I: RELIGION IN HISTORY by Alfred North Whitehead

From http://www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadreligion.htm

Religion in the Making

King's Chapel, Boston
February 1926

Alfred North Whitehead
1861-1947


Preface

This book consists of four lectures on religion delivered in King’s Chapel, Boston, during February, 1926.  The train of thought which was applied to science in my Lowell Lectures of the previous year, since published under the title, Science and the Modern World, is here applied to religion.  The two books are independent, but it is inevitable that to some extent they elucidate each other by showing the same way of thought in different applications.

The aim of the lectures was to give a concise analysis of the various factors in human nature which go to form a religion, to exhibit the inevitable transformation of religion with the transformation of knowledge, and more especially to direct attention to the foundation of religion on our apprehension of those permanent elements by reason of which there is a stable order in the world, permanent elements apart from which there could be no changing world.


Harvard University

March 13, 1926

Contents

            PREFACE

I:         RELIGION IN HISTORY
1.     Religion Defined
2.     The Emergence of Religion
3.     Ritual and Emotion
4.     Belief
5.     Rationalism
6.     The Ascent of Man
7.     The Final Contrast

II:        RELIGION AND DOGMA
1.     The Religious Consciousness in History
2.     The Description of Religious Experience
3.     God
4.     The Quest of God

III:      BODY AND SPIRIT
1.     Religion and Metaphysics
2.     The Contribution of Religion to Metaphysics
3.     A Metaphysical Description
4.     God and the Moral Order
5.     Value and the Purpose of God
6.     Body and Mind
7.     The Creative Process

IV:       TRUTH AND CRITICISM
1.     The Development of Dogma
2.     Experience and Expression
3.     The Three Traditions
4.     The Nature of God
5.     Conclusion


I: RELIGION IN HISTORY

1. Religion Defined

It is my purpose in the four lectures of this course to consider the type of justification which is available for belief in doctrines of religion.  This is a question which in some new form challenges each generation.  It is the peculiarity of religion that humanity is always shifting its attitude towards it.

The contrast between religion and the elementary truths of arithmetic makes my meaning clear.  Ages ago the simple arithmetical doctrines dawned on the human mind, and throughout history the unquestioned dogma that two and three make five reigned whenever it has been relevant.  We all know what this doctrine means, and its history is of no importance for its elucidation.

But we have the gravest doubt as to what religion means so far as doctrine is concerned.  There is no agreement as to the definition of religion in its most general sense, including true and false religion; nor is there any agreement as to the valid religious beliefs, nor even as to what we mean by the truth of religion.  It is for this reason that some consideration of religion as an unquestioned factor throughout the long stretch of human history is necessary to secure the relevance of any discussion for its general principles.

There is yet another contrast.  What is generally disputed is doubtful, and what is doubtful is relatively unimportant––other things being equal.  I am speaking of general truths. We avoid guiding our actions by general principles which are entirely unsettled.  If we do not know what number is the product of 69 and 67, we defer any action presupposing the answer, till we have found out.  This little arithmetical puzzle can be put aside till it is settled, and it is capable of definite settlement with adequate trouble.

But as between religion and arithmetic, other things are not equal.  You use arithmetic, but you are religious.  Arithmetic of course enters into your nature, so far as that nature involves a multiplicity of things.  But it is there as a necessary condition, and not as a transforming agency.  No one is invariably “justified” by his faith in the multiplication table.  But in some sense or other, justification is the basis of all religion.  Your character is developed according to your faith.  This is the primary religious truth from which no one can escape.  Religion is force of belief cleansing the inward parts.  For this reason the primary religious virtue is sincerity, a penetrating sincerity.

A religion, on its doctrinal side, can thus be defined as a system of general truths which have the effect of transforming character when they are sincerely held and vividly apprehended (understand or perceive).

In the long run your character and your conduct of life depend upon your intimate convictions.  Life is an internal fact for its own sake, before it is an external fact relating itself to others.  The conduct of external life is conditioned by environment, but it receives its final quality, on which its worth depends, from the internal life which is the self-realization of existence.  Religion is the art and theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things.

This doctrine is the direct negation of the theory that religion is primarily a social fact.  Social facts are of great importance to religion, because there is no such thing as absolutely independent existence.  You cannot abstract man society from man; most psychology is herd-psychology. But all collective emotions leave untouched the awful ultimate fact, which is the human being, consciously alone with itself, for its own sake.

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness.  It runs through three stages, if it evolves to its final satisfaction.  It is the transition from God the void to God the enemy, and from God the enemy to God the companion.

Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious.  Collective enthusiasms, revivals, institutions, churches, rituals, bibles, codes of behaviour, are the trappings of religion, its passing forms.  They may be useful, or harmful; they may be authoritatively ordained, or merely temporary expedients.  But the end of religion is beyond all this.

Accordingly, what should emerge from religion is individual worth of character.  But worth is positive or negative, good or bad.  Religion is by no means necessarily good.  It may be very evil.  The fact of evil, interwoven with the texture of the world, shows that in the nature of things there remains effectiveness for degradation.  In your religious experience the God with whom you have made terms may be the God of destruction, the God who leaves in his wake the loss of the greater reality.

In considering religion, we should not be obsessed by the idea of its necessary goodness.  This is a dangerous delusion.  The point to notice is its transcendent importance; and the fact of this importance is abundantly made evident by the appeal to history.


2. The Emergence of Religion

Religion, so far as it receives external expression in human history, exhibits four factors or sides of itself.  These factors are ritual, emotion, belief, rationalization.  There is definite organized procedure, which is ritual:  there are definite types of emotional expression:  there are definitely expressed beliefs:  and there is the adjustment of these beliefs into a system, internally coherent and coherent with other beliefs.

