HE GREAT ENIGMA W.5.LILLY 1 4; as a x ot the Theologica Son aso eS . PRINCETON, N. J.. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/greatenigma0OoOlill THE GREAT ENIGMA THE GREAT ENIGMA Bry WILLIAM SAMUEL “LILLY . . of Beot cbévover xm KelywY KpaTay vouos’ vouw yap Tovs Geods Hyovueda, Kal C@uev, Bika Kal Slav’ wpiopéevor’ EURIPIDES NEW YORK Dee ners i OaN Aen DY COL RA NOY 1892 LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS, TO THE VISCOUNT HALIFAX. My pear Lorp Hatirax, The book which I now offer to you is of the nature of an argumentum ad hominem, addressed to a class of readers practically outside the Chris- tian pale. It is an inquiry, from their point of view, into the tenableness of the religion which for more than a thousand years has supplied the fore- most nations of the world with an answer to The Great Enigma of human existence. Unquestion- ably, a feeling that this answer will no longer suffice is very widely prevalent. The professed teachers of Christianity, from Leo XIII. to ‘General’ Booth, whatever their differences, agree in confessing that its hold over the modern mind is rudely shaken. 'The question of questions now before mankind is whether ‘“‘the good Lord Jesus has had His day”? and must be numbered among the dead gods, or whether He is, in very truth, alive for evermore, and His life the light of men. The following pages present, in aid of the solution of that question, certain considerations (yi =) which have proved helpful to me, with special reference to the religious difficulties peculiar to these times. Possibly, they may be of use to some who find themselves unable to employ the old theological symbols. In dedicating the book to you, by your kind permission, I desire not merely to pay a tribute to a deeply prized friend- ship, but also to testify my sympathy with much of the work done by the movement within the Anglican Communion associated, in a special way, for many years, with your honoured name : a movement which appears to me to have largely increased the power for good of the National Church as ‘‘a serviceable breakwater ’’—to use Cardinal Newman’s happy expression—against the abounding impiety of the age. Thinking thus of the Church of England, [, although not of it, would say with our revered friend, whose name I have just written, that ‘TI should wish to avoid everything (except, indeed, under the direct call of duty, and this is a material exception) which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its maintenance of those great Christian and Catholic principles and doctrines which it has, up to this time, successfully preached.” I may add that the movement for its disestablishment seems to me one of the most retrograde and disreputable manoeuvres of our party politics. Itis the common teaching of the ( vii ) masters of political science, from Plato to Hegel, that to the perfection of the social organism, as of the individuals composing it, religion is necessary. Among English writers no one has more strongly protested against the repudiation of this doctrine than Mr. Gladstone. Thus, in his once famous treatise on The State in its fielations with the Church, he denounces ‘the separation of religion from government, Firstly, because it asserts practical atheism, that is a great and moral human agency, knowingly, deliberately, and permanently divested of regard to God. Secondly, because it asserts that atheism in its most authentic form, namely, by casting out its antagonist, religion, from what are most perma- nent and authoritative among men, their public politics. Thirdly, because the assertion is made, not by individuals alone, but by masses, invested with political power, and, under the most wretched infatuation, claiming it as a right of freedom thus to banish themselves from the Divine protection and regard.” No doubt this view no longer domi- nates either the general mind, or the mind of the distinguished person who thus expressed it with the copious and vehement rhetoric of which he is a master. But that fact raises no presumption whatever against its validity. And those of us who decline to recognize in ballot-boxes the sole organ of political truth, and in majorities told by head the one test of right and wrong in the public 4 f ( vn» order, are assuredly bound to bear witness to truer conceptions of the social organism than such as now find popular favour. ‘Things are what they are.’ Their nature is not in the least changed by the fond wishes of an age which sets up expedience as the unique rule of legislation, and material well-being as the only end of the State. So much to justify my description of the move- ment for the disestablishment of the National Church as retrograde. I have also called it disre- putable. There can be no question at all that the number of Englishmen, whatever their speculative opinions, who honestly wish to see the Church of England disestablished, is inconsiderable. Equally beyond question is it that the agitation for that end is being forced upon the party now in power by ‘an insolent and aggressive faction’ animated by sectarian hatred. The faction of which I speak is, in truth, an amalgam of two sects: the revolu- tionary doctrinaires who are inspired by a Jaco- binical dislike of Christianity, and that baser por- tion of the Dissenting interest—‘‘ most unblest phrase,” Coleridge used to call it—whose dominant motive is jealousy of the social superiority of the Anglican clergy. The wanton sacrifice of a vene- rable institution which, apart from its directly religious claims, is of great secular utility, as a vast organization of charity and a widely effective school of moral culture, might well seem to politicians not wholly given over to majority- ( ix) mongering, a heavy price to pay for the support of the brotherhood of Chadband and Stiggins, and their strange allies, the English admirers and disciples of Hébert and Chaumette. May we not reasonably hope that the event will justify Mr. Gladstone’s words, in the treatise from which I have quoted: ‘‘Our country seems to promise, at least, a more organized, tenacious, and determined resistance to the efforts against national religion than any other country which is prominent upon the great stage of the civilized world ” ? I am, my dear Lord Halifax, Most sincerely yours, AViesste Gli bia ATHENEUM C.UB, October 22, 1892. Fragments of the present work which hace appeared in the Quarterly, Fortnightly, and Contemporary Reviews, and in the Nineteenth Century, are here reprinted by per- mission of the respective editors, whose courtesy I desire to acknowledge, with thanks. And I am indebted to my friend, the Rev. Dr. William Barry, for his great kindness in reading the proof sheets of the book, and in favouring me with various sentences and suggestions scattered up and down it. Wace te SUMMARY. CHAPTER I. THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. Man alone of all animals wonders at his own existence. “What am I? Whence am I? Why amI? What is my finalend? What the means to it?”—that is The Great Enigma with which the generations of mortal men have ever been confronted The answers have been sought in philosophies and in religions Causation is, in fact, the great problem both of philosophy and of religion; but they approach it from different sides : The common ground and the last explanation of both philosophy and religion are certain great verities, bound together in links of necessary thought, which render a philosophy of religion possible Hitherto the great majority of men have sought the solu- tion of The Great Enigma in religions, and in the religion which is behind all religions PAGE xli SUMMARY. PAGE Religions have explained the human by the superhuman. They have contained—even the poorest and lowest of them—an ethical element in virtue of which this life was viewed, more or less clearly, as a period of probation ; : : ; 4 : 4 But in Christianity this ethical element assumes a very different character from what it possesses in any other mode of faith. Christianity proclaims that man is made and fashioned by the hands of the Divine Creator; that he is capable of the perfect felicity of the Beatific Vision which is his true end, and that the way to that end is by a right ordering of his will in this state of moral discipline ; . ; 4 This is the solution of The Great Enigma taught, in the Catechism, to every Catholic child: “Why did God make you?—To know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world, and to be happy for ever with Him in the next.” To incorporate moral culture with religion is among the most important achievements of Christianity . 5 é 4 In the present day, however, religions—Christianity among them—are widely supposed to have been “foundiout? =~, : : : ; 5 They are explained by professors of the science of religion as the accidents of periods: the poems in which man, at sundry times and in divers manners, has enshrined his ideals of the Divine, his aspirations towards the Unseen . ; : : , 6 Nor does this explanation stop short at the Christian Trinity. The Third hypostasis of the Sacred Triad, it will have to be merely the personification of a SUMMARY. metaphor. The Second it accounts of as the deifica- tion, under Platonic influences, of the Son of Mary. The First is stripped of the ecumenical attributes wherewith He had been invested, and is revealed as the national God of a small tribe of Western Semites The Sacred Books of Christianity are subjected to a criticism which issues in revolutionary views as to their date and origin, and which eliminates the super- natural element from them Moreover, physical science has introduced us to quite other conceptions, both of man and of his place in the universe, than those more or less closely inter- woven with the old theological dogmas Doubt is in the air. People can no more escape from it than from cholera or influenza Nor is the general doubt merely about this or that dogma. Unquestionable is it that, as the old creeds have lost their hold upon men’s minds, the Theistic conception which they more or less worthily enshrined, has become faint. Nor, again, is it confined to the domain of religion. The scepticism of the age extends to all first principles, and is nowhere more signally manifested than in the province of ethics From one point of view, indeed, it is extremely illogical that the decay of religious belief should affect ethical convictions, for the spheres of theology and of moral philosophy are, in themselves, distinct. The very knowledge which we have, by our natural reason, of justice and injustice suffices to give rise to a strict ethical obligation ; , : : But that a rule is conformable with reason is not enough Xili PAGE 10 16 18 xiv SUMMARY. PAGE to ensure obedience to it. The true principle of duty for the sake of duty is “too bright and good for human nature’s daily food.’ The vast majority of men need the prospect of retributive happiness and suffering to keep them in the right way : st rad Hence the ideas of moral good and evil, and of rewards and punishments beyond the grave, properly find place in dogmatic religious teaching . : : peo Christianity is, and cannot keep from being, a vast system of moral discipline. For a thousand years it has taught the foremost nations of the world what “to believe and to do.” And its rules of action must share in the discredit cast upon its articles of faith. It is impossible, practically, to view any ethical problem apart from The Great Enigma of the meaning and end of life which fundamentally underlies all morality : : : ; : eae2o In the present volume it will first be assumed, for the purpose of the argument, that the solution of that Enigma presented by Theistic belief, and especially by Christianity, is discredited, and the other solutions offered us instead will be considered both in their theoretical and practical aspects. And then the question will be examined whether Theism in general, and the Christian religion in particular, are so utterly untenable as is very generally contended : . 25 The book is of the nature of an argumentum ad hominem, and is written for the benefit, not of those who agree with the author, but of those who do not “ o aeeG There are really, in good logic, only two answers, besides Theism, to the Great Enigma: Atheism and SUMMARY. Agnosticism; by Atheism being meant the dogmatic denial of God, and by Agnosticism the mental attitude of doubt, suspension of judgment, nescience concerning Him ; ; ‘ And of Agnosticism there are two varieties: the merely critical and negative, which maintains that we can- not know whether or no a Divine Noumenon exists ; and the scientific or affirmative, which asserts His existence, but denies that He can be known . ‘ CHAPTER II. ATHEISM. By an Atheist is meant, in this work, one who dogmati- cally denies the existence of a First Cause or Creator of all things, “ruling the universe and holding moral relations with mankind” It may be truly objected that such dogmatic denial is not, in itself, worth answering, since ‘“‘a demon- strative proof of the non-existence of God, assuredly, no one ever has found nor will find”. But there is a very practical consideration which invests Atheism with much importance. It is among the masses, who are “as incapable of thinking as they are of flying,’ and to whom political power has everywhere passed, or is passing, that the propa- gandists of Atheism are most active and most successful xV PAGE 29 36 38 Xvi SUMMARY. Their methods differ in different countries, but in all worketh one and the selfsame spirit . 5 : In Germany, Atheism assumes the form of the crassest, coarsest, and most consistent Materialism, and is closely allied with Socialism . In England it occupies itself chiefly with attacks upon the Sacred Books of Christianity, the plenary inspira- tion of which is the corner-stone of the popular religion But France presents the completest view of the Atheistic propaganda; and what Atheism is in France, it is in the Latin races generally : : ° The best revelation of it is afforded by certain Catechisms which have been prepared by zealous men as instru- ments for the atheizing of that country. Notable among these compositions is M. Monteil’s Catéchisme du Libre-Penseur, which presents an admirably clear account of the dogmas proposed by Atheists in super- cession of the old religious and ethical doctrines The work is divided into three sections, dealing, respec- tively, with God, Religion, and Morals God, it teaches, is “‘an expression, the exact value of which is the material world, and All is matter” It continues that “the divine individuality is a lie;” that “we ought not to believe in the existence of the individual named God whom most religions have pre- sented to us,” because “‘ such a God has no existence ;” and that, “since everything belongs to the material order, the soul does not exist” Religion it pronounces to have “proceeded from the PAGE 38 38 39 41 44 48 SUMMARY. foolish deistic hypothesis;” and the Christian religion, in particular, it declares ‘“baneful and deadly ; in Jehovah as in Jesus, in the Pentateuch as in the Gospels:” an exitiabilis superstitio justly pro- scribed by the philanthropic pagans of the decadent Roman empire. It urges, “ Let us abandon religion completely, and take refuge in Philosophy—the product of all reason, and the source of all morality ” The “Philosophy” thus commended amounts to this: that man is naturally good: that the passions are the true guides of human life: that their gratification is the true end of human life: and that other life there is none . : - : And morality, we are told, is “the sentiment which pre- scribes to us prudent conduct, and is determined by the reason;” the reason, it would appear, being “nothing but phosphorus” This is the, New Gospel that the poor have preached to them as a substitute for a Theism which reasons of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come To use the elementary schools as a means for inculcating it, has been the cherished object of the antichristian sectaries who have so largely obtained political power throughout Europe They are training the coming generation to believe that the answer to The Great Enigma is not moral, but material: to put aside faith in the Divine as a senseless and servile superstition ; to find the rule of right and wrong in self-interest; to see in ethics only a regulation of police; to acquiesce in physical fatality ; and to practise a brutal egoism XVvil PAGE 55 65 66 68 68 XVili SUMMARY. Such are the human animals, with the wild beast unchained in them, which Atheism is rearing as the sovereigns of the democratic future . - . CHAPTER III. CRITICAL AGNOSTICISM. Of the merely Sceptical or Critical Agnosticism which is content with professing nescience of God, no better view can be obtained than that which is exhibited by M. Renan’s career and writings . : : His spiritual history is the spiritual history of millions writ large. He used his incomparable literary skill to interpret the mind of his generation to itself. And this is the chief cause of his influence Another cause is his intellectual opulence. A philologist, a historian, a philosopher, a publicist, he appealed to thoughtful men of every variety of mental character; taking them captive by the breadth of his erudition and the abundance of his ideas, no less than by the magic of his style In order to appreciate M. Renan’s influence as a teacher, it will be well to inquire first into the intellectual constituents of his character. And here much help will be derived from his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse,—a work, which, as he tells us, he wrote “in order to transmit to others the theory of the universe which he carries in himself;” which we may indeed take as presenting his answer to The Great Enigma. PAGE 68 71 72 74 77 SUMMARY. But all his other writings may, in a true sense, be regarded as a commentary upon his autobiography ; and there is no reason for questioning his sincerity . As a Breton, he possessed a vivid yet chastened and inexpansive imagination; while to the Gascon blood, which came to him through his mother, he owed “une certaine habileté dans l’art d’amener le cliquetis des mots et des idées,” and “le penchant 4 trancher beaucoup de difficultés par un sourire ” Everything in his early years seemed to indicate for him a modest ecclesiastical career in Brittany And during his time at the Little Seminary of St. Nicholas du Chardonnet, no question as to his vocation to the priesthood occurred to him But in the course of his four years at the Grand Seminary of St. Sulpice, the physical sciences — especially general natural history and physiology — greatly attracted him, and his studies in this department shook his confidence in metaphysics Later on in his career at the Grand Seminary, he devoted himself specially to Theology and Biblical Exegesis, and gradually became convinced of the impossibility of demonstrating that the Christian religion is, more specially than any other, divine and revealed; further, it appeared to him certain, that, in the field of reality accessible to our observation, no supernatural event, no miracle has ever occurred . Again, historical facts seemed to him absolutely irrecon- cilable with the theory that the doctrines of Chris- tianity, as they were defined at Trent, or even at Niceea, were what the Apostles originally taught Xix 80 81 83 84 87 87 xx SUMMARY. PAGE While his mind was revolving these matters, he betook himself to the