilisation needs a religion as a matter of life and death/' ii. 41 : Cp. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." CHAPTER III RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS What is Philosophy of Religion ? The Essence of Religion Per- sonal Experience of God Its Character and Content Experience and the Variety of Expressions God and Self The World a Har- mony Self-Recognition and the Way to It The Life of the Reborn Rebirth Salvation Summary. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION PHILOSOPHY of religion is religion come to an understanding of itself. It attempts a reasoned solution of a problem which exists directly only for the religious man who has the spiritual intuition or experience and indirectly for all those who, while they have no personal share in the experience, yet have sufficient belief that the experience does occur and is not illusory. The direct apprehension of God seems to be as real to some men as the consciousness of personality or the perception of the external world is to others. The sense of communion with the divine, the awe and worship which it evokes, which to us are only moments of vision or insight, seem to be normal and all-pervading with the saints If philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience. Before thinking can start there must be something thought about. Thinking does not produce its object but has it offered to it as a datum. If thought cuts itself away from the compulsion of fact, to that extent it ceases to be thought and becomes imagination. Just as there can be no geometry without the perception of space, even so there cannot be philo?9phy of r^giop yathout the fa^ts o( relifoQB^ As we have seen, sometimes psychplogy^oiT jreligion pro- fesses to serve asji $t^stit\itq for RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 85 logical factors as sub-conscious desires. To trace the psycha logical conditions of a belief is not to determine its validity T^ say that our sense perceptions answer to reality, while spiritual intuitions do not, is for psychology a gratuitous assumption. Psychologically the experience we have of the world T>ef ore us or of the British constitution or of the categorical nature of duty is on the same level as St. Paul's vision on the road to Damascus or Augustine's in the Italian garden. In the experience itself no question is raised whether the object experienced is real or not. Professor Alexander says: "It is for the worshipper as much a fact as a green leaf or the sun, is for a dispassionate observer. The religious feeling and its object are given in one and the same experience." 1 It is for philosophy of religion to find out whether the convictions of the religious seers fit in with the tested laws and principles of the universe. It is sometimes urged that while the psychological ex- periences rationalised by science are more or less uniform forj all observers, the data for philosophy of religion are diverse and discordant. Stones are hard and the sky is blue for all. But God is Buddha to some and Christ to some others. This difference means that the facts are more complex and require closer study. Just as we attempt to formulate in precise terms our sense experience in the natural sciences, even so philosophy of religion attempts to define the world to which] our religious experiences refer. There is no reason why the! intuitions of the human soul with regard to the ultimate reality should be studied in any other spirit or by any other method than those which are adopted with such great success in the region of positive science. When we speak of matter, life or mind, we refer to a certain type of experiences. Matter SM&SaL^^ and we account for it by the hypothesis of electric energy 1 Hibbert Journal, January 1928, p. 251. 86 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE or other kinds of resistance. The same is true of life and mind. Religious experiences possess their own distinctive character and we seem to be in touch with reality other than that of matter, life or mind. We cannot say that we know matter, life and mind and not God or ultimate spirit. As a matter of fact, we do not know precisely what matter or life is. We know that they are objects of experience though their real nature is hidden from us. So also we may not know the ultimate meaning of God, though we may know something about God or what answers to God in reality through religious experience. The creeds of religion correspond to theories of science. The physicist attempts to account for physical phenomena by the hypothesis of the electron and feels that his mental picture of it is like the real thing. However, we are realising that it is simply impossible to form any picture at all of the ultimate nature of the physical world. The theories are symbolic and are accepted because they work. Similarly, we have certain experiences jwhich we try to account for by the assumption of God. The God of our imagination may be as real as the electron but is not necessarily the reality which we immediately apprehend/The^ j^ea^&f^Godji^ Purely speculative theology which cuts itself off from religious tradition and experience and works from premises which are held to be universally valid cannot serve as an adequate philosophy of religion. The proofs of God's existence from premises of a general character yield not the God of religion but a supreme first cause or being who can be con- strued into the object of religious experience only if we start with the lacter. 1 A category of thought with no basis 1 "What in the end does the most complete teleology prove ?" asks Kant. "Does it prove that there is such an intelligent Being? No. It only proves that according to the constitution of our cognitive faculties we can form absolutely no concept of the possibility of such a world as this save by thinking a designedly-working supreme cause (hereof" (Critique of Judg- ment, Bernard's E.T.. D. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 87 in fact is not an experienced certainty. No stable conviction can be built on mere dialectic. Speculative theology can conceive of God as a possibility; it is religion that affirms God as a fact. In dogmatic theology, on the other hand, the theologian regards himself as an expositor of traditional doctrine accepted as revealed and his task is limited to the elimination of contradictions in it. He takes his stand on one set of facts and ignores elements of reality that his scheme does not recognise. Within limits the theologian is allowed freedom to interpret doctrines and elucidate their implications, but his investigations should always confirm the dogmas. While the methods are optional, the conclusions are obligatory. *~ Philosophy of religion as distinct from dogmatic theology refuses to accept any restricted basis but takes its stand on experience as wide as human nature itself. It rejects the high a priori road of speculative theology and the apologetic method of dogmatic theology and adopts a scientific view of religious experience and examines with detachment and impartiality the spiritual inheritance of men of all creeds and of none. Such an examination of the claims and contents of religious consciousness, which has for its background the whole spiritual history of man, has in it the promise of a spiritual idealism which is opposed to the disintegrating forces of scientific naturalism on the one hand and religious, Hnpr ma tism on the other. THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION Religion has been identified, with ieeling^moiion aad senti : per^ption^bdief , .and laith, tyiews are rigbt-in what they affirm, though ' . Schleiermacher is not wrong in saying lominanFTeeling that there is a predomman^^ling element in the i;gljjj consciousness. Religicfus feeling, however, is quite distinct 88 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE from any other kind of feeling. Nor is it to be identified with a sense of creaturely dependence; for then Hegel might retort that Schleiermacher's dog may be more pious than his master. If we assimilate religious experience to the moral consciousness, as ICant is inclined to do, we overlook the distinctive characters of the two activities. Religiqn^js^noL mere consciousness of value. There is in it a mystical element, an apprehension of the real and an enjoyment of it for its (Own sake which is absent in the moral consciousness. Religion is not a form of knowledge as Hegel sometimes urged. While religion implies a metaphysical view of the universe, it is not to be confused with philosophy. When Professor Whitehead defines religion as "what the individual does with his own solitariness/' 1 he is urging that it is not a mere social phenomenon. It Js not an apologetic for the existing social order ; nor is it a mere instrument for social salvation. It is an attempt to discover the ideal possibilities of human life, a quest for emancipation from the immediate compulsions of vain and petty moods. It is not true religion unless it ceases to be a traditional view and becomes personal experience. It is an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing an autonomous character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organises all experi- ences.* It is the reaction of the whole man to the whole reality. We seek the religious object by the totality of our faculties and energies. Such_fu^ whole man may be called smritual life, aj5_di^inclJto^ intellecti^ 1 Religion in the Making (1926), p. 6. When Croce declines to regard religion as an autonomous form of experi- ence, and views it as an immature misunderstood form of philosophy, when Gentile treats it as a stage, though essential in our spiritual develop- ment, they are voicing their protest against the transcendental conceptions of God. The God before whose majesty we abase ourselves, or to whose love we surrender ourselves, is completely immanent, is the spirit in man objectified. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 89 of them. The spiritual sense, the instinct for the real, is not satisfied with anything less than the absolute and the eternal. It shows an incurable dissatisfaction with the finiteness of the finite, the transiency of the transient. Such iategniLJffl^ our authority for religion. They reveal a Being^who makes himself known to us through them and produces revolt and discontent with anything short of the eternal. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF GOD All the religions owe their inspiration to the pei5jQ>ril insights of Jtlifiir prophet Ipunders. The Hindu Religion, for example, is characterised by its adherence to fact. In its pure form, at any rate, it never leaned as heavily as other religions do on authority. It is not a "founded" religion^ nor does it- centre round any historical events. Its distinctive character- isticjias beqfl ? ts insistence on the inward life of spirit. To know, possess and be the spirit in this physical frame, jto convert an obscure plodding mentality into clear spiritual illumination, to build peace and self-existent freedom in the stress of emotional satisfactions and sufferings, to discover and realise the life divine in a body subject to sicjcnes^and death, has been the constant aim of the Hindu religions endeavour* Jhe Hindus look back to the Vedic period as the epoch of their founders. The Veda, the wisdom, is the accepted name for the highest spiritual truth of which the human mind is capable. It is the work of the ilsis or the seers. The truths of the rsis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but they are the products ofjsygiril^^ The rsis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of the universal spirit. They are the pioneei } researchers in the realm of spirit who go AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE saw more in the world than their felJows. Their utterances are based not on transitory vision but^ on_ a^ continuous experience of resident iifejmd pov^er. 1 When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts. If experience is the soul of religion, expression is thejxxiy througH which it fulfils its destipy. We have the spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are commujiir cated to others, Sruti or what is heard^apd smrti or wjiat is remembered. Sarhkara equates them with pratyaksaLpj intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change. ruti and smrti differ as the authority of fact and the authority of interpretation. Theory, specula- tion, dogma, change from time to time as the facts become better understood. Their value is acquired from their ade- quacy to experience. When forms dissolve and the inter- pretations are doubted, it is a call to get back to the experi- ence itself and reformulate its content in more suitable terms. While the experiential character of religion is empha- sised in the Hindu faith, every religion at its best falls back on it. The whole scheme of Buddhism centres on Buddha's enlightenment. Moses saw God in the burning bush, and Elijah heard the still small voice. In Jeremiah we read: "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my hand in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it."* Jesus' experience of God is the basic fact for Christianity: "As he came up out of the river he saw the heavens parted above him and the spirit descending like a dove towards him: and he heard a voice sounding out of the heavens and saying 'Thou art my beloved son. I have chosen thee.' " According to St: Mark, the baptism in the Jordan by John SadS payanti sflrayab* xxxi. 37. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 91 was to Jesus the occasion of a vivid and intense religious experience, so much so that he felt that he had to go for a time into absolute solitude to think it over. 1 He obviously spoke of the ineffable happening, the sudden revelation, the new peace and joy in words that have come down to us. He emphasises the newness of the reborn soul as something which marks him off from all those who are religious only at second hand. "Verily I say unto you, among men born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist ; but the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he." a The vision that came to Saul on the Damascus road and turned the persecutor into an apostles is another illustration. Faith means in St. James acceptance of dogma; in St. Paul it is the surrender of heart and mind to Christ ; but in the Epistle to the Hebrews, faith is defined as that outreaching of the mind by which we become aware of the invisible world.4 The* lif 6 of Mohammad is full of mystic experiences. Witnesses to the personal sense of the divine are not confined to the East. Socrates and Plato, Plotinus and Porphyry, Augustine and Dante, Bunyan and Wesley, and numberless others, testify to the felt reality of God. It is as old as human- ity and is not confined to any one people. The evidence is too massive to run away from. CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE To ^tlldyjth?_ nature of this experience is rather a difficult matter. All that one can hope to do is To set down a "tew" general impressions. It is a type of expeiieiice whicIilsTiot clearly differentiated into a subject-object state, an integral, uiiHTvided consciousness in which not merely this or tEat Sii^D^ flW:itsdfc: It^jis a condition of consciousness in which feelings are 1 Mark i. 10. , See also Matt. xi. n. 3 Acts ix. 1-9. See also i Cor. xiii. 12; Romans viii. 18-25; Rev. xxi. 22. 02 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE fused, ideas melt into one another, boundaries broken and ordinary distinctions transcended. 1 Past and present fade away in a sense of timeless being. Consciousness and being are not there different from each other. All being jig _ con- sciousness ,and all consciousness being. JCtiought and reality coalesce and a creative merging of subject and object results- Life grows conscious of its incredible depths. In this fulness of felt life and freedom, the distinction of the knower and the known disappears. 2 The privacy of the individual self is broken into and invaded by a universal self which the ^,~ j . - . individual feels as his own.] The experience itself is felt to be sufficient and com- plete. It does- not come in a fragmentary or truncated Jorm demanding completion by something else. It does not look beyond itself for meaning or validity. It does not appeal to external standards of logic or metaphysics. It is its own cause and explanation. It js sovereign in its own rights and carries its own credentials. It is self-established (svatassiddha) self -evidencing (svasamvedya), self-luminous (svayam-pra- kaa) v It does not argue or explain but it knows and is. It is beyond the bounds of proof and so touches completeness. It comes with a constraint that brooks no denial. It is 1 "In this intelligible world, everything is transparent. No shadow limits vision. All the essences see each other and interpenetrate each other in the most intimate depth of their nature. Light everywhere meets light. Every being contains within itself the entire Intelligible world, and also beholds it entire in any particular being. . . . There abides pure movement; for He who produces movement, not being foreign to it, does not disturb it in its production. Kest is perfect, because it is not mingled with any principle of disturbance. The Beautiful is completely beautiful there, because it does not dwell in that which is not beautiful" (Enneads, v. 8. 4). 3 "To have seen that vision is reason no longer. It is more than reason, before reason, and after reason, as also is the vision which is seen. And perhaps we should not here speak of sight; for that which is seen if we must needs speak of seer and seen as two and not one is not discerned by the seer, nor perceived by him as a second thing. Therefore this vision is hard to tell of; for how can a man describe as other than himself that which, when he discerned it, seemed not other, but one with himself indeed?" (Enneads, vi. 9 and 10). RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 93 pure comprehension, entire significance^pmplete. Jft&(jity. . author of the Yoga Sutra, tells us that the , or truth-bearingJ The^tensipn of normal life disappears, giving rise to inward peace, power and joy. The Greeks called it ataraxy, but the wonLsounds more negative than the Hindu term "Santi" orj^eace, which is a positive feeling of calm arid confidence, joy and strength in .the midst of outward pain and defeat, loss and frustration. The experience is felt as profoundly satisfying, where darkness is turned into light, sadness into J2& despair into assurance. The continuance of such an experience constitutes dwelling in heaven which is not a place where God lives,, but a mode of being which is fully and completely real. However much we may quarrel about the implications of this kind of experience, we cannot question the actuality j}f the experience itself. While the profound intuitions do not normally occur, milder forms are in the experience of all who feel an answering presence in deep devotion or share the spell which great works jol art cast onjis. When we experience the illumination of new knowledge, the ecstasy of poetry or the subordination of self to something greater^ iamilyjor nation, the self-abandonment of falling in love^ we have faint glimpses of mystic moods. Human love perhaps takes us nearest to them. It .can Gecome an experience deep and profound^ a portal through which we enter, the. realm of the sublime. "My life, My all, My more," said Sappho to Philaenis. To have one's heart and mind absorbed in love ""seemsTb^ unveil the mystery of the ^universe. We forget the sense of the -outward world, in aur communion with the grandeur beyond. Religious mysticism often falls into the languagejrf paginate love. It has been so from th^Upaniads and the Song of Spng^ Since the intuitive experiences are not always given but > Rtambhara tatra prajfia (Yoga Sutra, i. 48). 94 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE occur only at rare intervals, they possess the character of revelation. We cannot command or continue them at our will. We do not know how or why they occur. They sometimes occur even against our will. Their mode of comprehension is beyond the understanding of the normal, and the super- normal is traced to the supernatural. Those who are gifted with the insight tend to regard themselves as the chosen ones, the privileged few. Conscious of a light which other men had not, they feel inclined to believe that the light has been directed on them and that they are not only the seekers but the sought. "Only he who is chosen by the Supreme is able to realise it." 1 If all our experience were possessed of intrinsic validity (svatahpramanya) there would be no question of truth and falsehood. There would be nothing with which our experi- ence will have to cohere or to correspond. There would not arise any need or desire to test its value. All our experience ^olLb^jself-valid, i.e. all reality will be presenFlnTK^tJwn immediate validity. But even the noblest human minds have had only glimpses of self-valid experiences. The moments of vision are transitory and intermittent. We therefore do not attain an insight, permanent and uninterrupted, where reality is present in its own immediate witness. But we are convinced that such an ideal is not an impossible one. So long as the experience lasts, the individual remains rapt in contemplation, but no man can rest in that state for all time. J-ifeJs^a resjtless surge. Scarcely is the seer assurgpl ofjtjffi.uM^ than he is caught in the whirl of desu&and temptation, discord and.stniggk During the vision, its influence was so potent and over- whelming that he.hadlnskhe^ t^pawerjom: tfe, desire to analyse it. Now that the vision is no more, he strives to recapture it and retain in memory what cannot be realised in fact. The .process of reflection starts. HQ,,_cannQt forget 1 Yamaivesa vnmute tena labhyah. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 95 the blessed moments which have a weight for the rest of his life and give to his beliefs a power and a vividness that nothing can shake. 'he individual adopts an attitude of f aitjj, which is urged by its own needs to posit the transcendental reality. He affirms that the soul has dealings, direct, intimate and luminous, with a plane of being different from that with which the senses deal, a world more resplendent but not less real than the conventional one. The experience is felt as of the nature of a discovery or a revelation, not a mere conjecture or a creation. The real was there actually con- fronting us, it was not conjured out of the resources of our mind. 1 He claims for his knowledge of reality an immediate and intuitive certainty, transcending any which mere reason can reach. No. further experience orjrational criticism can disturb his sense of certainty. Doubt and disbefieLaraJio more ^possible. He speaks" without Jhesitation and witkihe c&toa accents of finality. Such strange simplicity and antbou-. tgjtjveness dQ we toi in, the, utterances of the seers ,of .thg Upaniads, of Buddha, of Plato, of Christ, of Dante, of Eckhart, of Spinoza, of Blake. They speak of the real, not as the scribes, but as those who were in the immediate presence of "that which was, is and ever shall be." St. Theresa says: "If you ask how it is possible that the soul can see and understand that she has been in God, since during the union she has neither sight nor understanding, I reply that she does not see it then, but that she sees it clearly later, after she has returned to herself, not by any vision, but by a certitude which abides with her and which God alone can give her/'* In addition to the feeling of certitude is found the sense of the ineffability of the experience. It transcends expression even while it provokes it. It is just what it is and not like Bhutam brahma napuru?avyaparatantram (Samkara on Brahma Sutra, i. i. I). 1 James: Varieties of Religious Experience (1906), p. 409. 96 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE anything else. There is no experience by which we can limit it, no conception by which we can define it. The Kena Upaniad says that /lit js other than the^knqwrtaijd abov^. the unknown/' 1 As Lao Tze expresses it at the beginning pf his Tao Teh King: "The Tao which can be expressed 4s noJLthe unchanging Tao; the Name which can be named is not the unchanging Name.'' The unquestionable content of the experience is that about which nothing more can be said. 2 Indian scriptures give cases of teachers who dispelled the doubts of their pupils by assuming an attitude of silence on this question. 3 When we hear enthusiastic descriptions about the ultimate reality, let us remember the dictum of Lao Tze that he who knows the Tao may be recognised by the fact that he is reluctant to speak of it. Conceptual substitutes for ineffable experiences are not adequate. They are products of rational thinking. All forms, according to arhkara, contain an element of untruth and the real is beyond all forms. Any attempt to describe the experience falsifies it to an extent. In the experience itself the self is wholly integrated and is therefore both the knower and the known, but it is not so in any intellectual descrip- tion of the experience. The profoundest being of man cannot be brought out by mental pictures or logical counters.4 1 i. 3- 1 "There is an endless world, O my brother, and there is the Nameless Being, of whom nought can be said. Only he knows it who has reached that region : it is other than all that is heard and said. No form, no body, no length, no breadth is seen there: how can I tell you that which it is?" (Kabir: Rabindranath Tagore's E.T., 76.) 3 Maunavyakhyaprakati taparabrahmatattvam . Gurostu maunam vyakhyanam sisyastu chinnasamsayafr. Cp. also Lao Tze: "To teach without words and to be useful without action, few among men are capable of this." 4 Cp. St. Paul's words of his own experience in 2 Cor. xii. 2-4; also the following from Middleton Hurry's God (192$, p. 36: "What happened RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 97 God is toe? great for words to explain. He is like light r makig things luminous but himself invisible^. And yet we cannot afford to be absolutely silent. Though the tools of sense and understanding cannot describe ade- quately, creative., imagmation with its symbols and sugges- tions may be of assistance. The profoundest wisdom of ffie past is transmitted to us in the form of myths and metaphors which do not have any fixed meaning and therefore can be interpreted as life requires. The seers who were at least as wise and as subtle as ourselves, by letting their imagination work on the experience, devised symbolic conceptions such as crossing the ocean of sarhsara, ascending into heaven, meeting God face to face. Plato expressed his deepest con- victions, which were incapable of proof, in the language of poetry, saying, "Not this perhaps, but something like this must be true. 1 ' If we insist on interpreting these symbols literally, difficulties arise. But if we go behind the words to the moods they symbolise, agreement is possible . The symbols and suggestions employed are derived from thejlftcal and historical traditions. An Orphic describes to us Charon and the spring on either side of the road and the tall cypress tree. The Vaisnava speaks to us of the cowherd, the Brindavan and the river Yamun. The myths require to be changed as they lose their meaning with the lapse of time, but they are in no case to be accepted as literal truths. They require to be interpreted * 'according to their meaning and not their lisping expression," as Aristotle suggests in speaking of Empedocles. Much of the rationalistic criticism then? If I could tell that, I should tell a secret indeed. But a moment came when the darkness of that ocean changed to light, the cold to warmth; when it swept in one great wave over the shores and frontiers of myself; when it bathed me and I was renewed ; when the room was filled with a presence and I knew I was not alone that I never could be alone any more, that the universe beyond held no menace, for I was part of it, that, in some way for which I had sought in vain so many years, I belonged and because I belonged I was no Conger I, but something different, which could never be afraid in the old ways or cowardly u?th the old cowardice." G 98 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of the sacred scriptures is due to a confusion between sym- bolic statements and literal truths. It is easy to prove that the world was not made in seven days or that Eve was not made out of Adam's rib. What they say is not scientifically true; but what they mean is a different matter. The recent excitement about the Green Pastures is rather undeserved. If God works in an office, employing charwomen and smoking cigars, it is only a metaphor, rather crude perhaps, as much as glassy seas or many mansions. EXPERIENCE AND THE VARIETY OF EXPRESSIONS If all our experiences were adequately intuited at once, such immediate intuitions could not be doubted under any circumstances; but, as it is, we are compelled to relate our intuitive experiences with others and here we are obliged to employ formulas. The pedestrian function of consolidation and revaluation seems to be indispensable. The only way to impart our experiences to others and elucidate their implications for the rest of our life and defend their validity against hostile criticism is by means of logic. When we test the claim of the experience to truth, we are really discussing the claims of the forms or propositions in which the nature oLthejexperience is unfolded, fajthe utterances of the seers, we have to distinguish^^ Hlt??R r ,?i!^ What Jsyregarde^ given may be the product of inference. Immediacy dojesu&pt mean absence of psycho- logical mediation but . paly .non-mediation by conscious thought.., Ideas which seem to come .tpjus.. with xompellios foice, without any mediate, intellectual .process oi which -we ajsjiware, are generally the results xdLpreviQij&. training in traditions imparted . ^ tp^ jas w j^ our _e^ly .j^ears. Our past experience supplies i the _iMteri^^oj^ichJthe new insight adds fresh meanings. When., we are told .that the sottfcHrave felt in their liveTIEHelredeeming power of Kfna or Buddha, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 99 Jesus or Mohammad, we must distinguish the immediate experience or intuition which might conceivably be infallible and the interpretation which is mixed up with it. St. Theresa tellsjiis that after her experience, she learned to understan3 thfiJTrinity. Surely she would not have recognised the reve- lation as that of the Trinity if she had not already known something of the Trinity. 1 Similarly, if Paul had not learned something about Jesus, he would not have identified the voice that came to him on the Damascus road as Jesus'. We must distinguish the simple facts of religion from the accounts which reach US through the depth of theologjcaT preconceptions .1 That the soul is in contact with a mighty spiritual power other than its normal self and yet within and that its contact means the beginning of the creation of a new self is the fact, while the identification of this power with the historic figures of Buddha or Christ, the confusion of the jmpie .realisation of the universal self in us with a catastrophic revelation from without, is an interpretation, a personar confession and not necessarily an objective truth? Something Is directly experienced, but it is unconsciously interpreted in the terms of the tradition in which the indi- vidual is trained. The frame of reference which each indi- vidual adopts is determined by heredity and culture. Again, there is no such thing as pure experience, raw and undigested. It is always mixed up with layers of inter- pretation. The alleged immediate datum is psychologically mediated. The scriptural statements give us knowledge, or interpreted experience, a that-what. The "that" is merely the affirmation of a fact, of a self-existent spiritual experience in which all distinctions are blurred and the individual seems to overflow into the whole and belong to it. The experience is real though inarticulate. Among the religious teachers of the world, Buddha is marked out as the one who admitted the realitY5l the sgiritual 1 Evelyn Underbill: Mysticism, p. 132, 5th Ed. ioo AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE experience and yet refused to in terpretji.as- a xevelation of anything beyond itself. JFor him the view that the experience gives us direct contact with God is an interpretation and not an immediate datum. Buddha gives us a report of the experience rather than an interpretation of it, though strictly speaking there are no experiences which we do not interpret. It is only a question of degree. But Buddha keeps closest to the given and is content with affirming that a deeper world of spirit penetrates the visible and the tangible world. Such a world certified as valid by the witness of perfect intuition exists beyond or rather within the world of multiplicity and change which the senses and under- standing present to us. The primary reality is an unconditional existence, beyond all potentiality of adequate expression by thought or description by symbol, in which the word "existence" itself loses its, meaning and the symbol of nirvana alone seems to be justified. The only liberty in which Buddha indulges when obliged to give a positive content to it is to identify it with Eternal righteousness (dharma), which is the principle of the universe 1 and the foundation of all conduct. It is on account of It that we have the implicit belief in the worth of life. The Hindu thinkers admit the ineffability of the experience but permit themselves a graduated scale of interpretations from the most "impersonal" to the most "personal." The freedom of interpretation is responsible for what may be called the hospitality of the Hindu mind. The,.Hindu tradi- tion by it$ very breadth seems to be capable of accommo- dating varied religious conceptions. Hinduism admits that the unquestionable content of the experience is a that about which nothing more can be said. The deeper and more intimate a, spiritual, experience, the more readily does it dispense with signs and symbols. Deep Sec Appendix to the writer's work on Indian Philosophy, vol. i, 2nd Edn. (1929). RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 101 infaation.^is,-JLitterly.. > .5ilent, Throu^i^jsilence we "confess ^Yithgut confession" that the glory of spiritual life is inexr plicable and beyond the reach of speech and mii$. It is the great unfathomable mystery and words are treacherous. 1 The empirical understanding is quite competent within its own region, but it cannot be allowed to criticise its foundation, that which it, along with other powers of man, takes for granted. The Supreme is not an object presented to knowledge but is the condition of knowledge. While for Buddha, who was ethically disposed, the eternal spirit is righteousness or dharma, in the strength of which we live and struggle, for many Hindu thinkers it is the very condition of knowledge. It is the eternal light which is not one of the things seen but the condition of seeing. The ultimate condition of being where all dualities disappear, where life and death do not matter since they spring from it, where spirit seems to enjoy spirit and reason does not stir, can be expressed only in negative terms. The Upanisads and Samkara try to express the nature of the ultimate being in negative terms. "The eye goes not -thither nor speech nor mindj' 2 There is a danger in these negative descriptions. By denying 1 Plutarch has preserved for us the inscription on a statue of Isis in the Egyptian city of Sais, which runs: "I am all that hath been, and that is, and that shall be, and no mortal hath ever raised my veil." Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity (i. 2) observes: "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High ; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his name; yet our soundest knowledge is, to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him ; and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confess without confession, that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth. Therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few." Brhaddra&yaka Upanisad, iii. 8. 8. For Samkara it is nirguna (without qualities), nirakara (without form), nirviSesa (without particularity), nirupadhika (without limitations). It is what it is. Isaiah's words are true, "Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself." For Dionysius the Areopagite, God is the nameless supra-essential one elevated above goodness itself. St. AugustJbe speaks of the Absolute, selfsame One, that which is. 102 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE all attributes and relations we expose ourselves to the charge of reducing the ultimate being to bare^xistence which is absolute vacuity. The negative account is intended to express the soul's sense of the transcendence "orTjo^IKe "wholly other," of whom naught may be predicate3Tave in negations, and not to deprive God of his positive bHng"TTis the inex- haustible positiviity of God that bursts through all conceptual forms. When we call it nothing we mean that it is nothing which created beings can conceive or name and not that it is nothing absolutely. The scriptures do not demonstrate or describe him but only bear witness to him. Tfi_e three Jiote- \vpxthy;latuiis-olspiritual experience^irexeality, awareness ^n.d.Ir^edomu If some parts of our experience come to us with these characteristics, it implies the possibility that all experience is capable of being received in the same manner. The consciousness to which all experience is present in its own immediacy, revealedness and freedom from anything which is not itself is the divine consciousness, that which is our ideal. We picture it as a glowing fire, a lucid flame of consciousness ever shining and revealing itself. In the divine status reality is its own immediate witness, its own self- awareness, its own freedom of complete being. There is noFfimg which is not gathered up" in " if s being, nothing which is not revealed in jt, and there is utter absence of all discord. It is perfect being, perfect consciousness jtnd perfect freedom^ sat, cit and ananda^ Being, truth and freedom are distinguished in the divine but not divided^ The true and ultimate condition of the human being is the divine status. The essence of life is the movement of the universal being; the essence of emotion is the play of the self-existent delight in being; the essence of thought is ffie Irispiration of the all;j3ervadin& .truth ; the essence of activity is the progressive realisation of a universal and self -effecting good^ Thought and its formations, will and its achievements, love and jits harmonies are all based on the Divine^pirit. Only the human RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 103 counterparts^ are to the Julness l gcuxL-Its f reedom is its essential soontaneitv. GOD AND SELF While the fulness of ^spijiluaU^ng .traix^^ we are certain that its nature is akin to the highest kind of being we are aware of jnjourselxgs. If the real were utterly transcendent to the self of man, it would be impossible for us to apprehend even dimly its presence. We would not be able to say even that it is "wholly other/' T&ere is in the seli~of~. man at - the- very --centre o his being, something deeper than -the intellect,, which i$ akin to the Supreme. God's revelation and man's contemplation seem to be two. sides ..of on$ feet/ The spiritual glimpses are prophetic indi- cations of an undeveloped power of apprehension in the human mind as well as of an underlying reality with which it is unable to establish permanent contact without an adequate development of that power. Th ere IS a rea l ground in man's deepest being for J;he.._experience of reality. Man as a -tjiicrocosm has relations with every form of existence. While the spiritual apprehension appears in the course of our ordinary life, it is not due to it. It has its source elsewhere though it exhibits its force on the plane of the ordinary consciousness. It is due to that part of the soul which is timeless being. The consubstantiality of the spirit in man and God is the conviction fundamental to all spiritual wisdom. It is not a matter of inference only. gxgerience itself, the barriers .between .the., self jandLtke ultimate^ jnjthe moment of, .its. highest sight, the self ^coraes^awar^ejiQt.ojiLy of Jts own existence hp PY1 stnQg of an^omnipresent spirit of which it is, as it were, a focussing^ We belong to the real and the real is io 4 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE mirrored in us^The^gr&at text gfjth^JLJpani^ad affirms it Tatjtvam~asi That art Thou). It is a simple statement of an experienced fact. The Biblical text, "So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him," 1 asserts that in the soul of man is contained the^true revelation l God. "The spirit of man is thfi ^^^^^^^^ " a According to Plato man is potentially a participator in the eternal mode of being which he can make his own by living in detachment from the fleeting shadows of the earth. In the Theaetetus Socrates declares that we should strive to become "like unto the divine." "I and my Father are one," "All that the Father hath are mine," is the way in which Jesus expressed the same profound truth. It is not a peculiar relation between any one chosen individual and God but an ultimate one binding every self to God. It was Jesus' ambition to make all men see what he saw and know what he knew. In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Jesus sums up the various ethical demands in the general require- ment: "Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father also is perfect." As Paul says, he was the first-born among many brethren. Recognising us all as children of God and made in his image, Jesus shows us by his own example that the God and St. John spoke of the spirit as "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," the "spirit that guides unto all the truth." The phrase in I Peter of a birth "of the incorruptible seed by the word of God" refers to the divine in man. Plotinus' last words to his physician Eristochius are: "I was waiting for you before that which is divine in me departs to unite with itself the Divine in the Universe. "3 1 Genesis \. 