Herman Bavinck · 10 of 12

Lecture 10. Revelation and the Future · Part 1

Although the Christian religion is not at enmity with culture in principle, still there is no gainsaying that it attributes only a subordinate value to all the possessions of this earthly life. The value of the whole world is not so great as that of the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven, the forgiveness of sins, and eternal life in fellowship with God. In this respect the Christian religion is in direct opposition to the view of the world taken by the modern man, and is neither prepared nor fitted for compromise with it. The question between them concerns no less than the highest good for man.

Therefore not only is Christianity accused to-day of rather opposing than furthering culture in the past, and of adopting towards it at the present day a repellent and hostile attitude, but men go further and declare that it has had its time, and cannot be a factor in the development of the future. If modern culture is to advance, it must wholly reject the influence of Christianity, and break completely with the old world-view. There must be inaugurated a Kulturkampf, compared to which that of Bismarck against the Jesuits was child’s play. For Christianity in its essence, and consequently in all the forms which it has adopted in its several confessions, is always occupied with such supernatural subjects as eternity, heaven, God, etc.; it gives a bill of exchange for the life hereafter, which perhaps will never be honored, and makes men indifferent to this life; it does not stimulate to activity, but recommends as the highest virtues, patience, forbearance, obedience, and contentment.

The present century, on the contrary, is wholly diesseitig; it believes no longer in unseen things, but reckons only with those which are seen and temporal. After the disappointment caused by the French Revolution, a deep, general dejection reigned in Europe under the Napoleonic regime. But oppression occasioned a rebound. When the hour of liberty struck, humanity awoke to a new life and went to work with unimagined courage. Its energy was crowned, and at the same time increased, by the brilliant successes which were achieved in science and technic, in society and state. Discoveries and inventions, with their application to life, showed what man could accomplish by his skill and labor. Within half a century humanity was, as it were, reborn, and the surface of the earth was renewed. What the forefathers in former ages, what even the preceding generation had not dared to think or dream of, now came to pass in reality. Humanity stood amazed at its own creations.

In the measure in which self-confidence grew, confidence in God, belief in miracles, consciousness of misery, the urgency of prayer, and longing for redemption decreased, at least in many circles. Kant had boldly spoken the word,—du sollst, also du kannst,—and the humanity which trod the stage of the nineteenth century adopted this motto. It perceived in itself a necessity, a will, a power, and an obligation to reform the world ; and with this pressure it felt its strength awaken, and an irresistible desire to set to work. The modern man no longer feels himself a miserable creature, who has fallen from his original destiny, and no longer regards the earth as a vale of tears, which has taken the place of the original paradise. He can conceive nothing more wonderful than this beautiful world, which has evolved itself from the, smallest beginnings and has reached its highest point of development in grand and mighty man. He is in his own estimation no mere creature, but a creator and redeemer of himself and society. More and more he becomes his own providence. And he is so, and becomes so through his work, for labor is creation. By labor men are divine, and become continually more godlike. Labor must therefore be the foundation of religion and morality, and also of the entirety of modern society. In earlier times, no doubt, both outside and within the bounds of Christianity, labor was estimated as of great moral value, but there was nevertheless no system of morals built upon it, either by the Greeks, who despised labor, or by the Christians, who considered this life as a special preparation for eternity, or yet by the new moralists, who deduce the moral law from the subject, that is, from the categorical imperative. But among such men as Ihering, Wundt, Höding, Paulsen, Spencer, and Sidgwick, we see ethics becoming more and more a section of sociology, which perceives in labor for himself and for others the calling and destiny of man. For labor reconciles the egoistic and social instincts and takes into captivity the whole human life. Labor is “the meaning of our existence.”

This awakening of human energy is reflected in the world-view which now receives the strongest sympathy. Till now the whole world was riveted to absolute conceptions, such as substance and essence, spirit and matter, soul and faculties, ideas and norms. But now everything is changed; there is nothing firm, unchangeable, steadfast; there is no status quo, but only an eternal movement. Physics and chemistry dematerialize themselves, and seek their foundations in pure mathematical proportions; psychology has closed the account with substance and the faculties of the soul, and only reckons with psychical phenomena; logic, ethics, and aesthetics withdraw themselves from the government of fixed aprioristic norms, and seek to build themselves up on psychology and sociology; the atomistic world-view has given way in late years to the energetic, and the absolute is no longer considered as a being, but only as a becoming; “will is the real substance of the world.” If Descartes pronounced his cogito ergo sum as the principle of philosophy, the new world-view proclaims her moveo ergo fio; vivere is now no longer cogitare, but velle; in a word, modern wisdom can be summed up in this short epigram of Proudhon : Affirmation du progrè, négation de l’absolu.

