EESE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Received . 
 Accessions No. <J>'**-< J <J ' J Shelf No. 
 

 
 
THE 
 
 RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OR 
 
 THE UNIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE: 
 
 A COMPARISON 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHIEF PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS 
 OF THE WORLD 
 
 MADE WITH A VIEW TO REDUCING THE CATEGORIES OF THOUGHT, OR THE 
 
 MOST GENERAL TERMS OF EXISTENCE, TO A SINGLE PRINCIPLE, 
 
 THEREBY ESTABLISHING A TRUE CONCEPTION OF GOD. 
 
 BY 
 
 RAYMOND S. PERRIN 
 
 NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 27 AND 29 WEST 23D STREET 
 
 LONDON WILLIAMS & NORGATE 
 1885 
 
T4- 
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 1885 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 New York 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THERE is a popular dictum among priests and philosophers 
 that God, or the First Cause, is unknowable, and yet all re-. 
 ligions aim to teach the nature of God, and all philosophies 
 strive to define the First Cause. 
 
 Here is a manifest contradiction ; but the questions in- 
 volved are of such magnitude and require so much study 
 that, for the most part, it is allowed to pass unchallenged. 
 
 The cultivated mind, whatever its antecedents, holds a 
 judicial position. That is to say, the educated and thought- 
 ful members of society are looked to, to pass impartial 
 judgments upon questions concerning the general welfare. 
 This impartiality is particularly necessary in philosophy, for 
 thought is hedged about with prejudices, and almost every 
 man represents some logical sect or school which he feels it 
 his duty to support. 
 
 The great obstacle which religion and philosophy alike 
 encounter, in offering an explanation of the universe, is the 
 difficulty of finding a symbol of divine power or unity. A 
 symbol to have any real value must represent some fact, it 
 must be the emblem of some experience. Otherwise it is a 
 purely negative form of speech, a mere confession of igno- 
 rance. 
 
 The symbol which philosophy proposes for divine unity 
 has precisely the same meaning as that which religion offers. 
 They are both emblems of mystery ; they are both confes- 
 sions of ignorance. In so far, therefore, as these two great 
 spheres of knowledge, called philosophy and religion, have 
 attempted an ultimate analysis of existence they have failed; 
 the labor of both is incomplete. 
 
 iii 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 Philosophy, however, has approached this great problem 
 from another side : it has endeavored to build up a synthesis 
 of knowledge ; to discover the harmony or interdependence 
 of all facts. It has endeavored to reach, by proceeding from 
 particulars to generals, a universal principle. 
 
 The theorists of philosophy, commonly known as meta- 
 physicians, impatient of this slow method, would satisfy the 
 natural craving for a true symbol of divine unity by postu- 
 lating an unknowable principle, an emblem of mystery, as the 
 ultimate fact. This postulate, however, has been steadily 
 rejected, and the great quest goes on, insisting upon a true 
 analysis of being. 
 
 In this endeavor of philosophy to arrive at an ultimate 
 analysis, the great practical difficulty has been to reduce the 
 categories of thought, or the most general terms of existence, 
 to a single principle. The speculations of all ages contem- 
 plate this puzzle of universal terms, and endeavor with un- 
 tiring purpose to form, from the dissimilar parts, a divine 
 unity. 
 
 It is to the rules and principles of this great calculation 
 that the present work is devoted. The data employed are 
 derived from the most respected authorities, the conclusions 
 reached are confined to the equivalents of these data, and 
 the argument is developed in easy stages from the beginning 
 to the end. 
 
 To solve the metaphysical problem is to point out the 
 interdependence of all phases of knowledge by affiliating the 
 activity of perception with general activity, or by showing 
 the relation of the different aspects of existence, to existence 
 in general. This is to accomplish the unification of knowl- 
 edge, which has been the aim of all philosophies and of all 
 religions. 
 
 By what more direct way could this end be achieved than 
 by reviewing the story of human speculation from its rela- 
 tive beginning in ancient Greece to the present day, by 
 tracing the efforts made in the same direction, although 
 more indirect, which we find in the religions of the world, 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 and comparing each of these organized attempts at an under- 
 standing of life with the result of an ultimate analysis? 
 
 By this treatment the story of ancient and modern phi- 
 losophy is given a new interest. Instead of employing the 
 old historical method, the nearness of the approach of each 
 school to the solution of the problem of thought is pointed 
 out ; and the movement of the mind toward this goal is 
 shown to be the inevitable course of human progress. 
 
 The contemporaneous systems of Herbert Spencer and G. 
 H. Lewes are carefully reviewed and their results affiliated 
 with the sum of philosophy. So important are the psycho- 
 logical and sociological questions dealt with in these systems 
 that nearly one half of the space given to the review of phi- 
 losophy is allotted to them. 
 
 The successful study of the subject of Religion is shown 
 to be dependent upon a knowledge of the nature of lan- 
 guage and perception. In order to separate the supersti- 
 tious from the rational in belief, the history of all the great 
 religions is examined and the generic relation of Christianity 
 to the other faiths of the world is pointed out. As a conse- 
 quence the mind and character of Jesus are subjected to 
 established rules of historic and moral criticism. The ideals 
 of humanity for which Jesus so earnestly contended are found 
 to have been distinct principles in all the ancient civilizations, 
 and it is urged that we will need, in order to realize these 
 ideals, a higher intellectual and moral discipline than is taught 
 by Christianity. 
 
 To the study of morality and the establishment of a true 
 conception of God the best endeavors of the author have 
 been directed. The enormous advantage which a just knowl- 
 edge of the meaning of ultimate terms affords becomes 
 apparent when the question of the relation of personal to 
 general existence is discussed. The problems of ethics are 
 completely beyond the mind that harbors the belief in a 
 divine providence or a design in nature. These enthrone- 
 ments of personal existence distort all the higher logical 
 perspectives, and a morality which depends upon such an 
 understanding of life cannot be a true inspiration. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT is well known that religion, as well as philosophy, de- 
 pends upon language for the expression of its truths. This 
 seems a simple proposition, but what are its consequences? 
 If language is the sole medium of development of the higher 
 thoughts and feelings, in its genesis may we not hope to 
 discover the deepest truths of life and mind ? 
 
 Before the complex symbols which we call words came 
 into use, and hence before the mind acquired the faculty of 
 forming thoughts or extended comparisons, activities or 
 motions were the only medium of expression between sentient 
 beings. Language is the development of these expressive 
 actions, and so highly complex has it become, so far removed 
 from its rude beginnings, that it seems another order of 
 creation, a system of miraculous origin. But when we 
 remember that intelligence is a concomitant development 
 with language, that thought or spirit is but a building up of 
 words into ideas, and that these words are merely condensed 
 memories, common experiences which have become current 
 from tongue to tongue, is it not evident that there is no im- 
 penetrable mystery in speech, and that its product, mind, is a 
 synthesis of simple and familiar truths ? 
 
 Again, when we retrace sensibility or feeling, from which 
 language has been gradually evolved, to its beginnings in 
 organic life, we find no absolute demarcations ; we find that, 
 all life, whether mental or physical, is interdependent. 
 
 Hence the wonders of the intellect or the soul are only 
 wonders of complexity. The activities so intricately com- 
 bined in thought and feeling are perfectly familiar to us in 
 their simpler forms, and in the course of their development 
 
Vlii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 they include no facts which are not assimilable with our 
 experiences. But this announcement of the divine unity of 
 life, is not a welcome one to the majority of minds ; on the 
 contrary, it is generally regarded as an attack upon an ancient 
 privilege of the mind, the right to declare itself incompre- 
 hensible. 
 
 Thus, in endeavoring to construct a true philosophy, we 
 encounter at the outset a deep-rooted prejudice against 
 those simple explanations of life which spring from a com- 
 prehension of the nature of language. When the play of 
 thought and feeling which constitutes every thing that is 
 spiritual in our existence is discovered to be but a refine- 
 ment of organic activities, the first impulse is to look with 
 suspicion and dread upon such a levelling of the imagination. 
 Alarmed for the safety of its venerable myths, religion op- 
 poses the analysis of mind, and loudly proclaims against a 
 synthesis of knowledge which will bring all facts, whether 
 human or superhuman, into the true order of their develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Before the power of such an analysis as this, mysticism 
 shrinks a frightened spectre from the theatre of mind, drag- 
 ging in its train all the dissembling images of an undisci- 
 plined fancy. The hierarchy of heaven and the hosts of 
 hell, that have so long ruled over us, awake in their precipi- 
 tous retreat a tempest of emotions which rise to call them 
 back in the name of all that is holy. The light which drives 
 these spectres away leaves those who have worshipped them 
 almost sightless. The God which they could touch and 
 measure with their limited thoughts and feelings has van- 
 ished in the pure light of day, and in the cold immensity 
 they are left alone, and, as they would believe, spiritually 
 ruined. To such as these the truth seems terrible, that life 
 is only action, that its possibilities lie in the direction of 
 moral achievements, that its hopes, so far as they overstep 
 these limits, are wild and fruitless fancies. 
 
 To language, then, which is responsible for the extrava- 
 gances of human belief, we must look for the solution of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 great enigma. The central truth of language is that it is an 
 elaboration of the single principle of motion. In this fact 
 all lines of thought and feeling converge. God is the divine 
 unity of life, of which principle all individual existences are 
 but limited expressions. Every event, every happening, 
 whether human or extra-human, repeats this truth. 
 
 Mind, therefore, is the function of conditions which are 
 far wider and deeper than human life ; its images, so far as 
 they are not true reflections of this universal order, are de- 
 ceptive ; its perceptions spring from the concurrence of laws 
 which are as independent of consciousness as they are capable 
 of explaining the whole range of mental activity. 
 
 Perception accounts for mind, not mind for perception; 
 because perception is a simpler fact than language, and mind 
 is the product of language. The activities of nature express 
 conditions which are merely repeated in the processes of 
 mind, for the simplest activity declares a truth as profound 
 as any of the imaginings of the intellect. In this sense, and 
 only in this sense, nature perceives itself, intelligence is uni- 
 versal. 
 
 But man would appropriate the principle of life and 
 knowledge to himself. He would affirm that the infinity 
 and eternity of relations, of which humanity is but the pass- 
 ing form, are subservient to his existence ; that every thing 
 happens in reference to himself ; and, as the great currents 
 of nature toss him about in his struggle at self-maintenance, 
 he builds a world of phantom beings supposed to be inde- 
 pendent of natural processes in order to keep his theories in 
 countenance. As the history of the race progresses, and 
 the mastery of ignorance increases, this burlesque of nature 
 moves further and further into the background of thought, 
 for, as our view of cause and effect is widened, fewer and 
 fewer inconsistencies appear demanding to be clothed in 
 these unearthly forms. 
 
 The discovery of the nature of language imparts to us the 
 true knowledge of life. It discloses sensibility and feeling 
 (which are but forms of motion) as inarticulate perception, 
 and thought as an organic activity. 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Language is the first fruit of social life. For ages, ges- 
 tures or expressive motions were employed to eke out the 
 indefinite meaning of words, and where the faculty of speech 
 did not exist or was but slightly developed, gestures have 
 constituted of themselves a rude language. It is the growth 
 of definiteness in language which marks the progress of 
 humanity. In the delicate and intricate articulations of 
 thought we have the only instrument by which man can 
 establish extended relationships between himself and the 
 universe. Thought is not a thing apart from language ; the 
 spirit of a race breathes in the words and sentences which 
 have grown up to express the common life, and in the simple 
 laws which govern this development we find written the 
 nature of the thinking being. The nature of a being, its 
 origin and destiny, are revealed in the relations it bears with 
 surrounding life. To adequately express such relations a 
 definiteness of speech, hitherto unattained, is the first requi- 
 site ; for how are we to weigh in the balance of the mind 
 such fine proportions of thought unless the values of the 
 terms we employ are first clearly distinguished ? 
 
 The mind, then, is an activity which illuminates existence, 
 exalting the delicacy and range of human relations, and 
 giving to each individual that spirit of universal sympathy 
 which we call morality. 
 
 Religion and philosophy are ever offering us symbols of 
 existence, promising clearer views of life. But when we find 
 that these symbols do not harmonize, we are told that there 
 is an innate disorder in the uttermost regions of knowledge, 
 that all analyses lead at last to impenetrable mysteries. 
 And yet the universal measure of success in thought is the 
 establishment of order in the place of disorder, of definite 
 knowledge in the place of mystery. Does it not seem as 
 though this explanation were but a subterfuge ? 
 
 Ever since man has been able to state categorically his 
 beliefs concerning life and nature, the problem of Motion has 
 occupied the highest place among his thoughts. The effort 
 to solve this problem can be traced in an unbroken thread 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 from the dawn of philosophy to the present day. The cate- 
 gories of thought in which this problem is stated form the 
 burden of all metaphysical speculations, and the reduction 
 of these categories to the simple fact of Motion gives us the 
 solution of the metaphysical problem. 
 
 In the more vague and emotional sphere of religion the 
 same problem is unconsciously dealt with. The First Cause, 
 the most general principle, the one God, or the highest 
 among many gods, is the burden of all theological reasoning. 
 As the attributes of deity become more refined ; as they 
 exchange, through the agency of thought, the anthropomor- 
 phic or personal for the divine or most general, their identity 
 with the aspects of motion becomes evident ; for the Infinite 
 and the Absolute mean simply space and time, the objective 
 and subjective aspects of Motion. 
 
 The principle of universal gravitation or the absolute inter- 
 dependence of all things can be applied to mind and speech. 
 All words centre about a single word, all activities, inorganic, 
 organic, and superorganic, are strictly serial and intercon- 
 nected ; they are indivisible excepting in so far as they yield 
 to classification. In a word, the activities of the mind, and 
 of nature, are forms of motion and can be expressed in terms 
 of its aspects, space, and time. Applying this rule to lan- 
 guage we find it impossible to frame a sentence without 
 employing a verb, the symbol of action, and all the parts of 
 the sentence are but modifications of this action expressed 
 in terms of place and time. 
 
 This generalization, apparently so simple, is of transcen- 
 dent importance. It is fatal to every superstition and every 
 form of mystery. It defines the limits of language and 
 the nature of perception, for it shows that thought is in 
 reality but action. 
 
 To establish so important a conclusion as this, analysis 
 alone will not suffice. The analysis must be accompanied 
 with a synthesis which shall join the culture of the past with 
 that of the present and show that the unification of knowl- 
 edge is the natural consequence of the intellectual and moral 
 development of the race. 
 
Xll IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 This means that we need a new religion a religion 
 which shall appeal to the reason as well as to the emotions ; 
 which shall establish not a divine mystery, but the divine 
 unity of life and mind. 
 
 In Greece, thought was first emancipated from feeling ; and 
 true to the myth of the goddess Athenae, reason sprang into 
 the world a complete being armed cap-a-pie, ready for action. 
 Before this, thought had been involved with feeling, in religious 
 sentiment ; it had asserted its supremacy in many individuals 
 and in many ways, but it had never obtained its freedom and 
 established itself as an independent power in the world. 
 This logical sovereignty, which was so firmly established in 
 ancient Greece, has lasted through many vicissitudes to the 
 present day. In the meantime society has developed to 
 such an extent, that its other great forces clamor for an 
 equal recognition. Feeling becomes louder and louder in 
 her protestations of equality with the intellect. Her plea 
 is that morality is not the function of the mind any more 
 than of the organism, of reason any more than of slowly 
 acquired habit ; that the will is not a purely logical phe- 
 nomenon, but that its energies spring from and disappear 
 in the labyrinths of sentiency; that in a word, there is a 
 logic of feeling as well as a logic of signs, and the intellect is 
 the companion of the heart, not its despotic ruler. Thus 
 the despotism of reason is disputed, and we have the extra- 
 ordinary spectacle of philosophy ay, even metaphysics 
 disproving the unreasonable pretensions of an alleged " pure 
 reason " and winning success by the subjugation of these 
 pretensions. 
 
 The Pythagoreans were the first who attempted a complete 
 classification of the facts of the universe. Their effort, 
 though feeble, was in the right direction ; for the first prin- 
 ciple of perception is analysis, or classification ; and knowl- 
 edge can never be unified until an ultimate or complete 
 analysis has been performed. Aristotle repeated this effort, 
 and inscribed his celebrated ten categories of thought. 
 
 The history of thought has moved on, through the inter- 
 
INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 ruptions of the decline of the Greek and Roman states, and 
 the lethargy of the Dark and the Middle Ages. The light of 
 Islam threw a pale glare upon the thought of Greece, but it 
 soon faded out. Then the scholastic age ushered in the 
 revival of learning, and the arena of intellectual war was re- 
 opened in Europe. Many and fierce have been its conflicts. 
 Descartes and Spinoza followed upon the wrangling of the 
 Schoolmen, and established great systems of original investi- 
 gation. Bacon anticipated this effort, and opened the career 
 of logic in England. Then Kant reared his unequalled 
 monument of Idealism in Germany, his example being 
 followed by an army of the most thorough and devoted 
 students the world has produced. It was in Germany that 
 the exclusive sovereignty of the mind reached its zenith, 
 when Kant declared that all reality was subjective, that Mind 
 was the cause of the universe. Against this audacious tenet 
 Science entered a protest, which soon assumed the propor- 
 tions of a great impeachment ; and the psychologists of Eng- 
 land superseded the idealists of Germany in the world of 
 thought. The study of mind as the function of an organism 
 was the form which this protest first took. It needed but a 
 Darwin to show the perspectives of organic life, and a 
 Spencer to point out that the individual was but a single link 
 in the continuous chain of life and mind, for this great 
 movement, supported by the best scholars on the Continent, 
 to produce a. silent revolution in knowledge. 
 
 The world, then, has fully entered upon -a new era of 
 thought. But whether this thought is to be the sole 
 enjoyment of a few, or is to become the common prop- 
 erty of a great civilization, is a question which time must 
 decide. If it is to become general, the reform of knowl- 
 edge must penetrate to the very foundations of society ; 
 which means that the religious and the intellectual faith 
 of the multitude must be pledged to a single power or 
 government. To accomplish this, a new civilization must 
 arise, and whether it can arise out of any thing short of the 
 ruins of the old, is the question which presses upon our age.. 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The civilization to which we belong bears, by common 
 consent, the name of Christian. It has been brought to us in 
 developed forms by different nations. Among us it has 
 grown up into a new nation, different from any thing, in 
 some respects greater than any thing, that the world has yet 
 seen. But a rational view of history shows a certain mo- 
 notony in our experiences which forbodes evil. For if we are 
 passing through the same forms of development that past 
 civilizations have experienced, what right have we to expect 
 a better or a higher fate ? With Roman principles of law 
 and government, with Grecian love of the intellectual and 
 the beautiful, with the Scandinavian worship of freedom, and 
 the Semitic worship of God, we lack but one element of a 
 great national life, which is morality. If Christianity could 
 secure for us this greatest boon, we should be safe ; but does 
 it, can it, fulfil this all-important function ? Morality is not 
 merely the expression of the sentiments, or beliefs, of an 
 individual or race ; it is the type of its life. Its advocates 
 must not, therefore, appeal to faith or to reason alone ; they 
 must appeal with equal force to both. 
 
 Christianity is a religion of faith. It is admitted far and 
 wide, and among its most devout followers, that it cannot 
 sustain itself against the keen analysis of science, or the 
 commanding synthesis of history, but that it depends upon 
 faith for its life. The question then arises : Is this a safe re- 
 ligion for our age? Can we afford to bring up children, in a 
 world teeming with intellectual energies, under any thing 
 less than the broadest and highest logical discipline ? 
 
 In advocating the Religion of Philosophy, there seems 
 little hope of success. All imaginary advantages are on the 
 side of the Religions of Faith. These religions do not scruple 
 to hold out the promise of rich rewards in another world, for 
 services and belief, of aeons of blissful existence for the 
 faithful ; nor do they hesitate to threaten the unbelieving 
 with punishments too dreadful to be described. The Re- 
 ligions of Faith monopolize all the popular incentives to 
 morality. As a consolation for the misery resulting from 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 the still unmastered passions, they emphasize the temporal 
 character of human happiness, and contrast it with joys 
 which they say are eternal. To the weary they promise 
 rest ; to the bereaved, reunion with the dead ; to the poor, 
 plenty ; to the sick, health. All these obligations are ac- 
 cepted upon faith. Their redemption is postponed until the 
 empire of time and space shall have passed away. 
 
 Philosophy takes none of these advantages; it stoops to 
 no such disingenuous methods. It sounds the alarm of a 
 fleeting existence, it teaches the dire limitation of personal 
 life, it identifies time with eternity, and matter with infinite 
 space. It teaches that as there is no absolute death, there 
 is no absolute personal life ; that the absolute means time, 
 or the unchanging, and that individuality is transient and 
 ever-changing. It teaches that cause and effect are but 
 different aspects of each event, and that there is no need of 
 a supernatural power to entail the effects of conduct, for 
 they are inevitable. It appeals to nothing but the most im- 
 personal sympathies as the incentive to morality; and yet it 
 affirms that morality is the only real success of life. Thus 
 without a single pretext of authority, except the voice of 
 conscience pleading through the experience of ages the cause 
 of humanity ; unenforced by mysterious fears, unsustained 
 by ecstatic hopes, it confronts the gorgeous imagery, the 
 superb organization, the venerated associations of the Re- 
 ligions of Faith, and demands that their creeds shall be 
 brought into harmony with the discoveries of science and 
 history, that their promises shall be limited to their responsi- 
 bility and their knowledge, and that their moral teachings 
 shall be made to appeal to the highest nature of man. 
 
 With these reforms, and nothing less, will philosophy be 
 satisfied. To the realization of this ideal will all its efforts 
 be bent. And should the materials of our civilization prove 
 unequal to the tension of these principles, it will become 
 the mission of Philosophy to deposit among its ruins the 
 germ of a higher life. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART /. 
 
 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER. . PAGB. 
 
 I. THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. . . .3 
 
 Thales Anaximines Diogenes of Apollonia Anaximan- 
 der Pythagoras. 
 
 II. THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD 24 
 
 Xenophanes Parmenides Zeno of Elea Heraclitus 
 Anaxagoras Empedocles Democritus. 
 
 III. THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. ... 42 
 
 The Sophists Socrates Plato. 
 
 IV. ARISTOTLE, THE STOICS, THE CYNICS, AND THE 
 
 SKEPTICS OF THE NEW ACADEMY. ... 62 
 
 Aristotle Zeno the Stoic Antisthenes Diogenes Epi- 
 curus Pyrrho Arcesilaus Carniades. 
 
 V. THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL, SCHOLASTICISM, 
 
 AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. ... 85 
 
 Philo Plotinus Abelard Bruno Bacon. 
 
 VI. MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 105 
 
 Descartes Spinoza Hobbes Locke Hartley Leibnitz 
 Berkeley Hume. 
 
 VII. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 144 
 
 Kant Fichte Schelling Hegel Schleiermacher 
 Schopenhauer. 
 
 VIII. THE ECLECTICISM AND POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF 
 
 FRANCE AND THE SCOTCH SCHOOL. . . 180 
 
 Gassendi Malebranche Condillac Cabanis Gall 
 Royer-Collard Cousin Comte Reid Hamilton. 
 
XV111 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 IX. 
 
 PART 21. 
 
 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 PAGE,. 
 211 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 The Relation of Perception to Universal Activity The 
 Definitions of Evolution and of Life The " Unknow- 
 able." 
 
 X. HERBERT SPENCER (continued) 239 
 
 An Independent Study of the Relation of Perception to 
 Organic Life The Interdependence of Thought, Feel- 
 ing, and Action. 
 
 XI. HERBERT SPENCER (continued') 254 
 
 The Analysis of Reason The Fundamental Intuition 
 The Contrasted Theories of Perception. 
 
 XII. HERBERT SPENCER (concluded) 278 
 
 Sociology an Instrument in Determining Ultimate Beliefs. 
 
 XIII. GEORGE HENRY LEWES. ..... 296 
 
 Belief in the Unknowable Its Influence upon the Study 
 of Psychology. 
 
 XIV. GEORGE HENRY LEWES (continued). . . .312 
 
 The Principles of Psychology. 
 XV. GEORGE HENRY LEWES (continued). . . . 326 
 
 The Unity of the Whole Organism as a Factor of Mind 
 Lewes' Definitions of Experience and Feeling. 
 
 XVI. GEORGE HENRY LEWES (concluded). . . .351 
 The Relation of Universal to Organic Activities Lewes' 
 Theory of Perception. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 XVII. SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY 
 
 Resemblance between Primitive and Modern Religious 
 Beliefs Superstition the Negative, Morality the Positive 
 Form of Religion. 
 
 367 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 XVIII. THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. . . 390 
 
 In Egypt the Belief in Immortality Reached its Highest 
 Development Mysticism and Idealism. 
 
 XIX. THE RELIGIONS OF CONFUCIUS, ZOROASTER, AND 
 
 BUDDHA. ....... 416 
 
 All the Higher Ideals of Christian Morality Firmly Estab- 
 lished Principles throughout the World Ages before our 
 Era The Resemblance between Christian Worship and 
 the Worship of Earlier Faiths. 
 
 XX. THE RELIGIONS OF GREECE, ROME, SCANDINAVIA 
 
 AND ISLAM 440 
 
 Widely Contrasted Types of Religious Belief Showing 
 Constant Principles of Development. 
 
 XXI. THE HEBREW RELIGION 468 
 
 Semitic Monotheism The Jewish Conception of God. 
 
 XXII. THE RELIGION OF CHRIST 489 
 
 The Origin of the Faith The Doctrines of Jesus A 
 Glance at the Present State of Christianity in America. 
 
 XXIII. THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. . . . .523 
 
 An Ultimate Analysis Essential to an Understanding of 
 Morality The Scope of Moral Perceptions The Effect 
 upon Conduct of the Belief in a Personal God and a 
 Future Life Language and Intelligence as Factors in 
 Morality The Origin of the Idea of Duty or Obligation 
 The Questions of Personal and of National Purity. 
 
 XXIV. APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA IN BEHALF 
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. . .551 
 
 The Question Considered with Regard to Nations and Men 
 The Question Considered with Regard to Children 
 Religion is the Highest or Most General Thought and 
 Feeling ; Morality the Embodiment of Both in Action 
 The Home is the Citadel of Individual and of National 
 Purity. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
PART I. 
 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Thales Anaximenes Diogenes of Apollonia Anaximander Pythagoras. 
 
 s^ V 
 IN searching, for the dawn of philosophy one becomes lost 
 
 in the perspectives of the past. The comprehension of any 
 study depends so largely upon what is brought to it by the 
 student, upon the suggestions of his own knowledge, that in 
 reading the myths and theories which have come down to us 
 from the most ancient thinkers, it is natural to imagine them 
 pregnant with the deepest meaning. We see in these early 
 efforts to comprehend man and nature vague expressions of 
 the very problems which occupy us to-day. Thus, owing 
 to the plane of experience from which we regard ancient 
 thought, we are apt to overestimate its significance. For us 
 the difficulty is, to limit the meaning of the language of the 
 ancients by the actual knowledge which they possessed. 
 
 In this difficulty a knowledge of the nature of language 
 comes to our assistance. Language itself is but a system 
 of symbols representing ideas by virtue of an agreement 
 which is the slow outgrowth of usage. The nicety of the 
 adjustment of words to ideas is to be estimated by the pre- 
 cision with which the ideas are called up by the words. 
 If, for instance, a certain combination of words leaves a 
 choice or uncertainty as to the idea intended to be conveyed, 
 the expression is imperfect in proportion to the extent of the 
 uncertainty. In thinking, we are obliged to employ words, 
 
 3 
 
4 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 for thought itself is partly the function of words : language 
 is a part of the structure of which thought is the activity. 
 
 This brings us to the great truth, that there is an inter- 
 dependence between ideas and words, between thought and 
 its expression ; that order and success in the one imply sym- 
 metry and definiteness in the other. It follows, therefore, 
 that in studying the history of philosophy we can estimate 
 the quality of the thought of each age by the character as to 
 directness or definiteness of the terms in which we find it ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 We shall have no need of going beyond the history of 
 Greece for a beginning of philosophy. The contributions to 
 thought which come from other and earlier sources are all 
 represented in the efforts of the early Greek thinkers. The 
 degree of definiteness depends so largely, after all, upon the 
 actual experience of the race (its progress as indicated by 
 the spread of knowledge), that the higher generalizations can 
 never far supersede that classified particular thought 
 known as Science. Viewing intellect in its broadest light, as 
 the logical or moral aspect of life, actions express thought 
 with even greater precision than words. Valid comparisons 
 between early races and nations in respect to this quality of 
 definiteness as displayed in their general conceptions, must 
 therefore be made to include more factors than those which 
 are commonly called " intellectual." Such comparisons 
 must be extended to their whole civilizations, including the 
 phenomena of their arts and sciences, their religions and 
 their morals. 
 
 As a result of such a comparison, the Greek nation stands 
 forward clearly as the progenitor of the higher types of 
 European civilization and thought. In the history of Greek 
 thought we find all the phases of speculative development 
 which illustrate the inception and primary growth of the art 
 of generalization ; and as this is the whole field of philoso- 
 phy, to extend our examples to those furnished by the Hin- 
 doos, Egyptians, Chinese, Persians, Hebrews, or any other 
 nations, would be to needlessly lengthen what is at best a 
 
THE DA WN OF PHILOSOPHY. 5 
 
 tedious story. Tedious by reason of its slowness, but it is 
 deeply interesting when viewed as the explanation of what 
 we are, and as giving us some idea of what we may become. 
 
 Viewing thought as the perfecting process, or the purifica- 
 tion of individual life, which is the most comprehensive 
 theory of intellectual progress, the history of speculation 
 becomes a matter of great practical interest. As we 
 study the beginnings of human speculation and follow out 
 its development we cannot but be impressed with the great 
 logical possibilities which lie before us. Let us begin, there- 
 fore, this story of human speculation with the far-famed ad- 
 ventures of the Greek mind. 
 
 Thales, who is supposed to have been the first Greek phi- 
 losopher, was born at Miletus, a Greek colony in Asia Minor. 
 There are no means of determining the exact date of his 
 birth, but the first year of the 36th Olympiad (B.C. 636) is 
 generally accepted as correct. Like most of the prominent 
 men of Greece, he seems to have taken an active interest in 
 public affairs. Egypt is credited as the source of his learn- 
 ing, and, as he is said to have been a proficient in mathema- 
 tics, there is little doubt that the famous Egyptian geometers 
 were among his early instructors. The principal feature of 
 his philosophy was the theory that water was the source of 
 all things. In thus postulating a substance as a first cause, 
 the battle of philosophy was begun. To the observing and 
 thoughtful Greek, six hundred years before Christ, the uni- 
 verse was a chaos of unexplained and irreconcilable differ- 
 ences. The now familiar physical forces had not been dis- 
 joined in thought from the substances which manifested them. 
 When, indeed, we consider the unquestioning belief in the 
 absolute and ultimate character of these ideal separations 
 which we may observe in the writings of Tyndall, Balfour 
 Stewart, Tait, and other Physicists of our day, even the 
 ancient Greeks might be regarded as having a logical advan- 
 tage over modern science ; yet the darkness in which the 
 poverty of analysis, in the time of Thales, must have en- 
 shrouded all nature can hardly be overestimated. The pro- 
 
6 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 cedure of the mind is ever constant ; thought establishes its 
 base-lines and triangulates its more or less accurate advances ; 
 and these projections reach toward a universal principle, a 
 single fact by which all other facts may be explained. 
 
 Thales naturally sought out a cause, or chief antecedent, 
 of all that he saw around him, and his induction was more 
 elaborate than would at first appear. It was during his time 
 that a spirit of contemplation and investigation first made 
 its appearance among the Greeks. Hitherto men had con- 
 tented themselves with accepting what they saw without ex- 
 planation, remanding all obscure phenomena to the realm of 
 superstitious adoration. Thales being the first in Greece 
 who sought to establish a primal cause, is regarded as the 
 originator of philosophic inquiry. It is not easy to return 
 from our more advanced point of scientific observation to 
 that of Thales. Yet there can be little doubt that his choice 
 of water as the ultimate or formative principle of nature 
 was based upon extended observation supplemented by 
 thought. He was impressed with the universal presence of 
 moisture in animals and plants, in the earth and in the skies. 
 Seeds were apparently nourished by moisture ; all life 
 seemed due to the presence of water. His cosmological 
 theory too was no doubt biased by the ancient superstition 
 that the earth floated upon water ; for it is natural to sup- 
 pose, when we consider the matter in connection with more 
 modern thought, that this early step taken to establish a first 
 principle was not entirely free from the then ruling influence 
 of myths. Thales also endeavored to explain that every 
 thing was evolved from seed-germs ; the whole world, as well 
 as individual beings. 
 
 This, however, leads us to the doctrines of Anaximenes, 
 who is said to have been born in the same Greek colony as 
 Thales, in the 63d Olympiad (B.C. 529). His views were 
 fundamentally the same as those of Thales, though his ex- 
 planation of the primary essence was different. Anaximenes 
 could not accept water as the cause of all, for to him air 
 seemed to be life. He taught that air was the origin of all 
 
THE DA WN OF PHILOSOPHY, J 
 
 things ; that it was infinite, and in its pure state invisible. 
 Only through its qualities heat, cold, moisture, and motion 
 could it be known to us. To its eternal motion he attrib- 
 uted all change, for he reasoned that motion alone is the 
 power manifested in all the transformations of nature. He 
 also believed that the condensation of air had produced, 
 the earth, which he supposed perfectly flat, and supported 
 by air. He also thought that the heavenly bodies were flat ; 
 and he is said to have been the first to discover that the 
 moon shone by the sun's light. Anaximenes goes a step 
 further than Thales, for from individual life he endeavored 
 to deduce universal life. It is true that this effort took the 
 form of a theory, that the universe was a living organism, 
 palpitating with the same kind of life observed in terrestrial 
 organisms. So ancient is this belief, however, that it is hard 
 to say in what degree Anaximenes surpassed Thales in his 
 conception of the truth which underlies it. 
 
 Another famous theory of the universe was offered in this 
 epoch, by Diogenes of Apollonia, 1 born about the Both 
 Olympiad (B.C. 460). He argued, with Anaximenes, that air 
 was the origin of all things, but, giving it a deeper significa- 
 tion, he compared it to the soul ; though the word soul, for 
 him, meant life in a general sense, rather than mind distinc- 
 tively. As the primary substance of Thales was more than 
 the element itself was water endowed with vital energy, 
 so the air of Diogenes was more than the atmosphere ; it was 
 air full of vital qualities of warmth and life which ensouled 
 the universe. Life was to him Intelligence : " For without 
 reason," he says, " it would be impossible for all to be ar- 
 ranged so duly and proportionately as that all should main- 
 tain its fitting measure ; winter and summer, day and night, 
 the rain, the wind, and fair weather, and whatever object we 
 consider, will be found to have been ordered in the best and 
 most beautiful manner possible." 
 
 There is something very interesting in these intensely 
 
 1 Diogenes of Apollonia is not to be confounded with Diogenes the cynic, 
 the contemporary of Plato. 
 
8 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 human if crude speculations. The accuracy with which they 
 have been repeated by the thoughtful of subsequent ages 
 speaks volumes for the constancy of mental procedures, if 
 not for the progress of knowledge. It would not be difficult 
 to find, even in our day, men of high standing in the intel- 
 lectual world who reason precisely as did Diogenes of Apol- 
 lonia, with regard to universal intelligence. In other words, 
 they apply to matter and to general phenomena a word 
 which expresses conditions of human sentiency that have 
 been built up into what we term intelligence or mind. 
 They imagine that the order of nature can only be explained 
 by the sequences of thought ; whereas all mental activity 
 is but an expression of this order of nature, a consequence of 
 conditions that are far wider and deeper than human life. It 
 would thus be hardly fair, to charge Diogenes, who lived 
 about twenty-three centuries ago, with anthropomorphism, 
 for at that time the circumscriptions of human life, now so 
 familiar, had scarcely been thought of, much less delineated ; 
 but to interpret, in our times, the order of nature as a man- 
 ifestation of intelligence, is to lose sight of the limits of 
 language and the nature of perception. 
 
 Diogenes believed that air was intelligence, or order itselL 
 " That which has knowledge is what men call air ; it is it 
 that regulates and governs all ; and hence is the use of air 
 to pervade all, and to dispose all, and to be in all ; for there 
 is nothing that has not part in it. " l 
 
 It is seen from the above that Thales, Anaximenes, and 
 Diogenes tried to explain the universe from a physical basis, 
 citing water, air, and air-life as the origin of all things. 
 There was a man, however, who lived about the same time 
 as Thales, who seems to have divined the great truth that 
 the physicial, substantial, or statical aspect of nature is not 
 an ultimate fact, but rather a phase or aspect only of the 
 ultimate fact. The learned disquisitions on the nature of 
 matter, which form so prominent a feature of the philoso- 
 phic literature of our century, were probably an unknown. 
 
 1 See Ritter, vol. I., p. 214. 
 
THE DA WN OF PHILOSOPHY. 9 
 
 luxury to the early Greek thinkers ; so that we have no 
 choice but to admire the independence and astuteness of 
 Anaximander in taking a position so much in advance of that 
 occupied by the teachers of modern physics. No one who stu- 
 dies the science of Physics, as it is taught in the universities 
 of the world to-day, would suspect that matter was not an 
 ultimate fact. Those who speak of the absolute weight and 
 extension of atoms, postulating a material cause of all 
 phenomena, reason precisely as did Thales, Anaximenes and 
 Diogenes. To regard matter as an ultimate fact is to re- 
 verse the order of preception, for matter can never mean 
 more than an aspect of motion. 1 
 
 Anaximander is said to have been born in the 42d Olym- 
 piad (B.C. 610). He excelled in the political and scientific 
 knowledge of his time. " He was passionately addicted to 
 mathematics, and framed a series of geometrical problems," 
 and is credited with the invention of the sun-dial and the 
 origination of the system of geographical maps. 
 
 Anaximander is stated to have been the first to use 
 the term principle for the beginning of things. He defined 
 this word as the infinite. One of his tenets was : " The 
 Infinite is the origin of all things." In thus seizing upon 
 a principle, not a substance, as the ultimate generalization, 
 
 1 To show how vain it is to consider any special property of matter as ulti- 
 mate, we quote the pertinent objections which Judge Stallo brings against the 
 habit of regarding weight or density as absolute. 
 
 " The weight of a body is a function, not of its own mass alone, but also of 
 that of the body or bodies by which it is attracted, and of the distance between 
 them. A body whose weight, as ascertained by the spring-balance or pendulum, 
 is a pound on the surface of the earth, would weigh but two ounces on the 
 moon, less than one-fourth of an ounce on several of the smaller planets, about 
 six ounces on Mars, two and one-half pounds on Jupiter, and more than twenty- 
 seven pounds on the sun. And while the fall of bodies, in vacua, near the sur- 
 face of the earth amounts to about sixteen feet (more or less, according to lati- 
 tude) during the first second, their corresponding fall near the surface of the 
 sun is more than four hundred and thirty-five feet. 
 
 " The thoughtlessness with which it is assumed by some of the most eminent 
 physicists that matter is composed of particles which have an absolute primor- 
 dial weight persisting in all positions and under all circumstances, is one of the 
 most remarkable facts in the history of science." " Modern Physics," p. 205,. 
 
10 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Anaximander at once rose above materialism, and perceived 
 that divine unity which alone can harmonize life and mind. 
 Speaking of this principle, Ritter says : " The reason 
 why Anaximander regarded the primary substance as infinite 
 finds a natural explanation in the infinite variety of the 
 evolutions of the world, which have their ground in it. He 
 is represented as arguing that the primary substance 
 must have been infinite to be all-sufficient for the limit- 
 less variety of produced things with which we are en- 
 compassed. Now, although Aristotle expressly charac- 
 terizes this infinite as a mixture, we must not think of it as a 
 mere multiplicity of primary material elements ; for to the 
 mind of Anaximander it was a unity, immortal and imperish- 
 able, an ever-producing ENERGY. This production of 
 individual things was derived by Anaximander from an 
 eternal motion of the infinite; from which it would appear 
 that he ascribed to it an inherent vital energy, without, how- 
 ever, employing the terms life and production in any other 
 acceptation than the only one allowable by the character of 
 his philosophy, in the sense, i. e., of motion, by which the 
 primary elements of the infinite separate themselves one 
 from another." * 
 
 Anaximander acquired a great reputation for learning; 
 and as the Greeks spoke little but their own language. his 
 wisdom was, for the most part, the result of a direct study of 
 nature. " His calculations of the size and distance of 
 the heavenly bodies were committed to writing in a small 
 work, which is said to be the earliest of all philosophical 
 writings." 3 His inventions of the sun-dial and of geograph- 
 ical maps, and his passionate love of mathematics, above 
 .mentioned, declare him to have been a man of definiteness 
 and thoroughness in his researches ; and this is the more in- 
 teresting when we consider that he struck the key-note 
 of philosophy, that he framed an hypothesis which all subse- 
 quent research has proved unable to destroy. 
 
 1 Ritter, vol. I., p. 269. 
 
 2 Lewes : " Biographical History of Philosophy," p. n. 
 
THE DA WN OF PHILOSOPHY. 1 1 
 
 The speculations of Anaximander, coming to us from 
 a period five centuries before the beginning of the Christian 
 era, before even Greece had reached her political and literary 
 supremacy, stand out with prominence from their faded his- 
 torical surroundings. And when we think that the doctrines 
 of Pythagoras were the natural outgrowth of these specula- 
 tions, and that even they were said to have their exact coun- 
 terparts in the philosophy of the " Jews, Indians, Egyptians, 
 Chaldeans, Phoenicians, nay, even the Thracians," we are 
 compelled to acknowledge that the much vaunted progress 
 of philosophy among us is a claim that at least should be 
 investigated. 
 
 Pythagoras, about the time of whose birth there is much 
 dispute, opinions varying from the 43d to the 64th 
 Olympiad, was the founder of a very large and important 
 school of thought. 
 
 To him we seem to owe the term philosophy ; for although 
 the word was not current in his tirr.c, he declared himself to 
 be a lover of wisdom for its own sake, which is to-day the 
 accepted definition of philosopher. He regarded contem- 
 plation as the highest exercise of man, and emphasized the 
 distinction between seeking wisdom for ulterior purposes and 
 seeking it for itself. It is to denote this distinction that he 
 employed the term. philosopher. His aim was to reform life 
 by cultivating religious sentiment, and by instilling morality 
 into politics. 
 
 The accounts of Pythagoras depict for us that spirit of 
 exclusiveness which seems to have prevailed among the 
 leaders of learning, as well as of religion, in the early history 
 of thought. This tendency accounts for the constitution of 
 the secret society of the Pythagoreans, into which initiation 
 could only be obtained after five years of probation, years 
 during which many privations and other tests of character 
 were imposed. Indeed, so severe were these disciplines, 
 chief among which was the injunction of silence, that many 
 novices gave up in despair ; these were adjudged unworthy 
 to enter the " sanctuary of science." 
 
12 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Pythagoras seems to have differed from the savants of his 
 time in his ideas of the social and intellectual importance of 
 women,' fifteen of whom were among the members of his 
 school. Some accounts say that he lectured to and taught 
 women, and that his wife also was a philosopher. 
 
 The motto of the Pythagorean school was, " Not unto all 
 should all be made known." Concerning its doctrines there 
 is little unanimity of opinion ; they are said to have been 
 derived principally from the Eastern nations ; and nothing 
 indeed could be more natural than such a lineage, as from 
 these nations came nearly all that was prior to Greek 
 thought. The religious conceptions of Pythagoras, among 
 all his teachings, are alone admitted to be of a Greek origin. 
 Ritter tells us that the Egyptians taught him geometry, the 
 Phoenicians arithmetic, the Chaldeans astronomy, and the 
 Magi morality. 
 
 The Pythagorean school is represented as being not only a 
 scientific, but a religious and political society. Many mar- 
 vellous things are told of its founder; but it is generally 
 conceded that he attracted many students from distant 
 countries ; that nothwithstanding the symbolical nature of 
 his doctrines he advanced scientific knowledge, especially 
 mathematics ; and that both in politics and in speculation 
 he exerted a great influence over the age in which he lived. 
 The attention which this school received from the later 
 Greeks is instanced in the works of Aristotle, who modelled 
 his categories of thought, or most general principles, upon 
 the Pythagorean plan. Thus Aristotle describes its thought : 
 
 " In the age of these philosophers [the Eleats and Ato- 
 mists], and even before them, lived those called Pythagore- 
 ans, who at first applied themselves to mathematics, a sci- 
 ence they improved ; and having been trained exclusively in 
 it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the 
 principles of all things. 
 
 "Since numbers are by nature prior to all things, in num- 
 bers they thought they perceived greater analogies with that 
 which exists and that which is produced, than in fire, earth,.. 
 
THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 or water. So that a certain combination of numbers was 
 Justice ; and a certain other combination of numbers was 
 Reason and Intelligence ; and a certain other combination 
 of numbers was Opportunity ; and so for the rest. 
 
 " Moreover, they saw in numbers the combinations of har- 
 mony. Since, therefore, all things seemed formed similarly 
 to numbers, and numbers being by nature anterior to things, 
 they concluded that the elements of numbers are the ele- 
 ments of things ; and that the whole heaven is a harmony 
 and a number. Having indicated the great analogies be- 
 tween numbers and the phenomena of heaven and its parts, 
 and with the phenomena of the whole world, they formed a 
 system ; and if any gap was apparent in the system, they 
 used every effort to restore the connection. Thus, since 
 ten appeared to them a perfect number, potentially con- 
 taining all numbers, they declared that the moving celes- 
 tial bodies were ten in number ; but because only nine are 
 visible they imagined a tenth, the Anticthorne. 
 
 " We have treated of all these things more in detail else- 
 where. But the reason why we recur to them is this that 
 we may learn from these philosophers also what they lay 
 down as their first principles, and by what process they hit 
 upon the causes aforesaid. 
 
 " They maintained that Number was the Beginning (Prin- 
 ciple) of things, the cause of their material existence, and 
 of their modifications and different states. The elements 
 of number are Odd and Even. The Odd is finite ; the 
 Even, infinite. Unity, the One, partakes of both these, 
 and is both Odd and Even. All number is derived from 
 the One. The heavens, as we said before, are composed 
 of numbers. Other Pythagoreans say there are ten Prin- 
 cipia, those called co-ordinates : 
 
 " The finite and the infinite. 
 " The odd and the even. 
 " The one and the many. 
 "The right and the left. 
 *' The male and the female. 
 
14 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 " The quiescent and the moving. 
 
 " The right line and the curve. 
 
 " Light and darkness. 
 
 " Good and evil. 
 
 " The square and the oblong. 
 
 " * * * All the Pythagoreans considered the elements as 
 material ; for the elements are in all things, and constitute 
 the world. * * * 
 
 " * * * The finite, the infinite, and the One, they main- 
 tained to be not separate existences, such as are fire, water,, 
 etc. ; but the abstract Infinite and the abstract One are re- 
 spectively the substance of the things of which they are 
 predicated ; and hence, too, Number is the substance of all 
 things. They began by attending only to the Form, and 
 began to define it ; but on this subject they were very im- 
 perfect. They define superficially; and that which suited 
 their definition they declared to be the essence of the thing 
 defined ; as if one should maintain that the double and the 
 number two are the same thing, because the double is first 
 found in the two. But two and the double are not equal 
 (in essence) ; or if so, then the one would be many ; a con- 
 sequence which follows from their (the Pythagorean) doc- 
 trine." 1 
 
 It has been the aim of all historians of philosophy to> 
 classify the systems of belief which have reached us from, 
 the past, paying due regard to their succession in time, in 
 certain groups, or types of thought, which are more or less 
 closely identified with the localities or countries in which 
 they have appeared. This seems the most natural method 
 to pursue in writing a description of thought as it has oc- 
 curred in history. But when the object is, as in the case of 
 this work, to examine the whole subject of human knowl- 
 edge, a less elaborate historical method will better serve. 
 Instead of going through the tedious repetitions of detail in 
 all the recognized philosophies, and pointing out their inter- 
 dependencies, classifying them into such schools as the 
 
 1 Lewes: " Bio. His. of Phil.," p. 34. 
 
THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 Ionian or physical, the Pythagorean or mathematical, the 
 Eleatic, and the Megaric, we will content ourselves with a 
 brief sketch of the most important systems, and a portrayal 
 of the original features in each. The other method has 
 been so exhaustively applied by such writers as Ritter, Ten- 
 nemann, Degerando, Victor Cousin, Hegel, Zeller, and 
 Uebervveg, and its results, after all, are so purely historical, 
 so meagre in a logical and developmental sense, that there is 
 little encouragement for others to follow it. 
 
 We will confine ourselves, therefore, to the endeavor to 
 show, by selections from the accounts of these philosophies, 
 that there has been one great problem of thought which they 
 have all attempted to solve, and that the nearness of the 
 approach of each to the solution of this problem has 
 little or no connection with their relative positions in 
 history. The organic history of our race is so incom- 
 parably great when measured by the few centuries of 
 progress which make up the sum of recorded history, that 
 in the strict sense of the word we have no ancient philosophy 
 to study. The Greek mind suffers nothing by comparison 
 with the mind of the nineteenth century. With regard to 
 their natural capacity for dealing with the fundamental 
 problems of thought, the Greeks were our peers. If intro- 
 spection, or any purely logical achievement could have sup- 
 plied this coveted knowledge, we should have inherited it 
 from them in the same perfection in which their art has 
 reached us. Neither with the Greeks nor the moderns has 
 there been any want of intellectual acumen. There is a 
 deeper cause for our failure, thus far, to grasp this problem 
 of thought. 
 
 What is this cause ? It is to be found in the limitations 
 which have hitherto restricted our conceptions of knowl- 
 edge. Human knowledge in the higher sense means human 
 life, and the problem of thought can only be solved by the 
 development of knowledge as a whole. From the time of 
 the ancient Greeks to our day, the nature of man has pro- 
 gressed but very little. Human character appears rather in 
 
1 6 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the attitude of about ascending to a higher plane than of oc- 
 cupying it. And until this ascent has been actually made, 
 we cannot look upon the struggles of the Greeks to solve 
 the problems of thought as antique or alien. Their meth- 
 ods, their aspirations, and their successes, judged by accepted 
 standards, were in essence like our own ; and with our own 
 they compare very favorably. In describing, therefore, the 
 outlines of the thought of Thales and his immediate succes- 
 sors, and in emphasizing the success of Anaximander in his 
 effort to reach a solution of the great problem before us, 
 strange as it may seem, we have already drawn the logical 
 boundaries of the whole history of philosophy. Notwith- 
 standing that the achievements of Socrates, Plato, and Aris- 
 totle have not yet been mentioned, and that the writings of 
 Descartes, Kant, and their successors, up to the time when 
 contemporaneous writing begins, are yet to be described ; 
 the whole logical compass of these illustrious writers has 
 been anticipated by previous thought, and the farthest reach 
 of their speculations proves to have been familiar ground 
 to prehistoric minds. The corroborations of these state- 
 ments are to be heard on every hand. The futility of 
 thought, the hopeless search of metaphysics, the limits of 
 the knowable, even so recent a movement in philosophy as 
 agnosticism the modern term for the belief in an unknow- 
 able are but expressions of the common verdict, that these 
 early Greeks, and their predecessors in the East, went just 
 as far as we have gone, in an intellectual sense, toward solv- 
 ing the first problem of life. 
 
 When we say that the growth of knowledge as a whole 
 will alone realize any actual progress in this constant effort 
 of our race to achieve an ultimate analysis, we merely specify 
 that science and religion as well as thought are necessary 
 factors in this growth, and that what is known as specula- 
 tion and unaided introspection are of themselves utterly im- 
 potent to accomplish the desired result. After this state- 
 ment it may seem abrupt to offer the student a key to the 
 ever-recurring enigmas of philosophical systems, as we find 
 
THE DA WN OF PHILOSOPHY. I/ 
 
 them recorded in history. But as the charge, that philoso- 
 phers have reasoned in a circle from the earliest records of 
 human speculation, is not a new one, to emphasize the po- 
 sition here advanced we must demonstrate the possibility of 
 progress. 
 
 It is the task of this work to show that knowledge is not 
 merely thought, but that it includes conduct ; that truth 
 cannot find a fuller expression in words after all than in ac- 
 tions, and as a consequence, that we shall have to extend 
 the sphere of metaphysics to that of morality, identifying 
 these spheres as but phases of one fact of development in 
 order to accomplish our demonstration. In offering, there- 
 fore, at the very outset, a key to the metaphysical problem, 
 it might appear that I have anticipated our argument, but I 
 do not go beyond that department of truth which is indi- 
 cated by the general title of these chapters. As we ap- 
 proach the climax of Greek Philosophy, in the systems of 
 Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, if we are to show that the 
 thought of these men has no higher significance than earlier 
 speculations, it will be necessary to have some common 
 measure for the significance of words ; : for all philosophy 
 aims at an ultimate analysis. This needed criterion, then, 
 we will proceed to explain. 
 
 There is in England a school of geologists who have re- 
 nounced all forms of generalization. They refuse to build 
 up any theories of the organic history of our planet, but 
 devote themselves entirely to the accumulation and classifi- 
 cation of geological data. This resolution is the outgrowth 
 of the many disappointments with which the generalizations 
 or theories of geologists have met. The insuperable difficul- 
 ties of estimating the comparative remoteness of events, 
 when the only record of them is to be found in solidified 
 sand and mud, all the results of physical forces and condi- 
 tions which repeat themselves over and over again, leaving 
 no traces of their chronological interdependence, have dis- 
 couraged these scientists, and they have determined to 
 -hazard no further opinions until they have accumulated 
 
1 8 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 more facts. This is a silent reproof to the less conscientious 
 members of their profession who " have imagined that they 
 could tell us what was going on at all parts of the earth's 
 surface during a given epoch ; and have talked of this de- 
 posit being contemporaneous with that deposit, until, from 
 our little local histories of the changes at limited spots of 
 the earth's surface, they have constructed a universal history 
 of the globe as full of wonders and portents as any other 
 story of antiquity." 
 
 The only radical distinction between the development of 
 ancient and of modern philosophy is that which arises from 
 the poverty of the ancients in scientific facts. In other 
 words, the only difference between ancient and modern 
 knowledge (leaving out for the present the moral aspect) is 
 the growth of science. This does not deny to philosophy an 
 exclusive sphere relatively independent both of science and 
 religion ; on the contrary, it circumscribes that sphere. It 
 does emphatically deny, however, that there is any other 
 method of mental apprehension used in any of these three 
 spheres of human activity than that now universally ac- 
 knowledged to be the method of science. Mind is a function 
 of the organism, and has a definite and invariable mode of 
 procedure. To identify the principle of this procedure with 
 that of the humbler organic activities is the special task of 
 the succeeding part of this work ; but it is not too soon to 
 make the statement that truth is independent of words, that 
 facts express themselves. If we fail to interpret facts aright, 
 it is a failure of harmony between our minds and our sur- 
 roundings, a maladjustment of inner to outer activities. 
 The classification of facts which constitutes our intelli- 
 gence and accounts for every aspect of it is a classification 
 of changes. These changes express relations which have 
 their terms in other changes, and so on to eternity and in- 
 finity. If we would express these changes in numbers, we 
 should merely reduce them to units of time ; if we would 
 express them in quantities, we should merely reduce them 
 to units of space ; if we would seize these changing phenom- 
 

 
 
 THE DA WN OF PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 ena and analyze them in order to determine their weights 
 and affinities, we should merely express many relations in 
 terms of simpler relations, for weight and affinity are re- 
 lations having for their terms more or less familiar condi- 
 tions ; if we would comprehend the aggregates of changes 
 viewed in the heavens and on the earth, we should merely 
 enlarge the scale of the very method of investigation which 
 we have applied to lesser groups. If we turn our attention 
 to our race and generalize the principles of its development, 
 we use the same method and our effort expresses the same 
 law ; the analogy never ceases, and it never begins. We 
 discover our lives to be the function of this infinity and 
 eternity of conditions. 
 
 Philosophy, rebelling against imaginary limits to percep- 
 tion, would turn its face away and peer into the depths 
 beyond. Resolutely it has held this attitude for centuries. 
 Its eye has not dimmed, its hope has not abated, but the 
 misty distances into which it has been peering have gradually 
 been peopled with facts ; for science has patiently plodded 
 on, enlarging the sphere of reality until we find ourselves in 
 a universe of facts grand enough to satisfy our proudest 
 hopes. When we look back at this steadfast unsatisfied gaze 
 of the ancients trying to penetrate phenomena, we regard 
 them with a certain poignant pity, because their horizon of 
 reality was so limited. But to-day where is the mind that 
 has taken full advantage of its opportunities in this newer 
 world of knowledge? Who can afford to look unintelli- 
 gently or contemptuously upon our domain of facts ? Who 
 can complain of the method which has accomplished such rich 
 results ? Not the philosopher who would truly interpret 
 nature. There are phases of nature, however, which seem 
 to evade the scientific method ; they are the phenomena of 
 humanity. The questions which they raise are those of our 
 origin and destiny, of our relations to one another and to 
 the universe. 
 
 This is a philosophy which would still bid defiance to the 
 slow teachings of experience ; it is impatient of the restraints 
 
20 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 and the discipline of universal order; it claims a higher 
 source of knowledge than that of the classification or com- 
 parison of facts. This philosophy is called religion ; to its 
 study we devote the third division of this work. It is to 
 that philosophy which stands between science and religion, 
 which occupies the territory of mind or language, that we 
 would now give our attention. 
 
 The word entity is a fiction. There is no such thing as an 
 unrelated fact, an unconditioned existence. The mind rep- 
 resents a principle, but it is the principle of all activity. 
 Both ancient and modern philosophy teem with efforts to 
 reduce diversity to unity, the many to the one. This one is 
 not a place or a time, but a principle. The word principle 
 means first ; the word first means one. Hence to succeed in 
 this effort, to discover that unity which is the natural goal of 
 classification, will be to accomplish the object of philosophy 
 and amalgamate it with the departments of knowledge 
 hitherto distinguished as science and religion. 
 
 For the discovery of this ultimate fact, so long sought, 
 philosophy wholly depends upon that method of comparing 
 facts which is pursued in the sciences. From the time of 
 Thales to that of Kant, philosophy has consisted of nothing 
 but the grouping of observed facts, and deductions from 
 them. Words have never been more than an attempt to ex- 
 press what has already been expressed in these facts. If 
 mind is a fact, it must be the product of other facts ; if it is 
 .a phenomenon, it must be the function of its conditions ; if 
 it is a relation, it must have its terms in the other relations. 
 To say that it is an entity, is to corrupt our language with hid- 
 den contradictions, to stultify the mind. As we have seen, 
 the only ultimate difference between the philosophies of 
 different ages is to be found in the command of facts enjoyed 
 by each age. Apart from this, the scope of all philosophies 
 has been identical. The question of the ultimate analysis was 
 just as clearly stated in the speculations of Thales, Anaxi- 
 mander, and Pythagoras, as in Descartes, Spinoza, or Kant. 
 The latter writers, especially Kant, had a vast accumulation 
 
THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 21 
 
 of empirical data, scientific knowledge, to aid them in their 
 speculations, but they had not successfully applied them 
 to the science of mind. The postulate of Descartes (" I 
 think, therefore I am "), the God of Spinoza, and the 
 idealism of Kant, were no nearer the ultimate generaliza- 
 tion than the speculations of the earliest thinkers. They 
 one and all strove to reduce all imaginable diversities to one 
 principle. The vastly superior scientific knowledge of the 
 modern thinkers only seemed to increase the field of their 
 diversities, it did not bring them to the ultimate simplicity. 
 This ultimate simplicity has many names ; in seeking for 
 it, it has been denominated the ultimate unity, truth, fact, 
 principle, cause, substance, energy, force, existence, or 
 reality. Thales, in the paucity of his scientific experience, 
 thought that it was water ; Anaximenes, that it was air ; 
 Diogenes of Apollonia, that it was living air ; Anaximander 
 of Miletus, that it was the eternal motion of the infinite ; 
 Descartes considered it a dual principle of mind and matter; 
 Spinoza calls it God. Kant attributes this ultimate reality 
 to mind alone, and Herbert Spencer calls it the " persistence 
 of force." Where is the progress of the intervening twenty- 
 five centuries ? Surely it is in scientific knowledge, and not 
 in pure philosophy. 
 
 Will it be too much to ask the reader to believe that this 
 ultimate reality or principle is plainly and unmistakably 
 confronting us wherever w r e turn, that it alone accounts for 
 every experience, and that the only reason why it has so 
 long escaped us is, that it is an inseparable and primordial 
 quality of our very existence ? It is too near to be seen, too 
 easy to understand ; and for this reason, and only for this 
 reason, it is difficult to explain. If singleness of mind is 
 strength, then indeed it requires the greatest intellectual 
 power to grasp this fact. It would seem, though, that 
 the requisite condition of the mind to appreciate this truth 
 is not that of great tension, or a very high degree of train- 
 ing, but a self-discipline, a submission to the power of facts, 
 a renunciation of mental or verbal conceit ; in a word, the 
 
22 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 very thing in an intellectual sense that religion demands of 
 us in a sentimental sense in order to know God. 
 
 To present the argument in a scientific form, the whole 
 burden is to prove that matter and space are words which 
 have the same ultimate signification. Matter is clearly a 
 generalization of the statical side of phenomena. Under 
 analysis matter disappears in motion. Space is simply our 
 term for infinity or extension, and therefore the argument 
 turns upon the point whether the universe is a plenum or 
 not. In further support of the fact that it is, I refer the 
 reader to an argument in " Problems of Life and Mind," by 
 G. H. Lewes, as a powerful corroboration of this view, that 
 matter and space are terms which are logically indistinguisha- 
 ble. This argument, entitled " Action at a Distance," is 
 given entire in Chapter XV., Part II., of the present work. 
 
 Some time after I had made an attempt J to explain the 
 above theory of the identity of matter and space, this essay 
 gave me unexpected assistance. Although it does not state 
 in terms that matter and space are the same thing, this is an 
 irresistible inference from the argument. The question is one 
 of such transcendent importance in philosophy, and this 
 argument by Lewes seems to me so conclusive, that I thus 
 refer to it in advance. 
 
 The consequences of this reasoning are momentous. Un- 
 less this theory stand, the categories of thought, or ultimate 
 realities, will remain discrete, as we find them in Herbert 
 Spencer's " Psychology," and in all other modern philoso- 
 phies, namely, Space, Time, Matter, Force, and Motion. 
 Some writers add Cause, but it is now generally admitted that 
 Cause stands for merely one aspect of every phenomenon, 
 the obverse side of which is Effect, cause being thus a term 
 denoting a purely logical distinction. Others, again, postu- 
 late Consciousness as an ultimate reality. Spencer, for 
 instance, distinctly declares consciousness to be an irreduci- 
 ble principle, but this error is fully met and set aside by 
 Lewes. 
 
 1 An anonymous brochure published in 1881. 
 
THE DAWN OF PHILOSOPHY. 2$ 
 
 The interdependence of the five ultimate terms, above- 
 named, has not as yet been successfully demonstrated ; but 
 if matter and space are admitted to be the same reality, 
 under different aspects, the difficulty at once disappears ; 
 for then motion becomes the ultimate reality and space and 
 time become its obverse aspects. Space and time have no 
 separate existence apart from motion ; their identity is 
 merged in this ultimate fact. 
 
 As stated above, the amount of mental reorganization or 
 reform necessary to grasp this simplest of all facts is such as 
 to place it practically beyond the reach of minds that have 
 been trained to cherish the distinctions which this theory 
 would destroy. We have met many people of scientific and 
 philosophic training who are logically incapacitated for re- 
 ceiving this truth ; they would no more believe that matter 
 and space were the same thing than a devotee would surren- 
 der his faith. It is, therefore, to the younger class of think- 
 ers that we must appeal, thinkers who have not committed 
 themselves too deeply, who are open to conviction, who are 
 hospitable to new truths when they are clearly stated and 
 amply sustained. 
 
 If motion is the ultimate reality, and space and time are 
 its obverse aspects, all ultimate terms must be made to take 
 their places in this trinity of realities. The word infinite, 
 for instance, can have no signification beyond that of space; 
 and the terms extension, coexistence, and unlimited, so often 
 found in philosophic writings, all stand for the statical aspect 
 of motion, the most convenient name for which is space. 
 On the other hand, the word absolute has no signification 
 beyond that of time, and the terms sequence, invariable flux- 
 ion, and unconditioned, mean in their deepest sense the same 
 thing as time. With this understanding of the ultimate sig- 
 nificance of the chief philosophic terms, it will be compara- 
 tively easy to continue our review of philosophy, for we 
 have the key to every metaphysical situation. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 
 
 Xenophanes Parmenides Zeno of Elea Heraclitus Anaxagoras Empedo- 
 cles Democritus. 
 
 ACCORDING to the well-known essay of Victor Cousin, 
 Xenophanes was born in the 4<Dth Olympiad (B.C. 620616} 
 and must therefore have been the contemporary of Thales., 
 Although he is counted among the early philosophers, he 
 was more a poet than a thinker. He is called the " Rhap- 
 sodist of Truth." Banished from his native city, probably 
 on account of his convictions, he wandered over Sicily as a 
 Rhapsodist 1 during the remainder of his life, which lasted 
 nearly a hundred years. His chief aim seems to have been 
 to oppose to the worship of nature and of many gods a pure 
 monotheism, to spread the doctrine of the unity and eternity 
 of God, and to dispel the deep superstitions of his age. Al- 
 though by no means indifferent to the beauty of the Homeric 
 fables he fiercely opposed the religious falsehood which they 
 contained. Plato, great as was his appreciation of every thing 
 good in literature, took the same position, as can be seen by 
 the latter part of the second and the beginning of the third 
 books of his Republic. In fact, does it not appear as though 
 the criticism of Plato might have been suggested by these 
 verses of Xenophanes ? 
 
 " ' Such things of the Gods are related by Homer and Hesiod 
 As would be shame and abiding disgrace to any of mankind ; 
 Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other.' " 
 
 1 The Rhapsodists were the minstrels of antiquity. They learned poems by 
 heart, and recited them to assembled crowds on the occasions of feasts. 
 
 24 
 
THE PRE-SOCRA TIC PERIOD. 2$: 
 
 In another place the following verse occurs, showing how 
 intimately religious feeling and philosophy were conjoined 
 in the minds of-the ancients : 
 
 " One God, of all things divine and human the greatest, 
 Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in spirit." 
 
 Identifying God with the universe the All Xenophanes 
 again says : 
 
 " Wholly unmoved and unmoving, it ever remains in the same place, 
 Without change in its place when at times it changes appearance." 
 
 God moved all finite things ; " without labor he ruleth all 
 things by reason and insight." 
 
 These things sung by a wandering Greek minstrel six 
 hundred years before the beginning of our era, among a 
 people whose only strong bonds of union were connected 
 with religious observances, show how deep-seated are re- 
 ligious feelings, and how much they depend for expression 
 and refinement upon the advance of knowledge. 
 
 Parmenides, who was born about the 6ist Olympiad 
 (B.C. 536), belonged to a wealthy and distinguished family 
 of Elea. It is said that his early life was wasted in dissipa- 
 tion, and that it was only after his friends, Ameinias and 
 Diochaetes, had persuaded him to join the Pythagoreans 
 that he embraced a philosophic life and began to contem- 
 plate " the bright countenance of Truth in the quiet and still 
 air of delightful studies." 
 
 Parmenides made a great logical advance on Xenophanes 
 when he warned us that to see Truth we must rely on 
 our reason alone, and not trust our senses, which lead 
 us merely to human Opinion. This discrimination is of 
 much historic interest as it anticipates the doctrine of innate 
 ideas. He believed in the unity of all Being, or, in other 
 words, that all that exists is in its essence the same the 
 One ; that Being alone fills space, while the fullness of 
 all Being is Thought. Non-Being, he assumed, could not be, 
 because nothing can come of nothing. If, therefore, Being: 
 
26 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 existed, it must embrace all existence. He regarded the 
 senses as the cause of all error, as they reflect the appearance 
 of plurality and mutability, and oblige us to follow our 
 many sensuous impressions to apprehend the changeable 
 and the many ; thus preventing us from understanding the 
 One the divine truth in all its reality. 
 
