HERBERT READ ON EXISTENTIALISM

The origins of the existentialist movement are usually traced back to Kierkegaard, whose main philosophical works appeared between 1838 and 1855. As these were written in Danish, they did not immediately get into general circulation...However, there is no excuse for making Kierkegaard the founder of existentialism. It is true that he gave the movement a specifically Christian twist, but all the main ideas were already present in the philosophy of Schelling, and one should remember that Kierkegaard, however much he may have criticised Schelling, was nevertheless at first profoundly influenced by this great German philosopher...

..As I have pointed out elsewhere, all the main concepts of modern existentialism - Angst, the abyss, immediacy, the priority of existence to essence - are to be found in Coleridge, and most of these concepts Coleridge no doubt got from Schelling.

...It would seem that the philosopher who calls himself an existentialist begins with an acute attack of self-consciousness, or inwardness, as he prefers to call it. He is suddenly aware of his separate lonely individuality, and he contrasts this, not only with the rest of the human species, but with the whole goings-on of the universe, as they have been revealed by scientific investigation. There he is, a finite and insignificant speck of protoplasm pitched against the infinite extent of the universe. It is true that modern physicists may have succeeded in proving that the universe itself is also finite, but that only makes matters worse, for now the universe shrinks to littleness and is pitched against the still more mysterious concept of Nothingness. This is not merely something infinite; it is something humanly inconceivable. Heidegger has devoted one of his most intriguing essays to an attempt- not to define the indefinable- but to define the negation of being, Non-Being, or Nothingness.

So there we have the Little Man gaping into the abyss, and feeling - for he still retains an infinite capacity for sensation - not only very small, but terrified. That feeling is the original Angst, the dread or anguish, and if you do not feel Angst you cannot be an existentialist. I am going to suggest presently that we need not necessarily feel Angst, but all existentialists do, and their philosophy begins in that fact.

There are two fundamental reactions to Angst: we can say that the realization of man's insignificance in the universe can be met by a kind of despairful defiance. I may be insignificant, and my life a useless passion, but at least I can cock a snook at the whole show and prove the independence of my mind, my consciousness. Life obviously has no meaning, but let us pretend that it has. This pretence will at any rate give the individual a sense of responsibility: he can prove that he is a law unto himself, and he can even enter into agreement with his fellowmen about certain lines of conduct which, in this situation, they should all adopt. He is free to do this, and his freedom thus grows into a sense of responsibility. This is Sartre's doctrine, but he does not make very clear what would happen supposing he could not persuade his fellowmen to agree on certain lines of conduct, or certain values, I think he would probably say that a measure of agreement is ensured by our human predicament: that being what we are, when our existential situation is made clear, we are bound to act freely in a certain way, Our necessity becomes our freedom. But I am not sure about this. The characters in Sartre's novels and plays tend to act absurdly, or according to their psychological dispositions, and are not noticeably responsible to any ideal of social progress.

This aspect of existentialism seems to me to have a good deal in common with Vaihinger's philosophy of 'as if'. We cannot be sure that we are free, or that we are responsible for our own destiny, but we behave 'as if' we were. And by natural extension existentialism establishes a relationship with pragmatism...

More profoundly still, the existentialists object to pragmatism and other such practical philosophies (including, as we shall see presently, marxism) on the ground that they are materialistic. Any form of materialism, by making human values dependent on economic or social conditions, deprives man of his freedom. Freedom is the capacity to rise above one's material environment. 'The possibility of detaching oneself from a situation in order to take a point of view concerning it (says Sartre) is precisely what we call freedom. No sort of materialism will ever explain this transcendence of a situation, followed by a turning back to it. A chain of causes and effects may well impel me to an action, or an attitude, which will itself be an effect and will modify the state of the world: it cannot cause me to turn back to my situation to apprehend it in its totality.'

That turning-back to a situation is the metaphysical act: there is nothing in our environment to compel us to adopt a metaphysical attitude. That is a process of rising superior to our environment, of seeing things, of seeing all nature, from a point of view external to nature. The marxist may protest that that is all poppy-cock - there is no possibility of lifting ourselves outside nature by our own shoe-straps. But that is the crux of the whole question. The existentialist, it seems to me, is bound to assert that mankind has developed a special faculty, consciousness, or intellectual self-awareness, which enables him to do precisely that trick...The higher forms of animal consciousness are connected with this impulse to detachment - detachment from the herd, from society, from any situation including the situation of man vis a vis the universe..

..But there is a danger inherent in detachment which the existentialist fully realizes. It is the danger of idealism. In detachment we elaborate a philosophy, a social utopia, which has no relevance to the conditions we are at any moment living through. The existentialist therefore says that man, having experienced his sense of detachment or freedom, must throw himself back into the social context with the intention of changing those conditions. Hence the doctrine of engagement. To quote Sartre again: 'Revolutionary man must be a contingent being, unjustifiable but free, entirely immersed in the society that oppresses him, but capable of transcending this society by his effort to change it. Idealism mystifies him in that it binds him by rights and values that are already given; it conceals from him his power to devise roads of his own. But materialism also mystifies him, by depriving him of his freedom. The revolutionary philosophy must be a philosophy of transcendence.'

...let us pause for a moment to examine the other typical reaction to Angst, the religious reaction, for that is an idealist attitude to which Sartre is also objecting. I am not sure that I can do justice to this attitude, but as it takes shape in the thought of Schelling, Coleridge, and Kierkegaard (and earlier still, in Saint Augustine), it seems to amount to this: We have the existential position - man confronted by the abyss of nothingness. It just does not make sense. Why am I here? Why all this complex structure, of which I am a part, a part become aware of itself? It is complete nonsense, but a simple hypothesis will make sense of it all - the prior existence of God....It is another philosophy of 'as if'; it might be called the philosophy of 'only thus' - only thus does our existence make sense.

The sense, in such a case, is identical with what these philosophers call 'essence', and Sartre, if not Heidegger before him, has said that the fundamental thesis of existentialism is that existence precedes essence...'Essence' has a confusing history as a philosophical term. It usually means what we can assert about anything apart from the mere fact of its existence (i.e. subsistence): the possibilities inherent is a thing: the Platonic 'Idea'. Santayana, whose use of the term is a little peculiar,...defines the difference between existence and essence as that between what is always identical with itself and immutable and what, on the contrary, is in flux and indefinable. This agrees with Sartre's notion of contingency; it is essence which allows for the possibility of change in the world..