study, first of Hebrew, and then of German, which introduced him to the new exegesis distinctive of the nineteenth century; the result being that “the traditional thesis” as to the date, authorship, and inerrancy of the Hebrew Sacred Books—a thesis which he had been taught to consider essential to Christianity—soon grew incredible to him ; : ; : ; : PT 3, The conclusion of the whole matter for him was that “his direct study of Christianity, undertaken in the most serious spirit, did not leave him enough faith to be a sincere priest; while, on the other hand, it inspired him with too much respect to allow of his resigning himself to play an odious comedy with beliefs most worthy of respect ‘; ; : Aeiiat: Ile had the courage of his convictions; and on the 6th of October, 1845, he quitted Saint-Sulpice, leaving behind him the faith which he had once hoped to teach . : : : - : 89 M. Renan was what he called himself, “un prétre manqué:” and the work of his life was to engraft modern criticism upon his religious temperament. The faith of his childhood dwelt with him as a sentiment. Its poetry survived, side by side with the criticism which had been fatal to it asa creed. His utterances differed, according as it was the poet, or the critic, that spoke ; ; ; “ Re) He was, in fact, a poet penetrated by the beauty, dominated by the majesty of the religious sentiment. He was also a critic whose last word was that the Object of the religious sentiment—if Object there be—is beyond SUMMARY. xxl our knowledge: that we can affirm nothing of it, not even its existence : ; : : Pi Se Buthisscepticism was not confined to the domain of religion. In the province of morality he found the same funda- mental doubt. Here, too, his first dogma was the rejection of all dogmas. ‘Sa pensée de derriére la téte, c’est que la vertu, non plus que toute autre chose ne supporte examen; on souléve le voile et, Ja comme partout, ou découvre qw il n’y a rien dessous.” Critical Agnosticism is as fatal to the idea of Duty as is the most dogmatic Atheism : : pulse His ethical Agnosticism sprung from his religious Agnos- ticism. And of his religious Agnosticism he has himself given us the history. Like so many others in this age, in unlearning Christianity he unlearned Theism. He illustrates, in a very striking manner, Cardinal Newman’s dictum that “ to deny revelation is the way to deny natural religion” . ; . 105 We have seen that the reasons why he ceased to believe in Christianity were, mainly, two: his inability to receive “ the traditional thesis” regarding the date, authorship, and inerrancy of the Sacred Books of Christianity, and his conviction that miracles never have happened and never can happen : meld With regard to the first of these, it must be frankly admitted that if Christianity depended upon a pseudo- scientific view of certain venerable documents, formed at an unscientific period, and irreconcilable with the conclusions of true science, Christianity would be doomed : ; : : : jal US But to suppose Christianity founded upon that collection XXll SUMMARY. of ancient documents called the Bible is historically false. It is certain that no authorized New Testa- ment canon existed until the latter half of the second century. It is equally certain that the mission of the Author of Christianity was not to promote the forma- tion of a volume, which, long centuries after, should become ‘the religion of Protestants,” but to establish a society. The Bible is, in fact, the creation of the Catholic Church, from which other varieties of Chris- tianity have received it. And the Catholic Church, while declaring it in all matters of faith and morals divinely inspired throughout, has never pronounced how far that inspiration extends—has never formally committed herself to “ the traditional thesis,” which has come down from uncritical ages Next, as to M. Renan’s peremptory declaration that ‘there never has been a supernatural fact,’ “ Quod gratis 5) asseritur, gratis negatur,” would, in good logic, be a sufficient reply. It is a question of evidence M. Renan, in terms, acknowledged this, and professed to Bu ct repudiate the a priort argument. But, as is clear from many passages in his writings, he was, consciously or unconsciously, under its influence. It was a first principle with him that a supernatural fact —a miracle—is impossible, because it would be abnormal: an infraction of the order of the universe: a violation of law . everything depends upon what is meant by “ norm,” ‘“‘order of the universe,’ “law.” The invincible prejudice against the miraculous, now so common, is, in truth, an expression of that abounding materialism which denies the spiritual principle in man and in PAGE 107 110 110 SUMMARY. nature, and which, identifying law with physical necessity, issues in physical fatalism . Again, “ What are miracles for us, that is, what are they for the practical use of our understanding, but events in the world with the laws of whose working we are, and must always remain, utterly unacquainted ?” That such events have occurred, and do occur, seems abso- lutely certain; and when intelligent men are found dogmatically asserting that they do not occur, we can only suppose that these dogmatists have not looked into the evidence, or that they are under the influence of a first principle which disqualifies them for weighing it M. Renan constantly speaks of the miraculous as “ irra- tional” and “absurd.” But “irrational ” means contrary to reason; “absurd” means contradictory, impossible. Do we assert that which is contrary to reason, or contradictory, or impossible, when we say that there are events with the laws of whose working we are, and ever must remain, unacquainted ? The criticism whereon M. Renan founded the Agnosticism of which we have taken him as a typical exponent, is inadequate to support the vast edifice of doubt which he reared upon it CHAPTER IV. SCIENTIFIC AGNOSTICISM. The Scientific Agnosticism, which is the subject of this chapter, will be best viewed as exhibited by Mr. Herbert Spencer, who is generally recognized as its most complete and methodical expositor ‘ : XXlli PAGE 1il 111 112 115 Le XXIV SUMMARY. PAGE Mr. Spencer bestows upon his speculations the name of “The Synthetic Philosophy;” and philosophy he defines as “completely unified knowledge;” his Scientific Agnosticism proposes to give a solution of The Great Enigma: to explain the source of life, the meaning of life, the end of life, and the conduct of Life." yer. : : ; : : WAU The foundation of Mr. Spencer’s philosophy is the dis- tinction between the Unknowable and the Knowable. The sentiment of a First Cause, infinite and absolute, he considers the eternal and secure basis of all religion. This Deity, whom, hidden more or less under anthropomorphic disguises, the votaries of all creeds ignorantly worship, declares he unto them as “The Unknowable” . , é ‘ Mao Next, turning to the physical sciences, he regards all forces as manifestations of the dynamic energy every- where diffused, which co-ordinates the whole range of phenomena, past, present, and future: an energy the essence of which escapes us. Thus the last word of physical science, as of religion, is that “the Power which the Universe manifests to us is inscru- table:” and in “the ultimate truth” of The Un- knowable he finds “the basis of their reconciliation” 122 We can know, he holds, in the strict sense of knowing, only the phenomenal manifestations of The Unknow- able, and these we can know only as purely relative and subjective realities. ‘ Even the highest achieve- ments of science are resolvable into mental relations of co-existence and sequence, so co-ordinated as exactly to tally with certain relations of co-existence and sequence that occur externally ” . é vei 128 SUMMARY. XXV PAGE These manifestations, “called by some ‘impressions’ and 999 “ideas,” Mr. Spencer prefers to distinguish as “vivid” and « faint;” manifestations that occur under the conditions of sensuous perception being “faint,” and such as occur under the conditions known as those of reflection, or memory, or imagina- ion, or ideation beine Vivi : ‘ : f tion, deat being “ ra ie 123 “This profoundest of distinctions between the manifesta- tions of The Unknowable,” he continues, “‘ we recog- nize by grouping them into self and non-self. These faint manifestations, forming a continuous whole, differing from the others in the quantity, quality, cohesion, and condition of existence of its parts, we call the ego: and these vivid manifestations indis- solubly bound together in relatively immense masses, and having independent conditions of existence, we call the non-ego'; or rather, and more truly, each order of manifestations carries with it the irresistible implication of some power that manifests itself; and by the words ego and non-ego respectively, we mean the power that manifests itself in the faint forms, and the power that manifests itself in the vivid forms” fe : ‘ é Se Es “The totality of my consciousness,” he further writes, “is divisible into a faint aggregate which I call my mind ; a special part of the vivid aggregate cohering with this in various ways, which I call my body; and the rest of the vivid aggregate which has no such connection with the faint aggregate. This special part of the vivid aggregate, which I call my body, proves to be a part through which the rest of the vivid aggregate works changes in the faint, and through which the faint works certain changes XXVl Mr. SUMMARY. in the vivid.’ And, ‘the root-conception of exist- ence, beyond consciousness, becomes that of resist- ance, plus some force which the resistance measures ‘i Spencer’s philosophy, in fact, requires as “a pri- mordial proposition,” as ‘“‘a datum,” the acceptance of these two separate aggregates, as constituting the world of consciousness, and the world beyond con- sciousness, and the ascription of both to the action of one single cause, which he terms, The Unknow- able. Thus is “the unification of science complete,” and “ philosophy reaches its goal” . Spencer’s theory may be shortly and accurately described as an attempt to find the solution of the problem of the universe in a sole law: the persistence of force under multiform transformations. Physical forces, vital forces, mental forces, social forces, are all only different manifestations of the selfsame force. Cosmology, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Ethics— all are to be explained by the persistence, under various modifications, of that manifestation of The Unknowable. The Spencerian philosophy is, in fact, a vast system of speculative physics There are three fundamental doctrines upon which it rests: his doctrine of Causation, of the Relativity of Knowledge, and of The Unknowable. Hach will be examined in detail First, then, as to Causation. The unity of natural forces is by no means established, and the correlation of mental and physical forces is a mere nude hypo- thesis. No equivalence can be shown between neurosis and psychosis; nor can life and energy be brought under Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the Per- PAGE 124 124 125 129 SUMMARY. XXVli PAGE sistence of Force, which, as taught by him, is an amalgam of physical dogmatism and metaphysical error . ‘ : ‘ ‘ ‘ wt29 Mr. Spencer’s doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge is, in substance, this: “That what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective agencies that are unknown and unknow- able.” But perception is a much more delicate matter than Mr. Spencer imagines. Passive sensa- tion does not constitute knowledge in the true sense. The instrument of knowledge is thought. There is a perception of sense: there is an analytical inter- pretation, an intellectual appropriation of that per- ception. The idea which the intellect obtains concerning its various objects is not wholly relative. Mr. Spencer ignores the fact that the relations of things are rational; that is, that they possess an element of objectivity. He does not recognize the category of Being : . : : 2 9135 Next as to The Unknowable, Mr. Spencer teaches that “though the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness: that, so long as conscious- ness continues, we cannot for an instant rid ourselves of this datum: and that thus the belief which this datum constitutes, has a higher warrant than any other whatever.” But the very nature of intelligence forbids such a conception of the Absolute as this. All knowledge, according to Mr. Spencer, is relative. Jt is rigidly restricted to phenomena. If this is so, if our knowledge is limited to conditioned experience, XXVIll SUMMARY. we cannot possibly know, in any sense of knowing, the unconditioned. All consciousness, according to Mr. Spencer, is constituted under forms and limits: it belongs to the phenomenal order. That is for him the one mode of consciousness. If you abolish the limits, you abolish the consciousness The truth is, that as Mr. Spencer’s erroneous theory of But relativity has led him to label the Supreme Object of knowledge Unknowable, so a true theory of relativity would have saved him from the antinomies in which he is hopelessly involved with regard to this matter, The more the manifold relations of things are examined, the more clearly are they seen to be rational: they testify of Objective Reason. Mr. Spencer’s Scientific Agnosticism is an outrage upon reason. He puts aside the self-affirmations of the intellect—those a priori or necessary truths which are laws of thought because they are absolute uniformities, intuitively known as self-evident—and these are the primary sources of all knowledge; they are “what God eternally thinks.” In them, and not in any collocation and displacement of molecules, is the ultimate basis of metaphysics Mr. Spencer’s Scientific Agnosticism is not merely speculative. He preaches new morals as well as a new faith. He considers that since “ moral injunc- tions are losing the authority given by their sup- posed sacred origin, the secularization of morals, the establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis, is a pressing need,” lest “ by the disappearance of the code of supernatural ethics” a moral “ vacuum ” should ensue PAGE 145 157 SUMMARY. Xx1x PAGE Mr. Spencer, however, greatly errs—as has been pointed out in Chapter J.—in supposing transcendental moralists to regard divine commands as the only possible guides in morals. The old data of ethics which have guided the civilized world for so many generations are not “ supernatural,” though they are supersensuous . : ‘ : ° om tos This, by the way. We proceed to examine that “ fitter regulative system of conduct” which Mr. Spencer invites mankind to accept : : : a 161 There are, in truth, only two great schools in ethics. There is the school which seeks to ascertain morality from the spiritual nature of man by methods purely rational. There is the school which denies the transcendental ground of man’s being, and which seeks to derive morality from his animal nature, by methods merely physical. There is the school which finds the real aboriginal principle of morals in pleasure or agreeable feeling. There is the school which finds it in intuitions of equity, held to be primordial and independent elements of our nature . : of, eLOE There can be no question to which of these schools Mr. Spencer belongs. His philosophy, viewed as a whole, is, as we have seen, an attempt to construct a complete scheme of the universe by means of the persistence, under various transformations, of that manifestation of the Unknowable which he calls Force; to unify knowledge of phenomena, the only knowledge held by him to be possible, and to trace everywhere the one cosmical processus. ‘* Moral phenomena ” he considers as phenomena of evolution ; and he expressly tells us that “a redistribution of matter and motion constitutes evolution.” He attempts XXX SUMMARY. PAGE to construct a science of morals out of physical elements by means of his one formula : eer G2 Such is Mr. Spencer’s method in moral philosophy. We proceed to consider his application of it, and to see how he manufactures morality from prior conditions that were unmoral : : : : ela He tells us “ Ethics has for its subject-matter that form which universal conduct assumes, during the last Stage of its evolution.” By “conduct” he means “acts adjusted to ends, or else the adjustment of acts to ends.” And “always acts are called good or bad, as they are well or ill adjusted to ends.” Conduct which subserves “ the welfare of self, of offspring, and of fellow-citizens” “is regarded as relatively good:” but “evolution becomes the highest possible when the conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow- men:” the reason being that in Mr. Spencer’s philosophy life is regarded as the highest good a uel Ge Moral good, then, according to Mr. Spencer, does not differ essentially from physical good. The goodness of a hunter and the goodness of a hero, the goodness of a sausage and the goodness of a saint, are for Mr. Spencer, in kind, identical. And the test of goodness is always the same: not the character of the agent, not the quality of his intention, but the pleasur- able tendency of his acts. Virtue possesses for Mr. Spencer no primordial and independent character. | It is whatever, as a means, promotes, on the whole, the supreme end—pleasure : : ALG This is Mr. Spencer’s treatment of the fundamental question wherewith ethics is concerned: the nature SUMMARY. >> 9.4! PAGE of moral good: the difference between right and wrong. Further, he believes “that the experiences of utility organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human race, have been pro- ducing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition— certain emotions responding to right and wrong con- duct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.” “The moral motive,” he lays down, “is constituted by representations of con- sequences which the acts naturally produce.” “These are the restraints properly distinguished as moral.” And “since with the restraints thus generated is always joined the thought of external coercion, there arises the notion of obligation ;” a notion which he afterwards interprets as equivalent to the indispen- sableness of any means towards a given end,—the means being that which we are obliged to employ, if we would secure the end . : ; - 170 He further pronounces it “evident” that when the human machine is perfected by evolution, “that element in the moral consciousness which is expressed by the word obligation will disappear,’ and “the moral sentiments will guide men just as spontaneously as do now the sensations ” : ‘ : . 