CHAPTER XXII
THE CIVILIZING POWER OF THE ETHIC OF REVERENCE FOR LIFE
Civilization as a product of reverence for life
THE reverence for life which has grown up in the will-to-live which has become reflective, contains world- and life-affirmation and ethics side by side and interpenetrating each other. It therefore cannot but continually think out and will all the ideals of ethical civilization, and bring them into agreement with reality.
Reverence for life will not allow to pass as current the purely individualistic and inward conception of civilization as it rules in Indian thought and in mysticism. That man should make efforts for self-perfecting by withdrawing into himself is to it a deep, but an incomplete, ideal of civilization.
In no way does reverence for life allow the individual to give up all interest in the world. It is unceasingly compelling him to be concerned about all the life that is round about him, and to feel himself responsible for it. Whenever life is in question the development of which we can influence, our concern with it, and our responsibility for it, are not satisfied by our maintaining and promoting its existence as such; they demand that we shall try to raise it to its highest value in every respect.
The being that can be influenced in its development by us is man. Reverence for life compels us, therefore, to picture to ourselves and to will every kind of progress of which man and humanity are capable. It throws us into a restless condition of ever picturing to ourselves and willing civilization, but as ethical men.
Even a not yet deepened world- and life-affirmation [pg 270] produces this picturing and willing of civilization, but it leaves a man to exert himself more or less without guidance. In reverence for life, however, and the willing which accompanies it, to raise men and humanity to their highest value in every respect, he possesses the guidance which leads him to complete and purified ideals of civilization which with full consciousness of their goal come to terms with reality.
Defined from outside and quite empirically, complete civilization consists in making actual all possible progress in discovery and invention and in the arrangements of human society, and seeing that they work together for the inward perfecting of individuals which is the real and final object of civilization. Reverence for life is in a position to complete this conception of civilization and to supply a foundation for its most inward elements. This it does by defining what is meant by the inward perfecting of man, and making it consist in reaching the spirituality of an ever deepening reverence for life.
In order to give a meaning to the material and spiritual progress which is to be made actual by the individual man and mankind, the ordinary representation of civilization has to assume an evolution of the world, in which such progress has a meaning. But to do so, it puts itself in dependence on a play of phantasy which reaches no result. It is impossible to depict an evolution of the world in which the civilization produced by the individual man and mankind means something.
In reverence for life, on the contrary, civilization recognizes that it has nothing at all to do with the evolution of the world, but carries its meaning in itself. The essence of civilization consists in this, that the reverence for life which in my will-to-live is struggling for recognition does get stronger and stronger in individuals and in mankind. Civilization, then, is not a phenomenon of any world-evolution, but an experience of the will-to-live within us, which it is neither possible nor necessary to bring into [pg 271] relation with the course of nature as we know it from outside. As a perfecting of our will-to-live it is sufficient for itself. What the development that takes place in us means in the totality of the development in the world we leave on one side as something undiscoverable. That as a result of all the progress which men and mankind can make there shall exist in the world as much as possible of will-to-live, putting reverence for life into practice on all life which comes within reach of its influence, and seeking perfection in the spiritual atmosphere of reverence for life: this and nothing else is civilization. So completely does it carry its value in itself that even the certainty of the human race ceasing to exist within a calculable period, would not be able to lead us away from our efforts to attain to civilization.
As a development in which the highest experience of the will-to-live lives itself out, civilization has a meaning for the world without needing any explanation of the world.
The four ideals of civilization. The struggle for a civilized mankind in the machine age
The will-to-live which is filled with reverence for life is interested in the most lively and persevering way that can be imagined in all kinds of progress. Moreover, it possesses a standard by which to assess their value correctly, and can create a spirit and temper which allows them all to work in with one another in the most effective way.
Three kinds of progress come within the purview of civilization: progress in knowledge and power; progress in the social organization of mankind; progress in spirituality.
Civilization is made up of four ideals: the ideal of the individual; the ideal of social and political organization; the ideal of spiritual and religious social organization; the ideal of humanity as a whole. On the basis of these four ideals thought comes to terms with progress.
