Humanism and Superhumanism

The synopsis sheet is the lecture's cover: the running-order with page numbers, the venue and date in red pencil — South Place, 29·12·34 — and two planned readings, Blake's "The Tyger" and Shelley's "Ozymandias", with the page numbers of his anthology. The prose that follows reconstructs the spoken lecture from the notes, in Stapledon's platform voice; the placement of the two poems is conjectural.

My only claim to speak on this subject is a certain dissatisfaction with both of the attitudes named in my title. I am not a contented humanist; neither am I one of those who rest securely in some assurance of the superhuman. I stand awkwardly between the two camps, and it is from that uncomfortable ground that I shall speak tonight.

First, definitions. The Concise Oxford Dictionary tells us that humanism is "devotion to human interests; a system concerned with human — not divine — interests, or with the human race, not the individual." Let us sharpen that a little. Humanism, as I shall use the word, is an attitude of mind, a policy, a whole way of living, according to which "the proper study of mankind is man" — and the proper object of all devotion is man also. It makes two claims. First, that nothing less than man is worthy of devotion: we are not to worship stones, or beasts, or our own bellies. Second, that nothing more than man is knowable by men: whatever gods there be, we can have no traffic with them. And therefore all service, all loyalty, all praise and worship, is due to one object only — the awakening spirit of man.

The service of humanity, on this view, should be the dominant motive of the individual's life and the dominant principle of politics. And in what does that service consist? In helping to fulfil the capacities of men — their vital and their mental capacities; in helping others to be as fully human as possible, to realize in themselves the ideal form of human nature; and in helping to make a society favourable to that fulfilment. So far, I think, we may all travel together.

Now for the other word — a barbarous word, I admit, and my own coinage. Superhumanism, let us say, is likewise an attitude of mind, a way of living, a policy; and its content is simply this: that humanism is not enough. The positive side of humanism, the superhumanist says, is sound, and indeed essential; but the denial of the superhuman is an error.

What is the starting point of superhumanism? Either a mere feeling that man is not enough — a vague dissatisfaction, a yearning; or else some positive experience, which I can only call the worship of a nonhuman Other. That Other may be conceived in many ways — as gods, as Fate, as God, as Nature, as a Principle of Order, as the Whole. But note carefully: doctrinal elaboration is not essential to superhumanism. It is, I grant, almost inevitable, because the object of this devotion is excessively obscure from an intellectual point of view, however vivid it may be in experience; and where the intellect finds obscurity it spins theories. But the theories are accretions. The experience is the thing.

One more point of definition. Superhumanism, if it is to deserve our attention at all, must issue in practice. It is not merely a passive recognition of "God", a Sunday acknowledgment. It is a regulative principle, making a difference to life, to conduct — as, for instance, the Christian doctrine of salvation once made a difference, hour by hour, to those who believed it.

Now, what does humanism really involve? The form a man's humanism takes depends, I suggest, on that man's mental type. Let us distinguish a low-brow and a high-brow humanism — a naive and a sophisticated, a primitive and a mature.

Naive humanism — and one may fairly ask whether it is humanism at all — starts from the simple sense of obligation toward one's fellow men, and its goal is to fulfil men's actual felt needs and capacities as they arise: to take men at their face-value, as they seem to themselves, and give them a happy life. It is, in fact, identical with the old Utilitarianism — the greatest happiness of the greatest number, where happiness means simply pleasant hours. And since the greatest number are average, simple folk, the stress falls on average, simple needs: safety, food, comfort, free movement, and what are called "amusements". There is in all this no impulsion whatever toward difficult living. There is no suggestion that men should strive to rise above their actual selves, to realize some finer potentiality. Push-pin, as Bentham said, is as good as poetry — if it feels as good.

To the naive humanist, the high-brow humanist seems to suffer from a delusion. His cultural ideal is superfluous, since practical fulfilment gives as much pleasure; and his delusion is due to his divorce from actual life — he has lost touch with the concrete, and therefore craves the sophisticated.

