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Part 1: Section 3 - The World as a Moral Order

THERE WERE THREE CENTRAL AND GOVERNING PHILOSOPHICAL ideas
which, as we saw, were implicit in the medieval world-pictureGod, world-purpose,
and the world as a moral order. In the last chapter I discussed the first two. In the
present chapter I shall discuss the third. My purpose here, as there, will not be history.
It needs no documentation to show that medieval man believed that the world is a
moral order. This will be obvious so soon as we understand what the idea means. As
before we shall be concerned with discussing what this idea does mean, and what its
logical implications and difficulties are. For this is what we have to understand if we
are to make any attempt to fathom the perplexities of our own age.
What does it mean, then, to say that the world is a moral order? The idea, as thus
expressed, is certainly extremely vague. Yet it has been of superlative importance in
the intellectual and spiritual history of mankind. It is a part of the religious view of the
world. It permeates not only Christianity, but all the great religions, at any rate those
which are theistic in type.
It will help us at this stage to introduce a little modern phIloosophical jargon. Jargon
is to be avoided, if possible, but sometimes it is useful. Some modern philosophers
have said that "moral values are objective," while others have said that "moral values
pge 33
are subjective." In this chapter I shall maintain that the assertion that "moral values
are objective" is identical in meaning with the assertion that "the world is a moral
order." If this is so, then obviously the view that moral values are subjective is the
same as the belief that the world is not a moral order. It is not perhaps obvious, and I
shall have to prove, that "moral values are objective" means the same thing as "the
world is a moral order." But for the moment I propose to take this for granted.
The words "objective" and "subjective" are extremely ambiguous, and have
unfortunately been used in different senses by different writers, or by the same writers
in different contexts. I shall therefore begin by giving rough definitions of the

meanings of the terms as I propose to use them here and throughout this book. I call
my definitions "rough," because they do not pretend to very great precision. But they
will be sufficiently clear to guide us in our inquiries and to prevent us from falling
into fallacies due to ambiguity of language.
Any value will be called subjective if the existence of the value depends, wholly or in
part, on any human desires, feelings, opinions, or other mental states. An objective
value will, of course, be the opposite of this. It will be a value which does not depend
on any human desire, feeling, or other mental state.
There are, of course, different kinds of values. We attribute value to anything if we
call it, in any sense, good, or use any equivalent term for it. We may be said to
attribute a dis-value to it if we call it bad in any sense. We certainly use such words as
"good" and "bad" in different senses, of which we may distinguish three of the most
important. If we call a picture or a poem good or bad, beautiful or ugly, we are usually
speaking of aaesthetic value. If we call a man good or bad, or an action right or
wrong, we are usually speaking of moral values. If we call a motor car, a house, a
pen, or a typewriter, good or bad, we are generally referring to what may be called
utilitarian or economic values.
We can most easily illustrate the meaning of the words "subjective" and "objective"
by reference to economic values. For
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no one, I think, would dispute that economic values are subjective according to the
definition I have given. A house or an automobile would have absolutely no economic
or utilitarian value if no human beings ever desired such things. Moreover the more
human beings desire them, the greater becomes their economic value, the less they are
desired the less becomes their economic value. The strength of human desires for an
object and the number of people who desire itwhat economists call the demandis
one of the factors on which depends the so-called law of supply and demand, the other
factor being, of course, the supply. All this makes it evident that economic values
depend for their existence on human desires, feelings, or opinions, and are therefore,
according to our definition, subjective.

Another value which is plainly subjectivewhether we call this too an economic

value or give it some other nameis the pleasant or unpleasant taste of foods. A man
who says, "Caviar is nice" is not attributing an objective quality to the caviar, as he
would be if he described its weight or chemical properties. He means nothing more
than "I like caviar," so that his statement really describes his own feelings or
preferences, and does not describe any characteristic of the caviar. Clearly, then,
caviar is not nice unless someone likes it, so that its niceness depends on human
likings or desires, and is accordingly subjective. Another consequence follows from
this. If one man says, "Caviar is nice," and another says, "Caviar is nasty," they are
not contradicting each other as they would be if they were attributing opposite
chemical properties to it. For the first is merely saying, "I like caviar," while the
second is saying, "I do not like it," and both these statements may be true.
Since it is admitted that economic values are subjective, it is a very natural suggestion
that all kinds of value must be like them in this respect. Let us then raise this question
regarding moral and aesthetic values. We are not in this book directly concerned with
aesthetic values, but we shall find that it will be instructive to consider them also to
some extent in this chapter. A great many philosophers in the modern period, and at
the present day, have
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thought that both moral and aesthetic values, subjective Co' v ues must be, like
economic values, subjective. Consider the following passage which refers to moral
values and was written by the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who was born in
1588 and died in 1679, and was a contemporary of Galileo:
Every man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself,
good; and that evil which displeaseth him; insomuch that while every man differeth
from another in constitution, they differ also from one another concerning the
common definition of good and evil. Nor is there any such thing as absolute goodness,
considered without relation... And as we call good and evil the things which please
and displease; so we call goodness and badness, the qualities or powers whereby they
do it. [1]

This is one of the earliest modern statements of the view that moral values are
subjective. For it makes good and evil depend on human feelings of pleasure and
displeasure, and is therefore, by our definition, a subjective theory. Such a passage,
utterly out of tune with medieval thought, marks a revolutionary change in the climate
of European opinion. Moral subjectivism is characteristic of the modern mind, and
was, in general, absent from the medieval mind. Something had happened in the
interval, say between the thirteenth century and the time of Hobbes, which caused this
change, and later on we shall have to discuss what it was. For the present we note
only that the opinion expressed by Hobbes, or something essentially like it, has
become common in the modern world.
It is true that at the present day almost no one holds the very crude version of
subjectivism which is expressed in the above passage. It is crude because it implies
that the distinction between good and evil depends on the likes or dislikes of each
individual man. If thius were taken literally, it would follow that if a man liked
something he could never call it bad or evil. This, however, is not the case. We do all
often admit that something would give us pleasure, which is the same as saying that
we like it, but that
1 Thomas Hobbes Works, ed. Molesworth (London: J Bohn, 1839-45) vol IV, p. 32.
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nevertheless it would be morally wrong. We may call the view which Hobbes
perhaps carelesslystated in this passage individual subjectivism. According to the
most fashionable version of moral subjectivism now current, good and evil, right and
wrong, are not relative to single individuals, but to cultures or civilizations or large
social groups. Hobbes here writes as if he thought that what "pleaseth" each
individual is what that individual considers good. The typical current view is that the
standard of right and wrong in any society or culture is rather what "pleaseth" the
society or culture as a whole. It is the desires or feelings of the groupand this
presumably means the desires or feelings of the majority of the groupwhich make
the standard both of that group as a whole and of the individuals who compose it. We
may call this view group subjectivism, as distinguished from Hobbes's individual
subjectivism. We should note, however, that both views come within our definition of

the theory of the subjectivity of moral values. For in both cases moral values are
dependent "on human desires, feelings, or opinions."
That a radical change had come over European thought on the subject of moral values
by the time of Hobbes has been noted. We also noted that Hobbes was a contemporary
of Galileo. Further, the philosophy of Hobbes in general was based upon the new
science of his time. It expresses the sort of view of the world which was at that time
suggested to philosophers by the work of the scientists. It may be difficult to detect at
first sight any connection between the physics of Galileo, Kepler, or Newton and a
change of view about the nature of moral values. The seventeenth century scientists
confined their inquiries to the properties of matter, to astronomy and mechanics for
the most part. What bearing can physics or astronomy possibly have upon morals?
What difference can it make to any ethical theory whether the sun goes round the
earth or the earth round the sun, whether the planetary orbits are circular or elliptical,
whether the laws of motion and of falling bodies are those accepted by Aristotle or
those put forward by Galileo? Yet we shall find, when we come to discuss the
question, that it was precisely the new science which
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was the ultimate and basic cause of that radical change of opinion from moral
objectivism to moral subjectivism which we are now discussing.
Although moral subjectivism, in one form or another, has become the prevalent
opinion of the intellectuals of our time, it is by no means the universally accepted
opinion. There have been throughout the modern period, and there still are, some
distinguished and many competent thinkers, who repudiate it and accept rather some
form of belief in the objectivity of moral values. What does this mean? We may
remind ourselves of our definition. Moral objectivism is the view that moral values
are not dependent upon any human desires, feelings, opinions, or other mental states.
This, however, is merely a negative statement. It tells us only what moral values do
not depend on. And we may well ask at this stage upon what, according to moral
objectivists, they do depend. A preliminary answer might be that any view which
holds that moral values are dependent on anything whatever which is not merely a
part of the human mind, but is something which we should ordinarily speak of as

being outside the human mind, would be a form of objectivism. One of the simplest
kinds of objectivism would be the opinion that good and evil depend upon "the will of
God," that, for example, good is to be defined not, as Hobbes would have it, as that
which "pleaseth" man, but rather as that which "pleaseth" God, and that evil is that
which "displeaseth" God. Since the will of God, or that which "pleaseth" God, is
independent of any human mental state, this would be, according to our definition, an
objectivist view of morals. There are, however, many other possible forms of
objectivism which are much more sophisticated and less simple-minded. They may
differ from one another in their positive views as to what moral values depend on. But
they all agree in the negative condition that, according to them all, moral values do
not depend merely upon human psychology.
Let us look at some of the reasons why many philosophers think that moral values
cannot be subjective. We saw that economic values are admittedly subjective, and that
it therefore
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seems natural and plausible to suggest that moral and aesthetic values are like them in
this respect. In fact this is perhaps one of the reasons why people easily think that
moral and aesthetic values must be subjective. We should, however, note in the first
place that this does not at all follow. For there may be important differences between
economic values, on the one side, and moral and aesthetic values, on the other. For
instance, some people would say that moral and aesthetic values are in some way
"spiritual" in their nature, while economic values are "material," and that the former
concern "higher" things, while the latter concern "lower" things. It is very difficult to
say what this means, or whether the distinction has any real foundation. But it is at
least possible that it indicates some genuine difference. We note at any rate that
whereas apparently only men have moral feelingswhether this is also true of
aesthetic feelings seems a little doubtfulanimals may be said in a sense to have or
be aware of ecoonomic values. They do, that is to say, value such things as food, a
shelter, and so on. These vague ideas, of course, prove very little. The utmost that they
can be said to show is that perhaps there is some important difference between
economic values and moral and aesthetic valuesthough we have not been able to
show what it iswhich should put us on our guard against assuming too hastily that

whatever is true of economic values, for instance that they are subjective, must
necessarily also be true of moral and aesthetic values. We must, however, try to see
whether there may not be better arguments than this which have made some
philosophers doubt that moral values are subjective. We shall find that there are better
arguments, but that none of them can be said to be conclusivewhich is the reason
why there are still honest differences of opinion about the matter.
It is pointed out by those who reject subjectivism in moral and aesthetic matters that a
subjectivist theory implies the following three things, which do not seem to be true of
moral and aesthetic values. First, if the value of a thing is subjective, this is equivalent
to saying that whether it has value or not is no more than a matter of taste. This is
especially obvious in the case of
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individual subjectivism. Whether caviar is nice or nasty is plainly a matter of personal
taste. It is nice for one person and nasty for another. And if we take the Hobbesian
view of morals, we shall have to say such things as that whether murder is right or
wrong is merely a matter of personal taste. It is right if you like it and wrong if you
don't. It is true that this is to some extent avoided, or at least mitigated, if we adopt the
theory of group subjectivism. Whether murder is right or wrong will not then be a
matter of personal taste, but it will still be a matter of the mere tastes of social groups.
Secondly, subjectivism implies that, properly speaking, no value judgment is ever
either true or false. That caviar is nice is neither a true statement about the caviar, nor
a false one. For it only means "I like caviar." This may be a true statement about me,
but it is not a statement about the caviar at all, and therefore it does not tell us
anything either true or false about the caviar. The same will be true of moral and
aesthetic value judgments, if these values are subjective. If we say, "Murder is
wicked," this is not really a statement about murder at all, and tells us nothing true or
false about it, though it may imply something true or false about us or the group to
which we belong.
A third implication of subjectivism is that, if it is true, there cannot be any rational
discussion about moral or aesthetic matters, nor can there be any such things as moral

or aesthetic education. If we adopt the individual subjectivism of Hobbes, it will be

meanningless to discuss whether a thing is good or bad, or whether an action is right
or wrong, because which they are is only a matter of the personal tastes of each
individual. Not quite the same crude conclusion follows from group subjectivism.
There may be, on that theory, a genuine difference of opinion between two individuals
about a moral question, and it will be sensible for them to argue it. For if one says, "X
is good," and the other says, "X is bad," the first means "our social group likes X,"
while the second means "our social group dislikes X," and it is possible to discuss
rationally which of these two opinions is true. Moreover, on this view there may in a
sense be such a thing as moral education,
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since there will be a necessity to indoctrinate the young with the preferences of the
social group. But it will still be the case that as between social groups there can be no
rational discussion of moral differences, and no such thing as the education of one
group by another. For if the group to which I belong disapproves, shall we say, of
slavery, this only means that my group dislikes it. And if some other social group
approves of slavery, this only means that they like it. Thus the two groups stand to
each other in the same way as the two individuals who respectively like and dislike
caviar. No discussion between them will then be sensible, for each group is right
about its own tastes.
Now the main argument of the moral objectivists has been that, although the three
implications of a subjective theory of values namely, that values are merely matters of
taste, that value judgments are neither true nor false, and that no discussion of them is
possible-are quite true of economic values and of questions such as whether the taste
of a food is nice or not, they are wholly unacceptable if we apply them to moral and
aesthetic values. We find if we try to apply them to these values that we are forced to
conclusions which jar on, or even outrage, our moral and aesthetic feelings. And it is
urged that a theory of morality which outrages our moral feelings cannot be a true
theory; and that the same thing will be true of an aesthetic theory.
The case is perhaps rather stronger in the case of moral values than it is in the case of
aesthetic values. We will take the weaker case first.

Undoubtedly there is, in differing judgments on artistic questions, a large measure of

what may be called "mere" personal taste. One competent critic may prefer the poetry
of Shelley, while another equally competent critic prefers that of Keats. One music
lover may enjoy Beethoven more than Mozart, another Mozart more than Beethoven.
In such cases we may be prepared to admit that tastes may legitimately differ. We are
not inclined to insist that one opinion, our own, is simply "right," the other simply
"wrong," although even here we may suspect that there is some failure of aesthetic
perception on the part of the critic who differs from us.
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We think that he may have a blind spot as a result of which some aesthetic quality
which we perceive escapes him. But we admit the possibility that we on our side may
have a blind spot which renders us incapable of fully appreciating the aesthetic quality
which he stresses. And so we are not disposed to insist dogmatically on our own
opinion, and may be content to say that the difference is a matter of personal taste.
But even here there is the suggestion that the question is not really one of personal
taste, since we are inclined to suspect failure of perception on one side or the other or
both. But since the issue seems undecidable, we are wIllmg to let it go, to drop the
argument with the polite or ambiguous phrase that "tastes differ."
But if a man prefers the poetry of Edgar Guest. or Mrs. Hemans to that of Milton, the
case is different. We are quite sure that he is aesthetically blind. We do not usually use
such words as "wrong," "incorrect," "untrue," or "mistaken." We are more likely to
accuse him of "bad taste." But the word "bad" carries with it the implication of
wrongness, the implication of some sort of objective truth in the value judgment
which we oppose to his. And the word "taste" does not here have the same meaning as
it does in the phrase "merely a matter of personal taste." If anything is merely a matter
of personal taste, the implication is that one man's taste is as good as the other's, and
that there is no question of a right and a wrong opinion. But to accuse a man of bad
taste in art implies that there is a right and a wrong opinion, or at least a better and a
worse opinion. This implies that the question at issue is not "merely a matter of
personal taste," but that it is rather a question of true and false values, and in
consequence that discussion of it is possible. No sensible person would seriously
discuss whether caviar is or is not nicer than oysters. But critics do discuss the values

of a work of art, and this is evidence that they do regard their disagreements as more
than differences of personal taste.
What, it may be asked, is the technique of such a discussion? How does one side hope
to convince the other? How can anyone involved in such a dispute ever prove his
case? To what observpage 42
able facts can he appeal? If two men should dispute whether the earth is round or flat,
there are definite facts which can be observed which will settle the question. But
surely no such procedure is possible when the question is one of the aesthetic value of
a work of art. And if there is no conceivable way of settling such a dispute, no
observable facts which support one side or the other, surely we shall have to admit
that the question is one of personal taste regarding which it is senseless to argue, or in
other words that the value is subjective.
But critics actually do argue such matters, and their discussions are not regarded,
either by themselves or by other people, as merely senselessas we should regard the
argument about caviar and oysters. There must therefore be some method or technique
which is in principle capable of settling their disagreements, though it may, of course,
fail in particular cases. And it is, I think, usually something like this. Each side thinks
that the other has failed to perceive some value or dis-value which is perceivable in
the work of art. He assumes, or at least hopes, that his opponent has the aesthetic
sensitivity required to perceive the value, but that he has somehow missed seeing it.
He therefore attempts to point it out. He draws attention to some quality of the work
of art which he thinks has escaped notice. He may succeed, in which case the dispute
is settled. But if he fails, this may be due to either of two causes. It may be that his
opponent does have the required aesthetic sensitivity, that he could perceive the value
in question, but that the procedure of pointing it out has so far been unsuccessful. Or it
may be that he simply does not possess the required sensitivity, or in other words that
he has a blind spot. In either case the presupposition of the discussion, the assumption
which renders the argument rational and not senseless, is that there either is or is not
some value to be perceived, and that there is in consequence a right and a wrong
opinion about the matter. This is inconsistent with aesthetic subjectivism.

