《【英文文学】Saints and Revolutionaries.docx》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【英文文学】Saints and Revolutionaries.docx（59页珍藏版）》请在taowenge.com淘文阁网|工程机械CAD图纸|机械工程制图|CAD装配图下载|SolidWorks_CaTia_CAD_UG_PROE_设计图分享下载上搜索。
1、【英文文学】Saints and RevolutionariesPrefaceTHE AIMS of this series are set out in the Argument which follows this Preface. My responsibilities as Editor are restricted to the selection of the contributors and occasionally to the suggestion of a subject. I must not be supposed to agree with any particula
2、r authors point of view, any more than one contributor can be assumed to agree with another except on this, which gives the series its unity.We are all agreed in believing that materialism is not enough. That is the lowest statement of our convictions. The belief in freedom, in human responsibility,
3、 in the authority of reason, in the duty of argument, in the claims of the individual, which arises from these convictions will be expressed in different ways and from different religious, philosophical and political standpoints.For myself, I hold firmly that the great danger to civilization to-day
4、comes from the tyranny of fear, the worship of power and from mans refusal to endure the burden of spiritual liberty. Men seek to be free from their selves, not through a passion of self-abnegation, but from a suspicion that the self is not worth while. They value security above safety, convenience
5、above conviction; and would submerge themselves in the mass, not in a fellowship of free men seeking a fuller life, but in obedience to some dark sub-human impulse towards the domination of death.Against that, all of us, Christians, Jews, agnostics, atheists, mystics, rationalists, orthodox, heretic
6、s, are agreed to make our protest.R. ELLIS ROBERTSArgumentTHE two outstanding characteristics of our age are the revival of violence, of conflict, and the revival of religion. The revival of conflict is obvious enough conflict between classes, between parties between races, between nations. The revi
7、val of religion is not so generally recognized. The reason for this is that for most Europeans and Americans and it is their philosophers who are foremost in formulating and describing the clash of ideas religion still means Christianity: and the religions of the new conflicting forces are at the an
8、tipodes to Christianity.There is to-day no more important conflict than the conflict of ideas. It was possible for intelligent men in the nineteenth century to think that conduct could be divorced from belief. Indeed it was a common opinion: and it was as wrong as it was common. We see all over the
9、world the disastrous consequences of the attempt to separate conduct from creed.The most extreme conflict is that between those who believe in the world of freedom and those who believe in the world of fate. Between the disciples of reason and the instruments of the unconscious. Between the children
10、 of the: spirit and the servants of the machine.The Editor of this series is a Christian; but he would not put forward the arrogant and ridiculous claim that no religion but Christianity is opposed to the worship of the mass and of a mechanical determinism, which are our peculiar foes. In the presen
11、t conflict those who are not against the spirit are for it; all those who believe that. there is a world other than the sensuous, phenomenal world are on the same side. This is a series of books by those who are opposed to the forces in life which seek to destroy the dignity of the individual soul a
12、nd to exalt the machine: who are opposed to the attempt to exalt violence above justice; and to the tendency to substitute persecution for argument.The contributors will include historians, philosophers, men of science and theologians; but the chief aim of the series is to form a focus for the creat
13、ive artists.Each volume might be called I Believe The books, that is, will not be essays in opinion or conjecture; not experiments in speculation or desire, but adventures in faith. They will express the authors innermost convictions. Some of the books will deal at large with the world of reality; o
14、thers with certain aspects of it. Some of the authors have taken, as a starting-point and motto as it were, a clause or a phrase from the historic creeds of Christendom; others write from the standpoint of their own individual interpretation of philosophic, religious or historical subjects.Chapter 1
15、To-dayWHAT do I believe about man in his relation to the universe? Very little, and that little very doubtfully. But about mans own nature, and about his position on this planet to-day I have certain beliefs which are firm, precise and far-reaching in their consequences. Though in the last chapter o
16、f this book I shall make a few guesses about the universe, I shall in the main be concerned with matters nearer home.“Belief is a vague word. We may distinguish between three attitudes, which I shall call “surmise, belief and conviction. The distinction is not rigid, but it is useful. In surmise I f
