The logicalness of this further step can hardly be denied. If the human intellect, independent of the laws of objective truth, fashions its own object and truth, especially in things above the senses, why can it not form for itself, at different periods and in different stages of life, a different religion and another view of the world? Cannot the human subject pass through different phases? He indeed changes his costume and style of architecture; why not also his thoughts? Every product of thought would then be the right one for the time, but would be untenable for a further stage of his intellectual genesis and growth, and would have to be replaced by a new one. The nature of subjectivistic thought is no longer an obstacle to this. Besides, we have the modern idea of evolution, already predominant in all fields: the world, the species of plants and animals, man himself with his whole life, his language, right, family, all of them the products of a perpetual evolution, everything constantly changing. Why not also his religion, morality, and view of the world? They are only reflexes of a temporary state of civilization. Hence also here motion and change, evolution into new shapes!
Therefore, so it is said, we have now broken definitely with the “dogmatic method of reasoning” of the belief in revelation, and of scholastic philosophy which adhered to absolute truth. They are replaced by the historical-genetical reasoning of the saeculum historicum which “has discarded absolute truth: there are only relative, no eternal truths” (Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, 1898, 389). We are further assured that “this treatment of the history of thought prevails in the scientific world; the Catholic Church alone has not adopted it. She still clings to dogmatic reasoning, and that is natural to her; she is sure that she is in possession of the absolute truth” (Idem, Philosophia militans, 2d ed., 1901, 5). Outside of this Church every period of time is free to construct its own theories, which will eventually go with it as they came with it.
We meet this relative truth, and all the indefinable hazy notions identified with it, in all spheres.
The modern history of philosophy and religion concedes to every system and religion the right to their historic position: they are necessary phases of evolution. The notion of immutable problems and truths by which any system of thought would have to be measured has been lost. “The appearance and rejection of a system,” says J. E. Erdmann, “is a necessity of world-history. The former was demanded by the character of the time which the system reflected, the latter again is demanded by the fact that the time has changed” (Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 3rd, I, 1878, 4). And Professor Euckensays: “Despite all its advantages, such a view and construction of life is not a definite truth, it remains an attempt, a problem that always causes new discord among minds” (Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensanschauung, 1907, 2). “Thus, if according to Hegel the coming into being constitutes the truth of being, the ideals and aims also must share in the mobility, and truth becomes a child of the times (veritas temporis filia). That apparently subjects life to a full-blown relativism, but such a relativism has lost all its terror by the deterioration of the older method of reasoning. For agreement with existing truth is no longer its chief object.” (Geistige Stroemungen der Gegenwart, 1904, p. 197). The new theory of knowledge assures us quite generally: “It is a vain attempt to single out certain lasting primitive forms of consciousness, acknowledged constant elements of the mind, to retain them. Every ‘a-priori’ principle which is thus maintained as an unalienable dowry of thought, as a necessary result of its psychological and physiological ‘disposition,’ will prove an obstacle of which the progress of science will steer clear sooner or later” (E. Cassirer, Das Erkenntnissproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, 1906, 6).
That this relativism is also laying hand, more and more firmly, upon modern ethics is well known. One often gets the conviction that, as E. Westermark teaches, “there is no absolute standard of morality,”that “there are no general truths,” “that all moral values,” as Prof. R. Broda writes, “are relative and varying with every people, every civilization, every society, every free person” (Dokumente des Fortschritts, 1908, 362).
Thus modern subjectivism has lost all sense for definite rules of thought; in its frantic rush for freedom and in its confused excitement it seeks to upset all barriers. Now, of course, we may disregard convictions thousands of years old, by simply observing that they suited former ages but not the present; that they perhaps suit the uneducated but not the educated. Henceforth one may also reject the dogmas of Christianity by merely pointing out that they were at one time of importance, but are not suited to the modern man. That is an idea readily grasped, one which has already become quite general with those who are mentally tired of Christianity. What is demanded is a further evolution also of the Christian religion, a continuous cultivation of freer, higher forms, an undogmatic Christianity without duty to believe, without a Church: nothing else, in the end, but a veiled humanitarian religion.
“It will be difficult for coming generations to understand,” says Paulsen, in the same sense, “how our time could cling in religious instruction with such peace of mind to a system which, having originated several centuries ago under entirely different conditions of intellectual life, stands in striking contrast to facts and ideas accepted by our time everywhere outside the schools.” Hence a revision of the fundamental truths of Christianity is needed. Away with everything supernatural and miraculous, obedience to faith, original sin, redemption: all this sounds strange to the modern man. “So there remains but one way: to adapt the doctrine of the Church to the theories and views of our times” (System der Ethik, 8th ed., 1906, II, pp. 247, 250). And Eucken says similarly: “We can adopt the doctrinal system of the Church only by retiring from the present back to the past” (Zeitschr. fuer Philosophie u. Phil. Kritik 112, 1898, 165). Therefore we demand evolution of the Christian religion! “Let us not blindly follow antiquated doctrines disposed of by science,” we are exhorted. “Let there be no fear lest our belief in God and true piety suffer by it! Let us remember that everything earthly is in continual motion, carried along by the rushing river of life.” Onward, therefore, to advancement! … cheerfully avowing the watchword: “evolution of religion”(Fr. Delitzsch, Zweiter Vortrag ueber Babel u. Bibel, 45. thousand, 1904, 42).
Modern Protestant theology has achieved a great deal in this direction; its evolution has progressed to a complete disintegration of Christianity, by adapting it to modern ideas so thoroughly that there is not a single thought left which this Christianity, reduced to meaningless words, might not accept.
This is the relativism of the present subjectivistic reasoning and its consequences.
Now, it is true that there is room for a certain relativity and evolution in the field of thought and truth. There is a relative truth in the sense that our knowledge of it is never exhaustive. Even the eternal truths of the Christian religion we always know only imperfectly, and we ought to perfect our knowledge continually; established facts of history can also be known, if studied, in greater detail. Thus there is progress and evolution. But from this we may not conclude that there can be no fixed truths at all. In the astronomy of to-day one can surely have the conviction that the fundamental truths of Copernicus's System of the Universe must remain an unchangeable truth, and that the time will never come when we shall go back to the obsolete doctrines of old Ptolemy, who made the sun revolve around the earth. Is astronomy therefore excluded from progress and evolution? It is moreover true that the individual as well as the community pass through an intellectual evolution in the sense that they gradually increase their knowledge and correct their errors, that literature and the schools gradually enhance the energy and wealth of our ideas and thoughts.
But a progressive change of the laws of thought, to the effect that we must now hold to a proposition which at another time we should naturally reject as untenable, can be maintained only upon the supposition that the thought of evolution has driven all others out of the intellect. It would be absurd to hold that the same view could be true at one time and false at another, that the same views about the world and life could be right to-day and wrong to-morrow, to be accepted to-day and rejected to-morrow. A view is either true or false. If true, it is always true and warranted. Or was old Thales