The possibility of education in aesthetic appreciation points to the same conclusion. A

student hopes to learn what are true and what are false values in art. But if all
aesthetic questions were no
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more than matters of personal taste, then the opinion of the most uneducated freshman
student about a work of art would be just as good as the opinion of the most
experienced artist or art critic. Why then should he trouble to go through the arduous
process of art education?
Now none of these arguments against aesthetic subjectivism is decisive. The
instructed subjectivist is well aware of them, and thinks that he has good answers to
them. I shall not discuss his possible answers at present, because my aim at the
moment is not to solve the problem of the objectivity or subjectivity of aesthetic and
moral values, but only to present it to the reader as a problem, and to point out how
difficult a problem it is. The arguments just put forward against aesthetic subjectivism
are not conclusive, but on the other hand they are far from negligible. The objectivist
has at least an arguable and a tenable case. His opinion may in the end be mistaken,
but it cannot be dismissed as foolish. We see at least that we cannot argue that,
because economic values are obviously subjective, aesthetic values must necessarily
be subjective too. We see that there are difficulties in holding that aesthetic values are
subjective which do not arise in the case of economic values. The truth about the
matter, whatever it may be, is cerrtainly not obvious, and is very difficult to discover.
Exactly the same arguments which have just been put forward against aesthetic
subjectivism applybut I think with greater forceagainst moral subjectivism. Are
moral questions merely matters of personal or group taste? In order to test this we will
take an extreme case, because in an extreme case the principles involved will stand
out strongly. Suppose that there is a man who is by nature so cruel, so sadistic, that he
enjoys burning children alive. We should, of course, condemn his pleasure as a moral
abomination. But should we admit that this judgment was, after all, only a matter of
taste? Apparently this is what Hobbes would have to say on the basis of the passage
quoted abovethough we may be sure that Hobbes would not have said it. If burning

children alive pleases a man, then it is, on the basis of the passage from Hobbes, good.
If it displeases him, it is evil. And the one opinion
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is no better or truer than the other. As I pointed out before, individual subjectivism of
the Hobbesian type, is not now held, so far as I know, by any philosopher. It is group
subjectivism which is nowadays popular. So let us consider the question on that basis.
In our culture burning children alive would be universally condemned. But suppose
anthropologists discovered some other culture in which such actions were considered
highly meritorious. Should we admit that the moral question involved was only a
matter of group taste, and that the moral standard of this other culture was not evil or
bad or inferior to ours, but was merely different from ours? Would not the moral sense
of every decent man rebel against such an interpretation? But if so, how can we admit
subjectivism?
The fact that the example taken, that of burning children alive for pleasure, is
extreme, even absurd, makes no difference to the argument. We should feel the same,
only less strongly, if a weaker example were chosen. We cannot admit that stealing or
lying are good things merely because some person, or group of persons, likes or
approves of them. We cannot admit that moral questions are only matters of taste, that
all opinions about them are equally true, and that all discussions of them are senseless.
Again the argument may not be conclusive, for the subjectivist may perhaps have a
reply ready, but we can hardly help feel that there must be something wrong with a
theory of morals which so outrages our conscience. At least the onus of proof seems
to be on the subjectivist, and to be a heavy one.
Suppose we admit, then, that moral objectivism, whether ultimately true or not, is at
least a view which has something to be said for it. We may then go on to ask what sort
of a theory of the nature of moral values will be consistent with it. The phrase "the
nature of" moral values needs explaining. Consider Hobbes again. His theory was that
the nature of goodness consists in the fact that the good thing pleases the man who
calls it good. This is, in fact, his definition of goodness. To give a definition of
anything is to state its nature. Hobbes's definition makes moral values subjec-

page 45
tive. So we may rephrase our question in the form: what definitions of good and evil
could be suggested according to which good and evil would be objective?
There are many such possible definitions. One example has already been given. We
might suppose that the proper definition of a morally right action is that it is an action
which is in accordance with the will of God. A wrong action will then be defined as
one which is contrary to the will of God. This is a view which has often been taken,
for instance by the theologian Paley in the eighteenth century. Whether this theory is
true or false is not what I am now discussing. The point is that it is an example of a
theory according to which moral values are objective. For an objective value is, by
definition, one which is independent of any human desire, feeling, purpose, opinion,
or other mental state. And God's will, if there is such a thing, is plainly independent of
any such human mental states. For instance, if it is God's will that we love one
another, then this will be good whatever any human being, or set of human beings,
thinks or says or feels or wants. If moral values are fixed by God's will, and not by
any human wills or desires, they are objective.
To give another example of an objectivist definition of morals.
Suppose that someone believes that there is such a thing as a cosmic purpose. He
might believe this without accepting any theology or any belief in God. He might
speak of it as just "nature's purpose." He might then define good actions as those
which tend to advance the world-purpose, bad actions as those which tend to thwart it.
Moral values would then be objective because the cosmic purpose is presumably as
independent of human ideas or wishes as is God's will. As we have seen, a nontheistic
teleology of this kind is quite possible. The purpose will be immanent in the world
itself, not a conscious plan in the mind of a being external to the world. Presumably
the world will have to be in some sense alive, but it does not follow that it must
necessarily be conscious. A tree is a living being, but not a conscious one. We
sometimes talk as if a tree, reaching upwards to the sunlight, or downwards towards
the moisture in the soil, were
page 46

actuated by purpose. We speak of its "trying" to reach the sunlight or the moisture. It
may be said that this is only a metaphor; or that, although it is useful to talk as if there
were a purpose, we cannot really mean that there is one, because a purpose is
necessarily a conscious idea. The Freudian concept of the unconscious renders this
doubtful however. It is possible to suppose that the world, or nature, is governed by an
immanent purpose or purposes which in some blind unconscious way it has in itself,
without this purpose being a conscious plan in the mind of any transcendent personal
being. And if any such philosophy is possible, then it will also be possible to suppose
that moral values can be defined in terms of the immanent world-purpose, thus
making them objective.
A third possible objectivist theory of moral and aesthetic values may attempt to define
them in terms of the Absolute. The conception of the Absolute was developed by
certain German idealistic metaphysicians at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
and their thought penetrated into England and America during the latter half of the
century. The Absolute was supposed to be a "universal" mind, but not a personal mind
like the popular conception of God. This universal mind may then be thought of as the
source of all spiritual values, particularly of the so-called trinity of values, goodness,
beauty, and truth. Such a philosophy will regard these values as objective, since the
Absolute is independent of the human mind.
A more humdrum objectivist theorywhich makes no mention of any ultimate reality
or absolute beingis that which holds simply that moral and aesthetic values are
objective qualities of things, actions, or situations. By an objective quality of a thing
is meant one which it is believed to possess independently of any perceiving mind.
The roundness of a penny is such a quality, since it is believed that the penny will
continue to be round independently of what any human or other mind either thinks or
desires. It does not become square if any human being, or all human beings, should
want it to be square or believe it to be square. It is quite possible to suppose that
goodness and beauty are objective
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qualities in the same sense. It could be thought that a picture is beautiful even if no
eye is seeing it and no mind thinking of it, in other words that it just has in itself a

quality of beauty. In the same way it could be thought that a situation or action has an
objective quality of moral goodness.
I do not myself think that this is at all a plausible view, and my purpose in mentioning
it is only to illustrate the fact that it is not impossible to hold that moral and aesthetic
values are objective, since a number of theories of the nature of such values can be
suggested any of which will be consistent with their objectivity.
Thus the upshot of our discussion is: first, that there are arguments, drawn from our
moral and aesthetic feelings, which, though not conclusive, suggest that the
corresponding values are objective; and, second, that such a view, since several
possible theories of the nature of these values are consistent with it, is a respectable
and tenable hypothesis, although we have not yet made up our minds whether it is
true.

Medieval men would never have used the language which we have been using in this
chapter. They would not have talked of "objective" and "subjective" or even of
"values." This is modern jargon. But that the idea which we have expressed by the
phrase, "the objectivity of moral values," was implicit in all their thinking there can be
no doubt. For as I shall proceed to show this idea is really a necessary part of any sort
of religious belief about the world.
It is, in the first place, identical with the thought that the world is a moral order. For
consider what is implied by the assertion that moral values are subjective. This means
that they depend upon the purposes or desires or opinions or other mental states of
human beings. Hence if there did not happen to be any human beings in the universe,
there would be no moral values in it; nor are there any now, apart from human beings.
Nothing in the universe is, in itself, either good or bad. There are no values
economic, aesthetic, or moralin the non-human universe. Values are purely human
things. Such a view is common enough nowapage 48

days. The universe, it is sometimes said, is "indifferent" to our values, whether of

beauty or goodness. Nature has no preference for good over bad things. Its mills turn
out any kind of grist indifferently. This is the view that the world is not a moral order.
The view that it is a moral orderin other words that moral values are objective
was not only implicit in medieval thought, but is held, consciously or unconsciously,
by religious men everywhere. It is an essential part of the religious attitude. It still
finds expression in many things which plain people, who do not profess to be either
philosophers or theologians, often say. Often enough those who give expression to it
do not profess belief in any religious creed, and would perhaps deny that they are
religious. The thoughts of the majority of plain men on such matters are apt to be
vague and incoherent. But they may yield strong evidence of the persistence among us
of ideas which intellectuals are doing their best to obliterate.
For instance, many people seem to believe such propositions as that "the good must
triumph in the end"; or that truth has some inherent power which will enable it
ultimately to win out over falsehood; or that there is some "force" in things making
for goodness, a drive towards goodness immanent in the world. During the blackest
period of World War II, when Britain was fighting alone after the fall of France, and
when many people in America believed that Britain was about to collapse before a
barbarian assault, a correspondent in England wrote to me with complete confidence
that Britain would win the war even if the United States did not intervene. When I
inquired what basis he had for this belief he replied that "it is impossible for a system
based on lies, such as Hitler's, to prevail." He was an agnostic. The empirical or
historical evidence for his belief is wholly inadequate. Such a belief stems rather from
a vague feeling that the world is a moral order.
In the last chapter I remarked that belief in the teleological character of the world was
not invented by Christianity, but has been characteristic of the thinking of the western
world since at least the time of Plato and Socrates. The same is true of the view
page 49

that the world is a moral order. According to Plato the world is moved not only by
purpose, but by good purpose. It moves everywhere in the direction of the "form of
the good."
It may be relevant to add that this belief is not confined to the western world. The idea
of a world-purpose can be traced in Hinduism, which is in some sense theistic, but not
perhaps in Buddhism. But the idea of the world as a moral order appears in both
religions in the conception of "karma." The essence of the doctrine of karma is that
every living being receives at some timeif not in his present life then in some later
reincarnationexact justice in the way of punishment or reward for his good or evil
deeds. Thus at least the ethical quality of absolute justice is attributed to the worldorder.
The truth is that the ultimately moral character of the universe, whether it is
personified in the form of a righteous and transcendent God or is conceived as
immanent in the world-process itself, has been a part of all advanced religious
cultures. It has been, until recent times in the West, a universal belief of civilized
humanity. The opposite conception, that of a blind universe which is perfectly
indifferent to good or evilthough it appears occasionally in the ancient world, as in
Lucretiusis characteristic only of the western world during the last three centuries,
and is the product of the seventeenth century scientific revolution. That values are
subjective and relative, that the world is not a moral order, is the fashionable belief of
the intellectuals of our time. And this view of the world has seeped down to the
masses. But since the older religious view persists under the surface, this gives rise to
perplexities and contradictions in men's minds in contrast to the monolithic clarity and
simplicity of the medieval mind.

page 179
Part 3: Section 1 - The Problem of Religious Truth
10
THE PROBLEMS WITH WHICH WE HAVE BEEN CONCERNED IN this book, up
to the end of the last chapter, have been in their nature historical. We have tried to
show how the ideas which form the substance of the modern mind originated and
grew up. We have been careful to avoid any discussion of their truth, or to attempt any
assessment of their value. This holds true even of the many passages in this book in
which we have examined the logic of an argument, in which, for example, we have
inquired whether one idea logically follows from another. We have been careful to
point out, for instance, that a purely naturalistic and anti-religious view of the world
does not logically follow from science. But from this nothing follows as to the truth or
falsity of naturalism. For we have to remember the old principle that a true conclusion
is often supported by illogical arguments. The naturalistic view of the world may be
true although the modern mind has reached it by a series of thought transitions in
which the logic has been faulty.
In the remaining chapters of this book I shall change altogether our mode of approach.
I shall endeavor to present reasonable conclusions about the great problems which
face us. I shall attempt to weigh the truth or falsity of our beliefs. We have now on our
hands, as a result of the history of the last three hundred
page 212
years, a number of major spiritual and intellectual problems. They are the problems
which are the root causes of the bafflement and perplexity of the modern mind. Their
full solution must no doubt be the work of the ages before us. An individual is hardly
likely to solve them completely. But I propose to offer, in the rest of this book, what
contributions I can towards their solution.
If our analysis has been correct, there are two central problems and a sub-problem.
The first problem is whether we are to accept the scientific view of the world as true
and as the sole truth; or whether the religious view is true or contains some truth

which the scientific view leaves out; or whether the two can be in any way reconciled.
This is certainly the most important problem. The second problem concerns the
foundations of morality, whether they are secular or religious, and if secular whether
we are committed to a relativistic view of morals. The sub-problem is: have we any
free will, or are we mere cogs in a world machine, unable, even in the smallest
matters of our conduct, to alter by a hair's breadth the inevitable course of the world? I
call this a sub-problem because it is subordinate to the problem of morals and really a
part of it. For if there is no free will, there cannot be any morality.
I shall devote the present chapter to the question of religion and the final chapter to
the questions of free will and morality.

In the modern epoch the two world-pictures, that which I have called the naturalistic
or scientific view of the world and that which I have called the religious view, face
one another in unresolved contradiction. I have said that modern culture has for its
essence the conflict between them. It is not to be solved by amiable "reconciliations"
between bishops and scientists. The notion that it has been settled because
ecclesiastics now agree that the question of the age of the earth, of whether the
heliocentric or the geocentric astronomy is true, of whether man is a "special creation"
or is descended from simian ancestors, belong to the province of science and not to
that of religion, is a sheer
page 213
delusion. For science, as we have tried to show, is irrelevant to the problem. The
problem is handed over to the philosophers because it is a matter of general worldviews, and not of the details of any science. Moreover, any mere compromise, by
which one part of the territory of the world is given to science, the other part to
religion, is worthless and shallow. This was the great insight of Kant and of the
romantic movement of the nineeteenth centurywhatever may be thought of the
particular solutions offered by Kant and the romantics. Thus the problem still stands
before us, unsolved by any rapprochements which have occurred, or are likely to
occur, between scientists and religious men.

The question may perhaps be put in the form: is religion, or is anything in any
religion, true? For it can hardly be the case that the religious view of the world in
general is true, but that all particular religions are wholly false. And if the question be
put in this formis any religion true?I should myself, until recently, have replied
with an unqualified no. Religion, I should have said, is nothing but a mass of false
ideas and superstitions of which the ultimate source is wishful thinking. We have
believed a view of the world which we want to believe, namely, that is ruled by a
power which is friendly to us and to the values of beauty and goodness which we
cherish. As a result of further study and reflection I have modified this opinion. To the
question asked I now find the answer to be a qualified yes.
To explain this is the object of the present chapter. I fear that its contents must appear,
in a peculiar sense, no more than the very personal opinions of a single man. I offer
them for what they are worth.
It will be helpful to begin by regarding the religious view of the world, not as a set of
intellectual propositions about the nature of the world, but as importing a way of life.
Of course any religion is, or implies, some complex of propositions about the
universe. But every religion offers a way of life. And I shall consider religion in this
aspect first, leaving its intellectual side, as a
page 214
set of beliefs about the world, for consideration later in this chapter.
I will quote three passages from T. S. Eliot's play The Cocktail Party. They come
from different parts of the play, but it is noteworthy that they are all three put into the
mouth of the same character, whose utterances, in some sense, carry the main
message of the drama. Whatever else there is in the play, it certainly teaches that there
are two possible ways of life between which we have to make a choice. Says the
character Reilly concerning human life:
The

best

of

bad

job

Except, of course, the saints.[1]

is

all

that

any

of

us

make

of

it

In a later context he says

There

is

The

first

Because

another

you

illustrated,

second

The

kind

The
You

seen

or

less,

is
of

will

know
journey

you

have

describe

in

it,

as

in

the

unknown,
faith

destination
will

if

could

have

more

The

You

way,

blind.

the

terms

have

seen

it,

lives

of

those

about

us.

so

issues

requires
from

be

little
But

familiar

all

cannot
very

courage.

we
and

that

the

until
way

faith

despair.

described;
you

leads

get
towards

there;
possession

Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.[1]

In a third passage, quoted from a later page, Reilly says:
But
In

such
myths

experience
and

can

images.

only
To

be

hinted

at

speak

about

it

We talk of darkness, labyrinths, Minotaur terrors.[1]

1 T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party. Quoted by permission of the publishers, Harcourt,
Brace and Company, Inc. The italics in these quotations are all mine except the word
"is" in the first line of the second quotation which is Mr. Eliot's.
page 215
There is then a "way," and an "experience," and a "destination." It is the way of the
"saints." Nevertheless it is "unknown." Also it is only for those who "have the
courage." The destination "cannot be described." The experience likewise cannot be
described, but is only "hinted at in myths and images." I shall suggest that these
words, a "way" or path, followed by the "saints," which leads to an "experience" and a
"destination" which "cannot be known" except through "myths and images," stand for
the conceptions which are the essential truth of all religions.
In every religion there is a way or a path, and there is a destination or experience to
which it leads. "I am the way, the truth and the life," says the Jesus of St John's
gospel. The Buddhist speaks of "the noble eightfold path." The destination, the

experiencewhich is hiddenis variously described as "salvation," "heaven,"

