BD 523 
 .P3 
 
Class 
 
 Book 
 
 Copyright^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
r** ** 
 
THE 
 
 Problem of Cosmology 
 
 ABRIDGED AND ADAPTED FROM THE 
 GERMAN OF FRIEDRICH PAULSEN 
 
 E. Benjamin Andrews 
 
 O ) t 
 
 The Ivy Press 
 
 Lincoln, Neb. 
 
 igoi 
 
•> /I 
 
 •^ 
 
 * ? 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 JUL. 29 1901 
 
 Copyright entry 
 
 CLASS ClxXc. N». 
 
 COPY 8. 
 
 Copyrighted 1901, by 
 The Ivy Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 The following paragraphs are an independent re- 
 production, with the utmost possible abridgment, of 
 Fredrich Paulsen's Einleitung in die Philosophie (4th 
 edition), Book I, Chapter II. The unbracketed foot- 
 notes mentioning Paulsen all refer to this original. 
 Following each such note is another reference, in 
 brackets, giving the corresponding page or pages in 
 Professor Thilly's Translation of Paulsen. The sec- 
 tions of the Einleitung I have exhibited as chapters, 
 except the eleventh, which, being long, furnishes the 
 matter for two chapters. To induce and facilitate the 
 reading of Paulsen's full exposition, his order of topics 
 has in the main been followed. Also sentences here 
 and there are mere translations from him. The body 
 of the text is, however, by no means a mere translation. 
 Neither the doctrine of the Einleitung nor its mode of 
 exposition is closely adhered to, but both are freely 
 supplemented or amended. The undersigned is not 
 without hope that this compendious work may be 
 found a somewhat more orderly, logical, and self- 
 consistent discussion than the ampler one on which 
 it is based. 
 
 E. B. A. 
 
 University of Nebraska, 
 March 30, 1901. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 References for Collateral Reading 
 
 Chapter I — The Problem Stated 
 
 Section i. Definition; Sec. 2. Universality of Connection; 
 Sec. 3. Connection in Space; Sec. 4. Connection in Time; 
 Sec. 5. The Reign of Law; Sec. 6. Not only Order but 
 Organic Relation; Sec. 7. The Mental World also an Organic 
 Whole; Sec. 8. From Fact to Theory. 
 
 Chapter II — Atomism and Paleyan Teleology 
 
 Section 9. Atomism; Sec. 10. Its Weakness; Sec. 11. Paleyan 
 Teleology; Sec. 12. Purpose Work in Nature; Sec. 13. Con- 
 flict of the two Theories; Sec. 14. The Influence of Darwinism. 
 
 Chapter III — Defects of Paleyan Teleology as 
 an Interpretation of the Cosmic Order 
 Section 15. It Presupposes Essential Schism between 
 Mind and Matter; Sec. 16. There is no clear System of Ends; 
 Sec. 17. Nor any clear Final End; Sec. 18. " Dysteleology;" 
 Sec. iq. Individual Teleology; Sec. 20. The Question of 
 Ends in History; Sec. 21. Conclusion; Sec. 22. Paleyism 
 Persistent. 
 
 Chapter IV — The Development Theory 
 
 Section 23. Exposition; Sec. 24. Rise of this Theory; Sec. 
 25. Not the whole Truth even for Biology; Sec. 26. The 
 Theory Supplemented; Sec. 27. The Problem still Unsolved; 
 Sec. 28. Conclusion. 
 
 Chapter V — Mental and Historical Evolution 
 
 Section 29. Language; Sec. 30. Its Origin; Sec. 31. Results 
 of Linguistic Science; Sec. 32. Primitive Speech; Sec. 33. 
 Morality, Law, and the State; Sec. 34. Philosophy and 
 Science; Sec. 35. History, Personal and General. 
 
 Chapter VI — The Impossibility of Atomist 
 Metaphysics 
 Section 36. Primordiality According to Atomism; Sec. 37. 
 Cause and Effect, What ? Sec. 38. The Modern Conception 
 of Cause; Sec. 39. Atomism and Causality; Sec. 40. The Re- 
 sult of our Examination; Sec. 41. Rigid Monotheism the 
 Solution. 
 
 (3) 
 
Chapter VII — Causality and Finality 
 
 Section 42. Closer Definition of Finality; Sec. 45. Purpose 
 in Mental Life; Sec. 44. Throughout the Animal and Veget- 
 able Kingdoms; Sec. 45. In the Inorganic as well; Sec. 46. 
 Spontaneous Teleology; Sec. 47. Teleology not a Science. 
 
 Chapter VIII — The World-Soul 
 
 Section 48. Our View Stated; Sec. 49. Its Reasonableness; 
 Sec. 50. The World-Soul Notion in History; Sec. 51, Science 
 and Sciolism; Sec. 52. Objections; Sec. 53. Further Objec- 
 tions; Sec. 54. The Universe Sub Specie .Eternitatis. 
 
 Chapter IX — Religion and Cosmology 
 
 Section 55. The Nature of Religion: Sense of Dependence; 
 Sec. 56. Faith or Trust; Sec. 57. The Basis of Faith; Sec. 
 58. Religion and Dogma; Sec. 59. Religion and Monism; 
 Sec. 60. Continuation; Sec. 61. Prayer and Miracle; Sec. 62. 
 Transcendence, Immanence, Dualism; Sec. 63. The Ques- 
 tion of a Theodicy. 
 
 Chapter X — Evolution of Cosmological Theory: 
 Fetichism and Polytheism 
 Section 64. Fetichism; Sec. 65. Polytheism; Sec. 66. The 
 Elements; Sec. 67. Special Questions Touching the Genesis 
 of Religion; Sec. 68. Monotheism: General Characterization; 
 Sec. 69. The Progress from Polytheism to Monotheism. 
 
 Chapter XI — Evolution of Cosmological Theory: 
 
 Monotheism 
 Section 70. Greek Monotheism; Sec. 71. Monotheism among 
 the Hindoos; Sec. 72. In Judaism and Christianity; Sec. 73. 
 Spinoza and Leibnitz; Sec. 74. Locke and the "Illumination"; 
 Sec. 75. Hume and Kant; Sec. 76. Doom of Rationalistic 
 Theology; Sec. 77. Schleiermacher. 
 
 Chapter XII — Knowledge and Faith 
 
 Section 78. Science Proper and Science in General; Sec. 79. 
 Fides Praecedit Rationem; Sec. 80. This Tendency not a 
 Prejudice; Sec. 81. Further Misapprehension; Sec. 82. 
 Understanding and Reason; Sec. 83. Moods in Relation to 
 Belief; Sec. 84. Externals in Religion. 
 
 (4) 
 
REFERENCES FOR COLLATERAL 
 READING 
 
 ARNOLD, MATTHEW. . . Literature and Dogma: an essay towards 
 
 a better apprehension of the Bible. 
 God and the Bible: a review of objec- 
 tions to Literature and Dogma. 
 
 Darwin, C. R On the Origin of Species by means of 
 
 natural selection, or the preservation 
 of favored races in the struggle for 
 life. 6th edition, 1888. 
 The Descent of Man, and Selection in 
 Relation to Sex. 
 
 BALFOUR, L. J The Foundations of Belief. 
 
 DuBoiS R.EYMOND,E..£/i?fo?r die Grenzen des Naturerken- 
 
 ne?is; Die Sieben Weltraethsel. Two 
 Lectures, 1882. 
 
 GOETHE, J. W. VON. . . The Poems, Gott und die Welt. 
 
 HAECKEL, E. P. A. . . . The History of Creation, or the develop- 
 ment of the earth and its inhabitants 
 by the action of natural causes. 2 
 vols., 4th ed., 1892. 
 The Evolution of Man; a popular expo- 
 sition of the principal points of human 
 ontology and phylogeny. 2 vols., 1879. 
 Der Monismus als Ba?id zzuischen Re- 
 ligion undWisseyischaft. Glaubens- 
 bekenntniss cines Naturforschers. 
 3d ed., 1893. English translation, 
 Black, London, 1894; French trans- 
 lation, Reinwald, Paris, 1897. 
 
 HUME, D Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. 
 
 Essay on Miracles. 
 
 LANGE, F. A History of Materialism. 
 
 LoTZE, R. H Microcosmus: an essay concerning man 
 
 and his relation to the world. 
 Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion. 
 Metaphysics. 
 
 Mill, J. S Nature, the Utility of Religion, Theism: 
 
 being three essays on religion. 
 
 Paley, W Natural Theology, or evidences of the 
 
 existence and attributes of the Deity 
 collected from the appearances of 
 Nature. 
 Compare Clark, F. LeG., Paley's Natural 
 Theology Revised to Harmonize with 
 Modern Science, London, 1875. 
 
 ROYCE, J. [ET AL.]. . . . The Conception of God. 
 
 (5) 
 
SCHURMAN, J. G Belief in God. 
 
 WALLACE, A. R The Action of Natural Selection on 
 
 Man. 1872. 
 Contributions to the Theory of Natural 
 
 Selection: essays, 1871. 
 Darwinism: an exposition of the theory 
 of natural selection, etc., 1889. 
 
 WEISSMANN, A The Effect of External Influences upon 
 
 Development. With annotations. 
 The Romanes Lecture, 1894. 
 Essays upon Heredity and Kindred 
 
 Biological Problems, 1889, 
 With these two works consult: Romanes, 
 G. J., An Examination of Weissmann- 
 ism, 1893; Hiller, H. C, Against 
 Dogma and Freewill and for Weiss- 
 mannism, 1893; Spencer, H., two 
 articles in Contemporary Review, 
 February and March, 1893, "The In- 
 adequacy of Natural Selection"; 
 Ibid., April, 1893, Romanes, G. J., 
 "Mr. Herbert Spencer on Natural 
 Selection " ; Ibid., May, 1893, Spencer, 
 H., "Professor Weissmann's Theor- 
 ies"; Ibid., July, 1893, Romanes, G. 
 J., and Hartog, M., "The Spencer- 
 Weissmann Controversy"; Ibid., 
 September and October, i893,Weiss- 
 mann, A., "The All- Sufficiency of 
 Natural Selection: A Reply to Her- 
 bertSpencer"; Ibid., December, 1893, 
 Spencer, H., "A Rejoinder to Pro- 
 fessor Weissmann," also ibid., Octo- 
 ber, " Weissmannism Once More"; 
 Ibid., September, 1895, Weissmann, 
 A., "Heredity Once More"; Ibid., 
 October, 1895, Spencer, H., "Hered- 
 ity Once More: A Letter to the 
 Editor" ; Ball, W. P., Are the Effects 
 of Use and Disuse Inherited? etc., 
 London, 1890; Lombroso, C, The 
 Heredity of Acquired Characteristics, 
 The Forum, October, 1897. 
 
 ZELLER, E Ueber Ursp-ung und Wcsen der Re- 
 ligion. Vortrdge und Abhandlun- 
 gen 2te Sammlung, 1. 
 Compare Andrews, E. B., in The New 
 World, December, 1894, Science a 
 Natural Ally of Religion. 
 
 J a M ES, W The Will to Believe, and other essays in 
 
 Popular Philosophy. 
 
 (6) 
 
THE PROBLEM OF COSMOLOGY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Problem Stated 
 
 ^ ^. ... Section i. Presupposing a world of re- 
 
 Defmition. ,. . , rr ^ ° . , . . 
 
 ahty or fact, however constituted in its 
 
 essence, we proceed, in discussing The Cosmological 
 Problem, to inquire into the connection if any subsist- 
 ing between the different parts or aspects of the world 
 and into the manner in which they form, or seem to 
 form, a unity. Whereas Ontology deals with the ques- 
 tion: What is the essence or nature of the reai? we 
 here ask: How is it that the real takes the form or 
 forms it does, constituting itself into a cosmos ? The 
 inquiry is natural, since, so far as we can see, reality 
 might have any other form or no form at all that 
 would be apprehensible by us. 
 
 _. . ... _ Sec. 2. Unreflecting intelligence 
 
 Universality of & . & 
 
 _ .. views the world as an infinite plu- 
 
 Connection. ,. p . , , , . r . 
 
 rahty of independent things, each 
 
 one of which is taken as having existence in, by and 
 for itself. Things indeed seem to stand in mutual 
 relations one to another, acting and reacting, yet ap- 
 parently without any intrinsic necessity for doing so. 
 Reflection, however, discovers that nothing which 
 comes within our view exists by or for itself; that 
 what we term action and being acted upon, so far from 
 bearing an accidental or occasional character, is abso- 
 
 (7) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 lutely universal. All matter is involved in the system 
 all motion, from infinitely far back, forms but one 
 single, mighty, total motion. Every finite element or 
 thing whatever is a correlate, and omnis determinatio 
 est negatio. 
 
 ^ Sec. 3. So far as relates to the material 
 world this reciprocity is emphasized 
 by physics. When a stone falls we 
 say that the earth draws it, according to the law of 
 gravity, but the law is further to the effect that the 
 stone draws the earth as well. Its motion is at each 
 instant determined by the relation of all its particles 
 to all those which make up the earth. Were the earth's 
 mass smaller or were a single atom of it for the moment 
 inactive, the stone's motion would be different. On 
 the moon it would fall with less speed and force, on 
 Jupiter with greater. Moreover the stone's and the 
 earth's particles are all attracted toward the centre of 
 gravity of the solar system. The total fact probably 
 is that the system as such is in relation with other 
 systems and these with still others out to the milky 
 way and we know not how far beyond. All the ma- 
 terial elements in space thus form a unitary system 
 with a unitary motion, wherein every motion of a part 
 is included and determined as part motion of the whole. 
 So physics teaches and there is no reason to doubt 
 the statement. 
 
 „ .. Sec. 4. Connection in time is no less 
 
 Connection 7 
 
 . y. complete or impressive than connection 
 
 in space. The stone, suppose, was thrown 
 
 down by a storm. This was the effect of heat differ- 
 
 *For the sense in which "connection" here and in the following paragraphs 
 must be understood, see Sec. 37 and following. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 ences in different portions of the atmosphere, and this 
 of precedent conditions such as cloudiness, precipi- 
 tation, sea currents, the earth's motion, the form of the 
 earth's surface, and so on to infinity. Had a perfect 
 mathematician at any moment of past time, however 
 remote, known the earth's masses and their relative 
 positions and motions he could have foretold the 
 stone's fall in time and in place with the same abso- 
 lute precision with which astronomers predict eclipses. 
 So of every physical event whatever. All motions 
 throughout time are pieces of one eternal motion. 
 
 _ Sec. 5. Everywhere in the physical world 
 
 The Reign ° y • ■ ,-, 
 
 so tar as known like causes in like con- 
 of Law. 
 
 ditions produce like effects, time and 
 
 place being wholly immaterial. Gravity and all 
 the general laws of mechanics, so astronomy and 
 physics assume, are descriptions of the behavior 
 of all matter in all space and throughout all time. 
 Any particle could replace any other across infinite 
 reaches of space or of time without the slightest change 
 in the course of the world. This mechanical homo- 
 geneity of matter does not seem to be intrinsically 
 necessary. Not only is the reverse thinkable but, 
 were material elements mutually independent, as ordi- 
 nary intelligence assumes, we should positively expect 
 disagreement, heterogeneity, impossibility of system. 
 A science of nature, at least in the now usual sense of 
 the phrase, could not exist, and there could be no 
 applied mathematics. How can this majestic reign of 
 law be explained? Can it be a mere happy accident? 
 See Sec. 54. 
 
