THE NEMESIS OF HUMANISM
By DR. W. B. SELBIE
TN his address to Convocation at the close of the academic year, the recently retired Senior Proctor spoke of the effect on Oxford life of political confusion and unrest. "In these circumstances," he said, "it is not surprising that a certain feeling of futility should affect discussions of purely University matters and that undergraduates should devote what would ordinarily be a disproportionate amount of time to the consideration of international affairs." This is but one aspect of a much wider subject, and Oxford here epitomises a state of feeling which obtains throughout the length and breadth of our land. The Munich crisis brought home to the most casual observer the grim fact that we were on the edge of a catastrophe, and events since then have only served to increase the tension. The effect of this, not only at Oxford but in the country at large, is a sense of futility attaching to the ordinary business of life and a quickened interest in international politics.
So on the one hand men are saying "Why carry on busi- ness as usual when we may all be caught up in a war which will be the end of our civilisation?" while on the other, they scan every move on the international chess-board, wonder- ing if and how the deb licie may be avoided. The world is in an inextricable mess, and all human effort seems to be futile when confronted with those who act on the principle that might is right.
This frame of mind is probably unavoidable and is cer- tainly intelligible, but nevertheless it is quite mistaken. Life for human beings may be brief and disordered, but can never be wholly futile, and in the long run victory does not neces- sarily lie with the big battalions. The whole world just now is suffering from a lack of perspective, which is only another way of saying a lack of religion. When either nations or in- dividuals leave God out of their calculations, everything is apt to go wrong. "Where there is no vision the people perish." Both German arrogance and British fears may ho put down to the same cause—an anthropocentric humanism.
The most sinister and striking feature of modern totali- tarianism is its flat repudiation of all the standards and ideals associated with religion in its Christian form. It has not been possible, of course, to crush all manifestations of the religious sentiment, because these are natural to man, and it is still true that naturam expellas furca, (amen usque recurret. But it is possible and only too easy to supply men and women with a substitute religion which for the time, at least, will meet their needs and provide an outlet for their emotions. Communism, National Socialism and Fascism all serve as substitute religions, and, judging by their fruits, there is not much to choose between them. Their worship of nation and race and their blind belief in material force are a throw-back to a more primitive condition and carry with them consequences such as are writ large on the pages of his- tory. It is only possible for men to justify a policy of greed, cruelty, and falsehood, when they become a law unto them- selves and the arbiters of their own destiny. Moral sanctions mean nothing to those who make their own moral standards, and, in doing what is right in their own eyes, substitute the will of man for the will of God.
This humanism run mad is no new thing. The ancient Greeks knew it under the untranslatable name of hubris— that impudent, arrogant, and self-confident temper that de- spised the will of God and carried with it the seeds of its own destruction. The Old Testament, too, teaches that no man has a right to say "my power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me" this or that, for all power is of God and without Him men can do nothing. And Christianity with its far higher doctrine of human nature insists on man's impotence apart from God. It is by the grace of God that we are what we are. For man, therefore, to arrogate to himself the power to shape his own destiny and to become the master of his own fate is to attempt the im- possible. God is not mocked and hubris in the long run spells ruin.
It is a humanist outlook, too, that is responsible for that "certain feeling of futility" which is said to be affecting the younger generation in these days. If we are all to become cannon-fodder before we are much older, what is the use of carrying on? "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." Such an attitude is only possible to those whose horizon is limited to time and sense, who make man the measure of all things and rule out the transcendental as unreal. For the Christian, life, however brief and troubled, can never be wholly futile. He lives not unto himself, not for time, but for eternity. He can say, "Leave now to dogs and apes, man has for ever." This wider outlook adds a new mean- ing and dignity to the trivial round, the common task. Life is a vocation and the humblest duties can be made to minister to the service of God and man. The Christian, too, walks by faith not by sight. He believes that the future is in God's hand and that God's guidance is a reality. There- fore, he will not wilt before anticipation of evil, but do his best to avoid disaster, busy himself with the duty that lies nearest -and "greet the unseen with a cheer," whatever it may bring. This Christian attitude compounded of faith, hope, love and courage, is the kind of tonic men need in dark and depressing days. It will brace them to meet every contingency—the world's scorn or the tyrant's frown.
There is some consolation in the fact that humanism is at last being found out. Its logical results are so blatant and so terrible that men instinctively shrink back, not from them merely, but from the whole philosophy that underlies them. Therefore, it must be the chosen task of all men and women of good will to reconstruct human life and society on a theistic or even Christian basis. This means more than a religious revivaL To see all things sub specie aeternitatis implies a revolution.
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