"nirvana," "union with Brahman." The different religions seem to refer to different
paths and different destinations. I shall maintain that always and everywhere, in all the
great religions, there is in fact only one destination, one experience, evenwith some
qualificationone path, but that it is "hinted at" by means of different "myths and
images" which constitute the differences between the religions.
Mr. Eliot gives to his own words, if I understand him, a specially Christian
interpretation. Thus the end of the play seems to teach that the "way" necessarily, or at
least usually, leads through martyrdom which, if taken in its literal sense of death for
the faith, is a peculiarly Christian conception. (All religions, of course, involve
martyrdom, if by that is meant only the destruction in us of the desires of the world.) I
do not know whether in this I interpret Mr. Eliot rightly. But in any case I shall not
follow him in any specifically Christian interpretation he may give to his own words.
I have made it clear before that in my view religion and the religious view of the
world are not the special property of Christian peoples, but belong to the universal
heritage of mankind. It does not matter whether the meanings which I shall give to
Mr. Eliot's words are his meanings or not. I shall use them to express my own
meanings. I shall give them
page 216
a more universal scope than he perhaps intends. What he says, apparently only of one
religion, applies, I shall contend, to all the great religions.
The myths and images by means of which we hint at the experience and the
destination are, in my view, though perhaps not in Mr. Eliot's, the creeds and dogmas
of the different religions. These vary and contradict one another, and herein lie the
differences between the religions. The unity between them lies, in the first instance, in
the path and the destination, the way of life, which is the way of the saints. By the
word "saint" perhaps Mr. Eliot means to refer only to the Christian saints. But I shall
mean the saints of any religion. Whether this way implies any common view of the
nature of the world is something which I shall discuss later in this chapter. Thus there
are three questions which we have to discuss:

(1) The conception of religious dogmas and doctrines as myths and images.
(2) The way of life, the destination, the experience.
(3) Whether the experience implies any special view of the nature of the universe.
That all religious doctrines and dogmas are myths and images means that none of
them is literally true. To have perceived this is the contribution made to thought by
the skeptics and the atheists, in fact by the scientific view of the world. But they have
missed something. They have simply said that the dogmas are not true. In this they
were right. What they failed to see was that the dogmas are not merely falsehoods, but
that they are myths, images, allegories which hint at a way of life, a destination, an
experience, and possibly alsothis is the question referred to in (3) above, which is
left for later discussionsome deeper truth about the universe. What we have first to
show is that the dogmas are, if understood literally, false. Hence the contentions of the
next few pages, which will be designed to show this, will seem like pure atheism and
skepticism. But they must be understood in the light of the later parts of this chapter.
page 217
Naturally I cannot take all the dogmas of all the great religions and show that, if taken
literally, they are false. Such a task would be almost endless. Nor is it at all necessary.
Practically all religious people hold that the doctrines which are special and peculiar
to religions other than their own are false. The Christian does not accept the Hindu
doctrine of reincarnation. The Buddhist does not accept the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity. The procedure I shall adopt will be to take only one dogma, which is common
to most religions, and which will be thought by most people to be the most
fundamental doctrine of religion, and show that, if it is understood literally, there is no
reason to believe that it is true, and every reason to suppose that it is false. This is the
doctrine that there exists a being, known as God, who is a person, a mind, a
consciousness, who formed a plan in his mind, and who, in accordance with his
purpose, created a world. I do not think that this can be "proved" to be false. It is
conceivable that there might be such a mind who made the world as a watchmaker
makes a watch. But I think it can be shown that there is no reason at all to think that
there is such a being, and that the conception of him in fact involves such difficulties

that we are compelled to give it up. That the doctrine of God may have a symbolic
meaning, which is true, is something the discussion of which is postponed to a later
page. It is only the literal meaning of it with which we are now concerned.
The first thing to say is that science has absolutely nothing to do with the matter. This
should be obvious from what has already been said in earlier chapters. It does not
make any difference to the doctrine of the existence of God whether the sun goes
round the earth or the earth round the sun, whether the planets move in circles or
ellipses, whether the laws of motion are what Galileo and Newton thought or not. The
transition from the teachings of early science to, a diminishing belief in God was a
psychological, not a logical transition. In other words, it was a mistake. It is true that
the scientific belief that all events are wholly to be explained by natural causes, and
that there are no supernatural interventions, does make real difficulties for the more
primitive
page 218
and naive ideas of God's action in the world. But even this, as was shown on page 92,
can be overcome by a little logical ingenuity. We have only to suppose that God's
existence is necessary to the continued existence of the world, and that he acts in it,
now as in the past, always through and by means of, the operation of natural laws.
And if Newtonian science contained nothing inconsistent with belief in God, neither
does the science of today. No science ever could.
The kind of thought which is really fatal to literal belief in religious dogmas has
always come from philosophers, not from scientists. The popular belief to the
contrary, which is a delusion, is partly due to the mistaken transitions of thought
already referred to, and partly to the fact that science is in everybody's mouth (the
modern idol), while philosophy is unknown except to a few people.
In Chapter 2 I tried to pin down carefully the traditional meaning of the word "God,"
and of the conception of his creation of the world. For that word is nowadays used in
all sorts of nebulous ways. I know a man who professes to believe in God, but who, if
pressed, says that what he means by God is the sum total of all the good tendencies of
human beings. This, at any rate, is not what the ages have meant by God. The ages

have meant a mind, a spirit, a soul, a consciousness, which made and rules over the
world. The conception, as shown in Chapter 2, is necessarily anthropomorphic. It is
necessary to insist on this in order to understand what follows.
What reason is there to believe in the existence of such a being? There are a number
of well-known so-called "proofs of the existence of God." These have been put
forward from time to time in the history of thought from Plato onwards, by
philosophers and theologians. It is impossible that I should here examine them all.
Most philosophersexcept Roman Catholic philosophersand most philosophically
instructed religious men themselves, now regard them as fallacious and outmoded;
and religious thinkers tend to rely, more and more, not on these external, logical
arguments, but on the internal light of religious experience
page 219
in men's soulsof which more later. I have already examined, in Chapter 5, one of
the most famous of these arguments, the argument from design, and shown that it is
fallacious. I cannot do more here than briefly discuss a few other lines of thought
which have been believed in the past to prove the existence of a divine being.
One of the most common has been that the world must have a first cause, which must
be God. But why should not the chains of causes and effects run back into an infinite
past with no beginning? This may be difficult to conceive, and some philosophers
have thought that the idea of infinite time involves contradictions. But the point to be
made is that the idea of God as a first cause presents exactly the same difficulties and
contradictions and offers no solution of them. For the existence of God, on the
traditional view, runs back into an infinite past in exactly the same way as the
suggested chain of causes. It is true that some theologians, seeing this, have said that
God's eternity is not an infinite extension of time, and that God created time along
with the temporal world. But this leads to contradiction. For if it is true, then time had
a beginning and before it began there was no time. But the conception of time
beginning at a time, which was not itself in time, i.e., had no time before it, is selfcontradictory.

The main point, however, is that there is no reason to suppose that there must have
been a first cause, since the chain of causes might go infinitely backwards into infinite
time; and that if there is a difficulty in conceiving an infinite backward time
containing an infinite series of causes, there will be exactly the same difficulty in
conceiving an infinite backward time containing only one infinitely prolonged cause,
namely, God.
Suppose we admit, however, that there must have been a first cause. Why should this
first cause have been a mind? The argument that the chain of causes cannot have an
infinite backward extension, even if accepted, shows nothing as to the nature of the
primal cause. Why must it be a mental, rather than a material, existence? The only
answer which has ever been given to this
page 220
question is that the hypothesis of a mind is the only one which will explain the
evidence of purpose, the adaptation of means to ends, which we find in nature. In
other words, the argument that there is a first cause, even if it is admitted, is
compelled to supplement itself by appealing to the argument from design in order to
show that the first cause must have been a mind rather than anything else. But we
have already shown that the argument from design is worthless. .
It is rather late in the day to discuss the argument that miracles prove the existence of
God. Not many people believe that miracles occur. But a word may be said on this
subject. Suppose that some very astonishing event occurs which we are utterly unable
to explain. Water is turned into wine, or a stone into bread .. We are inclined to believe
that a miracle has occurred. Now eIther the extraordinary event is due to the operation
of some natural law which is not at present known, or it is a breach of natural law
only to be explained as an intervention of God. If a miracle is defined as an event
which we cannot yet explain by natural laws, but which could be explained if we
knew all the laws of nature, then a miracle, not being a divine intervention, affords no
evidence of the existence of God. But if it is defined as an intervention by God in
breach of natural law, then we cannot use an astonishing event as an argument for
God unless we already know all the laws of nature and know that the astonishing
event in question could not be explained by themwhich is to say, never. It may be

the case, for all I know, that paralytics are sometimes cured at Lourdes. If there is
sufficient trustworthy evidence of thisI do not know whether there is or notthen it
ought to be believed. But it proves nothing. For we do not know all the natural causes
and laws which affect human bodies. We are coming to know a little more about the
powerful effects of unusual psychological states on the physical organism. "Faith"
may well be one of these powerfully working psychological states. We are still
woefully ignorant of such matters. But there is absolutely no reason to suppose that
these cures, if they occur, are not due to natural causes.
page 221
If we admit that all the arguments for the existence of God are invalid, this does not,
of course, prove that God does not exist. The fact that there is no evidence of the
existence of a mountain thirty thousand feet high on the back of the moon does not
prove that one does not exist. There might be such a mountain. In the same way there
might be such a being as God, even though there is no evidence of the fact available
to us. It is impossible to prove the non-existence of God. You can only say that there
is no evidence of his existence. Let us suppose, then, that there is such a being.
What, now, does traditional religion tell us about his nature? First, he is a mind, a
consciousness. In the Christian tradition this mind is infinite, eternal, omnipotent, and
perfectly good. Let us consider some of these attributes. The word "mind" has to be
taken in its literal sense as having the same essential meaning as it has when it is
applied to human beings. Of course, the conception of the mind of God may have
some symbolic meaning; it may be a myth or image which stands for something else.
But we are now considering religious doctrines as taken in their literal meaning. And
understood in this way the mind of God must be something like a human mind,
although it is no doubt much more powerful, wise, and good. But the word "mind,"
taken in this literal way, means a stream of psychological states, flowing, changing,
succeeding one another in a time-series. Consciousness, in the literal meaning of the
word, cannot exist in any other way. It is not possible to conceive an unchanging
consciousness, because consciousness depends on contrast, which is possible only if
one thought or perception follows another with which it is contrasted; so that a
consciousness which ceases to change ceases to exist and passes into the darkness of
unconsciousness. Hence if God has consciousness in the only sense in which the word

has meaning for us, it must be a changing consciousness. But that God's
consciousness flows and changes in time contradicts that unchangeableness and
immutability which is also, in all religious thought, attributed to God. It at once puts
God in time, and contradicts the theological conception that he
page 222
is above time and created it. And it also contradicts the infinity of God's mind. The
infinite cannot change. For that which changes lacks at one time some state wbich it
has at another time; and that which lacks anything is not infinite.
In all theological thought God is supposed to be infinite. The finite mind of man is
contrasted with the infinite mind of God. But the more we think of it the more we see
that we can attach no meaning at all to this language. Since a mind is a flow of
changing conscious states, and change implies finitude, an infinite mind is a
contradiction in terms. We can understand what is meant by infinite time or infinite
space. But what is meant by the term "infinity" as applied to a consciousness? Since
no answer can be given to this question, some writers have suggested that when we
apply the word "infinite" to God we are merely using an honorific term. When we
speak of God as infinitely good, infinitely wise, and so on, all we can really mean is
that he is very good, very wise, etc.much better and wiser than we are. If so, the
difference between us and God is merely one of degree. This is certainly bad theology,
and the theologian will insist that God is truly infinite. But in that case no meaning
can be given to his language. Either he has to give up his doctrine of the infinity of
God, or he has to use language which has no meaning.
God's activity and creativity also contradict his infinity. For action and creation
involve change which, as we have just seen, are consistent only with the finite.
Theological thought has always recognized that passing away is an attribute of the
finite, which is the reason why God is said to be immutable and unchanging. But if so,
God's consciousness cannot have changed from a perception of the absence of the
world before it was created to the perception of its presence after he had created it.
There are also difficulties connected with the attribute of being all-powerful which is
applied to God. Does this mean that he could create a square circle? No doubt this is

absurd. But if so, what this means is that the laws of logic are as binding on the mind
of God as they are on the mind of man. There are things then which he cannot do.
page 223
The reader may perhaps consider this last consideration trivial. But he cannot think
this about the difficulties which arise in connection with the idea of the infinite or
perfect goodness of God. For this is notoriously irreconcilable with the existence of
pain and evil in the world, and has led to one of the most famous of theological
problems, the problem of evil. If God is the ultimate source of everything, then he is
the ultimate source of evil; and how is this consistent with his perfect goodness?
Hume wrote:
Epicurus' old questions are still unanswered. Is Deity willing to prevent evil, but not
able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he
both able and willing? Whence then is evil?[2]
The point to notice is that the whole force of Hume's argument depends on taking all
the terms used in it literally. It is necessary perhaps to remind the reader of the fact
that what we are attempting to show is only that the doctrine of the existence of God,
if taken literally, is a myth. Hume's argument has no force unless such words as "able"
and "willing" are taken in their ordinary human senses as meaning the same things as
would be meant if we were to speak of a human being as able or willing to do this or
that. And it has no force if God is not thought of as a person or a mind in the same
sense as human beings are persons and minds. But if the terms and ideas are taken in
their literal meanings, then Hume's argument is entirely unanswerable. But it does not
show that the doctrine of God's infinite goodness may not be symbolic of some deeper
truth. But if so, then it is what we have called a myth.
All attempts to solve this problem on the level of literal interpretation are obvious
absurdities. Some have said that evil is not a positive, but only a negative fact. It is
only the absence of goodness. It is therefore nothing, and God cannot be held
responsible for creating a nothingness. But this is to assert that pain and evil do not
really exist at all, which is absurd.

Others have urged that we should perceive no evil in the world

2 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1951),
part X.
page 224
if we could perceive the world as a whole. The appearance of evil is due to our limited
and partial vision. A discord in a musical composition might be unpleasant if sounded
alone. But when we hear it as a part of the whole piece we see that it contributes to the
beauty of the whole. In the same way evil would cease to appear as evil if we could
view the universe in a single all-embracing vision. But this contention, like the last,
really amounts to denying the existence of evil. It is only an appearance, not a reality.
Furthermore, if the appearance is due to our limited and partial view, then it will have
to be admitted that at least our limited and partial view is a real, and not merely an
apparent, evil.
Others, seeing the utter hopelessness of such prevarications and evasions, take refuge
in the concept of mystery. The ways of God are a mystery to the human mind, and we
must accept evil as one of these mysteries. But this is both illogical and inconsistent.
For the same people will insist that the good and beautiful things in the world are
evidence of God's goodness. But if so, by exactly the same logic, the evil things must
be admitted to be evidence of either his badness or his impotence. Those who urge the
concept of mystery upon us are therefore accepting the evidence when it favors their
case, but refusing to accept it when it goes against them.
In these pages I have selected, as samples, only a few of the skeptical arguments
which can be used to destroy such a proposition as: "There exists an infinitely good
and powerful mmd which created the world and runs it." Some of them may be more
convincing, some less. It will always be possible, of course, to pick holes, to argue
and dispute. But the total force of skeptical considerations of this kind, whether I have
stated them impecccably or not, must in the end, I believe, prove irresistible to a mind
which is both quite honest and quite impartial. What is the conclusion to which they
point? Not, in my opinion, that all religion is false. Not even that the proposition just
quoted is wholly false; but that such beliefs are not literally true, that they are at best

"myths and images" which perhaps "hint at" some deeper truth. "To speak about it/We
talk of darkness, labyrinths,
page 225
Minotaur terrors," that is to say, we talk of all-powerful minds, gods, devils, and what
not.

What thento turn to our second problemis the way of life, the destination, the
experience, which these myths and iniages are meant to symbolize? What is the
deeper truth to which they point?
There are two ways of life, that which most of us follow, and which consists in
"making the best of a bad job," and the "way of the saints"the saints of any religion.
What is this second way, and what is its destination? Since the way and the
destinaation are, in Eliot's words, "unknown," since the destination "cannnot be
described," the present writer, who follows the first way, cannot be expected to know
or describe them. No one can describe them, not even those who follow the way and
have reached the destination. But I think that nevertheless something can be said.
There do exist records, written by those who have followed the second way, which
can be quoted. They too will be found not to express the literal and naked truth, not to
"describe" the truth because that truth is "inexpressible" in language. This is the
reason why men invent myths and images which merely "hint at" it. The "experience,"
which is also the "destination," is "ineffable," which is the same as saying that "it
cannot be described." But these direct records of the personal experience of saints and
mystics are at least in some way nearer to the naked truth than are the official dogmas
of the various creeds which have been, for the most part, the work of theologians, not
of saintsalthough, of course, the theologian and the saint may in rare cases be the
same person.
Buddha said: "It remains a fact and the fixed and necessary constitution of being, that
all its constituents are misery."[3] Also it is said in one of the Upanishads: "In the
Infinite only is bliss. In the finite there is no bliss."[4]

If we think candidly about them, both these statements are

3 Anguttara-Nikaya, quoted Buddhism in Translations, H. C. Warren (Cambridge:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1896), p. xx.
4 Chandogya Upanishad, 7.23, in The Hindu Scriptures (Everyman ed.).
page 226
likely to appear to us as gross exaggerations, especially the first. It may be the case,
we shall perhaps piously admit, that the highest happiness is found only in God, the
Infinite, but there is, after all, a great deal of genuine happiness to be found in daily
life. Yet expressions which are parallel to the verse of the Upanishad can be found in
the literature of all religions. There is no happiness at all, the saints keep telling us,
except in God. Even in Eliot's language, all that any of us can do, except the saints, is
to "make the best of a bad job." This at least says that the normal way of life cannot
ever be anything except a bad job. It cannot be made a good job by any of the
ordinary means, such as money and possessions, or even poetry, music, science,
philosophy, art. All religious men really say the same thing, that life in the finite world
is bad, and that "in the Infinite only is bliss." They say it in stronger or in weaker
terms. Buddha's language is the strongest, Eliot's perhaps the weakest.
But impartially considered, do not all these religious statements seem false? There is a
great deal of happiness to be found in finite things. There are many innocent
pleasures. There are flowers, sunsets, poems, concerts, plays like Mr. Eliot's. What is
wrong, for the matter of that, with baseball and football? There are also good things to
eat and drink. To take pleasure in these things may not be especially noble. There are
no doubt higher and lower pleasures. There are pain and suffering too. Some may
think that the pains outweigh the pleasures, some the opposite. But is it not simply
false to say that there is no happiness in life at all, still more that all the constituents of
being are misery? And yetthat there is no happiness except in God, no bliss except
in the Infinite, is the constant refrain of the saints. Are they talking nonsense, denying
plain facts? Or do they mean something which we have failed to understand even
when, like parrots, we mumble their words in the church, the synagogue, the mosque?

