i-25 great reformers - lao tze

MANAS Reprint - LEAD ARTICLE

VOLUME I, NO. 25JUNE 23, 1948

GREAT REFORMERS: LAO TZEIT is perhaps inaccurate to call Lao Tze a “greatreformer,” for, so far as the historical record goes,there is no evidence that he reformed much ofanything, except, possibly, himself, and of this wehave only the implication of his philosophy. Taoism,it is true, is accounted one of China’s “threereligions,” the other two being Buddhism andConfucianism. Historical Taoism, however, if webelieve the scholars, has little to recommend it, andthe influence of Lao Tze is to be sought rather in theunending stimulation to the human mind of the littlebook of some 5,000 characters which he is said tohave written—the Tao Te King.

Of Lao Tze’s life almost nothing is known. Helived in the sixth century B.C., the epoch of Buddhain India, of Pythagoras in Greece, and a generationbefore Confucius in China. According to LionelGiles of the British Museum, “All that we know forcertain is that, after having spent most of his life inthe State of Chou, he set out at an advanced agetowards the West, passed the frontier, and was neverheard of again.” Legend claims that he was born ofa virgin who conceived him at sight of a falling star,that he wore from birth a venerable white beard, andthat he wrote his book at great age, when, about toleave China, a watchman at the frontier urged him toleave behind a record of his wisdom.

Lao Tze presents a peculiar challenge to thewestern mind for the reason that he represents theantithesis of everything the West seems to believe in,and yet we cannot avoid the conclusion that he was awise man. He seems to have gained hisunderstanding by means which have nothing incommon with the Western theory of knowledge. TheEuropean or American believes, with Descartes, that“clear and distinct ideas” are the criterion of truth.Lao Tze revels in paradox. The scientific minddemands precise definition and the proper use ofterms. Lao Tze’s meaning often undulates, serpent-like, through undermeanings and overtones. TheWest treasures its book of reference, its

encyclopedias. Lao Tze would probably use themfor firewood.

Lao Tze was not progressive. He invented thetheory of laisser faire. He was opposed to publiceducation. He was an isolationist. He was almost apacifist; at least, he offered extremely impracticalviews on national defense. Here, for example, is LaoTze’s conception of Utopia:

Were I ruler of a little State with a smallpopulation, and only ten or a hundred men availableas soldiers, I would not use them. I would have thepeople look on death as a grievous thing, and theyshould not travel to distant countries. Though theymight possess boats and carriages, they should haveno occasion to ride in them. Though they might ownweapons and armor, they should have no need to usethem. I would make the people return to the use ofknotted cords [the old quipo method of recordingevents, before the invention of writing]. They shouldfind their plain food sweet, their rough garments fine.They should be content with their homes, and happyin their simply ways. If a neighboring State waswithin sight of mine – nay, if we were close enough tohear the crowning of each other’s cocks – the twopeoples should grow old and die without there everhaving been any mutual intercourse.

How can a man who is against literacy and eventhe horse and buggy be called a philosopher?Perhaps we should say that all utopian works sufferby a literal reading, and need another sort ofinterpretation. But what would be the life of thepeople in Lao Tze’s “perfect State”? First of all,they would have their health, both mental andphysical. They would be self-sufficient,economically, and unperturbed by controversies overthe monetary system or reciprocal trade agreements.If they listen to Lao Tze, they would strive forunderstanding of Tao, the Way of Nature. Desiringlittle, they would undertake no conquests.Unacquainted with luxuries, their habits would begood. The weapons of war would remain hiddenand grow rusty. The people would havecontentment.

Volume I, No. 25 MANAS Reprint June 23, 1948

2

This comes uncomfortably close to soundinglike a tired radical’s dreams. With no injustice tohim, we may think that Lao Tze had becomediscouraged with civilization. Some years agoEdward L. Strecker, the psychiatrist, described aSouth American tribe of natives who live along theupper reaches of the Amazon. From time to timethey are seen to squat upon the ground, motionless,and until a certain interval has elapsed no persuasionor threat will make them move. “We are waiting,”they say, “for our souls to catch up with our bodies.”Lao Tze’s Utopia might have been designed forsome such purpose.

One who travels in the United States, either bytrain or automobile, and sees the shoals of livingquarters, massed in endless extension outside thegreat cities, without unity, great or small—mereappendages to the equally unrationalized overgrowthof modern industry—might be easily persuaded ofthe superiority of Lao Tze’s arrangements. To be ina measure insensitive to the garish and the hideous isconceivably an advantage when life affords no otherpossibility, but a people so benumbed is also apeople unaware of the meaning of beauty, of in whathappy, harmonious community life consists. Onecannot help thinking that, properly introduced, theUtopia of Lao Tze could become an El Dorado formillions of discontented, nervous, everlastingly tiredand frustrated people of the Western world.