..Santayana does bring out more clearly than any other philosopher I know the fact that it is by its very ideality, its non-existence, that essence is inwardly linked with existence - it is not a mere extension or part of that which exists... But it does explain why Sartre can support a notion like freedom without being committed to that kind of idealism which involves a whole system of absolute values. I do not think it would make much difference to Sartre's philosophy if for freedom we substituted the word flux. What we apprehend of the nature of things is subject to constant change, and the change is not so much inherent in the thing itself - in matter - as in our consciousness or apprehension of these essences. According to this view essences do not change, neither do they subsist in space or time. They are merely there when we perceive them. They belong to the object, but can exist without its material presence, like the grin of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.

Rousseau's mistake was to treat freedom as an essence, as an eternally subsisting value in mankind. Man is not in this sense 'born free'. He is born a mere bundle of flesh and bones, with freedom as one of the possibilities of his existence. The onus is on man to create the conditions of freedom.

Now all this may seem to be of merely theoretical interest, but on the contrary this is where existentialism is making its greatest contribution to philosophy. It is eliminating all systems of idealism, all theories of life or being that subordinate man to an idea, to an abstraction of some sort. It is also eliminating all systems of materialism that subordinate man to the operation of physical and economic laws. It is saying that man is the reality - not even man in the abstract, but the human person, you and I; and that everything else - freedom, love, reason, God - is a contingency depending on the will of the individual. In this respect existentialism has much in common with Max Stirner's egoism. An existentialist like Sartre differs from Stirner in that he is willing to engage the ego in certain super-egoistic or idealistic aims. He has less in common with dialectical materialism which requires him to subordinate his personal freedom to political necessity; less still with Catholicism which requires him to subordinate his personal freedom to God. He seeks alliance with a militant humanism which by political and cultural means will in some unspecified way guarantee his personal freedom.

...Philosophy begins when we depart from existential facts and flounder about in the realm of essences. In that realm our subjective faculties - intuition, aesthetic sensibility, the esemplastic power (as Coleridge called it) of subsuming the many under the one - with all these personal and uncertain means we begin to construct a philosophy. We should still be guided by practical reason, scientific method, and logic; but these are the methods and not the substance of our discourse (a fact often forgotten by the logical positivists). By virtue of this subjective activity, we reduce irrational essences into some kind of order, the order of a carefully constructed myth or fairy-tale (as in religion) or the order of a coherent utopia (as in political idealism).

...Scientific method may be one thing, and productive of separately ascertained truths between which there can only be relative discontinuity, a chaos of atomized facts; or scientific method may be something quite different and move towards some ideal of harmony, of wholeness and order. But such harmony (the ideal of a Marx no less than of a Plato) is a subjective perception. The communist in this respect does not differ from the royalist or the anarchist; we are all idealists, and I do not see how we can be anything else so long as we believe that man is what he makes of himself. The difference is between those who believe that a particular ideal should predetermine man's existence (which is the official communist line) and those who believe (as the existentialists and anarchists do) that the personality of man, that is to say, his own subjectivity, is the existing reality and that the ideal is an essence towards which he projects himself, which he hopes to realize in the future, not by rational planning, but by inner subjective development. The essence can only be grasped from the particular stage of existence which you and I have at any particular moment reached. Hence the folly of all so-called 'blue-prints for the future'; the future will make its own prints, and they won't necessarily be blue.

To most people all this involves a sense of insecurity, as though they were sailing strange seas without a chart, perhaps even without a compass. But that, as Sartre has pointed out, is the whole point. ....Which is what Sartre means when he says that man is condemned to be free. In my metaphor, he is condemned to be adrift...

...In view of the association of the French existentialist writers with the resistance movement during the occupation, it is a little difficult to follow the usual practice and label existentialism as a philosophy of fascism so it seems to have been agreed to damn it as Trotskyism.....For philosophical purposes we must seek for some more fundamental connection, and this undoubtedly lies in the nihilism which is the philosophical disease of our time. Now nihilism is merely that condition of despair ...from which you can react in various ways: you can, of course, affirm its fundamental reality - you can remain a nihilist and refuse to believe in anything but your own selfish interests. You can react as Dostoevsky did, and become a pessimistic Christian, or you can react as the Nazis did and become a 'realistic' power politician. Heidegger (and Sartre when it comes to his turn) reacts for more metaphysically: he constructs an elaborate fire-escape, a life-saving apparatus by means of which man can escape from nihilism, though not denying that it still remains the fundamental nature of reality. Now this is precisely what the marxist cannot accept. To begin with, what is this pessimistic nihilism but a reflection of the bankruptcy of the capitalist system? It has no reality: the Nothingness which Heidegger and Sartre write about is a subjective state of mind. Lukacs calls it a typical fetish of bourgeois psychology, a myth created by a society condemned to death. Its existence is only made possible by an abandonment of reason, and this is a characteristic trend of modern philosophy, a trend that includes, not only Heidegger and Husserl, but also Dilthey and Bergson.

...The philosophy which I am trying to present - a philosophy based on a positive reaction to cosmic experience - might well be called humanism - it is an affirmation of the significance of our human destiny. Humanism is a term which Sartre has adopted and which even an intransigent marxist like Lukacs does not disdain....Like the marxist - or should we say the leninist - the anarchist rejects the philosophical nihilism of the existentialist. He just doesn't feel that Angst, that dreadful ship-wreck on the confines of the universe, from which the existentialist reacts with despairful energy. He agrees with the marxist that it is merely a modern myth. He draws in his metaphysical horns and explores the world of nature. He again finds himself agreeing with the leninist that life is a dialectical process, the end of which is the conquest of what Lukacs calls 'la totalite humaine', which presumably means a world dominated by human values. But whereas the leninist conceives of this conquest in terms of a consciously directed struggle - practical action and work - the anarchist sees it in terms of mutual aid, of symbiosis. Marxism is based on economics; anarchism on biology. Marxism still clings to an antiquated darwinism, and sees history and politics as illustrations of a struggle for existence between social classes. Anarchism does not deny the importance of such economic forces, but it insists that there is something still more important, the consciousness of an overriding human solidarity. 'It is', says Kropotkin, 'the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed.'