But all these four factors are not of equal influence through all historical epochs.  The religious idea emerged gradually into human life, at first barely disengaged from other human interests.  The order of the emergence of these factors was in the inverse order of the depth of their religious importance:  first ritual, then emotion, then belief, then rationalization.

The dawn of these religious stages is gradual.  It consists in an increase of emphasis.  Perhaps it is untrue to affirm that the later factors are ever wholly absent.  But certainly, when we go far enough back, belief and rationalization are completely negligible, and emotion is merely a secondary result of ritual.  Then emotion takes the lead, and the ritual is for the emotion which it generates.  Belief then makes its appearance as explanatory of the complex of ritual and emotion, and in this appearance of belief we may discern the germ of rationalization.

It is not until belief and rationalization are well-established that solitariness is discernible as constituting the heart of religious importance.  The great religious conceptions which haunt the imaginations of civilized mankind are scenes of solitariness:  Prometheus chained to his rock, Mahomet brooding in the desert, the mediations of the Buddha, the solitary Man on the Cross.  It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God.


3. Ritual and Emotion

Ritual goes back beyond the dawn of history.  It can be discerned in the animals, in their individual habits and still more in their collective evolutions.  Ritual may be defined as the habitual performance of definite actions which have no direct relevance to the preservation of the physical organisms of the actors.

Flocks of birds perform their ritual evolutions in the sky.  In Europe rooks and starlings are notable examples of this fact.  Ritual is the primitive outcome of superfluous energy and leisure.  It exemplifies the tendency of living bodies to repeat their own actions.  Thus the actions necessary in hunting for food, or in other useful pursuits, are repeated for their own sakes; and their repetition also repeats the joy of exercise and the emotion of success.

In this way emotion waits upon ritual; and then ritual is repeated and elaborated for the sake of its attendant emotions.  Mankind became artists in ritual.  It was a tremendous discovery––how to excite emotions for their own sake, apart from some imperious biological necessity.  But emotions sensitize the organism.  Thus the unintended effect was produced of sensitizing the human organism in a variety of ways diverse from what would have been produced by the necessary work of life.

Mankind was started upon its adventures of curiosity and of feeling.

It is evident that, according to this account, religion and play have the same origin in ritual.  This is because ritual is the stimulus to emotion, and a habitual ritual may diverge into religion or into lay, according to the quality of the emotion excited.  Even in comparatively modern times, among the Greeks of the fifth century before Christ, the Olympic Games were tinged with religion, and the Dionysiac festival in Attica ended with a comic drama.  Also in the modern world, a holy day and a holiday are kindred notions.

Ritual is not the only way of artificially stimulating emotion.  Drugs are equally effective.  Luckily the range of drugs at the command of primitive races was limited.  But there is ample evidence of the religious use of drugs in conjunction with the religious use of ritual.  For example Athenæus tells us that among the Persians it was the religious duty of the King, once a year, at some stated festival in honour of Mithras, to appear in the temple intoxicated.•  [•The Deipnosophistæ of Athens, Book X.  I am indebted to my friend Professor J. H. Woods for this reference.]  A relic of the religious awe at intoxication is the use of wine in the communion service.  It is an example of the upward trend of ritual by which a widespread association of thought is elevated into a great symbolism, divested of its primitive grossness.

In this primitive phase of religion, dominated by ritual and emotion, we are dealing with essentially social phenomena.  Ritual is more impressive, and emotion more active, when a whole society is concerned in the same ritual and the same emotion.  Accordingly, a collective ritual and a collective emotion take their places as one of the binding forces of savage tribes.  They represent the first faint glimmerings of the life of the spirit raised beyond concentration upon the task of supplying animal necessities.  Conversely, religion in its decay sinks back into sociability.


4. Belief

Mere ritual and emotion cannot maintain themselves untouched by intellectuality.  Also the abstract idea of maintaining the ritual for the sake of the emotion, though it may express the truth about the subconscious psychology of primitive races, is far too abstract to enter into their conscious thoughts.  A myth satisfies the demands of incipient (in an initial stage) rationality.  Men found themselves practicing various rituals, and found the rituals generating emotions.  The myth explains the purpose both of the ritual and of the emotion.  It is the product of the vivid fancy of primitive men in an unfathomed world.

To primitive man, and to ourselves on our primitive side, the universe is not so much unfathomable as unfathomed––by this I mean undiscriminated, unanalyzed.  It is not a complex of definite unexplained happenings, but a dim background shot across by isolated vivid effects charged with emotional excitements.  The very presuppositions of a coherent rationalism are absent.  Such a rationalism presupposes a complex of definite facts whose interconnections are sought.  But the prior stage is a background of indefiniteness relieved by vivid acts of definition, inherently isolated.  One exception must be made in favour of the routine of tribal necessities which are taken for granted.  But what lies beyond the routine of life is in general void of definition; and when it is vivid, it is disconnected.

The myth which meets the ritual is some exceptional fantasy, or recollection of some actual vivid fact––probably distorted in remembrance––which appears not only as explanatory both of ritual and emotion, but also as generative of emotion when conjoined with the ritual.  Thus the myth not only explains but reinforces the hidden purpose of the ritual, which is emotion.

Then rituals and emotions and myths reciprocally interact; and the myths have various grades of relationship to actual fact, and have various grades of symbolic truth as being representative of large ideas only to be apprehended in some parable.  Also in some cases the myth precedes the ritual.  But there is the general fact that ritualism precedes mythology.  For we can observe even among animals, and presumably they are destitute of a mythology.

A myth will involve special attention to some persons or to some things, real or imaginary.  Thus in a sense, the ritual, as performed in conjunction with the explanatory purpose of the myth, is the primitive worship of the hero-person or the hero-thing.  But there can be very little disinterested worship among primitive folk––even less than now, if possible.  Accordingly, the belief in the myth will involve the belief that something is to be averted in respect to the evil to be feared from him or it.  Thus incarnation, prayer, praise, and ritual absorption of the hero deity emerge.

