a tendency markedly accelerated today.  Hence, we find ourselves in a disintegrating and distracted epoch.  In 1912 Rudolph Eucken wrote:  “The moral solidarity of mankind is dissolved.  Sects and parties are increasing; common estimates and ideals keep slipping away from us; we understand one another less and less.  Even voluntary associations, that form of unity peculiar to modern times, unite more in achievement than in disposition, bring men together outwardly rather than inwardly.  The danger is imminent that the end may be bellum omnium contra omnes, a war of all against all."[12]

[Footnote 12:  Harvard Theo.  Rev., vol.  V, no. 3, p. 277.]

That disintegration is sufficiently advanced so that we can see the direction it is taking and the principle that inspires it.  Humanism has at least the value of an objective standard in the sense that it sets up criteria which are without the individual; it substitutes a collective subjectivism, if we may use the term, for personal whim and impulse.  Thus it proclaims a classic standard of moderation in all things, the golden mean of the Greeks, Confucius’ and Gautama’s law of measure.  It proposes to bring the primitive and sensual element in man under critical control; to accomplish this it relies chiefly upon its amiable exaggeration of the reasonableness of human nature.  But the Socratic dictum that knowledge is virtue was the product of a personality distinguished, if we accept the dialogues of Plato, by a perfect harmony of thought and feeling.  Probably it is not wise to build so important a rule upon so distinguished an exception!

But the positive defect of humanism is more serious.  It likewise proposes to rationalize those supersensuous needs and convictions which lie in the imaginative, the intuitive ranges of experience.  The very proposal carries a denial of their value-in-themselves.  Its inevitable result in the humanist is their virtual ignoring.  The greatest of all the humanists of the Orient was Confucius.  “I venture to ask about death,” said a disciple to the sage.  “While you do not know life,” replied he, “how can you know about death?"[13] Even more typical of the humanistic attitude towards the distinctively religious elements of experience are other sayings of Confucius, such as:  “To give oneself earnestly to the duties due to men, and while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them may be called wisdom."[13] The precise area of humanistic interests is indicated in another observation.  “The subjects on which the Master did not talk were ... disorder and spiritual beings."[13] For the very elements of experience which humanism belittles or avoids are found in the world where pagans like Rabelais robustly jest or the high spaces where souls like Newman meditate and pray.  The humanist appears to be frightened by the one and repelled by the other; will not or cannot see life steadily and whole.  That a powerful primitivistic faith, like Taoism,