IO 
 
 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 . _ « Sec. 6. The world is, in some sort, 
 
 Not only Order . , . 
 
 h „ . an organism, a hierarchy of higher 
 
 Relation anc ^ l° wer > more an d l ess conse- 
 
 quential parts, with due super - 
 and sub- ordination. Thus our planetary system, itself 
 a member of a higher system, contains within itself 
 minor unities, the planets, several if not all of which 
 appear as many-membered systems, having rings or 
 satellites or both. Every one of the planets has its 
 periodic motions, axial and around the sun. Each has 
 its own developmental history, forming an essential 
 part in the life-history of the total system. In case of 
 the earth we can at least in outline recite this history. 
 Of the earth, moreover, we know the inhabitants, and 
 we see that these terrestrial organisms form hierarchies 
 and a hierarchy quite in analogy with what we know 
 touching the heavenly bodies. On earth, too, are 
 unitary systems, each with its series of periodically 
 recurring changes (breathing, digestion, circulation, 
 reproduction) — phenomena which, again, in each case, 
 are modified by birth, growth and maturity and end in 
 death. Though itself a unity, each system is an obedient 
 factor in a larger system — the inorganic supporting 
 the organic, plants feeding animals, smaller animals 
 higher animals and man. Moreover the cyclic pro- 
 cesses of life on earth correspond with those of the 
 planet itself. Generation accords, in the main, with 
 seasons, i. e., with the earth's motion about the sun, 
 life activity and digestion correspond with changes 
 between day and night, viz., with the earth's axial 
 motion. Lastly we have the atoms of the inorganic 
 world and the cells in the organic, each a microcosm, 
 relatively independent yet member in a system greater 
 than itself and not existing for its sake. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology n 
 
 Sec. 7. The world of mind like 
 The Mental World that of matter failg tQ present 
 
 also an Organic any unrelated e i eme nt. No life 
 
 is explicable save in and 
 through its historical setting. Every man is in a way 
 an epitome of all the past. Lessing's biography in- 
 evitably involves some account of Frederick the Great, 
 Voltaire, Leibnitz, and Spinoza, of each of whom the 
 life, when studied, carries us back to a great group 
 of contemporaries and predecessors. Lessing's 
 biography, in fact, could not be complete without 
 involving a good part of the history of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries, and this history, to 
 be fully understood, would require knowledge of all 
 the earlier past. No biography or special history can 
 be written without a more or less arbitrary separation 
 of elements, every period and every human life in 
 reality forming a piece of one infinite and seamless 
 web. As in the physical world so also here, all is in 
 each and each in all. The mental world, too, has its 
 ordered wholes of higher and lower: humanity, na- 
 tions, clans, families and individuals. The history of 
 each man's inner life is quite largely determined by 
 his contact and relations with the physical world. 
 Some erroneously consider it to be wholly determined 
 in this way. 
 
 Sec. 8. Seeing that reality exists in the 
 a form of a cosmos, presenting a unitary 
 
 y* and organic system of members mutu- 
 ally related and through and through governed by 
 law, thinkers have been unable to content themselves 
 with this towering Fact or Group of Facts. They 
 have asked how it is to be explained. How has it 
 
12 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 come about that the world, far from being a chaos of 
 mutually defiant elements as would be the case were 
 the logic of uncritical thought carried out, is a stu- 
 pendous and imposing cosmos, each part, aspect and 
 function firmly and kindly related to every other, up 
 and down, forward and back, in and out, infinitely? 
 To this inquiry three generic answers have been 
 returned: I. Atomism, which explains the cosmical 
 order as resulting from a fortuitous concourse of ma- 
 terial or spiritual atoms which were originally inde- 
 pendent. II. Anthropomorphic Theism, which ex- 
 plains the same as the work of Intelligence proceeding 
 architectonically, viz., bringing together plan and ma- 
 terials previously existing apart. III. Monotheism, 
 which proclaims unity as being the immanent princi- 
 ple of the world. By this theory not unity but mani- 
 foldness is the problem to be solved, the universe 
 being not a compositum but a totum. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Atomism and Paleyan Teleology 
 
 Sec. g. Atomism is the view according 
 Atomism. tQ which ^e cosm0 s arose out of entirely 
 unrelated particles, particles absolutuely independent 
 of one another. Moving about in space these at 
 length fell into those transitory connections called 
 things and systems. Space, time, elements and mo- 
 tion are the only presuppositions. Infinitely numer- 
 ous and playing about in infinite space, the elements 
 could not but originate, in the course of infinite time, 
 all possible combinations. Among these would be 
 plants and animals, which proved to possess equilib- 
 rium sufficiently stable to admit of permanence and 
 propagation. This crude theory, set forth by Dernoc- 
 ritus, Empedocles, and Lucretius, has, on the surface, 
 little in common with the atomism of modern empiri- 
 cal evolutionists ; for these very plausibly derive pres- 
 ent composites (living beings and species) from 
 earlier ones. Yet in respect to the origin of things 
 no empiricists of our day advance a step upon those 
 ancient ones. 
 
 _. ,, 7 , Sec. 10. As an attempt at fundamental 
 
 Its Weakness. , . * . , 
 
 explanation Atomism needs no refuta- 
 tion. It insults intelligence to suggest that the hairs 
 of a lion's skin, originating each by itself and in 
 hundreds of thousands flying through space, all at 
 once assembled upon the proper surface each in 
 the socket fitted for it. Yet by this theory we must 
 
 (13) 
 
14 The Proble??i of Cosmology 
 
 believe to have appeared in this manner not only 
 the lion's covering but all his other parts as well. 
 A lioness also must have come into being in the same 
 way, and this not only at the same time and place but 
 at the right time and place, where proper climate, 
 food, etc., permitted life. If all this is not incredible 
 no possible propositions are so. Indefinitely easier 
 to belive that an earthquake one day so shaped, 
 chiselled and collocated some pieces of stone that it 
 left them a Doric Temple or a Gothic Cathedral, or 
 that the Iliad or the iEneid arose by letting millions 
 of types fly out of a bag ! The theory gains nothing 
 by following hints from Empedocles and supposing 
 parts of bodies, like hands and feet, to have taken 
 form first separately. Well does Aristotle teach that 
 wholes always precede their parts. Shake atoms to- 
 gether to all eternity, the smallest hair will never grow 
 save upon the head to which it belongs. 
 
 Sec. ii. To the old Atomism, so mechan- 
 
 ,_ „ , ical and senseless, Anaxagoras opposed 
 
 Teleology. . . . t , \ ., f , 
 
 the original and fertile apercu that the 
 
 universe is the work of mind realizing ends (riXrj : 
 "teleology"), a thought which in some form must be 
 accepted if a rational account of origins is to be had. 
 Anaxagoras's conception, after use by Plato, Aristotle 
 and the Stoics each in his own way, became incorpor- 
 ated in theology, whence, with various modifications, 
 it has come down to our time as the popular philosophy 
 of Creation. Far the ablest modern expositor of it was 
 William Paley (1743-1805), whose Natural Theology 
 (1802) had immense vogue for nearly half a century. 
 The tenor of Paley's presentation is as follows: 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 15 
 
 Wherever we find a plurality of mutually independent 
 elements so ordered that their connection permanently 
 produces a worthy and rational result, we must assume 
 that the order has proceeded from intelligence work- 
 ing with that result in view as its end (reAos) or 
 aim. Thus a watch, its numerous and various parts 
 so combined as to make it a timekeeper, would be 
 pronounced by all to be the creation of art and pur- 
 pose. Finding it, or any part of it, on a desert island, 
 you would unhesitatingly say: Men have been here: 
 some man or men made this. 
 
 _, _,__ , Sec. 12. Everywhere in nature, runs 
 
 Purpose=Work J . 
 
 . __ . the Jraleyan view, we find results so 
 
 in Nature. , ■ •, 
 
 exactly similar to those 01 human pur- 
 pose and art that we are obliged to refer them to the 
 activity of a similar architectonic intelligence. Muscles, 
 nerves, heart, lungs, and so on, are obviously combined 
 to produce and sustain life, while each of these instru- 
 mentalities is in turn a composite, cunningly arranged 
 for the functions actually fulfilled. How marvelous 
 a contrivance is the eye, with its humors and lens to 
 refract rays of light, its retina to receive the image they 
 form, and its automatic accommodation apparatus to 
 let in always enough light and never too much ! The 
 organ is not only adroitly located and protected, but 
 made double to preserve function in case of accident, 
 to afford instantaneous judgments of distance and 
 relief through triangulation, and to give ordinary vision 
 more or less of a stereoscopic effect. These wonders 
 are to some extent repeated in every organ throughout 
 the animal frame, so that the deeper and broader bio- 
 logical research becomes, the more manifest and im- 
 
1 6 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 pressive is the presence of design in the whole realm 
 of life. As an archaeologist digging among ruins brings 
 to light an inscription, a sepulchre, or a temple, so the 
 biologist from a few fossil bones reconstructs his 
 mastodon or his plesiosaurus. In both cases design is 
 the sole cue. 
 
 - *«• j. • ^ Sec. 13. Strange as it may seem, 
 
 Conflict of the _ , , , , , 
 
 ^ t . Teleology has never yet succeeded 
 
 two Theories. . , . A . _ 
 
 in vanquishing Atomism. Ever 
 
 since Anaxagoras's day the two hypotheses have 
 struggled with each other on terms never very unequal. 
 Speaking generally, devotees of the church have favored 
 Teleology; adherents of science have leaned toward 
 Atomism. In full Middle Age, indeed, Teleology 
 seemed victorious, but the great cosmical and physical 
 discoveries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 produced a strong reaction, which we remark in F. 
 Bacon (1560-1626), Des Cartes (1596-1650), and, most 
 of all, Spinoza (1632-1677). Eighteenth century think- 
 ing, so formal, so conciliatory and uncritical, again 
 exalted Teleology, especially since the world of minute 
 beings made known by the microscope could not, as 
 Des Cartes fancied, be readily explained in a mechani- 
 cal way. In the first half of the nineteenth century 
 Teleology appeared sweepingly victorious. Most 
 scientists let it pass as a tolerable working hypothesis 
 even if they did not accept it as fundamentally true. 
 The triumph, however, was a brief one. As careful 
 scientific research expanded, Teleology of the Paleyan, 
 ecclesiastical, or popular type was found to be beset 
 with difficulties only a little less serious than those of 
 Atomism. See the next Chapter. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 17 
 
 _, , „ Sec. 14. Extraordinary life was im- 
 
 The Influence ... 
 
 , _ . . parted to the anti-teleological view 
 
 of Darwinism. f _ _, , °_ 
 
 by the work of Charles Darwin 
 
 (1809-1882). Giving a plausible, largely correct, and 
 certainly invaluable account of the proximate origin of 
 species through natural selection (Sec. 23), this great 
 biologist begot in many the conviction that life in all 
 its forms, primordial and human, physical, psychical 
 and historical, may be explained without reference to 
 any but known cosmic forces, mechanical or chemical, 
 the evolution of species being thus only a continuation 
 of the process which brought forth the planets and 
 prepared the earth to be the home of life. Mainly owing 
 to this attractive and magnificent generalization, most 
 now deem it wholly unscientific to refer any vital fact 
 or phenomenon to extra-mundane influence. This 
 resolute search for cosmic causes is most healthy, the 
 soul of physical science, yet it easily induces a scien- 
 tific dogmatism no less dangerous or disgusting than 
 dogmatism in theology. The universe may all be one 
 yet not all be under laws which are now known or dis- 
 coverable by methods at present considered scientific. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Defects of Paleyan Teleology as an Interpreta- 
 tion of the Cosmic Order 
 
 _ Sec. i 5. Paleyan Teleology pre- 
 It Presupposes J J .. . , • u 
 
 r- ^. t ~ . • supposes essential schism be- 
 Essential Schism . , 
 
 between Mind tween mmd and matten Such 
 
 and Matter a P resu PP os ition contradicts 
 
 and confounds clear thought. 
 How does mind lay hold of matter to impose thereon 
 its aims? When does or did it do this, and where?* 
 We never see the process in operation. And if we 
 could witness the junction, the thought of two 
 earlier universes would remain to plague us. This 
 perplexity, glaring in Anaxagoras, is not remedied 
 by Plato (6aTepov:ixrj6v), or by Aristotle (matter). 
 All three philosophers teach the contradiction of an 
 irrational element in the world, "the other," in Plato's 
 phrase, which forever baffles reason. Even church 
 doctrine, while declaring that God created matter out 
 of nothing, still treats it as, when created, something 
 foreign to Him, intractable, needing, that it may gen- 
 erate order and life, a reapplication of mind in the 
 form of design. One would expect that an infinite 
 and omniscient Creator, evoking matter from nothing, 
 would constitute it adequate to all subsequent demands. 
 To one holding this view of creation the rise of plant 
 life out of inorganic or of animals from plants ought 
 to seem wholly natural.** 
 
 * Trendelenburg, in Paulsen, p. 161 [Thilly's Tr. p. 156]. 
 **The doctrine of matter as a creation out of nothing is one of the Church's 
 deep insights, making God all in all. So, the world is but a form of ceaseless 
 divine activity. Paulsen, pp. 155, 156 [Thilly's Tr. pp. 151, 152]. It is in the 
 assumption of a necessity for special creation and for miracles that the Church's 
 logic gives way. But see Sec. 61. 
 
 (18) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 19 
 
 Sec. 16. While intelligence and 
 1 here is no Clear purpose in nature are at many 
 System of Ends. points perfectly conspicuous, we 
 
 can not make out in nature any system of purposes or 
 ends. The opaque places in nature are more numer- 
 ous and extensive than are the tracts of a contrary 
 character. Notice: 1. The infinite waste of life which 
 occurs in producing one mature life.* 2. The destruc- 
 tion of mature and useful lives through famines, wars, 
 and pestilences. 3. Desert patches of earth, like 
 Sahara; perhaps also useless planets. 4. The inex- 
 plicable pain in brute life before man and in all sen- 
 tient life now. The utmost to be said upon this point 
 is that the pain in question is a necessary incident in 
 the production of good. But this not only can not be 
 proved but, it would seem, ought not to be admitted 
 if the Creator possessed infinite power and knowledge. 
 To explain the above and such infelicities as inci- 
 dental friction and disorder is to admit a moral, or 
 else with Leibnitz a metaphysical, limitation in the 
 Creator's nature. The admission, in either sense, 
 amounts to dualism. See on this, Sec. 64. 
 
 Sec. 17. To what does the cosmic 
 Nor any Clear system tend? We can nQt see> 
 
 Final End. Without the assumption of a future 
 
 state of existence no tenable purpose can be assigned 
 to existence here and now. If one alleges that happi- 
 ness is such purpose, the reply is that it is not attained. 
 The same is true of character. Happiness and worthy 
 character are the rarest of exceptions. And whatever 
 occult end, if any, is reached by means of the present 
 
 *Lange, in Paulsen, pp. 171, 172 [Thilly's Tr. pp. 165, 166]. 
 
20 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 system, that end must cease to be such when the sys- 
 tem collapses. A display of power the universe cer- 
 tainly affords, but to our view this is, so far as man's 
 interests are concerned, fitful and without rational 
 aim. See Hume, Dialogue vi. on Natural Religion. 
 We shall find that a ray of light falls on the perplexity 
 when, from moral considerations, we prophesy for 
 man a life after death, but the Paleyans advanced no 
 solid grounds for such an expectation. Their conten- 
 tion was that our present life is by itself a rational 
 affair. 
 
 Sec. i 8. Certain things in nature 
 y e eo ogy. seem i^e contrivances meant to 
 thwart every rational, at least every moral, purpose of 
 which we can think. Such are: i. The appendix. 2. 
 The catarrh-sack in the human head. 3. The pros- 
 tate gland. 4. Most animal pests, such as human 
 parasites. Many pests, spiders for example, are 
 wonders of design equal to the eye. 5. The superflu- 
 ous cruelty of ravenous animals. We speak of 
 "superfluous" cruelty, meaning, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, to admit that ravening [powerful creatures and 
 species devouring those less so, etc.] might perhaps 
 in itself be reconciled with reasonable and benign 
 purpose. Among the most striking manifestations of 
 design are those enabling animals to kill. 
 
 Sec. 19. Teleology succeeds no better if, 
 
 n ivi ua giving up the anthropocentric point of 
 
 e eo ogy. v { eW) we se ek to find in each separate 
 
 form of life on its own account a sufficing reason for 
 
 its being. Such a reason can not be made out in the 
 
 case of animals or even in case of men. In very few 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 21 
 
 human individuals can life be shown to be on the 
 whole a good. In plants, whose structure also dis- 
 plays ample intelligence, this thought of course utterly 
 fails. 
 