 Parmenides wrote a philosophic treatise entitled " Nature," 
 which was divided into two parts ; the first described what 
 he termed absolute Truth as disclosed to us by the reason ; 
 and the second endeavored to describe the difference between 
 this absolute Truth and human Opinion ; a task which 
 has been attempted many times since, up to the present day. 
 Parmenides expresses himself thus : 
 
 " Such as to each man is the nature of his many-jointed limbs, 
 Such also is the intelligence of each man ; for it is 
 The nature of limbs (organization) which thinketh in men 
 Both in one and in all ; for the highest degree of organization gives the high- 
 est degree of thought." 
 
 An advanced psychological theory as viewed from this 
 century. 
 
 Parmenides denied motion in the abstract, but was obliged 
 to admit that according to appearance there was motion. 
 
 Zeno 1 was called by Plato the Palamedes of Elea, " on ac- 
 count of the readiness and scientific skill with which he in- 
 dicated the contraries of all things." * He was a singularly 
 prominent character among the ancient philosophers. Born 
 to high social position, which gave him political power, 
 he early manifested a disdain for the honors of rank and 
 office, and sought that seclusion which is the natural sphere 
 of thought. Some accounts charge him with a misanthropic 
 disposition, but there are good reasons for believing that the 
 political corruption and general immorality of his age 
 repelled him and held him aloof from public life. His 
 character can be judged of from the following words which 
 are attributed to him : " If the blame of my fellow-citizens 
 
 1 Not Zeno the stoic. "Ritter, vol., I., p. 470. 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 2/ 
 
 did not cause me pain their approbation would not cause me 
 pleasure." 
 
 To Zeno's high character and austere conduct is due much 
 of his celebrity. His contemporaries failed to understand 
 how benevolent and studious occupations could wean him 
 from the sensuous pleasures with which he was surrounded. 
 
 The invention of Dialectics the name given to the first 
 attempts at formal logical analysis is by the universal con- 
 sent of antiquity attributed to Zeno. " It may be defined 
 as a refutation of error by the reductio ad absurdum as a 
 means of establishing the truth." 
 
 Zeno was a devoted patriot, without being ambitious. 
 This character he showed while Greece was freeing herself 
 from the yoke of the Persians and trying to establish free in- 
 stitutions. He was much attached to his little colony of 
 Elea, and only occasionally visited Athens (where he had 
 Pericles among his pupils) to spread abroad his doctrines. 
 On his last return to his native colony, he found it in the 
 hands of the tyrant Nearchus (or Diomedon, or Demylus), 
 against whom he conspired. Failing in the attempt, he was 
 dragged before the tyrant, when " he gave proof by his ac- 
 tions of the excellence of his master's doctrines, showing that 
 a strong soul fears only that which is unworthy." Being 
 called upon to testify against his fellow-conspirators, " he 
 bit his tongue out and spat it in the face of the tyrant." 1 The 
 people, roused by this act of heroism, fell upon Nearchus and 
 killed him. Here the story is lost, the manner of the philso- 
 pher's death being unknown. 
 
 It is said that Zeno was the first Eleatic philosopher who 
 wrote in prose. To the system of Parmenides, his master, 
 he brought nothing new, but he labored bravely to establish 
 it. This he sought to do by his method of reasoning called 
 Dialectics, which employs principles generally acknowledged 
 to be true, as the bases upon which to build each structure 
 of facts. 
 
 1 Cousin: " Fragments Philosophiques," Zenon d'Elee. 
 
28 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Zeno argued particularly against multiplicity and motion. 
 He said, like his teacher, that there was but One thing really- 
 existing and that every thing else was but the appearance of 
 the One, and had no real existence. Motion he believed did 
 not exist in reality, but only in appearance ; for, he argued, 
 every object filling a space equal to its size is at rest in that 
 space at any given moment as an arrow flying through the 
 air is at each moment at rest in the same space. Of course 
 space and time are here reduced to their most minute par- 
 ticles, and therefore he concludes that motion is not, but is 
 only the appearance of, motion, or a number of spaces in 
 which the object is momentarily at rest. 
 
 It will be seen at a glance, if it is remembered that 
 matter and space are the same thing, how simple this great 
 question v of motion becomes. What Zeno tries to 
 prove is, that a moving body never moves away from the 
 space that it occupies, which is equivalent to saying that a 
 thing cannot move away from itself, a postulate so sensible 
 that we cannot wonder at the force with which it struck the 
 ancients. 
 
 These brief accounts of the early philosophies are given 
 solely to show how invariably all attempts at generalization 
 centre about a single problem, and how the various interpre- 
 tations given to this problem are merely different expres- 
 sions of the ultimate fact, motion. To reduce all systems 
 of thought to their most abridged form, and place them in 
 the order of their logical merit would suffice, therefore, if we 
 were to regard philosophy from the ideal standpoint, assure 
 reason. But however much we may extol the power of 
 "reason," we can never lift it above what it is. In the case 
 of the individual it is simply the logical aspect of individual 
 life ; in the case of a society it is the logical aspect of social 
 life. In the case of a race, the logic of action becomes in- 
 corporated in wider customs and broader principles forming 
 what we call Conscience. 
 
 If we look deeper down into this logic of action we shall 
 find it expressed in the very structure of the organism. 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 29 
 
 Thus the bee is a practical geometrician : it finds and em- 
 ploys in the construction of its cell the best angle for saving 
 space and securing strength. Its little mind, or sensorium, 
 is incapable of expressing this calculation in symbols, or of 
 reducing it to those general principles which give it, for us, 
 the form and value of a demonstrated problem : but the bee 
 has inherited a nervous structure which is the expression 
 and embodiment of the habits of its ancestors. Whether 
 they were compelled, by the Darwinian theory of " the sur- 
 vival of the fittest," to use this best-adapted angle, or 
 whether Mr. Spencer's auxiliary theory of "the direct 
 adaptation of the organism to its environment " was the 
 cause, the logic of the actions of the bee is expressed in its 
 tiny organism ; or, the formation of the proper angle in its 
 waxen cells is the natural or logical activity of this or- 
 ganism. 
 
 Applying, now, this principle to our own life, the reason- 
 ings of every individual are attempts to convert into the 
 symbolic form of language the logic of the actions of our 
 race. All the excursions into the supposed conditions of 
 life which philosophers have made, so far as they have failed 
 to bring back some clearer principle of action, are but verbal 
 constructions, curiosities in mental architecture. Those who 
 love these ruins for their own sake, write minute histories of 
 philosophy, making it their aim to record the details of each 
 system. When, however, the object is to extract from the 
 history of thought its modicum of truth we must adopt 
 the method of measuring each system by a single logical 
 standard, and we must regard the thought of each age as 
 the natural and necessary consequence of its social or moral 
 organization. 
 
 Philosophy, after all, is merely an attempt to identify 
 human nature with more general principles. There are no 
 laws of motion or of the most general existence. 1 The re- 
 
 1 ' ' There is no form of material existence which is its own support or its own 
 measure, and which abides either quantitatively or otherwise than in perpetual 
 -change, or an unceasing flow of mutations. * * * And the fact that every 
 
30 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 current activities which we observe in phenomena are classi- 
 fied and reduced to more and more general principles until 
 we come to the most general fact, which is Motion. No 
 law or rule of action has pre-eminence, therefore, as being a 
 law of motion otherwise than by virtue of its degree of sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 If we would review philosophies, we must review lives 
 and characters ; if we would understand Greek thought, we 
 must study Greek life and its surroundings; if we would 
 understand universal thought, we must study the progress 
 of civilization as pictured in the gradual formation of an ul- 
 timate generalization, or the conception of God as the divine 
 unity or principle. 
 
 Heraclitus was the famous weeping philosopher, coupled in 
 history with Democritus the laughing philosopher : 
 
 " One pitied, one condemned the woeful times ; 
 One laugh'd at follies, and one wept o'er crimes." 
 
 Some writers think both of these characteristics are mythi- 
 cal, while others say they are no doubt exaggerations of 
 truth ; but " there must have been something in each of these 
 philosophers which formed the nucleus round which the 
 fables grew." 
 
 Heraclitus was born at Ephesus about the 6gth Olympiad 
 (B.C. 503). He is represented as being of a very haughty 
 and melancholy temperament, holding his fellow-men and 
 their pursuits in contempt, and as being too proud to accept 
 the distinguished position offered him in his native city, 
 
 thing is, in its manifest existence, but a group of relations and reactions at 
 once accounts for nature's inherent teleology. * * * It follows therefore, 
 that the establishment and verification of the laws of motion are impossible. 
 And yet no one knew better than Euler himself that all experimental ascertain- 
 ment and verification of dynamical laws, like all acts of cognition, depend upon 
 the insulation of phenomena. * * * Euler's proposition can have no other 
 meaning than this, that the laws of motion cannot be established or verified 
 unless we know its absolute direction and its absolute rate," which are con- 
 tradictions in terms. [The italics are the author's.] Stallo : " Modern Physics,'* 
 pp. 185, 186, 202. 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 31 
 
 because it would oblige him to associate with men lacking 
 in moral character. He was a misanthrope, a critic of that 
 severe order which fails to see any good in others. But his 
 virtue, dogged as it was, became famous. The follow- 
 ing letter, written by Heraclitus to Darius, king of Persia, 
 in reply to a cordial invitation to visit his court, throws some 
 light upon his character : 
 
 " Heraclitus of Ephesus to the king Darius, son of Hystas- 
 pes, health ! 
 
 "All men depart from the path of truth and justice. 
 They have no attachment of any kind but avarice ; they 
 only aspire to vain-glory with the obstinacy of folly. As 
 for me, I know not malice ; I am the enemy of no one. I 
 utterly despise courts, and never will place my foot on Per- 
 sian ground. Content with little, I live as I please." 
 
 It is not surprising to learn that the author of this letter 
 " retired to the mountains and there lived on herbs and roots 
 like an ascetic." 
 
 In opposition to the mathematical school which taught 
 that reason was the source of all truth, and that impressions 
 through the senses were the source of the uncertainty of 
 knowledge, Heraclitus believed that it was through the or- 
 gans of sense that we drank in all knowledge, all truth, and 
 that it was only the ill-educated sense that gave false im- 
 pressions. 
 
 The great question for him as well as for Parmenides, and 
 indeed for all philosophers, was that of the origin of ideas. 
 Thinkers on this important question, from ancient times to 
 our day, have been divided into two principal classes, those 
 who, like Parmenides, believe in idealism, holding sense in 
 contempt, and those who, like Heraclitus, believe in material- 
 ism, holding that all knowledge is derived through the senses. 
 Thus we find in these almost prehistoric times, the deepest 
 questions of mind or perception discussed, and answered 
 quite as satisfactorily as they are to-day by' the great major- 
 ity of metaphysicians. The only difference is, that all who 
 discussed these questions in those days had the advantage 
 
32 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of being the originators, to at least some extent, of their 
 different theories, whereas, in our time the metaphysician, 
 however fantastic may be his taste, finds some theory ready- 
 made to please him, and hence by the practical world is 
 generally regarded as a delver in an exhausted soil. 
 
 This popular impression with regard to metaphysicians 
 cannot be complained of, when it is considered that, as a 
 class, they show no advance beyond the difficulties and delu- 
 sions of their most remote predecessors. It is for this reason 
 that such writers as Herbert Spencer treat metaphysics con- 
 temptuously, and openly declare it to be an effete science. 
 They are, nevertheless, compelled to take up the very prob- 
 lems which this science treats of, and attempt to solve them, 
 before they can fairly begin the study of mind. The ques- 
 tion, What is the ultimate reality ? must be answered before 
 mental procedures can be fully understood. This is because 
 the mind can be successfully studied only through its func- 
 tions ; activities which at the outset must be either distin- 
 guished from or identified with wider or more general activi- 
 ties. It would be unjust to say, that Spencer has not iden- 
 tified mental with universal activity, for he distinctly traces 
 -both to the principle which he calls "the persistence of 
 force," but he does not identify this principle with motion, 
 nor does he point out the relations which such ultimates 
 as matter, space, force, and time bear to his principle, " the 
 persistence of force," or to the principle called motion. He 
 therefore, without acknowledging it, enters into the sphere 
 of metaphysics, but leaves it in as great confusion as before 
 the advent of his system. 
 
 When it is remembered that heat is a form of motion, the 
 .following generalization of Heraclitus will not appear so wide 
 of the mark : 
 
 He conceived human intelligence to be a portion of the 
 Universal Intelligence, man's soul but an emanation of the 
 Universal Reason, or Fire ; and thus man, being merely a 
 part of the whole, must necessarily be imperfect and transient ; 
 while mankind came a little nearer to the truth, as many 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 33 
 
 parts approach nearer to the whole than one part. Fire, or 
 heat, was to him the God, the One, from which all things 
 emanated and to which all things would return. Life was 
 but a constant change, and all things followed in a perpetual 
 flux and reflux ; the quicker and more perfect the motion, 
 the higher and more perfect the life. 
 
 Ritter says in this regard: " The notion of life implies 
 that of alteration, which by the ancients was generally con- 
 ceived as a form of motion. The universal life is therefore 
 an eternal motion, and consequently tends, as every motion 
 must, toward some end, even though this end, in the course 
 of the evolution of life, present itself to us as a mere transi- 
 tion to some ulterior end." ' 
 
 Heraclitus saw vital energy in all phenomena, endless 
 change in all things ; for him all was in motion, and he 
 denied that there was any absolute rest, the harmony of the 
 world was contained in its ever-conflicting impulses : even 
 the very consciousness of life is founded on constant mo- 
 tion. Is any thing but a fuller knowledge of physical phe- 
 nomena lacking in these inductions? 
 
 Anaxagoras is credited with having had such illustrious 
 pupils as Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates. On leaving 
 Clazomenae, his native city, he went to Athens, at a time 
 when this city was rising in political importance, and be- 
 coming the centre of Greek learning ; when the great Age 
 of Pericles was at its dawn, and commercial and military ac- 
 tivity indicated a glorious epoch. " The young Sophocles, 
 that perfect flower of antique art, was then in his bloom, 
 meditating on that drama which he was hereafter to bring 
 to perfection in the Antigone and the (Edipus Rex." 
 
 With Anaxagoras Ionian philosophy became naturalized 
 in Athens ; though he had to struggle hard, during the 
 many years he lived there, to overcome the prejudices of the 
 people. His philosophy was astute, and commanded wide at- 
 tention. But the names of his pupils remind us that we are 
 approaching the close of what may be called the first growth 
 
 J " Hist, of Ancient Philosophy," vol. I., p. 239. 
 
34 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of Greek thought, known as the pre-Socratic epoch. The 
 tenets, therefore, of Anaxagoras have a certain freshness 
 which subsequent systems lack, in proportion to their re- 
 moteness from early Greek philosophy. To show how dis- 
 heartening the monotonous repetitions of philosophy are to 
 those who compare ancient and modern thought, and how 
 they encourage belief in that mystery or superstition called 
 the unknowable, we have but to read such passages as the 
 following from Lewes : 
 
 " Philosophy has been ever in movement, but the move- 
 ment has been circular ; and this fact is thrown into stronger 
 relief by contrast with the linear progress of Science. In- 
 stead of perpetually finding itself, after years of gigantic 
 endeavor, returned to the precise point from which it started, 
 Science finds itself year by year, and almost day by day, 
 advancing step by step, each accumulation of power adding 
 to the momentum of its progress ; each evolution, like 
 the evolutions of organic development, bringing with it 
 a new functional superiority, which in its turn becomes the 
 agent of higher developments. Not a fact is discovered but 
 has its bearing on the whole body of doctrine ; not a me- 
 chanical improvement in the construction of instruments but 
 opens fresh sources of discovery. Onward, and forever on- 
 ward, mightier, and forever mightier, rolls this wondrous 
 tide of discovery, and the ' thoughts of men are widened by 
 the process of the suns.' While the first principles of 
 Philosophy are to this day as much a matter of dispute 
 as they were two thousand years ago, the first principles 
 of Science are securely established, and form the guiding 
 lights of European progress. Precisely the same questions 
 are agitated in Germany at the present moment as were 
 agitated in ancient Greece ; and with no more certain 
 methods of solving them, with no nearer hopes of ultimate 
 success." And this from the most eminent of modern 
 philosophic writers. 
 
 Anaxagoras thus announces the principles of his system : 
 " Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 35 
 
 or ceases to be ; for nothing comes into being or is de- 
 stroyed ; but all is an aggregation or secretion of pre-exist- 
 ent things; so that all becoming might more correctly be 
 called becoming-mixed, and all corruption becoming- 
 separate." * 
 
 This idea recalls Spencer's definition of Evolution, "the 
 progress from the simple, indefinite, and homogeneous, 
 to the complex, definite, and heterogeneous." 
 
 The Nous of Anaxagoras is employed as the creative prin- 
 ciple or ultimate fact. The mistake which the critics of this 
 system generally make is to imagine that this Nous is simi- 
 lar to human intelligence. When on further examination 
 into the system they find that such an intelligence has 
 no place in it, as an ultimate fact, that it means the simple 
 fact of motion not the complex fact of mind, they declare 
 that there is a contradiction ; without seeing that they are 
 themselves alone responsible for it. The original power of 
 the universe Anaxagoras declared to be this Nous, which is 
 generally interpreted as Intelligence, hence he is said to 
 have opposed mind to matter. This principle he identified 
 with all motion, viewing it as the source of all order in the 
 universe. It was the rarest and purest of all things, some- 
 thing above the confusion of phenomena, its characteristics 
 being singleness, power, and life. He rejected Fate and 
 Chance as empty words having no ultimate significance. 
 
 A short time before the Peloponnesian war, Anaxagoras 
 was accused by his enemies of impiety, and was tried and 
 condemned to banishment. On leaving Athens his proud 
 remark was, " It is not I who have lost the Athenians ; it is 
 the Athenians who have lost me." He was an old man 
 when he retired to Lampsacus, where he was much re- 
 spected by the citizens, and lived quietly until his death, 
 which occurred about the year 428 B.C. On his tomb may 
 be seen this inscription : 
 
 " This tomb great Anaxagoras confines, 
 Whose mind explored the heavenly paths of Truth. " 
 
 'Ritter, vol. I., p. 284. 
 
36 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 According to our best authorities, Empedocles was born 
 at Agrigentum in Sicily ; he descended from a powerful and 
 eminent family, and enjoyed a high reputation through his 
 espousal of the democratic cause, at the same time that his 
 native city rose to its greatest splendor and became the rival 
 of Syracuse. This was about the 84th Olympiad (444 B.C.). 
 Like most of the early philosophers, he is said to have trav- 
 elled much in distant lands, and to have acquired a great 
 store of knowledge in the East. His love of distinction was 
 so great that it led him to allow a belief in his divinity. He 
 dressed in gorgeous robes, wore a golden girdle and the 
 Delphic crown, and surrounded himself with a courtly train 
 of attendants. It was said that he possessed power to per- 
 form miracles, to calm the winds, and to call the dead to 
 life. In fact his personal history is so full of marvellous 
 stories, so embellished by fable, that it is a very difficult 
 matter to arrive at any truth concerning it. But we may 
 say with certainty that he possessed rare intellectual gifts, 
 and that he was extremely disinterested and generous, as he 
 refused the government of Agrigentum when the citizens 
 offered it to him, and he is said to have devoted most of his 
 wealth to giving dowries to poor girls that they might marry 
 young men of rank. 
 
 Of the doctrines of Empedocles, Ueberweg 1 says: "Em- 
 pedocles posits in his didactic poem ' On Nature/ as the ma- 
 terial principles or ' roots ' of things, the four elements, earth, 
 water, air, and fire, to which he joins as moving forces two 
 ideal principles, love as a uniting and hate as a separating 
 force. The periods of the formation of the world depend on 
 the alternate prevalence of love and hate." 
 
 To thus express the economy of the universe in sym- 
 bols of human emotions, is but to follow the principle of 
 idealism to one of its logical consequences. To say that 
 " the mingling of the elements is the work of Love, their 
 separation is effected by Hate/' is the same order of reason- 
 ing as that great tenet of idealism which declares mind to be 
 
 1 Ueberweg : " History of Philosophy," translated by G. S. Morris. 
 
. 
 
 THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 37 
 
 the absolute cause of all phenomena, and that the universe is 
 governed by a supreme intelligence. Any theory which makes 
 human methods and human feelings universal, any theory 
 which disregards the limits of human life, is a species of 
 idealism. Perhaps the mildest form of this idealism is the 
 belief that love is universal ; for what is love but affinity ? 
 and how natural it is to attribute to universal affinities the 
 warmth and individuality of the strongest human sentiment. 
 The procedure of perception is from one fact to many from 
 the fact of personal existence to that of general existence. 
 In Idealism we have a system which has established its in- 
 ability to look beyond personal existence. 
 
 The belief of Empedocles, that Love was the chief crea- 
 tive power, and that it was identified with the Universal 
 Principle, is also interesting, as it throws light upon the 
 logical origin of the central principle of Christianity. 
 
 Democritus, the laughing philosopher, was born at Ab- 
 dera, in the 8oth Olympiad (B.C. 460). One writer suggests 
 that perhaps the native stupidity of his countrymen, who 
 were famous for abusing the privilege of being stupid, 
 afforded him continual cause for merriment. His family, 
 who were noble and wealthy, entertained Xerxes at Abdera, 
 and the king, as a recompense, left some of his magi as in- 
 structors for the young Democritus. 
 
 The gathering mists in the history of philosophy, even at 
 this early date, are to be seen in the efforts of leading 
 writers to classify the philosophy of Democritus. " Rein- 
 hold, Brandis, Marbach, and Hermann, view him as an 
 Ionian ; Buhle and Tennemann, as an Eleatic ; Hegel, as 
 the successor of Heraclitus and the predecessor of Anax- 
 agoras ; Ritter, as a Sophist ; and Zeller, as the precursor of 
 Anaxagoras." * Is it not already apparent that the sphere of 
 philosophy is limited to the determination of an ultimate 
 principle, and that the approach of each age to the solution of 
 this problem is the measure of its knowledge? The systems 
 we have reviewed are the efforts of powerful minds to pene- 
 
 1 G. H. Lewes : " Biographical History of Philosophy." 
 
38 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 trate beyond sensible impressions to a logical focus, in which 
 all lines of observation converge, disclosing the unity of 
 cause. The ancients' knowledge of cause and effect, al- 
 though limited, was not too limited to constantly suggest 
 the possibility of this final generalization ; and all thought 
 which attempted this problem was by common consent 
 called philosophic, without analyzing its merit. There was 
 no adequate standard of definite knowledge by which to test 
 the validity of thought, and therefore the classes into which 
 historians have divided the ancient systems are of very little 
 use, except as aids to the memory in acquiring an historical 
 knowledge of philosophy ; for the logical distinctions upon 
 which these classifications are based are too vague and con- 
 tradictory to be of any real value. 
 
 As I have heretofore suggested, the question of merit in 
 philosophic systems reduces itself to a comparison of the 
 directness and definiteness of the ultimate or most general 
 terms employed. 
 
 If we are in the possession of the secret which all these 
 systems seek, we shall have little difficulty in judging of the 
 nearness of their approach to it. The fulness of our appre- 
 ciation of this great truth depends upon the quality and ex- 
 tent of our knowledge, the training of the character as well 
 as the intellect, for knowledge does not live in words alone. 
 The progress of knowledge, therefore, is the development 
 of this greatest of all truths among men, and the history of 
 philosophy is but a register of their efforts to get at the begin- 
 ning, or greatest simplification of knowledge ; not its end. Is 
 it not clear that the beginning of knowledge should be the 
 deepest or most general fact ? 
 
 We have aleady said that, as far as unaided introspection 
 could accomplish the result, the ancients made as much pro- 
 gress in philosophy as has been realized at any subsequent 
 time. They detected the principle of universal unity, they 
 declared it to be a principle, not a person, and they gave it 
 such names as God, Motion, Love, Intelligence, Unity, and 
 Mind. Their deepest thought was always religious, their 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 39 
 
 deepest feeling always gravitated toward morality. Was it 
 possible for them to form a conception of the universal 
 principle such as we can form ? They had not the wealth 
 of discovered facts which science has bequeathed to our age. 
 Could they reason that light and radiant heat are different 
 aspects of one kind of energy ; that the ray of light reaching 
 us from the farthest star is not a fluid passing from space to 
 space, but a definite agitation of an interstellar medium of 
 infinite extension, and that therefore there can be no break 
 in it, no absolute vacuum; that the universe \s a. plenum; 
 that all differences between resistance and non-resistance, 
 between matter and space, are relative, not absolute? Could 
 they have ascertained the fact that all words meaning un- 
 conditioned, such as absolute, abstract sequence, or force con- 
 sidered apart from matter, were simply outgrowths of the 
 conception of Time, that they can mean nothing more than is 
 given in this subjective aspect of Motion ? Or could they have 
 known that all words signifying unlimited, such as infinite, 
 abstract co-existence, extension, or matter considered apart 
 from force, were simply outgrowths of the conception of 
 Space, that they can mean nothing more than is given in 
 this objective aspect of Motion ? This deepest of all truths, 
 the idea of one in three and three in one, has been dimly re- 
 flected in the minds of the oldest thinkers which even tradi- 
 tion tells of; it has found its way into religions and taken 
 upon itself interpretations which almost forbid its recogni- 
 tion ; but it is the beginning of knowledge, not its end ; 
 the only use that can be made of it is to enable us 
 to declare a common agreement with regard to first prin- 
 ciples, and devote our attention to Knowledge, which is 
 Life. 
 
 This agreement will not take place until Science has made 
 these first principles so clear that they will become the com- 
 mon property of the world. This result cannot be reached 
 until the ultimate signification of our most general (meta- 
 physical) terms has been placed beyond dispute. When a 
 term meaning time is used, we have a right to insist upon the 
 
40 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 limits of that conception, and so with the term space. Thus 
 armed with clear and definite ideas of the scope of language, 
 the most ordinary intellect can expose the fallacies of the 
 conventional metaphysicians, and the tortures to which these 
 autocrats of our higher speculations have subjected com- 
 mon-sense minds for the past twenty-five centuries will hap- 
 pily cease. 
 
 To continue our narrative : Democritus declared Being to 
 consist in an infinite number of small invisible bodies mov- 
 ing in the void, these were the primary elements, and all 
 production was caused by the change of relation among 
 them. He accepted motion as something eternal, and did 
 not attempt to explain it. Atoms, he said, being indivisible, 
 must necessarily be self-existent, and all consists of Atoms 
 and the Void. 
 
 The atomism of Democritus is a very profound specula- 
 tion. In it he tried to distinguish between the ideas of 
 force and those of weight, and of course did not succeed. 
 Lewes, anxious to compare Democritus to Leibnitz, declares 
 that the atoms of Democritus had no weight, only force ; 
 while on the same subject Zeller says : " Democritus sup- 
 posed that all atoms are too small to be perceived by our 
 senses ; this he was compelled to assume because every sub- 
 stance perceptible to sense is divisible, changeable, and of 
 determinate quality. But magnitude directly involves 
 weight, for weight belongs to every body as such ; and as all 
 matter is homogeneous, it must equally belong to all bodies ; 
 so that all bodies of the same mass are of the same weight. 
 The proportion of weight of particular bodies is therefore 
 exclusively conditioned by the proportion of their masses, 
 and corresponds entirely with this ; and when a large body ap- 
 pears to be lighter than a smaller one, this is only because it 
 contains in it more empty space, and therefore its mass is 
 really less than that of the other. Thus the atoms must 
 have weight, and the same specific weight ; but at the same 
 time they must differ in weight quite as much as in magni- 
 tude. This doctrine is of great importance for the Atomic 
 
THE PRE-SOCRATIC PERIOD. 4* 
 
 system : texts which maintain the contrary are to be consid- 
 ered erroneous." 
 
 It is difficult to perceive what progress modern physicists, 
 who regard matter as an ultimate fact, have made beyond 
 this ancient theory. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 
 The Sophists Socrates Plato. 
 
 BEFORE attempting a description of the doctrines of Soc- 
 rates, Plato, and Aristotle, which are looked upon as the 
 climax of Greek thought, it will be well to call attention 
 to the storm of common sense that swept over Greece just 
 before and during the advent of these men. It was a 
 general movement of dissatisfaction with the results of 
 philosophic thought ; a reaction which has often repeated 
 itself since then. Its leaders are referred to in the writings 
 of their opponents as Sophists ; and as these writings con- 
 stitute the chief literature of that epoch, our notions of the 
 Sophists have been modelled by their bitter antagonists. The 
 doctrines of the Sophists were the natural consequence of 
 the decline of the first schools of philosophy. They were of 
 use in bringing the different schools into comparison and 
 showing the defects of each. Protagoras, the first and most 
 accomplished of the Sophists, was born at Abdera. It is 
 stated that Democritus instructed him in philosophy, but 
 there is probably little truth in the statement, as Protagoras 
 was older than Democritus ; still it indicates a certain con- 
 nection between the thought of the two philosophers. Pro- 
 tagoras endeavored to trace the origin of all conceptions to 
 sensation. His doctrine was, that all thought is the same as 
 sensation, and is limited by it ; and that as all sensation is 
 but relatively true, all knowledge is relative, and therefore 
 imperfect. In the energetic mind of Protagoras these con- 
 clusions led to outright skepticism. It resulted in the for- 
 
 42 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 43 
 
 mula : " Man is the measure of all things " ; an epigram 
 which expresses with wonderful clearness the doctrine of 
 Kant and the great school of modern idealists. In tracing 
 all thought to sensation, however, we have a forecast of 
 modern psychology. The following translation from Sextus 
 Empiricus is perhaps the best description extant of the psy- 
 chological doctrines of Protagoras. 
 
 " Matter," says Protagoras, " is in a perpetual flux ; whilst 
 it undergoes augmentations and losses, the senses also are 
 modified, according to the age and disposition of the 
 body." 
 
 " The reasons of all phenomena (appearances) resided in 
 matter as substrata ; so that matter, in itself, might be what- 
 ever it appeared to each. But men have different percep- 
 tions at different times, according to the changes in the thing 
 perceived. Whoever is in a healthy state perceives things 
 such as they appear to all others in a healthy state, and vice 
 versa. A similar course holds with respect to different ages, 
 as well as in sleeping and waking. Man is therefore the 
 criterion of that which exists ; all that is perceived by 
 him exists, that which is perceived by no man does not 
 exist." 1 
 
 It would be hard to find a simpler and more lucid expres- 
 sion of the Kantian theory of perception than this doctrine 
 of Protagoras. From the speech of Callicles, in " Plato's 
 Gorgias," we can gain an idea of the way in which the 
 Sophists regarded philosophy. 
 
 " Philosophy is a graceful thing when it is moderately cul- 
 tivated in youth ; but, if any one occupies himself with it 
 beyond the proper age, it ruins him ; for, however great may 
 be his natural capacity, if he philosophizes too long, he must 
 of necessity be inexperienced in all those things which 
 one who would be great and eminent must be experienced 
 in. He must be unacquainted with the laws of his country, 
 and with the mode of influencing other men in the inter- 
 course of life, whether private or public, and with the pleas- 
 
 1 " Pyrrhon. Hypot.," p. 44. (Trans, by Lewes.) 
 
44 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ures and passions of men ; in short, with human characters^ 
 and manners. And when such men are called upon to act, 
 whether on a private or public occasion, they expose them- 
 selves to ridicule, just as politicians do when they come to 
 your conversation, and attempt to cope with you in argu- 
 ment ; for every man, as Euripides says, occupies himself 
 with that in which he finds himself superior ; that in which 
 he is inferior he avoids, and speaks ill of it, but praises what 
 he excels in, thinking that in doing so he is praising himselL 
 The best thing, in my opinion, is to partake of both. It is, 
 good to partake of philosophy by way of education, and it 
 is not ungraceful in a young man to philosophize. But if 
 he continues to do so when he grows older, he becomes ri- 
 diculous, and I feel toward him as I should toward a grown 
 person who lisped and played at childish plays. When I see 
 an old man still continuing to philosophize, I think he de- 
 serves to be flogged. However great his natural talents, he 
 is under the necessity of avoiding the assembly and public 
 places, where, as the poet says, men become eminent, and to 
 hide himself, and to pass his life whispering to two or three 
 striplings in a corner, but never speaking out any thing great, 
 and bold, and liberal." 
 
 It is to be seen by this that the Sophists were merely ag- 
 gressive skeptics. They lost faith in the power of man to 
 reason out his relations with the universe, and turned their 
 attention to studying the relations of men to one another. 
 Both the skeptics and the Sophists were convinced of the 
 insufficiency of all knowledge, but the former contented 
 themselves with reasoning upon this conviction, while the 
 latter turned from philosophy and devoted themselves to 
 politics and rhetoric. 
 
 Thus Plato represents Protagoras as arguing, " that the: 
 wise man is the physician of the soul. He cannot, indeed, 
 induce truer thoughts into the mind, for all are alike true, 
 but better and more profitable ; thus he may heal the souls 
 not merely of individuals, but also of States, since, by the 
 power of oratory, he may introduce good and useful senti- 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 45 
 
 merits and opinions in the place of the base and the hurt- 
 ful." ' 
 
 In Grote's " History of Greece," as well as in Lewes' 
 *' History of Philosophy," a spirited defence of the Sophists 
 is made against the many and bitter attacks of Plato and of 
 those who followed his example. It is worthy of remark 
 that the criticisms which Socrates directed against the 
 Sophists are free from that party spirit which characterizes 
 the attacks of the Platonists. We find no such bitterness 
 between Socrates and the Sophists in the biographical work 
 of Xenophon. 
 
 The Sophists acquired wealth and power by educating the 
 children of rich and noble families ; and judging from the 
 constant polemics of Plato against them, their influence 
 must have been great. It is said of them that they held as 
 a principle that nothing was right by nature, but only by 
 convention, and that following this pernicious rule of expe- 
 diency they made all law and justice yield to personal in- 
 terest. But these are too general terms in which to condemn 
 any class. They suggest more antithesis than is possible 
 between right and reason. It must be remembered that 
 with the Sophists disputation became an art, and that, like 
 many of our modern journalists and lawyers, carried away 
 by their own eloquence, they sometimes made the worse 
 cause appear the better. When it is said that much of the 
 immorality of the time is attributable to the influence of 
 their teaching, the limit of just criticism is reached. They 
 were the intellectual leaders of their age, but the degener- 
 acy of that age had causes far beyond their control. It is 
 certain that about this period egotism reigned supreme, State 
 trampled upon State, and the people of Greece, losing all 
 respect for law, were not slow in violating private as well as 
 public rights. The quibbling nature of the Greeks, and their 
 excessive love of lawsuits, led them to value the art of 
 oratory like that of arms, as an important means of self- 
 defence, especially as each citizen was obliged to appear in 
 
 1 Ritter : " Hist, of Ancient Philosophy," vol. I., p. 578. 
 
46 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 person before the courts of justice and plead his own cause. 
 To become a master in the art of disputation was the ambition 
 of all, for no one could hope to attain to a high position with- 
 out this acquirement. It would be ungrateful to the Sophists, 
 however, not to acknowledge the indirect benefits which we 
 have derived from their influence ; for " if forensic oratory 
 does sometimes make the worse appear the better reason, it 
 also makes the good appear in all its strength. The former 
 is a necessary evil, the latter is the very object of a court of 
 justice." 
 
 The reign of doubt, both scientific and moral, which in- 
 vaded all departments of Greek life during the supremacy of 
 the Sophists, received a strong check from the influence of a 
 great moral teacher, whom the needs of the times produced. 
 This teacher was Socrates, who was born B.C. 469, during 
 the golden period of Greek intellectual life, though his ca- 
 reer was synchronous with the decline of Athenian political 
 power. The story of his trial and execution is one of the 
 most touching and impressive in history. The Peloponne- 
 sian war, which ended in the fall of Athens, was carried on 
 during the active life of Socrates ; and the causes which 
 were working the ruin of the Athenian Empire the decline 
 of manhood and patriotism seemed to call this great moral 
 teacher into being. 
 
 " Every thing about Socrates is remarkable personal ap- 
 pearance, moral physiognomy, position, object, method, life, 
 and death." 
 
 Among the art treasures of the Acropolis there was for 
 many years a group of graces which tradition accredited 
 to Socrates. According to Diogenes Laertius the young- 
 sculptor attracted the interest of Crito, a wealthy Athenian, 
 who provided for his education, and afterward became a de- 
 voted disciple of the moral reformer whose powers he had 
 so early recognized. 
 
 In the second division of this work, entitled The Nature 
 of Perception, we have attempted to demonstrate that thought 
 is a manifestation of natural laws ; that it is an expression 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 4; 
 
 of the conditions of life, the inevitable expression ; but the 
 conditions are far too complex to admit of any predictions 
 of events, excepting in the most general terms. In the case 
 of great moral teachers or prophets, such as Socrates, that 
 which constitutes their influence and enraptures others, is 
 not a mystical power of divination concerning the particu- 
 lars of the future, but the grasp of truth expressed in the 
 grandeur and purity of their lives. Their powers of divina- 
 tion are wholly natural. They perceive the future because 
 they have discerned the deepest principles of life, and apply 
 them in judging coming events. Knowing and feeling these 
 principles more deeply than others, they command a wider 
 view of human life. 
 
 Modern psychology teaches that perception is a purely 
 natural activity akin with activities which we regard as sim- 
 ple or comprehensible ; what distinguishes mental from 
 what are known as natural phenomena is simply the higher 
 complexity of the conditions. Moral perceptions, therefore, 
 such as have made Socrates immortal, presuppose but a 
 higher and broader life, deeper sympathy, further insight, 
 greater logical sensitiveness. 
 
 Many suppose with regard to men as with regard to re- 
 ligions, that " if they contained no mystery they would in- 
 spire no reverence." This is only true for those who are en- 
 tirely beyond the influence of the divine unity of nature, 
 who imagine that familiar things are somehow isolated from 
 the unfamiliar, who have never thought out the great truth 
 that every fact is indissolubly connected with all facts, and that 
 it is the principle of perception that discloses to us that uni- 
 versal fact which explains both life and mind. Any hypothe- 
 sis concerning future events can only be a more or less in- 
 telligent judgment of consequences from experiences. If 
 prophesies of future events are by nature imagined experi- 
 ences, what shall we say of predictions which are declared to 
 be entirely beyond the pale of experience? The nature of 
 language declares them to be self-contradictory ; for language, 
 and thought, which is in great part the function of language ... 
 
48 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 to be intelligible must represent experiences. Under this 
 category of self-contradictory statements must come all at- 
 tempted descriptions of a future life essentially different 
 from the life which we experience. To be intelligible, every 
 thought must be subordinate to the broad generalization 
 that life is an eternal and infinite principle without begin- 
 ning or end, and that this principle is manifested in every 
 kind and degree of phenomena. 
 
 These remarks are required by the fact that we are about 
 to recount the earliest attempt to establish a philosophical 
 basis for the belief in a future existence. 
 
 Among all the earlier nations, and among nearly all sav- 
 age tribes, a future life has been more or less distinctly be- 
 lieved in. In fact, it would be difficult to find a religion or 
 a philosophy in which this belief is not a prominent feature. 
 But a refinement of intelligence which can alone come with 
 an increased definiteness in our understanding of general 
 terms, a purification of language, brings these vague and 
 unrestrained beliefs under a higher and higher discipline. 
 The details of a physical immortality are one by one rejected 
 as inconsistent, until the belief, as it is held by the better 
 class of minds, to-day is a formless principle, which they dare 
 not limit even by the most general description. Closely 
 allied to the belief in immortality is the idea of a personal 
 God, or a design in nature commonly known as the doctrine 
 of a Divine Providence. 
 
 All these beliefs, which are logically inseparable, we find 
 warmly entertained by the great moralist of ancient Greece. 
 Although Socrates was not the first to treat of the immor- 
 tality of the soul, he was the first, as we have said, to give 
 it a philosophical basis. We find in his arguments in sup- 
 port of the theory of a divine providence many anticipations 
 of the modern writers upon Natural Theology. 
 
 All those deep sentiments which are more or less perfectly 
 voiced in the religions of the world were constantly arising 
 in his mind and asserting themselves in his conversations. 
 "' How is it, Aristodemus, thou rememberest or remarkest 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 49 
 
 not, that the kingdoms and commonwealths most renowned, 
 as well for their wisdom as antiquity, are those whose piety 
 and devotion have been the most observable ? and that even 
 man himself is never so well disposed to serve the Deity * as 
 in that part of life when reason bears the greatest sway, and 
 his judgment is supposed to be in its full strength and 
 maturity ? * * * Then shalt thou, my Aristodemus, under- 
 stand there is a Being whose eye pierceth throughout all 
 nature, and whose ear is open to every sound ; extended to 
 all places, extending through all time ; and whose bounty 
 and care can know no other bound than those fixed by his 
 own creation." 2 
 
 The fitting mission of Socrates was the education of 
 youth, for he saw more honor in making wise and virtuous 
 citizens and rulers than in being chief ruler of the state him- 
 self. He was willing to assist all in the paths of knowledge, 
 but each must conquer truth for himself. The injunction of 
 the Delphic god, " know thyself," seemed to realize his phi- 
 losophy. He confined himself chiefly to ethical questions 
 concerning both public and private life, seeking to counter- 
 act the influences of sophistry, with its debasing opinion 
 that there was no truth for man, only the shadow of it, with 
 which he might " disporte himself at will." 
 
 Order seems to have been the motive of Socrates' method. 
 He lived in a time when science was in its infancy. The 
 method of science, well understood to-day to be wholly that 
 of sensible experiences and their logical extension into the 
 sphere of mind, was then hopelessly confused with vague 
 theories and speculations. Socrates did not by any means 
 penetrate to the principle of perception. His psychology 
 was of the rudest sort, but he insisted upon order in mental 
 procedures by demanding definitions. His whole method 
 was simply an effort to systematize the every-day thinking 
 
 1 "Although both in doctrine and conduct Socrates invariably evinced his re- 
 spect for the national deities, still it cannot be denied that he shared the opinion 
 which had led many of the earliest philosophers to attack and reject polytheism, 
 namely, that one supreme God ruled all human things." Ritter, vol. II., 27. 
 
 3 Xenophon : " Memorabilia," chap. iv. 
 
50 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE 
 
 of his fellow-men. He would take the most familiar sub- 
 jects, and ask his pupils to give their understanding of them. 
 Hence common observation, not minute research, was his 
 field. Of course, in these conversations it was necessary to 
 classify objects, forming them into groups and sub-groups. 
 The words genus and species, and the notion of the indi- 
 viduals included in them, were employed by Socrates. For 
 him these classes merely represented different families of 
 objects and the individuals composing them, classified on 
 the basis of certain kinds of relationships. This primitive 
 classification, without the aid of which it is impossible to 
 proceed to any great lengths in reasoning, was the beginning 
 of logic a very much abused as well as an overestimated 
 word. The simplest thought involves logic, which word 
 means, in its plainest sense, a conscious employment of the 
 fundamental process of all thought, the classification of ob- 
 jects. So that Socrates was merely an orderly thinker of 
 great natural benevolence and integrity, who found so much 
 disorder of thought and action about him that he devoted 
 his life to giving others the two-fold benefit of his clearer in- 
 tellectual perceptions and of his higher ideals of conduct. 
 That he produced a revolution in thought, initiated the in- 
 ductive method, and founded Greek Philosophy (which are 
 claims that his biographers repeatedly make), are only other 
 ways of expressing the above facts. The point to which we 
 would call attention is, that Socrates, while he was the 
 subtlest of disputants, was not, in our sense, a metaphy- 
 sician. Up to his day, and during his time, metaphysics 
 were in too rude a state to be recognized as a form of inves- 
 tigation. Philosophy had not as yet agreed upon a vocabu- 
 lary which could make the separation of metaphysics and 
 science possible. Taking the experiences of daily life for 
 his data, his conclusions had to do with human actions more 
 than with ultimate principles. The only ultimate principle 
 that he posited was the existence of God, his symbol of per- 
 fect action. He devoted himself to the study of the nature 
 of Knowledge as expressed in human conduct, and his chief 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT, 51 
 
 conclusion was the identification of Virtue and Knowledge. 
 
 Socrates hovered on the threshold of that long avenue of 
 thought which in its detours has included the whole field of 
 metaphysical speculation. His pupil Plato, followed by 
 Aristotle, plunged into this labyrinth, and they have been 
 followed by the great majority of those who have become 
 what might be called professional thinkers ; but Socrates 
 held on so firmly to the principle that thought and action 
 are but different sides of the great fact called Knowledge, 
 that he never exchanged the world of facts for the world of 
 words, in which metaphysicians live. We do not mean that 
 Socrates consciously grasped this principle in any thing like 
 the fulness with which it can be understood in this age ; for 
 this fulness is the product of its growth in the countless di- 
 rections which scientific investigation has taken. There are 
 also many indications of the metaphysical tendency of mis- 
 taking words for things in his teachings. He saw that all 
 phenomena were but coordinated changes, and he sought 
 for a stable existence. But he never declared that this stable 
 or unchanging existence 1 was an inherent quality of words 
 (or of the ideas which they represent), as distinguished from 
 the objects of thought which give rise to both the words 
 and the ideas. This assumption constitutes the first and 
 last mistake of metaphysics. 3 
 
 Plato did make this assumption, and, having once made 
 it, he was forced to elaborate the error into a system of ex- 
 planations from w r hich modern idealism has sprung. 
 
 In approaching the works of Plato, it will be well to define 
 again the position which we have taken, namely, that the 
 logical circle in which all attempts at ultimate analysis inev- 
 itably revolve has already been described by the philosophy 
 of Greece. The point or principle at which all analysis ends 
 
 1 We would call the reader's attention to the fact that the phrase "unchang- 
 ing existence," although often employed in metaphysical writings, is a meaning- 
 less contradiction in terms, because all existence has for its source or ultimate: 
 fact the principle of change. 
 
 3 "Names henceforth have the force of things." See Plato's " Cratylus,"' 
 passim. 
 
52 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 and all synthesis begins has already been disclosed through 
 the speculations of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Hence, now 
 that we are about to examine the genius of another thinker, 
 let us bear in mind that any truths which he may have to offer 
 us, if they are new, are only other applications of this funda- 
 mental truth which we have discovered. In other words, 
 the only field for novelty left to those who have solved the 
 metaphysical problem is that of variety, for we have estab- 
 lished the divine unity in performing an ultimate analysis. 
 
 We must not adopt the prevalent notion that Plato was 
 essentially a poetical idealist, a dreaming philosopher, and 
 the author of the popular conception of platonic love. 
 " Plato [says Lewes] was any thing but a dreamer or an 
 idealist ; he was a severe thinker, a confirmed dialectician, 
 and a great quibbler. He gathered into a beautiful whole 
 the scattered results of the earlier Greek philosophy, and 
 yet his metaphysics are so abstract as to puzzle all but the 
 most persevering student. His moral character has come 
 down to us free from stain. Both his morals and his politics 
 are of the highest logical severity, almost above the reach of 
 humanity. He seems to have regarded human passions and 
 pleasures with contempt. For him life was worth nothing 
 if not devoted entirely to the search of truth." 
 
 Aristocles, surnamed Plato (the broad-browed), was born 
 at Athens or ^Egina, in the 8;th Olympiad (B.C. 430), 
 about the time of the Peloponnesian war and the death 
 of Pericles. By birth he was connected with some of the 
 most distinguished families of Athens. He received an ex- 
 cellent education, in which gymnastics were not neglected ; 
 for, like a true Greek, he considered that gymnastics did for 
 the body what dialectics did for the mind. His early youth 
 was devoted to poetry, music, and rhetoric ; but at the age 
 of twenty, when he became acquainted with Socrates, he 
 abandoned these pursuits and devoted himself entirely to 
 philosophy. The melancholy meditative mind of this re- 
 markable scholar led him to love the contemplation of 
 ^Nature. Skepticism, that fever of the age, was not without 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 53 
 
 its effect upon him. Along with doubt went the deep 
 craving for belief, and under the guidance of his beloved 
 master he earnestly sought for truth. He remained with 
 Socrates until death separated them. He sought at the 
 trial to defend his master, but this was not permitted him ; 
 he then begged Socrates to accept a sufficient sum of money 
 to buy his life, but Socrates preferred to die for his convic- 
 tions. 
 
 A public garden in the neighborhood of Athens, called 
 the Academia, was the resort of Plato and his pupils. 
 Here the famous lectures were given which are still imitated 
 in almost every seat of learning in Christendom, and it will 
 be our special endeavor to explain the subtle errors which 
 are involved in the reasonings of this greatest of the ancient 
 dialecticians. 
 
 The story which has been so widely circulated concerning 
 the inscription over the door of his academy, "Let none but 
 Geometricians enter here" is supposed to have originated in 
 the purely argumentative nature of the discourse. The chief 
 objection to its authenticity was that Plato regarded mathe- 
 matics as entirely distinct from philosophy, not only in its 
 objects but in its method of reasoning. Nor did he admit 
 poetry to his philosophy. Poets he held to be inspired mad- 
 men, unconscious of what fell from their lips. 
 
 Throughout a long lifetime of thought, many changes of 
 opinion must naturally take place in an active mind, and it; 
 is most necessary to remember this in regard to Plato. We 
 find that in his old age he discards the idea of Socrates, which 
 identifies virtue with knowledge, and vice with ignorance, 
 thereby making vice involuntary. Plato adds incontinence to 
 ignorance as the cause of our errors ; and in speaking of 
 anger and pleasure as the causes of our faults, he mentions 
 ignorance as being a third cause. 
 
 Like Socrates, he was in doubt respecting the certainty of 
 knowledge ; and if his life was devoted to the search of 
 truth, it was without professing to have found it. 
 
 Plato approached to the solution of the central question 
 
54 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of metaphysics and this is the more wonderful when we 
 consider the condition of science in his day for Aristotle 
 says that Plato, in the Timczus, maintained space and matter 
 to be the same, but that, in what are called the unwritten 
 opinions, he considered space and place to be the same. 
 
 Socrates, in his investigations, relied mainly on the in- 
 ductive mode of reasoning, and on definitions. These did 
 not satisfy Plato : he found it necessary to go still further, 
 and to insist upon analysis as a philosophic process, it being 
 impossible to understand the whole without first under- 
 standing the parts, or, as he says, " seeing the One in the 
 many." Long before Plato's time the idea had become 
 prevalent that sense-perception was unreliable and incom- 
 plete, as it was but the knowledge of the changeable, or of 
 phenomena. But it was far too early in the history of 
 knowledge to grasp the idea that all life is change, and that 
 the unchangeable which they sought was the principle of 
 Unity, and not another kind of existence. In transitory 
 phenomena Plato did not perceive the true existence, but 
 only the image of it. To know real existence (his words 
 were deeper than he knew) one must seek to discover the 
 invariable in the variable, the One in the many. 
 
 During the summer of 1881, I had occasion to visit the 
 Concord School of Philosophy, in Massachusetts, which I 
 had been informed was founded principally upon the doc- 
 trines of Plato. There was a little rustic chapel built 
 among trees in a picturesque position. It was at some dis- 
 tance from the village, so that the lecturers and students 
 had a pleasant walk to and from the grove. I arrived in 
 time to hear an evening lecture ; it was on the subject of 
 Faded Metaphors, a very pleasing discourse, of a character 
 to serve as an interlude to the heavy philosophic arguments 
 which were the order of the place. After the lecture I met 
 a school-teacher from the west, who had come there deter- 
 mined to learn philosophy ; and, being very anxious to know 
 the drift of the thought of the school, I asked him if he was 
 able to make the philosophy which he learned there agree 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 55 
 
 with such knowledge or facts as he possessed ? He replied 
 with perfect earnestness : " In this school we learn a philoso- 
 phy that is above the range of what are generally termed 
 facts." " But," I insisted, " supposing you cannot make 
 \vhat you learn agree with such facts as you have, what do 
 you do then?" " Then," he replied, " we make the facts 
 agree with our philosophy." 
 
 In the morning, there was a lecture upon the Idealism of 
 Plato, given in the tone of a disciple of that great master. 
 It occupied two hours. One of the illustrations used and 
 it cannot be denied that it is a fair consequence of Platonic 
 reasoning was this : " The St. Louis Bridge does not really 
 exist in the structure that spans the Mississippi ; its real ex- 
 istence is in the idea of the engineer who constructed it." 
 Here is Plato's answer to Diogenes, who thought he had 
 demolished the theory of idealism by saying, " I see indeed a 
 table, but I see no idea of a table." Plato replied, " Because 
 you see with your eyes and not with your reason." Twenty- 
 three centuries after this reply was made, we find the 
 disciples of Plato in America teaching the same difference 
 between the perception of the senses and that of the reason. 
 Both Plato and his modern disciples agree in saying that the 
 phenomenal, the changing, or the unreal, is that which is 
 perceived by the senses, and that the noumenon, the unchang- 
 ing, or the real, is that which is perceived by the reason. 
 
 " Plato, "says Lewes, " held that human knowledge is nec- 
 essarily imperfect, that sensation troubles the intellectual 
 eye, and that only when the soul is free from the hindrances 
 of the body shall we be able to discern things in all the in- 
 effable splendor of truth." 
 
 We would not question the fact that the " ineffable splen- 
 dor of truth " is obscure, and that we need purification of 
 mind and life to perceive it, but we wish to emphasize the 
 great truth that the aspect of the natural procedure of per- 
 ception, which is known as the perception of the senses, is 
 not to be regarded as a degraded aspect because in the nar- 
 row view taken of it we cannot see the highest results of 
 
56 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 thought. We should regard the perception of the senses as 
 a means to an end ; we should remember that the limits we 
 give it have no objective existence, that they are purely the 
 effect of our method of classification, which is another name 
 for perception itself ; and that therefore the perception of 
 the senses is just as exalted in its nature as the highest 
 achievements of the reason. 
 
 This principle of Idealism, this disease of philosophy, 
 which was announced by Plato, burlesqued by Berkeley, per- 
 petuated by Kant, renewed by Hegel, and revived in this 
 country by the Concord School of Philosophy, is, that there 
 are two distinct kinds of human perception, one the per- 
 ception of the reason, and the other the perception of the 
 senses ; the product of the one being noumena, ideas, reality,, 
 and that of the other phenomena, objects, change. 
 
 This is not the place to demonstrate the fallacy of sup- 
 posing that there are two distinct kinds of perception, pro- 
 ducing different results. In the second division of this work 
 I hope to show the inconsistency of this idealistic theory 
 from the organic standpoint ; but here we have to do with 
 the super-organic sphere, that of language, and we must de- 
 pend upon the demonstrated significance of words for our 
 refutation. Are not the means at hand? If the ultimate 
 principle, existence, reality, is the fact of motion, or change,, 
 how can phenomena, which is another word for change, have 
 less to do with reality than noumena, which is a term created 
 to express unchanging existence ? Where shall we find un- 
 changing existence ? Two other terms which we find con- 
 trasted by the ideal theory are reality and change ; and this 
 contrast illuminates the whole question ; for do we not suf- 
 ficiently understand the meaning of metaphysical terms to 
 see that change and reality both stand for the same ultimate 
 principle? Thus the antithesis which idealism seeks to 
 establish between reality and change falls to the ground 
 when the contrasted terms are measured by one standard of 
 reality. But there is one more position which Plato holds,, 
 namely, the contrast of reality between ideas and objects. 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 57- 
 
 Aristotle says : " Plato followed Socrates respecting defini- 
 tions, but, accustomed as he was to inquiries into universals, 
 he supposed that definitions should be those of intelligibles 
 (i. e. noumend] rather than of sensibles (i. e. phenomena] : for 
 it is impossible to give a general definition to sensible objects, 
 which are always changing. Those Intelligible Essences he 
 called Ideas ; adding that sensible objects were different 
 from Ideas, and received from them their names ; for it is in 
 consequence of their participation in Ideas, that all objects of 
 the same genus receive the same name as the Ideas." * 
 
 It is with a certain reluctance that we make this quota- 
 tion ; for, although it is one of the clearest of all the interpreta- 
 tions of Plato's idealism, it has that fatal mist about it which 
 has permanently enshrouded so many powerful minds. Here 
 are the quicksands of philosophy which have swallowed up 
 so many thinkers, who by their gigantic efforts to extricate 
 themselves have made enduring fame. Recognizing the 
 danger of this perilous place, let us remember our principles,, 
 and we shall be safe. 
 
 To repeat : " Definitions should be those of intelligibles 
 (i. e. noumend) rather than of sensibles (i. e. phenomena], for it 
 is impossible to give a general definition to sensible objects, 
 which are always changing." Intelligibles which are after- 
 ward identified with ideas are unchanging existences (i. e., 
 noumend], and sensibles which are afterward identified with 
 objects are changing existences (i. e. phenomena]. The ob- 
 ject of Plato is to prove that intelligibles, ideas, unchanging 
 existences, noumena terms which are all identified as having 
 the same ultimate significance represent reality ; and that 
 sensibles, objects, changing existences, phenomena which 
 are also identified as terms having the same ultimate signifi- 
 cance represent the opposite of reality. This brings out 
 Plato's central idea (of the truth of which we are now able 
 to judge), namely, that unchanging means real, and that 
 changing means unreal. This is the idealist theory as it 
 first appeared in the world, reduced to its simplest terms. 
 
 'Metaph. I., 6, p. 28. Bohn. 
 
58 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 It is next to impossible for minds trained to this school of 
 thought to escape this dogma and recognize that the central 
 fact of the universe is change. 
 
 Plato's thought is susceptible of a much higher inter- 
 pretation than is to be found in modern Idealism, as he 
 "sought to detect the One amidst the multiplicity of ma- 
 terial phenomena, and, having detected it, declared it to be 
 the real essence of matter, so also did he seek to detect the 
 One amidst the multiplicity of ideas, and, having detected 
 it, declared it to be God. What ideas were to phenomena, 
 God was to ideas the last result of generalization. God 
 was thus the One Being comprising within himself all other 
 Beings, the Cause of all things, celestial and terrestrial. 
 God was the supreme Idea. Whatever view we take of the 
 Platonic cosmology whether God created ideas, or whether 
 he only fashioned unformed matter after the model of ideas 
 we are equally led to the conviction that God represented 
 the supreme Idea of all existence ; the great Intelligence, 
 source of all other intelligences ; the Sun whose light illu- 
 mined creation." 
 
 This interpretation is clearly a logical development of the 
 thought of Plato. It discloses the highest results of the 
 Platonic reasonings, and does not confine itself to what is 
 said in the original. The ability of Lewes to thus instil 
 a higher meaning into the dialectics of Plato cannot be 
 doubted by those who have read his invaluable writings on 
 the " Problems of Life and Mind," which will be fully re- 
 viewed in Part II. It is nevertheless difficult to read this 
 far-seeing interpretation of Plato's thought without wonder- 
 ing that its author failed to perceive the simple solution of 
 the metaphysical problem, especially as we find abundant 
 evidence in Lewes' works that he was conscious of the need 
 and of the possibility of this solution. 
 
 Plato held that intelligence was another name for God. 
 He reasons that, in this world of changing phenomena, evil 
 dwells, and to overcome the evil we must lead the life of 
 
 1 Lewes : " Hist, of Philosophy," p. 229. 
 
^%few*2/ 
 
 THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 59 
 
 the gods. Now, what was the life of the gods? Every 
 Platonist will tell you that it is a life of the eternal contem- 
 plation of Truth, of Ideas. Man must find his salvation in 
 dialectics. 
 
 A glance at Plato's psychology will give us a still better 
 idea of the character of his thought, and its degree of diver- 
 gence from what is acknowledged in our day as safe or sci- 
 entific reasoning. Plato considered the soul as a self-sub- 
 sisting essence, the principle of all motion in the universe ; 
 it always has been, and always will be. It does not depend 
 for its existence on its union with the body ; and as it ex- 
 isted before the union, so it will exist after the separation. 
 The difference between animate and inanimate bodies is, 
 that the former has a soul which moves it from within, 
 Avhile the latter is moved from without ; so the soul is 
 everywhere the moving force, which can neither be pro- 
 duced nor decay, else all motion would eventually cease. 
 This double-edged belief in immortality (the belief in a pre- 
 natal as well as in a future existence) is really the only con- 
 sistent form which it can take. 
 
 Thus we see that during the time of Plato there were just 
 as pure conceptions of the Deity as can be found in our 
 time. God, by the best minds then, was regarded as a prin- 
 ciple, not as a person ; the source of all light and good, and 
 the end of all generalization. The concrete conceptions of 
 the Deity, so prevalent among us, which ascribe to him the 
 attributes and limits of humanity, are merely less successful 
 efforts to reach an ultimate principle, although they occur in 
 a later age. It is also to be seen that morality, in ancient 
 Greece, was taught with a directness and freshness which 
 compares with any method to be found in our age, and that 
 these moral teachings are the more to be admired on account 
 of their freedom from those personal incentives which have 
 crept into the ethics of more recent times. The great 
 moral teacher of Galilee, who bore the same relation to the 
 decline of Roman power and manhood that Socrates bore to 
 the decline of the power and manhood of ancient Greece, 
 
60 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE, 
 
 was not to be heard for nearly four centuries, and yet there 
 is not a precept which he taught, nor a sentiment which he 
 breathed, that has not its counterpart and peer in the annals 
 of Greek thought and feeling. It would be well, before 
 leaving Plato, to call attention to the fact that Lewes objects 
 to calling Plato an idealist, as that phrase is usually under- 
 stood ; and in the same breath he says, " Plato was an invet- 
 erate dialectician." It is these fine distinctions between 
 different degrees of error in metaphysics which make this 
 study perhaps the most fruitless and discouraging in the 
 whole field of research. 
 
 Speaking of Plato's ideal theory, Lewes says: "Plato, 
 according to Aristotle, gave to General Terms a distinct 
 existence, and called them Ideas. He asserted that there 
 was the abstract man no less than the concrete men; the 
 latter were men only in as far as they participated in the 
 ideal man." If this is not idealism, as the word is usually 
 understood, then the word idealism cannot be used to indi- 
 cate any definite type of belief. 
 
 Again Lewes says : " Dialectics was the base of the Pla- 
 tonic doctrine. Indeed, Plato believed in no other science ; 
 dialectics and philosophy were synonymous. For dialectics, 
 (or logic) to be synonymous with philosophy, the theory of 
 Ideas was necessary. Dialectics is the science of general 
 propositions, of general terms, of universals. To become 
 the science, it must necessarily be occupied with more impor- 
 tant things. Ideas are these important things ; for Ideas 
 are at once the only real Existences and General Terms." 
 
 If Dialectics is the science of universals, and universals 
 are ideas, and ideas are the only real existences, surely dialec- 
 tics, at least as Plato taught the science, is nothing more nor 
 less than Idealism. If Plato's ideas, however, were continu- 
 ally changing, as we are told they were, while the meaning 
 of his terms remained relatively constant, there is plenty of 
 room for confusion in expounding his thought. 
 
 The influence of Plato upon subsequent ages is only sec- 
 ond to that of Aristotle. Throughout the time of the Alex- 
 
THE CLIMAX OF GREEK THOUGHT. 6 1 
 
 andrian school, in which Plato's philosophy received so 
 many interpretations, until the second century of our era, 
 when Ammonius Saccas founded the school of the Neo-Pla- 
 tonists, the mind of Plato seems to have presided over the 
 most thoughtful part of the world. 
 
 The second generation of the Neo-Platonists went to great 
 lengths in mysticism, citing texts from the writings of their 
 " God-enlightened master " as authority for all sorts of 
 extravagances of faith, among which were the revival of the 
 ancient rites of expiation, divination, astrology, and the inter- 
 pretation of visions ; all of which had been strongly con- 
 demned by Plato. Plutarch, and Boethius (the last of the 
 Neo-Platonists), redeemed somewhat the character of this 
 philosophy, until it almost disappeared after the Emperor 
 Justinian interdicted all instruction in the Platonic schools. 
 
 The early Christian Fathers owe much of their theology 
 to Plato. " Justin Martyr, Jerome, and Lactantius, all speak 
 of him as the wisest and greatest of philosophers. St. 
 Augustine calls him his converter, and thanks God that he 
 became acquainted with Plato first and with the Gospel 
 afterward." Passages of his Dialogues bear a close resem- 
 blance to parts of the Scriptures, and the moral ideals which 
 are pictured in the Platonic accounts of the death of Socrates 
 are reproduced with singular faithfulness in the Christian 
 accounts of the tragedy of Christ. 
 
 Thus the metaphysical teachings and the original genius 
 of Plato have become insensibly merged in Christianity. In 
 the bosom of the Christian Church Plato survives through 
 the dark ages, when the classics were read only by monks 
 and churchmen, and Platonism, with its natural logical 
 opponent the Aristotelian faith, produced through the 
 agency of Scholasticism that marvellous compound of Greek 
 thought and primitive science known as Mediaeval Theology. 
 When in the wake of this development the revival of learn- 
 ing in Europe brought into life a modern philosophy, the 
 influence of Plato again asserted itself, and the German 
 idealists have made this great teacher immortal. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ARISTOTLE, THE STOICS, THE CYNICS, AND THE SKEPTICS OF THE 
 NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 Aristotle Zeno the Stoic Antisthenes Diogenes Epicurus Pyrrho 
 Arcesilaus Carneades. 
 
 ARISTOTLE was the scientist of antiquity. His life was 
 given rather to the investigation of facts than to abstract 
 speculation. He had an aversion to the unrealities of meta- 
 physics, and yet he was obliged, in common with every 
 thinker of every school, to offer his solution of the great 
 metaphysical problem. This effort led to the formation of 
 his celebrated ten categories of thought, or the classification 
 of the ultimate realities, which will receive full treatment as 
 we proceed. 
 
 Aristotle was born at Stagira, a colony of Thrace on the 
 western shores of the Strymonic Gulf, in the QQth Olympiad 
 (B.C. 384). His life was one long devotion to the pursuit of 
 knowledge. His writings were numerous, but only a fourth 
 part of them is supposed to have descended to us ; and the 
 authenticity of even these has long been a subject of dis- 
 cussion among scholars. The influence of these works, 
 spurious and genuine, upon Eastern as well as European cul- 
 ture, it is impossible to estimate. " Translated in the fifth 
 century of the Christian era into the Syriac language by the 
 Nestorians, who fled into Persia, and from Syriac into Arabic 
 four hundred years later, his writings furnished the Moham- 
 medan conquerors of the East with a germ of science which, 
 but for the effect of their religious and political institutions, 
 might have shot up into as tall a tree as it did produce in 
 
ARISTOTLE. 6^ 
 
 the West ; while his logical works, in the Latin translation 
 which Boethius, ' the last of the Romans,' bequeathed as a 
 legacy to posterity, formed the basis of that extraordinary 
 phenomenon, the Philosophy of the Schoolmen. An em- 
 pire like this, extending over nearly twenty centuries of time, 
 sometimes more and sometimes less despotically, but always 
 with great force, recognized in Bagdad and in Cordova, in 
 Egypt and in Britain, and leaving abundant traces of itself 
 in the language and modes of thought of every European 
 nation, is assuredly without a parallel." 
 
 The ceaseless civil wars and counter-invasions which make 
 up the major part of the history of Greece had exhausted 
 the nation, enabling Philip of Macedon to subjugate the 
 Greek States. Philip gave the charge of the education of 
 his son Alexander to Aristotle, who taught the illustrious 
 boy philosophy during four years. They separated at the 
 beginning of the Macedonian war. Aristotle went to Ath- 
 ens to open his school, which received the name of Peripa- 
 tetic, from his habit of walking up and down the shady 
 groves of the Lyceum while explaining his philosophy. Alex- 
 ander departed on his Indian expedition accompanied by 
 Calisthenes, a pupil and kinsman of Aristotle. The philoso- 
 pher long enjoyed the favor of Philip and Alexander. "The 
 conqueror is said, in Athenaeus, to have presented his master 
 with the sum of eight hundred talents (about one million 
 dollars) to meet the expenses of his ' History of Animals/ 
 and, enormous as the sum is, it is only in proportion to the 
 accounts we have of the vast wealth acquired by the plunder 
 of the Persian treasures. Pliny also relates that some thous- 
 ands of men were placed at his disposal for the purpose of 
 procuring zoological specimens which served as materials for 
 this celebrated treatise." 2 It is a work based on knowledge 
 evidently acquired by close inspection and special studies of 
 dissection, and is one which naturalists may still consult 
 with profit. 
 