The point of view I have adopted myself is not dualistic; I do not recognize two orders of reality, known or unknown. Nor is my point of view materialistic in the marxist sense. I believe, in the words of Woltereck, that 'one stream of events embraces everything that can in any way be experienced as real: whether the events be material or non-material a-biotic, organic, psychic, conscious or non-conscious...The psychic or spiritual life of man is also part of this one stream of events we call "Nature", even though under special names and with special contents: science, technics, civilization, politics, history and art.

...What is important to emphasize in all this is the presence, throughout the one life-process, of freedom. ...There has existed throughout the whole process of evolution an ability to move on to new planes of existence, to create novelty. Freedom is not an essence only available to the sensibility of man; it is germinatively at work in all living things as spontaneity and auto-plasticity.

...Freedom, says Engels, 'consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature which is founded on knowledge of natural necessity: it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development'. The only thing wrong with this definition is that it is too narrow. The chick that is pecking its way out of its shell has no knowledge of natural necessity: only a spontaneous instinct to behave in a way that will secure it freedom. It is an important distinction because it is the distinction underlying the marxist and the anarchist philosophies. From the anarchist point of view it is not sufficient to control ourselves and external nature; we must allow for spontaneous developments. Such opportunities occur only in an open society; they cannot develop in a closed society such as the marxists have established in Russia. There is also to be observed in Engels and Marx an essential confusion between freedom and liberty: what they mean by freedom is political liberty, man's relations to his economic environment; freedom is the relation of man to the total life process.

The Spiritual Movement in the Nineteenth Century.

 (Spectator, Jan. 5.)

Few thinkers have ever made a worse shot than did John Stuart Mill when he expressed wonder that there had not been a revival of the Manichæan philosophy. For whatever else may be affirmed of the thought of the century just past and gone, one thing is certain — viz., that all schools tended to the doctrine of philosophic unity, and that the principle of dualism was thoroughly discarded. Whether we take the Hegelian system, or the idea of a "double faced unity," or the so-called " philosophy of the Unconscious," or the idealistic Theism of some eminent thinkers, or the Spencerian philosophy of evolution,— in all there is a strenuous attempt to reach a universal unity, a substance (in the sense of Spinoza) from which all phenomena take their origin. Of the philosophic thought of the century nothing is clearer than this. We may also say that the religious mind of the century tended in the same direction, and doubtless aided in rearing the philosophic structure. The Evangelical movement of the previous century had dwelt on the great fact of evil, which it had found hard to reconcile with the conception of an all-righteous God. But in the nineteenth century, with its scientific doctrine of the unity of Nature, there arose (e.g., in the theology of Maurice) the idea expressed of old in the Bible, — " Is there evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it ?" We do not say that the age-long problem found a real solution, although the doctrine of evolution suggested to men's minds in a more powerful way than before, the idea that evil was at bottom privative and derivative from lower forms of life. All we contend for is that neither the philosophic nor the religious consciousness could find any rest in a dualistic view of the world. That appears to us to be the most signal and positive outcome of the thought of the last hundred years, and a most vital and important conclusion it certainly is.
The second conclusion, not perhaps so absolutely felt and expressed, yet in the main accepted, is the condemnation of materialism as a philosophic creed. A man who to-day used the language of Cabanis would be ridiculed alike by men of science and philosophers. Whatever else may be the explanation of this wonderful universe, thinkers have concluded that its origin cannot be expressed in terms of matter. Huxley declared that materialism "involves grave philosophical error." Darwin never claimed that his theory accounted for more than the forces at work on the outside fringe of a limited world. Mr. Spencer, though attempting to evolve a world out of material forces, traces these very forces up to an inscrutable and infinite Power of which nothing can be predicated save that it is. Science has almost discarded matter and deals in potential energy. The leading philosophers of the century, whether teaching with Fichte egoistic idealism, or with Hegel the identity of thought and being, or with Schopenhauer the world as a product and presentation of will, have all declared against materialism. It may probably be asserted with definite assurance that the ghost of materialism (if we may make use of such an expression) has been finally laid by the critical thought of the century.
But for the rest, are we not still in the element of criticism in which the century began, when the great exponent of the critical philosophy was ending his long career ? All the thought of the present time is still centering round the lines drawn by Immanuel Kant. We see more or less clearly the limitations of his system, but the world has not arrived at any other. We have passed through many phases. The Hegelian theory, which so fascinated Germany half a century back, has declined in the land of its birth, though it has profoundly affected thought. Schelling's "Nature-philosophy" has singular affinities for modern science, but, into the work of Schopenhauer, it is rather a series of detached thoughts, of gleams of insight, than a consistent system in the Hegelian sense. Our much smaller English thinkers have produced no lasting effect. Dugald Stewart, who rounded off a system of philosophy for young Edinburgh Whiggism, is unread, and so is James Mill's philosophy of the mind. J. S. Mill has fared, from the philosophic point of view, little better ; and Mansel and Hamilton merely paved the way for the more thoroughgoing agnosticism of Mr. Spencer. If there is a positive tendency here at present, it is expressed by the so-called neo-Kantianism of Dr. Caird, which is widely held to provide an intellectual ground for religion. In Germany they have come to purely critical activity, not so much, perhaps, in the sense of an actual revolt against the ascendency of any school, but because the mind is weary, the spirit weighed down by the burden of actual life, and there must be a pause before the next bound onward.

