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H * + را 1 E میر ماما مع | بی بی م | هما | سه سمك . ورو هما " ی سی للعود:" حملت، رانا مه می " " ا محمد " حمد . جمعه من و شة حيا ه - - - - . ستيتتنننتميتحسن بشر : .مد * * ! به ، سعاد وه- د.معمولا . - . - . - - - - :":. .: ۰۰۰۰۰ يدندن داوطلب ها ۱۶۹، الا ..........اور ... . ...... . .. .......من FROM THE LIBRARY OF ROBERT MARK WENLEY PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 19 20 - GIFT OF HIS CHILDREN حنا"۔ . . . م . ) و16 TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN :: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ---- ب ع د - - - - . شي. = ---- - -- : : شستلعهسسینمننننننننننننلملنننننننننننننننلنلنننللننلمنننلنمنلنممممممممممنلنلننننلعندل سيلسيط لا del at se HmBicknals ... و في Tal A Renklaly from In Another. BASES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF HISTORIC AND IDEAL AN OUTLINE OF RELIGIOUS STUDY BY CHARLES MELLEN TYLER, A.M., D.D. Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion and of Christian Ethics, Cornell University G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON 27 West Twenty-third Street 24 Bedford Street, Strand The Knickerbocker Press 1897 COPYRIGHT, 1897 BY CHARLES MELLEN TYLER Entered at Stationers' Hall, London LES MELLEN TYLER Tbe knickerbocker Press, MCW Pork ΤΟ MR. HENRY W. SAGE THE FOUNDER OF THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THE WRITER. 1-10-39 DR Vio PREFACE. THE indications of a concordat between theology T and anthropology are cheering. Science is more clearly discerning the spiritual essence of man and nature. Theology, accepting the fact of the antiquity of man and the lessons taught by archæo- logical research, now interprets the doctrine of the fall of man, in terms of a reverent and enlightened philosophy of history. Both science and philosophy accept the Divine law of development, and the distress of thought is greatly mitigated. Every serious mind has a philosophy of religion. In our modern thinking, we find the basis of our re- ligious belief in the study of the facts of the world and of human nature. The latter force us to believe in a Being, above the course of the world which is de- veloped in time—a Being of Goodness who is the cause of all that is included in the world. That God can be known in his transcendence, is the view of a “romantic" inetaphysic. That he can be known only in his relation to us and to the world, Preface. as immanent in both, is the teaching of an inductive metaphysic. Speculative ontology gives way to an immanent ontology. Religious philosophy is the coronation of the scientific structure, and in a scien- tific spirit limits its study to that which can be ob- served, viz., to the Being who is intramundane, and to the “being which we ourselves are." The facts of man's religious history and the moral and religious ideals which are the forces of all prog- ress, demand and find their meaning in the perfect Goodness, who is the Supreme Cause and End. Inseparable from the belief in the Supreme Cause and End, who is the explanation of the ideals of reason and conscience, which have urged humanity along the track of progress, is the conviction of an immortal life in which those ideals may find con- summation. These aspirations are more than adequate to the existence of terrestrial society. In excess of the demands of a life confined to time, they prove, in- deed, hostile to man's physical life, shattering often the health of the philanthropist and the reformer. They are, so to speak, semaphores which signal afar higher reaches and functions of being. Life would, indeed, be a cruelty as well as an enig- ma, if these tremendous aspirations of the soul were not to be satisfied in a future life of union with infinite Goodness. Inductive reasoning is here a powerful ally of hope. The writer has aimed to give simply a résumé of the conclusions of modern thought. To enter in dis- Preface. vii cussion of critical problems of psychology or meta- physics, he has not attempted--that would have led him too far afield. He indulges the hope that this little book may be of some service to students in our Colleges, and to some who purpose to enter the pulpit, and that it may help them to appreciate the Divine origin and purpose of the religious belief of humanity. 1 CHARLES MELLEN TYLER. CORNELL UNIVERSITY, May, 1897. boy house O YOTEET CONTENTS. PART I. PAGE CHAPTER 1. DEFINITION OF RELIGION . . . . . 3 CHAPTER II. PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC DATA, AND THEIR BEARING UPON THE STUDY OF RELIGION . 24 CHAPTER III. WAS THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN HISTORY A MORAL CATASTROPHE?. . . . CHAPTER IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS OF RELIGION . : 74 PART II. CHAPTER I. METAPHYSICAL GROUNDS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 117 X Contents. CHAPTER II. PAGE ETHICAL GROUNDS . . . . . . . 158 CHAPTER III. ÆSTHETICAL GROUND . . . . . . . 188 O CHAPTER IV. SPIRITUAL LOVE AN IDEAL TO BE REALIZED : 206 CHAPTER V. THE ULTIMATE GROUND, OR GOD REVEALED IN HUMAN PROGRESS . . . . . . 235 CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . 259 PART 1. HISTORIC BASIS OF RELIGIOUS HISTORIC BASIS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. . sty CHAPTER I. 1 DEFINITION OF RELIGION. sality. THAT man is in all lands and in every age a T religious being, is now the general, if not the unanimous verdict of students of Religion. It re- quires fortitude to assert in the present state of knowledge that there is now, or ever has Its Univer- been, on the surface of the planet any race or tribe without Religion. “No tribe or nation," says Professor Thiele, “has yet. been met with destitute of belief in any higher beings; and travellers who asserted their existence have been afterwards refuted by the facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call Religion in its most gen- eral sense a universal phenomenon of humanity." The progress of research has not only forced anthro- pologists to concede this, but in an excess of convic- tion, some who formerly resisted this claim for man, now hasten to assure us that Religion is not a fact peculiar to man, but is possessed by animals as well. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Science must religious The origin of Religion, and its essence as well, properly belong to the realm of philosophy. The manifestations of Religion are the legiti- deal with mate materials of science. The Philoso- phy of Religion can achieve no adequate phenomena. definition of Religion without the study of the facts of history, nor can the history of these religious phenomena, which aids the construction of a science, enable us to arrive at a true conception of Religion, without the light that philosophy casts upon its source and essence. To collate these his- toric religious phenomena, to compare with each other these manifestations among various peoples, thus establishing the unity of all Religion, is the work of a Science of Religion. Science traces the historical development of the Religious Idea, and there is a natural history of Religion. It may, how- ever, be a history wherein we have a mass of facts selected from the experience of various races, with- out attempt to relate these facts, or they may be compared with each other to ascertain if they con- stitute a unity.* The object of the Science of Re- ligion is not to gain a knowledge of cults and rites as isolated facts which present an aspect of similarity, but to bring them out of disorder into a system, to find that they are parts of an orderly whole. Thus the comparison of religions, a legitimate effort of science, leads directly to the Philosophy of Religion. For there can be no comparative History * See Dr. Menzies, History of Religion, Definition of Religion. Is the history Science ? of Religion which does not interrogate the vital rela- tions of the various religions. And there can be no vital relations between them, apart from the Reason in the world which, with purpose, has founded those relations. Here we enter the domain of the Philoso- phy of Religion which deals with its rise and nature. That there has been a development of Religion, the facts of history furnish abundant evidence. Hence evolutionists of one class have re- is the garded the history of Religion as a natural a natural science, and have subjected it to the oper- ation of the law of natural development. In this natural evolution no place has been left for a Divine purpose. The conception of a Divine Idea ever more clearly revealing itself, of a goal of human destiny, is excluded. The Science of Religion is not a natural science in this sense of the term. Re- ligion is indeed subject to the law of evolution, but it is an evolution which is the ever clearer manifes- tation of the Eternal Idea. The mechanical conception of development can never do justice to the transcendent worth of the ideals of man. They are Divine impulses revealed in a historic process. Teleology is so necessary for the explanation of the phenomena of mind, that many who accept natural development cannot con- sent to dispense with it. The Science of Religion, Historical and Compara- tive, enlightens us as to the content and validity of Religion. The recurrence among all peoples of similar or identical customs, opinions, objects of wor- Historic Basis of Religious Belief. of Religion ship, and myths, also, points to a common instinct in Content the soul of man, and reveals the power of and Validity that instinct to develop, in human prog- on ress, higher religious ideals. The ascer- tainment of the nature of religious manifestations, must be the work of philosophy; but the history and comparison of religions reveal a religious capa- city which is one of continuous advancement, and is the fundamental impulse towards society and nation- ality. The religious phenomena which in the study of the past of humanity we are enabled to collate, and which, through the work of comparative science, dis- close the unity of religions, make it possible to for- mulate a preliminary definition. Religion may then reliminary be in a general way defined as A con- Definition of sciousness of Higher Power or Powers one upon whom man feels himself to be de- pendent, and with whom he desires to become united, in order to secure his present and future welfare. Religion is, indeed, a progress in knowledge of the Ideal-Reality. The ideals of the reason, conscience, and sentiments of man seek their fulfilment in the Ultimate Reality, whom we name God. A full knowledge of the content of Religion cannot be attained until growth is complete. But in all stages of its progress from the lower to the higher, from its germ to its fulfilment, the identity of Religion is not lost. Primitive and modern Religion are one, in different stages of growth. The religion of him who in the words of the Dramatist might say, Religion. Definition of Religion. “ Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more." is not in essence different from that of him who bows in Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame. It is then possible, remembering that the subject is iden- tical in all stages of its development, to so define Religion as to understand it as the ground of its potentialities. If, then, there is a continuity of growth of Re- ligion from the beginning to the close of man's his- tory, it may be asked, Is not the evolution a process anterior to man? Evolutionists have not hesitated to affirm that moral and religious qualities are possessed by ani- mals; that love, loyalty, gratitude, venera- HA tion, are manifested by them towards man mals a re- as a god, and, in their own societies, tow- ligion? ards the leader of their own species. It has been said, however, in denial of this affirmation, that, of the psychical states of animals we know but little, and not being able to put ourselves in their place, we speculate in vain. However gradual the evolu- tion of psychical states in man from those of animals, Religion would seem to be an experience only in the soul of man. Referring to the ingenious contention of Van Ende, that animals discern in natural phe- nomena the operation of powers superior to man, and are inspired with joy or terror, Count D'Alviella, Have ani- Historic Basis of Religious Belief. who is generous towards all theories which would claim a hearing in the court of Science, remarks : “With M. de Pressensé we shall decline to believe that the dog is religious until he has combined with his fellows to found a religion, implying the desire to establish ideal relations with the mysterious higher powers. This would require a capacity for abstraction and generalization and a perception of analogies which we could hardly expect from an animal, even were it Häeckel's anthropopithecus.” Confident that Religion is a capacity inherent in the nature of man, that what is developed in physi- cal and social relations must be present in the germ, and that the potentiality presupposes actuality and the real nature of things must be found in their Final Cause, we conclude that Religion must be so defined as to account for the phenomena of all the religions of the race: but science does not as yet enable us to include in these manifestations the sub- human feelings as constituting Religion. Gerland, von Hartman, and others, it has been pointed out by De la Saussaye, grant that“ animals have religious qualities but no true religion, because religious ob- jects are wanting to them.” The Philosophy of Religion cannot be content with a conception of the essence of Religion that makes its origin to be a merely natural or Religion of divine, not human origin. Religion cannot be the human satisfaction only of selfish instincts, as origin. . Gruppe and Feuerbach contend, for in its highest expression it is a surrender of self to the Divine Will. To confound the satisfaction of re- ligious needs, the longing for the realization of the Definition of Religion. higher ideal of character with selfishness is the sui- cide of Religion. Religion is indeed an affair of man as the subject, but as Dr. Boyd Carpenter remarks, “it is also a relationship between the Self and some Other-than-self." As the spectre of the Brocken was only an exag- geration of human forms as seen reflected upon mist, so Religion is declared by Feuerbach and others to be but man's worship of an exaggerated self, a merely subjective affair without an objective ground. But were Religion a subjective illusion, an illusion, notwithstanding, necessary to the progress of the race, and originating in man's conviction of its necessity and utility for him in his social relations and in the struggle of life, then the reason for that utility or indispensableness must be found in the Divine Purpose in the world. If Religion is felt to be necessary to man's progress and subserves a pur- pose in the life of the race, it cannot be a subjective illusion, but has its ground in the Divine Reality, and is included as one of the forces of developing history, an impulse from the Being who reveals himself ever more clearly in the advance of humanity obedient to the Divine ideals abiding in the soul. The claim made by Comte and his followers that the worship of Humanity is a religion, cannot be allowed. Religion is the worship of an comta's wor Other-than-Self. To claim, further, the ship of title of Theisin for the worship of Hu- Hu manity is, as Dr. Martineau affirms, a still greater violence, “a subversion of established meanings." Humanity. IO Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Woo The saints of Comte's Positive calendar are in some cases entitled to admiration, but as they are no longer living anywhere, no longer able to minister to those who survive them, to admire them is not Religion; it is but grateful recollection. Even though admira- tion may be exaggerated into veneration, the living can feel no dependence upon the dead for aid or sympathy. Many of the saints of Comte's calendar, moreover, while living, manifested traits of character which must have been revolting even to the robust admiration for great men, of which Mr. Carlyle seems to have been capable. « Habitual and permanent admiration” is not Re- ligion, else, as Martineau says, Count d'Orsay or Beau Brummel regarding themselves in a mirror would be examples of intense religiousness. “Cosmic Emotion,” another term for a religion which has no basis in that which is beyond or above Nature, can with as little reason be denominated Religion. Regularity of Cosmic Action, as observed in the motion of planets, may kindle poetic feeling, but the sentiment of duty can never be derived from the observation of the uniformity of the succession of physical phenomena. Behind the regularities of the physical Universe must be discerned the purpose of Goodness, an ulti- mate ground of all being, the source of all our ideals, rational, moral, and spiritual. If regularity of action alone is worthy of homage, the swing of a pendulum should inspire religious emotion. Definition of Religion. II Advancing now to more adequate conceptions of Religion, we find that definitions are usually based upon inferences from the study of either the primi- tive or the modern consciousness of man. The his- torian naturally lays emphasis upon the myths and customs of ancient peoples, or upon the manifesta- tions of Religion among modern savage tribes, in the formulation of a definition. The philosopher and theologian as naturally determine as to the essence of Religion from data afforded by the study of the advanced consciousness of man. A definition will be one-sided when the primitive and the later stages of growth are not taken together into account. The religion of primitive man, however low in the scale, cannot be other than that of the modern worshipper. In the evolution the identity of the subject is not lost. “The germ and the finished product," says Dr. Menzies, “are the same entity, only differing from each other in that the one has still to grow while the other is grown.” The definitions of Religion which reveal the his- toric spirit, though they more or less avail themselves of philosophy, may first be considered. Amassing all facts to be gained from the in study of the primitive culture of man, of the historic spirit. his Nature-worship and Animistic beliefs, the historian is disposed to find in fear and a sense of dependence the explanation of religious customs. It is conceded that a sense of dependence is one of the elements of Religion ; but a sense of dependence does not exhaust its contents. Definitions inspired by - - - “ . .. -- 12 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Even Schleiermacher, who laid stress upon the feeling of dependence,—and who drew the shaft from Hegel, that the dog must be more religious than man, if a sense of dependence alone constitutes Re- ligion,-liberates the scope of his definition in the further statement that “Religion is the immediate consciousness of all that is finite within the Infinite, and all that is temporal within the Eternal.” Here manifestly the philosophical spirit prevails, and a free range is given to all the feelings and conduct of man in his desire for union with the Power on which he believes himself to depend. “If the common kernel of Religion in all its forms," says Professor Pfleiderer, “is that reference of man's life to the world-governing Power which seeks to grow into living union with it, this is actually present at the very lowest stage of the primitive mythical consciousness.” Mr. Darwin, in the historical spirit, says: “The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of depend- ence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements.” * D'Alviella, who also may be classed with those who consider the facts of primitive life as of the highest importance for the definition of Religion, makes the cautious statement: “Religion is the con- ception man forms of his relations with the super- * Quoted by Professor Max Müller, Gifford Lectures, 1888, p. 65, note on p. 69; p. 188. Definition of Religion. 13 human and mysterious Power on which he believes himself to depend." This would seem to be an in- adequate statement, because it fails to account for the reality, and regards only the phenomena, of Religion. If Religion is only a conception of man, and there- fore the conception may be true or false, then the Science of Religion may dismiss its interest in the phenomena. All phenomena postulate a reality. Religion must be based on reality in the nature of the world, or its manifestations will indicate no per- manent active Principle, nor will they deserve the attention of Science which seeks reality as the ground of all appearance. Religion is, therefore, more than a “conception" which may have no basis in reality; it is a consciousness of reality. But Professor D’Al- viella concedes that feeling or sentiment must have preceded any formula of primitive theology, that a conception of the nature of the Gods while it seems logically antecedent to feeling, “since we cannnot love or fear a being before having conceived the idea of its existence,” is yet a subsequent act of reflection. He compares religious feeling to the consciousness on the part of the infant, of the approach of persons. He experiences joy or alarm long before there is any act of reasoning concerning his relations to them. Obviously, in the light of this concession, Religion should be defined, not as a conception of relations, but a consciousness of relation to the superior and mysterious Powers. Professor Max Müller, who blends the historical 1 14 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Professor Max Müller. and comparative with the philosophical method, must, however, be classed with those who er lay greatest stress upon the rise of the religious consciousness of primitive man. In his discussions of Vedic Religion, and in his vol- umes, Physical Religion and Anthropological Religion, the historical spirit is predominant. Under the stress of criticism he has revised his earlier definition of Religion as the “perception" (by primitive man)“ of the Infinite,” restricting now that perception " to such manifestations as are able to influence the moral conduct of man."* In seeking thus to assuage the demands of inan's practical reason, he admits that at first he laid stress upon his cognitive powers, to the neglect of the part played in Religion by his sentiments and conduct. It is obvious that he regarded the primitive man as too much of a philosopher. His “wide net” of definition seemed to be not wide enough to catch and hold all the phenomena of primitive Religion. His later statement approaches a satisfactory formu- lation, if the desire of man for union with the Infinite is included, and also the expression of that desire in his cults. He admits, “ The Infinite per se as a mere negative would have had no interest for primitive man; but as the background, as the support, as the subject or the cause of the finite in its many mani- festations, it came from the earliest period of human thought." Professor Müller does not, it is obvious, contend * Physical Religion, p. 294. Definition of Religion. 15 11 } that the idea of the Infinite is as definitely developed in primitive as in advanced consciousness, but that the feeling of the Infinite is more or less kindled by the observation of the appearances of Nature. His use of the name “ Infinite ” to express the object of all religious perceptions has not escaped criticism. He prefers this word to the word " Absolute," which is charged with an Hegelian meaning; and also to the word “Transcendent," which can with difficulty be dissociated from the school of Kant. The term “Infinite” possesses the advantage of having the term “finite” for its opposite, and Professor Müller admits that what theologians mean by the “Divine” is in reality the same. It is, then, manifestly unjust to attribute a scholastic sense to the term as he uses } it; rather should it be taken as the Non-finite, or that. which is behind the finite, but to call this unlimited or Infinite the Unknowable, Müller says “is to do violence to the verb to know." * M. Réville also must be classed with those who belong to the historical school, and who find that all religious development supposes a primitive germ in the soul. In his analysis of the religious sentiment he studies profoundly the psychical states of primi- tive man, discovers the germinal principle of Re- ligion, which, in its growth, experiences no breach of continuity, but unfolds itself and enriches itself with new forms, modifications, and numberless applica- tions. It is a principle which is the “initial fact and directing force” which attracts into its orbit all other * Physical Religion, p. 297. 16 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Definitions elements, itself being the substantial element. “Re- ligion,” as defined by Réville, “is the determination of human life by the sentiment of a bond uniting the human mind to that mysterious Mind whose domination of the world and of itself, it recognizes, and to whom it delights in feeling itself united.” It may be thought, however, that primitive man could hardly conceive of the Power as “Mind," that the content of the word is seized only by a more ad- vanced psychology, and that the primitive concept was simply that of living agency. Of those who represent the philosophi- inspired by cal tendency in the treatment of Religion, Philosophy. Professor Pfleiderer may first be mentioned as holding that “religion in its essence, is least of all to be recognised in its histori- cal beginnings; it reveals itself only through its actualisation in the course of its historical development, and most distinctly on the highest culminating point of that development in Christianity. ... Whoever would describe the essence of the oak, will not derive its marks from the acorn but from the full grown tree; and whoever would obtain a knowledge of the essence of man, will not limit him- self to the observation of the infant, nor will he choose as his models the savages who are to be found in the crude state of nature. On the contrary, he will give heed to what the human race has developed in the course of thousands of years; and in the highest representa- tives of the moral and intellectual culture of man he will find the criterion by which to judge of what the human species is by its con- stitution, or what its essence contains in itself." * The question may be asked, Shall we determine the essence of Religion from a study of the moral and in- tellectual culture of the nineteenth century, or wait * Introduction, Gifford Lectures, 1894. Definition of Religion. till a thousand or ten thousand years shall have passed away? Does not the study of primitive psychology teach us something concerning the essence of Reli- gion? Are not the acorn and the oak in essence identical, that essence being manifest in earlier and later stages of growth? And we recall the remark of Professor Pfeiderer, that “if the kernel of religion in all its forms is that reference of man's life to the world-governing Power which seeks to grow into living union with it, this is actually present at the lowest stage of the primitive mythical consciousness.” We may then affirm that the essence of Religion, the subject, or principle which is identical in all stages of advance to a clearer manifestation of itself, is implicit in this mutual desire for union of the Power above with man, and that this primitive sen- timent as thus expressed, is the "union with God” which now constitutes our highest conception of Religion. The essence of Religion must involve the desire for, and search for, a higher ideal, and both primitive and modern Religion reveal this active Divine principle in man's soul. The constant, unfolding element of Religion is this desire for the Ideal, and if the ideals of the first ages were not as clear and high as those cherished by the Christian of to-day, it is ideas essen- as true, also, that our conceptions of the tially Di Divine Reality are nobler than they were a decade or two ago, and will, hereafter, be still more worthy of the Creator. It were, indeed, a hardship if the essence of Religion, which consists in trust, hope, 7 . Primitive Iv Divine. 18 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. and a desire for that which ought to be, instead of that which is, can be understood only when all human history shall be closed, and the highest de- velopment of man shall have arrived. If the essence of Religion can be known only through the study of man in his highest state of culture, we can have no evidence that man in the early ages was a religious being. We can speak of primitive man as thus religious only because both ancient and modern religion are in essence one, but in different stages of growth and of clearness of apprehension. Another illustrious writer, Dr. Mar- tineau, approaches the question, What is the essence of Religion, from a quite exclusively philosophical point of view: “I do not mean," he writes, “ to set up one exclusive source for the faiths and worships of mankind; or to contradict any inquirer who may trace their genesis to the 'idea of the infinite,' or the 'sense of absolute dependence,' or the startling impressions of external na- ture, or the memory of ancestors, or the images of dreams. In the absence of any experience which can test such hypotheses, they must remain speculations neither verified nor disproved. ..As I do not wish to speak evil of dignities, I will not disparage the resources of the so-called 'science of religions' for ultimately determining this question. But meanwhile we have some psychological knowledge of the springs and varieties of religious conceptions in ourselves; and there seems no reason why we should neglect to consult these indica- tions of experience as to the lines of tendency that pass from our own nature to feel after the Divine." Dr. Martineau then defines Religion as “ Belief in an ever-living God-that is, of a Divine Mind and Will ruling the universe, and holding moral relations with mankind.” Definition of Religion. 19 The march from the consciousness of early man to the man of the university is a long one. Dr. Martineau is, indeed, right if he means that the phil- osophical conception was implicit in the primitive consciousness; that what man has attained in cul- ture existed as potency from the first; that what comes out at the end must have existed in the germ. But an exclusively philosophical definition antici- pates man's growth in knowledge, and cannot justly be affirmed to be a concept of his rude understand- ing. The oak is, in a real sense, in the acorn, though an acorn is not an oak, only in time becomes the oak. Dr. Martineau, whose services to the Philoso- phy of Religion are very great, concerns himself with its outcome rather than with its genesis, leaving the History of Religion to be treated by others. He is quite right in assuming that primitive mental processes must be interpreted in accordance with the demands of later psychology. The Science of Religion must, however, not rest alone upon our modern philosophy of consciousness. The facts of Anthropology and History must be taken into ac- count, and the History and Philosophy of Religion are not to be sundered. An adequate Philosophy of Religion must be founded on a broad knowledgel!! of the facts. It is to be observed, however, in the interest of philosophy, that when the historian has collated the facts of primitive Religion, it remains to determine the essence of Religion. And De la Saussaye reminds us that “primitive and 'essential' are not synonymous terms, and 20 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. though our philosophy of its essence may mould our views of its origin, it would be, however, a peti- tio principiż to maintain that the essence of Religion must clearly show itself in the earliest forms under which it appears.” That the essence of Religion reveals itself less clearly than in later stages of progress may be freely admitted. If we open the brilliant work of Professor Edward Caird, The Evolu- tion of Religion, we have the “root or basis ” of Re- ligion given in the three ideas, viz., the subject, the object, and the Unity in which they blend. The Ego or self, on the one hand; on the other the en- vironment constituted by the external world and all the things and beings within it, and the Unity of the subjective and objective in the Infinite. This is a process extending through all history, and religions are phases of this process. Therefore we are to seek for no common element in all religions. A definition of Religion must “express an idea which is fully re- alized only in the final form of Religion.” We must seek a “principle which is bound up with the nature of man, and which manifests itself in all stages of his development.” The pendulum of Religion thus vibrates in human progress between the subjective and objective, seeking rest in the Infinite Unity. The Science of Religion is indebted to Professor Caird for many profound suggestions, but this phil- osophy of Religion seems too schematic. It appears to be an excessive demand that we shall wait for a definition of Religion and to understand its obscure beginnings, until history shall be finished, until the Definition of Religion. 21 Religion a onsciousness f the Divine, “full growth and expansion of this mighty tree, under whose shadow the generations of men have rested.” And Professor Caird significantly remarks: “It need not, therefore, be a matter of wonder if an examination of the facts of religious history, taken in relation to their psychologic possibility, should lead us to a definition of Religion quite beyond the reach of uncivilized men.” Religion exists from the first as a consciousness of relations to the mysterious Powers or Agents, and its definition can be given in terms of primi- R tive psychology. Such definition need consciousness not wait until the conception of the most ºf the advanced psychology shall be reached. All that can be demanded for such a statement of Religion is, that the later conception shall arrive in the progress of knowledge, and that it shall be found to be implicit in the formula based upon primitive data. The goal of Religion is indeed to explain its genesis, the Im- pulsive Force is identical with the Supreme End. The progress of rational, ethical, and spiritual ideals more and more makes clear what is essential to Re- ligion. The deepest and purest realizations of its essence do not appear in the primitive stages of evo- lution, as explicitly manifest, but are latent in them. The religious consciousness is present from first to last in the development of the soul of man. The progress of religious development seems, with Pro- fessor Caird, to be a logical rather than a living proc- ess. In conclusion, it is obvious, that the definition of 22 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. The complete definition. Religion which shall do justice to the truth of God's presence in human history from the first, te which shall not exclude from all partner- ship in the Divine recognition the primi- tive peoples who have so earnestly felt after God if haply they might find him, should be stated in terms which may express the religious sentiment both of primitive and modern humanity. That definition has already been given. Religion is the consciousness of a mysterious higher Power or Powers upon whoin man feels himself to be dependent, and with whom he desires to become united, in order to secure his present and future well-being. This form of thought does not emphasize the ob- jective side of Religion, making the fear of Power to become the motive to conduct. It includes the conception of a Power, in union with whom all the ideals of man may be realized. It is therefore a Power which always transcends the highest concep- tions of morality, and in every stage of man's prog- ress towards the Ideal of Truth and Goodness is worthy of his devotion. The idea of a government of the world is included in the formula, and it implies the movement of all man's faculties, cognition, feeling, and will towards this Power, and the hope of another life as well. In reviewing thus the definitions of writers of the historical and philosophical schools, I have not been able to concur with those who think that the essence of Religion can not be known until its development shall be completed. That would delay our under- Definition of Religion. 23 standing of its nature to an indefinite future. What Religion is, man must experience from the first. The ideal in its origin is a low one, but with the ad- vance of culture, becomes clearer and nobler. Re- ligion in its essence is a constant element which takes upon itself higher and richer forms with every step of progress. In the words of De Pressensé : “La Religion est donc une tendance générale dominante de notre âme qui, s'emparant des éléments divins que renferment la raison spéculative, la raison pratique, le sentiment, ne les laisse pas dans l'isolement, les réunit, les fond dans une même synthèse, dans une même effort dont le résultat est précisément la vie en Dieu.” AZ TAAS VO a WC BASI CHAPTER II. PREHISTORIC AND HISTORIC DATA, AND THEIR BEAR- ING UPON THE STUDY OF RELIGION. . , 5: history. D ELIGION, in its essence, can be understood N only by a study of its origins, and its histori- cal development. Though a Divine factor in his- tory, it is yet natural, in the sense of a development in time, and in world-relations. Natural Religion of divine origin, Science cannot indeed account for the has a natural phenomena of Religion, for Religion is a transcendent principle, and while it can account for the facts with which Science is occupied, the latter cannot go behind the phenomena of the world. And Evolution itself involves the metaphysi- cal conception of a process, and cannot dispense with a transcendent Power, which is at once a pri- mal and a final cause. The signification of Evolu- tion is that of a metaphysical ideal, which has to be realized through the process of the world. The study of language and of mythology reveals a devel- opment in accordance with natural law—in other 24 Prehistoric and Historic Data. 25 words, the movement of Divine purpose in a uni- form process which has a history. We may interrogate the religious consciousness of primitive man, observing the facts of history which attest its growth. But to understand the re- ligious consciousness of primitive man, we must study the soul in its more developed life. Wide as is the interval between the primitive and the later civilized ages, the laws of the psychical activity may be assumed to have been, in both, identical, and we may reflect the rays of intelligence from the study of existing man to that of man in the earliest time. History and philosophy must not then be sundered, and if we must find the clue to lead us through the obscurity of the early time by reflecting upon our own experience, it is also a necessity to study the primitive phases of Religion, to understand our own religious life. In its origin, is latent the subsequent development of Religion, and, it may be added, a true Philosophy of Religion. “That theory will come nearest to a solution of the problem of the beginnings of Religion which possesses the highest degree of psychological probability, and which at the same time explains in the most natural way the various facts of primitive history.” * The facts of primitive Religion are legitimate material for Sci- ence, and they take their place in the natural historic development, but in a comprehensive philosophical view of the world they are seen to be facts of Divine origin and value. * Professor Otto Pfleiderer, 26 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Conceptions of Nature, The mechanical conception of Nature, with which Physical Science is ever legitimately occupied, is in a higher effort of philosophy made to dis- ns close “the gently constraining power of the one Eternal Idea in which we live and are.” The Divine principle of Religion must then be studied in its operation amidst primitive con- ditions of life, and in all ages it will be found devel- oping amidst physical and social relations which act as a check or stimulus, but in the end impel it to an ever-clearer revelation of its nature. “We should be expressing,” says Lotze, “but a part of the truth in lauding the improvement of the human race as attributable to the influence of re- ligion; we should have equally to admit that the progress of humanity due to the action and re- action of society, and to the development proper to secular life, on the one hand has supplied religious belief with new questions and subjects of considera- tion, and on the other by its quiet, obstinate, and ever-present resistance, has blunted the edge of those injurious extravagances into which the world-inter- preting, world-creating fights of devoutly inspired speculation were apt to run.” * While then the question of the origin of Religion is essentially a philosophical one, and not one of Science which deals only with given facts, and can- not reach behind them to the Divine purpose, the study of the vestiges of prehistoric and historic man is necessary to an adequate construction of the Philosophy of Religion. * Microcosmus, Book VIII., chap. iv. I:In The ICM . Prehistoric and Historic Data. 27 sub-human qualities, Certain anthropologists have affirmed that anterior to man the elements of Religion may have been pos- sessed by the lower orders of life, and that primitive man was lower in the scale Science of Re- ligion not con- than prehistoric man, whose vestiges have cerned with been discovered. For missing links to connect primitive man with the animals we still wait, and shall probably wait in vain. Pro- fessor Max Müller asks why the challenge of Virchow to Haeckel has not been answered. To the denial by the former that the ascent or derivation of man from the animals is an acquisition of science, no reply has been made. Science obviously can know noth- ing of the period when man was “losing his fur and gaining his intellect." Let Caliban be found half- man and half-beast, evolution is but the method of Divine purpose, and when manhood arrives, religion arrives with it. The antiquity of the remains of early men, dating as some writers contend from the end of the Terti- ary, or at the latest, from the Quaternary age, roused the hopes of materialists. The animal origin of man seemed about to be proved. The Science of Re- ligion is not vitally concerned with the question whether or not animals possess reason and Religion. Were it to be established that they possess them, we should only be impelled to hold a higher opinion of animals. That the religious capacity has always been arriving, aggrandizes the fact of its arrival. The mental and spiritual powers of man imply, however, a source beyond the physical order, even though their actual development may have occurred 28 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. 1 in the history of a physical Universe, though from the dull sense of the mollusk there may have been an ascent to human consciousness. Behind protoplasm is the Divine “Protoplast.” If then, man stands at the summit of the hierarchies of plant and animal life, if by subtle increments reason and conscience have at last appeared in man, it may be affirmed that his real origin dates from the hour he is capable of a free moral act.* In the light of Höffding's statement, that the inner unity of the soul which constitutes man a psy- chical individuality is the practical limit of science, we cannot be hopeful of any future proof that man, in the whole content of his mind, is derived from the lower orders of life, and ultimately from mere matter. We can gather into focus a few scattered rays from the prehistoric period. Neither the traditions, nor the discovered remains afford us of more than scanty materials. With these science must be content until more dis- coveries shall be made. In the present condition of Science, the question of the antiquity of man can- not, with precision, be answered. It is somewhat discouraging to find that man's origin, fixed by the conservative calculations of some men of science at an age removed only 15,000 years from our own, by the judgment of others, is assigned to an antiquity ten times as distant from our era. Professor D. G. Brinton regards as meagre the evidence that man * See note I. Antiquity of man. Prehistoric and Historic Data. 29 lived in the Tertiary period. That he did live in the Glacial or Pre-Glacial age, he concedes, and the Gla- cial age is fixed by him at a period about fifty thou- sand years back. He also affirms that “the fable of the lost Atlantis and the theory of Haeckel as to the submerged Lemurian are not tenable. Eurasia was certainly man's original birthplace.” Mortillet is held to be in error by De la Saussaye, for affirming that Religion is a modern discovery, only 15,000 years old, founding this opinion upon the absence of amulets and of the care for the dead in the Palæolithic age. Even the division of the prehistoric period into Paläolithic and Neolithic time seems to be questioned. Steenstrup, Nillson, and others have divided prehistoric times into three periods, namely, the stone age, the bronze age, and that of iron, but according to De Nadaillac the lines of division waver before the scrutiny of science. In America there has been, it would appear, no bronze or iron age, and one scientist, Alsberg, con- tends that iron was the first metal used, founding his contention upon the sixty-one prehistoric iron foundries discovered in Switzerland, and suggesting that the discovery of iron objects is only rare be- cause they soon perish by rust. De Nadaillac pre- fers the division of the prehistoric period into the two ages of rough and polished stone.* Such are the exiguous data from which we derive our knowledge of the religion of prehistoric man. Science is with reason cautious in retrospective con- * Manners and Monuments of Historic Peoples, De Nadaillac. 30 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. clusions. That there are evidences, however, that man possessed a capacity for Religion, there seems to be no reason for doubting, though some have erected too imposing an edifice upon so narrow a base. Con- clusions from amulets must be hesitant; those de- rived from the places of burial are quite assuring. Burial itself is an act of affection and of faith, im- plying both Morality and Religion, sympathy with kindred, and belief in their continued existence. The bones of the infant placed in the father's skull, and the weapons and tools laid in the tomb, admit of no satisfactory explanation apart from the belief in a continued life and a possible reunion of the family. The perforated crania of the Neolithic dead, a rude kind of trepanning, according to Broca, " proves be- yond question that the inan of that age believed in a life in which the dead retained their individuality, for these amulets were placed within the skull of the dead inan, and were intended to secure for him happiness and exemption from evil.” Even if, as has been claimed, trepanning was performed upon the living for medicinal purposes, the deposits in the skulls of the dead still give force to the argument. M. Quatrefages concludes that the belief in another life and in continued personality existed in the earliest times. The animism of prehistoric man, the belief in the departure of the spirit into another stage, de- rives a strong confirmation from the animistic beliefs of modern savage and early civilized peoples. It is true that the psychical states of the modern savage cannot be claimed as wholly identical with those of Prehistoric and Historic Data. 31 Y prehistoric man, but customs among modern savages, so analogous to those which we discover in the pre- historic age, imply similar beliefs which gave rise to the customs. Edgar Quinet eloquently writes : “What a future I begin to discern for this strange animal, hardly knowing how to build for himself a hut better than a wild beast's lair, and yet concern- ing himself to provide an eternal home for his dead; I seem to be touching the first stone on which rests the edifice of things Divine and human. After such a beginning, all that remains is easy of belief.” Even certain members of the school of transformism, who set aside the claims of reason and morality to an origin transcending Nature, and who relate man in all his development to his physical environment, admit that Religion is coeval with his origin. Ger- ard de Rialhe says: “La croyance à quelque chose d'inhérent à notre personalité qui survit à notre ex- istence ou qui la continue dans un autre monde, paraît être universellement répandue dans l'humanité et avoir pris naissance avec elle." * In the West, also, are found remains of Paläolithic man. “After the elimination of all doubtful exam- ples,” abundant proof remains of the existence of man on the American continent in a Palæolithic as well as an early Neolithic age. Sir Daniel Wilson, however, regards it as an open question whether the Paläolithic age of the New World is equally remote in time with that of the Eastern hemisphere.t * Mythologie Comparée. + Sir Daniel Wilson, New Atlantis. Y V 32 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Thus there is scarcely a region upon the earth's surface which may not be claimed as once the abode of man in a state like that of savagery. Prehistoric Archæology places in our hand a torch, the light of which, it may be, is feeble, but which, nevertheless, is able to guide us through the obscurity of the primitive age. That man has set forth from the lowest conditions, and has marched in the way of Religion and culture, feeling the Divine impulse of a higher destiny, the manifold discoveries of Archæ- ology overwhelmingly demonstrate. From the gravel beds of Europe, the laterite of India, the drift of America, relics of man find their way into the muse- ums of the world. Vestiges found in terramares, lake dwellings, and shell mounds combine with me- galithic structures of later times to attest the vast antiquity of his origin.* The Chaldean narrative of the tree of life and the deluge of waters centuries anterior to that of the book of Genesis, is a story of yesterday, when we compute the antiquity of primi- tive man. Both the cylinders of Babylonian art and those of Assyria frequently represent the tree of life, as shown by the so-called black stone of Lord Aberdeen, and by that from Babylonia, which offers us the picture of the tree of life, the man and the woman, and behind the latter the erect serpent. The composer of the Hebrew narrative, eliminating the archaic puerilities of the Chaldeo-Assyrian or Tu- ranian account, has invested it with moral sublimity. The crucial question is, Was he inferior or superior * See note II. Prehistoric and Historic Data. 33 avage Man? to savage man? This is the pivot of the contention between the defenders of the doctrine of the Fall of primitive man and the theory of continuous ad- vance. The pressure upon the mind from Primitive the conclusions of the sciences of Biology, Man and Anthropology, and other branches of Sava study, is vanquishing doubt that development is a Divine Law, and that it includes in its sweep the facts both of Nature and of human life. The evolu- tion of the world in its physical, animal, and human history is the progressive march of Divine purpose, a conception of Philosophy which can alone give ideal completion to thought concerning the world and the nature of man. *. The doctrine of a Fall may be successfully de- fended as a precosmic event, and there is no necessary conflict between this doctrine Savagery and the historical evidence. A conservative theology, however, in the interest of the doctrine of the Fall of man, in time, con- tends, as does De Pressensé, that the troglodyte was superior to the savage of the present day; and if he is permitted to select his examples, the case may, perhaps, be fairly made out. That pre- historic man possessed the fortitude to survive crises of climate and great cataclysms of nature in the Glacial age, must be conceded. We may reason- ably hesitate to affirm, with Sir Daniel Wilson, that he “evinces powers of observation and a freedom of hand in sketching from nature, such as would be found exceptional among pupils of our best training Primitive and the Fall. 11 3 34 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. schools of art.” We cannot assume that all prehis- toric peoples were in like measure endowed with the æsthetical insight, though some of them seemed to have had it in their ruder stages of development, The argument would prove too much, for if the troglodyte surpasses the man of to-day in the art of sketching, and if many persons who have now at- tained high culture lack the ability to sketch, the latter would have cause to envy the troglodyte. It is not probable that primitive men were upon the same level, even within the bounds of their own family group, and the exceptional genius who sketched the hairy mammoth upon ivory, may have been the Raphael of his tribe. We may justly con- clude that the modern savage state is to a great ex- tent the analogue of the primitive state, although behind the modern savage may lie a history of alter- nate advance and relapse.* But though the child and the savage may not be the exact representatives of the first men, the prog- ress of science makes it impossible on other grounds not to regard the man of the stone age as at least not superior to the savage of to-day. Nor is it to be forgotten that, if the modern savage is in some as- pects of his life higher in the scale of being than the Paläolithic man, the latter, also, may have been higher in the scale than his progenitors, whose un- recorded history stretched into the “dark and back- ward abysm of time." Whether these retrospective judgments of anthropologists derived from the psy- * See Note III. Prehistoric and Historic Data. 35 chical disclosures of modern savage life, as to the psychical states of man of the early stone age, be cogent or the opposite, still the evidence gained from vestiges of prehistoric life and the postulates of the Law of development, force us to the conviction that the man of the early stone age was in a stage of being lower than that of modern savagery, and that far back, clouded with the mists of antiquity, some Tertiary or Post-Tertiary being, his inferior, may have existed. Waiving the assumption of a possible human or pre- human ancestor, the scanty knowledge we have of man of the early and later stone ages, forbids the claim that he was the superior of the modern savage. The indications of nobleness, or of æsthetic capacity, discerned in the vestiges of the troglodyte or men of the cave, are even more manifest in modern savage life.