Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/37

Rh the realities called men might be discovered by God, he could not react to these interests in such a way as to fix them by a stable habit that by us would be described as an organic inheritance. For if they should be, a new species would result and the choices of one age would be rendered too easy or forced as it were upon the next, men would become a means to ends not fully lived as their own, would never be fully responsible for their lives, would not be ends in themselves, and so capable of being loved by God. And God, not able to reverence or love men for their intrinsic value, could not become a moral being. But the interests of men, not inherited biologically, are inherited as elements of the traditional and cultural environment of men, and thus they can be tried by men, and attracted or repelled, chosen or rejected, by men, and so all men can come to progressively and freely realize their possibilities, and become partakers of the responsibility for the formation of their characters and for the character of the world in which they live.

This being true, in cooperating with men in the creation of civilization, God is dependent upon and must await man’s initiative. Being in immediate relationship to men, God, as a moral being, must strive to create life in men, but he must wait for their interests to develop the sense of need to which the growth of these gives rise, and then through faith in men he must labor in a hope for the becoming real of the unseen. God would certainly have a civilization in which men could make themselves physically comfortable, but anthropology teaches that he had to wait for a vast period of time, many thousands of years, for some genius to discover how to make fire at will. History teaches that God had to wait during another long period for man to learn to smelt ores for the metals, or for one with organizing ability to hold by force a host of men in a large kingdom, such as the Assyrian and Persian empires. The same science teaches that it took still thousands of years for men to develop in such interests as to be able to be discontented with the idea that some were divinely authorized to rule over them without their consent or choice. It will take much time yet for men to learn to live successfully as members of a democratic government or church. How slow was man in learning to limit the power of kings and priests, to eliminate special privileges, to secure the right of trial by jury, to secure the right to vote and become an active factor in the formation of the government, laws, etc., by which he lives. All these things have added to the lives of men and must have been desired for them by God. But it seems that God has been unable to help man until man has learned to help himself and to initiate a new advance.

God is limited, because of the nature of the world-whole, in