Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

That's French for "the ancient system," as in the ancient system of feudal privileges and the exercise of autocratic power over the peasants. The ancien regime never goes away, like vampires and dinosaur bones they are always hidden in the earth, exercising a mysterious influence. It is not paranoia to believe that the elites scheme against the common man. Inform yourself about their schemes here.

Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

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CHAPTER 19: ROUSSEAU, AND EDUCATION ACCORDING TO NATURE

In what Davidson wrote on Rousseau, and Education according to Nature there are many side lights as to his philosophical position, and his views on sociology. He gave lectures on the subject at Glenmore, as well as in New York; and they were amongst the most useful parts of his oral teaching. What he committed to writing in 1 898 is here summarized in four sections; the first on " Ideas and Aspirations as to Authority, Nature, and Culture, Current in Rousseau's Time"; the second on "Rousseau's Life"; the third on his "Social and Educational Theories"; and the fourth on his " Influence."

I. Ideas and Aspirations as to Authority, Nature, and Culture, Current in Rousseau's Time [1]

If true human greatness consists in deep insight, strong and well-distributed affection, and free, beneficent will, Rousseau was not in any sense a great man. His insight, like his knowledge, was limited and superficial; his affections were capricious and undisciplined; and his will was ungenerous and selfish. His importance in literature and history is due to the fact that he summed up in his character, expressed in his writings, and exemplified in his experience a group of tendencies and aspirations, which had for some time been half blindly stirring in the bosom of society, and which in him attained to complete consciousness and manifestation for the first time. These tendencies and aspirations, which may be comprehended under the one term individualism — or, more strictly, subjective individualism — have a history; and this we must now sketch, if we are to understand the significance of Rousseau.

The ruling principle of the Middle Ages was authority. Man, created for God's glory, was only a means to that end, and had no freedom of thought, affection, or will. The task of the centuries since that time has been to shake off this yoke, and to restore men to freedom; that is, to convince them that they are ends in and through themselves.

The Germanic Reformation claimed freedom for the individual intelligence; the Italian Renaissance, freedom for the individual feelings and emotions. Neither, however, thought of aspiring to freedom of the moral will, which is the only true freedom. This is a fact of the utmost importance in enabling us to comprehend the thought and practice of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. We look vainly in these for the conception of moral freedom; and what its absence meant we can perhaps most clearly see when we realize that the complete and logical outcome of the Reformation was found in Voltaire; that of the Renaissance, in Rousseau. It took the clear mathematical mind of the French to carry principles to their logical conclusions in thought and practice. What Rousseau demanded was absolutely free play for the feelings and emotions. But it took a long time for any one to become clearly aware that this was the true meaning of the Renaissance.

The reformers appealed to reason, the humanists to nature. The notion of nature was an inheritance from the Greeks, but, as time went on, nature, and gradually mind or reason also, fell into disrepute; and the supreme object of interest became Plato's so-called ideal world. This tendency, along with many other things in Greek philosophy, passed over into Christianity, and reached its culmination in the Middle Age, when nature and reason were both equally regarded with suspicion as the origin of evil; and the ancient place of Plato's ideal world was taken by an authoritative revelation.

In the seventeenth century churchmen, for the most part, clung to revelation and authority; other thinkers tried to make peace between reason and nature. The English mind, generally preferring nature, tried to explain reason through it; the French, setting out with reason and finding no way of arriving at nature, left the dualism unsolved. Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke form a strong contrast to Pascal, Descartes, and Malebranche. Rousseau generally followed the former, especially Hobbes, who conceived the "state of nature" to be one of universal war. He taught that in spite of differences, mental and bodily, when all is taken into account men are not only equal, but have equal rights. "The right of nature" is the liberty of each man to use his own power as well as himself for the preservation of his own nature — that is, his life — " and to do anything which he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereto." A common power must be set up to maintain covenants between men, and to direct their actions for the common benefit.

"The attaining of this sovereign power is by two ways. One is by natural force. . . . The other is when men agree amongst themselves to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others." Hobbes went on to say that the power once established can never be replaced or annulled, and is binding on all; that the sovereign, once elected, can do no injustice; and hence cannot be put to death, or be punished by his subjects. His views with regard to law are characteristic, and are as follows: " The law of nature and the civil law contain each other. For the laws of nature, which consist in equity, justice, gratitude, and other moral virtues on these depending in the condition of mere nature ... are not properly laws, but qualities that dispose men to peace and obedience. When a commonwealth is once settled they are actually laws, but not before. . . . The law of nature therefore is a part of the civil law." And again, " Reciprocally, also, the civil law is a part of the dictates of nature. For justice, that is to say, performance of covenant and giving to every one his own, is a dictate of the law of nature."

In 1689 Locke published two Treatises on Government. In considering how political power could rise he made the two fundamental assumptions of Hooker and Hobbes: (1) that mankind started on its career in a state of nature, in which all individuals enjoyed complete liberty and equality; (2) that the transition from this to the civic state was through a social contract; but he sided with Hooker, against Hobbes, in maintaining that the state of nature was one of peace, governed by a natural law. He says: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges every one, and reason is that law. It teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. . . . All being the servants of one sovereign Master, they are made to last during his pleasure."

Locke rejected Hobbes's theory of despotic sovereignty, and believed that men, by submitting to common laws, gain freedom. He maintained that when a form of government failed to perform its functions it might be overthrown and another put into its place.

Hobbes and Locke were the chief inspirers of Rousseau's social and political theories. Among others that influenced him were Montesquieu and Morellet. By his scientific researches the former caused a reactionary effect upon Rousseau, many of whose theories may be simply considered as a protest. Morellet, though combating Rousseau's idea that human corruption is due to the arts and sciences, was at one with him in maintaining that men in a state of nature are good, and that most governments have corrupted them. He accordingly wished to return to the simplicity and equality of nature by the establishment of a community of goods, that is, socialism.

When Rousseau began to write, the chief questions were these: (1) Was the state of nature one of freedom and peace, or of war and slavery? (2) Are the laws of nature beneficent, or the opposite? (3) Do men gain freedom through the social contract, or lose it? (4) Are they improved, or degraded, by social union and culture? (5) Since all men are free and equal in the state of nature, how do the social subordination of one man to another and social inequality come about, and what is their justification? (6) Are men bound to submit to social regulations against their wills? While these questions were fermenting in men's minds Rousseau came upon the scene.

II. Rousseau's Life

Human beings may, roughly speaking, be divided into two classes, — those who live for passive enjoyment, and those who live for active mastery. The former seek to enjoy each moment; the latter live chiefly in the future and often attain a permanent place in the world's history. Rousseau belonged to the first class, Voltaire to the second. How, then, did Rousseau become an important factor in a great historic movement? (1) Because, like other men of his type, he was thrown into circumstances which wounded his sensibility, and was thus driven to imagine others in which it would find free play; (2) because the movement in question was toward the very things which he represented, — sensibility, subjectivism, and dalliance. He had, moreover, the rare advantage of being able to express his imaginings in a style which for simplicity, clearness, effectiveness, and nearly every other excellence, looks almost in vain for an equal. Keen sensibility, uttered with confident and touching eloquence, is the receipt for making fanatics, and Rousseau made them. Meanwhile his ambitious rival, Voltaire, was making sceptics.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born at Geneva in 1712. His father, a watchmaker by trade, was descended from an old Parisian family and inherited the French characteristics, — love of pleasure, liveliness, sensibility, romanticism, and gallantry. Jean Jacques's mother died at his birth, leaving her son to the care of his aunt, who indulged him greatly. At the age of six Rousseau spent every evening, and occasionally an entire night, in reading with his father the highly colored romances that had formed his mother's library. A year or two later he was interested in such books as Plutarch's Lives, Ovid's Metamorphoses, La Sueur's History of Church and Empire, and Bossuet's Lectures on Universal History, besides certain volumes of Moliere. Plutarch was his favorite author. "To these readings," he says, "and the conversations with my father to which they gave rise, I owe the free, republican spirit and the unyielding pride, impatient of every form of servitude, which have tormented me all my life. . . . There grew in me this heart at once so haughty and so tender, this effeminate yet indomitable character, which, hovering between weakness and courage, has always placed me at odds with myself, and has caused me to miss the satisfaction of either abstinence or enjoyment, indulgence or self-control."

In 1720 when his father left Geneva Rousseau was placed in the care of a clergyman at Bossey for two years. The rule was kindly, but it was here that the lad suffered an unjust punishment to which may be traced the origin of one of Rousseau's chief doctrines — that it is discipline and the curbing of natural impulses that confuses and degrades human nature. Later he was apprenticed to an engraver, a rough and violent man. Of this experience Rousseau writes forty years afterwards: "I was driven to vices which otherwise I should have hated, such as lying, idleness, and theft. . . . Had I fallen into the hands of a better master I should have passed, in the bosom of my religion, my country, my family, and my friends, a quiet, peaceable life, such as my nature demanded, amid regular work, suited to my taste, and a society suited to my heart." The whole of Rousseau is here. Of heroic, moral goodness in the midst of circumstances offending both taste and heart, he had not even a conception.

After running away from his master, home, and relatives, Rousseau lingered a short time in the neighborhood of Geneva, getting food and shelter as best he could, and rioting in the sense of animal freedom, and in romantic visions of his future career. Thence he wandered into Savoy, was converted to Catholicism, and for many months endured the varying fortunes of a vagabond's life. Nothing, perhaps, is more characteristic of Rousseau than his description of his Arcadian longings and his self-pity at this time. " I must have an orchard on the banks of Lake Geneva," was his dream. "I must have a firm friend, a sweet wife, a cow, and a little boat. Till I have all these I shall never enjoy complete happiness on earth. ... I sighed and cried like a child. How often, sitting down on a big stone to weep at leisure, did I amuse myself by watching my tears fall into the water!"

Having one day entered a peasant's house and asked for dinner, offering to pay, he received nothing but skimmed milk and coarse barley bread. Later, feeling that his guest would not betray him, the man opened a trapdoor in the floor and brought out a ham, some good white bread, and a bottle of wine, on which, with an omelet, Rousseau made a royal dinner. The peasant then explained to him that in order to avoid ruin at the hands of the tax-gatherer he was obliged to feign abject poverty. "All this was absolutely new to me," writes Rousseau, "and it made an impression that will never be wiped out. This was the germ of that inextinguishable hatred which grew up in my heart against the oppressors of the unhappy people."

His vagabondage, which lasted four years, did much for him. It satisfied his lust for adventure; it awoke in him a profound passion for rural simplicity; it made him acquainted with the common people, and awakened a lively sympathy for them; it inspired him with a love of natural scenery such as no one before him had ever felt; and it made his language the expression of genuine passion and first-hand experience.

For nine years Rousseau spent the greater part of his time at the home of his patroness, Madame de Warens. When in 1741 they wearied of each other he left her, resolving to try his fortune in Paris, and hoping, if he were successful, to save her from financial ruin. Up to this time he had been a bundle of ardent desires, undisciplined by either serious reflection or moral training. He was lying, faithless, slanderous, thievish, sensual, cruel, cowardly, selfish. Only toward the end of this period do germs of nobler things begin to appear.

Through the influence of Madame de Broglie he obtained a secretaryship at Venice, but having quarreled with the ambassador by whom he was employed, he returned to Paris and resumed his Bohemian way of living. Here he met Therese Le Vasseur. His loyalty to her through all changes of fortune is perhaps the noblest trait of his whole life.

The productive period of Rousseau's career is included between the years 1741 and 1778. It was during this time that his literary and musical work was done. In 1762 he published his famous Emile, a philosophical treatise on education that involved him in immediate difficulties. Threatened with arrest, he fled to Switzerland and thence to England. He returned to France in 1767 and lived for a time under an assumed name. The last eight years of his life were spent in Paris; some of his minor works belong to this period. A few weeks before his death he went to live at Ermenonville, about twenty miles from Paris, and there he died suddenly on July 2, 1778, at the age of sixty-six.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Rousseau is that he went through life, not only without learning the meaning of duty, but firmly believing that the life of pure caprice which he led was the ideal life, and that he himself was the best of men. This indeed he openly maintained. So far was he from being ashamed of his undisciplined spontaneity that he wrote his Confessions to prove that the spontaneous man is the best of men. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the whole aim of his literary activity was to show how men may be made happy and contented without being moral.

But what Rousseau sought to prove by eloquent words, by insidious appeals to man's natural craving for happiness on easy terms, he disproved by his own example. His obtrusive independence, due to absence of moral ties, was spongy, unmanly, and repellent. We might pity him if he did not pity himself so much; but we can in no case admire or love him. ... A sadder old age than his has not often been recorded.

III. Rousseau's Social and Educational Theories

In 1749 Rousseau wrote an essay, which won the Dijon Academy's prize, on " Has the Progress of the Sciences contributed to corrupt or to purify Morals? " This discourse was attacked from many quarters, but, by no means daunted, he wrote another entitled, "What is the Origin of Inequality among Men, and is it authorized by the Natural Law?" In this he assures us that reflection is contrary to nature, and that the man who thinks is a depraved animal. He draws a picture of man in his purely animal estate, wandering in the forests, without industry, without speech, without home, but free, strong, and happy.

Rousseau next shows us how every step in advancing civilization has led to corruption. The great evil of inequality began when what had previously been common to all was claimed as private property. From this point on it is easy to follow the development of civil society, involving, as it does, the decay of freedom, virtue, and happiness, and the growth of slavery, vice, and misery.

In a letter thanking the author for a copy of this discourse Voltaire wrote: " Never was such ability put forth in the endeavor to make us all stupid. On reading your book one longs to walk on all fours." The work is indeed in many respects absurd, yet it contains a large amount of solid truth. What Rousseau wrote of the origin of language and of ideas is better than anything that had been said before his time. The book contains not only the tinder that kindled the French Revolution, and the germ that burst into the American Declaration of Independence, but also the forces that are "toiling in the gloom "under the surface of our present social order. Lastly, there is in it an important pedagogical truth, which may be summed up in the Greek aphorism: " Education is learning to love and hate correctly."

This discourse was written in 1753, not long before Rousseau's reversion to Protestantism. Nine years later he published the Social Contract, in which, recognizing that a return to the state of nature is impossible, he tries to show how man's lost freedom may be recovered in the state of culture. According to his Social Contract each individual was to give up his personal freedom, and accept in exchange social freedom, by submitting himself to the supreme direction of the general will. There is always danger, however, that in the enforcement of laws there may be some tyranny and injustice. When this happens the "social contract" is broken and the parties to it return to a state of nature, free from all authority, but free at the same time to make a fresh contract. Here we have the justification of revolution.

Rousseau's "state of nature" is a pure fiction of the imagination. Animal caprice is not freedom. The phrase "natural rights" is self -contradictory, for where there is no social order there are no rights; in so far all beings are equal. But his chief error lay in supposing that human nature could be transformed by the fiat of the legislator, and society be made to assume any arrangement which he might choose to give it. No good can ever be done to a people by trying to force it into any mold prepared for it from without. All that the wise reformer can do is to diffuse such knowledge and culture as shall give a deeper and wider meaning to experience and so make possible higher ideals. Any attempt to force the process, or to substitute for its slowly but freely attained results a rigid, unprogressive scheme such as Utopias are sure to be, can lead to nothing but slavery and death.

Rousseau's educational system was meant to be a preparation for that sort of life which his own nature pictured to him as the highest — a quiet, uneventful, unreflective, half animal, half childish "natural life, free from serious tasks, aims, and duties." . . . Had he been logical he would have sent children for nurture and education to a tribe of savages; but instead he propounded this problem: How can a child, born in civilized society, be so reared as to remain unaffected and uncorrupted by the vices inseparable from civilization? His solution is given in Emile, the first words of which are: "Everything is well as it comes from the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of men."

In dealing with infant life Rousseau lays down many sensible but chiefly negative rules. The young child is not to be swaddled, confined, or rocked, but to be allowed the utmost freedom of limb and voice. Its cries must be attended to at once, in so far as they express real needs, but no further. Father and mother must combine all their efforts to develop the nature of the child. The directions regarding the treatment and food of the infant are in the main excellent. They may be summed up in the one precept: Let nature have her way.

Rousseau considered that habit as regards set times for food, sleep, etc., was something to be avoided. In this respect his teaching is both unnatural and unwise, for it may safely be said that all evolution is due to the acquisition of habits. Habit is economy of energy.

To Rousseau the end of existence is happiness, and happiness is merely the sensuous enjoyment of each moment as it passes, without thought for higher things, without regard to others. Whatever interferes with present enjoyment is to be regarded as evil. It would hardly be possible to form a more pitiful conception of human life and education than this. There is not a moral or noble trait in it. Instead of Noblesse oblige, Rousseau's maxim amounts to Bonheur invite. In these days when uncontrolled individualism still has its advocates it is well fully to realize what it means. "See that children have a good time" is received as a divine oracle by millions of parents and teachers. No wonder that a good time has become America's chief god [2]

Rousseau's theory of education was destructive of all social institutions and all true civilization. He maintained that children should not be taught obedience. Since nature and things resist but do not command, the teacher should do the same. Human relations should be replaced by mechanical relations, if the precious individuality of the child is to be guarded. He is to meet the iron law of nature everywhere, the love of humanity nowhere.

