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THE HUMANIST TRADITION( sourse of website)

45

Hobbe’s interpretation of Materialism was unusual in that he

made it the basis for political conservatism and suggested

that God was

corporeal

. This latter idea, paradoxical as it

may seem, stems from the logical position, likewise held by

some of the early Church Fathers, that there can be no such

thing as an incorporeal substance and that God, if he exists,

must have a body. Hobbes was also an iconoclast in under-

taking criticism of the Bible on documentary grounds. It is

no wonder that the Church of England looked upon him as a

doubtful ally, some of the more intolerant bishops wishing to

have him burned as a heretic. And it is more than possible

that Hobbes, who in his best-known book,

The Leviathan

,

attacked even Aristotle for compromising with religion be-

cause of “fearing the fate of Socrates,” at times wrote about

God and other religious topics with his tongue in his cheek.

The most significant resurgence of Materialism, however,

took pl

ace in France during the sec

ond half of the eighteenth

century as part of the great Enlightenment that stirred to its

depths the Western world. The French Encyclopedists, such

as La Mettrie and Helvetius, Holbach and Diderot, were able

to utilize the materialist philosophy as a powerful weapon

against religious superstition and the r

eactionary Catholic

Church. In his

System of Nature

Baron d’Holbach summed

up the materialist attitude toward religious supernaturalism:

“If we go back to the beginning of things, we shall always

find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagina-

tion, rapture, and deception embe

llished or distorted them;

that weakness worships them; that credulity nourishes them;

that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in or-

der to profit from the blindness of men.”

12

And the uncom-

promising Diderot exclaimed: “Men will never be free until

the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest!”

13

These French materialists, however, maintained the mecha-

nistic fallacies I have already mentioned and in addition ex-

46

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM

tended them to their social theory.

During the nineteenth century leadership in the materialist

movement passed to Germany and to such men as Jacob

Moleschott and Ernst Haeckel, Ludwig Buchner and Ludwig

Feuerbach, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Haeckel was

the first important German biologist who wholeheartedly ac-

cepted the Darwinian doctrine of organic evolution. He used

that theory as the cornerstone of his popular philosophic

work,

The Riddle of the Universe

, wherein he showed con-

clusively that the mind as well as the body of humans had

evolved from animal species.

The brilliant Feuerbach, a much underrated figure in most

histories of philosophy, broke with orthodoxy early in his ca-

reer and lost his teaching post after it was discovered that he

was the author of an anonymous treatise attacking the idea of

personal immortality. In his most significant book,

The Es-

sence of Christianity

, Feuerbach demonstrated that the my-

thologies of traditional religion have their source in unful-

filled human feelings, longings, and needs. Human beings

deify their inward nature by projecting it outward as the idea

of God; “God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted

from himself.”

14

The essential predicates of Divinity, such

as personality and love, are simply the human qualities we

value most highly. Although Feuerbach is ordinarily classi-

fied as a materialist, he himself at one time considered Hu-

manism as the most appropriate name for his philosophy.

Feuerbach had a profound influence on the philosophic

development of Marx and Engels. It was he, as Engels

states, who “in many respects forms an intermediate link

between Hegelian philosophy and our own conception.”

15

The Dialectical Materialism of Marx and Engels corrected

the mechanistic errors of the earlier materialist tradition and

gave full recognition to the dynamic, ever-changing character

of existence and to the infinite interrelatedness of phenomena

THE HUMANIST TRADITION

47

in both Nature and society. While Dialectical Materialism

considers that human thought is a function of the bodily or-

ganism, it believes that the mind is no mere passive reflector

of the outside world, but that it possesses a fundamental ini-

tiative and creativity, a power of working upon and remold-

ing the environment through the force of new ideas.

At the same time the Marxist materialists have carried on

and developed the intransigent antireligious doctrines of the

materialists who preceded them. Today there can be

little

question that Dialectical Materialism, while having its own

shortcomings, is the most influential variety of Materialism,

both because of its consistency and inclusiveness and also

because it is the official philos

ophy of Communist govern-

ments and parties throughout the world.

There are other philosophies of the past which, while not

specifically within either the naturalist or materialist cate-

gory, give strong support to the Humanist position. For ex-

ample, Auguste Comte, French thinker of the middle nine-

teenth century, made a stimulating if somewhat erratic ap-

proach to a consistent Humanism. Taking the facts and

methods of science as his starting point, Comte worked out a

far-reaching system, which he called

Positivism

. He used the

word

positive

, not as the opposite of

negative

, but as mean-

ing scientifically certain or assured.

