APPENDIX I
SPIRITUAL SELF-DISCIPLINE
The preceding volume in its entirety and in every part is nothing else than a book of spiritual self-discipline. Every religion presents to its followers as real objects that the eye has not seen. The certainty of the existence of these objects, religious certainty, religious conviction, springs from one or other kind of need and distress. The object that the eye has not seen is believed in because it corresponds to that need, and relieves that distress. Furthermore, the conviction is strengthened, the certainty intensified, by two methods: (1) elaboration of the ideas presented; (2) performing acts in the doing of which the existence of the objects is presupposed. Thus the idea of the Heavenly Father corresponds to the childlike need of protection. The elaboration of this idea in theological systems strengthens its hold, every idea being powerful as an active force in proportion as it is worked out in detail and linked up with other ideas. And ceremonies, prayers, acts of worship in the doing of which the reality of the Father-God is presupposed, strengthen the belief in him. Conduct is one of the chief sources of belief. The more frequently a devout Roman Catholic prays to the Virgin Mary, the more firmly will he be convinced that she exists and hears him. These features are common to all religion: unseen objects are presented as real; the belief in their reality is augmented by elaboration of the ideas; and above all their hold is reinforced by practice founded on and presuming the reality of the ideas.
The unseen object which the religion of spiritual experience presents is the unique personality. The lines along which the ideas are to be elaborated have been sketched in the above. Conduct based on the presumption that the divine nature exists in every human being is the principal means of fortifying that conviction, and this presumption itself rests on the fundamental fact of worth.
The difference in rank between the various religions depends on the kind of need which they seek to satisfy. It may be physical, as when the worshiper prays for large herds and fruitful crops. It may be the urging of a passion, as when a man prays for revenge on his enemies. And it may be ethical. And if ethical, it may be purely ethical, or ethical with non-ethical elements admixed. A religion is neither approved nor condemned because it satisfies a need. The judgment passed on it depends on the kind of need it undertakes to satisfy.
Seek to raise the plus traits to the Nth degree. Seek through spiritual sex interaction to release the spiritual life in the child. Bring to birth in thyself the idea of the state, etc. Every chapter of this volume contains some direction as to the lines of conduct to be followed. The principal self-discipline consists in the effort to follow these lines.
But experience tells us that the effort may be hindered or helped in certain ways. I shall mention a few of the helps and hindrances:
Physical and Mental Athleticism are helps to Moral Athleticism. Ethics is a science of energetics. Bodily and mental energy is favorable to ethical energizing. By mental energy I understand especially the habit of vigorously attacking complex and difficult mental problems.
Right Asceticism is related to Ethical Development. I exclude self-abnegation and self-repression practiced as drill apart from any particular occasion requiring them, holding that self-repression should always be incidental to self-expression. This applies especially to the hygiene of the sex passion. A positive ideal of the sex relation, as in marriage, is an invaluable help in ennobling and thereby restraining the passion.
The Ethical Life is the supremely Planful Life. There is a hierarchy of ends of which the ethical is the apex. The ethical end is the supreme end to which all others are to be planfully subordinated. The habit of conducting one’s life planfully is favorable to ethical behavior. I say planfully, not pedantically, due regard being always had to spontaneity.
Among hindrances to Ethical development may be mentioned the tendency to be satisfied with the minor perfections. The better is the greatest enemy of the best. The disproportionate value set on the embellishments of life is but one illustration of this point.
A great hindrance to the spiritual life is the necessity under which we lie of restricting our actual ethical relations to a few persons. We cannot extend our influence to the millions of China and India. We cannot even deeply influence a considerable number of our fellow citizens. On ethical grounds we do acknowledge the claims of each individual, of all these myriads of human beings. Yet as far as any actual good we can do them is concerned, we are powerless, and must leave them to their fate. The tragic aspect of life comes home to us sharply at this point. Intensity must take the place of extensity. Intensive spiritual relations with a few will teach us at least to conceive worthily of those personalities whom we cannot directly affect, and to invest them in idea with the honor which is their due.
Intimate spiritual relations with a few will also counteract the unethical habit of labeling those with whom we come into casual contact according to the special functions they happen to exercise. Thus a letter-carrier is apt to be thought of as an animated machine to carry letters, a stenographer as a kind of animated machine to take dictation, the servant in the house a machine to render physical service. The more complete our appreciation of personality is in the case of the few, the more we shall be impelled to transfer the concept of personality, at least in its outlines, to all others. In this way our friendships, our close relations, will not restrict our ethical horizon. In the narrower circle we shall engender those ideas which in thought at least we can carry out to the farthest limits of human society.
