Tradition

There are certain terms which, for reasons no longer discoverable, have taken on an emotional force which impels people either to admire what they seem to stand for or to dislike it. Among such terms are the temporal and the eternal, the dynamic and the static, the unified and the multiple, the universal and the local. At the present time to say that a work of art, for instance, has been "universally admired" is presumably also to say that it is better than one which is admired only in France or Italy or the United States. To say that courage or truthfulness or charity have always been "highly esteemed" is also to say that they are inherently nobler qualities than, for example, originality or wit, which are highly esteemed only in certain epochs. It is this curious aura of emotivity which Professor A. O. Lovejoy in one of his ingenious terminological inventions once called "metaphysical pathos." "Metaphysical pathos" is not merely the name for the power which terms have of stimulating pleasant emotions, of making men feel that the things they name are good. It may also be of an unpleasant sort. It may induce dislike as well as admiration. Where one man speaks of the dynamic with something approaching awe, another calls it "aimless striving" or "spiritual restlessness," forgetting that only a hundred and fifty years ago the German Romantic philosophers could think of no nobler end of man than striving for striving's sake. Hence it is always useful and for the most part necessary to look closely at those abstractions by means of which we justify our programs. It is for this reason that it may be well to examine one of our own sacred words, "tradition," which seems to have replaced even that perennial favorite of the poets, "nature

Sociology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity