KY
-
-
-
.
.
.
:
1
.
>
1
:
.
.
:
imi
-
:
..
1
.
..
.
1,232,795
.
A
.:.:.:.
:.:.:.:.:.
20
Qui
-
K3,
.
1
.

PROPERTY OF
University of
Michigan
Libraries
1817
A R T ES SCIENTIA VERITAS
THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS
OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
i
s
in
patients. so
i
LECTURES
BY
CHARLES CARROLL EVERETT, D.D., LL.D.
LATE BUSSEY PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
EDITED BY
EDWARD HALE
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HOMILETICS IN THE DIVINITY
SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1902 ..
All rights reserved
**
KE
1693
S
"
Pit
BUS,
COPYRIGIT, 1902,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped July, 1902.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
PREFACE
MANY of Dr. Everett's friends have expressed
the wish that there should be some permanent
record of his lectures on theology – a wish
justified, it is believed, by the unique character
of the lectures and the profound impression
they made on those who heard them. The
Faculty of the Harvard Divinity School, there-
fore, with the approval and authorization of the
only surviving member of Dr. Everett's imme-
diate family, appointed a committee to consider
the feasibility of bringing out the lectures, or a
part of them, in book form. As Dr. Everett
left no manuscript of his theological lectures,
— seems, indeed, never to have written them
out, — it was necessary to have recourse to
notes taken by students. The task of putting
this material into shape was committed to Pro-
fessor Edward Hale of the Harvard Divinity
School, who, on another page, explains his
.
VUL
vi
:
PREFACE
method of procedure; the present volume is
the result of his editorial work.
Dr. Everett divided his theological instruc-
tion into two courses. Of these, the shorter
course, on the psychological elements of reli-
gious faith, was intended by him to serve
chiefly as an introduction to the longer course
in which he considered the special content of
religious faith. It has been judged advisable
to issue the first of these courses in a separate
volume. It gives the fundamental principles
of Dr. Everett's inquiry, and forms a unity in
itself. If the reception given to this volume
should be encouraging, the lectures of the sec-
ond course, it is hoped, may be issued in the
near future. This second course deals with
the great questions of religious belief: the
being and attributes of God, human freedom,
sin and salvation, immortality, and the organi-
zation of religion in human life.
C. H. TOY.
For the Committee.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
June, 1902.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
1
DR. EVERETT was made Bussey Professor of
Theology in the Harvard Divinity School in
1869, and in the following year delivered for
the first time the shorter of the two courses of
lectures which Dr. Toy has described in the
Preface. At first these lectures were entitled,
“ The Science of Religion”; later the title,
“ The Psychological Basis of Religious Faith,"
was substituted, this in turn giving place finally
to the title under which the lectures are here
reported, “ The Psychological Elements of Re-
ligious Faith.”
During the thirty years from the time when
Dr. Everett first delivered these lectures until
his death in October, 1900, there was compara-
tively little change in the substance of the
lectures as a whole; but in the arrangement
and order of the thought, and in the greater or
lesser emphasis given to one or another aspect
vii
viii.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
I
of it at different times, as well as in the illus-
trations used, there was continual change. This
variety of treatment gave to the lectures as
Dr. Everett delivered them a peculiar freshness
and spontaneity, but it has made more difficult
the task of reproducing them. There was no
manuscript of his own to which reference could
be made, and no one set of notes, however full
and intelligent, could be relied upon without
comparison with others.
It will therefore be readily understood that
the lectures as here given can only suggest the
substance of Dr. Everett's argument, with some-
thing of his method of presentation ; they are
necessarily a condensed report rather than a
reproduction, with the defects of style incident
to such a report, brief and sketchy in compari-
son with the lectures as Dr. Everett delivered
them, and without the finished form which he
would have given them if he had himself pre-
pared them for the printer. A word of expla-
nation may not be out of place in regard to
certain colloquial phrases which occur; they
are characteristic of Dr. Everett's less formal
speech, and belong to a certain playfulness of
EDITOR'S PREFACE
1
thought which was habitual with him even in
his more serious moods.
The twelve chapters into which the book is
divided represent about thirty lectures, the
number in the course varying a little from
year to year.
I am indebted to the Rev. F. M. Bennett, the
Rev. V. J. Emery, Professor H. H. Horne, the
Rev. W. I. Lawrance, Mr. George B. Rogers,
Professor J. H. Ropes, Mr. C. G. Ruess, Dr.
Duren J. H. Ward, and the Rev. A. H. Winn
for the use of their notes, and to Professor
Horne and Mr. Ruess for their assistance in
verifying references.
EDWARD HALE.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
June, 1902.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introduction: The Methods of Theological Study.
1
CHAPTER II
Partial Definitions of Religion. The Elements of
Religion; the Primacy of Feeling
-
9
CHAPTER III
Superficial and Profound Feeling. The Test of ...
the Worth of Feeling. The Relation between
Feeling and Action . . . . . . . 24
CHAPTER IV
The Priority of the Religious Feeling as compared
with the Intellectual Concept. The First Defi-
nition of Religion . . . . . .
40
CHAPTER V
Spencer's Reconciliation of Science and Religion.
Schleiermacher's Definition of Religion
52
xii
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER VI
The Psychological Basis of Schleiermacher's Defini-
tion. Criticism of the Definition. Examina-
tion of the Attempts which have been made to
supply what is lacking in the Definition . .
69
CHAPTER VII
The Second Definition of Religion: the Feeling
toward the Supernatural. Definition of the
Supernatural. Superstition: the Supernatural
considered as Negative . . . . .
86
CHAPTER VIII
The Supernatural considered as Positive. The Re-
ligious Feelings. The Progress from the Reli-
gion of Self-related Feeling to the Religion in
which the Feeling centres in God . . .
108
CHAPTER IX
The Content of the Supernatural: the Three Ideas
of the Reason. Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
as implied in the Religious Feelings. Instinct
and Reason . . . . . . . . 130
CHAPTER X
The Ideas of the Reason as Supernatural. The Be-
lief in Unity Instinctive; Consideration of the
Theories of Hume and Mill. The Supernatural
Character of the Moral Law . . . . 150
CONTENTS
xiii
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
The Theories of a Natural Basis for the Moral Law:
Utilitarianism; the Theory of Darwin. The
Basis of the Moral Law found in the Principle
of Unity as manifested in the Social Order. The
Relation between Morality and Religion.
173
CHAPTER XII
The Supernatural Character of Beauty. The Rela-
tion between Beauty and Religion. The Third
Definition of Religion . . . . . .
196
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS
OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: THE METHODS OF THEO-
LOGICAL STUDY
In the study of religion it is necessary to have
at the outset a definite and correct understand-
ing as to our starting-point, and the method
which we are to follow. In general, we find
four different methods of theological study ;
they are sometimes followed singly, but more
often they are blended.
In the dogmatic method, followed by most
of the older theologians, certain facts are as-
sumed. Beginning with the thought of God,
the student goes on to consider the divine attri-
butes. Belief is made to rest upon authority.
This authority may be external; thus in
Christianity we often find the Bible or the
Church made authoritative. Or we may have
2
DOGMATIC AND CRITICAL METHODS
an internal authority, the authority of the
reason. When the conception of God has been
made clear, the consideration of man's relations
toward God follows.
The second of the four methods is known as
the critical method. It begins with a criticism
of dogmatic theology, showing where it fails or
overpasses its limits. In its extreme form it
ceases to be a method of theological study and
becomes simply negative criticism. We see an
instance of this in the attitude which some have
taken in the consideration of so-called anthro-
pomorphism, the representation of the divinity
under the form of man. This anthropomorphic
conception of the divinity came as an early
form of religion which, in comparison with still
earlier forms, marked a real advance in reli-
gious thought. Now, in considering this con-
ception, one could follow the critical method up
to a certain point and still have positive results.
If we only went so far as to show that the
divinity cannot have physical organs like man,
and that any resemblance between the divinity
and man must consequently be only spiritual,
the result of our criticism would still be positive;
THEIR DEFECTS
L
са,
DI
for we should still have an anthropomorphic
conception, in which the divinity would be
represented with the spiritual, instead of the
physical, attributes of man. When, however,
men go farther, and say that human nature
cannot in any aspect adequately represent the
divine nature, they reason away all spiritual
attributes and thus all positive religion.
The dogmatic method tends to become narrow
and assumptive. The critical method may de-
stroy the limits of theology and leave nothing.
Thus Strauss in “ Die Christliche Dogmatik”
pushes the critical method so far that he leaves
little positive religion. On the principle that
everything that is not absolute, if allowed to go
far, will pass over into its opposite, he takes an
assertion in apparent good faith and then carries
it by its own development into contradictions.
“Give the devil rope enough,” we say, “and he
will hang himself.” It is thus that the critic
simply gives rope enough to certain beliefs. To
some extent the critical method enters into all
theological study in which modern thought has
part. It must not be thought wholly negative
in its tendency. Working together with the
11
PSYCHOLOGICAL METHOD
1
dogmatic method, it has produced good re-
sults.
The third of the four methods, the psycho-
logical, is distinctly positive; but it differs
fundamentally from the dogmatic method in
that it begins with religion, and from it reaches,
so far as it can, the thought of God, whereas
the dogmatic method begins with the thought
of God and passes on from that to reach re-
ligion. The psychological method, beginning
thus with the thought of religion as it has
been actually recognized in the various forms
which it has taken, cannot pass outside of re-
ligion itself; therefore it can never reach be-
lief in any attribute of the divine nature which
is not involved in religion. That is, religion
itself, as actually manifested and recognized,
furnishes the whole sphere within which the-
ology must move.
Of course this method also, like the critical
method, in itself and carried to an extreme,
would leave no positive religion. Thus Feuer-
bach1 reduced religion to psychological ele-
1 Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, 1804-1872, “ Das Wesen
des Christenthums,"? " Das Wesen der Religion,” etc. See
SPECULATIVE METHOD
ments and reached no religious faith whatever.
No authority was recognized, and religion be-
came simply man's projection of himself.
When we look for the supreme example of
the psychological method, we turn to Schleier-
macher.1 He recognizes nothing which is not
bound up in the nature of religion. There is
a positive result, the recognition of an absolute
reality with which religion brings us into
relation. Schleiermacher, however, recognizes
no divine attributes as such, but only a method
of relation.
The last of the four methods is the specu-
lative. It occupies a place between the dog-
matic and the psychological methods. It
accepts to a large extent the results of the
psychological method, and then makes within
these results a world for itself. It fills out
psychological results into a system. Whereas
the psychological method is satisfied with the
simpler relations, the speculative strives to
bring out the inner relation of things, and
aims to show the perfection of the whole.
also Friedrich Albert Lange's - History of Materialism,"
Bk. II, Chap. II.
1 See Chapters V and VI.
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Here Hegel is the typical example. It is
sometimes said that the speculative method
admits no assumptions. This statement, how-
ever, is extreme; we can reach nothing with-
out assumptions. Hegel, certainly, begins with
an absolutely dogmatic assumption, the objec-
tive fact of being. From this as his starting-
point he develops his system.
There is a great difference between the
theology which results from this method and
the old dogmatic theology. Here results are
reached by a process of speculative construc-
tion which grows like a plant. The plant
takes its beginning from a seed, and then, as
it grows, draws from earth and air and water,
translating each into itself and at every stage
of its growth assimilating new material
Our own method in the examination which
we are about to make will be largely psycho-
logical. Although as we go on we may be
led into a more external and objective treat-
ment, we shall begin by studying the elements
of religion. Our subject is given as the psy-
chological elements of religious faith. We are
to consider a philosophy of religion.
NOT SCIENCE OF RELIGION
A
2
Why do we not rather say a science of reli-
gion? Certainly, in so far as accuracy and
order are fundamental to the scientific method,
our method is to be scientific. In all, how-
ever, that is recognized as scientific, the
experiments at the outset are as scientific as
the accepted results. Before they have been
adopted into the body of science, they have
order and system. From this point of view
neither theology nor philosophy is scientific.
In science, furthermore, there is universal
agreement as to the object which is to be
studied. It is not so in theology. We
are to follow the scientific method, but we
have not yet reached a point where we can
demand general agreement among students of
theology and philosophy. There is one other
distinction, also, between our study and what
is recognized as science. To science all things
are of equal value ; it seeks the truth, indif-
ferent as to its value. On the other hand,
the study of religion involves judgments of
value; its estimate of the worth of things
guides its movements and furnishes a basis
for its results. Philosophy is fundamentally
8
THEOLOGY A JUDGMENT OF WORTH
not love of knowledge, but love of wisdom, and
wisdom involves a judgment of worth; it is
the true life which the philosopher endeavors
to reach and to impart. All theological thought
since Kant has tended to recognize this. At
present, therefore, we speak more properly of
a philosophy of religion than of a science of
religion.
CHAPTER II
PARTIAL DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION - THE
ELEMENTS OF RELIGION - THE PRIMACY OF
FEELING
CUL
WHAT is religion? We must define it.
Yet a complete definition is not possible at
the outset. Logically our study gives us the
definition at the end, practically. we need it
at the beginning. We must start with some
rough and ready definition, and then the con-
ception may grow more distinct as we go on.
Religion has been defined as identical with
morality; but neither this definition nor the
modification of it, “ morality touched by emo-
tion," satisfies us. If we see a man indignant
at some wrong, shall we say that he is reli-
gious ? Is a man eager for right and justice
a religious man? It has been defined, also,
as man's effort to perfect himself; but a man
may try to perfect himself without religion,
and some religions do not pretend to perfection.
10
DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION
an
Religion implies a relation between us and
some being beyond ourselves ; it is in part
objective, and this definition is purely sub-
jective.
Max Müller says 1 that religion is a mental
faculty which, independent of sense and reason,
enables man to apprehend the infinite under
different names and various disguises. There
are here two statements, one that religion is a
mental faculty, the other that it is the appre-
hension of the infinite. But what is called a
faculty is rather potential energy, and religion
is rather a result of such a faculty than the
faculty itself. Further, our definition must
at the outset include all forms of religion, and
the early religions cannot be said all. to have
had the sense of the infinite. Müller's defini-
tion, however, comes nearer the ordinary con-
ception of religion than the preceding definition,
in that it recognizes in religion the relation to
something objective. Count Goblet d’Alviella
gives 2 as a definition of religion the conception
16. The Origin and Growth of Religions” (“ Hibbert
Lectures," 1878), pp. 21, 42.
2 66 Hibbert Lectures,"' 1891, pp. 47, 48.
DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION
11
which man forms of his relation with super-
human and mysterious powers on which he
depends; and in connection with this we may
take the statement proposed by Tylor1 as
the minimum definition, that religion is belief
in spiritual beings. According to Réville,2
religion is the determination of human life by
the sentiment of a bond uniting the human
mind to that mysterious mind whose domina-
tion of the world and of itself it recognizes,
and in the sense of union with which it de-
lights. Here we have an advance, though the
form of statement is clumsy. The bond itself,
according to this definition, or its sentiment,
is not religion. There must be a determina-
tion of life, and thus some form of activity
appears to be an essential element of religion.
There is the assumption, also, that delight is
an essential element.
We see already how definitions divide and
scatter. Moreover, no one of these definitions
is scientific. There are two kinds of defini-
1 Edward Burnett Tylor, “Primitive Culture," 3d ed.,
1891, Vol. I, p. 424.
2 Albert Réville, “ History of Religions,”' p. 25.
12
INCLUSIVE AND TYPICAL DEFINITIONS
O
tion, the inclusive or extensive, and the typical,
and to make our definition complete we need
both. The inclusive definition includes all
specimens which can be covered by the term
to be defined; the typical emphasizes the
special or more marked characteristics of that
which it describes. The definition of man as
a biped without feathers is inclusive but not
typical; so is Spencer's definition of life as
the correlation of internal changes with ex-
ternal changes. In any definition, if we can
find what is true of the highest and the lowest
forms, we may infer that it is true of the
intermediate forms also. But such a definition
will include nothing which is not found in
the lowest forms, and a definition of religion,
therefore, which is to include all religions,
must include nothing that is not found in the
lowest forms of religion. The typical defini-
tion, on the other hand, emphasizing the
highest forms rather than the lowest, may not
include the lowest. We are to begin with
inclusive definitions, and as we advance bring
into our conception higher and higher elements,
1« First Principles," Pt. I.
ELEMENTS OF RELIGION
0
Le
C
proceeding in this way from the inclusive to
the concrete, from the abstract to the typical.
Where in life does religion find its seat ?
Religion is of the spirit, spiritual not in the
technical sense, but as being of the inner
nature of man. Thus our field is limited,
for the elements of the spiritual nature are few.
Intellect, feeling or emotion, will — these are
the elements of the inner life. Does religion
belong primarily to the intellect, or to feeling,
or to will ? Or if not primarily to some one
of these, does it belong to two of them only,
or to all three ?
We find at once that we cannot consider
the intellect by itself; intellect and feeling
cannot be separated. Consciousness itself
implies a form of intellect, and on the other
hand there is no thought which is unaccom-
panied by feeling; thought is inspired by
feeling; we think because we are interested.
Therefore we cannot employ the logical method
of difference, and ask if religion is ever found
where feeling is separate from thought, or
where thought is free from feeling. There
is a second method, however, which we can
Te
14
PRIMACY OF FEELING
employ, that of concomitant variation. By
this we may determine the relative importance
of elements which cannot be separated, and
find how far one element is dependent upon
another. Does religion, then, vary with varia-
tions in thought or with variations in feel-
ing, or as both thought and feeling vary?
The answer is clear. Religion varies, not
with the variations in thought, but with the
variations in feeling. “If I know all mysteries
and all knowledge . . . but have not love, I
am nothing.”1 Some of the clearest thinkers
in theology are not religious, even though
they may have belief. On the other hand,
some ignorant persons are truly religious.
The first person to put theology upon a
purely psychological basis, Schleiermacher,
reached the result that feeling is everything in
religion. Over against him, Hegel does not
deny the reality of feeling, but he gives it a
subordinate place as compared with intellect.2
11 Cor. xiii. 2.
2 " Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion,” transl. from
the 2d German edition by E. B. Speirs and J. B. Sanderson,
Vol. I, Pt. I, B, II.
HEGEL'S CRITICISM OF FEELING
15
Ce.
With Hegel the starting-point is transitory and
of less importance. In this his method differs
from that now in vogue with some who assume
that the starting-point explains all. Hegel
more wisely lays stress on the final term.
In his criticism of feeling Hegel urges, first,
that feeling is indifferent to its content; sec-
ond, that feeling is private and individual,
whereas thought is universal ; and third, that
feeling is common to man with the brutes, the
assumption being that feeling therefore fills a
lower place than the intellect. It is perhaps
true that feeling is indifferent to its content.
Yet feeling is determined by its idea of its
object. We may say, for instance, that love is
indifferent to its object; that is, a bad man
may receive the devoted love of a wife ; love
gives itself where it can and will. Love, how-
ever, idealizes its object; to us, on the outside,
love seems to be in pursuit of a worthless ob-
ject, but to the person who loves this object is
its ideal. Further, the feeling varies with the
nature of the object; admiration may be felt
toward a Washington and toward a prize-
fighter; we give the feeling the same name in
16
HEGEL'S CRITICISM OF FEELING
both cases. But the feeling itself is not the
same; these are two different kinds of admira-
tion. What is true of admiration is true of all
emotions, even of love ; the love of a great
person is different from the love of a base per-
son, the love of a parent different from that of
a child. Of course, there is in all love a com-
mon, universal element; but there are these
differences also. We conclude, therefore, that
feeling is not altogether or indeed mainly
indifferent to its object.
The second criticism of Hegel, that feeling is
private and individual, has much in its favor.
De gustibus non disputandum; each man's taste
is his own. A man's thought may be con-
vinced; his taste cannot be. One man likes a
picture, another dislikes it; this dislike or lik-
ing cannot be altered by persuasion. Yet feel-
ing is no less universal than thought. We are
apt to speak of thought as if a thought existed
apart from our minds, and could be taken from
one mind and put into another. But thoughts
are not the same, they are only similar; your
thoughts are yours, mine are mine, they can-
not be interchanged; thought is private as
HEGEL'S CRITICISM OF FEELING
17
well as feeling. Still it is true that argument
can produce similarity of thought, whereas we
cannot thus produce similarity of feeling.
But why do we wish to produce similarity of
thought? Why does a man whose mind is
filled with some great idea seek to bring it into
the minds of others ? He wishes others to
share his thought only that they may share his
feeling, the feeling perhaps in turn leading to
some action. I seek to convince you that your
candidate for some office is an unscrupulous
politician. Why? In order that you may
vote for mine. The preacher tries to convince
us of the truth of religion. Why? In order
to bring us to his way of feeling and action.
Community of feeling is generally the end to
which community of thought is but a means.
Not that this is always true; but it is true in
most practical situations. Further, feeling
may propagate itself without the medium of
thought, as for example at a camp-meeting or
in a riot, when enthusiasm or passion is con-
tagious ; or as in some expedition when one of
the party who thinks the expedition will fail
may not utter his thought, and yet others will
18
HEGEL'S CRITICISM OF FEELING
catch his feeling. We recognize, also, that this
contagion of feeling may be a sign of health as
well as of disease, as when we speak of the
contagion of moral enthusiasm.
Hegel's third criticism of feeling is that it
is common to the brute with man, and there-
fore belongs to the lower strata of man's
nature, and so is not to be emphasized as an
element in religion. Is not thought, however,
also common to the brute with man? The
brute has the beginnings of intellect as really
as the beginnings of feeling, and if we allow
that feeling is predominant in the brute, we
may say that what is most common and uni-
versal in life is most fundamental. Perhaps,
however, the brute shares thought with us as
fully as feeling; our feelings may be of a
higher grade than those of the brute because
our thought is higher.
We conclude, therefore, that in religion feel-
ing has the primacy as compared with intellect.
How is it as regards feeling and the will ?
Here we can apply the method of difference ;
for we have instances in which all activity is
excluded. A person may be in prison or ill,
PRIMACY OF FEELING
19
and can only endure, and yet in such cases the
most beautiful religious life may appear. It
is true that here the will often has a place ;
the spirit may be rebellious at the confinement,
there may be envy of the well or the free, and
the will is exerted in an earnest endeavor to
subdue wrong feelings ; here is a true activity
of the will. Yet, after all, it is a confirmation
of the primacy of feeling. For what the will
is trying to bring about is a new condition of
feeling; the emphasis is on feeling; feeling is
the essential.
Under normal conditions, however, we find
intellect, feeling, and will all necessary, Why,
then, should we consider one more truly essen-
tial than the others? There are, however, two
uses of the word “essential”: first, to express
that which carries within itself the essence of
the whole, whatever it may be ; and second,
to express that without which a given result
is not reached, though such a factor in the
result may, be less fundamental than others --
a sine qua non. In a vineyard, for example,
the vine, the trellis, the soil, the water for
irrigation, each may be, in a certain sense,
20
PRIMACY OF FEELING
essential as a sine qua non, because without it
the result would be failure. But the relation
to the result is not the same with all ; the vine
itself is the essential and the others are ac-
cessories. So feeling is the essential element
in religion.
? It is the more important to recognize the
primacy of feeling in religion if only because
it has the same primacy in life generally. In-
tellect represents the environment, feeling rep-
resents the man. Intellect brings to man his
material ; feeling is his response to this mate-
rial. Intellect is analytic ; feeling recognizes
the unity of the object and is constructive.
Intellect tries to explain and justify, yet never
reaches that in which feeling rejoices. A
picture may be all that the intellect can de-
mand, and yet not excite feeling; the last
touch of genius cannot be described, though it
may be felt. Thus, again, intellect cannot ex-
plain why you love your friend. What you
love is not the aggregate of his good qualities,
which may belong equally to others whom you
do not love. Feeling regards the friend as a
unit, filling gaps which the intellect cannot fill.
INTELLECT NEEDED BY FEELING
21
U
O
It is true, however, that intellect is needed
by feeling. Intellect not only provides the
environment to which feeling responds; it
helps, also, to preserve the balance among the
feelings. In so far as we can think our envi-
ronment as a whole, we are less exposed to fluc-
tuations of feeling, and the intellect helps us
thus to lump our experiences. The intellect
cannot do this alone ; a fact is not the same
as our thought of a fact; when death comes,
it is not the same as our previous thought of
it; an immediate fact affects us differently
from the presentation of a distant fact, however
assured of its reality we may be.
Further, the intellect tends to develop feel-
ing. As the intellect works, it enlarges the
environment, and thus stimulates the growth
of feeling. You enjoy a simple air, simply
played, but you have a different and greater
pleasure in listening to a quartette or an or-
chestra ; there is more fulness and richness
in the feeling and more intensity. Now this
result could not be reached unless the skill of
the composer were developed. You may say
that, after all, what is essential here is not the
22
PRIMACY OF FEELING
skill of the composer, but the musical sense to
which appeal is made. Yet the skilled per-
formance is necessary; it is knowledge which
gives opportunity for certain feelings. Feeling
is not like a bell which responds to a stroke.
A man with his feelings is like an organ which
does not give the same response to every touch,
but is capable of infinite variation according to
the skill of the player. The intellect is the
player who draws out the possibilities of the
instrument.