 The Question of ^ EC> 2 °* Tlie doctrine °* en & s i n 
 
 Ends in History. history is beset with many diffi- 
 culties: 1. That humanity at 
 large is really on the whole better off now than at the 
 dawn of history is exceedingly hard to demonstrate. 
 2. If we admit that there has been advance it is quite 
 impossible to prove that it is as great as it might have 
 been — to show, i. e., that all historical events have 
 been for the best. Thus, nearly every specially momen- 
 tous event as the Reformation and the French Revolu- 
 tion is considered by vast numbers of intelligent people 
 to have been a curse to humanity. Observe that an 
 event may actually have resulted well while another 
 that was displaced by it might have resulted better. 
 Common reasoning is incessantly in fallacy here. We 
 can not compare the actual with the non-existent — a 
 line of events which did occur with imagined doings 
 which did not occur — so as to prove which was the 
 better fitted to further the weal of mankind*. 3. Many 
 momentous events, like the fall of Troy or of Carthage, 
 the death of Alexander, the Turkish capture of Con- 
 stantinople, and the Thirty Years' War, were appar- 
 ently not for the best. 4. If we admit that, spite of 
 appearances, all that has taken place has been for the 
 best, we are still confronted with the fact of the infinite 
 loss and woe which human advancement has cost. The 
 
 *See Cicero, de natztra deorum, III, 89. Votive tablets in Neptune's temple 
 testified to the great numbers of men who had been saved from death by shipwreck ; 
 but no pictures there or anywhere told of the multitudes who actually perished in 
 the sea. 
 
22 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 downfall of noble civilizations in Mexico, Babylon, 
 Phoenicia, and Carthage, illustrates this. So does the 
 fate of progressive peoples as by Rome's victories, and 
 the continuance of barbarous and unprogressive peo- 
 ples even now. Nearly the same difficulties surround 
 the proof of "all's for the best" in any personal life. 
 
 _ . . Sec. 21. Recognizing as altogether in- 
 
 Conclusion. , . b , & .. 
 
 structive and important the manifesta- 
 tions of thought and purpose in nature and maintaining 
 that teleology must in some form be true, we still have 
 to declare the Paleyan account of it false or at least 
 utterly inadequate. We shall find (Sec. 47) that 
 whatever analysis of reality is adopted, neither nature 
 nor history offers matter for a strictly scientific tele- 
 ology. Suppose immanent intelligence, which we shall 
 give reasons for accepting as the true view, substi- 
 tuted for mechanism, the considerations which incline 
 our minds to specify as cognizable by us the ends or 
 any of the ends which the World-Power is working 
 out, fall very far short of logical proof. But the 
 Paleyan exhibition of Creator and creation as sections 
 of being foreign to one another needlessly aggravates 
 the problem. Dissipation of the geocentric and the 
 anthropocentric idea of the world has rendered a 
 mechanical explanation of the cosmic order untenable 
 and absurd. For the facts which Chapter I passed in 
 review some other hypothesis must be sought. 
 
 _ , . Sec. 22. Spite of its insuperable diffi- 
 
 r>3.1evism * ± 
 
 . culties, Paleyism is still a wide-spread 
 
 conviction even among intelligent 
 
 people. Church teachers continue to expound it and 
 
 most reverent people to hold it. Reasons for this are 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 23 
 
 (1) that many if not most critics of Paleyism have 
 been unbelievers, and (2) that this form of teleology 
 is considered the only mode of religiously explaining 
 the universe. But the latter assumption is groundless. 
 Evolution itself as a method of creation is entirely 
 consistent with theism. In any event religion can 
 obtain no permanent support, indeed it must suffer 
 permanent damage, by inculcating an untenable theory 
 of cosmology. Witness the results of the church's 
 attempt to bolster the Ptolemaic system, of its more 
 recent struggle against the geological account of crea- 
 tion and of its still continuing opposition to the 
 hypothesis of development. Nothing nurses unbelief 
 like this attitude on the part of accredited religious 
 teachers. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Development Theory 
 
 Sec. 23. The theory of development 
 fcxposi ion. ff ers itself as a complete account of the 
 manner in which all species of plants and animals 
 arose. According to it, a small number of life forms 
 being given, the evolution of these into the innumer- 
 able species now existing is explicable through 
 natural selection and allied forces, wholly without aid 
 from any agency not resident in the evolving system. 
 Among the individuals of a species one, say, has some 
 happy peculiarity, as superior height, horns, teeth, 
 swiftness, digestion, a thicker skin or a better power 
 to hide, enabling it to thrive while others languish or 
 to survive when they die. In the struggle for exist- 
 ence such favored* individual succeeds beyond the 
 rest in propagating its peculiarity. Its offspring tend 
 to maintain this advantage in propagating, so that, in 
 time, a new species is born. The old one may still 
 abide, in which case, probably, the two at last so di- 
 verge that interbreeding becomes impossible; each, 
 however, going on to generate new species. It is 
 usually admitted that this theory does not explain 
 the rise of primordial life, while many evolutionists 
 
 * Meaning of "fittest" in Darwin. Darwin admits (Origin of Species, ch. v), 
 that the laziest and most clumsy beetle, which hates to fly, is often the one that 
 lives, the bolder and really better being blown out to sea. The "fittest" here is 
 the boldest and best which is not yet bold or good enough to fly too high or far. 
 The same must occur in all species. Among bucks on the mountain the most 
 daring climber falls and is killed or maimed, and a poorer specimen begets the later 
 race. So of dogs, horses, eagles and men. Among the Jews during the middle 
 age the fittest to survive were the least courageous, those most given to deceit and 
 indirection. See Lombroso, in Forum for Oct., 1897, p. 205. 
 
 (24) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 25 
 
 recognize other unsolved biological problems. But, 
 it is held, the theory accounts to such a wonderful 
 extent for the origin of life that we are justified in 
 applying it universally, the assumption of any occult 
 factor at any point in the evolutionary process being 
 quite unscientific. Withal it joins biological evolu- 
 tion on to geological, thus at once unifying and ren- 
 dering intelligible the entire universe of cosmic form, 
 the cosmological problem needing no new but only 
 at points, perhaps, a little fuller light. 
 
 _. - A « •. Sec. 24. The first who sought to pre- 
 
 Rise of this T . . . . - 
 
 _, sent a scientific theory 01 mechanical 
 
 Theory. , . J. . . . . 
 
 evolution was the French biologist 
 
 de Lamarck in his philosophic zoologique (1809). In 
 Germany, nearly at the same time, Schelling, Oken, 
 and Goethe uttered many thoughts of similar tenor. 
 Biological Science was affected, however, only after 
 fuller discoveries in Geology and Palaeontology. The 
 laying bare of numerous defunct life forms, necessi- 
 tating amendment of the special-creation theory by 
 hypotheses of destructive cataclysms and re-creations 
 from time to time in the past, rendered the special- 
 creation notion absurd. But, as expounded anew by 
 Sir Charles Lyell (1 767-1 849), Geology set aside be- 
 lief in cataclysms, showing that the earth has derived 
 its present form mainly from the slow and regular 
 working, through the ages, of the same forces now 
 active in it. At this point appeared Charles Darwin's 
 immortal work, the Origin of Species by Natural 
 Selection (1859), followed (1871) by his Descent of 
 Man. These writings seemed not only to make the 
 geological record clear and to unify physical science 
 throughout, but to throw an all but final light upon 
 
26 The Problem of Co sinology 
 
 every main problem of sociology as well. All exact 
 science felt a fresh stimulus. Biology in particular 
 began to progress with a rapidity and assurance 
 showing the influence of an invaluable new guiding 
 principle. Going far beyond the master, soi-disant 
 Darwinians hastened to exalt the new discovery as a 
 universal philosophy, which rendered ridiculous all 
 theology and religion as well as all metaphysics of 
 the old type. 
 
 Sec. 25. Admitting that Natural 
 
 Not the Whole c 1 <.- u u ui u* 
 
 _ . m Selection has probably wrought 
 
 Truth even for . _ . „ / & 
 
 n . . much as Darwin alleged, we can not 
 
 Biology. , , . . . , 
 
 take this principle as an exhaus- 
 tive explanation of development even within the field 
 of biology. 1. While natural selection may account 
 for the survival of the fittest it fails to account for 
 the arrival of the fittest. The rise of the fortunate 
 oddities by which individuals become founders of new 
 species it leaves a mystery. Yet these oddities are 
 the very hinges of the theory.* 2. Many organs, like 
 the eye and the torpedo, which, when matured, con- 
 fessedly play a part in evolution, are the fruits of a 
 progressive development reaching through genera- 
 tions during which time they can not have been of the 
 slightest use. The theory does not account for this 
 their early conservation and growth. According to 
 Weismann sexual propagation itself, on which all evo- 
 lution of species depends, is in the same way a prius 
 of natural selection* [save among protozoa]. 3. What 
 
 * Weismann, to be sure, pretends to account for these oddities. According to 
 him acquired traits are never inherited, transmissible peculiarities being always of 
 the germ-plasmic or congenital order, the results of fortunate germ-plasmic combi- 
 nations occurring in sexual reproduction. He regards the multiplication of trans- 
 missible peculiarities as the great biological office of propagation in the sexual way. 
 But as the theory thus carries all present differences between species back to differ- 
 ences existing among the protozoa which, Weismann admits, were due solely to 
 environment, the difficulty referred to in the text remains. See Romanes, "An Ex- 
 amination of Weismanism," esp. pp. 23 and following. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 27 
 
 Schopenhauer terms the "will to live/' which per- 
 vades all life, vegetable as well as animal, is an abso- 
 lute presupposition of Darwin's hypothesis, yet is not 
 explained by it. 4. In animals the will to live becomes 
 a positive psychical force, as illustrated by the sexual 
 impulse, and can not be reduced or even likened to a 
 mechanical operation. So far as it is concerned the 
 individual is not passive, like the boulders which 
 churn pudding-holes in rocks, but an active factor in 
 the evolutionary process. Here at least the animal 
 and the vegetable world are separate pieces of nature 
 instead of forming an unbroken total. 5. They are 
 equally separate in the item of consciousness or sen- 
 sibility, this pertaining to the animal kingdom alone, 
 nor does natural selection throw the faintest ray of 
 light upon its genesis. 
 
 «,, ^. Sec. 26. To obviate these and other 
 
 The Theory 
 
 „ t difficulties in the theory of develop- 
 
 Supplemented. ./ r 
 
 ment various subordinate hypoth- 
 eses, mostly suggested by Darwin himself, have been 
 introduced. 1. The important supposition emphasized 
 by de Lamarck that changes in the earth's surface like 
 the rise of mountain chains or the formation of islands 
 and peninsulas must often modify species. 2. The 
 principle of correlative changes in organisms. Thus, 
 if natural selection alters the teeth of a species, 
 stomach and claws change to correspond.* 3. The 
 presence of a psychical coefficient in the evolution of 
 animals (see 4, in Sec. 25). In the form of sexual selec- 
 tion Darwin recognized this, but Wundt and Paulsen,** 
 after Fechner, have generalized the thought. They 
 
 * Paulsen, p. 190 [Thilly's Tr. p. 185], 
 ** Paulsen, pp. 193, 194 [Thilly's Tr. pp. 188 and foil.]. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 suggest that the will to live, unconsciously operating, 
 not only holds natural selection to its work, but occa- 
 sions those felicitous idiocyncracies on which that 
 process turns. For instance, the fighting cock's sen- 
 sible need of spurs might determine special nutrition 
 to the proper spot on his legs; whereupon the sense 
 of need and the incipient eminences, being both trans- 
 mitted, might, in generations, bring forth spurlets, 
 which, then, natural selection would develop into 
 spurs. This principle, observe, is in essence a depart- 
 ure from mere mechanism and a resort to teleology. 
 Observe, moreover, that none of these additions to 
 original Darwinism helps us understand the beginning 
 of conscious or sentient life. 
 
 Sec. 27. Were we to accept Nat- 
 The Problem ural Selection thus supplemented, 
 
 1 n o ve . ag a su ffr c j en f- account of the causes 
 which have diversified extant life, general cosmolog- 
 ical inquiry would not by any means be answered. 
 The following enigmas would still await solution: 
 1. Primordial motion. 2. The definite character of 
 original matter, enabling it, when set going, to take 
 on determinate forms. 3. The genesis of life itself, 
 there being no evidence that life has ever arisen ex- 
 cept from antecedent life. 4. The birth and meaning 
 of the reflective or rational mentality characteristic of 
 man. The mechanical view of the world has no place 
 for mind, than which a greater defect could attach to 
 no theory. 5. The forthcoming of the moral sense, 
 which is also characteristic of man. 6. The epiphany 
 of great men. 7. The course of history. 8. The fact 
 
 *See A. R. Wallace, The Action of Natural Selection on Man, where he argues 
 that primitive man was highly intellectual. See also DuBois Reymond, Die Sie- 
 ben Weltraethsel. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 29 
 
 of progress in evolution. Darwin admits that, on 
 occasion, second, third, or fourth rate individuals are 
 the ones best fitted to survive [Sec. 23, note]; and this 
 must often be the case among all species. We should 
 hence not expect progress as a general fact but this 
 alternating with retrogression. 
 
 Sec. 28. Even supposing all the above 
 * considerations waived, evolution can not 
 be pronounced true as a general causal law but only 
 as a general formal law, as a statement of the manner 
 in which some other cause has built up the present 
 world. Evolution means that such cause has pro- 
 ceeded by infinitesimal steps, creeping instead of 
 leaping. When it is said that evolution goes on 
 solely by means of forces resident in the members of 
 the series or by resident forces conjoined with those 
 of the environment, while the statement as usually 
 understood is untrue, it may be accepted provided 
 "members" and "environment" be taken in a meaning 
 sufficiently rich, including, i. e., cosmic energy and 
 intelligence. The wish to explain without supposing 
 foreign, supplementary or occasional intervention is 
 wholly just, but it can not be realized on the basis of 
 a mechanical conception of the world. Any system 
 can evolve only what it has from the first involved. 
 If so-called primitive matter actually gave forth the 
 present universe, it must have been more than matter; 
 it must truly have been rich "in promise and potency." 
 Similarly of each subsequent step in the process: the 
 lower, simply and strictly as lower, can not have pro- 
 duced the higher. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Mental and Historical Evolution 
 
 Sec. 29. Like human society or like any 
 *» ** * given people, a particular language (or 
 language at large) may be viewed as an organism, 
 presenting a vast number of unlike parts regularly 
 cooperating to one result. The thousands of individ- 
 ual vocables may be likened to cells, which, variously 
 put together, set forth in its infinite manysidedness 
 the entire body of a people's thought. The organic 
 character of speech appears also (1) in the several 
 parts of speech, noun, adjective, verb, etc., which 
 correspond to the main divisions of our ideas, such as 
 things, properties, processes; and (2) in inflection, 
 by endings or by prepositions, expressing the various 
 relations which persons, things, qualities, actions, 
 etc., bear to one another and to time and space. 
 Without speech to afford intellectual commerce the 
 life in common of a people would be impossible; still 
 more so civilization and culture. How language 
 arises and how it grows are thus cosmological ques- 
 tions of prime moment, analogous to those relating to 
 planets, plants, and animals. 
 
 Sec. 30. Language can not have sprung 
 Its Origin. intQ be i ng by acc ident (Atomism). 
 
 Hardly more credible is the thought of it as an inven- 
 tion, like Volapiik, to which men were prompted by 
 their desire for a joint and social life (Teleology). 
 The latter view belongs to the exploded theory of a 
 
 (30) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 31 
 
 state of nature wherein men were once fabled to have 
 lived before the rise of society. One needs but to try 
 and construe the conception to see its absurdity.* 
 Did one man think out the whole, or different men 
 the different parts of speech, inflections, etc. ? Or did 
 many wise heads participate in the grand discovery? 
 Each conjecture presupposes mental ability and 
 reflection impossible save through the use of language 
 itself. Yet the view of language as an invention has 
 over Paleyan teleology the advantage of starting with 
 the supposition of a known force, viz., gregarious- 
 ness or sociality, the desire to communicate. The 
 dilemma between atomism and old-fashioned teleology 
 as applied to language seems at first view a radical 
 one. No third hypothesis appears possible, yet each 
 of these baffles belief. 
 
 Sec. 31. Solution to the above 
 Results of difficulty was well begun by the 
 
 Linguistic Science. new view of language which w> 
 
 von Humboldt, Bopp, and the two Grimms intro- 
 duced, making it not a perfected instrument handed 
 on from generation to generation, but a growth: not 
 an epyov but an ivepyaa, ceaselessly evolving with a 
 people's life. Languages are born and change like 
 human beings, only more rapidly and visibly. The 
 extant literature of Europe, better than any fossil 
 record, reveals the birth and the death of several lin- 
 guistic species, with no missing links. Note several 
 characteristics of the process: 1. It is gradual, pre- 
 cisely like evolution at large. 2. New speech-neces- 
 sity, viz., the changing and enlarging life of men, is 
 an incessant impulse to alterations in language. The 
 
 * Paulsen, pp. 200, 312 [Thilly's Tr. pp. 193, 303]. 
 