27. Proverbs xx. 27. 3 Witness also the last testament of Labadie: "I surrender my soul heartily to my God. giving it back like a drop oi water to its source, and rest confi- dent in him, praying God, my origin and ocean, that he will take me into himself and engulf me eternally in the divine^ abyss of his being" (Inge: Philosophy of Plotmus (1918), vol. i, p. 12), RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 105 Thejguakers believe in the diyijif. spark or the appv in th<* soul. Descartes asks: "How could I doubt or desire, how could I be conscious, that is to say, that anything is wanting in me, and that I am not altogether perfect, if I had not within me the idea of a being more perfect than myself, by comparison with whom I recognise the defects of my own nature." 1 According to Eckhart: "There is something in the soul which is above the soul, divine, simple, an absolute nothing. . . . This light is satisfied only with the supra- essential essence. It is bent on entering into the simple ground the still waste wherein is no distinction, neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost, into the unity where no man dwelleth." Augustine says: "And being admonished to return into myself, I entered even into my inmost self. Thou being my guide, I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul, above the same eye of my soul, above my mind, the light un- changeable/'* St. Catherine of Genoa says: bein&jmylife, my strength, my Beatitude, my Gpal A my Delight.^' "AITmm3s partake of one original mind," says Cudworth.3 Xhe individuals are the reproductions of an eternal consciousness according to Green. William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, writes: "The over- coming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mysFic states we become one with the- Absolute and .we becpnie^aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystic tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime and creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, inJA^tmajiism, we have the same recurring nate r sa that .there is about mystical utteratncesL^ji efernal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and tlKntrarid which brings it about that the mystic classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. > Third Meditation. Confessions, vii. 10. See also vii. 32. i Intellectual System, iii. 62. io6 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE Perpetually telling of the unity of man and God, their speech antedates language, nor do they grow old." The immanence of God, the revelation of the meaning and mystery of life in the spul of man, is the substance of the mystic testimony. We generally identify ourselves with our narrow limited selves Wid refer to spiritual experience as something given or revealed to us, as though it did not belong to us. We separate 'the power of ^pirituaj, apprehension from the rest of our nature and ref er tojt _as^something"3ivine. ftiich a separation is unfair to humanity. The insight of the best moments reveals the deepest in us. It is wrong to regard human nature as its very self when it is least inspired and not its true self when it is most. If our self finds in these moments of vision its supreme satisfaction, and is intensely alive while they last, then that self is our true self. We cannot limit our being to the physical or the vital, the customary or the conventional. The divine in us is the source and per- fection of our nature. God is neither completely transcendent nor completely immanent. To bring about this double aspect, contradictory accounts are given. He is divine darkness as well as "unencompassed light." The philosophers with their passion for unity emphasise the immanent aspect, that there is no barrier dividing man from the real. T2lJ2!^~9^ thesis of the great philosophic tradition which Jhas come ro^ samkara, Spinoza^ ^Bradley jmdLaJb^^o^othere are witnesses txHtT "" ~ *~ ~ ~~""~~~"~"~-~ ' Those who emphasise the transcendence of the Supreme to the human insist on the specifically religious consciousness, of communion with a higher than ourselves with whom it is impossible for the individual to get assimilated. Devotional religion is born of this haunting sense of otherness. We may know God but there is always a something still more that RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 107 seems unknown and remains unspoken. A profound impres- sion of the majesty of God always remains with the devotee who is certain that we can never reach the divine level of glory. Some of the seers of the Upaniads, the author of the Bhagavadgttd, St. Theresa, John of the Cross, represent this type. For them the experiences themselves are due to the grace of God. God speaks to us, commands us, comforts us, and we speak to him in praise and prayer, reverence and worship. There are many degrees in this gersonal relationship, from the feeling of utter humiliation in the presence bftKe^ numinous, the other than ourselves, to the communion with a supremeT Love on whose grace the worst sinner can count. There cannot be a fundamental contradiction between the philosophical idea of God as an all-embracing spirit and the devotional Mg^ of jt^ersonal God who arouses in us emotion. The^ personal conception develojDSjLhe^LSpect of spiritual^expierience injfljiich it^ btgjregarded as f ulfillinj*J^Ji^^ and strength in the spiritual experience and so he knows the spirit as that which fulfils his needs. God is represented as possessing the qualities which we lack. In a sense the Freudians are not wrong when they assert that our religion is the projection of the desires of grown-up children. Justice, love and holiness are the h^estjgualiiig^j^e Jsnow^and we imagtiie God as possessing them, though these qualities-exist in God in a different sense f jm_thei*~*ifctence in us. To compare the Supreme with the highest kind of being we know is nearer the truth than comparing him with any- thing lower. T^ughjh^u^ isjthe changeless n^umenal reality, its representation in the form of a personal God who is the^source, guide and destiny ofJLhe^world seemsjtoj^jtj^ to^Jthe^ logical mind. The difference between the Supreme as spirit and the f L Iir _~.-Hi ~~~~'"~~> t Absolut^ .which is, the reality demonstrated by reason. But the religious conscious^ ness has felt that the two are one.* THE WORLD A HARMONY Besides the affirmation of a spiritual reality which is variously interpreted and its consubstantiality with the deepest self of man, we have also the conviction of the unity ,pf the universe. We see the and the sky, the world andjhe animals -~ an^become ^suddenly strange and wonderfiU. Fpj_ our eyes are opened and they all declare the presence olth&Qnj^^ The universe^ seems to be alive with spirit, ^aglpw with fire, burning with light. All ..that there is comes out of life and vibrates in if. 3 The Upanigad says: "Wbfn aj^this is turned into the^elf, who is to be known by whom? "4 The supreme spirit is in- 1 Metaphysics, A. 7. * Cp. Thomas , Kempis: "He to whom the eternal word speaks is set at liberty from a multitude of opinions." 3 Yat kinca yad idam sarv^am prana ejati nibs' rtam. "Yatra sarvam idam atmaiv&bhut tat kena kam pas' yet?" no AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE escapable. It is "above, below, behind, before, to the right and to the left." 1 'The reborn soul is as the eye which, having gazed into the sun, thenceforward sees the sun in every- thing/' says Eckhart. George Fox asks us to "learn to see all things in the universal spirit." God is everywhere, even in the troubled sea of human history, in the tragedy and injustice of the world, in its suffering and sorrow. When we experience the harmony, the discord with which we are familiar seems unreal. If the universe is essentially spirit, how do we account for its appearance as non-spirit ? If the experience gives us the joyful awareness of the universe as a harmony, why do we have the tension, the discord and the cleavage in the universe ? The world of science and common sense seems so different from the freedom of the self. Is it an illusion or is it a reality Those who are pragmatically inclined fake the practical life as the reality and treat spiritual experience as a mere dream, so deep seems to be the division between them. Some of the more careful trace the appearance of the multiple universe to the limitations of human intelligence, avidya, nescience. The human mind, being what it is, tries to reconstruct the universe from the intellectual point orvie\TInto^irorganic wKoKTTbr the inteflecTT the unity is only a postulate, %n act of faith. For the^spirit ; the harmony is the experienced reality. It belongs to the nature of things and we have had paHlaT and momentary premonitions of it, and we can work up the harmony if we remember that the world of ordinary experience is a feeble representation of the perfect world, a combination of light and darkness, a reflection of the pure idea in an incomplete material form. T^igjhasty logic which is co[2Eted in the view tlmt^th^one^eyeals itself in the marr^ 1 Chandogya Upanisad, viii. 24. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS in SELF-RECOGNITION AND THE WAY TO IT If in spite of this identity or kinship between the soul and God the latter appears so far away, it is because the soul is immersed in what is alien to it, and finds it difficult to get at self-knowledge. Having drunk of the waters of Lethe (forgetfulness), man has forgotten his heavenly origin. He is an exile from heaven, clothed in what seems an alien garment of flesh. We have to discover the spirit in us by stripping off all that is extraneous to it. The assertion of the self as something other than the true reality of God is the fall or the original sin (avidya). The obstacles to self-discovery are the stresses of the personal will and they can be overcome only by the replacement of the selfish will by an impersonal liniversalised will. TTTgjm^^ of rnaajjidjGd and restore thjejost^sense^tl unity. It is a progressive attempt lifting of the emgirical ego into the mind in its jmmed^ perfection. A strict ethical discipline is insisted on. The apprehension of spiritual" 'trutE depends on the quality of the soul of him who sees, 1 and this quality can be raised only by the cultiva- tion of the intellect, the emotions and the will through prayer and contemplation. No one can know the truth without being the truth. An absolute inward ^puntj^j^emmdirig self-mastery Irnd self-renunciation is demanded. "He who has not first turned awajfff oih frivolity, who is restless and uncollected, who has not a peaceful mind, cannot through searching reach Him."* The soul forgets its true origin if it fancies itself as part of the drift of events and is swept in its currents and eddies. The Hindu thinkers ask us to abstract from all definite manifestations of life, outward and inward, "The sun's light when he unfolds it depends on the organ that beholds it" (Blake). Katha Up.,ii. 24. H2 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE from our sense-impressions and feelings, thoughts and aspirations, let ourselves sink into the pure silent spirit from which the turbid stream of our present being wells forth. 1 Such is the way to get inwardly into touch with the source of universal life. Buddha prescribes the eightfold path of morality and tells us that men with unpurified minds and unchastened sensibilities cannot rise into the domain of spiritual experience. The cultivation of the interior IKe is not a fad of the oriental mind. Every great religion asks and be alone and prescribes^a discipli|ie for assisting the individual to come jn contact with the. spiritual environment. The Orphics and the Pythagoreans tried to secure the recovery of the soul to its original condition by means of purifications. By exalting contemplative life above practical activity, the Greeks suggest that~the most perfect of all objects could be apprehended only by those whose powers of spiritual apprehension are perfected.* "Religion is the art and theory of the interjial 1 Cp. Kaflia Up.: "The self -existent pierced the openings of the senses so that they turn outwards. Therefore man looks outward, not inward, into himself; some wise man, however, with his eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the self behind" (iv. i). "The mind which sees the divine essence must be totally and thoroughly absolved from all commerce with the corporeal senses, either by Death, or some ecstatical and Rapturous Abstraction" (Norris: Reason and Religion (1689), quoted in Stewart The Myths of Plato (1905), p. 481). Commenting on the text "About the going down of the sun, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham," Philo says: "This describes what happens to the man who goes into the state of enthusiasm, the state of being carried away by God. The sacred scripture bears witness that it is to every virtuous man that prophecy belongs, for a prophet utters nothing of his own; in all his word there is to be discovered the voice of another. It would not be lawful for any not virtuous man to become the interpreter of God so that by the fitness of things no vicious man is capable of the state of enthusiasm. Such things belong to the wise alone, because the wise man alone is the sounding instrument of God, struck and played by God after an invisible sort" (quoted in Edwin Sevan's Sybils and Seers (1928), p. 188). There is a well- known passage in Plotinus: "Oftentimes when I awake out of the slumber of the body, and come to a realising sense of myself, and, retiring from the world outside, give myself up to inward contemplation, I behold a wonderful beauty. I believe, then, that I belong to a higher and better world, A&d I strive to develop within me a glorious life and to become RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 113 life of man" according to Whitehead, "so far as it depends on J:he man himseTFltiid on what is permanent in~thenatwe oLthings." 1 By 4QQtria^ devotion and, ^orship^oiir life js awakened to the unseen reality.^ Sal yation.is_ attained not so much by placating God as bjMransforming our_behxg, by achieving a certain quality andTarmony of the j>assipos through severe self -discipline. The effort is costly. NQ. tricks of absolution or payment by proxy 4 no greased^ p&th_of ^ organs and stained-glass windows can help us much. The spirit has to be stripped bare if it is to attain its, Meditation is the way to self-discovery. By it we turn our mind homeward and establish contact with the creathts centre.JTo know the truth we have to. ..deepen ourselves and not merely widen the surface. Silence and quiet are necesgary for J:he profound alteration, of our being and they are not in our age. Discipline and restraint will help us to put consciousness into relation with the Supreme. What is called tapas is a persistent endeavour to dwell in the divine and develop a transfigured life. It is the gathering up of all dispersed energies, the intellectual powers, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, nay the very physical being itself, and ^concentrating them all on the supreme goal..*. .Th& rapidity of the process depends on the intensity of the aspira- tion, the zeal of the mind for God. ~~ NfiJB&Q on earth has ever maintained spiritual poise all through hisjife. The Jesus who declared that men must not resist evil if they are to become the sons of the Father who makes his sun shine upon good men and bad, and his rain to fall upon the just and the unjust, was the same Jesus who cursed the fig-tree and drove the tradesmen from the one with the Godhead. And by this means I receive such an energy of life that I rise above the world of things" (quoted in Rufus Jones's New Studies in Mystical Religion, pp. 43-44). 1 Religion in the Making (1926), p. 6. 1 A true religious culture will train the body also so as to develop rhythm and balance, grace and strength. H II 4 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE temple. There are moments in the life of the best of us as the one in Gethsemane when we shrink from the ordeal before us and pray if possible to escape from it, and it requires some effort before we can bring ourselves to say, 'Thy will be done." To keep one's balance in the face of an un- comprehending and hostile world is not a light affair. It is possible only if we get back to the depths constantly, and develop a disinterestedness of mind which no pleasure can entice nor The mystics emphasise bein& more than doing. While their lives escape triviality, pettiness and intolerance, it is possible that they may exaggerate a negative self-feeling and non-aggressiveness, ^i^^are^jnap^re^mclined to surrender theiLligiiis,thaii^ figbt for them, but their gentleness Is" born of courage and strength and not fear and cowardice. But in the heart of asceticism there is a flame of spiritual joy which is of the very essence of religion. Withdrawal is not the whole of the religious tradition; (Here is also participation, enjpy- ment. The Isa Updnisad asks us to enjoy by renouncing. It is a~cfeep and disinterested acceptance of the world and a joyful recognition that no part of it may be refused. We renounce the world in~order to return to it with the know,- ledge of its oneness to sustain us J THE LIFE OF THE REBORN Life is different from the moment of the insight. The vision of the one is the beginning of the process of conversion. The soul hath seen, the mind must consent and the heart approve. The new experience must control our whole being, *k*L^2lil^^^ mi i s t k e . co 5? e fl es h. If the new harmony glimpsed in the moments of insight is to be achieved, the old order of habits must be renounced. In the life of Socrates, for example, a change takes place from the time he had the experience in the carfip at Potidaea (431 B.C.) RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND ITS AFFIRMATIONS 115 where he is said to have stood still in a trance for twenty-four hours. Thereafter he became entirely devoted to the, teaching of his fellow citizen^ In the Apology, Plato makes Socrates affirm that his mission was jliid5?!y imposed on him and he dared jnot neglect it even if it led to his death ^Jgllllactu^lj eace_and their mutual under- standing the means of perfection. The suppression of any one side mars self -fulfilment. Asceticism is anjexQgss indulged injbyjhosg wJia .exaggerate the transcendent aspect of reality. If the real is^yjaader, in. another sphere, and this world is only appearance^ . then tfae real can be found only by those who turn aw^fromJ^elemporalMnd the finite. The mystic does not recognise.., any antithesis between the secular and the^gacrecL- -Nothing, is. to,. be. rejected; everything is to be raised. The perfection aimed at is no.t the perfection of a void, of a nature whose brain^is. barren and heart dry, The spiritual is not an essence apart, to be cloistered and protected from the rest of life, but something which pervades and refines the .whole life of .man. It cleanses all parts of our inward being and brings about a rebirth of the soul, a redemption of our loyalties and a remaking of our personal- ities. Life puts on immortality and the whole being of man becomes intenser. Feeling the unity of himself and the uni- verse, the man who lives in spirit is no more a separate and self-centred individual but a vehicle of the universal spirit. He does not shut his eyes to the evil in the world so obvious and obtrusive, though nothing can shake his conviction of the soundness of the inward frame. His vision of life is so clear and complete that it lives through days of darkness, beholding the sun with the eye of the soul. He struggles to weave into the fabric of life the vision he sees with his inner n6 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE spirit. He throws himself on the world and lives f). INTELLECT AND INTUITION 143 Besides, what we normally notice through the senses or infer through the intellect can also be known by intuition. We can see objects without the medium of the senses and discern relations spontaneously without building them up laboriously. In other words, we can discern every kind of reality directly. In normal circumstances we seem to be incapable of knowing what is going on in another's mind except through the expression of that mind through speech or gestures. The facts of telepathy prove that one mind can communicate with another directly. INTUITION AND IMAGINATION The reality of the object is what distinguishes intuitive knowledge from mere imagination. Just as in the common perception of finite things we become directly and inevitably aware of something which has its own definite nature which we cannot alter by our desires or imagination, even so intui- tive consciousness apprehends real things which are not open to the senses. Even as there is something which is not imagined by us in our simplest perceptions and yet makes our knowledge possible, even so we have in our intuitions a real which controls our apprehension. It is not fancy or make-believe, Jbut a bona fide discovery of reality, We can see not only with the eyes of the body but with those of our souls. Things unseen become as evident to the light in the soul as things seen to the physical eye. Intuition is the extension of perception to regions beyond sense. INTUITION AND INTELLECT According to Bergson, the life force evolves intellect as an instrument for the practical control of the environment. Intellect is useful for action. It is the toolmaking faculty by means of which life fashions inanimate matter into instru- 144 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE ments for the extension of its own powers. If we wish to know the inner nature of reality, we must resort to the whole personality of which intellect is only a part. Logic is success- ful only to the extent that it displaces the living flux of reality by a system of static concepts. Thought is useful but not true, but intuition is true though not useful. Intellectual consciousness is practical. When a man points a pistol at me, I do not care to ascertain its colour and make, but simply react to it by running away from it. Its dangerous character alone is of practical interest to me; all else is' irrelevant. Scientific knowledge is an extension of the workings of practical consciousness. It abstracts from the real certain aspects which are practically useful, and which happen to be repeated in others. Action is impossible without abstraction, and thought, in so far as it is logical, is abstrac- tion. As we do not get at the real, we await confirmation of our theories. We test the truth of our views by the power of prediction. But symbols and relations do not have the flavour of immediate experience, however much they may enable us to predict. A physicist says that he knows the laws of electricity, though he is ignorant of what electricity is in itself. His knowledge of electricity, which is indirect, grows from more to more. Direct knowledge is incapable of growth, for it is individual and therefore incommunicable. We cannot verify it and therefore cannot dispute it. It transcends the partial truths of the divided mind, the intellectual or the sensuous. Intuitive knowledge is proved on our pulses. It is the only kind of absolute knowledge. It is possible only when the individual is fully alive and balanced. We can see truly only when our inner being is harmonised. Intuition is the ultimate vision of our profoundest being. It is expressed and transmitted not by means of precise scientific statements, but by myth and image, literature and art. Ideas expressive of intuitions ar vital in character since INTELLECT AND INTUITION 145 they are expressive of life and not mere logical analysis. They are free, flexible and fluid, and bear on their faces the breath of the spirit. If the term "knowledge" is restricted to what is communi- cable, what can be expressed in formulas and propositions, then intuitive insight as ineffable and non-propositional is out knowledge. But certainty and not communicability is the true test of knowledge, and intuitive experience has this sense of assurance or certainty, and therefore is a species of knowledge. If all our knowledge were of an intuitive character, if reality bore immediate witness to itself, there would be no need for logical tests. The unity between the knower and the known would be perfect and our knowledge complete. In it there is no reference to external objects, no corre- spondence of an idea with an other than itself. Knowledge and being, the idea and the reality, the reference and the identification, are both there. It does not stand in need of proof (pramanyam nirapeksam). It is existence aware of itself. It is knowledge which is neither superficial, nor symbolic, nor second-hand. Actual knowledge, however, falls short of completeness as there is a distinction between subject and object. The object reaches the subject through an intermediate mode. Thought and sense-perception become necessary as means of objective knowledge. Here there is always the duality. The knowledge of a thing and its being are distinct. Exis- tence refuses to become incorporated in thought. Thought therefore demands verification. Within the world of know- ledge we can distinguish facts from fancies by standards of empirical reality. We are said to know a thing when we are able to place it in definite relations to other objects of experience. Empirical reality means necessary connection within the logical universe. As our information derived from the senses increases, a.^ new phenomena are assigned definite K 146 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE places within the framework of knowledge, our knowledge itself grows. New sense-facts are accepted as true if they can be fitted into our scheme. Their validity is derived and not immanent. Intuitive truths as simple acts of mental vision are free from doubt. 1 They do not carry conviction oh the ground of their logical validity. We cannot help assenting to them as soon as we intuit them. Doubts occur when reflection supervenes. Strictly speaking, logical knowledge is non- knowledge, avidya, valid only till intuition arises. The latter is reached when we break down the shell of our private, egoistic existence, and get back to the primeval spirit in us from which our intellect and our senses are derived. If intuitive knowledge is knowledge by coincidence or identity, the possession of the intuitive knowledge of reality means that it is possible for us to coincide or be one with reality. If our nature is spirit, so is the real. The fact of the spiritual character of both subject and object is lost in our conven- tional life where we mistake our true self for the superficial one. The deeper we penetrate, the more unique we become, and the most unique is the most universal. Both intellectual and intuitive kinds of knowledge are justified and have their own rights. Each is useful for its own specific purposes. Logical knowledge enables us to know the conditions of the world in which we live and to control them for our ends. We cannot act successfully without knowing properly. But if we want to know things in their uniqueness, in their indefeasible reality, we must Jranscend discursive thinking. Direct perception or simple and steady looking upon an object is intuition. It is not a mystic process, but the most direct and penetrating examina- tion possible to the human mind. Intuition stands to intellect Cp. Locke: "The mind is at no pains of proving or examining, but per- ceives the truth as the eye does light, only by being directed towards it" (Essay on the Human Understanding, iv. nV i). INTELLECT AND INTUITION 147 in somewhat the same relation as intellect stands to sense. Though intuition lies beyond intellect, it is not contrary to it. It is called sarhyagjnana, or perfect knowledge. Reflec- tive knowledge is a preparation for this integral experience. amkara observes that the fruit of knowledge is manifest to intuition. 1 He is in agreement with Plato, for whom the dialectic is a progressive rational inquiry which helps the mind to a direct vision of reality. 2 In his Symposium the prophetess Diotima instructs Socrates in the pursuits preparatory to the apprehension of the form of beauty. We survey a variety of beautiful objects, then recognise the common quality of beauty shared by them all, appreciate the abstract beauty in laws and morals, and at last we attain to a knowledge of the form itself. The Republic makes out that the apprehension of form is not possible except for those minds who have been prepared for it by the preliminary training in the exact sciences of measuring, weighing and counting, and hard and strenuous exercise in abstract studies.3 Intuition is not a-logical but supra-Iogioal. It is the wisdom gained by the whole spirit which is above any mere fragment thereof, be it feeling or intellect. The whole life of mind is more concrete than that of any special- ised mode of it. It follows that the great intuitions bear the stamp of personality. Any two men may hit on the same law of science, as Darwin and Wallace actually did, but no two men can ever produce the same work of art, for art is the expression of the whole self, while science in its ordinary usage is the expression of a fragment of the self. 1 Anubhavrfi4ham eva ca vidyaphalam (Commentary on Brahma Sutra, hi. 4-15). See also Kafka Up. t Hi. 12. Symposium, 211; Republic, 515, 532-535; see also Spinoza, Ethics >v. 26, 3 Republic, 525-528. I 4 8 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE HEGEL ON INTUITION It is necessary to insist on this integral nature of intuitive knowledge, for the criticism that a thinker like Hegel makes a ainst itjs due to a misapprehension that the intuitive power is Something cut off from the rest of mental life,, and the reality which it apprehends is equally abstract and isolated from the rest of existence. Immediate knowledge which excludes mediation cannot, for Hegel, possess a content which is true. He regards intuition as something unrelated to intellect and incapable of giving us anything else than simple being. Even as the bare category of being requires to be filled with the wealth of the concrete world, so is the intuition to be sustained by the other parts of mental activity. As a warning against views which oppose intuition to intellect and identify it with crude fancy or mere feeling, Hegel's criticism is justified. There is a tendency in Bergson to oppose intuition to 'intellect, though this does not represent his main intention. Bergson has profited by the teaching of Plato that the vision of the Good is possible only for those who are prepared for it, by intellectual discipline and hard thinking. 1 Intellect, he urges repeatedly, prepares the ground for intuition He says: ''We do not obtain an intuition from reality that is an intellectual sympathy with the most intimate part of it unless we have won its confidence by a long fellowship with its superficial manifest ations."* He illustrates his view by a reference to literary composition which assumes a patient study of the materials, a painful effort to place oneself in the heart of the subject and a constant brooding over it till the happy idea occurs to us which we try to analyse and develop into a thousand details. Genius in one sense of the term is a gift of the gods, in another it is an infinite capacity for learning in patience and humility. By defining * Republic, vii. > An Introduction to Metaphysics. E.T. (1913). P- 77- INTELLECT AND INTUITION 149 intuition as intellectual sympathy, Bergson suggests that intuition is not to be confused with a primitive, abstract, sub-intellectual immediacy, but is to be understood as indicating a higher immediacy which supervenes on intellec- tual analysis. 1 This latter is gained by a concentration of our whole nature, moral and intellectual, on a single effort. While Bradley is right in his contention that genuine immediacy gives truth and reality, we have to distinguish between the immediacy which appears at the sub-intellectual level before practical necessities and intellectual analysis break up the unity and the immediacy which appears at the supra-intellectual level, at the end and to some extent as the result of discursive thinking. The former or the primitive immediacy remains with us through the process, though at the second stage it is purified of its primitivity and seizes the real in a direct act. The immediacy of intuition as dis- tinct from that of feeling is of the latter kind. Plato and Samkara agree that this kind of intuitive certainty is reached after a long process of discursive analysis. When once the intuition is reached, it is prolonged into an intellectual ordering of images and concepts. All dynamic acts of thinking, whether in a game of chess or a mathematical problem, are controlled by an intuitive grasp of the situation as a whole. If intuitions are so intellectual in their nature, why call them intuitions at all ? Is not the distinction between intel- lect and intuition analogous to that between understanding and reason as Hegel employs it? Understanding which is concerned with bare self -identities is abstract thought, while reason is concrete thought, finding the universal in the particulars and forming with them an inseparable unity. While the bare identity of understanding leaves all difference outside itself, to the identity of reason difference is organic and essential. The opposites which understanding breaks reality into are opposed to each other but not to the whole. 1 Param pratyak$am (Yogabhdsya, i. 43). 1 5 o AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE Being and non-being are aspects of one concrete movement seen from two points of view. At one end there is being; at the other non-being, but the real is neither pure being nor pure non-being, but a concrete becoming. Mere being and mere non-being as understanding takes them are meaning- less. The opposites are mutually dependent though antago- nistic movements of the real becoming, and their unending strife constitutes the genius of creation. For Hegel the whole life process is a strife of opposites and a labouring to over- come the opposition. The conflict and the transit oriness of all things proceed from the attempt to overcome the opposi- tion and effect a reconciliation. If the reconciliation were complete there would be no world order. The process of becoming is either being in the act of overcoming non- being or non-being in the act of overcoming being. This overcoming is never at an end, for were it ever complete, were there not a non-being for being to overcome or a being for non-being to overcome, there would result either pure being or pure non-being, which are both meaningless abstractions. The world process is a strife of the two, and can be truly conceived only by thinking out completely the mutual indispensability of the concepts whose seeming negation of each other expresses the aspect of strife in the real. What is the point of dispute between the Hegelian view of reason and understanding and the distinction between intuition and intellect? The question resolves itself into whether we see becoming or only think it, whether we con- ceive reality by thought or only intuit it by an altogether peculiar power of direct insight. Hegel, by the exaggerated importance he attaches to conceptual thinking, is inclined to make reason organic to reality, if not to elevate reality to the rank of a concept. He makes logical opposition the prime condition of all being. Dialectic becomes for Hegel not merely a method of philosophical discovery and exposition, INTELLECT AND INTUITION 151 but also a description of the way in which things habitually come into being and grow. While it may not be true to say that Hegel reduces the rich life of concrete nature to a bloodless dialectic of categories, some of his followers, such as T. H. Green, make thought not merely revelatory but constitutive of reality. 1 In Hegel logic rules, turning life itself into an argument, converting the living truth into an abstract formula. If life could only be expressed in a logical system, it would cease to be life. Hegel's dialectic does not start from the whole in which the opposite terms manifest themselves, but stands with one side which takes us over into its opposite and later builds a unity that holds them together. While the indivisible unity is for intuition the primary reality, it is for Hegel something which is built up out of opposite parts which are logically prior to the whole. The unity appears as the result of a synthesis, the members of which are apprehended prior to the whole. The essential nature of Hegel's dialectic is an immanent transcendence by which a limited and finite something passes over into its opposite so that the former cancels itself and together with its opposite is taken over into a higher and more comprehen- sive concept. The insight into the whole is obtained by a synthesis. It is perhaps the heritage from Kant, who does not believe in any unity prior to reflective thought. It is the synthesis of a manifold (whether given empirically or a priori) which first gives rise to knowledge. 2 Besides, by reducing reality to a set of relations which can be dialectically understood, Hegel ignores the elements of feeling and will and psychical inwardness ; at any rate, he assigns a privileged position to the merely rational. Though man is a thinking being, his being does not consist solely in thinking. For some Hegelians, if not for Hegel, 1 Cp. Green: "Thought is things and things are thought" (Works, iii, P- M4). , * Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith's E.T., sec. 10. 1 52 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE thought alone, in and by itself, is creative of all existence. Reality becomes thought incarnate, the idea made flesh. It is an all-inclusive rational experience or mind. The world process is a fragment of a rational process, an unfinished syllogism. The whole future is in a sense contained in the present. There is no room for novelty or unpredictability in the cosmic process. If life is history, if reality is genuine becoming, a perpetual renewal, and not mere repetition, then its apprehension cannot be merely dialectical. Absolute knowledge in its concreteness is more in the form of effortless insight or intuition. It is more immediate than mediate, perceptual than conceptual. Philosophy is not so much a conceptual reconstruction as an exhibition of insights. The truest account of reality which is of the nature of life, a concrete becoming or a growth, partakes of the character of a his- torical narrative rather than dialectical development. That which reduces real growth to a logical scheme is pseudo- history. The ancient tradition of a geometrical world with its reversible and recurrent order is not only the rationalist view but also the Platonic. If the real is a genuine becoming, then knowledge can only be an insight. Philosophy as conceptual knowing is a preparation for intuitive insight, and an exposition of it when it arises. There is a need for logic and language; for the expression of all knowledge perceptual, conceptual, or intuitional requires the use of concepts. Only we have to remember that the rationalisation of experience is not its whole truth. The great truths of philosophy are not proved but seen. The philosophers convey to others visions by the machinery of logical proof. All that the critics of philosophy do is to find out whether the views are partial or total, pure or impure. There is no break of continuity between intuition and intellect. In moving from intellect to intuition, we are not moving in the direction of unreason, but are getting into the INTELLECT AND INTUITION 153 deepest rationality of which human nature is capable. In it, we think more profoundly, feel more deeply, and see more truly. We see, feel and become in obedience to our whole nature, and not simply measure things by the fragmentary standards of intellect. We think with a certain totality or wholeness. Both intellect and intuition belong to the self While the former involves a specialised part, the latte] employs the whole self. The two are synthesised in the self and their activities are interdependent. Jhituitive knowledge is not non-rational; it is only non- conceptual. It is rational intuition in which both immediacy and mediacy are comprehended. As a matter of fact, we have throughout life the intuitive and the intellectual sides at work. Even in pure mathematics where the conclusion is not evident, until the data are brought together and set forth in logical sequence, there is an element of intuition. In other cases we arrive at convictions without deliberate reasoning as in judgments of value. While the two are not exclusive, intellectual processes are more useful in the observation and description of things and their quantitative relations. Intuition gives us the idea of the whole and intellect analysis ofjparts. The^union of apparent opposites which intellect effects is itself inspired by the drive of intuition. Intuition gives us the object in itself, while intellect details its rela- tions. The former gives us the unique in the object, the latter Jells us of the qualities which it has in common with others. Every intuition has an intellectual content, and by making it more intellectual we deepen the content. Even if intuitive truths cannot be proved to reason, they can be shown to be not contrary to reason, but consistent with it. Intuition is neither abstract thought and analysis nor formless darkness and primitive sentience. It is wisdom the nous of which Aristotle speaks, the all-pervading, intelligence of Dante. 