LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, U-^ Chap. Copyright No.. Shelfi.^-5.5 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SELF AND THE FATHER SELF AND THE FATHER PART I Person, Divine and Human, as Known in Psychology and Philosophy By JOHN C. C. CLARKE, D.D. CHICAGO R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO. -&& c« THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTON 9796 Copyright, 1898 By JOHN C. C. CLARKE TWO tlVEl ^t v ' the Person " I do," or " I feel," in the mazes of a mono- w ° 1S gram; but consciousness refuses, and before it conscious. ° ' ' says "Do," or "Feel," it finishes saying "I." Self-consciousness is inscrutable, partly because in one 6 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 7 aspect it is single, and partly because in another aspect it is complex. It is single because it is the one fact of knowing. It is complex because the knower is more than a knower, and cannot separate himself from his relativ- ities, his needs, capacities, experiences and sentiments. But it is said by some that consciousness is at once the witness, instrument and substance of knowledge, and the judge, jury and advocate in the trial court, and hence there is no assurance that there is anything more than consciousness. But that is sophistry; for consciousness is never on trial as to its existence. A supposed case of consciousness may be on trial, but only because self- consciousness is confessed and made a first principle of fact. If the case is on trial in a court where you cannot throw out the witness without expelling the Judge, and can only impeach the Judge by denying the law of im- peachment, and the Judge refuses to expel himself, you cannot throw the case out of court. But there are those who say that consciousness is not self-consciousness, because it is not consciousness of what self is. This is a sophistical attempt to forestall self- examination by assuming for each of the words, What, Self and Is, an unwarranted meaning. Knowledge can be real without being complete. An infinite knowledge would be only a sum of many knowledges, each of which was real but narrow. It is the aim of this little book to show that our knowledge of our Selves is enormous; but it is knowledge more of actions than of being. Action does not beg for recognition, but enforces it. That which knows is He, She, You or I. Names are only conveniences, or garments. And so, for our con- venience, we say " Self " and "Person;" and the name Person means no more nor less than Self; and Self is that which knows by consciousness. CHAPTER IV HUMAN PERSON § I. SELF-EXPRESSION We now set before us the task of discovering this Per- son of our Self. It is a chase as difficult, perhaps, as the pursuit of a moccasined man over the stony ridges of pathless crags. But, as trained trailers follow and dis- cover fugitives, and as keen-scented nostrils hang on invisible tracks to their end, so we enter on the search, hopeful and eager; for it is a pursuit of all that is best in knowledge and in hopes. To discover and describe what is meant by the names Self and Person, one must explore consciousness, and systematize all that is found therein. To do this per- fectly would be to gather all actual and possible biogra- phies, to collect all possible experiences and conceptions of all souls, to catch all possible enjoyment of art, music, and poetry, to drone with the dullard, and kindle with the fire of the patriot, the statesman and the enthusiast, or to patiently dissect nerves with the Scientist and souls with the Philosopher; in short, to be in touch with humanity in every thought and feeling. In this pursuit of our Self, we propose to survey first, not what we are, but what we do, or rather to describe our Selves only as doers. If there is a possibility of find- ing out what a Person is " In himself," or out of all rela- 8 SELF EXPRESSION 9 tions with other things, we neglect that pursuit at this point. We follow the trail of the personality that is a self-conscious activity. We describe the Being whose life is an active self-expression: for, whatever a Person may be in his Being, he has adaptations to activity and to relations with his world. In the pursuit of our Self, we must notice and describe all the kinds of action of a Person. But this will not be a mere writing of a list. It will rather be like a picture of a busy world of people. And it will be a chart of a battle-field, for, to say that " A Person acts," is to raise the battle-flag of philosophy. Around this assertion the battle of the giants has raged, with consummate skill, and keenest and heaviest weapons. It is the ceaseless war between skepticism and consciousness, in which con- sciousness comes into the field an incorporate, irresistible positiveness. Personality knows itself as acting, and as quivering and springing with active vital force, in re- sponse to touches that are the impact of other actors and motions. Consciousness of personal doing is a protest against idealism, monism, and agnosticism. The thing or Being that does act, and can act, is a thing or Being that is. We will first observe the simplest forms in which the life or being of a Person expresses itself, and then come to the study of the highest Reason, and then ask if Phi- losophy can be constructed on anything but Psychology, and if Psychology can be constructed on anything but personal activities of minds, and if such Psychology is imbecile or glorious. Call up, then, this something that is named a Person. If you cannot weigh him nor fetter him, you can observe his doings. 10 HUMAN PERSON See him first in pleasure or pain. He who enjoys or aches lives. When he thrills with delicious joys, can you persuade him that delight is unreal, or that and* ?air ^e w ^° 1S s0 na PP v ]S nothing? When he is torn with pain, and when, perhaps, almost all his sense is one concentrated agony, can you convince him that torment is nothing, or that he who suffers is nothing? This Person comes to us certifying his real-being by his character, or the persistent self-expression of a dis- position. He wants something, wants desper- Character. r , . , , & /, ately, passionately, wants always. And he wants to do, to do always, to do fully, perhaps violently. All his sense of being condenses into one sense of adap- tations and relations and suitableness. He who has these has attitudes towards them, and this is character, and that which has such character is a Person. See him, next, in the passion of self-defense against invasion, or dismemberment, or robbery, or humiliation, or dishonor. He fights for life, rights, happi- sdf-defense ness ' or nonor J an( * this battle-passion is the vital forceful springing of a living Person. The recoil from a lie, or a meanness, or a breach of fidelity, or an insult, is the life-expression of a Self, a personality. See him, next, as the Being that loves, whether with the gregariousness that may be a timid clinging, or that "enthusiasm of humanity" which to some minds is a synonym for religion; or whether it be with that liking which results from being like, and is an expression of character, and makes the harmony of life, its sunshine, its wealth; or whether with that devo- tion which is the paradox of self-expression, that mystery which word-logic declares to be impossible, and which is SELF EXPRESSION I I the most real of realities, the potent factor in all noble life. See him as a Being that has aesthetic taste, or a sense of excellence, beauty, agreeableness, in Nature, art, or music. What is this but an adjustment st etlc of a living noble Being to his environment? Excellences are not in things, but in the Persons. They are revelations of the presence and nature of the Persons. See him as the Being that wills. But shall we here define Will? It is the concentrated essence of the self- expression of a personality. It is his Self, moving its Self. It is the freeness of a self- mover. It is the sovereignty of the soul. It is the Royal force of a living Being, a force that may be defeated or misguided, but cannot be else than free. Logic cannot define it. Some logicians have said that a Will deter- mines itself. But this is to say that Will is some sepa- rate element in a Person, and is not the Person's Will, and therefore is not a Will at all. Some logicians have said that it is determined by motives, and the strongest motive. But this is to say that the Man is ruled by some parts of his Self, and that his Will is one part of him. Logic fails to define Will; but self-conscious Will ex- plains itself as the automatism of the compound Person who is the real unit of living Being. Will is the living Person's declaration that he is a Person, a Being of many parts and multiple relations and wants, and of manifold powers. It is the province of a Will to choose accord- ing to the actual, not the ideal, circumstances. A choice of ideals is distinct from a choice of actions. A Will that can take counsel of intelligence, experience, policy and everything else in personality and relations, is a Person's Will, and anything else is no Will. A Will 12 ELEMENTS OF PERSON that can change with circumstances is a Person's Will, and anything else is no Will. Will is good or bad, not because something else in the Man, or out of the Man, makes it so; but because it is the self-expression of the Man's Self, and is the Man's freeness, and cannot be anything else than free. See this Person also as the life that has continuous- ness and memory. He clings to the glory and riches of his past; and the shame of his past, and its continuity evil > wil1 n0t leaVe nim * His P aSt is the aff * U " ence of his present. He is what he has been. Neither Science nor Logic can explain this continuity of being. Logic is bewildered when it attempts to explain how a being that was can be the being that is. And Science that, in despair, abandons all effort to explain how atoms of matter hold together, is still less able to tell how the life or being of a soul runs in one line through its yesterday and its to-morrow. But, what Science and Logic cannot do, Consciousness does; for the soul that is to-day knows itself as having been long ago. In the science of conscious life, perpetuated iden- tity with one's past experiences and history is the glory of personal being, and is its garnered treasure. § 2. INTELLECT We have, in the preceding pages, noted the simplest elements of the life of a human Person. But we have not seized the man, nor seen his Self. We have only noticed his experiences and his doings, and, in these, have felt the presence and the quality of the man's Self. The experiences in ourselves, which our consciousness, on its most solemn oath, will swear are real, have been PLATO S THEORIES 13 like the tokens of the experiences around us; and in ourselves we know our fellows. But we have not found and grasped a man. We have, however, been conducted near to his presence. We have felt in ourselves, and noted in the world, the principle that he who does is. We may pass on now to view a man in his grandest performances and noblest experiences. We must view him as rational or intellectual. But we shall not find the man in his selfness. We shall find him only in his doings; yet we are in these conducted where the spiritual air is tempered with his presence, and his voice is heard and his touch felt. And by these experiences and doings of our own Self we recognize our own noblest vitality, and are conscious that our body homes not unworthily an heir of Heaven and a child of God. Students of human life, Philosophers we call them, have assumed that study of what a man is, and of what he knows, is one study. We, too, shall proceed to observe what a man knows, and hope from this to be conducted to a clear view of his nature and his destiny. We may, however, profitably first glance at the the- ories of the three greatest leaders in philosophy, Plato, Aristotle and Kant. Plato taught that a human person is an organized real being. He is a growth not of Earth but of Heaven. He has, in a previous existence, been in sight of, and in touch with, ideas which originated in God's mind and are eternal entities. He took in the knowledge of these ideas once, because he is of stuff like them, and is an individualized idea. He tried to establish philosophy by distinguishing between the two Greek verbs einai, {to be) and gignesthai (to become). He said that only God and ideas are, and that other things 14 ELEMENTS OF PERSON only become. In this he made philosophy a mere dia- lectical quibble about the verb to be and the noun being (ousia), while he really recognized nothing as existing except God and forms conceived by God. *Hence the teaching of Plato, which on his lips fasci- nated the world, and inspired in men a sense of living as Children of God, in view of eternal verities, became, in the mouthings of Plato's successors, a cold skepticism and an agnostic despair. Plato almost alone, perhaps we should say quite alone, among all the philosophers of the world, attempted to formulate a Psychology, or theory of what a human per- son is, and made this to some extent a basis of his theory as to human Reason. He figured a man as having in his head another man, who is his rational {logistikbn) part, wise, incorruptible, and immortal. This knows so much of divine truth as it has seen in a previous existence. It is its right and duty to dominate the whole Person. Then he has in his breast a second part, which is instinc- tive (thumoeides) and spirited. This is like a lion, impul- sive and heroic. Then he has a third part, which is greedy (epithumetikbti) and beastlike. This is like a hydra mon- ster, and occupies the lower body, and is earthly, sensual and perishable, or, if not perishable, punishable. Plato's most celebrated and influential, but in genius far inferior, successor was Aristotle. Plato had Aristotle. . . , , . . ... explained everything through his conscious- ness of manhood as childship of God. Aristotle and *Plato's men did not really live either in substance or with vital power, and everything vigorous and effective in men was discredited by him. Per- ception also was discredited, because substances which have no permanent form or nature can cause in men no knowledge of true beings or permanent forms. Man and consciousness were minimized by the very effort to glorify them. There was left no criterion for ideas except their harmony with each other in the universal system of ideas; and that harmony had to be judged by discredited human minds. KANT S THEORIES 1 5 his men were machines for analyzing, enumerating, and classifying thoughts. But the machine never verified itself; and although this machine did its own thinking, its ideas neither originated in God nor in the thinker, but were in the material things that he saw. Aristotle was an incarnation of logic — cold, bare, and spiritless. He is the World's Master in formal logic; but his logic has no psychology. He had much to say about energy, but nevertheless he could not rise above futile verbiage about being and the verb to be, and his philosophy was but a machine moving itself from nowhere to nowhere, and halting at last in an arid desert of doubts and empty words. *The words used by Aristotle for names of intelli- gence implied, or ought to have implied, the agency of a man in his knowledge; but under Aristotle's pen they became merely names of forms of objective knowledge. His consciousness never asserted its authority. Among modern philosophers, no one has been so influential as Immanuel Kant. He is wonderful in his dialectical acumen, and minuteness and sub- tlety of logic. He is sometimes full of quick- ^ ening fire in the expression of great thoughts. He is a synonym for glorification of Reason. And yet he is the disseminator of despair and deadliness. Kant used all the power of his great abilities in push- *Nous {mind) was to him intellection, or intuition, a form of wisdom, but not a part nor a faculty of a Person. Although, in a vague way, he discusses inconclusively the question whether or not mind {nous) is conscious of itself (See Metaphysics, Book XI. ch. 9), or is the same entity as its perceptions and its objects of perception, and although in a careless way he, like all Greeks, spoke of exercises and even happiness of nous (Ethics, X, viii. 7), yet as to the question, What is a mind? he was " all at sea." (See also Ethics, I, ch. vi. 3, and Book VI. 2 and 11). Under his pen, gnosis, sunesis, efiisteme, gnome, dianoia, logismos, fhronesis, and aesthesis meant quality of objective knowledge, rather than personal exercies of a mind. Even to logistikon he discusses rather as to its usefulness than as to its essence. 1 6 ELEMENTS OF PERSON ing forward the already universal and destructive con- ception, or theory, that truth is to be attained only by logic, and in its harmony of ideas with ideas. We have to thank him for having pushed that line of theory so far that its refutation and self-destruction could not help following him. Kant glorified Reason; but it was not a man's Reason. Kant ignored human Mind as a factor in intelligence, but he did not deny it, because consciousness and con- science were quick in him. But his successors have dared to deny what he only said was not proven, and have scorned consciousness, and have made skepticism and disbelief the premises for their logic. Kant saw truth as something existing a priori. He assumed that for his starting point, and gave all his attention to an examination of that. But he did not escape from himself and his consciousness, nor from his sense of the operation of causation, which, as we hope hereafter to show, is the dominant fact and principle in philosophy. Hence, as he did not wish to say, like Leibnitz, that ideas are innate in men, and did wish, in some vague way, to confess the power of intellect, he does affirm that " Reason is a faculty of principles," and that there is a " Causal relation of Reason." But if we ask, What is a faculty? and, Of what is Reason a faculty? we get no satisfaction from Kant. Kant tried to mark out the lines within which the truth must be found, if there is any truth, and according to which our knowledge, if we have any knowledge, must arrange its ideas. He made logic a study of forms of thinking that does not think of actual things. He studied knowledge as something for men's minds, but INTELLECT 1 7 refused to admit the minds of men as agents of their own activity. Kant's system of Reason is like a geographical globe prepared for a map of human knowledge. The poles, equator, parallels and meridians are exactly drawn, but there are no lands nor living beings. It is not an Earth, but a dead moon. It is a map of thoughts, but ignores the thinker. And yet this chart, as he left it, appears as if drawn on transparent paper, having under it, in strong colors, a picture of a world crowded with living men. The followers of Kant have, as it were, withdrawn that lower sheet. Kant had only said that Reason does not know that there is any real being; but his successors have said, There is no being. They have thrown away the globe, and have made their chart a shadow on the changeful surface of a cloud. But they have not explained the source of the light and shadow, nor the nature of the cloud. That which Kant called "Transcendental Logic" has wrecked what he called "The Transcendental Esthetic." Before we proceed to our study of Reason, we notice some of the names which have been given to Reason and the performances of intellects. These are as flags on the battlefields of philosophy; 1^™^ ° nce for, although the power of a mind to con- struct names as symbols of conceptions is one of men's grandest faculties, and is indispensable to the evolution of intelligence, it is nevertheless true that the fixing of such names has always caused a stagnation of thought, followed by intellectual bigotry and fanaticism. Every word that is used to describe or name any kind of human knowledge is a word designating an action of 1 8 ELEMENTS OF PERSON the person who knows. Know is the same as Greek gignosko and Latin gnosco, and means as they do, I think. Apprehend means seize. Perceive means take thoroughly. Conceive means take together, or take in myself* No word has performed a more important part in modern philosophy than the wordreason; and scarcely any other word has been used so irrationally. It Reason. , . , _ . , comes to us through the trench language, from the Latin, in which it (ratio) meant a relation, or a perception of a relation, or a reckoning, or a ratio, or a reasonableness. But it did not mean either a part, or a faculty of a Person. It has come to mean, in different mouths, four different ideas, viz.: First, universal imper- sonal truth; second, reasonableness; third, a faculty of mind; fourth, the exercise of mind in reasoning. But, while many use the name Reason often, and arrogantly, and with very positive language, almost nobody has made a pretense of defining it. It has been more con- venient for everybody to assume that his favorite idea of it was the right one, and the one in which to deny its trustiness and glory would be the act of a fool. It is a word which nobody has a right to use without declaring in which of the four meanings he uses it. If the use of the word could be restricted to one meaning, it might be of great value; but the history of philosophy shows the word and its equivalent to have been used for little purpose except ambiguity, shuffling, and tricks, and largely to obscure truth, and to hide the person of God. Another word which has exercised an enormous power to the present time is the verb lego in Greek and Latin. ♦The other Greek words are these: Oida, J know, means / have seen. Epistamai is / stand on, and means / understand. Noeo, I think, means / use mind. Dianoia, intelligence, means w^wrfzWdistributively. Eidesis, intelligence, originally meant seeing. Katalambatio is / apprehend, or catch on. LOGOS. 