32 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 need is partly for fuller, partly for stronger, partly for 
 finer expressions. 3. Sense for economy in utterance 
 plays a great role, preference thus arising for forms 
 that are brief, clear and easily pronounced. 4. The 
 choice is always purposive instead of mechanical, yet 
 never formally or deliberately purposive. 5. Advance 
 is not always progress and perhaps never so in all 
 respects. Compare modern Greek with ancient. 
 Most Romance tongues are logically superior to 
 Latin, but harder and dryer. 6. Written grammar is 
 a late, artificial, in a sense unnatural product, and 
 hinders linguistic development. The same is to some 
 extent true of all literature. 
 
 Sec. 32. Primitive speech offers a harder 
 problem, not yet solved, perhaps mainly 
 peec . insoluble. Man probably began with 
 
 the natural language of brutes. Advance beyond that 
 stage consisted (1) in the articulation of sounds, and 
 (2) in the application of simple or articulate sounds 
 previously denoting only physical states and pro- 
 cesses, as symbols of objects also. Erect posture 
 gave man better production, range and articulation of 
 sounds, while the liberation of his mouth from pre- 
 hensile service improved his enunciation. How an 
 explicitly human vocabulary arose: how, in Aryan 
 speech, for example, "da" came to be used for "giv- 
 ing," "sta" for "standing," "reg" for "ruling" or 
 "making right," "plu" for motions of water, and "luk" 
 for "light," we can only surmise. Many root names 
 of objects and processes were probably imitations of 
 sounds which the objects and processes made. "Plu" 
 seems a clear case of this onomatopoesis; also "mar" 
 or "mr" for the noise of a mill. Human actions may 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 33 
 
 have been named from the tones often uttered in doing 
 them. Young children's habit of handing out things 
 with a "da" perhaps came down from a primeval 
 habit which gave that syllable its meaning. The gen- 
 esis of derivatives, of inflections and of the minor 
 parts of speech we more easily understand from lin- 
 guistic changes still occurring. 
 
 Sec. 33. Morality, Law and the 
 Morality, Law « ,-, / 
 
 _. State are, like language, each a 
 
 and the State. ,. . ' . 
 
 living fact and 01 slow growth. 
 
 Neither has a discoverable beginning, neither pro- 
 ceeds from conscious purpose, from authority or from 
 invention. Such ideas of their origin were part of the 
 stupid rationalism which described poetry, art, religion, 
 and every highest human possession as originating in 
 human plan and purpose, as if clever people had in- 
 vented and introduced these things on account of 
 their great value. Similar rationalism is still incubat- 
 ing to hatch the final education, the final political 
 constitution, and the final religion. In fact, on the 
 contrary, all law, moral or civil, at first consists simply 
 of customs; statutes and codifications being later and 
 more artificial. The state as the administrative and 
 coercive aspect of society is likewise, in some rough 
 form, present from the first. It comes into being with 
 perfect spontaneity, wholly without the deliberation 
 fancied by Hobbes and other believers in a " state of 
 nature" antecedent to society. The purposed inno- 
 vations having place when new nations or constitu- 
 tions rise are relatively most superficial, and often 
 work, for good or for ill, quite differently from what 
 their authors designed. 
 
34 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 „, ., , Sec. 34. Philosophy and science, too, 
 
 Philosophy D J r 1 1 a 1 
 
 , _ . are plants 01 slow growth. As their 
 
 and Science. . 
 
 germinal form we may take the old 
 
 mythical cosmology, men's first rough attempt at a 
 unitary idea of the world. From this grew philosophy, 
 which, in turn, after long cultivation and pruning, 
 thrust out as branches the several sciences. The ad- 
 vance was not excogitated or even outlined by any 
 human intelligence, but the germs of knowledge 
 budded and flowered by a sort of inner necessity. 
 Individual investigators and thinkers wrought each in 
 the dark, not seeing, at least beforehand, how their 
 ideas would fadge with the general movement. 
 Thoughts born in one man's head might in another's 
 take the most unexpected forms. Mind still makes its 
 conquests in that way. No one can tell what his in- 
 tellectual influence is to be. The less a man thinks 
 of contemporaries or of the future and the more ex- 
 clusively he regards his subject, the more fruitful his 
 work. Also the greater and more influential one's 
 thoughts the surer are they not to have the character 
 of planned discoveries. Newton, Darwin and Schopen- 
 hauer did not intend to make the generalizations 
 which immortalize them. Great, constructive, legis- 
 lative ideas, when the time is ripe, come of themselves, 
 as does an original conception in art. In mental crea- 
 tion, such as science, religion, art, and criticism, only 
 job work is projected beforehand. 
 
 Sec. 35. No man thinks out his actual 
 
 ~ , . career in advance. Youth, always 
 
 Personal and ' J 
 
 General rationalists, build air-castles enough, 
 
 but these prove to consist only of air. 
 
 In early years we believe in thoughts, particularly our 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 35 
 
 own, as able to change reality. All revolutions pro- 
 ceed from young men. Age is less ideal, more his- 
 torical. It reflects on the impotence and insignificance 
 of individual effort and upon the awful power of tradi- 
 tion, environment, and the course of events. The life 
 of every historical people is like that of a man; child- 
 hood, youth, maturity, and age are its stages. Also a 
 nation's like an individual's life falls in with no man's 
 plan but unfolds piecemeal and unconsciously. Even 
 great men's deeds are but surges on the surface of a 
 level ocean. Thus the same law of development which 
 we have traced in the material world reveals itself in 
 the mental. Organic forms whether in history or in 
 nature arise not by forethought but by a spontaneous 
 advance out of germinal beginnings. Growth, not 
 fabrication, is the fundamental category of reality. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Impossibility of Atomistic Metaphysics 
 
 „. ,. -B . Sec. 36. Although true, tenable, val- 
 
 Pnmordiality , , , r , 
 
 According to uable, and permanent as a formal 
 
 Atomism ^ aw ' ev °l u tion, like anthropomor- 
 
 phic teleology, utterly fails as a 
 bottom explanation of cosmic connection. The post- 
 initial structure of the world evolution certainly ex- 
 plains infinitely better than old atomism, yet their 
 utterances touching first things are identical: in the 
 beginning independent atoms, from which all cosmic 
 and living forms have proceeded. But the very con- 
 ception of material atoms is contradictory and absurd. 
 Does the atom occupy space? Then it is divisible 
 and is not an atom. If not space-occupying, how can 
 any number of atoms form a mass? To escape this 
 dilemma some explain the atom as unextended, a 
 mere point in space serving as a focus of forces. 
 This notion perfectly suffices physics and mathemat- 
 ics, but, when scrutinized, is found no more tenable 
 than the other. A force exists only as it acts, and, to 
 act, must have somewhat to act upon. No single 
 thing, atom or other, has or could have existence save 
 within a web of general being. The idea of self-ex- 
 istent space is another absurdity. Also primordial 
 motion and primordial relation need to be explained. 
 Sec. 37. But supposing an atomic 
 Cause and system launched, a further difficulty 
 
 Effect, What? arises Starting with separate sub- 
 stantive entities it must, to get on, involve the opera- 
 
 (36) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 37 
 
 tion of cause and effect among its members. Atoms, 
 masses, and beings must really act on one another in 
 the manner supposed by popular thought. But under 
 reflection this is seen to be unthinkable. A cause of 
 all changes there must indeed be; but, as shown by 
 Hume, real interaction between finite things can not 
 be conceived. How, for instance, can a given atom 
 or billiard-ball, being moved, impart its motion to an- 
 other, seeing that they do not touch? Repulsion is 
 really no less a riddle than attraction (Kant.) Still 
 harder is it to conceive direct causality between parts 
 or members of the mental world. The proposition that 
 A influences B can really mean only that when A does 
 a, B does b. Or, generally, what we call the opera- 
 tion of causes producing effects simply means that 
 given changes at given points in the system are always 
 spontaneously accompanied or followed by given 
 changes at other points. Effluences and influences, 
 causal ties and connections, necessity and compulsion 
 among the elements of reality are nothing but con- 
 venient figures of speech, like sunrise and sunset. 
 
 Sec. 38. The above view of causation 
 The Modern ig that of all the most recent p hii OS o- 
 Conceptionof phers The firgt tQ domonstrate it 
 
 was Hume (1711-1776). He showed 
 that the most trenchant analysis of our thought in 
 contemplating the relation of cause and effect reveals 
 therein no element of necessity, either logical, as if 
 the effect were inferrible from the idea of the cause, 
 or mechanical, as though causes forced their changes 
 to occur. All that we can discern in the fact of cause 
 is that whenever certain changes take place certain 
 others also take place. Kant (1724-1804) agrees 
 
38 ' The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 with Hume that, to our deepest scrutiny, causation 
 means only regular concurrence or sequence in time. 
 Not less emphatically than Hume does he deny the 
 possibility of logically connecting effects with causes, 
 or of referring the law of causality to the axiom of 
 contradiction. Spinoza (1632-1677) taught that mind 
 as such and matter as such never react upon one 
 another. The philosophy of Leibnitz (1646-1716) in 
 the same way presupposes the absolute independence 
 of the monads constituting the universe. Their mu- 
 tual relations are determined by a "preestablished 
 harmony." Lotze (181 7-1880), Leibnitz's disciple, 
 makes the accidental character of what we term caus- 
 ation the main thought in his metaphysics. Lastly, 
 the new science of physiological psychology, after 
 long and most assiduous study of the brain and the 
 successful localization therein of many psychical 
 functions, declares invisible the slightest causal con- 
 nection between the physical and the psychical side. 
 Sec. sq. With Lotze we find that the 
 atomistic view renders the connection 
 and Causality. and reciprocity of things absolutely 
 
 incomprehensible. If, as that theory supposes, reality 
 had arisen out of many independent substances, the 
 mutuality and harmony of their subsequent procedure 
 would utterly defy explanation. Were each atom, 
 each piece of reality, a thing on its own account, its 
 existence and nature all its own without the slightest 
 kinship outside, we should certainly expect it to go 
 its own way, never troubling itself at all about other 
 reals. On this hypothesis it is absurd to refer order 
 and interaction to the "laws of nature," since these 
 are nothing but formulae for the behavior of things. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 39 
 
 Far from explaining the riddle they in fact constitute 
 it. The amenableness of nature to general laws ex- 
 pressible in definite formulae is, for atomism, wholly 
 inexplicable. 
 
 Sec. 40. Again with Lotze, arguing 
 f ~ from the fact of reciprocal action 
 
 Examination. and accordance with law through- 
 
 out reality, we conclude that the 
 elements of the cosmos are not foreign to one another; 
 that, instead, reality is an absolutely perfect unity. In 
 this way, when we assume that all things are members 
 of one common nature, the one single Ultimate Sub- 
 stance, we can understand the consideration which 
 each item has for all and all for each. There exists 
 but one actually substantive being, God. All change, 
 all reciprocity, wherever or however occurring, is his 
 experience and manifests his causality. All forth- 
 putting of force is his free agency, perfectly unitary 
 and coherent, however infinite and various its forms. 
 Things are his transitory modes, patches of " der Gott- 
 heit lebendiges Kleid." See, on this, H. Spencer, 
 Principles of Sociology, §§ 659 sqq. 
 
 w^- .j »* ^.i_ • Sec. 41. We are thus led to 
 
 Rigid Monotheism T , , 
 
 _ , .. adopt as the only solution of the 
 
 the Solution. _ r , , _ ' , , , . , 
 
 Cosmological Problem the third 
 
 of the theories announced in Sec. 8. Monotheism, cor- 
 rectly understood and logically applied, if it does not 
 exactly explain the constitution and course of the 
 world, at least provides a non-contradictory idea 
 thereof. Cosmology thus leads us to the same result 
 as Ontology: God is all and in all. He alone funda- 
 mentally is, and all finite things exist in and through 
 
4-0 The Problem of Cosmo/ogy 
 
 Him. "In Him we live and move and are." This 
 view, while differing from vulgar theism, has over that 
 usual form of religious conception two important ad- 
 vantages: i. It reconciles theology with itself by abol- 
 ishing the contradiction of asserting creation out of 
 nothing and at the same time maintaining the sub- 
 stantive character of finite beings. 2. It much lessens 
 the difficulty of believing in man's free-will, since it 
 merges all reason with the divine, which it explains 
 as purely spontaneous and free.* The true view 
 differs equally for the better from Materialism. It is 
 often thought that banishing the idea of God would 
 carry also all fear of an evil future for man. Not so. 
 If somehow the miseries of this life came without a 
 God, how can we be sure that they are to end ? Even 
 when all humanity's present life ceases and the planet 
 freezes or melts, may not the same fatal energy which 
 set going the life that now is place us in another per- 
 haps less tolerable? If the system has reason for its 
 centre and goodness for its aim there is assurance of 
 its happy denouement in some way. On any other 
 supposition there is none. 
 
 *On Freedom, Paulsen, p. 227, sqq. [Thilly's Tr. pp. 221 and foil.] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Causality and Finality 
 
 ^. r^ *. .^. Sec. 42. Rejection of Paleyism 
 
 Closer Definition T . J . . _ , n . 
 
 . _. ... is not the rejection 01 the "final 
 
 of Finality. ,, . . . . __ T1 
 
 cause idea in every form. What 
 
 is insufferable in Paleyism is its sundering of the 
 cosmical purpose from its fulfilment. We can not 
 conceive of the Infinite as first forming or having a 
 plan which he afterwards proceeds to fill out with 
 reality. But purpose as antedating its result is not 
 necessary to the notion of final cause. This notion is 
 realized whenever an arrangement or movement willed 
 by any being has, however instantaneously, the result 
 which such being intended. Observe that, as finality 
 does not include the element of before and after, so it 
 does not exclude that of what we call causal procedure. 
 Rather, it may be said, all teleological connection is 
 or involves at the same time what we term a causal 
 connection. However, the teleological is fundamental ; 
 the tc'Aos always being, as Aristotle has it, to SOev 17 
 
 KLVYjCTLS. 
 
 _^ . Sec. 43. While every mental experi- 
 
 Purpose in Z . \ , . \ . 
 
 . t _ .. ence fits into a causal order, which, in 
 
 Mental Life. f , 
 
 one sense, explains it, the characteris- 
 tic phase of mentality is its purposive activity. The 
 form of mental work does not arise from any vis a 
 tergo pushing it on, but always from some goal-idea 
 leading it. A normal human life, or that of a nation, 
 is no composite of amorphous bits of consciousness, 
 
 (41) 
 
42 The Proble?n of Cosmology 
 
 but an organic total with meaning. Every biography 
 presupposes this, and so does every man in thinking 
 over his life past or to come. Mental association 
 does not proceed haphazard, by the mere play of effi- 
 cient causes, but mostly in a way to evolve some de- 
 signed result which the subject views with pleasure. 
 Even in finite work, however, the plan is to a great 
 extent executed as fast as it originates. The poet 
 may plan now to write out a poem hereafter; but, as 
 a creation in his own mind, the poem mainly origin- 
 ates when planned and is planned when it originates. 
 So with the orator, save that his planning and execu- 
 tion extend through the delivery, not being at an end 
 with any preparation, however careful. The architect 
 may or may not incorporate his plan, but its erection 
 into reality in his mind is a course of projection and 
 realization going on together. Formative idea and 
 the realization thereof are similarly contemporaneous 
 in the life of a person or of a people, and in the whole 
 development of human history. Everywhere are to 
 be seen innumerable elements freely cooperating, a 
 sort of esthetico-ethical necessity constraining each 
 to contribute to the common end. 
 
 ' t ., Sec. 44. So far as concerns con- 
 
 Throughout the ■ , ,-r 11 1 
 
 ... , scious human hie all admit the 
 
 Animal and ... , , ^ 
 
 . « . activity 01 purposes and ends, lo 
 
 Vegetable •/ _ 5. r 
 
 explain fishing-nets, lor instance, 
 Kingdoms. ^ , , , . . . 
 
 no one would think of saying that, 
 
 being constituted as they are, men aimlessly make 
 
 their hands go so that nets result and are thrown into 
 
 the water. But planning is no mere human attribute. 
 