Of course children as natural creatures are never to be reasoned with. "Use force with children and reason with men; such is the natural order. . . . The child may be bound, pushed, or held back with merely the chain of necessity, without his murmuring." In this way he will never learn what kindness is, and so he will not acquire the unnatural sentiment of gratitude, or indeed any sentiment of a human sort.

"Early education," says Rousseau, "should be purely negative. Exercise the child's body, his organs, his senses, his strength; but keep his mind indolent as long as possible." This is what he calls natural education, but it is a highly artificial one. Nature is made to exclude its highest manifestations, and then the child is watched, dogged, guided, and forcibly controlled at every step, and all for the sake of keeping him in a condition of sub-moral, sub-human innocence. The only moral lesson that he would teach children is to do harm to nobody. This "involves the injunction to have as little to do with society as possible; for in the social state the good of one is necessarily the evil of another." It is needless to say that the assertion is the exact opposite of the truth, and subversive of all civilization.

At the age of twelve Emile had learned only to play. Rousseau would now have him cultivate the "sixth sense, which is called 'common sense,' not so much because it is common to all men, as because it results from the well-regulated use of the other senses." The boy is still to be guided by immediate interests. When his curiosity is roused the natural sciences may be taught; but he is to study nothing which he does not see to be useful for his own special, sensuous ends. At the age of fifteen he is at last to learn to read, and his one book is to be Robinson Crusoe, which will make him eager to learn the natural arts. With regard to these Rousseau says: " The first and most respectable of all the arts is agriculture. I should give blacksmithing the second place, carpentry the third, and so on."

Rousseau may fairly claim the honor of being the father of manual training. While admitting that the isolated man may do as he pleases he insists that in society everybody must work. And manual labor is to be preferred to every other, as affording the greatest freedom. He poured contempt upon the accumulated treasures of human experience and upon all the means whereby they are made available to individual minds, — books, study, schools, colleges, universities, social intercourse. He continually speaks of science, learning, and all that depends upon them, as degradations and necessary evils.

But Rousseau had other teachings which were of a different nature. His attacks upon luxury, display, and the vain waste of wealth, and his eloquent praises of plain, simple, modest living, have laid humanity forever under deep obligations to him. When a century later Emerson said, " Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous," he had been to school to Rousseau. "Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home," might have been written by Rousseau.

Of Emile at the close of his boyhood Rousseau writes thus: "He has all the virtues that relate to himself. In order to have also the social virtues, he merely requires to have the relations which call for them, and the light which his mind is now completely ready to receive. Without disquieting any one he has lived contented and happy so far as nature has allowed." So far, rather, as Rousseau's utterly false views of nature have allowed! Smile has all the time been caged, watched, and trained in ignorance into complete artificiality. He is now an altogether fantastic and impossible creature, utterly unloving and unlovable.

Having hitherto represented rigid necessity, Smile's tutor must now become his intimate friend. Under his guidance Smile "must study society through men, and men through society," beginning with the study of the human heart. His surroundings must be such that "he shall think well of those who live with him, and become so well acquainted with the world as to think everything that is done in it bad. . . . Let him know," says Rousseau, "that man is naturally good, but let him see how society depraves and perverts men. . . . Direct your pupil to all good actions that are possible for him; let the interest of the poor be always his interest; let him aid them, not only with his purse but with his care; let him serve them, protect them, and devote his time to them; let him become their agent; he will never again in all his life fill so noble a place."

By what process the animal, self-centered Smile of sixteen becomes the bold philanthropist of eighteen, Rousseau says he is not bound to tell us, and we never find out; but the new Emile, if he could be considered a reality, is certainly an admirable creature and deserves all the encomiums of his maker.

To Rousseau, who had been both a Catholic and a Protestant, who had heard his father tell of the Moslems in Constantinople, and who had listened to Voltaire, sectarianism, with its exclusive dogmas, lost all meaning and authority. "Let everybody," he says, "think about these things as he pleases. I do not know how far they may interest other people; they do not interest me at all. But what interests me and others like me is that every one should know that there exists an Arbiter of the lot of men, whose children we all are; who orders us to be just; to love one another; to be kindly and merciful; to keep our agreements with everybody, even with our enemies and his; that the apparent happiness of this life is nothing; that after it there comes another in which this Supreme Being will be the rewarder of the good and the judge of the wicked. These are the dogmas which it is important to teach young people. . . . Keep your children always within the narrow circle of those dogmas which relate to morality."

Emile's courtship is carried on under the eye of the despotic tutor, who at first arranges everything for his pupil's gratification and enjoyment. Suddenly, however, this epicurean existence is changed and the young man undergoes the severe discipline of a stoic. Man must now rise above his natural desires and take Reason for a guide. Accordingly Smile is bidden to leave his Sophie for a time, and to set his strongest inclinations at defiance. After an absence of two years, which are devoted to travel, and in which Emile learns much of social obligations and responsibilities, he returns to Sophie and with their marriage the book ends.

The worst feature of Rousseau's treatment of the parting of the lovers is that, while Smile is urged to obey the voice of reason and conscience, he is not told why this voice should be obeyed any more than the voice of passion and interest. So far as we are shown, both are equally subjective and blind, and there is no third faculty to be umpire between them.

In Rousseau's next work, Emile and Sophie, we find the hero in adversity. Having been captured by Corsairs and sent to the galleys, he writes: " In my present state what can I desire? Alas! to prevent me from sinking into annihilation I need to be animated with another's will in default of my own." This piece of characteristic sophistry, which would justify any form of slavery, convinces him that his change of condition is more apparent than real; " that, if liberty consisted in doing what one wishes, no man would be free; that all are weak, dependent upon things and upon stern necessity; that he who can best will all that it ordains is the most free, since he is never forced to do what he does not wish." Here we have the germs of the Schopenhauerian doctrine that true freedom consists in renouncing all will, even the "will to live," which means that to be happy is not to be at all — the last conclusion of pessimism.

Rousseau proved to his own satisfaction two things: (1) that his education according to nature will enable men and women to stand the test of the severest adversity, and (2) that the life of cities is altogether corrupt and corrupting.

IV. Rousseau's Influence

No one can deny that the influence of Rousseau's ideas upon educational theory and practice has been, and still is, very great. His passionate rhetoric and his scorn for the conventions as contrasted with the ideal simplicity of nature roused men from their slumbers and made them reconsider what they had so long blindly accepted. So far his work was invaluable. His bitter, sneering condemnation of the fashionable life of his time, corrupt and' hypocritical, with its distorting and almost dehumanizing views of education; his eloquent plea for a return to a life that was truly and simply human, and to an education calculated to prepare for such a life, were righteous and well timed. His purpose was thoroughly right, and he knew how to make himself heard in giving expression to it. But when he came to inform the world in detail how this purpose was to be carried out, he undertook a task for which he was not fitted either by natural endowment or by education. His passionate, dalliant nature prevented him from seeing wherein man's highest being consists, while his contemptuous ignorance of study, science, and philosophy closed his eyes to the historic process by which men have not only come to be what they now are, but by which their future course must be freely determined.

Gathering up the various defects of Rousseau's social and pedagogical theories, we can clearly see the false assumption that lay at the bottom of them all. It is a very common and widespread error, and is fatal wherever it occurs. It consists in assuming that the later and higher stages in evolution are to be explained by the laws that manifest themselves in the earlier and lower, and must be made to square with these. It throws forward the darkness of the earlier upon the later, instead of casting back the light of the later upon the earlier. Thus it continually tries to explain human nature by the laws manifested in sub-human nature. It insists that man should go back and allow himself to be governed by the necessary laws of the latter as the fatalistic Stoics said. This is the sum and substance of Rousseau's teaching in sociology, ethics, and pedagogy. It is the sum and substance of much popular teaching in all departments of theory and practice to this day. Yet nothing could be more misleading or more fatal to progress. The acorn does not explain the oak, but the oak the acorn. The meaning of the acorn is revealed in the oak, and the meaning of nature in culture. Each to-day reveals the meaning of all yesterdays and contains the free promise of all to-morrows. And so the problem of life is not to make man live according to nature, but to make nature live according to man; or in less ambitious phrase, to elevate the " natural " into the "spiritual" man; blind instinct into rational freedom. Rousseau's system, therefore, exactly inverts the order of nature and progress. It advocates the descent, not the ascent, of man.

In spite of this, it has been given to few men to exert by their thought an influence so deep and pervasive as that of Rousseau. It extended to all departments of human activity, — philosophy, science, religion, art, politics, ethics, economics, and pedagogy.

In philosophy Rousseau influenced Kant, and through him all German, and therefore all modern, philosophy. Even its latest development, agnosticism, can be traced back through Kant's unknowable "thing-in-itself " to the same source.

Rousseau's influence in religion was felt by many of the French Revolutionists, especially by Robespierre and St. Just, and contributed important elements to the neo-Catholic renaissance in the Latin countries and to the Protestant reaction in the Germanic, as well as to English and American Unitarianism. It was also the determining influence in the theological movements initiated by Schleiermacher and Ritschl. In art his influence has been almost paramount throughout Christendom. We may trace his footsteps in the rural cottages and picturesque parks so common in Europe and America; in the landscape paintings and genre pictures that fill our galleries; and in the nature groups, and sentimentally posed figures that delight the majority of our sculptors.

French literature, for the last hundred years, has been soaked in Rousseau's teaching; and in Germany both Goethe and Schiller were powerfully affected by him. In England — where the poison has for the most part been rejected — his influence has been mainly beneficial and can be traced in the writings of the following: Burns, Lady Nairne, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, the Brownings, Carlyle and Ruskin, Cloughand Tennyson, Morris and Swinburne, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Mrs. Ward. On the other side of the Atlantic we find Longfellow and Lowell, Whittier and Emerson; and among the Italians, Leopardi, Manzoni, Carducci, and D'Annunzio. What is true here is equally true of the literature of Greece, Scandinavia, and Russia. Ibsen, for example, is Rousselian to the core.

Turning to the field of politics we find that the French Revolution was in very large degree Rousseau's work; and the formulas in which the American Declaration of Independence was couched were largely drawn from him. Upon political theory the effect of his teaching has been so great that he may be fairly called the father of modern political science. He gave wrong answers to the questions which he propounded; but these questions were just the ones that required to be answered.

Hovering between two equally immoral systems, Epicureanism and Stoicism, and having apparently no experience of free will, Rousseau developed no moral system. Nevertheless, his views were not without effect upon subsequent ethical theories.

In the sphere of economics Rousseau's influence, though great, is quite different from what he expected. Though entirely averse to socialism and anarchism, he was in large degree the parent of both. His stoicism is virtual socialism, while his epicureanism is virtual anarchism, as could easily be shown. It ought to be added that one of the noblest and most conspicuous traits in Rousseau's character was unfailing sympathy with the poor and the oppressed, involving hatred of their oppressors; and it is this sympathy and this hatred — which his example did much to make common — that have, respectively, caused the socialistic and anarchistic movements of this century.

Of his educational demands perhaps only three have been responded to: (1) that children should, from the moment of their birth, be allowed complete freedom of movement; (2) that they should be educated through direct experience, and not through mere information derived from books; (3) that they should be taught to use their hands in the production of useful articles. But certain others of his notions lingered on for a time, much to the detriment of education, and were with difficulty shaken off.

To give an account of all the educators influenced by Rousseau would be to write a history of modern pedagogy. Among the chief, however, are Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel, and Antonio Rosmini-Serbati; the latter far less known, but well deserving of careful study by educators.

Rousseau's Emile has made men attempt to defend existing systems of education, and, finding that they could not, resolve and endeavor to discover better ones. There is still much to be done. We have, even now, no scientific theory of pedagogy; and the reason is that we have no scientific theory of human nature. We are still distracted and blinded to the truth, on the one hand by certain traditional conceptions that once formed part of a view of world economy long since rendered unbelievable and obsolete, and on the other, by certain modern philosophic prejudices of a dualistic sort for which Kant is in the main responsible. The former make us still inclined to believe that the soul is a created substance beyond the reach of experience, a transcendental monad, possessed of certain fixed faculties and capable of being trained only in a certain definite direction to a fore-appointed end. The latter make us believe that it is a bundle of categories, empty thought-forms, existing prior to all sensation or experience, and conditioning it. In either case we are irrationally induced to regard, and to talk about, the soul as something other than what by experience — the only source of true knowledge — we know it to be, and thus to build our educational theories upon a mere chimera. There is not one fact in our experience going to show that the soul is either a substance or a bundle of categories. Indeed, when subtly considered these words are absolutely without meaning. When we ask what we know the soul to be we can only answer: A sentient desire, or desiderant feeling, which through its own effort after satisfaction gradually differentiates itself into a world, or, which is the same thing, gradually learns to refer its satisfactions to a world of things in time and space. Feeling is primary; ideas, or differentiations in feeling, are secondary; — exactly the contrary of what Herbart believed. The world that we know, whether material or spiritual, is entirely made up of feeling differentiated by ideas.

The end of education, therefore, can be none other than the complete satisfaction of feeling by an ever-increasing, harmonious, that is, unitary, differentiation of it into a world of sources of satisfaction. This satisfaction will be greater in proportion as the sources are richer and more numerous. Hence, every soul will be consulting for its own satisfaction by doing its best to satisfy every other soul, and to make it as rich as possible. Thus the most perfect egoism will be found to be one with the most perfect altruism, and the law of virtue to be one with the law of blessedness, as in the end it must be, unless all existence be a mockery. On this view of the soul, and on this alone, will it be possible to erect an intelligible and coherent structure of education — intellectual, affectional, and moral.

_______________

Notes:

1. Summarized from Rousseau, and Education according to Nature. Copyright, 1898, by Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

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CHAPTER 20: INTELLECTUAL PIETY

In addition to his longer and more important works Thomas Davidson wrote many short articles on philosophical, literary, and political subjects. The majority of these are extremely suggestive, and have elements in them of perennial interest. Such were his papers on " American Democracy as a Religion," in the International Journal of Ethics (October, 1899); " Education as World Building," in the Educational Review (November, 1900); "Intellectual Piety: a Lay Sermon" (1896); "Faith, as a Faculty of the Human Mind" (a paper read by him at a philosophical convention held at Chicago); and many others contributed to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. I select two of the above-named for partial reproduction in this book.

Intellectual Piety: a Lay Sermon

Of all a man's duties none is so essential, none so fundamental, as the duty of knowing the truth; and yet none has been so seldom enforced by religious sanctions, none is so frequently made light of and ignored. If we were asked to point out the crowning defect in all the systems of ethics hitherto promulgated, we should probably not be far wrong if we should say, Failure to impress the duty of knowing before acting. To this evil may be traced by far the majority of evils that infest the world around us.

Moral action is distinguished from all other kinds of action by this, that it is action based upon conscious choice. We refuse the attribute "moral" to all mechanical and instinctive action, for no other reason than because it is unaccompanied by choice. Even in the case of human beings we make moral responsibility coextensive with power to choose; and call a man who acts from uncontrollable impulse, passion, or instinct, insane.

Now choice, the basis of all moral action, depends upon intellectual appreciation. An error in intellectual appreciation is a moral error. The criminality of the greatest of crimes is wholly due to the intellectual act that preceded it, and vanishes when that act can be shown to have been pious. This is the sole justification of just warfare, and of the legal execution of criminals.

Before proceeding to show the evils that arise from intellectual impiety, and the supreme necessity of intellectual piety, let me try to make its nature clear. Nothing is more familiar to us than the fact that knowledge of the right does not insure the performance, that mere knowledge has but a limited moral force. Now intellectual appreciation differs from knowledge in this, that it is knowledge armed with moral efficiency, knowledge which commands respect and submission. We are wont to express this familiarly by saying that not only a man's head, but also his heart, must be right. Not only the thoughts of the head, but also the thoughts of the heart (to use the profound old English biblical expression), must be pure, and a man wants a new heart far more frequently than a new head. The truth is, that the element of piety in the intellect is due to what we may call the heart more than to what we may call the head. Let me make this a little clearer.

I have on other occasions explained that, by intellect as distinct from reason, I mean the primitive faculty which grasps the essential ideal unity of the universe, which makes it possible for us to transform our groups of sensations into things, and look at these as something distinct from, and independent of, ourselves — to look at them as something objective. I have also said that this faculty is the source of all freedom, a fact, indeed, which follows directly from its being the moral faculty. But observe that intellect is not by itself sufficient to insure freedom. Before it can do so, an element uniting the two must intervene. Mere intellectual comprehension is absolutely cold and inactive. It is possible to conceive a being gifted with perfect intelligence, and yet remaining entirely inactive from want of any motive to action. If all things were indifferent to it, that is, if one thing had no more value for it- than another, it would certainly not act with reference to any of them; it would not choose one in preference to another, and, therefore, would not be free in any important sense. What turns intellect into a spring of action and freedom is not its power of distinguishing things, but its power of seeing that things have different values, that one thing is better than another, and, therefore, to be preferred to another. Better and preferred are only terms for more lovable, more deserving to be adhered to by the faculties of the spirit, more worthy to determine the attitude of the spirit. When the spirit accommodates itself to the things it beholds, in exact proportion to their ideal value, it is perfectly free; for it is determining itself in accordance with the laws of being.