If the hero be a person, we call the ritual, with its myth, “religion”; if the hero be a thing, we call it “magic.”  In religion we induce, in magic we compel.  The important difference between magic and religion is that magic is unprogressive and religion sometimes is progressive; except in so far as science can be traced back to the progress of magic.

Religion, in this stage of belief, marks a new formative agent in the ascent of man.  For just as ritual encouraged emotion beyond the mere response to practical necessities, so religion in this further stage begets thoughts divorced from the mere battling with the pressure of circumstances.  Imagination secured in it a machinery for its development; thought has been thereby led beyond the immediate objects in sight.  Its concepts may in these early stages be crude and horrible; but they have the supreme virtue of being concepts of objects beyond immediate sense and perception.

This is the stage of uncoordinated beliefs.  So far as this is the dominant phase there can be a curious tolerance, in that one cult does not war upon another cult.  Since there is a minimum of coordination, there is room for all.  But religion is still a thoroughly social phenomenon.  The cult includes the tribe, or at least it includes some well-defined body of persons within the social organism.  You may not desert your own cults, but there need be no clash between cults.  In the higher stages of such a religion there are tribal gods, or many gods within a tribe, with the loosest coordination of cults and myths.

Though religion can be a source of progress, it need not be so, especially when its dominant feature is this stage of uncriticized belief.  It is easy for a tribe to stabilize its ritual and its myths, and there need be no external spur to progress.  In fact, this is the stage of religious evolution in which the masses of semi-civilized humanity have halted––the stage of satisfactory ritual and of satisfied belief without impulse towards higher things.  Such religion satisfies the pragmatic test: It works, and thereby claims that it be awarded the prize for truth.


5. Rationalism

The age of martyrs dawns with the coming of rationalism.  The antecedent phases of religion had been essentially sociable.  Many were called, and all were chosen.  The final phase introduces the note of solitariness:  “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way . . . and few there be that find it.”  When a modern religion forgets this saying, it is suffering from an atavistic relapse into primitive barbarism.  It is appealing to the psychology of the herd, away from the intuitions of the few.

The religious epoch which we are now considering is very modern.  Its past duration is of the order of six thousand years.  Of course exact dates do not count; you can extend the epoch further back into the distant past in order to include some faint anticipatory movement, or you can contract its duration so as to exclude flourishing survivals of the earlier phase.  The movement has extended over all the civilized races of Asia and Europe. In the past Asia has proved the most fertile in ideas, but within the last two thousand years Europe has given the movement a new aspect.  It is to be noted that the two most perfect examples of rationalistic religions have flourished chiefly in countries foreign to the races among which they had their origin.

The Bible is by far the most complete coming of rationalism into religion, based on the earliest documents available.  Viewed as such an account, it is only relevant to the region between the Tigris and the Nile.  It exhibits the note of progressive solitariness in the religious idea:  first, types of thought generally prevalent; then protesting prophets, isolated figures of denunciation and exhortation stirring the Jewish nation; then one man, with twelve disciples, who met with almost complete national rejection; then the adaptation for popular survival of this latter doctrine by another man who, very significantly, had no first-hand contact with the original teaching.  In his hands, something was added and something was lost; but fortunately the Gospels also survive.

It is evident that I have drawn attention to the span of six thousand years because, in addition to being reasonable when we have regard to all the evidence, it corresponds to the chronology of the Bible.  We––in Europe and America––are the heirs of the religious movements depicted in that collection of books.  Discussion on the methods of religion and their justification must, in order to be relevant, base itself upon the Bible for illustration; we must remember, however, that Buddhism and Mahometanism, among others, must also be included in the scope of general statements, even if they are not explicitly referred to.

Rational religion is religion whose beliefs and rituals have been reorganized with the aim of making it the central element in a coherent ordering of life––an ordering which shall be coherent both in respect to the elucidation of thought, and in respect to the direction of conduct towards a unified purpose commanding ethical approval.

The peculiar position of religion is that it stands between abstract metaphysics and the particular principles applying to only some among the experiences of life.  The relevance of its concepts can only be distinctly discerned in moments of insight, and then, for many of us, only after suggestion from without.  Hence religion bases itself primarily upon a small selection from the common experiences of the race.  On this side, religion ranges itself as one among other specialized interests of mankind whose truths are of limited validity.  But on its other side, religion claims that its concepts, though derived primarily from special experiences, are yet of universal validity, to be applied by faith to the ordering of all experiences.

Rational religion appeals to the direct intuition of special occasions, and to the elucidatory power of its concepts for all occasions.  It arises from that which is special, but it extends to what is general.  The doctrines of rational religion aim at being that metaphysics which can be derived from the supernormal experience of mankind in its moments of finest insight.  Theoretically, rational religion could have arisen in complete independence of the antecedent social religions of ritual and mythical belief.  Before the historical sense had established itself, that was the way in which the apologetic theologians tended to exhibit the origins of their respective religions.  But the general history of religion, and in particular that portion of its history contained in the Bible, decisively negatives (reject; refuse to accept) that view.  Rational religion emerged as a gradual transformation of the preexisting religious forms.  Finally, the old forms could no longer contain the new ideas, and the modern religions of civilization are traceable to definite crises in this process of development.  But the development was not then ended; it had only acquired more suitable forms for self-expression.

The emergence of rational religion was strictly conditioned by the general progress of the races in which it arose.  It had to wait for the development in human consciousness of the relevant general ideas and of the relevant ethical intuitions. It required that such ideas should not merely be casually entertained by isolated individuals, but that they should be stabilized in recognizable forms of expression, so as to be recalled and communicated.  You can only speak of mercy among a people who, in some respects, are already merciful.