Progress in knowledge has a directly spiritual significance [pg 272] when it is interpreted by thought. It makes us recognize, ever more completely, that everything which exists is power, that is to say, will-to-live; it is ever making larger the circle of the will-to-live of which we can form conceptions by analogy with our own. What a significance it has for our meditation on the world that we have discovered in the cell an individual existence, in the capacity of which for activity and suffering we see repeated the elements of our own vitality! By our ever-growing knowledge we are roused to ever greater astonishment at that secret of life which surrounds us on every hand. From simple simplicity we arrive at a more profound simplicity.
From our knowledge comes also power over the forces of nature. Our powers of movement and of action are increased in an extraordinary way. There comes about a far-reaching change in the circumstances of our life.
The progress which accompanies it, however, is not to the same extent an advantage for the development of man. By the power we obtain over the forces of nature we do indeed free ourselves from nature, and make her serviceable to us, but at the same time we thereby also cut ourselves loose from her, and slip into conditions of life, the unnatural character of which brings with it dangers of many sorts.
We press the forces of nature into our service by means of machines. There is a story in the writings of Chwang-tse of how a pupil of Confucius saw a gardener who, to get water for his flower-beds, went down to the spring with his bucket every time. So he asked him whether he would not like to lessen his labour. “How can I?” replied the other. “You take a long piece of wood for a lever,” said Confucius’ pupil, “weighted behind, but light in front; with this you dip for the water and it comes up without the least trouble. They call this device a draw-well.” But the gardener, who was something of a philosopher, answered: “I have heard my teacher say: ‘If a man uses machines, he carries on all the affairs of life like a machine; whoever [pg 273] carries on his affairs like a machine gets a machine-like heart; and when anyone has a machine-like heart in his breast, he loses true simplicity.’”
The dangers that were suspected by that gardener in the fifth century B.C. are active among us in full force. Purely mechanical labour has become the lot of numbers among us to-day. Cut loose from their own house and from any ground of their own which might feed them, they live in a depressing, materialist unfreedom. As a result of the revolution which the machine has produced, we are almost all of us subjected to an existence of labour which is far too much governed by rule, too limited in its nature, and too trying to the system. Reflexion and collectedness are made difficult for us. Family life and the upbringing of our children are impoverished. We are all more or less in danger of becoming human things instead of personalities. Many sorts of material and spiritual injury to human existence form therefore the dark side of the achievements of discovery and invention.
Even our capacity for civilization is endangered. Claimed entirely for so severe a struggle for existence, many of us are no longer in a position to think about ideals which make for civilization. Such men cannot reach the objective mood which is necessary for it. All their attention is directed to the improvement of their own existence. The ideals which they set up for this latter object they proclaim to be ideals of civilization, and thus they start confusion in the general picture of what civilization is.
In order to fit ourselves to the state of things produced by the results of these achievements of discovery and invention which are, indeed, desirable although injurious, we must think out the ideal of humanity and wrestle with circumstances to make them hinder as little, and help as much as possible the development of man up to this ideal.
The ideal of civilized man is none other than that of a man who in every relation of life preserves true human nature. To be civilized men means for us almost this: [pg 274] that in spite of the conditions of modern civilization we remain human. It is only taking thought for everything which belongs to true human nature that can preserve us, amid the conditions of the most advanced external civilization, from going astray from civilization itself. It is only if the longing to become again truly man is awakened in the man of to-day, that he will be able to find his way out of the confusion in which, blinded by conceit at his knowledge and pride in his powers, he is at present wandering. Only then, too, will he be in a position to work against the pressure of those relations of life which threaten his human nature.
Reverence for life demands, therefore, as the ideal of the material and spiritual being of man, that with the completest possible development of all his faculties and in the widest possible freedom, both material and spiritual, he strives to be honest with himself and to take a sympathetic and helping interest in all the life that is around him. In earnest concern about himself he must ever keep in mind all the responsibilities which are his lot, and so, as sufferer and as actor, preserve in his relation to himself and to the world a living spirituality. There should ever be before him as true human nature the duty of being ethical in the profound world- and life-affirmation of reverence for life.
