Zen and American Thought 9780824885106

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ZEN

AND

AMERICAN

THOUGHT

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VAN

METER

AMES

COPYRIGHT 1 9 6 2

BY T H E UNIVERSITY O F H A W A I I PRESS

M A N U F A C T U R E D I N T H E U N I T E D STATES O F BY V A I L - B A L L O U PRESS,

AMERICA

INCORPORATED

DESIGNED BY K E N N E T H B3NGHEY FIRST

EDITION

LIBRARY O F CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD N U M B E R 6 2 - 1 2 6 7 2

WHAT

THEN

IS T H E

HAVE A CUP OF

BUDDHA'S

STATEMENT?

TEA.

:::

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FOREWORD

Zen is vast. I am quite aware of limitation in speaking of it, beginning with ignorance of Oriental tongues. But Professor Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki has written so much about Zen in English as to have made English another Zen language, from which he is being translated into Japanese. I am grateful that I could discuss Zen with him on paper and in person. I have at least learned that Zen "does not depend on words and letters," since it is "a special transmission outside the scriptures"; also that it is not necessary to attain or accept all that Zen is, or is said to be, in order to benefit from it. The University of Hawaii (in 1947-1948) opened my eyes to the Orient, when I substituted for Professor Charles A . Moore during his sabbatical leave, and enjoyed being with another visitor, Fung Yu-lan. His course in Taoism led to Zen. Lily Pao-Hu Chong Winters helped me to follow. Harold E. McCarthy was my companion on the Way. On a Fulbright grant (1958-1959) I lectured on American philosophy in relation to Zen at the Soto Zen University of Komazawa in Tokyo. I treasure my associations with students and colleagues there, especially with Professor Reiho Masunaga. His assistant, Mr. Kokan Sasaki, was helpful in many ways and ably put some of my articles into Japanese. Mr. James S. Yamada from California, working for years with Professor Masunaga, contributed much to my understanding. So did Dr. Kenneth K. Inada, now teaching in the philosophy department of the University of Hawaii. Fortunately for me he was studying at Tokyo University at the time, and greatly aided me with translating and interpreting. He subsequently enabled me to avoid some of the mistakes in part of my manuscript. That the practice of Zen should carry over into the conduct of life, even in the modern world, was brought home in our discussions by the presence of Mr. Shinroku Inouye, a Zen devotee and man of responsibility in business.

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viii Staying with a priest and professor friend, Sohaku Ogata, at his lovely temple Chotokuin of Shokokuji in Kyoto, included participating in his morning service and discussing Zen. Lecture tours took me over much of Japan to several universities. The kindness of Japanese friends to my wife and daughter and me could not have been anticipated. The Fulbright sojourn was followed by the Third East-West Philosophers' Conference at the University of Hawaii in the summer of 19j9. There it was a pleasure to continue previous talks about Zen with Professors D. T. Suzuki, Hu Shih, Hideo Kishimoto, and others. To Charles Morris of the University of Florida, who heard Mead with me, I am indebted for reading the manuscript; also to Ernest Lynn Talbert, my colleague in Cincinnati, for years of generous criticism and encouragement. Some of the material in this book has appeared in Philosophy East and West, in Psychologia, in Anthology of "Zen, edited by "William A. Briggs (New York: Grove Press, 1961), and in the Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress for the History of Religions: Tokyo and Kyoto, 1958 (Tokyo: Maruzen, i960). Passages from the book constituted my presidential address for the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association in May, i960, published with the title "Zen to Mead" in Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association 19591960 (Yellow Springs, Ohio: The Antioch Press, October, i960), Vol. XXXIII, pp. 27-42. V. M. A.

The epigraph is from Hofuku (Pao-fu Ts'ung-chan, d. 928), Dentoroku Cb 'uan-teng Lu ["Record of the Transmission of the Lamp"]), fascicle 19.

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CONTENTS

1

A M E R I C A

AND

2

THE

3

FROM

4

J E F F E R S O N A N D F R E E D O M

52

5

E M E R S O N :

A M E R I C A N

BODHISATTVA

65

6

T H O R E A D :

TAOIST

A M E R I C A

79

7

W H I T M A N

ON

8

THE

9

W I L L I A M

PURSUIT

OF

H U M E

ELDER

ZEN

TO

H A P P I N E S S PAINE

IN

TO

J A M E S

AND

QUEST OF

OF

SIGNS

38

DEATH

95

E Q U A L I T Y

.

106

THE

.

119

SELF

PEIRCE

11

R O Y C E A N D T H E A B S O L U T E

12

SANTAYANA

13

D E W E Y A N D Z E N

214

14

CHINA

AND

236

15

M E A D :

NO

AND

USE

AND

.

10

INDEX

THE

J A M E S IN

19

REVOLUTION

DEMOCRACY

HENRY

AND

3

D E T A C H M E N T

CHICAGO SELF

IS

SEPARATE

141 162 .182

258 289

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ZEN

AND

AMERICAN

THOUGHT

CHAPTER I

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AMERICA

AND

ZEN

I. American Interest in Zen • American interest in Zen Buddhism is growing. This response to an Oriental outlook must answer to a need. Some people seem to feel that here is the whole answer to whatever ails the West. There is no hiding the fact that Western civilization, including American, confronts not only problems with which its science can cope but troubles for which more than science seems required. There is "more" in the traditional religion and philosophy of the West, but this heritage must be reinterpreted to be adequate now. Wisdom cannot be simply hoarded and inherited. It must be sought afresh. Today, wise men of the East are stimulating the Western mind, apparently by infusing it with something foreign, but, perhaps, by awakening it to resources of its own. The unwary, the unwilling to think for themselves may embrace an Eastern teaching as if nothing like it could be had at home, as if the West had gone astray for two thousand years and should declare itself culturally bankrupt. But, swallowed whole, an exotic view is hard to digest. Gradually it may be worked into the familiar. People must rely upon their own understanding. They will translate what is alien into their own terms, or employ outlandish expressions for what could have been said in household words. When, after all, what is offered from afar adds something the American had not been able to say or even to think, then he should assess its actual difference. He should see as clearly as possible what Zen has in comparison with American thought. Zen would not be the first import into the American thought stream; and it may be that Zen, more than almost any other foreign influence, has affinity with the most American thinking. Americans believe in the pursuit of happiness. They have declared independence of gloom and doom. By hand and by factory they have made a high standard of living, for a few and then for many. They have more and more machines, goods, services, time 3

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off. But not more happiness. Often they have less. They have more nerves, cancer, heart trouble. Something is wrong with a way of life which offers so much, yet spoils it with hurry and worry, even for those who appear most benefited. Perhaps it is gratuitous to be concerned about the lot of Americans who are successful in their own scheme of things when, a few traffic lights away, there still are slums breeding disease and misery which could be prevented. But, even though the shame of the cities can be progressively eliminated, the question remains whether people will have happiness by being better housed, fed, and educated. Are foreign existentialists and our theologians right that men cannot be happy in this world? Do advancing science and technology give no leverage on the real problem of a good life? The pessimistic reply is that the nature of being human is such that no improvement in living conditions will make any difference. Existentialists and theologians agree that there is an unbridgeable cleavage between human beings and the rest of being. Some existentialists side with the theologians about a supernatural future. But these thinkers all hold to a dualism between "man as man," as unique, and man as he can be studied by the sciences—denying the possibility of his being happy or at home here and now, unless even now he can escape Nature. One who accepts a scientific approach must ask whether there really is a split between "man as man" and Nature, between him as human and his body as animal; or whether the cleavage is in our culture, between a traditional dualism and a naturalistic outlook. People who believe the cleavage is fundamental must regard naturalism as a truncated view, cutting off values and reducing life to its lowest terms. The reply of the naturalists is that, instead of leaving out "higher things," they find them within man's range, though he must learn to search and reach for them, also to appreciate them when they are at hand. This is the position of Zen.

z. What Zen Is • The striking thing about Zen, to an American, is that it is a religion, or a way of life in place of religion, which denies the dualism associated with religion in the West, and is entirely naturalistic. In America, a similar position was finally reached most clearly and convincingly by the Chicago philosopher George

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Herbert Mead ( 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 3 1 ) . He disposed of dualism by accounting for the human self and mind without any transcendent or supernatural principle. The whole course of American thought leads up to Mead's achievement. Darwin placed man biologically in the scheme of evolution. Mead's Mind, Self and Society (published posthumously, by The University of Chicago Press in 1934) showed that man's personality and mentality belong to the same natural process of evolution as his body, though surpassing it. When this is appreciated, it heals the cleavage in Western culture. It makes man at home in Nature. Anticipations of Mead can be found in previous British and American philosophers. Now support for Mead comes from the Far East, in the realization that Zen arrived at the chief result of Mead's research centuries ago: that dualism between man and his world is untenable. Zen is a development of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, the "large vehicle," which holds that all men can attain salvation, contrary to the Hlnayana, the "small vehicle," which holds that only a few are capable of it (though this designation as the "small vehicle" is regarded as invidious by its adherents who prefer the name Theravada, "the teaching of the elders"). Zen is one of a dozen or so schools in the Chinese development of the Mahayana after its coming to China from India early in the first century A.D. The legend that Zen was brought full blown from India by Bodhidharma in the sixth century ignores centuries of gradual amalgamation in Zen of the humanism of Confucianism and the naturalistic mysticism of Taoism with Buddhism. But scholarship has restored poetic truth to the story of Bodhidharma's bringing Zen to China by showing that Zen, as it developed in China, kept the main Mahayana teaching of India, though in much simpler form, shorn of eternal Buddhas and other divine beings, with heavens and hells, which had been introduced into Mahayana literature to symbolize the vast metaphysical and cosmological dimensions of man and his universe. Bodhidharma personifies the fact that Zen in China was more a slow-won recovery of essential Buddhism than a departure from it. If China brought Buddhism down to earth, it had been on the ground in India; and Chinese translations of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit helped the Chinese on their way to Zen.

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D. T. Suzuki observes that "four Chinese translations of the Lanhavatara Sutra were made between about A.D. 420 and 704." This important Mahayana text, said to have been carried by Bodhidharma, teaches that Nirvaria "is not to be found in contradistinction to birth-and-death or Samsara. . . . It is to be found where there is the identity of Nirvana and Samsara." Dualism between here and hereafter, this world and another world, is denied. Suzuki fully succeeds in his undertaking "to treat the sutra as most intimately connected with Zen Buddhism, and, therefore, as containing some of the most salient ideas of Zen." 1 In fact, the Lanhavatara Sutra is used as one of the ten basic texts in Zen Buddhism in Japan. Now, Kenneth K. Inada, in a fresh study, finds "that Zen in its true nature belongs to the whole fabric of Mahayana thought." 2 But Zen is especially affirmative and joyous. It does not see the goal as a metaphysical absolute, but seeks a direct seizure of the here and now, in things just as they are. For Zen, every man has the Buddha-nature and simply needs to realize it, to wake up to the enlightenment he potentially has. Then he has only to go on with his life, free and unafraid, appreciating the wonder of the world in the present moment, while doing what needs to be done, not for gain or merit but for itself. This calm and joyful wisdom is found in meditation, but carries over into daily activities, and brings compassion for all beings. It is in stressing compassion that Zen is most identified with Mahayana Buddhism. Suzuki feels that a four-times repeated sentence in the first verses of the Lankavatara is not only the "most important passage" in it "but in the whole teaching of Mahayana Buddhism." It is: " Y e t a great compassionate heart is awakened in them" (the wise) .8 And Zen compassion is not only attitude but activity, not merely a teaching but a way of life, with endless social applications, while always helping men to realize the salvation that is in themselves. The name Zen is the Japanese reading of the Chinese Ch'an, a contraction of ch'an-na, which is the literal rendition of the 1. D . T . Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (Kyoto: The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1930. N e w impression, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1 9 5 7 ) , pp. 4, 129, 218—129. 2. Kenneth K . Inada, " A n Analysis of the Movement of Thought from £unyavada to Vijnanavada" (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Indian Philosophy, University of T o k y o , i960), p. 7. 3. Suzuki, op. cit., p. 2 1 ; .

7 Sanskrit dhyána, meaning the silent cross-legged meditation older in India than the Buddha, by which Sákyamuni became the Buddha, the Enlightened One. In China, Zen had its greatest importance in the eighth and ninth centuries, before dying out by the seventeenth century. But the Chinese philosopher and historian Hu Shih regards Zen in China as anti-Buddhistic, a revolt of Chinese naturalism and rationalism against the metaphysical abstractions and subtleties which had developed in Buddhism, and even against attributing any special importance to dhyána. For Hu, as for Tao-i (Ma Chu) in eighth-century China, there is no need for any special act of meditation. The enlightenment of Chinese Zen consists merely in being intellectually emancipated and enabled to live naturally.4 This seems a far cry from the rigid rules and practices of Zen monasteries in Japan, beginning with the leg-folding "lotus position" for meditation. But the Japanese do not pretend to reduce Zen to rules. While they find value in austerities, they recognize that one may meditate in a chair, in walking, and in working at daily tasks.6 They agree with the Chinese that, if Zen wisdom can be taught at all, it is indirectly, by devices obliging the novice to wake up to it himself. Hu Shih is disappointed, however, that Zen in Japan, as interpreted by Suzuki and his disciples, contrary to the Chinese simplification of Buddhism to what is plain, has become "illogical, irrational, and, therefore, beyond our intellectual understanding." 8 Yet plenty of sense can be found in Japanese Zen. It was brought to Japan from China, and retains much in common with Chinese as well as with Indian Buddhism, while having established its historical and central place in Japanese culture. If, in turn, Zen develops in America, without being just what it has been in China or Japan, it need not follow that what is made of Zen in America will not make sense, even if it is not all logical. For Zen to take hold in America may be no more surprising than for it to have become at home in Japan. 4 . C f . H u Shih, "Development of Zen Buddhism in China," The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, X V ( 1 9 3 1 ) , pp. 4 8 3 , 4 9 8 , J 0 3 , 5 0 4 - 5 0 5 . 5. C f . Reiho Masunaga, The Sotó Approach to Zen (Tokyo: Layman Buddhist Society Press, 1 9 5 8 ) , p. 3 3 . 6. H u Shih, "Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method," Philosophy East ani West, HI, No. 1 (April, 1 9 5 3 ) , 3 .

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Charles Morris has said: "If Buddhism has a significant future in the English-speaking world—and the signs seem to say that it has— Daisetz Suzuki will in historical perspective stand" with the scholars who carried Buddhism to China and to Japan. 7 He belongs to the Rinzai sect of Zen, which was introduced to Japan by Master Eisai ( 1 1 4 1 - 1 2 1 5 ) . In Japan the Soto sect, brought from China by Master Dogen ( 1 2 0 0 - 1 2 5 3 ) , is much larger. But these two founders did not want to be sectarian; and Dogen, before going to China, had been a student of Eisai. The conviction of the masters has been that Zen is Zen and that Zen is Buddhism pure and simple. The truth of Zen is beyond distinctions. The very name Zen, being a name, may be too distinctive. So a Zen master, when asked what Zen is, may say, "Zen is not-Zen." Although not by that name, Zen may be more American than appears at first, deep in the more-than-American philosophy of Mead. 3. From Dualism to Wholeness • Mead worked in terms of the biological and social sciences. Zen masters have relied on meditation and rigorous discipline as well as upon sheer emancipation. They express themselves enigmatically rather than scientifically. Yet their tone is close to that of Mead's intellectual predecessors in America: Jefferson, Emerson and Thoreau, "Whitman and "William James. Though Zen was originally prescientific, its present spokesmen often say that it is not opposed to science but welcomes it.8 American philosophers in general have thought that it is possible, right, and natural for men to be happy; and that they should reject any government, religion, or teaching which would deny that right. Removal of tyranny is not enough. The individual must learn to control his own attitude as a free agent. This has been the Zen way to a sense of wholeness through centuries before modern science, and must still be the way whether the benefits of science are available or not. Even with them the individual's attitude remains all -important. Life is what it is felt to be, in immediate experience. "What counts is firsthand, day by day, and in the moment. 7. Charles Morris, in Susumu Yamaguchi, ed., Buddhism and Culture Nakano Press, 1360), p. 9. 8. Cf. Masunaga, The Sdto Approach to Zen, pp. 6-7.

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Zen enlightenment does not fit the Western sense of the Enlightenment of John Locke and the French Encyclopedists, meaning the light of reason and science. It is more like the light in the Bible—"The Lord is my light" of the twenty-seventh Psalm, or the "true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" of the first chapter of John—if divested of theology. For Zen, the light is the awakening to the Buddha-nature in everyone. It is what Santayana, speaking of the New Testament, calls "a poetic expression of the dawn of spirit in every reflective mind." 9 It is liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement to a little, limited self felt to be separate from other selves and from the rest of the world. It is also what William James would call immersion in "pure experience." It is not problem-solving or having anything "on the mind." It certainly is not slackness. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come. "Meditation" is not quite the right word for this in English, because no thinking is involved, as the term might suggest, but a state the swordsman, the judo fighter, or sumo wrestler must have —that of not being tense but ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but flexible. André Gide calls this being dispontble, available. Zen appealed to the samurai because it taught him, when his life depended on it, not to watch the enemy's sword too closely, not to become fascinated and fastened, hence unable to shift, avoid, and strike back. The same thing holds for boxing, basketball, baseball, and other sports. Zen men speak of purposelessness. Reading the sutras, discussing with monks and masters, or doing without words and letters, if done in order to reach the silent experience which Suzuki calls "coming home," sounds purposeful. So Dógen denied a "difference between training and enlightenment," saying that meditation is free of striving or waiting "for enlightenment and the wish to become a Buddha." 10 But nothing could be more practical than the practice of Zen meditation if the test and benefit, the whole point, is so folded into it that no purpose sticks out, while the influence flows over. This overflow evidently must be included in what is meant by 9. George Santayana, The Idea of Christ in the Gospels (New Y o r k : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), p. 17410. Masunaga, The Sdtó Approach to Zen, p. 64.

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meditation. Zazen, in the narrow sense, is meditation in the crosslegged posture. But, historically and functionally, meditation has come to cover whatever a person does with the calm and unselfcentered attitude cultivated in sitting. Rinzai Zen may be more intuitive and less social than Soto. Yet Soto, for all its logical and social sense, has the Rinzai quality; has the arhat's emancipated, self-sufficient ideal of Hinayana within the bodhisattva's engaged and other-regarding ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Rinzai, with its individualism, has a social side. Zen, by transcending distinctions, baffles the Westerner, dismissing as it does the difference between sitting and working, between being above the battle and fighting for the right, between accepting the universe and doing something about it. Accepting oneself, not as one's apparently little self trying to maintain identity as a separate entity, but as part of all there is, all the flow and change going on, not at odds with it but at one with it, brings the peace of Nirvana in the midst of the world. So Zen gives relief to the self-conscious Japanese, afraid of falling down in their impossible, too personal obligations; also to Americans with a lingering Puritan conscience and consequent need to justify their private selves. The great Zen lesson is to be natural. Beyond its rules, the object is to become free and calm, to keep "undisturbed amid the bivouac of actual life." 1 1 The idea is to deal with things as they come, without thought of gain or merit, and without worry. It is to have a sense of duty with a sense of humor, and be joyous. This is the relaxed Taoist attitude of Zen, wisely, surprisingly fused with Confucian responsibility and Buddhist compassion. It means cultivation without cultivation, and doing without ado. This appeals to Americans, though Zen love of simplicity, and even poverty, might seem incompatible with assuming a rising standard of living. The fact is that Americans have become uneasy about the strain within their way of life, added to the fear of devastation from without. Under pressure they feel the need of being relaxed. So a teaching of humor and happiness out of the East is attractive to the troubled West. If much of the same message is in the Bible's tidings of joy (also Eastern), it helps to get good news in a new form. Words become worn, ideas frayed. Significance II. Kaiten Nukariya, The Religion of the Samurai (London: Luzac 8c Co., 1913), p. 197.

ir revives in a fresh expression, even if it is only another notation for what was known. But more is involved. Life does not stand still, and neither does wisdom. To keep it we must keep finding it, especially we Americans with a dualistic background. In this age of science, the supernatural is becoming hard to accept without violence to the assumptions which men work and live by. Yet, they have yearnings which seem to need the otherworldly beliefs still being preached. The attraction of Zen to the West is that, although from the past, Zen will meet the need for reassurance without being anachronistic. Zen can save men from the painful separateness of the self without the dualism of supernaturalism, in fact by denying it. A temporary or provisional dualism takes place during intellectual work. When a man is thinking he stands off from what he is trying to understand. This phase of experience has been emphasized in the West as basic, whereas in the East the undivided experience, which precedes and follows analytical thinking, is more real. Suzuki assumes that the separateness of the self in thinking and in self-conscious relations with other people does not support a metaphysical dualism. Yet, he admits that even for the Eastern mind, with its age-old tradition of oneness with the world, it is not easy to overcome the alienation of self-consciousness. Conquest of self-separateness is emphasized not because it is easy but because it is important. Suzuki is careful to explain that we must make the 12 effort "with our whole existence. . . If this is not easy in the East, it is much more difficult in the West, if overcoming unhappy self-separateness demands giving up self-consciousness. The Western sense of value, as usually backed by religion, philosophy, and literature (not to mention advertising and entertainment), rests upon conscious personality with its sacred dignity and rights. Yet, here is the root of unhappiness in the West. The release from it offered by Zen may seem a way for holy men and not for other men. But Shen-hui (686-760) observed: "If the ordinary man disciplines himself in it, he is no more an ordinary man." 1 3 The Westerner's difficulty is that, even when losing selfconsciousness is understood as awakening to the sense of a larger 12. D. T. Suzuki, Living by 2en (Tokyo: Sanseido Press, 1949), p. 158. 1 3 . D. T . Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series (London: Rider & Co., 1 9 5 3 ) , P- 39-

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Self, it is hard for him, beforehand, to imagine leaving the self he feels to be himself. After studying the literature of Zen he may still be rightly skeptical about giving up the self he has for one with a capital S, recalling the Absolute of romantic German idealism, which has been dismissed in America as fanciful. Can he take what makes sense to him in Zen and let the rest go? Can he take the rest as a way of expressing what had to be put metaphorically before it could be explained scientifically? To let the sense go would be to discount all that is down to earth in Zen, its finding the high in the here, Nirvana in daily life. What now and then sounds like German idealism in Zen is simply the attempt to say that actuality escapes categories, that experience cannot be fitted with predicates, because it is always more than can be said about it. The last thing Zen could mean would be that life is other than the experience of it. Suzuki says that in the Lankavatdra Sutra, which he finds basic to Zen, "apparent paradoxes are designed to adjust our thoughts . . . to the actuality of existence, with which no ordinary rules of logic are compatible." So the Zen notion of "non-ego," or getting rid of self, may be understood as meaning that the self as we conceive it does not fit the actuality, because "existence is really beyond any system of categories." 14 This does not justify using the categories of German or Indian or other idealism. The temptation to use them may be dissipated by Mead's achievement in showing how a larger self begins to develop as soon as a self appears at all, as a natural growth. Suzuki might object to Mead's approach to the question of the self by way of biology and the social sciences. He has said: "Zen is opposed to everything that goes by the name of science or scientific." 15 But in a broader mood he said: Strictly speaking, Zen has no philosophy of its own. Its teaching is concentrated on an intuitive experience and the intellectual content of this experience can be supplied by a system of thought not necessarily Buddhistic. If the masters find it more expedient for some reason, they may build up their own philosophical structure not always in accordance with 14. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, pp. 120, 136. 15. D. T . Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture Eastern Buddhist Society, 1938), p. 9,

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13 the traditional interpretation. Zen Buddhists are sometimes Confucians, sometimes Taoists, or sometimes even Shintoists; Zen experience can also be explained by Western philosophy.16

That would seem to leave the door open, even to a scientific philosophy. The work of Mead, Dewey, and others confirms Zen in showing how natural a widening horizon is to man, through continuing the same process which led to self in the first place. Attainment of a larger self is not visionary, but is what comes of becoming human. A happy few have guessed this all along. But, to wake up to it, most men need something like Zen; reading Mead makes this more likely. In him, the movement of American thought away from dualism is ready for a whole and human fusion with Zen. 4. Making the Most of the Moment • Zen celebrates the wonder

of the ordinary. It has too often seemed that to become mature is to be disillusioned with what is common, as if being wise had to mean turning to something higher. Men take the familiar for granted. Yet they do not move far without nostalgia. When they want heaven they want it to be like home. Unless terrible things have poisoned their childhood, they dream of its scenes, until they learn that what they seek is neither ahead nor behind but here and now or nowhere. Childhood is magical in retrospect because it was lived in the present. Vacation and retirement beckon with the lure of a moment it is hoped will stay. But when the future comes it is another present. So it is wise not to wait but wake, and make the most of the moment. Unfortunately, the moment may be a bad one and may stretch into a bad life. Zen would not appeal to the West if it meant accepting a wretched life passively, although the stoical patience of Zen is often valuable. Professor Shin'ichi Hisamatsu has a long tradition behind him in declaring the importance of the active life for Zen.17 To an American it makes sense to work for more good moments for more people. A moment filled with the good of a good life is better than a moment of forgetting a miserable life. And Buddhist good includes compassion and social-mindedness. Zen 16. Ibid., p. 105. 17. Address, September 8, 1958 at Myoshin-ji, Kyoto, to The Ninth International Congress for the History of Religions.

14 temples early were schools and hospitals. Suzuki notes the concern of Zen masters of the past with the labor of the agricultural society around them, their interest in the market place, their conception of a monastery not as "a hiding place from the worries of the world" but as "a training station" for doing all that could be done for the community. 18 Before Americans can settle down to enjoy the moment, or go much out of their way for other people, there seem to be too many other things on the list to do. With a watch on every other wrist, there is little chance to have a moment before it is jerked away, unless illness, age, or laziness slows the pace. People seem to think more coffee breaks and cocktails will help. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman were wiser, and the writers of the Bible, too. The sitting figure of the Buddha rises before us, now that we are becoming aware of the East. We may learn that we do not have to choose between doing things and being calm. To live in the present need not rule out activity. The moment need not be otiose. Zen joy can be found in doing the dishes or in whatever wants doing. Delight in the here and now should not interfere with art or science or reform. Effort belongs to the present as much as trees and mountains, with their growth and erosion. Criticism and new departures occur in the midst of what is here. Americans should know that the moment is on the move. They like a moving goal and a going concern. They can see that life is in living, that the time to live is now. They also know the moment has give to it and will stretch. William James noted that nothing could be done or enjoyed in the moment if it were only the knife-edge of a physical instant. The moment in which anything of moment can happen is a specious instant, with enough spread for elbow room and a span of attention. Within this span, the sense of being immersed in the immediate may last from a few minutes to an hour. To be momentous, a moment must last long enough for thought or feeling to slip between before and after. However momentary, a moment must last long enough for "now" to rest on it. By extension, any plan or project which is going on is felt to be in the present. According to the context, the now may be a second or a century. 18. D. T . Suzuki, "The Philosophy of Zen," Philosophy East and West, I, No. 2 (July, 1951). 14. IJ-

The Zen present is not only momentary but monumental, lasting through history like the Great Buddha of Kamakura, through typhoon and earthquake, and the soft fall of blossoms. Suzuki's Rinzai Zen has emphasized getting a sudden satori awakening after puzzling long over a paradoxical koan question such as, " W h a t is the sound of clapping with one hand?" O r , sudden seeing may be brought on by a master's shout or blow, if not b y a mondo session of question and answer with him. But Soto Zen teaches life-long deepening realization, spreading from hours of meditation through hours of working, eating, and sleeping, and forgetting Zen. Then Zen is not a special kind of experience, in contrast to the common run, but a natural way of taking life as it comes. Then Zen is not identified with instantaneous, unaccountable intuition, but is compatible with sense and science and social experience. Zen is not complete, however, unless its wisdom brims over in compassion and action for others. One who would cling to his own enlightenment is called a "personally enlightened corpse!" 1 9

5. The Joyful Mastery • Readers of Mead can confirm and supplement Zen. His students had with him something like the relationship in Zen between beginner and master, something like that which Americans expect between an athlete and a coach. In science and art also we have some of the spirit of "traveling on f o o t " to sit at the feet of a sage, to live with him and learn the joy of mastery, not only from what he says but from what he is. This was the way of ancient Greek learning, and the w a y of medieval master and apprentice. Compared with the formal lectures in a European or Japanese university n o w — w h i c h constitute most of the contact between professor and student, except for the few in graduate seminars or those who find a faculty member in a cafe—the American practice of allowing discussion during a lecture period, and of having consultation hours, brings a closer relation. In advanced work it may be very close. O f t e n the scientist seems to know better than the moralist that the important things are learned not only from books and classrooms but from the mutuality which comes in doing things to19. Masunaga, The Sold Approach

to Zen, p. 28.

16

gether, and in observing how hunches emerge before they can be stated or tested. The ethos of scientists, their motivations, obligations, and satisfactions cannot be found in the formal teaching of science so well as in working at it and sharing the work. Scientists and artists, whatever their difficulties, seem happier in modern society than other people, because they can be absorbed in what they do without feeling that they should be doing something else; and because their work is more their own, done with their own heads and hands. But anyone who enjoys what he is doing, who is conscientious and excited about it, because he is able to put himself freshly into it, is somewhat like an artist or scientist. Work too often does not seem worth doing, or one is too tired or worried to enjoy it. That is why social reform is in order. But no amount of reform will make people happy who do not learn to enjoy the daily run of life, around the edges of their work if not also on the job. A sudden clash of thunder, the mind-doors burst open, And lo, there sitteth the old man in all his homeliness.20 The old man means the Buddha-nature, the joyful mastery of life, which would seem to be quite ordinary to the unawakened. This is what Fung Yu-lan calls the open secret of Chinese philosophy, kept in Zen. Fung says Chinese philosophy "simply takes life as a fact of nature and tries to improve it spiritually. . . . Here is an age-old attempt to transform the meaning and value of daily life to make it most worth while in the best sense. That is why, throughout Chinese history, philosophy could guide spiritual life without any supernaturalism, and also guide practical life without being vulgar or mundane." 21 6. Reservations About Zen • With qualifications, Zen is congenial to the American temper. While Americans want to make daily living more satisfying, they usually mean improving their arrangements through engineering, further control of the environ20. Chao-pien, as quoted by Alan W. Watts, The Spirit of Zen (London: John Murray, Ltd., 1936), p. S i . 2 1 . Fung Yu-lan, "Chinese Philosophy and a Future World Philosophy," Philosophical Review, LVII, No. 6 (November, 1948), 549.

17

ment, and the development of social services. Yet, when their eyes are opened, they see the importance of their own attitude. Orientals now are also rapidly appreciating what science, industrialization, and social planning can do for them. East and West, economic security will enable Zen to make the best of a full life instead of a meager one. This distinction is lacking in Zen literature, and perhaps it is meaningless to one who can achieve Zen. But there are circumstances in which enjoyment of the ordinary would be reprehensible. It is admirable to have stamina and stoicism in adversity, but not to recommend Zen instead of trying to abolish poverty or oppression which no one should have to bear. It would be a travesty of Zen to offer it instead of welfare and justice, or to think the value of Zen depended upon keeping conditions primitive. Zen would be inhuman if its effacement of self-concern meant unconcern for the troubles of other people. To remember that Buddhist compassion is inherent in Zen should be sufficient to guard against such perversion of Zen. If doubts about it arise which are not anticipated in the literature, the reason may be that these would appear only in a context of modern social questions that have become acute since the formation of Zen. In the past, Zen concern for others has been chiefly for their spiritual development in a world assumed to cause suffering inevitably. So, as Suzuki has remarked, Zen joy is not without a tragic sense; but whether Zen is appropriate and adequate today is not decided by its past. Such application as it has had to social needs, however praiseworthy, may not be enough to keep Zen from being anachronistic now. Meditating in a monastery, when that comes first in Zen, does not sound like a realistic approach to contemporary problems. Yet, Zen is a discipline for monks and other men, not only in meditating but in gardening, cooking, sewing, and whatever needs to be done. Monks often stay in a monastery only a few years before going into the world with the attitude they have developed, an attitude which Americans might like to have. It would be helpful if some representative of Zen would consider seriously the differences between the preindustrial conditions of traditional Zen and the modern situation. The Zen answer probably would be that new conditions should not make any difference to Zen, because the Zen-experience of Buddhist truth flows on through all conditions. This is one of the reasons Japanese Bud-

i8 dhists feel that Zen can assimilate the methods of science. A Westerner may be unconvinced and still find the question of the relationship of Zen to the modern world the chief obstacle to accepting Zen. But benefit from Zen does not depend upon taking it straight. The Zen lesson of not depending too much on anything should apply to Zen itself. There is no reason to overlook what it lacks. The fact is that Zen can add the Eastern to our Western heritage. Zen is the essence of Japanese culture. Zen and Japan have distilled centuries of the wisdom of India and China. Japanese Zen is pouring the Orient into America. A n unexpected result is a new perspective on our own thinkers, showing how much more than local they are, though quite American. Reviewing them will reveal how much Zen there has been in this country all along, though not by the name. There is no one name for what Zen is. And there is no gate barring the way to it. The M« Mon Kwan, a thirteenth-century Chinese classic,22 asks how to enter a way without a gate. The answer is that it may be entered by many paths, if everyone is to get in, as the Buddha wished; then from paths in America as well as in Asia. Once past the "gateless gate," which only seems to keep people out, one may walk freely between earth and heaven: between the actual that is the ground of the ideal and the ideal that is the flowering of the actual, as Santayana would say. In American thought, as in Zen Buddhism, there is the union of the high and the here in the human, expressed by the Chinese monk Seng-chao (384-4x4) when he said: Heaven and earth, with me, are of the same root. 23

22. Transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1957), pp. 113, 114. See also Sohaku Ogata, Zen for the West (London: Rider Sc Co., 19J9). 23. Quoted by Suzuki, in Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture, p. 22$.

CHAPTER

II

•

THE PURSUIT HAPPINESS

OF

I. John Locke • The debt of the first American thinkers to John Locke should make him an honorary American. His pithy down-to-earthness is also akin to Zen Buddhism. But he spelled things out more than Zen would, and had a concern for society that was Confucian, though with the Western purpose of freeing the individual. He wanted government subject to law, because law should protect property, which would shield other private rights. He thought men would do well enough if they could be sure of the fruit of their labor, and be let alone—so far as possible in the necessary organization of social relationships. He insisted upon the separation of church and state, after seeing what happened to freedom when they got together. In his Letters Concerning Toleration (1689), he denied the authority of any church to interfere with men's reading the Bible for themselves. They should simply read it in the light of reason.1 That would be according to what made sense to them, as in the Zen attitude toward the Buddhist scriptures. Locke thought all men could have the natural religion of belief in God and being moral, by considering the evidence around them and examining their own ideas. A Christian would also believe in the Messiahship of Jesus as bringer of the revelation of the existence of God and the principles of morality even to men who failed to use their ability to reach these truths for themselves. Summing up The Reasonableness of Christianity (169j), Locke said: "The writers and wranglers in religion fill it with niceties, and dress it up with notions, which they make necessary and fundamental parts of it; as if there were no way into the church, but through the academy or lyceum. The greatest part of mankind have not leisure for learning and logic, and superfine distinctions of the schools." 2 1 . C f . John Locke, " A Letter Concerning Toleration," in The Works of John Locke (London: Thomas Tegg et al., 1 8 2 3 ) , Vol. VI, pp. j S - j 7 . 2. Locke, The Works of John Locke, "The Reasonableness of Christianity," Vol. VII, p. 157.

19

zo To Locke, the essence of religion was so universal that no one church could have an exclusive claim on it. H e also held that no religious belief or difference should affect a person's standing in the state, thinking of the state as a free union for the sake of civil interest. Holding to reasonableness, he left the implication (for others to develop) that religion might dispense with supernaturalism and be simply the idealization and celebration of men's deepest concerns, natural and social. For him, it was enough to say that the cohesion the state required was threatened by the divisiveness which plagued religion after the Reformation. If men could come together in the state on the basis of what they had in common, regardless of religious disagreements, then let them keep these to themselves. Or, let them go aside into any church or chapel or meetinghouse they pleased, so long as it was not one that menaced civil peace and freedom. H e feared only the one that belonged to Rome. Locke spoke of churches in the plural, thinking of them all as places for the salvation of men's souls. Beliefs basic to religion should not be interfered with, because, in the nature of the case, they could not be coerced. Nor should the ceremonies used in connection with them be any business of the commonwealth. Whatever Locke might seem to take from religion, he would leave it in full possession of what supposedly was of sole importance to it: the way to salvation. Locke wanted religion to be satisfied with this and not edge over into affairs pertaining to the state. The importance of religion meant to Locke that disputes about it would disrupt the state, as they had done. The safety of the state required separation from any church, as did the good of the various churches sheltered by the state. It must be neutral among them. As long as people could work together at their common responsibilities, it did not matter what religious or other interests they did not share. These need not be taken lightly. They could be of the highest importance in any sphere outside the state. In effect, Locke made church religion and its kind of salvation secondary to saving the common civil interest from dissension; though he thought both church and state were subject to divine law. He believed that divine approval of human conduct would show in favorable results, disapproval in disappointing ones. Government was a means of securing happiness, which in turn was a

21

sign of doing the will of God. Locke himself did not abandon the Church of England, but his teaching that all human ways and beliefs should be consistent with a natural and universal religion was approaching Deism. His position was analogous to that of a Zen sage still belonging to Buddhism, to a particular sect, and using its terms, while teaching that its scriptures are of no use unless they help a man to see what life is everywhere for everyone—in or out of Buddhism—who arrives at true seeing. Locke was close to saying that human welfare comes before supernatural salvation and is the practical meaning of salvation outside the churches, out in life. His idea of welfare allows for any amount of development and refinement, but calls first for saving life from the ills which plainly beset it, as understood by a doctor and man of sense. He cherished civil interest as comprising "life, liberty, health." It would include freedom from suffering. He added that it would depend on "the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like." This was plain enough. It was tantamount to rejection of devotion to anything independent of material conditions. Some would call it materialistic. It was realistic. Locke saw that if men were to be happy they had to be both secure and free. Then they had to have some health and wealth. They had to have the wherewithal. He called it property. He did not think all men would be able to get enough of it to be happy. He did not dream this would be possible, and one may hold that against him. But before the American dream could be taken seriously, and before the successors of Locke's scientific friends were able to transform the prospects of men in general, it was only sensible for him to think that human happiness as well as human knowledge must be quite limited, much as he would prefer having more. If "prying biographers" (to use Santayana's phrase) find that Locke's outlook was far from democratic, the historical fact remains that his philosophy was to be a bulwark of democracy. It was not bringing in something Locke nad not led up to, whether or not he realized or intended what he was intellectually fathering, when Jefferson put the pursuit of happiness in the place of acquiring property as the unalienable right to go with life and liberty. Locke made clear that the use and purpose of property, for those who could come by it, was to attain and protect happiness.

22 But what is happiness? The lesson of Locke for Jefferson was to think of this word as meaning what can be expected when life and liberty are there. It is in them but also beyond them. They are its basis and it is what should rest on them. A t first and at least happiness means release from all that has kept men from living fully. The democratic faith is that once men can possess their lives in peace and freedom they will find out how to be glad. Locke saw that the English Revolution of 1688 destroyed the divine right to rule without the consent of the governed. A f t e r that a good government must rest on contract, and the contract must be revised to meet new realization of need. This means that government belongs to the people and must be controlled by them for their welfare. Men have the right to be men, and that means being free. If free, they will work out ways of increasing freedom, and outwit whatever reduces it. The result will not be perfect. It will be happy compared with what men have borne. A t any stage there will be room for improvement. But men cannot care about the pursuit of happiness if they do not already have enough of it to know they want more. A s men live they learn what rights they need in order to be more freely themselves. Aristotle knew they could not come into their own in isolation. They need company to become developed persons. Society is necessary for men to live as men, and a better society for them to be better men. It is up to them to find out and work out what they can do and become. If they cannot be trusted to manage for themselves, whom can they trust to manage for them? They must simply go on putting their heads together and their hands to the work waiting to be done. The evidence and guarantee of progress are in the evolution behind them. If they long ago arrived at happiness for some, they have at last reached the idea of it for all. N o w they can feel that it belongs to the nature of things in addition to depending upon their own efforts. Call it evolution or call it God—there is to be counted on all that brought them to the point where they could call their souls their own, and make a king or a congress accept a Bill of Rights. For Locke it was God. A n d man's reason was of God, to be relied upon as much as anything in religion. Reason and religion both grew out of God-given experience. When they seem to grow apart

they come together again in what makes sense for further experience. God himself makes sense. In believing this, the sensible Doctor Locke was father of the Enlightenment and founder of Deism. God had said, "Let there be light," and there was Locke. Then there was Ben Franklin. Then there was Tom Paine. Then there was the American Revolution. Then the dream that men could be free and happy would never stop being realized. In the Old World, only the elite had done as they pleased, and they had pleased themselves by bearing down on the rest. The mass had moments of release, but only moments, bitterly bought. The idea that people, just as people, without belonging to the powerful few or the saints or sages, could live freely and not be afraid or punished was a new idea. This is the idea that appealed to the Puritans in this country, more and more, until they ceased to be Puritans and became Americans: people who think people should enjoy life. 2. The Bible and Zen • Americans do not live by bread alone. They have lived much by Zen, as they have found it in the Bible and liked it, without calling it that. They used to name their children after Bible worthies. They saw themselves, like the Hebrews of old, coping with the wilderness, seeking the Promised Land, building the New Jerusalem. When they read the Bible for themselves, and did not rely on interpretations which take the Zen out of it, they saw that Jesus was not a man so much of sorrow as of hope and joy; and not a wrathful judge but a friend wanting them to be happy, telling them they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and many things that puzzled them. He reconciled them with their brothers, had them do unto others as they would be done by, bade them give good gifts to their children, be of good cheer, and know the prophets by their fruits. Not only by their words, not by claims, oaths, sheep's clothing, wonder-working, but by their fruits—that was the secret of the Zen masters; not anything said, not anything done, so much as saying and doing things in a way to make all the difference, if only in asking to pass the tea, or in doing the dishes. Jesus ate and drank in a way that endeared him to all kinds of people. This was held against him by purists and formalists who could not see the differ-

24

ence between being publicans and sinners and being with them as Jesus was. There is the same difficulty about Zen's everydayness. Is it different from the way people live without any special aptitude or effort? Does the arduous Zen discipline lead where life leads the ordinary mortal anyway? The answer seems to be yes, except for more awareness. Then the answer is also no. Hu Shih tells how ordinariness helped Ch'an (Zen) monks survive the persecution of Buddhism in ninth-century China: "Ling-yii simply put on the cap and dress of the layman when he was ordered to return to secular life. 'He did not want to be in any way different from the people.'" 8 His lack of difference was not a lack but an achievement: not just for saving his neck but for saving his teaching; not by going back on it but by practicing it. The paradox of Zen is that the difference it makes does not "leave a trace," since it makes for oneness between the ignorant and the wise, where only ignorance would insert a difference—which it takes instruction and effort to overcome. Seeing into our Buddha-nature, our oneness with other men and with all Nature, requires strenuous preparation and the dawning of insight, yet may suddenly seem to do away with the need of further effort or learning. So Suzuki suggests that we should emulate "the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air" by living a purposeless life, "letting the evil of the day take care of itself." 4 A purposeless life, however, if it is to have high value, is free of any purpose except that of being absorbed in living. Zen has well expressed this as "living without a trace." But it is part of many a "traceless" day to deal in some fashion with evil, even for the fowls and lilies, though they neither toil nor spin. They fly and grow. And Suzuki's allusions to the sixth chapter of Matthew 5 are somewhat inaccurate and misleading, in suggesting the meaning to be that the evil of the day is to take care of itself, without our thinking about it. Jesus says it is the morrow that we are not to worry about, with the warning that "the morrow shall take thought for 3. Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method," Philosophy East and West, III, No. i (April, 1953), 18. 4. D. T. Suzuki, "The Philosophy of Zen," Philosophy East and West, I, No. 2 (July, i 9 J i ) , 7j . Ibid., p. 7.

25

the things of itself." Then comes: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," plainly saying that we have enough to do in coping with the evil at hand, without inventing any such presumptuous problem as trying to add a cubit to our stature by taking thought. But there will have to be thought, tomorrow if not today. The point is not that we should not face the troubles we have, but that we should not borrow any ahead. If parts of this passage nevertheless urge that men should neither toil nor spin, really saying that we should cultivate some gaiety and insouciance through faith in life, the question remains whether Zen can abolish, or ever intended to rule out, anything so everyday (hence Zen-like) as dealing with evil by thought and effort. If so, then a mere American, who has problems and responsibilities, and is man enough to shoulder them, will have to do without Zen or do it over. But this is not fair to Zen if we take seriously its teaching that, in the depth of Zen experience, a mountain, after ceasing to be a mountain, is again a mountain. The bird, the tree, the flower, each is itself once more. The market takes its place again among the things that are. Back come the tumult and the shouting, if not the captains and the kings. Back is the need to eat and sleep, to live and love, and to do so more humanly. There is the unceasing need to alleviate misery through compassion and intelligence; to make more available the appreciation of mountains, flowers, and all the wonder of the Nature we share, which must include the far landscapes of philosophy, the adventures of art and science. Unless reasoning is to be restricted unrealistically (and what is Zen if not realistic?) to prescientific thinking, then scientific research must belong to Zen as much as passing the tea or pondering an old text. Science, sense, nonsense: what in experience can be left out if Zen stresses suchness (tathata) or "the viewing of things as they are?" 6 Since inconsistency is part of life, Suzuki can be forgiven for admiring a poem which contrasts the lovely morning-glory with a bucket, and calls the bucket ugly for being a thing of use. But, Americans singing about "the old oaken bucket" seem closer to Zen than Suzuki when he puts the bucket in a "world of defilements," meaning the world of "the practical affairs of daily life 6. Ibid., p p . 6, 7 .

26

where utilitarianism rules." 7 Truer to Zen, as usually presented by Suzuki, is the Taoist idea that nothing is better than hewing wood and drawing water. Then the bucket cannot be left out or put lower than the flower. Both have their place in a traceless day which has no purpose other than that of being worth living. This is the true Zen lesson, which has always been instilled in Americans by Ecclesiastes: "Live joyfully" while you can, going your way under the sun, with your wife, with your work; eating your bread "with joy," if not drinking your wine "with a merry heart." Joy is the final fruit. It is the human test, as American and modern as it ever was Oriental or ancient. 3. Puritanism and Edwards • Jonathan Edwards, Puritan divine and first American philosopher, took the Zen direction when he found the criterion of true religion in the decent conduct of everyday life. Benjamin Franklin expressed the same thought with as much pith and homeliness as a Zen master. What made sense was to be sought in the practical results, in the test of common sense, for men clearing the ground for a new life in a new land, learning what would grow there, what could be done there, and how good it could be. That must be what Jesus meant when he said he came that men might have life and have it more abundantly. To be happy they must be alive, have a place to live and enough to live on, with a good chance for their children to go on living. At least that is what Jesus came to mean to many in America. Protestantism was inherently a drive for freedom, asserting the worth of the individual and his right to his own conscience, against the authority of not only the Roman but the English Church, or any power that became coercive. Though Calvin denied the freedom of the will, his idea of the elect enabled Calvinists, with the sense of being God-chosen, to defy anyone at any cost; also, to regard their eventual worldly success as confirmation of their favored state. It was to be free that a group of English Calvinists, the Pilgrims, came in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It was for freedom that many Puritans and other people followed. They came to live as they 7. Ibid., p. 1 2 .

