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no.29
THE CONCEPT STANDARD
A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF WHAT MEN HAVE CONCEIVED
AS CONSTITUTING OR DETERMINING LIFE VALUES.
CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION OF THE
DIFFERENT THEORIES TOGETHER
WITH GENERAL EDUCATIONAL
IMPLICATIONS
BY
ANNE M. NICHOLSON, Ph.D.
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION, NO. 29
PUBLIBALD BY
Teachers College, Columbia University
NEW YORK CITY
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY ANNE M. NICHOLSON.
General Korach
Compl, steary
fibrary
2-22-46
5130
FOREWORD
The present study is one that attempts to investigate what has
constituted in certain eras of the world's history the standard by
which all values were conceived or measured. That consciously
or unconsciously such an ultimate point of reference or guiding
principle has determined values in the past seems the only inter-
pretation possible of our social inheritance to-day. It is wholly
in accord with the main thesis of this study, to realize that the
significance of the control was not always grasped by those whose
destinies were being determined by it. It is also in accord to
suggest that progress was surer, more direct, when there was a
consciousness of the presence and nature of the control. The
standard ethically conceived and realized as functioning in the
life of a people has proved its worth by its greater power and
by its tendency toward survival. It is in this last thought that
there may be a warrant for this present essay.
A social con-
sciousness wakened as at present to the necessity of reflection
may find help in any survey of its past experience,
Contrary to ordinary procedure, greater time has been given
to those periods that have been lightly passed over by current
thought as having nothing worth while for modern needs. The
survey of the past has shown that it seems impossible for an
age to entertain more than one dominant idea at a given time.
All delays in the progress of thought have seemed to result from
the isolation of some one phase of a more inclusive whole. Neces-
sary consideration of means to an end has frequently resulted in
regarding the means as an end. While the attention is focused
on the part rather than on the part as related to the whole, things
are viewed out of proportion. It is some of these parts of the
history of philosophy that are out of focus in the present direction
of attention, that have received more attention in the present
study than may seem justified. Toleration is asked for what
may appear as digressions, and also some consideration of their
import.
Part of the work has been done while attending lectures on
philosophy under Dr. John Angus MacVannel and Dr. John
Dewey of Columbia University. The thesis was suggested and
continued for several months under the guidance of Dr. Mac-
Vannel. There may be found traces in this essay of the influence
of the theories of both these scholars.
ANNE M. NICHOLSON.
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES AND PRINCIPLES
PAGE
Implications of the logical situation in which the standard emerges
and functions. Conclusions concerning certain types of judgment and
their subsumption in the ethical or moral judgment. Essential nature
of the reflective situation involving definitions of impulse, idea, habit,
standard, character, control, reason. Effects of varying force of
initial impulse. Emotional natures require the check of a controlling
idea sufficient to hold in check the initial impulse until regulated by
reason. The essence of control identical with the essence of humanity.
15
CHAPTER II
THE STANDARD IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES FROM THE GENETIC POINT
OF VIEW
The entire discussion forces the query: Has the actual course of
human evolution on the whole been from lower to higher, and if so
is this movement based on something permanent in the nature of
things, or in the forces that move the human mind? Main thesis of
this genetic view: group approval or disapproval the prototypes of
moral emotions. First religious ideas identified with sacrificial rites
offered to secure the intervention of superhuman agencies in the
control of the element of luck. Folkways as unconscious, spontaneous,
uncoördinated mass phenomena. The degree of rightness in these
depending upon importance of interests. Pain calculus forces reflec-
tion and observation of some relation between acts and welfare-not
one of deduction from any great principle, but one of minute efforts to
live well under existing conditions. Recognition of a permanent
tendency implicit in some of these theories, explicit in others....
20
CHAPTER III
REVIEW OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE STANDARD AND ITS MODE OF
FUNCTIONING FROM FIRST HISTORIC EXPRESSION TO MODERN TIMES
Periods of social disintegration force a consciousness of standards
functioning in the life of the people, as (1) repudiation, (2) reinter-
pretation, (3) revitalization Classic instance, Greece in the sixth
century B. C.–Vitality of Judean standard increased at each re-
emergence
26
6
Summary of Contents
PAGE
27
30
SECTION 1. THE STANDARD AS CONCEIVED IN THE FOLLOWING EPOCHS
Judea: The core of Judean ethics, the conception of conscience.
Its postulate, the individual soul—historical development of law as
standard ...
Greece and Rome: Plato's standard involved in his theory of ideas.
The idea of the Good—the all inclusive idea. The desire to embody
the idea in Socrates. Aristotle's theory—the end of everything real-
ized in full perfection of itself. The standard a principle of activity
realizing its essential nature. Stoic Law of Nature” as standard.
Comprehensive scope of the Law of Nature. All things in the uni-
verse measured by this law. Duty emphasized. Summary of the
Greek conception of the standard: Moral obligation founded on the
well-being of the individual: virtue a fulfillment of the personality;
in Stoicism, an ideal standard applicable to all mankind; an ideal,
compelling conformity of social as well as individual custom....
Christianity: Subsumption of Greek and Judean Ideals. Eclecticism
in Alexandria. Mystical Asceticism. Contributions from Philo's idea
of the Logos. Resultant Christian Philosophy: the coalescence of
historical and natural teleology. Man's realization of his relation to
the Infinite, the end and aim of creation. Conception of the Christian
ideal by the Christian Fathers, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alex-
andria, Origen, his pupil Gregory, and Augustine. The fundamental
principle of Augustine: that which judges is always superior to
that which is judged: but that according to which judgment is
rendered is also superior to that which judges. Participation in
Divine Intelligence through Divine Grace; illumination. Divine grace
proportional to the degree of man's moral perfection. Idea, Judg-
ment, Will are modes of functioning whose unity is the soul. Aban-
donment to the will of the Divinity the condition of illumination and
revelation. Arrest of the intellectual development of these conceptions
by barbarian invasions. Connection in philosophical succession
between Augustine and Descartes..
.
39
SECTION II. MEDIAEVAL PERIOD
Artistotle termed the philosopher.” The standard viewed by the
controversialists over the reality of universals. Scotus Erigena's
theory termed logical pantheism. The degree of universality measures
worth. Nominalists' theory. Reality of particulars. Abelard's theory
a modification of the extreme views. John of Salisbury's interpretation
of the Augustinian conception of the soul's activity as ways of func-
tioning, the prototype of the English school of associational psy-
chology. The ancients, the Christian philosophers of the Patristic age,
mediaeval logicians never confused the states of consciousness, the
ways of functioning, with the ultimate standard or criterion of life.
Recognition of a divine principle sustaining the soul's activity through
contemplation, illumination, enlightenment, grace.
55
Summary of Contents
7
PAGI
58
63
Thomas Aquinas: Revival of interest in Thomistic philosophy.
Science forced to consider universals. Acute transformation of Aris-
totelian conceptions of form in relation to matter. Interpretation of
Plato's theory of ideas: the mind can effect the purely subjective
separation by considering in the individual only the universal. The
human soul does not possess innate conceptions, but its thinking rests
on the basis of sensuous perceptions and of representations from
which the active intellect abstracts forms. The actuating principle of
energy referred to divine essence. The soul is made in the image and
likeness of God. The recognition of an immanent principle in the
universe. The things of sense from which human reason takes its
beginnings of knowledge retain in themselves some trace of the
imitation of God, inasmuch as they are and are good. The nature of
the intellect is to grasp the intelligible. Natures and relations are
eternal Manifestations of God. God commands the good because it is
good and is recognized as good by His wisdom. Hence the Divine
Wisdom, the logos, is the ultimate standard.....
Participation in eternal law is called natural law. This is recog-
nized by reason, and in conformity with this law rational creatures
guide their conduct. Natural law apprehended as general principles
belonging to Eternal Law. Application to particular cases requires the
use of reason to draw conclusions from these general principles.
These conclusions are termed human law.....
The theory concerning the will and the intellect makes abiding with
God's will identical with man's good. Possibility of man's reaching
through his intellect the same conception of good as that revealed by
God
Mysticism: Pantheistic nature of Neo-Platonism: the temporary
participation in eternal reason. Pan-Psychism regarded by Christian
philosophers as a menace to metaphysical value of personality.
German mysticism of Eckhart the beginning of German idealism.
Christian mysticism of Thomas á Kempis....
Summary of Mediaeval Conceptions Influencing the Idea of Stan-
dard. Will uncorrupted-reason not infallible. Necessity of refining the
reason. Knowledge the product of reason and revelation. Revelation
includes truths of ancients, measured by God's revelation in Christ.
Identification of the idea of good with God. Attainment of happiness
coincident with perfect knowledge or wisdom. Participation in God's
nature. The church-the embodiment of grace the sacraments the
outward sign of inward grace. The gulf between the natural and
supernatural mediated by the Word made flesh-historic teleology-
fulfillment of the law. Idealization of contemplative virtues of Plato
and Aristotle, the source of asceticism. Necessity of ascetic ideal in
civilization of barbarians. Systematic accommodation to different
aspects of human nature. Faith in future life, the integral force.
Scope and opportunity for the play of intelligence...
63
64
68
8
Summary of Contents
PAGR
SECTION III. THE RENAISSANCE
A carrying over of momentum generated in theological energy into
other fields. Dante's conception of the poet's soul, one in which the
individual spirit had deepened into a universe within. The fusion of
ethical and physical prophetic of the transfiguration of nature as a
manifestation of the divine. Bosanquet's interpretation of the Renais-
sance: the common error of identifying in point of time the desire
with its realization. The Renaissance as the fruition of a movement
centuries old: declaration in dogina of fourth century, of evolution
as the one supreme principle by which a progressive content does not
lose anything or become secondary by the fact of this development.
Distance from these ages is giving perspective adequate to seeing
the relation of the Renaissance movement to the continuous evolution
of a universal standard. Nicholas of Cusa's conception of a pur-
poseful unfolding according to law. Man as microcosm. Nature an
unfolding of a single principle of movement. The world as a soul-
possessing articulate whole. Harmonious development—theories of
self-realization
Giordano Bruno's idea of a God-informed, God-governed universe
progressively accessible to the human conscience. Conception of
nature as something worth while led to appreciation of earthly pos-
sessions as of ultimate value. Problem: Relation of morals to effi-
ciency. Machiavelli's repudiation of any moral restraint in reaching
an end.
Success as the criterion of all values. Disintegration the result of
the absence of a unifying ideal. Conception among humanists of the
worth of general education as the fundamental method of control.
Erasmus
71
75
76
SECTION IV. PROTESTANT REVOLT
Effect on the conception of the standard. Interpretation of indi-
viduality as the right to assign values rather than to ascertain them
led to first a distrust in institutions, then their repudiation. The
French Revolution and Rousseau. The Peasant's Revolt in Germany.
Not yet sufficiently removed in time to allow of seeing the idea in its
relations. Hobbes' standard of uncompromising egoism. Reaction by
Cambridge Platonists and by Cumberland-Cumberland's rule "that
all rationals should aim at the common good of all.” Sanction fur-
nished by nature's enforcement of the above law, thus determining the
agent's happiness
76
SECTION V. CARTESIANISM
Descartes' maxim: Everything must be true that is as clear and
distinct as self-consciousness. Psychological and metaphysical basis of
his principle
Spinoza's pantheistic conception of the standard. Every event is
justified by the very fact of its occurrence, which is in immediate
connection with the supreme necessity. The knowledge of truth
79
Summary of Contents
9
PAGE
becomes thus the noblest good. The will is identical with the intellect.
Man is free only as far as ideas either immediately are or can be made
adequate. Our idea of God or of absolute unity is adequate: our ideas
of the affections of body are inadequate and can be made adequate
only by referring them to the idea of God. Effects of Spinoza's
views: (a) reactionary materialism, (b) a source of German idealism.. 82
SECTION VI. ENGLISH SCHOOL
87
Locke: Psychological method of determining the standard. Locke's
belief in the permanence and universality of moral truths includes a
belief that morality might be placed among the demonstrable sciences.
The English conception of God as law-giver...
Berkeley: Principle of universal mind: a living, active mind is
looked upon as the center and the spring of the universe. Man's
endeavor to bring his conceptions into harmony with Divine arche-
types. Butler's and Hutcheson's conceptions...
Hume: Denial of a unifying principle. Recognition by Hume of
the need of a synthesising principle. Ethical principle: so act as to
excite approbation in a disinterested spectator. Reactionary con-
ceptions
89
91
SECTION VII. GERMAN IDEALISM
Kant: Thought constitutes experience: thought reaches beyond
experience in that it is conscious of its own limitations. This con-
sciousness of the insufficiency of experience is the telesis that is mani-
fested in experience. Theory of the Categories as modes of synthe-
thising: the essential truths in Kant's analysis: unity of consciousness
and its identity with itself are the necessary conditions for the com-
bining of a given content into any conceivable kind of experience.
Recognition of guiding ideas which the process is unable to realize or
verify. Interpreted in field of conduct, the idea of an intelligible world
is a point of view beyond the phenomenal which the reason sees itself
compelled to take up in order to think of itself as practical. The moral
law presupposes freedom. The categorical imperative as formula for
conduct. Three-fold development of moral consciousness : act as if
the motive were to become a universal one: treat personality as an
end in itself: further an organization of a kingdom of ends. The God
of rationalism invoked instead of the God of revelation..
93
Hegel: The external world as a manifestation of spirit through
which it realizes itself. Mind a self-differentiating unity. The abso-
lute, in its self-alienation in the finite, constitutes what is termed
nature. Evolution from lower to higher manifestations of the all-
pervading idea. The standard is the conception of the return of the
idea to itself-the identity in difference in all existence-the universal
principle of nature and humanity whose essence in spirit...
.. 97
IO
Suinmary of Contents
PAGR
98
SECTION VIII. A RE-SURVEY OF THE EFFECT OF GERMAN IDEALISM ON
THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE STANDARD
Main principles of materialism. The essentially critical nature of
the German School. Kant's motive—validating the tools of knowledge.
The transcendentalism of Kant translated by Fichte into Subjective
Idealism. Hegel's logic comprehends in its theory of “identity in
difference," and inclusion of negatives, both Skepticism and Dogma-
tism
Reactionary influence of nineteenth century thought: Reaction to
Hegel's philosophy. New cycle of thought begun. Initial conception
of world forces. Recognition of the natural as a general standard for
measuring the value of every particular experience. Facts of science
explained by hypothesis of evolution. Herbert Spencer's theory: his
celebrated formula. His synthetic philosophy gives no clue as to the
nature of the implied ascending tendency in transformism. Progress
remains unexplained. Huxley's denial of the truth of Spencer's
fundamental thesis—the harmony of the cosmic and ethical process, 99
The Neo-Hegelian Movement: Thomas H. Green's thesis opposing
the conception of the universe as a purely mechanical process. The
idea of a possible better state of himself-the idea that has yielded to
man his moral standards. This idea must have place before the
authority of law or custom can have any meaning for the individual.. 103
CHAPTER IV
SECTION I. THE STANDARD FUNCTIONING IN NATIONAL Crises : INFLU-
ENCE UPON NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
China's acceptance and perpetuation of fixed standard. India's con-
ception of man as a transient mode of the Universal Spirit: its relation
to the philosophy of quietism. The Greek conception of " man as the
measure of all things": the Sophists' teaching but an expression of
the conditions of the times. Rome's lack of a national system of
education due to the clash of underlying principles--the Greek ideals
of life, and the Roman reverence for law. Roman genius provided a
mode for the transference of ideas never thoroughly assimilated into
national life. Christian seizure of all existent modes, philosophies, and
other institutions to convey its message to the world. Universal nature
of the standard furnished by Christianity permitted the use of all
modes of transmission. Inherent principles of the doctrine that made
possible its conquest of the world..
106
SECTION II. SUPPLEMENTARY CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION
Implicit or explicit recognition of a determining principle in all the
systems reviewed. This recognition analogous to developing self-
consciousness. This standard intelligible through its workings. Dif-
ferences in interpretation. Mediaeval philosophy a summary and an
anticipation. Modern clash of universalism and individualism as in
Summary of Contents
II
PAGK
Renaissance. The standard as a way of God in history; the contri-
butions of Israel, Greece, Rome. The historic church the administrator
of these great contributions from antiquity. The standard as a way of
nature: adaptation as purpose. Laws of nature as expressions of
purpose. Consistency of attributing all possible excellence to the
Source of all. Essential postulates of this theory. These concepts
viewed in relation to Pragmatism...
IIO
CHAPTER V
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
Self-activity the basis of this discussion. Aristotle's conception of
the characteristic function of man as the end of his existence. This
activity the means at once of survival and of progress. This pro-
gressive adaptation, the essence of the self. Man's limitation the
means of his progress. This perpetual establishing of relationships
the means at once of self-realization and group solidarity. Effort
to determine the significance of activities and attainment current in
civilization, reveals these as the sifted experience of the race, the
social inheritance, the core of reality in human experience. The
translation of this into the child's experience makes him bearer of
the social purpose. Distribution of the work of transmission among
the several institutions: the home, the school, the vocation, the state,
the church. Interchange of influences between these institutions essen-
tial to the life of the work. Need of defining the unique function of
each of these institutions as well as providing for their reciprocal
influences. Curriculum, method, personality of teacher interpreted
in light of present theory. Primary need of teacher's awareness of
these interrelations
124
Bibliography
136
.
0
.
“According to the established popular usage which the philoso-
pher considers should be our guide in the naming of things, they
are called wise who put things in their right order, and control
them well. Now in all things that are to be controlled and put
in order to an end, the measure of control and order must be
taken from an end in view, and the proper end is something good.
Those arts that lord it over others are called master-building, or
masterful arts, and the master builders who practice them arro-
gate to themselves the name of wise men.
But because
these persons deal with the ends in view of certain particular
things, without attaining to the general end of all things, they
are called wise in this or that particular thing, as it is said 'As
a wise architect, I have laid the foundation' (I Cor. III, 10);
while the name wise is reserved for him alone who deals with
the last end of the universe, which is also the first beginning of
the order of the universe. Hence according to the philosopher,
it is proper to the wise man to consider the highest causes.
"Now the last end of everything is that which is extended by
the prime author, or mover thereof. The prime author and mover
of the universe is intelligence. Therefore the last end of the
universe must be the good of the intelligence, and that is truth.
".For this was I born and unto this I came into the world,
to give testimony to the truth.'”? (John XVIII, 37.)
1 St. Thomas Aquinas, God and His Creatures. Extracts from Chap. I
and Chap. II.
THE CONCEPT STANDARD
CHAPTER I
FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES AND PRINCIPLES
It was intended to give an introductory chapter discussing
the logical situation in which the standard emerges and functions.
This involved a description of the logical procedure typical of
all kinds of judgment. This in turn necessitated establishing
crucial points in the theory against the contentions of conflicting
systems of logic. This last effort forced the conviction that the
different theories meet the crux at different junctures. One
theory would be so much simpler than another, so much more
convincing at some point, that it commanded assent; but pursued
consistently the apparent simple procedure met its crux at a
later point. Thus the seemingly simple task assumed propor-
tions beyond the limits of the present dissertation because of both
its technicality and length. But the study has been useful in
revealing certain crucial points, in establishing in the attempt
certain rather well defined conclusions, and in defining certain
fundamental categories. It is evident that the standard functions
in every judgment of even the most rudimentary form; 1 also
that all conduct is the product of judgment viewed in its most
comprehensive sense. Hence every act is the product of a judg-
ment in which a standard has functioned.
An analysis of so-called scientific judgments, ethical or moral
judgments, economic judgments, and aesthetic judgments proved
to the writer that all judgments in their last analysis are moral
judgments: that the so-called other types are secondary, function-
ing within the former : that judgment in any field involves the
tacit assumption of social verifiability as a matter of course ::
that the standard is the essence of control varying only in the
aspect or method of control.
2
Pillsbury, Psychological Theories of Judgment. Psychological Bul-
letin, August 15, 1907.
Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory.
• Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory. Chapter by Stuart, Valuation
as a logical process, Page 323.
15
16
The Concept Standard
This «
If experiences are human experiences they are reflective. An
analysis of reflective situations reveals conduct as the “co-ordin-
ating or bringing to a unity of aim and interest the different
elements of a complex situation.” It represents the reaction
out of a situation when present facts are significant to past and
future. The impulse becomes idealized.
reaction of
induced experiences with the inducing impulse is the psycholog-
ical basis of moral conduct.' The moral value of an act lies in
the control of the natural impulse. Moral discipline consists in
learning how to control. The idea becomes the intelligence that
controls, the tool of a free agent. The so-called motive is the
mediated impulse.
The original impulse completely transformed is habit: the two
sides, mediate and immediate, have lost their separate existence.
These habits put at our immediate disposal the results of past
experience,—at once economizing energy and freeing the agent
for higher activities. Freedom for is more prophetic of progress
than freedom from. The standard is the agent's capital of ideas
that is drawn on by the "energetic” self. Every ultimate type
of judgment presents a dramatic situation where the plot is evolv-
ing, employing as a means to the solution, as a working method,
knowledge of a proved kind. This proved knowledge is expressed
as judgments of the factual kind. In the process you cannot
shear off deduction from induction. Upon the student seeking
knowledge of this process of control, it is incumbent to know
how and where the inductive process is guided by deductive
considerations. This is the technique of modern science. Some-
thing of the depth and significance of a study of the concept of
standard is revealed in the last statement. The ground of chal-
lenge for all truth lies here. Realizing the difficulty of the
problem, it is still in keeping to state that the attempt to study
it is justified by the fact that that which gives man the maximum
of control, is the knowledge of the process of control,
The difference in the activities of different persons or of the
same person in different circumstances is one of varying degrees
of control present in the determining process. The onlooker
speaks of the character of the person whose actions he observes.
The enlightened say, “We have no right to judge the act of
* Dewey, Syllabus on Ethics. Page 10.
Fundamental Categories and Principles
17
another because we cannot look into his heart and see the motive
that prompted it," the charitable say, "We can forgive the doer
but not the deed," and the wise say, “ Judge not lest ye be judged.”
And the meaning of all these expressions becomes manifest if
we reflect upon the nature of the situation that precedes the
act. We realize that because acts proceed from character," they
are not a mere series of separate things, one after another, but
form the whole conduct." Character we think of as a way of
acting, while conduct is the executed way. Character is the
individual's potentiality for action and includes all the tendencies
which taken together constitute his power of action whether
impulsive, habitual, or reflective. Knowing the character and the
circumstances conditioning the activity, we can predict the act.
A "person of character" is one whose technique of control of
his impulses makes him master of the situation in other words,
responsible to the demands society has a right to make on him.
He must have the power of appreciation, which means he must
have the means of measuring values in the situation in which he
is called to act. These principles of measuring values are part
of his technique of control—a fundamental part: a correct appli-
cation of these to the existing conditions is another part. When
we presume to say that we know a person's character, we imply
that we know his principles of estimating value and his ability
to apply them to ordinary conditions. Given certain conditions,
we presume to count on the impulse stimulated by these, and from
former similar experiences we can count on the outcome of the
interplay of this particular impulse, with impulses induced
thereby, and can predict the overt act of the individual. The
induced experiences we call reason, and because these induced
experiences measure value we call them the standard. These
induced impulses-ideas, we say—become the law, the controlling
power of the immediate impulse. They are real in that they make
themselves felt by checking and determining in what form, and
under what conditions, the impulse may be satisfied. They deter-
mine and measure the value of the impulse; they say to it: you
are not what you are alone, or in yourself, but your value is
what it is in relation to us. Thus the impulse striving for
expression, the induced impulses each with its own momentum
• Dewey, Syllabus. Page 26.
Į
The Concept Standard
8
or impulsive quality, struggling also for expression, form a
situation, the whole process of which is one of discovering and
applying the standard—a process of estimating value which
emerges finally in the overt act.
The overt act in the degree of its significance as true or false
as verified by the criterion, becomes a reference for new situa-
tions, thereby increasing the worth of the ideal. The vagueness
so often associated with the word ideal is due to the fact that
the initial impulse in instances is too weak to act properly to
the summoned impulses, which therefore become fleeting fancies,
vague schemes, castles in the air," so often associated with
the popular use of idealist, or dreamer. When the initial impulse
is strong, the summons is strong, and if there be abundant experi-
ence to respond, the interaction is vigorous, and a defined project
emerges as a significant act. We may conceive of the ideas
summoned by the initial impulse, each bringing with it the residua
of the emotional content of the original experience, the whole
forming a cumulative emotional content which absorbs that of
the initial impulse and finally gives to the project the momentum
necessary to convert it into the overt act.
It seems perfectly evident that impulsive acts are characteristic
of certain temperaments which seem racial in their origin. Ac-
companying a quick response to objective stimuli, there is a
sweep of emotion attendant upon the initial impulse that carries
all before it and expresses itself in almost immediate action.
With such natures there is apparently a potentiality of high
degree. What is necessary is an idea of tremendous content to
check the onrushing original impulse, thereby giving time to
marshal other ideas with their accompanying emotional content
presumably of liigh power, to determine and define the project
for action. This controlling idea must be a standard adequate
both to check the impulse and to direct its intellectual harnessing
in order that the act expressing the process should be worthy of
the endowment of such natures.
The reflective situations seem the mediating influence by which
actions are raised to successively higher levels. Actions range
from the impulsive outburst of the child to the deliberate highly
controlled expression of the scientist, diplomat, or philosopher.
And each product of human activity bears the stamp of the human
soul, conceive the soul as we may. The alternative conclusion
Fundamental Categories and Principles
19
would make mankind either the hypnotized subject of mighty
chance, or a cosmically predetermined organism. The tiniest bit
of humanity in the midst of its helplessness teaches the absurdity
of either of these last conclusions. Each successive thrust of the
infant's hand is the expression of the import of the former
thrust. Each movement of the head reports the meaning that
directs the next. To detect the presence of this living control
is to identify it with that which makes us a human being
All records of human experience testify to its recognition. The
difference in civilization has been in the mode of interpreting it.
CHAPTER II
THE STANDARD IN PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES FROM
THE GENETIC POINT OF VIEW
The concept of evolution as applied to morality has given rise
to vigorous theories concerning the genesis of custom standards.
The entire discussion forces the question: Has the actual course
of human evolution on the whole been from lower to higher, and
if so is this movement based on something permanent in the nature
of things, or in the forces that move the human mind ?1
Opposing the view that the origin of moral conceptions lies
in the individual's own conscience, these theorists argue that
before there is self-reproach or remorse, there must be ideals of
right and wrong derived from group approval or disapproval
of certain acts. Savages think in herds. “Society is the school
in which men learn to distinguish between right and wrong.
The head master is custom and the lessons are the same for all.
The first moral judgments were pronounced by public opinion:
public indignation and public approval are the prototypes of the
moral emotions.". To account for developed conscience found
in savage tribes, remoteness of origin of the inherited body of
custom is assigned as cause. This inherited body of custom
composes the standards of conduct. No one standard is given
any place in this theory.
Folkways are unconscious, spontaneous, unco-ordinated mass-
phenomena, currents of similarity, concurrence and mutual con-
tribution. In the folkways, whatever is, is right. The degree
of rightness depends on the relative importance of interests. The
morality of the group is the sum of taboos and prescriptions in
the folkways by which right is defined. Morals are not intuitive:
they are historical, institutional, and empirical. These folkways
are not creations of human purpose and will, but are like the
products of natural forces accidentally set in motion. They are
!
** 1 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 1906.
Westermarck, The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, 1906.
8 Sumner, Folkways, 1907.
20
The Standard in Primitive Societies
21
subject to " a strain of consistency with each other, because they
all answer their several purposes with less friction and antagon-
ism when they coöperate and support each other.”
The strain of consistency finds expression in institutions.
Through suggestion and suggestibility, mass-phenomena result.
Suggestion has no rationale in its method of selection and con-
trol: an eclipse has changed the entire course of progress.
"Men in groups are under life conditions: they have needs
which are similar under the state of life conditions: the relation
of the needs to the conditions are interests under the head of
hunger, love, vanity, fear : efforts of numbers to satisfy interests
at the same time produce mass-phenomena, which are folkways
by virtue of uniformity, repetition, and wide concurrence. The
folkways are attended by pleasure or pain according as they are
well fitted for the purpose. Pain forces reflection and observa-
tion of some relation between acts and welfare. At this point the
prevailing world philosophy, beginning with goblinism, suggests
explanations and inferences that become entangled with judg-
ments of expediency. However, the folkways take on a philosophy
of right living and a life policy of welfare.4 Then they become
mores, and they may be developed by inferences from the philos-
ophy or the rules in the endeavor to satisfy needs without pain.
Hence they undergo improvement and are made consistent with
each other.'
“The real process is not one of deduction from any great
principle. It is one of minute efforts to live well under existing
conditions." The philosophy of welfare is purely economic:
democracy is the result of an economic demand for men, when
earth is underpopulated: humanitarianism is a willingness to
adopt ideas and institutions making competition of life easy and
kindly, only when men cease to crowd on one another. All
manifestations of what other philosophies regard as man's higher
nature, according to this theory have an economic origin and
are treated as distorted hindrances to man's rational progress.
The element of luck or chance was conceived as over and above
man’s manipulation, and hence ascribed to superhuman agencies.
These were appeased by sacrifices. These delusions became
poetical and fanciful in nature. The sacrifices were attended by
4 Italics ours.
Folkways. Page 34.
22
The Concept Standard
rites. This ritual is thus seen to have its origin in conditions of
welfare. In this ritual, according to this theory is the beginning
of religion. In time the "authority of religion and that of custom
coalesced into one indivisible obligation. This individual obliga-
tion was the custom standard sanctioned by religious rites. Men
became dazzled by the fancy and poetry of ritualistic phenomena –
by the bubbles they themselves had blown and continually leaped
to catch.”
Elaboration of these ideas but confirms the fact that the inter-
pretation of primitive phenomena is not revealed in studying the
origins but is unconsciously imposed by the observer of these
facts. The popular expediency standard dominant in an economic
or industrial age, such as the nineteenth century has been, is used
as the interpretation of these studies of origins. The signifi-
cance of these is not discovered in the process, but in the original
hypothesis in the mind of him who studies.