* The doctrine of the Fall of man, however, is not bound up with the anthropological question. We shall have occasion in a subsequent chapter to speak of it as a picture of a state of human consciousness in man's effort to reach an ideal. Meanwhile, that man has risen from animality, is as yet only a prob- ability of Science; but were it shown to be true, it is still a divinely ordered progress that we observe, and whether he emerges from the zoölogical order or sets forth from a point higher up, he has a Divine origin. The Theologian and the Evolutionist are in exact accord in accepting a state of mental and * See Note IV. 36 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Theology. moral poverty, from which man has begun his march down the ages. Both accept progress as fact and law. The Law of progress, however, receives a blow in the theological assumption, that a moral catastrophe hurled man down from primitive excellence, and that history has been for the most part a lapse from purely monotheistic worship into an ever-in-creasing con- fusion of ideas concerning the Divine Being. It is the weakness of the traditional view that both declension and progress are alternately assumed to Traditional be the Law of history. A vindication of doctrine of Providence must be based on one or the • other theory; it cannot be founded on both of them. The unanimity of the sciences is ominous for the traditional view derived from the comparatively modern story in the book of Genesis. The Philosophy of Religion, however, is not con- cerned to dispute the facts of history. Behind the historic process is the Divine Purpose, without which progress could not have been possible through mere struggle for existence and through natural selection. Every year Science is enriched by new accessions of evidence of the truth of historic development. Folk-lore gives account of customs and proof of un- manners, and Archäologists exhume cy- interrupted linders of clay which unveil the past and open up a vista which fatigues the imag- ination. Linguistic Palæontology shows that words and their roots constitute an unpurposed history handed on from age to age. Ethnology, surveying the races of the earth, accumulates invincible proof, Cumulative progress. Prehistoric and Historic Data. 37 and Ethnographical comparison swells our knowledge to riches. The historic period has been pushed back by the decipherment of cuneiform and hieroglyphic records, and by this startling accession of knowledge of the past, the proof of a purposive development of human progress is made impressive. As long as' one remains sullenly in the cloisters of conservative thought, and declines to accept what has been achieved in the many realms of research, he may still feel the potent spell of the old conception of history. But when one goes forth into the bracing air of reality and with candor regards the accumula- tion of data, the most obstinate doubts must yield. Within historic periods of time the evidence is cumu- lative and irresistible for the belief, that there has been an advance from lower to higher religious ideals. The granite fact of the survivals in higher religions of the imperfect conceptions of primitive cults is not to be conjured away by any device of S reasoning. Fetichistic survivals may still primitive be detected in the stories of children, and elements. even in the forms of ecclesiastical Christianity. Dean Stanley in his Christian Institutions—faithful to his- tory-has shown how usages and superstitions have survived the lapse of centuries, some of them being, beyond doubt, of pagan origin. The older Scripture of the Bible abounds with vestiges of pre-Semitic religions. That there has been no breach of conti- nuity in the development of Religion must be con- ceded, and historian and theologian alike prove recreant to truth, if they do not compare the evi- Survival of 38. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. dences of Religion in all stages of culture. Doctrines and rites have an ancient history, and are not to be considered as wholly later products of particular. religions. The past was big with the present, and the present is big with the future, and a devout be- liever in Providential development cannot refuse to study the significance of each rite and doctrine in its place in the Divine plan of progress. Ethnographic research, retracing the history of Language, Ethics, and Laws, arrives at forms so low and simple, and so clearly discerns in later stages of culture the primitive elements surviving, that it be- comes certain that from lower to higher stages prog- ress has been continuous. Language as clearly betrays in its primitive construction the undeveloped psychical states of the men who used it in early his- toric time, as their lake dwellings reveal their social conditions, or, as now, the coins of small value tell of the poverty of the community in which they circu- late. Indeed, Language still labors under the incu- bus of its rude material metaphors and imperfect analogies, which were more closely adapted to the primitive life than to later times. It is obvious, also, that our moral ideas are rooted in an obscure antiquity, in which the standard of Present stand- right was a low one, and our higher moral ard of moral. codes are no more to be sundered from primitive the lower moral judgments of ancient conceptions. time than the dome of the cathedral of St. Peter can hang in the air without the edifice and its foundations to hold it aloft. The history of cus- ity and Prehistoric and Historic Data. 39 tomary and written Law tells the same story of de- velopment from primitive conditions of society and its conceptions. Civilized law is to be traced clearly to Barbaric law, and the latter was not suddenly de- vised, but points to still ruder origins in prehistoric times. Philosophy, also, presents the appearance of a chain of ideas reaching back to the primitive con- ception of Spiritual Cause. “ Philosophy," it has--- been said, “is the history of Philosophy.” Affirma- tive or negative, Philosophy has never been able to break entirely with the conclusions of primeval man. Its course has been determined by the first reflec- tions of man, and Plato dealt with problems which had occupied his predecessors. From Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel, and from the latter to Hamilton and Lotze, the chain of ideas is closely linked. Philosophy is thus a child of the race, and has with the race advanced through constant libera- tion to the higher stages of culture. The dynasty of philosophic thought is more ancient and enduring than the dynasties of the Pharaohs. Philosophy is a Divine impulse in man. He was made to think concerning himself and the Universe, and to seek the ultimate Reality. It was inevitable that Phil- osophy from its first well-nigh inarticulate expression should, like Morals and Religion, be evolved under the pressure of the Divine Spirit and in contact with outward conditions, and thus reveal through all time an unbroken continuity. When we enter the field of Biology and take ac- count of the progress of life through Geologic ages, Historic Basis of Religious Belief. until it arrives at its highest forms, it is manifest that both Anthropology and Biology are subject to the same evolutionary Law. The utterance of Mr. Tylor carries with it great force. “In the scientific study of Religion, which now shows signs of be- coming for many a year an engrossing subject of the world's thought, the decision must not rest with a council in which the theologian, the metaphysician, the biologist, the physicist, exclusively take part. The historian and the ethnographer must be called upon to show the he- reditary standing of each opinion and practice, and their enquiry must go back as far as antiquity or savagery can show a vestige, for there seems no human thought so primitive as to have lost its bearing upon our own thought, nor so ancient as to have broken its connection with our own life.” It is true, however, that Progress may not thus far have been clearly understood. Is it a progress of uni- What is versal humanity in physical welfare, know- Progress? ledge, and virtue, or is it only the realization of a higher type of exceptional men of the race? This much is clear, that the civilization of Europe is in advance of that of Asia, that the Englishman of to- day is far in advance of the denizens of the British Isles in the time of the Cæsars, and that the subjects of the Emperor of Germany are far in advance of the Teutons who swarmed in the forests centuries before Cæsar and Labienus hewed their way through them with the legions of Rome. The tendency of culture within the historic period, observed in all its phases by historian, anthropolo- gist, and students of language, compels us to extend the Law of development to the prehistoric age. It Prehistoric and Historic Data. Y is necessary to study but a small segment of an arc to determine the nature of its curve. The knowledge gained of human progress within the historic period assures us that the same natural and psychologic laws were in operation in the first ages. Science, which alike with Religion deals with Divine truth, makes it increasingly clear that there are four stages of progress fairly differentiated, that of Primitive man, that of Savage man, that of the Barbarian, that of Civilized man. That there is no such thing as continued progress is seen to be an irrational conten- tion, for even the skeptic with regard to progress will hardly deny that for the present civilization of cer- tain peoples to lapse into the unquestioned initial savagery would be an inconceivable disaster. It would be to overlook the irony which inspired Mr. Burke's Vindication of Natural Society, and to ac- cept, as science, the sentimental theory of Rousseau. History is not a shipwreck, but a progress, and that progress is a Redemption as well. The conti- nuity of the world is another word for the Eternal Immanence and Activity of Divine Goodness. All things seek the goal of Eternal Wisdom and Love, and the words of Wilhelm von Humboldt are more and more seen to be true,“ Der Mensch knüpft immer Vorhandenes an." NOTE 1. Hoffding's Outlines of Psychology, p. 353 : “From a purely psychological standpoint it is necessary to go a step farther. Even though the individual organism, which in spite of its completeness and relative inde- 4.2 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. pendence is still a republic of cells, were to be explained as compounded out of elements, and its origin made in- telligible through the law of the persistence of energy, this would not explain the individual consciousness, the formation of a special centre of memory, of action, and of suffering (the ego). That it is possible for such an inner centre to come into being is the fundamental prob- lem of all our knowledge. Each individual trait, each individual property, might perhaps be explained by the power of heredity and the influence of experience ; but the inner unity to which all elements refer, and by virtue of which the individuality is a psychical individuality, remains for us an eternal riddle. It is impossible to apply to the mental province anything analogous to the persistence of energy. Psychical individuality is one of the practical limits of science.”. NOTE II. Count G. Maspero records the conviction (Dawn of Civilization) that, "nothing or all but nothing, has come down to us from the primitive races of Egypt; we can- not with any certainty attribute to them the majority of the flint weapons and implements which have been discovered in various places. The Egyptians contin- ued to use stone after other nations had begun to use metal. They made stone arrow-heads, hammers, knives, and scrapers, not only in the time of the Pharaohs, but under the Romans and during the whole period of the Middle Ages, and the manufacture of them has not yet entirely died out." . NOTE III. De la Saussaye, however, thinks that as savages have an unwritten history, the comparison of their state of life with the childhood of the race is a metaphor, rather ! Prehistoric and Historic Data. 43 than an analogue. He inverts the argument derived by historians from the survivals of savage customs among civilized peoples, and supposed to prove that civilization rests upon savagery as a foundation. Not only, according to De la Saussaye, are “savage customs to be detected amongst civilized races . . . but traces and indications of higher ideals are not wanting amongst savages.” Gerland finds among savages positive indi- cations of a former civilization. NOTE IV. It is probable that the primitive man may have pos- sessed the mysterious capability of progress which the modern savage has lost. The latter needs an external impulse towards a higher stage of culture; the primi- tive man did not. Even the ancestor of the modern ape—it has been suggested by a friend of the writer -may have possessed a capacity for development which the modern ape has lost, and is doomed to remain an animal. It is not infrequently observed that both indi- viduals and nations reveal now a capacity or incapacity for progress. Anthropologists, however, in contending for the infe- riority of primitive man are betrayed into much looseness of logic, as, for example, when discovering that certain modern savages indulged promiscuity, they promptly conclude that it was formerly universal, and that the first men lived in promiscuous relations of the sexes. It can never be shown that at any time among savage peoples it was a universal practice ; besides, the laws of physiology demonstrate that monogamous peoples are most likely to survive. If the promiscuous relation cannot be shown to have been universal, the presumption is against its primitive existence. WT 4 . allo CHAPTER III. WAS THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN HISTORY A MORAL CATASTROPHE ? Fall. may be THE historic development of Religion is not, of I necessity, inconsistent with the doctrine of human Sin. The tragic experience of the race is the result of a misuse of man's freedom. The initial o concep moment of an assertion of independent tions of a selfhood in opposition to the Divine Self may be considered as a precosmic fact or a fact of historic time. This sinful opposition of the finite spirit to the will of the Infinite may be viewed, Precosmic first, as a precosmic act. The atoms of physical science no longer held to be ulti- mate realities, must be regarded as either centres of Divine energy, or, with Leibniz and Lotze, as spir- itual monads endowed with selfhood. The physical Cosmos is the aspect assumed by these spiritual units in their interactions, and the cosmical relations may be an expression of the conflict of the finite personalities with the Divine Personality. They may be regarded, not as imprisoned in matter, but Fall. 44 The Beginning of Human History. I in their wilful opposition to absolute goodness, as under a Divine discipline, and in their relations to each other, become conscious of themselves as con- stituting a world-order. * The history of the world would then become an evo- lution of Spirits, through Nature as a state of stress, upward, out of conflict, into a reconciliation with the Divine Will. The belief entertained by theologians of the first centuries, that matter was a form of evil, might thus contain a certain amount of truth. But evil is “ ultimately psychical,” and “ matter is the condition of spirits which require the constraint of matter." The history of Religion, upon this hy- pothesis, is the history of Spirits ascending in a cosmic evolution towards ultimate spiritual perfec- tion, or, as both progress and retrogression are in- volved in an evolutionary process, towards a final sep- aration by degeneration from the Spiritual Ground of all being. The theory of precosmic sin, held by some of the early fathers, would thus explain the low beginnings of Religion and the continuous advance of man towards higher spiritual conditions. The Phi- losophy of Religion is not debarred from availing itself of this hypothesis by anything in the Sacred Writings, and many of the most devout theologians have found comfort in this explanation of the evil in the world. That precosmic spirits did sinfully assert their selfhood, is not found in the poetry of Milton alone, but in the first pages of the Old Testament. Again, the idea of a Fall may well find its justi- * Note I. † Note II. 46 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Conscious fication in the consciousness of a dualism within the soul, a struggle against evil or lawlessness in the effort to realize the ideal which evermore haunts the mind (the Divine Spirit being im- failure to re- manent in the reason and conscience), and alize the ideal. therefore the conviction is ever imperative that harmony of soul is to be found only in the union of man with his Creator. The sense of sin as experienced by early mankind is clearly a consciousness of a higher Power with whom man is not always in accord. Professor A. Reville * finds the spur to the religious acts of sacri- fice and expiation in the consciousness of man that he is not what he ought to bent does not do what he ought to do, and that fear of chastisement plays a great part in everything which impels him to seek in religion a synthesis of the contradictions of his des- tiny. The rise of sacerdotal orders, the expiatory rites, have their origin in the desire for a more per- fect harmony with the Powers above him. As man gains a higher ideal, finding also that progress is at- tended with effort and sorrow, the perfection which is sought is fancied to be something which once ex- isted and has been lost, a descent from an age of gold to one of bronze or of iron. Classic legends have influenced austere minds like St. Augustine, and Christian dogmatics have borrowed this concep- tion of a golden antiquity. * Prolegomena, p. 288. † There is a fall in man's self-esteem when he gains the vision of a new ideal. The Beginning of Human History. Individual conflict. The poets of Latium in their despair, seeing only retrogression from a higher to a lower civic life, dwell fondly upon the idea that the early ages were those in which justice and virtue were perfectly realized. The ideal society is thus transferred from the future to the past. All peoples dream of a golden past, and long for a restoration in the future. The Fall may be conceived also as a drama enacted in the personal soul. The first falsehood, or act of insurgence against parental love, is a.de- cree of exile from the Garden of Eden. experience of The new consciousness of sin, which dawns upon the hitherto innocent child, is the cherubic sword flashing athwart the path of return. The abode and exile are personifications of moral states. As men wearied by civic conflicts, and the hard strug. gle in the marts of trade, make pilgrimages to the rustic spots where they first saw the light, and roamed the fields, and admired the stars, so all souls respons- ive to the Divine Spirit look back to childhood as a paradise and sigh for the early innocence. And all peoples dream of a past of simple and innocent man- ners, because the conflict of good and evil suggests a future of perfection. The truth, implicit in the doctrine of a Fall, is that man possessed the innocence of an undeveloped being. The innocence of the child not Primi yet able to discriminate right from wrong, innocence lost -in whom, however, there is a capacity by P for such discernment, and who is at first the sport of natural impulse,- is not the innocence of the adult by progress. 48 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Y who, conscious of good and evil, as in opposition, resists temptation and maintains a moral character. There is a loss of innocent naturalness when man begins to think and choose in free conduct, but with- out such a beginning of thought and free choice the achievement of personal character and a historical progress of the race, seem alike inconceivable. The truth imbedded in the sublime allegory of Genesis may lie in the fact which science can justly not wish to controvert, that somewhere, in a primitive age, man may have lived in rudimental conditions, with few wants in some Arcadian realm, with, as yet, no consciousness of transgression in an insurgent free act, guided by healthful natural instincts and not yet oppressed by the horde of natural evils which in his later progress he causes to spring up around him. Driven forth by increasing numbers to contend with hard conditions of the planet, in countries remote from his tropical birth-place, he wrestled with wave and storm and glacier, and with axe and lance of stone warded off the beasts of prey who menaced his existence. But if, according to traditional theology, his first estate was one of perfect character and definite Distress of knowledge, not only have we to confront thought Scripture itself, which asserts that he did traditional not know good from evil before he ate the doctrine. forbidden fruit: more than that, we im- port into theology a great distress, and cast doubt upon the Divine goodness; for how can we explain the terrible hardships of the long and weary ages of stone and iron, into which the inexperienced ances- caused by The Beginning of Human History, tor of the race was plunged by a Divine impulse to know, which overmastered his feeble powers; a con- flict which even Christian thought now approves as a divine means of progress. The devout thinker will always shrink from assailing the traditions of faith, until the assured progress of knowledge shall compel him to substitute other and more solid grounds. But the faculties of man are not given him to mislead him; a humble trust in the veracity of his understanding is an imperative duty. To ad- here to an unscientific view of history, in order to maintain a inodus vivendi in accord with traditions which the progress of knowledge proves to rest upon insecure bases, is an abdication of manhood. As Genseric spread his sail in quest of perhaps an un- righteous conquest, and with unscrupulous piety exclaimed “whithersoever God will take us,” so, he who ventures upon the sea of truth must in a humble trust abandon himself to the currents of Divine Reason fearless of man's censure, and con- scious of a devout purpose, say also: “Whitherso- ever God shall lead me." The doctrine of man's original perfection has been watered down under the pressure of advancing knowledge, until it differs little from the Modification conception of man's primitive character by theology. maintained by anthropologists. The perfection thus diluted by theology, seems inadequate to the pur- pose for which it is advocated. It is now held to be hardly more than an innocent state, innocent of transgression not only, but of the distinctions of good and evil, until after an experiment is made 50 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. which is essential to progress. Thus Lenormant, the eminent French historian, whose efforts to ad- just the Roman Catholic theology to the facts of Archæology subjected him to ecclesiastical suspicion, accepts the “hard and miserable conditions” of primitive life as no longer to be questioned, but would save the doctrine of man's original dignity by denying that he was an abject being. According to his view, man from the first possessed faculties worthy of respect, an instinct for art, affections for his kindred, and a belief in immortality, all of which anthropologists grant. He thinks the abyss between man and the animal is not to be crossed, that in the strata of the earth, pithecoid man will never be found by those whose “bizarre pride” inclines them to seek the monkey for an ancestor rather than accept the dogma of the Fall. And Lenormant rests upon the “ perhaps” that this prehistoric savage state with so much of human dignity and achievement mani- fested in it, and which must have existed to account for the formation of languages and societies, was preceded by a vastly more ancient state which was one of peace and sinlessness. And thus the Divine anger condemned the first man to all the rigors and dolors of the Glacial age.* The primitive Monotheism is now by many con- servative thinkers relegated to so remote an an- Primitive tiquity, in order to make place for the Monotheism. facts of Archæology, that it becomes a violent presupposition. An eminent professor of the Catholic University of Louvain has written: * Histoire ancienne de L'Orient, p. 242, 245. The Beginning of Human History. 51 " The belief in a primitive Monotheism only concerns a period too remote for historical researches ever to reach. ... The original Monotheism does not affect any of the religious transformations and vicissitudes which history can trace, and which may become the sub- ject of our studies. The worship of material objects and the corre- sponding state of intelligence may perfectly well be admitted by us all, as existing in an age which is lost in the night of time, and from which man successively raised himself at several centres to loftier conceptions." * Universal Pressensé. VI And M. de Pressensé, the illustrious defender of Protestant orthodoxy in France, while adhering to the belief in a moral lapse in a remote age, yet admits the subsequent prevalence of a savagery con- universal savagery, and thinks it the initial ceded by De point for “the reconstruction with some degree of precision of the social and religious condi- tion of the rude infancy of humanity, of which they are themselves the survivals.” This “rude infancy. of humanity” lying back of the savage state would seem to be all that the science of development can require, and the Monotheism of such a rude infancy hardly deserves the name. D’Alviella, from whom these statements have been derived, refers also to another eminent defender of Roman Catholic ortho- doxy, the Abbé de Broglie, who admits or the progress of human knowledge in the Abbé de Church, and that Christianity is “an im- mense step in advance" from the religion of Moses, and the latter from that of the Patriarchs. It is neces- sary to take another step, following out this law of progress, and derive the Patriarchal religion from the Opinion of Broglie, * Cited by D'Alviella in his Hibbert Lectures, 1891. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. conceivable. beliefs of the Semitic peoples on a much lower level, beliefs the character of which is known from the decipherment of their inscriptions. Not only do the facts, that there is no breach of continuity within historic time, and that the sciences Descent to of Anthropology, Biology, and of the savagery in- Earth reveal a Divine law of evolution, me, make it difficult to postulate a primi- tive monotheism as now held by religious culture. The lapse from such a clear conception of God into a universal savagery, by all peoples without excep- tion, is inconceivable. The argument of Whately, derived from Nie- buhr, that there is no historical evidence of the rise of man without aid from the savage to a civilized state, may be met, as Tylor has shown, with a counter question. Is there any record of any civilized people falling independently into a savage state? Can even the hardships of a Glacial age explain so great a de- scent? As already pointed out, the summit upon which the first man stood has been so levelled by concessions of theologians, that hierographic science can ask little more. The Bible itself presents us a man ignorant of moral distinctions until he had eaten, contrary to oral command, of the tree of the knowledge of man non- good and evil, hitherto being simply a non- moral being. He is depicted as naked like the animals around him, not until the transgres- sion making for himself clothing of their skins; as capable at once of savage outbreaks; as battling with Scriptural moral. The Beginning of Human History. the forces of nature and the hostility of other tribes; as slowly arriving at the discovery of iron and use of barbaric instruments of music. It is difficult to see wherein man in this etiolated scripture picture dif- fers from the savage which Anthropology describes. What kind of a monotheism could it have been if unable to distinguish good from evil, and what kind of character could man have possessed without moral distinctions ? Were it possible for angels to remain ignorant of those distinctions and yet possess char- acter, we may still ask, Does sin consist in this dis- crimination by man of good from evil? That history affords examples of the degeneration of peoples is true, but it is to be observed that degeneration sup- poses previous attainment of culture. "Progression," says Tylor, “is primary, and degradation is second- ary; culture must be gained before it can be lost.” The “dangerous classes ” of great cities have not become savages. Proletarian life, unlike savage life, is dependent upon civilized conditions; the savage is dependent upon nature. In all degradations of peoples from higher conditions, caused by famine, war, and rigors of climate, it is not savagery which is reached, but a state in which elements of the lost higher condition are still at work, and where some- thing of the higher moral and intellectual life survives in the new state of being. The Science of Language enables us to conclude that no savage people was thrown off from either the Aryan or Semitic stock for milleniums of time, and this fact has great weight against the contention 1 54 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. that from a high culture any race has fallen to sav- agery.* Sir Charles Lyell in his work, The Antiquity of Man, describes the possible achievements of man, had he started with high intelligence. Instead of celts and polished stones we should find works sur- passing those of Phidias and Praxiteles, lines of buried railways or electric telegraphs, telescopes, and microscopes far surpassing in delicacy of construction anything we now possess, and mysterious inventions which would go beyond, and prove an insoluble enig- ma to, the most advanced intelligence of the present day. It is incredible that with such an original en- dowment the capacities of man should have shrunk to the proportions of savage ignorance; that godlike qualities which raised him above the angels should all have foundered in the shipwreck of his beginning. When Theology has summoned Science to afford proof of the descent of all peoples from one ances- Opposing tor, it has not been successful. Philology evidences of has cast much light upon the origin and cee growth of Mythology ; its torch gives a feeble light when we seek by its guidance to find a primitive stock and a primitive ancestor. It can neither affirm nor deny the unity of origin. Professor W. D. Whitney contends that, “ as the linguist is compelled to allow that a unique race may have parted into branches before the develop- ment of abiding germs of speech, so he must also admit the possibility that the race may have clung * Tylor's Primitive Culture, ch. ii. Science, The Beginning of Human History. 55 together so long, or the development of its speech have been so rapid, that, even prior to its separation, which no lapse of time, with all its accompanying changes could entirely obliterate." * And thus changes which“can bring utter apparent diversity out of original identity”can“ also impress similarity upon original diversity.” Professor Sayce, † however, ob- jects to even the assumption by Whitney of a parent speech, regarding it as being as hypothetical as the transition of one form of speech into another. Linguistic science can never settle, it is probable, the question of the monogenistic, or polygenistic origin of man. While certain linguistic groups may be pushed back to a fundamental unity, yet, as says Lenormant, “there will remain a large number of irreducible groups, of types essentially distinct, which will forever defy the attempts to unify them.” Physical ethnology, as well, can bear no positive wit- ness to the unitary origin of man, and upon the unity of origin must the traditional view of the Fall rest. While, however, the unity of origin has been re- garded as vital to the dogma, the dogma is not dependent upon the fact of unity. Granting the unity of origin, that unity has not prevented the splitting up of humanity into plural races. Granting the plurality of origin, we find with the progress of culture that the conviction becomes inexpugnable * Whitney, Language and Study of Language, p. 385. + Sayce's Introduction to Science of Language, vol. i., 81, $ Histoire de L'Orient, vol. i., p. 328, 56 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. of a spiritual unity of mankind which is in the future to be realized. The action and reaction of races upon each other are to develop the same moral ideals, and include the peoples in a common spirit- ual destiny. To be brothers in the common possess- ion of moral ideals, and in the prospect of a common salvation, is a fact of more moment than the fact of brotherhood based on physical descent. It is a unity not to be sought in the past, but realized in the future Kingdom of God. Students still stand confronted with three or four types of mankind profoundly dissimilar. The unity of the race would seem to be that of psychic consti- tution, and the same psychological laws may operate in the development of peoples who have started from various and remote ancestral pairs. If, however, Linguistic Science or Physical Eth- nology were able to establish a common descent, we should be as far as ever from the establishment of the fact of the primitive perfection of man's intel- ligence and character. As all roads are said to lead to Rome, the lines of development in the history of Nature and of Man converge to the conclusion that there has been continuous progress from lower to higher conditions. Professor Sayce finds in the development of Pre- Semitic beliefs much that is adverse to the theory of History and original perfection.* The Accado-Sume- Biblical Criti- rian texts which have been fairly differen- tiated from those betraying later Semitic influence give to the evil in the world no moral sig- * Note III. cism. The Beginning of Human History. 57 nificance. It is not until a later development of Chaldean Religion, in the age which gave birth to the poem on the Deluge, that men are seen to suffer for their sins. And even after Semitic influences are felt, the consciousness of sin is rudimentary. These magical texts take us back to the earliest religious literature, and contain no reference to man's primi- tive perfection. It is only in the later Semitic period that the story of man's origin is told. Noth- ing has come down to the Accadian from an an- tiquity remote, perhaps, 100,000, or, taking the lowest estimate, 25,000 years. That a tradition of original perfection should have survived through ages of savagery is incredible, even if it is granted that man was originally a holier being than he is to-day. History has no word to say in all that ancient time, and we must pin our faith upon the first assurances of man's primitive sinlessness and dignity, given us in a literature which is in comparison with man's prehistoric existence, a literature of yesterday. We are thus brought to the Hebrew literature as the authority for the doctrine of a primitive lapse, and to the conclusions of Criticism. The story of man's creation and that of the deluge should not be too strictly associated, as to the time of Hebrew their origin, nor as to authorship. But Literature. that both are as modern as the inscriptions upon the cylinders is obvious. The original forms from which the scribes of Assurbanipal made their copies during his reign (B.C. 668–626) are supposed by Assyriolo- gists to date back to the seventeenth century B.C. 58 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. But Professor Sayce thinks the Chaldean epic of Creation was a product of the age of Assurbanipal.* Anyhow, whether we hold with Lenormant that both Babylonian and Hebrew borrowed the flood legend from a primitive tradition, or, with Schra- der, Kuenen, and Kosters, that the Hebrews before their exile derived the myth from the Assyrians, or with Haupt, and others, that even the Jahvist (who is the first Hebrew writer who refers to the flood) borrowed it from them after the exile, we must ad- mit that the stories are modern contrasted with the antiquity of man on the planet, and that the Hebrew narrator has interwoven the idea of original perfec- tion with archaic fancies. Dr. Herman Schultz remarks that “Any one who takes up Genesis as an honest-minded historian, ac- customed to investigate the early history of other peo- Views of ples, will disdain such an expedient (as that of turning Schultz others. mythical narratives into actual human history) and will readily acknowledge that here he has to deal with reminiscences of primitive Semitic theology. In fact he will admit that much later still, in the course of the Mosaic period, mythical elements from the groups of nations, especially from Chaldea and Phænicia, got mixed up with popular Hebrew legends." + Ex-Pres. A. D. White commends the courage of Oppert, G. Smith, Sayce, Jensen and others for “pointing out these facts and connecting them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian myths were far earlier than those of the Hebrews, which so * Hibbert Lectures, p. 386. + Old Testament Theology, vol. i., P. 113: The Beginning of Human History. 59 strikingly resemble them," and remarks further that " they have also shown us how natural it was that the Jewish ac- counts of the Creation should have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of Creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier nations, or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations."* Professor Driver writes, “in the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Biblical narrative is drawn from the same sources as these other records.” And he concludes that materials which other peoples associated with grotesque poly- theism, were, by the inspired genius of Hebrew his- torians, made vehicles of profound religious truth.t To these statements may be added the opinion of Dr. Ryle, who admits that the Hebrew Cosmogony is from the same source as the Assyro-Babylonian Cosmogonies. At the Church Congress in 1892, it was declared by Archdeacon Wilson " that modern criticism is practically unanimous in saying that a non- historical element no longer separable has mixed with the narrative, and that in this respect the sacred books of Christianity are like those of Mosaism, of Buddhism, or Islam, or other religions, and that mod- ern criticism is practically unanimous in saying that an atmosphere of the miraculous in a certain stage of the human mind is an inseparable accompaniment of the profound reverence, with which a great Teacher and Prophet and Saint is regarded by his followers, and the necessary literary form in which such reverence would express itself. It is impossible, therefore, that such an atmosphere should not have gathered round the memory of Christ." I * Pop. Science Monthly, Feb., 1894. f Note III. † Quoted by Max Müller in the preface to Anthropological Religion, po 16. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Dr. Wilson presumably accepts the miracles of the Resurrection and those recorded as wrought by our Lord, but is not adverse to admitting that in the Gospels some non-historical elements have crept into the narrative. Dr. H. Schultz quotes Riehm as saying, the myth “is born again by the creative power of the living, self-revealing God," and hiinself writes: “In Israel the Spirit which sustained and developed Israel's religion, could appropriate such myths as raw material and saturate them with its true and enduring beliefs concerning God, the world, and man. .. In fact, legend must be regarded as fitted, in a higher degree than history, to be the medium of the Holy Spirit. For in history every figure expresses only in an approximate and imperfect fashion, what the Spirit at work in that particular people desires. In the legend, however, it is this very Spirit which moulds these figures and gives them flesh and blood..Hence the matchless value of patriarchal legend for purposes of edification.” * François Lenormant declines to accept as literal history the account of the serpent, and claims the right, as an orthodox thinker, to consider it as a legend borrowed from other peoples, designed to make intelligible a fact of the moral order, an effort to solve the moral problem which presents itself to every human consciousness. Thus the very general consensus of criticism accepts the Hebrew narrative concerning the primitive perfection and the Deluge, as derived from Chaldean sources, or from an older tradition common to both. But however ancient - * Old Testament Theology, vol. i., PP. 22, 24. + Note IV. The Beginning of Human History. 61 T that tradition, it is comparatively modern, when we reflect upon the vast antiquity of man. The conclusion drawn by Lotze, in the light of the sciences of Philology, Physical Ethnology, Pre- historical Archæology, and correlated sci- Statement of ences, seems inevitable, when still further Herman sustained by Biblical Criticism. “That Lot Historical life was preceded by a primitive state of moral holiness and profound wisdom, and that all succeeding ages were taken up with the decay of this glory and a struggle against the decay ; such a wholly perverted view will hardly find advocates in the present day." * And the watering down of the conception, of the primitive purity, by even conserva- tive thinkers, to almost an identity with the con- ception of the anthropologist, attests the force of scientific evidence and argument. Meanwhile the old philosophy of origins not only falters, but the philosophy of character also falters. That conflict is necessary to the develop- No hostility ment of character, that progress through between His- tory and the struggle is necessary to the achievement doctrine of of holiness, are truths written large in the Redemption, rubric of Christian faith, and if this promise is valid, a rigorous logic compels us to admit that had man remained in a Paradise without learning the differ- ence between good and evil, right and wrong, moral conflict would not have begun, there would have been no progress, and history would have had noth- ing to record. * Lotze, Microcosmus, vol. ii., p. 179. 62 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. But the charge against the science of religious development is unrelentingly reiterated, that it makes no place for the fact of Sin and its correlative fact, Redemption. Sin, remorse, prayer, forgiveness are declared to have no meaning in an evolutionary theory of the world. The facts of experience are made to stand or fall with the doctrine of original perfection and lapse. But a sense of sin and the feeling of remorse do not rest upon any remote fact of history, or upon any theory of derivative psychology. No theory of the origin of Sin can found the idea of responsi- bility elsewhere than in the present individual con- sciousness, or do more than affirm that an event occurred before, which is taking place every hour now in the forum of conscience. Remorse for sin springs up as keen now in the breast of him who, believ- ing in the Divine evolution of the world, yet by some sinful thought or act, places himself out of harmony with this physical and moral environment, as in the breast of him who is taught to look back to a perfect ancestor who has founded the experience of Sin. Theology has had to contend with the tendency to lay the fault upon that ancestor, and to escape from personal obligation to lead a holy life. One may be pardoned for doubting that the Augustinian view has been an unmixed blessing to Theology. Sin is not an ancestral, but a personal affair. It would be folly to affirm that one cannot be con scious of drowning, or grateful for rescue, until one shall be told how he fell into the water, or how his The Beginning of Human History. 63 ancestor in the time of William the Conqueror lost his life in the surf. De Pressensé, adhering to the old view, affirms, that the sufferings, as well as aspira- tions, of humanity show that in a mysterious past, it has become separate from God (s'est dérobée à Dieu) and that the word of the religious enigma is not ous past, it is a mysterious present which constitutes the enigma of Sin. It is the present free act of man, who does what he ought not to do, and leaves un- done what he ought to do, which gives rise to the sense of guilt. It would be disastrous to persuade humanity, that the moral categories have their basis only in a psychic experience of a remote founder of the race, and not in personal and contemporary conscience. It is not necessary to travel back Sin a rejec- Ideal. of conscience. In man's conscience has been evolved, with the lapse of every century, higher moral standards. The ideal of what ought to be, and is not that Sin which is, is ever beyond his achievement. tion of the He is ever arriving at the perfect ideal, is always more than he thinks he is, and strives to realize a higher self. If it is a sense of imperfect development, it is an imperfection for which he holds himself culpable. Sin is a dread reality to the con- sciousness not because the race started right and lapsed into savagery, but because God is still im- manent in the conscience of the sons of Adam, as truly as in that of Adam himself, and thus urging 64 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. The function them by his Spirit onward towards higher ideals. He who shuts his eyes to that Ideal and refuses to follow the star, at once finds himself at war with himself and with his Maker. The scientific and the theological view, of the function of conscience, are not in conflict. How can it be shown that a scientist who earn- estly desires to live in harmony with all of Conscience. cosmical and spiritual laws, discerning in them the method of a Goodness realizing itself, is not seeking after righteousness as truly as the man who believes that God is outside the world, and deals with men not through and within a develop- ing order and in accord with the psychic laws of human nature, but in a wholly interpositional way. The static conception of the world and Religion seems to many devout minds vastly inferior, in elevating power, to the dynamic conception. The breach of law is, from the standpoint of the unscientific religionist, a violation of a command; from that of the Christian man of science a violation of the Divine physical and spiritual order of the world. The commands of God and their sanctions are nowhere to be found, save in the constitution of the human soul and of the world. Bibles with their doctrines of rewards and retribution are the work of men inspired to seek the higher Ideal, by the Immanent Spirit who troubles the soul with thoughts that take hold on the Divine and Eternal. The sense of sin is psychically developed in the search for God, and through the arrival of higher impera- The Beginning of Human History. 65 tive ideals. It implies an absence of adjustment with the spiritual environment, as physical pain is a proclamation of mal-adjustment with natural laws. The sense of sin urges man to seek harmony with God and his environment, as the the throb of pain urges the sufferer to restore correspondence of his physical life with nature and her laws. But as Professor Fiske says: “While the sense of pain is common to those creatures whose in- centives to action are purely selfish, the sense of sin can be possessed only by those creatures whose intelligence is sufficiently, John Fiske's complex to enable them to recognize the relationship in view of Sin. which they stand to the Omnipresent Power and whose highest incentives are quite impersonal. To feel the sting of self-re- proach because of wrong-doing without any selfish reference to the misery which the wrong-doing must inevitably entail, is the highest prerogative of that creature whose future career of evolution, as we have seen, must mainly consist in spiritual improvement :-and in it we may recognize the sure token of the glorious fulness of life to which humanity must eventually attain."* It is, then, this advancing conception of the nature of Goodness and of the Divine Being, which consti- tutes the pain and the progress in hope, of religious man; and in God's revelation of himself in the Christ, the perfect ideal is realized in His sinless purity and perfect self-adjustment to the rational, physical, and spiritual order. In man's union with Christ, he finds the redeeming power which enables him to rise to higher and higher perfection.* In conclusion, the dynamic explanation of the feel- ing of sin as a deepening consciousness of the Divine Ideal, and of man's failure to reach it, finds impas- * Cosmic Philosophy, vol. ii., p. 456. + Note V. . " ul. 13hrouw 1 linol 66 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. sioned expression in the letters of St. Paul. “For- getting the things which are behind and looking to those which are before, I press forward for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” In reply to the objection that the desire for adjust- ment with the physical and moral order is scientific, not religious, is frigid philosophy, not devotion, it may be said that charity should incline us to respect the rapture which a Copernicus, or a Newton, or a Wordsworth experiences in the contemplation of Nature. The self-revelation of God is to be found in the world-order, and in the nature of man. Resi- dent in the order of the universe, we may, with Kepler, think his thoughts after Him. The Divine Will is but the movement of Divine Reason. The holiness of God is apprehended not as beyond world- relations, but in these relations, and to violate their order, is to sin against Infinite Goodness. Man finds everywhere manifest in the universe, rationality, be- cause he himself is a rational being sharing the Reason of God. To act out of harmony with the cosmical order, is to act contrary to the Divine Reason within man, to become a lawless spirit, to hurl himself out of the Divine environment, in a word, to sin against Holiness. The conception of God, as of one unwilling to have his creatures arrive at the knowledge of good and evil, and punishing man with exile, for yielding to a legitimate use of the faculties bestowed upon him, is a less worthy conception than that of a God who walks not in a garden, but is the Ground of all TY The Beginning of Human History. 67 Being, whose thoughts are uttered in the rhythmic motions of planets, whose goodness is revealed in sequences of events, whose redeeming love inspires men to live in harmony with the order, which is the expression and authority of Reason. Symbolism must indeed aid the apprehension of Reality. The conceptions of childhood are not at war with those of manhood; the wider knowledge of the world broadens and exalts the primitive conceptions. The anthropomorphism of primitive theologies is ex- changed for the sublime consciousness of the Divine Personality, gained through the conception of Reason and Will as immanent in his world. NOTE I. “We have spoken hitherto of the world as a manifes- tation of Divine Force, and treated the physical forces from the point of view of the subject of which they were forces. But Force, to be real, requires at least two factors and cannot act upon nothing, any more than it can be the force of nothing. We must consider, then, the objects also upon which the Divine Force acts. "It must be a manifestation to (something or) some- body, it must act upon (something or) somebody. Upon whom? Upon us, surely, for it is to us that the world appears.... When therefore we call the universe a manifestation of divine Force, we are not speaking with perfect precision, but leaving out the other half of the Stress, viz., the Reaction of the Ego upon that Force. The Cosmos of our experience is a stress or inter-action between God and ourselves."* * Riddles of the Sphinx, F. C. S. Schiller, Ph.D., p. 279. 68 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. On page 293 Mr. Schiller remarks : "If we think out the relation which on our theory must exist between the Deity and the Egos, we shall perceive that matter is an admirably calculated machinery for regulating, limiting, and restraining the consciousness which it encases. ... Accordingly we find that though Matter, being nothing in itself, cannot be the principle of Evil, and is not in itself Evil, it is yet characteristic of an essentially im- perfect order of things : it is, as it were, the outward indication and visible reflection of Evil. For Evil is, like all things ultimately psychical, and what is evil about Matter is the condition of the spirits, which require the restraint of Matter. If, therefore, as Plato says, the body is the grave of the soul, and Matter is the prison of the Spirit, it must yet be admitted that it is not the existence of prisons which is to be deplored, but of those whom it is necessary to imprison.” NOTE 11. M. Charles Secrétan, of the University of Lausanne, has treated profoundly the Fall of man, as a precosmic result of the operation of the principle of evil. The redemption or restoration includes all nature. In his admirable work, La Philosophie de la Liberté, he regards the “fall” as anterior to the constitution of nature, and the origin of this nature is to be sought in the plan of the restoration. I venture to quote from his pages : “Experience establishes a progression in creations ante- rior to our own. The internal relations which unite them force us to discern preparatory periods." "L'opposition qui règne entre tout ce qui pouvait exister dans ces époques et l'idéal de la création, dont le seul motif intelligible de la part du Créateur nous fait The Beginning of Human History. 