The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought · John Dewey
NATURE AND ITS GOOD: A CONVERSATION[5]
_Moore._ To get back into the game which Grimes despises. Doesn’t Arthur practically say that the universe is good because it culminates in intelligence, and that intelligence is good because it perceives that the universe culminates in--itself? And, on this theory, are ignorance and error, and consequent evil, any less genuine achievements of Nature than intelligence and good? And on what basis does he call by the titles of achievement and end that which at best is an infinitesimally fragmentary and transitory episode? I said Eaton begged the question. Arthur seems to regard it as proof of a superior intelligence (one which realistically takes things as they are) to beg the question. What is this Nature, this universe in which evil is as stubborn a fact as good, in which good is constantly destroyed by the very power that produces it, in which there resides a temporary bird of passage--consciousness doomed to ultimate extinction--what is such a Nature (all that Arthur offers us) save the problem, the contradiction originally in question? A complacent optimism may gloss over its intrinsic self-contradictions, but a more serious mind is forced to go behind and beyond this scene to a permanent good which includes and transcends goods defeated and hopes suborned. Not because idealists have refused to note the facts as they are, but precisely because Nature is, on its face, such a scene as Arthur describes, idealists have always held that it is but Appearance, and have attempted to mount through it to Reality.
_Stair._ I had not thought to say anything. My attitude is so different from that of any one of you that it seemed unnecessary to inject another varying opinion where already disagreement reigns. But when Arthur was speaking, I felt that perhaps this disagreement exists precisely because the solvent word had not been uttered. For, at bottom, all of you agree with Arthur, and that is the cause of your disagreement with him and one another. You have agreed to make reason, intellect in some sense, the final umpire. But reason, intellect, is the principle of analysis, of division, of discord. When I appeal to feeling as the ultimate organ of unity, and hence of truth, you smile courteously; say--or think--mysticism; and the case for you is dismissed. Words like feeling, sensation, immediate appreciation, self-communication of Being, I must indeed use when I try to tell the truth I see. But I well know how inadequate the words are. And why? Because language is the chosen tool of intelligence, and hence inevitably bewrayeth the truth it would convey. But remember that words are but symbols, and that intelligence must dwell in the realm of symbols, and you realize a way out. These words, sensation, feeling, etc., as I utter them are but invitations to woo you to put yourselves into the one attitude that reveals truth--an attitude of direct vision.
The beatific vision? Yes, and No. No, if you mean something rare, extreme, almost abnormal. Yes, if you mean the commonest and most convincing, the _only_ convincing self-impartation of the ultimate good in the scale of goods; the vision of blessedness in God. For this doctrine is empirical; mysticism is the heart of all positive empiricism, of all empiricism which is not more interested in denying rationalism than in asserting itself. The mystical experience marks every man’s realization of the supremacy of good, and hence measures the distance that separates him from pure materialism. And since the unmitigated materialist is the rarest of creatures, and the man with faith in an unseen good the commonest, every man is a mystic--and the most so in his best moments. What an idle contradiction that Moore and Arthur should try to adduce proofs of the supremacy of ideal values in the universe! The sole possible proof is the proof that actually exists--the direct unhindered realization of those values. For each value brings with it of necessity its own depth of being. Let the pride of intellect and the pride of will cease their clamor, and in the silences Being speaks its own final word, not an argument or external ground of belief, but the self-impartation of itself to the soul. Who are the prophets and teachers of the ages? Those who have been accessible at the greatest depths to these communications.
_Grimes._ I suppose that poverty--and possibly disease--are specially competent ministers to the spiritual vision? The moral is obvious. Economic changes are purely irrelevant, because purely material and external. Indeed, upon the whole, efforts at reform are undesirable, for they distract attention from the fact that the final thing, the vision of good, is totally disconnected from external circumstance. I do not say, Stair, you personally believe this; but is not such a quietism the logical conclusion of all mysticism? _Stair._ This is not so true as to say that in your efforts at reform you are really inspired by the divine vision of justice; and that this mystic vision and not the mere increase of quantity of eatables and drinkables is your animating motive. _Grimes_. Well, to my mind this whole affair of mystical values and experiences comes down to a simple straight-away proposition. The submerged masses do not occupy themselves with such questions as those you are discussing. They haven’t the time even to consider whether they want to consider them. Nor does the occasional free citizen who even now exists--a sporadic reminder and prophecy of ultimate democracy--bother himself about the relation of the cosmos to value. Why? Not from mystic insight any more than from metaphysical proof; but because he has so many other interests that are worth while. His friends, his vocation and avocations, his books, his music, his club--these things engage him and they reward him. To multiply such men with such interests--that is the genuine problem, I repeat; and it is a problem to be solved only through an economic and material redistribution.