 Aristotle severely criticised the Ideal theory of Plato, for 
 
 1 Blakesley : "Life of Aristotle." 2 Blakesley, p. 68. 
 
64 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 he was convinced that this theory had its origin in intro- 
 spective, not in physical, researches ; that it sought to sepa- 
 rate the universal from the material, and put forth doctrines 
 concerning things which did not correspond with phenom- 
 ena. He denied to ideas an objective being, and could not, 
 like Plato, give to qualities, such as weight, size, and color, 
 separate existences. While Plato believed that from a 
 single idea man could arrive at the knowledge of all ideas, 
 Aristotle maintained that all knowledge comes through ex- 
 perience ; that every idea is caused by a separate sensation, 
 and that the universal principle is a principle of contradic- 
 tion, man having power to perceive difference only through 
 comparing like with unlike. His method was new, his con- 
 ceptions just ; but, in that early age of knowledge, and 
 with such narrow data to generalize from, he could not ac- 
 complish much. Though both these philosophers admitted 
 that science could only be derived from universals, one gave 
 Experience as the basis of all science, and taught men to 
 observe and question Nature ; the other gave Reason as the 
 basis, and taught men the contemplation of Ideas. 
 
 It will be asked : If Aristotle was a cautious thinker, and 
 closely followed what has since received the name of the 
 Scientific Method, how could he have been at the same time 
 so famous a metaphysician ? 
 
 This question will be answered by getting at the nature, 
 not particularly of Aristotle's metaphysics, but of meta- 
 physics in general. Perhaps the most exact metaphysical 
 thought which the world has produced up to the time of the 
 appearance of Lewes's " Problems of Life and Mind," is to 
 be found in the writings of Herbert Spencer ; and yet Mr. 
 Spencer would, no doubt, be astonished were he called a 
 metaphysician. The fact is, no one can take an intelligent 
 view of life and its surroundings without becoming in some 
 degree a metaphysician. The moment we attempt any thing 
 like ultimate questions, we are in the midst of the most pro- 
 found metaphysical problems. Aristotle stated what he 
 took to be the ultimate realities or principles of all things, 
 his ten categories of thought, as follows : 
 
ARISTOTLE. 6$ 
 
 Relation, Substance, 
 
 Quantity, Quality, 
 
 Action, Passion, 
 
 The Where, The When, 
 
 Position in Space, Possession. 
 
 It will be seen at a glance that there are repetitions in 
 these principles. If we refer back to the beginning of Greek 
 philosophy, we shall find that the ten double principles of 
 Pythagoras, to whose school Aristotle gave a great deal of 
 attention, probably suggested the above categories. How- 
 ever this may be, Aristotle reduced the number of these 
 principles by one half, as those of the Pythagoreans were 
 double or coordinates, making twenty in all. Modern 
 thought has reduced these principles or ultimate realities to 
 five. In Spencer's system, which agrees substantially with 
 the best contemporaneous writings upon the subject, they 
 are stated as follows : 
 
 Space, Time, 
 
 Matter, Force, 
 
 Motion. 1 
 
 i contend that a generalization of these principles is pos- 
 sible ; that they are all aspects of the single principle of 
 Motion. There are so many repetitions, however, among 
 the terms employed to represent them, that confusion 
 inevitably results. It should be the aim of a true system of 
 metaphysics to do away with this tautology. For as Matter 
 and Space are but different aspects of the statical appear- 
 ance of the universe, Time and Force are also the obverse 
 aspects of the dynamical appearance of the universe. The 
 greatest difficulty in making physics and metaphysics har- 
 monize, or in making the experiences of phenomena agree 
 with the ruling principles of all things, is to identify motion 
 and the thing moved ; or, in other words, to overcome what 
 
 1 In Spencer's " First Principles " there are six ultimate realities postulated, 
 as Consciousness is added to the five above cited ; it is a fair inference from, 
 other parts of his works, however, that Consciousness is a relative, not an abso- 
 lute, fact. 
 
66 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 is simply a logical or subjective separation of an indivisible 
 fact. A large class of scientists persist in imagining a 
 force as the cause of motion ; in imagining a matter in itself 
 inert and propelled by this force ; the two being in some 
 way conjoined, they do not attempt to say how, make what 
 we call Motion. They then introduce Time to the com- 
 bination as another necessary element, and considerately 
 supply an infinite Space for its convenience and occupancy. 
 These logical preliminaries being arranged, the universe goes 
 on without difficulty. Is it not wonderful that all these 
 principles should work together so well in spite of the 
 inartistic way in which they have been put together by 
 human physicists ? 
 
 Dr. Holmes says somewhere that whenever he comes in 
 contact with a mathematician he imagines he hears the 
 click of the wheels within his head ; but if we must imagine 
 that there are wheels in the heads of mathematicians, to 
 account for the accuracy of their calculations, what shall be 
 our symbol for the stupendous cohesive and organizing 
 power supplied by the modern physicist who can make 
 isolated principles hold together and work out all the 
 wonders of evolution? How much more in accord with our 
 attitude as students of the majestic sequences of evolution, 
 having for their obverse aspects what we call infinite space 
 and absolute time, would it be to recognize that divine 
 unity, that universal principle, which we symbolize as power 
 in so many ways, which we apprehend through the ever-in- 
 creasing experiences of life. Let us not regard this prin- 
 ciple as a veil which obscures reality from us, as a limit 
 to knowledge, or a boundary of the " unknowable" for it is 
 that of which Life or Knowledge consists. 
 
 Aristotle's metaphysics were about as coherent as the 
 science or actual knowledge of his time; and this is the 
 highest compliment that can be paid to any thinker. All 
 the early thinkers sought with wonderful perseverance the 
 knowledge of the First Cause. The Four Causes of Aris- 
 totle, though they had been separately recognized, had not 
 
ARISTOTLE. 6? 
 
 all been proclaimed necessary. Aristotle, like a true philos- 
 opher, while he considered nothing that happens unworthy 
 of notice, yet gave his chief attention to the solution of the 
 problem of First Causes. He maintained that there were 
 four, as follows : First, the Material Cause, or Essence ; sec- 
 ond, the Substantial Cause ; third, the Efficient Cause, or 
 the principle of motion ; fourth, the Final Cause, or the Pur- 
 pose and End. 1 
 
 After what has been said, it is hardly necessary to go into 
 the merit of these speculations ; they are obviously the ex- 
 pression of a very high order of reasoning power, making 
 the best use of such materials as were at hand. We can- 
 not help regarding them with respect, considering the 
 opportunities of their author; and as they occur again in 
 the works of later thinkers, we should maintain the same 
 attitude toward them ; for the superior advantage which we 
 enjoy in the way of scientific knowledge is partly a product 
 of these very speculations. 
 
 The progress of knowledge consists of an ebb and flow 
 between hypothesis and verification, thought, and science ; 
 and it is the rivalry or interaction of these opposite modes 
 of procedure repeated in the individual, the school, the 
 epoch which constitutes the true progress of our race. 
 
 The strength of Aristotle lay in his marvellous command 
 of facts and in his power of grouping them. Plato will al- 
 ways be regarded as a finer writer, and, in the literary sense, 
 as a greater genius. Aristotle never reached the sublime 
 heights of abstraction which we find in the theology of 
 Plato ; he rather occupied himself with bringing the results 
 of previous thought into harmony with actual knowledge, 
 and enlarging this knowledge through the agency of new 
 facts, a more patient and thorough method than Plato's. 
 
 The science of Logic is said to have been originated by 
 Aristotle. If we admit this to be the case, we must be careful 
 
 fitter gives the four causes as follows: The Material, the Formal, the 
 Moving, and the Final : and says that Aristotle sometimes speaks of only three 
 Causes, identifying the Form with the End. He calls Form that which a thing 
 is in truth and apart from matter, it is the notion of the Essence. 
 
68 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 to limit the definition of logic to an exposition of the laws and 
 methods of reasoning, for it is clear that actual reasoning is lit- 
 tle dependent upon a knowledge of this science. Some of the 
 greatest feats of reasoning which history records occurred 
 before Aristotle was born, before logic was recognized as a 
 science. Logic enables us to compel assent to propositions, 
 rather than to discover truth. In other words, it too often 
 constitutes merely a training in the art of disputation. Peo- 
 ple are disconcerted and defeated more than convinced by 
 its processes. In his treatment of logic Aristotle seems to 
 have laid aside in part his distinct scientific character. 
 
 He made the mistake of regarding logic as the art of think- 
 ing, instead of " a portion of the art of thinking." He saw 
 the dependence of thought upon words, and imagined that 
 truth or falsehood in logical processes wholly depended upon 
 combinations of words, or propositions, instead of upon the 
 facts or things which the propositions represent. The fine 
 distinction that Aristotle made between the definitions of 
 words and those of things is declared by Mill to be futile. 
 As this theory of Aristotle involves a mistaken idea with 
 regard to the scope of language, we will give the argument 
 of Mill at length. 
 
 " The distinction between nominal and real definitions, between definitions 
 of words and what are called definitions of things, though conformable to the 
 ideas of most of the Aristotelian logicians, cannot, as it appears to us, be main- 
 tained. We apprehend that no definition is ever intended to ' explain and un- 
 fold the nature of the thing.' It is some confirmation of our opinion, that none 
 of those writers who have thought that there were definitions of things, have 
 ever succeeded in discovering any criterion by which the definition of a thing 
 can be distinguished from any other proposition relating to the thing. The 
 definition, they say, unfolds the nature of the thing : but no definition can un- 
 fold its whole nature ; and every proposition in which any quality whatever is 
 predicated of the thing, unfolds some part of its nature. The true state of the 
 case we take to be this. All definitions are of names, and of names only ; but, 
 in some definitions, it is clearly apparent that nothing is intended except to 
 explain the meaning of the word ; while in others, besides explaining the mean- 
 ing of the word, it is intended to be implied that there exists a thing, corres- 
 ponding to the word. Whether this be or be not implied in any given case, 
 
 1 See J. S. Mill's " System of Logic," p. 26. 
 
ARISTOTLE. 69 
 
 cannot be collected from the mere form of the expression. ' A centaur is an 
 animal with the upper parts of a man and the lower parts of a horse,' and ' a 
 triangle is a rectilineal figure with three sides,' are, in form, expressions pre- 
 cisely similar, although in the former it is not implied that any thing conform- 
 able to the term really exists, while in the latter it is implied as may be seen by 
 substituting, in both definitions, the word means for is. In the first expression, 
 ' a centaur means an animal,' etc., the sense would remain unchanged ; in the 
 second, ' a triangle means,' etc., the meaning would be altered, since it would 
 be obviously impossible to deduce any of the truths of geometry from a propo- 
 sition expressive only of the manner in which we intend to employ a particular 
 sign. 
 
 " There are, therefore, expressions, commonly passing for definitions, which 
 include in themselves more than the mere explanation of the meaning of a term. 
 But it is not correct to call an expression of this sort a peculiar kind of defini- 
 tion. Its difference from the other kind consists in this, that it is not a definition, 
 but a definition and something more. The definition above given of a triangle 
 obviously comprises not one but two propositions, perfectly distinguishable ; 
 the one is, ' there may exist a figure bounded by three straight lines ' ; the 
 other, ' this figure maybe termed a triangle.' The former of these propositions 
 is not a definition at all ; the latter is a mere nominal definition, or explanation, 
 of the use and application of a term. The first is susceptible of truth or false- 
 hood, and may therefore be made the foundation of a train of reasoning. The 
 latter can neither be true nor false ; the only character it is susceptible of is 
 that of conformity or disconformity to the ordinary usage of language. 
 
 "There is a real distinction, then, between definitions of names and what 
 are erroneously called definitions of things ; but it is that the latter, along with 
 the meaning of a name, covertly asserts a matter of fact. This covert assertion 
 is not a definition, but a postulate. The definition is a mere identical proposi- 
 tion, which gives information only about the use of language, and from which 
 no conclusions affecting matters of fact can possibly be drawn. The accom- 
 panying postulate, on the other hand, affirms a fact, which may lead to conse- 
 quences of every degree of importance. It affirms the actual or possible exist- 
 ence of things possessing the combination of attributes set forth in the defini- 
 tion ; and this, if true, may be foundation sufficient on which to build a whole 
 fabric of scientific truth." : 
 
 From the above it is seen that the operation on words or 
 symbols, of which logic consists, is limited in its results by 
 the collateral understanding of the symbols employed ; so 
 that the formalities of logic are entirely subordinated to the 
 original thought and investigation which enrich and make 
 more definite the meaning of words. 
 
 Thought is, no doubt, the function or activity of words or 
 
 1 J. S. Mill : " System of Logic," pp. 112, 113. 
 
70 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 language, but it is independent of words in the sense that 
 words are at best but copies of actions, while thought, in the 
 deepest sense, is action. 
 
 There is a divergence between the Aristotelian and the 
 Platonic methods which lasts throughout the subsequent 
 history of philosophy. The two systems were opposite 
 views of a single group of facts, or a different selection of 
 facts from a single organon of truth. 
 
 Aristotle was a scientist, Plato a theologian. Aristotle 
 endeavored to build up a synthesis of thought from a wide 
 range of facts, and was comparatively indifferent to an ulti- 
 mate generalization ; Plato, on the contrary, regarded all 
 facts as subservient to a single fact, and never tired in his 
 efforts to illustrate the omnipresence of this principle by ex- 
 pressing every thought and feeling in terms of a divine 
 Unity. From these two schools we trace the growth of 
 science and of metaphysics, of patient investigation accom- 
 panied by verification, and the contemplation of universals. 
 The natural philosophy of Aristotle was far more metaphysi- 
 cal than that of the present day. The natural philosophy of 
 modern times is a science based upon mathematics, and be- 
 gins with such general principles as are given, for instance, 
 in the Principia of Newton. This science considers all ulti- 
 mate questions concerning existence and first cause as be- 
 yond its sphere. Aristotle, on the contrary, sought to base 
 his theories of Nature upon ultimate conceptions ; he tried 
 to make the line of thought unbroken between the most ab- 
 struse metaphysical reasonings and his interpretations of 
 physical phenomena. The difficulty in finding an ultimate 
 reality upon which to build knowledge, Aristotle met by ac- 
 knowledging the impossibility of any unconditioned or ab- 
 solute creation or beginning to the universe. By a dexter- 
 ous verbal manoeuvre he explained that the regions from 
 which all things have sprung are those of the possible or po- 
 tential, and that the transition from this mystic state brings 
 us to the actual. Possibility and Actuality, therefore, he 
 tells us, are the opposite poles of reality, and the 
 
ARISTOTLE. 71 
 
 meaning of the often-recurring " is " and " became" or the 
 perplexing problems of existence and first cause, are thus 
 disposed of. Aristotle speaks of " Nature " as " a principle 
 of motion and rest essentially inherent in things, whether 
 that motion be locomotion, increase, decay, or alteration." 
 He reasons that there is only one Universe or Cosmos, and 
 that outside of this there is " neither space, nor vacuum, nor 
 time." The irresponsible way in which so many modern 
 writers on metaphysics and theology speak of space and 
 time, and separate the idea of time and eternity, can be 
 traced to Aristotle, who said that " the things outside " of 
 the Cosmos " existing in neither space nor time, enjoy for 
 all eternity a perfect life of absolute joy and peace. This is 
 the region of the divine, in which there is life and conscious- 
 ness, though perhaps no personality ; it is increate, im- 
 mutable, and indestructible. 
 
 " Descending from this region if that can be called region 
 which is out of space altogether we come in the Aris- 
 totelian system to the ' First Heaven,' the place of the fixed 
 stars, which ever revolves with great velocity from the left 
 to the right. In a lower sphere, revolving in the contrary 
 direction, are the sun, moon, and planets ; and we are told 
 that we must not suppose that either stars or planets are 
 composed of fire. Their substance is ether, that fifth ele- 
 ment, or quinta essentia, which enters also into the composi- 
 tion of the human soul. They only seem bright like fire 
 because the friction caused by the rapidity with which they 
 are carried round makes them red-hot. The reason why 
 the stars twinkle, but the planets do not, is merely that the 
 former are so far off that our sight reaches them in a weak 
 and trembling condition ; hence their light seems to us to 
 quiver, while really it is our eyesight which is quivering. 
 Sun, moon, and stars alike are living beings, unwearied, and 
 in the enjoyment of perfect happiness. * * * 
 
 " Aristotle argued that if the earth were to move, it could 
 only do so 'unnaturally,' by the application of external 
 force in contradiction to its own natural tendency to rest 
 
72 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 round the centre, and that no such forced movement could 
 be kept up forever, whereas the arrangements of the Cosmos 
 must be for all eternity. Therefore the earth must be at 
 rest ! As to its shape, Aristotle was more correct ; he proved 
 it to be spherical." 1 
 
 Alexander von Humboldt says : " The great influence 
 which the writings of Aristotle exercised on the whole of 
 the Middle Ages renders it a cause of extreme regret that 
 he should have been so opposed to the grander and juster 
 views of the fabric of the universe entertained by the more 
 ancient Pythagorean school." 2 
 
 " Unconvinced by the speculations of the Pythagorean 
 school, and of Aristarchus of Samos, the great Alexandrian 
 astronomer, Ptolemy, in the second century of our era, re- 
 affirmed the Aristotelian views as to the spherical form and 
 motion of the heavens, as to the earth's position in the centre 
 of the heavens, and as to its being devoid of any motion of 
 translation. And the Ptolemaic system satisfied men's minds 
 until, with Copernicus and Galileo, modern astronomy 
 began." 
 
 The firm hold which the speculations of Aristotle obtained 
 upon the world can be judged of when we remember that 
 the theories of Copernicus, supported by Galileo and Des- 
 cartes, were so slow in gaining ground against the Ptolemaic 
 system, that Shakespere died in the belief that the world 
 held a fixed position with regard to the rest of the universe ; 
 and Milton framed his plan of the universe, in " Paradise 
 Lost," according to the teaching of the Ptolemaic school, in 
 which he had been educated. 
 
 The cause of this is that Christianity incorporated with its 
 faith the Aristotelian philosophy, further elaborated by 
 Ptolemy and St. Thomas Aquinas. As a reminder of which 
 the peripatetic logic and metaphysics still survive, as a 
 part of the formal instruction in Roman Catholic ecclesias- 
 tical institutions of the present day. 
 
 1 See Alexander Grant's " Aristotle," pp. 138, 140, 141. 
 a " Cosmos," vol. I., note 48. 
 
THE STOICS. 73 
 
 The Stoics no more than the Sophists can be said to have 
 founded any special doctrine, or set of principles, clearly dis- 
 tinguishable from the complex of philosophy. Like the 
 Cynics, their doctrines were widely diversified, and repre- 
 sented a sort of general criticism of philosophy, rather than 
 any type of thought that could be clearly demarcated from 
 the established schools. It was not so with the pronounced 
 Skeptics. Skepticism is a well-defined belief ; and although 
 the strongest types have disappeared, the logical character- 
 istics which Pyrrho and Carneades brought into such prom- 
 inence in ancient Greece are still constantly asserting them- 
 selves in every form of society. The Stoics were numerous, 
 and many of them celebrated. Zeno founded the sect, and 
 Brutus and Marcus Antonius were among the last who con- 
 tributed to its renown. 
 
 The Stoics classed themselves as followers of Socrates, 
 and they were in fact nearly related to him by their doc- 
 trines. They seem to have been the most rational of the 
 Greek philosophers ; they made logic and physics auxiliary 
 to ethics, teaching that action or conduct was the chief 
 problem of man. They taught that the supreme end of life, 
 or the highest good, is virtue ; for virtue is inseparable from 
 perfect happiness. This they supported by the still higher 
 principle that virtue is sufficient for happiness. 
 
 " Physics, with the Stoics, includes not only Cosmology, 
 but also Theology. They teach that whatever is real is 
 material. Matter and force are the two ultimate principles. 
 Matter is per se motionless and unformed, though capable 
 of receiving all motions and all forms. Force is the active, 
 moving, and molding principle. It is inseparably joined 
 with matter. The working force in the universe is God." 1 
 
 Zeno, who was probably the most illustrious of the Stoics, 
 was born at Cittium, a small city in the island of Cyprus, of 
 Phoenician origin, but inhabited by Greeks. The time of his 
 birth is not known. In his youth he was engaged in com- 
 merce, as his father was a merchant ; but after reading the 
 
 1 Ueberweg : " Hist, of Philosophy," vol. I., p. 194. 
 
74 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 works of Socrates, which his father brought him from 
 Athens, his mind became entirely occupied with philosophy. 
 In his mature age, on his first visit to Athens, he was ship- 
 wrecked, and, having lost all, he joined the Cynics, whose 
 ostentatious display of poverty pleased him at the time. 
 But his moral sensibility soon revolted at their grossness and 
 insolence. After twenty years of serious study in different 
 schools, he formed one of his own at Athens. The place 
 selected was the Stoa, or Porch, which had once been the 
 place of meeting of the poets, but was now deserted ; and 
 from this Stoa the school derived its name. 
 
 Zeno was much admired for the temperance and austerity 
 of his habits. Though possessed of a delicate constitution, 
 by leading an abstemious life he lived to an old age. The 
 Athenians respected him so much that they entrusted him 
 with the keys of the city ; and at his death they erected 
 monuments in his honor, with inscriptions to the effect that 
 his life had been in perfect harmony with his philosophy. It 
 was certainly the highest praise that they could have be- 
 stowed upon him. 
 
 Greek civilization was now in its decline, and Rome was 
 fast taking the place in political power that Athens had once 
 held. Zeno, alarmed at the skepticism of the age, turned 
 his thoughts chiefly upon moral questions, holding in con- 
 tempt knowledge which did not immediately refer to conduct. 
 
 "The fundamental criterion of truth with the Stoics is sen- 
 suous distinctness in the mental representation "; 1 or, as Des- 
 cartes said many centuries afterward, " all clear and distinct 
 ideas are true." Sextus Empiricus tells us that the Stoics 
 -called this criterion of truth the " Cataleptic Phantasm;' that 
 is, the sensuous apprehension. 
 
 In the review of Plato, in the preceding chapter, this ques- 
 tion of the sensuous and intellectual apprehension has already 
 been dealt with. A more thorough examination of it re- 
 quires a careful study of the nature of perception, which the 
 reader will find in Part II. 
 
 1 Ueberweg, vol. I., p. 191. 
 
THE CYNICS. 75 
 
 Antisthenes, an Athenian, born of a Phrygian or Thracian 
 mother, was a pupil of Gorgias, the Sophist. After finishing 
 his studies, he established a school of his own, which he sub- 
 sequently gave up when he had made the acquaintance of 
 Socrates. His admiration for this wise man was such that, 
 with more modesty than most philosophers possess, he be- 
 came his disciple, and persuaded all his own pupils to follow 
 him, telling them that in so doing they could best learn wis- 
 dom. He took such pride in his poverty that Socrates one 
 day said to him : " I see thy vanity, Antisthenes, peering 
 through the holes in thy cloak." 
 
 It is difficult even for wise men to walk in the narrow 
 path of moderation ; and Antisthenes, after the death of his 
 master, carried poverty to such extremes that he became re- 
 pulsive. In his virtuous zeal he carried every thing to ex- 
 cess, ignoring completely the Socratic moderation. He held 
 all sensuous enjoyment in such contempt that he is repre- 
 sented as saying : " I would rather be mad than sensual." 
 Indeed, he and his followers became so indecent and un- 
 couth, that their manners finally resembled those of dogs 
 rather than men, and caused the refined Athenians to give 
 them the name of Cynics. 
 
 " The doctrine of Antisthenes was mainly confined to 
 morals ; but, even in this portion of philosophy, it is exceed- 
 ingly meagre and deficient, scarcely furnishing any thing be- 
 yond a general defence of the olden simplicity and moral 
 energy against the luxurious indulgence and effeminacy of 
 later times." ' 
 
 Diogenes of Sinope, the famous scholar of Antisthenes, 
 was the son of a banker who was accused of debasing the 
 coin. His son, being implicated, was obliged to fly to 
 Athens, where he was soon reduced to the most abject pov- 
 erty. He then went to Antisthenes, who refused to receive 
 him ; and, as Diogenes would not depart, the Cynic 
 threatened to strike him with his staff. " Strike ! " an- 
 swered Diogenes, " you will not find a stick hard enough to 
 
 1 Ritter, vol. II., p. no. 
 
76 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 conquer my perseverance." He was then accepted as a 
 pupil. 
 
 The Cynics despised the Athenians for their joyous way 
 of life, and opposed to it the greatest self-denial. They 
 maintained that the wise man must hold himself superior to 
 all outward influences, and out of their utter disregard for 
 social institutions arose their brutal coarseness. 
 
 By the Cynics, philosophy was reduced to the art of life, 
 but life stripped of all beauty, grace, and pleasure. They 
 denied that science or definite knowledge was possible, and 
 refused to accept the Socratic idea, that a definition was the 
 essence of a thing. Thus they opposed facts to arguments, 
 maintaining that definitions might prove that there was no 
 such thing as motion, but this was merely a manipulation of 
 words and did not alter the facts, which remained the same. 
 In this it must be admitted that they had an insight into the 
 great truth that facts express themselves, and are, therefore, 
 in one sense, independent of words ; a truth which indicates 
 the limitations of language. 
 
 We find among the Cynics the most extraordinary example 
 of the influence which skepticism can exert upon conduct. 
 As far as their opposition to the tenets of philosophy was con- 
 cerned, their skepticism was of a mild type, but their moral 
 distrust amounted to fanaticism. They arbitrarily dis- 
 sociated the mind from the body, and regarded the functions 
 of the one as holy and of the other as unholy. They made 
 the further mistake of estimating the degradation of bodily 
 functions by the degree of pleasure derived from their 
 exercise. They may have had an excuse for this belief in 
 the excesses of the age, but it brought them to the conse- 
 quence of such a doctrine the belief that pain is in itself a 
 virtue. They saw that virtue could only be attained by 
 reasoning with the desires, by a stern self-discipline : con- 
 necting this idea with that of suffering, they came to despise 
 all bodily comforts, and actually to court squalor, privation, 
 and pain. 
 
 The Stoics held themselves superior to worldly enjoyments,, 
 
EPICURUS. 
 
 and were proud of poverty : they thought that it enabled 
 them to devote their lives to the study of truth. The 
 Cynics devoted their lives to illustrating their contempt for 
 all kinds of pleasure, looking upon joy itself as a reproach 
 and beneath their dignity. They were admired for this 
 great force of character, and feared and respected for the 
 fierce purity of their motives. 
 
 Opposed to the repulsive and mutilated morality of the 
 Cynics we find the celebrated school of the Epicureans. The 
 popular idea of this school is, that it was licentious and 
 given up to the worship of pleasure. In fact, the word Epi- 
 curean has degenerated into signifying " a luxurious and 
 dainty eater ; a person given to luxury." If there is such a 
 school in our day it can have but little resemblance to its 
 prototype in ancient Greece. 
 
 Epicurus, the son of poor parents, was born in the lOQth 
 Olympiad (B.C. 342), at Samos, according to some ; or, ac- 
 cording to others, at Gargettus, a borough near Athens. He 
 visited Athens at the age of eighteen. Xenocrates was then 
 teaching in the Academy, while Aristotle was in Chalcis. 
 After studying for a short time under Xenocrates he left 
 Athens, and resided in different cities of Greece until the age 
 of thirty-six. He then returned to Athens to teach his own 
 philosophy, in a school over which he presided until his 
 death. 
 
 Opportunities were not lacking at this time for study 
 in Athens. The Platonists had their Academic Grove, the 
 Aristotelians walked along the Lyceum, the Cynics growled 
 in the Cynosarges, the Stoics occupied the Porch, and the 
 Epicureans had their Garden. 
 
 " Here, in the tranquil Garden, in the society of his friends, 
 Epicurus passed a peaceful life of speculation and enjoyment. 
 The friendship which existed amongst them is well known. 
 In a time of general scarcity and famine they contributed to 
 each others' support, showing that the Pythagorean notion 
 of community of goods was unnecessary amongst friends, 
 who could confide in each other. At the entrance of the 
 
78 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Garden they placed this inscription : ' The hospitable keeper 
 of this mansion, where you will find pleasure the highest 
 good, will present you liberally with barley-cakes and water 
 fresh from the spring. The gardens will not provoke your 
 appetite by artificial dainties but satisfy it with natural sup- 
 plies. Will you not be well entertained?" 
 
 It is believed now that Epicurus was a man of pure life, 
 who by his doctrines sought to inculcate moderation and ab- 
 stemiousness. He differed from Plato and Aristotle in one 
 essential point. He regarded philosophy as the Art of Life 
 rather than the Art of Truth ; declaring it to be an activity 
 which, by means of ideas and arguments, procures the hap- 
 piness of life. Epicurus did not seek the pleasure of the 
 moment, but the uninterrupted course of happiness through 
 life. This was to be obtained through the enjoyments of 
 the mind, which are lasting, rather than through those of the 
 senses, which are fleeting. He taught that virtue was in- 
 separable from true pleasure; and though he did not ex- 
 actly condemn all luxuries, he saw that a simple life was 
 best, saying, "wealth consists not in having great posses- 
 sions, but in having small wants." Thus, from the skepti- 
 cism which the imperfect philosophy of the age inspired, 
 Epicurus sought a refuge in morals, and endeavored to place 
 them on a philosophic basis. 
 
 To Epicurus are attributed some of the most astute gener- 
 alizations which are to be found in Greek thought. Ueber- 
 weg says : " Epicurus considers the dialectical method 
 incorrect and misleading. * * * Representations are re- 
 membered images of past perceptions. Beliefs are true or 
 false, according as they are confirmed or refuted by percep- 
 tion. * * * Animals and men are the products of the 
 earth ; the rise of man to the higher stages of culture has 
 been gradual. Words were formed originally, not by an ar- 
 bitrary but by a natural process, in correspondence with our 
 sensations and ideas. * * * Opinion or belief is due to 
 the continued working of impressions on us. The will is 
 excited, but not necessarily determined by ideas. Freedom 
 
PYRRHO. 79 
 
 of the will is contingency (independence of causes) in self- 
 determination." ] 
 
 It would be hard to find, even among the most modern 
 writers, a better statement of the fundamental facts of bi- 
 ology, psychology, and philology than these words of Epi- 
 curus. 
 
 The teachings of Socrates were said to have been a reac- 
 tion against the skepticism of his time ; and yet Pyrrho, 
 whose career did not begin until after the death of Socrates, 
 is regarded as the founder of skeptical philosophy. This , 
 apparent anachronism is to be explained by the fact that 
 skepticism existed as a definite type of belief in Greece long 
 before its organization into a school by Pyrrho. This school 
 developed later on into the New Academy. Among its. 
 pupils we find the names of Horace and Cicero. 
 
 Of the doctrines of Pyrrho, but an outline has come down 
 to us, so mixed are they with the teachings of his pupils. 
 These doctrines centre, like all skepticism, in the tenet that 
 there is no criterion of truth. Perhaps in the writings of 
 Sextus Empiricus is found the most complete portrayal of 
 the doctrines of skepticism. 
 
 The celebrity which the school of Pyrrho attained is due 
 more to the prominence of the doctrines which it combated 
 than to any originality in its own teachings. It is easy to 
 criticise. Skepticism criticised the creations of Socrates, 
 Plato and Aristotle, and well-nigh brought them to naught. 
 It exposed the weak points in these systems, but it offered 
 nothing worthy to take their place. Skepticism and Faith 
 are opposite intellectual extremes, and an undue tendency 
 toward either is enervating to the mind. Faith is trust in. 
 appearances, skepticism is distrust in appearances. Appear- 
 ance and disappearance are our symbols for change. All. 
 knowledge springs from these changes : to alternately trust 
 and distrust them, to experiment and verify, is the natural 
 course of perception. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, 
 that the actions and reactions which have gone to make up- 
 
 1 " Hist, of Philosophy," vol. I., pp. 203, 205. 
 
80 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the growth of knowledge should have produced the greatest 
 extravagances of belief and unbelief. 
 
 The extremes of faith and of skepticism are equally 
 opposed to thought. Science has no fear of skepticism, 
 for the element of doubt is never neglected in its conclu- 
 sions. Scientific facts are frustrations of doubt ; they rest 
 upon the " Universal Postulate/' the underlying principle of 
 certitude, the inability to believe the negation of a propo- 
 sition, which alone constitutes conviction. Skepticism is 
 said not to be a belief, but an unbelief. This is a misappre- 
 hension, for it is a clearly-defined doctrine, resting upon evi- 
 dences supposed to be axiomatic in their certainty. It has 
 a well understood method, and it has even created elaborate 
 dogmas. Its tendency is to depress conviction, not to 
 destroy it. Its position with regard to belief is like that of 
 the misanthrope who declared that he was most happy when 
 utterly alone, but was obliged to confess that he needed 
 some one to whom to communicate this happiness. 
 
 Let us examine some of the convictions of Skepticism. 
 Skepticism affirms that there is no criterion of truth. The 
 evidence it offers for this assertion is, that knowledge can be 
 only a knowledge of phenomena, and phenomena are the ap- 
 pearances of things, not the things themselves. According 
 to the Academicians, perceptions bore no conformity to the 
 objects perceived, or, if they did bear any conformity to 
 them, it could never be known. They assume that there is 
 a reality deeper than phenomena, or change, which they call 
 noumena. They mean, however, by phenomena, truth (facts), 
 for they assert that there is no measure or criterion of truth ; 
 and as they cannot reach the noumena to compare or meas- 
 ure them, had they this criterion, they must regard phenom- 
 ena as their organon of truth. Their assumptions, then, 
 amount to this : We have no absolute standard of facts by 
 which to measure the truth of facts ; and if we had, it would 
 be of no use, because there is a noumenon behind facts which 
 is more true and more real than facts themselves. This 
 noumenon is an unchanging existence, whereas facts are 
 
THE SKEPTICS OF THE NEW ACADEMY. 8 1 
 
 changing existences. Now, was there ever such a mass of 
 contradictory statements as this ? 
 
 Have we not already reached a point which enables us to 
 say that existence cannot be other than changing existence, 
 and that, therefore, unchanging existence is a contradiction 
 in terms. May we not now call upon the skeptics to prove 
 that there is such a thing as unchanging existence, before we 
 can accept their statement that there is a noumenon^ or a 
 deeper source of truth than phenomena? 
 
 Their assertion that perceptions bear no conformity to the 
 objects perceived, or, if they did, that it could never be 
 known, really amounts to this : A lady viewing herself in a 
 mirror is bound to believe that she is looking at some one 
 else, or that she is some one else ; or if she is not, it does not 
 matter, as she cannot know who she is. And it is said that 
 skeptics can believe nothing ! 
 
 Of course Arcesilaus and Carneades would have thought 
 this a frivolous way of meeting their profound arguments. 
 But let us bear in mind that profundity is not necessarily 
 proven by a confusion of ideas. Nor would we take advantage 
 of the rich inheritance of our century in definite knowledge to 
 make it appear that the acute intellects who puzzled the 
 Greeks and confounded the Romans were stumbling over 
 obvious errors. What we wish to prove is, that the Skeptics 
 had beliefs as well as other people, but that these beliefs 
 were divorced from facts by the tautologies and circumven- 
 tions of reasoning from a false premise. 
 
 If belief is but a phase of knowledge, a natural movement 
 of the mind which springs from the deeper impulses, those 
 dim, inarticulate perceptions which we call faith, then is not 
 Skepticism an artificial and unnatural belief, but none the 
 less a belief? 
 
 An analysis of these beliefs brings us inevitably to those 
 deep movements of consciousness, those simple and natural 
 perceptions upon which rests the whole structure of certi- 
 tude. 
 
 Arcesilaus was born at Pitane in the i i6th Olympiad (B.C., 
 
82 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 316). He was the successor of Crates to the Academic 
 chair, and is said to have filled it with great ability. The 
 difference between the views entertained by the Academi- 
 cians and those of the absolute Skeptics, we are told, is that 
 the former declared that all things were incomprehensible, 
 and that the latter did not affirm any thing, not even 
 that all things were incomprehensible. As it would be diffi- 
 cult to criticise the views of the latter class, we may consider 
 the Academicians the most pronounced Skeptics, for we are 
 in no danger of being contradicted by the other branch of 
 the sect. 
 
 Carneades, the most illustrious of the Academicians, was 
 born in the 141 st Olympiad (B.C. 213), at Cyrene in Africa. 
 Diogenes, the Stoic, instructed him in the art of disputation. 
 He was sent to Rome as ambassador, and astonished all 
 who heard him in that city by the brilliancy of his eloquence. 
 He was much praised for his celebrated discourse on Justice ; 
 but when trying to prove the uncertainty of all human 
 knowledge, he spoke against justice as strongly as he had 
 spoken for it ; Cato, the Censor, startled by these sophistries 
 hastened to have him dismissed from the city for fear that 
 he would corrupt the Roman youth. One of the pupils of 
 Carneades confessed that he could never discover what the 
 real opinion of his master was, so skilled was he in the art 
 of disputation. 
 
 Arcesilaus, while he admitted the arguments of Plato 
 which destroyed the certainty of Opinion, also admitted 
 those of Aristotle which destroyed the Ideal theory; thus 
 he left himself nothing but absolute Skepticism. The chief 
 problem which occupied the Academicians, briefly stated, is 
 this : Does every modification of the mind exactly corres- 
 pond with the external object which causes the modification ; 
 or, in other words, do we know things as they really are ? 
 The fact that all knowledge is derived through the senses 
 made them doubt its accuracy. It is true that the senses 
 are the outposts of the understanding, but what has that to 
 do with what takes place within the citadel of thought? 
 
THE SKEPTICS OF THE NEW ACADEMY. 83 
 
 Can the Skeptic say where sense leaves off and reason 
 begins? He cannot. Then is it not safe to say that all 
 reason has a sensuous aspect, and that all sense has a 
 reasonable or logical aspect ? 
 
 We know that such truth as we possess is the function of 
 certain conditions ; that these conditions are those of per- 
 ception ; that reason is one aspect of the mental procedure 
 called perception, and that objective phenomena, or change, 
 is the other. We know that phenomena and reason, there- 
 fore, are related to each other as cause and effect, and that 
 cause and effect are simply two aspects of the same thing. 
 When light awakens the phenomena of sight within us, and 
 this, with the cooperation of other activities of our complex 
 organism, is elaborated into an idea, or the- phenomena of 
 reason, we have but sequent groups of changes, natural 
 chains of cause and effect, uniting and explaining observed 
 phenomena, sensuous apprehension, and ideas. The greater 
 the number of changes coordinated in the mind, made pos- 
 sible by accumulated modifications of the mental structure, 
 the greater the extent of reason ; the greater the com- 
 mand of facts, the wider and deeper the generalizations 
 or the establishment of interdependencies among facts. To 
 state, therefore, that things are not in reality what they 
 seem, is an entirely gratuitous assertion. We know things 
 as they affect, and to the extent that they affect, us. 
 This effect is the function of a definite structure. As the 
 modifications of the structure increase, this function or 
 response becomes more extended. To know an object in 
 the sense that the Skeptics imagined that we ought to know 
 it (to have an absolute knowledge of it) could only be accom- 
 plished by changing identity with the object by becoming 
 the object ; as then, and only then, the perception would be 
 the function of its whole nature. 
 
 This is the way that God knows things, because God 
 shares his existence with every thing. 1 We, whether it be 
 regarded as fortunate or unfortunate, enjoy some sort of in- 
 
 1 This expression, it is understood, is purely symbolical. 
 
84 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 dividuality, and our perceptions are never more and never 
 less than the natural relationship or interaction between our- 
 selves and the things perceived. In the silent contemplation 
 of nature we come face to face with the deepest realities, 
 but the moment we would translate these realities into the 
 metaphor of language we are defeated on every hand. 
 What is more real than action ? What is more unreal than 
 its portrayal in words ? What is more certain than a feeling, 
 a sentiment, or a thought ? What is more impotent than 
 the best attempt at its conversion into symbols? The 
 incontrovertible part of life is its action, the delusive part is 
 its speech ; words are forever meaningless to those who have 
 not actually experienced the thoughts which they express. 
 The whole history of thought is a struggle with metaphors, 
 an effort to express thought and then a confusion of the ex- 
 pression with the thing expressed. As language, the great 
 medium of thought and feeling, enriches the lives of all who 
 use it, so it is the source of endless confusion and error to 
 those who have not actually lived up to its significance. 
 
 The issue we take with those who are willing to surrender 
 the results of philosophy to the Skeptic is now apparent. 
 Skepticism is only an involved and obscure philosophy, a 
 system of ultimate beliefs. Contrary to its teachings, we 
 hold that there is a successful philosophy, a successful 
 metaphysics, and that the most absolute Skepticism which 
 it is possible to state in terms is both a positive and a 
 mistaken belief. 
 
 These arguments, which seek to disclose the Scope of 
 Language, cannot be further produced without attempting 
 a close study of the Nature of Perception, which follows in 
 its allotted place. I am content for the present if I have 
 helped to dispel that logical presumption which has hung 
 for so many centuries like a dark cloud over the entire field 
 of thought. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL, SCHOLASTICISM, AND THE REVIVAL 
 OF LEARNING. 
 
 Philo Plotinus Abelard Bruno Bacon. 
 
 THE fall of Greek independence and the advent of Skep- 
 ticism dethroned philosophy in Greece, and the centre of 
 speculative thought was transferred to Alexandria. Here, 
 during the first centuries of our era, Greek thought and 
 oriental mysticism combined in the formation of Chris- 
 tian theology. Alexandria, for three centuries previous to 
 this time, had been the centre of vast commercial as well as 
 literary enterprise. Its celebrated library, which contained 
 inestimable treasures of Egyptian, Indian, and Greek litera- 
 ture, (destroyed by Christian fanatics under the arch- 
 bishop Theophilus, in 391 A.D.) had been enriched and 
 fostered by such men as Euclid, Conon, Theocritus, Calli- 
 machus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Hipparchus. 
 
 For three centuries the Alexandrian school of philosophy 
 contended with Christianity for the intellectual and moral 
 control of Europe. It was not a fight between religious 
 faith and reason, as might be supposed, for religious faith 
 was the foundation of the Alexandrian philosophy ; it was a 
 struggle between the special beliefs of Christianity, which 
 were formed by the early Christian fathers into a complete 
 organon of faith, and the incomplete beliefs which philoso- 
 phy at that time offered. This struggle still continues, with 
 the difference that the completeness of philosophical beliefs 
 now is far in advance of the Alexandrian school. The chief 
 objection to resigning Christian faith for Philosophy is that 
 something is given up with the former which is not replaced 
 
 85 
 
86 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 by the latter, and the objection is valid ; for until Philosophy 
 can round out and organize its tenets so as to present a 
 complete system of belief, with a definite creed, a moral law, 
 a source of inspiration, a cosmology, a distinct theory of the 
 origin and destiny of our race, expressed of course in terms 
 which comply with the laws of perception, until then, re- 
 vealed religion will have an advantage over philosophy 
 which will decide the choice of the multitude irf*its favor. 
 The question which presses upon us is whether it is not 
 possible to make of philosophy a religion superior to any 
 faith which the world has yet known. 
 
 The curious feature of the Alexandrian philosophy is, that 
 it was founded on faith, not on reason. Reason had been 
 defeated by Skepticism, and it was declared, by what was 
 then an unanswerable argument, that it was not a criterion 
 of truth. A philosophy of Skepticism sprang up which 
 denied the validity of human reason and demanded another 
 criterion of truth ; for belief is ever active, it never tires of 
 the effort to establish itself in fact. The philosophy of the 
 Alexandrian school took the stand that Faith was the criterion 
 of truth. It is interesting to know, therefore, that Christianity 
 owes to philosophy its doctrine of faith, so predominant 
 among its teachings. It is to the ingenuity of the teachers 
 of philosophy, who, defeated by Skepticism, sought another 
 explanation of the source of knowledge than reason, that re- 
 ligion owes this bulwark of its creeds, this unanswerable 
 argument of Faith. It is certainly a most fortunate starting- 
 point for any special belief, for it was devised as a defence 
 against the reasonings of Skeptics and has proved invulner- 
 able to all kinds of reasoning, both true and false. 
 
 Philo, the Jew, the first of the Neo-Platonists, was born in 
 Alexandria, shortly before the beginning of the Christian 
 era. He had imbibed the doctrines of the New Academy, 
 and therefore made no attempt to refute Skepticism ; he 
 merely tried to avoid it and to build a system of belief 
 which would endure in spite of Skepticism, not in place of 
 it. The manner in which he expressed his criterion of truth 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 8/ 
 
 is as follows : " The Senses may deceive, Reason may be 
 powerless ; but there is still a faculty in man there is 
 Faith. Real Science is the gift of God ; its name is Faith ; 
 its origin is the goodness of God ; its cause is Piety." That 
 Hebrew anthropomorphism which regards the Universal 
 Principle or Ultimate Generalization that the Greeks called 
 God, or the One, as a person having human attributes, as- 
 serted itself in Philo's teachings. Again : Mysticism, that 
 peculiar belief of oriental nations, far more ancient than any 
 thing which has come to us from the Greeks, was also a 
 factor in the doctrines of Philo ; and from these various 
 sources he framed a theology which is reproduced with 
 wonderful faithfulness in the Christian system of belief. 
 The most singular tenet of mysticism is that of a mediator 
 between God and man, made necessary by the inaccessible 
 nature of Deity. This mediator the Mystics called The 
 Word. 
 
 The school of Alexandria was founded by Ammonius 
 Saccas, toward the close of the second century of the 
 Christian era, at a time when civilization was on the decline. 
 This school gathered to itself many great and noble minds 
 which gave it unwonted brilliancy and power, while its 
 rivalry with Christianity spread its renown throughout the 
 world. For three centuries, this school lasted, during which 
 time Plotinus revived the doctrines of Plato ; Porphyry and 
 lamblicus sought to make it rival Christianity ; and Proclus 
 tried to harmonize philosophy and religion. This grand in- 
 tellectual centre to which the religious culture of our 
 era can be so clearly traced was indeed cosmopolitan in 
 its influences. Not far from the temple of Serapis, Greek 
 Skepticism, Platonism, Judaism, and Christianity, were all 
 interpreted. 
 
 Alexandrian Eclecticism, 1 though based on the doctrines of 
 Plato, had much that was original in it ; but its composite 
 
 1 Eclecticism is that method of philosophy which believes that by placing the 
 better parts of all systems of thought in comparison the highest truth will make 
 itself apparent. In modern philosophy, this method has been employed in. 
 .France by Victor Cousin and his contemporaries. 
 
88 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 character produced by degrees a mystic pantheism wholly 
 foreign to Greek thought. If the method of the school was 
 Platonic, its doctrine of the Trinity rendered it clearly mystic. 
 What is generally understood by the term theology is a body 
 of beliefs, largely originated by the teachers of philosophy 
 known as the Neo-Platonists, concerning the attributes of God. 
 These men, as above stated, were not only opposed to the 
 special tenets of Christianity, but endeavored to found a re- 
 ligious organization in opposition to the Christian church. 
 The Alexandrians exaggerated the vicious tendency so 
 prevalent in most religions, to despise human nature. 
 " Plotinus blushed because he had a body: contempt for 
 human personality could go no further." 
 
 Plotinus was the chief author of the metaphysics of the 
 Alexandrians, an exceedingly subtle and involved system, 
 especially interesting because it is closely reproduced in 
 modern German speculations. This system rests upon the 
 identification of subject and object as the principle of human 
 perception. If the explanation of perception which the 
 Alexandrians offered were reduced to its simplest terms it 
 would be correct ; but it is so involved, so many repetitions 
 in the use of ultimate terms occur, that it is impossible to 
 give it any definite form. The object seems to be to prove 
 that the varieties of the universe are but modes of God's 
 existence. If God is viewed as the universal principle, the 
 theory is essentially true, although unhappily expressed. 
 The commanding generalization which it suggests is clouded 
 by the fault of regarding God as a person, and the power 
 which is represented by divine unity as an intelligence. This 
 tendency to view human intelligence as universal degrades 
 what would otherwise be a sublime philosophy into a pan- 
 theism, or the belief that the universe is God and that God 
 is a personal intelligence. Thus Plotinus taught that "the 
 Sensible world was but the appearance of the Ideal world, 
 and that the Ideal world, in its turn, was but the modes of 
 God's existence." The correct view of the nature of per- 
 ception which we see struggling to the surface in the teach- 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 8c 
 
 ings of Plotinus is obscured by that mystic theory known as 
 the "ecstatic vision of the Infinite" (or God). Nothing 
 could be more destructive to a true philosophy than this 
 superstitious notion of perception, which postulates that the 
 knowledge of God is essentially a mystery. The fault of 
 this theory will be fully exposed in our review of German 
 thought ; for in Germany the Alexandrian metaphysics have 
 reached their farthest development. The origin of this, 
 theory of the ecstatic vision of God has already been indi- 
 cated, as it is merely mysticism in a metaphysical form. 
 
 All Christian metaphysics sprang from the belief in mys- 
 teries. The mystery of the Incarnation, the Redemption, 
 and the Holy Trinity, as they have been differently inter- 
 preted, have given rise to the great heresies, 1 and all the 
 subsequent Christian sects. Strange to say, modern philoso- 
 phy also rests upon a fundamental mystery, which is called 
 the Unknowable. No philosophy can succeed or become an 
 adequate guide to life (a religion) which does not establish 
 beyond all cavil the reality of human knowledge, the im- 
 possibility of a fundamental mystery in life or nature. Until 
 philosophy can build its truths upon a firmer foundation 
 than mystery, revealed religion will be its logical peer ; for 
 in fact there are few religions, taking them all in all, that are 
 not better philosophies than Agnosticism. 
 
 The dispute as to the priority of the Alexandrian or the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity is familiar to all students 
 of theology. Both doctrines clearly point to beliefs of great 
 antiquity. A brief description of them in the forms which 
 they respectively assumed under Christian and anti-Christian 
 philosophy, will suffice for our purpose. The doctrine of 
 the Christian Trinity is the highest and most " mysterious" 
 of Christian beliefs. The fullest statement of this mystery 
 is to be found in the Athanasian creed : " That we worship 
 one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity ; neither confound- 
 ing the persons nor dividing the substance ; for there is one 
 person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the. 
 
 'Arianism, Sabellianism, and Nestorianism. 
 
^90 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one ; the glory equal ; the 
 majesty co-eternal." The most striking argument which is 
 offered in support of this complex belief is, that the names 
 applied to God in the Old Testament, such as Elohim, 
 having a plural signification and being used in connection 
 with a singular verb, suggest a combination of the ideas of 
 unity and plurality in the Godhead. To any one not initi- 
 ated into the mysteries of theology, the thought would 
 occur that the use of a plural name for God by the ancient 
 Hebrew tribes meant that they believed in more than one 
 God ; but the theologians tell us that, on the contrary, it 
 meant that they believed in one God composed of three dis- 
 tinct persons. We have looked in vain among the traditions 
 of Moses, however, for any of the scholarly subdivisions of 
 deity in which the Alexandrian Jews so delighted. Nothing 
 can more clearly exonerate Moses from any connection with 
 the complicated idea of three gods in one, than the artless 
 manner in which he is made to speak of Yahveh in the 
 ancient Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 Plotinus was more original in his explanation of the Trin- 
 ity than the Christians : he does not consider Moses at all 
 in this explanation, although he was literally surrounded by 
 learned Jews; in fact he explains the Hypostases, or Sub- 
 stances, of deity with a provoking indifference to all our 
 theories of Semitic monotheism. In speaking of the Alexan- 
 drian doctrine of the Trinity as compared with the Christian, 
 Jules Simon says : "The unity of one God in three differ- 
 ent persons or hypostases (substances), this is all the resem- 
 blance, up to the present time, that we have found between 
 the trinity of Plotinus and the Christian Trinity. But each 
 of the hypostases of the god of Plotinus differs radically from 
 the corresponding divine persons of the Christian dogma; 
 and the opposition is not less great when we consider not 
 only the persons but their diverse relations. Thus, in the 
 Christian doctrine, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
 know and love one another. The Father loves the Son and 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 9! 
 
 is beloved by him, the Holy Ghost knows the Father and the 
 Son, and has of both an equally complete and direct knowl- 
 edge. In Plotinus, on the contrary, each hypostasis knows 
 and loves exclusively the preceding hypostasis, and remains a 
 stranger to inferior hypostases. Unity, which has nothing 
 above it, knows and loves nothing, and Plotinus only admits 
 in trembling that it loves and knows but itself. He can 
 say with Spinoza, ' No one can desire to be loved by God, 
 for it would be to desire that God should cease to be per- 
 fect.' " ' 
 
 Is it not safe to say, upon a careful comparison of these 
 two doctrines of the Trinity, that the Christian myth is 
 the more sensuous, because in it the attributes and powers 
 of each person of the Godhead are declared to be equal, 
 which makes 'it impossible to regard the Christian theory of 
 the Trinity as pointing to a universal principle through the 
 subjective and objective aspects of life ? 
 
 In passing from ancient to modern philosophy we must 
 remember that Rome holds no important place in the annals 
 of human thought. This great empire rose and fell without 
 producing any perceptible movement in philosophy. Roman 
 speculation, which was never more than a faint reflection of 
 that of Greece, fed upon the Alexandrian culture during and 
 long after the Augustan age ; and the great Church of Rome 
 established its faith and took up its chief theological positions 
 under the guidance of this same culture. From the decline 
 of philosophy in Alexandria to the revival of learning in 
 Europe, all organized thought seems to have been enlisted 
 in the service of the church. Christianity fostered the learn- 
 ing and logical skill which survived amid the decay of the 
 Roman Empire and the crude political beginnings of the 
 barbarian states ; and thus the church was for centuries the 
 custodian and promoter of the intellectual and moral order 
 of Europe. But although Rome protected thought, she 
 afterward enslaved it ; and, when the mind of Christendom, 
 encouraged by the growing liberties of our civilization, 
 
 1 " Histoire de 1'Ecole d* Alexandria, " vol. I., p. 332. 
 
92 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 opposed these restraints, it found in the church, instead of a 
 friendly protector, a powerful and determined enemy. 
 
 Scholasticism proper began with the schools (scholce) 
 opened by Charlemagne in the eighth century. These 
 schools were instituted in the episcopal sees, in the mon- 
 asteries, convents, and cloisters of the new Germanic Em- 
 pire. For centuries previous to this, Christian culture had 
 shown itself chiefly in the writings of the Greek and Latin 
 fathers of the church ; but now the famous doctors of the 
 Scholastic age arose. Joannes Scotus, the Irish erudite of 
 the ninth century, began the movement, which was carried 
 on by St. Anselm (1034), who is considered the reviver of 
 metaphysics after the decline of the Roman Empire. The 
 impetus given to thought by Charlemagne soon spread its. 
 results throughout Europe, and the writings of Albert the 
 Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, remind us of 
 the vast proportions which the theological disputes of the 
 Middle Ages assumed. 
 
 The most interesting character among the Scholastics, 
 from a philosophic standpoint, is Abelard. This celebrated 
 French logician, born near Nantes in 1079, manifested at an 
 early age a genius for dialectics. This was before the revival 
 of learning, but philosophy and theology were already be- 
 ginning to take divergent paths. There is no evidence that 
 Abelard was a great student or a profound thinker ; but he 
 must have had a ready insight into the inconsistencies of the 
 current philosophy of his time. Becoming eager to exercise 
 his natural faculty for metaphysical discussion, he went to> 
 Paris at the age of twenty and joined the school of William 
 de Champeaux, a renowned teacher of the art of disputation. 
 It was not long before Abelard challenged his teacher and 
 defeated him in argument ; then the character of his am- 
 bition became apparent. He was not primarily a lover of 
 wisdom, but rather of the glories and triumphs of contro- 
 versy. He looked upon the past as a repository of knowl- 
 edge containing more truth than his age possessed, and 
 throughout his teachings this attitude was maintained, which- 
 
SCHOLA S TICISM. 93 
 
 caused them to lack the inspiration of progress. In our age 
 we are not discouraged by believing in the retrogression of 
 knowledge ; our studies are full of hope, we feel the possi- 
 bility of increasing knowledge, of exalting human life. 
 During the revival of learning in Europe, all study was a 
 retrospect, and thought flowed down from the intellectual 
 heights of ancient Greece to the lower levels of the later 
 civilizations. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Abelard con- 
 tented himself with exhibiting to admiring crowds the treas- 
 ures which he found in the literatures of the Greeks and the 
 Romans, and that he felt the hopelessness of any endeavor 
 to add to the achievements of the past. 
 
 We are reminded by his fate that the deepest reproach 
 that can be made to a teacher, is that of unfaithfulness to 
 his precepts. 
 
 He was a brilliant orator and a master of the art 
 of disputation ; but in teaching there is no power like 
 that of example ; and as he lacked those sterling virtues 
 which alone could have made his life correspond with the 
 ideals which he held up for others, his career challenged ad- 
 miration but failed to command respect, or to exert any 
 deep influence. 
 
 Abelard was a representative Scholastic. He has been 
 called by different writers a nominalist, a realist, and a con- 
 ceptualist. Others think that his doctrines contain all these 
 kinds of thought in more or less definite proportions. For 
 our purpose it will be well to avoid these fine distinctions, 
 as they never mean any thing sufficiently definite to repay 
 the trouble of analyzing the terms. 
 
 There is one broad distinction, however, running through 
 all philosophic thought which can form the sufficient basis 
 of our classification. This distinction begins in the differ- 
 ence between the teachings of Aristotle and those of Plato. 
 Plato gave an objective existence to ideas ; he believed that 
 thoughts came nearer to the source of things than the 
 things themselves ; and as we can only recognize ideas by 
 
94 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 names or words, he mistook symbols for realities, and be- 
 lieved that, by operating on these symbols, deeper truths 
 could be reached than by studying nature directly. This 
 was the dialectics of Plato, and can be best described by the 
 term Idealism. The antithesis of idealism is science, the 
 patient investigation of facts accompanied by verification, 
 and the grouping or classification of these facts into more 
 and more general ideas. The ideas of science are always 
 subordinate to facts, because they are derived from them. 
 This, in general terms, is Aristotle's theory, and is distin- 
 guished from Plato's in that Plato held ideas to be superior 
 to facts. Of course there is a fundamental truth of which 
 both these interpretations are more or less distinct expres- 
 sions, but the difference between the theories is broad and 
 clear ; other and more minute distinctions are unnecessary 
 for the understanding of the general history and principles of 
 philosophy. For instance, Realism is a belief which sup- 
 poses that certain kinds of ideas, known as general terms or 
 abstract ideas, such as animal man truth, have an objec- 
 tive existence. Idealism maintains that all ideas have ob- 
 jective existences, such as both the idea of a given man, and 
 the idea of man in general, or that of a given animal and 
 the order animal. Nominalism is the ultra scientific posi- 
 tion. It holds that names stand for relations which we per- 
 ceive among facts, and that all relations are merely functions 
 of their terms or conditions : that a general name, such as 
 circle, simply stands for the relation of a circumference to 
 its centre ; that this relation can be generalized by apply- 
 ing it to many simpler groups of facts ; but in each case it 
 is strictly the function of these facts and has no separate 
 existence. 
 
 Realism, on the contrary, holds that the name circle 
 stands for a type of existence independent of all conditions. 
 It is a modified form of that rank Idealism of Plato which 
 believed in divine archetypes from which all concrete em- 
 bodiments were derived ; that an attribute or quality was 
 not simply the expression of certain conditions, but was a 
 
SCHOLASTICISM. 95 
 
 mystic genus or supernatural order of being, a mysterious . 
 something more real than the conditions expressing it. 
 This Idealism has fallen into such disrepute that the word 
 real has come to signify the exact logical opposite of it. 
 Real, to us, means rational, sensible, true, the antithesis of 
 ideal, fanciful, unreal. Is it surprising, therefore, that com- 
 mon-sense people should be puzzled when they are told that 
 Realism is a species of Idealism, and that it is the theory 
 that general names, such as circle beauty right, have a sep- 
 arate existence from round things beautiful objects right 
 actions ; that, in a word, Idealism believes that all reality is 
 in the mind ; Realism, that about seven-eighths of all reality 
 is in the mind ; whereas Nominalism leaves things as they 
 are, and claims for the mind no monopoly of reality ? But 
 the confusion becomes doubly confounded when we find the 
 Scholastics declaring that Aristotle, who is supposed to stand 
 for the rational or scientific order of perception, was a Real- 
 ist or a semi-Idealist. Aristotle, who honestly endeavored 
 to oppose the Idealism of Plato, became so entangled in its 
 mystical phraseology that his works were interpreted in the 
 Middle Ages as Scholastic Realism, and were identified with 
 religious orthodoxy. 
 
 The broad distinction which exists between Idealism and 
 Science is the only safe one to use in philosophic classifica- 
 tion. This distinction, as we have before said, can be traced 
 to the difference between Aristotle and Plato ; but as both 
 these great masters were monopolized by the church for 
 many centuries, the interpretations put upon their works are 
 more than confusing. Hence we shall not be surprised to 
 find a long line of logical reformers from Abelard even to 
 Francis Bacon denouncing the teachings of Aristotle as a 
 means of opposing Idealism. 
 
 Abelard was a strange mixture of Idealism and Nominal- 
 ism. An analysis of his thought in this regard would be as 
 tedious as profitless, for it suggests nothing original and 
 gives no indications of a direct study of nature. His career 
 was neither scientific nor, in the best sense, philosophic. 
 
-96 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 We must not forget, however, that he contended long and 
 earnestly for freedom of thought, and practically began the 
 movement which resulted in the separation of philosophy 
 and theology, the severing of that union which had been 
 effected by the Alexandrian school. 
 
 To glance at another civilization, the Mohammedan cul- 
 ture is not without its position in the history of thought. 
 The Arabians were diligent students of Greek philosophy, 
 and had translated a number of Aristotle's works into their 
 language long before the revival of learning among the Chris- 
 tian nations. An Arabian philosophy grew up which was a 
 combination of Mohammedanism and Greek thought, as 
 Scholasticism was a combination of Greek thought and 
 Christianity. The chief feature of this philosophy was mys- 
 ticism. All Eastern thought has a tinge of mysticism 
 that strange faith which has the doctrine of total depravity 
 for one support, and the principle of ecstatic communication 
 with God for the other. The Mystics had a contempt for 
 human energy. One of their orders symbolized this idea by 
 planting a stick in the desert and carrying water hundreds 
 of miles across the burning sands to water it. They believed 
 that the highest possible existence is absolute inaction, in 
 order to superinduce a reverie, or ecstasy, which is the con- 
 dition necessary to have perfect communion with God. 
 This idea is distinctly visible in Plato's teachings, and it 
 lingers in modern philosophy in the greatly modified form 
 of a belief in a priori ideas. Such an advanced work, even, 
 as Spencer's "Psychology" has a faint trace of it in the 
 notion of irreducible intuitions. 
 
 We find nothing in the system of Algazzali, the greatest 
 of Arabian philosophers (born in the city of Tours, 1 508 A.D.), 
 which is sufficiently distinct from the thought already re- 
 viewed to merit notice, unless it be this element of mysticism 
 which pervades the school, and which is abundantly repre- 
 sented in Christian culture. 
 
 Philosophy as well as religion has had its martyrs. In A.D. 
 1600 Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome by 
 
SCHOLA S TICISM. 97 
 
 the Holy Inquisition for teaching independence of thought. 
 It is true that he attacked religious beliefs with great force, 
 but he did it through philosophic writings and lectures. An 
 Italian of great learning, he conceived an intense feeling of 
 rebellion against the narrowness and superstition of his 
 time, and devoted his life to advocating principles of intel- 
 lectual reform. At that time the works of Aristotle were 
 regarded by the learned world with the same superstitious 
 reverence as that in which the Bible is now held ; and as 
 almost all learning was then confined to the church, there 
 was a strange combination of Aristotle's logic and physics, 
 the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and the Christian 
 dogmas, forming the accepted faith of the church. All those 
 who opposed any part of these beliefs were persecuted as 
 enemies of the Christian religion. The hold which this 
 combination of imperfect science and blind religious belief 
 had upon the public mind, is scarcely conceivable to us. 
 " In 1624 a quarter of a century after Bruno's martyrdom 
 the Parliament of Paris issued a decree banishing all 
 who publicly maintained theses against Aristotle ; and in 
 1629, at the urgent remonstrance of the Sorbonne, decreed 
 that to contradict the principles of Aristotle was to contra- 
 dict the Church ! There is an anecdote recorded somewhere 
 of a student, who, having detected spots in the sun, commu- 
 nicated his discovery to a worthy priest. ' My son/ replied 
 the priest, ' I have read Aristotle many times, and I assure 
 you there is nothing of the kind mentioned by him. Go, 
 rest in peace ; and be certain that the spots which you have 
 seen are in your eyes, and not in the sun.' ' 
 
 For ten years previous to Bruno's imprisonment at Venice, 
 where he languished without books or writing materials for 
 six years, he had wandered over the Continent and into 
 England. He was encouraged by Queen Elizabeth, and 
 through her influence lectured at Oxford. Before this he 
 lectured at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he attracted great 
 attention and became very popular. After leaving England 
 he visited Marburg, Wurtemburg, and Prague. In almost 
 
98 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 every place his aggressive nature and principles brought him 
 in conflict with the superior powers, and his visits to the seats 
 of learning were short and stormy. At last, returning to 
 Italy, whence he had fled, he was apprehended, suffered his 
 long imprisonment, and was put to death. 
 
 Together with the prevailing religious beliefs, Bruno bit- 
 terly and persistently attacked Aristotle and Ptolemy, and 
 in the more hospitable universities, debates of great pomp 
 and ceremony were organized to oppose his teachings. It is 
 to be remembered that these tournaments of learning were 
 a feature of the age. Bruno was a constant satirist of the 
 pedant, whom he held responsible for a great deal of the 
 narrowness of the times, and lost no opportunity to bring 
 him into ridicule. Speaking of him, he says : " If he laughs, 
 he calls himself Democritus ; if he weeps, it is with Her- 
 aclitus ; when he argues, he is Aristotle ; when he com- 
 bines chimeras, he is Plato ; when he stutters, he is Demos- 
 thenes." 
 
 Bruno was not a scientist, but he had the scientific spirit ; 
 he advocated the study of nature, instead of that unscientific 
 introspection which was the habit of his time. It may seem 
 strange that he was so opposed to Aristotle, and still so 
 thoroughly in sympathy with the Aristotelian method ; this 
 can only be explained by the narrow way in which the writ- 
 ings of the great Stagirite were interpreted by the church. 
 Bruno never could have come into contact with the broad 
 spirit of the Aristotelian method, or he would have recog- 
 nized in it the same hopes and ambitions which he enter- 
 tained himself. Bruno's philosophy had not become eman- 
 cipated from Scholasticism, as indeed but few modern 
 philosophies have. The highest generalization of the an- 
 cients, to which they gave the name of God, or Divine 
 Unity, had become substantialized by constant use in re- 
 ligious thought until its meaning was degraded by undue 
 limitations. 
 
 This substantialization of the Universal Principle, or the 
 idea of deity, is the great obstacle to an understanding be- 
 
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 99 
 
 tween philosophy and religion. These two contrasted 
 interpretations of deity employ the same terms but 
 give to them different meanings ; and so deeply rooted has 
 this misunderstanding become, that it is virtually beyond 
 correction. New generations must grow up with a common 
 knowledge of the meaning of these most important of all 
 words, before a reconciliation can be effected. 
 
 After the time of the Neo-Platonists and the Alexandrian 
 school, philosophy for fifteen centuries remained subservient 
 to religion and degenerated into a mystic theology. Such 
 men as Bruno rebelled against this low order of thought, and 
 struggled to throw off the concrete meanings imposed upon 
 ultimate terms ; they were only partially successful, and 
 passed away leaving their work incomplete. But from the 
 turmoil of mixed theological and philosophic debate, called 
 Scholasticism, the science of Metaphysics again springs into 
 existence, and the word God becoming purer and purer 
 in its meaning, at last assumes the form of the Ulti- 
 mate Reality, or Universal Principle Motion, the ob- 
 jective and subjective aspects of which are Space and Time. 
 Thus Science and Theology unite in the Synthesis of 
 Knowledge, giving us at once the only true philosophy, the 
 only pure religion. 
 
