By Charles Hartshorne
Editorial comments: The original of this piece is a single-spaced typed manuscript of four and a half pages which is on file at the Center for Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California. At the top of the first page is written in cursive, “Please return to Mrs. Charles Hartshorne,” which seems to be in Dorothy Hartshorne’s handwriting (it’s much too neat to be that of Charles). As the text says, the message was delivered on October 28, 1956 at the United Liberal Church, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Charles and Dorothy Hartshorne had moved from Chicago to Atlanta in 1955 where Charles was teaching at Emory University. According to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta Records at Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, “The United Liberal Church in Atlanta reopened as an integrated congregation in 1954, after being closed by the American Unitarian Association in 1951 for practicing racial segregation. Members of the new church became active in the civil rights movement.”
I have indicated the original pagination of the typed manuscript with numbers in square brackets. In the couple of places where I made insertions, I also used square brackets. I made a few editorial corrections. In only one case did I guess at Hartshorne’s meaning. On page 4 of the original manuscript (page 6 of this manuscript), I changed the word “flowless” to “flawless”—probably either will work. Finally, between the end of his message and the final prayer, Hartshorne included quotes from Whitehead’s Process and Reality which are not marked as such in the original text but for which I have provided the page references. (Donald Wayne Viney)
Life and the Everlasting
By Professor Charles Hartshorne
Delivered on 28 October 1956 at the United Liberal Church
For what do we live? To achieve, and help others to achieve, satisfying experiences; to enjoy, and help others to enjoy, the beauty of the world; to acquire and transmit love and understanding. Live to live well and to make life better for others. This is the humanistic view. We all, I presume, accept it, so far as it goes. But is it complete, is it the whole story?
For what do we live? To get into heaven when we die, and avoid getting into hell, and to aid others in their pursuit of the same goal. This is the orthodox religious review, crudely expressed. It is not in contradiction to the humanist view, since we are to deserve heaven by loving one another while on earth. But it seems to make the good life on earth a mere means to an end which is infinitely more important, if it can be attained; and at the same time, an end whose possibility of attainment rests on no clear evidence. It also seems to mean that generosity towards others is really the shrewdest kind of self-interest, since it is the way to attain everlasting happiness and avoid everlasting torment. Thus, the meaning of life becomes infected with ugly ambiguities. Nothing matters in comparison with heaven and hell, but perhaps there is no heaven or hell. We should live from the motive of love, but in doing so we merely serve our own advantage after all.
There is an additional difficulty. Is an everlasting continuation of life beyond the grave, even in heaven, desirable? Is a human personality worthy of an infinite succession of experiences? It is like a book with an infinite number of chapters, or a poem with no last verse, or a musical theme with unlimited number of variations. But after a while, variations on the same theme become trivial. I simply cannot believe that I, or others I know, have personal themes which could stand an infinite number of expressions. With all due respect, I cannot. The zest of living requires novelty, in substantial amounts. In childhood and youth things are new, and hence exciting. After fifty or one hundred years, much of the novelty is gone. Death is the solution to the problem of novelty. Give way to another generation, each member of which starts with a fresh personality, a new theme, to be put through its variations. But, if death means rebirth into heaven, then the same problem would arise, and new death be called for. There is no substitute for novelty. Of course, we are often told that life in heaven is not in time, is not a succession of experiences. Then I can only say that either words are being used without clear meaning or what is meant is the very thing I am going presently to defend as my own belief. But meanwhile I wish to ask why has the popular salvation theory been so widely held? I suggest that its appeal has been due partly to the fact that it gives an answer—whether or not a good one—to a question which humanism does not really face at all.
The humanist view answers only this question. What is the value of life in human and local terms or what and where is human happiness? To this question I take humanism to be the right answer and orthodoxy the wrong one.
But there is another question. What is the ultimate, total value of life in the universe as a whole and throughout the future? Why does it matter what happens for awhile on this planetary speck in the vastness of space-time? Suppose, when we die, we have made ourselves and others happy? When it is over, why will it be well that we have done so? [2] Is the only enduring accomplishment to be what posterity will have gained through our efforts? Surely, we cannot live just for posterity. Life has to be lived partly for the value of the living, of the passing moment. Yet most of your moments or mine will mean very little to posterity; and when we are gone, they will mean nothing to us. What then, will be the significance of our having lived, or lived well? What is the relation of the passing moment to the everlasting future? Our human posterity will either eventually come to an end, or will eventually so change that any contribution we can be supposed to have made must be totally unrecognizable and dubious, and no reasonable measure of our lives as they were actually lived. My view is that pure humanism is not a solution of this problem.
