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A Criticism of Some Deterministic 
 
 Systems in Their Relation to 
 
 Practical Problems 
 
 I ESSE HERRMANN 
 
A Criticism of Some Deterministic 
 
 Systems in Their Relation to 
 
 Practical Problems 
 
 A DISSERTATION 
 
 presented to the 
 
 Faculty of Princeton University 
 
 IN Candidacy for the Degree 
 
 OF Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 BY 
 
 JESSE HERRMANN 
 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 PRINCETON 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD university PRESS 
 
 1914 
 
Published October, 1914 
 
 
 . • • • 
 
 ■•'. : ■-• 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 II. THEORY AND PRACTICE 14 
 
 III. NATURALISM 21 
 
 IV. THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM 39 
 
 V. THE NATURE OF THE SELF 49 
 
 VI. CONCLUSION 57 
 
 2^^713 
 
I INTRODUCTORY 
 
 One of the functions of philosophy is to synthetize the sum 
 total of knowledge. But it must be remembered that philoso- 
 phy in its essence is not an amanuensis, a tabulator or a 
 reflector. Its enunciation is more important than its formula- 
 tion ; as a vitalizer it is more efficacious than as a systematizer. 
 Even though the philosopher receives his content from the 
 thought and the normal activity of the masses, yet he stands 
 on a unique pinnacle and becomes the true prophet and leader 
 of his age. True philosophy always eventuates in practical 
 consequences. Plato's Republic is speculative to the highest 
 degree, yet no one can deny that his ideas have had a marked 
 material influence wherever Greek culture has penetrated. 
 Stoic philosophic thought, in a way easily traceable, became 
 the formative principle underlying much Roman jurisprudence. 
 Among the speculative religious thinkers the classic example 
 is found in John Calvin. He blazed a new trail in religious 
 thought. The results of his rule in Geneva can be measured, 
 but who can compute the practical consequences in education, 
 sociology and politics that his bold and daring conception pro- 
 duced? In the eyes of many Fichte was a dreamer and a 
 spinner of metaphysical webs, but he became the man of the 
 hour when Germany needed practical and resourceful men. 
 There are exceptional men in public life to-day who have never 
 found an hiatus between the retreat of the scholar and the 
 work of the world. 
 
 There is no necessary conflict between theory and practice. 
 The successful financier, social worker, or inventor who ignores 
 the work of the speculative thinker is as ignorant and biased 
 as the pseudo-philosopher who has lost sympathy with the 
 doer, and who often despises the day and the man of small 
 things. The Greek geometricians out of pure love of knowl- 
 edge patiently investigated the conic sections, but they 
 never dreamed to what purposes a Newton would apply their 
 conclusions. 
 
 Still the criticism of the philosopher has not always been 
 
Ai ^ 
 
 .CRITjaSM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 unmerited. To this day metaphysics has not recovered from 
 the sins of its fruitlessness in the Middle Ages. The Renais- 
 sance with its new interest in science and in man, apart from 
 rehgious considerations, became keenly conscious of the worth- 
 lessness of certain types of speculative thought. The new 
 school did not hesitate to press its point of vantage and the 
 old philosophy was brought into thorough disrepute. But 
 philosophy learned its lesson well, and it has guarded its 
 systems with a jealous eye so that they should never again 
 degenerate into mere sesquipedalian verbiage. With the excep- 
 tion of a few thinkers modern philosophy has remained true 
 to her high purpose, and has rigorously insisted that the 
 terminus ad quern is nothing less than contact with human life. 
 
 ♦ * But in spite of all this philosophy has not escaped criticism 
 
 * and calumny at the instance of the scientific and business world. 
 
 • The scientist, allied with a materialistic psychology, claims that 
 ♦philosophy arrogates too much to itself when it proceeds to 
 
 ♦ synthetize the data furnished by the sciences and claims to have 
 •found a final word or a new whole which can not be equated 
 ^to the sum of its parts. In a similar way, though with a 
 
 different purpose, the over confident devotees of so-called 
 practical life have sought to undermine philosophy in the nine- 
 teenth and twentieth centuries. Man has discovered more 
 keys to unlock the store-house of nature's power in the last two 
 centuries than our progenitors had discovered in a millennium. 
 An undue excess of creature comforts has lulled the masses to 
 sleep. The world of appreciation and value has been relegated 
 to the limbo of uncertainty and unreality. The individuals in 
 the nation, riveting their gaze on the same object, have become 
 hypnotized ; they press forward with lowered head confident of 
 their self-sufficiency and power. They are deaf to the voice 
 of the poet, the preacher and the philosopher, the champions 
 of truth. 
 
 Many signs can be adduced which are indubitable proofs of 
 this condition. Just as an individual cannot think and work 
 at the same time, so a nation cannot construct railroads, 
 develop mines, build factories and cultivate the soil and at the 
 same time produce poetry, art, and music. To the student of 
 history it is not strange that America, in her brief childhood 
 days, has produced no immortal art. And if the fine arts thus 
 far have not found congenial soil in American civilization,. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 much less has philosophy found a hearing. It is no mystery 
 that the busy world should take little stock in the sober thought 
 of the secluded scholar. The man engaged with the concrete 
 thought and act has neither time nor inclination for much 
 abstract thinking. But even the busiest man and the busiest 
 nation love to flatter themselves that they are philosophers or 
 at least that they are on speaking terms with men who know 
 and make philosophy. When they cannot find a system to 
 their taste they begin to make a W eltanschammg to their 
 own liking. No better illustration is afforded of this tendency 
 than the pragmatism prevalent in our own day. This seculari- 
 zation of philosophy is fraught with as many dangers to the 
 intellectual life as the secularization of the church is fraught 
 with perils to the religious life. But this is exactly what* 
 pragmatic thought indicates. We must get our norms fromi 
 the mart and the stock exchange. 
 
 But no civilization can long continue in the course of ' 
 material prosperity and concrete thought without eventually • 
 developing the most portentous problems. An unpremeditated * 
 movement must eventuate in some such way. Suddenly a • 
 halt is made and the individual becomes self-conscious. When • 
 this self-consciousness comes to the masses a great upheaval • 
 follows the restless discontent. The people look on all sides * 
 for light and leadership. It is then that the demagogue has his 
 opportunity, for conditions are in unstable equilibrium, and 
 the slightest impact may precipitate the social consciousness 
 into stern fixity. But this malleable situation also receives the 
 arduous attention of sincere reformers who are not qualified by 
 training or temperament to reform the social structure. Thus 
 the market is flooded with ready-made nostrums and panaceas 
 for every ill. This crucial situation also furnishes the golden 
 opportunity for the philosopher, the man of reason, true 
 insight, and discernment. 
 
 The most pronounced feature of the last two decades of 
 our history has been its transitional character. A strange sense 
 of insecurity and dissatisfaction pervades every department of 
 life. Witness the disruption in present political allegiance ; the 
 revulsion from creed and dogma in religion. These facts indi- 
 cate that the old order is passing away and that a new align- 
 ment must be made. The new modus vivendi demands a new 
 modus operandi. The work of reconstruction has begun and 
 
6 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 it is imperative to inquire whether the plan of the work is 
 based on sound principles. 
 
 Broadly speaking, there are two distinct ways in which a 
 society may rehabilitate itself and its members. The first is 
 the internal or dynamic ; the second is the external or mechanic. 
 The former seeks to change the environment by changing the 
 individual, the latter tries to change the individual by changing 
 his environment. These two strands can be clearly detected in 
 the history of politics, philosophy and theology. 
 
 The true defenders of the crown in all ages sincerely believe 
 that the good of the people, the progress of the race and the 
 advancement of civilization can be secured only by creating, as 
 it were, ab extra conditions, laws, and environment, which will 
 
 • in turn penetrate the social fabric and renovate the individual 
 .member. The champions of constitutional government, on the 
 
 other hand, maintain that true progress results only when the 
 individual, motivated by self respect and a high ideal, projects 
 himself spontaneously into his outer relations, and thus creates 
 the laws and conditions which obtain in the community in 
 which he lives. History clearly teaches that the latter concep- 
 tion is the true theory of the state. 
 
 • In philosophy the conflict has been mainly between the 
 ^idealists and the naturalists. At all times the idealists have 
 .been eloquent in asserting the centrality of selfhood. The 
 ^periphery has significance only as it finds its way back to the 
 ^center. Not only do all human relations, social, economic and 
 
 • political, get their significance from these self-centers, but 
 *even nature and her laws are dependent on the self. Man is 
 ' not the child of nature ; rather say that nature is man's ward. 
 
 The naturalist, on the other hand, begins with the external 
 world in its larger proportions. He places the accent on phe- 
 nomena, and with great difficulty he ultimately finds the insig- 
 nificant creature called man. He studies him with the aid of 
 a microscope, but finds only chemical compounds, atomic 
 motion, nerve energy, and reflex arcs. Man is no more a 
 
 • mystery to him than the crystallization of a diamond. At any 
 V moment of time he is the effect of the sum-total of antecedents 
 N which obtain in the causal nexus of which he happens to be a 
 "*part. To him conduct is composed of the same calculable 
 
 ♦components that explain the path of a moving body. To get 
 I any definite reaction, it is only necessary to provide the appro- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 priate external stimulus. Provide the right stimuli and the * 
 man will turn out good deeds, sweet music, as well as the • 
 daily routine. According to this position nature makes man • 
 and not man nature. 
 
 These two threads are no less distinct in theology than they 
 are in politics and philosophy. In most religions, and in 
 Christianity in particular, there has appeared the antinomy 
 between priestism and prophetism, between ritualism and vital- 
 ism, between ceremony and sincerity. In a most singular way 
 the priest class and the prophet class flourished in the same 
 religious economy in the Hebrew state. Their ideals and work 
 were distinct and often seemed contradictory. The priest was % 
 concerned with the jot and the tittle of the law. He impressed * 
 on every member the necessity of conforming to the external* 
 rites in order that his present and future condition might be 
 secure. From birth to death the Jew was circumscribed by a * 
 law and order superimposed from without. Only by rigor- • 
 ously adhering to every precept of the law could he attain the • 
 ideal existence. The message of the prophet had an entirely* 
 different content. An Amos or an Isaiah towers above his • 
 fellows as a man who saw things in truer proportion ; who had • 
 communed with God and with himself, and thus felt very • 
 deeply the distinction between religious form and religious life. • 
 In their estimate religion must make form and not form • 
 religion. The following passages strongly emphasize the - 
 prophet's protest against the extreme liturgies of his day. • 
 ^'Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit 
 within me. For thou delightest not in sacrifice; else would • 
 I give it : Thou hast no pleasure in burnt-offering. The • 
 sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite • 
 heart, O God, thou will not despise."^ Or think for a moment • 
 of the high conception of the prophet Micah. "Wherewith - 
 shall I come before Jehovah, and bow myself before the high • 
 God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with • 
 calves a year old? . . . He hath showed thee, O man, what * 
 is good; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do * 
 justly and to love kindness and to walk humbly with thy * 
 God."^ This perennial conflict in the Jewish state came to a • 
 final issue in the teachings and work of Jesus and Paul. These 
 
 ^ Psalm 51 :io, 16, 17. 
 ^ Micah 6:6, 8. 
 
8 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 two masters found no comparable foes among the Pharisees 
 and the Sadducees. The strife was long but the outcome de- 
 cisive. The obstinacy of the ritualists culminated in the com- 
 plete disruption of the Jewish commonwealth. It was a great 
 victory for the principle of internalism. At the very beginning 
 of Christianity the proposition was clearly set forth that man 
 was to be regenerated from within and not from without. A 
 new spirit was instilled into the heart of man and not a new 
 shackle placed upon his hand. 
 
 It might have been expected that Christianity, founded on 
 a strictly spiritualistic basis and nurtured by men who were 
 loyal to this principle, would have dealt a death blow to the 
 idea that man lives by bread alone. But history speaks to the 
 contrary. The ghost of the Jewish nation was reincarnated in 
 the Christian body. Here is found a significant illustration of 
 the cyclical nature of history. As soon as the Roman Church 
 began to flourish the old conflict was again at hand. Chris- 
 tianity became more and more formal and ritualistic; religion 
 was often conceived as a commercial transaction. But there were 
 never wanting individual champions of a true heart-religion. 
 Space does not permit even to mention the salient facts in this 
 century-long conflict. Such names as Gottschalk, Savonarola, 
 Huss, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox and Luther are eloquent even in 
 their silence. The climax came at the time of the Reformation ; 
 but unlike the Jewish controversy the contest was not decisive. 
 The Jewish nation paid the penalty of death, the Roman 
 hierarchy lost many members and much prestige. The conflict 
 between the Romanists and the Protestants to-day is essentially 
 one of method and process in the regeneration of man. 
 
 It must be evident that the above discussion has not been a 
 digression from the point at issue. The problem is to find the 
 true method of procedure in the reconstruction of our life 
 and thought. There are two possible lines that may lead to a 
 solution. It has been observed that in all ages and in most 
 realms of life there have been two parties contending for 
 supremacy. It may be of little import to decide which has 
 scored most victories; it is sufficient to know that the strife is 
 perennial. 
 
 In reviewing once more the social and political tendencies of 
 the day, it is evident that the externalistic, the collectivistic 
 reconstruction is most prominent. In respect to faith in the 
 
INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 omnipotence of legislation many of our statesmen out-Bentham, 
 Bentham. The Allmacht of law is as axiomatic to many people 
 as the law of gravitation. The following statements by Prof. 
 George B. McClellan bring out this thought in bold relief : 
 
 *'Men have achieved a notoriety which their admirers have 
 believed to be fame, for no better reason than that they have 
 been instrumental in the enactment of statutes designed to 
 abolish most forms of sin by the mere decree that they shall 
 cease to exist." 
 
 "Despite this, year after year, our Congress and our Legisla- 
 tures, with a perseverance and an energy worthy of a better 
 cause, enact statutes by the thousand, all designed with the best 
 will in the world, to bring us a little nearer to perfection, and 
 all due to the prevalent impression that any statute will cer- 
 tainly accomplish the good intended by its authors." 
 
 *'The extreme of paternaHsm was reached in the Hepburn 
 Pure Food Act, which subjects all foods, drugs and drinks, 
 including wines, liquors and milk, to government analysis, 
 government regulation and government inspection. The 
 National Government, in other words, undertakes through its 
 power to regulate commerce between the States to secure the 
 citizen a wholesome breakfast, an eatable dinner, a sound glass • 
 of champagne and a pure drink of whiskey.""* 
 
 The inquiry now is concerning the cause and the significance 
 of the fact that men are surrounded by a network of mechan- 
 ical laws, which do not emanate from the social consciousness. 
 Why treat man like a machine? Why seek his good as we seek 
 the good of an acre of land? 
 
 As to its significance few will deny that it is fraught with • 
 the greatest dangers. There is imminent peril that man will * 
 degenerate into an artificially nurtured creature; that he will * 
 lose his initiative and creative impulse. Man can no more 
 develop on moral and legal crutches than the plant or animal • 
 can that leans for support on a ready-made environment. The * 
 very essence of life and growth is that the living entity persists • 
 not only in spite of its environment but that, in a very specific • 
 even if only in a limited sense, it creates a new environment. • 
 
 The twining herbs of the Cuscuta genus at the inception of 
 life have all the characteristics of strong independent organ- 
 isms. They seem potentially endowed to maintain their integ- 
 
 ^ Principles in Politics, pp. 6, 67. 
 
10 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 rity. They give promise of better things. But they evidently 
 grow weary in well doing. They send out suckers and draw 
 their sustenance, from the sap of other plants. The adult 
 dodder has neither root nor leaf of its own. It has hardly 
 strength enough to support the weight of its own frail stem. 
 When the plant ceases to change the inorganic into the organic 
 it no longer remains sui generis. The parisitical sin is to permit 
 'other' to change 'self without 'self changing 'other'. What is 
 true in the vegetable realm is equally true in animal life. 
 Nature has provided the ordinary crab with a good armor plate 
 to protect himself against the buffeting of the sea and the 
 attacks of his enemies. This means of self -protection is 
 nature's reward for long generations of faithful work. But 
 the progenitors of the hermit crab somehow conceived the 
 notion that nature could be improved. They then began to 
 appropriate as implements of defense the cast off weapons of 
 other mollusks. For generations this practice continued, and 
 the result is that the hermit crustacean has only a thin mem- 
 brane and articulated appendages that are atrophied and rudi- 
 mentary, where his more faithful brother has a solid integument 
 with strong and fully developed limbs. 
 
 • The experience of man has not been otherwise. The philos- 
 
 • ophy or religion that has helped man to find himself has truly 
 ♦-helped him to find God and the world. The political, social 
 
 • and economic orders, that have placed a high worth on the 
 ♦individual, have not only benefited the individual but have in 
 •turn raised the standard of the political, social and economic 
 'orders in which the individual has thus been honored. The 
 •charity that aids men to aid themselves is commendable, but 
 •the charity that seeks only to change the environment, thus 
 •hoping to change the character, is based on a false principle. 
 
 The cause of our mechanized and legalized society is un- 
 doubtedly a more intricate problem than the study of its signifi- 
 cance. To ascertain the real physical cause in a phenomenon 
 of nature is difficult enough, but it is almost presumptuous to 
 speak dogmatically about the relation of cause and effect in a 
 phenomenon of social life. The question may be somewhat 
 clarified by distinguishing at the outset between the antecedent 
 conditions that merely obtain and the causes that exist as 
 efficient antecedents. That there is a distinct difference between 
 the two becomes evident after a moment's reflection. Much 
 
INTRODUCTORY II 
 
 explanatory and descriptive matter is confusing because these 
 two concepts are interchangeably used. For example, space is 
 a condition of the material world, but in no sense is space the 
 cause of this existence. Time is a condition of a moving par- 
 ticle but it is not a cause of motion. Sin is a condition of 
 saintliness, but it has never produced a saint. 
 
 What then are the conditions and the causes of the patern- 
 alistic tendency in church, state and social life? In this con- 
 nection I again quote Prof. George B. McClellan : 
 
 "The three causes to which may be traced the origin of the 
 collectivist tendency of the present day all began during the 
 era of Benthamism; they were, first, a general belief in the 
 efficacy of legislation to accomplish anything that its authors 
 may desire; second, economic development resulting in the 
 organization of corporations, which carried a popular demand 
 for their regulation; third, the growth and power of the labor 
 movement."* 
 
 It appears that none of the three so-called causes are causes 
 in the true sense. ''A general belief in the efficacy of legisla- 
 tion" is practically the same as a general belief in a ''collectiv- 
 ist tendency." Neither explains the other; both must find their 
 raison d'etre elsewhere. One is no more the cause of the 
 other than one side of an algebraic equation is the cause of the 
 other side. As to corporations and labor organizations, it seems 
 that cause and condition are confused. The new economic 
 phenomena here instanced are part of the assemblage of condi- 
 tions under which the paternalistic spirit began to operate, but 
 observe that this same spirit is evident in our social, religious 
 and educational reconstruction, quite independent of corpora- 
 tions and labor unions. Therefore it is manifest that a strict 
 causal relation does not obtain between these new economic 
 conditions and the collectivistic faith. The trust and labor 
 problem may have occasioned much legislation, but in no sense 
 does this fact causally explain why there is implicit faith in 
 paternalism. 
 
 These same economic facts which have conditioned such a 
 luxurious harvest of legislation have been designated by Prof. 
 Frank A. Fetter as the ''Dynamic condition of American indus- 
 tries." For centuries adjustment and adaptation have been 
 going on in European civilization. The social, religious and 
 
 ^Ibid., pp. 57, 58. 
 
12 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 political grooves have been worn deep by the imperceptible 
 passage of time. It requires almost a catastrophe to change 
 the configuration in any department of life. Tradition and 
 custom exist in such an atmosphere as tenacious conservative 
 forces. In our civilization on the other hand most social and 
 economic factors are in unstable equilibrium. The fertile soil, 
 vast stores of mineral deposits, virgin forests, water power, 
 coupled with the invention of the steamboat, the steam locomo- 
 tive, and new methods of mining and manufacturing have 
 made the second half of the nineteenth century truly dynamic. 
 Every object to which man turned; his attention was found 
 pulsating with energy. But power does not only mean oppor- 
 tunity, it also spells danger. In this period all the dangers have 
 been encountered to which a virile youth is subject whom over 
 indulgent parents have supplied too lavishly with ready cash. 
 These conditions made it imperative that many legitimate safe- 
 guards should be enacted in order to preserve the nation as 
 well as the individual. At least a modicum of success can be 
 traced to this method of procedure. But the men of the 
 twentieth century, over emphasizing this success, have assumed 
 as axiomatic that the more life is protected by the strong 
 pinions of the law the safer our commonwealth will be. 
 
 Having now pointed out the conditions which have occa- 
 sioned the unquestionable faith in paternalism, it becomes 
 necessary in the next place to penetrate a little deeper and try 
 to ascertain the fundamental causes, which suggest external 
 remedies for conditions as above outlined, and why we clutch 
 so tenaciously at this method of reconstruction. The answer 
 to these questions briefly stated is as follows : 
 
 Both naturalism and theological determinism have conspired 
 
 * to rob man of the reality of selfhood and of his true relation to 
 
 • God. The former makes him a physical automaton ; the latter 
 ,a spiritual automaton. These two systems, in a very subtle and 
 •silent way, have dominated our thought, and have been forma- 
 •tive principles in the solution of every problem. Here is 
 ^ound the true cause of the externalistic method of dealing with 
 
 •new conditions. Between the two conceptions, that/man is 
 #only a play thing in the ruthless hands of a cold atomistic 
 
 • world, or the helpless clay fashioned by a creative potter, little 
 
 ♦ room is left to man for self-initiation and self-creation./ If man 
 
 * is what these two apparently contradictory and yet in a sense 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 13 
 
 converging W eltanschauungen appear to make him, it is no 
 longer a mystery why we seek to influence him solely by ex- 
 ternal means, — why man has degenerated into a parasite instead 
 of maintaining his integrity as the acme of nature, and the 
 consummation of God's creative work. 
 
 At this stage of the discussion my position must necessarily 
 be set forth in dogmatic and aphoristic statements. It is 
 hoped, however, that dogma will give way to reason, and 
 aphorism to elucidation as tho study continues, 
 ^^n Genesis i -ay we read : "And God created man in His own 
 image, in the image of God created He him." Whatever else 
 this statement means, for me it signifies that God gave man not 
 only discursive intelligence, and moral intuition but also a 
 will, which like His own has the power of self -initiation and 
 self-activity. Each self-conscious volition has an element of • 
 absolute newness in it. It makes the world other than it • 
 would have been, had not the creative self put forth an effort. * 
 In this sense creation is continually going on; in this sense a 
 part of God's world is realized only through man. In this 
 conception is found the secret of man's real worth./^ 
 
 The havoc results not so much from the fact that the law 
 maker, the reformer and the pulpiteer are unmindful of these 
 principles as from the fact that the rank and file are not con- 
 scious of their own unique powers. In the last analysis it is 
 the sum-total of conviction and appreciation, as created by the 
 many individual consciousnesses and finding embodiment in the 
 genius, that marks the way for progress and the attainment of 
 new truth. The mass-thought makes the master, and in turn 
 the master moulds the mass-thought. This mutual relation and 
 interaction obtains in all progress. 
 
 What we then need is not more constraint but more convic- 
 tion; more self-appraisement in the nobler sense. Legislation 
 and restriction are not unnecessary but these fetters must be 
 self-imposed by a consciousness working from within outward 
 and not from without inward. The greatest work that the 
 philosopher can perform to-day is to apprise man of his true 
 nature. To do this it is imperative to free him from the de- 
 grading trammels of naturalism and the lofty slavery of theo- 
 logical determinism. To this task of liberation we shall soon 
 turn. 
 
II THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 
 Before we proceed to the critical examination of naturalism 
 and theological determinism, it is important to consider 
 whether there is any vital relation between thought and prac- 
 tice ; whether there is warrant for the above assertion regarding 
 the relation between a deterministic world-view and the pro- 
 gramme of active life. 
 
 Consideration must be given to Martineau's statement : "The 
 real life of men, even upon its inner side, is not shaped by philo- 
 sophical systems or moved forward on lines of consecutive 
 logic."^ To the same purport is Sidgwick's well known opinion 
 that practical ethical interests are not vitally influenced by our 
 theory of the will. Such statements are very often distorted 
 and interpreted as if the author intimated that correct thought 
 is not a prerequisite of consistent and correct action. These 
 thinkers never deny that all concrete application of thought to 
 life consciously or unconsciously implies an abstract but 
 rational element. It only means that men often find their 
 system of thought in the application of thought and not vice 
 versa. 
 
 A distinction between two kinds of consciousness may clarify 
 our meaning. Intuitional consciousness is that activity of the 
 mind which is spontaneously generated when reality comes in 
 contact with the apprehending mind. Its content is exceeding- 
 ly complex, containing both feeling and reason. Reflective 
 consciousness, on the other hand, is that activity of the mind 
 which is discursively generated when the content of intuitional 
 consciousness is disintegrated into its constituent elements, and 
 their mutual relations resolved into grounds and consequences. 
 The one is concrete thinking, the other abstract ; the one is the 
 ''real life of men," the other ''philosophical system" and 
 "consecutive logic"; the one is Bismarck and Gladstone, the 
 other Holland and Austin ; the one is the poet and the painter, 
 the other the critic and the grammarian. It is the concrete 
 thinker that creates in the arts and makes progress in practical 
 life, but he owes an incalculable debt to the abstract thinker, 
 
 ^A Study of Religion, Vol. II, p. 196. 
 
 14 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 
 15 
 
 who systematizes and preserves the true and the good. In a 
 very real sense, therefore, abstract and theoretical thought 
 becomes the content and guiding principle for the men who 
 frame laws, control industry, and conduct schools and churches. 
 
 If it is agreed, then, that the dominant thought of a people 
 is uniquely formative in practical affairs, we are prepared to 
 discuss the more specific problem, namely, the relation of 
 deterministic thought to life. 
 
 The most fundamental thing in a man's religious life is his 
 conception of God ; the most fundamental thing in his social 
 life is his conception of man. There can be no consistent 
 theory of government, no philosophy of education, no science 
 of philanthropy without a clear conception of the nature of the 
 individual self. And as the estimate of the Ego changes, 
 slowly but surely there is a readjustment in every sociaP insti- 
 tution. Broadly speaking there are only two conceptions of the 
 self. The first is that the Ego is a product, the second that the 
 Ego is partly product but essentially producer. The one makes 
 the self a creature, the other creature and creator. Of course in 
 no age and in no country is there unanimity as to the nature of 
 the individual. If there were unanimity, all social problems 
 would be much simplified. If man is a product, and if the 
 factors of the product are discernible and subject to manipula- 
 tion, then the modus operandi is a comparatively easy task. 
 Just as the course of a river can be guided by digging and 
 damming so the course of human life, in the individual or in 
 group, is manageable by external means. If man is a resultant 
 of moments under the control of human authorities, then gov- 
 ernment, education and morality reduce themselves to physics, 
 biology and eugenics. This is the logical outcome of a natural- 
 istic conception of the nature of man. 
 
 The most potent influence among any people is religion. 
 Ultimately the kind of Deity a people worships determines 
 the kind of selfhood it attributes to the individual. And the 
 conception of the self becomes structural in the organization 
 of social institutions. In this respect the present age affords no 
 exception. But the influence to-day that is second only to 
 religion is science. And this science is Darwinian in thought 
 
 * 'Social' here as elsewhere is used in the comprehensive sense to 
 include politics, economics, education, etc. 
 
l6 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 and method and naturalistic in its interpretation of reality. 
 Since the publication of the Origin of Species every scientific 
 textbook has been rewritten; the principles of ethics have 
 been reformulated; sacred and secular history have been re- 
 vised. In a very singular way this modern scientific thought 
 has also accented the notion that the self is merely a product 
 of nature. Heredity and environment completely account for 
 the conduct of the individual. It is not strange, therefore, that 
 marked paternalistic tendencies have been displayed in the 
 wake of modern science. 
 
