PO AE weer ES = ~ RELIGION WITHOUT GOD ‘ a . ——e--* ¥ v - 4 ’ ‘ F i) > P un i f - . ce 221 EAST 20TH STREET, reno 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, EC 4 53 NICOL ROAD, BOMi 6 OLD COURT HOUSE STREET, RELIGION WITHOUT GOD BY FULTON J. SHEEN Pu.D., S.T.D. AGREGE EN PHILOSOPHIE DE L’UNIVERSITE DE LOUVAIN MEMBER OF THE FACULTY OF THEOLOGY, THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. NEW YORK - LONDON - TORONTO 1928 SHEEN? | Shae RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Fe Imprimatur: yx Parrick Carpinay Hayes, New York, May 21, 1928 ; COPYRIGHT: 1928 BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND C FIRST EDITION - MADE IN THE UNITED STATES 0 IMMUNI LABE VIRGINI = ORDINIS NOVI PRIMITIIS BEATA . A PATRE ELECTZ QU SPIRITU FECUNDA VERBO _ NASCENTIS INDE RELIGIONIS FIERET MATER fe EXIGUUM DICAT OPUSCULUM SUPPLEX SIBI OPEM ALM ROGANS PATRON ZE PREFACE RESENT-DAY religion is not in evolu- tion, but in revolution. Evolution implies growth from a germ, revolution a rup- ture with a principle; evolution has antecedents, revolution knows not its parentage. When we say that there is revolution in religion, we mean not merely a break with the past, but an abandonment as well of much that is best in the culture and heritage of tradition. Until a generation ago religion was generally understood in terms of man’s attitude toward a Supreme and Perfect Being; today, it is understood in terms of man’s friendliness to the universe or as “faith in the conservation of human values.” The term “ God” is still retained by some thinkers, but it is emptied of all content and dissolved to fit every volatile idea and fleeting fancy. God has been dethroned, the heavens emptied and man has been exalted to His place in fulfillment of an evil prophecy that some day he would be like unto God. Problems which once centered about God now re- volve about man, and those which were concerned with man are now fused with the universe. Theism is reduced to humanism and psychology to cos- vi Vill PREFACE mology, for there is no longer a distinction made between man and matter. God is humanized and man is naturalized. The science of physics and not the “flower in the crannied wall” has come to tell us what God and man are. No longer do men look to the past as to their Golden Age; no longer do they have a memory of a Garden wherein man walked with God in the cool breezes of evening. ‘The Golden Age is now placed in the future, but not one wherein man re- finds at the foot of a Tree the gifts he once lost there, thanks to a God-Man unfurled on it like a banner of salvation, but rather a future in which, due to a cosmic evolutionary urge, man not only makes but becomes God. Man in the supernatural state, it is said, needs no Redeemer as in the nat- ural state he needs no God. As a result of this philosophy of self-sufficiency we have the queer modern phenomenon of a religion without God and a Christianity without Christ. In these new terms religion remains the great concern of the modern mind. Never before has an irreligious world taken so much interest in re- ligion. It is the one subject anyone may talk about, though scientists alone may speak of science and geographers alone of geography. The press is teeming with it and university professors are lec- turing about it even when they lecture against it. But while it is true that there has never before been so much talking about religion, it is equally true that never before has there been so little walk- PREFACE 1X ing in it. Religion today is only doctrinal, not practical — a concern of the Pure but not the Prac- tical Reason. Its purpose seems to be to offer a consoling salve to erring consciences. Men first live and a doctrine is made to fit their living; bad thinking is flatteringly adjusted to bad living and thus phoenix-like a religion rises out of the ashes of irreligion. Because of this new and revolutionary change in religion, the exponents of the traditional con- cept have lost the ear of the changing world. ‘The terms “God” and “ Religion ” are still used, but they mean different things. It is easier for a Frenchman to understand an Englishman, than for a believer in a Perfect God to understand the God of Professor Alexander, “ who in the strictest sense of the term is not a Creator but a creature.” The two schools are talking a different language and revolving about different poles of thought: the older school is proceeding from God to religion while the new proceeds from religion to God. The task before the philosopher of religion whose reason commits him to a belief in God, the Alpha and Omega of all things, is not to state contra- dictory theses which have no common denominator nor multiple with those of his flesh and blood con- temporaries. Rather his task is to analyze the assumptions behind the modern view to determine whether or not they are justified. It is the things that are taken for granted in their position that must be challenged, for it may well be that philo- x PREFACE sophical assumptions are mere lyrical gratuities and their philosophy but free-verse poetry. It is to this labor of a calm and rational study of the assumptions behind the contemporary idea of religion that we have committed ourselves in writing this book. The method is threefold: ex- pository, historical, and critical. First, we have aimed to give an unprejudiced outline of the modern position both in its negative and positive aspects, refraining from all criticism; secondly, to trace out its historical origins, not so much through persons, as Jacques Maritain has ad- mirably done in his “ Les Trois Reformateurs,” to which we acknowledge indebtedness, but rather through philosophical principles and their evolu- tion; thirdly, to analyze the assumptions underly- ing the contemporary philosophy of religion and to present in a constructive way the rational ground for all religion from the natural point of view. God in relation to the anti-intellectual tendencies of the present day was examined in our previous work “ God and Intelligence,” of which this present volume is a continuation. The two are destined to be a complete philosophy of religion from both its formal and material angles. In conclusion we wish to thank Dr. Leon Canon Noel of the University of Louvain and Dr. Gerald B. Phelan of the University of Toronto for their scholarly inspiration and valued assistance. Deep- est thanks too are offered to Rt. Rev. Msgr. Ed- ward A. Pace, Ph.D. and Rt. Rev. Msgr. James PREFACE x1 H. Ryan, Ph.D. of The Catholic University of America for their learned and characteristically kind help, and to Professor A. J. McMullen of Harvard University for reading the book in manu- script and offering many valuable suggestions to make it more readable. For the tedious task of making the Index we are grateful to our friend, Rev. Henry J. Gebhard, M.A. CONTENTS PART I Contemporary Philosophy of Religion CHAPTER PAGE I. Mopern Reticion 1n Its NecaTIVE ASPECT 3 II. Mopern Re ticion 1n Its Positive Aspecr' 60 PART II The Historical Origins of the Contemporary Idea of Religion II]. THe SprriruaAt PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE Evo- LUTION OF THE CONTEMPORARY IDEA OF et EE ea 85 IV. THe Puitosopuy or INDIVIDUALISM ..... 102 Meets PuILOsopHy oF Facr. ..... 2. 6 1 PART III Critical Appreciation of the Contemporary Idea of ‘Religion in the Light of the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas VIT. THe Fatuacy or NoMINALISM. ....... 195 VIII. Toe Fattacy or tHE Unirorm METHOD oF MR arg elles ighiigk oti ccwre (hee pure 224 CHAFTER Be: Pe se emporary Philosophy = i of Religion ‘ A. i » t a 4 P A 4 y 5 “ 1 q, . [= 1. ’ ¥ RELIGION WITHOUT GOD BAR Des1 Contemporary Philosophy of Religion CHAPTER I MODERN RELIGION IN ITS NEGATIVE ASPECT ‘['e scientific study of religion has under- gone tremendous changes during the last four centuries, changes due in part to the modern mode of approaching problems, and in part to the universal adoption of the experimental method. This changed attitude towards the prob- lems of religion has been marked with each succeeding century. The sixteenth century asked for a “new Church,” the eighteenth for a “new Christ,” the nineteenth for a “new God,” and the twentieth asks for a “new religion.” In response to these appeals and in the name of “progress,” “science” and “liberty,” the Church became a sect, Christ but a moral teacher, God the symbol for the ideal tendency in things, and re- ligion an attitude of friendliness to the universe. The new conception of religion is quite differ- ent from the old; it is different because it has as 3 4 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD its heritage a vast array of negations and as its promise rich hopes for the glorification of man and not God. All these have contributed their share to usher in the new idea of religion: new sci- entific formulas which ever seek to overflow into theology, an increasing impatience with the tra- ditional and the dogmatic, a growing demand for a system flattering to new ways of living, and finally a desire to reduce everything to a single category. Professor H. W. Carr declares that sci- ence is the most important of these influences. “It is the progress of science,” he writes, “‘ which has required philosophy from time to time to re- vise the concept of God. The great metaphysical task which confronts us today is to reform the no- tion of God which the mathematical philosophers of the seventeenth century have bequeathed to us, in order to bring it into accord with the new con- cepts of biological science.” * | And what is this new idea of religion? It is briefly a religion without God, that is, God as tra- ditionally understood. Religion, according to the twentieth century philosophers and theologians, centres not about God but man. “It is man first and not God,” says one of the exponents of the © new notion; “it is as much God only as man may seem to suggest or prove. Above all, it is God re- vealed by man and not man by God. Our revela- tion today is from earth to heaven, from clod to + H. W. Carr, “ Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 1927) P» 74- MODERN RELIGION —NEGATIVE = 5 God — not vice versa as in the old days.”? “The scientific interpretation of natural phenomena,” says another, “ has made the interest in God more remote, God’s existence more problematical, and even the idea of God unnecessary. Mathematics and physics are making it increasingly difficult to assign a place for God in our co-ordinations and constructions of the universe; and the necessity of positing a first cause or of conceiving a de- signer, a necessity which seemed prima facie ob- vious to a pre-scientific generation, does not exist for us.”* The word “God” may still be retained in this new idea of religion, but that word takes on an entirely new meaning; it may even reach such a volatile state as to become identified with al- most anything from a psychical complex to an ideal. It may even be ignored altogether as it is, for example, by one for whom “new religion will be an outcome of the wants, the hopes and the as- pirations of these our times and the near future.” * When we speak of the “ modern” or the “ con- temporary ” idea of religion we do not mean ““modern” in the strict chronological sense of a definite period of time. Rather, we mean a “spirit ”?—a spirit which is so peculiar to con- temporary ways of thinking and so different from the past that in contrast, the new outlook may be 2 John Haynes Holmes, The New Basis of Religion in “ Essays towards Truth,” 1924, p. 218. 8-H. W. Carr, “ Changing Backgrounds in Religion and Ethics,” 1927, P. 74. * C. A. F. Rhys Davids, “ Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923, p. 178. 6 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD called “ modern.” The new attitude toward relig- ion is different both in degree and kind from any- thing which might be called either traditional or orthodox. It is quite true that there are many no- tions of religion which do not fit in with the syn-_ thesis we are about to present. These notions and systems may be modern in the sense that they are presented in our own day but they are not modern in the sense that they represent the “ progressive and liberating spirit” of contemporary philoso- phers and theologians. It is with this new idea of religion that this book is concerned;° special consideration should be given it for certainly there could be no question of greater importance or more fundamental than that of the relationship between God and man. Man is said to be “incurably religious,” and as nothing human was foreign to Terence so nothing religious can be foreign to man. It is only fair to the protagonists of the new doctrines that they present their own case. For that reason we propose to divide the work into three sections. The first section presents the new idea of religion sympathetically and uncritically; the second section traces out its historical origins; and the third examines it critically in the light of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Every science has a double object: a material 5 The modern idea of God is treated expressly and in detail in ** God and Intelligence,” Fulton J. Sheen, London, 1925. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 7 object which is the thing studied, for example, mat- ter in physics; a formal object, which is the peculiar aspect or “angle” of the study, for example, in physics, matter again, inasmuch as it is in move- ment. A thorough-going study of modern religion will have to take account of both these objects. Not only that, it will also be obliged to consider the older and the more traditional ideas of religion, for every philosophical and theological movement is either a reaction or a departure from something which preceded it. This means that the modern idea of religion will have to be treated under both its negative and positive aspects; its negative as- pect will be the criticism of the old notions it hopes to supplant, and its positive will be the expression of the new tenets it hopes to implant. Although the following synthesis and summary of the contemporary idea of religion appears at the beginning of this study, in ordine inventionis it came only at the end. It has been extracted from the contemporaries themselves and is no a priort construction. It is not an architect’s plan of some- thing which is to be constructed; rather it is an artist’s sketch of a reality already existing —an after-thought rather than an inspiration. The Modern Idea of Religion MATERIAL OBJECT FORMAL OBJECT Negative —noGod (astra- Negative — anti-intellectual. ditionally understood). Positive — Religious Expe- Positive — Values. rience. 8 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD This book shall concern itself only with the ma- terial object of religion, the formal aspect having been already treated in God and Intelligence.* The Material Object of Modern Religion Negatively Considered God as the Supreme and Perfect Being 1s not the necessary object of religion. This statement repre- sents the negative side of the modern idea of re- ligion and its reaction to the traditional notion. This does not mean that the term God is no longer used in religion by our contemporaries. As a mat- ter of fact, it is used, and used very often. But it is never taken to mean the Supreme Being of tra- ditional thought. God may mean anything from a “harmonization of epochal occasions” to a “ pro- jected libido.” Here we are not asserting the logi- cal superiority of the traditional over the contem- porary idea; we are just asserting a fact —viz., God as traditionally understood is no longer accepted as the object of religion. And what is the tradi- tional conception of God? It is that of a Supreme and Perfect Being, the Alpha and the Omega of all things: the Alpha, for without Him there would never be things to progress or evolve; the Omega, for without Him there would never be a reason for their evolving. Perfect He is with the plentitude of Being with its transcendental proprieties of Unity, Truth and Goodness; not static, because Life itself; ° The negative aspect, pp. 9-31; pp. 62-141. The positive aspect, PP. 31747, 141-218. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 9g not dynamic, because Perfect; not evolving, be- cause the Intelligibility of Evolution. Because He is and because everything else zs not but has being, there is a dependence of all that is not Him on Him, and this dependence is the foundation of all re- ligion. The reasons urged by contemporaries against the traditional concept of God may be reduced to three: the philosophical, the psychological and the sociological. Philosophical Negations of the Traditional Object of Religion Though William James no longer exerts a per- sonal influence in the world of philosophy, it is nevertheless true that his works carry on the task which he left unfulfilled. Pragmatism as a method may be dead, but Pragmatism as a spirit is alive and palpitating. Professor Julius S. Bixler of Smith College, in his excellent presentation of “ Re- ligion in the Philosophy of William James” has stressed this point. “Pragmatism,” he writes, “will appeal to the coming generation because of its creative faith.... And James’ believing, achieving, creative individual will find a scope for his powers and an application for his ideals un- paralleled in history.”’ Out of that vast array of philosophical material he left behind there is only a small but yet very important part of it which interests us, namely, his idea of religion. The influ- T0026, De alo. PL TICLE ae itn UO IO RELIGION WITHOUT GOD ences which worked for his particular theory of religion were varied and complex. His Swedenbor- gian father and his empirical training in physiology and medicine equipped him to look upon physical results empirically. The anti-intellectualism of Bergson (the publication of whose “‘ Creative Evo- lution’ James regarded as one of the world’s most important events, because it “killed intellectual- ism absolutely dead”), the pluralism of Renouvier, the utilitarianism of Mill, the reaction to the ab- solutists of Oxford, all conspired to make him the author of a religion which might be called the re- ligion of a romantic utilitarian.® Did James believe in a Perfect and Supreme Being as the object of religion? The answer is clearly in the negative. The best definition of re- ligion he leaves us is to be found in his “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” where he says: “Re- ligion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts and ex- periences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in rela- tion to whatever they consider the divine.”° Quite naturally, the meaning of the word “ divine” must be the key to this notion, and we must go on to in- quire what he means by it. Never is he clear in defining just what itis. “ The word ‘ divine,’” he writes later on in the same work, “‘as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal — and the enveloping and real. . . . The divine shall 8 René Berthelot, “ Un Romantisme Utilitaire,” 1922, Vol. 3. 9p Meee MODERN RELIGION —NEGATIVE = 11 mean for us only such a primal reality as the indi- — vidual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.” *° The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy mis- sions. “So a ‘ god of battles’ must be allowed to be a god for one kind of person, a ‘ god of peace and heaven and home’ for another.”™ This power which is beyond us and from whom saving experi- ences come need not be infinite. “ All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite; it need only be solitary.” ” In this work quite evidently God needs only to be a power, conscious like ourselves, but certainly not perfect. At one point James is logical with his pluralism and entertains the possibility of polythe- ism, in the sense of a union of these god-like selves. But in order to make more clear the object of re- ligion as understood by James, it is well to ask if the Absolute will do for religion, and then if the Scho- lastic notion of God will do. The Absolute can be dismissed at once. It has no religious values, being fit only to give us a “‘ moral holiday.” ** He scanda- lized his hearers at Oxford by telling them: “ Let the Absolute bury the Absolute.” While he did not go so far as to believe that all Hegelians were prigs, 10 Tbid., p. 38. 12 Thid Pps 52%. a* Idid.; p. 487. 13 «“ Pragmatism,” p. 72. 12 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD he did say that he somehow felt, that “all prigs ought to end, if developed, by becoming Hege- lians.”** But if the Absolute will not serve as the object of religion, will not God as conceived by the Scholastics do? James would not admit this either. First of all, the existence of God cannot be proved, and here, strange to say, James offers no other argument than the argument of authority: “that all idealists since Kant have felt entitled either to scout or neglect them (proofs) shows that they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s all- sufficient foundation. . . . Causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure of theology.” ** Secondly, the attributes of God, as conceived by Scholastics are too barren and meaningless for this life; they are only the “ shuffling and matching of pedantic dictionary ad- jectives, aloof from morals, aloof from human needs, something that might be worked out from the mere word ‘God’ by one of these logical ma- chines of wood and brass which recent ingenuity has contrived as well as by a man of flesh and blood.” *° What then will the object of religion be, and what will be the meaning of the word “ divine” ? In his latest work James declares himself in favor of the finite God. “I believe that the only God worthy of the name must be finite.”*” “And He is 14 « Essays in Radical Empiricism,” p. 276, ff. “ Pluralistic Uni- verse,” pp. 115-116, pp. 47-48. 19 “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 437. 16 Ibid., pp. 446-447. 17 “ Pluralistic Universe,” pp. 124, 125. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE § 13 finite either in power or in knowledge or in both.” Ultimately, however, and to be logical with his Pragmatism, James would have to admit that any God which you could use would be the object of your religion, and if you could not use one in your religion then for you he would not exist. “If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the wid- est sense of the term, it is true.” ** If He does exist, He is to be conceived more as a co-worker than a sovereign. “ He works in an external environment, has limits and has enemies.” We can even help Him “to be more effectively faithful to his own greater tasks.”** “God Himself in short may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our ~ fidelity.” ” While it is not so much to our point to decide definitely just what kind of God James did believe in, it suffices to know that religion for him de- manded no perfect Supreme Being. God as tradi- tionally understood certainly is not the God-concept of William James, for whom God was “more a powerful ally of ideals” rather than a “real ex- istent Being.” * A God who is “ only the ideal ten- dency in things” ** is a God already in a state of 18 Jbid., p. 311. Among other philosophers holding to the finite God may be mentioned: F. C. S. Schiller, “ Riddles of the Sphinx ”; James Ward, “Realm of Ends”; H. G. Wells, “God the Invisible King,” and J. C. McTaggart, R. H. Rashdall, R. H. Dotterer, and G. H. Howison. 19 “ Pragmatism,” p. 299. 20 «Pluralistic Universe,” p. 124. 21 “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 517. 22 «“ The Will to Believe,” p. 61. me Letters,” Vol..2,.pp. 2137214. 24 « Pluralistic Universe,” p. 124. e © NH 14 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD philosophical decomposition. Here is the sugges- tion of what becomes clearer in more recent phi- losophers; namely, religion which brings man into © more increasing prominence. From a notion of a finite God whom we help in His tasks, or an “ ideal tendency in things ” to the notion of a God whom we not only help in tasks, but help to create is only a step. Huxley described the religion of Comte as “Catholicism without Christianity,” and M. Berthelot continues the figure by saying that the “religion of William James is a Protestantism without Christianity.”” In a certain sense it may be justly described as a religion without God, for God to him means only what each individual takes as the divine. It is a great departure from the tra- ditional notion and a bold assertion of what was implied in the philosophy of Mill. With James’ successors it takes on a physical or a mathematical turn but always retains the aseity of the individual in the face of a Perfect and Supreme Being whom thinkers of a different school looked upon as the source and foundation of all religion. Religion according to Professor Alexander This distinguished professor of Manchester Uni- versity has given to the modern world a notion of religion which is quite unlike that of many of his contemporaries and yet has something in com- mon with them; namely, its rejection of a Perfect and Supreme Being as the object of religion. 25 O+. cit., Vol. 3, ps8. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE © 15 His notion of religion can only be understood in relation to his whole philosophy of Space-Time. The stuff of which this universe is made and the matrix whence all things come, is spatio-temporal. This means that the universe is essentially a uni- verse of motion, and of continuous redistribution of instants of Time among points of Space. Characteristic of the universe of Space-Time is its constant differentiation into higher and higher complexes, a tendency constituting a nisus towards deity, for deity is the upward urge of evolution. Within the all-embracing stuff of Space-Time the universe exhibits, in its emergence in time, succes- sive levels of finite existence, each with its own characteristic empirical quality. At one end of the scale it is undifferentiated Space-Time; at the other end progressive value. Among the three principal qualities, the highest known to us at pres- ent is mind or consciousness. Now, deity is always the next higher empirical quality to the one pres- ently evolved. This is true throughout all the levels of existence. When, therefore, the “ grow- ing world” was nothing more than empirical con- figurations of Space-Time, Deity, which by defini- tion is the next quality to the one presently evolved, was matter. When the growing world reached the level matter, deity was at the stage of life. When the world evolved to life, deity was at mind. We are now at the mind stage, and deity is the stage above us, always marching ahead of us very tan- talizingly. When we evolve to the stage where 16 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD deity is now, that stage will be the stage of angels and deity will move up a peg. Deity is therefore “a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity changes with it.” * In brief, “God as actually possessing deity does not exist, but is an ideal, tending toward deity which does exist... . As an actual existent, God is the infinite world with its nisus towards deity.” * What is religion according to such a notion? Religion is communion with this future quality of deity. It is “the sense of outgoing to the whole universe in its process towards the quality of deity.” ** But, it may be asked, how can this future quality of deity affect us and be an object of re- ligion? Professor Alexander recognizes the diffi- culty and attempts to answer it by saying that what acts upon us is what brings forth deity, namely the ~ actual world. It contains deity in germ inasmuch as the actual is the seed of the future, and the future 26 “Tt is clear that, while for us men deity is the next higher empirical quality to mind, the description of deity is perfectly general. For any level of existence, deity is the next higher empirical quality. It is therefore a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity changes with it. On each level a new quality looms ahead, awfully, which plays to it the part of deity. For us who live upon the level of mind deity is, we can but say, deity. To creatures upon the level of life deity is still the quality in front, but to us who come later this quality has been revealed as mind. For creatures who possessed only the primary qualities — mere empirical configurations of space-time — deity was afterwards what appeared as materiality, and their God was matter, for I am supposing that there is no level of existence nearer to the spatio- temporal than matter. On each level of finite creatures deity is for them some ‘unknown’? (though not ‘ unexperienced’) quality in front, the real nature of which is enjoyed by the creatures of the next level.” “ Space, Time and Deity,” 1922, Vol. 2, p. 348. 27 [bid., Pp. 353s 28 Ibid., p. 402. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 17 is previsible in so far as we can forecast it in spatio- temporal terms. Just as clairvoyants may see the future, so too, he says, “ we may suppose that in re- ligious experience the vague future quality of deity is felt, not in its quality, for that cannot be known, but as giving flavor to the experience of the whole world which it does not possess as merely an object of sense or thought.” ” There is no further elaboration peated to show that the centre of religion, as understood by this philosopher, is not the God of a Leibnitz nor an Aquinas, but an entirely new concept born of a new science and a new physics. ‘The difference is not merely that his notion of God is one in pursuit of deity, while the traditional notion of God is one who does not pursue but possesses; there is the added difference of our relation to God. Here it is that Professor Alexander separates his notion of re- ligion most widely from all notions which may be classed as traditional. God, according to his opin- ion, is sustained and helped by us. “ We also help,” he writes, “to maintain and sustain the nature of God and are not merely his subjects. . . . God him- self is involved in our acts and their issues, or as it was put above, not only does he matter to us, but we matter to him,” * because he is “in the strictest sense not a creator but a creature.’* Quite natu- rally, if we are not God-made but God-makers, then in virtue of this new relation religion will have an entirely different meaning. Religion will not 29 [bid., p. 379. °° Ibid., p. 388. %1 Ibid., p. 399, ttalics ours. 18 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD be something which “ commands us to perform our duties with the consciousness that they are the com- mands of God.” Rather “it is religion to do our duty with the consciousness of helping to create his deity.” Once it is allowed that “ deity owes its be- ing to pre-existing finites with their empirical quali- ties, and is their outcome,” * then religion will be- come co-operation with God instead of service of God. It will be something adventurous, something in which man takes a hand, and man instead of be- ing just a puppet dependent on a Perfect Being will have as his sublime vocation the duty of contribut- ing to the deity of God, by his life and actions. Such an idea of religion, Professor Alexander be- lieves, makes “our human position more serious, but frees it from the reproach of subjection to arbi- trary providence.” * - Professor Alexander leaves no doubt in the minds of his readers that he has little sympathy for the the- istic view of the world as commonly understood. His statement that religion means a “ consciousness of helping God to create his deity” is not so im- portant for our present concern as his repudiation of a God Who possesses Deity in its plentitude, and Whose Deity is not distinct from His Godhead. Even the most magnificent gesture of reverence of such a philosopher to the God of Augustine and Aquinas and the thought of which they are its noblest representatives, could not blind a reader to the obvious fact that Professor Alexander is 82 “ Space, Time and Deity,” 1922, Vol. 2, p. 39. °° Ibid., p. 400. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE © 19 through with God, who is not an evolving God. Whatever religion may be positively in his mind, certainly in its negative aspect it has no place in the Theism of the philosophia perennis. Religion according to Professor A. N. Whitehead Every one naturally approaches with respect any work by Professor Whitehead whose thinking in the field of mathematics, physics, and the philosophy of nature has been marked by profound originality and depth. Encouraged by success in these fields this distinguished scientist has branched out into the field of theology in his “ Religion in the Making,” which, despite its obtuse terminology and phraseology, has already gone into several editions. He has been described as “ one of the worst living expositors of philosophy, though he could be one of the best.” It would not do Professor Whitehead justice merely to state his theory of religion without giving his philosophy of the universe which lies be- hind it. No less than Spencer, Comte, James, he has inaugurated a new outlook on religion, this time based not on biology, or sociology or psychology but on physics and mathematics. The Philosophy of the Universe Contemporary philosophical thinking is breaking with the Cartesian tradition which has held sway the last three centuries. Philosophers no longer question the solutions of their immediate predeces- sors, Or swing with the speculative pendulum from 20 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD one extreme of the dualist position to the other. They are challenging the fountain head of their whole tradition and sounding the depths of their new philosophical edifice. The question no longer - is: which solution is right—the empirical or the transcendental? but rather: is the problem we are attempting to solve a legitimate one? | The challenge against the whole tradition of mod- ern thought has been hurled by no one more boldly than by Professor Alfred N. Whitehead in his “Science and the Modern World.” ** Though it is the Cartesian succession which is attacked, one cannot help but wonder at the similar role he plays to Descartes. In both there are the same protests and the same reforms. Descartes protested against the old physics of his time such as that of Telesius with his two principles of heat and cold. Professor ~ Whitehead protests against the Newtonian physics of matter and mass in space and time, which has been serving us for two centuries. Descartes re- pudiated the decadent Scholasticism he learned at Fleche, believing there was a conflict between it and the new science of his time. Dr. Whitehead, in his turn, repudiates the dualistic philosophy of either matter or mind as substances, believing it to be in conflict with the new physics. Both wished to reform philosophy in the light of mathematical and physical sciences, Descartes ending in a mathe- matical philosophy of clear ideas and Professor Whitehead in a mathematical philosophy of rela- tivity. | 84 1926. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = a1 These are broad lines of similarity which we trace and not essential to the problem at hand. What is important is that the issue of the present philo- sophical parturition will probably be a new tradition of thought distinct and separate from that which at the present day is called modern. ‘“‘ Men can be provincial in time as well as in place,” writes Pro- fessor Whitehead. “We may ask ourselves whether the scientific mentality of the modern world in the immediate past is not a successful example of such provincial limitation.” ** He asks the philosophers to examine their conscience and pleads with them in the words of Cromwell: “ My brethren, by the bowels of Christ I beseech you, bethink you that you may be mistaken.” Modern philosophy, he argues, has been built on a false science—that of the seventeenth century — and the abandonment of that science must entail the abandonment of the philosophy and even the religion built upon it. The so-called solid founda- tions of science on which the last century built its anti-religion may after all be no more trustworthy than a house of cards. “ The stable foundations of physics have broken up; also for the first time physiology is asserting itself as an effective body of knowledge, as distinct from a scrap-heap. The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinter- pretation.” * 85 “« Science and the Modern World,” Chap. 1. Re Dida. BA. a RELIGION WITHOUT GOD That great changes are taking place in the scien- tific conception of the universe is indisputable. Whether the new notions are true or false has yet to be decided; the fact is, they do jar with the old physics. The curvature of space, for example, when compared with our “ old ” idea that two paral- lel lines travelling in the same direction will never meet is like a square peg to a round hole. The new quantum theory of physics upsets the lay notion ~ that we never reach a limit in the unit of electric- ity. The theory of relativity comes as a surprise to the old scientists who looked upon things as essen- tially in space and accidentally in time, and rather baffles the untrained mind in its attempt to under- stand that space and time are relative not to the “simple location” of matter, but to the position — and location of the observer. So too we are scandal- — ized to learn that much of the physics and chemis- try and geometry we studied in school is now to be scrapped like armaments. The point, we are told, is no longer considered an ultimate in math- — ematics, but merely a limit of a converging series of lines which cannot be understood apart from that series. Modern physics no longer considers the atom as ultimate but only as a centre of electro-magnetic influence. Geometry is no longer interested in solid bodies but only in their spatial relations. Meaningless in themselves, these rela-~ tions are intelligible only in reference to the place which they occupy within the system, and the sys- tem is the spatio-temporal continuum. No so- MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE ~ 23 called ultimate constituent is intelligible except in relation to the whole system within which it acts. In the words of Professor Ralph Barton Perry: “The physical world is no longer made up of reality behind the scenes which is known only by inference from the phenomenal appearances, but as a system of those appearances — which are no longer appear- ances in the old sense of the term, but the very sub- stance and tissue of nature.” * The whole tradition of modern philosophy has been built on Newtonian physics, so the new school tells us. It may have a head of gold, but its feet are clay and the rock of the new physics hewn from the mountain of Einstein and relativity will sooner or later smash it to pieces. The time has arrived for a new philosophy of the universe. There is a vast difference between them. ‘The old philosophy was a philosophy of “ substance,” of *‘ matter,” of “nature.” Old science from the Ioni- ans up to our own day asked the question: “ What is nature made of? ‘The answer was couched in terms of stuff or matter or material — the partic- ular name chosen is indifferent—which has the property of simple location in space and time, or, if you adopt the more modern ideas, in space-time. What I mean by matter, or material is anything which has this property of simple location.” * Such conceptions of nature, Professor Whitehead considers as mechanical and lifeless. In their place he prefers to carry over into physics the biological 87 «Philosophy of the Recent Past,” 1925. 88 “Science and the Modern World,” p. 72. 24 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD idea of the organism. The universe is not made up of stones, it is made up of organisms. Substances are not the units of things and events are not their motion, but events are the units of things and what is described-as a material object 1s just a feature of events. There are no substances —there are only “events.” Descartes willed three substances to philosophy — matter, mind and God. Hobbes dropped mind and God from his scheme of nature, but retained matter; Berkeley dropped matter and retained God and mind; the absolutists dropped matter and mind but retained God. Professor Whitehead drops all three. Substances belonging to the “old physics of simple location” are anti- quated and guilty of the “Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.” If substances do not exist, then what does exist? Professor Whitehead answers: “ events, moments, epochal occasions.” ** What we call creatures, or things, or substances are in reality only “ epochal occasions.” ‘The motion or the event is not an acci- dent of a substance, rather, to put it in the old terminology, it is the substance which is the “ acci- dent of the event.” The ground or the basis of all things is space-time, and “ space-time is nothing else than a system of pulling together of assemblages into unities. But the word ‘ event’ means one of these spatio-temporal unities.” *° There is complete interdependence of each and every part of the unt- verse, beginning with space, of which every volume 89 « Religion in the Making,” 1927, p. 91. 40 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 106. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 25 mirrors in itself every other volume, and time, of which every moment has reference both to the past and the future. “Everything is everywhere at all times.” ** Each event has a past and a future and is bound up with both. In other words, the principle at work in this spatio-temporal universe, which links one thing to another and makes all things interdependent is “ the principle of concretion.” In its simplest form this principle was expressed by Tennyson in his lines about the little flower in the crannied wall: “If I knew you, root and all in all, I should know what God and man is.” ‘The principle of concretion means that everything that exists, involves in some way the totality of all being. Everything which is, has some share in the flower, the sun, the moon, the stars, the soil, the air; not only that, even the past events are “organic” in some way with it, such as the disturbances of the earth, laws of evolution and growth and even armies or warriors who passed over that very soil on which the flower grows. Everything that is or ever has been or ever will be is organic in that flower in concentric circles of in- fluence. The flower “prehends” all being; the universe is “ concreted ” in the flower.” The flower is the “unification of the universe, whereby its various elements are combined into aspects of #1 Thid., P. 133- 42 “ Things are separated by space, and are separated by time; but they are also together in space and together in time, even if they be not contemporaneous. I will call these characters the ‘ separative’ and the ‘ prehensive’ character of space-time.” ‘ Science and the Modern World,” p. 94. 26 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD each other.” It might also be called an “ epochal occasion” for an “epochal occasion” is a mi- crocosm inclusive of the whole universe.“ ‘The flower mirrors the universe. The flower, is “‘ concrete ” and the concrete means the unification of the many in the one, e.g., the color, the earth, the moisture, the sunlight, etc. But there is something important to be added. Not only do other things enter into a particular thing, but something else enters in which is more impor- tant, and that something else is “form” or possi- bility or universal. Everything in the world which is “concreted ” existed as a form before it came into being in this spatio-temporal universe. A Scholastic might say that all things in the world were made according to the archetypal ideas in the mind of God. Everything was once a form before it had existence, or when it existed in the realm of the possibles. Now these forms enter into things to make them what they are. Not only that, new forms enter into concrete things in the process of the evolution or the unfolding of the universe.* In summary, everything in this universe, or every creature, or even better “every epochal occasion ” (“epochal occasions are the creatures ”) has two sides. On one side it “ concretes ” or brings together 43 “ Religion in the Making,” p. 100. 44 “Tn the concretion the creatures are qualified by the ideal forms, and conversely ideal forms are qualified by the creatures. Thus the epochal occasion which is the emergent, has in its own nature the other creatures under the aspect of these forms, and analogously it includes the forms under the aspect of these creatures. It is thus a definite limited creature, emergent in consequence of the limitations thus mentally im- posed on each other by the elements.” Jbid., p. 93. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 27 actual elements of the universe; on the other side, viz., its creative or formative side, it is made up of ideal forms which enter into the actual epochal occasion during the creative process or the unfolding of the universe. “ But these are not two actual entities, the creature and creativity. There is only one entity which is the self-creating creature.” *° Now a question arises which has great conse- quences for religion. What effects the union of the two sides of the epochal occasion? What introduces the new form into the present concrete thing? What gave the giraffe a long neck, supposing that at one time he was a mere “ epochal occasion ” with a short neck? The forms are not actual; being only possi- bilities they have need of some determination. There must be something to decide when the time is ripe for the extra hump on the camel, or when matter is to blossom into life. The boundless wealth of possibility in the realm of ab- stract form would leave each creative phase still indetermi- nate, unable to synthesize under determinate conditions the creatures from which it springs. The definite determina- tion which imposes ordered balance on the world requires an actual entity imposing its own unchanged consistency of character on every phase.*® This something is God. _ And what is God? Is God, in the answer of the catechism, “the Creator of heaven and earth”? 45 «Thus the epochal occasion has two sides. On one side it is a mode of creativity bringing together the universe. This side is the occasion as the cause of itself, its own creative act... . On the other side, the occasion is the creature. This creature is that one emergent fact.” Ibid., p. 101. 46 Tbid., p. 94. 28 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD No, God is the “ Principle of Concretion.” ” And what is the Principle of Concretion? It is the sys- tem of organization which makes all abstract forms and all things have a share in the constitution of every other thing in the universe. It is God who determines the universe and admits certain forms into the creative process when that process is ripe for them. On first glance it might seem that Professor Whitehead holds to the common-sense conception of God. There does seem to be a Providential ordering of the universe in his system; all things do seem to have been made according to patterns in the mind of God; God does seem to be beyond this uni- verse and identified with it — but this is only seem- ing. The God of Professor Whitehead is the God of Professor Whitehead, and not the living God of traditional thought. First of all, God, according to Professor White- head, is not a transcendent being. If He were, he argues, it would be impossible to know Him, for the reason that any proof which commences with considerations drawn from the actual world can never rise above the actuality of that world. If God is beyond this universe of space and time, inde- pendent of both these physical qualities, He would be non-existent as far as we are concerned for “we know nothing beyond this temporal world.” “ 47 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 250. 48 An analysis of the world “ cannot discover anything not included in the totality of the actual fact and yet explanatory of it.” “Religion in the Making,” pp. 71, go. s . ea MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 29 This one difference between the new and old conception of God is fundamental; the old philos- ophy which Professor Whitehead spurns believed in a Being Who was independent of the actual world, transcendent to it, and yet knowable through the visible things of the world. But there are yet other reasons why the new God of Professor Whitehead is quite a different species from that represented to us, for example, in the philosophy of St. Thomas, and it is this: if God is not beyond this actual spatio- temporal universe He must in some way be bound up with it. And such is the case. The inherent nature of the spatio-temporal universe is God. God Himself is not concrete like the flower in the cran- nied wall, but He is the principle which constitutes the concreteness of things. As the “Principle of Concretion ” He is the order of the universe, and since the order is immanent in the universe it can be truly said that God is immanent in the universe. “The actual world is the outcome of the esthetic order, and the esthetic order is derived from the immanence of God.” * God enters into each “epochal occasion” along with the concrete ele- ment and the formal element, the “creatures and the creativity.” Each new “ epochal occasion in- troduces God into the world.” ‘The actual world is the base for which He provides the idealform. “He adds himself to the actual ground from which every 49 [bid., p. 105. For the author the order of this universe is not conceptual or moral, but zsthetic. It is the esthetic sense which makes us aware of the concrete fulness of things. 60 Ibid.. p. 90. 30 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD creative act takes its rise.” He is the great Ideal, and the power by which He sustains the world is that of Himself as this idea. Although omniscient, He is limited and finite in some respect. Evil fights against Him. He may also be described as a “fusion,” for it is He Who fuses together all the possibilities of the world in an harmonious way. “‘ Apart from Him there would be no actual world with its creativity, and apart from the actual world With its creativity there would be no rational ex- planation of the ideal vision which constitutes God.” : God then is not outside the universe as a Power, nor immanent in it by His causality, nor is He the end toward which all creation moves. God is not even a substance — nothing is, for there are only “nows” and “thens.” What we call things are combinations of something very much like energy which he calls “creativity,” something very much like abstract archetypal ideas which he calls “forms,” and something unlike anything a pre- Einsteinian philosopher or theologian has ever dreamed of, which he calls “ God.” This is not the place to discuss the merits of seh an outlook on the universe, and whatever be its merits it has already established itself in the good graces of philosophers who are already tired of biological and psychological and sociological inter- pretations of religion. It answers the craving for novelty ; it does more: it is in apparent keeping with 51 « Religion in the Making,” pp. 153, 156, 157. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 31 the new physics and the new science. It breaks with the past; it ushers in a new religion in which the traditional concept of God is banished to the scrap-heap of Ionian physics and Cartesian sub- stances. Religion according to Professor Otto Religion, since a long time, has been confused with many things which are not religion, such as ethics, esthetics, art and science. In certain quar- ters there has been growing a dissatisfaction with such all-inclusive religion and an attempt has been made to analyze its essential elements. The best work in this field has been done by the German phi- losophers, first of whom, we might mention Profes- sor [Troeltsch who along with Professor Otto has de- veloped the doctrine of the religious a priort. This a priori is to be understood in a wider sense than used by Kant. “In the ethical, the religious and the teleologico-zsthetic reason” writes Troeltsch, “Kant recognizes an a priori, which in that case naturally signifies, not the synthetic unify- ing function of scientific comprehension, but the way of judging and regarding the actual under ethical, religious and teleologico-xsthetic points of view, which is a necessity for reason and proceeds in accordance with its own laws.” * Behind psy- chical experiences of all kinds there is the a priori which enables us to discover values in the realm of facts, and to distil out of our impressions and our 52 “ Gesammelte Schriften,” 1913, Band 2, p. 758. 32 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD sense knowledge, those finer things which enter into religion strictly so called. Professor Otto has striven to define more ac- curately the nature of the religious a priori. Over and above ethical and moral categories there is an- other category in us which is bound up with our nature and inseparable from it. This category, or principle of interpretation and valuation is not moral or ethical, neither can it be translated into rational concepts. It is the category of the “ numi- nous ” or the “holy.” Since it is primitive it cannot be defined, but can be communicated only by suggestion and analogy.™ Every human being possesses it, though not every- one realizes it or uses it; some never call it into being. “ Most men have only the ‘ predisposition ’” in the sense of a receptiveness and susceptibility to religion and a capacity for freely recognizing and judging religious truth at first hand.” All men, for example, have a sense of the beautiful but not everyone calls it into action or develops that sense. So it is with this religious a prior. It is there rich in promise, if we would but make use of it. The religious a priori is something deeper than Kant’s practical reason though it bears many anal- ogies withit. It is essentially non-rational in char- acter, though Professor Otto is not always clear as to what he means by the non-rational. Sometimes 53 Das Heilige,” English translation by John W. Harvey, 1923. 4) Jbtd.y pe, §© Thid., D. 18t. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 33 it seems that it is the non-definable,” at other times it is that which produces in us an emotion and not a concept.” ‘This non-rational activity, this power of “ divination,” this category of the “holy,” is to be referred to something still deeper than reason, namely to that which Mysticism has named the “fundus anime’ —the Seelengrund. It is not constituted by a rational reflection on things any more than is the Kantian Practical Reason, but it is occasioned by things; it does not arise out of sense impressions like the idea in Scholastic thought, but only by their means. “ ‘They are the incitement, the stimulus and the ‘ occasion’ for the numinous ex- perience to become astir, and, in so doing, to begin —at first with a naive immediacy of reaction — to be interfused and interwoven with the present world of sense experience, until, gradually, it disengages itself from this and takes its stand in absolute con- trast.” °° In the numinous experience the a priori cognitive elements are not so much perceptions as they are interpretations and valuations of experi- ence. “ The facts of the numinous consciousness point therefore — as likewise do also the ‘ pure con- cepts of the understanding’ of Kant and the ideas and value-judgments of ethics and esthetics —to a hidden substantive source, from which the relig- ious ideas and feelings are formed, which lies in the mind independently of sense-experience; a ‘pure reason’ in the profoundest sense which, because of the surpassingness of its content, must be distin- 66 Tbid., pp. 1, 5, 60-61. 58 Tbid., p. 117. 57 Ibid., pp. 8-10, 140. 34 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD guished from both the pure theoretical and the pure practical reason of Kant, as something yet higher or deeper than they.” *° So much in general for the category of the Holy or the numinous —it is primitive, it is non-rational. But what elements are contained in it, when it is subjected to an analysis. Professor Otto enumer- ates five: (1) The element of awefulness, which in its primitive form is nameless fear, and in its devel- oped form survives in the quality of exaltedness or sublimity attributed to the Deity in such cries as “ Holy, Holy, Holy.” (2) Overpoweringness. In the first element one has the consciousness of “ hav- ing been created; ” in this, one has the “status of the creature.” This is the strain in religion that — makes for self-annihilation, and for making God all. (3) The element of urgency or energy, an ex- ample of which is to be found in the idea of the “wrath” of God or the “consuming flame” of Divine Love of which mystics write. (4) The wholly other or mysterious, viz., “that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the ‘canny’ and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonish- ment.” (5) The element of fascination, namely that element which impels us not to retreat from the divine but rather to approach and commune with it. Salvation, atonement, reconciliation are all mani- festations of this element. 59 “ Das Heilige,” English translation by John W. Harvey, 1923, p. 117. 0 1did.; Pp. 36. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 35 In treating each element Professor Otto over and over again insists that there are no concepts or dog- mas or rational compartments into which they can be fitted. The transports of the mystic are as unintelligible to the secular mind as the felicity of the lover to the unromantic. The “ Holy” lies be- yond syllogisms and reasoning processes ; it is more deep than logic and far more fundamental. The rational element is only an afterthought or what Professor James called “‘ the outbuilding.” The question which interests our special prob- lem now presents itself. Does the religion of Das Heilige admit God in the traditional sense of the word? The answer is negative, both from the his- torical and the philosophical point of view. From the historical point of view, because Professor Otto denies primitive Monotheism, and seems to take a substantial religious evolution for granted, never making a distinction between Buddhistic and Christian mysticism or even attempting a distinc- tion of the true and the spurious.” From the phil- osophical point of view he departs from a belief in a Perfect Being, not only because he has eliminated the rational from religion, but because he seems to make the essence of religion consist in the emotion rather than the object upon which the emotion is di- rected. At most he will only concede that the “numinous is felt as objective and outside the self,” which of course gives no guarantee that it is really objective. If religion has an object for Professor Otto it is that element in things which Stulbid., PD. 133; 135% 62 Tbsd,, Ps 13. 36 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD produces in us an “ eerie ” sensation of being in the presence of something aweful, mysterious and fasci- nating. This element in things whatever it may be certainly is not God, the Alpha and Omega of all things; and this one important fact in the religious philosophy of Professor Otto is sufficient to range him with an ever increasing group of present day thinkers who have protested against traditional thought on the subject of God. Religion according to Mr. Bertrand Russell In an article entitled “The Essence of Relig- ion” this author develops the idea that in man there is something infinite and something finite. The infinite in him is the principle of union with the world in general by which he knows of it and loves it as something beyond the categories of time and space and this and that. It is that in man which transcends the petty selfishness of the ego and goes out in search not for my good but for the good. The finite nature in man, on the contrary, is a principle of disunion, for it is that which makes the individual man assert his individuality and con- sequently his selfishness, and demarcates him from all other men and the rest of the universe. In proportion as this infinite grows in us we live more completely the life of universal nature. The finite self is the gaoler of the universal soul and these prison walls of the body must be broken down if life 68 “Das Heilige,” English translation by John W. Harvey, 1923, Hibbert Journal, Vol. 11, p. 46 ff. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 37 is to be lived at its best. ‘“‘ Sudden beauty in the midst of strife, uncalculating love, or the nightwind in the trees, seem to suggest the possibility of a life free from the conflicts and the pettiness of our every- day world, a life where there is peace which no mis- fortune can disturb.” “ But what is this infinite which at times so overwhelms us? Is it an object orisitan attitude? “ The quality of infinity which we feel, is not to be accounted for by the perception of new objects, other than those that at most times seem finite; it is to be accounted for, rather, by a different way of regarding the same objects, a con- templation more impersonal, more vast, more filled with love, than the fragmentary, disquiet considera- tion we give to things when we view them as means to help or hinder our own purposes.” * All that is required to pass from the life of the finite self to the life of the infinite is absolute self- surrender. And from that moment on, when the finite self appears as a death, “‘a new life begins, with a larger vision, a new happiness and wider hopes.” Now is God necessary for such a surrender? No, —and this is the important point. The surrender might possibly be easier for some if they believed in an all-wise God “ but it is not in its essence depend- ent on this belief or on any other.” ®° God then is not necessary for religion. All that is required is a communion with our infinite life, thanks to the crushing of the finite. From this 64 Ibid., p. 48. °° Ibid. p. 49. °° Ibid., p. 50. 38 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD point, Mr. Russell demonstrates that the three ele- ments of Christian worship, which he enumerates as “ worship, acquiescence and love,” can get along very well without God. For worship, God is not a necessary object. The object is “the ideal good which creative contemplation imagines.” Acqui- escence, in its turn, does not demand a God on whose Will we are dependent: “it consists in free- dom from anger and indignation and preoccupied grief.” Lastly, love, can exist very well in re- ligion without a God Who is Love, as St. John re- minds us: “‘in a religion which is not theistic, love of God is replaced by worship of the ideal good.” ® Religion then, in conclusion, must be said, ac- cording to Mr. Russell, “to derive its power from the sense of union with the universe which it is able to give.” Since God’s existence is denied, the new religion must be one which “ depends only on our- selves. ... . We with our ideals must stand alone, and conquer inwardly the world’s indifference.” ” It is man who matters in this subject of religion. “For in all things it is well to exalt the dignity of Man, by freeing him as far as possible from the tyranny of the non-human Power.” ” Such is the essence of religion as understood by Mr. Bertrand Russell, a conception in which re- ligion dispenses with God and puts man and ideals in His place. If it be the correct explanation of re- ST Tbid., Hi.) So. 69 [bid., p. 59. SS [hid.5 p. 86, 70 Tbid., p. 62. 71 «Free Man’s Worship” in “ Mysticism and Logic,” 1925, p. 46 ff. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 39 ligion, then Mr. Russell is right in saying “ Man worships at the shrine his own hands have made.” Religion according to Professors Croce and Gentile Not only is the modern philosophy of France, Germany, England, and America evolving a new religion which leaves no room for the God of reason, but even Italy, which so violently reacted against Naturalism, has also joined the ranks as if to make the demand universal. Italian philoso- phy like that of France, became tired of Positivism, and reacted against it in an Idealistic fashion as Aliotta has so well shown” and then finally de- veloped a philosophy of its own. The new thought, although Hegelian in inspira- tion, is not wholly so in its finished product, par- ticularly in so far as religion is concerned. Ac- cording to Hegel, it is only through a system of concepts that religion can be shown to be true and not by mere subjective intuitions or emotions. The inevitable conclusion is that religion is to be resolved into philosophy. There is not perfect agreement as to the exact manner in which religion is resolved into philoso- phy. For Croce™ spirit must be either theoretical or practical. If theoretical, it is either an intuition which is A‘sthetics, or a concept which is Logic; if practical, it is either useful, which is Economics, or Good which is Ethics. The point to be stressed 72 “The Idealistic Reaction against Science,” 1914. 73 “ Filosofia della Pratica,” 9th ed., 1923. ‘‘ Estetica come scienza dell? espressione e linguistica generale,” 5 * ediz., 1922. 40 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD here is that there is no room for a specific religious element; religion is only a hybrid of the above men- tioned forms; the Kingdom of God becomes the Kingdom of Man; and religion becomes the Dialec- tics of Thought. Gentile’s view of religion agrees with Croce as far as the fundamental notion is concerned, namely that Religion is man contemplating his own spirit idealized. But while Croce tends towards distinc- tions, Gentile is on fire with Unity, and herein lies the difference. Gentile“ is more concerned with the theory of the Spirit as essentially a self- realizing act. The Spirit is always becoming aware of itself as a subject, then of itself as an object, and finally returning to itself and knowing itself as the. synthesis of both. Religion is that second moment in which the Spirit discovers itself as an object. The overwhelming sense of the otherness of the ob- ject blinds the mind to itself as subject. Hence man forgets himself, annihilates himself before his object, which now assumes, because of its abso- luteness, the very character of God. God then is the object taken apart from its relation to the subject. Further elaboration is unnecessary. The God of the new Italian religious philosophy is not objective to the thinker, but like that of Professor Alexander is a “creature” of Thought or Spirit; or, to para- 74 Theory of Mind as Pure Act, “ Discorsi di Religione,” 1920. God for Croce and Gentile is not a Reality separate from the human spirits. It is the human spirit as conscious of its own identity with the absolute spirit. Man is God inasmuch as he is the world’s self-conscious- ness, MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 41 phrase the words of Mr. Russell, “we worship at the shrine our own spirit has made.” Religion according to Professor Gerald B. Smith In an article entitled “ Is Theism essential to Re- ligion? ” ‘* Gerald Birney Smith, the Editor of the Journal of Religion, declares that Theism as the basis of religion no longer has a cogent appeal, and hence an entirely new concept of religion is neces- sary to fit in with the temper of the day. The negative side of the paper is devoted to the proof of the three following propositions: men can be good citizens without appealing to God; they can be good scientists without affirming Theism; and finally, they can be religious without a belief in God. First, politically, there has been a dissolution of the theological theory of politics. “In the experi- ence of modern nations it was found that the doc- trine of the divine right of the ruler could be too easily invoked to sustain a royal tyranny. The democratic movement which has inspired modern political movement has been based upon the pri- mary tenet of the rights of man.” The conse- quence of a struggle for democratic rights is the secularizing of politics. And in terms of practical experience, the secularization of government means that citizenship is complete without any distinc- tively religious requirements. An atheist has the same rights as a theist. “If, now, in our political 15 Journal of Religion, Vol. 5, No. 4, July 1925. Ibid., p. 358. 42 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD practice, it makes no essential difference whether one is a theist or not, if one can be a good citizen without believing in God, theism comes to be a mat- ter of taste rather than a fundamental doctrine.” ” Secondly, as theism is not necessary for politics neither is it necessary for science. The old theo- logical supervision of science has passed into the background. It is the detail now rather than “speculations ” regarding reality which interests scientists. The conception of God in no way furthers the empirical method, and therefore is un- necessary for it. Furthermore “it is to be noted that scientists generally speak of religion rather than of God. Their belief in God, in so far as it persists at all, is a rather vague emotional inherit- 99 78 ance. Not only that, the advance of science shows non-theistic explanations of problems. “Epidemics are now averted by controlling sources of infection rather than by prayer. Material pros- perity is seen to depend on economic factors rather than on generalized moral attitudes.” In short, in the face of practical pluralism, the “appeal to God occupies a decreasing place in modern re- ligion.”’ Thirdly, men can be religious without Theism. Psychology has shown, Dr. Smith points out, that the fundamental realities in our religious experience are not ideas, but instinctive reactions of the human organism to the stimulus of environment. In 7” Journal of Religion, Vol. 5, No. 4, July 1925. p. 359 18 Tbid., p. 360. 19 [bid., p. 361. MODERN RELIGION—NEGATIVE 43 other words “ religion exists first, theological ideas are secondary.” ** Just as the Babylonian religions _ outgrew a belief in their Shamash, for he was only a symbol of their ideals rather than an actual deity, so too the modern age is outgrowing the old tra- ditional notion of God. Dr. Smith leans kindly to the ideas of Professor FE. S. Ames who would correlate religion with the actual, scientific and social forces dominant in life. God becomes something in experience, or as this author puts it: “‘ The character of God will be found in the experienced reciprocity between man and his environment rather than in the realm of metaphysi- cal speculation.”** The belief in God means that there may be found, not merely within the circle of human society, but also in the non-human environment on which we are dependent, a quality of the cosmic process akin to the quality of our own spiritual life. ‘Through communion with this qualitative aspect of the cosmic process human life attains an experience of dignity, and reinforcement of spiritual power.” * “Religion for men who think in this fashion will consist in a great mystic experiment rather than in the acceptance of a theo- logical system . . . God will be very real to the religious man, but his reality will be interpreted in terms of social reciprocity with an as yet inade- quately defined cosmic support of values, rather than in terms of theistic creatorship and control.” 80 Tbid., p. 362. 8? [bid., p. 375+ 61 Jbid., Pp. 373- 88 Ibid. 44 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Some Modern Definitions of Religion The foregoing exposition of religion has quite clearly proved to us that today religion is conceived in other terms than those of God and man. Even the word “God,” in some cases, is ignored; in others it takes on a new content. A few definitions of religion extracted from current writings bear out this point. ““Indeed the existence of a supreme being as a person external to ourselves and to the world, like a magnified human creature, is not affirmed by the religious consciousness, and if it were known to be a fact, would have no bearing on religion.” ™ “It is probably true that it is best to avoid the term ‘God’ in purely philosophical writing, just as in the critical discussion of poetry, we need not re- fer to the Muses.” *° “T wish you here to agree to my giving the name of God to the sum of the forces acting in the cos- mos as perceived and grasped by human mind. We can therefore now say that God is one, but that though one, has several aspects.” *° “Though the traditional content of the term ‘God’ is to be denied, the value of that term is not to be denied. Religion needs that word although it needs to overhaul its meaning.” ™ 8¢ B. Bosanquet, “‘ Value and Destiny of the Individual,” 1913, Pp. 254. 85 J. Mackenzie, “ God as Love and Di and Creative Power,” Hibbert Journal. Vol. XXIV, no. 2, p. 19 86 Julian S. Huxley, “ Science and Religion,” edited by F, S. Marvin, 1923, Chap. XI. 87 Julian Huxley, “ Essays of a Biologist,” p. 235. — MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 4s “Religion is an emotion resting on a conviction of a harmony between ourselves and the universe at large.” * “Religion is the force or faculty prompting to action in accordance with the highest ideals having reference to the future of the individual and the race,’,°° “ Religion is due to the interplay of many forces, the family, the community, the priest, the bishop, and other children. ... ‘The religious experience is best described as the experience of the ideal, the realization of value which comes in an exalted emo- tional moment that makes us one with our kind, at least with the best of our kind, who might include the whole of them.” *° Religion is “the pure embodiment of the prac- tical motive —that is, the highly interested desire for a place of action which will secure the maximum of good fortune from the environment as a whole.” ” “ Religion is a projection in the roaring loom of time of a concentration or unified complex of psy- chical values.” * ** Whether God exists or not, is not important to the nature of religion.” * “Religion is the projection and pursuit of ideal 88 T. McTaggart, “ Some Dogmas of Religion,” 1906, p. 3. 89 G. M. Irvine, “ Churches, Religion and Progress,” pp. 13, 18. 90 Ellsworth Faris, Journal of Religion, Vol. VI, No. 3, May 1926, y B4t 7 91 Al. Hoernle, Harvard Theol. Review, Vol. XI, No. 2, April 1918. R.B. Perry, “ Philosophical Tendencies.” p. 29. 92 Jos. A. Leighton, “ Man and Cosmos,” 1922, p. 545. 98 R, Eucken, “Truths of Religion,” p. 129. 46 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD _ personal relations with the universe and man... . Because it is a process of projection and pursuit, re- ligion is an ever moving process in the direction of complete personal adjustment and control in man’s total environment.” * “In its simplified element religion is thus found to be the expression of man’s mental attitude to- ward the unknown which is not capable of being known by any method of investae available at the time.” * *‘ Any reasoned appreciation of life is —a relig- ion even. though there are no conventional re- ligious elements in it.” °° “ Immanentism, the conception that God is life- force, only ‘personal’ in so far as realizing itself through successive forms of life, cuts the ground from under the feet of the Christian appeal; for where there is not felt to be any distinction, there can be no desire of union.” ” “The central dogma of the Christian religion, finds no support in science. It cannot be said that either doctrine is essential to religion, since neither is found in Buddhism. . . . Wein the West have come to think of them as the irreducible minimum of theology. No doubt people will continue to en- tertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our 94 Edwin E. Aubrey, “The Nature of Religion,” Journal of Religion, 1925, pp. 189-91. 95 G. M. Irvine, “ Churches, Religion and Progress,” pp. 13-18. 96 G. Santayana, “Reason in Religion,” p. 6. 97 Thomas J. Hardy, “ The Present Predicament of Christianity,” Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1925, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, p. 65. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 47 enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any ground for either.” ** “Religion is the most complete and full-orbed expression of this striving toward action with the widest and fullest environment.” ” “ Religion is, then, man’s sense of the disposition of the universe to himself.’ **° “God is neither an entity nor an ideal, but al- ways a relation of entity to ideal: Reality regarded from the standpoint of its favorableness or unfavor- ableness, to human life, and prescribing for the lat- ter the propriety of a certain attitude.” *” “ Religion is not mere conformity to moral law, it is an espousal of moral ideals, a dedication of the heart, a loyal devotion, the perpetual renewal of a right spirit within us.” *” “Center of religion is cosmic fortune of values.” *°° “ Religion is loyalty and co-operation in the ef- fort to attain the socially approved values in- volved in the ideal of the satisfactory life.” *°* * Religion is the glorious challenge of human life for the mastery of the planet; the loyal pursuit of the vision of the complete life through the ages.” 105 98 Bertrand Russell, “ What I Believe,” 1925, p. 13. 89 H. W. Wieman, Journal of Religion, May 1927, p. 307. 100 Ralph B. Perry, “The Approach to Philosophy,” 1908, p. 66. 101 Thid., p. 88. 102 Durant Drake, “A Definition of Religion,” Journal of Re- ligion, March 1927, p. 124. 103 W. G. Everett, “ Moral Values,” 1918, p. 302. 104 A. E. Haydon, Journal of Religion, March 1927, p. 127. 205° bid., p. 133; 48 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD “Faith in God is synonymous with the brave hope that the universe is friendly to the ideals of man 99 106 Psychological Negations of the Traditional Object of Religion Psychological arguments are not wanting to bol- ster up the contemporary negation of God as the object of religion. In making such an assertion there is grave danger of being misunderstood. Psy- chology, as such, does not hold nor even make for such a position any more than does modern physics or modern biology; it merely attempts to describe the by-products of religion, its emotions, its states and its reactions. In doing this it has rendered much service to the proper understanding of relig- — ion. In the words of Professor Flournoy: “ Psy- chology neither rejects nor affirms the transcenden- tal existence of the religious objects; it simply ignores that problem as being outside its field.” *” Dr. James Bislett Pratt, of Williams College, is an American psychologist who has well understood the boundaries and frontiers of his science when he writes “My purpose is to describe the religious consciousness, and to do so without having any point of view... . My aim in short has been purely descriptive, and my method purely empirical. Like other men I have my own theories about the philos- ophy of religion, but I have made unremitting ef- 106 A, E. Haydon, Journal of Religion, March 1927, p. 128. __ 107 “ Principes de la Psychologie Religieuse,” in Archies de Psy- chologie, Vol. Il, pp. 37-41. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE = 49 forts to describe the religious consciousness without undue influence from my philosophical theories, but merely by going to experience and writing down what I find.” *** Even better still has Dr. Gerald B. Phelan outlined the frontiers of psychology and philosophy of religion. In an excellent paper read at the American Catholic Philosophical Associa- tion, he said: “ When the psychologist follows the methods of his science in dealing with the phenom- ena of religious life as they affect the individual mind and the social group, he is quite within the confines of his territory and philosophy should look across at him smiling her approval on his energetic efforts. Only when the empirical investigator sur- reptitiously appropriates the findings of philosophy and distorts them to accommodate the findings of his science should the voice of Dame Philosophy be heard in protest. ... Whatever explanations he may offer, the authority of the psychologist ex- tends no further than the data of his science, which being definitely phenomenological, furnish no grounds for conclusions about the transcen- dental.” *” If psychologists remained psychologists there would be no reason for introducing them here, but unfortunately there is often an itch among them, as there is among physicists and mathemati- cians, to become philosophers and to discourse 108 « The Religious Consciousness,” 2d ed., 1927, p. Vil. 109 «“ Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting,” 1926, pp. 85, 86. Cf. p. 17 of “Feeling Experience and Its Modalities” by the same author, London, 1925. 50 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD about the nature of God and His existence. When this inclination so masters them that their descrip- tions become explanations, then they become philosophers of religion and as such must be treated. There is probably no psychologist of religion who has so far over-stepped the limits of his science as Professor James Leuba. His particular theories of conversion and mysticism and the like do not interest us, but his denial of anything beyond psy- chological causes of religion is of vital interest. There is no misunderstanding his position. He comes out very clearly against Flournoy’s state- ment that “ Psychology neither rejects nor affirms the transcendental existence of the religious ob- jects” ; and asserts that such a position nullifies the science of which he is an exponent. “The prin- ciple,” he writes, “ of irrelevance of science to the transcendent, shields the cardinal belief of the es- tablished religions only if their gods are transcen- dental objects. In taking for granted that there are such objects, an error has been committed and grave confusion has been introduced in the discus- sion of the relation of science to religion.” Very justly, he adds, that if the object of religion is a god whose source is in the naive interpretation of phe- nomena then religion is not outside science. But he believes every notion of God to be such an in- terpretation. “Should there be no ground of be- lief other than physical phenomena and inner ex- periences, then, for those who are acquainted with MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE © 51 the modern scientific conception, there would be no belief in God.” **° It is quite evident that for Professor Leuba there is very little reason for introducing the traditional notion of God into religion, for that notion has since been dissolved by scientific study. If there were super-human beings, their existence, he tells us, should have become increasingly evident. ‘“‘ Yet the converse is apparently true; the supernatural world of the savage has become a natural world to the civilized man; the miraculous of yesterday is the explicable of today. In religious lives acces- sible to psychological investigation, nothing requir- ing the admission of super-human influences has been found. There is nothing, for example, in the life of the great Spanish mystic whose celebrity is being renewed by contemporary psychologists — not a desire, not a feeling, not a thought, not a vision, not an illumination, that can seriously make us look to transcendental causes.” *™ That Professor Leuba means these shafts of naturalism to be the undoing of traditional religion is quite clear from the following passage: “The evils bred by the traditional conception of God may be called by the general name of ‘ otherworldliness.’ It would be difficult to evaluate the harm done to humanity in the past by the conviction that the real destination of man is the World to Come, and equally difficult to estimate the harm done by the 110 “ The Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” 1925, pp. 300, 302, 04. 111 «Psychological Study of Religion,” p. 272. 