Is Humanism Enough

My subject is, “Is Humanism Enough?” I approach it with some diffidence, because I have friends in both camps. Some call themselves Christians, and some Humanists; but all, I should say, are people of good will. Their hearts are sound. Whether their heads are equally sound is another question. Their difference is not merely a local quarrel. It is symbolic of a difference which runs through the whole world. Yet the world needs a common platform upon which all people of good will may stand together.

Let us begin by doing justice to the motives of both parties. The Humanist is moved by interest in man and by a moral will. He adds to these intellectual integrity; and intellectual integrity leads to scepticism. The Christian also is moved by interest in man and by a moral will. But he adds what I shall rather clumsily call emotional integrity: the determination to be true to his deepest intuitions, reached through religious emotion.

My claim will be that Humanists ignore certain data, certain facts of experience, with which their theory cannot cope. They fit experience to a Procrustean bed. Christians, on the other hand, claim too much for religious experience. They treat it as evidence about the hidden structure of the universe—as evidence for God and for other theological doctrines. We have, I suggest, a dialectical movement of Western civilisation. The thesis was orthodox Christianity, with doctrinal theism. The antithesis was Humanism, closely associated with scientific materialism—the movement for a more humane social order, which was the moral issue of the nineteenth century. The synthesis is something for which we are still groping.

I shall use “theism” in a broad sense, not merely for Christianity. I mean the doctrine of a universal being, personal or super-personal, immanent in all things. By “Humanism” I mean the doctrine that the proper concern of men is man.

Theists have often insisted that moral experience demands a theistic sanction. Good, they say, is good because God wills it; indeed, good is whatever God wills. They also say that without a loving God life is meaningless, and that unless there is reward in heaven God cannot truly be loving.

Let us first consider the dialectical movement more closely. Theism is a doctrine about the universe. Theists claim, first, that in religious experience they “find God,” or attain certainty that God exists, or at least encounter something which impels them to faith in his existence. Secondly, they claim that observation of the world itself affords evidence of God.

The essential doctrines may be stated briefly. The source of all things is God, conceived as personal or super-personal, eternal or supra-temporal, supporting the universe at every moment and immanent in it. In Christian theism God is benevolent toward his creatures; his very nature is Love. He is almighty, but is said to have limited his almightiness by creating free individual spirits, since without freedom nothing worth while could exist. But why, precisely, must that be so? At any rate, individuals can therefore damn themselves, and often do. Mostly, however, God can save them by special intervention.

At once the familiar difficulty appears. What of undeserved suffering—disease, and the rest? We are told of “the sins of the fathers,” or that “God moves in a mysterious way.” But these phrases do not remove the difficulty.

Why, then, did Christianity lose so much authority? Whitehead has pointed to its bad tactics in the battle with science. The Churches defended the Biblical story of creation as though it were essential to Christianity. It was not essential; but its defeat broke men's confidence in the whole structure. A second cause was the failure of the Churches, as Churches, to give a moral lead in social conflict. Christian individuals often did give such a lead, but the Churches did not. The Labour Movement, and in another fashion the Russian Revolution, often displayed something more truly religious than the official representatives of religion.

Yet the real reason for distrusting theism is not any scientific discovery. It is the doctrine's internal incoherence. Personality, as we know it, involves time and conscious process; yet God is said to be eternal. Personality involves purpose, and therefore finitude. Yet God is said to be infinite, and therefore in this sense purposeless. If we retreat to a “super-personal” God, what do we mean? We mean something quite inconceivable to us, and therefore insignificant.

There may also be an emotional inadequacy in theism. Critics say that God is good only if he wills good ends. Thus the idea of God already presupposes the idea of good. And there remains the mass of undeserved suffering: infant mortality, disease, the massacre of the innocents. It is difficult to reconcile this with a God of Love. Theology can add explanatory devices, but they involve “epicycles”.

What, then, is the verdict on the old conflict between clerics and scientists? Science did not disprove theism. It merely made theism look less plausible. It justified, not atheism, but agnosticism. More important, science produced a new temper and a new loyalty—the loyalty of intellectual integrity, with its horror of wishful thinking. This horror can itself be overdone. Russell has said, in effect, “It is nobler to doubt than to believe.” There arose also a new will to live without doctrines.

Theism may conceivably be true in some Pickwickian sense. But we cannot know that it is true; and today it is unwholesome for us, because it is wishful for so many. I should say that agnosticism is now the way of true piety. Insistence upon theism is impious, and ridiculous, because it shows a naive trust in human thought and human language.

