At this point we are confronted by the argument that such words as ‘good,’ ‘virtue’ and the like have no definite meaning, but signify now this, now that, according to the degree of latitude, the colour of the skin, the local mythology. This is, of course, perfectly true. The content of judgments of value is demonstrably variable. Two important points should, however, be noted in this context. The first is that such judgments are passed by all human beings, that the category of value is universally employed. The second is that, as knowledge, sensibility and non-attachment increase, the contents of the judgments of value passed even by men belonging to dissimilar cultures tend to approximate. The ethical doctrines taught in the Tao Te Ching, by Gautama Buddha, and his followers on the Lesser and above all the Greater Vehicle, in the Sermon on the Mount and by the best of the Christian saints, are not dissimilar. Among human beings who have reached a certain level of civilization and of personal freedom from passion and social prejudice there exists a real consensus gentium in regard to ethical first principles. These first principles are, of course, in constant danger from the passions and from ignorance, itself in many cases the fruit of passion.
Passion and ignorance work, not only on individuals, but sometimes also on entire communities. In the latter case a systematic attempt is made to replace the ethical first principles of civilized humanity by other first principles more in accord with the prevailing mass-emotions and national interests. This process is taking place at the present time all over the world. Nationalistic and revolutionary passions find themselves in conflict with the standards of civilized morality. Consequently the standards of civilized morality are everywhere denounced as false and wicked, and new standards are set up in their place. The nature of these new standards varies with the political ideals of the countries in which they are set up—but varies only very slightly. Essentially all the new moralities, Communist, Fascist, Nazi or merely Nationalist, are singularly alike. All affirm that the end justifies the means; and in all the end is the triumph of a section of the human species over the rest. All justify the unlimited use of violence and cunning. All preach the subordination of the individual to a ruling oligarchy, deified as ‘the State.’ All inculcate the minor virtues, such as temperance, prudence, courage and the like; but all disparage the higher virtues, charity and intelligence, without which the minor virtues are merely instruments for doing evil with increased efficiency.
Examples of reversion to barbarism through mere ignorance are unhappily abundant in the history of Christianity. The early Christians made the enormous mistake of burdening themselves with the Old Testament, which contains, along with much fine poetry and sound morality, the history of the cruelties and treacheries of a Bronze-Age people, fighting for a place in the sun under the protection of its anthropomorphic tribal deity. Christian theologians did their best to civilize and moralize this tribal deity; but, inspired in every line, dictated by God himself, the Old Testament was always there to refute them. Ancient ignorance had been sanctified as revelation. Those whom it suited to be ignorant and, along with them, the innocent and uneducated could find in this treasure-house of barbarous stupidity justifications for every crime and folly. Texts to justify such abominations as religious wars, the persecution of heretics, breaking of faith with unbelievers, could be found in the sacred books and were in fact used again and again throughout the whole history of the Christian Church to mitigate the inconvenient decency of civilized morality.
In the last analysis, all this folly and wickedness can be traced back to a mistaken view of the world. The Hebrews of the Bronze Age thought that the integrating principle of the universe was a kind of magnified human person, with all the feelings and passions of a human person. He was wrathful, for example, he was jealous, he was vindictive. This being so, there was no reason why his devotees should not be wrathful, jealous and vindictive. Among the Christians this primitive cosmology led to the burning of heretics and witches, the wholesale massacre of Albigensians, Catharists, Protestants, Catholics and a hundred other sects. In the modern world ignorance about the nature of the universe takes the form of a refusal to speculate about that nature and an insistence that there is no meaning or value except in such small and arbitrarily selected parts of the whole as the nation, the state, the class and the party. To believe that the nation is God is a mistake just as grotesque as was the mistake of supposing that the sun would die if it did not get victims or that God is a kind of large invisible man, with all the most disgraceful human passions.
We are back again at the point reached on an earlier page—the point at which we discover that an obviously untrue philosophy of life leads in practice to disastrous results; the point where we realize the necessity of seeking an alternative philosophy that shall be true and therefore fruitful of good. In the interval, we have considered the classical arguments in favour of theism and have found that some carry no conviction whatever, while the rest can only raise a presumption in favour of the theory that the world possesses some integrating principle that gives it significance and value. There is probably no argument by which the case for theism, or for, deism, or for pantheism in either its pancosmic or acosmic form, can be convincingly proved. The most that ‘abstract reasoning’ (to use Hume’s phrase) can do is to create a presumption in favour of one or other hypothesis; and this presumption can be increased by means of ‘experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence.’ Final conviction can only come to those who make an act of faith.
The idea is one which most of us find very distressing. But it may be doubted whether this particular act of faith is intrinsically more difficult than those which we have to make, for example, every time we frame a scientific hypothesis, every time that, from the consideration of a few phenomena, we draw inference concerning all phenomena, past, present and future. On very little evidence, but with no qualms of intellectual conscience, we assume that our craving for explanation has a real object in an explicable universe, that the aesthetic satisfaction we derive from certain arguments is a sign that they are true, that the laws of thought are also laws of things. There seems to be no reason why, having swallowed this camel, we should not swallow another, no larger really than the first. The reasons why we strain at the second camel have been given above. Once recognized, they cease to exist and we become free to consider on their merits the evidence and arguments that would reasonably justify us in making the final act of faith and assuming the truth of a hypothesis that we are unable fully to demonstrate.
‘Abstract reasoning’ must now give place to ‘experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact or evidence.’ Natural science, as we have seen, deals only with those aspects of reality that are amenable to mathematical treatment. The rest it merely ignores. But some of the experiences thus ignored by natural science—aesthetic experiences, for example, and religious experiences—throw much light upon the present problem. It is with the fact of such experiences and the evidence they furnish concerning the nature of the world that we have now to concern ourselves.
To discuss the nature and significance of aesthetic experience would take too long. It is enough, in this place, merely to suggest that the best works of literary, plastic and musical art give us more than mere pleasure; they furnish us with information about the nature of the world. The Sanctus in Beethoven’s Mass in D, Seurat’s Grande Jatte, Macbeth—works such as these tell us, by strange but certain implication, something significant about the ultimate reality behind appearances. Even from the perfection of minor masterpieces—certain sonnets of Mallarmé, for instance, certain Chinese ceramics—we can derive illuminating hints about the ‘something far more deeply interfused,’ about ‘the peace of God that passeth all understanding.’ But the subject of art is enormous and obscure, and my space is limited. I shall therefore confine myself to a discussion of certain religious experiences which bear more directly upon the present problem than do our experiences as creators and appreciators of art.
I have spoken in the preceding chapter of meditation as a device, in Babbitt’s words, for producing a ‘super-rational concentration of the will.’ But meditation is more than a method of self-education; it has also been used, in every part of the world and from the remotest periods, as a method for acquiring knowledge about the essential nature of things, a method for establishing communion between the soul and the integrating principle of the universe. Meditation, in other words, is the technique of mysticism. Properly practised, with due preparation, physical, mental and moral, meditation may result in a state of what has been called ‘transcendental consciousness’—the direct intuition of, and union with, an ultimate spiritual reality that is perceived as simultaneously beyond the self and in some way within it. (‘God in the depths