154 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE THE NEED FOR INTUITION IN PHILOSOPHY The deepest convictions by which we live and think, the root principles of all thought and life are not derived from perceptual experience or logical knowledge. How do we know that the universe is in its last essence sound and consistent ? Hindu thinkers affirm that the sovereign concepts which control the enterprise of life are profound truths of intuition born of the deepest experiences of the soul. For our senses and intellect the world is a multiplicity of more or less connected items external to themselves, and yet logic believes that this confused multiplicity is not final, and the world is an ordered whole. The synthetic activity of know- ledge becomes impossible and unmeaning if we do not assume the rationality of the world. It is not arrived at by way of speculative construction; we have not searched the outermost bounds of nature or the innermost recesses of the soul to be able to say that the systematic unity of the world is a logical conclusion. While thought cannot stir without faith in the consistency of the world, for thought itself it is only a postulate, a matter of faith. Our logical impulse is a power of the self, and therefore possesses in its own being the vision of the law that governs the universe. The order of nature is a dependable unity because the self is itself a unity. So long as I remain myself, everything is capable of being thought as unity. Thought is guided by the spirit in man 4 the divine in us. The orderedness of the universe is a conviction of life which is beyond raerejogic! It will not do to be jnerely logicah^IMs necessary_t^ be reasonable. We have to start with right premises if logic is to yield fruitful results. Intuition is as strong a& life, itself from whose soul it springs. It tells us that the world is part of a spiritual order, though we may not have clear and consistently logical evidence for it. Through intuition we become aware of the harmony which critical intelligence INTELLECT AND INTUITION 155 attempts to achieve. In spite of so much obvious arbitrari- ness we assume the trustworthiness of nature. Scientific experience increasingly confirms the venture of faith, but at no stage does the act of faith become a logically demon- strated proposition. Our whole logical life grows on the foundations of a deeper insight, which proves to be wisdom and not error, because it is workable. Again, how do we know that it is good to be alive in the universe? Theories of ethics which attempt to answer this question assume that it is worth while to live, and the universe will not disappoint us. There is an ultimate decency in things. Even as scientific understanding starts with the assumption that our powers "are trustworthy, and will lead to a system of truth which will make the universe intelligible, ethical endeavour assumes that life is worth living and will yield to the vision of the good, and we can compel the world to consent to its transformation. We assume a spiritual imperative which urges us to seek not the safe and the expedient but the good, which is not to be confused with temporal well-being. Logic and ethics take for granted the meaningfulness of life, which they require but cannot establish. Simply because we require the world to be good, is that any argument why it should be so ? Can we be sure that the universe will respond to and implement the demands of the human spirit, that the world of facts will accord with the claims of spirit ? From the point of view of empirical under- standing it is a mere hypothesis that the realms of nature and spirit, existence and value are not alien to one another, but for intuition it is a fact. There is nothing in the structure of reality when viewed from the logical point of view to contradict this assumption, though logic by itself cannot offer any demonstration of it. It is not a question of believing the world to be what we want it to be. It is the fundamental affirmation of the spirit of man, the ground of all values and 156 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the governing principle of all life. It asserts that the ground of the moral order is the source of the universe in time. It is life that imposes on us the obligations to be true and good. Our very vices are the false steps of something which aims not at vice but at virtue. Nature in its ultimate being abhors evil and strives for goodness. This is the first principle of all ethics. Similarly, the heart of man craves for happiness: The rejection of pain is a sovereign instinct in our nature. Life is opposed to death. There is a persistent endeavour to eliminate pain, error and ugliness, which are opposed to the profounder possibilities of our being, our true self. All intuitions are involved in self-knowledge. All growth in knowledge is an elaboration of this instinct, an increasing assimilation of the mind of man to the spirit in him. All experience issues forth from it and rests in it. It is beyond the reach of the mind and the senses, though the mind and the senses are thought by it, as the Upanisad says. If intuitive knowledge does not supply us with universal major premises, which we can neither question nor establish, our life will come to an end. The ethical soundness, .the logical consistency and the aesthetic beauty of the universe are assumptions for science and logic, art and morality, but are not irrational assumptions. They are the apprehensions of the soul, intuitions of the self quite as rational as faith in the physical world or the intellectual schemes, though not grasped in the same way. Disbelief in them means complete scepticism. If all knowledge were of the type of perception or conception, disbelief would become inevitable. The proof of the validity of intuitive principles is somewhat similar to Kant's proof of a priori elements. We cannot think them away. Their opposites are inconceivable. We cannot dis- believe them and remain intellectual. They belong to the very structure of our mind. They are native to the soul. They are not data received by the senses or inferred by INTELLECT AND INTUITION 157 logic, and yet there can be no perception or conception if we do not employ them. If we deny self-knowledge, if we make nothing evident of itself into man's self, we deny the possibility of all knowledge and life. It is a great saying of Theophrastus, "They who seek a reason for all things do. utterly overthrow reason/' If all knowledge depends for its validity on external criteria, then no knowledge is valid at all. One thing depends on another, and we slide into infinite regress, and we can escape it only by assuming knowledge which is valid in itself. Self-knowledge is self- valid knowledge. It is ideal, absolute knowledge, complete thinking. It is not possible for thought to think what is not true. If it were, then no external criterion or standard of truth could ever be substituted for that which thought in itself would lack, since the apprehension of such external standards would itself be an act of thought. "It is prima facie the nature of a thinking being to frame true or adequate thoughts." Commenting on this statement from Spinoza, Bosanquet writes: "Truth is normal to mind and error is the exception." "If you can get the mind's thought pure that is, as it is in its own nature, and free from certain definite defects you must possess in it a true characterisa- tion of reality. For this is the nature of thought, to charac- terise reality. Its doing so is not exceptional, it is inherent. It is what we mean by thinking." The belief in the validity of human thought is implicit in every thinking being. Error is non-thought. We do not think t. It is due to the passions and interests of men which cloud our thought. Our logical knowledge is a mixture of truth and error, for practical motives interfere with the unclouded thought. Unless the mind is set free and casts away all desire and anxiety, all interest and regret, it cannot enter the world of pure being and reveal it. It is prior to the distinction of subject and object, of truth and error, which arise at the reflective level. 4 1 Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy (19-21), 82. 158 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE No logical knowledge is possible of that which underlies all logical knowledge. The living self is the final ground of all thought, and as independent of any further ground is free and absolute. Similarly, ethical certainty requires a highest end from which all other ends are derived, an end which flows from the very self and gives meaning and significance to the less general ethical ends. The ultimate assumption of all life is the spirit in us, the divine in man. Life is God, and the proof of it is life itself. If somewhere in ourselves we did not know with absolute certainty that God is, we could noi live. Even the sun and the moon would go out if they began to doubt. Our lives are not lived within their own limits. We are not ourselves alone; we are God-men. PLATO The great philosophers admit that the major convictions of life are born of intuition. Socrates, for example, preferred to rest his case not on inductive evidence from observed facts but on arguments based on axioms and intuitions. The voice of the inner demon counted for him more than external perception N or logical reasoning. Plato's theory of recollec- tion points but that the adventure of human life in all its aspects requires certain truths which are not supplied by the traffic of the^senses with ^jy^ward^things joj-Juitellect \YJth relations. "Recollection" is Plato's name for that concentrated endeavour of the whole man by which the essential principles of life and logic are apprehended. The immortal soul learned all truth long ago, and it is reminded by sense experience of truths it once knew and has forgotten. Recollection is the basis of the logical process which consists in the discovery of ideas in which the particulars participate. The universal mind, according to Plato, consists of different essences which are reproduced in the world and act as vital controlling forces in its evolution. To the mind of man they INTELLECT AND INTUITION 159 appear as "ideas" and are the supreme efficient causes of his thoughts. However much reason may help us to appre- hend them, we do not owe them to reason. It is by the memory of a direct vision we had before birth that we apprehend them. When Plato tells us that "that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower, is what I would have you term the Idea of Good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science/' 1 he is asking us to admit the reality of good which is made loiown to us by recollection. No knowledge can become our own if it does not conform to the experience of the self. When Plato says that all learning is a process akin to remem- bering, he is making out that all truth is at once new and old, mysterious and familiar, cognition as well as recognition. The "good" which is the principle at once of existence and value cannot be logically expounded, and Plato uses an analogy. The "good" is to the system of forms what the sun is to the system of visible things, the source at once of their existence and the light by which they are apprehended. It is an unproved first principle. If Plato presents this foundational idea in a mythical form, it is because it is not a matter of logical knowledge. It is an object of faith or belief as distinct from demonstration or knowledge. From the logical point of view it is a great hypothesis or a glorious venture. It is felt and affirmed, and not derived or explained. We know it to be true not through logic but through our whole nature, impulses and emotions included. Plato's doctrine of recollection is taken from the Orphics. His distinction between discursive and intuitive thought has remained with us in one form or another. Aristotle's nous represents the intuitive apprehension of the first principles which all reasoning assumes to start with. They are incapable of proof or disproof. "How," he asks, "can there be a science of first principles?"* Their truth is 1 Republic, vi. 508. > Metaphysics, 997 a. 160 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE evident to everyone. We become aware of them by nous, by direct intuition and not by demonstrative science. DESCARTES Descartes insists on the clear evidence of God's existence yielded by the nature ofjjur thought itself. lLbelo?Jg s to certainty to which the founda- tions of, mathematical sdencesJbelong. The truth oTThese ideas is their clear intelligibility. No other evidence ' is necessary, as all experience testifies to it. Descartes unneces- sarily complicates the situation by making the veracity of God the ground of our belief in the truth of clear and distinct ideas. Even God cannot make clear and distinct ideas false. They are essentially true, and their clear intelligibility is sufficient warrant of their truth. Cudworth rightly remarks with reference to Descartes' criterion^ of clear and" distinct ideas: "Truth is not factitious; it is a thing which cannot^ be arbitrarily made, but is. The very essence of truth is this clear perceptibility or intelligibility/' 1 Descartes' admits that intuitive knowledge, that which spiings from what he calls the light of reason, is a knowledge different from the fluctuating testimony of the senses or the misleading judg- ments that proceed from the blundering constructions of imagination. It is the intuition which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so clearly and distinctly that we are" wholly freed from doubt about that which we understand. SPINOZA Spinoza distinguishes imagination and reason from intuition (scientia intuitiva)./rhe first gives us opinions, inadequate and confused ideas. By reason we attain the systematic knowledge of the man of science. But the breath of life has 1 Intellectual System, iv. pp. 31-38. INTELLECT AND INTUITION 161 escaped from the world of science and only intuition can restore it. "We delight in whatever we understand by the third kind of knowledge, and our delight is accompanied with the idea of God as its cause/' 1 "To know the essences of things, i.e to understand them not in their general aspect, as the scientist does, but so to say, as God does, from within, we need the higher grade of knowledge to which the scientific is said to point." 2 In the Short Treatise intuitive knowledge is said "not to consist in being convinced by reasons but In an immediate union with the thing itself/' "It does not result from something else but from a direct revelation of the object itself to the understanding/^ From intuitive vision arises the highest possible peace of mind. 4 LEIBNIZ Leibniz in his New Essays tells us that there is something like "pure reason" which can be tested by self -observation. His faith that there is nothing innate in the intellect except the intellect itself does not favour the view that all knowledge is either perceptual or conceptual. PASCAL Pascal's saying that the heart^hasjts reason which reason well known. The knowledge^oFfirst pnncTples, like the existence of space, time, movement and number, is as certain as any of the principles given to us by our reason- ing- Reason Jjsell_concedes_that ..there isLan infinite region bey^djjeason. According to Pascal, the mjnd thinks in (I* esprit gJomJtrique) (Esprit de finesse). In the latter case we * see and feel the truth. * Ethics. V. xxxii. > II. 47 Sch. Roth: Spinoza, p. 123. 3 Roth: Spinoza, pp. 146-14^. Ethics, V. xxvii. L 1 62 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE KANT Rant's chief contribution to. the philosophy of religion is his insistence on the logical indemonstrability of God. In the Critique of Pure Reason he shows that the arguments employed for proving the existence of God are defective and lead to contradictions. Our capacities of knowledge are limited to the phenomenal world, and if we extend the principles of space and time experience to regions beyond it, we are betrayed into what he calls "the illusions-ofLthe' understanding/' For our categories are useless until the material is furnished by sense, and sense can never supply material adequate to the requirements of the principles of speculative reason. God is not an object of perception or of inference, and if he exists, his being must be apprehended in some way other than that which holds for the finite world. But unfortunately Kant did not discuss the question of the possibility of a different mode of apprehension for the world in its non-spatial and temporal character, though there are valuable suggestions especially in his treatment of the Ideas of Reason, the moral problem and the teleo- logical judgment. The categories of the understanding, like causality , and substance, give us only partial unities, but the mind; of man is haunted by the ideas of a completely integrated whole of experience. It seeks to bring the whole that is experienced, whether as subject or object, or as a union of both, into a form in which it could be grasped as one. Kant called the ideas^after Plato, Ideas of Reason. There are three i^eas olieaspn Soul,\Woiidjnjts entirety ) and God. They cannot be construed as objects of experience, though they have a regulative use. They prescribe the problems which the understanding is called upon to solve in its search for know- ledge. They are at the same time limiting concepts. They do not represent the nature of reality^ for the Ideas cannot INTELLECT AND INTUITION 163 receive empirical verification, * n L^^ything empirical is and the Ideas_ are unconditioned ILwe ask how such ideas arise at all, since they are in conflict with the content, o.Lexperience, Tant answers that the understanding forms these ideas by remov- ing the conditions under which objects are known in experi- ence. The Ideas express the demands of the understanding, the subjective interests which inspire the work of under- standing in organising the contingent facts of experience into a unified system. Their sole function is to regulate the work of understanding, and they have no metaphysical significance. They help us to organise our experience and estimate its worth. Science in the last analysis rests on a f aitli_aruLa..hap^ the faith of .reason. inJbLs jawn ^supremacy , a Llk e l^J?? * n *!?? ra l?P^^yL?^ t* 1 !? woir ld. Kant conceives of reason as the faculty by which we learn about ultimate or unconditioned principles. In the matter of cognitive experience, these principles do not give us valid knowledge, since one has to depend on sense for the matter of knowledge, and the matter actually supplied is not adequate, to the requirements of the principles of reason. But reason in its practical capacity is in a better position. A command can be valid, even though it is not actualised in the world of space and time. So there is no inherent defect in the unconditional validity of the principles of practical reason. A deeper meaning to the Ideas of Reason is given by moral life. The fact of duty is an illustration of the kind of reality to which the Ideas of reason point, a reality which, although it has a definite content, is in no sense an object in the context of experience. We have an intuitive recognition of moral law as good in itself, not because it is commanded by a superior or is felt to be condu- cive to our happiness. The unconditioned principles are admitted to be valid in the sphere of practical reason, even though they have not received any fulfilment in the world 164 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of space-time. Kant is fully alive to the fact that^ the kind of apprehension we have in the mathematical and sciences is not all. The moral consciousness is where we touch absolute reality. Conscience is the call of reality within the individual mind. The intuitive apprehen- sion of the moral law is quite different from the logical apprehension of any object in the space-time scheme: It is interesting to find that Kant actually assigns to reason in its practical aspect not merely the abstract principle of all morality, orderliness, or regulation, but also the more concrete principles of conduct. In the sphere of pure reason, Kant always insisted that the matter of experience was no less necessary to knowledge than form. But he believed that in the sphere of practical reason, the bare, abstract formula of reason, the categorical imperative is sufficient by itself to determine the whole duty of man without any reference to the specific desires of human beings. We know our duty, according to Kant, by means of rational intuition and not by an intellectual calculation of results. But as a matter of fact, Kant is not quite consistent. The mere criterion of self -consistency, which is all that the categorical imperative amounts to in practice, is incapable of guiding us in life. There is nothing theoretically inconsistent in willing universal destruction. If Kant thinks suicide to be wrong, it is not because of its violation of the formal principle of the cate- gorical imperative, but because of its incompatibility with certain ends with which the will is identified. These ends are not the casual desires of the individuals, which are contingent in character, but the supreme ends of humanity. Clearly, then, Kant admits that not merely general principles of morality but the specific duties are known by rational intuition. One would have expected Kant to have developed the implications of this mode of apprehension and applied it to the knowledge of God, but he did ifot do so. God is left in INTELLECT AND INTUITION 165 a precarious position, as a postulate of the moral conscious- ness. God remains-an.idea]_tQ .be used instead of a reality to be apprehended, or a person to b worshipped, God is a_j;egulative_conception and not an object of scientific understactdiag^jor.pf possible experience. Our knowledge of reality does not give us religious truth. Moral consciousness tells us of the practical indispensableness of certain values, and we have no means of knowing whether there is any real object possessing these values. If we assume God to be real, it is only a case of wish-fulfilment, however much the belief may be justified in view of the contingency of phenomena, the appearance of design in nature and the consciousness of the moral law. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant urges that beliefs are sometimes grounded in the necessities of feeling. Our feelings also involve knowledge or discernment to some extent. Our feeling of the fit and the worthful in nature is a dim recognition of some ultimate background which we might term God. But he suggests that a higher type of mind might possess an intuitive knowledge which would render the teleological judgment superfluous. 1 These three lines of reflection in Kant, Ideas of Reason, the forms of moral life, and the notion of adaptation, confirm the view that reason is in Kant another name for the deeper rationality or intuition. Kant is convinced of the reality of God, for we have besides theoretical reason working through categories another source of apprehension which Kant traces to moral consciousness. We have not only an a priori consciousness of good and evil, but also that of the unconditioned. They issue from the soul's own deepest source of knowledge. Reason theoretical and practical, our whole nature constrains us. If we do not believe in God, we will be proving false to 1 Schelling used the Kantian suggestion that our aesthetic sense may contain a perception of the Ultimate truth of things, and art may be the organ of philosophy. 166 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the deepest in us. Kant proves that God is the reality with which the mind of man at its deepest is in communion, though no object is present in phenomenal experience adequate to it. The self -evidencing and under! vative character of intuitions is the lesson of Kant's philosophy, though he was himself not conscious of it. Kant thinks that intuitive understanding is a prerogative of God and not a possession of the human spirit. Such a misconception is traceable to the arbitrary limits he imposed on human knowledge. For r him it is always conditioned by the senses apart from which we have no faculty of intuition or direct perception. Our perceptions are always sensible, and our understanding deals with general notions and is not therefore intuitive. Kant conceives the possibility of an intuitive understanding. In his Dissertation he says, "The intuitive power of our mind is always passive ; and is only possible so far as some object can affect our senses ; but the intuitive power of God, which is not the effect of objects but their cause, since it is inde- pendent of them, is their archetype, and hence is completely intellectual.' 1 1 If Kant denied this privilege of intuitive understanding to man, it is due to his intellectualism, which is a sheer misfortune. Though he draws a distinction between theoretical and practical reason, even the latter is for him intellectual. Virtue is not virtue if it is accompanied by a thrill for the act. He arbitrarily separated thought from feeling and the other sides of man's psychical nature, and would not realise that the mind as a whole can know things which are beyond the ken of mere intellect. If we follow the spirit of Kant's work we will see that it is quite friendly to the hypothesis of intuition as the primary source of our highest knowledge. If we depend on sense data and logical proof we cannot account for the laws of substance and causation, for experience itself is based on these and has no meaning if they are not presupposecj. The method of proof 1 Webb: Kant's Philosophy of Religion (1926), p. 44. INTELLECT AND INTUITION 167 is of no avail since first principles are improvable. 1 By a criticism of reason Kant shows that we possess independent of all experience, i.e. a priori, a knowledge of certain first principles. The certainty of mathematics and natural science is due to the contributions made by pure reason. The cate- gories themselves are various forms of the one fundamental idea of the reasoning mind, the idea of universal unity and necessity. They are individual determinations of the funda- mental knowledge of the necessity and unity of all that is. This knowledge is something most immediate and most profound. It is this that is the real basis of Kant's criticism, and not what is exhibited as the proof in the transcendental deduction of the categories. The categories are only the extensions of the one fundamental idea of the unity and interconnection of things in the universe. It is because Hume denied any other kind of knowledge than that derived from perception or proof his system ended in scepticism, whilst Kant assumes that independent of all experience, from ourselves alone, we know the fundamental condition of all being. Unfortunately, Kant believes that since this knowledge is altogether a priori it is true only of objects as known and not of objects as they are. Things in themselves are known by us only in so far as they "affect " us. The picture of the universe shaped by the categories has no claim to objec- tivity. Kant is inconsistent on this point, for the "ideal" category of causality is applied to the thing in itself where it is conceived as causing our perceptions. He overlooks the natural self-confidence of teason that it knows things as they are in sense perceptions. Unity and interconnection are true of the objective world itself. No scepticism can really shake this conviction. What we know is not an illusion arising from our own subjectivity. It is the appearance for us of things themselves. Only we see them under limitations. Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., Introduction. 168 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE Our knowledge is valid, though within limits. Unless we become aware of the limitations we cannot correct them. Again, while Kant tells us that nature is a construction of our minds in the sense that the categories synthesise the multiplicity of sense, he did not ask how our a priori forms happen to suit sense-material. Unless both the self with its categories and the non-self or nature have a common source, unless there is unity between our thought and the nature of things, this adaptation is inexplicable. Kant's view of the Ideas of reason is somewhat inadequate and defective. While the categories of the understanding are certain a priori conceptions, without which there could be no experience or knowledge of sensible phenomena, jth Ideas of reason guide and inspire human thought by pre- scribing to it the goal to which experience must approximate, if it is true to^ itself. The effort of intellect to systematise knowledge is guided by the Ideas of reasop. There are no objects in the empirical world answering to them; they therefore remain unaccomplished. Yet we are called upon to act as if there were such objects ; otherwise our life would come to naught. While the categories of the understanding are necessary, if we are to have any knowledge at all, the Ideas of reason are necessary if our knowledge is to attain a completely systematic character. The Ideas are for Kant not central truths but future possibilities. The difficulties of Kant's system are due to his inadequate perception of t)ie power of the human mind to pass beyond the distinctions of the understanding to the unity that underlies them. The forms of understanding with the abstractions they involve may fail to give us the truth of things, but it is possible to interpret these "Ideas" not as Kant does, as regulative principles bereft of any substantiality, but as Plato did as the underlying basis of the whole structure of knowledge, not only constitutive, but also productive. The concepts of the understanding may be abstract and partial; but the INTELLECT AND INTUITION 169 Ideas may be the reality. We do not derive the Idea of the unconditioned from the conditioned by the elimination of the conditions as Kant often suggests, but we start with the unconditioned. All consciousness is consciousness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. We cannot be conscious of a limit unless we are conscious of what is beyond the limit. That which is altogether limited or finite cannot know itself as limited or finite. The Idea of the unconditioned is distinct in nature from all other concepts, and so cannot be derived from them. It is a pure a priori idea of reason. If Kant regards the world of experience as limited and phenomenal, it is because it falls short of the ideal demands of pure reason. Besides, the Ideas of reason are to some extent realised in the world of experience. The beauty and sublimity of nature and the purposiveness exhibited in living organisms suggest the conformity of nature as a whole to the ends of reason. We are able to judge empirical truth by the standards of reason. If these Ideas help us to organise experience and test the value of concepts, if they control and regulate our thought about the world, surely they possess the highest kind of reality, and the world of experience which never realises it falls short of it. 1 If inclu- siveness and coherence are substituted for correspondence with an external given object as the test of truth, it is to no small extent due to the understanding of the implications 1 On this view, Kant is in agreement with Plato's theory of Ideas. As he himself expresses it: "(For Plato) Ideas are the archetypes of the things themselves, and not, like the categories, merely keys to possible experi- ences. In his view they issued from the Supreme Reason and from that source have come to be shared in by human Reason. ... He very well realised that our faculty of knowledge feels a much higher need than merely to spell out appearances according to a synthetic unity, in order to read them as experience. He knew that our Reason naturally exalts itself to forms of knowledge which so far transcend the bounds of experi- ence that no given empirical object can ever coincide with them, but which must none the less be recognised as having their own reality, and which are by no means mere fictions of the brain" (Norman Kemp Smith: A Commentary to Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason/ 9 2nd ed. (1923), p. 447). I 7 o AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of Kant's theory of the Ideas of Reason. These Ideas of Reason may be greater realities than the facts obvious to the outer senses and the intellect. Instead of assuming that Ideas are only pale reflections of the forms which they so much exceed, we may take the facts as partial representations of the reality which they reveal. Reason is, for Kant, the faculty by which we become conscious of the ultimate or unconditioned principles. It is different from understanding in the empirical sense. For the empirical understanding the Ideas of reason are only ideas, demands for an unconditioned which in Kant's view can never be given, though there is an unceasing effort on the part of thought to reach a fuller comprehension of conditions. But reason is not a faculty co-ordinate with others. It is the whole mind in action, the indivisible root from which all other faculties arise. To say that the Idea of God is a product of reason is to say that it is the outcome of the deepest life in man, the reaction of the whole nature of personality to the nature of the real. God is the answer which the full being of man utters when it presses against the whole nature of things. If the faculty of reason gives us the notion of a world higher than the phenomenal, something that is not the effect of any cause but the ultimate cause of all effects, and if it shapes this notion into the ideas of God, freedom and immortality, it means that these ideas are worked into the very structure of the mind. They are not subjective fancies, or even ethical postulates, but the necessary fruits of the mind issuing from its most vital springs. They are not objects of logical know- ledge, but are intuited certainties. Kant's successors realise that the true or the objective is what thought is compelled to think by its own nature. Whatever we are constrained to think is real. When Hegel said the real is the rational, he is stating this important truth. Only his Reason is not what Kant meant by it, the faculty which gives the unconditioned principles both theoretical and practical. God is not real, INTELLECT AND INTUITION 171 if the real is identified with the actual in space and time, but He is real if the real means that which thought is obliged to assume as the operative principle in all existents, mind as well as its objects, drawing them together into a satisfying universe. Both God and the moral law belong to the same region of certainty, though they are not observed facts. When Kant urges against the proofs of God that the existence of a thing cannot be got from its idea (ontological argument), the necessary can never be derived from the accidental (cosmological argument), that the physico- theological proof retreats on the other two, he means that we cannot prove the reality of God. The highest idea is not derived from sense, or proved by logic, but is founded in the secret places of the soul, and its validity is self-estab- lished by reason of the soul's trust in itself. HEGEL Hegel thinks that he makes little use of intuition. As a matter of fact he attacks Jacobi's view of intuition for the obvious reason that he views it as an abstraction unrelated to the rest of mental life. For Jacobi, metaphysical truth can be reached not by the mediate knowledge of ideas, but by immediate insight or direct knowledge which he called faith. Hegel, who professed to be a foe of all abstractions, protested against Jacobi's view of faith. Hegel believes in a monistic view of the universe. For him all reality is a single spiritual organism. The one ultimate being is Absolute Spirit, which in attaining its self-realisation appears in forms which seem other than itself, though they are in reality necessary forms through which the ultimate self-expression is obtained. Nature is the process by which the infinite spirit attains its fullest concreteness. But how does Hegel arrive at t^is unity ? It is not a discovery of the dialectic. Hegel's philosophy is one long dialectical exposition I 7 2 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of the concrete unity, but dialectic is not the way by which the mind of man arrives at the idea of the One. When once the idea is there, dialectic expounds its implications. But we cannot explain the sense of the One by a compounding of concepts. We must put the One in the premises if the dialectic is to deduce it in the conclusion. It is clear that the sense of the One is just realised in mind before it is conceptu- ally determined. With Kant we may say that no legitimate concept is possible without a previous intuition. This sens$ of the One which is the central feature of Hegel's system is an announcement of an intuition and not the result of a demonstration. When intuition gives us the idea of some- thing real behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be, our dialectic strives to express the sense of the unity by the concepts of God, eternity, immortality, heaven and the like. William James makes a profound observation about Hegel, when he asks, "What reader of Hegel can doubt that that sense of a perfected being with all the otherness soaked up into itself, which dominates his whole philosophy, must have come from the prominence in his consciousness of mystic moods ?" x Hegel admits as much in some places.* Only he is inclined to treat religious intuitions as imaginative representations. While both religion and philosophy deal with an identical object, viz., ultimate reality, religion gives us imaginative representations 1 Varieties of Religious Experience (1906), p. 389. * Comparing religion with philosophy, Hegel writes: "It is not the concern of philosophy to produce religion in any individual. Its existence is, on the contrary, presupposed as forming what is fundamental in everyone. So far as man's essential nature is concerned, nothing new is to be introduced into him. To try to do this would be as absurd as give a dog printed writings to chew, under the idea that in this way you could put mind into it. He who has not extended his spiritual interests beyond the hurry and bustle of this finite world, nor succeeded in lifting himself above this life through aspiration, through the anticipation, through the feeling of the Eternal, and who has not yet gazed upon the pure ether of the soul, does not possess in himself that element which it is our oiject here to comprehend" (Philosophy of Religion, E.T. (1895), vol. i, p. 4). INTELLECT AND INTUITION 173 (Vorstellungen) of it, while philosophy gives us clear concepts or notions (Begriffe). The former precede the latter. "In point of time the mind makes general images of objects long before it makes notions of them/ 1 x Philosophical knowledge is said to be more adequate to the object known. We need not deny that religious experience is not exclusively intel- lectual. It has mixed up with it elements of feeling and imagination. We may also admit that the real is represented through symbols and pictures. But all this does not make Religious knowledge less true than the philosophical. It gives us the truth which philosophy analyses and clarifies. If intuition is to be identified with emotional feeling and not integral knowing, then it does not give us the truth; but if it is, as Hegel himself in some passages suggests, creative insight, which cannot be adequately represented by exact concepts and is obliged to employ images and symbols which suggest it, then it follows that the universal spirit is apprehended concretely in religion, and only abstractly in philosophy. The function of philosophy is interpretative rather than creative. If popular religion substitutes symbolic for literal forms, it is false, and if philosophy assumes that it provides the final goal of the spiritual quest, it is also false. The form in which philosophy grasps reality is less adequate to the true nature of reality than is the form under which religious intuition grasps it. It is in integral knowing that the spirit of man reaches its highest development. Again, Hegel argues that the idea that only philosophy can give us assurance of God's reality "would find its parallel if we said that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of the chemical, botanical, and zoological qualities of our food, and that we must delay digestion till we had finished the study of anatomy and physiology."