 Francis Bacon, about the merit of whose works there has 
 been so much dispute in England, especially during the 
 present century, was born in 1561. He studied at Cam- 
 bridge, and afterward took up the profession of law, in which 
 he became eminent. Under the reign of James the First his 
 fortune advanced rapidly. In 1616 he was sworn a member of 
 the Privy Council, and in the following year was appointed 
 Keeper of the Great Seal, then created Baron of Verulam, 
 and Viscount of St. Albans. Macaulay says : " The moral 
 qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say 
 that he was a bad man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. 
 He bore with meekness his high civil honors, and the far 
 higher honors gained by his intellect. He was very seldom, 
 if ever, provoked into treating any person with malignity 
 
100 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 and insolence. * * * No man was more expert at the soft 
 answer which turneth away wrath. He was never ac- 
 cused of intemperance in his pleasures. His even temper, 
 his flowing courtesy, the general respectability of his de- 
 meanor, made a favorable impression on those who saw him 
 in situations which do not severely try the principles. His 
 faults were we write it with pain coldness of heart and 
 meanness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable of 
 feeling strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making 
 great sacrifices. His desires were set on things below." 
 In the zenith of his prosperity a sudden reverse was at hand. 
 Notwithstanding his large income, his habits of extravagance 
 tempted him to accept bribes. He was charged with cor- 
 ruption, and, after an attempt at defence, publicly acknowl- 
 edged his guilt. The sentence was severe : he was condemned 
 to imprisonment during the King's pleasure, and fined forty 
 thousand pounds ; he was declared incapable of holding any 
 office in the State or of sitting in Parliament, and was also 
 banished from Court. This sentence was scarcely pro- 
 nounced when it was mitigated, for he passed only two days 
 in the Tower, when he was liberated. Retiring to Gorham- 
 bury, he devoted himself to literature during the remainder 
 of his life. When the rest of the sentence was finally remit- 
 ted, and he could have resumed his seat in the House of 
 Lords, he did not do so, shame, perhaps, preventing him. 
 On his death-bed, knowing that if he had thought pro- 
 foundly, he had nevertheless acted most unworthily, he said : 
 " For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable 
 speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next age." His 
 confidence was not misplaced ; men have dealt leniently 
 with him, for " turn where we will, the trophies of that 
 mighty intellect are full in view." 
 
 Bacon is accredited with the honor of establishing the 
 modern scientific method. Although it would be difficult 
 to find an age, since history began, completely without a sci- 
 entific method, a glance at the situation in the time of Bacon 
 
 1 Macaulay's " Miscellanies," p. 255. 
 
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. IOI 
 
 will convince us that much of our scientific advancement 
 and educational reform are to be traced to his influence. 
 Bacon lived in a time of marked theological and metaphysi- 
 cal activity. The great work of Copernicus had just begun 
 to unsettle the Christian beliefs, and Galileo was in the midst 
 of his controversy with Rome. The paths of science and 
 religion were beginning that redivergence which has since 
 brought these two branches of knowledge into such antag- 
 onism. Lessing's "Fragments" and the acrimonious wars 
 which they engendered were yet unheard of, but theological 
 debates filled the air, and there was a certain freshness and 
 earnestness about these collisions which they are without to- 
 day. Science was so feeble and had so few friends, religion 
 was so generally held as the arbiter of all questions of the 
 understanding, that Bacon's unflinching devotion to the 
 scientific method, his supreme indifference to the war of 
 words around him, showed a deep appreciation of the real 
 needs of his time. 
 
 Bacon is often called the father of experimental philosophy, 
 but his works attempt no solution of the metaphysical prob- 
 lem ; he carefully avoids throughout the use of ultimate terms. 
 His idea of the nature of perception constitutes the great 
 force of his system. He saw clearly that human knowledge 
 is but an aspect of life, and that it springs from a fact which 
 is more than human and deeper than personality. He saw 
 the futility of trying to express this fact in terms either of 
 human or divine personality, and therefore declared that all 
 knowledge was subordinate to or expressed by facts. Gen- 
 eralizations, he reasoned, are only broad classifications of 
 facts. He overlooked, however, the great truth that all facts 
 must take some part in human life in order to be classified, 
 and that the constant human or subjective term in every 
 perception can be made to disclose a constant objective 
 term ; that in the multiplicity of facts a unity can be dis- 
 cerned, a principle which accounts for universal as well as 
 individual life. 
 
 One of Bacon's celebrated aphorisms is : " Man, the min- 
 
102 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ister and interpreter of Nature, can act and understand in as 
 far as he has, either in fact or in thought, observed the 
 order of Nature: more he can neither know nor do." In 
 other words, to understand any thing perfectly, that thing 
 must harmonize with our experiences. If our experiences 
 are not sufficiently extended to receive great truths, we must 
 extend them by the accumulation of more facts, as the only 
 means of increasing knowledge, or, what is the same thing, 
 of enlarging life. If we were to reduce Bacon's method to a 
 single sentence, we would say: do not jump at conclusions ! 
 His power and originality centre in the " systematization 
 of graduated verification as the sole method of research." 
 
 He shows a great contempt for the conventional meta- 
 physical method of forming generalizations from insufficient 
 facts. 
 
 " There are two ways," he says, " of searching after and 
 discovering truth ; the one, from sense and particulars, rises 
 directly to the most general axioms, and resting upon these 
 principles and their unshaken truth, finds out intermediate 
 axioms, and this is the method in use ; but the other raises 
 axioms from sense and particulars by a continued and gradual 
 ascent, till at last it arrives at the most general axioms, 
 which is the true way, but hitherto untried. 
 
 " The understanding, when left to itself, takes the first of 
 these ways ; for the mind delights in springing up to the most 
 general axioms, that it may find rest ; but after a short stay 
 there it disdains experience, and these mischiefs are at length 
 increased by logic for the ostentation of disputes. 
 
 " The natural human reasoning we, for the sake of clear- 
 ness, call the anticipation of nature, as being a rash and 
 hasty thing ; and the reason only exercised upon objects, we 
 call the interpretation of nature." 
 
 To interpret nature, therefore, was Bacon's only way to 
 learn. As Bacon paid little or no attention to an ultimate 
 analysis, he never seemed to realize that the greatest need 
 of the race is a point of beginning for perception, so that all 
 the " graduated verifications," upon which he so earnestly 
 
THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 103 
 
 insisted, should invariably lead us back to one incontroverti- 
 ble principle. That he, nevertheless, felt the possibility of 
 such an analysis is manifest from the following passage in 
 his " Novum Organum " : "But let none expect any great 
 promotion of the sciences, especially in their effective part, 
 unless natural philosophy be drawn out to particular sciences ; 
 and, again, unless these particular sciences be brought back 
 again to natural philosophy. From this defect it is that 
 astronomy, optics, music, many mechanical arts, and what 
 seems stranger, even moral and civil philosophy and logic, rise 
 but little above their foundations, and only skim over the 
 varieties and surfaces of things, viz. : because after these 
 particular sciences are formed and divided off, they are no 
 longer nourished by natural philosophy, which might give 
 them strength and increase ; and therefore no wonder if the 
 sciences thrive not, when separated from their roots." 
 
 The roots of all science he thus conceived to be moral or 
 natural laws. To reduce these natural laws or experiences 
 to a single principle never seemed to occur to him as 
 feasible. 
 
 Bacon said that Aristotle corrupted natural philosophy 
 with logic, which simply means that he reasoned beyond 
 his depth. 
 
 Aristotle for centuries was regarded as the originator 
 of the inductive method, because he was a scientist and 
 studied nature, carefully accumulating facts and drawing 
 from them general laws. He classified facts through resem- 
 blances of different kinds, and gave to these resemblances 
 names. His attention was largely devoted to the study of 
 comparative anatomy, the resemblances in the structure of 
 animals. These classifications have led to our present divi- 
 sion of the whole animal kingdom into five sub-kingdoms, 
 each of these sub-kingdoms again divisible into provinces, 
 each province into classes, and the classes into successively 
 smaller groups, orders, families, genera, species. Surely 
 thus far Aristotle did not corrupt natural philosophy. But 
 
 1 " Novum Organum," I., Aph. 79, 80. 
 
104 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 he did strive to reach an ultimate analysis, and to this end 
 he framed his ten categories of thought. He also indulged 
 in a great deal of metaphysical speculation, which Bacon 
 regarded as a sheer waste of time. It is an interesting fact 
 that Bacon should have differed so much from Aristotle and 
 still have inherited from him his own chief distinction ; for 
 Bacon is now widely known as the apostle of the inductive 
 method of philosophy. This method is supposed by some 
 to constitute a kind of reasoning distinct from that em- 
 ployed in the deductive method ; whereas all that is really 
 meant by the terms induction and deduction is a different 
 manner of investigating facts, the process of reasoning being 
 constant in all methods. Before Aristotle's time the animal 
 kingdom was regarded as a great mass of unrelated phe- 
 nomena. Biology was unknown, and anatomy and physiology 
 were confined to such rude results as could be obtained by 
 untrained observation. The result was that the knowledge 
 of animal life was chaotic. As we have seen, Aristotle 
 studied animal structures, and from comparisons built up 
 classes of resemblances. This is the inductive method of 
 research, because it is said to proceed from particulars to 
 generals. It is contrasted with the deductive method, or 
 the procedure from generals to particulars. 
 
 The fault which Bacon finds with Aristotle, then, is sim- 
 ply that he did not proceed to the farthest lengths of rea- 
 soning, that he did not define the contrasted nature of 
 individual and general existence, without breaking loose 
 from his careful synthesis of organic life. This objection of 
 Bacon's is well taken ; but it must be remembered that 
 Aristotle was far less fully equipped for such an undertaking 
 than Bacon might well have been, and that the latter lacked 
 the ambition and courage for the attempt. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 Descartes Spinoza Hobbes Locke Hartley Leibnitz Berkeley Hume. 
 
 IF it is to England that we owe the inauguration, through 
 Francis Bacon, of experimental science, it is to France that we 
 are indebted for the firm establishment of Modern Philosophy. 
 The writings of Rene Descartes Duperron mark the transi- 
 tion from mediaeval to modern thought. To be a great thinker 
 is a higher distinction in France than in any other country. 
 Not that there are as many scholars in France as there are 
 in Germany, or that the logical achievements of England 
 suffer by comparison with those of the continent ; but 
 the French language affords the least opportunity of all 
 tongues for vagueness of expression, and hence a system of 
 philosophy, to command lasting respect in France, must be 
 distinguished for clearness, definiteness, and good sense. 
 Such, allowing for the time in which it was written, is the 
 system of Descartes. 
 
 Born in 1596, Descartes was contemporaneous with Galileo, 
 and suffered not a little from the spirit of religious intoler- 
 ance which pervaded Europe at that time. Educated by 
 the Jesuits, he had no sooner mastered the religious and 
 philosophic thought of his time than he announced his dis- 
 satisfaction with it. He declared that the only result of his 
 studies had been to enable him to discern his utter ignorance. 
 At the age of twenty-three he conceived the project of re- 
 organizing the philosophic knowledge of the world, and be- 
 gan a series of travels principally in his own country, for the 
 purpose of studying life. These travels, which lasted about 
 ten years, included various periods of service in the army. The 
 
 105 
 
106 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 garrison life afforded him opportunities of study, and brought 
 him in contact with many scholars of note. Mathematics 
 was the favorite study of Descartes, and it was not long be- 
 fore he achieved a European reputation in this science. The 
 faculty which he acquired for solving problems was marvel- 
 lous. The discovery of the application of algebra to geome- 
 try, his chief scientific merit, was a crisis in his career. The 
 manner in which he approached this discovery he thus 
 describes: "The long chains of simple and easy reasons 
 which geometers employ in arriving at their most difficult 
 demonstrations made me fancy that all things which are the 
 objects of human knowledge are similarly interdependent ; 
 and that, provided we abstain from assuming any thing false, 
 and observe the correct order in deducing things one from 
 another, there are none so remote that we cannot reach and 
 so hidden that we cannot discover them. I was at no trouble 
 in finding out where to begin ; for, considering that the 
 mathematicians only had attained to some certainty, and 
 this because they occupied themselves about the easiest sub- 
 ject of all, I thought I should examine this first. And 
 then, considering that to know the mathematical sciences, 
 I should sometimes require to consider them each in detail, 
 and sometimes only to retain or understand several of them 
 conjointly, I thought that to consider them better in partic- 
 ular I must consider them in lines, because I could find noth- 
 ing simpler, or more distinctly representable to my imagina- 
 tion and senses ; but to retain them, or to consider several 
 of them together, it was necessary to explain them by the 
 briefest possible symbols, and thus I should borrow all that 
 was best from geometrical analysis and from algebra and 
 correct the defects of each by the other." 
 
 This puissant method opened up new fields of discovery 
 to Descartes. Not content with applying it to mathematics, 
 he saw its bearing upon the physical sciences, and even enter- 
 tained a vague hope of applying it in some form to the 
 study of mind. " Not that I ventured to examine forth- 
 with all manner of problems, which would have been a vio- 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. IO/ 
 
 lation of my rules; but, knowing that their principles must 
 all be derived from [first] philosophy, in which I could, as 
 yet, find none that were certain, I thought that here, above 
 all, I ought to establish them." Thus we see that the exact 
 deductions of mathematics had a charm for Descartes, and 
 supplied him with a method to which he always afterward 
 adhered. During these ten years of wandering, Descartes 
 resided at times in Paris, where he had the advantage of 
 scientific friends as well as the distraction of Court life 
 into which his good social position introduced him. This 
 scientific association gave him ample exercise in mathemat- 
 ics and developed in him a taste for other investigations, 
 among which is prominently mentioned practical optics ; 
 but he longed for more abstract studies and the retirement 
 which makes them possible. 
 
 At the age of thirty we find him secluding himself in Hol- 
 land and beginning the work which resulted, eight years 
 afterward, in the publication of the " Discourse on Method," 
 and the celebrated " Meditations." The appearance of these 
 works interested at once the learned world, and their author 
 was almost immediately recognized as an original and pow- 
 erful thinker. Charles the First of England and Christina 
 of Sweden urged him to come to their respective Courts. 
 The civil war in England decided his choice in favor of 
 Stockholm, where he became interested with Christina in 
 the establishment of an academy of sciences. Descartes' 
 delicate health, however, soon succumbed to the rigor of 
 the northern climate. With Scandinavian indifference to 
 comfort, Christina insisted upon taking her lessons in phil- 
 osophy at five o'clock in the morning of an Arctic winter. 
 Descartes was too chivalrous to demur; and scarcely had 
 he begun to teach his royal friend the principles of his phil- 
 osophy, when he was taken with the illness which in a few 
 days caused his death. 
 
 In the development of the mind of Descartes we find mir- 
 rored the dawn of modern philosophy in Europe. His ap- 
 preciation of the Advantages of a broad culture can be judged 
 
108 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of from the famous autobiographical passage in the opening 
 of the " Discourse on Method " : " I know that the languages 
 I then learned were necessary for the understanding of 
 ancient authors ; that the grace of myths stimulates the 
 mind ; that the memorable deeds in histories exalt it, and, 
 being read with discretion, and in forming the judgment, 
 that the reading of all good books is like a conversation with 
 the best people of past centuries who have written them, 
 nay, even a studied conversation, in which they disclose to 
 us only their best thoughts ; that eloquence has incomparable 
 strength and beauty; \hakpoetry has enchanting delicacy 
 and sweetness. * * * But I came to think that I had spent 
 enough time at languages, and even in the reading of 
 ancient books and their histories and fables: for it is almost 
 the same thing to converse with men of other ages as it is 
 to travel ; but if one travel too long, one becomes a stranger 
 to one's own home. * * * I highly esteemed eloquence 
 and loved poetry ; but I thought that both one and the 
 other were mental endowments rather than the fruits of 
 study. Those who have the strongest reasoning faculty and 
 digest their ideas most thoroughly, so as to make them clear 
 and intelligible, are always best able to persuade men of 
 what they propose even though they talk bos Breton and 
 have never learned rhetoric ; and those who have the most 
 pleasing fancies, and can express them with best adornment 
 and most sweetness, will still be the best poets, even should 
 the art of poetry be unknown to them." 
 
 Passing from this delineation of culture to his philo- 
 sophic position, we find that Descartes perceived that a 
 vacuum, or absolutely empty space, was an impossibility. 
 He said that the essence, or first principle of matter, or sub- 
 stance ', is extension, and that wherever there is extension there 
 is matter ; or, which is the same thing, he identifies Matter 
 with Space. " The substance which fills all space must be 
 assumed as divided into equal angular parts. Why must 
 this be assumed ? Because it is the most simple, therefore 
 the most natural supposition. This substance being set ins 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 109 
 
 motion, the parts are ground into a spherical form, and the 
 corners thus rubbed off, like filings or sawdust, form a second 
 or more subtle kind of substance. There is, besides, a kind 
 of substance, coarser and less fitted for motion. The first 
 kind makes luminous bodies, such as the sun and fixed stars; 
 the second makes the transparent substance of the skies ; 
 the third kind is the material of opaque bodies, such as earth, 
 planets, etc. We may also assume that the motions of these 
 parts take the form of revolving circular currents, or vortices. 
 By this means the matter will be collected to the centre of 
 each vortex, while the second or subtle matter surrounds it, 
 and by its centrifugal effort constitutes light. The planets 
 are carried round the sun by the motion of this vortex, each 
 planet being at such a distance from the sun as to be in a 
 part of the vortex suitable to its solidity and mobility. The 
 motions are prevented from being exactly circular and reg- 
 ular by various causes. For instance, a vortex may be 
 pressed into an oval shape by contiguous vortices." * 
 
 With these rather fanciful theories of physics, fanciful 
 from our point of view, but exceedingly penetrating when 
 we consider the state of science in the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century, Descartes makes the most important 
 assertion in the whole range of physical truth, but he seems 
 to have little conception of its vast logical importance. This 
 assertion was the identification of Matter and Space, as con- 
 vertible terms, representing the ultimate statical generaliza- 
 tion. The ultimate fact with Descartes was personal exist- 
 ence, or consciousness. From this he deduced the fact of 
 general existence, or God. His famous dictum, " I think 
 therefore I am,'* is really an identical proposition ; for the 
 kind of existence postulated is Consciousness, or the act of 
 thought. His proposition simply means, Existence being 
 thought, I think therefore I exist, or, I think therefore I 
 think. The method of Descartes is a faithful elaboration 
 of his fundamental tenet of consciousness. His capital 
 axiom is, ll All clear and distinct ideas are true" ; which means 
 
 1 Whewell : " Hist, of the Inductive Sciences," vol. II., p. 134. 
 
110 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 that thought justifies itself. This rule, although true in the 
 sense that all facts justify or express themselves, is merely 
 an argument against a superstitious belief in causes. It ad- 
 vocates a careful scrutiny of the relations between cause and 
 effect. 
 
 The assertion that all clear and distinct ideas are true, 
 does not disclose the nature of perception ; nor does the 
 dictum "I think therefore I am " throw any light upon the 
 purely relative nature of the fact of individuality, or per- 
 sonal existence. Descartes, in deducing the existence of 
 God from personal existence, clearly reversed the order of 
 perception ; for God is the Ultimate Reality, the chief fact 
 from which all individual facts are but derivations. 
 
 In perception, the individual responds to the universe ; 
 and as the individual is but a part of the universe, the fact 
 of personal existence is subordinate to that of general exist- 
 ence, or God. 1 God cannot, therefore, be deduced from 
 consciousness, but consciousness may be deduced from God. 
 The conception of Deity is an ultimate analysis. Every 
 conception, however humble, employs this fact as an inte- 
 gral part. 
 
 To reduce the above argument to metaphysical terms, 
 God is Motion thoughts, or individual perceptions, are 
 motions. Here we have Divine Unity contrasted with the 
 variety which is expressed in personal life. 
 
 With Descartes, who read and admired Bacon, and util- 
 ized many of his valuable suggestions, the beginning of 
 modern science was fairly inaugurated. In the metaphysical 
 reasonings of Descartes I am unable to see more profundity 
 or originality than can be found among the ancient Greek 
 and Alexandrian authors. The dissatisfaction with the an- 
 cients, so commonly felt at the time, was more with their 
 science than with their philosophy, more with the paucity of 
 their facts than with the use made of them. 
 
 1 This interpretation of consciousness is fully explained in the review of the 
 systems of Herbert Spencer and G. H. Lewes, Part II., where the mind is 
 studied as the activity of an organism. 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 1 1 1 
 
 A full appreciation of the greatness of Descartes can be 
 had only by viewing him in the scientific plane of his age. 
 His ideas on physics were elaborated before the other parts 
 of his system, although the fear which the persecution of 
 Galileo inspired delayed for a long time their publication. 
 Descartes saw that it was impossible to write upon philoso- 
 phy without ultimately declaring himself upon these ques- 
 tions, and therefore his true originality was hidden for a 
 time through fear of a conflict with the church. Had 
 he announced his discoveries concerning the operations of 
 nature as they occurred to his mind, he would have des- 
 troyed his influence and imperiled his liberty. His first phil- 
 osophic production was an elaborate exposition of the true 
 method of investigation. Its title was, " Discourse on the 
 Method of Properly Guiding the Reason in the Research 
 of Truth in the Sciences : also the Dioptric, the Meteors, 
 and the Geometry, which are Essays in this Method." It is 
 seen that, in this work, an effort was made to avoid religious 
 controversy. It was distinctly scientific. Of course, in 
 studying the nature of thought, it is necessary to become 
 metaphysical ; but where this occurs, the argument is 
 couched in conciliatory and devout language, with the mani- 
 fest object of escaping the direct charge of infidelity. 
 
 In the fourth division of the " Discourse on Method " the 
 nature of God and of the human soul is discussed. By a 
 course of reasoning which ignores one difficulty after an- 
 other, the author arrives at the conclusion that the human 
 soul is absolutely distinct from the body 1 ; that this soul is 
 put into the body by a divine being infinitely perfect, whose 
 existence is proved by the ideas we have of his perfection. 
 These ideas disclose to us our imperfection, as the positive 
 discloses the negative, or as being discloses non-being. 8 
 
 No one can read the fourth division of the " Discourse on 
 Method " without seeing in it the identical metaphysical 
 reasonings which are most popular with the orthodox writers . 
 
 1 " Discours de la Methode," vol. I., pp. 158, 159. 
 * Ibid., vol. I., p. 60. 
 
112 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of the present day. The popularity of these metaphysics is 
 due to the fact that they are just enough involved to escape 
 the plain statement that God is not a spirit, but the ultimate 
 reality or fact of the universe. 
 
 The theologians of the seventeenth century, however, 
 were by no means satisfied with these guarded statements ; 
 and although Descartes declared himself a conservative in 
 faith, although he was a " pet pupil of the Jesuits," and 
 strove earnestly to discuss philosophy apart from religion, 
 and to uphold the moral teachings of the church, the appear- 
 ance of his argument on Method was the occasion of a tem- 
 pest of controversy, in which he was bitterly assailed by the 
 leading theologians of the Universities of northern Europe, 
 both Catholic and Calvinistic. These attacks were made by 
 theological theses against Descartes, in some of which the 
 printed comments were so offensive that they were struck 
 out by order of the magistrates of Utrecht. 
 
 About four years after the appearance of the " Discourse on 
 Method," the " Meditations " made their appearance. These 
 were more religious in tone, and consequently more meta- 
 physical. Unlike his first work, they were written in Latin, 
 and constitute a labored argument about first principles. 
 Although they are considered by many to be the greatest 
 achievement of Descartes, they are in reality the least valu- 
 able of his writings. The " Meditations " was printed in Paris 
 in 1641, with the King's privilege and the approbation of 
 the Doctors of the Sorbonne. The full title was " Medita- 
 tions concerning the First Philosophy, in which are demon- 
 strated the Existence of God and the Immortality of the 
 Soul." The official sanctions under which this work was 
 published were obtained by the direct prayer of Descartes, 
 who felt keenly the attacks made upon his first work. He also 
 took the precaution of having a dozen copies of the " Medi- 
 tations " submitted to the ablest theologians of the time, so 
 that the criticisms might be obtained and published with 
 the author's replies to them, thus establishing the work in a 
 controversial light from the beginning. One of the chief 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 113 
 
 results of these criticisms, which came from such distin- 
 guished men as Arnauld, Gassendi, and Hobbes, was to 
 change the discussion of the immortality to the immateriality 
 of the soul, which latter title was more in accordance with 
 the manner in which Descartes treated the subject. 
 
 The scientific writings, which form the most interesting 
 part of the " Method," were omitted in the " Meditations," 
 which reduce it to a mere enlargement of the metaphysical 
 argument of the first publication. This argument concern- 
 ing the relative importance of the facts of general and per- 
 sonal existence, or of God and the human soul, has been 
 fully dealt with above. The question of the principles 
 of certitude, or the measure of doubt, also receives much 
 attention in the " Meditations." As has already been ex- 
 plained in a previous chapter, this question belongs to the 
 nature of perception, or the study of mind as the function 
 of the organism, and cannot be successfully discussed in the 
 absence of an ultimate physical analysis, or without full un- 
 derstanding of the relation of body and mind. 1 What con- 
 cerns us most is, not the logical position of the " Medita- 
 tions," for this position has been superseded long ago, but 
 the effect which the work wrought upon the world and the 
 life of the author. 
 
 In the preface to the " Meditations," Descartes, not feel- 
 ing quite satisfied with his proof of the immortality of the 
 soul, says, that a strict proof of this theory would require a 
 complete development of his whole system of physics. He 
 suggests that the first requisite is to form a " clear and 
 distinct " conception of the soul as distinct from the body, 
 because substances thus clearly conceived to be distinct 
 must really be so ; which is in effect " taking firm hold of 
 one's own sleeve in order to jump over the river." In reply 
 to the objection that Hobbes made to this argument, Des- 
 cartes admits that we only infer the difference between 
 mind and body from the difference in their qualities, or ac- 
 tivities, which as above said, at once remands the whole 
 
 'See Part II., chap. i. 
 
114 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 question to the study of mind as the function of an organ- 
 ism, or modern psychology. 
 
 The Protestant theologians of Utrecht and Leyden, irri- 
 tated by the imprudent enthusiasm of one of Descartes' 
 disciples, Le Roy (Regius), began a systematic opposition to 
 the Cartesian philosophy. This movement developed into 
 a persecution which proved a grievous trial to Descartes. It 
 began with disputations by theses in the Universities, 
 which were followed by the public with intense interest. 
 These disputes were confined for some time to general prin- 
 ciples, but Le Roy, wishing to force a logical issue with 
 his adversaries, boldly announced the principle, under the 
 authority of Descartes, that man was a being composed of 
 the two elements of mind and extension ; that he was not a 
 substance per se, but a substance per accidens, which means, 
 that human existence is not an unconditioned fact, but that 
 man is a natural phenomenon, and is therefore the function 
 of his conditions. This announcement was a direct chal- 
 lenge to the powerful orthodox party. The Protestants, 
 represented by Voe't and Arnauld, the rectors of the Uni- 
 versities of Utrecht and Leyden, immediately resented it. 
 The acumen of these theologians can be judged of from 
 the fact that they were Aristotelian in their faith, bitterly 
 opposing the theory of the earth's motion round the sun, 
 which theory they identified with the philosophy of Des- 
 cartes. From our point of view, it would seem as though all 
 the best thought and intelligence of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury were arrayed against Christian orthodoxy, but this is 
 hardly fair either to the early Protestants or the Catholics ; 
 for religion does not oppose science because it is science, but 
 because new theories of life and mind disturb the authority 
 and dignity of the church. As long as religion attaches her 
 faith to persons instead of to principles, to fixed creeds hav- 
 ing the authority of mysterious books instead of to the great 
 principles of human progress, so long will those discoveries 
 which are the natural movement of life disturb her peace. A 
 religion on the contrary which identifies God with the Uni- 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 115 
 
 versal Principle will employ science as a great moral power, 
 enlisting in its services the best efforts of the mind. 
 
 The Calvinist theologians, headed by Voet, were so bitter 
 in their attacks on Descartes, that an appeal to the Prince 
 of Orange was necessary to put a stop to the persecution. 
 The authority of this prince alone saved the theories of Des- 
 cartes from being formally expelled from the University 
 teachings, and his books from being publicly burned by the 
 hangman of Utrecht. The right of private judgment, which 
 was the fundamental principle of the Cartesian philosophy, 
 first excited the opposition of the church, both Protestant 
 and Catholic ; for Christianity rests its judgments or per- 
 ceptions upon the theory of faith originated by the Alexan- 
 drian mystics. 
 
 The enduring part of Descartes' system, that which has 
 fairly won for him the name of a great thinker, was his 
 original investigations of natural phenomena and his able 
 criticisms of the sciences. His metaphysics, his reasonings 
 concerning existence, as above indicated, were not in ad- 
 vance of the best Greek thought. Epicurus made a more 
 perfect synthesis of life, Anaximano^er a far keener analysis 
 of first principles; but Descartes gathered together the 
 learning of his age, enriched it with new investigations, and 
 co-ordinated it into a system of knowledge which will ever 
 bear his name and mark an epoch in human history. 
 
 The science of mathematics is purely a study of motion 
 and its aspects ; that is to say, it expresses all its results in 
 terms of time and space, or of number and quantity, which 
 are but the aspects of motion. 
 
 Descartes felt that all phenomena could be reduced to 
 terms of time and space, and thus " insisted upon the only 
 true path ever followed by physical science its reduction to 
 the mathematical laws of figure and of motion. 
 
 " Having first shown," says Prof. MahafTy, " that by the 
 earliest of his discoveries all problems in figure could be 
 reduced to arithmetical formulae, and that these could be 
 generalized by the use of algebraic symbols, he insisted that 
 
Il6 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 nothing should be assumed in explaining the laws of nature 
 but the laws of figure and motion. He cast to the winds 
 the whole apparatus of occult qualities, intuitional species, 
 and other assumed secrets by which the scholastic Peri- 
 patetics endeavored to explain, and by which they succeeded 
 in obscuring and confusing, nature." 
 
 The boldness and novelty of this position of Descartes' 
 can only be appreciated by looking at his scientific sur- 
 roundings. In our day, we are so accustomed to the asser- 
 tion that all phenomena can be expressed in terms of mo- 
 tion, that the importance of this great truth escapes us. 
 How few among those to whom this proposition is familiar 
 are willing to admit its full significance, that all phenomena 
 means all life, and that the term life includes mind. Des- 
 cartes, even, failed to rigorously follow out the meaning of 
 his own induction. He states that all phenomena can be 
 expressed in terms of motion, which distinctly means that 
 motion is the ultimate fact of life ; and yet the fundamental 
 principle of his metaphysics, or his analysis of knowledge, is, 
 that consciousness, or mind, is the ultimate fact of life. 
 
 His application of algebra to geometry, or his expression 
 of space relationships in algebraic symbols, led to the de- 
 velopment of the fluctional calculus elaborated by Newton 
 and Leibnitz, which constitutes the most exact portrayal 
 science affords of infinitesimal measurements or motions. 
 This discovery of Descartes' raised the science of geometry 
 from a mass of isolated demonstrations of figure and meas- 
 urement, as it came to us from the ancients, to a system of 
 abstract calculations, in which given powers of co-efficients 
 are made to represent constant space relationships. Thus 
 Descartes introduced his philosophy with brilliant discourses 
 in mathematics and physics, which at once commanded the 
 attention of scholars, and gave to his more abstract reason- 
 ings a reputation which they could not have achieved of 
 themselves. 
 
 " The Principles of Philosophy," the first planned and last 
 published of his capital works, was the most thorough of 
 
MODERN PHIL OSOPH Y. 117 
 
 them all ; and yet the author admits that this great treatise 
 on physics was incomplete, inasmuch as it was not extended 
 to the treatment of plants, animals, and lastly of man ; so 
 that what is generally supposed to be the greatest logical 
 feat of Descartes his postulate that consciousness is the 
 ultimate fact of the universe is seen to be a direct contra- 
 diction of his best and most original teachings, which tended 
 to subordinate individual to general existence, or conscious- 
 ness to the more general fact of Motion, or God. 
 
 Benedict Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, in 1632, of a 
 Hebrew family that had moved from Portugal to escape 
 persecution. He studied under the auspices of the Jewish 
 church of his native city ; but his mind soon rebelled against 
 the limits of this religion, and the Rabbins, finding it impos- 
 sible to change his course, visited upon him the then terrible 
 penalty of excommunication. 
 
 Among the ancients, the word piety seems to have been 
 employed in the sense which we give to the word humanity. 
 It had less to do with formal beliefs and more with charac- 
 ter. A man who sought universal truth, for its own sake, was 
 considered pious. 
 
 The Greeks knew less of the importance of religious dis- 
 cipline than we do ; being without the past two thousand 
 years of human experience, they were unable to distinguish 
 between intellectual and moral exercise as factors in social 
 advancement. Again : the intellectuality of the Greeks 
 was less taught, more spontaneous, than ours. The great! 
 fact that thought purifies was constantly before them. A 
 man, to be a great thinker in Greece, had to do, for the 
 most part, his own thinking. He had not our facilities for 
 imbibing thought ready-made from others. Those wide 
 sympathies which are the necessary accompaniment of a 
 deep understanding of life, presuppose a certain moral 
 advancement. To discourse of God, or the Universal Prin- 
 ciple, in Greece, was not that semi-mechanical operation 
 which we so often see among religious teachers of more 
 recent times. It was an enthusiasm for the higher or most 
 
Il8 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 general truths, at once elevating and purifying to the whole 
 life. This thoughtful and devotional cast of mind the 
 ancients called piety. It demanded a certain capacity, an 
 earnest and sustained effort to bring the mind into harmony 
 with its farthest surroundings ; an effort which is sure in 
 time to compel moral development. 
 
 It was this kind of piety that was the inspiration of 
 Spinoza's life ; and so completely did it possess him, that 
 the sentence of excommunication with its terrible conse- 
 quences did not even seem to depress him. His life is a 
 singular instance of the resources which we possess in the 
 higher sentiments. 
 
 It was not considered enough for the ancient Jewish 
 doctors to be scholars ; they were required also to learn 
 some mechanical art by which to support themselves. 
 Spinoza learned the art of polishing glasses for optical instru- 
 ments, in which he attained great proficiency. To escape 
 persecution, he retired to Leyden or Rynsberg, where he 
 passed the life of a recluse, devoting himself to study. 
 
 A heroic firmness that is truly invigorating to contem- 
 plate shines throughout the life of this man. Our deepest 
 admiration is aroused by his independence of spirit, his cheer- 
 ful nature, his moderate wants and indefatigable industry. 
 
 In the doctrines of Spinoza we have a worthy study. 
 Many have complained of the abstruseness of his writings, 
 but this is largely due to his persistent effort to reduce all 
 his generalizations to mathematical forms of expression. 
 The language of numbers and quantities is too cold and 
 inflexible to serve as a medium of philosophic thought. 
 
 To give an idea of the rigidity of Spinoza's style, we cite 
 a few of his celebrated definitions, and place opposite to 
 them the interpretation which the reduction of the cate- 
 gories of thought to a single principle enables one to make. 
 
 " DEFINITION III. By Substance I Existence is the ultimate reality, or 
 
 understand that which exists in itself, Motion. Substance, of course, has a 
 
 and is conceived/^r se ; in other words, place in the conception of Motion, 
 
 the conception of which does not re- For if matter and space are the same 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 quire the conception of any thing else 
 antecedent to it." 
 
 " DEF. VI. By God I understand 
 the Being absolutely infinite, i. e., the 
 Substance consisting of infinite At- 
 tributes, each of which expresses an 
 infinite and eternal essence. 
 
 "Explanation. I say absolutely in- 
 finite, but not infinite suo genere j 
 for to whatever is infinite only suo ge- 
 nere we can deny infinite Attributes ; 
 but that which is absolutely infinite 
 includes in its essence every thing 
 which implies essence and involves no 
 negation." 
 
 " DEF. VIII. By Eternity I under- 
 stand Existence itself, in as far as it is 
 conceived necessarily to follow from 
 the sole definition of an eternal thing." 
 
 thing, and space is merely an aspect 
 of Motion, our conception of Sub- 
 stance is a part of that of Motion. 
 
 If absolute means time, and infinite 
 means space, God, or the ultimate 
 generalization or reality, and Motion, 
 are convertible terms ; they mean the 
 same thing, for the aspects of Motion 
 being space and time, and the attri- 
 butes of God the infinite and the ab- 
 solute, they are convertible terms, and 
 must point to the same fact. 
 
 The "Explanation" of the defini- 
 tion I consider more involved than 
 the definition itself, and therefore not, 
 properly speaking, an explanation. 
 
 There is but one clear meaning to 
 the word Eternity, and that is Time. 
 Time is an aspect of Motion, and is 
 therefore an aspect of Existence. In 
 No. III. Spinoza says that Substance 
 is Existence itself, and in No. VIII., 
 that eternity is Existence itself. In 
 one case he means Space and in the 
 other Time, and in both his words ex- 
 press the conception of Motion, which 
 includes Space and Time. 
 
 At the risk of being tedious, we select the seventh and 
 eighth of Spinoza's Propositions with the Scholium attached, 
 in order to show how necessary it is to be definite and clear 
 with regard to the meaning of ultimate terms in forming a 
 final generalization, and also what store Spinoza placed by 
 his ultimate generalization, which he called Substance. 
 
 " PROPOSITION VII. It pertains to the nature of Substance to exist. 
 
 " Demonstration. Substance cannot be created by any thing else, and is, 
 therefore, the cause of itself ; its essence necessarily involves existence ; or it 
 pertains to the nature of Substance to exist." 
 
 " PROP. VIII. All Substance is necessarily infinite. 
 
 " Dem. There exists but one Substance of the same Attribute ; and it must 
 either exist as infinite or as finite. But not as finite, for as finite it must be 
 
120 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 limited by another Substance of the same nature, and in that case there would 
 be two Substances of the same Attribute, which is absurd. Substance, there- 
 fore, is infinite." 
 
 " Scholium. I do not doubt that to all who judge confusedly of things, and 
 are not wont to inquire into first causes, it will be difficult to understand the 
 demonstration of Prop. VII., because they do not sufficiently distinguish 
 between the modifications of Substance and Substance itself, and are ignorant 
 of the manner in which things are produced. Here it follows, that seeing 
 natural things have a commencement, they attribute a commencement to Sub- 
 stances ; for he who knows not the true causes of things confounds all things, 
 and sees no reason why trees should not talk like men, or why men should not 
 be formed from stones as well as from seeds, or why all forms cannot be changed 
 into all other forms. So, also, those who confound the divine nature with the 
 human naturally attribute human affections to God, especially as they are ig- 
 norant how these affections are produced in the mind. But if men attended to 
 the nature of Substance, they would not in the least doubt the truth of Prop. 
 VII. ; nay, this proposition would be an axiom to all, and would be numbered 
 among the common notions." 
 
 This effort of Spinoza at mathematical exactness in 
 thought serves to bring out boldly the nature of the final 
 problem of philosophy. It demonstrates also the impos- 
 sibility of using more than one term to denote the Ultimate 
 Reality, unless the equivalence of meaning between the 
 terms is distinctly laid down. It also shows how necessary 
 it is to determine the exact relationship existing between all 
 the categories, such as time, space, matter or Substance, 
 force, the infinite, the absolute, etc. 
 
 Time and Eternity are used by Spinoza without any 
 acknowledgment that they mean the same thing. Again : 
 space, matter, extension, infinite, follow in close succession 
 without any effort being made to harmonize or compare 
 their meanings ; whereas in their widest sense they mean 
 precisely the same thing. This important fact is brought 
 out indirectly by Spinoza's own arguments ; for a careful 
 examination of the exhaustive definitions of Substance 
 which he offers shows that it is impossible to establish any 
 ultimate difference between the meaning of the terms he 
 employs to denote space or extension. Again : the words 
 essence, substance, God, and existence, are used repeatedly 
 in a similar sense, and yet no distinct declaration is made of 
 
i ft 
 
 '< 
 
 
 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 121 
 
 their equivalence of meaning. Is it any wonder that meta- 
 physics should have been declared a failure by the ancient 
 skeptics, and an effete science by modern agnostics ? And 
 yet how remarkable it is to see throughout the writings of 
 these schools an ever-renewed effort to solve the meta- 
 physical problem ! 
 
 It is impossible to discuss philosophy in any of its phases 
 without including, directly or indirectly, this problem. In- 
 deed, so fundamental is this great question of the meaning 
 of ultimate terms, that scarcely a thought or feeling can 
 be imagined that is not, in some degree, influenced by it ; 
 and the science of metaphysics, instead of being the farthest 
 removed from practical life, is really the mainspring of all 
 human action, for it identifies and correlates the energies of 
 the mind with those of the universe. 
 
 When this simple solution of the metaphysical problem 
 shall have become the property of the thinking world, the 
 illogical misgivings which we call skepticism, or agnosticism, 
 will disappear, with all those lower forms of belief in mys- 
 tery known as superstition, and it will be no longer necessary 
 for the mind to become shipwrecked among the meanings 
 of ultimate terms in the outset of the study of human 
 progress. 
 
 Spinoza was the opposite of a skeptic. Although it has 
 by no means been acknowledged that his system success- 
 fully refutes the doctrines of skepticism, it opposes these 
 doctrines consistently throughout. Here the difference 
 between Spinoza and Lewes appears. 
 
 Spinoza declares that our knowledge is real, that our 
 impressions of things disclose their real nature. Lewes 
 says that our knowledge is only knowledge of phenomena, 
 and therefore does not disclose the actual nature of things ; 
 which is a gratuitous assertion that the actual is a mystery, 
 or something that cannot be understood. 
 
 There is perhaps no more direct way of explaining the 
 philosophy of Spinoza than by quoting his argument against 
 the teleological interpretation of nature : this argument 
 
122 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 occurs in the form of an Appendix to the book " De Deo " : 
 " Men do all things for the sake of an end, namely, the 
 good, or useful, which they desire. Hence it comes that 
 they always seek to know only the final causes of things 
 which have taken place, and when they have heard these 
 they are satisfied, not having within themselves any cause 
 for further doubt. But if they are unable to learn these 
 final causes from some one else, nothing remains to them 
 but to turn in upon themselves, and to reflect upon the ends 
 by which they are themselves wont to be determined to 
 similar actions ; and thus they necessarily judge of the 
 mind of another by their own. Further: as within them- 
 selves and out of themselves they discover many means 
 which are highly conducive to the pursuit of their own 
 advantage, for example, eyes to see with, teeth to masticate 
 with, vegetables and animals for food, the sun to give them 
 light, the sea to nourish fish, etc., so they come to consider 
 all natural things as means for their benefit : and because 
 they are aware that these things have been found, and 
 were not prepared by them, they have been led to be- 
 lieve that some one else has adapted these means to their 
 use. For after considering things in the light of means, they 
 could not believe these things to have made themselves, but 
 arguing from their own practice of preparing means for their 
 use, they must conclude that there is some ruler or rulers of 
 nature endowed with human freedom, who have provided 
 all these things for them, and have made them all for 
 the use of men. Moreover, since they have never heard 
 any thing of the mind of those rulers, they must necessarily 
 judge of this mind also by their own ; and hence they have 
 argued that the Gods direct all things for the advantage of 
 man, in order that they may subdue him to themselves, and 
 be held in the highest honor by him. Hence each has 
 devised, according to his character, a different mode of 
 worshipping God, in order that God might love him more 
 than others, and might direct all nature to the advantage of 
 his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus this preju- 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 123 
 
 dice has converted itself into superstition, and has struck 
 deep root into men's minds ; and this has been the cause 
 why men in general have eagerly striven to explain the 
 final causes of all things. But while they have sought 
 to show that Nature does nothing in vain (i. e. which is not 
 fit for the use of men,) they seem to me to have shown 
 nothing else than that Nature and the Gods are as foolish 
 as men. And observe, I pray you, to what a point this 
 opinion has brought them. Together with the many useful 
 things in Nature, they necessarily found not a few injurious 
 things, namely, tempests, earthquakes, diseases, etc. ; these, 
 they supposed, happened because the Gods were angry on 
 account of offences committed against them by men, or 
 because of faults incurred in their worship ; and although 
 experience every day protests, and shows by infinite ex- 
 amples, that benefits and injuries happen indifferently to 
 pious and ungodly persons, they do not therefore renounce 
 their inveterate prejudice." 
 
 This simple and commanding argument remands humanity 
 to its due place in the universe, and rebukes that inordi- 
 nate conceit which is known in metaphysics as Idealism, 
 and in general philosophy as Anthropomorphism. The 
 former appropriates all reality to the mind, and the latter 
 all nature to the purposes of man. The charge of athe- 
 ism which was so generally brought against Spinoza rests 
 chiefly upon his unfortunate selection of the term Sub- 
 stance to designate the Ultimate Reality ; for it naturally 
 shocks the understanding to designate God by that single 
 aspect of the Universal Principle which we call Substance, 
 Infinity, or Space. In using the word Substance in this 
 widest of its applications, Spinoza meant the substance of 
 existence, or life, the ultimate fact, rather than the statical 
 aspect of the universe which we call Matter or Space. The 
 justice of the claim for Spinoza that he distinctly appreciated 
 the divine unity of nature, and rose above the level of ideal- 
 ism, and all other teleological interpretations of life, none 
 who carefully follow his thought will dispute. The most 
 
124 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 condensed description of his philosophy, and one on the 
 main points of which all the best authorities agree, is given 
 by Lewes. " There is but one infinite Substance, and that is 
 God. Whatever is, is in God ; and without Him, nothing 
 can be conceived. He is the universal Being of which all 
 things are the manifestations. He is the sole Substance ; 
 every thing else is a mode; yet, without Substance, Mode 
 cannot exist. God, viewed under the attributes of Infinite 
 Substance, is the natura naturans, viewed as a manifesta- 
 tion, as the Modes under which his attributes appear, he is 
 the natura naturata. He is the cause of all things, and that 
 immanently, but not transiently. He has two infinite at- 
 tributes Extension and Thought. Extension is visible 
 Thought, and Thought is invisible Extension ; they are the 
 Objective and Subjective of which God is the Identity. 
 Eveiy thing \s a mode of God's attribute of Extension ; every 
 thought, wish, or feeling, a mode of his attribute of Thought. 
 * * * Substance is uncreated, but creates by the internal 
 necessity of its nature. There may be many existing things, 
 but only one existence ; many forms, but only one Substance.. 
 God is the idea immanens the One and All." 
 
 The obvious fault in this analysis of existence, or life, is, 
 that thought is regarded as an ultimate fact, a fact as simple 
 and general as space or extension an attribute or aspect of 
 God ; whereas thought is a very complex phenomenon re- 
 quiring a vast plexus of conditions. It presupposes the 
 facts of sentiency, of organic life, of individuality, and is 
 therefore far removed in the scale of generality from the 
 subjective aspect or attribute of God, which is the meaning 
 that Spinoza applies to it. Again : Extension is said to be 
 the opposite aspect of God, the antithesis of thought ; while 
 thought, again, is said to be invisible extension. Confusions 
 here are multiplied, for matter is the name commonly given 
 to that space or extension which is sufficiently tangible to be 
 called visible ; and although thought, viewed as the activity 
 of an organism, has a distinct statical aspect, there is surely 
 no necessity for confusing the ideas of thought and matter., 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 125 
 
 This is where Spinoza has laid himself opten to the charge of 
 Pantheism, that theory which invests all nature, animate 
 and inanimate, with an inherent faculty of thought, and con- 
 fusing again the ideas of thought and God, disseminates, as 
 it were, a thinking spirit of God throughout the universe, 
 a sort of magnificent fetichism, filling all things with an 
 omnipotent mystery. How different from that simple and 
 pure conception of Deity which demarcates thought as 
 simply an aspect of individuality, recognising in God, or 
 general existence, the divine principle of Life, having eter- 
 nity and infinity respectively for its subjective and objective 
 aspects. 
 
 Spinoza did not carry his impeachment of the teleological 
 interpretation of nature far enough ; for, although he ex- 
 posed the presumption of the belief that nature moves for 
 the benefit of man, he confused that attribute of man which 
 we call thought with the subjective aspect of God. This 
 confusion was a natural consequence of the Cartesian dualism 
 (in which philosophy Spinoza had thoroughly grounded him- 
 self), and also furnished an excuse for the extravagances of 
 German idealism which were soon to follow. 
 
 Spinoza's greatest work is " Ethics Demonstrated by a 
 Geometrical Method," from which most of the foregoing 
 quotations are given. It is generally admitted that this 
 work is a masterpiece of metaphysical reasoning, and many 
 writers say that it has never been successfully attacked, such 
 is the rigor and precision of its deductions. 
 
 Spinoza lived a life of retirement and privation, princi- 
 pally in Holland, where he was, in a measure, protected from 
 the fierce religious persecution of the seventeenth century. 
 For more than a hundred years after his death he was 
 generally stigmatized as an atheist and a monster. The 
 German scholars of Goethe's time, notwithstanding these 
 epithets, promptly recognized his great genius and the 
 touching sublimity of his life and character. Goethe says of 
 him, the man was represented an "Atheist, and his opinions 
 as most abominable ; but immediately after, it is admitted 
 
126 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 that he was a calm, reflective, diligent scholar, a good cit- 
 izen, a sympathizing neighbor, and a peaceable domestic 
 man." 
 
 Just at the close of Descartes' career, and before the great 
 unity of Spinoza's thought had been given to the world, 
 a mind of singular power and clearness made its appearance 
 in England. Thomas Hobbes, like most of the scientific 
 men of his time, was an eminent mathematician. He studied 
 at Oxford, where the Ptolemaic system of astronomy was 
 still taught, and where the philosophic lectures were chiefly 
 confined to scholastic metaphysics. This was before the 
 law of gravitation or the fluctional calculus had been dis- 
 covered, as Newton and Leibnitz were in their boyhood. 
 The circulation of the blood, which had been known 
 to the Chinese five hundred years before, 1 had just been 
 announced in England by Harvey. The conservation and 
 equivalence of the physical forces was a fact hardly as yet 
 suspected. Galileo had discovered the spots on the sun, 
 the satellites of Jupiter, and Saturn's rings, and was dis- 
 cussing other questions of astronomy with the monks of 
 the Holy Inquisition. Kepler was engaged in working 
 out his laws of the planetary motions. Milton, who had 
 been carefully taught at Christ's College, Cambridge, that the 
 sun turned round the earth, was planning the scene of his 
 great drama of Heaven. The genius of Shakespeare, thirty 
 years after the great poet's death, was not yet recognized. 
 The language of France was just attaining its present state 
 of perfection under the magic sentences of Moliere ; and, as 
 above indicated, Descartes, the first modern who applied to 
 philosophy the rule of scientific investigation, had but a few 
 years before published his " Meditations." It was with these 
 surroundings that Hobbes, by a masterly analysis of the 
 facts of consciousness, laid the foundations of the science of 
 psychology, which has since attained to such development 
 in England. Bacon before him had insisted that facts could 
 alone be * the foundation of knowledge ; that theories, or 
 
 1 And to at least one Italian physiologist. 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 12? 
 
 ideas, must always be subservient to facts. Proceeding upon- 
 this slow but sure method, Hobbes, in a style that is simple, 
 powerful, and clear, analyzed consciousness and thereby in- 
 dicated the solution of the great problems of the scope of 
 language and the nature of perception, which can alone 
 afford an understanding of the relations of life and mind. It : 
 is also interesting to note that at this time the world had not 
 yet heard of the adventures of German thought, as Germany 
 was lying prostrate under the terrible effects of the Thirty 
 Years' War, which had virtually destroyed her civilization. 
 Her great intellectual life had not as yet begun. Hence^ 
 Hobbes had no bad examples of modern idealism to influ- 
 ence him (Berkeley and Kant were yet unborn) ; nor do his 
 writings show that he troubled himself much about the. 
 dialectics of Plato, or the logical difficulties of the Skeptics. 
 
 The insight which Hobbes had of the all-important question 
 of the scope of language is intimated by his famous aphor- 
 ism : " Words are wise men's counters ; they do but reckon, 
 by them ; but they are the money of fools." This shows 
 that he had studied out the great truth that language springs, 
 from action, and that thought is a part of action inseparable 
 in nature from the simplest organic and even inorganic ac- 
 tivities. Instead of this being materialism, it is the most 
 exalted view of the mind, for it identifies mind with life, 
 explaining the presence of the infinite and the absolute in 
 our conceptions as the obverse aspects of the Universal 
 Principle of life, or Motion. But it must not be assumed 
 that Hobbes made a perfect analysis of the mind, that would 
 have been impossible with the limited scientific advantages 
 of his time ; but his conclusions, as far as they went, are the 
 result of a careful study of facts, and are therefore valuable : 
 he did not attempt those purely theoretical constructions, 
 which have since taken up so much room in philosophy. 
 
 The connection between thought and sensation is de- 
 scribed by Hobbes with a candor and simplicity which is re- 
 freshing, after reading the tortuous theories of the meta- 
 physicians. It is now a well-established fact that sensation 
 
128 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE, 
 
 and thought are but different phases of the activity of a sen- 
 tient organism. Thoughts are those vastly more complex 
 co-ordinations of impressions which the highly-structured 
 nervous organism, through the condensing process of lan- 
 guage, accomplishes within us ; while sensation is the com- 
 paratively simple external view of isolated impressions. 
 But as there is no absolute dividing line between the muscle 
 and the nerve, or between motorial and psychical phenom- 
 ena, sensation insensibly becomes thought, and thought 
 again sensation. These facts of psychology will be fully ex- 
 plained in the review of Lewes' works on the subject, which 
 occurs under the study of the nature of perception, in Part 
 II. The object in thus mentioning them in advance is to 
 show how clearly Hobbes perceived the true relations be- 
 tween body and mind. Thus, in speaking of the origin of 
 ideas, he says : " When a body is once in motion it moveth, 
 unless something hinder it, eternally ; and whatsoever hinder- 
 eth it, cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite 
 extinguish it ; and as we see in the water, though the wind 
 cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after : 
 so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the 
 internal parts of man. * * * For after the object is re- 
 moved, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing 
 seen, though more obscure than when we see it. * * * 
 The decay [subsiding] of sense in men waking is not the de- 
 cay of the motion made in sense, but an obscuring of it, in 
 such manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of 
 the stars ; which stars do no less exercise their virtue, by 
 which they are visible, in the day than in the night. But 
 because amongst many strokes which our eyes, ears, and 
 other organs, receive from external bodies, the predominant 
 only is sensible ; therefore the light of the sun being pre- 
 dominant, we are not affected with the action of the stars." 
 The fault of Hobbes' analysis is not its incorrectness, but its 
 incompleteness. As far as he goes, he has contributed to 
 the science of psychology. It is true that his works lay 
 neglected until James Mill discerned their merits ; that Par- 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 129 
 
 liament passed censure upon them on account of the oppo- 
 sition they excited from the church ; but this is due more to 
 the ethical and sociological development of Hobbes' thought 
 than to any thing repulsive in his analysis of mind. 
 
 The ethics of Hobbes are any thing but attractive, and his 
 ideas of social development were as faulty as the exceeding 
 complexity and difficulty of the subject, and the fact that it 
 had hardly been touched upon before him, excepting in a 
 purely theoretical manner, would lead us to expect. 
 
 Auguste Comte, who was practically the originator of 
 sociological science, belongs to two centuries later. Such 
 writings as the " Republic " of Plato can hardly be said to 
 belong to a methodical study of the great problems of social 
 life. Hence, when we read of " Hobbes' Theory of Govern- 
 ment," and the " Social Contract," we expect little that is 
 instructive, and we are not disappointed. 
 
 Hobbes teaches that the natural state of man is war, or 
 mutual opposition, and that society consists in the establish- 
 ment of an authority over him sufficient to overcome this 
 opposition. The end of society, therefore, is to suppress the 
 natural propensities of man, not as we understand it, to 
 develop his better nature. The absurd part of Hobbes' doc- 
 trine is the theory that the cause of the formation of society 
 is the " misery of the natural state of war," and whether the 
 authority exerted to suppress this natural state be founded 
 upon the right of superior strength or cunning, or upon jus- 
 tice, matters not, providing it be strong enough to suppress 
 the state of war. 
 
 According to Hobbes, the justification of a government is 
 in its strength, and therefore an absolute monarchy is the 
 best form of government, because the strongest. It is easy 
 to understand how his philosophy, loaded down as it was with 
 these imperfect theories, was neglected for two centuries, 
 and is even yet regarded with enmity by many. Not until 
 the elder Mill discriminated Hobbes' valuable analysis of 
 mind from his ethical and sociological theories, was this great 
 English thinker appreciated even by his own countrymen. 
 
130 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 While Spinoza was quietly elaborating his system of 
 philosophy in Holland, and Newton and Leibnitz were uncon- 
 sciously vying with each other in the higher mathematics, the 
 study of mind, as the function of an organism, was taken up 
 where Hobbes had left it and further developed by John 
 Locke (1632-1704). He, too, studied at Oxford and became 
 a mathematician, but principally devoted himself to medi- 
 cine, in which science he attained marked proficiency. His 
 life was cast in those troublous times in England when the 
 principle of the " Divine Right of Kings," which James the 
 First had introduced from Scotland, was being tested by the 
 contending political and religious parties over which his son 
 Charles the First tried to reign. 
 
 The Scotch Covenanters, so terribly in earnest in resisting 
 that ritual in which they saw but a return to the despotism 
 of Rome ; the discontented Romanists, representing a large 
 part of the culture and rank of the nation ; the English 
 Puritans, who opposed and mistrusted them ; that large 
 class of dissolute nobles, the immoral tlite of England, too 
 selfish to espouse any religion for its own sake, too unintelli- 
 gent to adopt any broad national policy, supporting Royalty 
 but for its emoluments and license, and laying up by their 
 vices and crimes that reaction which Cromwell rose to con- 
 trol ; among these circumstances it was that England ex- 
 hausted, at least for herself, the question of the divine right 
 of kings. And this was the political, social, and moral at- 
 mosphere in which the ideas of Locke were formulated and 
 promulgated. Toleration was a word of vast importance 
 in those days ; hence the conciliatory tone of Locke's writ- 
 ings. Many have mistaken his disposition to avoid too 
 pronounced assertions on ultimate questions for logical 
 weakness or mediocrity : thus Leibnitz calls Locke poor in 
 thought, " paufertina philosophia" This view has been 
 taken up by so many critics, that one who approaches Locke 
 through his general reputation is .surprised to find through- 
 out his writings so much vigor and firmness of thought. His 
 aim seems to have been to create a feeling against Scholasti- 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 131 
 
 cism, or purely theoretical philosophy and its interminable 
 disputes, and to study the workings of the mind with a 
 view to discovering what it could do and what it could not 
 do. His philosophy, therefore, was that of experience ; for 
 he examined into what the human mind did after it became 
 a mind more than into the genesis of consciousness. 
 
 In modern philosophic writings the popular term for that 
 branch of inquiry which begins with the fact of mind, and 
 proceeds to study its assimilation of ideas, is a posteriori 
 (or that which comes after the fact of mind). The term 
 which denotes an inquiry into those principles which are 
 anterior to the fact of mind is a priori. 
 
 It has been the habit of that school of writers in 
 which Kant is pre-eminent to fix upon arbitrary categories 
 or forms of thought and call them a priori ideas, for natu- 
 rally enough they could not explain the existence of the 
 mind from purely mental experiences. Without any attempt 
 to explain the genesis of these a priori ideas, however, they 
 proceed to build up vast theoretical systems in which the 
 mind is the central mystery, to which all the other mysteries 
 of their theories are made to point. To these a priori phi- 
 losophers, or modern idealists, who have prospered most in 
 the intellectual climate of Germany, we will give attention 
 in the following chapter. 
 
 Locke, as the successor of Bacon and Hobbes, occupied a 
 hostile position toward this school, which was the beginning 
 of that broad divergence so plainly seen to-day between 
 theoretical and practical philosophy, or the German idealists 
 and the English psychologists. 
 
 Locke's principal philosophical work was written as early 
 as 1671, although it was not published until 1690. The 
 cause of this long delay was not improbably a very natural 
 reluctance to augment by any possible means the fierce re- 
 ligious disputes which were raging in England, and indeed 
 throughout Europe, during his entire life. This theory 
 becomes all the more probable when we compare his utter- 
 ances on religious subjects with the general clearness and 
 
132 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 depth of his thought. In this regard let us first consider 
 his ethical theories. 
 
 Although Locke taught a belief in a personal God, whose 
 will was the source of all morality in man, he made the 
 scope of moral conceptions purely human, or organic, by 
 resolving the meaning of good and evil into that of pleasure 
 and pain, making the ultimate test of virtue the degree in 
 which it promotes pleasure and averts pain. 
 
 This is a logical necessity, to which all writers upon ethics 
 are eventually brought ; for the fundamental fact of individ- 
 ual or organic life is personal existence, and pleasure or 
 happiness, used in its broadest sense, means successful exist- 
 ence, or life ; and pain, used in its broadest sense, means the 
 opposite of this, or death. 
 
 The question of conduct, therefore, in its simplest form, 
 is a question of life and death ; in its developed form it 
 becomes a study of the most successful or highest life. Al- 
 though Locke says that he believes morality can be reduced 
 to a science, which means that conduct can be reasoned 
 from its origin in the principle of life to all its applications 
 in the details of our existence, he nevertheless makes use of 
 much conventional and theological phraseology which de- 
 prives his system of the purity, breadth, and consistency 
 which is demanded of such writings in our time. For in- 
 stance, after reasoning against the existence of any innate 
 moral rule or idea, he says : " The true ground of morality 
 can only be the will and law of God, who sees in the dark, 
 has in his hands rewards and punishments, and power 
 enough to call to account the proudest of offenders ; for 
 God having by an inseparable connection joined virtue and 
 public happiness together, it is no wonder that every one 
 should not only allow, but recommend and magnify, those 
 rules to others, from whose observance of them he is seen to 
 reap advantage himself. The conveniences of this life make 
 men own an outward profession and approbation of them, 
 whose actions sufficiently prove that they but little con- 
 sider the lawgiver that prescribed these rules, or the hell 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 133 
 
 he has ordained for the punishment of those that transgress 
 them." * 
 
 Thus we see that, although Locke rebelled against the 
 theory of innate or supernatural ideas, he had a very me- 
 chanical way of looking upon the relations between the di- 
 vine and the human. He seemed to think that the divine 
 meant a God fashioned after man, dealing out rewards and 
 punishments in a distinctively human manner, and even 
 employing a mechanical hell to enforce his will. All this 
 seems unworthy of the breadth of Locke's mind ; but we 
 must remember the times in which he lived and the condi- 
 tion of religious knowledge in England during the seven- 
 teenth century. After the above quotation, however, it is 
 not without wonder that we read the following ethical com- 
 parisons : " Yet, if we ask a Christian who has the views of 
 happiness and misery in another life, why a man must keep 
 his word, he will give this as a reason : Because God, who 
 has the power of eternal life and de^ath, requires it of us. 
 But if a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer: Because 
 the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if 
 you do not. And if one of the old philosophers had been 
 asked, he would have answered : Because it was dishonest, 
 below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the 
 highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise." 2 
 
 This shows a complete independence of superstition ; and 
 we are compelled to believe that Locke, like Descartes, 
 knew better than he thought it advisable to write on re- 
 ligious matters ; or else, that he had not harmonized his 
 thoughts on the existence and nature of God with the 
 results of his other investigations. This opinion is confirmed 
 by such passages as the following, which, although they do 
 not deny, are surely intended to undermine the belief in 
 a supernatural revelation. " So God might by revelation 
 discover the truth of any proposition in Euclid, as well 
 as men by the natural use of their faculties come to make 
 the discovery themselves. In all things of this kind there is 
 
 J " Essay Concerning Human Understanding," vol. I., p. 62. * Ibid., p. 61. 
 
134 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 little need or use of revelation, God having furnished us 
 with natural and surer means to arrive at the knowledge of 
 them. For whatsoever truth we come to the clear discovery 
 of, from the knowledge and contemplation of our own ideas, 
 will always be certainer to us than those which are con- 
 veyed to us by traditional revelation. For the knowledge 
 we have that this revelation came at first from God can 
 never be so sure as the knowledge we have from the clear 
 and distinct perception of the agreement or disagreement of 
 our own ideas. * * * The history of the deluge is conveyed 
 to us by writings which had their original from revelation ; 
 and yet nobody, I think, will say he has as certain and clear 
 a knowledge of the flood as Noah, that saw it ; or that he 
 himself would have had, had he then been alive and seen 
 it. For he has no greater assurance than that of his senses 
 that it is writ in the book supposed writ by Moses inspired ; 
 but he has not so great an assurance that Moses writ that 
 book as if he had seen Moses write it." 1 
 
 The extreme timidity of this criticism of the authorship of 
 the Pentateuch is to be contrasted with the confidence 
 with which Professor Max Miiller now speaks upon the sub- 
 ject to the English public ; but it should be remembered 
 that Mr. Miiller now places the latest known revelation 
 of God to man as far back as Abraham, 2 which renders all 
 the historical surroundings of Moses perfectly natural. 
 
 The task which Locke set himself in writing the " Essay 
 on Human Understanding" was, " to inquire into the 
 original certainty and extent of human knowledge, together 
 with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion and assent " ; 
 or, as we would express it to-day, to examine into the 
 objects of perception, and the principles of certitude, as 
 distinguished from the nature of perception. Thus he confined 
 
 1 "Works of John Locke," vol. III., pp. 140, 141. 
 
 3 ' ' And if we are asked how this one Abraham possessed not only the 
 primitive intuition of God as He had revealed Himself to all mankind, but 
 passed through the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of the one God, we 
 are content to answer that it was by a special Divine Revelation." Max Miiller, 
 "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. I., p. 367. 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 135 
 
 himself to that branch of psychology which begins with the 
 fact of mind. 
 
 Locke, employing the ancient simile, viewed the mind as 
 a tablet upon which experience records its impressions ; a 
 very inadequate way of looking upon mental phenomena, as 
 it leaves out of view many prominent conditions. What 
 resemblance is there, for instance, between a white tablet, 
 which certainly has no reactionary power of its own, and 
 a complex organism of definite structure, and therefore 
 predetermined functions or activities, existing in a medium 
 of language or intelligence which also has a definite 
 structure, and hence the power of reacting in a prede- 
 termined manner ? 
 
 The study of language as the social factor in mental phe- 
 nomena, by such men as Comte, Spencer, and Lewes, has 
 yielded rich results for psychology ; but this view of lan- 
 guage was scarcely entertained in the time of Locke. The 
 nearest approach to this great subject which he made 
 was his dim foreshadowing of the " association of ideas," 
 afterward developed by Hartley and Mill. But Locke had 
 enough to do to combat the doctrine of innate ideas, which 
 was so generally accepted in his time. It was acknowledged 
 that there are predispositions of the mind which give to in- 
 dividuals, through the accumulated modifications of heredity, 
 understandings of things, or conceptions, which are practi- 
 cally before experience ; but these inherited mental ten- 
 dencies were regarded as ultimate psychological facts defy- 
 ing analysis, and taking the form of arbitrary, irreducible 
 categories of thought. This is the theory which Locke op- 
 posed, and well he might, for its influence has been so per- 
 sistent as to have governed the metaphysical opinions of 
 even such recent thinkers as Mill and Spencer, both of whom, 
 as will be abundantly shown hereafter, devoutly believe in a 
 priori, unknowable conceptions which they postulate as irre- 
 ducible and mysterious figments of the mind, whence all 
 thought springs. 
 
 The strange part of this modern a priori philosophy is that 
 
136 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 its advocates include among the mental mysteries the fact 
 of Consciousness itself, 1 which really throws all these specula- 
 tions about the ultimate principles of mind into hopeless 
 confusion. 
 
 Locke taught that the source of all our ideas is sensation ; 
 and that thought, or reflection, is the apprehension and gen- 
 eralization of facts. This is strictly in accordance with the 
 best conceptions of modern psychology, if the consideration 
 be not omitted that the organ of thought, which is now 
 called the sensorium, is only developed by experience, and, 
 therefore, that its structures contain a potentiality which is 
 a factor in the formation of ideas ; in a word, without this 
 definite structure ideas would be impossible, and experience, 
 as an educator of ideas, would be in vain. 
 
