CHAPTER THREE Is THERE such a thing as a spiritual world-order? This is the crucial problem of religion. And upon the answer which human thought finds itself compelled to give to it the future of religion largely depends.DISCARDED CONCEPTIONS OF THE SPIRITUAL
For religion is definitely committed to the belief that the values of personal development and personal association exercise a determining influence in the real world. Else the response of personal confidence in the Universe is unreasonable if not impossible. And as human intelligence awakens and grows it is bound to become increasingly aware of this fact, with results which may be disastrous to religion. Hence an inquiry into
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the validity of the religious view of the world is of momentous interest to every serious student of religion today. On such an inquiry we now embark.
A world-order dominated by the values of moral character and social community we call, partly for the lack of a better name, “spiritual.” “Spiritual” has at least the merit of meaning a type of organization different from the material or physical. But it has also misleading associations, such as those with “spiritism” and “spiritualism.” Hence it will be good policy to begin with a brief review of the principal meanings which have been given to this much used and much abused term by the religious thought of the past. We wish to make doubly sure that we do not give allegiance to any of these old and discarded conceptions clothed in a new dress. Besides, these conceptions are not uninteresting in them. selves and contain, along with much error,
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many fruitful suggestions which bear upon the solution of our problem.
Whatever else it may mean, “spiritual” at least signifies something radically different from the material. The material world is always with us, material objects force themselves on our notice every hour in the day, and we are very familiar with their qualities. Therefore it is not strange that men in their first efforts to conceive of the spiritual drew upon their knowledge of material objects and material qualities. Is the spiritual different from, even opposite to, the material? Well then, spiritual objects must be distinguished by the lack of those very qualities which make material objects material. What are these but the degrees of hardness and solidity, of heaviness and impenetrability, which make matter the substantial thing it is? Spirit, it was thought, was distinguished by the lack of these qualities. But in carrying out this idea early
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human thought was unable to get away entirely from the material. It contented itself with ascribing to the spiritual these physical properties reduced to the extreme limit of refinement and attenuation. The spiritual was understood as the light and ethereal, the intangible and (because of its lack of solid substance) the invisible. But it was supposed to have shape and size. And location, too; for while it is extremely mobile it is, at every instant, somewhere.
Thus we can easily understand the line of thought which led men to their first conception of spirit as the ethereal duplicate, the ghostly double, of material body, in particular, of course, of the bodies of men and animals. This is the theory called animism or spiritism and is what. the philosopher Haeckel had in mind when he ridiculed the Christian idea of God as that of a “gaseous vertebrate.” This conception of the spiritual is as old, or
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nearly as old, as human thought itself, and very widespread among the different races of mankind. As to the first beginnings of belief in spirits in this sense, we can only speculate. But students of primitive human thought and social life point to several striking experiences, themselves universal accompaniments of human life, which would almost certainly suggest, and lend support to, animism.
One of these is dreaming. In his dream the savage visits places far distant from his encampment, perhaps he hunts and fights with former associates and friends who he knows on awakening are far removed by barriers Of land and water from his present abode and field of action. Such dream-images, remembered on awakening, haunt his mind and press for explanation. He can easily assure himself that he did not,, in the bodily sense, leave his bed during the time of sleep. What conclusion more natural, more altogether plausible,
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then, than that his dream self, a second or duplicate self, left his body during sleep and visited these distant scenes and took part in these far-off hunts and fights and feasts and revels with acquaintances and relatives from whom he had been long separated in waking life?
And since the striking thing about the dream self was its mobility, which enabled it to surmount ordinary barriers of space and time, it was naturally supposed to be of a light, insubstantial character. And so by an inevitable sequence of thought, primitive man was led to believe that he possessed a duplicate self, an ethereal spirit, a ghostly double of his everyday bodily self. This belief would seem to receive confirmation from the frequently observed and well-known accompaniments of the swoon, the trance, and the death struggle. In such cases it seemed clear that the soul or ghost had departed from the body,
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temporarily or permanently, leaving it inert and helpless. This was especially indicated by the partial suspension of breathing in the deep-swoon or trance, and by its final struggle to free itself completely from the body in death; for the breath, itself invisible but mobile, ethereal but vitalizing and invigorating, seemed the appearance and manifestation of the indwelling spirit.