There is a tradition that Confucius, when he wasthirty-four years old, visited Lao Tze to ask hiscounsel, and that Lao Tze said to him:

The men about whom you talk are dead, andtheir bones are mouldered to dust; only their wordsare left. Moreover, when the superior man gets hisopportunity, he mounts aloft; but when the time isagainst him, he is carried along by the force ofcircumstances. I have heard that a good merchant,though he have rich treasures safely stored, appearsas if he were poor; and that the superior man, thoughhis virtue be complete, is yet to outward seemingstupid. Put away your proud air and many desires,your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of novalue to you—this is all I have to tell you. Why doyou not obtain the Tao? This is the reason—becauseyou do not give it an asylum in your heart.

It is helpful, in attempting to appreciate the TaoTe King, to have read first a book like Ortega’sRevolt of the Masses. Both books are intended fordismayed Progressives, men of good will who cannotunderstand what has gone wrong with the world.Ortega describes the behavior of vast populations—the masses—which are without any ideal ofindividual human excellence. “It is not,” he says,“that the mass-man has thrown over an antiquated[moral code] in exchange for a new one, but that atthe center of his scheme of life there is precisely theaspiration to live without conforming to any moralcode.” Ortega is among those few thinkers who areconvinced that the humane culture which everyonewants, yet which is dying away, has its roots inindividual character. Oretega and Lao Tze agree thatno political incantations can conjure humanexcellence into existence. It has nothing to do with60,000,000 jobs, a great industrial plant, radar, noreven the Encyclopedia Britannica. Humanexcellence is a self-produced achievement, on whichthe Tao Te King is a treatise, and one that hasoutlived several civilizations that neglected theprinciples it teaches.

The first Emperor of the later Chin dynastyasked if Tao could be of any use in ruling china. Hewas told by an adviser that “with Tao a corpse couldgovern the Empire.” Kublai Khan ordered all theTaoist books burnt except the Tao Te King, whichwas an emphatic if curious way of pronouncing onits value. In the present, a time of vociferous andincreasingly obtrusive government, Lao Tze’ssuggestions are both refreshing and apt:

In the highest antiquity, the people did not knowthey had rulers. In the next age they loved andpraised them. In the next, they feared them. In thenext, they despised them.

How cautious is the Sage, how sparing of hiswords! When his task is accomplished and affairs areprosperous, the people all say: “We have come to beas we are, naturally and of ourselves.”

Evidently, to obtain rulers of this sort, thewinning party must be one which takes for itsplatform Books V and VII of Plato’s Republic, andin seeking support will urge, paradoxically, that “theState in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern


3

is always the best and most quietly governed, and theState in which they are most eager, the worst.”

Lao Tze continues, showing that the lessons ofChinese history were not different from the lessonsof European history:

As restrictions and prohibitions are multipliedin the Empire, the people grow poorer and poorer.When the people are subjected to overmuchgovernment, the land is thrown into confusion.When the people are skilled in many cunning arts,strange are the objects of luxury that appear.

The greater the number of laws and enactments,the more thieves and robbers will there be. Thereforethe Sage says: “So long as I do nothing, the peoplewill work out their own reformation. So long as Ilove calm, the people will right themselves. If only Ikeep from meddling, the people will grow rich. Ifonly I am free from desire, the people will comenaturally back to simplicity.”

If the government is sluggish and tolerant, thepeople will be honest and free from guile. If thegovernment is prying and meddling, there will beconstant infraction of the law. Is the governmentcorrupt? Then uprightness becomes rare, andgoodness becomes strange. Verily, mankind havebeen under delusion for many a day!

Govern a great nation as you would cook a smallfish [Don’t overdo it].

The Tao Te King is a collection of aphorismswhich have been variously rendered and variouslyarranged. Here, we have drawn upon the translationof Lionel Giles. A more recent translation, alsoexcellent, is that of Ch’u Ta-Kao, published by theBuddhist Society in London. These versions seempossessed of both the vigor and the subtlety of LaoTze’s thought, and offer as well the best of Orientalscholarship. Giles’ work in particular is valuable forits introduction, which helps the reader to recognizebehind the apparently formless sayings of the sagethe outline of a profound metaphysical view of lifeand of nature—but hardly a system, for the genius ofLao Tze lies in his art of intimation, in his refusal tooffer rigid conceptions.