One of these theorists says: We see the man-who-can-do-
things elevated to a social hero whose success overrides all other
considerations. Where that code is adopted it calls for arbitrary
definitions, false conventions, and untruthful character.” The con-
cluding paragraph in the same author's work shows the presence
of a higher standard in the writer : “ The antagonism between a
virtue policy and a success policy is a constant ethical problem.
The Renaissance in Italy shows that although moral traditions
may be narrow and mistaken, any morality is better than moral
anarchy. Moral traditions are guides which no one can afford to
neglect. They are in the mores and they are lost in every great
revolution of the mores. Then the men are morally lost. Their
natures, desires, and means become false, and even the notion of
crime is arbitrary and untrue. If all try the policy of dishonesty,
the result will be the firmest conviction that honesty is the best
policy. The mores aim always to arrive at correct notions of
virtue. In so far as they reach correct results, the virtue policy
proves to be the only success policy."
A more conservative view and a more philosophic and more
highly organized theory? considers the field of inquiry to include
quasi-instinctive judgment based on the unthinking acceptance
of tradition and the profoundest theory of the thinker seeking a
o Sumner.
? Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution.
The Standard in Primitive Societies
.23
rational basis of conduct and an intelligible formula to express the
end of life. Between the two extremes is recognized a play of
forces remodelling custom and substituting deliberately accepted
principle. The conception of the good becomes the prime inquiry
and "the business of comparative ethics is to determine the gen-
eric character and principal specific variations of this conception
as actually held by men at different places at different times.
Studies in ethical evolution reveal variations and diversity of
moral judgment but finally surprise the student with a more far-
reaching uniformity." In line with this thought and partly
accounting for it, is the tremendous bearing of purely economic
changes upon ethical conceptions. This is just dawning upon ari
awakened social consciousness.
In line with this finding of a far-reaching uniformity, this theory
recognizes the growth of will over desire. “By desire we are to
understand impulse informed by the anticipation of an event; by
will, a reaction of character to ends in which relatively stable and
permanent satisfaction is found. Its authority over desire, we call
self-control, but it is rather control by self as a whole of one or
other of the impulses which conflict with its permanent tendency. 8
It is only when this relatively stable and balanced adoption of
permanent ends or abiding principles is psychologically possible
that the inculcation of general rules could have any meaning."
This theory recognizes an intrinsic difference in apparently
similar institutions, due to the ethical development of one and the
unconscious growth of the other. This difference is quite sure to
emerge in subsequent history. The higher value of ethically con-
ceived and developed institutions depends on the 'firmness with
which they are held, owing to the fact of their being the product
of man's constant endeavor. Their formation contains the means
of their defense. Such ethical standards react upon social organi-
zation, the result of which reaction forms a large part of world
history. On the other hand mere favor of circumstances rather
than any moral quality accounts for the presence of the custom-
made institution. The term morality qualified by primitive is
rather grudgingly applied to mere custom-standards.
ers of magic have no moral purpose and the spirits of animism
are neither moral nor immoral.” They are guided by the law of
8 This suggests T. H. Green after Aristotle.
• Ibid. Page 14.
“The pow-
24
The Concept Standard
retaliation. It is only with the recognition of moral obligation to
protect life, to guard property, to redress wrong that the element
of morality really enters. In tracing ethical development the
emergence of the spiritual ideal of religion is reached. This ideal
is described as furnishing a standard that left no room for pre-
viously recognized virtues of enmity. The materialistic Deity dis-
appears: God is spiritual and rules by love. The notion of retri-
bution is suppressed.
The best interpretation' of these seems to be in line with these
conclusions. There is no such thing as private rights in primitive
morality. These emerge in Greek times and legally only in Roman
law. The first control was that of old men. Respect for law first
emerges as respect for the representatives of social order. Custom
was projected in old men and women, priests and gods as repre-
senting permanent interests over and against the tendency to vary
in the individual. This tendency to vary, genetically speaking, is
the origin of the moral situation. What lies behind the so-called
sympathetic resentment is the conflict between the approval of the
clan, and the immediate strong desire. The differentia of the
ethical situation is a certain discrepancy between certain ten-
dencies of individuals left to themselves, and the expectation and
acquirement of the individual with reference to the customs of the
tribe and clan as such.
Certain fundamental categories are recognized as the common
element in primitive and present situations. Value, control, and
standard are probably the most fundamental. These were recog-
nized by the group as a group and are hence objective. A type of
good or value was generally accepted. This common good was
the standard which regulated all conduct. Common goals were
enforced on the individuals as his ends. Tribal emblems, symbols,
insignia, implements, rites, and cults existed for the individual
exemplification of customs of the tribe. The respect for the aged
as the embodiment of these customs grew through these rites to
the ancestor worship so universal in primitive peoples. Taboos
are probably the outcome of the group enforcement of custom
upon some individual's tendency to express an individual end.
The whole line of effort was to direct the attention of the indi-
vidual to the tribal goods.
Dewey, Lectures on Moral and Political Philosophy. Unpublished,
1908.
10
The Standard in Primitive Societies
25
The reconciliation between social duty and personal right has
been the desideratum in all stages of human development. Prim-
itive morality must possess the two elements, though not so highly
developed. There must be value appropriated by individuals as
well as a sense of social order through which these rights are
secured.
Certain definite limitations of primitive morality which tended
to give wrong direction to subsequent development may be
summed up under four heads: (1) limited area of moral idea's;
(2) the basis of moral responsibility was wrongly conceived in the
quasi-religious belief in the animistic and magical rites by which
group interests were conserved; (3) the identification of morals
with custom, and of breach of morals with breach of custom,
tending to the ignoring of the central position occupied by char-
acter in the moulding of conduct; (4) accidental acts were not
differentiated from voluntary acts.
Latent in these theories is a recognition of a permanent ten-
dency in the individual, which is one way of implying the telisis of
a guiding principle or standard.
:
CHAPTER III
REVIEW OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE STANDARD
AND ITS MODE OF FUNCTIONING FROM FIRST
HISTORIC EXPRESSION TO MODERN TIMES
From the studies of primitive peoples, among which studies
might be mentioned those of Westermark, Hobhouse, Sumner,
Spencer, Andrew Lang, and from the researches of historic ,
peoples by such men as Wundt, Waitz, Ladd, and Jowett, the
statement is forced that religion and morality have developed
simultaneously, that man is essentially a religious being. Theories
have been advanced as to the genesis of this feeling, but all
theories start with the fact as found existing. Several of these
have been met in the chapter on the Genesis of Custom Standards.
The point is this: all concede the fact that no society has been
found without so-called rites that are expressions of belief in a
Power that controls in variously-conceived manner and degree
the destinies of man. Man's relation to this power forms his re-
ligion; this religion is a sanction for codes of behavior which are
expressions of the morality of the race.
These elements, religion and morality, having developed simul-
taneously, were not differentiated until the uncritical acceptance
of traditional morality had been rudely shaken by the disintegra-
tion of social forces. This breakdown of moral sanctions has
inevitably brought about a crucial criticism directed to the dis-
covery of a standard that would hold the dissolving elements to-
gether. The classic instance of this condition is in the breakdown
of the traditional Greek theory of the moral sanctions, of the
divine basis of virtue, and the authoritative supremacy of the law.
In such epochs there is a strong skeptical movement of speculative
thought which gathers into a philosophy the symptoms of disease
in the society affected, and exhibits the cause to be the inadequacy
of existent standards as principles of control.
The common inheritance of moral ideas, the habits of a people,
become the objects of thought and of critical analysis in the sit-
uation. The skeptic asks whence comes this common inheritance
26
Review of Conception of the Standard
27
or stock of moral ideas. Their beginning is obscure. In the his-
tory of the people or race, these moral ideas have been slowly
evolved " by religion, by poetry, by law, having their foundation
in the natural affections and in the necessity of some degree of
truth and justice in a social state."1
The negative movement of thought is not, as some suppose, the
cause of the breakdown of established customs and standards, but
is a reflex of tendenciesactively at work in the social organismi.
The claim may be true that such skeptical philosophy often hastens
the dissolution it attempts to stay. By further invalidating the
mode of control which had operated successfully in previous ages
without offering an adequate substitute, the progress of dissolution
may be accelerated.
Two alternatives for this acceleration of disruption are the
revivifying of the old standard, or the substitution of a new prin-
ciple of control. The most striking instance of the first, a standard
constantly gaining in meaning and power at each vicissitude of
the Jewish people, is found in the Old Testament. Scripture is
full of testimony to the successive re-emergence of the standard
through disaster. “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of
Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion." He will be mindful forever of his cov-
enant." All his commandments are faithful, confirmed forever
and ever, made in truth and equity." "He hath commanded his
covenant forever."
SECTION I
THE EARLIEST TIMES
Judea
The core of Judean ethics is the conception of Conscience, or
Moral Consciousness. Conscience implies the possibility of re-
sistance to the Divine will. This possibility postulates the indi-
vidual soul, and thus confers upon it an independent value, a dig-
nity, we might say, that can never be conceived under a theory
1 See theories of origin given in Chap. II in the present volume.
2 See argument that in a dynamic society, changes are rapid, readjust-
ment necessarily rapid, that men grow careless of always measuring the
force, of estimating values, that standards are discredited. Ross, Social
Psychology.
28
The Concept Standard
that treats the human spirit as merely a transient mode of the
Universal Spirit. “Wherever the conscience is regarded as re-
vealing a supreme authority, there complete Pantheism becomes
impossible, and individual spirits become of quite infinite signifi-
cance and worth. Looking for the relation between man and God
at the very point where the two most certainly meet; viz., in the
sense of Duty, the Hebrew saw in wilful wrong-doing something
far deeper than vice; he saw sin there, and sin meant the estrange-
ment between God and the Individual soul.”3
“ Him whom to love is to obey and keep His great command."
This identification of his will with that of the One God was still
a possibility for man. The conception of One God imparted and
not gained by thought, left to human reason alone, was broken up
into many measurables”-polytheism. Then to the Hebrew
did God announce himself as the “God of their Fathers.” To
this rude people the conception must be the Mightiest of all. "As
yet God could give to His people no other religion, no other
law than one through obedience to which they might hope to be
happy or through disobedience to which they must fear to be
unhappy. For as yet their regard went no further than this earth."
The Old Testament becomes a history of this early people's strug-
gle to maintain the standard as revealed in external command,
and of the rewards and punishments which Jehovah addressed to
the senses. Thus Revelation became to the race, what some con-
ceive Education to be to the child. “ Moses was sent to the
Israelite people of that time, and his commission was perfectly
adapted to the knowledge, capacities, yearnings of the then
existent Israelitish people.”5 The Divine essence of this Revela-
tion is manifest to succeeding generations in that it contained
nothing that procrastinated the progress of the people to whom
it was given. Much that developing reason was capable of appre-
hending was implicit in its nature. When contact with other
races of different levels forced the consciousness of value of their
spiritual possession, not always immediately, we witness a re-
emergence of their standard with an ever-increasing vigor because
of its enrichment through the implicit becoming explicit. Their
conceptions became "expanded, ennobled, rectified " most con-
8 Hibbert Lectures. 1893. Chas. B. Upton. Pages 244–245.
* Lessing, Education of the Human Race. Page 11.
• Ibid. Page 23.
Review of Conception of the Standard
29
spicuously possibly—“in captivity under the wise Persians," when
the Israelites conceived their God in connection with the “Being
of all Beings" that the Persian reason had evolved : Jehovah
became God.
It has been urged by various writers that the way this action
of God on the individual spirit manifested itself in the Hebrew
conception was defective in that the means was an external com-
mandment. The standard was conceived as being imposed from
without rather than emerging out of the individual con-
sciousness. But as the experience of the Hebrew race became
fuller and richer, the ideal was awakened or elicited from this
experience, was consciously realized as the authority of the
Divinity latently present in the very essence and nature of the soul.
This did not come until later in their history, and the charge
may be true that the concentration of all intense interest on the
moral and spiritual relation of each particular soul to the Divine
source, led to comparative neglect of the objective cosmos. A
greater recognition of this might have lifted the plane of activity
to a level nearer the Source.
Mackenzie speaks of the readily traced development from cere-
monial law, through the Ten Commandments, to the deep and
more inward principles represented by the Psalms and the later
prophets, reaching finally the principle of love in Christianity.
But in this line of development “the deeper principle is always
formulated by the voice of some prophet speaking more or less
definitely in the name of the Lord." The idea of divine law
remains fundamental throughout. Even when the inner principle
of Christianity is set against the external rules of the older
system, it still appears in the form of a definite enactment-a
· New Commandment.' " It was said by them of old time,
But I say unto you." The appeal is still to an au-
thoritative law. Surely no standard of antiquity has proved its
vitality so well, or so clearly demonstrates the features of the
moral judgment as set forth by Mackenzie.?
(1) It develops from customs, through law, to reflective
principles.
(2) It develops from the judgment on external acts to the judg-
ment on the inner purpose and character.
*
Lessing, Education of the Human Race.
? Mackenzie. Ethics. Page 126.
30
The Concept Standard
(3) It develops from ideas peculiar to the circumstances of
particular tribes and nations to ideas that have a universal
validity.
Greece
Plato's standard is evolved in his theory of ideas. The Idea
is the pattern the mind possesses as a manifestation of the Logos.
The idea of all ideas is the idea of Good-identified with the
Logos. This is conceived as the one in the Many, the Same in
the Other : it is the universal, the World-Soul. The only existence
or reality that we can perceive or know is a unity that includes
difference, a multiplicity that is nevertheless a unity. These con-
ceptions all express the principle that all existence, the world
itself, must be regarded as a combination of an ideal element, that
element which alone can be truly known or thought, and the
inatter or formless element which is necessary to temporal and
spatial existence, the presence of which makes it impossible to
know any concrete thing completely. The many ideas thus con-
ceived in the synthesis of Form or Limit and Unformed or Un-
limited, are differentiations of the all-inclusive Idea of Good.
The Idea in Greek usage is associated always in some way
with unity; as the idea of the mind itself--the mind being that
which unifies the multiplicity of sense; 8 as the idea in each thing,
the essential element by which alone it is possible to compare it,
classify it. Without ideas, the world lacks coherence. A person
without them is borne on the wings of opinion. Such a one is
described as a man that may be said " to know and not to know
at the same time," or again as not one at all but rather many
and infinite as the changes that take place in him.” But let this
person attain to reality through ideas, and he will be able to dis-
cern the One in the Many, the whole in the all. The supreme
idea is the ideal or perfect form of knowledge which would render
intelligible the whole of reality.”10 “The greatest and noblest
truths have no outward images of theniselves visible to men.”'11
It is by means of this idea that man is able to see beyond him-
self, to discern the common good of all, which as an absolute
8 Plato's Psychology in its Bearing on the Will. Mind. April, 1908.
Page 195
9 Thecetetus. 194 B. 199
10 Plato's Psychology in its Bearing on Will. Mind. Page 196.
11 Politctus. 285. E.
Review of Conception of the Standard
31
standard determines the true nature of all with which he has
to do.12 Plato shows how this notion of an absolute standard can
be attained. Through the study of number the mind is drawn
away from the things of sense to the universal and permanent.
The constant dialogue of the Mind with itself (dialectic), by
which the essence of a thing is comprehended, and consequently
its relation to the whole, enables man to get that grasp of reality
which alone is self-sufficing and complete. The Idea or Form
of the Good is at once the standard of reason, and the aim or
end at which every creature aims, for “it is the nature of the
soul's activity to grasp the truth, to do everything for the sake
of it.” It is the motive of conduct, actively seeking realization
in act.
There is no more drifting when reason takes the helm."13
If the motive be the Idea of the Good, only then will the means
be rightly chosen; if not, the separate acts or resolutions have no
standard to guide them and the life aiming at no clear end, is
the sport of chance.14 Self-mastery is discussed in the Laws,
and in the Charmides, and seems to be determined by self-knowl-
edge. The attainment to it then must be through a conscious
development of mind, brought about by the earnest striving for
the truth through reflection. Plato continually emphasizes the
necessity of knowing anything fully. To understand anything
fully, it must be known in more than its material conditions:
they are merely con-causes." (Timaeus 46 D.). It must be
known from the point of view of its end: the Idea determining
particular existence is eventually referable to the all-inclusive
Idea of the Good (Republic) or the Will of the Creator (in the
Timaeus).
“The Creator desired that all things should be as like unto
himself as possible. This is, in the truest sense, the origin of
becoming and of the universe, as we shall do well in believing
on the testimony of wise men.
And when the Father
who begat it perceived the created image of the eternal Gods
that it had motion and life he was well pleased and in his joy
bethought him to make it more nearly like its pattern. So he
bethought him to make a moving image of eternity”—becoming
12 Republic. VII. 517 C.
18 Plato's Psychology in its Bearing on Will. Mind. Page 199.
1.9 cf. Rep. VÍI, 519
C., 561 B., Referred to in Mind, April, 1908. Page
See Chap. I of this present volume.
*
200.
32
The Concept Standard
sud-
in Time. Thus the soul is conceived as having more of the One
and less of the Many, than anything else in the Universe. Every-
thing in the world is made after the pattern of ideas: the product
in some way determining the process. In none of the Greek
philosophers is it so easy to determine the principle that acts as
universal standard. This universal standard differentiating, de-
termines the standards of beauty, harmony, order, law.
In the Symposium the supreme principle assumes the guise of
beauty. The fusion of the ideas of the good and the beautiful
in the Greek theory of Art, would form a treatise in itself. Suffice
it to say at this point that it is difficult to determine which is
inclusive of the other—as the two seem seldom dissociated. The
excellence of human life seemed to demand the identification of
the good with the beautiful. The progress of him aspiring to the
conception of the beautiful must be through appreciation of con-
crete forms embodying progressively more of the one, and less
of the many, until when he comes toward the end he will
denly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this Socrates is
the final cause of all our former toils), a beauty absolute, separate,
simple, and everlasting which without diminution and without
increase or any change is imparted to the evergrowing and perish-
ing beauties of all other things. *
Remember how in
that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind,
he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty but realities
(for he has not hold of an image but of a reality) and bringing
forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and
be immortal, if mortal man may.”
Before leaving the consideration of Plato's standard as the Idea
of the Good—there must be noted in him, a desire to give embodi-
ment of his ideal, so that the idea might have compelling force.
The difficulties present themselves in offering a standard for most
men, and the necessity is conceived in the Meno and in the
Republic, of discovering one who is capable of educating states-
“ If there be such a one he may be said to be among the
living what Homer says that Tiresias was among the dead : ‘He
alone has understanding, but the rest flit as shades, for he in
respect of his excellence will be like a reality among shadows."
(Meno, 99 B—100 A.) Such was Socrates to Plato. It is easy
to believe with him, because it is a never-ceasing source of wonder
to the heirs of succeeding centuries of wisdom that the potentiality
*
*
inen.
Review of Conception of the Standard
33
of man could have been realized to the degree it was in Socrates.
He seemed to have divined the truth of coming ages so completely
as to become its manifestation. His complete abandonment to the
pursuit of what he considered the Good of life, made him not only
a prophet of the best of coming ages, but the embodiment of his
vision. He himself seemed the standard to many of his followers.
Plato, Aristotle,—these names associated for all time with the
sources of that stream of thought that for twenty-five centuries
has expressed the meaning and destiny of the western world-
suggest at once one of the two great channels in which it has
flowed. Sand bars and green island divide, broad shining shal-
lows link together, but the deep currents lie apart, here one limpid
with the blue of heaven, yonder one brown with the soil of earth.
We call these streams by various names as they flow down between
the banks of centuries, they widen, they narrow, they grow shal-
lower, they deepen. The blue catches more of heaven's own
color, and again it fades pale; the brown waters shimmer under
some wind-swept sky like burnished metal. Astonishing change
and variety everywhere appear, but no man confuses the two
main currents. For these two currents are figures of the two
fundamental types of human thought. The one type represents
the experience of man with his ideas and ideals, the other his
experience with the world of sense."15 The blue catches heaven's
own color in Plato's thought. Because at once so deep and wide,
broad, shining shallows link the two streams in Aristotle's time,
and the blue fades pale that carried Plato's thought. Still no one
confuses the current: the brown waters from the shallows have
still the blue, the men can gaze at the softened tone and wonder
whether it is of earth or of heaven. For Aristotle made concrete
Plato's conceptions. There is more of "the soil," the things of
sense, in Aristotle's philosophy. Aristotle attempted to rationalize
the existent order. Plato had tried to interpret the particular by
the universal; Aristotle reversed the process. To deal with these
particulars, Aristotle constructed a logic which enabled the human
mind to pass by means of middle terms from the particular to
the more general. Hence back of Aristotle's logic, is the fact
that all that rests on universal truth : "that all knowledge whether
'deductive' or inductive' is arrived at by the indispensable aid
18 Democracy and Prophetic Idealism.
1907, Stanford. Edward Lambe Parsons.
Phi Beta Kappa Address,
34
The Concept Standard
of general propositions."18 Through this reasoning, Aristotle
dealt with Greek life as it was. The goods are those of Greek
life. The ideal he proposes is not an abstract ideal, or one that
appears in violent contrast with the customs of his time. It
is an ideal born, so to speak, of what was actual, in harmony
with Greek life and adapted to its form of government and
classes of society."'17 His doctrine of the inean is the essence
of concreteness. The whole of morality so called consists in
willing to observe in all things, the due mean, and in actually
observing it. The aim of life is neither to keep the gaze directed
on some abstract ideal of goodness, “nor to sink into the selfish
individualism of the Cynic, but to realize our human nature as
members of society, in all the ways in which psychological analysis
shows it right to be realized."
In working out this idea of realization, his general principle of
activity is discerned. Everything in the universe is striving for
realization. This becoming is the process in which potentiality
(dunamis) is transformed continually into activity (energeia).
From the lowest types of inorganic life, through the vegetative
and animal world, through the varying degrees of man's poten-
tiality, this force is at work. Its higher manifestation is in man's
rational life; its highest in speculative thinking. The teleology
of Aristotle regards the end of a thing as realized in full per-
fection of itself.
This immanent principle, itself static, controls the cosmos;
makes it a universe. Into this conception, self-realization as man's
end may be thought of as the standard. But Aristotle constantly
repeats that the virtuous man is the rule and measure of the
Good. In the case of this ideal man it is not opinion (as with
"most men ") that decides, but right reason realized and living
in him. “Being truly man, he is pleased with what ought to
please him, he distinguishes clearly the good from the evil, he
is the rule and measure of things."'18 But Aristotle reasons: We
are to measure man by his characteristic function, that which is
special or dominant in a thing being always the end for which
it came into being. Man's characteristic function is ability to
draw inferences by the aid of middle terms—to reason. Man
10 Wallace, Outlines of Aristotle. Page 1o.
17 Janet, Problems of Philosophy. Page 20.
18 Janet. Page 18ff.
Review of Conception of the Standard
35
has two ends: the application of practical reason and the applica-
tion of pure reason. In the first his activity is in the exercise of
practical intelligence on things immersed in matter and subject
to the incalculable influence of necessity and chance. This
activity constitutes" happiness for man." This lower or purely
human happiness is the end of conduct or practical life—of mor-
ality as he defines it. But in the exercise of pure reason on the
data of necessary truth—is perfect happiness, an exceptional
state—for the rare man, and for him only in rare moments. This
contemplation transcends our sensible nature, and partakes of the
nature of the Divine. Our passions are an obstacle to this state,
which lies in intelligence alone. The "moral virtues" govern
our sensible nature, hence the moral life is the promise and
manifestation of the intellectual or divine life. To the extent
that reason enters into the control of the sensible nature, it is
then at once a manifestation and a promise of absorption or con-
templation of divine life, immortality. So in spite of the asser-
tion that the “ virtuous man" is the standard, he is the embodi-
nient of the standard, that principle of activity whose latent
potentiality is further actualized in the rare moments of the
rare man in contemplation.
The Stoic "Law of Nature” as Standard
"Socrates sat for the portrait of the Stoic sage; the Stoics
strove earnestly to build up their inner man after the pattern
of the virtuous wise man, whose lineaments they borrowed from
the transfigured and lofty form of Socrates."10 Regarding them-
selves as followers of Socrates, in making virtue the highest good,
the Stoics nevertheless introduced important modifications into
Greek philosophy. Their logic differs from that of Plato and
Aristotle in denying the objective reality of Concepts. The view
they take is largely that known in the Middle Ages as Nominal-
The concept is purely subjective, formed by a process
of abstraction. “The individual as such is the only thing which
has real existence; the universal concept is a purely subjective
product of the process of thought.” Genera are merely conceptions
of ours and nothing real.21 Concepts are deprived of all relation
ism.20
10 Noack, Psyche, V. I, 1862, Page 13. Quoted in Ueberweg, I. 187.5
20 . Page 193:
21 Stockel, History of Philosophy, Part I, page 135. Translated by
T. A. Finlay.
36
The Concept Standard
to the essential being of things, and are thus reduced to mere
generalized sensuous perceptions. Only a judgment, never a
conception, can have truth. The Stoics occupied themselves with
the question of a criterion of truth. This they found in the
Apprehension: this is attained when the object is represented with
such clearness and force that the truth of the representation can-
not be denied.
" The leading power or governing part of the soul is for them
not only that which makes perceptions, out of excitation of the
individual organs of sensation, but also that which by its assent
(in the judgment) transforms excitations of the feelings into
activities of the will."22
The highest purpose of human life is not contemplation but
action, which is living according to Nature. Nature as the Stoic
conceived it, is used in a sense to include not only natural law
as we know it, but also eternal and divine law. In nature this
law manifests itself. All things in the universe are measured
by this law: it is the standard to which human action inust con-
forin if man would fulfil the purpose of his existence. The
fundamental law of human conduct may be expressed in the
formula: Thou shalt live according to Nature, i. e., according
to the Divine Law which manifests itself in Nature."23 Virtue
is its own end, the supreme good of men; it in itself is sufficient
for happiness. There must be immanent in man as part of
Nature that which can identify itself with the general law of all.
" Light is apprehended by the luminous eye, sound by the aeri-
form ear, and the nature of the All by the related logos in us."24
This Universal Nature is the creative cosmic
nic power, which
permeates the world as an all-pervading breath, -as the soul
and reason of the All,-and contains the rational germs of all
things. The World Thought is acting according to ends. Man's
morality consists in subordination to this law, to eternal neces-
sity. To act according to the "Law of Nature
Law of Nature” meant with
them the opposite of what it meant in later times. Passion was
a term with them that included all the cravings of sense, the
: appetites and desires. He who did not wait for the affirmation,
22 Windelband, History of Philosophy..
28 Stockl, I. Page 140.
24 Posidonius. Quoted in Ueberweg Ancient and Mediaeval Philosophy.
Page 192.
Review of Conception of the Standard
37
or apprehension, the voice of reason, but acted in accord with
passion, was acting contrary to Nature, which is most nearly
defined as Reason. Emotion is an accompaniment of failure to
act according to Nature; Emotionlessness is the goal. “If man
cannot hinder fate from preparing for him pleasure and pain,
he may nevertheless by esteeming the former as not a good, and
the latter as not an evil, keep the proud consciousness of his
self-sufficiency."25
The possession of reason prevents him from being the play-
thing of circumstance. This withdrawal of the individual per-
sonality within itself, this discriminaton of the moral from the
agreeable, is an essential characteristic of the Stoic ideal. Not
altogether paradoxical is this part of the Stoic ideal, and the
part that regards man as under obligation to lead a social life.
"As parts of the same one World-reason, gods and men together
form one great rational living structure, every individual a neces-
sary member.” A realm of reason embracing all its members is
an ideal goal. This modification of Greek philosophy was largely
the product of their effort to adapt it to the many. To translate
into conduct the Socratic ideal of virtue, was the main problem
for the Stoics. The philosophic formulation became a valued
possession of the iron statesmen of republican Rome. Duty,
the feeling of responsibility, strict consciousness of the ought,
recognition of a higher order, gives to their doctrine as to their
life, backbone and marrow.
The recognition of no mean between Virtue and Vice by the
earlier Stoics changed in later times to the consideration of
gradation of goods and to the correlative gradation of duties.
Improvement is substituted for the absolute opposition between
Virtue and Vice.
This school of Stoics formulated probably the best expression
of the tendency of the time to the practical wisdom of life though
“with all the clearness and impressiveness of one-sidedness.”27
The fundamental tendency was individual ethics: the right appre-
ciation of the good things of life was its essential object. A sort
of social-ethical principle pervaded the times.28 The logic and
26 Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 168ff.
** Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 172.
27 Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 159.
» Windelband, History of Philosophy. Page 159.
926
38
The Concept Standard
ethics of Stoicism contain much that enters into the logical and
ethical discussions of the present. The social-ethical principle,
the brotherhood of man, is taught to-day again from the phil-
osophical standpoint. The Nominalism of the Stoic logic has a
curiously familiar aspect, with its emphasis on the reality of the
particular; its criterion of truth is the affirmation of the object
in the critical judgment; its idea of the concept as mere gen-
eralized sensuous perceptions. The moral sayings of Epictetus,
Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius are too well known to mention as
adding to the feeling of being at home with many of the Stoic
doctrines. If one could add to the Stoic conception the critical
control of the perceptive judgment secured by modern science,
the logic would warrant the substitution of modern individualistic
control of facts for the self-sufficiency idea of the Stoic. The
modern idea might be interpreted as control by the self, rather
than control of the self.