19 It is impossible to study philosophy without examining and using this word; because from it are made the Greek equivalent for ratio, and our words logic, in- tellect, and intelligence. ^ eg0, Logos. The verb lego meant / lay, in Latin and Logic. in Greek. Intelligence means knowledge of J nte ]) ect - d . Intelligence. relations, and the faculty of knowing relations. Intellect means laid in relations, and the faculty of know- ing relations. From lego, the Greeks made the noun logos, the first meanings of which are ratio, proportion, relation, degree, and division. Later it came to mean word, saying, speech, state?tient, account, argument, expla- nation, definition, proposition, theory. Later it had a place in philosophy. Logos will often be found translated into English by the word reason. But it never, in Greek, meant reason as a part of the being of a person, or an equivalent of the word intellect. It had in philosophy three general meanings: First, the truth in universal Nature; second, the apprehension of that truth in (not by) the minds of men; third, the right expression of that truth in logical thought and in speech. In these three significa- tions it did important service, alike in the common and the metaphysical language of the Greeks.* We shall have occasion tG observe its place in the writings of Philo Judaeus and the Apostle John. Here we may well ask with much interest, What did Greek master- workmen in philosophy conceive to be the nature of *The reader who desires to study the word in Greek will find very elaborate definitions. See in Plato, viz. : Theaetetus, 200 to 210 ; Sophist, 259 to 264 ; Republic, 510 and 511. See in Aristotle, viz.: Ethics. Book I, ch. vii, 13, 14: ch. xiii, 15, 18; Book VI, ch. ii, 2, iv, 4; v, 3; Book VI, ch. i, ch. v.,ch. vii. 7; ch. xi, 4; ch. xiii, 3 and 4; Book VII, ch. i, to Book VII, ch. ii, 7. Metaphysics, Book I, ch. i; Book II, ch. i; Book VIII, ch. v. See Alcinous and Albinus in editions of Plato's works, as Appendix 20 ELEMENTS OF PERSON reason, or logos, and what the reasoning faculty in a man? Unfortunately, while they did not use the word logos as ambiguously as we now use the word reason, they did conceive that Reason {logos) is something existent in itself,* possibly originating in the Supreme Deity, but existent in the nature of things, and a law to all truth. And they never, except in Plato's and Aristotle's theories of eide and ideas, carefully studied the problem how this universal truth becomes a possession of a man. Earnest efforts were made by the Greeks to describe, scientifically and systematically, human knowledge of the things of the world. All the different know^ ideas, or kinds of knowledge of material Categories things, were classified, and these classes were grace ' named. The names given were called "Categories," i. e., names, or predicables. We cannot help admiring the acumen of the Greeks, as men of our western race, who, alone of all men, saw the importance of such logical steps in philosophy. The earliest schedule of categories, made by the so-called Pythagoreans, divided knowledge about things into four general classes. It said that we know things in, or as, ousia (being, or essence, or substance), posbn (quantity), poibn (quality), and pros ti (relation). Evidently here was an admirable beginning for a rational and scientific philosophy; but it was gravely imperfect. It was made from no fixed philosophical point of ♦The word logos was commonly used only in such terms as to have logos, i. e., to have the universal wisdom, and in phrases with the prepositions with, through, on account of, according to. Logos was commonly spoken of as orlhds logos tes phuseos, the right reason of nature, or simply the right reason. From logos were made the words logizomai, to reckon; logikos, rational; logisttkion, the rational or intelligent faculty, and logike, the logical art. INTELLECT 2 1 view, and therefore the categories crossed and overlapped each other. The first category, being, might include everything, or it might be merely a conception, or a name for a mere logical inference about what is a pre- requisite for any and all knowledge. The other three categories each had at least two viewing points — one in the things observed, and the other in their observer. The whole schedule was imperfect, because it made no recognition of knowledge of activities, events, concep- tions, and organized beings, or of life. Aristotle added to the four categories six others, viz.: chrbnos (time), tbpos (place), keisthai (situation), echein (possession), poiein (action), and pdschein (suffering). Later he added others. But, wonderful Master of thought and logic as he was, he only introduced new confusion; for the first four of these later categories are only itemized categories of relation, and the other two are categories of active or vital beings. Later, some of the Greeks used the word hypostasis {substance) instead of ousia, and made other unimportant variations of the schedule. It must be observed that whether they used the name ousia or hypostasis, or any other term, to ex- press such ideas as have been rendered into Latinized forms, as essence, existence, substance, or entity, these words never meant to them the verbal idea of to be or to have being, but always meant a material something at the basis of substance. Kant brought to the study of categories rare powers of analysis and logic, but he attempted a new, a differ- ent, and an impossible performance. He sought to schedule the categories of The ^g^gg Understanding while he excluded conscious- ness, experience, and all the other elements of psycho- 22 ELEMENTS OF PERSON Logical science. He designed that his categories should be names for the varieties of knowledge as purely theo- retical. He said, They are the a priori conceptions of the understanding, answering to all the logical functions in all possible judgments. The inevitable result was that his categories were, in one aspect, attributes of ob- jective substance, and, in another aspect, they were only formulas of logical processes in a thinking mind, and there was no way for bringing these antipodes into one- ness. They are words in the air, which implied the real existence of matter and mind, but confessed neither, and prepared the way for denying and insulting both. They are categories of matter that is not matter, and of mind that is not mind. While making a magnificent struggle to attain superhuman intelligence, Kant is like an eagle tossed with broken wings on the division line of air and sea. Kant's schedule of the categories is as follows : I. Of Quantity. II. Of Quality. Unity. Reality. Plurality. Negation. Totality. Limitation. III. Of Relation. Of inherence and subsistence (substance and accident). Of causality and dependence (cause and effect). Of community (reciprocity between the agent and the patient). IV. Of Modality. Possibility, Impossibility. Existence, Non-existence. Necessity, Contingence. INTELLECT 23 The faults* in this schedule are more numerous than its words. It is a kind of revolving, intertwining lot of colors. It is a cute invention to persuade a person that he is talking or thinking of things, when he is only talking of words. There is a deft arrangement such that there is an appearance of starting with a recognition of a unit of being, passing through all the phases of reality and existence, and reaching a conclusion that a priori ideas have existence in necessity. In fact, all idea of being is excluded, either as an a priori or a deduced belief. Such schedules of categories as Kant's contain nothing but empty words, not really designed to describe either things or ideas. A schedule equally philosophical, but utterly worthless, can be produced by itemizing in three groups, called Relation, Quality and Quantity, all the words that can be made by taking the Latin words herence, tension, ence and sistanee, and prefixing the prepo- sitions ab, ad, con, de, ex, in, sub, etc. Let us, then, for the present drop all thought of scheduling the categories of knowledge as Ex eri _ pure reason, and let us study our Self and our mental experiences as rational or intelligent persons. now e ge * Intelligence begins in a sensation, a very simple thing ♦The arrangement in trios is forced and unnatural. Important cate- gories are omitted and others are named twice, as if seen from different view- ing- points. Some items are only negations of others. There is no real recog- nition of actual quality and modality, unless the categories of relation are taken in such comprehensive senses as to include almost all facts. Of the three itemized categories of quality, reality does not mean actuality, because that is no more nor less than existence, which is scheduled as a modality. Kant's reality is not of things, but is a quality or manner in assertions. Nega- tion cannot be made an item of quality alone ; for it belongs equally in all four groups of the categories, or in none. Limitation, as used in this group, is limitation only in assertions. In general, it may be said that Kant's attempt to keep the categories in the old lines as quantity, quality, relation and modality, was a snare and bur- den to him. The whole scheme is full of tricks. It is a kaleidoscope, suscep- tible of all sorts of changes in its arrangements. It has a specious appearance of giving names to knowledge of real things ; but it is in fact only a list of pos- sible forms of sentences about anything or nothing. 24 ELEMENTS OF PERSON as long as the man does not think about it. But if he reflects, the sensation resolves itself into at least two, Sensation ^ not tnree » elements. It becomes a con- and sense- sciousness of his Self, and a consciousness that perception, something else has come into relations with his Self, and a consciousness of an idea of a cause of his sensation. Then if he asks about causation, and asks how he knows even what he sees or touches, and asks how much is true, there he is bewildered. Alas for him if he asks, Do I know in my brain or at my fingers' tip? or asks, How does a thing out of me become a knowledge in me? He is told, and truly, that he never saw or touched anything. What he has seen was only light as it reflected ; and light is waves of an unknown something that, for describing, has to be hunted by mathematics, and never is described or known. He is told that what he thinks he sees has only sent light into his eye, but even there he has not seen the picture that is there of the object, but it has done something to one of his nerves, and that has done something to or in his brain. He learns that compound or shaded colors, and appearances of solidity, and perception of distances, are all operations by himself. He is told, too, that when he thinks that he touches something, he is mistaken; for no atom touches another in the world. Blessed is he now if he does not despair, nor cease to think. He has only been taught that he does not know so simply and immediately as he supposed that he did. It does not follow that he knows nothing, nor that he is deceived. His consciousness has not been invalidated; for what he is conscious of is a true consciousness. He has only learned that there are many media between INTELLECT 2$ things and his sense of them, but he can become con- scious of many of these media and of their exact laws. What the man is conscious of in sense-perception (as we call perception by the senses) is that he has received some information. Information must always remain information; but there can be conveyed to any being just so much information as his faculties are adapted to receive. By touch, there arises in a man's mind a conviction (which is consciousness, or very like it) that something has touched him; and he has a very definite conception of the nature of that thing. This consciousness we must re-examine. Right here we must classify the facts of consciousness, and here we must formulate some princi- ples of philosophy. The first principle coming out of an examination of consciousness is this, viz.: All human conceptions are of concrete things. General, universal, abstract, AU our nominal, and conceptional ideas we have in knowledge abundance, but there is not one which is in an "J eas • are or our consciousness until it has been observed concrete in some actual concrete thing. There are no t mgs ' abstract facts, such as goodness, badness, right, wrong, truth, or falseness, except in substantial things. Imagina- tions of non-existent and impossible combinations and organizations may be in our thoughts, but no conception of a primal elementary idea can be in our mind that has not been observed in a fact or thing. A man has not many perceptions before he compares and classifies what he perceives, and gives names to the classes of ideas. These he calls abstract conceptions. Then he makes abstractions of abstractions, and principles of principles, true and false; but the basis of all these is his perceptions 20 ELEMENTS OF PERSON of concrete actual things. Indeed, the most of our abstract conceptions are but a notion of some single thing, or of a few things. An unlearned man cannot argue or reason without appealing to his few experiences and facts; and a philosopher does liitlc better. The second principle coming out of our examination of consciousness is this, viz.: All our conceptions are Ml our ideas of things as active. We know nothing knowledge whatever except actions. Science has demon- are of the strated that solidity, form, weight, cohesion, activities gravity, temperature, color, taste, smell, and chemical and mechanical properties of mat- ter are forms of motion of its atoms. In these words there is outlined not only the whole world of Science, but also the battlefield of Philosophy. Philosophy has only two armies and two battle-flags, although there are divisions and factions within the armies. The one army proclaims that the noblest, or most perfect, knowledge is of being. The other declares that all knowledge is of doings. Very early the Greeks recognized that motion and energy (kinesis and energeici) could not be disre- garded in philosophy; but when the methods and logic of Aristotle became generally used, Philosophy turned away from Science and devoted itself chiefly to a search for what is called being. Science impelled this search only by its weariness in the effort to find order in the mass and multitude of facts, and by its confirmation of the truth that every fact has its cause. The chief impulse to the search for being was the natural love of men for skill in logic. Under this impulse they pursue the ulti- mate, or first, principle in all things, and in all lines of study. This ultimate object of pursuit is being, or that which is. We pursue it under the various names of INTELLECT 27 essence, substance, entity, the thing in itself, the unit, unity, the first cause, etc.; but whatever may be the name given, the object pursued has been one, viz., that which is under the substance, and before action, and simpler than any known unit. This aim is chimerical. It is even absurd. Men still pursue it with arts of logic, but Philosophy despairs in the pursuit. Men cherish in their conscious- ness and their logic the conviction that there is being; but they despair of knowing it as being or as unity;* for we know and think of nothing but concrete things; and we know, and can think of these, only by and in their activities. This is not to say that we know only material things, and that we know only by sense-perception. It is to say that we know an enormous amount, and know gloriously, in consciousness, and that our knowledge is of the real and the actual, and of the moving things, and of the living and forceful things, in their doings and their products. The logical complement to the facts just stated is that knowing is itself an action. But this truth does not depend on logic. It is a declaration of con- Conscious . sciousness itself. The dogma that conscious- nessisan ness is an action is, however, the doctrine actlon - about which the hottest fight of philosophy will perhaps always rage; for if in consciousness a man does some- thing, surely the man exists; but then arises the momen- tous question, How, if consciousness is an action, can we know that it is right action, and that its product is truth? Men have always, by the very names that they give to *It is profitable to see how the master mind of Aristotle wrestled with the problem. He tries to describe, or define, being by various turns of the verb to be, and by tricks with the prepositions, but he reaches no end. See his Metaphysics, Book I, chs. 2 and 3, and Book VI. 2 8 ELEMENTS OF PERSON primal intelligence, implied that it was an action. Per- ceive means seize thoroughly* Conceive is seize together. Apprehend is catch on. You cannot turn consciousness into an inactive merely recipient faculty, by saying that knowledge is information received; for to receive is to seize. A further part of the answer to the question, How do we know? is this. Knowledge, as known in conscious- Knowled c ness » is a seizing, by the Self, of some rela- ol thin-sis tion of a thing to the man's Self, or a seizing rive ?o rea °* some doing (action) of the thing, in which human facul- it is relative to the doing of the man. No tlcs ' matter what may be the outcome of this declaration, we must assert it, both as logic and as con- sciousness. As surely as, in a mathematical