All that the intellect can do, however, is not
too much to meet the highest feelings. Feel-
ing has the primacy. Intellect is for the sake
of feeling. What we do is done to gratify
feeling. In science and philosophy, feeling is
the beginning, the middle, and the end. The
desire to know or to explore, the charm of
mental activity, the hope of discovery, eager-
ness for renown— these in both science and
philosophy stimulate the student. Feeling in
one form or another first prompts to study,
and then through the student's sense of obliga-
tion it sustains him in his work. Activity
is pleasant, also, and mental activity most
PRIMACY OF FEELING
pleasant. Finally, at the end of any study
there is the ästhetic joy in success and an
enlarged horizon.
CHAPTER III
SUPERFICIAL AND PROFOUND FEELING - THE
TEST OF THE WORTH OF FEELING — THE
RELATION BETWEEN FEELING AND ACTION
IF feeling, then, is primary, does it follow
that the office of religion is to make one “ feel
good”? No, but to make one a person of
good feeling. “Feeling good ” is momentary ;
the quality of good feeling is permanent, the
“right heart” of Hegel. We must distinguish
between feeling and emotion. It is not always
the most emotional men who have the deepest
feeling; the man whose religious feeling is
most easily stirred is not necessarily the most
religious. Emotion is only one form of feel-
ing, something stirred, changing, transient.
Two judges may have each a painful case to
decide. The appeals to the sympathy of each
may be similar. One is greatly moved, and
yields to the appeals; the other is firm. We
say of the man who yields that he is a man of
24
FEELING AND EMOTION
more
feeling; the other we may call cold-hearted.
Yet the immovable judge may be a man of
stronger and more profound feeling than the
judge who yielded. His feeling is simply
different in kind, the sense of responsibility
and of the importance of maintaining the
supremacy of the law, the thought of the
results which may follow pardon and freedom,
the sorrow likely to be caused by others more
liable to crime as they see this man go free.
The emotion of the moment may be real
enough, there may not be in it any pretence
or dissimulation; but one feeling is driven out
by others. We speak in this way of super-
ficial feelings, such as are called forth by one
aspect of the environment and not by others.
As the environment changes, a man is the
creature now of one feeling, now of another.
Deeper feeling may vary outwardly with the
changes in the environment, but underneath
is changeless. The feeling of the mother who
loves her child is fundamental and permanent,
though it manifests itself in a variety of con-
stantly changing and more or less superficial
moods. A certain amount of variability makes
GRADES OF FEELING
a person interesting; too much variability
destroys our respect for him.
What causes the difference between a man of
profound feeling and one of superficial feeling ?
Perhaps their different natures, the intellect,
the imagination, the training, of each. As has
already been suggested, the intellect or the
imagination can present the world as a whole;
past and future are made real, and there is less
danger of superficial and changeful feeling.
Or some master passion may control all the
rest, and interpret everything into the same
term, as when a person in profound grief is no
longer moved by various forms of pleasure.
Further, the man of deep feeling lives more
according to principle than the emotional man.
Principle in this relation need not mean moral
principle, for there are two kinds of interest
which may absorb one, interest in one's self or
interest in one's environment. The thoroughly
selfish as well as the thoroughly unselfish man
may live by principle, and be similarly unaf-
fected by superficial feelings; the interests of
either may be as broad as the whole world, but
the selfish man interprets all from the point of
FEELING AND EXPERIENCE
27
.
.
.
view of his own gain or passion, the unselfish
man with a view to the good of others than
himself.
In training the feeling, habit and knowledge
are great powers. Spinoza suggests, at the
close of the “Ethics,” that the object most
present has most power over the mind; that if
we associate the thought of God with every
experience, this thought, and also the feelings
connected with it, will become more and more
masterful. Similarly, if any feeling is to be
profound and permanent, it must be associated
with every experience.
We speak of men of mere intellect or of mere
feeling. What do we mean? Of course there
is no such thing as a man who has intellect
alone. Intellect must have feeling to prompt
it, and must produce feeling. We may almost
say that one man has as much feeling as an-
other, and that any difference is not in amount
but in kind. What we really mean by the man
of mere intellect is the man whose delight is in
the processes of thought themselves, who loves
the tool rather than what it can effect. One
man as he looks at the stars through a tele-
FEELING AND THOUGHT
1
scope is interested in the lenses which he is
using, while another is delighted and exalted
by what he sees, the revelation of the heavens.
Thus when people speak of Goethe and
Schiller, comparing what they call the coldness
of Goethe with the warmth and humanity of
Schiller, they really mean, not that Goethe was
without feeling, but that he rejoiced in his art;
that was his fundamental interest. Schiller,
on the other hand, rejoiced rather in what his
art represented, and thus kept in relation with
the external world. Goethe may have felt
the very deepest delight in his art. To think
does not kill feeling; it only changes its
direction.
The assumption often is that the exercise of
the intellect tends to lessen the force of feeling.
The argument is drawn from a physical figure.
Here is so much force to be applied ; if a cer-
tain amount is used in one direction, so much
the less remains for use in other ways. The
analogy, however, is false. In life, use tends
to develop the part exercised without neces-
sarily withdrawing strength from other parts.
The strength of a blacksmith's arm has not
CONCEIT OF KNOWLEDGE
29
been gained at any necessary expense to the
rest of the body. The feelings do not grow
weak because the intellect is used, but only as
they are not themselves exercised. As it is
possible to develop the whole physical man,
so the entire spiritual nature may be developed.
The ideal life is expressed in Tennyson's
words:
“Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell.” 1
Our greatest difficulty, however, arises from
what may be called the conceit of the under-
standing. The intellect tends to assume that
its analysis, and therefore its explanation, is
complete, and then that all which can be
analyzed is explained ; it is always trying
to exhaust the content of the universe, and
ready to assume that it has succeeded. Thus
it tends to check and discourage all feeling
that is deeper than the results which the
intellect has reached. Whole periods of such
"explanation” come, when it is assumed that
everything has been made clear. But over
against what has been explained there still
16 In Memoriam,” the prologue.
30
FEELING ITS OWN TEST
remains the mystery of the universe, our
ignorance in regard to our own lives. Though
certain parts of the sphere have been illumi-
nated, the mass is still opaque.
How are we to measure the worth of
feeling? Almost every feeling is a judgment
of worth, a recognition of values. Now, some
values are greater than others. By what test
are we to decide that one is greater than
another? Is there any measure that we can
apply from without? No. It is sometimes
said that we test the worth of feeling by the
worth of the object which has called forth
the feeling; but the truer statement would
be that we measure the worth of the object
by the nature of the feeling which it has
aroused. The object is beautiful because
we admire it, good because we approve it.
Things are desirable because we desire them.
Again we see the primacy of feeling. It is
feeling which is the test of feeling. We
find, however, that other conditions accompany
the feeling which supplies the test. Intellect,
taking the hint which feeling has given it,
classifies and systematizes, and declares what
EXTENT OF ENVIRONMENT
31
is worthy of admiration. In melodious music
the ear is the first and final judge; but the
intellect makes a science of music, of harmony,
conforming always to that which the musical
sense recognizes as harmonious. So with all
our judgments.
We recognize that there are two aspects
of feeling to consider, one the extent of the
field covered, the other the intensity of the
feeling.
Leaving out the element of intensity for
the time being, we may say that the feelings
which refer to the largest portion of the
environment are the most worthy. This
statement is rather crude, but it will prepare
the way for something more satisfactory.
Why is love for another better than love for
oneself? Why is it worthier for A to love
B, and B, A, than for A to love A, and B, B?
It may be said that the love of A for B opens
to A a larger world. Unselfish love is often
supposed to destroy love of self; but there
is no reason to believe that an unselfish person
has less regard for himself than a selfish person.
Love of A for B does not destroy love of A
32
NECESSITY OF POSITIVE RESPONSE
for A, but overpowers it for a time; A loves
not self less, but B more. The feeling, then,
which has the larger sweep, which includes the
greater portion of the environment, is the more
worthy. Further, as soon as we begin to love
a thing or a person outside ourselves, and life
begins to enlarge, the possibility is present
of a life indefinitely larger; as soon as A
begins to love B and his little shell is broken
he may from B and C and D easily go on to
love X and Y and Z; he is made capable of
infinite possibilities. Thus feeling is meas-
ured by largeness.
Now, if the response to a large environment
is best, then the universe is a good place in
which to live. This is the optimistic view.
But in order to hold this view, our response
to the environment must be positive. Given
a negative response, and we have the attitude
found in the Oriental religions, where the
universe is regarded as evil and men are
counselled to respond to as little of it as
possible. 6 Where ignorance is bliss," we
hear it said, “'tis folly to be wise.”
We have found that feeling is measured by
INTENSITY
33
10
largeness. We need, however, to modify this
conclusion. Herbert Spencer defines life in
terms of length and height, 1 that is, in terms
of extension and intension. So it is with
feeling; it must have intension as well as
extension. Intensity of feeling may even be
higher than mere extensiveness or complexity.
We may see a thousand details in the flower,
and yet miss the beauty which the child finds in
it as a whole. The depth of our feeling toward
God depends not so much on our recognition of
the extent and manifold nature of creation as
upon our consciousness of the unity of all
things. Compare the ignorant woman who is
religious and the scientist who is without re-
ligion. Has not the scientist the larger
environment? Yes; but the woman has in
her less extensive environment that conscious-
ness of the infinite presence beside which the
environment of the scientist, in whom the like
consciousness is lacking, is as nothing. In the
case of feelings obviously less worthy, greater
intensity of course only renders them still more
unworthy. We reach the greatest height when
1" Principles of Biology," Vol. I, Chaps. IV-VI.
34
WORTH OF INTENSIVE AFFECTION
we can have both the recognition of unity,
the consciousness of the infinite presence, and
at the same time the knowledge of details
through which the unity, the infinite presence,
is manifested.
We meet here the question as to our duty
toward a few as compared with our duty
toward many. Which is worthier, intensive
or extensive affection? We distinguish love
for our immediate circle from love for the
remoter but larger circle of society in general.
How shall we compare the love of a person for
his home, while he is more or less indifferent
to this larger circle, with the love of those who
are interested chiefly in the larger relations
and comparatively indifferent to those about
them? Some have refused to concede ethical
value to family affection on the ground that
it is instinctive; but the natural affections
have ethical value, and the wider interest in
mankind will reach its happiest results in pro-
portion as it becomes equally instinctive with
love for the family. It is in a certain intensity
of personal feeling that we find the real life,
and I should value the feeling of a person
CONFLICTING AFFECTIONS
closely bound to his own circle more highly than
that of the persons who are indifferent to those
near them, and interested in a remoter circle.
We should doubt a little the reality of their
feeling, and should ask whether it were not
some principle other than love, and less worthy,
which prompted them to devote themselves to
the remoter circle, to the neglect of their fami-
lies or nearer friends.
The history of the development of philan-
thropy supports us in this view. Out of affec-
tion for the smaller circle has come affection
for the larger circle. Love of race has grown
from love of family. The interest of a man
in the condition of the slaves might, and often
did, spring from the tenderness felt toward
his own immediate household; and from the
same source nowadays may come his interest
in the neglected children of the streets.
There are cases in which the intensive affec-
tion and the extensive, the personal and the
general, come into conflict, and one or the
other must give way. Thus, in time of war a
man may feel it his duty to leave his home
and those who are nearest to him, in order to
36
FEELING AND ACTION
TT
V
serve his country. Yet when he goes we
should be sorry if the intensive, personal affec-
tion were lost; we should think more highly
of him if he went with bleeding heart. When
Jesus says, “ He that loveth father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me,” i there is
nothing to imply that love of the Master is
inconsistent with the love of father and mother.
Here again, if love of the father and mother
were wanting, the love of the Master would
.be unworthy.2
We have now to consider the relation be-
tween feeling and action. Here it is impor-
tant to distinguish between the objective and
subjective relations of feeling, between the
standard of society and that of the individual.
In the case of society we judge the feeling by
the result. In the case of the individual we
ask what was the motive; the act has worth
according to the motive, the feeling, manifested
through it. Now when we ask whether society
exists for the individual, or the individual for
society, we find, if we take the broadest view,
that it is society which exists for the individual.
1 Matt. x. 37. 2 1 John iv. 20; also 1 Tim. V. 8.
ACTION AS MEASURE OF FEELING
37
The purpose of society has not been accom-
plished when each member has been clothed
and fed; rather society is then just ready to
begin its real work, the elevation of the indi-
vidual, the production of the noblest men and
women. We conclude, therefore, that ulti-
mately in all cases the motive is of first impor-
tance, and that any act has worth according
to the feeling manifested through it.
Under ordinary circumstances, to be sure,
we say that the act is the measure of the feel-
ing. The feeling shows itself in some act, and
we infer the feeling and judge it from the act.
Even so, however, we recognize that the act
is a very imperfect measure of the feeling.,
What is the pressure of the hand to the part-1
ing friend, in comparison with our affection for
him and our sense of loss in his going? How
far is the gift of the dollar, or of the hour of
one's time, to some charity, a real measure of
the interest which perhaps moyes our whole
heart ? Nowhere has the man full of feeling
opportunity for complete expression. You
may recall how Browning emphasizes this in
the conflict which he represents as taking
38
ACTION AS MEASURE OF FEELING
place in the mind of Sordello after he has
learned his true parentage, and is debating
what to do.1 “ All our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags.” So all expressions of profound
feeling are as rags in comparison with that
garment without seam, the feeling itself.
Is there not, however, a danger here? Of
what value, we may ask, is any feeling if it
does not lead to action ? That will depend
upon whether or not circumstances are such as
to render action possible. What is required is
only that the sympathy be real, that it be
strong enough and deep enough to lead to
action if circumstances permit. A sufferer
is usually more grateful for sympathy with-
out help, if he sees that the sympathy is
real, than for help which does not sympathize.
The difficulty in the case of professed feelings
which do not result in action is that we lose
our faith in the reality of the profession. The
act is simply a test, a measure of the feeling.
Some people enjoy the mere stimulation of
the feelings. They are moved by fictitious sor-
row in stories and on the stage, and are un-
1 Robert Browning, "Sordello,” Bk. VI.
7
FICTITIOUS FEELING
39
moved by the sorrows of real life. Similarly
one may come to look upon the world as a
stage, and rather enjoy the pathos of it. In
such cases as these, however, we conclude that
the feeling is not real, or at least that it is
superficial, perhaps an unconscious sense of
how bad it would all be if it were true. If the
feeling were more real or more profound, it
would strive to express itself in action.
CHAPTER IV
THE PRIORITY OF THE RELIGIOUS FEELING AS
COMPARED WITH THE INTELLECTUAL CON-
CEPT -- THE FIRST DEFINITION OF RELIGION
We have seen that in religion feeling has
the primacy as compared with intellect and
will. We have now to ask which is first in
point of time, the religious feeling or the in-
tellectual concept. Our common habit of
thought is to regard intellect as calling out
feeling ; if we are to reverence a noble person,
we must first believe that the person has those
qualities which command reverence. But is
not the process sometimes reversed ? Does
not the feeling in certain cases suggest the
thought? A child is being put to bed, and
is quiet so long as there is a light in the room ;
but as soon as the light is taken away, the
child begins to fear that there is a man hidden
in the closet. Here it is not at the outset the
idea of the man which causes the fear; but
-
FEELING PRIOR TO THOUGHT
41
fear creates an object which, if real, would be
the cause or the occasion of fear. In the same
way a man alone in the forest hears noises as
of wild beasts ; a vague terror of the darkness
concentrates itself into a definite idea. In
such cases there may be some sound or other
suggestion, inadequate, however, in itself to
produce the feeling ; the terror takes advan-
tage of the suggestion and fills it out. So
with certain temperaments ; the suspicious man
believes that he is surrounded by enemies, or
by those who are indifferent to him ; his sus-
picion transforms the slightest and most un-
conscious acts into deliberate slights and
insults.
When we pass to more important examples,
we find men sacrificing the most precious
things in life, even life itself, for the sake of
a feeling which bids them do right. We
should expect to find some rational ground
for such action. But if we ask different men
why they act as they do, we get widely differ-
ent answers. The feeling precedes all expla-
nation of it. It is not the forms of ethical
belief that have created the moral sense, but
42
IDEAS OF THE REASON
the moral sense that has given birth to the
intellectual recognition.
We find ourselves here led out into the
grandest relations possible, the great ideas of
truth and goodness and beauty. In these,
feeling seems to come first. The belief in the
unity of the universe is taken as a basis for
reasoning long before it is consciously ad-
mitted. The world acted upon the principle
of the uniformity of law for ages before the
generalization was formulated. We have a
feeling of good faith in things, we do not won-
der every morning if the sun will rise. The
mind accepts this faith so fully that it has no
question about it. You may have heard the
story of the old lady who was surprised at
Newton's puzzle over the fall of the apple to
the ground. “Of course,” she said ; “where
would it fall? It couldn't fall up."
The confidence in the uniformity of law in
the world is so natural that we can appeal to
nothing else even when we wish to prove it.
It would be difficult for us to give ourselves
an answer why we trust in it as we do. The
instinctive feeling precedes the conscious intel-
PRIORITY OF FEELING
43
lectual recognition. No matter for the present
whether this instinct is natural to mind, or is
the result of the accumulated experience of
the race. All that we need to see is the power
of the idea or feeling before the idea is con-
sciously recognized. We do not ask, how
many consciously recognize the truth of a
doctrine, but how many act as though they
recognized it. Here is the fallacy in Locke's
argument against innate ideas, that they are
not found in children and savages. Although
the child or the savage may not be conscious
of the idea, he acts as though he were. These
great truths are like the sun; they show their
power and light before they rise above the
intellectual horizon.
We have already seen that this is true in
the case of the moral sense. It is equally
true in regard to the sense of beauty. For
while most of us have some knowledge of
what is right, few have knowledge as to
what is beautiful, and often where intellec-
tual recognition is strongest and most accu-
rate, the sense of beauty is most lacking.
1“Essay concerning Human Understanding," Bk. I.
44
THEORIES OF REVELATION
Beauty cannot be described ; one can only
feel it. Try to describe the beauty of a
picture, and what you have pointed out may
be found in another picture which is not
beautiful. Read Poe's account of how he
wrote - The Raven."i You may fancy that
you have a receipt for writing poetry; but
try it!
Is the religious feeling also similar in this
regard to the æsthetic feeling and the moral
feeling ? Is it, like them, in advance of the
intellectual recognition which is logically its
basis? If not, we must ask whence should
come the intellectual recognition ? From
revelation? How, then, was the revelation
made? Was it given objectively, coming
wholly from without? This conception is
entertained more easily if we assume that the
race had a single origin, either as regards
some individual person, or in respect to the
place of origin. The conception, however,
becomes more difficult as the question of
origin becomes complex. There is difficulty
1 Edgar Allan Poe, Essays, "The Philosophy of Compo-
sition."
THEORIES OF REVELATION
45
also in conceiving how the revelation should
be given. Was it written on the heavens,
or was there a voice from heaven, or was
there an incarnation of the divine upon the
earth? If, on the other hand, we conceive
that the revelation was given subjectively,
impressed upon the nature of the soul, an
inner and not an outer revelation, it may
have come primarily either through the intel-
lect or through the feeling. So that the
answer in this case to our question whether
intellectual recognition came through revela-
tion cannot help us unless it can tell us
whether the revelation was made through in-
tellect or through feeling.
Another theory of revelation is found in
the hypothesis of an actual presentation of
the object which excites the religious feel-
ing. This theory is very distinctly stated
by Tylor. According to him, religion con-
sists in the recognition of supernatural beings,
the knowledge of whom comes through dreams.
But does religion consist in this? The facts
on which the theory is based may be real ; but
16 Primitive Culture," Vol. I, p. 424.
46
THEORIES OF REVELATION
we have here two questions : first, as to the
beginning of a belief in immortality; and
second, as to the origin of religion; and the
two questions are not necessarily one and the
same. Setting aside any question as to a
belief in immortality, does religion consist in
a belief in disembodied spirits ? We must
apply here the method of difference, and ask
whether religion and a belief in spirits neces-
sarily accompany each other. The savage, it
is said, dreams, and thinks that he really sees
the spirits of the dead. He certainly has a
great dread of these spirits ; he tries to pro-
pitiate them ; he has even a religious feeling
toward them. But the dream is, so to speak,
the land in which the spirits dwell. If reli-
gion is what this theory assumes, we should
suppose that the savage would dread to go to
sleep. Just as in Fouqué's story of Undine
the hero is afraid of sleep, expecting to be
haunted by the water nymph, so according to
this theory the savage should feel as if sleep
were haunted. He appears, however, to go
to sleep with as little fear as the civilized
man, and even sometimes prepares for dreamy
SPIRITUALISM
sleep by fasting. The belief of the savage,
then, in the life of his ancestors after death,
is not sufficient as an explanation of religion.
It may affect the mind religiously; we may
have, perhaps, all the conditions of Tylor's
definition of religion, but we have not reli-
gion itself.
Again, if the theory is true, the phenomena
of spiritualism should be in all cases religious.
I am not here discussing the truth of spirit-
ualism as such, but simply the question as to
any necessary connection between its phenom-
ena and religion. We find that there is no
such necessary connection. On the contrary,
the spiritualist bears himself with as little
awe or reverence in the presence of the
spirits of the departed as among the living.
In the intercourse which is professedly held,
we find nothing of religious or even supersti-
tious feeling; and unless we are to assume
that a belief in life after death is religion,
we cannot conclude that there is any more
religion in the communication with disem-
bodied spirits than in ordinary human inter-
course. On the other hand, religious feeling
48
LEADERSHIP OF FEELING
may exist without the belief in the spirits of
the dead. At least, we find a worship of
nature which is seemingly independent of any
belief in disembodied spirits.
It remains now for us to ask whether the
intellectual recognition might be the result
of a process of reasoning. It is said that
men by reasoning have arrived at certain
beliefs which occasion the religious feeling.
No doubt this is true to some extent in the
development of religion. Here, however, as
elsewhere, the very beginnings of history are
sealed to us. As far back as we can go we
find men religious. We have to use again
the method of concomitant variation. Prac-
tically and historically we find religious feel-
ing and intellectual recognition coexisting.
Is recognition always in advance of feeling, or
vice versa? Sometimes intellect, sometimes
feeling, takes the lead; but feeling appears
to have the larger part. Take the case of
the classic religions. Here we have definitely
recognized objects of worship. We find feel-
ing in advance, a reverence in the early wor-
ship which is not justified by the intellectual
LEADERSHIP OF FEELING
conception of the time. Then, as the ethical
sense is developed, a higher intellectual con-
ception follows. When, as was well said, the
morals of Athens became higher than the
morals of Olympus, men were obliged either
to give up their worship, or else to confess
that their intellectual conception of the gods
misrepresented them. Thus the conception of
Zeus became an ideal which to the more pro-
found thinker was free from the traits which
made the early Zeus unworthy of thoughtful
worship. In Christianity, also, we find in
the same way the change to higher concep-
tions of the attributes of God following upon
the dissatisfaction of the feeling, the heart,
with existing conceptions. Feeling is con-
stantly demanding that the object of worship
shall be conceived as altogether worshipful.
Again, a sense of infinitude is essential to
religion in its highest form. Now, Hume
and Kant are only foremost among many in
urging that, so far as the reason is concerned,
we could reach no higher conception of life
than the manifestation found in the world
about us. We cannot reason from the world
50
FEELING A SOURCE OF ILLUSION
to a god having more wisdom and power
than is manifested in the world. We might
prove the divinity to be very good, very
mighty, but not absolutely good and mighty.
Yet the thought of Christianity has leaped
beyond any conception which could be based
on what is found in the external world, has
ascribed higher qualities to divinity than a
superficial view of the external world would
justify. Why? Because feeling has reached
a point in its development where it demands
this highest conception as essential. It can-
not rest in anything less than the infinite,
and so it urges the reason on.
It may be said that the influence of feeling
upon the intellect is sometimes a source of
illusions. It is true that illusions are created
by feeling, as when the lover attributes to the
object of his affection beauties of person and
qualities of mind not found in her by others.
Especially may illusion result when some
deeper feeling assumes that its object is found
in finite form, is already embodied in an indi-
vidual person. The religious soul clothes
some leader with all the glories which it de-
RELIGION IS FEELING
51
1
JUU
ICUL
mands in a perfect being, and then, if the leader
is found to be in any way frail, the temptation
comes to abandon the ideal altogether as being
itself an illusion. The feeling, however, which
guides reason and the life is that which relates
to the universe as a whole. Such feeling is
bound up with the human soul itself, it stands
nearest to man. It is not the person himself,
it only represents him ; but it is his most direct
representative, his innermost manifestation.
We conclude from this consideration of the
sources which have been proposed for the intel-
lectual recognition that, like the aesthetic and
the moral feeling, the religious feeling also is
in advance of intellectual recognition. Fur-
ther, as the result of our examination as a
whole, thus far, we reach our first definition of
religion. RELIGION IS FEELING, OR ESSEN-
TIALLY FEELING. This first definition is the
most abstract and most extensive of the various
definitions at which we may arrive. Our
later definitions are to add each something
more typical, until we reach finally the most
distinct and the highest type.
a
LL
.
