Josiah Royce

“ The possibilities of error are infinite. Infinite then must be the inclusive thought. Here is this stick, this brickbat, this snow-flake: there is an infinite mass of error possible about any one of them, and notice, not merely possible is it, but actual. All the infinite series of blunders that you could make about them not only would be blunders, but in very truth now are blunders, though you personally could never commit them all. You cannot in fact make a truth or a falsehood by your thought. You only find one. From all eternity that truth was true, that falsehood false. ”

“ It is not because progress is to endure on this planet for a short or for a long time, but because the world in which this progress is so to end seems, thus regarded, wholly indifferent to progress, — this is the gloomy aspect. To-day, even while progress is so swift and sure, at this moment, we are living in a world for which, as science displays it to us, this progress is as indifferent and unessential as the fleeting hues of an evaporating soap-bubble. Is the physical fact of progress, thus regarded, a moral help to us? ”

“ This evil that I fight here in this finite world is a delusion. So then, why fight it? If I do good works, the world is infinitely good and perfect. If I seem to do evil works, the world is in truth no worse. Seeming good is not better than seeming evil, for if it were, then the seeming evil would be a real defect in God, in whose life is everything. If I have never loved aught but God, even so I have never hated aught but God. It is all alike. God does not need just me. Or rather I may say, in so far as he needs me to complete his infinite truth, he already has me from all eternity. ”

“ Infinitely progressing, always growing better, and yet reaching after all this eternity of work only the incoherent, troublous, blind imperfection that we feel in ourselves, and that we see in every dung-heap and sick-room and government on the earth, in every scattered mass of nebulous matter, in every train of meteor-fragments in the heavens — what is this but progress without a goal, blind toil? The world would be, one might think, after an infinity of growth, intensively infinite at every point of its extent. ”

“ Have we not forgotten one terrible consequence of our doctrine? The partial evil is universal good, is it? There is no evil? All apparent imperfection is an illusion of our partial view? So then where is the chance to be in a free way and of our own choice better than we otherwise in truth should be? Is not the arm that is raised to strike down wickedness paralyzed by the very thought that was to give it divine strength? ”

“ There is the glorious figure of the suffering Titan, there is the sweetness of the tender love that watches him; and above the tyrant himself one feels that there is somehow a heavenly might, that does not suffer him to do his worst. The world in which these tilings live is not intolerable. But then come the spirits that sing to Prometheus, in his anguish, of immortal deeds done on the earth, of great thoughts and lofty passions. All these are born of the conflict, and have their being in the midst of the terrors of the tyrant’s dominion. ”

“ My knowledge is torture to my foolish, sensitive self; yet while I writhe with the vainest of pangs, I despise utterly the thought of escaping it by illusion, or by forgetfulness, or by any means save the actual removal or conquest of the defect. And this I feel even when the defect is seen to be utterly irremovable without the destruction of myself. Better go on despising myself, and feeling the contempt of others, than return to the delights of foolishness; or, if the pain of knowing what I am is insupportable, then it were better to die, than to live in despicable ignorance. ”

“ You that have declared your willingness to serve moral ideals because they are such, does this help you to know, not of a goodly place where you personally and individually shall live without tears forever as a reward for your services, but of an eternal Judge that respects in no whit your person, before whom and in whom you are quite open and perfectly known, who now and for all eternity sees your good and your evil, and estimates you with absolute justice? This blaze of infinite light in which you stand, does it cheer you? ”

“ A religion may teach the men of one tribe to torture and kill men of another tribe. But even such a religion would pretend to teach right conduct. Religion, however, gives us more than a moral code. A moral code alone, with its “Thou shalt,” would be no more religious than is the civil code. A religion adds something to the moral code. And what it adds is, first, enthusiasm. Somehow it makes the faithful regard the moral law with devotion, reverence, love. By history, by parable, by myth, by ceremony, by song, by whatever means you will, the religion gives to the mere code life and warmth. ”

“ For us then the highest achievements of science are the dim shadow of the perfection of the infinite thought. And to science, accordingly, we must go, not for the invention, but for the intellectual illustration of our ideal. And science we must treat as absolute mistress of her own domain. Of the world as a whole, of the eternal as such, of infinite past time, of the inner truth of things, science pretends to tell and can tell nothing. Nor does science invent, nor yet can she prove, her own postulates, as we previously defined them. ”

“ This warrior, why does he not win? This slayer of evil things, this binder of Satan, who boasts that all things will yet be put under his feet, — has he not had all eternity in which to put all things under his feet, and has he done it yet? He may be indeed good, but somehow disaster seems to pursue him. Religious comfort in contemplating him you can have if you believe in him, but always you feel that this comfort is shadowed by the old doubt; is he after all what we want him to be, the victorious ruler of the world? ”

“ Thou livest for the applause or in fear of the blame of thy neighbors. An unkind word cuts thee to the quick. A little public favor, or the approving word of a friend, is worth half thy soul to thee. And all the while thou knowest not that One infinitely greater than multitudes of neighbors is here, not above thee only, nor afar in the heavens, but pervading thy every thought. And that all-pervading Thought judges thee as these neighbors never can. Myriads of their blunders about thee are as nothing to an atom of this infinite Truth. ”

“ Is the doctrine itself, however, once gained, so remote from the natural religious emotion? What does a man want when he looks to the world for religious support? Does he want such applause as blind crowds give men, such flattery as designing people shower upon them, such sympathy as even the cherished but prejudiced love of one’s nearest friends pours out for him? Nay, if he seeks merely this, is he quite unselfishly righteous? Can he not get all that if he wants it, wholly apart from religion? ”