52 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD conviction that for its ethical improvement society is dependent upon a personal God. If these evils are of lesser magnitude now than in the past, it is because the traditional belief has lost some of its ancient potency, and because the sense of respon- sibility of the individual for the natural and the spiritual welfare of society has grown correspond- ingly greater. In order that we may come to a full realization that he and he alone is his brother’s keeper, it is necessary that man should entirely give up the belief in personal super-human causa- tion. Divided responsibility works no better in re- ligion than in business.”*? “It need hardly be said here that the abandonment of the belief in a personal God and in personal immortality, though it involves the disappearance of existing religions, need not bring to an end religious life.” *” The God-less religion of this psychologist is de- fined as follows: “ Religion is that part of human experience in which man feels himself in relation with the power of psychic nature, usually personal powers, and makes use of them. ... In its ob- jective aspect, active religion consists then, of atti- tudes, practices, rites, ceremonies, institutions; in its subjective aspect, it consists of desires, emotions and ideas, instigating and accompanying these ob- jective manifestations. ‘The reason for the exist- ence of religion is not the objective truth of its conception, but its biological value.” ** 112 « Psychology of Religious Mysticism,” pp. 329-330. 118 J. H. Leuba, “ The Belief in God and Immortality,” 1916, p. X. 114 “ Psychological Study of Religion,” pp. 52, 53. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE _ 53 While Professor Leuba rules God out of court and relegates such belief to non-psychological ages of human existence, there are others who are more inclined to exclude God from religion altogether by reducing Him to a psychic state. ‘The theory of projection” is the popular fashion of doing this among the latter group of psychological-philoso- phers. Professor A. G. Tansley, for example, makes religion God-less by making God a mental pro- jection: “In a primitive state of culture man projects parts of his own personality upon the forces of nature and thus personifies and defies them... . At a later state of development the process of pro- jection is gradually simplified, in accordance with the persistent need of unification, and finally crys- talized into a dualism, a personification of good and evil, of what is beneficial or harmful to the human race, and instead of polytheism we have the antithesis of God and the Devil. ... At a later stage still we have a further unification; the Devil is banished from the cosmology, and God is repre- sented as responsible for everything — even for the evil in the human heart. . . . So far God is essen- tially a social God, a concentrated projection of all the qualities useful to the herd in a supreme super- natural personality —the supreme herd leader of humanity, just as the tribal gods were the tribal leaders.” *° 115 « The New Psychology and its Relation to Life,” 7th ed., 1922. W. R. Matthews while denying that the idea of God is a pure pro- jection believes that it should be retained because it has a “ survival 54 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD > Sociological Negations of the Traditional Object of Religion In addition to the purely metaphysical or psycho- logical explanations of religion there is yet another which may be called the sociological or the humani- tarian. Among European thinkers this explana- tion takes a double form: either that of Durkheim for whom God is “a divinized society ” or that of Wundt for whom God is the term which represents the values of life as estimated either by the folk or the community. Professor Alfred Hoernle, who knows so well the currents of contemporary philos- ophy, describes the humanitarian view as follows: “ For the ineffective love of a supernatural or even non-existent God it seeks to substitute the effective love of actual men and women. From preoccupa- tion with the salvation of his soul in a life after death, it seeks to turn man to the service of his kind in this life. It aims at making the energy of value ”: “This idea, no less than the idea of nature, has value for life, and has helped man to gain command of the circumstances in which his existence is cast.” ‘The Psychological Approach to Re- ligion,” 1925, p. 21; cf. Jung, “ The Psychology of the Unconscious”; T. W. Pym, “ Psychology and the Christian Life,” 1921, Chaps. 2, 3. “The psycho-analyst is satisfied with the theory that religious beliefs are produced by disused, displaced and projected libido.” ‘ The ‘ one God? satisfied the narcissistic craving of the beloved Ego for an om- nipotent projection for its own adoration.” Cavendish Moxon, M.A. (Oxon), ‘Freudian Essays on Religion and Science,” 1925, pp. 18, 20. “Religion is primarily emotional and therefore is in the broadest sense of sex-origin.” §. Swisher, “ Religion and the New Psychology,” 1923, p. 19. J. Cyril Flower, “ Psychological Studies of Religious Questions,” 1924, p. 224 ff. “The constitutive character of religion lies in the psychical’s successful attempt to assert itself physically.” Jacques Cohen, “ Religion,” 1923, p. 35. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE - 55 religion available in the cause of human progress, for the fight against disease, poverty, ignorance, crime. It preaches a crusade against remediable ills in the cause of a better future for the human race on this earth.” **° ‘There are few contemporary thinkers who have done more to further this natural kind of religion than Professor E. S. Ames of the University of Chicago. He believes that the Christian concep- tion of a future life is gradually losing its hold on mankind. “At last religion has come,” he says, “to reckon with the fact that its highest quest is not for a supernatural order but just for natural good- ness in the largest and fullest measure. . . . What then is the goal of religion? ... The goal of re- ligion is the fulfillment of the normal duties and opportunities of life as we experience it, with sym- pathy and idealism and passionately unselfish de- SOLON ait The notion of worshipping a Supreme Being in another world is therefore quite out of the question. It smacks of the “ adoration and flattery such as were formerly given to tyrants and despots.” ** “In our democracies men do not bow themselves to the ground nor prostrate themselves even before the mightiest individuals.” *° More or less the same sentiments are expressed by Professor Charles A . Ellwood of the University of Missouri. “ The crisis in the religious world,” he 116 “ Matter, Life, Mind, God,” 1923, p. 176. 117 “ The New Orthodoxy,” 1925, pp. 93, 101. 418 Thid.; Pp. 117. 119. bid.) ps £234 56 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD writes, “has been brought about by the failure of existing religion to adapt itself to two outstanding facts in our civilization—science and democ- racy.” *”° He believes that a religious revolution is in the air, and that it is concerned with a transition from ethical monotheism to a scientific and social conception of religion. And “the real religious problem of our society is to secure the general ac- ceptance of a religion adapted to the requirements of continuous progress toward an ideal, consisting of all humanity.” *” “Service of God must consist in service of man.”*” The traditional notion of God will then be done away with. Professor Ellwood calls ita Santa Claus notion. “ ‘The autocratic con- ception of God, as a force outside the universe, who rules by arbitrary will both physical nature and human history, will be replaced by the conception of a spirit immanent in nature and in humanity, which is gradually working out the supreme good in the form of an ideal society consisting of all human- ity. And since service of God is in reality service of man, there will be sin in this new religion of democracy; it will be a failure to serve mankind. In other words it will be “ disloyalty to society.” *” “Religion means the consecration of individual life, at first for love and spiritual ends, but finally for humanitarian ends.” *** 120 “The Reconstruction of Religion,” 1922, p. 2. OST bid. 0. 164: 122 Ibid., p. 100, 123 Tbhid., pp. 139) 143. 124 Tbid., p. 45. “This new spirit, forming itself, as it were, upon the restless sea of humanity, will, without doubt, determine the MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE 57 Professor R. W. Sellars expresses similar ideas on the nature of religion, believing that “religion must be separated from the other worldly pull of the traditional theologies and be sanely grounded in the outlook of modern knowledge. ... The Human- ist’s religion, is the religion of one who says yea to the life here and now, of one who is self-reliant and fearless, intelligent and creative. ... Its Goal is the mastery of things that they may become serv- ants and instrumentalities to man’s spiritual com- radeship.” *”* Mr. Thomas J. Hardy, noting this growing relig- ion in which mankind is both worshipper and worshipped, has said “If immanentism means the apotheosis of Man there are few who need much converting. ... Man is emerging from the cum- brous trappings of Divinity and ‘the Service of future sense of God and destiny. ‘The deistic conception of an age now completely past, that God is some distant monarch, will fade into the darkness with the social system which gave it rise; and so- ciety as a federal union, in which each individual and every form of human association shall find free and full scope for a more abundant life, will be the large figure from which is projected the conception of God in whom we live and move and have our being.” (Robert A. Woods, Democracy: A New Unfolding of Human Power, a chapter in “ Studies in Philosophy and Psychology,” 1906. ‘Society, democratic from end to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a supreme being favored with eternal and absolute perfection and the man of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle. It is the large figure out of which is projected the conception of the God that is ourselves, in whom and of whom we literally are; the God that, in every act and intention, we, with all our countless fellows are realising. . . . It isa God that in one respect is in the making, growing with the growth of the world; suffering and sinning and conquering with it; a God, in short, that zs the world in the spiritual unity of its mass-life.” H. A. Overstreet, “The Democratic Conception of God,” Hibbert Journal, Vol. XI, p. 410. 125 «The Next Step in Religion,” 1918, pp. 211, 212, 217. 58 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Man,’ rejected in its doctrinaire presentment, has become the Established Religion.” **° The foregoing survey of the field of philosophy of religion, though it does betray a great want of uni- formity of teaching, does nevertheless very clearly reveal a tendency to dispense with God as the goal of religion and the end of life. The term “God” may still be retained, and in some cases is, but it is emptied of all the content ascribed to it by the great- est minds of the past. In other words, the conclu- sion to be drawn from the philosophical theories just presented is not that there is no God in modern religion, but only that God as traditionally under- stood is no longer considered the object of religion. The reasons for such a conclusion, as we have seen, are generally either philosophical, psychological or sociological, but underlying them all is the inability to reconcile the old concept of God and religion with 126 «The Present Predicament,” Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1925, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 66, 69. “The new faith will be neither Buddhist nor Christian, nor Mohammedan; it will be an outcome of the wants, the hopes and the aspirations of these our times and the near future; it will involve the fraternal love of man to all beings.” C. A. F. Rhys Davids, D.Litt., ‘Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923, p. 178. ‘“ The object of humanistic religion is the enhancement of the human estate... . The old religion judges man by his contribution to the gods; humanism judges the gods by their contribution to man . . . we are loyal to our ideas of right and wrong, to our ideas of value, not in order to measure up to an ultimate standard but in order to promote human welfare. . . .” Curtis W. Reese, 1926, pp. 17, 23, 35. Among other interpretations of religion which reduce religion to a purely human thing is the historical, e.g., Alfred W. Martin, “The World’s Great Religions and the Religion of the Future,” 1921. E. Washburn Hop- kins, Ph.D., “ Origin and Evolution of Religion,” 1923, writes, “ Every religion is a product of human evolution and has been conditioned by social environment.” p. 1. A. N. Whitehead, “ Religion in the Making,” 1926, Chap. II. MODERN RELIGION — NEGATIVE — 59 the latest discoveries of science. This conclusion is, Of course, negative, and tells us nothing positive of the content of modern religion. A more interest- ing inquiry is the nature of the substitute offered and this is the burden of the following chapter. CHAPTER IT MODERN RELIGION IN ITS POSITIVE ASPECT HILE it is a difficult task to group the multiple and varied theories of relig- ion which are now seeing the light of day, under some specific heading, it does neverthe- less seem true that they are all quite agreed in regarding values as the object of religion. The varied and colorful interpretations of God which were substituted for the traditional notion now merge on a common ground: God is subordinated, _ at least in some way, to the supreme task of con- serving values. It is true that for some, God still remains the object of religion, but only in relation to values. Thus Professor Whitehead, for example, although admitting the necessity of some “ har- monizer” or “principle of concretion” in this world of relations, makes God subserve value. “The purpose of God,” he writes, “is the attain- ment of value in the temporal world.” * There is no danger of exaggerating the place which the philosophy of values holds in the world today. Only a few decades ago the term “ Value” would have suggested nothing more than a term of economics, signifying the price of things. “The 1 “Religion in the Making,” p. 100. 60 MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE 61 value of a thing is just as much as it will bring.” Now the term is applied in the field of education, _art, religion and all the aspects of human life.? Pro- fessor Pringle Pattison says that “ At the present time philosophy is carried on more explicitly in terms of value than at any other time.”* To take another of the vast host of testimonies to this fact, Professor D. S. Robinson affirms that: “ Since the time of Kant all progressive theologians have shifted the emphasis away from the abstract philosophical arguments for the existence of God to the searching question: What value does God have in human experience? ”* ‘The philosophy of value up to the present day has been a by-product of thought; now it is the essential. Writing in 1885, Herman Lotze saw the possibility of its development when he wrote in reference to esthetics and ethics: “ and for these two investigations a third common to both may be conceived, which has hitherto never been carried out, namely, an investigation con- cerning the nature of all the determinations of value.” ° But what is the reason for the popularity of a philosophy of value? Only a few have attempted to answer this question. Professor R. B. Perry and Professor J. S. Mackenzie are notable exceptions. The former believes that the philosophy of value is 2 J. S. Mackenzie, “ Ultimate Values,” 1926, p. 13. 3 “The Idea of God,” p. 39. 4 “The God of the Liberal Christian,” 1926, p. 118. 5 “Griindzuge der Logik und Encyclopaidie der Philosophie,” quoted by Perry, “ General Theory of Value,” p. 5. 62 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD the culminating phase of the modern scientific movement in which science not only studies nature but man, and the study of man means the study of his values. ‘The old Baconian program of science which promised man conquest over the powers of nature has given place to the new program which promises power through the conquest of himself. Sciences which before studied only the physical world now include man within their scope; biology, for example, now studies the “descent of man.” “The theory of value belongs to this general intel- lectual movement—shares its aspirations, and participates in its efforts.” It is really an attempt to apply science to life, and to discover that age-old problem of living together with a minimum of friction and a maximum of mutual aid.® Professor Perry gives a still more interesting ex- planation of the importance of the philosophy of values. It is founded on the contrast between the outlook of the ancient and medieval world and that of the modern world. The fact is that in the modern world there has been such a multiplication of diverse objects, thanks to the development of in- dustry and commerce, that the needs and the wants of man are constantly increasing. What our grand- parents looked upon as luxuries, are necessities for us. The standard of living has mounted; what once was a luxury is now a need, and what is presently a luxury will some day be a necessity. Coupled with this vast increase of values there has grown a great § “General Theory of Values,” pp. 12, 13. MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 63 confidence in the attainability of these things. Men are becoming more certain that the world is at their service and that as time passes on newer and better conveniences will reveal themselves which will make life better and more worth living. ‘The world is a good place to live in. “There is something in the modern spirit that prevents a man’s washing his hands of the whole matter and retiring from the world.” Set now in contrast with this modern spirit is that of the ancient or the medieval world. The idea of the ancient world was that man should be content with what he has. Stoics proclaimed the doctrine of disillusionment. The medieval world continued to do the same but introduced a new element which was not found in paganism; namely, the doctrine of the future life where the losses of time would be compensated by the gains of eternity. There was still a common element between the two, namely the disproportion between man’s desires and his powers and the consequent need of renunciation. Its wis- dom, continues Professor Perry, “was pervaded with a sense of doom, of ironic fate, of incurable failure, or of divine intervention. It taught men to believe that worldly attainments could never be more than provisional. . . .” But the triumphs of modern science have, for better or for worse, resulted in a sort of re-illusionment of the modern European. He proposes to increase production rather than reduce consumption. He has under- taken an aggressive campaign in the open... . If 64 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD he remembers the fate which overtook the Tower of | Babel he attributes it to ignorance of modern engi- neering. If he summons faith to his aid it is not to compensate resignation, but to invigorate his effort or confirm his illusions. sf Hence the broad difference between the theory of value in the contemporary and European sense, and the theory of value in the earlier and non-European sense. Value today springs from a kind of embar- rassment of riches. How shall a man choose from what is offered him? How shall their conflict be re- duced or eliminated? The problem, in other words, is that “ of establishing a principle of selection and a method of reconciliation by which order and har- mony shall be brought out of a bewildering chaos and a confusion of values.”* Since the world has — changed its outlook on life, and is more bent on — enlarging man’s powers than reducing his desires, a new theory of values is necessary to adjust prop- erly the details of the new vision. Value, in some way or other, has become the primary object of religion, regardless of the kind of God any contemporary philosopher may ‘create. Those who are well versed in contemporary relig- ious philosophy will recall the frequency with which Hoffding’s definition of religion is quoted.? It would be interesting to know who has not quoted it. H6ffding has defined religion as “faith in the conservation of values,” or “‘ the conviction that no T Od. cit. p. 13. 8 Op. cit. pp. 14-16. ® J. S. Mackenzie, “ Ultimate Values,” 1924, p. 172. MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE — 65 value perishes out of the world.” *® Windelbrand, who is no less an authority,sums up the present philosophical situation in these words: “ We do not so much expect from philosophy what it was formerly supposed to give, a theoretic scheme of the world, a synthesis of the results of the separate sciences, or of transcending them on lines of its own, a scheme harmoniously complete in itself; what we expect from philosophy today is reflection on those permanent values which have their foun- dation in a higher spiritual reality above the chang- ing interests of the times.” ” One might go on through the field of contempo- rary philosophy seeking positive definitions of re- ligion and in the end would find they would be variations of Hoffding. Thus Professor E. G. Spaulding finds in religion “‘the factor of value, of something that is of worth to the individual, of something that means to him betterment and good- ness.”*” “The essence of religion,” according to Viscount Haldane, “is the claim that the world has value.” * But what is value? While contemporary philos- ophy agrees that religion is destined for the conser- vation of values, there is not a perfect agreement as to what constitutes value. Professor Whitehead, 10 «Philosophy of Religion,” English translation, p. 6. 11 “Die Philosophie im Deutschen Geistesleben des 1gten Jahr- hunderts,” 1909, p. 119. 12 «“ Christianity and Modern Thought,” foreword by Ralph G. Gabriel. Chap. 4; Psychology of Religion by Professor Spaulding, oe 13 “The Reign of Relativity,” 1921, p. 305; cf. W. K. Wright, “ A Student’s Philosophy of Religion,” 1922, p. 41. 66 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD for example, defines it as “ the intrinsic reality of an event.” ** Meinong, on the contrary, says the value of an object lies in the total reaction of the subject in terms of the feeling aroused by the judgment or supposition of its existence or non-existence.” Pro- fessor John Dewey tells us that “value is consti- tuted by interest, liking, vital bias,” ** which is something similar to Professor R. B. Perry’s notion that value is intelligible in function of interest.” Professor E. S Brightman likes the psychological explanation and defines it as “ what is liked or de- sired or approved in the light of our highest ideals.”** ‘‘ Value is at any stage the distinction between what on that level is fitting and what is defeated in the contrast or the struggle with it.” ” And so one might go on elaborating definitions. Ultimately some classification would have to be made. ‘This classification might be based on the distinction between objective and subjective values, or between instrumental and intrinsic values, or else a classification founded on the several sciences which would give such values as ethical, moral, ar- tistic and the like. While admitting the validity of all these classifications and divisions, there is yet another one which far better serves the purpose this work has in view. It is a classification in 14 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 136. 15 “ Ueber Annahmen,” 1910, p. 182. 16 “Valuation and Experimental Knowledge,” Phil. Review, Vol. XXXI, 1922, p. 334. 17 “ General Theory of Value,” 1926, Chap. 5. 18 Professor S. Alexander, “ Religious Values,” 1925, p. 15. 19 “ Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. 2, p. 410. MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 67 answer to a problem which has been well expressed by Professor E. S. Brightman: “Can we give a complete account of what religious values mean merely in terms of our psychological life, our actual or possible immediate experience, or does the mean- ing of our religious experience depend on our rela- tion to a real order which is more and other than our human life?” * In other words, is God necessary for the conservation of values? There is no violence done to the philosophy of value in classifying its various schools according to their answer to this question, for here we are not taking sides, but merely treating values in relation to religion. In this connection it may be said that there are two groups of Value-Philosophers, one holding that God is necessary as the ground of values; the other either ignoring God or denying His necessity as their foundation. 1. First Group of Value-Philosophers In his work, “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” which may be said to be the finest contribu- tion contemporary philosophy has made to the problem of value, Professor R. S. Sorley gives a very orderly and coherent background for values. He holds that the mind has a double interest, first that of interest in the individual, the other that of in- terest in universals. Natural sciences study the universals; the historical and moral sciences study the individuals. In other words, natural sciences 20 “ Religious Values,” p. 103. 68 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD study causes and moral sciences study values, be- cause values are essentially personal. There is ob- jectivity in both spheres. Ethical principles are as valid for persons as physical principles are valid for material things. There is no absolutely independent unit among the objects of experience; reality is known to us as a whole. The problem is to understand this whole, for each thing is a part of a great whole. Reality includes diversity. The problem then is how are - these diversities reconciled into a whole, i.e., the diversities in the realm of causes and the diversities in the realm of ends. The two meet in man and there seem to be in conflict. From this conflict there arises a difficulty which may be put in the form of two questions. Why do persons realize their ideals so imperfectly? and why is the causal system so indifferent to them? The answer to the first is Freedom; the answer to the second is Purpose. “‘ How is it that persons do not realize the moral order of the universe? and the answer is that moral values can be realized by free beings only; that freedom is necessary for goodness . . . andthatthe world would be a less noble and worthy event than it is if it did not contain the values which can be realized only by free beings, and therefore cannot be purchased except by the gift which makes evil possible as well as good.” * Why is the world apparently so indifferent to 21 “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 503. MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE — 69 our ideals? This difficulty “can be explained only by the interpretation of the world as a purposive system. ... We must postulate purpose in the world as well as freedom in man. ‘The world with its order of natural law cannot be explained from its present appearance only; not only its justifica- tion but also its explanation depends upon the final issue; and we must have regard to the ends which it is adapted to serve. ... The order of nature in- tends a result which is not found at any particular stage in the process of existence. It requires an idea of the process as a whole and of the moral order to which nature is being made subservient. It means therefore intelligence and the will to good as well as the ultimate source of power. In this way the recognition of the moral order and of its relation to nature and man, involves the acknowledgment of the Supreme Mind or God as the ground of all reality.” ” Although arguing that the “idea of value is fun- damental,” ** Professor Sorley does not say that God is good because there is goodness in things. “We have not argued,” he writes, “that God is good because we find goodness in man, but that he is good because we find the idea of goodness to be valid for that universal order which we are trying to understand.” ** In this same favorable connec- tion must be mentioned Professor E. S. Brightman, who is thoroughly unsympathetic to any theory of values which outlaws God. ‘“ Man-made values are 22 Thid., p. 503-504. 23 [bid., p. 487. 24 Ibid., p. 488. 70 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD not only unsatisfying, but they are groundless. God alone can give fixity and permanency to values and hence is to be defined as “‘ The Supreme Value of the Universe.” ” | The problem of the foundation of values has been taken up by another justly celebrated moral phi- losopher, Professor Hastings Rashdall in his two volume work: “The Theory of Good and Evil.” *® Well done in its criticism of psychological and ra- tional utilitarianism and the Kantian categorical imperative, it is less satisfying in its constructive part. His own theory is that goods of different kinds (pleasure, virtue and the like) are capable of quantitative reckoning and admit of being meas- ured in respect to their ultimate value. But there must be some ultimate postulate for morality, otherwise there is no reason for being moral. Now God is such a postulate. Moral values are in close connection with the doctrine of the love of God. “For God to be loved He must be thought of as worthy of love, and it is difficult to believe that He is worthy of love if He wills such a world as ours except as a means to some better one, for those at least of his creatures who are worthy of it... . In the love of God the two strongest emotional forces which make for Morality in this world find their fullest and most harmonious satisfaction — reverence for the moral ideal and love of hu- manity.” ” 25 “ Religious Values,” 1925, p. 16. “8 adved.j 4024. 27 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 212, 243) 267, 299. MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE 71 But when one asks what is the nature of God Who is so necessary for the conservation of values, we are surprised to learn that it is a God Who is not omnipotent.** God is not the Absolute, but “the absolute must include God and all other con- sciousness, not as isolated and unrelated beings, but as intimately related (in whatever way) to Him and to one another and as forming with Him a system or Unity.”*® ‘Thus the God Who con- serves values is not the God of traditional thought, but the God Who with us goes to make up the Absolute. Professor Pringle Pattison joins the rank of those who believe in the necessity of God for the conservation of values. He wars against finite per- sonalities constituting the final purpose or the cen- tral fact of the universe. “All claims made on man’s behalf, must be based on the objectivity of values revealed in his experience and brokenly realized there. Man does not make values any more than he makes reality.” *° But what is the nature of this God who sustains values? It is cer- tainly not the traditional notion, for that must be “profoundly transformed,” it being “‘a fusion of the primitive monarchical ideal with Aristotle’s conception of the Eternal Thinker.” ** His own idea of God is not that of “two independent acts, but the experienced fact which is the existence of 78 I bid., P» 237: Itid., Pp. 239 20 « The Idea of God,” 2d ed., 1920, pp. 43, 239. $1 [bid., p. 407. 72 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD the one in the other and through the other.” * God is transcendent, if you will, but this transcendence refers “to a distinction of value or of quality, not to the ontological separateness of one being from another.” * Professor Hocking says “ ‘The use of the God idea . . . will be the chief determinant of the value level in any consciousness. ... What- ever value religion has for man will be founded, we now judge, in the religious ideas . . . the idea of God.” And yet, God is not so important after all, for later on he writes: “‘’The world would be consis- tent without God; it would also be consistent with God; whichever hypothesis a man adopts will fit experience equally well; neither one, so far as ac- counting for visible facts is concerned works better than the other.” * Hugo Miinsterberg believes that Religion de- mands “ a progression over the limits of the experi- enceable.” ** Values are found in the region of the human will and value implies an over-personal, metaphysically absolute will. But this absolute will is not to be interpreted as a Perfect God for he adds: “Whether God stands above the things or lives in the things themselves, whether there is one God or many, remains a consideration of secondary importance.” * There is also a group of philosophers inspired by the Kantian “ Critique of Practical Reason,” who 82 «The Idea of God,” 2d ed., 1920, p. 254. SS Ibid. te ees 34 «The Meaning of God in Human Experience,” 1921, pp. 136, 139, 143. 85 “ Eternal Values,” 1909, p. 355. °° [bad.. p. 962. MODERN RELIGION —POSITIVE 73 believe that God is a postulate for moral values. Such is the idea of Professor Joseph A. Leighton, whose position may be summed up as follows: “The true meaning of postulating a God, ‘the animating principle of faith in God and the higher order of which He is the guardian and sustainer, is this af- firmative response to the very cry of mankind for the assurance or promise of the permanence of the life of most worth,’’”’*’ ‘This is similar to the views of Lord Balfour: ‘‘ Divine Guidance must be pos- tulated if we are to maintain the three great values — knowledge, love and beauty.” * 2. Second Group of Value-Philosophers There is yet another group of philosophers for whom an existent God is not necessary for the con- servation of values, and this for varying reasons, either psychological or metaphysical. An example of the psychological point of view is furnished by Professor Ralph Barton Perry in his “General Theory of Value.” *® Instead of starting with a category and then seeking for instances of it, he pre- fers to proceed in the reverse direction, by collect- ing instances and then distilling out their common characteristics. The discussion of value opens with the search for a term which will be broad enough to embrace the varieties of the motor-affective life, and this 37 «The Field of Philosophy,” 1923, p. 475. 38 “’Theism and Thought,” 1923, p. 248. 795926; 74 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD term is interest. Professor Perry here separates himself from Santayana for whom value is abso- lutely indefinable, and from Brogan and Dewey for whom it is relatively definable. His own theory is that the value of an object lies in its relation to interest, but not in terms of a peculiarly qualified will or interest. But how are we to conceive this relation between value and interest? Does interest direct itself towards the object, as the marksman directs his arrow to the target, or does the object draw the interest towards itself like a magnet? In the first case value springs from interest and would be conferred on the subject; in the second case value would reside in the object according to its capacity to command interest. Professor Perry inclines to the first view: “ That which is an object of interest is co 7pso invested with value. Any ob- ject whatever it be, acquires value when any inter- est, whatever it be, is taken in it; just as anything whatever becomes a target when anyone aims at it.” *° He believes that Aristotle was “ fundamen- tally mistaken when he said that the apparent good of a thing makes it an object of appetite, as its real good makes it the object of rational desire, and that Spinoza was right in asserting that a thing is good because we desire it and not vice versa. Since interest is constitutive of value in the basic sense, the theory of value will take interest as its point of departure and centre of reference. Interest is then analyzed biologically, psychologically, and 40 “ Theism and Thought,” 1923, p. 116. | MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 75 cognitionally. The foundation of interest is biol- ogy. This science has definitely established the fact that the living organism provides the context of interest for there is found in it a capacity of prospiciently determined action. The dog who an- ticipates a beating behaves in such a way not only to avert the beating, but also in a way appropriate to a possible future beating which the whip repre- sents to him. (Animals not only possess adapta- tion to environment; they also acquire it.) ‘This anticipatory response, along with adaptation to en- vironment and the like are kinds of interest. What is lacking is prescience and this leads one into the psychological consideration of interest. Psychology defines an interested or purposive action as an “ action adopted because the anticipa- tory response which it arouses coincides with the unfulfilled or implicit phase of a governing pro- pensity.” ** A chess player for example has a series of moves all ready in advance; there is in him a coincidence of the expected sequel and the govern- ing tendency. Interest may be studied not only in its basic relations, biology and psychology, but also in rela- tion to cognition. Interest is related to cognition inasmuch as the satisfaction varies with the truth of a judgment. This is very different from saying that the act of interest is the same as the act of judgment. “The nerve of the judgment is the con- nection between the index and the predicate, iS] btd.. p.0 209. “6 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD whereas the nerve of interest is the connection be- tween the predicate and the governing propensity. ” The conclusion which Professor Perry draws from this long study of interest is that “ All values are subjective in the sense of being functions of in- terest and objective in the sense of being independ- ent of judgments about them.” * Passing on to the Critique of Value, the author then asks the question: What is that condition of an object in virtue of which it may be said to be better or worse than another object, or the best or worst among several objects? In other words, what is the standard of comparative value? In answer he gives three irreducible standards — intensity, preference and inclusiveness. “ An object, wine, is better than an object, water: first, if the interest in the wine is more intense than the interest in the water; and secondly, if the wine is preferred to the water; and thirdly, if the interest in the wine is more inclusive than the interest in the water.” “ The intensive principle is emphasized by the hedon- istic school; the preferential principle by the hu- manistic school, or in the cult of rationality and taste; and the principle of inclusiveness by the school of moral rigorism. So much for the comparative values; but what will be the greatest good? “The greatest good will be the object of an all-inclusive and harmonious system of interests.” *° In the individual, for ex- 42 “ Theism and Thoughts,” 1923, p. 357 44 Tbid., p. 616. Oe bid. po 60S: 45 Ibid., p. 659. MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE = 77 ample, harmonious interests constitute a better person than antagonistic interests. In the “har- monious person ” there is subordination of a lesser to a greater interest and there is also mutuality of which love is a special case. But there is also such a thing as a “harmonious society,” the harmoni- zation of which is effected through universal love. * An all-benevolent will, or a benevolence of which all persons are the object, and which is each per- son’s controlling purpose, is a unique mode of life —an integration sui generis... . It is the char- acteristic product of a personal life in which all in- terests are subordinated to the love of the aggre- gate of persons, a will resulting from the catalytic action of universal benevolence within the chemism of that complexus of appetites and desires that is rooted in one organism.” *° This integration does not make a person; it is rather a benevolent will, “‘ everybody’s good toward everybody.” “It is the will in which it is reasonable for all to concur, not because of some occult property or authoritative sanction, but because such general concurrence is reasonable.” ** And this all-benevolent will, ac- cording to Professor Perry, is God. And this God isnot aperson. “The demand that God shall be a person is only the last of the anthropomorphisms by which man has compromised God by the desire to worship him. When persons live in accord the total situation is something greater than a person, as truly as an organism is something greater than a cell.” * 46 [bid., p. 685. 47 Tbid., p. 685. 48 [bid., p. 686. 78 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Professor Perry believes that such a concept leaves no room for such troublesome questions as: does the supreme good consist in utility and pleas- ure, Or in some deeper well-being, such as virtue, self-perfection, or saintliness? “In the conception of a happiness of all which is the condition of the happiness of each one, there is standing room alike for Stoics and Epicureans, for Kantians and Utili- tarians, for Christians and pagans.” * Naturally a further question arises. Does such a harmonious, all-benevolent and enlightened una- nimity exist? Does God exist, if you will? Pro- fessor Perry does not fly from the difficulty. Ina note to page 686 of this same work he states that he believes in Alexander’s emergent deity, which, of course, does not exist but is the nisus towards existence. We can therefore expect a like solution, and our expectations are not unfulfilled. Una- nimity should exist, is Professor Perry’s contention. “The best so defined is a hypothetical and not a historical fact. ... If I say that another world war would be a supreme catastrophe, or that a man having a stature of ten feet would be taller than any man now alive, I affirm what is true despite the non-occurrence of war or the non-existence of giants. ... Soif one asks generally what would be best, and is answered in terms of that which neither did, nor does, nor even will exist, such an answer is not on that account inapt or untrue.” ” In that sense God (the all-benevolent will of 49 “ Theism and Thoughts, 1923 p. 687. 