Synopses & Reviews
HUMAN NATURE AND ITS REMAKING WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING PROFESSOR OP PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON HUMPHREY MILPORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright, 1918, 1923, by Yale University Press. First published, May, 1918. New and Revised Edition, 1923. New Printing with Additions, August, 1929. Reprinted, March, 1932. All rights reserved. This book may not be re produced, in whole or in part, in any form, ex cept by written permission from the publishers. TO GEORGE HERBERT PALMER SKILLED INTERPRETER OF HUMAN NATURE TEACHER AND FRIEND PREFACE SINCE books are no longer supposed, whether by author or public, to contain the final and finished truth, no book need apologize for being unripe. Ones hope is, not to close discussion, but to open it. What I have here aimed to do is the work rather of the quarryman with his blasting powder than of the sculptor with his chisel. Not that the quarry of human nature is a new one. But that we are only beginning to learn the technique of dealing with the larger masses. Few of us, I dare say, are satisfied with the degree of clarity we have reached about the rights of the primitive impulses, of the instincts of pugnacity, sex, acquisition, etc., as compared with the claims of social orders such as we see dissolving before our eyes, or of super-social orders, of art and religion. These and other agencies attempt to transform the original material of human nature human nature resists the remaking process the groping effort of mutual adjustment has continued throughout the length of history, has made the chief theme of history we still seek the broader principles wjhich govern the process, call it what you will, the processof remaking, of educating, of civilizing, of con verting or of saving the human being. Quest of such principles is the object of this present essay. Vlll PBBFACB No doubt, we have always had our authorities ready to spare us the trouble of search, ready to settle ex cathedra what human nature is and ought to become. And presumably we have always had a party of revolt against authority, convention, and the like, in the name of what is natural a revolt which has commonly been as dogmatic and intuitional as the authority itself. But the revolt of today is no longer either impres sionistic or sporadic. It is psychological, economic, political and it is general. The explosive forces of self-assertion which have finally burst their bounds in the political life of Central Europe have their seat in a widespread spiritual rebellion, a critical im patience of established sentiments and respecta bilities, a deliberate philosophic rejection not more of Hague Conventions than of other conventions, a drastic judgment of non-reality upon the pieties of Christendom. This rebellion would hardly have become so wide spread or so disastrous if it were wholly without ground. It indicates that our moral idealisms like our metaphysical idealisms have been taking their task too complacently. Our Western world has adhered to standards with which it has never supposed its prac tice to be in accord but heaving a resigned sigh over the erring tendencies of human nature, it has offered to these standards that of course variety of homage which is the beginning of mental and moral coma. By labelling these standards ideals it has rendered them innocuous while maintaining the profession of defer ence an ideal has beentaken as something which PBBFACB IX everybody is expected to honor and nobody is expected to attain. It is just these ideals that are now violently chal lenged, and the challenge is salutary...