- Shalom & Welcome! - 
This paper treats of a discovery that I made some forty years ago, on the very first occasion that I ever paid any serious attention to a metaphysical problem, at the mature age of thirty-six. I had chosen a scientific education, and my research work, alternating with chess and a good deal of music making, had satisfied my intellectual and æsthetic appetites. My parents had brought me up with a certain contempt for formal religion, and this had on the whole been enhanced by a good deal of enforced attendance at the services of several denominations during boyhood. My general interests were quite wide, but whenever I had dipped into 'formal' philosophy I had felt that it had very little relation to direct experience, and that it was wholly concerned with abstractions; it gave me the impression of being little more than mere 'verbiage'.
Thus I was, philosophically speaking, virtually tabula rasa when I happened to come across A. N. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World. Here, for the first time, I found a professional philosopher whose thought was actually concerned with concrete experience and not merely with verbal and symbolic descriptions of it, and I followed it enthusiastically. As a scientist, I was naturally familiar with most of the material dealt with in the first few chapters, but the approach to the subject of Relativity was new to me. Here Whitehead explained how Einstein had come to the conclusion that 'events' must furnish the basic data for physics, but seeing that 'distant simultaneity' was unobservable, on account of the finiteness of the velocity of 'light', the 'objective' events which were to furnish the building-blocks for Physics could only be constructs, made by correlating a number of events observed 'privately' by several observers, each of whom might have his own system of 'space-time'.
At this point it struck me that one question had been overlooked which, although it might be of negligible importance in everyday practice, could have considerable significance for epistemology: Was 'absolute' simultaneity observable even within the extended visual field of a single observer?
A little careful reflection on our direct experience of visual perception seemed definitely to lead to a negative answer. Every judgment of relative position - above or below, to the right or to the left - requires repeated transitions of attention between the areas or 'points' related, and these transitions certainly embody a temporal element, albeit brief enough to be negligible for the purposes of ordinary measurement. Furthermore, every measurement of distance away from an observer, if this is longer than a metre or so, requires the locomotion either of the observer's body or the measuring apparatus, and the contacts, which are the 'events' which define the 'interval' measured, cannot be observed simultaneously. Furthermore, whenever we require, for the purpose of increased accuracy, to express this distance in shorter units than lengths of the measuring rod employed, the rod has to be placed laterally in the visual field, that is to say, at right angles to the line of measurement, and comparison between the length of the rod itself and the smaller units of 'distance' can only be effected by visual transitions. When I say that one centimetre equals ten millimetres, I am expressing my repeated experience that when I cast my gaze along the edge of a ruler, the frequency of my awareness of the millimetre marks is ten times as great as that of my awareness of the centimetre marks. Furthermore, any general judgment of this nature tacitly assumes that each sequence of acts of awareness is 'regular' or 'uniform', which in terms of direct experience can only signify that it is judged to be 'rhythmically invariant'.
A negative answer is even more stronly supported by the almost universally accepted 'wave theory' of light. According to this the quality that we experience as 'illumination' is our awareness of a compresence of vibrations of quasi-invariant rhythm, with frequencies which lie between certain definite limits. And once 'frequency' is held to be a necessary attribute of illumination, this clearly cannot be regarded as 'simultaneous with itself'; thus it is nonsensical to speak of an 'instantaneous' observation of 'illumination'.
At this point I began to wonder whether the concept of 'absolute simultaneity' could be usefully applied to any mode of experience. 'Process' is obviously inherent in most of them, such as hearing, touch, visceral sensation and, above all, in 'thought'. Vision alone confronts us with a complex compresence of a multitude of relatively invariant bounded areas, which we certainly judge to be 'synchronous', and in practice generally treat as 'simultaneous', especially for measurement purposes. But if in fact this synchronicity falls short of 'absolute simultaneity', the latter notion should be discarded, as redundant, from the repertoire of properties attributable to direct experience.
But in that case, I would be obliged to regard the 'stuff' of all my experience as a single flux of linear succession; this could take the form of a continuous flux of change of intensive quantity, structurally more akin to 'sound' than to 'illumination'.
Presently I found that Whitehead's own line of thinking, which was far more abstract in character than the one that I had followed, had led him to the same conclusion as a possible consequence of his reasoning. He, however, had quite arbitrarily rejected it, in the following passage:- 'There is no necessity that the temporal process should be constituted by one series of linear succession. Accordingly, in order to satisfy the present demands of scientific hypothesis (my italics), we introduce the metaphysical hypothesis that this is not the case'.
This struck me as intellectually irresponsible. The conclusion which he rejected was one which I had reached by simply considering certain abstract features of 'space-time', which had been unearthed by modern physics, and applying them to the perceptual field, when it seemed to follow as a necessary consequence; Whitehead had never considered these matters at all. He might indeed be justified in refusing to consider the conclusion as a basis for a mathematical physics which adopted the usual conventional assumptions that 'absolute simultaneity' was a valid concept, but in his rôle of philosopher, this ad hoc procedure seemed entirely out of order.1 Accordingly, I decided to ignore his rejection for the time being, and to look around for more substantial reasons before taking any such step.
1. I subsequently discovered that in his earlier book The Concept of Nature, Whitehead had admitted that the fact that 'instants' were required by physical science did not show that they were actual ingredients of 'experience'.
I quite soon encountered one difficulty which would make rejection obligatory unless some way round it could be discovered. I had already realised that if distant simultaneity was unobservable, visual percepts must be 'in the mind'; the correctness of this view (Berkeley's) ought to have been realised as soon as the velocity of 'light' had been experimentally proved to be finite, by Fizeau's measurement in 1849. Consider, for example, a percept of the Sun sinking below the horizon; this is all synchronous 'in the mind', but nowadays we all believe that the solar events which have occasioned our 'Sun-percept' have occurred some eight minutes earlier than the percept itself, whereas in the case of the corresponding events on the horizon, the discrepancy is only one of a 'split second'. What we say we see is not, in fact, what we actually do see; it is at least a split second earlier. Indeed, if we accept the physiologists' prolongation of the 'lines of communication' into the interior of our own bodies, we are forced to conclude that our most immediate experience, from which we actually infer the whole 'external Universe', can only consist of our awareness, from inside, of goings-on within the 'matter' of our nervous systems.
Similar considerations clearly apply to the visual and aural percepts from which I infer the activities of other sentient beings; my acquantance with any such activities can never be immediate. I have of course no way of refuting the possibility that my inferences are mistaken, and even that nothing at all occurs outside my own awareness. I am, however, prepared to reject this hypothesis on what seems to be the best possible ground, namely, that I find it altogether intolerable!
But if my own experience and, by analogy, that of every other sentient being, consists of a continuous linear flux, how can we possibly manage to communicate?
Now this seems to have been the right question to ask, and I must have asked it with great intensity, since it was answered, in a forceful and completely unexpected manner, by an experience of altogether unprecedented character and intensity. Although mainly visual, it was something more than just a 'vision', since my whole being was somehow embodied in it. In effect, I was actually shown the structure of my own being, and its relationship with that of totality, in so far as this could be accomplished through a visual medium. The whole experience was unspeakably wonderful, and I had no hesitation in attributing it to the activity of a Divine Being, in Which I have believed ever since.
What I was 'shown' was that my being was not unconditionally 'continuous'; it apeared so when contemplated in relation to the slow tempi of change to which our attentions are confined during waking hours. Were it to be contemplated at a 'tempo' more rapid than that of its own-recreation, it would appear as a succession of 'atomic durations', and were the tempo of the contemplation sufficiently rapid, the intervals between two successive 'atomic durations' would be long enough to encompass the 'rest of the Universe'! Each of my 'atomic durations' might consist of 'absolutely continuous Godstuff', but I could nevertheless never be aware of the intervals within my own being, since they would be the periods of its 'not-being'. Since 'Godstuff' is absolutely continuous, it is correct to call it 'eternal', in the sense of 'unceasing'. Once it has been realised that both 'space' and 'time' are denotations of interval, the choice of word depending merely on the context, it must be inaccurate to use 'eternal' to qualify anything bounded, since the boundary defines its 'cessation'. It is a radical mistake to suppose that 'eternity' means 'infinite time'; on the contrary, in so far as anything can be correctly described as 'eternal' it cannot properly be said to include any 'time' at all.
During each of my infinitesimal shares of 'absolute duration', which I nowadays envisage as an all-embracing 'carrier-wave' of 'infinite frequency', I am the Universe, and can presumably modify the 'wave' before it passes on to adjacent 'atomic durations' belonging to some other being. In this way the 'wave' itself can function as a medium of communication.
My 'vision' had in effect revealed the Universe as a 'monadology', with the monads interdigitating within 'absolute duration', i.e. a 'plenum continuum' of change of intensive quantity. The principle is extremely simple and conceptually unexceptionable; the only difficulty about it is that we have to postulate 'tempi' of a rapidity that is beyond the range of normal perception or imagination. I had clearly arrived at it owing to my insistence, for ethico-æsthetic reasons, on retaining communication as a necessary element of experience.
When I later encountered Leibnitz' system, my objection to it was precisely that his monads, which coexisted simultaneously in a space-like Platonic 'receptacle', were condemned to be 'incommunicado'; a mere illusion of communication was provided, by an external 'deus ex machina', in the shape of the 'pre-established harmony'. Furthermore, his monads played no active part in the Universe, but merely 'reflected' it. It was my æsthetic rejection of this state of affairs that had evoked a 'revelation' of the alternative. A simple comparison of the two systems can be expressed in terms of electrical circuitry; in his system, the monads occur 'in parallel', and are only connected 'at infinity', whereas in mine, they occur 'in series'.
At first hearing, the temporal structure of a serial monadology is bound to sound fantastic, and it is very difficult to express, because it differs so radically from the 'parallelist' structure characteristic of the visual field, which is also implicitly assumed in all linguistic and symbolic techniques of communication. Fortunately, modern technology has come to the rescue; an excellent slow-motion model of the structure can now be indicated, in the shape of the temporal relation between individual 'points' within a television picture and the 'picture as a whole', which is of course not a 'thing', but a quasi-continuous sequence of change.
My experience carried an implicit warning that I should not try to contemplate my 'being' relative to the tempo of 'Godstuff' unless I was prepared to disintegrate, body and soul, into a meaningless sequence of isolated atomic durations, thereby utterly destroying my sense of continuity. Such 'reabsorption into the Absolute' seems to be the ideal of many Eastern religions; in my opinion, it would be a symptom of hopeless 'cosmic despair'. The Buddhists may be right in maintaining that all 'aggregates' are 'impermanent', but at least they must be of more value than unorganised sequences of isolated 'atomic durations'. Furthermore, there are no reasons for assuming that the 'ground' of being must be intrinsically superior to 'being' itself; it is only this admittedly widespread superstition which gives rise to a 'problem of evil'. Thus the present writer, though holding that absolutely continuous change is the ground of 'being', has no intention of eulogising it. Any attempt to equate ontological priority with ethical or æsthetic supremacy is to be deplored, because this entails the complete rejection of the attribution of intrinsic value to any notion of 'progress'.
My 'experience' left me in an acute state of hyperæsthesia, in which inner visions and voices occurred quite frequently. One of my 'voices' instructed me, by way of an excellent joke, that it was my job to communicate what I had been shown. I did my best, but all my efforts met with blank incomprehension. Meanwhile, my condition was making me something of a nuisance to my neighbours, especially to my wife, so I reluctantly sought medical treatment, and the doctors managed to restore the censorship of my nervous system to something like its normal functioning. Since the train of thought that had led to my 'experience' was still perfectly clear, I was confident of being able to resume my efforts to communicate at a later date, when circumstances might be more propitious.
At the present time, general familiarity with television has made the task of exposition relatively easy, and I propose to conclude this paper by showing that the temporal relationship between individual monads and 'absolute duration', as adumbrated in my 'serial monadology', is identical with that which is generally understood to obtain between a 'point' in a television picture and the picture as a whole.
The picture is generated by a cathode-ray, a rhythmic activity of such great rapidity that it is 'quasi-continuous' in relation to any of the other 'tempi' involved in making the picture. It regenerates the picture some 25 times a second, traversing the entire 625 lines of the screen on each occasion, and successively activating each of the luminescent particulars, or 'phosphors', as it goes along. Thus a 'point' within the picture will consist of a discontinuous series of activations of the same phosphor, also occurring 25 times a second. By the standards of tempo contemplated by the television engineer, no two phosphors are ever activated 'synchronously', although for the viewer, who is only scanning the 'raw materials' relative to the much slower 'tempi' to which our attention is restricted during normal visual perception, the whole picture would, in the ordinary course of events, be unreflectingly regarded as 'simultaneous'.
Now each 'phosphor' is a luminescent 'molecule', and there must be, at a highly conservative estimate, at least 10,000 of them on each 'line', so that the ratio between the duration of the illumination of each individual phosphor and that of the whole picture is at least 1 : 6,250,000, that is, 10,000 × 625. And between every two successive activations, or 'atomic durations, of the same phosphor, the rest of the picture actually occurs!
Of course, the model only serves to replicate the temporal structure of the monadology; there is no suggestion that the individual 'points' communicate with one another, or that they modify the cathode-ray in any way; in these respects, their status is more like that of Leibnitz' monads than of mine. But if they were sentient beings, as Leibnitz considered his to be, and could modify the cathode-ray, it could then serve as a medium of communication between them. Some such modification of the 'Universal carrier-wave' seems to be a natural interpretation of our experience of 'volition', and I hope that this suggestion will serve to complete an intelligible account of the cosmology, adumbrated in the paper.
I was brought up to take a completely sceptical view of 'religion'. This was reinforced by a scientific education, and although 'religious instruction' at school familiarised me with much of the Bible, I found myself unable to take it seriously, mainly on account of the plethora of alleged 'miracles'; I could see no way of incorporating them within the same conceptual framework as the 'naïve realist' assumptions which underlay, and still to a great extent underlie, my everyday beliefs and practice.
But when, in my thirties, I made my first approach to philosophy, from the scientific end, I accidentally stumbled upon an intelligible theory of 'miracles' which changed my outlook completely. I experimentally applied the equivalence of 'space' and 'time', with which I was familiar from Einstein's work, to the field of visual perception. This step seems to me to be unexceptionable; even though we normally regard the whole of the visual field as 'simultaneous', every 'spatial' interval must surely have a 'temporal' counterpart, albeit so brief as to be unnoticeable.