2

7

could not live in England and Europe, with church and state, priests, nobles, and kings over them. They saw that to live freely they had to be free of the past, free for their own future. They must be free for the truth as they read and felt it for themselves. They knew in the New Testament the truth that would make them free, and found in the New World the place for truth to work. U n fortunately, learning to respect the freedom of those who disagreed with them took time. The early settlers in America, and most of those who came later, were not afraid of work, but thought the laborer was worthy of his hire. They thought he should not always have to worry about what to eat, what to wear. Jesus had said not to, but perhaps that was easier to say in Galilee. They agreed that other things would come to a man as a matter of course, if first he could seek what God wanted and was. They believed that each who sincerely asked should receive. If the fowls and lilies and grass did not have to worry, why should men be of little faith? They knew this from what they read in the Bible and heard in church. They heard about hell, but thought less about it when they left Europe. Heaven continued to mean something. But the here gained on the hereafter. The Old Testament, with its stories, poetry, and long experience of the human scene, showed them the slow refinement of the idea of God from a jealous tribal deity to the Lord who required man to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him. They could enjoy the Song of Songs. They could consider the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, with the admonition to get down to earth while there was time. It may seem that life was dull without the variety of our activities, the flood of entertainment and world problems. But we may envy the quiet hours in the field, the slowing down to a walk on the road, the time for thinking on timeless things, all focused on the same King James passages, once familiar to everyone, while the land was being mastered and the country built, fought for, and defended. Never had there been such equality for so many in so much. At last there was a chance to try out life for what it was worth, for all comers. People could begin to think of being happy. Except for the very few or the very inexperienced, or in very unguarded moments, this would have been foolish at almost any other time, and almost anywhere else at the same time. To be happy,

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one had to live, instead of dying at birth or soon after or shortly after being old enough to realize all there was to live for. Even when men grew older there would be lacking the freedom to live as men would who could. Only in a late day in a far land could people begin to think seriously and sanely of being happy. Plato and Aristotle did not dream that happiness was attainable except for a few Greeks. A few Romans reached it. Christians postponed it to another world. Subsequently, it seemed that some Islanders had happiness in the Pacific, some red Indians in the West, and perhaps a handful of people had a season of it in Europe. Sages in the Far East had known for centuries what it was, but could not spread it or share it more than a bit, intermittently, when united with friends. Only now is what they knew being added to what may be had in America, so that we can tell how much we have had something like it, or missed it. Except in America, the state of being happy has always been rare and precarious. The cynic could doubt its possibility. The wonder is that Sartre's dark philosophy of Existentialism did not arrive sooner. In some minds it did. They have accused the American founding fathers of dishonesty for holding out the hope of happiness and declaring the right to pursue it. Even in Franklin and Jefferson passages can be found where they were discouraged about happiness. They did speak of the pursuit rather than the possession of it. But they did not mean to hedge. They were not men who would solemnly guarantee what they secretly felt to be a wild-goose chase. They were convinced that happiness could be had: with the aid of a government that would not be against men but on their side, with concern for their welfare written indelibly, and with effective checks against its getting into the hands of oppressors. With lords and masters left in Europe, their abuses and usurpations consigned to the past, men could begin to be themselves; to live and breathe and call their souls their own. Was it not happiness already, in great measure, to live freely? If men could have life and liberty they could be happy, by any previous standard. That was what the Greeks had wanted, fought for, and lost after a brief experience of it, which was enough for other men to base hope on ever after. The shape of things to come, when the good life of a few Greeks would be widely shared, was hard to forget in the marble they left. Their defense of individual

*9 conscience and freedom of discussion was lodged in words to last, in ideas that would not be lost. Sooner or later they would make sense in plain English, as in Locke, and then more plainly in Paine and Jefferson. Jonathan Edwards accepted Locke's view of the individual's own sense experience as basic, and argued that God is known, first of all, in the direct way of being sensed. T o Edwards, the sense of the divine presence brought an experience of the most intense love and happiness. But he sadly realized that this experience was carrying many people away. Dismayed by the emotional excesses of the revival of 1740, for which he felt his own emphasis somewhat to blame, he used what was virtually Locke's common-sense approach to justify judging "the high and extraordinary transports" of religion by their fruit in practice, in the conduct of daily life. A t some length Edwards commended the kind of person who had been lifted to the highest pitch of spiritual joy and did not lose his head but was wonderfully improved as a human being. "The heart was swallowed up in a kind of glow of Christ's love coming down as a constant stream of sweet light, at the same time the soul all flowing out in love to him. . . ." There was no doubt about the person's having the mystical experience. And it steadied him instead of sweeping him off his feet. It gave him the bedrock base of Locke and Zen. High experiences and religious affections in this person have not been attended with any disposition at all to neglect the necessary business of a secular calling, to spend the time in reading and prayer, and other exercises of devotion; but worldly business has been attended with great alacrity, as part of the service of God: the person declaring that, it being done thus, it was found to be as good as prayer. These things have been accompanied with exceeding concern and zeal for moral duties . . . and an uncommon care to perform relative and social duties, and a noted eminence in them; a great inoffensiveness of life and conversation in the sight of others; a great meekness, gentleness, and benevolence of spirit and behaviour; and a great alteration in those things that formerly used to be the person's failings; seeming to be much overcome and swallowed up by the late great increase of grace, to the observation of those who are most conversant and most intimately acquainted.8 8. Jonathan Edwards, "Thoughts on the Revival of 1740," The Works of President Edwards (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill, 1830), Vol. IV, Part I, Sec. V, pp. n o . 118.

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This reasonable and, to Americans, more appealing side of Edwards was in conflict with his attack upon the freedom of the will, his conviction that all was foreordained by God, including sin, the fire awaiting sinners, and the pain in store for unbaptized babies. More in keeping with the joy of Zen was his sense of the "glory and fulness of God . . . his holiness and happiness," which God poured forth in creating the world.9 Intellectual and ecclesiastical as this divided man was, he could not confine his feeling to the formal. Though he defended the dread letter of Calvin, Edwards felt that religion should be not only strict and exacting but humanly practical as well as glorious. Like the men of Zen, who were unknown to him, he knew that the center cannot be reached by mere reasoning, but by a kind of experience as immediate as sense. Whatever can be thought, in a reflective mood, he held fast, first and last, to inward delight. To have this delight with mystical intensity, yet keep the good sense of Locke, is the Zen-mark in Edwards. No less than anyone in ancient China, he closed the supposed cleavage between the highness of holiness and the hereness of happiness. He did not speak of pursuing happiness. For him, it was not to be thought or sought but had. The blinding having of it needed only the opening of the heart. Then came the Zen-burst of reality, the whole glory of happiness as its own end, beyond any dualism. This Zen-moment of effulgence shut out the Calvinist shame of being a worm in a vale of tears; also it shut out the Deist dream of improving the human scene through education and science; and was too much for Edwards' congregation which wanted to use religion as the basis for a commonwealth. It finally seemed to them that he was out of his senses. He had to go to the Indians and the forest, leaving the problem of uniting the mystical and the practical to be worked out in towns. There, where Americans have increasingly lived, they will find the Zen-freshness when they learn to look. If it can be had only in taking to the woods, then its dismissal of dualism falls short. Where it is needed is where life splits into things having to be done and things hoped for. If it is only out and away, a retreat, a vacation, it is not the Zen secret of going on with life as we must, where we are, as free as air, because we are at home in all there is. 9. Edwards, The Works of President Edwards, "Dissertation on the End for Which God Created the World," Vol. Ill, Chap. II, Sec. VII, p. 82.

3i 4- Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin 10 did not take to the woods or fields or appreciate the Indians. If this was his loss, he found zest in town, in the midst of the problems of townsmen and of all his countrymen; also in science and invention; even in education. He gladly shouldered the burden of freedom which the decline of Puritanism left. If Edwards could attack the freedom of the will, holding that choice is determined by the strongest motive, Franklin might have replied that freedom depends upon the will to freedom. W i t h his part in the Revolution, his skill in getting help for it, and with his hand in writing the Constitution, he knew that things would be determined if men did not determine them. He knew the necessity of planning to have freedom and to keep it. He chose to seek the best motives and the means of making them the strongest. This may seem more prosaic than Edwards' vision of the glory of God. But to be pedestrian is to have feet on the ground. T o be Franklin was to bring down lightning, to put high and low together with a clap of Zen. It was to apply Edwards' own test of religion in everyday affairs and citizenship. This was the direction of interest and discussion everywhere in the new land, before and after church, if not in it. This led to the demand that education, which had been chiefly for ministers, be more useful for ordinary people, to help them learn what they needed to know, in order to do what would do most good. If the criterion of religion was in the quality of life as lived by men in managing their affairs, the criterion of education should be no less realistic. But the schools would not contribute enough to life in America, Franklin thought, as long as they were limited to Greek and Latin, Hebrew and a little mathematics. In 1749, he wrote an essay on education in Pennsylvania, saying he wanted geometry, astronomy, English, ancient customs (hist o r y ) , a practical application of mathematics, and French and German. Universal education had been established for a century in Massachusetts, and was spreading. By the time of the Revolution, the privilege of education was available to nearly all children whose parents wanted them to have it. Though the quality was not high, here was a high mark of democracy, and the promise of it. In the IO. Here I am glad to express gratitude to James Hayden T u f t s for his course on American Thought.

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seventeenth century perhaps half the settlers in North America could not write their names. Many of the newcomers to follow were immigrants who had lost out in society or who had decided to break out and pit their will against the wilderness. There they could strike out for themselves as they could not do in the old country, where their place and work and share of initiative were fixed. So there was feeling against learning to read, and even to speak, ancient languages which might be fine for ministers and gentlemen but would not answer the common need of learning to earn and govern. At least so it seemed. By the time of the Civil War, the colleges were offering science and the scientific philosophies of Mill, Darwin, and Spencer. The academies responded sooner than the colleges to the need of men to be free men coping with their situations, rather than ministers dealing with things that had to be translated into common life if they were to count there. Benjamin Franklin himself founded the academy which was to become the University of Pennsylvania. Born into a Boston blacksmith's family, he was the tenth of seventeen children. He was brought up as a Presbyterian. When he went to England in his youth, he read Deist writings teaching a rational religion in opposition to Calvinism. Although Deists believed in God as creator and moral ruler of the universe, they were under suspicion for criticizing the orthodox. So Franklin prudently decided that, while Deism might be true, it was not very useful! Yet, he was one who did much to overcome the separation of the true and the useful. If he said little about religion, he gave aid and comfort to a common-sense view of it by his acts and attitude. He furthered the transition which had begun with the Puritans. He transferred moral concern from church and Bible to all his broad interests. Deism applied to religion the drift of the Enlightenment, which became the conscious intention of making science the guide of life. Launched by Locke in England, using the impetus of Bacon and Hobbes, this point of view spread to other countries, and made a special impression in France. There the effect was to discredit the past and tradition as allied with superstition and tyranny. Along with this destructive result, there was the positive educational work of Diderot and his colleagues in the great Encyclopedia. It showed what science was doing and would do: for agriculture, industry and

33 commerce, and for the arts and crafts in general. Here was massive fact to feed the flash of argument, and a new lease on life. Now darkness would be dispelled by light. This was a revolution which promised not to stop, however it might be stalled. In France, the opposition was so intrenched in political and religious absolutism that headway could not be made without violence. In England, progress could be relatively painless because of the tolerance resulting from a variety of religious positions and the development of representative government. The Revolution of 1688 was bloodless. It was justified by John Locke, who fathered the American Revolution. In America, no aristocracy or established church stood in the way of the future. Only the dead claim of the crown, reaching over the ocean, had to be removed by the leverage of Locke in the hands of Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson. Then the insight of Edwards, that the sign of true religion was decency in secular affairs, could be firmly followed. The Puritan and frontier virtues of clean living, hard work, and public responsibility could be justified apart from the old theology, by their service to society. This American leveling of Calvinism to sense and sanity was parallel in the modern world to the way the Chinese had brought Indian Buddhism down to Ch'an or Zen, from theological clouds to human terms. If the Zen masters liked to speak in riddles, it was not because they could not talk sense but because it was fun to use fancy talk to say what was plain; to dramatize the fact that the obvious had been so overlaid with the pious that it was nearly as hard to get down to as the supernatural ever was to get up to. This was the feeling of Franklin: that religion, with its ritual, mystery, imagery, and terminology, meant that men should try to get along together and build as good a life as they could in their own time and place, or it meant nothing much. He would judge actions good or bad by their results, in helping or harming human beings humanly considered. Men should be fair and square, industrious and orderly, and on the lookout for better ways of doing things, because then they would be good neighbors and fellow citizens. Franklin himself continually worked at projects useful to the community and the country because he saw things needing to be done and was glad to be doing them. He not only acted on this plain basis but put it into proverbs that were read with delight in

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every home, often with the help of bifocal spectacles he invented, in the comfort of the stove he designed. He did not seek transcendental things, or worry people with the tale of total depravity, as Edwards did (in his Calvinistic mood). Perhaps Franklin missed Edwards' ecstasy over scenery, too. But Ben noticed fossils and saw that the land had been submerged. In a youthful study, Jonathan really saw the spider. If such was not Zen-seeing, it is too earthy to please some people. They think there are things higher than a kite, more electrifying than lightning, more interesting than a spider. If they shudder at Edwards' sermon on "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God," they find Franklin prosaic. Turgot said: "He snatched the thunder-bolt from the sky, and the scepter from tyrants." Franklin was the one the Colonists sent to England when there was trouble. His prose was adequate to tell the English that his people would support the crown by vote, not tax; that they were subject to the crown, not Parliament. When we needed aid from France it was he who went and got it. He came home to have a hand in the Constitution, which formally put the Enlightenment into effect. If such initiative and enterprise constitute a break from Calvinist acceptance of being God-doomed, Puritans themselves had begun the break. Edwards announced it when he said the evidence of being holy was in being decent. For Franklin, it was a man's privilege if he wanted to be religious in some private or mystical way; but what counted in the community was being sensible and benevolent. A good education would be the guide, a free government the guarantee. The sense of what was important was shifting; the notion of what was religious was broadening. If the Puritans remained conscientious, it was not only because of the fear of God in their bones but because they had to be serious to survive. They could not afford to make mistakes. Their morality was required by their pioneer situation. The clergy interpreted the will of God accordingly. They had no intention of reducing God to human size, but of sealing with his name what needed to be done. Otherworldliness was less and less to the fore. The attitude of the American Puritans, coming to its climax in Franklin, was that God was putting men on their own. They could not shoulder responsibility for themselves without being earnest and anxious, or without being resourceful and informed. Perhaps because of his

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greater resource and sagacity, Franklin could be more humorous than most in establishing what it has meant ever since to be American. His practical devices and homely advice, unassuming and smiling, stemmed from a reflective and inquiring bent, which earned him international fame as a scientist. His practical benevolence and humanitarianism were not divorced from his theoretical interests. As a man of the Enlightenment, he regarded knowledge as power for welfare. He assumed that men would gladly pit intelligence and effort against disease and poverty, and enjoy the struggle itself, but also have increasing appreciation of the uses of leisure. He did not urge the Puritan virtues for their own sake or to perpetuate Puritanism, but to bring about a more free and easy way of life. We may wonder. There has been a habit-forming fascination about rising early to work, rushing through lunch, and hating to waste time. Not only may the ease be lost which Franklin anticipated, but redoubled effort may accumulate power not directed toward any social goal. Hard work and Franklin's virtues may be used against society. Hard work as such has no standard but how much. Its temptation is to seek success for its own sake, and to find the measure in money. Then why strive for an honest penny and not for tainted gold? What will happen to the strenuous virtues advocated by Franklin after the Puritans when efficient production adds comfort and leisure for more people? If those virtues are justified as the way to ease, then why not take the ease and let the effort go? Why save bits of string, put out lights, keep leftovers, and count change, as nice people once did, when even the poor in Franklin's country see no point to it? Complaint is often made against our growing materialism. It is said that as we come to comfort we go on to luxury which brings laziness and corruption, with selfishness flourishing from start to finish. But confusion enters when the assumption is made that the cure is in restricting freedom and discrediting the ideal of happiness. It may be granted that when men first work free of the poverty and necessity which made it vain to aim at happiness—except for a few here, or for more in a hoped-for hereafter, or in stolen moments to be paid for harshly—foolish things will be done. Men will waste their substance in travesties of happiness. The way to deal with this, however, is not to turn the clock back and impose artificial

36 hardships in place of the old unavoidable ones, or tell people to wait for heaven. Those who had their reward in the past, without postponing it, did not always make the best use of it. The ideal of freedom and happiness needs more of a trial before being given up. Then it may be learned that when freedom is achieved in obvious respects it must be won over and over on other levels; and that, while happiness can in a real sense be identified with freedom in any sense, being free of whatever prevents happiness gives only a chance to be happy. Happiness cannot be won once for all, and cannot be handed out. It has to be planned out and worked out, not too far ahead. Each generation, each group, each person must be trusted to find the right kind of happiness, and to take the chances of missing it. If happiness in the past depended largely upon coping successfully with economic difficulties, the solution of these will not be a joy forever. Something like the secret of Zen is needed. Its old seeing will help a fresh seeing. Its teaching can enable us to sit down quietly in the midst of atoms and armies, and be easy in the full career of our activity. Zen does not aim at somnambulism or even at tranquillity at the expense of really living, but means to become fully alive and awake to the wonder of the passing moment, anywhere at any time at any speed. Zen is not a moral code or political platform to tell us what we ought to do or for whom we ought to vote. Zen assumes that by the time we feel the need of Zen we are launched on the path of life, knowing what is socially required of us and how to do our part, in the place where we belong. Zen originally went with an agricultural society, where the work was laid out according to one's sex and age and the season of the year. In our complex society there are myriad ways to earn a livelihood and be useful. Hewing wood and drawing water may still symbolize things most needing to be done, though only two out of many in even a simple economy. But the need of Zen is the same. Even when a person has a place in the world and a set of relationships, the question is still whether he can so see his situation as to feel good about it. Zen has nothing to say about how much he should be paid or insured or secured in any of the ways that do not depend upon his own attitude; whether he should be married or stay married or have children, or take another job, or move to another city. Zen does not care about a technological training, or whether a person is versed in science or the humani-

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ties, or even in the literature of Zen itself. All Zen cares about or comes to is whether a person, in addition to whatever else it takes to make a life and make it worth while, or takes the place of whatever may be lacking, can suddenly see the marvel of it all, in a seizure that shakes him to the bottom of his being. It leaves everything the same as it was. The street is still the street. An office building is still an office building. The only difference is in him, and that is enough. Now that economic advance is threatened even more than formerly by war, happiness must be snatched under that shadow. But even if that and every other shadow could be dissipated, the quest would go on. The fact is that when people can forget about war and are reasonably well off, they still have all they can do to meet the demands upon them. They still have the never-ending need of achieving right relations with other people, beginning with the nearest, and with the closest of all, oneself. It is beyond parental power to make children happy, though there is the responsibility of helping them to live and start out as well as possible. It can all go wrong. Even when it goes as right as it can, it is not good enough unless something is there which comes more easily to some than to others, and is as elusive as Zen: the direct seeing and realizing that daily relationships with their problems are not only full of possibilities but bursting with present reality, in its very thereness overflowing the virtues of the Puritans or Franklin with the best of all: the sudden love of things as they are. Whatever can or should be done with them, the wonder is that they are. This is the thing to bank on and build on. If this is not appreciated to begin with, nothing can be added worth having. This is the sense of Franklin. With his science and unusual experience, it was Concern for the common things of the common good that made him one of the great ones who launched his country on the Zen-way of John Locke. Much read by the educated colonists, along with Edwards and Franklin, Locke kept bringing on the Enlightenment. All three helped people to see the very rocks and rills with a seeing that left them rocks and rills, but with the difference that becoming American made, in the land of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

CHAPTER III

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F R O M H U M E TO P A I N E TO R E V O L U T I O N

I. The Basis of Morality • For Locke, much as God might precede or transcend men, it was up to them to discover what he meant and what he required. If this was revealed in the Bible, it could also be found by reflection upon what was given to everyone.1 Then, it behooved men to think, or to realize with Zen-like patience if not suddenness, what knowledge life led to, or what their living enabled them to have, beyond knowing. Yet, over what he could and could not know, Locke assumed that the same moral authority resided in the will of God, the laws of the state, and ethical norms. Instead of assuming this, he would have preferred to arrive at it by reason. He fell back upon experience because reason was inadequate. He relied upon empiricism because he had to, not because he wanted to. Still, he clung to the notion of an absolute basis for morality, which no experience could give. And Jefferson followed him, as the eighteenth century followed the seventeenth, in leaning upon an absolute even while repudiating the claim of any human being to embody it, especially a king. For Jefferson, men were endowed with unalienable rights by God, who was their creator. David Hume, who died in 1776, was skeptical of any century's knowledge of God, and of his being creator or providence. Immanuel Kant, aroused by this skepticism, thought it still left the way open to identify God with morality. Kant felt that the sense of right, and of the obligation to uphold it, remained absolute, at least in the practical sense of being felt and accepted as guiding life, even of being reasoned—as lying and stealing, and whatever was immoral, could not be consistently. To think of everyone lying or stealing would be to think a contradiction. Neither would it be thinking it through to think lying is all right for some, not for others. So, although Kant granted that reasoning could not reach 1. C f . John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding versity Press, 1924), Book IV, pp. 310—321.

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(London: Oxford Uni-

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a metaphysical creator-God or go beyond experience, men could find in their own conscience a moral imperative which made sense only by supposing that God was behind it—even if, strictly speaking, he could not be known. What conscience came to, when Kant thought out what it meant to consider other people fairly and not make exceptions for oneself, was: to treat each person as an end in himself, never as a means only. If this could not be proved theoretically, to the satisfaction of a skeptic, it was a practical absolute, to act on and test by action.2 "While it can never be fully tried out, the misery caused by not acting on it has been horribly established by Hitler and others. Kant's conclusion might satisfy Locke. For Locke, common morality coincided with the will of God, so that men without certain knowledge of God, in having morality would still have the same as divine guidance. Edwards neared this position (perhaps as a result of reading Locke) in taking a man's moral conduct as the test of his religion. Hume, however, questioned the existence of ultimate moral standards, along with that of God. Whether any practice is right or not could always be doubted by Hume, whatever men might think or feel about it. They could not really know what they ought to do. And, except in terms so formal and abstract as to say only that they should do what they should do, Kant did not try to tell them, except that they should treat other people as ends. He did not show specifically what that would mean. He had no answer for anyone who might not feel like treating people as ends, beyond repeating that one ought to, on pain of showing that one did not have the nature of a moral being. This answer would be scorned by an immoralist, either in Plato or in Gide.

2. Going from "Is" to "Ought" • Hume still has to be met when he says that men do not really know what they ought to do and cannot reason it out. They can feel strongly. This will enable them to act and take sides in the practical affairs of life, but will not establish that what they do is right. Hume declares that the rules of morality are not conclusions of reason. For him, all that reason 2. Cf. Edward Scribner Ames, "Religious Values and the Practical Absolute," International Journal of Ethics [Ethics, International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy], Vol. X X X I I , No. 4 (July, 1922), 347-365.

4° can do is to discover truth or falsehood, which is the agreement or disagreement of ideas with other ideas. Whatever therefore is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason. Now, it is evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, complete in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions. It is impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.

He goes on to say: Actions may be laudable or blamable; but they cannot be reasonable or unreasonable. . . . Moral distinctions, therefore, are not the offspring of reason. Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.3

The best reply to Hume is Hume. When he moves on from his Treatise on Human Nature to his Enquiry Concerning the 'Principles of Morals, he anticipates Kant's disposal of moral skepticism and puts it better. Hume recognizes that when he disqualified reason from dealing with moral questions it was by restricting the sphere of reason to the abstract relationships of mathematics and logic. Morality might make some use of reason in this sense but would have to rely on something else for the most part and in the end. Good and bad would have to be judged according to a feeling of approbation or disapprobation. This sounds subjective and unreliable—a feeling. Hume explains that the feeling he appeals to is that of a spectator detached enough to be disinterested, yet concerned enough with human welfare to consider what is conducive to it in a particular case. So, the criterion is not irresponsible feeling, not just a question of what gives selfish pleasure. If the moral were simply what any individual happened to like, he could never be wrong. And Hume does not rest with a mythical impartial spectator, but finds one who is at home in everyone. For Hume holds that all human beings have fundamentally the same sentiments, producing approbation or censure, so that he practically j . David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, Everyman's Library ed. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1930), Vol. II, Book III, Part I, pp. 167—168.

4i agrees with Kant that all have the same conscience. Hume does not put it so abstractly or categorically. He simply believes, on the basis of observation, that "the benevolent concern for others is diffused . . . and is the same in all." 4 For Hume, it is sufficient to observe that, in general, both individuals and society are better off for the prevalence of more or less the same sentiments of approval and blame. This leaves room for improvement at home and abroad, but also for hope. Nor does it belittle the need for finding out all that can be learned about the circumstances and relations bearing on a moral decision. Hume simply insists that when all that can be known is known, in a given case, what makes the decision is a feeling about it all, which is something different from getting more facts or relations. We need to know all we can; then we need to feel; and, since we must rely on feeling in the end, we may be mistaken, as we could not be in pure reasoning. A t last, there must be a venture, a risk, a putting to the test of experiment or further experience. If the objection is made that then we must act without absolute assurance, the answer is yes. We must take the responsibility of doing that, as every man of action and sense will know. We must commit ourselves, engage ourselves, and do it as often as a genuine moral situation confronts us. The answer is not to be found in the back of any book, and cannot be all worked out on paper, but must be tried out and lived out by each individual, each group of individuals, in each generation. The sure sign of having a moral question is our having to answer it freshly and on our own. This calls for the spirit of Zen, which vaunts the wisdom of its masters because they always turn the question back upon the asker. They make him see for himself what is plain as a stick only when he sees it, which is why the only explanation he gets from them may be a blow with a stick. Whatever he gets from them means that he must seek the answer for himself, in his own seeing. Hume and Zen are both as plain yet enigmatic as that, hence unsatisfactory to people who want clear and complete answers instead of being told that moral problems must be solved by those who have them, with no outside help, after having all there is to get. 4. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals Open Court Publishing Co., 1930), Sec. IX, Fart I, p. 1 1 4 .

(Chicago: The

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If Hume leaves a cleavage between seeing what a situation is and feeling what needs to be done, the ensuing decision claps the two halves together. This seems too irrational, even when reasoning enters into the seeing, to one who still thinks human affairs should be thought out all the way. And it sounds frivolous to suppose that such an undertaking as the American Revolution was determined by emotion. But emotion is not empty and need not be otiose. It is always about something, may be about something serious, and may lead to doing something. Could a revolution be about anything more fundamental than feeling that men ought to be free and happy? What reasoning could be more cogent than such a felt reason to a human, if not to a wholly rational, being? When Hume rejected reason, in his narrow definition of it, as dealing only with abstract relations and demonstrations, he did not deny that morality could be intelligent in the reasonable (if not rational) sense of considering the welfare of all concerned. Hume appreciated the utility of such virtues as honesty, kindness, friendship. He saw that they are valued because they tend to bring general satisfaction by fostering situations that people feel good about together. The objection to utility or interest, as to feeling, is that it may be selfish. But Hume saw that feeling or interest could be sympathy for the welfare of others, with a spread and steadiness to outweigh sentiments not held in common. In his scheme of things he called all of men's common agreements, culminating in law, government, and justice, artificial and conventional rather than natural. He meant that these would have no place outside society. But apart from society there would be no need of them. The awkward question remains: how interest, if originally private, could become shared and cease to be selfish. Hume's reply is that, no less basic than what is selfish in human nature, there is sympathy. This is not merely feeling what another feels, but feeling concern for others: "a feeling for the happiness of mankind and a resentment of their misery." Hume holds that such a social feeling could not arise if men were entirely selfish, with no desire "for the interest of our species." It will still be asked: How firm a foundation does morality have in resting on feeling, even a feeling quite unselfish, concerned for the good of others, and able to compare alternatives in search of the better? If men only feel what is good or right, no matter how

43

generously and judiciously, then what if other men feel otherwise, with equal benevolence and acumen, or with less? Will not "might makes right" lurk in the background, ready to stalk forth at any time? Americans felt that independence was right for them, but to get it they had to resort to revolution. They had reasons for their feeling, if not pure reason. They had Locke's conviction that government must rest upon the consent of the governed. They could say that their right was not made by might but was backed by might, which they were lucky to get enough of. Their right arose from sensing and then surveying their situation. Piecing it together and picking it up as a whole even Hume would call reasoning, in the broader meaning. This made the case which called for action. But Hume would break the continuity between putting the case and deciding to act upon it. He would regard the first as gathering the facts of the case, and the second as deciding whether it was a case for action. If there was feeling back of getting together the evidence for doing something, there had to be feeling again to set off the doing. Granted, however, that some cool collecting was a preliminary stage, it does not seem discontinuous with the subsequent feeling of what to do and whether to do it. Hume was hampered by his conception of reasoning (even in the broad sense) as passive and disengaged, in contrast to the motor effect of emotion. Reasoning, in a situation calling for a moral decision, is never more than partially disengaged from the feeling to follow. Hume assumed that the relationships of a situation could be laid out without value-implications, letting these wait upon another step to be supplied by a separate faculty. To some degree this may be so. Reasoning also happens to be done with value-considerations in mind. To find out what to approve or disapprove we need some facts, and we should see how they shape up. But an aspect of the facts, perhaps from the first, is their felt tendency, their threat or promise, their veering toward one alternative or another. It is humanly impossible to learn facts of disease and health without, at the same time, learning what to foster and what to fight. In learning what a vital situation is, we cannot help gathering what to do about it. To see what is actual is to see something of what is possible, and we cannot reason out possibilities for society without reaching moral implications. This is what Hume objured.

44 He said: Reason being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery: Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition. From circumstances and relations, known or supposed, the former leads us to the discovery of the concealed and unknown: after all circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter makes us feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or approbation.5

In thus separating what he called reason and taste, Hume broke the continuity between finding out the facts and feeling what to do about them.

3. Tom Paine Joined "Ought" and 'Is" • Tom Paine should have the credit, as much as anyone, for bringing to light the hidden transition between facts and their value-implications, between seeing what a situation is and deciding what action it demands. Perhaps Hume can be read to mean simply that we should be cautious about drawing conclusions from our investigations, because these might be wrong and then we might do wrong. But, if this is what Hume means, we need Paine's leap from reflection to action. The risk of making a mistake is outweighed by the danger of missing a blow for freedom in the moment to make it. Hume's skepticism about being too skeptical is to the point here. When Paine showed that to see the situation of the Colonists and their relation to England was to feel what they should do, it is hard to believe that Hume himself would insist on splitting this feeling from that seeing. It would be to split a hair. Yet, there were Tories who saw and felt otherwise. So Hume would seem justified, after all, in not resting a moral decision on reason but on sentiment? Or, is it that when people reason differently it is because they see different facts or the same ones otherwise, hence diverge in their feeling? How else could some people in the Colonies be and remain Tories? And, if it was also possible to be undecided, to waver between j . Hume, op. cit., Appendix I, Consideration V , p. 1 3 ; .

45

loyalty to the English king and loyalty to the rights of Englishmen, with reasons on both sides, a powerful impetus might tip the scales. Hume's thesis of the need of a sentiment beyond reason, to reach a decision, could be read to mean that, for the American Revolution to come off, there had to be Tom Paine, or someone like him. The final spur to action had to be given. Paine gave it by summing up the reasons which people were already seeing, with the needed feeling—that is, by feeling what the reasons came to. What Paine felt when he came over and saw the situation, and was able to express, was the feel of it. He was not balked by Hume's problem of going from the indicative to the imperative mood. He showed that the imperative was indicated. For him the two coalesced, as they do for us if we put ourselves back in the moment when he wrote. Then we see that, if it is impossible "to show a single advantage that this continent can reap by being connected with Great Britain," the thing to do is obvious. Going back to Paine, we see that every fact he states calls for an act. In itself, each declaration of fact is incomplete, needing to be completed by the hearer or reader. Paine's facts make sense by appeal to common sense. " O u r corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will." He points out the injuries and disadvantages in our being tied to England. They are stamped into the economic facts. He stands on them to call for arms to throw out the tyrant "and prepare in time an asylum for mankind." Hume's separation between reason and sentiment melts away in Paine's Common Sense and the Crisis papers. In showing men what they are up against he shows them their duty and fires them to do it. If they will see, they will fight. Even in Hume's account men will act, in a life situation, when they both see and feel how their lives depend upon it. In times that try men's souls they must survey their situation as best they can, whether this is reasoning in a strict sense or not. They must see what they face and arrive at what to do in view of what they see, if they keep their heads. If they cannot reason all the way to a conclusion, they must at least explore the possibilities and compare different lines of action. So Paine mentions arguments for reconciliation with England: the old loyalties, the danger of being defeated. A real situation is not one-sided; not when it demands reflection and decision.

4€ This is not because men are unable to gather information or to organize what they find and use it for ends, but because what Hume or anyone means by reason can make use of any information for any purpose, and fit means to any end. This is what makes plausible his saying that to act we must leave reason for sentiment. Sooner or later we lean one way or another. A t last we act somewhat arbitrarily, if we act at all, not because we lose our heads (though we may), but because we can use our heads only up to a point. But this need not mean a complete break between reason and decision; or that we are purely rational in surveying a situation, entirely irrational in making up our minds. The initial assessment of the facts will be colored by our interests, our sense of grievance or of need and opportunity. T r y and train as we may to be objective, our concerns stick to the facts we pick up, no matter how clean and cold our instruments. And, as we realize what is actual or possible or out of the question, this sinks into our sense of what to do. Paine saw England overextended against France. Her money was more paper than gold. Her list of warships was padded. There was something absurd, anyway, in the idea of a continent ruled by an island. He saw what should be done (by seeing what could be done) about what the Colonists wanted and needed, as Englishmen and men. When he saw what they had the chance to do, he lit the fuse of the "ought" with the heat of what "was." Then "was" sparked to "should," sputtered on to "would," and the Fourth of July went off. This would not have happened but for what men decided and willed. America was made when Paine wrote that a country should be free of tyranny; honest men should have room to live. He said it. They saw it. That did it. In The Rights of Man he declared (against Burke) that government could no longer be justified by what the people's legal representatives had bound themselves to in 1688. The American Colonists could not be forever bound by what their ancestors had agreed to in Parliament. Each generation must make its own agreement or re-affirm a previous one. Locke had laid down the principle in saying that government rests upon the consent of the governed. As Paine spelled it, "That which a nation chuses to do, it has a right to do." But it is not a genuine doing unless done in view of the relevant contemporary circumstances, clearly seen. The needs and purposes of the people are the important part of the circum-

47 stances. This most-American idea was carried over by Paine from Locke's English way of thinking (when the English were moving away from it), that what must be respected above all is the right of people to be free. In Common Sense Paine made it convincing, made it the cause of embattled humanity. When the Revolution was bogging down, its forces melting away in defeat, Washington called on Paine to write again. Whether he wrote the first Crisis paper on a drumhead or not, Washington ordered it read to his ragged troops. It was a fight talk because it was the right talk. It fused reason with feeling. Reason showed the facts facing two ways: toward what continuing defeat would bring, and toward what a first victory would begin to do. "This is our situation, and who will may know it." 6 The words were wise and brave. They hit the point that a crucial situation is truly known by those who will to know it. Knowing it requires willing it, because in the midst of it is a commitment needing to be made. Not to will it is to refuse to see it. To look at it squarely summons "perseverance and fortitude." There imprinted is warning that the alternative is "cowardice and submission." For Paine and through Paine insight was spliced to action, as feeling was to reason. The imperative was planted in the indicative. One willing to see what Paine saw would will to act. To see what he saw was to reach for a weapon. 4. The Zen Flash • The manliness of forging such seeing and feeling into decision is the quality of Zen, and the reason it became the religion of the warrior class in medieval Japan, the samurai. Zen was to them the soul of chivalry, with its severe discipline, denial of worldliness, and utter bravery. It is a paradox of history that the life of quiet Zen monks inspired the fighters to seek them as tutors and to build monasteries for them, when the samurai were in power. And Zen was combined with fencing by a class of professional swordsmen.7 So Zen, although in China and then in Japan it developed tea drinking from a refreshment to a ceremony 6. Howard Fast, ed., The Selected Works of Tom Paine, Modern Library edition (New York: Random House, 1943, 194$), p. 53. 7. Kaiten Nukariya, The Religion of the Samurai (London: Luzac & Company, 1 9 1 3 ) , pp. 36-48.

4

8

associated with all that is aesthetic in house and garden, could be the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. Although quiet, Zen's masters have always denied that Zen is quietistic. The calm of Zen not only made the samurai fearless but put fearful surprise into "the gentle art" of jujitsu or judo "on the principle of defeating one's opponent by yielding to him and using his own strength." Alan Watts points out that a second Zen-secret in this technique of fighting is "immediacy of attack and defence—we find that there can be no success in jujitsu if there is even the slightest interval between these two movements. If one stops to think out a countermove for a fraction of a second, one's opponent has time to regain his balance, for it is precisely by yielding correctly to his attack as he makes it that he is defeated . . . the expert must be as elusive as the truth of Zen." 8 The suddenness of Zen is the practical and breath-taking answer to the supposed necessity of a break between seeing what is called for and deciding to do it. Zen flashes from "is" to "ought" so fast there is no difference. If we fail to learn this Zen lesson, we miss the " i f " in the "is," and must deny the "might have been" in the "was." We do not really see a situation unless we see what can be done with it. This may take a while. It may take too long. There is no guarantee of seeing in time. But the best hope of effective action is to look for the " i f " in the "is," with all the help we can get from science, when we learn that its facts and laws are not divorced from possibilities which can be wrought into purposes. Then the actual melts into the potential. The main incentive to knowledge has always been the need of solving problems, the pressure to find out what can be done. Now the giant strides of research are teaching men that science is as much concerned with finding out what can and should be done as with discovering what already is: that there is only a vanishing gap between them. There is the oneness of Zen in the suddenness of going from what men see to what they will, when they arrive at the dynamic insight. If Zen could inspire the samurai, teach the technique of swordplay and judo, and be the unnamed secret of Tom Paine's ability to spring a revolution in the nick of time, Zen is also the frictionless 8. Alan W. Watts, The pp. 124, 126-127.

Spirit of Zen

(London: John Murray, Ltd., 1936,

1948),

49 slide of science from fact to plan to future. Already, something approaching the flash of Zen is taken for granted in the speed of communication and transport. The next step must be to find Zen's calm center, where we can recover our balance and join in the judo we need to save us from the odds that, the more we master them, the more they grow against us. We need a Paine to show us colonists of modern space and time what we have in common, so that we may become countrymen in face of the danger we all confront: of losing the rights that would be unalienable if we were not alienated from one another. Can we declare independence of fear and hate and war? Can we use our new means to extend our ends beyond the point where they divide us? Tom Paine helped men take a step which furthered the cause of freedom everywhere, by showing them their hope was grounded in principles and facts, hence not an idle dream but a working hypothesis. He was sure it would work if they would work it. He meant that it must not be allowed to fail. He was plainly saying that the consummation to be wished had to be assured by the utmost effort. To exhort men as he did, he had to warn them that the outcome was in doubt. Because their fate was in the balance it was up to them to tip it in their favor. So he declared a state of crisis "big . . . with expectation and events," calling the whole country "to unanimity and exertion. Not an ability ought now to sleep, that can produce but a mite to the general good. . . . " 9 This was a trial and test, not of reason apart from feeling, but of both as they go together when confronted with a vital choice and chance. Here the "ought" in what ought to be done was clearly in seeing that it was better for the country to be free than submissive, and that it would not be free without vast and drastic action. "Whatever was left of Hume's cleft between "is" and "ought" was crossed by Paine with a stride that crossed it out, as it is each time any one or any number of people have a chance to choose between better and worse, and will work or fight to make good. To see that the good is what would be better is to have an obligation. The problem then is not to go from reason to feeling or will, but to 9. H o w a r d Fast, ed., The Selected Works of Tom Paine, p. 81.

5°

go from impulsive to intelligent and settled choice.10 This is the theoretical point which Paine made practical for the Colonists in helping them to see the alternatives before them, to realize what they were, and so to know what they ought to do. He showed them how the better would justify itself if they would stand up for it. It was the better in view of circumstances, which were what they were but could be changed. If it was better to do something about them, then that was the good—as good as could be—hence the right thing to do, and thus the obligation of all who saw it and were able to do something about it. This was imperative enough for men of sense and feeling. It may be said that what Paine showed to be good, right, and imperative was not absolute but relative to 1776 in the American Colonies. But an absolute for them, if it had not been relative in being related to their situation, could hardly have been felt as their obligation. Then it would not have been better for them then and there, and so could not have been up to them as their choice and their duty. What they saw they could choose and should do was absolute enough to act on, absolute enough to stand on afterwards, and good enough to hold good ever since, in the eyes of men who realize what it meant to reach a real choice between being unfree and free. People may be mistaken about their situation and what they should do. But the British philosophers of freedom and Tom Paine were willing to trust the people to find their way and correct their own mistakes. The final question was: If people could not trust themselves, whom could they trust to choose or rule for them? To be free may not mean to be happy, but Paine thought it was the requisite condition. So he made it fundamental to his religion to help men be free. In The Age of Reason he attacked organized religion because he saw it working against men's freedom and so preventing happiness. But he had no use for atheism, and wrote that book in the effort to save the French Revolution from it. He felt that the Bible gave a very inadequate idea of God except in some chapters of Job and in the Nineteenth Psalm. Here, men were invited to take the whole shining frame of creation as the word of God. In this Paine again was like the Zen masters, since they questioned the value of the Buddhist scriptures, even regarding them 10. C f . E. T . Mitchell, A System of Ethics i ? J ° ) . P- 17S-

(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,

as so much waste paper compared to the book of Nature and a man's own experience. Paine could think of science as studying the works of God and learning from their munificence to provide comfort, but learning also how men could "be kind to each other." He thought belief in a God identified with the universe and with "the practice of moral truth" provided the basis for uniting all nations and religions.11 If men could unite upon such a Deistic position, any disagreements in other respects would not matter. But men could not unite until they were free. Standing on the sense of John Locke and the sympathy of David Hume, Tom Paine saw values embedded in the facts of life. He saw that it was better to be free than governed without consent. He saw that what was better was what ought to be, hence what men should act to bring about. He summed it up in his first Crisis Paper: "I know our situation well and can see the way out of it." 12 To read him was to see it with him, and then to act, with the suddenness of Zen, by taking from the American Indians something like Zen's judo-art of fading from the opponent and catching him off balance.

1 1 . H o w a r d Fast, ed., The Selected 12. Ibid., p. 53.

Works

of Tom Paine, pp. 309, 324.

CHAPTER

IV

•

JEFFERSON

AND

FREEDOM

I. Public Life to Foster Privacy • In January, 1776, Paine's Common Sense fired the Colonists to break with England. In June, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Working on it for seventeen days, he expressed what was coming to be the American mind: what his countrymen had learned from reflection on their experience and on British philosophy. He knew what needed to be said, but was not satisfied until he found the sound as well as the sense of the truth. When he was through, it was self-evident that, if men are not, they should be, endowed with the rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If he got his thought from Locke, Jefferson carried it further and put it better. If he had been troubled by Hume's skepticism, he was reassured by something like Hume's sympathy and spirit of justice. A s if following Locke and Hume, Jefferson considered equality to be favored by a somewhat equal possession of property, such as most Americans had who were not wealthy plantation owners or merchants or slaves. The ideal for him was close to the simple agricultural life of the Colonies, requiring little more than being free of outside interference. He was ready to give up his own unequal rights as a landed aristocrat. A f t e r writing the Declaration of Independence, he went to work on legislation, which he succeeded in getting passed, to democratize the royal Colony of Virginia. His bills in the Virginia House of Delegates were pilot plans for the future democracy of the United States. The most important bills in the new code for Virginia were those for education and for religious freedom. If people were to govern themselves, or choose their representatives, there had to be general enlightenment at the common expense. A n d there must be separation of church and state. Like Locke, Jefferson felt that the powers of government should extend only to the civil interest, that is, to matters of common concern. Here he would include the moral teachings of religion, which he considered, as Locke did, to be the same for all men, resting on reason and decency regardless of any 52

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particular dispensation. Special aspects of religion Jefferson would leave up to the individual and the home, to the volunteer and nonpolitical organizations that churches should be. The state must always be separate from any church, to make sure of avoiding the political pressure on or by religion which had sorely troubled Europe. People cannot freely govern themselves when pressed by the conflicting voices of men claiming to speak with supernatural authority. T o Jefferson, religion was essentially a private thing, as were all the most precious things. Silence, like that of Zen, was better than what could be said about them. They were things to have and to hold, not to talk and argue about. So he considered public arrangements important only as necessary to shelter the intimate side of life. The public aspect might be crucial in times that tried men's souls. He saw, with Paine, that it might be imperative to give up things cherished in privacy, to practice a kind of Buddhist detachment toward one's attachments, with a Platonic attitude of guardianship toward the general good, at least for a while, in the hope of securing private values in the long run. So Jefferson felt bound, during most of his mature years, to live away from home and from what he most cared about, to build a lasting bulwark for the best things of life for coming Americans. Masterful as he was in getting his ideas accepted and enacted, he did not like having to argue and persuade. In public he found it usually necessary to compromise. A t heart he was a resourceful and self-reliant American, preferring to do as much as possible for himself in his own way. His house was a marvel of ingenuity and grace. He designed it and his University of Virginia to meet the eye as well as to be functional. Since he had to acknowledge the public side of life, and devoted himself to it, he wanted to fit it in with the private, to keep both free, as he would fuse the useful and the delightful. 1 His unifying concern was freedom. What he was most proud of, and all he asked to have put on his tombstone, were his three chief strokes for freedom: political, religious, and educational. i . Eleanor Berman, Thomas Jefferson Among the Arts (New Y o r k : Philosophical Library, 1947), pp. 39-40. C f . also T . V . Smith, "Thomas Jefferson and the Perfectibility of Mankind," Ethics, International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy, LIII, N o . 4 (July, 1943), 30J, "This self-respect, this preference for privacy, is, indeed, I think, the key to Jefferson's whole life."