 In making the claim that evolutionary naturalism tends to 
 mechanize society, I am not unmindful of Spencer's Social 
 Organism. Spencer undoubtedly attempted the most compre- 
 hensive and thorough application of evolutionary thought and 
 method. He is the unqualified champion of the ladssez faire 
 theory of government. The state in its various forms is as 
 much a natural organism as any living being. Parliament is 
 the brain; arteries and veins find their counterparts in public 
 highways and railroads. Just as an animal or a tree matures 
 naturally, so the individuals composing the state, if only they 
 are left alone, will eliminate the evil and enhance the good. 
 
 Space does not permit an extensive criticism of Spencer's 
 theory of government. In passing, however, it may be observed 
 that the tendency of politics in the countries where evolution- 
 ary thought has been most exploited has been just the opposite 
 of Spencer's theoretical claims. Huxley, who practically 
 started with the same premises, came to collectivistic conclu- 
 sions in the realm of practical politics. I think that in Admin- 
 istrative Nihilism his argument against Spencer is cogent, 
 when he insists that the logical outcome of a naturalistic con- 
 ception of man is the assumption by the state of more and more 
 personal functions.^ 
 
 '"But if the resemblances between the body physiological and the 
 body politic are any indication, not only of what the latter is, and how 
 it has become what it is, but of what it ought to be, and what it is 
 tending to become, I cannot but think that the real force of the analogy 
 is totally opposed to the negative view of State function. 
 
 "Suppose that, in accordance with this view, each muscle were to 
 maintain that the nervous system had no right to interfere with its 
 contraction, except to prevent it from hindering the contraction of 
 another muscle; or each gland, that it had a right to secrete, so long 
 as its secretion interfered with no other ; suppose every separate cell 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE 17 
 
 If it is conceded that a naturalistic determinism, by deposing 
 the self from its high office, tends to produce a mechanistic 
 society, the question still remains whether a deterministic con- 
 ception in religion produces the same result. The term theo- 
 logical determinism may be used in two senses. 
 
 In the strict sense it implies that th^oDeity predestined from 
 the beginning all things that come to pass, both good and evil. 
 Mohammedanism and Augustinianism are very specific in this 
 respect. Say the Koran and the Traditions, "The Prophet 
 said, verily, the first thing which God created was the pen, and 
 He said to it write. It said, what shall I write ? He said, write 
 down the divine decrees (quadar) ; and it wrote down all that 
 was and all that will be to eternity. . . . He leads astray 
 whom He will and guides whom He will. . . . Verily God 
 most high has ordained five things on each of His servants from 
 His creation : his appointed time, his actions, his dwelling place, 
 his travels and his subsistence. . . . When God creates any 
 servant for heaven. He causes him to go in the way of those 
 destined for heaven, until he dies, after which He takes him to 
 heaven. And when He creates any servant for the fire of hell, 
 then He causes him to go in the way of those destined for 
 hell until his death, after which He takes him to hell." So 
 Omar Khayyam sums up the prose into poetry : 
 
 "The moving finger writes ; and, having writ, 
 Moves on ; nor all your piety or wit 
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
 Nor all your tears wash out a word of it." 
 
 In this particular doctrine the Westminster Confession of 
 Faith uses very similar terminology. In speaking of "God's 
 eternal decrees" it states : "God from all eternity did by the 
 most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely and un- 
 
 left free to follow its own "interest" and laissez faire lord of all, 
 what would become of the body physiological? 
 
 "The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks for the 
 physiological organism, acts for it, and rules the individual compon- 
 ents with a rod of iron. Even the blood-corpuscles can't hold a 
 public meeting without being accused of 'Congestion' — and the brain, 
 like other despots whom we have known, calls out at once for the use 
 of sharp steel against them." Methods and Results, Essays, "Adminis- 
 trative Nihilism." p. 271. 
 
l8 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 changeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass ; ... By the 
 decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men 
 and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others 
 fore-ordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus 
 predestined and fore-ordained, are particularly and unchange- 
 ably designed ; and their number is so certain and definite that 
 it cannot be either increased or diminished." 
 ' In the broader sense theological determinism includes the 
 •conception of God in which it is held that He rules with an iron 
 *hand, directly or indirectly through appointed agents, all His 
 ^subjects. The future programme seems less rigidly fixed 
 •than in the more logical determinism. The ideal of the Old 
 Testament theocracy was such a conception. The pattern of 
 •the tabernacle as well as the law and the plans of battle came 
 
 * directly from God. The Roman Church ultimately is based 
 
 * on the same conception. God, the pope, and the priests control 
 -the destiny of each individual. 
 
 But in both the broad and narrow sense there is a common 
 element. The self is not merged into the Infinite, as is the 
 case in pantheism, but the standing or the destiny of the self 
 at any moment is determined and is the product of agencies 
 outside the self. In naturahsm the agents are heredity and 
 environment. In theological determinism there is added a third 
 factor, namely, the personal agency of the Deity or his repre- 
 sentative on earth. The more deterministic the religious con- 
 ception is, the less significant becomes the self. The individual, 
 like a small stone in a mosaic picture, is fitted into his destined 
 place by the master artist and his contribution to the artistic 
 effect of the whole comes from his passivity and not from his 
 activity. 
 
 The most telling example of the relation between a determin- 
 istic theology and social institutions is furnished by the history 
 of Mohammedanism. The study is exceptionally fruitful be- 
 cause the complex influences, which are so numerous in other 
 similar theological views, are conspicuously absent. In the 
 thirteen centuries of Moslem history its religious tenets have 
 remained singularly intact. In predestinarianism is to be found 
 both the strength and the weakness of the Moslem faith. No 
 more indomitable soldiers ever took the field than the early 
 followers of Mohammed. Their onward march seemed irre- 
 sistible. The man at the battle front is as immune to death as 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE 
 
 19 
 
 the non-combatant until the ''appointed time." In the time of 
 peace, however, this same assurance produces a different result. 
 Inclination becomes the guide of life. Self-exertion is mini- 
 mized because it avails nothing. Society becomes sterile and 
 stagnant. Mohammedan civilization is strong evidence of the 
 decadent influence of spiritual determinism. Its institutions 
 and its individuals are hampered and mechanized by law, rule, 
 and tradition. 
 
 The history of the Jewish nation and of Catholicism bear out 
 the same truth that the more the individual is conceived as a 
 necessary fixture in the economy of God and the church, the 
 more legalistic, ritualistic, and paternalistic become the social 
 institutions in the respective civilizations. 
 
 It is true that deterministic theology in protestant countries 
 has often developed marked individualistic tendencies. Kuyper 
 in his lectures on Calvinism points out very eloquently how the 
 Calvinistic faith has been the champion of liberty and democ- 
 racy in Holland, England and America. But no one seriously 
 claims that such results are traceable to the teaching of pre- 
 destination. The right of private judgment and the teaching 
 that man is ultimately subject to no human authority have had 
 the most pronounced political consequences. The keynote of 
 the Reformation was not determinism but rather this: ''God 
 alone is Lord of the conscience; and hath left it free from the 
 doctrine and commandments of men, which are in anything 
 contrary to his word, or besides it in matters of faith or 
 worship." 
 
 The spirit of the Renaissance quite apart from religion, as 
 embodied in such men as Erasmus and Reuchlin, was also a 
 great liberalizing agency. When it is, therefore, said that Cal- 
 vinism produced certain results, it must be remembered that 
 Calvinism is a comprehensive term. It developed in a complex 
 age, which was characterized by many independent movements. 
 The beneficent influence of Galvanism was produced not be- 
 cause of, but in spite of, its predestinarian doctrine. In due 
 time it will be considered whether Calvinism leaves any room 
 for self-initiation. In so far as it does minimize the efficiency 
 of the self, it tends to treat the individual in the same manner 
 as other deterministic systems. It is highly significent that 
 Calvin's rule in Geneva developed a most rigorous paternalistic 
 government. 
 
20 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 It is perhaps anticipating to say that the writer conceives 
 the self both as creature and creator. This means that there 
 will always be need of law, form and ritual in our institutions. 
 The keen insight of the statesman will be required to determine 
 when the restrictions on the creature become a detriment to the 
 creator. But no one can become a true guide in practical 
 afifairs who has not first settled the problem of the nature of 
 the self. The fact that evolutionary naturalism and theological 
 determinism, with its accent on total depravity and predestina- 
 tion, have deprived the self of significant independence, makes 
 it of vital importance to examine the foundations on which 
 these two systems rest. 
 
Ill NATURALISM 
 What is Naturalism? 
 
 Philosophy is engaged in a very ambitious undertaking, for 
 it attempts to capture and exhibit things that evade the ordi- 
 nary observer. The difficuhy that confronts a missionary, who 
 tries to disseminate a monotheistic conception of God among 
 illiterate tribes, is not unlike the task of the philosopher who 
 essays to give a clear exposition of his own convictions. 
 Thought is always elusive and language a poor vehicle. In 
 this respect the metaphysician makes confession with the poet 
 of "Fancies that broke through language and escaped." The 
 fact that words are an inadequate expression of the real spirit 
 of any philosophic persuasion, makes it almost presumptuous 
 for any one to attempt a valuation or summary of a system of 
 thought to which he himself can not subscribe. It is ludicrous, 
 not to say pathetic, for a speaker to boast that he will present 
 both sides of a question impartially. No one can become thor- 
 oughly familiar with any vital question without coming to 
 some personal conclusion. And when the conclusion is made, 
 tacitly or avowedly, the multifarious data, which once seemed 
 so flexible, become fixed ; they receive a new color and meaning, 
 now that they are definitely related to an espoused end. With 
 these limitations clearly in mind we continue our study. 
 
 The child, perhaps, is the best exponent of naturalism. It 
 finds itself in a world of time, space and objects, which im- 
 pinge upon its sense organs and act and react upon each other. 
 The vital problem of its existence is to learn the language, 
 meaning and content of things in order to relate^ itself to them 
 in the most economic way. It takes things at their par value. 
 From the geography of its body it passes to that of the home, 
 the immediate vicinity, and finally to the larger and fuller 
 world of nature. It makes a cosmos out of chaos, not by the 
 
 ^ The question of self and not-self, implied by the word 'relate/ does 
 not enter the child consciousness. In this unreflective stage the 
 cognitive function is not unlike that of the animal, i. o. accommodation. 
 
22 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 introduction of a new principle of interpretation, but by passive 
 obedience and by observation of things just as they exist. The 
 knowledge of reality comes like the knowledge of a foreign 
 tongue. The word, the sentence and the meaning are not 
 changed because a new individual masters them. The attitude 
 of the naturalistic thinker is not unlike that of the child. He 
 finds himself in mediis rebus; multiplicity and heterogeneity 
 prevail. Things must be related, unified and explained in 
 order that life may be fruitful. He sets about his task in the 
 most natural way.^ From his childhood experience he has 
 learned how to reduce the complex to the simple; how to 
 explain phenomena that were once inexplicable; how to find 
 significance in the insignificant. The results thus far have only 
 been an earnest of the things to come. With logic and science 
 as his trusted field-marshals the naturalistic warrior goes forth 
 boldly seeking new conquests. 
 
 What are the conquests of naturalism? What are its con- 
 clusions? Most important is the claimed reduction of the 
 qualitative to the quantitative, the world of appreciation to the 
 world of description, the spiritual to the material. Science 
 comes in the role of a great emancipator. The scalpel and the 
 laboratory have freed us from the myth of freedom, religion 
 and personality. "Belief in the so-called freedom of the will," 
 says Dr. P. W. Van Peyma, "is a relic and an inheritance of an 
 unscientific past; an age of belief in devils and witches, in 
 magic and miracles; in divine interposition and special provi- 
 dence. But as knowledge widens we find that the range of 
 possibilities is lost in necessity."* Huxley is well qualified to 
 speak for his school and therefore the following citation is 
 significant : 
 
 "Any one who is acquainted with the history of science will 
 admit, that its progress has in all ages meant, and now more 
 than ever means that extension of what we call matter and 
 causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all 
 regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spon- 
 taneity. . . . And as surely as every future grows out of the 
 
 ' Whether the thinker begins as Pearson does in Grammar of Science 
 with sensation, or with bodies as is the case with Ostwald in Primer 
 of Naturalism the method is the same, namely, to start with that which 
 is immediately given. 
 
 ' The Why of the Will, p. 41. 
 
NATURALISM 
 
 23 
 
 past and present so will the physiology of the future gradually 
 extend the realm of matter and law until it is coextensive with 
 knowledge, with feeling, and with action. The consciousness 
 of this great truth weighs like a nightmare upon many of the 
 best minds of these days. The advancing tide of matter threat- 
 ens to drown their souls ; the tightening grasp of law impedes 
 their freedom."* 
 
 Hume in a less serious vein graphically expresses the same 
 convictions. *'If we take in hand any volume of divinity or 
 school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask. Does it contain any 
 abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number ? No. Does 
 it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of 
 fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it 
 can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."^ 
 
 The above quotations hardly represent the real temper and 
 attitude of the naturalistic thinker of to-day. In most writers 
 one finds a pathetic sense of loss and regret.^ They are aware 
 that something valuable has vanished from their lives. It is 
 not that they are enemies of religion, God, and spiritual values ; 
 but all these are found to be supernumeraries, and thus are 
 naturally eliminated from the construction of reality. Laplace's 
 reply to Napoleon's query when he presented his Mecanique 
 
 * Collected Essays, Eversley Edition, Vol. I, p. 159. 
 ^ Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding. 
 
 • "It is therefore with the utmost sorrow that I find myself compelled 
 to accept the conclusions here worked out; and nothing would have 
 induced me to publish them, save the strength of my conviction that it 
 is the duty of every member of society to give his fellows the benefit 
 of his labours for whatever they may be worth. ... I am not 
 ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe 
 to me has lost its soul of loveliness; ... I think, as think at times I 
 must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that 
 creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now 
 I find it, — at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the 
 sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. For whether it be 
 due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the 
 requirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those 
 sacred associations which to me at least were the sweetest that life has 
 given, I cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, 
 there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton, — Philosophy 
 having become a meditation, not merely of death, but of annihilation, 
 the precept know thyself has become transformed into the terrific 
 oracle of Oedipus — 'Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou 
 art:'" Romanes, A Candid Examination of Theism, pp. 113, 114. 
 