In other words, piety of intellect consists not in a clear, cold distinguishing of one thing from another, but in the power to appreciate the different values of things, when so distinguished; that is to say, in loving things in exact proportion to their intrinsic worth. The moral power of intellect consists solely in its ability to distinguish worth, and this ability is, in the strictest sense, the ability to love. Since love is usually considered a matter of the heart, we may say that intellectual piety lies in the thoughts of the heart. In fact, it is only the truth which is revealed to the heart that has any moral effect. This was clearly recognized by the old Hebrew prophets. Isaiah, for example, says:

By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand;
And seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive;
For this people's heart is waxed gross,
And their ears are dull of hearing,
And their eyes they have closed;
Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart
And should turn again, and I should heal them.


The truth is, that there is no chance of a man's being healed unless he understands with his heart, that is, until he loves things in accordance with their true value. If in this connection we ask, What is morality? what is religion? we shall get a ready answer: Morality is action in strict accordance with the relative value of things. Religion is the love which prompts this action. Immorality and injustice are simply distribution of action according to a false estimate, and impiety or irreligion is the spirit of misdirected love which prompts this distribution.

If, now, we look away from theory and turn our eyes upon the seething, toiling, competing, suffering, self-flaunting world about us, and ask ourselves the cause of all that is not satisfactory there, we can see that it is the false estimate placed by men upon the things of the world, the want of intellectual piety. Men, instead of making themselves acquainted with the constitution of the world — as by calm attention and patient study they might — and distributing their interest and affection in accordance with the relative value of things, rush into life blindly and without thought, adopt conventional standards of value, and so frequently spend their days in impiety, upholding injustice, or following current fashion. One does not need to examine the lives of the mass of mankind very closely to see that not two in every hundred of them have ever, in all seriousness and without prejudice, put to themselves the question, How must I distribute my interest and affection among the objects which I find in the universe, in order that I may do justice to all, and so live a life in accordance with its laws — a true moral and religious life?

Indeed, not only is this general question rarely put, but hardly any attempt is made to distribute interest in any just way, even among the commoner things usually deemed worthy of interest. In a large class of society, interest and affection are distributed almost in inverse ratio to the value of things. The more frivolous a thing is, the more interest does it excite. People are given up to the frivolous — to frivolous talk, frivolous reading, frivolous work, frivolous pleasure. But even in classes which claim a certain amount of seriousness, the scale of interest has nothing to do with the real value of things; there is hardly any trace of intellectual piety. In by far the majority of families in almost any city or country I know, the all-absorbing interests are wealth and comfort; higher things, art, science, and even religion, are looked upon as merely amusements, or as furnishing opportunities for the display of wealth. Only among the very few, among men generally regarded as unpractical dreamers, is there any serious attempt to distribute affection in accordance with the true value of things; to love with supreme love that which is highest, the eternal; next, that which most closely approaches the eternal; and last of all, that which in its nature is fleeting and unreal.

The men who do this are the only men in the world who are truly happy, living the natural life of the spirit, at peace with heaven and earth, shedding goodness on all sides, because they have nothing else in them to shed. But such men hardly seem to be of the world, though they are in it; and, indeed, if we mean by the world the complex of material phenomena, they are not in the world with the best part of them. Their intellectual piety makes them fix their affections upon things whereof material phenomena are but fleeting manifestations. If all men followed the example of these few, life would be blessed, sin and suffering would almost entirely cease, and earth would become heaven.

But what is the effect of the opposite course, of distributing affection falsely, of neglecting and ignoring those things that are of the highest moment, and loving those of inferior merit with the heart's best love? We have only to look around us to see. Just consider what the effect of setting the heart upon wealth, position, show, or comfort is, not to speak of lower and criminal things? Is not this one result of intellectual impiety the cause of well-nigh all the evil with which philanthropists are trying to contend, which threatens to grow over our heads, to overwhelm our civilization, and conduct us back to barbarism? Suppose, on the contrary, that the whole human race suddenly became intellectually pious, and set upon each thing, spiritual and material, its proper value. How long do you think the present brutal condition of society, in which each one struggles to supplant or overreach his neighbor and make the fruit of the earth fall into his own basket, would last? Not an hour. Let wealth, ease, and comfort, position, and pride once be measured by the standard of true intellectual piety, and they will cease to seem worth struggling for, except in so far as they contribute to make the realization of higher ends for all spiritual beings possible.

A great deal might be said upon the blessed effects of intellectual piety, and the accursed effects of intellectual impiety; but it is so easy, by a little thought, to realize both, that the above indications may suffice. Let us now ask ourselves (1) how the now prevailing intellectual impiety came about, and (2) how it may be best remedied, and the world restored to intellectual piety and its blessed results.

First, then, how did the widespread intellectual impiety, which at present confounds and mars the world, come about? Mainly from two causes: (1) the natural, constitutional impiety of the human heart, and (2) the transition which is at present going on in the world from one kind of intellectual piety, namely submission to authority, to another, namely individual insight. Let us consider these two causes in their order.

(1) The natural impiety of the human heart. In saying that the human heart is impious by nature, I am using the term nature in its old original sense of instinctive tendency, and not as meaning essence. The human spirit is in essence thoroughly pious; in other words, its true essence is realized only when it becomes thoroughly pious. It would be strictly correct to say that perfect piety is the ideal, and the destined end of the human soul. But the human soul is able to realize this, which is at first only implicit in it, solely through the medium of the senses, solely through stimulating and awakening influences derived from other beings, since no being can act or develop without a stimulus from without. In its lowest stages the soul is lethargic and hard to rouse. It can be stirred only by acute stimuli due to numerous external beings acting upon it at once, and even then it is roused to only the lowest and least intelligent kind of activity, namely, reflex action. Now the habits of the soul are formed by its actions, and these at first are determined solely by the nature of the external stimuli. These stimuli being violent, — necessarily so, in order to rouse the soul's latent activity, — the soul learns from the first to determine itself, and to act solely with relation to violent stimuli. The more violent the stimulus, the more certainly and strongly does the soul react.

Not only so, but when a stronger and a weaker stimulus affect it at once (other things being equal) it may very readily, in reacting against the stronger stimulus, neglect the weaker altogether. It is this inborn and necessary tendency of the spirit, in its lower phases of development, to respond to stimuli in proportion to their strength that I would term the natural impiety of the spirit. It is what the theologians mean by the term original sin, which they have tried to account for by various myths, such as the temptation of Eve, which has a curious kernel of truth at the heart of it. So long as the spirit remains in a purely animal and natural condition, this tendency to respond to the strongest stimuli is really no impiety at all. It is really the piety of animal nature, whose highest good is pleasure, and whose highest evil is pain. But the time comes, for certain spirits at least, when out of and over the animal nature, developed to its highest, there arises another nature, totally different in kind from the former, and tending in very large measure to counteract and govern it.

I shall not try to determine at what point, and under what circumstances, this higher nature passes from latency into activity. That, in certain beings, it does so pass, is a fact, and the fact is sufficient for my present purpose. This higher nature is the intelligent nature. As soon as this begins to manifest itself in any being, that being begins a new phase of existence. It ceases to respond to stimuli in proportion to their strength. Such response, which belongs to its merely animal nature, becomes impiety, assumes the attitude of original sin. In accordance with its new nature it gradually ceases to respond to stimuli, as such, at all, and responds to things with power proportionate to their ideal value, as intellectually, that is, freely, conceived. In a word, the being in question passes gradually out of the region of material, sensible stimuli, into a region of ideal motives, which, being inactive and unstimulating, leave the action of the spirit perfectly free. All the action of adherence or non-adherence on the part of the spirit is due to the pure inner spontaneity of the spirit, to pure spiritual love or aspiration. But the process from animality to perfect intellectuality, in other words, to piety of intellect, is very difficult and slow. The animal habit of responding to strong material stimuli fights along with the intellectual need of spiritually aspiring. Indeed, it is this fight that constitutes the entire interest in human life and human history. Slowly, as man advances, he unlearns his animal habits, or, at least, learns to subordinate them to his intellectual insights. More and more his actions become guided by ideas and less by stimuli. For a very long time ideas have to be embodied either in art, or in living human beings, in order to be effective; and a man's spiritual height can at any time be accurately measured by the spirituality or ideality of the art, or of the human beings, whom he loves. At bottom a man is exactly what he loves.

I say "for a very long time" but I might have said "forever"; because I believe that, in order to be truly effective, ideas must always be embodied. Unless they are so, they never appeal fully to our faculty of aspiration, but have always the chill of an imposed duty, a chill which damps the purest ardor of the soul. That is good Christian doctrine; because, while Judaism called upon men to obey God's law, Christianity called upon them to love God, as manifested in Jesus Christ. But, although we cannot fully love ideas, or ideal things, except as embodied, it does not follow that we need be led astray by the embodiment. Embodiment, as such, is simply forcible presentation. But, in the long run, all embodied ideas only serve to lead up to that pure idea which is the end of love, and the vision of which is the soul of freedom and blessedness.

From what has been said you will see that the intellectual impiety of our day, as well as of all other days, is, primarily and in large measure, due to the natural impiety of the human heart, the necessary legacy of the animal nature. It is the animal nature fighting with the intellectual nature, the " law of the flesh warring against the law of the spirit," that makes men direct their affections toward the coarse, strong stimuli of wealth, ease, gluttony, pomp, and all the other objects to which animal selfishness naturally tends, and that brings about all the sin and suffering that there is in the world.

(2) But the present prevalence of intellectual impiety in the world is partly due to another reason, namely, to the transition through which we are passing, from the intellectual piety of authority to the intellectual piety of insight. All transitions from one ideal to another are slow and difficult, but this one is especially so, because its consequences are so far-reaching, extending to every institution of society, and every attitude of the individual. Perhaps you will find it strange that I use such an expression as "intellectual piety of authority," as if submission to authority could consist with intellectual piety. But so it was, and, to a very large extent, so it is even now. At a certain stage in human development intellectual piety consists in reverent submission to authority. Such submission is simply what we call faith, neither more nor less. Faith at one time was intellectual piety. There is no use in hiding that fact from ourselves; but it is not so now. Nowadays, intellectual piety is submission to pure intelligence, in the sense in which I have been using that term, as comprehending spiritual insight, love, and freedom. The transition from one mental attitude to the other is what we are now passing through, and what is introducing so much confusion into our institutions, so much impiety into our lives. Let us consider the two attitudes. They mark two eras in the world's history, the one the era in which the individual is regarded as the servant and creature of institutions, the other the era in which he is looked on as the lord and creator of institutions.

In times when animal habits and sensual brutality were still fighting hand to hand with the first cold dawnings of intellectual insight, that insight was in a very disadvantageous position. Its power was slight compared with that of its foe, and though, being eternal, it could not be crushed, it could be rendered almost powerless, unless it was so embodied as to be able to utilize some of its enemies' brute force. Under these circumstances, in order to be effective at all, it was forced to ally itself with that half-animal, half-divine instinct of personal ambition. Men of clear heads, eager for power, were glad to have such an ally — an ally which has no superior. Insight results in justice, and justice is the pillar of power. Thus intelligence, in its battle with animality, found strength only by taking on the form of individual authority. This individual was at first a tribal patriarch, later on a chief, later still a king, and, if he abused his authority, a tyrant. When individual authority became thus tyrannical and abusive the insight and sense of justice, ^which had now grown up, turned against it; having found an ally in the self-respect of a morally developed people, aided sometimes by what were supposed to be miraculous, divine sanctions. When tyrannies were put down, and insight and justice no longer found strength in individual ambition, they were embodied in laws and legal systems, which imposed themselves as abstract rules upon human life, and the transgression of which entailed punishment. But in both cases — whether embodied in human individuals or in legal systems and institutions — the insight which constitutes the higher nature appears to the generality of men as a restriction and a fetter. Doubtless they learned to submit gracefully to this restriction, and even to hug the fetter, but such submission was always felt to be a form of subjection. The divine, simply as such, was not loved, nor did men in submitting to its dictates — called by the name of justice — feel themselves free. AEschylus, one of the greatest of ancient seers and poets, tells us, "There is no one free but Jupiter."

I need not tell you that all the forms of government that have ever been are only so many arrangements for giving effect to the divine insight, and imposing it upon men inclined to follow their animal nature and habits. In ancient times these governments armed themselves not only with what we are wont to term the terrors of the law, but also with power derived from current beliefs in supernatural agency, which beliefs were themselves a very crude form of divine insight. While men were in this condition it is plain that intellectual piety, so far as such a thing could be said to exist at all, consisted in submission to constituted authority; for it was through such submission that the higher nature of man was in any way enabled to triumph over the lower. As the Bible expresses it, the law was a taskmaster, and, in the earlier stages of advancement, obedience to this taskmaster was the best thing that men could do. If we should ask what service ancient civilizations, generally speaking, performed for the cause of human progress, the answer would be, They succeeded in forcing external submission to intelligence embodied in the form of laws, with fear of punishment attached. These laws neither did nor could accomplish submission of the will or the affections, still less could they command the love of the intellect. Nevertheless, they accomplished a most necessary and a most important work. Until men have learned outward conformity in action to law, they are not capable of any higher spiritual attainment. Fear is the first attitude assumed by the animal toward the spiritual. The transition from this attitude to a higher was marked by the rise of Christianity. The great movement so called was, of course, preceded by a considerable period of preparation, especially among the Hebrews and the Greeks.

Among the former, mere submission of outward action gradually gave place to submission of the affections, and men learned to love the divine. Among the latter, outward submission tended to give place to insight, that is, to pure piety of the intellect. Had any man appeared about the beginning of our era, capable of placing himself at once at the advanced standpoint of the Hebrew and the advanced standpoint of the Greek, and had he been able to impose his doctrine upon the world, the result might have been the spread of true intellectual piety, in its wide triple sense of insight, love, and freedom. Unfortunately, Jesus, the man who did succeed in imposing himself upon the world, and who well deserved to succeed, could place himself at only one of these two standpoints — that of the Hebrew. He taught men to love the divine as manifested in his own person. In other words, he taught them to submit the affectional part of their nature to the divine, and this was a step of incalculable importance, a step which replaced fear by love. What he failed to do was to make men submit their pure intelligence to the divine, in the only way in which intelligence is justified in submitting itself, that is, through clear insight. As far as their affections were concerned the Christians were free; they followed the good, the divine, because they loved it in one splendid manifestation. But they were not altogether free; they were still subject to authority with a part of their nature, namely, with the pure intelligence. Nothing can free the intelligence and enable it to act with perfect liberty, except clear, unwavering insight, and this Christianity did not give, and could not give. The place of insight was taken by faith, — faith in the life and words of an individual; and this life and these words necessarily became authoritative, and had to be embodied in a law-imposing institution, namely, the Church. Just as the State had been, and .was, an institution replacing insight into the divine and affection for it, in order through authority to secure outward conformity of action; so the Church was an institution replacing insight into the divine, in order to secure affection for it. The Church was, therefore, an institution higher than the State; it represented less through authority, and made possible a greater degree of freedom, namely, freedom of the affections. In the Church men acted and lived through freeing love, instead of through slavish fear. But after all, it was an authoritative institution, and, in so far, an imperfect one. In spite of this imperfection, if she had remained true to herself and her inmost principles, she ought to have been able to impose herself upon the State and to absorb it, as a higher institution ought always to absorb a lower. Indeed, in one period of her history, the Church came very near to this, and it was only her infidelity to herself that prevented her from doing so altogether. If, through the lives of her members, or even of her priests, nay, even of her head, the Pope, she could have exacted that divine love which Jesus had hoped that his representatives, imbued with his righteousness, might at all times exact, there can be no doubt that the kingdoms of this world would have become the kingdom of Christ. We all know how far she failed in this respect. At the very time when the kingdoms of the civilized world seemed almost within her reach, she was represented in her supreme dignity by several men, whom a woman, afterwards canonized by the Church, — and well deserving canonization, if ever woman did, — was constrained to speak of as demons incarnate, daemones incarnati.

That the divine, when so represented, should call forth man's affections and secure the submission of the State was utterly impossible; and so Church and State, instead of being absorbed into one great institution, setting man's affectional nature free, and gradually working toward the liberation of his intellectual nature through pure insight, fell gradually back into the position of the ancient states, and, through material force (the use of which Jesus had actually forbidden), as well as by spiritual threats conceived in the spirit of exclusiveness, hatred, and tyranny, flung men back into the condition of slaves, living and acting in fear. However much we may blame the Church — and she deserves great blame for relapsing into this pagan condition — we must never forget that her errors were in a certain sense due to her very constitution, and the imperfection of the doctrine of Jesus upon which she was originally founded. Jesus and his immediate followers had called for faith, instead of for insight, and faith had, of absolute necessity, to result in a dogmatic system; for articles of faith must be expressed as dogmas, if expressed at all. What is more important, however, is, that dogmas, from their very nature, could not defend themselves rationally, inasmuch as they were not based upon intellectual insight, but upon authority. If they defended themselves at all, they had to do so by material force.