 To declare man a mere piece of nature, denying that 
 
 he is a realm apart, and yet, on the other hand, to limit 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 43 
 
 finality to man alone, is most arbitrary and unscien- 
 tific. If men weave and use nets to catch fish, spiders 
 certainly do the same to catch flies. And if the catch- 
 ing is purposive so is the eating and the digesting. 
 All the processes of animal life, conscious or uncon- 
 scious, must be interpreted as purposive, not only 
 those maintaining the existence of individuals but 
 also the instinctive ones like building nests, laying 
 and hatching eggs, nursing and protecting young. It 
 were an insufferable denial of nature's unity to use 
 teleology in explaining the conservation of individu- 
 als yet deny its place in the conservation of species. 
 Thus forced to predicate purpose beyond the sphere 
 of either human or brute consciousness, we must go 
 further and recognize its presence in every part of the 
 organic world. In its manifestation of design that 
 world forms a seamless total, no domain of it admit- 
 ting of satisfactory explanation by aetiology alone. 
 
 Sec. 45. In the inorganic realm 
 In the Inorganic purpose is confessedly less obvi- 
 ous, yet in the absence of counter- 
 vailing evidence the view, emphasized by science, of 
 the world as one unbroken piece, demands that the 
 thought be applied in this department as well as else- 
 where. Living beings were not rained down upon 
 our planet: they are its legitimate offspring, made of 
 the same elements as the earth, children of the great 
 cosmic-telluric system, itself, apparently, a work of 
 art. As animals could not originate or subsist with- 
 out plants, so plants depend on the soil, which chemical 
 and physical forces have provided by breaking up 
 rocks, and upon rain and warmth produced and re- 
 newed by cunning and complicated inorganic pro- 
 
44 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 cesses. To all this it is objected: i. That the inor- 
 ganic world is a congeries of dead elements — the 
 conception of Atomism and of Paleyism. Answer: 
 As we have seen, both Ontology and Cosmology de- 
 clare this an absurd theory and bid us think of mat- 
 ter itself as somehow alive. 2. That all things, pro- 
 cesses and events in the inorganic realm are suscepti- 
 ble of a purely aetiological explanation. Answer: 
 They are so explicable only in the sense and degree 
 in which an organ melody is. Notes, keys, and vol- 
 ume vary as the> do because organist and organ have 
 the physical constitution they have. In the same way 
 an oration can be physically explained, or a Beethoven 
 string quartette depicted as "a scraping of horses' 
 tails on cats' bowels."* If, however, as all say, the 
 meaning and beauty of the result in those cases defies 
 physical explanation, the statement holds good for all 
 nature, since nature, too, has meaning and beauty. 
 
 Sec. 46. It accords with the above 
 Spontaneous 7, • , , 
 
 ,_, , . that all men, scientists with the rest, 
 
 Teleology. 
 
 spontaneously ask touching all things, 
 
 Wherefore? as well as What? and Whence? Find- 
 ing the Wherefore category in ourselves we can not 
 but use it in construing the world about us. No man 
 is able to regard the various processes in a life or the 
 different stages of its development as all on the same 
 
 * See James's Will to Believe, etc., chapter iii, under Sentiment of Rationality. 
 To the mere intellect the universe may be construed in a variety of ways each as 
 satisfactory as any other. The intellect, could it act independently of the rest of 
 our nature, would be satisfied with any view of the universe involving no mental 
 hitch, wrench, or friction. Is there then no sense in which one thought of the world 
 can be declared more rational than another? There is. A theory of it is rational 
 (1) in proportion as it "determines expectancy," i. e., forewarns how things are go- 
 ing to turn out, and (2) in proportion as it is congruous with our powers or funda- 
 mental propensities, of which faith is one. To judge rationality by these tests is no 
 more subjective or arbitrary than is the quest for rationality itself. In fact any 
 merely intellectual apprehension of the universe is per se irrational and unsatisfy- 
 ing in that it leaves unsolved the problem why there is any universe at all instead 
 of a " multiverse." 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 45 
 
 dead level of importance simply because they are all 
 equally real. We exalt certain stages and results as 
 the regnant and determining ones and subordinate the 
 rest. The acorn is for the oak that springs from it in 
 a sense higher than the one in which that oak exists 
 for that acorn. So of tadpole and frog, pupa and 
 butterfly, ox and calf. Could we see a planetary sys- 
 tem or a whole national life unfold, we should there, 
 too, in the same way, apply the notion of final cause. 
 It is not necessarily the later stages of an evolution 
 which we exalt as worthful. The ashes of a tree are 
 not its end, nor is the carcase of a brute or the ruin of 
 a temple its end. Our criterion of importance among 
 the members is, meaning for ourselves as intelligent, 
 aesthetic and moral: the fact being that we are inevit- 
 ably impelled to try and construe or unify the world 
 taking these principles of our nature as norms. The 
 scientist as such, (laudably) seeking to arrange all 
 things in an order of efficient causation, may in part 
 overcome the teleological tendency indicated, but he 
 can never wholly do so. The impulse to assign worth 
 among things is an inconcussum of our nature. To 
 lose it would mean the loss of personality itself. Ab- 
 stract understanding alone could never grasp any of 
 the predicaments which express worth, and under- 
 standing alone does not constitute us human beings. 
 
 ,_, t t Sec. 47. After all we are not in con- 
 
 Teleology ,. • f 
 
 _ . dition to set up a proper science 01 
 
 not a Science. , TTT r v , 
 
 ends. We can not, thus tar at any 
 
 rate, predicate this or that as the system's supreme 
 end. In general, we have not overcome the difficul- 
 ties pointed out in Chapter III. We allege only that 
 a telic character pervades the world so far as we can 
 
46 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 see, and that cosmological analogy joins ontological 
 theory in declaring such character probably universal. 
 Teleology is not unscientific but only extra-scientific. 
 It does not contradict the sciences proper, which con- 
 sist in exhibiting the causal order, but it usefully sup- 
 plements them. If it can not be demonstrated, 
 neither can it be disproved. As science is the expo- 
 sition of causes efficient, art, poetry, religion, and, in 
 part, philosophy, are expositions of causes final, of the 
 significances and values of things. They address 
 themselves to the meanings of reality, introduce cri- 
 teria of better and worse, set up ideals and goals, and 
 make life worth living. If science proper is the 
 priestess of truth to the understanding and as such 
 ever to be heeded and venerated, those other disci- 
 plines are her priestesses to man in the higher walks 
 of his soul. All four, as well as science, belong at 
 the altar; let none seek to drive any other away. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 The World-Soul 
 
 _ __. Sec. 48. The conclusions from the fore- 
 
 Our View 
 
 going considerations may be briefly 
 
 summed as follows: 1. Reality is an all- 
 inclusive unity. Finite things are not absolutely 
 substantive but have a whorl-like existence in and 
 through the Infinite One, the ens realissimum et perfec- 
 tissiitium, whose more or less substantive constituents 
 they are. 2. We are not to say "God is all," or "all 
 is God;" God and Existence not being identical con- 
 ceptions. God is the Centre, the Absolute, which 
 neither comes, goes, nor changes. The universe, on 
 the other hand, exists. It is God's out-put,* not God 
 himself. 3. The Infinite manifests itself, far as it 
 does so at all, in the two inclusive phases of reality, 
 nature and history. Spinoza's dichotomy into Exten- 
 sion and Consciousness was meant to express this truth. 
 The two sides, however, are not co-equal in dignity, 
 since extension itself is but a form of mind. 4. All 
 movements and changes in the universe are so many 
 direct activities of the Infinite, setting forth in a cos- 
 mos of concrete, particular phenomena the richness 
 of his endlessly manifold nature. 5. Being the ex- 
 pressions of a divine purpose, these activities form no 
 chaos but a rational order. The necessity with which 
 they proceed is also rational. Containing in himself 
 
 *"And God is seen God in the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and 
 the clod." — Browning's Saul. 
 
 (47) 
 
48 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 all reality, God is subject to no influence from with- 
 out, still less, if possible, to any compulsion. As 
 causa sui He must also be a causa libera. All rational 
 beings partake this character with their original. * 
 
 Sec. 49. To justify this con- 
 Its Reasonableness. cepdon o{ an infinite; etemal 
 
 Spiritual Life, whose fulness surpasses our utmost 
 thought yet of whose nature we have a noble (thus far 
 the highest) adumbration in man, we here recall a 
 few considerations already presented: 1. The unity 
 of the world despite the non-causal connectedness of 
 its members. 2. The analogy offered by the reality 
 best known to us, viz., ourselves. In us mind is 
 primary and everything bodily has its corresponding 
 inner phasis. 3. The very fact of mind, to material- 
 ism a hopeless riddle and contradiction but according 
 perfectly with the theory here advanced. 4. The 
 telic character of existence, in biology overwhelmingly 
 obtrusive, elsewhere the object of impressive surmise. 
 We do no violence to the data by declaring life the 
 goal of the earth's evolution, consciousness the goal 
 of life, mind that of consciousness, and a rational- 
 moral existence that of mind. If this is so, the further 
 thought of a supreme Spiritual Life as the end and 
 aim of all things is inevitable. No other possible 
 conception so illuminates reality or enables one to 
 construe it so simply. 
 
 *We deny freedom of a man (1) when he is compelled from without ; (2) when 
 he is acting out a compulsory nature of his own, received from God or parents. If 
 a man were causa sui and dependent on no external influence, we should certainly 
 denominate him a free being. In that sense God is free. This is what Paulsen, also 
 Caird, Harris, and all the Hegelians, mean by God's freedom. The very deep 
 and perplexing problem of a nature within the primordial being to which primordial 
 and all will must bow they do not front. See below, Sec. 54. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 49 
 
 The World=Soul S =c. 5 °' ( A P hil ° s °P h y f e . the 
 
 «.i ^. • u . ^ above, often with imperfections 
 
 Notion in History. , . . , , ,.. 
 
 and considerable modifications, 
 
 has received the assent of the world's greatest think- 
 ers, in the East and in Europe, in ancient and in 
 modern times. Only a few philosophizing physicists 
 have demurred. The best reflection among the great 
 culture-peoples of Asia found rest in idealistic pan- 
 theism. A related form of thought wrought out by 
 Plato and Aristotle — reality a single essence, the ab- 
 solute unity of the spiritual and the good — satisfied 
 the Greeks. The Platonic conception mastered 
 mediaeval thinking almost against its will. Modern 
 thought, as well, wherever freest and boldest, has 
 always taken the same direction. Bruno (1 548-1 600) 
 and Spinoza (1632-1677) were led to it by the new 
 discoveries in cosmology and natural science; Ger- 
 man speculative philosophy was won over by the 
 modern mode of apprehending history. In Hegel and 
 Hegelism, where all reality was resolved into the idea, 
 many thought they saw the final philosophy, suppos- 
 ing materialism and agnosticism thenceforth forever 
 impossible. While this proved to be an error, such 
 reaction as has appeared since affects few save those 
 who renounce as hopeless all effort to think problems 
 through. 
 ~ . . Sec. 51. Comparatively few among the 
 
 c, . t . cultivated at present reflect much upon 
 
 Sciolism. , . * ,, , \ . 
 
 ultimate problems. Most who do this 
 
 soon land either in skepticism, owing to difficulties in 
 
 the theory of knowledge, or in materialism based on 
 
 natural science. Investigators of nature usually 
 
 ignore or deny the fact of a soul in nature. The 
 
50 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 notion of a mundus intelligibilis seems to them like that 
 of anthropomorphic gods, a fancy or a dream. They 
 deem it superfluous, essaying to explain the world, 
 consciousness perhaps excepted, from atoms and 
 force. Science, it is said, has attained man's estate, 
 no longer tolerating childish speculations. Influenced 
 by the confidence with which science asserts itself, 
 public opinion in educated circles is ashamed to own 
 convictions not bearing the "scientific" stamp. Feel- 
 ing the absurdity of recognizing a realm of fact yet 
 denying its knowableness, some venture to assert that 
 what we do not know does not exist, that what astron- 
 omy and physics can teach is all there is to be said 
 about the universe. Others admit a sort of knowl- 
 edge touching supersensible realities, but deny it 
 scientific rank, confining the terms "science" and 
 "scientific" to work within the field of exact or at 
 least of experimental research. In fact, science is 
 simply a method of investigation, applicable any- 
 where. To define it by its object is in effect to call 
 scientific all studies dealing with those objects. But 
 this is ridiculous. 
 
 _, . .. Sec. 52. We proceed to canvass the most 
 
 Objections. ..,..,.. , . 
 
 formidable objections to the hypothesis 
 
 of a world-soul: 1. A soul presupposes a nervous sys- 
 tem. Reply: For aught we know suns, stars and 
 planets may be the ganglia of such a system. They 
 possess the same matter as nerves — carbon, oxygen, 
 hydrogen, iron, phosphorus, etc. — have functional 
 unity, and seem to form a rounded system. Their 
 spatial separateness perfects rather than disturbs the 
 analogy, as nerve microscopy clearly shows. Perfect 
 resemblance to an animate nervous system we should 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 51 
 
 not expect, as the cosmical body needs no means of 
 communicating with extraneous being. 2. The 
 hypothesis is mere imagination. Reply: Suppose it 
 is so, though the statement is not wholly true, the his- 
 tory of science itself shows that imagination is most 
 important. Present hornbook knowledge about milky 
 way systems, cosmic evolution, the structure of the 
 eye and the motion of light, was once imaginative, 
 ridiculed by physicists. How fortunate that investi- 
 gators pressed on ! Until entire reality is explored 
 bare guesses at the unknown are more scientific than 
 scorn of speculation. Moreover, speculation which 
 is consistent with itself and with the knowledge thus 
 far acquired is scientific as far as it goes. 
 
 _ ^, Sec. 53- 3. We are not conscious of 
 
 Further . 
 
 _.. .. membership in a World-all. Reply: A 
 
 Objections. , f „ , 
 
 part would naturally not survey the 
 
 Whole but the Whole the part. A cell, if conscious, 
 would probably not be aware of being merely a cell; its 
 consciousness would seem individual and independ- 
 ent. 4. The hypothesis exalts error and evil as on an 
 equality with the True and the Good. Reply: Not so 
 (see Sees. 46, 47). It gives scope for all imaginable 
 differences of better and worse short of breaking 
 reality absolutely in two and declaring evil inex- 
 plicable. The charge made is applicable rather to 
 materialism. 5. We can not mentally construe the 
 relation of the finite to the infinite. Reply: We have 
 the analogy of the relation which the individual mind 
 bears to its component faculties and experiences. As 
 our feelings, impulses and thoughts all fit together in 
 one consciousness, so we may think the whole com- 
 plex of mentality in the universe, known and unknown, 
 
52 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 as uniting in the life of God, yet no part losing aught 
 of its several independence. The present or the his- 
 torical life of a people is another analogue. Matter 
 may be conceived as in last analysis resolved into 
 mind. Or, were we with Plato to take it as defying 
 mind, an irrefragable shell or casement of "other," the 
 view would offer no greater difficulty here than in any 
 theory of the world. 6. By this theory the soul can 
 not be immortal. Reply: Quite the contrary. If there 
 is a central, infinite consciousness to things, all that 
 has ever existed is in a sense immortal. But more. 
 Nothing forbids the belief that as our present pro- 
 gressive blending of thought and experience with other 
 mortals and with God in proportion as we advance in 
 knowledge and goodness does not annul personality, 
 so we may grow up and out into God yet not be lost 
 in Him, not cease to be ourselves. 
 