Indeed, if one is to speak briefly of the movement of the last century, either in terms of philosophic thought or of spiritual consciousness (the outer and and inner sides of the one human soul), one would say that that movement has itself been its own end. Positive results have not been reached ; outwardly there seems much chaos, and undoubtedly there is not a little. Never since the palmy days of Greece has mankind known more intense intellectual activity, never more eager attempts to state the religious problem in the terms of the intellect. The chambers of the mind have been ransacked, the grounds of man's faith in a spiritual world have been explored as never before, the theory of knowledge has been examined from every point of view. From Strauss to Harnack, what learning and power have not been expended in criticism of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures ! The century, too, practically witnessed the unfolding of the portals of the East and the exposition of new Oriental philosophies. Greek philosophy has been revived, and Plato and Aristotle more keenly scrutinised than during many generations. There has been, too, a general desire for a restatement of Christianity which should at the same time reveal its spiritual power and reconcile it with the demands of the reason. Neither the scientific discoveries nor the historical criticism of the century revolutionary as they have been, have indicated more passionate eagerness than the philosophic and religious activity by which the human mind has tried to give some answer to those questions which will never let it rest, — What, whence, whither? And we have to confess that, from one point of view, we are no nearer an answer than when Napoleon was disputing with his scavants under the sky of Egypt. But has this mental toil been in vain, as the dweller in Philistia supposes ? When we say that the movement of the century has been in the main analytic and critical rather than constructive, and that this critical movement has been an end in itself, what do we mean ?
There are two great results of any critical movement, each of first-rate importance. One is the resolution of a great and complex statement into its terms. That does not mean that the statement is being destroyed, but that its essential contents are being ascertained. All positive movements in human thought are followed by those periods of analysis when the mind turns on itself and is impelled to search for the grounds of its positive affirmations. For the time, as in the story of Osiris (the analogue, as readers of Milton will recognise, is not new), the beautiful and symmetrical form of truth seems to have been destroyed, and with Wordsworth we lay our curse on those who " murder to dissect." But analysis is an inevitable movement in the course of thought, since it helps us to realise and make our own the truth presented to us with a view to a larger statement. It is not the actual process of criticism so much as the preparation for the next leap that is vital an result. But it is also, in the second place, this very critical process which enlarges the mind ; so that, while men think an epoch barren, they must look for its effects in this twofold way,— as a preparation for a deeper and wider statement, and as a training-ground for the mind. Are we saying too much when we claim this double gain for the nineteenth century in the domain of spiritual thought, — that its critical movement, apparently leading us no further out of the chaos, has both enlarged and exalted man's mental and spiritual consciousness, and has prepared the way for the positive advance of another century ? If this twofold effect has been wrought, and if the great idea of a spiritual monism as the principal achievement of the century has destroyed both dualism and materialism, we may, while looking back on the grey phantom that has vanished into the past, exclaim with Browning— as outcome of that century of quick and eager change—
That one Face, far from vanished, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my Universe that feels and knows.

Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW : 1894 - 1939), Tuesday 19 February 1901, page 2

THE BISHOP OF MELBOURNE ON MODERN MATERIALISM.