54

The last was to undergird the others. People would have to be educated to keep their political independence and to use it well; also, to keep religious freedom and make it worth keeping. Education would enable men to maintain the larger structure of relationships in a way to favor the pursuit of those interests nearer their happiness. Education would also equip men to cultivate their closer interests more freely. Jefferson believed that if outer and inner impediments—unjustifiably imposed restrictions and the disabilities of ignorance—were lifted or lessened, men would find their own way to all kinds of creative and happy activity. As healthy and unafraid children will endlessly occupy themselves with things they find to do, so would men when free. The arts and sciences vindicate Jefferson's faith that when men are free they will experiment, quest, criticize, and create. What worried him was the way new ideas and means would develop manufacture. He saw that other modes of production would bring other ways of living and thinking. He foresaw and feared that technology would bring industrialization and urbanization. His outlook, like that of Zen, belonged to an agricultural society. Would either survive the simple life, which could be good in itself and seemed to be the basis of any good that counted? But, since Zen surprisingly could be applied even to fencing, and something akin was unexpectedly effective in winning the American Revolution, perhaps the masters of Zen were right that it would be valid anywhere and any time, at least whenever men would stop to have a cup of tea or to meditate. And it is hard for Americans not to feel that Jefferson's ideal of a government to foster freedom and the pursuit of happiness can somehow be kept, even in an industrial age. The saving thing may be discovery and adaptation of Zen at this late date, with its lesson of yielding to a dangerous force and seizing a chance to trip it in our favor. 2. High Value of Daily Living • For us to use Zen, it would need

to have the benefit of Jefferson, though it may be the Zen-nature of his thought which makes it hold good for us. He had the inwardness, the self-reliance, the joy of living the everyday round, the sense of oneness with land and man that Zen teaches. Living by Zen would let the country down if all it came to were silence and

55

meditation; but these amount to more than appears at first, and there was always more to Zen. Thinking of Jefferson will help us to understand what it means when Zen men say that the best way to cultivate Buddhahood is not to practice spiritual cultivation. We must transliterate Buddhahood to any practical wisdom. Then we gather that the Zen idea is not to debunk Buddhism, as if it had no value, but to find its true value in natural human terms. The idea is not to give up cultivating the ideal but to see that cultivating it requires nothing peculiar, nothing especially monkish, even in a monastery. Otherwise, a Zen monastery would not be, as it has been, a place not of escape from the world but a training place for life in the world; often also a hospital, school, foreign relations office, publishing house, etc. Jefferson knew the importance of silence and meditation. No one felt more than he that meditation, prayer, and worship should be practiced personally, whether with other people in a congregation or alone. As he culled from the New Testament the passages he found most helpful for himself, he respected every man's freedom of thought and feeling in his deepest moods. This corresponds to the Zen appreciation of silence, and makes American sense when we realize that Jefferson did not merely prize keeping quiet, much as that meant to him, but opposed any move toward an official version of the silent side of life. To urge a dogmatic or standard interpretation would violate the most precious freedom, and overlook the way free men get together to safeguard their differences. If, in meditation and silence, a man had a genuine spiritual experience, Jefferson, as well as Locke or Jonathan Edwards, believed that it would help him be a decent human being. The conviction was that men had much the same values in the depth of their privacy, differently as these values might be conceived. And Jefferson held as firmly as a Zen master that, aside from meditating on them, the way to cultivate them was not in doing anything unusual, certainly not in seeking merit, but in just doing what needed to be done, at home or in society. To do one's work or duty "without a purposeful mind," that is, without calculation of some spiritual or ulterior gain, is wisdom for Zen and for Jefferson. If something is thought to be higher, finer, or holier than that, then the Zen master will say there is nothing to it, and he will have a

drastic way of saying it. Jefferson is saying the same thing when he says that any kind of religious expression is "good enough" in being "sufficient to preserve peace and order." 2 If such justification of religion seems too public to satisfy the individual privately, the personal aspect of religion also is tested for Jefferson, as for Edwards, in the effect upon daily living. Any outlook which is good for society and preferred by the individual is acceptable. Jefferson asserted this in the debate upon the Virginia bill for religious freedom, when he said that he meant "to comprehend within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination." 3 Jefferson called himself a Christian, but only in the sense of subscribing to the precepts of Jesus as a human teacher; 4 he did not think of Jesus as Christian if that meant identifying him with the dogmas of "artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by Him." 6 Jefferson exalted Jesus above the ancient philosophers on the ground that he would extend "the circle of benevolence" to all mankind, instead of restricting it as they did." 6 But, to be consistent with the separation of church and state for the sake of religious freedom, Jefferson did not want the United States to be regarded as a Christian country. 7 That Jesus was representative of Judaism Jefferson could not think, having no fair idea of what that was, denouncing it as "depraved religion," 8 even failing to appreciate the ethics of its prophets, actually saying it was "anti-social." 9 2. "Notes on Virginia," in Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Modern Library edition (New Y o r k : Random House, 1944), p. 276. 3. A . L. Bergh, ed., Memorial Edition of Jefferson's Writings (Washington, D . C . : Issued under the auspices of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903-1904), as quoted by Herbert W . Schneider in " T h e Enlightenment in Thomas Jefferson," Ethics, International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy, L f f l , No. 4 (July, 1943). 2 494. Koch and Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings, letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, p. j 6 7 . j . Ibid., letter to William Short, October 31, 1819, p. 694. 6. Ibid., letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, pp. 548-569. 7. Schneider, " T h e Enlightenment in Thomas Jefferson," op. cit., 249. 8. Koch and Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings, letter to William Short, October 31, 1819, p. 694. 9. Ibid., letter to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803, p. 569.

57

Epictetus and Epicurus seem to have meant most to Jefferson, next to Jesus, possibly more than Jesus: "Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others." 10 This suggests that the influence of the New Testament may have been secondary (supplementary) with Jefferson. Professor Gilbert Chinard finds this plausible and says of Jefferson's Literary Bible: "This worn little volume, these closely written and now faded pages give us an opportunity to penetrate the real personality of Jefferson. If, as we believe and hope to show, this much thumbed little book was compiled by Jefferson during his student days, it could rightly be called: 'Jefferson self-revealed.' For it contains the maxims and principles which so impressed his still plastic mind, that by them he was to govern the rest of his life." 1 1 Both in the Introduction to this Literary Bible 12 and in an important later article 1 3 Chinard quotes the passage where Jefferson declares himself an Epicurean, and says: " I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us." 14 As the Epicurean search for calm happiness began with dismissal of the illusions of supernatural religion, so the joy of Zen was detached from Buddhism's proliferation of ideas and practices beyond the simple teaching of Buddha. Like the Epicurean sages and the Zen masters, Jefferson schooled himself to find comfort in plain sense and homely terms, giving up "a higher meaning" to find how high the "here" and "now" are in worth-while human work and relationships. The Eastern teaching has been summed up thus: "All one should do is to pursue the ordinary tasks of one's everyday life, and nothing more. This is what the Ch'an Masters call cultivation through non-cultivation." 1 5 It is still a kind of cultivation. It is natural, but 10. Ibii., letter to William Short, October 3 1 , 1819, p. 694. 1 1 . Gilbert Chinard, The Literary Bible of Thomas Jefferson: His Commonplace Book of Philosophers and Poets (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1 9 2 8 ) , p. 3. i i . Ibid., p. 16. 1 3 . Gilbert Chinard, "Jefferson Among the Philosophers," Ethics, International Journal of Social, Political and Legal Philosophy, LIII, No. 4 (July, 1 9 4 3 ) , 16j. 14. Koch and Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings, letter to William Short, October 3 1 , 1819, p. ¿93. 1 j . Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Co., 1948). P- 260-

with the naturalness that is fully attained and justified only after discipline and effort: the effort to be effortless, the purpose to be purposeless. One must remember to forget, until forgetting to remember, that this is the path to fulfillment. A man is not only on the way, he is there, when it is natural and enough to do what he can in daily life, to help the family or the state. To do this and feel there is nothing better—that is Zen and that is Jefferson. A t least, that is what Zen seems to come to. If the Zen sages do not quite say so, their reticence here may belong to their maneuver of leading a learner up to the point and then leaving him to see it for himself instead of telling him. 3. Sageliness and Kingliness • Fung Yu-lan, the historian of Chinese philosophy, thinks the social implication of Zen waited to be brought out by the Neo-Confucianists,16 who achieved a fusion between the social outlook of Confucianism and the Buddhist contemplation in Zen, with the Zen-pleasure in homely chores, such as carrying water and chopping firewood. Fung holds, moreover, that Buddhism became Zen in China by taking over Confucian respect for human needs and relationships, along with the naturalistic mysticism of Taoism. He shows further that Taoism developed from idealizing simplicity and shunning society to obliterating so completely the difference between self and others that, instead of having to get away from society to be at peace with the self and the universe, the Taoist could live with and for others quite as easily and naturally as with mountain scenery. Finally, however, Fung takes another turn in regarding Neo-Confucianism as a further development of Zen, with Zen's Taoist sense that beyond doing one's duty in society there is a wonderful oneness with the universe. This sense of Tao gives more than moral value even to "the moral activities valued by the Confucianists." 1 7 The zigzag in ancient China, from the self-escaping-to-nature to the self-at-home-in-society to the oneness-of-self-and-societyand-universe, is found no less in Jefferson. In his youth, along with studying, he loved riding and canoeing in the wild. More Confucian was his loving music and conversation; going to college; delight16. Ibid., p. 26j.

17. Ibid., p. 280.

59

ing in the classics, philosophy, science, law; going away later to serve Virginia, and on to the highest office of his country. Finally coming home to Monticello, to his own soil and its problems, he kept up an immense correspondence about national questions, had a stream of visitors, yet read and turned back from newspapers to the classics in search of tranquillity. He pondered the teachings of Jesus and summed them up to the lesson of happiness. In the end, he devoted himself to his plan for universal education and to founding the University of Virginia. 18 If he does not seem to have achieved the legendary calm of a Zen master, it may be because we know him well, and because he undertook more than other men. We may wonder what Zen man made a synthesis of as many diverse elements in Zen itself as Jefferson did. His spiritual attainment in daily life, at home and at the helm, without thinking about improving himself or saving himself or having any purpose beyond doing what he saw needing to be done, and meditating on it all—this was quite like Zen. His way of doing and being, belonged, like the Zen way, to an agricultural society, yet has lasting value. That there would need to be some adaptation for a new age should not daunt anyone who cares more about the spirit than the letter of Jeffersonianism, as of Buddhism or Christianity. To puzzle out what Zen puts in enigmatic or deceptively plain remarks may help us to see what Jefferson condensed in the Declaration of Independence and other great statements. They contain the relation between his hope of private happiness and his devotion to public service. They show the tie between his prizing privacy in religion, with silence about it, and his saying that the good of any religion is in promoting peace and order. As Neo-Confucianism was able to blend social values with Zen's intense self-sufficiency, so it may be that Jefferson developed his own synthesis of the private and the public, with some help from the later Confucianism which had absorbed Zen and was brought to Europe by Jesuit missionaries in time to influence Voltaire and other philosophers of the Enlightenment, whom Jefferson read and admired.19 Whether or not 18. Saul K. Padover, Jefferson (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1942; New American Library oi World Literature, 1952), chap. 14. 19. Cf. H. G. Creel, Confucius: The Man and the Myth (New York: The John Day Co.,

1949).

6o Jefferson got anything from China, or needed to get anything from France that he did not get from British thought and his own reflection, he did develop something like the Chinese ideal of "sageliness within and kingliness without," which means achieving spiritual cultivation while functioning in society. 20 This ideal led Jefferson, as it led the Chinese, to believe that, in order to serve one's country wisely, it was necessary for people to be educated outwardly as well as inwardly, especially if they were to have democracy and make it work. W e cannot think that this ideal is appropriate only to an agricultural economy. For life to be fully human it must be made free for the pursuit of happiness. Laissez faire no longer is the answer. It is not enough for government to be a figure of speech under which education and religion, art and science, are turned loose with Taoist assurance that the way for the ruler to get things done is to do nothing, when enterprise in every field is on the loose. This hands-off conception of government was inadequate as soon as the inequality which Jefferson deplored in Europe became a problem here, with the concentration of new modes of power not directed to the common good. Jefferson not only hoped to prevent economic inequality in the new nation but would have feared federal power great enough to curb inordinate economic power. The totalitarianisms of the twentieth century have justified him; also the curtailment of freedom to protect freedom in his own land. He knew that each freedom could be abused, as that of the press was in his day, but he held the abuse less detrimental than thought control. He did not think a people could be ignorant or afraid and free. W h a t he said in defending freedom of the press applied also to the freedom to learn and teach. T o make this freedom effective, he worked out a system of public education for the state of Virginia, with elementary and high schools followed by a university. Founding the University of Virginia occupied his old age. He planned it as a thing of beauty and managed to get the money for it little by little from the state legislature. But he knew as well as a Confucianist, Taoist, or Zen Buddhist that what counts in teaching is not structures but teachers. 21 W i t h great pains he assembled the best men he could get in their fields, only one of them a native Amer20. Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, 21. C f . Padover, Jefferson, p. 401.

p. 8.

6r ican, and had the joy of welcoming them the year before he died. With the University well launched, he was pleased that the students could be treated "as men and gentlemen, under the guidance mainly of their own discretion." 22 He reaffirmed his faith that man's labor "would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object—the happiness of man—to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests." 23 If privacy was fundamental to happiness for Jefferson, it was because he regarded it as a blank check for each man to fill in with his own interests. He himself filled it in with looking after his farms, reading his books, conversing and corresponding with friends, being with his family, and, finally, with founding a university. The purpose of the new university, as of government, was to help people to find all there is to live for and devote themselves to, as the College of William and Mary had helped Jefferson. Yet "privacy" is not an adequate word for the freedom basic to happiness in Jefferson's conception. Privacy suggests the warmth and intimacy he felt about what appealed to him, but not its range. What he liked to read at home were books of wide human concern. The letters he steadily wrote were mostly on subjects of national or universal importance, and the same was true of his conversation. While he felt the solicitation of more things than he could take up adequately or leisurely, and wanted more time free of pressure for his family and for his own devices, what he also wished time to himself for was to do more for his country: more thinking and planning on levels that it was hard to get down to while he was overtly engaged in public service and occupied with official duties. Even in retirement, he had the outreach of kingliness with the inwardness of sageliness. This is also the case with lesser men, more than is realized. Their happiness, though ostensibly and normally centered at home, would lose much if its scope were enclosed by the walls or fences of their property. Advances in psychology and other social sciences now enable us to be more aware of the fluidity between self and society. We more easily appreciate that a man can be as miserable in his 22. Koch and Peden, eds., The Life ani Selected Writings, Jefferson's letter to his granddaughter, Ellen W . Coolidge, written at Monticello, August 2 7 , 1 8 2 J , p. 7 2 1 . 2 3 . Loc. eit.

6z own house, his own room, in what he feels to be his own self, as he ever is when he "is out"; that his own problems cannot be separated from his relations with others; that a healthy association with them will help him, as much as anything, to be on good terms with the self he comes back to. But inherited ideas and habits have so exaggerated the opposition between individual and society that our very language is warped by the supposed clash between egoism and altruism. Even a man as complete as Jefferson would at times (perhaps out of sheer fatigue) express himself as if what he most longed for was to hole up in the ego and be safe from the alter. If he avoided suggesting this in his epitaph, surely it was not only because it would not be seemly but because he would engrave on granite, near the tomb of his young wife, three achievements which were no less social than personal: the great Declaration, the Statute for Religious Freedom, and the University of Virginia. 4. Zen and More Than Zen • A man can take home and to heart the general welfare. But, unless he has a heart, a hearth to go out from and come back to, and so can appreciate what it means to other men to have their own lives, with wives and children, his conception of the common good will be hollow. It is not easy to find men who will leave home because they love home and want other men to be secure in what they love. Yet such detached attachment needs to be taught by whatever technique will work, whatever discipline, practice, or prayer. This is the aim of Zen. It takes a man away for a while, that he may go home with more appreciation of it and with compassion for all who go out from their own doors, go back, go about the house, the neighborhood, the world, doing what needs to be done, bearing what has to be borne. Zen would have one feel oneness with everyone, warmness for all men, because they are there in all that is and it is theirs. This is all, this is enough, many times enough. It is life and death and endless ongoing, the same and ever various, surprising, serious, sad, tragic, yet fun, too, and funny. So it is not so wise to sigh as to laugh. The Zen master is not afraid to laugh, because he is not afraid to live or die or to think there is no differ-

¿3 ence. He has touched bottom. He can sit quietly. He can as well get up and do the dishes or talk about it all with anyone who asks what it is all about. If his answer is enigmatic, a blow or a laugh, he seems to mean that life for each man is what he can make of it. Life is there and there is each man in it. A man may be slow to see, but the only way for him to see is for himself. When he sees, what can he say to equal it? In the face of so much, perhaps nothing to be said can make enough sense. So Zen is the philosophy of silence. The Zen feeling that each person must make of life what he can is akin to the Declaration of Independence penned by Jefferson with the conviction that every human being has the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Whether man is endowed with these rights by a Creator, or by the nature of things when evolution reaches the level of man, does not matter. But would the men of Zen bother about the form of government by which to secure these rights, or the right of the people to alter and renew that form? Would they work out the principles underlying it as the protection of "their safety and happiness"? There was in Jefferson, and in his countrymen who went on to frame the Constitution, a faith in reason, in thinking things out, that is more Confucian than Zen-ish, except as these two strains in Chinese thought could be blended. The lesson has to be learned over and over that individual rights can neither amount to much nor be protected unless their social implications are recognized. It must be seen that an individual man cannot have or exercise significant rights unless they are upheld for other men too—for the more men the better, and, in principle, for all men. For the independence cherished by Zen or Jefferson to be maintained in the mid-twentieth century there must be a Constitutional structure, though it must be interpreted and applied by a further body of court decisions. Implications must be worked out for economic affairs and for foreign relations. All human activities and interests need to be thought about and smoothed out wherever conflicts and obstacles arise, whether more or less privately or publicly. Yet, the necessary inquiry into what men are up to, and the legislation to keep their doings going, defeats the whole purpose of freeing men and keeping them free to pursue happiness, unless this purpose is kept to the fore. This cannot be done without

64 maintaining Jefferson's emphasis on education, so that men may understand the new uses and abuses of power in their growing size and complexity. By the same token, there is need for the Zen suspicion of knowledge that is too knowing, too formal or abstract, although knowledge must become ever more abstract to cope with the vast range and variety of problems involved in maintaining society now. Zen's intuitive hold on the goal of happiness is the more precious the more precarious it becomes in the press of detail and the pressure of over-all schedules and projects. The hope is Jefferson's for the best representatives to be chosen for government. For that, the people must be generally informed as well as trained in special techniques. Especially, they must be well educated in the fundamental values of democracy. Formal learning will help. But the Zen kind of seeing and realizing is indispensable. It is more intimate than intellectual, more a sensing than a knowing. It is even a forgetting. It calls for uncluttering thought and unblocking response. It causes a shaking up and waking up. It also demands some tranquillity for summing up. There must be recovery of the immediate worth and joy of living that all the thinking is for, all the planning and effort are for, if for anything. American democracy needs much more critical and technical intelligence than Zen seems to offer, but could use the renewal of zest which Zen could give, not only to drawing water and lugging firewood, but to all the work which needs doing if modern life is to keep going.

CHAPTER

V

•

EMERSON: AMERICAN

BODHISATTVA

I. Platform Seer • Jefferson devoted himself to public life in order to keep private life free for pursuing happiness. Emerson concentrated upon the pursuit. Private as he felt it to be, however, he found himself in public demand, traveling far to tell about being secretly happy to people who wanted to be more intimate with themselves. Though his idea was to be self-reliant, they relied on him. So he phrased his inmost thought for the platform. As if taking his audience into his study, he wrote, as he spoke, to Puritans and descendants of Puritans who were uneasy about leaving Puritanism. Jefferson's Virginians, rich and poor, may have known well enough how to pass the time when they could have it to themselves. But New Englanders were strenuous and anxious. The population, spreading west, went back to school to them or set up schools inspired by them, not to mention churches. Churchgoers or not, most Americans of a century and a half ago were brought up, if not born, with the mark of Calvin or Luther on them. If Sunday was not a day of work, it was not a day of idleness; not a day to be careless but to be at one's best in dress and thought and feeling, and to meet other people at their best. During the week, an evening out would be spent at prayer meeting. When there was time to read, it would be the Bible. It and the latest sermon provided the food for thought or talk. The tendency was to look down on less serious pastimes. It is not surprising that people with this background, when they came to have more leisure, when they went less long and often to church, remained fairly serious. When they did not go to church they would go to a lecture. Emerson had been a preacher and people listened to him as if he still were. They wanted him to tell them what to think and how to live. He did it with a tone and presence and choice of words that worked like a charm. He was a poet with a platform manner, a seer in a business suit, an oracle in prose. He wrote to speak and he spoke to be quoted. Every other sentence was

66 a text. Elegant and pithy, he could soar and swoop. If he had given up formal religion, he did not cease to be religious. More than Edwards, Emerson emphasized the religious importance of morality and the secular side of religion. This was another notch in Locke's sensible approach to religion as not revealing anything contrary to reason, at least not so far as civil interest goes. Jefferson got from Locke that this interest was aimed at happiness and should not be hampered by any religious authority. Jefferson, like Franklin and Paine, had the idea of the Enlightenment—that the guide to life was in knowledge, science, and education. The implication was to interpret religion accordingly or keep it apart. Jefferson did not want to talk about religion but simply to free it from the state, and the state from it. This did not mean lack of interest in religion any more than in other things which Jefferson preferred to keep private. With Emerson, the transition from the Enlightenment to Transcendentalism, or the addition of the latter to the former, was under way. To the religious value of morality, to the idea of right conduct as the test, if not the best, of religion, he brought a more than moral, a mystical, appreciation of the wonder and oneness of the world. Here he found repose and refreshment beyond the strain of moral effort, a horizon-wide outlook outside the focus of the daily round, a universe beyond worry. Edwards had anticipated this in feeling the beauty of Nature to be the glory of God. Paine almost identified God with the universe. Yet the universe, for Paine, was woefully unfinished, in need of reform and revolution. Emerson felt renewed by a walk in the woods, with a sense of something vastly right and good around him. Yet he thought of N a ture as growing and on the make, along with man. Though much still needed doing, he liked to believe, with the Taoist, that for each man there was something easy for him to do, fitting his gift and inclination. When orthodoxy was losing its hold, Emerson replaced it, not only with Nature worship and acceptance of evolution, but with a moral interpretation of life still in the spirit of Puritans in search of the best, of something not yet altogether in being, in Nature or man or Bible, demanding the utmost of man. A man should do what he could, and Emerson believed this would be easy as well as right, once he knew himself and his forte. Work is arduous only when a man has not found the right work

*>7 or has missed the measure of his true self. " F o r it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose." 1 Here, in the first paragraph of his essay on "Spiritual L a w s , " Emerson expressed the insight of Zen, much as it was put b y Tao-hsin, the Fourth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China, who died A.D. 6 5 1 . Tao-hsin said: W h e n the mind is tranquillized in its deepest abode, its entanglements are c u t asunder. . . . Therefore, let a man discipline himself first of all in the realization of a perfect state of quietude in his mind and also in his world. . . . B u t in this discipline there is really nothing to take hold of as a definite achievement, and this non-achievement is w h a t is achieved b y the discipline, f o r Reality is grasped b y non-striving, and non-striving is truth itself. 2

Such a parallel between Zen and Emerson would account for his appeal in China and Japan, though he was more familiar with the thought of India. 3 A s the men of Zen both used and abused the Buddhist scriptures, learning not to lean on them but to be seers in their own right, so Emerson felt the need of supplementing the Bible. T h a t set of books bound as one had been sufficient for the pioneers and early settlers 1. Brooks Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Modern Library edition (New York: Random House, 1940), p. 190. 2. Quoted by D. T. Suzuki in Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series (London: Rider & Co., 1953). PP- 30-313. Cf. Frederic Ives Carpenter, Emerson Handbook. (New York: Hendricks House, Inc., 1953). PP- 2 J 0 - 2 J I . I Have now found Suzuki, in reference to Emerson's partiality to "sky-void idealism" (in a letter to Carlyle in 1844), supposing this to mean "the Buddhist theory of Sunyata (emptiness or void)," although questioning how deeply Emerson "entered into the spirit of this theory which is the basic principle of Buddhist thought and from which Zen starts on its mystic appreciation of nature. . . ." Suzuki feels that here may be the reason for "the deep impressions which were made upon me while reading Emerson in my college days." (D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture [Kyoto: The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1 9 3 8 ] , p. 213.) Professor Reiho Masunaga, of Komazawa University, objects to identifying Zen with anything mystical, because to him mysticism means theism and a personal God. This would come short of the oneness in Zen, if to think of God or anything else in particular would divide the world between the thought of something and the rest. But Professor Sohaku Ogata, of Hanazono University (and Abbot of the sub-temple Chotokuin in Shokokuji, Kyoto) contends that no Christian can be a true mystic for the very reason that "as long as you have God you haven't got very far." The question is whether Meister Eckhart, for instance, did not go beyond a personal God to impersonal Godhead, so that Suzuki was justified in comparing his view with that of Zen.

68 who had wandered like the Bible tribes, subduing a hostile and promising land. But Jefferson and other gentlemen had read widely, and ministers were expected to be educated. Emerson's following had read beyond the Bible and were ready to hear about writers outside the canon: Plato, Goethe, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare. Emerson was able to lift his audience to these names and make them the signatures of his hearers. He could say that in the great we realize the potentialities of the rest. Great men show what it means to be a man. He suggested that religion arose from admiration of the great; that theologies are hero worship which celebrates great human qualities. He had hit on the Zen teaching that "all the Bodhisattvas, including the Buddhas—are ourselves, and their doings are our doings." * Quite naturally he would share the anti-scriptural attitude of Zen, its independence of the letter of the sutras, and its aim "not to know Buddhism but to become Buddhism." 5 He said: "Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings." He granted that books, well used, might be inspiring, and that some things could be learned only by "laborious reading." But he would have a man free himself of anything that might distract him from his own experience. "Only so much do I know, as I have lived." 6 That to be a man is to be emancipated and unlimited is the theme of Emerson's essay on "Circles." "There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. There are no fixtures to men. . . . " 7 Emerson's outlook was formed before he had any real knowledge of Oriental literature. When he came to it he welcomed it, espe4. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series, p. 83. 5. Reiho Masunaga, The Soto Approach to Zen (Tokyo: Layman Buddhist Society Press, 1 9 5 8 ) , p. 63. 6. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, " T h e American Scholar," pp. ; o , J I , J I . Masunaga, speaking f o r the Soto Sect of Zen, says that the catch phrase " N o dependence upon words and letters" means only that the sutras are not to be taken as the final authority. It does not mean to be ignorant of the sutras. It means rather that " t h e true law of the Buddha and the patriarchs flows f r o m mind to mind and f r o m personality to personality" (op. cit., pp. 1 7 , 1 8 ) . This is like Plato's disparagement of books in f a v o r of man-to-man discussion, because a book only repeats itself and cannot reply afresh to a question. Mead used to say to read enough f o r stimulus—not so much as to take the place of thinking. 7 . Atkinson, ed., The Complete

Essays, pp. 2 8 1 , 282.

cially Hinduism with its teaching of absolute unity, which was akin to his transcendentalism. He responded quite a bit less to Buddhism and Chinese thought, though it seems that eventually he got much there also. That a great man embodies the vital force of the universe is a Chinese idea he liked. But it is best developed in Taoism, which apparently never came directly into Emerson's ken.8 Taoism, and the combination of Taoism and Buddhism which led to Zen, seem closer to him than Hinduism. Zen's naturalization of Buddhism, lowering the transcendental to earth, would have appealed to Emerson who was at his best when he found the profound in the common touch, the higher meaning in meeting life on the level. 2. Conversation the Culmination of Life • While Emerson brought high and low together, he believed that the heights were being heightened, the depths deepened, and that everything was on the move. "The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees." Man, with his ability to think giving him control of things, was more dynamic than anything else. "Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea; they will disappear." 9 Emerson realized how the advance of thought was gathering momentum in the mode of science and technology: "New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam by electricity." 10 There would be no end to it. "In the thought of tomorrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted." 11 Men of science were the prime movers in this earth-shaking world-making, and they were men. Emerson especially liked to identify his hearers and himself with them, as he sounded their names and celebrated their achievements. In "Uses of Great Men" 8. C f . Frederic Ives Carpenter, Emerson Press, 1930), pp. 232, 244. 9. Atkinson, ed., The Complete 10. Ibid., p. 280.

and Asia

(Cambridge: Harvard University-

Essays, "Circles," p. 279. 1 1 . Ibid., p. 281.

7°

he honored them for converting Nature to human purposes. He thanked them for practical benefits, but more for the panorama they unrolled. "Thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of the earth. This quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility of our condition. . . . We are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old earth, as by acquiring a new planet." 12 It was not technological advance for which Emerson thanked science so much as for enrichment of thought, feeling, and conversation. In his second essay on "Nature" he spoke of conversation as the goal and test of life. What else was the end suggested by science, as by music, poetry, and language itself? "What a train of means to secure a little conversation! This palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage, this bankstock and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house and cottage by the waterside, all for a little conversation, high, clear and spiritual!" 13 A t first this may seem contrary to Zen, which is called the philosophy of silence, of meditation rather than of talk. Yet, the literature of Zen is mostly a record of conversations. If Zen arrived at silence it was by way of question and answer, leading up to a reply suggesting more than could be said. And Emerson remarked: "Good as is discourse, silence is better, and shames it." He also said: " I admire answers to which no answer can be made." 1 4 Whether silence ensues because of the difficulty or the completeness of communication, it would not be human not to speak again before long. "In conversation we pluck up the termini which bound the common of silence on every side. . . . When each new speaker strikes a new light, emancipates us from the oppression of the last speaker to oppress us with the greatness and exclusiveness of his own thought, then yields us to another redeemer, we seem to recover our rights, to become men." 1 5 Greek civilization rose to the height of inquiry in the dialogues of the tragic poets and of Plato, which carried further the talk of 12. R . W. Emerson, "Uses of Great Men," in Representative

Men (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Co., I88J), pp. 1 7 , 1 8 .

1 3 . Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, 14. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, of Emerson's Journals (Boston: Houghton 15. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays,

p. 418. "Circles," p. 284. Bliss Perry, ed., The Mifflin Co., [ 1 9 2 6 ] ) , p. 263. "Circles," p. 284.

Heart

7i the market place, the council, the assembly, the table, and the afterdinner discussion. In England, the tongues of village and town led to the tales of Chaucer and on to the Elizabethan stage, to Shakespeare and Shaw, to all that made drama, poetry, and philosophy of talk, and always called for more talk. In France, from repartee in field and street to causerie, to conversation in the salon, the cafe, the theater, the seminar, the short story, and the novel, the verbal give-and-take goes on. France is many things, but French is what is said there. And the French always have more to say because they are too human to allow a last word as long as they are free to be themselves. The freedom to speak is the last they will give up. They speak for all men when they say nothing is more anti-human than a curb on what to think or say. This seems to be the same in East and West. The main difference between man and all that is subhuman is the ability to put things into words and so into question and suggestion, without end. Emerson thinks of men of science as spokesmen for the realms of Nature, representing them and so bringing them into discourse. He calls this putting things "into the spiritual and necessary sphere." 1 6 Today, we should say, rather, that our research puts things into abstract and quantitative statements, so far as possible. A n aura is lost in dropping the term "spiritual" in this connection, but we can be clearer about what "quantitative" means. And, if science now encourages or obliges us to give up the security of a "necessary sphere," we gain the assurance of a method which is self-corrective, and recommended by its usefulness rather than by the dubious claim to being necessary in some final and absolute fashion. Emerson was on the way to this outlook, though still using terminology from transcendentalism which now sounds fuzzy and fancy. He was actually anticipating the evolutionary conception which Darwin's Origin of Species was to establish. That book was published in 1859. Representative Men had come out in I 8 J O with Emerson's insight: "The gases gather to the solid firmament; the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows; arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives at the man, and thinks." He added: "Man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason." But Emer16. Emerson, Representative

Men, "Uses of Great Men," p. 16.

72 son would not have us rely passively on men of science. "We must not be sacks and stomachs." 17 We should be inspired to activity and inquiry of our own. We should question before accepting. In the essay on Montaigne, Emerson sees that skepticism has value but does not see that to doubt and demand evidence is fundamental to the method of science. Doubting, which always had a negative use, in guarding against error and falsehood, acquired in modern science a positive function. It is still true, as Emerson says, that "Society does not like to have any breath of question blown on the existing order." 18 Yet we have come to trust and support the research scientist in work that we know may cast suspicion upon what has been accepted. We now sense safety in the discomfort of reconstructing old truth. At the same time, we are afraid of this. Scientists find their freedom restricted and threatened in the name of security. In this age of worse and worse wars, they had better make upsetting discoveries in their fields before rivals and enemies do. But, the inquiring mind needed for scientific pioneering is prone to raise questions which the powers that be may fear. Emerson said: "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." 19 He will certainly be skeptical about much. But to hem him in or try to bind him to what is behind him is not conducive to progress. The scientist must be more or less a skeptic, and Emerson knew that the skeptic would be called a bad citizen if he noted the "drowsiness of institutions," and ironically added: "But neither is he fit to work with any democratic party that ever was constituted; for parties wish everyone committed, and he penetrates the popular patriotism." 20 The hope is for a party democratic enough to welcome criticism, and for citizens confident enough to have misgivings without giving up. Emerson notes that even the saints have doubts, and he doubts that doubt is fatal. Rather, he finds it vital to the good life, which is the criticized life, as Socrates taught. That is a life which 17. 18. 19. 20.

Ibid., pp. 1 6 - 1 7 , Emerson, Representative Men, "Montaigne or the Skeptic," p. 164. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, "Circles," p. 283. Emerson, Representative Men, "Montaigne or the Skeptic," p. 164.

73

thrives on skepticism, using it to propel argument and debate toward inquiry and discovery. Emerson could not anticipate Mead without knowing how American thought would move between his time and Mead's, yet was intuitively on the way to Mead's realization that life is most intense in the world-conversation of science, where life is continually rising above itself by raising questions and doubting the answers, in quest of further questions and answers. 3. Optimism Scientific and Oriental • Emerson's optimism is brave and wise, not naive. It is won in face of Montaigne, who made him ask: "Are the opinions of a man on right and wrong . . . at the mercy of a broken sleep or an indigestion? Is his belief in God and Duty no deeper than a stomach evidence?" Emerson sees the whole question of the relativity of values when he asks: "Does the general voice of ages affirm any principle, or is no community of sentiment discoverable in distant times and places? And when it shows the power of self-interest, I accept that as a part of the divine law, and must reconcile it with aspiration the best I can." Emerson is asker and seeker no less than seer. His optimism is sobered by all that counts against it. He realizes "that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us. . . . We paint Time with a scythe; Love and Fortune, blind; and Destiny, deaf. . . . What front can we make against these unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? . . . What can I do against hereditary and constitutional habits . . . ? " 21 He finds that passing through all the sciences may leave a man a churl; through all offices a child. He suggests that perhaps God's "method is illusion. The eastern sages owned the goddess Yoganidra, the great illusory energy of Vishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole world is beguiled." 22 Emerson entertains the idea that the choice between faith and unbelief may rest on temperament. He does not want to be fooled. He thinks the manly thing is not to hide doubts "and lie for the right." A faith to live by must be arrived at in the teeth of doubt, after "a series of skepticisms." He girds himself with his preview of evolution. Man has worked up from the worm. He sees, before William James, that, if men are to 2 1 . Ibid., pp. 168-169.

12. Ibid., p. 170.

74 go on living with zest, the moral sentiment must win out, though they have to bear the chasm "between the largest promise of ideal power, and the shabby experience." 23 Emerson was one who could seize upon insights and phrase them rather than work them out, but that is what a sage is for. That is why people flocked to hear him, and still like to read him in the East as in the West, as more than one James did, and Santayana, and Dewey, after Thoreau and Whitman. Even when the social sciences have studied the interactions of individuals and groups, finding how men are conditioned by circumstances they are learning to control, we get lost in facts and theories and need someone with the wit and nerve to say what it comes to and where we stand. If Emerson's way of speaking is oracular, with the knack of meaning more than dawns at first, and meaning at last what we can make of it, that is the way of wisdom. A wise saying cannot be caught flat-footed like a statement of fact. A fact cannot afford to be off base. But wisdom is so based that the ground is always under it. That is why it is often humorous, from the smile behind the lines of Lao Tzu to the chuckle of Santayana. There is grim joking in Sartre when he says the inhuman world is so full of being that no thing can be added except human consciousness, because it is "nothing." Emerson was glad to find that man can manage to be himself in spite of, and with the aid of, all that the world is chockfull of. But man must take his chances. Since being himself means surpassing himself, he is always in danger of overreaching himself. He will fail in what he undertakes. And when he succeeds in doing something, he may undo something else; the more ingenious and far-reaching his achievements the more incalculable the results. So Emerson says to beware when a thinker is let loose. "Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow. . . . Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned. . . . This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth. . . ." He must face ahead with "the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society, 2 3 . Ibid.,

pp. 1 7 1 , 1 7 3 ,

176.

75

his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded and decease." 24 The strength which men must have, to face the world they are making and to be the selves they are remaking, belongs no less to the Zen adept than to the research worker in the van of progress. Emerson said: " I unsettle all things. N o facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at my back." 2 5 This is to have the security of a method, whether of Zen or of science, rather than the dubious safety of some metaphysical certainty, Eastern or Western. It is to chariot on change instead of trying to stand against it. Emerson used Transcendentalism as a practical instrument for assessing the culture of an age on the edge of the scientific and industrial era. He saw the need to match technical progress with moral advance, and believed that ends and purposes could be enlarged along with increasing means. He did not think the contribution of science was merely material. He saw science enabling man to be a more effective reformer and remaker of his being. Emerson belonged to the Enlightenment with the Encyclopedists, on the side of reason and humanity against superstition, institutionalism, and traditionalism.26 Emerson saw that the scientific attitude is modest and tentative, upholding no absolutes but expecting to be corrected and to correct itself. If he saw this only in his more courageous and energetic mood, we cannot blame him for seeking transcendental ease when he was tired. He needed to get away from society and its demands to solitude, as Jefferson wanted to escape from public to private life, as every man, including the scientist, likes to have off hours. That need not mean denial of the world and total avoidance of its trouble, as it did for an early Taoist. Nor need it be interpreted as a philosophical inconsistency or indecision between relativism and absolutism. It is just the difference between effort and rest. It is physiological and psychological rather than metaphysical. It is rhythm, not schism, and it is natural. In a moment of exaltation, full of the wonder of Nature and the sense of oneness with it, 24. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, "Circles," p. 283. 25. Ibid., p. 288. 26. C f . Eduard C. Lindeman, "Emerson's Pragmatic Mood," The American X V I , No. 1 (Winter, 1 9 4 6 - 1 9 4 7 ) .

Scholar,

76 Emerson would express himself in transcendental terms of an intuition beyond intelligence, as of something supernatural. But this was a manner of feeling, of speaking, of celebrating "the highest of the experiences of man in nature." 27 Nature, for Emerson, includes all that he would call spiritual, as well as what we would call physical. Man, with his aspiration and potentiality, belongs to the world as much as "fox and woodchuck." And every man has within his experience something of what the great man has. This was Emerson's base for his defense of democracy, which has inspired its great defenders ever since. He praised his country as home of democracy; also for the dream of what democracy might become. But he criticized the abuses of freedom and equality which he saw in the raw on lecture tours which took him as far as California. Tempering his optimism were his doubts about social progress. He certainly did not think it would be automatic. His hope was in the capacity of men to know and grow. But they would need time. "Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better." 28 4. Man Thinking About Democracy • What Emerson meant by the word "God" cannot be ascertained from an exclamation where it may be only idiomatic and conventional. "God," in the Essays as a whole, has three levels of meaning: unconscious Nature, the conscious self, and the unrealized ideal. The second and third uses may seem to transcend Nature, but not when it is realized that he gives the same triple characterization of Nature. It is first the woods, flowers, animals, mountains, "the yellow afternoons of October," the "natural facts," which may be very beautiful as well as useful to man. Second, Nature is man who can use and enjoy Nature in general, and through whom "the bone and marrow" of it can be penetrated by ethical character, so that "brute nature" is far from being all that Nature is. It is humanized too. Third, there is "somewhat progressive" about it, beyond man, in uses and possibilities that cannot be exhausted.29 27. Carpenter, Emerson Handbook, p. 184. 28. Op. tit., quoted from Emerson's Journals, Vol. II, p. 4$. 29. Cf. Atkinson, ed., The Complete J J . 34-

Essays, First Series, "Nature," pp. n , 14, 23,

77 Finally, it is not only God or Nature which has three levels. Emerson says the same of his country. The United States of America is the actual physical land. It is also the people who inhabit it. A n d it is the home of the dream of freedom and democracy, to be fought for, even if it is a losing battle, against the avarice that makes "the air we breathe thick and f a t , " and against the "aim at low objects." These phrases ring out from " T h e American Scholar," where Emerson says it is not enough to rejoice in the great man as showing what is in all men. The time has come for "the near, the low, the common" to have their turn. Each man must realize the three levels of Nature, God, and country. This is the lesson addressed to "Man Thinking." Emerson knows the odds that man is up against, even in his new country. He knows the defeats and betrayals. Yet, he holds to the hope and the promise. Let literary men dwell upon the tragedy and the loss. The part of the wise man is to see what they see and go on to the good that is and is to be, believing in the men who are devoted to it. Emerson celebrates the hero and the martyr of the human cause, who would stand by the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. His friend John Brown believed in these, and died for them. Emerson said: "Indeed, it is the reductio ad absurdum of Slavery, when the governor of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom he declares to be a man of the most integrity, truthfulness and courage he has ever met." A n d Emerson quoted John Brown: " I f I had interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or any of their friends, parents, wives or children, it would all have been right. But I believe that to have interfered as I have done, for the despised poor, was not wrong, but right." 30 The defense of John Brown showed how Emerson understood democracy and stood for it. He meant it even when it meant war. He sensed that science led toward emancipation that would be effective beyond the proclamation of it and the fight for it. H e saw that, with science, men could convert Nature to human purposes. Then it was up to men to be clear about their purposes and to be steadfast in working them out, win or lose. A n d , while they should 30. Atkinson, ed., The Complete

Essays, speech on John Brown, p. 880.

7« look toward the future rather than look back, they should learn to enjoy the present and help others to enjoy it as their birthright. In the midst of all the striving he would have men prize nonstriving, like the men of Zen. Every man, he said, is entitled and should be enabled to develop the "great and crescive self," not just to accomplish things but, in the thick of action, to become aware, to pause and know the joy of being alive. That is what he wanted when he wanted to see "man thinking," and to ask him: " W h y not realize your world?" 31 This is the crowning "non-achievement" of Zen. It is "to fill the hour." As Emerson puts it, "that is happiness; to fill the hour and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval." 32 This "is to be present in all places and yet not to become attached anywhere," as Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, who died in 713, said.33 Emerson did not need to know about him, any more than Huineng had to wait for Emerson. But to know about both is to have more appreciation of each. It makes it possible to read Chinese in English, and to see how American is the wisdom of the East. In the rush and roar and reading that go on, the entertaining and distracting, the waiting, aching, dreading that alternate with work and earning, here is sanity; the chance to sum things up and cancel out what does not count. "What is left is "man thinking." It is the Buddha-mind, wonderfully close to not-thinking and no-mind. Whether there is tea or not, talk or not, to have "man thinking" is not to have what Emerson calls "always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction." 34 It is, finally, to have life "for itself." It is to have a happiness not measured by how long it lasts but by how good it is. The only way it can be better is for more people to have it. Emerson did what he could about that. He was an American bodhisattva.

j 1. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, "Experience," p. 364. 32. Ibid., p. 3 jo. 33. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series, p. 35. 34. Atkinson, ed., The Complete Essays, Second Series, "Nature," p. 419.

C H A P T E R VI

•

THOREAU: T A O I S T IN

AMERICA

l . Inspector of Snow Storms • In Thoreau's pages, the pursuit of happiness goes on with the life and liberty Jefferson could wish, and a zest for privacy never better expressed. Thoreau reveled in Nature in contrast to towns, with their "life of quiet desperation." He said: "For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully. . . . " 1 He could see human doings belonging to the round of Nature. "I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston. . . . " 2 He admired a man working in the street or splitting granite to make fence posts, or anyone who had a craft, as he watched a fox run "as though there were not a bone in his back." 3 He would be free of government, church, and society, especially when they were unjust. So he admired John Brown. Tolstoy and Gandhi were influenced in their stand on nonviolence by Thoreau's "Essay on Civil Disobedience." He was like the early Taoists of China in their rejection of society for Nature, although, like the later ones, he could recognize that the good life must also be social. The important thing for him, as for them, was to retain simplicity, to realize the good of this world here and now. Any ideal, any improvement must be guided by what was already fine and lovely, or else what was there to go by? He had the Taoist sense that there is nothing better than to do the work at hand, to chop wood and draw water. So he could say: "I am convinced . . . that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we 1. Henry David Thoreau, chapter on "Economy," in Walden (Special edition for the the Book League of America, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1929), p. 18. 2. Thoreau, Walden, chapter on "Sounds," p. 130. 3. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen, eds., Henry David Thoreau, Journal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1949), Vol. 1 , p. 187.

79

8o will live simply and wisely. . . . It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do." 4 He stuck to it that it was "Employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons," living in the moment and living there again in writing it down. He took the same pride in clean hard writing as in swinging an ax: "every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood." 8 He wrote: "My Journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of." 8 He was sorry for "the inhabitants of large English towns" who, for walking, "are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to the highways . . . I should die from mere nervousness at the thought of such confinement." 7 What would he think of American cities now, or Tokyo! Yet, while he would certainly be nervous in them, he might find compensation in automobiles. He would deplore their discouragement of walking, their choking the streets, and be horrified by their murderousness, but might welcome their power to get a man out of town and back to Nature. He noted: "If I would extend my walk a hundred miles, I must carry a tent on my back for a shelter at night or in the rain, or at least I must carry a thick coat to be prepared for a change in the weather. So that it requires some resolution, as well as energy and foresight, to undertake the simplest journey." 8 Something of his spirit remains in the way Americans take to the woods and like to camp out, and set aside some of the wilds for national parks—though the idea of a park seemed tame to him. Fast transportation has made it possible for more city dwellers than in his day to have a bit of forest at the door and a few of its denizens. But exasperating traffic problems must be solved if working in town and living outside is to continue. N o doubt, he would rather carry a tent than be caught in an automobile, either in town or out where Nature has been paved away. Perhaps trains on rails will restore mobility where expressways fail. Today it should not be 4. Thoreau, Waiden, "Economy," p. 78. j . Torrey and Allen, eds., Journal, Vol. I, p. 312. 7. Ibid., p. 451.

6. Ibid., Vol. n , p. 101. 8. Ibid., p. 402.

8i unusual to be a part-time Thoreau. And Thoreau was not a fulltime recluse. He was a civilized man who liked having friends in addition to fresh air and walks in the woods. H e could revel in a library, and say: "I saw that while we are clearing the forest in our westward progress, we are accumulating a forest of books in our rear, as wild and unexplored as any of nature's primitive wildernesses." 9 He would admire the development of libraries beyond the circulating ones he knew. It is unlikely that he would enjoy radio and television. But he would visit the art museums that now are not far from Concord. With his ear for sounds he would find time for concerts. When he spoke of wanting to reduce life to its simplest terms he did not intend to "live meanly, like the ants." He "wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." 10 Today he might have hi-fi and collect records. If this would cost more than he could earn by doing chores, surely such a man would manage to earn what he needed whenever he lived. He would say of this age what he said of his: "If we live in the nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?" 11 H e did without things which would be important to another, including wife and children. He was an intense man rather than a complete one. Now, as then, he could save the savor of the moment by keeping a journal. He was married to it in the long conversations he had with it instead of with a wife. Reading what might have been buried with her, we may be glad she did not exist. He was not sorry for himself but for the man who had to push a barn "down the road of life" 12 instead of a pen. Thoreau was so rich in sunny hours that he could squander them, but often was too tenacious of them to want to use them. "There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life." 13 Yet going to Harvard helped him go to Walden; having gone to church made it more f u n to go fish9. Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 353. 10. Thoreau, Walden, chapter entitled, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For," p. 101. n . Ibid., chapter on "Reading," p. 123. 12. Ibid., p. 3. 13. Ibid., "Sounds," p. 124.

82

ing. Spending Sunday in the sun would have meant less without the thought of people in church. He was not the first to compare forest vistas to cathedral aisles. In the rain, under trees and clouds, he felt as in a house. For him to repudiate, however, could be to espouse, even to retain. He gave up the Puritan conscience, refused to worry, resented repentance, and sought to be at one with himself. Still he was conscientious about knowing and naming each tree and plant, noting the temperature and aspect of each different day. If he did not want to be pawed by dirty institutions, and would rely on the inner spirit, he kept a sense of belonging to all that was around him. While he found this easier in the open than in town, he stayed only two years at Walden, and there he lived no less in words than in the woods. He chose words to celebrate what he saw. He used them to accept himself and to help his fellows acknowledge the wonder. Individualist and rebel, he withdrew from the community to embrace the race, from local churches to find a common faith. He mingled the water of "Walden with the Ganges.