If it is recognized as the aim of civilization that every man shall attain to true human nature in an existence which is as fully as possible worthy of him, then the uncritical overvaluing of the external elements of civilization which we have taken over from the end of the nineteenth century can no longer prevail among us. We are forced more and more into a reflexion which compels us to distinguish between the essentials and the unessentials of civilization. Unspiritual pride in civilization loses its power over us. We dare to face the truth that with the progress of discovery and invention civilization has become not easier, but more difficult. We become conscious of the problem of the mutual relations between the material and [pg 275] the spiritual. We know that we all have to wrestle with circumstances on behalf of our human nature, and make it an object of our care to transform the almost hopeless struggle which many have to carry on to preserve their human nature, into one which offers some hope.
As a spiritual help in this struggle we offer them the spirit and temper which will allow no man ever to be sacrificed to circumstances, as if he were a mere human thing. Formulated by so-called thinkers and popularized in all possible forms, the conviction is general that civilization is the privilege of an _élite_, and that man in the mass is only a means for realizing it. At the same time the spiritual help which they can claim is denied to these men who have to wrestle to preserve their human nature. That is the effect of the devotion to reality to which we have surrendered ourselves. But reverence for life rebels against it, and produces a spirit and temper in which there is offered to every man in the thoughts of others the human value and the human dignity which the circumstances of life would deny him. The struggle has thus lost its extreme bitterness. Man has now to assert himself only against his circumstances, and no longer against his fellow-men at the same time.
Further, the temper of reverence for life helps those who have to struggle hardest on behalf of their human nature by keeping alive the conception of human nature as the privilege which must be preserved at any price. It keeps them from engaging with one-sided aims in their struggle for the diminishing of their material unfreedom, and bids them bethink themselves that much more of human nature and inward freedom can be combined with their actual life-circumstances than they actually secure. It leads them on to preserve recollectedness and inwardness when they have hitherto given them up.
There must come about a spiritualizing of the masses. The mass of individuals must begin to reflect about their lives, about what they want to secure for their lives in the [pg 276] struggle for existence, about what makes their circumstances difficult, and about what they themselves renounce. They are wanting in spirituality because they have only a confused conception of what spirituality is. They forget to think, because elementary thought about themselves has become something unfamiliar to them. In what is in our day cultivated as spirituality and practised as thought, there is absolutely nothing that comes directly home to them as necessary for them. But if it comes about that the thoughts suggested by reverence for life become common among us, there will be a mode of thought provided which will work in everybody, and a spirituality aroused which will show itself in everybody. Even those who are engaged in the hardest struggle on behalf of their human nature will then be led to reflexion and inwardness, and will thereby obtain powers which they did not before possess.
Though all of us are alike aware that the maintenance of civilization is dependent first and foremost on the breaking out of the fountains of spiritual life in us, we shall nevertheless zealously take in hand our economic and social problems. The highest possible material freedom for the greatest possible number is a requirement of civilization.
The recognition that we evidently have so little power over economic relations does not discourage us. We know this to be to a considerable extent a result of the fact that hitherto facts were contending with facts, and passions with passions. Our powerlessness comes from our feeling for reality. We shall be able to deal with things much more effectively, if we resolve to try to solve our problems by a change of spirit and temper. And we are at length ready for the recognition of this. The efforts for control which were made on the strength of economic theories and Utopias were in every respect failures, and have brought us into a terrible condition. There remains nothing for us to do but to try a radical change of policy, [pg 277] viz., the solution of our problems by means of a helpful understanding and confidence in a way that will prove effective. It is reverence for life alone which can create the spirit and temper needed for this. The understanding and confidence which we mutually accord to each other with a view to what is most purposive, and by means of which we obtain the utmost power that is possible over circumstances, can be enjoyed only if everyone can assume in everyone else reverence for the existence of the other and regard for his material and spiritual welfare as a spirit and temper which influences them to the depths of their being. Only through reverence for life can we attain the standards of economic justice, about which we have to come to an understanding with each other.
