LITMIR.BIZ

      I. STATEMENT AND CRITICISM OF INDIVIDUAL SYSTEMS OF LIFE

      It must be admitted that the first glance at the present conditions of life shows a chaotic confusion. A more careful examination, however, soon discloses a limited number of schemes of life, which, although they are often combined by individuals, are in their nature distinct and remain differentiated. We recognise five such systems of life: those of Religion and of Immanent Idealism on the one hand, and those of Naturalism, Socialism, and Individualism on the other hand. For, two main groups may be clearly distinguished: one, older, which gives to life an invisible world for its chief province; and one, newer, which places man entirely in the realm of sense experience; within these groups, the ways again lead in diverse directions. Let us see what each of these organisations makes out of life; on what each supports itself; and what each accomplishes. Let us see also where each meets with opposition and in what it finds its limits; and this not according to our individual opinion, but according to the experiences of the age.

      (a) THE OLDER SYSTEMS

      1. The Religious System

      The religious organisation of life has influenced us in the past with especial power. This has worked in the form of Christianity, which, as an ethical religion of redemption, occupies a thoroughly unique position among religions. As a religion it unites life to a supernatural world, and subjects our existence to its supremacy; as a religion of redemption it heightens the contrast between the two worlds to such a degree of harshness that a complete revolution becomes a necessity; as an ethical religion it regards the spiritual life as a power of positive creation and self-determination, and insists upon a complete change of the heart. Arising in an age of decay, an age weary of life, it confidently took up the conflict against this faintness; it did not carry on this conflict, however, by a further development of the natural world and of culture, but through the revelation of a supernatural order, of a new community of life, which, through the building up of an invisible Kingdom of God—which wins a visible expression in the Church—becomes to man in faith and hope the most certain presence. Christianity ratified an affirmation of life; still, it did not accomplish this immediately, but by the most fundamental and definite negation; and thus to a cursory consideration it might appear to be a flight from the world. In reality, it unites the negation and the affirmation, flight from, and renewal of, the world; the deepest feeling of, and the happiest deliverance from, guilt and suffering, and thereby gives to life a greater breadth as well as a ceaseless activity in search of its true self. Religion does not mean a special domain by the side of others; its intention is rather to be the innermost soul and the supreme power of the whole life. Through its ideals and its standards it lends to the whole sphere of life a distinctive character; it leads to a definite organisation of mankind and offers powerful opposition to all dissipation, all merely individual caprice. It comes to the individual as a supreme power which brings to him salvation and truth, shapes him for the highest ends, and connects his thought and feeling with an invisible world.

      With such an undertaking Christianity has exercised most deep-reaching influences on the course of history; in the first place it implanted a new vitality in an exhausted humanity; then in the Middle Ages it worked to the education of a new race; and now that it has become mature it has not ceased to exercise strong, though quieter, influences: considering all the facts, it appears to be the most powerful force in history.

      But all the greatness of past achievement could not prevent a strong movement from arising in the Modern Age against Christianity; a movement which still continues to increase in power and which undermines the position of Christianity, where outwardly it still appears quite secure. It is true that there never was a period when it was not opposed by individuals, but through the lack of any spiritual import these isolated oppositions had never combined so as to produce a united effect. An effect of this kind was first produced with the emergence of new systems of thought and new streams of life since the beginning of the seventeenth century; as long, however, as this movement was limited to the cultured classes and left the masses untouched, that which existed in it as a menace did not produce its full effect. It was the conviction of Bayle, that the spirit of the Enlightenment would never permeate the masses. In the nineteenth century this “unexpected” happened, and the nature of spiritual endeavour and the disposition of men join together in an assault upon Christianity; an assault which no one with insight will call anything but dangerous.

      The thing most evident and most talked of is the subversion of the old conception of the world; a conception which is usually associated with Christianity. This conception is less and less able to assert itself in face of the triumphant onward march of modern science. The representation of nature, like that of human history, has been broadened immeasurably and at the same time has acquired inner unity, law, and order; a direct intervention of a supernatural power is felt more and more to be an intolerable derangement. The earth, hitherto the centre of the whole and the chief platform upon which the destiny of the universe was decided, sinks to a position of more correct proportion, and man is much more closely linked to nature and fitted into a common order. How then can that which takes place in him decide what shall be the destiny of the whole?

      If we would withdraw from this shattered conception of the world, as from a mere external matter, to the substance of Christianity, this substance must be much more clearly and much more forcibly present to us than it really is. For, in this change we are concerned not simply with individual phrases, but with the whole mode of thought. We have learnt to think far more causally and critically; we perceive the peculiarity of the historical circumstances in which Christianity arose, and, along with this, become aware of a wide disparity from the circumstances of the present. We question all historical tradition as to its grounds, and so overthrow the weight of authority; our thought has become throughout less naïve and we strive to transcend the form of the immediate impression. From this point of view it comes about quite easily that the religious mode of thought appears to be a mere anthropomorphism, a childlike, imaginative interpretation of the world, which, to an intelligence equipped with the clearness of objective consideration, can pass only for a stage in evolution, which has once for all been overcome. Such is the teaching of Positivism, and it is just in this

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