Consider the case of Communism, which is in general a naive humanism. The proletarian communists are mostly naive humanists: their goal is the fulfilment of simple needs; cultural needs are incidental, and sophisticated needs are suspect. And that attitude is entirely natural to the wage-slave, to the toiler who has unfulfilled material needs and no apprehension of the subtler ones. The communist intelligentsia, on the other hand, tend to high-brow humanism — but shame-facedly, as though caught reading poetry in working hours. And communist theory itself, if I read it rightly, allows for two stages: first the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, with its urgency of reorganization for the fulfilling of primitive need; and afterwards the Triumphant Communism which opens up new capacities of men — and therefore, in the end, a full humanism.

Let me pause on one point, for everything turns on it later. The intuitive basis of naive humanism is the sense of obligation toward others. This is simply felt — and felt as obligation, as "I ought". It is not derivable from self-regard. Utilitarianism, whatever its textbooks say, is not derived from individualism but from our social impulses, from an intuitive oneness with others. And similarly the values of individualism itself are intuitive: the preference of a greater future pleasure to a lesser present one, the preference of an enduring personality to a passing impulse. At the bottom of every ethic, low or high, lies something that is not proved but seen.

High-brow humanism accepts the low-brow kind as a sine qua non — no fine flowering without bread — but it goes further. Its goal is the fulfilling of human capacity: including the needs men actually feel, but including also their dormant capacities, capacities for more difficult and more human living. It recognizes, that is, a precious potentiality in man. Something in him is better than something else. Pleasures are not all of equal worth. Set a man beside an animal and you see what is essentially human in him — and you see also the possibility of further growth. The goal is the development of full humanity in human individuals: the development of persons toward more complete personality.

And what is that? It is the development of conscious activity — of knowing, feeling, and striving; and each of these involves the others. Let me dwell on this. By "knowing" I mean being aware of objects of every kind — as truly as possible, as comprehensively as possible, as dispassionately as possible. And "objects" must include everything that can be known: the sensible world; the world of scientific concepts and of metaphysical principles; the world of human personalities in all their diversity; the world of social enterprise; the objects of art; the objects of the religious consciousness. Feeling has a corresponding development: our emotional reactions are to become more appropriate to their objects, more discriminate, more graded and varied — and the appropriateness, mark you, is itself intuited. And striving: to subordinate the lesser to the major ends in actual conduct; emancipation from the obsession of the familiar, easy, primitive impulse, for the sake of the new, the more difficult, the more developed. Advance, in a word, is finer adjustment to reality.

Such is the goal of humanism at its best. Call it the development of distinctively human capacity; call it the development of sensibility, of intelligence — practical and theoretical — and of imagination. And what is the sanction of this aim, its basis, its justification? Again: intuition. We feel it to be right; we have vision of the worthwhileness of these activities. They need no demonstration, and they can have none; they are not derived from anything more basic. It is the same sanction on which humanism itself, and individualism itself, must finally rest.

An analogy, before we go on. A starving man craves food as a great good — it is his nature to eat, and his nature is unfulfilled; but he may not have the strength or the resolution to go in search of food. Just so, a mentally starving man sees the humanistic goal as good — if he has it in him to apprehend it at all; but he may lack strength or resolution, or be sidetracked by easier goods. The vision of the good is one thing; the power to pursue it is another.

Now the humanistic ideal, thus stated, raises awkward questions — and I will not run away from the most awkward of them: aristocracy or democracy? Should our aim be to give all men equal opportunity for fulfilment, all fulfilled to some extent, even if this involves a low level of personal attainment? Or to secure the highest possible attainment for a few — a few fulfilled extremely — even if this involves slavery for the rest? In other words: is the goal finally the fulfilling of all particular individuals? Or is it the achievement of a form of mind, by means of individuals?

