Universalism

“ Hence the familiar idea of the universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the physiological is universal—as universal, to repeat, as it is indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the lawful or the lawless is universal. ”

“ Absolute equality might be better, but so far as we can see, the law of the universe is infinite diversity in unity; and variety in condition is the essential of what we call progress—it is, in fact, life. ”

“ Simply, though perhaps abstrusely too, the universal is just all the particulars; unity is always in and through difference; and there is, therefore, without inconsistency, a case for individuality from either side. Indeed, the life of the individual being, as was said, always in a tension or strain of difference, of opposition and competition, is bound to have, it can be real only as it has, both a particular form and a genius for universality. ”

“ However, in its general sense of experience, being underlies the ideas of individuality and perfection. And these, at least so far, must be positive.
2. And, in the second place, each of them is positively determined by what it excludes. The aspect of diversity belongs to the essence of the individual, and is affirmatively contained in it. The unity excludes what is diverse, so far only as that attempts to be anything by itself, and to maintain isolation. And the individual is the return of this apparent opposite with all its wealth into a richer whole. ”

“ Let us bring but one test to every question—to every effort after social progress and organisation—to every law, or would-be law, the blind-worm politicians and propagandists present to us: civilisation as a spiritual and mental unity in infinite variety, but ever as a unity, based on the scientific enslavement of Nature. ”

“ Because the substance is the absolute unity of individuality and universality of freedom, it follows that the actuality and action of each individual to keep and to take care of his own being, while it is on one hand conditioned by the pre-supposed total in whose complex alone he exists, is on the other a transition into a universal product.—The social disposition of the individuals is their sense of the substance, and of the identity of all their interests with the total ”

“ It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, intellectual, moral, æsthetic, and religious, and in its social life has developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, aspects, or relations that are discovered. ”

“ For in conceiving of all that is as a single whole, as the life, the meaning, and the consciousness of a single Self, we are not limited to merely universal considerations. Human thought has long been conscious of some aspects of the unity of Being. The world of ordinary experience, of common sense, and of science, has already its provisional unity, which our own idealism must view as a genuine, if fragmentary, hint of the final unity. ”

“ We have still to ask how in particular we can most truly conceive the systematic unity which is formed by the whole multiplicity of apparently more or less independent subjects of experience, what degree of permanence and individuality, so far as we can judge, belongs to ourselves as members of that system, and what light is thrown by our ethical, religious, and æsthetic aspirations and ideals on the concrete character of the whole system and on our own place in it. ”

“ Why not view the Individual Whole as a whole of many related but not therefore mutually determined individuals? Why is not that at least possible? Do you say that one system of Thought, one ideal unity of universal Ideas, or Laws, is by our hypothesis to be fulfilled, and that therefore the individual fulfilment can only be such that it realises the very system of laws in this system of facts, where the Whole is contingent, but the parts are predetermined by the unity of the system? ”

“ In the form of finite social intercourse, amongst human beings, we find exemplified a type of unity in variety, and of variety recalling us always to the recognition of unity, — a type, I say, which permits us, as I believe, to go further in our hypotheses for the interpretation of the vast finite realm called nature, than we can go by the use of any other types of conception. The social life finds room for the most various sorts of mutual estrangement, conflict, and misunderstanding amongst finite beings ”

“ Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the whole living world. ”

“ How the freedom of man, and all the efforts by means of culture, instruction, religion, legislation, to form him to goodness, are to be reconciled with this truth, is the object of an entirely different inquiry, into which we do not now enter. We can here only declare in general, that the two principles may be thoroughly reconciled, and that a deeper study of philosophy will clearly show the possibility of their union. ”

“ Lay your foundations broad and deep in the common ground of humanity. Base your calculations on the sure ground of universal law. Then, gradually, out of this common earth will grow up the special flower, true to its own individual law, which is just as sacred and unalterable as the general law. ”

“ On the other hand, it is evident that all the tendencies of humanity, both in its politics and in its civil laws, are towards universalization,—that is, towards a complete transformation of the idea of society as determined by our statutes. ”

“ On a first survey, nothing appears more opposed than these two impulsions; one having for its object change, the other immutability, and yet it is these two notions that exhaust the notion of humanity, and a third fundamental impulsion, holding a medium between them, is quite inconceivable. How then shall we re-establish the unity of human nature, a unity that appears completely destroyed by this primitive and radical opposition? ”