 _. ' . Sec. 54. To complete the Cosmology 
 
 The Universe ,*.■.*, 7 
 
 ~ , . above outlined two further remarks 
 
 Subspecie 
 
 /Eternitatis are necessary: i. The truth that reality 
 presents a Reign of Law (Sees. 3, 4, 5) 
 does not conduct us to the deepest nature of being. 
 The usual idea of law as fundamental is in fact not 
 true. Every operation of law probably involves an 
 element of free co-efficiency contributed by the Central 
 Power. Thus, no two leaves are exactly alike; history 
 does not repeat itself; we can not fore-judge a char- 
 acter or a life from its antecedents; every great man, 
 in particular, is an ultimate fact. Numberless phe- 
 nomena are, from the point of view of law, so far as 
 our vision pierces, utterly inexplicable. For all this 
 our thought seems obliged to assume within the Abso- 
 lute a fundamental nature which must constitute a law 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 53 
 
 even to the will of the Absolute — to posit law, that is, 
 as deeper than freedom. To this one can offer only 
 the very unsatisfactory reply that ultimate fact may 
 not accord with our thought. 2. For the universe as 
 a whole, God and the world together, there can be no 
 such thing as progress. Only particular and finite 
 things improve. The conceptions of advance, better- 
 ment, victory over evil, etc., true touching special 
 phases of existence, involve desperate contradiction 
 if applied to the All as all. Evolution itself is but a 
 local fact. The universe as a whole can not evolve, 
 but is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. Total 
 reality is not to be thought of as rectilinear but as a 
 closed, rounded, self-completing system — literally a 
 "world without end". * 
 
 *See G. Vacher de Lapouge, in his preface (pp. 6, 7) to his French translation 
 of Haeckel's Monismus. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Religion and Cosmology 
 
 „,. _. . Sec. 55. Considered in its essence 
 
 The Nature of ,. . . , ■ 
 
 n .. . ~ religion consists neither in mental 
 
 Religion: Sense " 
 
 . ^ - assent to propositions nor in the 
 
 of Dependence. , , . T 
 
 observance 01 rites. It is an atti- 
 tude, or two kindred attitudes, of the finite spirit in 
 relation to the Infinite: the reverent sense of depend- 
 ence on the Supreme Being and faith or trust in that 
 Being as righteous. Man is a conscious cipher sur- 
 rounded by reality whose limit he can in no direction 
 even surmise. Infinite time had passed before he ex- 
 isted, infinite time seems destined yet to come. Spite 
 of his best striving he is mainly passive in the midst 
 of forces and events, tossed, buffeted and borne on by 
 the tide or drowned beneath it. "Men are the sport 
 of circumstances when the circumstances seem to be 
 the sport of men" (Byron). You do not create your- 
 self or appoint your lot, and, however rich, great or 
 powerful, can not prolong your existence an instant 
 beyond its appointed span. Consciousness of this 
 aspect of life provides, so far, basis for religion. If 
 reverent, /'. <?., neither sullen nor merely intellectual, 
 this sense of our helpless finiteness becomes a truly 
 religious feeling. Part reason why brutes have no 
 religion is that they are unaware of limitations. 
 
 _,-..- ~ Sec. 56. Religious faith means a 
 
 Faith or Trust. . . , . _ _ . 
 
 conviction that the Infinite is not 
 
 merely the Vast, Unsearchable and Almighty, but also 
 
 (54) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 55 
 
 perfectly good, possessing moral character and gov- 
 erned by reason, whose laws we can obey and with 
 whom we can commune, gaining instead of losing in 
 the dignity of human beings. It is a joyful certainty 
 that reality is imbedded in the good; that the world, 
 somehow, though we may not see how, instead of 
 being a blind, aimless tumble of accidents, constitutes 
 a meaningful and worthy order, that all things some- 
 how fall out for the best, and that the ultimate motive 
 at work in nature itself is moral. In primitive relig- 
 ions this element appears as a confidence in the ex- 
 istence of certain good powers in or over the world, 
 able to ward off evil and to bless men with fortune. 
 A more perfect form of it is seen in the polytheism of 
 the great historic nations, believing in gods rational 
 and just, in whose hands are the course of the world 
 and the fate of men, who protect the good and punish 
 the wicked. Then came faith in a universal and 
 almighty Providence graciously directing all events, 
 even the minutest, so as to compass the highest weal 
 of all, establishing a divine kingdom where truth and 
 righteousness should perfectly prevail. When not 
 merely intellectual but joined with sympathy, this 
 reliance on the power above is a religious exercise.* 
 
 * Paulsen takes trust in one's country, people, etc., as an analogue to one's 
 trust in God. A better, it seems, is one's trust in father, mother, or wife. This is 
 better, too, than the one he suggests of a mother's trust in her son ; because dis- 
 trust in one's wife or mother, except in the most flagrant cases of vice, is regarded 
 as immoral. We should condemn a husband if we found him applying objective 
 standards of character to his wife. We never think of doing this to our parents : it 
 would be impious. Your mother (or wife) objectively criticized, may not be the 
 best woman on earth ; but to you she must be the best or you are a villain. If the 
 objective standard ever comes into your mind in judging her, you dismiss it as 
 morally a poisonous thing. You entertain it at the peril of losing your moral 
 soundness and balance. 
 
56 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 Sec. 57. While rational, involving our 
 
 The Basis , , , , 
 
 mental nature, and more or less express- 
 ed Faith.* ., ■ . ' .. . , . , . F 
 
 lble m creeds, religious taith is not a 
 
 deduction from merely mental data, scientific or phil- 
 osophical. A survey of the world apart from human 
 nature would never lead to faith. It is a bent of mind 
 and of feeling which men have slowly developed in 
 the course of the ages, every generation passing it on 
 with reinforcement to the next. Each of us derives 
 it from devout parents, relatives, teachers, the Church, 
 public opinion of the wisest and worthiest, who re- 
 ceived it by like tradition from those before them ; and 
 so on. Far from being a superstition, however, like 
 so many false beliefs showing such tenacity of life, 
 the conviction in question is solidly grounded and de- 
 fensible. Its primary seat is in the esthetic, moral, 
 super-intellectual department of our nature. A 
 rational and moral world-order is a postulate of the 
 moral law within us, which w T e find to be a radical, 
 ultimate, objective datum, no less so than the physical 
 universe itself. While, therefore , intellect could never 
 from its own premises evolve faith, it is bound to 
 recognize the premises thereof as fully valid when 
 experience and a study of human nature as a whole 
 have disclosed these. In thus not springing from 
 mental grounds yet demanding mental recognition 
 and treatment when found, faith is in no wise unique. 
 All ideas and experiences arising in our sentient 
 nature are of the same character. 
 
 *See J. G. Hibben, The Heart and the Will in Belief, North Am. Review, 
 Jan., 1898. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 57 
 
 _ ,. . - Sec. 58. This religious conviction, 
 
 Religion and D u . & ' 
 
 _ like all their experiences, men, being 
 
 Dogma. . , . 11 1 
 
 social, incessantly seek to express and 
 
 do express as well as they can. Hence religious phil- 
 osophemes, systematic divinity, ecclesiastical dogmas. 
 Such statements are often of great value, and will 
 never case to be made (Sec. 83). They are useful 
 symbols of an aspect of our life which is too rich, deep, 
 and internal to be phrased with exactness. But 
 when dealt with as full or final utterances of the truth, 
 certainly when identified therewith, dogmas become 
 pernicious, incompatible with the fullest virility of 
 faith, not seldom fatal to it, instruments of persecu- 
 tion against good men. It thus appears that while 
 there are better and worse among religions and 
 among the varying presentations of a given religion, 
 the essence of religion may be present among the 
 devotees of all, and even in men who profess none 
 whatever.* 
 
 ^ ,. . _, Sec. 50. From the above, religion is 
 
 Religion and Jy , . , 
 
 seen to agree even better with a mo- 
 Monism. , . _ , 
 
 nistic metaphysics than with the the- 
 ology which represents the world as existing outside 
 of and over against its Creator. Monism is not in 
 itself a religion: it is only a cosmological hypothesis. 
 But it is an hypothesis which seems faithfully to give 
 back the impression that total reality makes, upon 
 unprejudiced reflection. As it finds reality to be 
 rational and telic, bottomed in good and aiming at 
 the good, it can not but befriend a faith which has its 
 life in these same ideas. We can not, indeed, ascribe 
 
 *The Eternal may hear the cry of such as a father acknowledges a letter 
 reaching him from a child too young or too ignorant to give it the proper address. 
 
58 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 to the Supreme Being personality, will, feeling, or 
 other attributes, save as we, with utmost care, purify 
 these conceptions from human limitations. The 
 divine knowledge is not discursive : it consists in vis- 
 ion. To the Infinite Ego no non-ego corresponds. 
 Divine will can presuppose no unsatisfied desire, no 
 object outside or beyond its subject. Divine action 
 implies no contrast of purpose and execution, end 
 and means. And so on. We scruple to call God a 
 person not because the term means too much but be- 
 cause it means infinitely too little. However, using 
 the notion of personality simply as symbolic of all 
 that is highest, finest, and best, and divesting it of all 
 finiteness, we may speak of God as super-personal, 
 and call the devout man's relation with him a per- 
 sonal one. This is the admissible and unavoidable 
 anthropomorphism of all religion. In such a sym- 
 bolic anthropomorphism philosophic thinking and 
 religious faith join hands. 
 
 _ .. .. Sec. 60. Conflict between science and 
 
 Continuation. ,. . , 
 
 religion arises only when science 
 
 seeks to exclude religion, maintaining that itself trav- 
 erses and exhausts all reality and that the symbols 
 above mentioned are but fancies, good only for peo- 
 ple who can not think, or when church authorities pre- 
 sent their symbols as exact conceptions and their 
 articles of faith as scientifically demonstrable truths, 
 calling on all so to recognize them on pain of con- 
 demnation as heretics or atheists. Against a faith 
 which vaunts itself as the supremely valid science 
 the understanding is up in arms. Against a science 
 which allows no room for faith, art, or poetry, the 
 heart and imagination are up in arms. But a faith 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 59 
 
 which does not affect to be anything more and a 
 science duly aware of the limits to human knowledge 
 are perfectly compatible, both having place within 
 the great Kingdom of Truth. 
 
 Sec. 61. That prayer may have sub- 
 
 jective results all admit (i); and, in 
 and iviiracie. _ . . , 
 
 the light of recent psychology, object- 
 ive results, too, in persons other than the supplicant, 
 so far as regards their mental states, are not incredi- 
 ble (ii). Nor is it absurd causally to connect with 
 prayer modifications in the order of nature which to 
 us seem even miraculous (iii). An effect belonging 
 in either of these three classes would justly be deemed 
 an answer to prayer, since it would arise from the 
 operation of a divine order. Philosophy can not de- 
 clare an alleged occurrence impossible simply because 
 it has no known parallel, for our knowledge of normal 
 realityitself is narrowly limited. Anyalleged occurrence 
 whatever, as parthenogenesis or life from the dead, is 
 perfectly credible when duly vouched. But neither 
 philosophy nor instructed piety can expect, in answer 
 to prayer or otherwise, any occurrences, phenomena, 
 or modification of the usual course, which could, from 
 God's point of view, be or appear miraculous. Such 
 an expectation would imply an afterthought, imperfec- 
 tion of plan, or faulty execution. Reverent and care- 
 ful thought of the world leads one not only not to 
 expect but not to desire miracles. As an immediate 
 manifestation of its Author's will the world must be 
 good. The essence of all true prayer is : Not my will 
 but God's be done. It were arrogant in me to wish 
 this or that in nature changed because it distresses me. 
 
60 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 _ , Sec. 62. Philosophical theism does 
 
 Transcendence, , _ 3 f 
 
 _ not deny God s transcendence. 
 
 Immanence, _ , / 
 
 ^ t . (jrod and nature are not contermm- 
 
 Dualism. 
 
 ous notions (bee. 48). They dif- 
 fer quantitatively, since nature is finite, a drop in the 
 ocean of reality, while God is infinite. It is exhausted 
 in Him but He is not exhausted in it. They also dif- 
 fer qualitatively. The nature of things is at no point 
 foreign to God but, as spiritual, His being reaches be- 
 yond and rises above time, space, matter, extension, 
 body and all other categories of nature whatever. A 
 view which is cautious about ascribing to God human 
 attributes and faculties must be less in danger of 
 identifying Him with his works than one habitually 
 anthropomorphist. By its anthropomorphism ordinary 
 theology jeopardizes the doctrine of God's transcend- 
 ence: in another way it denies his immanence, teach- 
 ing downright dualism. If God created all things 
 out of nothing they are and remain his work, and 
 every effort to explain evil as of creaturely origin is 
 abortive. Touching metaphysical evil this is clear, 
 and it is hardly less so of moral. If moral evil first 
 appeared in the act of a man's or an angel's will, we 
 must locate the cause of such act in the being's nature 
 and environment, whence the responsibility inevitably 
 goes back to the ultimate cause of all. Clearly here 
 is a terrible obstacle in the way of a theodicy but it is 
 better to admit and face it. 
 
 _, _ .. Sec. 63. The facts of life do not at 
 
 The Question . , _ , 
 
 ^ ,. once point to weal as the final 
 
 of a Theodicy. . , . ~ 
 
 cause of things. Can pain, so 
 
 ubiquitous, be reconciled with benevolence as the sov- 
 ereign motive for creation, supposing the Creator 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 61 
 
 infinite in power? Answer were no easier could we, 
 as we can not, either (i) deny freedom, so reducing 
 moral evil to metaphysical, or (2) trace all pain to sin, 
 so reducing metaphysical evil to moral. Some light 
 comes if, regarding Character as God's end in crea- 
 tion, occasioning the highest good conceivable or pos- 
 sible, we consider: 1. That the world's moral evil has 
 all sprung from misuse of that freedom on which 
 character, and so, supreme weal, absolutely depends. 
 2. That the world's metaphysical evil is in part and 
 perhaps wholly an inevitable incident of finiteness, in 
 part and perhaps wholly of service in building char- 
 acter. 3. That the concurrent realization of all the 
 events which are, each by itself, desirable, is in the 
 nature of things impossible. The last supposition, it 
 may be said, does not limit omnipotence, this mean- 
 ing only the power to do whatever can be done. The 
 above thoughts offer the best theodicy ever yet 
 framed, but it can not be called satisfactory. See 
 Chapter 111, passim. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Evolution of Cosmological Theory: Fetichism and 
 Polytheism 
 
 _, .. , . Sec. 64. Fetichism is the earliest of the 
 
 Fetichism. T 
 
 three generic stages usually recognized 
 
 in the evolution of belief in a Supreme Being, this 
 leading to Polytheism and Polytheism to Monothe- 
 ism. The history of that evolution, revealing mono- 
 theism as the goal of all cosmological thought, con- 
 firms the argument hitherto presented. Fetichism 
 (spiritism, animism, naturism) is the faith of all unde- 
 veloped peoples like those of Northern Asia, Central 
 Africa, and Oceanica. In the same way as polythe- 
 ism and monotheism it asserts a supersensuous power 
 manifesting itself in the sensuous world. A fetich 
 (Portuguese "feitico," an amulet or idol) is some rude 
 image, stone, bone, or cluster of weeds or of hair, in 
 which a magical presence is supposed, for the time, to 
 reside, whose aid can be invoked by offerings of food 
 and drinks. While the system doubtless tends to 
 the identification of fetich with divinity, there is evi- 
 dence that such identification is in fact rarely com- 
 plete. Usually not the fetich but the divinity is wor- 
 shipped. The choice and use of fetiches gives 
 occupation to a magician-priesthood, Shamanism thus 
 always going with fetichism. Animals, trees, moun- 
 tains, streams, lakes, the sea, the sun, and the moon 
 are looked upon as the seats of spirits and addressed 
 in acts of devotion. The worship of ancestors also 
 forms part of religion at this stage, while here and 
 there a devotee has surmises of gods and of one God, 
 Maker of heaven and earth. 
 
 (62) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 63 
 
 _ . ^ . Sec. 65. Next comes polytheism. In 
 
 Polytheism. r / 
 
 this, instead 01 vague, transitory, 
 
 nameless and formless incorporations of magical 
 powers, we find personal gods and goddesses con- 
 ceived as permanent historical beings each with a 
 definite nature. The Greek system of divinities best 
 exemplifies this. Here each god had his well-defined 
 character, bodily and spiritual, which he never laid 
 aside. The traits are those of human nature only ex- 
 alted and without the limits of space, time, causality 
 and mortality which prevail in men's estate. The 
 gods enjoy perpetual youth. Without being almighty 
 they will and it is done, no human or material aid in- 
 tervening. Polytheism is during their early history 
 the religion of all historical peoples: Greeks, Romans, 
 Egyptians, Semites, Germans and Slavs. The old 
 inhabitants of Mexico and Peru who had entered 
 upon an historical life were also at the polytheistic 
 level of religious development. As fetichism mirrors 
 the vague phantasy-existence of natural men, with no 
 clear thoughts, memories, goals, or ideals, so polythe- 
 ism is the outcome of a settled condition, community 
 life, orderly and connected thought. Along with a 
 people its gods also become localized, so that side by 
 side with the Capitol or the Prytanaeum rise temples, 
 where gods permanently reside. 
 
