“Consciousness of imperfection, the capacity for progress, and the pursuit of perfection, are alike possible to man only through the universal life of thought and goodness in which he shares and which, at once an indwelling presence and an unattainable ideal, draws him ‘on and always on.’”[15]
It is here in these experiences of ours which spring out of our real nature, but which always carry us beyond what is and which make it impossible for us to live in a world composed of “things,” no matter how golden they are, that we have the source of our spiritual values. When we talk about values we may use the word in two senses. In the ordinary sense we mean something extrinsic, utilitarian. We mean that we possess something which can be exchanged for something else. It is precious because we can sell it or swap it or use it to keep life going. In the other sense we see value in reference to something which ought to be, whether it now is or not. It is fit to be, it would justify its being in relation to the whole reality. When we speak of ethical or spiritual values we are thinking of something that will minister to the highest good of persons or of a society of persons. Value in this loftier meaning always has to do with ideals. A being without any conscious end or goal, i.e., without an ideal, would have no sense of worth, no spiritual values. It does not appear on the level of instinct. It arises as an appreciation of what ought to be realized in order to complete and fulfill any life which is to be called good. Obviously a person with rich and complex interests will have many scales of value, but lower and lesser ones will fall into place under wider and higher ones, so that one forms a kind of hierarchical system of values with some overtopping end of supreme worth dominating the will.
It becomes one of the deepest questions in the world what connection there is between man’s spiritual values or ideals and the eternal nature of things in the universe. Are these ideals of ours, these values which seem to raise us from the naturalistic to the spiritual level, just our subjective creations, or are they expressions of a coöperating and rational power beyond us and yet in us, giving us intimations of what is true and best in a world more real than that of matter and motion? These ideal values, such as our appreciation of beauty, our confidence in truth, our dedication to moral causes, our love for worthy persons, our loyalty to the Kingdom of God, are not born of selfish preference or individual desire. They are not capricious like dreams and visions. They attach to something deeper than our personal wishes, in fact our faith in them and our devotion to them often cause us to take lines of action straight against our personal wishes and our individual desires. They stand the test of stress and strain, they weather the storms of time which submerge most things, they survive all shock and mutations and only increase in worth with the wastage of secondary goods. They rest on no mere temporary impulse or sporadic whim. They have their roots deep in the life of the race. They have lasted better than Andes or Ararat, and they are based upon common, universal aspects of rational life. They are at least as sure and prophetic as are laws of triangles and relations of space. If we can count on the permanence of the multiplication table and on the continuity of nature, no less can we count on the conservation of values and the continued significance of life.
They seem thus to belong to the system of the universe and to have the guardianship of some invisible Pilot of the cosmic ship. The streams of moral power and the spiritual energies that have their rise in good persons are as much to be respected facts of the universe as are the rivers that carry ships of commerce. Moral goodness is a factor in the constitution of the world, and the eternal nature of the universe backs it as surely as it backs the laws of hydrogen. It does not back every ideal, for some ideals are unfit and do not minister to a coherent and rationally ordered scheme of life. Those ideals only have the august sanction and right of way which are born out of the age-long spiritual travail of the race and which tend to organize men for better team efforts, i.e., which promote the social community life, the organism of the Spirit. Through these spiritual forces, revealed in normal ethical persons, we are, I believe, nearer to the life of God and closer to the revealing centers of the universe than we are when we turn to the subliminal selves of hysterics. The normal interior life of man is boundless and bottomless. It is not a physical reality, to be measured by foot rules or yardsticks. It is a reality of a wholly different order. It is essentially spiritual, i.e., of spirit. In its organized and differentiated life this personal self of ours is often weak and erratic. We feel the urge which belongs to the very nature of spirit, but we blunder in our direction, we bungle our aims and purposes, we fail to discover what it is that we really want. But we are never insulated from the wider spiritual environment which constitutes the true inner world from which we have come and to which we belong. There are many ways of correspondence with this environment. No way, however, is more vital, more life-giving than this way of dedication to the advancement of the moral ideals of the world.
FOOTNOTES
[1] 1 Cor. VI. 9-11.
[2] Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, p. 483.
[3] Bosanquet, Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 320.