In the case of television, the engineers 'know' that this is the case; the individual illuminations of which the 'picture' is constituted all occur in succession, not 'simultaneously'; but the 'intervals' between them are too short, and their succession far too rapid for them to be of any interest to us, so that although we firmly believe that they occur, we completely fail to take any notice of them. The goings-on that we do 'see' on the screen are no more than an extremely slow-motion 'précis' of what is actually happening there. It is extremely likely that the same principle is applicable to 'direct' vision, which, in so far as we locate 'what' we see outside ourselves, is also a form of 'television'. It also seems likely that the 'raw material' of vision, like that of 'television', might be of the nature of a 'carrier-wave', a flux of change of intensive quantity, occurring at a 'tempo' of an even more rapid order than that of any of its 'modulations', which are what serve to transmit information from the 'external Universe'.
When we use a microscope as an aid to our normal perceptual apparatus, we do not magnify the 'object'; what we actually do is to slow down the 'tempo' at which the information from it is presented within the internal field of illumination; this enables us to become aware of far more detail than we can register when we 'scan' it at the 'normal tempo', with the unaided eye. Presumably this extra detail is always available, but we normally scan the information too quickly and carelessly to be able to notice it. This makes it clear that the 'nature' of what we see is dependent to a very large extent on the down-gearing ratio that we are using in order to bring our raw material within the limits of 'consciousness'; in practice, very likely thanks mainly to the 'natural selectionist' method of trial and error - which must be repeated by every infant shortly after birth - we have developed the habit of adjusting this ratio so that the images developed are of maximum use as signs for æsthetically valuable or disvaluable tactile possibilities.
Now it is by no means out of the question that an exceptional individual, here and there, may achieve an unusually high down-gearing ratio, which will bring much finer textures, and changes of a more rapid order of tempo, within the range of his 'conscious' awareness. Should he then manage to attune his motor-responses to the 'data' furnished by the new 'down-gearing' ratio, he would be able to effect changes of a type quite impossible for 'normal' people, who will be obliged to regard them as 'miraculous'.
This conceptual possibility was actually used, on a very conservative scale, by H.G. Wells in his short story 'The New Accelerator'. In this case, the increased 'down-gearing' ratio was supposed to have been attained by the use of a drug - but the method employed is quite irrelevant to the principle. The 'miracle' performed took the shape of a preposterous and rather malicious practical joke; a beneficent one would have been perfectly in order, but would have been out of keeping with the generally farcical tone of the story.
The discovery of an intelligible and reasonable theory of 'miracles' made it unjustifiable to disbelieve, on principle, any reports which included them, especially if they were performed by somebody who appeared to be quite exceptional in other respects. Since Christianity had made such an impact on Western civilisation that it could hardly be dismissed as 'insignificant', it seemed worth while to re-examine the 'Scriptures' in the light of this discovery. Their 'historicity' could now be assessed solely by the commonsense criteria that we habitually use in the case of narratives which are claimed to be records of event-seqences of a comparable order of antiquity. The following four were chosen:-
Now as far as the Bible is concerned, there is one part, and only one, which stands up to all four tests. This is the latter part of the Gospel story, from the Baptism to the Resurrection, inclusive.
On the other hand, the earlier part of Jesus' biography is nothing like so well attested; it is only to be found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. They agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Mary and, putatively, of Joseph; but this part of the story is accompanied by a mass of decorative material, concerning which they hardly agree in a single particular, except in respect of Mary's virginity. Personally, I am inclined to reject this, not because of its 'miraculous' character, but because it weakens the message of the later part of the Gospels; if the Spirit, while not "abhorring the Virgin's womb", did draw the line at a fertilised ovum, this raises doubts concerning the validity of the message for those who have been procreated in the usual way.
When we come to examine the books of the Old Testament, and especially the 'earlier' ones such as the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomic books, it is clear that they do not begin to satisfy a single one of the criteria put forward above:
1. The nickname refers to His wrestling match with Jacob.
There are, in short, no grounds whatsoever for attributing 'historicity' to these books, although this is unreflectingly assumed, either explicitly or implicitly, by all 'Christians'. Their assumption is no more than an unthinking and altogether unjustifiable extrapolation from the 'historicity' of the latter part of the Gospel story, which is acceptable. The 'historicity' of the Pentateuch should in fact be treated as on a par with that of the legends related by Homer and Hesiod, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Norse Sagas and other symbolic myths from the Bronze Age.
It follows that any interpretation of the Gospel story which relies for its meaning on its relation to the Old Testament narrative should be regarded with the utmost suspicion. This makes it possible to pinpoint an error which has bedevilled Christianity almost from the outset, and which gives rise directly to a stupid, completely unacceptable paradox. This paradox is explicitly asserted by Hans Küng in his book On Being a Christian, where he writes on p.296, that Jesus "proclaims no God other than the not very congenial God of the Old Testament" (Küng's italics).
In a purely trivial sense, we may admit that inasmuch as Godhead is envisaged as 'eternal' and 'omnipresent' both by the authors of the Pentateuch and by Jesus, we can only regard it as 'One and the Same'. But the entities that Küng is trying to identify are aspects of Godhead, on the one hand as portrayed in the Pentateuch, and on the other as portrayed in Jesus's teaching and manifest in Himself. But if the word 'God' has any useful denotation or reference, it must be as an object of 'worship', that is to say, a Being to which supreme 'worthship' is attributed. As a 'Christian', Küng is actually inviting his fellows to 'praise, adore and glorify' a 'Being' whom they regard, at the same time, as 'rather uncongenial'. This is either hypocrisy or nonsense, and the 'nonsense' explanation is the more charitable of the two!
During the first two centuries A.D., this identification was completely rejected by the Gnostic sects, and their example was followed later by the Cathars. They regarded "Jehovah" of the Old Testament as a fiend, and called 'Him' 'Ialdabaoth'; Blake was subsequently to christen 'Him' Urizen, and to nickname 'Him' "Nobodaddy". But the tendency to personify the contrasting elements was unfortunate, since the followers of such doctrines tended to finish up with two mutually hostile 'Gods', and to become 'Manichæans'. Now Manichæanism has been widely felt to be a less than satisfactory basis for science, philosophy and religion alike, and all heresies of this kind have consequently been extirpated, at least officially, from Christian doctrine. I believe that the Manichæans were actually mistaken, but only in so far as they mistook 'extremely differents' for 'opposites' in their reaction against the 'Christian' identification of them.
It is quite easy to trace the original identification to the teaching of Saul of Tarsus, and also to explain how and why he came to adopt it. What does not seem to be generally realised is that he initially developed his doctrine in almost complete ignorance of the life and teaching of the human Jesus, at any rate prior to the Trial and Crucifixion. He did know that Jesus had been crucified, at the instance of the Inquisition of the Church of Moses, for teaching the blasphemous heresy that the rule of the Law was to be replaced, or in some cases supplemented, by that of the Spirit immanent in the soul of every human being; he had heard Stephen repeat that doctrine, and shown his enthusiastic approval when he was stoned for it. He may or may not have known of the supplementary charge of claiming to be the 'Messiah', which had been preferred in order to secure the otherwise reluctant cooperation of the 'Secular Arm'. He would clearly have scouted the reports of the Resurrection as mischievous invention on the part of Jesus's disciples. But then came his shattering vision on the road to Damascus, accompanied by a voice which identified its utterer as Jesus of Nazareth, and told him to stop being such an obstinate ass! For him, this was clearly a 'divine' indication that the Resurrection had taken place, that the unjust sentence had been 'supernaturally' countermanded, and by inference, that Jesus' doctrine was anything but heretical in the sight of God.
There are no grounds for doubting that he completed his journey to Damascus, or that his sight was restored by Ananias. According to the account in Acts 9:19-22, he immediately began to proclaim his recantation of his former views, and this so incensed the Jews that he had to escape from the city by being let down from the wall in a basket. According to his own account in Galatians 1, it would appear that this occurred quite soon after his initial arrival in Damascus; Acts 9:23, speaks of 'many days', but this may well refer to the period after his return from Arabia, where he tells us, in Galatians 1:17, that he spent part of the three years which elapsed before his return to Damascus and his first visit to Jerusalem.
This period is not mentioned in Acts, but it is clear that it was during that time that he must have worked out his doctrine, knowing nothing about Jesus' teaching except for His central thesis that God was immanent Spirit, which his own vision had virtually compelled him to accept.
Now it is clear that Paul never discarded the common Jewish belief that all human sickness, misfortune and death was to be regarded as punishment for 'sin'. This belief underlies the whole of his teaching in Romans 5 and 6, which provide the basis of a great deal of the theory and practice of most ecclesiastical 'Christianity'. On the other hand, Jesus had repeatedly scouted this belief; outstanding examples of His attitude to it are to be found in John 9 and Luke 13. He even made ironical use of it, as recorded in Matthew 9, as the basis of His a fortiori argument that since he could perform the more difficult task of curing a man of the palsy, he obviously had the power to perform the much easier one of forgiving him his 'sins', which the audience would have assumed to be the 'cause' of it. The parable of the Sower likewise implicitly denies the connection between 'sin' and misfortune, developmental failures are not due to any fault in the 'seed' but to an element of 'randomness' in its sowing; in other words, they are attributable to accidents in the environment.
But for Saul, as indeed for any Jew who was unacquainted with this aspect of Jesus' teaching, the notion of 'God crucified' must have been a terrible 'stumbling-block' (1 Cor 1:23). His initial experience with the Damascus Jews must have convinced him that this difficulty had to be overcome before his preaching could stand any chance of success among them. It will be shown later in this essay that the Crucifixion can easily be interpreted almost entirely in relation to the earlier part of the Gospel story, but of this Saul was completely ignorant. As far as he was concerned, therefore, any interpretation could only relate it to the Old Testament narrative; and the one that he actually produced makes no sense at all unless this is regarded as 'historical'.
At that time, 'sin-offerings' were still being made in the Temple at Jerusalem, according to the prescription of the Mosaic Law. Their object was to propitiate Jehovah's wrath at breaches of that Law, and thereby to avert or soften the punishment for them. This made it fairly simple for Saul to interpret the Crucifixion as a vicarious 'sin-offering' intended to avert punishment for all who believed in its efficacy. It should be noted here that such offerings did not remit the 'sins' themselves, but only the punishment for them. Such an offering could only be made to 'Jehovah', with whom Jesus' 'Heavenly Father' has thus become identified, thereby giving rise to the paradoxical nonsense endorsed even by thoughtful theologians such as Küng.
Saul may originally have had only the Mosaic Law in mind, but since the Book of Genesis is technically included in the Torah for the purposes of Synagogue worship, it was not unreasonable for him to extend the reach of 'salvation' to the 'uncircumcision' which had preceded 'Abraham', and eventually, via 'Adam', to all mankind. I think that it must have been this extension which got him into trouble with the 'Grecians' - Greek-speaking but circumcised believers from the Diaspora - when he eventually went up to Jerusalem. Living as they did as a minority among the 'Goyim',2 in a state of self-imposed 'apartheid', they would be bound to resent a suggestion which clearly diminished their status as a 'Chosen People'; on the other hand, the 'Judæans' - the Aramaic-speaking Palestinians, who lived in a circumcised community, would be nothing like so strongly concerned about it. Paul says nothing about this quarrel in Galatians, but it seems to have been so serious (Acts 9:29) that Peter had to send Saul home to Tarsus, after a stay of no more than a fortnight (Galatians 1:18) in order to restore harmony among the 'believers' - who at that time were not yet known as 'Christians'. It is unlikely that Peter himself would have approved of Saul's doctrines at this stage; it was not until later, after his vision at Joppa, that he became convinced that Jesus' message was not intended to be confined to the Jews. The man whom he first sent to preach to the Greeks in Antioch was not Saul, but the 'Grecian', Barnabas (Acts 11:22). It was he who, remembering Saul's skill as a preacher (Acts 9:27), went to Tarsus and enlisted him to help with the work. It is clear that Saul, who for some reason changed his name to Paul, soon took over the leadership; he was a man of great force of character and a keen intellect, and henceforward it was obviously his views which furnished the doctrinal basis of 'Christianity'; the name 'Christian' was first applied to the community founded by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch (Acts 11:26).
2. A common Jewish epithet for Gentiles, with strong overtones of contempt.
It seems that Paul eventually persuaded Peter to accept his interpretation of the Crucifixion, albeit reluctantly and with reservations; in 2 Peter 3:16 one can almost hear the old ex-fisherman grumbling about the sophisticated obscurities of Paul's doctrine. And in point of fact, the 'logic' of his reasoning in Romans 5 and 6 is much the same as that of the White Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where the King's Messenger is serving a sentence for a 'crime' which he has not yet committed; the punishment proves the crime! In point of fact, if a 'sin' is an act or a thought, it cannot be 'remitted' without assuming a completely unthinkable reversal of the temporal order of actual events; 'remission' can only be meaningfully asserted of the prospective punishment. I do not believe that Jesus was in the least concerned with punishment for sins; what he wanted to 'remit', i.e., to abolish, was the whole notion of 'sin against God'. We could express this in English as "the remission of 'sin'", but not, I suspect, in Latin; "peccata" is an ineluctably past participle of "peccare". We would require some such word as "peccantia", deriving it from the verb "peccare" as "sapientia" is derived from "sapere". "Remissio peccantiæ" would at least be free from logical absurdity, which "in remissionem peccatorum" is not.
Now if we reject Paul's interpretation of the Crucifixion as a 'sin-offering', an alternative is required. It is clear from the Gospel story that Jesus deliberately and carefully planned to be crucified, and some of His motives for doing so are clearly indicated in the Gospels themselves. We begin by summarily rejecting Küng's paradoxical contention that the aspect of Godhead taught by Jesus is to be identified with either the 'Big Brother' or the Big 'Daddy' of the Pentateuch, and to take the far more obvious view that he was trying to replace this 'archetype', as an object of 'worship', by the Spirit immanent in the human soul. His 'theology' was a radical amendment of the Old Testament variety; so radical, in fact, as to amount almost to a 'refutation'.