 The Bishop of Melbourne delivered the fourth of his series of lectures on the Principles of the Revelations. . .
We have to consider to-day the meaning of the second symbolical form connected with the series of the vials ; that, viz., of the lamb-like beast, which, ascended from the earth. This is so connected in the vision with that which we last considered — the form of the wild beast from the sea— that when the meaning of this latter has been found, that of the former is as good as determined. If, as we saw reason to conclude, the wild beast from the sea represented the general spiritual characteristics of the Pagan Roman Empire, then the wild beast from the earth represents most certainly some spiritual power standing in a relation of close alliance to that empire. From amongst all such possible powers, then, of which shall we say that it is the image? St. John answers this question most unambiguously when in the 20th verse of the 19th chapter he calls it "the false prophet which wrought miracles before the first beast," and "deceived them" which had its mark. There can be little doubt, then, that this earth-born prophecy, with its lamb-like aspect, and its dragon- inspired words, represents heathen divination in its widest sense; including its oracles, mysteries, auguries, incantations and magical impostures. This interpretation answers exactly to the main features of the symbol. (1.) The second beast had its birth from the earth, the settled form of man's worldly existence, as the first beast arose from the sea, the militant masses of humanity tossing and heaving beneath the stormy breath of all violent passions. Both are thus earth born ; both arise out of the animal and sensual side of human existence. While the ideal has its birth in heaven, and comes down to man to elevate and purify him, the sensual has its birth beneath in the earth, in the sub-human sphere, and comes up to man with its lying and conjuring pretences to drag him down to the abyss of its own baseness. As the dragon was anti-God, and the first beast anti-Christ, so is this false prophetism anti-spirit ; and we thus have set before us a kind of diabolic trinity. Such is the nature and origin, of the second beast. (2.) Its aim is to induce men to worship godless force and lawless lust, as impersonated in the first beast ; and more particularly in its visible image, the Emperor. This Emperor-worship "gave to heathenism," as Uhlhorn has pointed out, "a religious unity, a universal state religion, to slight or abandon which became a crime against the empire.
 This is what really precipitated the conflict between the State and Christianity. To neglect the worship of Jupiter was little. A man might prefer Diana or some other god. Polytheism was from its very nature tolerant of various forms of worship. When, however, the Emperor became the visible deity of the whole civilised world, no man might dare to neglect or despise his worship. Let him worship what ever other god he pleased, but he must worship the Emperor too, for impiety in this case became treason. To the pagan, Caesar-worship was easy. It was simply the addition of another god to the Pantheon ; a god, more over, who as the effective guardian of the peace and prosperity of the world, added an element of reality to the now somewhat shadowy and dubious forms whom their simpler fathers had seen in sky and storm, in stream and wood and mountain. Caesar-worship, so popular in the Roman world, especially in the provinces, where the frailties of the god were less clearly seen, seems to us— at least with men so contemptible as Claudius, or so hateful as Nero, on the throne — the most monstrous of impossibilities. And not otherwise did it seem to the early Christians. It was to them an idolatry at once shocking and openly dishonoring to God. They could not away with it. Rather than sprinkle one pinch of incense before the Emperor's statute they would die. With a resolution so stubborn as this they would probably soon have forced their way to toleration had they been confronted by nothing but earthly force. A fiend like Nero might indeed upon some special occasion have glutted his natural ferocity, with the delight of a bloody massacre. But naked force, unhelped, must soon have given way before the patient determination of principle.
 To lengthen out the conflict through centuries, to hold down for all that time the mightiest religious enthusiasm the world had ever seen, force would need the assistance of some spiritual ally, and it found it, as St. John's symbolism significantly denotes to us, in a revival of heathen fanaticism. The chief instrument of this revival was also, as he represents, a diabolical prophetism, an irruption from the East, of those magical and sensual nature worships which were little else than a deification of natural and instinctive forces.  "After the accession of Tiberius," says Renan, "a religious reaction was perceptible. It would seem that a society was shocked at the avowed infidelity of the Augustan age." But what was to be done ? Men might still talk of the old deities, they might still even do them outward service, but all genuine faith in them, at least among the educated classes, was absolutely dead. They must get new gods, gods whose cult would neither be repugnant to Caesar-worship, nor hostile to the abominable Immoralities of pagan life. The gods which could give these sceptical and immoral Romans what they needed must embody the idea of tremendous mystical force, and must have close kinship with the lower instinctive impulses of man's animal nature. Just such were the deities of the vague ancient nature-cults of Egypt and Syria, Isis, Serapis, Attys and the mighty Earth-mother. Rome needed them, and they came. Magnificent temples rose to Isis and Serapis. Syrian festivals were celebrated with the greatest splendor, and the wailing for Attys resounded on the banks of the Tiber as loudly as ever on those of the Orontes. The mysteries became at first ascetic and sacrificial, then turned, as might have been expected, into " a veil for the most detestable orgies." Oneirology became a science, and a man could have no dream, how ever casual or absurd, of which he might not find in the " Oneirocritica" of Artemidorus a grave and fitting interpretation. With all these Eastern superstitions came their ministers. Impostors of all sorts," says Renan, "thaumaturgists and magicians, profited by the popular mood, and, as ordinarily takes place when the State religion is enfeebled, swarmed on every side." These impostors turned the temples into theatres of magic. Neophytes fasted, and lay all night in the darkness, to find at length a glorious light burst on their enfeebled nerves, or to hear mysterious music and to see majestic forms draped in the altar-flames as the sacrificial fire was kindled. People imagined themselves continually surrounded by miracles. Magicians, in their chambers of mystery, exhibited, then as now, spirit-raising and table-rapping. Nothing was more popular in ordinary conversation than ghost stories, such as are related by Apuleius and caricatured by Lucian. Individual impostors obtained an influence in the world unparalleled in any other age. Alexander, of Abonotoichos, whose knavery is exposed by Lucian, had so immense an influence, and commanded such implicit trust, that even Marcus Aurelius consulted him about the campaign on the Danube, and commoner people actually worshipped his statues. The proud civilisation of Rome seemed likely to end in nothing better than a witch's Sabbath. And yet it was all perfectly natural, and even inevitable.
 Scepticism ever throws back into some form of nature worship, and nature worship as constantly developes magic and superstition. For what is superstition ? It is the "standing over" of those instinctive beliefs in the occult powers, of matter which belong to the stage of fetish worship. Belief in these things sceptical philosophers cannot be said to have, but they have what stands to them in the place of belief, such an ecstatic exaltation of the emotions, and such a lifting a man above his common self, as shall fill up the painful vacuum in his heart, and cause the difficulties of thought and life to fade away. Naturalistic magic became thus a real power, inspired a real fanaticism, and established beside the vapid state worship of the Emperor, a mighty ally, by whose assistance it might confront with success the deep and terrible enthusiasm of the Christian Church. The Second Beast, with the lamb-like face and dragon-like words, did in very deed deceive them that dwell on the earth by means of the miracles which he did did in very deed cause men to worship the image of the First Beast, smiting all those in their worldly interests who refused such worship. Is this a picture for the first century, and not for the nineteenth also ? Are we not conscious of a like failure of belief in ancient truth ; of a like weariness and loosening of moral ties, yes, and of a like throwing back into that mere naturalism which may quicken the jaded curiosity, exalt the enfeebled emotions, and give a new color and interest to existence? Have we not amongst us a false prophet working miracles, before the image of unconscious force, and calling all men to worship it ? "Who can read such a book as Home's Lights and Shadow of Spiritualism without being reminded of the juggling and incantation and spirit-raising of the decaying Roman Empire ? False prophecy seeks now in Osiris, its Demeter, in the vast aggregate of material force, with all the magic powers which lie hidden in the dark unconscious background of human life. It has for its ministers mesmerism and clairvoyance, and it manufactures its miracles and brings up its ghosts with means supplied to it by a deeper science than was known of old. It has its wild beast of force, too, for which it demands worship under the name of nature, or even of God ; a dull abstraction meaning nothing, and therefore less liable to criticism than, the mighty earth-mother of old. This old vision of St. John, then, is for us too, warning us of a great danger, and pointing us to the only deliverance from it.
  What, let us ask, furnished the point of departure for this modern superstition-—this standing over—for so it is, of the residuum of abandoned faiths ? I believe it to be the natural offshoot of that which it so vehemently opposes, the popular materialism. An exclusive cultivation of physical science has deluded many with the hope that out of the simple elements of matter they can build up (helped by the theory of natural selection) the whole wonderful cosmos of matter and intelligence. This effort of theirs, it is to be remembered, is extra-scientific. It parts from science where it endeavors to transcend phenomena. By calling itself materialism it proclaims that it is nothing better than a hypothetical philosophy. What, then, precisely is the hypothesis which it puts forward? Knowledge, it is often said, consists of two parts—of the mind and of the world ; of the subject and of the object. But this is inaccurate. We have knowledge only of the states of our own consciousness. All laws are but rules of the relations of these ; all sciences are but collections of such laws. If, then, we know nothing more than, states of our own consciousness, shall we say that these comprise the whole of existence ; that nothing exists but what we know ? Strange to say, there are phenomenalists who say of the universe what David Hume affirmed of the human mind— that it is "nothing but a heap of perceptions." Logically that is a very convenient position to take, but then nobody can be found to believe it true. We are so constituted that we cannot help affirming that there is an outward world, of which our states of consciousness give us information, and that there is a mind of which our sensations, emotions, thoughts and determinations are states. These inward impressions of ours are caused by an object, and felt by a subject.