A language is not a universal mode of expressing all ideas whatsoever.  It is a limited mode of expressing such ideas as have been frequently entertained, and urgently needed, by the group of human beings who developed that mode of speech.  It is only during a comparatively short period of human history that there has existed any language with an adequate stock of general terms.  Such general terms require a permanent literature to define them by their mode of employment.

The result is that the free handling of general ideas is a late acquirement.  I am not maintaining that the brains of men were inadequate for the task.  The point is that it took ages for them to develop first the appliances and then the habits which made generality of thought possible and prevalent.  For ages, existing languages must have been ready for development.  If men had been in contact with a superior race, either personally or by a survival of their literature, a process which requires scores or even hundreds of generations  might have been antedated, so as to have been effected almost at once.  Such, in fact, was the later history of the development of the races of Northern Europe.  Again, a social system which encourages developments of thought can procure the advent.  This is the way in which the result was first obtained.  Society and language grew together.

The influence of the antecedent type of religion, ceremonial, mythical, and sociable, has been great; and the estimates as to its value diverse.  During the thousand years preceding the Christian era, there was a peculiarly intense struggle on the part of rationalism to transform the more primitive type.  The issue was a new synthesis which, in the forms of the various great religions, has lasted to the present day.  A rational generality was introduced into the religious ideas; and the myth, when retained, was reorganized with the intention of making it an account of verifiable historical circumstances which exemplified the general ideas with adequate perfection.

Thus rational criticism was admitted in principle.  The appeal was from the tribal custom to the direct individual intuition, ethical, metaphysical, or logical:  “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings,” are words which Hosea ascribes to Jehovah; and he thereby employs the principles of individual criticism of tribal custom, and bases it upon direct ethical intuition.

In this way the religions evolved toward more individualistic forms, shedding their exclusively communal aspect.  The individual became the religious unit in the place of the community; the tribal dance lost its importance compared to the individual prayer; and, for the few, the individual prayer merged into justification through individual insight.

So to-day it is not France which goes to heaven, but individual Frenchmen; and it is not China which attains nirvana, but Chinamen.

During this epoch of struggle––as in most religious struggle––the judgments passed by the innovators on the less-developed religious forms were very severe.  The condemnation of idolatry pervades the Bible; and there are traces of a recoil which go further:  “I hate, I despise your feast days,” writes Amos, speaking in the name of Jehovah.

Such criticism is wanted.  Indeed history, down to the present day, is a melancholy record of the horrors which can attend religion: human sacrifice, and in particular the slaughter of children, cannibalism, sensual orgies, abject superstition, hatred as between races, the maintenance of degrading customs, hysteria, bigotry, can all be laid at its charge.  Religion is the last refuge of human savagery.  The uncritical association of religion with goodness is directly negatived by the plain facts.  Religion can be, and has been, the main instrument for progress.  But if we survey the whole race, we must pronounce that generally it has not been so:  “Many are called, but few are chosen.”


6. The Ascent of Man

At different epochs in history new factors emerge and successively assume decisive importance in their influence on the ascent, or the descent, of the races of mankind.  Within the millennium preceding the birth of Christ, the communal religions were ceasing to be engines of progress.  On the whole, they had served humanity well.  By their agency, the sense of social unity and of social responsibility had been quickened.  The common cult gave expression to the emotion of being a hundred per cent tribal.  The explicit emotions of a life finding its interest in activities not directed to its own preservation were fostered by them.  Also they produced concrete beliefs which embodied, however waveringly, the justification for these emotions.

But at a certain stage in history, though still elements in the preservation of the social structure, they ceased to be engines of progress.  Their work was done.

They were salving the old virtues which had made the race the greatest society that it had been, and were not straining forward towards the new virtues to make the common life the City of God that it should be.  They were religions of the average, and the average is at war with the ideal.

Human thought had broken through the limited horizon of the one social structure.  The world as a whole entered into the explicit consciousness.  The facility for individual wandering in comparative safety produced this enlargement of thought.  A tribe which is wandering as a unit amid dangers may pick up new ideas, but it will strengthen its sense of tribal unity in the face of a hostile environment.

But an individual who travels meets strangers on terms of kindliness.  He returns home, and in his person and by his example promotes the habit of thinking dispassionately beyond the tribe.  The history of rational religion is full of tales of disengagement from the immediate social routine.  If we keep to the Bible: Abraham wandered, the Jews were carried off to Babylon and after two generations were allowed to return peacefully, St. Paul’s conversion was on a journey, and his theology was elaborated amid travels.  This millennium was an age of travel; among the Greeks, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, exemplify their times.  The great empires and trading facilities made travelling easy; everyone travelled and found the world fresh and new.  A world-consciousness was produced.

In India and China the growth of a world-consciousness was different in its details, but in its essence depended from their immediate social setting in ways which promoted thought.

Now, so far as concerns religion, the distinction of a world-consciousness as contrasted with a social consciousness is the change in emphasis in the concept of rightness.  A social consciousness concerns people whom you know and love individually.  Hence, rightness is mixed up with the notion of preservation. Conduct is right which will lead some god to protect you; and it is wrong if it stirs some irascible being to compass your destruction.  Such religion is a branch of diplomacy.  But a world-consciousness is more disengaged.  It rises to the conception of an essential rightness of things.  The individuals are indifferent, because unknown.  The new, and almost profane, concept of the goodness of God replaces the older emphasis on the will of God.  In a communal religion you study the will of God in order that He may preserve you; in a purified religion, rationalized under the influence of the world-concept, you study his goodness in order to be like him.  It is the difference between the enemy you conciliate and the companion whom you imitate.


7. The Final Contrast

A survey of religious history has disclosed that the coming of rational religion is the consequence of the growth of a world-consciousness.  The later phases of the antecedent communal type of religion are dominated by the conscious reaction of human nature to the social organization in which it finds itself.  Such reaction is partly emotion clothing itself in belief and ritual, and partly reason justifying practice by the test of social preservation.  Rational religion is the wider conscious reaction of men to the universe in which they find themselves.

