Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M A S M I D , in U ■ ■ Pro me it he us Or Tantalus? Ernest Rap i iai l Shall man ' s hopes repose softly upon saffron cushions of a blissful Heaven, or shall ihcy toss feverishly upon the hard bed of an implacable Nature? Is man a child of the gods, or a chance wanderling in lonely space? Is consciousness, as the idealist contends, the architect of the universe, or merely a throbbing impulse in a world of atomic disturbances? In a word, is man a Prometheus in possession of divine secrets, or a Tantalus con- demned forever to reach but never to grasp? The medieval age — that dismal chasm where sophistry and error lay in fond embrace — evolved a most ingenious solution to these perplexing prob- lems. Man was the noblest of all creations. His life was a mortal conflict between good and evil, a conflict that terminated in eternal bliss or eternal damnation. In the vaulted heaven, man read the glory of an omnipotent G-d, and in the sulphurous gases escap ing from the yawning jaws of volcanic mountains he fancied the faint traces of Purgatory. The earth on which he lived was but an island suspended in soace, midway between a glorious heaven and a torturous hell. In the sixteenth century, the investigations of Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler threatened man ' s monarchical pretensions, and shook the medieval structure to its very foundation. Man fought against his dethronement with the ferocity of an animal at bay, and in G-d ' s name he persecuted Galileo and burned Giordano Bruno at the stake. But with the triumph of reason, man was compelled to give up the medieval Paradise woven out of the tenuous threads of dialectic, together with the multi-shaped mirrors of phantasy in which man had often surveyed his exaggerated beauty and importance. A universe of law and order suc- ceeded a universe ruled by divine petulance and discrimination. A materialistc perspective was in- troduced into the investigations of Nature, a per- spective thai received il mo I eulogi tic, though declamatory, expre ion in the work of I lolbach. For the preservation ol man ' privihs cd portion in the universe there were two avenues of escape. The first, suggested by Pomponazzi, urged tin- sharp distinction between reason and religion. Reason, and its handmaid philosophy, became con- cerned with logical investigations in the secular realm, while religion with its theological d • was placed beyond the pale of proof into the realm of belief. For reason to seek theologic consecra- tion was abusrd; for theology to offer rational proof for its propositions was fantastic. Thus Pompon.i i declared immortality of the soul to be logically insoluble, but solemnly affirmed it as an article of faith. Logically, it may be observed in passing, this approach was a return to the Tertullian doc- trine, Credo quia absurdum; and historically it marked the breakdown of scholastism. viz.. ' he effort to establish the rational nature of theological propositions. The second avenue of escape, as observed in the writings of Boehme, involved the sharp dualism of the visible and the invisible worlds. Beneath the surface of visible things there is concealed a deep mystery, which is unravelled by the soul through mystical revelation. Though Boehme re- affirmed many of the propositions of theology, we cannot fail to catch glimpses of his liberation from the vagaries of mediaeval scholasticism. Science cannot, according to Boehme. dislodge religion from its venerable cosition. On the contrary, the drvrne Spirit dwells in the body of nature, as the soul dwells in the body of man. But any cosmological dualism, as Paulsen has pointed out, when carried to its logical conclusion reduces itself to monism or at best to pantheism, and consequently we need not be surprised to find Boehme occasionally equating God and nature. The pantheisim. feebly

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Eighteer MASMID have rendered thousands homeless and hungry, it seems almost a crime to divert funds for much- needed aid into the channels of education. Uni- versities and colleges all over the country have felt this attitude manifested in the tremendous de- cline of their income for running expenses. Yeshiva College has been no exception. The physical well-being of man is an essential component of progress. The advance of civiliza- tion has been marked by the gradual improvement of the living conditions of mankind. But always there has been recognized the underlying substratum of progress, the spiritual and intellectual develop- ment of the human mind. To this purpose the colleges of all ages have been dedicated ; and there has been no finer investment for the family of men than the continued support of thess centres of learning. A college progresses and expands in proportion to the facility with which it can meet its financial obligations. Thus, colleges of to-day live and grow on their endowments. Any college, which must resort to a hand to mouth policy for its support, must ultimately fail. By failure, I mean failure both in the necessary offices of careful supervision of a student ' s work and activities, failure in the disgruntled attitude of teachers who have not been compensated for their work, and failure in so far as the students themselves are affected by the precarious basis upon which their alma mater rests. In our own institution we have not yet reached so grave a pass. Our teachers are still enthusiastic, our students optimistic, and our ad- ministration actively interested in the individual work of each student. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and credit should be given to those far-sighted men who have so zealously ad- vocated the establishment of an endowment fund for the support of Yeshiva College. An endowment would not only insure the permanence of an in- stitution upon whose maintenance depends the fu- ture of Judaism in this country, but it would offer the basis for that necessary expansion and growth which would make of Yeshiva College what it should be and what we hope it will be — one of the great unversities of the world. A beginning has already been made and several men have given liberally of their time and money for the development of this project. There has been organized the Yeshiva Endowment Fund, Inc., whose purpose is to interest men in patron- izing Yeshiva College, as well to supervise the investment of the money that has already been contributed. Every effort should be bent in this direction. Therein lies salvation; therein lies ex- pansion; therein lies the future of Judaism in America.