The Tao of Lao Tze is the breath of all realityand the hidden source whence all reality has come.It is the Parabrahman of the Hindus, the Good of thePlatonists, the One of the Neoplationists, and the

Absolute of the Western metaphysicians. But forLao Tze, it is no speculation, no ontological guess. Itis that in which he lives and moves and has his being.Tao is the secret of the sage’s insistence uponsimplicity—the way of nature. At times it appearsthat Lao Tze demands a primitive absence of self-consciousness and that he longs for a pre-Promethean epoch of untried innocence. But we arepersuaded that this is rather the subtle cipher ofintense thought in perfect balance—the speech ofone who uses obscurity as an artist, in order thatother matters may be more luminously portrayed.

Lao Tze has been called “despondent,” a sadpessimist in his view of the ways of men. But thereis no real despondency in one who gives internalevidence of having penetrated deep into the core ofthe human situation, and of having discovered thesame extra-ordinary surety that Socrates reveals inthe Phaedo—that gives human greatness, whereverit is found, its stable foundation. Confucius, thecodifier of Chinese tradition and universal teacher ofthe Chinese people, described Lao Tze to hisdisciples, thus:

I know how birds can fly, fishes swim, andanimals run. But the runner may be snared, theswimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow.But there is the dragon—I cannot tell how he mountson the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven.Today I have seen Lao Tze, and can only comparehim to the dragon.

Of himself, Lao Tze wrote:

All Men have their usefulness; I alone am stupidand clownish. Lonely though I am and unlike othermen, yet I revere the Foster-Mother, Tao.

My words are very easy to understand, very easyto put into practice; yet the world can neitherunderstand nor practice them.

My words have a clue, my actions have anunderlying principle. It is because men do not knowthe clue that they understand me not.

Those who know me are but few, and on thataccount my honor is the greater.

Thus the Sage wears coarse garments, butcarries a jewel in his bosom.


4

Letter fromENGLAND

LONDON.—In one sense there is a connection forthe idealist between the reverence displayed, atleast temporarily, for the late Mr. Gandhi, and thegeneral interest awakened by the conception of a“Western Union” outlined in the British ForeignSecretary’s speech in the House of Commons lastJanuary. Both attitudes are indicative of a deepdesire by the divided human mind of the modernworld for an integral unity—a tribute in the onecase to the embodiment of a spiritual viewpointthat influenced many afflicted by torturing doubtsand uncertainties in the direction of peace, in theother, a tribute to something beyond nationalisolation, something bigger and more important,sometimes called Western democracy. In bothcases there is probably a recognition that neitherordinary human nature nor national patriotism isenough. The communal division of India isparalleled by the sundering of Europe intoideological camps. The phenomena are aptsymbols on a continental scale of the prevalentschizophrenia of the human mind expressing itselfin political or religious terms, and representingaspects of the unresolved conflict between thedual principles of right and wrong, good and evil,liberty and despotism, pain and pleasure, egotismand altruism, that have characterized the historicalspan of some 1,900 years. Painfully, the humanfamily gropes its way towards a solution of thisdichotomy. The universal grief shown over theassassination of Mr. Gandhi, and the acceptance in“free” countries of the proposals for a WesternUnion of Europe, constitute a tacit recognitionthat racialism and sectionalism are obstacles to theachievement of peace as a result of a commoneffort towards unity.

Such hopeful signs as these, however, grantno permission to live in an “ivory tower,” alooffrom our duty toward a bewildered world. Evenin what have come to be known as left-wingcircles here, it is felt that Mr. Bevin made it clearthat it was the policy of the Soviet Union to get

Communist control of the whole of Europe, andthat it was the first principle of British policy toprevent it from doing so. It would be dangerousfoolishness for any idealist to ignore those twofacts in his thought of the future. “In oppositionto none—unless others seek opposition,” wrotethe London Times (Jan. 23, 1948), “and infriendship with all who will bring theircontribution to the common task, this countryintends to go forward with her neighbours insearch of peace and prosperity.” There is roomhere for practical work for practical objectives.

It is salutary at the outset to remember thatWestern civilization has always shown a tendencyto assume virtues that are perceived to be quiteimpossible for anyone living in the world topractise in any unrestricted way. In the Westernsense, a wise man is one who, in all essentials, ismoved by self-interest—one who can mostcleverly conduct the business of his life so as toensure for himself the largest amount of materialprofit. That being said, it is perhaps unnecessaryto add that to equate Western with Christianvalues is quite unjustified. We shall have to returnto a broadly humanist view, if an acceptabledefinition is to be found. “The mostfundamentally European of all moral ideas is thatof individual responsibility,” writes the TimesLiterary Supplement (Jan. 31, 1948), adding:“Those who speak of the dignity of humanpersonality have in mind not the capacity ofrational men to choose between cinemas andcigarettes, but the responsibility of rational men topursue freely what is good.”

