Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/131

No. 2.] molecules which made up the primitive nebulosity of the uni- verse," or conceive the world as an interlocked system of ideas realizing an absolute purpose from which there is absolutely no escape, the fate of the individual is sealed from the very start.

So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen. So sagten schon Sibyllen und Propheten.

Whether we begin with moving atoms or logical concepts or universal purposes, the individual seems to become a mere phantom, a temporary arrangement of eternal particles of matter or the passing thought of a determined God. His beliefs, his yearnings, his loves and hates, his aspirations and ideals, all these are mere incidents, inevitable creakings and strainings, in the interlockings of the machinery of nature. It is not remarkable that, threatened to be caught in the never-stopping wheels, the modern man should shriek out in pain and protest against such a fate and refuse to have it so. The very terribleness of the conception fascinated him at first, held him spell-bound, and even kindled in him a spirit of exaltation, an excited desire to be spun along over the cataract and to be dashed against the rocks below. But now that the novelty has worn off, his bravado is all gone. Like the Romanticists of the past century, he is searching for a way of escape; as the dread of Spinozism had driven them to fideism, mysticism, intuitionism, and moralism, so the bugbear of mechanical, logical, and teleological absolutism is driving the new philosophers away from the cheerless abode of intellectualism in quest of a refuge where they may warm their hearts in the contemplation of ethical and religious values and be at peace, or where they may strive to bend a plastic world to human needs.

What characterizes the new currents in our contemporary thought is their opposition to any theory that degrades human life to the rôle of an epiphenomenon, that makes man a puppet, that leaves no place for human values. If, the pragmatist asks, everything, man included, is a mere effect of the primitive nebula or infinite substance, what becomes of moral responsibility, freedom of action, individual effort and aspiration; what, indeed, of need, uncertainty, choice, novelty, and strife?