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PARTISAN REVIEW
this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate."
Naturalism rejects this view because the "soul and its action" as
supernatural are put in opposition to a natural world and its
action, the latter being regarded as thoroughly corrupt. But
naturalism does not fly to the opposite extreme. It holds to the
possibility of discovering by natural means the conditions
in
human nature and in the environment which work in detail toward
the production of concrete forms of both social health and social
disease--as the possibility of knowledge and corresponding con–
trol in action by adequate knowledge is in process of actual dem–
onstration in the case of medicine. The chief difficulty
in
the road
is that in social and moral matters we are twenty-five hundred
years behind the discovery of Hippocrates as to the natural quality
of the cause of disease and health. We are also behind his dictum
that all events are equally sacred and equally natural.
I mention one further instance of the contrast between the
relative bearings of anti-naturalism and naturalism in connection
with social problems. Because of the influence of a low view of
human nature and of matter a sharp line has been drawn and
become generally current between what is called
economic
and
what is called
moral:-and
this in spite of facts which demonstrate
that at present industry and commerce have more influence upon
the actual relation of human groups to one another than any other
single factor. The "economic" was marked off as a separate com–
partment because on the one hand it was supposed to .spring from
and to satisfy appetites and desires that are bodily and carnal,
and on the other hand economic activities have to do with mere
"matter."
Whether or not Karl Marx originated the idea that economic
factors are the only ultimate causative factors in production of
social changes, he did not originate the notion that such factors
are "materialistic." He accepted that notion from the current and
classic Greek-medieval-Christian tradition. I know of no way to
judge how much of the remediable harshness and brutal inhu–
manity of existing social relationships is connected with denial of
intrinsic moral significance to the activities by means of which
men live. I do not mean that anti-naturalism is the original source
of the evils that exist. But I do mean that the belief that whatever
is natural is sub-normal and in tendency is anti-moral, has a great
deal to do with perpetuating this state of affairs after we have
