"[13]
The precise area of humanistic interests is indicated in another
observation. "The subjects on which the Master did not talk were
... disorder and spiritual beings."[13] For the very elements of
experience which humanism belittles or avoids are found in the world
where pagans like Rabelais robustly jest or the high spaces where
souls like Newman meditate and pray. The humanist appears to be
frightened by the one and repelled by the other; will not or cannot
see life steadily and whole. That a powerful primitivistic faith,
like Taoism, a sort of religious bohemianism, should flourish beside
such pragmatic and passionless moderation as classic Confucianism is
inevitable; that the worship of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of redemption
and a future heaven, of a positive and eternal bliss, should be the
Chinese form of the Indian faith is equally intelligible. After a like
manner it is the humanism of our Protestant preaching today from which
men are defecting into utter worldliness and indifference on the one
hand and returning to mediaeval and Catholic forms of supernaturalism
on the other.
[Footnote 13: _Analects_, XI, CXI; VI, CXX.]
For the primitive in man is a beast whom it is hard to chain nor does
humanism with its semi-scientific, semi-sentimental laudation of all
natural values produce that exacting mood of inward scrutiny in which
self-control has most chance of succeeding.
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