The old questions are probably themselves false questions, admitting no true answer. We ask, “Which came first, the hen or the egg?” We ask, “Geocentrism or heliocentrism?” We ask, “God or no God? Survival or no survival?” Perhaps these alternatives are wrongly framed. But agnosticism excludes atheism also, since atheism is equally doctrinaire. And agnosticism must be an agnostic piety; otherwise it remains emotionally lopsided.

Three factors have entered into the growth of the scientific attitude. First, there is interest in objectivity rather than subjectivity: respect for what Whitehead called the “irreducible and stubborn facts.” The scientist is not interested in rationality as such, except as a means of inference to further facts. Perhaps this temper was encouraged by the general effects of material progress.

Secondly, there is trust in analysis into simple elements, a trust founded upon spectacular successes. Hence the conviction that wholes are “nothing but” their elements in a certain pattern. But this may ignore the possibility that the parts, when isolated, do not reveal all their nature.

Thirdly, there is iconoclasm—the debunking of established theories. This may be connected with the rise of the bourgeoisie and with the victory over the Churches. In itself it is laudable. But it may go bad. It may become a defence mechanism, automatic, obsessive. When that happens, we must debunk the debunker.

The new scientific attitude has a religious aspect, if by religion we mean an emotional attitude toward the universe as a whole. The Christian attitude has been one of filial piety, trust, taboo and emotional integrity. The scientific attitude stresses self-reliance, independence, intellectual integrity, and reverence for inhuman “fate” and chance. But it can also foster the egotism of humanity and self-pity for man, as one sometimes feels in Russell's “Free Man's Worship.”

Individualistic hedonism is implied in materialism—that is, in “mechanical” materialism. Dialectical materialism is another matter. It can embrace all that I say; but its advocates will not agree.

Humanism may be called the religion of the scientist. Its common doctrine is that the whole proper concern of man is man—not the individual man, but the species. It has many forms, but this is the common factor.

Humanism ranges between two extremes which are not themselves Humanism. At one extreme stands individualistic hedonism, based on absolute ethical scepticism. The individual's pleasure alone concerns him; and prudence advises him to avoid entangling pleasures, such as love and devotion to causes. At the other extreme stand theism and such religious doctrines as Buddhism, according to which we exist for something above man, something supernatural.

All Humanism asserts an obligation to transcend individualism for the sake of the human species, but rejects all claims beyond the species. Its two main forms are simple and evolutionary Humanism. Simple Humanism, or utilitarianism, conceives man in a limited way. It considers existing human beings and their felt needs, together with future generations of the same type, fading into the distance. Evolutionary Humanism includes not merely felt needs but development: the growth of capacities at present embryonic and the appearance of needs which are not yet felt.

Simple Humanism is at heart hedonistic; it is utilitarianism. Its standard of value is the pleasure and pain of individuals. Three difficulties arise. First, it fails to explain the leap from individual to social hedonism. Why should I bother about the pleasure of others? Perhaps I have been conditioned to bother. But what if I do not? Ought I to bother? If no obligation can be shown, prudence may tell me simply to be callous.

Secondly, there is the hedonic calculus. How much pleasure comes from each source? How much pleasure in one individual is equal to the pleasure of ten others? Thirdly, are some pleasures qualitatively better than others? Is pushpin as good as poetry? Is the pleasure of love better than the pleasure of self-regard?

The upshot is this. Either the theory is non-ethical and logically sound: it says that by nature we do care for mankind, but that there is no obligation to do so. Or it is ethical and logically unsound: it says that we ought to care for mankind because pleasure is good, no matter whose it is; yet its hedonistic premise is that my own pleasure alone can move me. Emotionally also it is inadequate. A Brave New World is not good enough. We feel it in our bones that we are for something more than pleasure.

Evolutionary Humanism tries to do justice to this feeling of instrumentality. It blends an important truth with an error. Its error is to derive good and evil from biology—from something other than our experience of good and evil. Its value is that it uses biology to clarify our ideas of good and evil.

It begins with the distinction between the developed and the less developed, and applies this to man—to the developed mentality. Development is an objective fact, not merely subjective; compare Julian Huxley. Man is more developed than an ape or an amoeba, in structure and function, in body and experience. Human love is more developed than animal mating.

Within our species some individuals are more developed than others, though judgement is difficult. Development in one respect may coexist with undevelopment in another. The standard is therefore hard to apply, but we do try to apply it, and we value development morally. In biology we may ask whether its criteria are complexity, adaptation, integrative sensitivity and response, or specialization. In psychology we may ask about complexity, integrative perception, and sensitivity and action.

