MR. TOYNBEE'S
CITY
OF GOD
humanism, and naturalism. "On this view," he writes, "the individual
human being is nothing but
[sic!]
a part of the society of which he is a
member. The individual exists for society, not society for the individual."
And so on in a succession of horrendous
non sequiturs.
The upshot of
his remarks is that the this-worldly view culminates in totalitarianism to
which the only genuine alternative is Christian supernaturalism. To this
end he is compelled to depict the system of pagan superstition, which
Christianity overthrew, as this-worldly in outlook. Nothing could be more
mistaken. The triumph of Christian over classical culture
W'/-S
not a
triumph of other-worldliness over secularism but rather a triumph of one
species of other-worldliness over another, of one mystical religion over
a series of magical cults with mysteries imaginatively less adequate. We
are dealing here not with contradictory beliefs but with contraries: both
could not be true, but from the point of view of a genuine this-worldli–
ness, both would be considered false.
This-worldliness in philosophy does not entail the belief that the
human being is
nothing but
a physicochemical system, or
1J,Othi
1
ng but
a part of society, as Mr. Toynbee would have it. It recognizes the pres–
ence of whatever distinctive human .qualities emerge in experience, in–
sisting only that these qualities modify organisms which have natural
histories.
It
rejects not only Mr. Toynbee's transcendental myths-when
they can be given a determinate meaning-as false but also the syntac–
tical nonsense about individuals existing
for
society. Individuals exist
in
societies but only
for
other individual beings or for themselves. They serve
their own purposes and interests or other people's purposes and inter–
ests-sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously. The sense be–
hind the nonsense of the phrase "existing
for
society" is that it makes
it easier for some individuals to impose their purposes upon others,
whether the social institutions in question are the Party, the State, or
the Church. Because secularism refuses to worship Christ Crucified as
King, although prepared to learn from him as a man of great but not
perfect moral vision, it need not worship as divine either the Roman
Emperor or Stalin and Hitler. Yet the assumption that if one does not
worship God one must worship some man as God is central to Mr.
Toynbee's position,
The basic form of other-worldliness is the fetishism of abstractions.
Such fetishism may be clothed in the language of secularism as well as
that of religion. A genuine this-worldly philosophy, on the contrary, far
from worshipping abstractions uses them to understand and control the
problems of human existence. It does not bow down to institutions of
the visible or invisible Kingdom but evaluates them only as instruments
697