_Eaton_. Gladly, Stair, do all of us absolve ourselves from the responsibility of having to create the goods that life--call it God or Nature or Chance--provides. But we cannot, if we would, absolve ourselves from responsibility for maintaining and extending these goods when they have happened. To find it very wonderful--as Arthur does--that intelligence perceives values as they are is trivial, for it is only an elaborate way of saying that they have happened. To invite us, ceasing struggle and effort, to commune with Being through the moments of insight and joy that life provides, is to bid us to self-indulgence--to enjoyment at the expense of those upon whom the burden of conducting life’s affairs falls. For even the mystics still need to eat and drink, be clothed and housed, and somebody must do these unmystic things. And to ignore others in the interest of our own perfection is not conducive to genuine unity of Being. Intelligence is, indeed, as you say, discrimination, distinction. But why? Because we have to _act_ in order to keep secure amid the moving flux of circumstance, some slight but precious good that Nature has bestowed; and because, in order to act successfully, we must act after conscious selection--after discrimination of means and ends. Of course, all goods arrive, as Arthur says, as natural results, but so do all bads, and all grades of good and bad. To label the results that occur culminations, achievements, and then argue to a quasi-moral constitution of Nature because she effects such results, is to employ a logic which applies to the life-cycle of the germ that, in achieving itself, kills man with malaria, as well as to the process of human life that in reaching its fullness cuts short the germ-fulfilment.
It is putting the cart before the horse to say that because Nature is so constituted as to produce results of all types of value, therefore Nature is actuated by regard for differences of value, Nature, till it produces a being who strives and who thinks in order that he may strive more effectively, does not know whether it cares more for justice or for cruelty, more for the ravenous wolf-like competition of the struggle for existence, or for the improvements incidentally introduced through that struggle. Literally it has no mind of its own. Nor would the mere introduction of a consciousness that pictured indifferently the scene out of which consciousness developed, add one iota of reason for attributing eulogistically to Nature regard for value. But when the sentient organism, having experienced natural values, good and bad, begins to select, to prefer, and to make battle for its preference; and in order that it may make the most gallant fight possible picks out and gathers together in perception and thought what is favorable to its aims and what hostile, then and there Nature has at last achieved significant regard for good. And this is the same thing as the birth of intelligence.
For the holding an end in view and the selecting and organizing out of the natural flux, on the basis of this end, conditions that are means, _is_ intelligence. Not, then, when Nature produces health or efficiency or complexity does Nature exhibit regard for value, but only when it produces a living organism that has settled preferences and endeavors. The mere happening of complexity, health, adjustment, is all that Nature effects, as rightly called accident as purpose. But when Nature produces an intelligence--ah, then, indeed Nature has achieved something. Not, however, because this intelligence impartially pictures the nature which has produced it, but because in human consciousness Nature becomes genuinely partial. Because in consciousness an end is preferred, is selected for maintenance, and because intelligence pictures not a world just as it is _in toto_, but images forth the conditions and obstacles of the continued maintenance of the selected good. For in an experience where values are demonstrably precarious, an intelligence that is not a principle of emphasis and valuation (an intelligence which defines, describes, and classifies merely for the sake of knowledge,) is a principle of stupidity and catastrophe.
As for Grimes, it is indeed true that problems are solved only where they arise--namely, in action, in the adjustments of behavior. But, for good or for evil, they can be solved there only with method; and ultimately method is intelligence, and intelligence is method. The larger, the more human, the less technical the problem of practice, the more open-eyed and wide-viewing must be the corresponding method. I do not say that all things that have been called philosophy participate in this method; I do say, however, that a catholic and far-sighted theory of the adjustment of the conflicting factors of life _is_--whatever it be called--philosophy. And unless technical philosophy is to go the way of dogmatic theology, it must loyally identify itself with such a view of its own aim and destiny.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.