 It is interesting to see how Locke approaches the prob- 
 lem of the categories of thought. Our idea of Space, he 
 says, is derived from sight and touch. These experiences 
 are co-ordinated and generalized until we form a symbol or 
 general idea of all externals, co-existences, or Space. This 
 idea of Locke shows how much deeper down in the scale of 
 reality is Motion than its aspects, Space and Time ; for what 
 myriads of motions, both subjective and objective, are im- 
 plied in the phenomena of sight and touch, and the co-ordina- 
 tions of their results in thought ! 
 
 In the review of Herbert Spencer's works, this theory, 
 that the origin of our conception of Space is the " sense of 
 resistance," will be found clearly and fully developed, giving 
 us one of many points of resemblance between the writings 
 of Locke and Spencer. 
 
 To those who have made themselves conversant with mod- 
 ern philosophy, the writings of Locke are an unfailing source 
 of interest, as they show that the psychology for which Eng- 
 land has become so famous is but a generic development of 
 his thought. 
 
 Improving upon the psychology of Locke, David Hartley 
 (1705-1757), an eminent English physician, propounded the 
 
 1 See Spencer's " First Principles," and Mill's " Logic." 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 137 
 
 " vibration theory " as an explanation of the association of 
 ideas. In his celebrated work, " Observations on Man," 
 upon which he labored from 1730 to 1746 (first published in 
 1749), he tells us that his idea of a physical basis to mind, 
 or that there is a physical explanation possible of sensation 
 and thought connecting the two as muscular action and sensa- 
 tion, was first suggested to him by the Principia of Newton. 
 
 The theory of "the association of ideas " can, in a simpler 
 form, be traced as far back as Aristotle. Hobbes noticed 
 the principle under the name of " mental discourse," but 
 Locke gave it its present familiar name. 
 
 Hartley acknowledges his obligation to a dissertation by 
 the Rev. Mr. Gay prefixed to the translation of Archbishop 
 King's " Origin of Evil," in which the principle of " the 
 association of ideas " is applied to moral phenomena ; but 
 Hartley was the first to definitely formulate this principle, 
 which is now " applied to the different practical fields of 
 language, law, morals, politics, education, religion, and soci- 
 ology," 1 into a philosophic system, and to make its enunci- 
 ation the study of a lifetime. It is to be seen from the fact 
 that this principle was first advocated by men of acknowl- 
 edged religious spirit, that the ideas of evolution are the 
 natural fruit of the most devout minds. 
 
 Hartley endeavored to prove that the primal fact of con- 
 sciousness had its physical expression in changes in the 
 nerve centres of the thinking being, and that the structures 
 of the nervous system centring in the brain were the physi- 
 cal counterpart of all mental phenomena ; " that our ideas 
 spring up, or exist, in the order in which the sensations ex- 
 isted of which they are copies." The order of occurrence of 
 ideas, therefore, is determined by the past activities of the 
 mind as we find them registered in the structures of the 
 brain. The happiness of this thought is manifest to those 
 who have traced its development in the psychological studies 
 of Herbert Spencer and George H. Lewes, where the inter- 
 actions of function and structure explain all organic life. 
 
 'See "David Hartley and James Mill," by G. S. Bower. 
 
138 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 The particular development which Hartley gave the vibra- 
 tion theory is known as his theory of "neural tremors," 
 which, it must be admitted, has many special features that 
 the advance of Science has proved incorrect. Newton's 
 hints as to the relation between sensation and motion con- 
 tributed to the neural hypothesis. The difficulty of the 
 subject Hartley describes as follows : " If that species of 
 motion which we term vibrations can be shown by probable 
 arguments to attend on all sensations, ideas, and motions, 
 and to be proportioned to them, then we are at liberty 
 either to make vibrations the exponent of sensations, ideas, 
 and motions, or these the exponents of vibrations, as best 
 suits the inquiry, however impossible it may be to discover 
 in what way vibrations cause, or are connected with, sensa- 
 tions or ideas." 1 As the term vibration is so indefinite as 
 to mean much the same thing as motion the ultimate fact 
 in all phenomena of mind as well as of body, in tracing con- 
 sciousness to neural tremors or vibrations we have reached 
 the theoretical end of the analysis of mind. To state these 
 neural tremors in terms of time and space, or numbers and 
 quantities, is the task of the psychology of the future, but it 
 cannot afford us a deeper or more general principle than we 
 have already discovered in that of Motion employed as an 
 explanation of mind. 
 
 Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646-1716) was a Ger- 
 man mathematician and philosopher of great merit. He 
 was the Newton of Germany ; but, unlike Newton, he in- 
 dulged in metaphysics, and has therefore been considered 
 more of a philosopher than his great English contemporary, 
 whose theory of universal gravitation still holds the highest 
 place among our generalizations of motion. At the age of 
 twenty Leibnitz endeavored to harmonize the systems of 
 Plato and Aristotle, and produced a treatise on the " Com- 
 binations of Numbers and Ideas." At twenty-three he ac- 
 cepted the office of Councillor of State at Frankfort, and in 
 the year following, 1668, published his " New Method of 
 
 1 "Observ. on Man," vol. I., p. 32. 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 139 
 
 Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence." In 1670 he ad- 
 vanced new and bold theories of Motion (" Theory of Con- 
 crete Motion " and " Theory of Abstract Motion "), which, 
 when compared with the great discovery of Newton in the 
 same direction, show how inevitably the mind reverts, in 
 science as well as in religion, to the problem of the Univer- 
 sal Principle. About this time Leibnitz visited Paris, where 
 he met Cassini and Huyghens, and soon after made the ac- 
 quaintance of Newton and Boyle in London. Here he was 
 made a member of the Royal Academy, and announced his 
 discovery of the Infinitesimal Calculus, nearly identical with 
 Newton's Method of Fluctions. 
 
 The ambitions of Leibnitz were not satisfied with the vast 
 command of the physical sciences which he enjoyed, and 
 which made him famous throughout France, England, and 
 Germany, for in the prime of his life he interested himself 
 in a beneficent effort to harmonize the Protestant and the 
 Catholic churches. Toward the end of his career (1710) he 
 produced his great work entitled " Essay of Theodicea, on 
 the Goodness of God, the Liberty of Man, and the Origin 
 of Evil " ; in which he advanced the celebrated theory of 
 Optimism. 
 
 Leibnitz confined himself in writing almost entirely to 
 French and Latin ; for at his time, as will aftenvard appear, 
 there was comparatively little culture in Germany, and the 
 Greek language was employed scarcely at all in science or 
 philosophy; his audience, therefore, was principally in 
 France and in England ; for it was only toward the close of 
 his life that Germany began to show signs of the marvellous 
 intellectual development which she has since achieved. 
 
 Among the philosophical writings of Leibnitz his criti- 
 cisms of Locke are the most interesting, as Leibnitz was a 
 Cartesian, believing in a dual principle in nature, or an abso- 
 lute difference between body and mind. His opinions are 
 clearly based upon the teachings of Plato and Democri- 
 tus ; and it is a fact of no small interest that as Bacon, 
 Hobbes, and Locke laid the foundations of English thought, 
 
140 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Leibnitz gave the first impetus to the Idealism of Germany. 
 The difference between Leibnitz and Locke is thus stated 
 by the former : " The question between us is whether the 
 soul in itself is entirely empty, like tablets upon which noth- 
 ing has been written (tabula rasa), according to Aristotle and 
 the author of the ' Essay,' and whether all that is there 
 traced comes wholly from the senses and experience ; or 
 whether the soul originally contains the principles of several 
 notions and doctrines, which the external objects only awaken 
 on occasions, as I believe with Plato." Leibnitz here at- 
 tempts to prove the existence of innate ideas in order to 
 oppose the theory that knowledge springs wholly from the 
 exercise of the senses and reflection. The factor of reflec- 
 tion, however, which was insisted upon by Locke, is so sug- 
 gestive as to discover to the close observer a remote agree- 
 ment between the two great schools of thought which 
 Leibnitz and Locke respectively represented. 
 
 It is to a clear knowledge of the nature of perception that 
 we must look for a reconciliation of these conflicting theories. 
 
 Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753) and Hume (1711-1776) were 
 the historical successors of Hobbes, Locke, and Hartley as 
 English writers on philosophy ; but as they respectively re- 
 produced those eccentricities of Greek thought known as 
 Idealism and Skepticism, they retarded, if any thing, the 
 scientific study of mind which their immediate predecessors 
 had inaugurated. They were both erudites learned in Aris- 
 totle, Plato, and the Greek Skeptics. But these ancient 
 theories, deeply interesting as they are when studied as parts 
 of the civilization which produced them, appear very faded 
 when compared with modern thought. Hence we find the 
 metaphysical speculations of Berkeley and Hume tame and 
 uninstructive. 
 
 George Berkeley was born and educated in Ireland, and 
 was always distinguished for the best qualities of his race 
 generosity, morality, and religious fervor ; in fact, the sat- 
 irist Pope expresses the common verdict of his time in 
 ascribing " To Berkeley every virtue under heaven." He 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 published, in 1709, "An Essay Toward a New Theory of 
 Vision," and in the year following, " The Principles of 
 Human Knowledge," in which he advanced his celebrated 
 theory of Idealism, that there is no proof of the existence 
 of matter anywhere but in our own perceptions, as though 
 the words proof and perception did not both imply mind, 
 which can never be more than one of the two terms of the 
 relation expressed in thought. If mind implies an external 
 relation it implies space or matter. This theory of Idealism 
 has been examined as it first appeared in Plato, and we 
 again study it in its subsequent unparalleled development in 
 Kant's a priori philosophy. Suffice it to say that Berkeley 
 has been more or less faithfully reproduced in the Subjective 
 Idealism of Schelling and the Absolute Idealism of Hegel, 
 both generic developments of Kant and remote develop- 
 ments of the Dialectics of Plato, and the Skepticism of the 
 New Academy ; for, strange to say, the unnatural exaltation 
 of the fact of perception which we find in Idealism leads 
 directly to the distrust of mind exemplified in Skepticism. 
 
 Berkeley gave evidences of being influenced by Locke and 
 Hartley. He followed Locke in regarding the proposition, 
 that a material world really exists, as not strictly demonstra- 
 ble, but went beyond him by declaring the proposition false. 
 He followed Hartley in asserting that there was a necessary 
 succession or association of ideas, but he went beyond him 
 by declaring that the order of nature was not reflected by 
 mind, but was caused by mind. " That which we call the 
 law of nature," he says, " is in fact only the order of the suc- 
 cession of our ideas." This is manifestly reversing the order 
 of perception, or assuming individuality to be the ultimate 
 fact, and general existence to be a subordinate fact derived 
 from individuality ; the absurdity of which, when followed 
 to its logical consequences, is beyond expression. 
 
 Berkeley published, in 1725, "A Proposal for Converting 
 the Savage Americans to Christianity." To promote this 
 idea he undertook to found a college in this country. The 
 English government promised to aid the enterprise, and he 
 
142 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 sailed for Rhode Island in 1728. During the voyage he 
 wrote a poem on the subject of his mission. 
 
 While in this country he preached for about two years at 
 Newport, R. I., but the British ministry failing to keep 
 their promise concerning the projected college, he returned 
 home. 
 
 The Skepticism of David Hume was so marked and so 
 ably reasoned that it awakened a number of Scottish philos- 
 ophers, headed by Thomas Reid, to a vigorous polemic 
 against it, and in Germany incited Immanuel Kant to the 
 construction of his Critical Philosophy. At the age of 
 twenty-six, Hume published in London (1738) his "Treatise 
 on Human Nature," in which the principles of his Skep- 
 ticism are declared, and of which work Mackintosh says: 
 " It was the first systematic attack on all the principles of 
 knowledge and belief, and the most formidable, if universal 
 Skepticism could ever be more than a mere exercise of 
 ingenuity." In 1742, his " Essays, Moral, Political and Lit- 
 erary," appeared ; in 1752, " Political Discourses," and soon 
 after, the famous " History of England." 
 
 Hume traces our idea of Cause to what he calls habit, 
 our habit of observing the causes of events ; and from this 
 he argues that it is impossible for us to form any idea of the 
 real nature of cause, because our idea is derived entirely 
 from particular experiences. He forgets that the firmest 
 ground of certainty is our inability to disbelieve. Hence an 
 experience which is without exception is universal to us. If 
 we are able to reduce every conceivable phenomenon, or 
 experience, to an ultimate fact, which remains constant in 
 every experience, that fact, to us, is our highest generaliza- 
 tion of cause, and constitutes the general existence of which 
 individuality is but the consequence. Infinity, to man, is 
 that which he is unable to limit ; the Absolute, that to 
 which he is unable to supply conditions. The former effort 
 has manifestly more to do with externals, or objects, than 
 the latter, and is therefore the objective as distinguished 
 from the subjective, aspect of the irreducible fact, cause, or 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 143 
 
 Motion. Hence Hume, in denying the possibility of our 
 knowing the nature of the objective connection between 
 cause and effect, merely stated, in other words, the old 
 theory of Carneades, that we cannot know phenomena as 
 they really are. This theory we have fully dealt with in 
 chapter IV. 
 
 As a natural consequence of Hume's theory of the unreal 
 nature of knowledge, he denied that we could form a con- 
 ception of God, or the immortality of the soul, two widely 
 different propositions, as God is the ultimate fact, and 
 Immortality is the endless perpetuation of a relative fact, 
 which gives us a contradiction in terms. 
 
 Hume's political writings brought him into prominence, 
 and after his return from Paris, accompanied by his friend 
 Rousseau, he was intrusted with the diplomatic correspond- 
 ence of England (in 1767). Soon after this he retired to 
 Edinburgh, the scene of his best literary efforts, and lived in 
 retirement until his death in 1776. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 Kant Fichte Schelling Hegel Schleiermacher Schopenhauer. 
 
 FOR those who have ceased to regard the mind as a mys- 
 tery, a critical review of the German a priori philosophy 
 is unnecessary, for they will easily identify this new growth 
 of Idealism with its kindred errors of the past. They 
 will regard such events as the Centennial translation of 
 Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason/' by Professor Max Miil- 
 ler, and other like publications, as the last guns which ob- 
 stinate artillerymen fire after the tide of battle has turned 
 against them and their cause has been rendered hopeless. 
 
 The vast majority of people, however polite may be their 
 culture, are accustomed to view history through its external 
 events, and to judge thought by its official position. To 
 them, reformations are invisible until their effects become 
 crystallized in structural changes, and logical movements are 
 unappreciated until they appear in text-books and encyclo- 
 paedias. To such as these the a priori philosophy will be a 
 reality as long as animate professors expound it to living stu- 
 dents. But to the earnest thinker who is in full sympathy with 
 the progress of his times, whether he be able or not to state 
 categorically his belief, there are abundant evidences that 
 Idealism has been permanently superseded by a higher and a 
 better faith. The proof of this is the increasing contempt 
 with which scientific men, whatever may be their religion, re- 
 gard metaphysics, and the importance which the teaching of 
 morality has gained over the mere defence of dogma through- 
 out the Christian world. An understanding of the scope 
 of language has insensibly dawned upon our era, as a result 
 
 144 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 145 
 
 of which ideas are subordinated to actions ; beliefs are be- 
 ginning to be estimated by the lives of the believers; and 
 although the organization of religion and learning remains 
 apparently the same, theology and metaphysics, considered 
 as distinct sciences, are almost universally regarded as merely 
 formal acquirements of little or no practical value. When 
 in addition to these facts it is remembered that almost every 
 surviving system of theology or of metaphysics is idealistic 
 in its tendency, we perceive that there is in effect a popular 
 uprising against the empty idioms of the a priori school, 
 which extends far and wide beyond the limits of philosophic 
 culture. 
 
 We have no idea, however, of depending upon a sympathy 
 so general and indefinite for the refutation of Idealism. 
 There are too many instances in history of the re-establish- 
 ment of false doctrines long after they have been to all 
 appearances destroyed, to trust to what is, after all, but 
 a harbinger of victory. 
 
 As Germany slowly arose from the almost indescribable 
 desolation of the Thirty Years' War, she entered upon a 
 century of her history during which she had no national 
 existence or memories, no literature or language, no social, 
 religious, or moral life. The nation had expired when peace 
 was concluded in 1648. This war not only destroyed an old 
 civilization which was fairly abreast with that of the rest of 
 Europe ; it so completely destroyed it that the nation has 
 been two hundred years in regaining her natural status in 
 the world. Commercial statistics show that the general pros- 
 perity of Germany in 1850 had but just reached the level of 
 that which she enjoyed at the beginning of the war of 1618. 
 " The highly cultivated language of Luther was forgotten, 
 together with the whole literature of his time. Many 
 schools and churches stood abandoned, for public instruc- 
 tion and public worship had nearly perished. * * * There 
 was no middle class nor gentry left; the higher noble- 
 men had become petty despotic princes, with no hand over 
 them, since the Emperor was but a name ; the lower went 
 
146 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 to their court to do lackey's service. A whole generation- 
 had grown up during the war, and considered its savage bar- 
 barism as a normal state of society. * * * For all habits 
 of self-government, even in the cities, had gone ; the gentle- 
 men had become courtiers instead of magistrates. An un- 
 precedented coarseness of manners had invaded not only 
 courts and cities, but also the universities and the clergy." 
 
 A century later, when Frederick II. realized the desires of 
 Prussia in a reign memorable for its impartial devotion to 
 the whole nation, firmly establishing the Prussian State, the 
 intellectual life of Germany was not only awakened but im- 
 mediately burst into a luxuriant growth. Universities were 
 established and regenerated, great scholars, great poets, and 
 great thinkers immediately appeared. Leibnitz, Kant, 
 Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and the rest, came to glorify the 
 new national life. The beauties of the ancient classics were 
 rediscovered, history was read by fresh minds and its organic 
 nature disclosed, sciences were created to deal with the new 
 problems of life ; for a nation had arisen and taken a new 
 interest in humanity. In the midst of this intellectual exal- 
 tation German philosophy was born. Is it any wonder that 
 its whole existence has been marked by a kind of subjective 
 intoxication ? 
 
 Each national language formulates its philosophy with an 
 unfeigned satisfaction and pride. The old, old problems of life^ 
 which Greece absorbed from the East and expressed so vivid- 
 ly, were new in Germany ; but a careful examination of their 
 structure discloses them to be of the same logical species as 
 their progenitors. The German type of these problems, 
 however, has marked modifications due to a greater and a 
 higher environment. German philosophy is more Greek 
 than the Grecian ; it is a refined leaven of the Greek thought, 
 so powerful that it has fermented the mind of Europe ever 
 since its appearance. It has produced idealists beside whose 
 theories Plato's Idealism is rational ; it has produced materi- 
 alists whom Aristotle would not have recognized ; it has 
 
 1 See " German Thought," by Karl Hillebrand. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 147 
 
 generated skeptics whom Carneades would have wondered 
 at. But of all these schools Idealism has taken the deepest 
 root, its fancies have most pleased the multitude, and what 
 was in the beginning the innocent recreation of a few literati 
 has become a national vice. 
 
 How different has it been with France and England ! 
 These nations have had their wars and revolutions, but they 
 have never suffered destruction ; their development has had 
 no great gap in it ; it has been more gradual, and conse- 
 quently more rational. During the time that Germany was 
 slowly regaining life, France was leading the civilization of 
 Europe under Louis XIV. England was in advance in 
 political institutions and religious liberty, and, as well as 
 Spain and Holland, was superior in commerce and conquest; 
 but in all those graces of life and mind which tend to develop 
 and refine the individual, and in the unity and strength of 
 her national life, France of the eighteenth century was pre- 
 eminent. " The French," says Taine, " became civilized by 
 conversation. Their phrases, still formal, under Balzac are 
 looser and lightened ; they launch out, flow speedily, and 
 under Voltaire they find their wings. Pedantic sciences, 
 political economy, theology, the sullen denizens of the 
 Academy and the Sorbonne, speak but in epigrams. * * * 
 What a flight was this of the eighteenth century! Was 
 society ever more anxious for lofty truths, more bold in their 
 search, more quick to discover, more ardent in embracing 
 them ? The perfumed marquises, all these pretty, well- 
 dressed, gallant, frivolous people, crowd to philosophy as to 
 the opera ; the origin of animated beings, the question of 
 free judgment, the principles of political economy, all is to 
 them a matter for paradoxes and discoveries." 
 
 Just previous to this time we find Leibnitz complaining of 
 the sensuality and ignorance of the German gentry as com- 
 pared with the love of science in England, and the intelli- 
 gence and culture of the French. Count Mannteufel writes 
 to Wolff, as late as 1738, " The German princes, who might 
 be compared to your lords, think it beneath their dignity to 
 cultivate their mind." 
 
148 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Thus we have England, in the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, enriched by Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Addison, 
 and Swift, and learning from Locke and Newton ; France in 
 possession of Pascal, Descartes, Moliere, Malebranche, Ra- 
 cine, and Boileau ; England earnest and studious ; France 
 brilliant and refined, and Germany as yet intellectually un- 
 born. 
 
 Looking at Germany from the closing years of the nine- 
 teenth century, with an unequalled army of trained scientists 
 animated by the true spirit of original investigation, and 
 almost universal culture, with intellectual and religious free- 
 dom, one might easily expect great things of her. But her 
 originality, her genius, which attained such a marvellous 
 life during the century which closed with 1850, has seeming- 
 ly passed away, and it is in her abnormal Idealism, the natu- 
 ral consequence of a sudden intellectual development, that we 
 are to find the cause. 
 
 There is a lesson to be learned from the process which 
 underlies the survival of great names in history. It is 
 that the most indestructible lives are not necessarily 
 those which have most interested their contemporaries, 
 but those which have instigated the most needed re- 
 forms. As these lives recede in history, they fade out or 
 become brighter according to the degree in which they 
 have actually served the needs of their time. We find, 
 therefore, that the reputation of Kant, the first of the great 
 German thinkers, depends upon the intrinsic value of his 
 philosophy, although his philosophy is really the least im- 
 pressive feature of his life. What Germany most needed, 
 what every nation most needs, is a true philosophy. Kant 
 endeavored to supply this need, and if he failed, his great 
 learning, his broad humanity, his moral acumen, may insure 
 for him the lasting love and esteem of his countrymen, 
 but they cannot sustain his greatness as a logical reformer. 
 
 The " Critique of Pure Reason " is acknowledged to be 
 the representative work of Kant. Let us carefully examine 
 it with a view to forming an estimate of its value. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 149 
 
 The first words of the preface are : " Our reason ( Vernunff) 
 has this peculiar fate, that, with reference to one class of its 
 knowledge, it is always troubled with questions which cannot 
 be ignored, because they spring from the very nature of rea- 
 son, and which cannot be answered, because they transcend 
 the powers of human reason." 
 
 This simply means that the ultimate nature of reason is 
 incomprehensible, which is rather a discouraging admission to 
 make at the very outset of a work, the object of which is to 
 examine into the nature of reason. Kant must have believed, 
 however, that the nature of reason was comprehensible in 
 some degree, otherwise he would never have attempted an 
 exhaustive criticism of " Pure Reason/' 
 
 Let it be our object, then, to discover what degree of com- 
 prehensibility Kant believed in, or hoped for, with regard 
 to the nature of reason. The preface continues as follows : 
 " Nor is human reason to be blamed for [being incompre- 
 hensible]. It begins with principles which, in the course of 
 experience, it must follow, and which seem sufficiently con- 
 firmed by experience. With these, again, according to the 
 necessities of its nature, it rises higher and higher to more 
 remote conditions. But when it perceives that in this way 
 its work remains forever incomplete, because the questions 
 never cease, it finds itself constrained to take refuge in prin- 
 ciples which exceed every possible experimental application, 
 and nevertheless seem so unobjectionable that even ordinary 
 common-sense agrees with them." 
 
 This clearly states a well known fact, that the reason 
 springs from particular experiences and rises to general 
 truths. But among these general truths, Kant tells us, the 
 Reason can find no end, no resting-place, and is " constrained 
 to take refuge in principles which [transcend experience'] ex- 
 ceed every possible experimental application." 
 
 The point to be marked here is, that it is impossible for 
 Reason to act at all without putting in motion or expressing 
 its deepest principles. If reason springs from experience, as 
 Kant admits, we can find in experience the expression of its 
 
150 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 first principles. These categories, or most general principles, 
 Kant declares, transcend all experience, and yet he clearly 
 admits that the reason, of which these principles are simply 
 the aspects, begins in experience. This contradiction we 
 find still more emphatic further on. In the introduction 
 Kant tells us, " If we remove from experience every thing 
 that belongs to the senses, there remain, nevertheless, cer- 
 tain original concepts, and certain judgments derived from 
 them, which must have had their origin entirely a priori, and 
 independent of all experience, because it is owing to them 
 that we are able, or imagine we are able, to predicate 
 more of the objects of our senses than can be learned from 
 mere experience, and that our propositions contain real 
 generality and strict necessity, such as mere empirical knowl- 
 edge can never supply." 
 
 Here is an assertion which, in our time, sounds indeed pre- 
 posterous, that there is an absolute dividing line, or differ- 
 ence of nature, between sensuous apprehensions and the co- 
 ordination of those apprehensions which gives us the highest 
 achievements of reason. By the term " a priori" which 
 really means nothing but before, Kant wishes to designate 
 certain mysterious conceptions which cannot be accounted 
 for by the natural activities of the sentient organism. But 
 these principles, notwithstanding their mysterious nature, are 
 supposed to reside somewhere in the organism. On the 
 same page we are told that there is a certain kind of 
 " knowledge which transcends the world of the senses, and 
 where experience can neither guide nor correct us : here rea- 
 son prosecutes investigations, which by their importance 
 we consider far more excellent, and by their tendency 
 far more elevated, than any thing the understanding can find 
 in the sphere of phenomena." 
 
 This looks rather ominous. If Kant is to take us into 
 a region of knowledge where our investigations cannot be 
 verified by any possible experiences, a region of investiga- 
 tion which is far more " excellent " and " elevated than any 
 thing the understanding can find in the sphere of phenom- 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPH Y. 1 5 1 
 
 ena," no one will blame us if we feel alarmed at the thought 
 of the intellectual apparitions which we are to meet there. 
 
 But any reluctance which we may have to accompany our 
 author is dissipated when he continues, " Nay, we risk 
 rather any thing, even at the peril of error, than that we should 
 surrender such investigations, either on the ground of their 
 uncertainty or from any feeling of indifference or contempt. 
 * * * Besides, once beyond the precincts of experience, 
 we are certain that experience can never contradict us, while 
 the charm of enlarging our knowledge is so great that 
 nothing will stop our progress until we encounter a clear 
 contradiction." ] 
 
 From this it is evident that the only defence we are to 
 have, in the region of knowledge to be traversed by the 
 " Critique of Pure Reason," against the delusions of the 
 imagination, is the sense of " clear contradiction." This is a 
 certain relief ; for it assures us that we are not expected to 
 leave all sense behind. But the question arises : How, 
 in a sphere of " knowledge which transcends the world of 
 the senses," are we to retain enough sense to appreciate a 
 clear contradiction ? 
 
 The modern psychologist has no faith in the existence of 
 " Pure Reason " ; the very name implies a belief in the 
 actual separation of what are but aspects of one fact of sen- 
 tiency. To show how firmly Kant believed in this actual 
 separation, we give his definition of Pure Reason : " Every 
 kind of knowledge is called pure if not mixed with any thing 
 heterogeneous. But more particularly is that knowledge 
 called absolutely pure which is not mixed up with any expe- 
 rience or sensation, and is therefore possible entirely a priori. 
 Reason is the faculty which supplies the principles of knowl- 
 edge a priori. Pure Reason, therefore, is that faculty which 
 supplies the principles of knowing any thing entirely a priori. 
 An Organum of pure reason ought to comprehend all the 
 principles by which pure knowledge a priori can be acquired 
 and fully established. A complete application of such an 
 
 1 Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," vol. II., pp. 2, 3. 
 
152 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Organum would give us a System of Pure Reason. But as 
 that would be a difficult task, and as at present it is still 
 doubtful whether such an expansion of our knowledge is 
 here possible, we may look on a mere criticism of pure 
 reason, its sources and limits, as a kind of preparation for a 
 complete system of pure reason. It should be called a 
 critique, not a doctrine, of pure reason. Its usefulness would 
 be negative only, serving for a purging rather than for an 
 expansion of our reason." ] Any meaning which this defini- 
 tion has certainly hinges upon the term a priori. The 
 further service which this term is made to do in Kant's ideas 
 can be judged of from the following : " I call all knowledge 
 transcendental which is occupied not so much with objects 
 as with our a priori concepts of objects. A system of such 
 concepts might be called Transcendental Philosophy. But 
 for the present this is again too great an undertaking. We 
 should have to treat therein completely both of analytical 
 knowledge and of synthetical knowledge a priori, which is 
 more than we intend to do, being satisfied to carry on the 
 analysis so far only as is indispensably necessary in order to 
 understand in their whole extent the principles of synthesis 
 a priori, which alone concern us. This investigation, which 
 should be called a transcendental critique, but not a sys- 
 tematic doctrine, is all we are occupied with at present. 
 It is not meant to extend our knowledge, but only to rectify 
 it, and to become the test of the value of all a priori knowl- 
 edge." 
 
 Thus we have the privilege of reviewing a transcendental 
 criticism of a priori knowledge, or, knowledge which acknowl- 
 edges no connection with experience. 
 
 Kant describes the scope of his great work in these words : 
 " All that constitutes transcendental philosophy belongs to 
 the Critique of Pure Reason. * * * Transcendental phi- 
 losophy is the Wisdom of pure speculative reason. Every 
 thing practical, so far as it contains motives, has reference to 
 
 1 Kant's " Critique," pp. 9, 10. a Ibid., pp. 10, n. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 153 
 
 sentiments, and these belong to empirical sources of knowl- 
 edge.'" 
 
 The " Critique of Pure Reason " opens with a discourse on 
 what Kant calls " Transcendental ^Esthetic," and from that 
 proceeds to " Transcendental Logic," "Transcendental An- 
 alytic," " Transcendental Dialectic," and closes with the 
 Method of Transcendentalism, under the respective heads of 
 " Discipline of Pure Reason " and " Canons of Pure Rea- 
 son." These titles have a magnificent sound, but there is too 
 much that is transcendental (above the earth) about them. 
 The careful or conscientious thinker, being earthly, likes to 
 keep his feet upon the solid ground of good sense ; he feels 
 that this is the only position which secures logical strength 
 and repose, and that no thoughts are too high, too pure, or 
 too excellent to rest upon so human a base. Correct reason- 
 ing is logical integrity, intellectual morality ; but we have no 
 right to impeach the logical integrity of the " Critique of 
 Pure Reason " by assuming any connection between moral 
 and intellectual procedures ; for its author tells us plainly, in 
 the last page of the introduction, that " although the highest 
 principles of morality and their fundamental concepts are a 
 priori knowledge, they do not belong to transcendental phi- 
 losophy, because the concepts of pleasure and pain, desire, 
 inclination, free-will, etc., which are all of empirical origin, 
 must here be presupposed." This leaves us in an uncom- 
 fortable state of uncertainty whether he means that trans- 
 cendental philosophy has nothing to do with morality, or 
 whether a priori knowledge has nothing to do with transcen- 
 dental philosophy. At all events, the assertion is definite 
 that in transcendental philosophy the moral sentiments, so 
 far as they represent a motive, have no place. 
 
 Hence the author of the " Critique of Pure Reason," in 
 describing the scope of his work, deliberately takes leave of 
 all that is estimable and useful in philosophy, namely, the 
 study of life as a means of illuminating conduct, and applies 
 himself to the creation of that system of " a priori knowl- 
 edge " now widely known as German Idealism. 
 
 1 Kant's " Critique," pp. 12, 13. 
 
-154 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Herder, the Pindar of Germany, a pupil of Kant, a pro. 
 found scholar and moral teacher, earnestly denounced the 
 Kantian philosophy. James Sully, in the Fortnightly Review 
 of October, 1882, thus describes the antagonism of teacher 
 and pupil : 
 
 " Herder's conception of history as but an extension of 
 nature's processes was diametrically opposed to Kant's 
 dualism of human freedom rising above and opposing na- 
 ture. * * * He had no liking for Kant's critical philoso- 
 phy, with its cumbrous apparatus of ' intellectual forms.' 
 To his concrete mind ever impressed with the organic unity 
 of man, it seemed to resolve the human intellect into a num- 
 ber of unreal abstractions. It was a distinct retrogression 
 from the experience philosophy of his predecessors, and 
 along with the French Revolution threatened ' to send back 
 the world a hundred years.' Herder's chief dislike of the 
 Kantian philosophy, however, arose out of his view of its 
 hurtful consequences in literature, art, and theology. ' Criti- 
 cism ' was the fashion of thought of the hour. ' In every 
 journal ' (writes Herder) * these dogs and curs bark and yelp 
 the critical canons without canon, without feeling, law, and 
 rule. God help us!' The sharp separation of art and mo- 
 rality and the worship of pure form in art which Schiller and 
 Goethe were preaching, were professedly based on Kant's 
 teaching. And then there was the young generation of 
 theologians who had come under the spell of Fichte's elo- 
 quence at Jena, and who were blatant with somewhat vague 
 ideas about liberty and the supremacy of reason. One can 
 hardly wonder that the soul of the General Superintendent 
 should have been excited to wrath by the appearance of 
 youthful candidates for clerical appointments who thought 
 to conceal by loose talk of this sort the depth of their igno- 
 rance on all theological matters, candidates of whom one 
 even had the audacity to write an essay against marriage. 
 
 " So it came to pass that Herder's spirit was inflamed 
 against Kant, and delivered itself of a solemn denunciation. 
 In the year 1799-1800, there appeared from his pen two 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 155 
 
 works which were intended to give the coup de grace to 
 Kant's influence. These were the ' Metakritik,' which was 
 directed against the 'Critic of the Pure Reason/ and the 
 ' Kalligone,' which was to be a refutation of the theory of 
 taste and art put forth in the ' Critic of the Practical Reason.' 
 The mode of attack may be seen by a reference to the intro- 
 duction to the ' Metakritik.' It is an appeal from chair phi- 
 losophers to the sensible laity. He dwells on the mischief 
 wrought by the Kantian teaching. * For twelve years the 
 critical philosophy has been playing its part, and we see its 
 fruits. What father (let him ask himself) wishes his son to 
 become an autonomous being of the critical sort, a metaphy- 
 sician of nature and virtue, a dialectical or revolutionary 
 pettifogger, according to the critical stamp? Now look 
 round and read ! What recent book, what science is not 
 covered with flaws of this kind, and how many noble talents 
 are (we hope for a time only) ruined ! Foreign nations 
 scorn us : " Are you there, you Germans, you who were so 
 far on in many things? Are you speculating about the 
 question how it is possible for your understanding to have 
 come into existence ? * * * Unformed nation ! how differ- 
 ent the things you ought to be thinking about ! " 
 
 " The remedy for the evil lies in the hands of every intel- 
 ligent reader. Ordinary men are fully capable of destroying 
 the ' misty woof of words.' Everybody has a mind which 
 he can interrogate in order to know whether it behaves in 
 the fashion set forth in the ' Critic.' ' Ask thyself, thy senses, 
 thy understanding, thy reason ; they have imprescriptible 
 rights. Are the senses willing to be transubstantiated into 
 empty forms, the understanding into a senseless process of 
 spelling, and the reason into a chaos ? ' ' 
 
 But this brave attack and timely warning fell to the earth ; 
 it passed unheeded. And thus Herder, " the humanizer of 
 theology, the reviver of pristine life in literature, injured 
 himself only by his rash venture into the thorny enclosure 
 of metaphysics. He called into existence a whole army of 
 enemies only too ready to enlist under the banner of the 
 
156 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Konigsberg philosopher, and he alienated some of his best 
 friends." 
 
 The mind of Germany has indeed been put back a hundred 
 years in its growth by the Kantian philosophy. Idealism 
 hangs like a fog over her intellectual life ; her art, her litera- 
 ture, and even her science, are dwarfed by it. In Germany 
 the religious world is either superstitious or materialistic; 
 thought being separated from morality or real life, the 
 religion of philosophy does not exist ; even her political life 
 seems to be retarded by this unnatural divorce. The warm- 
 est friends, the ablest critics of this great nation compare 
 her to a mind without a body. From this can it not be in- 
 ferred that her body in the highest sense is without a mind ? 
 
 The fluent and methodical manner in which Kant pro- 
 ceeds to analyze perception is calculated to throw one off 
 his guard. The propositions which embrace his description 
 of mental phenomena are stated with such precision and ap- 
 parent candor that one is apt to take their logical integrity 
 for granted. For instance, at the outset he affirms that 
 " sensibility alone supplies us with intuitions (Anschauungen). 
 These intuitions become thought through the understanding 
 (Verstand), and hence arise conceptions (Begriffe). All 
 thought, therefore, must, directly or indirectly, go back to 
 intuitions (Anschauungen), i. e. to our sensibility, because in 
 no other way can objects be given to us." 1 Thus we have 
 sensation and thought duly recognized as different aspects, 
 of mental phenomena, their separation being purely artificial. 
 Then follows the very fair assertion: " The effect produced 
 by an object upon the faculty of representation (Vorstel- 
 lungsfdhigkeif), so far as we are affected by it, is called 
 sensation (Einpfindung). An intuition [Anschauung] of an 
 object, by means of sensation, is called empirical. The un- 
 defined object of such empirical intuition is called phenome- 
 non (Erscheinung)" But suddenly we have a leap into 
 obscurity which is amazing, and which of course we cannot 
 follow. Witness these words : " I call all representations 
 
 1 Kant's "Critique," p. 17. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 157 
 
 in which there is nothing that belongs to sensation, pure (in 
 a transcendental sense). The pure form, therefore, of all 
 sensuous intuitions, that form in which the manifold elements 
 of the phenomena are seen in a certain order, must be found 
 in the mind a priori. And this pure form of sensibility may 
 be called the pure intuition (Anschauung)" 
 
 A moment ago we were told that " sensibility alone sup- 
 plies us with intuitions"; that "all thought must, directly 
 or indirectly, go back to intuitions, i. e. sensations " ; that 
 " sensation is the effect produced upon the faculty of repre- 
 sentation by an object " ; thus completing the chain of cause 
 and effect between the many forms of mental activity which 
 Kant names as sensuous apprehensions, representations, in- 
 tuitions, and thoughts. In the face of this we are told that 
 he " calls all representations in which there is nothing that 
 belongs to sensation,/#r^ (in a transcendental sense)." Truly 
 this transcendental sense seems to be the source of Kant's 
 lasting error ; lasting because, as we shall see, he has artic- 
 ulated his system so ingeniously and covered up its logical 
 defects so dexterously with such a wealth of tautology, that 
 nothing but the most persistent vigilance can disclose the 
 unconscious deceit which permeates the whole "Critique 
 of Pure Reason." 
 
 Speaking of space, Kant says : " No determinations of ob- 
 jects, whether belonging to them absolutely or in relation to 
 others, can enter into our intuition before the actual exist- 
 ence of the objects themselves ; that is to say, they can 
 never be intuitions a priori. * * * Space is nothing but 
 the form of the phenomena of all external senses ; it is a 
 subjective condition of our sensibility, without which no ex- 
 ternal intuition is possible for us." Such language as this 
 is simply an outrage upon good sense. If it came from a 
 less illustrious pen than that of Kant, we might well pass 
 it by with contempt. It involves a mass of contradictions 
 and is loose and incoherent, logically, to the last degree. 
 
 The determinations of objects, or the properties by which 
 
 1 Kant's " Critique," p. 23. 
 
158 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 objects are perceived, imply a relation between the perceiv- 
 ing subject and the object ; the determinations of objects, 
 therefore, cannot belong to them absolutely, for they imply 
 a relation. When Kant says that the " determinations of 
 objects cannot enter into our intuition before the existence of 
 the objects themselves," it is to be remembered that, as the 
 determinations are qualities or functions of the objects, they 
 imply or presuppose the existence of the object, and hence 
 there can be no question of priority. As for the determina- 
 tions never becoming " intuitions a priori" we have been dis- 
 tinctly told that intuitions come alone through sensibility. 
 We therefore deny that there is any meaning in the term 
 "intuitions a priori." The difference between sensuous in- 
 tuitions and intuitions a priori is based upon an arbitrary 
 separation, by Kant, of the matter and form of phenomena ; 1 
 a distinction which has no foundation in fact, for the form of 
 objects is clearly the expression of certain statical or space 
 aspects ; and the word matter is merely a generalization of 
 the statical aspects of all phenomena. When Kant says, 
 therefore, that space is a subjective condition of our sensi- 
 bility without which no intuition of externals (objects) is 
 possible, it is clear that he does violence to facts, first by 
 insisting that space means form and does not mean matter, 
 and then that form is absolutely distinct from matter or 
 external phenomena. In a word, Kant abstracts from that 
 aspect of motion or general existence, which we call space, 
 a so-called transcendental principle which he calls form, and 
 leaves behind a mutilated conception which he calls matter. 
 Form, he says, belongs to the mind and transcends all sensi- 
 bility or experience ; but matter does not belong to the 
 mind, and cannot get into it, because it is not form. Surely 
 
 1 " The matter only of all phenomena is given us a posteriori ; but their form 
 must be ready for them in the mind (Gemuth] a priori, and must therefore be 
 capable of being considered as separate from all sensations. * * * The pure 
 form, therefore, of all sensuous intuitions, that form in which the mani- 
 fold elements of the phenomena are seen in a certain order, must be found in 
 the mind a priori. And this pure form of sensibility may be called the pure 
 intuition (Anschauung)" "Critique of Pure Reason," p. 18. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 159 
 
 the difficulty begins and ends with what Kant says, for he 
 offers no proof whatever that form is transcendental, or that 
 it is separable from the statical aspect of phenomena. 
 
 The reader will no doubt be edified by the following defini- 
 tion of time and space offered by Kant : " Time is the formal 
 condition, a priori, of all phenomena whatsoever. Space, as, 
 the pure form of all external intuition, is a condition, a pri- 
 ori, of external phenomena only. But as all representations,, 
 whether they have for their objects external things or not, 
 belong by themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our 
 inner state ; and as this inner state falls under the formal 
 conditions of internal intuition, and therefore of time, time 
 is a condition, a priori, of all phenomena whatsoever, and is. 
 so directly as a condition of internal phenomena (of our 
 mind), and thereby indirectly of external phenomena also." 1 
 
 As a specimen of a priori or transcendental reasoning, this 
 is a masterpiece; but it would not be in keeping with the 
 spirit of the " Critique " to try and reduce these conceptions 
 to " sense," or to assimilate them with " experiences." We 
 suppose that " the formal condition, a priori, of all phe- 
 nomena whatsoever " means the idea of all phenomena ; there- 
 fore we have the assertion that time is the idea of all 
 phenomena ; but we are told that space is a condition, a 
 priori, of external phenomena. Now, by external, Kant 
 means external to the mind, or phenomenal, so that exter- 
 nal phenomena means all phenomena. Hence the differ- 
 ence between these definitions of space and time results in 
 nothing, and we have the simple statement, if a simple state- 
 ment can be drawn from such language, that time and 
 space are the ideas of all phenomena. " But," Kant con- 
 tends, " as all representations, whether they have for their 
 objects external things or not, belong by themselves, as de- 
 terminations of the mind, to our inner state; and as this 
 inner state falls under the formal conditions of the internal 
 intuition, and therefore of time, time is a condition, a priori, 
 of all phenomena whatsoever, and is so directly as a condition 
 
 1 Kant's " Critique," pp. 29, 30. 
 
l6o THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of internal phenomena (of our mind), and thereby indirectly 
 of external phenomena also." Is not this simply an asser- 
 tion, that time is the idea of external phenomena, and also 
 that it is the condition of internal phenomena (or mind)? 
 In a word, Kant tries to occupy both sides of an imaginary 
 boundary line, which he would draw between two aspects of 
 a single fact of existence, and thereby, without perceiving it, 
 obliterates the line. 
 
 It will be remembered that phenomena are rigidly ex- 
 cluded by Kant from the subjective or a priori world ; that 
 man is not a natural but a supernatural being, using natural 
 and phenomenal as convertible terms. But sensibility is of 
 course natural and must belong to the world of phenomena. 
 This difficulty he avoids by creating for himself an a priori 
 man (in a transcendental sense), who is put into an a priori 
 world ; and if by any chance the a priori man manifests any 
 thing phenomenal, or natural, or sensible, he is ordered 
 by the irate philosopher of Konigsberg to resume his apriori 
 character. Then the good Kant looks about him and per- 
 ceives that space is an inconveniently real and universal 
 principle, and also that his a priori man has space relation- 
 ships which cannot be destroyed ; so he avoids the difficulty 
 by saying that all space is a priori and is in the a priori 
 man. Whatever of space is not in the a priori man, is only 
 matter and has no reality, for all reality is in the a priori 
 man. This beautiful truth he expresses in the following 
 familiar language: " Space, as the pure form of all external 
 intuition, is a condition, a priori, of external phenomena 
 only. But all representations, whether they have for their 
 objects external things or not, belong by themselves, as de- 
 terminations of the mind to our inner state." This defini- 
 tion brings him in collision with time, which he finds to be 
 also an inconveniently absolute principle that had not 
 been well considered in the first creation of the a priori 
 man. So he boldly attempts to make time a priori; 
 but all his efforts prove fruitless ; he struggles hard, but 
 time resists. Kant, however, would not have been the 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. l6l 
 
 greatest of German philosophers had he allowed himself to 
 be vanquished by time, so after a long and labored argu- 
 ment 1 which attempts to prove the ideality of time, he 
 makes the unprecedented point that time has an empirical 
 existence, but that empirical not being a priori is not really 
 any existence at all. The following argument is added 
 under the head of an 
 
 EXPLANATION. 
 
 " Against this theory, which claims empirical but denies 
 absolute and transcendental reality to time, even intelligent 
 men have protested so unanimously, that I suppose that every 
 reader who is unaccustomed to these considerations may 
 naturally be of the same opinion. What they object to is 
 this: Changes, they say, are real (this is proved by the 
 change of our own representations, even if all external phe- 
 nomena and their changes be denied). Changes, however, 
 are possible in time only, and therefore time must be some- 
 thing real. The answer is easy enough. I grant the whole 
 argument. Time certainly is something real, namely, the 
 real form of our internal intuition. Time, therefore, has 
 subjective reality with regard to internal experience ; that is, 
 I really have representation of time and of my determina- 
 tions in it. Time, therefore, is really to be considered, not 
 as an object, but as the representation of myself as an object. 
 If either I myself or any other being could see me without 
 this condition of sensibility, then these self-same determina- 
 tions which we now represent to ourselves as changes would 
 give us a kind of knowledge in which the representation of 
 
 1 " Time is therefore simply a subjective condition of our (human) intuition 
 (which is always sensuous, that is, so far as we are affected by objects), but 
 by itself, apart from the subject, nothing. Nevertheless, with respect to all 
 phenomena, that is, all things which can come within our experience, time is 
 necessarily objective. We cannot say that all things are in time, because, if we 
 speak of things in general, nothing is said about the manner of intuition, 
 which is the real condition under which time enters into our representation 
 of things. If, therefore, this condition is added to the concept, and if we say 
 that all things as phenomena (as objects of sensuous intuition) are in time, then 
 such a proposition has its full objective validity and a priori universality." 
 " Critique of Pure Reason," pp. 30, 31. 
 
1 62 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 time, and therefore of change also, would have no place. 
 There remains, therefore, the empirical reality of time only, 
 as the condition of all our experience, while absolute reality 
 cannot, according to what has just been shown, be conceded 
 to it. Time is nothing but the form of our own internal 
 intuition. 1 
 
 " Take away the peculiar condition of our sensibility, and 
 the idea of time vanishes, because it is not inherent in the 
 objects, but in the subject only that perceives them/' a 
 Take away the a priori man, and time is annihilated. 
 
 I do not give these quotations for the purpose of proving 
 any thing concerning time or space, but to show how in- 
 coherent and contradictory were Kant's explanations of 
 these ultimates. It is impossible to read the above quota- 
 tions without seeing that both the objective and subjective 
 existence of space and time are admitted in one breath,, 
 and that the effort to limit the aspects of motion to an im- 
 aginary subjective world absolutely separated from the 
 world of sense, was as futile as it is, in the light of our day r 
 absurd. 
 
 After laying such a foundation of error, one can imagine 
 the dreary waste of reasoning which follows in the subse- 
 quent chapters of the " Critique." The a priori man is 
 driven from pillar to post in the storm of facts which trans- 
 cendental reasoning stirs up, and the extraordinary vitality 
 which he displays is a lasting proof of the power of organiza- 
 tion, whether it be for good or for evil ; for this a priori man 
 is wonderfully articulated with facts where they are to be 
 had, and an abundant supply of words where facts are 
 wanting. 
 
 We have reason to be grateful that philosophy is not so- 
 rare a thing in the world that one is obliged to delve among 
 the intricacies of " Kant's Transcendental Dialectics " for 
 
 I 1 can say, indeed, that my representations follow one another, but this 
 means no more than that we are conscious of them as in a temporal succession, 
 that is, according to the form of our own internal sense. Time, therefore, i& 
 nothing by itself, nor is it a determination inherent objectively in things. 
 
 9 Kant's " Critique," pp. 32, 33. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 163 
 
 the facts of consciousness. There is no denying that a great 
 many of these facts are given by Kant, and that one can 
 glean from his writings much that is valuable concerning the 
 procedure of the mind ; but it is the opinion of all competent 
 authorities that the fundamental principles of Kant's philos- 
 ophy declare against the possibility of a unification of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Strange as it may seem, the philosophy of Kant strongly 
 resembles the Skepticism of Hume. Hume openly declared 
 philosophy to be impossible, upon the grounds that the 
 operations of the mind are transcendental, or unknowable, 
 while Kant acknowledged reality only in the subjective 
 sphere, placing limits upon the intellect which are fatal to an 
 understanding of the divine unity of nature ; or, to that con- 
 ception of God which can alone harmonize life and mind. 
 
 Kant's theory of the limitations of knowledge is thor- 
 oughly anthropomorphic. It finds in knowledge certain 
 principles of certitude which appear to him to be universal ; 
 but because he discovers these principles through the agency 
 of his own thought, he concludes that at all events they can- 
 not extend beyond the range of human consciousness. The 
 inevitable relations of consciousness to sentiency, and of sen- 
 tiency to the general activities of nature, never seem to 
 break upon his mind. But having measured the human 
 understanding and described its absolute (?) limits, he is 
 obliged to admit that it is only an island in a sea of mystery. 
 This is the very position of the ancient skeptics, who saw 
 no real harmony or identity of procedure between mind and 
 the general activities of nature. 
 
 Thus we find that the old theories of Skepticism, which 
 were so highly developed by the Greeks in the New 
 Academy, are reproduced in the Kantian dialectics with 
 scarcely a variation ; while the novelty of their appearance 
 in the German language under the elaborate forms of the 
 " Critique of Pure Reason " was enough in itself to account 
 for the reputation they at once achieved. The Skepticism 
 of Kant is thus but a reproduction of ancient Skepticism, 
 
164 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE* 
 
 which held that we cannot know things per se absolutely 
 or as they really are in themselves. This can hardly be a 
 correct theory of perception, since human knowledge is the 
 relation between a sentient organism and its surroundings, 
 and must be the expression of conditions, whereas absolute 
 means independent of conditions. Absolute or a priori 
 knowledge, therefore, is a contradiction in terms. Hence a 
 system which rests its fundamental principles upon the 
 assumption of an absolute knowledge becomes an absurdity. 
 
 Lewes, who made a profound study of Kant, says : " In 
 his ' Critique ' we are only to look for the exposition of a 
 priori principles. He does not trouble himself with investi- 
 gating the nature of perception ; he contents himself with 
 the fact that we have sensations, and with the fact that 
 we have ideas whose origin is not sensuous. * * * He did 
 not deny the existence of an external world ; on the con- 
 trary, he affirmed it, but he denied that we can know it ; he 
 affirmed that it was essentially unknowable." 
 
 The corner-stone of Kant's philosophy, as expressed in 
 the " Critique of Pure Reason," is that there is no reality 
 exactly corresponding to the notions of men, and that what 
 constitutes reality for us is simply our own mental represen- 
 tations. Let us examine this proposition. In perception 
 there are two factors, the subject and the object ; or of the 
 phenomenon of perception there are two aspects, the sub- 
 jective and the objective. Kant says that there is no exter- 
 nal reality corresponding to the subjective side of percep- 
 tion, and that, therefore, as there is no disputing the reality 
 of the subjective side or thought, all reality must be thought. 
 This logical snarl is wholly due to a false limitation of the 
 meaning of words. All those forms of mental activity 
 known as notions, mental representations, or thoughts, im- 
 ply an object as well as a subject. The separation of sub- 
 ject from object in the consideration of thought is purely 
 artificial. When we look upon thought as the activity of a 
 sentient being, we cannot exclude from view the infinite 
 conditions of this activity which relate it to universal life ; 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 165 
 
 we cannot isolate the subjective phenomenon of thought by 
 appropriating to it all reality. Thought is distinctly a rela- 
 tion, the function of subjective and objective conditions. 
 
 Kant's assertion, therefore, that all reality is subjective, is 
 a one-sided view of the fact of thought. If the many names 
 for mental or psychical activity, such as perception, thought, 
 mental representation, etc., were recognized as relatively 
 equivalent terms, and if mental phenomena were acknowl- 
 edged as the activity of an organism, whether that organism 
 be an individual or a race, there would be no difficulty in 
 accounting for the subjective and objective sides of thought. 
 It is our failure to identify these contrasted sides as aspects 
 of a single fact which alone impels us to attribute exclusive 
 reality to either the one or the other. To this latter asser- 
 tion all Kantians would at once demur, for they are contin- 
 ually speaking of absolute mind, or intelligence. The term 
 absolute simply means time, or the unconditioned, and 
 therefore cannot be applied to any individual phenomenon, 
 such as thought or mind. This explanation might dispose 
 of all the difficulties of the Kantian system, if there were not 
 a distinct contradiction of this theory of the absolute nature 
 of mind developed in Kant's psychology : for there is no de- 
 nying that he also teaches that there is no absolute dividing 
 line between subject and object in the act of perception 
 that the mind does not think in itself, but is acted upon and 
 reacts upon its surroundings in producing thought. His 
 creation, however, of an a priori sphere of thought, which is 
 absolutely separated from sensibility and external phenom- 
 ena, so confuses the theory of the union of subject and ob- 
 ject, that it is difficult to understand how he could have 
 retained two such conflicting opinions at once. 
 
 The teacher of philosophy is bound to express himself 
 with simplicity and clearness ; and when he does not, it is 
 fair to conclude that he himself is not clear upon the subject. 
 The serious contradictions which occur in the two edi- 
 tions of the " Critique of Pure Reason " are admitted by 
 the most pronounced Kantians. In speaking of these two 
 
1 66 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 editions, Prof. Miiller says : " That the unity of thought 
 which pervades the first edition is broken now and then in 
 the second edition, no attentive reader can fail to see. That 
 Kant shows rather too much anxiety to prove the harmless- 
 ness of his * Critique ' is equally true, and it would have 
 been better if, while refuting what he calls Empirical 
 Idealism, he had declared more strongly his unchanged ad- 
 herence to the principles of Transcendental Idealism. * * * 
 I must confess that I have always used myself the first 
 edition of Kant's ' Critique,' and that when I came to read 
 the second edition, I never could feel so at home in it as in 
 the first. The first edition seems to me cut out of one block, 
 the second always leaves on my mind the impression of 
 patch-work." 1 These contradictions are slight, however, when 
 compared with those already pointed out in the main argu- 
 ment of the " Critique " with regard to the nature of per- 
 ception. 
 
 Hence, since it is well known that the Nature of Perception 
 is the foundation of every philosophy, we think we are justified 
 in accepting what, outside of Germany, is becoming a very 
 general opinion that Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason " is a 
 monument of logical subtlety and at the same time an incor- 
 rect and hopelessly confused analysis of Mind. That this 
 view is not generally shared by those who have studied in 
 Germany under the influence of the Kantian system is 
 only too manifest. Professor Noire, in the introductory 
 review to Max Miiller' s translation of the " Critique," after 
 giving evidence of a very high order of philosophic culture, 
 closes his examination of the pre-Kantian systems as follows: 
 " Kant alone succeeded in solving all the contradictions and 
 paradoxes in which the reason was entangled, and in ex- 
 plaining them completely in accordance with their own 
 nature, as he dropped the sounding-line into depths which as 
 yet no mortal mind had dared to fathom, and brought up 
 from thence to the light of day news of the primary condi- 
 tions and eternal postulates of reason. It is therefore not 
 
 1 Kant's " Critique," Translator's Preface. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 1 67 
 
 too much to say that Kant is the greatest philosophical 
 genius that has ever dwelt upon earth, and the ' Critique of 
 Pure Reason ' the highest achievement of human wisdom." 1 
 
 And Max Miiller makes more conspicuous this flagrant ex- 
 ample of ethnic conceit by declaring that the thought of Kant 
 fills up the entire logical perspectives of humanity. The only 
 exception to be taken to this view of Professor Miiller is, 
 that he has manifestly confused his own logical perspectives 
 with those of humanity. 
 
 The " Critique of Practical Reason," which appeared in 
 1790, is generally admitted to be a retraction of the prin- 
 ciples of the first edition of the " Critique of Pure Reason." 
 But Kantians of the present day, for the most part, deny 
 to their master the privilege of changing his mind, for they 
 are almost unanimously of the opinion that the first edition 
 of the " Critique of Pure Reason " really represents the teach- 
 ings of Kant, while the second edition and the " Critique of 
 Practical Reason " they seem to entirely ignore. 
 
 We will not, however, be influenced by these eccentrici- 
 ties of the followers of Kant ; for the least we can accord 
 to the great master is, that his mental development was con- 
 tinuous, and suffered no serious mishap during the heyday 
 of his literary activity. 
 
 The " Critique of Practical Reason " deals with the sub- 
 ject of Morality. Its estimation of human duty is exalted, 
 but its effort to trace duty to an ultimate principle has 
 been widely criticised. Kant's original theory of justice 
 was, that it is an entity, an innate principle of the human 
 mind, present alike in all races and individuals, and indepen- 
 dent of social progress. This theory he afterward modified, 
 but still held to the belief that justice was universal. 
 The strongest objection made to this belief was, that 
 certain tribes of savages killed their old men when they 
 became feeble. The mode of determining the degree of 
 feebleness which merited death was, to require the most 
 venerable men of the tribe to cling to the branch of a tree, 
 
 1 Kant's " Critique," vol. I., p. 359. 
 
1 68 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 which was violently shaken, and those who failed to retain 
 their hold were put to death. Kant's reply to this argu- 
 ment was, that the fact that these old men were allowed 
 a chance for life proved the presence of the idea of justice 
 in the tribe. Was there ever an injustice which did not 
 prove as much? 
 
 In our day, it is well known that the conception of jus- 
 tice (which, it is to be remembered, is a purely relative term) 
 has grown up from the simplest mechanical experiences ; 
 such, for instance, as the balancing of weights. The idea of 
 justice or duty becomes clearer and more general with social 
 advancement. Kant's theory, therefore, that justice is a 
 priori, a mysterious presence in the mind which cannot be 
 explained by natural experience, reduces the source of mo- 
 rality to the level of a superstition which is the opposite of 
 philosophical. 
 
 Morality is rightly reasoned conduct ; but all reasoning 
 cannot be represented in abstract symbols. There is a logic 
 of feeling as well as of signs, an unspoken movement of 
 the emotions which enters into every human determination. 
 Since morality is the highest exercise of the judgment, the 
 most complete harmony between practical and intellectual 
 life, false methods of philosophizing, erroneous explanations 
 of the procedures of the mind, are demoralizing in their 
 effects upon society. The direct influence of idealism upon 
 morality is seen in the tendency toward the idealization of 
 human attributes, such as love, virtue, or reason. The en- 
 thronement of these qualities as a priori or absolute princi- 
 ples in life leads directly to the greatest extravagances of 
 conduct. The theory that love is a God-inspired feeling, 
 and that when a feeling can be clearly demonstrated to be 
 love it becomes holy, or justifies itself, is a natural conse- 
 quence of idealism ; and it is one of the most pernicious 
 beliefs that it is possible to entertain. What rivers of blood 
 have been shed, what homes destroyed, what hearts broken, 
 in learning the nature of love ! Although love expresses the 
 deepest feelings of which we are capable, it is but the func- 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 169 
 
 tion of a vast plexus of conditions, and depends upon these 
 conditions for its justification. However exalted and pure 
 we may imagine a passion to be, whether life and happiness 
 depend upon its gratification or not, the question whether the 
 feeling is right or wrong is governed by the conditions which 
 surround it, and has nothing whatever to do with its intensity 
 or imagined purity. Again : the idealization of virtue, or self- 
 abnegation the theory that virtue is an absolute principle 
 moving in a foreign universe of sin an a priori, God-inspired 
 intuition instead of the natural development of a well-or- 
 dered life, the result of pure examples and good habits, 
 leads to all those extravagances of conduct which vary from 
 asceticism and other forms of moral austerity to the more 
 general and lower grades of hypocrisy. Lastly : the ideali- 
 zation of the faculty of reasoning (mind) gives rise to the 
 greatest logical extravagances, from the Dialectics of Plato 
 and the absolute Skepticism of the Academicians to those 
 forms of Idealism known as the a priori philosophy of Kant 
 and his followers, the influence of which still remains in 
 modern agnosticism. Thus the success of morality, the ad- 
 vancement of the chief science of life, depends directly upon 
 a just appreciation of the limits of language and the nature 
 of perception, which alone can make possible the Unification 
 of Knowledge. 
 
 All recognized German philosophy subsequent to Kant is 
 but a development of either the practical or the ethical side 
 of the Kantian system, with a more or less marked subser- 
 vience to the Idealism with which Kant so deeply imbued 
 the German mind. The cast of thought, therefore, which 
 we find in Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Herbart, 
 and the other post-Kantian writers, seems predetermined 
 to an extent which it would be difficult to understand 
 without first becoming acquainted with what may be called 
 the solidarity of German philosophic culture, the almost 
 servile imitation which marks the development of the German 
 conception of Mind. 
 
 There are instances, however, in the writings of all the 
 above-named authors where they have risen above the arbi- 
 
170 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 .trary influence of their great predecessor, and delight us 
 with their originality and genius. This was especially the 
 .case with Fichte, who seems to have had the faculty of 
 making all who came within his influence respect and love 
 him. An example of the highest type of German character, 
 he was a moral and intellectual enthusiast. 
 
 Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born at Rammenau, a village 
 .in Upper Lusatia, in May, 1762. His first serious effort in 
 philosophy was the study of Kant's " Critique of Practical 
 Reason," in which he tells us that he discovered, for the first 
 time, the absolute freedom of the will. The theological 
 training which he received in preparation for the ministry had 
 given him the belief in a supernatural source of morality ; and 
 as ethics was the subject nearest to his heart, a deep and 
 natural sentiment, he was both surprised and overjoyed to 
 find what he regarded as a successful attempt to trace the 
 inspiration of virtue to the natural operations of the mind. 
 He prepared a hurried treatise called " A Critique of Every 
 Possible Revelation," and making a pilgrimage to Konigs- 
 berg, presented it to Kant, who, recognizing in it a high 
 order of ability, was instrumental in securing its publication. 
 By an accident, the author's preface, in which he acknowl- 
 edged himself a beginner in philosophy, was omitted from 
 the first edition, nor did his name appear on the title-page. 
 Some of the German newspapers jumped at the conclusion 
 that it was a production of Kant, especially as it seemed to 
 be a development of the ethical teaching of that writer, and 
 accorded to it unbounded praise. When the mistake came 
 to light, Fichte's reputation was instantaneously made, and 
 the result was an invitation to fill the chair of Philosophy 
 at Jena (1793). Here, according to one of the favorite criti- 
 cal methods of his age, he was assailed for atheism, and re- 
 fusing to make any retractions he resigned (1799). After 
 many changes of place he was made professor of philosophy 
 in the New University at Berlin, where his career was short 
 but dramatic. His eloquence and ability secured him im- 
 mediate and wide attention ; his lectures on Ethics were 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 1 71 
 
 stirring, and made a visible impression upon his times ; but 
 the national enthusiasm which marked the opening of the 
 memorable campaign of 1813 carried him from the close of 
 one of his lectures into the ranks of the assembling army, 
 and within a year he was taken with a fever and died. 
 
 The Fichtean philosophy was elaborated during the few 
 years of stormy activity which its author passed at the Uni- 
 versity of Jena. He endeavored to develop the practical or 
 ethical side of Kant's philosophy ; for it was to expound the 
 Kantian system that he had been invited to the chair. But a 
 revolution in Kant's own views had taken place ; his " Critique 
 of Pure Reason" had been virtually retracted by his " Cri- 
 tique of Practical Reason"; and as these works appeared but 
 six years apart, the latter shortly before Fichte began lectur- 
 ing at Jena, it will readily be seen that the first great disciple 
 of Kant had a somewhat difficult and confusing task in ex- 
 pounding the views of his master. The object in reciting 
 these details is to show how closely woven all that is known 
 as German philosophy is, and how much it consists in the 
 arbitrary creations of a few men, all living at about the same 
 time, and most of them having personal intercourse and 
 sympathy ; Kant being the senior of the group and the in- 
 stigator of the whole movement. 
 
 We can find no fault with Germany, therefore, when she, 
 even at this time, looks to Kant as her greatest philosopher, 
 for all German philosophy is acknowledged to be but branches 
 or side developments of the Kantian theories. But when 
 Germany says that Kant is her greatest mind, she under- 
 estimates the value of her other geniuses, such as Herder, 
 Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing, who have contributed so 
 much to the knowledge of the world. Kant's philosophy, 
 with all its branches, has, it is true, been written in German, 
 but not in the universal language of good sense. 
 
 Fichte exaggerated the idealism of Kant, which we have 
 already described, by advocating what is known as Subjective 
 Idealism. This means that objects of thought or percep- 
 tion do not exist externally, but only subjectively, or in the 
 
172 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 mind. This belief, absurd as it seems, we are bound to 
 believe was sincere, although it commits the fatal error of 
 confusing thoughts with things : the very thing that Plato 
 and the Skeptics did, but in a less grotesque manner. The 
 reasoning by which this belief is brought about has been 
 analyzed in our description of Greek thought. The fallacy 
 which this reasoning so successfully conceals arises entirely 
 from giving certain words different meanings, and afterward 
 employing these words as having the same meaning. For 
 instance, Fichte tries to establish the identity of being and 
 thought, or general existence and personal existence. If 
 we allow him to do this in the beginning, of course he can 
 make whatever use he pleases of facts ; for if we admit that 
 facts exist only in the mind, and if the mind is expressed 
 only through language, he can form any hypothesis he 
 wishes and we are powerless to resist ; for with an intel- 
 lectual appetite which is hardly conceivable he devours fact 
 itself, and consequently has on his own side all the facts in 
 any argument he chooses to moot. But Fichte was too 
 moral a man to make any dishonest use of the great logical 
 advantage thus claimed. He amused himself in building 
 up theories, which in turn served to amuse others. These 
 theories have been called by his commentators " Theoretical 
 Philosophy," to distinguish them from practical philosophy 
 a not unsuggestive distinction. We must not forget, 
 however, that Fichte's incomparable character, his enthusi- 
 asm for intellectual and moral reform, his brilliant talents 
 and scholarship, won for him vast numbers of admirers. 
 
 Shortly after he began his lectures at Jena, Forberg writes : 
 " Fichte is believed as Rheinhold never was. The students 
 understand him even less than his predecessor, but they be- 
 lieve all the more earnestly on that account." 
 