* It is clear that we have to turn to religious experience for Logic of Hegel, Wallace's E.T. (1874), p. i. Ibid., pp. 3-4. I 7 4 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the living substance of our knowledge of God and all that dialectic and philosophy do is to clarify our intuitions. It is fairly obvious that the great philosophers admit that the root principles are articles of faith, and not attained by argument. They are not arrived at through the senses, or by the ordinary processes of logical reasoning. Conviction arises only through our realising them as the cpmmon ground of all our knowledge. The archetypal Ideas of Plato, the a priori of Kant, are the contents of intuitive wisdom and the conditions of human knowledge. They point to the working of a Universal Spirit in us, the eternal subject without whose presence in the mind of man sensations would be blind and concepts barren. Intuition, faith, spiritual experi- ence, or the testimony of scriptures in theological language is necessary for knowledge and life. CHAPTER V THE SPIRIT IN MAN Intuition and Scientific Genius Artistic Achievement Poetry Artistic Knowledge Intuition and Ethical Life Religious Consciousness and the other values Creative Intuition The Spirit in Man Self-integration- -Instinct and Intuition Yoga Psychoanalysis Religious Life Argument from Religious Experience. INTUITION AND GENIUS IN SCIENCE THE roots of all great thinking and noble living lie deep in life itself and not in the dry light of mere reasoning. All creative work in science and philosophy, in art and life, is inspired by intuitive experience. While we all possess intuitive perception, and exercise it to some extent, in exceptional minds it is well developed. Intuitive life, spiritual wisdom at its highest, is a type of achievement which belongs only to the highest range of mental life. The great scientific discoveries are due to the inventive genius of the creative thinkers and not the plodding processes of the intellect. The latter might give us more precise measurements, more detailed demonstrations of well-established theories, but they cannot by themselves yield the great discoveries which have made science so wonderful. Creative work is not blind imitation or mechanical repetition. It is synthetic insight which advances by leaps. A new truth altogether unknown, startling in its strangeness, comes into being suddenly and spontaneously owing to the intense and con- centrated interest in the problem. When we light upon the controlling idea, a wealth of unco-ordinated detail falls into proper order and becomes a perfect whole. Genius is extreme sensibility to truth. Scientific discovery is more like artistic creation in its reaching out after new truth. Tyndall says I 7 6 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of Faraday's electro-magnetic speculations : " Amid much that is entangled and dark, we have flashes of wondrous insight which appear less the product of reasoning than of revela- tion/' A new law in mathematics is just as much a bit of spontaneous intuition as is a composition in music by Mozart. In his work on Science and Method, Henri Poincar has a chapter on Mathematical Invention where he contends that his own mathematical discoveries were more or less artistic intuitions. "It may appear surprising/' he says, "that sensibility should be introduced in connection with mathe- matical demonstrations, which, it would seem, can only interest the intellect. But not if we bear in mind the feeling of mathematical beauty of the harmony of numbers and forms of geometric elegance. It is a real aesthetic feeling, that all true mathematicians recognise. . . . The useful combinations are precisely the most beautiful/' 1 When a region of blurred facts becomes suddenly lit up, illuminated, as it were, to what do we owe this enlightenment ? It is due not so much to a patient collection of facts as to a sudden discovery of new meaning in facts that are already well known. Apples had been falling to the ground a long time before Newton worked out the law of gravitation. The genius discovers the meaning which binds the facts which remain distinct and separate for the ordinary understanding. P. 58, E.T. t Mr. Needham says: "The fact that the scientific investigator works 50 per cent, of his time by non-rational means is, it seems, quite insufficiently recognised. There is without the least doubt an instinct for research, and often the most successful investigators of nature are quite unable to give an account of their reasons for doing such and such an experiment, or for placing side by side two apparently unrelated facts. Again, one of the most salient traits in the character of the successful scientific worker is the capacity for knowing that a point is proved when it would not appear to be proved to an outside intelligence functioning in a purely rational manner; thus the investigator feels that some proposition is true, and proceeds at once to the next set of experiments without waiting and wasting time in the elaboration of the formal proof of the point which heavier minds would need" (The Sceptical Biologist (1929), p. 80). Again, '"The scientific worker operates to a high degree unconsciously, as it were, like the builders of coral reefs" (ibid., p. 81). THE SPIRIT IN MAN 177 It is the intuitive grasp of the dynamic principle which enables one to organise the facts successfully. Bergson has dealt with this problem in a suggestive way. It is generally supposed that scientific discovery is reached by conceptual synthesis, that is, by putting side by side or externally attaching to each other concepts arrived at by abstract analysis. The support for this view arises in two ways. No one unfamiliar with abstract analysis can hit on the rational insight. The insight does not arise if we are not familiar with rfie facts of the case, the contradictions and the half views which intellect throws up. The successful practice of intuition requires previous study and assimilation of a multitude of facts and laws. We may take it that great intuitions arise out of a matrix of rationality. Secondly, when the discovery is made, we find that it has room for the partial concepts which preceded the discovery, if only they submit to a little readjustment and reinterpret ation. The readjustment is so easy that, when the insight is attained it escapes notice and we imagine that the process of discovery is only rational synthesis. Thirdly, for purposes of communication, the insight has to be set forth as a rational synthesis. It is logical reason that consolidates the position and renders it easy for others to follow the intuitions of minds of more than average sensitiveness. Knowledge when acquired must be thrown into logical form and we are obliged to adopt the language of logic since only logic has a communicable language. When the formal logical presentation is set forth, a confusion arises between discovery and proof. As proof takes the form of conceptual synthesis, discovery is supposed to be of the same kind. The art of discovery is confused with the logic of proof and an artificial simplification of the deeper move- ments of thought results. We forget that we invent by intui- tion though we prove by logic. The art of explanation is an adventure of the mind. When the intuition arises, thought gives it a form and makes it possible for it to be communi- M 178 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE cated to others. If the process of discovery were mere synthesis, any mechanical manipulator of prior partial con- cepts would have reached the insight and it would not have required a genius to arrive at it. By an external intellectual synthesis, we may reach a wider reading of the facts, a more comprehensive law, a more complete notation, but the creative idea is not seized by the studious pursuits of intellect. The creative insight is not the final link in a chain of reasoning. If it were that, it would not strike us as "inspiied" in its origin. 1 It is the spark of genius that lights the firfe and makes it burn. Intellect supplies the necessary tools. They are quite valuable, but they are not knowledge. An intuition is not a construction. There is a difference between external synthesis and inner development, between the raw material and the finished product, between what is given and what supervenes. When the insight occurs to the dis- coverer's mind, it is found to contain in living unity the properties previously isolated in dead notation and many others previously unnoticed. The idea goes beyond all formulation and schematism. It arises out of profound experience. The function of discovery is sometimes attributed _ to imagination.* Through the exercise of imagination we hit upon hypotheses which help us to combine the discrete data into synthetic wholes. Hypothesis is the principle of growth in knowledge. In framing a hypothesis we seem to contemplate a situation which does not necessarily exist. We contemplate the non-existent and review a number of alternatives. Such an attitude of mind where the activity of assertion is suspended, and possible alternative situations 1 Cp. Sir Leslie Stephen: "Genius begins where intellect ends; or takes by storm where intellect has to make elaborate approaches according to the rules of scientific strategy. One sees truth where the other demonstrates" (Hours in a Library, vol. iii). 1 Professor Whitehead uses insight and imaginative experiment as lynonymous (Process and Reality (1929)* PP- THE SPIRIT IN MAN 179 are supposed seems to be obviously one of imagination. Croce identifies the activity responsible for hypothesis with artistic imagination. But an illuminating hypothesis is not the work of mere uncontrolled imagination. Imagination un vivified by intuition, imagination which is day dreaming, fancy, reverie or guess work, will not help us to light upon the truth except by accident. There is a difference between a mere guess which is the work of imagination and integral knowing or intuition. Those who attribute the framing of hypotheses to imagination assign it, not to the analytical intellect, but to the appreciative part of our mind. The insight does not arise so much as the solution of a problem but as the perception of something true. The intuition which is an activity of the whole being cannot be gained by mere intellectual effort, though it is equally true that it cannot be gained without it. Intellectual inaction seems to be the prelude to the intuitive flash. To allow the non-intellectual and yet rational part of our mind to play on the object, relaxation is necessary. Creative work is due as much to relaxation as to concentration. When we effectually concentrate on the object and think attentively about its many details, we do not seem to move far from the point at which we started. We must allow the intellect to lie fallow, let the object soak into the subsoil of our mental life and elicit its reaction to it. In addition to reflecting on the facts with our conscious powers, we should commune with them with the whole energy of our body and mind, for it is the whole mind that will reach the whole object. The essence of things cannot resist the concentrated attack of the whole mind. The mind moves on to something new when it is relaxing indolently or trifling with futilities. Intuitive ideas spring in those deep silences which interrupt our busy lives. In them the mind is brought under the grasp of the spirit. It is then f that our deeper consciousness grows and becomes intensely aware of the nature of the object. i8o AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE The truth shapes itself from within and leaps forth as a spark from fire. The relaxation of intellect means the activity of the whole mind, the awakening of the whole being for the crucial act to arise. When the flash occurs, we feel it to be true and find that it lifts up the puzzles and paradoxes into a luminous atmosphere. There is no more helpless fumbling over trifles or distraction in details. The truth is not so much produced as achieved. Though inexplicable in its origin, it is quite simple when it arises. It seems to be as direct and as effortless as ordinary perception when it occurs, though a multitude of details have to be overcome before it arises. The latter requires concentration and the former demands relaxation. Archimedes solved his problem in his bath and not in his study. "Happy ideas come unex- pectedly without effort like an inspiration, so far as I am concerned/' says Helmholtz. "They have never come to me when my mind was fatigued or when I was at my working table/' 1 A sort of intellectual passivity is demanded of us. When the religious scriptures require us to keep the mind still in a perfect purity and peace, so that we might hear the silence from which all words are born, they are only insisting on the passivity which is the preparation for the highest knowledge. Intuitions are convictions arising out of a fulness of life in a spontaneous way, more akin to sense than to imagina- tion or intellect and more inevitable than either. There is no control over them. The upward urges are a creation of the unconscious and the unwilled. "The spirit bloweth where it listeth and thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." Genius is not made by effort. It is a gift 1 Rignano: The Psychology of Reasoning, E.T. (1923), pp. 267-268. "What is generally meant by genius," writes Galton, "is the automatic activity of the mind, as distinguished from the effort of the will. In a man of genius, the ideas come as by inspiration; he is driven[rather than drives himself" (English Men of Science, Their ^Nature and Nurture (1874), THE SPIRIT IN MAN 181 of the gods. Plato, himself a genius, suggests that creative thought is a kind of madness sent upon men by the gods in accordance with some purpose of which they and not we are conscious. "We Greeks/' says Plato, "owe our greatest blessings to heaven-sent madness. For the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona have in their moments of madness done great and glorious service to the men and pities of Greece, but little or none in their sober mood/' 1 Jhe plodding intellectual, the man without intuition, is a useful worker quite necessary for the world of thought, but the genius is at a different and higher level. His messages take shape in the secret depths of the soul. Genius or inspiration is not something which first deprives us of our reason and then takes possession of us. As the findings of our whole consciousness, they are not non-rational. When they arise they can and should be logically demon- strated. Intuitions are not substitutes for thought. They are challenges to intelligence. Mere intuitions are blind while intellectual work is empty. All processes are partly intuitive and partly intellectual. There is no gulf between the two. The strictest scientist who believes that he does not go beyond the facts is also intuitive without knowing it. Intu- ition is the basis of all thinking. Though inarticulate in itself, it gives rise to all discourse. In every logical proof there is a grasping of the intellectual togetherness as a whole, an intuition of the whole as sustained by the different steps. Not only creative insight but ordinary understanding of anything implies this process. All active thinking is more than a mere linking together of images and conceptions. The intuited idea is operative throughout the whole process of the collection of facts, the brooding over them, the gradual heightening of the tension, the sudden release and the slow and steady mastery of the detail by the elaboration of the conceptions ancj judgments. In any concrete act of 1 Phaedrus, 244. 182 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE thinking mind's active experience is both intuitive and intellectual. 1 We see now the justification for the ancient view of philo- sophy as an insight (darSana) of the whole experience. To mistake it for an intellectual discipline which deals with highly abstract concepts is to make it irrelevant to life. While it is necessary to insist that a philosopher should not allow his thinking to be disturbed by his passions, no one can be a philosopher whose non-logical sides are no/ well developed. If the philosophers to-day are not so influ- ential as they used to be, it is to no small extent due to the fact that they are specialising in abstruse problems which are beyond the comprehension of the layman. They mani- pulate abstract concepts with the weapons of logical analysis. Philosophy which once was the pursuit of wisdom has become the possession of a technique. Though philosophy is a system of thought, the experience it organises must be both rich and comprehensive. The vision of the philosopher is the reaction of his whole personality to the nature of the experienced world. The great systems of the past had an adequate sense of the vastness of the universe and the mysteries of the soul. It is a mistake to think that the only qualifications for elucidating truth in the sphere of philosophy are purely intellectual. Only those whose lives are deep and rich light on the really vital syntheses significant for mankind. INTUITION AND ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT All art is M the^ expression of experience in some medium. The experience is dotihg.d~.in FQO^s_which_appeal to our 1 Cp. Henri PoincarO: "It never happens that unconscious work supplies ready made the result of a lengthy calculation in which we have only to apply fixed rules. . . . All that we can hope from these inspirations, which are the fruit of unconscious work, is to obtain points of departure for such 'calculations. As for the calculations themselves, they must be made in the second period of conscious work, which follows the inspiration, and in which the results of the inspiration are verified and the consequences deduced" (Science^and Method, E.T. (1913), pp. 62-63). THE SPIRIT IN MAN 183 emotions through .the_senses. Sculpture has for its medium stone and marble, painting colours, music sounds and poetry words. The relation between the experience and the medium is closer in some than in others, in poetry than in music, in painting than in sculpture. By means of the work of art, the^experience, is released _afresh 4 Jn {he spectator or the auditor. The enjpyer becomes a secret sharerjof .the creator's mind. Attempts are sometimes made to treat artistic experience as an illusion or trace it to the causes which intellect is able to discover. We may confine ourselves to the great art with which we are all familiar, poetry, and look at the suggestions of the new sciences. Anthropology makes poetry rhythmic sgng. Rhythm helps breathing. So poetry and music employ it. If we turn excited speech into rhythmical utterance, we get music. Psychoanalysis argues that art is the unconscious and symbolic expression of the sensuous instinct. 1 Poetry, it is sometimes said, is but a reaction to environment. Historical factors can easily account for it. A statement of origins is not, however, an explanation of the phenomenon. Origins may help us to understand the pathology of art, its failures, but not its normal creativity. If we trace all art to rhythm, sex or environment, we shall not be able to discriminate between Beethoven and a brass-voiced beggar, Shakespeare and a clever undergraduate versifier. When all is said and done, art is an accident^ which depends on what we make of the conditions and not what they make of _us. Tire genius of the artist is the determining factor. The nature of the experience he has and the ability with which he com- municates it to others through his work, require to be explained and all these ingenious theories which confuse origins and conditions with results do not touch the central issue. 1 See Roger Fry: The Artist and Psychoanalysis (1924). 184 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE POETRY The experience or the vision is the artist's counterpart to the scientific discovery of a principle or law. To what is this creative experience or vision due, fancy, imagination, sensi- bility or thought or something else which, including them all, yet transcends them? In poetic experience we have knowledge by being as distinct from knowledge by knowing. The mind grasps the object in its wholeness, clasps it to its bosom, suffuses it with its own spirit, and becomes one with it. "If a sparrow came before my window," Keats wrote, "I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." There is a deliberate suspension of individuality, an utter submission to the real, a complete absorption in the object as it is, so as to breathe its life and enjoy its form. When in the words of Byron "the heart and soul and sense in concert move," the individual is absorbed by the object, lives in its rhythm and hears its inward harmony. In that heightened consciousness subject and object become interchangeable and, as Blake said, "we become what we behold.." In a note to the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, Wordsworth writes: "I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in my own immaterial nature." The object becomes clothed, as it were, with a strange light, revealing itself as the specific form, the concrete picture of an idea, "a faultless essence of God's will." 1 The endless variety of the sensible world becomes the symbol of an invisible ideal world which is behind and within it, sustaining both it and the mind which perceives it. Browning in his Essay on Shelley speaks of the poet's aim thus: "Not what man sees but what God sees, the Ideas of Plato, seeds of Creation, lying burningly in the Divine Hand it is towards these he struggles." The actual world 1 Bridges: The Testament of Beauty (1929), ii. 32. THE SPIRIT IN MAN 185 is reborn and reveals its truest self. It is the old world and yet new. We apply our powers of sense to note the outward semblance of things; we use the skill of intellect to under- stand their logical relations. But the powers of the soul are needed to know the soul of things. The spirit in man is as profound and true as the reality that answers to it in the constitution of things. So long as we are lost in the details of sense and intellect our soul is inactive. But when we are laid asleep In body and become a living soul While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy We see into the life of things. It is then that one passes into the object, flings oneself on it, lives in its rhythm and sees into it. Whatever be the object to which our energies are directed, a physical thing or a metaphysical idea, a passing mood or a particular person, the poet puts his whole being in the centre of the object contemplated and construes its nature from that centre outwards. Poetry, then, is a form of life, a realisation of the meaning of common life by living it more intensely. It is a ripe nature as organic as life itself. It is life come tq utterance. It is utterly spontaneous. Keats says of the poet, "ifjpoetry comes not as naturally to him as the leaves to aL tree, it had better not come at all." The work of art is the crystallization of a life-process. It is creative contem- plation which is a process of travail of the spirit. The mind is in labour and derives sustenance from the whole being. The intellectual faculties are there operative but suffused by the creative life. True poetry which is rich with a world of suffering and experience, has the fulness and mystery, the depth and authority of life itself. It is because the poet sees so intensely that he is able to communicate to us his feeling and judgment. 1 1 * * Emetic creation, ' ' Carlyleasks, "what is this too, but seeing the thing suj^ently ?^~and,. adds, ."the wprd^that~wilf describe the thing follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing" (On Heroes, Hi). i86 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE The creative spirit and its activity are so unlike the con- scious mind that the latter feels itself to be inspired and raised above its normal power by the breath of spirit. The inspired souls speak from a centre of consciousness that has transcended the limits of its finitude and so claim an authori- tativeness which it is not within the power of the normal individual to bestow. They do not think so much as thoughts come to them. The poet believes that his work is due not to his intellectual skill or imaginative boldness but to what he calls his inspiration. Since it comes into the poet's life anfi fades out of it regardless of his inclination, he traces it to a power more unconscious than conscious. 1 To the ancient Hindus and the Greeks, the poetic exercise is a religious act, and the poet invokes his muse and begins with prayer. It is always a dialogue between the daimon and the psyche. The authors of the Vedic hymns regarded themselves as channels of something greater than they knew, instruments of a higher soul beyond themselves. They do not so much create the contents as contemplate them in their moments of deepest insight. Plato in his Symposium suggests a similar view. Aristotle says that the poet is either "happily gifted by nature 1 ' or "a bit of a maniac." "The words which I speak unto you are not mine but the Father's who sent me. 11 Dante says: "I am one who, when love inspires, take note and as he dictates within me I express myself /' "Sing, heavenly muse," is the sublime opening of 1 "They remember moments when a new light or a reviving force appeared to stream upon them coming whence it would, from the presence or the thoughts of the living or the dead, from intercourse with nature, from the heights of personal joy or the obscure deeps of pain; and they think of these moments as inspired" (A. C. Bradley: A Miscellany (1929), p. 226). Purgatario, Canto xiv, quoted in Graham Wallas: The Art of Thought (1926). George EHot declared "that in all she considered her best writing there was a 'not herself which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, were acting" (Cross: Life of George Eliot). THE SPIRIT IN MAN 187 Paradise Lost. Milton speaks of the "celestial patroness" who deigns Her nightly visitation, unimplored And dictates to me slumbering; or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse. 1 The poetic experience is but momentary for the veil is redrawn and the mood of exaltation passes. The poet attempts a translation of the ineffable experience into words. While poetry is in the soul, the poem is a pale reflection of the original, an attempt to register in words an impression which has become an image in memory. There is something incom- mensurable, eluding expression in words. The poetic temper is irj all of us though only a few develop it. The poet has the gift, which fewer still have, of communicating the experience by words of immediate power which compel the wandering mind to respond to his appeal. It is difficult to translate states of soul into words and images. The success of art is measured by the extent to which it is able to render experiences of one dimension into terms of another. An adequate control of technique is essential. Even in the act of composition the poet is in a state in which the reflective elements are subordinated to the intuitive. The vision, however, is not operative for so long as it continues, its very stress acts as a check on expression. The experience is recollected but not in tranquillity. Poetry is the language qf excitement. For in recollecting the exciting experience, the poet recreates the conditions of its happening and identifies himself with it. The spell of the experience is still on the poet and under its influence he employs intuitive words and images which possess emotional value more than logical meaning. While ; poetry is not the vision itself, but only the image of it, still its quality depends on the degree with, which it calls up the vision. Paradise Lost, Book ix. 1 1. 21-24. 188 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE Such an account of poetic experience and expression seems to be opposed to Croce's view of the identity of in- tuition and expression. He says that it "is a principle of ordinary common sense, which laughs at people who claim to have thoughts they cannot express or to have imagined a great picture which they cannot paint." 1 While we cannot divide intuition from expression, Croce's view does not seem to take into account the fact that inarticulateness stands between experience and expression for the averagg man. The moment the poet has the intuition or the experi- ence, i.e. the experience is vividly felt, the intuition unmistakably known, its expression or embodiment is also implicitly present. For the purely formless cannot be known or conceived. The form is present in the experience itself, but the great poet is he whose nature it is to represent experience through words winged with magic, capable of evoking the experience. The experience has its full shape in the words and phrases which clothe it. In the experience itself the expression is only implicit. To the extent to which the poet is perfectly aware of the experience, we may say that his expression is in a sense also complete but certainly its verbal equivalent is not developed in it. Croce seems to ignore the problem of artistic communication. The difference between a poet and a non-poet is that the experience of the former is larger and his verbal control greater. There are some who speak of poetry even as a mechanic talks about his engine. If we do certain things, certain things will result. There is no more mystery in poetry than there is in engineering. If we observe a few tricks of the trade, we will get poetry. It is reduced to technical power. But technique without inspiration is barren. Intellectual powers, sense facts and imaginative fancies may result in clever verses, repetition of old themes, but they are only manufactured poetry. Those who t depend on them are 1 "Aesthetics," Encyclopedia Britannia*, I4th ed. (1929), vol. i. p.* 266. THE SPIRIT IN MAN 189 designers of verses and not poets. They may please us by their pretty fancies, but the seer who gives us the inner quality thrills us. It is not merely a difference of degree in the quality but a difference of kind in the source itself, of the plane in which the poet moves. True poetry has that maturity of experience, that magnificence of mind, that touch of the soul which escapes one who lives on the surface. We measure the value of poetry by the depths of its roots in reality. Only poems that come from the soul trailing clouds of glory make the heart beat and the eye brighten. Plato distinguishes the man of genius, the madman inspired by the muses, from the industrious apprentice to the art of Letters and maintains that the latter has no chance against the former. "He who has no touch of the muses' madness in his soul comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art, he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman/' 1 Coleridge in the opening section of his Table Talk brings out the vital difference between an artist and a craftsman. To produce an impression of terror Schiller sets a whole town on fire, throws infants into the flames and locks up old men in old towers. Shake- speare drops a handkerchief and freezes our blood. But unless the poet speaks from the depths, he cannot engage the depths in others. When Carlyle gave the finished manu- script of the French Revolution to his wife, he said, "I know not whether this book is worth anything, nor what the world will do with it, or misdo, or entirely forbear to do, as is likeliest; but this I could tell the world; you have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man."* IJ is often asked whether the power of poetry is due to the music of words, or the images they suggest or the ideas they express. Each vie>Y counts powerful support. "The best 1 Phaedfus, 245. CarlyU's Life, vol. i. p. 89. igo AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE words expressed in the best order" is poetry according to some. There is no doubt that rhythmical words exert an enchanting influence on the mind. We respond to music even when we fail to seize the sense. It does not follow that good poetry is mere sound and no sense. Again, it is. true that we do not go to poetry to gain information. The function of art is to stir the spirit in us, humanise our nature; refine life and produce profoundly satisfying states of mind which gradually become fashioned into more persistent attitudes. The light of knowledge commends itself by its own sweet- ness. The harmony which an educated sensibility feels in the appreciation of inner reality is also valid knowledge. Verbal music and logical meaning are present in poetry, but they are not all. Its essential quality is that emotional fervour, that strength of passion, that intensity of life, which bursts out in ecstatic utterance. Mere passion unaccompanied by thought is sentimentality. But unless the passion is present the poet cannot induce in the reader an acceptance of his experience. The experience is a unique event and cannot be repeated. The poem is only a recollection or record of it. But the poet's words must establish a natural sympathy with the reader and induce in him the mood of exaltation favourable to the implicit apprehension of the idea. The Deader must insinuate himself into the mood of the poet, ee with his eyes, feel with his heart and judge with his mind. What matters is not the massiveness of thought or the importance of the subject but the purity and profundity of the experience. The poet's mind is finer, his heart more sensitive to the remotest murmurs of things. It hardly matters on what subject he speaks, a night wind or a love fancy, a flower or a fleeting memory. He mediates between the Divine Logos and the things of the world that pass away. But this does not mean that all themes are equally good for poetry. Form and content are closely bound up and only great themes can give great poetry. Prose which is meant THE SPIRIT IN MAN 19! jfor discussion and communication is not competent to deal with the highest themes. Poetry is the language of the soul, while prose is the language of science. The former is the language of mystery, of devotion, of religion. Prose lays bare its whole meaning to the intelligence, while poetry plunges us in the mysterium tremendum of life and suggests the truths that cannot be stated. An atmosphere of the numinous envelops all poetry. In the last analysis, the essentially poetical character is derived from the creative iAtuition which holds sound, suggestion and sense in organic solution. 1 Modern literature is essentially trivial. Even our greatest masters like Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells do not touch the heights of genius. They have not given us one epic which brings out the full meaning of life, which leaves us throbbing with wild hopes and dazzled by new vistas, not a single drama of a profoundly moving nature which devastates us by its grandeur, burns into us unforgettable visions of men at grips with fate, which shakes, exhausts, cleanses us. It is because they deal with the tumult of the soul and not with its depth They are predominantly intellectual. We are ( / a generation of intellectuals, keen in analysis, patient in| observation, but no great art was ever made of observation and analysis. We are acutely conscious of the present dis-^ order and are anxious to remould society to a better plan. We burn with indignation against wrong and preach ways of overcoming it. But our sufferings are only mental, torments of mind, not agonies of spirit. The true artists undergo profound experience, intense suffering. They have no time 1 See Herbert Read: Phases of English Poetry (1928), v. Speaking of art, Robert Bridges says: "Where of all excellence upspringeth of itself, Like a rare fruit upon some gifted stock ripening On its arch-personality of inborn faculty Without which gift creative Reason is barren." (The Testament oj Beauty (1929), ii. 738-741). 192 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE to preach. They live and love. When they translate their experiences into words, we see in them that incalculable quality of mind, the creative passion, which is not a mere skilful arrangement of dead flowers, a work of passion and not mere cleverness. They give us things of beauty and not mere decorations. A true work of art is an unanalysable one comparable to a lightning flash flung from heaven, which strikes the earth and lifts it into a blaze. Robert Bridges' The Testament of Beauty is a case in point. It seems to be an elaborate exposition of a philosophic thesis in language which is more often abstract than poetic. Judged by the cosmic range of its knowledge, the nobility of its faith and the plenitude of its spirit, it is undoubtedly a great work. There are passages in it of extreme loveliness, of lyrical beauty, but for a poetic masterpiece we need emo- tional intensity and sustained inspiration. It is for the critic to say whether The Testament of Beauty, which is certainly a great work, is also great poetry, whether it has the poetic energy which is genius, the poetic quality which is magic. ARTISTIC KNOWLEDGE Art as the disclosure of the deeper reality of things is a form of knowledge. It is imitation, as Aristotle said, but not of outward nature but of inner reality. Poetic objectivity is not photographic realism. Even the so-called imitative art is not mere imitation. The artist's mind is at work in it, aiming at a definite purpose. He discerns within the visible world something more real than its outward appearance, some idea or form of the true, the good or the beautiful, which is more akin to the spirit itself than to the visible things. Yet this idea or form, this meaning or value is not an added grace or refinement but the very heart of the object itself, and we cannot tear it away from it. Poetic truth is a discovery, not a creation/' THE SPIRIT IN MAN 193 Croce denies that poetry reveals the nature of reality. It is an expression of a personal mood and the poet deceives himself if he claims that in his receptive mood he knows and in his creative mood he expresses the nature of reality. Poetry is essentially self-expression. On this view it is difficult to explain why the expression of one man's self should be valid or at least significant for other men. Again, even Croce admits that art is intuition and intuition is always of the real or the individual. It follows that poetic intuition also ^ives us a kind of knowledge. Besides, art can be said to give us subjective impressions, only if the real is interpreted as what exists utterly independent of our knowledge of it. In that case even science and common sense do not give us knowledge. The sensible is not the real. The man with sight knows more than the blind man. Even if we had nearly a thousand senses as Voltaire's imagination conceived, we cannot be sure that our apprehension of reality is knowledge of reality. The sensible is not independent of the observer. The colour of the rose exists only for one who has the human sense of sight. The scientific picture of the universe again depends on our ways of knowing. Vibrations as much as colours are relative to the observer. All knowledge, perceptual or conceptual, is the meeting ground of subject and object. The knowledge we gain in art is not peculiar in this respect. We have in it the reaction of delicate sensibilities to qualities of the real. Poetic truth is different from scientific truth since it reveals the real in its qualitative uniqueness and not quantitative universality. It does not speak of material qualities that can be measured but inward graces that can only be felt. The truths of poetry cannot be set out in elaborate arguments but are conveyed more subtly. To behold the vision is to be convinced of the truth. Even if art is self-expression, the self that is expressed is not the narrow particular one. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant argues that the*pl eas ^ re we experience as the enjoy- N 194 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE ment of beauty is individual and in that sense subjective; it is also disinterested, and our judgment concerning it is universal. Deepest poetry has the widest appeal. What the scientist does when he discovers a law is to give a new ordering to observed facts. The artist is engaged in a similar task. He gives a new meaning to our experience and organises it in a different way due to his perception of subtler qualities in reality. He increases our understanding of life and gives us a heightened sense of reality. He bestows comprehension by bringing things into deeper accord? "What is holiest?" asks Goethe, and answers, "That which, now and always, as it is deeplier felt, brings into deeper accord." The greatest gifts of art are peace and reconciliation. In those rare moments when we are moved by some beautiful poem or a great work of art, we are not only absorbed by it but our mind is raised to a higher altitude when it beholds the vision of things far above sense knowledge or discursive reasoning. Every beautiful statue has a certain air of repose, every great poem conveys a sense of peace. It is no use dis- cussing a work of art by the standards of intellect and dis- missing its characters and events as purely imaginary. The particular persons and events in a play may not be existent and yet the play may have a meaning and a value which have a higher and more abiding reality than the existent things. The imagined persons and events may be "such stuff as dreams are made of" and yet they help us to under- stand the reality or the significance. Fanciful forms may reveal a quality of life. After all, "the play's the thing," the rest are shadows. It is the function of the artist to induce in us a sense of the significance of life. As Kant puts it, art gives us the form of purposiveness in general "without the representation of any special purpose." It is not the function of art to give a detailed justification of particular events. It only gives us a sense of Vhe meaningfulness of THE SPIRIT IN MAN 195 life, evokes in us ideas of the larger beauty, justice and charity of the universe. The artist does not turn his back on the realities of the world. He knows its sorrows and sufferings as well as its virtues and victories. The wrongs and cruelties are there but there is no need for alarm. The universe is sound at the core. The darkness of the world is painted but it does not depress us. When we read a great play like Hamlet or King Lear, we seem to be somewhere near a clue to the world's secret. The poet shares with us the knowledge which he has gained of the foundations of life. The outward results may be calamitous but the mind is left restful. Juliet dies but only after establishing the greatness of love. If Othello had killed himself the instant he had struck the blow, he would have died with a grievance against the world. But he sees the innocence of Desdemona and dies ; for then death i > trivial. Outward defeats and failure do not touch the inner meaning of life. We get a general impression of an ultimate decency in things. Like the God of Genesis, when we look upon all creation, we find that its total impression is good. We not only accept the universe but feel at home in it. It does not stand for an immutable perfection. We see in it growth, continuance, endurance, growing pains, tragic accidents and yet it is our duty to share in the general movement and push it along. Art restores the isolated individual into fellowship with the world. It results in a catharsis, an emotional cleansing, a sense of fulfilment. Without the quickening of vital forces which art produces, life is an unlovely business. The author of the Bhagavadgitd tells us that the superior soul is he who experi- ences the intensest pain and pleasure without being affected by them. Only such seasoned souls who not only test life but are tested by it can see life always as we sometimes do when we are under their spell. Our sweetest songs are of our saddest moods. We give in song what we learn in suffering. I 9 6 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE Aesthetic appreciation demands the exercise of the whole mind and not merely of the logical understanding. We cannot truly appreciate if we are not aided by a higher insight. We ipust share the world which the artist presents to us. The reader of poetry is one of a similar heart and tem- perament (sa hrdaya or samanahrdaya). Schopenhauer suggests that the artists lend us their eyes and we see with them. Appreciation requires sympathy and understanding though not belief and agreement. We must for the moment become disinterested and severely contemplative. GoetW said that Schlegel, if he was to criticise Euripides, ought to do it on his knees. He should first give himself away, for that is the only way to understand. Aesthetic creation and enjoyment are both non-intellectual actions. INTUITION AND ETHICAL LIFE In our ethical life also, intuitive insight is essential for the highest reaches. The hero who carves out an adventurous path is akin to the discoverer who brings order into the scattered elements of a science or the artist who composes a piece of music or designs a building. Mere mechanical observance of rules or imitation of models will not take us far. The art of life is not a barren rehearsal of stale parts. "The man that is not an artist," cried Blake in one of his most arresting paradoxes, "is not a Christian." Life is a game which ends only when one retires. It calls for the exercise of skill and adventure. The player of mettle is a master of the technique. When he grasps the position, with a sure insight he moves forward. In the chessboard of life, the different pieces have powers which vary with the context and the possibilities of their combination are numerous and unpredictable. The sound player has a sense of the right and feels that, if he does not follow it, he will be false to himself. In any critical situation the forward THE SPIRIT IN MAN 197 move is a creative act. It springs from the self by the laws of its nature. There is a secret, organic, inevitable fatality about it. The moral hero follows an inner rhythm- which goads him on and he has the satisfaction of obeying his destiny, fulfilling his self. By following his deeper nature, he may seem to be either unwise or unmoral to those of us who adopt the conventional standards. But for him the spiritual obligation is of more consequence than social tradition. The inward constraint is more important than the law imposed from without. He craves for inward truthfulness, utter sincerity, and not conventional propriety. He is fighting for the reshaping of his society on sounder lines. His be- haviour might offend the sense of decorum of the cautious conventionalist and it is sad to feel that men of vision and creativeness have suffered at the hands of social leaders, though not always without justification. They illustrate the tragic truth that when any one grows better than his fellow men, he incurs their hatred. Crucifixion is the way in which we honour our supreme guides and teachers. The cold calculating men who are careful of appearances will never fall grievously low, though they will not soar high. Only the deeply sincere can make fools of themselves. The gospel of Jesus is antinomian as compared with pharisaism. "Love and do what you like/ 1 Love takes us to the deeper secrets of life and gives us a more integrated view than intellectual subtlety and a few plain moral rules can do. Though morality commands conformity, all moral progress is due to nonconformists. Society judges all acts according to well-known common standards. It assumes that everything is susceptible of scientific or impersonal treatment. It regards men as machines and reduces every personal problem to general terms and decides the moral wof th of individual acts in the light of typical situations and moral formulas. We are slaves of a 198 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE mechanical system of ideas. Rationalist codes of morality sacrifice flexibility and richness to correctness and con- sistency. Professing to act on principles, our intellectuals are cut off from the deeper sources of vitality and their souls are at strife with their minds. Life, love and suffering cannot be so easily handled. No two events or conjunctions of events are alike. We must look at each of them as a unique situation, as an absolutely free and living adjustment to the circumstances and not a mechanical adaptation to a preconceived end. Only men with a delicate conscience and deep love, who have found themselves on a higher level, whose minds are guided by a deep sense of realities, and who have developed a sense for the right and the true can understand other people's feelings and problems. They are the souls who are able to endure the evil even though they do not succeed in removing it. They have a know- ledge of the foundations; they have seen into the seeds of time. It is only in moments of supreme freedom that we are or get near to the deepest self in us. In daily life we act on useful conventions devised for the normal situations, and even in great crises most of us are incapable of grasping the opportunity to respond with our whole self. But there is no work, however lowly, no drudgery, however toilsome, no passion, however vile, that cannot engage the self in us and yield this serene content if only the individual is spiritually alive. Virtue, said Socrates, is knowledge; only it is not intellectual knowledge which is teachable. It is knowledge which springs from the deeper levels of man's being. It is acquired by the raising of one's mind, the growth of one's consciousness. The deeper a man is rooted in spirit, the more he knows directly. To one of ethical sensitiveness, the path of duty is as clear as any knowledge we possess. In its per- ception we come as near to absolute certainty as it is possible for us to do. We have in it a case of intuitive apprehension, THE SPIRIT IN MAN 199 though later reflection may discover reasons for its truth. 1 He whose life is directed by insight expresses his deeper con- sciousness not in poems and pictures as the artist does but in a superior type of life. He leaves behind the world of claims and counter-claims. He is indifferent to the morality which is a matter of checks and balances, for the highest morality which is not law but love is a necessity of his being. The lives of heroes like Buddha and Christ are not merely truthful and austere but beautiful beyond all Hream. RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE OTHER VALUES Religious consciousness is not reducible to either intellectual or ethical or aesthetic activity or a sum of these. If it is an autonomous form of spiritual life which, while including these elements, yet transcends them, the object of religion is not either the true or the good or the beautiful or a mere unity of them but God the universal consciousness who includes these values and yet transcends them. The human mind is value-seeking. It strives for unity and coherence, for harmony and beauty, for worth and goodness. Each of the values of truth, beauty and goodness has its own specific characters. We cannot arrange them in a hierarchy or subsume one under the others. We have clear testimony that these values are absolute and this means faith in God. They are the thoughts of God and we think after him. Truth, beauty and goodness are not existent objects like the things that are true, beautiful and good, and yet they are more real than the persons, things and relations to which they are ascribed. Though not known by the senses or reason, they are apprehended by intuition or faith as 1 Cp. Bradley: "We know what is right in a particular case by what we may call an immediate judgment or an intuitive subsumption" (Ethical Studies, and ed. (1927), p. 124). 200 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the theologians would put it. 1 Truth, beauty and goodness cease to be the supreme realities and become a part of the being and essence of God. From the eternal values we pass to a supporting mind in which they dwell. They thus acquire an objectivity and are not simply dependent on our individual minds. As possessed by a divine consciousness they cease to be static ideals but become dynamic forces. Religious con- sciousness would then be the amor dei intellectualis of Spinoza. It is amor because it is vivid and warm, joyous and hearty; amor intellectualis because it depends on a quickened per' ception and understanding; amor dei because all values are referred to the being of God. The cognitive, the aesthetic and the ethical sides of our life are only sides, however vital and significant. The religious includes them all. While science strives to comprehend the law that sustains the universe, while art yearns to reveal the beauty that is worked into the world, while morality struggles to realise the goodness the universe is labouring to achieve, while in their perfection these different aspira- tions merge into one another, in the process itself, each seems to be incomplete, though it is true that true art or philosophy or morality cannot be had without all of them in some degree. The nature of man is not built of parts which are independent of one another. Our instinct for truth, our moral sense and artistic craving are all organically bound up. But so long as they are inorganic or un-whole, thought is futile, feeling petty and action crude. The harmony which art reveals may be fleeting and transitory, a dream, not a desire, much less a dedication. The artist not the greatest, however 1 It is unfortunate that we are obliged to employ the single term "intuition" to represent scientific genius, poetic insight, ethical conscience, as well as religious faith. Though these diverse movements represent the integrated activity of the mind, the activity is oriented towards knowing in some cases, enjoyment or creation in others. In Hindu Philosophy, pratibha denotes the creative intuition of the genius, and ar?ajrtana is the name given to the religious intuitions of the sages (se* Indian Philosophy, vol. ii, 2nd ed. (1931), p. 68). THE SPIRIT IN MAN 201 may be intellectually feeble and morally depraved. The heroes of history are not noted for their aesthetic sense ; nor are the artists as a class patterns of morality. Strictly speaking, an art independent of morality, which has no roots in our deepest ethical instincts, which does not draw towards the divine in things is not true art. The insight into philosophy may not be a steady and assured possession. The truths of philosophy any more than the ideas of art may not incite to life. We require the three together, cognitive illumina- t/bn, emotional stability and practical power, inward light, ineffable beauty and strong fire, a life in which the three become closely bound up with one another, where what we see, adore and live are one. Here we find the essence of religion, which is a synthetic realisation of life. The religious man has the knowledge that everything is significant, the feeling that there is harmony underneath the conflicts and the power to realise the significance and the harmony. He traces the values of truth, goodness and beauty to a common background, God, the holy, who is both without and within us. The truth we discern, the beauty we feel and the good we strive after is the God we apprehend as believers. While art or beauty or goodness in isolation may not generate religious insight, in their intimate fusion they lead us to something greater than themselves. The religious man lives in a new world which fills his mind with light, his heart with joy and his soul with love. God is seen as light, love and life. The religious intuition is an all-comprehending one, covering the whole of life. While the spirit in man fulfils itself in many ways, it is most completely fulfilled in the religious life. Here is consciousness at its full and simultaneous realisation. While every genius is in his own way a pioneer of the evolution of spirit, in the religious genius we have a simultaneous exaltation of the different powers of the inward life. He combines most 'or all of the superiorities and inten- 202 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE sities, imaginative vision, intellectual strength, emotional fervour and practical power. An integral life entirely free from error and perversion will be pure disinterestedness, impersonality incarnate. Some men are so vitally con- structive that they are able to organise anew the society in which they live according to their vision. These souls are men transfigured, rendered new, whose every power is raised to its highest extent. In them the universal finds its expression, God manifests himself more than in others. The contours of their God-intoxicated facts possess the radiance of such as have seen eternity (brahma- tejas). They are men apart, free from the magic of this world. They stand to the commonalty somewhat in the same relation as the great creators of art stand to the large body of appreciators. When an artistic genius creates a work of beauty, it is not an esoteric mystery but a common possession prized by the whole race. When the prophets reveal in sym- bols the truths they discovered, we try to rediscover them for ourselves slowly and patiently. The gifted spirits who win forward steps for the race or add grace to daily life seek to extend these values to others, and that is, in the language of religion, to live to the glory of God. Even as there is a difference between the scientific genius and the plodding intellect, poetic energy and versifying talent, moral heroism and conventional good form, spiritual insight differs from religious intcllectualism. While the latter believes that interest in religion is promoted by the adducing of proofs for the existence of God, the former asks us to train our consciousness to the level when it can see God. The intuitive seers shrink from precise statements and clearcut definitions. 1 They speak in picture and allegory, 1 Cp. Erasmus: "We have been disputing for ages whether the grace by which God loves man and the grace by which we love God are one and the same grace. We dispute how the Father differs from the Son, and both from the Holy Ghost . . . and how there cap be one when neither of the three is the other. . . . Entire lives have been wasted on these speculations, THE SPIRIT IN MAN 203 parable and miracle. It is a law of the human mind that the letter grows at the expense of the spirit, the material at the cost of meaning. Intuitions are not dogmas. The two differ not only in degree but in kind. It is the difference between feeling after God and knowing Him. We cannot get the intuition of God unless we strive for it with our whole being. The experience has to be earned with costing effort, passion and suffering, faith and struggle, but the intellectuals wish to acquire it cheaply. The great body of believers in any religion wish to enjoy the consolations of religion without undergoing the labour of being religious. They are religious not with their whole beings or their souls, but with their brains, more frequently with their spinal cords. The priests feed on the weakness of human nature and tell us that it is necessary to believe to be saved. They are well versed in mechanical theology and dull formalism and are quite competent in their own range but they are not enough in critical times. The prophets with the creative spirit find themselves in conflict with the priests with their respect for exaggerated repetition. They contend that the spirit can leap into life only if the moulds in which it is cast are broken. They are more dissenters than conformists. They are considered to be irreligious and antisocial forces and are often faced with isolation and death but all progress in religion is due to these persecuted spirits. They deepen and enrich the life of God in the world, and when the priests fail to satisfy the honest and hungry minds, the prophets attract them. Dogmatism is the danger of an intellectual religion which is so attractive to a world in which standardisation and and men quarrel, and curse and come to blows about them. . . . The school- men have been arguing for generations whether the proposition that Christ exists from eternity is correctly stated ; whether He is compounded of two natures, or consists of two natures. . . . And all this stuff of which we know nothing and are not required to know anything, they treat as the citadel of our faith" (Note on i Timothy i. 6). 204 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE quantity are superseding individuality and quality. When the dogmatisms are breaking down we are disturbed that religion may disappear. If we regard the forms as final, we are rightly sceptical when they are shaken. We may be encouraged when we find that the great seers of religion do not prescribe definite systems of dogma or ritual. They invite the soul to its lonely pilgrimage and give it absolute freedom in the faith that a free adaptation of the divine into oneself is the essential condition of spiritual life. The nature of man is a life demanding to grow and not "clay waiting to be moulded." The examples of the great religious geniuses are there as broad directions of effort and attainment and even when they belong to organisations, they attempt to keep up the spirit of life in them. They are not in a hurry to turn a great life into a rigid formula, a mystery into a metaphysics which can be learnt by heart by everybody. If our temples, mosques and churches understand that their primary function is to awaken the spirit in us and not impart sacred wisdom, they will convert themselves into houses of God which will have the courage to be comprehensive and welcome believers of varied views and tastes into their spiritual atmosphere. They will prepare for an invisible church which will embrace all souls o^good wilL A life or an atmosphere is opposed to a creed or a code. It is something incalculable in its possibilities and offers full scope for variations to suit different minds. If we believe that man needs a framework for the tendrils of his mind, we may provide symbols and examples and leave the rest to the God in man. The true teacher, like Socrates, plays the part of a midwife. The lack of definiteness in a religion like that of the Hindus seems to me to stand for a higher form of definiteness. Religion means conscious union with the Divine in the universe with love as its chief means. THE SPIRIT IN MAN 205 CREATIVE INTUITION Creativity in cognitive, aesthetic, ethical or religious activity springs from thought which is intuitive or spiritually quickened. There is no greatness, no sublimity, no perfection whatever be the line, without the touch of this creative energy of life. The heroes of humanity, its Buddhas and Christs, its Platos and Pauls, are all shaped after the same pattern and are inspired from the same elemental source of life. They have touched the deeps of spirit and speak from that undivided impersonal root from which our personal thoughts, emotions and strivings arise. The thinkers, the artists and the heroes, though they may not use, though they may often quarrel with the language of religion, are still religious in a true sense. For they have broken down the barriers between the individual and the universal. They have the sweet dignity, the quiet resignation, the patient faith of those who dwell in another world, the world of spirit. They are lonely, self-centred, not by choice, but by necessity. Genius has no place for team-work. Poets and prophets do not go into committees. THE SPIRIT IN MAN If we are asked to define what the spirit in man is, it would be difficult to give a definite answer. We know it, but we cannot explain it. It is felt everywhere though seen nowhere. It is not the physical body or the vital organism, the mind or the will,, but something which underlies them all and sustains them. It is the basis and background of our being, the universality that cannot be reduced to this or to that formula. 'That which one thinks not with the mind, that by which the mind^s Bought, Know that indeed to bejthe supreme, not this whicji men follow after here." 1 There is 1 Kena Up. i. 5. 206 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE a parable in the Upaniads which speaks of two birds sitting on the same bough, one of which feeds and the other looks on. The spirit looks on disinterestedly, its delight is pure and free; the empirical self is concerned with the business of life. The former is vaster, profounder, truer, but it is ordinarily hidden from our knowledge. When the supreme light in us inspires the intellect we have genius, when it stirs the will we have heroism, when it flows through the heart we have love, and when it transforms our being, the son of man becomes the son of God. Put the fire of spirit on any altar, it blazes up to heaven. Its powers are infinite, its dreams angelic, its apprehensions godlike. There is no natural limit to its expression, it is potentially all-embracing. Wherever there is genius, ardour, heroism, there is the crea- tive spirit at work in however nebulous and untried a way i+ may be. Completeness of achievement is always satisfying. It is a glimpse of the divine. Inspiration in every one of its forms is a manifestation of the universal spirit in us; only the religious man is conscious of this fact. 1 He knows that his true self is something universal which influences his normal ego in its highest activities and is therefore moved by feelings of gratitude and devotion to it. In the rush and clamour of our conscious life, we do not I&y attention to this mystery of our being. We do not realise that we have sensibilities strange to our normal life, ways of apprehending reality which are not strictly logical. We do .pot have an adequate consciousness of what we really are, of what invisible threads link us to the universe. Worse still, we sometimes confuse the spirit in us, responsible 1 "The Greek sculptor who wrought his statue, and when it was finished fell on his knees before it, felt that its beauty was no mere creation of his own, but something heavenly. Milton's passionate prayer to the celestial muse was not a poetic convention. And to Wordsworth what in literary phrase is named the consciousness of genius was in truth the consciousness of dependence upon, union with and devotion to, the spirit of thought and love which manifests itself in nature, and is more fully revealed in the thought and love of humanity" (Bradley: A Miscellany (1929), pp. 235-236). THE SPIRIT IN MAN 207 or the flashes of insight, for the sudden intuitions, for the unexpected emotions with a primitive and elementary state of our being. The psychoanalyst explains the moments of. our heightened consciousness in terms of his "complexes/ 1 instead of regarding them as suggestions of an undeveloped power in us. The genius is not one with exceptional access to the primitive elements of our being, but one who gives us a foretaste of the spiritual man to be. He has become aware not of the suppressed primitive desires but of the greatness of spirit which lifts him into a higher state of being than the normal. Our analysis of intuitive consciousness tells us that we ourselves are that one indivisible spirit and the empirical world we are familiar with is the arrangement produced by the limited part of ourselves active in waking consciousness. If we learn to live within, we shall respond to the presence within us, which is our more real self, profound, calm and joyous, that which supports and sustains all manifestations. We cannot attain to this greatness of soul unless we are reborn. Those who have reached the heights are literally reborn, made new. While this quality of rebornness mani- fests itself in the lives of the lords of mankind, it is not absent in any of us. Though we may not have developed this greatness, we are ready to pay our homage to those who have reached it. The thoughts, the raptures and the deeds of the great induce in us an attitude of adoration. If the spirit were not in us, we would not have thrived with joy when face to face with the great works of art, science or life. We claim their intensities of significance, their splendours of heroism, their visions of rapture as our own. The rhythms of the poet find correspondence in the conditions of our soul; their words an authentic echo in our speech. The gleam haunting our whole life, the undiscovered spirit in us is suddenly recollected in Plato's sense. Any voice which speaks from the depths of one's heart liberates at 208 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the same time thousands of silent voices. The poet's words are claimed by us as our native speech; the philosopher's ideas are accepted by us as our own highest thoughts. The saint's perfection is felt as something to which we aspire and may attain. We understand an object only when there is something in us akin to it. When any picture, poem or life produces in us a wonderful effect, we may be sure that there is an interior responding wonder that meets it. We cannot understand Plato if we have not the spirit of Plato. To understand Christ we must have the mind of Christ. Croce's view, that aesthetic experience is active creation, expresses an important truth, though he exaggerates it. Even when we enjoy poetry, our mind is actively creating an intui- tion and finding its expression though we may not be conscious of it all. The meaning of the poet must become meaning to me, the image he suggests must be found in my mind, and his ideas must be thought by me. I cannot see in a work of art another's thought unless it becomes my own thought. We cannot understand great poetry unless we bring to it some fragment of a like experience. We cannot have a know- ledge of God or of the invisible world unless its voice is heard in our own selves. In none of us is the spark of spirit wholly extinct; in none is the image of God wholly effaced. Only the seers in whom the spirit is not merely a presence but an achievement lend us their eyes, in Schopenhauer's phrase, and we begin to see with them. They give us the power to know, love and appreciate the world in a new way. We share their vision of life, splendid and sublime, to the best of our capacity. Even as those who appreciate beauty are artists in a degree, so also those who recognise the prophets are prophets of a kind. All true greatness has this power to illumine us, to trans- form us, emancipate us, from the low and the petty, the temporary and the expedient. They do not simply please THE SPIRIT IN MAN 209 our senses or interest our mind, but touch our souls and change our being. We acquire through their aid a heightened awareness of the meaning of life. There is no more conclusive proof of the reality of the spiritual world than acquaintance with the saints of God. They shake us out of our scepticism. Their lives reveal the truth and they cannot be refuted. Their influence is compulsive for they do not speak as the scribes but as those having authority. 1 These geniuses from whose quivering lips ecstatic utterances Ivsap up give us a foretaste of what all human beings are destined to be. They are the heralds of the infinite, the first- fruits of the future man. They and the moods of exaltation they rouse in us are a promise of mankind's future achieve- ment in spiritual understanding. They are the new emergents, the beginnings of a new human species, the "sports" in the biological expression, in whom a qualitatively new type is awakened. We have all to be reborn, reveal our potential sonship, 2 share in all the fulness of divine nature,3 though a long process of development and illumination separates us from that goal. In Buddha and Jesus, the new vision of life, the new unification of nature, inner and outer, has become flesh. If we remember the wonders achieved in the course of evolution, the hope is not unreasonable that we may all attain to the greatness these have reached. It would not 1 There is a striking phrase in Plato's Republic (382 F), where Adeimantus is represented as assenting to Socrates' statement about God's essential goodness. It seems to become evident to him the moment Socrates asserts it. "So I myself think, now you say so." We have in John i. 43-51 an illustration of this personal influence. Nathaniel was unconvinced when his brother Philip told him of a new teacher who, he believed, was likely to prove Israel's promised Messiah. But when he met Jesus and heard him speak, his doubts were silenced, and he became convinced of his divine mission and authority. When the pagan philosopher who was converted to Christianity by an illiterate rustic was asked how it happened, he replied that there was such a power of sanctity in the old man that he could not resist it, though he could answer all learned arguments. Such is the responsive assent of ordinary mankind to the great prophets. * Romans viii. 17. 3 Ephesians lii. 19. O 210 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE have been possible for the Darwinian ape living its instinctive life in the forest to imagine that one day he would himself grow into an animal using a new power of reasoning and dominating the earth and its conditions mental and material, handling natural forces, sailing the seas, and riding the air, and, more than all, controlling its own life by codes of conduct, in domestic, national and international life. Man to-day finds it equally difficult to imagine that he might himself grow into the divine status, possessing knowledge without a taint of error, bliss without a shadow of suffering, power without its denial of weakness, purity and plenitude of being without their opposites of defect and limitation. Such an ideal transfiguration of humanity is man's dream of heaven, of the reign of God. Of the creative process and man we may say that "it doth not yet appear what they shall be. 1 ' Our intellect tells us that all that is possible is a relative knowledge, a precarious happiness, conditioned power, limited good, but the moments of insight inspire us with the vision of the kingdom of God and the hope that even as the anthropoid ape became the human being the human may become the divine. If we look at the progress we have achieved in the space of fifty centuries, which in the process of ages is but as the turning of an hour-glass, there is no cause for impatience. The glass has to be turned again and again till the shout of victory comes exultingly from all along the line. A passage such as that in the eighth chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans must hearten us. "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us, for the creation with outstretched head awaits the revelation of the Sons of God." Till that revelation arises, no one individual will be able to organise his life completely. For organisation is not only internal but external. We have to organise our own processes and powers with all the best in that which environs us. THE SPIRIT IN MAN 211 This full realisation of the interactive union is "life more abundant" and it is possible only with the perfection of the world, its growth into the higher state of being. No one can stand in proud isolation with contempt for the common herd. We can rise in the scale of being only by drawing all into ourselves. While the individual has to cultivate his own garden and integrate his own self, the self is not sharply marked off from the world, the garden is not fenced off from the rest of the universe. The world is our garden and \fre cannot become self-sufficient until the world is so. SELF-INTEGRATION Intuitive insight, whatever be the line, is a whole- view where the mind in its totality strains forward to know the truth. The realisation of this undivided unitary life from which intellect and emotion, imagination and interest arise is the essence of the spiritual life. Ordinarily we are not whole men, real individuals, but wrecks of men, shells of individuals. Our responses are formal and our actions imitative. We are not souls but human automata. So our lives lack grace, depth and power. To change oneself into a whole and balanced nature, instinct and intellect, emotion and will which have no being apart from the evolving personality require to be integrated. This process is not mere change of creed. We want discernment, not cleverness, purity of spirit, not training of the intellect, an intimate acquaint- ance with and living closer to the nature of reality. No amount of sense training can make the senses perceive thought ; even so no amount of intellectual skill can lead us to intuitive experience. We must reach a new level of con- sciousness to which the highest truths are revealed even as concepts are given to thought and colours to sense. The life of spirit is essentially creative in its character. We cannot create through the exercise of intellect any more than a 212 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE flower can evolve in obedience to a formula. Creation is the result of the growth of self, the expansion of consciousness. For this we want religion as an uplifting power and noFas a confession of belief or a demonstration of God. Religion is not science nor is church an academy. It is the perception of the eternal in the finite. Psychoanalysis tells us that the human mind is an arena of conflicting forces which require to be subordinated to some unity. The control of primary instincts takes place according to it in three ways: (1) Defence reaction: The conscious mind takes up an attitude of direct opposition to the subconscious instinct. (2) Substitution: Instead of re- pressing the instinct, the mind diverts it into other channels, as when the sex instinct finds its outlet in the cultivation of art. (3) Sublimation: Here the instinct is neither repressed nor diverted but is transformed into a higher form. Sexual love is sublimated into spiritual devotion. Dante's spiritu- alised passion is an instance of this kind. In all these cases the unity the mind acquires is only superficial. The repressed instincts remain in the background with all their energy, waiting for expression on a suitable opportunity. Old maids who have led honourable lives of abnegation suddenly mani- fest uncontrollable obsessions and erotic impulses. The unused elements of their nature shut down in the cellars of the subconscious clamour for satisfaction. Eager for love and friendship, they squander their affections on pet cats and tame dogs. Dissatisfied with such a substitution, they turn out neurotic and unbalanced. Through these methods, the mind does not acquire the power and balance of a tranquil soul absolutely at peace with itself. The method of Yoga tries to change the very stuff of our nature, which is not possible by the mere conscious control of the individual will. The Hindu system of Yoga sets forth the discipline by which all parts of our nature, the bddy and the senses, life THE SPIRIT IN MAN 213 and mind are controlled and integrated so as to allow the free and creative working of the spirit of which all these are the developments. Disease obstructs the harmony of the physical self and its environment. Error and ignorance injure the harmony of the rational mind with the universe of reason. Vice obscures the harmony of the will of man with the will of the universe. When tht different powers of the self attempt to function in self-supporting isolation, there i disharmony between the self and the universe. We look at things through the refractory medium of our private passions and selfish interests. It is when we free ourselves from their bondage that the scales fall from our eyes and we see things as they are in themselves. Religion as Yoga enables us to attain a mastery over the different forces of our nature. When we are called upon to sink from our surface consciousness into the depths by controlling our activities, it is to let the spirit, large, powerful and luminous, to assert its nature. Meditation is the method by which our convictions soak into our bones, become our breath and grow without needless conscious interference. INSTINCT AND INTUITION Spiritual life is not to be confused with the instinctive or the unconscious. It is true that religious teachers tell us that we cannot enter the kingdom unless we become as little children. Those who speak of intuition refer to certain qualities which it shares in common with instinct such as directness, spontaneity and a closer contact with life. Instinct is the source of vitality and the bond that unites the individual with the race. The feeling of being one with the world is the reflection in consciousness of that instinctive unity which is the foundation of our conscious life. In the lower stages of evolution, our wa? to knowledge is through instinct. Primitive man had marvellous knowledge of the ways of I 4 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE nature which we do not possess. Animals know instinctively what we acquire after