I believe that what the saints say is truenot merely that there is some truth in it, but
that it is wholly true.
It is correct that, as viewed from a certain level, there are plenty of pleasures and
enjoyments available in the common way
page 227
of life, and that many of them are perfectly innocent. The saint is not denying this. He
is not denying that you can have good time, and that having a good time is very
enjoyable. But the level at which these things are said is superficial. At a deeper level
we find that all this is hollowness, vacancy, and futility. Underneath the glitter of the
tinsel there is darkness. At the core there is misery. That is why we are continually
absorbing ourselves in ephemeral pursuits. To be absorbed is to forget what we
ourselves, in the depths, actually are. We want to forget it.
This is not true of the animals. There is something in man which is not in the animals.
It is at this something which the myth of an immortal soul is hinting. What is it? The
question cannot be answered, because the something "cannot be described"; it is
inexpressible. If we say that it is a "hunger for the Infinite" we use the language of
myth, and we also use language which is trite and hackneyed. If we say that man's
true home is God, that he is estranged, and this estrangement, being his essential
nature as a finite being, is the inner misery of which we speak, we are using again
hackneyed language and the language of myth. But something like this is all that can
be said.
It is true that men can so completely forget this inner darkness of the soul that they
become unaware of it and do not know what is meant when it is spoken of. And then
it may be asked how can a man be unhappy and yet not know it? If one feels happy,
then one is happy. But even at the superficial level of daily life this is not true. It is
possible to believe during a period of time that one is happy and afterwards to realize
that one was not. And again one may ask whether, if a man is unaware of the darkness
within him and is happy on the superficial level, it would not be better for him to
remain in that state and be content with it. This, is the same as the old question

whether it is not better to be a pig satisfied than a Socrates unsatisfied. To which the
answer is: No, not unless you are a pig.
The essential truth of religion, of every religion, is that from this darkness of life there
is a way out, a way into the light. The destination of your present way is futility. The
destination of the
page 228
other way is "bliss" or "blessedness." This is not merely a higher degree of what men
call happiness. It is not merely an elevated "pleasure." Blessedness and happinessat
any rate as the latter word is commonly understooddo not belong in the same order
of things at all. According to all religions the way out is very long and hard. But it is
possible, if you want it enough. What is this way?
It is generally supposed that the way of the saints consists in living a good life, that is
to say, in morality. Is not a saint just 'a very good man? To this view corresponds the
suggestion that the essence of religion is ethics. It may then be said that the essence of
Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount. When we discount the dogmas, we are left
with the ethics, for there is nothing else in a religion besides its ethics and its dogmas.
The view that, religion is "morality tinged with emotion" also makes ethics the
essence of religion.
This whole way of thinking is a fatal blunder. It is hardly too much to say that it can
only be the result of a sort of religious blindness. For just as there are men who are so
esthetically insensitive that they appear to others blindthose, for instance, who have
no sense of music, to whom music is no more than a jumble of soundsso it is in
religion. Nor are such men found only among skeptics. They are common enough
among the conventionally orthodox.
Religion is not simply ethics. Nor is it just a mixture of ethics and dogma, or of ethics
and emotion. There is a third something, totally different from either, which is its
essence. It is true that religion always insists on a moral life. It is true that saints are
usually good men. And this is not a matter of chance. It is a necessity. For love and
compassion flow necessarily out of the peculiar vision, the peculiar experience, of the

mystic or saint, are indeed parts of it, so that he cannot help being also a moralist. But
his morality is not his religion.
The moral way alone will never lead to bliss, to blessedness, to salvation, or whatever
the destination of the path may be called.
page 229
It is possible that it may lead to "happiness." Plato and others have tried to prove that
the good man is necessarily a happy man. We may hope that this is true. And yet there
is a peculiar kind of disappointment, or disillusionment, which attends the life which
is only moral. A man may do his duty, and yet remain unhappy, or at least basically
unsatisfied. It seems in the end to have profited him nothing and to have been no more
than a heavy burden which he has borne. And in any case happiness, even if the moral
life does ensure it, is only a superficial phenomenon, like pleasure. It is not that
blessedness which religion seeks.
What then is the way, what the destination? Strictly speaking, they "cannot be
described." They are ineffable. And this word "ineffable" must be understood in its
strict sense as meaning that which cannot be said, cannot be uttered at all in any
conceivable words, in any conceivable language, and never will be. But it is here that
the records left by the saints themselves can be of some use. Not that even they can
say that which cannot be said. But they can "hint at it" more clearly than the common
dogmas of religion do. Of course the saints themselves believed in and repeated the
dogmas, Christian saints Christian dogmas, Hindu saints Hindu dogmas, Muslim
saints Muslim dogmas. They were after all human beings conditioned in their
intellectual beliefs by the different cultures in which they were brought up. And in so
far as they repeated the doctrines of the particular religions to which they were
attached, they contradicted one another. But sometimes they transcended these
different cultures, and sought to utter the pure essence of religion itself, and when
they did so their utterances show a surprising measure of agreement.
The essence of religion is not morality but mysticism. And the way of the saints is the
way of mysticism. Accordingly, I use the words "saint" and "mystic" interchangeably
in this book. If this does not wholly accord with dictionary definitions, I cannot help

it. My contention is that all religion is ultimately mystical, or springs from the
mystical side of human nature. All religious men are therefore mystics in greater or
less degree. There is no sharp
page 230
line between mystic and non-mystic. Those who are commonly recognized as mystics,
and who so recognize themselves are only those whose mysticism is explicitly
realized in the full light of consciousness. In the ordinary religious man that
mysticism is implicit, lies below the threshold of consciousness, only faintly stirring
the surface waters of the mind and not recognized as what it is either by himself or
others. The "saint" is the religious man par excellence, and the substance of his life is
therefore mysticism whether he, or others who watch and describe him, know it or
not.
I shall quote a few of the utterances of mystics taken designedly from a number of
different cultures and religions. What is common to all of them is the assertion that
there is a kind of experience, a way of experiencing the world, in which all
distinctions between one thing and another, including the distinction between the
subject and object, self and not-self, are abolished, overcome, transcended, so that all
the different things in the world become one, become identical with one another. We
must suppose that they are still, in a sense, different; and yet they are not different but
identical. Philosophical readers will be reminded of Hegel's famous "identity in
difference." But whereas Hegel only talked about this, as a theory, the saints
experience itwhich is quite another thing. The affirmation of the possibility, or
rather the actuality, of such an experience, raises at once a host of questions. But let
us, for the moment at any rate, proceed to the evidence, or rather to that minute
fraction of it which space allows me to reproduce here. I merely take a few samples
from a vast literature.
A notable witness is Meister Eckhart, the Catholic mystic of the thirteenth century. A
few passages from his writings follow.
There all is one, and one is all. There to her [the perceiving soul] all is one and one is
all. Herein lies the soul's purity, that it is purified from a life that is divided and that it

enters into a life that is unified. All that is divided in lower things will be unified so
soon as the soul climbs into a life where there is no contrast. When the soul comes
into a life of reasonableness [the true insight] it knows no contrasts. Say, Lord, when
is a man in mere "understanding"? I say to you: "When a man sees one thing
separated from another." And when is a man above mere
page 231
understanding? That I can tell you: "When he sees all in all, then a man stands
beyond mere understanding."[5]
In this passage our ordinary mode of experiencing the world, in which one thing is
distinguished from another, is called understanding. In the true vision, which
transcends it, there are no contrasts or distinctions, but "all is one."
In another passage Eckhart says:
All that a man has here externally in multiplicity is intrinsically One. Here all blades
of grass, wood, and stone, all things are one. This is the deepest depth.[6]
And again:
When the soul comes into the light of the supersensual it knows nothing of contrasts
[7]
In such an experience the mind has necessarily passed beyond time and space. For
time and space are the very conditions of division, separation, multiplicity, contrast.
Space divides things here from things there; time divides things now from things then.
Hence the unifying vision in which all is one is an experience of the eternal, for
eternity is not an unending length of time, but is timelessness. For the same reason it
is an experience of the Infinite. For where all is one, there is nothing outside that one,
and therefore nothing to limit or bound it. The notion of boundary is the essence of
the finite. Only that which is bounded is finite. But for a thing to be bounded means to
be bounded by something else. And if there is only one, there is no something else to
bound it, and therefore it is infinite. This is the true meaning of tlie term "infinite" as
it is used in religious thinking. And this is the solution of the paradoxes we earlier

discovered in the notion of God as an infinite mind. We could give no meaning to this
phrase so long as we understood infinite to mean mere endlessnessas when we
speak of infinite time or space. An infinite mind, we now see, is a mind for which "all
is one." This also provides the
5 Quoted, Rudolph Otto, Mysticism East and West (New York: The Maccmillan Co.,
1932), p. 45.
6 Ibid., p. 61.
7 Ibid., p. 61.
page 232
key to the meaning of the verse of the Upanishad which we quoted: "In the Infinite
only is bliss; there is no bliss in the finite." This means that in the ordinary way of life,
which views all things by what Eckhart calls the understanding, there is no bliss
though there may be pleasure and even happiness. Only in the super-consciousness,
which is the second way of life, the way of the saints, is there bliss.
Our second witness will be a pagan writer, Plotinus. He wrote of that vision which he
had himself attained:
Our self-seeing There is a communion with the self restored to its purity. No doubt we
should not speak of seeing, but instead of seen and seer speak boldly of a simple unity.
For in this seeing we neither see nor distinguish nor are there two. The man is
changed, no longer himself nor self-belonging; he is merged with the Supreme,
sunken into It, one with It; only in separation is there duality. This is why the vision
baffles telling; for how could a man bring back tidings of the Supreme as detached
when he has seen it as one with himself? It is not to be told, not to be revealed to any
that has not himself had the happiness to see. . . . Beholder was one with beheld ... he
is become the Unity, having no diversity either in relation to himself or anyything
else ... reason is in abeyance and intellection and even the very self, caught away,
God-possessed, in perfect stillness, all the being calmed. . . .

This is the life of gods and of god-like and blessed menliberation from the alien
that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of eartha flight of the
alone to the Alone.[8]
The italicized passages carry the essential points which are the same in all accounts
whether they proceed from Christians, Muslims, pagans, Hindus, or Buddhists. These
are, first, that in this experience "all is one," there is no distinction of the seer from the
seen (the distinction of subject from object) nor any distinction of anyone thing from
any other, no division or separation or discrimination; second, that in consequence the
vision transcends intellection (Eckhart's "understanding"); third, that
8 Ennead VI.IX.II (eleven) in Works (New York: Medici Society) trans. Stephen
Mackenna. Italics mine.
page 233
for this reason it is ineffableno words can speak it because all words depend on
distinctions of one thing from another, that is to say upon the intellect; and fourth, that
this experience is liberation, blessedness, calm, peace.
The pagan, we see, agrees with the Christian. Let us turn now to a wholly different
culture, that of India. There the chief religions have been Hinduism and Buddhism.
Their dogmas and doctrines are, of course, wholly different from those either of
Christianity or ancient pagan philosophy. Nor can they be suspected of being
influenced by these. They were indigenous products of purely Indian experience.
In Buddhism the unifying vision, that super-consciousness which is above mere
"understanding" is called Nirvana. It is also called "enlightenment." In northern
Buddhism it is sometimes called "the Buddha-mind," or again "Mind-Essence." It is a
complete mistake to suppose that Nirvana is a sort of place or condition which one
reaches after death. It is a state of the soul which can be attained by men who are still
in the body and walking about the earth. Buddha attained it early in life, and lived and
worked in the light of it for half a century. Ashvaghosha, who composed a Buddhist
manual called The Awakening of Faith, about the first century A.D., distinguishes
between the "discriminating consciousness" (Eckhart's "understanding," which

distinguishes or discriminates between different things, and the "intellection" of

Plotinus) and the "intuitive consciousness" or Mind-Essence in the attainment of
which lies enlightenment. He says:
Mind-Essence does not belong to any individualized concepption of phenomena or
non-phenomena .... It has no particularizing consciousness, it does not belong to any
kind of describable nature. Individuations and the consciousness of them come into
being only as sentient beings cherish false imaginations of diffferences.[9]
9 A translation of The Awakening of Faith will be found in A Buddhist Bible, edited
by Dwight Goddard (2nd ed.; Thetford, Vt.: Dwight Goddard, 1938). This passage
appears on page 364.
page 234
In another passage of the same author:
In its aspect of Enlightenment, Mind-Essence is free from all manner of individuation
and discriminative thinking.[10]
Again:
If any sentient being is able to keep free from all discriminative thinking, he has
attained to the wisdom of a Buddha.[11]
Emphasizing what we should call the relation of the moral life to the transcendent
vision, the fact that the vision is the source of ethical life, he says:
The fourth significance [of enlightenment] is an affirmation of compassionate
helpfulness, for being free from all limitations of selfness, it draws all alike into its
all-embracing purity and unity and peacefulness, illuminating their minds with equal
brightness so that all sentient beings have an equal right to enlightenment. [12]
Why does the unifying vision lead to love and compassion, the sources of the good
life? Because in it all differences are abolished, including the difference between "I"
and "you" which is the source of egoism and selfishness.

The reference in this passage to peacefulness is also important. We remember the

Christian phrase "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." Why does it
"pass all understanding"? We mumble this phrase in church knowing nothing of its
meaning, or supposing that it is a pious ejaculation, or a superlative which has no
precise significance. On the contrary, it means exactly what it says. Refer to Eckhart's
use of the word "understanding." The peace of God, which is the same as the
blessedness which is the destination of the saint's way, the same as the "bliss
unspeakable" of Nirvana, is literally unintelligible to the discurrsive consciousness,
the discriminating mind, the understanding. It has nothing to do with peace as that
word is understood in our ordinary modes of living and thinking, any more than
blessedness has anything to do with what is ordinarily called happiness.
10 Ibid., p. 365.
11 Ibid., p. 366.
12 Ibid., p. 368.
page 235
Referring again to egoism Ashvaghosha says:
As soon as the mind perceives differences, it awakens desire, grasping, and following
suffering, and then the mind notes that some relate to himself and some to not-self. If
the mind could remain undisturbed by differences and discriminations the conception
of an ego-self (the root of moral evil) would die away,[13]
From another northern Buddhist text The Surangama Sutra, out of many similar
pasages I quote only one. Buddha, speaking to Ananda, the beloved disciple, says:
Ananda, if you are now desirous of more perfectly underrstanding Supreme
Enlightenment . . . you must learn to answer questions with no recourse to
discriminating thinking. For the Tathagatas (Buddhas) in the ten quarters of the
universe have been delivered from the ever-returning cycle of deaths and rebirths by
this same single way, namely by reliance upon their intuitive minds. [14]

"Discriminating mind" is the "understanding" of Eckhart, the "reason" or

"intellection" of Plotinus. Intuitive mind is the non-discriminating, non-conceptual
mind, the unifying vision in which all is one, the "insight" of Eckhart.
From Buddhism we turn to Hinduism. The Upanishads, the work of unknown forest
saints, which date back two thousand five hundred to three thousand years, have been
the chief source of the best Hindu thought from their own time till now. The great
theme of the Upanishads is the discovery by their authors that "atman," which means
the individual soul or self of a man, is identical with Brahman, which is the name of
the Universal Self, or God. I am God; or, to use the language of the Upanishads
themselves, "That art thou." The difference which we make beetween ourselves and
Brahman is maya, illusion. To overcome this illusion is salvation, for in the
overcoming of it the soul passes into and becomes one with God. But the overcoming
of the illu13 Ibid., p. 369.
14 The Surangama Sutra is also translated in Goddard's Buddhist Bible. This
quotation is from page 112.
page 236
sion is not an intellectual understanding of it. One may know as a matter of abstract
thought that one's self is identical with God. But this does not destroy the illusion of
the difference, the separation, between God and the self. One may compare this
situation to any common optical illusion such as seeing a mirage. You see a lake of
water in the desert. You may possess the scientific knowledge that no water is there.
But this does not get rid of the illusion. You still see the water there. In the same way
the intellectual knowledge that one's self is identical with the divine self helps not a
whit in getting rid of the illusion of difference. The identity of one's self and God has
to be actually experienced. Then only, in that supreme mystical experience, is the veil
of illusion rent, and the soul passes into an immediate, experienced union with
Brahman. It is of this mystical experience that the Upanishads everywhere speak. And
it requires no great degree of understanding to see that this experience is identical

with the unifying vision of Eckhart, the ecstatic state of Plotinus, the intuitive or nondiscriminating mind of Buddhism.
In the Mandukya Upanishad we are told that there are four possible states of mind.
The first three are waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep.
The Fourth, say the wise, is not subjective experience, nor objective experience, nor
experience intermediate between these two, nor is it a negative condition which is
neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. It is not the knowledge of the senses, nor
is it relative knowledge, nor yet inferential knowledge. Beyond the senses, beyond the
understanding, beyond all expression, is the Fourth. It is the pure unitary
consciousness, wherein awareeness of the world and of multiplicity is completely
obliterated. It is ineffable peace. It is the supreme good. It is One without a second. It
is the Self.[15]
In this passage the "Self" means Brahman, the Universal Self.
The "One without a second" is another expression constantly
15 The quotations given from the Upanishads are from the translation of Swami
Prabhavananda and Frederick Manchester (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948). The
expression here translated "not subjective experience, nor objective experience" is
rendered by another translator (R. E. Hume) "not inwardly cognitive, not outwardly
cognitive."
page 237
used in the Upanishads for Brahman. "Without a second" means that Brahman has
nothing outside it, by which it is bounded or limited. It is therefore the Infinite in that
precise meaning of the religious Infinite which has already been explained.
The essential character of this supreme vision, it will be noted, is that in it all
discrimination, difference, multiplicity, are transcended. As with Eckhart, it is beyond
the understanding. As with all mystics, to whatever religion they belong, it is
ineffable, impossible to express in language,"cannot be described"and is
"unknown" in Eliot's words. And it is peace, bliss, blessedness, the supreme good,

salvation. It is the "destination" of the "way." It is that for which, in Christian thought,
the myth of a heaven after death stands.
From the Mundaka Upanishad I quote the following:
The subtle Self [Brahman] is realized in that pure conscioussness wherein there is no
duality. [Italics mine.]
One of the commonest methods by which the Upanishads draw attention to the
absence of all discrimination or difference in the mystic's experience of the divine is
by insisting on the formlessness of Brahman. (It makes no difference whether we say
the formlessness of Brahman or the formlessness of the mystical experience; for the
two are one.) Form means any kind of character which distinguishes one thing from
another. Gold, for instance, is distinguished from lead by having different characters
for example by the difference of yellow from gray. Since having form, having
characters, is what distinguishes one thing from another, form is therefore the
principle of differentiation and multiplicity. That in which there is no differentiation
or multiplicity, in which "all is one," will accordingly be formless, and without any
characters or qualities.
Hence we read in the Katha Upanishad:
Soundless, formless, intangible, undying, tasteless, odorless,. eternal, immutable,
beyond Nature, is the Self.
And in the Brihadaranayka Upanishad:
page 238
The Self is to be described as not this, not that. It is incomprehensible, for it cannot be
comprehended.
It cannot be comprehended, that is, it cannot be understood by the conceptual
intellect, i.e., by Eckhart's "understanding," which always proceeds by discriminating
this from that. But it can be experienced in the divine vision. It is the experience of
the saint.