As this world-view is a precipitate of modern life, so in its turn it influences that life and gives it direction and guidance. The century in which we live is distinguished from all preceding ones by its restless activity, by its exploitation of physical and psychical forces, but at the same time also by its endeavor to obtain the greatest possible results from the smallest possible expenditure of power. The activities of men move in the most divergent directions, and cross each other every moment, so that nobody can obtain a clear view or give a complete account of them. And yet it seems as if all this manifold and many-sided labor accomplished to-day by men under the sun, is animated by one spirit, is directed by one aim, and is made serviceable to one end, namely, the improvement of the human race. Men live to-day in a land of abundance, but there still remains a longing for a richer and more durable happiness. This earthly life is confidently declared the sole home man; yet men seek even here below another and better dwelling. And therefore there are not wanting reformers who earnestly reflect on the miseries of this life, and recommend ways and means not only for the deliverance, but also for the perfecting of humanity.

In the first place, there is being made an attempt, which should be remarked, to improve the racial qualities of mankind in an artificial way. Individuals follow one another like small, unsubstantial waves from an unlimited ocean of being, but are all nevertheless equipped with free and .active powers. They must therefore not be passive in the routine of nature, and must not lose heart from the thought that man remains eternally the same and is capable of no improvement or perfecting. The Christian religion may offer in its doctrine of the inheritance of sin such a comfortless view; but this dogma, that man is radically corrupt, must be saved by Christ, and can never become holy and happy by his own power, is the most demoralizing of all the articles of the Christian faith, and ought to be opposed and eradicated with determined strength. In its place must come the comforting conviction that man is still always becoming; he has already raised himself above the animal, and is moving in the direction of the Uebermensch. The evolutionary process, of which we have evidence all over the world, presses on not only forward, but also upward, to meet the light, the life, the spirit. It is only necessary that man understand this process, and take an active part in it; he must feel his responsibility for the carrving of the process through by man, and for its advancing through him to a higher type of being. It seems as if the physical development of man has reached its end, at least so far as its basal structure is concerned; but all the more necessary now is the spiritual development, that is, the conscious, intentional, systematic work of man towards his own perfecting. And to this belongs in the first place the improvement and ennobling of the human race.

But now we are faced by the fact that, as Karl Pearson expresses it, “the mentally better stock in the nation is not reproducing itself at the same rate as it did of old; the less able and less energetic are more fertile than the better stock.” And that is not all; but in all lands the law allows, apart from certain limitations of age and cousanguinity, complete freedom to marriage, so that it is possible for all kinds of weak, sick, incurable, and degenerate people to be united in marriage and to give birth to unfortunate children, and in this way to promote the steady deterioration of the human race. Nobody can deny that such a deterioration takes place. While hygiene does its best, on the one side, to prolong the life of the weak as much as possible, the number of these weak beings is continually increasing by the complete freedom of marriage. Weismann may assert that propensities which are acquired during life are not inherited, but the fact still remains that the physical and psychical condition of the parents influences that of the children. Insanity and crime, tuberculosis and alcoholism, and all kinds of venereal diseases are increasing among all nations; increasing numbers of inmates are sent to hospitals and prisons; and all this lays on the community a burden which in the long run it will not be able to bear. Therefore it is our duty to devote the greatest possible attention to marriage, and to the people between whom it is concluded.

In the first place, it is necessary that the act of propagation be restored to honor. Ascetic Christianity has imprinted the stamp of impurity on it, and humanity therefore will never become better by returning to this mode of thought. But it will enter the path of self-perfecting when it turns its back on all asceticism and comes to understand the holiness of propagation. The act of generation is not impure, but a holy sacrament, and all conception is immaculate. True progress will come when humanity returns to the classic honoring of the strength and beauty of the body and regains the old respect for the divinity of propagation.

But with this restoration to honor of the propagation of the race earnest investigation must be combined. The science of “eugenics,” which was already inaugurated by Francis Galton in 1883, and for which he not long ago founded a research-fellowship at the University of London, must become a science which subjects to exact inquiry everything that bears upon propagation and heredity, and endeavors to discover the laws by which these are governed. Such an inquiry has not yet been prosecuted far enough to warrant the deduction of conclusions on which legislation might be founded. But public opinion can be instructed, and the way for new legislation respecting matrimony may be prepared, and the state can at any rate begin to make medical inquiry obligatory before marriage, forbid marriage in definite serious cases, and so prevent the birth of unfortunate children. Artificial selection shows how genera and species may be modified among plants and animals; if this selection is applied also to the human race, it will promote its well-being and improvement in the highest degree.