24 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 Celeste fairly represents the position of the scientist. "M. 
 Laplace," said Napoleon, ''they tell me you have written this 
 large book on the system of the universe and have never 
 mentioned its Creator." Laplace's answer was brief but to the 
 point: *'Sir I have no need of any such hypothesis."^ And 
 the scientist is not without an answer if it is asked why he has 
 no need of such an hypothesis ; why spirit and consciousness 
 are not permitted to remain as independent entities. 
 
 It is a safe principle in any investigation to begin with the 
 known and the definite. At least provisionally, reality must be 
 defined as the heaviest things in life; the things that can be 
 grasped by the senses and can be manipulated by experimenta- 
 tion. But the observer soon finds that many "weighty" 
 matters have no tangible form. They can not be subsumed 
 under physical categories. Introspection intrudes into the 
 scientist's sanctuary. Consciousness becomes a very tantalizing 
 companion. The naturalist, however, has a very plausible 
 explanation for all spiritual conceptions. Religion and morality 
 serve a useful purpose, but they are prone to forget their 
 humble origin. The bright tungsten light is many steps re- 
 moved from, but it is nevertheless directly and quantitatively 
 related to, the black and inert piece of coal. 
 
 The classification of material things is made possible because 
 nature has a rationalistic structure. Everywhere there is 
 Einheit in Verschiedenheit. If unity and uniformity did not 
 exist logic would be but a name ; nature could have no spokes- 
 man ; language and mutual intercourse would be impossible. A 
 world without uniformity would be like a body without a 
 skeleton : there would be no coherence, no permanency and no 
 articulate expression. The same uniformity that prevails in 
 the construction of bodies also obtains in the action and reaction 
 among them. A formulation of the way bodies behave is 
 called a law of nature. Its validity depends on the insoluble 
 nexus between cause and efifect, between antecedent and conse- 
 quent. All action or efficiency is quantitatively measurable. 
 Reality must and can be explained in this descriptive termi- 
 nology of science. If anything is not thus explicable it is 
 designated, by virtue of that fact, as a pseudo-phenomenon. 
 This principle of uniformity, which is so easily detected in the 
 inorganic world, is then rigorously applied to the organic 
 'W. W. Rouse Ball, Short History of Mathematics, p. 388. 
 
NATURALISM 25 
 
 world, the animal kingdom, and the conscious life of man. It 
 is in this connection that the naturalist makes use of the facts 
 furnished by evolution. With the aid of this information he 
 claims to be able satisfactorily to explain the mental in terms 
 of the physical and to reduce self-consciousness to terms which 
 are amenable to scientific formulae. 
 
 The amoeba is a unicellular protoplasmic animal. In the 
 ordinary sense this organism has no digestive organs, no 
 muscles, and no nervous system. However, the whole animal 
 has the contractility of muscle and the irritability of nerve. 
 The assimilation of food, the excretion of waste matter, and 
 the reproductive process are carried on by no special organs but 
 are performed by the organism as a whole. If any external 
 stimulus, mechanical or chemical, impinges on the periphery, a 
 specific amount of latent energy is set free and manifests itself 
 in a definite reaction. This response is determined entirely by 
 the strength and kind of irritant and the nature and state of the 
 particular amoeba affected. The higher forms of animal, and 
 man in particular, are only a more complete organization of a 
 large number of protoplasmic cells. The ova-sperm, which is 
 a fusion of the ovum and spermatozoon, contains all the latent 
 possibilities of the mature man. By a process of cleavage or 
 segmentation the cells multiply very rapidly. As the division 
 continues the structure and the function of the various parts 
 become specialized. In due time the ova-sperm has differenti- 
 ated itself into muscles, bones, nerves, and special senses. 
 
 Man's reaction to external stimulation is not unlike that 
 of the amoeba. In a pure reflex action there is no con- 
 sciousness concomitant with the response. In the higher 
 forms of response there is an invariable concomitant phe- 
 nomenon (better designated epiphenomenon) called con- 
 sciousness. But here also, as was the case with the less 
 developed organism, the afferent impulse plus the nature of the 
 nerve center, which releases the stored-up energy, account 
 quantitatively for the strength of the efferent reaction. The 
 most unique manifestation of consciousness in higher animals 
 is volition. When conflicting impulses come to consciousness 
 it is, of course, impossible to respond to both. In all such 
 appeals there is consciously or unconsciously a preponderance 
 of inclination in favor of one of the alternatives. A so-called 
 decision of the will is merely the turning of the scales in the 
 
26 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 direction of the greater weight. Consciousness may thus be 
 considered either as nature's extreme example of the versa- 
 tiHty of transformed energy, or the necessary concomitant of a 
 certain pecuHar configuration of living cells. As convexity 
 implies concavity, so certain cell arrangements may imply con- 
 scious life.^ 
 
 The application of biometric methods to biology and psy- 
 chology have furnished support to the above contention. There 
 is at least a vital conditioning if not a causal relation betvv^een 
 the shape, structure and quality of the brain and nervous 
 system and the moral, mental and spiritual condition of races 
 and individuals. The different nervous constitution, and not 
 any spiritual condition, distinguishes the phlegmatic German 
 from the emotional Frenchman. Lombroso® and his school 
 undoubtedly made exaggerated claims in regard to the ''crim- 
 inal type," still a careful tabulation of the physiological 
 features of men and v^omen who find their way; into penal 
 institutions substantiates the claim that certain congenital 
 physical characteristics convey moral and mental deficiencies. 
 The determinacy of human action is also argued from the fact 
 that the future acts of a group of individuals can be foretold 
 with greater certainty, for example, than the meteorologist 
 can forecast the weather. And whenever any sudden change 
 occurs in the predicted results it is generally admitted that 
 some external condition has changed, and the disturbance in 
 turn has influenced the individuals.^^ The strict dependence of 
 the mental on the physical ; the reduction of the immaterial and 
 qualitative to the material and quantitative ; the leveling of all 
 phenomena to a common denominator of energy or matter in 
 motion, are but the heralds of "the advancing tide of matter" 
 whose onward progress strengthens "the tightening grasp of 
 law." Nothing but a thoroughgoing determinism can result 
 from the naturalistic interpretation of the world. Every 
 
 *C/. Prof. H. C. Warren's address, The Mental and the Physical, 
 Psychological Review, March, 1914. 
 
 • Lombroso in his "L'homo Delinquent" distinguishes the born 
 criminal type from other men by the following stigmata: 
 
 1. Excessive asymmetry of the skull. 
 
 2. Small cranial capacity. 
 
 3. Abnormal features. 
 
 4. Slight growth of beard relative to hair on head. 
 
 "C/. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, Vol. II, p. 310. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF EXTENSION 2/ 
 
 thought and act at any moment is determined by the state of 
 the individual and his environmental conditions. But his state 
 and environment at any time are the necessary products of the 
 natural course of events. Just as the position of a grain of 
 sand on the beach is the resultant of untold but definite physical 
 antecedents, so each emotion, each thought, each page of 
 history has had an equally fixed chain of quantitatively measur- 
 able antecedents. If naturalism is true then a free self- 
 determining agent is a myth and a delusion. 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 If the foregoing exposition is a fair presentation of the 
 nature, method and purpose of naturalism, the way is opened 
 for a critical examination. Does the scientific method alone, 
 if at all, lead to reality? Is science justified in making state- 
 ments concerning the 'Vhat" as contrasted with the "how"? 
 Does not the naturalistic position ultimately rest on speculative 
 thought and presuppositions which can never become elements 
 of experience nor objects of experimentation, and thus depend 
 for their substantiation on proof other than scientific? The 
 following lines of thought, it seems to me, reveal the most 
 vulnerable parts of the naturalistic armor. To say that these 
 arguments per se are conclusive would be philosophic arro- 
 gance; but the claim that these observations, regarding the 
 naturalistic position, militate against a coherent and consistent 
 construction of the data furnished by the world as a whole, is 
 but the outcome of an attempt genuinely to comprehend things 
 in their totality. Apart from the domain where demonstrative 
 evidence is procurable, no single argument or cluster of argu- 
 ments is sufficient to disprove a system of thought. It is 
 rather the cumulative effect of the main arguments, coupled 
 with innumerable necessary implications, that is most potent in 
 producing conviction. 
 
 A. SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLE OF EXTENSION 
 
 My first contention is that the so-called "scientific principle • 
 of extension" may lead to error whenever the conclusion does * 
 not permit of concrete verification. 
 
 Scientific reasoning proceeds in a straight line. The scientist 
 reasons forward and backward on this line, always, however. 
 
28 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 assuming the uniformity and continuity of nature. When 
 he comes to the linear limits of observable data, he projects 
 over the limit and assumes that the same processes which took 
 place within the limits, where scientific data were observable, 
 will take place, or have taken place, in the same manner outside 
 those limits. For example the scientist measures temperature 
 by the expansion or contraction of some substance. This 
 process is observable within narrow limits, but the assumption 
 is made that the same quantitative change takes place after 
 verification is no longer possible. But it is quite conceivable 
 and even probable that there may ensue a qualitative change 
 in the process, or that the same numerical relation between 
 temperature and volume no longer obtains. This actually 
 happens in the case of water. Down to a certain degree water 
 contracts as the temperature is lowered, but at a critical point 
 the process is completely reversed and the water begins to 
 expand. 
 
 9 This possibility of error is much enhanced when the principle 
 •of extension is applied to social, economic, historical, moral 
 •and religious phenomena, i. e. in the realm where self-con- 
 *sciousness becomes a potent factor. The "law of diminishing 
 utility" is an illuminating example. "As the amount of any 
 good increases, after a certain point the gratification that the 
 added portions afford decreases. "^^ The diminution of gratifi- 
 cation continues until ultimately pleasure is changed to pain. 
 In the study of social conditions it is found that as people 
 collect in a locality, thus making cooperation possible, better 
 sanitation, education and general welfare ensue. But when 
 the size of the city passes a certain point, not only do increased 
 advantages cease, but many additional evils become manifest. 
 
 In most of the cases cited above verification is possible, and 
 the results are corrected by an appeal to facts. ^^ But in the 
 evolutionary process to which the naturalist appeals in his 
 attempt to make the data of morality, religion and self -con- 
 sciousness amenable to scientific formulae, no such empirical 
 verification is possible. The terminus a quo is the moral, 
 
 * " F. A. Fetter, The Principles of Economics, p. 22. 
 
 ' "Just as in logic an 'empirical division' is a corrected 'logical 
 division.' The latter gives ideal groups and an appeal to experience 
 must be made to eliminate the members of the division that do not 
 obtain in the economy of nature. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF EXTENSION 29 
 
 religious and self-conscious man as we know him today; the 
 terminus ad quern is the most primitive man. Between these 
 two termini there is a clearly marked gradational development. 
 Heredity, social instinct, and environment explain to a great 
 extent the progress man has made in this period in the develop- 
 ment of a monotheistic religion and a morality of oughtness. 
 But in the words of T. H. Green : "The most primitive man 
 they exhibit is already conscious of his own good as conditioned 
 by that of others, already capable of recognizing an obliga- 
 tion."^^ So it is also found that the most primitive man is self- 
 conscious and has a religion, however you may define that 
 term. Morality, religion and self -consciousness hopelessly 
 remove the primitive man from the highest form of animal. 
 The question is not how these human quaUties have success- 
 ively manifested themselves in history but rather this : How 
 account for these entities at all? It is here that the scientist 
 has access to that questionable personage called prehistoric 
 man. 
 
 But now the scientist has departed from his sure foothold of 
 ^'experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and exist- 
 ence." He is in a speculative realm where his compass and 
 sextant are useless. He has pushed from the known to the 
 unknown. When he again emerges on the known animal plane 
 a great change has taken place. He still finds mentality in the 
 animal, but self-consciousness, with its concomitant capacity to 
 recognize an obligation and to worship, has been lost in the 
 twilight zone that separates man from the animal. To continue 
 the quotation from Green : ''The theory of descent and evolu- 
 tion opens up a vista of possibilities beyond the facts, so far* 
 ascertained, of human history, and suggests an enquiry into 
 the antecedents of the moralized man based on other data than 
 the records which he has left of himself." Thus, when the 
 scientist asserts that in the amoeba there is potentially present 
 a consciousness the same in quality as that in a religious and 
 moral man, he must admit that this conclusion was arrived at 
 after a long journey through the wilderness of speculative 
 thought where the data of science — "matter of fact and ex- 
 istence" — were not observable and therefore where the usual 
 scientific method was not the sole guiding principle. 
 
 ^^Prolegomena to Ethics^ p. 8. 
 
30 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 B. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS 
 
 My second observation is that the basic assumptions of 
 naturalism are hypothetical and arbitrary. The assumptions 
 are these: Nature is a complex but self-contained system in 
 which uniform laws prevail universally ; in which all change — 
 social, historical and economic included — is explicable as the 
 transference of energy from one form or vehicle to another; 
 in which the amount of energy is a constant quantity. In 
 brief the scientist postulates the "uniformity of nature," the 
 "conservation of energy," and the "inertia of matter." He 
 holds as absurd and inconceivable that an effect is produced by 
 anything but by transferred antecedent motion; that the 
 psychical effectively projects into the physical; that there is 
 an entity determined by itself and not by 'other.' The follow- 
 ing quotation advances a position which an unprejudiced stu- 
 dent of phenomena must admit to be at least plausible. To the 
 scientist the position seems incomprehensible. 
 
 "The course of the world" says Lotze, "may every moment 
 have innumerable beginnings whose origin lies outside it, but 
 can have none not necessarily contained within it. Where such 
 beginnings are to be found we cannot beforehand say with 
 certainty ; but if experience convinces us that every event of 
 external nature is at the same time an effect having its cause 
 in preceding facts, it still remains possible that the cycle of 
 inner mental life does not consist throughout of a rigid mechan- 
 ism working necessarily, but that along with unlimited freedom 
 of will it also possesses a limited power of unconditional 
 commencement."^* 
 
 * The psychologist also too often begins his investigations 
 %with rigorous deterministic presuppositions, which preclude ab 
 ^initio independent significance for psychical phenomena. "Psy- 
 * chology," writes Hoeffding, "must be deterministic, that is to 
 ^ say, it must start from the assumption that the calisal law holds 
 ^good even in the life of the will, just as the law is assumed to 
 \ be valid for the remaining life and for material nature." 
 