We many now draw together the main points of what has been said about the way, the
path, the experience, the destination, of the saints in all the higher religions. Its
essence is the transcendence of all multiplicity in the unifying vision of the One. In
this experience not only is the distinction between this and that, for instance, between
the stone and the wood, done away with, but also the distinction between the subject
and the object, the experiencer and the divine which he experiences. The experience is
also felt directly as being bliss, peace, blessedness. This is the source of all myths
about a paradise to come. The experience also has the character of eternality. For
since space and time are prinnciples of division, and the experience is divisionless
unity, it is therefore "above time and space." Even if the ecstatic vision lasts only a
moment, which can, if we look at it from the outside, be dated, yet that moment, as
seen from within itself, is timeless and eternal. For this is the meaning of eternity. It
does not mean unending time, but timelessness. This eternality of the saint's
experience is the source of all myths about the immortality of the soul, reincarnation,
etc., in which eternity is symbolized by the notion of endless time. The experience
has, finally, the character of infinity in the sense that there is nothing outside it to
bound it, for in the vision in which all is one there cannot be any other to form a
boundary. This infinity of the vision is the source of all myths about the infinite
wisdom, power, and knowledge of God. In these myths infinity, like eternity, is
distorted to mean mere endlessness. When so distorted the idea of God as an infinite
mind gives rise to the absurdities and difficulties which were noted on an earlier page.
page 239
Now all this may seem like a tissue of fantastic dreams. It is quite easy to pound it
with the battering rams of logic. If we are so disposed, we shall say as follows: It is
not necessary to suppose that the saints and mystics are consciously saying what is not
true. But they must be in some way deluded. The experience of which they speak is
impossible, because it is self-contradictory. For consciousness of any kind depends on
contrast, discrimination, difference. If discrimination of differences disappears,
consciousness disappears with it; we simply become unconscious. Being aware of
differences is therefore part of the meaning of the word "connsciousness," just as
"having four corners" is part of the meaning of the word "square." There cannot be a

consciousness without awareness of differences for the same reason as there cannot be
a round square.
But it must be pointed out that, by exactly the same sort of logic, a man born blind,
who is aware of the world only by touch -we may ignore smell, taste, and sound-could
prove that there cannot be such a thing as sight. His argument will go as follows:
Consciousness means the awareness of things by touch. Therefore part of the meaning
of consciousness is contact between the body and the thing which is being
experienced. But these people who talk about sight say that it is an awareness of
things at a distance, or without contact of the body. But this is self-contradictory
beecause being in contact with the object is part of the meaning of experiencing or
perceiving it.
Both of these argumentsthe one against the mystical experience and the other
against sightare a priori, that is to say, arguments based on pure logic and not on
experience. And they are both refuted in the same way, by experience. There simply is
such a thing as sight, although it may seem contradictory to the blind man. And there
simply is such a thing as the mystic experience, although it may seem contradictory to
those who have not attained it. Of course you can say that the saint or the mystic is
telling lies, or is at least in some way fuddled and deluded, as the blind man could say
the same things of the man who sees. But it seems to me that, in view of the constant
reiteration of the
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same things by innumerable mystics in different ages and countries and cultures,
which are in many cases independent of one another and uninfluenced by one another,
in view of their agreement with one another about the essentials of their visiona
vast literature of evidence of which I have only been able to give a few samples here
this explanation is not reasonable. The reasonable explanation lies in believing
what they say.
We come to the third of the questions which we raised at the beginning of this
chapter: whether the saint's experience implies any special view of the nature of the

universe. There seem to be two possible views which can be taken. It may be held that
the mystic's experience is real in the sense that he does have the experience, and it has
the peculiarities which he asserts of it. But it is only a subjective experience in his
own mind, so that it implies nothing about the real nature of the world outside him. It
is, in this way, like a dream. A dream is real in the sense that it exists as a subjective
state in the dreamer's mind. But it does not exist in the outside world, and implies
nothing at all about that world. This may be called the subjectivist view of mysticism.
The other possible view is that the mystical experience does imply something
objective. It may be held to imply that there is an objectively real being, a mind, a
person, God, who is the creator of the universe. This is the view taken by most
religions, and by most of the mystics themselves. For instance, in Hinduism the
unifying experience is believed to be identical with Brahman, and Brahman is Godalthough it ought to be added that Hindu thinkers often do not think of God as a
personal being. This may be called the objectivist view. Thus the question which we
have to ask is: does the mystic experience imply what is ordinarily called "the
existence, or objectivity, of God"?
Not all religions have taken the objective view. It is unsafe to speak with great
confidence about what Buddha and his earliest disciples believed. But the earliest
Buddhist writings seem to show that, although he certainly had the mystic experience
perhaps more clearly that any other man who ever livedhe did not objectify it.
Brought up as a Hindu, he apparently denied the reality of Brahman, the Hindu
equivalent of God. What he stressed was the state of enlightenment of the saint, which
is Nirvana. On the face of it this seems like a subjectivist interpretation. It has been
followed by the southern schools of Buddhism, those of Siam, Burma, and Ceylon,
though not by the northern schools. This is the reason why Buddhism is sometimes
called atheistic. And Buddhism is not the only Indian creed which takes a subjectivist
view of the mystic experience. The Sankhya and Yoga systems do the same. From this
it seems to follow that theism is not a necessary implication of the experience of the
saint. But that it is certainly a natural implication, which the majority of religious
minds tend to follow, is shown by the emphatic insistence upon it of all the other great
religions, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam.

It may appear that either the objectivist or the subjectivist view must be true, and that
we are compelled to choose between them. My suggestion is that this is not the case,
and that in fact neither is the truth; or, if we prefer to put it in another way, both are
true, each from a different point of view. I will begin by pointing out that either view,
if taken as the sole truth, is objectionable.
The religious man's objection to the subjectivist view will be that it destroys the truth
of religion. We have seen that theological doctrines cannot be literally true; they can
only be symbolic. This is the same as saying that they are myths which hint at a
deeper truth. But if so, there must be a deeper truth to be hinted at. Of course, it is
possible to say that what they hint at is simply the subjective mystic experience itself.
[16] But it is utterly unsatisfactory to the religious consciousness. It amounts to saying
that the doctrine, "God exists," means only that a certain mystical state of mind
sometimes exists in some people.
No doubt the religious man can admit that the popular conception of a God who is a
mind in the sense of a stream of psycoological states, such as emotions, volitions,
thoughts, succeeding
16 This is the view I took in a paper under the title "Naturalism and Religion." I have
since abandoned it.
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one another in time, cannot describe the real nature of God. but is only symbolic. But,
if religion is to be in any sense true, there must, he will say, be some real being who is
thus symbolized.
The objection to the objectivist view is not so obvious, but it is just as important. If
we look at the mystic experience itself, and ask what it implies, what we find is that it
declares itself as neither subjective nor objective. This is stated in so many words in
the Upanishad quoted above. "The Fourth [the mystic state of mind] is neither
subjective experience, nor objective experience." And if it is objected that this is a
Hindu, and not a Christian, thought, we must demur. For it is only what is implied by
the most basic fact about all mystic experience, in whatever religion it is found,

namely that it transcends the distinction between subject and object. And if it be
added that what the mystic experiences is God himself, it follows that God himself is
neither subjective nor objective.
This implies that God is not an object, and that it cannot properly be said even that he
"exists." For both these words, "objective" and "existent," mean that what exists, or is
objective, is one thing alongside of other things and therefore finite. But God is
infinite and not one among other things. This is why all proofs of his existence fail. To
prove that something exists means to pass by inference from one thing to another.
Thus the proofs assume that God is "another thing." For instance, if God is the first
cause, then there are other things besides God, namely the effects of which he is the
cause, from which we pass by inference to him. The sun and the moon exist and are
objective, and this means that they are parts of the natural order, i.e., the space-time
order. But God is not a part of that order, and therefore is not existent or objective.
But from the statement that God is not objective it does not follow that he is
subjective, or merely an illusory thought, or idea, or psychological state, in
somebody's mind. For what the mystic experience teaches is that he is neither
objective nor subjective.
That God should be neither the one nor the other may seem incomprehensible, but this
should not surprise us since the incompage 243
prehensibility of God is asserted, in one form or another, in all the great religions.
Nevertheless something can be done to help the mind in this dilemma. We have
become accustomed in science to the conception of frames of reference. For instance,
suppose that two events, X and Y, occur. According to the theory of relativity, from
the point of view of one space-time frame of reference, X may have occurred before
Y, but from the point of view of another, Y may have occurred before X. Thus X may
be both before and after Y. Until recently this would have been thought to be a
contradiction. We should have said that there can be only one time order, and that, if

the two events were not simultaneous, then either X occurred before Y, or Y occurred
before X.
It is dangerous to press scientific and physical analogies too far in the religious
sphere. No scientific analogy can properly express religious truth. But with this
warning, and remembering that it is no more than an imperfect analogy, we may say
that the contradiction between the naturalistic or scientific view of the world and the
religious view is due to the fact that two frames of reference are being used. We may
speak of the natural or temporal order, and the eternal order, as being the two frames
of reference. The eternal order is revealed in the mystic experience of the saint. The
natural order is the space-time world which is revealed to the intellect and to science.
If we use the natural order as our frame of reference, then from that point of view the
natural order is the sole reality, the mystic experience is subjective, and God is an
illusion. This is the truth presented by atheism, skepticism, and naturalism. But if we
use the frame of reference of the eternal order, then from that point of view God and
the eternal order is the sole reality, and the world and the natural order are illusion.
Looked at from outside itself, the mystic moment is a moment in time. But looked at
from within itself, it is the whole of eternity. That God is an illusion is the standpoint
of naturalism. That the world is an illusion is the standpoint of the eternal. This latter
view finds actual expression in the Hindu doctrine of maya, and, in a less fully
developed form, in all those
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philosophies, such as those of Plato, Spinoza, the German ideallists, and Bradley, who
hold that the space-time world is "appearance," or is not "the true reality," or is "half
real," or has a low "degree of reality."
It will be observed that this view conforms to the great insight of Kant that the
solution of the religious problem cannot be a compromise, but that scientific
naturalism must be one hundred per cent true and religion one hundred per cent true.
Naturalism is the sole truth about the natural order, and religion is the sole truth about
the eternal order. Neither order interferes with the other. But the two orders may be
said to intersect in the mystic experience which is both eternalfrom its own
standpointand a moment in timefrom the standpoint of time. Man, as Kant said,

is an inhabitant of both worlds (orders). Kant's only mistake was his failure to
recognize that man can have direct experience of the eternal order in the mystical
vision.
If the solution of the religious problem here suggested is accepted, there are still a
number of questions which press on us ordinary men who are not among the company
of the recognized mystics. Where, it may be asked, does all this leave us? It would
seem that the true religious vision is only possible to a few extraordinary men. For the
great mystic is rarer even than the great poet. What then can religion mean to us? Are
we not, on the account here given, wholly cut off from it? And even though we may
believe that it exists, will it not be for us only a traveller's tale, something which we
cannot ourselves experience or know? If so, it can mean nothing to us in our practical
lives and we might as well decide to ignore it.
The answer is that it is a mistake to suppose that there is a sharp line to be drawn
between the mystic and the non-mystic. We easily recognize that there is no sharp line
between the poet and the non-poet. We are all poets in greater degree or less. This is
proved by the fact that when the great poet speaks our spirits echo to his utterance and
his vision becomes ours. We have that vision in ourselves, but he evokes it. If it were
not so, if we were not ourselves inarticulate poets, his words would be nonsense
page 245
syllables to us and we should listen uncomprehendingly to them.
Something of the same sort is true of mysticism. All men, or at least all sensitive men,
are mystics in some degree. There is a mystical side of human nature just as there is a
rational side. I do not mean merely that we are potential mystics in the sense that we
theoretically could, by living a life which is a practical impossibility for most of us,
achieve the mystic consciousness. That would indeed be next to useless. I mean that
we have the mystic consciousness now, although in most of us it shines only dimly.
This is proved by the fact that, as with poetry, the utterances of the saint or the mystic
call up a response in us, however faint it may be. Something in us answers back to his
words, as also something answers back to the words of the poet. Why has the phrase
of Plotinus, "a flight of the alone to the Alone," become famous and echoed down the

ages? Why has it fascinated generations of men? It is not mere nonsense to men who,
though they do not claim ever to have had anything which they would call a
recognizable "mystical experience," yet possess spiritually sensitive minds. It must be
that it stirs in them some depth of the waters of the soul which is ordinarily hidden,
and which, by these words, is, if but for an instant, drawn up to, or near, the surface.
Deep down in us, far below the threshold of our ordinary consciousness, there lies that
same intuitive. non-discriminating mentality which in the great mystic has come to
the surface of his mind and exists in the full light of conscious recognition.
And it is reasonable to hold that when ordinary men have what they call "religious
feelings" or "religious experiences" of any kind, whether with the conscious thought
of God in their minds or without it, whether in prayer, in church, or amid scenes of
nature, the wonder, the awe, the sublimity of the mountains, the sunsets, or the seas,
such religious feelings, vague, unformed, unclear, hardly expressible, dim, misty,
inarticulate, are a stirring of the depths of the mystic vision which, if only we could
drag it up into the clear light of our surface consciousness, would be the full-fledged
ecstatic vision of the great mystic. It is an ancient insight that at least some "feelings"
are unformed and inchoate
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cognitions. And this is the justification of the religious feelings of common men. They
are not sentimental and subjective emotions. They are faint mystic experiences. They
are a dim vision of the eternal, appearing in the guise of feelings, or even emotions,
because they are dim and vague.
It is here that the myths of the different religions have their function and justification.
No doubt, taken literally, they are false. But whether the worshipper takes them
literally or recognizes them as the myths they are, they perform the function of
evoking within him those religious feelings which are in fact a far-off view of the
divine. A man may feel in his heart or say with his lips that God is a God of love, and
may pray to that God. It does not matter whether he simple-mindedly supposes that
there is, somewhere unseen all about him, listening to his words, a great benevolent
ghost who regards him with the human emotion which is called love, or whether on
the contrary he knows that his language and his thoughts are symbolic expressions not

to be taken literally; the inward effect in him, the evocation of the eternal, may in
either case be the same.
This is the justification of the myths and images, and therefore of the creeds and
doctrines, of the great religions of the world. No doubt they tend to degenerate on the
one side into superstitions, on the other into mere intellectual abstractions spiritually
dead and powerless. No doubt they may in this way become fetters on men's minds
and even sources of intellectual and spiritual disorders. They become even shams and
hypocrisies. It is then that the skeptics turn on them and rend them, and in this way
the skeptic too performs a function which has value in the spiritual life, a spiritual
purging. But basically most men will always require myths and images to evoke in
them the divine vision. And when one set of symbols has degenerated into mere
abstractions or debasing superstitions, another set arises. Even the great mystics who,
one might suppose, would have no need of any mere metaphorical representatives of
the eternal, since they have the eternal itself, yet for the most part use the symbols of
the religion in which they were born and so attach themselves to this
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religion or that. It is in this way that what one mystic says seems to contradict what
another says. For they use different symbols for the same reality.
A man may attach himself to any church, or to none. He may be disgusted with the
superstitions into which institutional reeligions degenerate, and with the shams and
hypocrisies which they engender. Or he may have seen the literal falsity of their
creeds, and because he has been taught to take them literally and thinks there is no
other way, because he fails to see their symbolic truth and function, he rests in a mere
negation. He may then call himself an agnostic or atheist. But it does not follow that
he is irreligious, even though he may profess to be. His religion may subsist in the
form of a sort of unclothed religious feeling, unclothed with any symbols at all,
inarticulate, formless. Each man, in an institutional religion or out of it, must find his
own way. And it is not justifiable for those who find it in one way to condemn those
who find it in another.