CHAPTER V
SPENCER'S RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND
RELIGION -- SCHLEIERMACHER'S DEFINITION
OF RELIGION
WE say that religion is feeling. The ques-
tion at once follows, What kind of feeling?
Before we undertake to answer this question,
however, let us consider two illustrations of
our general theme, Herbert Spencer's recon-
ciliation of religion and science, and Schleier-
macher's definition of religion as feeling.
In order to reconcile religion and science it
would seem to be necessary, first to determine
the nature of each, and then to compare them.
Over against the recognized unity of science
under its different aspects are many religions.
We should naturally, therefore, try first of all
to find the common element in all religions to
oppose to the unity of science, discovering their
1« First Principles," Pt. I, Chaps. I-V.
52
SPENCER'S BASIS OF RELIGION
53
agreements and their differences, and throwing
aside the differences.
Spencer, however, proceeds in a somewhat
different way. Without entering much into
comparisons, he assumes that the common ele-
ment in all religions is the question as to the
origin of the world. To this question he finds
three kinds of answers, the atheistic, the pan-
theistic, and the theistic. Each and all of
these answers, however, he regards as unthink-
able, because they involve us in contradictions.
Hence he concludes that the basis of all reli-
gion is mystery, a question which cannot be
answered, and he fortifies his position by refer-
ence to statements of the theologians express-
ing their sense of mystery. By a similar
process he shows that the fundamental notions
of science-force, space, etc. — issue in self-
contradiction and mystery. Hence, religion
and science both rest on mystery. Religion
looks one way, recognizing the mystery itself,
the unknown and unknowable cause or basis of
the universe. Science looks in the other direc-
tion, and sees what is built upon this basis of
mystery. Science is the seemingly solid crust
54
OBJECTIONS TO SPENCER'S VIEW
of snow on which men erect a shelter, and
religion is the sense of the vacancy beneath.
Have we here a real reconciliation ? We
meet with difficulties at once. In the first
place, religion is not an answer to a question,
certainly not to a question as to the origin of
the world. In the history of religion the cos-
mogonists come late ; people did not wait for
the religious feeling until they knew how the
world was made. The first question of the
cosmogonists, too, concerns the arrangement
of the world rather than its creation. For the
most part the older divinities took shape out
of the thought of the spirits of the dead, or
out of the personification of natural objects
and forces. They represent, not the creators
of these forces and objects, but their powers,
the help or the peril which may come from
them. Agni is not represented as the creator
of fire, but is the power of fire. Poseidon is
not the creator of the ocean, but the personifi-
cation of its power and majesty. Religion is
not the recognition or the worship of the
creator of things, but of the divinity in things.
The question, “ Who made it?" is not natural
30
RELIGION NOT CONCERNED WITH ORIGINS 55
to the child or to the savage. At times it
may appear so, but in such cases we have to
ask how much has entered the thought of the
child or the savage from those with whom he
has come in contact. Ordinarily the child
and the savage recognize three sorts of things,
inorganic, organic, and manufactured. The
inorganic is simply taken for granted as exist-
ing, the organic is thought of as having grown,
and the manufactured as put together. Life,
they think, simply grew; Topsy's answer, “I
'spect I grow'd," tells their view of it. In
our own time also the question as to creation,
taken alone, holds an unimportant position,
and the term “ Creator” is less used than
formerly. The question as to the origin of
the world is scientific rather than theological,
scientific, that is, in the larger sense. Religion
may use the answer, but cannot give the an-
swer. God made the flower, but how it was
made science alone can tell. Religion will
find God in the world; how it finds him does
not matter. The question that religion first
asks is not, - Who made the world?” but
56 Who will help me and whom shall I thank
ta
56
NECESSITY OF MYSTERY
for my favors ?” Religion has to do, not
with the past, but with the present and the
future.
In the second place, Spencer's use of the
term “mystery” is ambiguous. We do in-
deed owe a debt to him for emphasizing that
which is one of the great elements in religion.
Although the place which it fills is secondary,
although that which calls forth the religious
feeling is not so much what is known to be
not known as what is known, still a religion
without mystery would be extremely superfi-
cial and unworthy. A religion which should
assume that everything is accounted for by its
formulas would be imperfect and prosaic. As
the darkness adds to life the element of awe,
so the sense of mystery adds impressiveness
to religion. Take the thought of death and
of the future life. A religion which saw the
future life continuing our ordinary relations,
and took from death its mystery, might bring
to some a certain comfort; but we should lose
in it an important element which belongs
properly to religion. “Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the
1
.
NATURE OF RELIGIOUS MYSTERY
57
heart of man, the things which God hath pre-
pared for them that love him.” 1
The mystery, however, which Spencer dis-
covers is that which appears to the outsider
who looks upon religion to study and analyze
it, not the mystery felt by the worshipper be-
fore his God. The worshipper is fully satisfied
with the answer which he receives to the ques-
tion, who made the world ; he finds in it no
self-contradiction; for him it simply testifies
to the power and grandeur of his divinity.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth ; "2 the worshipper accepts the an-
swer as a simple fact, and rests in the great-
ness and the glory of it. This is the mystery
which the theologians have recognized in the
object worshipped, the mystery which Isaiah
found ; “ Neither are your ways my ways, saith
the Lord.”3 It is not, however, the whole of
the religion of the theologians nor the essen-
tial part of it. What they find essential is the
positive aspect of religion, the great truths and
facts about God.
Further, religion and science stand less in
1 Is. Ixiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 9. 2 Gen. i. 1. 8 Is. lv. 8.
58
IDEAL METHOD OF RECONCILIATION
1
>
antithesis to each other than Spencer recog-
nizes. If it is true of science that it builds
upon mystery, the same is equally true of
religion. Religion has its structure as truly
as science. Each has its system of doctrines,
each its positive beliefs, each its mystery
veiled by its beliefs. Spencer's reconciliation
sweeps away the structures of both, all that
is positive in both, and leaves only the empty
places where they were.
The ideal reconciliation would find some-
thing in common between religion and
science, not in their negative, but in their
positive aspects. There were at one time two
theories in regard to the formation of the
earth, the igneous and the aqueous, but we
do not hear of them now. How have they
been reconciled? If Spencer's method of
reconciliation between science and religion
had been followed, the argument would have
been, that the world was in some way formed,
that neither theory was adequate to explain
the formation, and that the theories were
thus reconciled in that both were impotent.
If, however, while we grant that either theory
IDEAL METHOD OF RECONCILIATION
59
by itself is inadequate, we recognize that
each has contributed something toward the
final explanation, then we have a reconcilia-
tion which is no longer negative, but positive.
Spencer himself gives us a beautiful type of
positive reconciliation in his solution of the
problem between the a priori and the experi-
mental schools of philosophy.1 According to
the a priori philosophers we construct the
world under categories born in us. The
experience-philosophers hold that the mind
is a blank at the outset, and that all
ideas are the result of experience. Spencer
reconciles the two by saying that we do
come into the world with innate ideas, but
that these ideas are the result of our in-
herited experience. Looking at present fact,
the a priori philosophers are right; looking
at ultimate fact, the experience-philosophers.
The a priori philosophers, dealing in theories,
are found to be the school which actually
recognizes facts as they are; the experience-
philosophers, insisting upon fact, and urg-
ing that all ideas result from the pressure of
1« First Principles,” Pt. I, Chap. V.
00
SCHLEIERMACHER'S DEFINITION
outward conditions, are found to be wrong
in fact, but right in ultimate theory. Grant-
ing what is assumed, we have here a perfect
type of reconciliation. It is very interesting
in itself, and it illustrates the method which
we should follow in seeking a reconciliation
between religion and science.
Let us turn now to the definition of religion
given by Schleiermacher, the theologian and
philosopher who has made most of feeling as
an element in religion. We shall find his
presentation inadequate; but no writer has had
more influence on modern theological thought.
He is one of the pillars of Hercules, with Hegel
the other, that mark the entrance through
which one passes into modern theology.
We find two statements by Schleiermacher,
the one popular, the other scientific, the
“ Reden ”1 and the “Glaubenslehre."2 The
“ Reden” were addressed to the cultivated
people of his time, who had little sympathy
16 Reden über die Religion,'' 1799.
26 Der Christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der
evangelischen Kirche;" 1st ed., 1821-1822; 2d ed.,
1830-1831.
THE “REDEN"
61
with religion. He undertook to win them
to the support of religion, trying not to
make them religious, but to prove to them
that they were religious, or at least had
within them the germs of the religious life.
There is a certain sophistry in these dis-
courses, but it is the result of his purpose.
His method is that of the hunter or soldier,
who draws a cordon around those whom he is
to take and then closes in upon them. Religion
is feeling; no one can deny that he has feel-
ing; therefore no one can deny that he is
religious. This is the first statement, and it
is against this that the objection made by
Hegel to Schleiermacher's definition has its
full force. The circle, however, is drawn
closer and closer as we proceed. Feeling
must be healthy and normal; it must be
complete, toward all. Complete feeling
should be not in successive moments, but
toward the whole at once. But this in-
volves the unity of the world. Feeling, then,
must be toward the Weltgeist. The Weltgeist
may be either personal or impersonal ;
Schleiermacher himself recognizes not a per-
V
62
THE DEFINITION QUALIFIED
12
LU
sonal, but a spiritual God. In the first
edition of the “Reden,” a certain intellectual
element, Anschauung, was added to the modi-
fications of feeling; but this is omitted in
later editions.
Schleiermacher's most general statement,
that feeling is religion, must be taken in its
more developed form, in which the qualifica-
tions have been added. Between the first
general statement and this later developed
form there is a seeming contradiction which
he never explained. It is possible that he
considered such broken feelings as are com-
monly experienced not true feeling. If, for
instance, we say that all sound is music, musi-
cians would at once contradict us. But sup-
pose we say that sound is not to be judged
by the accident of noises, but must be left
to follow out its laws instead of being broken
up by its environment. In this way we
could make out a good case, and it may be
that Schleiermacher had some such idea of
feeling. He speaks very slightingly of super-
ficial feeling, as for example that of the woman
who goes aimlessly about in the woods exclaim-
THE DEFINITION QUALIFIED
63
ing at pretty flowers. If we ask what test
shall be applied to ascertain how far feeling
is profound, the only test is one not expressly
admitted by Schleiermacher, although he hints
at it, that the more profound feeling is that
which touches the greater environment. By
this test we should find that the feeling which
relates to only a small part of the environment
is not true feeling; true feeling would be the
contact of the whole man with the whole
environment.
Schleiermacher's position has a strategical
advantage. No intellectual statement is neces-
sary for religion. Religion is distinct alike
from intellect and from will. It prompts
directly to no act. Thus religion is freed
from responsibility for the dogmas of the
church and for the wars and persecutions for
which it has been blamed. It is like music.
Music is pure, though it may accompany
armies; we cannot object to it that it has
been used by people who were guilty of
crimes; we cannot complain of its use in
teaching of which we do not approve. So it
is with religion.
64
THE “GLAUBENSLEHRE"
In the “Glaubenslehre” we have Schleier-
macher's later statement. Here again he
insists upon feeling; but the account which
he gives of it and the method of presentation
are both different. The style is no longer
poetic and voluptuous, as in the “Reden,” but
dry and formal, the discussion of a system of
theology addressed to thoughtful students.
All feelings now are gathered into one; abso-
lute dependence not merely accompanies reli-
gion, but is religion. It is discouraging to
see the misunderstandings which have gathered
about this statement. The Duke of Argyll,
for instance, says 1 that if the sense of absolute
dependence is religion, a great deal is included
which cannot be called religion ; a man cling-
ing to a log in the stream is absolutely
dependent upon it, but he has no religious
feeling toward it. So D'Alviella,2 when he says
that according to this definition of religion
a man would have to worship everything, from
his own limbs to the law of gravitation. In
1 - Unity of Nature," p. 453.
2 Count Goblet d'Alviella, “ Hibbert Lectures," 1891,
p. 69.
ITS “ABSOLUTE DEPENDENCE”
65
these criticisms we find the same misconcep-
tion. They fail to recognize the full meaning
with which Schleiermacher uses the term
“ absolute.” The Duke of Argyll does not
distinguish it from partial, D’Alviella disre-
gards it altogether. When a man is floating
on a log in the stream, the log is indeed a
sine qua non; but there is a difference between
a sine qua non and absolute dependence; the
man is not wholly dependent upon the log
alone, but on many other things beside, such
as air and food and warmth. In the same
way a man could not exist by the law of gravi-
tation alone. In all these relations the man's
dependence is partial, not absolute. The
absolute dependence of Schleiermacher is far
more complete and intimate and penetrating.
If that on which one is absolutely dependent
is present, one needs nothing more. Absolute
dependence is that which goes through and
behind all things. The universe shares this
dependence, not a sense, but the sense, of abso-
lute dependence; for there is but one unity of
the universe and one spiritual centre, and one
possibility of absolute dependence.
66
HOW MISCONCEIVED
Even Pfleiderer1 fails to reach the real
meaning of this absolute dependence. If the
sense of dependence is religion, he says, then
the Mohammedan is the most religious of
men; for he is a fatalist; for him all is
appointed, and he submits to the will of
Allah. But this is superficial, external de-
pendence. The Moslem accepts his fate at the
will of Allah simply as one who is dependent
upon the power of another which is greater
than his own. Absolute dependence is some-
thing more intimate than any fate dependent
upon another's will. It is penetration, through
and through. We cannot live, think, feel, be
anything, merely in ourselves. Absolute de-
pendence is not that of one personality upon
another over against it, disposing of it as it
will; absolute dependence is the relation to
the spiritual centre in whom we live and
move and have our being, and without whom
we are nothing.
Suppose the submission were unwilling.
Would such dependence be religion ? Willing
166 The Development of Theology in Germany since
Kant,” trans. by J. Frederick Smith, Bk. II, Chap. II.
THREE STAGES IN DEVELOPMENT
67
JY
or unwilling, from Pfleiderer's standpoint it
must be religion. But if a person submits
unwillingly, he has not yet reached the sense
of absolute dependence; he still thinks of
himself as something apart and independent
in that he protests.
Schleiermacher recognizes three stages in
psychical development. In the first we have
confused self-consciousness. The dog has no
distinct sense of his own individuality or of
the world as over against him. This is the
life of the child before he can say “I.” In
the second stage there is action and reaction,
the relation of give and take, the man over
against the world. Man depends partly on
himself, partly on the things about him, and
in turn many things depend upon him. He
affects the outside world, and the world
reacts upon him. Then comes the third
stage, the sense of absolute dependence, all
this little action and reaction disappearing.
The sense of partial independence is lost.
Man utters the cry of absolute dependence,
and in so doing speaks not only for himself,
but as the high priest of the universe.
68
DEPENDENCE THE FINAL STAGE
This sense of absolute dependence is not
merely something which forms a part of reli-
gion, as with Calvin ; it is religion itself,
nothing else than religion, and religion noth-
ing else than it. It follows that the perfectly
religious man would be one who should live
wholly in the sense of absolute dependence ;
absolute irreligion would be found in the
entire absence of this sense; and the degree
of one's religion would be marked by the
greater or less degree of ease with which the
mind entered into the state of dependence.
Thus some men are more religious than
others, and the same man may be more reli-
gious at one time than at another, because it
is more difficult to reach the state of absolute
dependence at certain times and under certain
conditions than at other times and under other
conditions.
CU
CHAPTER VI
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF SCHLEIER-
MACHER'S DEFINITION — CRITICISM OF THE
DEFINITION - EXAMINATION OF THE AT-
TEMPTS WHICH HAVE BEEN MADE TO SUPPLY
WHAT IS LACKING IN THE DEFINITION
LET us see what is the psychological view
on which Schleiermacher bases his definition.
At this point we shall find Weissenborn's
66 Introduction”i most helpful. According
to Schleiermacher, the intellect and the will
occupy two extremes like the poles of a mag-
net. The will is to be moved by the intel-
lect, but how is the intellect to reach the
will? Now in passing from one pole of the
magnet to the other a point of indifference is
found. In the same way, as we pass from
the intellect to the will, we find an inter-
mediate point which is neither will nor intel-
1 Georg Weissenborn, “ Vorlesungen über Schleiermachers
Dialektik und Dogmatik.”'
69
70
.
HOW FEELING FINDS GOD
JLU
lect. This neutral, undifferentiated point is
feeling, the centre of gravity, if we may use
the term, of human nature. Intellect acts on
feeling, and through feeling reaches the will.
We have already seen that feeling may in-
fluence intellect; but in this case intellect
reacts upon feeling before feeling acts upon
will. In feeling we have the undifferentiated
man, the individual as such, while intellect
and will represent the differentiated man.
We can now understand better why feeling
is the only medium by which we come into
contact with God. Action and reaction im-
ply identity. The self and the external
world are one. The external world acts
on us through the intellect, and we react on
the external world through the will. Subject
and object are two aspects of universal being.
The undifferentiated centre of being, where
subject and object are one, the absolute unity
of being, that is God. Now since feeling is
the undifferentiated point in us, it is in feel-
ing that we find God; it is through feeling
that we come into relation with his attri-
butes. God cannot be reached by thought,
1
SCHLEIERMACHER'S THEOLOGY
71
for thought implies differentiation, and has
to do with what is separate from us and over
against us. Feeling finds God — yet only in
part, only as he is found in ourselves. The
intellect is always over against the object.
Feeling, finding itself one with the object,
cannot state the object in terms of conscious-
ness. In the attempt to reach truth intellect
thus gives us philosophy, feeling gives us
religion.
Again, as God is absolute form, and chaos
is absolute matter, both God and chaos are
unthinkable, and therefore can never be fully
known. We cannot conceive anything so
abstract as to have no content, anything so
concrete as to have no form. Therefore, the
two extremes, the absolutely universal and
the absolutely individual, are unthinkable and
unknowable.
We have here extreme agnosticism united
with profound religious feeling, an emotional
religion with an agnostic philosophy. This
agnosticism excludes all dogma, and the the-
ology of Schleiermacher consists simply in the
translation of various dogmas into terms of
72 AGREEMENT WITH KANT AND SPINOZA
absolute dependence. God is that which cor-
responds to and makes possible the sense of
dependence ; whatever is not dependent is ex-
cluded from theology. The divine eternity,
for instance, is in itself foreign to the thought
of dependence, or rather includes more than
the thought of dependence; but although God
is eternal outside of time, yet time and all
temporal relations depend upon him, and thus
the divine eternity in this aspect represents a
form of dependence. The goodness of God is
the dependence upon him of the moral law.
The compassion or tenderness of God may not
be translated into terms of dependence ; it is a
phrase which, according to Schleiermacher, be-
longs rather to homiletical and devotional use
than to theology.
To a certain extent Schleiermacher agrees
with both Kant and Spinoza; with Kant he
recognizes the fact that we are powerless to
know the reality of the outward universe ; with
Spinoza he recognizes the absolute unity mani-
fested in the universe within us and without.
We find in Schleiermacher the same subjectiv-
ity as in Kant, and both recognize the ultimate
SCHLEIERMACHER'S MYSTICISM
73
7
foundation of things as being in feeling and not
in thought. With Schleiermacher, however, the
positive finds expression more readily than the
negative. His recognition of the agnostic prin-
ciple is after all cold ; but in the thought of
the absolute unity, in the recognition of the
world as being in God and dependent upon
God, he turns toward Spinoza with an enthusi-
asm of sympathy and reverence.
We have seen that in Schleiermacher's view
no divine attributes can be recognized except
those which grow out of the relation of abso-
lute dependence in which we stand toward God.
In such a conception of religion there is little
room for forms of worship. Little praise can
be offered, no direct obedience is possible. We
have only on the one hand mystery, as in the
Unknowable of Spencer, the recognition of that
which cannot be formulated, and on the other
hand mysticism, the recognition or sense of
a community between the individual life and
the absolute life. This sense of community
between the human and the divine varies in
form. It may be of the sort which underlies
all profound, positive religion, the mysticism
ILU
FIRST GENERAL CRITICISM
of Paul when he says, “In him we live and
move and have our being," i the mysticism
which takes form in the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit. This is the normal form of mysticism.
Another sort results, abnormal and fantastic,
when the individual life, believing itself one
with the absolute life, assumes that its thoughts
are the thoughts of God, and mistakes the
vagaries of the imagination for divine revela-
tion. We have to distinguish also between
mysticism and pantheism. In pantheism God
is lost in the world, and is no longer related
to it; he has no reality except in nature, and
ceases to be self-related and to have conscious-
ness. Now, religion implies some term of self.
Therefore no religion is possible in real pan-
theism. When men say that they are panthe-
ists they usually mean that they are mystics
like Paul. For this mysticism there is per-
haps no better formula than Schleiermacher's
sense of absolute dependence.2
The first general criticism to be made in re-
gard to the definition of Schleiermacher is that,
while it is apparently psychological and sub-
1 Acts xvii. 28. 2 See also Chap. X, pp. 167–169.
CY
MERITS OF THE DEFINITION
75
jective, it really is dogmatic. Schleiermacher
gives no evidence that he has studied religious
life in its various manifestations, and arrived at
his definition after careful and accurate analy-
sis. He has reasoned to feeling and not from
it. Like Spencer, he has made the content of
his religion, his definition of religion, to fit his
philosophy. From the intellectual side the
definitions of both Spencer and Schleiermacher
fit their philosophies ; their thought has place
for the kind of religion which they recognize.
But if they had begun by studying the reli-
gions of the world, the different ways in which
the religious life has found expression, Spencer
would have found in religion more than the
sense of mystery, and Schleiermacher some-
thing besides the sense of dependence.
Yet with all its imperfections the definition
of Schleiermacher has had a great influence.
What are the elements of its power? First,
all that is positive in it is indisputably true.
Absolute dependence is an essential of all true
religion. It is not the element first reached
either by nations or by the individual life; but
when once the conception of religion is com-
76
THE DEFINITION INCOMPLETE
plete, it is found to be at the centre and heart
of all. In the second place, the sense of de-
pendence is a feeling more easily awakened and
stimulated in the religious spirit than any
other, partly because it is independent of any
argument, and partly because it is also inde-
pendent of any mood. Again, one religious
feeling when excited naturally introduces
others by the power of association. When,
therefore, we recognize the truth of absolute
dependence, there follows also, in some degree,
the fulness of the other feelings. We think
that all have arisen out of the first feeling,
whereas in reality they have come simply
through association with it. Finally, the defi-
nition of Schleiermacher rejects in all that has
grown up about religion whatever is merely
formal and has no true relation to human life.
All creeds and theories which are without this
vital relation it casts aside as not belonging to
the reality of religion.
It is possible, however, to make our criticism
of this definition more careful and profound.
Religion corresponds to the whole nature.
ATTEMPTS TO COMPLEMENT IT
77
Now in its completeness the reason involves
three ideas, truth, goodness, and beauty, and
any philosophy of religion should recognize
all three elements. But as Kant recognized
only the second, excluding the possibility of
knowing God, so Schleiermacher, although his
æsthetic sense is strong, recognizes only the
first element, the absolute unity. The lan-
guage which Goethe puts into the mouth of
Faust when he is seducing Margaret is an ex-
pression of Schleiermacher's religion :
6 Wer darf ihn nennen?
Und wer bekennen :
Ich glaub' ihn?”
Here the need in religion of the recognition
of other elements than feeling is plain enough ;
the recognition of the moral law at least must
be added. If Faust had been in the mood of
Kant, and had recognized the absolute as good,
the result might have been different. It is
not enough for religion to tell us that we are
absolutely dependent; there must be found
in it the elements which shall give an impulse
to the life.
To complement the definition of Schleier-
78
ELEMENT OF FREEDOM ADDED
VO
macher, his followers have added to it the
sense of freedom. Freedom and dependence
are antithetical ; each needs the other. Yet
at first sight each seems antagonistic to the
other. A reconciliation is found in the as-
sumption that freedom grows out of the sense
of dependence. According to Pfleiderer, 1 con-
sciousness of ourselves and consciousness of
the universe, of the me and of the not me, these
are the two elements in complete consciousness.
They are antithetical and opposite, self-con-
sciousness demanding freedom, asserting itself,
the world-consciousness recognizing limit, ne-
cessity. We have, then, a situation which
involves the worst kind of servitude, the sense
of dependence accompanied by the conscious-
ness in the soul that it was made for freedom.
From this servitude and strife some escape
must at least be sought. It cannot be found
in either element; it must be found in that
on which both elements depend, in God.
This is an interesting and important view
of religion. It is another expression of what
Kant has said in the eloquent passage on the
1 " Religionsphilosophie,” 3d ed., 1893, pp. 257, 258.
90
ELEMENT OF FREEDOM ADDED
79
moral law and the heavens.1 In form the
reconciliation is perfect. There is no compro-
mise. Both self and the universe are depend-
ent upon God; both are divinely appointed.
The universe is the sphere within which free-
dom is to be exercised and the aim of self
worked out. The world, instead of being the
enemy of man's freedom, becomes the servant
of his freedom. At first I feel myself in
collision with the world about me; I am but
a point in it; I find myself constantly thwarted :
but I am God's creature, and this is God's
world ; I am sent to accomplish certain ends ;
the difficulties which I must overcome, them-
selves a part of God's world as I am part, must
be the very things by which I am to develop
my highest life and so work out the ends
which I am to accomplish. Or suppose that
a servant tries to do his duty among other
servants who shirk their duty and persecute
the first servant; the first servant will chafe
at first, but when he considers how dependent
all are upon the master, he is lifted above all
anxiety to satisfy the others. In the same
1“ Critique of Practical Reason,” Pt. II, Conclusion.