 I submit that such assumptions are arbitrary and unwar- 
 ranted if justice is to be done to the facts, and if any regard is 
 to be had for philosophical method. Ladd is fully justified 
 , when in criticism of the above passage he says: "Psychology 
 
 " Microcosmus, Vol. I, p. 261. 
 
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS 31 
 
 has no right to such assumption; it must stick to the facts of • 
 consciousness, discuss and describe them just as they are, then, • 
 if it can, explain them, but it must not sophisticate them. ♦ 
 Among these facts it finds the conscious and dehberate choice. • 
 Its appearance is not that of a fact in which the causal law • 
 holds good ; it is rather that of a fact arising in the mysterious • 
 depth of the self-directing mind."^^ 
 
 What are the facts which the psychologist and the scientist • 
 find and which they try to force into the formulae of physics ? * 
 There is, of course, first of all the great multiplicity of material * 
 phenomena : the falling stone, the receding tide, chemical » 
 affinities, geological strata — in brief, physical action and reac- \ 
 tion. But it would be a mistake to assume that these manifes- \ 
 tations constitute even the major part of knowledge and ex- *> 
 perience. There is on the other hand the amazing wealth of 
 data and fact furnished by history. In the broad sense history " 
 is the articulated expression of consciousness. The conscious * 
 life of the billions, who have inhabited the globe, has found 
 embodiment in social and religious institutions, in art, in litera- 
 ture and in philosophy. If all the facts of the physical sciences 
 were enclosed in one book and all the facts of the social 
 sciences in another, no one can deny but that the latter would 
 be much more voluminous. It is not intimated that this state- 
 ment proves or disproves anything, but it does bring out a 
 fact, which the scientists only too often ignore, namely, that 
 there is no preponderance of physical over social data. 
 
 If we approach these records of consciousness without any 
 presuppositions there emerge some patent facts. Human 
 history is non-repetitive ; it is constituted of a vast number of 
 unique individual acts. In as far as these acts are the ex- 
 pression of rational beings they assume a continuity and coher- 
 ence; but the connection that binds them together is different 
 from the bond that unites physical phenomena. Like M. 
 Henri Bergson's conception of time, history is a qualitative 
 multiplicity, a heterogenity of elements that interpenetrate and 
 commingle with one another. 
 
 There are no a priori reasons why these phenomena, so 
 unlike physical facts, should conform to the same causal laws 
 observable in the material world. The decision must be arbi- 
 trary which disqualifies half the eligible players before the 
 
 " Outlines of Descriptive Psychology, p. 336. 
 
32 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 game begins. To assume that the mental is amenable to the 
 
 laws of physical science ; to assume that consciousness is equal 
 
 to Yi m v^ is to prejudge the case. It can be said of the 
 
 naturalist as Aristotle said of the Pythagoreans, that they are 
 
 ''forcing phenomena into accordance with certain reasonings 
 
 and notions of their own." I confess that I cannot see the 
 
 , force of Prof. H. C. Warren's logic when he says : 'The burden 
 
 tof proof rests on those who deny the regularity and deter- 
 
 •minacy of human volition and human reasoning."^^ It is 
 
 •equally if not more imperative that he establish that reason does 
 
 *not make possible the regularity observable in nature.^^ 
 
 • It must not be understood that fault has been found with 
 
 • the scientist because he begins his researches with definite 
 •presuppositions which at the present stage may still be unveri- 
 
 • fied hypotheses. Every investigation must proceed in some 
 •such manner. The work and the instruments of science are 
 %teleological. Their object is to subjugate nature in such a way 
 %that it may become an object of knowledge and a benefit to 
 ^mankind. To carry out this purpose recourse must be had to 
 
 abstractions — space, time, energy, mass and motion. Most of 
 these concepts are defined by the scientist in terms of each 
 other. True, this does not shed any light on- their real nature 
 but for all scientific purposes such definition is adequate. As 
 long as the scientist does not presume to write a metaphysic, 
 and admits that he is only investigating a limited field of 
 reality — "the world of description"^^ — he is making a legiti- 
 mate use of his abstract conceptions. But when he quotes his 
 axioms and then proceeds to assert that, in so far as "the 
 world of appreciation" cannot be subsumed under these cate- 
 gories, it has no significance and reality, the naturalistic thinker 
 makes an illegitimate use of his rubrics because he attempts to 
 apply them to phenomena beyond the scientist's domain. It 
 need hardly be reiterated that the above-mentioned axioms are 
 neither self evident nor necessitated by the laws of thought. 
 Even Mill declared that it was an unwarranted assertion to 
 claim that the principle of causation as taught by science ob- 
 tained in the whole universe. 
 
 "Ibid., p. loo 
 
 " Cf. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, "The Spiritual Principle in 
 Knowledge and Nature." 
 
 " Cf. J. Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, Lecture XII, "The 
 World of Description and the World of Appreciation." 
 
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS 
 
 33 
 
 Let us examine a little more carefully one of these axioms, 
 as a typical case, in order to get a better conception of their 
 tentative character. I select the principle of conservation of • 
 energy, because it is so strongly maintained that, if a free self • 
 determining entity were recognized in reality, the very warp * 
 and woof of the scientific fabric would be torn into shreds. 
 
 Conservation of energy is defined thus : "In a system of • 
 bodies neither acted upon by, nor acting upon, anything outside * 
 of itself, the total energy of the system remains invariable only » 
 changing from one form into another."^® The "system" may 
 refer to a clock, the earth, the solar system or the universe. 
 Reality consists of a fixed amount of energy captured and 
 expressed in a "world formula" by science. If mind, which is • 
 not a "system of bodies," were so bound up with matter as to • 
 become an efficacious agent, the above principle would be * 
 invalidated ; Shakespeare's plays could no longer be equated to 
 ^m V-, for now the molecular motions of his brain have been 
 supplemented by a spiritual efficiency. My contention is that no 
 harm can accrue to the conception of the permanency and 
 regularity of nature by leaving room in the scientific pro- 
 gramme for a dynamic spiritual principle. There may well be 
 an interpenetration of the spiritual and the physical. When 
 once the spiritual has projected itself into the realm of the 
 physical, where the law of cause and effect obtains, the sup- 
 plied energy would conform to the laws of change and transfer- 
 ence which exists in that particular physical system. When a 
 meteor falls into the ocean the configuration of the whole earth 
 is readjusted and the sum of the mass particles on the globe 
 is increased by the intrusion of a stranger from another 
 realm. But no law of physics or thermodynamics has thereby 
 been vitiated. It must be remembered that there is a distinc- 
 tion between the assertion that there are constant mechanical 
 equivalents between the various forms of energy, and the 
 gratuitous assumption that the quantity of energy in the uni- 
 verse is finite and invariable. The physicist speaks of kinetic, 
 potential, dissipated and latent energy. Of latent energy we 
 know little or nothing; dissipated energy can never be rein- 
 stated as available power; potential energy, "capacity for 
 capacity of work," is not mechanically of the same dimension 
 as kinetic energy. But as yet no means have been devised by 
 
 "Baldwin, Dictionary of Psychology and Philosophy. 
 
34 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 which these different forms of energy can be accurately calcu- 
 lated and therefore we cannot dogmatize about the amount and 
 constancy of energy in the universe. Such a dogmatic state- 
 ment would be as tenable as the contention that the quantity 
 of water in a lake must be constant because the surface is 
 always level. Or the attitude of the physicist might be likened 
 to that of an imaginary economist who had never heard of 
 production and consumption, but confined his entire attention to 
 the study of the laws of exchange. With an entire disregard of 
 the laws of production and consumption, supply and demand 
 curves can be mathematically constructed. ^° ''In the grander 
 economics of nature the relations might be similar." The forces 
 of the universe may continually be enhanced by agents which 
 are not themselves part of the mechanistic system which we 
 call nature. It may well be that reality is richer in content 
 than a scientific formula or a logical concept. 
 
 While, therefore, the physicist may tell us much about the 
 behavior of mass particles in the sphere of his observation and 
 while he may formulate accurately the laws to which certain 
 kinds of energy conform as they pass from one state to another, 
 he can only speak in hypothetical terms when he essays to 
 limit the bounds of reality by the declamation of a few assumed 
 axioms. 
 
 C. EPISTEMOLOGY 
 
 In the third place I submit that, when due regard is given 
 to epistemological considerations, it is found that naturalism 
 presupposes — to use T. H. Green's phraseology — a spiritual 
 principle in nature which is not a part or product of nature, 
 in that sense of nature in which it is said to be an object of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Thus far in our examination the existence, the nature, and 
 the importance of the knower or sponsor of naturalism (or any 
 other ism) has not been insisted upon. It has only been 
 urged that, when the naturalistic scientist undertakes to give a 
 comprehensive account of reality, his methods and assumptions 
 are open to criticism and subject to modification. He is un- 
 warranted so to construe the world that all facts must be re- 
 duced to matter or motion. It has also been indicated that no 
 
 ** Illustrations by J. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. II, 
 
 p. 75. 
 
EPISTE^^IOLOGY 
 
 35 
 
 harm need accrue to any of the necessary postulates of science 
 if a causa eminens prevails in conjunction with a causa 
 formalis. 
 
 An advance step now becomes imperative. The relation of 
 subject to object, of knower to the thing known must be care- 
 fully surveyed. What are the necessary implications in the 
 process of knowing nature in the scientific sense as a connected 
 system of uniform laws? Is the subject knowing any part of, 
 or the sum of any parts of, the concatenated matters of fact and 
 experience which are the data of science? Is there any validity 
 in Kant's statement? ''Macht zwar der Verstand die Natur, 
 aber er schafft sie nicht." When Huxley exclaims : 'Tact I 
 know and law I know" does he not imply a conditioning 
 relation between the *T" and the ''fact" and "law"? 
 
 In urging these epistemological questions, I am fully aware 
 of the disrepute into which epistemology has come in some 
 philosophical circles. Prof. W. T. Marvin writes in all serious- 
 ness : "Those who deny that the theory of knowledge is 
 fundamental believe that the idealists are here guilty of a 
 grievous logical treason whereby, through a coup d'etat a 
 perfectly legitimate special science has been raised by them 
 from the humble rank of a private citizen in the world of 
 science to be the infallible and supreme autocrat and judge over 
 all the other sciences."-^ 
 
 But it is of great importance to note that epistemology is 
 not a "special science" at all, even though it claims to be 
 scientific in its method. A particular science investigates and 
 systematizes as far as possible all the facts contained within a 
 specific sphere. Philosophy (including epistemology as one of 
 its branches), assimilating the knowledge furnished by the 
 special sciences, attempts to gain a new insight and present a 
 more consistent conception of the nature of reality. It is true 
 that a man can see without understanding the mechanism of 
 the eye ; it is true that a man can know without understanding 
 
 '^ A First Book in Metaphysics, p. 204. Ever since the publication of 
 Locke's Essay Concerning the Human Understanding and Kant's 
 Critique of Pure Reason there has been a tendency to permit episte- 
 mology to supplant metaphysics. This tendency, however, has been 
 over emphasized by the Neo-Realists in their vituperative attacks 
 against epistemology. Vide W. T. Marvin, "The Emancipation of 
 Metaphysics from Epistemology," in the New Realism. 
 
36 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 the process of knowing; but it is also true that the mechanism 
 of the eye fixes the limits of vision and that the nature of the 
 cognitive function determines to a large extent the measure 
 and nature of knowledge. Epistemology is fundamental to all 
 the sciences not because of the usurpation of power, but be- 
 cause all the facts of the sciences are obtained and systema- 
 tized by the use of the cognitive faculty. The center of the 
 circle is more fundamental than any radius because all the 
 radii presuppose and must pass through the center. Criticism 
 is not like an infallible autocrat, ruling the philosophic and 
 scientific domain with a high hand ; it is better likened to a light 
 house, which from its natural point of vantage throws its 
 searching light far out into the distant future, beckoning on- 
 ward in the right direction both science and philosophy. 
 
 This brief exposition of the grounds on which a theory of 
 knowledge is justified is indispensable not only because the 
 naturalists usually ignore these considerations altogether, but 
 also because the epistemological argument is the most dis- 
 tinctive, and gives the first assurance that reality contains a 
 genuine spiritual element. 
 
 The old proverb, *'As iron sharpeneth iron so the coun- 
 tenance of man his fellow," nowhere finds better embodiment 
 than in philosophic controversies. Here, unlike other relations 
 in life, a man's dearest foe is his best friend. The stronger the 
 position of the opponent, the better can be displayed the 
 strength and the mettle of the a.ntagonist. If there had been no 
 Hume there might have been no Kant ; if there were no natural- 
 ism there would be no clearly defined spiritualism. 
 
 Hume divided all the objects of human reason or inquiry into 
 "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact." The former consti- 
 tute intuitive or demonstrative affirmations — the necessary log- 
 ical implications of thought which are formulated in mathe- 
 matics and geometry. The latter deal with the so-called 
 phenomena of nature. Here we deal only in probabilities. 
 Hume clearly saw that the fundamental conception in nature, 
 as a connected series of events, is causality. Contiguity, suc- 
 cession and necessary connection are the three essential ele- 
 ments in causation. The first two are explicable from the 
 data furnished by observation and sense impressions. In his 
 searching analysis Hume points out that neither the cause nor 
 the effect can disclose the nexus that binds phenomena to- 
 
EPISTEMOLOGY 
 
 37 
 
 gether. "No connections," says Hume, "among distinct 
 existences are ever discovered by human understanding." To 
 explain then the "necessary connections" among phenomena 
 Hume had recourse to the psychology of association, in which 
 custom and experience account for the delusion of causality. 
 
