CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW OF SIN

If any term in the moral vocabulary stands in need of strict redefinition, it is sin. Three elements combine to complete the idea of sin: first, that the deed was one that ought not to have been done, not so much because of its painful consequences to others or to self, or to both, or, by repercussion on society as a whole; but because it was opposed to what is intrinsically right: in other words, because it contravened the kind of interrelation which would exist in its purity in the ethical manifold.

Secondly, the idea of sin implies that the sinner himself is the doer of the deed, or that there is to this extent freedom of the will. I do not say that he is the cause of which the deed is the effect. Causality appertains to sequent phenomena. As regards freedom of the will, the distinction between the category of interdependence and that of causality is vital. A long series of causes, such as bad heredity, bad environment, etc., may have led A to determine to murder B.[51]

The notion of the freedom of the will as here viewed signifies that no matter what the causal series may have been which leads up to the act, when the act itself is about to be performed, when B is about to experience the effect of A as cause, in that moment the relation of interdependence between A and B ought to arise before the mind of A and withhold him from completing his evil purpose.

Thirdly, it is characteristic of sin that the fuller knowledge that the harmful deed is sinful _comes after the act_,—that it is the Fruit of the Tree, the enlightenment of the eyes. As the serpent said: “If ye eat of the fruit ye shall be as gods.”

Many a man has done what is called evil, and done it most deliberately, knowing evil as evil. Remember the career of a Cæsar Borgia, the extermination of the Caribbean Indians by the Spaniards, the outrages on women perpetrated during the present war, the exploitation of human labor practiced on a large scale among the civilized nations. That the blackest crimes may be committed with a full knowledge of the horrible consequences to the victims seems hardly to admit of doubt. Evil is known as evil.

But evil in its character as sin cannot be fully recognized prior to the act. In this respect the Greeks had a certain prescience of the truth when they asserted that no one can knowingly commit evil; only they failed to distinguish between evil and sin. A man _can_ knowingly commit evil, but cannot with full consciousness commit sin. The knowledge of the sin is the divine elixir which may be distilled from the evil deed (“Ye shall be as gods”), and the object of every kind of punishment should be to extract that pain-giving but ultimately peace-giving elixir.

Above I mentioned the criminal as the extreme type. But evils in less formidable guise, though not on that account less evil, refined invasions of the personality of others, spiritual oppressions, sometimes deliberate, often unwitting, are included in everyone’s experience. And the process of expiation, by which evil is transcended through the recognition of sin (with its prostrating effect at first, its strangely elevating effect later on) is alike applicable to all. The best of men have to go through this ordeal as well as the worst. Especially is unwitting transgression inevitable. Sophocles makes it the text of his philosophy in the _Œdipus_, though the solution offered is that of Greek enlightenment and not that of the more profound ethical consciousness.

We have next, in close connection with sin, to consider the tremendous question of responsibility, interpreted from the point of view of our ethical principle. Responsible means answerable. Answerable to whom, and in what sense? As commonly understood, it means answerable to God the Law-giver, to God regarded as the Author of the moral law. God is likened to a sovereign. Any infraction of his law is an offense against the sovereign. Answerable means subject to the pains and penalties which it suits the sovereign to annex to moral offences. There is no intrinsic connection implied between pain and redemption. The pain is supposed to break the will of the offender, or to mellow him, so that he will in future obey the mandates of the sovereign without a murmur.

Again, responsibility may mean responsibility to society. Crime is infectious. A fissure opening at any one point in the dykes erected against crime may let in a flood. The social order as a whole is threatened in every single violation of law. The offender must answer for his defiance of the public will by being subjected to the pains or penalties which society annexes to his crime. The object is the same as before, to break him into submission, to fit or force him into the social mould, to make him harmless, or if possible what is called a “useful citizen.” No internal redemptive change in the nature of the evildoer is contemplated, except as it may be necessary to lead him to a useful or at least a harmless life. The antisocial attitude is to be replaced by the social attitude. Appeals to enlightened self-interest, and to the sympathies are commonly thought sufficient for this purpose.

Thirdly, responsibility means responsible to oneself. There is an inner forum, a tribunal in which the spiritual self sits in judgment on the empirical self. Conscience, the voice of this spiritual self, pronounces the verdict. (Cf. the passages in Kant in which this figure of speech is used.) These are metaphorical expressions.

To grasp the meaning of responsibility from the ethical standpoint, we must lift into view the concept of _the task of mankind as a whole_, and of the individual as a factor in the fulfilment of that task. This introduces a momentous turn into the discussion of the subject.