50 Jbid., p. 688. ae ve ie ey a = —— MODERN RELIGION— POSITIVE 79 mankind) is helpful for values. ‘God defined as a will which would make all demands harmonious and commensurable if it existed, is so defined by combining the facts of discord and incommen- surability with the principles of comparative value. . . . God is that being whose nature may be judged to be highest, in the sense proper to goal as yet unattained but rationally binding on the will. God is a being far exceeding and surpassing man, and yet dependent on man’s moral effort. The world becomes divine through being willed to be divine, and hence its being divine is condi- tioned by the dynamic faith through which high resolves are carried into effect. God’s existence may in this sense result from belief im God, though not from a belief that God already exists.” ™ “The persistent danger of religion is that through excess of faith in his existence God should cease in any moral or intelligible sense to be _ divine.” °? Professor J. D. Mackenzie, in his “ Ultimate Values,” after rejecting the notion of Dr. G. E. Moore that values are objective, as well as the view of Sedgwick that they are purely subjective, in- clines to a compromise position that they are both objective and subjective. The difficulty with the first view — and here he resembles Professor Perry —is “that in every case of intrinsic value it seems to be true that a change in the subjective attitude produces a change in the object.” °° The objection 51 Tbid., p. 689. 52 Ibid., p. 690 and cf. p. 691. 53 “ Ultimate Values,” p. 123. 80 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD he raises against the subjective view is that “to be pleased we must be pleased with something.” Among other theories of value, which ignore God as their foundation, though not necessarily exclud- ing Him, are those of Meinong, Ehrenfels, and Urban. For Meinong value is the content of feeling when ~ this is mediated by a judgment. The measure of the value of an object is the pleasure and pain felt on the assumption of its existence or non-existence. The particular kind of objective, or what one feels should exist, he calls a “dignitative,” just as he terms what one desires to exist a “ desiderative.” Values have in other words that non-existent ob- jectivity which is so basic in Meinong’s system.” Ehrenfels adopts the psychological method like ~ Meinong. His theory is something like Perry’s. “Value is a relation between an object and a sub- ject, which expresses the fact that the subject either actually desired the object or would desire it, in case he were convinced of its existence.” ” For Urban value in the sense of ought to be is an ultimate category, under which in the last analysis, must be subordinated even the categories of exist- ence and truth.” Value does not attach itself uniquely to will. It | is not relative to any actual will either divine or human, for then value would become a question of existence and nature. He argues that the whole, 54 “ Weber Annahmen,” 1910, pp. 182, 183. 55 « System der Werttheorie,” 1897, Vol. I, p. 65. 56 “ Value and Existence,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 13, 1906, P. 449. ‘ 4 MODERN RELIGION — POSITIVE — 81 perfect happiness ought-to-be, which following Meinong, he calls an “ objective.” Urban says that when we know a value we need know nothing of being or possibility. Thus I may say that “ perfect happiness ” ought to be whether or not there is such a thing, or even though it would be impossible. Ideals ought to be, and they possess regulative value, even when like “‘ complete self-realization,” they are essentially unattainable; just as impos- sible fictions such as the “infinitely little” or the “ether conceived as a perfect fluid ” may have value in science.” To be added to this group, whose ultimate is the ought-to-be, there are others for whom value is purely human. Bertrand Russell, for example, as- serts, “It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature.” * Professor Sellars writes, “ Values con- cern man’s response to, and estimation of things. Though they are conditioned objectively by the nature of their objects, they are yet primarily personal and social, that is human.”” Finally, there is Dr. Walter G. Everett, who is so much wedded to an earthly ground for values. “ For the realization of all values,” he writes, “we are di- rectly dependent upon the cosmic Power.” * The world has outgrown the Palestinian and Medieval 67 “ Value and Existence,” Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 13, 1906, p. 463. “Valuation,” 1909, p. 16 ff. 5S “ What I Believe,” 1925, p. 25. 59 “ Evolutionary Naturalism,” p. 342. 60 «“ Moral Values,” p. 422. 82 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD idea of a double world — heaven and earth. “The two worlds of value are here and now—they are with us in each hour, nay in each moment of choice, as we consciously will to dwell in the world of knowledge or ignorance, of love or hate, of beauty or ugliness, of generous aims or ignoble passions. The feeling that what is won in this process is unspeakably precious is the true basis of religious reverence and confidence in the extension and growth of these values as the true ground of re- ligious faith and hope. . . . He who does not find God here is in danger of finding Him nowhere.” ® In light of the foregoing presentation two conclu- sions emerge: (1) There is a growing tendency in contemporary philosophy to present a religion with- out God. This is done either by denying God alto- gether, which is rare, or else by emptying the God- idea of all traditional content and identifying it with anything as vague as a “nisus” and as va- porous as “ society divinized.” (2) As a substitute for religion in terms of God and man, the majority of philosophers of religion offer a religion in terms of value or friendliness of the universe. These views are new; they are forcing themselves upon intellects and are meeting with favorable reception. It is not enough to dismiss them as “modern,” or “foolish ” for they are offered in all sincerity. It is the purpose of this book to pass a reasoned judg- ment on them in the light of history and the phi- losophy of the “‘ most learned of the saintly and the most saintly of the learned,” St. Thomas. 61 “ Moral Values,” pp. 427, 428, 431. ioe. PART Il 1€ Historical Origins of the ontemporary Idea of Religion PART II The Historical Origins of the Contemporary Idea of Religion CHAPTER III THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONTEMPORARY IDEA OF RELIGION HE problem before us is to account histori- cally for the contemporary idea of religion, which has been reviewed in the preceding chapters. The mass of historical data of the last four centuries, representing the raw material of this study, is capable of manifold and diverse in- terpretations. A survey of the democratizing movement in religion, for example, would not em- brace the same historical data as would the study of the development of dogmas. In like manner, a study of the origins of the contemporary concep- tion of religion will not include those elements which are foreign to the subject even though con- temporaneous with it. Our interest lies only in those particular and definite threads of the past which have been woven into the fabric of what is now called “modern religion.” Since there are no hard and fast lines in the evo- lution or progress of religious thinking, it is only 85 86 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD natural that, here and there, we should find cer- tain cross-currents of thought, cutting diagonally through what appears to be a natural line of devel- opment. When Newton gave his physics to the world, and Galileo his astronomy, there were waves of opposition, which probably confused their con- temporaries. But for us, these events are sufii- ciently in retrospect to permit us to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to outline the story of the development of the new physics and the new as- tronomy. So too, there are cross currents in phil- osophical thinking; there are tangents of idealism cutting through materialism, as there are reactions to Lutheran Protestantism among reformers them- selves. But from all these reactions, and cross cur- rents, there still remains a very definite line of _ thought which has brought its heritage to the doors of the twentieth century and enriched, if not cre- ated, our new ideas concerning man’s relation to God. Our task is not to trace the development of relig- ious thinking in a strictly chronological way, nor is it to localize the thought according to the coun- tries in which it took its rise. Rather, we shall seek out those spiritual principles buried in the past which have been germinal in the development of modern religion. We are solidaire with the past intellectually as well as physically. We are not only children of our age but we are children of every age. The principles born in acie mentis of our in- tellectual forebears is the germ of the “ spirit of modern progress.” THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 87 Spiritual principles — it is these we seek, for re- ligion, whatever else it may be, involves spiritual elements, which transcend the gross materialities of life. Spiritual principles are sought for still an- other reason, and that is because they are funda- mental. It is the thought which inspires action; “the thinker lives forever; the toiler dies in a day.” The Marathon racers of Greece are dead and for- gotten, but Plato and Aristotle live and are vener- ated. The mere search after the origin of the sup- posed conflict between science and religion, monism and pluralism, vitalism and mechanism, would al- ways leave something to be desired. Such history might explain the growth of the fact, but it would not explain the fundamental principles behind it. Now there are three fundamental spiritual con- cepts with which religion and philosophy are con- cerned. One of these belongs to the supernatural order, the other two to the natural. They are: grace, intellect and will. Grace is a participation in the intimate life of God; intellect and will are likenesses of the Divine Life. We are like God inasmuch as we have an intellect and a will; we are like to the animals inasmuch as we have a body. It is around these three concepts that the whole religious and philosophical life of man revolves. Other problems are subsidiary; materialism, for example, is only secondarily a glorification of mat- ter; primarily, it is the denial of the spiritual. The treatment these spiritual realities have re- ceived from the hands of thinkers since the begin- ning of the Christian era has been as varied as it 88 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD has been bewildering. The Pelagians and Augus- tine in the past, Fundamentalists and Modernists in our own day, are not agreed on the nature of grace. Bergsonians and Thomists have different notions of the intellect while Fouillé and Nietzsche have given us quite diverse conceptions of the will. It is necessary then (under penalty of never tracing out a coherent history of modern religious ideas) to have some fixed meaning for these great spiritual realities. A standard is necessary. If the car- penter’s rule changed with each beam even the pragmatist would not want to live in a modern house. If everything changes we should never know there was a change. Without prejudicing the case, but merely to have a certain norm by which to judge these spiritual realities, we take the definitions given them by the philosophia perennis. Whether or not a contem- porary philosopher agrees or differs with this stan- dard does not matter. He may disagree, but he knows very definitely with what he disagrees. The Scholastic meaning of these terms is taken as a norm, and if there were any other norm equally inelastic and permanent, it would serve our pres- ent purpose just as well, but there is none. The justification of this norm on the grounds of its logical consistency is quite another problem than that of its fixity, though fixity does make us sus- pect its consistency. The problem of its justifica- tion we shall touch on in the following section. A brief explanation of what the philosophia per- Ee THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 89 ennis and the theologia perennis mean by grace, intellect and will, will not only clear the mist of misunderstanding which hangs about these terms in the minds of many contemporaries, but will also serve to make clear the modern ideas themselves, inasmuch as they are reactions from the traditional notions; and we can never know what a man has fallen to until we know what he has fallen from. Grace Grace. Creation had for its purpose the com- munication of the infinite riches of Divine per- fection. And since the perfections of God have no limits it was impossible that they be fully represented by one creature. ‘That is why, St. Thomas tells us, God has multiplied and diversified creatures, in order that what one lacked in the manifestation of Divine Goodness the other might supply. The Goodness which is in God is simple, but it broke up, so to speak, much like the rays of the sun break up into the seven colors of the spec- trum when shining through a prism. ‘That is the reason why the infinite perfections of God are better represented by the totality of the cosmos, than by any one nature, however perfect it might be.* Just as the infirmity of our human language obliges us to multiply words in order to express something of the nature of God, which He Himself speaks in a single and unique Word; just as a teacher breaks 1 1. q. 47 art. 1. References to St. Thomas will be given through- out this work in this manner, i.e., without nominal reference. ele) RELIGION WITHOUT GOD up abstract principles into the crumbs of concrete examples for his pupils, so too does God break into fragments His infinite yet simple perfection, in order that our finite minds might grasp and under- stand it. Thus it is that the whole world is an ensemble of the participations of this Divine Beauty. If all things in this universe exist, it is because they par- ticipate in the Being of God; if there are some things with life, it is because they are reflections of the life of God; if there are beings endowed with an intellect and a will —like men and angels —it is because they are a participation of the Sovereign Intellect which is God. And yet none of these participations, however ex- cellent they may be, suffices to constitute creatures children of God; none of them permits man to become partaker of the Divine Nature itself. The stone, for example, is like man, inasmuch as it has existence; the plant is like man, inasmuch as it lives; the animal is like man, inasmuch as it is conscious, but there is nothing in the universe which is like man inasmuch as he is possessed of an intellect and a will. So too, there is nothing in the world like to God in His most intimate nature, in that by which He is God. By nature we are creatures, not children. If God, out of the fullness of His love for men, wills to communicate to us a participation of His nature which will make us not merely creatures but children, such a gift will be above the due nature of THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES QI man without being contrary to it.’ It will be super- natural in the strict sense of the word. It would be a “supernatural” act for marble, if it bore fruit; it would be a “supernatural” act for a flower if it Were conscious with the consciousness of the five senses; it would be a “supernatural” act for an animal if it were endowed with the power of reason- ing like an Aristotle or an Aquinas ... “ super- natural,” because these gifts transcend, in a vague way, the exigencies and powers and nature of these creatures. But, in a far more rigorous way would it be a supernatural gift for man, if God communi- cated to him the power of becoming a member of the family of the Trinity, an adopted son of God, consortes divine nature. ‘This participation in the very intimate life of God, is called grace and has been defined as “a supernatural gift of God be- stowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ for our salvation.” And the least gift of this Life, according to St. Thomas, is worth more than all created things. It is grace which makes the dif- ference between creature of God and son of God. The same learned Doctor tells us that there is more 2 Sic enim fides presupponit cognitionem naturalem, sicut gratia naturam, et ut perfectio perfectibile. 1.q. 2 art. 2 ad. 1. 3 Those who wish something more than a mere analogical ex- pression of the natural and the supernatural will find an excellent ex- position in the work of P. Garrigou Lagrange, “ De Revelatione,” Vol. 2, p. 198. 1. Natura in qualibet re est eius essentia, ut principium radicale operationum et passionum quz ei per se conveniunt. 2. Supernaturale dicitur pro qualibet ente finito zd quod excidit proportionem eius nature, et id quod superat eius essentialia, eius natu- rales passivitates, vires, exigentias, immo eius meritum naturale, eam- que gratuito perficere potest. 92 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD difference between a soul in the state of grace and a soul not in the state of grace on this earth, than there is between a soul in the state of grace on earth and a soul in heaven. Grace is the germ of glory; it has the potencies of the beatific vision within it, in a far more remarkable way than the acorn has the potencies of the oak within itself. Intellect * The intellect has two important characteristics: its realism, and its transcendentalism.’ Realism, because it knows things before knowing the ideas of things, it being only by a reflex act that it grasps the ideas. That with which it is in direct contact is the real. Transcendentalism, because of its power to know things above the sensible order. The intellect is spiritual; being spiritual it can be actu- ated spiritually, and the more spiritual the object * It is worth noting at the outset that intellect and reason are not syonymous terms—a confusion into which Professor Bergson hope- lessly fell. The intellect simply apprehends truth; reason moves from a known truth to a truth hitherto unknown. Intelligere enim est simpliciter veritatem intelligibilem apprehendere; ratiocinari autem est procedere de uno intellecto ad aliud ad veritatem cognoscendam. I. q. 79 art. 8; 1-2. g. 93 art. 4; 3d4 q. art. 1 ad 5; C.G. lib. 4 ¢. 11; De Veritate, q. 15 art. 1; Post Analy. lib. 1 art. 1. Intellect and reason are related as being and becoming, or as the centre of a circle to its circumference. Et sic motus comparatur ad quietem, et ut ad principium et ut ad terminum; ita et ratio comparatur ad intellec- tum ut motus ad quietem et ut generatio ad esse. De Veritate, q. 15 art. 1. The intellect does not explain, does not argue, it grasps. It knows an intelligible object as the eye knows a sensible object. Reason is related to the intellect as movement is related to rest; or as acquiring a thing is related to having a thing; as going is related to arriving. Furthermore, just as going and arriving do not mean two journeys, so reason and intellect are not two distinct faculties. 5 See Part III, Chap. I for a fuller explanation of these points. THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 93 the more adequate it is for the intellect. The fac- tors disclosed by experience do not limit its power of knowledge any more than all the colors of the rainbow exhaust the possibilities of vision. ‘The intellect never finds an object adequate to itself until it rests in God. Will The will is the faculty of the good as the intellect is the faculty of being. Everything in this universe has a curve which it must trace. The target for every one of nature’s projectiles varies with its na- ture; in like manner the propulsion which traces its curve and directs it to its targets, varies from thing to thing. Material things, for example, are directed to their end by laws of nature; animals are directed to their end by instincts, and man is di- rected to his end by reason. Pleasure is the attain- ment of the end for which a thing is created; pain is caused by being out of joint with that end. The will is that tendency towards a thing suitable to its nature. Desire is the mainspring or the impul- sion of the projectile and is founded on — first, an actual indigence, and secondly, a potential richness. Relation of the Intellect and the Will Whence does the will receive its end or its ob- ject, or what constitutes its target? It is quite easy to see that material things receive their end ® Quasi tendere in aliquid ad ipsum ordinatum. De Veritate, q. 22 art. 1. 94 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD from nature, and animals their end from instincts. But whence does man receive his? In addition to his own nature with its native inclinations common to the whole human family, man, in virtue of his spiritual soul, is capable of receiving the natures of other things within himself by an act of knowledge, knowledge being an assimilation and a possession of the outside world. Of course he does not possess the natures of these things in a material way, but in a spiritual or “intentional ” way, for everything assimilates according to its own nature. Now, since these natures or “forms” as they are more technically called, exist in man in a nobler way than in things, it follows that the inclination derived from these natures or “forms” will be more elevated than in the material world. In lower creatures where these “forms ” are natural, the inclination is called appetite; in man, where the forms are acquired, the inclination is called the will. Itis clear then that unless there was knowl- edge there would never be a desire —ignott nulla cupido. Knowledge is the condition of desire,” and the more lofty and noble the knowledge the more elevated the desire. If our thoughts are low and base we tend to that which is low and base; if they are sublime and virtuous we tend to that which is sublime and virtuous. Hence the necessity in the Scholastic synthesis for clear and clean thinking. Sound pedagogy cannot overlook this point. It * Bonum autem appetibile cujus ratio est in intellectu est objectum voluntatis. 1. q. 82 art. 3. ¢. THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 95 is not enough to legislate on a desire when it has passed into act; it is far better to crush the thought before it is desired. The proper therapeutic for bad living is clear thinking. We must supply the will with the right kind of projectiles, and trace for it the proper trajectory, for the will, by its nature, is inspired by the intellect. This brings us to the question: which is the higher, the intellect or the will? It is in answer to this question that we find the source of many of our erroneous ideas on religion.® A very manifest distinction must be made at the beginning: the intellect and will may be considered in relation to things above the soul in nobility, or below it. 1. In relation to things below the soul, in nature and nobility, the intellect is nobler than the will.? The reason is that the intellect and the will act differently toward material things. The intel- lect elevates things by knowing them, for it confers on them a new existence, but the will steps down to meet the requirements of the thing. The intellect in knowing assimilates, and since it is spiritual, 8 Absolutely speaking, the intellect is higher than the will, for the reason that its object is more simple. ‘Though the intellect must use the senses, yet in its movement toward the intelligible it leaves behind it as many images as possible, whereas the will carries them with it in its movement toward the object which it loves, that is, carries with it the affections of the sensible appetite. Even in a practical way, knowledge is imperfect as long as it carries subjective dispositions and prejudices with it. Furthermore, the object of the intellect is within itself, whereas the object of the will is that which is presented by the intellect. 1. q. 83 art. 2 c.; De Veritate, q. 22 art. 11. ® Quando vero res, in qua est bonum, est infra animam, tunc etiam in comparatione ad talem rem intellectus est altior voluntate. 1. q. S2vatt, 3. C. 96 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD it assimilates spiritually. Thus the tree endowed with a mere material existence is ennobled and per- fected when it enters into a knowing mind for there it becomes endowed with intellectual being. The will, on the contrary, instead of drawing the thing in to itself, goes out to meet the object of its love. Lovers always accommodate themselves to and meet the demands of the one loved, and for this reason love is often synonymous with sacrifice. And since here the object loved is beneath the soul in dignity, the will by taking leave of its spiritual demands and descending to mere material satisfac- tions would be degrading itself. For this reason, the intellect as far as material things are concerned, is nobler than the will and a practical conclusion to be’ deduced is that, in ac- cordance with the Thomistic position, it is much better to be a scientist than a worldling; for the sci- entist ennobles the universe by knowing it, while the worldling degrades himself by loving it. 2. In relation to things above the soul in dignity, however, the will is superior to the intellect.” Again, the reason is that the intellect and will act differently towards things above the soul, as they do towards things beneath it. The intellect in at- tempting to grasp truths which are difficult and above its capacities, splits them up, makes use of examples, concretizes them and brings them down to its own level. This every teacher must do who 10 Quando igitur res, in qua est bonum, est nobilior ipsa anima, in qua est ratio intellecta, per comparationem ad talem rem voluntas est altior intellectu. 1. q. 83 ad 2c. ae wee Tae a THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 97 has the task of presenting abstruse truths to others. The intellect thus runs true to its form, assimilating knowledge according to its nature, splitting up the simple and the abstract. But the will, on the contrary, since it always goes out to the object loved and tends to become one with it, is ennobled inasmuch as the object loved is nobler than itself. It becomes heavenly in lov- ing heavenly things as it becomes earthly in loving earthly things, forever manifesting the law that love tends to become like or one with the object loved. Thus philosophy disposes the mind for the accept- ance of the Incarnation, wherein God became man and like to man because He loved man. A practical conclusion from this doctrine of St. Thomas is one which he himself draws; namely, it is better to love God than to know Him, just as it is better to know the material things than to love them. Melior est amor Dei quam cognitio; e con- trario melior est cognitio rerum corporalium, guam amor. We ennoble things in knowing them; we ennoble ourselves in loving God. Hence the necessity for loving something nobler than our- selves in order that we might be perfected by that love. Not only that; our knowledge and our love should be harmonious. We should love what we know only according to the degree of nobility which that thing possesses. Thus we reflect the Trinity in which Knowledge and Love are in harmonious eternal balance—the Son and the Spirit being equal. 98 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD The origin of the contemporary idea of religion is to be found in the historical reactions to these three fundamental ideas of the spiritual life — grace, intellect and will. It is admitted on all sides that during the last four centuries there has been a gradual misunderstanding, dissatisfac- tion with, and finally the elimination of each of these realities, the denial being accompanied in each case by the assertion of some substitute to fill the void. The general principle which has been implicit in religious thinking for the past four centuries has — been the denial of the transcendent and the asser- tion of the immanent. In the normal order of things there is a balance between the transcendent and the immanent, for all life is an equilibrium be- tween the forces of within and the forces of with- out. The negation of the transcendent under the plea that it is an oppression and a violence to our nature, always has for its counterpart an insist- ence on immanence, on the plea that it makes for independence. The Denial of the Transcendent: By this is meant the tendency to ignore or disregard those spiritual realities which lie beyond the phenomenal world about us. What traditional thought has called transcendent (not in the Kantian sense) our contemporaries regard as extrinsic; and what is extrinsic is considered as an attack against liberty of mind and freedom of thought, as something which stands between us and our power to work out THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES 99 our own salvation, as something which is unnatural for the very reason that it is transcendent, and as a force whose sole end and purpose is opposition to the ego. Every mean which common sense regards as uniting the “ within ” to the “ without ” is looked upon as an “intermediary” which separates us from the real—such are ideas in the realm of knowledge and the Church in the kingdom of grace.” The Assertion of the Immanent: The denial of the perfectible as something extrinsic has as its coun- terpart the glorification of the “within” as con- trasted with the “ without.” The Immanent prin- ciple asserts that there is nothing which dominates man, nothing which measures man, no Supreme End toward which he tends. Man is independent as regards powers above him; he possesses license as regards laws which reason may press upon him; he is supreme and free as regards the choice of values. Nothing above man, nothing above mind, nothing above matter —these are the dictates and maxims of the immanent principle carried to its logical conclusion. This principle of the denial of the transcendent and the assertion of the immanent has been pro- gressively applied to the three great spiritual real- ities of all religion: Grace, Intellect, and Will. Each in its turn has been denied as “ extrinsic,” and a something foreign and exotic has been erected in its place. 11 Jacques Maritain, ‘“ Anti-Moderne,” Introduction. 100 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD DENIAL OF THE TRANSCENDENT ASSERTION OF THE IMMANENT Grace The Philosophy of Individ- ualism Intellect The Philosophy of Fact Will The Philosophy of Value The three great periods roughly corresponding to these three stages are the Reformation, Ra- tionalism and Romanticism. The problem of ~ each of these periods was formulated in terms of the ego. The Protestant Reformation asked the question: “ How am I justified?”; Rationalism asked the question: “ How do I know?” and Ro- manticism, “What am I worth?” The problem of grace, the problem of the intellect, the problem of the will were no longer formulated in the third person as with the Scholastics, but in the first. In _ a word, the history of Theology ceased to be Christo-centric and became anthropo-centric; the history of philosophy ceased to be theo-centric and became ego-centric. _ The three great prophets of the religious reform who have prepared the way for twentieth century ideas are Luther, Descartes and Kant. Luther distorted grace by making it extrinsic to an intrinsically corrupt human nature, and through his doctrine of private interpretation prepared the way for the Philosophy of Individualism. Descartes distorted intellect by making it intui- tive and independent of the sensible, and through his rational principle of the clear and distinct pre- pared the way for the Philosophy of Fact. THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES tor Kant distorted the will by making it blind, and separating it from the intellect and through his doctrine of the moral sense ushered in the Phil- osophy of Value. The combination of these three philosophies, — subjectivism, rationalism and pragmatism lie at the roots, we believe, of our contemporary idea of religion. CHAPTER IV THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM ONG before the sixteenth century the super- natural was the object of attack and mis- understanding. St. Augustine found it necessary to defend it against the Pelagians. In the year 1311 the Council of Vienne defended the supernatural against the Beguards and Beguins who asserted that every intellectual nature has naturally its beatitude within itself and therefore has no need of glory to lift it to the beatific vision. Later, under the Pontificate of John XXII, cer- tain propositions of John Eckhart were condemned because they tended to a pantheistic suppression of the natural in favor of the supernatural. But none of these errors ever succeeded in be- coming a tradition like those which arose at the time of the Reformation. The theology of Luther marks formally the first seed of a tradition touch- ing on the supernatural which ultimately bore the fruit of an entire elimination of the whole order of grace and justification. Luther, of course, did not draw his theology of the supernatural out of the void, for the very rea- son that no man is completely isolated from the time in which he lives. There were certain ante- 102 PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 103 cedents both in his life and doctrine as well as in history which prepared the way for it. The two principal ideas which formed the back- ground of Luther’s doctrine concerning the rela- tion of grace to nature are: 1. The doctrine of the essential corruption of human nature. 2. The nominalism of the decadent Scholastics. 1. Essential Corruption of Human Nature Whether it was Luther’s own experience of the invincibility of concupiscence, or the rational con- viction of the inability to perform good works which led him to the doctrine of essential corruption of human nature in no way affects the certainty that he held such a doctrine.* 1-A problem of secondary importance is the psychological elements which gave birth to his doctrine on concupiscence. Two principal theories are those of Grisar and Denifle who are divided on the priority of the idea and the fact. Denifle believes that Luther’s inner experience paved the way for the doctrine. Grisar denied that it did. cf. Grisar, “ Luther,” English edition, Vol. 1, p. 110 ff: Denifle, “ Luther,” French ed., Vol. 2, p. 391 ff. There seems much in the life of Luther which would indicate that he arrived at this doctrine through experience. (1) He often equated being in the state of grace with feeling himself in the state of grace. (2) He relied over-much on his own forces, much more than on grace, in his attempt to overcome the revolts of lower nature, “ Presumptuossimus justitiarius,” quoted by Janssen, “ L’Alle- magne et la Reforme,” Vol. 2, p. 71. (See notes 4 and 5 in Maritain, Les 3 Reformateurs,” p. 241.) (3 Added to both of these was a dedi- cation to work which took him away from all prayer. Maritain of. cit. pp. 10, 11. See Denifle, Vol. 2, pp. 433, 4343 also pp. 391, 392 for comparison of his ideas with Grisar’s on the question of the priority of experience over doctrine, also note by French translator J. Paquier: For Grisar; Vol. 1, English edition, pp. 110-117: Luther’s belief in its irresistibility is not to be alleged as a proof of his moral perversity. In favor of his thesis Grisar gives two reasons: — 1. Luther strove to overcome bad tendencies. 2. He wished that justification be crowned by the fulfillment of the commandments, 104 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD It is quite clear that in the year 1514 Luther held to the traditional notion of original sin, and upheld the freedom of man in face of his passions.’ In his ‘“‘Commentary on the Romans” he sacrifices this freedom a little, but insists that prayer will over- come everything. His sermons at this particular time are full of exhortations to prayer as the great help in overcoming the burning fires of concupi- scence. In 1515 he comes out very clearly and asserts that evil, concupiscence and sin are “in- vincible.”* Experience, he asserts, teaches us that.* This invincibility of concupiscence which “ can- not be removed from us by any counsel or work,” is another way of saying that human nature is in- trinsically corrupt. Grace, Baptism and Penance in no way affect this essential corruption. ‘The Scholastics he upbraided because “in their arbi- trary fashion, they make out that on the infusion of grace, the whole of original sin is remitted in everyone.” ° Grisar weaves the whole story of Luther around abnormal psychol- ogy. That he opened a fertile field for investigation is shown by works written since, e.g., H. Strohl, “ L’evolution Religieuse de Luther jus- qu’en 1515,” 1922, in which he shows that Luther’s boyhood was clouded by religious fear. P. Smith also in the preface to the second edition of “Life and Letters of Martin Luther” admits a “ neurotic vein” in Luther. Finally, R. Will in “La Liberté Chrétienne, étude sur le principe de la pieté chez Luther,” 1922, believes that Luther is a problem for religious psychology. 2 “ Werke,” Weimar ed. III, p. 215. 3 “ Invincibilem esse concupiscentiam penitus,” Weimar, I, p. 35. * Sic enim passio, ire, supberbie, luxurie, cum absens est, facilis presumitur victu ab inexpertis; sed cum presens est, sentitur difficillima, immo insuperabilis, ut experientia docet. Weimar, IV, pp. 207, 7, 32. 5 “ Schol. Rom.,” p. 108. PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 105 At one time, he says, he had believed that the Sacrament of Penance removed everything, and therefore in his madness thought himself better after confession than those who had not confessed.° But now he knows that sin remains even after absolu- tion. “Sin therefore,” he writes, “ still remains in the spiritual man for his exercise in the life of grace, for the humbling of his pride.... We must carry on a war with our desires for they are culpa- ble; they are really sins and render us worthy of damnation.” ’ If grace, absolution, and baptism do not affect the soul intrinsically, neither do good works. ‘Works, do not render us good, but our goodness, or rather the goodness of God, makes us good and makes our works good, for in themselves they would not be good, and they are or are not good in so far as God accounts them or does not account them good.” * | Concupiscence then, with Luther, is not some- thing which solicits the will without determining it, but on the contrary, is an essential evil of human nature which corrupts the interior man, his reason, will, and his appetites. In other words, concupiscence is original sin itself. Nothing can remove it or alter it intrinsically. It remains even after the administration of the sacraments. Human nature is essentially bad. ‘We are all a lost lump.” ® Sin and grace then co-exist in the same being, for 6 Omnia ablata putabam et evacuata, etiam intrinsece, [bid., p. 109. 7 [bid., p. 178. © bid. Pp. 224. ©. 9, Weimar, p. 343. 106 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD the human nature is essentially sinful, and grace is merely a covering for that sinfulness and in no way affects human nature intrinsically. A con- clusion which follows is that virtue and vice may co-exist, and Luther admitted this.” The teaching of Luther on human nature may be summed up in the following propositions: 1. Original justice in the Garden of Paradise was the natural state of man. What traditional thought called gifts were “‘ just as natural for man as to re- ceive light through the eyes.” 2. Now when man lost these gifts through the fall, he lost that which was natural for him, and forever after became “ de-naturalized,” so to speak, in this sense that his nature became intrinsically and essentially vitiated and corrupted. 3. Concupiscence which is the inclination to sin and which is “invincible” is identical with orig- inal sin. 4. Concupiscence remains all through life, so does original sin. Grace, Baptism, Penance in no way affect our intrinsic corruption. Hence every act which proceeds from our nature is sinful for reason that our nature is sinful. ‘“ We are all a lost lump.” 2. Nominalism The first source of Luther’s peculiar notion of the super-natural is to be found in his theory of human nature. The second source is to be found in 10 “ Vera castitas est in luxuria.” Weimar, I, p. 486. PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM $107 the Nominalism of the decadent Scholastics. Wil- liam of Occam is known as Venerabilis Inceptor Nominalium. “On theological questions concern- ing poverty he came in conflict with the Pope; his sentences were condemned by the University of Paris, he appealed from the Holy See to a General Council; was excommunicated in 1328, protested against the decisions of the General Chapter of the Order, and then took refuge with Lewis of Bavaria, the schismatic, whose literary defender he be- came.’ Now what were some of the doctrines of the Oc- camists? To their justice let it be said that they recognized that the natural and the supernatural order were distinct from each other. But the two principal doctrines which bear on the present con- sideration are the following: 1. Grace is not absolutely necessary; it is neces- sary only in the present condition of things. Any act of charity which we perform in the ordinary course of our mortal life does not differ essentially from any act of nature. It is not therefore anything above our natural forces.” 2. God accepts our supernatural acts as such, simply because He has willed to do so. They are not necessarily and in themselves meritorious. It is in the nature of no act to be meritorious, even though it be infused with charity. The merit comes from the free acceptance by God.” 11 Grisar, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 131. 