To sum up the Stoic contribution in relation to the standard:
it is they, probably, more than any other merely philosophic
school of thought that elevated an ideal (their conception of the
Law of Nature) as a standard above the will of legislators,
whether despotic or popular. The self-containment, or self-
reliance of the Stoic, and his universalism are correlative to a
high degree. The wise man learned to contain himself and to
bow to the universal order of things, "as the disposer of things
has disposed them.” “Reasoning on such lines as these, from
their conception of Nature as one Cosmos, animated by One
God, the father of all mankind, the Stoics arrived at the idea of
a Law of Nature prescribing the freedom, equality, and brother-
hood of mankind, overriding all distinctions of class, and race,
and nation, prescribing good faith and mutual obligation, even
when there was no law."29 This was an active principle and
may be said to determine the policy that Rome pursued with her
colonies. The catholic and humane principles of Stoicism made
possible that recognition of the right of the conquered to achieve
their development along their own lines. The Common law seems
a manifestation of the same catholicity of conception: that sift-
ing of the cosmopolitan elements of control from the various
conquered peoples. It must be to the lasting fame. of Stoicism
29 Hobhouse, II, 204.
Review of Conception of the Standard
39
that it can claim the following conception of one of the best
Emperors: that government "should provide a constitution of
equal laws ordered in accordance with equality and equal freedom
of speech, and a Kingship honoring above all things the freedom
of those who are ruled." That this ideal was not reached, does
not invalidate the fact that there must be much in a philosophy
that produced such standards. There is a value, say what you
will, of the "high which proved too high, the heroic for earth
too hard.” Even the extreme, where man's hypocrisy disregarded
what it was expedient not to deny, revolting though this must
be, was a hint of better things.
Hobhouse sums up the contributions of Greek philosophy in-
cluding its later Graeco-Roman development as the following:
(1) Moral obligation was founded on the well-being of the indi-
vidual: virtue was not an emptying but a fulfilment of the
personality: it reconciled self-realization or development with
the demands of citizenship in a free city and state; and (2) from
the Stoics it conceived an ideal standard of conduct applicable
to all mankind, not subordinate but superior to state law, an
ideal to which social as well as individual custom should be
made to conform
It is evident that these were contributions, because of their
subsumption in Christianity and because also we can trace the
idea of “a Law of Nature from the common reason' of
Heraclitus and the 'natural justice' of Aristotle, through the
Roman Jurisprudence and the Canon Law to Grotius and Hobbes
and from them to Locke and Rousseau."30 It is true without
doubt that Greek ethical ideas and standards have been very
recently revived as correctives of real or fancied failures in mod-
ern ideals.
The Contributions of Pagan Philosophy to the Christian Ideal
With these contributions from Greek philosophy subsumed in
Christian theology, there was much that was essentially religious.
The abiding essence of things, the whole system of Plato's
reality, was a spiritual conception seen most strongly as a re-
ligious one, in the Timaeus. The spiritual monotheism of Aris-
totle was but a development and transmission of the Platonic
idealism. There was much in the Stoic conception of the pneuma
30 Hobhouse, II, 207.
6
40
The Concept Standard
and the logos, much in the recognition of a command transcend-
ing human desire, that was a fertile substratum for Christian
doctrine. So completely had the profound thought of Greek
philosophy imbedded itself in the civilization of the time, that
permanent satisfaction meant satisfaction of feelings and intel-
lect. The "afterglow” of custom-standards that furnished the
opposite pole to Greek thought and made its activity possible,
had been so transmuted by the marvelous alchemy of the Pla-
tonic and Aristotelian systems, that man's mental existence hence-
forth demanded the rational as a necessary mode of its activity.
Hence the marvelous development of religious metaphysics that
the early Christian era afforded. In Alexandria, the resort of
Jewish savant and Greek philosopher, developed the Graeco-Ori-
ental philosophy, which was essentially a philosophy of religion.
" It made use of philosophical concepts and principles only for
the purpose of giving philosophic form and establishing by phil-
osophic proof, what it rightly or wrongly regarded as primeval
religious tradition."31
This religion had a practical as well as theoretic aim. Cor-
ruption of the grossest kind had undermined the religious and
moral life of society. Faith in the old religions was fast dis-
appearing, religious doctrines and ritual were objects of mock-
ery, and frivolity and vice prevailed.32 The efforts of religious
philosophers were exerted in gathering the elements of truth
found in conflicting philosophies, into a comprehensive system.
To make this system life-giving to the decadent civilization, the
strain of mysticism formed a considerable part. “To reform
religion, man it was believed should be again brought into close
communion with God.” Mystical asceticism is but a logical
emergence of the union of Greek and Oriental philosophy. The
Platonic and Aristotelian attitude toward the economic world,
the Stoic independence of wants are easily tributary to asceticism.
Again in Plato's absorption in the absolute, and in Aristotle's
picture of complete happiness in contemplation we have the
essence of mysticism. Mystical asceticism could well have been
evolved from the Greek alone, but when brought into contact
with the mysticism of the East, in an age where many revelled
31 Stockl, (Translated by Finlay). History of Ancient Philosophy
Part I, page 160.
33 Ibid.
Review of Conception of the Standard
41
in surfeit in the midst of millions deprived of sufficiency, it is
easily seen that such a doctrine would flourish, finding eventually
its best expression in Philo whose life extended over the last
part of the first century B. C. and the first part of the first
century A. D. The combination of Greek philosophy with
Jewish theology was in operation from the second century B. C.
In the last named of the three Jewish sects formed in that cen-
tury, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Theraputae,33 are
found the first beginnings of Graeco-Jewish Philosophy.
A consideration of the evolution of the Christian standard
requires an insight into Philo's idea of the Logos.
The world is the work of God, but the world is not God. The
world came mediately from God: it was not fitting that He, the
supremely Pure, should come in immediate contact with matter.
He created it by His Logos (Word).34 The sum-total of divine
activity in the world is35 designated by the Stoic conception of
the Logos-Reason as coming forth from the Deity (" uttered
Reason ”). It might be in keeping here to show the influence
of these conceptions on the promulgation of Christ's teachings
by this text from the Gospel of St. John: "In the beginning was
the Word: and the Word was with God: And the Word was
God: the same that was in the beginning with God.”
“In man we distinguish between the indwelling reason, which
is the active faculty of thought, and the extrinsic word, in which
thoughts finds expression." An analogous distinction may be
applied to the divine Logos,—the aggregate of all ideas indwell-
ing in the mind of God, and the ectypes, the things created, the
outward expression of those ideas.
Again this Logos is the power that gives form to matter, as
the architect of the universe, working from within outwards,-
the universal cosmical law, the universal World-Reason which
pervades and governs all things, which guides and controls the
course of the universe. In this last conception of the Logos,
we recognize the standard which in Philo's philosophy meas-
ures, controls, governs all things. Windelbandse sees in Philo's
conception at once the immanence and transcendence of God:
88 Stockl. Page 163.
84 Stockl. Page 165.
36 Windelband. Page 241.
90 Windelband. Page 242.
42
The Concept Standard
“the Logos as the God within the world is the 'dwelling place
of the God without the world ”–unity existing in separate
potencies.
With regard to human cognition Philo distinguishes between
that which concerns itself with sensible objects, the reasoning fac-
ulty (Logos), and the faculty of immediate intellectual contempla-
tion (nows). The knowledge obtained by the reasoning faculty
is uncertain and unstable; perfect certainty is attained only by
intellectual contemplation. God alone can bestow the knowl-
edge of contemplation, and He bestows it when we pray for
it through the Logos."37 The highest attainment is only possible
in mystical ecstasy. It is necessary to notice that Philo recognizes
logical subdivisions of the universal Logos or Reason, regarded
in its moral aspect as right reason.' The latter is the all-
inclusive rule of virtuous conduct; the Logoi are the several rules
or laws into which it may be resolved, the divine precepts which
must have severally their corresponding virtues.''38
To sum up, the Logos is the Thought of God dwelling sub-
jectively in the infinite Mind, made objective in the universe.
“ The cosmos is a tissue of rational force, which images the
beauty, the power, the goodness of the primeval fountain." The
reason of man is this same rational force entering into conscious-
To follow it is the law of righteous living.
Through reflection, each according to his capacity may divine the
Logoi, particular laws, particular rules of conduct from the
universal
The system of Philo covers many diverse notions, so that in
the early Christian Era we find borrowings from Philo on opposing
sides of the controversies. His allegorical interpretations of parts
of Scripture had a lasting effect. His interpretation of the Fall
of Man may be cited as an instance. It is because of the influence
of Philo on the philosophy of the Patristic Age of Christianity
that the above account is given. In a study of Philo, the
impression is continually strengthened that the products of his
eclecticism are found in many of the philosophical conceptions
extending to modern times. In his mysticism is seen the begin-
*
*
ness.
87 Stockl. "Page 168.
3* Drummond, Philo Judaeus or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy.
II, Page 272.
Review of Conception of the Standard
43
nings of Neo-Platonism; in his treatment of the Logos, the
parallelism with Spinoza.
The Mystical Asceticism of Plotinus
Plotinus conceives the highest good to consist in mystical
asceticism, which as we have seen can only be attained by with-
drawal of the soul from the things of sense.
The source of
evil is the body, because it is composed of matter. The soul is
individualized in its union with the body. The essence of evil
is the assertion of this individuality of the soul, against the uni-
versal existence with which it has its being. The essence of
good is in the merging of the soul in the universal. All practice
is for the sake of theory, and "the wise man is blessed in his .
self-proficiency even if no one should see his blessedness. 39
The system of Plotinus is an intricate one a theory of ema-
nation as distinguished from evolution. This system of emana-
tion is characteristic of the whole school of Neo-Platonism. This
doctrine shows the Christian attitude in rejecting all" compro-
mise with sensual self-seeking, and has faith in a reality deeper
than phenomenal nature, deeper than civic or natural relations,
deeper even than mind." Like Plato's Idea of the Good, it is
above existence; like Aristotle's Unity or Primal God, it is above
reason, and above the life of the world. The last two principles
Bosanquet identifies with Aristotle's "intelligence," and with the
Stoic universal life.” These emanate from the Divine mind,
and hence are inferior to it. This “ adherence to the axiom
of subordination, that the derived is below the original, dis-
tinguishes Neo-Platonism from a true evolutionary doctrine,
such as was latent though not at all obvious in Christianity." 40 In
connection with Plotinus' conception of the highest principle it
is consistent to mention his theory of the Beautiful. Beauty
to him was a direct expression of reason in sense: “ All that
symbolizes in sensuous or material form the laws or reasons
eternally active in the world has a right to rank as beautiful."
He regarded the prevalent idea that symmetry is a necessary
category of the beautiful as inadequate. He emphasized the
importance of light. The portrait painter must aim to catch
the look of the eye as the mind reveals itself in it more than
30 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic, P. II2ff.
Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic, P. 112.
i
40
44
The Concept Standard
in the conformation of the body. “A beautiful material thing
is produced by participation in reason issuing from the Divine."41
The conception of art as perfection of cunning in imitation is
changed to one of symbolism. Material beauty is an image ema-
nating from reason, in which the soul recognizes an affinity to
itself in participation in reason and form. The theory excludes
all desire for the sensuous reality, and in being a direct expres-
sion of reason in sense, is co-ordinate with morality, not subordi-
nate as in previous theories.
Influence of Philo and Plotinus on Early Christian Philosophy
As has been stated, Philo's complex and varied conceptions
concerning the Divine Logos became tributary to the contro-
versies concerning Christ's doctrines in the first and second cen-
turies. The outcome of the controversies was Christian philos-
ophy. Philo's methods, being those of synthesis of two philoso-
phies, lent themselves to the highly synthetic philosophy of early
Christianity. The Gnostics, on the one hand, reject Judaism,
and on the other, use Philo's method of assuming esoteric teach-
ing, as the authority underlying their philosophy. The Apolo-
gists accept much of the doctrine of Philo as part of the founda-
tion of the philosophy of the Logos, as well as some of his theories
of revelation.
The Neo-Platonists continued the Hellenic philosophy, endeav-
oring to oppose Greek theology to the Christian. Though failing
in this purpose, Hellenic philosophy became one of the chief
means of transmitting the doctrines of Christ. The mystic con-
ception based on Plato's and Aristotle's doctrine of contempla-
tion as the highest end, intensified as it was by influences from
the East, and best conceived as an immediate illumination of
the individual, by the Deity, found its expression in the idea of
Divine Grace and in the ecstasy of prayer. This influence showed
itself also in strengthening the conception of Jewish prophetic
revelation, inasmuch as the abandonment of all activity in the
ecstasy, makes man a direct instrument of revelation, an inspired
prophet of divine wisdom. The development of the idea that
church doctrine is a fulfilment of prophecy gave rise eventually
to its highest manifestation in the scholasticism of the Middle
41 Bosanquet. P. 114.
Review of Conception of the Standard
45
Ages, while the development of the Neo-Platonic idea of immer-
sion in the Divine essence found full expression in the mysticism
of the same period.
The Christian doctrine of free will finds an incipient revela-
tion in Aristotle's idea of capacity in the individual to choose
between given possibilities. This conception substituted for the
dualism between good and evil the purely internal one of conflict
between the Finite and Infinite Will.
In the resultant Christian Philosophy there is an historical
teleology added through the well-ordered succession of God's acts
of revelation to the Greek idea of nature's teleology. Nature
exists for man; history exists for man. The history of the sal-
vation of the human race is the measure of all finite things.
Man's realization of his relation to the Infinite is the end and
aim of creation. “What arises and passes away in space and
time has its true significance only in so far as it is taken up into
the relation of man to his God."42 Being and becoming, beauty,
goodness, truth unite with love and faith as Man's conception
of means of realizing the end of his existence. Experiences of
personalities, controlled by the principle of love, and by faith in
the solidarity of the whole, become the essence of world-move-
ments. Not alone Philo and Plotinus, but Heraclitus, Pythagoras,
Zeno, Aristotle, and Plato were potent influences in the forma-
tion of the philosophy of the Patristic Age.
The Christian Doctrine of the Logos
The central doctrine of the Christian philosophy was inevitably
the doctrine of the Divine Logos incarnate. Philo who wrote
under the influence of the revelation in the Old Testament made
the Logos a kind of personality - extraneous to the Godhead.43
Christian doctrine asserted the personality of the Logos, the Son
of God, identical in nature with the Father from all eternity,
become incarnate to bring mankind from darkness into light,
from death to salvation. For the first time in human history
did the active principle of the brotherhood of man become a
spring of life to humanity. The Divine came within the compre-
hension of all men. The Incarnate God had lived, and suffered
as men live and suffer. Such a God was real, and what had
42 Windelband, Hïstory of Philosophy, P. 262.
43 Stockl. P. 194.
46
The Concept Standard
44
been a philosophic ideal for the few, became an active principle
within all life. This conception of God as spiritual personality
was one of tremendous energy. Persons and personal relations
were all of Reality. The world had never witnessed the power,
or strength of so compelling an idea. The Divine Sonship of
Man was a personal relation -- a living, breathing relationship
as children of God, because Christ was man.
The Christian teachers were so deeply imbued with the spirit
of Christianity that its expression assumed diverse formis whose
unifying force was the tremendous energy of the faith with a
love whose essence was communication. The triumphant spread
of the Gospel, its purifying effect, and the conspicuous purity
of life in the Christian communities in the midst of general cor-
ruption were the strongest arguments in favor of Christianity.
But from zeal and necessity both, these earnest teachers called
to their aid philosophy. The first of the Apologists was Justin,
trained in the various philosophical schools: a Stoic, a Peri-
patetic, a Pythagorean, a Platonist, successively, then a Christian.
It is nothing extraordinary that Justin culled from these philo-
sophies the elements most conducive to the furtherance of Christi-
anity. In the Christian system, he claims, the Divine Logos has
manifested Himself in the flesh and therefore in Christianity is
the fulness of truth. “But even in pre-Christian times, the Logos
was not wholly unrevealed. He was revealed as the omnipresent
in works of creation as well as in human reason, which is reason
only in so far as it participates in the Divine Logos. This Logos
enabled the philosophers and poets of antiquity to attain knowl-
edge of the truth. Whatever truth they possessed and set forth
in their writings they owed to the Logos. The measure of their
knowledge was deterinined by their participation in the Logos;
hence their knowledge of truth was only partial and they were
frequently involved in self-contradictions. The fulness of truth
was revealed only in the Incarnate Logos."'45 By this concep-
tion, the "truth taught by the philosophers and poets of paganism
is essentially Christian.” It follows also that those who before
the Incarnation lived according to reason, i. e., "according to
the Law of the Logos which manifests itself in reason, were
Christians, even though they were esteemed atheists by their con-
44 Windelband.
46 Stockl. P. 215.
Review of Conception of the Standard
47
temporaries. Such were Socrates, Heraclitus and others among
the Greeks, and Abraham, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, Elias and
others among outer nations. These were, however, the privi-
leged few: the knowledge of God and of His law was first made
general by the Incarnate Logos.
Justin claimed that the Greeks had knowledge of the law of
Moses. “The doctrine of free will, Plato borrowed from Moses,
and he was furthermore acquainted with the whole of the Old
Testament. Moreover, all that the philosophers and poets have
taught regarding the immortality of the soul, punishment after
death, the contemplation of things divine and kindred subjects,
was derived in the first instance from the Jewish prophets; from
this one source the seeds of truth have been sent forth in all
directions, though at times being wrongly apprehended by men,
they have given rise to differences of opinion.” 47
Justin accounts (as do all the orthodox Apologists) for evil
as the result of man's deliberate action. Free will is man's pre-
rogative.
The Christian Apologists48 unite the Aristotelian conception
of God as pure intellect or spirit with the doctrine that God cre-
ated the world out of shapeless matter. Matter is not an inde-
pendent principle as the Gnostics suppose in their dualistic notion
of God and Matter, hence it is not bad in itself, but good or evil
as man's purposiveness directs. This conception voices itself in
meeting the problem of understanding the world as the product
of spirit. It is a spiritual monism.
Irenaeus strengthens Justin's philosophy (1) in his maintenance
of the eternality of the Logos: (2) in his conception of revelation;
that God revealed himself on constantly higher levels according
to man's ability and need,- to the entire race in rationality, to
the people of Israel in the law of Moses, and to all mankind in
the law of love and freedom through Jesus, (3) and in his recog-
nition of the source of evil as man's deliberate opposition to Divine
will by the surrender to sensual appetites.
Clement of Alexandria about the middle of the second century
ascribed a sum of truth to Greek Philosophy as a revelation
through reason. Plato was to him the most excellent of philoso-
46 Stocki.
P. 215.
47 A pol. 1.
48 Stöckl. P. 222.
44. Quoted in Stockl.
P. 215.
48
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phers. So completely did Clement urge the study of philosophy
that he regarded the Christian Gnostic in comparison with him
who believes without deeper knowledge, as man compared with
child.40
" Philosophy is essentially a gift of the Divine Logos;
the character of a means to the attainment of the Christian
Gnosis can and must be accorded to it; in a right view of Chris-
tianity, it cannot be set aside.” But there is a practical require-
ment also. The man who passes from Faith to Gnosis must
overcome desire and appetite and be upon the path of moral
improvement. The complete mastery of inclination is the chief
characteristic of the Christian Gnostic as in the Stoic Ideal. The
following is the description given of the Christian Gnostic, the
ideal in Clement's philosophy: The Gnostic is united in perfect
and immediate love with Infinite Beauty, and beyond this he
desires nothing. He does not do good from any fear of punish-
ment, nor for any hope of reward, but merely for God's sake
and for the sake of the good done. Even if assured that he
would not be punished for evil deeds, he would not perform such
actions, and this for the sole reason that they are against right
reason, that they are evil. He is not mastered by any inclination
or appetite; only those appetites are admitted in his nature which
are indispensable for the support of bodily life, and they are
satisfied only as far as the support of life requires. Affections
and passions do not disturb his lofty calm of mind; to such influ-
ences he is inaccessible. The entire absence from passion of the
Gnostic raises him to a certain divine condition for in it he
attains to likeness with God. In this state his works are wholly
perfect, for they are performed purely for righteousness' sake. 50
This state is obtained by the chosen few only, but serves as
an ideal for all — something to be emulated. Interesting is the
account of the Christian boy, Origen. His own education and
afterwards his theories of education while instructor, are full of
interest, even now. Gregory's devotion as a pupil has furnished
an account of his principles of education. The character of a
pupil was his special study. He believed in intellectual disci-
pline in the accurate preparation of the instruments of thought.
Language was to be carefully used as the means of expressing
truths with the nicest accuracy. A study of external Nature was
48 Stocki.
50 Stockl.
P. 231.
Review of Conception of the Standard
49
destined in the end to show man in his just relation to the world.61
"A rational feeling for the vast grandeur of the external order,
'the sacred economy of the universe,' was a preparation for moral
science.” Here ethics was life, not a theory. All study was
tributary to character. Gregory says: “There was no subject
forbidden to us; nothing hidden or inaccessible. We were allowed
to become acquainted with every doctrine, barbarian or Greek,
on things spiritual or evil, divine or human, traversing with all
freedom, and investigating the whole circuit of knowledge, and
satisfying ourselves with the full enjoyment of all the pleasures
of the soul.” 52
The method of Origen as Gregory describes it, is determined
by an underlying principle of human nature -- a God-implanted
striving to know the purpose of creation, as revealed in the
ordered creation about us. “This desire, this passion, has without
doubt been implanted in us by God. And as the eye seeks the
light, as our body craves food, so our mind is impressed with the
characteristic and natural desire of knowing the truth of God
and the causes of what we observe." 53 This gift in its nature
anticipates satisfaction. "To every one that hath shall be given,
given, Origen would say, in measure to the use of this desire for
Truth. Each soul draws and takes to itself the Word of God
in proportion to its capacity and faith.54 "The creation of
finite rational beings by the free act of God involved the creation
of a medium through which they could give expression to their
character. It is the spirit that moulds the frame through
which it is manifested. Everything in life becomes worth while,
as a means of realizing the end of human life.
The end of life is with Origen the progressive assimilation of
man to God by the voluntary appropriation of his gifts. Pagan
philosophers had conceived the idea of assimilation, but Origen
vitalized the idea by the living energy of faith. By the unceas-
ing action of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit toward us, renewed
at every stage of our advance, we shall be able with difficulty
at some future time to look on the holy and blessed life.” 68
> 00
61 Paneg.
C. 8.
62 Ibid. C. 15:
53 De Principiis, II, 4.
64 In Cant. “I to III.
65 Westcott, Origen and the Beginnings of Christian Philosophy, P.238.
36 Westcott, Religious Thought in the West, P. 227.
50
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being is “
> 58
Many seeming incongruities in the world's plan could be recon-
ciled, did man have but breadth of vision. The entire range of
one thought " while we that are not all, as parts can
see but parts, now this, now that.” 57
Man's participation is necessary to the fulfilment of the end.
“ Neither does our own power apart from the knowledge of God,
compel us to make progress; nor does the knowledge of God do
so unless we ourselves also contribute something to the good
result."
Unceasingly man's participation is adding to the sum of moral
forces in the world, contributing as a free agent through loving
abandonment to God's plan, his measure to the progress of all.
"God cares not only for the whole, but beyond the whole in an
especial manner for each rational being:"59 Every gift of God
is perfect; God's gift to his rational creatures was not virtue
but the capacity for virtue.
"Right action is not only a necessity for moulding of the
character after the Divine likeness; it is also a necessity for the
progressive reception of the Divine Revelation. Morality in the
largest sense of the word is bound to Theology as a condition of
knowledge.” 60
Much of Origen's idealization of the world of sense was taken
up by the school of philosophers following him, best of all prob-
ably by Gregory of Nyassa. This seems the idea most frequently
associated with Origen's system of Christian doctrine: that the
whole world is a manifestation of the goodness and righteousness
of God in every detail. This conception necessarily idealizes
the world of sense, as a continuous law-revealing means of man's
development.
With Origen the Logos as the sum-total of the world-thoughts
of God is constantly revealing Himself to man in proportion as
man is active in seeking. “The Logos is the hypostatical Wis-
dom of God, and is by the fact the Archetype of all things.
Through the Logos, which in archetypal fashion contains all things
in Himself, are all things created. By this power the universe
exists. He penetrates and permeates the entire creation, giving,
67 De Prin. II 5; 9. 5.
68 De Prin. III.
I, 22.
68 C. Celsus. IV. 99.
80 Westcott. P. 242.
Review of Conception of the Standard
51
being, and maintaining everything. He is the comprehensive force
which embraces and upholds all things. He is the soul of the
universe. To Him is every Revelation due. He is the source
of reason in man; all knowledge of Truth is in the last analysis
attributable to Him." 11
Augustine, “a mind of the first order," has been considered
as one of the founders of modern thought.02 For that reason
he is placed at the beginning of the Mediaeval Philosophy by
Windelband and Erdmann in their Histories of Philosophy. Others,
Ueberweg, Stöckl, place him at the close of the Patristic period.
Inasmuch as convictions of the philosophers of the early Chris-
tian Era are presented in the form of a systematized philosophy,”
Augustine's philosophy of the Christian Church belongs as sum-
mary to the early order or so-called Patristic period. Inasmuch
as it served as the medium through which European people
inherited Greek learning, it might be considered as initiating the
Mediaeval period during which Europe was at school. Augus-
tine's psychology entitles him to the place given him as one of
the founders of modern thought. His conception of the highest
goal of life is that of Plato and Aristotle.
His devotion to philosophy and his exaltation of it in his
theory of knowledge ally him to the ancient world. His recog-
nition of the human soul as a unity, as the living whole of per-
sonality which, by its self-consciousness, is certain of its own
reality as the surest truth, places him above Aristotle, and the
Neo-Platonists.63 This immediate certainty of inner experience
(which Augustine first expressed 04 with complete clearness)
is the principle upon which all his philosophy rests. In interiore
homine habitas veritas 05 is the conception that unifies the com-
ponent ideas of his system, and at the same time animates their
expression. For the skeptic who doubted the external reality of
the content of perceptions, he argues that he at least cannot doubt
the existence of the sensation.
His initial premise, Ego dubito, ergo sum, contains the solid
ground upon which he builds his psychology. This brings him
through Descartes to present-day philosophy. This existence,
61 Stockl. P. 237.
62 Windelband. P. 276.
03 Windelband. P. 278.
64 Windelband. P. 276.
05 Augustine, De Vera Religione, 39–72.
52
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*
*
this power of doubting the evidences of our senses, Augustine
argues could not have been given to us without criteria or stan-
dards of truths to measure and exainine these perceptions. For
this the reason exists - this immediate perception of incorporeal
truths. “Under these Augustine understands, not only the logi-
cal laws, but the norms of the good and beautiful : in general
all those truths not to be attained by sensation, which are neces-
sary to elaborate and judge what is given — the principles of
judging. Such norins of reason assert themselves as standards
of judgment in doubt as in all activities of consciousness
they are the same for all who think rationally
Thus
the individual consciousness sees itself attached in its own func-
tion to something universally valid and far reaching:68
When we reflect upon ourselves, we find in ourselves not only
sensations, but also an internal sense which makes of the former
its objects (for we have knowledge of our sensations, but the
external senses are unable to perceive their own sensations), and
finally reason which knows both the internal sense and itself.
(De Lib, Arb. II, 3 seq.) That which judges is always superior
to that which is judged; but that according to which judgment
is rendered, is also superior to that which judges. The human
reason perceives that there is something higher than itself, for
it is changeable, now knowing, now not knowing, now seeking
after knowledge, now not, now correctly, now incorrectly, judging:
but truth itself which is the norm according to which it judges
must be unchangeable. (De Lib., Arb. II, 6. De Vera Rel.
54, 57. De Civ. Dei., VIII, 6.) If thou findest thy nature to
be changeable, rise above thyself to the Eternal source of the
light of reason. Even if thou only knowest that thou doubtest,
thou knowest what is true, but nothing is true unless truth
exists. (De Vera Rel., 72 seq.) Now the unchanging truth is
God
It is identical with the highest good in virtue
of which all inferior goods are good. (De Trin., VIII, 4.) All
ideas are in God. He is the eternal ground of all form who
imparted to created objects their temporal forms; he is the abso-
lute unity to which all that is finite aspires without ever fully
reaching it, the highest beauty which is superior to and the con-
dition of all other beauty; he is absolute wisdom, blessedness,
*
*
86 De Ver. Rel.
39–72 f.-Also Windelband. P.
P. 278.
Review of Conception of the Standard
53
*
*
*
justice, the moral law.
God is, as was rightly per-
ceived and acknowledged by the Platonists, the principle of being
and knowledge and the guiding-star of life. (Confess, VII, 16.
De Civ. Dei., VIII, 4.) 07
“If a human teacher states any principle to us, we do not
immediately perceive the truth of the principle. We must have
within ourselves a criterion by which we test the truth of the
proposition stated. And this criterion can, for the reason already
griven, be no other than absolute truth itself. The immutable,
eternal Word of God is the teacher of the soul." 08 The knowl-
edge of the intelligible world is for Augustine, essentially, illumi-
nation, revelation.6: The soul will become wise only by partici-
pation in the unchangeable wisdom itself, with which it is not
identical. This participation in Divine Intelligence is through
Divine grace and is granted to man in measure of his moral con-
dition. The whole metaphysical system of Augustine is built up
from man's knowledge of himself — upon his self-consciousness.
As none of the categories are attributable to God, and man's
knowledge of God is altogether beyond definition, the only com-
prehension of the Divine essence possible to man is after the
analogy of human self-knowledge. This may be justified by con-
sidering man to be created in the image of God. The “permanent
existence of spiritual Being is given in the sum-total of the con-
tent of consciousness, or reproducible ideas; its movement and
living activity consists in the processes of uniting and separating
these elements in judgments; and the impelling force is the Will,
directed toward the attainment of highest blessedness." 70 Idea,
judgment, and will are modes of functioning whose unity is the
soul. The central position of the will in the inner life is manifest
in assuming all perception to be essentially an act of the will, all
activity of the inner sense, as well, and finally the activity of the
intellect is formed, completed according to the purposes of the
will, for the will must determine the direction and the end
according to which the data of outer or inner experience are
to be brought under the general truths of rational insight." 71
67 Quoted in Erdmann. P. 340.
88 Stockl.
60 Windelband. P. 281.
70 Windelband. P. 280.
11 Windelband. P. 28I ff.
P. 269.
54
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It is in the cognitions of rational insight that man's abandon-
ment to the will of the Divinity secures the illumination and
revelation that brings that participation in the Divine intelligence
which constitutes truth. Faith then in the Divine Revelation
must precede the knowledge which "appropriates and compre-
hends it intellectually. Full rational insight is indeed first in
dignity, but faith in revelation is the first in time.”