 And yet it is interesting to observe that Hume v^as dissatis- 
 fied with the skepticism to which his position naturally led. He 
 admitted that the many sense perceptions were in some way 
 unified in one consciousness; but this principle of unity had 
 no significance for him. It was Kant who developed Hume's 
 vague feeling for a permanent unifying principle into the 
 "originally synthetic unity of apperception." How close Hume 
 came to Kant's position in this respect is significantly pointed 
 out by Ward.^^ In his Treatise Hume says : "The human 
 mind is but a system of different perceptions or different exist- 
 ences, which are linked together by the relation of cause and 
 effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence and modify 
 each other." But in the appendix to the later editions of the 
 Treatise he confesses : "But all my hopes vanish, when I 
 come to explain the principles that unite our successive per- 
 ceptions in our thought and consciousness." 
 
 It is here that we begin to find the limitations of naturalism 
 and its necessary termination in spiritualism. If there were 
 no unifying principle in consciousness independent of "suc- 
 cessive perceptions", there could be no T' and if there were no 
 *r, there could be no 'facts' and 4aw,' for these only become 
 common property when related to a consciousness. There 
 can be no naturalism or science which does not presuppose as 
 instrument of research and formulation an element which is 
 not naturalistic in the narrow sense. In order that science 
 may become serviceable, that thought may become knowledge, 
 and knowledge power, there must be permanence and certitude. 
 But if knowledge, on the one hand, is merely "matters of fact" 
 i. e. successive sense perceptions, it has no coherence and uni- 
 versality; and if, on the other hand, it consists of "relations 
 of ideas," it has no necessary reality. 
 
 Thus it is realized that, since consciousness is at the same 
 time equally present to a series of events, it cannot itself be a 
 part or product of such a series. In other words, a knowledge 
 
 ^Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. II, p. 228. 
 
38 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 of nature cannot be a part of nature. Triton, emerging from 
 the sea and apprehending the wide expanse of water with one 
 sweep of the eye, cannot be any part or product of the element 
 which is native to him and which he has the power to survey. 
 However far the scientist moves from his starting point, he 
 is constrained to acknowledge the centrality of the knowing and 
 thinking self ; to find his irov arrco in Descartes' Cogito ergo 
 sum. It is a highly significant fact that a scientific thinker as 
 naturalistic as Huxley should admit, *'that our one certainty is 
 the existence of the mental world." 
 
 The genesis of knowledge is thus to be found in conscious- 
 ness. It is this spiritual element that construes nature and 
 gives meaning to it. It is that organizing and form-giving 
 element in knowledge which is the basis of Kantian thought. 
 
 The conceptualizing process illustrates on a small scale the 
 primacy and the nature of this spiritual element, whether 
 embodied in a finite self or in the Absolute. Through the 
 avenues of the senses there come to the mind various separate 
 sensations, which consciousness unifies into a concept. Multi- 
 plicity is reduced to simplicity. The one emerges from the 
 many. This unifying principle in conscious experience finds its 
 ideal counterpart in the unity of nature. The function of 
 science is to conceptualize the universe. The pattern for this 
 task is found in the nature of the scientist's self-conscious life. 
 
 Both logically and empirically the spiritual precedes the 
 material. The latter can only be interpreted in the light of 
 the former. Consciousness can include nature but nature can- 
 not include consciousness. The fallacious conclusions of 
 naturalism are traceable to the fact that this process is 
 reversed. Der Verstand macht die Natur and not die Natur 
 d<en Verstand. 
 
IV THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM 
 
 If any one doubts the all pervasive influence of fatalism as 
 it emerges from a naturalistic world-view, let him read the 
 literature of the day, e.g. Zola's, The Human Beast, Couperus' 
 Destiny, Ibsen's Ghosts. Here is found in new disguise the 
 inexorable Molpa of the ancients and the inscrutable Kismet of 
 the Oriental, which irresistibly grinds out the minutest details 
 of human life and seals the destiny of all^^^ach man plays 
 his part, good or bad, in conformity to the deposit that has 
 come to him from untold ancestors, and in response to the 
 particular environment in which he happens to exist. There is 
 no real merit or demerit. Goodness and badness, heroism 
 and cowardice, crime and virtue are essentially meaningless 
 distinctions. A cynical skepticism and a petrifying resignation 
 sap the life and energy of the individual and social institutions. 
 External props are invented to sustain the tottering life^ 
 
 Of course, if such a philosophy were true, it would be mcum- 
 bent humbly to submit to our tragic fate. In our investigation 
 thus far, however, we have found reasons for the conviction 
 tha^Ahere is in man a principle of personality which is beyond 
 the reach of scientific mechanism. There is encouragement 
 for the belief that in the realm of selfhood there is room for 
 freedom, morality and real worthyr If such an individual self 
 is the unit of our social, religious and political institutions, 
 then our attitude toward practical problems must adjust itself 
 accordingly. If each unit has creative power and can actually 
 effect change, and if the consciousness of this fact becomes 
 universal, a great dynamic force will at once disclose itself. 
 The emancipation from undue bondage to heredity and en- 
 vironment will be a great transforming power. 
 
 But when the thinker has found his way through mechanism 
 into the realm of spiritual reality, he is by no means assured 
 a safe retreat from the stern mastery of necessity. Perchance 
 he turns to idealistic philosophy or theology and to his amaze- 
 ment finds himself in the clutches of a new mechanism, 
 euphemistically styled soft determinism. 
 
 39 
 
40 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 It is a significant fact that practically all reformed theology^ 
 with the single exception of Arminianism, is strictly determin- 
 istic. The necessarianism of St. Augustine, John Calvin and 
 Jonathan Edwards maintains its integrity in the official creed 
 of most denominations. The poet has well portrayed their 
 position : 
 
 "With earth's first clay they did the last man knead, 
 And there of the last harvest sowed the seed, 
 And the first morning of creation wrote 
 What the last dawn of reckoning shall read." 
 
 To be sure the doctrine of predestination has retreated into 
 seclusion in many quarters, yet it still remains the theoretical 
 basis of much religious teaching. The inimical result in the 
 first instance does not issue from the actual influences of a 
 spiritual deterministic world-view but from the fact that, in an 
 age of naturalistic fatalism, the church has no positive counter- 
 acting influence, which can break the bonds of necessity and 
 restore man to his legitimate sphere of self-initiation. Little 
 comfort can be obtained by postulating a supreme Deity, who 
 has constructed the loom and devised the pattern of the net and 
 decreed the weaving of every loop. To the many, who are 
 destined ever to be misfits in the cosmic process, a theistic 
 . determinism is sheer mockery. "The chain of Fate" says Dr. 
 » Henry van Dyke, "is not made less heavy by fastening the end 
 ( of it to the distant throne of an omnipotent and impassive Cre- 
 r.ator. If our false sense of freedom comes from such a Being, 
 % who is Himself free, it is all the more a cruel and bitter enigma. 
 , .If moral responsibility has been imposed upon us by the same 
 I , hand which has bound us to an inalterable destiny, it is all the 
 . more a crushing and miserable fraud. To baptize fatalism with 
 \ » a Christian name does not change its nature. To hold fast to 
 ♦ the metaphysical conception of God while accepting heredity 
 .and environment as His only and infallible prophets is simply 
 V to add a new ethical horror to the dismal delusion of life, 
 « and to fall back into the pessimism of Omar Khayyam."^ 
 
 The above quotation makes the challenge that there is little 
 to choose between a theistic and a naturalistic determinism. 
 The one may be blind and the other intelligent, but my help- 
 
 '^The Gospel for an Age of Doubt, pp. 216, 217. 
 
THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM 41 
 
 lessness in both is the same, and both are equally inscrutable to 
 me. The one may have a purposed end in view, but the good 
 is realized by a tremendous waste of human souls. 
 
 The inadequacy of atomistic mechanism and theistic finalism, 
 because of an underlying similarity, has been brought out very 
 forcibly by a modern thinker who approaches the problem from 
 a different point of view. His criticism of the two positions is 
 significant because it confirms the opinion that a theology 
 which is itself deterministic can never successfully combat the 
 dispiriting influence of naturalism, which denies to man the 
 power of self-control and the power effectively to change his 
 condition. In working out a philosophy, culminating in a free 
 self, M. Henri Bergson begins his construction with a chapter 
 on mechanism and teleology. He points out that both positions, 
 as now understood, are equally disastrous. If we substitute 
 "theological determinism" for "radical finalism" his conclusion 
 sheds light on our present problem. 
 
 "Radical mechanism implies a metaphysic in which the 
 totality of the real is postulated complete in eternity, and in 
 which the apparent duration of things expresses merely the 
 infirmity of a mind that cannot know everything at once. But 
 duration is something very different from this for our con- 
 sciousness, that is to say for that which is most indispensible in 
 our experience. We perceive duration as a stream against 
 which we cannot go. It is the foundation of our being, and, as 
 we feel, the very substance of the world in which we live. 
 "But radical finalism is quite as unacceptable and for the same 
 reason. The doctrine of teleology, in its extreme form, as we 
 find it in Leibnitz for example, implies that things and beings 
 merely realize a programme previously arranged. But if there 
 is nothing unforeseen, no invention or creation in the universe, 
 time is useless again. As in the mechanistic hypothesis, here 
 again it is supposed that all is given. Finalism thus understood 
 is only inverted mechanism. It springs from the same postulate. 
 It substitutes the attraction of the future for the impulsion of 
 the past"^ 
 
 CALVINISM AND FATALISM 
 
 Thus far it has been more or less tacitly assumed that theo-* 
 logical determinism is in the last analysis fatalism and equally 
 
 ^Creative Evolution, translation by A, Mitchell, p. 39- 
 
42 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 » subversive of morality and real endeavor. However, it is well 
 .known that predestinarians truculently repudiate the idea of 
 .fatalism. Their position implies certainty but not necessity. 
 Not to make this distinction is ignorantly to put Hobbes and 
 Edwards under the same rubric ; to establish a kinship between 
 Calvinism and Islamism. That there is some difference between 
 the two isms no one ventures to deny, but just what this dis- 
 tinction is, and what relation this distinction has to responsi- 
 bility, freedom and other germane subjects, is a most important 
 question. The following comparison brings out clearly the 
 claimed relation between fatalism or hard determinism, and 
 Calvinism or soft determinism. 
 
 The points in which they agree: 
 
 1. Whatever comes to pass God has foreordained. 
 
 2. What God has foreordained is certain and necessary. 
 
 3. The ultimate grounds of the decrees are in God and never 
 
 in the objects of the decrees. 
 
 The points in which they differ : 
 
 1. Relation of God to evil: 
 
 A. In the fatalistic conception God's relation to evil is 
 the same as to good, i. e. God is the efficient cause of 
 both. 
 * B. In the Calvinistic conception God is the efficient cause 
 of good, but has only a permissive relation to evil. 
 
 2. Method of carrying out decrees: 
 
 A. In the Calvinistic conception God carries out His 
 ^ decrees in reference to the powers and nature of the 
 
 object of the decree. If an individual is to be saved 
 God makes him willing to be saved. If he is to be 
 
 • lost God hardens his heart so that he is not willing to 
 % be saved. The decrees are carried out on the basis 
 
 ♦ of character and justice. 
 
 B. In the fatalistic conception God carries out His decrees 
 without reference to the powers and nature of the 
 object of the decree. The methods are arbitrary, and 
 are not based on character or justice. God acts on 
 the individual without first making him assent to the 
 result which is to be produced. 
 
 The essential difference between the two positions is the 
 character they attribute to the Deity. This amounts to saying 
 
THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM 43 
 
 that the Deity reveals his character by his purpose and by the 
 method he selects to bring his plans to fruition. 
 
 The crux of the situation is found in the nature of man's 
 role in the rendition of God's programme. The fatalist knows 
 only determination by 'other'. He makes an abrupt diremption 
 between himself and the causes which determine his action. 
 "His outward circumstances and inward acts are all equally 
 determined by an inexorable law or influence residing out of 
 himself."^ As contrasted with this procedure, the Calvinist* 
 affirms a jd/-'determination. The self that chooses may be ' 
 determined by 'other' but the present choice is always deter-' 
 mined by 'self. The remote antecedents of all actions coalesce » 
 in God, but the immediate determinants of any particular * 
 choice are the complex constituents of the whole self. There * 
 is still, at least remotely, determination by 'other' but there is • 
 also acquiescent determination by 'self. 
 
 Christian self-determinism displays here a keen psychological 
 analysis. Motivation is indisputably the universal law of 
 choice.* The following are its characteristics : ( i ) All motiva- 
 tion is immanent. Before anything can become operative in 
 moving the will it must first assume the nature of internal 
 energy. It must become indigenous to the mental life of a 
 self-conscious individual. (2) All choice displays a selective 
 character. The self functioning in volition projects itself in 
 one direction in preference to another. The one is left, the 
 other is taken. "And selection of alternatives involves a two- 
 sided process, conscious annulment of ends as well as conscious 
 self -commitment to the end that is chosen." (3) Every normal 
 conative process has the power of arrest. Through the faculty 
 of attention the fragments of the scattered self can be col- 
 lected before the self moves from one state to another. 
 
 An examination of consciousness, when volition takes place, 
 substantiates this analysis. The testimony for free agency 
 seems universal, and, therefore, the self-determining agent is 
 morally and legally responsible for his acts. In this sense it is 
 claimed self-determinism provides the kind of freedom that is 
 required as an ethical postulate. In this respect Calvinism is a 
 distinct advance on the Islamic or fatalistic conception of the 
 
 * Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II, p. 280. 
 
 * Cf. A. T. Ormond, Freedom and Psycho-Genesis, "Princeton Con- 
 tributions to Psychology," Vol. I, p. 31. 
 
44 
 
 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 self. But the exact nature of the freedom attained by this 
 
 advance must be examined. 
 
 •• "It may be demonstrated/' says Prof. A. T. Ormond, ''that 
 
 • the present choice is self-determined, and at the same time the 
 
 • self that chooses may be predetermined by its antecedents. We 
 •may thus escape fatalism and still find ourselves in the clutches 
 *of necessity".^ The vital question is whether this necessity is 
 
 • sufficiently attenuated to change its real character by removing 
 I it one step, grounding it in God, and then calling it certainty. 
 
