Problems of Immanence: studies critical and constructive

by Joseph Warschauer

Now we believe that this philosophy, consistently embraced, is utterly devoid of the dynamic which can generate any great social reform. The smallest and forlornest actual slum baby appeals to our sympathy immeasurably more than a vast, dim aggregate of indistinguishable items called the Race; for we have actually met the slum-baby, and we have never met—what is more, we shall never meet—the Race. This tendency to treat the individual as negligible is as futile as it is inhuman; in the long run it will be found that he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love {68} the Race which he hath not seen. No matter by how many times we multiply nothing, the result is still—nothing. If the individuals do not count, neither can the species which is made up of such individuals. Or, if "the Race is the drama, and we are the incidents," it must be observed that no great and noble drama can be strung together out of trivial and unmeaning incidents. All the talk about Mankind as the greater being, "the great and growing Being of the Species," "the eternally conscious Being of all things," is only the old, thin, unsatisfying idolatry of Positivism. If we wish to be social reformers in earnest we must take care of the individuals, and the race will take care of itself.

That the monistic denial of all individual significance should lead to the denial of a future life is only what we should expect; for if man, as such, does not matter, why should he survive? On the other hand, the more we care for the individual, refusing to regard him merely as "an experiment of the species for the species," the more irresistibly shall we be impelled to believe that this life is not all. It is the inestimable achievement of Christianity, by its insistence on the infinite value of the soul, to have given the strongest impetus and support to belief in personal immortality. That, however, is an aspect of our subject which demands, and will subsequently come up for, separate treatment.

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What, for the present, we must yet once more point out, as we did in the preceding chapter, is this—that wide as is the influence of a non-Christian writer like Mr. Wells, the danger of such teaching is intensified when it is given by those who profess Christianity. Doubtless, Bousset is right when he points to the closer contact between East and West as one of the causes of the growth in our midst of a type of religion in which "the human ego is put on one side and almost reduced to zero." Doubtless, also, he is correct in saying "the adherents of this kind of religion will be chiefly found in circles where people do not regard religion seriously, where they desire and accept religion as aesthetic enjoyment." Nevertheless, the evil attending this type of teaching is, to our thinking, great and serious, designed to undermine selfhood and to set up a species of dry-rot at the very centre.

Let us again show what we mean by quoting from an actual utterance: "God," we read, "is supposed to be thinking more about us than about anything else—a rather arrogant assumption when we come to think of it, considering what specks of dust we are amid these myriads of stars and suns whirling through space like motes in a ray of light—and the great object of His solicitude is to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness." If this view be the true one, the writer went on to ask, why do questions like unemployment, the Budget, {70} the uprising of nationalism in Turkey, etc., bulk so largely in our thought? These topics, he says, have "little or no relation to the question of saving the individual soul, as commonly understood." How, he demands, does the actual life of every day fit into "that view of the scheme of things which bids us believe that the silent God above us is principally anxious about just one thing, the moral recovery and ingathering of these individual souls one by one"? The answer is given with characteristic confidence: "It does not fit into it at all; if God be as anxious about that as we are assured He is, He has a queer way of showing it."

Here we have a conception of man and his place in the sum of things fundamentally at one with that of Mr. Wells, and as utterly irreconcilable with that of Christianity. Not only does the individual not matter in himself; he does not even matter to God. The idea of the soul's infinite value to God is held up to derision, and so is the idea of God's interest in individual character; man, the atom, must not think that the Creator is specially anxious for his fate, and is bidden to measure his insignificance against the vastness of the heavenly bodies; and in conclusion we are pertly told that if God really cares about the individual as such, "He has a queer way of showing it." In this view—the view of Monism—it is indeed true that "the individual withers, and the world is more and more."

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We say that the issue is plain; it lies between Monism and Christianity; if the one is true, the other must be rejected. On which side shall we cast our verdict? For a warning example we have only to glance at the case of Buddhism, in which, the value of human individuality having been steadily lowered, "the other main factor is religion, belief in God, was likewise lost" (Bousset). But, turning to a more detailed examination of the statement just quoted, it is hardly necessary to discuss the astounding suggestion that man must not take himself too seriously by the side of the immensities of suns and stars. Such a view merely betrays a spiritual perception miles below that of the Psalmist, who saw man, to all appearance a negligible speck, yet in reality made by the Almighty little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honour. Neither need we combat at length the strangely superficial notion that such questions as unemployment, the Budget, etc., have little or no relation to that of saving the individual soul, as commonly understood. If they have no relation to that subject, they are hardly worth considering; but the fact is that the regulation of industry, the distribution of wealth—these and all other questions derive their importance solely from the manner in which they affect individual men, women and children, fitting or unfitting them for the life that now is and that which is to come. A good deal might be said of {72} the temper which makes fun of the idea of God's "solicitude to get us individually to toe the mark of Christ-likeness"; but we may leave that unhappy phrase to be its own comment.

The attitude of Christianity to our question is perfectly clear. Christianity, in teaching each frailest, poorest human unit to address God as Father, affirms in unmistakeable accents the Eternal's personal interest in and care for the individual soul, and by so doing ennobles every human life that falls under the sway of the Gospel. It is Christianity's master-thought that to the Father from whom all fatherhood is named each one of His children is personally dear, and that His desire is for the salvation of each one. To the cheap and ugly sneer that God has a "queer way" of manifesting His concern for us as individuals, the Christian consciousness has its own answer; how, in any case, such a sneer could come from the same source from which we previously quoted the statement that "nothing can happen to any of God's children which is not in some way the sacrament of God's love to us," we do not profess to understand. We are not mere individual organ-stops, each without use or significance apart from the rest, waiting for our mutual dissonances to be swallowed up in some "music of the whole," but members of a family, each with a place in the Parent's heart and thought. Finally, to the Christian there is one last, {73} crowning proof of the soul's value for God, and God's yearning for the soul; that proof is Calvary. To the Christian there is one experience which settles this problem fully and finally for him; it is the experience which Paul embodied in the cry, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me."

For Monism the individual is a mere surface ripple on an infinite ocean, alike impermanent and impersonal; for Christianity the soul is a child of the Father of all souls, loved with an everlasting love. Between these two conceptions we have to choose, remembering that each utterly excludes the other. There is no third alternative.