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Speculative Philosophy

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 28, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 29.

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Speculative Philosophy

By R.

THERE are a great many problems in this world altogether too big for the unaided mind of man. Like a boy who tries with his small strength to move a mighty rock, man consumes a great deal of energy wrestling with the ponderous problem, only to leave the thing pretty much as it was before.
Through the ages there have been a good many teachers who have tried to explain everything in the wide universe, seen and unseen, by their systems of philosophy. A wider knowledge has shown us how weak and foolish are these intended explanations, and that they muddle, more than they clear, the great mysteries confronting us.
The universe is a big affair, and man’s philosophies are insignificantly small. You can not put a barrel of rain-water into a thimble. The toad that lived in the bottom of a well could not comprehend the immensity of the ocean. And Byron tells of a man that— “Was also certain that the earth was square Because he had journeyed fifty miles, and found No sign that it was circular anywhere.”
No man of himself is able to take a comprehensive view of the vast ocean of truth, and some things he overlooks may throw all his seeming wisdom into foolishness. Shakespeare refers to this frailty of man when he causes one of his characters to say: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
A landsman can not manage a full-rigged ship. There are a thousand things about the craft of whose use and control he is utterly ignorant. And when it comes to the matter of this unmeasured universe, no man of himself has ever yet mastered the foundation principles, or even discovered the starting-point.
Nevertheless many men have made attempts. As a result we have many different forms of speculative philosophy.
About seven of these deal with the sensible, or material world, rather than with the supersensible, or idealistic. These seven accept only what appeals to the senses. Anything outside of this they call incredible and consider as purely imaginary, unknown, or unknowable. These seven forms have been called, according to their teachings, by the names of materialism, sensualism, externalism, utilitarianism, positivism, secularism, and agnosticism.
But there are thinkers and teachers who are not at all satisfied with these. They believe in going to the opposite extreme. They magnify the importance of the supersensible or seek more or less to discredit the material, or sensible. And under this form of thought come mysticism, asceticism, Spiritualism, and superstition.
Thus you see that there are those who, according to the first division, think that only the material, sensible things of the world are to be depended upon, and that by these alone can the mysteries of the world be explained.
At the same time there are others who, as indicated under the second division, believe that only the really true and dependable things are, after all, the things we can not see or touch or hear.
Between these two extremes men have been vibrating in their opinions for ages. Human thinking has been seeking to occupy “both sides of the road at once with a scared look on its face, like a tyro on a bicycle,” wondering if it will ever be able to find the middle of the road and stay there, or instead be wrecked by a mad leap into the ditch.
For example, there have been times when it seemed that the whole world of human thought would be swung into the abyss of materialism.
And again there have come times when human thought, as at the present day, has swung away from materialistic lines to those which were spiritualistic or mystical or superstitious.
As human thought through the years has thus staggered on like a drunken man, swinging from one side of the road to the other, there have been those who have longed for some teacher to come from somewhere who could plow a straight furrow through the field of the universe.
Many a one has tried his hand at the plow; but, looked back upon, the furrow is surely crooked enough to show how weak and purely human was the driving.
Is there any hope then for the world? Is there one who can plow a straight furrow? Is there one who can truly illuminate the dark problems of the world? Is there one who can show us what really is right where there is so much that is wrong and confusing?
Yes.
The teachings of Jesus Christ have marked a plain, straight furrow for human thought. In His teachings are to be found the explanations that truly explain. In His messages to us and in His life for us we see, as in a clear light, how to distinguish the right from the wrong.
No one is better than another if he does not re-echo the teachings of Christ. All human speculation is at the last unprofitable. Speculative philosophy leads away from great and essential truths while it teaches some truth intermingled with error. Poisoned truth like poisoned food is always more deceptive than poison alone. The human race has had more than enough of that knowledge that the Scriptures call “the knowledge of good and evil.”
Let us follow rather the teachings of this Christ who cuts a straight line between the natural and the spiritual, following neither materialism nor spiritualism, but giving us the true philosophy of matter and spirit.
Let us learn from Him the interrelations of the sensible and the supersensible, of the material and the spiritual, and we shall not be led to put too much confidence in this present world or this present time; neither will we be led into the wild vagaries of speculating on things unseen and even unknown.
It matters little with the evil one how a man becomes confused. It matters not with him to which side of the road human thought may stagger; he desires, however, that it shall stagger and stagger badly, until it falls in a heap on the one side or the other of the King’s highway.
If human thought, in its drunken wandering, shall stagger out of the way to be dashed to its death into the abyss of materialism, it is well with his satanic desires, for it is the death of human thought that he desires, and the means is non-essential.
If, on the other hand, human thought shall stagger in the opposite direction to be drowned in the black waters of mysticism and spiritualism, it is just the same, for drowning is as sure death as a broken neck.
There were times when the world of thought was staggering toward the abyss of materialism. But to-day it is headed for the black pool of spiritualistic mysticism.
Even many professed Christians are headed in this same direction. They are allowing the old landmarks to be taken away. They are cherishing ideas of God which tend to rob Him of personality and character, and remove from their hearts a grateful love for His care and guidance.
They are accepting ideas of man and his condition that remove any necessity for a redeemer or saviour and that therefore make the life Christ lived to be as a vain and idle mockery.
They are adopting views of the world and its operations that tend to degrade the Creator and to break down all distinctions between the works of nature and the operations of the Spirit. And all this, followed to its logical end, will make sin to appear as merely one phase or stage of righteousness, and the work of character-building will seem merely a process of development or evolution from a lower to an increasingly higher.
R.