It thus becomes obvious that newconceptions of ends and means must beformulated if the current discussion of moral valueis to have any real meaning. With relief we turn tosome fruitful ideas contained in a recent broadcasthere by Mr. L. L. Whyte. Many will share hisview that the essence of the present human plightis that mankind possesses no universallyacceptable and effective system of ethics, and thatthe supreme need is for new principles—“a new


5

way of thinking which will by its own impetus leadman to think appropriately not only about nature,but also about himself and society, so that he canestablish greater harmony both in his own personand in his world community.” When unity ofprocess replaces the old dualism of being in adeeper sense we shall approach the solution ofmany of our present problems, and the science ofthe atom, the science of life, and the science ofmind, will be seen (as Mr. Whyte asks us to seethem) as merely three aspects of a unified science.Meanwhile, we do well to remember what the AgaKhan told us in the London Times (Feb 5, 1948)about an interview he had with Mr. Gandhi atPoona in 1946, when Mr. Gandhi remarked “thata society’s civilization should not be judged by itspowers over the forces of nature, nor by thepower of its literature and art, but by thegentleness and kindness of its members towardsall living beings.”

ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT


6

REVIEWPERIODICAL REVIEW

A PROFESSOR of English literature, HowardMumford Jones, of Harvard, casts a balance onthe past thirty years of American history, and findslittle to admire. His article, “The Vultures ofPeace,” in a recent Saturday Review of Literature,is one of those rare discussions which view humanaffairs with an uncompromised idealism, and has,besides, the peculiar virtue of endowing theprinciples it sets forth with moral reality.Regarding the present foreign policy of the UnitedState, Prof. Jones says:

What Europe hungers and thirsts after mostdeeply is moral and spiritual strength; what ourpolicy insists upon giving Europe is materialism – amaterialism which, whether you want to call it theMarshall plan, or the cold war against Russia, or therestoration of doubtful governments, or bolsteringEuropean currencies, springs from an erroneousconcept of the uses of victory. We have lost anAmerican point of view, and we have been infected bya European one—by the obsolete nineteenth-centurynotion that balance of power is a greater force in theinternational order than spiritual calm.

This analysis is psychological and moral, notpolitical. And because it grows from an impartialspirit it is able to reveal the emotional tragedy ofEurope with a clarity impossible to merelypolitical investigation. The appeal of Fascism,Prof. Jones shows, was to the deep hunger of thespirit of European man; that its promise of“Spiritual calm” was illusory, its premises false, itsconsequences horrible, in no way destroys the factof its character, nor the abyss in human life whichremains unfilled with its defeat:

The fact that Fascism is a defeated cause hasblinded every American leader—most of them mere“practical” men—to the central truth that the problemin Europe today is not Communism but loneliness.We have stripped away the illusory peace of Fascism,but we have given nothing in its place.

Prof. Jones reminds us of the chaoticTwenties, when the forces which in the Thirtiescatapulted the world to war, were in the making.

In those days, “observer after observer returnedfrom the tragic continent to tell us the truth—thathealth is found in the souls of men, not in theirbanking systems.” People who understoodEurope better than any diplomat—the artists,writers and others who, being able to participatein the flow of European culture, felt what waswrong—“told us that what was breaking down inEurope was not so much an economic order orinternational currencies as man’s confidence inhimself and his fellow man.” Again and again,these people

implored us to speak that necessary word ofconfidence in the soul, that reassurance that the greatnew nation of the West truly believed in the dignity ofthe individual and the brotherhood of man.

But the United States was otherwiseconcerned in the Twenties.

Someone will doubtless ask, What, exactly,does Prof. Jones want us to do? He wants us topractice the idealism we talk about, but which weignore in action. He wants a foreign policy basedupon something different from the fear andsuspicion which undergird the present-day“security” program.

The irony of our pretensions to religion anddemocracy [he says] is underlined by the cosmicdisharmony of a Nobel Prize awarded to AmericanQuakers while American arms, ammunition, andofficers are shipped in vessel after vessel to Turkeyand Greece. To Europe, therefore, American belief inthe soul presents itself as a consignment of machineguns in the best Bismarkian manner. The greatestAmerican of the twentieth century may prove to be aHindu who held no office whatever.