“ Thou shalt know that in our weakness and blindness, in our pain and sorrow, in our little days, in our dark world, ignorant as to the future, confused with many doubts, beset with endless temptations, full of dread, of hesitation, of sloth, we yet sought, such as we were, to be in our own fashion like thee; to know the truth as thou knowest it, to be full of higher life as thou art full, to be above strife as thou art above it, to be of one Spirit as thou art One, to be perfect as thou art perfect. This thou shalt see in us, and this record shall be eternal, like our knowledge. ”

“ Here is not the ideal. “Would that there were a higher life! To that we would devote ourselves. We will serve humanity, but how can we worship it?” Such is the thought of many an ardent soul that seeks no personal rewards in serving the good, but that does seek some great Reality that shall surely be worthy of service. To such, our religious insight points out this higher reality. You that have been willing to devote yourselves to humanity, here is a Life greater in infinite degree than humanity. ”

“ The good Samaritan must say to himself, as he helps the poor wretch by the wayside: “In so far as I realize only this man’s need, my purpose is indeed simply to relieve him. But my purpose must be higher than that. This man is not alone, but one of a multitude. My highest aim in helping him is not to make him individually happy, but to increase by this, as by all my acts, the harmony of mankind. Not alone that he may by and by go away and enjoy himself do I help him now, but because by so doing I hope through him to increase among men moral insight.” ”

“ From life to life you pass, now a Brahman, now a king, now a worm, now a tiger, now a beggar, now in hell, now among the demons of the air; your aims alter everlastingly with each new birth, and nowhere do you find life anything but a succession of aims, no one of which is intrinsically more significant than the others. The world of aims is a world of strife, and no life has any real significance. No desire is of any essential worth. Therefore, seeing all this, give up desire. Have it as your one aim to have no aim. Such is the outcome of the insight into the eternal warfare of aims. ”

“ Well, our doctrine says that he gets it. Just as deep, as full, as rich, as true approval as expresses the full worth of his act, — this he has for all eternity from the Infinite. To feed upon that truth is to eat something better than snow, but as pure as the driven snow. To love that truth is to love God.
We spoke in the former book of the boundless magnitude of human life as it impresses itself upon one who first gains the moral insight. To many this first devotion to human life seems itself enough for a religion. ”

“ May we not be content with the few millions of years of growth that remain to our race before the earth grows cold? Is it not foolish to look into futurity so curiously? What matters it whether chaos comes again in far-off ages?
But we still insist. We desire, vainly or justly, yet ardently, that the world shall answer to our moral needs not by accident, not by the way, not for a time, but from its own nature and forever. If we can see that present progress is an indication of the nature of the universe, that the present is a symbol or a specimen of eternity, we shall be content. ”

“ Faust is to work for human progress, and progress means the existence of a whole nation of hard-laboring, fearless men who fight forever for their freedom. To have been the father of such a people is the highest blessedness. Good, indeed, we say; but to have wrought by the devil’s aid, through magic and oppression, is this the highest? Is this the type of the best activity? And is the great problem after all really solved? For what is the ultimate good of the eternal warfare with nature in which mankind are thus left? ”

“ Not so much in the hopelessness of our efforts to reach our ideals once chosen as in our perpetual hesitation or unsteadiness in the choice of ideals, we most frequently find the deepest ground for pessimistic despair. Choose an ideal, and you have at least your part to play in the world. The game may seem worth the trouble; for far off as may be what you seek, there is the delight and the earnestness of free self-surrender to a great aim. But pessimism is almost inevitable if you have been long trying to find an ideal to which you can devote yourself, and if you have failed in your quest. ”

“ Furthermore, what our planet is to become in time, the moon itself tells us, having cooled, by reason of its small size, more rapidly than we have done. Cold and dead, waterless, vaporless, that little furrowed mass of rock desolately rolls through its slow days, looking with passionless stare at our stormy, ardent earth, full of motion and of suffering. What that mass is, our earth shall become. And progress here will cease with the tides. All these are the commonplaces of popular science. Progress then, as we know it here, is a fact of transient significance. ”

“ We must live united with each other and the world. Therefore must we do our part to find work vast enough to bring us all in so far as may be into unity, without cramping the talent of any of us. Each then is to do his work, but so as to unite with the work of others. How may we accomplish this? By seeking to develop every form of life that does bring men into such oneness. Our vocation, whatever it be, must not end simply in increasing what people call the aggregate happiness of mankind, but in giving human life more interconnection, closer relationship. ”

“ What then is thy neighbor? He too is a mass of states, of experiences, thoughts, and desires, just as real as thou art, no more but yet no less present to thy experience now than is thy future Self. He is not that face that frowns or smiles at thee, although often thou thinkest of him as only that. He is not the arm that strikes or defends thee, not the voice that speaks to thee, not that machine that gives thee what thou desirest when thou movest it with the offer of money. ”

“ If they are hungry or naked or sick or imprisoned, so am I. We are brethren; ours is all one universal life. That I sit in this seat, arbiter of heaven and hell, makes me no other than the representative of universal life. Such reverence as ye now bear to me is due, and always was due, to the least of these my brethren.” The infinite sacredness of all conscious life, that is the sense of the story; the rest is the scenic accompaniment, which, whether literally or symbolically true, has no direct moral significance. ”