69 comprendre le caractère, démontre que le principe du mal moral était actif dans le monde à toutes les époques dont nous pouvons obtenir une connaisance expérimen- tale quelconque. Nous sommes donc manifestement contraints d'avouer que ces époques appartiennent au procès de la restauration, et que la chute les a précédées. La vérité de cette conclusion me semble ressortir du seul fait d'une succession progressive. Pourquoi l'idéal n'aurait-il pas été réalisé du premier coup, s'il n'eût pas rencontré d'obstacles ? L'humanité, qui voit dans le progrès la suprême loi de l'univers, se plâit à constater le progrès antérieurement à sa propre existence. . . . Pour concilier ces commencements chétifs que l'expéri- ence lui révèle, avec la perfection de la création divine dont il est certain a priori, il faut qu'il admette une alté- ration des rapports primitifs et l'introduction accidentelle d'un principe de résistance qui ne puisse être surmonté que graduellement. Ainsi puisque nous voyons la loi d'évolution progressive régner dans le monde avant l'apparition de l'humanité dans sa forme sensible, nous sommes obligé de placer la chute avant cette apparition. “En résumé, l'histoire de la nature dans les phases qu'elle a parcourues antérieurement à la race humaine, ne s'explique pas sans l'intervention des idées de mal et de progrès. Nous n'y trouvons pas sans doute des mani- festations directes du mal moral, mais nous y trouvons des faits qui supposent l'infuence du principe du mal. Et comme le mal ne saurait avoir d'autre origine que la volonté des êtres libres, nous sommes contraints de placer avant toutes les révolutions matérielles dont les sciences expérimentales nous permettent de remonter le cours, cède les révolutions naturelles et les explique. Mais elle Historic Basis of Religious Belief. ne les explique pas seule : avant la venue de l'homme naturel, de la race humaine, la nature n'était pas livrée purement et simplement aux conséquences de la chute. Sa marche est un progrès, dont l'apparition de l'human- ité forme en quelque sens le terme. Avant l'homme, la nature a déjà subi l'influence du principe restaura- teur. . . . “ La chute et la restauration dont les périodes de l'hist- oire du monde antérieures à nous conservent les marques, déterminent la condition de notre propre existence; et comme, d'après le principe général que nous avons adopté sur l'autorité de la conscience morale et de l'évidence in- tellectuelle, il appartient à l'être libre de determiner sa condition lui-meme, il est clair que cette chute est notre chute, cette restauration, notre restauration. ... .“ Quelques fidèles se demandent si notre manière de comprendre la chute est d'accord avec l'Ecriture. Je répondrai que mon intention ne saurait être ni d'ex- pliquer les récits de la Genèse ni d'en fixer le sens, mais que je ne les contredis pas du tout. En effet la Genèse ne prétend pas indiquer l'origine du mal. Lorsqu' Adam est tenté dans le Jardin, le principe du mal existe déjà dans le monde sous une forme personelle ; or la question que je me suis efforcé de résoudre est celle de, l'introduction du mal dans le monde, au sens absolu. "Je conclus donc: La Chute, acte d'un sujet moral substantiellement identique à l'humanité, est antérieure- ment à la nature actuelle. “La Nature actuelle est un produit de la restaura- : tion."-(Leçon VIII., La Philosophie de la Liberté.) NOTE III. “The Semitic belief, in fact, stands out in striking contrast to beliefs which betrayed no consciousness of . The Beginning of Human History. 71 S human sin, and the necessity of finding in this an ex- planation of malevolent action on the part of the gods above.”—Hibbert Lectures, p. 314. Professor A. H. Sayce. " It is only necessary to read the psalm (just quoted) to see in it distinct traces of contact on the part of the Accadians with Semitic thought. The god cannot be addressed alone; the goddess necessarily stands at his side. The introspection, moreover, which the psalm re- veals is hardly reconcilable with the religious concep- tions presupposed by the magical texts and the earlier hymns. The consciousness of sin is a new feature in Chaldean Religion, and belongs to the age that saw the rise of poems like that on the Deluge, which ascribed the sufferings of mankind to their wrong-doing. Hith- erto the evil that existed in the world had not been given a moral significance. It was due to the action of malevolent spirits or the decrees of inexorable fate, rather than to the wickedness of man, and it was re- moved by spells and ceremonies which occasioned the interference of the god of wisdom and his son Mero- dach.”-Hibbert Lectures, p. 352. A. H. Sayce. Among the ancient Accadians, then, there was no consciousness of sin or of a lapse. It was not until the arrival of the Semites from Arabia, and their political fusion with the Accadians, that the Deluge poem, and the psalms which betray a consciousness of sin, were composed. NOTE IV. De la Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion, p. 497, thinks the Flood story is derived by the Hebrews at a late period ; that it could not have been borrowed so 72 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. early as the time of Abraham, nor so late as the time of the Exile, but probably during the time of the Kings. The Rev. Charles Gore in Lux Mundi, asks the ques- tion: “Are not its earlier narratives before the call of Abraham of the nature of myth, in which we cannot dis- tinguish the historical germ though we do not deny that it exists ?" And he reminds us that Clement of Alex- andria and, later, Anselm, treat the seven days creation as an allegory, and even Athanasius speaks of Paradise as a “figure.” The story of an original perfection must find its source not in actual history, but in the philosophy of religious men before or after the Exile. NOTE V. In his interpretation of Romans, v., 12-21, Weizsäcker finds no evidence that St. Paul regarded the first man, the founder of the race, as a “pneumatical," or "spirit- ual” man. “It is remarkable that he does not there say that Sin emanated, and was transmitted to all his descend- ants, from Adam's fall. That was of course the means by which Sin entered the world, but yet it is not the sin that is said to have extended to all men ; it is the death which accompanied Sin. And this transmission of death is not the effect of Adam's transgression but, on the con- trary, is conditioned by the fact that all have themselves sinned. If Paul has been influenced here by the Jewish view that Adam's descendants were already present in him, yet he has not concluded from it that they sinned with him.” Weizsäcker develops his argument to the conclusion, that in view of the passage, I. Corinthians, xv., 45, 46, the question whether St. Paul supposes “the nature of the first man to have been pneumatic before his trans- The Beginning of Human History. , . gression " " is undoubtedly to be answered in the nega- tive." The argument from page 148 to page 153, vol. i. deserves the attention of students of the Pauline theology. (English translation, Apostolic Age of the Christian Church. Carl von Weizsäcker ) If the conclusions of Weissman shall (as seems doubt- ful) be accepted by biologists that the doctrine of heredity is to be modified, it is hardly probable that they who believe in a primal lapse, will yield their ground. I venture to refer again to Lux Mundi, page 373, where Mr. Gore has the following note, “In answer to the ques- tion whether Adam was found perfect or imperfect, TÉã105 ñ átalńs, Clement replies, 'They shall learn from us that he was not perfect (i.e., complete in de- velopment Télelos) in respect of his creation, but in a fit condition to receive virtue.'" (Clem. Alex., Strom, vi., 12, 96; Cp. Iren. Č. haer iv., 3, 8.) . RE . . WU al 29 VUA K V. II. . LT .. . N 14 AI A 14 V2 70 NA GENERO CHAPTER IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL GENESIS OF RELIGION. Religion a TV THE secret of Religion lies in its primitive im- 1 plicit, and in its later philosophical, conceptions. That which has become explicated in advanced culture of religious man, is latent in the conscious- ness of primitive man. The naïve thought progressive and feeling of the latter, directed towards capacity. the higher power, reveal the religious capacity which reaches its nobler development in the later stages of culture. From the first step to the last, the march is one, the goal is one. From the thought and emotion of the man who chants his hymn to Varuna or Agni, to the worship of him who, at the present day, bends in the aisles of the temples of Christendom, the progress is genetic and divine. “The Objective Divine Reason," says Professor Pfleiderer, “ which forms the ruling law of the world, becomes in man the pathos of the heart, and a living power, and on the other side, man's heart, defiant and timid as it is by nature, is united with the reason of the Divine world-order, and thereby made truly reasonable in all its feeling, and willing.”* * Philos, of Relig., vol. iii., p. 30. 74 Psychological Genesis of Religion, 75 Religion de- relations, Explain how we may man's advent upon the stage of the world, his language, as Bunsen affirmed, differ- entiates him from the animals. His lan- Language, guage was the product of his thought, Morality, and for thought must be forever lame with veloped in out language. Language, Morality, and external Religion are to be forged in efforts of ad- justment; the external conditions in which man finds himself are to act as excitants to liberate the electric spark of Reason; and Language, Morals, and Religion find expression. That these are Divine capacities within man, roused to activity by the impressions made upon his senses by the outer world, to enter henceforward upon a career of plastic energy, a true psychology will not permit us to question. His finite reason is a Divine spark; but a spark to be kindled and to grow in contact with the outlying physical world. His subjective powers can find no development except amidst objective relations. Re- ligion, therefore, as the product of his thought and feeling, must find its liberation in the experience of life and history, and its development must be in accordance with the laws of human progress. To say that Religion has its genesis in human thought and emotion, is not to deny its Divine orig- in; it is rather to affirm that no revelation Capacity for from God is possible save to a religious Religion a capacity, and that capacity is itself a divine revela- revelation. Henceforth that capacity, sub- ject to impacts of the external world, is adequate to the production of all religious phenomena observed tion. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. and Mora by the Science of Religion, for it is the capacity of a rational being, constantly feeling the authority and inspiration of Divine Reason. In this derivation of human will from the Divine Will, and the consciousness of a dependent relation, we find the common root of Religion and Common root of Religion Morality. Because in later stages of so- rality, ciety Religion and Morality have been sundered, that they have this common root has been denied. But the fact is established, that social cus- toms and legal ordinances sprang directly from re- ligious beliefs and usages. The primordial unit of society—as Sir Henry Maine and others have shown -was not the individual, but the family, and from the aboriginal family group, with its nascently ethi- cal relationships, the Tribal, Civic, and National forms of society have proceeded. The family be- comes a moral fellowship, and through religious beliefs and practices, the sympathies which make the family enduring, and the affections, however rudimentary, which bind husband and wife, mother and children together, become consecrated as piety. Thus, social arrangements and the moral ideas essen- tial to their stability, sprang from religious motives.t The consciousness of a higher Power and the connection of the human with the Divine Will, finds, as Professor Pfleiderer expresses it, “immediate manifestation in Religion as the union of God and man, while in Morality it appears mediately as the social bond of the in- dividual and society. So far it may be said that Religion contains the * Note I. † Note II. Psychological Genesis of Religion. 77 ideal ground of Morality, and Morality the real manifestation of Re- ligion. From this it follows that each of them has its truth only in union with the other; and, on the other hand, that either must be- come stunted and falsified when torn away from the other." * The Family, Man, as we know him, existed not in a gregarious state, but in a state of sociality, the aboriginal family. Mr. John Fiske, in his theory of the pro- longation of infancy as giving rise to the the unit of family affections has made a brilliant con- ancient so- ciety: tribution to the doctrine of social evolu- tion. But it is still impossible to conceive man as he now is, as existing prior to the passage of the animal from the state of gregariousness to that of sociality or the primitive family with its religious and ethical implications. Man and his Religion be- gan with the family. Our concern, therefore, is not with the evolution of man from animality, but with man himself from the moment he became man exist- ing in the family relation. In attempts to determine the original form, or forms, of Religion, we must derive what light we may from the study not only of the psycho- logical experience of cultivated man, but of that also of our childhood, and of modern savage and nature-peoples as well. The psychical states of childhood cast light upon the states of the conscious- ness of primitive man. The child, from the first, thinks and speaks in what Philosophy terms the category of causality, and it is the necessary form of his nascent reason, though obviously he is not * Gifford Lectures, vol. i., p. 66. Naturism. 78 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. i conscious of it as a law of thought. His attention is riveted at first upon external objects. Primitive man may be contemplated as he stands with childlike wonder amidst the scenes of nature. By turns, timid and confident, awed and delighted, as yet not distinguishing his own soul from the limbs of his body which he moves, yet conscious of his own agency, he attributes agency like his own to the objects of Nature. The rolling or resting stone, the rushing stream, the animal which springs away at his approach, the cloud which sails across the sky, the sun, moon, and stars, which rise and vanish, the light which alternates with darkness, all seem ani- mated with the life of which he is conscious. All physical phenomena seem to be agents swayed by passions and motives like his own, which urge him to activity. The cognition of his own agency, is the first manifestation of intelligence, with which is united his discernment of agency external to self. The agencies are in Nature as manifold as the ob- jects and forces which excite his wonder, the power to unify them in a Supreme Agency remaining dor- mant until a later stage of reflection. The little child we are told, saw the moon hiding behind every tree he passed in the forest, and thought there were as many moons as there were trees until assured it was the same moon. These manifold agencies in the objective world awe him with their mysteriousness, menace him with their superhuman power to do him harm, or challenge his gratitude by their genial aid in his 1 Psychological Genesis of Religion. 79 1 weakness, and their kindly provision for his wants. These natural phenomena assail his consciousness in a pell-mell way; all things which seem to him animate, have for him an equal power and dignity, until by experience of their unequal influence upon his welfare, they become distinguished into higher and lower, stronger and weaker agencies. The crag, the torrent, the beast of prey, are found to possess less power to injure or benefit him than the storm-wind, the lightning, or the sun-ray, and the latter assume giant proportions to his fancy. They become Titans who build their castles in the clouds, celestial warriors hurling their spears of light- ning, and the sun drives his chariot to plunge from the meridian into the darkness of the west. His experience soon enables him to disdain the forces which prove inferior to his own power, and the animal he slays, the stream he can turn from its course, and the tree he can fell, are degraded from their supremacy and only the grander powers of Nature maintain higher empire. Terror and love, separate or combined, are the motives which impel him to adore the powers of Nature; and terror even, by a psychologic law of man's being, passes over into ecstacy, and when man once feels that he has ap- peased a dread Power, and has gained it for an ally, the love of the tragic finds satisfaction in terrific dis- plays of power which no longer work him harm. This is Naturism, the original form of man's wor- ship in which Soul and Nature, spirit and matter, are not in thought differentiated. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. The next psychological stage is the discovery of soul as distinct from body, spirit as distinct from matter, a discovery of more moment for man than that of gravitation in modern science. Hitherto the agencies in Nature have been identi- fied with the physical phenomena; appearance and reality have been confused. Now man through the discovery of his own soul is on the way to discern Soul in the world. Henceforth the world will be thronged with spirits who reside in that which is visible, but are no longer identified with the physical elements. How came man to make the discovery of soul? How could he call anything soul without a prior Discovery of concept of soul, however obscure it may soul. have been, awaiting the occasion which should call it forth into clearer apprehension ? Be- fore the dream in which he left his body to engage in the spectral hunt could suggest to him a soul, he must have already possessed an elementary concept of soul.* If, moreover, the shadow cast by his form gave rise to the thought of his soul distinct from his body, the shadow could act only as stimulus to the clearer apprehension of the pre-existent idea. Neither dreams nor shadows can do more than make clearer the dormant idea of soul. Man in the progress of his thought studies the mysteries of his own constitution. Conscious of the agency within his own body, as yet identified with it, and discern- ing a similar agency in the bodies of others, startled * Note III. A T Psychological Genesis of Religion. 81 1 by the stillness, rigidity, and pallor of the recumbent dead, he felt that the real agent had fled. What more natural for him than to identifiy that vanished agency with the breath that had ceased. To expire is, for the last time, to breathe. The breath must be the soul, and the word “breath” in Sanscrit is the word for the soul. Too much stress however may be laid upon Philology in the attempt to explain the origin of the belief in soul. Psychology helps us to more confident conclusions. The reappearance in visions of the night of departed ancestors, the dreams of the hunter of ghostly battles with beast and foeman, the moving shadows of his form and of the objects of Nature, were experiences which lib- erated the idea of soul latent within the conscious- ness. Such is the origin of Animism, and without first the “ Anima," you cannot, declares Prof. Max Müller, have Animism. This emergence of the idea of soul from the obscurity of consciousness is an epochal discovery, and discovery is the unveiling of what was hidden from clear knowledge. In this discovery of his soul, this cognition of his selfhood or realness of being which is the centre of all agency revealed in his life, man, for the first time, gains the power to discern above and behind the appearances of nature, a Spiritual Reality. Intrinsic, therefore, to this primitive philosophy of Animism are the metaphysical concepts of our present science, held as yet in solution to be precipitated in a later stage of synthetic reflection. **-:. • 82 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. T - Mr. Tylor, while contending that in the doctrine of souls or spirits we have the explanation of all Belief in Religion, fails satisfactorily to relate the spirits. belief in souls to the worship of the Great Powers of Nature. Mr. Spencer's theory, that the propitiation of dead ancestors is the rudimentary form of all Religion, is shattered against the fact of the worship of Great Nature Powers by the Vedic Aryans, and by the early Greeks. But the worship of the Great Powers of Nature must have marked the first psychological stage of man's development, for we cannot, by any reflection, derive Nature worship from the belief in souls, and it is further difficult to see how, after the discovery of the soul, man could have lapsed into a religion in which the Nature power is worshipped for itself. To say that belief in souls is at the base of all Religion, is to deny, first, that the natural being simply as visible agency could be worshipped, a fact for which we have indubitable evidence in the Vedic and Greek religions where Jupiter is just the sky, and Helios is just the sun. Sun and moon, sky and wind, among savages of the present day, are adored simply as natural agents. And, secondly, it is to make primitive man too much of a psychologist, as competent to distinguish souls from matter, before he identified them in his worship. If we vaporize the concept of soul into mere agency without per- sonality or self-consciousness, then Naturism and Animism are one, and Mr. Tylor may claim as the Psychological Genesis of Religion. AWEWS basis of the worship of the living Nature element, a belief in souls. But such a soul, in man or in the natural being, is an inadequate representative of the personal soul, which obviously is a discovery of man in acts of reflection long after he has näively adored the Natural Powers. That primitive Religion manifests itself in both the worship of Manes and in the adoration of Na- ture Powers must be conceded from the study of history. And that this domestic religion in which ancestral souls were the objects of veneration,) and the worship of Nature Spirits, existed together, without the one ever being confounded with the other, and entered into various forms of combina- tion, is also to be admitted. While, then, Ancestral and Nature Spirits seem to have a coeval and inde- pendent origin, and must be accounted for by dif- ferent psychological motives, the question is, Which is the root of Religion, the belief in spirits, or the näive worship of Nature? The doctrine of souls is not necessary to explain the worship of Nature Powers, in which is not yet distinguished the sensi- ble element from the supersensible subject. The Great Natural Deities of Vedic Religion take their rise from natural phenomena, are rooted in a past in which the sensible element and the agent within it were conceived as one. The child and poet of to-day regard Nature as animated, as a living being, without resort to the analogy of the human soul. The Ancestral and Nature Spirits first appear when man in self-reflection is able to distinguish his Kun 84 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. *** ressid: V2 soul from his body, and spirit from matter, in the objective world. The organized worship of Ances- tral Spirits, the cult of the Manes, was probably the more original cult and may have aided human thought to a clearer separation of the supersensible subject from the sensible element, and to a more definite personification of Nature Spirits in the great mythical Gods whose roots are found in the phenomena of Nature. Science, then, studying the operation of the Divine Law of development discerns three stages of reli- Three stages gious progress, Naturism, Animism, An- of progress. thropomorphism, which conduct to Monotheism, the goal of all religion. These stages of growth cannot be demarcated in a rigid temporal succession, for the later are always implicit in the earlier stages, and it is not a cause for surprise that the Monotheistic instinct is at times manifest amidst the opulent pluralisms of the first three stages of religious thought and feeling. In certain periods, and among certain peoples, the three mani- festations not only, but the Monotheistic conception of Religion as well, are found to be contemporary impulses. Progress and retrogression will be de- termined by climatic and geographical conditions, and by the genius of the race which is subjected to them. One people may rapidly liberate itself from psychical states which another will take over into later historic life. “From north to south of Africa," says Waitz, “the negroes adore one supreme God, in addition to their numberless fetiches.” Even in some forms of Christianity, the survival of animistic 1 Psychological Ĝenesis of Religion. 85 Animistic Retrogression. and even fetichistic impulses are recognized, and on the other hand in primitive stages of Religion, obscure fore-gleams of a unitary Power behind the manifold phenomena of the world are disclosed. But science, on the whole, is justified in this delimitation of the successive stages, as marking the psychological order of dominant religious conceptions. From Naturism to the discernment of the soul in Man and in Nature, was a stupendous progress of thought. Will this great discovery by Ani man make a rectilinear progress inevita- Progress and ble, or will the course of development be retrog at times turned back? Both advance and retrogres- sion are involved in the operation of the Law of Development. Whether the host of Spirits now distinguished from the physical phenomena shall be increasingly moralized, shall be promoted to an Olympian authority and dignity, deliver their the- mistes to earthly princes and exercise paternal care over men and their affairs, or whether they shall be- come nameless amorphous demons flitting every- where between heaven and earth, forcing into the background the Shining Ones, the lofty Nature Powers which begin to assume the qualities of hu- man souls, will depend upon the aptitude or inca- pacity of each people for a social progress. Morality, though a divine capacity of the soul, is yet, so far as the special form which the idea of right is to take on, a product of man's Interaction social and political progress. Religion Morality and and Morality from the first inseparable, Religion. having a common root in the Divine Ground, existed " Y 86 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. as germinal impulses to be developed together as man advances in social relations. The religion of the family, in itself a moral fellowship, exerts its in- fluence upon morals, and as social culture makes progress, morals react upon Religion to exalt its character. Religious motives constituted the found- ation of morals in the family, the primordial unit of society, for the members venerated the same Manes, and bound by a common tie, experienced mutual esteem and affection. As the family was enlarged to the gens or the tribe, thus assuming a wider social character, the conceptions and institu- tions of Religion kept pace with this progress. Thus Religion was moralized in degree as a people pos- sessed genius for social discipline and unanimity of conduct, and conversely, morals were religionized. But when, on the contrary, a people in selfish cen- trifugal impulse seeks to disperse itself into families or groups without social aspiration, its Gods will not become moralized and then be seated on some Olym- pus, but will be chosen from the host of genii which exist in the dark realm of spirits. In this form of Animism, the relation of man to the object of worship becomes less moral, and the Retrogressive sorcerer appears, who will strive to com- imism. pel the spirit, by his incantations, to do his bidding. Magic is the science of opportunity. These mutually hostile spirits, a rabble of dread, formless powers haunting the forests and caverns, shrieking in the winds, or lurking in the morass, are to be subdued by spells and the use of ineffable Psychological Genesis of Religion. YOY 1 names. The Accado-Sumerian exorcism, like that of the modern African and Polynesian and aborig. inal American, may have arisen from the existence of disease which the medicine man regarded as the work of malevolent spirits, and would expel from the body. Spiritism in the early Accadian religion, would seem to have begun its ascent to a higher form through the Totemism which saw in animals, as well as in other objects, beneficent spirits.* The ox whose labors helped man to construct a social life, and the fish which supplied him with food, were adored as tutelary beings; the magician gradually assumed the character of a priest, and moral dis- tinctions were more clearly accentuated. † The process of mythological evolution began in the Accadian Religion, and the Cosmical Powers, which are hardly yet definite personali- Mythological ties, assumed the distinctions of sex. But Evolution. this Anthropomorphism was still vague and resulted in hardly more than the power to use an ineffable name with which to break the spells of demons. The influx of Semitic conceptions, and the arrival of a greater political unification, together with the cul- ture of astrology, subsequently bore a part in the development of Chaldean Religion. Among Nature-peoples, the working of the mytho- pæic fancy is arrested, and Spiritism is corrupted into Fetichism. It is no longer a generous fancy which discerns in sun, sky, and wind great Spiritual * Professor Sayce, Hibbert Lectures. + Note IV. I : 88 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Powers, but is now a degenerate and calculating be- lief in man's ability to bribe or terrify zoömorphic or amorphic demons which, by accident, or by strategy of man, may have been imprisoned in the tree or stone. That Religion will become degraded as morals decay is as true as that it will take on nobler forms when social aspiration purifies manners and morals. Explorers have been astonished to find savages chaste and courteous, and at the same time revenge- ful and cruel. Side by side with a naïve truthfulness and many natural graces of manner, and unstudied moral acts which induce the sentimentalist to think that natural is better than civilized society, there flourish in savage life inhuman and unspeakable cus- toms and dispositions which make social progress impossible, and compel the religious impulse to as- sume the low and grotesque forms of magic. The Nature-peoples, with no ideal of culture to pursue, and without desire for social order, children of wild individual caprice, become more and more morally untrustworthy and their religion is correspondingly degraded. But the historic peoples have not halted in the animistic or spiritistic stage of thought. Ideal ends of civilization began to dawn upon the mind. Neighboring tribes felt an impulse towards social intercourse and discerned the advantages of political solidarity. The invention of alphabets and writing gave birth to literature. Conquest and commerce brought with them political unification, and some times a syncretism of religions, Psychological Genesis of Religion. 89 It is when we attempt to construct a bridge of thought from the animistic stage to that of Poly- theism, and to the stage indicated by From Anim. the confusing word Henotheism, that we ism to again encounter difficulty. By Henothe- Polytheism. ism we may understand the exaltation to successive supremacy of each one of many Gods, as if a nation were to be governed by a college of mon- archs, one of whom for a time should wear the crown, to be displaced by another member of the col- lege. From which primitive form of Religion, from Naturism or Animism, is the transition made to the humanized Gods? Did both these forms contribute to the development of the college of Deities, and their alternate occupation of the throne ? Mr. Tylor, as we have already pointed out, contends that the Great Gods of Nature sprang from the spirits of Nature, and then were endowed with the traits of human individuality and thus take their place in the mythological pantheon. This process of humaniza- tion, he assumes, is inspired by the existence of dig- nities and sovereignties which have arisen in the social and political order, in which ancestral found- ers and eponymous heroes are held in respect. This, we may again remark, is to assign to Anim- ism the chief rôle in the origin of Religion. It is true that among some peoples it is possible to trace the passage from belief in spirits to the belief in the great Gods of Nature. The religion of China, though it does not individualize sharply the Gods, has ad- * 0 90 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. vanced from the lower belief in spirits.* The dis- tinction, however, of the Gods from souls and spirits is easily made, not only by civilized man, but by savages who separate in thought the gods which have been individualized and have names, from mere spirits or genii who are without form and anonymous. Obviously, Animism cannot wholly account for the plural mythology of the Egyptians, Hindus, and the Greco-Roman peoples, however much it may have influenced them through the cult of the dead and belief in Ancestral Spirits. Not primarily in the worship of spirits, but in the worship of personified objects of Nature, to whom, in the gradual progress of social and political conscious- ness, moral qualities were attributed, must we find the explanation of their religions. The active cosmic Forces are thought to be per- sons like men. The sun is at one time Phaethon Mythopæic driving his chariot, at another time Her- impulse. cules executing twelve great tasks which stand for the twelve hours or the twelve months, or the twelve signs of the zodiac; again, Ixion revolving on his wheel, and then Apollo sending shafts from his bow of silver. The separation of these person- alities from the natural phenomena is not wholly made until civilization has far advanced. In the Æneid the word “ Jupiter" is used for the sky. It is when these deities have been moralized and brought into intimate relations with man's social and politi- * D'Alviella, however, thinks that in China belief in spirits was grafted upon Nature worship. Psychological Genesis of Religion. 91 s.... cal life, that they cease to be identified with natural phenomena, stand out upon the background of the religious consciousness as Divine personalities, and are assembled upon Mount Olympus or in the halls of Valhalla. Professor Max Müller naturally rejects the idea that all Gods were originally spirits, and asserts that many Gods, and chiefly those of the Indo-Germanic peoples, were personified natural phenomena. But while he finds the genesis of the belief in Gods in the impressions of Nature upon the imagination, with prudent acceptance of the facts of psychology, he also finds in man's experience of death, and in the mandates of conscience and his sympathy with joys and sorrows of friends, as well as in the light of the sun and the flush of the dawn, an awakening of the sense of a Power beyond the finite-conceptions of law and duty, with emotions of human love, all entering as elements into his Religion. Conceding, then, that we cannot precisely delimit the stages of religious development, nor be sure that advance has been straight onward Hista from Naturism through Animism to An- ples as Colos- thropomorphism and Humanism, and sa thence to philosophic Monotheism, conceding that they at times seem to blend and part, and alter- nately to dominate the consciousness, still, science need not hesitate to accept them in this logical order as way-marks of man's religious progress. The early Naturism and Spiritism survive in the higher religions. The mistake lies in making monotheistic * Historic peo- sal Men. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Chaldeo- Religion. ideas which are not yet liberated from primitive conceptions to have been antecedent to them. Each of the historic peoples may be regarded as a colossal man, with varying states of religious con- sciousness, yet revealing a dominant idea. Assyrian The Chaldeo-Assyrian Religion reveals several stages of growth. Its belief in the power of magic, of Accadian origin, is modified by Semitic beliefs in Gods who constitute a pantheistic unity, but rising and falling like waves of the sea, they struggle in vain for individuality or sove- reignty. The Gods of the Chaldeo-Assyrian Relig- ion wear a spectral character. The sculptured demons, the creation of terror relieved at times by a flash of higher feeling, betray in their forms the Animism which is identical with that of the modern savage. The highest point is reached in its astro- theology in which sidereal Naturism is but slightly tinged with Anthropomorphism, and the use of magic to exorcise the demons of the world lingers on to the last. The genius of the Chaldeo-Assyrian Religion is animistic. Turning now to India, Religion originates...in- Naturism, and ends with metaphysics. The Hindus Indic cannot be included among the peoples Religion. who have a history. Without records or traditions of any great political struggles, only one fixed light glimmers in the obscurity of the past, and that is the reign of Chandragupta contemporary with Alexander. Linguistic Palæontology enables us, however, to trace back the Aryans of the Punjab Psychological Genesis of Religion. 93 to the ancient tribes, who, as Dr. Otto Schrader now thinks, moved away from the steppes of South Russia. In opposition to Gruppe, who boldly as- serts that the Indo-Europeans had no God of heaven or light, that they indeed were without Religion, and that Mythology was not the religious language of the people, was in fact the “ creation and property of the higher classes, and that the Rig Veda reveals us anything but the sway of the naïve poetry of nature," Schrader concludes after patient inquiry, " that it is an unassailable fact that in all Indo- European Religions certain supreme Gods and national Gods have been evolved out of natural phenomena.” And he finds that ancestor worship and cult of the dead have no place in the Homeric world, but gradually in post-Homeric times the Di- vinity of departed heroes appears. Divi, Manes Lares, etc., are indeed primitive ideas of Romans, but Linguistic Science does not force us to regard ancestor worship as primeval, that is, as Indo-Euro- pean. According to Pictet the Aryans, 3000 B. C. were still undivided peoples, but 1500 years or more, later, we have the Vedas,--the Hindus and Persians hav- ing separated from their cousins, the Celts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavs. The tendency to Hen- otheism is then in full sway, and in one hymn of the Rig Veda the movement from multiplicity towards unity is clearly manifest. God is called Indra, Var- una, and Agni. Not only this primitive impulse “to give Polytheism a monarchical apex," but the iden- 1 94 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Indic tification of one God with another or with several others, indicates the activity, at this early stage, of the monistic impulse. But in this exchange of at- tributes we discern already a pantheistic movement of thought, and the Gods became forms of a protean impersonal principle of the world. . The metaphysic of Brahmanism succeeds the sim- ple beliefs of the Vedic period, and in these profound Indic speculations of the Brahmanic age we find Religion. anticipations of Greek and German sys- tems, hylozoistic pantheism, and idealistic monism. “ Brahmanic Religion,” says Prof. E. Caird, “ only rose to a pantheism which was an acosmism, to a unity which was no principle of order in the mani- fold differences of things, but merely a gulf in which all difference was lost.” * We may then say that the colossal man in India was a metaphysician, who never arrived at a determinate Theism. No other people, however, has revealed such capacity for sub- tle dialectic, so keen an insight into the mysteries of being, or painted the scenes of Nature with such gorgeous and attractive colors. If in Indic speculation the individual is lost sight of, and political enterprise is paralyzed and progress Religion of made impossible, the Persian, on the con- Iran. trary, inspired by the conflict between light and darkness, symbolic of the ethical antithesis of good and evil, became a man of action, flew upon swift steeds from conquest to conquest. “The mon- archy of Persia," says Ranke, “ fulfils a high mission.” * Evolu. of Relig., vol. i., p. 263. Psychological Genesis of Religion. 95 The Gods of Iran, pure and shining ones, were im- patient of the flagitious superstitions of other peo- ples. The duel between light and darkness is to end, and goodness is to conquer. But as Ahriman, the spirit of evil, proceeds from Ormuzd, evil seems to be inherent in the Ground of Being, and thus has no positive existence. The great question of the origin of evil fails of solution, and though there is a latent Monotheism in the religion of Iran, a natural- istic Dualism seems to hold it back from a clear articulation. "In all religions,” says Max Duncker, "when they have reached a certain stage of development, the impulse arises to find the unity of the Divine Being among the multifarious crowd of Deities. On the Ganges, the Brahmins or priests attained to this unity by exalting the power of the holy acts, which controlled the deities, into Lordship by uniting with this conception the great Breath or World-Soul, the source of life springing up in Nature.” In Iran, the reform did not discern Nature as unity, and therefore Dualism held its ground. Turning now to Greece, we find that the Naturism of the Vedic Aryans under the plastic touch of Greek genius becomes transformed, not Religion of into the metaphysical abstraction wherein the Greeks. no moral personalities survive, but into that nobler thought which personifies and humanizes the Na- ture-Powers, which, through ästheticism, and then through conscience, culminates in tragic poetry and monotheistic Philosophy. The last, expressed in a language of marvellous flexibility, has left its im- press upon all the literatures of the modern world. 96 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. T - If the religious genius of India was metaphysical, and that of Persia was ethical, that of the Greeks is found in the incessant longing for the realization of harmony in the world of sense, in the social life, and in the soul of man. The brilliant æstheticism of the Greek did not permit him to rest in frivolity, and in no other land was the Sphinx more earnestly ques- tioned, nowhere else was the conscience more deeply stirred, as the works of the great tragedians plainly make manifest. Through their Pelasgic origin, the mythologic development of the Greeks is to be traced to the Aryan Naturism of the East, deriv- ing also from the Phænicians new mythologic con- tributions. The humane genius of the Greek soon extricated itself from the sensuous and cruel alien religion of the Phænician, and Theseus vanquishes the Minotaur of Crete. In the first stage of Naturism there is as deep a sympathy of the soul of man with the life of Nature as we find in the highest poetry or philosophy of our civilized age. But that sympathy is at first but feebly productive of moral ideas. Greek thought, inspired by the marvellous beauty of Nature in the fair land of Greece, rose to a mastery over it, and idealized it, projecting upon its Gods the greatness of man himself. The intuition of the Order of the World was accompanied by a perception of a higher Ideal demanded by intellect and conscience. Greek Humanism in post-Homeric times began to repre- sent its Gods in a moral alto relievo. Humanism * See Einleitung in die Griechische Mythologie, by Ludwig Preller. LY WUUT Psychological Genesis of Religion. Stages of Philoso hy. developed into Philosophy, and philosophic thought passed through stages of evolution analogous to those of mythological development. Philosophy was at first naturistic. In the school of Ionia, Thales finds the source of all things in water, Anaximander in the air, and Hera- clitus finds fire to be the primitive sub- stance. Diogenes of Apollonia did not Greek succeed in differentiating the rational * essence from the air. It is first with Anaxagoras of Clazomena that Mind is seen to organize the world, and thus a humanistic Philosophy takes its rise, to degenerate later, however, into the scepticism and pessimism of the Sophists. In the works of the great tragic poets, Humanism finds expression of its loftiest moral convictions. Human destiny in its mournful aspect is depicted by Æschylus and Sophocles; Eternal Justice is not always distinguished from fate; remorse is set forth with an appalling emphasis, and thus afford presages of the approach of clearer ideas of freedom and re- sponsibility. The note of charity rendering good for evil is struck in Antigone, and dramatic thought hovers about the conception of the Divine Father- hood which vouchsafes forgiveness to the sinner. dipus goes into the light at last like the passing of Arthur: 1 " So he died. No death to mourn for,—did not leave the world Worn out with pain and sickness ; but his end, If any ever was, was wonderful.” 98 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. In Socrates and Plato we have the culmination of Philosophy. Art reached its highest point in the age of Pericles. Philosophy, with the Socratic school, divined the unity of the world, but a dual- istic element, the belief that evils could not be over- come, was blended with its metaphysics.* Perhaps thought in no age has surpassed the flight of Socratic Philosophy. The mind of man seemed about to at- tain the highest truths of Religion. Later, however, so inveterate are the lower religious ideas of the peo- ples which refuse to be wholly transformed by even a brilliant culture, we find the wild elements of Natur- ism to some extent still reasserting their influence. We have to deplore the decadence of Hellenism, which brought the genius of Greece in the time of Alexander into a new vassalage to the of Greek religions of Nature. A degenerate phi- osophy, losophy helped to repristinate to some extent the Nature religions. Monarchs were dei- fied, and Euhemerus saw in the Gods, only ancient Kings exalted by superstition to the skies. The sceptre passed from Athens to Alexandria. The cosmopolitan city of the Ptolemies extended hospi- tality to all religions, and a general scepticism arose, during which the elevation of Mythology, which had been promoted by the great artists and great poets of the age of Pericles was arrested. Epicurus went so far as to give to the Gods human form and difference of sex, and assigns them, as their habita- tion, the space between the worlds. The disciples of * Plato's Theætetus. Decadence Philosophy “ผ่ะ ๒๕๕๙ Psychological Genesis of Religion. 99 Aristotle, Dicearchus and Strato, revolted from their master, and in their system found no necessity for God, to explain the world order. Strato, abandon- ing the theology of the great Stagirite, gave a physical explanation to the world, and reduced the idea of God to a level with unconscious activity of Nature. Warmth and cold were called into service as universal and active sources of being, and the soul's immortality was rejected. * Academic scep- ticism reached its zenith in Carneades, whose con- clusion is that of pure agnosticism. In the Philosophy of the earlier Stoics there were flashes of pure truth, but the general trend was not upward, and the impulse of Platonic thought spent its force. Scepticism at last committed suicide, when without a blush it could be written, “There is nothing shameful or right in itself; law and custom alone determine equity and inequity.” Tragedy and poetry lost the fire of inspiration, and in the main fell to didactic mediocrity. Whatever art lingered on was but the reminiscence of the splendid age of Pericles. Turning now to Semitic Religion, whatever ideas are held in common by Semitic and Aryan peoples, it cannot be affirmed that these parallel Semitic streams have the same origin. It is a far Religion. cry, Prof. Max Müller tell us, from India to Baby- lon, and the few coincidences between Hebrew and Sanscrit, no more than those existing between Eng- lish and Chinese, prove community of origin. Re- * Zeller's Outlines of Greek Philos. 100 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. semblances are to be traced to the identity of the constitution of human nature in different lands. The monotheistic instinct attributed by Renan to the Semitic race has not won the recognition of scholars. The grain of truth in Renan's theory is found in the fact that purely Semitic races seem not to have Theory of possessed an opulent Mythology; and in Renan. the fact that they had one chief or tribal God; that the names Baal or Master, Moloch or King, Adonis or Lord, are merely descriptive of the God of the tribe as its exclusive separate deity, standing in vital relation to the particular people. * The unity, however, is not that of Monotheism, as a belief in a Universal Deity, but the exclusive one- ness of the particular God worshipped by the tribe in distinction from the Gods of other tribes, which were not by them denied to be Gods for other peoples. Professor Baethgen, however, has adopted a par- tially monotheistic view of Semitic religion. He Professor surmises that the Semites began with Baethgen. monism, the worship of El, or God “not the totality of the separate Gods, but the undivided and impersonal essence.” † This is to suppose that no Nature myths are to be found in Semitic Re- ligion ; but Nöldeke reminds us that where Nöideke. Sun, Moon, and Venus-star are wor- shipped, there is Nature-Religion. But not from * C. G. Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, p. 23, 1892. + C. G. Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures, p. 24. IT . S Psychological Genesis of Religion. IOI any one source can we derive the elements of Se- mitic Religion. Even if Monolatry antedated the teachings of Moses, the tribal, nameless deities would seem to have been of the animistic type. For when they became, later in a polytheistic stage of thought, veritable Gods with names as persons, female personalities appear, and sex is introduced into the Godhead by a natural psychological process. Mr. Montefiore refers to Pietschmann, the latest his- torian of Phænicia, who thinks that the progenitors of the Canaanites and Phoenicians worshipped one clan deity. Mr. Montefiore argues that the words Ruler, Lord, King, were vague indefinite titles of clan Gods of an animistic, not a personal character, and if there was a common clan deity of the ancestors of the two tribes, it must have possessed an impersonal, indetermi- nate value, and true Monolatry was unveiled by the great teacher Moses. The fact that the Israelites who were few in number, yet vanquished the more numerous Canaanites in the invasion, affords proof that the reign of Jahveh, introduced by Moses, gave them esprit du corps and a stronger manhood. The Canaanites still under the spell of animistic and naturistic conceptions were conquered by inferior numbers. The monotheistic feeling must date from the imperial influence of Moses, and was rather a Monolatry than a Monotheism. The definite con- ception of a Universal God and Father was set forth later by the prophets of the eighth century. Opinion of Montefiore. 102 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. The monuments of Assyria and Babylonia, and the survivals of Arabian traditions, and also the tendencies of the Jews in later times to backslidings, have been cited by Max Müller as proof of a poly- theistic rather than monotheistic instinct in the Semitic mind. Mr. Robertson Smith, with rigor, traces the ex- istence of Totemism as the fundamental idea which underlies the development of Semitic Religion, by that, meaning the blood relationship and fellowship existing between the clan and the totem. But this emphasis laid upon the social nature of that religion has, by his critics, been regarded as too radical a reconstruction of Semitic history.* Much obscurity lingers about the subject of the primitive Religion of the Semites, but the cuneiform inscriptions clearly show that Accadic ideas and cus- toms were blended with the old Semitic star-worship, and in the Hebrew literature, there survive names and forms of Accado-Babylonian origin. But the He- brew Religion has for us a surpassing interest. Here we find ourselves breathing a purer atmosphere. A moral sanctity pervades the literature, and though SWS:r :19 Amprom... * Mr. Joseph Jacobs, Biblical Archeology, “ Totem clans in the Bible,” may be consulted. Professor F. B. Jevons (Introduction to the History of Religion, 1896), contends that an amorphous Monotheism precedes a universal lapse into Totemism among all peoples. But the theory that Totem- ism has figured as a universal lapse, and as a point of departure to higher religion, is too exacting, and the objections too insurmount- able to permit its acceptance. + See Schrader's Keilinschriften. Psychological Genesis of Religion. 103 its purity is alloyed with legends and myths of im- moral import, and the veritable part of its history is, much of it, a dolorous confession of personal and national sin, or a record of sanguinary wars, yet, the candid reader must discern a Power above the nation “making for righteousness” and revealing himself throughout the checkered experience of Israel. The Hebrew Religion, containing many elements derived from pre-Semitic Religions, is unique in this possession of the idea of righteousness. At what time it emerged into consciousness, whether in the time of the Abrahamites, or later, in the midst of alternate progress and relapse, it is never lost, in- deed is a crescendo from century to century. The animism and fetichism of the ancient Ara- bia, the sidereal Naturism of the Accado-Babylonian, sometimes reassert their presence in the Superiority religion of Israel, but a Divine Power of Hebrew to urges them on in the way to righteous-other Semi Religions. ness. It is a serious people, without any genius for metaphysics, but possessing a genius for right conduct. As Henry More said, there is some- thing about us that knows better, often, what we would be at, than we ourselves ; so Israel was haunted by an ideal of behavior towards Jehovah, and in right behavior towards their tribal God, was expressed whatever monotheistic conceptions they had gained. Every exercise of self-control brought with it a sense of peace and joy, and Israel was the first people, who, as a people, gained the exper- ience. 