 Leaving the metaphysics of Fichte to their fate, we turn 
 with pleasure to his Moral Philosophy, which has a freshness 
 and reality about it that enable it to survive the mystifying 
 influences of his logic. What, he asks, is the revelation 
 which consciousness gives ? It consists in the fact that 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 173 
 
 41 1 am free ; and it is not merely my action, but the free de- 
 termination of my will to obey the voice of conscience, that 
 decides all my worth. More brightly does the everlasting 
 world now rise before me ; and the fundamental laws of its 
 order are more clearly revealed to my mental sight. My 
 will alone, lying hid in the obscure depths of my soul, is the 
 first link in a chain of consequences stretching through the 
 invisible realms of spirit, as in this terrestrial world the ac- 
 tion itself, a certain movement communicated to matter, is 
 the first link in a material chain of cause and effect, en- 
 circling the whole system. The will is the efficient cause, 
 the living principle of the world of spirit, as motion is of the 
 world of sense. I stand between two worlds, the one visible, 
 in which the act alone avails, and the intention matters not 
 at all ; the other invisible and incomprehensible, acted on 
 only by the will. In both these worlds I am an effective 
 force. The Divine life, as alone the finite mind can conceive 
 it, is self-forming, self-representing will, clothed, to the mor- 
 tal eye, with multitudinous sensuous forms, flowing through 
 me and through the whole immeasurable universe, here 
 streaming through my veins and muscles, there pouring 
 its abundance into the tree, the flower, the grass. The dead, 
 heavy mass of inert matter, which did but fill up nature, has 
 disappeared, and, in its stead, there rushes by the bright, 
 everlasting flood of life and power from its Infinite Source." 
 
 This kind of eloquence, which was a new thing in the 
 German language, must have moved the hearts, excited the 
 minds, and transcended the understanding of Fichte's stu- 
 dents. When it is carefully analyzed, however, it is found 
 to be a sort of summer-night's dream in philosophy, which is 
 fascinating though enervating to the mind. 
 
 Frederick William Joseph Schelling was born in Wiirtem- 
 berg, January, 1775, and was therefore thirteen years younger 
 than Fichte. He afterward became Fichte's pupil and chief 
 expositor, succeeding to his chair at Jena. Schelling made 
 the acquaintance of Hegel at the University of Tubingen, 
 where a warm and lasting friendship was formed between 
 
174 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 them. He remained in Bavaria until 1842 (where he was 
 "honored, rewarded, and ennobled," when the King of 
 Prussia persuaded him to come to Berlin to fill the chair 
 once held by Hegel. Lewes tells us that in 1845 ^ e " had 
 the gratification not only of hearing him lecture on Mythol- 
 ogy to large audiences, but also of hearing him, in the ex- 
 pansiveness of private conversation, pour forth his stores of 
 varied knowledge." He continued an active, intellectual 
 life to the last, and died August 20, 1854. 
 
 Schelling taught that the Reason was incapable of solv- 
 ing the problems of philosophy, a very old doubt, but 
 certainly an inconsistent one ; for does not philosophy, 
 which is an effort to solve the problem of existence, pre- 
 suppose a belief in our ability to succeed? But this incon- 
 sistency was a mere trifle to some of the difficulties which 
 Schelling attempted to overcome. He saw that it was 
 necessary to have some faculty which he could believe was 
 able to solve the problem of life, so he decided to call this 
 faculty the " Intellectual Intuition," a name so apt and 
 pleasing that it has continued in use ever since, and is de- 
 voutly believed in as a mental principle distinct from the 
 natural coordinations of reason, even by advanced psycho- 
 logical writers, who are supposed to belong to an opposite 
 school. 
 
 Schelling inaugurated what may be called an aristocracy 
 of intuition, to which only a privileged few could gain ad- 
 mittance. The line which circumscribed this elite, however, 
 seems to have been drawn against all those who could not 
 understand Schelling's philosophy. " Really," he exclaims, 
 " one sees not wherefore Philosophy should pay any atten- 
 tion whatever to Incapacity. It is better rather that we 
 should isolate Philosophy from all the ordinary routes, and 
 keep it so separate from ordinary knowledge that none 
 of these routes should lead to it. Philosophy commences 
 where ordinary knowledge terminates." Here we see some 
 of the first fruits of that unnatural transcendentalism 
 which Kant so successfully established in Germany. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 175 
 
 The foundation of Schelling's philosophy was the lumi- 
 nous principle that " Nature is Spirit visible ; Spirit is invis- 
 ible Nature: the absolute Ideal is, at the same time, the 
 absolute Real." If this proposition were as harmless as it 
 is meaningless, we could well afford to pass it by without 
 further comment. Let us, however, examine this saying, 
 which depends so largely upon the meaning of the word 
 absolute. 
 
 The salient points in Schelling's philosophy are best 
 brought out by comparing his system with that of Fichte. 
 Fichte said that the Non-Ego was created by the Ego; 
 Schelling said that the two were equally real, and that both 
 were identified in the Absolute. " In what, then, does 
 Schelling differ from Fichte, since both assert that the pro- 
 duct (Object) is but the arrested activity of the Ego ? In 
 this: the Ego in Fichte's system is a finite Ego, it is the 
 human soul. The Ego in Schelling's system is the Abso- 
 lute the Infinite the All, which Spinoza called Substance \ 
 and this Absolute manifests itself in two forms in the 
 form of the Ego, and in the form of the Non-Ego as Na- 
 ture and as Mind." 1 When we remember that the word' 
 absolute has no deeper meaning than Time, and that Time is 
 not an ultimate but a relative fact an aspect of Motion ; 
 when we think that the Ego means nothing but the indi- 
 vidual ; that the Infinite means that other aspect of Motion 
 which we call Space ; and that Substance, also, when used 
 in its widest sense, means Space ; we can see how all these 
 efforts to transcend the limits of language, to place words 
 before things, ideas before facts in the order of reality, 
 serve but to emphasize the great truth that a true con- 
 ception of knowledge can be obtained alone by reducing 
 the number of the categorical terms until the meaning 
 of all possible combinations of words converges in that 
 of a single term or universal principle. How long will 
 the higher ingenuities of man be exerted to resist this 
 all-powerful truth, and, by so doing, postpone the success 
 
 1 Lewes: "Hist, of Phil.," p. 709. 
 
176 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of philosophy, which is simply an ultimate analysis bringing 
 the mind, or individual life, into harmony with general ex- 
 istence ? 
 
 But notwithstanding its intricacies and absurdities, there 
 is an underlying strength in Schelling's thought which makes 
 it evident that if Germany could only throw off this curse of 
 Idealism, her genius would again assert itself and accomplish 
 great things in the world of speculation. Schelling's writings 
 display great knowledge and research, fine intuitions, but so 
 many changes of opinion occur that, although some posi- 
 tions are adhered to throughout, it is impossible to construct 
 from them any coherent method. 
 
 In this particular Hegel differs from Schelling ; for in 
 Hegel we have a new and coherent method of dealing with 
 the problems of philosophy. 
 
 George Frederick William Hegel was born at Stuttgart 
 .in 1770, and studied philosophy and theology at Tubingen. 
 He was a private tutor in Switzerland and Frankfort until 
 the death of his father in 1801, when a small inheritance 
 enabled him to remove to Jena and to publish his first 
 work, a dissertation directed against the Newtonian sys- 
 tem of Astronomy, in which he pitted the transcendental 
 theories of Schelling against the scientific method of in- 
 duction. In any other country this proceeding would have 
 helped the fame of Newton ; but in Germany it obtained for 
 Hegel the reputation of an original thinker. Soon after this 
 he joined Schelling in editing the " Critical Journal of Phi- 
 losophy/' in which appeared his celebrated essay entitled 
 " Faith and Knowledge," a criticism on Kant, Jacobi, and 
 Fichte. It was at Jena also that he wrote his " Phanom- 
 enologie des Geistes," the writing of which was not even 
 interrupted by the battle which gave that place into the 
 hands of the French. On the nigfyt of this battle he is said 
 to have finished the work, oblivious of the pain and terror 
 with which he was surrounded. We shall not be disap- 
 pointed in the production of a mind capable of withdrawing 
 itself so completely from the world. In 1816 he was called 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 177 
 
 to the chair in Heidelberg, and two years later to that of 
 Berlin, the first in Germany. Here he formed a school which 
 included many illustrious members, and lectured until his 
 death in 1831. 
 
 What has made the fame of Hegel is the invention of his 
 new method of philosophy. The world hitherto had been 
 unable to discover the procedures of the mind ; Hegel 
 fixed upon a mental procedure of his own and discovered 
 it to the world. This method was none other than the fa- 
 mous identity of contraries, which teaches that objects or 
 ideas which are different are, in a sense, not different ; that 
 contradiction implies an innate identity ; that subject and 
 object are one, or that internal and external are equivalent 
 terms in a transcendental sense. This, of course, was a great 
 discovery, because, at least in the form in which Hegel ex- 
 pressed it, it had never been made before ; and Hegel at once 
 became a German prophet. Some hardy critics pronounced 
 the principle absurd, because it led to contradictions, but 
 Hegel replied that this was the very reason why it was true ; 
 for, he said, the conditions of all truth consist in the identity 
 of contraries or contradictions. This, it cannot be denied, 
 was logical, providing his first assertion be admitted. The 
 ground for this assertion, it is true, is a question of fact, but 
 Hegel held himself superior to facts, and the intellectual 
 portion of Germany applauded his brave position. 
 
 Hegel established "Absolute Idealism." Kant was con- 
 tent with plain idealism, Fichte with subjective, and Schell- 
 ing with objective idealism. Hegel wanted absolute ideal- 
 ism, and he therefore established it. 
 
 " It may be thus illustrated : I see a tree. Psychologists 
 tell me that there are three things implied in this one fact 
 of vision, namely, a tree, an image of that tree, and a mind 
 which apprehends that image. Fichte tells me that it is I 
 alone who exist ; the tree and the image of the tree are but 
 one thing, and that is a modification of my mind. This is 
 Subjective Idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and 
 my Ego are existences equally real or ideal, but they are 
 
1 78 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 nothing less than manifestations of the Absolute. This is 
 Objective Idealism. But according to Hegel, all these expla- 
 nations are false. The only thing really existing (in this 
 one fact of vision) is the Idea the relation. The Ego and 
 the Tree are but two terms of the relation, and owe their 
 reality to it. This is Absolute Idealism." 
 
 Some say that this idealism of Hegel is but the skepticism 
 of Hume in a dogmatic form ; others, that it is a refinement 
 of the Spinozistic notion of Substance. It is, in my opinion, 
 a great truth badly expressed. 
 
 The twelve octavo volumes of Hegel's Philosophy and 
 Logic were not written in vain ; they constitute the most 
 tortuous and fantastical expression that the world has ever 
 produced of the simple truth that the ultimate fact or re- 
 lation is Motion, and that Time and Space are its subjective 
 and objective aspects. The harmonies of this truth can be 
 traced throughout his dexterous paradoxes and his ingenious 
 word-puzzles, but with an effort that is out of all proportion 
 to the benefit derived. In fact Hegel, instead of helping the 
 world to find the ultimate reality, seems to have done all he 
 could to render it forever incomprehensible. And had we no 
 other means of studying philosophy than Germany thus af- 
 fords us, it is a question whether our civilization would last 
 long enough to bring this truth to light. The difficulty, 
 therefore, is not in understanding German thought, but in 
 establishing, by any reasonable mental effort, an agreement 
 between its assertions and the facts of consciousness and life. 
 
 The warning of Herder against the idealism of Kant and 
 his followers, however, was not entirely lost. There has been 
 a distinct opposition in Germany, which has, in a measure, 
 represented Herder and repeated his protests, but with little 
 or no effect. Chief among this opposition we find the name 
 of Schleiermacher (1768-1834), preceded by Christian Gottlieb 
 Selle, Adam Weishaupt, Feder, Tittel, and Tiedemann. 
 These men have defended the doctrine of the objective and 
 real validity of knowledge, but their voices have been practi- 
 cally unheeded by both philosophic and scientific Germany. 
 
 1 Lewes : " Hist, of Phil.," pp. 723, 724. 
 
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY. 179 
 
 Again: Schopenhauer, the pessimist (1788-1860), tried to 
 reconcile idealism and realism, and postulated the Will (used 
 in a wider sense than as a human faculty) as the ultimate 
 reality. The success of these efforts can be best judged of 
 from the writings of such prominent modern scientists as 
 Du Bois-Reymond, and his pupil Professor Rosenthal, who 
 distinguished themselves by brilliant discoveries in nervous 
 phenomena, the very citadel of thought, and yet regard the 
 mind with superstition, plainly showing the influence of the 
 a priori philosophy. We also have the recent assertion of 
 Karl Hillebrand, that " almost all the really great men of 
 science in Germany are neither materialists nor spiritualists, 
 nor skeptics, but critics of the Kantian school." 1 
 
 But again it is to be remembered that Germany has prac- 
 tically repudiated, little by little, all the post-Kantian phil- 
 osophy of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, whom Schopenhauer 
 courteously calls the three great impostors, and rests her case 
 upon what Kant himself lived to refute and recall, the anal- 
 ysis of mind to be found in the " Critique of Pure Reason." 
 
 We are told that Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel endeavored 
 to be true Kantians, but by resting one foot on the " Cri- 
 tique of Pure Reason," and the other on the " Critique of 
 Practical Reason," they were obliged to perform all sorts 
 of logical contortions to preserve their equilibrium. 
 
 When all these things are considered are we not, upon the 
 whole, entitled to say that the transcendental production 
 known as German philosophy assumes, to the disinterested 
 student, the appearance of a huge family quarrel rather than 
 a worthy attempt to solve the problems of life ; and that, 
 as far as the progress of thought is concerned, the world can 
 well afford to dispense with it ? 
 
 Hence it is with a feeling of unfeigned relief that we 
 turn to the more mature and gradually developed culture 
 of France and England, in which soil the idiosyncrasies of 
 thought that achieved such rank development in Germany, 
 although frequently making their appearance, have never 
 been able to gain a substantial hold. 
 
 1 " German Thought," p. 203. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ECLECTICISM AND POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF FRANCE 
 AND THE SCOTCH SCHOOL. 
 
 Gassendi Malebranche Condillac Cabanis Gall Royer-Collard Cousin 
 Comte Reid Hamilton. 
 
 AFTER the religious fervor of Europe had expended itself 
 in the Crusades, there remained the three famous orders of 
 chivalry known as the Teutonic Knights, the Templars, and 
 the Knights of St. John. The latter maintained their or- 
 ganization by a long and valiant defence of Southern Europe 
 against the Turks. The Templars were disbanded about 
 fifty years after the last Crusade, while the Teutonic Knights 
 turned their attention to Christianizing what was then known 
 as pagan Prussia. This they did by almost exterminating a 
 brave and hardy people, who loved their rude mythology 
 and bitterly opposed the forms of Christian worship and the 
 rule of the Empire. While this was going on, Paris had 
 become the first great seat of learning in Christendom ; its 
 University was then a congeries of schools connected with 
 monasteries and churches, but without that corporate unity 
 which afterward made it the model of almost all the Uni- 
 versities of Europe. 
 
 As an example of its early importance, Henry II. of Eng- 
 land, in 1196, offered to refer his dispute with Becket to the 
 arbitration of the Peers of France, the Gallican Church, or 
 -the Nations of the University of Paris. Toward the end of 
 the thirteenth century Pope Nicholas IV. conferred privi- 
 leges upon the doctors and students which virtually gave 
 the University a government of its own ; and in the middle 
 vof the fifteenth century it was attended by over twenty-five 
 
 1 80 
 
THE ECLECTICISM OF FRANCE. i8l 
 
 thousand students, which at that time was nearly half the 
 population of Paris. It was in Paris that the chief battles 
 of Scholasticism were fought. William de Champeaux, 
 Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, all lectured 
 there. When the great Luther sounded the alarm of inde- 
 pendent thought, which resulted in the emancipation of 
 learned Europe from the papal authority of Plato and Aris- 
 totle, Loyola opposed the movement by establishing the 
 Society of Jesus, with its invincible organization and re- 
 nowned culture. His object was to preserve the Catholic 
 faith in its entirety, including its ancient philosophy. But 
 it was the favorite pupil of the Jesuits, Descartes, who soon 
 afterward dealt the death-blow to Scholasticism, emanci- 
 pating thought from the tyranny of the church. 
 
 Thus it was in the turmoil of the theological war which 
 raged throughout England, France and Germany, and culmi- 
 nated in the establishment of Protestantism, that modern 
 philosophy was born. It was born in the writings of Des- 
 cartes and Spinoza, and was therefore an avowed attempt 
 to define, not motion, but the nature of God. Thus in 
 severing its connection with theology philosophy exalted 
 its religious character, instead of debasing it. It proceeded, 
 untrammelled by obsolete faiths, to form a true conception 
 of the unity of God, to bring all thought into harmony 
 with this highest of thoughts, to establish an ultimate gen- 
 eralization. 
 
 But what great influence has been urging the claim of 
 Motion to its position as the highest or most general con- 
 ception ? Is it not the voice of Science, trying to persuade 
 us that God is a principle, not a person ? Its method is 
 patiently to classify and arrange all experience into one vast 
 organon of truth. As Science progresses, it becomes more 
 and more conscious that there is but one fact or principle, in 
 which all analysis ends and all synthesis begins. 
 
 Bacon, in England, took the sure path of science, feeling 
 that although he might not reach a complete analysis of 
 knowledge, such progress as he made would be in the right 
 
1 82 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 direction. There was but feeble resistance offered to this 
 reform in France ; the age felt the need of throwing off the 
 delusions of arbitrary dialectics and reaching out for actual 
 facts. Such, however, is the fascination in seeking the ulti- 
 mate analysis of life, that the superb scientific achievements 
 of Descartes were neglected for his complicated and unsatis- 
 factory metaphysics, which led to a dual principle, and there- 
 fore did not even pretend to unify knowledge. 
 
 To the philosophy of Descartes was opposed that of Gas- 
 sendi, who inaugurated the eclectic philosophy, a school 
 which subsequently attained to such eminence in France 
 through Royer-Collard, Jouffroy, and Cousin. 
 
 Pierre Gassendi was born in Provence, France, in 1592, 
 and became a distinguished astronomer and mathematician, 
 as well as a theologian. At the age of twenty-four he was 
 appointed Professor of Theology at Aix, where he had 
 studied. His first work was a polemic entitled " Paradox- 
 ical Essay Against Aristotle " (1624), in which he opposed 
 the Aristotelian Astronomy, but announced his fidelity to 
 the church, maintaining that Christianity was in nowise 
 dependent upon the then Christian philosophy. In 1647, 
 through the influence of the Archbishop of Lyons, brother 
 of Cardinal Richelieu, he was appointed Professor of Math- 
 ematics in the College-Royal of France, where his lectures 
 attracted great attention, and were attended by the Mite of 
 Paris. 
 
 "A System of Epicurean Philosophy " and " The Philo- 
 sophical System of Gassendi " were his principal works. 
 The latter was a combination of the various systems of 
 antiquity, with a view to showing by their juxtaposition the 
 correct method ; which is the plan of Eclecticism. 
 
 Gassendi also wrote a criticism of the " Meditations " of 
 Descartes, opposing the innovations of that writer in meta- 
 physics. But his chief power was in the field of scientific 
 investigation, where he had such friends as Kepler, Galileo, 
 and Descartes. His reasonings with regard to the atomic 
 theory are especially interesting and show a great boldness 
 of thought. 
 
THE ECLECTICISM OF FRANCE. 183 
 
 Gassendi combined the idea of material substance as 
 taught by Descartes, with the idea of atoms. The weight 
 of the atom he identified with its motion or energy ; thus 
 refuting the theory of the imponderability of atoms which 
 we find current among some physicists even of the present 
 day. Motion, which is the fundamental fact in all phenom- 
 ena, was selected by Gassendi in lieu of Descartes' erroneous 
 theory of an ultimate substance or matter. " The atoms 
 (created and set in motion by God) are the seed of all things : 
 from them, by generation and destruction, every thing has 
 been formed, and fashioned, and still continues so to be." 
 
 It is also interesting to observe that Gassendi explained 
 the fall of bodies by the earth's attraction, and yet, like 
 Newton himself, held action at a distance to be impos- 
 sible. 
 
 A reference to the teachings of Democritus and Epicurus 
 will distinctly show the source of Gassendi's speculations, as 
 both these men offer a very refined and, considering their 
 time, a wonderfully advanced theory of the universe, in 
 which all phenomena are reduced to the principle of the 
 related activities of atoms, or the finest imaginable subdi- 
 vision of matter, the first step in the direction of an ulti- 
 mate analysis. 
 
 Gassendi also wrote a history of the science of Astronomy, 
 including an account of the lives of Copernicus and other 
 great astronomers, an excellent description of the state of 
 that science in his day. 
 
 The seventeenth century in France was as conspicuous for 
 its theological activity as the eighteenth century was for its 
 general and absorbing interest in philosophy. 
 
 Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) was the last and great- 
 est of those Oratorian priests and writers who contributed so 
 largely to the religious literature of France. 
 
 The philosophy of Malebranche was entirely subservient 
 to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and developed the 
 ideal or mystical side of Descartes' teachings. It is so full of 
 beauty and high moral purpose, however, that no philosophic 
 
1 84 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 writer has been more read and admired in France, not 
 even Descartes. His chief work, " Recherche de la Ve- 
 rit " (1674), was immediately recognized for its literary 
 and philosophic merit. As a metaphysician, Malebranche 
 interests us but little, for his reasonings are so mystical, or 
 ideal, that he has been called the Kant of his country. He 
 was essentially a Christian philosopher, and deduced his theory 
 of knowledge from communication with a personal Deity, 
 something after the method of St. Augustine or Moses, but 
 with a less concrete conception of God. 
 
 Malebranche taught that the soul and the body are enti- 
 ties, absolutely distinct, and, as a natural consequence, that 
 the senses cannot supply us with truth. As God embodies 
 all truth, the soul must receive this truth directly from God, 
 and endeavor to preserve it untainted by the sinful body. All 
 of this sounds more like theology than philosophy. Male- 
 branche was nevertheless far too good a writer and thinker 
 to be neglected in a review of philosophy. He had an intu- 
 ition of divine unity, and endeavored to express it by har- 
 monizing the philosophy of Descartes with Christian beliefs. 
 This gives us a succession of essays on duty which nothing 
 but a most delicate and profound understanding of life could 
 produce. These thoughts on ethics are interspersed with 
 Platonic metaphysics, rendered in the terminology of Des- 
 cartes. 
 
 Next in the history of French thought, and really the di- 
 rect logical successor of Gassendi and Descartes, we have 
 Etienne De Condillac, who was born at Grenoble in 1/15. 
 The attention which Locke's philosophy had attracted 
 in France was signalized by this writer. Locke had en- 
 deavored to prove that all thought springs from sensation 
 and reflection. Condillac offered a simplification of this 
 theory by saying that thought and sensation are but different 
 views of the same thing, that sensation presupposes a sen- 
 sorium, and that every activity of a sensorium is in some 
 degree a thought. This opinion is vehemently opposed by 
 modern psychologists, upon the ground that thought is 
 
THE ECLECTICISM OF FRANCE. 185 
 
 exclusively the function of a special thinking organ called the 
 brain ; and that the fact that some animals evince highly 
 complex sensations after the brain has been removed proves 
 that sensation is independent of thought. 
 
 Condillac and his pupils gave to the word thought a wider 
 meaning than perhaps properly belongs to it, but this is ex- 
 cusable when we remember that it is only by calling atten- 
 tion to the elasticity of the meaning of words that their 
 hidden interdependencies are brought to view. The aphorism 
 " to think is to feel " (pensercest sentir) is called an absurdity 
 of the Sensational school, to which Condillac belonged ; but 
 there is no denying that this dictum has a logical value, for 
 the simple reason that no psychologist is able to point 
 out exactly where sensation ceases and thought begins, 
 although these faculties are distinct enough when viewed 
 separately. 
 
 Thought is a coordination, an activity, which takes place 
 in the nervous system. That its operation is not entirely 
 confined to the brain there are many means of proving. The 
 effects upon thought which disturbances in the system, 
 remote from the brain, occasion, to say nothing of the 
 organic diseases which wholly incapacitate the mind, are 
 familiar instances of the obscure cooperation of the whole 
 sensorium in the act of thinking. The muscle .and the nerve 
 are nowhere absolutely disjoined. But there is no need of 
 confusing their functions. Condillac had no difficulty in 
 distinguishing between thought and sensation, as the words 
 are commonly used ; he simply wished to point out the fact 
 that there is no absolute dividing line between thought and 
 sensation ; and in so doing he rendered a service to philos- 
 ophy ; although it is easy, from the better understanding 
 which we now have of the subject, to find fault with his 
 phraseology. 
 
 Condillac, in his criticism of Locke, says : " Locke dis- 
 tinguishes two sources of ideas, sense and reflection. It 
 would be more exact to recognize but one ; first, because 
 reflection is, in its principle, nothing but sensation itself; 
 
1 86 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 secondly, because it is less a source of ideas than a canal 
 through which they flow from sense. This inexactitude, 
 slight as it may seem, has thrown much obscurity over his 
 system. He contents himself with recognizing that the soul 
 perceives, thinks, doubts, believes, reasons, wills, reflects ; 
 that we are convinced of the existence of these operations, 
 because we find them in ourselves, and they contribute 
 to the progress of our knowledge ; but he did not perceive 
 the necessity of discovering their origin and the principle of 
 their generation, he did not suspect that they might 
 only be acquired habits ; he seems to have regarded them as 
 innate, and he says only that they may be perfected by ex- 
 ercise." x This seems unjust to Locke, when we remember 
 how he strove to prove that we have no innate idea ; and 
 yet Condillac's exception is well taken, for Locke does speak 
 of many faculties as belonging to the mind, without offering 
 any clear explanation of their origin. 
 
 Condillac's psychology can hardly be called scientific, 
 if we compare it with such recent works as those of Bain, 
 Spencer, and Lewes. At the age of thirty-one he published 
 his first work, an " Essay on the Origin of Human Knowl- 
 edge " (1746). This was followed, in 1754, by his "Treatise 
 on Sensation," which spread his reputation throughout 
 Europe : soon after this he was appointed preceptor to the 
 Prince of Parma, for whose use he wrote his "Cours 
 d'Etudes." Among his literary friends we find the names 
 of J. J. Rousseau, Grimm, and Diderot. In 1768 he was 
 elected a member of the French Academy, but never after- 
 ward attended any of its sittings. 
 
 The chief merit of Condillac was his discovery of the im- 
 portance of language as a factor in intelligence. He taught 
 that we owe the development of our faculties to the use 
 of signs, and that the power of thinking is directly depend- 
 ent upon the exercise of speech. When we think how 
 important these inductions are, and how little progress 
 
 1 " Extrait raisonne du Traite des Sensations." " CEuvres de Condillac" 
 -(1803), IV., 13. 
 

 ; 
 
 
 THE ECLECTICISM OF FRANCE. 
 
 has since been made beyond them, we realize the signal im- 
 portance of Condillac's services to thought. 
 
 As Comparative Physiology originated with Goethe, so did 
 Comparative Psychology, notwithstanding its present un- 
 developed state, originate with Cabanis, a French physician 
 and philosopher, born at Conac, in 1/57. Cabanis admitted 
 that all mental phenomena were reducible to activities akin 
 with sensation, but he asked, What, after all, is sensation ? 
 Is it feeling the name we give to sensations of which we are 
 conscious ; and if so, what degree of consciousness does the 
 word sensation imply ? What are we to call those myriad 
 changes constantly going on within us of which we are 
 entirely unconscious ? Is it not clearly only those activities 
 which are sufficiently obtrusive to attract attention that we 
 call feeling ; and are not all internal activities, in the broad- 
 est sense, sensations ? These inquiries of Cabanis fairly 
 opened the problems of Comparative Psychology, for they 
 cited, as the field of psychological research, the whole vast 
 empire of organic life in which the psychical states are 
 but the evidences of a higher complexity of action. In the 
 ascending complexity of organisms we have more and more 
 sensitiveness to remote influences, more and more perfect 
 coordinations of these impressions ; and as function and 
 .structure are but different views of a single fact of develop- 
 ment, we have potentialities which we severally call instincts, 
 faculties, and innate ideas, awakened into activity, not created, 
 by the experiences of life. Without certain inherited 
 structures certain degrees of development are impossible, 
 but the structure is not wholly in the individual, it resides 
 also in the physical and intellectual environment, i. e. in 
 civilization and language. Thus Cabanis not only demar- 
 cated the scope of psychology, but he actually began the 
 science by "connecting the operations of intelligence and 
 volition with the origin of all vital movements." Auguste 
 Comte later built upon this great plan, and in the systems 
 of Herbert Spencer and George H. Lewes we shall find it 
 .further developed. In 1802 Cabanis produced his principal 
 
1 88 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 work, " Relations Between the Physical System and the 
 Mental Faculties of Man." He warns his readers that they 
 will find no discussions of ultimate principles in his works. 
 He contented himself with studying mind as the function 
 of an organism ; and although some of his conclusions were 
 crude, such as that " the brain secretes thought as the liver 
 secretes bile," the worst that can be said of them is, that 
 they are unhappy metaphors imperfectly expressing impor- 
 tant truths. 
 
 Cabanis was a personal and political friend of Mirabeau, 
 the undisciplined genius of the French Revolution, whom he 
 assisted with his pen during the great struggle. Diderot,, 
 Condorcet, and Franklin are also numbered among the 
 friends of Cabanis, who seems to have been in full sympathy 
 with the great political and social movement of his time, 
 a period in which a calm and complete philosophy was 
 surely not to be thought of. 
 
 We have now to note the appearance of an innovation in 
 the study of the mind which was principally due to the Ger- 
 man physician Francis Joseph Gall (1757-1828), the founder 
 of the system of Phrenology. He graduated at Vienna, and 
 practised medicine there for many years. He made a spe- 
 cial study of the brain, and formed elaborate theories 
 concerning the external signs connected with the different 
 faculties of the mind. About 1805, with his coadjutor, Dr. 
 Spurzheim, he began to propagate his views on Phrenology 
 by lecturing in Paris, Berlin, and other cities. In 1808: 
 he presented to the French Institute his " Researches into 
 the Nervous System in General and the Brain in Particular," 
 which was reported upon adversely by the committee to 
 which it was given. Soon after this he began the publication 
 of his principal work, " The Anatomy and Physiology of the 
 Nervous System in General and the Brain in Particular." 
 During the last twenty years of his life he was a resident of 
 Paris. 
 
 The bold theory that certain portions of the brain corre- 
 sponded with certain mental faculties stimulated a more 
 
THE ECLECTICISM OF FRANCE. 189 
 
 thorough research into nervous phenomena. The chief ob- 
 jection made to the generalizations of phrenologists is, that 
 the exceptions to their rules are so many and serious that 
 the rules are virtually destroyed by them, leaving but iso- 
 lated observations which give little prospect of ever becom- 
 ing a science. The correspondence, for instance, between 
 certain cranial shapes and certain mental peculiarities is 
 scarcely ever to be relied upon. Who would be willing, 
 upon seeing the shape of the skull, without hearing the voice, 
 observing the actions, or weighing the words of a person, to 
 make even a guess at his mental capacity or characteristics ? 
 We must remember that the cranioscopist has the advantage 
 of all these other means of judging before making his guess. 
 Even the simplest of all phrenological generalizations " the 
 size of the brain is a measure of power, other things being 
 equal/' has so many exceptions that it is practically value- 
 less. Of this rule, Lewes, who is so much at home on the 
 subject, says : " Phrenologists forget that here the * other 
 things ' never are equal ; and consequently their dictum, 
 ' Size is a measure of power,' is without application. There" 
 never is equality in the things compared, because two brains 
 exactly similar in size and external configuration will never- 
 theless differ in elementary composition. * * * Nerve tis- 
 sue, for example, contains both phosphorus and water as 
 constituent elements, but the quantity of these elements 
 varies within certain limits : some nerve-tissues have more 
 phosphorus, some more water ; and according to these 
 variations in the composition will be the variations in the 
 nervous force evolved. This is the reason why brains differ 
 so enormously even when their volumes are equal. The 
 brain differs at different ages, and in different individuals. 
 Sometimes water constitutes three fourths of the whole 
 weight, sometimes four fifths, and sometimes even seven 
 eighths. The phosphorus varies from 0.80 to 1.65, and 1.80; 
 the cerebral fat varies from 3.45 to 5.30, and even 6.10. 
 These facts will help to explain many of the striking excep- 
 tions to phrenological observations (such, for example, as the 
 
THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 manifest superiority of some small brains over some large 
 brains)." 
 
 As far as Gall's efforts tended to place psychology on 
 a physiological basis, they were in the right direction ; but it 
 is to be observed that his chief followers have neglected the 
 physiological side of phrenology for what is called cranios- 
 copy, which on account of the uncertainty of its conclusions 
 cannot be ranked as a science. 
 
 Philosophy did not escape the reactions which followed 
 the French Revolution. The reign of terror extended into 
 thought. The horrors resulting from the brief and unnatural 
 rule of ignorance and passion made the people return to the old 
 belief that true intelligence is superhuman, so that the mys- 
 tic philosophy of Christianity regained its ascendancy in the 
 mind of the nation. The mistake made was that of suppos- 
 ing the highest intelligence to be a mystery with which the 
 church is in some way entrusted. 
 
 Theories of life which attempt to do away with the 
 element of mystery, which would make our highest concep- 
 tions the natural or logical development of our most famil- 
 iar experiences, have come in conflict with organized religion, 
 and are therefore supposed to neglect the higher aspects of 
 life. Until it is understood that the highest aspect of life 
 means the most general or intelligent view of existence, un- 
 til the idea of mystery is discovered to be but some degree 
 of delusion, the endless recriminations which occur between 
 the adherents of those schools of thought known respectively 
 as the " natural " and the " supernatural " will continue to 
 postpone the advent of a true religion, or the Unification of 
 Knowledge. 
 
 The effect of the Revolution upon the thought of France 
 was to make it dread every thing anti-religious or anti- 
 spiritual, and to bring the old-fashioned mystic philosophy 
 again into favor. The best minds which France has since 
 produced show an almost pathetic reverence for the spiritual. 
 Had any one been bold enough to affirm that there is no fun- 
 damental mystery in life, he would have been at once classed 
 
THE ECLECTICISM OF FRANCE. 191 
 
 with the demons of the Revolution. Not French Philosophy 
 alone, but even French criticism, has been warped by this 
 reactionary tendency ; and we find the most superb intellects 
 cringing before this spectre of the mind, variously denomi- 
 nated as the unknowable, the infinite, or the absolute, or, 
 worse than all, the spiritual. 
 
 Even in the recent speech of Renan, before the French 
 Academy, we find him burning incense to this ancient God by 
 numerous mysterious references to the " Infinite " ; while in 
 all the eclectic philosophers, such as Royer-Collard, Cousin, 
 and Jouffroy, this mystical element is clearly present. 
 
 When the University of France was established by the 
 Imperial Government, centralizing the whole educational 
 system of the nation, Royer-Collard was called to the chair 
 of philosophy (1809), but only accepted the invitation after 
 long hesitation, and then immediately began a course of 
 study to fit himself for the position. He had studied at the 
 College of Saint-Omer, which was under the management of 
 his uncle, the Abb Collard, had adopted the legal pro- 
 fession, and taken an active interest in the stormy politics 
 succeeding the Revolution. At the time of his appointment 
 to the chair of philosophy he was regarded as a man of wide 
 culture and fine abilities, but he had not identified himself 
 with any particular school of philosophy. Our interest 
 in him comes from the fact that he founded what is known 
 as the Eclectic System of Philosophy, which afterward 
 gained such a reputation in France. It was at first simply a 
 comparative study of the chief systems of thought, but un- 
 der Victor Cousin it assumed the character of a distinctive 
 method, which we will duly examine. 
 
 The attempt of Royer-Collard was to effect a compromise 
 between what he regarded as the opposite extremes, Sensa- 
 tionalism and Idealism. He rejected Condillac's analysis of 
 consciousness, and endeavored to introduce the mystical ele- 
 ment of Idealism in the modified form in which it occurs 
 in the writings of Reid and Stewart. The influence which 
 he exerted on the thought of France has been chiefly 
 
THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 through his pupils, among whom were Guizot, Ampere de 
 Remusat, and Cousin. 
 
 Victor Cousin is one of the chief philosophic writers of 
 modern times. He was the king-maker of the French phi- 
 losophy during the first half of this century, for he first 
 crowned Reid and Stewart, making the Scotch school popu- 
 lar in France ; then studying Kant, he imposed upon his 
 obedient countrymen the autocracy of Konigsberg. Weary- 
 ing of this, he raised to power Proclus of Alexandria, editing 
 his works and advocating his cause ; and after this he gave 
 his inconstant allegiance to the transcendental Hegel, weav- 
 ing his theories into the celebrated doctrine of Eclecticism. 
 To the prodigious amount of study which such changes 
 of heart must have cost, Cousin added the arduous task 
 of editing the complete works of Descartes in eleven octavo 
 volumes, and producing his works on Abelard and Pascal, 
 the celebrated translation of Plato in thirteen volumes, his 
 " History of Philosophy," well known in this country, and 
 several original treatises, besides contributing largely to the 
 literary and philosophic reviews of France. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a more agreeable and eloquent 
 writer than Cousin. In him we have a striking instance of 
 the difference between the highest order of erudition and real 
 logical acumen. His style is clear and graceful, his pages are 
 laden with interesting references and pleasing generaliza- 
 tions ; but one looks in vain for the development of any 
 great theme or deep-laid philosophic purpose. There is 
 every thing to beguile, but nothing to establish, the mind. 
 His method, briefly described, is, that "All systems are in- 
 complete views of the reality, set up for complete images of 
 the reality. All systems containing a mixture of truth and 
 error have only to be brought together, and then the error 
 would be eliminated by the mere juxtaposition of system 
 with system. The truth, or portion of the truth, which is in 
 one system would be assimilated with the portions of the 
 truth which are in other systems ; and thus the work would 
 be easy enough." 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 193 
 
 The extraordinary success which attended the lectures of 
 Cousin in Paris from the year 1828 can only be accounted 
 for by the beauty and lucidity of his expositions, and his en- 
 thusiasm and eloquence. The interest which his lectures 
 aroused has not been equalled since the days of William de 
 Champeaux and Abelard. 
 
 At the same time that Cousin and Jouffroy lived and 
 taught, a mind of singular force and originality appeared in 
 France as the founder of the so-called Positive philosophy. 
 The name of Auguste Comte is familiar to the reading world, 
 but the name of his philosophy is even more widely known. 
 There is, however, nothing in his teachings which gives them 
 an exclusive right to the name Positive, for we are unable to 
 find that the author had a firmer grasp of the principles of 
 certitude than many another philosopher. 
 
 As the basis of his theory of knowledge, Comte postulates 
 an unknowable existence, which he says we can never know. 
 This mysterious existence, using the language of Plato and 
 the Greek skeptics, he calls noumena. It is to be observed 
 that he gives us no hint as to what the term noumena means, 
 excepting that it is utterly unknowable. The reason which 
 Comte gives for filling in the perspectives of human knowl- 
 edge with noumena is, that our knowledge is only relative but 
 noumena are absolute. Now, as absolute means without con- 
 ditions, is it conscientious in Comte to impose upon noumena 
 the condition of existence ? As for our knowledge being 
 relative, it could hardly be any thing else, as relative means 
 related, and we are certainly intimately related to the rest 
 of the universe. The principles of certitude, therefore, which 
 Comte fondly hoped to centre in his Positive philosophy are 
 transgressed at the outset of his exposition of knowledge by 
 intruding upon our perceptions the presence of an inde- 
 finable mystery. After creating for himself these difficulties, 
 Comte displays wonderful resources in avoiding them. His 
 grasp of scientific facts is marvellous ; he marshals in review 
 his battalions of data until one is overcome with the extent 
 of his learning ; but as the succeeding columns disappear in 
 
194 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the distance he offers no explanation as to whence this vast 
 army comes or whither it is going. In a word, with regard 
 to those ultimate problems of knowledge, such as the limits 
 of language, and the nature of perception, Comte is incom- 
 plete and unsatisfactory. 
 
 The influence of Comte's writings in England was almost 
 immediate. The English mind leans toward the positive, 
 and was tempted by the name of the system to investigate 
 it. Dr. Thomas Brown, J. S. Mill, Spencer, Lewes, and 
 Harriet Martineau, all expound the Cours de Philosophic 
 Positive. Comte had but a limited number of disciples in 
 France ; the nation was too well entertained by the brilliant 
 Cousin to give him their attention. The example of England, 
 however, and the writings of Littre, the most eminent of 
 Comte's disciples, at last brought the Positive school into 
 such prominence in France that it is now commonly re- 
 garded as the philosophic faith of the nation. 
 
 The manner in which Comte abandons, in the outset of 
 his system, the great problem of perception is thus aptly 
 described by Mill : " The fundamental doctrine of a true 
 philosophy, according to M. Comte, and the character by 
 which he defines Positive Philosophy, is the following : We 
 have no knowledge of any thing but phenomena ; and our 
 knowledge of phenomena is relative, not absolute. We 
 know not the essence, nor the real mode of production, of 
 any fact, but only its relations to other facts in the way of 
 succession or of similitude. These relations are constant 
 that is, always the same in the same circumstances. The 
 constant resemblances which link phenomena together, and 
 the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and 
 consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phenomena 
 are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature 
 and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are un- 
 known and inscrutable to us." 
 
 The metaphysical errors in this analysis of knowledge are 
 now too familiar to need comment. They are the old, old 
 errors of agnosticism, of skepticism, of the belief in an un- 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 195 
 
 knowable. These errors give us but another instance of the 
 perverse habit in introspective analysis of creating a mystery 
 and then worshipping it as a " final cause." The assump- 
 tion made is that there is an absolute knowledge (which is 
 an absurdity), that this absolute knowledge is beyond our 
 knowledge, for " we have no knowledge of any thing but phe- 
 nomena," and yet this absolute knowledge is defined as the 
 " essence," the " real mode of production," the " final causes 
 of phenomena." " The essential nature, the ultimate causes 
 of phenomena are unknown and inscrutable to us," and yet 
 it is insisted that we know of these things which are un- 
 knowable. How much more simple would it be to deny the 
 existence of these precious mysteries. Would we run any 
 serious risk in denying the existence of things which have 
 never troubled any one excepting those who affirm over and 
 over again that they know nothing of them? If the com- 
 pensation for the risk is to be a rational theory of knowledge, 
 let us at least try it. Let some other race of philosophers 
 take up and cherish these mysteries ; we have nursed them 
 long enough. 
 
 The chief merit of Comte's system is to be found in his 
 sociological inductions, by which he indicates the organic 
 nature of all human development, thus opposing the theory 
 advanced by Rousseau and others, that society with all its 
 complex processes is an artificial structure, a divergence from 
 nature. Notwithstanding the contradictions above enumer- 
 ated, Comte suggested, through his classification of the 
 sciences, principles of mental evolution which have contrib- 
 uted greatly to our conception of knowledge. Perhaps no 
 writer ever aimed so high, ever attempted to do more. His 
 propositions are splendid. "A social doctrine," he says, " is 
 the aim of Positivism, a scientific doctrine its means." "The 
 aim of Positivism is to create a philosophy of the sciences 
 as a basis for a new social faith," hence his celebrated 
 "Organon of the Sciences" and his "Religion of Hu- 
 manity " ; add to this " the predominance of the moral point 
 of view," "the rigorous subordination of the intellect to the 
 
196 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 heart," and we have the figure of the great emotional sys- 
 tem of Comte. 
 
 There is scarcely an idea which the most advanced biology, 
 psychology, and even sociology establish which cannot be 
 found latent in the writings of Comte, ideas of course derived 
 in part from such writers as Cabanis, Gall, Condillac, and their 
 predecessors. But criticism has no right to give to imper- 
 fectly elaborated theories the more perfect form of later and 
 higher developments. Thought, like science, must pass for 
 what it is, not for what it could be, or might have been. 
 The idea that law rules in the moral and social as well as the 
 physical world is clearly emphasized by Comte, but the fur- 
 ther development of this idea, which we find in Spencer and 
 Lewes, constitutes the distinction of these latter writers from 
 Comte. Hence, to say that Spencer owes all his philosophy 
 to Comte, an assertion which has attracted some attention 
 in England recently, is as untrue as it is ungenerous. It is 
 a significant fact that the profundities of Comte's system were 
 but poorly appreciated until Spencer actually established 
 great inductions which are scarcely more than germinal 
 thoughts in the positive philosophy. No one can doubt this 
 who will carefully compare Comte's scheme of the sciences 
 with Spencer's synthetic philosophy; and yet Comte's 
 scheme of the sciences is his best work, that which has 
 challenged the widest admiration. The theory of knowledge 
 which runs thoughout this scheme, however, as already 
 pointed out, cannot bear close analysis. 
 
 Comte taught that all true methods of investigation are 
 fundamentally alike ; that philosophy is but the union of all 
 positive knowledge into a harmonious whole. These are 
 good generalizations ; but the moment he particularizes he 
 becomes arbitrary, and contradicts himself. He says that 
 the progress of humanity has three stages, the theological, 
 the metaphysical, and the positive ; for speculation always 
 begins with supernatural, advances to metaphysical, and 
 finally reposes in positive, explanations ; which is equivalent 
 to saying that all conceptions of God, or all efforts to arrive 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE. 197 
 
 at an ultimate fact or principle, which, in all cultures, have 
 taken the form of metaphysical and theological speculations, 
 are to be cast aside as primitive methods tending but to un- 
 certainty, and that positive philosophy alone complies with 
 the canons of a true investigation. When we consider how 
 faulty is the analysis of knowledge which this "positive 
 philosophy " offers, and how true are the theological and 
 metaphysical intuitions of the race when viewed as a whole, 
 we fail to perceive that positivism has risen to the higher 
 plane of thought and feeling which its author claims for it. 
 This assumption of Comte is all the more strange when we 
 remember how liberally he acknowledges the debt of human- 
 ity to all who have contributed to the sum of knowledge 
 either through religion or thought. The explanation is to be 
 found in the fact that he was influenced by the belief in a 
 fundamental mystery, and hence stigmatizes all efforts to 
 find God, or an ultimate principle, as not only hopeless, but 
 as belonging to stages of human development which are 
 primitive in comparison to the unerring procedures of Posi- 
 tivism. 
 
 When we think that philosophy can only succeed by 
 harmonizing religion with the search for divine unity known 
 as metaphysics, and that the classifications of science can be 
 but subsidiary to this achievement, we are unable to accept 
 Comte's analysis of human progress or his definition of 
 philosophy. And yet it is easy to see that notwithstanding 
 his imperfect conception of the true nature of theology and 
 metaphysics, he was keenly alive to the fact of a divine unity 
 in life and mind ; for in describing the stages of human 
 development he says that the highest condition of the theo- 
 logical stage is " when one being is substituted for many, as 
 the cause of all phenomena " ; of the metaphysical stage, 
 "when all forces are brought under one general force called 
 nature" ; and of the Positive stage, "when all phenomena 
 are represented as particulars of one general view." This is 
 certainly good evidence that notwithstanding his arbitrary 
 subdivisions of progress he was conscious that the search for 
 
198 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the Ultimate Fact, the First Cause, or God, first system- 
 atically attempted in ancient Greece, still unremittingly 
 prosecuted in our times, and which has been more or less 
 distinctly voiced in all the concerted thought and feeling of 
 the world, is the true philosophy, and that it must pursue 
 the same methods to the end. Thus it is that in reviewing 
 the writings of Comte we are forced into alternate con- 
 demnation and praise, for with the highest merit the 
 gravest inconsistencies are found. 
 
 The subdivisions of philosophic thought have been largely 
 determined by the ethnic sentiment, the ties of country and 
 race. In ancient philosophy this is not so apparent, as 
 Greece had little or no competition in the thought of other 
 nations. In the Christian civilization, however, we not only 
 find a rendering of philosophy in each of its languages, but 
 there are further subdivisions corresponding with the geo- 
 graphical boundaries of different peoples speaking the same 
 language. It is natural enough that each different language 
 of Europe should have a philosophy of its own, though these 
 systems may much resemble each other. But when Scot- 
 land and England are accredited each with a different school 
 of thought, the merely geographical or national element in 
 the division becomes obtrusive ; the classification lacks the 
 dignity which should belong to the highest order of thought. 
 
 As Auguste Comte taught a Positive philosophy, so did 
 Thomas Reid promulgate a system of Common-Sense ; and as 
 the qualities designated by these names are essential to every 
 well-regulated mind, whether its surroundings be those of 
 Athens, Paris, or Edinburgh, we must not be disappointed 
 if we fail to find any very distinct logical characteristics in 
 these systems corresponding with their names. 
 
 The chief writers of what is called the Scotch School were, 
 first, Thomas Reid (1710-1796), then Dugald Stewart, 
 Thomas Brown, and Sir William Hamilton. They all lectured 
 in Scotland. Stewart wrote upon the system of Reid, Brown 
 lectured and wrote of both his predecessors, and Hamilton 
 published complete editions of the works of Reid and 
 
THE SCOTCH SCHOOL. 199 
 
 Stewart ; so we have in the thought of these four men an 
 organon of truth which, whatever may be its other excel- 
 lencies, can at all events be clearly identified with Scotland. 
 
 Bishop Berkeley was the first to formulate in English the 
 doctrine of Absolute Idealism. Hume deduced from Berke- 
 ley's arguments a skepticism which, as we have already 
 pointed out, is virtually the same thing as Idealism. Thomas 
 Reid rejected the skepticism of Hume. But by admitting 
 the possibility of an unknowable existence, he really agreed 
 with Hume in all essential particulars. Dr. Thomas Brown, 
 upon being asked whether the difference between Reid and 
 Hume was not chiefly one of words, replied: "Yes, Reid 
 bawled out we must believe in an outward world ; but added, 
 in a whisper, we can give no reason for our belief. Hume 
 cries out, we can give no reason for such a notion ; and 
 whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it." Thus we have a 
 confession from one of the chief Scotch metaphysicians that 
 Reid, although he claimed to have refuted both idealism and 
 skepticism, was really an agnostic, which is the most popular 
 name for the modern skeptic. 
 
 Dugald Stewart comes very near the truth when he says 
 that the belief in the external world, or space, is one of the 
 " Fundamental Laws of Human Belief," or, as we would ex- 
 press it, one of the conditions of perception. 
 
 Reid sought to prove that our instincts account for our be- 
 lief in an external world, but he insisted that it is impossible 
 to account for our instincts ; which is hardly an acceptable 
 solution of the problem of perception. 
 
 " To talk of Dr. Reid," said the Quarterly, in its review of 
 Stewart's Second Dissertation, " as if his writings had op- 
 posed a barrier to the prevalence of Skeptical Philosophy, is 
 an evident mistake. Dr. Reid successfully refuted the prin- 
 ciples by which Berkeley and Hume endeavored to establish 
 their conclusions ; but the conclusions themselves he himself 
 adopted as the very premises from which he reasons. The 
 impossibility of proving the existence of a material world 
 from ' reason, or experience, or instruction, or habit, or any 
 
2OO THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 other principle hitherto known to philosophers/ is the argu- 
 ment, and the only argument, by which he endeavors to force 
 upon us his theory of instinctive principles." 
 
 Sir William Hamilton was one of the clearest and most 
 advanced writers upon metaphysics, of modern times. His 
 philosophy is principally devoted to the consideration of 
 three questions, (i) the perception of the external world ; (2) 
 the nature of necessary truths, or the principles of certitude ; 
 and (3) the law of causation. The discussion of such ques- 
 tions as these can lead to no definite results unless we first 
 agree upon the signification of those general terms known as 
 the Ultimate Realities, or the categories of thought. Such 
 words as the Infinite and the Absolute, called by Hamilton 
 the " two inconceivables," are employed so often that we feel 
 convinced they stood for very important facts in his mind. 
 Again : Space, Time, Matter, Force, and Motion, are con- 
 tinually employed in conflicting senses. For instance, 
 Hamilton affirms that Space and Extension mean the 
 same thing, but, if there is any difference at all in them, 
 Space is a priori and Extension a posteriori ; or, the idea of 
 Space is given in the fact of mind and the idea of Extension 
 grows up with experience. He also distinctly teaches that, 
 whereas mind and matter both appear in Time, matter alone 
 appears in Space : From which it is fair to conclude that space 
 appears in mind, but mind does not appear in space. Now, 
 as no mind has ever yet appeared out of space, we are unable 
 to appreciate this distinction, however clear it may be to the 
 admirers of the Scotch School. Again : Hamilton, it is well 
 known, employs the word Matter frequently in the Kantian 
 sense of Force, as a necessary element of consciousness, 
 which makes it all the more difficult to understand how an 
 element of consciousness, called matter, which we are told 
 never appears out of space, can be an element of conscious- 
 ness, if consciousness, or mind, appears only in Time and not 
 in Space. It is generally admitted that matter always occu- 
 pies space, but if mind cannot appear in space, the question 
 arises, what becomes of the space which matter ought to oc- 
 
THE SCOTCH SCHOOL. 2OI 
 
 cupy when it appears as an element of mind in Time alone ? 
 It is evident from this that the Scotch School places matter 
 in a very unfair position, for we are left to conclude that the 
 matter which appears as an element of mind does not occupy 
 the space that it should. 
 
 Hamilton, as we have said, is one of the clearest and best 
 writers upon metaphysics, of modern times ; but it cannot be 
 denied that there are occasional infelicities in his manipula- 
 tion of the Ultimate Realities, or the categories of thought, 
 which none but the most indulgent readers of his system 
 could overlook. 
 
 How can we hope to determine such general questions as 
 the " Perceptions of externals," " Necessary truths," " The 
 law of causation," while such confusion reigns with regard 
 to the meaning of the most general terms employed ? 
 
 To Bacon can be traced the English love of the real as 
 distinguished from the ideal in thought. The great work of 
 Newton was a natural consequence of Bacon's scientific 
 method, but Newton avoided all metaphysical discussions, 
 not because he was not able to reason as well as any of his 
 contemporaries, but because he was conscious of the need 
 of a common understanding of the significance of general 
 terms. The mind that could affirm that " all philosophy 
 consists in the study of Motion " was incapable of enter- 
 taining such a belief as the absolute separation of mind and 
 matter : the mind that saw the impossibility of " action at 
 a distance," or unrelated phenomena, could not consent to 
 an absolute distinction between matter and space, or be- 
 tween force and time. 
 
 Science, in England, has steadily progressed upon the 
 plan suggested and developed by Newton. In the mean- 
 time the scientific study of mind as the function of an organ- 
 ism, founded by Hobbes and Locke, and developed by Dr. 
 Hartley, the elder Darwin, and the elder Mill, has led to 
 such works as J. S. Mill's " System of Logic," the psycho- 
 logical studies of Professor Bain, and the complete philo- 
 sophic systems of Herbert Spencer and George H. Lewes. 
 
202 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 As these latter systems embody the highest results of 
 English, and in fact of modern, science and thought, our 
 argument can best be furthered by a careful review of them, 
 especially as they constitute the most thorough study in ex- 
 istence of that aspect of knowledge which we call perception. 
 
 In closing this portion of the work, which has been in 
 large part devoted to the explanation of the scope of lan- 
 guage, let us bear in mind that language can only represent 
 motion, that it is impossible to frame a sentence or express 
 an idea which does not imply as a fundamental fact some 
 movement or activity. The most abstract mathematical sym- 
 bols, such as numbers, letters, a dot, a straight line, or a curve, 
 represent respectively the operation of counting, the grouping 
 of the results of counting, the separation of wholes into parts, 
 the shortest movement between two points, or the movement 
 of a point around a centre. It is well known that the most 
 abstract metaphysical symbols, such as space and time, can 
 only be represented by motions, and are but aspects of the 
 universal fact of Motion. But there are few who are willing 
 to acknowledge the full significance of this truth, that 
 motion is the universal fact ; for it means that all compre- 
 hension, perception, mind, will, are functions or consequences 
 of this fact. This great truth, which is the simplest state- 
 ment of the scope of language, can only be apprehended by 
 studying the genesis of language ; and although this study 
 is scarcely begun in the world, our argument would be in- 
 complete if we were not to give some idea of it. 
 
 The fundamental form of communication is by gesture. 
 Gesture-language, therefore, is the genetic beginning of all 
 language. Even in these days of developed and apparently 
 arbitrary speech it constitutes a universal medium of ex- 
 pression. Animals comprehend movements or gestures more 
 easily than sounds ; but when we think that sound, or any 
 other activity which appeals to the senses, is but movement, 
 we begin to appreciate how utterly dependent the mind is 
 upon activity or motion. It is a well-authenticated fact that 
 deaf-mutes and savages converse readily through gestures, 
 
CLOSE OF THE ARGUMENT. 203 
 
 "because in the former, speech, or communication by words, 
 is wholly undeveloped, and in the latter but imperfectly. 
 Even when speech is highly developed, gestures are used as 
 a further emphasis of meaning. The interaction of expres- 
 sion and ideas, or language and thought, the fact that they 
 develop each other, is aptly illustrated by the description 
 which Kruse (himself a deaf-mute and a well-known teacher 
 of deaf-mutes) offers of the formation of gesture-language : 
 " Thus the deaf and dumb must have a language, without 
 which no thought can be brought to pass. But here nature 
 soon comes to his help. What strikes him most, or what 
 makes a distinction to him between one thing and another, 
 such distinctive signs of objects are at once signs by which 
 he knows these objects, and knows them again ; they become 
 tokens of things. And whilst he silently elaborates the signs 
 he has found for single objects that is, whilst he describes 
 their forms for himself in the air, or imitates them in thought 
 with hands, fingers, and gestures, he develops for himself 
 suitable signs to represent ideas, which serve him as a means 
 of fixing ideas of different kinds in his mind and recalling them 
 to his memory. And thus he makes himself a language, the 
 so-called gesture-language ; and with these few scanty and 
 imperfect signs a way for thought is already broken, and, 
 with his thought as it now opens out, the language cultivates 
 and forms itself further and further." It is well understood 
 among those who have studied gesture-language that deaf- 
 mutes and savages are far better able to master it and ex- 
 press themselves than educated people who enjoy the full 
 use of their faculties. Said the director of an Institute : 
 " None of my teachers here who can speak are very strong 
 in the gesture-language. It is difficult for an educated, 
 speaking man to get the proficiency in it which a deaf-and- 
 dumb child attains to almost without an effort." 
 
 It is evident that all language not only springs from ges- 
 ture-language, but is essentially of the same nature. Not 
 only the means of expression, but the objects of expression, 
 are found upon analysis to be motion. All sentences de- 
 
204 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 pend upon some verb (expressed action or being) for their 
 meaning. Now, when being or existence is identified with 
 life or universal activity through the aid of a metaphysical 
 analysis, we see how from the grammatical side of language 
 also we are irresistibly led to this ultimate fact. All parts 
 of speech are but modifications or inflections of motion. 
 Thus " the deaf-mute borrows the signs of space, as we do 
 similar words, to express notions of time : * * * the present 
 tense [of the verb can be expressed] by indicating ' here ' 
 with the two hands held out, palm downward ; the past 
 tense, by the hand thrown back over the shoulder, * behind ' ; 
 the future, by putting the hand out, ' forward.' But when 
 he takes on his conjugation to such tenses as ' I should have 
 carried,' he is merely translating words into more or less 
 appropriate signs." 1 
 
 Quoting from Quintilian, Mr. Tylor says : " As for the 
 hands indeed, without which action would be maimed and 
 feeble, one can hardly say how many movements they have, 
 when they almost follow the whole stock of words ; for the 
 other members help the speaker, but they, I may almost 
 say, themselves speak. * * * Do they not, in pointing out 
 places and persons, fulfil the purpose of adverbs and pro- 
 nouns ? So that in so great a diversity of tongues among 
 all people and nations this seems to me the common language 
 of all mankind." 
 
 " The best evidence," continues Mr. Tylor, " of the unity 
 of the gesture-language is the ease and certainty with which 
 any savage from any country can understand and be under- 
 stood in a deaf-and-dumb school. A native of Hawaii is 
 taken to an American Institution, and begins at once to talk 
 in signs with the children, and to tell about his voyage and 
 the country he came from. A Chinese, who had fallen into 
 a state of melancholy from long want of society, is quite 
 revived by being taken to the same place, where he can talk 
 in gestures to his heart's content. * * * Macrobius says it was 
 a well-known fact that Cicero used to try with Roscius, the 
 
 1 E. B. Tylor : " Early Hist, of Man." 
 
CLOSE OF THE ARGUMENT. 2O5 
 
 actor, which of them could express a sentiment in the greater 
 variety of ways, the player by mimicry or the orator by 
 speech, and that these experiments gave Roscius such con- 
 fidence in his art, that he wrote a book comparing oratory 
 with acting. Lucian tells a story of a certain barbarian 
 prince of Pontus, who was at Nero's court, and saw a panto- 
 mime perform so well, that though he could not understand 
 the songs which the player was accompanying with his 
 gestures, he could follow the performance from the acting 
 alone. * * * Religious service is performed in signs in many 
 deaf-and-dumb schools. In the Berlin Institution, the simple 
 Lutheran service a prayer, the gospel for the day, and a 
 sermon is acted every Sunday morning for the children in 
 the school and the deaf-and-dumb inhabitants of the city, 
 and it is a very remarkable sight. No one could see the 
 parable of the man who left the ninety and nine sheep in the 
 wilderness, and went after that which was lost, or of the 
 woman who lost the one piece of silver, performed in ex- 
 pressive pantomime by a master in the art, without ac- 
 knowledging that for telling a simple story, and making 
 simple comments on it, spoken language stands far behind 
 acting. The spoken narrative must lose the sudden anxiety 
 of the shepherd when he counts his flock and finds a sheep 
 wanting, his hurried penning up of the rest, his running up 
 hill and down dale, and spying backwards and forwards, his 
 face lighting up when he catches sight of the missing sheep 
 in the distance, his carrying it home in his arms, hugging it 
 as he goes. We hear these stories read as though they were 
 lists of generations of antediluvian patriarchs. The deaf-and- 
 dumb pantomime calls to mind the ' action, action, action ! ' 
 of Demosthenes." 
 
 The connection between thought and language constitutes 
 the best possible lesson in psychology. In ancient Greece, 
 deaf-mutes were thought to be speechless on account of a 
 deficiency of intellect : we, who take the opposite view, 
 namely, that their deficiency of intellect is due to inability 
 to speak and thus to develop the mind, are still apt to 
 
2O6 THE SCOPE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 neglect the fact that there are all degrees of intellectual inca- 
 pacity expressed in imperfections of speech. Thought and 
 the power of uttering thoughts are not only interdependent 
 activities, but they are different views of the same activity. 
 " Thinking is talking to one's self" ; " Language shapes itself 
 in mind, and mind in language." 
 
 In the gesture-language, we are told, it is impossible to dis- 
 tinguish between the verb and the noun, or the adjective and 
 the adverb. This is because a noun represents the activity 
 or appearance produced by an object, and this appearance is 
 represented by actions or gestures corresponding to it, which 
 really makes every noun a certain kind of action or a verb. 
 " To say, for instance, * The pear is green,' the deaf-and- 
 dumb child first eats an imaginary pear, and then, using the 
 back of the flat left hand as a ground, he makes the fingers 
 of the right hand grow up on the edge of it like blades 
 of grass. We might translate the signs as ' pear-grass,' but 
 they have quite as good a right to be classed as verbs, 
 for they are signs of eating in a peculiar way, and growing." 
 
 Again : since substantives and verbs are thus indistinguish- 
 able, the adjectives and adverbs which qualify them are 
 equally so ; for gestures bear the same relation to phonetic 
 symbols or spoken words that picture-writing bears to alpha- 
 betical writing. In gestures or pictures, the action expressed 
 is conveyed to the mind directly, in its original or concrete 
 form ; in spoken or written words, it passes through a meta- 
 morphosis of sound and form, a sort of digestion, or reduc- 
 tion to its simpler elements, which adjusts the action to the 
 special senses, or the conditions of perception. 
 
 Developed language is susceptible of a vastly greater ex- 
 tension and definiteness, because what might be called the 
 atoms of thought are so much more subdivided, and there- 
 fore capable of higher complexities in their redistribution. 
 We cannot make a mould with gravel ; we must use the finest 
 clay, so that every detail of the model may be reproduced 
 by the particles employed. To reproduce our thoughts, we 
 must dissolve them into minute particles of sound and form, 
 
CLOSE OF THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 called letters ; and with this simple medium we reconstruct 
 the most delicate mental delineations. Behind this picture 
 we can clearly see the irreducible fact of Motion, which in a 
 complex form constitutes both the object and subject of 
 thought, approached in its simpler conditions of form and 
 sound through the medium of language. 
 
 Hence language is an activity which extends the range of 
 sentiency, relating for us the particular and the general, the 
 complex and the simple, or the human and the divine. 
 
PART II. 
 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 209 
 
PART II. 
 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 The Relation of Perception to Universal Activity The Definitions of Evolu- 
 tion and of Life The " Unknowable." 
 
 HUMAN knowledge consists of the elaboration of per- 
 ceptions, the organization of facts. The principle of per- 
 ception, therefore, underlies and must explain the whole 
 fabric of ontological science. Notwithstanding the vast pro- 
 portions to which the writings upon this science have grown, 
 there is probably no department of knowledge which, in the 
 future, will require less space to record its truths than the 
 science of Metaphysics. 
 
 The imposing number of works upon ontology have not, 
 however, appeared in vain. It was necessary that every pos- 
 sible construction of the questions involved should be made 
 before the mind could choose between them. Hence bodies 
 of co-ordinated beliefs have sprung up in all directions ; these 
 have coalesced into orders or schools named after the char- 
 acteristics of each, such as ideal, spiritual, rational, natural, 
 and positive. These schools have been subdivided into 
 varieties which bear the names of their principal advocates, 
 forming a long list and representing practically every possible 
 shade of opinion. This is not only the history of metaphysi- 
 cal science, but of all sciences ; it is, in fact, the only way in 
 which opinion grows into settled belief. The test of truth 
 in the majority of the sciences, although precisely the same 
 
 211 
 
212 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 in nature, is much simpler than in philosophy, because the 
 means of verification are so much nearer at hand. There is 
 a horizon, however, to every science which eludes the special 
 methods of each, and requires the combined logic of all to 
 survey it. It is this outlying region of experience which 
 constitutes the field of philosophy. Zeller tells us that " the 
 term Philosophy, as in use among the Greeks, varied greatly 
 in its meaning. Originally it denoted all mental culture, and 
 all effort in the direction of culture. The word aocpia from 
 which it is derived was applied to every art and every kind 
 of knowledge. A more restricted significance seems first to 
 have been given to it in the time of the Sophists, when it 
 became usual to seek after a wider knowledge by means of 
 more special and adequate instruction than ordinary educa- 
 tion and the unmethodical routine of practical life could of 
 themselves afford." Since the time of Plato this word has 
 assumed a more and more special meaning, until to-day it is 
 widely understood to designate not merely a development of 
 knowledge, but a different kind of knowledge from that to 
 which the particular sciences belong. The term mental 
 science, again, has had, if any thing, a more restricted mean- 
 ing than the more general term philosophy. The activities 
 of the mind have been regarded as of another source and 
 kind than other activities. This idea has grown until the 
 different mental faculties, such as memory, will, reason, and 
 perception, have come to be considered as separate princi- 
 ples, the interdependencies of which are inscrutable. The 
 confusion which these superstitions have engendered is only 
 just beginning to give way before the new science of psy- 
 chology, which studies the mind as an organ and its activity 
 as part of organic life. 
 
 Perception has always been conceded to be the chief men- 
 tal faculty, partaking in its nature of all the others. The 
 -theories concerning the nature of this faculty, which we find 
 in the different systems of mental science, form the truest 
 index to their comparative logical merit. A careful analysis, 
 therefore, of the theory of perception which is presented in 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 213 
 
 any system of philosophy, will serve to bring us by the 
 shortest route to a comprehension of its scope, and the 
 position it holds in the great hierarchy of Knowledge. 
 
 The philosophy of Herbert Spencer has made an impres- 
 sion in America : it is a system which has especially com- 
 mended itself to the inquiring minds of our people. The 
 Americans resemble the Greeks in their intellectual economy ; 
 they have not buried themselves in the karning of the past, 
 and are therefore keenly alive to the progress, and propor- 
 tionately less attentive to the history, of thought. This 
 fact has given Spencer's system, as a whole, an importance 
 which it could not have attained in an older country. In 
 England, and on the continent, Spencer's writings are esti- 
 mated according to their individual merit, philosophical 
 culture there being too general to admit of the concrete 
 conception which we have formed of them. 
 