We, like the Disciples, can readily accept Jesus as the 'best beloved', which is to say, the most complete incarnation of the Spirit. The Passion sequence can then be easily interpreted as a highly ingenious and extremely heroic teaching device, a demonstration of the validity of His doctrine, using Himself as the 'experimental animal'. It established the following points:-
Paul had never heard Jesus's denials of the Old Testament doctrine, and completely misunderstood this aspect of the Crucifixion. For him, the association of sin and punishment remained so close that any remission of 'punishment' implied a 'remission' of the antecedent 'sin', which, as we have seen, is actually nonsensical. Jesus's 'Messiahship' was a side-issue. He was certainly not the kind of 'Messiah' expected by the Jews, who would have been a political figure, but He certainly deemed it expedient to act a rôle selected from the Messianic prophecies, possibly with a view to strengthening His teaching credentials. He Himself stated clearly that His fulfilment of the prophecies was deliberate, as recorded in Matthew 26:56 and Mark 14:49; it appears to be implied, in a similar context, in John 11:18. He may have realised that crucifixion would require the cooperation of the 'Secular Arm' of the Inquisition, and that they were unlikely to cooperate on the basis of a purely 'religious' offence. In the event, although the genuine motive for the Crucifixion was clearly the accusation of blasphemy - as the crowd understood very well - the 'official' charge was His alleged claim to be 'King of the Jews'.
It was Peter's famous 'avowal', recorded in Matthew 16:16, which put the notion into His head. His answer, in the following verse, should be translated as "What a heaven-sent idea!" But He immediately told the disciples to keep quiet about it until He was ready to make use of it, and all the Synoptic Gospels agree that it was at that time that He began to make His plans for the Passion - from which Peter vainly attempted to dissuade him! The timing of the whole operation was carefully planned and pre-announced so that it would carry greater conviction. Even his fulfilment of the 'Suffering Servant' prophecies during the trial and the subsequent occurrences was not 'passive', but a heroic piece of acting.
It is not psychologically credible that the outburst of religious enthusiasm which followed the Resurrection was due, to any significant extent, to relief at the 'remission of sins'; it was the Resurrection itself followed by the gift of the Spirit, and not the Crucifixion, which sparked off the explosion. It is true that in Acts 3:19, Peter speaks of the "blotting out of sins, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord", but it is the 'time of refreshing' which is the vital point. There is no other mention of 'remission of sins' in the earlier part of Acts, and Peter's reluctance to infringe the dietary regulations or to eat with Gentiles seems to have persisted even subsequently to his vision at Joppa. He was still rather squeamish about this matter when he went to visit Paul in Antioch (Galatians 2:12) which hardly suggests that he regarded the Crucifixion as having effectively remitted his own sins; at this stage he had clearly not accepted Paul's interpretation of it.
It is quite remarkable that in the Gospels, the Crucifixion is only once associated with "remission of sins", this is in Matthew's account of the institution of the Eucharist (Matthew 26:28). Thr other Evangelists simply quote Jesus as saying that His blood is shed "for many". Now Matthew is believed to have written his Gospel mainly for the benefit of Jewish, not Gentile, converts, so that it is hardly surprising that a trace of Pauline influence has crept in here; it is in fact rather surprising how little there is in the Gospels as a whole, seeing that they were certainly compiled later than Paul's Epistles.
The Crucifixion, as a method of dying, had tremendous advantages in respect of its dramatic emphasis and its refutation of the antecedent condemnation. But it was not the necessary vehicle of Jesus's message; almost any mode of dying would have served for its conveyance. The major emphasis within the Passion sequence should be placed on the Resurrection; Paul, by shifting it to the Crucifixion, produced a doctrine which fully deserves its nickname of 'Crosstianity'. In doing so, he unfortunately riveted the myth of the Pentateuch to the historical element in the Gospel story; the theology which has emerged from this unholy hybrid is a farrago of nonsense! The 'wheat' of Jesus' teaching has been riddled with 'tares' from the adjoining Old Testament territory introduced, not by an enemy, but by a would-be friend. It may well be that the infestation has progressed so far that its removal would prove impracticable; it certainly seems to me that anybody attempting to accomplish such a feat would be well advised to eschew the label of 'Christian'.
It is more or less universally recognised by philosophers that our knowledge of the 'external' world is essentially structural in character. The fact that independent observers can regard objects or events separately perceived by them as, for practical purposes, identical, when the percepts must, in the nature of the case, to some extent be different from each other, can only be explained by the presence of structurally identical elements in their separate percepts.
Epistemologists have almost all concentrated on visual perception - none of the leading philosophers seems to have been much of a musician - and consequently structure has usually been thought of, and expressed, in geometrical terms. The structure of a piece of music, however, contains no spatial element, although it can be translated into spatial form as on a magnetic tape, gramophone record or printed page. Any one of these, together with the actual performance, can be adequately denoted by the same name, e.g. "Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata".
Russell has remarked that it is very difficult to "get behind" the concept of structure. This is an understatement: it is quite impossible. What is possible, however, is to discover what are the minimum elements necessary for the production of a recognisable structure, and the present essay hopes to show, in particular, that no spatial element is needed for this purpose.
This point is, in fact, directly demonstrated by a philosophical examination of television technique. The 'picture', as it goes over the air, consists of no more than a fluctuation of electromagnetic intensity. Although it is present in every region traversed by the wave, it has in itself no spatial element at all. It is a simple pulsation of intensive quantity, and its form is pure rhythm.
At present the wave carries no more than a two-dimensional visual structure, together with the accompanying sound, which, like the wave itself, has rhythm for its form; but there is no theoretical limit to the number of dimensions which could be transmitted in a similar manner. There is no present demand for the tele-transmission of touch or smell, and the practical difficulties would obviously be formidable, but could almost certainly be overcome if this were felt to be worthwhile.
It is important to note that the wave contains in itself no hint as to the way in which it is to be spatialised. In this it differs from the spatial representation of sound, such as a sheet of music, where the order of reproduction is prescribed by elements in the spatial structure.
Television thus demonstrates that a rhythmic pulsation of intensive quantity is sufficient to 'contain' within itself the most complicated polydimensional structures, and this, therefore, would seem to be the most basic, primitive form of structure itself.
Now considerations drawn from a completely different field of thought, namely, Special Relativity Theory, lead directly to the conclusion that the raw material of perception must possess a structure similar to that of the television wave.
The Special theory of relativity was based on the realisation that distant contemporaneity was unobservable, as all media of communication must, a priori, have finite velocities. In practice, this is only of importance in the astronomical field, where very large distances are involved. For everyday purposes quasi-contemporaneity is quite good enough. We accept the physicist's statement that colour depends on the frequency of vibrations by analogy with a similar relation between sound-pitch and frequency, as in the latter instance we have direct experience of the frontier-region between the two in the case of very low-pitched sound. Hence, we know that frequency and, therefore, duration is built into our auditory and visual perception, but its structure is so fine that it is felt as a quality.
From the philosophical standpoint, however, we are entitled to ask - what is the lower limit of distance? Is it ever logically possible to observe absolute simultaneity?
Clearly, this can only be possible at a point, or point-instant. Now such entities, as defined by methods like Whitehead's, are logical constructions which may have no real counterpart in the physical universe. In any case, I do not think that two absolutely discrete events could be logically accommodated within a Whiteheadian 'point-instant'.
On the other hand, there would be no objection to referring an atomic 'event' - a change of intensive quantity - to more than one sequence of such events, just as a particularly large marine wave can be analysed as a resultant of a multitude of differently phased wave-trains.
It appears, therefore, that absolute simultaneity is, on the modern view of space-time, not a possible object of perception. From this it follows that the raw material of our perception must in fact be pure succession, like the television wave.
Here it is relevant to show that it is possible to construct a model of the Universe as pure succession, without using any conceptions other than those derived from experience, and without relapsing into complete solipsism.
From what has already been said, it is clear that each of our separate experiences is, in fact, probably a pure succession. The only difficulty in extending this notion to the universe as a whole is that of reciprocal causation, as for example in a conversation.
This, however, only presents difficulties if we make the assumption that each of the participants in the conversation exists continuously in terms of an absolute time-scale, and for this assumption we have no justification whatsoever.
Suppose, for our purposes, that our existence in fact consists of a series of separate short periods of duration separated from one another by æons of time. Could we possibly be cognisant of our own periods of non-existence? Here again an example from the practical field serves to illustrate the point. A cinema picture actually consists of a series of 'stills', and the change from one to the next is concealed by the intervention of a shutter. Nevertheless, the spectator takes no cognizance of the intervening periods of darkness, and the picture appears to be continuous.
A fortiori, it is obvious that if our very existence is, in terms of an absolute time-sequence, cinematographic, it must still appear continuous to us, and that the assumption of our own continuity on an absolute time-scale has no justification.
Accepting the possibility that all the elements of the Universe may be discontinuous, it becomes quite simple to regard them as fitting together to make up a successive whole. A Leibnitzian monadology is therefore possible in which all the monads are causally related, but they do not mirror the Universe; each, during the brief period of its existence, is the Universe! Their occasions of existence must certainly overlap, but need never coincide.
Such a cosmology is quite useless for practical purposes. Indeed, I hope to show that it would represent a universe from which all meaning has been removed. But its possibility serves to reinforce the ideas of perception put forward above.
Now if the raw material of perception is in the form of pure succession, it follows that space and spatiality are simply devices for ordering the flux, and that they must be ideal in something like the Kantian sense.
There is, however, an important difference between the present idea and Kant's; he regarded space, as a condition of intuition, and in its Newtonian aspect, absolute, and given, at least to all mankind and possibly some of the animal kingdom. He never had any grounds for examining its possible origin, and thus never attempted to do so.
What is suggested here is that the mind generates its own space for the purpose of ordering its raw material, and it becomes relevant to inquire on what principle it can possibly proceed in the matter.
Here again the example of television supplies the answer. As we have already noted, the wave, on arrival at the receiver, provides no clue as to how it is to be spatialised. The process could, in fact, be effected in a quite indefinite number of ways. In practice, however, we use the method which shows us what we want to see.
It is difficult to suppose that any other procedure can be adopted by the human mind in early infancy - or probably already in the womb, since spatial position must be of some emotional significance even there. It is significant that visual space-sense is of comparatively late development; a baby does not see, although its receptive apparatus is in perfect order, because its visual percepts are at first absolutely irrelevant to the visceral and tactile sensations which are its exclusive interests at that stage.
The television analogy is bad here, because the television engineer, designing the receiver, knows that the transmission wave has been produced by the scanning-scrambling of a visual image, and thus also knows the procedure needed for reversing the process. The infant obviously has no knowledge of this kind - nor, for that matter, has the adult. Indeed, the idealist philosopher denies (perhaps correctly) that the source of the transmission can ever be known an sich.
The beginnings of spatial sense are probably pre-natal, resulting from a correlation of internal sensations with those derived from the semi-circular canals of the ear, which are know to control our sense of movement in space. Most philosophers seem to have overlooked the importance of this factor.
I am assuming that a baby is born without knowledge; Plato's notion that spatial intuition is the fruit of memory (cf. Socrates' slave who 'knew' geometry) is useless anyhow, because it simply refers the problem back to a previous incarnation. The respect in which a baby's mind is not tabula rasa is obviously its potentiality for likes and (especially) dislikes. The active principle behind these is what I call the æsthetic.
This seems to be the sole construction-kit available for building up spatial concepts. It is a first-rate candidate for the rôle of author of the synthetic a priori, being obviously given empirically, yet utterly unavoidable!
In most respects the habits formed in infancy, together with their Euclidean sophistications, serve us perfectly adequately throughout life. On the other hand, the scientists is at liberty to make use of a non-Euclidean variety of space if it suits him better; he must devise some form of space to give order to his percepts, but the Euclidean axioms are not the strait-jacket that Kant considered them to be.
Most epistemologists, in our relativistic age, accept that the public space of Physics is a construct built from the elements common to each of our private spaces.
Now if each private space is constructed according to the æsthetic of its possessor, the overwhelming degree of agreements between them, at least as regards structural properties, leads directly to the hypothesis that all human beings share the same æsthetic.
This hypothesis, if correct, has important practical consequences in the ethical field. It is, from the point of view of the Logical Positivist, a metaphysical one, since it is neither verifiable nor refutable in practice; it is not possible for human beings to swap consciousnesses so that one is judging and acting on the other's experience. Nevertheless, if we regard similarity as a degree of identity, its validity can be fairly tested, and I maintain that we already accept it in practice over much of the field of human experience.
In the case of extremely abnormal behaviour, we accept it without question. The lunatic is not 'responsible' for his actions, and we seek the cause of the abnormality either in bodily malfunction or in something in his conscious or unconscious memory. From the point of view of his basic æsthetic, of which his will is the expression, these are all environmental factors, and the curative efforts of medical psychology are entirely devoted to their improvement.
But between the lunatic and the sane man there is no hard and fast line; "normal" behaviour itself covers a tremendous range. Within that range it is usually possible to trace variations back to external causes of some kind or other (I continue to use the word "external" to include bodily influences which can obviously affect judgments, e.g. astigmatism or liverishness. The body should always be considered as an intimate part of the environment in which the æsthetic functions).
The very possibility of reasoning or argument also assumes a high degree of agreement as regrds both the original premises and the logical methods employed. There are bound to be irreconcilable differences, especially where premises are concerned; for example, anyone who has been thoroughly conditioned in childhood into the acceptance of certain religious beliefs is likely to find it emotionally impossible to accept premises which reject them. It is impossible to argue with a Jehovah's Witness concerning the evolution of species.
Logical methods are subject to far less disagreement. For most purposes the old syllogistic methods, like Euclidean space in geometry, are quite sufficient. Where they are not, new types are being invented as required; most of them are regarded as valid by the specialists who can understand their symbolism!
In view of the fact that the hypothesis of a common human æsthetic seems to be valid in most spheres of human activity, it seems well worth while examining the consequences of its extension over the whole field, but this involves extensive consideration of ethical matters1 such as rewards and punishments, and will be undertaken later.
1. I should, perhaps, anticipate a little here for the sake of clarity. I am treating ethics as the branch of æsthetics applicable to the field of human activity. Kant's categorical imperative is regarded as a special case of a wider, Wordsworthian type, which can be expressed as "We needs must love the highest that we are capable of seeing".