1 104 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Matthew Arnold. It is objected, says Matthew Arnold, that the Jew's God was not the Enduring Power that makes for righteousness, but only their tribal God, who gave them the victory in the battle and plagued them that hated them. But how then comes their literature to be full of such things as “ Show me thy ways, O Eternal, and teach me thy paths; let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I put my trust in thee! if I incline unto wickedness with my heart, the Eternal will not hear me!” Mr. Arnold thinks that the desire for goodness could not come from the mere sense that their enemy should be put to confusion, and victory be given to Israel. To the objection that the law of the Lord was a traditional mechanical rule, and that their fear of the Lord was superstitious dread of a magnified man, Mr. Arnold in reply asks, “Why, then, are they always saying: 'Teach me thy statutes. Teach me thy way. Show me the way that I shall walk in, Open mine eyes, make me to understand wisdom secretly,' if all the law they were thinking of, stood stark and written before their eyes already? And what could they mean by: ‘I will love thee O Eter- nal, my strength.'? Every time that the words of contrition or humility drop from the lips of prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears." The eighth century prophets appeal to the historic consciousness of righteousness, and recall the people to former loyalty. The Pentateuch, whether of pre- exilic or post-exilic origin, and to whatsoever extent Psychological Genesis 105 AL of Religion. 3.....-17. .7.4:274: a reconstruction of early history in conformity with the views of later time, contains a solid antique nucleus of fact, made up of the words of Moses, of hymn and story by his successors who exalted Je- hovah and his righteousness, of folk-lore and nar- rative rescued by the Elohist and Jahvist chroniclers from oblivion. This strange Hebrew people are seen to start with the concept of righteousness, to march with it continually, to hold it fast to the last amidst all backslidings. Glimpses of the guidance of God and of the value of righteousness, are, indeed, vouchsafed to other branches of the human race, but are wavering and often lost. The religious de- velopment of Israel is more rapid, because the people possess and cherish a greater receptivity of the Di- vine influence which is active in all history. The Hebrew race must ever be esteemed as the race called of God to be the ethical and religious teachers of humanity. NOTE 1. “It is just here that archaic law.renders us one of the greatest of its services, and fills up a gap which other- wise could only have been bridged by a conjecture. It is full in all its provinces of the clearest indications that society in primitive times was not what it is assumed to be at present-a collection of individuals. In fact, and in the view of the men who composed it, it was an aggre- gation of families. The contrast may be most forcibly expressed by saying that the unit of an ancient society was the family, of a modern society the individual.”—Sir Henry Maine in Ancient Law, page 126, ***PAVA 106 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. Mr. Bagehot, in Physics and Politics, page 136, remarks : “I at least find it difficult to conceive of men, at all like the present men, unless existing in something like fami- lies, that is, in groups avowedly connected, at least on the mother's side, and probably always with a vestige of connection, more or less, on the father's side ; and unless these groups were, like many animals gregarious, under a leader more or less fixed, it is almost beyond imagina- tion how man, as we know man, could by any sort of process have gained this step in civilization." Professor John Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, vol. ii., page 360, remarks : “Seeing that such thinkers as Sir Henry Maine have shown that the primordial unit of society, by the manifold compounding of which great tribes and nations have come into existence, was the aboriginal family group with its nascently ethical relationships be-a tween the members, how shall we explain the genesis of these family groups, which have nothing strictly answer- ing to them, either among non-human primates or among other gregarious animals? ... The explanation, as I have shown, is to be found in that gradual prolonga- tion of the period of infancy, which is one of the conse- quences, as yet but partially understood, of increasing intelligence. ... What we have here especially to note amid the entanglement of all these causes conspiring to educe humanity from animality is the fact, illustrated above, that this prolongation of infancy was manifestly the circumstance which knit those permanent relation- ships, giving rise to reciprocal necessities of behavior which distinguish the rudest imaginable family group of men from the highest imaginable association of gregari- ous non-human primates.” In this line of inquiry which, so far as I know, has 1 Initi Psychological Ĝenesis of Religion. 102 never yet been noticed by any of the able writers who have dealt with the origin of the human race, it seems to me that we have the clew to the solution of the entire problem. In this new suggestion as to the causes and the effects of the prolonged infancy of man, I believe we have a suggestion as fruitful as the one which we owe to Mr. Wallace. And the most beautiful and striking feature in this treatment of the problem is the way in which all the suggestions hitherto made, agree in helping us to the solution. That same increase in representativeness, which is at the bottom of intellectual progressiveness, is also at the bottom of sociality, since it necessitates that prolong- ation of infancy to which the genesis of sociality, as distinguished from mere gregariousness, must look for its explanation. In this phenomenon of the prolonging of the period of infancy we find the bond of connection between the problems which occupy such thinkers as Mr. Wallace and those which occupy such thinkers as Sir Henry Maine. We bridge the gulf which seems, on a superficial view, for ever to divide the human from the brute world. And not least, in the grand result, is the profound meaning which is given to the phenomena of helpless babyhood. From of old we have heard the monition, “Except ye be as babes ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." The latest science now shows us -though in a very different sense of the words-that, unless we had been as babes, the ethical phenomena which give all its significance to the phrase "kingdom of heaven "would have been non-existent for us. Without the circumstances of infancy we might have become formidable among animals through sheer force of sharp- wittedness. But, except for these circumstances, we . 108. Historic Basis of Religious Belief. should never have comprehended the meaning of such phrases as “self sacrifice" or“ devotion.” The phenom- ena of social life would have been omitted from the history of the world, and with them the phenomena of ethics and religion.” Professor Drummond in his Ascent of Man has availed himself of these suggestions ; in the “Struggle for the Life of Others," on the part of parents for their offspring, he finds the supplementary factor related to the “Struggle for Self.” From egoism to altruism (nutrition and re- production) he constructs a bridge from the animal to the human ethical plane, taking account of the feelings of fatherhood and motherhood, which emerge during this prolonged infancy of animals. Understanding both Professor Fiske and Professor Drummond as not deriving the moral from the non-moral and as regarding love of offspring as affording conditions for the emergence of moral affection which is a trans- cendent elementman ethical potentiality in the whole process of life from the first-grounded in the Ethical Being whose love is enfolded in the progress of all life, it may be accepted as a happy solution of the problem of continuity. But if the theory is meant to explain the passage from the non-moral to the moral, from matter to spirit, the gulf remains uncrossed. Infancy with its cir- cumstances, constitutes the condition of the manifest- ation of the Divine ethical feeling. NOTE II. “The assertion now often heard that Religion and Morality stood originally in no connection with each other, is an error which arises from a false way of put- ting the question. Our present moral convictions are Psychological Genesis of Religion. 109 . taken as a standard, and it is asked whether the oldest representations of the gods correspond to our moral ideals, and whether the duties required at the first by religion correspond to our conception of duty.. "As, of course, there is no such correspondence in these cases, it is believed that any original connection between morality and religion must be denied. In maintaining this view, it is forgotton that the primitive morality is just as different from our morality as the primitive religion is from our religion. But it is an incontestable fact that the primitive morality stands in very close connection with the primitive religion, and indeed that the beginnings of all social customs and legal ordinances are directly de- rived from religious notions and ceremonial practices. The family is the oldest religious community and only as such did it become a moral fellowship. The worship of the house-gods or of ancestral spirits was the ideal bond which connected the members of the household into a lasting fellowship regulated by fixed rules.... “The oldest laws and legislative assemblies were re- ferred by all the peoples back to divine revelation-a correct reminiscence of the fact that they had not arisen from arbitrary invention or agreement, but were regarded as the expression of religious convictions, whose involuntary presuppositions were regulative for the formation of the several relations of life. ... There was therefore found from the beginning a relation- ship of closest reciprocity between the religious and the moral; and the development of the two sides proceeded for a long time pari passu, and under the reciprocal influ- ence of the one upon the other.” (Philosophy and Development of Religion, Gifford Lectures, 1894, vol. i., lecture ii. Professor Otto Pfleiderer.) IIO Historic Basis of Religious Belief. NOTE III. “You may remember," writes Professor Max Müller (Anthropological Religion, p. 184), “ the arguments which I produced against admitting Animism of any kind as a primitive form of religious thought. You cannot have Animism unless you have first an anima. In order to ascribe an anima, a soul, to anything, be it a stone, a rag (Fetichism), a sign-post (Totemism), a tree or a mountain (Animism) man must first have gained the name and concept of anima. If, as we are told, trust in a fetich arose always from the doctrine of spirits embodied in or attached to, or conveying influence through certain ma- terial objects' how can it longer be doubted that fetich- ism in all its forms, presupposes a belief in spirits ? and that what has really to be accounted for, is how for the first time a spirit was named, conceived, and believed in, not how a spirit was attributed to a stone, a sign-post, or a tree.” On page 183, Max Müller had written : “You may remember how it was the chief object of my Lectures on Physical Religion to discover the faint vestiges of that intellectual progress which led the human mind to the formation of a name and concept of God. We saw how that progress began with the simplest perceptions of the great phenomena of Nature and then advanced step by step from what was seen, to what was not seen, from what was finite, to what was not finite, till at last all that was merely phenomenal in the ancient names was dropped, and there remained in the end the one Infinite Agent, still called by the old names but purified from all material dross." “As in treating of Physical Religion it was our chief object to watch this genesis of the name and concept of Psychological Genesis of Religion. III God in the various religions and languages of the ancient world, we shall now have to do the same for what forms the necessary counterpart of God in every religion, namely, the human soul, or whatever other name has been given to the infinite, and therefore the im- mortal element in man. The name of that immortal element also was not given to man as a gratuitous gift. It had to be gained, like the name of God, in the sweat of his face." Page 195. “And here we can watch at once another step. If it is true that the discovery of the soul was made, not so much during life, when body and soul were almost indistinguishable, but at the time of death, when the breath and all that was implied by that word, had de- parted from the body, the question could hardly be avoided, whither that breath had gone. ... To unso- phisticated minds the thought that a man who but yester- day was, like ourselves, eating, drinking, working, fighting, should have utterly perished, was almost impossible to grasp. It was far more natural to suppose that he con- tinued to exist somewhere and somehow, though the where and the how were unknown, and had to be left to the imagination. Imagination, however was more busy in ages of comparative ignorance than in our days, and if the expression had once been used “our father's breath has fled,” that would soon grow into the expression that his spirit had fled, that he himself had departed from his house, and had gone where all spirits had gone before him, to a world of spirits. “This is a very general outline of a process which under varying forms we can trace almost everywhere among uncivilised and among civilised peoples and which has led to a belief first, in something in man different from 112 Historic Basis of Religious Belief. his body, call it breath, or spirit or soul; and secondly, to a belief in immortality, and to a large number of acts intended to keep up the memory of the departed, to secure their favor, to escape their anger, till in the end they were raised to an exalted position, second only to that of the immortal gods." In Hibbert Lectures, p. 77,1891, Count Goblet D'Alviella traces the rise of the worship of the Manes or ancestral spirits. “The Australian Kurnai who was asked whether he really believed that his yambo could "go out” while he was asleep, immediately answered: 'It must be so, for when I sleep I go to distant places. I see distant people ; I even see and speak with those who are dead.' We have but to open the first treatise on Ethnography that comes to hand, and we shall see that the same reasoning prevails amongst the Negroes, Kaffirs, Poly- nesians Red-skins, Greenlanders, and natives of South America. ... Here we see an opposition beginning to shape itself between the body and what we have come to call the soul. The savage is doubtless far from regarding his interior personality as an immaterial entity, conceived by force of abstraction, and reduced to a pure psychic force. . . . It will be a reduction, or rather a reflection of the body, vaguer, paler, half-effaced. This is what has been called the double identified by many peoples with the shadow produced by the body, with its reflection in water, with its image seen in the pupil of the eye, and so forth. The sorcerers of Green- land describe the soul as a pale soft thing, without nerves, without bones, without flesh. When one would seize it one feels nothing. Is not this exactly the Animula, vagula blandula, Hospesque, comesque, corporis. Psychological Genesis of Religion. 113 under the traits of which Hadrian conceived his own spiritual principle ?" Prof. D’Alviella on page 81 asks the question: "Did the worship of the dead precede or follow the worship of natural objects and personified phenomena? It is possible that in certain localities the worship of the dead manifested itself the first, or that the two conceptions formed themselves pari passu, with a preponderance of the one or the other. It seems that in China the wor- ship of ancestors grafted itself upon a previous nature- worship. Amongst the Polynesians it has been success- fully established that the worship of the dead, native to - the eastern archipelagos, sporadically overlaid the ancient mythological nature-worship, while it hardly penetrated into the most western islands of Micronesia.” “All I maintain is that neither of these two forms of worship necessarily presupposes the other ; but that man, having been led by different routes to personify the souls of the dead on the one hand, and natural objects and phenomena on the other, subsequently attributed to both alike the character of mysterious superhuman beings. Let us add this must have taken place everywhere, for there is not a people on earth in which we do not come upon these two forms of belief side by side and inter- mingled." That the root of Religion is found in Nature worship, however, must be admitted, though the worship of Nature spirits and ancestor spirits may, after the discovery of soul, have existed side by side. YTT 1 NOTE IV. “When the Gods had become human, there was no other place left for the animals with whom they had once 114 n Historic Basis of Religious Belief. been so intimately connected. The evidence, however, is not borne by art alone. The written texts aver that the Gods were symbolized by animals, like the Sun-God of Kis, whose 'image' or symbol was the eagle. It is these symbols which appear on the Babylonian boundary stones, where in the infancy of Assyrian research they were supposed to represent the Zodiacal signs.”* In the ſotemistic age of Accadian faith we find names given to the constellations of the Zodiac, the solar bull, the fish of Ea, and the Scorpion. The Zodiacal circle seems to have been invented long before the reign of Sargon, (3700 B.C.). * A. H, Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 279. PART II. IDEAL BASES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. I15 or 1 Wet P 19+ 23 or CHAPTER I. METAPHYSICAL GROUNDS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. IN this second part of the treatise upon the Grounds 1 of Religious Belief, we appeal no longer to his- tory, but to the existing consciousness of man. The demands of human reason can find their explanation and satisfaction, in the postulate of a Divine Person- ality, and in that alone. The Philosophy of Relig- ion attempts to show that the reason of man, in order to explain the constitution and impulses of the mind, requires the confirmation of its rational, ethical and æsthetical ideals, by the postulate of a Unity of Being as the Ultimate Ground of Nature and Mind. In certain moods of mind most persons of adult years, and even children, are found by a natural im- pulse of thought to become genuine meta- me physicians. The child who asks, Who a necessity of Reason. made God? has already pushed the ques-05 tion of Causality to the last stage of metaphysical inquiry. When, also, he is impelled to ask: How do I know that what is red in color for me is red for 117 Metaphysics 118 İdeal Bases of Religious Belief. others also ? he has entered the school of Protagoras.* The youth who indulges in reverie may dream of scenes and incidents in an ideal realm, oblivious of passing events, and with a vivid fancy may create a new world of chivalry or art. Roused from his ab- straction, in which imaginary scenes have seemed more real than those observed in the rustic life around him, he is lured to a repetition of the visits of fancy to the realms of fiction, and at last is led to ask if what is termed real life is not after all most unreal, and if reality is not in strictness of analysis a subjective feeling, and not an objective fact. Thus he has entered the school of Kant. Cause, Sub- stance, Motion, Space, and Time are concepts not devoid of strange interest for even the child. It would be easy to recall the curious questionings of thoughtful childhood in which each of these catego- ries, in one or another form, is interrogated. It is for the Philosophy of Religion that these medita- tions on Reality or Being are found to have a vital interest, and through the answers gained to our ques- tionings in the stress of thought experienced by thinkers from Plato to Hegel, to become the friends and advocates of Religion. Metaphysics, we are reminded by Professor Mo- merie, is a term applied by Andronicus of Rhodes his works upon physics ; these treatises were spoken of as things beyond physics, or behind physics. “Let us have done with metaphysics,” exclaims * Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 119 Physical Sci- one who perhaps is incapable of prolonged reflection, or is discouraged because man must search for truth, and because metaphysics has so often proved to be a warfare in the clouds. This aversion to metaphysics is to a great extent the product of mental indolence. To refuse the aid of metaphysics is to refuse to think at all about the problems of life and destiny. But metaphysical thought is no longer, justly, com- pelled to vindicate its right to exist, for even the votaries of physical Science are now forced to interrogate the Ultimate Reality, Mind, ence rests or Spirit which is seen to be the ground upon Meta- physics. of those interactions or changes in the world of phenomena, which we regiment in thought and denominate the Order of Nature. Laws, Causes, Forces, are convenient symbols. We find that not only Matter vanishes into these as we pursue our regressive analysis, but farther, these ab- stractions from Matter do not constitute the ultimate reality of Being. A static conception of the world is no longer possible for Science; the dynamic con- ception has succeeded to it, and forces are not to be conceived as less than spiritual in their ultimate nature. Certain instincts of human reason must be ac- counted for. Reason compels us to hold that there is an Ultimate Reality the ground of both the problem mind and matter, and that this Ultimate of Meta- Reality is a unitary Being and a personal Physics. Being. The metaphysical demands of reason lead us to the conclusion that such a Being exists, for 120 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. known. his existence can alone account for and satisfy these demands. The argument which is thus metaphysical is powerfully reinforced from the ethical sphere of reflection, when we attempt to account for the moral ideals which can have no adequate explanation other than that found in the existence of a supreme Moral Being, the source and fulfilment of them. The de- mands of these ethical ideals of the soul of man will be considered in another chapter. The demands of the metaphysical reason will, in this chapter, claim our attention. The reality of Self, is the point of departure in order to arrive at the Ultimate Reality, God. Rather Self is the may we say that through the intuition of first reality the reality of our own personality we have the intuition of the Divine Personality. This intuition of the Divine Personality stands or falls with the intuition of our own.* A process of reasoning seems necessary to clearly reveal our intui- tion of the Absolute Self, but in such an explication the intuition must not be considered other or less than an intuition. The study of Nature and Mind confirms, but does not establish the fact of this intuition. If we do not know our own selfhood as real, it is in vain to claim any knowledge of any reality be- yond or outside the mind. Hence the saying that “Personality is the beginning and end of Meta physics.” The state of consciousness in which one thinks of himself as a subject actively forming con- * Note I. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 121 cepts out of sensuous perceptions, or as an undivided unity holding together the variety of the inner life or as an Ego or combining centre unifying the mani- fold states of consciousness, this is a knowledge of the reality of our own mind. Without this know- ledge of the reality of one's own mind to start with, all knowledge, of anything within the mind, or of other minds, or of the external world, is impossible, and intelligence is a blank and Science a dream. There must be a knower that anything may be known, a perceiver that perception may be possible, and that which is known or perceived cannot be an illusion but a reality, something that is. We cannot get under way to know that which is outside the mind, the external world for example, or the Ulti- mate Being who is the Ground of the world, without assuming that we know our own minds to be real, that our reason requires no validation ; in other words, that our subjective necessities of thought are strictly related to objective realities. Neither Phi- losophy nor Science can get under way, if the rela- tion of subject and object is an illusion, if we cannot know, without being able to explain how, something that is. It was the question, Can we know any reality, or is our knowledge only a kaleidoscopic change of our subjective impressions? which Kant attempted to answer. Philosophy since his day, thankful that he raised the question, has determined that reality can be known, as object is related to subject, and that self-consciousness is but the central subject regard- ALA .... I 22 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. ing itself as object, thus facing its own reality. How the subject knows the object we may not ex- plain, but the fact itself is certain, and the mind in self-consciousness cognizes its own reality. We may here recall the words of Jackson: “Scepticism can only destroy the validity of thought by assuming that the laws of thought are valid. It must use rea- son to disprove the truth of reason.” * Thus if any knowledge is possible and we are not chimeras and the world is not a chimera, we know ourselves as subjects or centres of the states of our consciousness. Mind thus confronts its own real- ity as both subject and object. In this microcosm man there is a personal soul, or unitary reality, able to distinguish its states, from itself as the unity which binds them together. This Ego, or subject, not only perceives these phenomena of mental life, but in its freedom at times originates them and changes them. Thus the traits of personality are self-consciousness and self-determination. That the soul is a unity we do not, however, infer, because we are manifested to ourselves as unity; Unity of but we are confident of the undivided the Soul. nature of our being, from the fact that anything can appear to us at all ; in other words, that there is a self to which we can appear. The so-called faculties of the soul, namely, ideation, feel. ing, and will, are indeed a trinity of capacities, but a trinity that is only a unity in the being of the * In order to deny the existence of mind we must first possess & mind. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 123 soul. In our introspection, going over our mental states, and observing this plurality of modes of psychic life, we are forced to find also a unity of be- ing as fundamental to the soul. Thus the certainty of the soul, as a unitary reality, is a gradually in- creasing ascertainment, through acts of self-conscious knowledge. If there is an activity of knowledge, the knower must really exist before he can actively know. This psychical unity is not a stiff and un- varying unity, but in every act of self-knowledge this soul or subject becomes one, and recognizes itself as unity. Every unity implies a plurality or manifold, and in every plurality is implicated a fundamental unity. The Soul, Subject, or Ego, does not gaze directly at its unitary reality ; it knows itself in its acts of knowledge, in progressive life, amidst the manifold experience of consciousness. + Mysterious as is the origin of self, all activities of thought, feeling, and will are inevitably to be re- ferred to this first of all realities. To speak of my thoughts, my sensations, my acts of willing, is to presuppose the self as reality, the basis of all know- ledge. But this experiencing self, the combining centre of this variety of states, does not represent the entire capacity of self. The phenomenal self is the actual, but not the ideal self we are to become, in our upward progress towards the Divine Self. Our present self seems to us at times to fall short of representing the whole reality of our nature. + Note II. 124 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Personality There hovers beyond us a transcendental self or per- sonality, an ideal Ego, towards which we are striv- ing, a Person we may and ought to become. The key then to the metaphysical position, the Ilium which cannot be surrendered nor taken, is the itu unity of our personality. It would seem not a bundle to be no longer necessary to contend for of Sensations. that unity. Personality is not to be ex- plained as a bundle of sensations or impressions, or a bundled manifold of perceptions, for the question returns, whose sensations, whose impressions or per- ceptions are they? Thus the Ego is constantly assumed as the unitary subject. “In order," says Mr. Bain, “ to produce any effect on the senses there must be a change, and everything in the nature of change thrills through the brain with a kind of sur- prise." But we may ask, Who is surprised, and who feels the thrill, if not the ego or subject ? The changes in the molecules of brain are then only the occasions of thrill or surprise for the per- ceiving subject. It may be conceded that not in every mental state, is implicated a knowledge of self, but it is impossible to deny that every act of know- ing presupposes a subject who cognizes and feels it. The continuity of consciousness is a dream without a central subject, or self, who remains after percep- tions have come and vanished. There can be no memory, unless there is a subject to perform the act of remembering. A series of events can have no consciousness of itself as a series; Mr. Picton writes, .“when a schoolmaster canes a row of boys one after Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 125 another they have similar feelings but no continuous feeling. In order to the existence of the latter the strokes must be given successively to one boy.” This identification with, or dissolution of, the self into the phenomena of sensation, is the analogue of the attempt in discussions of ethics to escape the fact of freedom and moral obligation by identifying them with character, when it is forgotten that there must be a self to have a character. Character is without ethical significance when, as in insanity, the unity of consciousness is lost, when sensations or perceptions flit like storm clouds across the mind's firmament, there being no central power to arrange them into rational relations. As Professor James remarks “ we can no more have a stream of thought without a thinker, than a thinker without thought.” It is not simple consciousness that is the elementary fact, but the mind which is conscious. It is around the personality of man that the fire rages hottest. But Psychology without a soul would seem to have no function. To endow molecules of matter with the capacities of a subject of all psychi- cal phenomena, and with the power to construct a soul by whose activities alone matter can be known, is to suppose the unconscious first making itself con scious, in order to know its unconsciousness. That the simplest fact of consciousness will ever be ex- plained in terms of matter, is a hope which the most sanguine believer in the potencies of matter will have to surrender. That changes in states of conscious- ness are correlated to changes in the substance of Hande l smisses 126 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. TY the brain, follow, from the union of soul and body, but as has been many times affirmed, the passage from physics of the brain to the facts of conscious- ness is inconceivable. * The attack upon personality has failed, and with this direct knowledge of the reality of the finite self, is implicated the reality of the Absolute self. Man as self-conscious and self-determining, possessing rea- son and agency, feels himself to be dependent upon a Being who cannot be inferior to him in his person- ality. The higher cannot come from the lower. But this intuition of the personality of the Absolute is still farther explicated by metaphysical reasoning concerning extra-mental reality. From the reality of self in the act of knowledge we arrive at the reality of Nature and of other beings. The World as Knowing myself to be an agent, I find my reality. “spontaneity disputed” by an Agency other than Self, in the external realm. Self and an Other-than-Self reciprocally limit each other's agency, as when the traveller pushes his way against a strong wind, or strives to lift a heavy weight. From exerting my own causal agency or will the most central, direct, and “intimate fact of my life," I find myself face to face with a Causality in the world, around me, a Causality of the same kind as my own, since agencies or powers must be homogeneous to limit each other. With this category of Causality derived from the intuition of Self we enter the external world to find * Note III. + Note IV. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 127 there a Causal Will, of like nature with our own, im- manent in the world, its presence revealing itself at one time as potential, at another as kinetic energy, to use the terms of the science of Nature. Since this dynamical antithesis of the Cause within and the Cause without, that is, of the Self and the Other-than-Self, cannot exist if they are hetero- geneous, we are justified in attributing to the causal principle of Nature volitions like our own, powers of initiation, selection, and control. Thus, as we know our own self or will to be a reality, we are forced to accept our knowledge of the world as valid, and to know the World is to establish its reality, for knowledge and reality are inseparable, since we can- not know anything of which we cannot affirm that it is. To know is to know something that is. Mr. Browning's idealism is excessive. He sets forth the subjective side of knowledge as an act, but loses sight of the objective element which answers to it in the fine passage in Paracelsus : “ There is an inmost centre in us all Where truth abides in fulness; and to know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entrance for a light Supposed to be without.” The mind does not make nature; it knows it, be- cause it has an objective reality. Here we are forced to consider what the reality of the world is, in the ultimate analysis of it. Is the realism of Nature a solid—that is, a physical realism ? 128 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. . ality ? TT. ALIUL Gena P The solidity of matter vanishes before our analysis, and the term matter is seen to be an abstraction, What is the and must be metaphysically interpreted. world's re- The statical conception of Nature yields to the dynamical conception, and matter can be thought of only as a function of force, and force can be conceived only as spiritual. The realism of Nature is then not a physical, but an ideal real- ism. Energy or Force is the reality or life of the Universe and as metaphysical reasoning shows that force or energy to be a fact of mind, the conclusion is that the forces which animate Nature are them- selves spiritual in ultimate analysis. That the power in nature and in mind is the same in its essence, if granted, does not, however, reveal what its essence is. Inductive science, emphasizing the dynamical properties of matter, conducts us to the conception of matter as force, and metaphysics, conceiving force or causation by the analogy of our own mental ac- tivity, reveals its nature as spiritual. While then mental action can be distinguished from physical action, and Mind seems to stand in antithetic relation to the World of matter, science has arrived at the truth that the action of mind differs from the action of matter only “as the con- scious manifestation of force differs from its un- conscious manifestation.” As in the sphere of mind the conception of en- ergy is derived from the action of will, in similar wise the energies of Nature must have their ground in an immanent Will. The Cosmos is order, and the . Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 129 a Will? unconscious forces are the modes of activity of a conscious Ground, an Intelligent Will, and the pro- cess of the world is the unfolding of an Idea. That the Intelligent Will immanent in Nature is a holy Will may be shown hereafter, when the Ethical Grounds of religious belief shall be considered. As we were obliged to accept first the reality of self and then the unity of self, so the conclusion that the reality of the world is found in to the reality Will immanent in it, must be advanced of the world to the further conclusion that this will is a in its nature one. “Through the simply intuitive fancy of men and nations,” says Dr. Martineau, “life in its changes is little less than a colloquy be- tween human and superhuman Wills.” Among primitive men in face of Nature, countless agencies, ancestral and nature Spirits, were worshipped as arbiters of man's life and destiny. Slowly did man in his advancing culture liberate himself from the belief that many wills were exerting their power above him. Suspicions of a unitary Will or Agency, even in his lowest intellectual conditions, were not absent from the consciousness of primitive man. But the glimpse of such a unity was but transient; the powers of reflection soon yielded to fatigue, and the easier conceptions of polytheism held their sway. As the philosophy of Nature made progress, the monistic impulse gathered strength and the study of the Cosmos revealed its unity, and with that unity there arrived the conception of the One Will above the world. 130 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Will. The sciences of Nature are ever running their roots into each other's domains. The students of Nature regard their particular sciences as part of a unitary science. The belief in the uni- versal reign of Law attests this pro- found conviction, that the Cosmos is one. Hence the friendly support the sciences afford to each other, the esprit du corps which prevails, the sublime confidence men of science cherish that they are engaged in rearing a unitary edifice of know- ledge, as masons, sculptors, and painters ally their powers in the construction of some cathedral. This unity is a presupposition, not of philosophy alone but of science as well, the ‘high belvedere always to be ascended, the inspiration to achievement of those who are busy in constructing the temple of knowledge of Nature. This rapprochement of the sciences reveals the monistic impulse, and the efforts of experimental psychology to bridge the gulf be- tween brain-action and thought also attest it. The mysterious force called Gravitation, which binds our planet to the solar system, and that system Ovitation as to others in space, is of itself an evidence unitary force of Nature's unity. The word Universe is Fl. a magazine of suggestion. This inscruta- ble force not only holds the worlds in their orbits, but poises the flower on its stalk. The body of man achieves its conquests by its aid, and in all the me- chanical triumphs of genius this force is the great factor, and the whole order is by it conditioned. There is also the “great Pentarchy” of Physical in Nature, Metaphysical Grounits of Religious Belief. 131 i forces, Light, Heat, Magnetism, Electricity, and Chemical Affinity. Obscure as are their relations to each other-and it may be inaccurate to speak of their transmutation-they yet suggest unmis- takably a unity of co-ordination. The correlation of forces is a discovery of modern science, and the “great cycle of Forces” suggests a unity of origin. To postulate an immanent unitary Will,-in dis- tinction from the many Wills supposed by man in his primitive stages of culture to be operating the world's forces,-is a logical necessity of the mind. Man also, through his organic life, is a part of the unity of Nature. His body is indeed a mechanism, but a mechanism which is the vassal of his mind. No physiology of the knife enables us to make the passage from the spatial to the non-spatial, to explain thought in terms of matter, to place our consciousness under the sway of the Law of persistence of Force. With the advance, then, of the sciences of Nature we find pluralistic conceptions of the world, passing into monistic, if not always theistic, con- Sciences ceptions. The unity of the world which Nature, science feels compelled to postulate as an explanation of the relations of matter is not, how- ever, a static, but a variable unity. All changes are possible only on the hypothesis that there is a Ground Reality or Will which ex- plains all Cosmic interactions, by changes in its own states, itself remaining a Unit- Cosmic ary Being. We observe certain conse- int quences flowing from certain antecedents in Nature, monistic. Unity of interactions. 132 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. not in an accidental but in a definite order. With the principle of Causality derived from our self- consciousness, we enter the objective realm of Na- ture, confident that our minds do not deceive us; that there is an objective order answering to our sub- jective necessities of thought; that while our know- ledge is an act of the mind, the content of our knowledge has an objective validity; that the outer world does not melt into a dream of subjective fan- tasy, and that science has no basis if, with the ex- treme idealist, the objective facts it observes are wholly interior, and have no reality outside the mind. Thus the massive edifice of knowledge erected by science becomes with the passage of each year more majestic, and students of Nature, even the most vigorous realists, accept the facts of the world as in objective relation to our subjective intelligence. The metaphysic impulse is irresistible, to search for the ultimate unitary Will or Ground of these inter- actions in Nature which occur in definite succes- sions. We cannot rest with the penurious concept of Law, for on reflection we find that Law is but a modus agendi of the unitary Agent whose mode of behavior we study scientifically. How, then, do these interactions of things come about? Is it by impacts merely upon each other, these as when one ball is struck by another, or Cosmic inter- do things aloof from each other shoot soccurr some mysterious influence across inter- vening space, and thus give rise to the changes we observe in Nature ? Physical science cannot accept TTT II How do these actions occur? Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 133 the theory of impact, and action across an interval of space is no explanation, for interaction implies a mutual dependence or existence in relations. If things are independent of mutual relations—that is, each thing is sufficient for itself-then no causal connection is conceivable, no transitive influence is possible or necessary. We must, then, regard things as existing in mutual interdependence. Observing, then, one event as conditioning the occurrence of another, we can find no explanation other than that of an Immanent Ground or Being, a Unitary Reality or Will, operating these changes in Nature. It is in vain to say that the system of interactions is self-explaining, for a system is made up of its in- teracting units, and merely adding them together is not to give the reason of their relation. The basal Reality is, then, Unity, and we are again forced to seek in Ultimate Being or Unitary Will the explanation of the existence of the system itself. We may, therefore, think of things as all- dependent upon this Unity, as transcendent Being apart from them and outside the world, influencing their interactions, or we may think of things as de- pendent upon Absolute Being resident in them, while they are expressions of it.* It seems impos- sible to hold the former view, which is Deistic, and affords no solution of the origin and nature of things. The doctrine of the Immanence of Will affords the best explanation of the world. If we have reached in the argument the truth of a * Note V. 134 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. T Will not un- i intelliger personal Will as the Source of all being, it would seem unnecessary to contend that it is conscious, but intelligent, I can only conceive of Will zent. as directed by intelligence, and as having purpose which is meaningless unless it is intelligent. The world is an enigma not to be resolved, if it has not its ground in self-existing and self-determining Will. That it is intelligent, the system of things compels us to believe, that we may account for the order of the universe. Schopenhauer finds an Absolute Ground of all phenomena, both subject and object, man and nature, but is content with spelling it with a capital letter, emptying it of thought. In the words of Martineau “his Will has no tincture of thought, and does not know what it would be at,- which seems just to unsay its volitional nature." There seems to be no road out to any conclusion with such a usage of words. “Gewöhnlich glaubt der Mensch er nun Worte hört Es müsse sich dabei doch auch was denken lassen.* says Goethe. Hartman concedes intelligence to this Will, but it is an unconscious intelligence, whatever that may mean. But an intelligent Will without conscious- ness, would seem an impossible conception. From both these thinkers is wrung the concession that a unitary Will, a Power, which thinks and establishes the order of Nature, must be presupposed in order * Men usually believe when they hear words that there must be some thought in them. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 135 Finality in Nature, to construct any rational philosophy of Nature. A Power which wills and purposes can be nothing less than conscious, and we have, after obstinate warfare, concessions made by these writers which cause their imposing systems of thought to collapse and to for- feit the respect of Philosophy. But the intuition of a supreme intelligent Will may be farther explicated by reflecting upon the signs of purpose in the evolu- tion of Nature. With every enlargement of the conception of sys- tem gained in the alliance of the sciences we have seen that a Unitary Will has become more and more an indispensable postu- late, and the more cogent becomes also the demand for Intelligence, for assuredly it is order, not chaos, that attests its presence. It is a surprise in the history of science, that the conception of an ordered relation or Cosmos has been used to expel purpose from Nature, as if the Creator would more clearly reveal his presence and agency by leaving things to chance and disorder. It is a hardship to find, that at one time orderly system is deemed incompatible with the presence of purpose, and, at another, accidental relation is deemed to be equally incompatible with it. The Unity of Nature is inconceivable otherwise than as a purpose of Goodness being realized, though Pessimism may deny the Goodness and con- cede the purpose. Leibniz, perhaps the founder* of the modern *Note VI. r enje larra 1 136 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. means, not doctrine of Evolution, with his law of continuity, his theory of insensible perceptions, and his prin- ciple of the infinitely little, has said, “The present is big with the future,” thus implicating finality, contending that all internal changes of substances were controlled by the Idea to be realized. Natural Selection is clearly seen to be not a cause, but an instrument used by Supreme Agency. The Natural Se- “survival of the fittest" is inconceivable tion, without the pre-existence of the fittest cause. who survive. The world is not governed by laws, but in accordance with laws, or if we drop the term laws, the order of the world is but the uniform succession of changes which accord with changes in the states of Divine Consciousness, and is the realization of the Idea. If the agents in Na- ture are devoid of intelligence, their method of action betrays the direction of Intelligence. The purposive idea is a ghost of Banquo at every feast of science, and insists upon taking its seat at the board. Thus Häeckel in his work, the object of which is to dispense with finality in Nature, defines an organ- ism as one in which “the various parts Häeckel. work together for the purpose of produc- ing the phenomena of life," and Hartman, who con- tends that the world is the outcome of unconscious- ness, speaks of the “wisdom of the Unconscious," of the “inechanical contrivances It employs," of "Its direct activity in bringing about complete adaptation to the peculiar nature of the case," of Y Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 137 hauer, TY “ Its incursions into the human brain, which deter- mine and guide the course of history in all depart- ments of civilization, in the direction of the goal intended by the Unconscious." How much Hart- man is forced to concede, is pointed out by Dr. Martineau.. “ Hartman, in his correction of Schopenhauer, de- clares it impossible to reconcile the evident pursuit of ends in the Universe with any mere Hartman and irrational Will.” Hartman seems to pass Schopen- under the yoke when he grants that the inner Principle of the World “so far from being un- intelligent and blind, is an intuitive and clairvoyant wisdom determining the contents and directing the processes of nature”; it is “the unity of intelligence and will,” it is “in an eminent sense individual.” How then Hartman can confront his own statement and still affirm this Intelligence and Will to be un- conscious, is, indeed, an enigma. It is a significant remark of Professor Huxley * that the course of evolution is best described as a “materialized logical process. The doctrine of chance thas, therefore, no standing in the court of science, nor can the theory of Evolution apart from an Intelligent Ground arouse any longer any intel- lectual interest. By whatever names the Ground of the world may be called, spelled in large letters, the Unknowable Will of Schopenhauer or the Un- conscious of Hartman, there are to be found in all * Nineteenth Century, February, 1888, + Note VII. 138 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. hauer. jar the theories based upon them vigorous implications of intelligence and purpose. It has been contended, however, that finality is a conception in which intention is not necessarily etion of implicated. By Schopenhauer, for exam- Schopen- ple, finality has been declared to be sub- jective, or the projection of our way of looking at things, our own mental order, into the objective realm. In his view, finality exists for our intelligence, and it does not follow that it exists by intelligence, and this is to say, that there is in the order of Nature no immanent purpose. To empty the conception of finality is to destroy..." it. And to regard it as a subjective illusion is to rob it of reality. Herbart well contends that if we have a mental concept of finality, we are under the same necessity to apply it to the external world as we have to apply the concept of causality. The theory, then, of a subjective finality may be dismissed as without further interest to philosophy. It is again said that finality may be regarded as instinctive; in other words-as held by Lachelier- Objection of “the means arrange themselves in the fit Lacheliér. order to realize the end.” This is again to empty the word finality of all meaning, for, as has been often pointed out, the tendency of means towards an end is not the same as acting for an end. In such a conception of finality there is neither intention, nor intelligence. “What is stranger," asks Fénelon,“ than to imagine stones that grow, that come out of the quarry, that Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 139 ascend one upon each other, leaving no space, that carry with them the cement to unite them, that ar- range themselves so as to provide apartments, that receive beams above them to roof in the work?” As Janet suggests, to say that an architect selects and foresees the means needed for a structure is not equivalent to the statement that these means all alone arranged themselves to build the edifice. In commemorating the rebuilding of Drury Lane Theatre, the authors of Rejected Addresses wittily illustrated the irrationality of the theory of Lucre- tius, that the world was the product of chance : “From floating elements in chaos hurled, Self-formed of chaos sprang the infant world, No great First Cause inspired the happy plot, But all was matter and no matter what- Atoms attracted by some law occult, Settling in spheres--this globe was the result. I sing how casual bricks, in airy climb Encountered casual cow-hair, casual lime ; How rafters borne through wandering clouds elate, Kissed, in their slope, blue elemental slate, Clasped solid beams in chance-directed fury And gave birth to our renovated Drury." Nor, if we make intelligence one of the means, can we speak with reason of an instinctive Finality. What is more illogical than to endow means with intelligence when intelligence is the very end-by the hypothesis of instinctive Finality, towards which the means are tending. Means thus exist to discover means, and we have an example of circular reasoning. Finality without intention is devoid of meaning; Cosmic force is but a name for intelligent 140 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Rationality Will, and the Universe is a scheme of thought. The Order of Nature is vast, the mind of man is finite, and may not be able to say what telic significance may be discerned in amorphous rocks, barren plains, animal malformations, or in organs which no longer have any use. But it will be forever natural to the mind to discern a particular adaptation of the eye to light, of the ear litvor to sound, and something more than a sur- special v ival of the fittest in the correlation of gn. tooth and claw to the digestive organs of predatory animals. More difficult still to derive the rational powers of man from the content of an un- intelligent Cosmos; for it is inconceivable that from an unintelligent Ground there should emerge the genius of Shakspere or the spiritual elevation of Fénelon. The higher cannot come from the lower. Evolution presupposes Involution. Much emphasis is laid upon the wastefulness of Nature, the presence of physical and moral evil, and though these riddles may defy solution, Disproof of the order of the world, that is, the uni- nality. formity of Nature, is accepted by theistic and non-theistic thinkers alike, as affording a solid basis for the sciences which are claimed by them to be the most certain of all our achievements of know- ledge. The acceptance by scientists of the uni- formity of Nature is an act of faith in the trust- worthiness of Nature, in other words, of faith in its moral character. Theism is thus virtually accepted by every experimenter in science. For the consti- Evil no 1 Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 141 tution of the world appeals to trust, and never be- trays it. It is morally trustworthy and reveals a moral personal Ground. This thought has been well set forth by Professor Alexander Campbell Fraser, in his Philosophy of Theism. Nor is the world-save by pessimists, who interest mostly the pathologists—to be regarded as one in which benevolence is not predominantly manifest, and the energy and hopefulness of the great majority of those who direct human affairs accuse the des- pair of the few whose minds would seem to lack equilibrium. Man may have erred in thinking him- self to be the sole end for which the universe was called into being. The anthropocentric conception of the world has been set aside by the heliocentric, and the universe is felt to exist for even a higher end than man, or his temporal happiness. Steam has not found its ex- planation in railway transit alone, nor does electricity exist solely for flashing messages. The supreme im- port of the universe must be found in the purpose of Goodness. While, however, the anthropocentric view of the universe has been outgrown by thought, man has been placed by science at the summit of the hierarchies of life. Biology assures us that no race zoologically dis- tinct from or higher than man, can, through known laws, be produced. Man's progress in a future ages will be a progress psychical, of develop- but will undergo no physical change. The history of Life culminates in the Divine form of man, Man the goal ment. 142 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. T and in his moral and spiritual nature, God makes his highest revelation. * As self-conscious and self- directing, man wears the impress of Divinity, and as the microcosm he reflects in his intelligence the rays of ultimate Reason. Christ himself de- clared that the great end of man's being is to be like the Father; and this is the highest conceivable Finality. And though riddles of the Sphinx may never be answered, and in certain processes of Nature we may now fail to discern a purpose, yet science can never be persuaded that the world order is not one of reason. After centuries have elapsed, we may say with Anaxagoras: "Noũs távta o inzoo unos.” In- telligence is the simplest and highest explanation of the world. · In the course of the argument it has been con- tended that the personality of man and the person- The Divine ality of God are homogeneous, and that Go through our own self-consciousness we be known. have an intuition of the self-conscious- ness of the Absolute. It is now objected, that we as finite beings can not know the Absolute, and such a spell is exerted by a word upon the mind, that there seems to exist a real difficulty. To say that our knowledge is relative, that is, the knowledge possessed by a finite being, is only to say that we must know God, as man can know, and not as some other order of beings can know him. It is not a hardship to be compelled to * Note VIII. Personality can relatively Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 143 ****- .