laborious reasoning. When we are in nature's embrace, our lives are simple and certain. But the scope of instinct as unconscious is limited. While the beings guided by instinct act with unhesitating precision, they are helpless in unfamiliar surroundings. For they act without knowing why they do so. They cannot express themselves. Besides, the unconscious unity of life which made instinctive knowledge possible is sundered by the rise of intellect which helps us to know ourselves and control the forces of nature. Since the primeval unity is broken, man is uncertain and wavering. We seem to be alienated from nature, leading sceptical, artificial and self-centred lives. If intellect is to be brought closer to life, it must combine with instinctive knowledge. Such a combination is what we possess in intui- tion. It has the directness and unity of instinctive knowledge as well as the consciousness of the intellectual. It is not confused ir rationalism or irresponsible mysticism. When the prophets refer to the virgin outlook of a child, they have, in view the second innocence which comes after knowledge and not the first which precedes it. The spon- taneity of the child is not a substitute for insight. The spirit which is the unconscious beginning must become the conscious ending of our life. Children enjoy an innocence, a sincerity, an integrity, born of harmony between themselves and their lives. They live in peace; they tell no lies; they do no wrong. They surrender themselves to spontaneity. Their behaviour is a perfect expression of their being. Our intellectual con- sciousness has driven us out of that wholeness of being. To regain that integrity, to attain to a Jife where knowledge and being are not divorced from each other is the essence of human evolution. To recover the lost unity is to be reborn. It is the secret of spiritual life, the mystery of the kingdom of God. <. The "ecstatic" moods induced by drugs, anaesthesia THE SPIRIT IN MAN 2x5 and such other aids are .quite different from the spiritual attitude of those who have won integrity or wholeness of life. They are not altogether useless since they point to the feeling of unity with tne universe which is latent in all of us. This feeling of the unity with the universe is not confined to the great moments of our life. The Upaniads tell us that the life of man has affinity with the planetary and the physical, the plant and the animal. This generic feeling of indistinctness from the world is impressed on us in the ctondition of sound sleep. Our oneness with the world always remains with us whether in our simplest state or highest activity, thsSugh it is lost in divisions and conflicts in our ordinary life. We may sink or swoon into the bosom of the infinite in a thousand ways. Such a kind of quieting down into instinctive life or unconsciousness is different from the raising of the whole self, its reintegration into the universal spirit. Spiritual life is not inertia or indifference but is light and freedom, peace and power; spiritual realisation is not hysterical trance or drug intoxication, for the life of the seer takes on a new depth, a marked increase in coherence and character. There is a general enrichment of personality. It is more life and not less. The psychoanalysts hold that the fundamental insights of art, religion and philsophy are not due to conscious mind but have their roots in the unconscious, which is the deeper and more vital mind of which the conscious is only a speci- alisation. The relation between the conscious and the un- conscious is compared to that between the waves on the surface of the sea and the depths beneath. The great insights which surprise us by their strangeness and significance are born not of the unconscious but of the spirit in us, the self in its entirety which includes both the conscious and the unconscious. Since they are spiritually produced and not simply consciously originated, they are sounder in their content even as the spirit is superior in wisdom to the 2i6 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE conscious self. The unconscious is not the condition in which desires stimulated by our nature but rejected by our normal consciousness exist in all their potency waiting for oppor- tunities to overthrow the censor. It is not the asylum of outlawed desires but is the essential unique nature (svabhava) of each individual creature which is by its nature unanalys- able. What we do or think arises out of what we are and not simply what we think we are. Psychoanalysis throws light on the way in which our interior stresses bear on our conscious attitudes. Mariy events of the world unnoticed by our waking consciousness leave their marks on the mind and influence behaviour. If intuitive knowledge is the witness of the whole experiencing mind to the whole object, it is necessary to discover our whole mind and keep it trim. The impressions registered in the unconscious mind must be controlled. The buried life that lies concealed in each one of us must be dragged into the light of day and made part of conscious life. Behaviourist psychology also insists on the potencies of the non-intellectual mind. It contends that when one is thinking, the whole of one's bodily organism is at work im- plicitly. All thinking is organic thinking, the focussing of the whole organism on the object. The body and the mind join together and the whole of our nature becomes strung up and raised into an intensity, when its life embraces the object. This integrated gathering together of the whole self, the nervous character of severe contemplation has in it something comparable to an erotic ecstasy which has been exploited in inferior cults. We are not called upon to eliminate the body or the senses but only to get rid of their independence and effect an integral self -fulfilment, where the body ceases to be an obstacle and becomes an organ of the self. The psychoanalysts contend that the truths of religion are the expression of the repressed fears and wishes in the unconscious. They are right in so far as they admit that THE SPIRIT IN MAN 217 they are not due to conscious reasoning of the type with which we are familiar in science. They are wrong in their assumption that what scientific reasoning deals with is reality and all else is a phantasm. When the psychoanalyst declares that the religious person is deceiving himself, he is passing beyond his limits of psychology and stepping into metaphysics. Religious ideas are certainly due to psycho- logical processes which are different from those at work in self-conscious reasoning, but, as we have seen, even science dknnot proceed with its work if it does not assume principles from beyond itself. Reality need not be reduced to what appears to the unimaginative, non-aesthetic, naturalistic vision. Psychoanalysis clearly makes out that living experi- ence is more extensive than logical reasoning. The roots of life are in the unconscious depths of the soul. The term "libido" which the psychoanalysts employ to denote the deeper centre of one's being is unfortunate. Religious faith emerges from the total nature of man. It is not something uncanny, confined to children, neurotics and savages. While we have increased immensely our scientific know- ledge of the world and human nature, there is not much justification for assuming that we know more about the mysteries of the human soul than our forefathers centuries ago did. In the realm of spirit our ignorance does not seem to be less abysmal. It is a foolish complacency that shuts itself away from true knowledge that is contained in the great literatures, philosophies and religions of the world, which have a good deal in them which is of immense impor- tance to our lives. They are, perhaps, more important than the other achievements of the human spirit, including psycho- analysis, since they tell us about the development of the soul and insist on the deeper integration of being which alone can result in the right vision of the significance of things. The powers of the soul can be atrophied or destroyed as much as limbs of the body for lack of use or wrong use. 2i8 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE The exercise prescribed in all the great systems for the development of the spiritual in man is the worship of God and the development of love and sympathy. Worship and meditation, prayer and devotion are acts in which the soul in its completeness, and not merely the body or the mind, is in exercise. We do not worship by mind or body but in spirit and in truth. Our mind apprehends, our body partici- pates, but worship goes beyond these. It is the communion of the soul of man with the soul of the universe, a direct and ineffable contact with the light divine, more inwafd and complete than even the relation between the knower and the known, which can only be weakly expressed by acts of mind or of body. Religion provides us with forms and institutions which have an emotional appeal. Only in many religions it happens that these forms are morbid and irrational. Even the dying Socrates said: "I owe a cock to Aesculapius/ 1 A rational faith has little to do with anti-human forms and practices which divide man from man and exalt what is harsh and cruel at the expense of the genial play of life, the tender affections and the quiet pleasures. The codes which invent virtues which are sterile and sins which are imaginary throw out of gear the healthy movement of life and a true religion has nothing in common with this spirit of negation. Science and criticism have nothing to say against a religion which proclaims an invisible church of spirit which will be a brotherhood of men and women of good will, who find nothing hateful but hypocrisy, nothing immoral except hardheartedness. But religion as it is practised to-day has a long distance to travel before it can reach this goal. We have seen that a lack of understanding between man and nature is the source of the fear which gives rise to religion. In primitive religion this fear is lulled by the invention of other worlds, of spirits and totems, of t magic and propitiation. Science which deals with discoverable facts and religion THE SPIRIT IN MAN 219 which revels in unverifiable hypotheses become opposed to each other. Religion originally invented as an aid to man's normal and healthy life becomes an encumbrance, arresting rational thought, degrading life and perpetuating unhappi- ness. Even to-day popular religion is mixed up with wizards and witches, magic cures and incantations, ghostly appari- tions and priestly frauds. The mass of men still cling to superstition in the name of religion and believe in priests who affirm that they know the nature of life beyond the grave, the complexion of God and his followers, why pre- cisely the stars are hung in the sky and why they are kept there and what exactly their influence is on the destiny of man. A highly instructive study of mankind might be written under the title of "A History of Human Stupidity/' in which it would become apparent how our religious experiments and adventures since we began to leave records is an account of one crusade after another on behalf of some illusion or other. Loyalty to ourselves, to our intellect and conscience, requires us to withhold our assent from propositions which do not commend themselves to our conscience and judgment. We become more religious in proportion to our readiness to doubt and not our willingness to believe. We must respect our own dignity as rational beings and thus diminish the power of fraud. It is better to be free than to be a slave, better to know than to be ignorant. It is reason that helps us to reject what is falsely taught and believed about God, that he is a detective officer or a capricious despot or a glorified schoolmaster. It is essential that we should subject religious beliefs to the scrutiny of reason. THE ARGUMENT FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Human arguments are not at their best logical proofs and the most valuable part of our heritage comes from the prophetic souls who announce thejr deepest convictions, not as their dis- coveries or inventions but as the self -revelation of God in their 220 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE own souls. 1 The value of the Ontological argument as well as the moral proof lies in this fact that our deepest convictions give us trustworthy knowledge of ultimate reality, perhaps the only knowledge possible. The validity of divine existence is not founded on anything external or accidental but is felt by the spirit in us. The Ontological argument is a report of experience. We cannot have certain ideas without having had the experience of the objects of which they are the ideas. In such cases it is not illegitimate to pass from the ideas to the objects referred to by them. We should not have had an idea of absolute reality if we had never been in immediate cognitive relation with it, if we had not been intuitively conscious of it. The proof of the existence is founded on the experience. The Ontological argument is defective if it is treated as a logical inference. To have the idea of a most perfect being is certainly different from affirming the existence of such a being. The meaning which the Ontological argument seeks to convey is that the idea of God is an underivtfd and self-evident one. Since it is difficult to express this conviction in precise logical forms, we find variety and indefiniteness. Anselm argues that the idea of a perfect being necessarily involves the existence of that being. If we think of the most perfect being as an idea or a fancy, we contradict ourselves. We must think of it as existing. Anselm thought that it was "a single argument which would require no other for its proof than itself alone, and alone would 1 Simmias in the Phaedo says: "I will tell you my difficulty, I think, Socrates, and I daresay you think so too, that it is very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to obtain clear knowledge about these matters in this life. Yet I should hold him to be a very poor creature who did not test what is said about them in every way, and persevere until he had examined the question from every side, and could do no more. It is our duty to do one of two things. We must learn, or we must discover for ourselves, the truth of these matters; or, if that be impossible, we must take the best and most irrefragable of human doctrines, and embarking on that, as on a raft, risk the voyage of life, unless a stronger vessel, some divine word, could be found, on which we might take our journey more safely and more securely" (Church's E.T. in the Trial and Death of Socrates (1910), pp. 150-157). THE SPIRIT IN MAN 221 suffice to demonstrate that God truly exists/' 1 Aquinas rejects it as an "unsupportable sophism." Descartes' reformulation of it came in for Kant's criticism and Hegel thinks that there is a deeper significance in it than Kant was able to discover. The only way to establish the validity of this argument is to trace how the idea arises. If the question is put as to how we know that we are alive or awake, we can only exhibit the sources of the belief in the mind. This exhibition is what we attempted to outline. It rtiay seem that the Ontological argument gives semblance to the criticism that the religious objects are the projections of our instincts. But it is all a question of the nature of the compulsion whether it is a mere subjective fancy that the individual is projecting on the screen of the beyond or the deepest needs of his nature. If God is the whole reality which intuitive knowledge affirms, still, as Aristotle told us in his Poetics, no object is a whole which is not logically coherent. Discovery becomes proof when what is revealed by intuition is confirmed by the slower processes of consecutive thinking. We have now to show that the general character of the universe as known is quite consistent with this intuited certainty of God. It is the only way by which religious truths can be recommended to the large majority of people for whom religion is a matter of trust and inference. It is the only way to defend ourselves Irom uncriticised intuitions and dogmatisms which are prepared to find whatever they want. Proslogium, Preface. See Baillie: The Interpretation of Religion (1929), p. 79. CHAPTER VI MATTER, LIFE AND MIND Belief and Certainty Science and Philosophy Limitations of Scientific Knowledge The Conception of Samsara Matter Space Time Relativity Substance and Cause Order and Progress Physical Science and Subjectivism Ed ding ton, Jeans and Whitehead Life Vitalism Evolution Mind and its Significance. BELIEF AND CERTAINTY INTUITION is one of the ways in which beliefs arise. We believe because of the immediate certainty which the belief inspires. Often we rely on the testimony of others and such testimony is ultimately traceable to individual belief. We believe when a particular view is shown to be consistent with what we know in other realms or when the results accruing from the assumption of the belief justify our confidence. "If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." 1 If the belief works in the realm of mind or knowledge, of life or conduct, it is true; otherwise it is spurious. We reach absolute logical certainty, if what we find to be true is supported by others, if it is coherent with knowledge and works in life. The religious intuition requires to be reconciled with the scientific account of the universe. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY There is, however, a difference between science and philoso- phy. Their motives and methods vary. While science studies the different facts of experience, philosophy develops the meaning and implications of experience as a whole. It has ' John vii. 17. MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 223 two sides to it, an explanatory and a descriptive, a meta- physical and an empirical. Science is purely descriptive. It is perfectly satisfied if it relates a fact to its class, a plant to its species, or if it assigns a place to it in an evolutionary scale, or if it traces a phenomenon to certain mediating conditions, as when sound is traced to waves, or if it brings certain events under well-known laws, as when Newton brought Kepler's discoveries under the law of gravitation. Science gives us a general history of what happens without raising the further question why things are what they are. Again, matter, life, consciousness and value are facts of experience studied in their abstract isolation by science, while for philosophy they are all interconnected as in human person- ality. We are one, and therefore the world is one. The experi- ence which philosophy studies is concrete and whole, while the subject-matter of science is abstract and partial. Philosophy does not reveal anything wholly beyond experi- ence, but presents to us the order and being of experience itself. LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE It is necessary to know the limitations of scientific knowledge. It gives us quantitative measurements of events in the world we live in. It is controlled by the maxim, "nothing can be known completely except quantities or by quantities/ 1 Science is at home in processes that can be repeated, in systems that can be reproduced. ' 'Every thing is itself and not something else" is the principle of nature; everything is an example of a class is the principle of science. Again, the objects studied by science are selected from experience. The data of perceived experience are studied as if they were independent of the world of perception. Physical science, for example, believes that the special aspects which events assume in relation to human observers 224 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE are irrelevant to their intrinsic constitution as physically determined. We select phases of events for study in science. We can look upon man as either a physico-chemical being with certain weight and measurement, or a biological unit of the human species, or as a psychological, ethical or religious being. The subject-matter of science is abstractions from the real, plane diagrams from the solid object. It is a true enough representation of certain aspects of experience, and useful for certain specific purposes. The useful is not necessarily the true. It is now agreed that science gives us only readings, notations, a system of symbols. The laws of science express average and probable results. Given such and such conditions, such and such events happen. These laws express no opinion about the activity by which they happen. The ultimate structure of the universe is not known to science. It may be very different from the scientific model of it. Newton's mechanical conception as much as Einstein's is only an ideal picture, a conceptual model. The practical success of these is no guarantee that they are faithful repre- sentations of the actual structure. We can use the wireless, even though we do not understand its mechanism. There is a tendency on the part of thought to make relative truths into absolute ones, provisional hypotheses into final statements. The success of the scientific hypothesis is tested by the applicability of its results in fields from which it did not originate. If a theory which arises from a restricted field finds additional relevance and cogency in new contexts, the validity of the theory receives an impressive verification. This tendency to generalisation requires to be carried out with great caution. What is true of the mindless forces with which physical investigations deal is not true of human beings Science becomes superstition if it insists on forcing facts into conformity with theories which do not suit them. A theory of physics or biology is not a philosophy of nature. When we pass to the scientific view of reality, we have to MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 225 bear in mind the dependence of the scientific method on induction, the essentially abstract character of its subject- matter, its constant employment of statistical processes, its inevitable intellectual analysis for practical ends. SAMSARA Hindu thought is generally associated with the theory that the world is samsara, a perpetual procession of events, an intessant flow of occurrences. Expressions like "the wheel of time," "the cycle of birth and death/' "the ever-rolling stream," "samsara," "pravaha," "jagat" are employed to indicate the non-substantial or unstable character of the universe. Everything that exists suffers change. Every actuality is a becoming, has in it the principle of unrest. Nothing empirical is eternally conserved. All life is a constant birth or becoming, and all birth entails a constant death, a dissolution of that which becomes in order that it may change into a new becoming. The world is movement (jagat), and it would be dissolved by the cessation of movement. The illusion is not in the movement, but in the stationariness. Buddhism took over this conception of samsara from Hindu thought and put it at the centre of its scheme. For it, being is only process, a continuous alternation of birth and death, a perpetual transition from one thing to another. The doc- trine of pratityasamutpada refers to the dependent or caused character of the universe. 1 It is always dependent on causes (hetupratyayapekam). Incessant change is true of the infinitely small as of the infinitely great. With both the Hindus and the Buddhists, the notion of world-becoming is more a speculative category than a scientific truth, at any rate in regard to the physical world. 1 Yah pratltyasamutpadam pasyati sa dharmampas'yati. There are those who interpret pratityasamutpada as "pratiprativinas'inam utpadah pratltyasamutpadah." Candraklrti does not support the latter view (see Candraklrti on Mddhyamika Sutra, i. i). P 226 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE If the world is a process, it cannot be divided into parts but only phases. We do not have realms or spheres of being, but only modes or phases of activity. The process of nature is one, supple and continuous, and not a consecutive series of static entities with fixed attributes. There are no sharp divisions of reality. MATTER The most obvious way of treating experience is to regard it as a world of events. Of these events the physical ones seem to exist in their own right without any relation to a perceiving mind. In the early stages of cosmic evolution there were no minds to perceive the physical world or reflect on its nature. If the world is sarhsara, move- ment, we must find in physical nature also transition and gradation. While the mental world was admitted to be one of con- tinuous movement, perpetually superseding itself, and not much suspicion was felt with regard to the mobile character of the world of life, matter at least was held to be immutable. The familiar conception of matter was that of an enduring substance moving through a static space in a uniformly flowing time. According to the old atomic theory, matter consists of atoms or tiny particles that cannot be divided. Material things are due to the varying combinations of the atoms or the indivisible particles. The changes visible in material things are traced to changes in the arrangements of the atoms, and not in their internal con- stitution, for the atoms were regarded as unchanging in character. The solid atom has melted away in the_ recent develop- ments of physics. J. J. Thomson resolved atoms into more minute corpuscles, which were in 'turn reduced to electrical units, the mass of which was only one factor in electromag- MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 227 netic momentum. Rutherford explained radioactivity as being due to atomic disintegration. Radioactivity involves the transmutation of elements, which is quite inconsistent with the immutability of atoms. Rutherford pictures the atom as a positive nucleus with negative electrons circling round it. Matter is not any more close, densely packed stuff, but is an open structure with large empty spaces and scattered electric charges. Every atom is a structure which consists of electrons and protons of varying degrees of complexity. 1 The chemical properties of an element depend on the number of revolving electrons, and they yield the atomic number of the element. Protons and electrons themselves are sources of radiation or wave groups, a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. As a matter of fact the electron, which is the ultimate constituent of matter, is only a hypothetical centre of a group of radiations. The latter are all that we detect. As to what exists in the centre and the nature of the medium which carries the waves, if we can at all speak of a medium, we know next to nothing. The electrons seem to be mere wave forms. If we suppose that they are more than associated groups of radia- tions, we are drawing upon our imagination. An electron is the region from which energy may radiate. For Bohr it is a little spherical particle, a "disembodied charge of elec- tricity." Eddington calls it a ' 'something' 1 whose mathe- matical specification can be given. It works* though we do not know why. If 'electrons swing round the nucleus of an atom as planets 1 The hydrogen atom, the simplest of all, consists of one proton for nucleus and one electron going round it. In other atoms a number of protons and a smaller number of electrons are bound together so as to form a nucleus with a number of electrons scattered round it, which can escape from the atom. Helium, e.g., has a nucleus consisting of four protons and two elec- trons closely packed, and two electrons go round the nucleus as a planet round the sun. Uranium, the largest atom, contains 238 protons and 238 electrons, of which 92 revoiVe round the nucleus, wnile the others are fixed in it. 228 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE circle round the sun, they should give out radiation of all wave-lengths, the energy increasing in a calculable way as the wave-length shortens. Since this does not happen, Max Planck suggested that radiation is emitted and absorbed in finite packets or definite quanta. The quantum changes which occur in an atom when it absorbs or radiates energy are discontinuous. 1 The electron is in one place and then in another without having passed the intermediate ones. It jumps regularly but discontinuously from one definite orbit to quite another definite but different orbit. At the moment, the physicists are obliged to use the quantum theory for certain purposes, and the classical undulatory theory for others, though the two are mutually exclusive. The quantum theory is unable to explain as the classical theory does the fact of diffraction. 2 Again, we are told that the atomic models have no physical significance. It is perhaps more accurate to look upon the atom as a doubly infinite number of numbers arranged in an infinite matrix, and all that we really know about the atom is contained in this matrix. Strictly speaking we must be content with the equations which express rela- tions between observable phenomena, and we know little about the meaning of the equations. Matter is a ^structure of fenergy-units revolvingwith immense yelocitigsjh^pace-time, and the various elements arise from the number and arrangement of these units in an atoihrSince these can be varied, transmutation of ele- ments becomes possible as ijx radioactivity. Atomic weights 1 Schr&dinger does not admit this view. See Russell: An Outline of Philosophy (1927), p. 112. "There are parts of physics," says Max Planck, the author of the quantum hypothesis, "among them the wide region of the phenomena of interference, where the classical theory has proved its validity in every detail, even when subjected to the most delicate measurements; while the quantum theory, at least in its present form, is in these respects completely useless" (Max Planck: The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics. English Transla- tion (1931). P- 95; see pp. 30 ff.). MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 229 and numbers relate to the number of units and their archi- tectural or patternal grouping in the atoms. Matter is a form of energy or action. Physical objects are events, happenings, occurrences. They are not self-contained, changeless, eternal entities, but only moving points in a continuous passage. Nature is a complex of events, a structure of processes. Events are the stuff of concrete existence. They exist not in space separated by time, but in space-time, in which the relations between space and time are altering so constantly tfiat the universe as it changes is characterised by an infi- nitely varying space-time system. Space is not a box in which solid bits of matter move about, nor is matter some- thing extended in space and persistent through time. There is no such thing as a cosmic space or a cosmic time any more than persistent matter. Sgace^ time and material are abstrac- tions from the concrete fact which is a set of events. They exist together in_concrete reality. According to Einstein, events are elements in an absolute f ourdimensional continuum whose geometrical structure constitutes its intrinsic natuie. This continuum is conceived by Einstein as "finite, but unbounded." The theory of relativity follows from the substitution of space-time for the two independent entities of a persistent space and a cosmic time. Prerelativity physics assumed that if two events happen in different places, the question of their simultaneity can be answered easily. It is now held that each series of events has its own time order, and it is difficult to relate the one to the other since there is no one common standard time. Unless we take into account the relative notion of the observer and the object that is under inquiry, exact measurements cannot be made. There is not and cannot be any constant unit of measurement. What a thing is in its nature depends not only on the nature of the thing itself, but also on the nature of the observer relative to the object. Distances, lengths, volumes are all relative 230 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE to particular frames of reference. 1 The law of relativity applies to all natural events, from radioactive atoms to celestial bodies. We can distinguish in events two aspects, the formal and the material. Space-time refers to the formal aspect. Each event, whatever be its quality, has its own endurance, its spatio-temporal character. It is limited and not absolute; it is temporary, not everlasting. Space-time is the natural condition of finiteness, limitation, change which characterises all events. It is not a real homogeneous structure, but an integral aspect of reality. It is not a sort of a stage on which different kinds of material exhibit their dance, but refers only to certain rules and modes of expressing the broadest features and relationships within a universe of mobile events. A space-time relatedness applies to the whole of nature and confers unity on it. Since relatedness is not by itself a fact, the ultimate fact of nature is conceived as a process, a passage, single and not multiple. The name "event" is applied to the parts or aspects of the process. Nature is an essentially unanalysable and indivisible process of change in which certain formal attributes called space- time and certain material characteristics called objects, as matter, life, etc., exhibit themselves as standing in many relations to each other and the whole. The mathematical sciences deal with the formal stuff of events. Their study is of ideal abstractions, and their logic is formal, one of implication. Pure mathematics abstracts from even the space-time conditions, and deals with the pure concept of order or structure in its most abstract possible form. The units are characterless and can be shuffled 1 "A distance as reckoned by an observer on one star is as good as the distance reckoned by an observer on another star. We must not expect them to agree. The one is a distance relative to one frame, the other is a distance relative to another frame. Absolute distance not relative to some special frame is meaningless" (Eddington:" TA* Nature of the Physical World (1928), p. 21). MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 231 and manipulated with the least interference with their inner nature. Mathematics is thus a model science. It is more akin to logic than to physics. The discovery of the non-Euclidean geometry, algebra and arithmetic, the rise of the non-quantitative subjects like the theory of groups and projective geometry, show the purely formal nature of mathematics. Whitehead says that ' 'mathematics in its widest signification is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning/' 1 Such a view conflicts with Kant's belief that mathematical propositions are synthetic while logical propositions are formal and analytic. There seems to be a confusion here between pure and applied mathematics. Since Kant does not accept the possibility of purely logical intuitions, he suggests a priori intuitions of space and time which have a reference to the sensible world. Russell and Whitehead argue in their Principia Mathematica that the proof of the proposition 7 -f- 5 = 12 is as strictly logical as any other proof. Though many of us cannot understand mathematical demonstrations without reference to images and diagrams, these are not however a part of the demonstrations. Mathematics cannot be regarded as of the same character as physics. There are some who believe that space-time is not a formal abstraction from experience, but is itself the most elementary fact of existence. Eddington seems to think that matter is reducible without remainder to space-time relations. 2 Space- time according to him is the ultimate fact, in terms of which alone everything else can be defined. The ultimate in nature is not physical but logical, or mathematical. The real, which is independent of the observer, is not a series of events which can be grasped by the senses, but a system of relations which can only be conceived by thought. The roots of reality are the eternal, changeless, mathematical relations. Masses 1 Universal Algebra, p. vi. 1 Space, Time and Gravitation (1921), p. 197. 232 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE and forces are purely psychological appearances resulting from the interaction between the observer and the eternal relations which are their condition. Matter is reduced,, to thought: physics to mathematics. 1 For Alexander, space-time is the ultimate reality- from which both space and time are abstractions. Space-time is a kind of universal motion, and concrete things are differen- tiated complexes of motion within this universal scheme. Space-time has certain pervasive or categorical properties like existence, universality and order, which characterise all things. Other empirical qualities which distinguish different classes of objects emerge only under special condi- tions. Space-time, according to Alexander, spontaneously differentiates into finite collocations of point-instants. The simplest of these consists of motions of different velocities and extents of motion. When these objects form certain patterns the quality of materiality emerges; when other conditions are added, colours, etc., emerge. Physical experience is not the same as knowledge of mathematical equations. The perception of light or colour is not the same as the perception of an identity. Spatio- temporal relatedness is incapable of existence apart from events. In the most primordial form events are not only spatio-temporal but physical also. There is a definite content in addition to space-time relatedness. It may be a flash of lightning, a thing of beauty, or an object of knowledge. We seem to touch the rockbottom in the empirical universe in the physical events of the world. Space-time-quality is the stuff of all events. None of them is by itself existent. They are distinct ideas, but existentially they are intrinsic factors 1 Sir James Jeans: The Mysterious Universe. Cp. also the Hindu Mathema- tician who says: "What is the good of elaborating it all? Whatever there is in all the three worlds containing moving and unmoving beings, nothing of all this can assuredly exist apart from measurement." Bahubhlr vipral&paife kim trailokye sa car&care. Yat kificid vastu tat sarvam ga^itena vina nahi. MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 233 in the process of being, and are abstracted by thought from the concrete process. 1 Like all other events, the physical ones occur only in space-time. They occur here and not there, now and not then. The displacement of hard indivisible matter by electric influences is of the greatest importance from the philosophical point of view. Matter is not a thing, but a system of inter- related events. The old view of matter as a permanent substance having certain qualities and standing in various relations and performing definite functions is displaced by the conception of matter as a cluster of unstable events. The contrast between matter as inert and life as active, matter as reversible and life as irreversible, disappears. The difference between life and matter is not one of activitjLand passivity, but between two different kinds of activity. The inertia of matter which^ Newton exalted in his first law is itseJOhfi- result of its internal activity. Radioactivity in matter isL.analogqus to organic descent in life, though the former ; is jrggressive and the latter progressive activity. We can apply the concepts of families, genera and species to both the periodic table of Chemistry and the systems ot Botany and Zoology. There is no impassable gulf between matter and life. 2 Atom, molecule, colloid, protoplasm, cell seem to be more or less continuous phases of a single process. Matter is concentrated structural energy which makes possible the creation of fresh forms, structures and types. It is as lfuly~creative as living organism or mind. When atoms coniBme Info a molecule they acquire a new status. In""virt ue of the whole to which they belong, they acquire new qualities, which could not be deduced from their nature before the combination. 1 Cp. Ak2gditrayam tu vastuta ekam eva upadhibhedan nnbhQtatn. Sivaditya's Saptapadartht, p. 17. * Science is to-day "the study of organisms. Biology is the study of the larger organisms, whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms" (Whitehead: Science and the Modern World (1926), p. 145). 