equation, one member equals the sum of the elements in the other, so surely there is in all knowing: equation. J ° a " Personal Equation," or formula of ele- ments and factors, a part of which are the faculties and activities of the man. But it does not follow that beliefs can be invalidated on the ground that they are personal. To prove that human knowledge resting on consciousness is false, or even doubtful, it must first be proved that The Cause or Creator of men is not able to bring true information to men, or that he could not make men capable of receiv- ing or conceiving truthfully. Is consciousness a lie because receive means seize? or because a Human Person is something more than an open-mouthed sack? Why, then, should negative theories have preference of right on the roads of philosophy? Why should we applaud him who compares man to a shining drop in a miry pool, rather than him who recognizes in man a protege* and INTELLECT 2g favorite, if not a child and image, of God? Why should consciousness, which no science nor logic can impeach, be insulted on its imperial throne? And yet there will always be philosophical doubters; for knowledge is information; and if The First Cause had endowed men with ten thousand senses, and their evidence furnished an almost infinite description of substances and of their doings, and if The Creator, with an audible voice and in a visible form, declared the truth of the information, even then this certification would be relative to the powers and activities of men, and susceptible of rejection as not proven; but alas for him who should reject it! Theories as to the nature and means of conscious knowledge of things by perception through the senses have been many. Some declare that it is only a combination of material sensations. Others ense ~ perception. call it a representation to the central nervous seat of intelligence, communicated by the nerves. Others say that it is a pre-established harmony between sensations and the mind. Others imagine that there is a medium between sensations and the mind, transforming feelings into ideas. Others declare that consciousness is imme- diate knowledge of things. Others say that things are only ideas, perhaps created in the mind itself, or perhaps suggested by some arrangement of inexplicable Nature. But is there really any reason why our bodies, which are the assistants of our joys, the mediums of our self-display, and the instruments of our great performances, should be in the courts of Philosophy scouted vagabonds? When we observe and consider the intellectual acts and the noblest conceptions of Reason, and we ask how they arise in human minds, we are directed away from the trickery of logic, which only turns a ka ] eidoscope 30 ELEMENTS OF TERSON of words, and plays with the ins and outs of phrases, and we discover in a human person powers and func- tions exalted and glorious. As we survey Faculties . . . f ° , J and acts of each of these, we observe that they are not the personal on i y helps to our highest wisdom, but each mind. , , is the essential, and almost the beginning, of all intelligence; and, without each of them, men would be idiots, and truth unknowable. Foremost among these faculties is that which we call Attention. It is Directed consciousness. It is con- sciousness knowing itself as an activity, and Attention. ... ° _ . . J ' controlling itself. It is consciousness gov- erning its own direction, quickness, grasp and tenacity. It is not merely an occasional exercise of the mind, but is ever active in the waking man. It is the faculty that opens the doors of the treasury of the mind and com- mands a delivery of its affluence. And if Man is to know himself in consciousness, it is attention which is to make the study with spiritual scalpels and lenses, and is to count the respirations, pulses and vibrations of the soul. Next we notice in human intelligence something that all persons observe as being curious, and that logicians A . . and philosophers speculate about, but which, of ideas. as a study, is a part of psychology, and is of Memory. utmost importance. We observe that ideas have a connection together, a connection by classifica- tion, and a persistent union in our minds. This is not merely an occasional occurrence, nor a rare phenome- non. It is an essential element in all intelligence; and just in the measure of its perfect operation Man has wis- dom, reason, genius and personal intellectual power. Without it intelligence would vanish as it dawns, and thought would be no chain, no conception even, but a INTELLECT 3 1 sequence of fugitive unrelated glimpses. The association of ideas is thought correlated, adjusted to its relations with other thoughts and with the personal life of the thinker, and then reeled up in the Being that is behind and below consciousness. It is the persistence of mental life, bearing constant evidence of the under working of a persistent living personality. It stores away thoughts with a history of their origin in circumstances, and also with intelligence of their likenesses, connections and relativities; and therefore when the thoughts mount again into consciousness they come in linked chains, or broad pictures, or in troops. Sometimes it seems to be a Master of our thoughts; but it is so only as a man's past always dominates his present. This association of ideas is not essentially different in the greater conceptions in our minds from what it is in our lesser experiences; for it is not a connection of imper- sonal reason, but is a connection of each thought with the Being of the man himself. He is the link and tie of ideas, and they are the witnesses to his existence. And the measure of their quantity and quality is the measure of the mental nobility of the man. The persistent con- nection of thoughts, and the power of giving attention to parts of that connection, are the two phases of memory; and memory is the sine qua non of personal nobility, and makes both the present and the past experiences of a soul a persistent wealth. Woe to him if it is only a per- sistence of separate sights and sounds and touches, and not a correlation of ideas which The Creator has designed for eternal union. Next there come into our notice two faculties and functions of mind, which work with the attention and the memory to perfect their work. One is a faculty of 32 ELEMENTS OF PERSON making in the mind such symbols and representatives of knowledge, that ideas remain when the things and experiences are forgotten. It makes words ™boLSig and language, art and harmonies, logic and Faculty of its premises. It raises a soul out of its sor- ideas atng ^ anc * S ross associations into the intellec- tual and spiritual life. The other is a faculty of multiplying attention and memory and association of ideas, and of correlating the many experiences and the plural ideas of the intellect, so that out of them come ideas of ideas, and principles of principles. These two personal faculties exalt the man from the condition of a mere receiver of impressions into that of a Being to whom great principles of Nature, and wide-reaching purposes and ideas of The Creator are revealed. After we have recognized that grand personal powers and actions in men are the means which furnish an ines- ideasof timable wealth of intelligence to them, we time, space, find that we have in them an explanation of Turaiit^ a l ar g e g rou P of conceptions which are al- division, ways present in our ideas and experiences, lmension. an( j w j t jj 0U |. wn ich there can be neither ex- perience nor thought. And yet these ideas are unsolved puzzles in every philosophy which rests more on logic and analysis of objective thought than on recognition of the nature of consciousness and on the personal active functions of men. These conceptions are our ideas of quantity, time and space, which Aristotle classed as catego- ries, and Kant called a priori conceptions. A rational examination of them will show that they are products of personal actions and experience, and that, in a greater measure than any other conceptions, they are assisted INTELLECT 33 by, and dependent on, that human body which so many rationalists disparage. Kant specially mentioned as a priori conceptions the principles of mathematics, and the categories time and space. He could not have selected any that are more evidently physical and experimental; for, all the proc- esses of mathematics are either mere variations of meth- ods of counting, or mere equivalent definitions. Kant often cites, as a priori conceptions, the fact that 5-4-2 = 7, and the fact that two sides of an angle, or two parallel lines, cannot enclose space. But, in fact, no sum in addition, nor any multiplication table, was ever learned by anybody except through counting or memory of hear- say. And that "Angles and parallels do not enclose space," is only an equivalent definition of angles and parallels; for "enclose" means "surround by continu- ous lines," and angles and parallels are not continuous lines. If we scrutinize our perceptions of things, we soon perceive a consciousness of directed attention; or, in other words, a consciousness of direction of our Self, and that this directed consciousness fixes itself on various points of the observed objects, and that we perceive these points in their relations to each other and to our Self, and that we perceive our Self, or are conscious of our Self, in relations to them. And this is Space, a consciousness of measurable reach of direc- tion of our Self, in respect to attention and perception. This is the simplest aspect of the conception of space. But we are, in our bodies, constantly conscious of per- ception of different objects, or different impacts, at dif- ferent parts of our organism, or at different angles 34 ELEMENTS OF PERSON from our center of personal consciousness. These rela- tions and separations of parts of objects, we learn to measure only by experience; and this experience is gained in its first steps by some sense of measure, exten- sion, or reach, in our own person, or by some sense of time occupied in the process of measuring. Space is therefore a conception of plurality in the relations of physical objects to each other and to our Self, and is measured by our consciousness of different parts of our own physical organism, or by the angles and reach of directed attention, or by time. If we scrutinize further our self-consciousness, we per- ceive always a consciousness of self-continuance, gauged or measured by something that is in con- sciousness itself, and inseparable from it. This is time; or, in other words, time is consciousness of continuance of our Self. This, by experience, assisted by our personal power of making general conceptions and symbols, and of perpetuating them by memory as laws of our thought, becomes a general conception of time, applicable in all our experiences, and in all conceptions of actions or events. Who shall say that it may not be a regulated vibration or oscillation of our personal being? Science has demonstrated that all the so-called qualities and accidents of matter are meas- urable motions of particles, and Science is demonstrating that the vital functions of our bodies are performed in pulses or vibrations. There are in our physical life, direct and reflex action, flux and reflux, stroke and relax- ation, which in our health compromise and harmonize with each other, but by their conflicts produce disease, dementia and death. Analogy of Science may indicate that there is a pulse and vibration of the soul, or of that INTELLECT 35 subtlest, most hidden part of our physical being, at which mind seizes matter, and takes control. Time is primarily a consciousness of successive exercises of vital action. Secondarily, it is a consciousness that the oscillation of our attention is associated with a sequence in the vital experiences of our bodies, and in the activities of the material world. The discussions in the preceding pages have been steadily illustrating and confirming, on many lines of survey, our doctrines that personal conscious- c ness is an activity, and is of plural facts, con- ness is nected with one another. Pursuing the study pluraL of intellect further, we are brought, by both logic and self- examination, to a perception that consciousness is itself plural, and that in this truth there is a conductive phi- losophy reliable and glorious, a philosophy of personal being. It has been the popular fashion to declare that con- sciousness is an unit, and that it cannot be consciousness of anything but just being, or Self, and that all the rest of our wisdom is uncertain and unreliable. Against such doctrine, derived from inferences from false premises, we affirm that consciousness is multiplex or plural, and that this fact is the reason why philosophers have recognized quantity, quality, modality and relation as necessary cate- gories of knowledge. In one aspect consciousness is single. It is conscious- ness of the unity of its possessor. This is the last van- ishing glimpse of Self as seen by One's Self, single con Really this unity or singleness is a result of sciousness. confining One's Self to a single viewing-point. It is see- ing One's Self through only one window. Philosophers have felt compelled to find assurance of 36 ELEMENTS OF PERSON the reality of existence or life. They have thought to find it by tricks with the verb to be, and they have made infinitives and nouns and participles out of it, as if it meant something, and yet, all the time there was no idea in it; for to be is not really a verb. It is only a copula. It is only an equation mark of equality, like =. Hence the Greeks were so confused in their words that they named the first category sometimes being, ousia (really this is essence or substance), and sometimes quantity. But almost all the world has approved Aristotle's dictum 11 Unity {to /ien) is entity " (to on). In one view of the matter they were right ; for consciousness of quantity is, in its beginning, a person's consciousness of his own being, his independence, oneness, selfhood and wholeness. But no experience of a person's consciousness ever was, or ever can be, single. A person is always con- scious, not only that he exists, but that he is Double con- f certain sort and that his « suc hness," or sciousness. ' ' quality, consists in faculties for activity. He knows that he is, but more than that, he knows that he has something, and that which he has he knows only as powers of action. But, no person ever had a thought that was not about some action, real or imaginary. The knowledge of the outer world begins, for all persons, in the So^ness third cate g orv of the person's Self; that is to say, in his exercise of his faculties; and this is his category of modality. Hence quantity of substance is, in our knowledge of it, a perception of many contacts that the person has with its many parts (or atoms), which are joined in oneness by the intelligent faculties of the person. He looks at himself, when he wishes to, through a single window, and finds his selfhood, but he always INTELLECT 37 looks at other things, and often at himself, through many windows, and he discovers himself by his many doings. In this triplicity of consciousness arises that concep- tion which is the chief principle of philosophy, the central fact in all the system of truths, the basis of all reasoning. This fact or principle cau e sati on° is named Causation. In every perception we are conscious that something does something. Philoso- phers have recognized a great importance in the idea of "Cause and effect." It has been discussed as a law, and as a deduced conception, and as a formula of an equa- tion : but, in fact, it is the simple truth that " Doing does," although in philosophy there is no greater fact. All life of intelligent persons gets its constant illumi- nation from exercise in the consciousness of causation. We act, or do, to ourselves, moving and receiving motion. We are at both ends of these acts, and know cause and effect as one action in ourselves. We may now proceed to say further that every con- ception in consciousness is so far plural that it is at least quadruple. In every perception of things, 0uadru le the knower knows the thing as doing some- conscious- thing, both to the perceiver and to other ness " things. That is to say, he knows it in its relations. He knows it as a cause actively related, or connected, with many other things. By this knowledge, the man comes up into all the wealth and splendor of mental endowment. Here he finds the affluent material of his logic. He, in every one of his conceptions, knows himself as being, as having faculties, as using those faculties, and as correlating the relations (or relativities) of per- ceived things, until he sees widened out an universe 38 11 EMENTS OF PERSON of conceptions and principles glorious beyond measure. In the quadruple consciousness, the single perceptions become multiplex conceptions, and the individual facts become the interwoven systematization of a magnificent universe. And in this conceived universe there are prin- ciples of principles, and generalized facts of facts; but not one of these is an inferential product of Logic, or a creation of Reason; for man knows nothing that has not been brought to his consciousness by the relation of his trebly conscious person to the multiplex relations of the concrete things, or the events, or the living beings of the world. In the quadruple consciousness, sound ennobles itself into music; and lines and surfaces become the beauties of painting and sculpture and architecture; the activities of matter develop into the grandeur and ministrations of Science and Art: and causation expands into conceptions of possession, ownership, rights, skill and moral law. That which the quadruple consciousness of a man knows, constitutes his grand endowments and wealth. This raises him above the brutes. This ushers him, a Prince, into an universe which ever unfolds to him new glories, and invites him into an inexhaustible field of ministering resources. And this unmeasurable treasure is not a creation of the Reason of men; but has come to them in their perception of the relations in the facts, beings, and activities of the world. Are we humiliated by this? Not unless it is a shame to be second to The Creator. If we were the makers of the grandest concep- tions, then the facts of the universe would also be imagi- nary and its things unreal. We must note here, that probably the loftiest concep- tion that arises in the human mind is, at least as to its INTELLECT 39 chief element, a conception of purpose. Even brutes know themselves as doers, and know their wishes and aims; but the} r probably know these as indi- vidual aims to exercise instinctive activities. ^p* 6 ^ But man, in his quadruple consciousness, knows himself as aiming at intelligent action, and knows intelligent action as purpose: for this is the definition of purpose, just this and no more. Intelligent action is directed aim. It is the personality and will of intelligent Person acting. It is not an inductive conception, a cre- ation by thought; but is a consciousness of what intelli- gent action, in relation to things and circumstances, is. Aimless action is idiocy or insanity. Intelligent action, known in consciousness as purpose or aim, is the crown- ing glory of the splendor of personal being in men or Gods, and, as we shall observe further on, is the core and essence of that consummate excellence in personal beings to which we give the name Morality. In what we have said of quadruple consciousness, we have used the language of philosophy, but we have only interpreted the thoughts and