Theism and Humanism: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow, 1914Balfour, Arthur James
Religion
Theism and Humanism: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow, 1914
Balfour, Arthur James
Humanism; Naturalism; Theism
Again, it may be said that such moments too seldom occur in any man’s
experience to justify even the most modest generalisations—let alone
generalisations that embrace the universe. But this objection seems
to rest on a misapprehension. We must remember that the argument
from æsthetic values is not a scientific induction or a logical
inference. There is here no question of truth and falsehood, or even
of good taste and bad taste. We are not striving to isolate what is
essential to beauty by well-devised experiments; nor are we concerned
with psycho-physical determination of the normal relation between
feeling and stimulus. If it be urged that some particular example
of deep æsthetic emotion quite outruns the merits of its object, so
that sound canons of criticism require its value to be lowered, we
need not deny it. We are not dealing with sound canons of criticism;
though I may observe, in passing, that if they lower emotional values
in one direction without raising them in others, good taste becomes a
somewhat costly luxury. My point is different. I am not appealing to
all men, but only to some men—to those and to those only who, when they
explicitly face the problem, become deeply conscious of the incongruity
between our feelings of beauty and a materialistic account of their
origin.
The extreme individualism of this point of view may seem repulsive to
many. Are the feelings (they will ask) of some transient moment to be
treated as authentic guides through the mysteries of the universe,
merely because they are strong enough to overwhelm our cooler judgment?
And, if so, how far is this method of metaphysical investigation to
be pressed? Are we, for example, to attach transcendental value to
the feelings of a man in love? There is evidently a close, though
doubtless not a perfect, parallel between the two cases. It is true
that love is rooted in appetite, and that appetite has a survival value
which I, at least, cannot find in the purely contemplative emotions.
But romantic love goes far beyond race requirements. From this point of
view it is as useless as æsthetic emotion itself. And, like æsthetic
emotion of the profounder sort, it is rarely satisfied with the
definite, the limited, and the immediate. It ever reaches out towards
an unrealised infinity. It cannot rest content with the prose of mere
fact. It sees visions and dreams dreams which to an unsympathetic world
seem no better than amiable follies. Is it from sources like these—the
illusions of love and the enthusiasms of ignorance—that we propose
to supplement the world-outlook provided for us by sober sense and
scientific observation?
Yet why not? Here we have values which by supposition we are reluctant
to lose. Neither scientific observation nor sober sense can preserve
them. It is surely permissible to ask what will. And if Naturalism be
inimical to their maintenance, the fact should at least be noted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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