The theory of salvation in heaven does seem to give an answer of a sort to the question how our life on earth does achieve an enduring result. The result is to be our own everlasting happiness. But the answer is highly doubtful as to its truth. It tends to make our highest motives ambiguous as between love and calculated self-interest. It also threatens us with everlasting boredom—that of endlessly being the same person, instead of everlasting happiness. There are other difficulties, especially this: We need to see the value of life, not only in terms of time, but of space. Many astronomers now believe that there are millions of inhabited planets, myriads probably, with rational beings upon them. And even on our own planet, there are a million and a half species of animals and billions of human individuals. What does all this add up to, if anything? A man may sacrifice his life for a group—feeling that many persons are more valuable than one. But more valuable for what, or for whom? Two apples are better than one, if you wish to eat both, or if you can sell both for more money than one. But who gets the extra benefit for each additional person? I get my happiness, you get yours, who gets the sum of your happiness and mine? Can you add the happiness of separate individuals—put them into a basket and see how much happiness is there? The greatest happiness of the greatest number is not, in humanist terms, a happiness at all, but only a sum in the head of the philosopher thinking about it.
We have then a two-pronged question. How does life add up to anything in the ultimate long-run, and how does life spread out in space—some here in me, some there in you, some on another planet, and add up to a sum which has at least the value of the items going into the sum?
For three thousand years or more, men have had glimpses of an answer to both aspects of this question. This answer is simple enough. If, and only if, there is a unity of life in space and time, if all lives are items within an all-embracing, conscious life, which is everlasting, the truly “immortal” being, then indeed our every moment, can contribute its mite to a single value. For surely an everlasting consciousness would also be one which never forgot what it once had possessed. Perfection of endurance and perfection of retention in memory would logically go together.
The lower animals can relate themselves to the cosmic background through mere feeling, but man has to think about things, even about this thing, if he is to realize his human powers to the full. The trouble with pure humanism is precisely that it does not allow us to be altogether human, but holds us in some respects, down to the animal level. The other animals have no superstitions about heavenly or divine things; we may be able to avoid such superstitions in their manner, by refraining from thinking about certain matters.
But perhaps we ought to aim higher than that and seek another way of avoiding superstition by finding the truth, if possible. But it must be a truth by which we can really live.
I wish, before closing, to deal with the one greatest difficulty in accepting the view which has been presented. How can we believe that all life is included within a supreme and everlasting life when there is so much conflict, suffering, and wickedness in the world? If the supreme life, the [3] divine life, enfolds all—how is evil possible? Is the divine being unable to control its own constituents? Is it defective in power? I reply, it is unable fully to control its own constituents, but yet it need not for all that be defective in power. But, you may say, surely this is a strange paradox, that a being should be unable fully to control its own members, and yet not be defective in power. I have to reply: Nevertheless, that is exactly what I wish to say. Let me try to remove the paradox. If “A” is unable fully to control “B”, “C”, and “D”, this might be for one of two reasons: It might mean that A is weak and does not possess the highest kind and degree of power; or, the other possible reason [is that], B, C, and D, are such that they could not be fully controlled, by no matter how superior a power. Now it is arguable that genuine individuals can only exist at all as partly self-determining or free beings; they can be largely molded and controlled by the situations out of which they arise and in which they operate, but to exist as individuals at all they must act individually in some fashion and to some degree. This is why I am enthusiastic about the indeterminacy principle, and related ideas in the new physics, concerning which Professor [Henry] Margenau spoke last year. I believe that the substitution of statistical laws of average behavior for the old classical laws, which purported rigidly to determine the acts of individuals, is the emergence in physics of a truth which some philosophers had earlier divined, that individuality and self-activity are inseparable.
If this principle is sound, and I am wholly persuaded that it is, then for the divine life to exercise precise control over its constituents would be the same as for it to have no constituents, would be the same as for it to exist in complete solitariness. It may be suspected that such a solitary life is not conceivable, and there seems no reason to suppose it desirable, since the social nature of life seems to constitute its value. The evil in the world, which results—I hold—not from divine contrivance, but from the partial uncontrollability of the individuals making up the world, is not too high a price to pay for there being a world at all. So the old argument, either God is weak, or he lacks benevolence, is unsound. Weakness is an inability to exercise over others such control as they are capable of yielding to; but the inability to exercise over them a complete control to which they are not capable of yielding, is not inability in the proper sense. For the corresponding ability would amount to the capacity to do the logically impossible.
We may now answer our original question, for what do we live? We live to live well and to make life better for others, but this is worth doing because we shall thereby contribute indestructible values to the one life of which we all are members. Let us take an analogy. For each of us, it is self-evident that the cells in his own body are primarily there for his sake, not he for the sake of his cells. Yet the cells in each of us may, for all that, enjoy their own existence. We are as cells in the universal life; but we have the privilege of trying to understand what and how we contribute to the larger whole.