For the present, I propose to enquire whether the hypothesis of a single æsthetic can be extended to cover the animal kingdom and, ultimately, the inanimate world.
As far as the higher mammals are concerned, the existence on the one hand of Pavlov and on the other of the R.S.P.C.A. bears witness to the fact that we attribute similar likes and dislikes to beings whose sensory and motor apparatus is similar to our own. It is erroneous to suppose that Pavlov ever conditioned his dogs' reflexes. What he actually did was to persuade them to do the conditioning by supplying stimuli which he was confident would have strong positive or negative emotional significance for them.
However, in the absence of speech, we can do no more than say that there is nothing in animal behaviour which appears to refute the extension of the hypothesis.
Any further extension is, of course, purely speculative; but seeing that man and the mammals appear to have emerged from more primitive forms of life and ultimately, from the inanimate world, it is logical to inquire under what conditions we can so extend it and what kind of world-picture results from its extension. At this point it becomes necessary to examine the notion of causation as applied to the physical world.
The locus classicus for this discussion is still Hume's Treatise. Now I do not think that it is possible to refute Hume's contention that sense-data in themselves can provide no evidence of any causal relation between them, and that the notion of causation belongs to the 'sensitive' part of our nature. Hume clearly realised that the complete rejection of causal notions produced an impossible position - he obviously had his own philosophy partly in mind when he said "the errors of philosophy are merely absurd",2 but oddly enough made no attempt to inquire into how we come to acquire them at all.
2. He might have recanted this view had he lived to see the results of the influence of Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx. But he would probably have classed them as fakirs rather than as philosophers!
This omission is due to his failure to notice the ambiguity of the word 'impression', which is the foundation of his whole argument. The word is used in two distinct senses. One of them is that of sense-datum, which might better be described as 'imprint'; the other is the actual process of impressing. They are loosely used as equivalents, simply because the first implies the prior existence of the second, but Hume ignores this implication.
This is somewhat curious, since he, like all empirical philosophers, is concerned to show that the mind cannot manufacture its own raw material, but is dependent on what is given from outside. Now the verb 'impress' is obstinately transitive, and causal, through and through, in its significance; thus by the use of the word 'impression' - which he afterwards uses in the passive sense of 'imprint' - he is admitting, as direct knowledge, a causal relation between external happenings and mental events.
His rejection of volition as an origin of causal notions is equally open to question. The key passage, in Section 14 of Book 3 of the Treatise, runs as follows:-
Inexplicable it certainly is in terms of post-Cartesian dualism, but then impression, which he admits as direct knowledge, is equally so!
The causal efficiency of acts of volition is also direct knowledge. At least, I have never met or heard of any human being who did not believe that his acts of will were efficient causes, and if anyone can find a better definition of 'knowledge' than 'a belief which is held and acted upon by the whole of mankind', I would be glad to hear it!
The ordinary notion of causation is commonly associated with active volition rather than passive impression, although its aspect of 'necessity' derives mainly from the latter. In every instance where one object or event is described as being a 'cause' of another, we envisage some degree of force, effort or transfer of energy between the two. Hume, in the section of the Treatise quoted above, gives a whole catalogue of causal words but omits 'effort', which is clearly the most significant of all!
It is worth remarking here that it is our absolute faith in the causal efficacy of volition which causes us to reject solipsism. We are always conscious of the ability at least to initiate a change in our bodily or mental train of events, but we find only too often that the change is not commensurate in degree with what we have anticipated from our effort. There must, therefore, be something which resists our effort. I do not think that impressions alone could lead to a valid refutation of solipsism.
All causal process, then, must be regarded as akin to volition. Any causal explanation of events in the physical world thus implies a belief in the functioning there of something like will. And this belief appears to be pragmatically justified by the success of physical science, which, at any rate until very recently, has accepted causal hypotheses without reserve as a basis for its investigations.
Such a belief is regarded with distaste by many rationalist thinkers (I am using the word in the modern, not the scholastic sense). This is mainly due to the fact that a spiritual view of the universe has tended to become the prerogative of organised religion, and is therefore emotionally associated with the extravagances of revelation. Another distasteful association is that of primitive animism; the savage has carried his analogy too far. He is correct enough in assuming that the causal process with which he is drectly acquainted is also operative in nature, but incautiously attributes individual wills to Sun, Moon, mountains, rivers, etc. which show no functional resemblance to the human body which is the primary field of operation of a single will.
The reduction of the multitude of spirits to a few nature gods and ultimately to one God is a step in the wrong direction, as it gives rise to an insoluble problem of evil. So long as we postulate a plurality of causal entities, evil can be explained (perhaps correctly) as due to conflict between them. Postulate a single, personal God, and this is no longer possible.
On the other hand, the hypothesis that a single æsthetic is operative in nature, working through a multitude of entities, which we must be careful not to identify unless we can clearly distinguish their primary fields of action, provides a reasonable explanation of the degree of unity and order which we actually find in nature. It also makes it possible to include human values, which are completely outside the scope of scientific methodology, as part of the order of nature.
Such a hypothesis does, however, require a re-examnation of the basis and scope of physical laws. The universe is portrayed as an extremely stable society of similarly intentioned individuals each of which, however, is restricted in its experience and potential activity to a very minute part of it. The physical universe thus becomes the aggregate product of the whole society, and its laws express that society's customs and habits. These laws are therefore likely to be statistical, and may become inexact in application in certain cases. They may not apply precisely in the case of living matter, which is the primary field of action of a single will, although the extent of the inaccuracy is bound to be ultra-microscopic, reflecting as it does the efficacy of a single will as against that of the universal society. There is also no reason to suppose that they will always apply to the microscopic conceptual particles (e.g. electrons) into which we choose to divide matter for our own purposes - "De minimis non curat lex"!
Since the operation of causality in the physical universe is not directly observable - Hume's findings in this respect are perfectly acceptable - a positivistic technique is perfectly in order for physics, as is the elimination of causal notions from its descriptive methods. Gravitational "forces" can well be displaced by "curvatures of space" in astronomy, though it is unlikely that they will be jettisoned in the terrestrial field, where we spend so much effort in striving to overcome them. But their retention is mainly for the sake of rendering physics intelligible to the layman; differential equations connecting selected measurements are the proper expression of physical laws. Indeed, the activities of will could ultimately perhaps be described in terms of local variability of space-curvature, without transgressing any of the normal laws of conservation, e.g. of energy, momentum, etc.
The hypothesis of a universal Aesthetic is deterministic, but this æsthetic determinism must not be confused with mechanical determinism, which reduces human volition to the status of an epiphenomenon, and takes all meaning out of human activity.
For many people, however, the deterministic nature of the hypothesis may militate against its acceptance, so it is perhaps worth while to show that the popular sentiment in favour of freedom of the will is due to a misconception which confuses free will with freedom itself. By "freedom" which is certainly felt to be desirable, we denote the extent to which society allows us to have our own way. This notion is also applicable to the universal society postulated by our hypothesis. Indeed, the reason why we have to study physics is to determine the extent to which the habits of the universal society are likely to further or impede our aims.
But when we consider the way in which our will develops, we must all admit that we are conditioned from earliest childhood to direct our desires into channels which are socially acceptable, and that, in the main, this conditioning is effective. Those individuals for whom this conditioning fails, and whose desires and consequent actions are to a considerable extent 'free' and unpredictable, we class as lunatics. The lunatic represents, in fact, the closest available approximation to pure freewill in action. And yet, as we have previousy noted, it is precisely the lunatic whom we regard as 'not responsible for his actions'. In other words, we regard his failure to respond to the usual conditioning not as due to a defect in the will itself, but to some environmental factor such as a bodily defect, a serious emotional stress or some traumatic experience in childhood.3
3. I am ware that this argument was used by Hume in the Treatise. I repeat it because it has gained additional force since his time owing to the increase in our understanding of the origin of mental states.
In short, if we think matters over carefully, we neither like, nor believe in, freewill.
But although our wills are not in any real sense free, their action can never be entirely predictable even by ourselves, since every situation with which we are confronted contains some element of novelty. The feeling of freedom which this gives us certainly provides much of the spice of life.
The position adopted here is in keeping with the philosophy of Hinduism rather than with that of Christianity. It clearly expresses and gives meaning to the fundamental teaching - "tat tvam asi" - "thou art That" which is a basic tenet of Hindu thought.
It is, however, difficult to follow Hinduism into taking a pejorative and pessimistic view of every individual expression of the common æsthetic; this attitude probably stems from the general conditions of life in India, where extreme contrasts between riches and poverty are the rule, with the vast majority at the lower end of the scale. Under such circumstances individual existence may easily come to be regarded as an evil. Neither the Hindus nor their western follower Schopenhauer seem to have taken much note of the possibility of evolution, and they might well have modified their views had they been conversant with the evidence collected in this field during the 19th and 20th centuries.
If, as is suggested here, the universal Aesthetic is the source of all meaning and beauty in the universe, and if evolution is its expression in the realm of nature, we must surely be justified in taking an optimistic view of it.
Summary and Conclusion
Television technique demonstrates that complicated polydimensional visual structures can be adequately represented by a single unidimensional rhythmic pulsation of intensive quantity, i.e. electromagnetic intensity. This flux, which contains no spatial element whatsoever, clearly possesses the simplest possible form of structure.
The unobservability of distant simultaneity, a fundamental property of space-time as understood today, indicates that the raw material of perception must be, like the television wave, in the form of a successive flux, since the mind cannot be regarded as situated at a "point" which is a logical fiction.
It follows that all space and spatiality must be in some sense ideal. Since the flux can carry within itself no basis for its own spatialisation, this process must be æsthetic in origin, as in the case of television, where the final image is what we want to see.
The possibility of constructing the public space of physics from a multitude of private spaces indicates that all human beings spatialise in the same way, and that in this respect at least they share a common æsthetic.
It is shown that the principle of a single æsthetic is accepted by implication over much of the field of human behaviour, and it is suggested that it should be extended to cover the whole of it, all variations being regarded as environmental in origin. The body is regrded in this context as an intimate part of the will's environment.
Since mankind appears to have developed from animals, and ultimately from the inanimate world, consideration is given to the hypothesis that one æsthetic is operative throughout the Universe.
The notion of causality is examined. Hume's contention that no idea of causality can be obtained from a series of sense-data is accepted, but his use of "impression" as a starting-point is shown to involve acceptance of a causal relation between something external and mental events as direct knowledge. It is maintained that the causal efficiency of acts of will is equally direct knowledge, since this is universally believed and acted upon.
All causality, then, is akin to the operation of the will, and the successful assumption of its operation in nature implies the acceptance of the presence there of something akin to will.
The hypothesis of a universal æsthetic provides a ground for an element of unity and order in nature, thereby justifying induction, and also allows the human scheme of values to be integrated with physical science into a single system of thought.
The laws of physics are regarded as the description of the habits of the very stable universal society; a few possible minor limitations of their validity are indicated. Since the physical world is the aggregate production of all the causal entities in the Universe, most of them unknown to us, the positivistic techniques of physics, together with the elimination of causal ideas in its descriptions, is perfectly justified.
The Aesthetic determinism implied by the hypothesis is distinguished alike from mechanical determinism and freewill, and is shown to be in keeping with Hindu philosophy, but the pessimistic element in Hinduism is rejected.
The above train of thought clearly leads to a realistic metaphysic of the kind propounded by Alexander in Space, Time and Deity, but inside out.
He regarded time as the mind of space; I suggest, on the other hand, that time in its aspect of rhythm is built into our raw material, of which intensive quantity is the "stuff", and that space is generated out of it by the Aesthetic - which can be identified with Alexander's nisus towards deity.
This represents a total rejection of the static, Parmenidean view of the Universe. The Aesthetic alone is regarded as eternal, but as in some sense alive and incorporating its own evolutionary urge.
Bergson, the leading Herakleitan philosopher of our age, diagnosed the nature of the raw material of perception, correctly in my opinion, as pure flux. He, however, found the spatializing intellect such a formidable obstacle in his single-minded quest, that he took a pejorative view of it and located all life and value in the flux itself. Anyone who makes the imaginative effort needed to picture the universe as pure flux will, however, find himself looking into a hell of meaninglessness; it is the Aesthetic which alone produces meaning and value, and the intellect is its servant.
I have said nothing about logic and mathematics. These are quasi-artistic pursuits - the invention and symbolic representation of complicated patterns of process, subject to the single overriding condition that these must be strictly analysable into the few simple processes used universally for ordering the flux, and thus, in theory, intelligible to everybody. They belong, therefore, entirely to the realm of the Aesthetic, perhaps with one exception; if we accept rhythm as the basic structure of our raw material, it is possible that the integers and the multiplication table are synthetic rather than analytic elements of knowledge.
In conclusion, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to the writings of A.N. Whitehead, who is, I think, the only philosopher of our age who had made a serious attempt to combine the worlds of science and of value into a single system. This essay is a deliberate attempt to follow in his footsteps with the aid of additional material, some of which, I hope, is original.
I have given reasons for supposing that our primary experience must consist of a variable flux of intensive quantity, which we dissect, arrange, and modify to the very limited extent which is possible for each of us, according to the dictates of an Aesthetic which is common to all of us.
This hypothesis has important implications in the field of ethics, which I now propose to examine.
The Aesthetic is the active principle underlying a system of preferences; a Will is an individual expression of this system in a particular set of circumstances. I shall assume that every will is, in the broadest possible sense of the word, selfish. While the Aesthetic is assumed to be omnipresent, its individual expressions can vary considerably in quality, so that selfishness can be enlightened or the opposite. But even the highest degree of self-sacrifice is performed for purposes of self-satisfaction; the martyr, choosing between the probable consequences of accepting or rejecting martyrdom, selects the course which leads to whichever of them, according to his imagination, is the preferable one.
It seems to me tautological to state that there can be no purpose other than the increase of somebody's pleasure. Anyone who performs a purposeful act, even if it temporarily increases somebody else's pleasure rather than his own, does so because he enjoys doing it. Theologians and religious enthusiasts regard what they consider to be God's pleasure as the supreme object of satisfaction - but once they have whole-heartedly accepted this view, their own greatest pleasure will be to act in the way which they suppose will be most pleasing to God.