If there is a Life Force, it too must be subject to our moral judgement. We must still ask whether its direction is good or bad.

Development implies perversion from the true line of development, and perversion also is objective. Biological perversion includes degeneracy, as in the tapeworm and the mollusc, and over-specialization, as in the armed reptiles or the sabre-toothed tiger. Psychological perversion likewise includes degeneracy, such as imbecility, and over-specialization, such as intellectualism or the obsessive cravings and repugnances of neurosis.

In spite of all this valuable truth, I insist upon the inadequacy of Evolutionary Humanism. It founds ethics upon biology. Good is supposed to be good because it lies in the line of evolution, not because of what good actually is in experience. There are two forms of this theory: one based on a Life Force and the other on a naturalistic account of evolution.

The arguments for a Life Force are unconvincing—far too weak to bear the weight of ethics. Moreover, the Life Force doctrine is a kind of theism. It incurs many of the same difficulties, while missing certain truths which theism contains. I shall return to those truths. In any case ethics must stand upon its own feet, not upon theism, a Life Force, or natural selection.

Naturalistic evolutionary Humanism tries to have its cake and eat it. It recognizes an obligation to work for development, but explains this obligation by natural selection. You feel that you ought to act in a certain way; therefore, it says, that feeling must have had survival value. But this does not justify the feeling. Instead of sanctioning it, the account makes it illusory.

The psychological argument is parallel. Love and reason have social survival value. Groups possessing such traditions survive and hand them on. Freud's account of moral feeling begins with the infant dominated by the mother, who is the source of pleasure and pain. Conflict arises; an ego ideal is founded upon the mother; the child imbibes the tradition and feels guilt when he infringes it. This explanation is true so far as it goes, but it misses the vital point. Consequently it merely “explains away.”

Evolutionary Humanism claims to be both a religion and an ethic, but fails, by merely explaining away. There is no “scientific” justification for religion and ethics. Contemporary naturalistic science is inadequate as their foundation.

Three courses are open. We may accept scepticism and cynicism for the sake of a narrow intellectual integrity. We may reject the scientific spirit altogether and rush back to theism. Or we may re-examine religious experience and the scope of intellect and reason.

To pass beyond Humanism we must form a clear view of the scope of reason and the nature of rationality. All honour is due to the Rationalists for their noble work against superstition and wishful thinking. But we must beware of narrow rationalism: the shutting of one's eyes to awkward facts for the sake of a theory. I too care for intellectual integrity. Indeed, it is for that very reason that I reject rationalism: its theory blinds it to certain facts.

What is rationality? It is true inference from the given to the not-given, taking into account everything relevant within the field of observation. We must avoid being led astray by the irrelevant, but we must equally avoid neglecting the relevant. Rationalism avoids wishful thinking, but is snared by the wish for rationality. It is impatient for results.

The great danger is that, within a familiar universe of discourse, “singular points” may occur and be overlooked. True rationality may then demand a wider universe of discourse. Imagine two-dimensional beings living upon a sphere. They might complicate their geometry, but they could not perceive the third dimension. Or imagine eyeless beings sensitive to light. They could not conceive three-dimensional seeing.

There is also the old saying that “the heart has its reasons which the head knows not.” That is, it involves the whole cognitive, affective and conative person. The heart's reasons do not support theism; but they do demand more than Humanism.

The heart can give no evidence about the hidden nature of reality, and therefore none for theism. But it gives important evidence about itself—that is, about the nature of personality. If this evidence will not fit a rationalistic theory, so much the worse for the theory. This does not lead us into irrationalism. It requires only a wider universe of discourse.

I can now offer my own sketch of a synthesis. It is no doubt false, but it is worth considering. I shall examine religious experience; inevitably, my own experience. It is typical and average, open to all, and I offer it simply as a basis for discussion.

First, some preliminaries. I distinguish in myself more-awake and less-awake states of knowing, feeling and striving. They range from sleep to my most aware and lucid condition. In a more-awake state I am aware of more, more clearly and more comprehensively. I feel more precisely and appropriately. I act more coherently, appropriately and creatively.

I am more aware of the objective world: of sense-perception, of principles implied in it, of myself as an object and a person, and of other persons as objects and persons. I conceive motives which are inconceivable to the less-aware me, and I see through my more somnolent motives to what I really want.