This is the alternative which some philosophers and theologians propose to the salvation theory. It is not an alternative to humanism, but its completion, by bringing into recognition the cosmic background, the whole of things in space-time. Mere humanism renounces this attempt. But is there not a dimension of human capacity which is thereby left unexpressed?
That the divine is unable to make genuine individuals which, at the same time, are not genuine individuals, surely is no ground for criticizing the divine power.
The whole trouble has arisen through a failure to understand what individuality means. I suspect the notions of heaven in the sky, and even of heaven on earth, if I may say so, both spring from misunderstanding the nature of individual existence. Individuals cannot be subjected to perfect control, either by God or by social scientists and educators not to mention the question, who is to control the scientists or the educators. Tragedy there will always be, in any actual state of existence.
[4] Do we then give up all hopeful notions of the future and all dreams of perfection? Perhaps we should separate hopeful notions from dreams of perfection. In all living things, there is something like hope, the sense of value to be achieved through effort. But value can be quite genuine without being perfect or untroubled by sorrow, suffering, and sense of danger. Animals find life livable in the midst of danger and aspects of suffering; so do human beings. The good life on earth is one thing, perfect life on earth quite another. To refuse to strive for reforms, unless promised the perfect society seems to me a rather childish petulance. Our aim need not be perfection; but as good a life as we can achieve, for ourselves and our children. To leave anything undone which will improve this life is a mistake, whatever the prospects for utopia in the distant future.
What then about perfection? Shall we simply dismiss the idea? I personally am not willing to dismiss it, but I locate it where it seems to me to belong, in the superhuman. It is the divine life which alone can control, not so much the world which is in part uncontrollable, but its own response to the world. The divine life, cherishing the world, notwithstanding its evils and limitations, can make of the values, scattered through innumerable lives, a unique, all-embracing, and in whatever sense this is possible, a flawless synthesis, the one great endless symphony to which all lesser music is contributory. Here indeed is a poem with no last verse, a theme worthy of infinite variations.
It is hard for man to have the honesty and humility to admit that he is, for all his gifts, but an animal—a localized fragment of things, a mass of specks in a vast universe, which cannot in good sense be supposed [to be] there just for him. On the contrary, he is there for the universe, for what he can contribute to the cosmic life. But since he is conscious of this contribution, and can enjoy his role, and the use of his powers, he cannot complain that he is exploited for the larger purpose. For it is his own good which that purpose asks him to achieve and to lay upon the altar of the Everlasting—in that treasure house where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and thieves do not break through nor steal.
* * * * *
Thus by reason of the relativity of all things, there is a reaction of the world on God. Every new creature is a novel element in God’s objectification of the actual world. God’s primordial nature is unchanged, but his derivative nature is consequent upon the creative advance of the world. In this nature, the world is felt in a unison of immediacy. The wisdom of God prehends every actuality for what it can be in such a perfected system—its sufferings, its sorrows, its failures, its triumphs, its joy—woven by rightness of feeling into the harmony of the universal, divine feeling, which is always many, always one, always with novel advance, moving onwards and never perishing. The revolts of destructive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrast, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole. The image—and it is but an image—the image under which this operative growth of God’s nature is best conceived is that of a tender care that nothing be lost. [Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Corrected Edition edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald A. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 346]
The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage. [Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 346]
He is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness. [Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 346]
The consequent nature of God is the fluent world become everlasting by its objective immortality in God. [Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 347]
[5] The basis of all religion is the story of the dynamic effort of the world passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God’s vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World’s multiplicity of effort. [Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 349]
The consequent nature of God is the fulfillment of his experience by his reception of the multiple freedom of actuality into the harmony of his own actualization. [Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 349]
In this way, the insistent craving is justified—the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live forevermore. [Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 351]
* * * * *
Poet of the World, who at every moment accepts each of us, as he or she is at that moment, as a new word to be woven into thy one living poem, for which there can be no last verse, nor can any verse be forgotten . . . may we be inspired to give our momentary words, our acts of self-creation and part-creations of one another, as much vitality and harmony as is within our power. Thus, we shall be not unworthy participants in thine all-embracing self-creation, whose beauty surpasses every limit and every perfection, to which something can always be added, though nothing can be taken away. Not a sparrow falls but has made its contribution, yet always there is room for further unique individuals and novel species. May we have the devoted imagination to find—in the joy of making our utmost contribution to the common life—that river whose ocean thou art—our own sufficient reward.
Amen