In close alliance with this attempt to ennoble the human race by artificial selection is the effort which is making for the perfecting of humanity by a radical reform in education. Many opinions exist as to the nature of such a new education. Some accept in principle the perfect equality of man and woman, defend free marriage and free love, and would withdraw education as early as possible from the family and delegate it to the community. Others, on the contrary, esteem the woman in every respect distinct from man, and wish to maintain and re-establish her in the ro1e of mother and educator of her children. According to these, biology and anthropology prove that woman, who, in her whole physical and psychical development is much more closely allied to the child than man, and lives by instinct, intuition, and feeling more than he, is on this very account a much better representative and supporter of the human race; she is more “reminiscent of the past,” more “prophetic of the future,” and therefore superior to man. In the new philosophy of sex, of which biological psychology already dreams, the woman and the mother will stand “at the heart of a new world,” become the object “of a new religion, and almost of a new worship.” The mothers are the most valuable portion of the people, and must therefore be liberated in the future from all other cares than those of motherhood, and be treated by state and society with the highest honor.

But whatever difference of opinion on this or similar points may exist among the reformers of pedagogy, all agree that education requires radical changes and must be built up anew on a scientific basis. Education is of far too great importance for the future of humanity to be abandoned to caprice or chance. Education is “man’s chief problem, and the home, school, state, and church are valuable exactly in proportion as they serve it,” yea, “the highest criterion of pure science is its educative value.” And the science which must be the principle and foundation of education is genetic psychology. This teaches us that man has slowly risen from the animal, and repeats in his development as embryo and suckling, as child and boy and youth, the different stages of phylogeny. The, soul of man is thus not complete, but as it has become, so is it still becoming; it does not stand alone, but is cognate with the souls of the animals and plants and all creatures; it strikes its roots deeply into the past, as the tree does into the ground, is the product of an immemorial heredity, and can and must be conceived and explained by the history of the human race. We shall never really know ourselves until we know the soul of the animals, and especially that of those which are in the line of our descent.

He who takes into account the lesson of evolution quickly comes to the conclusion that the present-day system of education is one great error. Up to now men have given almost exclusive attention to the soul of man, and to its hereafter. They have taken their start from ideas, fixed norms, unchangeable conceptions, and have placed before themselves as their chief aim to implant maxims and dognias, and to fill the head with representations and ideas which are in opposition to nature, and can therefore never be assimilated. This education has neglected the body, fatigued the brain, weakened the nerves, suppressed originality, slackened initiation, and the consequence is that the children on leaving school have possessed no independence, and have had no eye to see and no ear to hear. They have been completely estranged from life; and what is of more importance, the education which has alone been hitherto procurable has shown its incapacity, especially, in that during its continuance men have retained the same nature and the same defects; it has not eradicated a single sin or brought about any moral improvement whatever.

Instead of this a new system of education must be instituted which in the first place is to be characterized by an honoring of the child. The child has been hitherto governed peremptorily and from without, but in the future the child must be placed in the centre, must be considered in whatever peculiarity it may have, and must be developed according to its own individuality. It is now the era of the child. The child is born good, for there is no hereditary sin; every defect in the child is only a hard shell, which contains the germ of a virtue, which as such has the right not to be eradicated, but to be trained. There must be no question of punishment or breaking of the will; if the child is not good in later life, then it has been a victim of its parents and teachers, and upon them lies the guilt. They have to bow to the superiority of the child; a child is only another name for majesty.

Further, this great reformation must be wrought in education,— it must return from school to life, from books to nature, from theology and philosophy to biology. In the life of the child sense, nature, and the body are, in the foreground. Before consciousness awakens, and intelligence and judgment are formed, the child is passion, desire, movement, will. Formerly men said that life was thought, but now we see that life is will. Will is the essence of the world, and the innermost nature of man; first life, then thought; first the natural, then the spiritual, The muscles make forty-three per cent of the weight of the human body, and are the organs of the will and the creators of all culture. Man is one-third intelligence and two-thirds will. The “age of art” must thus take the place of the “age of science.” The body with its members and organs ought to be developed before all things; manual labor, gymnastics, sports, and all kinds of play ought to take up a large, yes, the principal part in education. For mere knowledge. produces a serious danger; better ignorance than knowledge which does not develop the strength of man; “muscle-culture” is at the same time “brain-building”; power must accompany knowledge.