174 Upon these fundamental positions of the “ fitter regulative system” proposed to us by Scientific Agnosticism in the place of the rule of right and wrong hitherto received, it may be observed— First, that there is an absolute contradiction between Mr. Spencer’s hedonistic morality and his great law ofevolution . ‘ ; : ‘ ~ 1t5 XXxll SUMMARY. Secondly, that Mr. Spencer’s teaching depends, essentially, upon quite arbitrary assumptions Thirdly, that Mr. Spencer’s moral philosophy is hopelessly vitiated by his misapprehension of the subject where- with such philosophy is concerned—moral goodness . Fourthly, that it is no less fatal to the concept of moral The Mr. obligation than it is to the concept of moral goodness “fitter regulative system” which Scientific Agnosti- cism proposes to substitute for the old data of ethics is a mere abortion of moral philosophy ; just as its doctrine of The Unknowable is a mere abortion of natural theology Spencer’s portentous generalities, with their integra- tions and disintegrations, leave the mystery of “ the immeasurable world” precisely where they found it. The key to the problem of existence is not sensation, but personality. And it is to be sought, not in the charnel-house of Physics, but in the spiritual temple of Reason CHAPTER V. RATIONAL THEISM. The next step in the present inquiry is, whether Theism is, in fact, so hopelessly discredited as is frequently and confidently alleged - : ° ° The antitheistic current of contemporary thought is a PAGE 178 182 190 196 199 200 a ee SUMMARY. XXX sort of intellectual epidemic. The vast majority of those who are infected by it could give no coherent account of their scepticism It is, no doubt, largely due to the stupendous advance of the experimental sciences. And this is natural enough, For those sciences dwell in the sphere of physical uniformity. They are nothing but a know- ledge of the relative; and exclusive devotion to them tends to shut out the idea of a First Cause Existence presents two problems—the how and the why. To explain the how of things, we must discover these uniformities of sequence or co-ordination which we call their laws. That is the province of physics. And with all beyond that, physical science, as such, is not concerned But contemporary masters of physical science often display a desire, and more than a desire, to bring everything within its boundaries; to restrict our ideas to generali- zations of phenomena; to erect experimental observa- tion into the sole criterion of certitude No doubt there is a true, a close analogy, between physical and intellectual laws, both being manifesta- tions of the same Reason. But it is most necessary to resist the application—misapplication—of the physiological method to the mental and moral order : the claim that purely intellectual questions shall be determined by the laws of matter In this chapter the special character of the antitheistic current of thought, in these days, will be specially kept in view. The reader will be asked to consider first what are the reasons specially urged why we PAGE 200 201 205 XXXIV SUMMARY. PAGE should abandon Theism; and next, what Reason, freely exercised according to the methods now specially prized, and without any reference to systems of religion professing to be revealed, makes evident, unless we stultify its teaching, concerning the existence and character of the Supreme Reality . 206 We are told that if men will go on believing in God, it is ‘cin spite of science and the laws of consciousness.” We will proceed to see what reasons in support of the antitheistic argument “science and the laws of con- sciousness” supply . 4 : ; 2 5208 The antitheistic argument from physical science specially relied on, in the present day, is the argument from the apparent failure and waste in the phenomenal world. We are told, “The early glimpses of the marvels of Nature afforded by modern science un- doubtedly were favourable to natural theology in the first instance. Knowledge revealed so many wonders which had not been suspected by ignorance, that a general increase of reverence and awe for the Creator was the natural though not very logical consequence. But a deeper philosophy, or rather biology, has dis- turbed the satisfaction with which ‘the wisest and most exquisite ends’ were once regarded. It is now known that for one case of successful adaptation of means to ends in the animal world, there are hun- dreds of failures. If organs which serve an obvious end justify the assumption of an intelligent designer, what are we to say of organs which serve no ends at all, but are quite useless or meaningless?” . a Ws In answer to this it may be said— First, that though we may not be able to argue, solely from the phenomena of the physical world, to an absolutely SUMMARY. wise and all-powerful First Cause, yet the progress of physical science has not disproved, and does not tend to disprove, thought, order, purpose . Secondly, that, in strictness, there is no such thing as failure known to us, because there may be always ends which are hidden from our eyes. We can affirm order, because that is a thing positive. But to affirm disorder, absolute and final, is like attempting to prove a negative Thirdly, that theories borrowed from the economical schools of the day are not the proper measure of finality in the universe: nor can the standard sup- plied by Utilitarianism be accepted as the rule of all things in heaven and earth Fourthly, that the doctrine of organic evolution does not in the least conduct us to the necessity of modern phenomenists as the true explanation of the universe. Necessity is a question-begging word. If blind necessity is meant, such necessity assuredly could not produce the diversity, the succession, the return of phenomena. But if necessity is not blind it is merely another name for law; and law implies an abiding and unchanging self, a spiritual principle Fifthly, that the question of a First Cause is one with which the physicist, as such, is not concerned. His domain is the sphere of sense perception Next, the antitheistic argument from the laws of conscious- ness amounts to this: that the antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended while conscious- ness lasts, renders impossible all knowledge of the Ultimate Reality, in which subject and object are transcended; that we can believe in a Divine con- XXXV PAGE 211 212 213 XXXV1 SUMMARY. sciousness only by refraining from thinking what is meant by consciousness, and that the condition of believing in a Divine will is similar . But this argument is vitiated hopelessly and radically— First, by assumptions, of the most arbitrary @ priori de- scription, concerning the Ultimate Reality, whose existence and attributes reason seeks in some degree to know Secondly, by utter misconception of what is meant by the faculty of abstraction . : : ° \, Thirdly, by failure to apprehend the essential nature of intellect We go on to the next point: What grounds for belief in God are afforded by reason freely exercised, according to the methods specially prized in these days? It must be frankly admitted that the strongest grounds for such belief are inexpressible, because they trans- cend the logical understanding. But we may claim to have done enough in satisfaction of the debt which we owe to all men, if we show that our faith, so far from being unreasonable, does, in fact, sum up the conclusions to which reason points; that the language in which we clothe it, although infinitely inadequate, is the nearest approximation to the truth possible to us Let us start, then, from the way of thinking just now so much in credit. The popular philosophy of the day is a philosophy of relativity, employing as its most valued instrument comparative analysis. No doubt, to reduce the complex to the simple, the phenomenon to the law, the special law to the general law, is, so PAGE 214 217 218 219 220) 220 SUMMARY. XXXVIi PAGE far as it goes, an explanation. And if universal being were merely monotonous and _ inflexible mechanism, such would be the whole explanation. But universal being is not merely that. It is also organic. And the tendency of lower forms to pass into higher, implies something else than mechanism ; a system of definite directions is merely a synonym for finality bo bo a Correlation cannot be essence. It is a logical impossi- bility for the Relative to exist alone. It presupposes the Absolute. To the Absolute the whole series of relative realities tends. , : : Bee? Phenomena, apprehensible by the senses, must have a reason which is not a phenomenon, and which there- fore is ‘“ beyond the probe of chemic test” . . 223 If it be objected, from Kant, that the principle of causality is purely subjective, and that we must not venture with the speculative reason beyond the lmits of sensible experience, the reply is that though the subject imposes its own form on knowledge and makes it subjective, subjectivism does not neces- sarily follow from this. The phenomena of the ex- ternal world are not merely abstract signs, like _ algebraic symbols. They are instinct with life: they obey law: they are disposed in a wonderful order. The life, the law, the order, demand explana- tion. And for this explanation the principle of causality is necessary. “It is by an @ prior? axiom of the understanding, that we apply the causal relation to the external world” : ; - 223 If Kant’s teaching be viewed as a whole, it cannot be believed that he held the law of causation to be XXXVill SUMMARY. PAGE wholly subjective. Nor is there any way out of Nihilism for his disciples, save to take the Supreme Principle which is beyond sensible experience, and to build on that ; ; , : 225 What, then, can we know about this Supreme Principle ? this Ultimate Reality? As we saw in the last chap- ter, Mr. Spencer, while pronouncing it Unknowable, predicates of it not only being, but causal energy, eternity, omnipotence; recognizes it as “the basis of intelligence,” and holds it to be ‘“ manifested” “through phenomena,” to our “ consciousness.” Let us see what these manifestations amount to . . 