And if the theory of religion which I have outlined is accepted, it should at least cause
those of us who cannot find a place within any institutional religion to understand the
religious side of human nature, both that of themselves and of others, and the function
and justification of religious creeds for those who can still hold them, creeds to which
simple-minded men have clung, and which they, the more sophisticated ones, have
perhaps too hastily condemned.[17]
17 The view of religion which is baldly sketched in this chapter is more fully worked
out in the writer's book, Time and Eternity.

page 248
Part 3: Section 2 - The Problem of Morals
THE SECOND GREAT PROBLEM WHICH THE RISE OF SCIENTIFIC naturalism
has created for the modern mind concerns the foundations of morality. The old
religious foundations have largely crumbled away, and it may well be thought that the
edifice built upon them by generations of men is in danger of collapse. A total
collapse of moral behavior is, as I pointed out before, very unlikely. For a society in
which this occurred could not survive. Nevertheless the danger to moral standards
inherent in the virtual disappearance of their old religious foundations is not illusory.
I shall first discuss the problem of free will, for it is certain that if there is no free will
there can be no morality. Morality is concerned with what men ought and ought not to
do. But if a man has no freedom to choose what he will do, if whatever he does is
done under compulsion, then it does not make sense to tell him that he ought not to
have done what he did and that he ought to do something different. All moral precepts
would in such case be meaningless. Also if he acts always under compulsion, how can
he be held morally responsible for his actions? How can he, for example, be punished
for what he could not help doing?
It is to be observed that those learned professors of philosophy or psychology who
deny the existence of free will do so only in

page 249
their professional moments and in their studies and lecture rooms. For when it comes
to doing anything practical, even of the most trivial kind, they invariably behave as if
they and others were free. They inquire from you at dinner whether you will choose
this dish or that dish. They will ask a child why he told a lie, and will punish him for
not having chosen the way of truthfulness. All of which is inconsistent with a disbelief
in free will. This should cause us to suspect that the problem is not a real one; and
this, I believe, is the case. The dispute is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a
confusion about the meanings of words. It is what is now fashionably called a
semantic problem.
How does a verbal dispute arise? Let us consider a case which, although it is absurd in
the sense that no one would ever make the mistake which is involved in it, yet
illustrates the principle which we shall have to use in the solution of the problem.
Suppose that someone believed that the word "man" means a certain sort of fivelegged animal; in short that "five-legged animal" is the correct definition of man. He
might then look around the world, and rightly observing that there are no five-legged
animals in it, he might proceed to deny the existence of men. This preposterous
conclusion would have been reached because he was using an incorrect definition of
"man." All you would have to do to show him his mistake would be to give him the
correct definition; or at least to show him that his definition was wrong. Both the
problem and its solution would, of course, be entirely verbal. The problem of free
will, and its solution, I shall maintain, is verbal in exactly the same way. The problem
has been created by the fact that learned men, especially philosophers, have assumed
an incorrect definition of free will, and then finding that there is nothing in the world
which answers to their definition, have denied its existence. As far as logic is
concerned, their conclusion is just as absurd as that of the man who denies the
existence of men. The only difference is that the mistake in the latter case is obvious
and crude, while the mistake which the deniers of free will have made is rather subtle
and difficult to detect.
Throughout the modern period, until quite recently, it was
page 250

assumed, both by the philosophers who denied free will and by those who defended it,
that determinism is inconsistent with free will. If a man's actions were wholly
determined by chains of causes stretching back into the remote past, so that they could
be predicted beforehand by a mind which knew all the causes, it was assumed that
they could not in that case be free. This implies that a certain definition of actions
done from free will was assumed, namely that they are actions not wholly determined
by causes or predictable beforehand. Let us shorten this by saying that free will was
defined as meaning indeterminism. This is the incorrect definition which has led to
the denial of free will. As soon as we see what the true definition is we shall find that
the question whether the world is deterministic, as Newtonian science implied, or in a
measure indeterministic, as current physics teaches, is wholly irrelevant to the
problem.
Of course there is a sense in which one can define a word arbitrarily in any way one
pleases. But a definition may nevertheless be called correct or incorrect. It is correct if
it accords with a common usage of the word defined. It is incorrect if it does not. And
if you give an incorrect definition, absurd and untrue results are likely to follow. For
instance, there is nothing to prevent you from arbitrarily defining a man as a fivelegged animal, but this is incorrect in the sense that it does not accord with the
ordinary meaning of the word. Also it has the absurd result of leading to a denial of
the existence of men. This shows that common usage is the criterion for deciding
whether a definition is correct or not. And this is the principle which I shall apply to
free will. I shall show that indeterminism is not what is meant by the phrase "free
will" as it is commonly used. And I shall attempt to discover the correct definition by
inquiring how the phrase is used in ordinary conversation.
Here are a few samples of how the phrase might be used in ordinary conversation. It
will be noticed that they include cases in which the question whether a man acted with
free will is asked in order to determine whether he was morally and legally
responsible for his acts.
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Jones I once went without food for a week.

Smith Did you do that of your own free will?
Jlones No. I did it because I was lost in a desert and could find no food.
But suppose that the man who had fasted was Mahatma Gandhi. The conversation
might then have gone:
Gandhi I once fasted for a week.
Smith Did you do that of your own free will?
Gandhi Yes. I did it because I wanted to compel the British Government to give India
its independence.
Take another case. Suppose that I had stolen some bread, but that I was as truthful as
George Washington: Then, if I were charged with the crime in court, some exchange
of the following sort might take place:
Judge Did you steal the bread of your own free will?
Stace Yes. I stole it because I was hungry.
Or in different circumstances the conversation might run:
Judge Did you steal of your own free will?
Stace No. I stole because my employer threatened to beat me if I did not.
At a recent murder trial in Trenton some of the accused had signed confessions, but
afterwards asserted that they had done so under police duress. The following
exchange might have occurred:
Judge Did you sign this confession of your own free will?
Prisoner No. I signed it because the police beat me up.
Now suppose that a philosopher had been a member of the jury. We could imagine
this conversation taking place in the jury room.
Foreman of the Jury The prisoner says he signed the confession because he was
beaten, and not of his own free will.

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Philosopher This is quite irrelevant to the case. There is no such thing as free will.
Foreman Do you mean to say that it makes no difference whether he signed because
his conscience made him want to tell the truth or because he was beaten?
Philosopher None at all. Whether he was caused to sign by a beating or by some
desire of his ownthe desire to tell the truth, for examplein either case his signing
was causally determined, and therefore in neither case did he act of his own free will.
Since there is no such thing as free will, the question whether he signed of his own
free will ought not to be discussed by us.
The foreman and the rest of the jury would rightly conclude that the philosopher must
be making some mistake. What sort of a mistake could it be? There is only one
possible answer. The philosopher must be using the phrase "free will" in some
peculiar way of his own which is not the way in which men usually use it when they
wish to determine a question of moral responsibility. That is, he must be using an
incorrect definition of it as, implying action not determined by causes.
Suppose a man left his office at noon, and were questioned about it. Then we might
hear this:
Jones Did you go out of your own free will?
Smith Yes. I went out to get my lunch.
But we might hear:
Jones Did you leave your office of your own free will?
Smith No. I was forcibly removed by the police.
We have now collected a number of cases of actions which, in the ordinary usage of
the English language, would be called cases in which people have acted of their own
free will. We should also say in all these cases that they chose to act as they did. We
should also say that they could have acted otherwise, if they had chosen. For instance,
Mahatma Gandhi was not compelled to fast; he chose to do so. He could have eaten if
he had wanted to.

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When Smith went out to get his lunch, he chose to do so. He could have stayed and
done some more work, if he had wanted to. We have also collected a number of cases
of the opposite kind. They are cases in which men were not able to exercise their free
will. They had no choice. They were compelled to do as they did. The man in the
desert did not fast of his own free will. He had no choice in the matter. He was
compelled to fast because there was nothing for him to eat. And so with the other
cases. It ought to be quite easy, by an inspection of these cases, to tell what we
ordinarily mean when we say that a man did or did not exercise free will. We ought
therefore to be able to extract from them the proper definition of the term. Let us put
the cases in a table:

Free Acts

Unfree Acts

Gandhi fasting because he wanted to free The man fasting in the desert because there
India.

Stealing bread because one is hungry.

Signing a confession because one wanted to

tell the truth.

Leaving the office because one wanted

one's lunch.

was no food.

Stealing because one's employer threatened

to beat one.

Signing because the police beat one.

Leaving because forcibly removed.

It is obvious that to find the correct definition of free acts we must discover what
characteristic is common to all the acts in the left-hand column, and is, at the same
time, absent from all the acts in the right-hand column. This characteristic which all
free acts have, and which no unfree acts have, will be the defining characteristic of
free will.

Is being uncaused, or not being determined by causes, the characteristic of which we

are in search? It cannot be, because although it is true that all the acts in the right-hand
column have causes, such as the beating by the police or the absence of food in the
desert, so also do the acts in the left-hand column. Mr. Gandhi's fasting was caused by
his desire to free India, the man's
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leaving his office by his hunger, and so on. Moreover there is no reason to doubt that
these causes of the free acts were in turn caused by prior conditions, and that these
were again the results of causes, and so on back indefinitely into the past. Any
physiologist can tell us the causes of hunger. What caused Mr. Gandhi's tremendously
powerful desire to free India is no doubt more difficult to discover. But it must have
had causes. Some of them may have lain in peculiarities of his glands or brain, others
in his past experiences, others in his heredity, others in his education. Defenders of
free will have usually tended to deny such facts. But to do so is plainly a case of
special pleading, which is unsupported by any scrap of evidence. The only reasonable
view is that all human actions, both those which are freely done and those which are
not, are either wholly determined by causes, or at least as much determined as other
events in nature. It may be true, as the physicists tell us, that nature is not as
deterministic as was once thought. But whatever degree of determinism prevails in the
world, human actions appear to be as much determined as anything else. And if this is
so, it cannot be the case that what distinguishes actions freely chosen from those
which are not free is that the latter are determined by causes while the former are not.
Therefore, being uncaused or being undetermined by causes, must be an incorrect
definition of free will.
What, then, is the difference between acts which are freely done and those which are
not? What is the characteristic which is present to all the acts in the left-hand column
and absent from all those in the right-hand column? Is it not obvious that, although
both sets of actions have causes, the causes of those in the left-hand column are of a
different kind from the causes of those in the right-hand column? The free acts are all
caused by desires, or motives, or by some sort of internal psychological states of the
agent's mind. The unfree acts, on the other hand, are all caused by physical forces or
physical conditions, outside the agent. Police arrest means physical force exerted from

the outside; the absence of food in the desert is a physical condition of the outside
world. We may therefore frame the following rough definitions. Acts
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freely done are those whose immediate causes are psychological states in the agent.
Acts not freely done are those whose immediate causes are states of affairs external to
the agent.
It is plain that if we define free will in this way, then free will certainly exists, and the
philosopher's denial of its existence is seen to be what it isnonsense. For it is
obvious that all those actions of men which we should ordinarily attribute to the
exercise of their free will, or of which we should say that they freely chose to do
them, are in fact actions which have been caused by their own desires, wishes,
thoughts, emotions, impulses, or other psychological states.
In applying our definition we shall find that it usually works well, but that there are
some puzzling cases which it does not seem exactly to fit. These puzzles can always
be solved by paying careful attention to the ways in which words are used, and
remembering that they are not always used consistently. I have space for only one
example. Suppose that a thug threatens to shoot you unless you give him your wallet,
and suppose that you do so. Do you, in giving him your wallet, do so of your own free
will or not? If we apply our definition, we find that you acted freely, since the
immediate cause of the action was not an actual outside force but the fear of death,
which is a psychological cause. Most people, however, would say that you did not act
of your own free will but under compulsion. Does this show that our definiition is
wrong? I do not think so. Aristotle, who gave a solution of the problem of free will
substantially the same as ours (though he did not use the term "free will") admitted
that there are what he called "mixed" or borderline cases in which it is difficult to
know whether we ought to call the acts free or compelled. In the case under
discussion, though no actual force was used, the gun at your forehead so nearly
approximated to actual force that we tend to say the case was one of compulsion. It is
a borderline case.

Here is what may seem like another kind of puzzle. According to our view an action
may be free though it could have been predicted beforehand with certainty. But
suppose you told a lie, and it was certain beforehand that you would tell it. How could
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one then say, "You could have told the truth"? The answer is that it is perfectly true
that you could have told the truth if you had wanted to. In fact you would have done
so, for in that case the causes producing your action, namely your desires, would have
been different, and would therefore have produced different effects. It is a delusion
that predictability and free will are incompatible. This agrees with common sense. For
if, knowing your character, I predict that you will act honorably, no one would say
when you do act honorably, that this shows you did not do so of your own free will.
Since free will is a condition of moral responsibility, we must be sure that our theory
of free will gives a sufficient basis for it. To be held morally responsible for one's
actions means that one may be justly punished or rewarded, blamed or praised, for
them. But it is not just to punish a man for what he cannot help doing. How can it be
just to punish him for an action which it was certain beforehand that he would do? We
have not attempted to decide whether, as a matter of fact, all events, including human
actions, are completely determined. For that question is irrelevant to the problem of
free will. But if we assume for the purposes of arguument that complete determinism
is true, but that we are nevertheless free, it may then be asked whether such a
deterministic free will is compatible with moral responsibility. For it may seem unjust
to punish a man for an action which it could have been predicted with certainty
beforehand that he would do.
But that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility is as much a delusion
as that it is incompatible with free will. You do not excuse a man for doing a wrong
act because, knowing his character, you felt certain beforehand that he would do it.
Nor do you deprive a man of a reward or prize because, knowing his goodness or his
capabilities, you felt certain beforehand that he would win it.
Volumes have been written on the justification of punishment.

But so far as it affects the question of free will, the essential prinnciples involved are
quite simple. The punishment of a man for doing a wrong act is justified, either on the
ground that it will
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correct his own character, or that it will deter other people from doing similar acts.
The instrument of punishment has been in the past, and no doubt still is, often
unwisely used; so that it may often have done more harm than good. But that is not
relevant to our present problem. Punishment, if and when it is justified, is justified
only on one or both of the grounds just mentioned. The question then is how, if we
assume determinism, punishment can correct character or deter people from evil
actions.
Suppose that your child develops a habit of telling lies. You give him a mild beating.
Why? Because you believe that his personality is such that the usual motives for
telling the truth do not cause him to do so. You therefore supply the missing cause, or
motive, in the shape of pain and the fear of future pain if he repeats his untruthful
behavior. And you hope that a few treatments of this kind will condition him to the
habit of truth-telling, so that he will come to tell the truth without the infliction of
pain. You assume that his actions are determined by causes, but that the usual causes
of truth-telling do not in him produce their usual effects. You therefore supply him
with an artificially injected motive, pain and fear, which you think will in the future
cause him to speak truthfully.
The principle is exactly the same where you hope, by punishing one man, to deter
others from wrong actions. You believe that the fear of punishment will cause those
who might otherwise do evil to do well.
We act on the same principle with non-human, and even with inanimate, things, if
they do not behave in the way we think they ought to behave. The rose bushes in the
garden produce only small and poor blooms, whereas we want large and rich ones. We
supply a cause which will produce large blooms, namely fertilizer. Our automobile
does not go properly. We supply a cause which will make it go better, namely oil in
the works. The punishment for the man, the fertilizer for the plant, and the oil for the

car, are all justified by the same principle and in the same way. The only difference is
that different kinds of things require different kinds of causes to make them do what
they should. Pain may be the
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appropriate remedy to apply, in certain cases, to human beings, and oil to the machine.
It is, of course, of no use to inject motor oil into the boy or to beat the machine.
Thus we see that moral responsibility is not only consistent with determinism, but
requires it. The assumption on which punishment is based is that human behavior is
causally determined. If pain could not be a cause of truth-telling there would be no
justification at all for punishing lies. If human actions and volitions were uncaused, it
would be useless either to punish or reward, or indeed to do anything else to correct
people's bad behavior. For nothing that you could do would in any way influence
them. Thus moral responsibility would entirely disappear. If there were no
determinism of human beings at all, their actions would be completely unpredictable
and capricious, and therefore irresponsible. And this is in itself a strong argument
against the common view of philosophers that free will means being undetermined by
causes.
We may now turn to the central question of the foundations of morality. In earlier ages
morality was seen as grounded in religion. This view appeared historically, of course,
in a variety of different forms according to what men's religious beliefs were, and
according to their comparative naivete or sophistication. Its most naive form is the
belief that what is right or wrong is simply determined by the will of God, God being
conceived anthropomorphically as a great mind or consciousness which created and
governs the world. And perhaps its most sophisticated form is found in the more
abstruse and recondite systems of absolute idealism. The popular concept of God is in
them replaced by the metaphysical Absolute. But this Absolute is, like God, the source
of moral and other values. The one thing common to all forms of a religious basis of
morals is the belief that the distinction between moral good and evil is in some way
rooted in the concept of the world as a moral order.