consciousness of ,, ™ , Skill, all men. The common sense, or general wisdom, consciousness of normal men, fairly devel- Common 1 . r 1 1 , sense. oped, is an acceptance of truths that have been brought to us in facts. Wisdom is not invented conceptions, or harmony of theories with theories; but is humble obedience of mind to the reception of facts that are found in things. What are skill, and science, and art, but submission to the truth which The Creator brings, in things, within the compass and vision of the mind, that is to say, into the quadruple consciousness of a man? After all our boasting about our Reason, our progress, our inventions and conceptions, we find our 40 ELEMENTS OF PERSON glory and our happiness in our conformity to the laws and facts that are in things, as we discover these laws and facts, not in ourselves alone, but in Obedience. . Nature as relative to ourselves. This is obedi- ence to The Creator; and perfect obedience is consum- mate wisdom and complete virtue. We might now attempt here to write in a schedule of categories, a scientific and philosophical portrayal of the powers, blessedness, and glory that inhere in Multiple con- h personality f a human being. But the sciousness. tr j r> plural consciousness brings forward so vast an array of intelligence, and displays such a system of the relations of men to things, and of each man to all men, and of principles to principles, that we must linger in contemplation of some of these facts and principles. The plural consciousness finds its greatness and glory in the fact that it makes intellect itself the subject of its study. The lesser animals can, like men, have conscious- ness of being, and of having powers, and of using facul- ties, and of perceiving some of the relations of things. But a man can make his Self, and all the stored treasures of his complex being, the object of his reflections. §3. MORAL SCIENCE Chief among all these glories that are in men, or that come to them, through the consciousness of the affluent wealth in the endowments of Man's personal being, and through the performances of his personal powers, and through his perception of the facts and principles of the countless relations in the things and activities of the world, is that one which, as a philosophy of the well-being of Man, and of the MORAL SCIENCE 4 1 highest happiness of human persons, and of the direct- ing aims and the motive springs of action in human lives, is called Moral Science. Nothing in the realm of human conceptions is accorded more unanimous and enthusiastic eulogy than theoretical morality. About nothing is there more com- plete consensus of opinion than there is about the gen- eral principles of practical morality. But when we look for agreement among men in the application of these principles, or for a prevalent regard for that part of moral science which relates to what we call right and wrong, or when we attempt the study of the fundamental principles of morals, the unanimity breaks up like the surface of water under a wind, and the ideas which as theories are adored, are in practice despised and hated. Moral Science is not a system of religion, nor of vir- tue, in any narrow sense. It is the whole broad system of all that is highest and wisest in wisdom, all that is noblest in performance, and all that enters into the hap- piness or the misery of men. It is the science of the perfection of the human person, not only in all those elements of physical and mental life which we have enumerated, but also in many more which rise far above them in the plane of excellence, and indeed fill the whole horizon of that field in which are the forces and values of personal being. This field is so vast that for the purposes of this little book, as a study of the philoso- phy of human personality, we must content ourselves with a contemplation of the essential and fundamental principles that come to us in the crowded intelligence, or plural consciousness, of men. In our survey of the conceptions which arise in human minds, and are correlated and joined in our plural con- 4^ ELEMENTS OF PERSON sciousness, we found three which are always present in a person awake and sane, and are connected with almost every thought. These three conceptions are cetionsSf 1 " °^ Gausa ^ on > purpose, and obedience. When causation, these three conceptions are viewed in their obIdie S nce nd relations » and in the conclusions to which they conduct us, there opens to us a magnifi- cent prospect of the splendor and wealth of human per- sonality, and of the possible destiny of men. The consciousness of causation, beginning in our knowing ourselves as causes, or causers, then becoming a perception that all knowledge is of activities, Causation. _ fl . , and that all action is causation, and that causa- tion is inherent in all existence and all vitality, is the basis and the constructive principle in Moral Science. In the consciousness of causation there inheres, or is born, the idea of ownership, an idea dominant and T , . blessed in all the lines of human life, and Idea of ' ownership or furnishing the impulses to all the ardor of "ghts. human pursuits. The consciousness of causa- tion is a feeling that the caused thing is forever joined to its cause. An entire separation of an effect and its cause is inconceivable. There is a connection of rela- tion that is eternal. The idea that you own your crea- tions, and that in them you have added to the sum of your own possessions, becomes the first element of the idea of what we call Rights. Then the spirit of the man inflates with a sense of the Tightness of self-defense, and with a sense that an assault on his ownership is an attack on the nobility, and on the value, of life itself. And so, from very childhood, the consciousness of acting becomes a beginning of the sense of exaltation and dig- nity inhering in the ideas that we call Rights and Jus- MORAL SCIENCE 43 tice. These ideas of ownership, rights and justice, become in us general principles that spread a halo of what we call " Sacredness," over all the relations of Society, and that become on one side a passion of asser- tion of ownership, and on the other an equal authority of restraint. But each single perception of rights or justice is a recognition of ownership based either on some causing action of the owner, or on some rights imparted and transferred by the first causer of the right. Viewed from another point, the idea of causation appears inseparably joined to a perception that all intel- ligent action is a movement towards the pro- . . • i • i Ideas of duction or causing of something. In other purpose, words, intelligent action is purpose. This value, ends, and quality. idea of purpose is interpreted and illustrated to us by all our consciousness of our own nature, by all our wants, by all our passion for self-expression. It becomes a sense of value, or rather, it is a sense of the value of the ends not yet grasped. A person cannot conceive of himself as not, at every moment and in every action, pursuing ends that have value to his living being. This sense of value is the sense of what we call quality. It never comes to us except in a perception of the way in which the ends of things or of actions express the purposes of living persons, or bear on the welfare of living beings. The combined conceptions of causation, ends, pur- poses and values, so pervade all our conscious- ness of our life and of the relations of things, Fi rst°cause that they become a perception that we are of men and free actors, pursuing with intelligence valu- Sy ^ t ^ r ' able ends. It develops also into a conception and conviction that the same principles prevail every- 44 ELEMENTS OF PERSON where, and that we are ourselves parts of a system that has one First Cause; and that, in this system of things, its Cause, or Creator, has the rights of ownership that are inherent in causation, and is pursuing, with intelli- gence, ends that to him have value, or quality and excel- lence. It becomes a conception and conviction that the Cause of the Universe has the right to obtain the ends or values for which he has created the World. In this conception The Creator does not stand before our minds as a power, but only as The Cause of a universe, which in many respects and relations can never be separated from him, and in which he has a right to attain his ends and values. Later this conception of The Creator's rights may be reinforced and illuminated by our perception of the value of the ends pursued by The Creator, Ideas of J ^ \ / . , , moral right, an d by our personal sympathy with the ex- duty, obiiga- cellence of those ends; but the conscious- ness of the ownership that inheres in causa- tion is itself the foundation and authority of what we call the law of Tightness in the universe, or Moral Law. The Nature which The Cause of an Universe incorpo- rates into it, cannot be anything but right, no matter what it may be ; for there is no other standard of right practicable or conceivable. If The Creator had pur- posed and caused an Universe very different, in its things and forces and operations, from this one in which we live, it would have settled itself into a system, would have worked out its ends, and would have evolved a harmony in its activities, or at least a peace in which the forces intended for mastership would exercise the con- trol designed for them, and this mastership would be their right, because, at the last, it is the right of The MORAL SCIENCE 45 First Cause. Then, because every idea that a man has, except those of consciousness of his Self, comes to him in the perception of the relations of concrete things, these master forces of the Universe, but especially those that are masterful in the social and political life of per- sonal beings, become to men as voices that declare the ends, or values and purposes, which The Cause has ordained, and which, therefore, are The Creator's rights. Then, when a free-willed person, like a man, in whom the ends of The Creator can be reached only by his vol- untary conformity to the purposes and methods of his Cause, inwrought in Nature, sees the designed ends of creation and of life, as having value in the system of be- ing, and as part of the rights of the Cause of himself and Nature, his consciousness responds with those con- ceptions which we call Duty and Obligation. Then he makes the verbs "I ought," "You ought," and the word ought means to him the authority and rights of The Creator as The First Cause. Books innumerable — books eloquent and forceful, books that are magnificent de- fenses of virtue and right and excellence — have been written to maintain that the first principle in moral science is the immediate consciousness of obligation, and that the conception which forces us to say ought is intuitive, primal, and unexplainable. That it is imme- diate in consciousness is true, but it is not there as an abstract idea. Life and experience are made up of indi- vidual momentary activities and relations, which teach to us the principles that they illustrate, and in each of these facts and relations where the sense of obligation is present, the consciousness is a sense of the rights which inhere in the ownership of The Cause. Moral law, right, duty, are words that would have no meaning, or 46 Kl EMENTS OF TERSON rather could never arise, in an Universe that had no sin- gle, or universal, intelligent Cause or Creator. In a system that has an intelligent Cause they are words au- thoritative and inflexible. The system, however, which our Creator has instituted, is so immense in its provision for human good and happiness, and so affluent in excel- lences, that it adds to our conception of The Creator'scon- trol of his rights another conception of beauties, harmo- nies and beneficence; so that, in our plural consciousness, our conception of moral law is a conception of an infinite righteousness exercising everywhere an authority that aims at universal bliss in harmony. In this Universe, a human Person knows himself as a part of both the means and the ends of The Creator, and then with consciousness of his own freeness, and with a sense of the value or quality of his own being as compared with The Creator's design, he cherishes in himself a conception of duty that explains and glorifies itself, and glorifies its possessor as being very near to The Creator. We must believe that there is no such thing as value, or right, or moral law, except in personal beings, and in their relations to their Cause and to each other. In physical Nature all things are of equal value and Tight- ness; and nothing can be wrong. In the relations of men to each other, and to their common Cause, every- thing is a moral relation, because it has a relation to the ends designed by The Creator for personal beings. These moral relations are of three classes, and include, first, everything that a person does to himself as affecting what The Creator designs him to be or to do; second, what the person does or gives to his Creator in recogni- MORAL SCIENCE 47 tion, worship or service; and, third, what the person does to or for other persons. Moral duty calls first to sanctity of the body. It pre- sents an ideal of normal health and action. It suggests purity and chastity and a loathing of self-degradation. It raises and expands the sense of self-value and per- sonal honor, as a Child of God, till it becomes a dignity, and a passion of self-defense, that abhors ignorance and self-deception, and scorns a lie, and loathes a breach of trust. Then it glows with a sense of the value of great thoughts, noble sentiments, pure loves, and earnest Will, all measured by a divine conception, which has not grown out of mere experience, nor had its origin in the soil or on Earth. Secondly, the Moral Consciousness erects a concep- tion of the nature, character, purposes, beneficence and Tightness of The Cause of the Universe, until ideas of his Will fill the soul as a presence of a holy law. It expands until the soul glows with a sense that obedience to the Author of life is self-exaltation, and that praise, adoration and service belong of right to The Creator from men. Thirdly, the Moral Consciousness, instinctive with a sense of the value of The Creator's purposes for the whole host of his children, asserts its authority in all the broad field of political and social science. It draws together the family, and gives all the significance there is in the names, Parent, Husband, Wife, Son, Daughter, Brother and Sister. Then it broadens its compass, till it engenders and illuminates the conceptions of neigh- borism, of race, of nation, of the solidarity of Society, and finally of that love, justice and ministry which are 48 ELEMENTS OF PERSON comprehended under the name u Enthusiasm of human- ity." We are sorely tempted to linger here for a disquisition on the rights of men; but we must content ourselves with a recognition of the general principles. In its first bearings, the Will and purpose of The Cause of the Universe relate to the individual person. He stands in some relations to his Creator as if no other soul existed on the Earth. The Divine Will has made him, and has endowed him with capacities, and needs, and ends, and duties. So far as these are contained in, or related to, the soul's senti- ments and acts towards his Creator, that is to say his beliefs, his loves, his obedience, his private worship, the Creator has delegated to no other man or society any right of control or interference by force. And the Cre- ator has given him a home on the Earth, and a share in its stores and resources. Somewhere, somehow, as long as his life continues, he has the right of home and of sus- tenance, and a right of ownership in what he produces. But the Creator has made a host of persons, all of them objects of his love and ministry, and subjects of his moral law. Hence the stores and resources of the world must be partitioned and shared. More than this: The Creator has made Society to be more serving than served. The stores and resources of the world are much more in Society than in Nature. The accumulated wis- dom, experience, philosophy, science and inventions of the men of the past, gathered into history, literature, culture, arts and civilization, are the world into which the man is born a citizen, on which he may justly make demands for justice, protection and love, for good laws, education and help; and which gives to him, even at its MORAL SCIENCE 49 worst, almost all that he has, and more than he can repay. If he makes discoveries or inventions, or new ideas, or wealth, he has done it with what the past men have supplied to him. They have pushed him forward a thousand steps before he made the final one. Hence his right of ownership of even his own productions has some limits, and he owes more than he ever pays. Duties and rights are joined together. Ideal Society is incarnate reciprocity. This fact is the inspiration of patriotism. It gives meaning to words like country, nation j fatherland, that have analogies with the meaning of home, and even with the fatherhood of God. The words justice and love would have no meaning if there had been no divine constitution of Society. And these two words are woven together as one. Blessed is the world only because the Creator has not left its system to evolve itself merely through the passions of men, nor under the guidance of intellect alone; but has made moral forces and ideas persuasive and dominant, and has established as moral agencies the consciousness of his purposes and values and Will, with the sympathies and forces of love like his own. To the moral consciousness, there has, in English, perhaps unfortunately, been given the special name con- science, which is the French name for both . Conscience. consciousness and conscience, and is derived from the Latin conscientia, which also has the double meaning. The special word conscience has caused most harmful misconceptions. It has been considered some- thing different from consciousness. It has been regarded as a tribunal to which the soul is responsible. It has dis- placed The Creator from his judgment throne. Men declare themselves justified if they think themselves so. 50 ELEMENTS OF PERSON They go further, and say, that they are justified if they are conscientious, and sincere in this, even if their sin- cerity has only been a cherishing of some notion or passion which they have fostered in themselves by gross- ness, prejudice, follies and lies. Conscientiousness is not conscience, but disposition towards One's conscience. It may displace the perception of The Creator's Will and ends, and may erect Selfwill into a standard of Tightness; and it may become imperious and masterful, just in the proportion that it is narrow, ignorant, passionate and perverted. Conscience cannot be understood, nor set in its right position in Moral Science, unless its relation to the sen- timents and emotions of personal beings is fully issenti- recognized. The ends and Will of The Crea- mentai and t or cannot be conceived, nor even believed to emotional. . .... exist, except as dear to his sentiments, emo- tions, loves, or whatever other name we may give to the idea of having interest in the lives of personal beings. The values, goodness and Tightness of the aims of The Creator in human society can only be understood or conceived by, or through, sympathy, or fellow feeling, with the living experience and happiness and misery that teem in the loves, emotions and sympathies of the people. Pure intellect cannot compass it, nor even touch it. Pure intellect may perceive many of the rela- tions of things, or of beings, or of truths; but it makes no estimates of worth. It tells