The task of mankind is to arrive through its commerce with the finite world, through its unremitting efforts to incorporate the infinite plan within the sphere of human relations, at an increasingly explicit conception of the ideal of the infinite universe; and through partial success and frustration to seize the reality of that universe. Responsibility means _participation in this task_, sharing its doom, and attaining in oneself, in part, its sublime compensation. The evildoer is to achieve the knowledge that his evil deed is sin, that is to say, that it not only carries with it harm to others and indirectly to himself, but that it is _the defeat in him_ of the task which is set for the human race as a whole on earth. Instead of doing his share in fulfilling this task, in gaining a footing in the finite world for the spiritual relation of living so as to enhance the life of others and thereby his own, he has miserably sought to enhance his life at the expense of other life. The knowledge that he has so acted sears his awakened soul like fire, but it is also the beginning of healing. The transgressor, now sees what he did not see before. He sees by way of contrast the holy pattern of relations which in his act he has travestied, the holy laws which he has infringed, and in imputing sin to himself for transgressing them, he at the same time proclaims himself in his essential being holy, that is, capable of executing them, or at least of striving unceasingly to do so. It is thus that he opens within himself the sources of redemption, unseals the deeper fountains of spiritual energy.

That man is responsible means that he is answerable to do his share in discharging the task of mankind. And when he is inwardly transformed by the consciousness of the holy laws, and of himself as intrinsically committed to holiness, he does thereby advance the business of his kind on earth. In him humanity does take a step forward on the spiritual road. In him one other member of our race has been lifted out of evil, becoming perhaps, from the spiritual point of view, a more advanced member of the forward-pressing host than those who have never passed through an experience like his, who have not been overtly tempted, who have remained conventionally moral, who have not realized the evil that remains unexpurgated within them, and have not passed through the cleansing process of self-condemnation and rebirth.

The incongruity between the finite and the infinite order is the basis of this doctrine of responsibility. Mankind is responsible for seeking to embody the infinite in the finite. It fails to do so, but gains its compensation. The individual shares this responsibility, but both mankind and the individual jointly take a step forward whenever an evil deed is recognized, branded and expiated as sinful. The object of punishment, whether inflicted by society or self-inflicted, is to promote this regeneration which is the expiation.[52]

NOTE

Evil in its ethical meaning presupposes worth as attaching to human beings. To do evil is to offend against worth. To assert the worth of man is to view him as one of an infinite number of beings, united in an infinite universe, each induplicable in its kind. Of this spiritual multitude ideally projected by us as enveloping human society only our fellow human beings are known to us. _The moral law is the law which reigns throughout the infinite spiritual universe applied within, the narrow confines of human society. It is applied within those confines, it is spiritual, universal in its jurisdiction._

The task of humanity as a whole is to embody more and more the universal spiritual law in human relationships, and thus to transform and transfigure human society. In the New Testament we read the expression: “the light of God reflected in the face of Christ.” The ideal here indicated may be expressed in the phrase, The spiritual universe with its endless lights reflected on the face of human society! The task of humanity is one which can never be completed, one from which mankind may never desist. To see evil as sin is to see it as contravening the collective task of mankind, the task of weaving the human groups more and more into the fabric of the spiritual relations.

To see evil as sin is to see any single act or series of acts ideally in their infinite connections. This is what I mean when I say that the knowledge of sin comes after the act. I do not mean that there may not be before the act a vague consciousness of the ramified consequences of evil, but that the fuller knowledge of it as sin is the fruit of the act. Nor do I mean that evil in its deeper significance is revealed to every guilty person. The opposite is obviously true. What I mean is that it is possible after having eaten of the Fruit of the Tree to gain the enlightenment, in other words, to become aware of the intrinsic holiness of our nature in consequence of our offense against the holy laws. If anyone should ask “Must I then do evil in order to gain the enlightenment?” the answer is that this question is an idle one. No one can escape doing evil. If not in its grosser forms, then in ways subtler and more complex, but not therefore less evil, every one is bound to make acquaintance with guilt. He need not go out of his way to seek occasion, let him see to it that he improves the occasion when it comes, as inevitably it will, to his spiritual advantage.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] The category of interdependence implies that the lines of energy between A and B cross, so that A is subject to B’s influence, B subject to A’s influence, simultaneously. The simultaneity of the relation distinguishes the category of interdependence from that of causality.

[52] This implies that the evil deed shall not be lost sight of, simply forgotten. Compare the inadequate account of repentance as given by Goethe in _Faust_ and elsewhere.