There is a practical question here, and a theoretical one. Practically: in the pre-machine age it was simply impossible to afford fulness of life to all. But machinery — mechanization — might enable all to attain fulness, each up to the limit of his capacity. A well-ordered mechanized world should make the best possible of every man. So far, good. But though mechanization solves the practical dilemma, the theoretical dilemma remains: is the ideally awakened world good because it is implied in actual human nature — or is it good in itself, absolutely? Is Man an end, or a means? Are individuals instrumental?

Consider some hypothetical worlds — I have spent some years of my life constructing such worlds, and I can recommend the exercise. First, a world of mediocre beings exercising their mediocre powers fully. Second, a world of many abject slaves and a few splendidly fulfilled beings, attaining a high degree of humanity. Third, a brotherhood of equal supermen. Fourth, a world of many subordinates, each fulfilling his own powers, and a few supermen attaining full humanity. Now observe what we actually say of these worlds. The mediocre world we condemn as a failure — though every felt need in it is satisfied! The aristocratic slave-world we condemn as violating human unity and the sense of obligation to others. The brotherhood of equal supermen is impossible, since capacities vary in rank. But the fourth — the hierarchical world of free exercise of powers — does not violate the social obligation, and yet does justice to the ideal.

The upshot of this whole discussion of humanism, for a thorough-going humanist, is fourfold. First: the satisfaction of felt need is not enough — we have just condemned the mediocre world. Second: the perfection of the few at the expense of the many is equally condemned — it violates love and justice; and, what is more, the few could not accept it and remain perfect; the man who takes his fulfilment from slaves is thereby maimed. Third: yet finally we judge everything in relation to the humanistic ideal itself — approximation toward the ideal form of Man. And fourth — and here I ask you to attend closely — for ourselves, each as an individual, we recognize that when we are most vital, most human, most awakened, most spiritual, we are ready to be sacrificed for the humanistic ideal. If by being sacrificed I could contribute, then I ought to be sacrificed — I ought willingly to sacrifice myself; and so ought all men, though none may sacrifice another against his will. Equally, of course, if I could contribute to the mere happiness of others, I ought to accept sacrifice. But note the difference: the one I accept out of comradeship; the other I accept out of devotion. And a further point: it is meaningless for all to "die" for one another — for whom, then, would any live? But all might have to "die" for the Ideal. Out of human unity, mankind itself might be offered up. Hold that thought; we shall need it.

Before I set the two great antagonists at each other's throats, let us give the sceptic his innings; for he attacks both. What, he asks, is the justification of this famous sense of obligation? Is it not sheer prejudice? Why not eat, drink and be merry? These high-flown intuitions of yours are suspect. Psycho-analysis explains them away — finds their primitive unconscious sources. Often, when we prize something, the cause of our valuing is some trivial association with an infantile craving no longer accessible to memory. The worship of the Virgin, we are told, is based on infantile sexual and filial craving; the worship of a personal God on the infant's need of a Father. And the present application is obvious: the humanistic ideal owes its power to infantile conditioning, merely.

To this attack from the unconscious I make four answers. First, psycho-analysis is very salutary and enlightening, and it should indeed make us sceptical — I would not have it otherwise. Second: its principles are still uncertain and vague, and its method can be turned against itself. The analyst's trust in his own theory is presumably due to infantile conditioning also — say, to a revulsion against parental sanctity. He cannot fire that gun without shooting himself. Indeed, in the end one must choose between psycho-analysis and humanism: if the reduction settles anything, it settles the humanist's own ideal along with everything else. And since none of us here means to give up the ideal, we have all of us, implicitly, already refused the reduction. Third: the reduction of a developed valuation to primitive motives is an illicit abstraction — you may trace the river to its spring, but you must not say the river is nothing but its spring. Fourth, and decisively: there is a qualitative difference between infantile craving and the recognition of the human ideal. Explain the origin of an insight however you please; the insight remains, and must be judged on its own ground.