Once the idea of soul or spirit in this sense had taken form and been generally accepted, it was employed to explain the behaviour of natural objects and the working of natural processes. That soul or spirit which by its temporary absence during sleep leaves the body inert and helpless must of course be the moving, directing power of the body, the cause of its actions, the source of its efficiency. Is it not then to be inferred that the behaviour of physical objects, as well, of course, as that of animals and plants, is due to the spirits
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which dwell in and control them? And with regard to the spirits of dead humans of whose continued existence we are assured by our dreams of renewed intercourse with them, must they not have an abiding-place? An abiding-place in the home of departed spirits where they go to join the souls of ancestors long dead and of the ancient heroes of the tribe. From the continuing spirits of heroic ancestors to divine spirits is but a short step and to imagine them exercising power over natural objects and processes, either directly or through lesser spirits, an almost inevitable consequence. With the result, however, that man's everyday world seemed to draw a large part of its interest and significance from the host of spirits supposed to people and govern it.
It is scarcely necessary to say that the existence of spiritual objects in this first sense has not been verified in fact. Animism may be
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dismissed as a pre-scientific idea, unacceptable to developed intelligence. Ghosts, along with centaurs and mermaids, goblins and fairies, have been relegated to the limbo of the fanciful and fictitious. The normal advance of human knowledge is itself sufficient to seal the doom of this type of “spiritism.” Ghost stories are among the first of traditional beliefs to succumb to rational scrutiny and scientific criticism. And as for the behaviour of natural objects, which was assumed to require for its explanation the existence and intervention of spirits, this is found by increasing experience to be due to natural causes and resident forces. The events of nature are found to be linked together in such uniform and necessary connection that the cause of each occurrence is to be found in some other event or occurrence which inevitably precedes it in the system of nature. Indeed, the difficulty of getting even a fair hearing for Psychic
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Research is partially due to the general feeling that here we have an attempt to revive a discredited spiritism.
A second conception of the spiritual brings us much nearer our modern idea of the soul or self. In this conception two of the positive attributes which distinguish conscious personality gain recognition. One of these is the continuing unity, the self-identity, which is inseparable from individual personality as we observe and deal with it in ourselves and other human beings. The second is the power of self-directed activity whose possession by human beings leads us to hold them individually responsible because capable of free choice. Combining these two attributes a conception is formed of the spiritual as unitary, self-active being. Springing as it does from an increasing insight into the characteristics of human personality, this conception applies primarily to the human self or soul, but is
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equally applicable to all beings of similar characteristics and powers throughout the universe.
This second conception of the spiritual, taken very seriously as it certainly was, called for a sharper distinction between the spiritual and the material. Not merely must we deny to the spiritual the grosser properties of matter such as solidity and impenetrability; we must also deny to it all material and spatial properties whatsoever. This because what is extended in space is always an aggregate or collection of parts, hence never can possess real unity. In the spatially extended world the pursuit of ultimate and indivisible parts is hopeless from the start; space and the matter which fills it are infinitely divisible. Even the human body, abode of the soul and subject to its controlling influence, is a collection of tissues and organs; these in turn are composed of cells, and the cell itself is revealing
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to the microscope an elaborate structure of constituent parts. These constituent parts will doubtless disclose a structure of their own, and so the analysis will be pushed on until we come perhaps to the electron. And if the electron is accepted by the physicist as the ultimate unit this is simply because the limits have been reached of man's power of physical exploration and explanation. Of course the second conception is not, like the first, such an idea as might occur to the mind of a savage while puzzling over the memory of last night's dream or when gazing at the still, set features of a fellow from whose body life had departed after struggles of which he was an awestruck witness. It is rather the product of systematic reflection and presupposes some power of abstract reasoning. Its source, in Occidental thought at least, was the philosophy of the Greeks, particularly of Plato. It was readily accepted by the religious
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philosophy of medieval Christianity, however, because it attributed to the human soul that integrity and independent reality which souls must possess if their salvation and eternal well-being are to be regarded as the principal aim of divine creation. Besides, the conception of spirit as unitary, self-active being or substance appeared to furnish the basis for a conclusive demonstration of immortality. For the soul if a simple unity, is indivisible. And since all decay consists in the disintegration of a whole and the separation of its constituent parts, the soul cannot suffer disintegration and decay. It is incorruptible and indissoluble; therefore, it is immortal. A neat demonstration,, indeed. Its logic is sound if its premises are true. But that is the question.