80
THIS COMPLEMENT NOT REAL
way the fear of breaking the moral law lifts
one above all other fears. The sense of de-
pendence upon God thus frees men from the
sense of dependence upon their environment.1
All this is satisfactory so far as it goes. Yet
we do not find in these statements a real com-
plement to the definition of Schleiermacher.
The sense of freedom does not supply what is
lacking in the definition which finds religion
in the sense of absolute dependence; nor can
it be regarded as a fundamental element in
any definition of religion. If we were so to
regard it, we should be attempting, in the first
place, to put that which is secondary on the
same plane with that which is primary. For
if we grant that freedom is the outgrowth, the
result, of dependence, we have obviously pri-
mary and secondary elements, and to place
these two elements on the same plane is not
properly to define. Further, to consider the
sense of freedom a fundamental element of
religion, is to put the subjective in the place
of the objective. Religion is in one way or
1 See also Biedermann (Alois Emanuel), “Christliche
Dogmatik," 2d ed., 2 vols., 1884–1885.
FREEDOM A RESULT OF RELIGION
81
16V
another a relation between man and some power
outside of man, and nothing can be a funda-
mental element of religion which does not in-
volve this relation. The sense of dependence
does involve it; but the sense of freedom
touches nothing outside of ourselves, it in-
volves only a sort of self-relation. Again,
the sense of freedom is not real, but formal.
Of course, what we mean by freedom in this
connection is not freedom of the will, but
freedom of development. Nothing is more
formal than such freedom, and nothing may
be more worthless than what is merely formal.
Freedom is worthy or not, according to the
use which is made of it; it is sought, not
for itself, but for that which it gives one the
power to do. If we compare the freedom of
the drunkard who refuses to take the pledge
because he “will not sign away his liberty"
with the freedom which Luther desired, we see
how entirely formal the thought of freedom is.
No, the sense of freedom is a resultant of re-
ligion. To include it among the fundamental
elements of religion is a mistake. How, then,
shall we complement the definition of Schleier-
THE REAL COMPLEMENT
macher ? Religion is more than the sense of
dependence, but to add the sense of freedom
is a mechanical suggestion only. Schleier-
macher's definition is true in so far as it insists
upon one element in religion, and that the
most profound and important. To comple-
ment it we must seek the other elements which
stand in the same relation to religion. In the
thought of dependence we have the recogni-
tion of absolute unity, of universal truth ; but
goodness and beauty are the other ideas of
the reason, and Schleiermacher's definition is
lacking in that it recognizes only unity, and
provides no place for beauty and goodness.
Yet it is due largely to the recognition of
goodness and beauty that we have worship.
The worship which comes from the sense of
dependence alone is much like that found in
the Upanishads, the expression only of the idea
that God is the all, and that all depends upon
him. Not only is such worship in itself
limited, but the controlling force of religion
in life is lessened. In the sense of dependence
we find no impulse to largeness and fulness
of life ; the religion which it expresses is one
CERTAIN ASSUMPTIONS EXAMINED
83
of withdrawal and absorption rather than of
self-manifestation.
The thought of Schleiermacher involves
certain assumptions not infrequently made.
The first is that religion is primarily a rela-
tion to the infinite. This is in a way true.
The conscious recognition, however, of the
infinite as the object of religion comes late ;
religion does not begin with it. . The savage
first recognizes his divinity as stronger than
himself, and what he seeks is enough strength
to help him in his needs; then the thoughts
of goodness and beauty lead the worshipper
to a higher plane, and last of all comes the
realization of the infinite. Now, if we ap-
proach this realization through previous con-
ceptions of truth and goodness and beauty,
we can carry into our thought of the infinite
some content; but if we start with the thought
of the infinite, our conception remains a form,
abstract and empty, without content.
I said just now that religion does not begin
with a recognition of the infinite. There is,
U
1Cf. F. Max Müller, “ Hibbert Lectures,” 1878, Lecture 1,
pp. 11-26.
84
CERTAIN ASSUMPTIONS EXAMINED
however, in the trust or fear of the early re-
ligions an element which separates this trust
or fear from ordinary trust and fear. We
may find that this element is a sense of the
infinite, the recognition of a power which is
the negative of the finite. If so, then we may
say that the sense of relation to the infinite
is found at the two extremes of religion, its
beginning and its end. We see this in the
development of Brahmanism, where the early
trust or fear changes until at last we have
the thought of the absolute, and nothing more.
At these extremes the relation is found, al-
though of a kind which we can hardly recog-
nize as religion ; but if the idea of relation
to the infinite were an essential element in
religion, we should find it at all stages of
religious development.
The other assumption involved in Schleier-
macher's thought is that the infinite is pure
abstraction, the negation of all content. We
have just seen that this is the conception which
results if we begin with the thought of the
infinite. But we have also seen that if we
approach the infinite from the side of truth
THE INFINITE NOT ABSTRACTION
85
and goodness and beauty, we carry into the
conception of the infinite the content of these
ideas of the reason. We find thus in the
infinite, instead of pure abstraction, the abso-
lutely concrete.
CHAPTER VII
THE SECOND DEFINITION OF RELIGION: THE
FEELING TOWARD THE SUPERNATURAL-
DEFINITION OF THE SUPERNATURAL — SU-
PERSTITION - THE SUPERNATURAL CONSID-
ERED AS NEGATIVE
WE reached as our first definition of religion,
the most abstract possible, the statement that
religion is feeling.) To reach our next defini-
tion we must ask, What kind of feeling? The
answer will necessarily be unsatisfactory; for
this second definition, like the first, must be
inclusive, covering nothing that is not found in
the very lowest forms of religion.
What, then, is the sort of feeling which we
call religion? We are using the term “ religion”
now in its widest sense, including superstition.
How are we to define feeling so that another
shall know what we mean ? Feeling is subjec-
tive. A person who has had no experience of
1 Page 51.
FEELING TOWARD THE SUPERNATURAL 87
a feeling cannot understand it through an-
other's description; we have to refer to the
object toward which the feeling is directed.
We say, for instance, that a man is purse-
proud; there is a qualitative distinction be-
tween such pride and family pride. Here we
have had to call the intellect to our help, to
provide the trellis for the vine; thought has
been necessary to bring feeling to higher con-
sciousness. So in religion feeling depends for
its development upon the intellect.
We shall be helped in forming our second
definition of religion if we look at the result
reached by the savage. The religious feeling
of the savage is aroused by some object which
has influenced his life for good or for evil with-
out the medium of the physical organs through
which such influence is ordinarily exercised,
that is, by spirits of the dead, or by a plant or
a stick or a stone, which, without any external,
physical contact, but simply by good will or ill
will, have made themselves felt in his life.
The action of such objects he considers divine
or magical. They produce an effect without
resort to the means by which the will ordina-
88
SECOND DEFINITION OF RELIGION
U
!
rily manifests itself. Now this production of
an effect apart from the means usually em-
ployed is what we commonly call supernatural
as distinguished from natural.
Let us take, then, as our second definition of
religion, THE FEELING TOWARD THE SUPER-
NATURAL.) I have said that this definition is
inclusive. If we think of the various forms
in which religion is found, we see that all in-
volve some reference to something supernatural,
using the term “supernatural” in its broadest
and vaguest sense. The Buddhist recognizes
among a number of divinities no object of
supreme worship; but his whole life is con-
trolled by the thought of what is to happen
after death. In the Hebrew religion we have
the barest, most abstract thought of life after
death, but there is the recognition of Yahweh
as the controlling power in this life, an intense
impression of a living, divine power. From
our own present point of view, religion is not
only a belief in the supernatural, but a feeling
toward it, and this feeling affects the life
1 Cf. Count Goblet d'Alviella, “ Hibbert Lectures," 1891,
p. 47.
2
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL
89
equally with belief. Besides its inclusiveness,
our definition has this advantage, that it offers
room for development. We can rise from the
lowest type with which we begin to higher
types, without abandoning or changing the
original form of definition. For our feeling
toward the supernatural will vary as our
thought of the supernatural varies.
What do we mean, however, by supernat-
ural? What do we mean by natural ? The
term “nature” is of course used in many
senses, and a definition which should include
all would hardly be serviceable to us in this
connection. What we here mean by nature is
the universe considered as a composite whole,
and the supernatural is that which stands in
antithesis to this composite whole. Now there
are two aspects under which we may view a
composite whole. First, we may think of it as
regards the relation of the parts to one another.
If the whole is more than a mere aggregate,
then the parts have a certain orderly, definite
relation one to another. Anything which in-
terferes with this usual relation of the parts to
one another may then be called supernatural ;
90
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL
the supernatural will be the disturbing influ-
ence. But, secondly, the term “ composite
whole,” in which we have unity of combination,
may also involve a non-composite whole not
made up of elements brought together; a
whole, that is, forming a unity in and through
which all these elements of the composite whole
have their being, and which manifests itself
through them all. We may say, for example,
that in one sense space is an aggregate of ex-
tensions ; but these extensions would have no
significance if it were not for space as a whole ;
space is that in which all spaces have their
being. This, however, is an imperfect illustra-
tion. The one perfect illustration is the human
mind. From one point of view our conscious-
ness would seem to be made up of various
thoughts and feelings. In another aspect all
these thoughts and feelings, these various ele-
ments of consciousness, håve no meaning with-
out the unity of consciousness in and through
which they exist, and which in turn manifests
itself through them. The human mind is thus
a unity manifesting itself in and through
diversity.
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL
91
Y
Spinoza's use of the term “nature” helps to
make this clear. He speaks of the natura na-
turata, the body or effect of the natura natu-
rans, the unity which manifests itself through
all things. The natura naturata of Spinoza
corresponds to that which we here call natu-
ral, his natura naturans to what we call super-
natural. Our use of the term “nature” is only
one of several which are possible, but although
it is used in other senses, the sense in which
we are here to understand it is not forced,
but is the more usual sense. When, for in-
stance, we speak of the natural sciences, we
mean those sciences which refer to the rela-
tions which natural objects bear to one an-
other; we do not speak of psychology as a
natural science, but we do so speak of min-
eralogy. In theology also the “natural man"
is he who conceives that life consists in the
abundance of the things which he possesses ;
that is, he lives in the nature which we have
described as composite ; in the state of grace
he has been taken out of this composite life
and brought into relation with the absolute
life. The poetic use does indeed more nearly
92
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL
C
approach the natura naturans of Spinoza ;
here nature is personified. Ordinarily, how-
ever, as I have said, the term “nature” desig-
nates the universe considered as a composite
whole.
We saw that in antithesis to nature viewed
as a composite whole, whose elements stood
in orderly relation to one another, the super-
natural was that which interfered with the
usual relations of the parts, the disturbing
influence. When, however, nature is viewed
as a composite whole which exists in and
through a non-composite unity, then the su-
pernatural is this non-composite unity. The
thought of the supernatural does not at all of
necessity imply a conception of spiritual be-
ings. In Buddhism we have no absolute
divinity, no god ; the religion is in a most
profound sense atheistic. Yet it is a religion
because it is a feeling toward the supernatural.
With the thought of life as a part of nature,
there is constant relation to that which may
or may not come after death, and thus the
supernatural, that which is beyond nature, is
a controlling power in atheistic Buddhism.
TWO KINDS OF RELIGION SUGGESTED
93
No, in itself the supernatural is simply a
negative term. It does not necessarily imply
even superiority. As the term “superfluity"
merely designates that which is in excess, with-
out implying that the excess is different in
quality from that which was enough to fill the
measure, so “supernatural” means primarily
only something which we do not include in
the term “nature”; only its negative relation
to the natural is implied. Experience, how-
ever, adds a content to terms which at the
outset are only negative. The term “inor-
ganic,” for example, depends at first for its
significance upon the term “organic," and is
simply something which has no organs; but
as a matter of fact it does have for us a posi-
tive, definite meaning, because we have learned
by experience what sort of things belong to
the inorganic world. In the same way we
shall find, as we proceed, that we can give to
the term “supernatural” a positive content.
Two kinds of religion, then, are suggested
by our definition, the feeling toward the
supernatural as negative, and the feeling
toward the supernatural as positive.
94
SUPERNATURAL AS NEGATIVE
The thinnest form of the supernatural is
that from which all definite content is ex-
cluded, and there is found only the vague
sense of the supernatural. Suppose that a
person wakes in the night and puts his hand
upon a dead body, something unmistakably
dead. He is startled; he experiences a sensa-
tion of the unusual; he may be afraid. Yet
there is nothing to fear. What, then, is the
nature of his feeling? It is the sense of the
supernatural. So far as the individual is con-
cerned, death is the breaking up of the natural
world. The contact with the dead body
brings us abruptly into definite touch with
something which implies the nothingness of
the visible, natural world. Similarly, in look-
ing over a precipice, we are moved, not so
much by the fear of falling, as by the sense of
a vastness which is alien to us. We overcome
this feeling after a little ; and in the same way
those who are accustomed to contact with the
dead — surgeons, undertakers, and others —
lose the sense of fear. It is the feeling that
we are touching the limit of the natural, and
are as it were chilled by the breath of the
S
.
SUPERNATURAL AS NEGATIVE
supernatural, which disturbs us; as soon as
the experience becomes familiar, the feeling
passes. .
Some experience a similar feeling when in
the dark. An easy method of explaining this
fear, adopted of late, is to throw the responsi-
bility back upon our savage ancestors. It is
said that they were timid in the dark because
they were then liable to be attacked, and
that we inherit an organic reminiscence. This
theory, however, is hardly sufficient. Our
ancestors were quite as likely to be attacking
as they were to be attacked, and we cannot
think that they were a timid set. No, it is
simply that in the darkness the world familiar
to us is swept away. Our world is made up
primarily of color; that is the aspect under
which it usually presents itself to us. In
the darkness this is gone, and a strange world
is about us, the negation of our familiar world.
As in the contact with death, the realization
that we had reached the limit of our familiar
world chilled us, so now we are again chilled
UCU
1 See Charles Lamb, " Essays of Elia,'' 66 Witches and
other Night Fears."
96
SUPERSTITION AND RELIGION
as the familiar world is blotted out by the
darkness. It is the negation of the natural,
the sense of the supernatural in this first,
primary meaning of it which has aroused fear.
We have seen already how such a fear creates
an object for itself in the thought of a person
under the bed or behind the door; the un-
canny feeling needs an object and so creates
one; the object does not create the feeling,
but the feeling the object.
Superstition stands in a curious relation to
religion. In all accounts of all forms of
religion superstitions have their place. Yet
when we speak otherwise than historically,
we consider superstition as something over
against religion. We call the highest forms
of savage worship superstition, and we speak
of that which we criticise in present forms of
worship as superstition. From one point of
view superstition is opposed to religion; from
another it is related to it. They must have
something in common, yet with a great differ-
ence. Superstition is the feeling toward the
supernatural as negative, religion the feeling
toward the supernatural as positive.
UL
FORMS OF NEGATIVITY
97
We have here a justification of our second
definition of religion as a feeling toward the
supernatural. For with any other definition
we should have difficulty in finding room for
superstition; the two pass into each other
so easily, and yet are so distinct, that it is
difficult to include them properly in a single
definition. True religion is antithetical to
superstition, and an antithetical relation im-
plies union, a relation to something held in
common. This union exists for superstition
and religion in that each is a feeling toward
the supernatural.
There are three forms under which the
supernatural considered as negative may be
recognized : active negativity, negativity of
neutrality, and negativity of limitation. The
most striking of these is active negativity.
It is a destructive force, invading the natural
and making war upon it. It is this form
which we find more marked in the lowest
religions. The savage lives almost wholly
in nature. So great is his confidence in it
that he thinks it might continue indefinitely
if it were not that the supernatural makes
98
ACTIVE NEGATIVITY
war upon it. Whereas in the higher forms of
religion man's trust is in the supernatural,
and the natural world is the disturbing ele-
ment, here the trust is in the natural world,
and it is the supernatural which invades.
Disease and death are regarded as such in-
vasions of spiritual forces, interfering with
nature. In the religion of the Ayesta, the
demon most hated is he who has possession
of the bodies of the dead, the personification
of dissolution with all its attendant horrors.
To overcome this invading force of the super-
natural, resort is had to magic and spells
and charms. We find, therefore, that in a
certain sense Müller's definition of religion
as “the relation to the infinite” is true in
the extreme types of religion. It is true,
at one extreme, in the ultimate forms of
Brahmanism, and it is also true in the lowest
forms of religion if we consider the super-
natural element which invades the natural
world as the infinite negatively interpreted,
the anti-finite. It is of course an infinite
as formless as the savage's thought of the
ocean. It is as though he were to build his
ACTIVE NEGATIVITY
99
hut on the shore and establish his home
there, and then there were to come some day
a great tide, higher than usual, which should
sweep everything away.
The devil is the ideal of active negativity.
We may say that he is the god of supersti-
tion. In the words which Goethe puts into
the mouth of Mephistopheles, he is “the
spirit that always denies.” Emerson, in an
unpublished lecture, speaking of the negativ-
ity of the devil, said that if a profane man
wished to strengthen an affirmation he did
so by referring to God, “ It is so, by God,"
whereas a negative statement was referred to
the devil, “ The devil it is !"
UCU
“ When the devil was sick and like to die,
The devil a monk would be;
But when the devil got well again,
The devil a monk was he.” 1
1
Can religion recognize this negativity? Yes,
it represents a real relation, a great truth.
The supernatural does stand in a negative
relation to many parts of life. Even in its
highest form there is something of this nega-
1 Francis Rabelais, “ Works,” Bk. IV, Ch. XXIV.
100
MEN'S HATRED OF GOD
tive relation. For in its highest form it
is the sense of our ideals, and our ideals are
always making war upon the natural, the
existing order. “Beware when the great God
lets loose a thinker on this planet,” says Em-
erson. A thinker introduces an ideal, and
an ideal breaks up one's relations to the
world about him. Take the ideal of abso-
lute freedom. What is more positive? Yet
what a disturbing power this positive ideal
may be, witness our civil war! But when
à man is doing wrong, we have again a
disturbing force. What is the difference?
When a positive negative acts, it negates a
negation, and an affirmative is the result.
Slavery is negative; the ideal of freedom,
negating this negative, sets the slave at lib-
erty, and we have an affirmative. The simple
negative, on the other hand, results only in
a negation.
Does man ever hate God? The question
has often been asked, and many theologians
have said that he does not when God is seen
as he really is. Yet we must say that a man
16 Essays,” First Series, “ Circles."
MEN'S HATRED OF GOD
101
dil mein holisinin spzok
may see God as he really is, and yet hate,
him, so long as he sees him only in negative
relation to himself. Abstractly it may not?
be possible for us to have any feeling of
hatred toward God; but when he is mani-
fested in such a way as to break up our
lives, when collisions come between the natu-
ral life and the life led in the thought of
God, then there enters the possibility of
hatred. It was thus that people asked Jesus
to leave them, and that Paul and Silas were
accused by the men whose gains they had
interfered with. Only when we come to
understand our relation to God in its positive
aspect can we fully love him. God is called
a “consuming fire,” a “jealous God.” He is
jealous in the sense in which every ideal is
jealous of the actual, demanding absolute
devotion.
Shall we call it superstition when we hate
God because he requires of us something
which we are unwilling to do? There are
those who can see in the largest manifestation
1 Matt. viii. 34. Also Luke v. 8.
2 Acts xyi.
102
NEUTRAL NEGATIVITY
of love and right only that which opposes
them; shall we call this superstition? Yes,
it is a superstitious feeling. The facts of
religion have been translated into the lan-
guage of superstition. The fear and dread
of the ideal involve an attitude of supersti-
tion in regard to it. “ The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom.” Yes, says
Hegel, but it is not the end of wisdom.
The second form under which we recognize
the supernatural regarded as negative is the
negative of neutrality. Here we use the
term “negative” just as we do ordinarily in
common speech. We say of a man that he
has a negative character when we mean that
he is without any positive or marked char-
acteristics, and is simply not this and not
that, etc. We speak in the same way of
negative colors. When in this sense we
apply the term “negative ” to the divinity, we
do not mean that he may not have interests
of his own, but that, so far as human inter-
ests are concerned, he has no desire either
to harm or to bless, he cares nothing about
them. Our effort, then, is to make him
NEUTRAL NEGATIVITY
103
care. He has wants of his own, and to win
him to our support we will appeal to those
wants. If he should be opposed to us, we
should try in the same way to remove his
hostility; if he should be uncertain, freaky,
we should use the same means to win him to
a stable friendliness. It is as though we had
to deal with a venal judge, who did not care
for us, but did care for money, and we could
by some bribe sue for his interest in our case.
So the Vedic worshippers offer each his soma
juice to the divinity, and he whose offering is
accepted has gained the favor of the divinity.
So in all the history of the world we find war-
ring elements, striving each by prayer or offer-
ing to win the help of the supernatural powers,
or, as we say, to “get the Lord upon their
side.” From the highest point of view, the
divinity is conceived as still having interests
and needs of his own; but our endeavor is,
not to win him over to our desires, but to
make our desires one with his. We ask, not
6 Is the Lord upon our side?” but “ Are we
upon the Lord's side?" This is the differ-
ence between such a prayer as that of Jacob
104
NEGATIVITY OF LIMITATION
D
at Bethel 1 and the prayer of Jesus in the
garden of Gethsemane.2
As we follow the history of religion, we see
to what an extent religious worship has been
of the superstitious kind which tries to bribe
the divinity. Yet we should make a great
mistake if we assumed that there was in the
religion which thus expressed itself no higher
element than the desire to win favor and
support for selfish ends. A child, on seeing
his father, will run and thrust his hand into
the father's pocket to see what gift there is
for him, but we do not, therefore, doubt the
child's love for his father.
We have in the third place a superstition
which is fortuitous, selective, a negativity of
limitation. Certain things are recognized as
sacred: certain animals, certain places, certain
days. There are spots of sacredness; men
say, “Lo here!” or “Lo there!” True reli-
gion finds the divine presence everywhere;
not a sparrow shall “fall on the ground with-
out your Father.”3 Not that special times
and places may not be observed, but there
1 Gen. xxviii. 20-22. 2 Matt. xxvi. 36-46. 8 Matt. x. 29.
TOT
TRUTH IN SUPERSTITION
105
are in all such observances a right use and
a wrong use. The day or the place may be
sacred in either of two senses ; it may be set
apart for religious and moral opportunities,
or it may be considered sacred in itself; I
may go to church feeling that I have now to
my credit one good deed more, or I may go
because I recognize another opportunity for
higher thought and nearer relation with God.
The test of the observance is whether the
day or the thing set apart casts a shadow on
other days and other things, or brightens
them ; whether it tends to make the rest of
life profane, or to make all life more sacred.
We must remember, however, that it is better
to have one day holy than to have no day at
all holy. If one day is holy, the divine
power has at least so much foothold in the
world, a beginning from which to spread.
We have also to remember that what, from
a higher point of view, appears to be super-
stition may be the husk of true religion.
The world cannot reach absolute truth at a
bound; it can only take that which for the
time being is within its reach. We look
106
SUPERSTITION AS A SURVIVAL
back to the Greek myth, and think it a
profanation to conceive the gods in human
form ; but if we look at it from the point
of view of those who in earlier times had
represented the divine in the form of a beast
or a stone, the conception of the divine in
human form marks a great advance. As
soon as any form has been outgrown, we
see its limitations, but compared with earlier
forms it was a gain. The test is whether
at any given time that which is worshipped
is above the worshipper or below him, whether
the worship lifts his nature or degrades it.
There is a popular definition of superstition
based on a derivation from superstare, which
makes superstition a survival, something which
stands over or is left beyond its time. The
etymology is mistaken, but superstition does
take a necessary place in religion, and survives
for a time after larger truths have come. In
the terms “heathenism” and “paganism,” both
of which refer to the persistence of older forms
in villages and out-of-the-way places after
Christianity had been recognized in the cities,
we have an illustration of the different aspect
ITS POSSIBLE ABSOLUTE ELEMENT
107
of superstition as something which stands in
the way when it has outlived its time. We
may notice also, in passing, that narrowness of
external form often stands around some posi-
tive, absolute element. A neighbor tells me
that if I will unite with his church I shall
find God. I may indeed find God in this way.
Yet my neighbor's attitude must somewhat
remind us of the boy who sold tickets of
admission to his mother's yard to those who
wished to see the eclipse ; those who entered
may be said to have received their money's
worth ; they saw what they had paid to see.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SUPERNATURAL CONSIDERED AS POSITIVE
- THE RELIGIOUS FEELINGS — THE PROG-
RESS FROM THE RELIGION OF SELF-RELATED
FEELING TO THE RELIGION IN WHICH THE
FEELING CENTRES IN GOD
As we pass to the consideration of the super-
natural regarded as positive, we must take care
that we do not repeat the mistake of Spencer
and Schleiermacher. We found them working
somewhat arbitrarily, at least in part, making
their definitions of religion fit their systems
of philosophy. We must try instead to keep
close to the facts of religion itself as recog-
nized in the world; for it is better that we
should have a very imperfect science of reli-
gion than a very perfect science of something
which is not religion.