Like other Americans, Prof. Jones reveals hisdeep attraction to Gandhi—so much that heclaims him for a countryman. Gandhi, it seems, isdemonstrating the truth of Paine’s dictum that“An army of principles will penetrate where anarmy of soldiers cannot.” Gandhi’s death did notdiminish his appeal to men of ideals in other lands,but increased it. Gandhi’s conquest is proceeding,slowly, peacefully, but invincibly, around theworld. It is not too much to say Gandhi united


7

indivisibly the “practical’ and the “ideal” forcountless thoughtful human beings, of whom,perhaps, Prof. Jones is one. We offer thefollowing passage in evidence:

If idealism is not good sense, why do ourstatesmen continually employ the language ofidealism? If lofty phrases which conceal coarse aimsare the homage that vice pays to virtue, the hypocrisyindicates at the least that men are most profoundlymoved by noble images. The noble image ofdemocracy, truly presented, brings in its train relieffrom tension, inward peace, a pervasive and generouscalm. But a country which, possessing the atombomb, through the mouths of its rulers also demandsfor the first time in its history universal militarytraining cannot impress upon Europe an image ofnobility, but only one of fear. We admire Gandhi; Iwonder whether we dare to imagine him in the WhiteHouse? Yet this dreamer did more for millions ofmen than any Secretary of State has done.

� � �

The leading editorial in the Spring, 1948,Retort, a quarterly of social philosophy and thearts, deals with the traditional radical idea of the“general strike” against war. Noting that mentionof this idea has become increasingly rare, thewriter says:

The general strike against war is a naturalcorollary of the fundamental assumption underlyingall genuine radical thought: that the working class iscapable, under certain circumstances, of actingaccording to its own interests. If after a hundredyears of radical agitation, circumstances still do notpermit one to believe in the possibility of the workersacting to prevent so self-evident a catastrophe asanother war, then clearly the whole basis ofradicalism is seriously challenged. It is a matter ofconsiderable importance to discover why the generalstrike against war has proven so unrealizable.

After some discussion and review of history,the writer concludes the workers are toohabituated to authoritarian control—whether byemployers or labor leaders—to dare so drastic ameasure as a strike against war. The prescriptionsis simple:

The workers should be encouraged to withdrawgradually from industry into a new, decentralized,

self-governing economy. In this economy—a real“new society within the shell of the old”—theworkers would provide their own needs, and it couldserve as the material base and spiritual fountainheadfor a permanent strike against the whole industrialsystem.

It is worthy of note that most of the originalthinking in the radical movement today is in thisdirection. Again, the solution proposed is in forma close analogue of Gandhi’s program ofeconomic independence for the Indian peasantry;it also reminds the reader of the concludingobservations of Carlo Levi in Christ Stopped atEboli. Ralph Borsodi’s Flight from the Cityshows that the white-collar worker may realize asimilar emancipation, and the communitymovements in both England and America alsoseek the roots of freedom in decentralization andeconomic independence.

In these several converging tendencies ofthought one may recognize a common spirit andobjective, and enough agreement, also, on themeans to reach that objective to provide for aloose alliance in motive among them all. From theviewpoint of the mass-society of the present age,such tendencies are no more than germinalbeginnings, but they represent, nevertheless, the asyet unbetrayed movements of the human spirittoward freedom in our time; and they are allmovements for mankind, and against no nation,race or class—a fact which distinguishes themfrom previous libertarian programs.


8

COMMENTARYTHE COMMUNITY IDEAL

IT is a relatively easy matter to build a closely-knitcommunity around a special religious revelation.Under the unifying influence of their peculiarreligious ideas, the communal society of theShakers lasted for over a hundred years. TheOneida Community, too, achieved a comparativesuccess which continued so long as its originalinspiration. The founder of Oneida, JohnHumphrey Noyes, himself observed that he didnot believe such a community could survivewithout the integration of a common religiousfaith.

In contrast, the more “intellectual” society ofBrook Farm had little stamina. The determinationof the Mormons in the face of adversity put theNew England transcendentalists to shame. Asthough realizing something was missing, Emersondid not join the Brook Farm experiment.Likewise Tolstoy, while he inspired the foundingof Tolstoyan communities, never joined one. Hefelt that they missed the main current of life.

The economic communities fared no betterthan the “cultural” ones. Robert Owen’s NewHarmony in Indiana was a disappointing fiasco. Itlasted hardly as long as the grandiloquent “Age ofReason” established by the French Revolution.On a larger scale, we all know what has happenedto the “classless society” promised by Karl Marx.

It seems that the ideal of common materialbenefits is insufficient to sustain humancooperation to the extent demanded by acommunity which does not recognize privateownership. The religious idea of non-materialbenefits, on the other hand, has worked, butcreates a spiritual egotism that is noticeableamong the “saved” of every time and place,whether in communities or not.

This, then, is the problem of the socialidealist: to find a way of generating a spirit ofcooperation that does not rest upon hope of

exclusive rewards, either in this world or the next.There have been individuals animated by such aspirit, but no self-conscious communities of thissort, that we know of. The beginning, perhaps,should be made, not in laying out a townsite, norby planning a credo for choice spirits, but byrecognizing the community of idealism whichalready exists, where we are, as we are, and givingits pattern a more conscious and imaginativeexpression. Perhaps we are not ready forsalvation, on the terms we want and will accept it.Utopia, it may be, is a condition which must beunsought before it can be attained.