Will it be possible to bring about this development? We must, if we are not to be ruined together, materially and spiritually. All progress in discovery and invention works itself out at last to a fatal result, if we do not maintain control over it through a corresponding progress in our spirituality. Through the power which we gain over the forces of nature we get in an inexplicable way as human beings control over other human beings. With the possession of a hundred machines a single man or a company is given a supremacy over all who work the machines. Some new invention makes it possible for one man by a single movement to kill not merely a hundred, but ten thousand of his fellow-men. In no sort of struggle is it possible to avoid becoming ruinous to one another by economic or physical power. At best the result is that the oppressor and the oppressed exchange rôles. The only thing that can help is that we renounce the power which is given us over one another. But that is something to be done by spirituality.
Intoxicated by the progress in discovery and invention with which our age has been flooded, we forgot to trouble ourselves about men’s progress in spirituality. In the absence of all thought we slid without knowing it into [pg 278] pessimism, believing, that is, in all sorts of progress, but no longer in the spiritual progress of the individual and of mankind.
Facts call us now to bethink ourselves, just as movements of their capsizing vessel drive the crew up on to the deck and into the rigging. Belief in the spiritual progress of the individual and of mankind has already become almost impossible for us, but with the courage of despair we must force ourselves into it. That we shall all unanimously again will this spiritual progress and again hope for it: that is the reversal of the helm which we must succeed in making, if our vessel is at the last moment to be brought once more before the wind.
Only through thoughtful reverence for life shall we become capable of this achievement. If that reverence begins anywhere to work in our thinking and in our spirit and temper, then the miracle is possible. The power of the elementary and living spirituality that is to be found in it is beyond calculation.
Church and State as historical entities, and as ideals of civilization
State and Church are only modified forms of the organization of men towards humanity. The ideals of social-political and religious organization are therefore determined by the necessity of these entities being made effective aids to the spiritualizing of men, and to their organization towards humanity.
The fact that the ideals of State and Church among us are not at work in their true form is due to our historical sense. The men of the “Aufklärung” assumed that State and Church had come into existence by reason of estimates made of their usefulness. They sought to comprehend the nature of these two entities by means of theories about their origins, but in this proceeding they did nothing but read back their own view into history. Not feeling the least reverence for any natural historical entity, they [pg 279] found it easy to approach them with demands suggested by a rational ideal. We, on the contrary, have such a measure of this reverence that we feel shy of wishing to transform in accordance with theoretical ideas what had a quite different origin.
But State and Church are not merely natural historical entities; they are also necessary ones. The only way in which reflexion can deal with them is to be always at work, transforming them from what they are as received, into organisms which are in accordance with reason and effective in every respect. Only in this capacity for development is their existence fully apprehended and justified.
The natural historical entity presents us always only with initial facts which lead on to corresponding further happenings, but never with facts in which the nature of the society, that is to say the way in which we are to behave towards it and to belong to it, can be determined. If one allows that in the conception of the natural entity there is also given one of a self-determined purpose, there arises a fundamental confusion in people’s notion of the organization. The individual and humanity as a whole, which are just as truly natural entities as the two historical ones, are robbed of their rights and sacrificed to the latter. The increased understanding with which we now study the natural policy of societies with historical origin can therefore not alter at all our demand that State and Church shall direct their course more and more with reference to the ideal of man and of humanity as their natural poles, and be obliged to find in them their higher effectiveness.
Civilization demands, then, that State and Church become capable of development. This presupposes that the relations of influence between the collective body and individual members of it will become different from what they have been. In the last few generations the individual has in face of State and Church surrendered more and more of his spiritual independence. He received his spirit [pg 280] and temper from them, instead of the spirit and temper that was growing within him working as a shaping force upon State and Church.
This abnormal relation was unavoidable. The individual had, of course, nothing in which he could be spiritually independent. He had, therefore, no spirit and temper in which he could come to terms with the entities of real life. Nor was he in a position to think out ideals which could work upon reality. There was no course left for him but to adopt as an ideal an idealized reality.
But in the world- and life-view of reverence for life he obtains the means to a firm and valuable self-determination. It is with a will and a hope which he carries ready shaped within himself that he faces reality. It is to him something self-evident that every society that is formed among men must serve towards the maintenance, the advancement, and the higher development of life, and the production of true spirituality.