We shall be helped in this if we first bring
together the different kinds of feelings which
have been recognized as religious, including all
108
THREE GROUPS OF FEELINGS
109
109
which have some place in religion, even though
all may not be essential. We may group them
under three general headings. The first group
will include all the religious feelings which are
self-centred, or, to use a more exact term, self-
related : the negative feeling, fear ; the posi-
tive feelings, trust, conciliation, gratitude,
praise ; and the mediative feelings, submission
and reconciliation. In the second group we
shall have those feelings whose centre is
divided : recognition and dread. And in the
third group will be found the feelings which
centre in God : first, love and worship; second,
awe and obedience ; and lastly, self-surrender,
this self-surrender being either mystical or
ethical, the highest surrender possible and not
merely submission. We might add to this
list; but we have included most of the feel-
ings which are typical. It should be said, in
passing, that the terms used are somewhat
forced in certain cases, and that sometimes
the expression of the feeling has been used
instead of the feeling itself.
The self-centred or self-related feelings are
those of the worshipper who seeks his own
110
SELF-RELATED FEELINGS
good. His relation to the divinity who is the
object of his worship is that of expectation of
some service, or of recognition of a service
which has been performed. The worshipper
regards himself as the centre, and appeals to
the divinity to help him in the attainment
of the special ends which he has at heart, or
to deliver him from evils which he wishes to
avoid. The first of these self-related feelings
is negative, the fear of the divinity. It is so
prominent in the lower forms of religion that
some have concluded that religion originally
sprang from fear. This is an exaggeration ;
yet fear does have a large place in the religion
of the savage, to whom death or sickness brings
the thought of some interference with the
natural order of things on the part of the
supernatural beings whom he must propitiate.
Following this first relation there comes the
stage in which the worshipper thinks that he
has formed such a relation with the divinities
that they will help him, and his negative feel-
ing of fear changes to a positive trust. The
divinity has become the god of his tribe or
his nation; or he has made a bargain with
SELF-RELATED FEELINGS
111
SE.
him, and the divinity must keep it; Indra has
drunk the soma juice. If the divinity is in-
different, he will conciliate him. If the divin-
ity has given aid, the worshipper will return
gratitude and praise. The term “praise” is
often used in the sense of worship, but worship
requires a higher view of the divinity than
praise. We worship only that which is ex-
alted above us, but that which we praise
may be on an equality with us or even on a
lower plane; we praise a servant or a child,
or a horse or a dog. The praise which the
self-related worshipper gives his god is not
for what the divinity is, but for what he has
done; he says, not “How good God is !”
but “How good God has been to me!”
Of the mediative feelings the submission of
the self-related worshipper is the surrender
to the inevitable. The world has gone wrong,
the divinity has failed to do what the wor-
shipper hoped for ; but the worshipper feels
that it is useless for him to strive longer
against a power greater than his own, and so
he submits, not gladly, but because he must.
In the course of the conflict a breach has
112
FEELINGS WITH DIVIDED CENTRE
opened, but with the submission of the wor-
shipper the breach is closed and reconciliation
takes place.
The second group, that which includes the
feelings whose centre is divided, is psycho-
logical rather than historical. It marks the
development of the worshipper out of the
lower into the higher forms of the religious
life. The worshipper begins to see that the
divinity has needs of its own to which the
worshipper ought to yield; he begins to recog-
nize the rightfulness of the moral and divine
law. Yet at the same time he shrinks from
obedience to it. He finds himself in the situa-
tion which Paul describes : “ For not what I
would, that do I practise ; but what I hate,
that I do. ... For I delight in the law of
God after the inward man: but I see a differ-
ent law in my members, warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into cap-
tivity under the law of sin which is in my
members.” 1
In the third group of feelings God is the
centre, and the worshipper not only feels and
1 Rom. vii. 15, 22-23.
.
~
FEELINGS WHICH CENTRE IN GOD
113
recognizes the supremacy of the divinity, but
rejoices in it. ove is felt toward him, not for
what he has done for the worshipper, but for
what he is in himself. Worship is rendered,
not because he has brought help to the wor-
shipper, but because he is in himself worthy
of worship. We have not left absolutely be-
hind us the negative element, for we have awe.
This awe, however, is not the sort of negative
which we call superstition, for it is not a re-
lation toward the supernatural regarded as
negative; that which inspires the awe is
greater in the mind of the worshipper than
the awe. So in a great storm the recognition
of the might of the elements produces in us
a sense of awe very different from the sense
of personal fear. Awe is thus rather a remi-
niscence of the negative element than its
actual presence. It is, or should be, insepara-
ble from the higher religious feelings. It
belongs, indeed, not merely to the religious,
but to all the higher feelings. In the relation
between two friends, for example, if one loses
his reverence for the personality of the other,
then friendship has lost one of its exalting
CUUU
114
FEELINGS WHICH CENTRE IN GOD
and purifying characteristics. The father or
mother may feel awe toward the little child.
Toward God, if once we have the slightest
sense of the eternal, infinite nature of his
being, awe must enter always into every feel-
ing, even our tenderest love; when awe ap-
pears to be absent, it is as though the flower
and bloom of religious feeling had been
rubbed off.
Associated with the feeling of awe is the
spirit of obedience. An external, formal
obedience may be found among the self-re-
lated feelings. Such obedience, however, is
unwilling ; it is very different from this spirit
of obedience.
Finally we have self-surrender. This, again,
is different from the submission of the self-
related life. Submission, although it may be
used in a higher sense, is often used in the
sense of mere surrender to force or to neces-
sity. Self-surrender, on the other hand, can
be understood only when one gives himself up
to something which he feels is worthy of the
sacrifice. We see the difference which is im-
plied in the conception of the divinity when we
TWO FORMS OF SELF-SURRENDER
115
think of the two interpretations which we may
give to the words of the Forty-sixth Psalm,
“ Be still and know that I am God.”i On the
one hand is the God of might, forcing the sub-
mission of his creature, asking him why he
should contend in his helplessness with the
infinite power; on the other is the God who
invites the worshipper to surrender himself to
the infinite wisdom and love, which can do for
him beyond what he can desire or conceive.
Thus the father may say to his child, “I am
your father," requiring submission to parental
authority, or in the same words may express
the love and the wisdom which shall lead the
child to surrender himself.
Self-surrender appears in two forms. The
first, the mystical, is found in Brahmanism and
in the Christianity of the mystics; we see it
in Paul, and in Schleiermacher's sense of abso-
lute dependence. In the second, the ethical
form, the individual gives himself up, not sim-
ply to the spirit of obedience, but to the actual
doing of the will of God in whatever direction
one is led.
i Ps. xlvi. 10.
116
LOVE TO GOD AND SELF-LOVE
Self-surrender can take place only toward
that which represents the self. A man's ideal,
that which he earnestly longs to be and tries
to be, is more himself than that which he is,
just as the plant is much more the reality of
the seed than is the seed itself so long as it
remains without germinating. There can be,
therefore, no self-surrender to the divinity un-
less the divinity fulfils our own highest ideals,
and we can in this sense surrender to our own
truest self. Love to God is the recognition
that the divinity thus fulfils our ideals.
Can there remain in this highest form of
religion any of the self-related feelings? Is
it necessary that there should be absolute
extinction of all relation to self? Must the
man who loves God cease to love himself ?
Some have held to this as essential to the high-
est religious life. Yet, if we do not love our-
selves, there is a certain blank in our lives;
there is one direction in which our own love
does not extend; and if we do not rejoice in
our own personal relation to God, there is one
point in which we have failed to give the love
of God full recognition. If, to use the phrase
LOVE TO GOD AND SELF-LOVE
117
attributed to a certain religious sect, a man
were “willing to be damned for the glory of
God," he would simply be willing that the
outgoing love of God should come to a stop
at that point where he himself was concerned.
We know what is good and pleasant only by
experience. We cannot understand the pleas-
ure of another if we have none ourselves. If
all good and happiness were passed on by every
one to some one else, no one would have any.
A man stands on a cliff looking out across the
sea toward the setting sun, and sees a path of
light between himself and the sun; other men
stand on either side along the cliff, and each
sees in the same way his path of light. It adds
to the thought of the glory of the sun that all
are thus sharing the same experience; but each
could have no conception of the rays which
are covering the whole line of coast, if he did
not see the special beauty of the ray which
connects him individually and personally with
the sun. So experience in one's self and for
one's self is the key to the comprehension of
the experience of others, and to the best
method of serving others.
118
SELF-LOVE AND SELFISHNESS
The whole difficulty arises from a confusion
of self-love with selfishness. There is always
a tendency in men to go to extremes. As the
recognition of the immorality of sensual pleas-
ure when carried to lawlessness led to the
condemnation of all sensual pleasure, whether
legitimate or not, so the evident evil of selfish-
ness has produced the view that all self-regard
or self-love is wrong. But the evil of selfish-
ness lies in its exclusiveness and in its claim
to have a monopoly of any good or pleasure.
If on a cold night we go into a room and take
a place before the fire, the act becomes selfish
only when some one else is crowded out. In
self-love we may thank God for the blessings
we have received ; it is a very different thing
when we thank him because we have received
more than others. It is normal for a child to
rejoice in his mother's love; the abnormal
appears only when the child rejoices because
he is loved more than his brothers.
Further, healthy self-assertion is important
for others; it becomes a form of altruism.
For the development of life in the social
order results largely from the mutual resist-
SELF-SACRIFICE
119
ance of individuals. A man leads a healthy
life because he meets with resistance from
all sides. If in any direction resistance is
withdrawn, there is at once the tendency to
abnormal development in that direction. If
one of two friends always gives way to the
other, he tends to establish in the other a
habit of claiming consideration and indul-
gence. In the same way a mother, by sacri-
ficing herself constantly to her children, may
lead them to think that she does not mind
sacrifice; they cease to consider her, and
become selfish. The rule, “ It is more blessed
to give than to receive,”I must be allowed to
work both ways, and another than ourselves
be sometimes permitted the greater blessed-
ness.
There are, of course, occasions when self-
regard has no place, when one must wholly
forget one's self. Under certain conditions,
for instance, we recognize a virtue in giving
one's life for another. A man may ask in
such a case, “Why should I sacrifice myself?
Is it anything more than an exchange of
1 Acts xx. 35.
2
.
120
SELF-SACRIFICE
equal values ?” But conditions may be such
that lives are no longer to be judged as of
equal value. Suppose two men are on a raft
at sea, and only one can be saved; one is
single, the other has a family; the loss to
the world would be greater if the man with
the family should drown, because his death
would affect a greater number. As between
the general of an army and a common sol-
dier, the life of the general becomes more
valuable, because upon him depends the con-
duct of the whole campaign. There are
cases where an individual may save a multi-
tude. In all these cases equality no longer
exists. It is conceivable, also, that one might
give one's life for a worthless person if by
the sacrifice the person benefited would be
reformed. There may be also a self-sacrifice
of discipline. But an unreasoning self-sacri-
fice is not ennobling; when self is sacrificed
it should be for some object, and it is the
object which gives worth to the sacrifice.
After all is said, the generous mind will not
try to draw the line too carefully between
selfishness and self-love. Self-love, further-
GOD'S LOVE UNIVERSAL
121
more, hardly needs to be preached; as a rule
it takes care of itself; the danger is of too
little self-surrender.
When our friends care more for us than
they do for others, we are glad. Why should
we not feel a similar joy in the thought that
God may love us more than others? The
conditions, however, are different. In earthly
relations we expect and rightly demand a
certain favoritism, a warmth of personal affec-
tion, which cannot be given to all alike in
the same degree. This is what we mean by
friendship. The broader, more general affec-
tions, the larger philanthropy and human
interest, grow out of this more intense affec-
tion of friend for friend, and depend upon
it for their highest meaning and value. It
is true that in some forms of religion the
attempt is made to do away with all special
and particular affection, on the ground that
it brings with it care and pain and sorrow;
but if personal love ceases, we feel that a very
essential element of human life is lost. Where
there is an equal claim, however, we expect
equal love. The child would be justly grieved
122
FAVORITISM HAS NO PLACE
if his mother did not care more for him than
for the children in the street; but he would
also be pained to know that his mother loved
him either more or less than she did his
brothers. Now, all have an equal claim
upon God, and in our conception of the
infinite love we can imagine no limitation
such as we find in finite relations; the infinite
love is inexhaustible, and we rejoice in its
universality and not in its selection of our-
selves.
The idea of favoritism has indeed held a
prominent place in religion ; the earlier divini-
ties were tribal or national, and therefore par-
tisan. But as the conception of the divinity
becomes broader and higher, no room is found
for favoritism. The relation in which God
stands toward the sinner is no exception.
Even in the family, indignation at wrong-
doing and blame do not check affection for
the wrong-doer; a light-minded father or
mother, it is true, may allow anger to take
the place of affection toward a disobedient or
wayward child, but the large-hearted parent :
will never love the child more than at those
TTTT
TTS
DIFFERENCE OF OPPORTUNITY
123
LV
times when punishment must be administered.
We know that there is danger in carrying
anthropomorphic ideas too far into the thought
of God; yet the highest symbol which we
have of God's spirit is our own spiritual life,
and we cannot conceive of the sinner as in any
relation to God other than that of an erring
child to a loving father.
Some one may ask, however, how it is possi-
ble for the unfortunate and afflicted to believe
that God's love is equal. In answering such
a question, we have to remind ourselves that
various individuals are called for various ser-
vices. The world offers not so much different
degrees of benefit as different kinds of service,
and any advantage which one appears to have
over another is simply his greater opportunity
for usefulness. We do not say that the gen-
eral is favored above the common soldier
because he stands apart from the conflict.
The son who is sent to college is not loved
above his brothers who are compelled to
remain at home; he has only been selected
for a particular sphere of usefulness.
Although any exclusiveness of claim, any
124
SELF-REGARD TRANSFIGURED
thought of exceptional love, is out of place in
the highest conception of religion, yet the con-
sciousness of individual love, the self-assertion
which claims for itself only what belongs to it,
is right, and gives nobility to life. “He call-
eth his own sheep by name.”] Such self-
assertion is necessary if there is to be true
self-surrender.
"Our wills are ours, to make them thine.” 2
The feelings which in the lower forms of reli-
gious life were only self-related, are now in the
highest forms transfigured, leaving behind all
selfishness. A man comes to give thanks, not
because he has been particularly favored in
this or that, apart from others, or above others,
but simply out of joy in the consciousness that
he is blessed, and that the whole world is par-
taker in the divine blessing. His appreciation
of what he has himself received gives warmth
and reality to his thanksgiving, while his own
experience makes possible for him a sympathy
with the experience of the race.
The transition from the self-related feelings
1 John X. 3.
2 Tennyson, “In Memoriam," the prologue.
TRANSITION TO GOD-CENTRED FEELINGS 125
to the feelings which centre in God is the
most important change which can take place
in religion. Some have considered the pas-
sage from polytheism to monotheism most im-
portant. They are right so far as religious
thought is concerned ; but feeling is more
fundamental in religion than thought. The
individual may pass from polytheistic to mono-
theistic belief, and remain all the time in the
lowest stage of religious feeling, as self-related
at the last in his attitude toward the one God
as he was at the outset toward the various
divinities of his earlier belief. It is true that
the monotheistic view is more favorable to the
development of unselfish feeling than polythe-
ism, in so far as it leads to the thought that all
men are the children of one infinite being, and
so promotes a fraternal feeling among men
toward one another. Community of religious
belief has done much to consolidate tribes and
peoples, and also to intensify religious feeling
among them. This, however, does not always
hold true; for, as I have said, the individual
worshipper may regard the one God only in
relation to his own interests; the children in
-
126
ARGUMENT OF COMTE
a family should naturally love one another
more because of their common parentage, but
one or another of them may look upon the
father or mother only in relation to himself.
Comte argues that, as religion develops
from fetichism to polytheism, and from poly-
theism to monotheism, it becomes less intense
and personal. The fetich worshipper finds his
divinity near at hand, he has close contact with
him. The change to polytheism is a process
of generalization, the objects of worship are
classified, and it is no longer this or that par-
ticular thing which is worshipped, but this or
that kind of thing ; Apollo is not so near to
the worshipper as was the sun. In monothe-
ism the process of abstraction is carried still
farther, and the object of worship is made
yet more remote ; and the more abstract and
remote the conception of the divinity, the
less intense and real is the relation of the
worshipper toward him. Thus the passage
from fetichism to monotheism, according to
Comte, marks the decline of religion. Comte
1 Auguste Comte, “Positive Philosophy,” translated by
Harriet Martineau, Vol. II, Bk. VI.
DECLINE IN RELIGIOUS INTEREST
127
is right in so far as he emphasizes feeling
rather than any form of thought in tracing
the development of religion, and his whole
argument is plausible ; but the conclusion
which he reaches is not inevitable. The
monotheistic conception may be abstract, and
yet the worshipper may have a sense of close
relation to the divinity more vital than that
of the fetich worshipper. The fetich is exter-
nal only to the worshipper, something outside
of and over against him. The infinite divinity
is not only without but within; the worshipper
lives and moves and has his being in him ; he
is all-pervading and all-upholding. Here is an
intimacy which fetichism cannot give.
The change from self-related feeling to
God-centred feeling may explain in part the
apparent decline in the interest which the
great mass of people take in religion. Just
so far as the people who regard themselves
as the chief centre of interest are more numer-
ous than those who are willing to give them-
selves up for larger interests, a God-centred
religion must appeal to a smaller number than
one which is self-regarding. In church-going,
128
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
for example, a great influence is brought to bear
when the worshipper thinks that his attend-
ance is noted by the divinity, and that he
may, as it were, gain a good mark by regular
attendance ; the higher conception of church-
going, as an opportunity for spiritual growth
and inspiration, appeals to a smaller number.
Further, in self-related religion, the divinity is
more prominent, so far as the attitude of the
worshipper is concerned, than in the God-
centred, because in the self-related religion
the worshipper is trying to influence the di-
vinity to favor him. He thinks of the divinity
as entering into a bargain with him. “ Serve
me,” the divinity appears to him to say, “and
I will bless you.” In the religion which is
God-centred, the word of the divinity is, “ Go,
do my will ; serve your fellows." The move-
ment is toward the world. On a clear winter
evening we say, “How beautiful the stars
are !” On a bright, sunny day we say, not
“ How beautiful is the sun!” but “ How beau-
tiful is the world !” The stars reveal them-
selves; the sun reveals the whole world to us.
Not that we lose relation toward God in see-
C
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
129
'en
ing more fully the relation toward those about
us. If relation to God were absent, we might
have a philanthropy, but we should no longer
have religion. We must remember that our
service to man is the outcome of our relation
to God, and that the two elements cannot be
separated without loss.
We speak of a decline in religious interest,
and we see how it is that the higher forms of
religious feeling may appeal to a smaller num-
ber. It would not be true, however, to say
that there is less religion in the world than
formerly. There is more true religion in half
an hour's questioning: “What wilt thou have
me to do?” than in a whole lifetime of asking :
“What wilt thou do for me?"
CHAPTER IX
THE CONTENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL-THE
THREE IDEAS OF THE REASON - TRUTH,
GOODNESS, AND BEAUTY AS IMPLIED IN
THE RELIGIOUS FEELINGS —— INSTINCT AND
REASON
As we compare the self-related feelings with
those which centre in God, we find this great
difference, that the higher feelings imply a
certain content in the divinity which is not
similarly involved in the lower feelings. The
divinity is not a mere abstract form, which
we may use if we will, but a being with a
place and will of his own, independent of our
personalities, worshipped by us because he
is in himself lovable, trusted because he is
worthy of trust. The relation is no longer
between an individual worshipper and an
individual divinity, but between the indi-
vidual worshipper and the absolutely worship-
ful, trustworthy, and lovable.
130
THE IDEAS OF THE REASON
. 131
What is the nature of this content ? Our
minds and hearts are full of varied thoughts
and experiences. It seems impossible to clas-
sify them. We find, however, a classification
already made. It comes, handed down to us,
as the result of the thought of the ages. Ac-
cording to this classification, the content of
the divinity is found in the three ideas of the
reason — truth, goodness, and beauty. Truth
we use here in the sense of unity; we shall
see the justification of this use later. In
speaking of these ideas of the reason, we
often consider them objectively as well as
subjectively, referring not only to the ideas
themselves, but also to the realities which cor-
respond to the ideas. For example, I mean
by unity not only my own thought of unity,
but also the great fact which I recognize as
corresponding to my thought.
What, then, is the relation between the ideas
of the reason and the highest forms of the
religious feeling? We may make our exami-
nation in either of two ways. First, we may
begin with the religious feelings themselves,
and ask whether they imply the ideas of the
132
FREE RELIGIOUS FEELINGS
reason ; and, second, we may begin with the
ideas of the reason and ask whether they would
in themselves give rise to the religious feel-
ings. In contrast with the concrete feelings
which we have just been considering, we may
call the feelings toward truth, goodness, and
beauty free religious feelings, using the term
“ free” in the sense in which the chemist uses
it when he speaks of free oxygen, oxygen, that
is, which is not combined with anything else.
The feelings toward truth, goodness and beauty
are of the nature of religion, they have a cer-
tain religiosity; but when they exist apart we
hesitate to speak of them as “ religious.” The
relation of the philosopher to the unity of the
universe which he is seeking is not in itself
religion ; it is of the same sort with the feeling
of the poet or the artist toward beauty, or
of the philanthropist toward charity or duty.
These feelings become religious as they are
combined with others, when to the thought of
truth or goodness or beauty is joined the
thought of the supernatural. Religion is the
feeling toward the Absolute Being in whom are
united truth and goodness and beauty.
UL
10
TRUST
133
Do the religious feelings, then, the concrete
religious feelings, imply the ideas of the rea-
son ? Take the feeling of trust. In the ordi-
nary use of the term, when we say that we
trust a person, we imply that we find in him
first of all a certain degree of power, physical
or intellectual or moral, as the case may be ;
there is no trust or reliance unless we believe
that the person whom we trust has the strength
to support us. We imply also his good will,
his disposition to help us, and also the continu-
ance, the stability, of this favorable disposition.
Now, when we come to the thought of absolute
reliance, what is involved ? We have here the
very heart of faith in one of its aspects. Ab-
solute reliance requires in the person trusted
not only the power to help, but unvarying,
absolute stability ; there must be no change
from moment to moment. Further, there must
be no power in the universe strong enough to
cause disturbance. This means that there
must be in the universe nothing foreign to the
power which we trust. For if there were any-
thing foreign to it, how could we be sure in
advance that this foreign element might not
134
TRUST IMPLIES UNITY
L
overcome it? In the earlier mythologies there
was trust, but not absolute trust; the di-
vinities which others worshipped might be
stronger ; the gods had their battles as well as
men, and one god or another might be de-
feated ; the confidence in the divinity was like
that in an army or a general, and as easily
overthrown. The object of absolute trust must
be that upon which all things depend, the unity
of the universe. Further, not only must there
be unity in the object of worship, but, as has
been already implied, this unity must include
the worshipper; the worshipper must be one
with the absolute power. The child has a
trust in his father beyond that which he has in
another, because in some way he feels that his
father and he are one. The saying, “Blood is
thicker than water,” expresses a crude but in-
stinctive trust in kindred blood which typifies
broadly the great spiritual unity beneath it.
Just as we trust those who are related to us as
we cannot so readily trust others, so the reli-
ance of the worshipper is deeper as he feels
himself one with the object of his worship. “In
him we live and move and have our being."1
1 Acts xvii. 28.
TRUST IMPLIES GOODNESS
135
Trust thus implies unity in the object of
worship, unity in time and in fact, and unity
of the worshipper with the object of worship.
It must imply goodness also. We can rely
upon the forces of nature, so far as regards
their permanence; but we cannot rely upon
them to do us good. “Fire is a good servant,
but a hard master.” The forces of nature may
help, or they may destroy. If trust is to be
complete, there must be absolute goodness in
the object toward which it is directed.
What is implied in love? In human rela-
itions there is in it always something inde-
scribable. The lover is asked what it is in his
mistress which attracts him, and the picture
which he draws is found by another true also
of his own beloved. There enters the personal
element which cannot be described, by which
one appears beautiful and another not. The
element of contrast also has its part, the flaw
perhaps which gives the good qualities added
value, and breaks up what might have seemed
a monotony in perfection. Yet, however com-
plex and intangible love may be, we find the
three ideas of the reason essential to it. As
Ever
136
LOVE IMPLIES UNITY
the thought of unity entered to deepen the
trust between the child and its parent, so in
the love of the mother for the child, it is the
thought of the mother that her child is part of
herself which gives to her love its peculiar
strength, and makes it the type of love. Some-
thing of this sense of unity is found in all
love; we read in romances of the “exchange of
hearts"; the centre of the lover's being is in
the heart of the beloved.