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Twenty MASMID ind confusedly suggested by Boelime. was devel- oped independently by Bruno, and by Spinoza in whom the material and spiritual, temporal and eternal, find the most eloquent union. The anthropocentric aspects of philosophical speculation, however, received their death-blow at the hands of enlightened propagandists and jour- nalists — the French philosophes of the eigh- teenth century. The most characteristic feature of eighteenth-century French rationalism was the so- cial transvaluation which it gave to all metaphysical speculation. Thus Berkeley ' s arguments in his New Theory of Vision to the effect that the shape and size of objects are not given in immediate sen- sation but are intellectual constructions were used by Diderot to establish the relativity of morals and political institutions. Locke ' s empirical psychology was urged by the philosophes as a basis for universal education. All abstract speculation was given by these enlightened thinkers a social trans- formation. The philosophes were not metaphy- sicians. First and last, they were reformers. The first extension of reason was into the realm of politics and social reform. Voltaire, influenced by Newton ' s mathematical procedure, contended that reason must be adopted as an instrument of reform. Reason had produced law and order in the cosmos; and reason must produce law and order in society. So strong was his faith in reason that he believed that all the profound and innumerable forces which chained man to an irrational past could be dissolved by the single touch of the magic wand of reason. At first glance this notion seems highly superficial, but it contained the kernel of a great truth — the notion of progress. Man was no longer to dream, amid squalor and misery, of a golden past, but was to apply his own efforts for the amelioration of his sufferings. Man, endowed with reason, was to effect the ultimate regenera- tion of the society in which he lived. The natural man was glorified by Voltaire not out of a romantic weakness, but because he served as a convenient symbol, as a physical representation of man free from the institutional evils perpetuated in society by kingly avarice and priestly knavery. Reason then invaded the sphere of morals and found its expression in Helvetius ' L ' Esprit. An inveterate foe of mysticism and asceticism, Hel- vetius brought a new theory cf morals and human character. All human virtue, said Helvetius in effect, was motivated by self-love. Man sought good and shunned evil because it brought him pleasure and spared him pain. To speak of a thing as good in itself was to utter nonsense. How Helvetius deduced social responsibility from the principle of self-interest is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to realize that Helvetius rejected the divine ordinances of the church and the mad ravings of the mystics in preference for experience pure and simple as the basis for moral action. The final extension of reason was made by Holbach in his System of Nature. Few books have made such an impression on mankind as this one. It seemed to many that they stood face to face with the devil, come to claim their souls. The universe, they read in the eloquent pages of Holbach, was nothing but matter in motion; G-d was at best the personification of a force, cold and inanimate; the existence of a soul was chimerical; the belief in man ' s eternity was a vain flattery that must be eradicated if he is to attain happiness in this world. Man, believed to be a fondling of the gods, was but a fleeting symmetry in a world of atomic interaction. The terror that such assertions produced must have been enormous. As Goethe said of the book; it came to us so grey, so Cimmerian, so corpselike, that we could not endure its pressure ; we shuddered before it, as if it had been a spectre. It struck us as the very quintessence of musty age, savourless, repugnant. Caught in the stream of Holbach ' s eloquence, man suddenly discovered himself an inhabitant, as it were, of a huge strange city. He had been awak- ened from a delightful dream only to find himself in the clutches of omnipotent Death. A terror seized him and he fled to romanticism, in which he rediscovered spirit, heaven, purpose, harmony and fantasy. Rousseau clearly indicates to us the psychologic origins of his romanticism in the follow- (Continued on Page 58)