Shoemaker, Robert V.

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A TRUCE OF PHILOSOPHIES.BY ROBERT V. SHOEMAKER.PRAGMATISM says that truth is always relative to our develop-ment of mind, and valued according to our purposes. If this istrue—and there is no doubt but it at least represents a truth—thena philosophy that can reconcile the sustaining purposes of material-ism, idealism and pantheism, will be able so to appeal to the wholesoul of man that he will recognize the teaching as truth—as theidea-embodiment-for-him of reality. To sketch the outlines ofsuch a reconciling philosophy, and to show the real underlying har-mony between these three philosophies, is the none too modestpurpose of this essay.Following the pragmatic principle of practicality, let us try toassign a place to pantheism. The chief objection to pantheism isthe passive mood that it imparts. The recognition of worthinessin everything that is, is not conducive to strife for the things thatare not and must be. If everything at any one time is either goodor working for good, there is no standard for the choice of moreor less productive paths in life. Spinoza's pantheism resolved itselfinto an end to all striving, and a passive oneness with the All—though nothing is more manifest than that to be one with the Allis to be active. The modern "Christian Scientist" pantheism doesnot discourage striving, but allows it recognition along with allthings else, as good ; but, since all is good, there is no impellingmotive to altruistic striving, and selfish striving is the more en-couraged. The materially prosperous flock to the Scientist standard:others of the fold are encouraged, and thus aided, to gain materialprosperity ; and the whole tone of their worship is one of deadeningcontentment in health and wealth or whatever other material bless-ings they may have; Not for them any agony over starving millionsin China or in tenement houses in unvisited corners of their own city!Yet it can readily be seen that this philosophy would do veryA TRUCE OF PHILOSOPHIES. 55nicely for a well-adjusted world, where governmental and humanfrailties were so slight that there was no need of an aggressive andsacrificing altruism. The reason we rebel against pantheism is thatthe times are not yet ripe for it. Humanity cannot live half eman-cipated and half enchained. The emancipated must devote them-selves to rending the others' chains. But once the chains are allbroken and thrown into the melting-pot of dissolution, then pan-theism can come into its own.There are yet some objections which we must answer here.Some object to a perfect, pantheistic world for our goal, because,they say, they would not live in a land whose fruits were not sweet-ened by desperate strife. These we may ask if there is not some-thing wrong with a mind, that insists upon having others suffer tospice its pleasure. But, say others, granted such a world of per-fection is better than our present world, is it worth striving for?Would it not be a tame object for century-long struggle? Why notgive up the fight and die? To this the first reply is, to give up thefight is to shirk. Man has an impulse that makes him strive upward,and to drop out of the struggle is ignoble. Even could all men bepersuaded to give up the fight, the world would still move on, evenwithout man, and still have problems unsolved which only evolu-tion and striving could solve. And this would remain true if mankilled, before himself, all life upon which he could lay hand. Andthe second reply is that, no matter how near perfect the institutionsof man and the dispositions of beasts, there are always the elementsto brave, games to excite and develop, mountain crags to scale.And if the man of the perfect world becomes surfeited of these—which is not likely from our present need of bundling for the ele-ments and of braces and supporters for our games—he may at leastseek a calm death, untroubled by the responsibility of the sins ofthe world.So pantheism is an unsilenceable craving, which the selfish hopeof a personal reward hereafter cannot silence, but only deaden. Inour philosophy, then, pantheism for the future.Examining idealism by its fruits, we find two distinct, yet oftenentwined, types of idealism, which we will denote as aspirationalidealism and as basic or cosmic idealism. Their products in theworld are practically opposite, and when the two are combined ina philosophy, as they are almost invariably, they make for a sortof contradictory ethical indeterminism.Basic idealism defines matter as we know it as a figment of themind. Kant's critical rationalism concedes some ground to the56 THE OPEN COURT.materialist in his threefold world of mental states, phenomena andthings-in-themselves, but his definition of phenomena as the syn-thesis of sense-impressions by means of mental categories giveshim a decided leaning toward