 In reviewing a great and new system, such as the Syn- 
 thetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, it is a certain dis- 
 advantage to have studied it only at first hand. The 
 enormous reach of its investigations, and the vast co-ordinat- 
 ing power which has made this system one of the greatest 
 achievements of modern thought, are such as to place all 
 who study it, deeply in the author's debt. A new system, 
 scarcely completed, has no subsequent expository l to illu- 
 minate it, to help us to distinguish between what is really 
 original with the author and what is imbibed from contem- 
 poraneous thought. In a mind like Spencer's the rays of 
 contemporaneous thought converge, and it is necessary to 
 view it from a distance in time, in order to separate the re- 
 flected from the individual light. Mr. Fiske says: " When 
 Von Baer discovered that the evolution of a living organism 
 from the germ-cell is a progressive change from homogeneity 
 of structure to heterogeneity of structure, he discovered a 
 scientific truth. But when Herbert Spencer applied Von 
 Baer's formula to the evolution of the solar system, of the 
 
 1 1 am not unmindful of the excellent works of John Fiske and Malcolm 
 
 Guthrie. 
 
214 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 earth, of the totality of life upon its surface, of society, of 
 conscious intelligence, and the products of conscious intelli- 
 gence, then he discovered a truth in philosophy, a truth 
 applicable not merely to one order of phenomena, but to all 
 orders." * If this claim for originality in Mr. Spencer's be- 
 half could be sustained, we should indeed have in him a 
 Columbus of philosophy, for this vast discovery could be 
 compared to a new continent of thought. That this new 
 continent of thought, known as evolution, has been dis- 
 covered, no one will deny ; but we should hesitate to give 
 the credit to any individual, or even to any century. While 
 we plume ourselves upon the discoveries of our century, we 
 are continually forgetting that we are, in the strictest sense, 
 but a consequence of the past ; that by reason of this ines- 
 timable debt knowledge is, for the most part, but erudition, 
 and philosophy but Eclecticism. In distributing the honors, 
 therefore, to the originators of this great theory of Evo- 
 lution, which our race is but beginning to appreciate, our 
 encomiums become a hymn of praise to the thinkers of 
 all ages. 
 
 Spencer's philosophic system is an application of the 
 principle of evolution to every conceivable aspect of life 
 and of the universe. It begins with a work entitled " First 
 Principles," which is in effect an epitome of the whole. The 
 immediate purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the 
 interdependence of all phenomena, and thereby to define 
 the term evolution. 
 
 Little by little as his argument progresses Mr. Spencer 
 adds to the meaning of this word evolution, or rather he re- 
 moves one restriction after another to its meaning until its 
 generality alarms the metaphysician, and the inquiry arises, 
 Is it not a universal term ? The position here taken with 
 regard to the meaning of ultimate terms is already familiar 
 to the reader. There can be but one ultimate fact, give it 
 what name or names we please ; for ultimate means final, 
 and a final fact is only distinguished from other facts by its 
 
 1 John Fiske : " Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," vol. I., p. 40. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 21$ 
 
 simplicity. If it were complex, it could be separated into 
 more general facts. If it is simple, resisting all further analy- 
 sis, if it is a common property of every fact, if it remains 
 after every analysis has been pushed to its farthest limits, 
 and if it is the foundation of every inference or synthesis, 
 it is unity itself. That Mr. Spencer employs the term evolu- 
 tion as an ultimate fact will be manifest to any one who will 
 patiently examine his treatment of the subject in " First 
 Principles." 
 
 In closing the second chapter on the Law of Evolution, 
 Spencer says : " As we now understand it, Evolution is de- 
 finable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a co- 
 herent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion 
 and integration of matter." * In a chapter entitled " The 
 Interpretation of Evolution," and referring to the above 
 described law of evolution, we find the following : "Is this 
 law ultimate or derivative ? Must we rest satisfied with the 
 conclusion that throughout all classes of concrete phenomena 
 such is the course of transformation ? Or is it possible for us 
 to ascertain why such is the course of transformation ? May 
 we seek for some all-pervading principle that underlies this 
 all-pervading process ? * * * It may be that this mode of 
 manifestation is reducible to a simpler mode, from which 
 these many complex effects follow. * * * Unless we suc- 
 ceed in finding a rationale of this universal metamorphosis, 
 we obviously fall short of that completely unified knowledge 
 constituting Philosophy. As they at present stand, the 
 several conclusions we have lately reached appear to be 
 independent, there is no demonstrated connection between 
 increasing definiteness and increasing heterogeneity, or be- 
 tween both and increasing integration. Still less evidence is 
 there that these laws of the redistribution of matter and 
 motion are necessarily correlated with those laws of the direc- 
 tion of motion and the rhythm of motion previously set forth. 
 But until we see these now separate truths to be implications of 
 one truth, our knowledge remains imperfectly 2 coherent. * * * 
 
 1 Spencer's " First Principles," p. 360. The italics are the author's. 
 1 The italics are the author's. 
 
2l6 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 It has to be shown that the redistribution of matter and motion 
 must everywhere take place in those ways, and produce 
 those traits, which celestial bodies, organisms, societies, alike 
 display. And it has to be shown that this universality of pro- 
 cess results from the same necessity which determines eacJi sim- 
 plest movement around us, down to the accelerated fall of 
 a stone or the recurrent beat of a harp-string. In other 
 words, the phenomena of Evolution have to be deduced 
 from the Persistence of Force. As before said, f to this an 
 ultimate analysis brings us down, and on this a rational syn- 
 thesis must build up.' This being the ultimate truth which 
 transcends experience by underlying it, so furnishing a com- 
 mon basis on which the widest generalizations stand, these 
 widest generalizations are to be unified by referring them 
 to this common basis." 
 
 If the widest generalizations result in the conception 
 of evolution, and if the only common basis for these 
 generalizations, as is admitted by Mr. Spencer, is the 
 universal principle which he calls the " persistence of force," 
 surely evolution in its widest sense is a universal principle. 
 Nothing could simplify philosophy more than this identifi- 
 cation of evolution as a universal principle. 
 
 So serious are the consequences, however, so grand are the 
 results, and withal so simple is the explanation, that the 
 conventional thinker, entrenched behind his dogmatic dis- 
 tinctions without differences, will make many objections. 
 From this conventional reasoner the first objection would 
 be that evolution is a process, not a principle. But a prin- 
 ciple is merely a prominent or general fact, and it is clear 
 that the fact or process of evolution is the most general 
 in life. Where under the new light of biology and organic 
 chemistry are we to find the limits of life? Is not the 
 most prominent fact in " all phenomena " a universal fact ? 
 
 Again it will be objected that the correlative or anti- 
 thetical term of evolution is dissolution, and that all phe- 
 nomena have these contrasted aspects, which remands the 
 
 1 " First Principles," pp. 397, 398. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 21 J 
 
 term evolution to a more subordinate position in the scale of 
 generality than "the persistence of force." This is an objec- 
 tion which needs careful scrutiny, as it seems to mean more 
 than it does. It is impossible to conceive of evolution 
 in the philosophical sense in which the word is used without 
 including the idea of dissolution, in the same way that it is 
 impossible to conceive of the universal principle which we 
 call life without including the idea of death. 
 
 Again, the senses in which the word evolution is employed 
 in mathematics and dynamics are entirely distinct from the 
 broad philosophical sense, where it is the equivalent of the 
 serial development of all things, " the evolution of ages." 
 
 To say that evolution is not used by Spencer as a universal 
 principle because its reverse process is involution, would be 
 as sensible as to make the same assertion because dissolution, 
 in a certain restricted sense, is the antithesis or correlative of 
 evolution. 
 
 Mr. Spencer may not be conscious of the fact that he has 
 defined evolution as a universal principle, but when he builds 
 up a system of philosophy in order to apply the process to 
 all phenomena, that it is in its widest sense a universal fact 
 is an irresistible inference from his words; and the distinc- 
 tion between process and principle when both are facts of 
 universal application becomes invidious. If, as Mr. Spencer 
 says, " evolution is the redistribution of matter and motion," 
 what event in time and space is independent of this cause ? 
 
 A candid study of the manner in which Mr. Spencer em- 
 ploys and defines the word will convince us that it stands in 
 his mind for the highest generalization of life or existence, 
 and that, as there are no absolute demarcations to life in the 
 universe, evolution is a universal generalization or principle. 
 
 And here we come to the theory of perception, which we 
 hold to be the chief feature of every system of philosophy, 
 determining its merit as an original production, its impor- 
 tance as a contribution to knowledge ; for it is in the respect 
 of learning the true nature of perception that real progress 
 in philosophy has been made. We see from the above that 
 
218 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 the formula of Evolution suggested by Mr. Spencer, which 
 in its simplest expression is " the redistribution of matter and 
 motion" is acknowledged by him to be but a derived law, or, 
 in other words, a complex expression of a simple law or ulti- 
 mate fact, which he denominates " the persistence of force" 
 and which we submit can find a still more simple expression 
 in the word Motion. Motion is the ultimate term in all the 
 sciences, as well as in philosophy. 
 
 When we remember the great principle that facts express 
 themselves, it is apparent that the attempts to form such ab- 
 stract generalizations as "concentration of matter" and "dis- 
 sipation of motion" or " Evolution is an integration of matter 
 and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter 
 passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, 
 coherent heterogeneity ; and during which the retained motion 
 undergoes a parallel transformation" 1 are useless, for the 
 ultimate fact of motion is so obtrusive throughout that 
 nothing is gained by the definition. 
 
 As will be evident to any one who follows out Spencer's 
 whole system, these involved formulas of the ultimate pro- 
 cess of evolution are, for the most part, but vain attempts to 
 define motion. These definitions depend for the terms in 
 which they are expressed upon the aspects of the ultimate 
 fact, Motion, or upon different names for the fact itself; 
 such as co-existence and sequence, the equivalent terms 
 space and time, or the frequently recurring motion and 
 matter, which is the fact itself and one of its aspects (matter, 
 the equivalent of space). To speak, therefore, of the redis- 
 tribution of matter and motion as an ultimate law is simply 
 to define motion in terms of its aspects, for the word motion 
 gives us at once the idea of redistribution. I submit that it 
 leads to no advance in knowledge to say that motion redis- 
 tributes itself and one of its aspects. 
 
 To familiarize ourselves with the procedures of nature is 
 the province of science, but scientific analysis, so far as it is 
 successful, stops with the ultimate fact, or divine unity. 
 
 1 " First Principles," p. 396. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 In so far as Mathematics has tried to analyze this ultimate 
 principle, it has failed, for there are no laws of motion which 
 are not expressed by the term itself. 1 
 
 Where Physics has tried to analyze motion, it has failed. 
 The cabalistics, which purport to convey a deeper knowledge 
 of this fact than is given in the simple conception itself, are 
 vanities and deceptions. All knowledge is expressed in 
 terms of the 'aspects of motion, i. e. places and times. All 
 knowledge consists in expressions of motion. The only way 
 in which we can enlarge our horizon of facts is by assimilating 
 new experiences with old ones ; the only way in which we 
 can reveal to others these newly discovered facts is by ex- 
 pressing them in terms of more familiar ones. 
 
 This Spencer has done throughout his system. We are 
 indebted to his powerful and effective method for some of 
 the clearest and most commanding views of the interde- 
 pendences of phenomena which the age affords ; but this very 
 power which he has exerted so happily in revealing hidden 
 truths has carried him to the excess, not of attempting 
 impossibilities, for we admit no impossibilities to knowledge, 
 but of creating impossibilities where none exist. This is 
 
 1 Solidity, in the sense in which it is attributed to the atom, is not a fact, but 
 the hypostasis of an abstraction. As M. Cournot observes, an absolutely solid 
 body is unknown to experience. The consistency of the bodies which present 
 themselves to the experimental physicist depends upon the preponderance or bal- 
 ance of forces, such as the forces of cohesion, crystallization, and heat ; and the 
 assumption of the absolute solidity of matter results from that superficial and 
 imperfect apprehension of the data of sense (in conjunction with the disregard 
 of the essential relativity of all the properties of things; which is reflected in all 
 the early notions of mankind. * * * Euler states that without the assumption 
 of absolute space and motion there could be no laws of motion, so that all the 
 phenomena of physical action would become uncertain and indeterminable. If 
 this argument were well founded, the same consequence would follow a fortiori, 
 from his repeated admissions in the first chapter of his book, to the effect that 
 we have no actual knowledge of rest and motion, except that derived from bodies 
 at rest or in motion in reference to other bodies. Euler's proposition can have 
 no other meaning than this, that the laws of motion cannot be established or 
 verified unless we know its absolute direction and its absolute rate. But such 
 knowledge is by his own showing unattainable. It follows, therefore, that the 
 establishment and verification of the laws of motion are impossible. Stallo : 
 "Modern Physics," pp. 180, 202. 
 
220 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 what all thinkers do who divide when they should multiply, 
 who subtract when they should add, who, having found 
 unity, are not content with it, but turn in quest of other uni- 
 ties, or seek in unity itself variety. These futile attempts, 
 which will never cease until the world at large learns to 
 recognize them as useless, are the outgrowth of a misappre- 
 hension of the nature of perception. This we hope duly to 
 demonstrate. 
 
 The celebrated definition of life which Spencer offers is 
 without doubt a masterpiece of classification, but by reason 
 of its unnecessary complexity it accomplishes less than 
 it purports to do. It is as follows : " Life is the definite 
 combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 
 successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and 
 sequences'' 
 
 Now if the terms employed in this definition are examined, 
 it will be found that the equation which it constitutes can be 
 greatly simplified. To express the conditions of life is to 
 tell the story of the universe ; to study different kinds of life 
 is to pursue certain branches of science. The principle of 
 life is activity. All definitions of life, therefore, other than 
 the mere citing of its principle, must be more or less special 
 or limited ; they must denote the principle and connote cer- 
 tain manifestations. The above definition denotes the prin- 
 ciple of activity, or universal life, and connotes the char- 
 acteristics of organic life. But the terms in which the 
 connotations are made, when viewed in their full signifi- 
 cance, amount to the assertion that organic life consists of 
 motions or activities within an organism, co-ordinated with 
 or adjusted to, or still better, acting and reacting with mo- 
 tions without. The only inference, therefore, in this defini- 
 tion, which has so imposing a sound, is that of an organism. 
 If this inference is dropped, the sense of the definition is lost 
 among the echoes and re-echoes of universal change. 
 
 Although it is true that Mr. Spencer traces, practically, all 
 phenomena to an ultimate cause or principle, he fails to es- 
 tablish that harmony in the significance of ultimate terms 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 221 
 
 which should be the aim of a true philosophy. With the 
 means now at hand, is it not evident that in dealing with the 
 great principles, such as Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and 
 Force, and the " Persistence of Force " (a term made up of 
 one of these principles and a word meaning virtually the 
 same thing), we should be able to point out their correlation, 
 interdependence, or relative significance ? In Chapter III., 
 of the same work, 1 entitled " Space, Time, Matter, Motion, 
 and Force," and in Chapters XIV., XV., and XVI., of the sec- 
 ond volume of " Psychology," Spencer vigorously deals with 
 this metaphysical problem. Indeed, so dependent upon this 
 problem is the theory of perception, that it is scarcely pos- 
 sible to discuss the two subjects separately. Thus, in 
 Chapter III., of " First Principles," and in the chapters on 
 Psychology above referred to, treating respectively of the Per- 
 ception of Space, Time, and Motion, we find the same argu- 
 ments, and the same failure to seize what we conceive to be 
 the simplest solution of the two great allied questions of the 
 nature of perception and the unification of the categories 
 of thought. This solution, as I conceive it, is as follows: 
 
 If a weight falls to the ground a fact is expressed, for the 
 reason that facts express themselves ; wherever a fact is ex- 
 pressed, there is a perception. Perception and expression, 
 using these words in their widest possible sense, are obverse 
 aspects of every fact. Every given change is a response to 
 other changes, and in seeking the ultimate nature of percep- 
 tion we are obliged to recognize this response as equivalent 
 to a perception of the external change. This reduction of the 
 meaning of the word perception to that of change, or motion, 
 is the greatest achievement of psychology. To those who 
 have not familiarized themselves with psychological analysis 
 this proposition, that the deepest meaning in the idea of per- 
 ception is found in the universal fact of motion, will hardly 
 prove intelligible. This is because perception is generally 
 considered to be exclusively a mental faculty. Many persons 
 are incapable of following the meaning of perception beyond 
 
 1 "First Principles." 
 
222 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 its anthropomorphic limits ; few have ever followed it be- 
 yond its sentient limits. No psychological work known to 
 me, not even that of Lewes, has attempted to follow the 
 principle of perception beyond the limits of organic life; 
 and yet I affirm that this principle is plainly to be seen 
 in every phenomenon or change. Every activity is a response 
 to other activities ; there is no final difference between the 
 response of the simplest object to its simplest conditions, and 
 the response of the highest mind to the farthest influences. 
 
 The manner in which Mr. Spencer deals with these ques- 
 tions can be readily seen by glancing at Chapters IV., V., 
 and VI., of " First Principles." The indestructibility of matter 
 and the continuity of motion are said to be necessary infer- 
 ences from the Persistence of Force, which he declares to be 
 " the sole truth which transcends experience by underlying 
 it, * * * the cause which transcends our knowledge and 
 conception, * * * that unknowable which is the neces- 
 sary correlative of the knowable." l These are Spencer's 
 explanations of the persistence of force, and from them we 
 must derive his explanation of perception. They postulate 
 a fact which is supposed to be the most general of all facts, 
 the source of reality for both the mind and the universe ; a 
 fact to which all physical phenomena can be reduced, the 
 fact with which consciousness itself begins ; and yet he says 
 that it is unknowable, that it transcends consciousness. 
 
 It will not do to call this language loose or vague. It is 
 Mr. Spencer who employs it. We must content ourselves 
 with trying to glean from it the truth which is intended to be 
 expressed. If by any chance we could suggest definitions of 
 the categories of thought which would do away with the 
 absurdities involved in " an unknowable fact, * * * a principle 
 of consciousness which transcends both conception and experience, 
 * * * an unknowable which is the necessary correlative of the 
 knowable" we must perforce suppress them, because there 
 are many very estimable persons who "cannot understand 
 the universe without an unknowable." Their understanding 
 
 1 " First Principles," p. 192. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 22$. 
 
 must be exceedingly delicate to be affected by that of which 
 they know nothing. But perhaps they do know something 
 of the unknowable. 
 
 If the nature of perception were not involved in this ulti- 
 mate fact, the contradiction in declaring the fundamental 
 principle of life and mind unknowable might be less glaring. 
 The philosopher could then baffle his readers by expanding 
 upon a latent consciousness which is anterior to perception. 
 An a priori mmd that employs the unknowable as a principle, 
 but which does not know it this and other extravagances of 
 expression might be employed to cover up the preposterous 
 assertion that an apprehended fact, the most prominent of all 
 facts, is unknowable. But when the issue of the nature of 
 perception is forced, all subterfuges must be laid aside, and 
 we may confront one another upon the simple and honest 
 meaning of words. The believer in the unknowable, for 
 instance, will hardly venture to say that we can perceive the 
 unknowable, or that the unknowable is a factor in perception, 
 and yet Mr. Spencer would deduce perception itself from 
 this mystery. 
 
 The indestructibility of matter is now generally admitted 
 to be an axiom, or necessary truth. Of this truth Mr. 
 Spencer says : " Our inability to conceive matter becoming 
 non-existent is immediately consequent on the nature of 
 thought. Thought consists in the establishment of rela- 
 tions. There can be no relation established, and therefore 
 no thought framed, when one of the related terms is absent 
 from consciousness. * * * It most concerns us to observe the 
 nature of the perceptions by which the permanence of Mat- 
 ter is perpetually illustrated to us. These perceptions, un- 
 der all their forms, amount simply to this that the force 
 which a given quantity of matter exercises remains always 
 the same. This is the proof upon which common-sense and 
 exact science alike rely. * * * Thus we see that force is our 
 ultimate measure of Matter ; * * * by the indestructibility of 
 matter, we really mean the indestructibility of the force with 
 which matter affects us. * * * This truth is made manifest 
 
224 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 not only by analysis of the a posteriori cognition, but equally 
 so by analysis of the a priori one. 1 And yet before and after 
 these words, the truth, the principle, the fact, which is made 
 manifest to us in so many ways, is declared to be unknow- 
 able. 
 
 Respecting this same truth we are told in the chapter 
 following, entitled the " Continuity of Motion," that " This 
 existence may cease to display itself as translation ; but it 
 can do so only by displaying itself as strain. And the prin- 
 ciple of activity, now shown by translation, now by strain, 
 and often by the two together, is alone that which in Motion 
 we can call continuous. * * * Hence the principle of activity 
 as known by sight is inferential ; visible translation suggests 
 by association the presence of a principle of activity which 
 would be appreciable by our skin and muscles, did we lay 
 hold of the body. Evidently, then, this principle of activ- 
 ity which Motion shows us, is the objective correlate of our 
 subjective sense of effort. By pushing and pulling we get 
 feelings which, generalized and abstracted, yield our ideas of 
 resistance and tension. Now displayed by changing posi- 
 tion and now by unchanging strain, this principle of activity 
 is ultimately conceived by us under the single form of its 
 equivalent muscular effort. So that the continuity of 
 Motion, as well as the indestructibility of Matter, is really 
 known to us in terms of Force." ' 
 
 And yet these terms of Force which are so clearly affiliated 
 with all our physical and psychical perceptions, which terms, 
 to use Mr. Spencer's language, are " displayed" and "shown " 
 to us, which are " inferential" " appreciable" and "conceiv- 
 able" are still unknowable. This principle of activity from 
 which, Spencer tells us, our perceptions are built up, which 
 discloses itself to us by the most general and familiar facts 
 of life, is unknown to us. Or perhaps this is saying too 
 much, it may be termed the unknowable and still be known 
 to us. The term unknowable may have nothing to do with 
 
 1 " First Principles," pp. 177, 178. a Ibid., pp. 187, 188. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 22$ 
 
 our perception, or knowledge, or appreciation of the prin- 
 ciple. It may be simply a name which the old-school phi- 
 losophers insist upon giving this principle in order to conform 
 to the ancient canons of skepticism, or the modern rules of 
 agnosticism, which systems of belief would be completely 
 subverted were there no unknowable. 
 
 It will be my purpose as we proceed to show that this 
 term unknowable cannot be made to harmonize with a true 
 psychology. All will agree that the analysis of every pos- 
 sible perception discloses what are known as the ultimate 
 realities, or the commonly conceded elements of thought. 
 If the elements of thought are also the elements of all 
 reality, is it not clear that the principle which these ele- 
 ments disclose, namely, Motion, must explain all thought 
 and all perception ? 
 
 In analyzing any phenomenon or change, such as a weight 
 falling to the ground, the conventional result, found in all 
 current systems of philosophy, is to discover in the change 
 these elements, Space, Time, Matter, Force, and Motion. 
 Thus far philosophy has gone, and no farther ; and we find 
 Spencer no exception to the general rule, for how are we to 
 deduce from his definitions of these categories the one fact 
 which he calls the Persistence of Force, and to show how the 
 phenomenon of perception arises from this one fact ? What 
 are the definitions which Mr. Spencer offers of these elements, 
 and what is the relation which he establishes between them 
 and the central fact in the phenomenon of perception? 
 "Our conception of Matter," says Mr. Spencer, "reduced to 
 its simplest shape, is that of co-existent positions that offer 
 resistance ; as contrasted with our conception of Space, 
 in which the co-existent positions offer no resistance. * * * 
 Hence the necessity we are under of representing to our- 
 selves the ultimate elements of Matter as being at once 
 extended and resistent : this, being the universal form of 
 our sensible experiences of Matter, becomes the form which 
 our conception of it cannot transcend, however minute the 
 fragments which imaginary subdivisions produce. Of these 
 
226 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 two inseparable elements the resistance l is primary, and the 
 extension secondary. Occupied extension, or Body, being* 
 distinguished in consciousness from unoccupied extension, 
 or Space, by its resistance, this attribute must clearly have 
 precedence in the genesis of the idea. Such a conclusion is, 
 indeed, an qbvious corollary from that at which we arrived 
 in the foregoing section. If, as was there contended, our 
 consciousness of Space is a product of accumulated expe- 
 riences, partly our own but chiefly ancestral, if, as was 
 pointed out, the experience from which our consciousness of 
 Space is abstracted can be received only through impres- 
 sions of resistance made upon the organism, the necessary 
 inference is, that experiences of resistance being those from 
 which the conception of Space is generated, the resistance- 
 attribute of Matter must be regarded as primordial and the 
 space-attribute as derivative. Whence it becomes manifest 
 that our experience of force is that out of which the idea of 
 Matter is built. Matter as opposing our muscular energies, 
 being immediately present to consciousness in terms of force ; 
 and its occupancy of Space being known by an abstract of 
 experiences originally given in terms of force, it follows that 
 forces, standing in certain correlations, form the whole content 
 of our idea of Matter." a 
 
 Space is admitted to be but an inference from Matter, or 
 an aspect of it ; Force is admitted to be the source of our 
 idea of Matter, which means the same thing as that Matter 
 is an inference from Force, or an aspect of it. Now substi- 
 tute the word motion for force and we have our definition of 
 Space an aspect of Motion ; and our definition of Matter, 
 i. e. that Matter and Space are the same thing. 
 
 To get at Spencer's definition of Time and Space we quote 
 from a previous part of the same work : 
 
 " That relation is the universal form of thought, is a truth which all kinds of 
 demonstration unite in proving. * * * Now, relations are of two orders rela- 
 tions of sequence and relations of co-existence, of which the one is original and. 
 
 'The italics are the author's. a " First Principles," pp. 166, 167. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 22? 
 
 the other derivative. The relation of sequence is given in every change of con- 
 sciousness. The relation of co-existence, which cannot be originally given in a 
 consciousness of which the states are serial, becomes distinguished only when it 
 is found that certain relations of sequence have their terms presented in con- 
 sciousness in either order with equal facility ; while the others are presented only 
 in one order. Relations of which the terms are not reversible become recognized 
 as sequences proper, while relations of which the terms occur indifferently in 
 both directions become recognized as co-existences. Endless experiences, which 
 from moment to moment present both orders of these relations, render the dis- 
 tinction between them perfectly definite, and at the same time generate an ab- 
 stract conception of each. The abstract of all sequences is Time ; the abstract 
 of all co-existences is Space. From the fact that in thought Time is inseparable 
 from sequence, and Space from co-existence, we do not here infer that Time 
 and Space are original conditions of consciousness under which sequences and 
 co-existences are known ; but we infer that our conceptions of Time and Space 
 are generated, as other abstracts are generated from other concretes ; the only 
 difference being that the organization of experiences has, in these cases, been, 
 going on throughout the entire evolution of Intelligence. * * * It remains only 
 to point out, as a thing which we must not forget, that the experiences from which 
 the consciousness of Space arises, are experiences of force. A certain correla- 
 tion of the muscular forces which we ourselves exercise is the index of each posi- 
 tion as originally disclosed to us ; and the resistance which makes us aware of 
 something existing in that position is an equivalent of the pressure which 
 we consciously exert. Thus experiences of forces variously correlated are those 
 from which our consciousness of Space is abstracted. " l 
 
 In reading the above, it is difficult to believe that Spencer 
 was not fully aware of the existence of an ultimate Reality, 
 of which all other facts are but more or less remote aspects. 
 It is hard to understand how so penetrating a mind could 
 declare that Force is the origin of all ideas and all facts : 
 "that Relation is the universal form of thought," "that 
 Relations are of two orders, relations of sequence and rela- 
 tions of co-existence," without seeing that the ultimate 
 relation is the universal fact of motion, having for its terms, 
 or aspects, the primordial inferences known as Space and 
 Time. 
 
 A little farther on we find the following, which is a very 
 clear portrayal of the difference between the simple solution 
 of the metaphysical problem which we offer and that offered 
 by Mr. Spencer : " Is Space in itself a form or condition of 
 
 1 First Principles," pp. 163, 165. 
 
228 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION". 
 
 absolute existence, 1 producing in our minds a corresponding 
 form or condition of relative existence ? This is an unan- 
 swerable question. Our conception of Space is produced by 
 some mode of the Unknowable ; and the complete unchange- 
 ableness of our conception of it simply implies a complete uni- 
 formity in the effects wrought by this mode of the Unknowable 
 upon us? But therefore to call it a necessary mode of the 
 Unknowable is illegitimate. All we can assert is, that 
 Space is a relative reality ; that our consciousness of this 
 unchanging relative reality implies an absolute reality 
 equally unchanging, in so far as we are concerned; and 
 that the relative reality may be unhesitatingly accepted 
 in thought as a valid basis for our reasonings ; which, when 
 rightly carried on, will bring us to truths that have a like 
 relative reality, the only truths which concern us or can 
 possibly be known to us. Concerning Time, relative and 
 absolute, a parallel argument leads to parallel conclusions. 
 These are too obvious to need specifying in detail." 5 
 
 Again, in contrast with the above notion of Space, as an 
 " unchangeable," " fixed form," mark the following, taken 
 from the chapter on the Perception of Space, in which it is 
 distinctly denied that Space is a fixed form or unchangeable 
 conception : " And now mark that while these several 
 peculiarities in our space-perceptions harmonize with, and 
 receive their interpretations from, the experience-hypothesis, 
 taken in that expanded form implied by the doctrine of 
 Evolution, they are not interpretable by, and are quite in- 
 congruous with, the Kantian hypothesis. Without insisting 
 on the fact that our sensations of sound and odor do not 
 originally carry with them the consciousness of space at all, 
 there is the fact that, along with those sensations of taste, 
 touch, and sight, which do carry this consciousness with 
 them, it is carried in extremely different degrees, a fact 
 quite unaccountable if space is given before all experience 
 as a form of intuition. That our consciousness of adjacent 
 
 1 The term Absolute Existence is a contradiction in terms. 
 a The italics are the author's. 8 " First Principles," p. 165. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 22g 
 
 space is far more complete than our consciousness of remote 
 space, is also at variance with the hypothesis ; which, for 
 aught that appears to the contrary, implies homogeneity. 
 Similarly with that variation in the distinctness of surround- 
 ing parts of space which occurs as we turn our eyes now to 
 one point and now to another : were space a subjective form 
 not derived from experience, there should be no such varia- 
 tion. Again: the contrast between the spontaneous con- 
 sciousness of space within a room and the consciousness of 
 the space beyond its walls, which does not come spon- 
 taneously, is a contrast for which there seems no reason 
 if space is a fixed form." 1 This hardly harmonizes with 
 " the complete unchangeableness of our conception of Space 
 produced by some mode of the unknowable upon us," but 
 if we remove the theory of the unknowable the incongruity 
 between the two conceptions of Space at once disappears. 
 
 In making these close comparisons of passages occurring 
 widely apart in a great system, and written at considerable 
 intervals of time and study, every allowance should be made. 
 I would especially disclaim any intent of captious criticism. 
 It is my desire only to show the futility of all attempts to 
 account for Space and Time in any other way than as as- 
 pects of Motion ; to show how the greatest minds become 
 lost in the labyrinth of error which lies outside of this simple 
 and direct solution. The above contrasted passages also 
 help to show the intimate connection between the metaphy- 
 sical problem and the problem of perception which we are 
 studying. 
 
 To return to the first of the above quotations, we would 
 simply repeat that the term unknowable is self-contradictory ; 
 nothing can be unknowable. If we know the universal 
 principle, we could know any form of it, were it presented to 
 us. In its nature, at least, the field of knowledge is infinite. 
 Our knowledge is limited by our lives that is to say, there 
 is, and always will be, to limited beings, a vast unknown; 
 but the antithesis of known is unknown, not unknowable. 
 
 1 " Psychology," vol. II., pp. 200, 2OI. 
 
23O THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 Life is a universal principle with which knowledge in its 
 widest sense can be identified, therefore knowable has no 
 meaning, and unknowable has none. If life is a universal 
 principle, what sense would there be in the word livable ? 
 If knowledge is a universal principle, what sense is there in 
 the word knowable ? There are no unanswerable questions, 
 there are only unanswered questions. 
 
 In the note 1 below will be found a transcript of the best 
 
 1 SPENCER'S ANALYSIS OF THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE AND TIME. 
 
 " Whether visual or tactual, every perception of the space-attributes of body is 
 decomposable into perceptions of relative position ; that all perceptions of relative 
 position are decomposable into perceptions of the relative position of subject and 
 object ; and that these relations of position are knowable only through motion. 
 Such being now our data, the first question that arises is, How, through experi- 
 ences of occupied extension, or body, can we ever gain the notion of unoccu- 
 pied extension, or space ? How, from the perception of a relation between 
 resistant positions, do we progress to the perception of a relation between non- 
 resistant positions ? If all the space-attributes of a body are resolvable into 
 relations of position between subject and object, disclosed in the act of touch 
 if originally, relative position is only thus knowable if, therefore, position is, 
 to the nascent intelligence, incognizable except as the position of something 
 that produces an impression on the organism, how is it possible for the idea of 
 position ever to be dissociated from that of body ? 
 
 " This problem, difficult of solution as it appears, is really a very easy one. 
 If, after some particular motion of a limb, there invariably came a sensation 
 of softness ; after some other, one of roughness ; after some other, one of 
 hardness or if, after those movements of the eye needed for some special act 
 of vision, there always came a sensation of redness ; after some others, a sen- 
 sation of blueness ; and so on ; it is manifest that, in conformity with the 
 laws of association, there would be established constant relations between such 
 motions and such sensations. If positions were conceived at all, they would be 
 conceived as invariably occupied by things producing special impressions ; and 
 it would be impossible to dissociate the positions from the things. But as we 
 find that a certain movement of the hand, which once brought it in contact with 
 something hot, now brings it in contact with something sharp, and now with 
 nothing at all ; and as we find that a certain movement of the eye, which once 
 was followed by the sight of a black object, is now followed by the sight of a 
 white object, and now by the sight of no object ; it results that the idea of the 
 particular position accompanying each one of these movements is, by accumu- 
 lated experiences, dissociated from objects and impressions. It results, too, 
 that as there are endless such movements, there come to be endless such posi- 
 tions conceived as existing apart from body. And it results, further, that as in 
 the first and in every subsequent act of perception, each position is known as 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 analysis of the perception of Space and Time which occurs 
 in the work of Mr. Spencer. This analysis is given to 
 show that his study of the perception of these categories 
 from the physical or organic side has been most successful. 
 It is the manner in which he deals with the relations be- 
 tween the categories themselves that we find so confusing 
 and unsatisfactory. To the habitual student of these subjects 
 this analysis will be a pleasant and profitable review, and to 
 
 co-existent with the subject, there arises a consciousness of countless such co- 
 existent positions ; that is of Space. This is not offered as an ultimate inter- 
 pretation ; for, as before admitted, the difficulty is to account for our notion of 
 relative position. All that is here attempted is, partially to explain how, from 
 that primitive notion, our consciousness of Space in its totality is built up. 
 
 " Carrying with us this idea, calling to mind the structure of the retina, and 
 remembering the mode in which the relations among its elements are estab- 
 lished, it will, I think, become possible to conceive how that wonderful percep- 
 tion we have of visible space is generated. It is a peculiarity of sight that 
 makes us partially conscious of many things at once. On now raising my 
 head, I take in at a glance, desk, papers, table, books, chairs, walls, carpet, 
 window, and sundry objects outside : all of them simultaneously impressing me 
 with various details of color, suggesting surface and structure. True, I am not 
 equally conscious of all these things at the same time. I find that some one 
 object at which I am looking is more distinctly present to my mind than any 
 other, and that the one point in this object on which the visual axes converge is 
 more vividly perceived than the rest. In fact, I have a perfect perception of 
 scarcely more than an infinitesimal portion of the whole visual area. Neverthe- 
 less, even while concentrating my attention on this infinitesimal portion, I am 
 in some degree aware of the whole. My complete consciousness of a particu- 
 lar letter on the back of a book does not exclude a consciousness that there are 
 accompanying letters does not exclude a consciousness of the book does not 
 exclude a consciousness of the table on which the book lies, nay, does not 
 occlude even a consciousness of the wall against which the table stands. All 
 these things are present to me in different degrees of intensity degrees that 
 become less, partly in proportion as the things are unobtrusive in color and 
 size, and partly in proportion as they recede from the centre of the visual field. 
 Not that these many surrounding things are definitely known as such or such ; 
 for, while keeping my eyes fixed on one object, I cannot make that assertory 
 judgment respecting any adjacent object which a real cognition of it implies, 
 without becoming, for the moment, imperfectly conscious of the object on 
 which my eyes are fixed. But notwithstanding all this, it remains true that these 
 various objects are in some sense present to my mind are incipiently perceived 
 are* severally tending to fill the consciousness are each of them partially 
 exciting the mental states that would arise were it to be distinctly perceived. 
 
232 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 those to whom it may be new we recommend it as a 
 specimen of Spencer's best work, an example of that care- 
 ful and exhaustive study of obscure phenomena which has 
 given to his writings so high a place in the estimation of 
 scholars. 
 
 In this analysis is illustrated our complete dependence 
 upon the primordial fact of Motion for our ideas of Space 
 and Time ; for it is the same thing to say that we derive our 
 
 " This peculiarity in the faculty of sight (to which there is nothing analogous 
 in the faculties of taste and smell ; which, in the faculty of hearing, is vaguely 
 represented by our appreciation of harmony ; and which is but very imperfectly 
 paralleled in the tactual faculty by the ability we have to discern irregularities 
 in a surface on which the hand is laid) is clearly due to the structure of the 
 retina. Consisting of multitudinous sensitive elements, each capable of inde- 
 pendent stimulation, it results that when an image is received by the retina, each 
 of those sensitive elements on which the variously-modified rays of light fall, is 
 thrown into a state of greater or less excitement. Each of them as it were 
 totiches some particular part of the image, and sends inwards to the central 
 nervous system the impressions produced by the touch. But now observe that, 
 as before explained, each retinal element has come to have a known relation to 
 every one of those around it a relation such that their synchronous excitation 
 serves to represent their serial excitation. Lest this symbolism should not have 
 been fully understood, I will endeavor further to elucidate it. Suppose a 
 minute dot to be looked at a dot so small that its image, cast on the retina, 
 covers only one of the sensitive elements, A. Now suppose the eye to be so 
 slightly moved that the image of this dot falls on the adjacent element B. 
 What results ? Two slight changes of consciousness : the one proceeding from 
 the new retinal element affected ; the other, from the muscles producing the 
 motion. Let there be another motion, such as will transfer the image of the 
 dot to the next element,' C. Two other changes of consciousness result. And 
 so on continuously ; the consequence being that the relative positions in con- 
 sciousness of A and B, A and C, A and D, A and E, etc., are known by the 
 number of intervening states. Imagine now that, instead of these small mo- 
 tions separately made, the eye is moved with ordinary rapidity ; so that the 
 image of the dot sweeps over the whole series A to Z in an extremely short 
 time. What results ? It is a familiar fact that all impressions on the senses, 
 and visual ones among the number, continue for a certain brief period after 
 they are made. Hence, when the retinal elements forming the series A to Z 
 are excited in rapid succession, the excitation of Z commences before that of A 
 has ceased ; and for a moment the whole series A to Z remains in a state of 
 excitement together. This being understood, suppose the eye is turned upon 
 a line of such length that its image covers the whole series A to Z. What 
 results ? There is a simultaneous excitation of the series A to Z, differing from 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 233 
 
 ideas of Space and Time from Motion as to say that Space 
 and Time are inferences from, or aspects of, this fact. The 
 analysis of sensible perception given below also illustrates 
 how far beyond us, whatever may be our penetration into 
 the intricacies of phenomena, is this principle of activity, 
 and how it eludes all efforts at division or classification. 
 Now that we have followed out Mr. Spencer's analysis of 
 our conception of Space and Time, it will be interesting to 
 
 the last in this that it is persistent, and that it is unaccompanied by sensations 
 of motion. But does it not follow from the known laws of association, that as 
 the simultaneous excitation is common to both cases, it will, in the last case, 
 tend to arouse in consciousness that series of states which accompanied it in the 
 first ? Will it not tend to consolidate the entire series of such states into one 
 state ? And will it not thus come to be taken as the equivalent of such series ? 
 There cannot, I think, be a doubt of it. And if not, then we may see how an 
 excitement of consciousness, by the coexistent positions constituting a line, 
 serves as the representative of that serial excitement of it which accompanies 
 motion along that line. Let us return now to the above-described state of the 
 retina as occupied by an image or by a cluster of images. Relations of coexist- 
 ent position, like those we have here considered in respect to a particular linear 
 series, are established throughout countless such series in all directions over 
 the retina ; so putting each element in relation with every other. Further, by 
 a process analogous to that described, the state of consciousness produced by 
 the focal adjustment and convergence of the eyes to each particular point, has 
 been made a symbol of the series of coexistent positions between the eyes and 
 that point. After dwelling awhile on these facts, the genesis of our visual per- 
 ception of space will begin to be comprehensible. Every one of the retinal 
 elements simultaneously thrown into a state of partial excitement, arousing as 
 it does not only a partial consciousness of the sensation answering to its own 
 excitement, but also a partial consciousness of the many relations of coexistent 
 position established between it and the rest, which are all of them similarly ex- 
 cited and similarly suggestive, there results a consciousness of a whole area of 
 coexistent positions. Meanwhile the particular consciousness that accompanies 
 adjustment of the eyes, calling up as it does the line of coexistent positions 
 lying between the subject and the object specially contemplated ; and each of 
 the things, and parts of things, not in the centre of the field, exciting by its 
 more or less definite image an incipient consciousness of its distance, that is, of 
 the coexistent positions lying between the eye and it ; there is awakened a con- 
 sciousness of a whole volume of coexistent positions of Space in three dimen- 
 sions. Along with a complete consciousness of the one position to which the 
 visual axes converge, arises a nascent consciousness of an infinity of other posi- 
 tions a consciousness that is nascent in the same sense that our conscious- 
 ness of the various objects out of the centre of the visual field is nascent. One 
 
234 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 note the propositions in regard to the " ultimate realities " 
 with which he originally sets out. These propositions de- 
 clare him to be an agnostic or, in better language, a skep- 
 tic, or a disbeliever in the integrity of human knowledge. 
 For what faith can we have in a knowledge which has its 
 -deepest foundations in impenetrable mysteries? If we can- 
 not understand the first principles of knowledge, how are we 
 'really to know any thing ? If we cannot grasp the deepest 
 
 -addition must be made. As the innumerable relations subsisting among these 
 coexistent positions were originally established by motion ; as each of these rela- 
 tions came by habit to stand for the series of mental states accompanying the 
 motion which measured IT ; as every one of such relations must, when presented 
 to consciousness ', still tend to call up in an indistinct way that train of feelings 
 accompanying motion, which it represents y and as the simultaneous presentation 
 of an infinity of such relations will tend to suggest an infinity of such experi- 
 ences of motion, which, as being in all directions, must so neutralize one another 
 as to prevent any particular motion from being thought of ; there will arise, as 
 their common resultant, that sense of ability to move, that sense of freedom for 
 MOTION, which forms the remaining constituent in our notion of Space. 
 
 1 ' Any one who finds it difficult to conceive how, by so elaborate a pro- 
 cess as this, there should be reached a notion apparently so simple, so homo- 
 geneous, as that which we have of Space, will feel the difficulty diminished on 
 recalling these several facts : First, that the experiences out of which the no- 
 tion is framed and consolidated are in their essentials the same for ourselves and 
 for the ancestral races of creatures from which we inherit our organizations, and 
 that these uniform ancestral experiences, potentially present in the nervous 
 structures bequeathed to us, constitute a partially-innate preparedness for the 
 notion ; second, that the individual experiences which repeat these ancestral 
 experiences commence at birth, and serve to aid the development of the cor- 
 relative structures while they give them their ultimate definiteness ; third, that 
 every day throughout our lives, and throughout the whole of each day, we are 
 repeating our experiences of these innumerable coexistences of position and 
 their several equivalences to the serial states of feeling accompanying motions ; 
 and fourth, that after development is complete these experiences invariably 
 agree that these relations of coexistent positions are unchangeable are ever 
 the same toward each other and the subject are ever equivalent to the same 
 motions. On bearing in mind this inheritance of latent experiences, this early 
 commencement of the experiences that verify and complete them, this infinite 
 repetition of them, and their absolute uniformity ; and on further remembering 
 the power which, in virtue of its structure, the eye possesses of partially suggest- 
 ing to the mind countless such experiences at the same moment ; it will become 
 possible to conceive how we acquire that consolidated idea of Space in its totality, 
 which at first seems so inexplicable." 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 235 
 
 meaning of life, how are we really to live ? We would not be 
 understood to infer that this demoralizing skepticism, known 
 as the belief in the unknowable, is not thrown off in the bet- 
 ter portions of Mr. Spencer's teachings. No one who care- 
 fully examines his analysis of our conceptions of Space and 
 Time given below can fail to see that Mr. Spencer at times 
 
 Upon the Perception of Time. " The reciprocity between our cognitions of 
 Space and Time, alike in their primitive and most developed forms, being un- 
 derstood ; and the consequent impossibility of considering either of them 
 -entirely alone, being inferred ; let us go on to deal more particularly with Time. 
 As the notions of Space and Coexistence are inseparable, so are the notions of 
 Time and Sequence. It is impossible to think of Time without thinking of 
 some succession ; and it is equally impossible to think of any succession without 
 thinking of Time. * * * The doctrine that Time is knowable only by the suc- 
 cession of our mental states calls for little exposition, it is so well established a 
 doctrine. All that seems here necessary is to restate it in a way which will 
 bring out its harmony with the foregoing doctrine. * * * As any relation of co- 
 existent positions any portion of space is conceived by us as such or such, 
 -according to the number of other positions that intervene ; so any relation of 
 sequent positions any portion of time is conceived by us as such or such, ac- 
 cording to the number of other positions that intervene. Thus, a particular 
 time is a relation of position between some two states in the series of states 
 of consciousness. And Time in general, as known to us, is the abstract of 
 all relations of position among successive states of consciousness. Or, using 
 other words, we may say that it is the blank form in which these successive 
 states are presented and represented; and which, serving alike for each, is not 
 dependent on any. * * * The consciousness of Time must vary with size, with 
 structure, and with functional activity ; since the scale of time proper to each 
 creature is composed primarily of the marks made in its consciousness by the 
 rhythms of its vital functions, and secondarily of the marks made in its con- 
 sciousness by the rhythms of its locomotive functions : both which sets of 
 rhythms are immensely different in different species. Consequently the consti- 
 tution derived from ancestry settles the general character of the consciousness 
 within approximate limits. In our own case, for example, it is clear that there 
 are certain extremes within which our units of measure for time must fall. 
 The heart-beats and respiratory actions, serving as primitive measures, can 
 have their rates varied within moderate ranges only. The alternating move- 
 ments of the legs have a certain degree of slowness below which we cannot be 
 conscious of them, and a certain degree of rapidity beyond which we cannot 
 push them. Similarly with measures of time furnished by sensible motions 
 outside of us. There are motions too rapid for our perceptions, as well as 
 motions too slow for our perceptions ; and such consciousness of Time as 
 we get from watching objective motions must fall between these extremes." 
 "Psychology," vol. II., ch. xv. 
 
236 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 completely rises above the level of agnosticism. But this 
 fact only renders more confusing the system as a whole. 
 
 For instance, when we find such plain declarations of our 
 utter inability to understand the principles of knowledge as 
 occur in Spencer's opening volume we naturally look with 
 distrust upon all subsequent attempts to explain these prin- 
 ciples. In a word, why should Mr. Spencer expect us to 
 put faith in his analysis of those facts which in the very 
 outset of his work he tells us it is impossible to understand ? 
 Thus in the Chapter on Ultimate Scientific Ideas we have 
 the following declarations : 
 
 " It results, therefore, that Space and Time are wholly 
 incomprehensible. The immediate knowledge which we 
 seem to have of them proves, when examined, to be total 
 ignorance. While our belief in their objective reality is in- 
 surmountable, we are unable to give any rational account of 
 it. And to posit the alternative belief (possible to state but 
 impossible to realize) is merely to multiply irrationalities." 
 
 " Matter, then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely in- 
 comprehensible as Space and Time. Frame what supposi- 
 tions we may, we find, on tracing out their implications, 
 that they leave us nothing but a choice between opposite 
 absurdities." 
 
 " Thus neither when considered in connection with Space, 
 nor when considered in connection with Matter, nor when 
 considered in connection with Rest, do we find that Motion 
 is truly cognizable. All efforts to understand its essential 
 nature do but bring us to alternative impossibilities of 
 thought." 
 
 " While, then, it is impossible to form any idea of Force 
 in itself, it is equally impossible to comprehend its mode of 
 exercise." 
 
 And lastly : " Hence, while we are unable either to be- 
 lieve or to conceive that the duration of consciousness is in- 
 finite, we are equally unable either to know it as finite, or to 
 conceive it as finite." 
 
 1 " First Principles," ch. iii. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 237 
 
 Here is, indeed, a cheerful prospect at the beginning of a 
 study of perception ! All those principles which are ac- 
 knowledged by writers upon metaphysics to be " ultimate 
 realities," or fundamental ideas, are declared to be utterly 
 incomprehensible ; and, in way of reassurance, we are told 
 that to try to understand consciousness itself can but lead 
 to " absurdities." If agnosticism is an aggravated form of 
 skepticism, surely this is a high type of agnosticism ! 
 
 The first requisite in forming a true conception of Knowl- 
 edge is to understand that the word, in its widest applica- 
 tion, means the same thing as life ; and that life is coexten- 
 sive in fact, and therefore in meaning, with the universal 
 principle, Motion. All activities are expressions of this 
 principle, whether they display the structure and function 
 of consciousness (the subjective world) or the statical and 
 dynamical aspects of nature (the objective world). Structure 
 and function are but the obverse aspects of every activity ; 
 they correspond to the more abstract or general terms Mat- 
 ter and Force, using the word force, as is so often done, to 
 signify motion considered apart from its space-aspect. The 
 more acceptable terms Space and Time are also the equiva- 
 lents of structure and function. Bearing these truths in 
 mind, the difficulty of forming a rational theory of percep- 
 tion, or thought, disappears. 
 
 If thought is an activity, to comprehend it we have but to 
 state its conditions. The theory that thought is the expres- 
 sion of an absolute or unconditioned principle has but to be 
 reduced to its simplest terms in order to expose its ab- 
 surdity. The word absolute, or unconditioned, is a much- 
 abused term in metaphysical writings ; it is an outgrowth of 
 our conception of Time, which, when regarded as a prin- 
 ciple in itself, certainly seems to move, independently of 
 any imaginable conditions. If whenever the word absolute 
 occurs its equivalent Time is understood, we cannot be 
 misled. To call thought an entity, or an absolute principle 
 in itself, is but to block the progress of analysis by clinging 
 to one of the aspects of the phenomenon and disregarding 
 
238 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 the other. If thought is an activity, it must have struc- 
 ture as well as function ; it must have a space-aspect as 
 well as a time-aspect ; it must be an expression of the 
 universal principle, Motion. If there are two great oppo- 
 site spheres of existence, known as the subjective and the 
 objective, the ego and the non-ego, the conscious and the 
 unconscious, they are not absolutely different spheres, but 
 are interdependent, or related ; they act and react upon 
 each other, and are expressions of a fundamental fact which 
 underlies them both. What becomes of the charge that 
 such a theory as this is materialistic, when we remember 
 that the attributes of this principle are those which are 
 universally ascribed to God? This, however, is but an 
 ultimate analysis, it is not the living synthesis, of life. 
 
 The theory of Evolution is, that every phenomenon or 
 change is the product, or function, of its conditions. Every 
 phenomenon is a relation, or the joint expression of its terms. 
 The ultimate relation is Motion, and its terms are Space and 
 Time. The relation or fact called consciousness has for its 
 terms the objective and the subjective worlds. The study 
 of consciousness or perception (they are, in their widest 
 sense, equivalent terms) is the study of the conditions of 
 mental life, which are only relatively separable from the 
 conditions, of general life, or the universe. If we would 
 single out from this plexus of relations an ultimate relation, 
 or from this vast array of conditions ultimate conditions, we 
 have for result the ultimate relation, Motion ; the ultimate 
 conditions, Space and Time. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER (CONTINUED). 
 
 An Independent Study of the Relation of Perception to Organic Life The 
 Interdependence of Thought, Feeling, and Action. 
 
 THE study of psychology is fast becoming a definite 
 science. Little by little its ontological superstitions are 
 giving way to the more rational method of approaching the 
 mind through the medium of its functions and structures. 
 The old system of taking for granted the existence of a 
 psychical principle as the only means of explaining thought, 
 is yielding to the belief in a universal principle in which all 
 lines of cause and effect converge, whether they describe 
 physical, mental, or moral phenomena. Speaking on this 
 subject, Lewes says : " Psychology investigates the Human 
 Mind, not an individual's thoughts and feelings ; and has to 
 consider it as the product of the Human Organism, not only 
 in relation to the Cosmos, but also in relation to Society. 
 For man is distinctively a social being ; his animal impulses 
 are profoundly modified by social influences, and his higher 
 faculties are evolved through social needs. By this recogni- 
 tion of the social factor as the complement to the biological 
 factor, this recognition of the Mind as an expression of 
 organic and social conditions, the first step is taken toward 
 the constitution of our science. * * * An organism when in 
 action is only to be understood by understanding both it and 
 the medium from which it draws its materials, and on which 
 it reacts. Its conditions of existence are, first, the structural 
 mechanism, and, secondly, the medium in which it is placed. 
 When we know the part played by the mechanism, and the- 
 part played by the medium, we have gone as far as analysis 
 
 239 
 
240 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 can help us ; we have scientifically explained the actions of 
 the organism. This, which is so obvious in reference to vital 
 -actions that it is a physiological commonplace, is so little 
 understood in reference to the mental class of vital actions 
 that it may appear a psychological paradox, and a paradox 
 which no explanation can make acceptable so long as the Mind 
 is thought to be an entity inhabiting the organism, using 
 it as an instrument ; and so long as Society is thought to be 
 an artificial product of man's mind, in which case it cannot 
 be one of the conditions of mental evolution." 1 
 
 What is known, then, as the social factor in the study of 
 psychology is that feature of the science which is by far the 
 most difficult to comprehend. A theory of perception which 
 neglects the influence of this factor is thereby apparently sim- 
 plified, but it is incomplete ; for it is from the relations of man 
 to society that the bewildering complexities of mental phe- 
 nomena arise. The rudimentary communications of sentient 
 beings gave birth to intelligence, or the representative faculty, 
 and by the continued development of this faculty language 
 came into existence. Language, which is the condensing or 
 grouping of thoughts into symbols, has attained to such 
 perfection that a climax in its development has been reached 
 in the creation of a single word to express the interdepen- 
 dencies of the universe. In studying mental phenomena, in 
 tracing the connections of cause and effect throughout the 
 labyrinths of sentiency, we have to view human intelligence, 
 as a whole, in the light of an achievement or superstructure 
 of organic evolution. This is what is meant by taking into 
 account the social factor, the combined influences of life upon 
 life, of mind upon mind. The simplest definition of organic life 
 is the adjustment of the organism to its environment. Society, 
 as a whole, is an important part of the environment of each 
 human organism, for the response of each organism to 
 humanity marks the degree of development the quality of 
 life. The counterpart of this view of the social factor is 
 what might be called the individual factor, the other term of 
 
 1 Lewes : " The Study of Psychology," ch. i. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 241 
 
 the relation known as psychical life. In every perception, 
 however simple, the perceiving individual, as a whole, has a 
 determining influence. This view of the individual factor of 
 psychical life, the part played by the whole personality of 
 the perceiving individual in the phenomena of perception, is 
 if any thing more obscure than the influence of the social 
 factor. Perhaps the most direct way of explaining it is to 
 recite a passage, quoted in the foregoing chapter, from 
 Spencer's explanation of the genesis of our idea of time. 
 Time is a fundamental element of perception. If the indi- 
 vidual, as a whole, is shown to be a prominent factor in the 
 formation of our conception of time, it will follow that the 
 individual, as a whole, is an important factor in perception. 
 
 " The consciousness of Time must vary with size, with 
 structure, and with functional activity ; since the scale of 
 time proper to each creature is composed primarily of the 
 marks made in its consciousness by the rhythms of its vital 
 functions, and secondarily of the marks made in its con- 
 sciousness by the rhythms of its locomotive functions, both 
 which sets of rhythms are immensely different in different 
 species. Consequently, the constitution derived from an- 
 cestry settles the general character of the consciousness 
 within approximate limits. In our own case, for example, 
 it is clear that there are certain extremes within which our 
 units of measure for time must fall. The heart-beats and 
 respiratory actions, serving as primitive measures, can have 
 their rates varied within moderate ranges only. The alter- 
 nating movements of the legs have a certain degree of slow- 
 ness below which we cannot be conscious of them, and a 
 certain degree of rapidity beyond which we cannot push 
 them. Similarly with measures of time furnished by sensible 
 motions outside of us. There are motions too rapid for our 
 perceptions, as well as motions too slow for our perceptions ; 
 and such consciousness of time as we get from watching ob- 
 jective motions must fall between these extremes." 
 
 It is clear that the same argument applies to the genesis 
 
 1 lt Psychology," vol. II., pp. 213, 214. 
 
242 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 of our idea of space, namely, that consciousness of space is 
 generated by the experiences of the perceiving organism, 
 and is plainly governed by its size. Our ideas of the large 
 and the small, the infinite and the infinitesimal, the near and 
 the distant, have our individual space relationships as ever- 
 present factors. In a word, we have no absolute unit of 
 space or time, but depend upon the space and time aspects 
 of our own organisms for our estimates and conceptions of 
 these elements of all existence. Now, if we remember that 
 the word element is used in the sense of phase or appear- 
 ance, and that the indivisible fact which presents to us these 
 phases, both of our own existence and of external existence, 
 is motion, we shall perceive the significance of the familiar 
 dictum that life, both mental and physical, is an adjustment 
 of inner to outer relations. 
 
 These primordial inferences of existence called space and 
 time, which are so fundamental in their nature as to have 
 beguiled many into supposing them inscrutable, are plainly 
 functions or products of our individuality. Our ideas of 
 these two elements of thought are fashioned by our experi- 
 ences ; our estimates of quantity or size, and of durations, are 
 measured by ourselves; and we can never escape from these 
 personal units, as they are factors in the conceptions them- 
 selves. Thus we have in the study of psychology what 
 might be called a personal relation, the two terms of which 
 are the individual and humanity ; and it is in the elabora- 
 tions of this relation that we have all those perceptions 
 known as the world of thought. To get at the true mean- 
 ing of perception, however, it will be necessary to dis- 
 pense, for a time, with the use of this word thought. If 
 it be admitted that to think is to act, the difficulty is at 
 once removed ; but the manifest difference between what are 
 known as actions and thoughts must be explained before we 
 can hope to make clear the community of meaning between 
 these two words, which is the chief aim of modern psy- 
 chology. 
 
 In the restricted sense in which the word feeling- is used 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 243 
 
 we have another difficulty. There are no absolute demarca- 
 tions between the meanings of the words feelings, thoughts, 
 and actions. Let us examine the first and last of these 
 terms, with a view to discovering the true meaning of the 
 word thought. 
 
 Feelings and thoughts are what we know of our own lives ; 
 actions are what we know of the lives of others. For the sake 
 of convenience, let the word feeling represent all the changes 
 that take place within us, which are, of course, without num- 
 ber ; they include all thoughts and dreams, all emotions of 
 every degree of intensity to say nothing of that vast com- 
 plexity of internal changes making up the sum of our physi- 
 cal existence, of which we are for the most part unconscious. 
 Only a very small proportion of the changes which take place 
 within us ever occupy the attention. Our bodies and minds 
 are teeming with energies which we do not even suspect, 
 and which never cease from the beginning to the end of our 
 lives. 1 Whenever we move a muscle or experience a thought, 
 there are disturbances which disperse throughout the whole 
 system. These disturbances or changes, which have their 
 expressions in heat and sound, and other forms of motion, 
 only attract the attention when they are sufficiently abrupt 
 to shock us in some degree ; thus every form of feeling or 
 consciousness is an excitement. In fact, attention consists of 
 the ebb and flow of these internal changes. Attention or 
 consciousness is itself a disturbance or change, but it is an 
 aggregate or co-ordination of changes, a moving equilibrium 
 with certain well-defined conditions, as is illustrated by the 
 severe limits to which consciousness is subjected by the 
 laws of health, and the degrees of activity and inactivity of 
 the sensorium. 
 
 Thus we see that the word feeling has a much wider 
 meaning than is generally given to it, and it is only by a 
 recent feat of science that we are enabled to classify feel- 
 ings, thoughts, and actions under the one great heading of 
 
 1 This incessant internal activity is said, by a great physiologist, to produce a 
 tone of which we are unconscious. 
 
244 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 internal or subjective changes of the same fundamental na- 
 ture but differing widely in their processes. Perception, 
 therefore, does not necessitate a belief in a psychical prin- 
 ciple or any ultimate fact, other than that which is disclosed 
 through the study of the structures and the functions of 
 the human organism, and the faculties which arise from the 
 actions and reactions ever going on between the individual 
 and its physical and social environment. 
 
 Now that we have agreed upon a word to stand for that 
 great class of changes called internal or subjective, what 
 shall we call those changes which occur around us, or exter- 
 nally to us, known as objective? It is understood that the 
 word feeling shall represent all subjective changes or phe- 
 nomena, and that these changes viewed from without, or by 
 others, are actions. It will not do to separate feelings from 
 actions, excepting in a logical sense, as they are only names 
 respectively for the internal and external aspects of the same 
 thing. This fact becomes clearer when we remember that in 
 trying to find a name for all changes external to us we are 
 obliged to include in objective or external phenomena the ac- 
 tions of others ; for these actions are a very important part of 
 our surroundings. Using the word feeling in its broadest 
 sense (as signifying all those changes which take place within 
 us), it is clear that what are feelings to us are viewed as actions 
 by others, or what are feelings subjectively are actions ob- 
 jectively. In a word, we are compelled to classify the feel- 
 ings of humanity, or society, among the activities which 
 constitute the environment of each individual. 
 
 When light strikes the eye and produces within us the 
 phenomenon called sight, the sensorium, or the most active 
 part of our organism, is said to react in response to the 
 stimulus. The same term is used with regard to all the re- 
 sponses which we make to stimulations from without ; such 
 as in the cases of hearing to sound, sensitiveness to tempera- 
 ture, and resistance to strains. Again : when a bar of iron 
 is struck with force sufficient to produce perceptible heat, 
 the heat is said to be a reaction of the iron to the blow. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 24$ 
 
 When we place certain chemical substances, in definite pro- 
 portions and temperatures, in juxtaposition, the changes we 
 observe are called reactions ; and in a wider but not less exact 
 sense all the changes which we observe around us, from the 
 subtle relations called electric and magnetic to cosmical evo- 
 lutions ; from the energy which we call vegetable and animal 
 life to the great panorama of social and moral phenomena 
 known as human history ; from the convulsions which are 
 registered in the physical structure of our planet, and which 
 are repeated upon so much grander scales in the sun and in 
 distant stars, to the comparatively gentle changes of the 
 seasons and daily variations in temperature ; all are expres- 
 sions of the fundamental law or fact of action and reaction. 
 This law has many names : it is known in philosophy as evo- 
 lution ; physicists write about it as the conservation and 
 correlation, or the equivalence, of forces ; mathematicians 
 portray it as motion ; but of one thing we may be sure, that 
 the word action brings its essential nature truly before us, 
 and what we know as actions constitute its universal expres- 
 sion. This law means that every change is the exact result 
 of its circumstances ; otherwise expressed, that every phe- 
 nomenon is the function of its conditions. Cause and effect 
 are simply the opposite appearances of each event, changes 
 viewed from different standpoints in their succession ; and 
 these two factors, cause and effect, can never be more than 
 logically separated from each other ; they are merely phases 
 of the event. This law means that the universe is a plenum 
 of interdependent changes; each change we perceive being 
 the consequence of other changes, and that the great pro- 
 cession of events in which our lives appear and disappear is 
 the expression of one universal principle, law, or relation. 
 Is it not apparent, therefore, that it is alone in viewing 
 humanity as an active aggregate that its influence upon the 
 individual can be distinguished from that of nature in gen- 
 eral ? For if the actions of men and of nature are funda- 
 mentally the same, if the one is the product of the other, 
 and they are both the expression of one fact, is not the en- 
 
246 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 vironment of each individual both cosmical and social, an 
 empire of interdependent activities united in allegiance to a 
 single power ? 
 
 But we have said that psychical life or thought is a relation 
 having for its terms the individual, on the one hand, and the 
 "social factor" otherwise known as the aggregate intelli- 
 gence of the race, on the other. What, then, is it that 
 separates mind from nature, that gives human intelligence 
 an existence of its own, distinguished from general exist- 
 ence ? What forms intelligence into a whole, demarcating 
 the conscious from the unconscious world ? Is it not Lan- 
 guage ? Each human organism, by slow progressions of 
 development, actions and reactions between itself and its 
 surroundings, beginning with the rude comparisons of a rude 
 life, and growing into the complex relations which we call 
 social life, has slowly developed that vast organon of tran- 
 scribed thought which we call language or literature. The 
 individual organism has become gradually modified until we 
 find ourselves in possession of the faculty of responding to 
 the meaning of words. Through this delicate medium of 
 intelligence the comprehensive adjustments of human life 
 are made possible. The structural aspect of this intelli- 
 gence is language ; its functional aspect is thought. View- 
 ing thought from within, we classify it as internal change (or 
 feeling used in its widest sense) ; viewing it from without, it 
 is action ; and its community of nature with universal 
 change thus becomes apparent. 
 
 And now we are confronted with the profoundest question 
 of philosophy, the initial inquiry of psychology, the stum- 
 bling block of metaphysics. This is the vexed question of 
 subject and object ; this is where the idealist and the nomi- 
 nalist disagree, where the spiritualist and the materialist part 
 company. Upon the solution of this question depends the 
 success of psychology, the understanding of the true nature 
 of thought. If motion is the universal principle, having for 
 its aspects space and time, it is important to know what 
 constitutes this ever-present difference between space and 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 247 
 
 time ? Why are we powerless to merge these ideas in one ? 
 Why are we compelled to oscillate between these two terms 
 of the deepest of all differences, in order to form the con- 
 ception of motion or universality ? 
 
 The reply is this : that as our existence is individual, all 
 our knowledge is the function or consequence of this indi- 
 viduality. The difference, or relation, between ourselves and 
 our surroundings, between subject and object, self and not- 
 self, viewed in all its phases, gives us the sum of our exist- 
 ence. Time is the most abstract view possible of general 
 existence ; it is the consciousness of existence separated 
 from the events which fill it ; it is the subjective view of life. 
 Space is the objective or external view of general life, 
 separated from all particulars. Thus the aspects of motion, 
 space and time, are merely the natural products of the dif- 
 ference between subject and object ; and in this fundamen- 
 tal difference we have the explanation of psychical life, or 
 thought traced to the relatively simple adjustments of primi- 
 tive organisms to their environment. 
 
 Now it may be objected that this fundamental difference, 
 or relation, between self and not-self, between the creature 
 and its environment, is precisely the mystery of life and 
 thought, and that it is none the less a mystery because of 
 the simplification of its terms. 
 
 The reply to this is, that if by the term mystery is meant 
 a point or principle which defies analysis, I cordially 
 consent that life is a mystery ; but I deny that life is one 
 mystery and that thought is another, or that human life 
 presents us with a different mystery from that of universal 
 life, or that organic changes are either more or less mys- 
 terious than cosmical or inorganic changes. 
 
 If that unity in all things can be established which cul- 
 minates in the conception of God, a universal principle 
 whose aspects or attributes are the infinite and the absolute, 
 or space and time, philosophy will be fully satisfied. No 
 theory of providence which is built upon so commanding a 
 view of nature as this will shock the finest logical sensibilities. 
 
248 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 No teleology which can spring from such a conception as 
 this will appear narrow or anthropomorphic, or suffer by 
 comparison with the most dignified and resplendent achieve- 
 ments of thought. 
 
 To recapitulate, we have the following important results. 
 The first or primordial difference, or relation, 1 from which 
 the great phenomenon called thought is evolved, is the dif- 
 ference between subject and object, self and not-self. This 
 difference is the same as that which exists between time and 
 space. 
 
