The Principle of God

by CHARLES F. HIBBARD

DR. STACE contemplates with resolute sophistication the godless limbo through which mass man wastes his powers in the pursuit of illusion. Christ and His vicars appear momentarily in the whimsical discourse as purveyors of narcotics, whose insidious merchandise the unenlightened have consumed in an abortive effort to obtain surcease from the hideous truth. Stace, whose eyes have been opened to the traditional fallacies of “romanticism,” enjoins mankind to put aside its dream-pipe and accept the fact that the universe is an aimless mechanism exploding into the void in accordance with the inverse proportions of Newton. The call is Spartan, the obligation of the intellectual unmistakable.

There remain a few questions on the part of those who for the next “few hundred years" will not have attained the stature of Huxley, Hume, and John Stuart Mill — to name only a few who, in the view of Stace, tower above the deluded Christ in their appreciation of the cosmic truths.

First of all, in respect to the essential postulate of the paper, “the truth that there is, in the universe outside man, no spirituality, no regard for values, no friend in the sky, no help or comfort for man of any sort": has any man, in good logic, the authority to declare categorically that such a value does or does not exist? Is not this technique comparable to that of Chaucer’s chanticleer?

If we regard mankind with proper objectivity, it would appear of little consequence to the constitution of divinity in the universe whether it enjoyed the ratification of human opinion. The observation to which the lay mind is drawn is elementary: In the opinion of Stace there is no Father in Heaven; in the opinion of Christ there is. Thence the lay mind moves to further conclusions according to its lights, though perhaps with “unconscious dishonesty.”

On this argument, the question of the existence of God remains open, unaffected by the contradictory imperatives, and so does many a lay mind regard it. Is it then essential, as a standard of individual conduct, to say Aye, Aye with the bishops or Nay, Nay with Stace, to join a party and vote the ticket; or is there a more promising alternative?

It is upon the prodigies of modern scientific thought that the argument for a materialistic universe rests with such apparent security. In the flow of the evolutionary tide, it is difficult to support a relatively static conception based upon Scripture more than two thousand years old as against the ever increasing pressure of a young and dynamic science. On the face of it, the one is standing still while the other is keeping pace with man in his development.

Yet have we the certainty that the disclosures of science afford conclusive evidence of the purposelessness of the universe? The objective philosopher deplores the Victorian complacency of the Royal Academy, for he perceives therein a bigotry unsurpassed in the orthodox church. The modern physicist vindicates his distrust by establishing the fact that beyond certain limits the hitherto sacred mechanics of Newton are fallacious. So it was with the pragmatic science of Aristotle. Must not the lay mind, then, in forming its judgment upon the quarrel between Stace and the bishops, entertain the possibility that the science of the thirtieth century may repudiate many of the precepts of our own ?

As we observe the conscientious physicist — he, that is, who is not preoccupied with purely technical objectives— in his rational struggle with the mystery of reality, we discern that he is beset with doubts. He is inventing and discarding concepts as man has invented and discarded gods: the electrical fluid, the light corpuscle, the ether of space, the systemic atom. He is finding that reality is not altogether real, that as he endeavors with increasing vigor to perfect his delineation of its characteristics its outlines dissolve like a familiar face in a dream.

The field equations appear exceedingly nebulous as the basis of a materialistic conception of the universe. By contrast, man’s discernment of his own inner promptings is almost adamantine.

My second question, then, is this: Is science, for all its undoubted accomplishments, in a position to support Stace authoritatively in his contention that there is no “spirituality” in the universe outside of man?

Perhaps, after all, it is with his own idea of God rather than with the principle of God that modern man has become dissatisfied. If that be the case, then surely there remains more hope than Stace offers us in the conclusion to his article.

If the purpose to work good or evil be the key, as Stace suggests, it seems possible to admit his argument upon “ethical relativity” without annihilating our conception of God. Purpose in the universe need not be supposed to resemble purpose in man. Because man has rationalized good and evil, it is not essential to attribute to God an affinity for one or the other, nor a susceptibility to evaluation in terms of either. Upon God, the raiment of man is ill-fit and unbecoming, yet I cannot relinquish Him solely because He has not a flair for our ready-made philosophical haberdashery.

Purpose is discernible in man by man, a fact which Stace tacitly allows; therefore it is without dispute that there exists some purpose within the pattern of the universe. That there are no evidences of manly purpose outside of man should not prove disconcerting, for one would not expect to find a human face upon a tree. There are evidences of a kind of purpose in the lowest orders of animals and in plants, each conditioned upon the character of the individual which exhibits it. The latter are recognizable to man since they are kindred to his own sense of purpose, as the living things are kindred to him in contrast to the inorganic universe. It does not seem to me totally illogical to suppose that there may be a kind of purpose intrinsic to every object in the universe, its nature determined in each instance by the nature of the object. That such a purpose, however, would be comprehensible to man at the present stage of his intellectual evolution, or discernible to his most able scientists, is not to be imagined. I assert merely that its existence is a possibility the mind must recognize.

So far have our scientists brought us in the realization of the interplay among the forms of reality, the transmutation of elements, the interconvertibility of matter and energy and of the organic with the inorganic through photosynthesis and the carbon cycle, that we may no longer assume unreservedly that the fundamental attributes of man are peculiar to him. The principles of conservation, though refined, remain inviolate.

The character of the third question is clear: Are we obligated in logic to conclude, with Stace, that outside of our kind there is no purpose in the order of the universe?

If these questions be open and the choice be free, it would seem that man might still, though encumbered by an intellectual vanity of the highest order, remain humble before his God without either “conscious” or “unconscious” dishonesty. Should he fail to accept entirely the interpretations which generations of human beings have placed upon Christ’s conception of His Father, that is a matter for his own conscience. It does not appear inevitable that he bend either to the fiat of the Church or the fiat of Stace: there is an alternative.

Out of the warmth of his experience, t he sweetness of his love, the nobility of his arts, the consummation of his labors, and the beauty of his days, he may strive to fashion for himself an appreciation of the principle—if not the outline — of God which will sustain him in his brief life and form his gift to the perfect understanding his issue may ultimately achieve.