In less-awake states I trust the more-awake, and particularly the most-awake state—that is, I trust my imperfect memory of it. But I may be too somnolent to have any memory of it, or to have a cogent memory. Why trust the more-awake state? First, because it works and does not let me down, just as we trust the adult rather than the child. Secondly, because it affords a deeper satisfaction and a sense of the “true I.”

My most-awake state includes sensory acuity when attention is directed to sense; intellectual acuity, when similarly attended to, and imagination; emotional acuity, and conative integrity with the emergence of new motives. In that state I see that some things matter supremely—for example, intellectual integrity, and emotional and conative integrity.

They matter in what I call a relatively absolute way. Beings sufficiently awake to grasp them cannot but will that they should occur wherever possible, unless their minds have been perverted from the true line of mental or spiritual development by irrelevant cravings. I see this because of what mind is—or, rather, because of what personality is. It follows from the experienced nature of personality. To deny it is nonsense.

This is true for any rank of personality, in any period and any world. Awake minds cannot but will these things as ends, as intrinsically good—not merely for individual satisfaction, though satisfaction comes, incidentally.

What kinds of things does the most-awake state will? From one point of view they are all activities of persons, whether myself or others: acts expressive of essential personality, such as intellectual integrity. From another point of view they are relations between the person and his world. Compare Hegel: they are acts of “me-moulded-by-my-world,” directed toward my world's fulfilment.

In every case the concern is with something objective to the act. In consciousness I espouse objective needs: the needs of my body, my personality, other persons, groups, and so on. Personality is the expression of a world in individual consciousness. Personality without a world is an abstraction. The concrete fact is personal consciousness in a world.

For the awake state, what matters most is the fulfilment of persons. The ideal is the fulfilment of the universe in personal consciousness, whether in one person or in many.

For religious experience perhaps the most important matter is personal relationship. There are two broad kinds of relation between individuals. The first is animal or subhuman. There is no clear awareness of self and other. The self is an automatic self-cherisher responding to stimuli. There is also automatic gregariousness, conformity and persecution.

The second kind is distinctively human and finds its fullest expression in love. Here there is clear awareness of self and other as different—in needs, capacities and temperament. There is mutual enrichment and mutual cherishing. Each espouses the other's needs as his own.

There arises awareness of “we,” the community of the two, perhaps valued more than either alone. Yet the individuals remain distinct. There is no common “I,” only a common “we”; otherwise there would be no love. A factor of hate remains in all love, for conflict between self-interests does not vanish. But true love transmutes it.

Possessiveness is incompatible with love, and is therefore a violation of respect for personality. There may, however, be a quasi-possessiveness through the “we,” for the sake of the “we,” never for the “I.” There is also the generalized will for right relations: the will that all persons shall be treated as persons, and the will for a universal “we” embracing all persons. Such a will is impossible without some experience of love. Personality involves community, and vice versa. The goal is personality-in-community.

This brief ancillary sheet adds that in love pleasure merely directs the child's attention to its mother; it does not constitute the whole value of love.

In love we wake to essentially new values, as in all mental maturing. We discover values which were previously unintelligible. Consider the baby's love of its mother. The orthodox psychoanalytical account—an inadequate account—says that the mother gives pleasure and pain, and is therefore loved and hated through simple conditioning. There is conflict over the mother, and an ego ideal derived from her. On this view all values are derived from animal impulse through conditioning.

Ian Suttie's criticism is that the child discovers “I,” “you” and “we.” “I” and “you” stand upon an equal footing, though “I” is the stronger. My own point is that the child finds new values. “I,” “you” and “we” cannot be reduced to sensory pleasure and pain; they are different in kind. Both kinds of value emerge in the objective world, but the horizon has widened.

Psychoanalysts similarly derive moral experience from conflict over the parents, between the self and its ego ideal. This is true so far as it goes. But love is presupposed; otherwise there could be no guilt. Morality involves obligation to persons, whether to other persons or to oneself.

Note this qualification. My account of the child's experience is not essential to my view. It may be false, though I would bet heavily upon its truth. At any rate, at some point genuine love emerges.

Art is a particularly obvious case. This work of art is an end in itself. But there is a sense of possession. Yet the universe finds expression through me.

After these preliminaries I can approach fully developed religious experience itself. Thus far Humanists might agree with me. Now I go too far for them, while theists will applaud and then demand that I go farther still.