Pleasures vary greatly in quality, and as I propose to maintain that the quality of a will depends on the quality of pleasure that its possessor is capable of enjoying, my first task is to establish a hierarchy of the various types of pleasure.
For the purpose of increasing the total amount of pleasure, we employ two quite distinct methods.
Firstly, we may seek to gain an increasing degree of control over our environment. Such action does not in any way increase the quality of our pleasure, but does increase the overall quantity, and is especially effective in reducing pain and suffering. Secondly, we may strive to increase our internal sensitivities so as to improve the quality of our pleasures.
Superficially it may appear that the first aim is more important than the second, but this is a short-sighted view. Increase of control of our environment depends on greater understanding of the laws both of human society and the physical universe, and this can only be brought about by an increase in the sensitivity, and consequently in the wisdom, of those who are working in these fields.
I conclude, therefore, that the second aim is, in the long run, more important than the first. There is a sense, indeed, in which it can be said to constitute the only specifically human aim, and I shall accordingly give it precedence.
Sensitivity and understanding differ in extremely high degree as between different members of the human race, and the following theory is an attempt to outline a possible scientific explanation for the observed differences.
If mental activity is interpreted as a type of "scanning" in reverse, as it must be if our raw material is in fact a pure succession, the rhythm of mental activity must possess a higher order of frequency than that of the multitude of separate perceptions which it carves out of the flux.
This point can be illustrated by analogy with the grain of a photographic film. If a photograph is to give a satisfactory accuracy of detail, the grain of the film must be of a higher order of fineness than the size of the images of separate objects depicted on the photograph.
There is, therefore, good reason - perhaps in any metaphysic1 - for postulating the activity, in mind, of frequencies of an order transcending those of light. It also is clear that the higher the frequency the greater will be the clarity of detailed perception and the higher will be the sensitivity, and probably the understanding, of the actiive agent.
1. In an orthodox, space-based metaphysic the mind will be integrating a multitude of distinct percepts; in mine, it will be dissecting them out of the primal flux.
I suggest, therefore, that the degree of sensitivity of a human being, and therefore also the quality of his pleasure, depends on his scanning rate. This probably depends for the most part on the quality of his bodily environment, particularly the brain and central nervous system, but there are some reasons, which I shall give later, why this may not be altogether the case. The highest degree of human pleasure can only be judged by those who have been lucky enough to enjoy it and to be able to compare it with pleasures lower down the scale.
On this criterion there seems to be little doubt that the highest degree of pleasure experienced by human beings is the mystical experience or 'beatific vision', as it is sometimes called. I infer, therefore, that this occurs when the mind breaks through to a rate of scanning far higher than that which normally prevails.
This may be a kind of mental "freewheeling". It is generally accompanied by a complete absence of ordinary bodily percepts; the mystic has the feeling of being "out of the body". It may even be the case that it can be artificially induced by the use of drugs such as mescalin and L.S.D., which probably completely block the inflow of normal perceptual materials.2
2. I would agree with Aldous Huxley that there is nothing particularly amiss in attaining a mystical experience in this fasion, unless the drugs have undesirable side-effects or become addictive. But it would be a poor look-out for humanity if the approach to ecstasy were to become general, and a large proportion of the population were reduced to the condition of the moribund woman in Brave New World who was kept in a pemanent state of 'soma-holiday'.
The mystics who are really valuable to humanity are those who manage to retain their increased sensitivity, at least in part, when they return to the ordinary world of perception, and to communicate some of their findings to their fellow men.
Most of the very great religious teachers lay claim to this kind of inspiration, as do many poets. I think that something of this kind is evident in certain paintings. Look, for example, at the faces depicted by Fra Angelico on the one hand, and Pieter Breughel on the other. Angelico was exclusively a religious painter, and the quality of saintliness which pervades the faces in his pictures is clearly the fruit of an intense observation of some of his more saintly companions. Breughel had little religious feeling, and painted his Flemish yokels as he saw them; it is an unfortunate fact that if you look sufficiently intently at most people, without idealising at all, that is what they actually look like!
Mystical perception is not in itself the perception of anything "external" over and above the normal. It is simply a hyperactivity of mind, an exceptional faculty enjoyed by a favoured few who have perhaps attained a stage of development beyond that of their fellows.
Certain of the phenomena of mystical experience can, however, resemble symptoms of lunacy, and the reason for this is fairly clear. If the scanning frequency of mind is greatly increased, it will discover significant rhythmic patterns in frequencies other than those which we ordinarily refer to the senses. Now all of us are accustomed to referring all apparently "external" percepts to sight and sound; this is what we do in dreams. The mystic will do the same with his new "sense-data" and will therefore hear "voices" and see "visions". There is no reason to condemn these as illusions, and he may even be able to refer them to plausible causal sources. He himself, however, may find it very difficult to distinguish them from the usual percepts which he can easily relate to those of other people.
George Fox, the Quaker, standing outside the Staffordshire town declaiming "Woe unto the bloody city of Lichfield" provides a good example of the absurd behaviour to which the misinterpretation of such "extra-sensory" perception may give rise.
Human beings, compared with other animals, are fśtalised, and do not attain maturity until many years after birth. For this reason it is probable that much of the development which represents the latest stages of the specifically human evolution, and which is bound chiefly to concern the brain and central nervous system, may occur after birth.
Thus it is subject to the considerable vagaries introduced by the external environment, as well as probably depending to some extent on the precise nature of the hereditary equipment. It is well known that certain chromosomal abnormalities appear to be causally connected with particular character defects, and it is likely that both an exceptionally favourable hereditary endowment and exceptionally favourable circumstances for mental development are necessary for the attainment of the highest level of experience, that is, the mystical.
If it is possible to further this development, it would seem that the method is to encourage intensive meditation about something which is felt to be of the utmost emotional significance. In the past it has often been supposed that this means something connected with religious beliefs, but this is probably no more than a reflection of the contemporary fashion, for neither Plato nor Buddha, to name two outstanding mytics, ever appear to have employed anything of this kind as an aid to meditation.
As the whole phenomenon is one of personal development, the precise nature of the object of meditation may be quite irrelevant, provided that it is felt to be of sufficient importance.
If mystical pleasure is at the summit of the hierarchy, artistic pleasure, which is capable at times of rising to almost mystical levels, must take second place.
Intellectual pleasure rarely reaches mystical heights, though it may do so occasionally in the case of mathematicians and philosophers. Most intellectuals, even if intensely absorbed in their work, look to one or other of the arts for the highest degree of pleasure. The pleasures of the intellect are, however, at least on a par with all but the highest artistic pleasures; the æsthetic quality of a proof is a cardinal point in its favour with mathematicians, and even in the world of natural science æsthetic quality is of great importance - as witness James Watson's insistence, in The Double Helix, that a structure as pretty as that proposed for D.N.A. 'just had to exist'.
The pleasure of the craftsman is in some degree comparable with artistic and intellectual pleasures, but I have never read or heard of any craftsman who regarded his work as a source of mystical inspiration.
Only one of the bodily pleasures appears occasionally to rise to something like a mystical level of intensity - this is, of course, sexual. An occasional connoisseur of food and wine may raise the pleasures of eating and drinking to the level of artistic pleasure, but this happens seldom.
Speaking generally, mankind rises above the animal level of pleasure whenever he is doing something which he feels is worth while for its own sake, and which demands the exercise of his intelligence and sensitivity. The quality of enjoyment will depend on the intensity of the intelligence and sensitivity employed.
Such a kind of activity is what I call 'intelligent play', and I shall use this term to denote it from now on. For the lucky man, his 'play' will include his 'work'; Eric Gill defined a "free" man as "A man who does what he likes when he must, and what he must when he likes".
I consider that the hierarchy of pleasures given above is reasonably authoritative, for the simple reason that I think everyone will agree with it up to his own level. Mystics, artists and intellectuals alike rank artistic and intellectual pleasures above those of eating and drinking; artists and intellectuals are at least averagely active sexually; artists, indeed, more than averagely so. But they would hardly rank sexual enjoyment above artistic or intellectual creativity unless the latter is of indifferent quality. And all three groups, at any rate at the higher level, would value their own types of pleasure far above those obtained by the acquisition of wealth or power.
We now come to the other aspect of the will's activity, the increase of control over our environment. This concerns the satisfaction of our bodily wants and the elimination, as far as possible, of pain and suffering.
These activities, and the pleasures associated with them, are not specifically human, since they are shared with the animal kingdom. Unfortunately, few human beings manage to go beyond them, for the very good reason that they have to devote nearly all their time and energy to them.
Deprivation and discomfort have been the lot of most of mankind throughout the history of the human race, and still prevail, at least periodically, in most of the underdeveloped parts of the world. The dominant aim in life, for most men, has therefore been the acquisition of sufficient material wealth to guard against these hazards.
The acquisition of wealth and the pleasure derived from such acquisition has thus come to be regarded as an aim in itself. And because power has been efficacious in fulfilling this aim, the acquisition of power has in turn become an independent object of desire, which provides pleasure by its fulfilment. This again promotes the desirability of prestige, and has led to the vast, largely meaningless proliferation of ostentatious and often luxurious living characteristic of all the world's wealthier societies.
None of this activity is really above animal level. The acquisition of wealth and power are not really values in themselves - although it is easy enough to understand how they have come to be so regarded. Certain of the activities connected with them - political, financial and military manśuvres - can be considered as medium-grade intellectual pursuits, but this is as high as they can ever hope to rise.
It may well be that the innate potentialities of most human beings are not fine enough to allow them to rise above this level, but it does seem obvious that, where actual material hardship has been eliminated, our material resources should as far as possible be devoted to promoting a higher level of human quality by the furthering of intelligent play, rather than to the perpetual repetition of what has already been achieved, that is, the acquisition of more and more material wealth.
There is another respect in which the specifically human types of activity are greatly superior to those which we share with the animals. They are entirely constructive and when conducted in any reasonable spirit, never give rise to conflict. Competitive they may well be, but in the field of art, intellect or craft, this competition is always a striving after greater excellence; the winner has contrived to outdo his rivals, but has done them no damage in the process. In the scramble for wealth and power, just the reverse is the case, and this is a cogent reason for condemning them completely as independent objects of desire. The cruelty, deprivation and consequent hatred which they cause are the main sources of human suffering.
A very rich man who does not devote a large part of his resources to furthering intelligent play - but simply uses them for the purpose of gaining still more money - should therefore be regarded as an object of contempt, in much the same way as geologists tend to regard the great overgrown dinosaurs of the Cretaceous age.
I am not intending to denigrate the accumulation of wealth as such, but only to point out that it should be regarded as a means of attaining worth-while-aims - as it was in its origins - and not as an independent aim in itself. The same considerations obviously apply to the acquisition of power.
So far I have attempted simply to establish a hierarchy of pleasures, with the implied corollary that human beings who are capable of experiencing the higher ones are, in a real sense, objectively better than those who are not, since they appear to be higher up the specifically human ladder of evolution.
Although this essay purports to deal with ethics, the words 'right' and 'wrong' have not been used. This is because I consider that goodness and truth, the latter in so far as it can be said to have any intrinsic value at all, are sub-species of beauty, and, like beauty, must be assessed in terms of the pleasure they produce.
Any action which is felt to be good must either (a) be æsthetically pleasing in itself, that is, beautiful, or (b) be seen to be aiming at æsthetically pleasing consequences, or (c) be seen to be consistent with certain rules or principles which the beholder has been emotionally conditioned into accepting. In every case the only reason for calling it 'good' is its production of æsthetic pleasure.
On the other hand, there are plenty of things which produce æsthetic pleasure but cannot be described as virtuous, e.g. landscapes, music, works of art (considered in abstraction from their ideological or literary content), mathematical proofs, chess combinations, perhaps indeed the skilful performance of any game in accordance with the rules. This latter instance is probably identical with case (a) in the preceding paragraph.
Ethical considerations are here entirely irrelevant, and any attempt to apply them - for example, the description of nature as "red in tooth and claw" is an illegitimate extension of the ethical field, provoked, incidentally, in this instance, by the ugliness of the phenomena referred to.
What I am proposing is the replacement of Kant's categorical imperative, an entirely moral concept, with the Wordsworthian imperative "We needs must love the highest when we see it", which, granted that a good deal of training may be needed before we can see it, is more general than Kant's which is simply a special case, applicable only in the field of human action.
As far as truth is concerned, I think that there is only one kind which possesses any intrinsic value; unfortunately, thanks to the influence of Greek thought, it has become the paradigm of truth in general, and the value rightly attached to it has been attributed to other forms of truth from which it differs in fundamental respects.
I refer, of course, to the discoveries of the early geometers, who did not realise that some of the more hidden properties of their figures were analytical consequences of their methods of construction, and thought that their purely deductive reasoning was actually producing fresh knowledge. This analytic form of truth gives much æsthetic pleasure, and has intrinsic value for this and for no other reason.
Factual truth, on the other hand, has no intrinsic value, but is very important from the practical point of view. Over-emphasis on its alleged intrinsic value led to the Gradgrind-M'Choakumchild doctrine of 'facts, facts, facts!' in education, of which too many traces survive in our schools even today.
I am not disputing the existence of facts, but these, unless they are retained in memory or become part of that kind of enduring repetitive pattern of events which we call a record, vanish instantly.
The desirability of a veridical memory is obvious. We conduct our lives on the assumption that we understand a good deal about the universe of our experience, and our understanding of its regularities is based entirely on memories and records. Any falsehood, therefore, may well stir up in us unnecessary and uncomfortable doubts about the adequacy of our understanding, and is therefore undesirable.
Exactly the same considerations apply to historical truth. I cannot possibly know whether Cæsar ever crossed the Rubicon, but, if I were seriously to doubt the statement this would involve casting doubts on the whole structure of what I believe concerning Roman history, which makes a consistent and harmonious whole with my memory of such Roman remains as I have actually seen. I believe it, because it is far more comfortable to do so, since disbelief would cause me a lot of probably unnecessary trouble.
On the other hand, I do not believe many, perhaps most, of the events narrated in the Bible, because the Bible does not conform to the criteria which we expect of a historical record, and because belief would involve me in an agonising reappraisal of many of the commonsense principles by which I regulate my everyday life. The strength of my unbelief varies in proportion to the discordance between the stories and the pattern of the universe as far as I think I understand it. Thus I completely disbelieve the story of the plagues of Egypt and the Feeding of the Five Thousand. I do not actively disbelieve in the healing miracles and even the resurrection of Jesus, since there is no established body of knowledge as to how mind operates on matter. Therefore, even if trustworthy confirmation of these stories were to turn up, it would cause me no disquiet.