 ._,, _. Sec. 66. More closely studied, each 
 
 The Elements. , . , _ . . .. 
 
 god m polytheism is discovered to 
 
 present one or more of three personifications: 1. Deities 
 are often viewed mainly or exclusively as personified 
 magical powers. Here we see the tie connecting 
 polytheism with fetichism. Popular religion, which 
 is expressed in worship, not in mythology, everywhere 
 
64 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 gives this phase the chief emphasis. Health, wealth, 
 fortune, bountiful harvests, victory, knowledge of the 
 future — these and such were the blessings which be- 
 lievers sought of their gods. Hence, always, the 
 priesthood, with its magical ceremonies and formulas 
 and its knack of persuading the gods, all obvious rem- 
 nants of fetichism. 2. The gods were to a great ex- 
 tent personified forces of nature. Zeus was the 
 bright heaven, the power of the sky, manifest in the 
 weather, especially in lightning and thunder. Dem- 
 eter was the fruitful earth, Poseidon the sea-deity; 
 and so on. This was the aspect of divinity with 
 which mythology dealt, as religion concerned itself 
 with the supernatural in its immediate relation to 
 human welfare. Quite analogous is the relation of 
 religion and theology to-day. 3. The gods were to a 
 great extent personified ideals, presenting to a peo- 
 ple's eyes in concrete form its own ideas of human 
 perfection. Zeus was the model of man as a ruler, 
 exhibiting worth and power as based on might and 
 right. Apollo, whom the Muses served, embodied 
 the idea so cherished by the Greeks, of high, free, vic- 
 torious mentality. So Hera, Athene, and Aphrodite 
 were types, in various directions, of feminine per- 
 fection. 
 
 _ . , _ A . Sec. 67. Two questions have 
 
 Special Questions , , ,. 
 
 _ . . A% _ been much discussed: 1. Has 
 
 Touching the Gen= . . , . . , , 
 
 . _ ,. . fetichism invariably preceded 
 
 esis of Religion. , , . ... 
 
 polytheism, or is it sometimes or 
 
 always produced by the decadence of polytheism or 
 of monotheism? Cases of decadence, like what Max 
 Muller ascribes to the Hindoos, may have been fre- 
 quent. Still, as we can not prove that any belief 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 65 
 
 higher than fetichism has ever been primordial, we 
 seem bound by the general law of human evolution to 
 regard the simplest and rudest form of religion as the 
 earliest. 2. How did belief in specific and particular 
 deities arise? Answers: 1. Peschel and others refer 
 the first belief in gods to men's theoretical necessity 
 of finding causes for the changes which they continu- 
 ally observe. 2. Feuerbach and others, after Hume, 
 Spinoza and Hobbes, connect the same with man's 
 felt practical need of aid from superior powers. 3. 
 H. Spencer makes the veneration of ancestors the 
 root of all religion. Substantially considered, these 
 views do not seem to be contradictory but mutually 
 supplementary. Search for cosmic causes must have 
 begun early, yet can not have gone far without coop- 
 eration from man's sense of weakness and need, while 
 the agency of the two impulses in working out the 
 idea of personal supernatural causes and helpers may 
 easily have been belief — occasioned by dreams — in 
 the continued existence of dead friends, heroes, and 
 kings. Primitive worship seems to have consisted 
 everywhere in the invocation of departed spirits to 
 partake of food with the living; yet we can not with 
 Spencer consider Zeus and Demeter, Apollo and Arte- 
 mis, Indra and Rudra, Mithra and Varuna to have 
 been merely deified kings and queens. When the 
 category of spirits has once arisen the spirit-world 
 may be peopled by the play of various faculties under 
 all sorts of impulses. 
 
 __, ... . _ . Sec 68. Monotheism is the 
 
 Monotheism: General . 
 
 ~. . .. form of religion prevalent 
 
 Characterization. . r 
 
 among all historic peoples at 
 
 an advanced grade of culture. All the great mono- 
 
66 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 theistic religions have arisen within historic times and 
 through historic personalities. Another peculiarity 
 which they show is their spiritualizing of the divine. 
 They lay aside the sensuous attributes of the polythe- 
 istic divinities, making Deity incorporeal, inapprehen- 
 sible by the sensuous imagination. Thus, in princi- 
 ple if not in popular conception, is given up the whole 
 anthropomorphic enrobing of the supersensuous world, 
 also the notion of God as a particular existence under 
 law to time and space. God becomes the Being, the 
 sole substance, whose essence and power permeate 
 all spaces, times and things. Nationality in religion 
 also passes away: God is the only living and true; 
 there can be no other god. All monotheistic religions 
 accordingly undertake international propaganda, 
 which polytheism never did. The Greeks and 
 Romans, indeed, carried their gods abroad, yet with- 
 out thought of forcing foreigners to worship them. 
 
 _. _ . Sec. 6q. So far as relates to the 
 
 The Progress from * 
 
 _ , A , . . Greek world, we can to a goodly 
 
 Polytheism to ' ? \ 
 
 „ A - . extent trace the evolution of 
 
 Monotheism. . . . , . . 
 
 monotheism out of polytheism. 
 
 Polytheism yielded in part to considerations of ad- 
 vancing morality. It was seen that if the gods were 
 the founders of order, protecting goodness, righteous- 
 ness and truth, much that tradition and myth ascribed 
 to them must be untrue. By 500 B. C, thanks to the 
 influence of priests, philosophers, poets and artists, 
 the Greeks had outgrown not only the magical and 
 the more coarsely anthropomorphic elements of their 
 old faith, but as well the belief in those enmities and 
 moral discords among their gods so familiar in Homer. 
 The good and right was felt to be necessarily one — a 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 67 
 
 notion which, from Herodotus on, found expression 
 in to Oeiov, "the divine." A refined polytheism, how- 
 ever, being still morally possible, remained, and 
 would have proved permanent but for metaphysical 
 speculation with its clearer and clearer apercu of the 
 unity of reality, and positive science with its relent- 
 less investigation and criticism. To an age enthusi- 
 astic for zoology, botany, anatomy and physiology the 
 gods of Olympus could be nothing but creatures of 
 fable. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Evolution of Cosmological Theory: Monotheism 
 
 c . Section 70. On renouncing poly- 
 
 ., .« . theism, cosmological thought at once 
 
 Monotheism. ' ° ,. . 
 
 struck out in the two directions fol- 
 lowed ever since, that of materialistic atomism first 
 developed by Democritus, and that of idealistic 
 monism first developed by Plato. This latter soon 
 won the upper hand. Impressed with the order 
 patent in nature, specially in the starry heavens, and 
 with the moral order observable in society and in- 
 sisted upon by conscience, Plato was led to his idea- 
 theory, which exhibits reality as nothing but a unitary 
 system of permanent and agreeing thoughts. The 
 truth of the world is not what our senses apprehend 
 in time and space, separation, rise and decay, but only 
 its thought-content. Reality is the Koafxos votjtos, the 
 mundus intelligibilis, and this, spite of its diversity in 
 detail, is a perfect unity. Moreover, as existence for 
 thought must consist in being thought (esse-percipi), 
 and as finite thought can not grasp the vast total of 
 Reality, Reality itself was pronounced conscious. 
 The living, self-sufficing Cosmic Thought, containing 
 in itself infinite wealth of subordinate determinations, 
 was thus God, all-efficient and perfectly good. Though 
 variously expounded afterwards, this Platonic view 
 was in essence maintained by Aristotle, the Stoics, and 
 the New-Platonists. As presented (best) by Aristotle, 
 it formed a very consistent monotheism; only his 
 "matter," the same as Plato's "other" or fit] ov, always 
 
 (68) 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 69 
 
 proved an irreducible, inexplicable element. The 
 same difficulty in one form or another has dogged all 
 attempts at systematic cosmology ever since. 
 
 ., . Sec. 71. Not dissimilar was the course 
 Monotheism ,.*.,„. , 
 
 . A1 01 cosmological reflection in the great 
 
 Among the , , * , A 
 
 __. , eastern branch 01 the Aryan race. 
 
 Hindoos. . _ , . ■ i 
 
 Surrendering to creative fancy the 
 
 Hindoo mind first, in the Devas, made for itself a 
 world of eternal, light-giving gods, to which philo- 
 sophic thought subsequently denied all reality. While 
 still retained in the popular religion, the deities were 
 to thinkers nothing but forms and names ascribed to 
 Brahman, the sole absolute Self of the world. Brah- 
 man is the supersensible, self-existent all-spirit, sex- 
 less and transcending individuality. Our souls 
 manifest it, but only in limited, broken, and sensuous 
 forms. "The atman, the self in thee, is in truth Brah- 
 man, from which thou wast for a time estranged by 
 birth or death; but it will assume thee into itself 
 again as soon as thou comest to it and to thyself." 
 The retention by the Hindoos, to answer popular 
 religious needs, of polytheistic teachings and rites, 
 well illustrates the parallelism between the stages of 
 religious development in a human life and in a people. 
 "There are," says Max Muller, "many brahman 
 families in which the son is learning by heart word for 
 word the old sacred hymns and the father daily per- 
 forms his religious duties and sacrifices, while the 
 grandfather regards all usages and ceremonies as idle, 
 and sees in the Vedic gods only names for what he 
 knows to be above all names, and seeks rest, where 
 alone it is to be found, in the highest philosophic 
 
70 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 knowledge, which to him is at the same time the 
 highest religion: Vedanta, the end, the goal, the ful- 
 filment of the whole Veda." 
 
 - - . , Sec. 72. Israel's religion was at 
 
 In Judaism and _ ' , , , . 
 
 _, . __ .. first a local henotheism. enovan 
 
 Christianity. „ , J 
 
 was "God ol Israel, wnile, as pre- 
 supposed by the first commandment, other gods pre- 
 sided over other peoples. How this rude polytheism, 
 common to all the early Semites, became enlarged 
 into the explicit monotheism of the later prophets, 
 history does not make wholly clear. Speculation 
 certainly had little part in the change. The impulse 
 to progress was mainly practical and moral, prophets 
 effecting here what philosophers wrought in Greece. 
 The absence of idols — early renounced, apparently 
 by Abraham's initiative — led those exalted souls to 
 emphasize the moral elements of religion. But right- 
 eousness they saw to be in its very nature general, 
 not local, wherefore its divine Seat and Defender must 
 be universal. Jehovah was thus no longer merely 
 "God of Israel" but the "God of all the Earth." 
 Not alone the seed of Abraham or those worshiping 
 at Jerusalem but the righteous everywhere were his 
 people. The way was thus opened for Christianity, 
 which presents God's Kingdom as purely spiritual, 
 free from all national or geographical limitations. 
 This notion of the Supreme Being, so rich in moral 
 elements, early church theologians naturally joined 
 with that which Greek philosophy had built up. 
 Spite of the problem of evil, spite of the metaphysical 
 difficulty offered by Plato's "other," church doctrine 
 declared God to have created the world out of noth- 
 ing. Manicheism and Paulicianism were stamped out 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 71 
 
 as impiously dualistic and so atheistic. Often as 
 dogma or practice might gainsay the teaching named, 
 it always maintained itself as the authoritative the- 
 ology. From Augustine down the Church's chief 
 thinkers agreed in it, while the greatest heretics, 
 whether rationalists or mystics, were on this point 
 orthodox. 
 
 _ . „ Sec. 73. Spinoza was the first head 
 
 Spinoza and /J . __ 
 
 . .. .„ m Lurope to think Monotheism 
 
 Leibnitz. . , . , . . 
 
 through to its ultimate conclusions, 
 
 cleansing it from the contradictions which theology 
 and even Plato and Aristotle had suffered to attach to 
 it. Spinoza's exposition leads to the same view as is 
 presented in these Chapters, save that he (a) too 
 much denies the transcendence of God over nature 
 (deus sive natura), and (b) too much ignores differences 
 in value among the various forms of being, tending to 
 identify reality with perfection. His own age, little 
 critical, deemed Spinoza an atheist, whence innumera- 
 ble efforts, in the supposed interest of religion, to re- 
 fute him. Far the ablest of these was Leibnitz's doc- 
 trine of monads, ascribing life and intelligence to all 
 matter. But this theory of reality reduces to Spin- 
 oza's while not having the simplicity or consistency 
 of that. Over the monads, their creator from moment 
 to moment and the author of their "preestablished 
 harmony," is the one self-subsistent monad, God. 
 This sole strictly original being is to all intents and 
 purposes the same as Spinoza's substance, while the 
 minor monads vary little from Spinoza's " modes," to 
 which he, too, assigns a species of relative independ- 
 ence. Leibnitz ascribed to Spinoza the assertion of 
 a doctrine contrary to the freedom of human volition ; 
 
72 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 but here too the philosophers agree, since Spinoza no 
 more than Leibnitz teaches mechanical necessity. 
 
 , _ . ._ Sec. 74. Locke's philosophical 
 
 Locke [1632=1704] ' T , , . . , 
 
 , . work was also partly inspired 
 
 , tt . .. by the wish to refute Spinoza. 
 
 Illumination. ^ * 
 
 1 hough grounding all our knowl- 
 edge in experience, yet, by admitting that experience 
 does not exhaust reality, the Englishman found place 
 for faith along with science. Thus, as Leibnitz writes 
 de la conformity de la foi avec la raison, Locke proves 
 The Reasonableness of Christianity. Unaided reason, 
 he says, makes certain (a) the existence of God and 
 (b) the immortality of the soul. Of the other religious 
 truths, he says, reason demonstrates the possibility, 
 though revelation is needful to bring them to our 
 knowledge. Owing in Germany mainly to Leibnitz, 
 in England and France more to Locke, there grew up 
 the natural theology and the rationalistic church the- 
 ology of the eighteenth century, the age of "illumina- 
 tion." Both exhibited God as a supramundane be- 
 ing, who had made the earth and man according to 
 purpose and plan and had prescribed them their laws. 
 Paleyan teleology was a phase of this movement, in 
 which deists as well as theists were involved, the lat- 
 ter peculiar only in denying miracle and revelation. 
 This superficial mode of belief, slightly modified, re- 
 mained till quite recently the basis of nearly all sys- 
 tematic theology especially in England and America. 
 
 __ , Sec. 75. Hume's posthumous Dialogues 
 
 Hume and ' J , „ ,. . , „ N , „ ° , 
 
 on Natural Religion (1780) and Kant s 
 
 Kritik der reinen Ver?iunft (1781) may 
 
 be said to have annihilated, for the thoughtful, the 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 73 
 
 entire fabric of rational theology as it then existed. 
 Proceeding empirically, Hume thoroughly demon- 
 strated the shortcomings of the teleological proof for 
 the divine existence. Whatever idea of this world's 
 purpose we may name, he said, be it happiness, cul- 
 ture, or the perfection of living beings, innumerable 
 facts contradict our supposition. Were we assured 
 from other sources that a perfectly wise and good 
 Creator existed, we could refer our difficulties to the 
 limitation of our knowledge. Having no such ex- 
 traneous assurance, we can not do this. We can 
 conclude only from what we know, not from what we 
 do not know. Over this and neighboring territory 
 Kant went even more thoroughly, showing that the 
 old grounds for believing in the soul's immortality and 
 in God's existence were either utterly invalid, like the 
 ontological argument — to which he reduced the cos- 
 mological also — or else, like the teleological, quite 
 insufficient for demonstration. Hume paused with 
 his negative conclusion, only remarking, in Dialogue 
 vi, that if driven to choose a cosmological theory he 
 should prefer the one which ascribes a principle of 
 order to the world as part and parcel of its nature. 
 Kant, on the other hand, in his practical philosophy, 
 reaches positive ground. The ideas of God, Freedom, 
 and Immortality, he argues, though not demonstra- 
 ble to the Understanding, become certainties when 
 the world is viewed in the light of the facts presented 
 by the Practical Reason. These ideas are not usable 
 theoretically, to apprehend and explain nature. With 
 the notion of God physics has naught to do; with that 
 of freedom history has no concern. But nature is not 
 reality itself; it is only the complex of possible 
 
74 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 phenomena. In and with the conception of Duty we 
 are confronted by Reality itself — the absolute world- 
 order, to which, by virtue of our practical reason, our 
 deepest and proper selves belong. 
 
 _. Sec. 76. The work begun by Luther 
 
 Doom of - ' , . , , & . : . . 
 