9

CHILDREN. . . and Ourselves

THE recent supreme Court Decision invalidatingthe “released time” program for pupils of publicschools in Champaign, Illinois, focusses intereston the problem of teaching moral codes andvalues to the young. There is no doubt whateverthat many parents are justified in feeling that the“scientific” tone of public instruction has tendedincreasingly to discourage in children a respect forreligious values—which may be defined as allcounsels for the subordination of self-interest tothe end of establishing a universal brotherhood orcommunion among men.

The parent who vaguely states that he wantshis child to have “some” religion usually meansthat he wants the child to have a wider view of lifethan one circumscribed by purely personal desires.Such a parent is typical; he may not insist on aspecial denomination; he only wants his child to beencouraged in the development of “ideals” forwhich he will courageously sacrifice and which inthe long run may bring him more happiness thanpower or wealth. When the churchmen of acommunity unite to provide week-day opportunityfor the child to receive a little religious leaveningin association with his regular studies, such aparent will probably feel that released time forreligious instruction is “a good thing.” And anumber of school boards have apparently felt thesame way, for such programs are being carried onin nine states of the United States and Hawaii.But the Supreme Court has decided that this is nota good thing at all but a bad thing—and theSupreme Court, we think, is right.

A child does not learn to love, respect andsacrifice for others by becoming affiliated with areligious denomination. He may feel a temporarysense of identity with those who attend his church,and he may be told by his religious teacher thatJesus commands us to love all men because allmen are like unto each other, but what he actuallysees is that he is not like all men because not all

men belong to his church. His embryonic effortsto embody religious precepts in daily activity willbe soon confronted by the dilemma fostered by allChristian sectarianism—the clash between the“Christ-life” and the conceits of exclusiveness andself-righteousness.

Racial problems are very closely allied tosectarianism. In his or her earliest years, a child isnever conscious of racial divisions until informedof them by parents. Black, brown, red, yellowand white are treated alike. Each is a distinctindividual and appeals to the child according toattractiveness of personality. (Here we have,perhaps, the clearest example of the fact thatchildren’s attitudes are often superior to socialattitudes.) With sectarianism it is the same. Itmakes no difference to a child what denominationclaims the allegiance of a playmate’s parents—unless and until attitudes at home give him thefeeling that differences of religious faith erectcertain barriers to mutual trust and appreciation.So it is possible that the parents and the SchoolBoards who translate their high-minded concernfor the child’s introduction to “transcendentalideals” into such mechanisms as the released-timeprogram are unwittingly providing the seeds fordivisive social attitudes. This is particularly truein those cases where the parent informs the childthat “We” are Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists,or some other. The “we” is dangerous becausethe child in such instances may affiliate himselfwith a certain sect through institutional or parentalpressure.

Concurring with the majority decision, JusticeFrankfurter raised considerations that haveimportant bearing on education. He observed:“In no activity of the State is it more vital to keepout divisive forces than in its schools. . . . ‘Thegreat American principle of eternal separation’ . . .is one of the vital reliances of our Constitutionalsystem for assuring unities among our peoplestronger than our diversities.” It is clear that theSupreme Court recognizes that the original intentof the framers of the United States Constitution


10

was to discourage sectarianism. In the mind ofJefferson, for instance, the essence of all Americaneducation should be the development of a non-denominational attitude toward every phase oflife. The prohibitions which he designed toprevent any possible alliance between church andstate were not alone to keep a particular religioussect from controlling the cultural life of themajority, but also to uphold the ideal of non-sectarianism. The greatest religion of all is theaffirmation that all men and women and allchildren are brothers. This religion is preached bythose who refuse to recognize the value ofseparatism in religion, and practiced by seeking torid one’s own mind of the tendency to think ininstitutional terms.

It is true, however, that modern seculareducation lacks a rational basis for idealism.There is no answer to this problem except the onewhich will be forthcoming when more men andwomen are impelled to become truly “religious”as individuals. And until the strength of non-sectarian religion is made manifest by the majorityof teachers, parents and pupils, there will be manywho are unable to see why it is not a “good thing”to hand over the matter of “religion” to somerespectable sect. Here we can come back again tothe word “soul”—the soul, which in its mostenduring aspirations, speaks a universal language.No sect, as such, has ever been able to speak thatlanguage. If we were to begin by allowingGandhi’s principle of “no religion higher thantruth” to permeate our own minds, we would seeample reason for applauding the Supreme Court inits Champaign, Illinois decision. And we wouldperhaps seek to embody the same universal idealwhich Gandhi embodied in action before theworld. This is the solution, and the only solutionto the problem of materialism and self-aggrandizement as reflected in the shallowperspectives of so many of our teachers. They, inturn, are “shallow” precisely because they are thevictims of long centuries of a sectarianism whichuprooted all natural religion by stultifying the

philosophizing and idealizing faculties of thehuman mind.


