Mainly Speculation
AT the beginning of this book I said that two kinds of experience afforded me acquaintance with great good, namely the experience (including the practice) of community, and the experience (and practice) of critical intelligence. I called these two activities love and reason. I believe that they are significant not only for the understanding of man but for the understanding of the universe. I do not mean that the universe is governed by the principle of love and the principle of reason. There may be some sense in which this is true, but I find no clear evidence for it. I mean simply this. Love and reason seem to me to be essential characteristics of the behaviour of a conscious being that has reached a certain stage of mental growth. In a sense they are implied in the very nature of consciousness. Inevitably there comes a point in the development of consciousness at which a conscious being cannot but recognize love and reason as good. If this is so, then, since it seems almost incredible that consciousness should be without significance for the understanding of the universe, we may well believe that love and reason, even though they may not be the supreme controlling principles of the universe, playa great part in it.
By love I mean in the first instance a certain kind of felt personal relationship, issuing in a certain kind of conduct, namely the relationship in which one individual wills to enrich, and is enriched by, another individual, apprehended as alike yet different. By reason I mean in the first instance simply intelligent behaviour, in which a situation is clearly and comprehensively apprehended, and an appropriate action is taken, an action appropriate in the light of all the relevant facts, including the agent's own felt needs. The more developed kind of intelligent or reasonable behaviour, which is possible only to those who are clearly self-conscious and other-conscious, involves also recognizing and taking into account the needs of others.
Personal relationships are of many kinds. In some there is no clear apprehension of the other as a live individual. In some we perceive and shun. In others we perceive and respect, or even adore. Personal relationship begins with the child's blankly unperceptive friendships and antagonisms. It develops into the more detailed but still largely unseeing romances of love and hate which trouble adolescence. Later, along with increase of self-awareness, comes; or may come, an increasingly objective and perceptive relation to one's fellows. The huge majority of them remain uninteresting and unperceived, but a few loom up as real distinctive individuals, sometimes to be passionately loved or loathed, sometimes to be peacefully co-operated with, more often to be merely shunned. Little by little, as the years pass, one or two may take on great detail of form, though inevitably remaining in important respects unknown or misconceived.
The whole gamut of these experiences contributes to our awareness of community. Even the contacts that we loathe, can be enriching, so long as they do not wound us too deeply. Indeed, even in hate there can be an element of love, a detached relish of the other's alien vitality. But the kind of relationship which is most significant, and the norm of all the others, is that in which each individual is clearly aware of himself and of the other; and in which the two are of very diverse character, bound in mutual respect and mutual enrichment, and in a common task. This relationship varies from superficial and fleeting comradeship to the most intimate life-long partnership, in which each member is radically and often painfully moulded by the other; and in which, though inevitably there is mutual restriction and frustration, there is also mutual strengthening and spiritual increase. Thus there is formed a true community which, though in a sense it is nothing but its members, is also far more than they could possibly be if they existed in isolation from one another.
This kind of relationship cannot be healthy unless the members are united, not only in mutual respect and affection, but also in some kind of common task, whether the rearing of a family or some external work for society.
Further, I believe that it cannot attain full health and full lucidity of experience unless the members are united also in a common attitude to life. I do not mean necessarily in explicit intellectual doctrines but in a common emotional undertone of daily conduct.
In large societies, of course, and in small ones where there is no spontaneous mutual respect, the truly social spirit (if it exists at all) is maintained by the acceptance of the principle that individuality should be respected. This principle is a generalization from the experience of concrete community in personal contacts.
I believe that in the experience of concrete community at its best, based on love and reason, we gain a deeper insight into the nature of the universe than in splitting atoms or in logical analysis of concepts, valuable though these pursuits are. Whatever the truth about the universe, it is certainly capable of producing this thing, community, which we intuitively recognize as being a very great intrinsic good. But since in our day human society is obviously both immature and diseased, and since human nature itself is obviously but a primitive, half-formed and perhaps abortive thing, our experience of individuality-in-community must be regarded as merely a token of what might be. Even our own imperfect human nature is capable of far fuller expression than is possible in our tortured age. And when we think of the astronomical cosmos, in which our planet is a microscopic grain, we cannot but surmise that human community, even in its perfected state, is but a hint of cosmical promise altogether inconceivable to us, yet in essence identical with our own experience of community.
Though the psychical activity that I am calling love manifests for human beings its fullest, clearest expression in the active life of intimate community, there is a love-factor, so to speak, in all experience.. For experience, at bottom, is a relishing of the object by the experient, and a will for mutual intercourse. This is particularly clear in aesthetic experience, in which the artist both creates his work and is created by it. And even in the experience of frustration and pain there may be a factor of love, of acceptance, of enrichment, if the frustration does not go so deep as to be gravely destructive.
In religious contemplation of the universe the factor of love is dominant. It combines hunger to receive the universe and the longing to contribute to it. In its purest form it accepts the universe with piety, even though also with dread, and moral protest against the suffering and wickedness which it recognizes as necessary factors in the rich and excellent whole.
I said that in my experience reason appeared along with love as one of the two great goods. Like love, reason must be interpreted very broadly. It is seen most clearly in any simple intelligent act. It is essentially a disinterested apprehension and scrutiny, issuing in appropriate action. I have no doubt that, like love, its simplest root lies in the simplest kind of awareness and appropriate response. On a higher plane it shows itself as delight in the exercise of intelligence, in whatever field. One form of it is zestful intellectual analysis. But by reason I mean more than intellect. The distinction between intellect and intuition is superficial and misleading. Intellectual activity itself consists of an intuitive correlation of data which are at bottom intuitive. And the more developed and far-reaching intuitions are in part a product of past intellection. None the less there is a sense in which intellect and intuition may be contrasted. In some spheres the laborious intellectual process is more reliable than the intuitive leap. But sometimes the reverse is the case. Sometimes it is definitely unreasonable to trust to intellectual analysis rather than to intuition.