 An end obtained by the compulsion of a self-conscious Deity is 
 on that account a no less binding necessity than the result made 
 necessary by the compulsion of any other force. ''A man is 
 free," writes Hodge, "so long as his volitions are the conscious 
 expression of his own mind; or so long as his activity is 
 determined and controlled by his reason and feelings."^ But, 
 whence came his mind, his individuality, his character, his 
 whole self, which at any moment makes a choice? Clearly 
 these manifestations are traceable to heredity and environment. 
 This fact the naturalistic thinker points out with great avidity. 
 If you adhere to a theistic position, you widen the meaning of 
 the two terms so as to admit an efficacious spiritual heredity 
 and spiritual environment. God controls the factors and thus 
 obtains any desired result. 
 
 At this point, however, the problem transcends psychology, 
 for the individual has no consciousness of the actual nature and 
 origin of his mental stock. God, who determines and fore- 
 ordains a man's original character as well as his environment, 
 is able, without any apparent intrusion into the realm of self- 
 hood, to make necessary, that is to predestine, every choice and 
 every act of the individual. In this way it is claimed that human 
 freedom and predestination are reconciled. God's sover- 
 eignty is maintained without taxing out of existence freedom 
 and responsibility. The individual agent, on the one hand, has 
 the consciousness and conviction of sin, freedom and responsi- 
 bility ; the Deity, on the other, from eternity has foreordained, 
 made necessary and certain all things, good and bad, that dis- 
 close themselves in the current of moving time. 
 
 V&tU, p. 34. 
 
 VHrf., Vol. II. p. 288. 
 
THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM 45 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SELF-DETERMINISM 
 
 What pragmatic and metaphysical significance has this "con- 
 sciousness and conviction of freedom" which obtains in the 
 theologian's self-determined agent? In the narrow sense it 
 has a unique pragmatic value. Granted the fact of self-deter- 
 minism, the foundation is ready for the construction of many 
 practical institutions, even though it may afford no foundation 
 at all for the construction of a Weltanschauung. Viewed from 
 this limited standpoint I can, at least partially, agree with 
 Rashdall's statements : '*An act inspired by such and such a 
 character is good, no matter what be the historical explanation 
 of the genesis of such a character." "If it be true that the 
 value of good character and conduct is not really affected by 
 the question of its genesis, it is impossible that, except under 
 the influence of intellectual confusion, any doctrine as to that 
 genesis could destroy or weaken any reason for moral effort 
 which I can possibly give to myself or urge upon another. For 
 purely ethical purposes we need not look beyond the immediate 
 cause of the acts."'^ The real implication and meaning of 
 Rashdall's attempt to separate ethics and moral conduct from 
 their genetic or ultimate ground is very candidly betrayed by 
 Abbe Ferdinand Galiani when he says : "The conviction ofj^ 
 freedom is not the same thing as freedom but it produces • 
 absolutely the same thing in morals. The conviction of* 
 freedom is all that is wanted to establish a conscience,* 
 remorse, justice, rewards, and punishments; it answers every '^ 
 purpose."® ^ — ^ 
 
 Granted that this statement were true, such a pseudo-freedom* 
 could never permanently satisfy the conscientious thinker who* 
 demands consistency between thinking and living, and coher- * 
 ency in his conception of reality as a whole. It is not the "in- • 
 fluence of intellectual confusion" but rather the influence of 
 intellectual clarification that demands an ultimately genetic or 
 metaphysical grounding for "purely ethical purposes," moral 
 effort, and character. You may call a character good or bad 
 or designate an act vicious or virtuous without raising the 
 question regarding the genesis of the character or the act; 
 but the mere attribution of a moral quality to an act or charac- 
 
 ' The Theory of Good and Evil, Vol. II, pp. 330, 331, 340. 
 
 • Quoted by Martineau, A Study of Religion, Vol. II, p. 322. 
 
L 
 
 46 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 -ter can never become a real basis for Christian ethics. Such an 
 ^ethics always has, and I may venture to say must have, an 
 •nought in its system. But if ''all is given" and the individual, 
 ^though self-determined, is but a resultant of the Deity's own 
 
 * determination for him, it is a ludicrous, not to say a pathetic 
 
 ♦ figure of speech, to insist that the individual ought to change 
 %his course or to conform to some standard, for at any and 
 
 • every moment in his career he is precisely what his remote 
 .antecedents have made him. If God absolutely fixes and fore- 
 ordains before my birth every influence that will play on my 
 life so as to produce certain good or bad predestined acts ; if, 
 therefore, I have no inherent power to effect a change in my 
 condition or to alter circumstances, my metaphysical status is 
 not changed because I am ignorant of the genetic factors which 
 have produced me, and because I am deluded into construing 
 my so-called self-determination as real freedom. 
 
 I can hypnotize my friend and suggest to him that at a 
 certain hour on the next day he will perform a specific act, e. g. 
 remove a calendar from the wall. At the appointed time my 
 friend, unconscious of the mandate given to him the day 
 before, in a very natural manner removes the calendar. The 
 act was not unmotived. It found its place in a legitimate way 
 
 • in the normal current of his self-conscious life. For all prac- 
 •tical purposes the act was a self-determined expression of the 
 •agent, but the constraining, even though unconscious, necessity 
 •robbed the self-determination of all significant freedom. If in 
 •■a similar way an agent could be compelled to commit a crime, no- 
 »Qne would venture to assert that the act had any moral quality. 
 
 rAnd the hypnotist's defense would not be strengthened in the 
 least by the euphemistic statement that he merely permitted 
 
 \ the agent to commit the crime and that he was not himself the 
 efficient cause of the crime. 
 
 ^'"''''^ If the Deity, however wise and good, with hands shielded 
 by secondary causes, thus supplies and determines every ante- 
 cedent that can become an efficient factor in life and character, 
 then the self does not ultimately retain any more important 
 role nor does it possess any more real freedom than it would" 
 possess under a strictly fatalistic regime. The conclusion 
 seems inevitable. If things are necessarily determined, as to 
 their origin and outcome, even before the agent emerges on 
 the scene of action, stern necessity is not mollified by threshing 
 
THEOLOGICAL DETERMINISM 
 
 47 
 
 data through a self-conscious machine even though it puts its 
 stamp of approval on every grain. 
 
 Let me summarize briefly. Our moral consciousness demands » 
 freedom, finds it, asserts it, and lives by it. We assume respon- r 
 sibility for our conduct. Penology is based on this assumption. * 
 Evil is hard to bear but it is not enigmatical to the individual in « 
 his own domain. The self charges both the good and the bad * 
 to its own account. If the testimony of consciousness is true, * 
 neither in theory nor in practice are we fatalists. 
 
 But the theologian and the metaphysician must take a more • 
 comprehensive view than that afforded by the individual, who 
 is conscious of his self-determination and therefore of his 
 freedom. The 'many' are inconceivable without some underly- 
 ing unity. Theism has established God as the ultimate ground i 
 of things. But God to be God must possess attributes infinite 
 in their quality. To be supreme and not merely primus inter 
 pares He must be the actual and efficient agent of all that comes 
 to pass. The unrolling of events from the scroll of time is 
 but the manifestation of His eternal decrees. All must be pre- 
 destined from the beginning else the Absolute could be taken by 
 surprise as history evolved. He would not be omniscient and 
 omnipotent if He did not foreordain and foreknow all things. 
 
 Here, however, the metaphysical conception of God trenches 
 on the territory which in the beginning of our investigation 
 was reserved for the plurality of finite selves. In such a fixed 
 and ''block universe," as James calls it, there is no elbow room 
 for a self-initiating and free agent. This is a problem as old 
 as philosophy itself. Can the absolutely determined plans of 
 God so filter through the human soul that the emerging result, 
 if good, enhances the real moral worth of the individual, or if 
 bad, bespeaks moral delinquency and blame? I confess, that* 
 the process seems logically hopeless. The kind of self-deter-« 
 mination, or free agency, that such a process permits, I have ' 
 tried to point out, retains no essentially significant freedom.* 
 Pragmatically it is better than fatalism, metaphysically it is * 
 worse. Again if God has determined all, and man has no real 
 creative ability, God is ultimately chargeable with sin. To say 
 that He merely permits sin is a meaningless evasion, since the 
 agent, in w^hom the sin is permitted, is the determined product 
 of the Permitter. 
 
 There seems to be a hopeless conflict between the free 'many' 
 
48 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 and the omnipotent 'One', and this has always been recognized. 
 In theology there are on the one side Pelagius, Arminius and 
 Wesley; on the other Augustine, Calvin and Edwards. The 
 former begin with man and his freedom and find a God who 
 does not conflict with this conception. The latter begin with a 
 sovereign God and conclude with a man shorn of all real 
 power and freedom. Is there a via media between the two 
 apparently conflicting positions? I believe that God and free 
 creative selves are not contradictory terms. To vindicate this 
 is the purpose of the following discussion. 
 
V THE NATURE OF THE SELpi 
 
 The ultimate nature of the self opens a realm where the 
 unwary fall into many pitfalls. In a short sketch one can 
 merely present the salient features of a conclusion whose 
 roots are deeply embedded in metaphysics. For our immediate 
 purpose, therefore, many things may be taken for granted. In 
 the criticism of naturaUsm the primacy of a spiritual principle 
 in reality was vindicated. In the examination of theological 
 determinism we accepted a plurality of selves and the unifying 
 supreme Intelligence that is implied by these finite agents. 
 There are finite personalities and there is an infinite Person- 
 ality. We admitted the validity of the psychological analysis 
 and other evidence adduced to establish a self-determined agent 
 i. e. one in whom there is some ultimacy; but we rejected that 
 kind of blind self-determination, styled theological, in which 
 the acts of the agent are swallowed up by the predestinating 
 Deity. What then are the features of a free self-determination 
 which is significant and at the same time does not dethrone the 
 Infinite ? 
 
 Man in his essence is an unfinished piece of reality. He is the 
 creation^ of God — made in his image — ^but very unlike his 
 other creations. Things are the phenomena of life; they are 
 the transmitters of forces ; they are the bearers of transeunt 
 causality ; they integrate and disintegrate without essential loss 
 or gain : selves, on the other hand, both are and partly produce 
 phenomena of life; they are real centers of force; in them 
 inheres immanent causality; by their cooperation they enhance 
 the spiritual efficiency of the world.^ 
 
 *C/. James. Psychology, Chapter IX, "The Stream of Thought"; 
 Chapter X, "The Consciousness of Self." J. Ward, The Realm of 
 Ends. H. Bergson, Time and Free Will, Translation by F. L. Pogson, 
 W. E. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experience, Chapter 
 XVII, "The Knowledge of other Minds than Our Own." 
 
 ^ Cf. J. Ward, The Realm of Ends, Supplementary Notes, "Dr. 
 Howison on Creation," p. 455. 
 
 ' In this mutual labor Wundt finds the fundamental law of spiritual 
 life, i. e. "The increase of spiritual energy" as contrasted with the 
 
 49 
 
50 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 "Our human life" says Professor W. E. Hocking, '4s only 
 an apprenticeship in creativity." The creative power is a gift 
 from God and distinguishes man from other animals. The 
 animal with formative instincts uses natural organized instru- 
 ments to remake his environment; man with creative intelli- 
 gence uses self-made instruments to bring into being a new 
 environment.* This faculty in man, however, is limited in 
 many ways. God creates the original stuff and gives it form; 
 man can exercise his powers only on ready-made material. 
 Again, man is begirt with the more or less fixed conditions of 
 heredity and environment. But within this realm there is 
 afforded to him a wide range of creative freedom. If properly 
 understood, the mechanism with which the self seems be- 
 leagured becomes the "handmaid of teleology" and furthers 
 the immanent end. "Heredity," says Prof. A. T. Ormond, 
 "conserves the end by preserving and transmitting the gains of 
 individual experience, while the environing forces supply the 
 necessary stimuli of development. . . . But free self deter- 
 mination is the end which all this hard and forbidding-looking 
 mechanism has had at heart and has been realizing from the 
 beginning."^ 
 
 * James, in his psychological analysis of the self, points out 
 \ *how a creative selection operates in every function of the 
 
 omental process.® As far as perception is a voluntary activity 
 
 ♦ the self accentuates or subordinates sensations; it displays 
 preference or dislike to the multifarious data that come into 
 consciousness. The same directive power is exercised in rea- 
 soning. Rationality is expressed by disintegrating the "totality 
 of phenomena reasoned about." The selected and significant 
 parts are then synthetized so as to substantiate the desired con- 
 clusion. It is, therefore, not at all inappropriate if one should 
 speak of the freedom of perception and the freedom of the 
 reason. 
 
 It is, however, in the realm of aesthetics and ethics that 
 man's creative powers come to real fruition. The good and the 
 
 fixed quantum of physical energy. Cf. System der Philosophie, 
 "Wachsthum der geistigen Energie." 
 
 * Cf. H. Bergson, Creative JEvolution, p. 147, fif. 
 '^ Ibid., p. 42. 
 
 * So also Baldwin. Cf. Development and Evolution, "Selective 
 Thinking." p. 238. 
 
THE NATURE OF THE SELF 
 
 51 
 
 beautiful are very closely related. ''Every decision is a work 
 of art." If the function of art is the revelation of reality, then, 
 it matters little whether the real is disclosed in a beaiitifiti 
 character or a good painting. No violence is done if the 
 adjectives are interchanged, for the good character and the 
 beautiful painting are both the product of a creative self. 
 Each personality stands in a unique relation to the rest of 
 reality and, therefore, has a point of view and a conception 
 that is only obtainable from that particular angle. 
 
 Every social and political institution is a work of art to 
 which each member has contributed his distinctive share. 
 Every ballot is a stroke of the brush. Every reformer 
 is an art critic. The purpose of government is so to 
 individualize each civic artist that, unhampered, he may 
 socialize his personality. The fault in collectivism, and in 
 socialism in particular, is that they try to socialize man at the 
 expense of his individuality. That man is a political animal is 
 a truth as old as Aristotle, but the Greek philosopher also 
 taught that he is more than a mere member of an organization. 
 The sum of a man is not the added result of his social and 
 trade relations. He is also a super-social animal. The con- 
 ception that each self is a creative being, an unfinished piece of 
 reality, makes this fact plain. The finishing of such realities 
 is greatly aided by organized society and, therefore, such 
 society is indispensable. But no institution or collection of 
 institutions can complete this finishing process. Free play must 
 be given the individual to perform the task by himself. Society 
 builds the foundation, the individual must rear the super- 
 structure. 
 