Goodness and beauty, too, must be assumed
in the object of love. No one would love
another whom he regarded as essentially and
fundamentally bad; the goodness may be
obscured, but love believes that at least the
germ, the possibility of it, is there. Often the
object of love is made the embodiment of
the lover's ideals, and sympathy recognizes
unfulfilled possibilities of the nature. The
mother clings to her son whom others have
abandoned ; the wife still believes in her
vicious husband if only because he once ap-
peared worthy of her. The beauty required by
love is not necessarily physical, but rather spir-
itual beauty, grace of character, that which is
ALSO GOODNESS AND BEAUTY
137
natural. Grace does not take the place of
goodness, though it is hard to believe that it
does not represent goodness, hard even, some-
times, to realize that mere physical beauty does
not represent goodness. Beauty of character
and goodness are akin, but there is an element
in beauty different from goodness. A man may
have a strong sense of duty, he may always do
what he believes he ought to do, and yet he
may lack the grace of character which calls
forth love ; goodness is often hard and angular
and conscious. But grace, naturalness, even
in those who may be otherwise less worthy,
calls forth answering affection.
It is this element of naturalness or grace or
beauty which first of all explains the affection
so often given to plants. There enters also
many times a certain power of personification
which clothes the object of the affections with
ideal qualities, and sometimes, too, the beauty
of the outer world symbolizes and embodies
certain aspects of divine perfection ; their life
is in some way a representation of life itself.
Thus some thought of unity and of goodness as
well as of beauty underlies these affections also.
138
WORSHIP
12
It is hardly necessary to dwell long on the
thought of worship; for it is obvious that
worship is full and complete in proportion as
it involves all three ideas of the reason. In
the religion of the Upanishads the worshipper
recognizes only the first idea. In the Mazdean
religion goodness is recognized, but not unity.
The Greek thought emphasizes beauty. In
each case worship is incomplete. In higher
forms of worship we find included all the
qualities which call forth reverence. There
must be goodness ; for power alone, though it
may be admired or feared, is not reverenced.
There must be supremacy, also ; in supremacy
are implied first unity and then perfection, and
perfection adds the element of beauty, the
“glory of God.”
At this point we have to ask whether our
table of the religious feelings is complete.
Should not the sense of sin, and repentance, be
added to the list ? We may include them
among the feelings of the third class, those
which centre in God; but they seem to be
secondary, a result of the primary feelings.
If they are to be included, it is easy to see
SIN. SELF-SURRENDER
139
that they involve recognition of the ideas of
the reason. Sin in its deepest sense refers
rather to God than to man. It implies a
recognition of divine holiness and unity from
which the sinner feels himself separated and
cut off. It is the antithesis of self-surrender,
the refusal to surrender one's self; the sinner
maintains his self-relation instead of entering
into relation with God. To surrender one's
self implies necessarily the recognition of the
ideals to which the life gives itself. It is with
self-surrender as with trust. There must be
not only unity in that to which we surrender
ourselves considered in itself, but unity be-
tween it and ourselves. As we have seen
already, we may submit to that which is
foreign to and apart from ourselves, but we
can surrender ourselves only to that which
fulfils our own highest ideals and is thus in a
certain sense our own highest self. The ideal
which we hold before us, and to which we are
to give ourselves, belongs to our own nature.
We may not be conscious of this. The ideal
may be foreign to the life actually lived, so
that the identity of the relationship may be
140
'INSTINCT
obscured; yet even here the attraction toward
the ideal shows the kinship with it of the actual
self. The idea of goodness also is implied in
the highest self-surrender, filling out the con-
ception of that to which one gives oneself. In
this highest form of self-surrender the life is
not conscious of the unity in which it stands
with the ideal, it is not conscious that it is sur-
rendering itself. Its surrender is that of love.
I have said that there were two_methods by
which we might examine the relation between
the ideas of the reason and the higher forms
of religious feeling. Thus far we have fol-
lowed the first of these methods ; beginning
with the concrete feelings themselves, we have
looked to see whether they implied the ideas
of the reason. We have now to take up the
second and more essential method of examina-
tion, and to ask whether the ideas of the
reason in themselves give rise to the religious
feelings. In doing this we shall find it help-
ful, first of all, to have a clear idea of the
part which instinct 1 has in life. We speak of
1 See also C. C. Everett, “ Essays Theological and
Literary."
INSTINCT
141
O
man as a bundle of instincts, and we are apt
to think of these instincts as more or less like
so many quills of a porcupine, ready to be
thrust out or let go. In reality, however, in-
stincts are tendencies to action, tendencies of
individual life to manifest itself in one way
or another. When I spoke of the primacy of
feeling I had in mind its primacy in manifesta-
tion rather than in fact. Behind feeling there
exists something which manifests itself in feel-
ing, and this inner self is the instinctive self.
Why do we take satisfaction in doing any-
thing? It can be only because there is a
natural tendency, an instinct, to perform the
act. We like to take exercise, to eat when
we are hungry, because these desires are in-
stinctive. Of course these instincts may be
developed ; the savage's love of beads may
become the æsthetic appreciation of a Raphael.
Yet “nature is made better by no means but
nature made these means.” Development is
along the line of instinct.
In the manifestation of instinct the first
stage is impulse, the last and highest stage is
the ideal. We see a case of suffering, and
HIUU.
142
INSTINCT
our instinct is to relieve it; but we have also
an instinctive desire to avoid it as well as to
relieve it. We sometimes speak of the altruis-
tic impulse as built upon the selfish impulse ;
but in reality the one is as natural as the
other, just as an atom exercises attraction as
naturally as repulsion, or vice versa. In the
earliest forms of life, in animals, in the say-
age, in a child, the self-regarding instincts
may be the more powerful ; but to a certain
extent the other instincts are there, and their
manifestation is as natural, when it occurs, as
the manifestation of the self-regarding in-
stincts. Sometimes it appears as though by
education we changed the nature ; but in such
cases what we see is only the result of the
development of instincts along lines in which
without such training they might not have
been developed. Thus a dog may be taught
to do things which seem foreign to his nature;
but what he does is after all based upon his
instincts, social, imitative, and affectionate ;
the path by which the result is reached is the
instinctive nature of the animal himself.
We do not desire a thing because it is
NIETZSCHE'S VIEW
143
desirable ; it becomes desirable as we desire
it, as it meets some instinctive demand of our
nature. Water is desirable because it meets
one of our needs; when we are not thirsty
we do not desire it. This may seem to un-
settle all the fundamental relations of things,
and make highest and lowest alike dependent
entirely upon the point of view of the indi-
vidual. This, according to Nietzsche, is just
what does happen. Man, he says, is a creature
of instincts, and these instincts practically
make up his life. He has instincts of belief
beyond which he cannot pass. What, then, be-
comes of the Absolute ? — the Absolute Being
or the Absolute Truth? There can be no
real proof of anything, and each believes
simply what it is his nature to believe. Nietz-
sche's premises we may accept heartily, but
his conclusion is not warranted. The confu-
sion in which his reasoning seems to leave
matters of belief and thought disappears when
1 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Works,” edited by Alexander
Tille ; also “ Jenseits von Gut und Böse." See article by
C. C. Everett in the New World, Vol. VII, “Beyond
Good and Evil," reprinted in " Essays Theological and
Literary."
144
INSTINCTS OF BELIEF
we look more closely. It is idle to say that
something is simply our belief, but that we
do not know whether or not it is true ; if
we cannot help believing we cannot really
raise the question whether what we believe is
true or not.
We have instincts of belief as well as in-
stincts of action. At one time instinct may
prompt me to do one thing, at another time,
another. Now, when a man has formed an
ideal of life, when, we will say, he has come
to feel that it is his duty to do all that he
can for the betterment of the world, or, higher
still, when the sense of duty has become in
him a desire, a sense of privilege, then such a
man has reached a stage far in advance of the
impulses of his earliest stage. Between those
impulses and the high ideal is the realm of
conscious reason. We compare instincts, in-
telligence gives its aid, and what were at first
blind impulses become ideals. We cannot,
however, give account of the ideal any more
than we could give account of the first im-
pulse. If we ask ourselves why we want to
make people better or happier, there is no in-
D
REASON AND REASONING
145
telligent answer. We may say, " Because it is
better for them.” But why is it better, and
why do we wish it to be better? No matter
how far we push the question, we come at
last to something which is final, and to which
there is and can be no answer.
Here we have to recognize two uses of the
word “reason.” On the one hand, it may refer
to the logical process of thought by which
certain results are reached. On the other
hand, we use it with reference to that which
appears to us to be reasonable or unreasonable.
When we say that a man does what is rea-
sonable, we do not mean that his action is the
result of any conscious process by which he
has argued everything to a conclusion, but
simply that he has done that which conforms
to reason, that is, to the ideal of life. Often
that which is reasonable may contradict that
which has been reasoned. A man in solving
a problem obtains a wrong result; he may not
find any flaw in the process by which he has
reached it, yet he distrusts the result because
it is not reasonable. Reasoning is built upon
reason. As we act instinctively, so we believe
146
REASONING
instinctively. We recognize that nothing can
be absolutely proved. We have certain ten-
dencies to believe. All that reasoning can ac-
complish is to bring back our reason to some
ground of trust. There can be no valid chain
of reasoning which is not attached to some
instinctive belief, something which we take
for granted. This something may be super-
ficial or it may be fundamental; it may be
some prejudice, some hereditary or current
belief, or again, it may be some ultimate fact
of life.
Reasoning consists in connecting a given
proposition with what we actually believe.
Every argument involves two kinds of assump-
tion, that is, things which cannot be proved :
first, the relation between the major and the
minor premise; and second, the relation between
the premises and the conclusion. One is the
connection, the other the ultimate basis, of the
proposition. The relation between the prem-
ises is taken for granted or, is seen directly.
We say in such a case that we see that it is
true ; but this is not a primary perception, it
is only the absolute certainty of a relation, and
REASON
147
that is always secondary. We have a feeling
of absolute certainty; then the intellect and
the feeling are united.
Reason as distinct from reasoning is the
final point in which we rest. Reasonableness,
however, may be of various kinds. It may con-
form either to previous experience or to funda-
mental ideas of the reason. This may appear
to take away the basis of certainty. But, as
I have said in referring to Nietzsche's theory,
what we cannot help believing it is idle to
talk about. Can we doubt the law of contra-
diction? We simply cannot believe that one
thing can be where another thing is in the same
time and in the same sense. There are differ-
ent layers of certainty or belief. Some have
come from prejudice, some are the common
beliefs in which we have been educated. Cer-
tain things are taken for granted which become
the basis of our reasoning. Behind these
beliefs are the ideas of the reason. This may
seem to introduce laxity into our thought, but
it is by this method that the world moves. If
every one had to begin for himself and settle
everything afresh, the world would make little
7
148
INHERITED BELIEFS
e os
progress. There is, however, a great body of
beliefs in which we are educated, which is the
bequest of the ages. This body of beliefs
gives us more truth than we should have with-
out it. It does not follow, of course, that we
are to take for granted all that we hear or all
the beliefs that we find. Some we cannot help
taking for granted, and some we cannot help
questioning ; but those which we question
form only a small portion of what has come
to us. Our most revolutionary thinkers have
touched very little of the great body of beliefs
which men take for granted. Christianity
seemed a revolution ; but the thoughts and
customs of the world closed in upon it, and
although a new and mighty element was intro-
duced, only a small fraction of the whole ideal
content of the world was changed.
As the reason is the final point in which we
rest, so it is the ultimate basis of belief. Men
speak sometimes of innate ideas as though they
were in some way tacked on to men at the
outset, a sort of tag. Some philosophers
assume them, Locke and others deny them. In
fact, however, innate ideas come to us through
-
U
THE IDEAS OF THE REASON INNATE
149
L
instinct. We cannot help thinking or be-
lieving certain things. We recognize thus as
innate the three ideas of the reason — truth,
goodness, and beauty. Later, we shall find
that, of these, goodness and beauty are really
manifestations of truth, so that ultimately we
have this one innate idea, the first idea of the
reason.
CHAPTER X
THE IDEAS OF THE REASON AS SUPERNATU-
RAL ---THE BELIEF IN UNITY INSTINCTIVE:
CONSIDERATION OF THE THEORIES OF HUME
AND MILL - THE SUPERNATURAL CHARAC-
TER OF THE MORAL LAW
We have found that religion is the feeling
toward the supernatural. We have also found
that the ideas of the reason are involved in
religious feeling. These ideas, then, should
partake of the supernatural; it should appear
that they are not the result of experience,
but underlie experience and make it possible.
Take the first idea of the reason, truth. I
have said that truth is synonymous with
unity. How shall we justify this statement ?
We must ask ourselves what we mean by
truth. We use the word in various signifi-
cations. We say that a proposition is true
when it corresponds to external facts. Sub-
jectively, truth is harmony between my
150
DEFINITION OF TRUTH
2
151
thought and what is going on outside. We
have the objective use also; we speak of a
true man, one who conforms to the ideal of
a man. Again, we hear a story, and we wish
to know the truth of it. We talk about
seeking the truth; what is it that we seek?
Here is a fact; the truth cannot be simply
the existence of this particular phenomenon ;
the truth must be the relation of this object or
phenomenon to other objects and phenomena.
When we first see an object it seems to
stand apart, and what we try to do is to
bring it into relation with other objects.
Every one lives in relation to an organized
world of thought. Our first effort with
something which is new to us is to bring
it into relation with our world of previous
experience, and anything which we cannot
bring into such relation either startles us or
else makes no impression at all. We accept
nothing for which there is not some niche
ready in our minds. If we knew the abso-
lute truth, we should see the universe as a
great organic whole, the manifestation of a
principle in and through which all things exist.
152
TRUTH IMPLIES UNITY
« Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies; -
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.” 1
The idea of truth thus shows itself as the
ideal unity in and through which all things
exist, and it is obvious that there is no forcing
of terms in our use of truth and unity as
synonymous.
Subjectively, an idea which is true stands in
connection with some external fact. Truth
here implies unity. If we say that a thought
is not true, does it then stand alone ? No,
we unite it with the psychological world; every
error as well as every truth has its place in
the psychological development of the indi-
vidual; it is nothing isolated ; and if we could
see all as it is, we should see this psychologi-
cal world related in some way to the rest of
the world. So far as objective truth is con-
cerned, we find it in our definition of the
supernatural. Nature we found to be the
1 Alfred Tennyson, “Miscellaneous Poems,”? « Flower in
the Crannied Wall."
IDEA OF UNITY SPONTANEOUS
153
world considered as a composite whole. The
supernatural, while it might be the power
which interfered with the mutual relations of
the elements in this composite whole, was
also the unity in and through which all the
elements had their existence.
The idea of unity is spontaneous in the
mind itself. This appears under two aspects.
First, a priori, we find the idea of unity
implicit in all intellectual activity. Here we
come back to instinct. By instinct, as we
have seen, the organism acts as it would if
it knew something which it does not know.
Thought at first is purely instinctive. We
have an instinct to think just as the animal
has an instinct to react. This instinct to
think is the primary response of man to his
environment. Now, thinking is the process
of forming concepts, and every concept in-
volyes two aspects, a universal and a limiting
element; every concept is a limiting uni-
versal ;1 an absolute universal cannot be con-
ceived. The process of thought consists in
1 C. C. Everett, Science of Thought," Bk. II, “ Con-
ception and Terms."
154
UNITY UNIFERSALLY ASSUMED
bringing the object of thought into relation
with something else; no element can be con-
ceived by itself. Whenever we wish to
understand something new, we bring the new
object into relation with the world of thought
and experience which is already ours. This
we call apperception. It is, as I have just
said, instinctive at first. We make no state-
ment in regard to unity; we simply assume,
as soon as we ask the question how or why,
as soon as we begin to think, that there is a
relation between each new element and our
intellectual or experiential world. The say-
age makes no universal statement; but he
assumes the fact that every experience belongs
to the world in which he lives. He does
not say explicitly with Tennyson that if he
wholly understood the flower in the crannied
wall he would know God; but he does as-
sume unity in every direction. His assump-
tion that a particular object or element has
its place in the world carries with it implicitly
the fact that everything has this relation.
He is like the farmer who said he never
wanted much land, but always did want the
INDUCTION RESTS UPON UNITY
155
O
land next to his. So the savage desires to
annex one thing after another to his intel-
lectual world, and thus begins a progress into
the infinite. He thinks exactly as he would
if he could see all and know that there was
absolute unity; he does not know, but he acts
as though he knew. This, then, is what we
mean by saying that the idea of unity is
instinctive, implicit, in all human thought.
When we attempt to reach the idea of unity
by an a posteriori process we find ourselves in-
volved in a contradiction. Induction rests
upon or implies the idea of unity; but the
idea of unity, the thought of the world as an
organic whole, can never be reached by any
inductive process. We say, after a few trials,
that gold is heavier than water; we trust our
induction because of our faith in the unity of
things. We apply the law of gravitation to
the universe ; we have studied only a few
worlds; we leap from a generalization to a
universal assumption. It is not the process
of induction which has given us knowledge of
the unity of things; it is once more the un-
derlying faith in that unity which has made
156
INDUCTION RESTS UPON UNITY
possible this leap to the universal assumption.
Hume holds that if we knew all that ever has
happened in the world, the regularity and uni-
formity of events, their sequence, and all the
phenomena connected with them, we should
still have no logical reason for a belief in their
continuance even for the next minute. Induc-
tion cannot go beyond generalization, and
generalization, strictly speaking, is the recog-
nition of uniformity within the range of actual
experience.1 The atmosphere in which we pass
from generalizations to universal affirmations,
the atmosphere which supports the wings of
our thought as it soars beyond the world of
experience, is this instinctive faith in the unity
of things.
All induction by which science arrives at
the idea of the unity of the world depends
upon an unconscious assumption of that unity.
Further, the most absolute recognition of the
unity of the world comes before the beginnings
of scientific induction. In the Upanishads,
the earliest expression of philosophic thought,
TV
1C. C. Everett, “Science of Thought,"' Bk. II, B, b,
"Generalization."
MOZLEY AND TYNDALL ON MIRACLES 157
we find the conception of the absolute unity
of the world ; yet all these facts on which
science now affirms that unity depends are
disregarded, the whole world of what we call
reality is denied, and unity is reached without
any external basis for belief. We find essen-
tially the same position, similarly gained, in
the Eleatic philosophy ; again the manifold is
denied, and unity is held to be the one abso-
lute reality. The great service rendered by
the development of science is that it tends to
bring to consciousness this idea of the unity
of the world, so that it can be expressed in
general propositions and receive popular recog-
nition.
To see how easily one may blunder here, we
have only to consider the discussion between
Tyndall and Mozley in regard to the credi-
bility of miracles. In this discussion Mozley
takes the ground that the argument against
a miracle, that it does not conform to the ex-
perience of the world, is not conclusive ; expe-
rience, he holds, furnishes no logical ground
1 James B. Mozley, “On Miracles" ; John Tyndall,
"Fragments of Science for Unscientific People," p. 57.
158 MOZLEY AND TYNDALL ON MIRACLES
for believing anything, and if a miracle does
not correspond to experience, that is no reason
for disbelieving it. Tyndall replies that by
trusting experience much has been discovered,
and appeals to experience to show that infer-
ence from experience is rational. Tyndall
falls into a curious logical circle in thus at-
tempting to make experience indorse, so to
speak, its own note ; and we are so much in
the habit of trusting experience ourselves that
we do not easily recognize the fallacy in his
argument. Mozley also reasons in a circle ;
the miracles are authenticated, he says, and
thus he uses evidence as a basis for belief.
But if we cannot trust to experience, we can-
not any more trust to evidence. Practically,
Mozley was wrong, and Tyndall was right.
There is no objection to our trusting experi-
ence. This, however, is not because experi-
ence of the past in itself warrants assumption
for the future, but because underlying all our
thinking is the idea of unity, and one form of
this conception of unity appears in the assump-
tion which we make, that there can be no vio-
lent break in experience by which one epoch
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUME
159
of the world should have no connection with
another.
In speaking of the process of induction as
related to the thought of unity, I have re-
ferred to the position taken by Hume. The
study of Hume is good for the correction of
many assumptions of the present time. Writ-
ing clearly and honestly, he undertakes to
construct a philosophy which shall take no
account of ideal elements, but base itself
wholly upon the understanding. He finds
two elements in thought : impressions, which
are the direct relation of the individual to the
external world through the feelings and the
senses; and ideas, which are the abstractions
of these impressions. Impressions are more
distinct than ideas; the sight of a tree is more
distinct than the thought of a tree. We must
not be misled by the term “impression”; as
used by Hume it represents, not simply the
action of something upon the mind from with-
out, but the fact of perception. Hume, then,
recognizes these two elements in thought, and
these alone, and then insists that there is noth-
ing in the realm of ideas which does not come
160
HUME'S THEORY OF BELIEF
(
CU
from the world of impressions. Thus he con-
structs the world without the ideas of the
reason. Ideas are faint images; complex
ideas are made out of single ideas. What
difference is there, we may ask, according to
this position, between that which we believe,
and that which we do not believe? Belief,
Hume answers,1 is the conception of an object
more lively, more forcible, more vivid, than
the imagination alone can attain. This vivid-
ness of conception results from association.
We associate A with B so often that when A
is seen B is suggested so strongly that we have
the condition of belief; without any abstract
theory in regard to it, the burned child dreads
the fire. Vividness of conception is thus not
merely the cause of belief, but in itself consti-
tutes belief.
But are there not cases where that which we
believe is less vivid than what we disbelieve ?
Our belief that the earth revolves around the
sun is not so vivid as the apparent fact that the
sun sinks below the western horizon; yet we
brush away the vividness of the sunset, and
16 Works, Vol. IV, p. 56.
HUME'S THEORY OF CAUSATION
161
believe that which we have not experienced,
that of which we have merely heard or read.
Often, too, where we have a vivid impression
that something has occurred, and then find that
the occurrence did not take place, with the
abandonment of our belief the vividness of
the impression also passes. So far from belief
depending upon vividness, vividness depends
rather upon belief.
All this shows that belief is something more
than the vividness of an impression; but what
it is we cannot say. We can say, however,
what we mean by it. We mean the recogni-
tion of the object of belief as having its place
in the great, united whole. No external test
of belief or unbelief can be found. We rec-
ognize belief as we recognize any other inner
element of the mind.
According to Hume, once more, our belief
in the law of causation is founded on habit.
Causation, he says, is simply unvarying se-
quence. B so regularly follows A that when
A occurs we look necessarily for B, and if B
does not occur as we expect, it is because some
other element has interfered. But one objects
M
162
CRITICISM OF HUME'S THEORY
that there are so many cases of invariable
sequence where no causation can be recognized.
Thus day follows night, and night day, but no
one supposes that either is the cause of the
other. Milli here adds a word. The term
“unconditional,” he says, should be added.
Unconditional sequence is causation. The day
does not follow the night unconditionally; the
sun must rise, for instance. But as soon as a
condition is shown we distinguish between that
which is cause and that which is not cause.
If we accept Hume's idea of belief, that it is
vividness of conception, and that belief in cau-
sation is the result of association, neither the
objection nor Mill's “unconditional sequence”
meets the case. According to Hume, day and
night should be regarded as the cause one of
the other ; they give the association of ideas,
the invariable sequence, which with Hume
stands for causation. What he means by cau-
sation, however, is not what we mean by it.
We do not mean a simple sequence, an external
relation. If this were all, then we should have
no reality of connection between the past and
16 Logic," p. 203.
C'RITICISM OF HUME'S THEORY
163
the present, no real union between past, pres-
ent, and future, no continuity in the world; we
should have no more relation between things
than is found in a heap of sand. What we
mean by causation is that there is some inner
relation between what we call cause and what
we call effect, that the present is the product of
the past because of an inner bond; that the
world has unity so that nothing in it exists by
itself and for itself. Causation is a form under
which we recognize again the unity of the
world, a unity underlying all the processes of
our thought, and not the result of any of them.
We seek for a cause for everything. We may
admit a formal freedom of the will; yet we
seek for the cause of the man's action. We
do not ask, “ Is the savage, or am I, conscious
of a belief in the unity of the world ?" but,
“Does he or do I manifest such a belief in
daily life ?” And every time that we seek
for a cause, faith in the unity of the world is
manifested.
According to Mill, belief in the unity of
the world was first reached by reasoning, the
1" Logic,” pp. 339, 184.
164
GROUND OF BELIEF IN UNITY
process of induction, and then the belief
thus reached was used in turn as a basis for
further reasoning, the process of deduction.
But I have tried to make it clear that in-
stead of being the result of induction, this
belief is the basis of all induction. The first
idea of the reason is not reached either by
induction or by deduction. It is supernatural.
It is that in which the natural, the composite
world, lives and moves and has its being.
Ultimate truth cannot be proved. What
reason have we, then, for believing in a unity
which cannot be proved by induction? The
only answer is that we cannot help believing
in it. We cannot think of causation without
thinking of unity, we cannot make large gen-
eralizations without going beyond them to
universal assumptions. We receive a new
thought, and we must at once bring it into
relation with all our former experience. But
no chain can support anything unless it is
attached to something; an endless chain of
reasoning is powerless, and we cannot help
recognizing unity as that to which all reason-
ing ultimately attaches itself. If it is said
120
LDC
UNITY RECOGNIZED IN EARLY RELIGION 165
that we cannot believe it because we cannot
prove it, then we must face this situation,
that we cannot get on without believing it,
because it is involved in our every thought.