225 What does the external universe manifest to our conscious- ness of the Power which, as Mr. Spencer tells us, “persists unchanging under these sensible appear- ances?” If we look around us and above us, we find everywhere what we term mind and matter. Surely we may say with Fénelon that the Ultimate Reality “igs not indeed mind or matter, but is all that is essential in mind and matter” : . ot, What is essential in mind is reason. And if there is any lesson taught more clearly than another by the re- cent researches of physicists, it is the intelligibility of the universe. Reason everywhere—such is the lesson which we see writ large in Nature. Its laws are identical with the laws of the human intellect. Reason is the constituent element of reality. And does not this point to the Supreme Cause as Objective Reason? Surely it is an irrational doctrine that the unintelligible is the primary source of the intel- ligible . ‘ : . : : »| 229 Reason, then, the essence of mind, is what sensible phe- nomena disclose to us, ever more clearly. And what SUMMARY. XXXIxX PAGE is essential in matter? It is given us only as the union of two forces—the force of expansion and the force of attraction. It is the visibility of force ot 20k But force is only a resultant ; nor, if we go by experience, have we knowledge of any other primary cause of force than volition. This is the only possible name under which we can gather up the mighty forces ever energizing throughout the universe. Matter, therefore, is merely a manifestation of Will . . 231 Reason and Will are inseparably united in the universe as they are in idea. But the union of reason and will it is which constitutes personality : . 232 This is perhaps as far as external nature enables us to go. But the phenomena of the external world are not the only channels through which the Ultimate Existence is manifested to consciousness. We must also take into account the lessons of what the some- what slipshod language of the day calls “mental phenomena.” Mr. Spencer tells us that the Ultimate Existence is “the basis of our intelligence.” Let us see what our intelligence tells us concerning its basis. bo (Se) bo What is the primary fact which the intellect reveals to us, aS soon as the act of thinking takes place in our own consciousness? Unquestionably it is the distinction of self and non-self. And, as unquestion- ably, this distinction ig accompanied by the idea of moral obligation. It is also matter of fact that the source of that obligation has ever been felt to lie in a mysterious and hyper-physical Entity whereon man depends . , : . : . 234 d xl SUMMARY. This is the common factor of all creeds, They all pro- claim, however rude or refined, grotesque or sublime their symbolism, the absolute dominion of the moral law, as a perpetual obligation binding upon all possible intelligent beings, and therefore, as a Transcendental Reality, a manifestation of the Eternal under the condition of time. They point to the Ultimate Reality which is “the basis of our intelligence” as law moral! . It appears, then, that as external phenomena manifest to But our consciousness the Ultimate Reality as Law, which is another name for the union of Reason and Will, wherein consists Personality, so do “ mental phenomena” also, adding this further revelation first of all: that the Law is just, the Reason right, the Will ethical, the Person holy . further: the primary fact revealed to us by reason, as soon as the act of thinking takes place in our consciousness, is the distinction of self and non-self. Intellect, then, manifests to me myself. The per- ception of selfhood is the very fundamental interior fact of which I am conscious. The Ego, upon its own self-testimony, is a something which is one, identical, permanent, rational, volitional, and free— not, of course, absolutely, but relatively free—a something which is the principle and cause of our acts. But these facts are manifestations to our “eonsciousness” of the Ultimate Reality, which is “the basis of our intelligence.” And they manifest that Reality as possessing, in some transcendent and incomprehensible way, those qualities which are the self-affirmations of the intellect: Substance, Causality, Being, and all else included in the metaphysical conception of Personality PAGE 234 237 238 SUMMARY. If it is objected that there is a contradiction in con- ceiving the Absolute as personal, the answer is that personality does not mean limitation. In the proper sense of the word, Personality—Fiir-sich-sein—can be predicated only of the Infinite. « Ipse suum esse est.” Perfect selfhood means immediate self- existence. The idea of Personality, like all ideas, is realized only in that Self-Existent—the Original of all existence—which transcends those ideas, indeed, but in transcending, includes them may say, then, that the Ultimate Reality is mani- fested to our consciousness as the Original of the law physical, which rules in the phenomenal world, and of the law moral written on the fleshly tables of the heart; as the Supreme Good, in whom all ideas are realized; as the First Cause and Final End of the universe, where all is causation and finality ; as the Self-Existent, and therefore a Person, or rather the Person, from whom all personality is an effluence ; as “the basis of our intelligence,” of all intelligence. Such are the conclusions which we must accept upon the testimony of intellect. The only alternative is to deny the validity of intellect altogether It may indeed be objected that the conception of God involves us in invincible antinomies. No doubt that is so. We should remember, however, that while in the finite contradictories are in opposition, in the Absolute they find their union : ; : It must not for a moment be supposed that our human and relative notions are the measure of the Absolute and Divine. The Infinite and Eternal is not “a magnified, non-natural man;” nor can our speech do xli PAGE 241 242 244. xhi SUMMARY. PAGE more than most dimly adumbrate Him. All our words, essentially phenomenal and relative, are but sensuous symbols of the great Noumenal Fact. But surely there is some mean between knowing all about a thing and knowing nothing about it. . 244 The popular god, in all religions, is a thing of shreds and patches, a vice of gods, and cannot possibly be other. Still, we are too apt to undervalue that exceeding great multitude of people who are simply good and religious-minded, wholly undisturbed by Theistic problems, They are not intellectually considerable. But to them are ofttimes revealed things hidden from the wise and prudent . ‘ : . 246 Unquestionably, of all those problems the most terrible is the existence, not of the Absolute, but of the Perfect Being. It is hard to conceive how the Supreme Self, in whose unmoved and immovable calm all ideals are realized, could have become an active cause. It is infinitely harder to conciliate the existence of a Perfect Creator or First Cause with the existence of such a world as this . fs . 249 Nor is there any alleviation of the burden and the mystery save in the certitude that justice rules the world, and that we can follow the law within. In this certitude the wisest and best of our race have ever found “amid the encircling gloom” “a light unto their feet.” That light will be spoken of in the next chapter 1) Or [o\e) SUMMARY. xliil CHAPTER VI. THE INNER LIGHT. PAGE Mysticism is the proper complement of the Rational Theism considered in the last chapter; its office to point from the phenomenal to the noumenal, from that which seems to that which is. It is based upon the indubitable fact, that the spirit of man comes in direct contact with the Supreme Object, to which neither the senses nor the logical understanding can attain: whose manifestations carry with them their own proof, and are moral in their nature, are out of time and place, are enlightening, purifying, and are therefore, in a true sense, ascetic ; é t Zo Or In this chapter the four chief systems in which the mystical doctrine has been clothed will first be sur- veyed; and then the especial significance of the expression which it has found in modern philosophy will be considered : : : : i 206 The most perfect specimen of Hindu mystic philosophy is the Katha Upanishad, in which Yama, answering the questions of Nakiketas concerning “the Self and that which dwells in the Great Hereafter,” expounds the doctrine of Atman—infinite, invisible, divine; life of the world and life of our life; of whom many are not able to hear; whom many, even when they hear of Him, do not comprehend; and who is reached, not by the Veda, not by under- standing, not by much learning, but only through the spiritual insight of him who has ceased from evil, and who is concentrated, and whose mind is quiescent : 2 : : , « 256 xliv SUMMARY, Greek mysticism is substantially the development of the same thought, from its earliest expression by Pythagoras to its full development by the Neo- Platonists , } 5 : : : And the root idea of Moslem mysticism is identical with the root idea of the Upanishads The fourth great mystical school—the Christian—is clearly marked off from these three other schools, which are all more or less Pantheistic, by its}doctrines of the Trinity and creation . Still, Christian, like all other mysticism, aims at grasping the Ultimate Reality, at direct communion with the Highest ; and professes to open a way of escape from the blinding tyranny of sense, to transcend the veil of illusory phenomena, and to set free its votaries by an inward vision. Its central doctrine is that which is so emphatically enforced by the great non- Christian schools of mysticism, that the Being of Beings is cognizable only by the purified mind : At first the Supreme Reality appears to the inner eye as darkness, whence Dionysius the Carthusian tells us, “‘ Mystica theologia est ardentissima divini caliginis intuitio.” This apparent darkness is, however, in itself light, dazzling and blinding in its splendour, and it gradually becomes visible as such, when the spiritual vision is purged and strengthened and renewed by the stripping off of all love for the relative, the dependent, the phenomenal, and by the assiduous practice of all moral virtues To this Purgative way succeeds the Illuminative way, and to that the Unitive way, whereby the soul attains to that union with its Supreme Object which is called ‘transformation ” PAGE 265 265 267 268 SUMMARY. xlv PAGE The dangers incident to mysticism are obvious: on the one side lie the deep gulfs of madness: on the other, the abysses of sensuality : . : - 269 It is, however, a fact, worthy of being deeply pondered, that in the Catholic Church mysticism has been incomparably more healthy, more sober, more beauti- ful, than anywhere else. Her symbolism, historical, social, visible, has provided for its highest aspirations congruous expression, and restrained them within the bounds that may not be passed in this phenomenal world. While as the type of Christian mysticism, practically exhibited “for human nature’s daily food,” it is enough to point to The Imitation of Christ. 