“ And the advance of civilizations, with their science and philosophy, brings truer and completer views of man's place and relations. The moral ideas of the human reason are, indeed, essentially identical in all men and all ages, and when human relations are apprehended in the same light, with equal clearness and fulness, the moral judgments substantially agree.174 But the progress of knowledge, throwing increasing light on these relations, leads the onward civilizations up into truer and better application of the principles of right in life. ”

“ A problem of a purely formal character thus presents itself, viz. this—to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture, to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits of their applicability. ”

“ Just in the same way the State and the social life of men are, of course, credited with the purpose that in them all human capacities and all individual powers are to be developed and to find utterance in all directions and with all tendencies. But in opposition to so formal a view there at once arises the question in what unity these manifold formations must be comprehended, and what single end they must have for their fundamental idea and ultimate purpose. ”

“ According to the doctrine of this lecture, every entity is in its essence social and requires the society in order to exist. In fact, the society for each entity, actual or ideal, is the all inclusive universe, including its ideal forms. ”

“ This unity—on the one side of the being for another, or the making oneself into an outward thing, and on the other side of the being for oneself—this universal substance speaks its universal language in the usages and laws of his people: and yet this unchanging essence is itself nought else than the expression of the single individuality, which seems at first sight its mere opposite; the laws pronounce nothing but what every one is and does. ”

“ Here we have the statement of the universal principle that the religious and political orders, the spiritual and the temporal, or, otherwise, church and state, are, like soul and body, though distinct, inseparable in living, organized humanity. The author then goes on to prove the truth of his assertion by the example of our own republic, apparently the most notable exception to his rule, and an instance sufficient to disprove to most men of modern habits of thought the universality of the rule as an organic principle of society. ”

“ But if it be here further objected that the mere fact of unity is of small importance unless one comes to learn of what nature the unity is, and how it bears itself towards the varieties of our wealthy life, towards the vast phenomenal diversities of physical facts, towards the contrasts and tragedies of existence, towards that relative independence of moral individuals upon whose recognition all modern civilization depends, — then I fully admit the force of this objection. ”

“ And thus the conception of the necessary unity of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the strait-waistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being. ”

“ In a word, even in the language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest [p.161] social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual person. ”

“ We know how this has changed; how the masses are determined to form a mere dependent body of the so-called higher classes no longer, but to take the problem of life independently into their own hands, and how they obtain their representation of the world and the task of their life from that which is more immediately present to them and directly concerns their welfare; and how in this way they are inclined to look upon themselves as the whole of humanity. ”

“ I have observed, among the nations that I am familiar with, that the complex principle which we call humanity can be successfully addressed only in part to a race that could not develop the same principle to an equal degree for itself. ”

“ Somewhat hastily, as our limits have required, we have pursued the definition of our ideal through the imperfect forms of individualism. And now what must it be that the moral insight, with its Universal Will, demands of the possible future moral humanity, not as the negative task of preparing the way for goodness, but as the positive ideal task of the community in which the moral insight is attained? ”

“ If in universal nature, and in every individual that forms a part of the universe, we must distinguish between the internal unity or law, and external multiplicity or sensible phænomena, we find that in the plant the multiplicity overbalances the unity; in the animal, on the contrary, the unity overbalances the multiplicity. ”

“ Rising still higher on the road of generalization, he discussed the problem of unity and diversity, the one and the many. But in these lofty speculations the facts of human experience were not lost to view. The one, the good, the true, is otherwise regarded by him as the moral ideal, and this is examined as realized both in the individual and in the state. ”

“ For the universal as present in the particular, which itself is only the particular aspects of the universal itself is present in no particular absolutely, but rather in that very particular reaffirms once more its essential unity as universal. ”

“ But the progressive march of social man which constitutes the subject of universal history, or, as we term it, the formation and growth of humanity, are regulated by principles somewhat different from those which determine the internal life of individual man. ”

“ Proletarian logic teaches not only the equality of all human beings, but universal equality. And mark well, this universal equality does not conflict with variety any more than a variety of pots and jugs conflicts with the unity of vessels, or the manifold forms of bretzels and rolls with the unity of bakery ware. ”

“ I might express it in this way: to make life, social life as well as natural life, a thing that can be steered, and to confide the management of it to humanity itself, a humanity that shall be free, self-conscious, and united. ”

“ On the other hand, during the era in which the principle of individuality predominated, we should be prepared to see a preponderating manifestation of all those elements which tend to freedom, change, disintegration of interests, antagonistic or competitive effort, diversity in political and religious belief, intellectual activity; of all those drifts, in short, which relate to the individualizing of social power and interests, and to progress by antagonism; with corresponding absence of the elements active in the preceding epoch. ”