In early religion we meet phenomena
which seem at first to exclude the idea of
the unity of the world. In place of the
universality of law we find the spontaneity
of spiritual activities. The savage, in case
of sickness, asks not what has caused it, the
modern question, but who has caused it, what
witch, what enemy, what ghost. Thus the
idea of unity seems broken up. As we look
more closely, however, we find still the affir-
mation of unity, only under a different form.
One type of unity is that of the spiritual life.
Now no more striking recognition of this
unity is found than that which is manifested
in the primitive religions. The savage under-
stands the motives which appeal to his own
will, and by a great generalization he as-
sumes that what takes place in his own con-
sciousness is the type of that which happens
outside of him and everywhere. This is as
great a step, as bold and as real, as that
166
THE HIGHER SPIRITUAL UNITY
which Schopenhauer takes when he reasons
from the consciousness of his own will to
the thought of the universal will. The
physical type of unity recognized by modern
science is the universality of physical law.
Science holds that until this was shown there
was no recognition of unity. Yet in a sense
the view of the savage was more compre-
hensive than that of the modern scientist.
For the savage could find a place for all
that occurred in the world, he had no diffi-
culty in understanding the world as con-
trolled; but materialistic science finds little
or no place for spiritual phenomena. Mate-
rial science, therefore, has no right to say
that before its day the unity of the world
was not recognized.
There is a higher type of unity in which
the results of both these types are united.
In the early spiritual life there was much
caprice. This higher type manifests the
same majesty and order that are shown in
the physical type. All caprice is eliminated,
and yet the unity is spiritual. We have a
spiritual unity with the sublime orderliness
0
NORMAL MYSTICISM
167
S
of the physical world, but embracing the
physical world within itself. This is the
unity of monotheistic religion when it reaches
its highest development. The caprice which
was apparent in the lower divinities would
result naturally from the limited nature
of those divinities, just as the limited nature
of a man makes him capricious. Given the
Absolute Spirit, and the element of caprice
as naturally and necessarily disappears.
This highest spiritual unity manifests itself
under two aspects: first, externally, as the
creator of the world; and secondly, and more
profoundly, when it is conceived as immanent
in the world. I have already spoken of this
immanent spiritual unity. We find it mani-
fested in religious mysticism. This mysti-
cism, when normal, consists in the recognition
of a certain community between the individ-
ual and the universe, between the finite spirit
and the infinite spirit. It is manifested most
profoundly in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,
which implies the interpenetration of the
individual by the absolute spirit. In its
abnormal form mysticism falls easily into
168
ABNORMAL MYSTICISM
pantheism. God is absorbed into the uni-
verse. The universal spirit has no con-
sciousness, and, strictly speaking, human
individuality is lost. Unity becomes exclu-
sive, and the understanding has no place.
In such abnormal mysticism the individual
sometimes thinks it unnecessary to follow the
laws of thought; he believes that he has
direct intuitions of the truth. Conceiving
himself to be a manifestation of the universal
life, he thinks that he can arrive at the struc-
ture of the universe, as truth in general, by
consciousness. But this is lawless thought,
dreaming and not reasoning, the work of the
fanciful mind. If the man is a man of genius,
there will be, it is true, flashes of valuable
thought, and some of the mystics of this
sort have shown marvellous insight into spir-
itual things. Many of their intuitions are of
real consequence. Jacob Böhme, for example,
is regarded by Hegel as holding an impor-
tant place in the religious world.
We do not always distinguish as we ought
1 Jacob Böhme, 1575–1624, “Aurora," “ Der Weg zu
Christo," etc.
MYSTICISM AND PANTHEISM
169
between mysticism and pantheism. In the
words themselves there is no reason why they
should not carry the same meaning, just as
there is no reason why deism and theism
should not mean the same; only they do not.
In mysticism is implied both the immanence
and the transcendence of the divine being in
the universe ; in pantheism only the imma-
nence. We use the term “ transcendence” here
as we should use it in speaking of the tran-
scendence of the soul over the body. The
life of a tree exhausts itself in the life of
the tree; in man there is a life which is not
exhausted in the life of the body. The life
of the tree may represent the pantheistic view
of the life of the universe, whereas the tran-
scending consciousness in the life of the man
may represent the mystic view of the con-
scious divine life of the universe. Or, to
use the illustration of the tree in another
way, if the leaves could be conscious of their
relation to the tree, they would be to that
extent mystics.
The first idea of the reason is incomplete
alone. It is formal, positively formal, and lacks
170
GOODNESS SUPERNATURAL
content. Truth, or unity, is supernatural, it is
over against the natural world; but nothing
is affirmed of it, it needs a more definite con-
tent. We shall reach this in part as we pass
to the second idea of the reason, goodness.
Is this also supernatural ? Yes, and under
certain aspects it represents the supernatural
in its sternest form. It appears both as
negative and as positive. In the same way
in which the savage feels that his little life
is broken up by the power of the supernatu-
ral, so the moral law strikes into the relations
of our life with an interference which, when
really felt, admits no compromise. If the
principle of duty is supreme in a man, noth-
ing else has any value in comparison. No
wars are so bloody as those fought for
some principle of ethics or of faith. Nations
and individuals alike feel the overturning
and compelling force of the moral law. The
story of Mendelssohn is a type of what takes
place again and again. Here is a man living
where he desires to live, with the various
advantages which he covets for himself and
for his family; but he is receiving a salary
STERNNESS OF THE MORAL LAW
171
from the government which he is doing noth-
ing to earn; he feels that this is wrong, and
because of the sense of duty he makes up his
mind to leave the place where he would like to
remain, and go where he does not want to go.
Some men fail to recognize this imperative
sternness of the moral law until they have
offended against it. It is thus that men, who
have continued in wrong-doing so long as
they came into no collision with this force of
goodness, are led through collision with it
into repentance. There is a saying that a
good deal of crime is committed because of a
lack of imagination. The man plans his
crime, a murder perhaps, but cannot picture
to himself beforehand what his feelings will
be, and what the condition of things, in the
moment' after the crime is committed. One
aspect of this is brought out by Browning in
“Before ” and “After.”i The criminal sees
all the natural elements in the situation ; but
what he fails to anticipate is the horror
which follows the deed, as he comes into
relation with the unexpected.
16. Dramatic Lyrics.”
172 BENEFICENCE OF THE MORAL LAW
!
!!
There is, however, a positive side also ;
the moral law is beneficent as well as stern.
There is a certain satisfaction in the perform-
ance of duty, not a sense of pride —- for who
would feel pride because he had done some-
thing where failure to do it would have been
meanness ? — but a natural pleasure, rising
sometimes to a holy joy, that one should have
been the instrument in the accomplishment of
good. A deep humility may accompany such
approval of the conscience; but, as we have
seen, the self-related feelings have their place
in the highest life, and true love for others
not only does not forbid, but implies, a certain
degree of self-love.
UUUU
LLC
CHAPTER XI
THE THEORIES OF A NATURAL BASIS FOR
THE MORAL LAW: UTILITARIANISM ; THE
THEORY OF DARWIN — THE BASIS OF THE
MORAL LAW FOUND IN THE PRINCIPLE OF
UNITY AS MANIFESTED IN THE SOCIAL OR-
DER - THE RELATION BETWEEN MORALITY
AND RELIGION
ATTEMPTS have been made to find a natural
basis for the moral law. Of these the theory
of utilitarianism is best known. A thing is
right because some good is done in some way
to oneself or to others. But suppose I recog-
nize that an act of mine will bring harm to
others, but good to me, why, in such a case,
should I try to do good to others ? This
question the older, cruder utilitarianism did
not answer. Mill recognized the difficulty,
but did not attempt to meet it. Utilitarian-
ism may furnish a measure for what is good ;
it does not furnish the underlying impulse to
173
174
UTILITARIANISM
goodness. It assumes that right is that which
is for the highest good of the world; “hon-
esty is the best policy ;” righteousness is
determined by happiness. As a practical rule
for conduct it is clumsy. Many moral judg-
ments demand quick discernment. Instinctive
obedience is needed. On shipboard everything
is done for the success of the voyage; but
the individual sailor obeys, not because he has
this in mind, but because he is commanded.
If we were always calculating the precise
outcome of each act, we might do wrong or
we might fail to do anything.
So far as the applicability of the theory is
concerned, a great step in advance is taken
when we come to Spencer's statement? that
the moral sense is the result of the utilities
of past generations, an inherited recognition
of utility by which a man acts instinctively ;
utility is so repeatedly and constantly ham-
mered into the nature that it becomes auto-
matic. Of course, if we hold Weismann's 2
15 Data of Ethics."
2 August Weismann, “ Essays upon Heredity and Kindred
Biological Problems."
SPENCER'S STATEMENT
175
view, that acquired characteristics cannot be
inherited, this theory falls to the ground. In
any case, there are difficulties in the way of
accepting it. If we ask how have the utili-
ties been impressed, we are told “through
civil law, through religious commandment,
through parental instruction.” This answer,
however, is based in part on a misapprehen-
sion, for in the early forms of religion we
find comparatively little account made of
what we call morality. The people had their
morality, that is, they had the manners and
customs of their time; but this is not what
we mean by morality. Perhaps, to avoid
confusion, we had better use the term “altru-
istic virtue" instead of morality. It is mo-
rality in this sense which has so little place
in the earlier forms of religion. What they
made prominent was sacrifice, ritual, etc.
Even in the thought of a future life, it was
not his altruistic virtue while living which
determined whether a man was to be happy
or not after death, but the performance or
non-performance of certain rites.
Besides the ritual in the lower forms of reli-
1
176
CRITICISM OF SPENCER
gion, we have the taboo, which has no moral
significance, but which affected the individual
without regard to his own wish and intention.
Thus dipus becomes impure through taboo,
though wholly innocent so far as his own moral
and spiritual life is concerned.
No, obedience and order grew out of reli-
gious culture, submission also ; but not the
moral sense, the impulse to righteousness.
This existed before its recognition in religion
and law, and during much of its growth moved
in advance of them. Religion and morality
develop from different centres at the outset.
Only later, when at length religion can take
a more comprehensive view, has it enjoined
morality. Thus the explanation given by
Spencer does not account for the moral law.
The element of inheritance which he introduces
into the theory of utilitarianism relieves it of
its clumsiness by disposing of reflection and
discussion, and contributing something of abso-
luteness and spontaneity. But the basis of the
moral law is not reached. The cruder utilita-
rianism tells us neither what it is that prompts
a man to do right, nor why it is that he feels
THE THEORY OF DARWIN
177
it his duty to do right. Spencer does give an
answer to both questions, but it is not the final
answer.
In trying to find a natural basis for the
moral law, appeal has also been made to the
theory of natural selection. In the “ Descent
of Man,” Darwin, in his derivation of con-
science, finds the answer to the question, why
conscience reproaches a man after a wrong
deed, in the permanence of social instincts as
compared with the intermittent character of
selfish instincts. The self-regarding instincts
prompt to the gratification of a particular
need ; personal grief or passion bears down
and violates the social instincts ; but when the
passion has been satisfied, the social instincts
again assert themselves, and in the calm which
succeeds the man reproaches himself for having
violated them. The social instincts have this
advantage over the self-regarding instincts,
that they have always the last word. Nega-
tively considered, the social instincts have no
authority beyond other instincts ; they owe
their authority simply to their greater perma-
1 Vol. I, pp. 86, 87.
178
DARWIN'S THEORY INSUFFICIENT
nence. They are not in themselves higher;
they merely hold out longer.
But will this theory bear examination ?
Suppose we apply to it the logical method of
difference. Are there any instincts which,
though they have the last word, yet are not
conscience ? and does conscience sometimes
speak when it does not have the last word ?
Take the case of a man whose supreme interest
is money. A case of need is presented to him,
and he gives a little more than he is in the
habit of giving; the altruistic element, the
social instinct, asserts itself exceptionally in
his life. When he realizes what he has done,
the selfish instincts reassert themselves and
make their protest, and he reproaches himself
for what he considers his folly. Such self-re-
proach as this is very different from the self-
reproach which follows a wrong act. On the
other hand, does the reproach of conscience
come in cases where it is not given the last
word ? Certainly. The king in “ Hamlet” is
an example of what we often experience. I find
myself tempted and my moral sense protests ;
I recognize its dignity even though I disobey.
179
DIRECT ALTRUISM
The king in “Hamlet” feels that he has done
wrong ; he tries to pray for forgiveness, but
cannot,
“ Though inclination be as sharp as will :
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect.” — Act iii, Scene 3.
12
At first thought Darwin's theory is plausible ;
but evidently the reproach of conscience arises
from something more than the greater perma-
nence of the social instincts.
In our examination of the earlier utilitari-
anism and of Spencer's theory of the moral
instinct as the result of inheritance, we have
seen that there are two questions with which
we have to do : first, why people perform al-
truistic acts at all; and second, why they think
it their duty to perform them. If we consider
first the nature of the impulse to altruistic acts,
we find that these acts are of two kinds, those
which are directly and those which are in-
directly altruistic. The directly altruistic are
performed with the conscious purpose of help-
ing others; we should not perform them if we
180
INDIRECT ALTRUISM
did not believe that what we are doing is to
benefit some one else. The acts of indirect
altruism are those in which the effect is not
considered. For example, why does a man pay
a debt? It is not because the other needs the
money ; the creditor may be rich, and he may
even have forgotten about the debt. Yet an
honorable man will pay every debt. He pays
on his own account, for his own sake. Or take
the case of a man who is returning home from
abroad and has to make a declaration to the
customs officers in regard to what he is bring-
ing with him. An honorable man will make
a true statement. The government may be
actually suffering because of the surplus in its
revenue; you may believe in free trade; but
you give a fair, honest account of your goods.
It is because you have respect for your own
word. When a man fails to meet these obliga-
tions, his feeling at bottom, if he has any self-
respect, is one of shame; the positive side of
this feeling of shame we may call honor.?
Thus we have two ethical principles. One
1 C. C. Everett, “ Poetry, Comedy, and Duty," III, “The
Ultimate Facts of Ethics."
HONOR
181
we call direct altruism; the other is indirect
altruism, or honor. Acts done from the direct
altruistic impulse have conscious reference to
others; those done from a sense of honor
have reference to one's self. In other words,
altruism or sympathy is a principle of self-
surrender, honor is one of self-assertion. Now,
there are many kinds of self and consequently
many kinds of honor. There is the personal
honor of the kind which resents insult, the
kind which may resort to duelling. Here
there is no ethical value, except as this sort
of self is the only self which the man has;
then, of course, from his point of view it is
right for him to defend it. The next higher
self is found where a man regards himself as
a member of a group. Here we have family
honor and patriotism. The circle of his rela-
tion to others continues to enlarge, and he is
jealous not only for his family or his country
but for all men. Beginning with mere indi-
vidualism, he has passed on to a larger self,
in which he recognizes that he is a member
of the race. As such he resents for others
what at first he only resented for himself,
182
THE SENSE OF OBLIGATION
and he is ashamed to allow in himself what
he would object to in another. No one may
know of his wrong act; but he is ashamed
to be a rotten timber in the general fabric of
society. He will not separate himself from
his kind by doing what he condemns in
others. He arrives at this recognition of the
moral law, sometimes as he blames himself,
and then applies the same blame to others,
and again when he blames another first, and
then applies the same blame to himself.
We come next to the sense of obligation.
In resting the moral sense on the social rela-
tions, it may seem that I have given to the
moral law a superficial basis. But this is so
only as we consider the social relations super-
ficially. Take the principle of love. This
is more than the sense of duty. Duty is a
sense of obligation to do something which if
we are filled with love we do naturally. The
man who provides for his family from either
a sense of honor or a sense of duty has not
reached the level of the man who cares for
his family because he loves them. Love, we
say, is the basis of the law and the fulfilling
IMITATIVE SYMPATHY
183
Y
of the law. Now love is the most mysterious
thing in the world. In it the individual
passes out from himself and centres his life
in another.
Psychologists do not always do full justice
to the altruistic feelings. Spencer, for ex-
ample, finds the basis of altruism in sympathy,
which he describes only in its lowest form as
an imitative feeling. Thus, if we see a per-
son uncomfortable, we feel uncomfortable too;
if another yawns, we yawn ; in seeing another's
pain, we have a feeling of imitative pain. But
this sort of sympathy is centred wholly in
the individual himself. In altruistic sympathy
our pain is not imitative; instead, we are pro-
foundly moved by the fact that another person
is suffering; the feeling of sorrow enters.
Further, the effects of the two kinds of sym-
pathy are wholly different. Imitative sym-
pathy, self-regarding sympathy, may cause
anger, the anger in such a case arising from
our sense of discomfort. Frances Power
Cobbe tells a story of two children, one of
whom fell out of bed and hurt himself and
cried; the other child flies at the first and
184
ALTRUISTIC SYMPATHY
beats him: the second child is unhappy,
and punishes the first child, because of the
trouble he has caused. We may also make
the effort to forget what disturbs us, to shut
our eyes to it. In “ Bleak House” Dickens
makes Skimpole run away from the child sick
with smallpox because the delicacy of his
nature makes it impossible for him to endure
suffering; Dame Durden has little feeling,
and can stay with the child and see the suf-
fering and give the needed care.
Unselfish sympathy seeks to help and relieve
the sufferer. To forget suffering is the easier
course. The more one accustoms himself to
disregard the troubles of others, the easier it
becomes, whereas the more we try to relieve
suffering the more suffering oppresses us. The
pain of sympathy can never be removed by the
effort to relieve the suffering which causes it;
the undertaking is too great. The wonderful
thing is that through love we thus break
through all individual preferences, and instead
of following the easier course; choose that
which involves effort and sacrifice. What is
the significance of this ?
LOVE INVOLVES UNITY
185
0
To find our answer we must turn back to
the first idea of the reason. As the law of
causation was found to be, not the mere se-
quence of events, but an inner connection
between cause and effect, revealing a unity
which underlies all experience; as in the
inflexible working of the law of contradic-
tions we feel the grasp of this principle of
unity so far as all thought is concerned -- SO
the principle of obligation, the principle of the
moral law, is found to rest in the love and
sympathy which manifest the same great unity
in society. The sympathy which summons
us out of selfishness is not a mere imitative,
echoing reflection; it is the suffering of a
man, not because of another, but in and for
another. The whole social basis of morality
looked at from the outside seems superficial ;
but examined from within, nothing can be
more profound. Unselfish, helpful sorrow
represents the positive side of this principle,
the reproach of conscience the negative side.
The man who takes advantage of another sets
himself off apart from others; this contradicts
the principle of unity, and he feels himself
186
THE LAW OF LOVE THE ONLY LAW
solitary. On the other hand, to the extent
to which a man's love embraces others, he is
one with them. The only solitude is that
which a man makes for himself. When love
and sympathy are checked, or cease, then
follows solitude — a solitude that is often
haunted.
Why do not all feel this relation, just as
a stone feels the attraction of gravitation ?
No one does fully escape. The criminal can-
not wholly shut himself off. We are all bound
by the principle, though the consciousness of
it is less in some than in others. But man
may choose to live his life more profoundly
or more superficially, as the stone cannot;
man has a certain freedom.
If the principle of the moral law rests upon
altruism, then all the various forms of morality
have a common source; the forms may be
very different, and at the same time the heart
remain the same. There is no system of com-
mandments, the only law is the law of love.
The Fiji islander believes that the bodily state
in which one dies will be that in which he
enters upon the life after death, and there-
THE MORAL LAW SUPERNATURAL
187
fore he puts his parents to death while they
are in full health of body and mind ; from
his point of view this is an act of love. Love
has to learn from experience what acts are
helpful and what are injurious to others;
and where experience cannot reach, the result
is helped out by theories and beliefs. Public
sentiment comes to the aid of the altruistic
virtues, religion assists them, law more or less.
Yet they have also a certain spontaneousness.
The moral law finds its basis in the principle
of unity. It is thus supernatural because the
principle of unity is supernatural. It breaks
in upon the natural world, the “noumenon,”
to use Kant's phrase, “breaking in upon the
world of phenomena.” Spencer, in a remark-
able passage, recognizes this supernatural
quality of the moral law. “If the principles
of morality,” he says, " are those toward which
the unknowable is aiming, then morality has
the sanction of the unknowable.”
As regards the relation between the moral
law and religion, we have already seen that
to a great extent the development of the
16 Data of Ethics,”' p. 171.
188
RELIGION AND MORALITY
higher ethics has taken place independently
of religion. As in the human embryo the
various growths are from different centres,
yet as development continues these growths
unite, so religion and morality appear to have
their rise from different centres and to unite
only at length in their highest aspect to form
one inseparable whole. When the God who
is the object of worship comes to be known as
the Absolute Goodness, then religion adopts
as its own the higher ethics and gives it its
sanction.
What, then, is the gain to morality from
its relation to religion? We have seen that
in its highest aspect the moral law is a mani-
festation of the unity of the social order. This
unity first shows itself without conscious rec-
ognition on the part of the individual; he
feels it as a power long before he recognizes
it for what it really is. Now, as soon as re-
ligion and morality come together this prin-
ciple is illuminated. God has “made of one
blood all nations of men."1 It is no longer
a vague, abstract principle of unity in which
1 Acts xvii. 26.
RELIGION AND MORALITY
189
Te
&
we stand together; we are in the grasp of
God. When we define in this way the prin-
ciple of brotherhood, we are defining, not only
our relation to our fellows, but also our rela-
tion to God.
In the second place, the sense of the
supernatural aspect of the moral law is
deepened. When we do right, we feel that
the power of Omnipotence is behind us and
working in and through us. Further, we are
freed to a large extent from the pressure of
little things. Religion gives to morality a
broader outlook. The little child thinks life
a failure because it is denied some pleasure
on which it has set its heart; the man knows
that the days and the years will bring their
opportunity. So religion, the relation toward
God, leads the soul out into infinite fields of
spiritual being, and the petty influences by
which we are surrounded no longer distract
and hinder us. In the general conduct of
life the thought of eternal rewards and pun-
ishments has much less effect on men than
is often supposed. It plays a large part, it
is true, before the moral law comes to be
190 REALITY OF DEATH-BED REPENTANCE
known in its higher aspects. But as the
ethical ideal rises, the importance of rewards
and punishments diminishes; the individual
recognizes the impossibility of fulfilling ab-
solutely the whole of the moral law. Only
the unusual, the startling, act excites the
dread of supernatural penalty; for the ordi-
nary occasions of life, moral standards adapt
themselves to the individual and the commu-
nity; the question is, “ How far?" Yet a
belief in God and immortality, in so far as
it makes a man take a larger view of life,
does have a great effect upon moral char-
acter.
We often speak slightingly of what is
known as death-bed repentance, and assume
that the murderer, for example, who dies on
the scaffold expressing repentance for his
crime is necessarily a hypocrite. Yet there
is no reason why such repentance should not
be real. The man is taken out of the temp-
tations and all the usual relations to which he
has been accustomed; he can see good and
evil without bias; he can see where he has
done wrong. At such a time a man's life is
IS
PERMANENT INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 191
U
like the compass that has been lifted to the
masthead, above any interference from sur-
rounding influences. His better instincts
follow the leading of their own nature.
Of course, if the compass is brought down to
the deck again, it will vary as before, and if
the man who has been at the point of death
is allowed to live and comes back into the
accustomed relations, it does not argue his
repentance untrue that old attractions and
temptations may again assert their hold upon
him. Religion aims to reach permanently a
result similar to that which in such crises is
gained transiently; it seeks to introduce
men into a larger life where immediate in-
fluences shall have less power, and the
higher instincts shall be free to follow their
own law. Suppose a civilized man ship-
wrecked upon an island inhabited only by
savages ; so long as he has any hope of a
return to civilization, it is easier for him to
maintain the old habits of life; but when
once he despairs of rescue he sinks to the
level of those about him. Thus religion makes
possible an outlook beyond the world of sense,
111
1
192
MORALITY WITH RELIGION
0
LU
so that it shall not fill and obstruct the hori-
zon; religion does not necessarily dwarf the
ordinary relations of life, but it puts the
higher relations in a stronger light, so that
naturally they assert a greater authority.
On the whole, religion and morality gain
each from the other. Each may make the
other clearer and stronger. Each contributes
its force to the other, and the two work
together as a single force. Some are awak-
ened to any real religious sense only by the
power of conscience. The man finds a super-
natural power present with him in the moral
law which he has in his own heart; or as he
breaks the moral law and the voice of con-
science cries to him, he recognizes the pres-
ence of God as a resistance made to his own
independent activity. Thus in one way or
the other he realizes that there is in religion
something more than its formal or material
aspects. On the other hand, as we have seen,
religion reënforces and illuminates the moral
sense. It is more difficult for the individual
to live selfishly, to shut himself off from the
common life, the unity of the world, when
NON-RELIGIOUS MORALITY
193
once he has recognized this unity under the
form of a great spiritual presence and power.
The question is often asked, What would
become of morality if men should lose their
faith in religion ? So far as communities are
concerned, history shows that morality and
religion usually rise or fall together; as reli-
gion is denied, the moral standard falls, there
is a greater prevalence of crime, a greater
general laxity. This does not mean that the
decline of religion is necessarily the cause of
the decline of morality ; both may be the
result of a general decline in life. It is im-
portant to notice, however, that the same
principle does not in general hold true of
individuals. The individual partakes of the
spirit in which he is trained, the influence of
habit is about him, and thus we have examples
of a high degree of ethical development among
men and women who have given up positive
religion.