It is true that on more than one occasion the Church attempted to base her dogmas upon intellectual insight, first in the second, third, fourth and fifth centuries, through the ponderous writings of the so-called fathers of the Church, of whom the most important and able was St. Augustine; again in the twelfth and following centuries through the efforts of the schoolmen so-called. The former, the Church Fathers, employed for their purposes the philosophy of Plato mostly; the latter, the schoolmen, the philosophy of Aristotle. But on each occasion the attempt failed, and failed signally, for the very good and very inspiring reason that the dogmas were false, and nothing that is false can ever be based upon intellectual insight. Fortunately it is not in the nature of things that any institution existing to exercise authority can be eternal; for, in the long run, man must attain his true nature, which is absolute freedom, intellectual as well as other.

The long struggle which the Church carried on against the State, in so far as it was in any degree representative, was a struggle of love and duty against fear and law. In this struggle, the Church, as an institution, may be said to have succumbed, and, indeed at the Protestant Reformation, the Church was expressly made subject to the temporal ruler; but, after all, the Church did impart a great deal of her spirit to civil institutions, so that in our day a very large number of men and women, who care nothing whatever for the Church, live and act from love and cheerfully accepted duty, and in no degree from fear.

The Church, as I have said, was, from the very defect in the nature of her fundamental principle, necessarily an authoritative institution, as far as the intellect was concerned. She put faith and dogma in the place of insight and clear conviction, and, when she began to degenerate, actually set her face against the latter, and discouraged free inquiry and free thought, as hostile to piety and religion. They were, indeed, hostile to piety, as she conceived it, and this the event has proved. As she conceived it, piety — and piety, in the last result, always means intellectual piety — meant the unquestioning submission of the intellect to the authority of dogma. There can be no question that there was a time when this was real piety, the very best thing that men could do. There was a time when the dogmas of the church were higher than the loftiest insights of even the best of living men, and when this is the case, and men can in any way be convinced that it is the case, then submission becomes intellectual piety. Very few people, comparatively speaking, have ever worked out the proof that the earth moves round the sun; nevertheless, we should at the present day regard it as intellectual impiety and arrogance for any one who had not examined the proof, to question the fact.

But the reign of faith is of necessity the reign of authority. Faith is authoritative, or it is nothing. That this is true, any one who thinks clearly, by simple reasoning, can easily see. But it has also been demonstrated by experience. The Church has lost power as an institution, exactly in proportion as she has ceased to be authoritative. Let us now ask ourselves, What is the effect of authority in matters of intellect, and especially in the loftiest matters with which the intellect can deal? Simply this, to paralyze the intellect and render men indifferent to its dictates. This, of course, would not be felt, and, indeed, would not be prejudicial, so long as the dogmas of faith were nearer the truth than the insights of intellect; but, as soon as the intellect arrives at higher insights than the dogmas contain, then any attempt to confine the intellect within the limits of dogma can result in only one of two things, — paralysis of the intellect, or rebellion on the part of the intellect and an open hostility to dogma and the entire institution based upon it.

Now both of these results have been actualized in the last three hundred years, and exist in a very pronounced state at the present moment. On the one hand, we have a very large number of people who, utterly incapable of profound thought, and unaided even by dogma, nevertheless, in a blind and imbecile way, cling to dogma, and lead superficial, conventional, and altogether pitiable lives. This is the case with by far the majority of formal churchgoers, many of whom are sunk so deep in intellectual impiety and death, that it seems as if even the last trumpet would not rouse them. On. the other hand, we have at the present day a large number of persons, who, rebelling openly against dogma, and the Church based thereon, reject even the good that there is in the Church, and fall back into an unsettled, hopeless condition, in which they vainly grope about for a clear principle of action. They have rejected authority, but have not attained insight; and so they either wander about in a sort of grim uncertainty, which they call agnosticism; or else adopt, as a principle of action, some abstract formula borrowed from the old religion without acknowledgment, and declared to have been found among the inmost instincts of the heart. When authority and intellect fail, the heart is always made to do duty, and, in consequence, invested with a kind of mysterious sanctity, as if its blind dictates were necessarily infallible oracles. Among these men too we find great impiety of intellect.

Before taking up our second question — How may the prevailing impiety of intellect be remedied — let me recapitulate, in a few words, the answer to the first. The now prevalent impiety of intellect is due to two main causes: (1) the natural impiety of the human heart, its primitive animality, which, when it resists intelligence, becomes original sin; (2) to the transition now going on from faith or authority in matters intellectual to clear insight and perfect freedom. The former of these causes is potent in almost every individual, producing selfishness and blindness; the latter is potent in all our social institutions, causing confusion of the most threatening kind, ranging class against class, and bidding fair, in the form of nihilism and anarchism, to annihilate the civilizing efforts of many centuries.

Now it is a strange fact, and one which every man who is not a mere play actor, unable to discern the signs of the time, sought to weigh carefully, that the first effects of the birth of a new truth in the world often take the form of gigantic courses of heartless and hideous crime. Nihilism and anarchism are cases in point. The hideous crimes perpetrated by their votaries are really performed in obedience to a true principle; but the principle is by these votaries so imperfectly and incorrectly grasped, that it becomes a curse, instead of a blessing, and rouses prejudices most prejudicial to itself. What nihilists and anarchists are sinning for is freedom, and freedom, when properly comprehended, is the highest possible of blessings; but to these men it is a mere word, or at best a synonym for utter impiety. Thus, without in the smallest degree palliating the acts of these men, or failing on every possible occasion to express our righteous horror of them, we need not fail to recognize that the end which they so foolishly and criminally seek to attain is the true end of all noble human endeavor. For just as Christianity rose above ancient paganism and overthrew its institutions, in order that men's lives might be freed from the authority of fear and be guided by love, so at the present day pure intelligence, combining in itself insight, aspiring love, and freedom, is slowly rising above Christianity even, and seeking to free men's souls from the authority of faith and dogma, so lifting them into absolute freedom. The world's battle of progress is now fought in the name of perfect intellectual piety, which alone can make men free and blessed.

In the struggle, no doubt, many of our existing institutions must go down; indeed, in the end, they must all go down, in so far as they are in any way authoritative; for among men intellectually pious authority has no place or power. We ought always to remember that the amount of authority requiring to be exercised among a people is always in exact inverse ratio to its spiritual advancement, its intellectual piety. Among the intellectually pious all authority resolves itself into insight — insight into the ultimate laws of absolute being, or, as theologians awkwardly say, into the will of God.

We are now ready to answer our second question, How can intellectual piety be realized on the earth, and intellectual impiety be made to cease?

We may answer this question in a preliminary sort of way by saying, By teaching men to disregard the blind promptings and blinding habits of their animal nature, and to see things as they are objectively in themselves, estimating each according to its true value, which will be at once absolute and relative. We may express this otherwise, thus, By cultivating in every man pure intelligence and pure divine love, and so strengthening these that they shall without difficulty subject and rule animality and selfishness. We may express it in a third and very brief way, thus, By turning every man and woman into a philosopher, and a hero or heroine.

You will doubtless say to me: It will be a long time before we succeed in doing that! Your notion is Utopian, visionary, wild in the last degree! I am only too well aware that it will take a long time to make men profound thinkers and heroes, and if I thought otherwise, I should most certainly deserve all the epithets you might be inclined to heap upon me. In saying what I have said, I have only sought to point out the ultimate weal toward which we must certainly move, if we are to progress at all, — the goal of human perfection, which is perfect insight, perfect love, perfect freedom. The failure to see that this is man's goal leads to very many evils, evils of the most crying kind, of which most people are but little aware. Let me name two of the saddest and most hurtful of these.

The first relates to the theory of education and takes this form, that in educating a child we should do everything in our power to let it follow its natural inclinations. This is almost an axiom in American education — at least I know it is so in several parts of the country where it has been my lot to teach. This idea I believe to be in the highest degree false and dangerous. One easily understands how it arose — from a reaction against the brutal, bullying systems of education which were formerly prevalent here, and are so still in Eng- land and several other countries. One consequently can excuse it to some extent. Nevertheless, this does not alter its character, which is in the highest degree pernicious. If by the natural inclinations or nature of the child we mean the animal nature with which it comes into the world, nothing can be more untrue than that we ought to indulge and cultivate this nature. Indeed, the very opposite is true. This nature ought to be completely subjected and subordinated to that higher nature which is only latent in the child at its birth and for a long time afterwards, the intelligent and moral nature.

It is true that a child's natural instincts and tendencies ought to be regarded to this extent, — that they ought to be carefully studied, in order that it may be taught to subordinate them, and rise above them into the region of pure intelligence and complete freedom. The course of education for every child ought to be, as far as is possible, a copy of the education which the race has undergone, and is under- going, just as each child is a copy and epitome of the whole development of the race in all other respects. First of all, the child ought to be taught in its outward acts to respect authority blindly, and, if need be — mark you, I say, if need be — even through fear. Then it ought to be taught to act from loving confidence and to this end a model worthy of love and confidence ought to be continually kept before it, as parent, nurse, or teacher, while at the same time it is made to live in a world of art, — not merely of graphic and plastic art, but of art in the broadest sense, — in a world of the lovable. Last of all, at the proper time, the child, now grown a young man or a young woman, must be taught to act from simple insight, to shape its actions in accordance with the recognized worth of things, without any regard to what its own animal inclinations, its own personal desires and ambitions, may be. But in order to be able to act in this way, it must labor and study to know the true worth and meaning of things, to see them in their true relations, to be, in one word, a lover of wisdom, a philosopher.

Now, the second of the evils which arise from the failure to recognize man's true destiny is just this, — a contemptuous denial that every man and woman ought to be a philosopher. So much does the old habit of authority and convention in matters of intelligence and morals still prevail, so much are men still the slaves of these, that philosophy, which alone can make men free, is still looked upon with suspicion, and ill-concealed contempt. One continually hears: " But you can't expect every man to be a philosopher! It takes a long time to learn philosophy, and people generally have other things to attend to. They must sow and reap, buy and sell, eat and drink, and they must have a good time. Philosophy is dull, solemn business." The implication, of course, is, that sowing and reaping, buying and selling, and so on, are more important things than philosophy, and this, indeed, is what the world of our time practically believes.

The general belief is that the end of life is to acquire material wealth and have a "good time," which means to satisfy the natural inclinations, which our education accordingly fosters and pampers. I say this is the result of a failure to recognize that the aim of man's life is man's perfection, and that perfection consists in perfect insight, perfect love, and perfect freedom. As soon as men see this clearly they will no longer look down upon philosophy, which is but another name for loving insight, one of the essential elements in human perfection. To despise philosophy is to despise spiritual perfection, for clear knowledge is one of the elements of that perfection.

There is no duty more incumbent upon any human being than to know; unless it be the duty of loving with divine love everything known, in proportion to its worth, and sternly refusing to be guided by personal feelings and inclinations. A man or a woman who is not a profound thinker, seeing the things of the world in their true ideal proportions and acting accordingly, is a mere dependent, half-enslaved creature, whatever amount of so-called culture, refinement, and kindliness he or she may have. Such a person is still a slave to authority and convention, a mere play actor in life, bound to play a traditional, unreal part, without any of the glorious liberty of the children of God, of them who see the Divine face to face, and, in the light thereof, all things in their true worth.

The only reason why it is necessary to sow and reap, to buy and sell, and, indeed, to live at all in this world, is that the spirit may be enabled to rise to the heights of conscious insight, love, and freedom. If this end is missed all is in vain. A mere blameless, legally correct life will save no man. There is no unjust God, who will pick us up out of our cowardly, ignorant, narrow, prejudiced, slavish condition, and all at once pour upon us an ocean of insight, love, and freedom, without any effort on our part. The true God of philosophy, the God of the religion of the future, the just God, gives to each man precisely what with his own efforts he has righteously won, neither more nor less. The man who asks for more is a miserable dependant, sycophant, and beggar; the man who is content with less is a fool.

The upshot of the whole matter is, that knowledge and clear insight, of the intellectual, worth-estimating kind, is essential to all true well-being in this world. It is the want of intellectual insight into the true worth and meaning of life and its institutions that is the cause of well-nigh all the misery, sin, and confusion that are now cursing the world. The mass of men live on blindly, not knowing the meaning of the things that are most close to them, and thoughtlessly giving countenance to institutions and practices that crush out the life of the spirit. Not one in every fifty ever asks himself whether our political and social institutions, our state, our industry, our education, are founded on truth and right, or upon lies and convention-supported wrong.

And yet this is one of the first duties of every man. How much human energy and spiritual force are being thrown away and wasted in doing things that ought never to be done at all, the result of which clogs and binds in slavery the spirit! How much industry, ministering to pomp and pride and self-indulgence, is worse than useless! How much charity is worse than wasted, making human beings puling dependents, instead of beings rejoicing in divine liberty! How much education is absolutely pernicious, pampering the animal instincts and inclinations, and helping to sink the soul in matter, to enthrall it, and to hide from it the vision of God! How much precious time is wasted in frivolous reading of a sickly, sense-pampering kind, — time that might well be employed in obtaining intellectual insight, and in learning to love the things of the universe as they deserve! Amongst the greatest curses of our time, the greatest barriers to spiritual insight and human happiness, are misdirected education, and frivolous reading, and devotion to frivolous and meaningless art. Before we can hope to advance in righteousness and happiness we must reform our education from the foundation up, in accordance with insight into the true, eternal nature of the spirit; we must make it a means for spiritual perfection, and not a means for acquiring material wealth with which to glut the senses.

At the same time those of us who have already reached manhood and womanhood must seek to undo the effects of our vicious early education, and strive with all our might, by labor and study incessant, to rise to divine insight, love, and freedom. We must learn to know the universe we live in, in order that we may be able to live in accordance with its nature and being. We must give up all frivolous reading, all devotion to frivolous art, and consecrate our time to the study of the great thinkers in all departments of human knowledge, physical and spiritual, and of the great artists, — those who have embodied in their works the truths of the eternal. What shall we say of people who devote their time to reading novels written by miserable, ignorant scribblers — many of them young, uneducated, and inexperienced — and who have hardly read a line of Homer or Sophocles or Dante, or Shakespeare or Goethe, or even of Wordsworth and Tennyson, who would laugh at the notion of reading and studying Plato or Aristotle, or Thomas Aquinas, or Bruno, or Kant, or Rosmini? Are they not worse than the merest idiots, feeding prodigal-like upon swinish garbage, when they might be in their father's house, enjoying their portion of humanity's spiritual birthright? I know of few things more utterly sickening and contemptible than the self-satisfied smile of Philistine superiority with which many persons tell me, " I am not a philosopher." It means simply this, I am a stupid, low, grovelling fool, and I am proud of it!

But it is of no use to rail at the ill. Let us rather, all of us, from this day forward, resolve to be intellectually pious, to bend all our energies to the comprehension of that world, physical and spiritual, which is our larger selves, through Science, Philosophy, Art; and to exercise our souls in the correct loving of all things in proportion to their intrinsic worth. And inasmuch as art and science and philosophy are long, and the world-self which we have to comprehend is infinite, let us, like immortal spirits, combine to give each the benefit of the labor of all.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

Postby admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:02 am

CHAPTER 21: FAITH AS A FACULTY OF THE HUMAN MIND [1]

To the question, How "does the human mind attain to the knowledge of God? two main answers have been given: (1) through the natural faculties of the mind, (2) through a supernatural revelation. Catholic Christianity, as reflected for example in the pages of Thomas Aquinas, united these two answers, and maintained that, while the human faculties are capable of discovering that God is, a revelation is needed to know what God is, and how he is related to human beings. It held, moreover, that natural knowledge is a condition of supernatural knowledge, and that the latter is the material of faith.

Since the days of Kant, all this has been changed. That philosopher thought he had proved — and the world, on the whole, has agreed with him — that man's knowledge of actuality extends only to sense experience, since the forms of his mind have reference and applicability only to these. When he attempts to apply them in any other region, they find themselves without any contact, and when that is the case, they help him to no truth. Now, since, according to Kant, God is not an object of sense experience, man's faculties do not enable him to say there is any such being, or, indeed, anything supernatural at all. In truth, Kant believed himself to have conclusively demonstrated that man can attain to no knowledge of any metaphysical reality. His reason, indeed, has to postulate God in order to make the world appear rational; but whether any reality corresponds to this postulate, it is impossible to say.

If Kant be right in maintaining that the categories of the mind are mere forms which are utterly useless without a content derived from experience, — and this seems to be really the case, — it follows directly that, if we are to know God at all, it must be through some sort of experience. This experience may be either direct or indirect, that is, either inwardly cognized, or outwardly revealed. In the former case it will produce science and conviction; in the latter, at best, belief and persuasion. Furthermore, an external revelation of God can have no meaning for any one who has no experience corresponding to the terms in which that revelation is couched. Hence it follows, in the last resort, that we can have no knowledge of God without experience, and that of a personal sort. The question, then, whether we know God, resolves itself into the question whether we have any direct experience of God.