As to the knowledge which must be communicated in the various schools of instruction, the natural sciences ought to take the place which was formerly given to the so-called spiritual sciences, literature, history, theology, and philosophy. The science of nature must form the groundwork of all teaching, and the common possession of all civilized people. For even the spiritual sciences can no longer be understood and practised with benefit, if they do not rest, on the basis of the science of nature. Without knowing man in his prehistoric life, they cannot attain their full development. If they have latterly advanced, and have reached assured results, they are indebted for this to the application of that method which is used in the sciences of nature. This, then, is the indispensable foundation for all other sciences and for all culture. Nobody ought to be nominated to any important office, therefore, or to be accepted as a member of parliament, or as a minister of the state, unless he has acquired a solid knowledge of nature. In a word, the old world-view must be replaced in all schools by the world-view of the doctrine of evolution. Then only will a great future stretch out before education, for knowledge of nature has not merely an intellectual, but also great practical, technical, and ethical value.

But a reformation which will usher in a new era for the human race cannot confine itself to a change in the system of education. If reformation must consist principally in replacing the old world-view by that of evolution, then educational reform is but a single step in a long road, and there remains a great deal to do. For the old world-view—that is, that conception of world and life which has been formed under the influence of Christianity—is so intimately interwoven with our whole being, with all our thoughts and actions, that to eradicate it would seem almost a hopeless task, and if it could be accomplished, would throw humanity into a violent crisis, the consequences of which no one can foresee. Church, and state, and society, religion, morality, and justice, marriage, family, and school, habits and laws, and our whole culture are, notwithstanding many foreign elements which have intruded from elsewhere, built on a Christian basis and animated by the Christian spirit. He who desires such a reform may, no doubt, make a beginning, but who knows what the end will be, and who can estimate the cost? None the less, if such a reformation is to be wrought, it cannot be satisfied with a mere change in the system of education; it must proceed to a total rebuilding of society.

However, even if we do not reckon with the conscious will of man, there is already at work in present-day society a hidden force which affects it, as it were, in heart and reins, and distinguishes it from all earlier forms in a very remarkable way. We may approve or disapprove of this movement, but the trend of modern society is in the direction of freedom, autonomy, and democracy. All boundary lines which formerly separated men, and all bonds which encumbered their movements and activities, have been broken down one after another. All forms of servitude—slavery, bondage, feudalism, and subordination—are thought to be opposed to the independence and dignity of man; even service for wages appears to the modern man humiliating, and is accounted merely another form of slavery. All the relations which have grown up between men in the course of the centuries are more and more losing their organic, moral, and natural character, and are being replaced by voluntarily formed contracts. Liberty of religion and conscience has been succeeded by freedom of habitation and occupation, of trade and intercourse, of union and association, of writing and thinking; and thought has so much outstripped discipline that the most absurd ideas arouse the greatest admiration.

Specialization and multiplication of occupations go hand in hand with this autonomy. The number of trades which were organized as guilds in Germany in the eighteenth century were counted by tens; they are now to be numbered by thousands, and continually increase, almost from day to day. Labor is endlessly differentiated and specialized. All activities which are auxiliary to the provision of the necessities of life have become independent occupations. The machine which has replaced the impleinent in the hand of the workman, and operates much more quickly, uniformly, cheaply, and powerfully than any human power, increases the division of labor, and makes the simplest article into a product which is accomplished by the cooperation of many hands. And this specializing of labor may be observed not only in material, but also in spiritual domains. There was a time when one could say of a person that he knew everything that was written in books, but such an encyclopaedic knowledge is not possible now, even for the greatest genius ; sciences are divided and multiplied, and are so far removed from the common centre that the investigator in one science is a complete stranger in the disciplines of the others, and does not even understand the terms employed in them.

With this specialization of labor is combined, contrary to what would perhaps apriori be expected, an increase in social dependence. It is usually said that the French Revolution has made men free and equal, but to tell the whole truth one has to add that it has replaced personal by social dependence. We depend on each other now more than ever. Nobody, no man, no city, no village, no people, and no state is independent any longer. We have no food and no drink, no covering or clothing, no warmth or light, no furniture and no implements, which are not procured for usby the community from day to day. Each man has significance only as a part of the whole, as a “labor-unit of the social organism”; if he be left to himself, and excluded from the social body, he is powerless and loses his value. This life in community, which forms such a remarkable trait in the society of to-day, is indebted for its growth in a large degree to the decline of the value of personality.