- know any reality according to the laws of our being. The choice is between no knowledge at all, an ab- dication of our human nature, and knowledge by means of the faculties which constitute us human minds. It is true we must know in relations, and that there is any knowledge apart from relations is not conceivable. Absolute Being cannot be Being which excludes relations, nor is the Absolute opposed to the Relative in the sense of excluding, but in the sense of implying it. The Absolute is not that which is out of relation, but that in which relation has its i ground. The Absolute contains no despotic mean- ing such as that, of existence out of relation. “An Absolute excluding relation would be as unmeaning as a substance without properties, or an agent in- capable of action.” * It is again said, that we cannot reason from hu- man self-consciousness or personality to the self- consciousness of the Absolute. Human self-consciousness is related to external sciousness of stimuli or impressions of sense. The self Div can achieve no knowledge, except through consciousness. the occasioning activity of the not-self. Hence the Ego, or subject of states is conditioned by the action Self-con- Man, and SY is to be limited, therefore the self-consciousness of the Absolute would be limited and the Absolutewould become finite. The answer given by Lotze seems to be valid, that self-consciousness is possible, not for conditioned or dependent beings alone. That self- * Scienti fic Basis of Faith. Note IX., p. 130 144 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. consciousness is conditioned by that which is not- self, is true only of human consciousness. The self-consciousness of God is not necessarily dependent upon an external universe for the estab- lishment of a contrast within his mind. The orienta- tion with an environment so necessary to a finite being, is not required to constitute the Divine Per- sonality. Even man lives at times in a realm of ideas, conscious of the ebb and flow of feelings and purposes which he can refer to himself as their sub- ject, and which in the exercise of his higher reason, seem to be wholly independent of the stimuli or im- pressions of the world, outside the mind. Man seems thus at times enfranchised from world rela- tions, lives in an ideal world, and feels himself to be the sovereign and possessor of a realm of thoughts and feelings which are in constant movement, and constitute an opulent inner objectivity in contrast with his subjectivity. And thus man is conscious of a larger personality, of ascending to a more perfect likeness to the Absolute Self, as in the contempla- tion of purer ideals, he cuts himself loose from the suggestions, passions, and interests, which the lower world excites within him. In reply to Fichte, who contended that the con- sciousness of the self is possible only through the antithesis of the not-self, Krause and Lotze hold the view that in order to distinguish an object from one's self there must be first a self-awareness, that isz=-*** it is necessary first to possess the Ego. And Lotze regarding this Divine self-consciousness as higher Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 145 than that of Man's, remarks “Perfect Personality is reconcilable only with the conception of an Infinite Being; for finite beings, only an approximation to this is attainable.” But the Philosophy of Religion rests not with arguments of a metaphysical nature, it finds even a more solid basis in the ethical feelings of man, and the faith in the ethical ideals here grasps the torch and leads us onward to more satisfactory conclusions. The consideration of this Ground of Religious Be- lief is reserved for the following Chapter. NOTE I. “Belief in the personality of man, and belief in the personality of God, stand or fall together. A glance at the history of Religion would suggest that these two be- liefs are for some reason inseparable. Where faith in the personality of God is weak, or is altogether wanting, as in the case of the pantheistic religions of the East, the perception which men have of their own personality is found to be in an equal degree indistinct. The feeling of individuality is dormant. The soul indolently ascribes to itself a merely phenomenal being. It conceives of itself as appearing for a moment, like a wavelet on the ocean, to vanish again in the all engulfing essence whence it emerged. Recent philosophical theories which sub- stitute matter, or an 'Unknowable' for the self-conscious Deity, likewise dissipate the personality of man as ordi- narily conceived. If they deny that God is a spirit, they deny with equal emphasis that man is a spirit. The pan- theistic and atheistic schemes are in this respect con- sistent in their logic. Out of man's perceptions of his TO 146 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. own personal attributes arises the belief in a personal God. On this fact of our own personality the validity of the argument for Theism depends."* NOTE II. There is no value in the conception of an older psy- chology of the static unity of the soul prior to all actual living experience. It is a subject that becomes one in the manifold progressive life, is an actual unifying of the manifold ; its reality is known by the modes of action in which it puts forth its energy. Our ideas, feelings, states, or acts are unintelligible to us, save as states or acts of the Ego as the combining centre in which they cohere. And however disconnected, in certain cases, these states may be, and in our absorption in witnessing some outward tragedy, or in reverie, however we may cease to be self-conscious,-these facts do not impugn the soul's unity but actually imply it, for the very recog- nition of transient unconnectedness, -as has been pointed out, is possible only by postulating the unity of the cog- nitive subject as the unity of a being able to discern the difference between unconnectedness and its opposite. The stability of the personal soul is not imperilled by the variety of its internal states. Were it an absolutely unvarying subject, then a changing psychical life would become impossible. Its permanent unity is not mathe- matical, but that of a being capable of blending all changes, and of reducing them to an internal harmony, “as the manifold chords of a musical composition are combined to utter a dominant theme." * Prof. G. P. Fisher, Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, P. I. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 147 The subject of a cycle of phenomena, in being perma- nent, as Lotze affirms, “is not disqualified for perform- ing the much more important function of acting as a centre for the exeunt and ineunt actions of which, the cycle of phenomena to be explained, consists." The individuality of our being becomes then manifest by the actions themselves of the soul in its empiric life. To confess that we must infer its unitary reality from its phenomena or actions, however called forth from it, and that we cannot envisage that unity as something apart from its actual energizing life ; and, further, to sum up our convictions of the nature of its being, by saying that it is “something which contains the capacity for devel- opment,” may seem not enough to clear up the idea of personality. But what can we ever know more of this reality of the soul than that it exists as one, and that as unity it combines its manifold states. Of the essence of anything, apart from its conditions which stimulate its energy, can we know nothing, as we cannot see any ob- ject without light. The soul itself must be known by what it reveals of its nature in the experience of unfold- ing life. This sovereign, central power of the soul that unifies the manifold of its states, and is not merely a stream of ideas without cohesion, nor a flow of states without a central subject in which they are held to- gether, constitutes the reality of the Soul, the human Personality. NOTE III. Mr. Illingworth, in Bampton Lectures, 1894, p. 48, quotes DuBois-Reymond as saying: “The complete, knowledge of the brain, the highest knowledge we can attain, reveals to us nothing but matter in motion. mer AHLSR 148 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. ... What conceivable connection exists between certain movements of certain atoms in my brain on the one hand, and on the other the, to me, original and not further definable but undeniable facts, 'I feel pain, ; feel pleasure ; I take something sweet, smell roses, hear organ-sounds, see something red,' and the just as imme- diately resulting certainty 'therefore I am'? It is im- possible to see how, from the co-operation of the atoms, consciousness can result. Even if I were to at- tribute consciousness to the atoms, that would neither explain consciousness in general, nor would that in any way help us to understand the unitary consciousness of the individual." "Among all the errors of the human mind," says H. Lotze, “it has always seemed to me the strangest that it could come to doubt its own existence, of which alone it has direct experience, or to take it at second hand as the product of an external nature, which we know only indirectly, only by the means of the knowledge of the very mind to which we would fain deny existence." Compelled to choose between the interpretation of Mind in terms of matter, or the interpretation of Nature in terms of Mind, we cannot hesitate to choose the latter. We know more about Mind than we do about matter. It is by the Mind that we become conscious of matter; not by matter do we become conscious of Mind, for matter cannot at the same time be both conscious and ; unconscious. NOTE IV. “Not till we put forth and direct our own Causality, whether simply percipient or motory, have we revelation of the causality of the world ; so that it is not in mere Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 149 ..t . wie exposure to changes, but in concomitant production of them, that this intellectual intuition is gained. Further, in the genesis of our consciousness, both the Ego and the Non-Ego are embraced as foci within the same cateam gory of causality, and in the same objective relations. True, the subjective focus has in it, as a seat of con- sciousness, an immediate feeling of operative Will which can only be reflected on to the other. But reflected it is, and must forever be ; for it is identified with the in- most essence of the sole causality accessible to thought. And accordingly it is read by us into the Non-Ego as what would be stirring in us if we could change places with it; and is, in truth, the ground of that fellow- feeling with Nature, which Philosophy, deluded by its own abstractions, rashly surrendered to the poet, but will have to beg back again, whenever it returns into living relations with reality. To the world we are intro- duced not as to a dead thing, or material aggregate of things, but as to another Self, just as causal as we, in- stinct with hidden Will, and so far presenting the outer and the inner spheres in true equipoise.” * “Of all the Intuitive Faculties which are peculiar to Man that of self-consciousness is the most prominent. In virtue of that faculty or power, without any deliber- ate reasoning or logical process of any formal kind, Man must have been always familiar with the idea of energies which are themselves invisible, and only to be seen in their effects. His own loves and hates, his own gratitude and revenge, his own schemes and resolves, must have been familiar to him from the first as things in them- selves invisible, and yet having power to determine the * Studies in Religion, by Dr. James Martineau, vol. i., p. 190. 150 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. most opposite and the most decisive changes for good or evil in things which are visible and material. "It never could have been difficult for him, therefore, to separate the idea of Personality or of the efficiency of Mind and Will, from the attribute of visibility. It never could have been any difficulty with him to think of liv- ing Agencies other than his own, and yet without any Form, or with Forms concealed from sight. There is no need, therefore, to hunt farther afield for the origin of this conception than Man's own consciousness of him- self. . . . “... To conceive of the energies that are outside of him as like the energies that he feels within him, is simply to think of the unknown in terms of the familiar and known. .. It must have been in the very nature of things, the earliest, the simplest, and the most neces- sary of conceptions." * It is not through the discourse of the understanding that we reach the highest truths of Reality. We can only explicate the intuitions which we have. Philosophy is, in one sense, a disease of the Mind. “We end where we began but not as we began." The fabled spear that wounded, could also heal. w01 NOTE Y. The cosmological argument in its later form justly de- mands the assent of Science. It no longer aims to prove a scientific First Cause, calling the World into being at some remote moment of past time. † It rests upon the more cogent conception of a Unitary Causal Ground, to * Duke of Argyle, Unity of Nature, pp. 473-4. + Such a Cause would be only a demiurge. Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 151 account for the whole order of dynamic activities and phenomenal changes. The Universe is seen to be not a statical affair, but a dynamism, a disclosure of immanent Agency. This view of Nature avails itself of the postulates of science; in- deed, the Philosophy of Religion seeks to find the Ulti- mate Ground for all the facts disclosed by the sciences, and the conflict between science and religious philosophy is thus no longer possible. The atoms, whether psychical or physical, were held by Leibniz and Kant, and later by Lotze, to be spiritual Monads, differentiations of the Absolute Substance, pos- sessing an imparted individuality, each one a psychical unity. In the interactions of these monads, capable of maintaining their selfhood by mutual resistance, they give rise to the aspect of impenetrability or matter. Cosmical phenomena, therefore, arise from the activity of these so-called atoms of science, which are centres of energy, and which may ascend from the faintest sentience of pain and pleasure, from the inorganic world, in the vegetable and animal organisms up through the whole gamut of consciousness, until the conscious states of the ruling monads arrive at volitional energy analogous to our own. Matter would then be seen to be a stress or imprisonment of souls for purpose of moral education, and to bring insurgent monads into harmony of will with the Will of God. The precosmic sin, the ascent and descent of spiritual monads suggested by Origen, seems to be an anticipation of the modern view of the Cosmos as constituted of Spirits. In the Hibbert Lectures of Professor Hatch justice is rendered to the genius of Origen, and his cos- mothetic suggestions. 152 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Religious Philosophy and Evolutionary Science ob- serve with common interest the ascending intensities of psychical activity of these ultimate energies, and dis- cern the rational connection of dynamic conditions of the present moment with those of the preceding moment. It is not necessary to think that there was any begin- ning for this interaction of psychical or physical atoms or monads, which have their ground in the Eternal Substance. As we in our self-consciousness find the ground intuitively of our personal existence in the Ab- solute Being, so these monads betray no signs of self- subsistence, and, as innumerable centres of energy, they, by the changes of the states of the Absolute Ground, are made to conspire together for the evolution of the world-process, which is a process of intelligence. Each living atom and each human mind is in essential re- lation to the Eternal Substance, otherwise no action between bodies or between the soul and Nature is conceivable. As already pointed out in accordance with the view of Lotze, among all these centres of energy, as plurality, there can be no complete independence, nor can there be action of one body upon another apart from the sup- position of a deeper unity, to which all monads are re- lated. It is by the changes in the Unitary Ground that “the changes in the inner state of one Monad produces a change in the internal activity of contiguous Monads." Thus, as we cannot as minds interchange our ideas with each other, except as we are members together of a commonwealth of Reason, so all psychical or physical Monads must have their common ground in the One, true, and Absolute Being. The dynamics which con- ştitute the universe are not only conceived to be spirit- . Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 153 ual centres or Monads, deriving individuality from the Absolute, but to explain their conspiracy or organic unity, which appears as the Cosmos, we are driven by the necessity of thought to suppose a self-existent Unit- ary Will the ground of their being. The ethical feeling, however, recoils from the view that these ultimate in- dividualities are dependent upon the changes in the inner states of the Divine Consciousness, but ceases to recoil from implied fatality when the freedom of the Monads is regarded. The real difficulty lies in the relation of the Finite to the Infinite. How can finite Man be free, as he, like the Monads, is dependent upon the Infinite? The conscious- ness of human freedom is meanwhile a fact, illustrated by the history of the race, an indispensable datum for belief in morals and the claims of duty. The dependent relation of the Monads and of Man can give thought no distress, so long as man has this indecomposable intuition of freedom. NOTE VI. S The theory of Evolution was implicit in the works of Aristotle, in his doctrine of potentiality and actuality (Súva jis and ÅyÉpyala). “Though potentiality (Dr.. F. C. S. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, pp. 197, 199,) is prior to the actuality in the order of time and in the order of our knowledge, yet the actuality is really prior to and presupposed by the potential....It is only by a recognition of final causes that the conception of causation can be cleared of its difficulties.” Thus Evolution, so far from abolishing Finality, proves to be in accord with the conception of Aristotle, and the teleology implicit in Evolution is, as Mr. Huxley con- 154 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief.. cedes, the most sublime realization of purpose of which we can form a conception. “The laws of Nature can- not account for their own origin,” says Mr. Mill, the great Master in Inductive Philosophy, in his review of Comte (Westminster Review, April, 1865). It is obvious that we, as finite beings, cannot compre- hend the finality of the world-process. Included in this purpose must be not only man as he has thus far developed his character, but the race in its entire history and the higher minds which shall appear. Finality will become more cogent and clearer as minds shall, ages hence, arrive at higher discernment of the meaning of the world-pro- cess. “ La Nature est une évolution dont la Perfection in- finie est à la fois la force impulsive et le but suprême.” * NOTE VII. In his Winkley Lectures, P. 205, Pres. J. G. Schurman quotes a remarkable passage from a letter of Mr. Dar- win to Mr. Huxley. “You have," writes Darwin, “ most cleverly hit on one point which has greatly troubled me; if, as I must think, external conditions produce little direct effect. What determines each particular varia- tion? What makes a tuft of feathers come on a cock's head, or moss on a moss rose ?” And Pres. Schurman adds, “ until that query is answered, the proof that the eye has 'come' by way of natural selection, instead of having been 'specially made,' is no proof that its com- ing was unintentional. And when the query is answered, it will be seen that though we have in the eye a result *“Aristotle," " Descartes,” “Hegel.” Histoire de la Philoso- phie Européene, p. 574. Alfred Weber, Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 155 TON. which is brought about only in accordance with the inex- orable laws of causation, it is a result that cannot be exhaustively explained on a merely mechanical or blind necessitarian theory of the Universe." To the above may be added the remarks of Professor Romanes quoted by Professor Upton in his Hibbert Lec- tures, p. 231, “I need scarcely wait to show why it appears . to me that the world-object furnishes overwhelming proof of psychism. There is first the antecedent im- probability that the human mind should be the highest manifestation of subjectivity in this universe of infinite objectivity. There is next the fact that throughout this universe of infinite objectivity—so far at least as human observation can extend—there is unquestionable evidence of some one integrating principle, whereby all its many complex parts are correlated with one another in such wise that the result is universal order. And if we take any part of the whole system, such as that of organic nature on this planet to examine in more detail, - we find that it appears instinct with contrivance. So to speak, wherever we tap organic nature-it seems to flow with purpose, ... Assuredly no human mind could either have devised or maintained the working of even a fragment of Nature; ... The Spirit, as it were, of the universe---must be something which, while, as I have said, holding nearest kinship with our highest conception of disposing power, must be yet immeasurably superior to the psychism of man.” Y yol _ NOTE VIII. In the little book, The Destiny of Man, by Professor John Fiske, he has in eloquent words affirmed man to be the goal of evolution, referring to Mr. Spencer as holding 156 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. " that the conscious soul is not the product of the col- location of material particles, but is in the deepest sense a divine effluence.” “Speaking for myself,” says Professor Fiske, “I can see no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in the evolution of Humanity this divine spark may have acquired sufficient concentration and steadi- ness to survive the wreck of material forms and endure forever. Such a crowning wonder seems to me no more than the fit climax to a creative work that has been in- effably beautiful and marvellous in all its myriad stages. “Only on some such view can the reasonableness of the Universe, which still remains far above our finite power of comprehension, maintain its ground. There are some minds inaccessible to the class of considerations here alleged, and perhaps there will always be. But on such grounds, if on no other, the faith in immortality is likely to be shared by all who look upon the genesis of the highest spiritual qualities in man as the goal of Nature's creative work. This view has survived the Copernican revolution in science, and it has survived the Darwinian revolution. Nay, if the foregoing exposition be sound, it is Darwinism which has placed Humanity upon a higher pinnacle than ever. The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the greatest musician, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge; and as we gird ourselves up for the work of life, we may look forward to the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world shall become the Kingdom of Christ, and He shall reign forever King of Kings and Lord of Lords." Metaphysical Grounds of Religious Belief. 157 NOTE IX. “Is the Absolute opposed to the Relative as excluding it or implying it? Examples from the world of material things will serve as well as any other to illustrate this distinction. An acid and an alkali are opposed as ex- cluding each other, because they cannot exist together ; if they come into atomic contact, they neutralize and destroy each other. The two poles of a magnet, on the contrary, are opposed as implying each other ; neither pole can be isolated, and if the magnet is broken in two, each part presents the two poles. Now does the abso- lute exclude relation or imply relation ? Certainly the latter. ... The Creator is in relation to all created beings, and all created beings are in relation to Him." * * J. J. Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, page 130 2A EX 11 HEY VPGT Un TO ! 11 M N VIA O ! CHAPTER II. ETHICAL GROUNDS. Man not THUS far the necessities of thought have led us I to the conclusion that the facts of Mind and Nature have no explanation apart from an Ultimate Reality, which we must regard as a Unitary Per- sonality. Metaphysics thus enables the Philosophy of Religion to finish one stadium of progress. Man possesses, however, not alone a capacity for knowledge of the True; the dignity of his soul is constituted of feelings which reach towards only an the Good and Beautiful as well. Ideals of intellectual goodness and beauty play even a more being. important role in the life of man, than do purely intellectual impulses. The heart has its rights as well as the head, and we recoil from thinking that the Divine Personality is so impoverished as not to realize in perfection these ideals which haunt the soul. The Ideal and the Real must be blended in the being of God, or the heart of man is mocked with hopes which are baseless. 158 Ethical Grounds. 159 1 Ethical Man is an ethical being, and that the Author of his constitution is not also a Moral personality is inconceivable. The higher cannot spring from the lower. The lower must be interpreted in terms of the higher. The Philosophy of Religion seeks to answer the question, Is the Ground of all being an Ethical per- sonality? Do the ideals, which from age to age have been developed in man's pro- character of gress, evoke any interest from the Heart the Absolute. of the Universe ? In the spirit of Feuerbach's philosophy, it has been said that the wish is father to the thought, that man's longings for the realiza- tion of his ideals have become for him objective in a hypothetical Being who is the figment of his desires. Mr. Wm. R. Alger, in reply to the assertion that “the unsatisfied and longing soul has created the doctrine of a future life,” says: “Very good! If the soul has builded a house in Heaven, flown up and made a nest in the breezy boughs of immortality, that house must have tenants, that nest must be occupied. The divinely implanted instincts do not provide and build for naught.” * Evolutionary Ethics may historically trace the progress of man towards higher ideals, but the moral capacity is always a prior fact. As it is an Evolu offence to reason to say that thought can history of come from unconscious matter, a self-con- scious being from an unconscious source, it is equally offensive to reason to affirm that the Moral can come * Doctrine of a Future Life. Morals. * ** ** 160 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. $ Ethical forth from the Non-Morat. If the necessities of thought force us to postulate an intelligent per- sonal Ground of Nature and Mind, they compel us also—when we study man's moral constitution-to postulate an ethical Being who is immanent in the whole rational and moral history of man. The moral progress of the race is not to be ques- tioned; from the man of the neolithic age to the Frenchman of to-day, from the Briton progress who launched his coracle on the water of of man. the Thames in the time of Cæsar, to the Englishman of the House of Commons, a Gladstone or a Salisbury, is a long upward march. But moral progress is inconceivable without a prior capacity for moral ideas, and that capacity is explained in terms of the higher and not in terms of the lower, by the ethical Reality which is both the Primal and Final Cause. “Morality," says Prof. O. Pfleiderer, “is the realization of our destiny as reasonable creatures in the world of social relations ; religion the realization of the same destiny in reference to God.” Morality and Religion are, then, facts from the first moment of human consciousness, and have had their historic development. If, as it is thought, we may trace the historic evolution of mind through zoologic stages to the arrival of self-consciousness in man, in similar wise, we may trace the evolution of morals from the lowest stages of primitive human society to the society of the present day. However long the process of development of the worlds of matter Ethical Grounds. 161 Writers. and mind, a Divine Purpose is immanent in it; nothing emerges in a later stage which was not im- plicit in the first stage of the process. The facts of man's moral and religious history as obviously de- mand an ethical Ground of their existence as the phenomena of Mind and Nature have demanded of us the acceptance of a Personal Intelligence for their explanation. That there is a moral ideal, the noblest realization of which is found in the life and character of Jesus, all schools of Ethics are disposed to grant. The Moral Both the schools of derivative and in- Ideal accepted tuitional Morality agree that there is an by Ethical ideal of absolute worth, not a means, but an end. With reference to the individual, that end is good-will; with reference to the race, the end is social welfare. That this moral ideal has a historic development is not denied. It is liberated with the advancing culture of man into clearer apprehension, and this enlargement can occur only in the experi- ence of social life. That Morality is useful, the experience of the world teaches, but the words utility and happiness do not express the whole content of the moral ideal, nor do they carry with them the teleological signifi- cance of the word Goodness. The reality of moral distinctions is not, then, affected by the controversy between the empirical and intuitional schools of Ethics. That man, even in a savage state, has an idea of right, of the better and the worse, a conception of moral worth, and 1 II 162 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Indeterminate Ethics. that he attaches to that idea an imperative ought, or a law of unconditional obligation, is a universal and constant fact of his history in all ages and lands and points to a Source of all his ethical ideals and imperatives. * The indeterminate factor in the moral life of man lies in the varying judgment as to What is right, nate and What things ought to be, or be done. element in That there is a right is unquestioned, but just what it is, is the fact which man is ever more clearly determining as the race makes progress. The moral ideal is an ever-advancing con- ception of the Ultimate Good, and it must be devel- oped in social relations and in psychical progress. Evolutionary Ethics undertakes to trace this pro- gress of the moral judgment, this continually liberated conception of what is right and of absolute worth. The discipline of life lies in this struggle to purify and exalt our moral ideals, constantly surrendering the lower for the higher. For example, the scion of a noble house abandons the turf from a conviction that the ideal he pursues is not a worthy end, and he enters parliamentary life. Soon he feels that he can no longer vote with his party, and goes into op- position ; the minority under his leadership becomes the majority, and he is made Premier. Again con- scious of a higher standard, to the level of which he finds it impossible to bring up his followers, he re- signs from office. To pronounce such a course of action quixotic is * Note I. Ethical Grounds. 163 impossible, save for those who deny that there are any moral distinctions. There are theorists who have the courage to do so, but such a denial is a challenge to the universal sentiment of civilized man, and is to refuse to find in nobility of character the highest meaning and value of life. The argument for an ethical Being, derived from the moral constitution of man, would seem to be even more cogent than that derived from Cognition of the reality of the human mind, for the the ideal existence of the Divine Intelligence. Good, immediate. Indeed, Dr. Martineau contends. that through conscience we have as direct a cognition of God as through the senses we have of the outer world. * “The cognitions we gain through the ordinary exercise of the Senses are perfectly analogous, in their mode of origin, to those which come to us through the moral faculty. In the act of Percep- tion we are immediately introduced to an other than our selves that gives us what we feel ; in the act of Conscience, we are immediately introduced to a Higher than ourselves that gives us what we feel : the externality in the one case, the authority in the other, the causality in both, are known upon exactly the same terms, and carry the same guarantee of their validity.” [. It may be irrelevant to discuss the question, whether our moral judgments are more direct or imperative than our mental judgments. We may be content with saying that they are equally direct and imperative. It would seem, however, that Philosophy has disputed more persistently our power to know things external to the mind, than * Study of Relig., vol. I., p. 27. + Note II. 164 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Ethical Ideals, the forces of history. ( it has our power to know that there is a something which is Right and Good. Assuredly the ethical and religious Ideals have proved to be the true dynamics of progress. Through these Ideals, God has revealed himself with increasing clearness and power, while the warfare of intellect from age to age has left ontological problems, if not without satisfactory solution, at any rate with- out a solution that commands the imperative and unanimous assent which the moral categories secure. Professor Upton is perhaps right in saying that, “ It is because the conscience makes known the possibility in man of resisting the injunctions of the moral imperative, that it reveals a clear distinction between the Will or Personality of God and the will or personality of man, and thus confers upon the latter an independ- ent value and importance which it always tends to lose when the relation between man and God is viewed solely from the standpoint of pure reason or intellect. Just as the feeling of resistance renders most men quite unable to doubt the reality of an external world, so does the consciousness of spiritual resistance, as presented in the dis- cord felt at times between the human will and the invitations and injunctions of the Ideal, i, e., of the indwelling God, make it im- possible for any one in whom ethical experience is vivid to remain satisfied with any theory which treats the human spirit as merely a transient mode of the Universal Spirit.” * This revelation of a Supreme Authority through the conscience is a refutation of the Pantheism which extinguishes human personality. The self-revelation of God is made through the reason, conscience, and will of man, but I must think that the ethical Ground of Belief is that which the Philosophy of Religion may emphasize, * Hibbert Lectures, p. 243. Ethical Grounds. 165 and through the conscience, man is most immedi- ately related to God. History affords ample evi- dence that moral ties have held men to faith, when the discursive understanding, exclusively relied upon, has led to pantheistic conclusions which have para- lyzed moral effort. The errors of mysticism, resulting from an ex- cessive and one-sided confidence in feeling unregu- lated by the reason, have been productive of less harm than the errors which have sprung from an abstract intellectualism. The three elements of feeling, thought, and will are, as Professor Upton remarks, “only three aspects of the one relationship of the finite self to the absolute Self.” As through the will, however, we ascertain vividly the reality of an external world, or the reality of the Divine Will, which is immanent in Nature, so through the moral will or purpose we are immediately conscious of a Supreme Will, through our ideals enjoining upon us the duties of conduct. That the moral imperatives imply an immediate cognition of God, and are the most important basis of Religious Belief, is a growing conviction of all who are given to earnest reflection. The moral ideals, or conceptions of the right and the good, becoming more and more clearly mani- fest in advancing experience of life, are Categorical attended by the feeling that they ought imperative to be realized in conduct. This impera- or the "ought." tive within the dependent soul, derived from the immanent Reason, exercises no despotic influence upon the will of man. Man is left to 166 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. fashion conduct in conformity with, or in opposition to, this inner Divine authority. Reflection confirms the naïve belief in this imperative enthroned in the soul; nor will any history of its arrival or enthrone- ment divest it of its irresolvable categorical nature. “The consciousness of duty," says Professor Rauwenhoff, “is some- thing entirely unique in us. Far from always agreeing with inclina- tion, it is for the most part opposed to it. . . . It asks nothing about the calculations of utility or expediency. Inexorably and pitilessly it pursues us with · Thou must' (Du musst), and if we give no heed to it there comes into the 'Thou must' a more emphatic tone, and it passes over into an imperative "Thou shalt' (Du sollst). "Through the whole of our life (if our higher nature be not stupefied and deadened by absorption in pleasure or some ruling passion) this. Thou must' accompanies us, and as we reach any stage of ethical development, we still feel the pressure of the Ideal sum- moning us to a still higher point of moral perfection."* Professor Upton reminds us of Mr. Huxley's can- did admission in his Romanes Lecture, that “there is more in the sentiment of ought'than evolutionist theories avail to explain," and also that Professor Sidgwick,-in spite of his sympathy with the em- pirical school of Philosophy,-admits that the feeling of the ought is unique, that is, is irresolvable into feelings of pleasure, pain, or sympathy. But since the Moral Ideals are accompanied by this categorical imperative of duty, Physiological Ethics would fain resolve the moral capacity itself, for these ideals, into a product of circumstance, and the conceptions of ideal right and goodness are no longer regarded as heaven-born, but as springing * Quoted by Professor Upton, Hibbert Lectures, p. 250. Web Ethical Grounds. 167 JI UNI CT 1 Y from the dust by some accident of change. But to clear the field for the destruction of the moral capac- ity of man, the denial must be made of the ethical personality of God. For if the Absolute is self-con- scious and moral, the moral capacity in man finds an explanation of its reality. It is felt to be an absurdity to grant an ethical character to the Source of Being and deny the Divine origin of man's ethical ideals. The only alternative is to deny the self- consciousness or personality of the Absolute, and here again the two personalities, the Divine and human, stand or fall together. Only by this violent assault upon the Divine personality can the moral capacity of man be derived from purely physical sources. Here again, as metaphysical Philosophy has been compelled to defend human personality as a free personality, must ethical Philosophy re- sist the attack upon that central fortress. defend man's If man's personality is not free, if it is to freedom. be placed-under the law of a necessary, in distinc- tion from an ideal, evolution, then it is all over with ethics, and, it is obvious, it is all over with the belief in an Ultimate Personality, the basal Principle of the inner and outer worlds. Things and animals are not persons, therefore we do not attribute to them merit or blame when they injure us. Moral indignation is not aroused by the attack of a lion, or the fall of a stone from the wall of a house. It is not the "thing done,” but the “person doing," which we are impelled to approve or condemn. Ethics must 168 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. b Preferential focus of M An ethical personality is a free personality. The Morality of Determinism, in physical reference, is an ; illusion, and to rescue ethics we must choice the first rescue freedom. The focus of free- dom is the moment of self-conscious, re- liberty. sponsible choice. Whatever may have been the psychological history, this unique fact of decision is the fortress of personality, which physio- logical psychology will not be able to carry by storm. We have seen that if anything whatever can be known or is known to be real, it is a unitary Subject or Ego, originator of its psychical states, with a spontaneity unexplained, which is not a capri- cious, but a rational spontaneity. So-called motives, to which so often attaches a suspicion of physical force, if understood to be rea- Motives, sons, have their place in the realm of rational, not spontaneity. But to give “motives” the ysical significance of physical impulse is to pass from the spatial to the non-spatial, to carry the law of the persistence of force into the realm of Mind, to bridge the gulf between spirit and matter with a pure assumption. To place one psychical state behind another, and physical states behind the psychical, is not to account for that nature of the mind, by virtue of No endless which it marshals or originates states of which it is permanent Subject and Cause. Hume could never catch, as he affirmed, the Ego or Self without some perception,* and then could ob- * Forgetting, as Dr. Momerie suggests, that he had a self to catch, regress. Ethical Grounds. 169 serve nothing else save the perception. “But," says Höffding, “Hume could not see the wood for the trees." He searches in the wrong place. "The nature of the Ego is manifested in the combination of the sensations, ideas, and feelings, and in the forms and laws of this com- bination. ... He offends against actual psychological experience when he declares mockingly that 'setting aside some few metaphy- sicians,' the rest of mankind are nothing but bundles, or collections of perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity and in a constant current. He overlooks the inner link between these conscious elements, which enables them to become elements of one and the same consciousness, and not of several consciousnesses. And yet he must have been of course led to ask what holds the con- scious elements together, and makes them into a bundle ?"* Hume lost sight of this initiating combining force, in his sole regard for the individual components of the bundle. And he confessed that for him it was too hard a problem to show how these percep- tions, assumed to be independent, could be bridged together. It is necessary for ethics to make this excursion into the realm of psychology, to meet this attempt to break up the unity of the mind, and to rescue the soul's unity before contending for its initiative power. The unity of the mind or its synthesis, as Höffding points out, is, indeed, hidden from us, is not absolute, is always “relative or struggling,” but it is a real unity. The essence of the Self is, then, that of a capacity for development in the realization of an end or ideal, and as the Subject of its changing states is capable of a rational spontaneity. * Psychology, p. 137. i 170 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. menultimusic Liberty, then, is not a blind act of choice, a lib- erty of indifference, a chance blow delivered by will. The free preference of one end to Liberty not blind choice. another is that of a person, a being en- dowed with reason, who in the act of selection of the end, compares two or more ideas which are present at the same moment in the mind. To act in accordance with concepts or ideals may be said to be a determination of the will, but it is the self-determining of a person who reflects, com- pares, and values. The capacity to act thus under the guidance of reason is the true liberty. It is to act with an end in view, and if the end is a base one, it has influenced the will's decision, because the agent has, in his comparison of one idea with an- other, preferred the end pursued as in his view the better. It is inconceivable that any person not de- prived of reason, not made bankrupt of conscience through long courses of evil conduct and a descent towards animalism, could prefer a thing because it is “worse.” The inferior, the worse, can never be an end preferred, and to suppose this is to annul Will itself. It is, as Dr. Martineau suggests, to attribute persuasion to dissuasion, and speak of in- firmity as force. “ Conscience is the knowledge with one's self of the better and worse." To elect the bad for itself alone is to cease to pos- sess a conscience, to abdicate reason, to be less than human. One may seem to choose the worse for its own sake, but no person, not wholly lapsed into irra- ționality, can prefer misery to happiness. The most Ethical N 171 Grounds. Meaning "character." abandoned criminal must, if retaining a spark of reason and conscience, prefer the end which seems to him the better. The guilt lies in unreflecting surrender to sense and passion, in not rising by thought above false concepts to true concepts of good. As Paulsen concludes, the freedom of the will, apart from metaphysical obscurities, consists in the capacity to order one's life independently of all sensuous impulses and allurements, in accordance with reason and conscience, toward a higher end. The word “nature” or “character" is, however, seized upon by the false determinism, and the cham- pion of liberty, in using either term, is M supposed, like Hamlet, to have lost his “nature" or own sword, and to take that of Laertes, or "char the Determinism of Necessity. The “nature" is not, however, a determining mass lying back of the act of choice. It is rather the uniform mode of be- havior. The “nature” has been constituted by these acts of decision, or more strictly is a term which expresses the uniformity of choice. The agent chooses to-day and to-morrow and hereafter in a uniform manner, and we style it the man's na- ture. This manner of acting may, without being inconsistent with freedom, have its influence upon future decisions, but the nature itself is dependent upon previous choices for its being here at all. To say that the nature is an antecedent which compels the decision, is only to say that the freedom of yes- terday is a cause of the freedom of to-morrow. We i 172 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. cut, but do not untie, the Gordian knot by asserting that physical or psychical causes, being antecedent to this nature, have constituted it as a part of the chain of determinism, and that all acts must be gov- erned by it. That is simply to say, without proof, that the nature of the mind does not permit any free decision. The “nature" of the man must be rescued from the physical implication, and to be re- garded as the manner of acting, illustrated by the prior free decisions. Thus, about the nature and function of the self surges the warfare, not only over the problem of Knowledge and Reality, but over the problem of Morality as well. But if the Ego stands unresolved into its states or experiences, and is always there as a prior fact, a permanent unity having the power of rational initiative, we may say that the battle for freedom is won. And in fact, Necessary Determinism inevitably leads to the Indeterminism which it would evade. To explain any psychical state by an an- Determinism tecedent psychical or physical state, is to disguised In- put cause behind cause forever. It is determinism. either to affirm that the regression of causation is infinite, and thus to remove the neces- sity to such remoteness as to make necessity vanish,- which lands us in indeterminism, as Dr. F. C. S. Schiller * has pointed out,--or it is to affirm that there is a First Cause who is unconditioned by any- Necessary * Riddles of the Sphinx, Appendix. Ethical Grounds. 173 thing outside or within his consciousness. For if He is conditioned by any motives, we but erect a Deity above him, and thus renew the infinite re- gressus, and again land in indeterminism. The identification of the self with the character is inadmissible. The feeling is invincible that the self forms and possesses the character, and that, other- wise, no change of character could be achieved. * But reformation of character is an every-day fact, and Professor Upton rightly says: “In every moral crisis of a man's life he rises in the act of moral choice above his own character, envisages it, and passes moral judg- ment on the springs of action or desire which he feels present within him ; and it is because a man's true self can thus transcend and judge his own character, that genuine moral freedom and moral responsi- bility become probable and actual," If, then, man as a free personality is by virtue of that freedom capable of an ethical character, and shares the nature of God, the free personal Ground of all being, then the ethical nature of man must find its explanation in the ethical nature of God. + 1 The history of human progress is the history of the development of moral ideals, and with them, of the sense of obligation to surrender life and conduct to their authority. The Moral M in history. ideals have been the guiding stars be- neath which all peoples have pursued their march. Lured onward by their light, humanity has advanced to nobler conceptions of the right and the good. * Note III. + Note IV. Moral Ideals 174 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Upon these ideals have ancient peoples built up their societies, politics, arts, and literatures. No theory of Morals is necessary before man can act morally. Morals are simple acts of behavior in obedience to the emperor within the soul who de- clares that some things are right and other things are wrong, and the sanctions of right and wrong, as human culture has advanced, have been found in the favor or disapproval of a Power which is above, making for Righteousness. In this progress, Morals and Religion have been inseparable. The former find more and more clearly their sanctions in the latter. If Religion has been at times immoral, it was be- cause Morality was low, and Morality was low' because the ideals were but dimly apprehended. Religion and Morality have marched together from the low to the higher, reacting upon each other, both striving towards the Ultimate Good, the Ethical Ground of all Being. The watches in the pockets of a thousand persons may not be in exact accord with the sun, but they are veritable guides, and be- come safer for direction, as they approximate a con- formity with the march of the sun. As the soul itself of man is a capacity for development, more and more realizing the unity which has been implicit from the first, so the moral capacity explicates in experience of life the uplifting ideals which have been latent in the heaven-born soul, and which make their sovereignty felt, in increasingly higher and nobler imperatives. Ethical Grounds. 