facts, but not values. The sentimental, or vital, moral consciousness can under- stand that there are in men capacities nobler than the instinctive, sordid and sensual appetites, and can under- stand that The Creator has aimed at the happiness of personal beings through their chastity, service, justice, MORAL SCIENCE 5 I loves and unsensual tastes. Pure intellectual conscious- ness takes note of facts and of their relations. It per- ceives that they are causes and effects; but it has no con- ception of the meaning of the phrase "For the sake of." Consciousness could not be moral, moral law would have no meaning, and conscience would be unknown, if we had no sentimental experience of the worth, good and Tightness, that are possible in personal lives, and that are the ends aimed at by the Will of The Creator. Conscience, or moral consciousness, is then, first, a perception of the relation of the lives of personal beings to ends designed by The Creator's Will; second, a per- ception of the value of these ends, and also a perception of valuable ends that are unappreciable by pure intellect; third, a consciousness that we ought to stand in personal harmony with these ends and aims; fourth, a conscious- ness of our actual disposition and performance towards The Creator and his aims; fifth, a judgment as to the moral quality of dispositions and performances. This is not saying that Tightness is utility, or is to be gauged by utility. Nothing is, in fact, useful that has not been aimed at, to that end, by The Cause of the Universe; and righteousness, or virtue, is sympathy with the Will of The Creator, and is action for the sake of The Creator. It follows, from what we have observed, that moral consciousness, or conscience, is susceptible of culture and perversion. Like all plural conscious- ness it depends for its intelligence and cor- c ™^bte rectness on the nature and number of the facts that it notices, and on the wisdom with which they are correlated. As consciousness, its ultimate and fun- damental facts are immediate or direct perceptions, and 52 ELEMENTS OF PERSON its conception 6t causation, and of the rights involved in it, are included in its primal intelligence; but the appli- cation of these conceptions, as principles, in the relations of living beings, depends on the intelligent observation of those relations. That the sentimental moral nature can be cultivated is the grandest fact in human life, and is one of the most precious evidences of the beneficence of The Cre- ator. Alas, for the matured person whose tastes and sentiments are not purer, richer, and stronger than an infant's! §4. SOUL, MIND, AND SPIRIT In our observation of the nature of a human person, we have recognized in him force, intelligence, and senti- ment. Each of these is an activity, but they Human per- . . son is com- are so diverse in their methods, instruments, plexor results and productions, that, if consciousness did not know them as one unity of person, Reason could not conceive them as one life. We are compelled to make and use distinct names for these three parts of our personality, when we speak of them as living or acting. Names are arbitrary inventions for our service; but the ideas of which they are symbols may give to them enormous importance in philosophy. The great never-to-be-forgotten question in this con- nection is, What are the vital differences of nature in the three elements of personal being? For on the answer to this question depends the transcendent question, How, and how much, are we higher than the brutes? Force, the first form of manifestation of life, is known only in connection with a material body and physical organs; but neither Consciousness, Reason nor Logic SOUL AND MIND 53 has been able to demonstrate that it is a product of mat- ter. The forceful kind of being has quantity, quality, modality and relation: and may have them in ,: . T . ■ Soul - great diversity. It may have consciousness, selfness and faculties. It may perceive facts, and actions, and their effects. It may even correlate some relations of things, and perceive some causation, and many adapta- tions. But it cannot make abstract ideas, nor principles of principles. To this kind of vital being we may give the name Soul, and there is no serious objection to giv- ing, (as the Greeks did with psyche}, the same name to the essence of all living beings. The giving of a com- mon name does not imply that all souls have the same nature, endowments and destiny. It only implies that the highest faculties of the inferior creatures, and the lowest faculties of human persons, have some analogies. It merely designates a limit, behind which Reason, and even Consciousness, cannot explore. It is that part of the living being which is forceful, instinctive and auto- matic. In using this name we must leave out of view any original meaning of the word soul, and its equiva- lents, psyche, anima, time, alma, seele, etc. For that part of a living being, or that vital energy which supplements soul by, if we may so speak, handling ideas, abstracting and generaliz- , . - , . r Mind. ing conceptions, correlating the relations of things, formulating truths and principles, and making symbols and names for ideas, the word mind is a good enough name. The great fact is that this is not an im- provement of soul life, but is apparently a distinct, and radically different, addition to it. It is something which is connected with soul life, but imparts to it a kind of life which, in its powers and its sympathies, comes near 54 ELEMENTS OF PERSON to that being which is causative, immaterial, and eternal. When we come to the contemplation of the third part, or kind of human life, we hesitate for a name. A satisfactory name, descriptive of either its es- sence, form, powers, or quality, seems not possible. Hence, naturally, all the names that have been given to it have been words that meant breath; be- cause air is the least gross of substances, and breathing is the subtlest of physical acts. Men have never been able, and no one except Plato has ever tried, to conceive the personality of the human being as immaterial, pure power and character in pure form. We know ourselves and others only as bodies, or in bodies; and the life be- low consciousness eludes our sight and touch. Hence the Hebrews, and even Philo, the most philosophical of Jews, thought that spirit was substance. Even now the most haughty kinds of philosophy (if we except Agnosticism, which is really a negation of philosophy) occupy them- selves chiefly with discussions of substance, and con- found substance and being. The name spirit (and Hebrew ruach, Greek pneuma^ Latin spiritus, anima and animus) is very faulty, but we have no better word available. For ages it has stood as a symbol of the highest truth in the consciousness of men, alike in their science and their philosophy; for it has signified their conviction that men's bodies are but vehi- cles of the true Man; that personality is immortal, and that character or moral nature inheres only in that part of Man which has disposition and sentiment. We need a word for a name of that part of a human person which is moral. That part is neither the body nor the intellect; for acts of bodies take their character from the will and sentiments of the person, and intellect spirit 55 is concerned only with ideas, and at its best it is only intelligent of facts as known in things. There is a part of men which has a sense of divine ends, and has sympathies, loves, character, disposition and will, and through these knows the value, Tightness, beauty and holiness of the divine ends. Therein also are courage and its inspirations, and therein are the hates and awful passions. Therein is everything that makes the right and wrong between men and men, and between a man and his Creator. For this part of a man, the word spirit may well enough serve as a name, for want of a better. And if, using this name, we wrestle with the prob- lem of the difference between Man and the ani- mals and meaner creatures, and ask how much of man is spirit, and how much of mind and soul joins with it to make one person, and where the man ceases to be animal, perhaps we cannot do better than to say, that human consciousness begins at the top. No- bility and glory, or passion and perversion, invest the triple person made of spirit, mind and soul, and the greater question is, not where man leaves the brutes, but where human being laps upon the animal, and how much of common soul inheres in the nobler being. And if there is an ascending scale of words and ideas, and it ends at the side of God, why should the subtler and nobler consciousness be less believed than the gross senses of the cold and coarse or seething flesh? In the consciousness of spirit-being there is a line of conviction, which may not have „ 1 s ip ' J Human the authority of a demonstration, but is a spirits, strong persuasion, strongest in the best and o{ Q j 6n wisest souls. This is the conviction that the souls of human persons are in a true sense children 56 ELEMENTS OF PERSON of their Creator. When a human spirit interprets to itself the depths of meaning that there are in loves, and in values of life, and in ends of being, and in purposes, and in duty, and right and wrong, it does Moral , more, and declares that moral principles, argument r r ' forimmor- relations, and laws have their essence in a t^aiuyof connection of personality. It is an ontolog- ical, and not a statutory relation. There can be no moral principles between beings that are not of one origin and kind, bound together more by vital kin- ship than by commands. There is no moral relation where there is no solidarity in life. And this principle prevails all along the moral line. It reaches upward, as well as downward. It seeks the center, as well as the surface, of the globe of the universal system. There is no moral responsibility where there is no capacity, and there is moral capacity only in and by kinship. Morality is possible only in mutuality and reciprocity. A being is only under the laws of the spiritual system when he is by nature a member of that system. Then moral law does not exist for any beings who are not in some real sense The Creator's children. And if a man is part of the ends for which creation exists, and if there is a spirit part of his person, existing for the sake of divine quality, then the man belongs to the system of spiritual being and eternal relations. And as the moral principles reach backward to their source, so they reach forward to their end or purpose. Moral relativity cannot be conceivably compressed into the limits of an earthly life. Conscience demands for it a futurity, and philosophy conducts to a conviction that moral law is an effect and evidence of a life that has no cessation. Conscience has no condemna- tions for a being who is not a free personality in the vital CATEGORIES 57 system of moral relations, and returnable as a spirit to its laws of mutuality and reciprocity, and its loves. This moral argument for immortality is the verdict of true psychology, and the climax of the philosophy which we may call conductive. It is the cry of conscience against that pantheism, and that monism, which pretend that, if there is spirit, there is but one universal sub- stance. Universal, intelligent, impersonal spirit is either gross matter or universal emptiness. It is an unmean- ing phrase. The pantheism that means universal iden- tity, or impersonal unity, can have no relativities, no sys- tematization, no moralities. Only such pantheism as there may be in a system of the relations of individual free personal spirits can be moral, or philosophically conceivable, or have the applause of conscience. This is replete with life and glory, and with assurance of endless personal vitality. There is an ascending scale of words and of ideas, and it ends at the side of God.* Loves, right, will, spirit, Child of God — these are as steps of the staircase rising to the better world. " Glory to God in the highest places, and on Earth peace! Good will towards men! " is only heard and understood by human spirits because it is the language of the family, and because the human spirit can respond, " Hallowed be Thy name, Our Father." § 5. DESCRIPTION OF MAN IN CATEGORIES If, in the preceding discussions, we have been true to facts, we ought now to be able, scientifically, logically and philosophically, to describe in outline, by exact ♦In this discussion we have, as far as possible, omitted discussion of the personality of The Creator, and of moral responsibility, guilt, punishment, and their related topics. The consideration of these comes in its logical place in later chapters. 58 ELEMENTS OF PERSON categories (i. e., predicables), our knowledge of men's person as it begins in consciousness and evolves into all the glory of moral life. A schedule of categories may reasonably be demanded of us by those readers to whom the discussions shall seem faulty. "The Personal Equa- tion " must be formulated, in order that it may be defended, and that Psychology may become a science. A few further explanations of principles and methods must precede the schedule. i. The words quantity, quality, modality and relation must be recognized as naturally serviceable names for the kinds of conceptions in which we may be known to ourselves or to others. 2. In a person's self-consciousness his knowledge of himself will not be a comparative measure, but will be his fundamental being. His quantity will be his unity, and will be the same as identity, independence, totality, selfness, or whatever else we may call his personal one- ness, when we observe it from different points of view. But while self-consciousness is knowledge of individu- ality, it is not an abstract notion of oneness; for personal identity is complex, organic and vital. 3. A schedule conforming to self-consciousness must put relativity after modality. 4. In a complete table of the categories of personal being, there must be three schedules, the first contain- ing the predicables of psychical, or vital, being, the sec- ond containing the predicables of the faculties that are concerned with the relations which are correlated in knowledge by the intellect, and the third description of the relations of a Person with his Creator. Inasmuch as intellect is a certain quality of the per- sonality, and in its activities it deals with, and exhibits, CATEGORIES 59 an advanced range of conceptions, by correlating the simple perceptions known in the psychical life, it follows that intellectual quantity includes vital quality, intel- lectual quality includes vital modality, and intellectual modality includes vital relativity. And, inasmuch as what we may call Moral Life is a certain modality and relation of the intellectual life, and exhibits an advanced range of correlated conceptions based on those of the intellectual life, it follows that in the third schedule there must be observed a similar precession, so that moral quantity, quality and modality include, respec- tively, intellectual quality, modality and relation. 5. The verbs which help to describe personal being must not be the verb to be only but the verbs have, exercise, and correlate. 6. We can profitably use some suggestions of Kant, in his discussion of what he calls " The Principles of The Pure Understanding." These he classi- r . Kant's neS aS: Principles of I. Axioms Of Intuition. the Pure II. Anticipations of Perception. Understand- Ill. Analogies of Experience. IV. Postulates of Empirical Thought in general. These are the four classes of the conceptions that are in consciousness; that is to say, they are the forms of the intelligence of a self-conscious and rational person; and while they could have no place in a philosophy of pure reason, they take a great importance in a conductive philosophy based on self-consciousness; for they are, in fact, quantity, quality, modality and relatiofi as known in consciousness. The second and third items may better, perhaps, be named Adaptations to Relations, and Adapta- tions to Experience. 6o ELEMENTS OF PERSON CATEGORIES OF a human person (as in consciousness). OF STRUCTURAL HEING. Of Quantity* Tin y ake "Axioms of In- tuition." Their Verb is, "I Am." Inherent, Introherent, Self, JSubsistent, Existent, Real, Identical (One, To- tal), Free, Complex, Fi- nite, V\'hole, Vital, Pro- pulsive, Organic, Con- scious, Sensitive. Of Quality. They are Adaptations to Re- lations. Their Verb is, "I Have." Consciousness, Senses, Selfhood, Power, Energy, Selfness, Nature, Disposi- tion, Affinities, Coherence, Continuity, Reach, Needs, Receptivity, Aggressiveness, ness, Form, Constitution, Conservatism. u -~ The categories of Vital J3 =j Quantity. The categories § o of Vital Quality (the lat- c = ter converted into their g *± nouns or adjectives). The categories of Vital Modality. Experience (Hab- its, Education, Bias, Preju- dices). ./Esthetic association of ideas. o ^ _• O 3 The categories of Vital and Intellectual Quantity and Quality (as adjec- tives). Consciousness of value (i. e., ends). Associated ideas of personal relation. Will, Loves. The categories of Intel- lectual Modality. Conscience of comparison with normal personality and the Will of The Creator. Sense of self-value, or ex- cellence. Impulses to optim- ism in Self (Tightness, chas- tity, purity, worth, honor, nobility, integrity, conti- nence, and self-employment). CATEGORIES 61 categories of a human person (as in consciousness). OF ACTIVE BEING. Of Modality They are Adaptations to Ex- perience. Their Verb is, "I Exercise." Attention (Alertness, Con- centration). Self-expression. Address, Direction. Asso- ciation of ideas, Memory. Instinct, Hope, Fear. In- tention, Force, Causation. Sensation. Of Relativity. They afe "Postulates of Em- pirical Thought." Their Verb is, "I Perceive in Correlation." Impact, Contact, Affinity Pleasure, Pain, Danger. Se- quence, Time, Space, Motion, Extension, Divisibility, Plu- rality, Shape. Assistance, Resistance, Combination, Ef- fect, Possession, Sense-per- ception, Tone, Color. Categories of Vital Rela- tivity. Invention (Symbol- ization, Language), Qualita- tion ( Abstraction ^Contempla- tion, Reflection, ^Esthetic Taste. Causation and Effect, Own- ership, Personality, Enumer- ation, Mathematics, Value, Generalization, Logic, Judg- ment, Science, Philosophy, Reason, Harmony, Beauty, Music. Art. Categories of Intellectual Relativity. Conscience as to duties to the Creator, in re- spect of Tightness, or excel- lence in Sentiments (love, reverence, gratitude); Obedi- ence (lovalty, service, humil- ity); Faith "(in his Will and Word) ; Worship (recognition, adoration, prayer, praise, thanks, penitence). Conscience as to duties to Society because of relation to the Creator, in respect of value (or Tightness) in Truth- fulness, Fidelity, Justice, Love, Family sentiments and acts, Friendship. Altruism, Solidarity, Socialism, Philan- thropy, Kindness, Liberality, Patriotism, Neighborism, Statesmanship, Government, Punishment, War, Protection and Service, Education, Be- neficence, Influence for vir- tue, " Enthusiasm of human- ity," Influence for God and religion. CHAPTER V THE DIVINE PERSON § I. A PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL ARGUMENT In the preceding survey of the personal nature, powers, and destiny of our Self, we have, at several points, seen that our philosophy includes, and depends on, the exist- ence and actions of a personal First Cause of all things. This, however, is only like opening the door of a palace, when immediately visions of splendor, and evidences of wealth and power, invite us to enter the halls, and reach the presence of the King