17、eel a minimum of belief, but not no belief at all. So far as possible I avoid taking action, but if action is inevitable I act as though the surmised proposition were true. In belief, though I have not certainty, I am ready to bet very heavily on the truth of the proposition. I act unhesitatingly, o
18、r rather with no appreciable hesitation. In conviction I have no doubt whatever that the proposition is true. I cannot conceive its being false.In the course of my life I have acquired a certain loose tissue of thought about man and the rest of the universe. This tissue is made up of bushels of wool
19、ly surmise, a few relatively firm threads of belief, and one or two indestructible convictions, like rare wires of steel maintaining the whole web. These indestructible convictions are intuitive. They do not present themselves to me as propositions which I might perhaps have doubted but do in fact b
20、elieve; they are immediate perceptions. I find them very difficult to describe in a satisfactory manner, but as they actually present themselves to me they are indubitable.For instance, I perceive intuitively that kindliness and mutual respect and co-operation are in some sense good, intrinsically a
21、nd universally. But what exactly I mean by saying this, I find it extremely difficult to determine. All the same, the statement does represent an intuition which I find indubitable and immensely significant for practical life.With equal certainty I perceive that it is good to become, so far as possi
22、ble, accurately and comprehensively aware of the world, including myself and other individuals. It is good to be as sensitive as possible and as intelligent as possible. It is good to strive to see things truly and to see things whole.Kindliness and intelligence, or in more exalted language, love an
23、d reason, present themselves to me with a special savour in virtue of which I call them good, and declare with absolute confidence that in general, and apart from particular qualifying circumstances, they ought to exist.From this intuited savour of love and reason I derive one of my very few firm, b
24、ut theoretically dubitable beliefs. I firmly believe that no mind which clearly apprehends love and reason as they really are can fail to perceive them as good, can fail to approve of them. To anyone who denies that he perceives them as good I reply, Either you do not understand what these words mea
25、n, or you have never clearly apprehended love and reason in your own experience; or else, though you have indeed encountered them, something is preventing you from attending to the fact that you do actually perceive them as good, intrinsically and universally. In a later chapter I shall try to defen
26、d this position. Meanwhile I am merely giving examples of my convictions, beliefs and surmises.Another of my few firm beliefs is one of a very different order. It is much more complex and much more questionable. None the less, in my case it is very firm, and it has very far-reaching consequences. Al
27、ong with my conviction of the goodness of love and reason, it is a controlling factor in my attitude to life. I believe that I am living at a time when human society and human culture are being refashioned perhaps more radically and certainly more rapidly than ever before. Indeed I believe that, if
28、this change fulfils its promise, all earlier ages, including our own, will come to be regarded as ages of darkness and barbarism. To-day, most of the ideas in terms of which we conceive our beliefs are dissolving. Some will be abolished altogether; others will be reshaped into almost unrecognizable
29、forms. It is impossible to-day for anyone who retains any suppleness of mind to state his beliefs without having very soon to discover that he was in many respects deluded.My belief in the fluidity of our culture persuades me that beliefs should be reduced to a minimum. This scepticism is connected
30、with my intuitive conviction that reason, or intellectual integrity, is itself good. I believe that no proposition whatever should be believed which, when everything relevant has been considered, offends reason. To say this, of course, is not to say that no proposition should be believed which reaso
31、n cannot prove. For reason must at bottom be a reasoning about unprovable but not unreasonable propositions, based on immediate experience. And for my part I do not believe that the only immediate experiences which reason must take into account are sense-perceptions.Intellectual integrity, then, imp
32、els me to reduce my beliefs to a minimum. I must recognize the limitations of human thought. Some people tell me that they believe in God, a benevolent and almighty ruler of the universe. Some say they believe in personal immortality, some in Evolution as a metaphysical principle, others in Material
33、ism and so on. In these remote spheres I cannot reach any firm belief at all. Do I believe in God? Is Materialism true? Almost as intelligibly I might ask myself, is the fundamental essence of things Sunday or is it Monday morning? I dare hazard the guess that, in a very metaphorical sense, reality
