The name is absent

II

THE DOCTRINE OF NATURAL RIGHTS AND
THE EVERLASTING MAN

I. INTRODUCTION

A

N the preceding lecture I sought to make us all aware of
the impasse to which we men have been brought in the
modern world—of an inner contradiction and confusion
which has found an outer and visible form in the world
crisis through which we are passing. The practical confu-
sion and paradox is, however, as I tried to point out, but
an outer and visible sign of an inner and spiritual disgrace
—of a degradation of men’s ideals of knowledge and reason
which I described as the degradation of scientific dogma.

Science, it scarcely requires a philosopher to point out,
is central in modern life—central not only with regard to
what we do, but also with regard to what we think. With
what we think, moreover, about the world of things and the
world of men. We have a dangerous instrument in our
hands—a two-edged sword with which man may hew his
way through things to God, but also one with which he may
rend his own manhood, perhaps beyond recovery.

In the present lecture I invite your attention to the con-
sideration of a second dogma of the nineteenth century—
that of the absolute value of man and the doctrine of natu-
ral and inalienable rights in which it found expression. This
is the democratic dogma par excellence, that which under-
lies w^τhat we like to call our entire democratic way of life.
It implies faith in the rational nature of man and in his ra-

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