himself. We must attain assurance of the existence and activity of a Sovereign personal Creator, or all our convictions and our hopes are involved in obscurity. Nevertheless, an examination of the religions, theolo- gies and philosophies of the World reveals the fact that almost nowhere, at any time, has the existence of an absolutely first cause of all things been affirmed. All men have Gods; but very few men have thought that their Gods were either Creators of men, or makers and defenders of moral law. Everywhere, except to a limited extent among Hebrews and Christians, the eternal uncreated existence of matter has been assumed. The mystery of the cause of firstness has so dazed theologians and philosophers that they have hardly tried to define or find the First Cause, and have halted 62 DIVINE PERSON 63 far short of it. Hence, with beliefs in some kind of God universal, unity of theologies and philosophies has not been even approached; and we may come to the study of the existence and nature of the Creator almost as if it were a new subject. The argument for the existence of God, from the evidences of intelligent and beneficent design in Nature, is so familiar to us, who are accustomed to the -., 1 he argn- Hebrew Scriptures, that we do not notice how ment from little part it has in the World's beliefs, nor deslgn< how dexterously it is evaded by those who may wish to do so. No person has more fully or more eloquently than Immanuel Kant stated how the evidences of intel- ligent and benevolent aims in Nature bear us irresistibly to the acknowledgment of a Creator, and yet Kant denies that Reason reaches or justifies that conclusion. In fact, unless the argument from the evidence of intel- ligent and moral ends in Nature can be maintained by philosophical facts and principles more radically funda- mental and ontological than those usually advanced, it may be weakened by many lines of attack. But these attacks cannot harmonize together, and no two of them can be right at the same time. There are too many of them, and they are mutually destructive. Fortunately for the truth, the radical philosophical facts are attain- able; and the attacks, being inspired more by destructive purposes than by a self-sustaining and constructive phi- losophy, shatter their forces on these facts which are intrenched in consciousness and conscience. Attacks have been made on the argument from design by assaulting the word design with shrewd logical tricks. And if we use the word design carelessly, so that we assume in it the personal agency that needs to be proven, 64 DIVINE PERSON we lay our argument open to the keen weapons and subtle onslaughts of the Humes and Voltaires, and all the Skep- tics and Deists. But in some of the preceding pages, when we were analyzing and defining human ideas, with no object except to accurately describe human intelli- gence, we recognized that intelligent action and design are synonymous terms. If we perceive intelligence in the universe, there is no intermediary between intelligence and design. But we have perceived this intelligence. We have perceived it directly and immediately, in our consciousness and our conscience, as one of the first principles of intelligent philosophy. And it is universal wherever there is intelligent activity; and its cogency, as evidence of design, cannot be lessened by tricks of phrases, such as the assertion that creation is something unique for which we have no analogies in experience. We have also recognized in preceding pages that all things are forces in action, and that all knowledge is per- Ar ument ception or conception of actions, and that the from perception of an action is one and the same causation. thing as the perception of causation. This principle, or rather this fact, is an essential and universal one in all perceptions, and in all things. There is no intermediary argument, or inference, between perception of things and perception of causation. Per- Cause of . . . , , complexity ception or the World is perception that it had andcorreia- a cause. Perception of the World is really a multitude of perceptions of a multitude of atoms, things, organs, actions, relations, influences and correlations; and, in each of them, causation and design (intelligent action) are obvious. Skeptical philosophy pleads that we cannot argue about this as we do about other causation and design. But, in fact, causation and design DIVINE PERSON 65 are more directly perceptible in the correlation of forces and in harmonized complexity, than in anything else. It is possible to doubt, in a certain way, the causation of a single atom of matter; but doubt of causation and design in the harmonies, complexity, and correlations of the elements of the World, is irrational and impossible. But a willing, not to say a determined, skepticism has inge- niously devised many objections to a recognition of a Creator. Kant, who has made an eloquent statement of the evidences of design in Nature, and the cosmological argument for practical faith in a Creator, says after all, that this is only evidence of an Arranger of Nature rather than of an Author. Others have adduced as hin- drances to faith in a Creator, metaphysical theories like Idealism, psychological theories like Monism, material- istic theories like Evolution, and a deification of the word Law. Against all of these we may adduce the principles which inhere in our primal conceptions of being, and come to us in our plural consciousness, being the common sense of our daily experiences, classified and formulated by science and correlated by philosophy. A leader in these facts and principles is the axiom that all relations are mutual and reciprocal actions. There can be no one-sided relativity knowable or effec- -r-r 1 i 1.1 Relations tive. Hence, there can be no relations between are mutU al things, or between things and persons, unless an dredp- provisions for the mutuality of the relations have been made by The First Cause, in the constituted relativities of things. If there could be several, or many, self-existent Gods, they would be to each other as nothing and unknown; and any universes created by different Gods would be to the other Gods, and to each other, entirely devoid of relations and unknowable; and 66 DIVINE PERSON even ideas could not be alike in any two universes that had not the same First Cause. On the other hand, the Creator of a universe could not divest himself of relation to it except by annihilating it; but he could change his works, or his ways, or his plans. Hence no Deity except the Creator of the universe could be its organizer or arranger, or stand in any relation to it, or even know of its existence. Of course, it follows that, even if self- existence is something uniform, we can never know any God but the one who made the universe; and we can know him only in the mutual relations which he has constituted. If we would pursue to the end the search for firstness in Nature, we must take up, scientifically and philosoph- ically, the study of atoms of matter; for sci- The ause ence knows no forces or activities of Nature of atoms is the Creator that are not atomic. Atoms -are not nuclei World or vemc ^ es floating in or carrying portions of some general world-force. An atom is known to us only as a set of motions co-ordinated together. Each motion is invariable in its quantity; and the char- acter of the atom is constituted by the nature and num- ber of the motions in the set; and it is effective, and per- haps measurable, according to the number, direction, speed, and length of its waves and revolutions, and the number and force of its collisions. If to our external observations we add our personal consciousness of the nature of force, action, and causation, we conceive an atom of matter to be a set of movements started by a volition of a Creator, and limited, invariable, sphered, commissioned, and localized by co-ordination in a nar- row range of action, adjusted to a larger external range of relations. As uncaused co-ordinations and harmonies DIVINE PERSON 67 are impossible, the further back science, philosophy, and logic press their search towards the ultimate atoms of matter, the nearer they come to the recognition of one Cause of the universe and its atoms, and all its activities are relativities. But, however evident the existence of an intelligent First Cause may be to many, or even if to most persons, it is not strange that it should be denied by , . , r , , . , „ Materialism. multitudes of learned, intelligent, and well- disposed people. Therefore, while we may pass without discussion the coarse and brutal forms of ignorance, apathy, sensualism, and passion, which only make the pretense of belief in materialism an excuse for grossness, we must here give a respectful and rational consideration to three forms of materialistic philosophy which are somewhat prevalent among intelligent and learned men. These forms are deification of law, evolutionism, and materialistic pantheism, all of which gain a specious appearance of a scientific basis, but are in fact more theoretical and dogmatic than the most speculative phi- losophies, stop far short of first principles, suppress con- sciousness, and override Reason and philosophy. Pro- fessing to be rational, they demand of us unbounded credulity; for they require us to believe that matter is intelligence, or else Nature is governed by a Necessity that has no cause, and for the existence and power of which no explanation is conceivable. To some persons the evidence of the continuous operation of wisdom in the forces of Nature is convinc- ing. They rightly believe that the atomic forces of matter are in the matter; but they of " a ^ atlon try to rise to a higher level by affirming that there is a vague power controlling matter. They do not 6S DIVINE PERSON define it, because definitions are troublesome things to defend. They call it Law, but they do not mean any- thing that in any other connection is called law. They do not make it an idea. It is an unfinished phrase. Law is not a force; nor does a conception of any law of Nature explain the source of a force, but only its behavior and regularity. If any vast number of atoms were to- gether, but separated absolutely from all others, they would act on each other according as the conditions favored or hindered their mutual approaches. But event- ually they would assume the character of a system, would exhibit everywhere the pursuit and attainment of intelli- gent aims, and would present that aspect which we call the effect of laws; the interworkings, harmonies and results of the highest and most complicated exhibitions, being traceable to the atomic forces intelligently cor- related at the creation. In our universe-system, these workings are of such vast numbers, and the harmonies and victories display such immeasurable intelligence, and the results are so beneficial to human beings, that the higher and subtler laws and workings become more conspicuous than the less and gross ones. But whether the system be large or small, since the intelligent co-ordination of magnificent results was initiated in the creation of the atoms, we are compelled by Reason and personal con- sciousness to believe that force and intelligent aims are effects of a personal Being's Will. Of all the forms of materialistic theology, none comes to men more seductively than that one which is called Evolutionism. It appeals to that pride and Evolution. , . lf . . . that natural and proper self-gratulation or scientific observers, which accompany great attainments and surprising discoveries. It is approved, as a prob- DIVINE PERSON 69 able theory of the methods through which life has im- proved, even bv eminent believers in a personal First Cause. As a science, or rather in science, it has a noble sphere. But, so far as it is a theory of causation, it is naked materialism of the crudest kind. It does not offer any theory of a First Cause, nor even any facts that guide in that direction. If evolutionism could, as very prob- ably it may eventually, array ten thousand times as many facts as it has gathered, it would not touch the problem of first causation of matter. As a philosophy it aban- dons all first principles, and teaches that effects are greater than their causes. We do not care to antagonize here those eminent observers whose science has added glory to our age, made our world seem larger and fuller, alike of beauty, uses and intelligence, and has sent thrills of enthusiasm through all circles of intelligent people. But for the petty and superficial scholarship, which takes note only of the forms of things, while it overlooks all the facts of animal chemistry and the dependence of life on organi- zations, and co-ordinations and vital functions, and ignores multitudes of facts where it adduces one, how can we entertain any respect? How can we respect the evolutionism which is chiefly an arithmetical audacity? — which is not appalled by the obvious necessity for infinite time for the infinite multitude of the processes which it affirms — an audacity which is ever able to say, Take more time. Figures are inexhaustible. Reason and true Science bid the student of evolution to look both ways along the line of study. They note that the agencies, processes and results are in 1 r , • r 11.. Involution. the system of things from the beginning. They turn our admiration towards, rather than from, a 70 DIVINE PERSON plan of creation. They set before us the science of Typical Forms, as the most wonderful thing in Nature, and demand our admiration of the divine prescience, which, devising a moderate number of perfect ideals of type, could modify these in infinite variety, and could produce with exact adjustment to their necessary environ- ment and their circumstances, alike the minute and sim- ple forms, and those enormous saurians, batrachians, mammals and birds, whose antecedents are undiscovered, and apparently are undiscoverable. They set up involu- tion as a companion study to evolution. They teach us that seeds and germs produce what has been put into them, and that whatever involution there is goes on in an adjustment to an intelligent co-ordination of the whole system of Nature. Nature is a science of ideals, which are intelligently devised plans carried into effect with perfect skill by unlimited power. There is a materialism that arrogates to itself dignity and an appearance of moral character, by associating an acknowledgment of Deity with its adora- Pantheism. . _ „ . ,, , . tion of matter. It calls itself Pantheism, with emphasis on the first or the second syllable, according as it desires to deny a Creator or to confess a Cause. It is an empty name. It aims to divert attention from the inadequacy of its ideas of The Cause, by dilating on the splendor of effects. It attempts to make zero enormous. When it, in a weak and halting way, confesses a Divinity in the greatness, the relations and interworkings of the universe, but declares still that the intelligent and vital force is that of matter, it retains all the weakness, narrow- ness, and irrationality of materialism. So long as it affirms that Deity is immanent in matter, inherent in and identical with it, it is irrational, and has no adequate DIVINE PERSON 7 1 recognition of the Cause of intelligence, order, beauty and beneficence. When, on the other hand, it affirms that Deity is pervasive of matter, inherent in it, but not identical with it, it has only debased its ideas of The Creator unnecessarily and irrationally. If, in the preceding pages, we have kept on the true lines of science, philosophy and reasoning, we have found, in causation, consciousness and ontol- r ,i .« j i Summary of os:v, assurances of the creation and control .. oJ 7 the reason- of the substance of the universe by a First ingoncausa- Cause that is superior to it, absolute Master, J 10 r n of mat " intelligent, aiming at great ends, and securing those ends, not by himself working in matter, and being its force and vitality, but by constituting its relativities through and in the act of causation of its elements. The reasoning must proceed much further before it dem- onstrates in this Creator the most and the greatest of those attributes to the sum, or the possessor, of which we give the name God, and. bring our adoration. But even so much understanding of him, as we gain in this reasoning, exhibits him as having character, wisdom, purposes and power that can inhere only in a Person, and that Person, One who is sole Sovereign, and glorious and mighty beyond our power to measure in our con- ceptions. § 2. AN INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT By the same consciousness and reasoning which demonstrate that matter and all material things are coor- dinations of activities, and therefore have a First Cause, or Creator, it is also demonstrated that intelligence and intellect have a Creator. A man is of a higher order of being than other earthly creatures, because he can make 72 DIVINE PERSON his Self and his actions the objects of his study. But it is yet true that all his ideas are conceptions of things and of their relations. Even his highest, general and abstract, ideas and principles, are in their essence concep- tions of material things, or of living active beings, or of their relations. Even if it were possible that there could be truth which was not in such connections and rela- tions, whether it were self-existent, or were created by The Creator of the universe, it would be to us as noth- ing. Hence, as a coordination of movements makes matter, and living beings, and the universe, and its rela- tivities, and therefore it has a personal Creator, so the coordination and correlations of matter and mind make intelligence, and these mutual and reciprocal relations must have had an intelligent personal First Cause, or Creator, who made both matter and mind. This reason- ing is, however, denied and attacked in several ways. First, it is said that knowledge is only conceptions, of which no explanation can be given, and of which no defense can be made. This is idealism, not Idealism. . , . , objective and plausible like Plato s, but sub- jective. It can only acquire plausibility by claiming that all ideas are results of immediate consciousness. Such idealism ridicules the logic of common sense, bur- lesques consciousness, and denies causation. It ignores the fact that our consciousness not only exhibits ideas, but affirms judgments, and declares truth and untruth. As primal consciousness affirms that material things are real, so our intellectual consciousness affirms that our generalizations, correlations, and classifications of facts are true or correct. Ignoring these facts of conscious- ness, idealism denies causation, subverts all beliefs, and leaves its victim no stay against skepticism, and no res- DIVINE PERSON 73 cue from despair. It is only a deification of puzzles; but the World will not accept a philosophy that calls a man a corporate vacuum, worships Zero as Creator, installs negations in place of truths, and uses Reason for its own degradation. The World cannot honor a theory that destroys every gcod belief, and builds no structures, and that delights in casting shadows over all human paths, and in embroidering the drapery of an universal coffin. Secondly, our confidence in the existence of a Cause of intelligence is assaulted with an attack aimed at the foundations of all beliefs, and at the existence . , . , . Skepticism. of all assurance; but only as aimed against Agnosticism, faith in a personal God does it exhibit any earnestness, or much motive. In its milder form it is reasoning, but only to certain points of interrogation and