Paul Elmer More: A Study

PAUL ELMER MORE: A STUDY T HE appearance of a volume, of Shelburne Essays .-has long been an occasion for rejoicing among the elect. I t is equally true that others will be qui te unmoved by the.event or may even take the opportunity to renew an ancient grudge. For among the younger generation there are some who very frankly assert that they can derive nothing but pain from the writings of Paul Elmer More, and consequently utter nothing but complaints and condemnation. The last work to ·appear is The Sceptical Approach to Religion (1934), and as it is a direct continuation of the comprehensive plan ofthought to be discussed hereafter,'it will do nothing to turn away the wrath of the antagonists. For the antagonism is not merely a Iiterary feud: it is rooted deeply in a clash of interests and a struggle of ideals. The younger generation will not accept the doctrine which More advocates because to them it seems classical and frigid; it runs counter to the modernism in thought and expression which they consider the essential mark of vitality and the true sign of freedom from antiquated models. More says: "1 think, indeed I am very sure, that the general disappearance of beliefin the Platonic Ideas, or perhaps it , would be better to say the loss of belief in the everlasting truth which Plato dressed up in the doctrine of Ideas, has been the chief cause of the present debacle of morals and art.", This is an uncompromising creed which the younger generation refuses to accept, partly because they do not admit that morals and art have suffered any decline and partly because "everlasting truth" is not an ideal which they like any more than they like Platonism. ' . 279 THE UNIVERSITY OF rORONTO QUARI:ERLY In the light of this conflict of opinion, a consideration of More's· work becomes practically a study of the principal trends in modern thought. As many people knew before, and the oth~rs possibly learned from this QUARTERLY/ Paul Elmer More was at one time editor of the Nation. The published works to which reference is here made are the collected essays and reviews known as the Shelburne Essays, and the series of philosophical studies called collectively ··The Greek Tradi-·Iion, comprising The Religion of Plato, Hellenistic Philosophies , The Christ of the New Testament,. Christ the Word, .and The Catholic Faith.2 The last of these volumes appeared in 1931, and forms, for the present purpose, the climax of a development which, looked at retrospectively as a whole, seems uniquely consistent and organic. For the essays, though written at various times and originally printed in many different journals, when read ·consecutively aRpear to be Rrimarily ~ifferent ~PRortunities for stating the same thesis in variou~ ways, so much dominated by a central idea that one becomes conscious of a sense of repetition, as if a theme were being played with variations. The unity of thought and the larger movements of the theme are consciously recognized by the author, for the essays grouped in the different volumes are given collective titles, such as The Drift ofRomanticism and . Studies in Religious Dualism. . Nor are we left in doubt, finally, about this central idea. It is stated explicitly, in the Preface to the eighth series of the Shelburne Essays (I9Ij), in the following words: "The qu~stion finally raised is thus one of dualism: Is there, or is .there not, some eleme~t of man's being superior to IVaI. III, no. 2. llThe bibliography given in this essay is not intended to be complete. For further details the reader should consult The Challenge of Humanism by Louis J. A. Mercier, and for the significance of the opening remarks The Critique of Humanism edited by C. H. Grattan. . 280 PAUL ELMER MORE: A STUDY instinct and reason, some power that acts as a st'ay on the flowing impulses of nature, without whose authoritative check reason herself must be swept away in the dissolution of the everlasting flux?" This explicit statement of the problem must be accepted as the clue to the whole gamut of More's work. Before considering it with greater...