But here we must be careful not to fall into confusion. In saying that, if we are to know God, we must have some personal experience of him, I do not mean that the whole content and system of this knowledge must be of an individual sort. If it were, it would be mere mysticism of the bad kind, a series of individual impressions, indistinguishable from hallucinations, and utterly irreducible to true knowledge. True knowledge is the result of universal human experience, built up out of combined human experience by many successive generations. This is eminently true of our knowledge of the outward material world. If each individual had to derive his knowledge of that from his own experience, his world would be of the meagerest sort, and it is otherwise only because he adds to his own experience that of the race, as organized in language, science, art, and philosophy. Granting, then, that man has an experience of God, and that out of this experience he can frame and systematize a knowledge of God, we shall expect to find that this knowledge is universal, and that each individual, if he is to arrive at a knowledge of God, must supplement his own experience by that of the race. But the God experience of the race is organized in religious institutions, religious creeds, and sacred books. Hence it is to these that the individual must go in order to supplement his own narrow experience. Only by these can he test its validity and assign its place. Without the experience of the race, his own could have little value; without the latter, that of the race would have no value at all; for we may fairly and justly say that that of the race is valuable to him only in so far as it enables him to interpret his own. Mysticism detached from scholasticism is mere dreaming; scholasticism detached from mysticism is empty dialectics, a mere playing with hollow concepts.

If, then, a knowledge of God involves an experience of God, it is clear that we must have a faculty corresponding to and mediating this experience. And I think that this faculty has long been recognized and named, being none other than faith. I am quite aware that the term "faith" is often used to mean a belief in certain historic facts, whose reality cannot be proved by the ordinary methods of history; and a famous scholar has maintained that there are no fewer than six meanings of "faith" in the New Testament alone. But even in that work the most common and vital meaning of "faith " makes it the faculty of the mind which grasps the substance and order of that invisible world in which lie the grounds of all our hope. And in this sense exclusively I shall use it in this paper. I will treat it as a faculty of the human soul, and ask what it reveals and what it commands.

But here at the very outset I am arrested by the prior question, Is there any such faculty? Kant, as we have seen, assumes that there is not, and all the conclusions of his philosophy, as well as of most other philosophy since his time, are deeply influenced by this assumption. Nevertheless it is one that stands at direct variance with the convictions of the race, into whose consciousness there enters the thought of an invisible world. In refusing to acknowledge the faculty of faith, therefore, we are setting aside, as unreal, one half of the content of the human race — consciousness — as a mere illusion to which nothing in reality can be shown to correspond. We say, in effect, that it is a mere delusive play of the transforming and recombining imagination, or else that it is due to a misuse of the empty forms of thought, the latter being Kant's notion. The question in the last resort is one of simple fact, and its answer must depend on an appeal, first to the individual consciousness, and then, for confirmation, to the general consciousness. Have we then, let us each ask ourselves, any direct experience of an invisible world? Before attempting to answer this question, let us be sure that we clearly understand what it means, and not rashly say No, because we have no experience of an invisible world at all like our experience of the visible world. We must, indeed, beware lest we take the question to mean, Have we any visible experience of the invisible world? This, of course, we have not, though many persons have claimed such experience and many more look for such experience as the only thing that would make certain the existence of an invisible world.

We must bear in mind that our ordinary experience of the material world consists of two elements which are readily enough distinguishable, though not, in reality, separable, — an element made up of sensations, and an element by which these sensations are combined and converted into an objective, tangible world of things. If either of these elements were different, our material world would be different from what it is; and if the latter element were entirely different, we should no longer have what we call an external world at all, — a world of sensible things existing in time and space. Now, if we are to have any experience of the invisible world, we must, indeed, have in it two elements analagous to these; but there is no reason why they should be similar to these or go to make up a similar result. Our sensations need not be those of color, sound, taste, smell, touch; and the things we form out of them need not be bodies visible and tangible in time and space. When, therefore, we ask whether we have any experience of an invisible world we must look for a world very different from the visible one.

That we have a whole range of feelings entirely different from those that are connected with our senses, there can be no manner of doubt. They are what we call the moral feelings, — feelings aroused in us by actions and not by things. Such feelings are those of justice, injustice, right, wrong, remorse, reverence, duty, etc. It is likewise beyond doubt that we have a series of mental forms by which we combine these and the like into an invisible world of spiritual personalities. Kant has been at great pains to show us just what the forms are which enter into the composition of our material world, namely, the forms of sense and understanding. No one, so far as I know, has undertaken to draw out a scheme of the forms which enter into the composition of the spiritual world. And yet the task does not seem extremely difficult. I do not, indeed, flatter myself that I can give such a scheme in all its details; but I think I can point out the way in which it may be reached.

It is a familiar fact in all ethical experience, that when we do certain acts we are filled with a peculiar, elevating, inspiring joy; when we do others we are filled with a strange, degrading, paralyzing pain, or remorse. I am not at present concerned in determining how these feelings come to be distributed as they are at any particular time. It is enough for the present purpose to know that they always exist. Further, I am not concerned in showing how these feelings were developed and what lower stages they have passed through before showing their real nature. It is sufficient to know that nature. Now these feelings of joy and remorse are as clearly facts of experience as the sensations of color or sound and belong as clearly to a real world. The question is, Have we any means of constructing for ourselves the world to which they belong? In order to make the meaning of this question clearer, let us once more call to mind that the material world which we know is constructed by the forms of sense and understanding out of certain subjective sensations. Can we, then, out of those moral sensations, by any forms of our spiritual being, construct for ourselves a moral world? That such a world has actually been constructed, we know. In that world is one supreme spiritual being, all powerful, all loving, all holy, — a being who is the author of all spiritual beings, whose activity is directed toward the realization in themselves of his perfections. Is this world, then, a real world? And if it is not, can we construct a real moral world, or, which is obviously the same thing, a real metaphysical world?

That such a world has been constructed and has taken outward form in religious institutions, which fill the larger half of human life, affords at least a presumption of the reality of this world and, at the same time, a test for the validity of any world which the individual may construct. The difficulty with regard to the moral or metaphysical world is due, in large measure, to the fact that there does not seem to be the same concensus in regard to it that there is in regard to the material world. There is a general belief that all men have a common material world, that earth, sky, sun, moon, stars, mountains, plants, animals, etc., are the same for everybody; whereas it seems clear that the moral world is different for different people, and some seem to have no moral world at all. The conclusion is drawn that because the moral world is not the same for everybody, there cannot be any real moral world at all.

Now I think there is a double mistake in all this: (1) the material world is not so much the same for everybody as it is generally believed to be, and (2) the moral world is more the same for everybody than it is believed to be. But while insisting upon this, we may readily admit that the material world is more the same for everybody than the moral world is, and the ground of this is not difficult to discover. The material world is to a large extent constructed for us by the spontaneous action of our powers, free will hereby entering into it; and these powers, just because they are spontaneous, are much, though by no means altogether, the same for all persons. The moral world, on the contrary, being a world of acts, freely and consciously performed — for nothing is moral that is not free and conscious — largely depends upon the free will of each individual for its character and content. A person who performs no moral acts — and acts here include thoughts — has no moral world. In spite of all this, however, there is a fundamental similarity between all moral worlds. Deduct what is due to differences of culture, language, and conceptions, and there remains a residue which is much the same in all cases. This is daily becoming clearer and clearer through the comparative study of religions.

I have said that certain acts bring to every man satisfaction, and certain other acts remorse. By acts I mean here not merely the changes that a man makes in the world, but I include also all the motives and interests involved in the acts. Now these feelings of satisfaction and remorse are a content, and a very real one, and it cannot be said that mental forms when applied to them are empty. It may be true that the forms of sense and understanding cannot be applied to them, and indeed it is true; but it still remains to be seen whether the mind has not other forms in which to apply to them, and which when so applied give us a moral or a metaphysical world of reality. In the feelings of remorse and satisfaction, when we come to examine them closely, there is involved the consciousness of authority, which we cannot help recognizing as rightful. This is, if we may so speak, the form of these feelings, — the form of the moral sense, — just as space and time are forms of the "outer" and "inner" senses. We can no more get rid of the authority which these feelings involve than we can get rid of space and time in our consciousness of the material world. But feelings which involve authority are found to involve much more. And here it is that the faculty of faith with its forms comes in. By means of these it explicates what is contained in these faculties or states of consciousness. And what are these forms? They are none other than what Kant calls the postulates of the pure reason, — God, freedom, and immortality. In other words, Faith constructs for us a world of free immortal beings, living and moving and having their being in God, just as Understanding constructs for us a world of transient, necessitated things, determined by the categories of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. And there is no reason to doubt the validity of the one more than of the other. To Kant, indeed, God, freedom, and immortality are mere postulates, revealing and shaping no reality; but this is because he does not recognize that we have any moral sense giving us experience for these terms to determine. As soon as we recognize that we have a moral sense, and that this sense gives us the content of moral experience, we at once see how those forms, which with Kant remained empty postulates, may determine the content and result in a real moral world.

It is curious and interesting in this connection to see how Kant, from his failure to see that the moral sense has a content of which God, freedom, and immortality are the forms, has been obliged to let his philosophy fall asunder into two disconnected parts, both of which are imperfect and which do not supplement each other. In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant gives us a theory of experience of the world as known, without doing anything to prove to us that it is not a subjective delusion entirely dependent for its character upon the nature of our consciousness. In his Critique of the Practical Reason again he finds the grounds of Morality in a mere "categorical imperative," which hangs in the air, and is not supported by any metaphysical order of being. He sees, indeed, that this imperative, in order to be rational, demands three postulates, — God, freedom, and immortality, — but whether these postulates correspond to any reality he is unable to say. He does not recognize that the moral sense and the forms of faith supply that very world of things in themselves which is needed to complete the phenomenal world and at the same time to supply the laws of ethical life. Accordingly he does not see that things in themselves are and must be free, moral, and eternal beings, and that the phenomenal world is the result of their activity. Hence his world, like his philosophy, breaks up into two disconnected parts, the world of theory having no connection with the world of practice, and both being left without any eternal foundation. The effect of this upon the philosophy of the last hundred years has been in many ways most unfortunate. It has broken up the world of man's consciousness; it has induced a despair of ever understanding the world; it has discredited philosophy and brought about a decay of interest in it; it has led to a low materialism in science, to the divorce of ethics from any theory of the world, and to the decay of religion and the religious consciousness which rests upon the conviction that the world at its foundation — that is, in its essential being — is free, divine, and moral.

It is a very common reproach cast against philosophy that its history is a history of ruined systems; that instead of advancing in an orderly way, like the experimental sciences, it has had in every epoch to begin afresh. One reason for this is very obvious: the world to be explained is different at different epochs, and so is the form of the explanation demanded; but this is not the only reason. A far deeper and more potent one is this, — that all the philosophies hitherto have failed to take due account of one most important element in the nature and theory of the world, namely the content of faith; they have left that to religion, which has nearly always stood aside of, and in opposition to, philosophy. It may be said that there is one very marked and important exception to this rule, namely the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Age. This, it may be said, took account of the content of faith. While this is in one sense true, it is so only when faith is used in a peculiar sense, one largely different from that in which it is used in this paper. In scholasticism " faith " means, not a faculty of the human soul, but an acceptance by the reason of certain facts and dogmas held to have been communicated by a special revelation from God. As a consequence of this, philosophy was not extended so as to include religion and the data of faith; rather were religion and theology placed in opposition to philosophy and the latter made merely a handmaid of the former. I think, then, we may say that philosophy has never taken account of faith as an integral faculty of the mind, or correlated its data as such, with those of the other faculties. The world of philosophy, therefore, has always been an imperfect world. It is true, indeed, that numerous attempts have been made to arrive at the forms of faith without taking account of the faculty of faith. Such are the so-called proofs of the existence of God, which have played so important a part in philosophy, but whose insufficiency Kant so clearly showed in the Critique of Pure Reason. Since this was done, the existence of God, and therewith of freedom and immortality, have become, to say the least, problematic. Those who still believe in them do so either from old habit and association or because they believe that these things are a matter of direct divine revelation. For nearly all others they are either implicitly or explicitly obsolete notions; and since these are the notions that give meaning to life, life is suffering from the want of them.

If I am told that these practical needs should not be allowed to have any weight in a matter of pure philosophy, I can only reply that no advance in philosophy or anything else has been made, save in answer to a practical need. At the present time it has become evident that there is no true way of reaching any certainty with regard to God, freedom, and immortality, unless we can show that they are involved in actual experience, that we have a faculty whereby they are directly cognized. Neither revelation nor inference will help us, since they are both meaningless without the experience referred to.

Now I think I have shown that in the data of the moral sense, as determined by the forms of faith, we have the existence of a moral and metaphysical world — the two terms mean the same thing — assured to us. It is no longer either a matter of hearsay or a postulate; it is a reality and the truest of all realities. I am, indeed, very far from supposing that I have worked out this great truth in all its details or given it a completely scientific form; but I think I have shown its presuppositions and bearings, and likewise its necessity in order to give unity and completeness to our view of the world, and meaning to our lives. Having now shown what faith, as a faculty of the human soul, reveals to us, let us next try to see what it commands us to do. The word " command," I must admit, is here not a happy one, if it be taken in its literal sense; for faith gives no commands of any kind: it simply reveals to us a world of reality, with which, for good or for evil, we are inseparably bound up and leaves us to draw our own conclusions as to what conduct is best with reference to that world. Only in this sense does it command us. What we have now to consider is, what the moral world, being such as it is, revealed to us by faith, suggests in the way of conduct.

The moral world, then, is a world of eternal beings, having their root and origin in one Eternal Being of infinite perfection, which includes boundless freedom. All these beings are so connected with the Perfect Being that he is at once their deepest form and necessarily, therefore, their goal. Here we must adopt a line of thought with which the philosophy of Aristotle has made us familiar. That thinker tells us that the state is prior in nature to the individual, which is only a particular case of a universal law, namely that the end is prior in nature to the beginning, for any individual. Just as it is the political characteristic in man that makes possible at once the civil institution and civilized man, so it is the divine characteristic or form in him that makes possible the Kingdom of Heaven and the divine man. Indeed, it is the divine form immanent in the world, that, in working itself out, is gradually reducing it to the image of God.

Man, then, is man, because he has in him that divine form. In this he differs from all the rest of the creation known to us. Having this form, he is free. But he possesses this form only in an undeveloped form, and his freedom, therefore, is potential, rather than actual. Man is not free but he has the power to become free by actualizing the divine form in himself. This is the strange condition in which man finds himself, — a condition which gives rise to all the endless discussions in regard to the freedom of the will. It is entirely possible to maintain that a man is free and also that he is not free, the facts being that he is not actually free until he frees himself. It is difficult to express this in intelligible language. He cannot choose until he does choose: it is in the very act of choosing that he becomes free to choose. Perhaps we may make this somewhat clearer by a parallel case which 'occurs in perception. When I perceive that this paper is white I make a judgment to that effect; the judgment and the perception are one and the same thing. I do not perceive and then, having perceived, judge. I can neither perceive till I have judged, nor judge till I have perceived. In the judgment the subject is not subject nor predicate predicate until the judgment is pronounced. It is in the judgment that I become first aware of them and of their relation. In the same way, before I choose I am incapable of choosing: my will is absolutely determined one way or the other by what we call motives, generally assignable. When, on the other hand, I do choose, my choice is entirely free. Indeed, I have no method of telling which is the stronger motive center. I have made my choice. The stronger motive is the one I choose to follow. It is strong because I follow it, and I follow it because it is strong. In one and the same act I impart to a motive all the strength it has, and follow it because it is strong. I can never say, This I recognize to be the stronger motive, and therefore I must, or shall, follow it. In recognizing it as the stronger, I have made it the stronger. This is the paradox of the will, which has a perfect parallel in the paradox of the intellect. The fact is that our spiritual powers, those that express the divine form, are not conditioned by before and after; if they were, freedom would be utterly impossible. It may be said, Does the will then act without motives, spontaneously and blindly? Are acts of will purely arbitrary acts? Here we must make a distinction. What are usually called motives, and regarded as determining the will, do not determine it at all and, in so far, it may be said to act without motives. But there is another motive which is forever present, namely freedom, and from this it cannot possibly escape. But what is freedom? It is simply the activity of the will itself. In saying, therefore, that freedom is the motive of the will, we are simply saying that the will is its own motive. It moves because it moves; it is determined because it determines itself. It is moved by motives because it makes the motives. It wills itself, its own actuality, and that alone. In so far as it does, or seems to do, aught beyond this, it is not in reality willing at all; in so far as actions are determined by natural laws without the interference of the will, there is, in fact, dreaming, — a mere hypnotic state-consciousness, — without will.