In spite of all critics, then, we cannot but accept the humanistic ideal — as the goal for the individual and for society. All other goals are either incomplete, like the naive goal of comfort, or positively false, like national power. Let there be no mistake: whatever I say in the remainder of this lecture, I say as one who holds the humanistic ideal to be necessary.

But necessary is not the same as sufficient. From another point of view — and this is the turn on which my whole argument swings — though the humanistic goal is necessary, it is not enough. We must orientate ourselves to Something beyond Man — beyond even human perfection.

In saying this I lay myself open to attack from two sides at once — the religious will say I concede too much to the humanist, and the humanist that I have deserted to the enemy. Well, before I defend the position, let me state the humanist's case against superhumanism as strongly as I can. It is a formidable case, and it deserves to be heard at full strength.

The humanist says, first: superhumanism is a dangerous drug. It is habit-forming. It gets hold of a man. It makes all else seem worthless, insipid. It incapacitates one for useful life. It undermines the intellect, blurring all concepts, giving a bias to all reasoning. The appeal of superhumanism, he says, is to the infantile in us — to the desire for a fairy-land universe where all wishes are fulfilled, glamourously, mysteriously, unintelligibly. Its peculiar power derives from the infant's awe of the parent. Its seductive experiences are mere hallucinations, due to unconscious cravings for safety, for peace, for omnipotence. It is, in short, the supreme flight from reality.

And the humanist points to the historical record — the disastrous effects of the superhuman religions in the past. They withdrew men from the battle of life: to monastic seclusion, to ritual activities, to doctrinal disputation — withdrawing interest from this world, and from the call to make a better world, for the sake of "another" world, of soul-saving and mortification. They gave us the dominance of priests: a class privileged to "know", and to keep others from knowing; tyrannizing by fear of divine wrath and hell-fire; turning wealth to unproductive expense — building temples while the poor starved; resisting every advance in knowledge and in morality. They gave us orgies of persecution. They gave us the religious wars.

Then comes the argument from the limitations of the human mind. Man's intellect is a practical instrument, formed by natural selection for the struggle for existence. It is not suited to metaphysics. A spear serviceable for hunting quarry is futile when thrown at the moon. We cannot know anything superhuman — so why worry? Man's every desire is an expression of human needs: when the stomach lacks nutriment, we desire food; and even our most exalted desires are desires for human fulfilment. Superhumanism, on this view, is nothing but an expression of biological cravings — especially suppressed infantile cravings with their glamourous feeling-tone — woven into a tissue of biased reasoning, whose illusory cogency is due to the illegitimate use of practical concepts beyond their sphere.

And finally the argument from world-confusion — the argument of this decade, the argument you are all thinking. Even if superhumanism were right, in some sense, yet today — all hands to the pumps! Civilization is falling to pieces about our ears. What we want is a new human loyalty: a vivid realization of what the world might be, of what might be made of man. In times of crisis superhumanism is a mere side-line, and a pernicious one: it distracts from the urgent task. The Communist puts it with his usual vigour: superhumanism is capitalist dope, calculated to side-track the proletariat; and Fascism is merely a new version of the same drug — a mystical Race-deity. I should say myself: not calculated — the capitalist is not so clever — but it does have the effect desired; it does distract; the influence of the Roman Church in our own day is instance enough. And the Communist adds a shrewd diagnosis: superhumanism expresses, on the one hand, the crushed worker's yearning for a better world — the fairyland motive; and on the other, the worldly capitalist's yearning for a little otherworldliness, to sweeten his account.

Now, some of these arguments strike home with great force. They have the appeal of common sense; they seem reasonable, practical. Humanism is a clear, serene light to guide us; superhumanism, a will-o'-the-wisp, leading us over a precipice. Once follow it, and we are lost — we flounder in folly, in superstition, in religious mania. There is no denying the danger; the history of religion is strewn with such wreckage.