As man has a rational soul, he subordinates all this which he
has in common with the beasts to the peace of his rational soul,
that his intellect may have free play and may regulate his actions,
and that he may thus enjoy the well-ordered harmony of knowl-
edge and action which constitutes, as we have said, the peace
of the rational soul. And for this purpose he must desire to be
neither molested by pain, nor disturbed by desire, nor extinguished
by death, that he may arrive at some useful knowledge by which
he may regulate his life and manners. But owing to the liability
of the human mind to fall into mistakes this very pursuit of
knowledge may be a snarė to him unless he has a Divine Master,
who may at the same time give him such help as to preserve
his own freedom. Because while so long as he is in this mortal
body, he is a stranger to God, he walks by faith, not by sight;
and he therefore refers all peace, bodily or spiritual or both, to
that peace which mortal man has with the immortal God, so that
he exhibits the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law.'
With Augustine, the development of Christian philosophy in
the West came for a time to an end. The barbarian invasions
brought about so complete an overthrow of existing social con-
ditions that time and energy were focused upon the establishment
of the new order. The Christian philosophers retired to the mon-
asteries where they labored long and tirelessly to collect, preserve,
and transmit what portions of intellectual treasure they could
rescue. Claudianus, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore, and Vene-
rable Bede were among those who handed down the inheritance
of learning and prepared the way for the Middle Ages.
72 City of God II, Book XIX.
972
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55
SECTION II
MEDIAEVAL PERIOD
The first of the Mediaeval period was devoted to the schooling
in formal logic. The immediate stimulus was the interpretation
in the translation of Boethius.73
The Augustinian doctrine was that individual objects were
substances in the fullest sense, while species and genera were
such only in a secondary degree, and generic and specific char-
acteristics were predicable of individual substances. The reality
of universals was questioned by the assertion of the last fact.
It was inconceivable to predicate a thing of another thing. Scotus
Erigena combated this by asserting that the truth, and therefore
all being, is to be sought in the universal. This essential reality
in a process of unfolding creates natures or beings with creative
power in themselves. These include the sum-total of prototypes,
ideas, eternal archetypes of things. These ideas are contained in
the Divine Wisdom or Divine Word. Creation is an act of God
by which he passes through the primordial causes or principia
into the world of invisible and visible creatures.74 This proces-
sion is an eternal activity. Scotus says expressly that he affirms
the descent into finite things not only with reference to the incar-
nation, but with reference to all created things or existences.
Our life is God's life in us.75 Universalia ante rem, also Uni-
versalia in re, are the basic principles of this doctrine. This
doctrine is closely allied to that of Plotinus and was regarded
by the opposing school as logical pantheism. God and the
world are one. The same 'Nature' is as creative unity, God,
and as created plurality, the world.” According to this theory,
the more universality the more reality. It is a continuation of
the thought of the Greeks, and involved, as that did, the idea of
worth or value. Perfection was inseparably fused with the con-
- de
NOTE.- Porphyry's Introduction to the categories of Aristotle,
generibus et speciebus - sive subsistant sive in solis nudis intellectihus
posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia an incorporalia, et utrum sepa-
rata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia.”
78 Windelband. P. 288.
74 De Div. Nat. III. 25.
75 De Divis. Nat. I. 78 (De ipsam sancta trinitas in nobis et in se.
ipsa amat. vidit, movet.)
56
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cept of Being 76 From these conceptions in Realism the degree
of universality is the standard.
The Nominalists opposed to this theory of universals, one of
the reality of particulars: only individuals have real existence;
genera and species are merely subjective combinations of simi-
lar elements united by the aid of one and the same concept. Be-
cause universals in their logical significance are predicates, they
cannot be substances. Extreme Nominalism considered the uni-
versal to be the comprehension of many particulars by one name.
This name is the concept, is the universal that serves as a sign
for a multiplicity of substances or their accidents. Universalia
post ren is the basis of extreme Nominalism.
Modifications of these extreme views occurred in the so-called
Indifferentism, a development from Realism, and the doctrine
of Abelard, a development from Nominalism. In the former, the
stages of universality, with their corresponding worths, were
given up, and the idea of real states of one and the same sub-
stratum was adopted. There is a close approach to the “identity
-
in difference" conception in that the genus is present in the
species, the species in its individual examples, indiffentio (not
different). Abelard teaches that universals can be neither things
nor words. The universal is the conceptual predicate, the con-
cept itself, emerging in consciousness,- in judgment. But be-
cause of the uniqueness of its existence as predicate, it is not
without relations to absolute reality.?? There must be something
in the nature of things that we apprehend and predicate in these
universals, which something is the likeness or similarity of the
essential characteristics of individual substances.
Not as
numerical or substantial identity but as a multiplicity with like
qualities, does the universal exist in Nature, and it becomes a
unitary concept which makes predication possible, only when it
has been apprehended and conceived by human thought." This
similarity Abelard traces to the archetypes in the Divine Mind
(noys). Abelard thus unites the conflicting theories by con-
ceiving universalia ante rem as conceptus mentis in God; uni-
versalia in re as the similarity of the essential characteristics of
individuals, and universalia post rem as concepts and predicates
acquired by comparative thought.
70 Windelband. P. 290 ff.
77 Compare Bradley and Bosanquet.
:
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This whole controversy about universals necessarily threw
emphasis upon inner experiences. The Mystics were pre-emi-
nently psychologists with marvelous power of depicting states
and movements of feeling. They are followers of Augustine in
examining the force of the will in these processes, in conditioning
all knowledge in faith, and in regarding final blessedness as mys-
tical contemplation of Divine Love. In the controversy con-
cerning universals as functioning in thought, the keenest analysis
of subject states was persistently pursued with an ever-increasing
interest in the development of ideas. John of Salisbury empha-
sized the Augustinian conception of the soul's activity as ways
of functioning. “He sees in the sensation, and in a higher degree
in perception or imagination, an act of judgment. Emotional
states of hope and fear are attendant upon the union of the new
sensational data with those that are reproduced by imagination.
States of consciousness comprehending these feelings of pleasure
and pain with all their diversifications in the changing states of
life,78 constitute the practical series. In this series the will oper-
ates in comparing and adjusting and affirming opinions, knowl-
edge, and rational conviction. A second series of states of con-
sciousness is occupied by strivings for calm wisdom, — the con-
templative knowledge of the intellect.
In the first of these series John of Salisbury is the prototype
of the English school of associational psychology. He concerns
himself with practical concerns, the active world. “He has the
practical ends of knowledge in his mind, he desires to find his
way in the world in which man is to live, and above all in man's
actual inner life, and brings with him into philosophy a fineness,
and freedom of mind characteristic of the man of the world."79
British empiricism seems to be a state of mind resulting from
the temperamental qualities of the ethnological elements. Here
too we find hedonism in embryo.
Abelard's ethics are based on his psychology. Christian con-
sciousness of sin is the fundamental fact. Good and evil consist
not in an outer act, but in inner motive. This places morality in
the resolve of the will. Fault or error, the inherited predis-
positions become sin only through the will. The norm of judg-
78 Windelband. P. 307,
70 Windelband.
58
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ment, the standard, lies wholly within the individual. Agreement
with conscience constitutes the good morally. The natural moral
law is known in varying degree to all men. That it has been
obscured by human sin and weakness and had been wakened from
its torpor by the Christian religion, Abelard firmly assumes.
a theologian Abelard tends more and more to reduce the content
of the moral law to the choice of the divine will. The ethics
of intention is the recrudescence of the Augustinian principles of
internalization and individualism of the will. The ancients, the
early Christian philosophers, the mediaeval logicians never iso-
lated this aspect or series of states of consciousness, as sufficient
in itself to furnish the criterion of life. In some form, Plato,
Aristotle, Origen, Augustine, John of Salisbury, Abelard, all
recognize the second series where through contemplation, illumi-
nation or enlightenment, the soul derives its sustenance, its grace,
from the Divine. With them all, this divine principle variously
conceived is the ultimate standard by which all values are deter-
mined.
Thomas Aquinas
In Thomas Aquinas is completed an “adjustment of world-
moving thoughts upon the largest and most imposing scale history
has seen, and that too, without the creative authority of any
properly new philosophical principle as its impulse toward the
formation of a system.” 80 In the light of modern inquiry and
discussion of the nature of universals which has followed upon
the pure delight and intoxication of scientific discovery, this
philosophy of Aquinas has much of import. 81
NOTE.—It is significant that interest in the philosophical world is once
again concerned with logic and the old problem of the universal and par-
ticular? The essence of scientific method is the search for law under-
lying phenomena, a placing of an event in a continuous process of which
it is intrinsically and functionally a part. The new order to which it is
thus assigned as a normal part is constituted by a larger identity, where
differences become insignificant. The scientist is thus concerned in giving
a biography of the particular event in nature.81 The pervasive continuous
identity, as well as the continuous change within the process, these factors
determine the past of the event, and at the same time forecast the future.
Just this glimpse into scientific procedure reveals the necessity of dealing
with the theory of knowledge that validates the tools of inquiry. The
80 Windelband. P.
81 Dewey, Lectures in Logic.
P. 311.
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59
While the delirium of scientific achievement is subsiding, the
need of testing its findings resuscitates the controversy over uni-
versals that characterized the Mediaeval period. What is the
nature of general and what its logical relation to the particular.
As a result philosophy is concerning itself with the thought of
this epoch.82
In Thomas Aquinas is found a further development of Abe-
lard's theory of the universal. Both of course have their origin
in Aristotle. With Aristotle Thomas opposes the latter's inter-
pretation of the Platonic theory of ideas as existing independently
(separately), whether in things or in the divine mind.83 If by
ideas are understood independently existing generalities, then
Aristotle was right in arguing against these ideas as meaningless
fictions. But (after Augustine) “when the ideas are understood
as thoughts immanent in the divine mind and when their action
upon the sensible world is conceived as merely indirect," 84
Thomas recognizes the theory of ideas as unobjectionable. Plato's
conception is traced to the fact that he believed the universal
not merely possessed a reality of some sort but that it existed in
the same mode in our thought and in external reality. Thomas
Aquinas (after Aristotle) shows that just as the senses are able
to perceive separately what really is not separate (as color, or
shape, in an apple), so the mind can effect the purely subjective
separation by considering in the individual only the universal.85
This subjective abstraction in thought appertains not to our judg-
ment of the true state of the case, but functions in the mind's
activity of attention or apprehension. If the universal has no
questions that will arise and will not be downed, are these: Is it some-
thing inherent in the nature of things that determines “this biography
of an event," or is it caprice, in the mind of the individual? Is there
a power of the human mind by which this identity is perceived that
brings order out of discontinuity? If this power exists, what is its
nature?
82 To the investigators of today, who would chrow the controversy
over universals to the lumber pile of past theories or treat it as a long-
outgrown children's disease, so long as they do not know how to state
with complete certainty and clearness in what consists the metaphysical
reality and efficiency of that which we call a law of Nature, we must
still cry "mutato nomine de te fabula narrata". Windelband. P. 299.
89 Uebeweg. P. 441.
84 Ueberweg. P. 445.
" De Potentiis Animae, ch. 6. Quoted in Ueberweg, P. 445.
60
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9788
substantial existence in the objective world, it must possess
reality of some sort, “because all science respects the universal,
and would be illusory if the universal were without all reality;
the truth of knowledge depends upon the reality of the objects
of knowledge. The universal exists in reality in the individual,
as the one in the many, as essence of things or their quidditas;
the intellect performs only that act of abstraction whereby the
universal becomes in the intellect, the one beside the many.
In this last it is easy to detect the modification of the Aristotelian
by the Platonic notion. According to the Thomist theory, the
human soul does not possess innate conceptions, but its thinking
rests on the basis of sensuous perceptions and of representative
images from which the active intellect abstracts forms. Uni-
versalia in re, universalia post rem, et universalia ante rein, is
the order of development of Thomist idea of the universal.
Thomas bridges the chasm between the sensuous and the super-
sensuous, the spiritual and material, by an acute transformation
of the Aristotelian doctrine of Forms and their relation to mat-
ter.87 Pure forms are real or actual as active intelligences with-
out any attachment to matter. Forms in the material world
realize themselves only in union with matter. The human soul
as lowest of the pure intelligences is a pure form (forma sepa-
rata), and at the same time was entelechy of the body, it is the
highest of those Forms which realize themselves in matter. These
two sides of its nature are bound together in the only unity that
is at once subsistent and inherent. In this way the series of indi-
vidual beings proceeds from the lowest Forms of material exis-
tence, in past plant and animal life, through the human soul,
with uninterrupted continuity over into the world of pure intelli-
gences - the angels, and finally to the Absolute Form - the
Deity.” 88 Thus the Aristotelian ideas of dunamis and energeia
gave rise in the Thomist psychology to the conception of develop-
ment which bridged the separation between the "two worlds
of sense and spirit. “A body is made up of a potential subject
called matter connaturally extended in space; and further of an
actuating principle of energy called substantial form, which is so
united to the potential subject or matter, that the latter thereby
i
88 Ueberweg. P. 445.
87 Windelband. P. 324.
88 Windelband. P. 324.
Review of Conception of the Standard
61
becomes an individual body within a definite species, deriving
the power of action from the substantial form or principle of
energy.” 88
*
Again in the same strain:30 “The Divine understanding can
comprehend whatever is proper to each in its essence. Thus
by understanding its own essence as imitable in the way of life
without consciousness, it gathers the form of a plant, by under-
standing the same essence as imitable in the way of consciousness
without intellect, the proper form of an animal, and so the rest.
Evidently then the divine essence inasmuch as it is absolutely
perfect inay be taken as the proper type of each entity.
and herein also is defensible in some sort the opinion of Plato,
who supposes ideas according to which all beings in the material
world are formed. The reason why our understanding cannot
understand many things together in one act is because in the act
of understanding, the mind becomes one with the object under-
stood.” In this recognition of an “ actuating principle of energy
which is referred to the divine essence there is much of Origen.
The idea of an immanent principle as Origen conceived it is
relieved of some of the curious accretions from the Gnostic sect,
and is viewed in greater simplicity by Aquinas. Still further
in similar vein is the conception carried to its implication of a
standard. “ The standard in every genus is the most perfect
instance of the genus. But the divine truth is the standard of
all truth. Truth is a perfection of understanding and of its act.
The truth of our mind is measured by the object outside the
mind: our understanding is called true inasmuch as it is in accord-
ance with that object. And again the truth of the object is
measured by its accordance with the divine mind, which is the
cause of all things, as the truth of artificial objects is measured
by the art of the artificer. Since through God is the first under-
standing and the first object of understanding, the truth of every
understanding must be measured by His truth, as everything is
measured by the first and best of its kind.” “ The things of sense
from which human reason takes its beginnings of knowledge,
retain in themselves some trace of imitation of God, inasmuch
as they are and are good.”91
80 Aquinas. God and His Creatures. Translated by Rickaby, P. 18.
01 Ibid. Book I, Chap. VIII.
}
00 Ibid.
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son.
The Thomist conception of development is carried over into
the sphere of natural and revealed religion. These he regards
as different stages of development, and sees in philosophical
knowledge a possibility given in man's natural endowment which
is brought to full and entire realization only by the grace active
in revelation.92 “There is a two-fold sort of truth in things
divine for the wise man to study: one that can be attained by
rational enquiry, another that transcends all the industry of rea-
This truth of things divine I do not call two-fold on the
part of God, who is one simple truth, but on the part of our
knowledge, as our cognitive faculty has different aptitudes for
the knowledge of divine things. To the declaration therefore of
the first sort of truth, we must proceed by demonstrative reasons,
that may serve to convince the adversary. But because such
reasons are not forthcoming for truth of the second sort, our
aim ought not to be to convince the adversary by reason, but to
refute his reasonings against the truth, which one may hope to
do since natural reasons cannot be contrary to the truth of
faith."93 Our knowledge of God must come through an under-
standing of the effects he produces; "and so it is brought by
reasoning to a knowledge of him.”94 “We are brought to the
knowledge of His existence, not by what he is in Himself, but
by the effects which he works.
God is that wherein
all things are known, not as though other things could not be
known without his being known first, as happens in the case of
self-evident principles, but because through his influence all
knowledge is caused in us." The nature of the intelligent is
therefore to grasp the intelligible. Intelligence is conversant
with natures, which with relations are eternal. These natures
and relations are the universals, which being such are mani-
festations of the Prime Mover. As sight is the actuality of the
eye, so is the soul to the body, because by the soul, called also
the Intelligence, the body emerges from potentiality to actuality.
Thus plainly in Thomas Aquinas the divine principle which
animates and gives existence to things is all pervasive. It attains
to consciousness of itself in the human soul. There the Platonic
passion for truth, the discernment of the universal in the midst
*
92 Windelband. P. 321.
93 God and His Creatures. Rickaby's translation. Bk. I, Ch. IX.
04 Ibid. Ch. XI.
Review of Conception of the Standard
63
of the manifold, the intelligence, or reason in its higher mani-
festations, reveals the dark and half-blind processes by means of
which the development itself is taking place. Truth as in Plato
is seen to be the unifying principle that "gives form to what
was otherwise formless, simplicity to what was complex, whole-
ness to what was discrete." 95
But Thomas Aquinas adds,
“Wholesome is the arrangement
of divine clemency whereby things even that reason can investi-
gate are commanded to be held on faith, so that all might easily
be partakers of the knowledge of God, and that without doubt
or error."
The contest concerning the primacy of the will or intellect
brings into prominence the idea of the moral law as entertained
by Thomas. It is God's command. This both sides admit.
Thomas teaches that God commands the good because it is good
and is recognized as good by his wisdom. Thus the Logos, the
Divine wisdom, is the ultimate standard of truth and hence of the
good. Eckhart, the great mystic of this period, supports this
intellectualism of Thomas that teaches the rationality of the
good. Morals is a philosophic discipline whose principles are to
be known by the natural light.'
Closely connected with this conception of the moral law is
Thomas's treatment of law under four heads: the eternal, the
natural, the human, the revealed.
Eternal law to which the whole universe is subject and whose
end is God, pervades all things in the sense that "through it
they are directed to the actions and ends proper to them.” 97
Inanimate things and irrational creatures only participate in it
passively — the so-called law of similitude. They are subject to
eternal law and blindly follow its bidding. Rational creatures, by
the light of reason, discern what is good and evil. This light is
the impression of the Divine light within enabling men to be
sharers in Divine Providence for by it men are able to provide
for themselves and others. This participation in eternal law is
called natural law. This is recognized by reason, and in con-
formity with this law rational creatures guide their conduct.
196
P. 195
95 Plato's Psychology in its bearing on Will. Mind. Apr., 1908.
96 Windelband. P. 332.
.
07 Sum. 1.2.
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Natural law is apprehended as general principles belonging to
Eternal Law. Man cannot attain to the direct and immediate
knowledge of its application to particular cases, and he must "8
therefore use his reason to draw from those common and unde-
monstrable principles, conclusions applicable to particular cases.
These are human law.99
Besides eternal law, from which human law is derived through
natural law, there is divine law, or revealed law — that of Scrip-
ture. Thomas recognizes the shifting nature of "human law,"
adapted as it must necessarily be to varying conditions and
periods.
In the administration of law, "the office of the King is to
procure for the multitude a good life which must be in harmony
with the endeavor to attain to celestial beatitude. He must there-
fore as far as possible direct the people to do those things which
lead to eternal life, and forbid their doing anything opposed to
this."100 The final end of a society appears to be to live virtu-
ously. “For men associate themselves together that all may
live well, which would be impossible were each to live alone.
But a good is a virtuous life. Therefore a virtuous life is the
end of human society.” 101 To understand the content of the last
quotation, it is necessary to recall Thomas's theory of the will
and intellect. God wills what is good for man. This is a widely
different conception from that of Duns Scotus that because God
wills it, it is good. And good is understood to mean that which
satisfies man's needs and desires if these are only sufficiently
enlightened. Thomas would say it was possible that man through
his reason could arrive at the same conception of good as that
revealed by God.
Mysticism in the Mediaeval Period
The mysticism in Thomas Aquinas was always held in check
by the Augustinian conception of Personality. The pantheism
always inherent in Neo-Platonism was constantly emerging in
the most radical of its adherents. The absorption in the eternal
08 Ibid. 91. 3-0.
09 Compare this conforming to a standard with Hobbes' conception of
law as the arbitrary will of a sovereign. See Economic Review, 1896,
P. 78.
100 De Regimine Principium, l. 15.
101 Ibid.
14.
Review of Conception of the Standard
65
generic reason of the human race was viewed as temporal par-
ticipation. This in the fully developed forms of mysticism tended
to destroy the conception of the individual soul as a persistent
entity. The admixture of Arabian philosophy in the thirteenth
century, with the attendant pantheism of the East brought later
German mysticism which found its best expression in Eckhart
and Tauler. The inevitable tendency of the Andalusian move-
ment was to regard individual things as more or less transient
forms in which the single substance, ens generalissimur, becomes
realized.
Man's rational knowing is, in this philosophy, an impersonal
or supra-personal function: it is the individual's temporal par-
ticipation in the eternal generic reason.
This Pan-psychism was opposed by both Albert and Thomas
because of the menace, as they conceived it, to the metaphysical
value of personality. The tenacity with which the Christian
philosophers held to the Augustinian doctrine regarding the
experience which the individual has of itself as the highest prin-
ciple, diverted the empiricist conceptions of the Arabians from
their essential direction, as a study of nature's forces, to the
study of active human life. "Real science," however, took a
more secular aspect, as the science of the interrelations of human
society, and found expression in Occam and Marsilius of Padua,
and also in the more "inward” writing of history. The Platonic
idea of contemplation as the highest state, the Aristotelian idea
of complete happiness, the Neo-Platonic idea of immediate illumi-
nation of the individual by the deity, the supra-rational appre-
hension of truth, found their most intense expression in German
mysticism. The mystical elements in Eckhart, curiously a dis-
ciple of Thomas and Augustine, are his conception of the highest
activity of the reason as immediate intellectual intuition, his
denial of the being of all finite things, his demand that the indi-
vidual self should be given up, and his doctrine of complete
union with God as the supreme end of man.
God is in all
things as their intelligible principle; but by as much as he is
in all things, by so much is he also above them.” 108
God com-
municates himself to all things in the measure of their capability
to receive him. In so far as he is in things, they work divinely
102
102 Ueberweg. History of Philosophy. I.
I. P. 48.3.
103 Ueberweg. History of Philosophy. P.
P. 475.
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*
*
*
*
and reveal him. In things God has externalized his innermost
essence: hence all things tend to return to God. This return
is the end of all motion in created things.104
Morality — for Eckhart -- is this restoration through the soul
of all things to God. The condition of this return is " death
to self, i. e., the abolition of creatureship: its end is the union of
man with God. If thou wilt know God divinely, thy knowledge
must be changed to ignorance, to oblivion of thyself and all crea-
tures. This ignorance is synonymous with unlimited capacity
for receiving * God needs only that man should give
him a quiet heart. God will accomplish this himself; let man
only follow and not resist. Not the reason alone, but the will
also must transcend itself. Man must be silent that God may
speak.
Give up thine individuality and comprehend
thyself in thine unmixed human nature, as thou art in God: thus
God enters into thee.
Individuality is a mere accident,
a nothing: put off this nothing and all things are one. The
One that remains is the Son whom the Father begets.” 105 The
man who has thus annihilated himself, has absolutely no will;
he has abandoned himself completely to the will of God. This
complete “decease" of self is the condition of the birth of God
in the soul. "All moral action is nothing other than this bring-
ing forth of the Son by the Father.” 106 This birth of God in
the soul is irreversible.”
Virtuous action is purposeless action.
As God is
free from all finite ends, so also is the righteous man. Desire
nothing, thus wilt thou obtain God and in Him all things. Work
for the sake of working, love for love's sake.
All that
is contingent must be laid aside, including therefore virtue, in
so far as it is a particular mode of action. Virtue must be a
condition, my essential condition.
all virtues should
become in me necessities, being performed unconsciously. Mor-
ality consists not in doing, but in being. Works do not sanctify
us, we sanctify works.
All virtues are one virtue. He
who practices one virtue more than another is not moral. Love
104 A penetration of an Eastern idea.
105 Cit. P. 477.
106 Cit. P. 478.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Review of Conception of the Standard
.67
is the principle of all virtues. Love strives after the good. It
is nothing other than God Himself.” 107
The lowest faculties of the soul must be subordinate to the
highest, and the highest to God: the external senses must be
subordinated to the internal senses, the latter to the understand-
ing, the understanding to the reason, the reason to the will, and
the will to unity, so that the soul may be " deceased " and nothing
but God may enter into it.
Thus the universal is the real; it needs the individual, which
receives being and permanence from the universal and can only
through its immanence in the universal assert itself as real and
permanent.108 This mutual dependence of God and man so dar-
ingly spoken by Eckhart is entirely foreign to religious concep-
tion in general. It seems the unchecked development of the idea
of sacrifice, begun of old, reverently viewed in the suffering of
the God-man, and idealized in the Love of Christianity. The
idea as set forth by Eckhart is more beautifully and temperately
expressed in Thomas á Kempis. The Imitation of Christ has
preserved for Christendom the best expression of Mysticism.
The mysticism of Thomas á Kempis is relieved of the specu-
lative character of the school of Eckhart. Eckhart was moved
by a desire to communicate to his people the inmost truth in a
manner that should take hold of every individual who heard.
The necessity of putting these truths into popular language natu-
rally stripped them of the logical combinations of fundamental
ideas, and of the intricacies of dogma. In place of these came
speculation which gave to the theorems of faith the spiritual
vitality of one central idea, viz., the unity of the soul in reason
and will with God. Being and knowledge are one. The Son
as eternally begotten in that revelation which is coincident with
the identity of the soul with God, "involves the ideal totality
of things." In being known by man, the world of sense finds
again the true spiritual nature. Man's highest task is the elimi-
nation of multiplicity and plurality. Man should endeavor to
control the things of sense by reason, but should never fail to
regard as highest, the complete withdrawal of the soul from the
outer world. “In the act of knowing it reaches that purpose-
107 Quoted from Eckhart in Ueberweg, I.
108 Quoted from Eckhart in Ueberweg, 1. P. 472.
P. 478.
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lessness of action, that action not constrained by an end, that
freedom within itself, in which its beauty consists." 100
The excesses of mysticism, in fact the highest manifestations
of it, were due to the lack of provision in scholasticism for the
emotional element in human beings. The concept of conscience
for most of the scholastics was a kind of logical function. Emo-
tion and will were left out of account. The latter executed the
decisions of conscience, and while a certain amount of influence
is indefinitely ascribed to the emotions, they are described in
terms so intellectual as to ally them at once with the rational pro-
cesses.110 Mysticism seized upon the smothered religious feeling
and carried it to the excesses it sometimes assumed.
To sum up the conceptions of the Mediaeval period the fol-
lowing may be considered essentials: Humanity had sinned;
Adam being the type of the essence of man. The will was not
corrupted, but the cognitive-judging side had suffered. Man's
will remained good, but the steersman of the will, reason, no
longer gave adequate guidance. Man must continue to use his
reason, refining it to its utmost possibilities, as is shown by the
elaborate logical schemes. But he must recognize that it is not
the ultimate criterion of truth. There is no true illumination
of the intellect except by grace. Reason itself unaided is incap-
able of controlling passion. Knowledge is the product of the
reason, and of divine revelation of truth. The philosophy of
the ancients is revelation under different conditions, but it must
be measured by the fundamental truths of God's revelation in
Christ. With this conception of knowledge as a revelation of
truth, it is possible to will the good. Christian ethics took its
tools from Greek ideas which it interpreted according to Christian
ideas. The fundamental Greek conceptions that were accepted
were that all men desire, will, the good or happiness, that the
attainment of happiness is coincident with perfect knowledge
or wisdom. The idea of good is identified with God, conceived
as a metaphysical reality, the true being of everything, hence the
only adequate object of true knowledge, - the supreme end of
man's endeavor, the Good. This attainment is dependent upon
wisdom, which is ultimately participation in divine nature.
100 Windelband. P. 336.
110 Wundt, Ethics. P. 46.
P. 46. It is impossible not to connect the present
status of the psychology of the emotions with this aspect.
Reviezu of Conception of the Standard
69
Through grace God furnishes man with the conditions of regain-
ing what he lost in his Fall, viz., knowledge of God, which knowl-
edge includes all knowledge, since God is the true being of every-
thing.
The dignity of man is ensured in the God-inan. The Church
is the practical working embodiment of grace. The sacraments
are outward signs of inward grace, which most directly affect
man's conduct. The sacrament of penance through the confes-
sional made the teachings of Christ effective. It was a tremendous
force in regulating life. To understand the vitality and energy
of this epoch, a few general features of the technique of control
may aid:
1. The great gulf between the natural and supernatural was
mediated by the Word made flesh.
2. The historic teleology was complete in the seizure upon all
the tools of ancient thought that could be transformed into means
of furthering the Faith. The idealization of contemplative vir-
tues by Aristotle and Plato was the source of monastic orders,
whose asceticism was necessary as an ideal in the civilization of
barbarian hordes.
3. The systematic accommodation to different aspects of
human nature, to different temperaments, has never been paral-
leled: For the spiritual-minded was a scheme of ideas beauti-
fully symbolized; for the less spiritual, instrumentalities for
keeping track of them. The impossible was never demanded, not
even the exceptional, which was nevertheless encouraged in various
ways. Man was expected to sin, but there was institutional pro-
vision for keeping evil tendencies within limits. The integral
part of faith was the future life. The meagre beginnings in this
life have infinite time in future life for continuation under better
conditions.
4. The appeal made was to two motives which might seem
contradictory: self-sacrifice, devotion to others; and self-asser-
tion, control of others. The renunciation of the clergy made pos-
sible the advance in hierarchial democracy, where grades were
not fixed by wealth.