But among the hindrances to ethical practice the two most conspicuous must not be omitted. They are pity and terror, pity for the pain suffered by others, fear of pain for oneself. Aristotle regarded it as the high function of the tragic drama to liberate men from these disturbing factors. The two are combined and in consequence exacerbated to an extreme degree in those situations where the pain suffered by another person is at the same time poignantly felt as one’s own pain. And the anguish felt in seeing the physical suffering of another is even exceeded in witnessing the moral degradation of another, as of an erring son or an apparently irreclaimable husband or wife. The doctrine of frustration as explained in this volume is intended to show the way of relief in such situations. But it is only by not shirking the pain, by permitting it fully to penetrate, by uncovering the breast entirely to the entrance of the pointed spear that we shall have the experience of the transformation of it into the shaft of light.
APPENDIX II103
THE EXERCISE OF FORCE IN THE INTEREST OF FREEDOM
Force is a moral adiaphoron. The stigma attaching to the use of force belongs rather to its abuse. The employment of force is good or bad according as the ends for which it is used are good or bad.
The precept of non-resistance in the Sermon on the Mount is to be understood as a piece of ethical irony.
The right, or to be more explicit, the duty, of society to coerce individual members of it rests on the same ground and holds within the same limits as the duty of the individual to coerce himself. Self-coercion depends on the difference in the quality of one’s impulses, on the choice one is bound to make between competitive ends. Self-coercion is of two kinds: stimulative and repressive; stimulative to overcome inertia, repressive to subject wrong to right impulses.
He who denies the duty of self-coercion, to be consistent, must fall back on the position of the Cynics. For the Cynics were indeed consistent. They asserted not only the right of the individual to be free from outside compulsion, but also the right of each individual moment of the individual’s life to be lived without regard or subjection to future moments. Hence they rejected civilization and its tasks, inasmuch as the prosecution of any task involves the subordination of the present to the content of some future moment.
But if the coercion of a man by himself be admitted, it follows that the exercise of force upon a man by society must in principle be likewise admitted. For we are social by nature; we take an interest in the achievement by each one of his ends, and we regard such achievement as a social-benefit.
As to the limits within which outside interference is to be permitted and welcomed, these can best be ascertained by fastening attention upon the end to be attained. And here the positive conception of freedom seems to be the most helpful,—freedom defined as the release in each one of his essential self, that is, of his distinctive gift and capability, or of that in him which is unique or most nearly so. A society in which such valuable contributions were elicited from each would be the ideal society. Stimulative and repressive social coercion are justified in so far as they provoke energy and check disturbing impulses,—always of course without discouraging spontaneity, which is the very good to be secured.
The antithesis of reason and force common in discussions of this subject seems misleading and inadequate; since reason is a faculty of inference and not of preference, has to do with the adapting of means to ends, and does not of itself afford guidance in the choice of ends.
The concept of freedom as defined is more illuminating. Let freedom and force be contrasted, not reason and force.
The idea of law that would follow from what has been said may be illustrated by comparing the action of law with that of automatism in the human body. The system of co-ordinations by which we learn to walk, or acquire any kind of skill, such as that of performing on a musical instrument, is at first painfully and consciously acquired. Consciousness superintends every step in the process. But after a time the sequences reel off automatically. Consciousness retires from the field, ascends to a higher plane, and devotes itself to more interesting and significant business. Law, taking it in its broadest sense, may be regarded as the automatic machinery of freedom. It is the system of stimulations and repressions which the experience of mankind at any given time has found conducive to the attainment of the superior ends of life. In the minds of the more advanced members of the community repressive laws like the prohibitions of murder, theft, etc., have already become automatic. Such a thing as questioning or transgressing these laws never once in a lifetime occurs to them. (Of the stimulative laws, such as the requirement to pay taxes in support of the progressive interests of society, the same is not yet true.) As regards the backward members of society, however, the repressive laws are educative. Just as in certain diseases the convalescent needs to acquire anew the art of walking, which his neighbors exercise without thinking, so the backward members of society have to learn painfully those habits of repression which for others have sunk below the threshold of consciousness.
Social compulsion therefore may be defined as discipline in the interest of positive freedom. We may expect that in future this salutary kind of compulsion will go to even much greater lengths than it has yet gone. Society as organized in the state has undoubtedly the right to interfere in the choice of the sexes by prohibiting the marriage of persons afflicted with infectious disease. If the study of human character could ever be so far developed as to determine what kind of temperaments are radically incompatible with one another (a bare throw in the air of course), it would be within the province of the state to prohibit the conjugal union of such temperaments, and thus to prevent the disastrous effects on real freedom which such incompatibilities are apt to cause.
I am well aware of the perils of this point of view. There is a brutal factor in the action of society, as in that of individuals. A given community is apt to mistake its prejudices for principles, its torpor for conservatism, its superstitions for spirituality. Such apprehensions as those that weighed on the mind of John Stuart Mill as set forth in his Essay on Liberty are not to be lightly dismissed. And yet the main trend of his argument was plainly determined by an individualistic conception of liberty which many of us no longer share. It is safe to say that on the whole the benefits of coercion outweigh the detriments. We have only to picture to ourselves a state of society in which these coercions should not exist to realize that this is so. The dangers are real, but are due to the abuse of force and not to the exercise of it under the controlling idea of positive freedom which is here proposed.
INDEX