2. Little Oases of WUdness • His discovery of the philosophical literature of India confirmed his tendency to detachment, which had already given him an interest in the Stoics. Yet he had "attachment to a desire to make action significant." After the stay at Walden, he saw even more things he wanted to do and be: "explorer, traveler, surveyor, writer, lecturer, abolitionist, and, more exclusively than before, examiner and recorder of the flora and fauna of woods, fields, and streams." 14 It is too bad that he did not come upon the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets and sages. Their devotion to the active life, with equal need of contemplation, would have appealed to him. Without knowing it, he was close to the Taoist and Zen masters in feeling that wisdom should bring emancipation from abstraction and return to immediacy. He was like the old Chinese in celebrating stone and stream, flower and bird, snow and spring. He might have written what Po Chii-I wrote in the beginning of the summer of 812: 14. Winfield E. Nagley, "Thoreau on Attachment, Detachment, and Non-Attachment," Philosophy East and West, III, No. 4 (January, 1 9 J 4 ) 308, 318.

83 Surely if to-day I am not content with my lot I need not expect ever to be c o n t e n t ! 1 6

Po Chii-I, having thought his way through thinking until he had enough of it, reached the point of not wanting to improve his mind, saying: "All you have to do is not to let it start thinking, no matter what the thought is—tainted or pure." The ideal became for him to have " n o mental activity, but also no cessation of consciousness." 1 6 And Thoreau: "Wonderful, wonderful is our life and that of our companions! That there should be such a thing as a brute animal, not human! and that it should attain to a sort of society with our race! Think of cats, for instance. . . . They do not go to school, nor read the Testament; yet how near they come to doing so! how much they are like us who do s o ! " 1 7 Chuang T z u wondered whether he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. How Thoreau loved his world and wanted its sheer presence can be gathered from running over the topics in any volume of his Journal. In the ninth: A Roadside Garden, A Red Huckleberry, A Sociable Afternoon ("among the desmodiums and lespedezas"), Chimney Swallows' Nests, August Freshets, A Blue Heron, Catching A Pig, The Hatching of a Tortoise, Cranberrying, The Worship of Stones. Along with wanting to be alone with Nature and one with it, he needed to share his enjoyment. So he wrote: "Alcott said well the other day that this was his definition of heaven, 'A place where you can have a little conversation.'" 1 8 Like Emerson, Thoreau wondered what it all came to, what anything came to, if not to good talk. And what was that if not friendship? "Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends its fragrance to the flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it." But he i j . A r t h u r Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chu-1 ( N e w Y o r k : T h e Macmillan Co., 1 9 4 9 ) . P- 79- D . T . Suzuki, in Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture ( K y o t o : T h e Eastern Buddhist Society, 1 9 3 8 ) , asks, with reference to Thoreau: " W h o would not recognise his poetic affinity with Saigyo or Basho, and his perhaps unconscious indebtedness to the Oriental mode of feeling towards n a t u r e ? " (p. 2 1 4 ) . Saigyo ( 1 1 1 8 - 1 1 9 0 ) and Basho ( 1 6 4 3 - 1 6 9 4 ) were nature-loving traveler-poets. B u t it seems gratuitous to suggest an indebtedness of Thoreau to the Orient f o r his own feeling. 16. Waley, op. cit., pp. 9 9 , 100. 1 7 . Torrey and Allen, eds., Journal, 18. I bid., Vol. X I I I , p. 94.

Vol. I X , p. 178.

84

was particular. "This experience makes us unavailable for the ordinary courtesy and intercourse of men. We can only recognize them when they rise to that level and realize our dream." 19 Even his friend Emerson did not always reach that level for Thoreau. He in turn could disappoint Emerson. Yet, there can seldom have been better friends than they were for some years. If Thoreau knew Nature better, it was largely thanks to Agassiz, who also was to teach William James. The great naturalist, who resisted the theory of evolution, was a living link between the sensing of that theory in Emerson and Thoreau and the application of it to ideas and institutions in James and Dewey. Yet Thoreau's playful feeling of affinity with cats and his habitual at-homeness in all outdoors was perhaps no more an approach to Darwin's thesis than the love of Nature in the ancient Chinese. Thoreau was not anticipating a scientific hypothesis so much as renewing the primeval religious experience of the wonder of the world. He found this natural and available without clergymen, churches and their dualism, which people might need if they were out of touch with the actual, unable to trust their sense and senses. Others might have to substitute ceremony and the supernatural for what he had. He was hard on wearers of the cloth. It is a singular infatuation that leads men to become clergymen in regular, or even irregular, standing . . . in the clergyman of the most liberal sort I see no perfectly independent human nucleus, but I seem to see some indistinct scheme hovering about, to which he has lent himself, to which he belongs. . . . Whatever he may say, he does not know that one day is as good as another. Whatever he may say, he does not know that a man's creed can never be written, that there are no particular expressions of belief that deserve to be prominent. . . . What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of? In course of time they will abolish the one form of servitude, and, not long after, the other. I do not see the necessity for a man's getting into a hogshead and so narrowing his sphere, nor for his putting his head into a halter. 20

There are Unitarian and other ministers today free enough to suit Thoreau, devoted to freeing other people from what confines them in and out of religion. In any deep sense, his rejection of nar19. Ibid., V o l . I X , pp. 4 8 0 - 4 8 1 .

20. Ibid., pp. 283-284.

«5 rowness and servitude was religious. It was in the line of Jesus and the great religious leaders. Like Gide, Thoreau had carefully read the New Testament, then had turned against churches through love of Jesus and missing his spirit there. Thoreau, in his own way, was supporting Jefferson's plea for religious freedom: for leaving it up to the individual, as long as anyone could be individual enough to keep some things private. Emerson ceased to be a clergyman and Thoreau did not want to be one. But he was one of the saints of freedom: the freedom to seek the best and not bother with the rest. He taught that the best is always at hand if we learn to look. As he left the village in his search, perhaps we should move out of town. But he did not live far or long away from the village. He made some of his discoveries within its limits. There was the purple finch singing on R. W . E.'s trees. He would find an egg or something else to record in Emerson's garden or woodlot. There was the slough a snake had shed in Julius Smith's yard, and the hemp that sprang up in Alcott's yard. O n a cold morning it was a pleasure to compare one's thermometer with a neighbor's.21 Marcus Aurelius found he could live well in a palace. So a disciple of Thoreau need not find life dull in the midst of the city. Proust was not bored in salons which bored others. Though Gide loved the country and foreign parts, he could fill his Journal with Paris. If much of what Sartre finds in town is unpleasant, he is a colleague of Thoreau's in making the most of the moment, learning to move and breathe with expectancy, to stock consciousness with experiences worth keeping, not because they would make headlines but because they make life. Sartre's devious approach to affirmation has been by way of the futility, the "quiet desperation" (if not nausea) that Thoreau had to overcome. Thoreau is significant for city dwellers now, because they owe their being, in their increasing numbers, to massive, artificial organization often no less oppressive than necessary. If they cannot get away to the woods they must try to have Walden at home. The spirit of Thoreau is present, whether they have him in mind or not, when they "make arrangements" with bits of forest and beach to make living rooms livable. If this is not exactly the simple life extolled by Thoreau alone by his pond, it is city people's development of the love of Nature, 11.

Ibid., pp. 3 4 7 , 4 1 2 , 7 8 , 2 3 1 .

86 which the Japanese have achieved by coaxing Nature into a tiny garden and even into the house. Much of the Nature they cherish is man-made, and is less imitation than creation. Their cared-for forests and mountains have been brought into their culture, with the help of paths and lookout points, as well as with wood-block prints and poetry. While the outdoors is given the benefit of art, the garden and the teahouse have Nature's touch, since the desired effect is that of the weathered and the worn. There must be moss on the rocks, as if they had not been moved from the mountains. The stone lantern must seem to have been there of old. The teacups must be rough. The sense of camping out is to be kept at any cost. "Such is the meaning of wabi or sabi, which may be explained as simplicity of taste that is close to nature"22—while inviting admiration for artfully contrived illusion. Americans have a long way to go, but may be on the way to the Taoist-inspired Zen idea of adding a little teahouse rustic enough to suggest a remote hut. There, The Book of Tea says: "One may be in the midst of a city, and yet feel as if he were in the forest far away from the dust and din of civilization. . . . The kettle sings well, for pieces of iron are so arranged in the bottom as to produce a peculiar melody in which one may hear the echoes of a cataract muffled by clouds, of a distant sea breaking among the rocks, a rainstorm sweeping through a bamboo forest. . . ." 23 On a walk past gardens andfields,Thoreau rejoiced to come upon "square rods . . . as purely primitive and wild as they were a thousand years ago." So, after driving home through traffic, we can share his joy when we find in the house "little oases of wildness." 24 3. Gods of Wood and Stone • Thoreau said: "It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated 22. Nyozekan Hasegawa, "What is 'Japanese?'" Asia Scene, III, No. i (January, 1948), 14. 2J. Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea (Rutland, Vermont, and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 195«), pp. 60-61, 6). (This was originally published in Japan in 1906.) Cf. Arthur Drexler, The Architecture of ]apart (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955), pp. 208—213. 24. Torrey and Allen, eds., Journal, Vol. IX, p. 44.

87

enough to truly worship stocks and stones." 25 "Who does not feel worshipful at Stonehenge? Primitives have always been in awe of the striking features of the environment. And it is civilized to appreciate shapes of rock and wood. The Japanese have loved to place them in a garden. It is the breath of life to see the forms of growth, to touch the contours worn by wind and water, to hear the sound of water falling, and to feel the rain. So we like to take Nature in. We make mobiles that stir like birds and branches. If this is not to tame the unconquered, it is to be reminded of the not-I, the vast stretches of the nothing-human which have struck men as divine. That it spares us, that we and our cities can thrive in the presence of it and belong to it after all, gives us pause, and should save us from triviality. This must have been Thoreau's feeling when he spoke of the worship of stones and declared: "If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor, he who discovers two gods where there was only known the one (and such a one!) before is a still greater benefactor." 28 More than one God was welcome after the one jealous and vengeful and not slow to anger. There was another before the Old Testament was over: a gentle, loving, righteous one. The feeling came that, if there is such a God, there can be no other, because love and righteousness cannot stop short of being universal. Yet it is hard to remember this, hard to keep it from being remote and argued instead of close and felt. So Thoreau was justified in the pagan lustiness of thinking the more gods the better. If some are stocks and stones we shall never be without. It is solemn to have one God filling the world solid. We may be glad that divinity is scattered enough to surprise us when we come upon it. Thoreau said: " I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light. The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me . . . it is a matter of private rejoicing. If it did the same service to all, it might well be a matter of public rejoicing." 27 Man is happy when he can be astonished by a stone. Children are like that when they are well and fed and wanted. If more men are to be like that it will be in some measure thanks to Thoreau. We are 2 j . I bid., p. 45.

26. Ibid., p. 45.

1 7 . Ibid., p. 4 J - 4 6 .

88

in debt to Emerson for seeing that happiness is threefold: needing Nature, man, and the ideal. Also to Jefferson, for insisting that the most precious things be kept private, especially when there is danger of dissension about them. All should be glad that each has his own. Thoreau could agree with Jefferson that religion is an intimate thing. "What is religion? That which is never spoken." But Thoreau wrote this in revulsion against an illuminated sign: "Glory to God in the highest." Beneath it a gay company were shooting off firecrackers "in honor of the Atlantic telegraph." 28 He resented "indecent exposure and cant." As he did not like to hear the name of God used in a loose or cursing manner, so he would have the sexual relation "approached only with reverence and affection." He said, "The glory of the world is seen only by a chaste mind." 29 And the humor? He disliked amusements with mass appeal. Then, if there is to be a mass, there must be taste alien to his. "Gambling, horse-racing, loafing, and rowdyism generally" he objected to. What would he think of stock-car races or rock-'n-roll! or television and the rush to buy things it advertises? He saw men toiling too hard for wealth or getting it too easily, in either case seeking relief in amusements. He felt that "the supremest pleasure" is properly in a man's work itself. He said, "If our living were once honestly got, then it would be time to invent other amusements." The work he preferred doing for a living, besides a little gardening, was "to spend an hour or two a day picking some berries or other fruits . . . or collecting driftwood from the river. . . . Theaters and operas . . . are as nothing compared to these pursuits." 30 He did go on to praise "Farming and building and manufacturing and sailing. . . ." But how acceptable these occupations would be to him would depend upon how they were carried on. Little of the highly organized, if not hurried, work of the world would appeal to him. As work time is shortened, however, there is more chance after hours for the casual and desultory kind of activity he liked (if not even on the job). In off-hours there may be many Thoreaus now, though they cannot do much cranberry picking. There would be more such free spirits if the fear of war could be removed and the economy stabilized, if humanity could escape 28. Ibid.,

V o l . X I , pp. 1 1 3 ,

30. Ibid.,

V o l . X , pp. 1 4 7 , 145.

112.

29. I bid.,

V o l . I V , p.

I8J.

89

being standardized. But the more conformity there is the more his kind can be counted on to react unpredictably. Thoreau has become more of a prophet than anyone but Emerson could suspect a hundred years ago. Ruskin, who was impressive then, was dismissed by Thoreau for half-hearted love of Nature and having nothing but the Church of England to substitute. This may not be fair to Ruskin, since he also saw health and happiness in work worth doing, when it could be had. He was aware of the menace in the new methods of production, if not of their possible benefits. But Thoreau felt that love of Nature and of her revelation was incompatible with the "peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains." 31 "Surely, it is a defect in our Bible that it is not truly ours, but a Hebrew Bible," Thoreau wrote. "The most pertinent illustrations for us are to be drawn, not from Egypt or Babylonia, but from New England." 32 Before higher criticism and comparative religion were well under way, especially in America, he regarded the Bible as the record of the experience of a people, concerning what had been of moment to them. Whatever value this might have for other people, their own past would mean most to them. This was Emerson's thought in his address on "The American Scholar." Thoreau made the same point: "American scholars, having little or no root in the soil, commonly strive with all their might to confine themselves to the imported symbols alone. All the true growth and experience, the living speech, they would fain reject as 'Americanisms.' It is the old error, which the church, the state, the school ever commit, choosing darkness rather than light, holding fast to the old and to tradition." 33 This is the spirit of the Enlightenment speaking in America. It is Locke's trust in sense and experience. It is still Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Thoreau anticipates the psychology of William James and the philosophy of John Dewey: "Talk about learning our letters and being literate! Why, the roots of letters are things. Natural objects and phenomena are the original symbols or types which express our thoughts and feelings. . . ." Further: "They go on publishing . . . 'movable festivals of the Church' and the like from mere habit, but how insignificant are these com31. Ibid., p. 147. 33. I bid., pp. 3 8 9 - 3 9 0 .

32. Ibid., Vol. XII, p. 389.

9°

pared with the annual phenomena of your life, which fall within your experience!" 34 Thoreau would have our speech, learning, and religion our own. By making his Journal utterly his own, he made it part of the large Bible of the world, as Tolstoy and Gandhi felt it was. Thoreau should have seen that the Hebrew Bible belongs to all who read it, regardless of whose ancestors wrote it, as he was ready to adopt the Vedas of the Hindus. He had "no sympathy with the bigotry and ignorance which make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one man's faith or form of faith and another's,—as Christian and heathen." 35 Yet, he not only compared the religion around him unfavorably with some other but said: "There is no infidelity so great as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and founds churches." 3 6 He thought that, while the church might serve as a hospital for sick souls, the possibility of needing it for this did not justify this as the goal. For Thoreau, as for Whitehead, religion was not in being a brother's keeper so much as in keeping in touch with something more than local and social. " I am sure that if I call for a companion in my walk I have relinquished in my design some closeness of communion with Nature. The walk will surely be more commonplace. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature. I do not design so wild and mysterious a walk." 37 Yet what counted after all (again as for Whitehead) was not just the fact of solitariness but what one did with it. Thoreau not only planned to have it but went on to share it, not with a person who might spoil it but with all the company who go with him inaudibly. The question today, instead of being whether to walk alone, is more likely to be whether to go to an art museum and look in silence or go with someone and try to look in a lapse of talk. In listening to music, solitude and society are better fused. In the obligation to keep quiet, each may plunge into his own response and find it deeper for being shared. A concert is a communion. But if communion is good at a concert, why not in a church? Going to a concert has not been felt to be so urgent as going to a church, yet one may take the place of the other. A reason for choos! ' Ibid., iì ," 36. Vol.r I,' p.° 309. 3

id

}

9

39

37 .

3J.

Ibid., o l . I IIV, , p. p.. 262. ibU.,V Vol. 4

9i ing between them may be more freedom to interpret what is heard, or not to. Thoreau wondered whether "the kind of respect paid to the Sabbath as a holy day here in New England, and the fears which haunt those who break it" was any less superstitious than the religion of the ancient Romans. "The New-Englander is a pagan suckled in a creed outworn. Superstition has always reigned. It is absurd to think that these farmers, dressed in their Sunday clothes, proceeding to church, differ essentially in this respect from the Roman peasantry. They have merely changed the names and number of their gods." And: "Men were as good then as they are now, and loved one another as much—or little." 38 Thoreau rejected the idea that evidences of formal "religion" are signs of goodness. He was not impressed by the sound of prayer or the sight of Bible and prayer book. He declared: " A l l genuine goodness is original and as free from cant and tradition as the air. It is heathen in its liberality and independence of tradition. The accepted or established church is in alliance with the graveyards." 39 Thoreau sought to show the churches around him local and limited by setting them against the past and the East. It was not fair to pick lines from the Vedanta by which to belittle the faith of his neighbors when he might have pitted many a passage in the Bible against superstition in India. But his purpose was to play one tradition against another, to cancel out the authority of the past and leave men free to find their own way in their own time. Like Locke, and even Edwards, like Franklin, Jefferson, and Emerson, Thoreau believed that any truth in the Bible was available in India and wherever men used sense and reason; that what matters is not what men read or recite or listen to, but how decent they are. Yet, that is far from all that Thoreau cared about. He was given to worship as much as anyone, over and above morality. He would worship all day out of doors. One Sunday he noted: "I sympathize not to-day with those who go to church in newest clothes and sit quietly in straight-backed pews. I sympathize rather with the boy who . . . borrows a boat and paddle and in common clothes sets out to explore these temporary vernal lakes." 40 38. Ibid., V o l . V , p. 223. 40. Ibid., p. 352.

39. Ibid., V o l . I X , pp. 4 2 4 , 4 2 5 .

9*

4• Perhaps the South Wind • Heaven, for Thoreau, was not worked or waited for so much as found in the present moment. One day, he said he was depressed, "and life not as rich and inviting an enterprise as it should be, when my attention was caught by a snowflake on my coat-sleeve." We pause with his pang, to see him see, as we read: "It was one of those perfect, crystalline, star-shaped ones, six-rayed, like a flat wheel with six spokes, only the spokes were perfect little pine trees in shape, arranged around a central spangle. This little object, which, with many of its fellows, rested unmelting on my coat, so perfect and beautiful, reminded me that Nature had not lost her pristine vigor yet, and why should man lose heart?" The feeling and rhythm here, the tenderness for sudden loveliness—what more can be said except what he goes on to say? "We are rained and snowed on with gems." The passage ends with the idea that such things are products of the world-making "artist's utmost skill." 41 Thoreau remarks later: "I doubt if men do ever simply and naturally glorify God in the ordinary sense, but it is remarkable how sincerely in all ages they glorify nature." 42 But what is the ordinary sense? He seems to mean that it is something less than what men rise to when they try to express their piety toward the source and sustainer of their life. This is Nature, whatever else it is, and "Nature" is an easy word to use, whether men think they are religious or not, whereas the uses of the word "God" are confusing and may be distasteful. Yet, there is no shorter, surer name for the wonder of Nature and our relation to it; for the utmost happiness, gratitude, and dismay. Still, the name of God may not be uttered when the occasion is greatest. "To the highest communication I can make no reply; I lend only a silent ear." 43 It annoys him when religiosity leads people to talk about the "kindness of Heavenly Father. Instead of going bravely about their business, trusting God ever . . . they take His name in vain so often they presume they are better than you." 44 He believes that "divinity subsides on all men, as the snowflakes settle on the fields and ledges and take the form of the various clefts and surfaces on which it lodges." "We must securely love each other as we love God, with no more danger that our love be unrequited or ill-bestowed." "He listens Ibid., Vol. X , pp. 239, 43. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 28$.

41.

240.

42.

44.

Ibid., pp. 3 6 3 - 3 6 4 . Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 338.

93

equally to the prayers of the believer and the unbeliever." " I am startled that God can make me so rich even with m y own cheap stores. It needs but a few wisps of straw in the sun, or some small word dropped, or that has long lain silent in some book. When heaven begins and the dead arise, no trumpet is blown; perhaps the south wind will blow. What if you or I be dead! God is alive still." 45 Thoreau knew happiness. If his pursuit of it was in some respects narrow and monastic, it was sensitive, resourceful, and free. He showed that the pursuit begins with appreciation of values already there in the nature of things. W e may realize in reading him how far we often are from grasping what is at hand. It helps to be healthy, perhaps to have been at Harvard, to have friends like Emerson and Agassiz, to form habits of awareness, and to hold on to some leisure that is not pre-empted by engagements and distractions. Happiness does not call for a blueprint, but for life and liberty. Having these abundantly, Thoreau was in a position to pursue happiness. By the time Lincoln was elected president, however, just before Thoreau died, it was harder even for him to be free. The logic of his antislavery convictions would have enslaved him to causes if he had lived longer or later. The civil disobedience in his putting moral imperatives above institutions would have kept him in jail if he had been a contemporary of Eugene V . Debs. When anyone with a conscience can keep out of jail now, he is not likely to have Thoreau's peace of mind or time for walks. Whether the Civil War was to end slavery or to save the Union, the rights the South thought it was defending, like the democracy of free men with their own farms and shops which Lincoln hoped he was preserving, came to seem illusory, at least to need rethinking, with the spread of industrialism. Thoreau did not want to push a farm or a shop through life. N o w , to most Americans, it is too much of a burden or risk. They prefer security with a big corporation, and want to know the retirement plan before they start out. A car has become a necessity for getting to work and to pleasure. Americans today are not likely to have three generations under one roof, as did Lincoln's independent farmer. They are jealous of time for themselves after their shortened work hours. But, while they want 4$. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. I8J, 228, 31 J, 328.

94 freedom to do as they please when off duty, they do not want to curtail this freedom to spend time guarding it, beyond their stint of military service, as they must even to keep themselves free, if to be free is to include having the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. These rights have to be used to be kept. People must exercise the freedom of religion to have it, speak freely or lose the right to, often assemble peaceably to discuss grievances or find they cannot. If Lincoln could not reconcile slavery with the Declaration of Independence, neither can freedom be squared with indifference. Thoreau's attempt to work out a satisfying life could hardly have worked for the community he avoided. Perhaps society could always afford a few forest saints, especially if they would be good handymen. But the country could not long rely for guidance upon men dreading industrialization, like Jefferson, or detesting it, like Thoreau. Lincoln had to accept it whether he thought it was wicked or not. If the ideal of a good life was to be kept, it would have to be along with the realities of economics, as John Locke saw that property was the basis of freedom and happiness. But the realities of economics now promise, if they can be democratically managed, an abundance which could make it possible for everyone to have something like the leisure of Thoreau, not only on vacations but on weekends, even afternoons and evenings. Whether people make a happy use of their time will be up to them. If they can learn, with or without Thoreau, the secret of Taoism and Zen, they will not miss the sound of trumpets. And perhaps the south wind will blow.

CHAPTER

VII

•

WHITMAN

ON

DEMOCRACY AND

DEATH

l. Oneness With All the World • Lincoln's faith in common humanity was voiced by Walt Whitman when it might have been only a dream, as it is yet to many. Emerson, who had inspired him, gave the most generous praise when Leaves of Grass was first published in 18 j j, despite the amount of sex in it that was not in Emerson. And there was a kinship between Thoreau and Whitman. With all their differences, they were fellow rebels against convention; comrades in elemental democracy. Thoreau could find himself in Whitman's "Song of Myself": . . . I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.1 And no one need be denied the things which most delighted him: That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be, A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.2 Such feeling for the actual and natural puts Whitman with the Taoists of China, and with the Zen masters of China and Japan; though, like Thoreau and Emerson, he was more conscious of being influenced by India, and perhaps not educated enough to be influenced anyway. Suzuki quotes from Whitman's "Song for Occupations," "Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, than they are shed out of you," and comments: "In this let 'you' be replaced by f kokoro' or 'hsin' or 'citta,' and we have here the Buddhist view of the world," which means, "The grandeur, the vastness, the inexhaustibility of nature are in man. . . ." 8 1. W a l t W h i t m a n , "Song of Myself," sect. 24, in Leaves of Grass ( N e w Y o r k : Aventine Press, 1 9 3 1 ) . p. 532. Ibid., sect. 24, p. j j . 3. D . T . Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, T h i r d Series (London: Rider & Co., 1 9 5 3 ) , text f a c i n g Plates X I , X I I , XIII, following p. 143.

95

i>6 The point seems to be that Whitman was too much a man to miss what is deeply human. His joy in Nature, and in the human nature of the city, though not merely American or Western, was too autocthonous to be caught from Rousseau's notion of the noble savage on an unspoiled continent. Yet, Whitman was like Rousseau, while more like Thoreau, in rejecting rcpentance and accepting himself: "I exist as I am, that is enough." 4 This is refreshing after Calvinism, after much brooding and soul-searching. Perhaps it is not what everyone needs to have stressed in America of the midtwentieth century, when many seem indifferent and casual, if not self-centered. It may be, however, that inability to accept oneself is the trouble. Perhaps self-respect, even self-love, must precede real feeling for others. Religion for Whitman was not formal or theological, any more than for his Concord friends. "Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?" 6 This might sound negative out of context, but comes in the course of his identifying himself with humanity, with all posterity. As back in the third section of "Song of Myself," this is his mystical sense that he and all life are one. He lets the grass be the symbol of this realization, which is his salvation: "What is the grass?" 6 "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars." 7 Unlike Thoreau, Whitman can maintain the same joy in and out of town. Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass, "Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn'd up to the clouds, or down a lane or along the beach.8

He feels it is the same to study "the print of animals' feet" or to be "reaching lemonade to a feverish patient." 9 And whereas Thoreau pondered the problem of how best to live, Whitman declared: ". . . there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero." 10 Becoming a hero and finding the way to live may not be the same, but Whitman's catalogues of people 4. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, "Song of Myself," sect. 20, p. 49. 5. Ibid., sect. 10, p. 48. 6. Ibid., sect. 6, p. 33. 7. Ibid., sect. 3 1 , p. 60. 8. Ibid., sect. 33, p. 66. 9• Ibid.

10. Ibid., sect. 48, p. 90.

97

and things, which he would take to himself on an equal basis, express his large rejection of distinctions and his readiness to find the good almost anywhere. Is this democracy or is it mysticism? Has it more to do with a particular way of life or with an attitude that could be cultivated any place at any time? Whitman is akin to the mystics of India, to the sages of China and Japan, as well as to those of Massachusetts. His search for fresh seeing and saying was taken up fifty years later by the free-verse writers of France, and was to help inspire the prose of Gide. The influence of Walt Whitman in his own country has come largely by way of France. He liked to think he was cosmopolitan, speaking to men and women everywhere, though sending his message especially to Americans. He had Emerson's feeling that America, besides being what it was and promised in itself, symbolized what the world should become. And, if this sounds grandiose, there was truth and hope in it. He took to himself all that was and should be. In the large anonymous self of his poetry the mystic and the democrat were one, as were the human and the divine. What the mystic feels to be the pre-established and finished fact, the democrat feels must be worked out. His is a chastening awakening to the discrepancy between the ideal and the real, which is needed for the sake of effort and action. But, to prevent discouragement over the state of things, it can help to have the mystic's assurance that somehow the ideal is already anchored or sponsored by what is. The democracy Whitman had in himself, Lincoln wanted the country to have. This he had to wait and work for and worry over, uncertain how to achieve it. Because Lincoln was not sure of this, he knew it must be assured. He felt it lodged with God, and sounded that conviction in saying: "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

2. Facing Failure and Death • After unqualified acceptance of American life and reliance on Lincoln, Whitman lived to worry about the coming effects of machinery and impersonal organization upon democracy. He feared loss of previous freedom for farmers, artisans, underdogs, and people generally, as individuals. (A young man needs to be a person whether a "hero" or not.) Whitman felt

98 that the mass would have to be provided for if individualism was to survive. "The two are contradictory, but our task is to reconcile them." 1 1 He thought they had been wonderfully reconciled up to the time of Lincoln. "As we have shown the New World including in itself the all-leveling aggregate of democracy, we show it also including the all-varied, all-permitting, all-free theorem of individ12 But he dreaded the spread of materialism: "the uality. . . force-infusion of intellect alone, the depraving influences of riches just as much as poverty, the absence of all high ideals in character — w i t h the long series of tendencies, shapings, which few are strong enough to resist, and which now seem, with steam-engine speed, to be everywhere turning out the generations of humanity like uniform iron castings. . . He continued: ". . . they must either be confronted and met by at least an equally subtle and tremendous force-infusion for purposes of spiritualization, for the pure conscience, for genuine esthetics . . . or else our modern civilization, 13 (As if heeding him, with all its improvements, is in vain. . . Japan is dramatically trying to hold the values of tradition in the face of modernization.) In his maturity, Whitman was far from the indiscriminate yeasayer often assumed. He did not lose his nerve or want to turn the clock back; but to take stock and take heart, to face what was ahead with more awareness of what was behind. "We see that the real interest of this people of ours in the theology, history, poetry, politics, and personal models of the past . . . is not necessarily to mould ourselves or our literature upon them, but to attain fuller, more definite comparisons, warnings, and the insight to ourselves, our own present, and our own far grander, different, future history, religion, social customs. . . ." 14 This was the theme of Emerson, to whom Whitman acknowledged his debt. If he went on to "scarifying" his master, Whitman felt this was "proving that I am not insensible to his deepest lessons." He declared Emerson "unspeakably serviceable and precious as a stage," but deplored his cold intellectuality, much as the elder Henry James did. Stronger stuff was needed than Emerson's books. If they were to shape American 11. Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned and Horace L. Träubel, eds., Democratic Vistas and Other Papers, in The Works of Walt Whitman, New York Universal Library ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 190«), Vol. II, p. 17. 12. Ibid., p. j i . 14. Ibid., p. 88. I 3 . Ibid., p. 87.

99 character, Whitman exclaimed, " . . . what a well-wash'd and grammatical, but bloodless and helpless race we should turn out!" 1 5 Whitman's hope for a country more considerate of individuals, and for individual citizens more devoted to the common good, he would buttress with readiness to face failure and death. It was not only the physical fact of death which had to be reckoned with, but death as defeat and loss. If death in the full sense could be accepted, there was nothing to fear. This is like the Zen emphasis upon transcending concern about death. Master Dogen said: " I f we understand that life and death are themselves nirvana there is no need for avoiding life and death or seeking nirvana." 1 6 When Lincoln was assassinated, Whitman mourned his death in a poem which gathered into personal loss the sense of loss. No longer boasting, no longer confident that all was well, with the good bound to win and the bad to be defeated, he felt the need of resignation and reconciliation which he achieved in "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." 17 Though the Civil War was over, he knew the cost and had a foretaste of the bitter aftermath. He faced death. He had entertained various ideas about death and what might follow. He had been a theist and again a pantheist. In the "Lilac" elegy he accepts Socrates' suggestion that death may be a long sound sleep. After the best, and after the worst, death will bring the comfort of a soothing mother. So the youth from Brooklyn, who would be strong and barbaric, proud of his body, steeped in the senses, hungry for life, yearning over all the men and women in the world, whatever their face or fault, wanting them all and wanting them all to have all that he wanted, finds the worth beyond worth that no one will be denied. Interweaving his love and loss of Lincoln with the bereavement of the land and the cities, the lanes and streets, "With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd women standing," the poet, in haunting rhythm and imagery, works a marvelous transposition. From mourning one man he moves to honoring all the dead; and from sorrowing to celebrating death. This is the utmost consolation: to go from sadness over loss to gladness over release. I bid., p. I J J . 16. Quoted from the "Shoji" chapter of Dogen's Shobogenzo, in Reiho Masunaga, The Soto Approach to Zen (Tokyo: Layman Buddhist Society Press, 1958), pp. 92-93. 1 7 . Whitman, Leaves of Grass, pp. 33J-344. IJ.

IOO

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death. 18

The idea is not that of First Corinthians, where "Death is swallowed up in victory" because "this mortal shall have put on immortality," if this means renewal of personal identity. For Whitman, death is not swallowed up in anything more wonderful than its own full meaning. For him there is nothing later, greater, better, than death. The suffering he saw in the Civil War schooled him, when he went to the battlefields and helped in the hospitals. Trenches filled with dead taught him. I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them . . . • But I saw they were not as I thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not, The living remain'd and suffer'd. . . , 1 9

The comfort here is that of Spinoza and Buddha, not in striving to be something precariously different and individual, seeking satisfactions which at most are momentary, but in becoming one with all that might seem other and alien, with all that reaches beyond thine and mine, which is no less than the indestructible nature of things. This is the sense of the thirty-third chapter of the book of Lao Tzu: "When one dies one is not lost." 2 0 This is the assurance in the sixth chapter of the book of Chuang Tzu, that the place to put something for safekeeping, including the self, is in the universe, since nothing can fall out of the universe. This is to grasp "the reality of things" as more than father or mother or ruler and "greater than heaven." Whitman arrived at this Chinese insight: " T h e universe carries me in my body, toils me through my life, gives me repose with old age, and rests me in death. What makes my life a good makes my death a good also." 2 1 This is close to Stoicism, but not so solemn—more poetic, tender, passionate, without the reduction of happiness to apathy. 18. Ibid.f p. 337* 19. Ibid., p. 343. 20. A r t h u r Waley, The Way And Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and its Place in Chinese Thought (Boston & New Y o r k : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1 9 3 5 ) , p. 184. II. Chuang Tzu, selected translation by Fung Yu-lan Press, 1 3 3 3 ) , chap. 6, p. 1 2 2 .

(Shanghai: The

Commercial

101

The question, "What about death?"—put off by Confucius with "We don't know yet about life, how can we know about death?"— was met by Whitman, by feeling if not by knowing what it could be, what it could mean. Death, whatever else, was deliverance: "Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet." Death, in "Song of Myself," is not so much leave-taking as eternal return. "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love." But in the tremendous threnody of "Lilacs" the idea of return is inverted. The dead are not given back to life; all that makes life worth living is presented to death. "And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting." Here is the emotional effect of promising a return to life, but more powerful, because it fulfills wish with reality. The dead do not come back, but we can count on joining them. This comfort will not fail. It matches the promise of eternal life without raising doubts and paradoxes. Instead of opening another inconclusive chapter, beyond what can be imagined or believed, Whitman takes all that we have and are and brings it to a close. He finds the cosmic tone of the Upanishads, without the threat of karma and rebirth. He keeps the pledge of recovery from separateness through something like the oneness of each with the universe, which appealed to Emerson and the transcendentalists. But in Whitman this is not a doctrine. It is the conviction that the burden of one birth is enough to bring the sure relief of death. His apostrophe to death, though threnody, lamentation, and mourning, becomes the carol he calls it, floating over the fields and cities with joy: "a chant of fullest welcome." This is what life and liberty come to, then, and the pursuit of happiness? This is a declaration that happiness is the end of life in ending it? Does this mean that liberty is in being free of freedom? Then the true wealth sought by Thoreau is the utter poverty of nothingness? Has the mystic taken in the democrat? And is this not well in the end? Wisdom is first in forgetting, then in knowing how to accept the end, even to welcome it. This calls for preparation before the need is there. It is far from meaning that life and liberty should not be had to the full, for the pursuit of happiness, for all it is worth. But all this is vitiated if there is not an adequate attitude toward death. Lacking that, one is too vulnerable. Life seems worthless, liberty and happiness a mockery, if undone by death. From the primitive to the most civilized level, men find it necessary to come to terms

102 with death. It not only takes the individual but distresses those near him, and threatens to demoralize the community unless a way is found to discount it, to reaffirm the value of living in spite of it. Myths and sacrifices and various ceremonies have served this purpose. Belief in an afterlife has been widely relied on. A person today may be able to find comfort in some or much of this. Whitman's threnody is precious because it can serve the ancient need when other words and forms no longer function as they did in the presence of death. Life can be better lived and more enjoyed when it can again be accepted from start to finish as it was by the wise of India, China, and Japan. It was never a purely theoretical understanding alone that helped, but an attitude. Whether the attitude rested on the sense of a final end or an endless beginning over did not matter. Buddhists went beyond Buddha in this, since it seems that he was like Confucius in preferring to think how to live rather than to speculate on what might come after death. The notion of Nirvana developed in Buddhism with refreshing imagery. Just what it meant could not be agreed upon, except that it was the end of suffering. Strictly, it could be expressed only as not this and not that, but better than the best that could be said. Whitman wonderfully puts together the positive and the negative aspects. Death is deliverance, to be greeted, to be grateful for, to be honored above all things. If, after all, he could say this, there would be nothing to fear. The test is in listening to him say that death is veiled, vast, lovely, and delicate, a dark mother, cool and sure, coming unfalteringly. Death does not depend on creeds and churches, nor does Whitman's way of meeting it. Whatever one's religion or refusal, this way is available when other ways fail. It does not cancel the love of life but enhances it. All the good in life is renewed in death as the final gift; while what is bad is "laved in the flood" and soothed away. Only life can die, and death is only what life comes to, with all that it is, all that it means, when summed up and given up. Death makes life dear by making it brief. To have life for a while is the chance of happiness. To leave life is to seal up its joy and sadness in "the fathomless universe," deeper than good and evil, in the great Tao that cannot be named. We try to name it, addressing it in ways that help us face it and

103 nestle against it. Our death is ours (or should be, as Rainer Maria Rilke said) no less than our life, to make of it what we can, as it takes us and what we do. So Whitman spoke of the "sure-enfolding arms of cool-enfolding death." This is not only an idea but an idiom with the very sound of profound and final surcease, like the roll and thud of the sea on the beach. Whatever one does or does not think or believe, here the voice joins all that is voiceless; these words are surds, with the sense of the senseless. Reason is stilled and fulfilled in this ultimate function of making what is most dreaded and avoided most appealing. "Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?" The answer comes compellingly. "Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all." Fear is disarmed and transformed into trust. This is a triumph of kindness. It gives man back to Nature which mothered him, to mother him again. N o less than this is in the "sprig of lilac" given to the "coffin that slowly passes," in "Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul." Lincoln, the poet, the listener, are made one with the far lustre of the universe, the scent and song of the earth, and spring.

3. Prophet of the Self a Creative Outreach • Having made peace with death Whitman could take a new lease on life. He could go back to celebrating his country and its future. " B y Blue O n tario's Shores" enabled him to muse on the war being over, and on democracy's coming victory but continuing difficulty. He saw " A Nation announcing itself." He, as well as Emerson, loved his land not only for what it was but as the symbol of human destiny: " O America because you build for mankind I build for you." 22 Also, like Emerson, in "Passage to India" Whitman could sing the great achievements and promise of applied science: the Suez Canal, the transatlantic cable, the spreading railroad. He sensed that this progress was not merely material but opened possibilities for the whole life and mind, giving passage " T o realms of budding bibles." In his exaltation he invoked the name of God. Ah more than any priest O soul we too believe in God, But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. 28 22. W h i t m a n , Leaves 23. Ibid.,

of Grass, " B y Blue O n t a r i o ' s S h o r e , " p . 3 5 3 .

"Passage t o I n d i a , " p p . 4 2 2 , 4 2 3 .

104 He did not attempt to analyze the mystery, but his joyous celebration of it shows that for Whitman, as for Emerson, God was not only the wonder of the world, as known and loved in America, but all ideal possibilities, unfolding at home and reaching out like the dream of Columbus for a passage to India and "to more than India!" Whitman sent his voyaging soul to sound "below the Sanscrit and the Vedas." Nor could he patiently wait for the passage to more than India. "Passage, immediate passage! . . . Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!" 24 Though Whitman may have retained the idea of God as creator and providence, his expression usually suggests a naturalistic view. His heart went out to men and women as he knew them around him. He saw them as belonging to the past and future of the wide world. He yearned for them all to have all that was worth having. He took them into his self-song, and his self opened to include both past and posterity. He could not foresee how his cosmic consciousness would be understood in terms of the social-growing nature of the self, through the research of Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead. They would show the self coming to be itself and becoming more a self through companionship and conversation with other selves, and through creative communion with the wide world. James would delight in the "hoary loafer" as "a contemporary prophet" who "felt the human crowd as rapturously as Wordsworth felt the mountains," on the Brooklyn ferry or "on his omnibus-top, full of the inner joy with which the spectacle inspires him." 2 5 And when death puts an end, it is welcome, because first comes man, with his reach before and after. Death is only what life is, summed and sealed. That is the secret. Effort, rest, fun and suffering, remembering and forgetting, all go in. So go on. That is the spirit of Whitman. Sail forth—steer f o r the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou w i t h me, For w e are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, A n d w e will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 24. Ibid., p. 425. 25. William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1908), pp. 248-252.

IOJ

O O O O

my brave soul! farther farther sail! daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? farther, farther, farther sail! 26

z6. W h i t m a n , Leaves of Grass, "Passage to I n d i a , " p. 426.

CHAPTER Vili

•

THE

ELDER

JAMES

AND

HENRY EQUALITY

I. The Twice-Born • The elder Henry James was a contemporary of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and as refreshingly American, democratic, and paradoxical as any of them. Known mostly for his famous sons, the novelist and the philosopher, the father is coming to be appreciated in his own right. He was a theologian, whereas the three contemporaries we think of with him had nothing to do with theology except to reject it. But he was no less through with churches than they, and Thoreau was not harder on the God of his neighbors than he. The senior James, like his thoughtful contemporaries, did keep the name of God for what he found most real and important. He was closer to the social emphasis of Emerson and Whitman than to the Nature-worship of Thoreau, in finding God in society, in its most universally human and democratic aspect. Whitman was the poet of democracy and death; James the praiser of society and the sloughing off of self. The self Whitman sang, though he called it his own, opened to include everyone unselfishly, while the celebration of death offset any remaining trace of egoism. James's hatred of the self came from his inherited Calvinism, but also from his deep democracy—his not wanting anything, any more than Whitman did, that another could not have on the same terms. James's sense of sin, growing on him until he hated having a self, was contrary to Thoreau's dismissal of repentance and Whitman's acceptance of himself, yet pressed in the direction of similar emancipation from self-concern. James was fascinated and appalled by what struck him as the absence of conscience in Emerson. Drawn to him on the platform, charmed by his presence, James was disappointed in his conversation. This is ironical in view of the fact that for Emerson conversation was the test of life, was what it all came to if it came to anything. Yet in talking with him, James was looking for something that did not come out. If what was missing was conscience, James might have been expected not to mind, since worry about whether one's own conduct was right or wrong was the very self10 6

io7 centeredness which James wanted to rise above. Indeed, the lack of conscience in Emerson seemed to James divine, though chilling to friendship. The trouble was in feeling that Emerson had never been tempted to break any of the commandments, hence never had known "the evil that attaches to the natural selfhood in man." 1 One could as well be intimate with "a handful of diamonds." The more James thought of it the more impatient and irate he became: "It turned out that any average old dame in a horse-car would have satisfied my intellectual rapacity just as well as Emerson." 2 What James missed, however, was a quality of the heart, something spiritual rather than intellectual. Emerson's lack of sin, depriving him of a private personality or self, divine as it might seem, disappointed James because it prevented what counted for him: the experience of painfully overcoming the self. A man could not be saved if already safe; could not arrive at God if already divine. Emerson gave James the impression of Christ and God, and electrified him "by sayings full of divine inspiration." Yet, James said, "you found him absolutely destitute of reflective power." 3 His holiness was that of innocence. So he could not help James with becoming innocent, which for him depended upon learning "to denude" himself of "personality or self-consciousness." 4 Here is the nub of his philosopher-son's treatment of the distinction "between the two ways of looking at life which are characteristic respectively of . . . the healthy-minded, who need to be born only once, and of the sick souls, who must be twice-born in order to be happy." William James speaks of Emerson as "an admirable example of the former" and quotes from Emerson's essay on "Spiritual Laws" what might be Emerson's reply to the elder James: "Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin. . . . These never presented a practical difficulty to any man—never darkened across any man's road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul's mumps, and measles, and whooping-coughs." 6 But William James, instead of 1. William James, ed., The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James (Boston: James R . Osgood & Co.,

I 8 8 J ) , p.

296.

2. Ibid., p. 297. 3. Ibid., p. 300. 4. Ibid., p. 302. j . William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human (New Y o r k : Longmans, Green & Co., 1923), Lecture VIII, pp. 166, 167.

Nature

io8 thinking of Emerson as a rare case, regards the "healthy-minded" type as long standing and fairly numerous. H e thinks of it as simply the more optimistic kind of person, in contrast to the pessimistic, w h o can arrive at feeling good about life only after a struggle. H e recognizes that either attitude can reach a pathological extreme; yet, like his father, he favors the satisfaction that has to be striven for. In Zen there was the same question: whether the inquiring, disciplining, strenuous approach to understanding was better than just understanding. The idea was that the latter, which seemed to be the case with Emerson, occurred only with an isolated genius, whereas the other could be widely relied upon to bring about the intensity of awareness called for. Zen demands intensity, because it is all that distinguishes the wonder of existence f r o m mere existence. This is all, yet it is enough, and hard enough for most people to learn. Recognition of the difficulty led to the development of the whole apparatus of Buddhist ideas and terms. Y e t , their value was impugned while used b y the Zen master, because reliance upon them would become mechanical and, at most, was instrumental. H e could say, as Pao-neng Jen-yang did, that he was satisfied if he had "enough of salt, sauce, porridge, and rice with which to f e e d " the pilgrims w h o came to his m o n a s t e r y — " b u t as to the truth of Buddhism there is not even a shadow of it to dream o f . " 6

2. From Self to Social Self • Sometimes the sheer joy of living found in Zen is thought to forget evil, until it is remembered that Zen, like Buddhism in general, is rooted in the effort to overcome suffering. T h e n it seems thankless to hold against Zen its very success in delivering men f r o m pain, and doing it in a w a y that is made as far as possible available to all men. In Zen is the democratic conviction of the elder James that joy is in the escape f r o m separateness and all sense of otherness. H e f o u n d confirmation of this in the most mundane situation. H e tells of being in a horse car, admiring the "mutual forbearance on the part of its habitués; so much spotless acquiescence under the rudest personal jostling and inconvenience; such a cheerful 6. D . T . Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Inc., 1 9 5 1 ) , pp. 12J-126.