5. The church provided scope and opportunity for play of
intelligence. It is difficult to understand the intellectual activity
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Intellectual acumen was
very great. The Renaissance would be inconceivable if we imag-
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ined the preceding period as lacking in intellectual activity. There
was not a mere reaction against the church activity, but a carry-
ing: over of momentum generated in theological energy to other
fields. It might be in keeping to quote a few lines from New-
man's tribute to this period :111 "In the capitals of Christendom
the high cathedral and the perpetual choir still witness to the
victory of Faith over the world's power. To see its triumph
over the world's wisdom, we must enter those solemn cemeteries
in which are stored the relics and monuments of ancient Faith,-
our libraries. Look along their shelves, and every name you
read there is in one sense or other a trophy set in record of the
victories of Faith. How many long lives, what high aims, what
single-minded devotion, what intense contemplation, what fer-
vent prayer, what deep erudition, what untiring diligence, what
toilsome conflicts has it taken to establish its supremacy." In
Dante's Divine Comedy the long movement found its highest
aesthetic expression. The central interest is the fate of souls,
in particular the poet's soul. “Nothing could be more universal,
and nothing could be more individual, nothing even more per-
sonal. It is the climax of the long movement we have attempted
to trace, in which the individual spirit has deepened into a uni-
verse within, because it has widened into oneness with the uni-
verse without.
No Hellene, however skilled a spec-
tator in the theatre of this life, has portrayed the beauty and
terror of visible and audible things with so true and piercing a
touch as the mystic hierophant of another world." His genius
is the product of this Mediaevalism. He is regarded as a transi-
tion from the Mediaeval spirit to the spirit of the Renaissance.
Beyond question his work has marked affiliations with modern
spirit, 112 while its cosmology and formal doctrine are Mediaeval.
It may be probable that the projection of ethical psychology into
the physical form allowed of liberty being taken with the concep-
tion of the latter. Symbolic art takes these liberties freely. The
important thing is the fusion of the ethical and physical, presaging
as it did the transfiguration of nature from something to be gotten
away from to a manifestation of the divine, having inherent value
of its own as an object of study, a content of art, even a guide
and model for regulation of life.
111 Newman, Oxford University Sermons, P. 315.
112 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic. Chap. VII. Gives Bosanquet's.
elaboration of this idea.
*
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SECTION III
*
cism."113
EVOLUTION OF DOMINATING IDEAS WHOSE BIRTH IS ASSIGNED
POPULARLY TO THE RENAISSANCE
The interpenetration of the evolutionary idea has done much to
remove misconceptions of this period of the Renaissance. The
most glaring of these and probably the most persistent is the
notion that the Renaissance is the beginning of modern life. “The
long struggle for intellectual and political freedom which still
gives tone to our aspirations, appears to us to have had its starting
point in the revival of Greek learning and the awakening of phys-
ical science.
But any such view is coming to be less
and less approved by the deepest and most sympathetic criti-
Bosanquet traces further and further back into the
earlier middle age the intellectual attitude assumed by the Medi-
aeval Church and its greatest thinkers toward formative art and
the sense of beauty. Because beauty is always associated with
that which is deemed most worth while and desirable, this associ-
ation becomes a means of learning the standard vital at the time.
Too often the tendency has been to ignore the desire and effort
preceding the fruition, and too often to identify in point of time
the desire with its realization. “What youth desires, old age
abounds in.” So the “aesthetic interest was first attracted to the
full-blown and later Renaissance both in letters, in painting, and
in architecture, and only worked backwards by degrees to Gothic
buildings and early Tuscan painters.” 114 A study extended in
French literature reveals the beginnings of that Romanticism so
evident in Dante. In architecture, St. Sophia, built in 530 A. D.,
made possible the thousand years of beautiful buildings culmi-
nating in St. Peter's. Thus is justified the reference to the art
of the sixth century A. D. as "the sign of a 'true renaissance,'
which does not mean a rebirth of 'classical' forms, but rather
a rebirth of the human spirit in a vesture entirely new, though
woven of the robes it had laid aside." 115
Sympathy with nature
is ordinarily conceived as something engrafted upon humanity in
the sixteenth century. In truth, passages from Gregory of Nyassa,
from Origen, from Chrysostom are filled with an appreciation
113 Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic. P. 120.
P. 120.
115 Cit. P. 126.
114 Cit.
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*
of nature essentially "modern” in spirit. Art as interpretation
finds its tribute in the mastery the Christian painters attained
over the expression of the face, before they could deal ade-
quately with the figure, whereas with the Greek sculptors the
order was the reverse of this.” 116 This truth symbolises the
point of emphasis. Thus the profound conception of Plotinus
was maintained by the intellectual consciousness of Christendom.
The underlying thought is that nature and art are beautiful in
so far as they “worthily symbolise the Divine power and good-
ness, and do not appeal to sensuous interest or desire.
There seems always the conditional admission that material beauty
is divine, if rightly and purely seen." This idea was strengthened
by the great step taken in the fourth century, whereby evolution
was declared by Christian dogma 117 to be the one supreme prin-
ciple by which there is a progressive content which “ does not
lose anything nor become secondary by the fact of this develop-
ment.” This doctrine took the place of the interpretation of the
doctrine of emanation by which the first is best, the second a
little less perfect, and so on.
It seemed consistent to the Christian successors of Plotinus
to regard nature as God's work, superior to art conceived as
man's work, and this dualism persisted in the same age that
accepted evolutionary monism as the principle of orthodox the-
ology. 118 Erigena following Gregory of Nyassa regarded the
ugly as that not perceived in its true relation to the will of God,
and insisted that it was the order laid down by divine law to
know the Creator first "in his unspeakable beauty, and then to
regard creation in a significant or spiritual sense, conforming to
the inclinations of the intelligence, and to interpret the whole of
its beauty whether it exist inwardly in significance or outwardly
in sensible forms as showing the praise of the Creator." Uni-
versal significance of things cannot be claimed as a parasitic
outgrowth of the religious thought of the sixteenth or eighteenth
centuries. Symbolism is a mode of interpretation and communi-
cation, that has at least the advantage of absolute universality. 120
That beauty is the revelation of reason in sensuous shape, that
110 Cit. P. 130.
117 Cit. P. 132.
118 Cit.
P. 132.
119 Cit.
P. 142.
120 Cit. P. 143.
Review of Conception of the Standard
73
its fascination consists in its affinity with mind, and that conse-
quently the entire sensible universe as a symbol of Divine reason,
must be beautiful to the eye that can see it in relation to its
Creator, all this had sunk deep into Christian sentiment and is
familiar to us both in profound and in shallow readings of the
argument from design. Unquestionably, the middle age, through-
out its long development, was inspired by this conviction uncon-
scious in its art which was an achievement, but conscious in its
theory which was a postulate." 121
Bosanquet's recognition of the import of the time characterised
often as the Dark Ages is in itself a seeing of relations on a
widening scale. “To make the first sketch-plan of a new life,
and teach its use to illiterate peoples " was a work that in its
immensity must lose sight of details that, nevertheless, as under-
currents were gathering force and revealing their existence in
the intervals of peace that allowed of their emergence. In the
throes where a new civilization was in making "neither the
philosophy of the great Greek classics, nor the wide survey of
methodic natural science would have met fairly and squarely the
problems that pressed upon Augustine, Erigena, or Dante." 122
When it is urged against this period that philosophy was made
subservient to theology, it might be urged in defence that it was
a "subordination of science to a formulated conception of human
welfare, with a strictly mundane if also a transcendental side."
The most frequently expressed criticism of the metaphysics of
this period is that it is mere verbalism or theoretical subtlety at
best. This attitude is what naturally follows the practical turn
of mind that is in the ascendancy in present civilization. Bosan-
quet urges that it might be worth while " to raise the question of
whether the weakness of inediaeval science and philosophy was
not connected rather with excess of practice than with excess of
theory. The question is not unimportant for it indicates that the
essence of scholasticism is present, not wherever there is meta-
physics, but wherever the spirit of truth is subordinated to any
preconceived practical intent, whether mundane or extra-mun-
dane.” 123 To-day the subtleties of philosophy and of logic are
applied to subordinate the instinctive spiritual truths so necessary
121 Cit.
P. 149.
122 Cit. P. 141.
129 Cit. P. 146.
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125
to the life of numbers of humanity to the essentially mundane
goods so in the foreground of industrialism.124 Scholarly research
is revealing in the lives of the great thinkers of the scholastic
period, active, devoted public service, the content of which reveals
the vitality of their writings. The names of great Franciscans
and Dominicans foremost, among whom are St. Francis of Assisi
and St. Thomas Aquinas, are convincing examples.
Renaissance Ideas Tending to Modify the Standard
In Nicolaus Cusanus is found this purposeful unfolding accord-
ing to law, the ultimate significance of which is conception of
man as a microcosm. All substances are present in every thing,
vet each has its special principle of life and activity. God
transcends all knowledge, but is accessible in ecstatic vision. God
the Father is pure thought; the Son, the Logos, is the matter
side; the Holy Spirit is the union of these, pure motion.
This idea of motion was carried over into cosmology. Nature
was an unfolding of a single principle of movement. The uni-
verse itself was conceived as boundless in space and time. The
world becomes under this conception a soul-possessing and articu-
late whole.126 Everything if comprehended mirrors forth in its
place the universe. Every being preserves its existence by virtue
of its community with all others. Man should love each thing in
its relation to the whole. "God is the absolute maximum, the
world the unfolded maximum, the image of God's perfection."
By his anticipation of the Copernican theory of the universe,
man's relation to that universe is reconceived. The doctrine of
man as a microcosm brought with it the duty of harmonious
development, which found expression in the various theories of
self-realization. The theory concerning the unity of contra-
dictories 127 reaches its fullest expression in the reconciliation of
the finite and infinite in the God-man. Nothwithstanding that
Cusanus is the forerunner of much of modern thought in his
attitude toward knowledge, his theology remains that of the
church, with an emphasis on mysticism.
Pomponazzi (1462-1525) took immortality from philosophy,
because it was made a motive, instead of love of beauty and
124 This point will be elaborated in a succeeding chapter.
126 Windelband, Cit.
126 Ueberweg, Modern Philosophy P. 24.
127 Reappearing in Hegel.
P. 371.
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75
goodness for their own sakes. Motives of morality must be found
in the present life.
The separation of the natural and supernatural was conceived
as a barrier to realization; therefore the idea that God is in life,
in nature, became more and more emphasized. The pantheistic
view flourishes whenever there is an attempt to get away from
hard and fast regulations that limit the sphere of human activity.
The natural outcome is the teaching of the immanence of the
divine in nature and humanity, which justifies the increased value
and significance placed upon the goods of this life. Then easily
followed the belief that Nature did repay human study, because
of the principles of universals, which were manifest to those who
sought them. The presence of order or design was evidence of
the indwelling deity. We reach Giordano Bruno's idea of a
"God-informed, God-governed universe, a universe embodying
power, wisdom, and love, a universe essentially accessible to the
human conscience partially now and progressively with the
progress of that conscience."
The deduction from the various philosophers of this period was
that there was something in nature that was worth while, which
would help man rather than hinder him. The result of this was
to place value on earthly possessions and ends as opposed to those
of a future life. Then the relation of morals to efficiency was
urged as a problem. Machiavelli called attention to this by his
repudiation of any moral restraint in realizing an end. Excep-
tional men, he held, may use any means to an end. He advises
careful consideration of the end: then knowing what is involved,
to plunge. The step once taken there is no retreat. The use of
any means intelligence and force place at command is commended.
Success justifies anything, Success is the standard. The technique
of exploitation is worked out in the case of an ambitious man,
in Machiavelli's “The Prince. The forcefulness of the presen-
tation brings into strong light the practical advantages and disad-
vantages of moral law. The government is to be the authority to
keep men's appetites in check. Höffding says of Machiavelli that
like so many realists,128 he lost reality because he sought it in
the surface of events. Idealistic ends are the source of contempt,
128 Realists in the new sense-the direct opposite of the type heretofore
termed realist. The change in the use of the term indicates the transfer
of the focus of attention.
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as also the Church because it taught submission. It is imprac-
ticable to have an end unless you have the means to realize it.
Any means are allowable toward the accomplishment of an end.
“Men know not how to be splendidly wicked or wholly good.”
It is well to seem to have virtues, which if really possessed would
be a disadvantage or a hindrance to success. The result of such
a standard (Success), is ably pictured by Sumner in his account
of the Renaissance period. Disintegration was inevitable.
The revival of learning in the north had a different ethical
effect. Renewed knowledge of Scripture and of the early Church
Fathers' doctrines was an effort to give ethical interpretation to
existing ecclesiastical and institutional rites and ordinances.
Erasmus was the exponent of this within the Church. He saw
in general education the chief instrument of moral reform, and
consequently a fundamental method of social control. The six-
teenth century witnessed the revolt of Protestantism, and the
transfer of control from the clergy to the civic authorities. The
right of private judgment, the inwardness of faith as the sole
way to eternal life, the total corruption of human nature, the
universal and absolute imperativeness of Christian duties, the
repudiation of the doctrine of supererogation are the changes
most saliently urged. Ethically considered "these changes, how-
ever profoundly important, were either negative or quite general,
relating to the tone or attitude of mind in which all duty should
be done. As regards all positive matter of duty or virtue, and
most of the prohibitive code for ordinary men, the tradition of
Christian teaching was carried on substantially unchanged in the
discourses and writings of the Reformed churches." 129
SECTION IV
EFFECT OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLT ON THE CONCEPTION OF
THE STANDARD
In Luther's method there is much that suggests Descartes.
Descartes used doubt to unload and then took back discarded
beliefs, introducing difference of method. Luther virtually did
the same. The principle of subjective individuality as conceived
by Luther and his immediate followers required a philosophical
12. Sidgwick. History of Ethics. P. 152.
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77
basis. The demand for such was met at first by a denial of Aris-
totelian principles, but subsequently by a resumption of these.
The minimizing of good works was a theoretical inference from
the belief in the transformation of natural man to spiritual man
through an act of faith alone. It was clearly attitude versus
accomplishment. The significant question became: Where is the
standard of morality to be found? Can motive and consequence
be isolated in respective spheres? In the doctrine of sanctification,
which is to be interpreted as freedom from external law, there
is lurking an anti-social element.
The private interpretation of Scripture left ample scope for
casuistry. It became difficult to extract from so many sects an
ethical code that would meet with a sufficiently general acceptance
to serve as a foundation for society. The effect of making Scrip-
ture the sole, unerring guide, containing inherent evidence of its
truth, has been suicidal to Protestantism. Biblical criticism has
attacked this foundation and weakened it to such an extent that
many have come to distrust the validity of the standards that
have been and are still the vital principles of our present civili-
zation. These results were not immediately felt, but have been the
more remote consequences of the earlier attitude. The more
immediate effects are only recently being revealed and appreciated.
The more subtle, vital, and permanent influences have been
obscured by the grosser manifestations of the intense feeling
attendant upon the movement. The intoxication of the feeling
of freedom from living sanction or authority in one sphere, spread
into others. That the full significance of their attitude was not
grasped by the Reformers is evidenced in Luther's treatment of
the Peasant's Revolt in Germany. The idea was not recognized
in another sphere.
The interpretation of individuality as the right to assign values
rather than to ascertain them in experience led from a distrust
of institutions to their repudiation as evidenced theoretically in
Rousseau and actually in the French Revolution. The Peasant's
Revolt in Germany and the French Revolution embodied the
same idea. The one succeeded, the other did not, in establishing,
temporarily at least, the worth of the idea. It remains for suc-
ceeding generations to discern the inherent truth in the idea in
its relations to other truths.
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Beginning of the Isolation of Experimental Method
Bacon, followed by Hobbes, brought about a great change in
intellectual attitude. Bacon's belief that the mind has power to
correctly interpret accumulated facts, with Hobbes' needed curb
to this extreme inductive view in the conception of mathematical
control, and more especially his substitution of the idea of gener-
ation for transformation, together made experimentation the basis
of control
Hobbes' psychology is materialistic. Reality is a material
process. Pleasure and pain are essentially forms of motion, the
one " helping vital action," the other "retarding it.” Materialism
intrinsically regards all impulse as directed toward preservation
of the material organism. Hobbes' main contention as to the
complete selfishness of man is the logical outcome of materialism.
With Epicurean reasoning the so-called altruistic or social
impulses are all traced ultimately to self-seeking. Hobbes' con-
tribution to Epicurean philosophy is, that rules of social behavior
limited as they must be to furthering indirectly man's preser-
vation or pleasure, must be secured in the only way to make them
universally coercive, by the intervention of government. For the
authority of the Church, Hobbes substitutes that of the State,
and that State a despotism. This viewpoint is claimed by some to
be the necessary reaction to the anarchy among warring sects,
the result of the so-called liberty of conscience,- the main thesis
of the Protestant Revolt. Hobbism with uncompromising egoism
as its standard and necessary positive law for particular moral
rules was a sufficiently coherent theory to furnish a point of
departure for schools of ethicists.
Reaction to Hobbism
Cudworth of the Cambridge Platonists claimed the objective
reality of the essential and eternal distinctions of good and evil.
He emphasizes the inconsistency of Hobbes in presupposing an
objective physical world cognizable to the intellect, and in denying
a similar exercise of the intellect in an objective world of duty.
Cumberland claims man's essential socialty, and lays down the
rule " that all rationals should aim at the common good of all”
as the supreme rule of morality or “ Law of Nature.” To support
the fact of its being a law of nature, he provides sanctions referred
Review of Conception of the Standard
79
to the law-giver, God. These sanctions compel obedience to the
law by determining the agent's happiness.
It is evident from the reaction to Hobbes that Empiricism had
not yet won the supremacy in English philosophy. Scholasticism
had been confined to narrower limits and Skepticism flourished
арасе. .
Is there here in theme and sequence a miniature cycle of suc-
ceeding thought? Are the fundamental ideas of Kant, Darwin,
and Spencer, anticipated respectively by Bacon's discussion of
efficient causes, Hobbes' substitution of generation for trans-
formation, and Cumberland's assertion of the common good as the
supreme rule of morality?
SECTION V
METHOD OF DESCARTES IN DETERMINING THE STANDARD
Descartes determined to do away with all presuppositions and
by completely ridding himself of all such preconceived ideas, to
deliberately establish a philosophy, every point of which was abso-
lutely verifiable. His first postulate, Cogito Surii, seems, in its
import the same as that of Augustine, Dubito Sun. Augustine
valued the self-certainty of the soul as the surest experience from
which as a point of departure he built up a psychology of the
will, and gave to his successors the idealized conception of per-
sonality. Descartes in a slightly different way viewed the Cogito
Sum as the first fundamental rational truth, and builds his system
of philosophy on the maxim: Everything must be true that is as
clear and distinct as self-consciousness. In this statement is con-
centrated the essence of the Cartesian system, viz., its point of
departure as Cogito Suin, and its method of quantitative determi-
nations. "As clear and distinct as self-consciousness" is mathe-
matical in statement. Descartes rece
Descartes recognizes the sensuous appre-
hension of the qualitative as imagination " while the appre-
hension of that which can be mathematically constructed he terms
"intellectual" knowledge. “To that which I know clearly and
distinctly I may assent, for that clear and distinct knowledge
must be true follows from God's veracity.” 130 He thus assumes
that only clear and distinct presentations have the compelling
power on the mind that forces recognition. Error results in the
130 Quoted in Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, II 2:50.
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will's affirming or denying arbitrarily when confused presentations
are the data. “ The cause of all error arises from the fact that
my power of willing reaches further than my understanding and
that I do not confine the exertion of the former within the limits
demanded by the latter, but that instead of withholding my judg-
ment I presume to judge also of that which I do not understand.”
This idea is the basis of Descartes' ethics. Right willing and
action follow clear rational knowledge: sin and error follow the
abuse of freedom in willing and acting from the obscure and
confused impulses of the sensibility alone.
The ethical ideal is the Socratic-Stoic ideal of the rule of reason
over the sensibility. The Stoicism of Cartesianism, with infusion
of Christian ideas, is evident in the following: “ The true object
of our love being perfection, when we lift our minds to consider
God as He is, we feel ourselves naturally so strongly disposed
to love Him that we derive joy even from our afflictions, remem-
bering that in all that happens to us His will is fulfilled.” 131
Life's external order may be disturbed, but not the inner har-
mony of the soul. Accidents are necessary and are a part of God's
purpose, hence man can do nothing but desire them. To make
our will and our understanding one with the will of God,- in
this lies the whole of morality. The Supreme Good is good will
which alone depends on man's self. To know is to will rightly; ;
hence wisdom should be our ideal. In striving for wisdom, man
finds happiness.182
Psychological Basis of Cartesian Principles
The psychology on which Descartes bases his principle of cer-
titude is that of a reasoned realist.” Man is able to dis-
tinguish the idea of a thing from the idea of a mere mental fancy,
The mind, being a res cogitans, must be conscious of its acts;
man is conscious of having formed an idea (idea a me ipso facta),
and is equally conscious of the non-interference of the will when
an idea comes from the outside (idea adventitia). He knows
in the last case that whether he wills it or no, the idea represents
something controlled from outside the mind. Descartes finds a
sanction for this certitude in God's veracity.184
" 133
131 Letter to Princess Elizabeth, 13th June, 1645.
182 Janet, Problems of Philosophy, II. P. 56.
133 Turner, History of Philosophy, P. 454.
134 Descartes in a measure reasons in a circle, because he has already
established God's existence on the reliableness of the cognitive powers.
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Metaphysical Basis
The principle which underlies the reasoning of Descartes is
that to be conscious of a limit is to transcend it. Consciousness
of our existence as individuals — self-consciousness - is impos-
sible without the consciousness of something not ourselves, and
necessarily of a unity in which both self and not self are included.
Descartes reasons that all ideas of the finite are a limitation of
the idea of the infinite; that to be conscious of the various limi-
tations conveys with it as part of the essence of this consciousness
the idea of the infinite -- the Idea of God. This idea is not one
of many ideas, but is the pervasive idea in all ideas, by which
alone they have existence. “I ought never to suppose that my
conception of the infinite is a negative idea, got by negation of
the finite, just as I conceive repose to be merely negation of move-
ment, and darkness merely the negation of light. On the con-
trary, I see manifestly there is more reality in the infinite than
in the finite substance, and that therefore I have within me the
notion of the infinite, even in some sense prior to the finite, or in
other words that the notion of myself in some sense presupposes
the notion of God; for how could I doubt or desire, how could
I be conscious of anything as a want, how could I know I am
not altogether perfect, if I had not in me the idea of a being more
perfect than myself, by comparison with whom I recognize the
defects of my own existence?" 135 To think a series of approxi-
mations implies as an intrinsic part of the thought, a standard
which Descartes unhesitatingly pronounces consciousness of the
infinite,
Descartes sees nothing in this conception of the infinite to
exclude the existence of finite things. What would become
of the power of that imaginary infinite if it could create nothing?
Perceiving in ourselves the power of thinking we can easily con-
ceive that there should be a greater intelligence elsewhere. And
even if we should suppose that intelligence increased ad infinitum
we need not fear that our own would be lessened. And the same
is true of all other attributes which we ascribe to God, even of
his power, provided only that we do not suppose that the power
in us is not subjected to God's will. In all points, therefore, He
is infinite without an exclusion of created things.
> 136
135 Meditatio tertia, P. 21.
130 Respon. ad sec, object., P. 75.
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The Concept Standard
It seems strange that Descartes while anticipating many modern
theories of motion,137 and at the same time recognizing the sec-
ondary qualities, taste, color, etc., of material things as modes
of consciousness, should have failed to grasp the comprehensive
idea of the organic relation of mind and matter as necessary
moments of one process of experiencing. In the subjectivism
mentioned concerning the secondary qualities, he paved the way
for the idealism of subsequent philosophers. But the absolute
antithesis between mind and matter made the union of soul and
body merely a mechanical one, and created that chasm to bridge
which has exhausted the energies of philosophers since that time.
To Descartes may be traced the unnecessary antagonism
between those who believe in the spirituality of the human soul
and those who insist on the value of experimental method in the
study of psychic phenomena.
The most noteworthy contribution of Cartesian philosophy is
the essentially deductive or mathematical method as opposed to
the so-called Baconian method. By a strange “irony of fate ” 138
again, physical science owes more to Descartes than to Bacon.
In answer to the inevitable question, Are the antagonisms just
cited, real or imaginary in the last case, the result of emphasis
merely? the conviction is forced that in a reinterpretation of
Descartes there is to be found light on modern problems.
Spinoza's Pantheistic Conception the Logical Result of the Theory
of Occasionalism
The pantheism of Spinoza is the unchecked development of
the Occasionalism present in germ in Descartes and developed by
Geulinex and Malebranche. The theory of “Occasional Causes"
or "Divine Assistance” is the result of the presupposition that
body and soul are independently complete substances. Descartes
claimed that the influence of the soul upon the body was not real.
Malebranche develops the idea more fully: there can be no rela-
tion between things so different. The will is powerless to influence
bodily movements; but it can determine the will of God, who
thereupon produces the effect.180 “God is the sole immediate
and direct cause of all my movements. His activity is exerted
187 See Turner, loc. cit. P. 456.
138 "Irony of fate" indicates a lurking truth as yet unrecognized.
189 Driscoll, Discussion in Christian Philosophy, 1898. P. 170.
Review of Conception of the Standard
83
upon the occasion of ideas or of resolves in my mind.
The
act of the body is the occasion, not the cause." To this doctrine
Leibnitz opposed, later, his theory of " Pre-established Harmony."
He reproached Descartes for degrading the Divinity by com-
paring God to a watchmaker who having made a clock is still
obliged to turn the hands. But Leibnitz still holds to the inde-
pendence of soul and body: the acts of the soul form a pro-
gressive series, and the acts of the body another series; but God
in the beginning foresaw what the actions would be and estab-
lished a harmony between one and the other. Thus the soul and
the body can be compared to two watches which were regulated
and wound up.
ound up. “In both, the minute and hour hands point to
the same identical place; but one watch goes entirely inde-
pendently of the other; the spring which gives motion to one is
not the same as that which gives motion to the other.”
The doctrine, as Spinoza received it from the immediate suc-
cessors of Descartes, was that God by Divine decree has ordained
that material things should be the occasions of effects which He
alone produces. This is pantheism held in check by faith in
Christian revelation. Spinoza at this point substitutes the panthe-
ism of Giordano Bruno. With Geulinex and Malebranche, God is
the Creator; with Spinoza, He is universal essence or nature of
things: not God in the world but God as the world.
» 140
Spinoza's Identification of Knowledge with Will
Closely associated with this idea is that of universal necessity
or determinism. According to this the moral sanction is not
founded on responsibility, but is a consequence of the necessary
fixed order of things. “Every event is justified by the very fact
of its occurrence, which is in immediate connection with the
supreme necessity.' Man's endeavor should be to understand
and to love this immutable order. The knowledge of truth thus
becomes the noblest good. The possibility of this is seen only
after a comprehension of Spinoza's theory of parallelism.
Through a parallelism of thought and extension of the two
attributes of the One Substance, the psychical is substantially
identical with the extended which is perceived as material and
follows the laws of mechanics. All particular thoughts have God
140 Janet, Problems of Philosophy, II. P. 62.
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The Concept Standard
as a thinking being, just as all particular bodies have God as an
extended being, for their cause; ideas are not caused by perceived
things, and things are not caused by thoughts. But the things
of which we have ideas follow in the same way and with the
same necessity from their attribute as do our ideas from the attri-
bute of thought; the order and connection of ideas is the same as
the order and connection of things; for the attributes from which
the former and the latter respectively follow express the essence
of one substance. 141
"He who knows anything knows also by the very fact that he
knows it. The mind knows itself only in so far as it perceives
the ideas of the affections of the body.
All ideas are true
so far as they are referable to God, for all ideas which are in God
agree perfectly with their objects. Every idea which is in us as
an absolute or adequate idea is true, for every such idea is in God,
in so far as the latter constitutes the essence of the human mind.'
The mind is more capable of forming adequate ideas, the more
its body has in common with other bodies. These notiones com-
munes, or adequate ideas of the peculiarities of things, belong to
the kind of cognition called reason. The truth of such an idea
is apprehended as such by him who entertains it. The will to
affirm or deny ideas is not a causeless arbitrary act; it is the
necessary consequence of the ideas. The will in Spinoza is iden-
tical with the intellect.142 To discover the true order of ideas that
parallels the order and connection of things, i.e., to know the truth,
becomes man's moral endeavor.
Spinoza's Doctrine of Self-Realization
Added to this conception is the self-realizing impulse through
the three stages of knowledge. In the plane of confused knowl-
edge, the mind is conscious of the effort to extend its being by
breaking through the "modes " that hem it in. This conscious-
ness is emotion and indicates whether the modes affecting it
through the body are diminishing or increasing the power of
thought. “Where a mode of the body, as the sight of a rose,
increases the mind's activity, there results the emotion of pleasure
or joy; where a mode of the body, as having bad news, diminishes
the mind's activity, there results the emotion of sadness. Love
141 Ethics, Prop. 7.
142 Ethics, 2-49.
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85
is the idea of an external thing which is a cause of joy, and
hatred the idea of a thing which is the cause of sadness."143 In
this last idea, the influence of Hobbes on Descartes' conceptions
is evident.
Spinoza's conception of self-preservation finds coincidence,
almost with Hobbes's theory of governmental control, as the most
efficient and certain means for the satisfaction of egoism. This
virtually denies the possibility of an individual standard of right
and wrong in the practical sphere.
The illusion of the finite — sense, imagination, passion — is
viewed as the source of all error. The exaltation of the present
moment into a standard of measuring the universe is the result
of first raising the individual life to such a unit. The highest
good is to live the universal life of reason, to view all things from
their center in God, to be moved only by the intellectual love of
God. To love things that perish is to love that which can never
satisfy, and the pursuit of such perishable things brings a train
of evils — envy, jealousy, etc. The only felicity is to love an
object which is infinite and eternal. But our love rests upon our
knowledge.