Communal religion broadened itself to the verge of rationalism.  In its last stages in the Western World we find the religion of the Roman Empire, in which the widest possible view of the social structure is adopted.  The cult of the Empire was the sort of religion which might be constructed to-day by the Law School of a University, laudably impressed by the notion that mere penal repression is not the way to avert a crime wave.  Indeed, if we study the mentality of the Emperor Augustus and of the men who surrounded him this is not far off from the true description of its final step in evolution.

Another type of modified communal religion was reached by the Jews.  Their religion embodied general ideas as to the nature of things which were entirely expressed in terms of their relevance to the Jewish race.  This compromise was very effective, but very unstable.  It is a type of religious settlement to which communities are always reverting.  In the modern world it is the religion of emotional statesmen, captains of industry, and social reformers.  In the case of the Jews the crises to which it led were the birth of Christianity, and the forcible dispersion of the Jews by the military might of Rome.  The same type of religion in our generation was one of the factors which led to the great war (World War I).  It leads to the morbid exaggeration of national self-consciousness.  It lacks the element of quietism.  Generality is the salt of religion.

When Christianity had established itself throughout the Roman Empire and its neighbourhood, there were before the two main rational religions, Buddhism and Christianity.  There were, of course, many rivals to both of them in their respective regions; but if we have regard to clarity of idea, generality of thought, moral respectability, survival power, and width of extension over the world, then for their combination of all these qualities these religions stood out beyond their competitors. Later their position was challenged by the Mahometans.  But even to-day, the two Catholic religions of civilization, Christianity and Buddhism, and––if we are to judge by the comparison of their position now with what it has been––both of them are in decay.  They have lost their ancient hold upon the world.

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The Aims of Education by Alfred North Whitehead

From http://www.anthonyflood.com/whiteheadeducation.htm :

AnthonyFlood.com

From The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Macmillan Company, 1929, as reprinted in Education in the Age of Science, edited by Brand Blanshard, New York, Basic Books, 1959.  Here is the editor’s prefatory note:

In his famous essay called “The Aims of Education,” delivered as his presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England in 1916, Alfred North Whitehead addressed himself ostensibly to the teaching of mathematics in the British schools.  But, as he explained in the introduction to a book which includes this essay among others, his remarks referred to education in general, not only in England but also in the United States—"the general principles apply equally to both countries.”  The essay, republished here in part omitting some of the specific discussion of mathematics), "still speaks so clearly and wisely on the education problems of our day that it makes a fitting conclusion to this book.”

The Aims of Education

Alfred North Whitehead
1861-1947

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth. What we should aim at producing is men who possess both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge will give them the ground to start from, and their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art. We have to remember that the valuable intellectual development is self-development, and that it mostly takes place between the ages of sixteen and thirty. As to training, the most important part is given by mothers before the age of twelve. A saying due to Archbishop Temple illustrates my meaning. Surprise was expressed at the success in after-life of a man, who as a boy at Rugby had been somewhat undistin-guished. He answered, “It is not what they are at eighteen, it is what they become afterwards that matters.”

In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must beware of what I will call “inert ideas”—that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful—Corruptio optimi, pessima. Except at rare intervals of intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected with inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated clever women, who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from this horrible burden of inert ideas. Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.

Let us now ask how in our system of education we are to guard against this mental dry rot. We enunciate two educational commandments, “Do not teach too many subjects,” and again, “What you teach, teach thoroughly.”

The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child’s education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible. The child should make them his own, and should understand their application here and now in the circumstances of his actual life. From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The discovery which he has to make, is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through his life, which is his life. By understanding I mean more than a mere logical analysis, though that is included. I mean “understanding" in the sense in which it is used in the French proverb, “To understand all, is to forgive all.” Pedants sneer at an education which is useful. But if education is not useful, what is it? Is it a talent, to be hidden away in a napkin? Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim in life. It was useful to Saint Augustine and it was useful to Napoleon. It is useful, because understanding is useful.

I pass lightly over that understanding which should be given by the literary side of education. Nor do I wish to be supposed to pronounce on the relative merits of a classical or a modern curriculum. I would only remark that the understanding which we want is an understanding of an insistent present. The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by depreciation of the present. The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future. At the same time it must be observed that an age is no less past if it existed two hundred years ago than if it existed two thousand years ago. Do not be deceived by the pedantry of dates. The ages of Shakespeare and of Molière are no less past than are the ages of Sophocles and of Virgil. The communion of saints is a great and inspiring assemblage, but it has only one possible hall of meeting, and that is, the present, and the mere lapse of time through which any particular group of saints must travel to reach that meeting-place, makes very little difference.

Passing now to the scientific and logical side of education, we remember that here also ideas which are not utilised are positively harmful. By utilising an idea, I mean relating it to that stream, compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of mental activities adjusting thought to thought, which forms our life. I can imagine a set of beings which might fortify their souls by passively reviewing disconnected ideas. Humanity is not built that way except perhaps some editors of newspapers.

In scientific training, the first thing to do with an idea is to prove it. But allow me for one moment to extend the meaning of “prove”; I mean—to prove its worth. Now an idea is not worth much unless the propositions in which it is embodied are true. Accordingly an essential part of the proof of an idea is the proof, either by experiment or by logic, of the truth of the propositions. But it is not essential that this proof of the truth should constitute the first introduction to the idea. After all, its assertion by the authority of respectable teachers is sufficient evidence to begin with. In our first contact with a set of propositions, we commence by appreciating their importance. That is what we all do in after-life. We do not attempt, in the strict sense, to prove or to disprove anything, unless its importance makes it worthy of that honour. These two processes of proof, in the narrow sense, and of appreciation, do not require a rigid separation in time. Both can be proceeded with nearly concurrently. But in so far as either process must have the priority, it should be that of appreciation by use.