During his late forties Comte reacted against his earlier

intellectualism following a deep emotional crisis associated

with his passionate, though Platonic, love for a beautiful and

intelligent woman, Clotilde de Vaux, and her untimely death

at thirty-one after he had known her for only a year. Comte

mourned at her tomb once a week and invoked her memory

in prayer three times a day. He referred to her as his angel of

inspiration and as a second Beatrice. Finally, he formally en-

sconced her in his system as a virtual saint and as the per-

sonification of the Ideal Female symbolizing the Great Being

48

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM

(humanity).

All this accompanied Comte’s unfortunate transformation

of Positivism into a complex Religion of Humanity, replete

with rituals, sacraments, priests, and temples. For the wor-

ship of God he substituted the worship of humankind and for

the calendar of Christian saints a select list of the heroes of

human progress. Positivism, patterning its liturgy closely af-

ter that of the Roman Catholic Church, assumed some of the

objectionable features of a religious cult, and was soon

dubbed “Catholicism minus Christianity.” It was, moreover,

a cult overpersonalized in the image of its egotistic founder,

who in effect became the high priest of the new religion and

whose statue was prominently displayed in all the Positivist

temples.

Comte had a considerable vogue throughout the Western

world, but his thought took deeper root in Latin America

than in the United States. His followers have been particu-

larly active in Brazil, where in 1881 they established a Posi-

tivist Church. Its headquarters in Rio de Janeiro still func-

tions on a regular basis. Comte’s lasting influence on Brazil

is seen in the fact that inscribed on the national flag is his

maxim, “Order and Progress.” This is the only national em-

blem in the world that perpetuates the words of a philoso-

pher.

In England the versatile John Stuart Mill developed and

included in his philosophy of Utilitarianism the more scien-

tific aspects of Comte’s work, shunning its religious and

mystical elements. Mill’s writings also served as an invalu-

able stimulus to the democratic ideals that mean so much to

Humanism. His essay

On Liberty

ranks with Milton’s

Are-

opagitica

as one of the classic statements on freedom of

thought and the rights of the individual. “If all mankind mi-

nus one were of one opinion,” declared Mill, “and only one

person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no

THE HUMANIST TRADITION

49

more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had

the power, would be justified in silencing mankind....All si-

lencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”

16

Positivism also inspired Herbert Spencer, systematic and

system-building British philosopher who outlined a general

theory of evolution several years before Darwin issued

The

Origin of Species

and who continued, after that notable

event, to apply the evolutionary hypothesis to every sector of

human history and thought. Spencer promoted his interpreta-

tion of evolution with such zeal that he overreached and dis-

credited himself. For he advocated a hard-boiled theory, sup-

posedly based on the Darwinian principle of the survival of

the fittest, that in society the economically su

ccessful, the

biologically fit, and the morally good are roughly equivalent.

In regard to supernaturalism, Spencer was an agnostic, that

is, one who believes there is not sufficient evidence either to

prove or disprove the existence of God and immortality. The

originator of the useful word

agnostic

was Thomas H. Hux-

ley, noted English biologist and popularizer of the Darwinian

theory. Since agnostics are doubtful about the supernatural,

they tend to be Humanists in practice.

Although it is difficult to classify Bertrand Russell, the

leading English philosopher of the twentieth century and a

member of the House of Lords, he properly belongs, I think,

in the tradition of naturalistic Humanism. This is attested by

the fact that he was president of the leading British Rational-

ist organization and a member of the Advisory Council of the

British Humanist Association. Lord Russell’s system is not

free of contradictions and has never shaken off entirely the

taint of subjectivistic theories of knowledge. Yet there is no

trace of supernaturalism in his conclusions; and he stands

thoroughly committed to the methods of democracy and sci-

ence. Russell’s most original contribution to philosophy lies

in his demonstration of the essential identity of logic and

50

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM

pure mathematics. Early in his career he became a

militant

social reformer. On account of his pacifist views during the

First World War, Cambridge University dismissed him, and

the British Government imprisoned him for six months.

In 1940 political and

ecclesiastical pressures resulted in

Russell’s losing his appointment as professor of philosophy

at the College of the City of New York. A censorious faction

led by Episcopal Bishop William T. Manning had demanded

that Russell be ousted on the grounds that his books were

“lecherous, salacious, libidinous, lustful, venereous, eroto-

maniac, aphrodisiac, atheistic, irreverent, narrow-minded,

untruthful and bereft of moral fibre.”