And yet — humanism is not enough. Not, at any rate, for me. Understand: my sympathy is entirely with the humanist. I crave sanity, reasonableness, precision, rationality, science, practical bearing. By temperament I am of his party. Then why do I demand more than humanism? What more is needed — what more can there be? And if there is a "more", what practical bearing has it? I confess at once that a perfectly clear answer is impossible — though a clear answer is what is desperately needed. This is the most difficult of all questions; it stretches the mind to its limits. I can only tell you, as clearly as I can get it, what I find.

My reasons for demanding more than humanism, summarized, are four. First, a felt lack, an insufficiency, in humanism itself. Second, a felt acquaintance with a positive Something which supplies that lack. Third, a number of strictly rational considerations — I shall argue that the true rationalist ought to be a superhumanist. And fourth, that I find I live better — more effectively — through keeping sensitive to the superhuman.

First, then, the felt insufficiency. Naive humanism, we have already seen, is felt to be insufficient by the full humanist himself. And developed humanism satisfies precisely in so far as it is implicitly superhumanist — in so far, that is, as it sets man a goal which is good intrinsically, independently of anyone's opinion. But even so, the best kind of humanism is not enough. For it turns mankind into a mutual improvement and admiration society. Its goal is, at bottom, no better than self-improvement — like record-breaking, or the learning of fresh accomplishments. Humanism does not really make the best of Man — because it leaves out his true function. What that function is, we shall come to.

Second — and here I must walk delicately — the felt acquaintance with a positive Something which fills the lack. It is extremely difficult to speak accurately about this; indeed the experience is strictly indescribable, save by emotional words — emotive words — which indicate a special and appropriate emotion but do not describe the thing itself. Those who already know will understand; others will not. I am well aware how dangerous it is to say that; every charlatan in history has said it. I say it nevertheless, because it is true.

Call it, with Rudolf Otto, a sense of the numinous, the holy: mystery, majesty, formidableness; horror, weirdness, eeriness; and yet exquisiteness, sweetness, excellence — Beauty. And note: it is found in objective existence. It is possible to find it in every kind of object. In pure sensation. In perceptual objects small and great — and this is not merely aesthetic delight. In human persons and lives and dramas. In our own introspected mental activities — the mind itself as object. In personal relations: in love, in hate, in the embrace of lovers. In communities; in the World Community that does not yet exist; in History; in Evolution. In the objects of science — atoms, stars. In mathematical principles. In the objects of art. There is nothing so mean, and nothing so exalted, that it cannot on occasion be a window.

You remember Blake — and here I had meant to read him to you. Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, in the forests of the night — what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? That is the accent I mean: the thing seen not as useful or harmful, pleasant or fearful merely, but as burning with a dreadful and beautiful significance. Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Blake does not answer the question. Neither shall I. The question itself is the experience.

Normally, of course, things seem — just themselves: good, bad or indifferent in relation to our needs, beautiful or ugly in relation to our tastes. But sometimes they strike us differently. They come alive. Or say rather: we come alive, awake, and see them better, realize them; and we recognize in all of them — even the bad ones — a common character, a numinous significance. Not with the physical vision, mark you, but with the mind's eye, the eye of the spirit; and yet I do not mean any occult or mystical vision either. It is the familiar world, seen as we seldom have the strength to see it.

And when, in solitude, we try to feel existence whole — concentrating on the actual passage of time, and mentally embracing all experience, all that has ever come our way — we may have a vivid sense of — what? Of the Mighty Other: weird, holy, dread. A "presence" — though no personal presence; to call it personal is to belittle it. The old monks had the right words after all: Mysterium Tremendum.

Youth, perhaps, is most sensitive to the numinous in particular things — Wordsworth said so, and the Ode is evidence; though I am not sure. But as we mature we may respond more deeply to the numinous aspect of our whole experience. Such, at any rate, is the solitary felt-acquaintance with the Great Other.