11

FRONTIERSTHE PEACE WE NEED

IT is the custom of thoughtful men, after a greatwar, to sum the total of destruction in lives lost,wealth and resources dissipated, cities ruined, andto attempt to measure somehow the aftermath offamine and disease. In 1940, a statistician wasquoted by the New York Times as estimating thatthe loss of life due to the first World War wassomewhere between 25,000,000 and35,000,000—fatalities of which only about halfoccurred in battle or from wounds, the rest beingcaused by the ravages of disease related to thewar, notably the pandemic of influenza. In worldWar II, battle deaths alone reached the staggeringtotal of 10,000,000 and the accompanyingdestruction and starvation, both East and West,were—and are—almost incalculable.

But these statistics are not cited in order toenlarge upon the tragedy of war. This task, it maybe expected, will be carefully and adequatelyperformed by sociologists whose finalcomputations will not be different in kind from thewarnings given to the nations of the world a fewyears ago, before the last war began. We are hereconcerned with suggesting the effects of anentirely different sort of conflict—one that isseldom thought of in connection with war atallÑyet a conflict which involves casualties thatmay be even more costly to civilization than thephysical deaths, so easy to tabulate, of modernwar.

We speak of the conflict between science andreligion—a struggle in which every victory seemsfinally to turn into defeat. In the intellectual warbetween science and religion, science has clearlybeen the aggressor since the sixteenth century.The first great scientific triumph was in thedemonstration by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo andNewton that all physical events are capable ofaccurate mathematical description. The secondmarch of progress took place in the nineteenthcentury, with the victory of the doctrine of

evolution over the theological version of creation.Finally, in the twentieth century, the theories ofFreud, Einstein, and various psychic researchershave combined to confuse the simplicity of boththe theological and scientific viewpoints, andneither the impact nor the meaning of theirdiscoveries is sufficiently understood to makebrief generalizations about them of any particularvalue. Our present interest is to suggest that theinability of modern thought to assimilate thescientific contributions of the twentieth century isdue in large part to the fact that progress inscience, from the sixteenth century on, has been“progress” only from a technological viewpoint,and that religiously and philosophically, it hasbeen an ideological war, with all the disaster,mutilation and impoverishment that war entails.

The antagonism of the Church to the pioneersof modern science was solidly based onrecognition that a description of naturalphenomena which depended upon mathematics—instead of upon the irrational will of God—was adirect challenge to the theological doctrine ofpower (it all belongs to God) and the preferredposition of the Church in administering thatpower. What had once been simply a theologicalcontroversy, a thousand years before, betweenAugustine and Pelagius, was now revived in muchmore threatening form. Pelagius had dared toclaim that power was distributed equally amongall men, through his doctrine of free will—adangerous teaching which logically eliminated theinstitution of the Church as the dispensary ofGod’s power to give salvation. Augustine firedhis theological salvos at Pelagius, condemned himas a heretic, and increased God’s power to thesole and absolute force in Nature. For themillennium that followed, the Church remained inthis position of supreme authority. There wasGod, the All-Powerful; there was Matter, the inertstuff from which all independent energy and lifehad been subtracted and handed to God; and therewere all the creatures of the earth, made out ofmatter by God, themselves innately powerless,helpless without divine favor, which was, of


12

course, obtained only through the intermediary ofthe Church. When the ideologists of modernscience found themselves successful in discreditingthe theories of physical causation taught by theChurch—Ptolemy’s astronomy, Aristotle’snotions of motion—it was easy for them to freethemselves of all religious authority by droppingGod out of the cosmos entirely and devoting theirattention to what was left—dead, inert matter, andthe mathematical formulas of Galileo, Kepler andNewton.

The issue between the Church and the earlyscientists was never a question of spiritualidealism versus materialism as the “true”philosophy. The issue related to freedom andpower. If the Church, by an obliging act of self-destruction, had sided with Pelagius instead ofwith Augustine at the dawn of the Middle Ages,there would have been no theological tyranny,perhaps no Middle Ages, and certainly no anti-scientific dictatorship in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. And there would havebeen no scientific opposition to the practicalpantheistic religion implied by the heresiarchPelagius, had he been able to resist theinstitutional authority of Augustine. As ithappened, the war of science with theology, whileit began, not against the universal spirit butagainst spiritual monopoly, ended with anti-spiritual atheism and the amoralism of nineteenth-and twentieth-century biology.

