Religion and the Modern Mind
by W.T. Stace
1952
Preface and Contents
[from the dust jacket]
According to Mr
Stace, modern [1952] culture is the arena of a struggle between two
antagonistic views of the universe and of man's place in it. One is the
age-old religious vision of the world as a divine and moral order,
governed by spiritual forces and values. The other, which has been
produced by science, although it is not a part of science, views the
world as controlled by nothing but blind natural laws and forces which
are entirely indifferent to moral purposes and spiritual ideals. The
latter view which may be called naturalism or secularism, is the
characteristic content of the modern mind. The problem engendered by the
struggle of these two world views is the subject of this book
The author first
shows how, historically, the naturalistic view has been built up as a
result of modern science. he discusses its consequences in the spheres
of religion, morals, art, literature and philosophy; and then finally
turns to the central problem which is thus posed for man's spiritual
life.
In 1948, Mr Stace, a
Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, published in the Atlantic Monthly
an article entitled Man Against Darkness, which, because it urged that
the naturalistic view of the world must be accepted, was widely
interpreted as an attack on religion. In the present book he examines
the problem how a belief in the essential core of religion, which he
interprets not merely as "morality tinged with emotion", but as the
acceptance of a divine principle in the world, and which he bel;ieves to
be an essential element in man;s higher life, can be maintained without
repudiating the modern scientific or natural view of the universe. He
regards the book therefore as a defense of religion against skepticism. |
Preface
THE MIDDLE CHAPTERS OF THIS BOOK DISCUSS HOW
SOME OF THE most important characteristics of the modern mind, with its
special religious, moral, and philosophical problems and perplexities,
can be traced back to the seventeenth century scientific revolution. But
though the book is thus in some sense historically oriented it does not
profess to be history, even intellectual history, as the professional
historian uses that term. To understand these probblems it is necessary
to know how they arose, but the emphasis of the book is always on
logical connections between ideas, or the lack of logical connections,
and on the problems themselves rather than on their history. And the
purpose of the earlier chapters is to lead up to and into the final two
chapters in which an attempt is made to throw light, so far as the
writer can, on the solutions of the problems which have thus come to
bedevil the modern world.
I owe some facts recounted in the earlier
chapters to Professor
J. H. Randall's book, The Making of the Modern Mind. My great
indebtedness to A. N. Whitehead's Science and the Modern World will be
obvious to anyone who has read that book. My thanks are also due to
Professor A. G. Shenstone, of the Princeton Physics Department, who
kindly read through the chapter on the rise of modern science and helped
me to make corrections in it, and to Mr. George Stevens, of J. B.
Lippincott Company, who gave me helpful criticisms of my first draft of
the whole book and especially made valuable major suggestions regarding
the arrangement and expression of the ideas of the final chapters.
W.T. Stace, Princeton, January, 1952
|
W.T. Stace: Mysticism and Philosophy
W.T. Stace: Religion and the Modern Mind
W.T. Stace: Theory of Existence and Knowledge
The
problem of evil assumes the existence of a world-purpose. What, we are
really asking, is the purpose of suffering? It seems purposeless. Our
question of the why of evil assumes the view that the world has a
purpose, and what we want to know is how suffering fits into and
advances this purpose. The modern view is that suffering has no
purpose because nothing that happens has any purpose: the world is run
by causes, not by purposes.
... W. T. Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind |
|