Furthermore, we should not endeavour to use propositions in isolation. Emphatically I do not mean, a neat little set of experiments to illustrate Proposition I and then the proof of Proposition I, a neat little set of experiments to illustrate Proposition II and then the proof of Proposition II, and so on to the end of the book. Nothing could be more boring. Interrelated truths are utilised en bloc, and the various propositions are employed in any order, and with any reiteration (say something again). Choose some important applications of your theoretical subject; and study them concurrently with the systematic theoretical exposition. Keep the theoretical exposition short and simple, but let it be strict and rigid so far as it goes. It should not be too long for it to be easily known with thoroughness and accuracy. The consequences of a plethora of  half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable. Also the theory should not be muddled up with the practice. The child should have no doubt when it is proving and when it is utilising. My point is that what is proved should be utilised, and that what is utilised should—so far, as is practicable—be proved. I am far from asserting that proof and utilisation are the same thing.

At this point of my discourse, I can most directly carry forward my argument in the outward form of a digression. We are only just realising that the art and science of education require a genius and a study of their own; and that this genius and this science are more than a bare knowledge of some branch of science or of literature. This truth was partially perceived in the past generation; and headmasters, somewhat crudely, were apt to supersede learning in their colleagues by requiring left-hand bowling and a taste for football. But culture is more than cricket, and more than football, and more than extent of knowledge.

Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge. This is an art very difficult to impart. Whenever a textbook is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place. This evil path is represented by a book or a set of lectures which will practically enable the student to learn by heart all the questions likely to be asked at the next external examination. And I may say in passing that no educational system is possible unless every question directly asked of a pupil at any examination is either framed or modified by the actual teacher of that pupil in that subject. The external assessor may report on the curriculum or on the performance of the pupils, but never should be allowed to ask the pupil a question which has not been strictly supervised by the actual teacher, or at least inspired by a long conference with him. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions, and could easily be allowed for under the general rule.

We now return to my previous point, that theoretical ideas should always find important applications within the pupil’s curriculum. This is not an easy doctrine to apply, but a very hard one. It contains within itself the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert, which is the central problem of all education.

The best procedure will depend on several factors, none of which can be neglected, namely, the genius of the teacher, the intellectual type of the pupils, their prospects in life, the opportunities offered by the immediate surroundings of the school and allied factors of this sort. It is for this reason that the uniform external examination is so deadly. We do not denounce it because we are cranks, and like denouncing established things. We are not so childish. Also, of course, such examinations have their use in testing slackness. Our reason of dislike is very definite and very practical. It kills the best part of culture. When you analyse in the light of experience the central task of education, you find that its successful accomplishment depends on a delicate adjustment of many variable factors. The reason is that we are dealing with human minds, and not with dead matter. The evocation of curiosity, of judgment, of the power of mastering a complicated tangle of circumstances, the use of theory in giving foresight in special cases all these powers are not to be imparted by a set rule embodied in one schedule of examination subjects.

I appeal to you, as practical teachers. With good discipline, it is always possible to pump into the minds of a class a certain quantity of inert knowledge. You take a text-book and make them learn it. So far, so good. The child then knows how to solve a quadratic equation. But what is the point of teaching a child to solve a quadratic equation? There is a traditional answer to this question. It runs thus: The mind is an instrument, you first sharpen it, and then use it; the acquisition of the power of solving a quadratic equation is part of the process of sharpening the mind. Now there is just enough truth in this answer to have made it live through the ages. But for all its half-truth, it embodies a radical error which bids fair to stifle the genius of the modern world. I do not know who was first responsible for this analogy of the mind to a dead instrument. For aught I know, it may have been one of the seven wise men of Greece, or a committee of the whole lot of them. Whoever was the originator, there can be no doubt of the authority which it has acquired by the continuous approval bestowed upon it by eminent persons. But whatever its weight of authority, whatever the high approval which it can quote, I have no hesitation in denouncing it as one of the most fatal, erroneous, and dangerous conceptions ever introduced into the theory of education. The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exercised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now. That is the golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.

The difficulty is just this: the apprehension of general ideas, intellectual habits of mind, and pleasurable interest in mental achievement can be evoked by no form of words, however accurately adjusted. All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generalizations. There is a proverb about the difficulty of seeing the wood because of the trees. That difficulty is exactly the point which I am enforcing. The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood by means of the trees.

The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity, we offer children -- Algebra, from which nothing follows; Geometry, from which nothing follows; Science, from which nothing follows; History, from which nothing follows; a Couple of Languages, never mastered; and lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by plays of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short analyses of plot and character to be in substance committed to memory. Can such a list be said to represent Life, as it is known in the midst of the living of it? The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table of contents which a deity might run over in his mind while he was thinking of creating a world, and has not yet determined how to put it together.

Let us now return to quadratic equations. We still have on hand the unanswered question. Why should children be taught their solution? Unless quadratic equations fit into a connected curriculum, of course there is no reason to teach anything about them. Furthermore, extensive as should be the place of mathematics in a complete culture, I am a little doubtful whether for many types of boys algebraic solutions of quadratic equations do not lie on the specialist side of mathematics. I may here remind you that as yet I have not said anything of the psychology or the content of the specialism, which is so necessary a part of an ideal education. But all that is an evasion of our real question, and I merely state it in order to avoid being misunderstood in my answer.

