American nights entertainment
and Mars--the latter possibly inhabited by creatures millions of years
ahead of us in their development. This moving and inspiring book ends
with a sentence that might serve as the quiet challenge of science to
much of philosophy and religion. Says M. Flammarion: “Let us not be
personal, like infants or the aged, who see only their own room, let us
know how to live in the infinite and in the eternal.”
But this lofty idea needs translation into the terms of our finite
existence and our character of religious beliefs. It finds it in such a
book as L. P. Jacks’s _Religious Perplexities_. Like _The Humanizing of
Knowledge_, this is a slender book that can be read through in about an
hour and it is equally a book that is likely to influence a lifetime.
It is beside my point that Professor Jacks is one of the greatest
living philosophers and religionists; but it is a fact of the highest
relevance that he writes as no one writing on these subjects has
written since William James. The same power to pierce to fundamental
questions--and answer them; the same lucidity of thought and expression
are characteristic of the two men. Jacks exhibits the same tolerance
of the forms of religious belief; and it is only after a discussion of
“Religious Perplexities in General” that he closes with a talk about
“Perplexity in the Christian Religion.” He says: “Far be it from me
to set up an exclusive claim for Christianity. Anyone who does that
goes a long way towards forfeiting his title to be called a Christian.
Let each of us look for truth where it is most accessible and where
it speaks the language he best understands.” He begins with the two
ultimate questions that man asks himself: “Why are we here?” followed
by, “Why am I--I, and not John Jones or James Smith--here and now?”
The answer to the first is the need of the One to differentiate itself
into the Many, proving its universality and its power to integrate and
raise up the good. But, he shows, the answer to the second question is
in the conduct of the individual. Insofar as I by my courage in the
face of life justify my particular existence, I supply the reason why
myself, rather than Jones or Smith, exists in my place, here and now.
Faith is not a new faculty added to us, it is simply our reason grown
courageous. As Carlyle repeated, we all must answer the alternative:
“Wilt thou be a hero or a coward?” Professor Jacks adds: “No philosophy
can relieve us from the responsibility of having to make that
choice”--and religion, telling us our choice must be the heroic one,
strengthens us in making it.
It is religion, I think, that George Santayana represents--Santayana
who contrasts for me with that rooted countryman of his, Miguel de
Unamuno. I have a love for both, the one tenacious of his soil and
its traditions, the other early detached, flung into the New England
of Harvard and William James, now lodged in Paris, and always with
his roots feeding orchid-like on the air. It is inevitable that one
like Santayana should bear his blossom in poetry and criticism and his
fruit in philosophy-religion, or religious philosophy. Thus he calls
his _Scepticism and Animal Faith_, “an introduction to a system of
philosophy,” but it is so only in the literal sense probably necessary
to secure the proper recognition from a too unimaginative world. The
book, which has a charm unbecoming a philosophical overture, can be
read independently of the volumes that are to follow it; but who reads
it may be trusted to put independence on one side and “follow, follow.”
Santayana as poet is possibly matter to consider in a later chapter
of our book, but since, as he says in the preface to his _Poems_,
their subject “is simply my philosophy in the making,” we should be
privileged to a passing consideration here. “I see no reason why a
philosopher should be puzzled. What he sees he sees; of the rest he is
ignorant; and his sense of this vast ignorance (which is his natural
and inevitable condition) is a chief part of his knowledge and of
his emotion. Philosophy is not an optional theme that may occupy him
on occasion. It is his only possible life, his daily response to
everything”--call it religion, if you please, and regard its expression:
O world, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
Columbus found a world, and had no chart,
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;
To trust the soul’s invisible surmise
Was all his science and his only art.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
That lights the pathway but one step ahead
Across a void of mystery and dread.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
By which alone the mortal heart is led
Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
And to all who care for fine intellectualism neither arid of
inspiration nor robbed of beauty and emotion I commend Santayana in all
his books, those named and, of course, _The Life of Reason_, _Winds of
Doctrine_, _The Sense of Beauty_, and _Character and Opinion in the
United States_ and the _Soliloquies_ as well. For those unacquainted
with the man, _Little Essays Drawn from the Works of George Santayana_,
by Logan Pearsall Smith, may offer the readiest approach.
ii
The task to which James Harvey Robinson calls us has already been
undertaken with the highest success by himself and some others. Among
these has from the first been Edwin E. Slosson who now, with Otis W.