Man's will, the form of freedom in him, is his essential self. This will is a form, which being infinite cannot be realized in any assignable time. The process is therefore an everlasting one, tending forever toward a goal that can never be reached. That goal is God, who is the Perfect Will, Freedom completely actualized. Seeing, then, that faith shows us to be sons of God, whose form is divine freedom, or the complete realization of the will, and seeing that the complete realization of the form of a thing is the truth of the thing, we may state the whole duty of man in a word, namely, Be your true self, or Be a will, or Be free, or Be perfect as the Father which is in Heaven is perfect. These imperatives all mean the same thing, and that thing is at once the essence of all religions and of all true ethical systems. It is not my purpose here to enter into the details of the manner in which the imperatives may be obeyed, or to lay down a code of ethical rules or precepts of perfection. I merely wish to say that faith reveals to us a world in which all life is eternal life, and since we are in that world, we are in duty bound to live for eternity. This is the point which this whole paper is intended to emphasize. At the present day, having set aside and ignored the data of faith, because the nature of faith has been misunderstood, we are trying to construct formulae and ideals of life without God, freedom, and immortality. We are saying, " The present phase of existence is all; let us see how we can make the most of it," and are, in consequence, tending to a low prudential utilitarianism. It is true that we are still so far influenced by old habits and thoughts, forms derived from a view of the world which included the data of faith, that we neither see the end we are making for nor hasten toward it as rapidly as we should otherwise do; but these habits and thought forms, if unsupported by the total views to which they belong, will inevitably sooner or later die out, and then the race to the new goal will proceed with headlong speed. I see no other way to prevent the result than by restoring to human consciousness the content of faith, by showing that God, freedom, and immortality are not motives derived from a special external revelation, but that they are integral parts of the human consciousness, as such. I do not, of course, mean to say that every human being is born with these conceptions clearly defined in his mind — very far from it; I only mean that they are there in the same condition in which all other conceptions originally are, a condition of potentiality or latency. They can be brought out into clearness only as the forms of the understanding are brought out by actual experience. As the forms of the understanding are evolved through contact with the world of sense, so the forms of faith are evolved by contact with morality and religion, and particularly of the latter. What we need above all things at the present day, is a comprehension of the religious world, — not merely an intellectual comprehension of it, but a comprehension of it with the whole being. We must be able to enter into the consciousness of Isaiah, of Jesus, of the Buddha, of St. Francis, St. Bernard, and of all those to whom the moral world has been a clear reality. And not only so, but we must enter into the whole religious consciousness, that which underlies and includes the consciousness of all such men as these, the religious consciousness of the world. It is in this and through this that our conceptions of the data of faith will find definiteness and fullness, and that the moral world will gain reality for us. And another great and far-reaching result will accrue from the true view of faith as a faculty of the human soul, namely the insight that all religion is one religion, that all revelations are portions of the one continuous revelation which is being made to and through humanity; that they are aspects of the spiritual world, in which are all reality, and ultimately all truth. The world at the present day is still divided up into a number of religious sects which oppose and paralyze each other, and in doing so prevent the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven. Each sect chains a special revelation, and standing upon that, condemns or ignores all other revelations. Thus the spiritual force of the world is wasted in vain controversies about external matters, instead of being turned to realize the inner and eternal world and to make the content of it the norm and guide of life. Thus philosophy and religion, State and Church, are divorced, and the harmony and the unity of life broken up. Here in America we frequently, and with entire justice, congratulate ourselves that we have completely separated State and Church, and forbidden the one to interfere in the affairs of the other. But we ought to be fully aware that this is but a temporary condition of things, rendered necessary because the Church has placed itself in a false position, by claiming to stand upon something which does not correspond to any human faculty, — upon merely external revelation. As soon as there is a church which men feel and recognize to be the embodiment and organ of something revealed to themselves, this opposition will of necessity cease and Church and State will stand to each other in an organic relation. Then there will no longer be any conflict between the two as to which should undertake the work of education; then there will be no attempt to find a means of teaching morality apart from religion, no effort to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, without rendering unto God the things that are God's.

Ladies and gentlemen, the World's Fair, which has furnished the occasion for bringing us together, is a marvellous exhibition of what the genius of men can make of the material world to satisfy the demands of his own nature to furnish the conditions under which he may realize the divine form or image in himself. But what if, when the conditions are given, the end for which they exist be not realized, what if we stop short with the conditions, satisfied with them, and never use them to raise ourselves toward our true end? What if we never at all become conscious of that high world in which our end lies? What if God, freedom, and immortality be entirely forgotten in all our doings, or remain matters of mere hearsay? What, then, would the World's Fair be worth?

You probably all know that the last Paris exhibition furnished the starting point for a great idealistic reformatory movement in France, a movement which bids fair to renovate her whole moral life. Is it too much to hope that the Chicago World's Fair may, through its Auxiliary, accomplish something of the same sort for the United States, that a movement may now be started which, by claiming faith as an integral part of human nature, and proving that it makes us certain of God, freedom, and immortality, shall give unity, consistency, and impregnability to religion, and make it the fortress of ethical life?

_______________

Notes:

1. A paper read by Mr. Davidson at a Philosophical Convention held at Chicago.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

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APPENDIX A

The following prospectus of one of Mr. Davidson's courses of lectures in New York is printed as an illustration of the kind of material he deemed it advisable to bring before the Breadwinners, and of the range of his own studies. It is printed in the belief that it may be of use, not only to students of the subject outside the Universities and Churches, but also to those within them who wish to become familiar with the vast range of the literature of the subject.

THE ORIGINS OF MODERN THOUGHT

A SERIES OF TWENTY LECTURES WITH A LIST OF BOOKS FOR COLLATERAL READING

By THOMAS DAVIDSON

THE ORIGINS OF MODERN THOUGHT AND BELIEF


The aim of this course of lectures is to investigate the nature and validity of modern thought by tracing it to its origin in the past. This is now, for the first time, rendered possible through the results achieved in the last half century by archaeological and historical research and literary criticism, — results which have done much to set the past in its true light and deliver us from the weight of its authority. The course consists of twenty lectures, ten on ancient, and ten on mediaeval and modern thought, closing with an attempt to outline the tendencies of future thought.

I — ANCIENT THOUGHT

Lecture I — Introductory


In what sense should, and must, past thought influence us? True and false conservatism. Need for a thorough and unsparing criticism of tradition in thought and practice, especially at present. " New occasions teach new duties " and creeds. The evil of over-conservatism and over-radicalism. All advance either by evolution or revolution: the difference. The relation of the United States, as a nation, to past and present thought. The sources of modern thought and practice: Hebrew prophetism, Greek philosophy, Roman statesmanship, Muslim scholasticism, Jewish and Christian scholasticism, Germanic paganism.

Lecture II — Hebrew Prophecy

Its origin, affinities, and nature as shown by the higher criticism. The central trinity of Hebrew concepts: monotheism, Messianism, holiness. Its gradual evolution under social influences. Authentic Hebrew history begins with Samuel; so does prophecy. Tendencious reconstruction of previous history out of myths and legends derived from various sources. Character of Hebrew historical records. The worship of Yahweh. The central conflict of Hebrew history: church and state; authority and freedom.

Lecture III — Hebrew Prophecy

Hebrews and Canaanites under David and Solomon. The religious influence of these men. Priests, prophets, and wise men: their origin and functions. Wisdom literature. Division of Hebrew kingdom. Israel and Judah and their relations. The civic and prophetic parties. Nomadism of the latter. Elijah and Elisha. Gradual growth of monolatry, then of monotheism. Song of Solomon. Amos and Hosea, and the state of Israelitish thought at the time of the Captivity.

Lecture IV — Hebrew Prophecy

The ideas of Messianism and holiness. Isaiah and his influence. The Law. The Book of Deuteronomy and Josiah's reformation. Its failure and the result of it. Prophecy and monotheism triumphant. Yahweh becomes the universal God, and the Jews his chosen people. The creed of Judah at the Captivity. Why different from that of Israel. Jeremiah and the breach with ritual. The fate of the ten tribes. They were not "lost." The return, and the "second Isaiah." Ezekiel and the rise of apocalypticism. The end of true prophecy.

Lecture V — Hebrew Prophecy

Replaced by scribism and a written law. The post-exilic theocracy: its origin. The Law, introduced by Ezra. The Hexateuch and its composition. Origin of the Old Testament canon: its divisions and their order — Prophets, Law, Hagiographa. The wisdom literature: Job, Proverbs, Qoheleth, etc. The Psalms: their date and use. Post-exilic Messianic notions. The Messiah unknown to the Old Testament. Judea under the Persians and under the Greeks.

Lecture VI — Hebrew Prophecy

In conflict with foreign ideas. The Dispersion and its doctrines. Knows no personal, temporal Messiah. Replaced by Logos and Sophia. The Maccabean Rising and the Chasidim. The Book of Daniel. Sadducees and Pharisees. Babylonian and Persian influences and notions: angels, personal immortality, heavenly Messiah, Messianic age, final judgment, eternal hell, with devils. Apocryphal works in Hebrew and Greek: their importance for the understanding of Christianity. Great value of the Book of Enoch. Infiltration of Greek thought. Roman conquest of Judea, and its effect on Messianism. Condition of Hebrew thought in the century before Christ; Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven. The purpose of Jesus. The two elements in his teaching, — righteousness and Messianism. Their relation and conflict. The causes of his immediate failure and ultimate success. Jewish and pagan Christians. Paul's influence. The New Testament: its origin and purpose.

Lecture VII — Greek Philosophy

Judaism and Hellenism; revelation and reason; miraculism and nature. Epochs in Greek thought: mythology, theology, philosophy. Origin of the last: its problem and purpose. Fate and the gods. Necessity and convention. Evolution of thought from naive objectivism to pure subjectivism. Thales and Anaxagoras. Realism and idealism. Being and Becoming: their origin and relation. The One and the Many, and the puzzle they offer. Zeno's paradoxes and what they prove. Monism and atomism; both equally lead to subjectivism.

Lecture VIII — Greek Philosophy

The Sophists and the triumph of subjectivism. Ancient Kantianism. Decay of mythology and theology and of the institutions founded upon them. Naturalism and spiritualism an insoluble dualism for the Greeks: the reason of this. The Greek "up-clearing," and its effects. "Man the measure of all things." The force of moral authority transferred to the inner world. Socrates, the archsophist, inventor of science and of moral freedom. The nature and conditions of these. The Socratic method and its results.

Lecture IX — Greek Philosophy

The true Socrates, freed from Platonic additions. His contributions to humanity. The irony of Socrates.

Lecture X — Greek Philosophy

Plato, and his distortion of Socrates's thought. By his poetic ideas, replacing the old gods, he bequeaths to the world a hopeless and unnecessary dualism, leading to metaphysics, asceticism, mysticism, obscurantism, spiritual aristocracy and authority, unfreedom, romanticism, etc. His doctrine of universals. Champions Being as against Becoming. His Republic: its meaning and effects on subsequent thought and practice. Aristotle, the champion of Becoming. His explanation of change. Form and matter; energy and potence. His God: how arrived at; utterly empty and useless, except to lead to mysticism and Nirvana. Aristotle's world scheme, and its effect upon thought and science. He is the last great Greek thinker. After him Hellenism passes into cosmopolitanism. Stoicism and epicureanism: religions rather than philosophies. The character of post- Aristotelian thought: its mysticism, paving the way for mediaevalism.

II — MEDIEVAL AND MODERN THOUGHT

Lecture XI — Union of Hebrew Prophecy and Greek Philosophy


This is the source of mediaeval thought, which starts definitely with the Nicene Creed (a.d. 325). Greeks and Jews in Alexandria and other cities. The Synagogue and the School (1 Corinthians i, 22). The Logos doctrine and its double origin. Philo, the Jew, and his attempts to reconcile Moses and Plato — Jewish theism and Greek idealism — by allegory. The effect of this. The importance of Hellenic Judaism.

Primitive Christianity an ethical law and a Messianic hope. Based on what were believed to be facts. Innocent of metaphysics, theology, or dogma. Paul and rabbinical Christianity: its extension to the pagan world. Johannine Christianity and the intrusion of Greek (mystical) thought, necessitating dogma. Nature of dogma. Primitive Christianity and the Apostles' Creed, which contains no sign of Greek thought.

Lecture XII — Union of Hebrew Prophecy and Greek Philosophy

Eastern (Greek) and Western (Jewish) Christianity: pantheism and theism. The former formulated by Origen, who acknowledges two Christianities, an historical and a spiritual (Matthew xiii, 2). Origen's influence. Personal and non-personal Messianism. The latter takes form in neo-Platonism. The relation of this to Christianity: dogmatism and mysticism. The Christian and neo-Platonic trinities. The neo- Platonic world scheme and its gradual intrusion into Christianity, causing asceticism, mysticism, monasticism, and decay of science. Mithra worship, and its effect on Christianity. Gnosticism: takes final form in Manichaeism (Mani, a.d. 215-276). Nature, spread, and lasting effects of this. Gradual decay of primitive Christianity under Greek and gnostic influences. Faith vs. Metaphysics. Heresy. The New Testament canon: its use to prevent heresy.

Lecture XIII — Roman Statesmanship

The legal element in Christianity. Origin and character of the Roman State. The Empire and its need for a universal religion. Religion and State in the ancient world. Vain attempts to find an imperial religion, and their sad results. The causes of the success of Christianity. Its union with the Empire, giving definiteness and force of law to Hebrew beliefs clothed in Greek abstraction. The dogmas of Christianity thus claim both divine and human authority. Gradual formulation of the fundamental dogmas of Catholic Christianity, — trinity and incarnation. Reason abdicates in favor of faith, and the Middle Age begins.

Lecture XIV — Roman Statesmanship

Augustine lays the basis of Latin Christianity by incorporating into it elements from Roman legalism, neo-Platonic (Plotinian) mysticism and Manichasism. His notions of atonement, redemption, and evil. The secularization of the Church leads to a reaction in the form of monasticism. The nature and meaning of this: triumph of (Platonic) supernaturalism. Growth of mysticism. Its connection with the works of (Pseudo-) Dionysius Areopagita. Their character, origin, and effects upon the Church. Contradictory elements in the Church's creed: world renunciation and world rule. The Eastern and Western Empire and Church. The inroads of the barbarians. St. Benedict and Western monasticism: contempt for the world.

(Digression) What is it in human nature that makes it possible for the supernatural and mystical to triumph over the natural and rational?

Lecture XV — Muslim Scholasticism

Origin, nature, and spread of Islam. It is mainly Judaism carried to its extreme logical results. The Christian (Ebionite and Nestorian), Mazdean (Sabian and Manichaean) and Arabic pagan elements in it. It denies the two fundamental Catholic dogmas (Koran, Sura cxii). The Koran: its origin and character. Arab philosophy: its origin and character. A compound of Aristotelianism and neo-Platonism. Eastern and Western schools, and the great names in both. All the problems of later Christian scholasticism discussed in the Arab schools. Arab additions to thought. The ultimate triumph of blind orthodoxy in both schools. The dogmatic Sunnites and the mystic Shi'ites. The Sufis. Islam the true Unitarianism.

Lecture XVI — Jewish and Christian Scholasticism

Effect of Islam upon Jewish thought. Ibn Gabirol (Avicebron) and Maimonides (forerunners of Spinoza). The Fons Vitcz and Morek Nebukhim. Effect of Islam on Christianity compels it to give systematic formulation to its dogmas. The result, — scholasticism. The relation of this to patristicism and mysticism. Irish and Anglo-Saxon learning. Charlemagne, Alcuin, and the revival of learning. The ideals of Charlemagne. Gregory VII and his supernatural programme. St. Anselm, St. Bernard, and the reaction of Roscellinus and Abelard. Joachim of Floris and St. Francis. Europe sinking into supernaturalism when roused by Islam. Islam the bearer of civilization for nearly five hundred years.

Lecture XVII — Christian Scholasticism

Paved the way for rationalism. The epochs of scholasticism and their respective characteristics. Philosophy the handmaid of theology. Scotus Erigena, and the introduction of mysticism into the West. The struggle between theism and pantheism. The Platonic doctrine of uni- versals and the Christian Trinity. Realism and nominalism. Joachim's Eternal Gospel, and the introduction of Aristotle into Western thought. The far-reaching effects of both. Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Dante.

Lecture XVIII — Germanic Paganism

Nurse of individualism. Latin and German; Authority and Freedom. Effect of Arian and Catholic Christianity upon the Germans. The Holy Roman Empire. German mysticism: its nature and importance. Germanic reaction against Latin mysticism. The Reformation (revolt of reason) and the Renaissance (revolt of nature). Their effects. The growing demand for individual liberty in thought, affection, and act. Conditions of this. Savonarola and Bruno, Servetus. Rise of modern thought. Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Descartes. Spinoza and Berkeley. Hume and the complete breach with past thought constructions. The response in English, Scotch, and German philosophies. The reconstructive rationalism of Kant. Philosophy in earnest. Voltaire and Rousseau. Catholic and Protestant reaction after the French Revolution. Neo-Catholicism and Hegelianism. Rosmini. Return to mysticism and despotism. Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and the doctrine of evolution. Agnosticism and philopistism.