The decline of religion would not all at once
draw after it the full train of its consequences.
The potter's wheel continues to revolve long
after the vessel which was moulded upon it has
2
· 194
RELIGION AND ITS CRITICS
been finished and removed, and established
habits have a momentum by which they still
endure for a time. Certainly we could not be
sure what the result would be so long as the
strife between religion and non-religion was in
progress. Many scientific men who reject
positive religion take pleasure, nevertheless, in
writing about religion. Huxley was appar-
ently never so happy as when he was discuss-
ing religious questions. A person who faces
these great questions, even when the view
which he takes of them is negative, still has
his life enlarged by them ; he is brought into
touch with high ideals and wide outlooks. It
is as though we were intent on building a high
wall about an island to shut out the sight of
the sea ; we should have to wait for a time
before we could know what the effect was to
be : so long as the wall was in process of
building, those who were at work upon it
would have the outlook. So the critics of re-
ligion look out on great possibilities, however
strongly they deny their reality. Imagine a
Huxley with no thought or idea of religion,
and contrast him with the real Huxley, inter-
POWER OF RELIGION IN MORALITY
195
ested in controverting positive religious ideas,
and what a different man we should have !
Whether a decline of both religion and moral-
ity at once is caused by the lessening power of
religion, or whether the lessening power of
religion and of morality results from the lower-
ing of the tone of the general life of the com-
munity, it is hard to say. Although morality
is not dependent upon religion, yet to do away
with religion might bring about a reaction
stronger than the positive influence. Religion
gives to morality an immense power.
CHAPTER XII
THE SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER OF BEAUTY
- THE RELATION BETWEEN BEAUTY AND
RELIGION - THE THIRD DEFINITION OF
RELIGION
WE come now to the consideration of the
third idea of the reason, beauty. We have to
ask whether this too is supernatural, and what
relation, if any, it sustains to religion. There
are a great many theories about beauty. The
fact appears to be that if we divide the ex-
ternal world into certain types of form, the
objects which manifest any one of these types
freely and purely arouse in us the sense of
beauty or of sublimity. If we begin with the
material world, we find this true; the objects
of the material world fill us with the sense of
beauty when they are perfectly presented. In
the same way sounds and colors charm us when
IC. C. Everett, “Poetry, Comedy, and Duty," I;
“Science of Thought," pp. 153, 221.
196
THE NATURE OF BEAUTY
197
pure. There must be harmony of sound and
harmony of color if we are to know color and
sound as they really are. In mere noises
sound is broken up by the accident of the
instrument or the environment, and does not
reach us in its ideal form. When, as in music,
accident is done away with, sound is left free
to follow its own laws. We may even say
that noise is not sound, because sound in noise
is not itself. It is the same, again, when we
pass to animal life. That living thing is most
beautiful which most freely and purely mani-
fests itself. It is thus that the human form
when perfectly developed is so beautiful be-
yond other forms ; man stands by vital power,
and we see manifested in him the unity of life,
its absolute balance. Finally, if we take a
step higher, into the spiritual world, we find
there, too, beauty of spirit wherever the
spiritual life is perfectly exhibited.
There is a seeming contradiction to this in
the beauty of the imperfect. A ruin may be
more beautiful than was the complete build-
ing. But this is because the ruin has been
taken back into the heart of nature. Whereas
1
198
BEAUTY OF IMPERFECTION
the complete building, however much we may
have enjoyed the beauty which belonged to it,
stood out apart by itself, in the ruin nature
has made itself again supreme. In the same
way the Chinese junk appeals more strongly
to the sense of beauty than the modern
steamer, because the junk is subordinate to
the sea, while the steamer dominates it. The
beauty of the perfection of the type does not
exclude a beauty of imperfection wherever
that imperfection appears in relation to other
elements. For the world itself is beautiful.
Wherever we find the elements of nature and
of life presented in a typical form, the sense
of beauty is aroused. It is not an external
sense ; it is bound up with our whole relation
with the world. There is in the world a unity
by which all the elements are brought into
relation with one another, and between the
world and us there is something in common
by which the world, as it were, speaks to us.
The sense of beauty is not a feeling attendant
upon the intellectual recognition of the type
realized; it is the sense of companionship
with the outer world, the sympathetic enjoy-
BEAUTY MANIFESTS UNITY
199
ment of its perfection. The interpreters of
beauty are the poets. No treatise on beauty
can surpass Emerson's Ode.1 Take these lines
from the second strophe :
6 Is it that my opulent soul
Was mingled from the generous whole;
Sea-valleys and the deep of skies
Furnished several supplies ;
And the sands whereof I'm made
Draw me to them, self-betrayed ?”
Here the supernatural character of beauty
is given recognition, the unity in nature and
between nature and the human soul.
Just as morality is the power of unity bind-
ing individual souls into a whole in the social
order, so beauty is the manifestation of the
principle by which our lives and the sur-
rounding world are taken up into a common
relationship. The beauty of a single flower
is an indication of the beauty of the whole.
If the sense of beauty is the recognition of
companionship between ourselves and the ex-
ternal world, then every beautiful object im-
plies it. There is the scientific approach to
1 R. W. Emerson, "Ode to Beauty."
200
UNITY, GOODNESS, BEAUTY
the thought of unity, such as Tennyson gives
us in the “Flower in the Crannied Wall" ;
if we could perfectly understand the flower,
we should understand and know all things.
And there is the approach from the æsthetic
side, which we have in Emerson's “Ode to
Beauty,” and by which, in every beautiful
thing,
6. The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc,
The swinging spider's silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wine,”
is found the implication of the whole.
The three ideas of the reason are simply
different manifestations of one and the same
principle. The first affirms that which is, the
second that which ought to be, while in the
third we find that which is as it ought to be,
the fulfilled perfection. Recognition of the
moral law appeals to the conscious spirit. The
spirit which is wholly beautiful is as it ought
to be spontaneously without consciousness of
the ought; it performs this or that act because
it is the most natural and desirable thing in
the world. The beautiful is not beautiful
ise
BEAUTY AND RELIGION
201
unless it is free. It must be “its own excuse
for being.” So far as we think of an object
as serviceable, to that extent it ceases to be
beautiful. The enjoyment of beauty is pure
contemplation, and the personal element must
not enter:1
It is often said that beauty is the mingling
of variety and unity. This is in a sense
true ; but mere variety and mere unity is not
enough ; there must be the variety and unity
of something. Beauty as a whole is thus the
manifestation in the most concrete and varied
forms of the unity of the universe.
What is the relation of beauty to religion?
The two have been associated to a wide extent.
In the primitive religions beauty may have little
place; the objects in which worship centres
are those which attract by their oddity, their
peculiar size or conformation, rather than by
their beauty. But as soon as we leave these
earliest forms behind, beauty begins to mani-
fest itself in the object of worship. This
emphasis upon beauty strengthens until, in
Greece, religion becomes the worship of beauty.
1 C. C. Everett, “Science of Thought,” pp. 158, 159.
TI
202
BEAUTY MAY BE ANTI-RELIGIOUS
nce
Besides being the object of worship, beauty
enters as a means of worship; architecture
and music and sculpture and painting, all
have had their part.
Why is it that beauty has such prominence
in religion? Because religion is the feeling
toward the supernatural, and beauty is a mani-
festation of the supernatural in the world. As
the moral law and religion, developing from
different centres, at length come together, so
also do beauty and religion, with this difference
only, that beauty was earlier associated with
religion than was the moral law. Negatively
considered, beauty lifts us out of material asso-
ciations ; positively, it is one manifestation
more of the reality of life.
Yet beauty may stand in opposition to reli-
gion. The religion of Greece did not lead the
people to the highest things of life. Often the
love of beauty invites to selfishness and sensu-
ality. This happens first of all when the sense
of beauty does not take us out of ourselves.
It is a fundamental element in the enjoyment
of beauty that it should consist in contempla-
tion. Anything which interferes with contem-
BEAUTY MUST SUGGEST UNITY
UTO
203
LI
plation in so far hinders the recognition of the
object as beautiful. Thus, when a man looks at
a beautiful picture with the desire to possess it,
the desire of possession is foreign to the sense
of beauty, and therefore the enjoyment of the
beauty in the picture is impaired. Again,
beauty may stand opposed to religion when the
object does not take the beholder beyond itself.
Every beautiful object is a single instance of
the absolute beauty of which it is a part, and
the true enjoyment of beauty requires that we
should have some sense of this connection in
virtue of which the object does not stand alone.
“ A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.” 1
Why was it not something more? Because to
him the primrose, beautiful in itself, suggested
nothing beyond itself. The beauty of the
flower must suggest the beauty of nature itself.
“ To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” 2
1 William Wordsworth, Peter Bell," stanza 12.
2 Wordsworth, “ Intiinations of Immortality," stanza 11.
See also R. W. Emerson, “Poems: " " Each and All."
204
BEAUTY MUST SUGGEST UNITY
CU
The beautiful object of any sort must open
on one side or another into the infinite uni-
verse. Otherwise the object alone by itself may
be pretty, but it must lack the beauty which
comes only as there is some opening into the
larger relation. In art what is called “ complete
enclosure” has always an unpleasant effect.
The statue remains open on the side of color,
the painting on the side of form. When we try
to combine both, the form and the color, as in
waxwork, the result disappoints us. The wax
figure attempts to imitate life, and we know
that it is not life.
The phrase, “looks through nature up to
nature's God,” has often been interpreted to
mean that the contrivances of nature suggest
a God as their designer. The more profound
sense is that which I have indicated. It is
not that in our appreciation of the beauty and
wonder of nature we necessarily think of the
wisdom and power of the Creator, but simply
that we have the sense of the divine presence.
In the third place --- and here we get at the
heart of the matter - beauty may oppose re-
ligion whenever it is felt too soon or in excess.
CU
VI.
BEAUTY FELT IN EXCESS
205
The enjoyment of beauty is contemplation,
but the religious life calls for action. A life
of contemplation may by its very attraction
and delight dull the active ethical tendencies,
and so lead to inaction and the neglect of
duty. But is not this fatal to any vital re-
lation of beauty with religion ? No. For
worship, too, and even religious contemplation,
may stand similarly in the way of real reli-
gion. Jesus recognizes this : “ Therefore if
thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there
rememberest that thy brother hath aught
against thee, ... first be reconciled to thy
brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” 1
The temple service, when it takes the place
of the practical duties of life, is out of place
and in the way of the highest spiritual devo-
tion and surrender. But as the mistaken use
of worship does not imply that worship is in
itself a hindrance to religion, so it is not to
be assumed, because the sense of beauty is
sometimes in conflict with religion, that there
is therefore no real relation between beauty
and religion. We cannot argue here from one
1 Matt. v. 23, 24.
206
BEAUTY AS INSPIRATION
U
[
Tece
example to another. In Byron we find the
love of beauty divorced from religion and
ethics. With Wordsworth as great an appre-
ciation of beauty was united with a profound
religious sense.
No, religion without beauty is as imperfect
as religion without the moral law. Not that
the esthetic element occupies a position of
equal importance with the ethical element.
In the perfect cathedral we say that founda-
tion and spire are both necessary, but they
are necessary in different senses. So in reli-
gion the ethical element is fundamental; the
æsthetic element helps to complete it. In
what way? Religion without the moral sense
would be misleading, but religion has not
this dependence upon the æsthetic sense.
What, then, is the opportunity of beauty ?
To serve as inspiration. It must yield always
to the moral law. The monk in his cell, rapt
in a vision of the Virgin, is called away to
give food to a beggar at the door. He hesi-
tates, but goes. He returns to find the vision
still before him, but, “ Hadst thou not gone,”
the Virgin says, “I could not have stayed.”
BEAUTY AS REFRESHMENT
207
The moral law asserts its prior claim. But
just as play is needed for rest and recreation,
so beauty enters to refresh us. It fails if
one tries to enjoy it from any sense of duty.
The exercise which a man takes only for the
sake of his health fails to give full refresh-
ment; if he is to have the greatest benefit
from it, he must play. The man who seeks
happiness is not the one who finds it. So it
is in the enjoyment of beauty. A man must
hear music because he wants to, not because
he thinks he ought.
The mediæval scholastics held that after the
performance of all duties here the saint in
glory should find his rest and joy in the con-
templation of the divine beauty. Our enjoy-
ment of beauty in the world, our delight in
each most perfect manifestation of the uni-
versal life, this is the beginning of that “vision
beatific."
(
The first definition of religion which we
reached was that religion is essentially fecling.1
To this we added in a second definition that
1 Page 51.
208
THIRD DEFINITION OF RELIGION
it is feeling toward the supernatural.1 Both
of these definitions were inclusive, covering
all forms of religion. We have arrived now
at a definition which is no longer like the
others, absolutely inclusive, but typical. RE-
LIGION IS A FEELING TOWARD A SUPER-
NATURAL PRESENCE MANIFESTING ITSELF
IN TRUTH, GOODNESS, AND BEAUTY. There
remains for us to substitute for the word
“supernatural” the word “spiritual,” but this
step would take us beyond the limits of our
present examination.2
There are forms of religion which apparently
have little to do with truth and goodness and
beauty. Take, however, the lowest form of
religion. Upon what does it rest? Upon
the assumption that in the world there is some-
thing akin to the human spirit; the unity of
spiritual power is the first type of unity which
men recognize. In the first stage, it is true,
1 Page 88.
2 The definition of religion as thus finally modified was
considered by Dr. Everett in the longer course of lectures,
on 6 Theism and the Special Content of Christian Faith,"
to which this series served as an introduction.
8 Page 165.
n
RELIGION RESTS UPON UNITY
209
the idea is only poorly developed ; there is
no conscious conception of it, only the implicit
assumption that the external world is controlled
by the same force which man finds within him-
self, the assumption that there is a unity of
the world akin to the unity within himself.
This forms the basis of religious belief. It
is that which alone entitles these lower forms
of religion to be called religion. In the second
stage of development the type of unity is taken
from the material world, and the spiritual
seems accidental. In the highest stages the
spiritual unity becomes again the basis. The
other principles, goodness and beauty, grow
up slowly, developing more or less indepen-
dently of religion ; then, as religion recognizes
them, they are incorporated in it. There is
nothing, therefore, which can properly be called
religion which does not rest upon unity.
We have here to do only with the psy-
chological elements of religious faith. Within
these limits we recognize two distinct aspects
of religion. Under the first aspect we have
the form of religion, that which we have called
the supernatural. Under the second aspect
210
FORM AND CONTENT
we have the content of religion, the three ideas
of the reason -- truth and goodness and beauty.
The form and the content may be separated.
The form is found with very little content in
savage religions, and throughout the various
developments of religion the formal element
can be recognized. It appears even in the
highest stage ; even here, as we have already
seen, religion may be for the individual wor-
shipper self-related, and the supreme being
conceived only as a power to which appeal
is made, a power which serves the worshipper,
a power which may even possess qualities op-
posed to truth and goodness and beauty. On
the other hand, we may find devotion to the
content without recognition of the form. A
man may follow the leading of truth and good-
ness and beauty without recognition of the
supernatural, of God, just as he may recog-
nize. God, and give to truth and goodness
and beauty no recognition.
Which of these two kinds of men can be
said to worship God in the truer sense ? If
we must choose, we should say that the man
who recognizes the content worships God in
TRUE WORSHIP
211
the truer sense. It is as though we should
take some one to a gallery and show him there
a poor picture said to have been painted by
Raphael, and he should see also another paint-
ing, very beautiful, not painted by Raphael ;
“ I do not care for Raphael,” he says, “the
second picture is far more beautiful.” Another
man may admire the poorer painting. Which
would really honor Raphael ? We must believe
that Raphael himself would have thought little
of the man who praised his name but dis-
honored his work. So in religion, the man
who worships truth and goodness and beauty
worships what God is. The other recognizes
the name of God, but neglects that which
gives meaning to the name. Of course the
highest form of religion is that in which the
two aspects are united. Such union gives
power to all the elements. Unity becomes
clear, goodness receives impulse, beauty is
manifested in a higher form.
The whole history of religion is found in
the attempt to fill the form with the content.
How does the development take place ? There
is a twofold movement. It is often said that
212
TO
DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION
men construct their divinities according to the
ideal of their own lives, so that as man develops
his gods develop with him. Man transfers his
own goodness to the divinity, and then the
divinity in turn reacts upon him, and the good-
ness of the divinity stimulates the goodness of
the man. We can even see the political ideas
of men thus reflected in their divinities.
This is partly true. There are, however,
other elements which interfere with the work-
ing of this principle. In the first place,
in the earliest forms of religion, the concep-
tion of the gods grew out of the phenomena
of nature, and was affected by the working of
those phenomena. It is said that we judge
others by ourselves, and this is true. Yet the
mildest man knows what anger is, and when
a man's life is interfered with he does not
need to be cruel himself in order to feel that
the gods are cruel toward him. He forms
his conception of the divine power from the
influence which it has upon his life.
Again, very few develop their religion for
themselves. They take that which comes to
them. They may inherit their religion from
TWO KINDS OF RELIGION
213
2
the past, or they may receive it from some one
who has religious power and insight, and im-
presses his power upon others. In either case
we find as a result religious conceptions which
are misfits, because made for somebody else.
There have always been, on the one hand, men
who were in advance of the religion which
they professed, so far as their own lives were
concerned; and, on the other hand, similarly,
those whose lives were as far below the re-
ligious standard of their time. At the present
day, we recognize Christianity as the highest
type of religion, but in the religion which we
actually live how far we fall short of the ideal
in which we believe!
At any given period there may be two kinds
of religion present, entirely unreconciled. In
the Greek religion recognition of the divini-
ties of the middle heaven mingled with lofty
visions of something beyond and over them.
In Christianity the religious man may recog-
nize a God who is perfect love and justice at
the same time that his theology represents a
God whose justice and love are partial. When
the religion which men inherit comes into con-
Y
214
RELIGION DEVELOPS WITH MAN
LV
flict with some higher perception of their own,
some are torn by perplexity; others are not
conscious of the conflict; others yet trust in
a final reconciliation. We are all to some
extent in this last position. How, we ask,
can we reconcile the evil of the world with
the goodness and justice and love of God ?
It is impossible, then, to apply rigidly to
actual experience the theory that men create
their gods according to their own nature.
Religion is conservative. Men cling to that
which comes to them hallowed by the past.
They fear lest they may not think and act as
they should toward the mysterious presence
which they worship. Yet, in spite of contra-
dictions, as we look at the development of
religion as a whole, we find that religion has
advanced as man himself has developed.
The ideal religion, the one perfect religion,
would be that in which the presence of the
Absolute Spirit should be fully recognized, and
the ideas of the reason — truth, goodness, and
beauty- acknowledged as the content of this
Absolute Spirit. The various religions of
the world suggest and approach the ideal
THE IDEAL RELIGION
215
religion, each to a greater or less degree. The
ideal religion is like the pure air of the upper
heaven as compared with the atmosphere of
the earth. The lower atmosphere is every-
where different; it is vitiated by mists and
dust and smoke and all the various earthly
elements; yet we breathe it, and find in it,
with all its impurity, life and strength and
refreshment. The purer air is better, and so
is the ideal religion. Yet in most forms of
religion enough of the ideal is found to give
men spiritual thought and some degree of
spiritual life.
The World and the Individual
GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE
UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
By JOSIAH ROYCE, Ph.D., LL.D. (Aberdeen)
Professor of the History of Philosophy
in Harvard University
FIRST SERIES:
The Four Historical Conceptions of Being
Crown 8vo. Cloth. $3.00, net. Postage, 15 Cents
SECOND SERIES:
Nature, Man, and the Moral Order
8vo. Cloth. $2.25, net. Postage, 15 Cents.
"Too much cannot be said in praise of Professor Royce's style. He does
not try to manufacture new technical terms or mumble over Germanesque
phrases; he is content to speak English. And it is capital English that he
uses. There is, moreover, a fine and noble charm in his entire manner.
It is an important contribution which he has made to clear thinking and
the most wholesome religious sentiment.” — Chicago Evening Posto
"Professor Royce's work, now completed, is unquestionably one of the
most important contributions to the leading philosophical discussions now
going on between the theories of Monism and Pluralism. Though I am on
the side of it opposed to his, I recognize the great ability, originality, and
brilliancy of his contribution to the argument for a monistic view."
- PROFESSOR G. W. HOWISON, University of California.
"These two volumes constitute a contribution to Philosophy of unique
character and rare attractiveness for minds interested in these problems."
- JOHN E. RUSSELL, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
Naturalism and Agnosticism
THE GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE
THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN IN
THE YEARS 1896-1898
BY
JAMES WARD, Sc.D., Hon. LL.D. (Edin.)
Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic in
the University of Cambridge
2 Vols. 8vo. Cloth. $4.00, net
“The lectures may be commended as stimulating and suggestive.
Professor Ward is a learned thinker and a lucid writer; indeed, his
style is captivating.” — Evening Post, Chicago.
“ These lectures, by their thorough handling of a many-sided question,
take a front rank in the literature of the great debate." — Outlook.
“These lectures cannot be skimmed, if the reader desires to follow
out the author's train of reasoning. They call for close study and
attention, but the reward will be found in a masterly presentation of
the question from the standpoint of the believer in a divine force in
control of the universe. As a presentation of the shortcomings of the
scientific method at the hands of a competent critic, these two volumes
are especially worthy of attention and study.” — Brooklyn Eagle.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
I g4
TAGNCCO
6_AIL ZOL

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
MINI
UT IT
11
.
: BOUND
1
3 9015 01289 5515
FEB 21 1950
I
3
UNIV. OF MICH.
LIBRARY
.
12
4
7.
-.
**.-**-
t
it
書
​.
单集
​1
","
;
重車
​中三​,
":"
T",
, , , ,

-
重量​,
"
.
」
.
"
.
,
是
​「
|重重
​.
」
r.
i.
| .
是非​,
:
轟
​直击
​:
:
新車
​車
​.
..
查
​。
事重重
​「...
via/
.
.
重量​。
.
是
​,
| 畢書
​非是击​,
山
​,.
3.
1
.
重​.
1
|
4.重​。
--
|
4
.
.
「看
​...
.
.
.
.
| 1
事
​。
|
1.
.
書
​會
​.tw/
.
.
1.事主管单量​,
|
,-
,
,
地​。
重量
​,
4
,,
*」
.
.
,
量​:
1
.
.
上海
​書中市​-
中央​,
...
.
.
.
-
1
...
, ,
在本世​,
重 ​量
​十里​,
: 鲁中
​1
,
.
,
”
严
​面
​」
由
​「
真
​事
​!
"
"
t
。
售
​車轉車​車是事​,
..
.
至
​事业事物中​,
...
在實實​,
.
.
当
​:量
​,
重
​.
4i
,
小
​」
.
.
.
lus
.
| yi
14
1
..
.
·
::
当事​:
:
A
.
,
了
​是量
​量
​4
事
​鲁鲁鲁 ​,鲁
​I4是事了与自主管​。
”
.
.
.
量​,单单是車主
​事
​.
。
重
​.
-重里鲁直书
​·排毒​」产量
​基
​-
重
​。
11.1
鲁鲁
​第争​。
事​。
」
= r
年里​,
中山​,
,
中庫
​事事事
​|
事事事
​重重重
​下
​書
​「
.
.
,
,
,
,
,
本 ​. . .
htt
.
-
1
14
:
:.
。
:
:
:
:
.
1
事中事中事情​,中
​Ep1:
117
。
」
-
,
是看得到​, 事​:
生生平事业单排出事​,
" 一事​,里華​。
-
“...
fr
,
1
」
·
申赴畫書會
​重量
​單下
​:
:
:
|
单
​1
.
1
.
書中
​| 4
事业单击事件中​,
有著多重
​.
·
..,
:
人​,其中
​“馬書畫書​,書 ​,
事了
​-華人學
​并非
​重量
​ht背書
​,
事
​.
.
Fr鲁
​|
+
十十
​: 4
,',
f事单身​,
| 1444 」車​,由一番事事​,事事
​「毒
​」
"I'LL
II世事無爭
​”;
.-- 单身等​;
1
十
​|
,
看
​** *
1.4年十一
​“.
,
| Jr.,
...
,
.*"
,
·
·
.
,
i,
是一台車​,
·
!
事事生
​},
1.Illut車4j. 1
-
為農事
​* 1
.9"
*
4
1
:
產轟​,事​。
,
式​:
....
"
:
事事
​|-
“
T":4,
事事革 ​ii畢典​「學 ​中學 ​臺北市中
​事
​,
;事
​学
​售非
​+1
十十十 ​- 中中​-
kirit中t..
也
​+”背
​重量​:
。
書
​*
重量​:平量值​:-
|| .fr
"身​# }- 青
​在F
上
​,
:
1.
:
T
:
:
1
:いろは
​1 .會
​。
」,
"
"
1。
量
​#
“
是
​一声​,
程
​,写爭者​,
事
​,
11 量身​·单量​,单曲
​上更多
​-
...
4 ,
一年一
​平手
​44 1,
1.