IMMANENCE
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IMMANENCE
symbols. "The religious soul is in fact forever
interpreting and transforming the traditional dog-
mas" (Sabatier), because the progress of the absolute
reveals to us new meanings as it makes us more fully
conscious of the Divinity that is immanent in us.
Through this progress the incarnation of God in
humanity goes on witliout ceasing, and the Christian
mystery (they make the blasphemous assertion) has
no other meaning. There can be no further question
of a redemption ; nor could there have been an original
fall, since in this view, disobedient Adam would have
been God Himself. At most the pessimists admit
that the Supreme will, or the unconscious, which
blundered into the production of the world, will recog-
nize its blunder as it rises to consciousness in indi-
viduals, and will repair that blunder by annihilating
the universe. In that hour of cosmic suicide, accord-
ing to Hartmann, the Great Crucified will have come
down from his cross. Thus is Christian terminology
incessantly subjected to new interpretations. "We
still speak of the Trinity . . . , of the Divinity of
Christ, but with a meaning more or less different from
that of our forefathers". Buisson, in his "La Re-
ligion, la Morale et la Science ", thus explains the
influence of the doctrine of immanence upon the
interpretation of dogmas in liberal Protestantism.
(ii) The World, Life, and the Soul. — To explain the origin of the world, the evolution of the Divine principle is put forward. This hj-pothesis would also account for the organization of the cosmos. Hence the universal order is considered as the outcome of the action of blind energies, and no longer as the reali- zation of a plan conceived and executed by a provi- dence. From the physico-chemical forces life issues; the absolute slumbers in the plant, begins to dream in the animal, and at last awakens to full consciousness in man. Between the stages of this progress there is no breach of continuity; it is one and the same prin- ciple which clothes itself in more and more perfect forms, yet never withdraws from any of them. Evo- lutionism and transformism, therefore, are but parts of that vast system of absolute immanence in which all beings enfold one another, and none is distinct from the universal substance. Consequently, there is no longer any abyss between matter and the human soul; the alleged spiritualitj^ of the soul is a fable, its per- sonality an illusion, its individual immortality an error.
(iii) Dogma and Moral. — When the Absolute reaches its highest form in the human soul, it acquires self- consciousness. This means that the soul discovers the action of the Divine principle, which is immanent in it as constituting its essential nature. But the perception of this relation with the Divine — or, rather, of this "withinness" of the Divine — is what we are to call Revelation itself (Loisy). At first confused, perceptible only as a va^e religious feeling, it de- velops by means of religious experience (James), it becomes clearer through reflexion, and asserts itself in the conceptions of the religious consciousness. These conceptions formulate dogmas — "admirable creations of human thought" (Buisson) — or rather of the Divine principle immanent in human thought. But the expression of dogmas is always inadequate, for it marks but one moment in the religious develop- ment; it is a vesture which the progress of Christian faith and especially of Christian life will soon cast off. In a word all religion wells up from the depths of the sub-conscious (Myers, Prince) by vital immanence; hence the "religious immanence " and the more or less agnostic "symboli.sm" with which the Encyclical "Pa-scendi gregis" reproaches the Modernists.
The human soul, creator of dogmas, is also the crea- tor of moral precepts, and that by an absolutely autonomous act. Its will is the living and sovereign law, for in it is definitively expressed the will of the God immanent in us. The Divine flame, which warms
the atmosphere of our life, will enevitably cause those
hidden germs of morality to develop which the abso-
lute has implanted. Hence, there can be no longer
any question of effort, of virtue, or of responsibility;
these words have lost their meaning, since there is
neither original sin nor actual and freely willed trans-
gression. There is no longer any blameworthv con-
cupiscence; all our instincts are impregnateil with
Divinity, all our desires are just, good, and holy.
To follow the impulse of passion, to rehabilitate the
flesh (Saint-Simon, Leroux, Fourrier), which is one
form under which the Divinity manifests itself
(Heine), this is duty. In this way, indeed, we co-
operate in the redemption which is being accomplished
day by day, and which will be consummated when the
absolute shall have completed its incarnation in
humanity. The part which moral science has to play
consists in discovering the laws which govern this
evolution, so that man in his conduct may conform to
them (Berthelot) and thus ensure the collective
happiness of humanity; social utility is to be hence-
forward the principle of all morality; solidarity
(Bourgeois), which procures it, is the most scientific
form of immanent morality, and of this man is, in the
universe, the beginning and the end.
(2) Relative Immanence, (a) Its Historical Evo- lution. — Since the day when Socrates, abandoning the useless cosmogonic hypotheses of his predecessors, brought philosophy back to the study of the human soul, whose limits and whose independence he de- fined — since that time the doctrine of relative imma- nence has held its ground in conflict with the doctrine of absolute immanence. Relative immanence recog- nizes the existence of a transcendant God, but it also recognizes, and with remarkable precision, the imma- nence of psychical life. It is upon the evidence of this fact, indeed, that the admirable pedagogical metho<l, known as maieutic, is founded. Socrates thoroughly understood that knowledge does not enter our minds ready made from without; that it is a vital function, and therefore immanent. He understood that a cog- nition is not really ours until we have accepted it, lived it, and in some sort made it over for ourselves. This certainly attributes to the life of thought a real immanence, not, however, an absolute immanence; for the soul of the disciple remains open to the mas- ter's influence.
Again we find this conception of relative imma- nence in Plato. He transports it, in a rather confused manner, into the cosmological order. He thinks, in fact, that, if there are things great and good and beau- tiful, they are such through a certain participation in the ideas of greatness, goodness, and beauty. Hut this participation does not result from an emanation, an outflowing from the Divinity into finite beings; it is only a reflection of the ideas, a resemblance, which the reasonal)le being is in duty bound to perfect, as far as possil:)le, by his own energy. With .Aristotle this notion of an immanent energy in individuals ac- quires a new definiteness. The verj' exaggeration with which he refuses to admit in God any efficient causiility, as something unworthy of His beatitude, leads him to place at the heart of finite being the prin- ciple of the action which it puts forth with a view to that which is supremely lovable and desirable. Now, according to him, the.se principles are individualized; their development is limited; their orientation deter- mined to a definite aim; and they act upon one another. It is, therefore, a doctrine of relative imma- nence which he maintains. After him the Stoics, reviving the physics of Heraclitus, came liack to a .sys- tem of al)solute immanence with their theory of ger- minal capacities. The Alexandrian Fathers liorrowed this term from them, taking out of it, however, its pantheistic sense, when they set themselves to search in the WTitings of the pagans for "the sparks of the light of the Word " (St. Justin), and, in human souls.