Lecture XIX — The Conflict between Ancient and Modern Thought

The characteristics of the two. Supernaturalism and naturalism. The gradual decay of the former and growth of the latter. The effects of physical science, historical research, and higher criticism. The "up-clearing." The contents of the deposit of ancient thought, and its present influence. What of it must pass away, and what be retained. The spiritual results of past experience, thought, and belief will remain, but they will assume new forms to suit present thought, and give birth to new, free institutions. Influx of Hindu thought.

Lecture XX — The New Thought

Its relation to the old. Old thought theocentric; new thought anthropocentric. " Man is man, and master of his fate." The effect of this view upon thought and institutions; upon the individual consciousness; upon science, ethics, religion, sociology, education. The division between Church and State healed. Labor in the future. What we may learn from the Orient. The spiritual promises of the past more than fulfilled in the present. The Heaven of the future the republic of free, pure spirits, ever growing through mutual intimacy and help.

COLLATERAL READING

Those who wish to make a study of the subject of these lectures will find help in the following works, which have been selected chiefly on account of their accessibility:

[b]For Lecture I


1. Condorcet, J. A. N. Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique du Progres de l'Esprit Humain.

2. Comte, A. Systeme de Politique Positive.

3. Lecky, W. E. H. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe.

4. White, A. D. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology.

For Lecture II-VI

5. Driver, S. R. Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament.

6. Driver, S. R. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy.

7. Driver, S. R. Isaiah, His Life and Times.

8. Smith, W. R. The Religion of the Semites.

9. Smith, W. R. The Prophets of Israel.

10. Smith, W. R. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church.

11. Wellhausen, J. Die Composition des Hexateuchs.

12. Wellhausen, J. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels.

13. Wellhausen, J. Israelitische und Judische Geschichte.

14. Cornill, H. Der Israelitische Prophetismus.

15. Holzinger, H. Einleitung in den Hexateuch.

16. Haupt, P. The Polychrome Bible.

17. Renan, E. L'Histoire du Peuple d'Israel.

18. Renan, E. Le Cantique des Cantiques.

19. Renan, E. Les Origines du Christianisme.

20. Ewald, H. Commentary on the Prophets of the Old Testament.

21. Somerwell, R. Parallel History of the Jewish Monarchy.

22. Oort and Hooykaas. The Bible for Learners.

23. Schrader, E. The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament.

24. Cheyne, T. K. Jeremiah, His Life and Times.

25. Cheyne, T. K. The Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter.

26. Cheyne, T. K. Introduction to the Book of Isaiah.

27. Cheyne, T. K. Job and Solomon (Wisdom Literature).

28. Kuenen, A. The Religion of Israel to the Fall of the Jewish State.

29. Ryle, H. E. The Canon of the Old Testament.

30. Wildeboer, G. The Origin of the Canon of the Old Testament.

31. Schiirer, E. A History of the Jewish people in the Time of Jesus Christ.

32. Charles, R. H. The Book of Enoch.

33. Keim, T. The History of Jesus of Nazara.

34. Westcott, B. F. Introduction to the Study of the Gospels.

35. Strauss, D. F. The Life of Jesus.

36. Hamack, A. History of Dogma.

37. Harnack, A. Das Neue Testament urns Jahr 200.

38. Harnack, A. Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur.

39. Weizsacker, C. Das Apostolische Zeitalter.

40. McGiffert, A. C. The Apostolic Age.

41. Pfleiderer, O. Paulinism.

42. Julicher, A. Einleitung in das Neue Testament.

43. Brandt, W. Die Evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Christentums.

For Lectures VII-X

44. Zeller, E. Die Philosophie der Griechen.

45. Ueberweg-Heinze. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. 2 vols.

46. Byk, S. Vorsokratische Philosophie.

47. Marshall, J. A Short History of Greek Philosophy.

48. Gomperz, T. Griechische Denker.

49. Davidson, T. The Education of the Greek People.

50. Dickinson, G. L. The Greek View of Life.

51. Grote, G. A History of Greece, Chapter LXVII.

52. Xenophon. Memorabilia of Socrates.

53. Fouillee, A. La Philosophie de Socrate.

54. Pfleiderer, O. Sokrates und Plato dargestellt.

55. Plato. Dialogues (translated by B. Jowett).

56. Bussell, F. W. The School of Plato.

57. Grote, G. Aristotle.

58. Grant, A. Aristotle.

59. Rosmini-Serbati, A. Aristotele Esposto e Esaminato.

For Lectures XI-XIV

60. Drummond, J. Philo Judaeus, or the Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy.

61. Heinze, M. Die Lehre vom Logos in der griechischen Philosophie.

62. The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Translated).

63. Bigg, C. The Christian Platonists of Alexandria.

64. Hatch, E. The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures, 1888).

65. Schaff, Ph. History of the Christian Church.

66. Muller, K. Kirchengeschichte.

67. Richter, A. Neu-Platonische Studien.

68. Flugel, G. Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften.

69. Kessler, K. Mani. Forschungen iiber die Manichaische Religion.

70. Harnack, A. Monasticism, its Ideals and its History.

71. Montalambert, C. F. The Monks of the West.

72. Gibbon, E. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

73. Grandgeorge, L. St. Augustin et le Neo-Platonisme.

74. Frothingham, A. L. Stephen Bar Sudaili, the Syrian Mystic, and the Book of Hierotheos.

For Lecture XV

75. Muir, W. The Life of Mahomet and History of Islam.

76. Sprenger, A. The Life and Teaching of Mohammed.

77. The Koran. Translations by Sale, Palmer, Rodwell, Lane-Poole.

78. Nbldeke, T. Geschichte des Qorans.

79. Miiller, A. Der Islam im Morgen- und Abendlande.

80. Schmolders, A. Essai sur les Ecoles Philosophiques chez les Arabes.

81. Renan, E. Averroes et l'Averroisme.

82. Dieterici, F. Die Philosophic der Araber im X. Jahrhundert n. Chr.

83. Steiner, H. Die Mu'taziliten, oder die Freidenker im Islam.

84. Syed Ameer Ali. Life and Teachings of Mohammed.

85. Gobineau, Cte. de. Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale.

86. Wellhausen, J. Reste arabischen Heidentumes.

For Lectures XVI-XVII

87. Stockl, A. Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters.

88. Haureau, B. Histoire de la Philosophic Scolastique.

89. Von Eicken, H. Geschichte und System der Mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung.

90. Jourdain, A. Recherches Critiques sur l'Age et l'Origine des Traductions Latines d'Aristote.

91. Steinschneider, M. Die Hebraischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters.

92. Baumker, C. Avencebrolis (Ibn Gabirol) Fons Vitas.

93. Guttmann, J. Die Philosophic des Salomon ibn Gabirol.

94. Munk S. Guide des Egares, Traite de Theologie et de Philosophic par Moise ben Maimoun, dit Maimonide.

95. West, A. F. Alcuin and the Rise of the Christian Schools.

96. Bryce, J. The Holy Roman Empire.

97. Gfrorer, A. F. Pabst Gregorius VII und sein Zeitalter.

98. Scheffel, J. V. Ekkehard, eine Geschichte aus dem Zehnten Jahrhundert.

99. Sabatier, A. Vie de S. Francois d'Assise.

100. Picavet, F. Roscelin, Philosophe et Theologien.

101. Remusat, C. de. Abelard.

102. Deutsch, S. M. Peter Abalard, ein kritischer Theologe des zwblften Jahrhunderts.

103. Cousin V. Fragments de Philosophic du Moyen Age.

104. Reuter, H. Geschichte der religiosen Aufklarung im Mittelalter.

105. Talamo, S. L'Aristotelismo della Scolastica.

106. Prantl, C. Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande.

107. Tocco, F. L'Eresia ne4 Medio Evo.

108. Vaughan, R. W. B. The Life and Labors of St. Thomas of Aquin.

109. Dante. New Life, Banquet, and Divine Comedy,

110. Gorres, F. Die Christliche Mystik.

111. Vaughan, R. A. Hours with the Mystics.

112. Preger, W. Geschichte der Deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter.

113. Denifle, P. H. Die Universitaten des Mittelalters bis 1400.

114. Krumbacher, K. Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur (a.d. 527-1453).

115. Davidson, T. The Philosophical System of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.

116. Denzinger, H. Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum.

For Lectures XVIII-XIX

117. Anderson, R. B. Norse Mythology.

118. Zeuss, K. Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstamme.

119. Ueberweg-Heinze. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic, Part III.

120. Villari, P. La Civilta Latina e la Civilta Germanica, in Saggi di Storia, di Critica e di Politica (pp. 37-93).

121. Fisher, G. P. The Reformation.

122. Symonds, J. A. The Renaissance in Italy.

123. Villari, P. Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola.

124. Frith, J. Life of Giordano Bruno.

125. Fischer, K. Geschichte der neuern Philosophie.

126. Bacon, F. Novum Organum Scientiarum.

127. Hobbes, T. Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Authority of Government.

128. Descartes, R. Discourse on Method and Metaphysical Meditations.

129. Spinoza, B. Ethics and Theologico-Political Treatise.

130. Locke, J. An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.

131. Hume, D. Treatise on Human Nature.

132. Morley, J. Voltaire and Rousseau.

133. Davidson, T. Rousseau, and Education according to Nature.

134. Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason.

135. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Mind and Logic.

136. Schopenhauer, A. The World as Will and Idea (Vorstellung).

137. Darwin, C. The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.

138. Comte, A. Cours de Philosophie Positive.

139. Spencer, H. First Principles and Principles of Biology.

140. Von Hartmann, E. Die Philosophie des Unbewussten and Die Selbstzersetzung des Christentums.

For Lecture XX

141. Goethe, J. W. Faust and Wilhelm Meister.

142. Michel, H. L'ld^e de l'Etat.

143. Drummond, H. The Ascent of Man.

144. Huxley, T. H. Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews.

145. Hodgson, S. H. The Metaphysic of Experience.

146. Marx, K. Capital.

147. Wundt, W. System der Philosophie and Grundriss der Psychologie.

148. Drews, A. Die Deutsche Speculation seit Kant.

149. Nietzsche, F. Thus spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil.

150. Royce, J. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy and The Conception of God.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

Postby admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:15 am

APPENDIX B: LECTURES AND INTERPRETATIONS BY THOMAS DAVIDSON

I. Courses of Lectures


1. Athens, Ancient and Modern (stereopticon)

2. History of Greek Sculpture (stereopticon)

3. Modern Greece

4. Greek Moralists

• AEschylus (two lectures)
• Socrates (one lecture)
• Plato (one lecture)
• Aristotle (two lectures)

5. Spiritual Thought (one lecture) and its Heroes (ten lectures)

• Aristotle
• Philo Judaeus
• Plotinus and his School
• Dionysius Areopagita
• Thomas Aquinas
• Bonaventura
• Thomas a Kempis
• Dante
• Savonarola
• Giordano Bruno

6. Goethe's Faust

7. Rosmini's Philosophy

8. Greek Education

9. Jesuit Education

II. Single Lectures

A. On Greek Subjects


1. Are the Homeric Legends Greek?

2. The Home of Clytemnestra

3. The Growth of Art Ideas among the Greeks

4. Sappho

5. The Irony of Plato

6. Aristotle's Debt to Plato

7. Greek Education up to Aristotle

8. Aristotle on Education

9. The Greek Theory of the Drama

10. The Fragments of Heraclitus

11. The Niobe Group

B. On Medieval Subjects

1. The Revival of Thought in the Thirteenth Century

2. The Teachers of Dante

3. The Convivio (Banquet) of Dante

4. Dante's Guides in the Spirit World

5. The Nibelungen Lied

C. On Modern Subjects

1. Ontology

2. Intellectual Piety

3. Idols of the Theater

4. Animal and Man

5. Religion and Science

6. The Ultimate Creed

7. Divine Love

8. The Functions of a Church

9. Acceptance

10. Detachment

11. Practical Duties following from a Spiritual View of Life

12. Inner Moral Life

13. Sin

14. Retribution (text, The Laocoon Group)

15. The Immortality of the Human Soul

16. The Meaning of Death

17. Sentimentality

18. The Methods of Progress

19. Practical Reforms

20. Some False Assumptions of Present Reformers

21. The Missing Social Link

22. Cooperation vs. Socialism and Anarchism

23. Meum et Teum

24. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"

25. The Relation of Property to Liberty

26. The Limits of the State's Competence

27. Education

28. Life Education

29. The Education of Girls

30. School Exhibitions

31. Reading with a View to Culture

32. New Life

33. The Fellowship of the New Life

34. The Significance of Art

35. The Nature and Causes of our Social Difficulties

36. Social Remedies in the Light of History

III. Detailed Interpretation of Works in Philosophy and Literature

A. Philosophy


1. Plato's Republic

2. Plato's Timaeus

3. Plato's Phaedo

4. Aristotle's Metaphysics

5. Aristotle's Physics

6. Aristotle's Psychology (De Anima)

7. Aristotle's Ethics

8. Aristotle's Politics

9. Aristotle's Poetics

10. Plotinus's Works (Enneads)

11. Porphyry's Sentences

12. Proclus's Theological Instruction

13. St. Bonaventura's Soul's Progress in God

14. Rosmini's Philosophical System

15. Rosmini's Origin of Ideas

16. Rosmini's Logic

17. Rosmini's Dialectic

18. Rosmini's Psychology

19. Rosmini's Anthropology

20. Rosmini's Ethics and Politics

21. Rosmini's Theosophy

22. T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics

B. Literature

1. AEschylus's Oresteia

2. AEschylus's Prometheus

3. Sophocles's OEdipus Tyrannus

4. Sophocles's Antigone

5. Dante's Divine Comedy

6. Goethe's Faust

7. Tennyson's In Memoriam
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

Postby admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:16 am

APPENDIX C

Among Mr. Davidson's published books there are two which have unusual interest for the general reader. They are his Prolegomena to Tennyson's "In Memoriam," and The Parthenon Frieze.

Davidson considered In Memoriam to be not only the greatest English poem of the nineteenth century, but "one of the great world poems, worthy to be placed in the same list with the Oresteia, the Divina Commedia, and Faust''' He wished to show that In Memoriam lay " in the chief current of the world's thought "; that it was " the record of the shattering and the rebuilding of the moral world in a man's soul."

The Prolegomena, which was published in Boston in 1889, is considered by some readers to be Davidson's best book. It is certainly a noteworthy one, and a better introduction to the world's greatest elegy than anything else that has been written upon it. In his opinion the philosophical meaning of the poem is summed up in the prologue, and he gives us his interpretation with scholarly skill and sympathetic appreciation. The fundamental thought of the great lyric is this, — that "man's true happiness consists in the perfect conformity of his will to the divine will; and this conformity is attained through love, first of man and then of God."

The Parthenon Frieze, published with other essays in London in 1882, and brought out in Boston and New York in 1886, was written to combat the prevailing opinions regarding the meaning of this monumental work. The essay is a compact [and closely built argument in which the author gives his reasons for regarding the existing explanations as worthless. Modern archaeologists hold the subject to be the Panathenaic procession, or some ceremony connected with it. Davidson asserts that it may properly be called the Dream of Pericles, — a vision of social union and harmony, never realized, but having in it a great, genial, humane purpose, which, had it been fulfilled, might have changed the whole history of the world, and hastened the march of civilization by two thousand years.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

Postby admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:17 am

APPENDIX D

After writing his book on Rosmini Davidson remained at Domodossola for a year, and during this time he contributed several short, characteristic articles to the Pall Mall Gazette and other papers. One of these sketches, descriptive of the little town in which he made his home, is reprinted here as having more than a literary interest.

A SOLITUDE IN THE ITALIAN ALPS [1]

The stage that runs between the brooding loveliness of Lago Maggiore and the soaring ruggedness of the Simplon Pass stops about halfway at Domodossola, whose very situation between more renowned scenes has caused it to be treated with undeserved neglect. It is hardly noticed in the guidebooks, and though many travellers pass the night at it, they are usually so eager to reach what lies beyond that they pay no heed to the little town or its surroundings, and go away with only a vague consciousness of ever having been there. Nevertheless, the lover of nature, whose sense of beauty is not subject to the authority of guidebooks, will not grudge having spent a week or even a month among these surroundings.

Domodossola, a neat town of about three thousand inhabitants, stands on the Toce, in the bottom of a little valley completely surrounded by mountains, which are snow-capped the greater part of the year. It occupies, so to speak, the point of divergence of seven other valleys that branch off in different directions from the valley of Ossola — Val Anzasca, leading to Monte Rosa; Val Antrona; Valle di Bagnanco, with its mineral springs; Val Divedro, through which the Simplon road passes; Val Antigorio, continued in Val Formazza, in which is the Frua, one of the finest waterfalls in Europe; Valle dell' Inferno, not unworthy of its name; and Val Vigezzo, with its handsome churches and residences. Though all the surroundings of Domodossola offer that combination of Alpine sublimity and Italian beauty which at once suggests and imparts energy and rest, the mountains on the west side are especially calculated to attract and hold the lover of nature. These mountains rise to the height of four or five thousand feet, and are covered with vegetation to the very summit. Their steep sides are furrowed by innumerable ravines threaded by limpid torrents, whose courses form each a series of little pictures enough to fill a large gallery. Here nature and art seem to have combined to do their best. While the ravines still rejoice in their natural bosky savageness, every available spot of ground between them, to the height of two thousand feet, is under cultivation, while every little platform is occupied either by a picturesque village or an equally picturesque farmhouse. Above the line of cultivation are pine woods, whose still, somber hue, broken here and there by gayer tints, forms an imposing contrast to the bright green of the meadows below.