Second Series (Boston: The Beacon Press,

109 renunciation of one's strict right; . . . in short, and as a general thing, such a heavenly self-shrinkage in order that 'the neighbor,' handsome or unhandsome, wholesome or unwholesome, may sit or stand at ease. . . ." 7 This illustrates the elder James's belief that God is in man, not as an individual self, but when the self is transcended in society. He and "Whitman love society and cities the way Thoreau and the early Taoist love the wilds. Thoreau, much taken with James, wrote Emerson: " H e has naturalized and humanized New York for me." 8 But it struck Thoreau that James could not deal clearly with "questions of the day" because he uttered "quasi philanthropic dogmas in a metaphysic dress." 9 James held something like Aristotle's idea that man can become fully human only in the political and social life of the state. The difference is that the ideal society for James, as for Thoreau and Emerson, would be one in which law and government were no longer necessary; and that, whereas for Aristotle God is decidedly not a creator or even concerned with the world and man but simply has the attraction of an ideal, God for James is altogether creative, and ceaselessly at work within man, to help him get out of the pride and illusion of self into the divine community. James failed to see what his son William would see—that the problem is not to get rid of self but to widen it into a more social self. There need not be the chasm between the individual and the social or the good that the elder James assumed from his Puritan background, with its original-sin doctrine, condemning the self as hopelessly corrupt, hence in need of miraculous help, which could come only from outside. In Zen, of course, the true self is the Buddha-nature, which is no less local than universal. On a visit to England, James was confirmed by the Sandemanian sect in his own feeling that the orthodox churches mistakenly magnified selfhood by requiring concern for the state of one's soul. To get rid of self-esteem, so far as possible, was important to James, not only for theological reasons, but because he felt ashamed of the 7. Society the Redeemed Form of Man, pp. 89-90, quoted by Frederic Harold Young in The Philosophy of Henry James, Sr., (New York: Bookman Associates, Inc., 1 9 5 1 ) , p. 274. 8. Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1936), Vol. I, p. 48. 9. Ibid., p. 149.

no

wealth and privilege he had enjoyed. The Sandemanian experience, followed by reading Swedenborg, led him to write: It is a monstrous affront to the divine justice or righteousness that I should be guaranteed, by what calls itself society, a life-long career of luxury and self-indulgence, while so many other men and women, my superiors, go all their days miserably fed, miserably lodged, miserably clothed, and die at last in the same ignorance and imbecility, though not, alas! in the same innocence, that cradled their infancy. 10

The passage continues: I perceived . . . that, if it were not for the hand of God's providence visiting with constant humiliation and blight every secret aspiration of my pride and vanity, I should be more than any other man reconciled to the existing most atrocious state of things.

This utterly lovable man came to feel that the outward want of his fellows was in truth but the visible sign and fruit of my own truer want, my own more inward destitution with respect to God. . . . I could never succeed in persuading myself that God Almighty cared a jot for me in my personal capacity,—that is, as I stood morally individualized from, or consciously antagonized with, my kind; and yet this was the identical spiritual obligation imposed upon me by the church. 11

His Presbyterian "spiritual advisers" told him "it would not do" for him to "abandon myself to the simple joy of the truth as it was in Christ, without taking any thought for the Church." 12 After "self-hood" had been destroyed in him with the help of the Sandemanians, the reading of Swedenborg gave James the vision of what should replace concern for one's own soul, namely, devotion to "divine-natural humanity." Thanks especially to his friend Garth Wilkinson's "liberal interpretation," James was delivered from more than self-concern, as Herbert Schneider sees it. James was led away from "the whole tendency to interpret human nature biologically, in terms of individual organisms" by "the doctrine that man's nature or substance is a collective spiritual being." 13 10. Henrjr James, The Secret of Swedenborg, quoted by William James, ed., in The Literary Remains, p. 90. 11. Ibid., p. 91. it. Ibid. 13. Herbert W. Schneider, A History of American Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946, 1947), p. 306.

Ill

Reading Charles Fourier, the French social philosopher, also helped him to emphasize society. Schneider explains the seeming paradox of the repudiation of personality by a man who was so very much a person, by James's belief "that his characteristic spontaneity was not an individual trait, but a spiritual grace in which all men share." 14 That is to say that he was anticipating his son William's treatment of the self as largely social, and the social psychology to follow, in Dewey and Mead. William James, commenting on his father's thought, notes that, when he spoke of the individual man as nothing, he meant that the individual cannot be self-sufficient, for he "owes all he is and has to the race nature he inherits, and to the society into which he is born." W. J . also says of his father in this connection: "he scorned to admit . . . that the great and loving Creator, who . . . has brought us as far as this, should not bring us through, and out, into the most triumphant harmony." 16 3. Divine-Natural Humanity • As William James interprets his father's idea of God as creator, it is compatible with acceptance of evolution; as are also the Eastern ideas of Brahman, Tao, Great Void or Emptiness, or whatever the all-enfolding source or whole of everything is called. And the impersonal rather than personal character of the ultimate in the East seems congenial to the thought of H. J., Sr. Creation, as he conceived it, did not take place once for all, but is a process going on and on. Looked at broadly, the stage of Nature, which is "the movement of formation, the first quickening of the void unto itself," is followed by Society, which "is the movement of redemption, or the finished spiritual work of God." Both Nature and Society are the Creator himself, for "he is the sole positive substance in the universe, all else being nothingness." The son explains that the father did not regard his system as pantheistic, because to him pantheism excluded the subsequent recoil and reaction to mere outward happening. Humanity, for the senior James, was divine, and so was not swallowed up in Nature but took it in, with its culmination in Society. "This is why I said the system could hospitably house anything that naturalistic evolu14. Jbid., pp. 301-302. IJ. William James, ed., The Literary Remains, p. IJ.

112

tionism might ever have to say about man; for, according to both doctrines, man's morality and religion, his consciousness of self and his moral conscience, are natural products like everything else we see." 16 According to H . J., Sr., after the social stage is reached, men must rise from the level of "self-consciousness or morality" to that of "conscience or religion." The difference here is between a person's feeling that he has his own life in himself and realizing that he is dependent or created. The elder James thought self-consciousness and its self-confidence had to be severely wounded before this awakening could take place. Although he felt joyfully delivered from Calvinism, it still weighed on him in his hatred of self and selfconsciousness; also in his sense that it is better to struggle with pessimism than to begin with optimism. Being religious, for him, seemed to depend upon being pessimistic to begin with. A n d W . J., in his Varieties of Religious Experience, was to think of the essence of religion as the finding of a solution for uneasiness. He would make plain, as his father implied, that "Divine-Natural Humanity," the father's phrase for the kingdom of heaven, would be "made of no other stuff than the actual stuff of human nature." 1 7 The father not only identified mankind with God, but thought of a wonderful give-and-take between man and God in one process, God giving invisible being to man and man giving visible existence to God. He would say that man's feeling of personal worth, when legitimate, is owing to God's entering into him. God's creation is not outwardly wrought, but inwardly, through man. Self-consciousness is a stage of creation, which must be hated to be abandoned. God, for H . J., Sr., is so much in humanity that it is impossible to think of God as sufficient unto himself. He fiercely rejected such an idea of deity. 18 He anticipated Berdyaev and Buber in thinking of God as not a bit aloof, but struggling and suffering in man. This rules out the notion of creation as a pure act of will. H . J., Sr. said: I will not acknowledge a God so void of human worth, so every way level to the character of a mere ostentatious showman or conjuror. . . . I am constrained by every inspiration of true manhood to demand for my 16, Ibid., pp. 19, 20.

1 7 . Ibid., p. 16.

18. Ibid., p. 4 1 .

"3 worship a perfectly human deity; that is to say, a deity who is so intent upon rescuing every creature he has made, from the everlasting death and damnation he bears about in himself as finitely constituted, as not to shrink if need be from humbling himself to every patient form of ignominy, and feeding contentedly year in and year out, century after century, and millennium after millennium, upon the literal breath of our self-righteous contempt.19

This is strikingly close to the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism—the ideal of a being so divine that he gives up Nirvana to help others attain it, or finds it in that very effort. Except for the terminology, H. J., Sr.'s conviction is close to the Zen development of Mahayana into the idea not only that everyone should be saved but that, as in the other and older branch of Buddhism, the Theravada, each man must save himself—by coming to realize that he is one with the universal and eternal Buddha, "the source of all things in the universe." This is the way Nyogen Senzaki put it, with the comment, "there is no more and there is no less." 20 Senzaki was a Zen Buddhist monk who lived many years in California, until his death in 1959. He believed Zen had a future in America, though probably by another name; and is reported to have recognized the affinity between Zen and William James, but apparently did not take account of his father. Senzaki's reference to "the source of all things" as "the eternal Buddha that was never born and will never die" 21 may either seem or be at variance with the Zen rejection of supernaturalism in reliance upon the teaching and example of the historical Buddha, who simply had the nature of every man. Zen often uses expressions from supernatural Buddhism to emphasize the potentiality of human nature; but Zen people are not always consistent about identifying Buddha-nature with nothing more than human nature. This is not only because they are not always clear in their own minds. It is also because, while wanting to keep their feet on the ground, they want to give full weight to an awakening that is transforming. 19. Henry The Literary 20. R u t h Philosophical a 1. Ibid.

James, Substance and Shadow, pp. 72, 73, quoted in William James, ed., Remains, pp. 40—41. S. McCandless and Nyogen Senzaki, Buddhism and Zen (New Y o r k : Library, Inc., 1953), p. 32.

1X4 4. Beyond Personal Morality • The elder Henry James's tenderness, fairness, and passionate concern for the rights of others—always with belief in their great possibilities, even when this made him seem gullible—were not lessened in his son's pluralism. The father had, along with his metaphysical monism, a practical pluralism, as a good father or all-fathering principle must have. He gave a quarter-century's devotion to the education of his children, with the aim of encouraging their individualities. He delighted in their vociferous differences, which made conversation the life of the James house; a life that was outgoing from the home to the whole human family. Father and philosophical son would not have "a Sunday but a week-day divinity, a working God." 22 The great discrepancy between them was in the father's scorn of moralism and the son's dedication to it. This might seem to ally the father more with Zen. As his hatred of self is similar to Zen's repudiation of an egoentity, so his objection to moralism is like the Zen idea of living without purpose. But, it is impossible for such an inherently striving being as man to live without purpose, while he cannot live without a self any more than without a skin. Zen simply exaggerates the importance of relaxing relatively and appreciating all that a moment holds, instead of being too tense about the unattained; and is right that the self can reach beyond any littleness when not too wrapped up in itself. For the elder James, and for Zen, moral effort is too self-centered, too consciously bound to self-improvement to permit the self-forgetting of wisdom. William James, however, was suspicious of a view so lofty as to lose the sharpness of moral issues. For him, evil was altogether real, and the fight against it had to be in earnest. He thought it took the heart out of the struggle to believe it was somehow won beforehand; that, in a higher insight, there was no split between good and evil because some absolute was all. Yet, his father's theoretical monism did not bring indifference to social, economic, and political matters. He could look down on logic, along with ethics, as long as he could be devoted to democracy. In his mind, it should be furthered in every sphere, and anything undemocratic should be opposed. His Fourth of July oration 22. William James, ed., The Literary

Remains, p. 39.

r i

5

at Newport, Rhode Island, soon after the beginning of the Civil War, puts in fresh phrase Emerson's feeling that Americans can love their country, not only because it is a good place to live, and is theirs, but "because it is the country of all mankind . . . and bares her hospitable breast to whatsoever wears the human form." The great thing about this country, to H. J., Sr., is that it is where honor "is due to man alone" and indifference "is due to persons." 28 N o less than Jefferson, James believes that in this respect his homeland has made a great advance over England and Europe, where it hurt him to see human significance sacrificed to maintain "the personal." A n indication of the headway made by democracy in this country is that the very distinction stressed by H. J., Sr., between the human and the personal, has almost disappeared. The urgent need he and the Zen men felt to suppress the self or person, in the pejorative sense of one standing apart in importance, has been reversed into the demand that everyone have the chance to develop a worth-while self or personality, in a life individually enjoyable and socially valuable. This revised conception of what H. J., Sr., considered to be human and sharable, in contrast to the selfish and separate which he called personal, had to wait for the scientific and technological means of making a fully human life generally available. The industrialism which Jefferson feared as a threat to democracy has made it possible on a larger scale than he could have imagined, though not without problems of corresponding magnitude. There need be nothing invidious about individuality when everyone can have it. When everyone may develop a self and be treated as a person (never as a means only, as Kant put it) the universal Buddha-nature will be realized, not by a discipline of selfforgetting, in fear of self-deception, and the fate of being sealed up in insignificance—but by joyful participation in the fullness of life. The wonder is that the men of Zen could arrive where they did by their negative approach of not thinking, not trying, and not arguing, and that they could have the influence they had, which is now reaching us. (Soto Zen has been more positive than Rinzai.) In a way, it was easier, in a simple agricultural economy, to learn to 23. Henry James, The Social Significance of Our Institutions, quoted by F. Matthiessen, in The James Family (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1948), p. 61.

O.

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be quiet and meditative, while doing what needed to be done. In the main, there could be little doubt or disagreement about what needed doing. There was less need of saying anything when everything there was could be seen, and must have felt much the same to everyone who would pause to feel it. If the elder Henry James shared the ancient spirit of Zen, he might seem far from it in his love of prolonged conversation among contrasting personalities. And, while he had the Zen gift for pungent expression, he had to explain and expatiate his meaning endlessly. The irony is that, in the end, it is no clearer than if he had been content to be pithy. If now we can make out what he meant, it is largely thanks to his philosopher-son. Also, if Zen is to help us, it will be through finding it in our own thinkers who speak to us. If the gist of it is to be free and unafraid, with a joy that Americans can have, its silence must be the hush of the voice of our people when enough has been said. But there is always more to say, especially after a pause. The brief conversations and stories of Zen went on and on, as well as its silence, and there has been a long hiatus since their great masters spoke. Perhaps their discipline of withdrawal even from thought is needed afresh in the clamor of solicitation we must ignore if we are to have any peace. Perhaps the very variety of occupations now, and necessary complexity of organization, make it more imperative to reaffirm common humanity. There is the same need to feel the importance of serving the family and society. Zen will have to take account of the new demand that everyone be enabled to have some sense of dignity and status, to be someone in particular, in addition to being human. This is demanded because the advance of science has made it possible. Realization of this unprecedented possibility is at the bottom of the unrest in the Orient and everywhere. N o talk and no silence will reconcile people to poverty and exploitation which they discover to be anachronistic. Zen itself, if true to its old advocacy of doing what needs to be done and finding it good, will have to favor reform. This does not mean that the so-called American standard of living could or should be the goal everywhere as soon as possible. Americans have plenty of reason to be critical of their own standard. Zen can help them see what they lack spiritually, as Zen may learn from them the spiritual dimension of technology. Americans should be proud of their much-decried progress for freeing them to feel increas-

Il

7

ingly that, just as everyone should have a decent income so as to have adequate food, shelter, and clothing, so everyone should have the educational opportunity to develop fully. The assumption is that, when effectively as well as formally free, everyone would grow a self significantly his own. Individualism, in this version, would seem to mean something like what the elder Henry James meant by overcoming individualism. And to him the moral level was to be superseded because it belonged with selfishness. Now the moral takes on what, for him, was the spiritual or religious value of the social; and this need not call for suppression of the self, now that William James and others have shown how social the self can become without ceasing to be itself. The elder James did not have the psychology or terminology to make clear what now is obvious: that in glorifying the social he did not wish to destroy anything spontaneous and appealing in what he honored as human. What he liked and approved in a man he called human; what he abhorred he called self. William James also liked what his father liked in a human being, but had no objection to referring to it as self or individual. Although he appreciated the social, he was more inclined to find fault there for bearing down on the individual—but what he resented he called institutional rather than social. Like his father, he cherished spontaneous difference. And William's brother Henry had the same spirit in writing novels which emphasized the relations of persons to persons, aside from what his father had no use for in people— their being "propertied or qualified"—though the Henry James characters were likely to be that. If the father was engrossed in theology, he showed at home that, for him, the religious was the human, and that the human was the tender, humorous, thoughtful sharing of the zest of living. If this was not moral, still it formed character and conduct at their best. It was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was what America was for, and what he hoped it would stand for to the world. And if he did not succeed in getting his books read, something of his message went into his sons' books which were read. The sons lived up to his expectation that they would "convert." He was not blind to the danger that what he denounced as "self" would rear its head in a new ugliness of greed and luxury. But his attack on slavery can still be withering against any form of

118 discrimination. He declared in his Fourth of July oration at Newport in 1861: "Our very Constitution binds us, that is to say, the very breath of our political nostrils binds us, to disown all distinctions among men. . . . " 2 4 Once more, it seems to come to the same thing in practice, whether men are treated equally out of respect for their individual differences or because of their common humanity. For the elder Henry James, however, the moral emphasis on the individual was vastly inferior to the religious emphasis on society as a whole (which is akin to the Zen teaching that all men share the Buddhanature). That is why he objected to Emerson's doctrine of selfreliance. Herbert Schneider has interpreted this objection as a reassertion of Calvinism and Platonic idealism. N o individual could count against the total sovereignty of God in Calvinism; no individual could have reality in Platonism except by participating in the universal. So, for H. J., Sr., "our true life" is not from "our natural progenitors" and is not in "natural gifts of any sort . . . , much less in any purely personal accomplishments . . . but flowing exclusively from the living acknowledgment of the Divine name, which means the hearty practical recognition of human fellowship." This fellowship is, ideally, so deep that, for James, revelation "ascribes to the whole human race the unity of a man before God, having but one body and one spirit, . . . this man being evidently social, as implying such a unity of all the members with each individual member and of each with all as will finally . . . do away with all that arbitrary and enforced inequality among men which is the pregnant source of our existing vice and crime." 25 Doing away with inequality, and all consequent wrong, depends then upon realization of unity. This belief is what counts for James, as it does for Zen. It means that doing away with evil is not a doing so much as a seeing, and the being it reveals. Without this seeing, no doing will do any good. With this seeing, the doing will be as good as done. That is why James puts religion before morality.

24. Ibid., p. 66. 2 j . Henry James, The Social Significance of Our Institutions, A History of American Philosophy, pp. 3 1 1 - 3 1 2 .

quoted by Schneider, in

CHAPTER

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•

WILLIAM

JAMES

IN

OF

QUEST

THE

SELF

1. Symbolic Activity Makes the Self • If William James joined his father in putting religion first, he could not disparage morality as his father did. So the son rejected monism in the religious sphere in order to have pluralism in the moral realm. He felt that if the world were all one in the ultimate truth of religion, then the evils to be fought on the moral level would be only windmills, however much they looked like wicked giants. W . J. said that, in the "exercise of our moral energy," we think of evils "as endowed with reality, and as being absolutely alien, but, we hope, subjugable powers." This he called the "healthy-minded" view, and he recognized that it took energy to maintain it. When he was tired and depressed, as he often was, he could feel the attraction of his father's position, though even then he spoke slightingly of it as the view of failure and fear. The comfort in it was tainted by the Calvinistic depreciation of human effort, the idea of total depravity, and need of miraculous salvation. W . J. was able to say that, in this attitude, "such a sense of the vanity of our voluntary career comes over us" that well-doing becomes "as the hollowest substitute for that wellbeing" which is "the object of the religious demand,—a demand so penetrating and unassuageable that no consciousness of such occasional and outward well-doing as befalls the human lot can ever give it satisfaction." But W . J. saw that, if this is the religious demand, to satisfy it "is to deny the demands of the moralist. The latter wishes to feel the empirical goods and evils, on the recognition of which his activity proceeds, to be real goods and evils, with their distinction absolutely preserved." 1 W i t h the conflict on his hands between his moral pluralism and his own leaning toward the reassuring spirit, if not the letter, of the paternal religious monism, William James appealed to "the umpire of practice," and predicted: " I t will be a hot fight indeed if the friends of philosophic i . William James, ed., The Literary Remains James R . Osgood & Co., I88J), pp. 1 1 6 - 1 1 8 .

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moralism should bring to the service of their ideal, so different from that of my father, a spirit even remotely resembling the lifelong devotion of his faithful heart." 2 The fight was most intense within the son, who did have the father's devotion to truth. On the one hand, W . J. responded to the "matchless eloquence with which Emerson proclaimed the sovereignty of the living individual." On the other, he recoiled from what he called "Whitman's "indiscriminate hurrahing for the universe," his allowing himself only expansive sentiments, and refusing to see evil in anyone. Although W. J. gave approval to the "healthy-minded" type in calling it healthy, he did not condemn the "sick soul" for being sick, but remained sympathetic in that direction. He regarded Emerson as a seer because he "could perceive the full squalor of the individual fact" and "also see the transfiguration." 3 But if the individual had sovereignty, would he need transfiguration? The difficulty here may be simply linguistic. The fact is that W . J. had his father's freshness and gusto; his warm sense of the worth of every human being, and the right of each to come into his own. But, to the father, this did not mean that each should be justified in himself separately, but in outgrowing the self. The son thought the self could be most fully itself in growing out to a free fellowship with other selves. And while the son also liked to think that the surrounding universe could be relied upon, he did not see how individuality could survive if the father's monism were final. Then the charm of conversation would be lost. The spontaneous give-and-take of differences would be forfeited. If each were to speak to each with the voice of all, nothing would need saying or hearing. The sparkle of the James table would be impossible. So the father's philosophy could not be accepted without reservation. Indeed, he himself held it ambiguously, as not only losing but perfecting individual identity. The difference between father and son is, first, that the son did not come to philosophy by way of theology. He tried being an artist and then a naturalist. He left picking up specimens of wild life for medicine, then went in for physiology, moved on to psychology, and finally philosophy; always fusing his later interests with the 2. Ibid., p. 119. j . William James, Memories and Studies » 9 " ) . P- 3*-

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earlier, and pressing on to the upshot of what he studied. While he rejected the monism of his father's theology, he equally refused the monism of materialism. The idea that man was just an automaton, doing what he was wound up to do, was to W . J. an impertinence. He arrived at the conviction that man is a conscious intelligence fighting for real ends. This functioning of consciousness is the important thing about it. And this was so significant to him that he was tempted to consider it as constituting a break in evolution. But he resisted that temptation in the effort to fit man into a naturalistic account, while continuing to be sympathetic with belief in the soul, though he preferred to speak in terms of the self, as less loaded with preconceptions. In the pioneering chapter in the Principles of Psychology 4 on "The Consciousness of Self," he began to get away from thinking of the mind or self as a conscious something, dualistically set over against a world of quite different things, and came to think of it as a way of behaving, on several levels. First, he considered the material self not only as the body one walks with but as the clothes one wears, the physical presence of the family and home one clings to; also the things made by one's own hand, or otherwise made one's own. There is not a clear line between this and a man's social self, which consists in "the recognition which he gets from his mates." Finally, we are brought to the spiritual self, where we seem about to learn at last what the self most truly is, beyond being the body with its warm belongings, inanimate and animate; and more than images which others have. Here James resolutely looked within. He made as exciting an effort to see and say what he found in introspection as Thoreau in describing a snowflake or Whitman in telling of Broadway. The very quick of human life which James sought he called spiritual. He might be expected to rejoice if he could identify it as spirit or soul. But, if his psychology was to be empirical and respectably scientific, he must stick to what he could observe. Whatever escaped him, whatever had to be added for comfort in other moods, he would now confine himself to what he could vouch for as a man of science. What he found was amazing. He succeeded in seeing more clearly than anyone before him what can be seen of the self 4. C f . William James, The Principles 1890, 1918, 1 9 3 1 ) , Vols. I, II.

of Psychology

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in a close look, as Galileo first saw the mountains on the moon. But mountains hold still. James said that what he saw was as evanescent as a snowflake "caught in the warm hand," or the dark when a light is turned on "to see how the darkness looks." The closest look that James could get at the self revealed not a spectator and not a disembodied entity, but a feeling of bodily processes. He could say that, whatever else the "self of all the other selves" might be, it was "active." It was an affair of going out to meet the world. It was something felt rather than purely intellectual, a coming to grips in "a constant play of furtherances and hindrances." James disclosed: "Whenever my introspective glance succeeds in turning round quickly enough to catch one of these manifestations of spontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bodily process, for the most part taking place within the head." Further: "In consenting and negating, and in making a mental effort," he found that the "opening and closing of the glottis play a great part. . . ." He added that the "glottis is like a sensitive valve, intercepting my breath instantaneously at every mental hesitation or felt aversion to the objects of my thought, and as quickly opening, to let the air pass through my throat and nose, the moment the repugnance is overcome. . . ." The conclusion is clear: "Our entire feeling of spiritual activity . . . the nuclear part of the §elf, intermediary between ideas and overt acts, would be a collection of activities physiologically in no essential way different from the overt acts themselves." 8 Although James was to waver about his finding that the self is at bottom a process or set of processes, in a fight for ends, rather than a pure knower or onlooker, he had really got away from the notion of consciousness as an entity or substance, and established the mind or self as a kind of behavior or functioning. A t first this may seem less acceptable for what he had called the social self than for the material self—the body and its activities. If the social self is the image carried by the people one knows, it would seem to be an image of physical size and shape. But the image is also of gait and gesture, of tones of voice, trick of smile, and of characteristic acts. If this is not what we mean, it is hard to say what we mean when we speak of a person's spirit or individuality. When, in addition to j . Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 297, 299-302.

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considering the self as material and social, we go on to what James calls the spiritual self, we have his testimony that this most intimate self can be observed only as movements in the head and throat. But this finding could not satisfy James's successors. It may discredit the idea of consciousness as an entity, but it does not suggest much of what human personality positively is. A n d James himself, in his own feeling, continued to cherish the sense of something more soulful, even though it must be inaccessible to psychology or philosophy. It is no wonder that he defended religious experience as evidence of more than research could establish, when his own investigation left such a discrepancy between all that "a native of the James f a m i l y " had experienced the self to be, and movements in the head or alterations in breathing. He knew all along, as he mentioned even in the chapter on the "Self," that the heart of the matter was "our ability to argue and discriminate." He linked this ability with "our moral sensibility and conscience" and "our indomitable will." If all he could find, when he tried to focus on this, were adjustments of muscle and breath, this might be very important, but obviously it was not all there is to the self. Fortunately his successors (Mead, Dewey, Morris) have been able to develop what James saw, but was unable to work out, when he spoke of "our ability to argue and discriminate." They have shown that the bodily processes which he found going on in connection with the self are humanly conscious self- activities only in their symbolic character: when movements in the throat and fluctuations in breathing are used to make vocal gestures, to say something, mean something, make sense. The biological organism rises to the level of a self through the use of symbols. Symbols are gestures, incipient movements by which the organic form comes to communicate with other forms, and whereby it responds to its own movements as others do, as George H . Mead was to say. Thus, the self or consciousness is more than bodily movements which observably occur. It is in their significant use, their use as symbols. This use makes human society and the human individual possible. When James's too great emphasis upon what observably takes place inside the individual organism is corrected by recognition of its symbolic and social outreach, then his concern for the self and his father's for society are justified and reconciled. Then Zen realization of the oneness of the self with the common or

124 Buddha-nature of other men need not require the disappearance of individual differences. Suzuki, despite his extensive early (and later) sojourning in the United States, has missed or dismissed the application to Zen of the work of James and his successors. In the 1957 edition of Studies in the Lanhavatara Sutra,* it is recognized that nonverbal gestures or bodily movements may be used for communication. But the capacity to confer without spoken words is illegitimately taken to relate the raised finger or the "unintelligible cry" of a Zen master, "to demonstrate the profoundest experience," with the way bees and ants co-operate without speech. In this passage Suzuki accepts "a distinction between words and meaning," whereas words without meaning would be only sounds, not words. He seems to grant this in what follows, but not really, for he goes on to speak of meaning as "an inner perception" apart from "past thoughts, affections, and deeds. . . ." Of course, the pointing finger is not the moon. A sound is not meaning, pointing is not an indication, except in context in human experience, when a stimulus is shared by one who makes it and one who receives it. But, meaning cannot be separated from understood words or gestures, as Suzuki suggests, so as to reduce words to means merely. Meaning, external as its reference may be, arises in language, in discourse, from the converse of human selves, even when one self in apparent isolation has a meaningful experience. Dependence upon words may be excessive, but that the human self or mind does not depend upon language in any form can scarcely be maintained. There is highly organized life without language, as with ants and bees. There may be experience beyond or above language. That may be what Zen sayings and writings are about. But their meaning cannot be separated from their words when words are used. If their teachings can be conveyed "by mere gazing, or by the contraction of the facial muscles, or by the raising of the eye-brows, by frowning or smiling, by clearing the throat . . . or by a motion of some kind," 7 it is done within a tradition, usually within an order, in one sect or another. James and his followers have made explicit in America what is implicit in Asia (whether recognized or not)—that there is no 6. D. T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). PP- 107-103. 7. Ibid., p. 107.

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meaning without communication, and no communicating without community. What both James father and son wanted was to find what was of most human worth and hold to it. William James did not want to lay up the value of human life in consciousness if consciousness did not exist or were nothing but movements in the head and chest. But he did not question the existence of consciousness. He questioned its existence as a stuff, or as an activity without significance. A self, to be a self, for a native of the James family, would have to make sense and be able to make fun. It would have to express itself on paper or canvas, but especially in conversation, in a play of meaning back and forth that could rise to surprise. This must be what James has in mind near the beginning of his chapter on the "Self," when he identifies "the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical Me," with "our ability to argue and discriminate." O n l y when this, and all he associates with it, is "altered," then "is a man said to be alienatus a se." 8 It must all seem altered, alienated, and denatured when nothing is verified of the inmost self but muscular adjustments and changes in breathing. A l l is restored, however, when someone following James can go on to note that these bodily events are the means of speech, silent or aloud. James himself saw these events as accompanying thought, pausing or checked with it, or furthered and released with it. He almost saw them as signs or symbols which become significant upon entering into a conversation or monologue, a monograph, or one of his brother's novels. If the symbolic process is the center of the self and of its relation with other selves, it is more than bodily, though not disembodied. It is not just movements in the head any more than it is merely movements in the air, marks on paper or dabs on canvas, apart from what is conveyed or meant or felt. Y e t , what is felt is what is drawn or painted or said, in the very way that it is done. The ever-renewed effort to express and communicate is, then, the very life of the self, which is more than a biological organism, though it is one to begin with; because then the pursuit of ends becomes more aware of them, more intentional, and so more meaningful. 8. James, The Principles of Psychology,

Vol. I, p. 296.

12 6 It would follow that the purpose of education, the goal of government, the point of civilized living is in freeing the self for symbolic expression. When life arrives at the capacity to make sense, there is no dearth of things to say; and saying them makes them more worth saying. Then the great dialogue of the arts and sciences can unfold. Then there is not merely plenty to talk about and write home about (also to keep quiet about), but there is that much more to live for—for nothing but a fuller life, and that is enough, day by day and moment by moment. The Zen realization that life is for living, that experience is its own end, and that it comes back to the mind or self, is in the same vein, and this seems to be what Zen means by purposeless living. James would not accept a lack of purposes, in the plural, with no ends in view, nothing to be done. But the Zen men recognize that there is wood to be cut, water to be carried, and that dishes need to be washed. Mostly, however, these men are noted for the meditation they do and the conversations they record and carry on through the centuries. Their endless questions, their answers which raise more questions, show that, among the daily activities which the Zen men have lived for, in common with other men, there is always zest for asking and asking again, "What is Zen? What is the Buddha?" As often as the revelation comes, the inquiry is renewed. Questing is the breath of life to them, as to William James. Their terminology differs from his no more than Japanese from English. After the question comes the answer, sometimes enigmatically, sometimes as plainly as in the words of Master Dogen ( 1 2 0 0 - 1 2 5 3 ) : "When you let go of your mind and body and forget them completely . . . when you follow the Buddha Mind without effort or anxiety—you break free from life's suffering and become the Buddha." 9

2. Mystical and Social Experience of the Self • To go from uneasiness to a sense of release and reassurance was the basic experience of religion and of life for James. In his effort to be scientific about this experience, along with yearning for it, he had the Zen conviction that the facts come first: the crack of the actual, 9. Quoted in Reiho Masunaga, The Soto Approach to Zen (Tokyo: Layman Buddhist Society Press, 19118)) p. 61.

127 the blow of a bat, the guffaw of an old man. For James and for Zen the question is what is there, and that is the answer. For both, experience is to be defended against philosophy, unless philosophy itself can be saved from abstraction and brought close to life. So, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, James relies on cases and confessions to reveal "something more primordial than reason" and get down to the "living moments." Like Zen and Emerson, James feels that the sum of everything is in the present moment. He values religion for belonging to this "very inner citadel of human life." This cannot be translated into conceptual terms, into a philosophy of religion, he says, because that is an attempt to be rational about the irrational, to make sense of what can only be sensed. Nothing can be made of it but what it is. So his biographer, Ralph Barton Perry, after quoting or noting these points, concludes: "Religion of the sort in which he was interested was closer to the simple piety of the evangelical sects than to that of modern religious liberalism." 10 There is also filial piety in this. Perry brings out James's desire to show his skeptical friends that his father's concern with religion is defensible. But the biographer also makes clear that, while the son cannot accept the paternal monistic absolutism, and must have a pluralistic universe open to risk and adventure, he also wants reassurance that, after all, the self will be safe. If this is intellectually inconsistent, so much the worse for intellect. In notes for the Varieties, Perry finds him saying: "Remember that the whole point lies in really believing that through a certain point or part in you, you coalesce and are identical with the Eternal. This seems to be the saving belief both in Christianity and in Vedantism." 1 1 As, of course, it is in Zen. A t least, James sees that it is not merely Western. But bringing East and West together is not so much a feat as joining the reckless "healthy-mindedness" of his own pluralism with the guarantee-demand of the "sick soul," which would seem to require the monism of his father. But when, in A Pluralistic Universe, William James approaches the conceptions of his father it is, to quote Horace M. Kallen, "always via 'working hypotheses' and not metaphysical affirmations." 12 The issue is "the difference between living against a back10. The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1936)> Vol. II, p. 329. C f . also pp. 326-328. 12. In a letter to the author, December 31, 1959. 11. Ibid., p. 331.

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ground of foreignness and one of intimacy" or "between a general habit of wariness and one of trust." 1 3 At least in some moods William James wanted the reassurance of intimacy and trust his father found in monism, while letting the monism go. This might seem the will to believe at its most wilful, except that, as Kallen points out, James would invoke "the will to believe" only in "a situation all insecurity and doubt . . . and the urgency of decision between alternatives." 14 There were moments when, like his father, the son wanted to "give way, embrace, and keep no ultimate fear"; yet he steadily rejected absolutism, with its totally encompassing "all-form," preferring the pluralistic view, "willing to believe that there may ultimately never be an all-form at all, that the substance of reality may never get totally collected, that . . . a distributive form of reality, the each-form, is logically as acceptable and empirically as probable as the all-form. . . ." 1 5 Horace Kallen, student and friend of William James, explains that, while he was "surer of science and of the methods and deliverances of science than to his last day he could be of the revelations and dogmas of religious faith, a measurable proportion of James's philosophic effort went toward equalizing the differences" and toward "reconciliation, not identification. . . . James's innermost emotion and most abiding insight was in the reality of alternatives and thence the fallacy of foregone conclusions." 1 0 His will to believe was controlled by his will to think, and he thought monism untenable. It made evil unreal and the fight against it for good ends a farce. Also, he thought the facts of immediate experience came first, and the evidence for reassurance was convincing. Men found it when they had to have it, even without theological or intellectual grounds. Explanation, whether forthcoming or not, was secondary. The first thing was the fact, and the belief it fed belonged to it rather than to the theory or theology that followed. It was interesting and seemed to have weight that both Christianity and Vedantism had "the saving belief" that the in1 3 . William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909, reprinted 1947), p. 3 1 . 14. Kallen, same letter to the author, December 3 1 , 1959. 1 $ . James, A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 32, 34. 16. Horace M. Kallen, "Remarks on R . B. Perry's Portrait of William James," The Philosophical Review, X L V I , No. 271 (January, 1 9 3 7 ) , 74-75.

129 dividual coalesced with the Eternal. 17 But what James seemed to mean—at least, all he needed to mean—was that in both systems there was the sense of being saved. The explanation that the individual was safe in the Eternal, with a capital " E , " was just a w a y of repeating emphatically the saving fact of feeling saved, which actually added nothing to the fact. This becomes clear when we see that Zen rests upon the same sense of safety, the same fact-and-belief, with the same explanation that the individual is one with the Buddha who is eternal. But when the Zen people ask what the Zen fact is in the Zen faith, they laugh in the asking. They know that the answer, whatever it is, can be no better than hitting the asker with a stick. W h a t is the Buddha? With all the high-sounding titles the Buddhists have given him, he is just the ash man, the garbage man, any old man. He is just a joke if you think he is more than you are. But, seriously, you are more than you think, if you don't think you are the Buddha yourself. The naturalism of this wisdom is equaled only by the wisdom of this naturalism. It shows the simultaneous value and void of a word like "Buddha" or "Eternal." It sounds grand and there is nothing to it. But anything is nothing, when you think about it; nothing but what it is, and certainly nothing by itself. For anything to be something it must have its place among other things, none of which in turn would be anything alone. But taken all together they make up everything there is. So it is true that the Buddha is nothing but what you and I are; and that what we are is all that Buddha is. When we see that, we can stop worrying. W e can laugh and be wise. W e can go back to our work. The mountain is still a mountain, the river is still a river, men are still men, yet everything is wonderfully different after we have wondered about it and got the answer. If we get it, we probably get it all in a flash, when we have stopped trying to get it. It is hard to get it by thinking about it. The Zen teachers say it is impossible. The way to think about it is not to think about it, and when you get it you just have it. Then you don't think about it either. Y o u can just see it and be it, while you do it. Zen is in the doing, when anything is doing. For Zen is no more quiet than active. It is not lazy. It is an intense seeking, which also calls for forgetting and not 17. Perry, The Thought

and Character of William James, Vol. II, p. 331.

130

seeking. When enlightenment comes, all goes on as before, except for something like what William James calls a second wind, which makes all the difference. This seeking and striving for release from uneasiness, which for him was the essence of religion, can be expressed in different cultural traditions. James was sympathetic with the Christian supernaturalist terminology, but had the Zen sense of the all-importance of the firsthand experience itself. This was reality for him, as for his colorful friend Benjamin Paul Blood, whose Anaesthetic Revelation records the sense of being he got upon "coming to" after his experiments with anaesthetics.18 He wrote in a letter to James: It is mainly about succession, the going on of time or life, with an overpowering sense of the utter unavoidableness of the going on,—with a sense of initiation into the fact of it as ancient and common; it is the old mystery, the Adamic, the hairy primogene. There is nothing grotesque in the revelation itself, but we chuckle at the simplicity and impregnable certainty of it. The grin is partly self-gratulation, and partly a shrug at being necessarily in it and of it. God, reason, religion, philosophy have nothing to do with it, save as afterthoughts . . . it is wholly secular, like common air. 19

The drugs Blood tried probably had nothing to do with it either, except to provide forgetting in the midst of seeking, which the Zen methods were devised to induce. In either case, what counted was the "coming to," the awakening to the going on of life, as the goal of the quest. Blood added a word about the "dead certainty" he retained from it: "that it is true, the truth about something which we have been taught to look for in religious regions—as if one had the multiplication table given him to displace the "Holy Scriptures.' " 20 Here is the gist of Zen: finding in the very fact of life what was supposed to be something higher and other; not having to be argued or handed down from the past or taken on authority, but to be had by anyone ready to see it, perhaps with the help of a laughing master. James's own suicidal crisis as a young man 21 would illustrate the 18. (Amsterdam, N . Y . : Pamphlet privately printed by B. P. Blood, 1874.) Referred to in Perry, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 225—226. 19. Quoted in Perry, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 226. 20. Ibid., p. 226-117. 21. Recorded as if not his own, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study m Human Nature (New Y o r k : Longmans, Green & Co., 1923), pp. 160-161.

i3i

view of the group around the Zen master Hoseki Shin'ichi Hisamatsu in Kyoto (the Gakudo-Dojyo, or Association for SelfAwakening), that it is necessary to go through a "great doubt" or "great death" on the way to awakening. The way is self-accomplished, out of fear into confidence. James said years later in a letter to Blood: "Fear of life in one form or another is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn't reason that will ever do it." 22 If he, at times for the sake of others, and sometimes also for himself, would honor the reassuring explanations and interpretations built heavenward upon the mystic experience, it was the experience itself which counted for him, as for Blood and for Zen. And James undertook to show, in case after case, that the experience of the gifted mystics, the religious geniuses, came also to ordinary people. It was but another step to say that the mystical experience was ordinary. And James, in effect, took this step in celebrating, as he did habitually, the extraordinary importance which the ordinary has whenever it is appreciated. For him, as for Zen, the pure experience of the present moment is ultimate. There is certainty, and it is always there, with all the reassurance any absolute could have; the guarantee which needs no other guarantee, for every other rests on it. In the certainty of immediacy is all the surety in the world, in the most original, lasting, practical, and available form without recourse to monism or any "ism," but fully compatible with naturalism and pluralism. If this reliance upon the immediate was native with James, it was fostered by his father, who incurred the expense of a succession of foreign schools and private tutors, with the idea that, besides learning French and German, his children would thus get "a better sensuous education." 23 But, in the James family, the sensuous was scarcely more immediate than the social. H. J., Jr., said they were "all gentle and generous together" because kept from "the shewolf of competition," and "we need never fear not to be good enough if we were only social enough." 24 So, when William James came to consider what the self was, he put the social beside the 21. Henry James, ed., Letters of William James, 2 vols. (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), Vol. II, pp. 38-39. 23. Ibid., Vol. I, p. J9. 24. Quoted from Notes of a Son and Brother, in F. O. Matthiessen, The James Family (New Y o r k : A l f r e d A . Knopf, 1948), pp. 7 1 , 78.

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material, bodily, or sensuous aspect; and when he tried to locate a spiritual self as something deeper or more inner, he got only some more of the sensuous for his pains, except as he almost recognized the "ability to argue and discriminate" as what he was after. 25 A n d that would come back to the social, in the use of vocal and other gestures to express and communicate: in the give-and-take of stimulus and response in relation with others, while simultaneously stimulating oneself and responding to one's own stimuli. So George Mead was to find in his further study of the self. In fact, when James moved on (in his chapter on the "Self") to another look at the social self, to consider its potential or ideal aspect, he saw that it develops and improves, first, through wanting to appear well in the eyes of friends and the present world, and, second, through thinking of "better possible social judges." He was struck by "the pursuit of an ideal social self, of a self that is at least -worthy of approving recognition by the highest possible judging companion. . . . " This time he was not disappointed, not confronted with some substitute, some mere trace or track of what he was after. He said: "This self is the true, the intimate, the ultimate, the permanent Me which I seek." He called it "God, the Absolute Mind, the 'Great Companion.' " 28 The significant thing here is not the use of terms from traditional religion but the realization of the growing self as a social process of interaction with others through stimulus and response, and the taking over of attitudes so that the individual can use them to judge himself and to progress through "the substitution of higher tribunals for lower." 27 N o w there is no question of the self as selfenclosed, much less sequestered within the body in some dark corner. The self is now identified with a social life leading to higher possibilities through comparison and companionship with other selves, which are found to be bound up with its own being and becoming. Here is the prophetic phase of James's research on the self—not the hide-and-seek he played with a phantom inside his throat and chest.

2 j . James, The 26. Ibid.,

Principles

pp. 3 1 5 - 3 1 6 .

of Psychology,

V o l . I, p. 296. 27. Ibid.,

p. 3 1 6 .

133 3. Personality and the Fight for Ends • When James tried to find a spiritual subject back of the sensuous and social experience he could get at, he got nothing. A t first he was more or less looking for a "knower" or "thinker" outside Nature, as in traditional dualism. Beginning to realize the impossibility of coming on such a thing, as if it could be a thing, he tried putting "the passing thought" in the role of doing its own thinking. But it dawned on him that there was the same inherent difficulty in the idea of a thought or mental state to do the thinking as in needing a "thinker" to do it. Dewey finds him finally reaching this point in his 1904 article, "Does Consciousness Exist?" He sees him on the way to it in The Principles of Psychology of 1890, where there are formulations which, if consistently held, would have made reference to a passing thought as unnecessary as reference to "the old substantial subject" of which it was the remnant. Dewey cites especially the sentence in which James sees the mark of mentality in the "pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment." Then mentality consists in behavior which can be observed and not in something mysterious behind the scenes.28 James did not need a "thinker" or "fighter" for ends if the ends were there in conduct, with the fighting for them going on in the very ongoing of life, actual, observable. Pursuing ends, then, is not just the mark of mentality, but is what it is. To bring in a mentality or consciousness, a thinker or knower, as an entity is, then, to duplicate something already going on with something superfluous which is supposed to make it go, as if there had to be a walker in a man to do his walking, a smoker in him to do his smoking, and so on, when what is a man himself but the walking and talking and other activities we say are his? The difficulty with accepting this seems to lie in our linguistic habit of subordinating verbs to nouns, and events to something else, as if nothing could happen without a "happener." If there is thinking, we suppose there must be a thinker, as when there is action we suppose an actor. Then, if the action is intelligent, we say the actor is intelligent; then, that he is intelligent because he has intelligence, or whatever it is that makes him intelligent; and so we get back to the idea of consciousness, which is a stuff or substance 28. John Dewey, Problems of Men 396—400.

(New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), pp.