 Rationalistic delivering faith from scholasticism, 
 
 Theolojr whose good issue had to await new 
 
 conclusions in physics and in history, 
 was completed by Kant's great Critiques. Knowledge 
 of nature such as science gives can not be utilized as 
 substructure for religious beliefs.* If faith is to remain 
 it must have a new basis. This can be found only in 
 the facts of the moral world, in the eternally living 
 and present fact of men's moral consciousness, wherein 
 alone we transcend the order of nature. In this teach- 
 ing by Kant the Reformation had its logical result: 
 not philological or historical arguments from canonical 
 books, not physical or metaphysical speculation, not 
 authority, can ground a saving faith. The will for the 
 good is the ground for faith in the supremacy of the 
 good, viz., in God. The old compromise between 
 faith and science thus went by the board, leaving each 
 free to develop. Thorough thought at once struck 
 into its natural path, to monotheism in the sense 
 
 * "There were times when Leibnitzes with their heads buried in monstrous 
 wigs could compose Theodicies and when stall-fed officials of an established church 
 could prove by the valves in the heart and the round ligament in the hip-joint the 
 existence of a 'Moral and intelligent Contriver of the World.' But those times are 
 past; and we of the nineteenth century, with our evolutionary theories and our 
 mechanical philosophies, already know nature too impartially and too well to wor- 
 ship unreservedly any God of whose character she can be an adequate expression. 
 Truly, all we know of good and duty proceeds from nature ; but none the less so all 
 we know of evil. Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference — a moral multi- 
 verse, as one might call it, and not a moral universe. To such a harlot we owe no 
 allegience ; with her as a whole we can establish no moral communion ; and we are 
 free in our dealings with her several parts to obey or disobey, and to follow no law 
 but that of prudence in coming to terms with such of her particular features as will 
 help us to our private ends. If there be a Divine Spirit of the universe, nature, 
 such as we know her, can not possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there 
 is no Spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there ; and (as 
 all higher religions have assumed) what we call visible nature, or this world, must 
 be but a veil and surface-show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary 
 unseen or other world." — W.James, "The Will to Believe," etc., pp. 43, 44. 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 75 
 
 which these chapters have sought to make clear. God 
 alone is; all that exists is and must be embraced in 
 Him. The poets, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe led, 
 creating a Sturm und Drang which forthwith extended 
 from poetry to philosophy. The through and through 
 monistic system of Fichte and Hegel resulted, from 
 whose principle Lotze, Fechner, and H. Spencer did 
 not depart. Poets and philosophers united in reject- 
 ing as deistic the old theological and philosophical 
 orthodoxy. The fancy of God as a supramundane 
 being creating the world and the fulness thereof by a 
 preexistent plan and placing it outside himself to run 
 like a machine according to nature's laws, was hence- 
 forth impossible for thoughtful minds. God is not to 
 be conceived as a great master-mechanic or His world 
 as a theatre of puppets. * 
 
 Schleiermacher. SeC \ 77 ' W " le F ^ hte J» "P^K 
 
 to those who charged him with 
 
 atheism (1799) came out Schleiermacher's Discourses 
 on Religion, expounding for the first time the exact 
 religious significance of the new theology. Schleier- 
 macher made feeling instead of knowing the source 
 and seat of faith — feeling " wherein the finite becomes 
 immediately aware of the Infinite and Eternal." He 
 taught that every feeling normally arising when the 
 spirit confronts nature and human life, such as rever- 
 ence, awe, joy, love, gratitude, humility, and worship, 
 is religious. Whenever in these experiences the 
 
 *In his Gott, Geniuth und Welt, Goethe says: 
 
 Was war ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen Hesse, 
 Ihm ziemt's die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 
 Natur in sick, sick in Natur zu hegen, 
 So dass, was in ihm lebt und webt und ist, 
 Nie seine Kraft tmd seinen Geist vergisst. 
 The great poet apparently dwelt upon this thought, for the lines also form part 
 of his prooemion to his later collection, " Gott und die Welt." 
 
76 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 Totality of Creation impresses us as God's revelation, 
 so that not a particular and finite thing but God him- 
 self seems to enter our life, and so that, too, in our- 
 selves, not this or that function but our entire nature, 
 the immediately divine in us, is awakened and brought 
 out — then the experiences are elements of piety. The 
 common idea of God as a special form of being 
 outside and behind the world is not necessary to 
 religion. That conception is seldom unbiased and 
 never sufficient. When it is entertained out of the 
 conceit that there must be such a being to render us 
 comfort and help, it is not certain to be pious at all. 
 Also immortality as many wish this and believe in it 
 is not the goal of a religious life. An immortality 
 outside or behind time or in time but after the time 
 that now is is over, is of little consequence. The 
 important immortality is the one which we may have 
 here in this temporal life. The attainment of it is our 
 proper task day by day. In the midst of finitude to 
 become one with the Infinite and to be each moment 
 eternal — that is the immortality demanded by religion.* 
 
 * There is no unbelief. 
 Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod, 
 And waits to see it push away the clod, 
 
 He trusts in God. 
 Whoever says, when clouds are in the sky, 
 "Be patient, heart, light breaketh by-and-by," 
 
 Trusts the Most High. 
 Whoever sees 'neath winter's field of snow 
 The silent harvest of the future grow, 
 
 God's power must know. 
 Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
 Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
 
 Knows God will keep. 
 Whoever says "To-morrow," "the Unknown," 
 "The Future," trusts the power alone 
 
 He dares disown. 
 The heart that looketh on when eyelids close, 
 And dares to live when life has only woes, 
 
 God's comfort knows. 
 There is no unbelief; 
 
 And day by day, and night, unconsciously, 
 The heart that lives by faith the lips deny, 
 
 God knoweth why ! 
 
 — Edward Buhver Lytton. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Knowledge and Faith 
 
 _ . n - Section 78. Much confusion 
 
 Science Proper and .. , 
 
 _ . . „ . prevails between " science "in 
 
 Science in General. , , , , . 
 
 the strict sense and the work ol 
 
 the intellect in envisaging transcendent realities like 
 the objects of faith. For this Kant is mainly respon- 
 sible, pretending in his first Kritik to deal with the 
 conditions of science, while his second proclaims a 
 form of apprehension other than that of science, by 
 which we may be sure of God, Freedom, and Immor- 
 tality. These, we are told, can not be known but 
 only believed in. If so, w r e naturally inquire whether 
 our alleged grasp of these ideas has any validity 
 whatever; whether in entertaining them we are 
 not duped with names. If we have knowledge 
 here, why not term it such? If not, why assert any 
 apprehension at all? It is important strongly to em- 
 phasize the Kantian distinction between the secure, 
 exact, limitless knowledge possible in nature, the 
 complex of which forms "science" in the narrower 
 sense, and the indefinite, wavering and scanty knowl- 
 edge attainable in the other realm. Yet it is a contra- 
 diction to allege two essentially different kinds or 
 orders of mental possessions. If in any case we are 
 justified in saying that things exist, it must mean that 
 we have knowledge of them more or less exact, com- 
 plete, and demonstrable, i. c, more or less scientific. 
 The data of sense are confessedly our most conven- 
 ient matter for science, having the maximum of exact- 
 
 L 0? C. (77) 
 
78 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 ness, detail, and demonstrability; yet in proportion 
 as other cognitions bear these marks they too are 
 scientific. Certain indemonstrable presuppositions 
 being involved in all knowledge, the exactest science 
 may be said to comprise a faith element; but the term 
 "faith" is more properly applied to our knowledge 
 where it is vague as well as undemonstrable and based 
 on phenomena of our inner nature. Yet no data are 
 valid for faith which are not in some degree valid for 
 knowledge. That any facts should be neglected be- 
 cause nebulous, science itself forbids. Most that are 
 now definite were once the reverse. With this para- 
 graph compare Sees. 45, 47, and 56. 
 
 Sec. 79. Every general philosophy, i. e., 
 every one which purports to be a theory 
 
 _ .. " of the world and of life, involves an 
 
 Rationem. , . _ . , . . . 
 
 element 01 taith in a sense in which 
 
 strict science does not involve such. Philosophy 
 undertakes to put meaning into things, or rather to 
 unveil the meaning already in them; and the assump- 
 tion of such a meaning never springs from the 
 philosopher's mental nature alone but to a great 
 extent from his moral and esthetic being. What he 
 as a man feels to be the highest good and the ultimate 
 goal, that he sees in the world as its good and goal, 
 construing all reality accordingly. His ideal, his con- 
 viction of what ought to be, is his impulse and guiding 
 light in surveying the universe. It is as a man with 
 such and such needs and wishes and not merely as 
 an intellectual being, that every philosopher tries to 
 interpret. What impresses him as weighty and 
 worthy he exalts as the essential, nay, as the sole final 
 reality. This truth, perfectly obvious in case of all 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 79 
 
 the idealists from Plato down, fits Kant, Schopen- 
 hauer, Comte, and the materialists as well. Moreover, 
 the need to which the philosopher makes the universe 
 answer is always at bottom moral. Our philosophy 
 inevitably bears the impress of our moral as well as 
 of our mental nature, and our view is no more likely 
 to be vitiated by this fact than it is by pure cog- 
 nition through the categories of space, time, and 
 cause. Be the danger here greater or less, it is 
 unavoidable. Philosophy is a human affair: as human 
 beings we could neither have nor tolerate any other. 
 
 _. . _ Sec. 80. The objection that this 
 
 This Tendency ,, , . . r . 
 
 ^ . ,. stubborn determination to find a 
 
 not a Prejudice. , 
 
 moral meaning in reality is only a 
 
 prejudice, to be eliminated like any other, is not well 
 taken.* It no more involves prejudice than does the 
 determination, whence all scientific striving precedes, 
 to find a mental meaning in reality. The two pro- 
 pensities are part of one and the same intellectual 
 bent. As already stated (Sec. 57), man's moral nature 
 with its implications is valid part of reality, no less 
 objective than that which bases physical phenomena. 
 Even in material science research seems to be in last 
 analysis grounded on or inspired by belief in the uni- 
 verse as somehow morally meant. Desire to explore 
 being as such never led any investigator far. On the 
 other hand inclination to limit the universe or our 
 possible knowledge of it to the simple, clear, and 
 definite data presented by the sense-world, is cer- 
 tainly a prejudice and a dangerous one. Hume's ad- 
 monition that we can conclude only from what we 
 
 ♦See note to Sec. 45. 
 
80 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 know, is of course to be heeded, but it offers no reason 
 
 for ignoring facts simply because they are as yet 
 
 obscure. 
 
 _ .. Sec. 8i. Too much must not be 
 
 Further , . . , . . 
 
 « made 01 the admission that the 
 
 Misapprehension. . . . 
 
 existence of a spiritual world and 
 
 a living God can not be demonstrated, and that these 
 and such verities are apprehended primarily in feeling 
 and afterwards as matters of faith. Musical harmonies 
 and all esthetic facts are in the first instance felt, not 
 cognized mentally; yet music at least is found to have 
 a mental and even a mathematical basis. Objective 
 demonstration, in the strict sense, is nowhere possible. 
 We demonstrate only when certain premises are ad- 
 mitted. Unless it is agreed that general reality is so 
 and so we can not demonstrate that particular facts 
 are so and so. Proof, too, which is less stringent than 
 demonstration, always regards a certain totality or 
 considerable compass of truth. To prove is in no 
 case aught but so setting forth the facts in question 
 as to make man's total knowledge the most harmon- 
 ious. Now what is asserted is that (i) while the 
 material universe studied by science in its more usual 
 application offers and can offer no reason for doubting 
 the existence of things beyond its sphere, (2) an un- 
 prejudiced survey of all known reality, including man's 
 moral nature with its aspirations and needs, renders 
 the telic, esthetic, moral, inclusive theory of reality 
 not only more reasonable than any smaller view but 
 the only reasonable or admissible assumption. Yet 
 (3) as our vision of the supersensible first dawns in 
 the domain of feeling and at present lacks definition 
 in detail, susceptible of being held in various ways 
 
The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 and subject in detail to all vagaries, surmises and 
 illusions, it may well, for distinction's sake, be termed 
 faith instead of knowledge proper. 
 
 WT . ,. Sec. 82. The distinction which 
 
 Understanding „ , , TT , 
 
 - _ Kant draws between Understand- 
 
 and Reason. , _ . . t . . ,, 
 
 ing and Reason, while in itseli ten- 
 able and not without propriety, is another source of 
 constant confusion and mistake. Thus Paulsen's 
 statement* that "the understanding is indifferent to 
 the problem whether the world is good or bad" might 
 naturally be taken as a denial of all evidence that the 
 objects of faith are real. Neither Paulsen nor Kant 
 means this. Both recognize ample evidence of the 
 sort in question, but make men's Reason the organ 
 for apprehending it. If this contrast of Reason with 
 Understanding is adhered to, it should be borne in 
 mind that Reason as well as Understanding is a valid 
 instrument for the prehension of Truth. No umbrage 
 is cast upon data by denominating them "ideas of the 
 reason." If well founded, though possibly indefinite, 
 they constitute information of an order as certain as 
 that which the products of the understanding afford. 
 Indeed, were it possible for data from the one depart- 
 ment of knowledge to contradict those from the other, 
 the facts avouched by reason would have the logical 
 precedence. 
 
 hk j • r» • a.- Sec. 83. It derogates nothing 
 
 Moods in Relation , , ° , ° 
 
 D .. . from the verity of the rational 
 
 to Belief. J . 
 
 ideas that they impress us more 
 
 or less strongly somewhat according to our moods. 
 When time and sense most nearly suffice, permanent 
 
 Einleitung in die Philosophic, p. 335 [Thilly's Tr. p. 325]. 
 
82 The Problem of Cosmology 
 
 realities seem vapid and far. Though special fortune 
 often evokes gratitude to the Power above, adversity 
 and distress are the chief quickeners of reverent 
 thought. Weariness of the world works in the same 
 way. When we find that life does not redeem its 
 promises, that men are mean, false, selfseeking, and 
 merciless, that to succeed here below you must call 
 the little great, the sham genuine, and appearance 
 reality, the heart-wrenching disillusionment drives us 
 to hope for a world of more righteous judgments and 
 awards. Few lives, and no great ones, are spared 
 this bitterness. You strove for earthly good: gold, 
 honor, position, prosperity, and enjoyment, and you 
 found like thousands before you that these objects 
 can not satisfy the heart. You let imposing things 
 deceive you; beauty and truth you sought to gain by 
 chasing them ; and now after many a long and devious 
 race you are undeceived and in despair. Once you 
 marched forth to fight for right and freedom, but you 
 grew weary, yielded, and made your peace with the 
 world. This disillusionment, too, impels one to long 
 for a higher life, for redemption from such vanity, 
 woe, and death. Existence seems illusory and cruel 
 and the weary soul cries with Goethe: 
 
 Ceaseless ache ! inane endeavor ! 
 
 What boots all the fierce unrest ! 
 Peace like a river, 
 
 Come, oh come and fill my breast ! 
 
 Sec. 84. It is the nebulousness at- 
 taching to the data of faith which, 
 considering the great value of such 
 faith, renders important religious organization with 
 its ordinances and creeds. Isolation in religious 
 
The Problem of Cos?nology 83 
 
 thought impairs the steadfastness of faith. Shut up to 
 his own meditations the most philosophic believer 
 will at times fear that his convictions are but vagaries. 
 Not only our own whims and arbitrary judgments are 
 a danger, but also those of shallow but dogmatic pub- 
 lic opinion. Communal religious life organized about 
 the great religious truths dear to pious mankind is the 
 sole antidote. The old creeds in which countless 
 generations of the faithful have to their comfort read 
 the meaning of life, place before us what is firm, 
 abiding and eternal amid the changes of human 
 opinion. Theories, doctrines and systems come and 
 pass away as the clouds do, but those hoary symbols 
 remain like the stars, though at moments hidden as 
 the clouds sweep past. Best to serve faith and life 
 a creed must be: 1. Historical. A new religion is, 
 strictly speaking, impossible. If such could and did 
 exist it would be useless. 2. General. Creeds too 
 definite or detailed, whether originally so or made so 
 by contemporary interpretation, divide minds instead 
 of uniting them and lead to persecution. What 
 strengthens one in the hour of need is not the faith of 
 scholars as such but the faith of good men as such. 
 The two often differ widely. 3. Of Transcendent 
 Content. An abstract or rational religion, or a creed 
 limited, like Comte's, to the present results of 
 " science," with no word touching absolute or eternal 
 verities, would be the scorn of all earnest minds. 
 
Aug 3 I901 
 
JUL 29 1901 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 {724)779-2111 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 013 192 736 8 
 
 ; 
 
 [Sgjigg . 
 
 mm 
 
 mm 
 
 M 
 
 I 
 
 111 
 
 pESS ;