basic idealism. Now the fruits ofthese beliefs-—pure and critical basic idealism—are perhaps not sosoporific as is pantheism, but they have marked tendencies that way.If ideals, ideas, or categories are held to be independent of matter(creating phenomena rather than created by phenomena), if ideasor categories are shot at us bolt out of the sky—we not only areinvolved in an endless array of equally dogmatic ideas, we not onlyfind ourselves unable to cope with numerous physical situations forwhich there is no adequate God-given idea, but we are likely tobecome physically lethargic, and echo too emphatically the ideas ofRabbi Ben Ezra of "the vulgar mass called work," of the world as"machinery just meant to give the soul its bent," and the subsequentinjunction, "Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou withearth's wheel?" This tone of selfish individualism is sounded atfrequent intervals through the idealism of the nineteenth century—its poets and its ministers—and its voice is still a strong one, com-forting into torpor those who otherwise could not rest until theyhad made the world physically a better place to live in, and whobut for trust that the sweet in spirit shall be saved to eternal bliss,might pin their lives and their trust to the hope of perfectionachieved in the physical world, through physical as well as soullabor. (This is not meant in any way to ridicule the belief in afuture spiritual life, except as it is used as a drug to deaden thesensibilities which demand a housecleaning in this world.)But the other kind of idealism, aspirational idealism, we wouldcling to above all else in the world. It is forming and clingingto ideals that has raised us above the brutes of the paleolithic age,the brutes of the inquisition days, the brutes of this day of war andafter-war terror, and the weaker brutes of our nation's southernneighbor. It is the forming of ideals and the insistence upon mak-ing them real and material that has raised man to be man. x\nd it isat this point that aspirational idealism conflicts with cosmic idealism.Cosmic idealists are content to keep their ideals in the realm of theideal ; natural, aspirational idealists throb to grasp their ideas andbring them to earth for all men to see and love.So, then, idealism, not for the explanation of the presentthrough the past, but for the evolution of the future through thepresent, shall be part of our philosophy.A TRUCE OF PHILOSOPHIES. 57And then materialism. Here again we have two sorts, ethicaland cosmic. I know of nothing more gross than ethical materialismThat since a thousand dollars, a roomy home or a tiny pearl is tobe desired, a million dollars, a thirty-room house or a string ofgiant pearls is of so much the more value, is absurd reasoning. Noris the idea that to furnish a modern home with Oriental rugs,medieval art, Greek statuary, colonial pillared porches, bungalowroof and Roman lions at the gate—a hodge-podge of things valu-able in their proper atmosphere—much better. To know a lady bythe quality and quantity of her dresses, to measure a man by hispossessions, to measure joy by laughter, or song by volume—theseare of the gross.But cosmic materialism—that is a different thing. The scien-tific investigations of evolution have shown that man could risefrom the ignoble ape—yes, even from the Protozoa, who trace acommon ancestry with plants. Possibly some day it will be shownthat man arose from no higher origin than a chemical reaction.Does it. then, seem unlikely that mind should evolve from puresensitive matter—that the ideal, though higher than the material,should have evolved from it?What there is of natural revolt against this now fairly estab-lished theory is due primarily to a repugnance toward those animalswhich trace a common ancestry with us. But this repugnance hasits basis in the fact that these types are not evolving types, but de-cadent and static offshoots of the true agent of evolution. Thisvery naturally raises the question, "Is man also a stationary, un-evolving type?" If we cannot answer this with a strong negative,we shall not be able to wean the aspirational idealist away fromcosmic idealism, and the efforts of this essay are useless. But ifwe have faith in a slow but steady human evolution, we need notdespise our lowly material origin.It may serve us well to take up the question of empiricism.In spite of the ethical, pragmatic, view against cosmic idealism,and the preponderance of reason in evolution against it, may wenot still be wrong in denying it? How do we know that there arethings-in-themselves ? And if we know that, how are we sure weknow them as they are? This seems to me well enough answered,by, for instance, the predictions of astronomy. The ability to fore-tell by science is certainly indicative of sufficient ability to knowthings as they are, to satisfy all our purposes. Of