134

that does not seem to exist, and would not help if it did, since it is only the ghost of what it should account for: the pursuance of ends. This kind of "explanation" has been ingrained, but is becoming less acceptable. "We know that matter is no longer something material or substantial in a solid sense to account for the hardness or resistance of things, but only a name for dynamic and electric qualities. "Electricity" is obviously a word for electric and electrifying events of incredible speed and power. We have learned that atomic fission is frightfully kinetic. The hope and horror of all the newly discovered energy is in what it does and will do. Only in a feeble cartoon of it does it reside in something stationary and stable. Our world is on the go, and we are on the move. The driver of an automobile does not drive but guides, and the car standing still is but the unblurred image of the way it runs. An aviator does not fly an airplane as if it were a kite, or as if he were outside making it go. He flies in and with the plane. And it does not do the flying either. It is flying. If a motor or something goes wrong, it will not fly as well, or will fail and fall. When all is well it does not fly by itself, but in and with the air. And only a flier knows how active the air is, with its currents, holes, and jolts. In our world of speed and power, anything still or standing is an abstraction from action, perhaps too fast or quiet or latent to be noticed. And every action is interaction and transaction. Everything and everyone is involved. There are no sidelines and no spectators, except artificially, for fun. But the game must be lively and the onlookers excited. They pay to participate as much as they can. There are calmer conceptions of life, but for James any existence is more or less active if one is alive at all. Even if his outlook is too strenuous for us and we seek repose in our accelerated age, he teaches us to rest on the wing. We learn from him that perchings are between flights and that transitions are no less real than landings. But if all is a flow and flux of Buddhist impermanence, and every landing is another take-off, how do we get our bearings and how can we have identities? The reply is that James has taken nothing from us. We still have what we have, and are what we are. The soul or consciousness which he comes to deny, we need not miss if it was a figment of speculation. If our life is our activity, and if it is

x

35

primary and self-sufEcient in its fight for ends, we need not imagine a fighter behind us to breathe life into our affairs. If there were such a ghostly figure in charge of each of us, he would have to borrow breath from real life. But what would be gained if there were such doubling? Not reality, since to be real is to be in the midst of what is going on, and not a copy of it. N o t explanation, for it does not explain anything to mirror it. If what seems to be missing in James's account of the central self is personality, then we have misunderstood him after all. For him, personality is not identified with consciousness or any entity whose existence can be questioned, which cannot be missed if it does not exist. For him, the self is not outside experience but the very center of it for each of us. It is the warm and breathing body that each human being is to begin and end with. It is a size and shape and way of walking; especially a way of talking. It is a trick of smiling, of gesturing, a knack of doing things a little differently. It is all this which a photograph suggests and a friend fills in from memory and affection. A self includes thé clothes that go with it, the house and neighborhood it lives in. Though à self is lodged in a body so snugly that it is the body, the same is true of the house it lives in. A house belongs to a self, not only in being owned and inhabited, but in being cherished and furnished not quite as it would be by another. And if we can speak of the bodily self as "it," we feel that we should use a personal pronoun when we recognize how much more than a body a self is. We see that in having friends, as well as parents and children, the self is what we mean by a person; not in being detached from his organic center and located in some abstraction above it, but in having interests and activities—that is, in doing things. It is still in or with the body that things are done. As the body goes walking, swimming, skating, so the body goes to college. The body writes and reads. Its eyes see who is at the door; its ear listens at the telephone. If it seems strange to speak of a body as doing these things, our speech reminds us that everybody does them. When William James tried his best to call on himself and find himself at home, he found his "Self of selves" in his breathing, in movements in his head and chest. The self, the person, the human being, is more than body but is there in the body, as well as in the house or in the country. In and beyond the body, the self is in the

I36

world. It breathes the environment in and out, and is part of its own environment.29 The body's hands can be seen and touched as other things are. The seeing and touching go on in experience, as part of it acts on other parts. Thinking, also, is done by parts of experience working with other parts, reaching beyond the body's epidermis, beyond its grasp, through memory and imagination, which are extensions of actual contact, with the help of books and other devices. "Thoughts in the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are," James said.30 He did not leave out of the self anything it does or comes to. He kept what friends cherish and lovers love in friends and loved ones, beginning with the warmth and intimacy of the body, with its breathing and speaking presence, and reaching out to all that men aspire to in the fight for ends. If he faltered, and fell back on the soul, it was because he could not realize how close and complete, how real and empirical he had found the self to be. Even to him the traditional way of expressing the actuality of the self had made it seem to call for something else, supposed to be the essential and lasting part of it, though only a ghost of it. Even the belief in immortality and a supernatural Being, which he was never ready to give up, expressed how precious, not only one's own self is, but how very dear and not to be lost is the self of each loved one. He showed why it is impossible to imagine any one of them except as he was, with the body he had, and his ways on earth. If we can think of having him back, that is how we would have him. James would not deprive us of what people can be to one another. He would have us see what that is and hold on to it as best we can. His concern for the self came to coincide with his father's aim 29. In a letter to the writer (January 11, 1957), Horace M. Kallen, referring to Husserl, wrote: "I think the movement he started is purely linguistic and that the transcendentalism derives from his confusing the intent of the word T with a ghost. It would have helped him to have been aware of James's observation that the word is a term of position and indicates where the body is at the time a writer or speaker refers to himself. This seems to me always the dynamic center of any action that takes place, so that "situations' can be understood as interpersonal transactions or chain-reactions that have their termini in individuals whose individualities have their nuclear fields in the bodies." 30. William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912, 1947), p. 37*

137 to get rid of it, since it meant selfishness to, the father, who dearly loved what was lovable in people but attributed that to common human nature. He passed on his concern for society to the son. If W . J. did not put the emphasis there, he realized that most people needed a better world, and did what he could to bring it about. Instead of justifying the status quo by what he knew about habit, he would use that knowledge to reform education and help everyone have better habits. He said: "The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics." 81 H e did not separate knowing what is from wanting what ought to be. He could not be the kind of scientist who stops short of being a moralist, nor the kind of individualist who thinks the individual drops out when the group begins. He knew that individuals make up each minority as well as the majority. He knew that it is individuals whose civil rights need the Bill of Rights, and need to have it ever renewed and taken more seriously. Since the ends he cared about all stem from the claims and aims of individuals, he was against any government or philosophy which threatened them. His stand for pluralism against monism clarified the meaning of democracy as we cherish it today, in opposition to any totalitarianism. William James personified appreciation of the worth of individuals in their differences. He also believed, because he vividly felt it and found how to express it, that the immediate experience of the individual is too deep not to be universal, even in its uniqueness. A l l feel heat and cold and hunger, but he, especially, knew that everyone at bottom feels depressed or invigorated in relation to the universe. Although he could object to overoptimism in Whitman, he accounted him "a contemporary prophet," saying of him: " H e abolishes the usual human distinctions . . . and loves and celebrates hardly any human attributes save those elementary ones common to all members of the race." Further: " A n d , if only in particular individuals, they must belong to the mere trapping and decoration of the surface-show." 32 This is the Zen teaching that what is most worth while is not reserved for a few. "The Buddhas, 31. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 127. 32. William James, Talks to Teachers (New Y o r k : Henry Holt & Co., 1899, 1908), pp. 248, 278.

I38

countless as the sands of the Ganges, are all witness to this fact." 33 The same sentiment in Tolstoy was welcomed by James, but he objected that Tolstoy seems to "overcorrect our social prejudices, when he makes his love of the peasant so exclusive, and hardens his heart toward the educated man." 34 For James, a significant life must have some heroism, such as physical dangers make most obvious, and the "horizon and perspective of ideals" which education gives. But he calls a man with more ideals contemptible if he shows no courage in their behalf, undergoes no privations, contracts no dirt or scars "in the attempt to get them realized." 36 Finally, whereas James speaks of the individual's fundamental relation to the universe as either invigorating or depressing, he believes that a complete life involves both. He sees that life is strengthened by bearing up under what weighs it down. So, he admires "twice-born men." The "once-born," whose temperament is "organically weighted on the side of cheer," can strike him as "quasipathological." 36 It seems that all religions, when they are complete, are made up of two parts: uneasiness and its solution. A t times there is even a Calvinistic cast to his thought, as to his father's, in the sense of something wrong in ourselves from which we are saved "by making proper connection with the higher powers." 37 The relation of the two phases of life is put in more naturalistic terms, more characteristic of William James, when he speaks of the fight for ends. Whether the fight is going well or badly, ends are to the fore, and their being cared about is what makes life worth while—makes it risky and strenuous, and, by the same token, makes comfort comforting. Life is good when the ideals espoused are neither a lost cause nor a sure thing. There must be a foothold for hope, and there must be the reach for a new hold. That is to say that life must go on affirming and reaffirming itself. Even when life is not obviously good, it may still be worth the candle, for it is better to have lost than not to have loved enough to try. A man must try his best, whatever the odds. And it may be good for him to worry as well as to believe. If the great thing in life is 33. Quoted from Nyogen Sensaki's translation of Y u n g Chia (d. 7 1 3 ) , in R u t h S. McCandless and Nyogen Sensaki, Buddhism and Zen (New Y o r k : Philosophical Library, I 9 J 3 ) . P- 4«. 34. James, Talks to Teachers, p. 183. 3 5 , Ibid., p. 193. 36. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 83. 37. Ibid., p. jo8.

139 release from uneasiness, then men should not be relieved of uncertainty from the first, as they would be if they seriously accepted the monistic absolutism of the elder James. Yet, William James recognized that the reason his father clung to the safety of an absolute was that he had suffered great anxiety before arriving at absolute reassurance. He began with the uneasy need of it. So did many a Zen man, according to the accounts. People would not need to be assured of having the Buddha-nature if they did not feel the lack of it in their own inadequacy. It is paradoxical that they should need an experience of awakening to their Buddha-nature if it is already theirs. On the other hand, it is a wonderful thing if they can discover that they already have it and do not need to attain it—especially for people as loaded with obligations as the Japanese. This is the point of Dogen's denial of a difference between training and enlightenment. So Masunaga says that the right attitude in zazen frees a man from "the wait for enlightenment and the wish to become a Buddha." 38 William James is most himself when he is not seeking safety or redress on high, not wishing to become a Buddha or anything but the man he is, with enough nerve and energy to take his chances and cheer his readers on to do the same. He says it feels like a real fight.89 He wants it to be real, as it would not be if there were no real danger, no actual hurt, no risk of bitter loss and defeat. He could not enjoy Chautauqua for long. He would have found a life tame and second-rate that was "all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners." 40 If there were no stress or distress, there could hardly be occasion for the vital virtue he honored. He wanted heroism. A mock heroism would be a poor substitute. He admired a man who could stand this universe, and he seemed out of character when he reached for his father's coattails and the supernatural. What he really wanted and willed to believe is that men can be men. He would have them rejoice in all that is joyful, and magnify the satisfactions of life by their own efforts, but especially by finding in the fight for ends the good of living. This takes "pluck and will." Kallen notes that James was ready 38. Masunaga, The Soto Approach to Zen, p. 64. 39. William James, The Will to Believe (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1 8 9 7 ) , p. 6 1 .

40. James, Talks to Teachers,

p. 170.

140

to die, as he lived, "without assurances or guarantees." The last thing he wrote was a tribute to his friend Blood: "Let my last word . . . be his last word: 'There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be given.—Farewell!' " 41 This last word is a Zen word. Like Zen, the philosophy of "William James has a practical impact. It is not advice, beyond instilling a view of life. It is a fight talk. It tells a man that his self is on trial; that being a man is an adventure to be lived, bravely. The world he lives in will depend much upon his attitude and action. This is a "conclusion" after all. To James, and to all who can take his philosophy, here is the "religious inspiration," the "spiritual health," which is "worth more than large amounts of that sort of technical and accurate information which we professors are supposed to be able to impart." 42 Emerson said that America is not only a land and a people but an ideal, a dream. William James made more clear that it is a dream needing to be realized, which will depend upon the people. America is risk and venture. It is struggle. It may be a losing effort. That makes a real possibility of tragedy. America is not only the beautiful, not only the life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is certainly not all adjusted, all safe and tame as Chautauqua, with nothing to lose and nothing to win. It is also the land of John Brown and the grapes of wrath. If it is still to be the home of the free and the brave, its people must take responsibilities and the consequences. This will take courage, as in the past. It will give America a future, as it has given her a history, heroes, and the philosophy of William James.

4 1 . William James, Memories and Studies (New Y o r k : Longmans, Green & Co., 1 9 1 1 , 1 9 1 2 ) , p. 4 1 1 , quoted in Horace M. Kallen, "Remarks on R . B. Perry's Portrait of William James," The Philosophical Review, X L V I , No. 271 (January, 1 9 3 7 ) , 7$. 42. James, Talks to Teachers, pp. 296-297.

CHAPTER

X

•

PEIRCE AND

THE

USE

OF

SIGNS

l. Scientific Method • Charles Sanders Peirce took a long time to come into his own, instead of arriving early as William James did, and is still coming. A f t e r being known chiefly through the interest that James took in him, Peirce has been steadily stimulating thinkers in several fields of research, notably in mathematical logic and in the general theory of signs. He says he was brought up in a laboratory, and he was the intellectual companion of his mathematician-father. Peirce went on to master the whole history of philosophy in the West: ancient, medieval, and modern. A n d he was at home with the developments in science since the Renaissance. H e not only knew what had been done in philosophy and science, but was a powerful critic of the ideas that interested him, and wonderfully original in developing new ones of his own. William James said to his friend: " Y o u r intensely mathematical mind keeps m y non-mathematical one at a distance." 1 Peirce deplored this lack in James, but loyally acknowledged indebtedness to him, as well as to other members of The Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, including Justice Holmes and Chauncey W r i g h t — a s well as to Socrates and Aristotle, Kant and Comte. Also in the Club was Nicholas St. John Green, who, Peirce says, " o f t e n urged the importance of applying Bain's definition of belief as "that upon which a man is prepared to act.' " 2 Peirce went from this definition to saying (in the 1870's) that the meaning of a concept is to be found in its practical conse1. Letter of March 27, 1897, quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1936), Vol. II, p. 224. Horace M. Kallen, while admitting that "James was not interested in mathematics," rejects the idea that exact thought was repugnant to him, the impression given by his biographer, R . B. Perry, whose "tendency to favor Peirce today coheres with the growing formalism of the philosophic Zeitgeist." C f . Kallen, "Remarks on R . B. Perry's Portrait of William James," The Philosophical Review, X L V I , No. 271 (January, 1 9 3 7 ) , 7S, 772. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1 9 3 1 - 1 9 3 5 ) , 5.12 (the editors thus indicate the volume and paragraph referred t o ) .

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quences. He refrained from saying that here was the road to the ultimate truth of metaphysics. His attitude was that of the scientist using a method which enabled him to deal with the problems at hand, regardless of ulterior considerations. What recommended this method to Peirce was its being "no other than that experimental method by which all the successful sciences . . . have reached the degree of certainty . . . proper to them today." He also called it an application of an older rule: " B y their fruits ye shall know them." 8 This reliance upon the procedure of the sciences at once removes Peirce from Zen, which developed in ignorance of science, and whose devotees still have little use for it. James, although a man of science, in medicine, physiology, and psychology, was closer to Zen in reserving the last word for the emotional need of immediate insight. Peirce also seems to fall back on prescientific experience in his Biblical appeal to fruits. But the difference between him and James comes out in Peirce's refusal to count the individual's feeling good or not as a decisive fruit, whereas James spoke at times as if the worth of a belief or idea lay in the comfort or encouragement it gave a person. For Peirce, not the personal but the public or universal implications were the test. He said: "the total meaning of the predication of an intellectual concept is contained in an affirmation that, under all conceivable circumstances of a given kind . . . the subject of the predication would behave in a certain general way. . . . " 4 Peirce was trying to be as intellectual as possible, in contrast to the need James felt to guard personal or religious sentiment from the skepticism that the intellectual approach might involve. Peirce was careful to say that he would not try to cover everything with his procedure. He said his was " t o be a method of ascertaining the meanings, not of all ideas, but only of what I call 'intellectual concepts,' that is to say, of those upon the structure of which, arguments concerning objective fact mav hinge." 6 Objective fact was not all that interested him, however. He, like James, was concerned also with belief and doubt, the grounds for believing and acting. Here, Peirce went back to the idea that to believe something is to be ready to act upon it, whereas to doubt is to 3- lbii -- 5-4«5-

4- ibid., 5.467.

j. Ibii., j.467.

143 inhibit action. Thus, the full purpose of inquiry might be not merely to establish facts intellectually, but to justify belief, and enable life to go on. Here, he and James were not as far apart as at first appears. The difference remaining is that James stressed the value of belief in giving courage to act; Peirce wanted to be more careful about the grounds of belief, so as to lessen the risk of acting without sufficient basis. He would justify doubt as well as belief. In his 1877 paper on "The Fixation of Belief," he pointed out that if the object of inquiry were just to settle belief, why not believe anything we like, noting what supports us and ignoring what does not? He observed that this is exactly what some people do. They believe what they like and stick to it. And he half admired this "method of tenacity." It saves the trouble of thinking and avoids the unpleasantness of indecision.6 That may be a fine thing in a crisis, when there is no time to think. But, when a person has leisure to reflect and happens to be in contact with other people, he risks being unsettled by their different beliefs, and it is likely to dawn on him that others may be right. One would have to be a hermit not to be influenced. Thus, for belief to be fixed in the individual, the question is how to fix it in the community. 7 Peirce said: "\^hat is utility, if it is confined to a single accidental person? Truth is public." 8 But he saw the danger of establishing by the method of authority what the public would have to accept as truth. He would seem to have been reading the newspapers ever since his death in 1914, when he expressed the social consequences of the method of authority in these words: "Let the will of the state act, then, . . . to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed. . . . Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard private and unusual opinions with hatred and horror. Then, let all men who reject the established belief be terrified into silence." There is nothing new about this method, he notes, and it has always been accompanied by cruelties. "Nor should this occasion surprise, for the officer of a society does not feel justified in 6. Cf. ibid., "The Fixation of Belief," j.358-387." 7. Cf. ibid., 5.370-378. 8. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, Vol. II, p. 437.

144 surrendering the interests of that society for the sake of mercy, as he might his own private interests." 9 Yet, the method of authority will break down, too. Men rebel, and it is never possible to regulate their opinions on everything. Men will find out about other ideas in other times and places, make comparisons, and thus "gradually develop beliefs in harmony with natural causes." But, to get beyond accidental and capricious opinion, they must finally arrive at the methods of science, to make firm contact with reality. The more the scientific approach is used, in contrast to the alternatives, the less doubt it raises about itself. And doubt, then, is not a private affair, to be overcome simply by one's own intuition, as for Descartes, and even for James with his will to believe, but is a matter of waiting for other scientific workers to confirm or disconfirm an individual's findings.10 Co-operative investigating and testing makes doubt an essential and constructive part of scientific method. The scientist does not go far alone, but works with others, predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. The scientific community is international. And everybody uses scientific method where he can. A man "only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it." Yet unscientific methods retain their appeal, and even William James seemed to succumb, in not recognizing the role of the consensus of competent men. He spoke of the test of truth too much as if it were what an individual happened to want, although he had no idea of condoning the antisocial individual, or of setting anyone above the needs of society or the facts. His no less painstaking than original work in psychology shows how cooperative his procedure was in practice, taking careful account of what other psychologists had done, and making clear for those to come what the evidence was for his own statements. Yet, if even William James seemed at times to grant men the license to believe what they wanted to, what would men not believe and do unless checked by authority? Then perhaps Peirce had reason to say: "The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. If liberty of Peirce, Collected tapers, " T h e Fixation of Belief," 5.379-380. 10. C f . W. B. Gallie, Peirce and Pragmatism. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1952), p. 76.

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speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, then uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval." 1 1 This generalization would justify the legalists or realists, who were the philosophic totalitarians of China, though not the Zen sages. Zen wisdom can be applied to swordplay, archery, and what not, but belongs primarily to the independent and self-reliant mind, which is ever questing and questioning. It is this inquiring nature of Zen which is akin to Peirce and science, and congenial to the American mind, though without the experimental, theoretical, or systematic aspect of research. The everlasting asking of Zen, the quizzical look it gives to convention and conformity, the skepticism it turns on its own authorities and scriptures, the laugh it is ready to answer with, would always be on the side of freedom, against the pessimism expressed by Peirce. Nor does a pessimistic observation fairly represent his own faith in science and the universe. If he were right that terrorism would always govern the mass of mankind, whether in a gross or refined form, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, with the idea that governments are instituted to secure liberty for life and the pursuit of happiness, would not have been worth writing. The American Revolution would have been fought in vain, if it were not true that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." If "just powers" should have been "actual powers," then there was nothing to fight for, at least not for a revolutionist. The method of authority, to be sure, has not been abolished and is not withering away. The question is whether it has not been restrained and even replaced, in this country more than in almost any other, by democratic practice. If democracy is not altogether a fact, it is a belief upon which Americans have been prepared to act; and the meaning which the idea of democracy has can be found in the practical consequences of believing in it and acting on it. The American Dream may be betrayed by those who pretend to believe in it and want to make others believe it has been realized, so they will not criticize the undemocratic methods and ends of the makei i . Peirce, Collected

Papers, " T h e Fixation of Belief," 5.386.

146 believers. Pseudo science, like false democracy, can be used to fool the people. The hope Peirce would hold (against his own pessimism) is that the scientific method and attitude can be relied upon to show what true science and democracy are, and what they can do toward having authority itself more democratically constituted and controlled. A s Peirce contended, the scientific method makes for agreement wherever it is seriously used; offering a basis for judgment and action that is the viable alternative to the methods of stubbornness, caprice, and coercion. The democratic and the scientific ways go together and need each other. Both rest upon honest consideration of the relevant facts and perspectives in a situation; both call for patience and co-operation in dealing with problems; both are self-critical and amenable to the testing of their plans or hypotheses. The distinction of the scientific method, as presented by Peirce, is that, instead of being wishful or wilful, it takes account of what can put the user in the wrong as well as what will show when he is right. It teaches men to get at the "Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them." That is, "the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same." 12 Peirce expresses the humor as well as the seriousness of this: "the absurd and eccentric men" of experiment have succeeded little by little in showing other people "that nature would not follow human opinion, however unanimous." 13 There is a tricky point here. As men learn what Nature is, they not only agree about it and may thereby learn how to adapt better to it, but also may learn how to get Nature to help them with their purposes. It does not take much science to find that the ground is good for walking, the water for swimming. It takes more science, not only to find the ground good, but to make it good for transportation of various kinds, the water for navigation, and now the air for rapid travel. T o find what uses can be made of land, water, air, and so on, is the business of the experimental approach, whether in or out of the laboratory. For Peirce, "the most striking feature" of his theory is "its recognition of an inseparable connection between rational cognition and rational purpose," 14 between what can be found out and what can be done with it. 12. Ibid., j.384. 14. Peirce, Collected Papers, j.412.

13. Ibid., j.385.

M7 2. From Chaos Toward Regularity • But Peirce takes more care than James to show that the test of knowing is in terms of human purposes in general, not of merely private ones. Meaning for him is general. It is "of the nature of a word or sign" which refers to something beyond the immediate. Peirce thought he and James might have been more in agreement if he could have taught James mathematics and logic. Peirce himself relied on experimental logic to weed out what is accidental in the reference of words or signs, to arrive at opinions which are destined, in the sense that they "will be the same in the end, however the perversity of thought of whole generations may cause the postponement of the ultimate fixation." The truth is "what will be believed in that ultimate opinion." 16 It might seem, then, that, for Peirce, knowledge is not so much for human purposes as that the purpose of all purposes is to get true knowledge. But actually, for him, science and practice, knowing and doing, are inseparable. His heart is with the "laboratory band" who put questions to Nature with their experiments, and get answers from her rather than from their inclinations. Yet he recognizes that the most scientific knowledge grows out of a vague beginning in dealing with practical problems. And, if the interest in pursuing knowledge becomes independent of practice, "pure" science will still be of use in showing that when certain steps are taken certain results can be expected. Then conduct will be controlled by the future. The good, for Peirce, is not in action, not in doing things in particular, so much as in learning how the particular embodies the general, which is the destined. The proper aim for man then is self-control according to what is reasonable, which will take him along with the trend of the universe toward what is more general, more regular, more orderly. This seems directly contrary to the spirit of "William James, with his concern for the individual and for his most personal values. The fight for ends, which, for James, was the basis of consciousness and morality and religion, is shifted to the struggle for knowledge of universals. To Peirce, if thought is for action, action is worth while in leading to further thought. What becomes, then, of the revolutionary thought of Paine, i j. Ibid.,

5.419, 430.

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Jefferson's Declaration, Emerson's self-reliance, and the whole American idea of rebuilding the world closer to ideals? What becomes of the distinction between the "is" and the "ought?" Peirce seems to dash the dream, and the idea that science will help realize it. If the real is the general toward which every particular is headed, then self-control becomes the sum of wisdom for the individual. The fight for ends would seem to be given up for the effort toward understanding. Yet, it is a question of emphasis—not of giving up purposive action, but of Peirce's being more interested in thinking about a situation than in doing something about it, though he believes that doing will benefit from thinking, when there is time to think. And what Peirce called thought was always creative, breaking with the familiar, actually revolutionary. Yet, to Peirce, the primary obligation, both scientific and moral, was to see where we stand and how we move amid a great framework of Nature, of general conditions, and of more general principles. This sense for the larger setting, of its centering where we rvre as much as anywhere, and reaching from what we are to whatever is, allied him, after all, with the less or more than scientific attitude of Zen and of William James's father. To Peirce, this outlook brought a humility to be proud of. He did not feel overcome by it, but steadied and inspired. And he associated it closely with science. In reading the philosophers, "he felt he might trust to them" only when, especially in Kant, Berkeley, and Spinoza, "he sometimes came upon strains of thought that recalled the ways of thinking of the laboratory." 16 What counted for him was "a sort of instinctive attraction for living facts," 17 which is like the downto-earthness of Zen—not science yet, but what science must take off from and keep coming back to. It does not mean a reduction of experience but a firsthand realization of its inclusiveness. Peirce recalled his youthful excitement over the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, because it confirmed the conviction he already had, that merely mechanical action could not explain all that happened, even in the physical world. Peirce, with all his science, and on account of it, held as strongly as William James that theoretical science, "compared with living belief . . . is nothing but a ghost." 18 The belief, like the perception, which we are to 16. Ibid., j.412. 17. Ibid., j.64. 18. Ibid., 5.60.

149 act on, cannot be questioned at the moment of action; whereas, for science, what is most evident, immediate, and obvious, is inferred, hypothetical, something to be investigated if the occasion arises— and so with what seems most established in Nature at large. Darwin's sports and mutations confirmed Peirce in his principle of chance. Anything can happen, and often does. Nature makes no promise to keep the laws men make for her. This is James's feeling of pluralism, that the universe is wide open, leaky, and draughty, which he liked to think of in his strength and wanted some guarantee against in his weakness. He wanted room for spontaneity, but would like to protect it when it appears in persons. And Peirce, while he kept saying there was no reason to think that every phenomenon is determined by law, even doubting the absolute truth of the principle of universal law, did think of chance itself as allowing for a principle of generalization. He thought of this as a tendency to form habits. So, while there are unpredictable changes, there is a drift toward regularity, growth of continuity, coalescence, reasonableness.19 He backed up this idea of a movement from chaos to regularity by his knowledge of work in physics, especially that of Maxwell. This enabled Peirce to maintain theories both of chance and necessity, and to think that somehow they worked together. The practical upshot for him is that, at the stage we live in, we can count on enough regularity in Nature to let us form habits of perception and inference, which we can trust for the most part, in spite of the mistakes we are bound to make and the surprises we should expect to get. We have the capacity to correct mistakes and increasingly to explain surprises. And we do this, not for our own behoof merely, "but as the share which God permits" us "to have in the work of creation." 20

3. Science—the Developed Use of Signs • Peirce thinks of progressive control of our environment and of ourselves as a matter of improving our science; and he regards science as essentially our most developed use of signs. It is in his study of signs that Peirce is at his best, not only highly original and exciting, but the turning 19. Cf. passages from Peirce in Max H. Fisch, ed., Classic American Philosophers York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, I?JI)> PP- 98, IOI, 1 0 9 - 1 1 3 . 20. Peirce, Collected Papers, $.402.

(New

IJO

point in man's understanding of himself. If the "West has got beyond Zen, though still in need of it, this is thanks to Peirce; and if the West has leaped beyond what the West was, this also is thanks to Peirce—or rather, of course, to what he represents, with his ability to express it, to put it into words. For it is words that work the magic. Magicians and the enchanting wordmen, the men of letters, though they did their part, were left behind by the man of science, brought up in a laboratory, when he found the word for what words are. They are signs, the signs of life rising to communication, the symbols of human life climbing higher. It is with signs that men conquer. This has been true ever since men began to speak. Words have been heeded more than anything else, feared, loved, treasured. "The pen is mightier than the sword" is sober truth. But it took Peirce to tell why. It is with signs that we put two and two together. It is with signs that we point out what needs to be noticed, recall what should be remembered, indicate what ought to be done. It is mostly with signs that we make love, or make war and hope to make peace. Without them we could not have history or civilization, trade or industry, art or science. This is not a new idea, but Peirce pioneered in classifying the kinds of signs and finding out what a sign fundamentally is. He discovered that a sign, no matter how complex or how simple, is a three-part affair. It is ( i ) an indication of (2) something to (3) someone. A road sign tells what is coming: a curve or a crossing or a town. But it does not tell this by itself. It must be seen and interpreted to be significant. And to interpret a sign is to ask or to see how it fits with other signs, on a map or a set of directions. At each stage of a journey, of a piece of work, a relation with a person, a campaign or undertaking of any sort, progress is guided, renewed, or abandoned, according to the signs of promise or warning—what they suggest or reveal, and how it is interpreted. Life is always a question of how to proceed. Each fulfillment or failure raises the fresh question: What do we do next? Where do we go from here, and how? Habits are formed, which may be uncomplicated or very elaborate, according to which many signs are responded to more or less automatically and unconsciously. But, whenever there is a conflict of habits, or any difficulty in proceeding, or any novelty, the signs call for attention, and for consultation, at least with oneself

if not with others. When we feel the need of thinking things over, alone or with company, we scrutinize any sign which concerns us by bringing further signs to bear upon it. T o use a sign, to make anything of it, get anywhere with it, is to respond to it with another sign or set of signs. Every sign, in effect, asks for an answer or comment from another sign. There is no end to this. There is always something more to be said in response to any sign, some further question or comment. So thinking, or the talking which thinking is, will go on and on. For Peirce, this is the very life of mind; and mind or intelligence is the form which life takes when it takes to using signs. Here, Peirce anticipates Mead's account of the development of the mind or self through the kind of stimulus and response which becomes significant gesture. Peirce himself does not undertake to give the genesis of sign-behavior. He simply analyzes what it is. He sees, as W . B. Gallie puts it, "that a man's essential life is made up of his communings—speech and listening, questioning and answering— whether with himself or with other members of the community to which he belongs. . . . Thus, Peirce writes, 'The word or sign which man uses is the man himself,' and again, 'My language is the sum total of myself.' " 2 1 "What William James was after, in his search for the self of selves, when he found only muscular adjustments and alterations of breathing, Peirce produces in the use of signs. Moving and breathing may go intimately with using signs, but this is what it means to be a mind or self. This is what there is that is more than mechanical or physiological in human behavior. James, in seeking to show that man is determined neither as an automaton of physics nor as a creature of divinity, was less successful when he peered into his own head and chest than when he hit on the ability to argue and discriminate, which was the life of the James family. Emerson had been warm in saying that the sum and test of life is conversation; as Plato had been in presenting man as a being of dialogue. But it took Peirce to make it plain and explain it. His account may seem over-intellectual at first, but not when it is realized how basic to all human existence is the use of signs. A t 21. Gallic, Peirce and Pragmatism, p. 4 1 ; quotations i r o m Peirce, Collected Papers, J.J 14. C f . also the discussion of Peirce's doctrine of signs in Gallie, op. cit., chap. j .

IJi the lowest level of animal gesture, it is just a biological affair of stimulus and response. Man uses all kinds of signs, but relies most on those of language, which are originally vocal, as Mead was to show. Children use them quite freely, before they can be said to be reasoning; but when reasoning comes, it is by means of refining the communicating which precedes it. When communicating reaches the point of reasoning, it is by inquiring more into the relationships of signs and seeing how each calls for another, on and on; though, for practical purposes, the process can be broken off whenever it has gone far enough for the business in hand. The discovery of Peirce (or his masterful clinching of an idea that had been forming throughout the empirical tradition of philosophy) is that the meaning of a sign, whether on the level of a term, a proposition, or a whole argument, is to be found through appreciation of its consequences.22 For Peirce, the significant consequences are experimental or practical, and, since a sign is always a hypothesis, a matter of inference, an invitation to inquiry, the use of signs involves a search for evidence, for or against. It is a grand process of finding out what the general features of the world are, and of developing habits of conduct to fit them.23 Gallie makes a most interesting comparison between Peirce's emphasis upon general, and James's emphasis upon particular, adaptations of conduct following from the use of signs. James, with his sociable nature and social conscience, who cared deeply about the state of the nation and the world, focused on events "within the inner life-history" of the individual, perhaps partly on account of his training as a physiologist. Peirce, who could not get along with people and lived more and more in solitude, seems to have compensated for this by emphasizing the community, "both as a reality and as an ideal." 24 His mathematical and logical training had much to do with his (medieval Realist) interest in the universal, in contrast to the (Nominalist) interest of James in the particular, shared by most modern philosophers and scientists. For Peirce, there really are laws of Nature, to which events increasingly conform; whereas for James the laws are only names for particular happenings that can conveniently be classed together. 22. Cf. Gallic, Peirce and Pragmatism, p. 137. 2 j . C f . ibid., p. 148, commenting on Peirce, Collected Papers, j.431. 24. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, Vol. IX, p. 166.

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4. Signs for Peirce and Zen • Perhaps Zen is closer to Peirce in this age-old controversy, in teaching that each mind is really the universal or Buddha-mind. On the other hand, the concentration of Rinzai Zen upon the present moment is in the spirit of James. Soto Zen is focused more on the long view of life as a whole. But all Zen has the zest for conversation which Peirce had in his youth as much as James, and continued on paper, in reading the great philosophers of the past and replying with a mass of manuscript. The Soto followers of Dogen do not prize silence as much as argument. Golden as silence is to the Rinzai branch, however, they also are quick to question answers to questions. They return to silence to meditate on what has been said, or on difficult sayings of predecessors; though Zen, in general, intends to get beyond what has been said or could be said, to a practical consequence. Soto men feel that Rinzai men overemphasize the experience of satori, or sudden awakening; that it is better to spread a gradual deepening of appreciation over all that life offers. Yet, this diffusion of value is supposed to follow for Rinzai, too. And for both there is always more to say. Rinzai sayings are elliptical and enigmatic, whereas Soto expression is closer to the effort of Peirce and James to be clear and explicit. For Peirce, any sign is to be understood through other signs, and the observations or experiments they call for. Perhaps this was best expressed at a preanalytical stage by emphasizing the puzzling aspect of words in their reference to what is beyond words, while relying on words to carry the search another step. This anticipates Peirce's fallibilism, his recognition that every sign, in having to be interpreted, may be misinterpreted; though established habits of inference usually build up enough sense of certainty to release action. So, the Zen master, after leading his interlocutor on, would break off an interview, it might be with a laugh or a slap; yet leave the impression that the inquiry could be continued. If now it is time to pass the tea or do the dishes, the time will come back for more questions. Peirce shows why this is so. It is because anything said can be understood only by saying more. Any sign, whether a word or sentence or extended argument, makes sense by belonging to a system of signs. Nor is this merely a verbal involvement calling for more talk, since the meaning of a sign is to be sought in its practical conse-

154 quences, in doing what is indicated. But there is also in Peirce the Zen sense of doing things for their own sake, not for a purpose. H e will not say that sign-using is for the sake of action any more than action is for advancing thought or the sign process. Peirce had laboratory research in mind, where the scientist may work alone but with the sense of co-operating with the "community of scientists" in terms to be shared with them and corroborated by them. Peirce seems not to have appreciated the extent to which thought would have this public character outside the procedures of laboratory science,25 although he recognized that language would not be the means of communication it is if it did not refer to common aspects of experience. In life, as in the laboratory, men learn to guide their conduct by patterns of expectation of the "if . . . then" sort: that is, that if certain steps are taken, certain results are likely to follow. Whereas Peirce thought of the sign-process mainly as it works in mathematical or logical procedures, in connection with controlled manipulation of materials and apparatus to test hypotheses in one or another field of science, there is something of the sort in Zen. In ignorance of the technical and critical methods of science, the Zen way may seem a blundering and groping through trial and error, without any clear criterion of sense and nonsense, thinking and nonthinking, through speech and silence, which brings no change in the work men live by. The only effect upon farming and gardening, hewing wood and hauling water, seems to be in reaching the feeling that nothing needing to be done is onerous. Zen gives the sense that chores are wonderful and does not question the doing of them in the time-honored way. Zen relies upon habit, as Peirce sees that all men do for the most part, even when they acquire the scientific habit of improving their habits. To what extent the daily work of Zen Buddhists now is being altered by the influence of science, one may wonder. There seems to be nothing in their position to oppose science. They must be increasingly aware of it, since their monastery training now commonly follows upon graduation from a university, which may even be a Zen university. The idea has occurred to some that, in order to carry out Zen's bodhisattvaideal of service more effectively, each monk should study medicine 25. C f . Peirce, Collected Papers, j . 4 2 j , and GalHe, Peirce and Pragmatism,

pp. 159-160.

155 or some useful branch of science. Whatever may divide Zen from Peirce and the scientific outlook indebted to him, there is in both Zen and Peirce the conviction that using signs or silence should be tested and justified in a practical outcome. For Zen, the practical consequence has been found not in doing things differently so much as in doing them well and finding them worth doing. What counts is the attitude. In the Zen experience at the full, everything is still the same except for being more than it was. This "more," which William James honored in religious experience, Peirce found in the logical process, and explained by the fact that everything is relational. When we think about a concept or a property, we discover that it is what it is through its relations with other things, which can be traced with patience and training enough. But, whereas in the past, both in East and West, there has been considerable recognition that each thing is related to other things, this is not so interesting to Peirce as another insight. What he establishes impressively is the way the reality of a thing is related to human will and purpose. This has been missed by Zen almost entirely. In the ancient ways of working with Nature to sustain mankind, a spade is to dig with, a bucket is to carry water in, wood is to burn. But the uses of a few such things are so habitual and customary in the Zen world that Peirce's point scarcely appears. For Peirce, not only tools, foodstuffs, clothing, and building materials are what they are in view of what can be done with them. The reality of anything may come to be thought of in terms of the uses that could be made of it, with the processes by which it could be produced, attained, or maintained. This is a more dynamic and creative outlook than that of Zen. A river is still a river, but it may be made a means of generating electricity, if men will. The course of the river, its depth, flow, and flood, will be controlled when men learn what a river is, not just in itself, not just in the banks it happens to have and the regions it winds through, but in what it would be and could do.26 Yet, it may be possible for Zen to take in this dimension of things: the potentialities they have in relation to the capacity of men to study them out and plan with them. If Zen can appreciate a spade, Zen should be able to admire a hydroelectric plant. On the other hand, it may be that after agreeing with Peirce a person may 26. C f . Peirce, Collected

Papers, 5.431, and Gallie, Peirce and Pragmatism, p. 155.

156

still find solace in the enhancement of the actual through the Zen view. It can still do us good to realize that each of us is Buddha as much as any Buddha that ever was. This is compatible with the conviction of James that man could not be the fighter for ends that he is if the sense of living his own life with initiative and zest were an illusion. Peirce himself works back toward Zen—with his tychism, his doctrine of the prevalence of chance and spontaneity, while also dwelling upon the stable features of the world, which enable men to plan more and more elaborately—and thinks of everything as approaching a more regular state of affairs. 5. Religious Reach of the Sign Process • The nonmechanical, though increasingly regular, character of life is established for Peirce by the way action is interfused with thought. The use of signs transforms conduct from the uncontrollable behavior it would otherwise be. Men can manage themselves, in addition to things around them, when they have the benefit of signs. Life becomes significant. When thought, which is resort to signs, is applied to action and serves it, the objection may be made that thought is demeaned and reduced below its proper level. Peirce replies that the action to which thought is applied is thereby conceived action. To use his illustration, he does not mean that thought, "in the sense of the purport of symbols," becomes merely thoughtless acts, any more than the painter's art, "applied to dabbing paint upon canvas," can rightly be called nothing but dabbing. There is all the difference between just dabbing and dabbing with art that there always is between doing anything mechanically and doing it with the purport of symbols. It is this difference which William James missed when he located the self of selves in movements and breathings in the head and chest instead of in the conversation that moves and breathes there and thereby. No more than the art-life consists in merely dabbing paint does any intelligent living consist of the uncontrolled activity it would be without the sea change wrought by the ability to will results. When using signs enables us to see that if we do this, then that can be expected to ensue, our conduct is so altered from mere dabbing or dubbing that it becomes thoughtful. This change, which Peirce called "the living inferential metaboly of symbols," makes thinking consist of action that is willed and in-

157 tended, on the hypothesis that certain consequences can be anticipated upon condition of taking certain steps.27 Then, what we do depends upon how we think, while what we think depends upon how we do, when we act thoughtfully. This tie-up between thought and action is bound up also with Peirce's realization that human life is not sealed in individual units, and less so the more it becomes thoughtful, since thought or the use of symbols is shared with other people. Before Mead, he sees that, even when a person seems to be alone, if he thinks, he does so by speaking with himself as with another, after the pattern of bandying signs with other people; "for all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language." 28 Here, Peirce's scientific interest merges with his religious feeling. For, if life and thought are interpersonal, the importance of having the best possible relation with others becomes obvious, and the word for this is love. It is interesting that, whereas William James spoke of "religious inspiration" and "spiritual health" as depending upon "pluck and will," and as being "worth more than large amounts of that sort of technical and accurate information which we professors are supposed to be able to impart," Peirce sees no break between what is technical and what counts most in life. On the contrary, it is in keeping with his research that he appreciates religion as "a great, perhaps the greatest factor of that social life which extends beyond one's own circle of personal friends." 29 This conception of religion amounts to an extension and celebration of what his study of signs reveals: that a human self depends upon communication, which carries everyone out to other people and beyond anything limited or local. The nature of the sign-process is to interpret whatever is of interest by reference to something further. Steady movement from the particular toward the general has not only a social but a cosmic outreach. But, whereas painstaking analysis can establish this for a few thinkers, religion can express it for everyone. Peirce admittedly could not see the possibility of setting up a hypothesis in a strict sense, to be tested by consequences with anything like certainty, outside the physical sciences. In morals, religion, and metaphysics, then, vagueness was inevitable. Yet a man with any curiosity or imagination would want to think things out 27. C f . Peirce, Collected 29. Ibid., 6.449.

Papers,

J.402, footnote 3.'

28. Ibid.,

j.421.

IJ8

as best he could here, also. Here Peirce and William James were both willing to venture beyond the "technical and accurate." In fact, Peirce's very familiarity with mathematics and physical science had taught him that certainty was unattainable even there. The most careful measurement was never exact; the more careful two or more observers were the more discrepancy there would be in their findings. Laws were never absolute. Nature was not reducible to rule. This was not just because of inability to be altogether accurate, he believed, but because chance and change actually make things more or less incalculable. So, although science can be reliable for practical purposes, is self-correcting and can allow for error, it is always fallible. No facts are beyond question; no arguments, either. Yet, vagueness in science is not simply a shortcoming but an asset too. It gives science a future. So with the looseness of ordinary language: this keeps it flexible and capable of development. In short, while religion is so much vaguer than science as to be quite a different affair for Peirce, they both belong to the use of signs by which human life advances. Peirce has relatively little to say about religion. But, in some paragraphs on "My Belief in God," he speaks of walking a lonely road at night and thinking how many more stars there are than he can see. It occurs to him that, just as one is influenced by long acquaintance with a man of great character, so serious contemplation of the universe can affect a person, imbuing him with love. This is what God means to Peirce. He confesses that here his thought is not so much argument as appeal to instinct, but says that instinct "is to argument what substance is to shadow." This expression is an allusion to the elder Henry James, whom Peirce admired. If he had known Zen, he could also have alluded to its doctrine of notthinking and "no-mind." Peirce seems to take from the elder James the idea of God's ongoing creation as "developing our real manhood" by "detaching us from a false dependence upon Him." 30 This can also be likened to Zen Buddhism's weaning from worship of an external Buddha. Yet, as Buddha remains the name for the nameless reality in Zen, so God remains for Peirce the word for the truth and reality sought by science; also reached for by religion with a wider net. The stars 30.

Ibid.,

6 . 5 0 2 - J 0 4 , 507.

iJ9 fill Peirce with awe as they did Kant, and with the love which Kant put into the kingdom of ends. Kant linked the stars with the moral law. Peirce saw shining in them the whole expanse of what is and what ought to be. Both dimensions can be there together if what is evolves; if love is creative and creation is love. This vision of Peirces is not unlike that of Edwards, who saw the glory of God in Nature; or that of Emerson, for whom the transcendental was the highest experience of Nature. Peirce, moved by the far stars, also is like Thoreau rejoicing over the "divine objects" he beheld, though for him they might be sticks and stones. Peirce, no less than these predecessors, rejoices in the wonder of what is, while seeing it stretch into all that is to be done. He feels that the religious experience is short-circuited if it does not fuse gratitude with obligation. So much needs to be done that all men should get together on it. "Working together should wipe out their differences while washing away superstition. Like Royce, who was influenced by him, Peirce thinks of the church as a great community laboring to realize possibilities that are there. A n d Peirce stands by William James (whom he loved in spite of their differences) in seeing a moral equivalent for war, saying: " A religious organization is a somewhat idle affair unless it be sworn in as a regiment of that great army that takes life in hand, with all its delights, in grimmest fight to put down the principle of self-seeking, and to make the principle of love triumphant. It has something more serious to think about than the phraseology of the articles of war. Fall into the ranks then; follow your colonel." The spirit of William James's father is vivid in the climax of this passage: "Keep your one purpose steadily in view, and you may promise yourself the attainment of your sole desire, which is to hasten the chariot wheels of redeeming love!" 3 1 The world is wonderful as it is. But it is a process of becoming, which more and more clearly depends upon love; upon devotion to the possibilities in men's capacity to overcome selfishness and separateness. With the clarity of science and the insight of religion we see that facts are avenues to ends, when we strive for them. For Peirce finally, as for William James, it is the fight for ends that makes life worth while. Peirce does not forget that first among ends 31. Ibid.,

6.448.

lío are persons, whom creative love makes neighbors; in its circular way projecting them into independency and drawing them into harmony. This is summed up for him in the Golden Rule, and in John's saying that "God is love." A sober and prosaic expression of it, putting science and religion together, concludes Peirce's paper on "Evolutionary Love": "I doubt if any of the great discoveries ought, properly, to be considered as altogether individual achievements." 32 Peirce's explicit statements on religion lack his characteristic originality, because he did not always realize here the import of his own work. His tribute to creativeness, love, and spontaneity in the cosmos, tending toward order, must be related to his doctrine of signs. This doctrine reveals the wonder of making persons by means of words (in their beginning was the Word) and shows the outreach of everything, in being what it is and also something more. Not only the lights in the firmament are for signs and for seasons. Whatever men are able to talk about can be identified with more or less definition, whether a star or a self, but will wriggle out of its form like the rod that frightened Moses. For Peirce, everything and everyone, even when appearing clearly, will have a further aspect which is unforeseen, which is mysterious, which is more. It is in hearkening to the voice of the latter aspect, of a person or of the universe, that Peirce moves into the religious sphere in his own way. But he misses the chance to grasp the religious attitude firmly as an outgrowth of the dialectic of question and answer which forms social selves in the first place and then leads them onward, Godward. He fails to see the religious significance of the values he does see, in the way of love, honesty, and creativeness, in all groups and persons, including scientists. When speaking of God he seems to forget his own discovery of the perspective opening ahead of any act, as belonging to the ceaseless development of signs, from the vague to the clear, the mathematical, and on to the vague again, the more that moves ahead like the horizon. The stars may or may not lead to love of the universe. Instead of falling back upon Kant here, Peirce might have followed out the curve of his own thought to find the love of God resulting from the 32. Ibid.,

6.317.

x 6 i

total impact of human relations—not simply the outcome of knowing some great personality. The saints apart, every actual person, even the greatest, even Jefferson or Lincoln, has plenty of frailties; so that we cannot love him altogether, although we love his ideal intent, the love in him, as Santayana would say. But Peirce has made it possible to see the mistake he makes in trying to define God as an entity to arrive at, once for all, as if the sign process could halt with some final sign such as the Pharisees wanted to be shown.

C H A P T E R XI

•

ROYCE AND THE

ABSOLUTE

I. In Pessimism the Ground of Hope • Josiah Royce carried on William James's fight for ends and Peirce's idea of creative love, with James's concern for the individual and Peirce's feeling that the individual is part of an overarching whole which is always in process. Peirce's mathematical thinking helped Royce to envisage the infinite which he needed for his Absolute. Royce embodied the friendly foe whom James harbored in his own breast. For James, while opposing monism, was attracted by the idea of a God, if not an Absolute, to rely on, supernatural though finite. If he could reply to Royce, James could answer himself. The initial problem for both men was how to meet pessimism. This seems not to have bothered Peirce, who had more of James's father's confidence in the upward trend of everything, and justified this confidence with his study of science; whereas what bothered James and Royce was the impact of modern science upon traditional belief. They were especially troubled by Darwin, who comforted Peirce in his belief that mechanical action is not all, that chance enters in and, surprisingly, contributes to a continuous creative advance toward a more reasonable state of affairs. Peirce, too, had a pessimistic streak, in his fear that the mass of men would always need authoritarian rule. But this fear seems to have been answered by his faith in "evolutionary love," related to his trust in the enlightening and liberating effect of the ever-developing use of signs. In Peirce, the religion of love and the love of science were not at odds. James and Royce, too, felt the necessity of having this outlook, but it was harder for them. Though they also were committed to science and at the same time sympathetic to religion, this compatibility was something of which they had to persuade themselves. The concern to protect religion from science, by showing that science is not to be feared, is revealing. Each had to work to reconcile the two sides of his own nature. They could give up neither. For both Royce and James, being religious involved being honest, fair, clear—which was also being sci162

i*3 entific. Neither wanted religion to be blind or sentimental. It was religious as well as scientific to wonder and question, to doubt and not be superstitious. Royce said: "Unless you lift it up into the light of thought and examine it often, how do you know into what your cherished religious ideal may not have rotted in the darkness of your emotions?" 1 He was afraid that uncriticized religion might degenerate into "mere feelings, mere visceral sensations." When Jonathan Edwards had become worried about this, amid the excesses of the Great Revival, he had seen the test of the genuinely religious man in how he conducted his daily affairs. So Royce came to say, in his turn, that vague ideas may be realized in a worthwhile way "in so far as they inspire you to work. If they do, they shall be judged by their fruits. Otherwise, do not trust too confidently their religious value." 2 This is like Peirce's appeal to consequences (although with religion it must be a very free procedure, in contrast to the way of testing a hypothesis in exact science). It is in the temper of James's sensible, practical approach. So is Royce's constant concern that the individual not be swallowed up in processes beyond him. Yet the social values which Royce cherished were not those of the American community. No one could be more American than the Californian Royce was to begin with. But, in his day it was American to study in Germany, if possible. There, the philosophy he got was that of the Prussian state, which took up the individual and his ends into a larger whole. Mead has noted that it was characteristic of immigrants to this country, and especially of those who trekked across it, that they did not carry much intellectual baggage. Their thinking was focused on the local problems facing them day by day. The result was that, when they felt the need of tradition and culture, they looked back to Europe. American writers and thinkers, even Emerson, had done this as a matter of course, though Emerson reacted against it more than most. So Royce went to Germany and absorbed the romantic idealism which had served to interpret what was going on there. Then he tried to adapt this philosophy to the American scene, to serve the American individual. I. Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy Mifflin Co., 1 8 8 $ ) , p. 13. z. Ibid., pp. 12—13.