There are many ways to analyze or evaluatethe conflict between science and religion, butnone, we think, of any importance except thatwhich begins with the proposition that humanfreedom is the highest good, and judges all historyand conclusions on this ground. It is, perhaps, theone self-evident truth of both individual andcollective experience. Throughout the past,whenever a theory of life, a religion or a science,has attempted to restrict human freedom and tolocate final authority outside the individual man,rival theories and revolutions have been the result.Ideologies, whether religious or scientific, ascent

to dominion over the minds of men in the name ofhuman freedom; but when they are found tobetray this cause, they are rejected and cast downand new social institutions, believed to be morefavorable to liberty, raised on their ruins.

This process, it will be said, is inevitable, andso it may be, but what ought to be questioned iswhether or not the excesses in destruction andsuffering which seem a part of the process areequally necessary. In the present century, forexample, the wars of irreligion have been asinexcusable, as bloody and immeasurably moredestructive than the wars of religion. The tyrannyof unbelief is as arbitrary and brutalizing as thetyranny of belief. The aimlessness of modern life,the heartbreaking loneliness of human beingsmassed together in both war and peace, drivenfrom accidental, unwanted birth to unmeaning,inevitable death—animated solely by primevalinstinctive drives, beset by conditionings—condemned without choice by the doctrine thatthe universe is without purpose, informed that thevoice of intuition is a dead echo of culturalaccretions, that freedom of the spirit is a witch-doctor’s invention: where, indeed, is the“progress,” scientific or otherwise, in this?

Within the year, a thoughtful critic of thescientific world-view has asked: Why, if our menof science are so firmly opposed to the idea ofmiracles, to any sort of divine intervention in theprocesses of nature and the affairs of men, do theyinsist upon picturing for us a world in whichneither Nature nor man can get along withoutmiracles? Why, by this distorted and impossibleaccount of scientific “reality,” do they invite thefanatics of irrational religion and psychicemotionalism to regain their authority overhumanity’s will to believe? Why not a Philosophy,a Religion of Nature, instead?

It is time for a fundamental reform in theteaching of science, if we are to avoid thecatastrophe of a blind return to dogmas whichmen have been made to believe are the onlyalternatives to the moral sterility of scientific


13

theory. The folly of teaching scientific materialismas though it were revealed religion is everywhereevident, and if the schools and higher educationalinstitutions will not undertake this reform, it mustbe done by individuals, by parents and by teacherswho see beyond the horizons of academicorthodoxy, and who will teach and explain sciencein its true terms of the striving of the human spiritto know and, most of all, to be free. There havebeen such teachers of science, as for example,Henry Fairfield Osborn, on the subject ofEvolution. He wrote:

Evolution takes its place with the gravitationlaw of Newton. It should be taught in our schoolssimply as Nature speaks to us about it, and entirelyseparated from opinions materialistic or theistic,which have clustered about it. This simple directteaching of Nature is full of moral and spiritualforce, if we keep the element of human opinion out ofit. The moral principle inherent in evolution thatnothing can be gained in this world without an effort;the ethical principle inherent in evolution is theevidence of beauty, of order, and of design in thedaily myriad of miracles to which we owe ourexistence.

Almost none of the truly great scientists werematerialists. Copernicus and Galileo wereinspired by Phthagorean mathematics, Kepler wasa mystical cosmologist, Newton pervaded histhinking with the idealism of the CambridgePlatonists and the religious philosophy of JacobBoehme. Lyell and Darwin conceived their laborsfor evolutionary theory as acts of piety. Thesemen and others like them intended no harm to thespirit of true religion, nor would their discoveriesand theories ever have served the purposes ofmaterialism had the defenders of dogma been ableto see in the new unfolding knowledge of Naturethe manifest of universal soul. It was the waragainst scientific discovery which in time infectedthe zeal of the movement for natural investigationwith the same crusading spirit as its intolerantenemies, and at last made of the search for truth apartisan struggle on behalf of atheistic denial.

This is the war which has corrupted mankindwith a low opinion of itself, which has schooled

scholarship and research in opportunism, whichhas degraded the genius of free inquiry andenslaved scientific truth-seekers to the newtotalitarians of the State. On every hand, we hearit said that men are in bondage to fear, that theylong for “security” but do not know how to get itand are beginning to believe that it is not to behad. We hear, in short, the latest version of theOriginal Sin, of the absolute sovereignty ofoutside powers—the doctrine that human failureand impotence are rooted in the nature of things.And if, as the title of a recent book suggests,“ideas have consequences,” what can we expect ofa race of men who acquiesce in this ignominiousdispensation?

What are the casualties of a war which takesour lives compared to the casualties of a warwhich destroys our capacity for idealism? If wecan end the war between science and religion, wemay discover, happily and wonderingly, that thereis nothing left to fight about at all.

i-25 great reformers - lao tze

Documents