The child's discovery of “I,” “you” and “we” is religious in an embryonic way, and so is all personal love. It includes a sense of instrumentality. “I” am for “we”—for something more than “I,” and more even than “you.” I am for love. The sense is not yet explicit, but it is implied in the child's loving behaviour.

Mature waking to religious experience may come early or late, or never. It may be fully lucid or half-conscious, or confused by theories and wishes. It is a waking to what I shall call “the spirit,” though I use the word in a special sense. Religious experience means, for me, experiencing an attitude toward the universe—or to the supremely important thing in it?—and experiencing it as the right attitude—that is, as actually appropriate to the actual universe.

No particular religious experience is wholly appropriate or wholly religious. But all are partly religious, if they involve an attitude toward the whole. Particular acts may serve as symbols which evoke the religious attitude: love, art, intellection, creative action and courage; pleasure or pain; bodily exercise and bodily functions; muscular skill and perception.

I reserve the right to use “spirit” in another sense: that in virtue of which we will. But by “spirit” I never mean a divine person.

Consider lovers embracing. There is a sense of universality: the universal subject embraces the universal object. Each lover is a vehicle, an instrument or vessel. This is what we are for: channels through which objective influences find expression.

In all such experiences there is an unmistakable sense of awakening—new meaning, new values and a new self. New needs are generated in the person by the object; and the object is the universe. There is a sense of possession and of being possessed. The child is possessed by the “we.” In mature religious experience the person is possessed by the “spirit,” meaning a vision of an ideal form of behaviour for all personal beings.

This resembles the Platonic form of the Good, but it does not inhabit a realm apart. It is inherent in the nature of personality—or personality-in-a-world, and more exactly personality-in-community-in-a-world. It is the ideal of full personal expression in sensitive and intelligent awareness, in love and in creative action, all in relation to the actual universe.

The spirit, then, is not a substance. It is a Way of life—the Tao, if one cares to use that word—a temper and an attitude. Its detailed expression varies with circumstances, from person to person, country to country, and world to world. But it is always the full expression of personality in those circumstances.

This small divider sheet marks the transition to the personal relations and practical consequences of religion.

A religious experience comes as a revelation of something not formerly noticed. Something new is given, and it must then be related to one's accepted culture. Christianity falsifies the experience by claiming too much for it. Humanism falsifies it by suppressing some of its aspects. In certain respects Christianity is nearer the truth.

First, take the phrase “for the glory of God.” One may dig in the garden, build Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land, swim, make art, or love a woman. The motive may be purely personal fulfilment, or social fulfilment, or the “glory of God.” I should translate the last as “for the glory of the spirit”: for the universal ideal of the fulfilment of personality-in-community-in-this-universe. In acting from this motive there is a sense of increased awakeness.

Secondly, consider the Christian doctrine of salvation. A man cannot save himself; nor can the race save itself. As it was put at Chelmsford, one cannot lift oneself by one's own bootstraps. God must intervene in an act of divine grace. The individual must “open his heart”; otherwise God cannot save him. Yet, according to the doctrine, only God does the saving.

Compare the child's first vision of “we.” The unregenerate self wills its own aggrandisement, the beloved's aggrandisement, society's aggrandisement, and so on. All these ends are good so long as they do not conflict with the spirit. The self may conflict with love, love with society, and society with the spirit. The unregenerate self wills these ends for their own sake, never as occasions of the spirit. It cannot lift itself beyond itself; it cannot will the spirit as such.

In Christian language, the unregenerate self cannot love God unless God reveals himself. What saves is the revealed vision of God. There is an important truth here. Translated into non-theistic language: the fully awake mind alone can will the spirit fully. Less-awake states may will it partially, according to their rank and their openness to the vision. But they cannot rise to a higher level of awakeness without the incursion of a new vision which takes possession, kills and recreates upon a new plane.

There is a deeper gulf between the most-awake state and all the others. Less-awake states do not clearly know what they are doing when they will love and other spiritual acts. They will particular spiritual acts, not the spirit itself. The most-awake state, as I know it, wills the spirit as an ideal form.

The less-awake states are the unregenerate self which cannot save itself, though it must open its heart. Only the clear vision of the spirit can save it. The vision takes possession, against violent resistance; it “kills” the old self and recreates a new one. The spirit affords no motive to the somnolent self. It seems irrational or crazy, and is resisted. Yet the spirit is immanent even in the mundane self, though embryonic and felt as “other.”

The spirit “promises” fulfilment, but not fulfilment to the ordinary self. It promises fulfilment only to an unborn, other self. And this other self does not seek fulfilment. It does not serve the spirit for the sake of self-fulfilment; it lives unconditionally for the spirit. Fulfilment is incidental. That, as it seems to me, is the core of religious experience.