For some, though, the felt acquaintance comes best not in solitude but in company with others; hence communal worship, in all the religions. But here we must distinguish two very different things. There is mere herd-feeling: the sense of the crowd's presence, the tint of gregariousness, exultation in the special stimuli of the herd — the perceived mass, the herd noises. Every demagogue in Europe is exploiting that, this winter. And there is something quite other: community in the presence of the Other. "Together we face God." I, the crowd, face God — the Other. I, the individual, bow — not to the herd, but to God. I, the crowd, worship God, subject myself to the Other in self-oblivious devotion. The first is man worshipping his own mass and heat. The second is men together, worshipping what is more than man. On that distinction, I suspect, a good deal of the politics of our time will turn.

Third, the rational considerations. Distinguish two sorts of rationalism: a pettifogging rationalism, and what I will call the Larger Rationalism. Pettifogging rationalism is dogmatic. It craves certainty and slick interpretation. It accepts human reason uncritically — and current science too; and it tends simply to deny whatever it cannot cope with. The Larger Rationalism is sceptical. Its spirit is reasonableness rather than rationality. It does not mistake probability for certainty, nor slight possibility for probability.

Now regard human experience in this larger spirit, and what do we find? We find sheer humanism unsatisfying — because it shuts the windows and draws the blinds, and seeks an artificial elegance within, oblivious of the outer night and the stars. Instead, we boldly go out into the darkness. And we find the superhuman everywhere. We find the magnitudes of astronomy: the aeons; the expanding space; the gigantic inconceivables — relativity, star-dust; and the minutiae of sub-atomic physics, the basic physical mystery of the electron; and with them an overwhelming sense of the Vast Inhuman — and the certainty that all our knowledge of it is mythical, a picture-book for children. We find the story of the evolution of life: its length, its wastefulness, its precariousness, its chanciness; its progressive release of potentiality; its final incomprehensibility — and ourselves as moments in it.

And we find the significance of the distinctively human, precisely as an achievement of that evolution. For the Great Other includes Man. We ourselves constitute the chief mystery for ourselves: the sheer fact of our awareness; our implication in the physical; our desiring this and not that; our varying degrees of wakefulness; our beginnings and our endings; our relationships together; our intelligence and imagination; our striving toward the life of the spirit. Man is transitional — and scarcely a beginning. It may be he is doomed into the bargain. But our mystery has a significance that reaches beyond the human sphere. Bearing all this in mind — and bearing in mind, too, the present growing humility of science itself — I put the question: is it reasonable to blinker oneself with humanism? Is not concern with the superhuman the very way of life — though a dangerous way?

But now, the crucial restraint. Though the larger rationalism points beyond sheer humanism, it should also restrain us from all doctrine — through realization of the Other's vastness, and the limitations of our thought, and the snares of wish-fulfilment. We may be tempted to say: "Surely, then, there must be a God" — a personal God, and benevolent; and therefore all is well; and immortality, et cetera, et cetera. But we must not. We must outgrow the craving for security, and the desire to have salvation. The whole discipline of the thing lies here.

What may we say, then? Only this. I am aware of an unspeakable Beauty — say rather, a Majesty — which I salute, though it destroy me. I can say no more about it; I can speak only of its effects on me.

And I am aware also of the claims of altruism, and of the humanistic ideal. These are the objects of practical loyalty. I ought to serve them unswervingly, and I mean to. Yet — if fate goes against them; if I suffer; if my beloved suffer; if all men are tortured; even if the human race itself is destroyed — I must still salute the Supreme Beauty which I see. That is the whole of my creed, and I know well how little comfort there is in it. But there it is. I cannot honestly profess more; and I dare not profess less.

Fourth and last, the pragmatic considerations — the practical effects of sensitivity to the superhuman aspect of existence. And let us first recognize, once more, the practical dangers of superhumanism: the tendency to withdraw from actual life, to live in a dream-world peopled with abstractions and doctrines; the tendency to dogmatize, to persecute, to disparage reason and science, to lose the critical faculty, to shrivel into individual soul-saving, or to inflate into mob-hysteria. These dangers are real. They must be guarded against — not run away from. A man does not refuse fire because fire burns.

