Winds of Doctrine

Winds of Doctrine

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Title: Winds Of Doctrine Studies in Contemporary Opinion
Author: George Santayana
Release Date: February 16, 2006 [EBook #17771]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WINDS OF DOCTRINE
STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY OPINION

BY
G. SANTAYANA
LATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD
UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

FIRST PRINTED IN 1913

CONTENTS

I. THE INTELLECTUAL TEMPER OF THE AGE
II. MODERNISM AND CHRISTIANITY
III. THE PHILOSOPHY OF M. HENRI BERGSON
IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL--
i. A NEW SCHOLASTICISM
ii. THE STUDY OF ESSENCE
iii. THE CRITIQUE OF PRAGMATISM
iv. HYPOSTATIC ETHICS
V. SHELLEY: OR THE POETIC VALUE OF REVOLUTIONARY
PRINCIPLES
VI. THE GENTEEL TRADITION IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

WINDS OF DOCTRINE

I
THE INTELLECTUAL TEMPER OF THE AGE
The present age is a critical one and interesting to live in. The
civilisation characteristic of Christendom has not disappeared, yet
another civilisation has begun to take its place. We still understand the
value of religious faith; we still appreciate the pompous arts of our
forefathers; we are brought up on academic architecture, sculpture,
painting, poetry, and music. We still love monarchy and aristocracy,
together with that picturesque and dutiful order which rested on local
institutions, class privileges, and the authority of the family. We may
even feel an organic need for all these things, cling to them tenaciously,
and dream of rejuvenating them. On the other hand the shell of
Christendom is broken. The unconquerable mind of the East, the pagan
past, the industrial socialistic future confront it with their equal
authority. Our whole life and mind is saturated with the slow upward
filtration of a new spirit--that of an emancipated, atheistic, international
democracy.
These epithets may make us shudder; but what they describe is
something positive and self-justified, something deeply rooted in our
animal nature and inspiring to our hearts, something which, like every
vital impulse, is pregnant with a morality of its own. In vain do we
deprecate it; it has possession of us already through our propensities,
fashions, and language. Our very plutocrats and monarchs are at ease
only when they are vulgar. Even prelates and missionaries are hardly
sincere or conscious of an honest function, save as they devote
themselves to social work; for willy-nilly the new spirit has hold of our
consciences as well. This spirit is amiable as well as disquieting,
liberating as well as barbaric; and a philosopher in our day, conscious
both of the old life and of the new, might repeat what Goethe said of
his successive love affairs--that it is sweet to see the moon rise while

the sun is still mildly shining.
Meantime our bodies in this generation are generally safe, and often
comfortable; and for those who can suspend their irrational labours
long enough to look about them, the spectacle of the world, if not
particularly beautiful or touching, presents a rapid and crowded drama
and (what here concerns me most) one unusually intelligible. The
nations, parties, and movements that divide the scene have a known
history. We are not condemned, as most generations have been, to fight
and believe without an inkling of the cause. The past lies before us; the
history of everything is published. Every one records his opinion, and
loudly proclaims what he wants. In this Babel of ideals few demands
are ever literally satisfied; but many evaporate, merge together, and
reach an unintended issue, with which they are content. The whole drift
of things presents a huge, good-natured comedy to the observer. It stirs
not unpleasantly a certain sturdy animality and hearty self-trust which
lie at the base of human nature.
A chief characteristic of the situation is that moral confusion is not
limited to the world at large, always the scene of profound conflicts,
but that it has penetrated to the mind and heart of the average
individual. Never perhaps were men so like one another and so divided
within themselves. In other ages, even more than at present, different
classes of men have stood at different levels of culture, with a
magnificent readiness to persecute and to be martyred for their
respective principles. These militant believers have been keenly
conscious that they had enemies; but their enemies were strangers to
them, whom they could think of merely as such, regarding them as
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