The great advantage of such a religious view is that morals are given a firm
foundation in the unchanging nature of the world,
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and not a shaky foundation in the shifting quicksands of human nature. Moral values
and laws are necessarily objective in the sense in which I have used that word in this
book. A value, on our definition, is objective if it is independent of any human ideas,
feelings, or opinions. The will of God is independent of any human psychology. So is
the world-purpose, if we assume that such a purpose exists. So also is the
philosopher's Absolute. And if moral values are founded in any of these, they are
objective.
Nor will it, on any such view, make sense to talk of the relativity of morals. There will
be one set of moral values and standards valid for all men, not varying from age to
age or from culture to culture. For those values and standards proceed from one
unchanging God, or from one constant world-purpose, or from one eternal Absolute.
Different ages, different cultures, may indeed have different opinions about what
things are good and bad, as they may have different opinions about anything else.
There will in this sense be a relativity of morals. But variations of moral opinion will
be explained by any religiously or metaaphysically based ethical philosophy in the
same way as variations of opinion on any other subject. There can be only one truth
about what is good or evil, just as there can be only one truth about the shape of the
earth at a particular time, though opinions. can vary on both subjects.
We have seen how the old views changed under the impact of the ever-growing
dominance of the scientific view of the world. Objectivism in morals has given way to
subjectivism. The beliefs in God, or in a cosmic purpose, though they may linger on
in the minds of the majority, or on their lips, as mental or verbal habits, have been
drained of effective meaning. The metaphysical Absolutethat thin abstraction
substituted for God by a few intellectualsnever had any hold on men's minds.
Therefore it became no longer possible to define morality in terms of divine or cosmic
purposes. But since it has to be defined in terms of some purpose, there remained no
alternative but to believe that what is good is what serves human purposes, and that
what is bad is what obbstructs them, and that good and evil have no other nature or

page 260
meaning. This is at once to jump from objectivism to subjectivism, from the belief
that the world is a moral order to the belief that it is not. This was the step which the
modern mind took.
But if morals are subjective, are they not then necessarily relative? The apparent
necessity of the transition from subjectivism to relativism lies in the consideration that
all human beings do not have the same purposes; that purposes differ from person to
person, or from social group to social group. If we define good as that which pleases
men, or serves their purposes, or as that to which they have some subjective attitude
of liking or approval, it would seem to follow of necessity that the same thing or
action may be good to one person and bad to another, according to their respective
likings or attitudes. And this is to say, not merely that men's opinions about right and
wrong will differwhich is true on any viewbut that what is actually right for one
person will be actually wrong for another, that slavery was right in the ancient world,
because the ancients approved it, though it is doubtless wrong for us because we
disapprove it.
The collapse of moral theory, though perhaps not of moral practice, seems to follow.
Does it not follow that although men may think some things good and others bad,
there is in fact no objective distinction between good and evil at all? Moreover there
is no room left, on such a theory, for progress in moral ideals. It is commonly
supposed that there can be, indeed that there has been, such progress. Surely we have
progressed in our moral ideals somewhat since the age of the cave man? We think that
Confucius had better and higher moral ideas than those of some uncivilized and
savage tribe. Or we think that Jesus effected an improvement in moral ideals. There
was a time when "an eye for an eye" was the standard. Jesus preached unlimited
forgiveness and love of one's neighbor. Even those who reject all supernaturalist
conceptions of Jesus admit that this was a great moral advance. But belief in ethical
relativity makes nonsense of all this. We cannot on such a basis say that one set of
moral ideas is better than another, but only that they are different. For in a society
which approved of an eye for an eye that standard was not merely
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thought right, it was right. It was just as right, therefore, as the Christian standard is
among Christian peoples. Therefore Jesus, if he supposed that he was introducing
better moral ideas, was deluded. He was in fact wasting his time. For he was not
changing a worse into a better. He was merely preaching a different moral code which
was no improvement on the old one. He was merely substituting Tweedledum for
Tweedledee. Also, if we should now come to approve of the international morals, or
immorals, of Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin, or to approve of the reintroduction of the
law of the jungle into human affairs, this would not be a deterioration, for these things
would then become right and good. A reversion to slavery, witch-burning, or human
sacrifice, would become right and proper if only we should all come to approve of
them again.
These are the consequences of giving up our belief in a religious foundation of
morals. Has the modern mind made any mistake? Can we either revert to a religious
foundation for our moral ideals or, in the alternative, discover a firm secular
foundation which will not yield the disastrous results of our present subjectivism and
relativism?
The view which I shall attempt to maintain is that morality has in fact a secular basis
which can be made reasonably solid, and which does not result in a chaotic relativism,
i.e., that an ethics which is universal for human kind can be reached within the
framework of a purely naturalistic and non-religious philosophy; but that nevertheless
moral aspirations and ideals have a deeper foundation in, and ultimately flow from,
religion. We can assume that moral values are subjective and the world not a moral
order and still accept a universally valid ethics. But actually moral values are
objective and the world is a moral order, so that the older view of morality as based in
religion gives a truer and proofounder understanding both of morals and of the world
than does the merely naturalistic view. I believe that Bergson was right in suggesting
that morality has two sources. One of these is the social pressure of purely utilitarian
considerations. This source is, of course, secular and naturalistic. The other source is
in mysticism,
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which is, for us, identical with religion. The moral aims which flow from these two
sources fit into one another, harmonize and fuse together i man society, so t a in this
fusion they become indistinguishable and appear as a single homogeneous set of ideal
ends, a single morality. [My emphasis: DCW]
I will begin with the secular source of morals. We may agree that it is utility or, in
other words, human happiness. I shall assume, for the sake of argument, a wholly
naturalistic view of the world, according to which morals are entirely dependent on
human purposes and have no cosmic significance whatever. I shall attempt to show
that even if we dismiss religion as nothing but a set of falsehoods without even any
symbolic truth, yet, even so, the modern mind has made a mistake in thinking that all
morals must be relative.
The thinking of the modern world may be represented as having taken three steps.
First, it accepted the naturalistic view of the world. Second, it deduced subjectivism
from naturalism. For it argued that moral values must serve some purpose, and if there
is no divine or cosmic purpose, the only remaining alternative is that their function is
to serve human purposes, which constitute therefore their only foundation. And this
view is, by definition, subjectivism. It took the third step when it deduced relativism
from subjectivism, saying that, if morals are dependent on human purposes, they will
be different for different men or different groups of men, because human purposes
differ from man to man or from group to group. I shall not challenge the first two
steps of the argument, but I shall challenge the third. I shall assume that morals are
subjectivewhich they must be if there is no religious or cosmic basis for themand
that the world is not a moral order. But I shall maintain that relativism does not follow
from subjectivism, and that the modern mind has made a radical error in supposing
that it does. I shall say that, even if we place morality on a purely secular basis, there
is yet a morality which is true for all men and not merely binding on this or that social
group. Moreover, this secular morality will include not only the lower ranges of
morality, the minimum of moral behavior
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required for survival, but even that universal love and compassion which are also
commanded by the religious vision. For the two sources of morality do not conflict.
They dovetail together, and fuse into one.
The essential reason for the transition which the modern mind has made from
subjectivism to relativism lies in the proposition that the purposes of men are all
different from one another. For it follows from this that there can be no common
human morality. In one form or another the basic argument for moral relativity always
founds itself on this one alleged fact of human nature, the variety of human purposes,
wishes, needs, appetites, and aversions.
Now it is obvious at a glance that any such proposition as "human beings have
different purposes" is utterly vague. Does it mean that no two human beings ever
lived who shared a single purpose in common? If so, it is plainly false. Two or more
men may agree to rob a bank. It is clear that, although there are certainly differences
of purpose among men, the extent of these differences ought to be investigated if we
are to have anything like an accurate picture of the human situation. Certainly groups
of men may share a common purpose. And can we deny, without any investigation at
all, that there may be purposes which all men share and which are common to the
human race? Apparently the group-relativists of our own day must at least suppose
that there are purposes which are in some sense common to very large social groups,
to nations, and perhaps to whole cultures and civiliizations. For they tell us that there
are moral rules which are bindding within the social group. This can only be true if in
some sense the social group is united in a common purposeperhaps in the sense that
a great majority of its members share the purpose, though there may be a few who do
not. But if a whole culture may share some purposes, why is it impossible that the
whole human race may share some purposes?
What is the importance of this question? It lies in the fact that any purpose which is
common to a number of men, whether the number is small or large, will give rise to
rules of conduct which
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all those men must obey if they are to achieve their purpose. For instance, if a band of
men agree to rob a bank, this will impose on them all certain rules. For example, none
of them must tell the police of their design. We should not call this a moral rule
though the robbers mightbut it is a rule of conduct. And it is obligatory on all the
members of the group if they are to succeed in their purpose. In the same way, if there
are any purposes which are common to all humanity, this fact will give rise to rules of
conductnot necessarily moral ruleswhich all men ought to obey if they are to
achieve those purposes. I believe that there are at least three such common human
purposes which are the sources of universal rules of conduct. They are:
(1) Self-preservation: This is the source of a number of universal rules of conduct
which may be called rules of prudence or safety.
(2) Physical Health: This common human purpose gives rise to a vast body of rules,
which are the same for all men, under such heads as sanitation and diet, and which
also includes the rules of medical science. These may be called medical rules.
(3) Happiness: This may also be called by such names as welfare, richness of living,
self-realization, abundance of life, power, health of the soul, etc. The rules which are
founded in it are called moral rules.
These three ends constitute a hierarchy in the sense that the second includes and
advances beyond the first, while the third includes and goes beyond the second. The
rules of conduct to which all of them give rise are universal and common to all men
and in no way relative to any age, culture, or civilization. The reason for this is the
same in each of the three cases, namely, that they are common human ends which
require common means, that is, common modes of conduct to achieve them.
To begin with self-preservation. All men desire their self-preservation in the sense that
each desires at least his own. I am not committing the fallacy of supposing that all
men desire self-preservation in the sense that each desires the preservation of the
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lives of all the others. As a matter of fact men do commonly desire the continued
existence of at least some other persons, for instance, their children and other people

in the society immediately surrounding them. But this is not necessary for my
argument. The same remarks apply to the other two common ends.
Of course there are occasional cases of men who do not desire to preserve their own
lives. Suicides are the obvious example. But it is true that all men want to preserve
their own lives in the same rough or general sense in which it is true that all men have
two legs, two eyes, etc. There may be men born without any legs. But all normal men
have two legs. And all normal men normally, that is throughout most of their lives,
wish to continue in existence.
This fact is the foundation of many rules of conduct. Here are a few: .
Do not jump off the top of the Empire State Building.
Do not cross the street without looking.
Do not eat poison.
These are no doubt negative rules. Positive ones would be:
Eat enough food to keep you alive.
Keep on breathing.
Put out a fire which starts in your house.
All this seems very trivial. But the more obvious it is the better it supports my
argument. There are two points to be made. First, it cannot be denied that these are
genuine rules of conduct, of things which we ought and ought not to do. We should
not call them moral rules. They are rules of prudence or safety. Secondly, they are
universal in their scope. They apply to all menexcept suicides. It would be absurd
to say that they are relative to an age, a social group, or a culture. It would be absurd
to say that, allthough it is bad for an American to jump off the Empire State Building,
it is quite all right for a Frenchman to do so. It is conceivablethough not at all likely
that there might be a whole tribe or other social group which rejected one or other
of them. They might have some different code of safety, and in that sense

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codes of safety might be called relative to different social groups. But if any man, or
group of men, or even all men, should be mad enough to think they could safely jump
off the Empire State Building, they would be mistaken. These rules are binding upon
all normal men everywhere, and in all ages and societies, because they are necessarily
corollaries of a common human purpose, self-preservation.
The next common human end is physical health. All normal men desire their own
healthnot necessarily that of other men. There may be men, for all I know, who
want to have cancer. But they are very few. Notice that this end includes and
transcends the end of self-preservation. He who wishes to keep in good health must at
least first of all wish to retain bare existence. But he also wants something more. He
wants not only bare existence, but a happy life so far as the mere physical condition of
his body will ensure it. For this is the meaning of physical health. What is health, and
what is disease? Health is that condition of the body which ensures continuance in
existence as long as possible and ensures during such continuance a happy and
pleasant life so far as that depends on nothing but the condition of the body. Disease is
any condition of the body which leads to death or to pain, misery, discomfort, and so
on. (This, of course, is not meant to include as disease a painful condition of the body
which a surgeon may have to induce temporarily in order to achieve greater health in
the end.)
If we admit that, in the sense explained, all men desire their own health-apart from
abnormal casesthis, because it is a common human purpose, will give rise to many
rules of conduct which will be applicable to human beings generally. Here are a few:
Do not overeat or overdrink.
Take a balanced diet.
Take enough exercise and fresh air.
Be clean.
Take proper sanitary measures for the disposal of sewage.

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These are rules of conduct. We should not ordinarily call them moral rulesperhaps
dietetic, sanitary, hygienic rules, and so on. We notice also that, except in regard to a
point shortly to be mentioned, they are none of them relative. They are rules which all
men, in any age or culture, ought to follow if they wish to be healthy. No one would
say that overeating and overdrinking are bad for the health of Americans, but may be
good for the health of Chinese. It may be the case, as with the rules of safety, that
there may be disagreements about them in different cultures, and in that sense
relativity. I believe that the ancient Egyptians thought that the urine of a cow applied
to the eyes would cure blindness. They had a different medical rule from ours. But
their rule was mistaken.
Yet we should notice that, in spite of these considerations, there is a slight element of
genuine relativity about some of these rules. For they contain words like "enough"
and "too much." Even "Be clean" must, I suppose, be interpreted to mean "Be clean
enough." For no one would advise a man to spend ten hours a day brushing his teeth.
And it is at this point that an element of relativity seems to enter the picture. For
"enough" and "too much" are vague words. What is enough for one person may be too
much for another. Some people, for maximum physiical health, require more food,
some less; some more exercise, some less; and so on. This means that such and such
an amount of food may be "good" for me, but "bad" for you. This is a sort of
relativity. The doctor will take account of individual differences of constitution. He
may order more for one person, less for another. But the rule, "Don't overeat," will
still be universal and and non-relative. The general rule is universal and non-relative,
but because it is vague and imprecise, it has to be applied differently in different cases
when it comes down to details. And this may be called relativity, not merely of
opinion, but of the rule itself. This is very instructive because we shall find exactly the
same situation, due to the same sort of causes, in the sphere of morality.
We should also notice that not only more or less commonpage 268

sense rules of diet and sanitation flow from the common purpose of health, but the
whole of the laws of medical science including those which are unknown to laymen;
and that these medical rules are universal and non-relative for the same reason as the
others. If you have cancer, tuberculosis, or Bright's disease, then you should take such
and such treatments. These are rules of conduct. You may say that they are rules for
the doctor to follow, not for you. But that is chiefly because you do not know the rules
yourself and have to get the doctor to apply them to you. These rules are not relative
to cultures. If the cure for appendicitis is to cut out the appendix, this will be just as
true for a Hottentot as for an Englishman. Of course there will be different opinions in
diffferent ages and countries about the best cures. There may even be differences
between doctors in the same country at the same time. This is like the differences of
opinion about moral questions.
Moreover there is, in matters of detail, an area of relativity here. Some people may
require more of a drug, some less. In particular cases a drug which generally does
good may do harm. There are people who cannot take penicillin or quinine without
unpleasant results. The doctor knows the general rules, but will apply them somewhat
differently according to individual needs. Only the general rules are universal and
non-relative.
We come finally to moral rules. These depend on the common end of happiness. This
is at least common in the sense that each man desires his own happiness, whether he
also desires that of other people or not. Philosophers have become very impatient with
the word "happiness," because they say that no one knows what it means. This is true
in one sense, false in another. There are two quite different levels of "knowing what a
word means." One is to know the definition of it, and this may be called scientific or
philosophical knowing. The other consists in being able to recognize the object or
situation for which the word stands, so that you know when to apply it and when not
to apply it, and do not make mistakes in this. This does not usually require any
knowledge of definitions and may be called common-sense knowing. For instance,
not being a biologist, I do not know the biologipage 269

cal definition of a horse. In fact I do not know any definition, not even that which a
farmer or owner of horses might give, if they could gIve any definition at all. In this
sense it may be said that I do not know the meaning of the word "horse." But I know
how to apply the word. I use it rightly. I apply it only to horses, never to elephants. In
this common-sense way I know the meaning of the word.
Do we know the meaning of the word "happiness"? When the philosopher says that
we do not, he means that no one has ever yet discovered exactly how to define it,
though some philosophers have tried. In this he is probably right. But everyone who
knows the English language has a common-sense knowledge of the meaning of the
word. We can use it appropriately. We usually know when we are happy and when we
are not. We know the difference between a happy marriage and an unhappy one. I
therefore think that, in spite of the philosopher's objections, the word "happiness" is
just as respectable as the word "horse." Hence I propose to continue using it. But if
anyone prefers to speak of welfare, or the enrichment of life, he is welcome.
Every manexcept perhaps a few abnormal individualsdesires at least his own
happiness. It is therefore a common human end in our sense of the phrase, and must
give rise to universal non-relative rules, though there may be different opinions about
what these are. It may be objected that "happiness" is a blanket word which is applied
to different things by different people. What makes one person happy makes another
unhappy. And if so, the assertion that we all desire the same thing may seem to be
false, or only true in a verbal sense. I will postpone this objection for later discussion.
Just as physical health includes and transcends bare self-preservation, so happiness
includes and transcends physical health. It includes health, for although sick people
may sometimes be happy, they would usually be happier if they were not sick.
Physical health is in a general way a condition of happiness. But happiness transcends
health because it involves something more. What more? Perhaps one may say that
what it includes,
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over and above a happy condition of the body, is a happy condition of the personality,
and I think that we shall have to include a man's personal relations here, for instance

his relations with his wife and children and with other human beings with whom he
comes in contact. Perhaps this is rather to extend the common meaning of the word
"personality," but this does not seem to matter. A man's happiness at any rate will
include not only bodily health, but health of personality as well as happy personal and
social relations. It may also include ordinary amusements and pleasures, and the
satisfactions to be derived from music, poetry, science, philosophy, if he happens to
care for these things.
If happiness is allowed to be a common human end, shared by all normal men, to
what rules of conduct, applicable to all normal men, will it give rise? I will mention a
few:
Love your neighbor.
Get rid of hatred, malice, jealousy, envy, and so on.
Do not steal, lie, break faith, etc.
These are not rules of prudence or safety or diet. They are what are commonly called
moral rules. It is much more difficult to show that all men should follow these rules if
they wish to be happy than it is to show that they should follow rules of safety if they
wish to preserve their lives, or medical rules if they wish to be healthy. But I believe
that this is true. I believe that moral rules simply are rules of human happiness. And if
so, they will be universal and not relative to any culture in exactly the same way, and
for the same reason, as rules of safety and of health are so.
I think it is not possible to prove thisat any rate at presentin the sort of exact and
rigorous way in which scientific truths are established, but that it is nevertheless
supported by general human experience. And it would seem that the great moralists,
such as Jesus, Buddha, and Socrates, have been the best interpreters of that
experience. Perhaps more intuitively than by any conscious process of generalizing
from experience they divined that obedience to such precepts is the best way of
achieving happage 271