Now compare the practical effects of humanism and of superhumanism at their best. Humanism may give generosity, refinement, fortitude — I have known humanists who shame the saints. But — aridity? A certain complacency; a lack of detachment; dare I say, a lack of humour about Man? Some humanists, I gladly admit, are more than humanists without knowing it. And superhumanism — of the undoctrinal sort — may indeed give selfishness, withdrawal, all the diseases on the charge-sheet; but these are its perversions. What it should give, and can give, is a heightened temper of the will; an improved muscular tone of the spirit; and this makes a subtle difference in conduct — day by day, minute by minute.

Let me try to give you the psychology of this heightened temper. It presupposes, first, a degree of sensibility — the spirit's eyes must be open. But, second, what is thereby revealed awakens the spirit further — as a sleeper sensitive to sound is wakened outright by the bell. And the final result is conduct raised to a new plane: a finer adjustment to circumstances — compare, if you will forgive the bathos, the effect of coffee on the thought-processes. We become more able to live with style, instead of sloppily; to get the benefit of ourselves. Everything comes to seem more worth while. There is at once more energy and more detachment: more strength for serving the Ideal — the human ideal — and more detachment in success and in failure alike.

And the detachment goes deeper than the humanist can follow: detachment not only from self, but from Man. For in the presence of the Other we feel man to be so small — and to be, finally, instrumental. Instrumental to what? I do not certainly know. To worship, perhaps: to the apprehending and enjoying of the universe — and thus, it may be, to some contribution, some distinctive beauty, which the universe requires of us and of nothing else. And out of this humility comes a new dignity, which the sheer humanist must lack: the dignity which comes of free subordination of oneself to something more admirable. Here I remember Shelley's traveller, and the vast and trunkless legs of stone. My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. That is the dignity of man without the salute — colossal, and a wreck. The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Observe the humanist's predicament. He subordinates himself to the human ideal — well and good. But he cannot subordinate Mankind; there is nothing, on his view, to subordinate it to; and therefore, at the last, he cannot truly subordinate even himself. Whereas the mind sensitive to the superhuman has a humility, a dignity, a peace, which is unshakable — and which underlies even his dread of the holy, even his vision of the horror of existence. He has also a deep felt-scepticism about human thought itself. He feels its superficiality, its minute scope, its merely mythical character; and in feeling that, he feels the presence of that which utterly transcends it.

And this — paradoxically — should make him in the long run a better thinker than the pure humanist: a more sensitive, supple, cautious one. He will not take the fashionable principles of his day too seriously: the materialism of the nineteenth century; the mentalism of the twentieth — I think of Professor Eddington; psycho-analysis; even that blessed phrase, "the scientific attitude". But equally he must beware of taking theology seriously; he must avoid all doctrine, and welcome all hypothesis.

One last safeguard, and I am done. Scepticism about human reason need not — must not — lead to irrationalism. A man may doubt the reach of his own mind and still accept objective rationality. The Other that he worships is irrational to him — freakish, terrible, grisly to him; but it may yet be in itself systematic. The universe may be intelligible, though not to man. And even man may progressively understand — and must try to do so. That is my whole case. Humanism is necessary; humanism is not enough. Beyond the walls of our well-lighted house there is a darkness; and in the darkness, Something. The right attitude to that Something is neither denial nor doctrine, but the salute. And the salute, rightly performed, does not withdraw us from the world's work: it sends us back to it with a quieter mind and a steadier hand. These two attitudes may seem to our half-formed intelligence to be in conflict; in practice, each demands the other.

The final two sheets carry no lecture text: sheet 33 is blank, and sheet 34 bears only the Liverpool University Library archive stamp (STP2, F11/4) — the manuscript's afterlife as an archival object.