   And now what shall we say about the relation of this object and subject, which we are compelled to assume ? Shall we say that subject and object are both real and different, calling the one matter, the other mind ? This is the theory of the dualist. Or shall we say that what we know best — the subject— is real, and the only real thing ; the object being merely a projection outward of its thoughts ? That is the position of the subjective idealist. Or shall we say again that the object is the only real thing, the subject being merely its product, part of that hypothetical matter which, according to the materialist, "contains the promise and potency of all being?" This is the theory of the materialist, a mere theory like any of the others, and dependant for its acceptance on what it can say for itself. The theory was constructed for a practical purpose— to explain mind in terms of matter, to prove mind a mere function of matter. Does it succeed, then? It does not. In the first place, its adherents cannot agree upon the meaning of matter. Some are for leaving it a something without consciousness, others are for giving even to the ultimate atoms of it life and even potential thought. Some affirm that it is simple and uniform in its nature, others that there may be more than one kind of it, a subtler matter for conscious, a coarser for unconscious, phenomena. Seeing that no one knows what it is in itself, and that its disciples are divided even as to its potencies, it is very difficult to talk about such a thing. On one point, however, materialists seem to be agreed — that matter is to be held capable of developing consciousness. These are atoms of some kind, be they only vortex atoms, with physical energies playing around them, and these atoms, impelled by their energies, can produce thought. But how, we ask ? If your theory is worth anything it must make the problem of thought clearer to us. How, then, do these atoms produce thought? That question staggers such men as Professor Tyndall — too honest to pretend to see when they do not. How the vibration of an atom, or the mere impact of a wave on a surface, can produce any sense of color, heat or sound, is, Professor Tyndall acknowledges, unthinkable. Now, if the passage of mere moving matter into sensation cannot even be presented to our thought, what is the use of it? Where is the credibility of it? But now, suppose that the material genesis of thought were thinkable, how is materialism to get over certain difficulties which beset it as a theory ? Can we believe, in the first place, that the whole cosmic order, with its far-reaching laws and delicate adaptations, resulted from the purposeless, and therefore accidental, concourse of atoms ? Suppose that I had a number of letters, endowed simply with physical energies, and capable of combining in many ways. Is it possible for me to believe that in any given length of time, and allowing for as many false starts as you please, they could in the end, without purpose, combine themselves into Milton's Paradise Lost? That is the substance of the materialist hypothesis, and it wrecks itself against the scientific law of continuity, which declares that there must be no more in the consequent than existed in the antecedent. Either, then, mind with a purpose existed in the atoms, or it will never come out of them. But, again, this theory is seen to wreck itself against the physical law of the conservation of energy. The greatest materialists allow that if man were a mere machine, without consciousness, his acts would be the full physical equivalent of the energy taken up to perform those acts. The circle of supply and expenditure, of expenditure and restoration, is complete without consciousness. When, then, is consciousness? A physical energy it cannot be, or it would contradict the law of conservation. What is then, this tertium quid, left solitary in space, formless and substanceless ? Oh ! urges Professor Tyndall, we must look on it as "a by-product." But, then, if it be a product of any kind, whether "by" or other, it must, according to the materialists' theory, have taken up energy in being produced. What, then, has it done with it, for no energy can be lost? Oh! answers Professor Huxley; consciousness has the same relation to the brain as the face of a clock to a clock. It does nothing. It only shows what is being done. But this is not true. This clock-face is in constant action. It passes through incessant changes of thought, feeling, volition and the like. Moreover, although by hypothesis it is not a physical energy, it can originate physical energy — a result again forbidden by the law of conservation. I said it can originate physical energy. The thought of Shakspeare is locked up and crystallised in his printed plays. The atoms of the man's brain have long since been "blown about with desert dust." They cannot affect me. But I read Hamlet and the thought embodied there stimulates my nervous energy so powerfully that I waste brain force, and break down brain matter indefinitely in thinking, feeling, willing, and perhaps acting, as otherwise I should not have done. Here is a nothing, a mere index of what is, stimulating and originating physical energy. It is impossible. And what a theory for a man to be driven to !
 States of consciousness, as we have seen, make up our whole knowledge ; they embrace our whole intellectual, emotional, volitional existence ; they comprise all laws, even the law of the conservation of energy itself. Nay, according to the phenomenalist, they comprise the mind and the universe. And yet they are a by- product — a mere index — the mere face of a clock. Could there be a more complete reductio ad absurdum ? Who can wonder, then, that a thinker like Herbert Spencer turns away from such a theory with disdain ? But ah ! it is welcome, most welcome, to a sense-worshipping age. For it justifies the pleasure loving life of instinct. If I be only organised matter, passing, with five senses, through an hour of consciousness into dark and everlasting unconsciousness again, what more reasonable than that I should get what pleasure I can on the way ? Then the one good of life is what can buy me enjoyment. For with that I can get feasts, shows, amusements, concubines ; and, taking care to keep life from becoming too beastlike by a refined and becoming reserve, can wallow in sensuality at my will. Do you tell me that I spill the very wine of life in destroying thus its holiest affections, its loftiest ideals, its most gracious charities ? I answer, cries the rich sensualist, that I have no taste for these. How should I regret the loss of what I never knew ? Yea, if even with increasing age and satiety I be attacked, as man's miserable experience seems to threaten, with the deep weariness of ennui, I can at least end the dulness, the vacancy, the monotony of sated lust, as Pliny reminds me, by suicide.
 There are some amongst us who try to escape from the absurdities and menacing immoralities of materialism into what is called agnosticism. There may be a grand ideal world, they grant ; there certainly is a something greater than mind, greater than matter, greater than man knows, behind our vivid life of sense. But if so, it must remain for ever unknown to us. It cannot show itself on the stage of consciousness. What, then, we cannot know, it must surely be allowable to ignore. What are a few teasing aspirations, a few foolish presentiments, a few inevitable disgusts and disquietudes ? Neglect them, tread them under, thrust them into the dim background of consciousness, treat them as hereditary survivals of a more barbarous age— as the misleading marsh lights of dead superstitions, which, if followed, would only lead you into the forbidden regions of the unknown. This form of unfaith is wont to pride itself upon the impregnability of its intellectual position. Tho boast is a vain one. Agnosticism, in its greatest representatives, denotes a reaction against pure phenomenalism. Hume, as I have said, actually held that mind was nothing more than a heap of states of consciousness. This theory is so utterly unbelievable, and even to a serious man unthinkable, that modern agnostics have pushed it somewhat disdainfully aside, and postulate, at the least, an infinite mysterious something behind phenomena, both mental and physical, as the basis and energy of all being. But now if there be this mysterious something ; if all existence, and therefore human existence, is derived from and leans upon it, must there not necessarily exist important relations between that something and me? Deny the something with the phenomenalist, and it is reasonable to dismiss all thought about it ; but admit the something with Spencer, admit your own dependence on it, and how can it be reasonable to ignore what is, what shows in nature and man some aspects of its character, because you cannot understand all that it is ?
  Agnosticism despises materialism as absurd ; it rejects phenomenalism as unthinkable ; and it is itself more inconsistent than either. For, if we came from the great something, and are constantly sustained by it, to ignore it is as ungrateful as impossible. The practical effect of such an effort is, I believe, more spiritually hurtful than atheism itself. The atheist still fixes his eye on the place where God is said to be, and even in his denial is obliged to keep the great object before him. But the agnostic may fall into the position of those Parisians of whom Heine said, "There are no atheists here. They have not preserved enough respect for le bon Dieu to be at the pains of denying Him." And let no one suppose that such unfaith as this protects a man from superstition ; rather does it incline him, by the ineffable weariness which it brings, to seek something beyond the bright sultry circle of the known, to which the heart may go out and cling. And this something is almost certain to be the fetish of the magician. For sinking, as the agnostic practically will, into the belief that unconscious force wrought by accident the immense miracle of giving to man consciousness, he may easily come to entertain the suspicion that a very crafty man might surprise nature in the act of doing some of those haphazard tricks which other men have failed to detect. This man will be a magician. He has a system by which he can cheat chance of its secrets, very much as some European gamblers are superstitiously supposed to cheat the rouge et noir machine. Such a theory of things throws back as naturally into magic as the faith in a great spiritual power, with purpose and goodness, throws forward into spiritual religion. Let no one cry out that such degradation is impossible in these enlightened days. It is not in Dahomey, it is among civilised European races, that spiritism has played its tricks and won its disciples. Let a man once give up his hold on the love and righteousness of a heavenly Father, and there is nothing in intellectual culture, even the highest, to prevent him from falling down and worshipping the image of the wild beast of blind force, whether in the shape of mob or kaiser, which the false prophet of these days may set up.