It is difficult to conceive of a manipulation of logic to justify
in a sense an almost Machiavellian ethics of self-realization, to
confirm a governmental sanction and authority with Hobbes, and
to affirm with Malebranche the only perfect satisfaction is to be
found in the “love of God." Like Malebranche, Spinoza says,
"We needs must love the highest when we see it.” To be able
to do this man must rise from the domination of opinion. Under
such sway, things are viewed in an arrested moment of inter-
relationing, as complete in themselves. The imagination pictures
as complete what it is impossible for thought to conceive as such.
The range of possibility narrows to the degree the understanding
and not the imagination has sway. To perfected knowledge pos-
sibility becomes necessity; absolute unity is the goal: all nature
is as one individual “whose parts vary through an infinite num-
ber of modes without change of the whole individual.” “And
as to the human mind, I think of it also as a part of nature, for
I think of nature as having in it an infinite power of thinking
which as infinite contains in itself the idea of all nature and whose
thoughts run parallel with all existence." 144
148 Quoted in Turner's History of Philosophy, P. 430.
144 Fifteenth letter.
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as
The idea of absolute unity is involved in the idea of each par-
ticular thing. It is man's blindness to this idea that makes him
a slave to confusion and disaster. Man is free only in so far
ideas either immediately are, or can be made, adequate.”
Our idea of God or of Absolute Unity is adequate; our ideas of
the afflictions of the body are inadequate and can be made ade-
quate only by referring them to the idea of God. The idea of
God is as it were the touchstone which distinguishes the gold
from dross.” 145
Spinoza's idea of abstract affirmation as deity, and his accom-
panying idea of the negative as nothing, leaves no place for asceti-
cism in his ethical theory. The morality he advances is Machia-
vellian in its self-assertion or self-seeking. The negative element
is never admitted. Man's affirmation of his natural self which
Spinoza conceives as having much in common with animals and
all beings, is affirmation apparently not different in kind from
that highest affirmation which is identification with God's love.
Spinoza confesses in the following statement his own inability to
comprehend this all-leveling logic of pantheism: "I confess I
cannot understand how spirits express God more than the other
creatures, for I know that between the finite and the infinite there
is no proportion.
Effect of This Exaggerated Spiritualism
That the exaggeration of the concept of spirituality culminating
in Spinoza's pantheism should bring a protest in the form of an
exaggerated materialism is only another instance of the rhythmic
alteration of opposite emphases. A movement initiated by a
desire to free the spiritual from its threatened materialization,
resulted in the materialistic philosophy which spread and prevailed
in France during the eighteenth century.
On the other hand, the theory of Spinoza became one of the
centers of German idealism. Reinterpreted in the light of inter-
action of mind and matter, spirit and sense, it may be said to be
the basis or source of the double-aspect theory, finding its closest
relationship in the logic of Hegel.
The most manifest inconsistency in Spinoza's logic is the
attempt to save enough of the idea of personality or individuality
Encyclopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, V, P. 158. Article, Carte-
sianism.
145
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87
to afford a semblance of a basis for morality. Consciousness
of this inconsistency is inevitable; at first, it is forced by the
fact that the conception of freedom is rescued from the logic only
in the so-called ethical field of the control by the reason of the
senses and passions. It becomes more and more evident in the
elaboration of the last idea. Something is the matter with the
logic as soon as it is applied to the practical sphere of conduct.
Spinoza himself was conscious of this.
Cartesianism is regarded as the first movement of modern
philosophy. The intelligible world emerges into greater impor-
tance, the result of what has been shown to be a cumulative
interest in material philosophy. This interest popularly ascribed
to the Renaissance period, has been shown to have had its origin
in remoter periods, and to have progressively evolved as the
control of civilization asserted itself through the medium of the
world's new religion. The nature of man had been progressively
freed for higher activities by control of the elemental forces of
that nature.146 The mind of the scholar had been sharpened by
the dialectic of scholasticism: the world of men had been at
school.
In Descartes, then, matter was emphasized as limitation.
was raised by Spinoza to be the equal of mind, and by a curious
inconsistency viewed as negation. The inconsistency is the result
of the attempt to bridge the duality between mind and matter,
an attempt to formulate the idea of unity which he felt existed
between the intelligible world and the mind of man.
His logic
defeats his purpose of dignifying matter. As a complement to
this absorption of all things under the form of eternity, the schools
of Locke and Leibnitz asserted the equally one-sided view of
individuality and difference. The English school forced con-
sideration of experience viewed under the form of time. With
what method and what results, will now be considered.
SECTION VI
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL METHOD OF DETERMINING THE STANDARD
With much of the spirit of Descartes, Locke undertook to lay
a basis for measuring objective truth. His method was one of
measuring the powers of the intellect, and by estimation of these
146 It is here that Monasticism has fulfilled its mission.
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The Concept Standard
to provide against their being applied to problems beyond their
scope.
Assuming the objective reality of extension, he accounts for
certain ideas as copies of such real qualities as bulk, number,
figure, situation, motion, or rest. In dealing with color, sound,
smell, and taste to which he likewise ascribes the term qualities,
secondary qualities, he finds it necessary to admit that they are
not copies in any sense, but are of the mind. He is unable to
give any explanation of the transmutation of sensations into such
ideas. 147
Locke seems to be uncertain as to just where the principle of
control lies. Real qualities in objects place it " without the
mind." “Secondary qualities” cannot be explained otherwise
than " of the mind.” He seems more concerned with the attitude
toward knowledge-getting, than with framing any philosophical
system. He urges repeatedly the control by knowledge; at one
time regretting that men do not think for themselves, at another
urging them to widen the range of experience in order to escape
the consequences of limitation of experience. Emphasizing always
experience as the source of knowledge, and showing at the same
time that knowledge is necessary for right conduct, he regards
this active use of our faculties as the chief means of honoring
the Deity.
The emphasis placed upon experience carries with it the hedo-
nistic interpretation of good and evil found in Hobbes. But
Locke opposes alike Hobbes' political intervention as moral obli-
147 The difficulty of Locke's undertaking is manifest.
How can
powers of mind be measured except by the very powers themselves?
The fallacy lies in the abstraction of one element in the idea of knowl-
edge and idealizing it as a standard by which all other elements are sub-
ordinated, or condemned.
The difficulty is not transcended: the standard has not been deter-
mined, and cannot be adequately determined by using the powers to be
measured as standards, or by the abstraction of one of them to degrade
the others. The interconnection of the powers is so complete that it
is impossible to abstract one without destroying the identity of all, or
rather their true nature. "To see around our knowledge and find its
boundary, we must stand outside of it, and where is such standing ground
to be found ?" This is not a denial of the possibility of criticising parts
of our knowledge. It is sound judgment to criticise an idea because of
failure to consider in its formation factors whose omission destroy its
relation to the whole, or ipso facto, its truth. Of course in so doing the
implication is inherent that there is a consciousness of truth which in
being thus used serves as standard.
What is denied is the possibility of completely validating the tools of
knowledge, or of criticising adequately the idea of k owleug itself.
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89
gation, and that shifting of a moral standard determined by
society's praise and blame. There is anticipation of Shaftesbury
in the idea of universal benevolence. But with Locke this inherent
harmony of individual, and orderly, organized, social life is
referred to conformity with Divine Will. Locke's belief in the
permanence and universality of moral truths is shown in the
following: “The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power,
goodness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are and upon
which we depend, and the idea of ourselves as understanding,
rational beings, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose,
if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our
duty and rules of action, as might place morality among the
sciences capable of demonstration, wherein I doubt not, but from
self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences as incon-
testible as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong
might be made out."
In place of the pantheism found often in the continental schools,
the English conception has been that of God, the lawgiver, the
ruler, with nature as his dominion. This Stoic-Scholastic idea
is strongly supported by Locke's younger contemporary, Newton.
Laws to him were the expression of infinite goodness and power.
Lesser laws classified under greater laws suggested a pyramid
with the apex one law, the expression or manifestation of one
lawgiver. Kepler's classic saying that in the discovery of laws
of nature, we think the thoughts of God after Him, is a summary
of Newton's view.
Berkeley's Principle of Universal Mind
Berkeley, following Descartes and Locke, interprets the idea of
matter according to a new principle. All existence necessarily
implies mind: the so-called laws of nature are ideas of the Uni-
versal mind,—the so-called external objects, “ things as they are,"
are the signs and symbols by which these ideas are communicable
to man's mind. The
sense ideas are man's consciousness of
participation in the ideas of God. “ Instead therefore of fate or
necessity, or matter, or the unknown, a living, active mind is
looked upon as the center and spring of the universe." Man's
struggle then in all experience is to bring his human conceptions
into harmony with the Divine Archetypes.
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With such a conception it is hard to understand a segregation
of any part of experience as ethical, and it may be that Berkeley's
deductions of so-called moral rules from the intention of God
to promote the general happiness, may be translating his general
standard into terms of the contemporary moral theorists.
The synthesis of subject and object as conceived by Berkeley
under the idea that no object can exist apart from mind, is
thought by some to be an English empiricism forerunning the
German Kantian school.
Reaction to Hobbes' Theory of Complete Egoism
The influence of Hobbes' theory of egoism was indirectly the
source of the attempt of Shaftesbury, Butler, Hutcheson, and
others to identify private and public good. Shaftesbury made
intelligent self-regard identical with social good. The personal
sanction, which he termed the "moral sense,” was criticised and
developed by Butler into conscience which became at once a
rival standard to self-love. Butler attempted to recognize the
imperativeness of conscience independent of religious proof. He
showed that man's primary impulses cannot all be egoistic, some
of these being as obviously social as others are self-regarding,
and also that man cannot be consistently egoistic without being
self-regulative. If the impulses are thus regulated, the natural
claim of conscience to be supreme ruler must be conceded.
Hutcheson, while sustaining Butler's idea of the governing
power of the "moral sense," maintains Shaftesbury's harmony
of private and public good, but emphasises the disinterestedness
of benevolent affections. He denies, with clear argument, the
presence of the motive of “intrinsic reward” in the actions of
the benevolent man. He points to the universal admiration man-
kind has evinced for self-sacrifice as testimony to its being some-
thing different from "refined self-seeking." 'In the practical
working out of his system into control of outward acts, Hutcheson
used the scholastic distinction between “material" and " formal"
goodness. “An action is materially good when in fact it tends to
the interest of the system, so far as we can judge of its tendency,
or to the good of some part consistent with that of the system,
whatever were the affections of the agent. An action is formally
good when it flowed from 'good affection in a just proportion.'
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Hume's Denial of a Unifying Principle
Hume in continuing the Lockian analysis of the limits of our
knowledge transformed the latter into a philosophy of skepticism.
There is no unifying principle by which experiences are inter-
preted. The only synthesis Hume concedes is that ascribed to
habit. A recurrence of associated phenomena leads us through
memory of these to feel the necessity of one on the appearance
of the other. The description is the purely psychological one of
the Associational School. It is difficult to conceive of Hume's
analysis as an explanation. It is essentially descriptive, and that
only of routine rather than of reflection. Hume's description
of the synthesis necessary to all cognition as merely the accidental
result of external relations discoverable as impressions in our
conscious experience, leaves all consideration of a standard out
of the question. That Hume was conscious at once of the need
of a synthesising principle and of the impossibility of a logical
conception of such a principle in his theory is shown by the fol-
lowing:
If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only
by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct
existences are ever discoverable by human understanding. We
only feel a connexion or determination of the thought or pass
from one object to another. It follows, therefore, that the
thought alone feels personal identity, and when reflecting on the
train of past perceptions that compose a mind, the ideas of them
are felt to be connected together and naturally introduce each
other.
“However extraordinary this conclusion may seem, it need not
surprise us. Modern philosophers seem inclined to think that
personal identity arises from consciousness, and consciousness is
nothing but a reflected thought or perception. The present philos-
ophy therefore has a promising aspect. But all my hopes vanish
when I come to explain the principles that unite our successive
perceptions in our thought to consciousness. I cannot discover
any theory which gives me satisfaction on this head.
“In short there are two principles which I cannot render con-
sistent nor is it in my power to renounce either of them; viz.,
that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that
the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct
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existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple
or individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion
between them, there would be no difficulty in the case.
Hume has herein stated the crux in the theory known as
Empiricism. It is conceded that his is the consistent exposition
of the fundamental presupposition of that theory — that the
theory of knowledge is identical with the problems of Associa-
tional Psychology. It is conceded too that there has been no
advance from Hume's position even in John Stuart Mill's
“ Logic.” In Hume's closing sentence above he seems to rest
his case: that with his theory he can not consistently offer an
explanation of cognition. The value of Hume's analysis is only
increased by the confession of its insufficiency. As is true always
of masterful, scholarly work, it is a contribution to the world's
knowledge even though its results are negative in the particular
direction which the author has given them. It clears the field
for further inquiry and provokes and stimulates like critical work
in others. That this is especially true of Hume we know from
Kant's own words. 149 In reading Hume, the stimuli to Kant's
“Critique" are readily to be detected. Hume's attempt to account
for any synthesising mode of experiencing is couched repeatedly
in the words, "manner of conceiving.” In the recurrence of this
phrase, Kant's categories are implied. The last statement in the
quotation from Hume suggests the scheme to frame the theory
of knowledge that Kant actually took.
Hume's ethical theory is a necessary deduction from his theory
of knowledge. It is an analysis of distinct cases that excite appro-
bation or disapprobation in a disinterested spectator of an action.
Adam Smith's test is that of Hume: so act that a disinterested
spectator will approve of your action. In his later treatise Hume
recognizes no obligation to virtue except the agent's interest or
happiness. In his earlier treatise he states that in some cases by
"association of ideas " the rule by which we praise or blame is
extended beyond the principle of utility from which it arises,
but in his later treatise, “ Inquiry into the Principles of Morals,"
he returns to the more strictly utilitarian view.
148
Appendix to the Treatise on Human Nature, II, P. 551.
140 It was Hume who awoke me, etc.
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Reactionary Schools
In the extremes represented by Hume and Shaftesbury, there
is a manifest attempt to dissolve ethics in psychological hypo-
theses. Shaftesbury's theory views the "moral sense," which is
the efficient cause of action in his theory, as varying in different
individuals. Hume's theory acknowledges no standard for action
except the evanescent one of the approbation or disapprobation
of a changing public. Both alike produce a disintegrating effect
upon society. This is evident in the two reactionary schools that
follow inevitably such crises : the one devoted to the strengthening
of standards commonly accepted by “most men”; the other
devoted to the repudiation of these and to the development of the
strongest common element in the new theory into an ultimate end
or standard. The former was the still existent Intuitional School
represented by Price, Reid, Stewart, and others; the latter
developed into Utilitarianism represented at first by Paley and
Bentham, and afterwards by Mili.
SECTION VII
KANTIAN ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCE: RECIPROCAL INFLUENCE
OF THIS CONCEPTION AND THE MORAL STANDARD
Kant makes thought the prius of experience, and so of all
existences that are objects of knowledge. Thought not only
constitutes finite experience, but reaches beyond it, in that it is
conscious of its own limitations.150 This consciousness of the
insufficiency of experience is the telesis that is manifested in
experience by man's continual striving to reach an ideal.
Kant concedes Hume's position that evidence is lacking in the
actual objects of experience of the unity or identity that thought
demands. Combination," says Kant, “is not in things and
cannot be derived from them by perception, for example, and
thence first transferred to the understanding; it is the work of
the understanding alone, which itself is nothing more than the
faculty of a priori combination, the faculty by which the variety
of given representations is brought under the unity of apper-
ception. This principle is the highest of human knowledge. Since
now all possible perception depends on the synthesis of appre-
160 This recalls Descartes.
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hension and since this empirical synthesis again depends upon
the transcendental synthesis, and hence on the categories, it
follows that all possible perceptions, and hence everything that
can exist in the empirical consciousness, i.e., all phenomena of
nature, are subject in what respects their combination, to the
categories which are the original ground of the necessary con-
formity of nature (considered simply as such) to law." 161
The categories then are the conditions of thought upon which
all experience depends. The categories belong exclusively to the
subject which by these modes of synthesising shapes the sensa-
tions and so generates phenomena which become ideas. These
ideas in turn become means of control. Hume's interpretation as
" manner of conceiving" becomes Kant's “mode of experienc-
ing." Kant's selection of a definite number of these modes of
synthesising and designating them as the categories cannot fail
to impress us as arbitrary or dogmatic. The essential truth of
Kant's analysis is that unity of consciousness and its identity
with itself are the necessary conditions for the combining of a
given content into any conceivable forın of experience.
The only world we can know is the world determined by mind.
The world of experience is therefore transcendently ideal. It
is only empirically real; its reality is only phenomenal. Kant has
sometimes been wrongly interpreted as supporting an idealism
which would involve the "negation of things in themselves beyond
phenomena, or the identification of the objects of experience with
these things." Kant is concerned with the world we know, the
world of experience, the only reality we can know, though not
the absolute reality, ding-an-sich.
It is difficult to follow him in the Dialectic where he has to
account for the fact that the conscious subject is able to so far
transcend his experience as to contrast (as in the last statement)
the objects of his experience as phenomenal, with things in them-
selves. He shows that the expression of the subject through the
categories is not the pure expression of its real nature, but only
the product of the relationing of that identity with the forms of
time and space. On the other hand, the affections of the sensible
subject can tell us nothing of the unknown thing-in-itself that
causes the affections. Thus experiencing on both sides is phe-
nomenal -- both in relation to the noumenal subject and noumenal
181 Ueberweg, P. 170. See criticism in note same page.
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object. These “lurk behind the veil and send forth into experi-
ence on the one side affections which become objects through their
determination by the unity of thoughts, and on the other side an
identity of thought which becomes self-conscious in relation to
the objects so determined by itself." 162 If the phenomena are
regarded as unreal, there must be an idea of reality by which they
are so judged. In other words, they are not condemned because
they are ideal but because they are iinperfectly ideal. The nou-
menon is substituted for the thing-in-itself in the dialectic, and
is defined by Kant as the object as it exists for an intuitive or
perceptive understanding, i.e., for an understanding that does
not synthetically combine the given matter of sense into objects
by means of categories, but whose thought is one with the exis-
tence of the objects it knows.163
This idea of the pure identity of knowing and being is self-
originated by thought and leads us to regard our empirical
knowledge as imperfect, and its objects as not, in an absolute
sense real objects. The noumena are not therefore the unknown
causes by whose action and reaction conscious experience is
produced; they represent a unity of thought with itself to which
it finds experience inadequate." This higher unity of thought
with itself Kant calls reason. In his identification of reason with
the faculty of syllogizing, there is an echo of Aristotle's dis-
cussion of the characteristic function of man.
In the three fields, psychology, cosmology, and theology, Kant
finds the empirical process of knowledge guided and stimulated
by an idea it is unable to realize or verify. In psychology it is
the identity of the self, in cosmology, the idea of totality the
world as a completed infinite whole, and in theology, the unity
of identity and totality -"the unity of all things with each other
and with the mind that knows them.” These ideas do not exist
independently of the mind that conceives them, but they exist in
their function of keeping "open a vacant place beyond experience.
They are like dark lanterns which cast light upon the
empirical world and show what are its boundaries, but leave
their own nature in obscurity."
Interpreted in the field of conduct, Kant's "idea of an intel-
ligible world is a point of view beyond the phenomenal which
162 Edward Caird's Criticism of Kant.
168 Compare Thomas Aquinas.
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“ Thus," says
the reason sees itself compelled to take up, in order to think of
itself as practical." Beings morally free, that is, self-determined,
presuppose an idea of causality which with other ideas begins to
fill the blank space beyond the phenomenal. The moral law pre-
supposes freedom. Man in the sphere of conduct must recognize
himself as the "denizen of a spiritual world where nothing is
determined for him from without which is not simply the expres-
sion of his own self-determination from within."
Kant, “ we have found what Aristotle could not find, a fixed
point on which Reason can set its lever, not in any present or
future world, but in its own inner idea of freedom - a point fixed
for it by the immovable moral law, as a secure basis from which
it can move the human will, even against the opposition of all
the powers of nature.”
The universal law, the “categorical imperative," finds content
in the two formulae: “Act so that the maxim of thy action may
serve as a general rule,” and “So act as to treat humanity
whether in thine own person, or in that of any other, in every
case as an end withal, never as a means only.” In this conception
of a "kingdom of ends," the principle of personality finds one
of the highest forms of expression in history. In such a "king-
dom there is necessarily implied an organic unity toward the
realization of which each contributes by virtue of his individuality,
his unique share.
There is thus a threefold development of the moral conscious-
ness :
I. Act as if the motive were to become a universal one.
2. Treat personality as an end in itself.
3. Further an organization of a kingdom of ends.
Virtue, which is the satisfaction of reason, is the supreme
good. Happiness is the satisfaction of man's sense nature. Hap-
piness and virtue tend to approach each other. The union of the
two becomes a moral necessity, an ideal. The moral conscious-
ness authorizes the use of the idea of organic unity to interpret
the phenomenal world; in other words, to serve as an ideal to
give meaning to all experience. The consciousness of the beau-
tiful and sublime represented by Kant's " Critique of Judgment"
as disinterested, free, immediate, suggests essential harmony
between the understanding and sense. In Kant's philosophy of
religion, the idea of God is evolved from the moral consciousness,
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97
and becomes the means of reconciling the two worlds of sense
and intelligence. The God of Rationalism is invoked instead of
the God of Revelation.
Thus as soon as Kant applies his theory to the field of conduct,
the duality disappears. When he directs that ideas evolved in
the realm of reason be used as standards for the world of experi-
ence, he virtually recognizes an identity in difference in the two
worlds. How otherwise could the ideas be used to measure or
synthesize or interpret experience, if these ideas were absolutely
incommensurable with that experience?
Hegel's Conception of a Self-differentiating Unity
In Hegel's development of Kant's philosophy is the beginning
of the modern tendency to identify morality with socialty. Hegel
developes the positive character of the will as interpreted by Kant,
to the conception that will is not will until it is objectified. By
giving this idea historical breadth, the Hegelian conception of
social institutions as the objectified general will or morality of
the race is reached. The external world is regarded as the neces-
sary manifestation of spirit through which it realizes itself. Mind,
or Spirit as Hegel calls it, is a self-differentiating unity. The
Absolute in its self-alienation in the finite constitutes what is
termed Nature. The Idea as Being, is Nature. The return of
its own alterity to itself, is Spirit. Spirit is the being-with-self
of the Absolute Idea after its existence in its own otherness in
Nature. The gradual advance to the final reconciliation is its
becoming in time, its development towards freedom. Freedom
arises from the ashes of the old activity, and is identical withi
the truth of the new activity. Hegel gives content to this con-
ception in his interpretation of history in all its aspects. His
whole philosophy is one of the evolution from lower to higher
manifestations of the all-pervading Idea. These progressive
manifestations are the momenta in the return of the self-differ-
entiating Idea to itself. The goal is absence of self-determination.
This cessation of determination of the Idea into Being is Absolute
Freedom. The unity of willing and thinking is the activity of
this force of self-determining freedom working toward its goal.
The ethical is the recognition of ends of universal, rational scope,
and the active furthering of these ends.
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Thus the ideal is the reconciliation of differentiation with its
essence, unity. The standard of all activity is this conception
of the return of the Idea to itself, the reconciliation of nature
and spirit; the necessary relation of all things to one another and
to the mind that knows them, the identity in difference of all
existence, the universal principle of nature and humanity, whose
essence is Spirit — an active self-determining principle. The
principle is not an abstract one, but one that both within and
without is necessarily realizing itself. It is the consciousness of
this identity of the necessity that pre-conditions our activity with
the manifestation within us of the spirit that makes us free, that
constitutes morality in the Hegelian sense.
Section VIII
A RE-SURVEY OF THE EFFECT OF GERMAN IDEALISM ON THE
MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE STANDARD
Whether formulated as in ancient times by Democritus 164 and
later by Lucretius, or present as a tendency more or less pro-
nounced in the English school of Bacon, Locke, Hobbes, and
Hume the main principles of materialism can be summed up as
follows: "the eternity and indestructibility of atoms,— nothing
produces nothing: the eternity of motion, and the infinite pos-
sibility of its combination, the iron sway of necessary laws
throughout the universe: the rejection of final causes: the prin-
ciples of spontaneous generation, and of natural selection at least
in germ.
German idealism from Kant through Fichte and Schelling to
Hegel had opposed to this the conception that all the truths of
science are but the phenomenal form of an inner determining
principle: that consequently none of the particulars can be com-
prehended except as determined in their significance to a pur-
poseful connected whole of life. “The dutifully bound seeming
universe of our experience will obey the law of the inner life
whose thought it is." The German school therefore in its begin-
nings was essentially critical. Kant's motive was an attempt
to synthesize the two prevailing modes of thought, dogmatism
and skepticism.
164 Tyndall in his Belfast address suggests as a final conclusion of modern
thought, the doctrines of Democritus.
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The skeptic accused the dogmatist of employing ideas as means
of arriving at general truth without adequate test of the means.
He consequently denied both the possibility of truth, and the
value of the tools. Mutual accusations resulted in fruitless
affirmation and denial. The critiques of Kant were intended to
validate the tools by a systematic investigation of the method
of arriving at results.
A re-survey reveals the fact that the exaggerated spiritualism
of the Cartesians gave birth to the empiricism of Locke: this
to the skepticism of Hume; to confute Hume, Kant wrote his
Critique of Pure Reason,” to counteract the inherent disintegra-
ting influences of the extreme individualism of the last mentioned,
his “Critique of Practical Reason ": the trancendentalism there
developed, Fichte translated into Subjective Idealism in which
“life was a dream and he himself the dream of a dream," until
the idea became with Hegel, a conception requiring a new logic,
involving the denial of the principle of contradiction, and the
substitution of the movement of negation and absorption of the
premises. 106
The logic of Hegel regards the operations of the understanding
alone as impotent to achieve any real synthesis, and tending to
degenerate into dogmatism, religious and scientific. The first
work of the reason termed dialectic, he considers as centrifugal
and radical, and when combined with an attitude toward the
products of the understanding as ultimate or final, producing the
attitude known as skepticism. The third stage, the inclusion of
negatives, the total grasp of the speculative notion, comprehends
in its “identity in difference" both skepticism and dogmatism.
Thus by carrying this conception into the history of philosophy,
opposing systems of philosophy previously considered as mutually
destructive of each other become the necessary stages or elements
of a conscious unity embracing both.
Reactionary Influence of the Nineteenth Century Thought
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a reaction to the
high tension of that speculative philosophy that found its most
comprehensive expression in Hegel, closed the philosophic era.
The exaltation of matter, beginning with Descartes, with each
165 The Logic of Hegel. Prolog. Chap. XIII.
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returning wave in the rhythm of spiritual and material emphasis
gathered force and became a purely mechanical conception of the
universe. The nineteenth century becomes thereby seemingly
the beginning of a new cycle of thought. The old cycle beginning
with the animistic conception of the universe had given way at
length to the new cycle with its correspondingly initial conception
of world's forces. Science occupied the center of world interests,
and acting with the individualistic tendency of the Protestant
Revolt supplanted interest in universals. The discovery of the
world's forces stimulated unprecedented progress in the economic
and industrial control of these. The Weltgeist of the time was
busy with concrete reality, concrete having come to stand for
matter, reality being another name for the material thing. The
simplicity of the appeal that is made by science, to the perception
and imagination, has a certain clearness and definiteness appar-
ently verifiable 156 in experience. Hypotheses become theories,
theories become principles when they are verifiable in experience.
The goal is the mathematical formulation of experience.
Romanticism was another influence. Aside from the effect it
exerted upon the systems of philosophy in Germany, making pos-
sible the highly speculative character of these, the emphasis it
gave nature was one influence in paving the way for the recog-
nition of the natural as a general standard for measuring the
value of every particular event or experience. The interpretation
of the natural was wholly materialistic.
Paralleling this tendency to reduce all this experience to a
mathematical calculus, has been the increasing divergence of
science and religion. Science has come to mean the store of
knowledge gained through sense experience alone. The most
comprehensive hypothesis explaining the facts of science has been
the modern conception of evolution. It may be defined as a
natural history of the cosmos including organic being expressed
in physical terms as a mechanical process."
Herbert Spencer's Theory
Herbert Spencer has done more than any one else towards the
formation of a philosophy of evolution on a scientific basis. His
celebrated formula that "Evolution is an integration of matter
150 The possibility of this is challenged.
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IOI .
ance,
and a concomitant dissipation of motion, during which matter
passes from a relatively coherent heterogenity: and during which
the contained motion undergoes a parallel transformation ”- this
formula while implying an ascending process gives no hint of
the nature of any inherent determination in favor of variation in
the higher direction. Darwin found no better epithet for the
variation through which transformations are wrought than “for-
tuitous" and his staunchest disciples assert that if such varia-
tions be predetermined toward certain results, there is an end of
Darwinism. It seems difficult to understand this ignoring of an
initial force so characteristic of many enthusiastic followers of
Darwin. These 157 too often recklessly claim what Darwin most
humbly disclaims. He implies that my views explain the uni-
verse, but it is a most monstrous exaggeration. The more one
thinks the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignor-
If we consider the whole universe, the mind refuses to
look at it as the outcome of chance. The whole question seems to
be insoluble.” 158
Spencer's optimistic belief in the eventual complete adjustment
or adaptation of man to the condition of his environment furnishes
a principle of conduct: man should so act as to further progress
toward that ideal. Morality consists of an observance of laws
of life, both individual and collective. There is a strong tincture
in Spencer's optimism of the eighteenth century idea of beneficent
nature,-- of nature as a great law-abiding force: a vice-regent
of God that effects the happiness of those that conform to its
beneficent laws. Spencer's conception of an earthly goal of "the
greatest length, breadth, and completeness of life” when conduct
simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in
offspring, and in fellow men” where every voluntary act would
be conducive to the harmony of all—such a conception is not only
Utopian but destructive as well to the fundamental principle
upon which his philosophy rests --- evolution. The process has
transcended the condition of its existence, the need of adaptation
of the individual to the environment.
