WIDELY VARYING CONCEPTIONS OF MAN OBTAIN TODAY, SOME OF THEM IN RADICAL OPPOSITION TO THE Christian view. Sometimes these conceptions are implicit rather than avowed, especially in the case of social political theories.

Materialism sees man as a creature of earth, and only that. As a last-century German philosopher put it, you are what you eat— Man ist was er isst. The average man, it is estimated, has in his body the equivalent of some ten gallons of water, twenty-four pounds of coal, seven pounds of lime, not quite two pounds of phosphorus, with some sugar, salt, iodine, sulphur, potassium, and other elements. The materialism which sees man as merely the compound of these elements is rare today.

At the opposite extreme is the rationalist-idealist view which stems from Plato. Reason is man's essential nature; the rest is incidental. True, his spirit is enclosed in a body, which one may call the prison of the soul. And the body has its passions which must be ruled by the spirit. But all these have no real place in the true life of a man, which is that of reason. Akin to this is the romanticist view. It sees man as basically good. What he needs is simply freedom—freedom from hampering social conventions, from superstitious ideas and the whole artificial structure of "civilization." With this we may contrast the cynical-pessimistic view, for which man's chief mark is not reason but folly. True, he has knowledge and skills and power, but the further he advances in these the more serious is his predicament. He is ruled by the ancient instincts of the jungle, the fighting instinct first of all; and in a world which demands co-operation he is incurably selfish.

Biology, psychology, and sociology are sciences which have contributed directly to our knowledge of human nature. No one of them yields by itself an adequate doctrine of man, but they have all been appealed to in support of special theories.

There is first what may be called the idea of the "biological man." The theory of evolution is determinative here, and the biological origin of man is assumed to yield an adequate account of his nature. Man as an animal is akin to his lesser brethren. His structure, bone by bone, organ by organ, shows him to be one of the higher vertebrates. Further, he has the same basic instincts and appetites—hunger, sex, fear, the herd instinct. In times of crisis, alike with the individual and the group, these, and not the acquired social customs and conventions which we call civilization, are the determining forces. There are, of course, differences, structural and psychological. With only two legs to stand on he is not so secure as the four-legged creatures, and many of these are stronger and swifter than he. But his different profile, with the high forehead, indicates mental development. He can think and talk and plan. His erect posture means that he can look forward and upward and not merely down, and it sets his fore limbs free to use the tools which his cleverness has shaped.

The "psychological man" of the new psychology is akin to this biological man. The Freudian approach is analytical, not genetical; but there is the same emphasis on the primacy of the instinct-impulse side: the will to live, the age-long struggle for existence, the assertion of self in conflict with his fellows and his environment, the sexual drive, the fear lurking at the door, and all this leading to the conflicts within himself.

Each of these theories has its factual basis and its element of truth. Reason is a distinctive mark of man. There is in man a desire for good, a vision of good, and a capacity to respond. There is evil in man: he is his own worst foe, and despair is a not illogical conclusion for those whose world contains nothing higher than nature and man. Man is a creature of earth; "God formed man of dust from the ground" (Gen. 2:7). Man has come by a long and slow ascent from lower levels of life; he is akin to the lesser creatures not only in body but in the drives that move him to action and influence his thought. The Christian doctrine of man must include these aspects of his nature. Religion deals, and must deal, with the whole man.

But that is where these doctrines are at fault. They take a fragment and view it as the whole. And isolation and overemphasis mean distortion. He who sees only a part fails to understand even the part which he sees. More serious is the second error: the failure to see the highest. Man's world includes God. Man's nature includes the capacity to envisage the moral and spiritual and the ability to respond to it. This is what marks him off from other creatures and indicates his distinctive nature.

Of great importance for our study are the varying conceptions of man which are implied in the competing social ideologies of our day. For the most part they are implied rather than formulated, but they are none the less important, and they underlie those issues which are the source of conflict within nations and between nations. Fascism (including Nazism), communism, capitalism, and democracy may be taken as representative.