That which is decisive for the commencement of a development of State and Church which has civilization for its aim and object, is that the mass of men belong to these two entities in the spirit and temper of reverence for life and the ideals which grow out of it: when that is the case there arises in State and Church a spirit which works for their transformation into something ethical and spiritual.
A forecast of the course this process will take cannot be made, nor is one needed. The spirit and temper of reverence for life is a force which works effectively in every direction. The important thing is that it shall be present with a strength and a steadiness which will suffice to bring about the transformation.
The moralizing of the religious and political community
If the Church is to accomplish its task, it must unite men in elementary, thoughtful, ethical religiousness. This [pg 281] it has done hitherto very imperfectly. How far it is from being what it ought to be, its absolute failure in the war revealed. There devolved on it the duty of summoning men out of the struggle of national passions to reflexion, and to keep them in the spirit and temper of the highest ideals. It was not able to do this, and indeed did not seriously attempt to. Only too completely historical, and too well organized, and too little a directly religious association, itself succumbed to the spirit of the time and mixed up with religion the dogmas of nationalism and pragmatism. There was only one tiny church, the community of the Quakers, which attempted to defend the unconditional validity of reverence for life, as it is contained in the religion of Jesus.
The spirit and temper of reverence for life is able to work for the transformation of the Church to the ideal of a religious association, because it is itself deeply religious. In all historically formulated belief it seeks to bring into general acceptance as the elemental and essential thing in piety the ethical mysticism of oneness with the infinite Will, which experiences itself in us as the will to love. By putting in the very centre of things the most living and universal element of piety, it leads the different religious associations out of the narrowness of their historical past, and paves the way for understanding and union between them.
But this spirit and temper does even more than that. Besides bringing the existing historical religious associations out of their historical existence into a development towards the ideal of a religious association, it works also where they can do nothing, in the sphere of non-religion. There are many non-religious people among us. They have become so partly through thoughtlessness and absence of any world-view, and partly because as a result of honest thinking they could no longer be content with a traditional religious world-view. The world- and life-view of reverence for life enables these non-religious minds to [pg 282] learn that every world- and life-view which begins to think honestly necessarily becomes religious. Ethical mysticism reveals to them the necessity to thought of the religion of love, and leads them back to paths which they believed they had abandoned for ever.
Just as the transformation of the religious association must be the result primarily of an inward change, so must that of the social and political community also.
It is true, indeed, that to believe in the possibility of transforming the modern state into the civilized state is a piece of heroism. The modern state finds itself to-day in an unprecedented condition of material and spiritual penury. Collapsing under the weight of debts, torn by economic and political struggles, stripped of all moral authority, and scarcely able any longer to maintain its authority in practical matters, it has to wrestle for its existence in a succession of fresh troubles. Whence is it to get power to develop, in the face of all these things, into a truly civilized state?
What crises and catastrophes the modern state is still destined to go through cannot be foreseen. Its position is further endangered especially by the fact that it has far overstepped the limits of its natural sphere of operation. It is an extraordinarily complicated organism which intervenes in all social relationships, which tries to regulate everything, and therefore in every respect functions ineffectively; it tries to dominate economic life as it dominates spiritual life; and for its activities over this extensive field it works with machinery which in itself at once constitutes a danger.
At some time and in some way or other the modern state must emerge from its financial trouble, and reduce its activity to a normal standard, but by what methods it can ever again get back to a natural and healthy condition remains still a riddle.
The tragic thing is, then, that we have to belong to the unsympathetic and unhealthy modern state while cherishing [pg 283] the will to transform it into a civilized state. There is demanded from us an absolutely impossible achievement of faith in the power of the spirit. But the ethical world- and life-view gives us strength for the task.
Living in the modern state and thinking out the ideal of the civilized state, we first of all put an end to the illusions which the former cherishes about itself. Only by the majority of its members taking up a critical attitude towards it can it come to itself again in reflexion about itself. The absolute impossibility of the continuance of the state in its present condition must become the universal conviction before things can become in any way better.
