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92 VI. Wandering between Two Worlds I N o verses of Matthew Arnold’s are better known I suppose than that which describes modern man as “Wandering between two worlds, one dead / The other powerless to be born.”1 In an essay he puts the matter without the exaggeration of poetry in the following words: “Modern times find themselves with an immense body of institutions, established facts, accredited dogmas, customs and rules, which have come to us from times not modern. In this system their life has to be carried forward; yet they have a sense that their system is not of their own creation, and that it by no means corresponds exactly with the wants of their actual life; that, for them, it is customary, not rational. The awakening of this sense is the awakening of the modern spirit.”2 I have taken the liberty of italicizing the words of the last sentence. I have done so because the sentence indicates, perhaps more definitely than their author intended, that “modern times” are inchoate in their modernity, so much so that the awakening of “the modern spirit” consists of a sense of discrepancy, of conflict, between the tendencies and requirements that are modern and the established institutions , customs, traditions, creeds, within which the tendencies that are modern are compelled to operate. Its sense is that of tension and confusion, rather than of something definitively going its own way on terms that are compatible with its own direction of movement. Were we to say that those who are dreaming live exclusively, in a sense, based on esteem for the past, we should have to say that those who live with a sense of definitely achieved present exist in a state of hallucination. . . . Given such conditions in general, it is reasonable to expect that philosophies which are produced in these conditions will reflect the state of inchoateness, 1. [“Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse,” in Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold., ed. Robert Super (1960), 3:109.] 2. [“Heinrich Heine,” in ibid., 3:112.] Wandering between Two Worlds | 93 confusion, and uncertainty. They are born of that state and they continue to share it. Even those who have no sympathy with the view of philosophy here put forward will be among the first to admit that modern systems as a collection—instead of some one system which is preferred—are more noteworthy for statements of problems than for conclusions expressing solutions that command any widespread assent. It is difficult to account for the number and diversity of systems that have appeared in the last three centuries, and for their controversial quality, if they are looked upon as engaged in a scientific study of “ultimate reality.” It is a simple matter to account for these features if these philosophies are engaged in trying to disentangle, to lay hold of, and to formulate some facet or aspect of the existing confused scene, namely that particular one which is taken to point to the highway that leads to a goal of articulate coherent expression of what is genuinely modern in the new culture. We are brought back to the reasons that render serious consideration of Greek and medieval philosophies and theologies pertinent to an appraisal of modern philosophies. The latter cannot be understood without taking into account the active operative presence within them of the “principles” that were formulated earlier. For, as a rule, the things to which the name principles is given are settled directions of attention and interest, ways of observing and describing that are so habitual and controlling that they regulate other observations because they are not themselves observed. It has been said in previous discussions that if the doctrines of medieval theology be looked upon as if they were exclusively theoretical or “intellectual ” statements and the conclusions of modern science be taken in the same way, or as technical, the conflict of science and theology would been comparatively episodic. It represents in fact a crisis because theological philosophy with its context of an institution that was “normative” for the arts, for education, for economic and political relations, as well as for moral discipline, had incorporated the science of nature into its own structure. It there formed the comprehensive frame of reference within which all doctrines and every variety of conduct were placed in order to pass upon their validity and fix their significance. When scientific subject matter moved outside the frame, the latter remained substantially intact with reference to humanist and moral...

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