Factual truth, in fact, is only important in so far as untruth would cause trouble. Many representatives of easy-going peoples like the Irish and many African tribes would not consider it good manners to give a factually true reply to your questions; they give you the answer they think you would like to hear, with the laudable motive of pleasing you. They would probably not do so, except perhaps by force of habit, if they realised that the factual information sought was of great practical importance to you.
In bustling and active societies, however, factual truth is generally important as a basis for action, and so we in the West are strongly conditioned from early youth into accepting the virtue of truthfulness. Thus, if I am asked whether I had coffee or tea for breakfast - I am quoting from Russell's criticism of the instrumental theory of truth in his article on John Dewey in the History of Western Philosophy - I do, of course, consult my memory. If I cannot remember, the fact, in the absence of any independent record, has actually been annihilated. If I can, I give the answer which assumes that my memory is veridical, simply because it will cause me discomfort to do otherwise. In other words, I am experimenting to see which answer is most satisfactory in terms of my personal feelings. The whole procedure is automatic and instantaneous, but this is, I think, its correct analysis.
A further aspect of truth is involved in the verbal or symbolic description of phenomena. This, in the nature of the case, can never be exact; words and symbols can never adequately represent things or events. Here again, the measure of truth is the adequacy of the statement in the context in which it is to be used. For example, Newton's First Law of Motion is accepted by engineers and terrestrial physicists in its original form as sufficient for their requirements. The modification proposed by Einstein is, however, needed by astronomers, and, because the original law can be interpreted as a special case of the new one, the latter has a greater measure of adequacy, and, therefore, can be regarded as a closer approximation to the truth.
Relations, however, can only be expressed in words and symbols, since they are tools which the Aesthetic creates in order to dissect the flux. Since we have invented them, the 'truth' of any verbal or symbolic expression of them can only depend on whether this has been constructed in accordance with the accepted set of rules. This analytical type of truth is similar in nature to the geometry of the Greeks, and has genuine æsthetic appeal, which is the reason why some people work enthusiastically in the field of logic and mathematics.
I hope I have now demonstrated that the value of truth, in so far as it has value, depends on its production of pleasure or avoidance of pain. Analytic truth appeals directly on account of its beauty, while synthetic truth is valuable only in so far as it is useful.
The truth criteria for the philosophy proposed here can be easily analysed on the basis of what has just been stated. The theory of perception seems to be an analytical consequence of modern space-time theory, which is itself an æsthetic device for the ordering of perception. Any satisfaction obtained from it is the æsthetic one of surprise, which was perhaps the Greek geometers' reaction to their discoveries.
The general hypothesis to which this leads is shown to leave physical science unaffected except for one or two minor reservations which are of no practical significance, and it also provides a reasonable ground for induction. It is therefore adequate for physical science, but is of no use in that field, any more than 'curvatures of space' are of any use to the engineer.
Its value, if any, lies in the realm of ethics and æsthetics, and the measure of its adequacy will be the consensus of opinion of superior minds, - i.e. those whose chief pleasures are ethical, artistic and intellectual. If its ethical consequences are felt to be unsatisfactory, then it must be condemned as untrue.
Now the hypothesis of a universal Aesthetic attributes all variations of human behaviour to what, in the widest sense, we consider as environmental factors. The notion of moral responsibility, therefore, ceases to have any meaning. The idea that any action is deserving of praise or blame, reward or punishment, has no rational basis.
We are entitled to judge a man to be a good man or a bad man, and to treat him in accordance with our judgment, but not to praise him or blame him for being what he is. We may, in fact, praise and reward or blame and punish him, but this must be regarded as designed to effect such a change in his environment as will encourage him to modify his behaviour in the way that we desire.
Good and bad alike are, in fact, incarnations of the same Aesthetic, and their differences are entirely a matter of luck. We often hear the expression "There but for the Grace of God go I". Substitute "the luck of the draw" for "the Grace of God", and we do not substantially alter the meaning of the expression.
So far, this view is entirely in accordance with the Calvinistic view of predestination, which divides mankind into "the elect" and "the reprobate", although the two divisions, necessitated by the notion that there are only two possible destinations after death, is altogether too crude. But the Calvinistic view that men deserve and are therefore bound to receive, reward or punishment on account of their nature, is wholly rejected.
It is necessary, however, on this hypothesis to account for the development of the notion of moral responsibility, and this I will accordingly attempt to do.
Our starting-point will be the Wordsworthian version of the Categorical Imperative - "We needs must love the highest when we see it". But we cannot see it unless we put our sensitivities and imaginations through an extensive and rigorous course of training. Only a few people develop them sufficiently to attain the summits of human experience, and many fail to develop them sufficiently even to gain understanding of the ethical level necessary for the maintenance of a tolerable standard of society.
A talent for human relationship should be regarded in the same light as a talent for one of the arts or intellectual pursuits; but because some measure of it is essential for social life, we are apt to take an interest in it too much for granted, and this is absurd.
Even the most sensitive and cultured of men rarely develop a high standard of talent and appreciation in many of the possible arts and intellectual pursuits. There are many brilliant scientists and mathematians who are also sensitive musicians, but care little for art or literature. The converse is also quite common; in my own university days the 'cultured' set - mostly Arts men - were expected to be conversant with literature and the visual arts, but music was an optional 'extra', and any use of mathematical symbolism in argument scared them stiff!
A strong interest in any artistic or intellectual pursuit almost always arises either from being brought up in a home where it is already part of the atmosphere, or from contact with an infectiously enthusiastic teacher or friend.
Precisely the same is true of the development of human sympathy. There are saintly men who are specialists in this field, and even sects, like the Society of Friends, who devote most of their energies to its encouragement. I cannot call to mind any Quaker who has been especially prominent in the artistic or intellectual world, but I have never met one whom I have not felt to be above average in his talent for human sympathy, and their record in the field of social reform is altogether outstanding.
Human sympathy, as Hume rightly concluded, is the foundation of ethical behaviour. But sympathy has to be developed, or at least to be allowed to develop; it does not often appear to be a source of motivation in young children. Indeed, in my teaching experience I have met many older children whose actions were motivated far more easily by spite of some kind. As regards motivation, the Augustinian view of children seems generally nearer the mark than the Wordsworthian one. But there is no reason to regard this state of things as due to sin, original or otherwise; most children are naturally like that!
Now we are obliged to live with children, so that in order to secure a tolerable existence we are obliged to condition them, by means of various systems of praise and blame, reward and punishment, to behave as if they had developed quite a measure of human sympathy. If our conditioning has been successful in its immediate aim, we come to assume that their sympathy has developed satisfactorily.
If our household is ordered and happy, and the children are treated affectionately, this development will take place, and lip-service to sympathy will be supplemented by inward acceptance. The purpose of the rules of behaviour which have had to be imposed and enforced will be understood, and they need be retained no longer. The rule of the Spirit, in fact, will have replaced that of the Law.
But if the home is disturbed or unstable, or the child is unusually insensitive or backward, this development will fail to take place. Thereafter, if the child behaves cruelly or badly in some other way, we blame it for its actions, because we wrongly assume that its sympathies have developed normally, and that its wrongful actions must be due to backsliding of some kind.
In short, the norm of behaviour that we establish is always based on the assumption that the development of sympathy has proceeded satisfactorily, so that any behaviour which fails to attain the assumed norm we label 'wicked' or 'sinful'.
These adjectives, when applied to any act, are generally taken to imply that the agent, at the time when he committed it, must have been inwardly convinced that it was wrong, and that his will must, at least temporarily, have become evil and taken a downward turn.
On our hypothesis of the one Aesthetic, this interpretation is inadmissible. We must therefore seek other interpretations which are in keeping with the hypothesis. There are in fact two of these, which between them cover the whole field, and which apply to two types of case. The agent's reaction after the event indicates which of them is applicable.
In the first case, he may show little or no remorse - except, perhaps, for being caught. In this case it is quite plain that he was not inwardly convinced that the act was wrong. He is simply a case of backward ethical development, most probably due to an unfavourable environment during childhood, for which he cannot be blamed. All the same, such moral defectives are nasty pieces of work, and the fact that we cannot blame them should not encourage sentimentality in our dealing with them.
There is a class of cases where a man may show little remorse in spite of being well aware that his act did not conform to his usual behaviour standards, as in the case of a very poor man stealing in order to feed himself or his family. In this case we do not normally regard the action as wrong, if it was clearly the least of the available evils. It in no way indicates any degeneration of the will.
In the second type of case, the agent may show sincere remorse - which clearly indicates that his sympathetic education is not backward. In this case, his action must be regarded as due either to temporary inattention or to faulty calculation of the consequences.
Such lapses do not necessarily imply any perversity of will. There is no form of physical or mental exercise for which a man can remain perpetually in the strictest of training, but a periodical relaxation in no way negates his actual talent for that exercise.
For example, excellent drivers are sometimes convicted for careless driving, which they definitely desire to avoid and which they sincerely regret. But an odd incident of this kind casts no real slur either on their morality or their motoring skill; we all realise that some unavoidable measure of fatigue, worry or other preoccupation may have contributed to the occurrence.
Unless all human beings are to turn themselves into spiritual valetudinarians - which may seriously cramp their style in the pursuit of other worthwhile aims3 - we must expect lapses of this kind as a matter of course, and refrain from taking too tragic a view of them. Indeed, if the consequences of such a lapse have been serious, the shock is likely to make the perpetrator more careful in future. Repentance should properly be identified with a firm resolve not to repeat the error and to make good the damage as far as is possible; it should not be confused with the attitude of the worshipper, however sincere, who repeats the undignified and blasphemous grovel of the Anglican General Confession. No health indeed! Are we not all incarnations of the Aesthetic?
3. This is the probable explanation of why the Quakers, who have achieved such excellence in the field of human relations, have contributed little to art and science - they have had to be too careful.
There is no place for the notion of moral responsibility within the framework of an æsthetic determinism; although it may be convenient to retain it for purely practical purposes. It should be realised that although men are not to be blamed for any action, their actions, together with their attitude to them, provide a reliable diagnosis of what kind of persons they are. And in the field of ethical education standards are just as variable as in that of the intellect - from educationally subnormal to genius.
The development of the Aesthetic within the individual is always one-way. It is only this fact which enables us confidently to identify the great works of art, literature and music, and the greatest achievements in the intellectual field. The cognoscenti in each field, acquainted with the whole range of achievement, can recognise them with confidence, and they retain their lofty position indefinitely. No musician who has really learned to appreciate Bach, Beethoven and Mozart ever subsequently comes to regard 'Pop' or even Gilbert and Sullivan, as the summit of musical endeavour; a progression from the one to the other is invariably in the opposite direction. This one-way trend in æsthetic development is the justification for a certain measure of authoritarianism in the matter of æsthetics; it is the sole excuse for teaching literary, artistic and musical appreciation!
Similar considerations apply to ethics. The great ethical teachers of the past retain their value for all those who give these matters their serious consideration. Their teachings may have become mixed up with a lot of superstitious nonsense, and it may be that a belief in the nonsense has served to keep them alive, but they have their own intrinsic validity, even for those who reject their superstitious accompaniments.
Miracles alone would not have sufficed to perpetuate the veneration of such teachers; if Jesus' teaching had not been of extremely high quality, no intelligent man could ever have been persuaded of his divinity. But it is extremely short-sighted to take Jesus' precepts as the foundation for ethical teaching, at any rate for children, since his standards are much too advanced for most adults. This widespread procedure has about as much sense as beginning an elementary course of musical appreciation with a study of late Beethoven quartets! It inspires little but boredom and apathy.
Precept is in any case an unsatisfactory way of developing human sympathy which, like a proper feeling for language, can only be acquired by living in a community in which it is in constant use.
The creation and preservation of such communities, and the development of human intellects and sensitivities by means of an improvement in both the quantity and quality of intelligent play, are the most urgent tasks today.
Conclusion
A valid ethical system arises out of an æsthetic determinism provided that the Aesthetic itself is regarded as consisting of, or embodying, an evolutionary influence.
The extent of the evolutionary progress made by an individual expression of the Aesthetic, i.e. a will, can be assessed by the degree of sensitivity and intelligence indicated by the quality of the highest pleasure which that will is capable of appreciating.
The will of any human being whose activities clearly indicate that it has proceeded further along the specific road of human evolution is to be regarded as objectively better than one which has made less progress. But no human being should be blamed for backwardness, except in the hope that this may encourage his attempts to remedy it.
Just as no moral blame is normally attached to a writer or composer who turns out second-rate stuff, so no moral blame should be attached to a human behing who turns out second-rate behaviour.
On the other hand, it is perfectly proper to assess an artist or writer as second-rate, and to employ him in a capacity suited to his limited talents; we are quite entitled to take similar steps in the case of a human being whose ethical standards are poor.
Retributive justice, therefore, disappears, and is replaced by the notion advanced by Plato in the Republic, which can be summed up as "The right man in the right place". The location of the "right Place" is clearly one of the vital tasks of sociology.
I hope that many people will consider this view of ethics as far more constructive than the conventional one, which morally condemns, as some kind of "fall", any failure to attain a certain arbitrarily prescribed norm of behaviour, whether it be an assumed divine perfection or merely the law of the land.
It is here suggested that moral condemnation, accompanied as it is by morbid feelings of guilt and grovelling repentance, should be replaced by a clinical diagnosis, and, it is to be hoped, acknowledgment of moral inferiority. Repentance then become a constructive effort towards self-improvement, rather than a sterile plea for forgiveness. The latter in any case loses all meaning if the concept of moral responsibility is abandoned.
I am aware that by conventional standards these ideas will reek of gross arrogance and intellectual snobbery. But then there is a great deal of unreal humbug about conventional standards. Surely every teacher is entitled to believe that he is in some respects wiser than his pupils? If he is not, he should not occupy his position. He is also perfectly entitled to admit and to enjoy his superiority, provided that he believes it is real.
But on the conventional system of ethics he is also entitled to take some pride in it, whereas on the system of ethics advocated here, he might as well be proud of winning a prize in the football pools!