Evidently the conception of spiritual existence we are considering has much to recommend it. Else it would not have appealed to great philosophers and seemed convincing to
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acute theologians. But how has it met the test of continued criticism in an age of increasing respect for scientific standards of proof and verification? Not at all well: it has been shown to have defects and these defects have caused it to be rejected in modern times by psychologists and even by philosophers committed to the idealistic view. In the first place, if spirit exists in the character supposed, we should be able to find evidence, incontrovertible evidence,, of its existence in the facts of common human experience. But such evidence is difficult if not impossible to produce. The skeptic Hume has given classic expression to the difficulty of such verification. “When I enter most intimately into what I call myself,” he writes, “I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observe
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anything but a perception.” To be sure, if what we mean by soul or self is just the progressive organization of all personal activity, “mental” and “bodily,” this is just the way not to discover it. Still we must, I think, admit that the test is a fair one when applied to the existence of the self or soul as a simple, unitary being. If such unitary, self-active beings exist, they must, it would seem, signalize their existence in some verifiable detail of experienced fact. And it will be not unreasonable to look for evidence of their existence, if not among the sense-impressions we receive from the outer world, at least among the items of our inner experience. Nowhere do they reveal themselves, however; no attested ,empirical fact bears witness to their existence.
But spirit in this conception is not merely an indivisible unity, it is a source of original activity. When we consider, in the second place, the nature of this activity and what it
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accomplishes in the actual world we are plunged into even greater difficulties. Not merely is evidence lacking that such activity does exist but it is hard to understand how even it could exist and operate. If spirit has no spatial properties whatsoever, it has no place in or from which to act, hence no point of contact with the living organism which is a material body in space. How then can it be conceived to exercise constant control over bodily actions or even to influence them in any way? The mere fact that we cannot understand how spirit in this sense can act on body is no final reason for denying that it does act on body, if there is convincing evidence of such action. But such evidence has not been presented. Those acts and achievements of our conscious lives which are supposed to be due to the direct intervention of soul are explained by modern psychology as the results of other activities and experiences with which
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they are correlated in a variety of sequences and patterns. In the case of voluntary choice, for instance, where it was supposed that the soul could finally tip the scales one way or another, psychologists see the resulting decision as the outcome or outgrowth of many interrelated tendencies and experiences working together.
Still a third conception of spirit and spiritual existence remains. This has found favor in recent times partly because of the failure of the two conceptions we have been discussing. According to this view the spiritual realm is the inner life of conscious experience as contrasted with the outer world of physical fact. Spiritual, that is to say, is identified with the conscious and subjective. Here at last we seem to be on solid ground, to have
discovered a spiritual world whose existence cannot be doubted by any sane mind. So far Ls evidence for its existence is concerned, the
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existence of consciousness is testified to by the very activity of scientific intelligence which undertakes to investigate and examine it. And not only is consciousness an undeniable fact of every man's experience, it is an ultimate and irreducible aspect of the world. All attempts to reduce consciousness to a form of physical energy have failed and, we may confidently predict, will fail. After claiming that the iron laws of physical necessity account for all forms of existence, Ernst Haeckel found himself forced to recognize consciousness as an original property of the One Universal Substance. Much the same subterfuge was forced upon Herbert Spencer: after professing to deduce all the phenomena of evolution, including life and mind, from the Persistence of Force, he was compelled to assert that the dualism of spirit and matter as “symbols of the Unknowable” is, for our knowledge, ultimate. And contemporary
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philosophers who discard the concept of consciousness as useless for rational interpretation are confronted with the alternative of admitting the existence of some other type of relation besides the physical or else leaving salient features of our actual human world unexplained,
Even this third conception, though it appears to be impregnable, is proving difficult to defend. It is of course a matter of common knowledge that consciousness as we possess and experience it, the inner or subjective life of human beings, is somehow dependent upon the activity of our highest nervous center, the brain. But contemporary psychology is having notable success in linking it up in a detailed and thoroughgoing manner with the bodily reactions we make, through the instrumentality of our nervous systems, to the environment. So far has this gone, indeed, that one school of present-day psychologists is proposing to leave consciousness entirely out of
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account. The human mind, these psychologists contend, can be understood altogether in terms of observable organic behaviour.