(Boston and New York: Houghton

164 As Mead puts it, " H e calls upon this American to realize himself in an intellectual organization of conflicting ends that is already attained in the absolute self, and there is nothing in the relation of the American to his society that provides any mechanism that even by sublimation can accomplish such a realization." 3 In contrast, William James, who also owed much to Europe, broke with it, studying psychology and philosophy with a view to interpreting conduct as it comes, without referring it to an infinite intellect. For him, conduct was self-sufficient, to be explained in its own terms, without being referred to something beyond. If James could show that an idea can "indicate its own object by pointing or leading along paths of human experience, then Royce's Absolute Thought, or Universal Consciousness, becomes a supernumerary, the idle witness of an achievement which does not require its services." 4 This is like Zen's bringing down to earth the grandiose conceptions of Indian Buddhism, to find on the level of daily living all that wonder could add. So Mead praises James for realizing that "conduct sets the process within which it must be understood," 5 and credits Royce with learning this from James, though unable to abide by it. A s James shifted the orientation of knowledge from some outside reality to the problems of life-situations, the question he most needed to answer was how to overcome the misgivings about life which accompanied and, perhaps in part, accounted for his youthf u l ill-health. He found the solution in a Zen-like shift to the will or right to believe what he needed to believe. He relied upon what he found in his own experience and could make of it. But Royce fell back on what he had learned in Germany: that if he would rest in the optimistic rationalism of Hegel it was necessary to face the pessimism of Schopenhauer. Royce wrestled with Schopenhauer, as James fought his own melancholia. Both went through a slough of despond to win hope and confidence. The saving realization which came to Royce was that pessimism 3. George H. Mead, " T h e Setting," The International 4. Ralph Barton Perry, Little, Brown & Co., 193 6), j . Mead, op. cit., 223.

Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in their American Journal of Ethics, X L , No. 2 (January, 1930), 221-222. The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Vol. I, p. 799.

I6J

contradicted itself. If life were not foundamentally worth while, if value were not really there in the world, and for us, pessimism would not be possible. If there were no good, there could be no bad. There would be just a neutral grey. Nothing could be wrong, Royce thought, if there were nothing right by which to judge. This does not make the way easy which leads out from darkness and despair, but shows that there is a way for us to find. First, we must see what is actually before us. Here science is very useful, Royce granted. But he, as much as William James and Peirce, rejected the idea that science reduced things to mechanical cause-and-effect relations, and men to robots. Science did not invalidate moral striving and religious aspiration, which belong to a higher order. In his fashion, Royce was a preacher in the line of Edwards and Emerson. In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy 6 ( 1 8 8 j ) Royce said that previous philosophies, while they had progressed toward a moral standard, were still open to the skeptic's objection of not establishing a necessary and universal claim upon us. They left men with a confusion of goals. The avaricious man says money is best, the honorable man that honor is, the wise man that wisdom is. H o w do they justify their positions? For Royce, in any stand a standard is implied, however vaguely. He holds that even the skeptic would not bother to point out conflicts in the ideals men think they hold if he himself were not, however despairingly, in search of an adequate moral standard. He could not find fault with the lines men take, except by comparing them with something better, of which he must have at least a glimmer.

2. Justifying Belief in Oneness • Royce was as practical a preacher as Edwards and Emerson could be, when they had their feet on the ground of conduct and its consequences. Peirce's realization that the logic of consequences cannot be rigorous outside the exact sciences did not deter Royce from saying that a man should act as if the results of what he did were staring him in the face. He should be able to summon them from the future by recalling what had been the fruit of previous deeds. The problem and 6. C f . Royce, The Religious Aspect of

Philosophy.

i66 the hope was to control impulses running loose in various directions, so as to achieve some harmony with one's neighbors and within oneself. Having the religious conviction that we are all members one of another, Royce believed the way to overcome conflict was to act as if the other and oneself were one being. That would bring out the unity that ideally, hence most really for Royce, was there. That was not only the way of a man with a maid, but of brother with brother, even of rivals and enemies, when they succeeded in overcoming their differences. It was the way the thirteen colonies had made one country. It would be the way for all countries to make a world. This belief in fundamental oneness, rather than in the pluralism of Peirce and William James, if it is more German than American, is like the monism which did not keep the elder James from being American enough. Royce himself went as far as possible to domesticate it. He not only read Schopenhauer but had listened to the vicissitudes of his family's covered-wagon trek to California before he was born. This must have seared into him all that might daunt the bravest spirit. But the fact that his family had come through what they did, thanks to the fortitude and faith of his mother, 7 gave him the lead which German thought enabled him to put abstractly: that obstacles can be made into steppingstones, that mistakes can be taken as signs of the right road, and failure interpreted as guarantee that success is waiting. Looking for the silver lining in the dark cloud became habitual and mechanical with Royce. But, if he overworked (and overworded) this mechanism of escape from error and evil, it had worked in the pioneer trial before he put it into German terms. This was the "spirit of '76," and of many a bitter year in American history; not only for soldier and statesman, but for men and women pitted against the wilderness, if not also against the returning burdens of civilization. Royce needed this spirit, to bring up children on a professor's salary. It seemed always needful, since, with the best will and effort, and all the foresight that could be mustered, a man would often take the wrong turn. If error could upset the best plans and dismay the stoutest heart, here was the need for moral and religious philosophy. 7. C f . Sarah Royce, A Frontier Lady: Recollections of the Cold Rush and Early California, Ralph Henry Gabriel, ed., with Foreword by Katherine Royce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932).

167 This was still the will, because of the need, to believe. But Royce would back belief with proof. The possibility of being deceived he meets with reasoning. Thus, he attacks error by asking what warns against it. There must be some consciousness of purpose whereby what is done or what happens can be compared with what was intended or should have occurred. If a mistake is made, or if I make one, how can I condemn it? or how can I blame myself? It must be because I have awareness not only of the particular instance, but have a larger consciousness by which it is judged. To Royce this means that I am finite in one respect and infinite in another. The moral is: "Devote yourselves to losing your lives in the infinite divine life." This is the preaching of Edwards again, except that Edwards expressed it more emotionally, Royce more intellectually. When Royce says, "Live out your life to the full, for it is God's life," this is also Emerson's doctrine of self-reliance, with the reason behind it. Except for the German accent, is it not Jefferson's declaration of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Jefferson gave it a civil and political connotation, but on the same divine premise. As error implies truth, which is reached by overcoming error, so evil points to good to be achieved in the process of overcoming evil. Though there is no doubt of the outcome for the divine mind, to be human and finite is to be engaged in struggle. It can also mean being buoyed up by love for the more than individual, through the perfect love implied in every bridging of separation between one self and another, as in the pain of every failure to be at one with others. Royce believes that once to have a glimpse of infinite love is to wish for union with it. "Even without knowing of the love, the very consciousness of the wretchedness of the lonely, separate life of selfish wickedness must lead one to want to forsake the husks and find the Father. . . . Duty to one's neighbor is but a corollary to all this." 8 Having seized upon the idea that the world makes sense and harmony, in the coherence of truth and love, Royce flinches at no fact or fear to the contrary. Sure of the secret, he will tackle any opposition, and trust the devil himself to reveal his master. Royce 8. Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 4 1 .

i68 sticks to it that "the truth is to be reached, neither by dreading nor by discountenancing the doubt, but by accepting, experiencing, and absorbing the doubt, until, as an element in our thought, it becomes also an element in an higher truth." 9 Nor does Royce rest with contemplation of higher truth. He tests and justifies it by acting upon it, and urging others to do likewise. He adapts the language of Kant's moral imperative to say: "Get and keep the moral insight as an experience, and do all that thou canst to extend among men this experience." More simply: " A c t out in each case what the moral insight bids thee to do. . . . So act as to increase the number of those who possess the insight." 10 Realizing that this is rather abstract and preliminary, he develops it to mean that whatever the further and more concrete good may be, it will involve harmony. Men must pursue it together and achieve it in common. It will not be selfish, but shared. Not only Royce's Christian background counts here, but Kant's interpretation of it as calling for a kingdom of ends in which everyone will be considered equally and never as a means only. This is the elder James's vision of society as the redeemed form of man. It is Whitman's dream of democracy, and Lincoln's goal of Union. In Royce's next book, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy,11 he contrasts his position not with that of the skeptic but with that of the materialist. He plays off the world of description, of material and mechanical explanation, against the world of appreciation, of immediate insight, which can dispense with the step-by-step relating and reasoning of scientific work. The roundabout effort of the self to seek truth from the outside, with patient method, is of course asserted to be inferior to the direct knowing of the deeper Self, which is only apparently finite. It is really the all-knowing Logos, the Word which was in the beginning, was with God, and was God. For Royce, just as error can exist only by grace of truth, so no truth has meaning except as embraced by Someone knowing all truth. This is the Indian idea which comforted Schopenhauer: that the little, limited self of error and partial truth is one with the divine Self, when the veil of maya is lifted and the principle of individuation is seen to be illusion. 9. Ibid., p. 171. 10. Ibid., pp. 172, 173. 11. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1892).

i

69

3. Actual Versus Absolute in Zen and Royce • "William James

questioned whether consciousness exists as a self-entity aside from the conduct of an organism which is intelligent or knowing when it fits means to ends. He tried in vain to find inside his head and chest anything like an agent to fill the role of "knower," but found that no "knower" is needed for knowing, no little man inside a man to solve his problems in addition to the actual process of solving them. Then, a supposed infinite Self-entity as All-knower would be gratuitous. The Zen masters seem to have arrived at the same conclusion. Although Zen has at times been presented as a kind of idealistic monism or pantheism, teaching that everything fits into an Absolute Mind, this is misleading. In Zen, as in Buddhism in general, the existence of an individual soul was denied long before James came to doubt the existence of consciousness as a stuff or substance. With no finite soul to begin with, there is nothing to be (or to need being) magnified into an all-inclusive Over-Soul. Suzuki says: "Zen is neither monotheistic nor pantheistic." Such terms are rejected as designations and discriminations: "even the idea of oneness or allness is a stumbling-block." 12 In Zen, the ultimate is intimate, not an abstraction, but the very negation of the abstract, as of everything that can be imagined—transcending being and non-being, to be described only as a vast emptiness. Everything is emptied out that could be seen or heard or understood. Yet the ineffable void which is left is not to be thought of as "denying the experiences of our daily life but as indeed confirming them in every way." 18 So Hu Shih thinks of Zen as emancipating men from any prejudice against ordinary life, any idea that there could be aught above it but confirmation of just trying to be human and to appreciate that this is as wonderful as to be a Buddha.14 The term "Buddha," then, becomes in Zen just a poetic way of expressing what it is to be a human being, or else is nothing. To make this emphatic, the Zen masters were capable of putting it in the most iconoclastic fashion. 12. D. T. Suzuki, Introduction

Inc., 1949), p. 41. 13. D. T. Suzuki,

to Zen Buddhism

(New York: Philosophical Library,

Studies in Zen (London: Rider & Co., 19JJ), p. n 7 . 14. Cf. Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method," Philosophy East and West, III, No. 1 (April, 1953), 18.

17 o

"Wen-yen (d. 949), when asked what the Buddha was like, replied, " A dried stick of dung." 1 5 Suzuki himself, although critical of the degree to which Hu finds Zen down to earth, has confirmed it in much of his own translation of Zen material and comment on it. "Zen is life," he has said, meaning that Zen "contains everything that goes into the make-up of life." 1 6 The baffling thing about Zen is that, at the same time, it debunks the transcendental pretensions of Indian philosophy which appealed to Schopenhauer, yet keeps the sense of a lift above unemancipated living. Zen, as Fung Yu-lan has put it, can find in this world an otherworldly afflatus.17 Thus, although Zen may express this afflatus as a wonderful oneness, Zen belongs on the side of James, with his pluralism, against the absolutism of Royce. But would Zen be with Peirce in repudiating Royce's notion of a knowledge by acquaintance superior to scientific inquiry? In Zen there is no higher "Knower." On the other hand, there is in Zen much about the One which is in everything; and much about prajnd-intuition, through which this is realized, as higher than vijiidna or logical reasoning; though it seems that, after all, prajnd must express itself through vijiidna.18 This makes it hard to tell them apart. Peirce not only has maintained that it is difficult to distinguish what we experience directly from the interpretations we put upon it, but has denied the contention of Descartes, and the whole Cartesian tradition, that all knowing rests upon intuition, in the sense of a direct, immediate grasp of truth. This impugns the empiricism of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—that is, the conception of knowledge as building upon bits of firsthand experience, and assails, by implication, phenomenology and existentialism as well. Peirce, instead of holding that we must initially know something in order to think (with it and about it), maintained that it is impossible to know anything except by thinking. And thinking, for 1 j . Quoted by H u Shih, in a selection from the same article, in Suzuki, Studies Zen, p. 1 3 4 .

in

16. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, " T h e Philosophy of Zen," Philosophy No. 2 (July, i j j i ) , 3.

I,

East and West,

17. Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New Y o r k : The Macmillan Co., 1948), chap. IZ. 18. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, "Reason and Intuition in Buddhist Philosophy," in Charles A . Moore, ed., Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1 9 5 1 ) , p. 34.

i7i him, is a process of interpreting one sign by another, back and forth, and on and on. This process begins with signs that are relatively vague and unconscious. Even when highly developed, the use of signs has the benefit of habitual inference and action. But no step in the interplay of signs can be beyond question. Even what seems most certain is, according to Peirce's philosophy, of the nature of hypothesis, to be tested when question arises, by looking to the consequences which the signs call for. Discredited, then, is the idea that a person can rely on anything privately arrived at as beyond doubt. Doubt is not a private affair, but a matter of appeal to the competent investigators in any field. In the light of this scientific approach of Peirce, Descartes' individually vouched-for "clear and distinct" ideas have no authority. Gone is the superiority of Zen's prajna. Royce's knowledge by acquaintance has no standing. Yet, for Peirce there is no last word. Not only Royce, who thought he learned from him, but Zen would, in another turn of Peirce's speculation, be closer to him. When it came to his larger views, he realized that they could not, as scientific ideas could, be tested by consequences. When he summed things up, he did it to suit himself quite as freely as James did, or Royce, or the men of Zen. As much as they, he fitted what stared him in the face with what he believed: first, that there is no end of different particular things; second, that things interact and have to be reckoned with in their stubborn and more or less unpredictable actuality; third, that things, after all, tend to develop continuity in the direction of general laws. For Peirce, then, as for Royce and Zen, if not for William James, life has not only the rich uniqueness of the present moment, filled with particular things and qualities, but somehow a continuous wholeness. To say this, Peirce must telescope the always-to-becontinued sign process and stop waiting for the test of consequences. He seems to fall back on something like the Cartesian intuition he refuses to begin with. The distinction is lost between reasoning and not-reasoning, as Zen thought becomes not-thinking and no-mind, fusing discursive vijitana with intuitive prajna, in the satori experience of enlightenment. Even so, Royce, having found the Absolute, felt that scientific knowledge came back to knowledge by acquaintance. But the Roycean argument becomes so abstract that, despite

the professed intention of saving the individual, he seems to get lost in all that overarches him. Peirce and James would not let this happen, with their insistence on pluralism, spontaneity, and chance. For Peirce the general, the continuous, is only a tendency toward synthesis. A n d for James, the world is a wide-open pluriverse, although he reserves the right to believe that the individual is somehow safe in it. Zen always holds on to the presence of the individual, in the anecdotal character of all its lore; keeping the roll of the masters' names, telling what questions were put to them, and by whom; and recording the answers with the pith of original utterance. This is like James's reliance upon cases and confessions in his Varieties, in addition to the personal note in all his writing. Interest in the individual is impossible without concern for him, which is never far from worry about him. T o care for a person is to realize the odds against him, the chances he must take, even in the most favorable circumstances. This makes for the excitement of risk and adventure which appealed to James, but which could also appall him. Hence his sympathy with the religious search for security, and his appreciation of the courage to face insecurity. If this shows less in Peirce, it would still seem to be there. Royce obviously and admittedly wanted to discount and cancel out evil by means of the Absolute. A n d Zen may seem intent on doing the same thing. But, just as Zen keeps the individual to the fore, its Buddhist compassion for him is rooted in realization of the misery of existence. This is never glossed over in Zen or argued away with Hegelian optimism. The realism of Zen was given classic expression by Suzuki when he spoke of Zen as trying to cope with pain and misery "desperately beyond our individual control," and of such proportions that he wondered: "Is God now in earnest engaged in the gigantic task of effacing man from the earth?" 1 9 Zen maintains the reality of the individual at the cost of recognizing universal suffering, rather than relieve him by losing him. When Zen gives him a comforting vista, it shows him, as in a Zen painting, gazing out upon it, out of a need equal to its vast mountains and distances. The little human being confronts the infinite, fits into it, without being lost, for all its grandeur is his. O n the edge of it, in a corner of it, he is still there, in silent tête-à-tête 19. Suzuki, "The Philosophy of Zen," op. cit.,

IJ.

173

with it, being charged with the calm and fortitude to go on with his life. The Zen artist will depict one of the legendary figures planting a pine, cutting bamboo, bringing a cow home, or going to market like anyone else. Not merely in contemplating an exalted scene—one can have the saving Zen sense anywhere, doing anything worth doing; no less in eating and drinking than in working or meditating; having a good laugh with friends, or just lying down when sleepy. Zen deliverance is not reserved for sages but includes "wine-bibbers and butchers." They all are changed into Buddhas. "There is no need for the miraculous power of the gods." 20 Whereas other schools of Mahayana Buddhism teach that attainment of Buddhahood takes many steps, through cycles of lifetimes, "Zen ignores all these, and boldly declares that when one sees into the inmost nature of one's own being, one instantly becomes a Buddha." 21 Since there can be any number of Buddhas, according to Zen, the dilemma which Royce got into is avoided. Holding that all selves are really one infinite Self, he had the problem of saving the individual from his salvation. If all are safely united in one great Being, it seems to be as difficult to get them separated as to get them together. William James kept telling his friendly opponent that life makes sense only if individuals, each more or less on his own, must struggle for ends. If evils or enemies had all been defeated, before the world began, for the only real Self, then only shadowboxing would be left for the shadow-selves that individuals would be. So Royce's argument depends upon double vision, if not double talk. Royce himself was somehow able to battle more energetically against error and evil by thinking they were eternally overcome. He was able to believe this and take heart, while forgetting it enough to make his effort seem to count. He could take one attitude as a finite mortal man, and another as being, after all, infinite. James had his own moments of needing something like this second sight. Everyone must sometimes want things eased, as in the second movement of a Mozart sonata. But, even for Mozart, this does not begin or end the piece, and his composing was done amid a sea of troubles. A t least, composition came easily for him, unlike Royce's writing. The irony is that Royce was quite as strenuous as James 20. D.. T . Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (London: Luzac & Co., 1927), P- 37421. Ibid., p. 361.

174 —and set on having an Absolute because far from resting in it. For anyone skeptical of absolute idealism, it is hard to see how an infinite Self could have saving relations with finite selves unless they were really there to be saved. But, to Royce, absolute self-consciousness is needed to enable human beings to communicate, to know things, and hold their experiences together. But, if it is the natural actual fact that we do touch and know things, as a cow eats grass, and have dealings with other people as a matter of course, there is no need to invoke a super-something. Everyday happenings are what we can count on, not what we have to account for, especially not by discounting them. The answer to Royce is in Zen's matterof-factness, first; and then in James's psychology, showing the animal nature of intelligence, the empirical character of knowing as part of conduct. When mind is seen as meeting obstacles and problems, neither a finite consciousness nor an infinite Self would help if there, or be missed if lacking. So Royce is put to it to prove, in the two huge volumes of The World and the Individual, that our problems arise in a truncated realm, while answers, solutions, and healing are to be found on a higher level of larger meanings. To keep the larger meanings from rendering ordinary life unreal and meaningless, however, he sees that his superstructure must come down to the Zen level after all, even at the risk of suggesting the skepticism he wants to refute. He sees that "the Absolute Self, to be a self at all, has to express itself in an endless series of individual acts, so that it is explicitly an Individual Whole of Individual Elements." 22 The Absolute seems to depend upon the willing, thinking, and acting of each of us. So: . . . our sorrows are identically God's own sorrows. . . . The Absolute knows all that we know, and knows it just as we know it. For not one instant can we suppose our finite experience "absorbed" or "transmuted" and then reduced, in an ineffable fashion, to its unity in the divine life. The eternal fulfilment is not won by ignoring what we find present to ourselves when we sorrow, but by including this our experience of sorrow in a richer life. . . . In the Absolute I am fulfilled. Y e t my very f u l filment, and God's, implies, includes, demands, and therefore can transcend, this very sorrow. 23 12. Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1839), Vol. I, p. 588. 23. Ibid., pp. 408-409.

175 If this "saves" the individual from the Absolute which is supposed to save him, it is fatal to the Absolute. In effect, there is nothing left of it but the passionate assertion that what matters to us does matter; that our problems can be solved somehow; that we can muster up the courage and hope we need, to face what we must face. The Absolute serves as an abstract magnification of the relations which each person has with his fellows in becoming and remaining a person. The Absolute is an elaborate and roundabout recognition that men cannot go through life alone, and do not need to, because they go together. The fact that a self, to be a self, must have social relations with other selves, disqualifies the Absolute from being a self, because there can be only one Absolute, single and alone. A n Absolute has no family and no fellows. It cannot have the relations with human beings that they have with one another. If it is anything, it is a name for those relations in a cosmic setting. Its social character is borrowed; it is theirs, and not that of another person over and above them. Something over and above men and the world may be the sum but not the substance. In Zen, the sum is called Sunyatd or Emptiness, which is nothing, in the positive sense of being nothing but what there is, such as it is, in all its suchness and particularity, yet undivided. Royce seems to see this and want to say it when, on the one hand, he tries to keep individual differences from dissolving in his Absolute and, on the other hand, realizes that the individual must not be isolated. He wants his German Absolute to make American sense, and most nearly succeeds when his theme is community. He celebrates community in his book on The Philosophy of Loyalty.2* There he takes our actual fellowship and exalts it as the supreme duty of loyalty to social unity and harmony. Thus understood, his Absolute is a glorification of the social and the human. His metaphysical idealism, which seems to do away with moral idealism by arguing that what we strive for is already safe in the Absolute, may then be read to mean that moral ideals must win out, because it is unthinkable, unbearable, that they should not. Then Royce is more tender-minded than James, in being unwilling to risk values to the rough and tumble of a world in the 24. Cf. Josiah Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908).

17*

making, with no guarantee of the outcome. Yet, it is part of the scheme of things, for Royce, that the outcome, although sure from the point of view of the Absolute, depends upon the effort men must make. Their responsibility is not written off but written in. He defines loyalty as the "willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause." 26 This is strenuous and demanding. Royce makes explicit that it is the ideal of bushidd,26 which Suzuki has attributed to the introduction of Zen into the life of the samurai.27 In bushidd, serenity goes with striving. Royce declares: ". . . the finding of one's rest and spiritual fulfilment even in one's very life of toil itself,—this state is precisely the state of the loyal, in so far as their loyalty gets full control of their emotional nature. I grant you that not all the loyal are possessed of this serenity; but that is because of their defects of nature or of training. . . . And I say: The truly serene of spirit are to be found at their best among the loyal." 28 Royce regarded bushidd as historical evidence that loyalty to a cause need not be opposed to individualism but can be united with it. In the tone of William James, he urges: "But for Heaven's sake, set about the task. Do not forever whet the sword of your resolve. Begin the battle of real individuality." 29 And what cause to choose? He answers: ". . . so choose and so serve your individual cause as to secure thereby the greatest possible increase of loyalty 2j. Ibid., p. 17. 26. Cf. ibid., pp. 72-77. 27. C f . D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1959). P- 69. 28. Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 97. What came to be known as Bushidd, the W a y of the Warrior, was given its first systematic statement by Yamaga Sok5 in the seventeenth century. Along w i t h stressing moral and martial discipline, he reflected "the conversion of the samurai class . . . from a purely military aristocracy to one of increasing political and intellectual leadership," moving toward taking "the initiative in dismantling feudalism itself." Ryusaku Tsunoda, W m . Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, compilers, Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), PP- 3 9 J - 3 9 « I am indebted to Miss Kinue Nagatomo, a graduate student at Columbia University, for knowledge of a book which may have been the source of Royce's interest in Bushidd: Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, The Soul of Japan (Philadelphia: Leeds & Briddle Co., 1900). The book had considerable vogue, having been translated into several languages. In the Preface to the tenth edition (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 190J), three years before the publication of The Philosophy of Loyalty, Nitobe mentions that President Theodore Roosevelt had done him "the honour of reading the treatise and of distributing copies among his friends" (p. v i ) . 29. Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, p. 98.

177 amongst men." That is, be "loyal to loyalty." 30 He explains that this calls for more than impulse. My whole being must be summoned, yet "not without my willing choice. I must control my devotion." 31 While granting that loyalty answers to a need in us, he wants to guard against the expediency which he t h i n k s is deplorably involved in the philosophy of James. So Royce interprets loyalty as at bottom needing "the superhuman, the city out of sight . . . the essentially eternal." 32 But all he can muster here, against James's "will to believe" in what is life-sustaining, and against Peirce's appeal to practical results, amounts to a substitution of the word "eternal" for "vital" and "practical." Royce ends with the belief he begins with: "My life is an effort to manifest . . . eternal truth . . . I know that my cause liveth. My true life is hid with the cause and belongs to the eternal." 33 While this is psychologically equivalent to the assurance reached in Zen, the approach is inverted there and brought to earth. At least the emphasis in Zen is not that each man belongs to the eternal, but rather that what is called eternal or Buddha is just what any man is. And in Zen literature, a man ordinarily belongs to a monastery before going back to a family. He is helped toward enlightenment by conversation as well as by meditation; and when he meditates he is likely to take off from what he has read or heard said. This social aspect of Zen is so obvious that it is taken for granted. When a monk tries to learn alone, no matter how hard he tries, he seems to be mostly getting stuck. To get unstuck he will travel any distance on foot to find someone to help him. The help consists, whatever is said, and whatever sense it makes, in a sharp reminder that life is the answer to the question of life; especially life as it is lived together, in the little things that keep it going day by day. The saving wisdom, sought through study and discipline and traveling on foot, is summed up in the simplest social terms: "Pass the tea." And when the tea is finished: "Wash the dishes." 4. Salvation in Community • Everything is much more complicated in Royce. Yet, in The Problem of Christianity,84 following 30. Ibid., p. 121. 32. Ibid., p. 346. 33. Ibid., pp. 347, 3 4 g . 3 I . Ibid., p. 130. 34. Cf. Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, 2 vols. (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1913).

x78 up his discussion of loyalty, he makes clear that he is rethinking Christianity as salvation of the individual through membership in a community. Though he speaks of this as spiritual and divine, he is practically stressing the Zen-fact that the divine is social. For Royce, the original sin of man is isolation, brought about by rebellion against the community which developed his self-consciousness.35 The tradition is that the individual needs relief from a burden which he cannot escape alone. Yet, Royce sees that, whatever else the burden is, it is the weight of failure to be what a man essentially is, which he can be only by losing his separateness. Though Royce accepts the language of atonement for sin and guilt, he uses the story of Joseph to bring out a quite human and social moral. Royce works away from the penal-satisfaction theory that Joseph suffers to pay off the penalty earned by his brothers; and presents the idea that Joseph, with creative skill, restores his family. He makes whole what his brothers had shattered, after he has served the country where he was carried off. Royce does not want to deny or condone evil which has been done, but to show that it can be used for good. Healing treason can strengthen the bonds. The wrongdoers are forgiven, not because their deed has been cancelled, but because it has been overruled by love, and thus transformed into a source of good.36 The hard thing to accept in Royce's reasoning is that he not only sees evil overcome by good, but as so indispensable as to be good, too. That he himself could not see evil as good when it was serious, Santayana brought out in ridiculing Royce's denunciation of Germany in the first World "War. "Was not the Universal Spirit compelled to bifurcate into just such Germans and just such Americans, in order to attain self-consciousness by hating, fighting against, and vanquishing itself? . . . His conscience spoiled the pantheistic serenity of his system. . . . What calm could there be in the double assurance that it was really right that things should be wrong, but that it was really wrong not to strive to right them?" 37 Moreover, if the good is devotion to the community, there is 3$. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 328. 3«. Ibid., p. 371. 37. George Santayana, Character and Opinion Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), pp. 124, 126.

in

the

United

States

(New

York:

179 still the question as to which community to love. Royce says that, ideally, it is the one which includes all mankind, though men as they are must be transfigured to belong to it. The trouble lies in their faulty social conditions and human nature, which inflame suspicion and strife. The hope is in building communities which will foster the creative, transforming love preached by Paul. For Royce, the Christian life means practical devotion to the community through absorbing love.38 He warns that religion will die unless it keeps in touch with social needs, and corrects lagging social institutions instead of relying on them. He believes, however, that institutions will be renewed or replaced as necessary, if the spirit of loyalty to the Beloved Community is awake and inventive; and hopes that religion will become as progressive as science.39 In Royce's final volume, he reaffirms that the "detached individual is essentially a lost being," and that this is what original sin is. He thinks this calls for repudiation of utilitarianism, because it aims at the happiness of individuals rather than at the loyalty which is devotion to the community. He interprets Paul as meaning by Christ Jesus "in essence the spirit of the universal community." 40 Thus, Royce carried on the torch, which, in his affectionate tribute to William James, he praised James for taking from Edwards and Emerson. O f Edwards, Royce said in that connection: "If the sectarian theological creed that he defended was to our minds narrow, what he himself saw was very far-reaching and profound." And of Emerson: "he transformed whatever he assimilated. . . . He thought, felt, and spoke as an American." 41 Much as Indian Buddhism was made over into something Chinese by the Zen masters, European Christianity was naturalized by James and his predecessors, if not by Royce. In both cases, the result, though colored by a culture, had universal scope. Both in China and in this country, the shift to a more earthy interpretation of what matters gave a more viable faith; one that would not wilt in the light of scientific advance, when it came or came to be realized. Fear of science, and of views in keeping with it, which has caused a frantic 38. Royce, The Problem

of Christianity,

Vol. I, p. 379.

39. Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 429, 430. 40. Josiah Royce, The Co., 1 9 1 6 ) , p. 48.

Hope

41. Josiah Royce, William 1 9 " ) . PP- 4 . St

6.

of

James

the

and

Great

Other

Community

Essays

(New Y o r k : The Macmillan

(New York: The Macmillan Co.,

i8o retreat to the kind of religion left behind by the march of civilization, does not disturb men of East or West who think in the direction of Zen. For them the Pure Land is this earth itself, human experience is its own salvation, wisdom is love of life; and the effort to help other people love it, in spite of all their suffering. For Royce himself, the value of James's Varieties of Religious Experience lay in showing the vitality of religion when freed from external forms, and also from "barren free-thinking"—that is, from the idea that everything in religion has been discredited by the teachings of evolution and psychology. At times it seems that Royce and James had the same conviction that religion is most genuine as a transforming experience which brings old ways of salvation into continuity with renewed resolve to make the most of life. What counts most in life, in practical terms, James sought in observable consequences. And Royce defended him from the criticism that these may be found in some easy, undemanding way. He knew that, for James, "What makes life worth living is not what you find in it, but what you are ready to put into it by your ideal interpretation." But Royce went somewhat beyond James, in developing this to mean: "Your deeper ideals always depend upon viewing life in the light of larger unities than now appear, upon viewing yourself as a coworker with the universe for the attainment of what no present human game of action can now reveal." 42 Royce thus brought James closer to the Absolute than he would have consented to. But Royce tried to tame and humanize it into something like James's finite God after all—needing the help of man as co-worker, in a struggle for ends. Royce tried to exonerate the Absolute of the moral indifference which James thought it must involve. Seeming to invoke his friend's will to believe, Royce said: "We need to interpret the world in order to act. We have a right to interpret the universe so as to enable us to act at once decisively, courageously, and with the sense of the inestimable preciousness and responsibility of the power to act." Royce drew close to James and they stand shoulder to shoulder in Royce's saying, "The world needs our deeds." 43 And this lesson of Royce's super-intellectualism, with that of James's warm voluntarism, comes back to Zen's steady reliance upon the importance of doing 42. Ibid., p. 38.

43. Ibid., p. 42.

I8I

what needs to be done: beginning with the dishes, but, in principle, including whatever the good of society calls for. While the difference between James and Royce can be minimized, it is still there: in Royce's emphasis on the oneness of the world, though it needs us, over against James's pluralism, and the more particular nature of the demands in response to which he would say that we act. Royce's philosophy thus remained somewhat alien to the actualities of American life. James's thought was more like Zen in being more American. Mead said of him: "It was perhaps because the solution that he sought for his own problems did not take him to foreign systems, that it was out of his own physiology and psychology, that he felt his way to an intellectual and moral world within which he could live, that the cleavage between life and culture did not appear in his philosophy." This did not keep James from condemning crudity or corruption in his own country, "but he condemned it as an American," and as a person concerned about other persons. Mead's conclusion is: "He was ready to go to the help of the Lord against the mighty, and called on others to go with him, but it was as individuals they were to go, to bring moral order into a pluralistic unfinished universe." 44 Royce was a master of argument in a grand manner, which he tried to bring down to American soil. The wonder is that he could domesticate German idealism as well as he did; and that he did it by way of what Zen taught the samurai.

44. Mead, op. cit., pp. 224, 22;.

CHAPTER

XII

•

SANTAYANA AND D E T A C H M E N T

l. Gentle Wonder • If the give-and-take between James and Royce, as between James and Peirce, and James and his father, provides turns of thought lively enough to keep on turning, there is also the relation between James and Santayana, who was his student and became his colleague. Santayana once wrote to James: "Doubtless you have from of old let seeds fall into my mind which have sprouted there into what I feel to be quite native convictions; and it comes to me now as a rather surprising happiness that I can invoke your authority in support of a great deal that I feared might seem rash in my opinions." 1 Santayana had just received James's papers "Does Consciousness Exist?" and "A World of Pure Experience." While there was agreement here, between the two men, as there would also be with Zen, upon the immediacy of experience as it flows, Santayana went on to stress the general or systematic dimension of things, as Peirce would, or Royce. But this did not bother James as much as Santayana's separation of ideals from existence, so that they could only be contemplated, not striven for and worked into the world by human effort. This spectator-attitude, flouting James's dedication to "the fight for ends," shocked him, while the impertinence of it fascinated him, from his first realization of what Santayana was up to. This was in reading his Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. James said: " I have literally squealed with delight at the imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down on page after page." 2 On another occasion he called it "a perfection of rottenness." A few years later he felt the same admiring dismay upon the publication of Santayana's Life of Reason: "But there is something profoundly alienating in his unsympathetic tone, his 'preciousness' and superciliousness. The book is Emerson's first rival and successor, but how i . Letter of Nov. 29, 1904, quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown 8t Co., 1936), Vol. II, p. 396. 1. Perry, op. cit., p. 319.

182

I83

different the reader's feeling!" Yet James added, "It is a great feather in our cap to harbor such an absolutely free expresser of individual convictions." 3 And he spoke of Santayana as "the shiniest fish in the sea." He was a rare fish in America. Still, George Santayana must count as an American philosopher, despite his Spanish birth and having a Spanish passport to the last. He is a master of English, though he said he set out to say as many un-English things as possible. He did not like being a professor, and ceased to be one as soon as a small legacy enabled him to resign from Harvard in 1912 and leave the country for good. After nine years of life in Spain he had sojourned forty years in the United States. Then he had forty more in England and continental Europe, mostly in Rome. That he gave up his position at the crest of his career has been hard to understand. He must have somewhat enjoyed teaching. Apparently it was easy for him, and he excelled at it. The legend is that to hear him lecture was like listening to Brahms. With the passing of his teachers he would have been the leading philosopher at Harvard. He might have influenced many more students than he did, who would have spread over the country. The thought of a teacher is usually more effectively implanted in direct contact than through the printed page. Even when a serious effort is made to read him, his words lack the sound of his voice and the warmth of his presence, for one who had not heard him. That Santayana's teaching has been felt as widely as it has, beyond the reach of his aging pupils, shows the devotion of his readers. And there would be less of him to read if he had not withdrawn. This would justify his retirement, even if teaching were only lecturing and discussing. But it is also committees and meetings. Remaining, he would have become responsible for more and more. He would have had to be available, to have an office and office hours; engagements, a calendar pad; even a telephone. That would have been hard on a confirmed spectator. He said once that a telephone might be a fine thing if you wanted to be in touch with someone at a distance; but not if you were where you wanted to be, doing what you liked. Thoreau would have said the same. And it is hard to imagine a Zen master with a phone at his elbow—or doing anything 3. Ibid., p. 399.

184 but banging down the receiver when his silence was interrupted. For Santayana at Harvard there would have been endless occasions to honor and be honored—or to avoid. His courtesy might not have flagged, but would have failed to protect his love of privacy and obscurity. The morning freshness, when the blank sheet was ready and the pen wet, would have faded into the daily round of corridor and class, greeting and being greeted, and getting away as soon as seemly. He refused to teach graduate students, with their seminars, elaborate assignments and bibliographies, dissertations and seriousness. He preferred the lighter touch of teaching younger, more responsive, less solemn listeners. He said: "Teaching is a delightful paternal art, and especially teaching intelligent and warm-hearted youngsters, as most American collegians are." But he also said: "in the presence of a hundred youthful upturned faces a man cannot, without diffidence, speak in his own person, of his own thoughts." 4 If this is held against him, there it is, and it goes deep. And, if his very bent and nature was a thorn in the American spirit, his dropping out is not baffling. If it is deplored, it should not be condemned, unless his being Santayana is regretted. The wonder is that he came, and stayed as long as he did; also that, in the way he wanted to count, he is counted an American. He is one of us after all: more than the Spaniard he was innately, more than the Englishman he admired and might have passed for, more than the ancient Greek he wished he had been, more than the Roman he died. Only if Americanism means the melting pot must he remain the outsider he felt he was when he went to Mass with the foreignborn. His belonging is vindicated by the American Idea of the founding fathers, vigorously renewed by his pupil, Horace Kallen: the idea of pluralism, of equality in difference, of security of all who do not threaten the security of others in Whitman's "composite nation, formed from all." The value of Santayana is in his difference, his independence, his being unassimilable. He was a supreme example of Emerson's selfreliance. He went his own way as much as Thoreau. He caused William James to say that at last Harvard had produced a man who could think. But he had no will to believe, belong, or strive. 4. George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States (New Y o r k : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), pp. 42, 43.

18 y It is my crown to mock the runner's heat With gentle wonder and with laughter sweet.® A country of stadiums, filled w i t h vast crowds day and night, might welcome one more onlooker, such as he seemed to be when, as a y o u n g instructor, he went with y o u n g friends to watch football practice. Y e t , a spectator would not be expected to be as detached, as gentle, or laughing as he—rather, to take sides, get excited and urge on. H e was too critical, too self-conscious, too humorous f o r that. Incongruous as it may also seem, he was more like a sports writer than a fan. It was the game of life that he followed. Since it happens to have relatively f e w aficionados, he did not have as many readers as Red Smith. But Santayana had a comparable amount of lore at his command, to use in setting the day's achievements against the feats of yesteryear, celebrating the superlative in terms of the unforgettable. H e , too, could draw on current idiom, poetry, and deathless prose, to find the fitting phrase, w i t h just enough mockery to let the k n o w i n g k n o w the f u n he was having, and share it with them. This is the Zen touch. A n d there is more than a touch of Zen in thinking of life as a game, or of athletic skill as akin to wisdom. T h e association of Zen with swordplay as well as w i t h the Bushidd, with archery and judo, shows the twist that goes w i t h the jest. Santayana was a thinker, but first a writer, and relied more on the right word than on argument, as he preferred to rest his case w i t h the gentle reader rather than w i t h the academy. H e liked to think that ladies and men of the world understood him when professors of philosophy did not. H e was bored b y footnotes and scorned to be a scholar. H e had the Zen respect for life and disrespect for learning, the kind of wisdom that could flash and kindle if the burning point was near. Perhaps that is w h y it is often objected that, in spite of the pleasure of reading him, he is obscure, as enigmatic as he is epigrammatic. Here he is brother to the Oriental masters. H e is that also in his withdrawal f r o m the world, and in drawing seekers f r o m afar, to delight and enlighten them, not so much b y explanation as b y his presence. H e had all the serenity of a sage, none of the pedantry of a professor. W i t and smile were ready, not out of levity or frivolity, for there was no lack of steadi5. Sonnet X m , in George Santayana, Poems 1901, 1923). P- i j .

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ness in him, but welling from quiet gaiety. This had been won by facing the worst and coming to terms with it. He smiled through the tears of things, reconciled to his own predicament and able to help others accept theirs by seeing it under the aspect of eternity. As even a dog, in the midst of a dog's life, can take his ease by the fire, so completely as to relax and reassure a human family, Santayana showed that we can, "in this great disaster of our birth . . . be happy, and forget our doom." He had the secret that "the happy filling of a single hour is so much gained for the universe at large." This was the wisdom of Emerson and Thoreau. And, though Whitman was too raucous for Santayana, this was close to Whitman's saying, "I loaf and invite my soul." It is the Taoist ideal of enhancing everything by "doing nothing," the Zen goal of "not thinking." Yet what is more American, after all, than just enjoying being alive, whenever possible, and doing the simple things that are nothing but what people do when they have nothing to do but invite their souls, or invite family or friends? This is not only American or Chinese or Japanese, but Epicurean and Christian and human. To eat a meal or have tea with Santayana was every bit of this, and perfectly natural. He did not need Absolutes, having "this real and familiar good," which he found "always various, always beautiful, hardly ever expressible in its fulness." It hurt him that anyone should "try to cancel the passing ideal, or to denaturalize it." Not aloofness but affection caused his irritation "at seeing the only things that are beautiful or worth having, treated as if they were of no account." 6 Things "worth having" were as pluralistic for Santayana as for James, and Santayana did not underestimate "the variety and incomparability of systems," either. Not only things but ways of thinking were interesting for their differences. So he did not want "any compromise or fusion that could be made of them." In the same passage he said: "I have a great respect for Indian philosophy and for Buddhism and should like to believe that I share some of their insights." Yet, without seeming to be familiar with Chinese philosophy, he suggested an interpretation of Buddhism much like that of Zen—in the direction of valuing the immediate and particu6. Letter of Dec. 6, 1905, to William James, quoted in Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, Vol. II, p. 40 j .

i«7 lar experience, and dismissing anything supposed to be higher and grander. He disapproved of a Brahman, and could as well have said a Buddha or Buddha-nature, "in whom all distinctions disappear," when he likened it to the reality of Western idealists "on which they fell back when they dismissed appearances." It seemed to him that this "was not what their languages indicated by the words 'spirit' or 'ego' but an absolute intensity or abyss which remained when all particulars vanished, or were sucked in and made identical in a deep sleep." 7 When he called himself an ignorant man, it was not so much in the spirit of Socrates with his desire for a more intellectual grasp as it was in the vein of the Taoist or Zenist who wanted a more intense realization of what James called "pure experience." Santayana indicated this by saying, " I am an ignorant man, almost a poet." Like Taoist and Zen masters, he was content to be ignorant in the sense of not being learned, if he could recover, as a poet would, the fresh impressions of innocence, with the appreciation of one who refused to let them go for the lure of something said to be better. Yet, also like those Eastern teachers, he was philosophical as well as poetical, in that he did not just happen to have the attitude he had, but cultivated and justified it. There was in him a resemblance to and a return to the untutored outlook that was deliberate. He did not remain a child. In liking to be like one he was not a child but a sage. It was the difference between being simple when it could not be helped, and being simple on principle; after enough knowledge of the world to value the birthright of unspoiled delight above any mess of pottage that could be cooked up. It may seem inconsistent, then, that Santayana should dwell upon Shakespeare's lack of a religion, the "theoretical wholeness" of a system. But Santayana grants that if "the choice lay between Christianity and nothing," it would be better to choose "nothing" and be "in the presence of life and death with no other philosophy than that which the profane world can suggest and understand." 8 This "nothing" sounds like the Taoist's Great Void which has room for everything. I f it is true of Shakespeare that "the cosmos 7. George Santayana, "On Philosophical Synthesis," Philosophy East and West, I, No. i (April, 1 9 5 1 ) , j. 8. George Santayana, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900), p. 152.

i88 eludes him" intellectually, "he does not seem to feel the need of framing that idea," 9 which is to say that he feels at home in the world. He will take it neat, "without a meaning," rather than add what is not wanting. Santayana makes the same point about Goethe, saying he was "too wise, perhaps, to be a philosopher in the technical sense, or to try to harness this wild world in a brain-spun terminology." 10 Lucretius and Dante are more systematically philosophical, but "Goethe gives us what is most fundamental." 1 1 He is a "poet of pure experience" which happens to be "miscellaneous, to be indefinite, to be unfinished." 12 This is also true of Whitman. While Santayana would mark down his "poetry of barbarism," he justifies it after all. If "the order of his words, the procession of his images, reproduce the method of a rich, spontaneous, absolutely lazy fancy," 13 this is close to the Taoist ideal of not thinking and of "doing nothing." The gentleman and scholar in Santayana are ironical about Walt Whitman, but the poet Santayana can feel his "cosmic justification" and find him "a welcome companion" for "escape from convention and from that fatigue and despair which lurk not far beneath the surface of conventional life." Santayana responds to a mysticism which "makes us proud and happy to renounce the work of intelligence, both in thought and in life, and persuades us that we be9. Ibid., p. IJ4. 10. George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1910, 1 9 2 7 ) , p. 130. 11. Ibid., p. 204. 12. Ibid., p. 198. See Harold E. McCarthy, "Poetry, Metaphysics, and the Spirit of Zen," Philosophy East and West, I, No. i (April, 1 9 5 1 ) , ifi-34. McCarthy appreciates the spirit of Zen in Goethe, and that he apparently had it without benefit of the Eastern teaching. In the West, as in the East, it is, "taking life and the world as they are and without trying to read them according to one's own interpretation" (p. 30). " I t may well be that the true philosophy is no philosophy. Or, less paradoxically speaking, philosophy may truly become wisdom when it transcends the intellect and becomes a quality of l i f e " (p. 3 4 ) . If "there is no abstract philosophical scheme embodied in Faust" (p. 2 7 ) , it is became Faust is filled with " l i f e and nature itself. . . . T o ask what idea or purpose or meaning is embodied in nature is to ask a question to which no significant answer can be given. Reality does not lend itself to questioning of this kind. It lends itself only to the process of living through, of grappling with, of enjoying, of contemplating, of celebrating in song, or re-expressing in poetry, painting, and the dance" (p. 2 5 ) . 13. Santayana, Interpretations

of Poetry and Religion,

p. 177.