The Age 24 August 1883

A DIDACTIC ODE.

Ours is a wise and earnest age, an age of thought and science, sir,
 To error, ignorance, and bliss we fairly bid do fiance, sir ;
 " Professors" everywhere abound, both in and out of colleges,
And all agog to cram our nobs with " isms" and with "ologies."

Bow, wow, wow,  
Tol de riddle, tol de riddle,
Bow, wow, wow.
  
 Philosophy, as you're aware, material and mental, sir,
At one extreme is "positive," at t'other " transcendental," sir,  
And each of us who in these days would speculate "en regle,"        
If he can't run the rig with Comte, must take the tip from Hegel.

The fundamental problem which, debated now for ages, sir,
Is still attacked and still unsolved by all our modern sages, sir,
Is, if an effort I may make a simple form to throw it in,  
Just what we know, and why we know, and what's the way we know it in.
   
We can't assume (so Comte affirms) a first or final cause, sir,  
Phenomena are all we know, their order, and their laws, sir ;          
While Hegel's modest formula a single line to sum in,    
Is "nothing is and nothing's not, but everything's becomin'."
 
"Development" is all the go, of course with Herbert Spencer,   
Who cares a little more than Comte about the "why" and "whence," sir,    
Appearances, he seems to think, do not exhaust totality,  
But indicate that underneath there's some " Unknown Reality."

And Darwin, too, who leads the throng, " in vulgum voces spargere,"
Maintains humanity is nought except a big menagerie.  
The progeny of tailless apes, sharp-eared, but puggy-nosed, sir,
Who nightly climbed their "family trees," and on the top reposed, sir.

There's Carlyle, on the other hand, whose first and last concern it is
To preach up the "immensities" and muse on the eternities";  
But if one credits what one hears, the gist of all his brag is, sir,    
That "Erbwurst," rightly understood, is transcendental,"Haggis," sir. 

Imaginative sparks, you know, electric currents kindle, sir,    
On Alpine heights, or at Belfast, within the brain of Tyndall, sir ;
His late address, some people hold, is flowery, vague, and vapoury,
And represents the "classic nude" when stripped of all its " Draper"-y. 

Professor Huxley has essayed to bridge across the chasm, sir,  
'Twixt matter dead and matter quick by means of "protoplasm," sir,
And to his doctrine now subjoins the further "grand attraction"
That "consciousness" in man and brute is simply "reflex action."

Then Stanley Jevons will contend in words stout and emphatical
The proper mode to treat all things is purely mathematical ;
Since we as individual men, communities and nations, sir,
Are clearly angles, lines, and squares, cubes, circles, and equations, sir.
  
George Henry Lewes, I'm informed, had "gone off quite hysterical"
About that feeble, foolish thing, the "theory Metempirical" ;  
And only found relief, 'tis said, from nervous throes and spasms, sir,
By banging straight at Huxley's head a brace of brand new "plasms," sir.
 
Such are the philosophic views I've ventured now to versify
And, if, I may invent the term, in some degree to "ter'sify,"  
Among them all, I'm bold to say, fair room for choice you'll find, sir,  
And if you don't why then you won't, and I for one, shan't mind, sir.    
—' Pall Mall Gazette.' 


Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette 27 February 1875

NIETZSCHE. DID HE MAKE THE WAR ?

HIS OPINION OF THE GERMANS

BY ARCHIBALD T. STRONG

During the last few weeks I have repeatedly heard the question asked how far Nietzsche may be held responsible for the present war. It cannot be seriously doubted that a vast body of German public opinion regards, or pretends to regard, it as a struggle after the very heart of him who scouted pity; as the most contemptible of the Christian "virtues," regarded war as one of the main activities of the Superman, and gave unto his chosen ones the supreme commandment "live dangerously."       
Before and since the outbreak of hostilities all sorts of queer statements have been made by public men in Germany from the Kaiser upwards, which sound to any true student of Nietzsche much as the notes of a great singer might sound when transmitted through some cheap and blaring megaphone. To the grotesque misapplication of Nietzsche's teaching regarding the transvaluation of all moral values is in large measure due the mean and cynical repudiation of national honor, which caused Germany to dismiss the Belgian treaty as "a scrap of paper," and to make to England the disgusting proposal that she should stand quietly by while her chief ally was robbed of her colonies.
Nietszche, again, had, in a certain context and with marked reservations, defended slavery, and had declared that the weaklings of this earth existed only for the sake of the Superman, that sovereign incarnation of the Will to Power. It is seemingly to a perverse misrendering of this precept by a hundred brutal militarists and professorial pedants, that we owe the German official policy of "Schrecklichkeit," or "awfulness," which has resulted in a succession of organised horrors probably unparalleled in the world's history.