12 Occam. 1, Sentences d. 17, q. 2, ad 1. 13 [bid., Sentences d. 17, q. I. 1 er eee oe SrA Pars 1 ce ne 108 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Luther was influenced by theology of Occam. He states that he belonged to the School of Occam, * and considered Occam as the most gifted of all Schoolmen.** He was very familiar with the Com- mentary of d’Ailli on the Sentences, and in his mar- ginal notes on the Sentences of Peter Lombard often cites d’Ailli under the name Cameracensis, Bishop of Cambrai. It is a little early yet to say definitely whether the whole of the Nominalist doctrine of Luther was derived from the Occamists. There is a growing suspicion on the part of some, in the light of researches by Professor Etienne Gilson, that Luther may have derived his Nominalism from a distinct Augustinian Tradition of thought which was current in his community. But whatever be the source, there is no disputing the fact that Nominalism colored and influenced all his teach- ings. In taking over doctrines from the Nominalists Luther magnified them considerably. Occam, for example, taught that it was possible for nature to produce the same effects as grace; it was only in the present ordering of things that it was necessary. What Occam taught as possible, Luther taught as a fact. Furthermore, the theory of acceptation in the Oc- camist theology, became the theory of imputation in the Lutheran, and was applied, not only to grace, 14 Sum occamice factionis. Denifle, “ Werke,” Weimar ed., VI, 600. *® Summus dialecticus, scholasticorum doctorum sine dubio princeps et ingeniossimus — Jbid., p. 183. fas ee =< es = 7 = a id PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM tog but to good works. Our works are good only be- cause God accepts them as such and imputes His goodness to us.*® This doctrine of imputation is found scattered throughout the whole of Lutheran theology. Even in his Commentary on the Romans, Luther en- deavors to show that imputed righteousness is the principal doctrine advocated by St. Paul. “God has willed to save us, not by our own, but by extrane- ous righteousness and wisdom, not by such as is in us or produced by our inner self, but by that which comes to us from elsewhere. . . . “ Again, he writes, ““ we must rest altogether on an extrane- ous and foreign righteousness.” ™ Since righteousness does not come from works, for works come from a corrupted human nature which can produce nothing good, we should therefore, and so much the more, cling toimputation. “ Our works are nothing, we find in ourselves nothing but thoughts which accuse us—vwhere shall we find defenders? Nowhere but in Christ. ... He has done enough.”** Man ever remains sinful, but the sin is not im- puted to him; he is accounted righteous by the imputation of something which is quite foreign to him, namely the righteousness of Christ. “The Christian faith differs from the faith and religion of the Popes and the Turks, etc., for by it, in spite of 16 Quia non essent in se bona, nisi quia Deus reputat ea bona. Et tan- tum sunt vel non sunt quantum ille reputat vel non reputat. (Denifle), Fecker 11, 196. 17 (Grisar), “ Cod. Vat. Palat.” 1826 fol. 77. 18 (Grisar), “ Schol. Rom.” p. 44. IIO RELIGION WITHOUT GOD his consciousness of sin, a man, amidst afflictions and the fear of death continues to hope that God for Christ’s sake will not impute to him his sin.” “We hide our injustice behind God as a screen ”; Christ’s merits cover us like the wings of a hen. Christ is our “ mother-hen.” ** The justice of Christ covers us, and when we go before God to be judged it is not the sinner He perceives but the screen — Christ. Our justification then is something extrin- sic to our sinfulness,™ it is a covering over that which on the inside is full of filth and corruption. In other words, we are really like “ whitened sepul- chres,” outside clean, but inside full of dead men’s bones. The imputation saves, and not righteous- ness. We need have faith in Christ, and despite our sinfulness we shall be saved in the next world and imputed righteous in this. It is just this kind of theology which exaggerated itself into that remark- able letter he wrote to Melanchton on August 1, 1521. “God does not save those who merely fancy themselves sinners. Bea sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still. (“ Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius in fide.) * These are the two forces which prepared the way 19 (Grisar), Weimar ed., p. 360. 20 « Finer muss des andern Schanddeckel sein.” Fecker 11, p. 334. Et ego semper predico de Christo, gallina nostra. (Grisar), Weimar ed., p- 31. Ecce impossibilis est lex propter carnem; verumtamen Christus impletionem suam nobis impertit, dum se ipsum gallinam nobis exhibet, ut sub alas eius confugiamus et per eius impletionem nos quoque legem impleamus. Jbid., p. 35. 21 “Tdeo recte dixi, quod extrinsecum nobis est omne bonum nos- trum, quod est Christus.” (Denifle), Fecker 11, pp. 114-115. 22 (Grisar), “ Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 208. Jae Mit? Rees, ee ee PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 111 for the Lutheran distortion of the notion of grace, viz., his doctrine concerning the invincibility of concupisence and the intrinsic corruption of human nature, and which may possibly have been derived from his experience, and secondly, the Nominalist influence which asserted that the supernatural was acceptable, not because it was really worth more than the natural, but merely because God willed to accept it as such. From this Luther derived his notion of the zmputability of the merits of Christ. Two consequences flow from these influences, both of which endure to the present day, but under different forms: 1. Religion ceases to be the sum of man’s service to God, but becomes the sum of God’s service to man. In other words, religion becomes anthropo-centric, instead of theo- centric. 2. The traditional notion of the supra-position of nature and grace gives way to the notion of their juxtaposition. 1. Religion becomes God’s service toman. Nom- inalism in philosophy denies that the mind can attain the real, and asserts that that with which we are in contact is only an effigy of the real. Medieval Nominalism is modern subjectivism. Nominalism in theology asserts that the divine never really at- tains the natural; it is imputed to it; it is something extrinsic to it, but never one with it. Now, if the mind knows not the real, but only its effigy, then, as St. Thomas says, in his Summa,” all knowledge is mental instead of real. The mind 28's) G. 96 atte % ad 4. 112 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD then becomes the centre around which the world revolves. This is a Copernican Revolution long before the time of Kant, it being in germ in the de- cadent Scholastics. So too, in the spiritual order, if the divine, the supernatural, and grace, do not attain the natural in its inmost being, then there can be nothing in the natural as such which can make it pleasing to God, but there is much in the super- natural which may make it pleasing for the natural. It was this very implication hidden in the theology of the Reformer, which his friend Staupitz pointed out to him in a letter: “ You see that the grace by which we are in the friendship of God is not that by which we please God, but that by which God pleases us and makes Himself agreeable tous.”™* It is Christ who pleases us ; we can do nothing, for “we arealostlump.” Righteousness is nothing intrinsic, and organic, entering into the very life of our soul; it is something extrinsic, mechanical, crystalline, remaining ever outside ourselves like a cloak. We cannot please God, but God can please us, and this in sO many words means that man and not God is the centre and object of religion. This of course is not openly manifest in Lutheran principles of reform, but the germ of it is there as Staupitz well saw. The explication comes later on and reaches its full bloom in our own day when ~ philosophers like Professor Alexander make man 24 «“ Tterum cernis, quod gratia gratum faciens non est illa qua Deo placemus, sed Deus nobis placet et gratus est.” Libellus de ex. eterne predestinationis fratris Joannis de Staupitz. No. 131, cited by Janssen- Pastor. PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 113 not only the centre of religion but even the very creator of God. 2. A second conclusion to be drawn from this theology is that of the juxtaposition of nature and grace. The traditional position was that nature and grace were related one to the other as perfectio perfectibile.** Nature had no claim to grace as intellect had no claim to faith. But when the super- natural did come, it did not destroy nature but elevated it, there being in the natural a kind of obediential potency which makes it passively recep- tive for just such perfection. Nature and grace then were related as a perfection to a thing which could be perfected by a gift. But with Luther, nature and grace ceased to be related in this way. Nature was bad to the core and irremediably so, while grace was just an imputation. One was related to the other as a cloak to our shoulders. In other words, grace and nature were juxtaposed one to the other; one is foreign and extrinsic to the other in every possible way. The supernatural order is merely an imputation and not a renovation. And in this juxtaposition of the natural and the supernatural is to be found the germs of all the juxtapositions from that day on to this: juxtapositions which blossom out into such things as opposition between science and religion, faith and science, authority and experience, mystic- ism and logic. History is full of this unfolding of error which began with the separation of the Head sae kt ae es ie ako Oe 114 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD and the Body of the Mystic Christ in which, as Mr. Chesterton has put it, “The Reformers went to pontifical man to pull off the mitre and pulled the head off with it,” and from that day on to this the world has seen a body staggering down the centuries without a head, finally satisfying itself to be just a mere body made up of the brother- hood of men, forgetful that we can never call one another “ brother” until we have learned to call God “ Father.” While it is not to be denied that a Reformation was needed, it was a reformation of discipline that was needed and not a reformation of faith. Some- what similar conditions presented themselves to Gregory VII, and he reformed not faith but disci- pline. The sixteenth century marked a double reformation, one of faith on the part of the Reform- ers, the other of discipline on the part of the Church in the Council of Trent. And it will always be the wonder of those who study doctrines as well as men, how certain thinkers can point to Luther as the great apostle of progress when his initial principle — the intrinsic corruption of human nature — makes all progress impossible. It is equally strange to see how he showed the world “true and lasting union with Christ” when Christ remained something extrinsic and foreign to us, like a cloak or a covering. Such a theory does little credit to man for it makes him irremediably vitiated, and little credit to Christ for it reduces His Redemp- tion to a mere nominal and putative one. Finally, it PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 1s is rather difficult to understand why Luther should be upheld as the great apostle of reason when he so much despised it. Even Professor McGiffert, who is not at all remiss in glorifying modern theology, has this to say of Luther: “He spoke with great con- tempt of the human reason, and denounced both schoolmen and humanists alike because they depended upon it; and while in this he was more extreme than his associates, the depreciation of natural reason in connection with divine things was characteristic of the reformation movement as a whole.” ** The Evolution of the Lutheran Juxtaposition. Luther became the source of a twofold evolution of religious thinking; one current which took up nature, which he juxtaposed to grace, worked itself out by the denial of the transcendent; the other, which took up grace, which he juxtaposed to nature, worked itself out by the assertion of the immanent. From the objective side one current tends to reduce grace to nature, the other to elevate nature to grace; from the subjective side one current tends to absorb faith in reason, and the other to equate reason and faith. Religion in the successors of Luther bases itself either on a faculty of nature and develops along rationalistic lines, or else bases itself upon the individual’s need of a divine power, and develops along the lines of mysticism and sen- timentalism. 26 A.C. McGiffert, “ Protestant Thought before Kant,” p. 113. 116 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Denial of the Extrinsic. The Rationalistic Current.” It was particularly the Socinians and the Armin- ians who developed the rational current in Luther’s principles. The Socinians took as their formal method the examination of religious truth in the cold light of reason. They accepted Sacred Scripture as the revealed word of God, but since it requires inter- pretation, this interpretation must be done in the light of reason. Reason is the organ by which man knows, receives, comprehends and judges Divine Revelation. Certain universal axioms and common notions (axiomata universalia atque communes notiones) are set up by reason as being uncondi- tionally true in the relation to religious doctrine; é.g., a just person does not punish a good person in place of an evil one; a person who is from another is not from God. In the light of these principles the Trinity was rejected as being opposed to simplicity; the pre- existence of Christ was also denied and therefore His Divinity; consequently, His Passion and Death were a mere example to us and a pledge of forgiveness, but operated no redemption of the hu- man race. 27 A hetérodox Catholic current manifested itself in Baius, for whom the supernatural order is reduced to the natural order; in Jansenius, for whom justification is not due to the imputation of Christ’s merits by faith (Luther), nor by obedience to the law (Baius) but in actual help of grace which enables us to overcome what he called the terrestrial delight or attraction; and finally in Quesnel, who combined the errors of both. Justification for all three was something accidental and even sentimental. PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 117 Socinianism did not last long, the political situa- tion of Poland hastening its decline. In 1658 the Diet of Warsaw prohibited its confession under penalty of death. It found its way into England with John Biddle (1622) and into Germany with Soner of Altdorf (1612). Holland prohibited all Socinian writings in 1599. But its seed was sown and in the course of time it became one of the important harbingers of Rationalism. What is important in the history of Socinians is the decline it effected in the belief of the supernatu- ral. Luther believed both in the power and the light of the supernatural, i.e., grace and the Scriptures. This sect denied the power and retained the light. The “ function of Christianity was reduced to the revelation of truth in order that man might know the way of life, which once known, it 1s in his power to follow. This estimate of Christianity prevailed more and more among the Rationalists. ‘The Gos- pel ceased to mean supernatural power given from above and came to mean only supernatural light.” * The Arminians who followed the same train of thought reacted directly against the unnatural cold decretum horribile of Calvinistic predestination, under the leadership of the one from whom they have taken their name, Jacob Arminius, Professor at the University of Leyden. But there is much more in their movement than this. In spirit it is a continuation of a current of rationalism. “The 28 A.C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” p. 20; also Hastings, Socinianism, “Ency. of Religion and Ethics,” Vol. X, p- 652. 118 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Arminians were infected with Socinianism. The immoral antimonianism taught by the more ignor- ant Calvinistic ministers in England as a direct re- sult of Calvin’s doctrine of election gave them an opportunity of appealing to mens’ reason, and the appeal was made to men whose conception of the Church and the Sacraments was lower than that of Calvin and who were therefore more prepared to accept a reduced Christology.” ” “ By its underling principles of equality and free- dom it was more perfectly fitted than its rival system (Calvinism) for a period of intellectual transition. Arminianism stood generally for the strengthening of the scientific temper and for the principle of moderation. ... It strove to emancipate exegesis from the thralldom of dog- matics .. . Arminianism was a protest against the mystical interpretation of the internal world as a sufficient exponent and infallible judge of the external.” *° The premises of Luther, the Arminians and the Socinians were the same, but their conclusions were different. Luther depreciated reason while the Socinians, and to a lesser extent, the Arminians glorified it. What was common to them all was the denial of the transcendent or what they called the extrinsic. Luther considered the Church as ex- trinsic, the Socinians and the Arminians considered 29 Leighton Pullan, “Religion Since the Reformation,” 2d ed. 1924, p. 138; A. B. D. Alexander, “Shaping Forces in Religious Thought,” 1920, p. 67. 80 Hastings, Arminianism, “Ency. of Religion and Ethics,” PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 119 grace extrinsic, and succeeding generations march- ing under the banner of a revolt which ends in the absorption of grace and faith into nature and reason, denied even supernatural light, and then the Scrip- tures ceased to be revered as the Word of God. Luther distorted the greatest of spiritual realities, namely grace, and the Socinians and Arminians eliminated it. It now remains to develop a sub- stitute for it. The Assertion of the Immanent. The Philosophy of Individualism. The separation and even the juxtaposition of nature and grace, it was said, resulted in a double evolution, one stressing nature, the other grace. The first developed into a kind of theological ra- tionalism which we have just briefly traced. The second current starts not with reason but with the heart and develops in the direction of the spiritual and mystical rather than the rational and human- istic. Luther sounded the keynote of the philosophy and the theology of the immanent in announcing his doctrine of the immanence of justification by faith, the personal experience of justification and the pri- vate interpretation of Sacred Scriptures. The gen- esis of these doctrines resulted in a kind of religious romanticism in which the individual be- lieved himself to be in direct communication with God Who reveals Himself to man by prophecies, miracles, visions and the like. 120 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD The forms in which this individualism developed may be reduced to three: Dogmatic individualism Mystical individualism Moral or pietistic individualism. Dogmatic individualism was represented chiefly by Luther as we have already indicated in treating his doctrines. In brief it was the problem of justification posited in the first person: “How am I justified?” This form of individualism is familiar to all under the form of private interpreta- tion of Sacred Scripture. Mystical individualism stressed the interior illu- mination of the soul without much emphasis on the moral or practical side. For some this communica- tion of God is transitory and manifests itself from time to time in visions, ecstacies, and such like; for others there is a continuous real inworking of God in the human heart.** Dogmatic Individualism asserted the right of the individual to be his own interpreter of Sacred Scripture. Mystical Individu- alism, on the contrary, held not so much for pri- vate interpretation as private revelation. God is now thought of as revealing Himself to each indi- vidual. Hence the Mystical Individualists were quite out of sympathy with Sacred Scripture as a rule of faith: it was too cold and impersonal. Rev- elation must be personal and intimate. No one now was considered as an interpreter of the Bible, but every man was his own Bible. $1 Pijinjer-Hastie, ‘“ The Christian Philosophy of Religion from the Reformation to Kant,” p. 209 ff. nee PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 121 The slightest acquaintance with the religious movements of this period manifests a general dis- trust of individual interpretation of Sacred Scrip- tures. But instead of returning to a mystic body, the Church, as the official guide on these matters, the later reforms had recourse to direct manifesta- tion of God to each soul. Examples of this tendency are numerous. Melchior Hoffmann for example, (1533) and his associate Stifel believed them- selves the recipients of divine visions which mani- fested to them that the end of the world would come at eight o’clock in the morning of the third of October, 1533. David Joris (1501- 1556), one of the Anabaptists of Holland, main- tained that in his early life visions and revela- tions taught him the speedy return of the Lord. Whenever he was asked to prove his doctrine by Sacred Scripture, he repudiated the challenge as human wisdom and philosophical curiosity, assert- ing that the doctrine was revealed to him immedi- ately from heaven. Hans Niclas (1502-1577) on the same divine authority, believed the world divided into three periods: in the first, law rules under sin; in the second, Christ rules; and in the third, Hans Niclas himself rules through love, for God united Himself to him and made of him a living tabernacle in order to proclaim His works to the world. Quakerism under George Fox, Robert Barclay and William Penn believed that the “ in- ward light” differed from the light of individual reason, and that salvation is effected through the light of Christ which does not come through creeds 122 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD or dogmas or even calmly, but by a sudden seizure which is accompanied by convulsive movements of the body, whence the name Quakers. In these individuals and sects it was not Sacred Scripture so much as revelations, visions, internal lights and ecstacies which revealed divine truth. There were other individuals who carried on a com- mon polemic against too high an estimate of the external letter and strove above all else to delve di- rectly into the depths of the Deity. One of the best known of this group is Michael Servetus (1511— 1553), the well known physician, and geographer, who after the fashion of Nicolas of Cusa, believed that God communicated Himself to all things with- © out which there would be no being or subsistence. The world is therefore identical with God in essence. Thomas Miinzer (1490-1537) went so far in his de- preciation of Sacred Scripture as to assert that “it availeth nothing even though one should eat a hundred thousand Bibles.” No less opposed was Sebastian Frank (1495-1543) who declared that all death in the Church comes from a literal under- standing of the Scriptures. Faith, he said, does not consist in adhering to certain beliefs as true, but in experiencing the facts of faith. Valentin Weigel (1533-1588) in his “ Dialogus de Christianismo ” presents to the reader a debate between a layman who expounds Wiegel’s ideas, and a preacher, rep- resentative of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Christ appears and decides in favor of the layman. The preacher, though fortified by sacraments, dies and PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 123 is buried in hell, but the layman, because of his reliance on direct and personal revelation is saved. Schwenkenfeldt (1490-1562) taught that man be- longs to the animal world because of his body and to the spiritual because of his soul. Hence what is external can only move the external man, whereas only God can move the spiritual, and this He does without intervention of a book or a dogma or a church. Carlstadt (1541) and von Hohenheim (1493-1541) though differing in expression yet held as a common denominator the notion that the eternal Christ takes precedence over the historical, and the Living Word over the Written Word. Moral or Pietistic Individualism: ‘The mere revelation or communication of God to the soul was found to be insufficient, unless it made for the im- provement of the individual and the perfection of the society. As Cornhert (1522-1590), secretary of the city of Harlem, used to say: “‘ Christianity does not consist in the lip, but in life. It is in the walk, not in the talk.” Theobald Thamer (1569) soon realized after his experiences as an army chaplain that the reformation doctrines, the overflow of sentiment and gushy sentimentalism had not im- proved the morals of the times. Johann Arndt (1555-1621) and Joachim Betkins (1663) lamented the passing of the true imitation of Christ. Uni- versities took up the reform for practical piety and made it their aim “ rather to save one soul than make a hundred scholars.” It was this craving for true piety which prepared the way for Pietism which 124 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD found its best expression in Jacob Spener (1635- 1705) who attributed all godlessness to the exag- geration of dogmas. Hence, in 1670, he founded Collegia Pietatis, that is private assemblies in his own house for pious readings and mutual edifica- tion. In answer to an attack by Lutheran theologians he wrote “ Theology of all Believing Christians and Upright Theologians” (1680), wherein he set forth the principle that while human industry plays some part in the understanding of the Word of God, its real sense is grasped by an I]lumi- nation of the Holy Spirit; and since a requisite for such an illumination is righteous living, no un- regenerate man can possess a true knowledge of God or be a good theologian. As a constructive force Pietism bettered morals, but as a disintegrating force Pietism was twofold: “it undermined respect for dogmatic theology in general, turning men’s attention from orthodoxy to life; and it reduced the traditional system to com- paratively low terms by distinguishing its essential from its unessential tenets.” In England the reform along practical lines centred chiefly around Puritanism. Heylyn gives the year 1565 as the actual date at which “these Zwinglian or Calvinistic factions began to be first known by the name of Puritans . . . which name has been ever since appropriate to them because of their pretending to greater purity in the service of God than was held forth unto them in the common 82 A. C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” p. 10. PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM 125 prayer-book.* ‘The religious principle which gov- erned them was the inner word of the Holy Spirit which was set above the mere external letter. “ As if the prediction of the prophet Joel were fulfilled, everyone appealed to the word of the Lord which he had heard: as to an immediate revelation which he had received, or to the Spirit of God which spake in him.” ** For the Puritan emphasis was laid on the fact that “it is not the head but the heart which makes the Christian.” * The whole Evangelical movement in England is also to be traced to this yearning for a more practical piety. Professor McGiffert in comparing the two, writes, “Like German pietism, English evangeli- calism was practical in its aims and methods, but it had great influence in the sphere of religious thought. It is a fact of cardinal importance that it took its rise in a period dominated not by scho- lasticism, but by rationalism. It was in fact, in no small part, a reaction against rationalism in all its forms. ‘This gave it, in spite of its kinship with German pietism a very different character in many respects.” *° 83 « History of the Reformation,” Vol. II, p. 421. 84 Piinjer, op. cit., p. 213 35 “ History of England,” Vol. 1, p. 81. Taine writes, “ His speech stuffed with scriptural quotations, his names and the names of his children drawn from the Bible, bore witness that his thoughts were confined to the terrible world of the seers and ministers of divine vengeance. Personal asceticism grew into public tyranny. The Puritan proscribed pleasure as an enemy for others as well as for himself. Ornaments, pictures and statues were pulled down and mutilated. The only pleasures permitted were the singing of Psalms through the nose, the edification of long sermons, the excitement of acrimonious controversies.” ‘History of English Literature,” Vol. 2, p. 323. 86 “ Protestant Thought before Kant,” p. 163. 126 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Summarizing what has been said above, Luther put an abyss between nature and grace, forever making it impossible for the latter to perfect the former. Perhaps he did not see the consequences of his principles, but his followers did. Some insisting on nature, such as the Socinians and the Arminians, rejected supernatural power or grace as extrinsic and unnecessary. Others, insisting on grace, such as those who developed mystical individualism with stress on interior illumination of the soul, and those who developed Pietistic individualism with stress on personal righteousness, treated the supernatural as natural and immanent. Luther brought the in- dividual into prominence by asserting his rights against a mystic corporation, and by putting into his hands the Sacred Scriptures which he might inter- pret as he saw fit. But his followers glorified the individual still more by making the individual a kind of Scripture inspired ‘directly by Almighty God. Though varying in form, the fact still re- mains that authority, Divine Light and Power more and more became immanent in man. He became free as regards a Church and free as regards a Scrip- ture. It is this tendency to emphasize immanence in religion which constitutes the Philosophy of In- dividualism. A new current cuts in through this development; in fact, it was already manifest before Pietism, and that is the current of Rationalism. Its development led to the Philosophy of Fact. CHAPTER V THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT ENE DESCARTES marks the beginning of a new period in the development of the contemporary idea of religion thanks to the new juxtaposition he introduced into the world of spiritual realities. As Luther juxtaposed nature and grace, so Descartes juxtaposed the intelligibile and the sensible; as Luther distorted grace by mak- ing it extrinsic to nature and not its perfection so, too, Descartes distorted intellect by making it ex- trinsic and independent of the sensible and not its perfection. The origins of the Cartesian system are to be traced to two influences, one belonging to the past, the other to his own times. Descartes’ relation to the past is not so marked, for he cared little for tradition or history. Nevertheless, it is true that the Protestant current did have some effect on him, for its doctrine of the immanence of spirit and experi- ence, which was put in the place of the living word of the Mystic body on the one hand, and the author- ity of Sacred Scriptures on the other, naturally grew into a species of rationalism. When the inner experience grew cold it was only a matter of time 127 128 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD when natural reason would be considered the inner light. Then, too, there was the negative influence of a decadent Scholasticism against which he reacted, the dominant characteristics of which have been summed up by Professor De Wulf: 1. The prevalence of schools, parties and routine. The religious corporations accept the hegemony of one of their doctors. The universities flock to a standard and it is not rare to find the choice of a philosopher determined by politics or intrigue. 2. The abuse of dialectical discussion increased. The vital doctrines of scholasticism were neglected or else corrupted. In the seventeenth century manuals compared matter and form to lovers who courted, married and divorced and con- tracted new unions. 3. The scholastics defend themselves badly or else not at — all, against the philosophers of the Renaissance.* Hamelin * has urged that very little of the philos- ophy of Descartes is to be found in the past, and in support of his thesis urged the following points: the philosophers of the Renaissance were generally | Pantheistic, ¢.g., Bruno and Patritius, and Des- cartes was anything but a Pantheist. The physics of the Renaissance was not conducive to Cartesi- anism, it being for the most part, qualitative and vitalist, ¢.g., Telesius with his twofold principles of heat and cold. Montaigne and Charron, the French skeptics, had little or no influence on Cartesian doubt except perhaps to give it a certain smack of 1 “ History of Medieval Philosophy,” Vol. 2, pp. 294, 5. 2 “Le Systeme de Descartes,” 2d ed., 1921. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 129 antiquity. Mathematics offered little, for Descar- tes himself avows that he did not read Viete until he was thirty-one, that is at an epoch when his geom- etry was already well formed. Though the past contributed little positively to his formation there was a spirit budding in his time which did much to mould his life and his works, and that is the scientific spirit in its experimental and its mathematical aspects. Experiment was the life of the age. Da Vinci called it the “unique interpreter” of nature; and under the inspiration of Bacon, such men as Rondelet, Visale, Aselli and Harvey used it in their quest for forms, essences and qualities. Mathematics, too, was taking new strides. Galileo has the honor of being the first to apply mathematics tophysics according to the spirit of modern science. But although Galileo gave ex- amples of the positive method he never developed the science of method, in the sense that he discussed whether one could substitute quantities for qualities in the physical world. This task remained for Des- cartes. Hamelin’s contention is probably correct, for none of the scientists of the time exercised a direct influence on him, but certainly the spirit of the times did. His system as a system comes from within, and here we pass on to study its genesis in his own mind. When Descartes came to study the relation be- tween the decadent Scholasticism he had learned in Fleche and the new scientific spirit of the age, he became conscious of what he believed was a conflict 130 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD between the two. In the first part of his “ Discourse on Method ” he tells us that the old philosophy is speculative whereas the new science is practical; the old philosophy was interested only in essences, forms and natures and qualities, while the new scientific temper concerned itself with quantities. In the face of this opposition between philosophy and science Descartes could see only one way out,® and that was by a completely new approach to the subject. Having falsely identified Scholasticism with the old physics, it was only natural for him to repudiate Scholasticism in repudiating the new physics. He made war on Scholasticism from the beginning to clear the ground for his new system. Scholasticism was something to be exterminated at all costs— ante omnia exterminanda.* Once Scholasticism was out of the way he laid anew the foundations of thought. The Aristotelian method proceeded from physics to mathematics, or more 3 Really there was another solution which was given by the Scho- lastics themselves before their philosophy degenerated, viz., to distinguish Physics or the science of pure observation from Natural Philosophy which was Physics studied in the light of metaphysical principles. The physics might change, but this in no way affected the metaphysical principles brought to bear upon it. The decadent Scholastics probably were the only ones Descartes knew well, though he did have a copy of the Summa with him in Holland. He forgot entirely the prudent experimental probabilism of the great Scholastics, Comm de Coelo, lib. a lect 17 (Licet enim talis) ; De Boet. de Trinitate q. 4 art. 2 ad 8; i q. 32 art 1 ad 2; Met. lib. 12 lect 1o—. 4 “(Euvres,” Adams-Tannery ed., Vol. V. p. 176. He felt dis- satisfaction with it even while in school (‘ Discours de la Methode,” Flammarion ed., 2d part, p. 13). Speaking of the philosophy which he had at Fleche, he wrote: “ I should like very much to read over a little of their philosophy, something I have not done in twenty years, to see if it would not seem a little better to me now than it did then.” A.-T., Vol. 3, 30 Sept. 1640, p. 185. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 131 simply from the sensible to the intelligible. His method was just the contrary; he proceeded from metaphysics to physics or from the intelligible to the sensible. He proposed a system which would unite both metaphysics and physics —the accord or union of which he believed Scholasticism could no longer effect. It is probable that this idea of a method came to him at Neuberg on the Danube in the year 1619, where “he found leisure to enjoy the com- pany of his own thoughts.” ‘There he dreamt of some great universal science which would unlock all knowledge, not only that of metaphysics, but also that of physics and science. The new method must be one of invention, he argued, and this rules logic out of court for “ logic is only a dialectic which teaches the mode of ex- pounding to others what we already know, or even of speaking much without judgment of what we do not know, by which means it rather corrupts than increases good sense.” * Logic does not invent, but algebra and geometry do.° But the trouble with algebra and geometry is that both are slaves either to figures or to symbols. Descartes gets out of this difficulty by employing algebra to express geometric relations, and in so doing invented analytic geom- etry or the method of expressing by equations the properties of geometrical figures. In this way he found what he called: “ universal mathematics, be- 5 Preface to the Principles; cf. ‘ Discours de la Methode,” 2d part, p. 13. 6 Regulz 10, 14, 15. 132 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD cause it contains all the elements which make of the other sciences part of mathematics.” * This was an important step in the history of mathematics,® and no less an important one in — furnishing him the clue to the method he was seeking. Since he had found that there was a generalization applicable to universal mathematics, why should there not be one applicable to the whole field of knowledge? Why should there not be a science of knowledge which would unfold truths in the same way mathematics unfolds them? The answer to this question is “ The Discourse on Method,” whose purpose he tells us is to do away with the sterile logic and syllogisms of the School,’ and to set up in their place his own method founded on mathematics “ which the geometricians are wont to make use of.”*® His first rule is “ never to ac- cept a thing as true which I do not clearly know to be such.” This is what may be called the “ principle — of evidence.” Nothing will be accepted except what is evident. But the Aristotelian categories of form, essence, the metaphysics, logic and physics of Scho- lasticism are not so evident —hence these are all condemned in principle. While this method is being applied Descartes excludes certain subjects from the application of his method. ™ 7 Regula 4. 8 Gaston Milhaud, “ Descartes Savant,” 1921, p. 124 ff. ® “ Discours de la Methode,” p. 13. 10 '1bid.; Po 14s os > Tbe, Oe Gs Miter ivLOSOPHY OF FACT ~~ 133 I. Religion is not to be included in the examination of reason, for truths of religion do not fall under its jurisdiction. We must believe them, not examine them. “ We must,” says Descartes, “seek neither to adapt them to our reason nor to adapt our reason to them.” ‘They belong to another domain. 2. He then makes a distinction between the sphere of knowledge and of conduct. He submits to a provisional ethics which is to be replaced by definitive ethics only when the science is completed. 3. More definitely and concretely, he will not apply his method to political, ethical and social questions. With these exceptions philosophy and science will be judged solely on the grounds of rational evi- dence. Anything which is not clear will be rejected. In the fourth part of his Discourse he proceeds (a) to reject anything and everything of which he has the least doubt; (b) to distrust the senses because they have sometimes deceived him; (c) to distrust reasoning, for sometimes the results of the positive sciences are erroneous. (d) It is even legitimate to suppose that an evil genius takes delight in making him err, even when he wishes to see the truth. As a general rule, then, consent to any proposi- tion will be withheld until it is manifestly clear. Is there any proposition which is not affected by this doubt? There is one, and only one. My senses may deceive me, my reasonings may be false, and evil genius may delude, but there is one thing of which there can be no doubt. If I am mistaken it 1s because I am, and this truth cogito, ergo sum, is “ so evident and so certain that the most extravagant 134. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD doubt of skeptics is unable to shake it.” This he takes as the first principle of his philosophy. From this Descartes immediately goes on to prove the existence of God, from the idea of perfection which he has and which certainly could not have come from experience. It must therefore be a “stamp left by the workman on His work.” ” The existence of the soul is proved in the same manner—a proof well known to those who have the slightest acquaintance with Descartes. The Juxtaposition of the Intelligible and the Sensible. So much for the origins, both extra-mental and mental, of the method of Descartes. But wherein does his system present characteristics which make it an epoch in the history of philosophy? What revolution did he introduce into thought which makes him one of the prophets of the modern idea of religion? Descartes distorted intellect, the second great spiritual reality, by juxtaposing it to the sen- sible. This is brought out clearly by recalling the various manifestations of this juxtaposition found in his system, vz., his peculiar theory concerning the relation of science and philosophy, his theory of knowledge, his theory of the relation between the soul and body and, finally, his doctrines concerning the relation between Theology and Philosophy. Descartes, it was said, failing to distinguish be- tween sciences of observation and Natural Philos- 12 “ Discours de la Methode,” p. 23. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 13s ophy, which is the metaphysical reflection on these observed facts, fell into the error of believing Scho- lastic metaphysics antiquated and useless because its physics was useless. He wished to avoid that conflict between the two, and strove to bridge them in virtue of a new philosophy, which really never effected linking the two, but rather their separation. His solution was to invert the Aristotelian-Scholas- tic procedure of beginning with Physics as the first degree of abstraction and then working up to Meta- physics. He chose to begin with Metaphysics and then work down to Physics, in other words, to begin with the intellectual, the “clear and distinct” and only then find his way down to the sensible. In his Preface to the Principles he explicitly states “‘ Phi- losophy is like a tree, the roots of which is Meta- physics, the trunk of which is Physics, and all the other sciences are the branches.” ** In other words, he “closed his eyes,” “shut his ears,” turned away from the senses, and “effaced all the images of sensible things,” and thus completely upset the nor- mal procedure of the human mind, which begins with the world of experience as the raw material for the finished products of the intellectual. After stating that his Metaphysics was a preparation for his Physics, he continues in a remarkable confession which does not say too much for his sincerity: “ But you must not say so, please, for those who favor Aristotle would find great difficulty in approving it. 18 Cf, H. Gouhier, ‘‘ La Pensée Religieuse de Descartes,” 1924, p. 12. E. Gilson, “ L’Etudes de Philosophie Medievale,” 1921, p. 1153 “La Doctrine Cartésienne de la Liberté et la Théologie, 1913. 136 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD I hope that those who read them will accustom them- selves unconsciously to my principles and will rec- ognize the truth of them without seeing that they destroy Aristotle.” ** In a word, Descartes hoped to attain the real inside himself by reason, in the same way that man finds God in himself through the infused gifts of the Holy Spirit. Instead of using the natural procedure of the human mind of mounting to the intellectual through the doors of the sensible, the very way nature intended, he used the artificial procedure of methodic doubt, introductory to the revelation of the Cogito, and pretended to grasp the spiritual without the preamble of the material. He enclosed himself in a fixed and impenetrable world, Divine Veracity alone being the guarantee of correspond- ence with things — and this whole method of begin- ning with Metaphysics and then working down to Physics, is the beginning of a juxtaposition of the intelligible and the sensible which manifests itself more clearly in his theory of knowledge. Jacques Maritain, in a remarkable study of Des- cartes,” has developed this juxtaposition of the intelligible and the sensible by showing that for Descartes knowledge is intuitive as regards its method,” innate as regards its origin*’ and inde- pendent of things as regards its nature. Ideas for Descartes are only effigies of the real; what is grasped primarily and directly is not the real but 14 “ (Euvres,” A—T., Vol. III, pp. 297, 298. 15 “Tes Trois Reformateurs,” 1925, Chap. 2. 16 Regula 2. 17 A-—T., Vol. VI, p. 112. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 137 the thought — Cogito.** If the sensible is not nec- essary for the origin of our ideas, if the term of knowledge is not the real but the effigy of it, then the intellect becomes endowed with the quality of aseity and is independent of things. He wished to bestow liberty on the intellect in the sense that he desired to free it from the determination of the sensible—and in doing so distorted knowledge. Knowledge is like entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven; it can be gained only by humbling our- selves. In the true procedure knowledge humbles itself by going down to the material for its deter- mination and forthwith is exalted to the realms of the spiritual. Descartes refused to humble his mind by going down to things, but immediately ex- alted it by appealing to Divine Veracity as a guar- antee of the real, and for its exaltation was destined to be humbled by locking the mind forever in the narrow corridor of a Cogito. Then and there began the great modern problem of knowledge: how pass from the mental to the real? “ This is the central problem of Cartesian metaphysics, namely, the pas- sage from thought to existence. Thought alone is indissolubly inherent to itself. How then, and by what right and in what sense can one afhrm exist- ences? ”*® “The Cartesian reform is responsible for that strange condition in which we see humanity today, so powerful over nature, so informed and skillful in dominating the physical universe, but so weak and disorientated before intelligible realities 18 A—T., Vol. VII, Third Meditation, p. 160. 19 M. Boutroux, Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, Mai 1894. 138 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD to which the humility of wisdom made us formerly an heir. To fight against bodies, it is equipped as a god; to fight against the spirit, it has lost all its arnistiss Besides the juxtaposition of the intelligible and the sensible in all the phases just outlined, there are yet other juxtapositions among which may be men- tioned that of the body and the soul, which is simply another way of putting that of the intelligible and the sensible. For Descartes, the essence of the soul was thought, and the essence of matter was ex- tension. This necessarily brought up the problem of the relation between the two, since their natures are so diverse. It is the problem of knowledge in psychological dress. The Palatine Princess felt the difficulty —in those days princesses were philoso- phers —and she asked Descartes how the one could ever act on the other. Descartes finally offers ex- cuse that he has to go to Utrecht whither he was summoned to explain something that he wrote ‘“‘ about one of their ministers. This compels me to end now, as I have to try to find a way of getting free of their chicaneries as soon as possible.” ™ And the problem which really was an illegitimate one from the beginning has never since been solved. A final form of the juxtaposition of the intelligible and the sensible is to be found in his peculiar ideas concerning the relationship between theology and reason, or faith and science. Theology for Des- cartes is equivalent to the unintelligible. “ Re- 20 Jacques Maritain, of. cit., p. 115. 21 “Tettres de Descartes,” Cousin ed., Vol. IX, p. 127. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 139 vealed truths are above our intelligence, and I would not dare submit them to the feebleness of my reason: I believe that to undertake their examination and to succeed, it would be necessary to have some ex- traordinary assistance of heaven and to be some- thing more than man.”” In other words, the theological is the irrational for Descartes ;* the infinite is beyond the intelli- gible —all of which is implicit agnosticism. He believes that he honors God by placing Him beyond the sphere of the rational and the intelligible. In like manner he reduces to a minimum the rational preparation of faith, and the value of the proofs of rational credibility, thus proving that philosophical rationalism tends to become a kind of religious fideism. It is a remarkable thing that Descartes continually speaks of the God of the philosophers, but never the God of Love. He speaks of the world, but is brief concerning creation and when he comes to the problem of man, his origin and destiny, he is silent.** ‘This juxtaposition of theology and phi- losophy is later on taken up by Spinoza who writes, “The end of philosophy is truth; faith is nothing but obedience and piety.” ” The Cogito of Descartes thus displaced the axis of philosophy. Levy-Bruhl writes: “'To the an- cients and to the scholastics (theology excepted), 22 ¢ Discours,” rst part. 23 « Principes,” I, XXVI. 24 H. Gouhier, “ La Pensée Religieuse de Descartes,” 1924, p. 194. Jacques Maritain, “L’Esprit de la Philosophie Moderne,” Revue des Sciences Phil. et Theol., t. XXIV, 1914, p. 614. 25 Tract., Theol. Pol. cap. XIV. 140 +RELIGION WITHOUT GOD the thinking mind appeared inseparable from the universe, regarded as the object of its thought, just as the soul itself was conceived to be the substantial form of the living body. According to Descartes, on the contrary, the existence of a thinking mind, far from being dependent on any other existing thing, is the essential condition of every other ex- istence conceivable to us: “ for if I am certain of the existence of anything but myself, with far better reason am I certain that I, who have that thought, am in existence. The only reality I cannot possibly question is that of my own thought.” * Evolution of the Cartesian Juxtaposition™ Descartes, in the application of his method, care- fully avoided the application of his method to 26 « Modern Philosophy in France,” p. 20. 27 A. C. McGiffert, “‘ The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” 1921. A. C. McGiffert, “ Protestant Thought before Kant,” 1915. Leckey, ‘‘ History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rational- ism in Europe,” 1865. Bernhard Piinjer, “‘ History of the Christian Philosophy of Relig- ion from the Reformation to Kant,” trans. from the German by Robert Flint, 1887. Robertson, “A Short History of Free Thought, Ancient and Modern,” 2d ed., 1906. Hunt, “ Religious Thought in England in the 17th Century,” 1870. Leslie Stephen, “ History of English Thought in the 18th Century,” 1876. "Mark Pattison, ‘“‘ Essays and Reviews,” 1862, Tendencies of Relig- ious Thought in England, 1688-1750. Héffding, “‘ History of Modern Philosophy.” A. V. G. Allen, “ The Continuity of Christian Thought,” 1895. J. A. Dorner, “ History of Protestant Theology,” 1871. Otto Pfliederer, “The Development of Theology,” 1890. John Cairns, “ Unbelief in the 18th Century,” 1881. John Oman, “ The Problem of Faith and Freedom in the Last Two Centuries,” 1906. pee _- THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT I4I Faith, Morals, and Religion. But his successors were not of the same opinion. ‘The precaution he had taken to ‘ set apart’ the truths of faith was not equivalent to a treaty of peace with theology, defini- tive and accepted on both sides. It was merely a truce and destined soon to be broken.” ” The method of evidence and the ‘clear and dis- tinct’ became the method of Rationalism. ‘“ Ra- tionalism ultimately made its home in Protestant- ism rather than in the older communion, and not because the former was in principle more tolerant of divergent views, but because the divisions within the Protestant ranks made greater tolerance a necessity.” ” Two currents flow from Descartes: (1) The de- nial of the extrinsic which attaches itself to the intellectual side of the Cartesian juxtaposition and ends in a rationalized Christianity — a Christianity without the supernatural. (2) The assertion of the immanent which corresponds to the sensible side of the Cartesian juxtaposition and ends in an exalta- tion of the fact of the sensible or material universe as the limit and apex of human knowledge. We do not mean to assert that Descartes was directly J. Leland, “A View of the Principal Deistical Writers,” 5th ed., 1837. F. Vigoroux, “Les Livres Saints et la Critique Rationaliste,” Vol. II, 1901. Ludovic Carrau, ‘‘ La Philosophie Religieuse en Angleterre,” 1888. Lechler, ‘‘ Geschichte des Englischen Deismus,”? 1841. 28 Lucien Levy-Bruhl, “ Modern Philosophy in France,” 1899, p- 109. 29 A.C. McGiffert, “‘ Protestant Thought before Kant,” p. 187. 142. RELIGION WITHOUT GOD responsible or even the principal inspiration of Philosophy and Theology which followed him, but merely this: Descartes, for the first time in modern thought clearly expressed a principle of Rationalism. Though his followers did not all adhere to it in principle, they did adhere to it in spirit. In this sense Descartes is taken as the prophet of the Philosophy of Fact. 1. The Denial of the Extrinsic — Rationalism: The Cartesian method of the application of the prin- ciple of evidence to the sphere of knowledge broad- ened into the application of reason to all the departments of thought, both philosophical and theological. Just as Luther’s denial of grace in the realm of theology ended in the denial of super- natural power with the Socinians and the Armi- nians, so too, Descartes’ distortion of intellect in the sphere of philosophy, ends in the denial not only of supernatural power but also supernatural Jight, there being nothing more left to revealed religion than that which reason bestows on it or concedes to it. Revealed religion at first was denied only indi- rectly by the early Deists, whose rationalism was inspired by Protestant individualism as much as by Cartesian method. Herbert of Cherbury (1583- 1648), for example, began with a rationalist prin- ciple that God’s perfection demands that salvation be open to all, and since this cannot be given in any particular system, which, by its nature, is not open to all, it follows that the means of salvation must be implanted in human reason whereby they will be THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 143 accessible in all times, places, and circumstances. He then proceeded to draw out five propositions based on reason which constitute the norm of natu- ral religion. Thomas Browne (1605-1682) in his “Religio Medici” anticipates Harnack in the spurious distinction between the religion of primi- tive Christianity and the product of its adulteration through ecclesiasticism. Charles Blount (1654- 1693) with unbecoming grace turns Genesis into ridicule and in his “‘ Oracles of Reason” adds two more propositions to the list of Cherbury, which constitute the essence of natural religion. John Locke (1632-1704), while admitting the possibility of human reason to prove the existence of God, nevertheless, in speaking of revelation sets up cer- tain caveats to guard us against the too easy accept- ance of pretended revelations.” “Whatever God has revealed is certainly true; but whether it be a divine revelation or not, reason must judge.” Locke, however, had wisdom enough to see that the Deists were illogical in setting up a catalogue of fundamentals. While the method of Locke was Christian, it was empirical in its results. ‘There is no doubt that Descartes exercised a profound influence on him. John Toland (1670-1722) ra- tionalized revelation in his “ Christianity not Mys- terious,” by denying there was anything above reason in it. Faith, for him, is merely a conviction based on previous knowledge and, therefore, reduci- ble to reason. In his “Letters” to Serena, the 80 « Essays on Human Understanding,” Bk. 4, chap. 18, 10, 15. 144 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Queen of Prussia, there was sufficient incredulity to attract the attention ‘of Baron d’ Holbach who trans- lated the “ Letters” into French to serve the cause of impiety in France. In this work Toland states that the doctrine of future life and the immortal- ity of the soul are “Egyptian fictions.” He wrote against Spinoza, but later became a pantheist, using the term for the first time in his “ Pantheisticon.” Finally, there may be mentioned among many others the Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), who declared in his introduction to “‘ Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,” that his object is to illustrate the Stoic Principle: everything is opin- ion. In the name of opinion he made war on Christianity and the Sacred Scripture, but at the same time asked tolerance for all, for we can never be sure when we possess the truth. The attack against Revelation and the super- natural became more effective when writers chose to attack its particular tenets. An important stage in the rise of rationalism is reached in Collins and Woolston who denied respectively the probative power of both prophecies and miracles. Anthony Collins (1676-1729), in his “ Essay Concerning the Use of Reason in Propositions, the Evidence Whereof Depends upon Human _ Testimony,” sought to undermine all evidence from prophecy, pointing out what he believed was a lack of corre- spondence between prophecy and fulfillment. Taking as his rule, after the Cartesian fashion, the proposition that the assent to any proposition THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 145 depends upon the evidence with which it presents itself to the human mind, Collins deduces more geometrico, two propositions concerning Sacred Scripture: (a) Everything in Sacred Scripture which interpreted literally shocks our sense, should be interpreted allegorically. (b) All expressions which are not in accord with our manner of looking upon God should be rejected as interpo- lations. Collins, forgetting the distinction between what is above reason and what is contrary to reason, applied his principles and concluded that Sacred Scripture was not inspired. Thus he extinguished the one light the Socinians left burning. In 1713 he published his “ Discourse on Free Thinking Occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect Called Freethinkers,” which is a panegyric on the license of thought. Men have fallen in a multitude of errors; there have been false revela- tions; hence the best attitude to take is that of atheism, for atheism is better than superstition. His argument was very much like saying that be- cause there is counterfeit money in the world there- fore there is no good money. Naturally these attacks in a Protestant country produced great commotion. Among those who rose up against him were Bentley, who published two volumes in 1713 under the title, “‘ Remarks upon the Discourses of Free Thinking.” Bentley treats Col- lins as a knave and a fool. Swift also attacked with that irony of which he possessed the secret. One 146 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD of Swift’s main arguments is that of misanthropy. All men are fools, therefore freethinking is an absurdity. Freethinkers are knaves as well as fools, and hence their conclusions are contemptible. “The bulk of mankind is as well qualified for flying as for thinking.” ** A contemporary said: “If any man deserved to be denied the common benefits of air and water, it is the author of the discourse of freethinking.” Leslie Stephen says of him, “‘ He was destined like his great predecessor (Newton) to illustrate the truth that a man may be an eminent mathematician and a childish theologian.” ” Thomas Woolston (1669-1733) applied the al- legorical interpretation to miracles, after the fash- ion of Collins, and by the same token banished them from religion. In 1705, he published “The Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion against the Jews and Gentiles Revived.” The Old Apology for him was the allegorical interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Why are there so many dissensions in the Christian body today? It is be- cause up to this time Sacred Scripture has been interpreted literally instead of allegorically. Moses was purely an allegorical person; miracles in the Pentateuch are merely types; the changing of water into wine is the symbolic destruction of the Jews in a bloody war under Titus. The plague of frogs over Egypt symbolizes the Jews dispersed over the world after the fall of Jerusalem. Collins never 81 Swift, 1859 ed., Vol. 2, p. 19 82 “ History of English rT hoaahes in the 18th Century,” Vol. 1, pe 218, THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 147 attempted to prove that prophecies were absurd, but merely that prophecies did not refer to the nar- rative. Woolston, in asserting that Christ’s miracles were allegorical, was saying that actually they did mot occur. His style is bitter and acrimonious, violent and injurious. Leslie Stephen says of him: “He is a mere buffoon jingling his cap and bells in a sacred shrine, and his strange ribaldry is painful even to those for whom the supernatural glory of the temple has long utterly faded away.” * No one up to the present had attacked Revela- tion and Sacred Scripture in its entirety. Locke had proclaimed the autonomy of reason; Toland had substituted Pantheism, and Shaftesbury, skep- ticism for Christianity. Collins wrote against prophecies and Woolston against miracles, but it remained for Matthew Tindal (1657-1733) to at- tack the Holy City from all sides. Pope says of him in his Dunciad: “'Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer.” In 1730 Tindal published his best known work, “Christianity as Old as Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature.” ‘This work is the negation of the supernatural origin of the Bible as well as all Revelation. It can be summed up as follows: Natural religion is per- fect; all other religions, Christianity included, are true religions only in the sense that they are iden- tical with the natural religion. He believed that Our Divine Lord promulgated a SF Ops tit. MOL ap Pe 29 2s 148 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD natural religion, and for that reason, he speaks in the title of his work of the “ Republication of the Law of Nature.” “The Bible is not inspired; it is full of contradictions, and the story of Adam and Eve is absurd.” Voltaire said of him that “he was the most intrepid supporter of natural religion.” * The rationalist onslaught against the super- natural was yet to be carried on by Thomas Morgan and Thomas Chubb who directed their attacks against the Old and the New Testament respec- tively. Four years after the death of Tindal, Morgan, his disciple, anonymously made war on the Old Testament, declaring that all revelation is the invention of theologians. It is interesting to com- - pare some of our “ new” ideas concerning God and Christ with those of Morgan. The modern idea, for example, of looking upon Jehovah as a local God of the Hebrews and an inferior kind of deity is to be traced to Thomas Morgan. He anticipated Eichhorn and Paulus in asserting that Old Testa- ment miracles were myths, and long before the Tubingen school set forth the Petrine and Pauline parties. Thomas Chubb (1679-1746) concentrated his attacks on the New Testament — rather an auda- 84 In twenty years 106 refutations were written against him. The most important of all is “Scripture Vindicated,” written by Daniel Waterford, which contains a fine defense of the Divinity of Christ and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture. Another remarkable work was written by J. Foster, “ The Usefulness, Truth and Excellence of the Christian Revelation,” 1731, in which the author proves the authenticity, credibility and integrity of the New Testament. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 149 cious task for one who knew only English. Vol- taire says of him, “He thought the religion of Jesus Christ was the religion of Thomas Chubb, but it was really the religion of Jesus Christ.” Dia- bolical possessions were explained as natural maladies; the Bible was no more inspired than the Koran; religion is a human creation and all relig- ions are equally true. With the supernatural eliminated, and all relig- ions reduced to a purely natural basis, it remained for David Hume (1711-1776) to inaugurate the idea of evolution in religion, so much a part of our modern history of religion. Polytheism was a primitive form of religion, according to Hume, and deism and theism are the fruits of the reflection of centuries. In his “ Essay on Miracles” he attacked the probative value of miracles, not disproving them, nor showing their impossibility as such, but only their impossibility of serving as a guarantee of the authority of a Divine Messenger. With Hume, deism dies and impiety takes its place. The English influence now penetrates into France and Germany. ‘Thus England pays back its debt to France, which had given it the rational- ism of Descartes. In France the reaction is one of impiety, in Germany it is one of theological ration- alism. Among the French may be mentioned Peter Bayle— the “ attorney general of scepticism,” the author of the “ Dictionary,” an arsenal for much of France’s rationalism; Bernard Fontenelle, who looked upon mathematics as the “‘ universal instru- 150 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD ment,” and held the theory that the difference in peoples from one time to another is due to the necessary succession of discoveries, the theory that made Comte look upon him as the precursor of modern times; Voltaire, the scoffer whose whole life was dedicated to the destruction of Christianity, and who, in foolish pride, boasted that “it took twelve men to found that infamy (Christianity), but it will take only one to destroy it.” Voltaire, at the end of his life, speaking of the dissolution of Christianity, said: “‘] have done more in my time than Luther and Calvin.” Finally, there is Jean Jacques Rousseau, the apostle of sentiment and the exponent of romanticism.” In Germany, English Deism combined with French impiety and Wolffianism to produce its theological rationalism. Among the leaders may be mentioned Charles Wolff, who sought by the mathematical method to reduce theology and phil- osophy to a unit; Johann Salmon Semler, with his 171 works, only one of which reached a second edi- tion; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who introduced religious indifference in Germany with his theory of unlimited progress, and who published the “ Frag- ments of Wolfenbiittel ” as of an unknown author, when he knew them to have been the work of Reim- arus and the gift of his daughter Elsie. Finally, there is Frederick Nicolai, the German Diderot, in the sense that he began the publication of a Uni- 85 The influence of Rousseau upon this whole movement is quite marked, but from another point of view. Cf. Leon Noel, “ La Philoso- phie Romantique,” Brussels, 1927. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT I51I versal Library wherein the Bible was explained ac- cording to reason. Thus the application of the principle of reason to revelation completed the work Luther had begun. For him, only the Church was “ extrinsic,” and was therefore to be denied. For his immediate follow- ers, and for the Socinians and the Arminians, su- pernatural power or grace is “extrinsic” and un- necessary, and now, thanks to the principle of the rationally clear and distinct, even the supernatural light — Sacred Scripture— has gone out. All re- vealed religion is gone now; reason has done its work. It remains for another philosopher to show that even reason is powerless. Il. The Assertion of the Immanent. The Philosophy of Fact. Another current flows from the sensible side of the Cartesian juxtaposition and ends in the asser- tion of the Philosophy of Fact. . In the “ Essay on the Human Understanding” Locke proposed to approach the discussion of phil- osophical problems from the basis of the analysis of ideas, a psychological method. He hoped to destroy false pretensions about knowledge by showing just how ideas originate. This was a very natural prob- lem in the light of Descartes’ answer to a similar question. He immediately begins by rejecting the innate ideas of Descartes. ‘‘ When men have found some general propositions that could not be doubted of as soon as understood, it was a short and very 152 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD easy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled innate.” * Having disposed of innate ideas, and having proven that the mind, in the words of Aristotle, is nothing but a tabula rasa, he proceeds in his second book to show how ideas originate. For Locke, the whole content of consciousness springs partly from outer experience and partly from inner experience — sensation and reflection. By means of “ reflections we perceive our own men- tal states and activities; by means of sensation the effects of other things.” Locke then argues against substance, in denying that it 1s anything above the mere facts contained in experience. He writes, “The ideas of substance 36 Bk. 1, Chap. 24. Locke argued against innate ideas in the following manner: “For I imagine anyone will easily grant that it would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colors innate in a creature to whom God hath given sight, and a power to receive them by the eyes from external objects; and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute several truths to the impressions of nature and innate char- acters, when we may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy and certain knowledge of them, as if they were originally imprinted on the mind.” — Bk. 1, Chap. II, 1. ‘ Furthermore,” argues Locke, “it is evident that all children and idiots have not the least apprehen- sion or thought of them, but certainly they would have if they were innate.” The existence of polytheism and atheism proves that the idea of God, for example, is not innate in all men, and the diversity of moral customs in various countries proves that elementary truths of moral are not universally accepted. ‘ Whatever we think of innate principles, it may with as much probability be said that a man hath 11 pounds sterling in his pocket, and yet denied that he hath either penny, shilling, crown or other coin out of which the sum is to be made up, as to think that certain propositions are innate, when the ideas about which they are can by no means be supposed to be so.” -— Bk. 1, Chap. IV, 19. 7: Bk. 2, Chaps, 1, 34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 153 are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves, in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. Thus, if to substance be joined the simple idea of certain dull whitish color, with cer- tain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility, we have the idea of lead.” ** For Locke the idea of substance is the idea of the qualities or powers which we attribute toit. Everything which we attribute to substance is derived from experi- ence. Such a notion has within it the germ of the Philosophy of Fact which asserts that nothing is above experience in the strict sense of the term. Locke went so far as to say that even the idea of God which is a substance-concept is formed by ex- tending and elevating the ideas of spiritual qualities taken from the inner sense. For Hobbes, substances were only names; for Locke a substance is a sum of qualities. Berkeley here enters the philosophical world with his prin- ciple esse est percipi and concludes that there is nothing in the world independent of mind, or in other words, that the mind can never know ma- terial substances.” Berkeley retained spiritual substances; but his successor, David Hume, de- nied even these. “ The idea of substance is nothing but a collection of simple ideas that are united by the imagination, and have a particular name as- signed to them.*° Pek, 2, Chap, VII, 10, 89 “ Principles,” Sections 35, 36. 40 “ Treatise on Human Nature,” Bk. 1, Part I, 6. 154 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Now, it is important to observe here that of the three Cartesian substances, God, matter and mind, only one remains—the first. Berkeley prepared the way for a denial of material substances, and Hume laid the ground for the denial of spiritual ones. In addition to this, Hume even denied hu- man personality to be a substance, thus bringing man down to the realm of the material and the phe- nomenal.** It was typical of his whole philosophy; there are no substances, no rationes, no personal- ities: there are only facts. It is among them our mind must work, but never getting beyond them to a cause,” never transcending the material uni- verse, never knowing anything beyond factors dis- closed by experience. “My intention,” says Hume, “is only to make the reader sensible of the truth of my hypothesis, that all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom; and that belief is more prop- erly an act of the sensitive rather than the cogni- tive part of our natures.” ** Belief is not destroyed but all its reasonable and demonstrable character is denied. God may exist, but the mind cannot rise above the fact; hence the ontological, cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence are 41 Man is “ nothing but a bundle or collection of different percep- tions which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.” J[bid., Bk. 1, Part IV, 6. 42 « After a frequent repetition, I find that upon the appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determined by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light on account of its relation to the first object.” It is this impression, then, or determinism, which affords us the idea of necessity. Jbid., Bk. 1, Part III, 14. 43 Jbid., Bk. 1, Part IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT 155 denied; we have no right to assume, he tells us, that there is a mind back of the universe, nor can we deduce an Infinite Creator from an imperfect world, nor a future state from the present moral order.” The first forward step in the emancipation of the modern mind was the privilege of private in- terpretation of Sacred Scriptures. ‘This immanence of authority, in the course of time, became the im- manence of mystical revelation and pietism. Phil- osophically, and with Descartes, immanence of justification without the authority of a Living Word, became immanence of knowledge without the determination of the sensible. Followers of Descartes enlarged on this principle and freed the mind even from the determination of causality, necessity and transcendence. Knowledge is im- manent in the fact, and there is no knowledge be- yond it. It was once the person to whom the supernatural was revealed and this is the Theology of Individualism; it is now the fact which contains knowledge, and this is the Philosophy of Fact. Is is any wonder that Hume, who marks the peak of such a philosophy, should say of his speculations: “they appear so strained and ridiculous, that | cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.” *° 44 A brief but clear exposition of these philosophers finds a sym- pathetic treatment in “ Philosophy,” Bertrand Russell, p. 244 ff. #9 “Treatise on Human Nature,” Bk. 1, Part IV, 7. CHAPTER VI THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE NCE the idea of grace was distorted and twisted by making it extrinsic to nature, once the true function of the intellect as the crown and perfection of the sensible was denied in favor of innate ideas, there remained but one great spiritual reality untouched by the destroying hand of philosophers, and that was the will, which in traditional thought received its goal and end from the intellect. ‘There now appears on the scene one of the best known of the world philoso- phers, Immanuel Kant, who, endowed with every good intention, nevertheless razed to the ground the last vestige of traditional thought by distorting the true nature of the will, the source of man’s noblest aspiration. The origins of the Kantian system, first as far as external influences are concerned, and next as regards his own mental development, merit recall. Among many others, the two principal external in- fluences which went into the formation of his sys- tem were Pietism and Rationalism. Rationalism endangered his Pietistic leanings, and in an attempt to save the latter he worked out a system which was nothing short of revolutionary. 156 Pere rtLOSOPHY OF VALUE 157 1. Rationalism. Kant announced in his “ Pro- logemena ” that it was the memory of David Hume that roused him from his dogmatic slumbers. Hume, it will be recalled, had limited philosophy to a knowledge of the fact, by denying necessity to ideas, the principle of causality, and the power of the mind to prove the existence of God. It was only by habit, said Hume, that we expect an effect to follow from a cause, but there is no reason for assuming the objective validity of the principle. Rationalism could sink no lower; it touched the nadir in the Philosophy of Fact. Thinkers were be- coming impatient of keeping their eyes on dust. Opposition to the Aufklarung * in Germany, was be- coming more formidable, and Wolff, who was using the rationalist method at Halle, found it more and more difficult to spread. Voltaire, in France, had — already scoffed at the rationalistic optimism of Leibnitz; Klopstock and Wenckelmann in Ger- many, shook men’s faith in rationalistic esthetics ; Lessing waged war on the canonical, the dogmas of zsthetics, poetry and theology.” Kant had sympathy for these forces which made war on Rationalism, and this because Hume’s principles in germ made for the dissolution of Pietism which was dear to his heart. In this sense Rationalism Was a negative influence on Kant. 2. Pietism exerted both a direct and an indirect influence on Kant. (a) “His profound sense of 1 Ed. Zeller, “ Geschichte der Deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz,” 2nd ed., p. 69 ff. 2 Friederic Paulsen, “Immanuel Kant,” 1902, pp. 18-21. 158 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD > the urgency of the moral law written in our hearts; the individualism characteristic of his ethical out- look; his conviction that not gradual improvement but a complete change of orientation is involved in the passage from a bad to a good life; his apprecia- tion of the ‘radical evil’ in human nature, the corruption of the heart, which is none the less cer- tain that it defies satisfactory explanation; not to mention his obvious familiarity with the Bible; in all these features of his mind and character we trace the result of his religious education in Pietis- tic surroundings.” (b) “On the other hand, in his marked disposition to suspect those who in- dulge themselves in a supposed personal intercourse with God in prayer of a harmful and demor- alizing self-illusion we may not unreasonably con- jecture that we see the effects of a reaction from the atmosphere of overstrained absorption in private spiritual experience which the type of religion com- monly associated with the Pietistic movement would tend to create.” * Kant wished to save Pietism, and in particular the belief in God, immortality and freedom of the soul. The problem therefore was, on the one hand, to secure these beliefs, and on the other, to escape the skepticism of Hume. One escape would have been to take refuge in a Fideism of the supernat- ural order, but this did not appeal to him for he had no inclination to the supernatural for two rea- sons: his revulsion for Schwdrmerei, fanaticism 3 C. C. Webb, “ Kant’s Philosophy of Religion,” 1926, p. 20. H. Schmid, ‘‘ Die Geschichte des Pietismus,” 1863. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE © 159 and spiritual intoxication, and also his unhistorical temper of mind.* As time went on the solution of his problem became clear and certainly one of the influences which fitted in well with his Pietism was Rousseau’s assertion of the rights of feeling. “Up until now,” writes Hoffding, “faithful to the principles of Enlightenment, he had sought for the essence and nobility of man in the understand- ing only; now he discovered a still deeper founda- tion, common to learned and lay, in which the simplest peasant might be equal with the profound- est thinker. And Rousseau’s appeal to immediate feeling and immediate faith must have seemed all the more significant to Kant, since he was just on the point of undermining the proofs which had hitherto been supposed to support the assumptions on which the doctrine of natural religion was based.1° The day that Emile appeared, Kant, much to the astonishment of his neighbors, failed to take his usual walk at the accustomed hour. The problem for Kant was to save these beliefs which Hume destroyed by endowing them with some kind of necessity. If there was necessity in mathematics, why should there not be necessity in philosophy? Kant, in other words, sought to apply the certainty of Newtonian physics to the philosophical order. Crriticizing the Leibnitzian view he asserted that progress in mathematical knowledge was not given by an analysis of purely intellectual concepts, nor by the accumulation of 5 “ History of Modern Philosophy,” Vol. 2, p. 34. S.C. Webb,op: citep. 