And this social dependence is continually increasing; the organization of society is progressing from day to day under our eyes. Society has already become a most artificial system of manifold and complicated relations, a gigantic organism, wherein all members are closely connected; but all agree that the socialization of society proceeds without intermission; we are carried steadily forward in the direction of what Lamprecht calls the “bound enterprises.” The anarchy which reigns in the production of goods, the abuse of power of which the trusts are guilty, the law of parsimony in labor, the caprices of demand and supply, and the conflict of capital and proletariat,—all this leads to social organization and demands help from the all-embracing state. And the state has already traversed a good part of this way. Private enterprise has been replaced in many departments by the service of the community; one circle, of life after another loses its independence. Jurisprudence, army, navy, taxation, the postal system, telegraphy, trams and railways, instruction in all kinds of schools, the care of libraries and museums, of health and cleanliness, of poorhouses and asylums, the exploiting of water and heat supply, of gas and electricity, fire- and police-departments, roads and canals, parks and theatres, savings banks and insurance companies, and many other interests, are wholly or in part withdrawn from private enterprise and given into the hands of local or national authorities.

Well, then, social reformers say to us, if these things are so, what can we do but help on and direct, promote and complete, this powerful movement which is already proceeding? We are working in the same direction if we break down finally the last barrier which separates men, and that is capital, private property. The Reformation has procured for us religious freedom; that is, the equality of all men before God. The Revolution of 1789 gave us political liberty,—the equality of all men before the law. A third reformation is now in order,—the establishment of freedom in society, and the equality of all men in respect to the possessions of culture. What good are religious and political freedom for men if social equality is withheld from them? What value has the declaration of the rights of man if the right to labor and food and pleasure remains unsecured? As Protestantism has prepared the way for liberalism, and liberalism for democracy, so now democracy ought to be fulfilled in socialism. The motto of liberty, equality, and fraternity will be completely realized only when the community, leaving the means of enjoyment and the ratio of consumption to the individual, possesses itself of all means of production, land, factories, and implements,—and, systematically regulating the whole production, divides the product among all citizens, according to their merits or necessities. In a word, the reformation of society will reach completion only in the socializing of all the possessions of culture.

Men cherish the boldest expectations on the faith of all these reformers. Marx, it is true, held the opinion that he had set socialism free from utopianism, and had established it on a firm, scientific basis. His effort was to conclude an alliance between the suffering and the thinking part of humanity and to make science serviceable for the proletariat. Therefore he made a study of presentday society, tried to learn the laws which govern its development, and endeavored to show that the old society could produce an entirely new one by way of evolution. He refused indeed to draw up a complete description of the future state, but he did not shrink from proclaiming his expectations concerning it, and thus he ceased to be a scientific inquirer, and came forward in the ro1e of a prophet. And when he further not only published the results of his inquiry, but also made it the basis of a programme which was to be adopted and realized by a definite party, he threw off the toga and put on the mantle of a preacher of repentance and a reformer. Even Marx thus could not escape from utopianisrn; and the socialism which operates under his name is, as a doctrine concerning a future society, no scientific school, but a political party. The society of the future naturally is no subject of experience and investigation, but an object of hope and expectation, of desire and endeavor. This is sufficiently proved by the fact that socialism, in consequence of the serious criticism which its anticipated future state has aroused, has finally abandoned all details and left to the future what the future shall bring forth.

Nevertheless it can never completely abstain from framing a description of the future state, either with respect to its own members or those who are outside; for after all each man wishes to know, to a certain extent, in what direction and to what end lie is led by such a radical change in society. If the ideal which men strive after cannot be described, or on being described betrays to all its impracticability, all confidence is lost and all obedience is at an end. Hope alone keeps socialism alive; “the vision of the future is for every present circumstance the strongest bearer of power.” Socialism, therefore, ever seeks its satisfaction in the forecast of Bebel, that the future state will bring a condition of happiness and peace for all men. The state with its ministers and parliaments, its army and police, will not be necessary in the new society, for all those relations of possession and power in the behalf of which they have been called into being will have passed out of existence. All men will receive equal positions in life and a suitable subsistence. Each will have to accomplish a definite work; but this work will require only a few hours a day, and for the remainder of his time each man way devote himself, according to his free choice, to spiritual occupations, to companionship, to pleasure. There will no longer exist distinctions between rich and poor, idle and industrious, learned and ignorant, the population of city and country, because there will no longer exist commerce, trade, money, or unequal division of pleasure and labor. Each one after the necessary labor will do what he pleases, so that according to his free option one will become a musician, another a painter, a third a sculptor, a fourth an actor. Even diseases will disappear more and more, and natural death, the slow dying of the powers of life, will become more and more the rule.