There is an objection from theists. They say, “There is another stage of awakeness beyond your highest reach, and it gives assurance of God.” My answer is: perhaps there is. But may they not be deceiving themselves in terms of current theory and wishful thinking? Even if they are more right than wrong, theism today is too insecure a prop. My religious experience is the plain man's, but clarified.

There is also an objection from Humanists. They say that the naturalistic account of religion is adequate in terms of natural selection, social conditioning and psychoanalysis. My answer is that they falsify the thing to be explained. Actual religious experience and their account of it are superficially alike but fundamentally different—as a living human being and a wax model may look alike. They are blinded by their theory.

My view avoids the egoism of humanity which spoils Humanism—the self-importance of man. My view is Humanism Plus. It is Evolutionary Humanism with a clear awareness that it is more than Humanism, and with borrowings from theism, particularly the ideas of instrumentality and salvation.

Better, my view is personalism, because it is not limited to man—but objective personalism, because personality is the product of both the objective world and subjectivity. Better still, it is personalistic communism, because personality implies and presupposes community.

From the other side, my view is Theism Minus, but also Theism Plus. It is minus a personal deity and minus the assertion of individual immortality, about which I remain agnostic. It accepts instrumentality, but instrumentality to the spirit. It accepts salvation, but not salvation for the individual self; rather, salvation for the individual in his instrumentality to the spirit.

It also claims a greater emotional depth than theism. The theistic promise of individual survival blurs the essential tragedy of the unregenerate self. My view avoids both emotional weaknesses. The tragedy for the unsaved individual is absolute, but it is transfigured in his waking to the spirit.

Humanists charge Christians with woolly and wishful thinking. The charge is true. Christians charge Humanists with crude and obtuse feeling. That charge also is true. And yet Humanism is not the antithesis to Theism. It is a compromise—a failure to achieve the needed synthesis.

Let me gather the argument together. I began with Christian and Humanist friends, contrasting emotional integrity with intellectual integrity, and suggesting a dialectical movement. I defined theism, stated its essential doctrines, and recalled the causes of the failure of the Churches, and the conflict between clerics and scientists. Science did not disprove theism. The deeper objections were internal incoherence and false questions. The proper outcome was agnostic piety.

I then examined the scientific attitude: objectivity, analysis and debunking. Humanism is itself a religious attitude, poised between individualism and theism. Simple Humanism is either non-ethical and logical, or ethical and illogical. Evolutionary Humanism recognizes objective development and perversion, but remains inadequate when it derives ethics from biology, whether through a Life Force or natural selection.

This led to the scope of reason, the need for a wider universe of discourse, the danger of overlooked singular points, and the reasons of the heart. Religious experience had therefore to be re-examined. I distinguished more-awake and less-awake states, and argued for relatively absolute good as apprehended by the awake personality, asking what things are good. The values concerned awareness, feeling and action—the full expression of personality in relation to an objective world.

Personal relations showed the distinction between subhuman and human modes of life, and led to the generalized will for personality. The child's embryonic religion of “I,” “you” and “we” prepared the way for mature religion and the spirit: possession by a vision, action for the “glory of God” translated as instrumentality to the spirit, and salvation translated into non-theistic language. I then considered the objections of theists and Humanists. The conclusion was Humanism Plus and Theism Minus—but also Plus: objective personalism, personalistic communism, instrumentality and salvation, without the egoism of humanity or the blunting of individual tragedy.

There is another way of summarizing the matter. This lecture has not been sociological, though it concerns prerequisites of any sound social theory. The dialectical movement runs from doctrinal, deistic Christianity, through scientific materialism and the Humanist compromise, toward a synthesis. A revival of doctrinal Christianity today would be dangerous. We must learn Christianity Plus.

My own view rests upon the distinction between awake and less-awake states, the authority and values of the awake, and integrity of intellect, feeling and action. It is objective personalism, extending in concentric rings beyond the isolated self. It seeks personality-in-community and therefore requires an analysis of love and evil, together with a correction of Freudianism. The values apprehended in awakeness are irreducible.

Finally, it affirms a non-theistic religious experience and a concept of the spirit. It translates “the glory of God” into instrumentality, and salvation into non-theistic terms. Concerning the ultimate nature of the universe it remains agnostic; but its agnosticism is piety, not indifference. That, in outline, is the synthesis for which we are groping.