21. Te te POPSET Wa Pe oo ea Ce fy Pes } r me as a Ae 4 a Ch Fa ene eee oe Piaet, 160 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD sense perceptions, which was the view of Locke and Hume, but by something midway between the two. He never doubted for a moment that there was an a priori element in mathematics and physics. To discredit them seemed foolish. Whence comes this necessity? ‘The first man who demonstrated the properties of an isosceles triangle, argued Kant, saw a new light; his thought was creative; it con- sisted in creating such a figure and then drawing out of it the necessary implications of his own thought. ‘ He saw that he had to produce (by con- struction) what he had himself, according to a prior. concepts placed into that figure and repre- sented in it, so that in order to know anything with a priori certainty, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accord- ance with the concept.” In other words, unless we approach nature with certain principles we can never find its laws. ‘“‘ Even the science of physics entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its char- acter to the happy thought that we ought to seek in nature whatever reason must learn from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason itself has placed in nature.” It was a happy thought, when Coper- nicus, contrary to common experience, assumed the spectator to be turning around and the stars to be at rest. He would never have discovered the law if he had not dared to seek it in the spectator instead of the spectacle. Tit PHILOSOPHY’ OF VALUE © 16x Professor Frank Thilly, in tracing out the ori- gin of the Kantian revolution, says: ‘“‘ Kant believed that a new light had flashed on him. Just as Copernicus imagines the spectator moving and the stars at rest, so Kant tries the experiment in metaphysics, of presupposing that, in the perceiv- ing of objects, it is the objects that conform to the perception, and not the perception that conforms to the objects. If experience is dependent on our minds, and something already organized by the mind, according to its laws, then we have an a priori knowledge of what we experience.” ° Kant thus reached the conclusion that mathe- matics is necessary and universal, because it is a creation of the mind, of the perceiving and the understanding mind. Applying the conclusion to philosophy, he said that we understand space, time and causal relation because the mind relates things spatially, temporally and causally —although if there is no objective relation between the two, it is difficult to see just how the mind should relate spatially rather than temporally, or causally rather than spatially. Such was the Kantian revolution. Up tothis time it was held that ideas adapt themselves to objects; for Kant objects adapt themselves to ideas. In the constitution of knowledge the mind contributes as much as it receives. The raw material of experience is taken up and moulded to a pattern contained 8 Kant’s Copernican Revolution in “Immanuel Kant,” Open Court Pub. Co., p. 204 ff. 162 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD within the mind itself. Time and space are no longer external to mind; they are “ forms of sensi- bility,” while the principle of causality and the categories of understanding are mental principles by whose agency our manifold experiences attain to their unity and coherence of knowledge. For Descartes, knowledge comes from the mind or from above in that sense that ideas are innate; for Hume, knowledge comes from senses or from below, in the sense that all ideas are groupings of sensa- tions. For Kant, knowledge comes from both above and below, both from the inside and the outside, and here he was close to the Scholastic position, but not close enough, for he failed to see a connection be- tween the inside and the outside. Senses cannot give knowledge, for they cannot explain necessity and universality; intellect alone cannot, for its forms areempty. It needs the matter of knowledge furnished by the senses and the forms furnished by reason. (For the Scholastics reason does not fur- nish forms, it finds them by abstraction; hence it bridges the gap between the inside and the outside. Intellect is a light, not a mould.) For Kant, the a priori which is in the mind furnishes its models to chaotic data of sense experience, and thus renders science possible. It is therefore reality which is modified by mind, and not vice versa. Kant thus bore the fruit of Descartes’ bad thinking. Des- cartes believed that the intellect attains immedi- ately and directly its thought, the Cogito, but not the reality. It was consequently very easy for Kant THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 163 to conclude that the reality behind these representa- tions must remain forever unknown. But up to this point we have been speaking of objects of experience. What about those objects which lie beyond experience, e.g. the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will? These, says Kant, cannot be the object of a priori knowledge in the same way as mathe. matics and physics, for the simple reason that they lie beyond experience. We can never know what lies beyond phenomena, or what exists prior to, or apart from being taken up by our mental powers. This brings up the subject of Kant’s attitude toward religion, and the revolution he introduced into phi- losophy of religion. Juxtaposition of Belief (Will) and the Reason of Belief (Intellect) Kant’s contribution to the evolution of the con- temporary idea of religion is the juxtaposition he introduced between the intellect and the will, or belief and its rational foundation. The will, ac- cording to traditional thought, receives its object from the intellect, for the evident reason that we can never will or love or believe in a thing unless we first know it. Kant, on the contrary, said we could never have any rational knowledge of natural relig- ious truths, and yet we were to believe in them for another reason than an intellectual one. To this ex- tent he tore down the bridge between intellect and will, between faith and science, between belief and 164 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD its intellectual justification, and thus prepared fer the final exile of the last of the great spiritual reali- ties. For purposes of brevity we will indicate this juxtaposition in the two “ Critiques ” of Kant and in his “‘ Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason.” The “ Critiques ” were not the first of Kant’s works. As early as 1755, he wrote the “ General History and Theory of the Heavens,” which is important because it manifests the great impression the argument of design made upon him, for he confessed that the beauty and harmony of the universe made him sus- — pect a “‘strange hand” behind its orderliness. Eight years afterwards, he uses another argument for the existence of God in his work: “ The Only Possible Ground of Proof for a Demonstration of the Existence of God.” Herein he advances not the argument of design, but a modified form of the ontological argument; something is possible and possibility supposes a real being. The implication is that a thought which is not the thought of reality is no thought at all. The concluding words of his thesis, however, cast the shadow of the “ Critiques ” before them: “It is necessary that one should be convinced of God’s existence, but not so necessary that one should prove it.” A year later he published an essay on a question propounded by the Berlin Academy, “'The Clearness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Ethics,” which is important inasmuch as it anticipates a later distinction be- tween the speculative and the practical intellect, without using the term practical intellect, but rather THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 165 “feeling” which he took from Hutcheson. The last important work before his “ Critiques ” was the Latin dissertation, “ De Mundi Sensibilis et Intel- ligibilis Forma et Principiis,” which is generally regarded as the transition work from dogmatism to criticism. This work does not yet make the denial that the human mind can know things as they are in themselves, apart from our perception of them, but it does speak of the senses and the forms of the understanding which figures so prominently in his later works. Itis clear that even these early works manifest the juxtaposition which was the thesis of his famous “ Critiques.” We are not interested in these works from the purely philosophical point of view but merely from their bearing on religion. From this angle the Kantian doctrine and the Kantian juxta- position of the intelligible and the credible may be enunciated as follows: “The Critique of Pure Reason” asserts that we have no rational founda- tion for our belief in God; the “ Critique of Practi- cal Reason” asserts that in spite of this it is necessary to believe in Him. In his “ Critique of Pure Reason,” Kant denies the validity of the arguments for the existence of God, arguments which are valid enough if one would admit his revolutionary relation between thought and reality. What is important is the conclusion he deduces from the impossibility of proving the existence of God, viz., the only theoretical use which can legitimately be made of the idea of God is the 166 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD regulative. ‘‘ Reason does not supply us with the objective validity of such a concept.” ’ The idea of God does provide us with some notion of the systematic unity of all experience; the idea is important but whether or not there is an objec- tive reality standing behind it matters little. It still has some use.° ‘The supposition, therefore, which reason makes of a Supreme Being, as the highest cause, is relative only, devised for the sake of the systematical unity in the world of sense, and a mere Something in the idea, which we have no concept of what it may be by itself.” ® Kant even goes so far as to say that the term “Nature” might even be preferred to “God,” be- cause it suggests less knowledge of what that Being really is which lies behind phenomena. What is true of the existence of God, is true of the immortality of the soul and all religious truths — they cannot be rationally demonstrated; at best they can serve to unite our experiences in a nominal way, but only as ideas or hypotheses, and not as objective realities. In his next work, “The Critique of Practical Reason,” he attempts to bring through the back door those truths which he had ejected through the 7 Mueller’s translation p. 542. 8 “If we admit a Divine Being, we have not the slightest concep- tion either of the internal possibility of its supreme perfection, nor of the necessity of its existence, but are able at least thus to satisfy all other questions relating to contingent things, and give the most perfect satisfaction to reason with reference to that highest unity in its em- pirical application that has to be investigated, but not in reference to that hypothesis itself.” Jbid., p. 543. PoP. 345: THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 167 front door. His left hand knew not what his right hand did. He shows that, while God, freedom and immortality cannot be validated by pure reason, they are nevertheless demands of moral conscious- ness. Moral consciousness postulates a universe in which the value of the spiritual experiences are con- served and supported, 1.e., it must postulate a power adequate to bringing the Summum Bonum into be- ing. Practical reason is the name of human volition in the sense that it is supposed to give a reason for what is willed. After having said that it is morally necessary to admit the existence of God, he adds that this moral necessity is subjective, i.e., a need — Bediirfniss, and not objective, i.e., a duty — Pflicht, for “ it can- not be a duty to admit the existence of a thing, since that belongs wholly to the theoretical use of rea- son.” *° A few lines later he adds that the “ exist- ence of a supreme intelligence, for the pure reason is only a hypothesis, but from the practical point of view it is an act of faith, but an act of purely rational faith.” * The general result of the two Critiques of Kant, from the point of view of religion is the following: the foundation of religious certitude is not to be sought in the speculative reason, for it is incom- petent, but in the imperative needs of the practical reason. Friedrich Paulsen has well expressed the juxtaposition in these words: “ Kant’s Critique of 10 Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, 1 Theil, 2 Buch, ‘ Werke,” Berlin ed., 1908, p. 125. 7 10id., Dp. 126. Ye 4 (as 7 wt She ; eH ‘ok > a ee ¥ e 1A ee ee ee Prt a ye 168 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Pure Reason prepared the death-blow in asserting that reality transcends the standpoint of knowledge. From this as a consequence, religion cannot be de- rived from nor demonstrated by reason. Its roots are to be sought in the will.’ This is precisely what we mean by the juxtaposi- tion of belief and the reason for belief. Religious beliefs from this time on become something blind; they have no rational ground; they cannot be proved; they may be postulates of a rational faith, but we can never be certain that there are realities corresponding to them. Religious truths were transferred from the domain of knowledge to the domain of faith, and the problem of their validity became the problem of their value.” It is no wonder that Kant’s fellow-countryman, Heine, called the “Critique of Practical Reason” “the farce after the tragedy,” and held it as his opinion that Kant “‘ moved by pity for the poor people and perhaps by the fear of the police, added to the first Critique the second which is in contradiction with it, and which really should have borne over it the inscription Dante placed over the gates of hell: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.” 12 Immanuel Kant, 1902, pp. 18-21. 13 “Ta Philosophie de la Religion de Immanuel Kant, p. 106. P. Charles, “ L’Agnosticisme Kantien,” Revue Neo-Scolastique, 1920, p. 257 ff. C. Sentroul, “‘La Philosophie Religieuse de Kant,” Rewue des Sciences. “Phil. et Theol.,” Jan. 1910, p. 49 ff. Phillip Bridel, “La Philosophie de la Religion de Immanuel Kant,” Lausanne, 1874, p. 106. Albert Schweitzer, “ Die Religions Philosophie Kant’s,” Frie- burg, 1899. Piinjer, “ Die Religionslehre Kant’s,” Jena, 1874. Colani, “Exposé Critique de la Philosophie de la Religion de Kant,” Stras- bourg, 1845. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 169 “ Religion within the limits of Pure Reason ” even better shows the philosophy of value carried to its logical conclusion. This work was made up of col- lected essays, one of which Kant wrote against Woltersdorf, pastor of the Trinity Church, Berlin, who was a member of the Board of Censorship appointed by Frederick II, whose function it was to test the doctrines of the instructors. ‘Two of the other essays were refused the Lutheran imprimatur so Kant appealed to his own university and the completed work appeared at Easter time, 1794. What is important in this work is the application of the methods of the two Critiques. There is run- ning throughout it the thesis that although dogmas of religion have no objective validity (the point of view of the “ Critique of Pure Reason ”), they have nevertheless some practical value, or else some symbolic value (point of view of the “ Critique of Practical Reason”). This is illustrated first of all in his doctrine on the fall of man. He says that the fact of the fall of man, narrated in Genesis, explains very well man’s propensity toward evil, but he can- not accept that explanation, for every actual sin he believes is an original sin. Adam cannot be regarded as affecting us or implicating us in his rebellion against God. He is symbolic of “ Every Man ”; he stands for each of us. “ Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.”’ What is true of the Fall of Man is true of the Redemption. Kant is not definitely and concretely 170 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD interested in whether or not Christ ever was an historical person; what is important is the sub- jective effect he has on the mind of the believer. This is what in recent years has been known as Modernism. “In a practical point of view,” he writes, “the supernatural hypothesis (that Christ is a preternaturally begotten being) can benefit us nothing since the archetype subjected by us in thought to this phenomena is to be found in our- selves.’** And asa further proof that the objective fact of Christ’s historicity interests him little he avows that the “practical value of the idea of the heavenly man alone possesses moral worth, and whosoever should ask for signs and credentials would thereby proclaim his own moral unbelief.” * Kant goes yet even further away from a rational ground for belief in Christ, by asserting that the emphasis on the miraculous origin of Christ might tend to lessen the force of His example: “‘the ad- vancement of this Holy One above the weakness of human nature, so far as we can see, would rather impede than assist this idea in exciting our generous emulation to attain it.” ** In accordance with these principles Kant regarded the Virgin Birth as an idle controversy, since the doctrine has no practical value except as a symbol of humanity free from anything which hinders victorious resistance to evil. In brief, Kant substituted for the historical Christ an archetype of humanity well pleasing to God. 14 Die Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft, “ Werke,” Reimer ed., Vol. 6, p. 64. 15 Tbid., p. 63. 1° Ibid. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 171 This meant the end of an historical objective relig- ion and the beginning of the subjective.”’ His definition of religion as “‘the recognition of all our duties as divine commands ” was an excellent expression of his now already well developed relig- ion of values. But whence comes the persuasion that all our duties are divine commands? If it is purely subjective, as is the Kantian contention, then religion ends in skepticism, and for what reason should we appeal to God Whose existence we can never know? If itis objective, then God has spoken in history, then Christ is historical, then the boasted autonomy of reason is only a verbal autonomy. If it is interior as the Post-Kantian said, then it is God Who speaks to me and then the revelation can- not be limited to the practical and denied to the theoretical.** It is worth remarking with Professor Webb that Kant’s definition of religion (1) “ avoids requiring any speculative assertion, even that of the existence of God, and (2) avoids all suggestion of special du- ties (Hofdienste, court services, Kant calls them) 17 “Tt may therefore perhaps be all very true that the Person of the Teacher of the alone true and universal valid religion is an im- penetrable mystery; that His advent and departure from earth were miraculous; that His eventful life and death were likewise miracles; nay, that the very history documentarily attesting the narratives of all these wonders is again itself a miracle (7.¢., supernatural revela- tion). ... All this, it is conceded may be done, so long as those historic documents are not perverted into elements of religion, and man- kind taught that the knowing, believing and professing their contents, is in itself something whereby we can render ourselves acceptable to God.” Ibid., p. 85. 18 Otto Pfleiderer, “The Development of Theology,” trans. by J. F. Smith, 1923, p. 19; Gaston Rabeau, “ L’Introduction a l’Etude de la Theologie,” 1926, p. 51. 172 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD due to God over and above our natural duties to our fellow men. . . Kant sees then in religion neither an enlargement of our speculative knowledge nor yet a collection of special duties towards God dis- tinct from those to our neightbor, but a peculiar way of regarding the latter.” * As Kant grew philosophically, it became increas- ingly more evident that he was bent on the denial of the transcendent and the assertion of the immanent. God and the intellectual justification of His exis- tence were denied as the transcendent, and the moral ego, the subjective self was asserted as the immanent. “‘ His conception of the Creator became more and more transcendent in the sense that the reference to him of the order of nature became something neither evident nor even capable of being inferred from phenomena, but a mere ‘regulative idea,’ indis- pensable perhaps, but with no claim to be taken for metaphysical truth, although negatively valuable as ruling out alternatives, which, in a region neces- sarily beyond the ken of our intelligence, would accord less with the facts within our ken. “On the other hand the God whose voice was heard by Kant in the Moral Law tended to become in his thought more and more immanent; for this God could not be conceived without injury to our moral outlook as accessible otherwise than through the moral law . . . only on condition of seeing in God no other than a Reason identical with our own, 19 C, C. Webb, “ Kant’s Philosophy of Religion,” p. 151. i bath ~ in) THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 173 as ours is with that of all rational beings, yet untram- meled by having associated with it a sensitive nature with its self-regarding appetites and peculiar point of view.” *° It may, at first sight, seem strange to say, that Kant eliminated the will, since his Practical Reason was nothing else than the will, and since he saved God and immortality and freedom through belief which is of the will. It is true that Kant did retain will, but he so much distorted it as to destroy its realnature. He believed that reason and faith could not exist together: “I had to remove knowledge to make room for faith.” ‘The will, which is the seat of inclination, in belief, is never blind according to traditional philosophy. The intellect supplies its object and the reason of its belief, for nothing is willed unless it is known. It will be recalled that, for St. Thomas, the will is nobler than the intellect in those cases where the object of the will is nobler thanthesoul. The reason is, that the intellect drags things down to its level, but the will always goes up to meet the requirements of its love. Thus it is nobler to love God than to know all created things, for in loving God the will goes out to meet God but in knowing things it descends to the finite and the material. But suppose now that the intellect cannot know God; suppose that it cannot rise above the the transitory things of the phenomenal world; sup- pose that it cannot prove the existence of God, or the immortality of the soul. What then becomes of the 20 Jbid., p. 175. 174 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD objects of the will? Where will it find those spiritual objects which will elevate it? Where will it find those realities, the love of which makes the will nobler than the intellect? What will supply it with goals and ends which will be something more than ideals like pots of gold at the end of a rainbow? Here is precisely the difficulty of Kant. Since the intellect cannot know anything above the phenom-- enal world, as he attempts to show in his “ Critique of Pure Reason,” then it can never offer to the will an object nobler than itself. If the intellect does offer such objects, it is for some other reason than a rational one, and then the will is blind. It strives without a reason for striving; it yearns without any certainty that the object of its yearning is a phantom or areality. When we have no reason for supposing there is a target before us there is not much reason for shooting at it, and if we have no real reason for the existence of God, then we have no reason for postulating Him for our moral life. Faith which has no rational ground is not faith but superstition and fancy. A will without an intellect making its postulates reasonable is not a will, but what Heine has called the “farce after the tragedy.” It is in this sense that Kant eliminated the will from the phi- losophy of religion by distorting it and making it blind. To this extent Kant introduced a new point of view, and in the words of Friedrich Paulsen it “ may be described by means of two propositions: first, the worth of man does not depend upon his intellect, THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE = 175 but solely upon his will; and secondly, one’s ulti- mate metaphysics does not rest upon the under- standing, but primarily upon the will. The final and highest truths —the truths by which and for which a man lives and dies, do not rest upon scien- tific knowledge, but have their origin in the heart, in the essential principle of the will. . . .”* The Evolution of the Kantian Juxtaposition The influence of Kant on philosophy cannot be denied. Even in his own time it was felt that he would change the axis of thought. Boggesen called him a second Messias, and Stilling in a letter to Kant in 1789, said: “ You are a great, a very great instrument in the hands of God, and I do not flat- ter—pbut your philosophy will work far greater, far more general, and far more blessed Revolution than Luther’s reform.” Ho6lderlin, in the same laudatory terms, called Kant the “ Moses of our nation, who is leading it from Egyptian stagnation into the free lovely desert of his speculation and bringing to it the dynamic law from the holy mount.” The development of the Kantian juxtaposition of the intellect and the will, or the belief and the reason for the belief, was chiefly along two lines, one negative and taking its inspiration from the “ Cri- tique of Pure Reason,” the other positive and in- spired by the “ Critique of Practical Reason.” ‘The first was the denial of the transcendent, or the intel- 21 “Immanuel Kant,” p. 391, 2- eh ee ea r 7 176 | RELIGION WITHOUT GOD lect as the foundation of belief; the second was the assertion of the immanent or the philosophy of values. The Denial of the Extrinsic: The intellect for the traditional philosophy was the faculty of the tran- scendent, the power which put us in communion with being, with truth and with goodness. What the philosophia perennis calls transcendent, that mod- ern philosophy calls extrinsic. The intellect is ex- trinsic for Kant; it cannot attain things as they are in themselves, nor reach up to a knowledge of God any more than grace, in the Lutheran conception, could intrinsically affect human nature. It can never give reasons for the faith of the will, nor for the postulates of the practical reason; and is the useless baggage in the journey toward the goal of religion. , The evolution of the Kantian opposition to intel- lect as the foundation of belief has been constant and unswerving. In a certain sense it has not evolved; rather it has become a fixed principle and a court of appeal. To it must be traced the present general belief that God’s existence cannot be proved by reason. ‘The favorite “argument” against the proofs for the existence of God is the “ argument of authority,” viz., “the fatal defects of all these have, it is almost universally conceded, been clearly expressed once for all by Kant.”* “The bare fact that all idealists since Kant felt entitled to scant or neglect them, shows that they are not solid 22 James Ward, “ Pluralism and Theism,” 2nd ed., 1920, p. 406. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE = 177 enough to serve as religious all sufficient founda- tion.” ** “ More to him than to anyone else,” says Professor W. R. Sorley, “this changed attitude to- ward the proofs must be traced.” * “Through the efforts of Kant,” says Professor Taylor, “ they have been discredited ** and have lost all their in- terest.” ° Modern philosophy is now so convinced of the uselessness of the proofs for God’s existence that it has ceased to give reasons for ignoring them. It is in possession of a fact and the validity of its claim does not seem to disturb its conscience. For this reason one looks in vain in theistic literature of the present day for a sound criticism of the proofs. “They have long since passed the critical stage in which critical minds find them convincing, and they are gradually approaching the stage in which men generally cease to find them interesting.” The Inaugural Address of Philosophy at the Uni- versity of Edinburgh, in 1919, which summarized contemporary thought, bore witness to the general opinion of the impossibility of “‘ proving by dialecti- cal arguments the existence of God.” ** Professor Alexander, in his Gifford Lectures, asserted that “no one now is convinced by the traditional argu- ments of the existence of God.” ?? A member of the 23 William James, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 437. 24 “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 299. 25 A. E. Taylor, ‘* Elements of Metaphysics,” 9th ed., 1923, Pp. 400. 26 W. R. Thomson, “ The Christian Idea of God,” p. 177. 27 W. R. Sorley, “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 299. 28 Norman K. Smith, p. 28. 29 “Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. 2, p. 343. 178 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Aristotelian Society has put them beyond hope: “We cannot hope,” he writes, “by intellectually seeking to find out God.”* The very word “proofs ” is written in quotation marks to indicate that a value has been attributed to them which they do not really possess.** No one is found “ so intel- lectually poor to do reverence to the ‘ proofs’ for the existence of God.” *” “To the modern mind these ‘proofs’ when presented in their traditional garb, stalk about with the unsubstantiality of ghosts. ‘They were mighty, but they vanished, Names are all they left behind them.’ ** It is worth observing here that the Catholic Church, which has so often been accused of being the mortal enemy of reason, practically stands alone today in insisting on the power of the reason to prove God. In this sense the Church is the champion of rationalism. The Council of the Vatican expressly formulated and defined a canon testifying to the power of reason to mount from the visible things of the world to the invisible God. And this definition gives food for thought. Our modern world boasts of its great progress, thanks to reason. Now, whether 80 James Ward, “ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,” Vol. XX, 1920, p. 7. William James says they are “ absolutely hopeless.” Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 74, 171, 448, 455. 31 W. R. Thomson, “ Christian Idea of God,” p. 6. 32 Ibid. 83 C, A. Beckwith, “ The Idea of God,” p. 111. Cf. R. Alfred Hoernle, “ Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics,” 2nd ed., 1921, p. 302. Sir Henry Jones, “A Faith that Enquires,” 1922, p. 48. George Galloway, ‘“‘ Philosophy of Religion,” 1914, p. 381. Pfleiderer, “ The Philosophical Development of Religion,” Vol. 1, p. 137. A. N. White- head, “ Religion in the Making,” 1926, p. 71. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 179 or not one accepts the truth of the Church’s teaching power, it will be admitted that her councils at vari- ous periods of history have laid bare the dominant errors of the time. She has her finger on the pulse of the world. Now if our world is progressing religiously, should not her councils in these latter days have defined intricate questions concerning the lofty and elevated problems of theology, such as the relation of Persons in the Trinity, or the Hypo- static Union? But the contrary is the fact. These were defined in the early ages, and the last general council had to define against an erring world that the human reason can prove God. Certainly, if there were real progress such an elementary truth should have been defined at the beginning instead of in our own day. Our thinking is in a bad plight, when we forget we have a reason! * The second evidence of Kantian influence has been the repudiation of dogmas, this being merely another form of opposition to the intellectual ele- ment in religion. Dogmas to our contemporaries are “‘tools.” “ Asin the case of all tools their value 84 «Despite the frequent assertion that ours is the age of science, we are witnessing today a remarkably widespread decline of the pres- tige of the intellect and the reason. ‘Though the most successful of our modern sciences, the various branches of mathematics, physics, and experimental biology, have admittedly been built up by intellectual or rational methods, “ intellectualistic? and “ rationalistic” are popular terms of opprobrium. Even among professed philosophers, the high priests of the sanctuary of reason, faith in rational or demonstrative science is systematically being minimized in the interests of “ practical ” idealism, vitalism, humanism, or intentionism and other forms of avowed anti-intellectualism.” Morris R. Cohen, “The Insurgence against Reason, p. 113. Psychology and Scientific Methods, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 22, 1925. 180 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD resides not in themselves but in their capacity to work shown in the consequences of their use.” * The value of dogmas for the new-born religion resides not in their power to express an objective fact in definite terms, but in their power to influence the mind of the believer. Thus the Incarnation as a fact is not nearly so important as the subjective reaction it awakens, and consequently what is true for one worshipper is false for another. We leave it to Professor A. C. McGiffert, who is an authority on modern religion, to summarize Kantian influence on anti-dogmatism of our day. He writes: “ The criticism of Hume, and particu- larly of Kant, served to reveal the unsoundness of the old dogmatism, negative as well as positive. The supraphenomenal or noumenal world is quite inaccessible to the human understanding. This principle was employed by Kant to show the futility of all theoretical proofs of the divine existence, but he used it also to show with equal clearness that the existence of God could 85 “Fear is the basis of religious dogmas.” John Dewey, “Re- construction in Philosophy,” 1921, p. 145. B. Russell, “ What I Be- lieve,” 1925, p. 19. E. Hershey Smith, “ Shall We Have a Creed? ” 1925, pp. 24-34. ‘The world of thought, like the world of matter, is always moving, and rigid dogmas must be left behind. One might as easily stop the earth from revolving on its axis as tie the future down to a stated creed.” §. A. F. Rhys Davids, “Old Creeds and New Needs,” 1923, p. 178. ‘Creed is the petrification of opinion.” G. F. Wates, “The Religion of Wise Men,” 1923, p. 90. Kirsopp Lake, “The Religion of Yesterday and Tomorrow,” 1925, p. 106. S. Swisher, “ Religion and the New Psychology,” 1923, p. 161. C. A. Ellwood, “The Reconstruction of Religion,” 1922, pp. 121, 126. G. Santayana, ‘Scepticism and Animal Faith,” 1922, p. 10. E. S. Ames, “The New Orthodoxy,” 1925, p. 117. George Wobbermin, “ Wesen und Wahrheit des Christentums,” 1925. A. Loisy, “ L’Evan- — gile et PEglise, 1902, p. 66. ff. G. Tyrell, “ Through Scylla and Charybdis,” p. 306. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 181 not be proven. ... The soundness of this posi- tion has been generally recognized since Kant’s day, and as a result agnosticism has widely taken the place of atheism. ‘The growth of the scientific spirit has tended in the same direc- tion to restrain thinking men from going beyond the facts and asserting what cannot be proved, whether it be by way of negation or of affirmation. Here and there is to be found dogmatism, both religious and anti-religious, as extreme and as intolerant as ever, but it is decidedly exceptional in culti- vated circles, and, as a rule, educated men vie with one another in the modesty with which they disclaim the right to make any positive asser- tions touching realities lying beyond the realm of phenomena.” * The Assertion of the Immanent. The Philosophy of Value. The positive contribution Kant made to con- temporary thinking far outweighs his destructive criticism. Kant was no mere iconoclast; if he rejected the intellectual foundation of belief it was to substitute another for it, the basis of the practical intellect. His followers have developed his thought in the same vein. Professor Sorley, for example, speaks of a Kantian substitute for the rejected intel- lectual system: “The theism of philosophical research in which the idea of God is arrived at by a 36 A. C. McGiffert, “The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas,” pp. 144, 145. Cf. C. E. Moore, “Christian Thought since Kant,” 1912, pp. 1-23. ? > 2 Ls ee ae ; e 1c; ee Ay he ae 182 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD process of reflective thought must give way to the theism of religious consciousness for which God is in some way an immediate object.” * More definitely Kant’s thought has evolved along two distinct but not unrelated lines: (1) how we know, (2) what we know. The first of these cur- rents might be traced out according to the problem of knowledge, but that is not our present concern. Our interest is restricted to the religious problem, and here we find that the methods of knowing, inspired by the practical reason, are principally two: religious experience, and faith or hypotheses, both of which are non-rational. Schleiermacher was the first great follower of Kant to proclaim sentiment as the proper way to know God. The faculty or religion for him is a feel- ing or an immediate self-consciousness of God (Gefiuhl, unmittelbares Selbstbewusstsein) “'The feeling of the infinite in the finite ” is the basis of our beliefs. Religion is purely a matter of the heart, and so much so that the “ heart with its emotions with- draws into its own mystical depths, fearing any freezing contact with thought and purpose.” In his *‘ Second Discourse on Religion,” he says: “ There is no feeling which is not religious, save such as in- dicates an unhealthy condition of life.” Dr. Wob- bermin believes that Schleiermacher is the Coperni- cus of Theology, as Kant was the Copernicus of Philosophy, because he turned our attention from 37 “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 302. S. Alexander, “ Space, Time and Deity,” Vol. II, p. 343. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 183 the rational interpretation of God to the senti- mental.** The theories of Schleiermacher were developed by the School of Erlagen (Hofmann, Franck) and the School of Ritschl (Fries and Wette). Herder’s theory of emotions, Feurbach’s doctrine of senti- ment, Hartmann’s philosophy of the unconscious- ness, were so many manifestations of an affective or non-rational approach to God, and so many ante- cedents of our contemporaries who have exalted religious experience as the proper way to know God. Among many others * we choose William James’ explanation of what is meant by religious experi- ence. He brings out its non-intellectual character by comparing it to a bar of iron which “ without any representative faculty whatever, might nevertheless be strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling; and as if through various arousals of its magnetism by magnets coming and going in its neighborhood, it might be consciously deter- mined to different attitudes and tendencies. Sucha bar of iron, could never give you an outward description of the agencies that had the power of stirring it so strongly, yet of their presence and of their significance for life, it would be intensely aware through every fibre of its being.” *° We know God, 88 “Die Religions Psychologische Methode.” J. A. Leighton, “Typical Modern Conceptions of God,” p. 97. 39 Otto, “Kantische Friesche Religionsphilosophie,? p. 111 ff. D. C. Mackintosh, “ Theology as an Empirical Science,” p. 91. D. W. Fawcett, “ Divine Imagining,” p. 155. William Kingsland, “ Our In- finite Life,” p. 189. 40 “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” p. 55. 184 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD therefore, but we do not know how we know; He is there, just as real as the thrust of a sword or an embrace. Another form into which the practical reason of Kant has developed is that of faith or hypothesis. Faith here means a “venture; it begins with the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothe- sis.” ** In relation to God, it may mean as it does for Hans Vaihinger in his “ Philosophie des Als- Ob,” that we are to live as if God existed “ or it may mean as it does for Sir Henry Jones, a kind of experiment: “ If there are certain forms of religious faith, certain hypotheses, which deepen the meaning of natural facts, which amplify and extend the sug- gestiveness of the natural sciences, and, so far from traversing their findings, accept and invite them; and if in the world of human conduct they dignify human character, and reach sanity to man’s aims, construct and consolidate human society, elevate and secure the life of man and make for peace and mutual helpfulness amongst the na- tions. . . if, in a word, a form of religious faith or hypothesis works, in these ways, then indeed is the proof of its validity strong; stronger than the proof of any other hypothesis, because wider and deeper.” * These non-intellectual ways of knowing God, the 41 Dean Inge, “‘ Proceedings of Aristotelian Society,” 1923, p. 180. 42 Cf. Johannes Wegener, “ Die Christliche Religion als Religion des Als Ob,” 1923. H. Scholz, “‘ Annalen der Philosophie,” 3 Band, p. 2. 43 «A Faith that Enquires,” p. 104. Richard Miller, “ Pers6n- lichkeit und Weltanschauung,” 1919. F. C. Schiller, “Problems of Belief.’ E. E. Thomas, “ The Non-Rational Character of Faith.” THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE 185 way of religious experience, and the way of faith, (we might also add Bergsonian intuition) are the heirs of the Practical Reason of Kant, and it was no exaggeration for Professor Farley to say during the Kantian centenary that, “In a certain sense, Kant could have a fellow-feeling with William James when he said: ‘On pragmatic principles, if the hy- pothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.’”’ ** We have called them examples of the immanent characteristic of contemporary religion and this for the reason that they appeal to nothing but the se/f, either as the subject of the experience or as the judge of the worth of the hypothesis. The tradi- tional procedure, did not begin with self, but with the world; the fulcrum of its proofs was in the open air and reposed on the evident characteristics of the universe which revealed God, though imperfectly, as the painting reveals its artist. Another, and yet more important aspect of the Kantian philosophy of the immanent is in answer to the problem what do we know. It will be recalled that for the Kantian speculative reason God is neither being nor object, but an ideal, in the sense that He represents the supreme unity of a synthetic mind. Whether or not an object corresponds to this ideal does not matter. For the Kantian practical reason God is a necessary postulate, not to establish the bond between will and duty, but to assure the 44 J. H. Farley, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion, in “Immanuel Kant,” Open Court Pub. Co., 1925, p. 134. 