17

Although CCNY it-

self stood firm for

academic freedom in the Russell case, the

higher city authorities overruled the College.

After the Second World War and despite his advanced

years, Russell took active leadership in the British and

world-wide movements for the ending of nuclear bomb test-

ing, for total disarmament in nuclear weapons, and for the

abolition of international war. Participating at the age of

ninety in a big peace demonstration in L

ondon in 1962, he

was arrested and sent to jail for a week.

Another distinguished thinker not easy to label is George

Santayana, who has likewise made signal contributions to

Humanism. Born in Spain, he came to maturity in the United

States and taught philosophy for many years at Harvard Uni-

versity.

*

He spent the latter part of his life in Rome, where

he resided in comparative solitude until his death in 1952. It

is my considered judgment that Santayana’s prose style is

more beautiful than that of any other philosopher since Plato;

and his work, which includes poetry, the novel, and autobi-

ography, can be read as much for its literary charm as for its

__________

*

See also pp. xxxiv-xxxvi.

THE HUMANIST TRADITION

51

intellectual stimulus. His philosophic approach is always so-

phisticated and urbane, treating supernatural religion, for in-

stance, as poetic myth to be enjoyed and understood rather

than as dark superstition to be fought and eradicated. Santa-

yana’s essential tenderness toward the religious tradition has

led one wit aptly to say: “Santayana believes that there is no

God, and that Mary is His mother.”

Santayana’s volumes abound with aphorisms that plainly

have a Humanist intent, as when he tells us that “men be-

came superstitious not b

ecause they had too much imagina-

tion, but because they were not aware that they had any”;

18

that “the fact of having been born is a bad augury for immor-

tality”;

19

and that “the love of God is said to be the root of

Christian charity, but is in reality only its symbol.”

20

As contrasted, however, with the sound approach of his

earlier period and his greatest work,

The Life of Reason

,

Santayana in his later years somewhat weakened his phi-

losophy by adopting an esoteric doctrine of essences, which,

much like the old Platonic ideas, are supposed to subsist in

an eternal realm apart from the regular course of Nature. It is

this feature of Santayana’s thought that led John Dewey to

criticize it as “broken-backed Naturalism.” Santayana some-

times talked of himself as a Naturalist, sometimes as a Hu-

manist, but preferred to think of his system as a species of

Materialism. On political and economic issues he was dis-

tinctly conservative.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, world famous for his humanitarian-

ism and opposition to nuclear weapons, has sometimes

called himself a Humanist; and his central philosophic prin-

ciple, “Reverence for Life,” has a fine ring. But when we

analyze what he means by this phrase, we discover that for

him “life” includes physical objects and the whole material

universe, so that he turns out to be in a vague way an animist

or a panpsychist. Furthermore, so far as biological species

52

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM

are concerned, Dr. Schweitzer’s infinite benevolence extends

to the mosquitoes and microbes that may bring death to hu-

man beings. This is going a bit far for a Humanism primarily

concerned with the welfare of humanity; and it also imposes

psychological guilt on us for killing the worms and germs

that threaten our lives. Naturalistic Humanism, however,

agrees fully with Dr. Schweitzer in favoring kindness to

animals as a principle of human conduct.

Though contemporary Humanism cannot

accept

in toto

any of the Naturalisms, Materialisms, or allied philosophies

discussed above, it must draw primarily, insofar as it de-

pends on past thought, upon these great systems that I have

outlined. Today all philosophy of the first rank must to some

extent be eclectic and acknowledge its heavy debt to earlier

thinkers. To maintain otherwise is to strike an intellectual

pose. Humanism is not interested in novelty as such. Its

question is not whether an idea is old or new, familiar or

daring, but whether it is true and whether it is relevant to the

Humanist outlook.

Even systems such as those of Dualism and Idealism, with

which Humanists so profoundly disagree, have much to

teach us. Almost every philos

ophy contains some important

elements that are sound. And in general it is far more fruitful

to try to understand why certain philosophers went astray

than to neglect or scorn them. Brilliant errors, tenaciously

pursued unto their remotest implications, can be most illumi-

nating and suggestive in the search for truth. That search

follows no royal road, straight and smooth, but meets many

obstacles, makes many false starts, goes off on many attrac-

tive but misleading by-paths. It is a search, too, which is

never-ending, yet which each generation can push forward to

new discoveries and triumphs