The Cosmic Order in the Service of Man

I am presenting these lectures to you as merely an exercise in the history of ideas. The particular set of ideas which I will examine relates to the role of providence in the social order as seen, primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by intellectuals in general, and by theologians, philosophers of various species, and economists in particular. Some of these ideas no doubt had a substantial influence on the course of history in these centuries, but as to this I venture no claims. It has been said of the ideas of political philosophers and economists that almost on their own they have ruled the world. Perhaps so. In any case, I have a professional vested interest in believing it to be so. But most of the thinkers I will be dealing with in these lectures would have regarded as impious the idea that the ideas of men, even of men as important as themselves, ruled the world as a final cause. They would have insisted, instead, that it was providence that ruled the world. For the moment, I will defer paying my respects to the role of providence and look only at secondary causes.

There is a theory, which is a quasi-religion for some men and is regarded by perhaps a majority of modern intellectuals as having a large measure of validity, which holds that it is the material circumstances in which men live, and especially the social structure and economic institutions of society which govern the behavior of men, and via practice, shape their thought, including even their thoughts about providence. Karl Marx, in 1843, applied this thesis to religion in his most dogmatic manner: "religious misery is, on one hand, the expression of actual misery, and, on the other, a protest against actual misery. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the kindliness of a heartless world, the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the people's opium."

A rival theory is that it is the great men who determine the course of history, the men of action in the material world, the great thinkers in the world of ideas. It is, I suppose, the responsibility of social historians to decide between the competing theories as to the causes and consequences of the ideas which men hold. In any case, as I am not a social historian, I do not accept it as an immediate responsibility of mine, and I will endeavor to remain strictly within the narrow and modest sphere of the history of ideas. This, as I understand it, accepts no responsibilities except those imposed by the standards of scholarly objectivity, whose essence can be summarized in two precepts: first, be as neutral as you can in reporting other men's ideas, yielding neither to favorable nor to unfavorable bias, nor to unmotivated carelessness; second, bear in mind that this, even an approach to accuracy in reporting, is an arduous and difficult art, calling for unintermitting self-discipline.

Objectivity is not an all-purpose virtue. One can, I suppose, pay a higher price for it in surrendered values than it is worth in some circumstances. As it operates in the history of ideas it can result in a lifeless, bloodless, anaemic academic discipline, one which isolates ideas from human minds and passions and treats them as a species of intellectual atoms, as particles of thought which emerged from nothingness and will return to it, causeless and devoid of consequences. It may have no function except that of providing the historian with a vacation from true history of man's thought or providing him with a vocation which furnishes him with subsistence and occasional fun, but leaves him free from the need of making moral or religious or political or economic judgments as part of his professional task. It would be libelous to assert that this is a fair account of how in fact most historians of ideas operate. With minor qualifications, however, I confess that it comes reasonably close to how I have tried to operate when I have practiced the art of Ideengeschichte. In the past I have for the most part been otherwise engaged, in trying to generate ideas of my own, or to improve the morals of others, or either to help rescue contemporary society from the sad cultural predicament I am told it is in, or to protect society from its would-be rescuers, or to solve technical economic problems. The only assistance I was then conscious of deriving from such knowledge as I had of the history of ideas was a lesson it taught me with a very close approach to certainty. Outside the quite extensive area where tautology rightly rules, certainty is beyond the reach of man, but for effectiveness in the life of action the false assurance that one has attained certainty is easy to achieve and is a great help and a great comfort.

It is possible however, to make more of the history of ideas than the mechanical compilation of annals or chronicles of autonomous ideas, all free, equal, and of no visible interest except to those perhaps mythical scholars, the old-fashioned antiquarians. In relation to the outside world, including the spheres of thought which use as raw material particular ideas, there are many kinds of ideas and, with effort, the kinds can in practice be distinguished more or less precisely from each other. Depending upon time and place, also, the same idea may be performing in different roles. Given the appropriate knowledge, the observer may be able in any particular set of circumstances to identify the role which is dominant for a particular idea, and thus relate the idea to the thought, the doctrines, the passions and hopes, the material circumstances, of mankind in that time and place. The idea may be operating functionally, that is, it may be influencing the behavior of those who are possessed of or by it, and thus may have practical consequences. The idea may find use only as a part of traditional rote, not related logically to its intellectual context, and now playing only a ceremonial role as a residue of the functional thought of a distant past. The idea may have an aesthetic role, as decoration or ornamentation for an argument or thesis, or as raw material for the poet or dramatist. The idea may be an implement of play, the tennis-ball, so to speak, of an intellectual game which can have strict rules designed to provide standards of skill for players and spectators. Finally, the idea, though dead and functionless, may be an object of innocent curiosity, like uncommon pebbles or ancient artifacts which offer scope for the acquisition of connoisseurship. It is on the basis of some blend of these roles that I accept the history of ideas as a legitimate avocation for myself, but I hope that my audience, with its wider range of skills and interests, and no doubt its more profound convictions, will find in these lectures more solid justification for listening to them than I have the presumption to claim on their behalf.

Providence, as an intelligent being, external to nature but governing nature, is an idea common to most religions. The term, or its equivalent in various languages, is often used also to signify the pattern in which that...