صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

instincts reached, he is not a remade man. And in final analysis a man's own will must determine what he wants to be or do.

Coercion long continued may change human nature, but if so it is because a degree of consent has been developed. Unless coercion, even with a child, is so managed as to develop the consent and approval of the will, it is ethically worthless.

While there is continuous interplay between a man's will and the reaction of society, and while every man is what he is in part because of what somebody else is, or has been; yet within very wide margins a man may become largely what he wills to be. That is to say, a man may consciously remake himself and society may deliberately assist in the remaking. In this lies the hope of democracy.

Human nature is the most plastic part of the living world. Within very large margins human beings may not only do what they will but also become what they will.

In man, of all animals, heredity counts for least and conscious building for most. Man's infancy is longest, "his instincts least fixed, his brain most unfinished at birth, his powers of habit-making and habit-changing most marked, his susceptibility to social impressions keenest." 1 That is to say, man of all animals is the most unfinished at birth.

There are few national or racial or Utopian demands so contrary to nature that they could not be put into operation. The question, then, becomes not what is possible but what is desirable. Once we know what we want to make of human nature, that we can make it.

IV

The original unorganized impulses or tendencies are very general in their nature. For instance, the impulse to flee from danger: Some years ago a cry that sounded like "fire" was heard from the balcony of a theater in the south. The impulse to flee was immediately operative, and many people leaped from the building and landed on the pavement below or piled on top of each other and became heaps of dead. The impulse to flee from danger was not correlated with the higher impulse to think of an end and how to reach it. That is, the general impulse to flee from danger should be particularized and correlated and so become the specific impulse to reach the means of escape. The intellect, that is the idea of an end-in this case safely to reach the ground by means of the fire 1 Hocking.

escape-must particularize the general impulse to flee.

Consider the food-getting impulse. The impulse to eat may lead to sudden death from the eating of poisonous matter, or which is more usual, to indigestion from eating too much. The impulse to eat must be organized in line with the responsible policy of eating wholesome food and not too much of that, in order to an end, viz., health and long life.

The impulse to sociability, the gregarious instinct, must be particularized to the point of desiring to be with people of worth and to make people worthy of association. The general impulse to be with a crowd must be particularized to the point of desiring to be with a worthy crowd. And so on through the range of impulses.

Original human nature is neither depraved nor divine: it is simply unorganized and undirected. Its remaking, its regeneration if you prefer, consists in organization and direction toward worthy ends. And this is the work of intelligence and will.

V

To this task of democratizing human nature the church must set itself with apostolic fervor. Now that we know how to change human nature, what the change means, and why human nature should be changed, we should increase our efforts and so multiply results.

The achievements of religion in the remaking of human nature have not been what they should. And the reason for this is twofold: Neglect of basic inside facts, and misapprehension of the relation between inside and outside facts.

The function of the will in the remaking process has not been sufficiently recognized, nor has the will been developed adequately. Religion has called on men unconditionally to surrender the will to outside and supernatural forces. "Breaking the stubborn will" is evangelical language. Worldly powers have coerced the will of subjects; and parents have broken the will of children. The will is the central agent in remaking and should be neither broken nor surrendered to God or man. Let the will be developed, let it be directed into safe channels, but never broken or surrendered. If the church would once turn its attention toward developing the will and directing it into safe channels, it could render a most useful service to

humanity. The church must be the champion of the inviolable rights of the human will.

nature. ment.

The importance of outside facts in the development of the will and in the remaking of human nature has not been understood by the church. Arctic zones and torrid regions tend to stultify human But worse is the stultifying effect of an evil social environThe temperate zones tend to development. Likewise the zones of temperate living-of neither too much nor too little-are socially healthful. A democratic environment and a democratic nature are interactive and mutually necessary.

nature sustain us.