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come divine by remaining imperfectly human." Here is "inspiration to all loafers." 14 Santayana, living as late as he did and reading modern literature, had a romantic cast, despite his preference for Homeric Greek. He even read Proust and was fascinated by him. Commenting (in a letter) on a comparison of himself with Proust, Santayana spoke of his own view as Epicurean: "that is, the enjoyment of life from moment to moment in its purity, beyond care and regret." A better short statement of the Zen position would be hard to come by, especially with the addition of his next sentence: "The element of beauty or art is not more conspicuous in my mind than that of curious interest, wonder, or amusement." When he adds, "And the affections, in so far as not sorrowful, count in it above all," this may not sound Epicurean or in keeping with Zen. But the followers of Epicurus controlled their feelings because they had them, and are noted for friendship. The Zen figures, with their testy and crusty manner, not only had Buddhist compassion and the call to help people in the way they found effective, but loved Nature, as many a painting and poem attests. In the same letter Santayana questioned whether his philosophy should be called aesthetic, preferring to speak of it as "intellectual, spiritual or (if you dislike pious words) Epicurean," explaining: "It seems to me that we could not rationally rest in the aesthetic unless we made it cover the whole fruition of life." Coming back to Proust, he questions a "contrast of his recovered experiences with relations as against my unrelated essences. An essence in both of us is identical with itself no matter how often reconsidered: is identity a relation? Undoubtedly there is a fundamental difference in our sentiment, because Proust is weaving together his -memories, whereas for me the dates and repetitions of intuitions are unimportant, as would be the date or number of replicas of a painting. His mind is autobiographical and novelesque: mine, even in my 'novel' is not, but rather moralistic, in the ancient sense of collecting insights, thoughts, and maxims. The empirical setting of these high lights interests me little in itself. Yet they, and every essence, has essential relations that define its character. It would not be true (or possible) that I consider essences apart from 14.

Ibid.,

p. 187.

190 these internal or intrinsic relations. Besides, complex essences contain an arrangement of other essences accidental to the latter: so that the most complicated set of relations conceivable, if ever conceived, is intuited as one essence. The whole panorama of Proust's book, if one had mind enough, would thus appear absolutely and, if you like, unrelated." 15 In sum, the relations found among things do not diminish their pluralistic character, nor the "curious interest, wonder, or amusement" they afford. But Santayana's attitude is that of Zen rather than of Proust, in "collecting insights" more than memories. Santayana wanted to get the hang of things instead of treasuring the incidents in which he encountered them. Nor did he go much out of his way to find interesting things. He felt no need to explore each dark cave for more. 2. Making the Best of Disillusion • But in the sunlight he never forgot the shadows. He schooled himself, like Spinoza, to remember that off the stage of any life were infinite dimensions and possibilities—not all favorable to man but all good for contemplation. Considering how many essences never got enacted in actuality, Santayana marveled at what did come into existence. The odds seemed to be against anything's coming to be where and when and what it was. Any number of things might have been there instead. This thought was confirmed if not implanted in him by William James, who shared Peirce's feeling for the wild looseness of a universe of chance and spontaneity, the very laws of which had no absolute regularity. Like Royce, initially, Santayana was fascinated by Schopenhauer's similar notion of an irrational Will thrashing about in the world. Without accepting Sartre's idea that existence is prior to essence, since for Santayana an essence is simply the character of a thing whether it exists or not, he anticipated the existentialist notion that things, in their utter diversity, have no earthly rhyme or reason. They make sense only in ideal structures of the mind or imagination. As Sartre was to say, whatever exists has a slimy way of slipping out of any order imposed upon it. 15. Letter from Santayana, Rome, April 4, 1937, to the author, with regard to Van Meter Ames, Proust and Santayana: The Aesthetic Way of Life (Chicago and New York: Willett, Clark & Co., 1 9 3 7 ) .

i9i Santayana called this world absurd, and preferred to contemplate the scheme offered by the Catholic Church, saying it was too good to be true. He felt that here below we are in Alice in Wonderland, where anything can happen and anything may turn into something else. This is fun to read about and imagine, but it can be appalling to feel that it is real and unavoidable. Most people shrink from it into reassuring conventions, including the comfort of religion. But this comes to be cold comfort for a person who is persuaded, as he was, that religion "was found out more than two hundred years ago." He added: "it seems to me intolerable that we should still be condemned to ignore the fact." 16 It was also painful to think it was a fact. But it seemed to be necessary if one was to accept modern science. So William James had melancholy moods until he developed his will to believe that somehow science did not have the last word. Santayana, following Matthew Arnold, took refuge in the aesthetic attitude. If religion was "exquisite moonshine," 17 the adjective made up for the noun. Religion was poetry, but he liked poetry. "Despair before us, vanity behind," Santayana wrote, but affirmed that we can forget it and be happy after all, by enjoying the moment or the hour, whenever possible, as the eternity it is, in being timeless while it lasts. The Catholic religion he had lost in youth, he would recover, not for its impossible promises but for its order and imagery: for making the ideal vivid apart from the power to realize itself, which would only lower it to the mad scramble of the real. The value of the ideal, for Santayana, is that it can be loved without being possessed, and thus is safe from disillusion. He thought that, if it had not been for the Reformation, which stiffened the Catholic Church in insistence upon dogma, the humanistic trend of the Renaissance might have rationalized Christianity. Yet, he condemned modernism, because it seemed to him that the value of the Gospel was so encased in supernaturalism as to evaporate if freed from it. On the other hand, he thought the same teaching, that the real is redeemed by the ideal forever flowering in the midst of actuality as well as floating above it, was available in 16. Letter of Dec. 6, 190J, to William James, quoted in Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, Vol. II, p. 402. 17. Perry, op. cit., p. 402.

192 other religions; and that the Greek sages had lived by the same light, without benefit of religion in any supernatural sense. He could have said the same of the Zen masters, if he had been familiar with their iconoclastic understanding of Buddhism, while keeping its forms and terms. It was Santayana's conviction, however, that in what had been Christian lands, the most available vehicle for the wisdom of life would continue to be the traditional orthodoxy. He had no quarrel with it, since for him the idea of Christ in the Gospels was not less vital when seen to be natural. He called this idea "a poetic expression of the dawn of spirit in every reflective mind." 18 What he means by spirit requires considerable study of his books, yet seems clear enough in many a passage. It may not help when he says it is intuition, though this need not involve him in conflict with Peirce's critique of the Cartesian conception of knowledge that dispenses with a referential use of signs. To Santayana, the insight or awareness which is spirit, whatever the genesis or explanation of it, is a joy in itself when free—free of distress and distraction. Since it is not easy to be free of these in the world, otherworldliness is indicated, in withdrawal, meditation, the cell, and the cloister. So, for Santayana as for Zen, freedom was reached through discipline and simplicity, though the rustic setting was exchanged for the centers of Western culture. In civilian clothes in a hotel room he could be as contemplative as a monk. He could be a materialist, dine well, read what appealed to him, take spiritual exercise on paper, walk through busy streets, sit on a park bench, enjoy the verdure, and be saved. He had done it in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did it elsewhere. He said, "the sky is above every country." After trying Oxford and Paris, he found Rome most congenial. The monuments reminded him of Christian saints and ancient sages. He felt safe in the everlasting now. When an American friend looked him up he would be charming. The visitor might feel sorry for him, isolated for long stretches when apparently his only contacts were with elevator boys and waiters. But he did not feel sorry for himself. Like Peirce, he had Aristotle; also the company of Lucretius and Spinoza. There was the Eternal City, with its coming and going on the old errands. 18. George Santayana, The Idea of Christ in the Gospels or God in Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), p. 174.

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The fountains were there. War passed. The world went on and he watched. He was not teaching at Harvard. He was at peace. A t least that was the front he kept up. It was his strength in his final weakness, when the Blue Nuns had taken him into their clinic. There he is remembered for his gentleness and tranquillity. If he had given up his life in America, and most of what passes for life anywhere, the Zen monks would know what he had, if the priest who presumed at the last did not. Santayana had his reward. If, in his silence, he did not try to stop thinking, as often urged in Zen, he once said, chuckling, that thinking was no trouble for him, since he thought only of what occurred to him. As long as he could, he wrote it down in the morning. Near the end he wrote, in "The Poet's Testament," that exile had made him free; and, "I give back to the earth what the earth gave." 19 It may still seem that Santayana did not choose the better part, in giving up this country as he did his own, to live the life of reason in his fashion, in the realms of being that he found. Harvard tried to get him back, if only for a few lectures, and he would not come, even for a mere appearance at the three hundredth anniversary. But the pride of the Harvard philosophy department has been the diversity of its famous members. If his contribution was his difference, we should not wish it less, as it would have been if he had not left, or had been willing to return. By the same token, what he did for the United States was to question its character and opinion. Though wholesale acceptance of his path would not work, or would work havoc, there is no danger of that. Americans are not likely to become solitaries. But it does them no harm to see what that means, and the perspective it gives. They did not slow down for Emerson, but it did them good in their hurry and worry when they heard him ask, " W h y so hot, little man?" Santayana said, in his book on Americans, "I am confident of not giving serious offence to the judicious, because they will feel that it is affection for the American people that makes me wish that what is best and most beautiful should not be absent from their lives." Whatever they might have missed, he felt they were on the way to recover much, for he saw in them "a fund of vigour, goodness, and hope such as no nation ever possessed before." He was 19. George Santayana, P- 14-

I95i)>

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Testament

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194 sure that his sentiments were secretly shared by many of them, and confessed: " A f t e r all, it has been acquaintance with America and American philosophers that has chiefly contributed to clear and to settle my own mind." 20 In his detachment, it was America that he was detached from, more than it was Spain, England, France, or Italy. The hero of his novel is the author, as much as he is American and Puritan. Santayana is making fun of himself in chuckling over Oliver Alden's search for the best at the cost of rejecting the good. Oliver has the build and the co-ordination which the young instructor admired when he went with students to football practice. Oliver can row or drive a car with a skill forever a mystery to a pure spectator. A part of the author laughs and dances in the halfLatin Mario, who circles about the serious hero, leaving him bogged in conscience like a stick in mud. But Santayana has little of Mario's butterfly insouciance, while sharing with him a tender pity for Oliver, because he lacks their advantage of being Catholic. This explains his vain struggle to do good and find the good in the world, instead of looking in the only place where the ideal can lodge: in the unreal. The contrast between Mario and Oliver could have been developed from James's image of an Italian, with little inward capital, cutting circles round a correct Yankee obstructed by scruples and considerations.21 Perhaps it bothered Santayana when his putting ideals out of reach was called by James "a perfection of rottenness." It was a reply to James to show the futility of Oliver's effort to realize high ideals here below instead of being content to contemplate them. To Santayana, this was the way to get hurt, but he did not so much ridicule it as sympathize. He even admired it as boyish if not manly. He did not hide admiration for men of action, but thought of them as succeeding where Oliver failed, through seeing what was possible and seizing upon it at the critical moment. If it was cynical to say this, as to do it, Santayana did not hesitate to think that a cynical view might be right. When this led him to praise, not only Caesar and Napoleon, but Mussolini, it pained 20. Santayana, Character and Opinion 2 1 . C f . George Santayana, The Last York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1 9 3 6 ) , Psychology (New York: Henry Holt &

in the United States, pp. vi, vii. Puritan (London: Constable & Co., 1 9 3 5 ; New chap. VII; William James, The Principles of Co., 1 8 9 0 , 1 9 1 8 , 1 9 3 1 ) , Vol. II, p. J 3 8 .

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American friends, in addition to saddening the shade of William James and the spirit of Oliver Alden. Santayana honored the powers that were, but did not expect them to be for long. Sooner or later they would try to swim against the current or mistake its direction. Then they were doomed. According to his determinism, what happens must be in the cards, including some possibility of working for ends. Nothing can be ruled out, as far as our limited knowledge goes. This means that in practice, Santayana, like Peirce and William James (but without their reservations), believed that chance rules the world, and anything can happen. That does not make it likely that our wishes will all come true, or surprising that some of them do. We must make the most of these, and then make the best of disillusion. "All that is requisite," he said, "is that we should pause in living to enjoy life, and should lift up our hearts to things that are pure goods in themselves, so that once to have found and loved them, whatever else may betide, may remain a happiness that nothing can sully." 22 With European smoothness, Santayana rounded out the wisdom which Zen, with Chinese brevity, left cryptic, obliging each seeker to see for himself where the good lies. In American ballads and other folklore there is the same implied advice to look for satisfaction in the commonplace in spite of the troubles, burdens, and ills that flesh is heir to, in amusing contrast to artificial pretensions. Santayana said: "Philosophy in the good old sense of curiosity about the nature of things, with readiness to make the best of them, has not been absent from the practice of Americans or from their humorous moods; their humour and shrewdness are sly comments on the shortcomings of some polite convention that everybody accepts tacitly, yet feels to be insecure and contrary to the principles on which life is actually carried on." Yet, he added, "these wits have not taken their native wisdom very seriously. . . . Their fresh insight has been whispered in parentheses and asides. . . . What people have respected have been rather scraps of official philosophy, or entire systems, which they have inherited or imported. . . . " 2 3 There is something of the same ambivalence in Santayana himself, in his defense of "homely perceptions" while erecting a con22. Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, p. 190. 23. Ibid., pp. j—6.

196 siderable system, of a design frankly taken from Plato and Aristotle, though supposed to rest on simple fact. Reading Santayana's memoirs, one is struck by the povertous dimensions of his life, beside the verbal halls he built upon it. In contrast to these, and to the vistas he looked out upon, not only "poor little Avila," with the barren hills around it, but Harvard and Boston seem shut in. His Atlantic crossings he called "fussy voyages." Though he loved England, he saw it almost as a tourist. He made the most of his few contacts there, but they amounted to little more than the stuff of gossip and letters home, in awe of a country house, the servants, the title of the owner, the mess his life had become. The impressions are mostly outdoor ones, gathered on solitary walks, and with the help of the poets. Houses are seen inside through Dickens. With this much to go on, Santayana could write his richly appreciative Soliloquies in England.2* Finally, in Rome, he was still soliloquizing. Except for his hotel, and one restaurant or another, the old philosopher seldom entered anywhere, unless conducting a visitor to the Pantheon, or to San Pietro in Vincoli to see the Moses. It is sauntering with a cane, comfortably incognito in the crowd, or sitting on a park bench with something to read, that one pictures him. Not only his habitations but his peregrinations were, in his perspective, modest and confined, including his tour of the Near East, which he enjoyed with a leisure and even luxury that few travelers are likely to have again. He made plain that he would not have chosen to be himself, but he learned to accept his lot and to use it as an observation post. He was glad to come and go practically anonymous and unnoticed, so that he could gaze upon the surrounding scene like some watcher of the skies. Instead of shirking, as it might appear, while others did the work he might have done, he did what no one else could. He made the most of his own difference. His difference was first of all his diffidence. He found he could rely on his lack of self-reliance. Being a wallflower enabled him to watch. He did not shrink into the crippling anxiety that his shyness might have brought. He took advantage of being disqualified for action, making this the condition of activity more sus24. C f . George Santayana, Soliloquies in England 1922).

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tained and more significant than if he had remained a campus figure. Perhaps his example has seduced some who should not have thrown off the academic harness. But to many who have patiently or desperately shouldered the load of official duties, family responsibilities, and "social obligations," it has been solace to slip into the calm of his discourse and detachment. H e is good for Americans, whom he had most in mind. If their routine is crushing as he thought, and narrow as in a monastic establishment, his path is narrow also; but leads through a vast landscape where it is natural to pause and take in the view. If his attitude seems to be that of a valetudinarian, he showed how much euphoria can go with discipline and disillusion. He had the Zen secret that detachment is the way to attachment that cannot be disappointed. This is to love without possessing, to have without demanding. N o t : knock and it shall be opened, or ask and it shall be given; but be open, be receptive, and there is nothing to ask; for then nothing is denied and nothing lost, that matters. If this is called sour grapes or Freudian sublimation, that may be true, but misses the fact that grapes can be sour and compensation sweet. The sour, the stale, even the rotten will not bother a strong enough stomach. The tough, like the Greek Cynics, can laugh at refinement and take things as they come. They have little need of wisdom, and such as they have is only what they are notorious for. But to care for tea, as Santayana and the Zen teachers did, depends upon the delicacy that comes with civilization. This means being human enough to be hurt. Then there can be a bad taste in the mouth, an ache in the heart. Then it is important to discriminate. Men, to be safe, must be knowing. Yet, survival now is just the beginning. The problem is not merely to live, but to live well. To be concerned about that is to prize wisdom, as to be discouraged about it is to accept pessimism. It seems that pessimism can be offset only after feeling the force of it, as Royce grappled with Schopenhauer after being impressed by him. Royce tried to show that there would be no shadow if there were no light, though it is hard to believe that being in the dark is evidence that the sun is shining. To Santayana, Royce was whistling in the dark. But, if that is not a great protection, it can help to keep the spirits up, as William James showed. And was this not the beginning of Santayana's own wisdom, if not what it came

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to in the end? It would account for the affinity he felt with Indian philosophy. 3. Shift from Foreground to Background • In undernourished and feverish India, the meditative discipline of Hinduism and Buddhism was a blessing. In the hard life of the ancient and medieval West, the similar precept and example of sage and saint have been a boon too, even after the development of science. The failure of the French Revolution seemed to be the failure of the idea that science could solve our problems and end the misery of life. The pessimism of Schopenhauer followed. Santayana found him the bitter medicine for his own unhappiness. Bereft of his religion by the influence of science, unable and unwilling to be at home in an alien land, he was tempted by the denial of life. Santayana questioned especially the life about him, the local and parochial scene with its demands upon him. In fairness, he found much good there; and never thought that life had been much better anywhere, except briefly in Greece. In his novel, in the character of Oliver Alden, Santayana imagined how it might have been if he had tried harder to be a good American. It would have meant deciding somehow what ends to espouse, without much help from authority or tradition, and then fighting with the moral fervor of James or Royce. To be a projection of the author while being a young American, Oliver was given a mother as strict and unmotherly as Santayana's. This launched the boy on the puritanical course of doing what he ought, with little to guide him except that it meant going against the grain. The author could not imagine having his alter ego trust himself to choose a wife except from a sense of duty that would invite refusal. He could not make a wholehearted effort to win a wife or any other end, since he had a spoke in the wheel of every natural passion; hesitating to pursue any good for fear it might not be the best. If the ideal alone is worthy of devotion, the life of imagination becomes the life of reason. The author is sorry for his hero, not because he fails to find any satisfaction on earth, but because he tries to. The point is not that there are no delights on earth worth trying for, but that they come without trying, like dawn and sunset, the

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flowers of the field, the smile of a child or an old man. There is something ethereal about these things. They float in, so to speak, from the realm of essence, lighting up this world for a moment, for eyes that are open, then fade out or flit away. They do not depend on our doing. This is Santayana's aesthetic attitude, in contrast to James's and Royce's mood of moral striving. Santayana does not deny the fact of human effort, but thinks of it as taking place as all the processes of Nature do. He practically accepts the automaton theory which James abhorred, that people do only what they are conditioned and motivated to do; and that their consciousness has no part in their activity but to look on: with alarm, with pain, with calm, or with various degrees of pleasure. He had the feeling of Emerson and Thoreau that contemplation of Nature is more conducive to peace of mind than watching the affairs of men, because there is less illusion that we could, hence should, take part. Yet, like Emerson, Santayana believed that men and cities belong to Nature as much as animals do. He could ridicule the passage when Whitman lapsed from this larger view enough to suppose that animals are more natural than men. Santayana is not all of a piece. He even had a period of feeling, as Emerson did, that science would enable men to direct their course more advantageously. In general, Santayana belongs more with Zen, to the prescientific past, when it was not possible for men to do much more about their destiny than learn to accept it by seeing it "philosophically." Then, their doing anything about it was limited to the daily chores, which were not thought of as giving much, if any, impetus or direction to the course of events—rather, as the least grievous way of going along with them. Knowing what to do was knowing what had always been done. It might be done a little better or a little worse, but not much differently, and there was nothing else to do. If there was any difference, it was thinking that made it so; a thinking that was not planning or problem-solving, not inventing, not developing and testing hypotheses except more or less inadvertently; but musing and contemplating, waiting for a revelation that would leave everything as it was, yet make it wonderful that it was that way. This was to find the Way, the wonderful Tao, the Buddha, which Spinoza would obligingly call either Nature or God, and Santayana the Realm of Essence. This was simply to accept all that is and can be imagined as just what it is and should

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be, to welcome it, celebrate it, and so be as much as possible at peace with it. The men of Zen sometimes object that Zen is not as passive and quietistic as this sounds, and Santayana has more strenuous streaks. James and his energetic successors have their mystical moments. It is a matter of emphasis. But Santayana is emphatically more contemplative than active or reformative. He accepted without protest, or with ironically subdued protest: himself, his Catholic heritage and education in the classics; his being in Boston and going to Harvard; his falling in with James and Royce. Santayana said: . . the best and only possible world for a creature to live in is the world that produced him." 26 But the world which produced Santayana was so divided that he could find peace only by going from one part of it to another. Under the spell of James, if not of the American environment, the five volumes of The Life of Reason find science and technology hopeful that man can manage his affairs.26 There is no higher poetry than statesmanship. But before long the interest is shifted from the foreground, where control for a time seemed possible, to the background, which is out of control, untouched by ingenuity or effort. Expressing this point of view comes a virtually Buddhist set of books, Santayana's Realms of Being.27 4. Left Behind with Zen • This withdrawal into contemplation was congenial to Santayana from the first. His early pessimism returned as the new century moved into confusion and use of force. But, aside from disgust with the way governments were going, Santayana, with all his wisdom, lacked the intellectual equipment as well as the temperament, to go far with Peirce and James, on the road surveyed a bit even by Emerson, toward a creative use of intelligence, not just for seeing things under the aspect of eternity, but for doing something about them in time. Santayana did what 25. George Santayana, The Realm of Essence (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927), p. 164. 26. C f . Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Society, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, Reason in Science, volumes of George Santayana, The Life of Reason (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905—1906, 1 9 3 3 ) . 17. C f . Vol. I, The Realm of Essence, 1927; Vol. II, The Realm of Matter, 1930; Vol. Ill, The Realm of Truth, 1930; Vol. IV, The Realm of Spirit, 1940, volumes of George Santayana, Realms of Being (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons).

201 he could with the Cartesian dualism between the body and a disembodied consciousness somehow lodged within it. But all that he or anyone else could use such a subjective knower for was contemplation; marveling that something utterly unextended and immaterial could ever appear in the midst of other things. Sartre, trying to operate later with this fantastic wraith of a mind or self, has felt obliged to call it a kind of Nothing which can do nothing but "nothing-ize" in the alien environment of Being. N o t only can there be no understandable relation between such a Nothing and things which belong to Being, but this cipher-self is isolated from other selves. Santayana had a head start on Sartre in getting into the existentialist predicament which is inevitable in accepting the dualism of Descartes. Santayana was too far in to appreciate James's questioning the reality of consciousness a la Descartes. It seemed to Santayana that if this consciousness were denied, we should "come to the conclusion that objects alone exist." 28 The abandonment of consciousness as a mysterious substance or entity, unaccountably existing among other things, without any roots or genesis in Nature, in favor of a biological, social, and functional conception of consciousness—this was unintelligible to him. All he could call it was "startling." 29 Not only was James's pioneering work in this direction lost on him—so was Peirce's development of it, showing that a self or mind is a process of sign-using, a process moving from sign to sign, setting up and testing hypotheses by consequences that make a difference in practice, while practice is continued through ever further use of signs. Santayana was only half the materialist or naturalist he thought he was—with a consciousness on his hands that was neither material nor natural. It had no function or effect other than to rise above existence like a vapor, invisible except to itself, building the weightless castles of poetry and religion. Somehow this filmy superstructure was to give worth to the unaffected actuality going on below in the blind absurdity of determinism. He liked to say that every real situation has an ideal fulfillment, every ideal its real roots. He found solace in saying it. But he was using words in the ancient way of incantation, feeling their power while missing their secret. 28. Santayana, Character 29. Ibid.

and Opinion in the United States, p. I J I .

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He had the urge to words, and could manage them, but did not realize how much they could do; though he knew they put him in touch with the great wordmen of the past and entertained him endlessly, at his desk with his pen, on his walks with his cane. He never saw what words were, as Peirce did; how they worked as signs; why signs made man's ancestors into men; and men into worldtransforming men of science. He did not see how signs mesh with other signs, not just in the air and on paper, but in fact and practice. Or, if he saw this to some extent, he did not see it steadily enough to appreciate it. He could forget it and go back to regarding words and everything else as first eternal essences, insubstantial forms, a few of which happen to get enacted in existence. Peirce would agree that the world has general as well as particular aspects. He and James saw the importance of chance, and the limits of human control in the face of much that seems to be sheer necessity. But they both stressed the naturalness not only of man's body but of his intelligence; seeing it not as a soul within the body, a mysterious spirit or psyche as Santayana calls it, but as man's active dealing with his situation, making it over by solving problems, fitting means to ends, conceiving plans, and acting to realize them. Peirce is clear that this is done by a process of inquiry and inference, of quest and test, carried on with signs. Santayana, in comparison, is left behind with Zen, using words to make peace with things as they are and have been; not to see what can be done with them, what things can become when signs are brought to bear on them with the pressure of hypothesis behind action, to melt the actual and recast the facts. Master that he was of words, he did not suspect half their power. He used them for euphoria, and to extend it through imagination: through Platonic possibilities untainted by existence. Under a heaven of essences, of unfading flowers, and of all the unwritten plays, he came back, however, to the need of sustaining the biological organism and the social order, to keep imagination going. For awareness there must be spirit, let alone the vision of Santayana or Zen. Spirit, he admitted, could appear only in a psyche or soul coming to consciousness in an animal body, having its own location and local concerns, which it must heed, feed, and foster, in order to survive. The psyche, while it lasts, will give more or less attention to the world around it, fearing some things in it,

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pursuing others. In man, the psyche attains the height of spirit which can look out and appreciate what is there, even beyond the focus of hunger and thirst and other exigencies. So far as man's spirit can reach out to enjoy the essences or eternal qualities of tilings, he is saved from the egocentric predicament. He enters, like the sage in a Zen painting, into the sky and the breeze and the grass, where Walt Whitman said to look for him. This lesson of Zen, of the good grey poet, and of Santayana has a value which must be recovered when it is lost, if men are to live with any margin of imagination. But, if only because they must nourish the body to live with the Zen spirit, there must be enough society to make and maintain a self that can be articulate and aware. So there must be some development of the arts and crafts, of commerce and statesmanship. This calls for a considerable and, in the nature of the case, increasing use of signs. This is almost the theme of Santayana's last big book, Dominations and Powers.30 It was published the year before his death, though it, like his novel, had been worked on for many years. The farewell opus is profoundly pessimistic. It recurs to Schopenhauer's teaching that life at bottom is irrational Will. Hope is expressed for international peace, sobered by recognition of militant and irreconcilable human traits. If Santayana allowed for their being modified, there would be more prospect. But he was too imbued with the spectator-view to think of mind as the transforming use of signs. Almost, he used words to express how passive and helpless men would be if, lacking words, they were not men—as they would not be if they had no more language than the gestures of speechless beings. If men could not communicate significantly with one another they could not co-operate very effectively. They could not provide the spectacle of a life approaching reason for Santayana himself to observe, or the terms for the realm of essence to which he turned. He entered so little into the fight for ends that he could only be amazed or amused by the earnestness of James and Royce, though capable of admiring their manliness. T o one who was so much a spectator that he had withdrawn, before he retired, to the World as Idea, the interests and activities of men seemed to be driven by Schopenhauer's irrational Will. From there, 30. C f . George Santayana, Dominations Sons, 1 9 J 1 ) ,

and Powers

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how could the world of action not appear absurd? The world of Will would be unmotivated, unguided, unintelligible, if ideas were an inert realm of essences. These would not only be without efficacy but without meaning for James or Peirce, if not to be used, not to be tested by any findings. James could not seem as confused to Santayana as Santayana seemed perverse to James—to take the significance out of living and the life out of thinking, to make the mind of no consequence. Without benefit of more than a literary use of signs (which would collapse without their other uses), man's makeup would be as unregenerate as Santayana believed it to be. Drives and needs, deprived of the sign process, would be as deterministic as he thought. As there could be no possibility of changing them, there could be no reason for doing it either. Any attempt to reform an individual could only do him violence and no good. Then, of course, pessimism would be in order. Santayana found some cold comfort in thinking that the fate of human beings cannot matter to the great inane. This helped him to be calm about social and political ills. Unsympathetic critics have said that it made him insensitive and irresponsible. Certainly it put no barrier in the way of forces working to destroy the privacy and protection he enjoyed. He could talk as though the worst conceivable results of any revolution were coming about in the United States anyway. But he realized his exaggeration when he saw what Fascism brought. By "long association," he was American enough, after all, to have a bit of Jefferson's appreciation of life and liberty, and his conviction that the pursuit of happiness should be a largely private affair. After fearing that democracy would end the amenities, he saw how devastating dictatorship was to the minimum of decency. When interviewed at the close of the second world war, he spoke of Europe as wrecked and not worth saving with American lives. He would not have the youth of the land where he had spent his youth, with their freshness and promise, poured into the bankruptcy and corruption the Old World, with all its riches, had come to. In his last major work, he could not help yearning for a harmonious society on a world basis, though this was inconsistent with the assumption of his philosophy that human values are only dressed up biological drives, which are bound to conflict. Feeling the need of a world government, he still feared it would stifle freedom, as he

20J had always been afraid that democracy would. Without the signtheory of mind as inquiry with consequences, he was intellectually unequipped to see how a social ideal could affect individual propensities. So he was stuck with the dead-end belief that some men find their fundamental good in attacking others. He would defend minorities and individuals, no matter how few, in their right to be themselves, no matter how different. In the spirit of Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, Santayana thought it wrong for the few to be coerced by the majority, not to mention the predatory. Yet, he could not forget that the same principle would involve protecting even those who threaten everyone. How draw the line against shielding those who respect no shield, without violating the idea that everyone must, and so should, be what he is? Santayana was helpless here because he held on to the untenable conception of the isolated individual. H e could not see what James saw, that it is impossible to be a human being without having a social character as well as maintaining all that is kept inside the skin. Peirce made it plain that to be a person is to share signs with other persons; and that to use signs is to develop and reconstruct self and society at the same time. The implications of this discovery were worked out by contemporaries of Santayana whom he could not possibly understand or appreciate without more intercourse with them. If his seclusion did not reduce him to solipsism, it nearly muted his thought to soliloquy. Having chosen isolation, he was obliged to justify it, if he was to go on thinking. That he could do it as well as he did shows not only his native intelligence but how much food for thought he had stored up from the time when he had more intellectual companionship; and how he could replenish his store from reading. Yet, it is not surprising that he got out of touch with much that his contemporaries were doing, which might have helped him with some of his own most pressing questions. If he tried to keep up with journals and books, he does not seem to have done it very persistently. He frankly relied mostly on the old authors who appealed to him because they appeared to discredit practice and progress, at least as he read them, and to recommend contemplation of unchanging forms: Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer, especially, could confirm another aging bachelor philosopher in his detachment from a world presented at its worst, as in the Upanishads and the scriptures of

20 6

the Buddhists, when misread without the life-affirming zest and understanding of Zen. Peirce also became a solitary. But in his case it was more resented than sought. He also suffered a stunting of his social self. But before he pulled the ladder up to his loft, he had belonged to "the laboratory band" who were advancing human knowledge. He had been not just a student or colleague of James but a close friend; also he had laughed with James's father and family, as well as with Justice Holmes and other fearless, bantering minds. Peirce could be affronted and was often difficult, but never felt foreign or out of place, or shy as Santayana did. Peirce realized the need of thinkers to be roped together if they were to climb, and not fall into the night where all cows are black. He also went back to the great inquirers of the past; but less for comfort and reassurance, and not to follow and agree with old conceptions, not to end the quest. He met them equally, with a discovery the size of any of theirs and more revolutionary, calling for reappraisal of all of them. After his pioneering in the way signs work, he could enlist predecessors afresh in the march of ideas. Peirce, old and alone, forged ahead of Zen, whereas Santayana ensconced himself in something like its naturalistic mysticism; seeing things under the aspect of eternity like Spinoza, while finding enough that was beautiful and worth having in particular to fill the present moment and the passing hour. In a sense there is nothing better. What is the use of going on when the best is at hand? Whatever advance is made, there is still the far horizon centered on the here and now; the great blue yonder coming hither to home base in the head and chest. These co-ordinates would remain. Having got his bearings, Santayana did not care very much what happened or what was found. As for what could be done, he did not think it would outdo the deeds of the past, or make much difference. His naturalism, like that of Zen, and of Spinoza, did not take time seriously. Santayana lived late enough to know about Darwin but ignored the lesson of evolution, as if it could be fitted into a timeless scheme, making some commotion, like the thrashing Will of Schopenhauer, but going nowhere. The nature of modern science was so wasted on Santayana that he regarded it as just reporting more of what always had been, without really changing anything or calling for any new thinking. He so completely missed the

ZOJ

transforming power of signs in the advance of science, that he thought they were only what his own words were: a means of assembling what there was to be experienced and summing it up. There was always more to be reached and so more to be said, but he believed that the best and the gist had been seen and said already. If this would seem to make his own writing superfluous, he would admit that he went on with it just because he liked to, having nothing better to do; and because there were people who enjoyed his philosophy, perhaps because they had not read what he had read. Or, if they had, his readers liked to see how he could put it into plain English, or fancy, for he would indulge in purple passages, with Schopenhauer. A pessimist might feel entitled to sugar-coat his insight. Of course he would be supercilious about the men of science, working hard to add more items when the nature of things was all too clear. " W h y should philosophers drag a toy-net of words, fit to catch butterflies, through the sea of being, and expect to land all the fish in it? Why not take note simply of what the particular sciences can as yet tell us of the world? Certainly, when put together, they already yield a very wonderful, very true, and very sufficient picture of it. Are we impatient of knowing everything? . . . there would always remain an infinity of undiscovered facts." 31 If this is not Zen, it may be what Zen would have been if it had been obliged to take account of science as it was or was understood in the nineteenth century. But Zen would not have this tone of resentment against science. It had saddened Santayana in discrediting his childhood religion. Zen, being through with the supernatural and all its trappings, which traditional Buddhism had added to the ethics of Gautama, would not have had such conflict with science. So Zen could be more joyous, having found how to enjoy life and to feel that nothing could be better than what life is, as it is, once enlightenment is attained. If, as Santayana thought, science made no difference, neither would it have made any difference to Zen.

31. Santayana, Character

and Opinion

in the United

States,

pp. 2 9 - 3 0 .

208

5. White Marble Mind • The test comes in our time. Even before the turn of the century, Peirce realized that science had become less an information agency about supposedly unchanging Nature, and was noticeably giving man the capacity not only to see significant changes going on, but to guide them. Words were not just a net, and certainly not a toy-net, for catching butterflies or fish or anything already in the sea of being. If this is what Santayana's words are, Peirce's are as much more than that as the symbols of mathematics are more than scrabble. If Zen could remain unaffected by science that was chiefly descriptive, how would Zen stand up to post-Peirce science? It is difficult to make a direct comparison between the assumptions and attitudes of times and places far apart. But, if Santayana, who outlived Peirce, can be considered to share the basic insight of Zen, and to express it in English, then through him we may see whether Zen is now outdated or not. In a sense there is no going beyond Zen. The sky is still above every country. Not only Santayana, but James and Peirce and every thinker in America has something in common with Zen, when they are able to get down to earth and appreciate that ordinary living can be altogether wonderful—for one who is able to appreciate it. No matter what changes happen or are engineered, if we cannot keep or recover the ability to enjoy what is lovely or worth having, when it is there, our labor and our learning, even the most advanced science, will be in vain. That is the lasting lesson of Zen, however come by and whatever called. But something more than Zen is needed to have Zen now—not only its own discipline of silent meditation and lively conversation, with monasteries for monks and masters. That would work in an agricultural economy, and may still work for a few who can withdraw from cities and industry, whether in the midst or on the periphery. Through the increasing development and application of sign systems a la Peirce, a much larger population can be alive and even have a chance to enjoy life. But to keep this huge enterprise going at all smoothly, the sign-power of science must be mastered by people in general. Already we can see the danger of having only a few persons understand the techniques of inquiry, of hypothesis and test, while they are at the mercy of the ignorance,

ZO»'r;< of Chinese Philosophy, 239

James, H e n r y , Jr., 1 1 7 , 1 3 1 James, Henry, Sr., 98, 106-120, 148, 158, 159, 206, 2 1 5 , 285,

286

291 James, William, 1 1 9 - 1 4 4 , and passim the " f i g h t f o r ends," 1 2 2 , 1 2 $ , 1 3 3 , «3J, 138-M0» 159, 162, 203, 216 Essays in Radical Empiricism, 1 3 6 , 2 2 0 The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, 1 0 7 , 1 1 0 - 1 1 4 , 1 1 9 120 Memories and Studies, 1 4 0 , 2 1 1 - 2 1 2 A Pluralistic Universe, 1 2 7 - 1 2 8 The Principles of Psychology, 121-123, 125, 132-133, 1 3 7 , 223,224 Talks to Teachers, 137-140 The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1 0 7 , 1 2 7 , 1 3 0 n., 1 3 8 , 1 7 2 - 1 7 4 , 180, 186 The Will to Believe, 1 3 9 Jefferson, Thomas, 5 2 - 6 6 , and passim Jesuit missionaries, 5 9 , 2 4 4 Jesus, 1 9 , 2 3 - 2 4 , 2 6 , 2 7 , 5 6 , 5 7 , 5 9 , 8 5 , 179, 218, 221, 245, 258

Kallen, Horace M., 1 2 7 - 1 2 8 , 1 3 6 n., 1 3 9 1 4 0 , 1 4 1 n., 1 8 4 , 2 1 2 , 2 2 2 , 2 4 8 Kant, 3 8 - 4 1 , 1 1 5 , 1 4 1 , 1 5 9 , 1 6 0 , 1 6 8 , 2 3 1 , 2 4 1 . 274 Katz, 2 5 7

Mind, Self and Society, 5, 261-262, 273 The Philosophy of the Act, 2 4 9 , 2 5 8 , 2 6 3 , 2 7 3 n., 2 7 6 The Philosophy of the Present, 2 6 9 - 2 7 2 Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 2 7 3 n. meditation, 7 , 9 , 5 5 , 1 7 7 , 2 2 7 , 2 2 9 , 2 4 6 , 2 6 7 . See also "zazen" Mei, Yi-Pao, Motse, The

laboratory, 1 4 1 , 1 4 7 , 1 4 8 , 1 5 0 , 1 5 4 , 2 0 6 language, 2 2 5 . See also conversation, gesture, signs Lankavatara Sutra, 6 , 1 2 , 1 2 4 Lao T z u and Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching), 7 4 , 1 0 0 . See also Taoism Lincoln, Abraham, 9 3 - 9 $ , 9 7 - 9 8 , 1 6 1 , 1 6 8 Ling-yu, 2 4 Locke, John, 9 , 1 9 - 2 3 , 3 2 , 3 3 , 3 7 - 3 9 , 4 3 , 66, 9 4 Letters Concerning Toleration, 1 9 The Reasonableness of Christianity, 19 loyalty, 1 7 J - 1 7 8 . See also "bushidd"

M c C a r t h y , Harold E., vii, 1 8 8 n., on the spirit of Zen in Goethe Mahàyana, 5 , 6 , 1 1 3 , 1 7 3 , 2 1 7 , 2 7 6 Maitreya, 2 1 9 Approach

to

Neglected

Rival

of Confucius, 250-251 Mencius, 2 5 0 , 2 5 1 Merriam, Charles E d w a r d , 2 5 4 Metaphysical C l u b , 1 4 1 Michelson, A l b e r t Abraham, 2 5 4 Mill, John Stuart, 2 0 5 Miller, Dickinson S., 2 1 2 - 2 1 3 mind, 2 2 4 . See also self Mo T z u , 2 5 0 - 2 5 2 monastery, monastic, 7 , 1 7 , 4 7 , 5 5 , 1 7 7 , 208, 2 2 3 , 227-229, 268-269 mondo, 1 5 , 2 3 4 monk,

Kishimoto, Hideo, viii koan, 1 5 , 2 3 4

Masunaga, Reiho, The Sotd Z*n, 6 7 n., 6 8 n., 1 3 9

Maxwell, J. C l e r k , 1 4 9 Mead, George Herbert, 5 , 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 5 , 7 3 , 132, 163-164, 1 8 1 , 248-250, 2$4-2j6, 258-288

17, 47, 193, 208, 219, 227,230,

*37> 267» 2 6 9 , 2 7 8 . 2 7 9 Montaigne, 7 2 - 7 3 Moore, Addison Webster, 2 5 4 Moore, Charles A . , vii Morris, Charles, viii, 8 , 2 4 8 n., 2 4 9 , 2 6 8 , 284 Mu Mon Kwan, 18 mysticism, mystic, mystical, 2 9 , 6 6 , 6 7 n., 97, 1 3 1 , 188, 206, 2 1 9 , 2 2 1 , 240-242, 264-265, 266,274, 275

Nagatomo, Kinue, 1 7 6 n. naturalism, natural, naturalistic, 4 , 5 , 8 , 21, 129, 206, 225, 230, 2 5 1 , 266, 268, 279-281, 288 Nature, 2 5 , 6 6 , 7 0 , 7 1 , 7 5 , 7 6 - 7 7 , 7 9 , 8 0 , 83-90, 92, 96, 106, i n , 146-149, 1 5 9 , 199. 223 Neo-Confucianism, Neo-Confucianist, 5 8 , 237. 256 Nirvana, 6 , 1 2 , 9 9 , 1 1 3 , 2 1 7 , 2 7 8 No-mind, 7 8 , 2 3 1 , 2 7 7 , 2 7 9 N o t h i n g , 1 8 7 , 2 0 1 , 2 4 1 . See also Sunyata, Emptiness, V o i d

292 Nukariya, Kaiten, The Samurai, 10, 47 n.

Religion

of

the

Ogata, Sohaku, viii, 67 n. Okakura, Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, 86 Old Testament, 27, 87 ought, 39, 44, 46-50, 148, 216, 268, 275276

Paine, Tom, 23, 29, 33, 44-53, 66, 147 The Age of Reason, jo P'ang, 221 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 1 4 1 - 1 6 3 , and passim "The Fixation of Belief," 1 4 1 - 1 4 ? , 177 Perry, Ralph Barton, The Thought and Character of William James, 127, and passim Po Chu-I, 82-83 prajiia, 170, 171, 228, 232-233, 288 progress, 22, 116, 150, 2 1 1 , 229, 269 Protestantism, 26 Proust, Marcel, 189-190 pure experience, 9, 187, 188, 216, 2 2 1 , 236, 281. See also aesthetic experience, immediate experience Puritans, 26, 34-35 purpose, purposeful, 228, 2 3 1 - 2 3 3 , 235, 23 6

relativity, 270-273 Revolution, American, 3 1 , 33, 42, 45-52, S4> 145 Rinzai, 8, 10, 15, 1 1 5 , 1 5 3 , 233 role-taking, 270, 272-274, 277-278, 282, 286 Royce, Josiah, 159, 162-182, 190, 197, I 9^> i99J 200, 216 The Philosophy of Loyalty, 175 The Problem of Christianity, 177, 179 The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 165, 167, 168, 245, 2 7 1 , 276 The World and the Individual, 174 Ruskin, John, 89

"sageliness within and kingliness without," 9 Sathsara, 6

samurai, 9, 47, 48, 176, 1 8 1 , 185 Santayana, George, 9, 182-215, 2 2 ° > 2 3 3 , 2 37 Character and Opinion in the United Slates, 195, 201, 221 Dominations and Powers, 203 essences, 188-190, 199, 202-204 The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, 192 Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 182, 187-189, 2 1 0 - 2 1 1 , 215 The Last Puritan, 194-195 The Life of Reason, 182, 200, 233, 238 Realms of Being, 200 Soliloquies in England, 196 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 28, 85 Sasaki, Kokan, vii satori, 1 5 3 , 1 7 1 , 234 Schneider, Herbert W., A History of American Philosophy, 1 1 0 , i n , 1 1 8 , 271-272 Schopenhauer, 164 self, 1 2 1 - 1 2 7 , 1 3 1 - 1 3 8 , and passim Seng-chao, 18 Shen-hui, 1 1 sign process, 147, 149-161, 1 7 1 , 201-209, and passim. See also Peirce silence, 53, 55, 63, 70, 1 5 3 , 154, 193, 226, 228, 234 Sötö, 8, io, 15, 68 n., 1 1 5 , 1 5 3 , 233 Spinoza, 100, 190, 199, 205, 206 stimulus and response, 1 5 1 , 152, 261, 263, 282. See also gesture, conversation suchness (tathati), 25 Sunyäti, 67 n., 175, 242. See also Emptiness, Nothing, Void Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, passim and vii, viii, 169-170, 218-222, 2 3 1 - 2 3 3 , 256257, 279-281, 287-288 Swedenborg, n o

Talbert, Ernest Lynn, viii Tao, h i , 199, 229, 237. See Taoism Tao-i (Ma Chu), 7 Tao-hsin, the Fourth Patriarch, 67 Taoism, Taoist, passim tathatä. See suchness tea, 47, 86, 1 5 3 , 177, 2 1 7 , 227, 235, 236, 256, 257 n., 263-264, 272 Theraväda, 5, 1 1 3 Thoreau, Henry David, 14, 79-95, 96, i o i , 106, 1 2 1 , 159, 2 2 1 , 260, 278

293 Tolstoy, 79, 1 3 8 Transcendentalism, 75-76 T u f t s , James H a y den, 254

value, values, 204, 2 1 7 , 2 1 8 , 230, 2 5 2 - 2 5 3 , 2 66 vijnana, 1 7 0 , 1 7 1 , 228, 232 Virginia, 52 University o f , 5 3 , 59, 60-62 Void, 67 n., H I , 1 6 9 , 1 8 7 , 2 4 1 , 272. Set also Emptiness, Nothing, Sunyata

Watts, Alan W „ The Spirit of Zen, 48 Wen-yen, 1 7 0 Whitman, Walt, 9 $ - i o 6 , 1 3 7 , 188, 2 2 1 Wilkinson, Garth, 1 1 0 Winters, L i l y Pao-hu Chong, vii Wright, Chauncey, 1 4 1

Yamada, James S., vii

zazen, 10, 1 3 9 . See also meditation

ZEN A N D AMERICAN THOUGHT was printed and bound at Vail-Ballou Press, Incorporated, New York City. The text is composed in linotype Garamond: body text in ii point leaded I point; extracts, 9 point leaded 1 point; footnotes, S point leaded 1 point. Display type is Caledonia Bold in various sizes. Printing was by letterpress on blue-wbite Dixfield Bulking Offset, Basis 60. The endleaves are Stratbmore Chroma Gray, Basis So. The cases are Kennet t Cloth #1999 on boards, die-stamped in gold. Hobby Norton created the geometric symbol. Yosbio Koike provided the calligraphy for the epigraph page. The book was designed by Kenneth Kingrey. Its production was supervised by Aldyth Morris.