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PARTISAN REVIEW
their failure to do so is more creditable to their hearts than to
their heads. For it is an essential part of their doctrine that above
the inquiring, patient, ever-learning and tentative method of
science there exists some organ of f acuity which reveals ultimate
and immutable truths, and that apart from the truths thus obtained
there is no sure foundation for morals and for a humane order
of society. As one critic of naturalism remarked {somewhat
naively indeed), without these absolute and final truths, there
would be in morals only the kind of certainty that exists in physics
and chemistry.
Non-theological anti-naturalists write and speak as if there
were complete agreement on the part of all absolutists as to
standards, rules, and ideals with respect to the specific content of
ultimate truths. Supernaturalists know better. They are aware of
the conflict that exists; they are aware that conflict between truths
claiming ultimate and complete authority is the most fundamental
kind of discord that can exist. Hence, their claim to supernatural
guidance; and hence fanaticism in carrying on a campaign to
wipe out heresies which are dangerous in the degree they claim
to rest on possession of ultimate truths. The non-supernatural
variety in the more humane attitude it usually takes is living
upon a capital which is inherited from the modern liberal devel–
opments professedly repudiated. Were its adherents to yield to
the demands of logic, they would see how much more secure is
the position of those who hold that given a body of ultimate and
immutable truths, without which there is only moral and social
confusion and conflict, a special institution is demanded which will
make known and enforce these truths.
During periods in which social customs were static, and iso–
lation of groups from one another was the rule, it was compara–
tively easy for men to live in complacent assurance as to the
finality of their own practices and beliefs. That time has gone.
The problem of attaining mutual understanding and a reasonable
degree of amicable cooperation among different peoples, races,
classes, is bound up with the problem of reaching by peaceful and
democratic means some workable adjustment of the values, stand–
ards, and ends which are now in a state of conflict. Dependence
upon the absolutist and totalitarian element involved
in
every
form of anti-naturalism adds to the difficulty of this already ex–
tremely difficult undertaking.