 We decry the fact of machine-made men. Much can be 
 done to better external conditions, but the essential thing is to 
 teach man his innate power to rise superior to his inherited 
 environment. What the individual is depends on society, and 
 what society is depends on the individual. This is paradoxical 
 but true. Society can never rise higher than its source, i. e. 
 its members, but the individual may continue to make attain- 
 ment after his social relations have made their last contribution. 
 Ultimately each man must work out his own salvation. When 
 his external relations are exhausted or when they thwart his 
 purpose, there still remains the ''intensive cultivation" of his 
 moral domain. Man has a relation to God as well as to his 
 
52 
 
 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 fellows. After much convincing evidence Dr. Hazard, in 
 speaking of this realm of man's activity, concludes : 
 
 "We may more confidently than before deduce the conclusion, 
 that the mind in the sphere of its own moral nature, applying 
 an infalHble knowledge which it possesses to material purely its 
 own, may conceive an ideal moral creation and then realize this 
 ideal in an actual creation by and in its own act of will; and 
 hence, when willing in the sphere of his own moral nature, 
 man is not only a creative first cause, but a supreme creative 
 first cause ; and, as his moral nature can be affected only by his 
 own act of will, and no other power can will, or produce his 
 own act of will, he is also, in the sphere of his moral nature, a 
 sole creative first cause, though still a finite cause. Other in- 
 telligences may aid him by imparting knowledge ; may by word 
 of action instruct him in the architecture; but the application 
 of his knowledge, the actual building, must be by himself 
 alone. "^ 
 
 There is much unanimity among thinkers in their treatment 
 of man's self-conscious life. The self has two "discriminated 
 aspects." It is at once the knower and the known. It is both 
 subject and object. It has the power to hold itself at arms 
 length, as it were, in order that the self-examination may 
 proceed. This ability of self-objectification is another dis- 
 tinguishing mark of the human animal. It is perhaps the 
 unique cachet of personality. 
 
 The fact of this duplexity in the self is more important than 
 its terminology. The Germans distinguish between the 
 'empirical self and the 'pure ego'. James brings out the same 
 idea in his treatment of the T' and the 'me'. More recently 
 M. Henri Bergson, in making a new analysis of duration, has 
 broken new ground in this field. ^ Time is a qualitative multi- 
 plicity, an absolute heterogeneity of elements which inter- 
 penetrate one another. He distinguishes between the real self 
 in pure duration and the external projection of this self in 
 
 ''Man a Creative First Cause, p 8g. Vide also Freedom of Mind 
 in Willing. 
 
 ^J. Ward claims to have anticipated by three years Bergson's con- 
 ception that "there is an element in our concrete time-perception which 
 has no place in our abstract conception of time." Cf. The Realm of 
 Ends, note, page 306, Vide also Ency. Brit. "Psychology" nth Ed., 
 P 577. 
 
THE NATURE OF THE SELF 53 
 
 spatial relations. Since there is no mutual externality in the 
 moments of pure duration, there can be no antecedent and con- 
 sequent, no cause and effect relations in the activity of the 
 'timal' self. Because of the misconception of duration, and 
 thus also of the self, the associationist psychologists have fallen 
 into error. If it is once understood that psychic intensity is 
 never magnitude, all talk of the strongest motive determining 
 the will is meaningless. 
 
 In this non-spatial self freedom inheres. It is not by a dis- 
 cursive process but by intuitive insight and penetrating intro- 
 spection that the essence of reality is found. How then define 
 freedom? ''It is the relation of the concrete self to the act 
 which it performs." But what is this relation f It is indefin- 
 able just because we are free. We can only analyze and define 
 magnitudes i. e. things that have mutual externalities and that 
 have their position in a homogeneous space. Freedom is a 
 process and if we insist on a definition we persist in making 
 "a process into a thing and duration into extensity." Freedom 
 cannot be defined without spatializing duration and, therefore, 
 every attempt at definition unwittingly leads to determinism. 
 
 It is a fair question whether this analysis has any significant • 
 meaning for freedom. Is this indefinable and intuitive freedom • 
 any more satisfactory than Kant's freedom, which is so safely • 
 tucked away in the inaccessible noumenal realm ? There is this ♦ 
 advantage. M. Bergson's position, based on his own theory of 
 knowledge, shows that, while the fact of freedom is not 
 amenable to the same formulation and demonstration as a 
 scientific fact, nevertheless its certainty and reality, verified by 
 immediate consciousness, is unimpeachable. His whole argu- • 
 ment substantiates, what is generally admitted, that the only • 
 infallible proof of freedom is the testimony of self-conscious- • 
 ness. The validity of this conviction is vindicated not so much • 
 by positive evidence as through a negative process which under- • 
 mines a vicious and fallacious determinism. By showing how * 
 duration, intensity, and voluntry determination — purely psychic • 
 moments — have been misinterpreted by reason of the intrusion . 
 of spatial prejudice, M. Bergson has made the argument against • 
 a destructive determinism and, therefore, in favor of creative 
 freedom well nigh conclusive. 
 
 While, therefore, the fundamental self is the bearer of reality 
 and freedom, it remains barren as long as it abides alone. In 
 
54 CRITICISM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 order to realize itself and to become fruitful it must be objecti- 
 fied in space ; it must be thrown out into the current of social 
 life. In other words it must assume the common symbols of 
 extensity. The thought must be put in words; the burning 
 conviction into vital oratory. The vision of beauty is restless 
 until it finds embodiment in some concrete form ; the spiritual 
 impulse must manifest itself in worship and deeds of kindness. 
 Here again is found the meaning in the economy of mechanism. 
 The certainty and solidity, guaranteed by the causal nexus, 
 afford public permanency and continuity to the ever changing 
 self as it accumulates the living moments of concrete duration. 
 The external world is the common denominator of selves. The 
 laws of nature are the rules governing this great forum. If 
 the rules were not strict, the game would not be worth while. It 
 is true that this "hard and forbidding-looking mechanism" is 
 the friend and not the foe of freedom. 
 
 In this well-defined competitive forum, where the activities 
 of life take place, man is more at home than in the inner 
 sanctum from whence the real issues of life flow. From the 
 beginning of life the empirical self is our habitation. It is 
 more exhilarating to live on the periphery than at the center; 
 for there the movement is rapid and the scenery panoramic. 
 
 It is a well attested principle in jurisprudence that society 
 develops from "status to contract." The family, the caste, the 
 tribe or the government rigorously determines the exact scope 
 and nature of the social and personal activities of the primitive 
 man. As the race makes progress the individual is gradually 
 freed from the bonds of condition and circumstance. By con- 
 tract he is permitted to make his own status. So also in the 
 wake of civilization there is observed a transformation in the 
 Kultur Geschichte of nations. Pseudo-science, superstition, 
 and religion have been clarified and vitalized by the rectifying 
 power of reason. Society, i. e. the mass of its members, has 
 been emancipated from the slavery of external determinants. 
 
 This philogenetic process has its ontogenetic counterpart. 
 The child, the primitive father of the man, lives by the grace 
 of reflex arcs, heredity and environment. Self-consciousness 
 awakes in the empirical realm, in the 'me' and not in the T'. 
 In this domain 'other' determines the *me'; the T' seldom, if 
 ever, determines 'other'. Choice is abnormal and the self not 
 free. The status of selfhood has not yet been remade by a 
 
THE NATURE OF THiE^SELF: -/ { ;-•.;":"-.- g^.'-, 
 
 free contract. The business oi self-life, however, is to translate 
 the empirical into the spiritual ; it means the navigation of the 
 stream of life to its very source. All are prodigals living in 
 the far country of spatial selfhood. We feed on the husks of 
 transient experience. The purpose of education, religion and 
 government is to help a man to come to himself. This finding 
 process is retarded by too many external contrivances; it is 
 accelerated by insistence on the dynamic reality of the inner 
 self. He who has found his way through the crust of his 
 outer self to the core of inner reality becomes a living artist. 
 The sphere may be humble but it can never again become 
 merely mechanical. The increment may be small, but a unique 
 contribution is made to society. The course of history has 
 received a significant impetus. Such an individual makes the 
 world appreciably other than it would have been without his 
 existence. He is a real creative genius. A quotation at this 
 point may epitomize the thought. 
 
 "Freedom is therefore a fact, and among the facts which we 
 observe there is none clearer. All the difficulties of the prob- 
 lem, and the problem itself, arise from the desire to endow 
 duration with the same attributes as extensity, to interpret a 
 succession by a simultaneity, and to express the idea of freedom 
 in a language into which it is obviously untranslatable, . . . 
 But the moments at which we thus grasp ourselves are rare, 
 and that is just why we are rarely free. The greater part of 
 the time we live outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything 
 of ourselves but our own ghost, a colourless shadow which 
 pure duration projects into homogeneous space. Hence our 
 life unfolds in space rather than in time; we live for the ex- 
 ternal world rather than for ourselves; we speak rather than 
 think ; we 'are acted' rather than act ourselves. To act freely 
 is to recover possession of oneself, and to get back into pure 
 duration."^ 
 
 If the above delineation reveals the true nature of the 
 ^many', it may be asked, what has become of the 'One' ? Has 
 not the Infinite been impeached? The answer of course is, no. 
 It must be admitted, however, that in finding the 'One' z'ia the 
 'many', our conception of the Infinite is different from what it 
 would be if the process had been reversed. God in creating 
 selves on whom He has bestowed some creative causation, has 
 in a sense limited Himself. But it is a self -limitation and this 
 
 •H. Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 221, 231. 
 
^:56^^^^^)^f "^ '^ 't tCRI^AQSM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 clearly implies that He is never circumscribed by any thing 
 external to Himself. He does not fractionate Himself into 
 Hjs world. The relation between Creator and creature is never 
 subtractive. Some of^the, f uture volitions of _f r£.e„a^ents are^ 
 not the subjecT^rknowledge and, therefore, omniscience does 
 riot apply t o them. And still God r ules, the-AVorld,- and carries! 
 His plan to its culmination^ Thg^ total possibili ties are^ xed 
 .BuFt hev are always in excess of the actualities. Th is gives a 
 limitpjj^ but a real scope for human imtiativp and freedom. 
 Each_has some talent and some creative opportunity. Each 
 may hinder or help the"prairt>f-GDd:,"THough none'^ls sufficient 
 power wholly to thwart His final purpose. 
 
 "Foreknowledge of the contingent," says Martineau, "is not 
 a perfection, and if, rather than have a reign of universal neces- 
 sity and stereotyped futurity, He willed, in order to prepare 
 scope for a gift of moral freedom, to set up a range of alterna- 
 tive possibilities. He could but render some knowledge condi- 
 tional for the sake of making any righteousness attainable; 
 leaving enough that is determinate for science; and enough 
 that is indeterminate, for character."^^ 
 
 With this conception of selfhood it is also significant to 
 observe that the enigma of sin becomes rationally explicable. 
 Finitude means frailty, and thus the possibility of evil. Though 
 in an infinitely good God sin is inconceivable, it is entirely 
 compatible with the existence of a finite creature. Evil as a 
 misuse of talents, given to a free moral agent, violates neither 
 the perfection nor the omnipotence of the Deity. 
 
 In the criticism of theological determinism it was submitted 
 that the ought, which is indispensable to Christian ethics, 
 could not be grounded in a strictly "closed universe." No 
 matter what the obligatory ideal may be, to say that I ought 
 to conform, presupposes ability to do so. What ought to be 
 can be. The demand of oughtness is firmly grounded in the 
 new conception of selfhood because the self can creatively 
 respond to the lure of an ethical ideal. Each self contains the 
 potentialities of many characters — good, bad, and indifferent. 
 The soul is full, as James has it, of "simultaneous possibilities." 
 The imperative voice is a challenge to actualize only the best. 
 And this challenge is not mockery because each self has some 
 unique responsive power. 
 
 "^ study of Religion, Vol. II, p. 279. 
 
VI— CONCLUSION 
 
 The ultimate purpose of our study has been to find a basic 
 principle for the solution of the many practical problems which 
 confront the thoughtful student of modern life. The transi- 
 tional character of the present age makes the need of such a 
 principle doubly imperative. The reconstruction of social in- 
 stitutions is the demand of the hour. Shall the work proceed 
 in the direction of individualism or paternalism? 
 
 The true answer can be given only if we have a true know- 
 ledge of the nature of the individual selves which constitute the 
 social groups. /Science and deterministic theology, by inter- 
 preting the self as an entity directly or indirectly deter- 
 mined by 'other/ paralyze initiation and place a high 
 premium on collectivistic methods. The one makes the self 
 the organized resultant of physical moments; the other makes 
 it the product of physical plus spiritual moments. In both 
 cases the self has no inherent creative possibilities. Ultimately 
 all is given and determined by external influence, Evtdeft€e- 
 has been addno^, however, to-&bew^-thart these two prevailing 
 schools misrepresent the real nature of the self. The individual 
 is more than the sum of all external contributions.^ These 
 increments largely condition the operations of the self but 
 they are never the sole ground of its distinctive activities/The 
 vis which constructs the mental and moral life of the individual 
 is not entirely traceable to antecedents; for each self is sui 
 generis, and is itself the ultimate ground of its real emanations. 
 Talents, position, and opportunity vary greatly among men; 
 but each has power to recreate his environment and to create 
 out of the plastic element of his nature a finished piece of 
 reality. 
 
 This conception of the self becomes our guiding principle. 
 It will guard against a chaotic individualism as well as a 
 petrifying paternalism. The pure Ego remains barren until it 
 is projected into spatial and social relations. This objectifying 
 process is helped or hindered by the conditions which obtain in 
 the body politic. Increased restrictions are sanctioned as long 
 
 57 
 
/'SS'-^'t/^^ > •[ 'iZR^TlClSM OF DETERMINISM 
 
 as they tend to enhance individual freedom. The real purpose 
 
 of restraint is to permit the individual to realize both his social 
 
 #and super-social possibilities. The church and the school can 
 
 ♦ hasten the realization of this ideal by proclaiming the Gospel 
 
 %0F Creative Selfhood. 
 
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