270 Noteworthy, too, is it that when the paramount authority of dogmatic theology has been lost sight of, the speculations of medieval and modern transcenden- talists have usually issued in Nihilistic Pessimism . 270 Our present concern is, however, with the normal aspects of mysticism which is a fact of human nature, exhibited at all times in history, and confronting us to-day. We go on to inquire what is the peculiar significance of contemporary mysticism, when viewed in the light—or darkness—of modern philosophical speculation . : : : : acne European thought, after a century of not very fruitful wanderings, is going back to Kant. His Critique of Pure Reason deals precisely with the question, What are the limits of sane affirmation ? Without entering upon an examination of that work, and assuming, for the sake of the present argument, that its theory of cognition is substantially correct, where are we in regard to The Great Enigma of which man ever xlvi The SUMMARY. seeks the solution? the question which Nakiketas put to Yama about the Self and that which dwells in the Great Hereafter? Critique of Pure Reason is essentially a doctrine of nescience. The human understanding, Kant insists, is shut up within the circle of our sensations. These reveal to it merely phenomena. And beyond pheno- mena all is a void for it. Noumena may exist, or they may not exist. All that is certain is that no faculty of the human understanding can discover anything about them. The issue clearly is to anni- hilate dogmatism, affirmative or negative, and to warn us against venturing with the speculative reason beyond the limits of experience The effect of this doctrine upon the ordinary “ proofs of 99 is evident. Kant insists that no unity of thought and being is knowable save the unity of experience, and that this is the sole realiza- tion, cognizable by the speculative reason, of the ideal to which men have ascribed the name of God . the existence of Goc Thus does Kant lead us into what may be called “the dark night of the soul.” The Critique of Pure Reason presents a striking parallel to the Via Purgativa of the mystics. The illusoriness of the phenomenal world, the impotency of the mere understanding to pene- trate beyond it to the vision of a Reality transcend- ing sense—these are its main lessons. Kant employs the word noumenal to express a limitary conception. He gives it a negative use. But it is worthy of notice that this is pretty much the sum of the knowledge of God to which, as the mystics of all schools teach, we can attain by means of the phenomenal order. PAGE 273 The The SUMMARY. And hence the phrase common to them all: “The Divine Darkness.” Is there any way in which this darkness may be made light for the disciple of Kant? philosopher has answered that question in The Critique of Practical Reason, a work which he tells us is the necessary complement of the first: another storey of the same edifice. He knew well that there is far more in the human consciousness than is explicable by “the pure forms of intuition,” the concepts of the understanding, the ideas of reason; and that to shut us off from the intelligible world, is to doom us to moral and spiritual death. The opening into this transcendent region he finds in the concept of Duty; a concept marked off from the notions of space, of time, of substance, and the like, by vast differences which prove its objective character. Here is for him the creative principle of morality, of religion. ‘ We recognize,” he says, “in our moral being, the presence of a power that is supernatural.” It is the Kantian equivalent of the Illuminative Way of theology : and here Kant is at one with the mystics of every age in pointing to the Inner Light guiding from the phenomenal to the noumenal world ° : : . ° intuition of duty is, however, but one of many faculties independent of sense perception which, as a matter of fact, exist in human nature. That power within u& which discerns the axioms of eternal righteousness is the very same, in root and substance, which grasps the facts and interprets the laws of a world beyond appearances. : ° ° It remains to consider two objections. The first is that “whether in the Vedas, the Platonists or the Hege- 277 280 xlvili SUMMARY, PAGE lians, mysticism is nothing more nor less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective crea- tion of our own faculties, to mere ideas of the intellect” , : : ‘ : 5 284 Surely this is a tyrannous ipse diwit, if ever utterance deserved to be so called. Why should we believe, upon the authority of those who confessedly do not speak as experts, that the choice specimens of human wisdom and virtue in all ages have been wrong, when they thought themselves in communion with a world transcending sense? It is impossible for one who has held high converse with the sages of the Upanishads, with Plotinus, with Jelal, with St. Teresa, to believe that what those great souls accounted the prime and only Reality was wholly unreal . : 4 : : : . 284 The second objection is based upon the discrepancies and contradictions of mysticism . : : +260 This objection seems to fade away, when it is fairly con- sidered. The primary position of the mystics is that highest truth is not so much intellectually known as spiritually felt : ‘‘ cognoscendo ignoratur et ignorando 3) cognoscitur.” The accounts of the mystics are neces- sarily discrepant, and the discrepancy is due to the varying symbolisms used by them: symbolisms, for the most part traditional, inherited from the nation or school to which they belong. The Divine Secret cannot be congruously conveyed in the language of sense perception: ‘“transumanar significar per verba von si *poria.” The very incongruity of human words as a vehicle of transcendental truth, accounts sufficiently for defects in its presentation . 2c SUMMARY. xlix No doubt, in the more vulgar manifestations of religion, that is to say, the religion of the great majority, the mystical element, which is its life, will assume the most unlovely forms. But it is still there, potent in its divine virtue to slake the thirst of human nature for a great good transcending sense . ; —- 285 CHAPTER VII. THE CHRISTIAN SYNTHESIS. Shall we say, then, that the solution of The Great Enigma is given by what is called Theism of the natural order—a Theism at once rational and mystical? Or is there, among the world’s religions, any to which, without making our reason blind, or our conscience dumb, we may join ourselves, as filling up the revelations of the external and internal universe ? : ‘ é d : - 290 It is held by many excellent and distinguished persons that this last question must receive a negative answer. ‘They make of religion merely an emotion, an aspiration, and of religions merely temporary and fluxional hypotheses which have served to render the ideal accessible to the multitude. They preach an abstract, a subjective and unhistorical religiosity, which makes God into an impersonal force, with no objective character at all, or, at all events, undis- tinguishable from human impulses. ; - 290 But man never is abstract self-consciousness: he belongs to the world of time; he is individual, concrete, hic 1 SUMMARY, PAGE et nunc. And the religious faith which binds him to a present Deity must have the same character. Faith, if it is to be anything more than a blind instinct, must involve assent to propositions. And that it should likewise involve assent to historical truths, is simply of a piece with the laws by which man lives, and moves, and has his being : 5 LEE: It is precisely because this is the nature of man, and of the religious instinct in man, that we are led to form ecclesiastical associations ; : . 294 To speak of Christianity alone, it will be found im- possible, in fact, to separate the idea of Christ from the person of Jesus, and to live by the one without believing in the other. It is to the combination of eternal truth with the details of the evangelical history, that we must ascribe the influence of Chris- tianity over the hearts and lives of men : soe And it is enough, for our present practical purpose, to confine ourselves to Christianity. Few people, pro- bably, would seriously maintain that any other of the world’s creeds can really dispute with it the world’s future : es : 5 gO But what do we mean by Christianity? There are so many kinds of Christians! Perhaps we may say that Christianity is, in its simplest reduction, the doctrine concerning God summed up in the baptismal formula—the most ancient and, in a sense, the most authoritative, of all its formulas—the acceptance of which has, from the first, been required as a condi- tion of admission into the Christian society. And the question to be discussed in this chapter is Wp ds SUMMARY. li PAGE whether there is anything irrational, and therefore immoral, in accepting The Christian Synthesis as affording the best answer to The Great Enigma « 297 First, then, as to belief in an Almighty Father, of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things, it may suffice to refer to what has been said in previous chapters of this volume. If the intellect is valid, the true conclusion can never be Atheism or Agnosticism, but must be Theism of some kind . 298 The conclusions of Reason are certain. But they leave us cold. Objective Reason, Eternal Energy, Supreme Cause, Absolute Being, Perfect Personality — these conceptions, august as they are, by no means suffice for the needs, either of our intellect or of our emotions. We want “a God that can interest us.” Our conceptions of Him are, and cannot keep from being, anthropomorphic: that is to say, they are conditioned by the essential limits of our nature. It may, in a sense, be said, that we incarnate God by a necessity of our intellectual and spiritual existence. “Humanity will have a God at once finite and infinite, real and ideal. It loves the ideal, but it will have that ideal personified. It will have a God-man”’ : ‘ : : : . 299 The claim of Christianity is definitively to satisfy this longing. It presents Christ to the world as “the image of the invisible God,’ in whom the eternally ideal has become the historically real: the Aédyos Ocios, the thought of the Infinite and Eternal, made flesh and dwelling among us: the realization of the Divine will in the moral and religious order : ‘‘the desire of all nations” . ‘ : . 300 hii SUMMARY. And this claim is as prevailing now as it was eighteen But hundred years ago; In the Divine Founder of Chris- tianity we have an “ideal of humanity valid for all men, at all times, and throughout all worlds” external nature and human history are not our only sources of knowledge. One of the primary facts of consciousness is the feeling of ethical obligation. As surely as consciousness reveals to me, in the ordinary exercise of my faculties, myself, and an objective world not myself, so surely does it reveal to me, through that feeling of ethical obligation, a Higher than I, to whom that obligation binds me ‘The moral law first reaches its integral meaning when seen as impersonated in a Perfect mind, which com- municates it to us, and lends it power over our affections, sufficient to draw us into Divine com- munion,” The direct revelation of the personal God is that which is made to the personality of man. “Spiritus Domini replevit orbem.” The article of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Ghost,” stands as firmly now as it did eighteen hundred years ago. How can it pass away? We have “the witness in ourselves ” It must not be supposed that an endeavour is being made to prove the Christian doctrine of the Trinity by appealing to the facts of physical nature, history, and consciousness. It is merely contended, for the purposes of this argumentum ad hominem, that there is nothing in those facts inconsistent with the theistic conception of Christianity, but that, on the contrary, they clearly harmonize with it PAGE 304 305 307 309 SUMMARY, It will, however, be said that Christianity, as it comes before us, means a great deal more than this: that it is not merely a religion, but has become a theology : that the difficulty really lies in the vast accretion of dogma, to excise which from Christianity would be to perform a mortal operation upon it No doubt that is so. Christianity comes before us “rich with the spoils of time.” We may take it or leave it. But if we cannot take it as it is, with its doctrines and its traditions, we had better leave it. It is hard to imagine anything less satisfactory than the results attained by the method called rationalistic, which, in fact, seems extremely irrational No intelligent man can candidly deny that we may sometimes find difficulties in reconciling the posi- tions of dogmatic theology with the exigencies of criticism. But those difficulties are such as we may rightly discount when we are unable fully to solve them It must be remembered that, philosophically considered, a dogma is the result of several factors. There is the original idea, there is the concrete image, and there is the logical deduction. The facts of the Divine Life, with their redemptive and recreative energy, are not the subject of evolution, The Con- fessions, in which we sum up our appreciation and interpretation of those facts, are slowly elaborated by the human intellect Doctrine is the vertebration of religion, and is as essential to it as words are to thought. There is something in us which compels us to reduce to system the various aspects of truth. But our synthesis must necessarily be imperfect. ‘Verba sequuntur non lit PAGE 309 310 310 dll liv SUMMARY. PAGE modum essendi qui est in rebus, sed modum essendi secundum quod in nostra cogitatione sunt.” ‘T'o which we must add that human language has an essentially physical, sensual, materialistic character. And our theological theories expressed in words are , but imitations of the inimitable. Christian teaching is professedly symbolical. And the symbolized is greater, and deeper, and older than the symbol penis In the moral order truth is apprehended not only by the intelligence, but by the whole soul. The credentials of Christianity are sufficient for “men of good will.” But they ‘‘are not of so imperative a character as to impose themselves on reluctant wills. They are, in fact, moral and not mathematical or experimental” 314 It must be further remembered that “ quidquid recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur.” Chris- tianity is one thing. Popular conceptions of it are another : : : ; . 316 The contention in this chapter is that, while no one pretends that Christianity offers us a complete expla- nation of the scheme of things, there is no more reason in the nineteenth century than there was in the first, why its message should not be received by cultivated and intelligent men, who feel their need of it, and who will carefully and candidly examine its claims for themselves. We may call Christianity, if we will, “a chapel in the infinite.” Still it is a sacred shrine where life and death are transfigured for us, where we may gaze into the eternal realms of Spirit and Deity, where wise and learned, foolish and ignorant, alike, may handle everlasting realities, and realize in their deepest experience, the powers of the world to come Me oessili) THE GRHAT ENIGMA. Cree iiiie i THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. JouBERT, in one of the neatest of his Aphorisms, thus sums up philosophy: ‘Je, d’ou, ov, pour, comment, c’est toute la philosophie: l’existence, Porigine, le lieu, la fin et les moyens.’’ In truth this is The Great Enigma with which the gene- rations of mortal men have ever been confronted —What am I? Whence am I? Why am I? What is my final end? What the means to it? There is something in human nature which forces man to ask these questions. Hence he has well been termed ‘‘a metaphysical animal.’’ That it is which clearly marks him off from the rest of sentient existence. Schopenhauer has strikingly expressed this truth in words from which I shall borrow, as I cannot hope to better chon .— B 2 THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. [Cl ‘With the exception of man, no being wonders at its own existence.” ‘‘ Only to the brute, which is without thought, do the world and life appear as a matter of course. To man, on the contrary, it is a problem whereunto even the coarsest and most narrow-minded becomes vividly alive insome brighter moments. It enters distinctly and permanently into the consciousness of each of us, in proportion as that consciousness is clear and considerate, and has, through culture, acquired food for thought. In those higher minds which are naturally fitted for philosophical investigation, it becomes the ‘ wise wonder’ of which Plato spoke.” ‘“Forthe great majority, who cannot apply themselves to thought, religion very well supplies the place of metaphysics.” “If anything in the world is worth wishing for— so well worth wishing for that even the coarse and stupid herd, in their more reflective moments, would prize it beyond gold and silver—it is that a ray of light should fall on the obscurity of our being, and that we should gain some explanation of the riddle of existence.” ‘Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all lands, at all times, bear testimony by their splendour and vastness to this metaphysical need of man.” * Tt is no doubt true, as Schopenhauer here in- timates, that religions are the philosophies of the vulgar. It is also true that philosophy, in that highest sense rightly put upon it by the thinkers of the antique world, includes all wisdom: by wisdom being understood, according to the defini- tion of Cicero in the De Officis, ‘the knowledge of things divine and human, and of the causes by which they are determined.’ Causation is the great problem both of philosophy and of religion, but they approach it from different sides. Philo- sophy endeavours to explain man. Religion pro- * Die Welt als Wille wnd Vorstellung. Ergainzungen zum ersten Buch. Kap. 17. I. | PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 3 poses to reveal God. It is, however, in the Divine, that philosophy seeks the ultimate source and fount of the human. It is to man, ‘‘the true Shekinah,” as St. Chrysostom writes, made in the Divine image and likeness, that religion turns for an adumbration of the attributes of the First Cause. In both provinces the logical method must be followed; no other will serve in controversy. Itis a postulate of Christian apologists, from Justin Martyr down to Cardinal Newman, that between the teachings of religion, rightly understood, and the conclusions of philosophy, properly appre- hended, there can be no contradiction.