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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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