The views expessed here have obvious practical applications in the fields of education, sociology and criminology, and it is hoped to deal with these in subsequent work.
'Ethics' is the name given to the problems concerned with the qualitative assessment of purposeful actions.
'Purpose' has only one possible meaning - an effort to increase somebody's enjoyment, or to relieve their suffering. There can be no purpose in inanimate nature, regarded in the spirit of neo-Newtonian mechanical determinism; Newton himself had to regard the 'purpose' of the universe as the fulfilment of a grand design, giving pleasure to God.
I propose to maintain that when viewed correctly, the purpose of every deliberate action is an increase of the agent's own enjoyment or a decrease of his disenjoyment. Taking for an example a case which at first sight appears to constitute a definite refutation, let us consider that of a Christian martyr going into the arena, or a pious Jew to the Auto-da-fe, rather than commit the trifling symbolic act which would serve to appease the wrath of their persecutors.
I maintain that the principle stated above is applicable even in this case.
The contrary view is only held because too narrow a view is taken of the current experience of the martyr at the time when he makes his choice. This experience consists of immediate sense-perceptions, conjectures referred to the past (memory) and conjectures referred to the future (expectation). Memory and perception are playing their part in building up the sign-systems which constitute his expectations.
Now his memory will include his religious upbringing, which will give him a great horror of committing the sacrilegious act demanded of him. He may also have anticipatory visions of some kind of heaven awaiting him. He balances these considerations against the fear of death and the physical pain with which he is threatended, and makes his decision accordingly. He chooses what is currently, for him, the least of evils.
Unless this were so, he could not possibly command any admiration from anybody; only a fool would prefer burning to baptism. Some will probably consider that he is a fool - that his sign-systems are inferior and his expectations unjustified. But even these may admire him on the grounds that he has assessed spiritual pleasures and pains as more important than bodily ones. Their admiration is, then, for the æsthetic judgment which underlies his choice.
The assessment of the ethical quality of any action is, therefore, an assessment of the quality of the æsthetic judgment which underlies it. Unless there is some objective difference in the quality of such judgments, there can be no such thing as ethics.
Now the possibility of language, initially based on ostensive definition, depends on the development, by different human beings, of pre-verbal concepts so similar that their verbal tokens can be successfully treated as identical. Pre-verbal concept formation can be readily accounted for by a conjecture-refutation procedure, æsthetically motivated and controlled.
It seems, therefore, that the same æsthetic process must be operative in all human beings, at least in the earliest stages of their development. Yet the qualitative differences between æsthetic judgments, presupposed by ethics, imply that the quality of the operative æsthetic must vary; if this is initially the same for all, it follows that it must be capable of development, perhaps even of evolution. This can only take the form of an increase in sensitivity.
I assume that such a development is normal and natural in all human beings. It is perhaps capable of a physical-type explanation in terms of an increase in the order of frequency of the scanning rhythm of mind. For instance, in the field of vision, this would result in the noticing of details of movement like those revealed by the slow-motion camera, which are usually "invisible". Completely new details would be revealed within a familiar setting, but they would remain invisible to those whose æsthetic had not undergone this development.
The æsthetic judgment of the evolved type will be operating on a much wider qualitative range of material than that of the unevolved, and should therefore be regarded as objectively better.
This is the way in which we estimate excellence in sense-perception, as in wine-tasting or colour-matching. The best performer is he who is capable of the most sensitive discrimination, noticing fine points of detail which escape the vigilance of his competitors.
In assessing the quality of æsthetic judgment underlying an action, it is the intention rather than the result which must be taken into account, since the outcome of the action may be very different from the expectations entertained at the time when it was decided upon.
There is a good analogy here from the game of Bridge. A good player is one who plays consistently with the odds, and an odd bad result produced by a freak distribution of the cards does not affect the general estimate of his ability. Conversely, a bad player, playing against the odds, may sometimes score a spectacular success, but does not thereby improve his standing in the least.
Some ethical development is expected of everybody. High ethical ability is not possible without a highly developed æsthetic, but the highest ability is only attained by those who have specialised in the field of human sympathy, often neglecting and even depreciating any attempt to develop it in other directions.
Such saintly persons have made great contributions to humanity, although their neglect to develop the intellectual faculties needed to foresee the probable outcome of their decisions has sometimes produced results differing greatly from the expectations on which they were based. It it difficult to assess the value of their work in comparison with that of the great masters of learning and the arts.
The first requisite for a high standard of ethics is, then, a highly developed æsthetic.>
Theoretically, there seems to be no reason for postulating any limits to the possibility of æsthetic development; beauty appears to be an attribute that is potentially infinite. This is completely in agreement with those theologians who speak of the infinite potential value of the human soul.
But its actual development is entirely conditioned by its environment, which provides the raw material with which it has to deal. This can only be considered, in the long run, to be a matter of pure luck. For even if we hold, with Hindu-type philosophers, that our present incarnations are the consequence of our behaviour in former lives, the sequence has to begin somewhere. We can, if we like, refer it back to God: we are all familiar with the saying - "There, but for the Grace of God, go I". But can anyone seriously maintain that the meaning of this saying is substantially altered if for "the grace of God" we substitute "the luck of the draw"?
The æsthetic, being an urge to seek ever higher orders of enjoyment - "life more abundantly" - contains within itself the motivation to self-improvement; the environment imposes the limiting factor. This, in the human race, varies enormously; the resulting development varies correspondingly, so much so that from this point of view humanity is best regarded not as a single species, but as an evolutionary series.
There are two reasons for this enormous range of variation. In the first place, our chromosomal equipment is extremely complex, giving rise to an unusual number of genetic possibilities. Secondly we are fśtalised - born very prematurely from the normal biological standpoint.
Now every individual animal, during its development, to some extent recapitulates the evolutionary history of the species. Since we are born extremely immature, it follows that the physical development corresponding to the latest stages of mutation which produced the human species probably occurs, to a considerable extent, after birth.
This largely concerns the brain and the central nervous system; it follows that their development, which is certainly the main feature differentiating the human body from that of the animals, is subject to the enormous variety of external environment, which can be, and often is, extremely unfavourable. As they are the parts of the body which appear to be responsible for providing the immediate raw material of consciousness, any factor which hinders their development is going to produce corresponding consequences in the development of the æsthetic.
Now the more highly developed æsthetic is the one which attains the higher order of enjoyment. On this basis I think it is quite possible, and perhaps even useful, to divide mankind into evolutionary sub-species according to the highest order of enjoyment of which each individual is capable.
I suggest the following series of enjoyment-intensities as fairly representing the order in which æsthetic evolution actually occurs. My justification for this contention is that everyone who has attained a given stage of development will agree with my order up to and including that stage, but will have little or no inkling of the stages which lie beyond. We needs must love the highest when we see it, as Wordsworth correctly stated, but some can see very much higher than others!
These stages are achieved by young children and probably by most animals.
This stage is specifically human, but may be rudimentarily attained by a few intelligent animals.
A fairly large proportion of mankind attains this stage, but this cannot be said to be true of all literates; a good many of them learn the symbolism simply because it is instrumental in helping them to obtain the simpler forms of enjoyment; they are not in the least interested in the symbolic patterns.
Stage 4 is the crucial one for ethics, and is that which is attained by the 'ordinary' adult. Aided by his symbolism, he is able to grasp the pattern of events outside his immediate purview, well enough to realise the desirability of foregoing the immediate realisation of lower enjoyments in the interests of the fulfilment of a wider, more important pattern.
Legal norms of behaviour are mostly adapted to this stage.
Since the superior development of the æsthetic is the vital factor which distinguishes human beings from animals - I have already shown that cognition is an æsthetic activity - it appears to be correct to claim that anybody who attains the higher stages of æsthetic development thereby shows himself to be objectively better than the majority of his fellow humans.
It is not correct to claim that he deserves any credit for his superiority, or that the inferior human is to be blamed for his inferiority; one might just as well praise someone for winning the football pools!
Nevertheless, it should be obvious that when it comes to planning social and educational policy it is only commonsense to acknowledge the objectivity of these differences and to allot more weight to the opinions expressed by the men with the superior minds. It is just not true that one man's opinion is as good as another's.
The same considerations apply to ethical judgments, which are for the most part applications of æsthetic judgments in the field of human sympathy.
Aesthetic development is bound to become rather specialised as soon as the meta-symbolic level is reached. We cannot expect a gifted composer to be automatically also a brilliant mathematician, though we can be fairly confident that he could have done well in that field had his environment guided him in that direction.
Now everybody is expected to achieve some measure of ethical development, so that we can reasonably rely on anybody who can demonstrate advanced æsthetic development in any field to give an ethical judgment of satisfactory standard. Exceptions will only arise in cases where the judgment is distorted by sickness or neurosis, as for example in the case of Nietzsche. (The distortion is not of the æsthetic itself, but is affecting the raw material with which it has to deal.)
Such judgments will not as a rule attain the highest known standards, such as are produced by the specialists in this field. These are generally quite beyond the comprehension of the ordinary man, and therefore are not always satisfactory when used to provide norms for everyday conduct. This is the practical weakness involved in basing a morality on Christian, Hindu or Buddhist ethical doctrines.
The Concept of Sin
An æsthetic determinism is only tolerable if the active principle is believed to be wholly meliorative. The concept of sin, however, postulates a pejorative element in human nature. If, as I believe, this notion is a mistake, it is necessary to explain how and why it has arisen.
The answer is not difficult. It depends once again on the lengthy period of human immaturity. Every society contains a high proportion of children, who start life as very immature animals, and whose æsthetic and therefore ethical development takes some time to attain fully human standards even under the most favourable of circumstances.
Now a society, to be tolerable, requires that its members behave in a manner which corresponds to quite a high standard of ethical development (Stage 4 of my scheme formulated above). Children, and those who, though physically adult, have not developed æsthetically and ethically beyond the stages normal to childhood, have to be conditioned into behaving in a manner corresponding to a higher stage of ethical development thant that which they have actually attained. The conditioning is done by means of praise and blame, rewards and punishments; in other words, by the planned addition of certain motivating factors to their environment.
For this purpose norms of behaviour are set up, corresponding roughly to the state of ethical development attained by most human beings by late adolescence (Stage 4); there is some difference of opinion as to the age-level to which this does correspond, as is shown by the arguments as to the age at which criminal responsibility should be considered to begin.
In practice we quite wrongly assume that normal development has always taken place; consequently any behaviour which fails to attain the required norm is interpreted as wicked or sinful, representing a backsliding due to a pejorative element inbuilt into human nature.
Ten years as housemaster in a boys' comprehensive school have convinced me that this is absolute nonsense. Most seriously antisocial behaviour comes from boys with a home background which has hopelessly handicapped their ethical and æsthetic development. They are still at the animal level, and we would do well to remember this fact when it comes to deciding how to deal with them, notwithstanding that they are in no way to blame for the backwardness which their environment has happened to force upon them.
The theological doctrine of Original Sin is also normative in origin, but the postulated norm is very much higher than the social one, being no less than "Perfection" itself! Man is assumed to be born with his ethical powers fully developed, so that any shortcomings must be attributed to a downward tendency, somehow inherited from Adam. The soul, being the creation of a 'perfect' God, must itself be perfect, so that a "fall" has to be invoked to account for its actual state.
Now the notion of 'perfection', in normal usage, simply expresses the attainment or surpassing of the highest existing but still finite norm. Applied to the end-product of a process such as improvement, to which no end can possibly be imagined, it is obviously fictitious, since it has not been, and never could be, ostensively defined. (Any Christian who would cite Jesus as a counter-example should look up Mark 8:27; Jesus' remark to the Syro-Phśnician woman could well have been referred to the Race Relations Board!)
The notion of 'perfection' in this sense, entered philosophy and theology by way of geometry, the models being the 'perfect' circle and the 'perfect' straight line. It is nowadays realised that these defy exact definition; even an attempt to define them in terms of algebraic formulæ implies the possibility of 'perfect' measurement.
These fictions are, of course, extremely useful for our finite practical purposes, but their ethical and theological analogues are stupid. If we feel we need a theology, it is clearly more sensible to postulate a God who is infinitely good rather than one who is perfect, since otherwise we deprive him of the urge to self-improvement which we regard as the most 'divine' thing in ourselves.
An evolutionary theory of ethics disposes of the need to invoke a pejorative element in the human æsthetic in order to explain the failure to attain any norm, whether it be the conventional one imposed by law and custom or the fictitious pseudo-norm of 'perfection' prescribed by theology.
Developmental failure does not, however, account for all lapses of behaviour; in particular, it cannot account for the cases when the agent displays genuine remorse, which automatically disposes of any suggestion of ethical backwardness. In such cases, we can generally account for the lapse in terms of unusual environmental circumstances.
For just as a favourable environment is needed to promote the proper development of the æsthetic, so favourable conditions are necessary to facilitate its operation at high levels. Nor is the æsthetic commonly applied at its highest level in every field of human activity.
All kinds of bodily and mental troubles, often very temporary, can distort the current raw material of consciousness at the time of making a decision, which may be bitterly regretted later when the material has returned to normal.
For example, a skilled and conscientious driver can cause a serious accident when a possibly unsuspected degree of fatigue robs his consciousness of some of the data normally available for making a decision. His remorse will be perfectly genuine, and will manifest itself in his avoidance of comparable circumstances.
Similarly, a learned or even a saintly man, who has not applied his highly developed æsthetic to the specific problems involved in motoring, is quite likely to cause an accident. If he is genuinely remorseful, he will either give up driving or else apply his talents to acquiring some road-sense!
Exaggerated feelings of guilt and remorse, which should perhaps be regarded as neurosis rather than genuine repentance, are characteristic of many who have been conditioned into a formal acceptance of the pseudo-norm of divine 'perfection'. That unseemly grovel, the General Confession of the Anglican church, is an excellent expression of this state of mind. Nobody who had not been so conditioned could possibly recite it sincerely.
The horror expressed by Augustine, in his Confessions, concerning the infantile theft of some pears from a neighbour's tree, is an obvious instance of the attitude engendered by such conditioning. He is quite right in diagnosing the action as one displaying a low level of ethical-æsthetic development. The pleasurable motive was clearly the exercise of bodily control and power (Stage 2 of my scheme), probably in defiance of the tabu - at that age it can only be a tabu - on stealing.
