historian and social reformer, he most admired and identified with the great English prophet of natural selection. Wallace had followed a curious trajectory since his days of co-discovery with Darwin, becoming more mystical (and politically progressive) as his scientific expertise grew.
Meanwhile, Henry Bernard had gone further than Wallace in opening up what Roosevelt considered to be “a new biological and even sociological field of capital importance”—the theory that the principle of group development in human beings was as instinctive, and organic, as that in biological evolution. Bernard was willing to entertain the role of the soul in science. But he fell“into the great mistake of denying freedom of the will, merely because he with his finite material intelligence cannot understand it.” This incomprehension led him to call illogically for the remoralization of society, and for judicial reforms that would catch up with modern psychical perceptions. Roosevelt did not boast that he had recently called for the same things himself, but he remarked that a perfect community was unattainable “if there are no such things as freedom of the will and accountability.”
Not to mention love, an emotion scientists hesitated to analyze. It bonded the basic human cluster, the family, better than economic or environmental forces. Saint Augustine had correctly proclaimed that “the truths of love are as valid as the truths of reason.” Another essential was plain old common sense—too common for most philosophers, but not for Bergson, who regarded it as different from, and superior to, reason. In his new masterwork, the French philosopher had, in Roosevelt’s words, shown that “Reason can deal effectively only with certain categories [of knowledge]. True wisdom must necessarily refuse to allow reason to assume a sway outside its limitations; and where experience plainly proves that the intellect has reasoned wrongly, then it is the part of wisdom to accept the teachings of experience, and bid reason to be humble—just as under like conditions it would bid theology be humble.”
Roosevelt felt that Dwight and other cautionaries against purely materialistic thought were performing “a real service” in warning that dogmas, no matter how provable they seemed in the laboratory or the marketplace, were often as not swept away by the currents of historical change. Today’s “law” might be tomorrow’s superstition. But if there was to be any steady scientific or social advance, theists and materialists alike must give way to “bolder, more self-reliant spirits … men whose unfettered freedom of soul and intellect yields complete fealty only to the great cause of truth, and will not be hindered by any outside control in the search to attain it.”
The word
progress
sounded repeatedly in his essay as he continued to equate faith and reason as coefficients, not opposites, in improving the human lot. “In the world of politics,” he wrote, “it is easy to appeal to the unreasoning reactionary, and no less easy to appeal to the unreasoning advocate of change, but difficult to get people to show for the cause of sanity and progress combined the zeal so easily aroused against sanity by one set of extremists and against progress by another set of extremists.”
For a moment Roosevelt seemed tempted to veer into one of his habitual either-or mantras, but remembering that the theme he had set himself was truth-seeking in a spirit of reverence, he resumed his assault on “the narrowness of a shut-in materialism.” While praising materialistic scholars for “the whole enormous incredible advance in knowledge of the physical universe andof man’s physical place in that universe,” he ascribed superior wisdom to James, Boutroux, and Bergson because they understood “that outside the purely physical lies the psychic, and that the realm of religion stands outside even of the purely psychic.”
He argued that those who
Meanwhile, Henry Bernard had gone further than Wallace in opening up what Roosevelt considered to be “a new biological and even sociological field of capital importance”—the theory that the principle of group development in human beings was as instinctive, and organic, as that in biological evolution. Bernard was willing to entertain the role of the soul in science. But he fell“into the great mistake of denying freedom of the will, merely because he with his finite material intelligence cannot understand it.” This incomprehension led him to call illogically for the remoralization of society, and for judicial reforms that would catch up with modern psychical perceptions. Roosevelt did not boast that he had recently called for the same things himself, but he remarked that a perfect community was unattainable “if there are no such things as freedom of the will and accountability.”
Not to mention love, an emotion scientists hesitated to analyze. It bonded the basic human cluster, the family, better than economic or environmental forces. Saint Augustine had correctly proclaimed that “the truths of love are as valid as the truths of reason.” Another essential was plain old common sense—too common for most philosophers, but not for Bergson, who regarded it as different from, and superior to, reason. In his new masterwork, the French philosopher had, in Roosevelt’s words, shown that “Reason can deal effectively only with certain categories [of knowledge]. True wisdom must necessarily refuse to allow reason to assume a sway outside its limitations; and where experience plainly proves that the intellect has reasoned wrongly, then it is the part of wisdom to accept the teachings of experience, and bid reason to be humble—just as under like conditions it would bid theology be humble.”
Roosevelt felt that Dwight and other cautionaries against purely materialistic thought were performing “a real service” in warning that dogmas, no matter how provable they seemed in the laboratory or the marketplace, were often as not swept away by the currents of historical change. Today’s “law” might be tomorrow’s superstition. But if there was to be any steady scientific or social advance, theists and materialists alike must give way to “bolder, more self-reliant spirits … men whose unfettered freedom of soul and intellect yields complete fealty only to the great cause of truth, and will not be hindered by any outside control in the search to attain it.”
The word
progress
sounded repeatedly in his essay as he continued to equate faith and reason as coefficients, not opposites, in improving the human lot. “In the world of politics,” he wrote, “it is easy to appeal to the unreasoning reactionary, and no less easy to appeal to the unreasoning advocate of change, but difficult to get people to show for the cause of sanity and progress combined the zeal so easily aroused against sanity by one set of extremists and against progress by another set of extremists.”
For a moment Roosevelt seemed tempted to veer into one of his habitual either-or mantras, but remembering that the theme he had set himself was truth-seeking in a spirit of reverence, he resumed his assault on “the narrowness of a shut-in materialism.” While praising materialistic scholars for “the whole enormous incredible advance in knowledge of the physical universe andof man’s physical place in that universe,” he ascribed superior wisdom to James, Boutroux, and Bergson because they understood “that outside the purely physical lies the psychic, and that the realm of religion stands outside even of the purely psychic.”
He argued that those who
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