175 1 The Ethical man. Renan would not surrender these ideals, and real- ized that if the man of Evolution is lineally a "good-natured gorilla ” with his “chi- meras," his moral faith is necessary and longings of conducive to his progress. But if these so-called “chimeras" are necessary to the fulfilment of a purposive Idea in human life, they cannot be chimeras, but realities of reason, and Religion and Morals alike have their ground in man's Divine constitution. The feeling that we owe homage to Goodness and must yield to the mandates of the Ideal which beckons us on, is not then derived from the approval or disapproval of society, nor-it may be added- from the approval or disapproval of God, but from our subjective conviction that Goodness is in itself of authoritative worth. The approval of society sometimes reinforces the sense of duty, but many of the moral heroes of the race have heard a voice in the conscience calling them to defy the authority of public sentiment. No plebiscite can make anything right, nor could a command of God make right what conscience—which is God immanent in the soul- has decided to be wrong. Any supposed mandate from Heaven which conflicts with the ideal of con- science, is without surpassing authority, and will sooner or later be explained away. “Truth is within ourselves: it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all Where truth abides in fullness.” 176 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. The Philosophy of Religion is the Philosophy of the Ideal; the feeling of "what ought to be," in dis- tinction from “what is," is an ultimate principle of the soul, as unexplained as the consciousness of self. The rise and progress of knowledge, and the rise and progress of Morals, are alike the self-development of a capacity derived from God whose nature man shares. Starting with a conviction that there is such a thing as truth, we are forced by experience of life and the study of our own mental constitution, to arrive at more and more clear apprehension of what things are true. Starting also with a belief in the obli- gation to accept Goodness as the end of being, man gradually extricates himself from claims of unworthy conceptions of the moral ideals, and amidst the re- lations, and in the experience, of life, he is ever ascending to higher conceptions of absolute Good- ness. The concrete ideals revealed in the lives of great and noble souls, attract us upward, but the best and. holiest of men, though constituting for us who are below them in excellence, an ideal of worth, are yet discontented with themselves, and are urged by Divine impulse beyond their present attainments of goodness towards an unrealized but commanding Ideal which haunts the soul, and thrills it with desire and hope. The capacity of becoming more and more conscious of God, as the fulfilment of the Right or Good, is the birthright of man, the Divine endowment of his soul. Even in the history of sensitive life we find a M S Ethical Gronnds. 177 disposition to consider every sensation as part of a republic of sensations, and in every enjoyment some indication of an ordered realm of experi- Ideals point ence, wherein not personal pleasure alone to a future is to be sought, but other and higher wel perfected society. fares, which are parts of a Spiritual order. The savage, whose language is of the rudest nature, uses words not as mere ejaculations produced by sensations not arranged in mental order. Words are used as having relations in thought, as constituting language which postulates an ordered realm, in which his intelligence is associated with other intelligences. This intercourse of intelligences postulates a realm of knowledge in which exist universal truths, in consciousness of which man is raised above animal life. In similar wise the moral ideals are not insu- lated feelings, within men apart from each other, having no common end, but are flashes of dawn which herald the rising sun, holy presages of a Spirit- ual kingdom in which infinite Goodness is eternally regnant. If Mr. Burke could reproach a writer for indicting a whole nation, the Philosophy of Religion can justly reproach a class of thinkers for indicting Passion the Universe itself. The presence of moral or despair of and physical evil in the world affords an the Ideal. opportunity to challenge the ethical character of its Creator. Into a discussion of this mystery of Sin the writer is not disposed to venture. Such a dis- cussion may be left to Theologians. But the author- ity of the Ethical ideals, and the receding into the TIC Pessimism, I2 178 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. future of their perfect fulfilment, seem to doom man to a pursuit of the unattainable, as the mariner seeks the land which is merely a cloud on the horizon. The well poised mind, however, discerns in the evolution of the world a movement towards an equilibrium not incompatible with an endless progress in goodness. If to be a finite, is to be a sinful being, then Sin will always exist. But Sin is not to be explained as im- perfection merely-it may vanish from the Universe and still an endless advance towards the Ideal of absolute Goodness is conceivable. Meanwhile, the reply to the pessimists may be made, that the tragic facts of human experience are not an unmixed evil; the apparent discord between the present state and the ideal state of man gives rise to the noblest sacrifices and most heroic deeds, with- out which life would be deprived of much of its grandeur and virtue. Truth compels us to admit however, that there is much to oppress the mind and heart, and tax the faith, in both the allotments of life and the aspects of Nature. We exist in the midst of cosmic and human re- lations, can gain no perfectly commanding view of the march of destiny; but man cherishes the con- viction that from higher points of view, to be here- after reached, much of the mystery of the world will be explained. Christianity fosters neither a roseate optimism, tolerant of moral evil, incapable of noble indignation against wrong, nor does it encourage the pessimism which discerns in history the incessant rolling of the stone of Sisyphus. Neither Goethe nor 1 i Ethical Grounds. 179 Schopenhauer have set forth a true philosophy of life, though both have seized truths which they have exaggerated. Meanwhile, pessimism contains within itself elements which contradict each other, viz.: a demand for Reality, and, at the same time, the de- nial of the possible existence of an Ideal Good. It is not difficult to see that a kind of hysteria has seized, in our day, the minds of many, caused in part by increased pressure to which life is subjected in the pursuit of the prizes of the world, in part by the rapid progress of the sciences of Nature and Mind, demanding fundamental readjustments of thought, in part by the morbid egoism which impels many to regard their personal happiness as paramount to all the interests of humanity around them, and in part also through the want of moral fibre and courage to face the difficulty that comes from the Capuan ease and self-indulgence which riches secure. The ages of heroism and higher warfare are not those in which the temper of pessimism has reigned. It is in more prosperous times, when the physical welfare of so- ciety is most assured, and the long reign of peace between nations leaves mankind free to exaggerate the value of personal domination and gratification, that the malady of discontent and scepticism fastens upon many minds, and gloomy views of the con- dition and destiny of the World are indulged. Christianity, with the instinct of the wise physician, takes account of moral evil, of the failure of man to realize his ideals in the conduct of life. It reveals a Redemptive influence which is included in the YTY 180 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Remedies foi this despair. h purposive evolution of the world. Man, whose con- fession is uttered by the Latin poet “probo meliora deteriora sequor,” is by Christianity helped Fto rise above the pessimism of self-pity, above the mental weakness of ascribing all moral evil to God, to frankly discern that in his misused prerogative of liberty he is the chief cause of his own moral defeat and distress. Exalted more and more in the pursuit of these moral ideals, man becomes conscious of a spiritual power to “rise above the dead self to higher things" inspired by the life and self-sacrifice of the Founder of Christ- ianity. This hierarchy of Ethical ideals which is clearly discerned in the historic development, points evermore forward to the final establishment and un- veiling of a kingdom of Goodness in which exalted spirits are citizens in full communion with Him who is the moral and spiritual impulse of the whole progress of the race. Pessimism will never be able for a long time to congeal the currents of life, or chill faith in the triumph of Goodness, and can be regarded as having mostly a pathological significance. History affords abundant proof that they who live, not in abstract- ions, but an earnest and unselfish life in efforts to ameliorate the woes and sorrows of humanity, are the most cheerful among men, and retain unshaken faith in absolute Goodness. The greater the trials the moral heroes of the race have been called to face, the higher has been the joy of their spirits, the clearer has been their vision of God. It is Ethical Grounds. 181 through unselfish devotion to human welfare, and not through the speculations of the intellect, that man gains the profound conviction of the worth of life, and the assurance that the course of the world is ordered by infinite Goodness and Love. NOTE Ι. Dr. Martineau, in Study of Religion, quotes the follow- ing extract from a work of Michelet, viz.: Origines du droit Français cherchées dans les Symboles et Formules du Droit Universel. Introduction civ. cv. Paris, 1837. “I have studied the symbols embodying the human sen- timent of Rights, under the two points of view which embrace their infinite diversity, viz.: their age and their Nationality. Still, however great their variations, Unity prevails. If in the secondary forms the difference is great, it disappears in the most important. "It is an impressive spectacle to see the chief legal symbols reappearing in all countries throughout all ages. There are few nations in which we do not find the mar- riage rite by mutual purchase (co-emptio), by the sac- rificial cake (confarreatio), and conveyance of estate by delivery of a straw, of tenancy or measurement of land by throw of a missile and riding the bounds, and alliance by libation of blood. “ These symbols, never broken in transmission but to reappear further on, remind one of the Zend or Sanskrit words which, though without representatives in the Ger- man, turn up again in cognate or derivative tongues, in the Greek, for instance, or the English. "In truth, except to one who regards the human race as the great family of God the central unity of his creat- 182 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. ive work and purpose, there must be something magical and dismaying to the mind in alighting upon these voices which, out of hearing of each other, yet answer so ex- actly from the Indus to the Thames. "It is one of the features of our age, that humanity has begun to recognize a harmony in its diversity of language, law and manners, and to find in it, its own self-conscious unity. This sense of humanity as onc, i.e., as Divine, is to me the surest pledge of our religious reawakening. “To me it was a sublime experience, when first I heard this universal chorus. So world-wide an accord, if sur- prising in languages, was profoundly touching to me in the expressions of Right. Reversing the sceptical infer- ences of Montaigne, who ferreted out so curiously the usages of all nations to detect their moral discordances, I was filled with admiration at their harmony. A miracle opened on my perception. From my little momentary existence I saw, I touched, unworthy though I be, the eternal communion of the human race" NOTE II. To do justice to Dr. Martineau, his completing words are here given : “The dualism of perception, which sets ourselves in the face of an objective world, and the dualism of Conscience which sets us in the face of an objective higher mind, are perfectly analogous in their grounds. The religious intimation is not contained in the mere fact, that there is a graduated worth among our inward springs of action ; but in the further fact, that the superiors among them lay claim to our will with an authority that is above us, and that presents them as mere delegates of itself. “For our æsthetic faculty also there is given a Ethical Grounds. 183 differential scale of beauty, higher and lower ; but here the gradations remain upon the level of ideal facts, and do not rise into imperative Law, subjecting us to a trans- cendent relation that asks the sacrifice of ourselves. "It is the specific sense of duty that constitutes a dual relation, and cannot belong to a soul in vacuo, and must be forever a disconsolate and wandering illusion, till it rests with Him to whom the allegiance is due.... I care not whether this be called an immediate vision of God in the experiences of conscience; or whether it be taken as an inference drawn from the data they supply. It is the truth contained in them : with one man it may be only implicitly felt in their solemn and mystic character ; with another, explicitly and immediately seen emerging from them as they come, and making him the Seer of God, rather than the reasoner about him. In any case, the constitution of our moral nature is unintel- ligible, except as living in response to an objective Per- fection pervading the Universe with Holy Law." * NOTE III. “Inner 'nature' and outward circumstances are, as it were, a raw material out of which the individual is to create a character-a plastic material which, like the sculptor he has to subdue to his formative idea.” Professor James Seth. Study of Ethical Principles, p. 358. NOTE IV. Determinism as usually understood, strictly analyzed, is pure materialism. Place one psychical state behind another to infinity, there must be a subject of the states. Determinists of the school of necessity cannot dis- Sțudy of Religion., vol., ii, pp. 27-29, 184 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. pense with moral obligation, but if all phenomena are to be resolved into molecular action, it is unscientific to believe in freedom, right, or obligation. The disastrous influence of Physical Determinism in politics, economics, and morals, it is to be feared, will for a decade or two be illustrated until it shall be demonstrated that society cannot be maintained on any theory of Physical De- terminism. Physical Determinism is, as Professor Secretan urges, only “an hypothesis ”—a method of science. Meanwhile science cannot disprove the facts of human freedom and moral obligation, which cannot in thought be separated. The return of Mr. Tyndall to the Greek idea of the "Power of Becoming” reveals the consciousness that the physical chain must have a beginning and that beginning is the initiative of a Power which is free and intelligent. The doctrine of the Conservation of Energy cannot be used to disprove the existence of liberty. Physicists have shown that the material atom exerts different amounts of resistance to pressure, that its capacity is in- exhaustible, and that it is thus impossible to show that the sum total of energy in the Cosmos is always the same. That the human will acting upon matter cannot add to the sum of Cosmic force, has not and probably never can be demonstrated. “The law of the conserva- tion of energy signifies, in metaphysical reference, only, the unchangeableness of the actual World-Will on the side of its intensity ; this law is, however, purely formal, and only teaches us : if this quantum of mechanical energy is converted into another form, e.g., into heat, then, it will furnish such and such a quantum of heat.” * Meanwhile Determinism must supply links to the * Von Hartman, Philosophy of the Unconscious. Ethical Grounds. 185 Physical Chain. Three gulfs, according to Secretan, seven, according to Du Bois-Reymond, are to be bridged. I quote from Secretan's La Civilisation et La Croyance, p. 167. I. C'est, d'abord, l'origine du mouvement, question importune, qu'on s'efforce d'éluder en classant le mouve- ment au nombre des données premières, ce que fait du prétendu monisme un dualisme inavoué. II. C'est ensuite le passage de la matière minérale à la matière organique, la constitution, la spécification, la re- production des organismes par le jeu des forces physiques et chimiques sans plan donné, sans idée rectrice. III. C'est l'apparition du sentiment, de la conscience, qu'il faudrait définir en termes de mécanique ; c'est la finalité dont on ne peut plus nier la présence et l'action dans les êtres intelligents ; c'est la réflexion sur soi même, la religion, la curiosité scientifique ! Pour justifier la thèse matérialiste, il ne suffit point de montrer que toutes ces choses ne se produisent que sous la condition de certains mouvements moléculaires, il faudrait resoudre distinctement toutes ces choses en mouvements moléculaires ; l'adepte le plus sincère et le plus pénétré de la conception mécanique de l'univers sait parfaitement que la science n'y parviendra jamais. Il n'a donc réellement point d'enchaînement, point de systéme ; les divers ordres de phénomènes ne sont unis dans son esprit que par des affirmations incompréhen- sibles. And Mr. Balfour remarks in Foundations of Belief (page 20): “It is sufficient to remind the reader that on the naturalistic view, at least, free will is an absurdity, and that those who hold that view are bound to believe that every decision at which mankind have arrived, and 186 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. every consequent action which they have performed, was implicitly determined by the quantity and distribution of the various forms of matter and energy which pre- ceded the birth of the solar system. The fact, no doubt, remains that every individual, while balancing between two courses, is under the inevitable impression that he is at liberty to pursue either, and that it depends upon ‘himself' and himself alone, ‘himself' as distinguished from his character, his desires, his surroundings, and his antecedents, which of the offered alternatives he will elect to pursue. "I do not know that any explanation has been pro- posed of what, on the naturalistic hypothesis, we must regard as a singular illusion." (Page 21.) ... “The spectacle of all mankind suffering under the delusion that in their decision they are free, when, as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the kind, must certainly appear extremely ludicrous to any superior observer, were it possible to conceive, on the naturalistic hypothesis, that such observers should exist; and the comedy could not be otherwise than greatly relieved and heightened by the performances of the small sect of philosophers who, knowing perfectly as an abstract truth that freedom is an absurdity, yet in moments of balance and deliberation fall into the vul- gar error, as if they were savages or idealists." (Page 25.) “No doubt this conflict between a creed which claims intellectual assent and emotions which have their root and justification in beliefs which are deliberately rejected, is greatly mitigated by the precious faculty which the human race enjoys of quietly ignoring the logical consequences of its own accepted theories. .:: Nevertheless, the persistent conflict between Ethical Grounds. 187 1 that which is thought to be true,* and that which is felt to be noble and of good report, not only produces a sense of moral unrest in the individual, but makes it impos- sible for us to avoid the conclusion that the creed which leads to such results is, somehow, unsuited for such beings' as we are in such a world as ours.” M. Secretan, in La Croyance et la Civilisation, points out the disastrous effect of such deterministic theories when applied, and not held simply in the closet, upon morals, politics, and economics. * Naturalism or Determinism. . I We C WS VON URSI CHAPTER III. ÆSTHETICAL GROUND. T JF the belief in the Divine Reality is imperative I for the satisfaction of the Rational and Ethical impulses of the soul of man, not less imperative is that belief for the explanation and fulfilment of the ideals of Beauty. The Æsthetical, as well as the Ethical longings of the soul, reach forth towards an ideal of perfection, which, in noble and pleasurable, but un- satisfied and progressive effort, man strives to realize as the consummation of the life of the soul. That man possesses these ideals of the Good and the Beautiful, or that they possess him with more Comparative intensity as he advances in culture amidst clearness of physical and social conditions, is a convic- Æsthetical tion confirmed by the history of the race. judgments. That these ideals are the impulses to pro- gress, can be explained only by finding their origin in the Divine endowment of man. That there is a Being who is Reason and Goodness, who is both the impulse and goal of all history, it is a necessity of Ethical and 188 Æsthetical Ground. 189 thought to assume, in order to account for these ideal energies in man's progressive life. It is, how- ever, when we attempt to clear the idea of the Beautiful, that we discern its uniqueness and find that our Æsthetical, are not as surely determined as our Moral, judgments. As the Ethical Reason declares that some things are right and others are wrong, and implicated with this feeling is the imperative of the “ought," so also the Æsthetical reason declares categorically that some things are beautiful and others are ugly, and that we ought to prefer the beautiful to the ugly. It is when we proceed to inquire what things are right or wrong, and what things are beautiful or the opposite, that we discover that our standards of Beauty are more obscurely discerned than our Moral standards. It is indeed the discipline of character to determine in our progressive experience what is right and what is wrong. But an extensive list of actions of determined character has been established, and in all stages of Moral progress, theft, falsehood, injustice, are held by public opinion to be injurious to the social welfare, and condemned by the Moral Reason. While, indeed, the larger part of mankind is guided by an authoritative feeling in pronounc- ing certain acts to be right and others to be wrong, and while the philosophy of Utility fails to give satisfactory reasons for Moral judgments, sending us back to the decisions of feeling, the race has, how- ever, in its acquired experience reached moral ver- dicts which will never be reversed. Law, Politics, 190 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Commerce, have now a body of moral precedents and rules which have an assured empire, to defy which, would imperil the validity of conscience itself, and would compel a countermarch of civilization towards barbarism. These Moral verdicts are now firmly grounded in reason. But our verdicts con- cerning the Beautiful in Nature or Art, rest upon a feeling which we cannot discern to be as clearly based in the nature of things or reason. As, how- ever, in the sphere of Morals we say the good ought to be, and ought to be sought by all mankind, so the mind affirms that the Beautiful ought to be, and ought to be realized in its highest Ideal. As the Moral Ideal is not merely a subjective feel- ing, but possesses an objective and universal worth, ..so we are confident that the Beautiful is ful both ob- not wholly a state of subjective pleasure jective and caused by the objects we perceive, but is subjective. something universally valid, something objective in things called beautiful; something which reveals the infinite Soul of the world, who appeals to the soul of man. The beauty which is perceived in Nature and in Art, is the concrete manifestation of that Divine Life which is related to our own soul life, manifesta- and whose essence we share. The Beauti- tion of Divine ful is thus apprehended as both subjective and objective. In a beautiful landscape or a statue, we discern the presence of Life sympa- thetic with our own. The subjective æsthetic de- light can be realized only when the human soul The Beauti. 1 Beauty a Life. 1 Æsthetical Ground. 191 perceives—as Professor Ladd expresses it—"a joy- ous and worthy psychical life in the object declared to be beautiful.” In the act of perceiving the beautiful in Nature there is—if the word may be permitted-an inosculation of the Divine in us, with the Divine in external objects. At the moment of a noble enthusiasm, we apprehend the Infinite within both ourselves and animated Nature. “Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo," The beautiful is not then wholly a subjective feel- ing of pleasure, but involves an appreciation of Divine Life in objects regarded as beautiful. If Nature were a dead mechanism, it could not, by any projection into it of our own states of feeling, offer to us any objects or scenes which would appear to us as beautiful. A lifeless form may still seem beautiful to affection, only because the spirit which has left it is still, by us, associated with it. The fair pallid face, and the reposing limbs, still speak elo- quently of life. Æsthetic fancy cannot be active before that which is really lifeless. Even the wide desert becomes sublime, because we ourselves are in it to scan it with weary eyes, because, also, the thought of the toiling caravan places the far-reaching desolation in contrast with the living traveller who braves its solitude. The glacial peak of the Matterhorn tells of the power which lifted it, the cosmic Agency which animates Creation, whose purpose has related the cloud-capped summits to circumjacent plains, and 192 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. utters forth the majesty and eternal repose of the Creative Spirit. The sea itself, with its boundless horizons, and its restless waters upon which, for days, no sail is seen, offers no scene of death. The voyager is there upon his solitary barque, himself a living soul, and by the activity of his imagination perceiving the soul of the Infinite in the sublime energies of storm and wave around him. The soul of Man and the Soul in nature here hold communion. Science assures us that everything in Nature is in living movement. Matter is only the interac- tions of soul-like atoms. What we term matter is in the last analysis only the manifestation of Will. Chemical analysis in its supreme effort arrives at no inert dead nature; forces of Spirit keep all things in a state of inconceivable activity. The Alps which pierce the sky, and the boulder by the roadside, alike attest atomic movement. Like man, Nature has her expressions of face, and the setting sun, the heaving ocean, the Himalayan peak, stir within us a pro- found moral emotion. Our feelings of the beautiful and sublime attest our perception of the reality and opulence of Divine Life immanent in Nature. Ascending from what we denominate inanimate Nature, to the observation of animal life, we discern ti in its forms a higher beauty, and in the ful in living human form, a beauty surpassing that of 1s. animals, for though virtue and genius may be absent, yet the rays of moral and intellectual life illumine the figures of men. I The Beauti- forms, Ästhetical Ground. 193 “It has been lately decided,” says Victor Cherbuliez, “in an English Club, that the education of a young man is incomplete un- til he has traversed the Alps and visited Chamounix. We know not what education they had in mind, but if the religious culture of the soul is intended, we think one draws nearer to God in contemplating the Venus de Milo, or La Joconde of Leonardo Da Vinci, than in scaling Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau.” The rugged form and homely face of a Socrates, a Michael Angelo, or a Lincoln, assume a great moral beauty when their souls are inspired to the sacrifice of fortune and life for the welfare of humanity. The face wears a sublime expression and the figure becomes majestic when having reached the summits of moral greatness men attract the admiration and love of mankind. Physical beauty kindles in us the expectation of finding a beauty of the soul. Why do we prefer the Venus de Milo to the Venus de Medici, unless the latter fails to reveal as much soul as the former seems to possess ? Both physical and moral beauty satisfy only in part; they suggest more than they give us; they point to a higher Beauty; they beget within us infinite longings which we feel can be realized only by communion with Infinite Per- the universal Soul, who unites in himself truth, beauty, and goodness in perfection. The Philosophy of Religion has a profound inter- est in this liberation, from vagueness of feeling, of the idea of the Beautiful. It regards it as arising from our own state of pleasure, and as also having an objective validity in things called beautiful, and these subject- ive and objective elements are the manifestation of Beauty suggests fection, I3 194 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. the Divine idea in the soul of man and in all fair ex- ternal objects. “To him that hath shall be given.” We could never perceive an external beauty did we not possess a subjective capacity for the Beautiful. " The Beautiful,” says Goethe, “is the contemplation of life in its greatest perfection ; only I project this state of my soul into the ob- ject ; I see in it this perfect union of the idea and the form which is the work of my imagination. We are then wrong to speak of a passive perception of the Beautiful ; every time I perceive the Beautiful I imagine it, and to imagine is to act.” Thus the more of the Divine we have in the soul the more clearly do we perceive the Divine in the World. The more power of imagination we possess, the more clearly can we apprehend the Divine idea in the works of Nature and of Art. We must bring a fulness of life, the inspiration of the Idea within us, the constructive imagination, to the observation of any object called beautiful. The Ethical and Æsthetical ideals have this in common: that they are both, indeed, ideals, that they shilitu point to a fulfilment in God, but imply and Perfec- in man only an ever-progressive, but not he perfect, apprehension. “Cor humanum inquietum est donec requiescat in Deo." This lofty dissatisfaction with present attainment is the spur to moral and artistic effort. The soul of man cannot pitch its tent and dwell in it; it hears the summons to march forever onwards. Perfectibility is an at- tribute of finite man, perfection is an attribute of God. The Ethical Ideal is, when for the mo- ment reached, but the nearest of an endless range Perfectibility tion. Æsthetical Ground. 195 of heights, stretching towards the Absolute. The philanthropist strives to advance the perfection of society, but only an Utopian dreams that a State can be realized on earth, in which the harmony of individual rights with the demands of the general welfare shall be wholly realized. Man and society must march on, in an ascending progress, must for- ever seek and find, while the best and holiest re- main to be found. While thus the Moral imperatives are definite and absolutely authoritative, yet ascertained ever more clearly by reason, moral perfection is not to be achieved here below. To love the neighbor as one's self is the law of Christ, but to love millions, whom we shall never see, is an impossible realization. It is a sublime programme of duty. It is the endeavor, not the realization, which constitutes the discipline of character. What Fénelon terms “désapropria- tion," and the Gospel “self-renunciation," is the pur- suit of the Divine Ideal. He who refuses to follow the star is lost. From primitive to most highly civilized man, the Eternal Spirit has urged the soul towards the perfect Ideal. The finite can never be- come infinite, but is ever becoming like the Infinite in goodness. In similar wise the ideal of Beauty is an eternal reality, which he who loves beauty must ever seek to apprehend, and by it to be appre- hended. Hence the artist can never become content with his work, can never rest satisfied with certain canons of taste, nor find in one school or all schools of Art LI S 196 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. The true learner. The Artist is the ultimate expression of the Beautiful. A divine frenzy must possess him, urging him to higher effort. de But, alas! a divine inquietude will be the Artist ever a reward of his highest endeavor, and the to greater his success the more profound his sorrow. Divine melancholy fills the soul of Beethoven when his score is finished; he has heard the rustling of the garments of Deity. The artist is of necessity one who is dominated by vague and exalting conceptions which he ever strives to seize and imprison in definite form, s with more or less of success. The Idea also a mystic, which haunts him is a Spirit which draws near, and hovers about him, the flash of whose vest- ure is dimly seen, nor can he insult its divine free- dom by subjecting its self-revelation to fixed canons of taste or proportion. Art moves in a realm of freedom. The spirit of Beauty, as the Spirit of Holiness, like the wind, comes whence we know not, and goeth where it listeth. But while artists move in a realm of freedom, each one having his peculiar vision of the ideal, and becoming insurgent when science comes, with its formal categories, to dictate the forms of its ex- pression, yet, as Professor Ladd points out,* Music, Sculpture, and Painting are unable to realize the ideal without paying due regard to form and propor- tion. Music, least able to convey definite concep- tions, being the “mysterious sigh of things,” the voice of the Universe, suffers degradation when it * Introduction to Philosophy; Æsthetics. Æsthetical Ground. 197 becomes an imitator; but music is incapable of ex- pressing the most exalted feeling without obeying certain laws of structure, and in this sense only is a science. When the architect has consulted the law of pro- portion, has revered that “living geometry” revealed in all beautiful edifices, he has seized one, but not all, of the conditions of Beauty. There is something “free and negligent” in beautiful objects, and artists of every school, in striving to realize the feeling of the Beautiful, are busy disengaging the Idea, the Thought of thoughts which is sensibly manifested in objects. This Thought of thoughts, subjective in man's reason and objective in things of beauty, at- tests a purpose, which relates them to the cosmic whole, and is—let us declare-God himself, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty immanent in all things. Beauty, however, is not to be identified with the Good or the True, yet is inseparable from them. Intellectual and Moral beauty are everywhere per- ceived as such, but we cannot confound them with the True and the Good. They exist in living syn- thesis in the unity of the soul's life, and we cannot break up, with our analysis, that psychical unity. Beauty, however, with the Platonicians was not the sensible manifestation of the Divine element. Its Conception of essence was absolutely independent of Platonicians. perceptions and of the perceiving soul. Beauty was attributed exclusively to the Essence, was apprehended only by pure Intelligence, was veiled, obscured by the form. | 198 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. “Every human soul," said Plato, * "has contemplated essences, but all souls have not the same facility for remembering what they have seen. It belongs to the more cultured only, and the more deli- cate among them, to retain a faithful and definite souvenir. These are the privileged souls, who, perceiving some images of the essences, feel themselves transported and ravished ; in the imperfect copy they recognize the Divine model, and are deluged with a delicious joy." Thus the Thought of thoughts, the idea of Beauty which is manifested in objects of beauty is, in the Socratic philosophy, seized by pure intellect only, is something abstract, independent of the structure and purpose of the World. Schelling contends that “ in God reside the eternal types of things, finished, absolute, luminous; in God also the Idea which, tak- ing upon itself flesh, becomes Raphael, before com- ing to study art in the school of Perugino, was strictly in the bosom of Divinity with the eternal types.” It is obvious that, in this view, the beautiful is not objective in sensible things we term “beautiful” ex- cept as imprisoned, veiled, mutilated. It is true that the beautiful in objects cannot be perceived as definite image, nor as a concept with clear traits in- wardly related by a law. It is in the form of an “idea.” But it is not the captive and veiled pure essence of the Platonicians. The divine ideal of the Beautiful must also be rescued from the claims of those who belong to the school of transformism. To make art the vassal of our sensation of the agreeable, or of our selfish es- timate of what is useful to us, is to bring Uriel from * Quoted by Cherbuliez in his Philosophie du Beau. Æsthetical Ground. 199 not Beauty. the skies to grind in the mills of a selfish and warring world. It is to degrade the divine Ideal, to deny that minds, occupied of necessity with the vulgar interests of life, can experience a disinterested feeling, and be stirred by great and unselfish emotions The Agreeable before a work of art, or in contemplating or useful is the moral beauty of heroic conduct. It is to reduce the self-forgetful delight kindled by ob- jects of beauty to a pathological interest. “Art alone,” says Vischer, “ has the faculty of rendering us purely contemplative, and of making us to know the enjoy- ment of the Beautiful, apart from all pathological interest.” Beauty, indeed, must not cause a dis- agreeable feeling, must, on the contrary, be always agreeable, but to define it as the agreeable is wholly inadmissible. The Beautiful is a sense of delight which we feel belongs to all humanity, is of universal validity. A sensation of the agreeable is a fugitive sensation ; may be here to-day, and to-inorrow de- part; but Beauty is not fugitive, is always ready to procure for us the agreeable feeling. Nor is the useful' equivalent to the beautiful, for many works of art possessing no utility, are admired for their beauty only. The Apollo Belvedere never leaves its place in the gallery at Rome, cannot be of use to those who come and go, otherwise than to kindle, in those who look upon it, a disinterested pleasure. An implement of agriculture may be in- dispensable, but rouses no æsthetic interest. The ancient theory of Hippias defines Beauty as suitableness to the end. But while the beautiful is 200 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. included in the purpose of the world (and purpose is one of the conditions of the beautiful), yet Beauty is not identical with purpose. The longer we reflect, the more we become con- vinced that the feeling of the Beautiful cannot have True Art a sensuous origin, cannot be explained by appeals to the its being simply agreeable or useful to us. higher soul. Art, however successful in representing grace of form, fails of attaining the true Beauty when it appeals to a voluptuous interest only. It appeals to the higher soul through the senses, and if a form fashioned by Praxiteles or Canova gives rise to no feeling of ideal worth, if a painting by Raphael or Murillo exalts us not to ennobling emo- tion, the triumph of Art is not reached. The sentiment of the Beautiful is, it is true, not to be identified with the moral and religious feel- ing. The moral and religious character of artists does not advance with equal step, with their appre- ciation of, and power to represent, the Beautiful. Beauty is, indeed, always moral; the ideal of Beauty ennobles the soul, points always to Absolute Good- ness and Truth, but the object of the artist is to be an artist, and in disinterested effort to make others experience the æsthetical delight which fills his own soul. So unselfish a sentiment cannot be hostile to moral and religious feeling; in fact, it becomes their friend and ally. The artist, though he may some- times be deficient in ethical and spiritual life, is too conscious of Beauty to permit himself to prostitute Art. He keeps himself loyal to the divinity of Æsthetical Ground. 201 7 Beauty, and often unconsciously becomes the apos- tle of Truth and Goodness. Art, though disinter- ested, loving the Beautiful for its own sake, cannot escape moral obligation. It may choose ignoble subjects, may strive to impart grace to an immoral conception, but in the process the Ideal fades away, and the artistic feeling suffers an irreparable injury. The eternal trinity-Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, is a Divine unity of elements not to be confounded with each other, nor can they be sundered. Beauty, physical, intellectual, moral, raises the soul to a con- sciousness of the infinite Goodness, and awakens in the bosom of man “the desire of an eternal future and of a sublime existence." Here we may be reminded that the Beautiful ap. pears not the same to all. One may ask a friend, “This seems to me a master piece of art;, Variation of do you not accept my judgment of it?” judgments The shattering answer may come, “I do concerning the Beautiful. not see, as you see, its beautiful charac- ter.” One is thus forced to feel with Turner who, when a lady remarked, “I do not see what you do in nature," replied to her, “ Do you not wish you could, Madam?” Sadly must we confess, also, that a poem, statue, or style of some writer may seem beautiful to-day, and at a later period we feel that there is less beauty, or none whatever, which appeals to us. Is there then any authority to be attached to our æsthetical judgments ? The authority is not lost, for with every higher conception of Beauty gained, we feel that we ought 202 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. to rejoice in it. Its empire over us is to last until we arrive at a still higher conception of Beauty. The Gauls in Rome looked with the indifference of barbarians upon the statues of gods and heroes. The dancer Vestris classed himself with Voltaire and Frederick the Great because he could leap higher than any artist of his school. Insensibility to art in its higher forms is a characteristic of the Hottentot, but he is not without some idea of beauty which commands him. A savage would not perceive the exquisite proportions of the Parthenon. It is a far cry from such a savage to a Goethe who muses as he sits upon one of its fallen capitals, but the savage may become a Goethe, after centuries of develop- ment have passed away. Our Moral verdicts are authoritative, though in advance from those of primitive to modern man they have attained to more exactness. There is much in the world to distress the moral reason, and not yet is the mind of man able to reduce all that happens to the law of a Divine purpose. But enough is seen of this purpose to enable man to realize the grandeur of his destiny, and to inspire us to highest effort in the service of God and of humanity. In like manner there is much that is vague and indeterminate in our æsthetic verdicts, but the more refined the spirit of man becomes, the more he gains of life from the Source of all life, the nearer we approach a consensus of judgment concerning things Beautiful and Good. r Æsthetical Ground. 203 “Art truly human," writes De Pressense, “ could not be a proud Olympian, who knows only how to smile. After it has made us to admire beauty in serenity by the chisel of a Phidias, Art knows how to put into a thought an abyss of sad- Su buse of con Sublime ob- jects reveal ness. Grand poetry, lyric and tragic, portrays to the God. life our crimes and our anguish, our contrition, our burning and baffled aspirations. Æschylus and Shakspere enable us to understand the great cries of despair of the captive and trembling soul. Beethoven cast them towards the heavens as the mighty plaint of an ocean of sorrow. He is not a great artist who has not, in the hour of supreme inspiration, felt the coal of consuming fire upon his trembling lips.” Every great work of art, statue, poem, oratorio, or temple, every deed of moral beauty performed by noble or peasant, plunges the soul into sweet melan- choly, in which an immortal hope asserts its power. The Indian who in the prehistoric age of America stood wrapt in thought by the cataract of Niagara, discerned in its sublimity the hovering presence of the Great Spirit. The immensity of ocean, when it beats out its music on the keys of rock, and its waves sprinkle the stars, the solitary grandeur of the mountain peak which man has never scaled, reveal to us the majesty and repose of a Power which gov- erns the world. The revelation of the Infinite both humbles and exalts man in the contemplation of sublimity. The exhibitions of ordinary beauty are tolerant of man's feebleness, and do not crush his powers of imagination. The immensities which con- stitute the sublime in Nature at first cause a fear which distresses man. But soon the discernment of the Divine Power manifest in these intolerable grandeurs, becomes a consciousness of man's own 204 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. spiritual greatness, and of his kinship with the Spiritual Sovereign of the Universe. The magni- tudes of matter no longer fill him with consterna- tion; his breast expands with the conviction that as a partner in the Infinite life he will outlast all visi- ble grandeurs, and he is reassured and exalted by a sovereign self-respect. The words uttered by Diotima to Socrates in the Banquet may fitly close this chapter: “He who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succes- sion, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning ; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another; or at one time or in one rela- tion or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, ... but beauty absolute, separate, simple, everlasting, which without diminu- tion and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever- growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these, ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, ... from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of abso- lute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear Socrates," said the stranger of Mantineia, “is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty ab- solute, ... But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty- the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colors and vanities of human life-thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to Æsthetical Ground. 205 bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?"* * Jowett's Translation, vol. i., pp. 581–2. seseo QUANK 95 25 KO Vetera IPN O CHAPTER IV. SPIRITUAL LOVE AN IDEAL TO BE REALIZED. The God- THE arsenal of Religious Philosophy is not ex- í hausted, when we have inferred the reality of the Divine Being from the existence in man's soul of the rational, moral, and ästhetic ideals. The highest ideal which attests the immanence of God in the self-consciousness of man, is that of Love. It has not been contended that the Ideals which have claimed our attention are proofs of the Divine existence. They are themselves the Di- consciousness vine, immanent in man's self-consciousness. man. There can be no proof of self-conscious- ness or of the reality of our minds, since the mind must exist before there can be any logical exercise. The aurora of man's self-consciousness is the revela- tion of the Absolute self from whose substance man is derived. The Divine Reason is immanent in hu- man reason before it can search for any proof. The validity of reason must be granted before any act of reasoning is possible. The Ethical Divine must 206 Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 207 exist in man before any theory of morals can be constructed. The divine Beauty must be an endow- ment of the soul before Æsthetic reason can frame any theories of the ideal of the Beautiful. Primitive man possessed the consciousness of a Power upon whom he felt himself to depend, towards whom flashed his thought and feeling. The rational, ethical, and spiritual ideals would never have begun their march towards liberation in progressive culture, had they not germinally existed in the God-con- sciousness of man. The escape from immanent Divinity is as impos- sible as the escape from self-consciousness, as the escape from the shadow of the body. To expect to prove in logical fashion the reality of self, or of the Absolute immanent self, would seem to be the insanity of Philosophy. Hence there is an element of pallor and unreality needing no in all logical attempts to prove or disprove the existence of the Spiritual Ground of the universe of matter and mind. The logical argument may un- mask the facts of the God-consciousness, it does not found them. Welcome as an ally, to the self-revela- tion of God immanent in the soul, when the logical argument assumes the chief role as advocate, it be- comes an usurper, as when the constable of the palace dethrones the king. The ethical spiritual consciousness is not only the dynamics of history; it attests most imperatively and directly the immanence of God in the soul, and is the earliest impulse in the field of experience. Wonder, Intuitions proof. 208 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. 17 sense of dependence, fear, gratitude, hope, and even love, were primitive feelings by which the powers of reasoning were reinforced. Logical reason may conduct us to a Monistic prin- ciple like that of Spinoza, as cold and loveless as the Matterhorn. The ethical and spiritual Reason must not be made a vassal of the discursive intellect, and the words of the Christ are forever true, “The pure in heart shall see God.” Abstract Metaphysic, let us hope, has closed its reign in the realm of Philoso- phy, and an Ethic-Metaphysic which takes account of the moral and spiritual elements in man will in future direct the march of thought. The soul of man is a trinity in unity, and the Eternal Father who has delegated to us our selfhood, is still im- manent in us, as the Source of our rational, moral, and spiritual life, and is intuitively known by us in the response of our triune consciousness to his touch upon the soul. It is imperative, however, to distinguish this truth of the Divine immanence in Nature and the Soul from the conclusions of scientific and The God-con- se metaphysical Pantheism. A Spiritual and Panthe- Philosophy of religion cherishes no horror of Pantheism when the latter is rightly defined. St. Paul when he declares that “in God we live and move and have our being" may be re- garded as in one sense a Pantheist. But the true Pantheism must be distinguished from the false Pan- theism. Every Theist who believes that in the reason, con- sciousness ism. Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 209 science, and higher affections of man God is imman- ent, and that in Him we “live and move and have our being,” is in one sense a pantheist. But he is not a pantheist of the school which makes man but an iridescent bubble on the stream of an Eternal thought process, and thus fuses the human substance into the Divine substance in a way to annihilate the selfhood of man, and cause human agency to vanish into that of the absolute. Dr. Martineau * has made this clear in his admir- able chapter upon the “Relative Validity of Theism and Pantheism." The immanence of God in the soul does not absorb the agency of man. That agency in us would be impossible were we not de- pendent upon him as the Ground of being; but our dependence is the assurance of our independence. In the felicitous words of Dr. Martineau, Our “independence is conceded to us by the author of our being, and though entrusted for a while with a certain free play of causality, is referable in the ultimate resort to the Supreme Cause : it is in- cluded in what he has caused, though excepted from what he is caus- ing. It takes nothing from his infinitude, but what he himself renounces; and what is thus relinquished is potentially retained. The self-abnegation of Infinity is but a form of self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal itself." | Thus man cannot in thought, though conscious of living in God, abdicate his own causal personality. No logic which effaces the distinction between the Divine Will and human will can maintain its hold upon thought, or convince us that God, not Bee- * Study of Religion, vol. ii., pp. 166–183. + Study of Religion, vol. ii., p. 182. 14 210 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Metaphysical Pantheism. thoven, composed the Moonlight Sonata, and that God, not Napoleon, fought the battle of Marengo.