167 Haeckel quoting Kant's statement: “It is absurd for a man even
to conceive the idea that some day a Newton will arise who can explain
the origin of a single blade of grass by natural laws uncontrolled by
design,” makes the statement that the impossible Newton appeared
in the person of Chas. Darwin.
Quoted in "The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer," Gerard, P. 150.
168
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The subjective standard of pleasurable feeling, involving the
calculus of pleasure and pain, in its ultimate analysis is open
to all the criticism of the Utilitarian standard of happiness. This
is most plainly seen in comparing Mill's statement that if life
had any value at all, happiness was its one end "the test of all
conduct "— with the subsequent statement that this end was to
be attained “by fixing the mind on some object other than one's
own happiness, on the happiness of others, the improvement of
mankind." Instead of happiness for a standard there results a
standard for happiness. By substituting common good” for
"general happiness," the standard is not defined: it is not dif-
ferentiated from pleasure in the manifold. This principle of
valuation as analyzed by its most famous advocate, J. S. Mill,
results in an antithesis to the premises, viz., that the highest
virtue that can be found in man is the sacrifice of his happiness.
If social happiness is to be a test of morals, it must postulate
a personal happiness of some hitherto unexplained kind. The
negative condition of happiness - the ideal of social health -
conditions allowing each to act as he desires, interpreted means
only that by state or other mutually recognized power conditions
should be fixed so that individuals may proceed by agreement to
express and secure their own activities. May it not be that such
a foundation guarantees individual license, that such a pedestal
supports “either an Athene or a Priapus ” ?
Thus in the synthetic philosophy of Spencer, there is no clue
to the nature of the implied ascending tendency in transformism.
Progress remains unexplained. At the same time the distinctively
mechanical interpretation is not unreservedly admitted. An
unknowable reality, according to Spencer, manifests itself alike
in the material and mental domain. This suppositious unknowable
is sometimes termed force, the term itself revealing the materi-
alistic nature of the conception. There is no adequate meta-
physical interpretation of the principle of control, no standard
recognized as determining values. There is an essentially dua-
listic basis, however, evident throughout the system.
These conclusions are forced on the reader in attempting to
discover any full explanation of inorganic evolution. The con-
flict of integrating and disintegrating forces is not a solution, but
a description of an imaginary process. There is confessedly no
attempt to account for the first appearance of life, or later on
of mental life, no reason is found for the manifestation of the
Review of Conception of the Standard
103
unknowable in time, nor for its manifestation in a material world
before it appears as mind or consciousness. Nor does the theory
that innate intuitions are a racial inheritance explain their presence
in the most remote antecedent. The a priori element in mental
activity is not thereby accounted for.
Finally, his principle applied in the ethical field is contradictory
in its two standards: the subjective one of a calculus of pleas-
urable feelings, and the objective one of fullness of life for all.
The contribution to previous Utilitarianism of this biological
thesis that development has brought about harmony between pleas-
ure and progress, not only fails to solve the Utilitarian difficulty
of reconciling individual interests and social good, but the thesis
is itself challenged by other evolutionists, notably Huxley. Its
failure to solve the difficulty is in the fact that the necessary con-
ditions of progress imply a lack of the asserted harmony. On
the other hand, Huxley denies vigorously the harmony of the
cosmic and ethical process. The principle of the survival of the
fittest does not at all imply the survival of the ethically best.
Huxley would find the ethical standard in the moral ideals of
men, “ Its principle is not that of survival of the fittest but that
of fitting as many as possible to survive. The duty of man is
not to conform to the cosmic process, but to coinbat it."
1
Thomas H. Green's Theory -- Neo-Hegelian
One of the strongest opponents of the conception of the universe
as a purely mechanical process, is T. H. Green. He might be
termed a Neo-Hegelian in his fundamental assumption, which
identifies the self-" the single, active, self-conscious principle
with the universal or divine self-consciousness, the one eternal,
divine subject to which the universe is relative. Hence conscious-
ness has a double character, unity and manifold: as a unity it is
eternal, all-conditioning, an end realizing itself in and through
the manifold; as manifold it is subject to change, conditioned, and
is a means to an end. The eternal consciousness is manifested
in the individual in the forecasting idea.” In virtue of this
definite principle in him, man has definite capabilities the realiza-
tion of which, since in it alone can he satisfy himself, forms his
true good.” 150 The idea of a possible better state of himself,
169 Green, Prologomena of Ethics.
104
The Concept Standard
consisting in a further realization of his capabilities, has been the
moralizing agent in human life: it has yielded our moral stan-
dards, loyalty to which, itself a product of the same idea, is the
condition of goodness in the individual.” 180
The application of the principle to the interpretation of natural
phenomena is explained as the “consciousness of possibilities in
ourselves unrealized but constantly in process of realization that
alone enables us to read the idea of development into what we
observe of natural life and to conceive that there must be such
a thing as a plan of the world.” Although viewing the ultimate
standard of worth as personal worth, in which all other values are
relative to value for, of, or in a person, the common or social good
is conceived as altogether in harmony. “Society could not exist
without this recognition of each individual as an end in himself:
Persons are interested in each other as persons in so far as each,
being aware that another presents his own self-satisfaction to
himself as an object, finds satisfaction for himself in procuring or
witnessing the self-satisfaction of the other."
This consciousness of a possible better state of himself as abso-
lutely desirable, will yield a recognition of rules requiring some-
thing to be done regardless of inclination. “It is a consciousness
of the possibility of an action in which no desire shall be gratified
but the desire excited by the idea of the act itself, as of something
absolutely desirable in the sense that in it the man does the best
that is in him to do."
The resemblance of Green's principle to the Categorical Impera-
tive is readily seen. The particular duties which it enjoins will
include at least those that in the hitherto experience of men have
made for progress in the fulfilment of men's capabilities.
But Green denies emphatically the contention of contempo-
raneous evolutionary theorists, that this principle even as mani-
fested in the lower level of civilization is evolved from or is a
product of feeling of animal origin. “Unless the fragmentary
indications obtainable of a primitive humanity can be interpreted
as expressing a consciousness in germ or principle the same as
ours, we have no clue to their significance at all.” 181
100 Ibid, Compare Royce, Philosophy of Loyalty, 1908. HET
101 Green, Prologomena of Ethics, Page 211. Green's expositionis
given in his own words as far as the limits of the paper allow.
Review of Conception of the Standard
IOS
162
At the same time Green concedes without question the inter-
dependence in manifestations of his principle, of the idea and
the purely animal feelings. As an example of this is cited man's
provision for the wants of his family. This must have rested
upon the projection of himself in thought into the future, as the
subject of a possibly permanent satisfaction to be formed in the
satisfaction of the wants of the family with which he identifies
himself. “This power of coming to be what he is not through
a society in which he lives a permanent life, is in promise and
potency an interest in the bettering of mankind, in the realization
of its capabilities or the fulfilment of its vocation conceived as an
absolutely desirable end." The idea of the good according to
this view is an idea that gradually creates its own filling:
the idea must have place before the authority of the law or custom
can have any meaning for the individual.
The gradual spiritualization of the idea of true good exhibits
itself in the accepted standards of virtue and in the duties which
the candid conscience recognizes.
The real value of virtue according to this theory arises from
a clear conception of the end to which it is directed as a character
not a good fortune, as a fulfilment of human capabilities from
within, as a function not a possession. Thus both the practice
of virtue and the current standard of virtue, which on the one
hand presupposes the practice and on the other hand reacts and
sustains it, have a history corresponding to the gradual develop-
ment and determination of the idea of what social good consists
in."
Shortcomings arise from the impossibility of envisaging or
of exhaustively defining the good which it presupposes, insepa-
rable from the very nature of morality, as an effort not an attain-
ment, a progressive construction of what should be, not an
enjoyment of what is, governed not by sight but by faith.
162 Ibid. Page 259.
CHAPTER IV
SECTION I
THE STANDARD FUNCTIONING IN NATIONAL CRISES: INFLUENCE
UPON EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
The Chinese cycle of development bridges the crises on which
other civilizations wrecked, by a titanic grasp of its social tenden-
cies. This wresting from all its preceding civilization of elements
making for social stability, and conserving them in a national
classic, was an unique instance in history. The decision that
this selected content was to remain intact was forced as final,
and a system of education was devised that would make deviation
from this standard impossible. Social progress was sacrificed
to social stability. Four thousand years of continued existence
as a nation where all values were determined by an unchanging
standard has revealed to modern students the adequacy of an
educational system for the perpetuation of a definitely conceived
plan of national life.
It also affords a study of the influence of a purely secular stand-
ard. Confucianism contains no reference to a deity or to a
future life. It is an idealization of those forces which man's
experience through centuries of trial had found contributing to
social welfare. As such it bears close study in the light of modern
effort to isolate and conserve those tendencies conceived by social
engineers as the product of society's best expression. China
affords an example of a fixed standard which, through an ordered
system of examination excluding all possibility of re-interpretation
or adaptation of that standard, has absolutely controlled the des-
tinies of a many-million-souled nation for thousands of years.
India
In strikingly contrasted manner India through another cycle
of development testifies to the same fact - a nation's tacit recog-
nition of defeat to express itself on progressively higher levels.
The crisis must have been reached after centuries of striving
1 Recent developments in China are prophetic of general upheaval.
106
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
107
when final recourse was made to the peace suggested by a philos-
ophy of annihilation --- of the individual's ultimate absorption
into the one all-pervading principle of the universe.
Both the Chinese and the Hindoo conceptions produce the inevi-
table result, complete suppression of the individual. In the
Chinese conception this is accomplished by completely ignoring
the religious or spiritual in the universe, and in the Indian con-
ception, by regarding man as but the transient mode of the Uni-
versal Spirit. Consistently with his moral aim of absorption,
extinction, endless felicity, the Hindoo educated for this end.
His education began and ended with his philosophy of Quietism.
This Quietism has effectively resisted all efforts of Europeans to
arouse any endeavor for economic or social progress.
In these oldest of civilizations, modern man may see partial
manifestations at least of two plainly discernible tendencies of
present-day civilization: one the minimizing almost to complete
neglect of the spiritual needs of man by the modern sociologist;
the other the adoption of various forms of Eastern mysticism by
those whose spiritual needs are demanding expression. This last
carries with it disregard of scientific measures for the improve-
ment of man's worldly condition.
Greece
The crisis in the Greek cycle of development led to the recog-
nition of the individual's natural disposition, the constitution of
his impulses, the so-called law of Nature, as the supreme law
of action. This standard, deification of man's own powers, meas-
ured all values in the Sophist's scheme of education. This spirit
of Greek thought has its counterpart in the modern pragmatic
school. “Protagoras again” is a criticism of this philosophy.
Enough of the theory of Protagoras has been preserved to us
to afford a distinct parallel. To offset the intrinsic individualism
of the theory, Protagoras recognizes primary ethical feelings
which impel men toward the formation of permanent unions for
mutual preservation. Likewise in the modern theory man's essen-
tially social nature is regarded as the basis for solidarity. The
relativity of truth in both systems gives that flux of values that
both to the conservative and to the idealistic reformer seem so
disastrous to that social stability that is necessary to any perma-
nent progress.
108
The Concept Standard
While the great theorists were endeavoring to put what had
been custom morality upon a scientific basis, to give a rational
sanction to what had been received unquestionably, Greece fell
because her people had no standard but personal gratification.
The Sophist teaching which had been supposed by certain writers
to have hastened the downfall of Greece, was nothing but the
expression of the conditions of the times - a response to the
demand of the age. It seems incontrovertible that the theories of
these self-constituted teachers of the Athenian youth challenged
the genius of the Greek philosophers. It was only by accepting
the thesis “man is the measure of all things” and pursuing it
into all its implications, that Socrates was able theoretically to
restore authority to the law, legal and ethical.?
The Stoic conception of law so firmly gripped the iron states-
men of Republican Rome, that they were never able to give the
sanction of public endorsement to a system of education. Greek
teachers imbued with the ideas of the Sophist, so out of harmony
with the Roman reverence for law, made education under them
sufficiently undesirable as to preclude any National System of
Education. From the vigorous protest of Cato to the well-known
meditation of Marcus Aurelius, Roman history reveals the clash
of underlying principles. The practical-minded Roman seemed
to lack power to generate a national culture of his own to form
the content of an educational system. His awe of the towering
genius of Greece made him accept Greek ideas, and content him-
self with providing a mode for the transference of these ideas.
These modes or institutions are the channels through which Greek
civilization reached succeeding ages, but the exotic ideas were
never themselves naturalized. The conviction is forced that
Roman genius should have developed its own mode of experi-
encing life. The Stoic recognition of a law-abiding universe,
and of man's potentiality to ascertain these laws should have
led naturally to the search for these laws. In its stead, the
genius of the Roman wasted itself, so far as its schools were
concerned, in reducing Greek letters to law.
? For further development of this idea, see Windelband, History of
Philosophy, P. 77.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
109
Early Christian Era
The Christian Apologists reversed the attitude of the Roman,
and seizing every available channel of communication in the form
of existing philosophies and other institutions, used them for
the transmission of the Christian ideal. This is most clearly
seen in the Alexandrian Schools. Justin, Clement, and Origen
illustrate it best. “We are permitted when we go out of Egypt
to carry with us the riches of the Egyptians to adorn the taber-
nacles." All the learning of the Greek, all the eloquence of the
Roman were brought into the service of Christian instruction.
That all pagan religions and philosophies of themselves were
powerless to effect any moral improvement in the masses, had
been abundantly demonstrated. That Aristotle was aware of this
limitation is evident in the following: “Now if arguments and
theories were able to make people good they would be entitled
to receive high and great awards, and it is with theories that we
would have to provide ourselves. But the truth apparently is
that though they are strong enough to encourage and stimulate
young men of liberal minds, though they are able to inspire with
goodness a character that is naturally noble and sincerely loves
the beautiful, they are incapable of converting the mass of men
to goodness and beauty of character."
The limitation of all philosophical attempts to furnish a moral
sanction was that the conception reached could be grasped only
by those innately noble. All such conceptions furnished no moral
standard for the masses. Plato's theory necessitated a succession
of sages who by power of intellect were fitted to determine the
relations of the individual and society.
It was the contribution of Christianity that a standard was
furnished to all alike. The idea of love and charity, latent in all
men, was called into active existence by the conception of a God-
made man who had suffered death for the redemption of all
mankind. His life and His teachings as embodied in that earthly
life furnished a standard intelligible to all the redeemed. Its
acceptance as the guide of life depended upon that free-will and
its steersman the intellect the possession of which was man's like-
ness to God. Through the doctrine of the soul endowed with
understanding and free-will, the humblest grasped the essence of
3 The theme of Browning's Saul is a most exalted expression of this
thought.
IIO
The Concept Standard
the idea reached by the Stoic philosopher : that man possessed
within him a part of the divine that enabled him, if so he willed,
to be in harmony with the eternal order of the universe.
The Christian idea of grace prevented the deification of self
that characterized the later Stoics. Man is free to act as he
pleases — with or without the desire to put himself in harmony
with the Divine Will. He is a free agent in any event. The
Divine Will remains unchanged. On the one hand he may repudi-
ate all need of help: on the other he may humbly seek Divine
Grace to enlighten the intellect and to impel or reinforce the will.
To the Christian there is no evil except that wrought by the
alienation of the individual will from the Divine. The Creator
has supplied, by means of revealed law, what He has left imper-
fect in the means of discovering truth through unaided reason.
Not that the ultimate impossibility of arriving at truth through
reason is implied, but taking the bulk of mankind, there seems
sufficient grounds for believing that without revelation they have
not a sufficiently easy, sure, and universally available means of
keeping constantly in mind how they stand related to life, death,
and after death. Reason points to the likelihood of a revelation.
Christ came to fulfil the law, hence the law of Moses contains
potentially what the Sermon on the Mount reveals and interprets
and transfigures by Divine Love. Go ye and teach all nations.
There is no question of what to teach. History furnishes no
parallel of the unbounded zeal of those possessed with the spirit
to fulfil the Will of the Master. No motive has ever equalled
the loftiness of this. It inspired the pinnacle of human achieve-
ment in art. It belongs to the future to transcend it.
SECTION II
SUPPLEMENTARY CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION
"All that we know through experimentation and from observa-
tion of the earliest material cell and the life that animates it is,
not that they are one and the same thing, but that they are con-
comitants; all that can be said, through experience or observation,
of the advanced material organisms and an advanced state of
in order that man, himself created as we are told in the
image of his Creator, might in a lesser degree, through the power working
within him, become a creator also, might link his individuality with the
Father individuality behind all things." North American Review, V.
CXCVIII. P. 817.
4 "*
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
III
5
life is, not that they are one and the same thing, but that they,
too, are concomitants; and all that can be said of man, from any
standpoint of experience or observation, is that, with him, his
physical and soul life are concomitants. But whether the con-
comitancy of the material cell with the life that animates it, and
the concomitancy of the physical body of man with the soul that
inhabits it, are due to life having its origin in the cell, and the
soul having its origin in the physical body, or whether life and
soul are, in the last analysis, entities separate from the cell and
body,—the real entities of the universe, utilizing these material
forms as instruments only, as we utilize the telephone transmitter
and receiver as instruments only, are, at most, deductions only,
not facts scientifically established — deductions that any school
of belief may either accept or reject without rejecting any part
of the array of facts that actual observation and experience have
established."
Criticism and interpretation of the preceding chapters purposes
to find in all the systems of philosophy the tacit recognition of a
determining principle, a controlling essence. This recognition
of the presence of such a principle is comparable to the developing
consciousness of self in the individual. That which makes the
individual what he is, is this self which may have acted for a
space of years without having become conscious of its existence.
Vague consciousness of the presence of a personality has accom-
panied the use of I, me, my, mine, from infancy, but the realiza-
tion of this personality as a controlling factor in all activity comes
much later, and then with varying degrees of clearness in dif-
ferent individuals. This consciousness of self as a thinking,
willing, acting self is parallel to the recognition in humanity's
span of existence of a controlling essence — that which shapes
the destinies of the universe. The process becoming conscious
of itself proves that there is that within it that transcends it.
This immanent and transcendent essence is what we have viewed
in the preceding chapters as the standard.
The standard thus conceived is intelligible to man through the
modes of its workings. Viewed through history there is dis-
cernible through all the confusion of man's striving, a principle
of reality, unfolding itself on constantly higher levels, in pro-
6 A Layman's View. Peter S. Grosscup. North American Review, 1908.
P. 814.
II2
The Concept Standard
portion as man is active in seeking. The revealed Law of the
Hebrew has within it implicit, what is progressively made explicit.
The Divine essence of this revelation is manifest to succeeding
generations in that it contained nothing that procrastinated the
progress of the people to whom it was given.
It may be claimed that this statement is an interpretation of
pragmatism; if so, it but confirms the position taken that the
core of reality in man's historic experience has in embryo the
truth necessary to man's continuous development.
This conception of the standard is latent in Aristotle's theory
that everything in the universe is striving for realization. This
becoming is the process in which potentiality is transformed con-
tinually into activity. From the lowest types of inorganic life
through the vegetative and animal world, through the varying
degrees of man's potentiality, this force is at work. Its highest
manifestation is in man's rational life, its highest in speculative
thinking. To the extent that reason enters into the control of
sensible nature is there at once a manifestation and a promise
of absorption or contemplation of Divine Life, immortality. The
world of sense thereby becomes a law-revealing means of man's
development.
Thus in Jewish conceptions the standard is objectified by Reve-
lation as Divine Law; in Plato it is the Idea of the Good, which
in its differentiations or modes of functioning, forms the universe;
in Aristotle it is the Nature of all existences that is the telesis.
The Stoic interpretation of the Laws of Nature as the mani-
festation of the World-thought, together with the recognition of
man, the microcosmos, as having within him the means of putting
himself into harmony with the world order, needs no further
elucidation to show its essential identity with the conceptions
already advanced. As interpreted by Seneca, Epictetus, and
Marcus Aurelius, its kinship is undisputed.
The eclectic nature of the Alexandrian philosophy makes it
easy to recognize in the different systems current during the
Patristic age, the constant factors. In the philosophy of Justin,
Clement, Iranaeus, and Origen, is most clearly seen that con-
sciousness of a standard that has determined as truth the knowl-
edge of the ancients. This as viewed by them is the Divine Logos.
Revelation is the activity of the Logos, discernible as rationality
in the entire race, as the Law of Moses among the Jewish people,
and as the law of love and freedom through the Logos Incarnate.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
I13
Things created are the ectypes, the outward expression of the
ideas constituting the Divine Logos. The relation of this thought
to Spinoza's theory is evident. The power that gives form to
matter, that guides and controls the course of the universe is a
manifestation of the Logos. As thus viewed, the Logos, as the
God within the world, is the dwelling place of the God without
the world. Add to this conception that of Plotinus that all that
symbolizes in sensuous or material form the laws or reasons
eternally active in the world has a right to rank as beautiful, and
there results in essence a theory of the universe.
In the philosophy of the patristic period, there is a strong
infusion of Eastern philosophy that tends to give that pantheistic
conception of the universe so destructive, when consistently
developed, to human endeavor.
Through Abelard's ethics of intention following upon John
of Salisbury's desire to "find his way in the world in which man
has to live," there is a meeting ground of Augustinian principles
and of the essential principles of the English School of philoso-
phers or psychologists. However, as has been stated, this iden-
tification of the content of the moral law with the choice of
Divine Will, requires alike in Plato, Aristotle, Origen, Augustine,
John of Salisbury, and Abelard, sustenance from the Divine. This
sustenance is essentially the same whether viewed as grace, illumi-
nation, revelation, or enlightenment. This Divine Principle vari-
ously conceived, is the ultimate standard.
Reasons for the resuscitation of the controversy over uni-
versals need not be restated. Nor need there any longer be
that attitude toward Mediaeval philosophy that has waved it
aside as a thing of the past. The least attempt like a careful
reading of these philosophers, forces a realization at once
of the worth and soundness of many of the ideas advanced. There
seems validity in the contention that conceding at once that "the
soul” does not possess innate conceptions, and that its thinking
rests in a basis of sensuous perceptions and of representative
images, still the intellect has the unique function of abstracting
forms from these representative images. Not altogether in the
Platonic sense, but in a sense that does not challenge so severely
6
• See p. 57, Chap. III.
II4
The Concept Standard
:
our acceptance, does the one in this theory, exist beside the many.
In the elaboration of this theory, there seems to be at once a sum-
mary of the persistent factors in previous theories, and at the
same time an anticipation of emerging factors in succeeding
theories.? The essence of the theory as it is directly related
to the subject under discussion in this paper, is: The Nature
of the intelligent is to grasp the intelligible. Intelligence is con-
versant with natures which with relations are eternal. Because
of the theory that God commands the Good because
it is good, the ultimate standard of truth is at the same
time the ultimate standard of the good. This theory conceives
various ways of functioning of the Ultimate Standard of Divine
Wisdom by which men are aided to the “progressive assimilation
to God by the voluntary appropriation of his gifts.” This is the
purpose of life: this is man's Good. Good is understood therefore
to mean that which satisfies man's needs and desires if these are
only sufficiently enlightened. Though a medium is provided
through the modes of functioning of the Logos, by which man
can attain to his end, it is not assumed that man cannot through
his reason arrive at the same conception as that revealed by God.
The way of God in history would include all those spiritual pos-
sessions of the race, preserved because owing to the degree of
universality in them, consequently the degree of truth, they
have accelerated the progress of mankind. Here would be included
idea, will, judgment, conscience, in the individual; and codes
of conduct, commandments, authority, institutions, idealized types
of men, laws of nature, the permanent works of art.
It is in place to point out the inclusive nature of this theory.
The teleology of Jewish revelation, the theory of the one beside
the many, as a modification of Plato, the conception of develop-
ment bridging the worlds of sense and spirit as Aristotelian, the
recognition of an actuating principle of energy referred to the
Divine essence paralleling Origen, the anticipation of Kant in the
following: The reason why our understanding cannot understand
many things together in one act is because in the act of under-
standing, the mind becomes one with the object understood;
? See pp. 57 ff, Chap. III.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
115
and of Hegel in the progressive assimilation of man to God by
the voluntary appropriation of his gifts, all are instances of the
comprehensive nature of this philosophy.
The Standard as a Way in History
In this historical survey of what has constituted the controlling
principle of man's activity, the attempt has been to give a sym-
pathetic interpretation. This controlling principle, or standard
determining values, has been variously conceived in the different
ages. The study at hand has warranted the deduction that there
have been constant factors or elements in the conceptions. These
persistent constituents of the principle appear to be the result
of the operation of selection. They seem to be man's seal of
approval upon what has furthered his progress. Viewed in this
light the question forces itself, Should not an individual, before
he presuines to set his own standard, at least investigate those
that have stood the test of ages?
It is evident that social activities have been shaped by the ends
or ideals dominating society. From the account given of these
ideals or standards it remains to abstract those ideals that have
been appropriated by succeeding civilization and have, by shaping
the conduct of the invading barbarian tribes, survived into
modern times. There seems to be insufficient warrant for the
supposition that the life of these tribes before they encountered
the ancient civilization had developed ideals that controlled to
an appreciable extent their life from that time on.
furnished the practical strength with which to appropriate the
contributions which the other peoples had exhausted themselves
in making." 8 These contributions of antiquity had passed into
the custody of the church. They were the spiritual possessions
of most worth from the Israelitish, Greek, and Roman social life.
“They
Contribution from Israel
The prophetic movement through Isaiah and Jeremiah had
shown the possibility of worship of Jehovah freed from the limi-
tations of special time, place, and form. This conception was
necessary to hold the people together during their exile or dis-
persion. The ethical impulse was freed. While the prophets
8 Forrest, Development of Western Civilization, 1908. P. 2.
116
The Concept Standard
emphasized the right disposition and stated the idea of One God
in its essence, while the ethical impulse was freed by conceiving
it to be the spring to all action, it failed to provide means for
the expression of the universal principle thus set forth. It gave
no working formula for the guidance of life. This had to be
entrusted to the priestly class. These finding it necessary to
embody the ideal of the prophets, so transformed the old religious
habits that the priests became associated with the maintenance
of peculiar relations with God.“ Till then no one had dreamed
of a fellowship of faith dis-associated from all national forms."
" It was the first step in the emancipation of spiritual religion
from the forms of political life." It was thus only that a single
unified principle was asserted - the unity of all life in relation
with God -- in harmony with his will. .
But, although much of the old ceremonial was thus eliminated,
still the conception remained that God manifested Himself in a
particular way to the chosen people. This was evidently felt as
a contradiction as there seems to have been held by their leaders
a conviction that it was incumbent upon them to preserve the real
values Israel had attained by the embodying ceremonial, until
such a time as God should more fully manifest Himself. This
last idea was satisfied in the prophecies of the Messiah. In
Christ's teaching were reconciled the contribution of the prophets
and that of the priests. “On the prophetic side Jesus held that
the obedience to God was a state of the will and did not consist
in external acts. If the moral life was not only within, but
consisted in a willingness of the soul rather than an understand-
ing, every individual could realize it. On the priestly side Jesus
developed the conception of the Kingdom of Heaven, the com-
munity within which the right attitude, faith, could find expres-
sion. The truth underlying the priestly movement was that the
moral motive must find expression. It was the social principle ---
the consciousness of the necessity of organic, institutional expres-
sion of the moral impulse - for which the priestly movement had
stood; while the prophetic movement had stood for the principle
of individuality. Jesus made the disposition in and through a
universal society reciprocally necessary and thus gave an ulti-
mate ethical statement." 10
9 Forrest. Ibid. P. 18.
** 10 Dewey, unpublished lectures on the Evolution of Morality, quoted
in the Development of Western Civilization. Forrest. P. 21.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
117
i
“They
The Contribution from Greece
The highly imaginative Greeks in an early stage of their own
life as a people appropriated the technical skill of the advanced
civilizations with which they came in contact. The freeing of
the technique from the cumbrous customs of the older civilizations
was due to the fact that the sacredness of these latter had no
meaning to the foreigner. Thus the progress of a people was
short-cutted” by adapting technical processes which were the
product of ages of selection and elimination in the older civiliza-
tions, to the expression of highly idealized concepts.
formed the habit of separating meaning from existence and of
finding reality in the meaning rather than the existence. With
them every experience came to have an eternal value, a value last-
ing after the experience had gone." This ability to see reality
in the meaning resulted in the portrayal or execution of types
as expressions of this meaning. It was thus that the Greeks
chiseled ideals, and not particular existences.
This presence of universality made the products of their skill,
art. This tendency to objectify types is the basis of Plato's theory
of ideas, which are really archetypes as they were called by later
philosophers.
Aristotle worked out from these conceptions of Plato a system
of intellectual categories, which were used by later society as
standards to measure life values. The adoption of the Aristotelian
system by the church as an intellectual mode, is easily accounted
for, when it is seen that through this method of Hellenic genius,
Aristotle reached the idea of a soul of the universe a rational
logos. As Hebrew monotheism was ethical, the Greek mono-
theism was intellectual, and supplied the lack in the former. Their
coalescence formed the Christian doctrine.
Thus the contribution of the Greek was one of intellect. "By
generalizing experience and giving the generalization typical
form, the Greeks made possible the conception of standards by
which experience could be judged." 11 That which was abstracted
in Greek thought was the end of all particular ends. They reached
a conception of an absolute good -- the idea of the good — that
society as a whole was pursuing. Together with this idea was
the parallel conception of a free reason, capable of knowing the
11 Forrest, Development of Western Civilization. P. 52.
118
The Concept Standard
end and realizing it. This abstraction of social values from the
conditions that produced them, gave the world standards appro-
priated in turn by the Roman Empire, and Christian religion.
The Contribution from Rome
Rome tried to objectify the Greek conceptions of society in
institutions. The ideal of a society all serving common ends,
the Romans tried to realize. The greatest achievement was the
universal law, which as a framework of the institutional life of
society became a pattern for the nations of Europe.
The church became the administrator of these great contri-
butions from antiquity. The Hebrews had been able to free the
ethical impulses from the old social habits, and the Greeks had
freed the idea of the end of life from the particular life activities.