Quadratic equations are part of algebra, and algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world. There is no getting out of it. Through and through the world is infected with quantity. To talk sense, is to talk in quantities. It is no use saying that the nation is large, — How large? It is no use saying that radium is scarce, — How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and to music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves. Elegant intellects which despise the theory of quantity, are but half developed. They are more to be pitied than blamed, The scraps of gibberish, which in their school-days were taught to them in the name of algebra, deserve some contempt. This question of the degeneration of algebra into gibberish, both in word and in fact, affords a pathetic instance of the uselessness of reforming educational schedules without a clear conception of the attributes which you wish to evoke in the living minds of the children. A few years ago there was an outcry that school algebra, was in need of reform, but there was a general agreement that graphs would put everything right. So all sorts of things were extruded, and graphs were introduced. So far as I can see, with no sort of idea behind them, but just graphs. Now every examination paper has one or two questions on graphs. Personally I am an enthusiastic adherent of graphs. But I wonder whether as yet we have gained very much. You cannot put life into any schedule of general education unless you succeed in exhibiting its relation to some essential characteristic of all intelligent or emotional perception. lt is a hard saying, but it is true; and I do not see how to make it any easier. In making these little formal alterations you are beaten by the very nature of things. You are pitted against too skilful an adversary, who will see to it that the pea is always under the other thimble.

Reformation must begin at the other end. First, you must make up your mind as to those quantitative aspects of the world which are simple enough to be introduced into general education; then a schedule of algebra should be framed which will about find its exemplification in these applications. We need not fear for our pet graphs, they will be there in plenty when we once begin to treat algebra as a serious means of studying the world. Some of the simplest applications will be found in the quantities which occur in the simplest study of society. The curves of history are more vivid and more informing than the dry catalogues of names and dates which comprise the greater part of that arid school study. What purpose is effected by a catalogue of undistinguished kings and queens? Tom, Dick, or Harry, they are all dead. General resurrections are failures, and are better postponed. The quantitative flux of the forces of modern society is capable of very simple exhibition. Meanwhile, the idea of the variable, of the function, of rate of change, of equations and their solution, of elimination, are being studied as an abstract science for their own sake. Not, of course, in the pompous phrases with which I am alluding to them here, but with that iteration (repetition) of simple special cases proper to teaching.

If this course be followed. the route from Chaucer to the Black Death, from the Black Death to modern Labour troubles, will connect the tales of the mediaeval pilgrims with the abstract science of algebra, both yielding diverse aspects of that single theme, Life. I know what most of you are thinking at this point. It is that the exact course which I have sketched out is not the particular one which you would have chosen, or even see how to work. I quite agree. I am not claiming that I could do it myself. But your objection is the precise reason why a common external examination system is fatal to education. The process of exhibiting the applications of knowledge must, for its success, essentially depend on the character of the pupils and the genius of the teacher. Of course I have left out the easiest applications with which most of us are more at home. I mean the quantitative sides of sciences, such as mechanics and physics.

Again, in the same connection we plot the statistics of social phenomena against the time. We then eliminate the time between suitable pairs. We can speculate how far we have exhibited a real causal connection, or how far a mere temporal coincidence. We notice that we might have plotted against the time one set of statistics for one country and another set for another country, and thus, with suitable choice of subjects, have obtained graphs which certainly exhibited mere coincidence. Also other graphs exhibit obvious causal connections. We wonder how to discriminate. And so are drawn on as far as we will.

But in considering this description, I must beg you to remember what I have been insisting on above. In the first place, one train of thought will not suit all groups of children. For example, I should expect that artisan children will want something more concrete and, in a sense, swifter than I have set down here. Perhaps I am wrong, but that is what I should guess. In the second place, I am not contemplating one beautiful lecture stimulating, once and for all, an admiring class. That is not the way in which education proceeds. No; all the time the pupils are hard at work solving examples drawing graphs, and making experiments, until they have a thorough hold on the whole subject. I am describing the interspersed explanations, the directions which should be given to their thoughts. The pupils have got to be made to feel that they are studying something, and are not merely executing intellectual minuets.

Finally, if you are teaching pupils for some general examination, the problem of sound teaching is greatly complicated. Have you ever noticed the zig-zag moulding round a Norman arch? The ancient work is beautiful, the modern work is hideous. The reason is, that the modern work is done to exact measure, the ancient work is varied according to the idiosyncrasy of the workman. Here it is crowded, and there it is expanded. Now the essence of getting pupils through examinations is to give equal weight to all parts of the schedule. But mankind is naturally specialist. One man sees a whole subject, where another can find only a few detached examples. I know that it seems contradictory to allow for specialism in a curriculum especially designed for a broad culture. Without contradictions the world would be simpler, and perhaps duller. But I am certain that in education wherever you exclude specialism you destroy life.

We now come to the other great branch of a general mathematical education, namely Geometry. The same principles apply. The theoretical part should be clear-cut, rigid, short, and important. Every proposition not absolutely necessary to exhibit the main connection of ideas should be cut out, but the great fundamental ideas should be all there. No omission of concepts, such as those of Similarity and Proportion. We must remember that, owing to the aid rendered by the visual presence of a figure, Geometry is a field of unequalled excellence for the exercise of the deductive faculties of reasoning. Then, of course, there follows Geometrical Drawing, with its training for the hand and eye.

But, like Algebra, Geometry and Geometrical Drawing must be extended beyond the mere circle of geometrical ideas. In an industrial neighbourhood, machinery and workshop practice form the appropriate extension. For example, in the London Polytechnics this has been achieved with conspicuous success. For many secondary schools I suggest that surveying and maps are the natural applications. In particular, plane-table surveying should lead pupils to a vivid apprehension of the immediate application of geometric truths. Simple drawing apparatus, a surveyor’s chain, and a surveyor’s compass, should enable the pupils to rise from the survey and mensuration of a field to the construction of the map of a small district. The best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus. The provision of elaborate instruments is greatly to be deprecated. To have constructed the map of a small district, to have considered its roads, its contours, its geology, its climate, its relation to other districts, the effects on the status of its inhabitants, will teach more history and geography than any knowledge of Perkin Warbeck or of Behren’s Straits. I mean not a nebulous lecture on the subject, but a serious investigation in which the real facts are definitely ascertained by the aid of accurate theoretical knowledge. A typical mathematical problem should be: Survey such and such a field, draw a plan of it to such and such a scale, and find the area. It would be quite a good procedure to impart the necessary geometrical propositions without their proofs. Then, concurrently in the same term, the proofs of the propositions would be learnt while the survey was being made.