piness, best for society at large, and best for each individual.
The connection of some moral rules with happiness is more obvious than that of
others. It is pretty clear that lying and stealing lead in general to unhappiness in a
society, while their opposites tend to increase human welfare. It is perhaps less
obvious that if you wish to be happy you should love everybody, though it seems
fairly clear that a life based on malice and hatred produces misery not only in others
but in the man who indulges in them.
We must not claim too much. It is possible that a dishonest man may be happy, and
we have all known happy liars. Some people seem to get along pretty well even
though they lead immoral lives. Perhaps what we may claim is something of this sort
that although a particular man may sometimes "get away with" a dishonest way of
living, and perhaps not suffer at all, yet this is an utterly unsafe and unsound way of
conducting one's life. It is certain that a general rule which prescribed all-round
dishonesty and untruthfulness would be disastrous, and that a general rule which
prescribes honesty and truthfulness will, if carried out, increase human happiness.
After all, it is the same with rules of health, which we nevertheless recognize as
universal and non-relative. You may possibly get away with bodily uncleanliness, and
with unbrushed teeth, without suffering in your health. But to be cleanly is the only
sound rule, and this is universally true for all men and in no way relative to any
particular culture or age. Even the man who neglects it with impunity acts wrongly
and ought to have obeyed it if he wished for health. And the same is true of the man
who disobeys moral rules without suffering.
It was admitted that it is more difficult to show some moral rules to be rules of
happiness than others. What about the rule of universal love? Is that universal and
applicable to all men? It is non-relative because it is true of all men, regardless of race
or period or culture, that if the rule of love were followed, if we got rid of all anger,
hatred, and envy, all men would be the happier. To be for a moment Utopian, suppose
that this rule were followed as between nations, that they got rid of all international
grasping
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and selfishness, is it not obvious that this would be a far happier world? The
command to love all men is held before us as a remote ideal, in the direction of which
we can hope to move, although we shall never reach the end. Its non-relativity lies in
the fact that it is an ideal equally for all men in the sense that the more they
approximate to the moral ideal the nearer will they come to the common end of
happiness which they all desire.
Let us put the matter in another way. Agricultural scientists discovered that certain
kinds of chemicals increase the health and productivity of plants, while other
substances destroy their health. This is not a relative truth. It is true in all ages and
countries. The great moralists have made a similar discovery. It is that hatred
increases human misery, and that love increases human happiiness. Neither is this
dependent on culture or color of skin. It is a general truth about human beings
everywhere, just as the other is a general truth about plants everywhere. It is true that
you can subject the proposition about fertilizers to laboratory tests in a way which can
hardly be applied to the proposition about love. Yet the latter too is not without its
evidence, which lies in the general experience of humanity. The world is the
laboratory of the moralist.
And suppose that some social group should deny this moral truth. There may be some
Melanesian tribe which believes that hatred is for them the best way to happiness.
Does this prove relativity? Not at all. All it shows is that those people are making a
disastrous mistake about their own happiness. It is true of them, as of us, that the rule
of love, if followed, would lead them to a happier life. The rule of love is therefore
one that they too ought to follow if they wish to achieve their own greatest happiness.
It is sometimes said that a man or group is the best, or even the only, judge of his or
its own happiness. There is of course some truth in this. But it is more important to
point out its element of falsehood. Men just as often make mistakes about what will
lead to their own happiness as about what will conduce to their physical health. That
is why we need moralists as well as doctors.
There is a point in our argument which needs clearing up. It
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was asserted that happiness is a common purpose shared by all normal men in the
sense that each man desires his own happiness at least. But how can this give a reason
for attending to the happiness of other people, and not only to his own? And this
amounts to asking why he should love his neighbor. This is the crucial question for
any naturalistic or secular ethics. For instance, J. S. Mill in his famous Utilitarianism
told us that doing right consists in doing actions which produce the greatest amount of
happiness. He adds: "The standard is not the agent's own happiness, but the greatest
amount of happiness altogether. . . . The greatest happiness principle is the greatest
happiness of mankind and of all sentient creatures." No doubt this is a perfectly
correct description of the moral principle. To care for the happiness of others as well
as my own is just what morality is. But Mill fails to give any foundation, either
religious or secular, for this duty. Why a man should work for his own happiness is
obvious. Selfishness is a sufficient answer. But why should he work for the happiness
of others? Unless some reason can be given we have failed to discover the secular
foundation of morals.
So far as I can see the only answer which the naturalist can give is that the great
discovery of moral geniuses such as Christ and Buddha was precisely this: that the
selfish life is not the happy life, and that the best road to one's own happiness is to
forget one's happiness and work for that of others. Why this should be so it is perhaps
impossible to say. It is just a fact about human nature. And probably the only reason
which can be given for it is found in the famous words of John Donne:
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of
the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a
Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any
mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde: And therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
It is imposssible for a man to be happy while all around him are miserable, because he
is "involved in mankind," and their happiness is his happiness. Therefore if he wishes
to be happy himself, he must
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work for their happiness. The man who asks, "Why should I care for any happiness
except my own?" wrongly supposes that he is a human atom independent of other
human atoms; that he is an "island," and not part of the continent. He starts from an
atomistic conception of human nature which is simply false.
It may be said that this gives the wrong reason for being good. It appeals to selfinterest. I am to love others out of selfishness. And this is precisely what the good
man does not do and must not do. To do this is simply to be selfish and not good.
Thus this whole explanation of morality does violence to morality. It gives a nonmoral reason for being moral.
This criticism is not wholly fair. We must distinguish between the motive for being
good and the intellectual reason for being so. It is not suggested by the naturalist who
gives the above account of the matter that the good man should be motivated by a
desire for his own happiness. If he acts from that motive he will defeat himself. His
motive should be pure self-disregarding love. It is of the essence of the good man's
state of mind that he forgets his own happiness. But the question asked was not about
motives, but about reasons. It is an intellectual question asked by the philosopher. The
good man as such simply does not ask such a question at all. He does not have to be
convinced by arguments, either by this or any other. And if the philosopher is also a
good man, neither will he, in his capacity as a moral man, ask any such question. But
although he does not, in acting, ask for a reason or argument to convince him, he may
surely as a thinker be interested to discover whether any intellectually convincing
argument could be given. And if a man does ask this legitimate question of theory,
then the answer suggested by the passage from Donne is the only one that can be
given on a secular or naturalistic basis.
In discussing rules of health we saw that although they are universal and non-relative,
yet when we come down to their detailed application we run into an area of relativity.
The physician can say, "Do not overeat." This is a universally valid rule for all men.
But when we come to apply it we find that more food is necessary for the health of
one man and less for that of another.
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The same thing is true in moral matters. The moralist, who is the physician of the
soul, can lay down general rules which are valid for all men, but their detailed
application is relative to the different constitutions of different individuals. "Do unto
others as you would that they should do unto you." This is universal. But its
application is relative to the needs and natures of the "others." What is it that I should
do to others? Not identically the same things to all, and not identically the same things
as I should want done to me. I do not insist that because being a professor gives me
the sort of life I want, everyone in the world should be a professor. I do not insist that
because X likes chocolate I should force chocolate on Y who hates it. "Do unto
others ... " means that we should do to each according to his needs or desires. And the
needs and desires of men differ.
This means that only very general, even vague, moral rules are non-relative. The
Sermon on the Mount inculcates general moral attitudes, and gives specific
illustrations of some of them. Detailed injunctions lie in an area of relativity. But the
thorough-going ethical relativist makes the mistake of supposing that there are no
universally valid moral rules at all.
This too is the answer to the criticism, mentioned earlier, that "happiness" is only a
blanket word which covers a multitude of different things. It is true, the critic says,
that all men desire happiiness, but it is false that this gives a common end which all
men share, and which will give rise to universally valid rules. For happiness lies in
different things for different people, so that in fact they all desire different things, and
there is no common end.
Up to a point this is true. Some men are happy as engineers, others as musicians.
Some like dinner parties, others do not. But there are certain things which are
universally conditions of the best happiness of all men. And it is regarding these that
the great moral precepts hold. Being an engineer is not a condition of happiness for all
men, though it may be for a few. But being justly treated is such a universal condition.
Therefore being an engineer is not a part of morality, but being just is. Love,
unselfishness, justice, honesty, the keeping of faith, are universally conditions
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which will increase human happiness. Hatred, selfishness, injustice dishonesty,

faithlessness, are universally conditions which increase human misery.
To say these things is not to suggest an "absolute" standard of morals. That "there are
no absolutes nowadays" is one of those unintelligent parrot-cries which are commonly
mistaken for thought. But we need not insist on this here, for we are not claiming that
an absolute ethic can be founded on secular consideraations. We may call the view
here taken "non-relative." By an absoolute moral standard I understand one which
would be absolutely and eternally valid throughout the universe like the mathematical
truth 2 + 2 = 4. This would be true whatever human beings are like, or even if there
were no human beings in existence. Fifty billion years ago two and two made four.
They make four on the remotest nebula in space. But the moral law that one should
love one's neighbor dependson the naturalistic view which I am here explaining
on human nature. That love tends to increase happiiness is just a fact about human
nature which might not be true if human nature were wholly different. It might not be
true of beings living on Mars; and it might not be true of our own descendants a
million years hence if they have evolved into creatures quite different from ourselves.
We may say if we like that the great uniiversal moral laws are relative to human
nature. But they are not relative to particular cultures or periods, which is what is
usually meant by saying that morals are relative.
The view which I have suggested avoids the disastrous consequences of the common
relativism. For instance, we saw that on the relativist view it is impossible to say that
the moral standards of one culture are better or higher than those of another. We can
only say that they are different. And from this it followed that there could be no
progress in moral standards, and that "love your neighbor" cannot be considered an
advance on "an eye for an eye." But on the view suggested here what is right does not
depend on what individual men or social groups feel or think. It depends upon facts
about human nature as such, not on regional idiosyncrasies. That love increases
human happiness is a fact which is
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true for all men. Those therefore who preach hatred or even an eye for an eye, are not
merely taking a different view. They are mistaken. And those who discovered that

love is the best source of happiness are taking a better and truer view, and are making
an advance. Progress in moral ideals is therefore a reality.
Thus there is a possible secular basis for morals even if we accept subjectivism. The
view that morality is founded in human happiness is subjectivistic in our sense
because it makes morality depend upon human purposes, on human psychology, and
not on the nature of the world outside man. Hence what has been shown is that
relativism does not follow from subjectivism, and that the modern mind has made a
mistake in thinking that it does. And it has been shown that morality can be given a
secular basis which will save it from the collapse of moral theory implied by
relativism.
We may turn finally to the religious foundation of morals. It is no longer possible to
discover this by taking literally the creeds and dogmas of any particular religion. For
these creeds are myths. We cannot found morals in a crude anthropomorphic
conception of "the will of God," nor even in the idea of a world-purpose.
Since for us the essence of religion is found in the mystic experience of the saint, the
only possible solution of our problem is that a basis for morals must lie in that
experience. The moral urge must be seen as flowing out of that experience. And
undoubtedly this is true. For the experience is, according to the account of all who
have it, not merely cognitive or emotional, but above all a value-experience. It is
blessedness, calm, peace. It is also, or contains as an integral part of itself, an infinite
compasssion and love for all men. And such compassion and love are the fountains of
all higher morality.
But it is not enough to state the mere fact that love flows out of the mystic vision. For
if no reason is given for this, it might in that case be a mere accident. The mystic
vision is the unifying vision in which "all is one," in which all distinctions are
transcended. What, it might be asked, has this peculiar state of mind,
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wholly unpractical and visionary, got to do with practical life? The love of man for
man is after all a practical affair having to do with the daily routine of our lives. And

if it is true that mystics do feel, as a result of their ecstasy, an increased love for their
fellow beings, may not this be a mere superficial phenomenon? The mystic may have
a sense of emotional uplift which will cause him, at least for the moment, to feel
kindly to his fellows in much the same way as an intoxicant does? And can any such
mere emotional afflatus be made the foundation of ethics?
But the connectionl between mysticism and love is not thus accidental and superficial.
There is a necessary metaphysical relation between the two. The foundation of this
relation lies in the fact that in the mystic vision all distinctions, and therefore the
distinction between one man and another, are transcended. Selffhood, in the sense in
which I am one self and you are another, is gone. But it is out of such selfhood that all
moral evil, especially hatred and envy of others, arises. He who achieves the vision
sees that his self is the self of all men, that he is in them and they in him. There is for
him no such distinction between an "I" and a "you" as would cause him to seek
something for the "I" and deny it to the "you," to hate another while loving himself, to
cause pain to another while grasping at pleasure for himself. He lives in all men and
all men live in him. His desire, his love, therefore, is not for himself but for all men. It
is this which makes mysticism the source of the moral life and provides the religious
foundation of ethics.
This is why, although the way of the saints is not simply the moral wayto say this is
to leave out its specific religious essenceyet it always includes and results in a
moral life. The saints are good men, although this is not the essence of sainthood. It is
a fact that the divine vision normally transforms the lives of those who have it,
making them centers from which radiate enhancements of moral aspiration and
illumination among their fellow men.
But of what use, it will be asked, is this to the masses of men who have had, and can
have, no glimpse of that unifying vision
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of the saints and mystics? Their morality cannot flow from an experience which they
do not have. The saint may find a basis for morals in this experience, but how can we
who lack it do so? And in particular how can this help in regard to the problem of

relativity? How does it help to show that what is good is good for all men, and that
what is evil is evil universally? The saint's vision is essentially private to himself.
Hence what seems good to the saint will be good for the saint, but what reason is there
to say that it will be good also for us? We could find a basis for a universally valid
morality only in a universal value experience. And the saint's experience, so far from
being universal, is perhaps the rarest of any experience known to man. Hence the
solution proposed does not solve the problem of relativity. Nor does it give any
foundation at all for morality, even a relative morality, for those who lack the mystic
experience.
I have already given the answer to this sort of objection in the last chapter. The
principle there stated in the context of religion has only to be applied in the context of
morality. Not only is the saintly experience potentially in all men in the sense that all
could have it in certain conditionsfor instance, if they subjected themselves to some
rigorous and long discipline. It is actually present in all men now, though in a low
degree in most of us. What ordinary men call religious feeling is a dim "seeing
through a glass darkly" of what the saint sees in brilliant illumination.
If this is so, moral aspiration will flow out of the religious experience common to all
men in proportion as it is dim or bright. And since that experience is basically the
same in all menthe differences being differences of degreethe morality which
flows out of it will be the same everywhere, the same for all men, though some will
apprehend it more clearly, others more obscurely. Perrhaps something like this is the
truth which lies at the bottom of the old myth of "conscience." It is a myth if it is
taken literally as meaning a magical and infallible inner voice which tells a man on
every occasion what he ought to do. But it is true if it is taken symbolically as
standing for an inner light of the divine vision shining clearly only in the very few,
more dimly in the rest of us.
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And we may also think that what some philosophers have called moral "intuitions"
are in reality an influx into our ordinary connsciousness of elements from that
radically different kind of menntality, intuitive and non-discriminating, of which
mystics speak, which in most of us is sunk in the depths of the unconscious. This

would explain the apparently mysterious character of such intuitions, and would also
explain many of the paradoxes with which ethical philosophers have wrestled.
Does the view which has here been expressed justify the statement made earlier in this
chapter that although, even if we take the naturalistic view that moral values are
subjective and that the world is not a moral order, a sound basis for morality can be
given, yet actually moral values are objective and the world is a moral order? Are we
not compelled to think that even if ideal and moral aspirations flow out of the
religious experience of the saints and, more dimly, out of that of common men, yet
this experience being itself no more than a human thing, morals will still be subjective
and the world not a moral order?
To answer this question we have to refer again to the conclusions reached in the last
chapter. That the mystic vision is merely subjective is the sole truth if we take our
stand within the order of time and make that our frame of reference. But there is
another equally legitimate frame of reference. If we take our stand within the mystic
moment itself, if we view it from within instead of from the outside, then it alone is
the truth; and it is, rather, the time-order which is subjective illusion. The same will be
true of the moral ideals, the value experiences, which are enclosed in the religious
vision and which overflow from it into our daily lives in time. From a naturalistic
standpoint they are merely subjective. But in that other frame of reference, which is
the eternal order, they are eternal truths. Properly speaking we should say of them, as
we did of God himself, that they are neither subjective nor objective. But we may also
say of them that they are both subjective and objective since the universe contains
both frames of reference. The error of the naturalist is to admit the reality only of the
time-order. But the eternal order is as much a part of the
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universe, and therefore of reality, and therefore the moral values which belong to it
are in the same sense real and objective. This means that from the standpoint of time
the world is not a moral order, but that from the standpoint of the eternal it is a moral
order. And both truths have an equal right to our acceptance because we live in both
orders.

It is not true that moral ideals are merely human devices for achieving survival and
increased pleasure or happiness. They do indeed serve these ends, and can be
naturalistically justified thereby; but that is not all. A naturalistic ethics can at best
only lamely explain why, if morality is nothing but this, men will face torture and
deathwhich are surely not an increase of comfort or securityfor the sake of ideals.
In the long and tragic struggle of life on this planet from lower to higher forms; in the
terrible sufferings of mankind reaching upward to grasp at nobler ways of living,
constantly falling backward, yet as constantly striving higher; in the vague aspirations
of men for immortality, for a more blessed mode of existence, for God, for a life
which shall be not merely animal but also divine; in all this can be seen, not merely
the futile, because ultimately purposeless, efforts for survival or pleasure by an
animated piece of clay, but an influx into the darkness of such a life of a light which
has its source in that which is eternal.