CHAPTER 1

The Unsentimental Sentiment

But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is oftenenough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others);the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain,concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and hisduty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him,and creatively determines all the rest.

CARLYLE

Every man participating in a culture has three levels of consciousreflection: his specific ideas about things, his general beliefs orconvictions, and his metaphysical dream of the world.

The first of these are the thoughts he employs in the activity ofdaily living; they direct his disposition of immediate matters and,so, constitute his worldliness. One can exist on this level alonefor limited periods, though pure worldliness must eventually bringdisharmony and conflict.

Above this lies his body of beliefs, some of which may be heritagessimply, but others of which he will have acquired in the ordinarycourse of his reflection. Even the simplest souls define a fewrudimentary conceptions about the world, which they repeatedlyapply as choices present themselves. These, too, however, rest onsomething more general.

Surmounting all is an intuitive feeling about the immanent natureof reality, and this is the sanction to which both ideas andbeliefs are ultimately referred for verification. Without the metaphysicaldream it is impossible to think of men living together harmoniouslyover an extent of time. The dream carries with it anevaluation, which is the bond of spiritual community.

When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we areaffirming in effect that sentiment is anterior to reason. We do notundertake to reason about anything until we have been drawn toit by an affective interest. In the cultural life of man, therefore,the fact of paramount importance about anyone is his attitude towardthe world. How frequently it is brought to our attention thatnothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone failsto justify itself. Not without cause has the devil been called theprince of lawyers, and not by accident are Shakespeare's villainsgood reasoners. If the disposition is wrong, reason increases maleficence;if it is right, reason orders and furthers the good. We haveno authority to argue anything of a social or political nature unlesswe have shown by our primary volition that we approve someaspects of the existing world. The position is arbitrary in the sensethat here is a proposition behind which there stands no prior. Webegin our other affirmations after a categorical statement that lifeand the world are to be cherished.

It appears, then, that culture is originally a matter of yea-saying,and thus we can understand why its most splendid flourishingstands often in proximity with the primitive phase of a people, inwhich there are powerful feelings of "oughtness" directed towardthe world, and before the failure of nerve has begun.

Simple approbation is the initial step only; a developed cultureis a way of looking at the world through an aggregation of symbols,so that empirical facts take on significance and man feels thathe is acting in a drama, in which the cruxes of decision sustaininterest and maintain the tone of his being. For this reason a trueculture cannot be content with a sentiment which is sentimentalwith regard to the world. There must be a source of clarification,of arrangement and hierarchy, which will provide grounds for theemployment of the rational faculty. Now man first begins this clarificationwhen he becomes mythologist, and Aristotle has notedthe close relationship between myth-making and philosophy. Thispoetry of representation, depicting an ideal world, is a great cohesiveforce, binding whole peoples to the acceptance of a design andfusing their imaginative life. Afterward comes the philosopher,who points out the necessary connection between phenomena, yetwho may, at the other end, leave the pedestrian level to talk aboutfinal destination.

Thus, in the reality of his existence, man is impelled from behindby the life-affirming sentiment and drawn forward by someconception of what he should be. The extent to which his life isshaped, in between these, by the conditions of the physical worldis indeterminable, and so many supposed limitations have beentranscended that we must at least allow the possibility that volitionhas some influence upon them.

The most important goal for one to arrive at is this imaginativepicture of what is otherwise a brute empirical fact, the donnéeof the world. His rational faculty will then be in the serviceof a vision which can preserve his sentiment from sentimentality.There is no significance to the sound and fury of his life, as ofa stage tragedy, unless something is being affirmed by the completeaction. And we can say of one as of the other that the actionmust be within bounds of reason if our feeling toward it is to beinformed and proportioned, which is a way of saying, if it is tobe just. The philosophically ignorant vitiate their own actions byfailing to observe measure. This explains why precultural periodsare characterized by formlessness and post-cultural by the clashingof forms. The darkling plain, swept by alarms, which threatens tobe the world of our future, is an arena in which conflicting ideas,numerous after the accumulation of centuries, are freed from thediscipline earlier imposed by ultimate conceptions. The decline isto confusion; we are agitated by sensation and look with wonderupon...