* Metaphysical Pantheism, like Saturn, devours its own offspring. It is nobler than scientific Panthe- wi, ism in this, that the reality of absolute and Scientific Spirit is placed beyond the assault of ism. materialism. Its error lies in cancelling nature and man as illusions. Scientific Pantheism, reversing the process, must stand upon matter, while metaphysical Pantheism tries its flight into the thin air of the unrelated Absolute. The Pantheism of science moving triumphantly upward from the plural phenomena of Nature to unity, resolving all forces into a primal force, arrives at its atoms, and declin- ing to enter the realm of metaphysic halts in a reso- lute atheism, or forced to see in matter only a manifestation of something higher, accepts a Soul of the World, or a Principle of Life (Anima Mundi). As Martineau has pointed out, this conception will be pantheistic and the universal Life will be a hylo- zoic or biozoic principle-as a favorite view of the World may determine. Thus with metaphysical Pantheism the Absolute devours the World; with scientific Pantheism the World devours God. He is at the most conceded to be an unknown Power, or, with Hartman, an Unconscious Mind. The truth common to both systems is, that God and the World cannot be sundered, but in both the individuality of man vanishes and a fatalistic process is made to explain the Universe. * Note 1. Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 211 Pantheism. Pantheism, whether claiming to arrive at what is termed by Spinoza the “intellectual love of God," or at the “Cosmic Emotion ” of the Spiritual scientist, gains no consciousness of God affection im- and, of course, no personal love for him. possible for The ideals of Pantheism, the offspring of vague and poetic conceptions of the Universe, or kindled by a sense of the dignity of science and of the power of the human intellect, may indeed raise thinkers above the level of vulgar interests, may even inspire scorn of selfish conduct. Having, however, made human action a part of a fatalistic process of the World, good and evil are alike the acts of the Universe, and the ethical imperatives vanish, and with them all true consciousness of the Being to whom conscience relates us. The author of Riddles of the Sphinx * declares that Pantheism is practically Atheism, and that we lack courage or logic if we re- gard them as not identical. “For if all is God and all is one, all distinctions vanish. ... In the mouth of a Pantheist the accusation of Atheism is ridiculous. For just as King Charles II, wittily declared during the Popish plot, that he feared to be dethroned for his complicity in the plot against his own life, so the atheist may plead against the pantheist that in his impiety he offends against no one but himself, and that no one need interfere if it pleases God to blaspheme himself.” + The personality of man capable of love for a personal God and Father is, therefore, the Gibraltar of Relig- ion. How we possess personality not swallowed up in the divine Personality, is beyond our knowledge. *F. C. S. Schiller, Ph.D., p. 327. + Ibid., p. 327. 212 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. It is the old question of the finite existing together with the Infinite. “Our wills are ours, we know not how, Our wills are ours to make them Thine." The divine Reason is immanent in the laws of our reason: the ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Love we share with God. “ There is,” says Professor Upton, "a universal and eternal element in Love as well as in Reason and Duty; and what quali- fies Christianity for becoming a world-wide religion Spiritual Af- fections com- is, that it is based on the deepest of all principles, viz., plete Ethical on the principle that only in Divine Love does the soul conscious- fully realize its inherent birthright, that birthright which Father in its self-consciousness, and in virtue of the transcendent truth that God, in calling into existence rational souls, has formed them, not of some foreign material extrinsic to Himself, but in very truth of His own essence and substance, and has, therefore, to that extent died in order that they may live. What we call Divine Love, though it by degrees emerges in human nature out of the midst of the feelings of family and tribal relationship and widening social sympathies, yet contains, as an essential factor of its very being, a rational and univer- sal element which distinguishes it toto cælo from any mere inheritance or development of gregarious instincts or non-rational sympathy." ** From the Ethical feeling spring those lofty spirit- ualities which have ennobled the race, and which are presages of the Kingdom of purified Spiritual, based upon Spirits. Love is a divine involution, the Ethical feel- finality of the world-process, and in the lowest moralities there is the potentiality of the higher affections. The destiny of Ethics is * Note II. + Hibbert Lectures, pp. 83, 84. ing. Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 213 CD ODOMA to be perfected in Religion, which is a communion of Love. Therefore the progress in religious concep- tions could be made only, pari passu, with the ad- vance of the moral ideals. The Gods of the early ages were moralized in the progress of culture, and man drew nearer to the Heart of Goodness, and gained nobler affections as he yielded to the Spirit revealed in the conscience. Weary and long as was the march from the God-consciousness, as an ethical law in the soul, to the consciousness of God as Love, yet from the first, the synthesis of duty and spon- taneity, or of Law and Love was inevitable. The goal of progress is the equilibrium betwen Conscience and Love, in the union of man with God. Mr. Matthew Arnold is just to the wonderful people whose history revealed an unceasing pursuit of righteousness. The Ethical consciousness of the Hebrew is an illustrious proof of the immanence of God in the con- science of man. The mists which have shrouded the intellect have vanished and ing of the it has advanced to higher conquests, under the pressure of the Divine moral impulses. Where the Ethical insight has been feeble, or has been per- verted by love of military conquest, or by an excess- ive metaphysical speculation, true religion has been retarded in its growth, or eclipsed for a time. Much as the world owes to the genius of Greece, it may still be said that not Athens or Rome “but Jerusalem, is the Mother of us all.” Van takes his way onward through the ethical to the religious Ethical feel. je Hebrews. 214 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. consciousness, in which love becomes the law of action. Religions based alone on the speculations of the intellect, upon æsthetic impulse or unregulated sentiment, end in scepticism or fanaticism, if not anchored to reality by clear discernment of moral obligations towards God and man. The Mosaic commands become a pathos of the heart, and an end- less sigh for the possession of inward righteousness is heard in the strains of the Prophets of the eighth century. The Divine impulse culminated in the advent of the Lord of Christendom, and Law was transfigured into Love. Duty is the sister of Love, and F. W. Robertson and others are right in urging the souls who are storm-tossed in the archipelago of doubt, to perform the first duty with total self-sur- render, and thus plant the footstep upon the santa scala ascending towards Eternal Love. “If we now look back from this height of the Christian knowledge of God to the development of the consciousness of God in the history of religion, it can hardly escape us that that high point Unity of was the goal to which the whole development strove Duty and from the beginning, and which is already prefigured in Love. the religious capacity of man. For in some form or other these two things are always contained together in the belief in God; an ideal of what ought to be, and that this is, at the same time, moral goodness, that He is the Holy Will, was the revelation of Israel. But that this will of Goodness is the Love which communi- cates itself to us, and which has constituted and guided nature and history, in order to realize itself in humanity as a kingdom of love --this is the revelation of Christianity, in which all the religious pre- sentiment and longing of humanity before Christ comes to its fulfil- ment. “Now, as the end of a development must always be thought of as Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 215 sundered. its ground and law, we shall now be entitled to say that the love which was recognized at the culminating-point of the history of re- ligion as the essence of God, was even from the very beginning the ground of the human consciousness of God, which indeed could only disclose itself gradually to the consciousness of men, in the slow march of the human development, as the content of their belief in God. This is the sense in which we use the term when we designate the revela- tion of God in the religious Order of the world as revelation of his love. "Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is restless till it has come to rest in Thee.' This beautiful expression of Augustine is in fact the key to the whole history of Religion.” * Because of a distrust of feeling, as affording safe guidance, Duty may be sundered from Love. The ethics of the nobler Stoics and the rigorism Duty and of Kant are tinged perhaps with an ele- Love often ment of despondency, but they were able sun to inspire both Roman and German to heroic con- duct. The sanity of the soul's life is found in the consciousness of God as immanent not only in Rea- son, not only in emotions of Love, nor in Ethical insight alone, but in their healthy interaction. If emphasis is to be laid upon either one of these modes of the soul's life, it is more safely placed upon the Ethical consciousness. But Ethics which does not rise to a conception of the Heart of the Universe as a Being who is not Justice alone, but Love as well, lacks the divine fire and conquering energy which Jesus imparted to his followers, and which enabled them to subvert the empire of the Cæsars. Seneca and Marcus Aurelius challenge our admiration for the moral sentiments they have be- * Professor Otto Pfleiderer, Philosophy and Development of Re- ligion.—Gifford Lectures, 1894, vol. i., pp. 195, 196. '' a 245 . 216 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. queathed to us, rising above their hard environment, but they belong rather to the first of the two classes into which Cromwell separated earnest minds, to the class of the “seekers" and not to that of the “ finders.” St. Louis of France and St. Boniface are types which rise above them, blending ethical purity with hopeful self-sacrificing love. It is cer- tain that no morals however rigorous, arrested in progress towards the religious affection, can lift the world to a higher level as inevitably as can the love which inspired the souls of Luther, Elizabeth of Hungary, Fénelon, Wilberforce, and, in our own day, Phillips Brooks. Historians, too conscious of human weakness, and eager to chronicle the sins instead of the virtues of mankind, might contemplate with profit some of the lives depicted in Montalembert's Monks of the West. Duty and love were never, perhaps, more intimately blended, nor shone with a diviner lustre, than in the character of Queen Radigund, the forced spouse of the cruel Clotaire. It seems impossible for human nature, amidst earthly trials, to more perfectly blend love with duty, humility with firmness, holy and charitable activity with meditative sweetness, and joy in life with the experience of living martyrdom. The fire of Divine love never became extinct during the darkest ages. Paganized Pontiffs and Inquisitorial Courts were not the possessors of the love of Christ; but true Religion, in which there is a marriage of duty and love, flourished in many a cloister and at many courts, but the historian has Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 217 too often been unmindful of them, and has em- blazoned the crimes of despots, hypocrites, and fanatics. Love is the highest revelation of God in the self-consciousness of man, and to that disclosure of the Absolute in the soul we owe all that is best in our civilization. That it is the most potent force, all mankind confess by their instinctive response to its influence. In modern economics the demand for more altruistic feeling is a confession that intellect and force are at their wits' end, and that the hope of society lies in the exercise of a Divine sympathy. Man, in his egoism, misses the simple truth until disaster compels him to forsake his devices and be- take himself to this Divine element for Spiritual ex- succor. The history of thought makes perience the manifest the preference of the mind for highest evidence. labored proofs of great facts and of truths which require no logical demonstration of their re- ality. Goethe sometimes felt thus and exclaims, “Open your eyes : ye are not required to search for the good in the far distant; it is here if ye will but grasp it.” The science of life must take account of the fact of the Spiritual insight which is but the Ethical consciousness attaining its true goal in the apprehension of the Supreme Love," the objective Perfection pervading the Universe with Holy Law," and the right within the soul is seen to be the in- dwelling of the Divine in the human. Psychology may no longer treat with disdain the Spiritual con- sciousness which has exalted so many of the race to grandeur of conduct, and whose verdict upon the Y 218 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. X great questions which shake the world is regarded as final, though selfishness and worldliness decline to accept it as the rule of life. The word “Mysticism' has for some time been charged with a sinister meaning. That the intui- Mysticism tions of reason, conscience, and feeling all essential to attest the self-revelation or immanence of Religion. God in man, and that, to place exclusive stress upon any one mode of this revelation is to indulge a one-sided view of the soul, is manifest. Mysticism' has come to stand for the insulation of feeling, as the exclusive form of our apprehension of God and of his indwelling. It is not possible, however, to accuse modern religious philosophy of a mystical tendency. The intuition of feeling has been exiled too long from companionship with that of reason and of conscience. The time has come for a recognition of the truth inherent in Mysticism, of the validity which the word implies. The Mystic errs, not in trusting to feeling as an intuition of the Divine, but in sundering the insight of feeling from the insight of reason, and from that of the ethical consciousness. It is the most amiable, indeed the holiest, of errors. The Mystic is not more in error than the rationalist, or the moralist, when he trusts to his intuition of the presence of the Infinite in the finite soul. Assuming that God reveals his presence in the three forms of our consciousness, viz., reason, conscience, and feeling, he is in accord with the inetaphysician and the moralist. With them he holds that the existence of God is not a reality, 2 Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 219 T wholly inferred by a course of thought, but a self- revelation of the Infinite in the rational, moral, and spiritual constitution of man. If Mr. Spencer can say that the Finite has an im- mediate consciousness of the Infinite, and if Dr. Martineau can say that the apprehension of God through conscience is as direct and real as our im- mediate consciousness of an objective world, the Mystic has a right to say that we have an immediate acquaintance with God through the feeling. If he errs in assuming that through feeling alone we ap- prehend God, and that feeling, not intellect, is that which reaches truth, so also does Principal Caird err when he says "that what enters the heart must first be discerned by the intellect as true.” Mysticism has not always been divorced from reason, nor has it often felt itself superior to the claims of practical morality, and perhaps no one did more than Schleier- macher to defend the validity and authority of Spir- itual insight, calling into his service Philosophy. The attempt of mediæval Mysticism to attain a privileged gnosis, turning away from ordinary sources of knowledge, not subjecting the intuition of feeling to the friendly criticism and Mediæval verification which reason and the moral 19 sense afford, was followed by a reaction towards a philosophic formulation. “It is true,” says the au- thor of Hours with the Mystics, * "that no method of human wisdom will reveal to men the hidden things of the Divine kingdom. But it is also true that * Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, vol. ii., p. 70. 1 Mistakes of Mysticism. IUTI IV 220 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. dreamy gazing will not disclose them either. Schol- arship may not scale the heights of the unrevealed, and neither assuredly may ignorance. There is noth- ing to choose between far-seeing Lynceus and a com- mon sailor of the Argo, when the object for which they look out together is not yet above the horizon. The latter, at all events, should not regard the ab- sence of superior endowment as an advantage." * Meanwhile, to affirm that Mysticism contains not an indispensable truth, that it rests upon subjective illu- sions or states of consciousness without objective ground, is to assail the sober experience of all the learned and unlearned, who have felt, in communion with God, an elevation of soul. The intuition of ordinary religious feeling, in the tranquil moods of the spirit, and that which, amidst sublime scenes of Nature, or in presence of some Godlike exploit, be- comes a shiver of rapture, are the same in essence, different only in the extent to which the Divine reveals itself in the soul. If Mysticism, implying unregulated feeling, is not without danger of passing into immorality, that Spiritual con- Spiritual love, while completing the Eth- sciousnessical insight, must rest upon the latter, as Ethical in- its ground, is obvious. Morality, busy with acts of duty, may be arrested in its passage over to Spiritual affection, but in its essence is trans- itive, and must be transfigured into higher feeling, or lose its empire. Mr. Matthew Arnold's definition of Religion as Morality touched with emotion, is * Note III. sight Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 221 essentially true. Conscience with its ideals must inevitably bring us into the presence of Eternal Holi- ness and Love. Moral character is incomplete until duty becomes a spontaneity, until Law becomes Love. "It is here, perhaps," says Dr. Martineau," that the main difference lies between the Will ethically obeying, and the heart spiritually sur- rendered,-between morality and religion. Morality applies itself successively to several points of duty : religion, fairly awakened, seizes all at once. Morality, intent on one obligation, is apt to be betrayed upon another : religion demanding harmony above everything, achieves the whole more easily than a part, and takes the discords out of opposites. Morality proceeds from action towards the soul : religion issues with the soul into action. . . . If you are intimately thrown with one in whom you recognize a greater spirit than your own, to whose gentle or majestic excellence you go into captivity, his power over you takes no single line of direction, but speaks through all the dimensions of your nature : it does not set you on copying him, but bends you low before the Holiest of all: so clearing away the whole film of conscience, that duty stands with all its obligations before your eye at once, and life is seen no longer in section only, but in its deep moral perspective." * The moral feelings are essentially prophetic; they inspire a sublime discontent, until the vision of an infinite Perfection is gained, then, no longer exiles without a country, they become restored and joyful subjects of their liege and sovereign Lord. The divorce of the ethical and affectional elements of Religion results in disaster. Either we wander amidst the chilling shades of derivative moralities of social expediency, or pass into the realm of an intox- icating mysticism. The feeling of remorse is an ethical recognition * Study of Religion, vol. ii., p. 31. 222 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Ethico-spirit- of an unseen Holiness, watching the conduct of man.* The consciousness that conduct is watched, not only Remorse an gives rise to remorse when duty is not it- heeded, but to the feeling of trust and ual experi- ence. love for the Being who watches us, when the heart has been true to the imperatives of duty. This awareness of an eye that follows us is a spirit- ual experience of One who is not only a moral, but a loving Being, and in healthy souls, remorse is but a step from penitence, and the latter feeling, is, in its essence, a sorrowful, trusting love. The ethico- spiritual nature of remorse cannot be explained in terms of physical or derivative morality. It is diffi- cult to conceive how one reared in a school of thought which derives moralities from a non-moral source, from social utilities or customs, for example, of purely naturalistic or animal origin in which no immanency of the Divine is admitted, could, after some criminal deed, escape into solitude, safe from pursuit, and have no feeling of remorse. The de- rivative Moralist, in his study or chair of instruction, innocent of crime, is one person, the same Moralist a fugitive from justice, and even in a safe asylum where his forgery or murder will never be known, is a wholly different person. A voice from the Heart of being will not fail to be heard, and cause him to tremble. Man is more than he thinks he is, and what- ever rampart his naturalistic morality may have raised between him and infinite Purity, in a critical moment those ramparts will mysteriously fall, and * Note IV. | Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 223 leave his soul face to face with absolute Justice. Remorse may at any moment become holy sorrow, which discloses infinite Justice as infinite Love. “ Those high instincts before which our mortal nature Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised," come upon the transgressor and reveal to him a Be- ing who will pardon, and with that discovery, there comes the courage to return and submit to human justice. Thus from the depths of the soul, buried under the iciest layers of theory, the Divine fire of sorrow for wrong done, bursts forth into flame. This ethico- spiritual sorrow for ignoble acts of which human justice cares not to take account,—which are acts even included with those which society believes to be expedient-often manifests a volcanic energy in the reformation of one who reviews his ungrateful i conduct, or his life of selfish indolence. His remorse is not ethical, simply, but charged with a spiritual feeling of the Goodness he has wounded. To resolve by any analysis this unique ethico- spiritual feeling of remorse into survivals of non- moral naturalistic elements, in which no Divine impulse is active, will be forever survival of an inadequate explanation. As Professor Social judg- ment. Schurman says in his Belief in God: “Only the satirist could declare that twice two would make five if that product were advantageous. Arithmeti- cal facts cannot be determined by a plebiscite of utilitarians. And the same is true of the deliver- ance of conscience that injustice is wrong." Remorse no 224 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. TY The consciousness of Sin is the negative aspect of man's intuition of God as Holy Love. The gastric Conscious- theory, which materialism provides for ness of Sin. the explanation of the spiritual feelings, can give no account of the sense of Sin, and must always, at this point, break down. The direct appeal to the consciousness of Sin never fails to find an echo in the soul; we have only to appeal from the Philip intoxicated with theory, to Philip in his senses. Moral indignation against wickedness which touches his personal welfare, flashes as quickly from the eyes of the materialist as from those of the be- lievers in the spiritual origin of man. Nations, as well as individuals, commit sin, and Sin is more than simple injustice. And when one people sins against another, openly, cruelly, the speculations of the cloister, in which Sin is treated as an illusion, are set aside, and the philosopher, as well as the tradesman, or artisan, is fired to resistance. This moral fire is kindled at the Divine Fire of God's hostility to Sin. In the German and English Reformations, and it may be said in the French Revolution as well, the righteous anger against sin in high places was the cause of ex- plosion. To this inexpugnable spiritual consciousness of an indwelling Spirit of Holiness and Love, must we at- tribute also the impatience, on the part of This con- sciousness has the noblest of the race, with false con- made men ventionalities, and the holy unrest which has accompanied their highest achieve- ments. The Divine Spirit in human souls, and not reformers. Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 225 "vibrations” or “vibratiuncles" in the brain, can alone account for this noble melancholy, this pro- found abhorrence of Sin. The great forces of so- ciety have been the men who have held the views of the Christ concerning Sin, and have, in the State as well as in the Church, fought against it. “These are properly our Men,” says Mr. Carlyle, “the guides of the dull host which follow them by an irrevocable decree. They are the chosen of the world ; they had the rare faculty not only of 'sup- posing' and 'inclining to think,' but of knowing and believing ; the nature of their being was that they lived not by hearsay, but by clear Vision : while others hovered and swam along, in the grand Vanity Fair of the World, blinded by the mere Show of things, these saw into the Things themselves, and could walk as men having an eternal lode-star and with their feet on sure paths. . . . Such knowledge of the transcendental, immeasurable character of Duty we call the basis of all the Gospels, the essence of all Religion : he who with his soul knows not this, as yet knows nothing, as yet is properly nothing." Love, the onsciousness, The God-consciousness in man reaches its zenith in Spiritual affection which, in self-sacrifice, can lay aside a ducal or regal crown to brave pesti- lence and death in ministering to the highest God- wretched. The genius of Christianity is conscio that of self-sacrificing love. Neither the power of Constantine, nor the genius of Hildebrand, founded Christendom. It was not the armies of Rome that arrested the terrible advance of Attila. M. Amadée Thierry tells us how a Roman Pontiff, humbling him- self as a suppliant, in the words of Prosper d'Aqui- taine, “committing himself to the assistance of God who never fails to the efforts of the just,” went forth 51 226 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. . . . :- to meet the conqueror and vanquished him. The spirit of Christ is not one of aggression, nor that of violent defence; it conquers by love. “The lives of Christ. ians," says Mr. Merivale, “ have been ever the last and surest argument for Christianity. This com pleted the conversion of the Empire; this completes day by day the conversion of the worldling and the sinner. It defies criticism; it transcends philosophy." Nineteen centuries have elapsed, and the secret of Christ maintains its empire, and wherever his spirit of self-sacrifice is manifest in conduct, it disarms hos tility and banishes doubt. The number of agnostics is small who now have the heart to deny that the example and spirit of Acnostics Jesus constitute not only the dynamics of even, admire character, but the safeguards and hope of society itself. Selfishness and envy menace democratic, even more than aristocratic, society. Let Divine Love become the inspiration of personal and social life and a host of evils would disappear, and only those would remain which result from our ignorance of Nature's laws and forces, and from the limitations of human intelligence. And, perhaps, these constitute a needful discipline of the virtues of fortitude and industry. Meanwhile the holy joy of self-sacrifice, grounded in the consciousness of God's indwelling in life, in- spires character to the highest achievements. Ethi- cal societies, whose aim is not speculation, but the alleviation of human wretchedness, now record the conviction that in contact with poverty and immor- Jesus. Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 227 ality they must hereafter avail themselves of the “expulsive power of a new affection.” Love for men must be manifestly the love which the Founder of Christianity inspires. The philanthropist is cheered by examples of Sisters of Charity, who have been animated to highest daring of self-sacrifice by a Di- vine love. He delights to recall the story of Catholic Fathers entering the gloom of the Western Wilder- ness intent on deeds of love; of the many examples of voluntary death on fields of battle, while striving with glances of tenderness to arrest the strife; of the hard toil in the abbeys of the North to help a wretched peasantry, and of many a victory wrought by sweetness of temper over Barbarian and cruel Roman. And as the thought flashes back over nineteen centuries of progress, the form of the Son of God stands forth pre-eminent; his cross rises against the sky; the perfect Ideal of love is realized. The secret of the victories of Christianity is revealed as the con- quest of human nature by Eternal Love immanent in the world from the first, and struggling for recog- nition. “The personal grandeur of Christ,” says Edgar Quinet,“ is better demonstrated by the movement and spirit of the times which have succeeded him than by the Gospels themselves. If I knew nothing of the Scriptures, and had never heard , Edgar the name of Jesus, I must always have thought that some extraordinary impulsion took place in the world about the time of the Cæsars. Whence came this impulsion and its wonderful re- sults? When Strauss says that he regards the invention of the com- pass and of steamboats as of more importance than the cure of a few Quinet. 228 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. sick folk in Galilee, he is evidently the dupe of his own reasoning; for he knows as well as I do that the miracle of Christianity is not there, but rather in the great marvel of Humanity, cured of the evil of slavery, of the leprosy of caste, of the blindness of Pagan sensual- ity, able to rise up and carry its bed far away from the old world. He knows that the wonder of Christianity is not so much in water having been changed into wine, as in a world changed by a single thought, in the sudden transfiguration of the old law, in the casting off the old man, in the empire of the Cæsars struck with stupor, in the conquest of the conquering barbarians, in giving birth to a Refor- mation that brought all its dogmas into discussion, to a Philosophy that denied them, to a French Revolution that sought to kill it, while it only served to realize it more completely than ever. These are the miracles by which Christianity appeals to us. “The continual miracle of the Gospel is the reign of a soul which felt itself greater than the visible universe. This miracle is no illu- sion, no allegory, but a great reality. As palpable Nature, the Sea, the primitive Night, the shoreless Chaos have in paganism served as a real foundation to the inventions of the peoples, in the same man- ner the Infinite Soul of the Christ has served as the foundation upon which the whole Christian theogony has been built; for what is the Gospel if it is not the revelation of the inner world ?" NOTE 1. Dr. Martineau writes (p. 167, vol. ii.) : “The voluntary nature, then, of moral beings must be saved from pan- theistic absorption, and be left standing, as within its sphere, a free cause other than the Divine, yet homo- geneous with it. ... In fact it saves itself. You cannot even declare yourself a pantheist without self- contradiction ; for in doing so you reserve your own personality as a thinking and assertive power that deals with all else as objective." The primitive consciousness of God was that of Spirit- ual agency behind the phenomena of Nature, but it was man's own agency as spirit that disclosed the Absolute; Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 229 Spirit homogeneous with his own. His sense of depend- ence did not extinguish consciousness of his own agency as spirit. Not until he reasons in a later stage of reflec- tion does a metaphysical Pantheism, as in India, absorb the finite in the World-soul, when, also, the human spirit identified with the Oversoul ceases to retain personality. Man becomes lost in Brahma, indeed becomes Brah- ma himself. No true consciousness of God can sur- vive when the self of man vanishes into the Absolute, and personal consciousness becomes an illusion. Indian Pantheism, as indeed the Pantheism of modern thought, affirms with truth the reality of Spirit, but at too great a cost in the sacrifice of man's personality. And as Indian Pantheism in an excess of piety removed the basis of morals and paralyzed the energies of man, dooming a noble race to become the prey of domestic tyrants and soon to pass under the sway of the Mogul and the Eng- lishman, so the Idealism of Hegel makes personality an illusion and an ethical spiritual relation to God incon- ceivable. The logical process of Hegel ends in fatalism, for the individuality of man is swamped in the timeless con- sciousness of the Absolute and the goal of Pessimism is soon reached. The identification, by Mr. T. H. Green, of the self-consciousness of man with the Eternal self- consciousness, is the surrender of the key to the problems of life, which is the human personality, in spite of his eloquent defence of the ethical imperatives. NOTE II. I cannot refrain from citing more at length. “The revulsion from the absurdities and unsympathetic narrow- ness of English (orthodox) theology has caused many of 230 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. our best ethical thinkers, such as J. S. Mill, to turn their faces away from theology, and to seek elsewhere for a rational basis of morality. But it is not possible to place Ethics on any solid and permanent foundation, if you leave theology out of the account. The teaching of Jesus and of Paul on this question of 'Love' as a basis of Ethics still holds good and will forever hold good; and their view of the matter is, that men are bound to love their fellow-men simply because God is Love. "In other words, such love as Ethics needs for its basis has its origin, not entirely in the finite side of our being, by which we are related to the animals, and out of which Darwin wastes his ingenuity in trying to evolve a moral imperative, but in the universal and eternal side of our nature, where God immediately reveals Himself in our self-consciousness. In all true spiritual love the God-element, the Universal, manifests its presence and its operation. So far is this Lave from being identical with mere sympathetic feeling, that it is capable of en- tirely ignoring or overpowering all regard for the personal pleasure either of the lover or the beloved ones; and this clearly shows that its root is not in man as a finite individual, but in the Oversoul, that Absolute Being who is incarnate in the human consciousness and is at once Eternal Reason, Will, and Love. Nothing, it seems to me, can be more pitiable than the shifts to which egois- tic thinkers are put, when, in the absence of any admis- sion of the authority of the Universal, or God in human nature, they endeavor to find a rational ground for real self-sacrificing love. Few men probably have felt spir- itual love more intensely than J. S. Mill did ; but his writings reveal the almost grotesque inadequacy of his sensational and egoistic philosophy to explain and ac- Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 231 count for his own vivid recognition of the claims which the Indwelling Eternal made on his soul. Rather than worship a deity who had not what we call moral attri- butes, he would, he says, go to hell, i. e., endure the unend- ing agonies which the creed-books associate with that locality ; but the only intelligible explanation that can be given of this statement is, that there was in Mill's self-consciousness, though not in his philosophical sys- tem, a quite infinite or incommensurable difference of ethical rank between the cravings for personal pleasure and comfort which he felt as a finite individual, and that demand for absolute rectitude and self-sacrificing love which was the self-revelation of the Eternal and the Infinite within him. It has been conclusively shown by Dr. Martineau that it is utterly impossible for a philoso- phy which begins with the egoistic maxim, 'Each for himself,' to find a road that shall lead at last to the universalistic maxim, 'Each for all.'" * As to the last sentence which Professor Upton quotes from Martineau, I may remind the reader of the attempt by Professor Drummond in the Ascent of Man, to find the road out from individualism to altruism, from “Struggle for one's own Life" to the “Struggle for the life of Others." In nutrition and reproduction among the animals, and even "in the lowliest world of plants” where the “labors of maternity” begin, Professor Drummond finds the “coexistence of twin streams of egoism and altruism, which often merge for a space without losing their distinctness and are traceable to a common origin in the simplest forms of life.” Divine Love is thus infolded before it is unfolded in the world- process, and Fatherhood and Motherhood are developed * Professor Upton, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 83, 84. 232 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. from the lowest organisms. This view would hardly be accepted by Professor Upton or Dr. Martineau, judging by the citations here given. They would, however, agree with Professor Drummond that Love is the teleo- logical principle of the world. NOTE III. 1 “The mystic," says Dr. Beard in his Hibbert Lectures, “is one who claims to be able to see God and divine things with the inner vision of the soul-a direct ap- prehension, as the bodily eye apprehends color, as the bodily ear apprehends sound. His method, so far as he has one, is simply contemplative; he does not argue, or generalize, or infer; he reflects, he broods, waits for light. He prepares for Divine communion by a process of self-purification; he detaches his spirit from earthly cares and passions : he studies to be quiet, that his still soul may reflect the face of God. He usually sits loose to active duty; for him the felt presence of God dwarfs the world and makes it common ; he is so dazzled by the glory of the one great Object of contemplation that he sees and cares for little else. But the morals of mys- ticism are almost always sweet and good, even if there be a faint odor of cloister incense about them ; though at the same time there are more ways than one from mysticism to immorality, all leading through the Pan- theism into which mystics are ever apt to fall. For shall not one who is mystically incorporate with God live in a region above law ? And if God be the ground and substance of all things, what justification is there for distinction between good and evil ? “But these are comparatively rare aberrations, and the essential weakness of mysticism lies in another di- Spiritual Love an Ideal to be Realized. 233 rection. It much rather consists in the fact that mys- ticism cannot formulate itself in such a way as to appeal to universal apprehension. It affirms, it does not reason : all the mystic can say to another is, I see, I feel, I know: and if he speaks to no corresponding faculty, his words fall to the ground. Indeed, the mystic is always more or less indistinct in utterance; he sees, or thinks he sees, more than he can tell : the realities which he con- templates are too vast, too splendid, too many-sided, to be confined within limits of human words : he looks at them, now in this aspect, now in that, and his reports, while each true to the vision of the moment, have a sound of inconsistency with each other. So mysticism usually fails to propagate and perpetuate itself ; the mystic faculty is a gift of God, not an aptitude that can be com- municated by man to man. Its appearance in the Church is as that breath of the Spirit which bloweth where it listeth.” (Quoted by Professor Upton, in Hib- bert Lectures, p. 33.) Religious feeling cannot survive seclusion from every- day life and relations, and from the regulative influence of the practical understanding. NOTE IV. " Accustomed as man is to feel his personal feebleness, his entire subordination to the physical forces of the universe, -unable as he is to affect in the smallest de- gree either the laws of his body or the fundamental con- stitution of his mind, -it is not without a necessary sense of supernatural awe that, in the case of moral duty, he finds this almost constant pressure remarkably withdrawn at the very crisis in which the import of his action is brought home to him with the most vivid conviction. 234 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. ... The absolute control that sways so much of our life is waived just where we are impressed with the most profound conviction that there is but one path in which we can move with a free heart. To what end, then, are we allowed this exceptional liberty to reject that path, un- less a special interest attach to our use of it? And, if so, are we not then surely watched ? “Is it not clear that the Power which has therein ceased to move us, has retired only to observe, to see how we pass through this discipline of self-education ? The sense that a supernatural eye is upon us in duty is so strong, because the relaxation of constraint comes simultaneously with a deep sense of obligation, just as the child is instinctively aware when the sustaining hand is taken away that the parent's eye is all the more intent on his unassisted movement.” (Essays, Theological and Literary, by Richard Holt Hutton, vol. i., p. 11.) This sense that we are watched, not only begets a feel- ing of obligation which occasions remorse when not yielded to, or when abused, but a feeling of trust and love when duty is with fidelity discharged. The ethical and spiritual feelings are herein blended into one. 20 . DIV ERY ni I . . O ELS IC CH TAKSORE III 2 BY ht V AL TO WE. KA 1 PI . AE SI f Y 21 YON ? CHAPTER V. THE ULTIMATE GROUND, OR GOD REVEALED IN HUMAN PROGRESS. IN the preceding chapters we have seen that the Ideals, rational, moral, and spiritual, have been the forces of human progress, and that they have no explanation apart from their realization in a Being who is One, Wisdom and Goodness, and in his essence, absolute Liberty. The revelation of God in the natural order has been briefly discussed in the chapter on the meta- physical grounds of Belief. It was then seen that the order of Nature is a develop through Natu- ment of a purpose of Goodness, though our slight knowledge of Nature may never enable us to explain certain facts which seem devoid of telic significance. The Supreme Goodness may have a higher end in view than that of guarding man from physical forces which can crush his body, since death is the gateway to an immortal life. And many things which now seem hideous in aspect, and cruel Revelation ral order. 235 236 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. This world revelation. in effect, may from a higher point of view of the Universe when we shall attain it—be seen to be necessary to cosmic perfection. Amorphous masses of rock may be seen to be as necessary to the sym- metry of Nature, as the arch of stone to an edifice constructed by human art. It may be useless to discuss the question whether, or not, the Creator could have revealed himself in a a different world. That he has revealed the best himself in this, may justly inspire us with on the conviction that it is the best revela- tion. We can fancy forms of God's activity other than that now presented to view, but our ability to indulge such fancy is the result of Divine agency which in its production of the existing Universe re- veals itself as primal Reality. It is only because we are here, ourselves having a part in a real scene of things, that we can think of, or speak of, the possi- bility of any other world in which God might have revealed himself. Nor can we affirm that He was forced to choose one of several forms of reality, thus finding himself conditioned, for such conditions, ex- erting constraint upon his creative activity, would be a Power above him. It is God who, eternally active, is the first Reality, and only when he willed the world to exist, did it become possible for fancies of other worlds to arise in the order of thought. The inind may rest in the belief that the Creator has made in the present Universe a perfect revela- tion of his thought and goodness. The scientific conception of the world, so far from excluding such The Ultimate Ground. 237 7 Y a revelation, attests its reality. That Supreme Good- ness has revealed itself in an ordered world is mani- fest; to expect it to resort to capricious intervention, after instituting cosmical laws, is to indulge a habit of mind which may end in fanaticism. Religion, to retain the respect of scientific reason, must concede that a disclosure of the Divine mind and heart is best achieved through the uniformity of natural law, and the inviolable constitution of the soul. It is now difficult to determine the conception of a miracle, as held by theologians. By some it is frankly defined as violation of law, by others as suspension of law, by others still, the Duke of Argyll for example, as "the selection and use of laws, of which man knows nothing, and can know, nothing." The reign of law, by the latter writer, is held to be universal. We hesitate to think with the Duke of Argyll, that miracles occur by the operation of some unknown law, or unknown opera- tion of a known law.* Laws are only our subjective account of the uniform successions of the manifesta- tions of Divine will. Miracles may be admitted as Divine spiritual acts, in what Lotze denominates “the continual concourse of God who alone medi- ates the action and re-action going on between differ- ent parts of the world.” The Cosmos itself is a miracle, that is, is supra-natural, as constituted of interactions of the psychical monads, which inter- actions are grounded in the changes of the states of the Divine consciousness. These interactions oc- remote Miracle. * Note 1. 238 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. curring in uniform successions, appear to us as the World, or a self-contained whole. This appearance of a self-contained whole seems to exclude the ex- ternal interference, which the primitive beliefs at- tributed to the Gods. The new conception of Nature, as Divine mediations, through the free actions and re-actions of created spirits appearing as the physical Cosmos, liberates us from static views of the world- order, and permits us to regard the Divine concourse as manifesting itself at certain historic moments, in new phenomena. Such new manifestations, however, constitute no interference with the uniform succes- sions which we name the Cosmos. Metaphysical reflection makes it difficult to accept miracles as an interference with the reasoned order of in the dependent Universe. Miracles inay be interference held to be outflashes of psychic activity th order. from the realm of eternal Reason not in- harmonious with that activity which appears in the regimented phenomena of the world. Such out- flashes of the absolute Spirit, reveal his absolute liberty—the spiritual nature of the world-order and perhaps the need on the part of man of exceptional Divine spiritual activity. Miracles, so called, at cer- tain historic moments are not arbitrary interferences with the reasoned order of the world, but exceptional acts of the Absolute Spirit, taking their place in the world-order, realizing the idea of Goodness in the historic process. They may be fortissimo notes in the great harmony of God's spiritual disclosures of himself. -.. Miracle no . - - - .. . . . .... ...Posi The Ultimate Ground. 239 Fest.com Revelation It is difficult to see how revelation, by way of miracle, is possible without the co-operation of the religious faculties in man. Both the evi- 'dence of the miracle and the truth it is inconceivable believed to enforce, appeal to the divine apart from capacity. germ within the soul, the "product of the absolute action of God.” Miracles might be mul- tiplied, but apart from a religious capacity in man, the truth could never effect an entrance into the soul. The true supernaturalism is to be found in the pro- gressive religious susceptibility in man, not in an ex- ternal assault upon his consciousness. If there is, then, immanent in all physical or spiritual phenomena a Power supra-natural, it would seem to empoverish the idea of that Power to assume that he cannot reveal himself wholly within and through the order, natural or spiritual. The intelligent study of re- ligious experience, while not denying the mystical nature of man's relation to God, results in the firm conviction that the laws of human thought and feel- ing are never abrogated. Dr. Herman Schultz and many others, regard as a groundless prejudice the feeling “that legend is not a suitable medium for the Spirit of revelation to employ.” That myths and legend have played a conspicuous role in the history of Religion, is an incontrovertible fact, and myth and legend have their genesis and growth in accord- ance with psychological laws. Man, who on his physical side is a part of the order of Nature, finds, indeed, incitements to action 240 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Revelation in the external world, yet, in his inner nature, pos- sesses transcendent powers of activity. He gains from without neither the content of his sensations nor his plastic consciousness. In the free exercise of reason and love he converses with infinite Good- ness. But in this free converse of the finite with the infinite Spirit, the psychical constitution of man is In not set aside, and it is inconceivable that and psycho- any truth could be made intelligible to ical laws. man by his Creator save through the capacities with which He has endowed him. Any conception of man's spiritual nature, therefore, which would enable him in some mysterious way to receive communications from heaven without the exercise of his natural powers, would seem to be a false one. Any method of imparting truth, which would dis- pense with the laws of psychology would seem to be both unnecessary and impossible. In all Divine illumination of the soul, the capaci- ties of man are sacredly respected. The natural ap- prehension of Divine purpose, the natural exercise of human affection towards the Supreme Will, may establish such relations with God as to cast a new radiance over Nature and enable man to form more just ideas of the world, of history, and of duty. Divine illumination is to the human mind what health is to the body; it exalts its native capacities to the higher sanities of reason. It imparts no scientific knowledge, but kindles the moral and spiritual intuitions; and contrariwise, sci- Divine Illumination. The Ultimate Ground. 241 entific knowledge without spiritual insight may not gain a real consciousness of God. The genius of La Place may not have enabled him to discern the pres- ence of a kingdom of God in the world. The piety of Thomas à Kempis did not enable him to make dis- coveries reserved for the genius of Copernicus or Newton. But both religious and scientific thought must move in the realm of Reason, and both must be illumined in accordance with the laws of thought, to discern the infinite Love. The evolution of the World and of human history is a process of Divine revelation. If “ Nature con- ceals God,” it is not because Nature is not Development Divine, it is rather because God must first of Spiritual be revealed through the moral and re- conscious- ligious nature of man, in order to be dis- cerned in Nature. Human history is a revelation of an Infinite purpose, else the word Providence is de- void of meaning, and the reins have slipped from the hands of the Creator. The history of the race is a history of Religion. The historian cannot escape from the duty of interrogating the primitive ideas which reveal the Divine impulse urging forward all the peoples of the world to higher moral, religious, social, and political conceptions.* If, then, the his- tory of the race is a history of the evolution of religious ideas, that development implies the im- manence of God in the whole process, from first to last. We cannot hesitate to choose between the supernaturalism of occasional interference and the ness. * Note II. 16 242 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. Ordered TS supernaturalism of ordered progress. Revealed truth is either a product foreign to man's consciousness, outside the psychological and historical Progress, evolution, or it is an unfolding conscious- supernatural ness possessed by man, in virtue of the community of essence which he enjoys with his Creator. If the ancient peoples have possessed a revelation of the Divine in their progressive thought and conscience, it is because the eternal Reason has ever been active in the human soul, bestowing the powers of reason and sustaining its growth. The development of human reason centres, indeed, in the Divine religious impulse. It would not be intel- ligible were we to limit it to the activity of the human soul sundered from its spiritual Ground. The scientific instinct must be surrendered as irre- ligious, or we must decline to accept as truth that which is not potential in the religious consciousness with which man begins the march of life, or to accept any fact which comes like an aërolite into the atmos- phere of his thought, and which violates the laws of reason and conscience, for through the latter we have a prior revelation of God. There can be no revela- tion which cannot become our mental possession, and if it can become the property of the mind, it would seem unnecessary to choose the way of a mysterious external authority, for the revelation is already made through the activities of conscience and reason. Revelation cannot contradict revelation. The mystic religious experience has been by many persons jealously guarded from association with . The Ultimate Ground. 243 logical. 