ANTI-NATURALISM IN EXTREMIS
39
natural means at command for rendering the situation more
humane. Moreover, on the political side we fail to note that so–
called laissez-faire individualism, with its extreme separatism and
isolation of human beings from one another, is in fact a secular–
ized version of the doctrine of a supernatural soul which has
intrinsic connection only with God.
Fear and hate for that which is feared accompany situations
of great stress and strain. The philosophic attempt to hold the
rise of naturalism accountable for the evils of the present situation,
as the ideological incarnation of the enemy democratic peoples
are fighting, is greatly accentuated by the emotional perturbations
that attend the present crisis. Intense emotion is an ali-or-none
event. It sees things in terms of only blackest black and purest
shining white. Hence, persons of scholastic cultivation can write
as if brutality, cruelty, and savage intolerance were unknown until
the rise of naturalism. A
diabolus ex machina
is the natural emo–
tionalized dramatic counterpart of the
deus ex machina
of super–
naturalism. A naturalistic writer being human may yield to the
influence of fear and hate. But in so far he abandons his human–
istic naturalism. For it calls for ·observation of concrete natural
causal conditions, and for projection of aims and methods that
are consonant with the social conditions disclosed in inquiry. His
philosophy commits him to continued use of all the methods of
intelligent operation that are available. It commits him to aver–
sion to the
escapi~m
and humanistic defeatism inherent in anti–
naturalism.
As the war is a global war, so the peace must be a peace that
has respect for all the peoples and "races" of the world. I men–
tioned earlier the provincialism which regards the non-Christians
of the world, especially of Asia (and later Africa will come into
the scene) as outside the fold, and which philosophical non–
supernaturalism admits within the truly human compass only upon
conditions its own metaphysics dictates. A philosophic naturalist
cannot approve nor go along with those whose beliefs and whose
actions, if the latter cohere with their theories, weaken dependence
upon the natural agencies, cultural, scientific, economic, political,
by which a more humane and friendly world must be built. On
the contrary, to him the present tragic scene is a challenge to
employ courageously, patiently, persistently and with whole–
hearted devotion all the
natural
resources that are now potentially
at our command.
