Philosophical readers will remember the moral tonic of James' collection of essays, "The Will to Believe" (1902), with its picturesque style, its originality of standpoint and its moral enthusiasm. Here was a philosopher of medical training and of unquestioned scientific standing, and yet with the insight and earnestness of a prophet, making a valiant defense of spiritual realities, of human freedom, and the rights of the volitional and moral sides of our nature. As an evolutionist he contended that "the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall."[149] And as a psychologist he found that theism appealed to every energy of our active nature and released the springs of every emotion, and held that "infra-theistic conceptions, materialism and agnosticism, are irrational because they are inadequate stimuli to man's practical nature."[150]
Readers who had been breathing the stifling air of naturalism, so fatal to spiritual aspiration, or the too rarified atmosphere of absolutism with its "transcendence" of personality and moral distinctions, will remember also the sense of satisfaction and relief with which they read that other volume of protest, from the other side of the water, "Personal Idealism" (1902). It was refreshing to find that there was a body of brilliant young thinkers, alive to the scientific atmosphere of the time, and trained in the philosophic orthodoxy of the English schools, and yet boldly asserting the rights of personality in God and man.
This twofold protest against a denial, from whatever side, of the rights of personality was organized into the movement we call Pragmatism, under the leadership of William James, ably assisted by F. C. S. Schiller in Oxford and John Dewey in this country.[151] It is not to be wondered at if this reaction went too far, as the pendulum swung from the extreme of Being to that of Becoming. We find Pragmatism, reacting against monism, whether materialistic or idealistic, going over to pluralism; from the extreme of a "block universe" in which time is nothing passing to the other extreme of a "strung-along universe" in which time is everything; from pantheism going over to a vaguely indicated polytheism; from an absolute truth and an absolute Being sitting in smiling repose above the strife of time to a "God in the dirt" and a truth that could be made, or unmade, perhaps too easily.
Our discussion will be more concrete if we select leading representatives from the four nations most addicted to philosophy, and examine their attitude towards the Christian Faith and towards its theistic foundations.
I. Bergson and Creative Evolution
In close relation to the pragmatic movement, and set forth with a wonderful magic of style, is the philosophy of Henri Bergson which finds its mature expression in his "Creative Evolution." It is a remarkable testimony to the wealth of suggestion and many-sidedness of Bergson's philosophy that its support has been claimed by a number of movements of diverse aim. Modernists in theology, syndicalists in the sphere of social agitation, and even, it is said, cubists in art, appeal to Bergson for philosophical support; and affinities have been pointed out between his élan vital and Schopenhauer's will-to-live, Von Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and Nietzsche's aggressive individualism. We must ask whether his élan vital can be baptized, and his "Creative Evolution" be made the basis for a spiritual philosophy.
It will be useful to notice some features of Bergson's system before attempting to estimate its bearings upon religious problems. The story of evolution as Bergson describes it, certainly in an engaging manner, is a drama in three acts. The élan vital, or otherwise consciousness, is the hero, but is imprisoned by matter (the villain), and is striving blindly for release. In the first act, the vital impulse tunnels its way through the opposing element of matter into the vegetable world. The result is only the lethargy and immobility of vegetable forms, and is so far a failure. The next act finds consciousness working its way into the animal world and attaining mobility and becoming in so far free from the entanglements of matter; but here again there is partial failure. Consciousness is arrested at the stage of instinct, and, resting content with a response to the environment which is patterned after the mechanical action of matter, fails to attain freedom. In the third act, "by a tremendous leap," consciousness, in spite of the efforts of matter to drag it down to the plane of mechanism, reaches at last spontaneity and freedom in man. The drama reaches its dénouement in man and his ability not only to move in response to environment, but to control the environment. It is intimated that there may be a sequel, in which life pursues its career in another stage of existence.
1. It is evident at a glance that the view of evolution here set forth in barest outline offers many points of contrast to what has been accepted as evolutionary orthodoxy. The history of life with both Darwin and Bergson is a struggle: but with Darwin it is a struggle for existence, with Bergson a struggle for freedom, for efficiency, for complexity. With Darwin there is a struggle of living beings with one another, conceived after the analogy of economic competition; with Bergson there is a struggle of life against matter and necessity. The struggle for existence, in a sense, has been moralized. It is a struggle for the existence and higher life of consciousness.
2. Creative evolution is not materialistic evolution, for life is not a development from matter but is an upward tendency opposing the downward current of matter. The increasing complexity of living forms is not the result of the movements of matter, or of chemical-physical laws, but of an opposition, successful in a unique degree in men, to the imprisoning and entangling forces of matter.
3. The later stages in evolution, while connected with the earlier in continuity of development, may contain elements that are essentially new. A living being is "a reservoir of indetermination and unforeseeability."[152] The new species cannot be explained, except by an illegitimate process of thought, by what is presented in the old. The appearance of a new species is something as new as the composition of a symphony of Beethoven. Man, then, in his powers and destinies is not to be judged by his likeness to the brutes, but by what he possesses over and above the qualities of animal life, by those achievements and endowments to which animals have failed to attain. Since man, and man alone, has come so far, and in him alone consciousness has broken the chains of mechanical necessity, "we shall have no repugnance in admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone, consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life."[153]