11 the constitutional activities of the soul. Mysticism has, however, recoiled from regarding the religious feeling as irrational, and if it is rational, Mysticism not it takes its place in the genetic order of unpsycho- consciousness which has its ground in the Divine Reason. In the experience of St. Paul or Luther, the intuition of the new truth and the sud- den entrance upon an altered life have been pre- ceded by the struggle of conscience, and the influence of the Spirit of God may be discerned in painful hesitations, in the contention between the will of man and the advancing consciousness of the Divine purpose. This warfare has taken place in the realm of psychical relations. It has been said that the Church would not have had Paul had not Stephen offered the martyr's prayer. Such religious revolu- tions are not to be regarded apart from historic con- ditions, though indeed the outward impulses could not of themselves have caused the inner revolution of thought and feeling, for the transcendent relation between the soul and God is the sublime fact upon which rests the orderly psychical process in the nature of man. It is, indeed, beyond our power to always trace in the manifold and intricate relations of ordinary con- ciousness the subtle connections of thought. Ideas flash upon us without announcement, the ancestry of many convictions cannot be traced, but none the less is psychology assured that there is no anarchy in thought. Genius is not independent of the zeitgeist; the sudden flowering out of great powers 244 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. finds its explanation in the past moral, social, and in- tellectual conditions; in the spiritual traits which have distinguished a line of ancestors, and in the occasions and incitements of the present age. Each man is a genius, capable of original impulse, because he shares the essence of his Creator, but none the less is he the child of his time. He finds in his en- vironment the materials which his plastic intelligence can turn to account, and is felt as a power among his contemporaries, because standing in necessary relations to them. Cæsar, Frederick, or Napoleon might either one of them have arrived at peculiar greatness, had he lived in another age, but neither of them would have denied that the circumstances of his time largely made him what he was. The coming of any hero is not wholly a surprise. Foregleams on the horizon herald the star. The ideal haunts the minds of the age, the necessities of peoples and their longings infallibly announce the advent of a great personality. The new truth is in the air of life before the inspired genius gives it utterance. The law of identity and difference is the ground of all evolution; the new finds its causal conditions in the old, and the old finds its realization in the new; were it not so, human history would be a series of heterogeneous and unre- ; lated facts. The continuity of historic consciousness is not in- fringed upon by the sublime revelations of an Isaiah, Continuity else his words would be unintelligible to of history. the people of his time. The advent of the . 1 The Ultimate Ground. 245 Lord of Christendom did not take place before the “times were fulfilled." Revelation is thus a progres- sive Divine disclosure, in the ever unfolding religious capacity of man, of the purpose and goodness of Him who is immanent in history. The education of the race, like that of the child, implies no premature disclosures, no disregard of the genetic connection of ideas, no excessive demand upon the intelligence, no assumption that any truth can be of use which dispenses with the response to its voice, of the under- standing and conscience of mankind. Therefore the self-revelation of God in its highest moments has found its echo in the moral consciousness, because that revelation has been made through the conscious- ness, and has not carried it by storm. To the objec- tion that this is to attribute the disclosure of Divine truth to finite origin, and thus to divest it of its super- natural character, it may again be said that the supernatural is the Ground of the entire process of the religious development. The disclosure cannot manifest itself at certain points of time, independent of the solidarity of history, and without relation to the psychical development of the race. It is of vital moment, in opposing the Deistic con- ception of the world and humanity, to insist that the primitive constitution of man was a re- ligious one, that the first impulse of reason Revelation, was to attain union with infinite Reason and and Love, that these Divine impulses have never ceased to urge man towards the ideals of goodness, and that man's consciousness of this transcendent Immanent and Deism. 246 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. 1 relation to God has impelled him in all ages to seek and find Him in his own soul and heart-experience. The eternal Love has thus been ever active in the imaginations, emotions, and movements of the will, of man. Revelation is, then, coeval with the consciousness of man, nor is it important to affirm or deny his ascent from lower orders of life. The arguments of Mr. Romanes and others may be safely left to the future of science. The moment of self-scrutiny, in which primitive man distinguishes his Ego or self from beings and objects around him, the moment he per- ceives himself to be an agent, and discerns behind the phenomena of Nature an infinite Agent, that moment marks the dawn of the religious sentiment. In that moment the sail is hoisted, and the voyage of religious life is begun, and will be finished. At this moment of man's psychic development, the revelation of God is made, and the consciousness of duty exists. As the capacity for walking is latent in the infant, so in the soul of primitive man, is latent the capacity for an apprehension of God, and in his experience in world-relations, man gains an ever clearer knowledge of the Divine Being. If it is assumed that the development of the divine germ begins in animal consciousness, and has been slow to arrive at self- consciousness in man and the discernment of Agency in Nature, the law of continuity will still operate in the subsequent progress of the religious consciousness, and in accordance with that law, The Ultimate Ground. 247 the Divine revelation, through that advance of con- sciousness, will be gradual. In the process of this development of his divinely constituted nature, he will construct his language, imitating the sounds he hears in nature around him. From the family, he will advance to tribal and political life. In dire con- flict with the forces of nature and with hostile tribes, he will experience the need of help and sympathy of a higher Power. The heart of man is the same from the first: joy, sorrow, hope, gratitude, adoration, sway it in all ages, and through these experiences is the Divine revelation achieved. Guided thus by infinite Goodness immanent in all life, his progress towards clearer and nobler ideals is continuous, and the disclosure of infinite Love strikes increasingly higher notes as he pursues his way down the cen- turies. The revelation of the Highest, in and through the soul, manifests itself, from time to time, in the advent of the religious genius, hero, prophet, or seer, who becomes the guide and teacher related to of his tribe or nation, not indeed the originator but the interpreter of truth. In his exalted consciousness of the Divine, he is enabled to focus the scattered rays of the religious knowledge and feeling of his people; but his inspiration would be unintelligible were he not the product of the age. He speaks a rustic language, if reared among a pas- toral people; he speaks the language of courts, if he has moved among those who wear the ermine. The inspired seer and the common man are alike in free The Seer his time, 248 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. active All men can be Seers. spiritual activity related to the Soul of things, yet developed in finite objective conditions. The seer imparts no truth which is not a possible discovery for the ordinary man, if in free spiritual activity, striving for higher consciousness an of the Divine, he shall gain higher spirit- ual insight. The seer, possessing a greater receptivity for the Divine, gathers into the speculum of a larger apprehension the rays of truth. Man everywhere, by virtue of his divine constitution may be expected, with more or less faltering utterance, to speak from out the sphere of the divine. “Re- markable it is, truly,” says Mr. Carlyle, “how every- where the eternal fact begins to be recognized, that there is a Godlike in human affairs; that God not only made us and beholds us, but is in us and around us; that the age of miracles, as it ever was, now is. . . . So stands it, in short, with all forms of Intellect whether as directed to the finding of Truth, or to the fit imparting thereof: to Poetry, to Eloquence, to depth of Insight, which is the basis of both these: always the characteristic of right per- formance is a certain spontaneity, an unconscious- ness: 'the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick.'" The man of God speaks as in an ecstasy, for he speaks from the realm of Divine freedom and reason; but the truth he has gained for himself finds response in the consciousness of people around him, and his pontifical utterances are the expressions of the longings and hopes which have haunted kin- TY The Ultimate Ground. 249 national dred spirits, and are solutions of heart-problems which have stirred the souls of many others. Were not the substance of his teaching that which kindles common sympathies, and which has a basis in human nature, were not the seer rooted The Prophet in the soil of his age and conditioned by interprets the epoch to which he belongs, he would feeling: be without influence in his time. The Prophet indeed felt himself to be the agent of God, clothed with Divine authority and inspired with marvellous courage. A holy fire consumed him; he is impelled to convey his message, though human selfishness and hostility oppress his spirit. The in- spiration of the Christian philanthropist of the present day may quantitatively, but not qualitatively, be differentiated from that of the ancient servant of God. There cannot, it would seem, be two kinds of inspiration. The proof of the Divine legitimacy of the mission of ancient messengers of God, in their contention with a false inspiration, consisted in a subjective conviction, but a conviction rooted in the objective ground of the moral constitution of man. The Divine intuitions vouchsafed to them, came through their historic experience, intuitions of the right, and of the Divine will, which were the product of the immanent Spirit, in its constant relation to the finite spirit, subject to the conditions of life in the world. Not infrequently they claim as Divine revelations, certain convictions which obviously are the product of natural psychological conditions. The solid ground 250 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. of their prophetic authority was that of the practical intuitions of moral and spiritual truth, which in all religious men attest the immanence of the infinite Spirit. Exalted by an intense consciousness of eter- nal ideals, they discerned the presence in history of the personal Power which“makes for righteousness," and the inevitable triumph of Divine purpose. It is this purpose revealed with increasing clear- ness in world-relations that brings the seer upon the scene. Sharing the religious constitution with all others, in proverb, psalm, and prediction, he expresses their latent thought and feeling. If man were devoid of this religious nature, neither the Prophet, nor his people could have knowledge of God. It would be impossible for the seer to receive his message, and impossible for his people to receive it. All the light which floods the world, would impinge in vain upon the eyes were there not a power of vision, through which objective presentations may become subjective perceptions. All the orchestras in the world would in vain pour forth their harmonies, if there were no 'music in the soul.' Notruth can be gained by the seer, or imparted by him to another, which cannot become the mental property of him who hears the message, by the co-operation of his intelligence and feeling. Nor is the telescopic glance of the seer into the future inconsistent with the laws of psychology. Power to pre- Whatever knowledge of future events may dict events. have been possessed by men of the olden time, it could not have been imparted in a manner to dispense with normal psychical activities. The Ultimate Ground. 251 YTY Becoming more conscious of the operation in life of the sublime laws of right and justice, in his com- munion with the Highest, the servant of God divines the trend of the curve of destiny, one segment of which lies in the present. A true philosophy of history cannot be gained by one who has no high moral in- sight into the movement of history as a divine evolution. Statesmen like Washington, possessing unique moral prescience, can warn their country- men of remote dangers. The mere politician whose soul is not "touched to fine issues " is only capable of limited vision, and is like a pilot blinded by fog, and steers towards the reef. The spiritual reason discerns afar coming ills, or the triumph of justice. As certain trees of the wood with tremulous leaf announce the coming breeze be- fore others give signs of movement, so certain minds are presentient of events far distant. Valiant souls who stand upon the heights of spiritual vision are oppressed with the consciousness of the dumb in- dignations which sumber in the general conscience of their countrymen, and they sound the tocsin of warning. The seers of the race do not make revela- tions; they are occasional voices of the Divine in history, and their utterances are the striking of the chimes of the hour of God's manifestation. The writings or proclamations of the holiest men only express in higher or lower notes the spiritual in- stincts of mankind, and the latter distinguish in those utterances the transient from the permanent elements, the human from the divine. . 252 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. . 1 1 Such is the cheering view of the continuous revelation in Nature and history, which accords Revelation with the conceptions of science. Many and Science. minds at first reluctant to accept it, grad- ually forced by the cumulative evidence derived from biology, psychology, and history, of a uni- versal law of development, change their mental attitude, and escape from confusion into an ordered realm of thought, and at once become conscious of a more intimate relation to the infinite Heart of things. The facts of the world and history fall into benign order, and a glorious perspective is un- folded to the devout mind. The revelation of God to his children is not from a Being who sits in glacial isolation beyond the world, who now and then to save things from wreck interferes with the estab- lished order, and whose truth supervenes upon the normal action of man's rational and moral constitu- tion. It is the revelation of an intra-mundane Wisdom and Love inspiring men to develop lan- guage, society, sacred literatures, and religion in free, rational, and spiritual life. The Deistic view of the world is everywhere ress of yielding to that of the Divine imman- the doctrine ence. We may approve of the utterance of Goethe: “ No ! such a God my worship may not win Who lets the world about his fingers spin A thing extern; my God must rule within, And whom I own for Father, God, Creator, Hold nature in himself, Himself in nature ; And in his kindly arms embraced, the whole Doth live and move by his pervading soul." Progress of of immanence. The Ultimate Ground. 253 St. Paul, at Athens, proclaimed the truth of the Divine immanence; “In Him we live and move and have our being." And Coleridge writes : “And what if all animated Nature Be but organic harps diversely framed That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast one intellectual breeze At once the soul of each, and God of all ?” “ The theologian,” says De Laprade," compromises the august verities of which he is the repository, in an impossible strife with the verities less high, but more striking and more palpable. Physical Science is thus established outside Religion ; by that very act it be- comes impious. Science is to be blamed for accepting this exile which separates it from the moral World ; it ought to force the gates of the sanctuary by its supplications. Theology should not be able to refuse a place to it at the spiritual banquet. The first fault is that of Theology. She has preceded science; she ought to have reared her in her bosom, and nourished her with her milk. She has repulsed science from the church as another Hagar, has rejected her into the desert of materialism, and the numerous tribes of Ishmael now lift themselves against the posterity of Abraham.” Tracing the career of man from the earliest time we see him immerged in conflict, but it is a conflict which marks his growth in dignity and knowledge of God. His pains are the accompanied pains of growth. His history is a succes- by sadness. sion of pages, chapters, volumes, making manifest his progressive liberation into higher consciousness of the infinite Goodness. It is a wearisome but a glorious march from his beliefs, recorded on monu- ments and cylinders, to the sublime prophecies of the eighth century before Christ. From the lower 254 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. 1 CN ideals to the higher, from the worship of Powers of Nature to that of the tribal and national Deity, and the recognition of the universal fatherhood of God, is a stupendous advance. The ever more clearly apprehended Ideal has, however, saddened, while it has inspired and uplifted man. The dictates of reason have become more imperative as the conflict between the animal within him and the impulses of the higher soul has become one of more rigor. Gaining in moral sensibility, he becomes ever more impatient of his vassalage to sense or the lower desires of the mind. Every act of insurgence against the Divine love and will seems more worthy of blame, and sin wears a miore hateful mien, as it is the hound which bites the heel of the eager runner who seeks the goal of righteousness. It is not contended that history discloses an unin- terrupted progress of man, as the Divine ideal has been more clearly revealed. The track not uninter- of history is bloody, and human societies have risen, and through corruption of morals have fallen to rise no more. While Morality and Religion have arrived at higher and purer expres- sion in the more receptive minds of the race, and while in the intellectual, social, and material well- being we trace a progress marked by many hesita- tions and retrogressions, the conviction gains strength; that the progressive unveiling of the ideals of Mo- rality and Religion does not arrest the conflict between sin and righteousness. It becomes a sharper conflict with advancing enlightenment, and it will go Progress rupted, The Ultimate Ground. 255 on to the last. I have no desire, in the interest of the theory of Progress, to minimize the moral evil in the world, nor to obscure the responsibility of man. Indeed many who cling to the conservative view, and emphasize the external interference of Deity at certain moments of history, and who still cherish suspicion of the doctrine of Divine immanence, are found to be often more optimistic than they who hold the doctrine of an intra-mundane Presence. Theologians conceive Christianity to be an irrup- tion into history, and at the same time a continuity of history. So far as it is an irruption, it inconsistency is only for a time a breach of continuity, of many and christian life now finds its growth in the in theologians. strict accordance with the laws of psychology. This progress of religion is now in an orderly manner to advance to successive conquests and to culminate in a perfect Divine society. The believer in im- manent revelation and the believer in extra-mun- dane intervention are in accord in the view that from this time on the course of the Kingdom of God is to be finished through Divine impulses which are in harmony with psychological laws, and that no violations, or even counteractions, of natural laws are to be admitted. But the theologian of the past has broken history into parts. He has not the con- fidence in a Divine immanence in the beginnings of history, that he now cherishes in respect of the future of history. It is difficult then to justify the charge brought by theologians against the scientific view of religious development as optimistic and naturalis- 256 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. tic, so long as they now hold that Christianity is subject to the same law of progress. The scientific view of development is that Re- ligion has been a divine impulse through all time mani- festing itself in the divine constitution of man. The theological view is, that it is now a development by the co-operation of the spiritual constitution of man with the Eternal Spirit, but that it has not always been so. And as traditional theology is optimistic, holding to the final victory of righteousness and the extinction of moral evil, it is debarred from criticism of the doctrine of immanence as optimistic. The believers in continuous revelation through man's con- stitution and history are not so optimistic as not to believe in the fall of peoples to rise no more, and of the descent of individuals into such loss of moral consciousness as perhaps to forfeit immortality. Meanwhile, the mind can not rest in the view that the Divine purpose was thwarted, and that this is a shat- The world tered World. It is a sublime physical and not a wreck. spiritual Cosmos. The currents of infinite Goodness have been flowing eternally onward, and upon these have been borne the religions and seers of the World as white-winged barques upon an in- finite sea. Criticism is unable to darken the majestic evidence, derived, not from isolated texts of pre-Christian Scripture, but implicit in the whole development of the spiritual consciousness of the Hebrew people, and flashing from the pages of its literature. The unfaltering conviction of a higher note to be struck The Ultimate Ground. 257 i in the revelation of the Divine is not, perhaps, ex- pressed in definite conceptions. But the pulsation of a Redeeming purpose is felt in the soul of the Hebrew. Divine presentiments cause the more earn- est minds to sweep the heavens with their lenses, to descry if possible the Star which is somewhere in the spaces. The peoples of earth toiling onward in their course, gaining higher conceptions of the Ideal-Good, only to find themselves more conscious of sin, in not re- alizing that ideal in their conduct, with hopes often shattered, are saved from despair and animated with new hope, by the advent in history of the Perfect Man. Strange power has this revelation of the Di- vine in humanity to kindle hope, to renew the heart, to give victory to holy purpose! God thus makes his highest disclosure of his presence in the world, and the sons of men, in union with one who is Per- fect Love, are delivered from the long conflict of the ideal with the actual, and from self-condemnation. But Christian Redemption is to be achieved through conflict, no longer in pursuit of abstract ideals, but in efforts to resemble Him who is the realized Ideal, the Brother, and Saviour who makes fully known the Father. To the end of time the struggle endures, but its goal is divine, and triumph is assured. “Both our virtues and our happiness," says Lotze, “ can only flour- ish in the midst of an active conflict with wrong in the midst of self- denials which society imposes on us, and amidst the doubts into which we are plunged by the uncertainty of the future, and of the results of our efforts. If there were ever to come a future in which every 17 258 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. stumbling-block were smoothed away, then indeed mankind would be as one flock; but then no longer like men, but like a flock of in- nocent brutes, they would feed on the good things provided by Na- ture, with the same unconscious simplicity as they did at the beginning of the long course of civilization." 22 en * VI - VU . ME . VI TIKA WWW NA . . . .- . CONCLUSION. THUS God is present throughout human history. T The Infinite includes the Finite, and knowledge of reality is possible and theories of relativity must forever vanish. The unity of history is more clearly manifest. Secular events have been divine events. Commerce, industry, arts, legislations, are not satanic agencies; common life may be as devout a praise as a Te Deum chanted in the minsters of the world. As history, therefore, is itself a divine process, a perpetual miracle, Religion does not stand or fall with miracles of any time or place. The march of the peoples, through the aisles of the centuries, has been under the generalship of Infinite Love. If one column has enjoyed a more familiar presence of the Captain of the host, and has been in the advance, the rest of the army has not been without guidance. Zoroasters and Numas have felt themselves to be guided by a spirit within them, and Socrates named it his Divinity. No scintilla of the divine which is to be found in the religious life of other peoples, can be disdained. He who takes account of only one 259 260 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. religion, may justly be said to have little experience or knowledge of true religion. The religion of Israel is the sublimest of studies; its history, the most fecund with the revelation of God to his children. Semitic Monotheism, however much tinged with the influence of foreign cults, with Phænician and Syrian polytheism until the eighth century before our Lord, challenges the wonder and gratitude of all reverent minds. The religious puritanism of the Semitic Nomads in the early time is a divine fact; and Renan has well said, “ The tent of the patriarch Semite has been the point of departure of the religious progress of humanity.” The Hebrew books were not written in Heaven, and sent down to earth ready bound and lettered in gold. They have been written by men, but by men who thrilled to the presence of God in his world, for whom the air of life was charged with his immanence. The truths which made them the heralds of the final and universal religion came to them in no way to violate the laws of consciousness, or of national development. Because man's advancement has been a natural one therefore it has been divine. To say, that at a psychic moment of his development he be- gan to think and to invent words in which to clothe his thoughts, and to realize a Power above him dis- cerned through and beyond the natural world—is it not to say, that his Maker thus revealed himself to him, in so constituting his nature, that at a certain psychic moment he should be able to think, to speak, to discern a supreme and adorable Power above all . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion. 261 sensible appearances? Surely, an external revelation would be impossible to man had he not possessed the prior capacities for thought and language and Religion; and those prior capacities, beginning with his existence, are themselves the Divine Revelation., in and through, man's nature. Thus the Hebrew literature is a Divine, yet human product. It was not because the Red Sea rolled back its waves, or Sinai trembled to its base, or the walls of Jericho fell, that the world has yielded homage and faith. It is because the truths which the Creator kindled in the soul of Israel are wanted by the world, and the world cannot do without them. Chateaubriand, the sincere and distinguished Roman Catholic of the beginning of this century, writes, “ It is not necessary to say that Christianity is excellent be cause it comes from God, but it comes from God because it is excellent," a thesis which grants us à “full liberty for examination, for comparison, and for criticism” of sacred literature. The history of the Jews, like the history of all peoples, has been a natural development over-watched by God. The battle-axe of David was often used with no loftier purpose and with as profane a vigor as the battle-axe of Saladin, or of Charles Martel. The historic currents of Jewish and foreign life are ever flowing in upon each other, and to subject the latter to rigid historical inquiry, while regarding the former as too holy and unique to be tested by the same laws of criticism, would be an abandonment of reason. Greek and Roman, Indian and Jewish 262 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. AT a antiquity, must have an impartial treatment. With scientific probity must all researches be conducted, all facts and merits of religions be brought together, for thus we enrich the domain of general history, and, what is of more importance, we extend our conception of the Divine Providence itself. The expression “ higher criticism," has been made a word of obloquy; but the higher criticism, has come to stay and divine truth will emerge in new resplendence. Mr. Disraeli, in the preface to Lothair, thus writes : " The disturbance in the mind of nations has been occasioned by two causes ; firstly, by the powerful assault on the divinity of the Semitic literature by the Germans; and secondly, by recent discov- eries of science, which are hastily supposed to be inconsistent with our long received convictions as to the relations between the Creator and the created. “One of the consequences of the divine government of this world which has ordained that the sacred purposes should be effected by the instrumentality of various human races, must be occasionally a jealous discontent with the revelation entrusted to a particular family. But there is no reason to believe, that the Teutonic rebellion of this cen- tury against the divine truths entrusted to the Semites will ultimately meet with more success than the Celtic insurrection of a preceding age. Both have been sustained by the highest intellectual gifts that ever human nature has displayed ; but when the tumult subsides, the divine truths are found to be not less prevalent than before, and simply because they are divine. Man brings to the study of the oracles more learning and more criticism than of yore ; and it is well that it should be so. The documents will yet bear a greater amount both of erudition and examination than they have received ; but the word of God is eternal and will survive the spheres." Mr. Disraeli intends more by these words, it is possible, than we may wish to accept, but they ex- Conclusion. 263 press that hopeful view of results which makes his words fairly the words of Progress. We shall have pursued this study of Religion in vain, if we have not been led along these paths of reflection to more clearly discern that majestic per- son, who, brother, friend, teacher, Saviour, perfectly reveals the Divine, and wears the crown of the ages. When humanity shall have become moulded, by that plastic Life into his likeness, the Eternal pur- pose, so clearly revealed in the development of his- tory, will attain the goal of realization. NOTE Ι. The use of an unknown law can not, strictly examined, effect a miracle. The resurrection of our Lord ex- plained by the operation of an unknown law would not be miraculous. Mozley's objection seems valid, * that it would only need a recurrence of resurrections to estab- lish a new natural order of resurrections. But the new order of resurrections would not make the present order other than it is, and the criterion of a miracle is not found in any new possible order; it must be tested by the present order. And tested by the present order it is after all a violation of it. The miracle is not explained by supposing certain events like a resurrection, for ex- ample-recurring in accordance with some law not native to the present order. NOTE II. “It is now clearly seen,” says Sir Henry Maine in his book, Ancient Law, pp. 4, 6,“ by all trustworthy observers * Bampton Lectures, 1865, p. 122. 264 Ideal Bases of Religious Belief. of the primitive conditions of mankind, that in the in- fancy of the race men could only account for sustained or periodically recurring action by supposing a personal agent. Thus, the wind blowing was a person, and of course a divine person ; the sun rising, culminating, and setting was a person, and a divine person ; the earth yielding her increase was a person, and divine. As then, in the physical world, so in the moral. When a king decided a dispute by a sentence, the judgment was assumed to be the result of direct inspiration. The divine agent, suggesting judicial awards to kings or to gods, the great- est of Kings was Themis. . . . Kings are spoken of as if they had a store of Themistes ready to hand for use ; but it must be distinctly understood that they are not laws, but judgments, or, to take the exact Teutonic equivalents, 'dooms.'" Maine also adds,“ in early law and amid the rudiments of political thought ... a supernatural presidency is supposed to consecrate and keep together all the cardinal institutions of those times, the State, the Race, the Family.” The celebration of common rites and common sacrifices stands at the threshold of society itself. T 21 . A NU ANUMZ . ha! V .X . * . . - M . . A " AN . T 2 II IIN INt. . . O YAN NA SA RE ge IP . EX CV SPRE OVAT INDEX. Absolute being, implies relative being, 143 ; ethical character of, 159-162 Accado-Sumerian texts, 58 Agnostics are forced to admire Jesus, 226 Agreeable, the, not always the beautiful, 199 Alger, W. R., 159 Alsberg, 29 Anaxagoras, 142 Animals, have they a religion ? 7; of their psychical state we are ignorant, 7 Animism, of prehistoric man, .30; no animism without a prior concept of anima, or soul, 81; the Manes, 83 ; it became retrogressive with some primitive peoples, 86 Anthropocentric view of the world, 141 Antiquity of man, 30 ; evidences of, in different lands, 32 Argyle, Duke of, on personality, 150 Arnold, Matthew, on Hebrew feeling of righteousness, 104 ; his definition of religion, as morality touched with emotion, 220 Art appeals to the higher soul, 200 Artist, the, always a learner, 105 ; is a mystic, 105 Baethgen on Semitic monism, 100 Bagehot on the ancient family, Тоб Bain, psychological theory, 124 Balfour, Mr., on determinism, 185, 186 Beard, Dr., on the mystic, 232 Beautiful, the, a manifestation of Divine life, 190; both a subjective perception of man, and objective in external ob- jects, 191; in living forins, 193; suggests infinite perfec- tion, 193; sentiment of the beautiful not identical with the sentiment of the true or the good, 200; variations of judgment concerning the beau- tiful, 201 ; ascent to the Infi- nite beauty from the lower to the higher beauties of earth, as stages, 204 Biblical Criticism, 56 Browning, Robert, his idealism, 127 D Caird, Edward, definition of religion, 20 ; on Brahmanic religion, as acosmism, 94 Carlyle, Thomas, 248 Carpenter Boyd, idea of religion, Chaldeo-Assyrian religion, ani- mistic, 92 205 266 Index. Character or nature, of man, what is it, 171, 172 ; is not constituted of impressions or sensations, 172; is not some thing lying behind the will of man, 171 ; character is the product of acts of the will, 171, 172 Coleridge quoted, 253 Comte's religion as worship of humanity, 9 Conservation of energy, meaning of the term given by Von Hartman, 184 Cosmic interactions, unity of, 131 ; based upon changes in the Divine ground, 131 ; how do interactions occur? 132 Cromwell, Oliver, divides men into two classes, 216 De Rialhe, Gerard, on primitive belief in immortality, 31 Descent to savagery from higher condition inconceivable, 52; Tylor's reply to Whately's ar- gument, 52 Development, man is the goal of, 141 ; view of John Fiske, 156 Diotima, words to Socrates in the Banquet of Plato concern- ing the Infinite beauty, 204 Disraeli, Mr., on German criti- cism in preface to Lothair, 262 Divine immanence in nature and the soul distinguished from conclusions of scientific and metaphysical pantheism, 209, 210 Divine personality known di- rectly in, and by, finite per- sons, 142 Driver, Professor, on Biblical narrative in Genesis, 59 Drummond, Henry, on develop- ment of fatherhood and moth- erhood, or egoism and altruism, 231 Du Bois-Reymond on relation of brain-stuff to thought, 147 Duty and love, united in reli- gion, 214 ; often sundered, as in the rigorism of Kant, 215 D'Alviella, Count, does not find that animals have any religion, 8; his definition of religion, 12 ; his definition criticised, 13; on worship of spirits, 112 Darwin, his definition of religion, I 2 De Broglie concedes that there is a progress of religious ideas, Essence and origin of religion 51 Definitions of religion inspired by historic spirit, 11-16 ; defi- nitions inspired by philosophy of religious consciousness of advanced man, 16-21 De Laprade on relations of the- ology to science, 253 De La Saussaye, 29, 42 De Nadaillac, 29 De Pressensé, definition of re- ligion, 23 ; believes the cave man was superior to modern savage, 33; concedes that a state of universal savagery has existed, 51 ; holds to a mono- theism anterior to the sayage state, 51; on the mission of art, 203 the materials for Philosophy of religion, 4 Ethical progress of man from low to higher ideals, continu- ous, 175 ; ethical and æsthet- ical standards compared, 188, 189, ethical consciousness of Hebrews, 213; ethical reform- ers concede that the feeling of love for God, must be called into service, 227 Ethics, indeterminate element in, 162; the categorical im- perative, or feeling of the Index. 267 0 “ought," 165; ethics must Genius not independent of the defend freedom of the will, zeitgeist, 243, 244 167; must be perfected in re Gerland, 8 ligion, 213 God-consciousness in man, 206 Evolution, of mythology, 87; God, Nature does not conceal of morals, is a history of morals God, 241 ; he is immanent in strictly regarded, 159; of the whole process of the world man's historic life, attended and of history, 241, 242 with sadness, 253 Goethe, quoted, 134 ; remarks on the beautiful, 194 ; on the nearness of the good, 217; Fall, considered as a precosmic quoted, 252 event, 33 ; of man, a conscious Gore, Dr., Lux Mundi, on the failure to realize an ideal, 46; Fall, 73 a drama in personal experi- Gravitation as unitary force sug- ence, 47; a loss in progress of gests Will as ground of the innocent naturalness, 48; dis world, 130 tress of thought caused by tra- Greek philosophy, stages of, 97; ditional view of the Fall, 48; decadence, 98 modified by theology, 49 Greeks, religion of, 95 Family, the primitive, 77 Green, T. H., surrenders the Fenelon, defence of final pur key to problems of life, 229 pose, 138 Gruppe, idea of religion as self- Feuerbach, his conception of. re ishness, 8 ligion as man's worship of him- self, 9 Finality, or final purpose, 135 Häeckel, cannot dispense with 140; objection of Schopen teleology, or finality, 136 hauer to finality, as not neces Hartman's Unconscious Will, sarily implying intention, 134; is forced to admit its con- 138 ; is instinctive not deliber sciousness, 136 ; criticising ate, according to Lachelier, Schopenhauer, denies that will 138 ; not disproved by the ex is unintelligent, 137 istence, in the world, of evil, Hebrew literature and the Fall, 141 57; contents of Genesis, con- Finite and Infinite, the relations sidered by Sayce, Kuenen, of, 153 ; that the finite though White, Driver, and others, dependent is yet free, is an in 57-60 tuition, 153 Hebrew religion, superior to Fisher, Geo. P., on human and other Semitic religions, 103 ; Divine personality, as insepar Matthew Arnold's estimate of able, 145 its ethical value, 104; reveals Fiske, John, view of sin, 65; of a redeeming Purpose, 257 man as the goal of evolution, Hegel, the sense of dependence, as constituting religion not ad- Forces, correlation of, suggests missible, else dogs would be unitary Will as ground of the religious, 12; his logical pro- world, 131 cess, or panlogism implies Fraser, A. Campbell, 141 fatalism, 229 155 268 Index. Kant's theory of knowledge, 121 Henotheism a stage of religious progress, in which one of a college of deities is for a time supreine, 89 Herbart on final purpose in the world, 138 Higher criticism, its importance established, 262 Hippias, theory of beauty, as suitableness to an end, 199 Historic peoples viewed as co- lossal men, 91 History, of man, a revelation of Infinite purpose, 241 ; is a history of religion itsell, 241; is a perpetual miracle, 259 ; of the Jews is subject to same his- torical treatment as that of other peoples, 261 Höffding, on psychical individu- ality, 41 ; criticism of Hume on the nature of the ego, or self, 169 Hutton, R. H., on the mysteri- ous feeling that we are watched by God, 233, 234 Huxley, Prof., regards the world as a materialized logical pro- cess, 157 ; admits that the feeling of the “ought" cannot be explained by evolutionary or derivative theories, 166 Immanence of Will the best explanation of the World, 133 Indic religion, its genius is meta- physical, 92-94 Iran, religion of, is ethical and dualistic, 94, 95 James, Professor William, "no Lachelier, his objection to final- ity as being instinctive, and blind, not involving purpose, thus emptying the word finality of meaning, 138 Language, morality and religion developed in external relations, 75; Unity of all languages ex- amined, 54 Legend and myth made use of by the Divine Spirit for pur- poses of education, 239 Leibniz on finality, 135 Lenormant François, his view of man's primitive sinlessness, 50 Liberty of Will not a blind choice, but governed by ideals of reason, 170 Lotze, Hermann, on influence of religion on progress, 26; on primitive moral perfection and fall of man, 6I; on Divine self-consciousness, 143, 144; on relations of mind and matter, 148 ; on conflict with evil to the end of time, 257 Love, spiritual, the highest reve- lation of God, 217, 225, 226; de- mand for spiritual affection towards God in modern eco- nomics, 217 Lyell, Sir Charles, on perfection of primitive man, as not ad- . missible, 54 Maine, Sir H., on primitive man's perception of personal agency in nature, 264 Man not the sole end for which the world is made, 141 Martineau, James, definition of religion, 18; relation of human to superhuman wills, 129; on Schopenhauer, 134; on inner and outer causality, 149; in the acts of conscience, we have a direct cognition of God, 163, thought without a thinker and no thinker without thought," 125 Jevons, F. B., regards Totemism as at one time a universal state, and a descent from monothe- ism, 102 Index. 269 182 ; quoted concerning the dowed with freedom, yet are causality of man, as depend dependent on the Ground of ent, and yet independent of the world, 152 Divine Causality, 209 ; on Monistic impulse in primitive morality as related to religion, thought, 129 221; on importance of saving Monotheism, primitive, and facts man's freedom of will from of archæology, 50 pantheistic absorption, 218 Montalembert, Monks of the Maspero, Count G., on flint im West, 12-16 plements in Egypt, 42 Montefiore, C. G., thinks monol- Menzies, Allan, 4; on continuity atry was first unveiled by of religious growth, II Moses, IOI Merivale, on the most potent ar- Moral character incomplete until gument for truth of Christian- duty becomes spontaneity, 221 ity, viz., Christian lives, 226 Moral ideal accepted by both Metaphysics a necessity of rea derivative and intuitional son, 117 ; physical science rests schools of ethics, 161; moral upon metaphysics, 119; prob ideals are the forces of progress, lem of metaphysics, 119; ab 164, 174; they point to future stract, must give way to induc perfection of society, 177 tive and ethical, metaphysic, Mosaic commands, become a 158, 164 pathos of the heart with the Michelet on universal morality, prophets, 214 181, 182 Motives are rational ideals, not Mill, John Stuart, 154 physical or psychical con- Miracles, no interference with straint of the choice of the will, order of the world, 233 ; are 168 outflashes of psychic activity of Mozley objects to miracles as a God, in harmony with regi- use of unknown law, 263 mented phenomena of the Müller, Max, . definition of re- world, 238 ; are exceptional ligion, 14; remarks upon his acts of Absolute Spirit, taking view, 15 ; his opinion concern- their place, without collision, ing animism, SI, 91 ; quotation in the world-order, 238; might from, 110, III be multiplied to infinite num Murphy, J. J., the Absolute does ber, but would be of no avail not exclude the relative, but if man were not already en implies it, 157 dowed with a religious capac- Mysticism, essential to religion, ity, 239 218; mistakes of mediaeval Momerie, Dr., 118 mysticism, 219; has not, for Monads, spiritual, are the atoms the most part, been divorced of science, 4+; have a psychi from reason and morality, 219; cal individuality, 44; in their is not unpsychological, 243 essence are one with God, as Mystics err in trusting to feeling interacting individualities, con unregulated by reason, 218; stitute the visible cosmos, 45 ; but are not more in error than in a state of stress under Divine the rationalist, or the moralist, discipline, offer the aspect, to 218 us, of matter, 45, 151 ; are en Mythological evolution, 87 un 270 Index. Mythopæic impulse of early men, 90 Natural selection is a means, not a cause, of variation, 136 Naturism of primitive man, 77–79 Nöldeke on naturism in Semitic religion, 100 Order of nature a purpose of Goodness, 235 set aside the moral imperative by denying the ethical person- ality of God, 166 Picton, quotation from, 124 Pietschmann quoted concerning one clan god of Canaanites and Phoenicians, IOI Platonician theory of beauty, 197 Prediction of events a power not unrelated to psychology, 250 Prehistoric archæology, disclos- ures made by it, 32 Primitive man and savage man, 33; capable of progress, un- like modern savage, 43 ; con- scious of a higher Power, 207 Progress, cumulative proof that it is continuous, 37; what is progress?, 40; four stages of progress, 41, 54; progress of animism sometimes has been arrested, 85; of man and na- ture a supernatural fact, 242; though continuous, yet not un- interrupted for a time, 254 Prophet, or seer, interprets na- tional feeling, 248, 249 Purpose in nature not always ap- parent, 235, 236 Pantheism, true and false, 208 ; metaphysical pantheism makes the Absolute devour the world ; scientific pantheism makes the world devour God, 210 ; can- not produce a spiritual love in man, as there must be a person for man to love, 211; is in re- ality atheism, 211 Paulsen, Prof., on freedom of the will, 171 Pentateuch, the, 104, 105 Perfectibility and perfection, 194 Personality, the beginning and end of metaphysics, 120, 121; is not a bundle of sensations, 124; personality of God and man stand and fall together, 145 ; of God assailed by pan- theism, 211 Pessimism, 177; remedies for pessimism, 180 Pfleiderer, Otto, his definition of religion, 16; on morality and religion, 76, 109, 160; on union of duty and love, 214 Philosophy has had a genetic progress, 39 Physical determinism, or psychi- cal determinism, 168 ; a dis- guised indeterminism, 172; only an hypothesis, 184 ; cer- tain links which they cannot supply, 185 Physiological ethics, attempts to Quatrefages, M, on primitive belief in continued life, 30 Quinet, Edgar, on primitive man, 31 ; on personal gran- : deur and influence of Christ, 227, 228; his criticism of Strauss, 227, 228 . Rauwenhoff on the feeling of the “ought," 166 Redemption of man implied in the evolution of the world, IÓI Rejected Addresses, a poem, lines quoted from it, 139 Religion, its universality, 3; history of, in what sense a Index. 271 unconsciousness of sin in AC- cadian texts, 70, 71; on To- temism, 113 Schiller, F. C. S. Note upon God and the Monads, 67; on potentiality and actuality, 153; on indeterminism, 172; on pantheism, as, practically, atheism, 211 Schleiermacher, definition of re- ligion, 12 Schopenhauer, 137; objection to finality, 138 Schrader, Dr. Otto, on naturism, 93 natural science, 5; science of historical and comparative, en lightens us as to content and validity of religion, 6; is not a subjective illusion, 9; not to be explained as "cosmic emo- tion,” nor as “ habitual admir- ation," 10; is a consciousness of God, 21 ; definition of religion, 22 ; has a natural history, 24; is a progressive capacity, 74, 75 ; common root of religion and morality, 76; interaction of religion and mo- rality, 83 Religious phenomena the legiti. mate materials of science, 4 - Science, 4 Remorse, an ethico-spiritual ex- perience, 222, 223; is not a survival of social judgments, nor is it a product of them, 223 Renan, M., 100 Revelation, of God, through the order of nature, 235; is not possible apart from man's prior capacity to receive it, 239 ; re- lation to revelation to psycho- logical laws, 240 ; is a divine illumination of man's natural powers, 240; is made through evolution of history, 241; im- manent revelation is not con- sistent with Deistic conception of the world, 245 ; is coeval with man's moral conscious- ness, 246; is made through the seer, or prophet, or hero, 247 ; considered in relation to scientific view of the world, 252 Romanes, Mr., holds that nature is instinct with contrivance, 155 ; his speculations concern- ing heredity may be left to future of science, 246 Ryle, Dr., on Hebrew Cosmog- ony, 59 Sayce, A. H. Note on primitive Schulz, Hermann, on Genesis, 58, 60 Schurman, J. G., quotes Darwin on variation, and contends that it is not unintentional, 154; says a question of conscience cannot be decided by a plebis- cite of utilitarians, 223 Science of language renders descent to savagery from higher stage improbable, 53 Science of religion, what is it?, 5; is not concerned with sub- human or animal qualities, 27 Sciences of nature, monistic in their tendency, 131 Scientists, must accept the mor- a l trustworthiness of nature, a virtual theism, before they can get under weigh, 140 Scriptural man, as depicted, a non-moral being, 52 Secretan, Charles, on precosmic fall, 68 ; on three difficulties necessary determinism must meet, 185, 187 Seer, or prophet, the child of his age, 247 ; every man capable of being a seer, 248 ; he utters the hopes and longings of his age, 248, 249 Self-consciousness of man, and Divine self-consciousness com- pared, 143 ; is an intuition and O 272 Index. is not capable of proof, and does not need it, 205 Self, the first reality known by us, 120; is not to be identified with sensations, 125 ; self and other-than-self, 127 Semitic religion, 99 Seth, Professor James, on free- dom of man, 183 Sin, a fact in the historic develop- ment, 44; began with pre- cosmic spirits, 45 ; is a rejec- tion of the ideal, 61; is a per- sonal, not an ancestral affair, 62; the consciousness of sin, is a negative aspect of man's intuition of Divine love, 224; nations as well as individuals are conscious of sin, 224 ; con- sciousness of sin has made men great reformers, 224 ; this sense of sin rises not from "vibrations” or “vibratiun- cles," but from consciousness of the Divine holiness, 225 Smith, Robertson, on Semitic Totemism, 102 Soul, unveiling of, to primitive man, 80 Special design in nature and man not irrational, nor wholly ab- sent, 140 Spencer, Herbert, his theory of ancestor-worship, 82 Spiritual experience the highest evidence of the Divine, 217 Spiritual love, completes the ethi- *cal feeling, 212 ; is based upon it, 212 ; must be taken account of by psychology, 217 Students of nature are, of neces- sity, metaphysicians, 132 Sublimity in objects of nature, and in human conduct, reveal God, 203 Supernaturalism, the true, is found in man's religious consti- tution, and in the Divine order of the world, 239; is not an as- sault upon man's conscious- ness, 240 Survival of primitive rites, doc- trines, phrases, 38 Themistes, iudicial awards sug- gested by the gods, to ancient kings, 264 Theologians, inconsistency of some, 255; they conceive of history as both a miracle and an ordered progress, 255 ; they accept Divine immanence for. a portion of world-time, and for another portion of it reject immanence, 255, 256 Thiele, C. P., on universality of religion, 3 Thought, connections of, not al- ways to be traced, 243, 244 Totemism, 102. Triumph of the view of Divine immanence, 252 Tylor, E. B., on importance of study of early man, 40; on doctrine of spirits, 82; criticism of Tylor's view, 89 Tyndall, Mr., returns to Greek idea of “ Power of Becoming" as needed to explain physical causation, 184 Unity of origin of mankind, 55 ; a unity of psychical constitu- tion, 56 Unity of the soul, ego, or self, 122 ; it is not a static unity, but realized in progress of kno Upton, Professor, 164; on free- dom, 173; on Divine love as immanent in man, 212, 229– 231 Utilitarian ethics, 189 Vaughan, Hours with the Mys- tics, quoted, 219 Vischer, Theodor, on the senti- m ent of the beautiful, 199 Von Hartman, 8 C Index. 273 Weber, Alfred, 154 Weizsäcker on the fall of man, 72 freedom have a precious faculty of ignoring the conse- quences of such denial, and act as if free, 186; the spec- tacle of men acting under the delusion that man is free, while they are not free, is a White, A. D., on Jewish Scrip- tures, 59 Whitney, Professor, on Unity of origin of languages and of men, 54 Will, in ultimate analysis, the world is Will, 131 ; imman- ent Will the explanation of the world, 133 ; inconceivable without intelligence, 134 ; de termined by reasons, not by motives, 168 ; is not blind or arbitrary in its choices, 170; it acts in view of ideals, 170 ; freedom of will is a capacity to rise above sensuous im- puises, 171 ; free will an ab- surdity on the naturalistic view, 185 ; they who deny its Wilson, Archdeacon, on modern criticism of Scripture, 59 Wilson, Sir Daniel, on palæo- lithic age, 31 ; on the skill of primitive man, 33 World, the, is a reality, 126; what is that reality, 128 ; is that re- ality Will? 129, 130; it is not governed by laws, but in ac- cordance with law, 136 ; it is the best revelation of God, 236; we can fancy other are a part of this world, 236 YONAY OU Thishen SA Dr Toriler nh" Conhet fru& hur hewith 177 n.insi ho lo us 157 V un infinems of Hond af. land Dan áirit me te lire soiting halleci log. humanto Io the A on the photos by faz "Hemorher to his too los linds, sech 150-1 Javimu izz, irlar? * K . 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