suspense. It graciously tolerates our beliefs as amiable weaknesses; but it asks us to honor it because it cannot see its way through the labyrinths of truth. This is not a philosophy, but a surrender. Doubt is noble so long as it fairly weighs reasoning, refuses to be credulous, and has some principles that are touchstones and gauges. But when it is a stagnation of thought, an atrophy of Reason, an indolent habit, a contempt of conservatism, or a disregard of consciousness, it is contemptible. Skepticism that is a vitalized interrogation, an organized feebleness, a chronic perplexity, has no claims to respect. In its stronger and more aggressive forms, with the name Agnosticism, it is neither puerile nor ineffective. Denying the authority of consciousness, it urges its own logic of negations, and denies everything. Of course, its logic lacks premises, and can have no confirmations; but the passion of denial, a zeal of war, like the enchant- ment of love, is its own reason and defense, or at least 74 DIVINE PERSON is all that itself desires. Agnosticism that does not go to the extent of a denial of all intelligence, but only denies that we can know God, presents plausible argu- ments, and must have respectful, logical, and philosoph- ical answers. First, it is said that a man's conceptions must neces- sarily be mannish, imperfect and erroneous in respect to Beings that are superior to himself, and to Anthropo- tn i n pr S that he cannot himself make. This is morpnism. ° plausible, but irrational. We cannot know, and do not need to know, all about God; but neither science, reason nor philosophy tends towards showing that God could not make men so that they can receive true information from him, or so that their leading con- ceptions of him, in consciousness and conscience, are incorrect. We may even say that if any of our concep- tions are untrue because they are mannish, it is the scientific conceptions of the material things that are doubtful; and it is vital principles of causation and moral relations (interpreted to us by our vital conscious- ness) that must be trusted. We may admit that, on the principles of Agnosticism, if there were two Gods the one could not communicate to the other any thought in his mind nor any fact that originated by his own will; and yet a man may know what such a God could not know; the philosophical principle being that knowledge of facts does not wholly depend on greatness of the knower, but does depend, for its very beginning, on pro- visions for intelligence made by the Creator of minds and of things in one system, and adjusted by mutual and reciprocal relations. In other words, the relativity of knowledge, which skeptics take as a basis for their unbelief, does really limit the extent of our knowledge; DIVINE PERSON 75 but it is the one condition that makes knowledge possi- ble, and by it some, and even sufficient, knowledge of The Creator may be attained by men. Secondly, the dogma that a man cannot know God takes the form of an assertion that a finite being cannot know an infinite one — a most seductive Infinite phrase, but an irrational and even an un- Being, meaning one. Sometimes an attempt is n mty ' made to make the phrase philosophical by making it read, " The finite cannot know the infinite." This, how- ever, strips it of whatever appearance of meaning it had in its other form; for there can be no "The infinite," except "The Infinite Being" or infinity, and neither of these is it designed to speak of. The word infinite is either a negative word, or an instrument for tricks. It means incomplete or unfin- ished. In this sense it cannot describe a perfect Being; but it might describe our idea of him; in which case it would not mean that he is unlimited, but that our con- ception is incomplete. In fact, if we say Man cannot know the Infinite Being, we only mean that a man can- not circumscribe his own uncircumscribed idea. Infi- nite is a negative word, and the attempt to make it a pos- itive conception is an effort to turn nothing into some- thing. The attempt to make ififinite a definite word is only the effort of a man to outrun himself. We can always say More, After, and Before. If all space were filled with machines multiplying figures for ages, we could still say more: but it would not mean anything except what the noun might mean which we write after the figures. Infinite is not a proper term to apply to God. An unfinished, incomplete God, who cannot reach the com- y6 DIVINE PERSON pass of his own being, is an absurdity. In ontology there are no infinites. All things, and all Beings, even The Creator himself among them, are just what they are, no more nor less. A Deity can be perfect, supreme, and unlimited by anything except himself, but he is a very definite and positive Being. There can be no infinite attributes of Deity; for perfect ones are not infinite. Infinite wisdom would be unfinished wisdom ; but perfect wisdom knows all that there is to know, and there it ends. Infinite power and possibility are, in ontological philosophy, absurd; for ontology knows nothing but actual being, and that is the one thing that is fixed and definite. In ontology, that is to say in being, there are no possibilities (i. e., uncer- tainties or contingencies) except those of the will and actions of free personal Beings. Infinite possibility is impossible finiteness. Our uncertainty of the Creator's plans and will is not ontological possibility. There is no infinity even of space; for space is only known to us as direction of our attention, limited by reach. But direc- tion has no quantity, and reach is limitation. The conceptions of unity and relativity will contend with each other in our minds so long as we study being with only the verb to be, and the nouns essenee, being and substance, and so long as we think that relativity is unworthy of Deity. There are many acute and learned persons on whose minds the conception of personal unity, and the mysteries of being, exercise such potent control that Momsm. ^^ a ^ rm tnat a ^ fofag [ s ne un it, in such sense that all substance or essence is one. This may be pantheism, if it emphasizes the conception of God; or idealism, if it extols ideas; or it may go to DIVINE PERSON *]*] such an extreme of monism as to declare that mind and its ideas, Deity and matter, cause and effect, are all one. But one what? That, it cannot tell. In obliterating all relations it obliterates all quality, character and name; and its one cannot be being, essence, substance nor per- son, nor anything else than zero. A Monism that has no monad, a Unitism that has no unit, abolishes all con- ceptions, and becomes a mere trickery of words, a turn of a kaleidoscope. It is born dead, and its friends can do little more than invent names for a coffin-plate. When it becomes an enthusiasm for elimination, a frenzy for subtraction, a passion for denials, shrinkage and emptiness, it is a surrender of psychology and a flight of philosophy. With a pretense of service, it dethrones Reason. Under a show of homage, it buries its King. It claims a right to throw all philosophy and intelligence into its bottomless pit. And yet it grasps for rescue the names being and substance; but its being cannot be, and its substance neither stands, nor is under anything. Unitism, however, rarely attempts to be pure and unadul- terated monism. It must use some pantheism, idealism or materialism, if it will be anything more than mere phrases. Even so, if it calls all intelligence a wave of the All-Mind, or all second causes vibrations of the All- Power, or all operations changes of state of the iUl-Sub- stance, its First Cause is impotence, and its All-Being is zero in a vacuum. There is a true infinity and a true unit. The Uni- verse, in its coordination by and with one First Cause, has unity and totality, which are the categories The true of the quantity of a unit that is not a Person, infinity and The unit is the unity of a system. In it all umt ' things, all force, all life, all relations, consist, or stand 78 DIVINE PERSON together. And this is infinite, because there is nothing but itself that can limit its Self. All its relativities are combined in the causal relation of the will of the Creator.* § 3. A MORAL ARGUMENT We have now recognized that the coordinations of forces, and the correlations of intelligence, demonstrate the creation of Nature by an intelligent First Cause. When we advance further, to the study of moral life, with its ends and aims of creation, its values of life, its relations to the happiness of personal Beings, its con- ceptions of lightness and duty, and we find these to have their whole essence and character in conceptions of rela- tion to a First Cause of the universe, the demonstration of the existence and rule of a Creator becomes an irre- sistible conviction. The conviction of this relation is so innate in con- Th olo sciousness that, always and everywhere, theol- precedes ogy has preceded philosophy, and apparently p 1 osop y. tnere wou id nowhere have been a philosophy if there had not first been a Moral Science. There *Plato closely approached this conception of the Universe-System. He declared that the universe (heaven, ouranos) contains all being and all pos- sibilities. And Aristotle said the same of the aion. But neither Plato nor Aristotle completed the conception by seeing the causal relation of The Cre- ator. Both believed matter uncaused and eternal; but Plato said that the only things worthy to be called existent are ideas {eide, appearances) which are forms, caused by God's thought, and this makes one system of all that is truly being. Aristotle more widely failed to reach the conception, because he excluded finite things from God's aidn, and he discussed infinity only as limitation of human knowledge of what is unlimited. He does not use the word infinite in reference to God. He says (Metaphysics, Book X, ch. 10), infinity is not knowable, and an entity subsisting in actuality cannot be infinite, and neither space nor body can be infinite. There is much instruction and suggestion in the Greek Philosophers' words. Their infinite is apeiron (non-experimental) and a'idion (i. e., not individual, idion). A'idion at first meant indefinite, and later unlimited. Ho aion is "the bound outside of which there is nothing according to Nature." To on {the being) and to hen {the one) are impersonal universal being. To apeiron (the untried, or non-experimental) is the unreachable. All of these words are in the neuter gender except aion, and that is only masculine because it belongs to a class of words (ending in accented on, and signifying a container) which are always masculine. DIVINE PERSON 79 would have been no Aristoteliauism if there had been no Platonism. There would have been no occidental modern philosophy without both of these assisted by Hebrew theology. Even the recognition of conscience in philosophy preceded the recognition of the authority of consciousness, and the word consciousness* All the history of modern philosophy, beginning with Socrates, has been a history of moral ideas, beginning in con- science of men's relation to a governing Creator. Nature is a ministry for human Persons. Its whole teaching in physical science is a display of aims at intel- ligent ends. Its whole teaching in social sci- Moral ence is a demonstration that these ends are Design, and the good and happiness of human Persons. re atlons - Its chief teaching in psychological science is, that con- sciousness is a sense of a relation to the will, ends, and rights of a First Cause. Its great lesson in Moral science is, that intelligent and sentimental human life is in rela- tion to the desires and sentiments of that First Cause. The long course of philosophical, scientific, and logical study, proceeds steadily towards the full recognition of a creating and governing Cause, who, through the relations which he has established, displays his nature and charac- ter. But if the way of philosophy and science is long and tardy, that of conscience is early and quick, and lies at the very beginning of the pursuit of the truth that has value for human Beings, and for their Creator. Con- science makes a short path across the fields of philoso- phy to its God. *Although the Greeks used the verb sunoida (I know by myself) to sig- nify positive assurance, the noun suneidesis was scarcely, if at all, used be- fore the Christian era. Philo, of Alexandria, a Platonistic Jew, uses the word suneidesis only twice, but us^s the word suneidos a score of times, and always with the signification conscience, and always in connection with the word clenc/ws, conviction. 80 DIVINE PERSON The formal moral argument for the existence of a personal Creator and Ruler is neither long nor obscure. It begins with the principles of causation. It recognizes values in life, which are inwrought in the plan of crea- tion. It recognizes these as being dependent for their attainment on sympathies, tastes, affections, and all else that we call moral character, in human Beings. It sees all these as relations that, like all relations, must have had a cause; but it also sees in these the elements that we call Tightness and good and justice and holiness, and which can have no explanation or authority except as the Will of The Cause of the universe. The principles of Oni as a ontology affirm that only as a Cause has God creator can a right to govern. No God, however good, God rule. w j se , or mighty, in his sphere, would have either right or power to rule a World that he did not make; and if conceivably we could know such an alien God, we might adore and love him perhaps, but to serve him would be a crime against our Creator. The principles of ontology go on to affirm that a Creator whose Will ordained a World which sought val- . ues for human Beings in their purity, affec- anaiogous tions, sympathies with goodness, and mutual to his work. i oves an( j ministries, must himself be ardent with like holiness, love, and personal character, and be a Person in the best and highest sense of the word. The nature of personality, as known by us in con- sciousness and conscience, is such a conception as per- mits to us no idea of creation, and especially Creation Q f mora i orc [ er anc j i aw> except as the act of a Will. Philosophy, psychology, and logic, all indeed lead us to a recognition of a necessary unity in all being, but it is not a monism justifying an affirmation DIVINE PERSON 8 I that there is but one substance in the universe, and that material and vital activities are only changes of state of the monad substance. In all such language the word substance must be either empty of all meaning, or describe some divine matter or body. It cannot be made to have a meaning by any logic about unity or being; and if God's works, intellectual and sentimental, are performed by a sort of physical performance of his spiritual sub- stance, the fact is unknowable and inconceivable to us, and the idea of it is abhorrent to all our vital and moral consciousness. Moreover, a change of state of a Being that is unity and immaterial is impossible, and if it were possible, no change of state could be a cause of anything. There is a moral monism; but it is the unity of a moral system held together by relation to one Will that is replete with personal sympathies, character, and aims. Only once can the paradox of self-existence be possible, and it cannot be a paradox of anything but glory and honor in itself. Self-existence is the unit which philoso- phy declares, but it is a self-existence of a Cause, a Will, glorious and infinite in its creative work. Consciousness and conscience are the windows through which souls look on the ways in which one perfect Person has exercised magnificent purposes for loving ends. And when they have looked, the language of souls speaks infinite vol- umes of happiness, and intelligence, and love, and hope, in one thought and name, "Our Father." Even Kant says, " Teleological unity is so important a condition of the application of my Reason to Nature, that it is impossible for me to ignore it. But the sole condition, so far as my knowledge extends, under which this unity can be my guide, is the assumption that a supreme Intelligence has ordered all things according to 82 DIVINE PERSON the wisest ends. * * * The conception of this Cause must contain certain determinate qualities; and it must, therefore, be regarded as the conception of a Being possessing all power, wisdom, etc., in one bond." Again he says, "In the sphere of moral belief I must act in obe- dience to the moral law, * * * I am irresistibly constrained to believe in the existence of God, and in a future life. * * * My belief in God is so inter- woven with my moral nature that I am under as little apprehension of having the former torn from me as of losing the latter." When we have declared that our Creator is a person, have we said all that we know of him, or do the princi- ples of ontology, and the analogies of ex- Pluralityin r . , , . , . , , the Divine istence in personal relations, furnish the means Unity. f or vet m0 re conception and description? We know him in activities and power as a Cause, and in wisdom as a Mind, and in aims and loves as such as that which in ourselves we call Spirit. But shall we say that he is each of these, or that he has them? Hu- man language is unable to define the distinction, either in ourselves or in God. We must say both is and has, according to our viewing-point and the relations of our phrases; but the three natures must be one Person as they are in men. And yet, is it not possible that, in the pro- fundities of the nature of the self-existent Person, who correlates in his Self his power, mind and spirit, there may be distinctions, with powers of intercourse and rela- tion, making a glorious plurality of personality? If, with our poor logic, we declare God to be self-sufficient, yet our personal consciousness of the nature and nat- uralness of love joins with our conviction that his long- ings of love have made him a Creator, to make it DIVINE PERSON 83 rational for us to believe that love in God is something that has demanded, and has had eternally, the satisfac- tion of personal plural intercourse of spirit with spirit in himself. Philosophy and ontology demand oneness in The Creator in respect to self-existence, and demand that The Cause of everything that is not the Person of God shall be the One God, and demand absolute har- mony of cooperation between any and all Persons of Deity. But philosophy and ontology have not learned to describe personality, except by its doings. The doer is not seen, weighed, measured nor grasped. Human life below consciousness is inscrutable; and is only knowable as power, intelligence and spirituality, in one- ness of personal being. Still less is the person of God describable, either positively or negatively. But so long as we maintain his self-existent unity, and his unity as Cause of all that is not his Person, we may believe that the perfection and bliss of God rather require than dis- credit plurality in himself. Upon what else could the in- telligence and the moral nature of Deity be exercised before his creation of inferior persons, if there were not in his Self capacities of intercourse and relation? All our conceptions of God sink into utter blankness if we try to think of his wisdom as having nothing to know except his own oneness, or if we try to think of his moral nature as having none of the relativities that are the essence of morality and its loves. Self-sufficiency of a Person without relations, is to us a phrase without sig- nificance, or else it is shocking to our moral sense. In two ways, however, we