But at the same time, through meditation on the civilized state, the perception must become common property that all merely external measures for raising and making healthy the modern state, however effective they may be in themselves, will have only a quite imperfect result unless the spirit of the state becomes quite different. Let us, then, undertake to drive the modern state, so far as the power of our thought reaches, into the spirituality and the morality of the civilized state as it is to be, by following the ideas contained in reverence for life. We demand from it that it shall become more spiritual and more ethical than any state has hitherto been called on to become. Only with efforts to reach the true ideal do we get progress.
The objection is raised that, according to all experience, the state cannot exist by relying merely on truth, justice, and ethical considerations, but has in the last resort to take refuge in opportunism. We smile at this experience. It is refuted by the dreary results it has produced. We have, therefore, the right to declare the opposite course to be true wisdom, and to say that true power for the state as for the individual is to be found in spirituality and the ethical. The state lives by the confidence of those who belong to it; it lives by the confidence felt in it by other [pg 284] states. Opportunist policy may have temporary successes to record, but in the long run it assuredly lands itself in failure.
Thus ethical world- and life-affirmation lays upon the modern state the requirement that it shall aspire to making itself an ethical personality. It presses this obstinately upon the state, and does not let itself be deterred by the smiles of superior persons. The wisdom of to-morrow has a different tone from that of yesterday.
Only by a new spirit and temper ruling within it can the state attain to peace within its borders; only by a new spirit and temper arising between them can different states come to understand each other, and cease to bring destruction upon each other; only by treating the overseas world in a different spirit and temper from that of the past and of to-day, can the modern state cease to load itself in that quarter with guilt.
Such moral talk about the civilized state has often been produced in the past. Certainly it has. But it acquires a special tone at a time when the modern state is perishing in misery, because it refused in the past to continue to be in any way spiritually ethical. It possesses a new authority, too, to-day because in the world- and life-view of reverence for life there is revealed the significance of the ethical in its full extent and its full profundity.
We are therefore freed from any duty of forming a conception of the civilized state which accords with the declarations of nationalism and national civilization, and we are at liberty to turn back to the profound _naïveté_ of thinking it to be a state which allows itself to be guided by an ethical spirit and temper. With confidence in the strength of the civilized spirit and temper which springs from reverence for life we take upon ourselves the task of making this civilized state an actuality.
We look round beyond peoples and states upon humanity as a whole, feeling ourselves responsible to the civilized spirit and temper. To anyone who has surrendered himself [pg 285] to ethical world- and life-affirmation the future of men and of mankind is an object of care and of hope. To become free from this care and hope is poverty; to be wholly surrendered to it is riches. Thus it is our consolation, that in a time of difficulty and without knowing how much we may still experience of a better future, we are paving the way, solely by our confidence in the power of the spirit, for a civilized mankind which is to come.
Kant published, with the title _Towards Perpetual Peace_, a work containing rules which were to be observed with a view to lasting peace whenever treaties of peace were concluded. It was a mistake. Rules for treaties of peace, however well intended and however ably drawn up, can accomplish nothing. Such thinking as brings power to the spirit and temper produced by reverence for life is the only thing which can bring to mankind perpetual peace.
FINIS
FOOTNOTES
Preface Notes
1 [_Translator’s Note_.—Weltanschauung. This compound word may be translated “theory of the universe,” “world-theory,” “world-conception,” or “world-view.” The first is misleading as suggesting, wrongly, a scientific explanation of the universe; the second and third as suggesting, less ambitiously but still wrongly, an explanation of how and why our human world is what it is. The last indicates a sufficiently wide knowledge and consideration of our corner of the universe to allow all factors to be taken into consideration which bear on the question at issue.
There may be passages in which it is desirable to vary the translation, and others in which it is possible to give the meaning in more elegant English, for good English style does not take kindly to such compound words. But this latter consideration can be only a secondary one in the translation of a philosophical work, the first object of which must be to ensure that the author’s meaning shall be reproduced as clearly as possible.]
2 Friedrich Jodl: _A History of Ethics as Philosophical Science_, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Vol. I., 1906; Vol. II., 1912). It treats of the ethics of Western philosophy only.