He takes a grim view of it because he rightly equates his infantile frame of mind with that of the many adults who have never outgrown that stage, and whose power-lust leads them to commit hideous crimes.
Where he is wrong is in supposing that his own ethical-æsthetic development could possibly have attained a higher level at such a tender age. From his adult standpoint, he is bound to regard it as inferior; it is inferior. Original inferiority is natural and inevitable, but provides no evidence in favour of original sin, except for those who hold the fantastic belief in a pre-Adamite state of "perfection".
Rewards and Penalties
An æsthetic determinism is incompatible with the idea of sin, though not with that of a qualitative difference in the character of actions and of the intentions behind them.
Rewards and penalties must be regarded as additional motivating factors purposefully introduced into the environment in order to promote the commission of the better actions and the avoidance of the worse ones. The question as to whether or not they are deserved is meaningless, and cannot be taken into consideration.
Neither rewards nor penalties can be considered efficacious in directly promoting ethical-æsthetic development. Rewards are inevitably made in terms of a type of enjoyment which the recipient can already appreciate, while penalties inevitably worsen his environment and can only hamper his development.
Their function is entirely social, the aim being to create a community in which the natural development of the æsthetic has the best chance to achieve success. Ethical enlightenment, in particular, is absorbed from the life of the community, in much the same way as the use of one's mother-tongue.
Unfortunately, the socially constructive aspect of penalties has been unduly depreciated on account of the general preoccupation with their punitive function.
This casts a serious reflection on the state of ethical development of the great mass of humanity, who still find a major source of enjoyment in the infliction of suffering on their fellow-creatures, which provides them with the enjoyable sensation of power.
It is obvious that the satisfaction obtained from retributive punishment can only be of this nature - the injured person, or society as a whole, is seeking pleasure to compensate for the injury which they have suffered, or, quite commonly, simply using their own or somebody else's injury, as an excuse for obtaining pleasure of this kind, which is, by convention, generally considered disreputable. Such pleasure is, in fact, sadistic in character, though not always directly associated with the sexual function.
Probably all human beings, if they look deeply into their own characters, must acknowledge that punitive actions do carry with them a certain pleasurable feeling. However, if their æsthetic is sufficiently developed for them to be able to take a wider view, they can see that potential harmony in the wider field presents them with enjoyment of a higher order. And in this wider field, punitive actions generally strike a discordant note.
Enlightened people have therefore come to be ashamed of their more primitive urges, erroneously supposing them to be absolutely rather than relatively wrong. They have therefore reacted strongly against all punishment, the reaction being greatest in the cases of corporal and capital punishment, where the sadistic satisfaction of the masses has been strongest and where its essential nature has been most obvious.
This natural but essentially individualistic attitude needs reconsidering in view of the paramount importance of constructing a society whose members have a good chance of attaining a high level of ethical development. This may be impossible if the community includes too many seriously undeveloped characters whose behaviour poisons the atmosphere of any group which contains them.
Admittedly, punishment cannot improve their characters; but it may condition them into improved behaviour, especially if applied in early life. And painless, non-punitive elimination is surely worth considering in cases where development and conditioning alike have failed. At the moment we retain such persons indefinitely in the admittedly abominable places called prisons, probably in the long run creating evils far worse than those we seek to avoid.
It is interesting to note that Socrates, to whom preventive elimination was actually applied, approved of it in principle. Neither he nor we could agree with the verdict of the jury that he was a serious and persistent menace to the youth of Athens; yet he himself acknowledged that if this were in fact the case the City, in duty to its citizens, was bound to eliminate him.
Rewards have not come into disrepute in the same way as punishments. The primitive enjoyment of power is more readily attained by inflicting injury on others than by giving them pleasure, and, in any case, the giving of rewards does not constitute an obviously discordant factor in the wider field of experience.
Nevertheless, excessive emphasis on rewards as motivation to socially acceptable behaviour has its disadvantages, since such rewards are inevitably on a level of enjoyment that their recipient has already achieved. More can be the enemy of Better here. Satisfaction unceasingly attained at a lower level can blunt the appetite for self-improvement; the expression 'divine discontent' is by no means an empty one.
This trouble is seriously affecting the 'developed' regions of the World to-day. Until recently, most people have had to spend most of their time and energy warding off disenjoyments at the animal level - hunger, cold, sickness, etc., and trying to avoid the 'under-dog' status which fairly guaranteed a plethora of such discomforts. Rewards have therefore consisted almost entirely of material goods or the power, often financial, of securing an adequate supply of them.
Over-emphasis on rewards has led to money-grabbing and power-seeking becoming the ultimate aim of perhaps the majority of people in Western Europe and North America. Some of them may be incapable of attaining any higher level of enjoyment, but many of them have probably been blinded to the very existence of the higher levels by the insistence on material rewards which has been drummed into them throughout their childhood and adolescence.
The materialist conception of History is also a dogmatic denial that any æsthetic desires above the animal level have influenced the development of human societies. Thanks to the chronic material hardships which have been the common lot of mankind, it shows a rough agreement with generally accepted facts; but it is likely to be useless for predicting the development of societies where these hardships have been largely overcome.
My conclusion is that penalties, applied by adults whose ethical development is well advanced, and who will therefore not obtain any important measure of enjoyment from their infliction, may well be preferable to rewards for the purpose of conditioning children and adolescents into the standards of behaviour necessary to maintain an environment where their natural æsthetic and ethical development can proceed to the best possible advantage. Admittedly, every penalty is immediately disadvantageous to the child who suffers it, yet the immediate disadvantage will generally be outweighed by the ultimate benefit derived from the improvement in the whole group or community, which has resulted from checking the child's anti-social behaviour.
Praise and disparagement can be regarded as mild forms of reward and penalty respectively. In early life they usually accompany the more forceful varieties, and are therefore closely associated with them.
"Disparagement", not "blame", is the true converse of "praise". This can be used not only of actions obviously involving human relationships, but of the quality of human productions in general. For example, it is customary to praise an artist for producing a fine picture, but ridiculous to blame him for producing a poor one. He may be blamed if by so doing he has cheated the patron who commissioned the picture, but the blame then attaches not to the quality of the work, but to his treatment of his patron.
It is noteworthy that one and the same word is used for favourable criticism both in ethics and æsthetics, whereas different words are used when the criticism is unfavourable.
This results from the presence of conventional norms in the realm of ethics, which have no counterpart in æsthetics. An artist's work can be disparaged if it falls below his best standards, but he is not regarded as blameworthy, because there is no generally accepted normative standard for art.
The effectiveness of criticism, regarded as an environmental motivating factor, depends on the estimate of the critic held by the person criticised.
In its earliest years, a child will always take notice of parental criticism; its parents are unquestionably superior beings, since they obviously command a far wider range of enjoyments than anything it can obtain for itself. If their wisdom - an excellent abbreviation for "æsthetic-ethical development" - has developed to full adult status, respect for their opinions is likely to extend into late adolescence.
If, however, the parents' own development is retarded, their criticism will be completely disregarded as soon as the child sees no reason to consider them wiser than himself. Puberty is commonly the crucial age, when the attainment of sexual enjoyments puts the adolescent on a par with its parents.
Thenceforward, if criticism is to be effective, it is necessary to discover a critic whom the adolescent recognises as possessing superior wisdom. This may be impossible in cases where the adolescent is congenitally backward or has been seriously retarded by early environment, and is therefore incapable of attaining any degree of enjoyment above the purely animal level. In such cases cruder methods are needed for the purpose of behaviour-conditioning.
But where there is no irremediable backwardness, criticism by a wiser person is the most valuable form of conditioning, because it is constructive. The critic will obviously use criteria appropriate to his own higher level of wisdom, trying to convince the person criticised that there are levels higher than those he has so far been able to see. He does so in the faith that his pupil will adopt his own higher standards once he has managed to see them - Wordsworth once more!
If the standards of criticism are too high, it will again be ineffective; Jesus' ethical teaching is beyond the vision of most of mankind, and for that reason cannot be used as a basis for legal norms of behaviour. It has only survived because ordinary people have found sufficient evidence of his greatly superior wisdom in his reputed miraculous powers - the relief of suffering on the purely animal level, which they can understand.
Adverse criticism, from somebody whose views are respected, is more apt than praise to stimulate a desire for greater wisdom. The principle is always the same:- "damn" braces, "bliss" relaxes.1 Discontent is the chief spur to progress.
1. Blake, Proverbs of Hell.
Favourable stimuli, i.e. rewards, are only preferable to penalties in cases where an advance in wisdom seems to be out of the question, and the problem is purely one of conditioning behaviour. We are simply teaching animals to perform tricks, and they are not expected to learn, or even to be able to learn, the principles underlying the tricks which they perform. The same considerations apply to the large proportion of the human race who appear to be incapable of obtaining any real understanding of the ethical standards needed to maintain a tolerable social life. The carrot, when available, is inherently preferable to the stick where, and only where, the donkey is concerned.
Summary and Conclusion
"Ethics" denotes the æsthetic evaluation of the intention behind those human actions which are liable to have important consequences for other sentient beings.
These latter always include the whole human race: sometimes the higher mammals, as witness the existence of the R.S.P.C.A.: sometimes all living creatures, as in Hindu philsophy: sometimes "God", as in the Judæo-Christian-Islamic group of religions.
Ethical sense develops, in the main, pari passu with æsthetic sensitivity, beginning at a quite primitive animal level in early childhood. The human æsthetic embodies a natural tendency to self-improvement, but the extent of its development depends entirely on the environment - including the body which is, as far as genetic factors are concerned, an immutable part of it.
Since the nature of the environment is entirely a matter of luck, there is no rational justification for praise and blame; the nature of any considered action simply indicates the degree of the agent's æsthetic-ethical development - commonly known as wisdom - allowing for possible anomalies due to exceptional temporary factors in the environmental circumstances.
The measure of a person's wisdom can be reasonably assessed by the nature of the type of enjoyment that he values most highly, since æsthetic evolution appears to be a one-way procedure.
The notions of sin and blame, which imply a downward trend in human nature, have arisen from the necessity of insisting, for social purposes, on norms of behaviour far higher than the less mature members of society - naturally including all small children - can possibly begin to understand. The norms imposed are usually those characteristic of the state of wisdom attained by most adults. In addition, some religions assert the existence of the additional norm of divine perfection, but this is of very doubtful validity, and its acceptance generaly leads to a morbid sense of guilt; for, whatever norm is chosen, any behaviour which fails to attain it becomes considered 'sinful'.
Praise and blame, rewards and punishments are useful for the purpose of conditioning the immature into socially acceptable behaviour - in exactly the same fashion as they are used for training animals.
Since the urge to acquire great wisdom manifests itself as dissatisfaction with existing standards, blame - in the form of adverse criticism from somebody who is recognised as being wise - is the best method available provided that the agent is not too retarded to be teachable; conversely, praise and rewards are preferable if training is believed to be the most that is possible.
All these methods are only rational when applied with a view to the creation of a social environment where the æsthetic, in each separate embodiment, can attain whatever ceiling of wisdom is imposed by the immutable genetic factor:
The irrational and harmful element, especially in punishment, stems from the primitive low-class enjoyment of asserting ones power by the infliction of suffering on other sentient beings. Even this enjoyment is not evil in itself, but is undesirable inasmuch as it interferes with enjoyment of a higher order.
My justification for the view that the acquisition of wisdom is the true aim of mankind rests on a purely hedonistic basis, as it must do if all purpose is identified with an increase of enjoyment. It simply appeals to the fact that every fresh acquisition of wisdom provides its possessor with a wider and more intense range of enjoyment than anything he has previously experienced. If this is acknowledged to be a fact, I do not see how the argument can be answered.
This involves the flat assertion that human beings, whatever may have been their potentialities prior to the moment of conception, are not all in fact of equal value; an assertion which certainly seems to be in accordance with observation. The counter-assertion of their "equal" worth - whatever that may mean - is an unthinking reaction to the faulty manner in which their inequality has generally been assessed.
If the possession of superior wisdom can be reliably ascertained - I have already indicated the basis of a method by which I think this can be done - and the wiser man is in fact the better man, then the 'ideal' of human equality is a stupid one; upward competition should be the order of the day here. This is in fact how matters stand in the arts, the sciences, and even in athletics; those who are in the forefront of achievement actually rejoice at the emergence of someone who surpasses the best that they have done. Human 'equality' never comes into consideration here.
The 'ideal' of human equality is the product of envy, but of envy which is not without some justification. It derives from the circumstance that personal superiority has generally been considered to entitle its possessor to material reward. Now in any society where available wealth is seriously limited, this has often meant that those who have been assessed as inferior have received insufficient to secure them from material suffering and deprivation. The grounds for this differentiation have also generally been quite arbitrary and without any self-evident justification. Resentment at this state of affairs has naturally led to a reaction, culminating in the extraordinary declaration that "all men are born equal". But this in turn is self-evident nonsense, even if it is enshrined in the American Constitution!
My ethical system points to a clear way out of this situation, although its practical realisation will not be an easy matter.
It involves making a clear distinction between individual and social merit. Individual merits should be recognised and respected, but regarded purely as the matter of luck which it is, and never rewarded. Rewards should be reserved for their proper function, which is that of motivating socially desirable behaviour. They may well be thought of as compensation for any physical or material disenjoyments entailed by behaving in the manner required.
But when it comes to deciding what kinds of behaviour are socially desirable, the job, which should not carry with it any greater reward than is needed to have it performed comfortably and without anxiety, should be entrusted to the wisest heads available. Or, perhaps, not exclusively to quite the wisest heads, since they might, like Jesus, prescribe standards which were altogether too high for the great many people who, ethically speaking, barely attain human status.
I hope that the ethic expounded here will be recognised as in many respects superior to the one commonly current to-day, in which the notions of retribution for 'guilt' and of reward for 'merit' play such a predominant rôle. The persistence of these notions is, to my mind, convincing evidence of the ethical backwardness of a large part of mankind.
Such backwardness is bound to persist in areas where material hardships make it difficult for many to rise very far above the animal level. But in countries like our own, where these primitive hardships have been largely overcome, we should be looking for something better.
I have endeavoured, in this essay, to indicate a possible basis for such an attempt.
- Shalom & Welcome! -
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