34、is a good deal more Mondayish than Sundayish. And as to God and Materialism I might perhaps in a moment of self-confidence hazard the guess that there is something not wholly undeserving of the adjective God-like in or about the universe; and yet that from another point of view the universe may very
35、 well turn out to be matterish through and through, if matter may be interpreted in the Pickwickian manner of Dialectical Materialism. But to raise either part of this guess into the rank of belief, to take either Theism or Materialism as an article of faith, a principle for the guidance of ones lif
36、e, seems to me unwarrantable, unwise, and inconsistent with strict intellectual integrity.For my part I believe that for right living we must cling not to the frail stuff of metaphysical surmise, however bright or however exhilaratingly bleak its pattern, but to those few steel-true threads of intui
37、tion on which the rest is woven; and also, though less confidently, to certain generalizations based on logic and science and history. Of these, one of the most secure and most important is the belief in the fluidity of contemporary institutions and culture.Of course, though this fluidity is obvious
38、, the direction of social and cultural change is by no means certain. Though the process of revolutionary development in our institutions and ideas has begun, it may be frustrated. For in the present condition of the human race, and therefore in contemporary culture, there are two conflicting tenden
39、cies, intricately entangled with one another in every geographical region, in every department of social and individual life, and indeed in every ideology or system of doctrine. The one is an impulse toward archaic values, the values of primitive man. The other is directed toward the values appropri
40、ate to a highly developed society.The archaic values are those connected with the solidarity of the tribe against its enemies, and the triumph of the heroic individual as tribe-compeller. The developed values are those which centre round the remote but increasingly important ideal of a world-communi
41、ty of very diverse but mutually respecting and mutually enriching individuals. To the unwarped mind it is becoming increasingly clear that the right goal of all social policy has two aspects, which involve one another. One is the development of individuality in all human beings up to the limit of th
42、eir capacity. This is no vague phrase. It stands for a concept which at a later stage I shall try to state with precision. The other aspect of the social goal is the development of culture; or, let us say, of a communal pattern of knowing, feeling and creating.The struggle between the archaic and th
43、e developed aspirations is the great issue of our day. The forces of reaction may defeat the forces of progress. If this happens, unprecedented natural knowledge and physical power will be used to establish the archaic values. The result will be a new kind of barbarism, archaic in spirit, but equipp
44、ed with aeroplanes, bombs, radio and pseudo-modern ideas. The driving force of this new barbarism will be mistrust and dread of all that is most prized in the half-born progressive culture; and hatred, therefore, of reasonableness and kindliness and the ideal of a harmoniously co-operating mankind.
45、It is possible, though unlikely, that if the new barbarism triumphs throughout the world it may actually destroy mans intuition that reasonableness and kindliness are good. Moreover by systematic persecution it may seriously reduce the capacity of the race for these most human and most precious acti
46、vities, these powers by which man rose to mastery of this planet. Then our species will inevitably decline, and perhaps vanish. This disaster is improbable because the way of life which is signified by these little words, reason and love, is the only way by which man can find lasting peace and satis
47、faction. Almost inevitably, then, through however much self-frustration and self-torture, the race will sooner or later attain full realization of this fact, and reorganize its institutions in accord with this most practical of all principles.But even if the species does not destroy itself, a tempor
48、ary disaster seems probable. The triumph of the archaic in a world that is by now structurally modern may well cause a long period of misery and mental darkness. We can but hope that the wide-spread access of fury, which seems to us who witness it an apocalyptic catastrophe, may after all in the vie
49、w of history turn out to have been a necessary period of revitalization after a phase of lassitude.The struggle of our age may well be regarded as a war of ideas. But the conflicting ideas are themselves the reflections of the conflicting tendencies in human circumstances. The new form of society, and the new culture, if they come into existence, will be in a sense an expression of the immense objective changes in mans cond