For the artist, to whom Nature is the all-fruitful, all-beautiful Venus, hominum divumque voluptas, or for the student, who finds that the voice of intelligence sounds clearest through the harmony of the emotions, these mountains are almost an earthly paradise. One such student has fixed his summer abode among them in a cottage situated about five hundred feet above the town, on a steep incline just below the little plateau occupied by the chief "fraction" of the village of Vagna. The cottage, whose windows look east and south, stands in the middle of an artificial terrace some sixty yards long by fifteen broad. This terrace is completely surrounded by a wall, high enough on the upper side to exclude intruders, and low enough on the downward side to leave unimpeded the view of the whole valley. At either end of the house is a little garden with vine-shaded walks, and arbors covered with creepers and fitted up with seats and tables of stone. The house is three stories high exclusive of the cellars, which are under the terrace. The first floor opens upon the terrace, which is here completely covered by a single vine, rivalling in extent the famous one at Hampton Court. All the eastern windows on the second floor are doors, and open upon a long veranda, while those on the third floor open upon small balconies.

When the student (or, as the natives call him, the hermit) wakes in the morning he is greeted by the sun rising over the snow-clad peaks of the eastward mountains. When he throws open his blinds and walks out upon the veranda the whole valley, with its mountains, meadows, and streams, its town, and its innumerable white villages lies stretched out before him; and he can even see the whole length of the high valley of Vigezzo, close by the Gridone, which stands out like a huge pyramid against the sky. While his eye is occupied with these things, his ear is greeted by the rushing of streams near and distant, and by the songs of birds already busy with their love making. Venus seems to be the one divinity of all the feathered bipeds, and especially of the ringdoves, whose whole life seems one act of worship. Here the ringdoves are plentiful, and so tame that it is difficult to keep them from perching upon one's head and shoulders. Their cooing seems the voice of Peace herself.

Having dressed and breakfasted, the hermit starts for his morning walk. But first he takes a look at his garden, saluting the newborn flowers with a welcome, to which they respond with dewy perfume. As he passes the church he finds that mass has already begun. All the peasantry of the village are at their morning prayers; not one is to be met outside. He stops for a moment to consider which way he shall turn, for the mountain paths are so numerous and all so beautiful that the choice is difficult. Having decided he begins to ascend, looking back every few minutes to enjoy a new view of the valley below. His way leads him now under vine trellises, now along terrace walls covered with moss, ferns, and ivy; now past waterfalls, tumbling into deep, sandy pools, whose rocky sides are tapestried with dripping ferns; now over rustic bridges of wood or stone spanning rapid torrents; now along deep ravines whose sides seem to stretch to heaven, now under groves of chestnut, now by the side of overhanging rocks, and now past chalets so quiet and picturesque that he feels no desire to go farther. Here he rests on a stone seat under the kindly shade of vine or chestnut and enjoys the full prospect of the now waking valley. Yonder on the extreme left is the Simplon diligence emerging with its load of foreign tourists from Val Divedro; in front is a group of workmen entering Val Vigezzo, whose villages and churches now stand out clear and white; the paths of the valley are threaded by men and cattle that look no larger than ants; while on the left the Rosminian novitiate, with its white walls and open courts, its ancient donjon keep and gloomy battlements half hidden in garden trees, carries his thoughts back to other days, made significant by other ideals. Having rested, the hermit continues his walk. He is now beyond the line of cultivation, and his path leads him through thickets and across natural meadows that with their white cottages and shrines spring suddenly up before him like a vision of fairyland. As he approaches these cottages, rustic voices of men, women, and children salute him with hearty Buon di and he is invited to a glass of fresh milk and a piece of brown bread. As he partakes of these he talks with these simple people about their cattle and their labor, the pleasures of Alpine life, and the freshness of Alpine air. Before he leaves he is invited to come and spend a week at the cottages and share their mountain hospitality. He has now gone far enough; so bidding the cattle-tenders good-bye, with a promise to come again, he begins his descent by a different path from that by which he ascended. As he dives into the first wooded ravine he hears the wild, free song of the mountaineers flung to the broad sky from lungs that seem as inexhaustible as those of nightingales. He descends rapidly, but before returning to begin his studies for the day he refreshes himself with a shower bath, under a cascade that hides itself in a rocky labyrinth never trodden by profane footsteps. After thus paying his devotions to Nature and partaking of her sacrament he feels himself in that happy frame of mind that makes all mental labor easy. His day is passed at his study table, in view of the ever-changing beauties of valley and mountain. His only companions are the ringdoves, that use his study as freely as he does, and the beautiful cardellini, which seem never to weary of motion or song. When the sun is disappearing over the western mountains, and the Ave Maria is sounding from the bells of villages near and far, he takes his evening walk, enjoying for another hour the most intimate communion with Nature, a communion which satisfies every aspiration after the divine. He returns to a simple meal, after which he continues his studies for an hour or two, interrupting them from time to time in order to go out on the veranda and enjoy the sight of the mountains and valley steeped in meditative gloom or bathed with dreamy moonshine. So passes his day in the very bosom of Nature.

Notes:

1. From the Pall Mall Gazette of May 26, 1882.
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Re: Memorials of Thomas Davidson, The Wandering Scholar

Postby admin » Fri Apr 10, 2020 7:22 am

APPENDIX E: BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS DAVIDSON'S WORKS

I. Books


A History of Education. 12mo, 292 pages. New York, 1900. (Revised in The Dial [September 16, 1900], XXIX, 181; and in The Educational Review, XX, 522.)

Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals (Great Educators' Series). 121110, 250 pages. New York, 1892.

Education of the Greek People, and its Influence on Civilization (International Educational Series). 12mo, 229 pages. New York, 1894.

The Parthenon Frieze and Other Essays. London, 1882; Boston and New York, 1886.

Prolegomena to Tennyson's In Memoriam, with Index to the Poem. Boston, 1889.

Rosmini's Anthropology (translation).

Rosmini's Psychology (translation).

Rousseau, and Education according to Nature (Great Educators' Series, Charles Scribner's Sons). 259 pages. New York, 1898.

Scartazzini's Handbook to Dante, with Notes and Additions. Boston, 1887.

The Philosophical System of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, with a Sketch of Rosmini's Life, Bibliography, Introduction, and Notes. London, 1882

II. Articles in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy

Schelling's Introduction to Idealism (translation) I, 159.

Schelling's Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature (translation) I.

Rosenkranz on Difference of Reader from Hegel (translation), II, 55.

Leibnitz on the Nature of the Soul (translation), II, 62.

Rosenkranz on Goethe's Social Romances (translation), II, 120, 215.

Winckelmann's Remarks on the Torso of Hercules (translation), II, 187.

Sentences of Porphyry the Philosopher (translation), III, 46.

Leibnitz on Platonic Enthusiasm (translation), III, 68.

Fragments of Parmenides, IV, 1. Rosenkranz on Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (translation), IV, 145.

Introduction to Hegel's Encyclopaedia by Rosenkranz (translation), V, 234.

Trendelenburg on Hegel's System (translation), V, 349.

Notice of Morris's translation of Uberweg, VI, 95.

Trendelenburg on Hegel's System (translation), VI, 82, 163, 360.

Conditions of Immortality according to Aristotle, VIII, 143.

Letter about A. Vera's Review of Strauss's Ancient and New Faith, VIII, 281.

Grammar of Dionysius Thrax (translation), VIII, 326.

Address of Professor Tyndall, VIII, 361.

Translation of Rosenkranz's Summary of Logic, IX, 98.

The Niobe Group, IX, 142.

Reply to A. Vera's Stricture's on his Critique, IX, 434.

Notice of Anderson's Norse Mythology, X, 216.

Letter on the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, XIV, 87.

Bonaventura's The Soul's Progress in God (translation) (July, 1887), XXI.

Aristotle's Metaphysics. A translation of the eleventh book. XXII, No. 3, 225-253.

Dionysius Areopagita, Mystic Theology (translation) (December), XXII, 395.

III. Articles in the Western

Lincoln Monument at Springfield (1875), I, 223.

Funeral Hymn (April, 1872), p. 41.

Greek Literature (May, 1872), p. 61.

Articles in Western Educational Review

Self-Government in the Schoolroom (February, 1870), I, 53.

Religious Instruction in Public Schools (March, 1870), I, 81.

Rimini (translation from Heine) (May, 1870), I, 127.

Rimini (continuation) (September, 1870), I, 203.

(1) The Minstrel's Curse (translation from Uhland) (November, 1870), I, 252.

(2) The Origin of Language (November, 1870), I, 256.

Epitaph from a Roman Tombstone (translation) (October, 1870), I, 240.

Lyric Poetry (May, 1871), II, 159.

Pedagogical Bibliography (October, 1 871), II, 139.

The Tragic (November, 187 1), II, 321.

IV. Miscellaneous

American Democracy. International Journal of Ethics, October, 1899. The Brothers of Sincerity. International Journal of Ethics, July, 1898. The Ethics of an Eternal Being. International Journal of Ethics, April, 1893.

Conditions, Divisions, and Methods of Complete Education (a lecture). i6mo. Orange, N.J., 1887.

Education as World Building. Educational Review (November, 1900), XX, 325-345.

Education: Greek at Harvard College. Atlantic Monthly, XXXIX, 123-128, 386-388.

Aristocracy and Humanity. The Forum (October, 1887), IV, No. 2.

Review of Koch's Hist. Gram. English. Round Table (New York newspaper), November 21, 1868, Sect. 200.

Ideal Training of the American Girl. The Forum (June, 1898), XXV, 471-480.

Manual Training in Public Schools. The Forum (April, 1887), III, 111-121.

On the Origin of Language (translation).

Pedagogical Bibliography: Its Possessions and Wants.

National Educational Association (1871), pp. 51-66.

Place of Art in Education. Journal of Social Science (September, 1886), No. 21, 159-187.

Giordano Bruno, Philosopher and Martyr (written in collaboration with D. G. Brinton). Philadelphia, 1890.

The Kingdom of Heaven. Christian Union (January 15, 1891), XLIII, No. 3.

Dante's Place in History. The Parthenon (April 28, 1892), I, No. 24.

The Paradise of Dante. Lecture before Chicago Dante School, April 20, 1892. (Reprinted from The Parthenon.)

The Origins of Modern Thought (synopsis of twenty lectures). Contemporary Philosophy in Italy. The Nation (August 5, 1880), No. 788.

"Ad Tres Familiares" (Latin translation of Longfellow's poem, "Three Friends of Mine"), 1876.

Intellectual Piety. New York, Fowler & Wells Company, 1896.

The Present Condition of Greece. International Review (June, 1879), VI, No. 6.

Giordano Bruno (compiled from the Freethinker's Magazine for September (E.H.), p. 289.

When the Higher Criticism has done its Work. International Journal of Ethics (July, 1897), VII, No. 4.

The Democratization of England. The Forum (June, 1896), XXI, No. 4.

Victorian Greater Britain and its Future. The Forum (July, 1897), XXIII, No. 5.

The Supremacy of Russia. The Forum (September, 1897), XXIV, No. 1.

Evolution of Sculpture. New York, 1891.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston, 1882.

Ideal Training of an American Boy. The Forum (July, 1894), XVII, 571.

Review of Kolb's History of Human Civilization. Round Table (December 19, 1868), Sect. 204.

Review of Max Muller's "Chips." Round Table (May 8, 1869), Sect. 224.

Discussions with Richard Grant White. Round Table (March 13, 1889), Sect. 216; (February 27, 1869), Sect. 214; (April 17, 1869), Sect. 247.

CATALOGUE OF MANUSCRIPTS LEFT BY THOMAS DAVIDSON

1. The Revival of Thought in Europe in the Thirteenth Century: Aristotle in the Schools.

2. Bonaventura.

3. Introduction (to a set of lectures on great schoolmen).

4. Thomas Aquinas.

5. Aristotle's Debt to Plato.

6. Dionysius Areopagita.

7. Philo Judaeus.

8. Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Neo-Platonism.

9. Dante.

10. Dante's Ideology and Logic.

11. Dante (fragment).

12. The Convivio.

13. Greek Education up to Aristotle.

14. The Growth of Art Ideas among the Greeks.

15. Ontology.

16. Consciousness of the Divine Presence.

17. Savonarola.

18. Is the Homeric Cycle of Legends Greek?

19. The Present State of Thought.

20. Spiritual Thought.

21. Una Religione per l'ltalia.

22. In Memoriam.
23-27. Themistocles in Exile: A Modern Tragedy, Acts I-V.

28-36. The Bearing of Ancient Thought upon Modern Social Problems (ten lectures).

37-43. Seven Lectures (on the history of Hebrew prophetism and Greek philosophy).

44. The Affiliation of the Sciences.

45. School Exhibitions.

46. The Education of Girls.

47. Life Education.

48. Education of the Young: Use of Music.

49. Self-Reliance.

50. Practical Reform.

51. Greek Democracies.

52. Hegel and Rosmini.

53. Meum and Tuum.

54. Are there Synthetic Judgments a priori?

55. Aristotle's Problem.

56. Individuality.

57. The Ultimate Creed.

58. Sentimentality.

59. Acceptance.

60. Detachment.

61. The Missing Social Link.

62. Heraclitus (translation of the fragments).

63. Green's Theory of Cognition, and its Place in the History of Thought.

64. Dante's Convivio (translation with notes).

65. Letters to Class on East Side (summer, 1899).

66. The Brothers of Sincerity.

67. Social Remedies in the Light of History.

68. The Nature and Cause of our Social Difficulties.

69. Idols of the Theater.

70. Some False Assumptions of Present Reformers.

71. The Future of Classical Study.

72. "Ad Tres Familiares."

73. Protection and Free Trade.

74. Words, Thoughts, and Things.

75. The Methods of Progress.

76. Art and Fact (off-print from the Western).

77. The Philosophy of Words (review of Garlanda).

78. Animal and Man.

79. Social and Economic Equality.

80-83. Athens, Ancient and Modern (four lectures).

84-89. Modern Greece (six lectures).

90. Greek Sculpture (notes for six stereopticon lectures).

91-97. Philology (seven lectures).

98-101. The History and Grammar of the English Language (four lectures).

102. Ontology.

103. Olympia.

104. Shakespeare's World and its Limitations.

105. Divine Love.

106. The Immortality of the Human Soul.

107. Education.

108. Free Education.

109. Transfiguration.

110. The Practical Duties following upon the Spiritual View of Life.

111. Reading with a View to Culture and Insight.

112. On the Nibelungenlied (first page missing).

113. The Educational Problem.

114. The Educational Problems which the Nineteenth Century hands over to the Twentieth.

115-116. The Problems set by the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth.

(1) The Philosophic and Religious Problems.

(2) The Economic Question.

117. Religion and Science.

118. The Significance of Art.

119. New Life.

120. The Life of the Spirit.

121. Inner Moral Life.

122. The Function of a Church.

123. Faith as a Faculty of the Human Mind.

124-128. Five Lectures on great Greek Moralists:

(1) Antecedents of Greek Ethics.

(2) Socrates and Intuitional Ethics.

(3) Plato and Ideal Ethics

(4) Aristotle and Institutional Ethics.

(5) Comparison and Conclusion.

129. The Irony of Plato.

130-131. Two Lectures on Faust (old series).

132. Aristotle on Tragedy.

133. Aristotle's Poetics.

134. Prometheus.

135. The Oresteia: Agamemnon.

136. Choephori and the Two Electras.

137. Retribution (the Laocobn group).

138. The Other World in Homer.

139. Art in Homer.

140. Women in Greece.

141. Rosmini's Philosophy.

142. Savonarola.

143. Dante's Place in History.

144. Love as God's Method of Action (according to the Divine Comedy).

145. Virgil and Beatrice as Guides.

146. Ibn Gebirol and the Cabbalah.

147. What is Death?

148. The Fellowship of the New Life.

149. The New Life and the Old.

150. Life.

151. Liberty.

152. The Pursuit of Happiness.

153. The Educational Ideal: A Criticism of Modern Institutions of Learning.

154. "Sacred Diseases."

155. Scotch Ballads (badly mutilated).

156-161. Goethe's Faust (latest series; Lecture III, Sect. 159, not found).

162. Four Great Religious Poems.

163. Mediaeval Philosophy: Introduction; notes and fragments.

164. Letters to East-Side Class.

165. Diaries, and loose leaves from diaries, kept by Mr. David-son, 1861, etc.
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