course, we cannotknow what our world would mean to a fourth-dimension person,nor have we fathomed just its relation to the universe. But it is58 THE OPEN COURT.absurd to believe with the idealist that God tags us around, placingillusions before us, which in accordance with divine law producecertain effects upon, the mind, leading the mind to imagine in turncontrol over an illusory body, made for our mind's benefit by God.which in turn produces certain God-inspired illusory effects uponthe illusions which God has located in our minds as ideas of matter.Nor can we even agree with Kant that our idea of matter and move-ment is but the synthesis of sensations of things-in-themselves byGod-given categories of cause, time and space, for psychology hasbeen able in some degree to trace these categories to empirical ex-perience. Psychology tells us, and perhaps we can dimly recall,of a time when the world was to our infant mind one vast confu-sion. Impressions were made, strengthened by repetition, knit withothers by coincidence and analogy of effect, connected with oppo-sites by conflict of effect, and so on until our minds could graspwith less and less mystification the things of this world. This re-markable train of development seems to require no other building-material than a head filled with matter having a sensitive reactionto ether-waves, air-waves and the grosser material bodies aboutus. Psychology has, in other words, practically accomplished whatwas once considered impossible—knowing the knower. The mindhas practically been reduced to a structure evolved through the cen-turies (as the individual, so the phylum) from sensitive-reactivematter. Under this materialistic aspect our knowledge may be in-complete, fragmentary, and hence faulty, but it is not dubious inits foundation. It may be but a reflection, but it serves our pur-poses, and the only way to improve it is not to seek mystic inter-pretations of it, but to examine it more closely.Nor even is a more radical materialism to be feared. (My dis-cussion may be discounted from this point on without affecting mymain contention as expressed in the conclusion. I am now merelyadding my personal foibles to the possibilities.) Of course, allevolution may have been accomplished under the lash of a creator-driver—a personality—a fixed, immovable and ideal God. Butdoes this seem likely? And if so, whence full-fledged into beingsprang God?An acceptance of a materialistic basis for the world is boundat least to make unnecessary the belief in an all-powerful creativeand guiding hand, either in the growth of the mind or the growthof the world. (Do not misinterpret me as denying a guiding Aspira-tion or Spirit, for that is the object of my deepest worship.) It isnot belittling to the human race to think of it as evolving throughA TRUCE OF PHILOSOPHIES. 59the millions of years from a simple reactive-sensitive mass until itbodied forth creatures with a soul for beauty, for sympathy and forsacrifice. Nor is it a libel upon God to think of God as an imper-sonal Aspiration and Will, growing gradually in us through thisevolution—the Soul ideal—always a step in advance of the body.A future life of the spirit is not inconsistent with materialism.That the spirit—the motive pulse of the body—may pass into afiner and more plastic body, as the ether, appeals to the scientificmind. If it does pass into such a transcendent medium, its influencein the world is multiplied—a sort of mental telepathy—and it isalso possible that every thought, every moment, has its immortalityor eternal punishment.To those who find a Reason for creation, we may say, find ifyou will the first reason for the universe. Then ask for the reasonthat lies back of that. And so on. Do you think you will everfind one that will explain itself?,And to those who seek a Cause for creation, we may say, findthe Ultimate Cause, and then tell us how It sprang into being.But to those who seek a Purpose pervading the world, we maysay, Look at the universe as it was in the beginning, a causeless,reasonless, purposeless life. Then see through time a giant strengthand purpose rising out of the mist—a will to the universal reali-zation of fundamental impulses and to good will among men, beasts,birds, and growing herbs. This is the God in man—this is the soul.This is that which lives through death. This is that which willemancipate the earth from her terrible birth-pangs with an issue thatshall comfort her as long as she lives. This is the idealism arisingout of materialism to grasp pantheism.So you see, we have materialism for the past, idealism for thepresent and pantheism for the future. We sought a truce of philos-ophies, but I fear we have stirred us up a fight.

A Truce of Philosophies.

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A Truce of Philosophies.

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