RECENT ATROCITIES

If anyone still doubts these occurrences, I repeat, let him go up to the newspaper room at the Public Library and consult "The Times" of September 16 for the official report of the Belgian Commission on the behavior of the German army in Belgium. This testimony is confirmed up to the hilt by the special war correspondent of "Nash's Magazine," who, in the current number, describes a few of the horrors he has lately seen. The report just mentioned and the other reports of the Commission should be sufficient proof, of these things even for the most uncompromising Australian Anglophobe, or Teutophil.
I may add that I am not recurring to this subject because I like it, or be cause I, expect other people to like it. The details given are as odious to me as they must be to every normally constituted man or woman. My sole object is to point out to Australians that they have to expect this, and worse if worse were possible—should German troops ever set foot on English or Australian soil: and if I can help in nerving the heart and will of every Australian of fighting age to enlist at once, and make such a hideous contingency impossible, my purpose will have been amply served.

NIETZSCHE ON GERMANY.   

To return to our subject, we have for long been informed that modern Germany is steeped in Nietzsche's teaching, and that his influence has been especially strong in German universities, Gerhart Hauptmann, the leading German playwright of the day, in his contribution to the manifesto recently addressed to America by German writers, enlarged on the "culture"—convenient and elastic word!—of the German army, and said that it was common for a German soldier to go to the front with one of Nietzsche's masterpieces in his knapsack.
One is tempted to ask whether all Nietzsche's works are equally acceptable to the "cultured" spoilers, of Louvain, or whether any are placed on the index by the military censor. Certain it is that if the German army reads Nietzsche extensively, it must get some rude shocks. The following is a literal translation of a passage in Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo," and I would draw special attention to the last sentence:— 
Not only have the Germans entirely lost the breadth of vision which enables one to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture; not only are they one and all political (or church) puppets; but they have also factually put a ban upon this very breadth of vision. A man must first and foremost be German, he must belong to "the race"; then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values in history—then only can he establish them. To be German is itself an argument.
"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" is a principle. The Germans stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history. There is such a thing as writing history according to the lights of Imperial Germany there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history—there is also history written with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of himself. When I listen to such things I lose all patience, and I feel inclined I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience. Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies on their conscience.

SOME TERRIBLE INVECTIVE

The reference to Treitschke is interesting, and bears out what I stated a few weeks ago that in certain German Universities European history is "made to order" at the sweet will of the authorities, and that students are carefully  guarded from those truths which would lead them to favor a peace based on a fair view of their neighbors. But Nietzsche's loathing of the German character was vast, and various. As a writer in "The Times" has recently pointed out, one of his main causes for disliking Wagner was the fact that "he condescended to the Germans, and became German Imperialist."
Nietzsche expressly repudiates any identification of his own teaching with the spirit of modern Prussia, and instances as a sign of that Teutonic stupidity which he despised, the fact that his book, "Beyond God and Evil," was seriously regarded in Prussia as a genuine and typical example of "Junker-Philosophie." He thus repudiated by anticipation the exact misapplication with which I am now dealing. When living in Switzerland he almost hugs himself with joy at his remoteness from Germany.
The following extracts, one imagines, must have caused the volume which contains them — "Ecce Homo" —to weigh rather heavily in the Prussian knapsack:—

It is even part of my ambition to be considered as essentially a despiser of Germans. I express my suspicions of the German character even at the age of six-and-twenty (see "Thoughts Out of Season," Vol. II., pp. 164, 165). To my mind, the Germans are impossible. When I try to think of the kind of man who is opposed to me in all my instincts, my mental image takes the form of a German. 

As Nietzsche continues to speak of the Germans, his language becomes "curiouser and curiouser":—

You can scarcely even fathom their depths —they haven't any, and that's the end of it. Thus they cannot even be called shallow. That which is called "deep" in Germany is precisely this instinctive uncleanliness to   wards oneself of which I have just spoken. Might I be allowed, perhaps, to suggest the word "German" as an international epithet denoting this psychological depravity?

And again: —
A man lowers himself by frequenting the society of Germans. The Germans have not the faintest idea of how vulgar they are; but this in itself is the acme of vulgarity—they are not even ashamed of being merely Germans.

It is not my present object either to justify or refute this estimate of the Germans; all that I wish to do is to point out that perhaps some of them are carrying more in their knapsack than they may be aware of.

GERMAN VANDALISM HATED

Enough has probably been said to show that to judge by Nietzsche's utterances, Germany on the whole is somewhat mistaken when she claims him for her prophet and seer, and claims that if he had been living today he would have favored the present war. An esteemed friend of mine has pointed out to me that Nietesche's love of beauty alone would have led him to repudiate utterly the nation which has destroyed Rheims Cathedral, and given to the flames the immemorial treasures of Louvain.
How utterly he detested this kind of thing may be gathered from a letter of his to Baron von Gersdorf, apropos of the German excesses In Paris and the burning of the Louvre in 1871.
The following sentences seem especially striking if read in relation to the crimes of two months ago:—

We shall do wrong if we consider with a peaceful conceit the unchaining of a war against culture, and if we impute the fault merely to the unfortunates who do the deed. When I heard of the firing of Paris I was for some days utterly powerless, lost in tears and doubts; the life of science, of philosophy, and of art appeared to me as an absurdity when I saw a single day suffice for the ruin of the finest works of art.

In his autobiographical notes of 1870 he writes:—"The War : my profoundest affliction, the burning of the Louvre." His biographer, M. Halévy, further tells us that when he heard the news he "walked the roads like a desperate man," and subsequently recalled his own words that "without discipline, without a hierarchy, culture cannot subsist."         

The love of beauty, too, beauty manifested in the moral sphere, would, certainly have kept him from sympathy with the recent German outrages on innocent human life. Transvaluer though he was of moral values, he never wavered in his allegiance to the noble, as he understood nobility, nor strove to transvalue it into the ignoble; and if ever there was a supremely ignoble act; it was surely the German invasion of Belgium. No, as far as the present war is concerned, Nietzsche must be treated as a hostile witness by Germany. I must postpone an analysis of his general teaching till a future article.

Weekly Times 2 January 1915