This refusal on the part of behaviorists to admit that consciousness exists as a scientific fact is not likely to make a deep or permanent impression on modern thought. It is an extreme and doctrinaire position. It hinges upon technical points of scientific procedure too fine-drawn and theoretical to weigh heavily against the assurance which common sense gives to every man, that he knows of the existence and contents of his own consciousness if he knows anything at all. But, unfortunately for this third conception of spiritual existence which we are examining, the same cannot be said about many recent discoveries in the field of psychology. These suggest that certain forms of mental activity hitherto regarded as the peculiar and perhaps exclusive property of conscious mind are so
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intimately connected with organic responses that it is hard to see how they can have any independent existence apart from the life and activity of the human body. Take such feeling-states as emotions and sentiments, for example. Emotions have been known by their characteristic bodily expressions, to be sure, but the distinctive quality, the real core, of fear or anger or love or joy or grief was supposed to consist in a state of consciousness. But recent investigation has brought to light a complex of bodily disturbances which go far toward accounting for what is distinctive in emotional reactions. We now know that these are in large part due to the effect upon our internal organs of circulation, respiration, digestion, and elimination of secretions poured into the blood stream by the adrenal glands aroused to activity by external situations which strongly stimulate our fundamental instincts. Or consider reflective
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thought and creative imagination. Here we seem to invade the very citadel of consciousness, for these are activities which have no necessary external accompaniment or overt bodily expression. But psychologists have proved that even these activities involve bodily responses, imperceptible, to be sure, but none the less real and invariably present: minute and invisible movements of the speech organs and, correlated with these, slight incipient movements of the larger muscles throughout the body. This accumulating evidence of the intimate connection of “mental” activity with bodily reaction is influencing the thought of our time and is making the proposal to find in consciousness the key to the spiritual principle in the world seem doubtful if not positively invalid.
The three conceptions of the spiritual, as ghost, as unitary, self-active being, and as inner consciousness, turn out to be one and all
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untenable. Perhaps it would be more discriminating and just to say that the first is untenable, the second explains little or nothing, and the third is beset with so many difficulties as to be as much a hindrance as a help. It would be unfair to dismiss these conceptions as wholly false and absurd; they do contain in spite of all their defects a considerable amount of truth. Even animism for all its crudity reflects a fundamental fact of human experience, the fact that man does distinguish himself from his body and does exercise a degree of control over it; its mistake was in supposing this power to be possessed by a “ghost” the like of which was resident in all living beings and in objects of nature as well. The unitary, self-active soul theory expresses a true insight into the fact that there is another type of unity in the world besides that possessed by material objects and living bodies; its mistake lay in conceiving of this self-identical and
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self-active unity as a single, indivisible thing. The view which identifies the spiritual with the conscious and subjective is also based on an indubitable fact, the fact that we have in consciousness, and especially in intelligent consciousness, an operative organization not found elsewhere in nature; its mistake has been to identify conscious intelligence too closely with the inner, subjective states of the human mind. These three conceptions of the spiritual are encumbered with too much difficulty and error, however, to be useful at present in formulating the religious view of the world or in reconciling it with the conclusions of natural science. It is surely not surprising, in view of this history of collision with advancing science and of refutation by its empirical researches, that an increasing number of thoughtful people should have decided that belief in any kind of spiritual reality is unscientific and should have resolved to pin
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their faith to the experimentally attested conclusions of the exact sciences.
Nor is it at all strange that in this crisis, zealous champions of religion, anxious to retain its benefits for the relief and inspiration of humanity, should have tried to divorce it from any belief about the ultimate nature of the world and, with this end in view, should have proposed to take it merely as faith in our own highest social and moral ideals. But all such attempts, praiseworthy in intention, are foredoomed to failure. Religion stands or falls with the validity of a “spiritual” interpretation of existing reality. If the existing universe be wholly mechanical in its nature and workings, personal confidence in it is misplaced and personal communion with it impossible. And, contrariwise, if personal confidence in the real world is justified, and personal communion with it possible and
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fruitful then it cannot be wholly mechanical and must have a spiritual aspect.
In the face of this record of defeat and failure it requires courage to assert that there is a spiritual interpretation of the world which is rationally tenable, one which is not inconsistent with the results of science and which is supported by the facts of observation and experiment. Yet this is the claim I shall try to substantiate in the chapters which follow.
