he has reached perfect goodness. He has no need to be omniscient for this. If he can regard his life not from the standpoint of self-interest, but from that of God who looks upon the whole society of men from without, so that he is perfectly just not only in conscience, but even in desire, and can perfectly control his impulses to live according to such a view of his place in the scheme of things, he is a perfectly good man. Thus the whole Truth of God could not find expression in a human life, but the perfection of intellectual virtue1 can do so; the whole of apprehensible Beauty could not be concentrated in one human consciousness, though perfect Beauty of many kinds and grades can be realised there; the whole Goodness of God can in its completeness be expressed in a human life. We do not now discuss what conditions are requisite for this to happen; we are only concerned at present to assert its assert its possibility in principle. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are all absolute Values; they are good in themselves, apart from all consequences. But they may in experience become rivals through force of circumstance; there may be insufficient time for the fulfilment of some apparent social duty as well as for complete dedication to Science or to Art. Where such a choice has to be made, no man may judge his brother. But in principle Goodness has a priority over the other two because it is the distinctively human type of value and we are human. Indeed when we follow after Truth and Beauty with an absolute devotion, if we are not neglecting some other and yet stronger claim, we are manifesting Goodness. But it is possible to pursue these selfishly, not for their absolute value but for our own pleasure alike in the pursuit and the attainment; and then our 1 I.e. the readiness of the mind to apprehend rightly whatever it may have the opportunity to apprehend. conduct is wrong; for we are not responding to any absolute obligation but to our own desire for our own enjoyment. Goodness cannot be so pursued. We may do the acts of goodness from selfish motivesdesire for admiration or fear of censure. But goodness of character itself must be sought for itself or it is not sought at all. Truth and Beauty are absolute. values, and it is good that we should seek them; but they are not distinctively human; Truth we apprehend but do not create; Beauty we both appreciate and create, but appreciation predominates, for much of the Beauty of the world exists apart from our production of it, and so far as our activity creates Beauty, it is largely imitative. It is true, indeed, that appreciation is a very real activity, and I believe that it is in fact an activity of discovering in Art or in Nature the kindred spirit of the Artist (Divine or human) there self-expressed; and the essential moment in creation and appreciation of Beauty is this expression and recognition of spirit. It remains true, however, that appreciation is not creation. But Goodness, in the whole world so far as we know it, is a human creation; here, too, we appreciate and imitate. But each man must live his own life; imitation should never predominate; and moral goodness is an achievement of mankind, so that if we take mankind as a unit we find here an original contribution to the scheme of things, where no imitation is possible except of God Himself. We have now considered various types of Value, and must proceed to ask what is the nature of Value itself. If our whole position is sound, no definition is possible; you cannot state the Genus and Differentia of your highest principle. But characteristics can be stated. We find, then, that for any actual Value or Good there must be two factors in a certain relation ship-the "valuable" object and the apprehending 1 Cf. Balfour, Theism and Humanism, pp. 55-94, specially 77-81. and appreciating subject; and these must meet in an experience which "satisfies" or is fit for permanence. We shall see later that only the "good" character affords the inner condition of permanence on the subjective side, so that the apparent actualisation of Value represented by base pleasures is illusory. We shall further see that the " good " character is one which has achieved inner and outer totality or comprehensive unity; the objects which such a character accounts "valuable "valuable" are found to have this same quality; they are all marked by totality. Science seeks a totality of perpetually wider extension; Art seeks a totality of perfected inner unity; Goodness is the achievement of inner unity in the individual and extended unity in the society-totality in both. Value, in short, is a system of experience in which a subject free from inner causes of change finds satisfaction in an object which (therefore) it does not seek to change. Its type is God's eternal contemplation of His perfect work. It is not a relation of subject and object or of object and object; it is a unitary system of experience in which such relations have their place. Because it is a subject-object system, perfectly co-related, the object must reveal the characteristics of Mind and the subject must be absorbed in the object. Hence springs the demand for intellectual or logical structure in works of Art. Mind discovers itself in the Real, and in the discovery becomes its full self: that is Value or Good. But Mind will only perfectly discover itself in other minds; therefore Fellowship is the true norm of Value, and Love its perfect realisation. One other consideration claims attention - the relation of Value to the Time-process. Many of the highest values are found in activities or experiences lasting through considerable periods of time-presumably the highest of all is in the experience which comprehends the whole range of Time and Space. D When we study the experiences in which our finite minds can apprehend Value and which require a process of time for their actualisation-such as a drama or a man's life or a nation's history-we find that the value of the whole is by no means the same as the total or the average of all its stages. of all its stages. Thus we may consider two plays in three acts: in one the first act is cheerful, the second neutral, the third depressing; here the total effect is depressing. In the other the first act is full of gloom, the second shows a dawn of hope, and the third is joyful; here the whole effect is triumphant. The Value of an experience lasting through a period of time depends on its tendency and conclusion, not upon the stages in isolation. This carries with it the supremely important principle that, though past facts cannot be altered, their value can, so that the presence of evil in the world at any moment or through any period of time is not in principle any argument against the perfect goodness of the Whole. That is a consideration of supreme importance, because of the close relationship that exists between Value and Totality. In all Value, as we saw just now, Totality is the distinguishing feature. Totality is the very form of the Good; this is the "perfection of which St. Thomas speaks in the words quoted above.1 But the Whole, for us, is the Will of God and what it has created; therefore every apprehension of Value is in principle a religious experience. Hocking argues that in our sense perception of Nature there is already an apprehension of God. I think this is true. Certainly there is no apprehension of Value which is not an inchoate apprehension of God —and no human experience is utterly without value. CHAPTER III RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Those obstinate questionings Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature WORDSWORTH. To be conscious of absolute value and the absolute obligation which it imposes is plainly a direct awareness of something ultimate in the universe; and if the position already taken up with regard to Value is correct, then it is a direct awareness of what in all creation is most fundamental. It is a consciousness of the very object of the Creative Will; it is thus of itself a knowledge of God. But for a vast multitude of people it not only is, but is directly experienced as being, a knowledge of God. All men have conscience; that is, all men to some extent judge their actual character and conduct by comparison with an ideal formed from their sense. of absolute goodness. Many men experience this ideal as God's will for them; and so conscience becomes the channel of religious experience. It is so that religious experience comes to most men, at any rate to most men born and brought up in a Christian. civilisation. Among primitive peoples, perhaps, it is the sense of vastness rather than the sense of value that chiefly leads to a sense of the divine power; man |