Caldwell, the botanist and educator of Columbia University, has edited
an admirable volume, _Science Remaking the World_. This book is so good
and represents so intelligent a collaboration, that I hope it is only
the forerunner of a number of similar volumes. In the dual editorship,
Dr. Caldwell’s contribution was his working familiarity with every
field of modern science while Dr. Slosson lent his magic touch of the
born populariser. The fifteen chapters, eleven of which are contributed
by specialists in various fields, deal directly along the average
person’s lines of interest with such subjects as gasoline power, coal
tar products, the modern idea of the atom, what we know of “infantile
paralysis,” our present knowledge of tuberculosis, the lengthening of
human life, the world’s health, botanical science, evolution, warfare
against insects, forestation, the chemistry and economy of food, and
those two basic foods, bread and the potato. Dr. Caldwell writes the
general opening chapter and the chapter on lengthening human life with
its special reference to Louis Pasteur’s work; as was desirable in view
of the great popular success of his _Creative Chemistry_, Dr. Slosson
contributes the discussions of gasoline power and of the miracles
wrought from coal tar.
Our quest shuttles back and forth between the discoveries of man and
man the discoverer. At every stage we have to consider not only what
man has gained in the way of knowledge but his potentialities in
respect of all knowledge. That is why we have such a succession of
books as Madison Grant’s _The Passing of the Great Race_, those books
by Lothrop Stoddard which are brought to attention in Chapter 22 of
this volume, and, now, Roland B. Dixon’s _The Racial History of Man_.
The professor of anthropology at Harvard treats impressively and from
a broad point of view the whole question of race. His account of race
distribution and historical development is divided geographically.
Beginning with Europe and a general outline of its racial history,
he then takes up the separate countries or areas. In the same way
he deals with Africa, Asia, Oceania, North and South America. His
interesting conclusions, in some respects original and without the
dogmatism that vitiates much writing on the subject, are given in a
final chapter. But the best part is that this book is simply the first
in a group of probably ten volumes, each to be written by a leading
American authority, which is to describe, in the light of the latest
investigation and discovery, the formation of worlds, the evolution of
species, and the emergence and development of man.
Such books are desperately needed, to resume James Harvey Robinson’s
argument, if science is to save itself. Such is the present situation
that “if no precautions are taken to bridge the gap between scientific
knowledge and popular prejudice it may grow so wide that the researcher
himself may be engulfed.” It would not be the first time in human
history when light was swallowed up in darkness. How dense that
darkness can be, how persistent, how ironical and, perhaps, pathetic
may be learned from the slightest perusal of Dr. James J. Walsh’s
astonishing and engrossing new book, called _Cures_. This is a history
of new remedies of every sort in all ages which have cured for a
while and then have failed. It will scarcely surprise us, although it
may make us rather uncomfortable, to know that not Europe with its
ancient and superstitious peoples but modern America has supplied the
greatest number of cure delusions. Dr. Walsh puts the explanation on
a charitable ground: “Americans are more enterprising and as a result
we have had ever so many more successful discoveries of new”--but
less permanently successful--“remedies.” The subject is not without
its humorous aspects. Insofar as Dr. Walsh has occasion to treat of
some forms of curing which are still much adhered to, with or without
correlated religious beliefs, his book treads on live and resentful
toes. As a Catholic avoiding the discussion of Lourdes and other
shrines, he invites reprisals; as a physician of very distinguished
service and high standing, he is well-qualified to counter them. But
aside from any possible controversy, what an amazing history of human
credulity and ignorance he exposes--Dowie, rattlesnake oil, magnetic
iron, metallic tractors, sympathetic powders, hypnotism, mesmerism,
electric belts, plasters, pads, chest protectors, psychoanalysis and
spiritualistic healing along with the various forms of “New Thought”
come under review. It will be observed that as a rule Dr. Walsh gives
credit for cures to even the most impossible notion or contraption--at
first. A cure is a cure, perhaps only the more so if the actual
curative agent is suggestion.
Suggestion! Is it possible that, on a subject so bedevilled, a book
could now appear of genuine usefulness, sanity and popular value?
Personally I should have inclined to answer emphatically, “No!” But
I cannot, for the book is before me. Dr. Louis E. Bisch, a physician
practising in New York, lecturing on psychology at Columbia and
directing the treatments given in mental and nervous cases at the
large sanitarium in the North Carolina mountains, has been known to me
hitherto by his _Your Inner Self_--without exception the best popular
account of psychoanalysis and modern psychology I have ever seen. Now
he has written _The Conquest of Self_, in which he expresses with
the same directness and accuracy all that body of actual truth which
the “How to Succeed” books build into such amazing forms of lies and
nonsense. There is, of course, a certain power of accomplishment in
each of us; there is a general direction for each of us to take; there
are personal obstacles to overcome, and there is a power of progression
to be developed. A better comprehension of one’s self, as of others,
can definitely be arrived at. All these facts Dr. Bisch translates into
practical detail and illustrates with concrete instances, avoiding the
claptrap with which the whole subject is now so heavily overloaded.
In that general enterprise of the humanisation of knowledge to which
(I hope) we are all fully committed, such a book as _The Conquest of
Self_ has a special merit; for where ignorance is thickest, it lights a