186 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD future coincidence of duty and happiness. Schleier- macher pushed the Kantian practical reason to its natural conclusion — symbolism, by asserting that sentimental theodicy expresses only the needs of the heart and subjective dispositions. Since we cannot know God as He is in Himself, but only in relation to the needs of our practical reason, then we have “knowledge only of the being of God in us, but not the being of God external to the world or in Him- self.” Schleiermacher’s doctrine then became not an account of what God is in Himself, but what we found Him to be in our religious life,*° — a doctrine which Emerson introduced into America, in his Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838. Feuerbach went further than Schleiermacher and said God was the name of the sentiment, and far from being our Creator is our work — ens affectus. Ritschl, aided by Kant and Lotze, then intro- duced a distinction between the world of ideals and the world of facts. Beginning with sense experi- enced he argued that the mind appropriates sensa- tions in a two-fold way. (1) Sensations produce feelings of pleasure or pain and so become deter- 45 “ By means of feeling applied first to himself, man finds God, for it is in ourselves that we discover the sense of the whole and then transfer it to Nature round about us, Just as man unifies nature, so he gives a soul to nature, and finds in it that which corresponds to him- self. It is in others we find ourselves—. Then comes the famous Freudian passage: ‘“ Wherefore humanity and religion are closely and indissolubly united. A longing for love, ever satisfied and ever again renewed, forthwith becomes religion. Each man embraces most warmly the person in whom the world mirrors itself for him most clearly and purely; he loves most tenderly the person whom he believes combines all he lacks of complete manhood. Similarly the pious feelings are most holy that express for him existence, in the whole of humanity, whether as blessedness in attaining or of need in coming short of it.” “Reden,” (p, 92. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 187 mined according to their Value for the Ego. (2) On the other hand sensations embodied in ideas are judged in respect to their cause and their connection with other causes. ‘These two functions make up Value-Judgments and Causal-Judgments. Ritschl introduces Value-Judgments as an aid in deter- mining the difference between religious and theo- retical knowledge. “Religion and_ theoretical knowledge are different functions of the spirit, which, when they deal with the same objects are not even partially coincident but are divergent through- out.” * “Tn his hands,” says Dr. George Galloway, “the distinction became an instrument which en- abled the theologian to dispense with metaphysics and to build up a system of Christian doctrine which claims to be the reflection of the practical demands of the Christian conscience.” * It is not a long step from such doctrines, or even from the practical reason, to our modern pragma- tism which attempts to prove that all proofs are worthless, and to assert that the truth of a proposi- tion depends upon its value or utility. Once a philosopher denies the objective validity of any be- lief, it will not be long until its value will be the primary and unique consideration. And this was the revolution Kant effected; driving the rational element out of religion, he paved the way for what has become the dominant philosophy of our day — the philosophy of value. “Though he himself does not say it in so many words, we can see that 46 « Justification and Reconciliation,” pp. 193, 194. 47 “ Religion and Modern Thought,” 1922, p. 78. 188 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Kant used the idea of value to express the idea of God. ... Implicitly, at all events, Kant made the fertile suggestion that the moral consciousness could give a valid content to the idea of God which the speculative intellect could not supply. ... In making what amounted to a refusal to fuse into one the problems of existence and value, he opened up a line of thought which has been widely followed by a later day.” ** The transition was an easy one from God as a postulate of moral consciousness to God as a value for me. Kant gave philosophy another ideal and philoso- phers another goal, besides that of truth and love of truth. If the mind could never get beyond the phenomena and the factors of experience, then it was useless to speak of religious truth. A new in- terest displaced it, one which brought man into greater prominence, and even made God evolve about him as his theory of knowledge made the universe revolve about mind, and this new interest was value. It was the logical outcome of a philoso- phy which divorced belief and the reason for be- lief, and left the will no greater security than a pos- tulate; a philosophy which has so often proved its own futility, for out of a thousand that would fol- low Kant in his rejection of a rational ground for the existence of God, only a few would follow him in accepting God as a postulate. More and more 48 George Galloway, “Religion and Modern Thought,” 1922, p. 78. ‘The world of values remained in all his thinking the supreme realm of life, and devotion to it was man’s chief end and glory.” E, S. Ames, Religion of Immanuel Kant, in “Immanuel Kant,” Open Court Pub. Co., 1925, p. 93. THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE _ 189 philosophers tended toward an immanence, and by a gradual declension in logical consistency, the im- manence at first which was only the immanence of religious experience as the source of knowledge of God (how we know) degenerated into the imma- nence of God in the universe in German Panthe- ism, then the immanence of God as identical with the feeling or experience of God, and finally the immanence of value by which each man judged for himself the reality of God by the value God had for him. This is the contemporary idea of religion. Conclusion The three great spiritual realities of religion, grace, intellect and will, by which we are made to “the image and likeness of God,” have in the course of the last four centuries been completely banished from religion, principally through distortions of their nature wrought by the three prophets of mod- ern religion, Luther, Descartes and Kant. Each of them shifted discussion from man to his psychic state, and from the total drama of all reality to the individual subject of experience.*” Each of them made war upon the transcendent as if it were the extrinsic, and considered as an intermediary or a barrier everything which traditional philosophy looked upon as a perfection. Luther distorted grace by making it extrinsic to human nature and a mere imputation, and thus prepared for its final elimination; Descartes distorted the intellect by #9 A. N. Whitehead, “Science and the Modern World,” p. 201. 190 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD > making it independent of the sensible world, and thus prepared for its degeneration into Rational- ism; Kant distorted the will by making it blind in separating it from the intellect and thus under- mined its worth and prepared the way for senti- mentalism. The denial of the transcendental realities under the guise of their being “ extrinsic” has been com- plemented by the assertion of other and immanent principles, all of which have made for the deifica- tion of man and the humanization of God. Luther asserted the immanence of individual interpreta- tion of Sacred Scriptures which degenerated to a mystical and spiritual individualism in which each believer felt himself the object of Divine Revela- tions or communications: The Philosophy of Indi- Ss vidualism. Descartes asserted the immanence of philosophical “private interpretation” viz., the individualism of the Cogito and the clear and dis- tinct, which ultimately degenerated into a Ration- alism denying material and spiritual substances and the existence of anything beyond experience: The Philosophy of Fact. Kant asserted the imma- nence of the moral law, the independence of belief in relation to a foundation for a belief, which in his followers developed into a pantheistic and psycho- logical immanence of God in the world and in self, and the judgment of these realities not according to their objective truth, but according to their pragmatic value for the individual believer: The Philosophy of Value.” 50 « The general development of the Modern World shows a ten- THE PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE - 1o1 Add to this subjectivism, this empiricism, and this pragmatism, a pinch of biology, psychology, and new physics, stir it up, bake in a pan well greased with evolution, and the finished product will be the modern God. Some call it “Space- Time” (Alexander), others ‘‘ The Harmony Among Epochal Occasions ” (Whitehead), others the “‘ Perfect Process ” (Jones), others an ‘‘ Ima- ginal,” (Fawcett), others “Society Divinized ” (Durkheim), others a “ Projected libido ” (Moxon) but for those who believe that there are a thousand angles at which a philosopher may fall, and only one at which he may stand, for those who hold fast to truth rather than novelty, such gods are mere travesties, and such philosophers, sincere though they be, are hastening the advent of a new paganism and a new panic, for the day that God passes out of civilization, that day gladiators step in. dency towards immanence.... The religious conviction of the Middle Ages regarded the other world as the true fatherland, and only in its relation to the other world did this world acquire value; the Modern World, on the other hand, began with the desire to seek the operation of the Divine more within this world. This resulted in the first place, in a pantheism as professed by the noblest spirits of Renaissance... . Pantheism proved overwhelmingly attractive to the German Classical Period, since it promised to bridge every antithesis and in particular to combine the broadest and freest treatment of the visible world with the open recognition of an invisible one. . . . At first the divine is brought near to our existence, then it is closely associated with it as an inspiring force, and finally it totally disappears or vanishes to an unapproachable distance. ‘Thus religion, which was once an omnipotent power, has become, for the modern man, a thing of quite secondary importance, nay, a mere illusion, and the world of immediate experience has more and more completely absorbed his whole thought and feeling.” Rudolf Eucken; “ Main Currents of Modern Thought,” p. 464. PART III Critical Appreciation of the Con- temporary Idea of Religion in the Light of the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. i ow PART III Critical Appreciation of the Con- temporary Idea of Religion in the Light of the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas CHAPTER VII THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM siderations we come into more intimate contact with the modern idea of religion. But before proceeding to the details a few general remarks concerning philosophy of religion may not be out of place. 1. Contemporary thinking is noteworthy for an a priori denial of the supernatural which 1s wholly unjustified. Man has no right to assert there is no order above him any more than the rose would have the right to assert, if it could assert, that there is no life above it. The supernatural is not destruc- tive of the natural, but its perfection. One of the things which will always be difficult to understand is why some thinkers will believe in a blind urge pushing man on to greater and greater perfection even unto the state of deity, and yet deny the super- natural, which is such an added perfection with 195 Pp ASSING from historical to philosophical con- 196 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD this difference; viz., that in the first case the push is from below and implies the greater comes from the less, while in the latter it is a gift from above and implies that the infinite can give without ex- haustion, as the ocean can send up its vapors with- out ever diminishing its vast content. If a plant can “ supernaturalize,” in the broadest sense of the term, the oxygen which it takes into its system and render it part of itself, make it live under new govy- ernment, and be directed by new laws even to the extent of being organic with life itself; if the plant can be “supernaturalized” when taken into the animal, even to the extent of being one with it, so that it sees, and feels and hears because one with the animal, why should not man be capable of be- ing supernaturalized by some power above him by which he becomes endowed with powers, natures and exigencies far surpassing his own nature and yet retaining his own personality? Biology, in leaving room for a higher kingdom, leaves room for supernaturalization. ‘Supernatural biology ” leaves room for supernaturalization, thanks to the Kingdom of God, and to deny there is a power above man capable of elevating and ennobling him is to assert that man has Life within himself; it is completely to shut one’s eyes to the truth that the very fact that man must nourish himself in order to live testifies to his dependence on some other kind of life. 2. There is a confusion of de facto and de jure, concerning the whole nature of religion. It is one ; de rea sn >» T Ge A: THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 197 thing to say that the mind cannot prove the exist- ence of God and another thing to say the mind has a right, based on evidence, to make such an asser- tion. Kant has said that the proofs for the exist- ence of God are worthless and from his day on philosophers have accepted his word as final. No less a philosopher than James Ward has said, “ ‘The fatal defects of all these (traditional arguments) have, it is almost universally conceded, been clearly expressed once for all by Kant.”* It is quite true that Kant did assert and did give some reasons for the invalidity of the proofs for the existence of God, but it is quite another problem whether or not a philosopher who effects a Coper- nican revolution in thought and who makes mind the measure of reality instead of reality the measure of mind, is entitled to pass judgment on proofs. Kant’s criticism of the proofs are valid enough pro- vided you admit his premise that the mind can never know the nature of things. Sometimes that which most needs a criticism is a critique. It is not our point here to show the fallacy of the Kantian argument; that has been well done by others ’* but merely to observe that there is, in modern thought, a too general readiness to accept anything which criticises the traditional, and too great an unwill- ingness to judge the value of the criticism. The general rejection of the proofs for the existence of 1 “The bare fact that all idealists since Kant felt entitled to scant or neglect them shows they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s all sufficient foundation.” ‘“ Pluralism and Theism,” 2nd ed., 1920, p. 406. W.R. Sorley, “ Moral Values and the Idea of God,” p. 299. 2 Garrigou-Lagrange, “ Dieu, Son Existence et Sa Nature.” 1988 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD God does not prove they are worthless, but merely that philosophers are willing to accept uncritically a criticism of them. Apart from these considerations it may be said that there are three fallacies underlying the relation between God and man, as this relation is conceived by our contemporaries. These fallacies are: I. The Fallacy of Nominalism. II. The Fallacy of the Uniform Method of Science III. The Fallacy of Inverted Relations. Nominalism is one of the dominant character- istics of modern thought and one responsible in large for the volatile notion of God and religion. Nominalism is opposed to realism in so far as intel- lectual knowledge is concerned. Realism believes that the mind is in contact with the real, and that the judgments and conclusions reached by the mind are primarily judgments of the objective world. Nominalism, on the contrary, denies this. In its philosophical form, the nominalism which has in- spired the new idea of religion, may be summed up in the following propositions. (a) The mind can never know anything beyond experi- ence. (b) The mind can never know the nature of reality, hence the subject, being enclosed within himself, must seek within himself, in the confines of his own conscience and heart, all the knowledge which he needs and all the beliefs he can use. Against these tenets of Nominalism Thomism asserts their contraries. 1. The mind can know things beyond experience. THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM = igg Professor Whitehead was stating a tenet of Nom- inalism when he denied the power of the mind to know a transcendent God. “ Any proof,” he writes, “which commences with the consideration of the character of the actual world cannot rise above the actuality of this world. It can only discover all the factors disclosed in the world of experience.” ® This statement of the celebrated physicist- philosopher rather proves the contrary of what he intended. In laying down the limits of knowledge he is really asserting the power of mind. That any- one can make such a demonstration is the refuta- tion of what he demonstrates. To say we cannot know anything beyond the factors of experience is to say that we know what has already been called unknowable; to call an island a “‘ lost island ” means that at one time it must have been found. Apart from this observation, the assertion of the philosopher would be perfectly valid provided the material universe was the total cause of all knowl- edge, for then we never could get beyond the “factors disclosed in the world as experienced.” But such is not really the case. The sensible data and the empirical grouping of these data is not the whole cause of knowledge.* If there is a power above matter, which is not material and which is capable of working on matter, then certainly such 3 “Religion in the Making,” p. 71. 4 Non potest dici, quod sensibilis cognitio sit totalis et perfecta causa intellectualis cognitionis, sed magis quodammodo est materia cause. I. q. 84 art. 6 . . . sensitiva cognitio non est tota causa intellectualis cognitionis. Et ideo non est mirum si intellectualis cognitio ultra sensitiva se extendit. Jbid., ad 3, 200 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD a power is capable of producing a knowledge superior to the empirical grouping of the facts, just as marble is capable of becoming a statue of Moses given the spiritual artistry of Angelo. The factors of experience furnish the “ raw mate- rial”; the intellect, too, furnishes something and that is its abstractive power which is capable of re- vealing the intelligible in things. The abstracting intellect might very inadequately be compared to an X-Ray, which discloses the inner constitution of a thing which is denied to mere sense vision. Ab- straction, however, does not mean the peeling off of individuating notes as we might peel an onion. It does not mean a “rough and ready method of suppressing what appears to be irrelevant details,” as Professor Whitehead would have us believe.” The suppression of individuating notes and details in abstraction is simply a by-product of the work of the intellect and not a primitive process at all. The nature of a thing is not a core about which are grouped accidents and qualities ; neither is it a skele- ton. The intellect working on the factors of experi- ence reveals the nature of these factors, or their explanation in terms of the intellect; it reveals their ratio, or even better, it reveals the bead a2 of empirical phenomena. All science would be impossible were there not some power to rise above the “ factors of experi- ence.” The very law of the factors, their finality, their relationship— none of these is disclosed by 5 “ Science and the Modern World,” p. 77. ee oe ars i” » > ee oe THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 201 the factors as such. Nothing else than an intellect can perceive them, for nothing else than an intellect can perceive relation between facts; that is why man is the only being in the universe that can laugh. He has the faculty of seeing relations and deducing from suggestions. ‘There is nothing in this world quite so boring as an ambitiously funny story the point of which is disclosed too soon in the telling. Equally true there is no philosophy quite so pessi- mistic as a nominalism whose conclusions are on the same level with its empirical premises. The inability to transcend the factors of experience is the foundation of all pessimism; it is a philosophy with its eyes on the ground like a mole, not on the heavens like an eagle. But how does the intellect rise above this world? Even though it be granted that the intellect can know the nature of things, does it still follow that it can know beings which do not directly and im- mediately fall under its experience? ‘The position of St. Thomas and the whole tradition of common sense is that the intellect can know beings which do not fall under the senses, and that it can even know God. A parenthesis of Thomistic metaphysics here becomes necessary. Every faculty, according to St. Thomas, has an object to which it is ordained by nature. In the order of generation a very definite color is the ob- ject of vision, and a definite sound the object of hearing. But in the order of the formal object the object of vision is not a particular color, green for 202 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD example, but all colors. The ratio under which vision seizes its object is color, and the ratio under which hearing grasps its object is sound, for un- less a thing is sound it can never be heard. But the intellectual knowledge is of a superior kind to sensible knowledge. Consequently, it must have its own proper and superior object. There must be some ratio under which all knowledge is grasped, just as there is a common ratio under which the eye sees its object. What is the common ratio of the intellect? It is Being in all its latitude. This is its formal object. “That which is first apprehended is being, the knowledge of which is included in all things that the intellect apprehends.” “ Without being there can be no knowledge.” “It is that which the mind first conceives as most known, and it is that into which all its other conceptions are resolved.” ° But if being is the common ratio under which everything is known, it would seem that the object of the intellect is only being which 1s common to the nature of material things. How can we know a being which is beyond that which is common to all sensible experience? How can we know God? Can His Being be embraced under such a restricted ob- ject, namely, the being common to material things? It would seem that Professor Whitehead’s conten- tion is justified; namely, that we can know nothing except what is disclosed by the facts as experienced and can never know anything beyond these facts. 6 1-2 q. 94 art. 2; 3. q. 10 art. 3; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 1. THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 203 The answer of St. Thomas to this difficulty is as follows: Every faculty has a double object: a mo- tivating object and a terminating object. ‘This is true of the sense as well as the intellect. The mo- tivating object of the eye, for example, is the red house. The terminating object of the eye is color. In the intellectual order the motivating object is the nature of material things, or the “factors dis- closed in the actual world as experienced.’”’ Quite naturally the motivating or the proportionate ob- ject of the intellect will be greater than that of the senses for the reason that the sensible is not the total cause of the intellectual knowledge but only the matter of the cause.* Let it be noted that the motivating object never adequates the capacity of a faculty. Green does not exhaust the potentialities of vision, for the eye can see other colors besides green. So neither does the essence of material things exhaust the poten- tialities of the human intellect. ‘The terminating object far surpasses its motivating object, for un- der the former consideration its object is being in all its latitude. But why is not the intellect adequated by the being which is common to material things? Why is not its object the intelligible being of the material universe instead of being in all its latitude? Here it is necessary to recall the basic principle of the 7 1. q. 17 art. 3; De Veritate, q. 1 art. 12; C. G. lib. 3 cap. 56, The motivating object has also been called the proportionate object. John of St. Thomas, Phil. Naturalis, t. 3. p. 3. q. 10 art. 3. Bre. de 84 art. 6. 204, RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Thomistic theory of knowledge, namely the greater the spirituality of a thing, the greater is its power for knowing. Knowability increases with separa- bility from matter. Knowledge increases with separation from matter.® But the intellect is a spiritual faculty. Being spiritual it can be actu- ated spiritually, and the more spiritual the object the more adequate it is for the intellect, and the less spiritual it is the less adequate. The only adequate — object of the human intellect then must be being in all its latitude.” Due proportion being guarded the human intellect shares the same adequate ob- ject as the angelic and the Divine Intellect. PoRPORTIONATE OBJECT ADEQUATE OBJECT Human Intellect material essence Angelic Intellect angelic essence Being Divine Intellect Divine essence The object then of the intellect is being, which embraces everything from prime matter which is pure potency on to the Actus Purus which is God. Since the adequate object of the intellect is being in all its latitude, just as the adequate object of vision is color in all its latitude, it follows that any judgment or reasoning process built on being will be valid for the whole range of being. Abstracting now from the psychological and the chronological origin of judgments, what will be one of the first judgments in the ontological order? ® John of St. Thomas, Logica, t. 1 p. 2. q. 27 art 1; Philosophia Naturalis t. 3. p. 3. q. 10 art 2. 20 3.q. 79 rat. ad 33°C, Glin ap ogee Ss ee THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 205 The first judgment will be one of affirmation. In other words it will be Being = Being, or the prin- ciple of identity. Now this principle is not an equa- tion for an equation is merely a conditional identity; e.g., 3x==6 is true on condition that x==2. There is nothing conditional in the affirm- ation that being = being, or in the sense that the same is the same. Rather it means everything is its own nature. Expressed negatively this judg- ment is that it is impossible that a thing be itself and another thing at the same time and under the same formal consideration. This is the principle of contradiction. This is what is known as the first principle of thought, and corresponds perfectly to the three con- ditions which Aristotle laid down in his meta- physics: (1) The first principle ought to be one about which it is impossible to be mistaken. (2) It should not be a supposition. (3) It should be nat- urally known—that is to say, it must not be reached by demonstration.” The principle of causality attaches itself to the principle of identity and the principle of contradic- tion and is an unfolding of both; it can never be demonstrated directly, but merely indirectly by an appeal to the foregoing propositions. To deny the important principle of causality is to assert that that which has not in itself the reason of its being, has within itself the reason of its being — a manifest violation of the principle of contradiction. The 11 Fourth Book Cf. St. Thomas, Commen, lect. 6. 206 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD Principle of Causality then is not the statement of a mere succession of events, nor is it empirical, nor is it the psychological expression of will-activity. It is intellectuality rooted to being.” What is generally called an effect is that which has passed from non-being to being. This transi- tion cannot be traced to the being which has al- ready come into existence, otherwise it would have to have been before it was. Here there would be violation of the principle of identity and the prin- ciple of contradiction. Nothingness can never be the cause of being. If something exists, there must have been some being distinct from it which brought it into existence, or which produced the transition. It is in this sense that there never can be an effect without a cause. The next act of the mind in the ontological or- der is reasoning. Reasoning is not merely taking things out of a container. The relation between the major and the conclusion is one of act and po- tency. The syllogism is showing to the mind, by its mean term the reason of the identity of the ex- tremes, and thus necessitates the mind to see this identity in the light of the premises.** Every concept is in answer to the ase “What is it?” Every judgment is in answer to the question, “Is it?” Every reasoning process is in answer to the question, “On account of what is it?” Thus nothing is intelligible except in func- 12 Cf, “God and Intelligence ” for a development of these points. p. 159 ff. 18 In Lib. Periherminias. lib. :. c. VII. lect. 10. THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 207 tion of being. Being is the soul of every concept, judgment and syllogism. Not even the possible is knowable except through it, for the possible is that which is capable of being.* Now can the mind whose object is being in all its latitude, whose principles are transcendental and necessary, rise up to a knowledge of what is beyond the factors disclosed by experience? First of all, there is nothing impossible about such knowledge, for all that zs is capable of being known by the mind. Secondly, since the principles of reason are not em- pirical but necessary, they are capable of leading us out of the morass of a spatial-temporal universe into the realm of causes, finalities and even God. St. Thomas gives five ways in which the existence of God can be proved, based upon five notes of the universe: three dynamic notes, two static. The dynamic notes are— movement, dependency and contingency; the static notes are— composition and multiplicity. It is not our present concern here to elaborate the proofs of the existence of God but merely to indicate its broad outlines.” Very simply these five arguments reduced to the fundamental one of Be- ing, can be stated in some such way as this. All things in this world are composed of the determined and the undetermined, the conditioned and the un- conditioned, act and potency, essence and exist- ence. In virtue of this composition they change, 14 In Meta. lib. 5. lect. 14. 15 Garrigou-Lagrange’s “ Dieu, Son Existence et Sa Nature ” is the finest presentation of the Thomistic proofs, Sty oe ee y cee : 208 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD or evolve or die— evolution without composition is impossible. If I seek the reason of this partici- pation [ am driven back necessarily to something distinct from the composed elements and which has grouped or united them together.** Thus one mounts up to God in Whom there is no composi- tion, but Whose very essence it is to exist, and in this He differs from creatures whose existence is not their essence. And to ask the cause of God, Whose essence it is to exist, is to ask that that which has existence as its essence be explained as that which has it not, or that that which is First Cause be at the same time a second cause, or that God shall be at the same time cause and effect. But grant that God is known as Being, does it follow that we can designate Him properly or know anything about His character? ‘There are some thinkers who wish to designate God in function of evolution, the needs of the age, and in relation to our emotions and our democratic form of govern- ment. This is not good metaphysics. There are certain predicates which in themselves imply no imperfection, and these can be applied to God. Such ideas are those of being, goodness, truth and the like. Being free from imperfection in their formal aspect, these notions can be applied ana- logically both to God and creatures, thus solving the difficulty that there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite. “If there is no propor- tion between the finite and the infinite, it does not 48 5.9. 44. alts ts ay THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM. 209 follow that there is no proportionality, since what the finite is to the finite, the infinite is to the infinite, and thus it is that the similitude of God and crea- tures must be understood; namely, that God is in the same relation to that which concerns Himself as the creature is in relation to that which concerns itself.”*’ ‘Take the word “good” for example. I can apply it to a book, to a tree, to a dog, to a man, and in each case it designates the object. In each case it is applied according to the nature of each of these things; a book is “good” according to its nature; a tree is “good” according to its nature; a man is “good” according to his nature. But God is Infinite, therefore Goodness will be applied to Him in an infinite degree.** ‘The same is true of the other concepts. The intellect then, thanks to its abstractive power and its capacity for a knowledge of being as being can rise to the conquest of truths quite beyond the mere factors of experience; it can even rise to a knowledge of God as First Cause, and in doing so is not dealing with a mere symbol but with the ob- jective and the real. This leads us to the second tenet of Thomistic realism. Il. The Intellect can know the nature of the real. Nominalism contends that ideas are mere rubrics or words under which facts are grouped. God, then, through the application of this principle, is merely a symbol for the “ideal tendency in things,” or any- thing else quite equally vague. It is the contention 17 De Veritate, q. 23. art. 7 ad 9. 18 Sheen, “ God and Intelligence,” p. 175 ff. 210 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD of St. Thomas, on the contrary, that the mind knows things before it knows the ideas of things; what is known immediately by the mind is the thing itself and not its effigy or its image.” “ The stone is that which is known and not the idea of the stone, except indirectly by the act of reflection when the intellect turns back upon itself.” *° The idea then is neither a portrait nor an instrumental sign like a model which is first known before making known. It is a sign, the like of which does not exist in the material world, i.e., a formal sign, the nature of which is to signify and make known before being itself known by the act of reflection. Ideas then are the ideas of reality; we know cause, before we know the idea of a cause; we know God, before we know the idea of God. St. Thomas enumerates two conclusions which would follow a denial that the idea gives the real: (1) Every science would then be concerned, not with the objects outside the mind, but only with the ideas in it. In other words, science would be mental and would have no basis in the real. It is rather a strange fact that Thomistic and Medieval philosophy which is said to be so unscientific, should be the very one to uphold the very reality of science; while our modern philosophy which is said to be born of science and nourished by it, denies it a real right to existence, in denying that its ideas are ideas of the real and objective world. (2) If the ideas were merely effigies of the real and not the 19 De Veritate, q. 1. art. 9; q. 5 art. 2. 20 1. q.. 76 aft. 2 a0 ay THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 211 real, then the mind would be forced into a degener- ate pragmatism which maintains that whatever seems is true. As the Angelic Doctor has no sym- pathy for those who deny the reality of science, neither has he sympathy for those who are content to rest in a mere-seeming truth. He fears individ- ual interpretation brought to the facts of nature, in which each man would determine for himself what is true and what is best.” Ideas then are primarily ideas of the real; and judgments built upon them are also judgments of the real.” ‘The thinking subject is not enclosed within himself; therefore he must not seek within himself or the confines of his own conscience and heart all the knowledge which he needs and all the beliefs he can use. Not only that: since the mind can know things above experience and know them as real and objective, there is no necessity for the mock humility of nominalism. That is why the mere Will-to-Believe, the Als-Ob Philosophy, and Faith Philosophy must always be unsatisfying: they are based upon an acknowledged inability to grasp things as they really are. Since the mind can rise above the factors of experience, since it can know God objectively and not as a mere symbol, there is no necessity for an hypothesis or “* Will-to-believe.” Pre Os Art. : 2. 22 To reduce the ontological judgments of being to a purely sub- jective law, as all Nominalism would do, is to identify two notions which are manifestly distinct, namely, the impossible (or the irreali- zable) and the inconceivable. It also means to doubt the extra-mental reality of the absurd. He who doubts the ontological value of the notion of being ought to say: a squared circle is inconceivable, but it is not irrealizable outside the mind. 212 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD These tentatives might do very well if philosophy had to despair of acquiring a knowledge of tran- scendental objects, but why delight in faint gleams of light through latticed windows when one can en- joy thesunlight? ‘These prescriptions force us to be- lieve without any intellectual justification for such a belief. As Flint so well remarks: “ A ‘ will’ virtu- ally identified with our own non-intellectual or ‘passional nature’ is not real will, not will either in its proper psychological acceptation, and its re- lationship to belief must be on the whole very dif- ferent from that of will, properly understood, to belief. ‘There is no such act of the mind possible as willing to believe what does not seem to be true or promise to give pleasure, or in other words, which seems destitute of any reason or evidence for being deemed true or good. There is no mere ‘will to believe’; a merely willed belief is a sham belief; it is no real belief. ... The part which willing has in the game is this: the mind can either will to follow along the paths on which the true light shines, and in which alone therefore right belief can be attained, or will to deviate from them, and so wander into the regions of darkness and delu- sion’ The same is true of the “ wish to believe.” “If,” writes Archbishop Whateley, “a mode of effectual and speedy cure be proposed to a sick man, he can- not but wish that the result of his inquiries concern- ing it may be a well-founded conviction of the safety 23 « Agnosticism,” p. 451 ff. THE FALLACY OF NOMINALISM 213 and the efficacy of the remedy prescribed. It would be no mark of wisdom to be indifferent to the resto- ration of health, but if his wishes should lead him to put implicit confidence in the remedy without any just grounds for it, he would deservedly be taxed with folly. In like manner, a good man will indeed wish to find the evidence of the Christian religion satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence more care- fully on account of the importance of the question.” “T cannot agree with those philosophers,” writes L. P. Jacks, “who maintain that religion is based on the will to believe. The two are clearly con- nected, but it would be truer to say that the will to believe is based on religion . . . God is not a prod- uct, but the author and living principle of the will to believe.” * Hence these philosophers who tell us: “ believe what is in line of your needs,” “ believe that life is worth living,” “believe that the universe still has values ” — but all this advice about believing does not create the fact. It is a kind of mental hypno- tism. No belief without a sound basis can pro- duce good. “The argument that we should believe certain things because they are helpful to what we have assumed to be practical interests, is a wilful con- fusion between what may be pleasant for the time being and what is determined by the weight of ra- tional evidence. ‘Theoretic reason in the form of logical science is the effort to determine the weight 24 “ Religious Perplexities,” 1923, p. 35. 214 RELIGION WITHOUT GOD of things. To tip the scales by the will to believe is childish foolishness since things will generally con- tinue to weigh what they do despite this tipping.” ”° The Als-Ob, another non-intellectual substitute offered by Professor Hans Vaihinger” is a fiction and in the all important question of deciding relig- ious beliefs it is not only not serviceable but posi- tively harmful. Living as if we had money will never keep us out of the poor house, but would be the quickest way of getting us in. Living as if he were well fed will never keep a hungry man from starving. The sailor cast on the salty waters of the sea might live as if the waters were not salty, but he would never slake his thirst. The 4ls-Ob philoso- phy is the philosophy of hypocrisy ; it means pulling © the wool over your own eyes and living as if there really was a God. Certainly, such a foundation for religion is no foundation at all. The reason for living “as if” there was a God rather than as if there were not, must have either a mental or a real foundation. If it is only mental, then there is no reason for choosing “ as if there was a God” rather than “as if there were not,” any more than there is for living as if there were, or as if there were no ghosts. If the foundation is real, then we are not free to live “ as if there were not”; only one alternative is possible, just as if my hand is really burnt, I am not free to live as if it were not burnt. 25 Morris R. Cohen, “The Insurgence against Reason,” Journal of Philosophy and Scientific Methods, Vol. 2, 1925, p. 126. 26 “ Die Philosophie des Als-Ob,” 1911.