type and spokesman in the person of Socrates. It seems to me not too much to say that Socrates is presented to us as the subtlest of Greek humorists, finer indeed, to my sense, than either Aristophanes or Lucian. Yet for Plato Socrates is at the same time the embodiment of religious seriousness, while in Xenophon he seems rather oppressively "Victorian". And it is likewise interesting to note that Augustine in his "Confessions", perhaps the classical expression of reverential devotion, attributes a sense of humor to God.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SUBSTANCE OF LIFE

§ 54. The particular nature of man. § 55. Biological evolution and the experience of thinking. § 56. Thinking and imagination. § 58. Imagination, morality, re

§ 57. Imagination and human life.

ligion. § 59. Imagination and the metaphysical problem.

A

§ 54

MONG the deservedly classical documents of moral philosophy are Bishop Butler's "Fifteen Sermons

upon Human Nature", written in reply to Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury had derived morality from "human nature". True, is Butler's reply, but what, then, is human nature? What is "the particular nature of man"? His answer to this question was given in terms of "reflection or conscience". Butler's question will be the question of the present chapter, and the answer to be given I conceive to be substantially in accord with the answer that Butler gave.

The question may take various forms; among others the form of question implied in the distinction of the natural and the spiritual. Now the moral life I have defined in its various aspects as the critical, the thoughtful, the selfconscious life; and again as the spiritual life. But here a question may be raised. It may be objected that "the spiritual life" conveys an implication not to be found in any of these other terms.

For none of these other terms

"critical", "thoughtful", "self-conscious"-implies more than what is known as a temporal and worldly point of view restricted to the contemplation of natural fact, or a mental process which is more than the operation of a natural human faculty. The spiritual life, however, implies a preoccupation with a Platonic or Christian "other" world of "eternal" realities, and a kind of supernatural insight.

Well, then, the general meaning of my reply will be, so in the last analysis, as it seems to me, do all of the other terms. For myself it seems impossible to fix the conception of a thoughtful existence, or of an existence in any proper sense conscious, upon a basis strictly "human” and "natural". Thought, or consciousness, finds no comfortable abiding-place in a natural world; nor is she very warmly welcomed by natural scientists. And psychology, which would give us the natural science of thought, is neither good science nor good poetry. In moral terms the humane which is neither the beastly nor the divine is in unstable equilibrium; and the merely human refuses in the end to be distinguished from the merely animal.

The question may also be stated in terms of the conception of "life". What is "life"? In other words, what is it that in the last analysis distinguishes human from animal life; and which of the two is then more distinctively representative of "life"? It is from this point of view that I find the most convenient approach to the question; and in particular through a consideration of the relation of human and animal life suggested by biological views of evolution-which in two generations past have revolutionized our thinking about human life and human nature.

855

Before evolution, to put it simply, man was distinguished from all of the other animals by having an immortal soul. This was inferred from the fact that man differs from the other animals in his power of thought. Among the animals, therefore, man was sui generis. And this distinction assumed such an importance that the similarities between man and the other animals passed relatively without notice. Evolution, however, has changed all of that. Evolution, we learn, has made it clear that man is only one animal among others. And as for the power of thought—thought is only one of the innumerable varieties of biological function, or organ; only one of those matters of detail that enable this or that species to survive in the competition for existence. As a biological function indeed thought is a unique success. Essentially, however, it belongs in the same category with the speed of the deer, the strength of the elephant, the horns of the bull, and the quills of the porcupine. Thought is a natural fact, one among others; it has no special meaning.

Now I have no wish to contest the theory of evolution; and certainly none to reinstate the idea of special creation. Yet as I study the "social" sciences of today and note the dominance of the biological point of view in all of their conceptions of human life, it seems to me that this seemingly naïve pre-evolutionary view was after all curiously right. In our preoccupation with man as an animal we seem to have overlooked the characteristic feature of human life. We have been We have been so deeply absorbed in the "phenomena❞ of life that we have forgotten the experience of life. Observers of life, we fail to remember that

we ourselves are agents of life. In a word, we have been so strongly fascinated by the biological effects of thinking that we have forgotten what it means to sit down "in a cool hour" (Butler's phrase) and have the experience of thought. Let me try to paint a picture; a more or less fanciful picture of course, but it must be in the first person. I am sitting before my study fire in the darkening hours of an early December afternoon before the lamps are lighted, and my cocker spaniel is on the rug before me, also contemplating the fire. I have been spending the day in a task of writing, and as my mind slowly frees itself from this, I see other problems ahead; letters to be answered, purchases to be made, courses to be arranged, the beginning of plans for next summer; but meanwhile (dreadful thought!) Christmas presents to select. And then I think of my Christmases in other places where I have lived, in Germany in my student days, in New England, in the South and West, and on the Pacific Coast; and of the good companions and friends that I have had, here and there, whom I have in the past known so well, and whom now, to my shame, I rarely even remember. And then, strangely, there comes before me the picture of the little Irish newsboy, my admiration and my fear, who delivered our morning paper when I was a very small boy, and of the day when I saw him carried to the hospital, run over by a street-car, to die two days later; and then the picture of a college friend, one of the dearest fellows I have known, who sat on the side of my bed, as I was recovering from a slight illness, on the evening before our graduation, while we mapped out together our plans for the future. He was drowned a few days later. And it strikes me as somehow strange and uncanny that, in the many years