Rome's attempt to realize Greek ideals furnished the legal
machinery by which society was held together until the freed
ethical impulse could form into new habits having higher social
ends.12 It was not until the disintegration of the Roman Empire
that its contribution of institutional machinery passed as an inheri-
tance into the estate of the past already in possession of the
church.
Viewed in perspective the accumulated intrinsic worth of the
inheritance assumes proportions unrealized by preceding cen-
turies. The task of administering so valuable an inheritance,
assumes also more and more its just proportions. The realization
of the worth of the inheritance and of the magnitude of the task
of conceiving and using means by which barbarian hordes could
appreciate and appropriate its values and technique, brings the
modern student into sympathetic relations with those who assumed
the responsibility. It is the reflective consciousness of the race
turning upon its past, and discovering in its only partially con-
scious previous action the essence of its progressive development.
The claim of inspiration is weighed in the light of the seemingly
supernatural selection of means, that has secured the progressive
appropriation of the inheritance and at the same time has allowed
the timely manifestation of latent individual initiative.
The misinterpretation of this work of the church is largely
due to the fact that the modes of interpreting some aspect of the
12 See Justin's exposition of this idea. Ch. III.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
ΙΙ9
13
one all-ruling idea of God, are taken for the reality — the creed
for the idea that transcends the limitations of any attempt to com-
mensurately express it. The growth of the idea of God, which
we may call the revelation of God, is continuous and commen-
surate with human progress.
To enter sympathetically into the life of the Christian Church
is to view an attempt to make a sketch plan of life or human
welfare for those who were to inherit with the lands of Western
Europe, all the spiritual possessions, ethical, intellectual, and
aesthetic of the dominant races of antiquity. To a degree hard at
present to appreciate, every portion of experience was controlled
by the idea of God. The cathedrals are symbols of the nature
of the control of this idea. Dante's Divine Comedy testifies to
its inspiration. The travail of the "spirit bred cities instead of
speech."
Simply to tell men what is virtue and to extol its beauty is
insufficient. Something more than theory is necessary if the char-
acters of nations are to be moulded, and inveterate vices eradi-
cated. “The infirmity of human nature requires visible signs
in which to rest.” Herein the symbolisation and ritual of the
Christian religion find their place.
The different modes through which the Will of the Creator,
the controlling Intelligence of the Universe, has manifested itself
to man's comprehension or understanding, may be termed the
Way of God in history. These different modes form a sort of
hierarchy of standards,--tangible criterions for the measurement
of all conduct. Misconception has often arisen from mistaking
one of the “standards" or inodes of experiencing for the life-
giving source of these, the ultimate standard of all values.
Authority, sanction, law, institutions, all forms of spiritual cul-
ture are ways by which the controlling essence of all becomes a
means of measuring life values.
The last centuries have been possessed almost to exclusion of
all else by the idea of man's control of nature's forces. Man in
endeavoring to control meets evidence of a controlling principle
in the universe.
13 Forrest, Development of Western Civilization. P. 66.
I 20
The Concept Standard
The Standard as the Way of Nature
Undoubtedly the reign of law in nature is uninterrupted, but
in that law purpose is interwoven as the controlling element;
just as the hand of every printer that sets up type for a new
edition of the Iliad is governed by the mind of Homer. “To
say that Purpose rules every detail in the making or development
of the universe, does not by any means signify that it interferes
at every step with the laws of Nature. Rather these laws are
the expression of Purpose, its machinery to secure its designed
result.” This assumption does not preclude such theories as those
of Huxley's cosmic nebula - so constituted that the actual world
was destined to issue from it as an oak from an acorn. While
it seems inconceivable that such a piece of mechanism should
originate without an intelligence to design it, it is in line with
reason to suppose that the intelligence might have exhibited itself
once for all at the first beginning. Tyndal1,14 Huxley, a long
line of scientists can be cited who testify to the inevitableness
of the assumption of a determining force or purpose, in the uni-
Lord Kelvin 16 says, “I cannot say with regard to the
origin or life, science neither affirms nor denies creative power.
Science positively affirms creating and directive power, which
she compels us to accept as an article of belief."
While science has discovered relations in nature, to which
has been given the name of laws, there has been no real explana-
tion of their existence. They are expressions of what man calls
Mind or Intelligence; Man knows as efficient cause his own intel-
ligence and will; hence he views as cause of the ordered relations
of nature Intelligence and Will. It is the highest and noblest
conception within his reach. Being man he can speak only in
human terms of what is superhuman. Limited as he is by the
conditions of his nature he can find no mode of expression except
such as is based upon sensible experience. Hence while he can
convince himself by rational inference of the existence and to
some extent the character of what is beyond sense, he can frame
no description of it except so far as he is able to draw upon the
phenomena of the external world. It seems perfectly consistent
to attribute in the highest degree, viz., infinity, all possible excel-
verse.
14 Belfast Address.
16 Nineteenth Century, June 1903.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
I 21
lence to the source of all. To repeat, this acceptance of a Supreme
Intelligence can alone satisfy our intellectual need of causation;
while on the other hand," the nature of this Being as necessarily
beyond the scope of our senses, can be known to us only indirectly
through the effects of which He is the cause."
“Of this Supreme Being, in a word, of God, to whom all infini-
tude is seen to belong, man has thus conceived an idea, which
though indirect is sound, and which necessarily follows from what
he observes. In the same manner, he has formed another idea,
equally solid, namely of the boundless power of this Being, sug-
gested by the consideration of his works. The will of God is
everywhere expressed, by the laws of nature, since these laws
originate from Him."
Thus the laws of nature are the means through which the
Author of nature provides for all that is to be operated by the
forces He has instituted.
In the psychical world as in the physical, the real nature of
the ego, must be learned through its effects. In this sense, all
investigations of the psycho-physical order, all endeavor to record
exactly the responses to stimuli, are of real worth. It is through
the affections of the body that the nature of the person reveals
itself. Modern writings show in some cases a tendency to con-
found the ego with states of the ego. Such theories picture the
ego as a result. One who watches an infant is forced by his
observations to regard him from birth as a person, before there
is any opportunity for a coördination of elements to take place
and constitute a distinct personality. From all that can be defi-
nitely known, through experiment and observation, the ego is a
cause not a result. It seems strange after reading and weighing
explanations of the self to see to what extremes theory goes, in
order to avoid admitting the existence of a knowing, willing self.
There is less challenge to reason in this presupposition than
in any other. This knowing, feeling, willing self is a spiritual
reality in that it has a permanent life distinguishable from the
changes in the physical organism with which it is (in whatever
way) connected. The acts of the individual are due to the nature
or character of the self -- a comparing, distinguishing self. For
any conception of morality, this presupposition is a necessity.
"The general principle of the unity and expansion of the self
must be presupposed as in inductive inference general principles
I 22
The Concept Standard
of organic interconnection in parts of living things are pre-
supposed.” 16
The presence of a controlling principle in the universe, which
man interprets as Supreme Intelligence we have just seen. This
belief in the existence of an Eternal Consciousness, a mind whose
thoughts are the standard of truth not only in morality but in all
other existences as well, is a necessary postulate not only in ethics
but in all knowledge. The idea of morality of which conscience
is the source, is unintelligible in isolation from the knowledge of
the existence of a knowing, feeling, willing self; other knowing,
feeling, willing selves; of a world by which these selves are
enabled to realize their potentialities, and which they can partially
control to that end.
These Concepts Viewed in Relation to Pragmatism
There is no inherent contradiction between the two statenients
that the element of reality which constitutes the standard must
involve the elements of universality and permanence—and the
statement of the pragmatist that the content of consciousness is
real so long as the act resulting from it is adequate in adaptation
to other contents. The pragmatist, in the analysis of the total
activity of judgment, confines his investigations to the process.
The question of reality per se does not enter into this considera-
tion, but simply reality as entering into the reflective situation.
This involves a change in something, of something no matter how
much permanence is involved in something. Reality is concerned
with the eternal relations and natures of things. A relation between
certain contents of consciousness may bring adequate results
in one case and be termed real because of the adequacy. The
same apparent relation between these contents of consciousness
may cause action that results disastrously and be termed there-
fore unreal. Well and good — but this very adequacy in one situ-
ation and inadequacy in another is a report of a new element
which has entered into the conditions of the problem. The relation
termed real may be essentially so, hence permanently so, and in
further analysis of the inadequate situation this fact becomes one
of the data. The inadequacy, if successfully apprehended, be-
comes a means of discovering new relations which comprehend
the real of the old situation.
Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, P. 300.
The Standard Functioning in National Crises
I 23
man
It is man's faith in the permanence and universality of natures
and relations that ensures his constant endeavor to fathom these
truths. The continual search for the real is also a recognition
of the potentiality of him who seeks. It is just this power of
identifying himself with that which is wider and higher than his
individual being that makes morality possible to man.
Herein
lies the truth of pragmatism: it is eternally true that all search
for truth is a practical activity with an ethical purpose.17 The
facts of the world are what they are: the real universe exposes
our errors and makes them errors." There is in this striving of
n appeal to a conspectus of experience in which his is
included. The real world is a world whose stuff is of the nature
of experience, whose structure meets, validates, and gives warrant
to our active deeds and whose whole nature is such that it can
be interpreted in terms of ideas, propositions, and conscious mean-
ings while in turn it gives to our fragmentary ideas and to our
conscious life whatever connected meaning they possess. “My
loyal search for truth insures the fact that I am in significant
unity with the world's conscious life."
The part of pragmatism out of harmony with our conception
of the standard is that it "lives by selling its goods for present
cash in the temple of its cause.” Loyalty to the standard con-
ceived in its aspect of harmonious relations, exacts a service in
a cause possibly just now lost —"lost because the mere now
is too poor a vehicle for the presentation of that ideal unity of
life of which every form of loyalty is in quest. Humanity's most
precious spiritual treasures are the result of loyalty that includes
suffering." Man's tribute at all times in all ages to this sacrifice
of self in service to a cause is itself one of the constant factors
that indicate the truth of the ideal.
Loyalty as a devotion to a cause which unifies many human
lives is profoundly religious in its spirit. For man viewed merely
as natural phenomena are many and mutually conflicting crea-
tures. Loyalty aims at their unity and such unity is always some-
thing that has a supernatural meaning. To worship a divine
power in a genuinely ethical spirit is always to serve a cause which
is always in the human sense social — the cause of the state, or
of the church or of humanity ; which loyalty to serve causes is to
aim to give human life a supernatural, an essentially divine
meaning.'
Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, P. 327 ff.
17
CHAPTER V
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
The Import of Self-activity
In the preceding chapters the idea that the life of knowledge is
in self-consciousness has been repeatedly given. To understand
the world at all, it is necessary to conceive a self-active mind.
Before proceeding to discuss explicitly the educational implications
of the preceding chapters, the import of self-activity will be dis-
cussed in such a way as to suggest the underlying principles of
the educational process.
The Aristotelian conception of a nature realizing its end, may
be paraphrased into “Mind is the way in which the unity of an
organism displays itself.” Aristotle's conception that the char-
acteristic function of an organism is the end of its existence
emphasises the means of reaching that end. It supports too the
fundamental thesis that all judgments are necessarily moral judg-
ments. “The ultimate good of all judgment is the determination
of a course of conduct looking toward an end.” 1 Further the
whole of consciousness in as far as it is the consciousness of a
single world that shares the reality of our waking self may be
regarded as a continuous judgment which qualifies our present
feelings and surroundings by the knowledge of what is more
remote in time and space.” 2. Accordingly "the treatment of a
content by abstraction as a spatial or numerical whole may be
reabsorbed in a more concrete treatment of it as an organic,
aesthetic, or moral whole.” 3 To further develop this idea of
the essential nature of this self-activity, it is necessary to view
it as constantly moving toward the establishing of relationships.
The individuality in capacity is a microcosm constantly“ mould-
ing itself like a process of crystallization according to its own
affinities and cohesions." 4 In theological language the soul is
1 Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory. P. 241.
and: Bosanquet, Theory of Logić. P. 91.
* Bosanquet, Psychology of the Moral Self.
2
I 24
Educational Implications
125
the image of God, and as such is an activity : constantly sub-
mitting itself to the will of the Creator. Ignoring any difference
that may be read into the two statements, the point in question
is the identity in the significance of both for the purpose in hand.
This process of self-realization is not one requiring little if any
effort. On the contrary, man in his immaturity is deprived bio-
logically of the means that would make survival too easy. The
means of survival become almost necessarily means of progress.
Both are dependent on the discovery of relationships either in the
environment or between himself and the environment. Man's
"characteristic function” or nature is the capacity to discover
these, Man's limitation, the impossibility of thinking anything
in isolation is thereby a means of his progress. In association,
in judgment, the meeting point of differences furnishes the true
guide to the intellectual process.
The test of these discovered relationships is that of all reality,
viz., the resistance of all efforts to destroy. The test the scientist
applies in his laboratory is in essence one with that of the Medi-
aeval philosopher in his metaphysical research. Thus the law
of the conservation of energy when once discovered challenges
all efforts to destroy its manifestations: the true nature of the
idea, e.g., the circle, or more profoundly the self, resists all efforts
to destroy it. It seems impossible to think without establishing
a perceived relation or testing its validity by means of those
already established.
This perpetual establishing of relationship tends to give soli-
darity to the group grasping the relationship. The group are
“motived around the identical idea." The idea present in each
is the identity in the different individuals that makes the group
one in that particular. Each idea fully possessed by the indi-
vidual is thus the motif or essence of solidarity. From this point
of view each individual has the potentiality of a universal. To
the degree that the individual really possesses ideas, does he pos-
sess means of identifying himself with his fellows. Each idea
thus possessed is an energy in interaction with a like energy pro-
duced by the same idea in others. The sum-total of these inter-
6 A convincing modern treatment of this idea is found in an article
entitled God, Man, and Immortality, written for the N. A. Review by
Peter S. Grosscup, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals. N.
A. Review, 1908. P. 811.
126
The Concept Standard
acting energies motived by the same idea form the institutions
of society. An institution is a social habit, a purposeful activity.
A cross-section view of civilization reveals a web of these
interrelated activities. Such a view must necessarily be bewilder-
ing. Here too lies the danger that the sociologist, in his eagerness
to do, take the cross-section view, and thereby be forced to use
an individualistic psychology, or a mechanical interpretation and
ignore the sifted experience of the race in interpreting the present
complexity. Civilization is a progressive elimination of waste
a freeing for higher activities. It is “the degree of physical
freedom man has attained through his arts, inventions, and indus-
tries." When it is remembered that this attainment has been
secured by substituting intellectual life for physical life, that this
summarised achievement is the record of correspondence between
the mind of man and the course of nature, it becomes necessary
to consider in the light of its development, its significance. This
significance is more nearly ascertained in its highest stage, but
to see it all adequately its manifestation must be grasped as a
stage of a process realizing an end. Such effort to determine
the significance of human endeavor should reveal a core of reality
-- an identity through changing conditions that persists and
challenges all effort to destroy it. There seems to be constantly
emerging, established relationships which are reabsorbed to serve
as means of testing the value of new judgments. This sifted
experience of the race constitutes the social inheritance. Its
nature is essentially spiritual as civilization in its essence is the
substitution of intelligence for physical effort.
Nature of the Social Inheritance: Its Transmission
Viewed from one of its aspects, this social inheritance consti-
tutes both the control by which social stability is made possible,
and the appreciation of values which form the ideals that give
direction to social activity. Interpreted in terms of what this
dissertation has termed more or less exactly the standard, this
social inheritance is the summary of all its manifestations in both
history and nature so-called. The idea of this determining prin-
ciple progressively giving meaning or significance to man's effort
as he showed himself capable and worthy has formed the content
6 Tompkins, The Psychology of Teaching, P. 57.
Educational Implications
I 27
of this study. Its way in history reveais all that constitutes both
man's control and appreciation of his experience. It functions
as law, authority, institutions, all forms of spiritual culture,
knowledge, literature, art.
The transmission of this social inheritance is the work of edu-
cation. As stated before the individual tends to be mastered by
the complexity of the interrelated activities constituting society.
Institutions or ways of transmitting the control and appreciation
of these activities are part of the inheritance. The home, the
school, the vocation, the state, the church, are among the great
educational institutions by which this control and appreciation of
life activity are furnished. None of these by the great law that
everything should be viewed in its relation to the whole, can be
satisfactorily considered in isolation. It is this seeing of things
in proportion, that is urged upon modern thinkers. At the same
time there is need of realizing the uniqueness of each of these
institutions as a means of education or of social control. That
this is variously conceived and poorly defined is seen in the
tendency of each of these to encroach upon what has been
regarded as the special field of activity of the other. This tendency
indicates the need of some readjustment in the traditional activi-
ties conceived as the special function of each of these.
Some attempt has been made to show that the policy of making
the system of education termed the school a means of conserving
the social order is almost as old as society itself. "The school
as a form of institutional life is the special instrument devised
by society for maintaining the existing standard of civilization
by conferring upon the individual its spiritual possessions and
thereby enabling him to become a bearer of the social purpose." 8
It is a miniature community in which the individual is enabled to
face society step by step and consequently tends to master it. It
reduces complexity and diversity, selects more typical enduring
values, omitting irrelevancies, and presents typical phases of high-
est community life. It becomes necessary for the school to gen-
eralize, or present a comprehensive social environment. By
reflecting the upper levels of society the school should become
? It is in this statement that the biological analogy of an institution
as an organ is seen to be incorrect. Interchange and transfer of function
is not possible for organs.
8 MacVannel, Dr. John A., The College Course in the Principles of
Education, P. 36.
I28
The Concept Standard
a mode of accelerating social progress. By “reflecting the ideal
toward which the wider social life is struggling,”! it becomes
an instrument of social betterment.
To reflect the ideal it is necessary that those who are to trans-
late the social inheritance into the experience of the child, should
themselves embody in the highest degree possible that inheri-
tance. It must be experience that is translated. The mere
transference by means of language from mind to mind is not
translation of experience. “The life of knowledge is in self-
consciousness which systematically understands and you cannot
have it cheaper. We know not as much as in our memory, but
as much as we understand.
Knowledge differs from
opinion in the degree in which as a living mind it has understood
and organized its experience.” 10
Environment should be such that the self-activity of a child
encounters crises that call for that interpretation of his experi-
ence, that will furnish at once control of the present, and also
values for future emergencies. The alertness of the teacher
should assist in bringing about such crises and at the critical
moment introduce that part of race experience that can be assimi-
lated best at that time. The rediscovery on the part of the child
of these relations should revive that exhilaration that first accom-
panied the discovery in the past. This attitude should be a stimu-
lus to further endeavor in the same line. If in reality there is a
sharing of experience, there is an ever-growing feeling of free-
dom as something won in the process. It is in miniature that
freeing for higher activities that the race has secured as com-
pensation for all effort. Each experience so shared becomes,
as we have shown, a means of solidarity in the school community.
Thus an ideal society realizing the means of its solidarity is pos-
sible in the school as a social unit. A selected environment renders
possible a study of the technique of social control. The fact
that the environment is isolated must be constantly borne in mind.
This consciousness of the relation of the school to other institu-
tions, to society, will impel those in charge to make the .con-
nections wherever possible. This borderland region of activity
should be a constant medium of exchange of influences.
9 Ibid.
10 Bosanquet, Essays and Addresses.
P. 196-197.
Educational Implications
129
Interchange of Influences between Institutions for Educational
Purposes
Several aspects of this feature must suggest themselves. It
is here that the spirit and work of Pestalozzi should have its
influence. To connect with life, seemed his main endeavor. If
in endeavoring to do this, he and more especially his followers
lost themselves in the way of doing this, it but illustrates our
thesis that to prevent dissipating of energy there must be con-
stantly some means of relating activities to some central motif
or principle. The school as the supplement to the home was
Pestalozzi's conception. While this may not be entirely correct,
there is great need at present to define the specific function of
each, and at the same time to point out the meeting point of their
difference. There must be a constant stream of influence between
the two: the direction will depend upon the relative levels.
The connection too with life work was another of Pestalozzi's
ideas that he strove to work out. The relation of the school to
the vocations is a burning question to-day. The greatest danger
lies in viewing this relation in isolation from interrelated ends.
It is necessary to see this movement in relation to the national
ideal.
The connection of the school with the state is forcibly brought
to mind by the industrial trend in educational lines. The almost
general consensus of opinion that there should be a Minister of
Education, that the present bureau should be made a department
with an accompanying enlarged scope of activities, requires but
the slightest direction to make it an actuality. There is much
discussion in certain circles of a combined Ministry of Education,
Labor and Health. Others are considering an independent Depart-
ment of Labor, with a combined Department of Education and
Health. The relation of the proposed Children's Bureau to these
is another factor. Here again the historical phase is valuable for
study. The advantages and defects of the Guilds of the later
middle ages and their schools in their interrelations and in their
relation to the municipality are aspects worthy of study. A com-
parative study of the administrative systems of Germany and
France with a full appreciation of the conditions in each country
would still reveal meeting points of difference that would afford
valuable data for the control of school affairs. State intervention
130
The Concept Standard
in the control of the school as an instrument of social progress has
never been more spectacular than at present. Emperor William
has demonstrated that the relation is a vital one in politico-
economic welfare, even when the stress is on the economic. In
our own country it is forced on us that there should be an inter-
change of influences throughout the whole country by means of
the centre. Such interrelating is the very life of the organization.
It remains to consider for a moment the connection of the
school with the church. If compelled to state the most vital issue
in current world educational thought, one would be forced to
consider the relation of school to church as probably the one
involving most thought. England is in the throes of a struggle
to settle it. Germany has secured apparently at least a temporary
adjustment. France has laid violent hands on the relation and
severed all bonds at least legally. Our own country is wondering
what adjustment to make to secure the ethical impulse it is miss-
ing in its life. Then, too, men's spiritual or intellectual energies
have been subsumed in the Western development of physical free-
dom and just now there is a release of these in some places, and
in others a rebound from prolonged tension. Men are craving
again that expression of these released spiritual energies.
In somewhat contradictory ways and from unexpected channels
does this movement manifest itself. Anglo-Saxon particularism
has spent its force or at least has reached its zenith. However,
the race has not lost its power of comprehensive thinking. There
is a manifest revival of philosophy in English-speaking countries.
There seems to be gathering a mighty force of the smothered
convictions of millions of souls, that will free inan's essential
nature from the tyranny of facts based on sense impression only.
There is a tendency to seize the established relationships of natural
forces stored in laboratories - these vast accumulations of fact
and to transform them by means of working hypotheses or com-
prehensive theories into universal modes of control of life-activity.
Life is being interpreted as something more than absorption in
securing physical freedom. This diverting of man's intelligence
into economic channels only, has in reality been elevating a means
to the dignity of an end. The cry has been control of nature's
forces: it is now control of social forces. New values at once
present themselves. There is need in control of forces to know
the direction. Control of social forces for what? The answer
Educational Implications
131
comes in various interpretations of the aim of life. This at once
brings philosophic discussion. The standard to measure life's
values is strongly in men's minds. The end, general welfare,
common good, is interpreted so far to mean conditions of social
health. The possibility of redistribution of direction of energy
is being realized, and with it the full import of direction. Equal
freedom is an ideal urged as giving direction to energy. Freedom
for what? With the tentative answer self-realization, the whole
personality is at once suggested. The law of equality ceases to
have its economic import alone, and in place of setting over one
particular activity against another particular activity, the whole
personality of one is set over against the whole personality of
the other.
The ethical import of self-realization is in the air we breathe
to-day. Cults of various kinds are growing up in our midst where
possibility of self-growth is so all-engrossing an idea as to com-
pletely remove the devotee from all participation in the life about
him. Estrangement from family and friends is a result sug-
gesting the influence of Eastern mysticism. Absorption in a new
Nirvana, or even a return to the Eastern conception itself, is the
result of the force of the rebound from pent-up energies together
with the freeing of those heretofore engrossed in securing means
of gratification of physical wants.
It may be in keeping to justify this digression from the con-
sideration of the question, the connection of the school and the
church. The church is the institution affording opportunity for
man's expression of his relation to God. The conviction is forced
that the best expression for man's essential nature will be found
in established institutions which have their roots in civilization.
Where worship is not purely formal there is that satisfaction of
the human spirit that finds a parallel only in the aesthetic. Its
presence in the individual is easily recognised and is termed the
spirituelle. There is an apprehension by feeling or sensation of
that attribute which when manifested in intellectual knowledge
is termed truth. The same idea is expressed when one says
“there is a flash of the infinite that possesses one," or when
another says " Art is eternal.” 11 It is probably this thrill that has
made every primitive race find some expression in a religious
** 11 See development of this idea in Judge Grosscup's article in N. A.
Review, 1908. P. 811.
132
The Concept Standard
way. All common things are transfigured by “this light that
never was on sea or land.” A joyousness, a buoyancy, seems
almost to destroy what we term the material existence.
"Now have these homely things been made
Sacred, and a glory on them laid.
*
*
*
*
*
Now is the holy not afar
In temples lighted by a star
But where the loves and labors are:
Now that the King has gone this way
Great are the things of every day.” 12
The church is the institution in which men have found expres-
sion for the spiritual part of their nature. This expression is
what men are seeking to-day as is evidenced by the number of
cults that have arisen within the past few years. That this expres-
sion is necessary for man's fullest self-realization all history
witnesses.
Even more fundamental is another contribution of the church.
Where religion is an experience and not a mere form, there is
a continual freeing of the ethical impulse. When the question
of moral education impinges so manifestly on present educational
thought, this ethical impulse is sought in vain apart from religion.
Bosanquet says here, "If we think that the will to be good grows
up as a matter of course in every man and maintains itself without
help from a greater power than his, then we are in a fool's para-
dise and have still much to learn from the Catholic Church.” 18
Just how this connection can be made by which education in
ethical lines is vivified by the religious principle, no one seems
to be prepared to say. Congresses are being held for discussion
of this. This problem shares with the industrial problem the
interest of our leaders in educational thought. Until some means
is provided it is fitting to suggest that there be avenues of influence
sympathetically and tolerantly maintained. In connection with
a number of our State Universities and other institutions of
higher learning, there are societies being formed, affiliated with
various denominations. The Newman Club and The St. George's
Club representing respectively the Roman Catholic and Episcopal
12 Edwin Markham.
19 Bosanquet, Civilization of Christendom. P. 118.
Educational Implications
133
churches may be cited. Students professing these different beliefs
organize and provide means of coming into their inheritance in
this as well as in the lines of secular knowledge. The interchange
of influences would seem to be of benefit to all concerned. It
was only through such broadly tolerant geniuses as Frederick
the Great that Germany succeeded in making any adjustment.
The present Emperor in like spirit recognises the function of
religion in asking the schools to prepare God-fearing, patriotic,
and intelligent men and women.
Another medium through which something of that which uplifts
can be given to the immature in our schools is the personality of
a teacher whose experience in that, as well as all lines, is radiate
without one word of what is ordinarily termed religion. Still
another is provided in the increased efficiency of our Sunday
Schools. The school when viewed in its external relations and
internal relations is at once a means of self-realization, and a
means of " assimilating the members to the social purpose.” When
education is localized instead of centralized as in the case in
America - there is missing too often the ideals. There is a
failure of those in the work, teacher and pupil and administrator
alike, to see the relation of his particular work to that of the
whole. Much of the time given to “ method,” in the preparation
of teachers should be given to enabling the prospective teacher
to see the relation of the school to society, both as it is and as
it should be, and then to ascertain means of bridging the gap.
The interrelations of the school and other institutions should be
studied and the possibility of securing reciprocal reinforcement
of all these institutions should be worked out as far as possible.
If the significance of the work of the school is grasped, and the
significance of his share in the whole is realized, the work of the
teacher becomes that of the artist, and ceases to be that of a
drudge.
Summary
Self-activity has been made the basis of this discussion. Aris-
totle's conception of the characteristic function of man has been
interpreted to show that this activity is the means of survival
and at the same time of progress. This progressive adaptation
of the individual through intelligence and will, is the essence of
the self. In the process of this self-realization, man's limitation
134
The Concept Standard
of not being able to think any thing in isolation is again the means
of his progress. The discovery of the meeting point of differ-
ences, or of relationships, is at once the means and end of the
endeavor — the seeing all in One. This perpetual establishing of
relationships mediates towards unity by giving solidarity to the
group motived around the identical idea. The social good is
thereby furthered by means of the individual good. Effort to
determine the significance of activities and attainment current
in civilization reveals these as the sifted experience of the race.
This social inheritance is the core of reality in human experience,
the way of God in history. The translation of this social inheri-
tance into the experience of the child makes him the bearer of
the social purpose. This work of translation is the work of
different institutions: the home, the school, the vocation, the
state, the church.
The work of the school can be rendered better by defining the
unique fitness of each of these institutions and by providing ave-
nues by which the influences of each can reciprocally reinforce
one another. The work of the school should be a sharing of
experience. The various so-called subjects of study become under
this interpretation different modes of experiencing life, "method "
fundamentally the "mode of the individual's behavior in the
realization of some phase of his environment.” This mode of
behavior should give rise to attitudes that become stimuli to
continued endeavor. The school can be made a selected environ-
ment in which the technique of school control tends to be mas-
tered. In connection with this aspect, there should be a borderland
of activities by which there is a constant interchange of influences
with the life without.
The direction of these influences when the school is in con-
nection with the home is determined by the relative levels of each.
The connection of the school with the vocations brings out the
industrial school problem so urgent to-day. The connection of
the school with the state forces the consideration of a Department
of Education. The connection of the school with the church
brings us in touch with the problem of moral education. Some
channel must be provided that allows the ethical impulse freed
or called forth by religion to enter with the life of the school
and to give direction to the conduct of its members.
Educational Implications
135
By thus viewing the school in its external relations to society
and at the sanie time in its internal relations as a miniature com-
munity, its possibilities as a means of social control and of self-
realization is revealed to those in charge. Thereby the significance
of the whole and, of each one's share in the whole is grasped.
Realization of the significance of one's work makes the work
art instead of drudgery.
136
The Concept Standard
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84
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