We may become what we will to be. The door to the future swings wide open. The eternal urge moves within us. The laws of Swords shall yet be beaten into ploughshares. Ours shall be the social order that follows tireless toil and noble purpose. But to attain this goal we must reaffirm our faith in the possibilities of human nature, and dedicate ourselves to the task of organizing human nature on the basis of world-wide community of interest.

THE SECRET CULTS OF ISLAM

BY DUDLEY WRIGHT

ECRET societies and monastic orders, some would have us be

are a

lieve, are unknown in Islam. Certainly among a certain section of Moslems there has always been a strong disinclination to encourage membership of any society or association demanding a vow of secrecy from its members and, in some quarters, even membership of the Masonic order has been forbidden or deprecated because of its supposed opposition to some of the precepts of the Qur-an. That such idea is fallacious is proved by the fact that in India there are Masonic lodges composed entirely of orthodox Moslems, while in England there are Islamic members of lodges who are assiduous equally in the carrying out of their religious duties as they are of their Masonic obligations. In practice, however, almost every Moslem who takes his religion seriously (and that number is legiongreater in proportion to the faithful in any other religion) is a member of some secret religious order or confraternity and performs daily the Zikr, or act of devotion peculiar to such association. There is no doubt that monasticism was forbidden by Mohammed. It is stated in the Traditions that Usman ibn Mazun came to the Prophet with the request that he might retire from society and become a monk, to which the Prophet made reply: "The retirement which becomes my people is to sit in the corner of a mosque and wait for the time of prayer." According also to the Qur-an (lvii. 27) the Prophet said: "We gave them the gospel and we put into the hearts of those who follow him kindness and compassion; but as to the monastic life, they invented it themselves," thus crediting Christianity with the invention of monasticism, which is an error, it being a pre-Christian institution.

Although the Islamic faith knows nothing of the doctrine of sacrifice, in the general meaning of that term, and has, therefore, no priesthood, the organization of religious orders or societies, demand

ing a novitiate from aspirants to membership, along with the taking of vows and obligations of secrecy, following a regular ceremony of initiation, has been an established fact right from the days of Mohammed, in whose lifetime one, at least of the twelve original societies was founded. Many have been formed since then; many are in existence in full vigor at the present day. They are, as it were, independent states within the body politic, with constitutions, differing from each other only in trivial points of practice and costume, and may be compared with the orders, congregations, friarhoods, and societies of the Roman Church and, like those bodies, consistently orthodox (at any rate, so far as the majority are concerned) with respect to the articles of their faith and practice. In a few orders, however, beyond the fundamental belief that "There is no God but Allah”—which, by the way, is not maintained in one order there is the utmost divergence in belief. Even the second portion of the credal sentence: "And Mohammed is His Prophet,' finds exception in, at least, two. The Qur-an, the basis of the Islamic faith, has, in circumstances somewhat similar to the Christian Scriptures, been subject to various interpretations and dialectical comments, sometimes genuinely made, but sometimes also, inspired by self-interest, hatred, or ambition. The result in Islam, as in Christianity, has been spiritual chaos, and while, on the one hand, the various religious orders in Islam have played a very active part in the propagation of the faith, they have also played an equally or, perhaps, more important part, not only in politics, but also in the holy wars against Christian nations. Very frequently, too, they have proved hostile to modern civilization and European influence.

Yet, says Sir Edwin Pears, in his Life of Abdul Hamid, "the real simple life and spiritual life of Islam is to be found in Turkey among various sects of Dervishes, such as the Mehlevis and the Bektashees. Englishmen generally are unaware how highly developed is their spiritual life. . . . The influence of these two great communities has been a humanizing one on the Moslems of Turkey and it is largely due to the wide dispersion of their members that the spread of Pan-Islamism of an objectionable character entirely failed in the Turkish Empire. The only Pan-Islamic movement which has existed is a purely religious one. The great missionary efforts that Mohammedanism has made in Africa and Asia are not due to a political Pan-Islamism, but to the leaven of the sects mentioned, who understand that if missionary efforts are to succeed they must be made by spiritual and not by temporal forces."

« السابقةمتابعة »