234 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE SUBSTANCE The whole history of philosophy may in a sense be regarded as the criticism of the category of substance. Though Greek philosophy started with the conception of a permanent being, which is present identically in all transformations, it soon gave place to a different view in Pythagoras and Heraclitus. The real consists not in an unchangeable sub- stance, but in certain constant properties which persist in all becoming. The essence of things is number according to Pythagoras. For Heraclitus substance is not something which lies outside becoming, but is the immanent law or the logos which pervades all becoming and gives it its form. For Kant substance is a concept of the understanding, and Hume traces it to empirical habit and association. It is imagination which combines what occur together frequently in a regular order, into one idea. Avenarius and Mach look upon substance as a conceptual device for simplifying thought. The unity of substance is a nominal one. The identity of a thing is a fiction. The constancy of certain relations is all that is meant by it. Our minds are so made that they regard a number of conditions linked together as a unity, and treat the conditions themselves as properties belonging to it. We distinguish things by their properties. We speak of a thing as the same only so long as it has the same properties. The most satisfactory view of substance is what is expressed in a memorable phrase by Lotze, that a thing is what it does. Its nature is the way it behaves. In his Metaphysics, Lotze exposes the futility of the con- ception of a substantial reality, "communicating to the properties gathered about it the fixedness and consistency of a thing/' 1 What the inner essence of a thing is we do not know. We call a thing real, substantive or identical when it behaves in a certain specific way, when it changes in a 1 E.T., Book i, chap, iii, pp. 57-75. MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 235 certain regular order. The substantiality of a thing is the law according to which the changing events are connected with one another, the formula which sums up its history, the pattern which expresses its behaviour. Lotze compares the essence of a thing to a melody where the successive sounds obey a law of consecutiveness. We speak of a sub- stance when its qualities are coherent, when its successive changes follow a historic route. The being of a thing is constituted by its becoming. Whitehead tells us that what iS permanent in the organism is not "substance" but "form," and forms suffer changing relations. 1 Limited regions of space-time often have more or less clearly distinguishable qualities that tend to persist through time, or if they change, they do so in an orderly and gradual way. In other words, changes take place within the limits of a type. The funda- mental structure is not altered. The term "physical object" refers to such extended, qualitative, space-time regions. The things of the physical world are "substances" only in this sense. We do not have in them any permanent substratum supporting adventures of changing qualities and relations, and surviving identically in the course of these adventures. A string of events is what we mean by a substance. The quantum theory makes the notion of an enduring substance irrelevant to physics. A thing is a set of influences from a locality" or a centre, which is itself purely hypothetical. Strictly speaking, we have a set of events as scenes in a drama or notes in a tune. There is no thing which exists entire any moment, or survives throughout. Not even an electron can be conceived as a particle of matter self -identical through time and occupying a sharply defined region of space. Self-identity results from an averaging process taken over a relatively long period of time. An electron is a sort of a statistical invariant. Its substantiality is traced to some superior co-ordinating force, for each continuant is held to 1 Process and Reality (1929), p. 40. 236 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE be the activity of a co-ordinating force. The unity of a thing is the unity of its history. 1 The causal connection confers sufficient unity to deserve a distinct name. Unfortunately the single name suggests a single thing, and if the events concerned do not occur in the same place, we say the thing has moved. If things are a series of events, then identity means connected continuity. If the changes are gradual and do not involve any structural alterations, we have the continuity which is mistaken for identity. If the changes are sudden ancl entire, so as to involve structural alterations, we say the identity is violated, the thing has altered. There is persis- tence of plan or pattern for a certain extent of time. The longer it persists, the more substantial is a thing said to be. But it does not mean persistence of stuff. We say it is the same thing so long as there is persistence of form in addition to the usual change of stuff. Take the human body. The stuff in it is not exactly the same for two moments, and yet we call it the same body so long as the outward form and characteristic ways of behaviour are maintained. There are cases where we do not observe continuity, but attribute it. We hold that we are the same selves and that our environ- ment is the same, even though we do not notice the environ- ment and there are gaps in our conscious life as in sleep. Sometimes our ideas of continuity are confused. Jerky events seem continuous in a cinema. Rapid vibrations are taken for steady colours. That there are ultimate discontinuities in nature is the teaching of the quantum hypothesis. However, a substance which is a logical category is a continuant which we either observe or infer. ' Bertrand Russell says: "We have to change our notions both of sub- stance and of cause. To say that an atom persists is like saying that a tune persists. If a tune takes five minutes to play, we do not conceive of it as a single thing which exists throughout that time, but as a series of notes, so related as to form a unity. In the case of the tune, the unity is aesthetic; in the case of the atom, it is causal" (An Outline of Philosophy (1927), p. 118). MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 237 What we regard as a substance depends on our interests. For some purposes the human individual is a substance ; for others any part of his body may be a substance; for philo- sophical purposes nature as a whole may be the substance. If independence of existence is the mark of substantiality, no finite particular is a substance, though we can mark off any set of events as an individual for conventional purposes. Matter is the name for a cluster of events, possessing certain relatively persistent habits and potencies) CAUSE The conception of cause also requires revision. That there is a real connection between events which present themselves to us and not a mere subjective association is the condition of the possibility of any science. Kant gives us a simple illustration. My perceptions, he said, in apprehending a house may begin anywhere and end anywhere, may begin at the top and end at the bottom, or vice versa, but when we apprehend a ship going down a stream the sequence of perceptions is determined. We cannot vary or reverse the order. Kant explained that causality was a synthetic a priori principle. It is sometimes argued that the idea arises in the immediate experience of effort which we use as an interpre- tative principle in objective science. If conative efficiency is the basis of the causal concept, inanimate objects cannot be regarded as efficient. Besides, conative efficiency, how- ever familiar, is not easily explicable. It implies rigid contact which is absent even in densely packed situations. Again, the causal concept seems to imply that the world is a collec- tion of distinct things which it is not. Simply because the concepts are hard and precise, it does not follow that the situations to which they apply are equally hard and precise. By applying mathematical formulas to concrete existence, we suggest that there is no more in the effect than is in the 238 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE cause. If cause and effect are identical or equivalent, then all progress and creativeness will be ruled out. Events happen according to certain rules. There is no necessity why they should happen that way, but they do happen. Why water should be formed when oxygen and hydrogen combine, and not any other element, we do not know. It seems to be quite arbitrary. Things do not exist in nature by necessity. Nothing must be, nor is there any sufficient reason why anything should be. The fact is that things are. Hume long ago showed that there is no more reason for belief in cauSe and effect than that we constantly see one thing happen after another. No matter how often we may see events occur in a regular order, we are no wiser. The laws of succes- sion are observed facts, and there is no logical necessity about them. When we say that A is necessarily followed by B, all that we mean is that this rule of connection between A and B is found in a large number of instances, and we know of no case to the contrary. To say that B rises out of A is to note a fact of sequence. It does not mean that B is or is equivalent to A. The effect is not the cause in a different form. The end is not the beginning in disguise. We cannot speak of causes, for there are no causes, but only causal laws, selected uniformities of sequence, observed laws olj succession. Events are connected and causal laws tell us of the correlations of events. ORDER AND PROGRESS A scientific treatment of the universe is possible because nature is a network of interconnected events. Every event has both an individual and a social character. It has an irreducible specifically, a unique itselfness, as also a connection with other events. Each event is just what it is, but it cannot be what it is without the influence and assist- ance of the other events. The events are by no means MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 239 windowless, lonely and cut off. The environment is not separate from or external to the individual. The old concep- tion of atoms made them entirely independent as to their character and their relations were external and contingent. An atom would remain the same whether there was an environment or not. The conception of the electron brings out the "social" character. We cannot understand it, if we take it as an abstract individual. The electrons form groups or wholes, and their relations can be understood only if they acre viewed as members of wholes. An electron within a living body is different from one outside it, owing to its share in the plan and arrangement of the body. The atoms and molecules which are wholes have individual patterns of their own. The relations of the protons and electrons in their wholes are not external and accidental, but are due to the general structure of the atom itself. The more complex structures like molecules determine their characteristic properties. Even at the physical level, reality is not a collection of independent things, but a whole, and as such it has a structure which prescribes the relations as well as the properties of the parts. Control by the whole is the striking fact. We can infer from one part to another since events form a world of intercourse and association. At any one stage the whole universe represents a cosmic situation, and any part of it represents the whole background. There is not only order, but what one might call progress. The two striking features of the physical world are continuity and change, connection with the past and creative advance into the future. Time is connection, not mere succession. The past never dies, but lives in the present, and the present flows into the future. Every event has not only a retrospective but a prospective reference. At the conscious level we have memory of the past as well as anticipation of the future. We have at the physical level also what answers to memory and anticipation, a physical memory and blind anticipation. 240 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE No event is complete. It seeks for its completion in an undetermined future. Throughout the process of nature we have creativity, or the coming into being of the new, which is not reducible to or deducible from the old. We cannot forecast the future on the basis of our knowledge of the present. The atomic processes of radiation and chemical combination produce stable compounds. Two hydrogen atoms some distance apart, with the total energy necessary to make a molecule, move towards one another under an irresistible law of attraction if outside influences do nc/t interfere. The two atoms work towards a definite goal, though they are unconscious of it. Something new is per- petually happening in the course of nature. Every event seems to actualise a fresh possibility not contained in the past. Matter effects in its onward march new structural groupings and combinations which are not only valuable to us, but valuable in the order of the universe. Lloyd Morgan tells us that there are "emergents" in nature using an expression of G. H. Lewes whose character cannot be fore- told from the nature of their several constituents as they are in themselves. The nature of the new structures or the emergents can be discerned only by observation and experi- ment after they have come into being. In mere "resultants" the nature of the product resembles the nature of the assem- bled parts; in "emergents," on the other hand, we have a new and unforeseen structure and character. If evolution means an unfolding of what is already in being, emergence can only be the emerging or the coming into view of what is already contained in it, though hidden. But evolution now is interpreted as the coming into existence of something new, which is unpredictable before its occurrence. While each event is different from every other and has its own distinctive nature, we concentrate attention on the form, pattern or structural organisation, and so long as it remains the same we do not concern ourselves with the MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 241 differences which are negligible from the point of view of scientific classification. But when a new mode of organisation arises, it attracts our attention, and we say that a new form has emerged. The difference between resultant advance and emergent evolution is methodological and not meta- physical. There is always creative advance in time, small or great. Matter is essentially creative in character, and its processes are irreversible. That is why it is regarded as the mother of the universe. Creativeness is not confined to the vital and psychological aspects, but matter also is creative change. Its irreversible processes mean plans and ends, however unconscious matter may be of them. The physical world itself prepares for an unfulfilled future. At a certain time there came to be on the surface of the earth abundant supplies of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, which provided suitable conditions for the rise of life. The processes of the physical environment cannot be accounted for with- out a reference to the end of life, for which they were a preparation. The past cannot account for the present. Every occurrence is a mystery. Existence is a continuous miracle. Physical science fails if it attempts to transform a miracle into an equation. It describes the way in which bodies behave, and not why they do so. Our physical and chemical symbolism is a necessary working instrument which is exceedingly useful. But it is only a rough representation of reality in one of its aspects. We may feel that we know all about matter, that its existence is undoubted, and that its nature is intelli- gible, but all that we know about it is the effect it produces on us. When we come to think of it, it reduces itself to certain feelings and relations among them. It is experience and possible experience. 242 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVISM Matter may be far more complex in its structure and far subtler in its possibilities than we ever imagined, yet it is matter and not anything else. To reduce it to electric energy is not to equate it with mind. There is, however, a tendency to interpret the physical in terms of the psychological in the writings of some scientific metaphysicians. The two chief doctrines of modern physics, relativity and quantum theory, are mainly responsible for it. In the history of though^, relativity and subjectivism generally get mixed up. The varia- ble characters are often attributed to the subject. A classical illustration of it is found in the distinction of primary and secondary qualities. The latter, representing variable features, are traced to the activity of the subject. Now that even the "primary" features are said to be relative, it is inferred they are also subjective. All properties which belong to an entity or system under specific conditions of relation to some other term or terms are said to be relative, while those which follow from the self-enclosed nature of an entity without reference to anything outside it are said to be absolute. Characters which were once regarded as absolute and intrinsic are now known to be relative and variable. They are not properly characters of the real, and are traced to subjective contexts. Besides, the analogy of human perspec- tive is best adapted to the exposition of the relativity of events. If physical relations are characterised by relativity, then the subjectivity of human perspectives must also be present in them. 1 If we believe in uniformity of nature, it is due to our desire for simplicity and not any natural 1 Eddington says: "We ourselves, our conventions, the kind of thing that attracts our interest, are much more concerned than we realise in any account that we give of how the objects of the physical world are behaving. An object which, viewed through our frame of conventions, may seem to be behaving in a very special and remarkable way, may, viewed according to another set of conventions, be doing nothing to excite particular comment" (The Nature of the Physical World (1928), p. 152). MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 243 necessity. Our laws are no part of nature's plan or structure. "The fact that a predictable path through space and time is laid down for the earth is not a genuine restriction on its conduct, but is imposed by the formal scheme in which we draw up our account of its conduct/' 1 Consciousness is not a mere "unessential complication occasionally found in the midst of inorganic nature at a late stage of evolutionary history/ 1 but is essential to all experience. The properties which physical science ascribes to its objects are largely tfie product of thinking minds. The science of physics is a structure we build on the basis of mental phenomena which we receive and the laws which we form. Besides, there seems to be an element of spontaneity in the physical world itself. Indeterminacy or contingency is generally associated with human volition. Natural events are known to be indeter- minate. Referring to the Heisenberg principle of indeter- minacy, Eddington says, "Physics is no longer pledged to a scheme of determinate law/' 2 Quoting Einstein on the conflict between physical reality and structural causality, he argues that "the future is a combination of the causal influences of the past, together with unpredictable elements unpredictable not merely because it is impracticable to obtain the data of prediction, but because no data connecting causality with our experience exist/ '3 Eddington is inclined to believe that this indeterminacy is a sign of mental activity, an expression of freedom of choice. As the laws of physics are not strictly causal, as there is nothing which predeter- mines the quantum principles of the atom which seem to be more or less like the choice of the brain, what is below the atom may be said to be continuous with what is below the brain. "In the case of the brain we have an insight into a mental world behind the world of pointer readings, and in that world we get a new picture of the fact of decision which 1 The Nature of the Physical World, p. 148. a Ibid., p. 294. 3 Ibid . pp. 294-295. 244 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE must be taken as revealing its real nature if the words 'real nature' have any meaning. For the atom we have no such insight as to what is behind the pointer readings. We believe that behind all pointer readings there is a back- ground continuous with the background of the brain." 1 Another argument .which Eddington employs is that scientific truths are verifiable only in concrete and complex occurrences whose total character is not deducible from mere equations. The laws of physics deal with abstractions, quantitative correlations of "pointer readings" which might apply within any one of a number of possible worlds. "Of the infinite number of worlds which are examples of what might be possible under the laws of nature, there is one which does something more than fulfil those laws of nature. This property, which is evidently not definable with respecc to any of the laws of nature, we describe as 'actuality/ generally using the word as a kind of halo of indefinite import. We recognise the actuality of a particular world because it is that world alone with which consciousness interacts." 2 "The differentiation of the actual from the non-actual is only explicable by reference to mind."3 The actual non-metrical stuff of events is mind-stuff. "The stuff of the world is mind-stuff. "4 Mind is taken in an extensive sense. "Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness, and beyond that we must postulate some- thing indefinite, but yet continuous with our mental nature. This I take to be the world-stuff. "5 From the evidence of the mystics, the oneness of the physical world with conscious- ness is also inferred. 6 1 The Nature of the Physical World, pp. 311-312. Ibid., pp. 265-266. 3 Ibid., p. 267. Ibid., p. 276. s Ibid., p. 280. "Our minds are not apart from the world and the feelings that we have of gladness and melancholy, and our yet deeper feelings are not of ourselves alone, but are glimpses of a reality transcending the narrow limits of our particular consciousness the harmony and beauty of the face of Nature is at root one with the gladness that transfigures the face of man" (The Nature of the Physical World, p. 321). MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 245 The features which are relative and variable are not necessarily subjective. Special and variable features are as much real as the general and pervasive ones. The theory of relativity attempts to establish equations which hold for all observers, and which are independent of the personal positions. The new physics puts objectivity in a new setting, but does not cancel the distinction between the subjective and the objective. Again, it is difficult to accept the view that human convenience determines the occurrence or non- occurrence of such apparently objective facts as the relative position of the earth. The sun does not conform to Einstein's prediction simply because he would have it so. The actual and determinate motions of heavenly bodies are due to determinate physical causes. To hold that the general laws of physics do not determine the actual conditions of events, but only describe them, is not to deprive them of their objectivity. Our measurements of time, seconds and minutes and hours, may be human conventions, but the rhythmic processes of nature are not in any way disturbed by the way in which we happen to look at them. The solar system is objective, even though it is discerned by us from various points of view and is able to enter into a number of astro- nomical systems. In a very real sense we make nature. We attach a value to permanence and create a world of apparent substance. But this does not justify us in overlooking the compulsion of fact. It is under the control of fact that we build our sciences. If we ignore it, thought becomes mere imagination. The human mind is responsible for the concept of matter, but it is not the creator of matter as well. From indeterminacy we cannot infer human freedom. Natural events are indeterminate in some respects, even when the laws of their general structure are fully specified. But this indeterminacy does not mean irrationality of nature or arbitrariness such as we associate with human preference. The principle of indeterminacy shows us that no one set of 246 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE physical measurements can completely determine the complexity of natural fact. Heisenberg's principle of indeter- minacy is an expression of the limits of practical measure- ment. It does not mean the absence of determination. All abstract determinations are partial as regards the total event. Even the freedom of man is not helped in any way by freaks within the atom. To suggest that electrons possess free will is to degrade freedom itself. It is true that the conclusions of science are verified only in the context of experience. But appeal to the contingent actuality of what happens is not an appeal to the subjective mind. The experience to which science appeals is not a private system of mental data. Actuality is discoverable in the course of events, and not in our feelings or notions about it. It is admitted that physical laws do not tell us about the inner character of events. There is an unknown content deep within the world of physics unreachable by the methods which the physicists use. But it does not follow that the content is the stuff of consciousness simply because we have a direct knowledge of intrinsic nature only in conscious life. While we can sympathise with Eddington's anxiety to mentalise the experienced world which cannot be reduced to equations of physics on the ground that chance, contingent actuality and indetermination are characteristics of mental phenomena, it is difficult to ignore those persistent aspects of experience which refuse to be reduced to mere sentience. A stone is not a self any more than a self is a stone. From the empirical point of view their characters are so different that any attempt to reduce the one to the other is illegitimate. The experiences of the human mind are a feature of the natural world quite as much as the movements of molecules. 1 1 Cp. Max Planck: "Reason tells us that both the individual man and mankind as a whole, together with the entire world which we apprehend through our senses, is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature, whose laws are in no way affected by any human brain. On the contrary, they existed long before there was any life on earth, and will MATTER, LIFE AND 'MIND 247 The concept of matter stands for an aspect of the experienced world which is set over against the mental as its medium for expression. The relative solidity of matter helps the expres- sion of mind, and at the same time limits and restrains its activity. The negative function of matter has received great emphasis in the history of thought. The decay of the flesh entails the failure of spirit. The body is the tomb of the soul, as Plato urged. The threats of modern scientists that the sands of the physical universe are running out, and that no face of men or supermen can live for ever are based on the negative function of matter. In concrete experience mind and matter are in relation, but the concreteness of the relation is prejudiced by the assimilation of the one to the other. Matter and mind both belong to nature, but matter is not mind. Its otherness to mind is unaffected, however much it may be etherealised. Sir James Jeans in The Mysterious Universe (1930) thinks that as the behaviour of nature seems to be most adequately described by "pure" mathematical relations, the reality of nature must behave like the mind of the mathematician. Since mind consists of thoughts, nature may be regarded as made up of thoughts. Such an exaltation of the physical into the mystical is not supported by science. Sir James seems to forget that the type of analysis exemplified by mathematical physics is not the most adequate method of dealing with physical facts. It is incomplete, derivative and abstract. The mathematical properties of events do not tell us of their intrinsic nature. We start with sensible phenomena as the reality to be explained and construct from them scientific entities like electrons and energies which are abstractions from the perceived. If the abstract is interpreted as the real and the concrete as the appearance, it requires further proof than Sir James offers. continue to exist long after the last physicist has perished" (The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics, E.T. (1931), p. 8). 248 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE Terms like "feeling," "experience/ 1 "value," generally reserved for psychological contexts, are used by Whitehead in a wider sense. 1 Physical events are spoken of as percipient. Each occasion is a concrescence. It "prehends" all other occasions into itself. The word "prehension" is suggested by Descartes' mental "cogitations" and Locke's "ideas." Even physical relatedness becomes a sort of apprehension. "The most individual actual entity is a definite act of perceptivity, "* and since this perceptivity is immediate and non-cognitive, "the actual fact is a fact of aesthetic experience. "3 The event as the most concrete actual something has value. Value is present in the electrons as truly as in the mind, though in a different way.4 If consciousness and selectivity are to be regarded as the defining features of human experience, all events do not possess them, and it is rather confusing to use terms in a wider sense. Conscious experience is a natural occurrence just where, when and as it has been found to occur. It is a late and limited factor in a world of nature which it did not create, and whose more pervasive features it cannot seriously alter. We may sum up the general characteristics of the physical __. ~ -^Jfc,.^,^ .,.-...*.,.. , W ,...,... , . ,,-. - - " - * ""- .~~- - *.. >"*' I.-- .-" world: (i) What was regarded as a passive immutable particle is now known to be a complex system of seething energy. An atom is an organism whose members are protons and electrons. Molecujes and human society are more com- plex organisms. (2) N Pnysical nature is an ordered whole and operates as such, and its members are interdependent. There is thus an interactive union between every organism and its environment. (3)^Every event has both caused andpreative aspects. Its changes are thus trans-mechanical. (4fScientific 1 Nothing is to be received into the physical scheme which is not discover- able as an element in subjective experience (Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929), p. 253). Religion in the Making (1926), p. 108. 3 fbid.. p. 113. Ibid,, p. 109. MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 249 explanation finds its limits when we reach the creative side. Science cannot explain why matter should exist, nor why there should be two species of electrons and protons. LIFE It is in the context of matter that life is found fumbling for light. Biological sciences deal with the distinctive phenomena presented by living organisms from microbes to mammals afid their activities. Though something life-like might be foiTndf nf "other parts of the universe, biologists study life in the region of the earth's surface, seas and atmosphere. Thoiy^^^ the feature of consjcious- ness, biok>gicaljsciences do not concern themselves with it. There is something specific in the behaviour of living organisms which is not traceable in the non-living, The processes of assimilation, respiration, reproduction, growth and development are different from physico-chemical reac- tions. A living organism maintains its specific structure and activities throughout all changes. The stability of form is maintained in a living organism through an inner activity, and not mere passive resistance to changes in the environ- ment. In the activity of respiration, for example, the ^processes which regulate with the utmost accuracy the pressure of oxygen in the blood and of carbon dioxide in the lungs are intelligible only as a means of preserving the equilibrium of the organism as a whole. The dream of the whole, the idea of the object is the active influence operative in all life phenomena. Life is a dynamic equilibrium which tends to maintain itself. The parts of a living organism are less independent than those of a physical one. The removal of any part from a physical body does not involve any essen^ tial change of properties, but in living organisms, form, structure and composition are interdependent. The living organ is a whole, doing things that no atomic systems could 250 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE ever do. They register the results of their experience, and in a sense form habits. The changes which they present in response to outward circumstances are retained and built into the organism. An atom can neither mend itself nor reproduce itself. A living organism adapts itself to its environment. It does not simply react to the changes of the environment, but replies to them. As soon as a living organism is injured, the healing process sets in. A plant develops a new sprout in the place of one cut off. The changes which occur in tRe process of development are of a specific kind. The process of reproduction starts in a part of the organism itself. There is the hereditary transmission of enormously complicated physico-chemical structures. In a sense the environment is not foreign to the organism, but enters into its very life. The organism nourishes itself by assimilating materials from its environment. The two are so well adapted to each other that they may be regarded as expressions of a larger whole. The two are inextricably intertwined. There is a specific inner direction in living organisms which grow, repair, reproduce themselves, and mould the outer circum- stances into their own patterns. What we know of matter does not help us to understand the co-ordinated maintenance of life. Life is a different order of fact. VITALISM The striking difference between the living and the non-living suggested to some physiologists the hypothesis that a new principle called an "entelechy" or an unconscious "soul" takes control of the physical processes. There are souls or entelechies hidden in living things. Hans Driesch bases such a view on his experiments with the eggs of the sea urchin, in which the eggs were dissected and yet produced whole organisms of a small size. 1 Science and Philosophy of the Organism. MATTER, IIFE AND MIND 251 As a protest against the view which treats living organ- isms as mere machines or as complexes of physico-chemical processes, the vj^list.JbLypQtheis js_ useful. The strikingly specific behaviour of Jiving beings cannot be confused with atomic activity. Vitalism stresses the fact of co-ordinated activity in the phenomena of life by which the individual parts are adapted to the maintenance and functioning of the wKole. The cause of the particular mode of existence of each part lies in the whole. Life experiences are the expres- sions of a persistent and indivisible unity. But this vital principle cannot be a non-physical entity influencing physical experience. Professor Loeb has shown that the prick of a needle or some such disturbance starts the process of division and furthers normal development in an unfertilised ovum which would not otherwise divide and develop. We do not know the relation between the prick and the marvellously co-ordinated developmental changes. He also traces the activity of the simpler organisms to tropisms, direct reac- tions to light, heat, pressure, etc. 1 It is obvious, however, that physico-chemical stimuli start various kinds of vital activity. In reply the vitalists say that the vital principle operates only in conjunction with physico-chemical causes. It is only a regulative principle demanding for its operation a suitable physico-chemical process. But while phenomena of life depend on physical conditions, we do not know how physical conditions determine the phenomena of life. From a strictly scientific point of view, vitalism is unsatisfactory, siiice _It "attempts to explain every thing which occurs in a living organism, and we are unable to test its truth. As observers of experience we must be content with a statement of facts, a description of nature as it appears in the pheno- mena of life. In living organisms there is a new organisation of structure and a specific co-ordination of activity, a design in them, an inward determination of all the parts by the 1 The Mechanistic Conception of Life (1912). 252 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE function and purpose of the whole, which cannot be inter- preted physically. The only point relevant to science is that the kind of correlation needed for the biological facts is different from that needed for physical phenomena. The science of biology does not account for life, but assumes it as beyond all explanation. Life is a part of nature, differing in kind from matter, though there is scope in living organisms for the application of both the physical and biological explanations. EVOLUTION Answering to the qualities of continuity and change, or conservation and advance in the physical world, we have in the world of life heredity and variation. Living organisms inherit a plan of organisation, and also vary it. New structures and organs, new functions and powers appear. Living crea- tures have arisen, apparently by gradual change, from simpler ancestors. The hypothesis of evolution is suggested as an explanation for the origin of the new species. If we leave aside the ancient philosophies of India and Greece, the modern theory of evolution is mainly the work of Linnaeus (1707-1778), Buffon (1707-1788), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Lamarck (1744-1829), Charles Darwin and his followers. While Linnaeus believed in the separate creation of each species of plant and animal, he admitted in his later work that in certain cases new forms might have come into being through crosses between the original species. He was, however, of opinion that the change was a degenera- tion since it tended to obscure the perfection of the original type. Buffon started with a belief in the fixity of species, though he questioned the perfection of the plan on which the species are originally built. From his knowledge of comparative anatomy he argued that the original plan was not to be viewed as perfect since it had parts which were of little or no use to the animal, and which seemed to be MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 253 taken from other animals. This led to the conception that the members of a group of species showed striking family resemblance, and might have been derived from a common ancestor either by progressive change or degeneration. He made valuable suggestions about the changes in the plant and animal induced by the environment. Both Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck argued that changed circumstances in an animal's life led to alterations in its habits. These changes of habits resulted in the increased use of some oi'gans and decreased use of others, eventually producing a change of form. They thought that such "acquired characters" were inherited. Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) suggested to Darwin the importance of the principle of natural selection as a factor by which progressive changes are brought about. In his Origin of Species (1859) he gave details and demonstrations of his view of evolution, that life on this planet evolved by a gradual and yet continuous process from the earliest forms of living organs to the latest product, man. Natural selection, variation and heredity are s?id to be the factors through the operation of which new species arise out of existing ones. Natural selection by itself cannot account for the new changes. It is a sifting process, and assumes the two other factors of variation and heredity. According to the former, no two animals or plants are quite alike. Even the offspring of the same parent or parents tend to vary in greater or less degree both from their parents and from one another. The novelties or the new departures are called the variations. If a new variation is not inherited by the progeny, it is of little direct value in evolutionary change. The principle of heredity tells us that the peculiari- ties exhibited by the parents tend to be transmitted to the offspring in greater or less degree. When the new characters are produced by the variability of organisms, natural selection decides their survival or death. If the characters 254 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE are not adapted to the environment, they are eliminated in the competition. If, on the other hand, they equip their possessors better for the struggle, they tend to survive. The offspring of the successful tend to resemble the parents in exhibiting the favoured variation to a greater degree than the parents, and a new type becomes established by a continuous piling up of small useful accretions through many generations. After Darwin and Spencer, it was realised that the stages of development were not gradual, but abrupt. Bates&n showed that variations, in many cases, were of a discon- tinuous nature. According to Hugo de Vries, variations may arise either suddenly or gradually. The former are called mutations, the latter fluctuations. De Vries attributed all specific advance to large well-marked variations or muta- tions. Mutations are independently heritable and illustrate the principles of Mendelian inheritance. Weismann opposed Lamarck's theory of the transmission of acquired characters, in which both Darwin and Spencer had faith. He distinguished between germ- plasm or reproduc- tive tissue and somato-plasm or bodily tissue, and held that changes induced in the organism could be transmitted only if the germ-plasm was affected. Heritable variations are represented in the germ-cells, and the non-heritable ones are not. How do we account for the variations, small or great, gradual or abrupt? We cannot trace them to the influence of the environment, for the types without the variations seem to be just as well adapted as those with them. Weis- mann's theory of physical necessity cannot account for them. Darwin's view of chance variations is a confession of inability to explain the source of variations. Complex organs like the eye do not seem to be produced by a series of fortui- tous variations, and still more fortuitous survival. Modifica- tions and variations do not come singly but in complexes, MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 255 involving many minor and consequential modifications and variations. Each single small variation is not independently selected. In other words, the organism seems to "vary" as a whole. Bergson finds that the molluscs in the order of evolution proceed by steady steps to develop an eye, which resembles very much the eye developed by the independent line of verterbrates. How does it happen that similar effects appear in different lines of evolution brought about by different means? How could the same small variations occur in two independent lines of evolution if they were purely accidental ? The two series must have been governed by a common vital impulse to this useful end. There is something more in evolution than merely mechanical urges. Bergson is inclined to attribute a ''rudiment of choice" 1 to the species which, travelling by different paths, reach the same goal. Given a new situation, the "urge" common to all members leads them to meet it by a new method. If this relatively new mode of behaviour becomes fixed, natural selection perpetuates the congruent variations and eliminates those of an opposite kind. According to Bergson, it is the inner urge, or life force, or an upward drive, that incites the whole species in a definite direction. His view is nearer Lamarck's position. According to Lamarck, new surroundings produce new needs, and these evoke new functions. Animals striving to improve their conditions acquire modifications which they transmit to their successors. We cannot account for the origin of new organs, for the co-ordination of variations or even their rise when their utility is not perceived unless we assume with Lamarck and Bergson that there is a deeper law of inward striving after higher forms of life. The striving of the organism is the creative effort to which evolution is due. The hormic theory asserts that each animal has a special nature, by which it strives towards a limited number of goals. The 1 Creative Evolution, English Translation (1911), p. 96. 256 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE hormic tendencies of the different species are differentiations of a primeval urge to live. The variations are the creatures' efforts to meet the new situations. Lamarck's theory of the transmission of acquired charac- ters is questioned on the grounds that there is no mechanism by which the changes in an organism, such as increase of size, could be represented by changes in the structure of the germ-cell, and that there is no experimental evidence in support of the inheritability of the effects of use and disuse. Our ignorance of the way in which the germ-cell reacts to the bodily changes does not compel us to deny all changes in the germ-cell as the result of bodily changes. The condi- tions under which alone experiments are possible are not favourable to decisive conclusions. We have to induce changes in the organism by more or less unnatural interfer- ence from without, and our observations regarding such artificially induced characters need not be true of naturally developed changes. Besides, evidence in favour of Lamarckian hypothesis is steadily increasing. 1 Besides, the functioning of the whole in which organism and environment are parts accounts for the action and interaction of the parts themselves, such as the systematic co-operation between organs of different species. Protoplasm develops into the two main lines of the vegetable and the animal. Their mutual dependence is another illustration of the social and integral character of the universe. All biologists accept the evolution idea as a broadly satisfactory account of the mode of change that has actually taken place. There is a great difference of opinion in regard to the causal factors which operated in the evolution. In 1 Professor McDougall says: "Since 1920 I have conducted an experiment on strictly Lamarckian principles, and have found clear-cut evidence of increasing facility in successive generations of animals trained to execute a particular task. This very great increase of facility seems explicable in no other way than by transmission of the modifications acquired by the efforts of individuals" (Psychologies 0/1930 (1930), p. 27 n.). MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 257 spite of the great advance of our knowledge, what Darwin said in his Origin of Species is still true. "The laws governing inheritance are for the most part unknown." "Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound/' The known facts of biology can be summed up in the statement that there is deep within life itself a power of variation and a persistent tendency to perfect itself. Darwin's theory was confined to the biological field. He noted the changes within the different forms of life, but he assumed that life always came from life. He broke down only the lines between species, between the .lower and the higher forms of life. Herbert Spencer made a philosophy out of Darwin's observations, and seemed to account for the rise of the living from the non-living, the mental from the non-mental. The difference between these is reduced to the degree of the complexity of the organisation. Evolution is no explanation. It does not say why the process should have ever occurred, why life should occur at all. Survival of the fittest does not carry us far. Life has little survival value as compared with matter from which it is supposed to have sprung. A rock survives for hundreds of millions of years, while even the oldest tree is only a few thousand years old. If survival was the aim of nature, life would never have appeared. A strict science of biology merely notes the facts that in life we have a different set of phenomena and novelties occur right through, that plants and animals are not fixed, and have evolved or developed from other forms, and that in fact the whole organic kingdom has suffered a gradual evolution, moulded by inner urge and pressure of outer circumstances. What we find to be the characteristic features of the physical world are found true of living organisms in a higher degree. They represent a different order of fact than atomic S X5*!!5^ reality than the latter. They are individual wholes, and act as such. They maj 258 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE a constancy in the external and internal environment. There is no division between the organism and the environ- ment. They are expressions of a larger whole, which includes them both. While they tend to preserve the pattern and continue the form, there is also creative change in them. Neither physics nor biology can account for these specific features. MIND ( Mental phenomena are different from vital activities. Though the living organism maintains its activity and reproduces its structure as an organised whole, its responses manifest only the organic wholeness and persistence. Each step in its activity is an immediate response to the conditions existing at the moment. What we have is unconscious organic activity. Though the organisms seem to have a "mind" of their own, it is only seeming. The growth of an embryo realises a plan, but its stages of development are only immediate responses to the conditions of the environ- ment. The relation between the organism and the environ- ment which we discovered in the physical and biological worlds becomes more intimate in the mental world through the organs of sense and of action. Through the organs of vision and hearing an animal is able to keep in touch with distant environment. Animals learn from experience. They modify behaviour in the light of previous results. So long as the end is not secured, the activity does not cease. It ceases the moment the end is achieved. The animal looks out for stimuli, and when they occur it reacts to them in a special way. The presence of consciousness makes a real distinction to the behaviour. Self-preservation becomes consciously directed through the feelings of pleasure and pain, of benefit and injury to the organism. The activities possess a unity and a co-ordination. The animal acts as a whole and not MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 259 simply in its various parts. However primitive consciousness may be, it means a sense of direction. Conscious behaviour adaptive and selective is different from physical reactions or life adjustments. It is something sui generis, new and distinctive, unique and creative. Its appearance marks a new departure of a far-reaching character. It cannot be reduced to neurological happenings in the brain. It is a function of a later evolved and special integration of life. Though the connection between nervous and physical Events is intimate, one cannot be reduced to the other. Professor Watson attempts to reduce conscious behaviour to a derivative of reflex action. A few native reflexes common to all the individuals of the species form the basis on which all types of behaviour are built. Physiological traits are inherited and complicated behaviour results through habit- formation by way of conditioning. Professor Pavlov's experimental work on "conditioned reflexes" is utilised in support of this view. If we bring food near a dog, his mouth waters. The stimulus of food causes the response of salivation, which is an unconditioned or absolute reflex. If just before or simultaneously with the presentation of food a bell is rung and if this is repeated often there is established a conditioned reflex, so that a dog will salivate when the bell is rung, even when food is not presented. The response of salivation is now produced by a new stimulus which has come to be associated with the original stimulus. The activities of the mind, like the movements of the body, are traced to the complex conditioning of primitive responses. Consciousness is an accidental accompaniment of physiological activity But a conditioned reflex is not an intelligent adaptation. The latter is not a random process, nor a result built up by many repetitions, but is hit upon in a more direct way. It is not a mechanised habit, but a creative power. Behaviour is not what we observe, but only movements. To treat them as behaviour is to assume a unity of direction and activity 260 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE on the part of the organism as a whole. A conscious organism expresses a meaning with which it is identified. Animals whose cerebrum is destroyed, and other centres are intact, are capable of complex reflex activity, but not conditioned reflexes. Conditioned 1 reflexes seem to be purposive. Though mind is a continuation on a higher plane of the organic regulation and co-ordination which characterise the mindless organisms, its presence is the primary fact. It is a new level of reality with its own peculiarities and laws. Though there are aspects in conscious organisms which are physicd- chemical or biological, their behaviour is different from that of unconscious organisms. The Gestalt Pyschology, by insisting on the fact that there is more in the whole than in the mere sum of its parts, implies that the introduction of consciousness makes a difference to the activity. The belief grew up that the differ- ence between conscious and unconscious activity is due to the presence in the body of something which is different from body, viz. "soul. 11 It is given a local habitation in the body, the pineal gland or the brain. The observed phenomena are not consistent with the existence of a soul independent of the body. The mind of an animal is not an "anima" in control of its body, but is the organisation of its acts which are mental. Conscious phenomena are determined by physio- logical influences. When the heart ceases to beat, conscious- ness lapses. Three or four deep inhalations of nitrogen mean loss of consciousness; restore oxygen in the lungs, consciousness reappears. We discern the activity of the mind in relation to physical change in complex parts of the body, though we have no direct knowledge of the nature of this relation. But the soul is not independent of the body and its environment. It must either include the body, or become a function of the body. The truth of animism is that conscious behaviour is different in kind from the behaviour of physical 1 McDougall: An Outline of Psychology (1923), pp. 55-56. MATTER, LIFE AND MIND 261 bodies. Even the greatest extension of physiological know- ledge \vill not help us to infer mental activity from brain structure. Just as a living organism is a whole with a far higher degree of internal relatedness than any non-living system, the mental represents a higher degree of self -regula- tion and control than the body. It cannot be understood by a study of the living organism. Aristotle says that the soul is to the body as vision is to the eye, or axeness is to the axe. The most detailed examination of the physical and ttie physiological constitution of the eye will not explain the phenomenon of sight, even as the examination of the form and material of the axe will not explain the act of cutting. The soul is the actuality of the organic body in man, even as vision is the actuality of the eye. We cannot reduce psychology to physics or physiology. While the conscious arises from or emerges out of the vital or the biological, it is as real as the biological, from which it emerges, and represents a kind of interaction with things different from the vital. The environment is not something unrelated to the conscious organisms. It belongs to them. The world in which they live is not a physical world. The individuals and the environment form together one whole. The individuals exist among others and struggle with them. Answering to the physical principles of causation and creativity, the biological ones of heredity and variation, we have at this level the pervasive characters of horme (T. P. Nunn) and Mneme (Semon), which correspond to conation and memory at the human level. The development of new traits of activity, new methods of discrimination are all due to the hormic tendencies. The suggestion that the variations of the hereditary nature of the species are due to the efforts of the organisms which are required to develop new powers and functions in the varying situations of the environment receives support at this level. CHAPTER VII HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY Self-Consciousness and Consciousness Behaviourism, Psycho- analysis and Gestalt-theone The Self an Organised Whole The Self as Subject The Self and the Environment Karma and Freedom Future Life Personal Immortality Conditional Immortality Rebirth Spiritual Reality Salvation and its Character. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS IN self-conscious beings, we meet with a set of phenomena quite distinct from the physical or the vital or the merely conscious. Reflective mind is different from the unreflective mind of the infant or the animal. When the plain man protests that men are not to be confused with apes, he declares that however primitive man may be, he is still distinctly human. Man had been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years. Early specimens such as Pithecanthropus were dug up in Java and the skull of Eoanthropus was found at Piltdown. However strange and brutish they may seem, they were distinctively men. They not only used tools which were ready to hand but made tools for their use. They had reason which was distinct from instinct, however highly developed the latter may be. The reflective capacity of the human mind and its power of free invention are not mere complications of lower instincts. It is the essence of self-conscious intelligence to look before and after and vary action according to circumstances. Instinct does neither. When we pass from animal to man, we find not a gradual development but a sudden break, a leap into a new form of experience. Man is able to dominate nature. If he is the master of the world to-day it is not because his physical frame is more powerful or his movements quicker or his instincts sharper than those of other animals. It is because HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 263 of his intelligence which enables him to adapt himself to new and varying situations. Pascal urged that the minute human being who knows he is crushed is infinitely higher than the unknowing mass, however vast, which crushes him. Knowledge is the distinguishing feature of human consciousness and it is an ultimate fact incapable of deriva- tion from anything else. We can describe and analyse the contents of knowledge but we cannot explain why there is knowledge. * Man is not, however, an altogether separate and peculiar being. He bears the marks of his origin in his organism, his fragile body, limited life and bounded mind. He has grown out of the physical, vital and animal life into the power of manhood. He is a part of universal nature, a whole carved out of nature's continuum. But man is not simply the animal gone up any more than an animal is a man gone down. Between the two there is a gulf. No amount of scien- tific observation can help us to explain the astonishing change. Attempts are sometimes made to reduce man to the level of an animal. Behaviourist psychology assumes that human behaviour can be observed like the phenomena studied by natural sciences. Psychology as a science should restrict itself to direct experimental observation. It has little to do with personal experiences, values and purposes. The inadequacy of behaviourism becomes more pointed at the human level. To reduce human behaviour to reflex action is a travesty of the facts. The material provided by introspection is relevant to the science of psychology. The body as perceived from the inside is different from the body externally observed. The observation of the external mani- festations of behaviour does not tell us of the individual who is living through his experiences. The latter are imme- diate data and can be conveyed to others only mediately. Again, while every organism strives to preserve its health and wholeness of being and struggles to achieve a harmony 264 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE of its essential parts in their full development, man alone has to do it with effort and will. What other objects of nature possess as a natural quality, man has to achieve through effort and endeavour. The theory of conditioned reflexes cannot account for intelligent behaviour. 1 If the behaviourist account were true, then man is a slave to his environment without any dignity or freedom. He will be automatically responding to the varying situations with reflexes conditioned and unconditioned. Deliberate attempts to lift himself by struggle and suffering, by self-discipliife and self-development are futile. If a fount of type is shaken up in a bag, the text of Watson's Behaviour ism would result if only the time allowed is indefinite. Such a view robs mentality of its meaning and stultifies its own truth. If a man thinks even as a stone runs downhill, his thought is absolutely determined and cannot be judged as either true or false. In psychoanalysis, we seem to have an opposite story where mental phenomena are causal factors and physical behaviour can be explained in terms of personal history. An objective treatment is not of much use and we have to cross-examine the individual about his dreams and associa- tions. The greater part of our mind is hidden from us. It is buried or repressed and yet affects our waking consciousness. It is not possible to equate the "unconscious 1 ' of the psycho- logist with the "biological" of the behaviourist. It suggests that the unconscious and the conscious are parts of one whole. While the behaviourist and the psychoanalyst treat of body and mind as distinct, the supporters of the Gestalt- theorie look upon mind-body as a whole. They lay stress on the importance of patterns or configurations in the psycho- 1 Prof essor Pavlov writes : "It would be the height of presumption to regard these first steps in elucidating the physiology of the cortex as solving the intricate problems of the higher psychic activities in man when in fact at the present stage of our work no detailed application of its results to man is yet permissible" (Behaviourism : A Symposium, ed. by King (1930), p. 40). HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 265 physical realm. Strictly speaking, there is only one whole, the totality of being. For practical convenience, we isolate wholes of varying degrees of completeness. If we take the process of walking, we can account for it only if we consider the nature of the organism and the nature of the world with which it is interacting. We cannot walk on water. Yet for practical purposes we distinguish the self as a system functioning in a larger whole. The psychological whole is distinguished into two elements of the self and tlie environment. Psychology studies the nature of the self which is also a whole in a relative sense. The human indi- vidual is not a corpse added to a ghost (Epictetus) or a soul plus an automaton (Descartes). It acts as a whole and not with its dissociated parts. The atomistic psychology, which analyses the stream of consciousness into separate units and accounts for the course of the stream by the interplay of these units, is now obsolete. The physiological evidence is against such a theory. The brain functions cannot be broken up into elementary units, occurring in distinct areas. The specific character of any brain process involved in any particular activity of the organism is a quality of the total process, a peculiarity of the total field and not a putting together of specific processes occurring in special areas. The Gestalt psychology holds that the stream of consciousness is not a sum of elements but a configuration in which every distinguishable part deter- mines and is determined by the nature of the whole. Thoughts and their relations are unified wholes of subordinate parts and not mechanically added sums of independent units. The self is a unity which is more than a sum of its subordinate parts. 1 It is an active living whole, a body-mind, the latest term in the evolutionary process. 1 Even Behaviourism tells against the atomistic view of mind. Cp. Watson: "Let me start by saying that man to the behaviourist is a whole animal. When he reacts, he reacts with each and every part of his body" (The Nursery and Instincts. The Psychologies 0/1925 (1926), p. 2). 266 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE THE SELF AN ORGANISED WHOLE The human self is an emergent aspect of the world process and not a substance different in kind from the process itself. Persistence of pattern constitutes unity of a thing or a self. Though every one of the constituents of the body is changing, the bodily system as an organised totality endures. It is the same with regard to the human self which is a unity of diverse parts with an enduring structure. Transient as many of its elements are, the plan of organisation, however, preserved. In the history of thought the individual self has often been conceived on the analogy of a physical thing. It is said to possess an ultimate core of reality which remains un- changed throughout the changes of its qualities or states. It is viewed as a simple self-identical somewhat distinct from its experiences which are attached to it. Western philo- sophy owes to Plato the idea of an indiscerptible soul substance inherently immortal. Since the soul is not com- posite, it cannot be disintegrated. Scholastics argue from the unity and simplicity of the soul to its indestructibility and immortality. Descartes revived the classic formula of the soul as a thinking substance. Those who adopt this view argue that it can explain the possibility of personal identity and immortality. Reality is everywhere complex. It is so even in the atom. The self as real need not be simple. Locke confesses that a simple substance distinct from its manifestations could be "a hidden something, I know not what, in behind/ 1 Hume's arguments against the theory of self as a being or a substance which in some inexplicable way transcends the totality of its content still hold good. Such a substance is not observable and there is no evidence that it exists. Kant urges that the notion is self-contradictory, for all we know is an object of the self and never the self itself. If the soul were of the HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 267 indestructible, atomic character, its existence would be of no value at all, much less its continuance. The self has no element which is self -identical throughout. The body is continuously changing. It is a scene of unending waste made good by repair. Thoughts and emotions are constantly changing. There is nothing concrete in the individual which is not produced and which will not pass away, nothing from which there is no escape, or change. The distinctiveness of selfhood does not lie in its simplicity but in the specific organisation of its contents. Often, the self is confused with a series of mental states. Buddha opposed the two extreme views that the self is an unchanging essence and that it is absolutely different each moment. He held to the middle position that the self arises through the past as its cause. 1 It is a system of responses to environmental situations. It is a connected whole, whose parts work together. Even the most primitive individual faces the world as a unity. The self is not a collection of mental states but is characterised by organisation. It is an organisation which is active as a whole. Its activity is not as Gentile thinks, within a world of its own, where the mind creates its own environment and is uncontrolled by external facts. The self is not encased in a hard shell. It is constantly interacting with the environment. The organisation of the self, however, is a matter of degree. The lower animals which are tied to immediate situations do not have the unity and organisation characteristic of the human self, though they also have an instinctive unity. By the ability to use symbols and reflect on experience, a higher synthesis is rendered possible at the human level, where the organisation is not simply external. The instinctive control of animal behaviour yields to the rational determination of the self. The human self is able to save the past, bind it with the present, and face the future. Plato tells us that in 1 Samyukta Nikdya ii. 20; see Visuddhinagga, ch. xvii. 268 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE the self of man are found three types of function, appetites and desires, emotional reactions and intellectual ideals. It is the last which organise experience into more or less permanent unities. Each of us tries to control his life by a main life-purpose to which all others are subordinated. This choice limits the direction and scope of the development of the self. The self is a teleological unity, which is the only thing constant in the concrete, busy, active, dynamic self. Each soul has its life's star, its main purpose, "Man is altogether formed of his desires/' 1 In all his transformations, certain persistent and distinguishable characters remain. As the unity of a single melody is realised in the passage of time, the unity of self is realised in the series of stages, towards the attainment of ends. What we call a person at any stage is the cross-section of the growing entity. We speak of the person as the same so long as certain determinable characteristics are found for a definite period of time. The organisation of the contents has a specific character which constitutes the individual's uniqueness. As the whole is more than the sum of its parts, it determines the nature of the parts and their functioning. The individual carries his uniqueness even unto his thumb prints, as criminals know to their cost. In a true sense, therefore, personality is a mask. It is the part we play in the drama of life, an imperfect expression of the groundswell of our nature. Each looks at the world from a characteristic point of view. The mental data can be systematised in different ways and so long as they are fused into a single whole, we have a single self. The phenomena of multiple personality point out that for the same period or different periods we may have different conceptions of our self due to loss of consciousness or discontinuity. If the experiences are not sufficiently integrated, selfhood becomes loose and is often broken up into a series of relatively uncon- f KamamayaevSyam puru?ab (Brh. Up. iv. 4-5). HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 269 nected systems of behaviour and we have cases of/many selves. THE SELF AS SUBJECT The self as an organised whole is to be distinguished from the self as subject. The former is the problem for psychology, the latter for metaphysics. In all experience we have the duality between the subject experiencing and the object Experienced. The subject of experience is said to be distinct from every moment of the experience. It is the persistent substratum which makes all knowledge, recognition and retention possible. However much such a substratum may be essential as a principle of explanation, psychology does not tell us of it. It is sometimes argued that the series of experiences is aware of itself as a series. The whole series is involved in the knowledge of each item, which is difficult to understand. Hume reduces the subject to the object and makes the self a bundle of conscious happenings, for he could not find the "I" among his mental states. But the impressions cannot be made into a whole without the activity of the self. There is no explanation as to why the rapidly passing experiences hang together as the experiences of one and the same individual. The laws of association cannot account for this fact. Kant rightly contends that the laws of association mean a self which is more than a mere haphazard bundle of experiences. William James looks upon the passing thought as the subject of the experience. It gathers up into itself all that has previously occurred and grows on by assimilating the new. The thought is the thinker. But we cannot understand how one state can absorb another. James Ward believes that William James confuses process and content, subject and object. He argues that every 270 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE moment of experience has the three aspects of attention, feeling and presentation. While the first two are subjective, presentation is the object of experience. For Ward, the successive acts of attention manifest the subject's existence. Ward is correct in making out that the nature of self is constituted more by the acts of remembering, thinking and willing than by the materials or contents remembered, thought or willed. The activities rather than the contents with which they deal form the self, though the two are inseparable. The active self is held to be more persistent than the contents which are ever changing. Ward's "subject" is far too abstract and is postulated for the purpose of explaining experience. Ward's view reminds us of Kant's "I think," which must accompany all experiences. The "I think" of Kant is often represented as a mere logical form which accompanies all objects of consciousness. Though the relation of such a changeless passive entity, which remains the same yesterday, to-day and for ever, to the constantly changing experiences is not easy to conceive, such a subject is assumed to account for the synthesis involved in experience. It is said to be the ground of all categories, that which makes possible the empirical unity of consciousness. The deeper strand of Kant's teaching does not favour the view of the self as an abstraction. The subject and object of consciousness are elements which are distinguishable but not separable in experience, which is one. The distinction between the two comes before us as a distinction within a whole. If the two were independent of each other, knowledge would become a mystery. They are ideal factors in the whole of experience and not opposite divisions or separate parts of it. We cannot build knowledge from out of them, for it is the ultimate fact behind which we cannot go. The true subject or the self is not an object which we can find in knowledge for it is the very condition of knowledge. It is different from all objects, the body, the HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 271 the senses, the empirical self itself. We cannot make the subject the property of any substance or the effect of any cause, for it is the basis of all such relations. It is not the empirical self but the reality without which there could be no such thing as an empirical self. The individuals are able to have common experience, know a real world as identical for all because there is an ideal self operative in all. The individual who is aware of himself as limited has the direct consciousness of something which limits him and his purposes. 1'he consciousness of limit involves the action of the greater unlimited self in us. In order to assign a limit to our thought, we must in some sense be beyond that limit. To confuse the subject with the mind immersed in bodily experience prevents us from attaining complete comprehension of the object that appears to confront us. The true subject is the simple, self -subsist ent, universal spirit which cannot le directly presented as the object. When Plato says that the mind in man is the offspring of the eternal world-mind, when Aristotle speaks of an "active reason," at the apex of the soul, which is divine and creative, when Kant dis- tinguishes the synthetic principle from the merely empirical self, they are referring to the self as subject. The deeper unity is what Kant refers to as the transcendental self. Only in calling it the self he is applying to noumenal reality a category of the phenomenal world. It is not an abstract form of selfhood, for it is that which manifests itself in the organisation of the empirical self. It is within this universal spirit that the distinction of subject and object arises. While the empirical self is always correlated with a not-self, the universal self includes all and has nothing outside to limit it. The Hindu thinkers call it the at man as distinguished rom the empirical self or the jivatman. When we raise the question about the unifying agency in selfhood we are raising the more general question of the principle of unity in all existents, physical and biological 272 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE included. Their unity is of the same character as the unity of selfhood, though less complex and less personal, but in principle it is the same. THE SELF AND THE ENVIRONMENT The integral relationship between the organism and its environment which we found to be true of the subhuman grades of reality is also true of the human world. Human individuals are not unchanging substrata of change witfc accidental qualities and related to one another externally but are elements in an interrelated system. They are centres of experience or processes of becoming through a creative synthesis of their relations. They possess a certain relative independence though the general nature of the system conditions them all. Instead of being a self-contained individual, each empirical self is the expression or focussing of something beyond itself. 1 The real whole or individual is that which includes persons and their environment and these exist in themselves by a process of abstraction. How- ever self-conscious or self-determining, the human being is not absolutely individual. From the first his world is equally real with himself and his interactions with it influence the growth of his individuality. The individual and the world co-exist and subsist together. At the biological level, there is no such thing as an indi- vidual centre of life. The cells in an organism are unintelligible apart from the whole. Their life is centred in the life of the whole. While plants and animals lead "whole" lives har- moniously, human beings set up discords between themselves and their environment. The unity between the organism and the environment which is a striking point in the sub- 1 Professor J. S. Haldane writes: "Personality is not something confined and complete in itself separately from an environment in space and time, but extends over that environment" (The Sciences and Philosophy (1929)* P- 303)- HUMAN PERSONALITY AND ITS DESTINY 273 human world becomes sundered in the human. While the human being belongs to a larger world which penetrates him at every pore and lives through his interactions with it, his self-consciousness sets up a dualism which is untrue to fact and opposed to his whole nature. He forgets that his interests are not private to himself and believes himself to be distinct with his own form and individuality. While this strong sense of individuality is necessary for action, it is confused with individualism. He is in a state of unstable equilibrium. His conscience is the sign of a divided life. He is a flame of unrest full of uncertain seeking and disorder. So long as the individual suffers from separateness he is restive and homesick. He is always striving to get beyond his separateness. Human progress lies in an increasing awareness of the universal working in man. Through the exploring of nature, the striving after wisdom and the seeking of God, the individual struggles to achieve a harmony between himself and his environment. He finds his goodness in what is more than himself. He realises that his fragmentariness will be cured only if he is devoted to the whole. Fulness of life means service to the whole. So he strives after values, frames ideals and struggles to build up a world of unity and harmony. He forms associations, develops common interests by organ- ising families, tribes, churches and countries. Knowledge, art, morality and religion are the devices employed by man to realise his destiny as a member of a spiritual fellowship, a kingdom in which each is in the whole and the whole is in some measure in each. "That they all may be one as Thou Father art in me and I in Thee that they also may be one in us." Such a union based on knowledge, love and service is closer and more intimate than any represented by the lower orders of existence. The peculiar privilege of the human self is that he can consciously join and work for the whole and embody in his 274 AN IDEALIST VIEW OF LIFE own life the purpose of the whole. This embodiment differs vastly in degree from individual to individual. It is the source of the difference between superior and inferior souls. The two elements of selfhood, uniqueness (each-ness) and universality (all-ness) grow together until at last the most unique becomes the most universal. While every individual fulfils his real function in the whole and obtains value and dignity, no one individual is as wide as the whole itself. It is limited because it is only one individual element in what is much greater than itself. There is a tendency, especially in the West, to over- estimate the place of the human self. Descartes attempts to derive everything from the certainty of his own isolated selfhood. It is not realised that the thought of the self which wants to explain everything, the will of the self which wants to subjugate everything, are themselves the expression of a deeper whole, which includes the self and its object. If the self is not widened into the universal spirit, the values themselves become merely subjective and the self itself will collapse into nothing. Man's continual striving for perfection in spite of all error and misunderstanding, defeat and dis- appointment, his perpetual attempt to transform all occur- rences into harmony, to make the external express the inward and the partial success which has attended his efforts show that the task he is attempting is one in line with the genius of reality. The values we strive for are organic to existence The whole course of nature is an expression of meaning to be understood by man. Interaction with individuals, know- ledge of one another and social