In the sphere of human community reason takes the form of reasonable behaviour, which springs from the will for self-detachment and the will to apprehend objectively the characters and motives of others and of oneself, so as to take them into account in action.
In religious contemplation the reason-factor is very important. I do not for a moment believe that religious contemplation transcends reason, though it certainly transcends intellect. It transcends, though it may use, the abstract concepts which are the medium of intellect. But it is essentially reasonable, since it is a patient striving to see life whole and to put first things first; and its goal is an all-embracing vision and appropriate action. Of course the word "reason" is ambiguous; but, in the sense in which I intend it, reason is certainly a factor in contemplation, which, indeed, is the supreme manifestation of reason.
Both the kinds of experience that seem to me most significant may be regarded as products of creative imagination. The word "creative" is suspect. By "creative imagination" I mean any use of imagination which produces something significantly new either in the mind of the imaginer or in society or in the physical world. No doubt, all imagination is to some slight extent "creative"; but in practice we must distinguish between mainly reproductive imagination and imagination which is mainly and significantly creative.
It is by creative imagination that the child first grasps the universal numerical identity of twice two and four, or the universal redness of all red things and all shades of red. It is by creative imagination that we become more clearly aware of ourselves and of one another as definite personalities, and are able to transcend the life of mere impulsive self-assertion, impulsive affection and impulsive obsequiousness to the herd. In fact it is by creative imagination that we learn to behave with considered self-respect, respect for others and for the common enterprise of society. It is by creative imagination that we bring about new and more vitalizing personal relations, whether with colleagues, friends, lovers, rivals, opponents or enemies. It is by creative imagination that we change the structure of society to meet changing conditions. By the same mental process we devise new mechanisms of physical power and new forms of physical beauty. By creative imagination we develop culture in all its spheres of art, science and philosophy. It is by this power that we expand the horizon of our awareness of the universe, and conceive ways of developing the potentiality of the universe within the narrow confines of our power.
Finally it is by means of creative imagination that we learn detachment not merely from self-regarding desires but from the common human enterprise itself, and reach toward the universal view. In fact the most lucid contemplation is itself the supreme fruit of creative imagination; which on its humblest plane, as on its highest, is simply the power of apprehending the subtle forms of things experienced, and of re-combining them into new forms significant for creative action in the physical or mental spheres.
Now, as I see it, all the acts of creative imagination include a factor of love and a factor of reason, though sometimes it may seem far-fetched to use these words in this connection. For instance it is easy to see that the child's first apprehension of the identity of twice two and four is typical of all the intuitive flashes that make up a process of reason; but has it anything to do with love'? I believe that it has. In my experience everything that is apprehended through creative imagination is in a sense loved. It arouses delight and admiration, even though, if it happens to be something antagonistic to our enterprises, it may also arouse hate. On the other hand, every act of creative imagination involves something which is essentially reason, which is essentially a "putting two and two together", an intuitive grasp of a pattern of many things as one thing. Such is the process by which a man becomes aware of himself as a distinctive person, and of others as persons. Such also are the methods of science and of creative art, and of all the activities mentioned above.
In the case of the supreme activity of contemplation, reason and love seem to me to be equally important factors. For this activity consists essentially in apprehending the experienced world as a whole, not merely in terms of a vast array of intellectual concepts (though these are instrumental), but with something like the immediacy by which We grasp the identity of twice two and four. I do not mean that in the activity which I am calling contemplation we are aware simply of the wholeness of the experienced world and not of any particular detail in it. On the contrary we are more likely to contemplate the whole through some one particular detail, such as, the tone of a certain remark made by a certain remark made by a certain person on a certain occasion, or the sweeping motion of a certain gannet in flight, or some particular general principle, such as the physical theory of Relativity, or the sociological theory of dialectical change. But in contemplation the particular is attended to not simply for itself but for its significance in relation to the whole. We feel the whole through it. In contemplation we feel the universe as a whole, much as we feel a work of art. We do not, of course, feel literally the whole of it, any more than we feel literally all that is in a work of art. We feel extremely little of the universe, even in the most lucid contemplation. But we feel it as a whole, as a unity in which all the infinite diversities, physical and mental, are organic to the whole; in which all joy and grief, all love and hate, all beauty and foulness, con- tribute to the whole. And the whole we salute with an emotion which I have not the wit to describe save lamely as a process of delight and dread and admiration and protest, culminating in mute, unqualified praise. But no sooner have I written these words than I realize how empty and insincere they must sound to anyone who has not seriously attended to this aspect of experience.
I have described the two most significant kinds of experience in my own life, most significant, I mean, for my attempt to form a reasonable belief about the universe. These I now relate to the firm belief stated in the first chapter of this book, namely that I am living in an age of very grave crisis in the struggle between the primitive and the developed ways of social life. The discovery of science and of mechanical power opened up the possibility not only of a more prosperous world in which no human beings need be enslaved to drudgery, but of a world in which personal relationship and contemplation might begin to be not only the most significant but actually the dominating facts of life. The opportunity, as I said, has for the present been missed. We are now in the throes of a regression from love and reason, by which alone the advance could be made; we are falling under the spell of ruthlessness and superstition, which are essentially, opposed to it.
Nevertheless there is a possibility, perhaps a probability, that advance has only been postponed, not permanently frustrated. Perhaps after another ten or fifty years, or at any rate after some centuries, or maybe a millennium or two, our species may successfully negotiate this awkward corner, this terrible psychological crisis of its infancy.
About the im............