The social approach to the doctrine of man belongs naturally to a day like ours in which the group life has become ever more important and the individual has tended to lose significance. The important relations have been economic and political. The former has tended to make of man a cog in the industrial machine; the latter has led to the growth of the state in function and power and so in its control of individual life. The need for a larger measure of social and political control is obvious. We are dealing here only with the more extreme developments as seen in fascism and (Russian) communism, and with the concept of man that has gone with these. It is by these widespread movements, rather than by philosophical theories, that the Christian conception of man is most seriously threatened.

Fascism is the extreme form of statism, and Nazism is the extreme expression of fascism. The Nazi emphasis on race and land (Blut und Boden) was primarily a propaganda affair. The crucial matter in fascism is the idea of the state: nationalist, absolutist, and totalitarian. The state, with its power and glory, is the supreme interest. There is no authority above it, whether of right or of God. Man is here for the state, not the state for man. The mass man is an inferior creature. He is incapable of intelligent and responsible decision and action. Democracy is a delusion. We must have the rule of the superman, of the leader (Führer, Duce) and his associates. The common man is here to obey, to work, to fight. The woman is here to bear children for factory and army. Here human personality loses its sacredness and moral personality its meaning; man becomes property and tool. The doctrine has by no means passed with the overthrow of Mussolini and Hitler.

In theory communism stands in favorable contrast to the fascist attitude toward man. It repudiates distinctions of race and class. Its avowed concern is not for the state but for men. It seeks a common economic welfare and security. In its actual development in Russia, however, communism has more and more paralleled fascism. Its increasing concern has been the state, the Russian State. It represents the strictest and most powerful autocracy on the globe. Power is vested in the few and is absolute. The state is totalitarian in its rule: education, the press, science, music and the theater, as well as the industrial and political, are included in its rule. Its concept of man is purely naturalistic. It does not exclude the arts, but its ideology, like its practice, has no place for man as a moral being recognizing moral values and authority, as a religious being whose God is above all human power and authority, or as a being sacred in his own right and entitled to freedom in thought and speech and worship.

Western capitalism, too, is primarily concerned with economic man. Man is first of all a creature who produces and consumes and enjoys. The immediate concern is material well-being. Other goods are contingent upon attaining this. The appeal is to self-interest working in strict competition. The dominant conception of man and man's life is individualistic and secularistic, not social or religious or ethical. ¹

Democracy is still in the making, alike in the apprehension of its basic ideas as in their realization. More and more it is seen today, not simply as a form of political organization, but as a philosophy of the social life. As such it is inclusive, but not in the sense of any totalitarian control. The conception of man is basic for its thinking. Human personality is sacred and therefore is the supreme concern of society. Hence freedom of spirit, freedom of thought and speech and worship, is not less vital than political freedom. But man is also a morally responsible being, and obligations are inseparable from rights. The good of the social whole conditions the claims of the individual and demands his loyalty and service. Above the individual, as above the state, there is the authority of what is right and just and good. It is this moral quality of man's nature, joined with intelligence, which makes possible a government by the people and the conviction that individual freedom and social justice can be realized together. Thus democracy, as against cynicism and pessimism, involves faith in man. That does not mean romanticism, however; it does not idealize man. Democracy is a slow achievement, involving a constant struggle against ignorance, selfishness, and inertia. But there remains the faith in man as one who is educable, can respond to right ideals, is made for social relations, and can work with others. Clearly this conception of man and of the democratic way shows the influence of prophetic religion.

This is the world in which Christianity must proclaim its message. We tend to think of the competing faiths of this world, as of its want of faith, in terms of the doctrine of God. That is central, but such a survey as the preceding shows how significant the doctrine of man is in the conflicting ideologies of today, and how vital it is to bring the Christian conception as a challenge to the movements which threaten human welfare, as well as to give direction and inspiration to the democratic movement.

1) The issue here is not that of private enterprise and free competition as against public ownership and control. The reference under "capitalism" is to a widely held philosophy of life, usually assumed rather than consciously chosen.