Fortunately, the specialist side of education presents an easier problem than does the provision of a general culture. For this there are many reasons. One is that many of the principles of procedure to be observed are the same in both cases, and it is unnecessary to recapitulate. Another reason is that specialist training takes place—or should take place—at a more advanced stage of the pupil’s course, and thus there is easier material to work upon. But undoubtedly the chief reason is that the specialist study is normally a study of peculiar interest to the student. He is studying it because, for some reason, he wants to know it. This makes all the difference. The general culture is designed to foster an activity of mind; the specialist course utilises this activity. But it does not do to lay too much stress on these neat antitheses. As we have already seen, in the general course foci of special interest will arise; and similarly in the special study, the external connections of the subject drag thought outwards.

Again, there is not one course of study which merely gives general cultures and another which gives special knowledge. The subjects pursued for the sake of a general education are special subjects specially studied; and, on the other hand, one of the ways of encouraging general mental activity is to foster a special devotion. You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.

The appreciation of the structure of ideas is that side of a cultured mind which can only grow under the influence of a special study. I mean that eye for the whole chess-board, for the bearing of one set of ideas on another. Nothing but a special study can give any appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehension of life. A mind so disciplined should be both more abstract and more concrete. It has been trained in the comprehension of abstract thought and in the analysis of facts.

Finally, there should grow the most austere of all mental qualities; I mean the sense for style. It is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration for the direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste. Style in art, style in literature, style in science, style in logic, style in practical execution have fundamentally the same aesthetic qualities, namely, attainment and restraint. The love of a subject in itself and for itself, where it is not the sleepy pleasure of pacing a mental quarter-deck, is the love of style as manifested in that study.

Here we are brought back to the position from which we started, the utility of education. Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the engineer with a sense for style economises his material; the artisan with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate morality of mind.

But above style, and above knowledge, there is something, a vague shape like fate above the Greek gods. That something is Power. Style is the fashioning of power, the restraining of power. But, after all, the power of attainment of the desired end is fundamental. The first thing is to get there. Do not bother about your style, but solve your problem, justify the ways of God to man, administer your province, or do whatever else is set before you.

Where, then, does style help? In this, with style the end is attained without side issues, without raising undesirable inflammations. With style you attain your end and nothing but your end. With style the effect of your activity is calculable, and foresight is the last gift of gods to men. With style your power is increased, for your mind is not distracted with irrelevancies, and you are more likely to attain your object. Now style is the exclusive privilege of the expert. Whoever heard of the style of an amateur painter, of the style of an amateur poet? Style is always the product of specialist study, the peculiar contribution of specialism to culture.

English education in its present phase suffers from a lack of definite aim, and from an external machinery which kills its vitality. Hitherto in this address I have been considering the aims which should govern education. In this respect England halts between two opinions. It has not decided whether to produce amateurs or experts. The profound change in the world which the nineteenth century has produced is that the growth of knowledge has given foresight. The amateur is essentially a man with appreciation and with immense versatility in mastering a given routine. But he lacks the foresight which comes from special knowledge. The object of this address is to suggest how to produce the expert without loss of the essential virtues of the amateur. The machinery of our secondary education is rigid where it should be yielding, and lax where it should be rigid. Every school is bound on pain of extinction to train its boys for a small set of definite examinations. No headmaster has a free hand to develop his general education or his specialist studies in accordance with the opportunities of his school, which are created by its staff, its environment, its class of boys, and its endowments. I suggest that no system of external tests which aims primarily at examining individual scholars can result in anything but educational waste.

Primarily it is the schools and not the scholars which should be inspected. Each school should grant its own leaving certificates, based on its own curriculum. The standards of these schools should be sampled and corrected. But the first requisite for educational reform is the school as a unit, with its approved curriculum based on its own needs, and evolved by its own staff. If we fail to secure that, we simply fall from one formalism into another, from one dung hill of inert ideas into another.

In stating that the school is the true educational unit in any national system for the safeguarding of efficiency, I have conceived the alternative system as being the external examination of the individual scholar. But every Scylla is faced by its Charybdis—or, in more homely language, there is a ditch on both sides of the road. It will be equally fatal to education if we fall into the hands of a supervising department which is under the impression that it can divide all schools into two or three rigid categories, each type being forced to adopt a rigid curriculum. When I say that the school is the educational unit, I mean exactly what I say, no larger unit, no smaller unit. Each school must have the claim to be considered in relation to its special circumstances. The classifying of schools for some purposes is necessary. But no absolutely rigid curriculum, not modified by its own staff, should be permissible. Exactly the same principles apply, with the proper modifications, to universities and to technical colleges. When one considers in its length and in its breadth the importance of this question of the education of a nation’s young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures, which result from the frivolous inertia with which it is treated, it is difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage. In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. To-day we maintain ourselves. To-morrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated.

We can be content with no less than the old summary of educational ideal which has been current at any time from the dawn of our civilization. The essence of education is that it be religious.

Pray, what is religious education?

A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

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Whitehead Page:

Alfred North Whitehead
1861-1947

Essays By Whitehead:

Religion in the Making [1926]
Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect [1927]
The Aims of Education [1929]
The Function of Reason [1929]
God and the World [1929]
Prefatory Note to Susanne K. Langer, The Practice of Philosophy [1929]
Preface to William Morgan, “The Organization of a Story and a Tale” [1945]
Reflections on Man and Nature [Off-Site]

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