may name The Creator with names which, if not perfectly explicable, are yet replete with precious meaning to us. We may not unreservedly say that he is power or wisdom; but, on the principle 84 DIVINE PERSON that the greater contains the less, we may say that he is spirit, or a spirit. We look on power as the servant of God our mind, and we see no worthy field for the ex- Father and ercise of mind except for moral relations of a spmt. persons; and we see these only in the exer- cises of the loves of personal beings pursuing what to them and to their Cause are the values of life; and we recognize these as inhering in that personal nature which we call spirit. On the principle that a Cause must be greater than its effects, we must believe our Creator to be immeasurably better than our conceptions; but on the principle that a Cause must construct his designs accord- ing to his own nature, we must believe that our Creator is a spirit, in some analogy to our own spiritual being, and that he acts, as is the nature of spirits, by personal Will, like a King upon his throne. So in the truest and best meaning, in the deepest vital meaning, in the sweetest and most soul-filling meaning, Man can say of and to his Creator, " Our Father." CHAPTER VI THE RELATIONS OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSONS In the preceding pages we have recognized relations between men and their Creator which are of transcendent importance; but we have not stated all the principles involved, nor all of the logical deductions from them. Some of these other principles we must notice here, in order that we may see the momentous interests that depend on our attitude towards God, and on his atti- tude towards us. i. The Creator of a system of physical things and vital beings cannot cease to have relation to that system, except by annihilating it; but he can annihi- The Creator late it, if he has not made it on moral princi- and the 11 . r i • rr x universe pies that require eternity for their effect. It a i way s would perhaps be impossible for us to con- connected. ceive philosophically an annihilation of matter, if we really knew it as substance. But we only know it as motions; and if counter motions should be set against these, the forces or motions on both sides might be reduced to absolute zero. As we know them, all effects are perpetual, whether they be effects of will or of motions of a substance. Hence, as we know substance, we can see how it can be balanced in its forces, and be bound by another force; but this leaves it still existent. How far its existence may be dependent on the continued will of 85 86 RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN the Cause, we, perhaps, can never know; nor have we much interest in knowing. What we are interested in knowing is, that effects are persistent, and that they have their free identity, but are constantly related to their Creator in a relation analogous to ownership. He can- not discard .them, and they cannot escape from him, un- less he annihilates them. But, for aught that we know, he may create new elements, and institute new operations, and so greatly change the course of Nature. And, inas- much as moral facts and moral law are wholly made of relations between The Creator and his creatures, and these moral relations are, in this World, bound up in the material constitution of things, The Creator is always in the relation of a Moral Governor to human beings, and to the World that is their home. 2. In The Personal First Cause of such an universe, whose creative act is by will, and who remains in per- Providence si stent governmental relation to his creation, Prayer. there are possibilities of additions and modi- Supernature. fi cat j ons to ^is wor k. An universe-system which includes free-willed persons, and is made for adaptation to that freedom, has, for its natural comple- ment, free personal action by The Creator, to meet such otherwise uncontrollable action of the created persons. It is impossible for our moral sense to justify God for creating, if there is no supplemental power of ministry, providence, instruction and help from The Creator. Without a belief of this, all moral ideas are vitiated, and all evidence of harmony in the universe is invali- dated. With our belief of a personal Creator and moral Ruler, a divine providence and supernatural help are reasonable expectations. Such a conception, while it RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN 8? glorifies God, invites and even commands the spirits of men to come to the Spirit of God, in communion of love and faith, to ask in prayer what their souls desire and need, and to receive answers and beneficence by his per- sonal performance. 3. While the relations of The Creator to men are analogous to those of ownership, he has voluntarily modified them, by giving to men moral en- Moralrela _ dowments, and adapting them to moral order tionsof Cre- and rule. Neither moral ill nor moral good a t°d Arsons can come to us without the exercise of the free-will of persons; for moral good and ill are exercises of freedom of personal life. Moral relations, like all other relations, are reciprocal and mutual. The atti- tude of God is that of a Cause, Owner, Ruler and father, the attitude of a spirit towards spirits. The relation of men to God is that of duty and responsibility or obligation; for with such names moral consciousness decribes its sense of the normal subjection of a free- will-ed person to his Cause and Holy Ruler and loving Father. An abnormal attitude, disposition or will towards The Creator is sin. Violations of God's desires, or of his Will, as shown in Nature, Reason, Conscience, or otherwise, whether the violation be in our dealing with our Self, or with him, or with our fellows, are sins so far as they are performances of our spirits, or result from failure of our spirits to perform their duties. Acts that are only muscular, and thoughts that are only percep- tions, memories, or imaginations, cannot be said to be moral except as they are results of neglects or of wicked- ness. But acts of Will, or those that arise from tastes or habits, and those that are held by our atten tion, and SS RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN cherished in our tastes, have a relation to God's Will and have moral character.* Many sweet and saintly spirits torment themselves with a fear that fugitive thoughts, and bodily suggestions to which they do not yield, are sins. Other persons per- suade themselves that they are innocent while performing acts criminal, violent, or beastly. The moral principle by which all cases may be judged, seems to be this, viz.: Sin is wrong relation to God's Will respecting One's personal being, or his attitude towards God, or One's relations and acts to One's fellow-men. Hence, acts, thoughts and desires that in themselves have no wrong, become wrong in such relations of men as cross God's Will. And acts that are against God's Will under their circumstances, are not moral wrong, if they do not result from a wrong spirit towards God, or from previous neg- lect or self-corruption. There is sin when the personal Spirit loves and desires to do; or does recklessly, any- thing which does, or might do violence to the Will of God in the universe, however innocent the same things might be in other relations. Character is one of our imperfect names for the Being of a spirit. It is his Self, as having quality and disposi- tion. A man in cultivating his loves, chang- M° ral j n g n i s disposition, informing himself of moral order and good and evil, and in train- ing his spirit, is making himself lovable or unlovable to God. Sin is a wrong disposition of spirit; but inas- much as all of our acts have a relation to God's Will for ourselves or our fellow-men, they all somewhere are con- *Discussion of the importance of free-will seems to have begun with Philo Judaeus, who says: "It was necessary that free-will {to hekousion) should be displayed as a counterpoise to involuntariness {to akousion) for the perfection of the universe."— On The Confusion of Tongues, ch. 55. j RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN 89 trolled by our moral character, and must be judged as moral acts. 4. Although it is impossible for us to attain to such a comprehensive view of God's rule and plan, that we can understand how, in his love and his justice, he could create a World for so much evil and t0 ° cr e a " e g * suffering, growing out of men's free-will, yet men with it is apparent that only with and by free-will ^ domof can men be moral beings, or be God's chil- dren, or attain the chief good and values of life. With- out it men would be either fools or beasts, without virtue, loveliness or exalted happiness. As we can discover in the universe no higher end than the glory and bless- edness of The Creator in the moral excellence and hap- piness of his children, as free Persons, we may believe that the awful power to sin and suffer is in some way consistent with his perfect benevolence. We can see that endowment with personal freedom is of vastly more value to a man, and to the universe, than constitutional or enforced innocence would be. 5. Moral law is the personal attitude of God towards persons. It is his wisdom joined with his desire, in an expression of his Will concerning free-willed .,,,,, The laws of persons, respecting the values and ends of God. They personal existence. It is his wish, animate arehi s ! , • r • r 1 • loves. with the infinite earnestness of his supreme and perfect life, as operative in the universe. In its first aspect it is that for which, so far as Men can know God, he lives. The awful momentum of his Being is behind it. It is his self-expression moving his beneficent, but also terrible arm. It is his self-love, and his out-going love. And, because it is his love, it is the most absolute and fixed element in his revelation of himself to men. 90 RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN 6. As a love is a personal expression of a sense of the value of an object, so it is also a dislike of the opposite. The are * n tne sentmients of a spirit — those surges of also his in- life-action which refer us only to conscious- dignations. nesg an( j con science f or t } ie j r explanation and justification — the undercurrent of love is abhorrence. In one passion subjective love and hate meet objective good and evil; to embrace the one, to fight the other. Love dreads, and clashes, and hates. Only a Being who loves strongly can know indignation and detestation. A no- tion that God can act, or ought to act, alike towards good and bad is at variance with every intuition of moral sense, and would infuse a tinge of contempt into our conception of divine amiableness. Hard as it may be for us to conceive that God is animated by abhorrence of a wicked human spirit, the opposite conception would be irrational and immoral. 7. Divine law, or The Creator's self-expression, in aiming at or loving certain ends, and in making their attainment dependent on certain lines of alternative act; ion, causes opposite results of opposite vindicatory actions, and thus appears to satisfy itself with these results. In physical things that satis- punitive. r J ° faction may be real; but in moral things it cannot be true, so long as words have meanings, and sentiments are expressions of personal being and char- acter. All moral philosophy and intuitions affirm that God is not satisfied with his punitive and alternative law. There is love in it; but it is love for the system which is upheld, and for the good which is sought, and for the persons who are in harmony with the good ends pursued. While we are convinced that in some ways punitive RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN 9 1 law may produce good for even the punished persons, this conviction rests on spiritual rather than visible grounds; for moral judgment affirms that an offender when punished receives not only the natural, but the de- served results of his life-action. In the intuitions of conscience, punishment has a meaning which cannot be described as chastisement, correction, or discipline. There is a meaning in ill desert which is not good, although it carries the view of our spirits to the verge of a rayless abyss. But what it is the desert of one person to receive, it is the duty of some other person to admin- ister; for there is no ill desert where there is not some mutual relation of persons. Chief among the persons who have a duty, even if it is self-imposed, towards offenders, is he who is the Guardian and Cause of all good. The belief that God stands in an attitude of indigna- tion and antipathy to a spirit who is rebellious against good, is part of our conception of holiness and justice in God. The intuition that God loves good spirits, and is averse to bad ones, is one belief. The justification of God for the creation of men to be wicked and miserable is not one special and side- problem in philosophy. It is the general in- scrutable problem of the origin of creation. It involves to their utmost depths the problems of God's self-existence, and of his nature and purposes. Reason is blind and impotent before these problems. But Man and life and moral law are here for facts; and the more exact and imperative the law is, so much the more is the evidence conspicuous that in it is the vital stress of an infinitely adorable and loving God. 8. The act that is performed has become eternal. Life 92 RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN is not destroyed as it passes, but becomes in moral judg- ment the real life and fact. Life is self-mak- Past life, , . . persistent mg for eternity, and carries forward the crea- morai reia- t j on b v Qod, who works for persistent effects. tion to God. _. . / , , , „ , This is the grand and awful mystery of spirit- ual life. In his consciousness and his conscience, a man knows the thread of his personal identity, and that his past is his persistent Self. The history of a soul must always be a part of that for which he is perpetually under judgment before himself and his fellows and the infinite Creator. In view of the principles before stated, nothing can surpass in momentous interest the questions, Can wrecked souls be rescued, and how? Can God change? Can a free-will be made to have a new disposition? Can a heart reform its loves? Can an ignorant mind be made intelligent? Can a gross taste be made delicate and pure? Can character be radically changed? Can a soul be emptied of its decep- tions and wrong prejudices? Can a spirit that is foul and violent be made sweet and reasonable? The philosophy which argues that there is a Creator and a moral law, but goes no further, we call Natural Relisrion. It is a small part of true Conduct- Natural °, ., r religion has lve Philosophy; yet many persons compla- no remedy cently regard their ideas of this as if they for sin. J . , . . „ J were a virtue and even a salvation. But Natural Religion, even while it sees beneficence in the universe, is a religion of condemnation and despair, a dread of a God terrible in the severity of an inflexible Judge. Natural Religion exalts law that demands righteousness, but has neither mercy nor pity, and can only command and demand. Even when Natural SALVATION 93 Religion acknowledges that God is a loving Person, it yet sees him as pushing forward for goodness a law in inflexible hostility to its opposites. Conscience, that knows sin as a personal matter be- tween souls and God, discovers no possibility of pardons. It quakes as in the grasp of an infinite arm, . . m . , Conscience and as hearing the voice of an insulted, out- knows no raged and indignant personal Sovereign. It pardon nor . . . , . . , Savior. cannot conceive that wicked spirits can de- serve salvation, and it cannot discover how holy God can give to men what they do not deserve, or withhold what they do deserve. Conductive Philosophy finds principles which encour- age a conviction that, when the whole history of the World is made up, there will be brought to a Conductive triumphant finish a perfect scheme for the philosophy greatest possible blessedness of the whole hopeful - family of God. Reason sees that the enormity and ter- ribleness of sin inhere in the fact that it is a personal matter between The Creator and finite spirits. Reason cannot discover how The Creator can forgive, love, and help a spirit against whom he is arrayed by his diversity of character, his personal indignation, his justice, and his devotion to that moral excellence for the production of which the universe is created. And yet, Reason finds ground for hope in the fact that God is a Person; for in his personal nature there may be a reserve of resources and of principles which can remedy every evil except the determinate will of a free Person. And when Reason admits that in God there may be plural personality, it sees, in the relations of the Divine Persons to each other, possibilities of personal considerations, personal influences, and personal performances, that encourage a 94 RELATIONS OF GOD AND MEN hope that, through spiritual and moral agencies, the lov- ing Father may effect a salvation of men consistently both with his own character and the freedom of men's Wills. Reason believes that The Creator never would have given life to men if there had not been, before creation, ample security of blessedness to an innumer- able host of the errant, tempted, and wretched children of God. Reason cannot forecast the methods and acts by „ . .. which The Creator would effect the rescue of Requisites inhuman men, but it can indicate some of the princi- ples that would be operative, and some of the lines along which the methods would act. Salvation from sin cannot be effected by force. It must indeed begin in God, because men have to be saved from themselves. Somehow, some time, somewhere, there must appear in God something that harmonizes justice with mercy, honors the broken laws, allays the righteous indignation of the outraged personal Creator, and covers the dishonored man with some other person- ality, holy, innocent, and excellent. It must change the man's mind, and convert his heart to a love of God, and his spirit to a willing obedience. It cannot narcotize the man, but must master him in his full pride of intellect, and in the dominant career of his self-will. It is rational and reasonable that salvation should come through a revelation, by which men can Through be taug;ht God's rights and character as revelations. ° ° Ruler, at the same time that he is displayed in a personality that wins love. It is rational and reasonable that salvation should come through spiritual operations of God. In the pre- SALVATION 95 ceding pages we have analyzed human nature and moral science till we have recognized that moral Throu h life, for good or evil, is spiritual life of men spiritual in relation to the personal life of God as a agency - Spirit. There, where sin meets its condemnation, the remedial agencies must be set in action. It is rational and reasonable to expect the salvatory help to come both by divine control of general lines of men's social conditions and personal circumstances, in long processes, with many relapses and wrecks of society, and by immediate presentation to, and influence on, the spirits of men. Spirit is Sovereign in men; and so, sal- vation must come in ways that turn hearts towards God, install moral habits in men's souls, and establish God as Lord and Father of Spirits. PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY AND SONS COMPANY AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 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