 Thinking is relationing, multiplying, or grouping differ- 
 ences. Every thought is expressed in terms of time and 
 space, and declares an action of which these are the aspects. 
 When we compare two existences, or become conscious of 
 external coexistences, we contrast the objective terms of two 
 distinct relations by dropping, or not attending to, the sub- 
 jective terms. When we estimate durations, or become con- 
 scious of abstract sequences or time, we contrast the subjec- 
 tive terms of two or more distinct relations by dropping, or 
 not attending to, the objective terms. Hence we have space 
 or coexistences considered as objective conceptions, relatively 
 
 1 In case any objection should be raised to the use of the words relation and 
 difference as synonyms, we quote the following as one of many authorities for the 
 statement that these words are practically identical in meaning : " Suppose an 
 incipient intelligence to receive two equal impressions of the color red. No 
 other experiences having been received, the relation between these two impres- 
 sions cannot be thought of in any way ; because there exists no other relation 
 with which it can be classed, or from which it can be distinguished. Suppose 
 two other equal impressions of red are received. There can still exist no idea 
 of the relation between them. For though there is a repetition of the pre- 
 viously-experienced relation, yet since no thing can be cognized save as of some 
 kind ; and since, by its very nature, kind implies the establishment of difference ; 
 there cannot, while only one order of relation has been experienced, be any 
 knowledge of it any thought about it. Now suppose that two unequal impres- 
 sions of red are received. There is experienced a second species of relation. 
 And if there are afterward presented many such pairs of impressions, the mem- 
 bers of which are severally equal and unequal, it becomes possible for the 
 constituents of each new pair to be vaguely thought of as like or unlike, 
 and as standing in relations like or unlike previous ones." Spencer's " Psy- 
 chology," vol. II., p. 212. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 249 
 
 distinguished from time or abstract sequences considered as 
 subjective conceptions. From these personal relations, or 
 differences, the great organon of thought is constructed. 
 From the primordial adjustments of an organism to its en- 
 vironment are evolved the adjustments of the organism of 
 humanity to the universe, through the co-ordinations of lan- 
 guage which give to the individual the social factor, or its 
 intellectual environment, enlarging the terms of this relation 
 by insensible progressions from those of an individual and 
 its species to those of a species and its cosmical surround- 
 ings. From this simple theory of perception we are enabled 
 to deduce the inestimable truth that morality, which is 
 simply the vastly extended sympathy of an individual for 
 its race, is made possible by intelligence, and that it is the 
 natural result of human progress. 
 
 The chief point of divergence between this theory of per- 
 ception and that taught by such writers as Lewes and Spen- 
 cer, is, that it stigmatizes the unknowable as involving a 
 contradiction in terms. Since knowledge is the product or 
 expression of a universal principle, from which perception is 
 seen to spring, to postulate an unknowable is to deny the 
 source of knowledge. But there is a deeper incongruity in 
 this term unknowable than can be deduced by comparing it 
 with any group of facts. As has already been explained, 
 every possible conception is an elaboration of the difference 
 between subject and object, self and not-self ; to postulate a 
 deeper existence than that of which life and knowledge are 
 the expression is to say that a relation is not the expression 
 of its terms, that thought is possible in the absence of its 
 factors. 
 
 In the light of the preceding argument, it is unnecessary 
 to say that metaphysical discussions are merely comparisons 
 of the meanings of words ; once in possession of the funda- 
 mental fact of the universe, or the ultimate analysis, no pos- 
 sible combination of terms can disturb us. Amid the fiercest 
 conflicts of opinion this truth remains secure. It is in the 
 possession of a multitude of minds who feel its power and 
 
250 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 express its meaning in their lives. Its language is action ; 
 its law is morality ; its sentiment is the sympathy which we 
 call humanity. Far from being an innovation, its light has 
 burned through the long ages of the beginnings of our race ; 
 no human life has been without its influence. The bright- 
 est promise which the future offers is, that this truth shall 
 gain universal sway ; that the actions of men shall express 
 that principle of harmony which the mind naturally imbibes 
 from nature. 
 
 In the widest meaning of the word thought, therefore, we 
 find a reconciliation between the contrasted terms feeling 
 and action, a contrast which springs from the first condition 
 of organic life, the difference between self and not-self, the 
 subjective and the objective, the creature and its environ- 
 ment. These are the factors of the phenomenon which 
 we call thought. This reconciliation gives us a complete 
 psychology without a psychical principle, a religion without 
 a revelation, a philosophy without an unknowable. 
 
 Let us now consider the advantages which accrue from an 
 understanding of the nature of Perception. 
 
 In the opening of the chapter entitled " Function," in 
 the first volume of Mr. Spencer's work on " Biology," we 
 find this extraordinary problem : " Does Structure originate 
 Function, or does Function originate Structure ? is a ques- 
 tion about which there has been disagreement. Using the 
 word Function in its widest signification, as the totality of 
 all vital actions, the question amounts to this : Does Life 
 produce Organization, or does Organization produce Life ? " 
 And Mr. Spencer seriously applies himself to solving this 
 problem. The fundamental error of Mr. Spencer's system 
 of philosophy, as we have before pointed out, is in the in- 
 completeness of its ultimate analysis. An ultimate analysis 
 leads us to a single fact. This fact we do not find clearly 
 stated : the relationships between its many names and 
 the many names of its aspects are not explained, and 
 the student is left in doubt as to what this fact really 
 fs. Spencer's philosophy is termed by its author syn- 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 2$i 
 
 thetic. It purports to give us a synthesis of life, a com- 
 manding view of reality. This word synthesis springs 
 from a fact of perception. The physical or objective side 
 of the phenomenon of perception, it will be remembered, 
 is in itself a vast synthesis, or building up of parts into a 
 whole. The outposts of the understanding, known as the 
 senses, are merely channels of agitation leading to the great 
 central structure of the nervous system, called the brain. 
 Light, heat, the effluences known as odors, the relative 
 rigidities called resistances, are simply different kinds of agi- 
 tations of the nervous system centring in the brain. Mr. 
 Du Bois-Reymond tells us that the chief distinction between 
 the two substances known as the muscles and the nerves, 
 and hence between body and mind, lies in the amount of 
 activity of which each is capable. Again Lewes, in a 
 study of the relations of physiology to psychology, and 
 the incidental examination of the nervous system, has re- 
 moved many of the superstitions which have crept into 
 these sciences under the guise of the arbitrary localiza- 
 tion of functions, and has demonstrated the inseparable 
 nature of the two aspects of physiological phenomena 
 known as structure and function. From the simple organic 
 substance known as protoplasm, which, under analysis, dis- 
 closes a very high molecular multiplicity, to the synthesis of 
 organic life instanced in the individual of our own species, 
 structure and function are shown to be but obverse aspects 
 of each group of facts, which again are merged in the larger 
 fact of organic life. Hence the co-ordination of activities is 
 another name for organic life. When we use the word life 
 in a wider sense than that indicated by this co-ordination or 
 organization, it becomes applicable to that wider range of 
 activities known as mechanical or chemical, usually regarded 
 as distinct from vital. 
 
 Again : the science of organic chemistry, which is yet in 
 its infancy, has placed beyond dispute the great fact that the 
 distinction between vital and chemical activities is but super- 
 ficial. This discovery points to the conclusion, illustrated 
 
THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 by Lewes, that the structures or substances of the human 
 organism, as of all organisms, are directly accountable for 
 the type of activity which each organism displays. This 
 gives us the startling fact that the four organic elements, 
 oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, simply assert their 
 natures in all the phenomena of organic life ; jn other words, 
 that the affinities or activities of these and allied elements 
 account for all vital functions, from the primordial assimila- 
 tion, growth, and reproduction observed in the structureless 
 speck of protoplasm to the moral sentiments and the most 
 extended perceptions of man. 
 
 It is in the light of this fact that I object to Spencer's 
 definition of Life. For if organic life is accounted for by 
 those activities which outside of the vital sphere we call 
 chemical and mechanical, then the word life, in its broadest 
 sense, means activity ; organic life means organized activity ; 
 and no definition of organization, however extended, can 
 illuminate the meaning of the general principle which we call 
 Life. To say, therefore, that " Life is the definite combina- 
 tion of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and suc- 
 cessive, in correspondence with external coexistences and 
 sequences," is to say that an organism is an instance of the 
 adjustment of its internal activities to its external related 
 activities, and that organic life is organic life. Again : to 
 ask the question, Does life produce organization, or does 
 organization produce life ? is equivalent to asking whether 
 cause produces effect, or whether effect produces cause. 
 The only answer that can be given is to be found in the 
 nature of perception, which proceeds inevitably from sim- 
 plicity to complexity, from unity to variety, from the one 
 to the many, from cause to effect, from the principle of 
 activity, or motion, to the facts or realities of life. 
 
 That this metaphysical incompleteness of Spencer's phi- 
 losophy vitiates his whole system, is true only in a limited 
 sense. When so vast a body of data is organized into a 
 picture of life and its surroundings, the failure to strike 
 the key-note of the nature of perception is certainly pro- 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 253 
 
 ductive of minor discords, of unnecessarily involved expla- 
 nations which lead to no useful results. But these lesser 
 defects are overwhelmed by the comprehensive plan, the 
 consummate skill, the tireless research, and the earnestness 
 and noble purpose, of the work. Spencer's philosophy con- 
 stitutes an education in itself. No one can really study it 
 without feeling its elevating influence, and being benefited 
 by the splendid intellectual discipline which it imparts. But 
 it is further to be remarked : The tenor of Spencer's system 
 is sociological ; his illustrations are continually rising to the 
 level of social phenomena, and his originality is to be found 
 almost exclusively in this field. 
 
 Before looking on this bright side, however, it is incum- 
 bent upon us to examine the psychological department of his 
 work, which, we are compelled to admit, has the disadvan- 
 tage of demanding the most study and yielding the least 
 in return of any of his writings. The scope of this subject 
 of psychology has been outlined, from an independent stand- 
 point, in the preceding part of this chapter, and in the one 
 which follows we propose to examine carefully the method 
 of treatment which it receives at the hands of our author. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER (CONTINUED). 
 
 The Analysis of Reason The Fundamental Intuition The Contrasted 
 Theories of Perception. 
 
 IN the second volume of Spencer's " Principles of Psychol- 
 ogy," the author apologizes for the abstruseness of the opening 
 portions of the work, and explains that the method which 
 he adopts, namely, that of a systematic analysis, requires 
 that it should begin with the most complex and special 
 forms of intellectual activity, and progress in stages to the 
 simplest or most general. He further says that this method 
 will tax the powers of even the habitual student ; and to 
 those who are unaccustomed to introspection (or the study 
 of the operations of the mind) he recommends patience, and 
 holds out the reward of an ultimate comprehension of the 
 subject if they will but persevere. 
 
 The first words of the second chapter are these : " Of 
 intellectual acts, the highest are those which constitute 
 Conscious Reasoning [or] called conscious to distinguish it 
 from the unconscious or automatic reasoning that forms so 
 large an element in ordinary perception. Of conscious 
 reasoning, the kind containing the greatest number of compo- 
 nents definitely combined is Quantitative Reasoning. And 
 of this, again, there is a division, more highly involved than 
 the rest, which we may class apart as Compound Quantitative 
 Reasoning. * * * Even in Compound Quantitative Reasoning 
 itself there are degrees of composition, and to initiate our 
 analysis rightly we must take first the most composite type. 
 Let us contemplate an example." 
 
 The example given is the method of reasoning pursued 
 
 254 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 2$ $ 
 
 by an engineer in estimating the comparative strength of 
 bridges of different sizes. The vast amount of experience, 
 or special knowledge, concerning the comparative strength 
 of different materials, which the ability to solve such a prob- 
 lem would pre-suppose, is reduced to a minimum by taking, 
 for example, an iron bridge, and the problems of strain are 
 simplified by limiting the example to the tubular class of 
 bridges. By these means the whole bearing of the example, 
 which is made to represent, as the foregoing quotation shows, 
 the most complex form of " Compound Quantitative Reason- 
 ing" '. is the joint application of two problems in mechanics 
 to the building of bridges. The first of the propositions can 
 be stated as follows : The bulks of similar masses of matter 
 are to each other as the cubes of their linear dimensions, and 
 consequently when the masses are of the same material 
 their weights are also to each other as the cubes of their 
 linear dimensions. This proposition, stated and explained 
 in language familiar to all, is this : to determine the differ- 
 ences between masses, agree upon a unit of mass, the most 
 convenient form of which has been found to be a cube, or a 
 solid of equal linear dimensions. Since the length, breadth, 
 and thickness of this unit of mass are equal, its edges or lines 
 are equal, so that a comparison between the total number of 
 the cubic-shaped units in each mass can be made by compar- 
 ing the linear dimensions, providing the number of linear 
 units in the linear dimensions is first made to agree with the 
 number of cubic units in the respective masses. The prob- 
 lem states that the number of linear units in the three 
 dimensions multiplied together (or cubed in case the dimen- 
 sions are equal) will equal the number of cubic units in the 
 respective masses, or that the masses are to each other as 
 the cubes of the linear dimensions. The stages, therefore, 
 in this first of the two problems, the joint use of which is 
 cited as furnishing an example of the most complex order of 
 " Compound Quantitative Reasoning," are progressions of 
 equations, or equalities. All mathematical progressions are 
 steps from one equality to another, beginning always with 
 
.256 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 those simple equalities which are evident to the senses, or 
 sensible equations. Some savages who are unable to count, 
 form very good ideas of the comparative bulks of masses ; but 
 until they learn to count and measure they cannot understand 
 that numbers can be made to represent bulk. It requires no 
 mathematical mind, however, to see that they can ; and the 
 foregoing problem, stated in terms which the unmathematical 
 reader can at once understand, would be simply this : By mul- 
 tiplying together the length, breadth, and thickness of a mass, 
 we get a number which expresses the volume of the mass in 
 any desired units. This is the extent of the question ; for it 
 goes without saying, that if numbers are made to express the 
 exact volumes of masses, variations in volume imply varia- 
 tions in numbers, and comparisons of numbers are compari- 
 sons of masses. 
 
 The second problem is not so easy to reduce to its steps 
 of equivalence, or the equations by which its conclusions are 
 reached. It is stated as follows : In similar masses of mat- 
 ter which are subject to compression or tension, or, as in 
 this case, to the transverse strain, the power of resistance 
 varies as the squares of the (like) linear dimensions. Here 
 we have two things made to represent each other, or equal- 
 ized, or brought to an equation, which are widely different 
 in nature, namely, the power of resistance in a mass and a 
 superficial measurement. For if things vary with other 
 things, they must represent them, or be equal to them, at 
 least in the property which forms the base of the compari- 
 son. In this case, the squares of the linear dimensions of 
 two masses are said to vary with the power of resistance of 
 the masses. Therefore the squares of the linear dimensions 
 must in some way be made equal to the power of resistance 
 of the respective masses. How is this done ? There is a 
 law in mechanics, called the law of least resistance, which 
 locates the greatest strain in a structure in a plane. This law 
 or rule reduced to its simplest form is, that if a tube of iron of 
 uniform size and strength be subjected to the transverse 
 strain of (say) its own weight, the place at which it would 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 break, if the strain exceeded its strength, would be a trans- 
 verse section of the tube, or the plane of fracture. This 
 transverse section, or plane of fracture, is naturally two of 
 the linear dimensions of the tube, or mass, multiplied to- 
 gether, and in the case of transverse strains it would be 
 the two transverse linear dimensions which would be multi- 
 plied together to represent this transverse section in units 
 of squares. Here, then, the equality of nature is established 
 between the results of the two problems. In the first a 
 number was made to represent the bulk and also the weight 
 of compared masses. Since every mass has three linear di- 
 mensions, if it is desired to express these masses in com- 
 mon multiples, or divisions of their masses, of course these 
 divisions of mass, or units, must have three linear dimensions ; 
 and if we would compare the aggregates of units in each 
 mass, the calculations, or process by which these aggregates 
 are arrived at, must be compared. Now the calculations 
 in cases of solids or masses are cubic, or three lines multi- 
 plied together, and in cases of surfaces they are squares, 
 or two lines multiplied together. The power of resistance 
 of a structure to a transverse strain has been simulated 
 in the foregoing problem by a surface, and the weight 
 of masses by solids, so that the final comparison between the 
 results of the two problems is simply a comparison between 
 the methods of estimating the number of superficial units 
 in a surface and the number of solid units in a solid : one 
 is done by multiplying together the linear units contained 
 in two straight lines, and the other is done by multiplying 
 together the linear units contained in three straight lines. 
 Now if a certain operation is performed twice to accomplish 
 a certain purpose, and the same operation is performed three 
 times to accomplish another purpose, it is plain that the 
 result of the operation in the latter case will be larger than 
 that in the former, in proportion to the size of the original 
 operation. In other words, three times a given quantity will 
 be more than twice the same quantity, and the difference 
 between the results will increase in exact proportion to the 
 
258 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 size or power of the unit employed. This is equivalent to* 
 saying that the difference between three feet and two feet is 
 greater than the difference between three inches and two 
 inches, or simpler still, that three is greater than two. From 
 this simple difference, the perception of which is not an in- 
 tuition, because it is a sensible fact which can be demonstrated 
 mechanically, we can build up, by retracing the steps of the 
 above analysis, the complex problems that homogeneous 
 masses, and therefore their weights, are to each other as 
 the cubes of their linear dimensions, and that the power 
 of homogeneous masses of like proportional dimensions to 
 resist transverse strains varies as the square of the like linear 
 dimensions. The whole comparison grows out of the fact 
 that the operation by which the weight is estimated is per- 
 formed three times, and in the case of estimating the power 
 it is performed but twice ; and this gives us the startling 
 result that three is greater than two ! 
 
 Speaking of the above problems, Mr. Spencer says : 
 " But now, leaving out of sight the various acts by which 
 the premises are reached and the final inference is drawn, 
 let us consider the nature of the cognition that the ratio 
 between the sustaining forces in the two tubes must differ 
 from the ratio between the destroying forces ; for this cog- 
 nition it is which here concerns us, as exemplifying the 
 most complex ratiocination. There is, be it observed, no 
 direct comparison between these two ratios. How, then, 
 are they known to be unlike ? Their unlikeness is known, 
 through the intermediation of two other ratios to which they 
 are severally equal. 
 
 " The ratio between the sustaining forces equals the ratio 
 I 2 : 2 2 . The ratio between the destroying forces equals the 
 ratio i 3 : 2 3 . And, as it is seen that the ratio I 2 : 2 s is un- 
 equal to the ratio I 3 : 2 s , it is by implication seen that the 
 ratio between the sustaining forces is unequal to the ratio 
 between the destroying forces. What is the nature of this 
 implication ? or, rather, What is the mental act by which this 
 implication is perceived? It is manifestly not decomposable 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 259 
 
 into steps. Though involving many elements, it is a single 
 intuition, 1 and, if expressed in an abstract form, amounts to 
 the axiom : Ratios which are severally equal to certain 
 other ratios that are unequal to each other are themselves 
 unequal." 5 
 
 We submit that there is a direct comparison between two 
 simple quantities to which the compared ratios are reduced 
 by analysis. This perception of difference, which is so simple 
 and mechanical in its nature that it can be viewed as a sensa- 
 tion, is the fundamental activity of every perception, and to it 
 every mathematical problem can be reduced. Its origin can 
 be shown to be in the difference between self and not-self, 
 between the consciousness of a single serial existence, or 
 time, and of many existences, coexistences, or space. The 
 statement that this final difference is only relative, ex- 
 pressing the obverse terms of the ultimate relation which 
 we call motion, is merely the completion of the conception, 
 the illumination of the principle, of perception. 
 
 That this principle is not taught by Mr. Spencer, those 
 who will carefully study the first ten chapters of the second 
 volume of " Psychology " will have good reason to believe ; 
 and yet a deep study of these chapters reveals abundant 
 materials from which this principle can be drawn. 
 
 Following the problems of weight and resistance, Propo- 
 sition XI. of the fifth book of Euclid is cited. After the 
 demonstration of this problem, the following remarks 
 occur: 
 
 " What are here the premises and inference ? It is 
 argued that the first relation being like the second in a. 
 certain particular (the superiority of its first magnitude) ; 
 and the third relation being also like the second in this, 
 particular; the first relation must be like the third in this, 
 particular. The same argument is applicable to any other 
 particular, and therefore to all particulars. Whence the 
 implication is, that relations that are like the same rela- 
 
 1 Intuition according to Spencer is an undecomposable cognition. 
 * " Principles of Psychology," vol. II., ch. ii. 
 
260 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 tion in all particulars, or are equal to it, are like each other 
 in all particulars, or are equal. 
 
 " Thus the general truth that relations which are equal to 
 the same relation are equal to each other a truth of which 
 the foregoing proposition concerning ratios is simply one of 
 the more concrete forms must be regarded as an axiom. 
 Like its analogue things that are equal to the same thing 
 are equal to each other it is incapable of proof. Seeing 
 how closely, indeed, the two are allied, some may contend 
 that the one is but a particular form of the other, and should 
 be included under it. They may say that a relation consid- 
 ered quantitatively is a species of thing ; and that what is 
 true of all things is, by implication, true of relations. Even 
 were this satisfactorily shown, however, it would be needful, 
 as will presently be seen, to enunciate this general law in 
 respect to relations. * * * 
 
 " The truth, relations that are equal to the same relation 
 are equal to each other which we thus find is known by 
 an intuition (an undecomposable mental act), and can only 
 so be known, underlies important parts of geometry. An 
 examination of the first proposition in the sixth book of 
 Euclid, and of the deductions made from it in succeeding 
 propositions, will show that many theorems have this axiom 
 for their basis. But on this axiom are built far wider and 
 far more important conclusions. It is the foundation of 
 all mathematical analysis. * Alike in working out the sim- 
 plest algebraical question and in performing those higher 
 analytical processes of which algebra is the root, it is the 
 one thing taken for granted at every step. The successive 
 transformations of an equation are linked together by acts 
 of thought of which this axiom expresses the most general 
 form" ' 
 
 This citation is given for the purpose of showing the great 
 importance which Spencer attaches to this complex rule or 
 axiom that " Relations which are equal to the same relation 
 are equal to each other" ; also, how he clings to the word 
 
 1 " Principles of Psychology," vol. II., ch. II. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 26 1 
 
 relation as preferable to thing or fact ; although it is the 
 more abstruse term, and how decided he is in saying that this 
 rule is an intuition, a word which he interprets as " cognition 
 reached by an undecomposable mental act." : It is manifestly 
 a part of our theory of perception to deny the existence of 
 intuitions when the term is used in the above sense ; for that 
 sense presupposes an unknowable. " Intuition " is a very 
 useful word in describing mental procedures, but it can 
 never have a deeper meaning than that of a rapid percep- 
 tion, so rapid as to appear to be undecomposable. But the 
 principle of perception explains every possible intuition. 
 Notwithstanding that the mental organism of man has 
 reached such perfection that thought is able to cover vast 
 areas as by a flash of light, the operation is composite, and 
 can be traced step by step to the primordial difference 
 between subject and object, the primeval inference from 
 which all thought is elaborated. Far from this rule, "that 
 relations which are equal to the same relation are equal to 
 each other," being an undecomposable intuition, it is a 
 manifest complexity of the perception of difference which 
 is involved in every mathematical equation. 
 
 The reason for using the word relations instead of things 
 in the so-called axiomatic intuition is thus given by Mr. 
 Spencer : " It should be noted that the relations thus far 
 dealt with are relations of magnitudes, and, properly speak- 
 ing, relations of homogeneous magnitudes ; or in other 
 words, ratios. In the geometrical reasoning quoted from 
 the fifth book of Euclid this fact is definitely expressed. In 
 the algebraical reasoning, homogeneity of the magnitudes 
 dealt with seems, at first, not implied ; since the same equa- 
 tion often includes at once magnitudes of space, time, force, 
 value. But on remembering that these magnitudes can be 
 treated algebraically only by reducing them to the common 
 denomination of number, and considering them as abstract 
 magnitudes of the same order, we see that the relations 
 dealt with are really those between homogeneous magni- 
 
 1 " Psychology," vol. II, p. 12, foot-note. 
 
262 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 tudes are really ratios. The motive for constantly speak- 
 ing of them under the general name relations, of which ratios 
 are but one species, is that only when they are so classed can 
 the intellectual processes by which they are co-ordinated be 
 brought under the same category with other acts of reason- 
 ing." ' The word ratio means proportion, the comparison 
 of numbers or quantities. The terms of the comparison 
 may be things, or other ratios, or relations indifferently, for 
 things are merely complexities of numbers and quantities. 
 
 The fact that all acts of reasoning spring from or can be 
 explained by a perception, or sensation, of difference, is 
 opposed to the statement that it is necessary to speak of the 
 terms of an equation as Relations, in order to bring the in- 
 tellectual process represented " under the same category 
 with other acts of reasoning " ; for equations are merely 
 comparisons. The sign of equality does not mean identity, 
 but equivalence. There is always a difference implied in 
 every statement of equality. The primordial difference, 
 which is to be found between the conceptions of time and 
 space, or between the facts known as subject and object, the 
 self and the not-self, the creature and its surroundings, 
 accounts for this difference, which is implied in the most 
 complete possible equations. If "quantitative reasoning" 
 is the most exact, quantitative equalities express the finest 
 possible shade of difference ; and this difference is that of 
 position or space, which means the same thing as quantity, 
 for the word quantity never signifies more than an aspect of 
 any phenomenon. To equalize homogeneous things in their 
 quantitative aspect is to reduce their difference to that of 
 position, or only space ; but this difference of position re- 
 mains so long as comparison is possible. 
 
 Straight lines are generated by points in motion. The 
 most abstract terms of comparison possible are two straight 
 lines, because their difference can be expressed in the sim- 
 plest imaginable motion. Two equal straight lines give us the 
 ideal equation. If these straight lines are merged in one, 
 
 1 " Psychology," vol. II., ch. ii. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 263 
 
 equality disappears in identity, and we have remaining the 
 fact known as the simplest possible motion a straight line. 
 
 But, it will be asked, if the primordial or simplest differ- 
 ence is that between object and subject (the function of 
 individuality), if this simplest difference has its source in the 
 contracted aspects of motion, known as time and space, why 
 is it said that the faintest possible shade of difference, which 
 is detected at the bottom of every equation, is that of 
 position, or space? Why does not the other factor of the 
 ultimate relation, known as time, stand for an equally fine 
 shade of difference ? Why does not the factor of time also 
 appear in the ultimate analysis of equations? It has been 
 said above that the ideal equation was to be found in two 
 equal straight lines : " Two equal mathematical lines placed 
 one upon the other merge into identity, and alone exhibit 
 that species of coexistence which can lapse into single exist- 
 ence." A straight line is generated by a point in motion. 
 Two equal straight lines compared exhibit the simplest of 
 all possible relations, excepting the ultimate relation, which 
 is motion. A glance at the genesis of the conception of an 
 equation of two equal straight lines shows how absolutely 
 dependent we are, for every step of reasoning composing it, 
 upon the fundamental fact of motion. But in this fact of 
 motion is not the element of time always implied ? Can we 
 generate a straight line without employing the factor time ? 
 Can we form an equation without acknowledging the pres- 
 ence of time in the synthesis? 
 
 The first coexistence of which the mind becomes con- 
 scious, namely, the ego and the non-ego, employs the con- 
 sciousness of self as a factor. The conception of time is the 
 subjective aspect of that synthesis of motion known to us as 
 personal existence, and springs from the consciousness of 
 serial life considered apart from all conditions. The con. 
 sciousness of self, therefore, gives rise to our conception of 
 time ; and as the subjective is a factor in every coexistence, 
 no equation can be formed without employing time. But 
 we are continually forgetting, or dropping, the subjective 
 
264 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 factor of every coexistence. When we observe objects in 
 space, we form the idea of objective coexistence ; but it is 
 done by recognizing the relation, or fact, of coexistence 
 between ourselves and each object, and then forgetting, or 
 dropping, the subjective term. In this sense, and only in 
 this sense, is the axiom that things which are equal to the 
 same thing are equal to each other a primordial form of 
 inference. It is the method of all comparisons, but it is 
 manifestly composite and is the union of two distinct com- 
 parisons, the establishment of two distinct relations, or facts 
 of equality. In comparisons, or equations which rise above 
 the simple relation of coexistence, the presence of the sub- 
 jective factor becomes more and more obscure. If, for 
 instance, we would establish equality of magnitude between 
 three objects, we measure them all by one and declare that 
 each of the remaining two, being equal to the one first 
 measured, or selected as a measure, is equal to each other. 
 If the objects were increased to four instead of three, the 
 process would only be repeated, and the axiom would read, 
 All things which are equal to the same thing are equal to 
 one another, or the relation of equality is constant between 
 like terms. 
 
 Among homogeneous objects this relation of equality 
 amounts to a declaration that the compared objects are 
 alike excepting in position ; or, in other words, the primor- 
 dial difference of space lasts as long as comparison remains 
 possible, and is the last to give way before identity. In all 
 this, however, the element of time is present, for the very 
 act of reasoning, or comparing, or ratiocination, implies the 
 lapse of time, and the first step beyond the conception of 
 time implies space, or not-self. 
 
 But it may be objected, if the faintest possible shade of 
 difference between facts is to be found in the comparison of 
 two equal straight lines, and the source of difference itself, 
 or the primordial or simplest of all differences, is to be found 
 in the comparison of time and space, or subject and object, 
 what is the difference between these differences ? The reply 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 26$ 
 
 is, that when we compare two straight lines we compare two 
 motions, or two separate facts ; and in comparing time and 
 space, we have that contrast between the aspects of motion, 
 as an indivisible fact, which is the function of our individu- 
 ality, the germ of intelligence, the beginning of life and of 
 perception. Thus we see our utter inability to escape from 
 the primordial fact of motion, which gives birth to every 
 conception, for in the contrasted aspects of this fact we 
 have the source of every inference. 
 
 In the sixth and seventh chapters of the same work we 
 find a labored argument, the purpose of which is to review 
 the subject of " perfect " and " imperfect quantitative reason- 
 ing," thereby bringing the subject down to the subsequent 
 chapter entitled " Reasoning in General." All through this 
 argument a persistent effort is made to prove that the propo- 
 sition, " Relations which are equal to the same relation are 
 equal to each other," is what might be termed an irreducible 
 axiom, the initial act of reasoning. 
 
 In the chapter entitled " The Final Question," second 
 division of the same volume, Mr. Spencer endeavors to prove 
 that a complete theory of knowledge is impossible at the 
 present stage of human culture. By a complete theory of 
 knowledge he seems to mean a comprehension of the princi- 
 ples of life and mind, the determination of which is the aim 
 of all philosophy. This assertion is thus set forth : " But 
 while a true theory of knowledge is impossible without a 
 true theory of the thing knowing and a theory of the thing 
 known, which is true as far as it goes; and while it follows 
 that advance toward a true theory of any one depends on 
 advances toward true theories of the others ; it is, I think, 
 manifest that, since a true theory of knowledge implies a 
 true co-ordination of that which knows with that which is 
 known, the ultimate form of such a theory can be reached 
 only after the theories of that which knows and of that which 
 is known have reached their ultimate forms. * * * That the 
 theories of the known and of the knowing have assumed 
 their finished shapes, and that a finished theory of Knowledge 
 
266 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 is now possible, would, of course, be an absurd assumption." 
 Here we have two distinct assertions ; the first is, that a true 
 theory of Knowledge can be formed, providing we can form 
 -a " true theory of the thing knowing and a theory of the 
 thing known, which is true as far as it goes." The second 
 is, that a true theory of knowledge is impossible as yet, be- 
 cause " the ultimate form of such a theory can be reached 
 only after the theories of that which knows and of that which 
 is known have reached their ultimate forms "; and the 
 assumption that this ultimate form of theory has been 
 reached is declared to be an absurdity. This, of course, is 
 equivalent to saying that a true theory of Knowledge (using 
 the word in its true sense, to include the knowing and the 
 known) has not been arrived at, and cannot be arrived at 
 in the present state of human culture. 
 
 The theory of Knowledge, therefore, which Mr. Spencer 
 offers is admitted by himself to be imperfect, incomplete, 
 less than true. Is not this a rather discouraging admission, 
 when we consider the vast amount of introspective study 
 which his system contains ? The degree of this necessary 
 incompleteness of our conception of knowledge is not de- 
 fined, but it seems to be measured by the incompleteness of 
 our understanding of the principles of knowledge, or the 
 categories of thought. Thus we are told that " Developed 
 intelligence is framed upon certain organized and consoli- 
 dated conceptions of which it cannot divest itself ; and which 
 it can no more stir without using than the body can stir 
 without help of its limbs." 1 This asserts that these " organ- 
 ized and consolidated conceptions " are absolutely essential 
 to the activity of the intelligence. We are not told what 
 kind of activity it is which organizes and consolidates these 
 conceptions, without which the mind is said to be incapable 
 of procedure of any kind. It will be remembered that these 
 conceptions are five in number ; they are enumerated in the 
 chapter on " Ultimate Scientific Ideas," in " First Principles," 
 as follows : Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and Force. These 
 
 1 " Principles of Psychology," vol. II., p. 309. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 267 
 
 conceptions were declared to be utterly incomprehensible ; 
 any attempt to understand them was said to lead to absurd- 
 ities. Again : they were aggravated in a sixth conception, 
 called consciousness. This combination of incomprehensi- 
 bles was also declared to be utterly incomprehensible, which, 
 it must be admitted, was but a fair inference. Now is it 
 surprising, with this combination of inconceivable concep- 
 tions aggregated into an incomprehensible consciousness, all 
 being manifestations of the unknowable, to set out with, 
 that we should have a theory of knowledge in some degree 
 incomplete ? As a further illustration of the incompleteness 
 of Mr. Spencer's theory of knowledge, we would call atten- 
 tion to his belief in the existence of " organized and consoli- 
 dated conceptions," which are absolutely essential to intel- 
 lectual activity. 
 
 Conceptions are surely the fruit of intellectual activity, 
 and to postulate conceptions already " organized and con- 
 solidated," as a primary condition to intellectual procedures, 
 is correct only in a very limited sense ; in a broad sense it is 
 equivalent to saying that the mind can act without acting. 
 Here we have the vital fault of Mr. Spencer's psychology. 
 It teaches distinctly that " reason is absolutely incapable of 
 justifying its assumption. An assumption it is at the outset. 
 An assumption it must remain to the last." From a less 
 careful writer than Spencer these words might be passed 
 over as an inadvertence, but they are too consistent with the 
 rest of his psychological reasoning, and too prominent in 
 themselves, to fail to impress us. It is clearly admitted that 
 all intellectual activity is included under the broadest mean- 
 ing of the word reasoning. 
 
 By following out Mr. Spencer's idea of reasoning, there- 
 fore, in which it is said that the activity of reasoning extends 
 in an unbroken chain from those automatic procedures 
 known as reflex action to the highest efforts of the mind, we 
 shall perceive that it is hardly consistent with that theory of 
 knowledge which declares that the activities of the mind 
 
 1 " Principles of Psychology," vol. II., p. 317. 
 
268 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 depend absolutely upon organized consolidated conceptions 
 which are utterly incomprehensible. " Reasoning, however," 
 says Mr. Spencer, " is nothing more than re-coordinating 
 states of consciousness already co-ordinated in certain simpler 
 ways. * * * Men of science, now as in all past times, subor- 
 dinate the deliverances of consciousness reached through 
 mediate processes to the deliverances of consciousness 
 reached through immediate processes ; or, to speak strictly, 
 they subordinate those deliverances reached through pro- 
 longed and conscious reasoning to those deliverances reached 
 through reasoning that has become so nearly automatic as 
 no longer to be called reasoning." ] In a word, the highest 
 achievements of the mind are submitted to the arbitration 
 of the senses, or those automatic co-ordinations which may 
 be regarded as the natural activities of the physical organ- 
 ism, because so simple that they cannot be classed as mental. 
 
 If reasoning is thus traced from the simplest organic co-or- 
 dinations or activities to those involved efforts of the mind 
 commonly classed as reasoning, and if it is admitted that the 
 re-coordinations (or higher reasonings) cannot give to the 
 results reached a validity independent of that possessed by 
 the previously co-ordinated states, where is the break in a 
 chain of reasoning reaching from the simplest organic fact to 
 the most complex, or from the first co-ordinations to the 
 most involved co-ordinations ? Deductions when correct 
 are but natural effects of certain causes given in the 
 premises from which the deductions are made. Logical de- 
 ductions are the natural consequences of the meaning of 
 words, the symbolic representations of organic activities. 
 
 When Spencer teaches, therefore, that all the activities of 
 the mind can be included under the broadest meaning of the 
 word reasoning, and in the same chapter asserts that 
 " Reasoning is absolutely incapable of justifying its assump- 
 tion, an assumption it is at the outset, an assumption it 
 must remain to the last," the contradiction is evident ; for 
 after identifying reasoning with all organic activity, it would 
 
 1 " Principles of Psychology," vol. II., p. 315. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 269 
 
 be just as sensible to say that cause and effect, which are the 
 obverse appearances of every fact, are arbitrary appear- 
 ances, assumptions which cannot justify themselves, as to say 
 that reasoning cannot justify itself. Facts express and jus- 
 tify themselves, and the 'deepest fact is the end of analysis 
 and the beginning of synthesis, the principle of perception, 
 or life. 
 
 If it is possible to find a rank superstition involved in a 
 flagrant contradiction in terms, it is this theory which as- 
 sumes that reason is an unjustifiable assumption, that the 
 elements of thought are impenetrable mysteries, that knowl- 
 edge springs from the unknowable, that perception is the 
 function of the imperceptible, that conceptions are mani- 
 festations of the inconceivable, and that they spring armed 
 cap-a-pie into the world of consciousness, the manifest fruits 
 of thought, but denying their origin. Intellectual activity 
 is akin to universal activity, a form of motion. Conscious- 
 ness, thought, reason, perception, knowledge, are but differ- 
 ent names for different aspects of this activity. The prime 
 factors in this activity are the subject and the object, the 
 creature and its environment ; and in this dual aspect of the 
 phenomenon of knowledge (for knowledge we hold to be its 
 most comprehensive term) we have that contrast, comparison, 
 expression of difference, or primordial relation, from which 
 the great structure of mind is built up, to which contrast 
 we trace the origin of all thought, and by which we explain 
 Perception. The very word unknowable involves an absurd- 
 ity. To name a thing is to recognize its existence, to 
 classify it, and therefore to reason about it, and hence, 
 in some degree, to know it. In what degree do we know 
 the " unknowable " ? Hear w r hat Mr. Spencer says, in 
 another part of the same volume, in support of this 
 position : " The general community of nature, thus shown 
 in mental acts, called by different names, may be cited 
 as so much confirmation of the several analyses. * * * All 
 orders of Reasoning Deductive and Inductive, Necessary 
 and Contingent, Quantitative and Qualitative, Axiomatic 
 
270 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 and Analogical come under one general form. Here we 
 see both that classification, naming, and recognition are 
 nearly allied to one another, and that they, too, are sev- 
 erally modifications of that same fundamental intuition out 
 of which all orders of reasoning arise. Nor are classifica- 
 tion and naming allied only as being both of inferential 
 nature ; for they are otherwise allied as different sides of the 
 same thing. Naming presupposes classification ; and classi- 
 fication cannot be carried to any extent without naming. 
 Similarly with recognition and classification, which are also 
 otherwise allied than through their common kinship to ratio- 
 cination. They often merge into each other, either from the 
 extreme likeness of different objects, or the changed aspect 
 of the same object ; and while recognition is a classing of a 
 present impression with] past impressions, classification is a 
 recognition of a particular object as one of a special group 
 of objects. This weakening of conventional distinctions, 
 this reduction of these several operations of the mind, in 
 common with all those hitherto considered, to variations of 
 one operation, is to be expected as the result of analysis." 1 
 This analysis shows all the operations of mind to be of the 
 same order, from the simplest to the highest co-ordinations, 
 and yet all orders of reasoning are said to be but modifications 
 of that fundamental intuition which is elsewhere referred to 
 as the function of the " unknowable," a group of " concrete 
 organized conceptions," which are in themselves incompre- 
 hensible, a group of intellectual " entities," " manifestations 
 of the unknowable." In case the reader should suspect that 
 Mr. Spencer makes a difference between the operations of 
 the mind in general and those operations which we call 
 reasoning, we have but to revert to the chapter on " Reason- 
 ing in General," where we find it admitted that knowledge 
 gained through the senses, or, as Mr. Spencer terms it, by per- 
 ception, differs from that gained by the reasoning faculties, 
 not in nature, but only in the directness of the apprehen- 
 sion. If the cognitions gained through sensuous percep- 
 
 1 " Principles of Psychology," vol. II., p. 129. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 2? I 
 
 tions are the same in nature as the cognitions gained through 
 the reasoning faculties, at what stage in the development of 
 mind does the " irreducible intuition " make its appearance? 
 
 " Let us consider," says Mr. Spencer, " what is the more 
 specific definition of Reasoning. Not only does the kind of 
 proposition called an inference assert a relation ; but every 
 proposition, whether expressing mediate or immediate 
 knowledge, asserts a relation. How, then, does knowing 
 a relation by Reason differ from knowing it by Perception ? 
 It differs by its indirectness. A cognition is distinguishable 
 as of one or the other kind, according as the relation it em- 
 bodies is disclosed to the mind directly or indirectly. If its 
 terms are so presented that the relation between them is im- 
 mediately cognized if their coexistence, or succession, or 
 juxtaposition, is knowable through the senses, we have a per- 
 ception. If their coexistence, or sequence, or juxtaposition, 
 is not knowable through the senses, if the relation between 
 them is mediately cognized, we have a ratiocinative act. Rea- 
 soning, then, is the indirect establishment of a definite relation 
 between two things. But now the question arises, By what 
 process can the indirect establishment of a definite relation 
 be effected ? There is one process, and only one. If a re- 
 lation between two things is not directly knowable, it can be 
 disclosed only through the intermediation of relations that 
 are directly knowable, or are already known." 
 
 Reasoning, then, which is admitted to signify, in its 
 widest sense, all intellectual activity, is declared to be the 
 indirect establishment of a definite relation between two 
 things. " If this relation between two things is not directly 
 knowable, it can be disclosed only through the intermediation 
 of relations that are directly knowable ', or are already known." 
 Does not the above show conclusively that the genesis of 
 thought is from facts to facts, from definite known relations 
 to definite known relations, and that, in this admission, 
 there is no room for the unknowable ? Does it not appear 
 as though, in the analysis above quoted, our author had 
 
 1 "Principles of Psychology," vol. II., p. 115. 
 
272 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 penetrated so near the truth as to forget that error which, 
 in other parts of his system, is shown to be at the bottom of 
 his theory of perception? Is it not clear, from the position 
 we now hold in this attempt at a Synthesis of Knowledge, 
 that the departure from the true course of reasoning in Mr. 
 Spencer's psychology is caused by the difficulty of account- 
 ing, not for the general procedures of the mind, but for our 
 conceptions of those principles known as space, time, matter, 
 force, and motion, and his consequent failure to perform an 
 analysis of perception? 
 
 Involved as are the operations of the mind in tracing them 
 out, we encounter no mysteries, no irreducible intuitions, no 
 facts which are not fully comprehensible or which do not 
 justify themselves. If reasoning is an institution of compari- 
 sons varying in complexity from the primordial comparison of 
 the subjective and the objective, which gives us the conscious- 
 ness of personal existence, to the vaguest and most remote 
 analogies, it is manifest that the process is constant in nature, 
 and varies in complexity with the terms compared. In estimat- 
 ing the likeness between homogeneous objects, we establish 
 equality of quantity by a comparison of measurements, or by 
 measuring all by one. We unconsciously employ the subjec- 
 tive factor in each relation of equality established, for we 
 virtually affirm that each object impresses us as the same in 
 all respects excepting position. When quantitative com- 
 parisons cease and more complex attributes or qualities are 
 compared, the use of the subjective factor becomes more 
 and more obscured, and we imagine that we are comparing 
 purely objective facts directly together, whereas we are al- 
 ways comparing the impressions which the facts make upon 
 us together ; or, in other words, we are comparing relations ; 
 but what are these relations between ourselves and objects 
 but facts themselves ? They are facts of consciousness hav- 
 ing for their terms objective and subjective activities. If 
 mind, then, is made up of these simple comparisons, perfectly 
 simple in nature but becoming more and more intricate as 
 -they ascend in thought, what becomes of that involved intui- 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 273 
 
 tion which we are told is so fundamental that it cannot be 
 reduced to any simpler terms ? But here we come upon the 
 difference between sensation and thought, between facts of 
 consciousness which have objective factors, and facts of con- 
 sciousness which are purely subjective. A train of thought 
 is set going within us, and the great machinery of the mind 
 continues to work out its comparisons with apparent inde- 
 pendence of the environment. These trains of thought some- 
 times occupy years in their course, and are silently progressing 
 during waking and sleeping, during all sorts of distracting 
 occupations, and at last complete themselves, in some cases, 
 with scarcely any conscious effort on the part of the thinker. 
 This is certainly a conspicuous instance of the difference be- 
 tween sensation and thought. Sensation has one factor with- 
 out, thought proceeds within. This distinction, however, is 
 only relative. The sensorium responds to impressions from 
 without, and each impression produces its modification of the 
 sensorium, its memory : impressions repeated become deeper, 
 the modifications become more and more marked. Each 
 modification of structure implies a modification of function. 
 The physical adjustments which correspond to those compari- 
 sons constituting thought are thus far inscrutable, but we have 
 the results in the clearer perceptions which accrue from 
 thinking, or, in other words, the more ready adjustment of 
 the organism to its environment. The difference, therefore, 
 between sensation and thought is, that sensation is the ac- 
 tivity of the sensorium which is the more nearly connected 
 with the external causes of excitement, and thought is the 
 activity of the sensorium which is farthest removed from 
 external causes of excitement ; and between these two ex- 
 tremes there are all degrees of combinations, varying from 
 what is known as reflex action to the most abstract and 
 involved achievements of reason. The subjective factor 
 in each comparison is ever present throughout all these 
 progressions, and the intuition by which Mr. Spencer places 
 so much store is simply a logical formula in which the 
 repetition of the subjective term in perception, although per- 
 
2/4 T HE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 fectly discernible, is elided or neglected. In fact, in the 
 light of the above analysis, it is far more difficult to see how 
 the objective factor remains present in abstract thought, for 
 it is clear that in those mental activities which have no direct 
 connection with the environment, which, in other words, draw 
 the terms of their comparisons from the memory, the objec- 
 tive factor is only present through such representation as it 
 has secured by modifications of the sensorium. 
 
 Thinking or calculating, therefore, without the aid of di- 
 rect verification, or practical demonstration, is an intellectual 
 activity which is carried on by a sort of proxy communica- 
 tion with the outer world ; and keen indeed must be the 
 memory, deep the impressions made by facts upon the mind, 
 to secure the reliability of the results. 
 
 We see, then, that there is an excuse, but not a justifica- 
 tion, for the assertion of Mr. Spencer that the simplest type 
 of mental activity is the complex axiom declaring equality 
 between relations having one term in common and the other 
 terms equal (relations which are equal to the same relation 
 are equal to each other) ; for although it is impossible to 
 compare objects without employing the subjective factor, or 
 without comparing the impressions of the object on ourselves, 
 or the relations between ourselves and each object, the com- 
 parisons, or relations, are distinct and complete in them- 
 selves, and the presence of a common term is only an 
 abridged way of expressing the repetition of the same term. 
 If the presence of the subjective factor is not the ground on 
 which Mr. Spencer insists upon the above form of axiom, the 
 futility of the argument is the more manifest ; for to say that 
 two things are equal because they are each equal to a third 
 is exactly the same as saying that three things are equal be- 
 cause there is no distinguishable difference between them, 
 which repeats the subjective factor in each comparison and 
 makes three distinct assertions of equality. 
 
 Should refutation appear unnecessarily elaborate, the ex- 
 tent and intricacy of the argument of which it is a summary 
 should be remembered. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 275 
 
 The theory of Knowledge offered in this work, contrasted 
 with that offered by Mr. Spencer, may be set forth as fol- 
 lows : Knowledge is an activity coextensive with organic 
 life ; life is an activity which is universal. The activity 
 which we recognize as life in the monad is ultimately indis- 
 tinguishable in its nature from those expressions of the 
 physical forces known as chemical reactions or affinities 
 acknowledged to be but forms of motion. The activities of 
 organic life become more and more complex or special in 
 their development toward the highest type, which we find in 
 our own species. These co-ordinations still progress through 
 what is known as superorganic, or social, phenomena, through 
 the interactions of the individual and society expressed in 
 language and intelligence, culminating in that most perfect 
 activity known as morality. 
 
 In the march of progress, which is the most complete view 
 we can take of the universe, we are not passive spectators, 
 but co-operants. Our perceptions are limited only by our- 
 selves ; these limits are the expression of individuality. Now 
 this individuality is so conspicuous an attribute, that even 
 such minds as Descartes and Kant have mistaken it for the 
 most general fact, the one immovable truth. But if we think 
 a moment, we shall see that this truth is not absolute or im- 
 movable, that it is moving with the current of events ; that 
 it is a part of universal change. 
 
 Viewed in their higher developments, thought and action 
 appear entirely distinct ; but when we reduce the scale of 
 development to its lowest point, their community of nature 
 readily appears. There is nothing in the life of the monad, 
 in its affinity or attraction for proximately like substances,, 
 its consequent increase in size, and falling into pieces, which 
 could suggest such names as assimilation, growth, and repro- 
 duction ; but the fundamental activities of higher organic 
 life, to which these names are applied, are traced in insen- 
 sible gradations to this simple origin, and thus the differ- 
 ence between universal activities and the special activities 
 of organic life disappear. So the mental procedures, known 
 
276 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION'. 
 
 as perception, or thought, are only higher developments 
 of these organic activities, and are plainly traceable through 
 natural sequences to the same simple source. Every 
 movement of the microscopic speck of protoplasm is the 
 direct function of its chemical constitution and its mechanical 
 adjustment to the environment ; and these names, chemical 
 and mechanical, are acknowledged to represent merely special 
 aspects or forms of motion. When the monad acts, how- 
 ever simply, that action expresses a law, or a truth, and con- 
 stitutes the simplest imaginable form of perception. There 
 is no structure to co-ordinate the action so that it can be re- 
 produced in memory, adjusted in thought, and readjusted in 
 action. The tiny cycle of change set up in this little being 
 is too simple to receive any such classification ; but from its 
 motions are built up the activities of the highest life, without 
 the intervention of any new principle. Science having 
 familiarized the mind with all these particulars of develop- 
 ment, the seeker after incomprehensibles is forced into the nar- 
 row limits of metaphysical terms. Space, time, matter, force, 
 and motion, are found in consciousness, and they are 
 found out of consciousness. One class of thinkers are 
 puzzled with the question how they got into the mind ; 
 the other, how they managed to get out of it. The 
 former class reason that as they are unknowables they 
 cannot get into the mind as they really are, so they must 
 run the gantlet in the guise of " organized consolidated con- 
 ceptions " ; and it is well understood after they do get in 
 in this guise, they are to be utterly incomprehensible. The 
 other class argue that these mystic principles are absolute 
 entities, independent originals, that are found in the mind; 
 and as they cannot in any way get out, they practically take 
 every thing in with them. These two great classes of thinkers 
 have, of course, displayed all degrees of ingenuity in expound- 
 ing their theories. Some of them, in order to protect these 
 precious fallacies, have built up intellectual fortifications 
 which bid fair to last, at least as imposing ruins, throughout 
 the existence of our race. No amount of subtility on the 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 277 
 
 part of these metaphysicians, however, seems to prevent the 
 above simple classification of their systems, although, in the 
 course of their arguments they have sounded the key-note of 
 thought over and over again. The ultimate analysis declares 
 these so-called incomprehensible principles to be but phases 
 of a fact which is in the highest degree comprehensible ; for 
 to this fact perception and thought are directly traceable. 
 
 This is the distinguishing feature of the theory of Knowl- 
 edge which I would here offer, and this it is which marks 
 its contrast with all theories postulating an unknowable as 
 taking part in any form, or through any manifestation, in the 
 constitution of Knowledge. With regard to perception, the 
 present theory teaches that the direction of perception is 
 the direction of organic life, that its source and procedures 
 are organic, and that the moving limits of individuality 
 are its only circumscriptions. Thus mind has no proscrip- 
 tions in nature. The vistas of consciousness are unlimited ; 
 the universe holds nothing back from thought. Through- 
 out the receding simplifications of analysis, or the advancing 
 constructions of synthesis, we meet with no fact or prin- 
 ciple, however general, which the individual cannot assimi- 
 late, and which is not in itself an advancement and en- 
 largement of our existence. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER (CONCLUDED). 
 Sociology an Instrument in Determining Ultimate Beliefs. 
 
 WE have now before us the more grateful task of describ- 
 ing the merits of Spencer's system of philosophy. In " First 
 Principles," which is an epitome of the whole, and in the 
 succeeding four volumes, two of " Biology " and two of " Psy- 
 chology," we find a masterly picture of the related stages of 
 progression from the simplest to the most complex type of 
 organic life. In the first book of the above series, the changes 
 expressed in this progressive organic development are more or 
 less clearly affiliated to those changes broadly described as 
 inorganic. In the last book we find an attempt to explain 
 the organic side of mental life, and to apply to the highest 
 of all phenomena the formula of evolution. The march 
 from the simple to the complex is shown to be the direction 
 of universal activity. This idea is further elaborated in a 
 definition of life, to which we demurred because it merely 
 adds to the conception of universal activity the characteris- 
 tics of the activity of individual or organic life, and should, 
 therefore, be called a definition, not of life in general, but of 
 organic life. The principle so laboriously expounded, that 
 "Function makes Structure," which has a fuller expression 
 in the theory of " the direct adaptation of the creature to its 
 environment," a prominent feature of Spencer's biological 
 studies, was objected to on the ground that function and 
 structure are but obverse sides of every phenomenon, and 
 neither, therefore, can have precedence over the other as a 
 cause. 
 
 In constructing this system of thought, Mr. Spencer has 
 
 278 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 2?g 
 
 presented to the world a philosophy admirably articulated 
 and constituting an organon of scientific truth of inestimable 
 value. His best original work does not appear, however, in 
 the first five books of the system. Beneath the imposing 
 array of scientific knowledge we find an undercurrent of 
 ontological speculation, a persistent effort at an ultimate 
 analysis, which produces as its result, from crisis to crisis 
 throughout the work, the conception of the so-called " deepest 
 knowable truth," denominated The Persistence of Force. It 
 is true that at times this "deepest knowable truth " is de- 
 clared to be unknowable, but for the most part, with remark- 
 able consistency of purpose, he avoids placing this conception 
 among the weird group of ultimates fully described in the 
 last chapter, which are declared to be inconceivables ; but 
 the logical difficulty which this omission might be supposed 
 to avoid is only thereby enhanced, for Force, according to 
 Mr. Spencer, is a prominent name among the "unknowobles" 
 and how it is made to serve as the basis of " the deepest know- 
 able truth " is not explained. We are left to infer, perhaps, 
 that the depth attributed to this conception is solely a property 
 of the attribute persistence ; since we are certainly safe in 
 assuming that whatever property an unknowable conception 
 may have, it can lay no claim to a third dimension. 
 
 After this deep study of individual or organic life, which 
 forms the principal theme of the first five books above 
 mentioned, we come to the study of what Mr. Spencer de- 
 nominates super-organic phenomena. This is the science 
 of Sociology, for which he is so justly renowned. Its field is 
 human life ; its plan is to view humanity as a great organ- 
 ism, and to study the adjustments of this organism, as an 
 aggregate, to its surroundings ; tracing, through the changes 
 of history, the sequences of its existence. 
 
 The purpose of this study, as can readily be seen, is to 
 examine the different phases of conduct from the primitive 
 family or tribe to the race viewed as a confederation of 
 nations ; the object being to create a science of morality. 
 
 Too much cannot be said in praise of such a work ; its 
 
280 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 very inception is an inspiration. The first volume of " Soci- 
 ology " is one of the most interesting literary productions 
 of our century. It is the romance of human life viewed 
 from the most commanding position which thought affords. 
 The subject of the Primitive Man is minutely studied ; his 
 probable surroundings, and the influence of these surround- 
 ings as the external factors of his existence, are estimated. 
 The physical, emotional, and intellectual aspects of his 
 nature are respectively considered, as the internal factors of 
 his development, and this development is shown to be the 
 establishment of those permanent relationships between 
 individuals known as social organization. The different 
 questions which the enormous periods of man's prehistoric 
 existence give rise to are considered with the characteristic 
 depth and thoroughness of the author ; and in his treatment 
 of them we have a graphic picture of the long and painful 
 struggle for existence which preceded the primitive forms of 
 civilization. The great impetus which co-operation among 
 men has given to human life is depicted, and it is shown that 
 social progress and the perfection of conduct are but obverse 
 aspects of the same development. 
 
 In this book we have Mr. Spencer at his best. Sure of his 
 subject and conclusions, his style is clear and comprehensive, 
 his thought deep almost to the emotional. Persuaded by his 
 earnestness, criticism gives way to conviction, and one is 
 content to read and learn. An idea of the method can be 
 gained from the following, which occurs in the chapter on 
 " The Factors of Social Phenomena " : 
 
 ' ' There remains in the group of derived factors one more, the potency of 
 which can scarcely be over-estimated. I mean that accumulation of super- 
 organic products which we commonly distinguish as artificial, but which, philo- 
 sophically considered, are no less natural than all others resulting from evolution. 
 There are several orders of these. 
 
 ' ' First come the material appliances, which, beginning with roughly-chipped 
 flints, end in the complex automatic tools of an engine-factory driven by steam ; 
 which from boomerangs rise to thirty-five-ton guns ; which from huts of branches 
 and grass grow to cities with their palaces and cathedrals. Then we have lan- 
 guage, able at first only to eke out gestures in communicating simple ideas, but 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 28 1 
 
 eventually becoming capable of expressing highly- complex conceptions with 
 precision. While from that stage in which it conveys thoughts only by sounds 
 to one or a few other persons, we pass through picture-writing up to steam- 
 printing : multiplying indefinitely the numbers communicated with, and making 
 accessible in voluminous literatures the ideas and feelings of innumerable men 
 in various places and times. Concomitantly there goes on the development of 
 knowledge, ending in science. Counting on the fingers grows into far-reaching 
 mathematics ; observation of the moon's changes leads at length to a theory of 
 the solar system ; and at successive stages there arise sciences of which not 
 even the germs can at first be detected. Meanwhile the once few and simple 
 customs, becoming more numerous, definite, and fixed, end in systems of laws. 
 From a few rude superstitions there grow up elaborate mythologies, theologies, 
 cosmogonies. Opinion getting embodied in creeds, gets embodied, too, in 
 accepted codes of propriety, good conduct, ceremony, and in established social 
 sentiments. And then there gradually evolve also the products we call aesthetic ; 
 which of themselves form a highly-complex group. From necklaces of fish- 
 bones we advance to dresses, elaborate, gorgeous, and infinitely varied ; out of 
 discordant war-chants come symphonies and operas ; cairns develop into mag- 
 nificent temples ; in place of caves with rude markings there arise at length 
 galleries of paintings ; and the recital of a chief's deeds with mimetic accom- 
 paniment gives origin to epics, dramas, lyrics, and the vast mass of poetry, fic- 
 tion, biography, and history. 
 
 " All these various orders of super-organic products, each evolving within itself 
 new genera and species while daily growing into a larger whole, and each acting 
 upon the other orders while being reacted upon by them, form together an im- 
 mensely voluminous, immensely complicated, and immensely powerful set of 
 influences. During social evolution these influences are ever modifying indi- 
 viduals and modifying society, while being modified by both. They gradually 
 form what we may consider either as a non-vital part of the society itself, or else 
 as an additional environment, which eventually becomes even more important 
 than the original environments, so much more important that there arises the 
 possibility of carrying on a high type of social life under inorganic and organic 
 conditions which originally would have prevented it. * * * The influences which 
 the society exerts on the natures of its units, and those which the units exert on 
 the nature of the society, incessantly co-operate in creating new elements." 1 
 
 To these immediate influences are added others more 
 remote. The physical surroundings of the primitive man are 
 all but impossible to imagine, so meagre are our means of 
 estimating them. " Now that geologists and archaeologists 
 are uniting to prove that human existence goes back to a date 
 so remote that ' prehistoric ' scarcely expresses it now that 
 imbedded traces of human handiwork show us that, not only 
 
 J<< Sociology," vol. I., p. 14. 
 
282 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 sedimentary deposits of considerable depths and subsequent 
 extensive denudations, but also immense changes in the dis- 
 tribution of land and sea, have occurred since the rudest 
 social groups were formed ; it is clear that the effects of 
 external conditions on social evolution cannot be fully 
 traced." ' 
 
 In the second volume of "Biology" we find a series of 
 studies on morphology, which trace the special forms of 
 plants and animals to natural causes, and find in them an 
 expression of that general law of activity revealed as well in 
 the complex forces displayed in crystallization as in the sim- 
 ple and omnipresent power of gravitation. As a sequel to the 
 results of these studies, the theory of natural social develop- 
 ment is unfolded. The origin of the physical contrasts 
 giving rise to the classification of races is pointed out. The 
 ebony skin of certain tribes of Central Africa and the 
 blanched cheek of the Caucasian are made to tell their tales 
 of slowly operating causes. The Yakut child seen to devour 
 at one meal " three candles, several pounds of sour frozen 
 butter, and a large piece of yellow soap," the adult of the same 
 race who comfortably disposed of " forty pounds of meat in 
 a day," and the brain-worker of our zone and civilization who 
 subsists upon a modicum of highly concentrated nourish- 
 ment, are made to depict contrasted habitats and types of 
 social development. The theory that the life of an indi- 
 vidual from childhood to maturity simulates the develop- 
 ment of man from the savage to a higher social state, is 
 explained, and some telling comparisons are drawn between 
 the civilized baby and the primitive man. This theory is 
 made to precede the more general one, that all social as well 
 as individual development is an advance in the number, com- 
 plexity, and delicacy of the adjustments of the creature 
 to its environment, progressing toward the intellectual 
 through the physical and the emotional. The complete 
 dependence of mental upon social development is then 
 dwelt upon. The remoteness of the higher orders of mental 
 
 1 " Sociology," vol I., p. 17. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 283 
 
 action from the relatively simple and automatic reflex action 
 of organisms is explained. No stinted citations can give a 
 just idea of the power and faithfulness of these analyses, 
 or of the sweep of the thought which they describe. 
 
 " The environment of the primitive man being such that 
 his converse with things is relatively restricted in Space and 
 Time, as well as in variety, it happens that the associations 
 of ideas he forms are little liable to be changed. As experi- 
 ences (multiplying in number, gathered from a wider area, 
 added to by those which other men record) become more 
 heterogeneous, the narrow notions first framed, fixed in the 
 absence of conflicting experiences, are shaken and made 
 more plastic there comes greater modifiability of belief. In 
 the relative rigidity of belief characterizing undeveloped 
 intelligence, we see less of that representativeness which 
 simultaneously grasps and averages much evidence ; and we 
 see a smaller divergence from those lowest mental actions in 
 which impressions cause, irresistibly, the appropriate motions. 
 While the experiences are few and but slightly varied, the 
 concreteness of the corresponding ideas is but little qualified 
 by the growth of abstract ideas. An abstract idea, being one 
 drawn from many concrete ideas, becomes detachable from 
 these concrete ideas only as fast as their multiplicity and 
 variety lead to mutual cancellings of their differences, and 
 leave outstanding that which they have in common. Obvi- 
 ously an abstract idea so generated implies an increase of 
 the correspondence in range and heterogeneity ; it implies 
 increased representativeness in the consciousness of the 
 many concretes whence the idea is abstracted ; and it implies 
 greater remoteness from reflex action. It must be added 
 that such abstract ideas as those of property and cause pre- 
 suppose a still higher stage in this knowledge of objects and 
 actions. For only after many special properties and many 
 special causes have been thus abstracted can there arise 
 the re-abstracted ideas of property in general and cause in 
 general. The conception of uniformity in the order of phe- 
 nomena develops along with this progress in generalization 
 
284 THE MATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 and abstraction. Not uniformity but multiformity is the 
 dominant trait in the course of things as the primitive man 
 witnesses it. No two places are alike, no two men, no two 
 trees, rivers, stones, days, storms, quarrels. Only along with 
 the use of measures, when social advance initiates it, does 
 there grow up the means of ascertaining uniformity ; and 
 only after a great accumulation of measured results does the 
 idea of law become possible. In proportion as the mental 
 development is low, the mind merely receives and repeats 
 cannot initiate, has no originality. An imagination which 
 invents shows us an extension of the correspondence from 
 the region of the actual into that of the potential ; it shows 
 us a representativeness not limited to combinations which 
 have been or are in the environment, but including non- 
 existing combinations thereafter made to exist ; and it ex- 
 hibits the extremest remoteness from reflex action, since the 
 stimulus issuing in movement is unlike any that ever before 
 acted." ' 
 
 No one can read this part of Spencer's philosophy without 
 perceiving the great power of these sociological illustrations. 
 Facts which it is practically impossible to discern in individ- 
 ual life become clear when viewed through the vastly ex- 
 tended scale of aggregated social life. This question there- 
 fore naturally suggests itself : Cannot we employ sociology 
 as an instrument for the discovery of the nature of percep- 
 tion ? Cannot the growth of consciousness of the race, 
 viewed as a whole, explain to us the genesis of consciousness 
 in the individual ? 
 
 Religion in its rudest forms, superstitious reasoning with 
 regard to the causes of events, seems to have occupied the 
 larger place among the ideas of primitive men. The study 
 of sociology brings these beginnings of the social conscious- 
 ness prominently into view. Primitive Ideas Ideas of the 
 Animate and Inanimate of Death and Resurrection of 
 Souls, Ghosts, Spirits, and Demons of Another Life of 
 Another World of Supernatural Agents Sacred Places, 
 
 1 "Principles of Sociology," vol. I., pp. 84-86. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 28$ 
 
 Temples, Altars Praise Prayer Ancestor-Worship Idol- 
 and Fetich-Worship Animal-, Plant-, and Nature-Worship 
 Deities these are the titles of the principal chapters of the 
 " Data of Sociology " ; they recite a long and interesting 
 story of the development of the mind of primitive men. 
 
 With no definite language or records of the observations 
 and experiences of others, the primitive man groped in utter 
 darkness. Hence, with regard to the natural order of 
 things, as far as they were not appreciable in his simplest 
 sensations he was without a guide. Thought had no mate- 
 rials to work with and produced but vagaries and phantasms. 
 Ideas of supernatural beings came into existence, and as a 
 result we find the ruder forms of ancestor-worship the type 
 of all the early religious beliefs. 
 
 Thus the belief in a surviving duplicate, a soul separate 
 from the body, is universal among savages, and was the be- 
 ginning of our ideas of the supernatural. Those who are 
 interested in the genesis of this belief can trace it step by 
 step through the course of the chapters above referred to. 
 Instead of this savage belief in a surviving duplicate being 
 an authority for our belief in the immortality of the soul ; that 
 higher understanding of life, which is the natural product of 
 a developed language, discloses to us the ghost as the primi- 
 tive type of supernatural being, and the belief in any form of 
 ghostly existence as a primitive superstition. To the savage, 
 who found his most powerful foe in his own species, it is easy 
 to understand how the ghost-chief became the ideal of supreme 
 power. Of course the ideal of supreme power is always the 
 object of worship. The savage and the civilized man alike 
 bow before what they conceive to be the greatest force. 
 The point which we would here emphasize is, that the mind, 
 or sentiency and language, is the instrument by which this 
 power is invariably appreciated, and the degree of apprecia- 
 tion depends entirely upon the quality of the mind. It may 
 be said that all power must be appreciated by the mind, but 
 this is only relatively true. In lower organisms the power 
 which accounts for the life of the individual is only appreci- 
 
286 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ated in the ebb and flow of physical existence. It is not 
 co-ordinated into an ideal or conception which co-ordinates 
 conduct. The apprehension of food, and the escape from 
 danger, are certainly appreciations, and therefore percep- 
 tions, of external powers or existences ; but there is a vast 
 difference of degree between these humble reactions and the 
 conception, for instance, of a personal God as the cause of all 
 things. The conception of Motion, however, as the ultimate 
 reality, or universal principle, is an effort of sentiency and 
 language which is so much higher than that of a personal 
 God, a militant ancestor, or a fetich, that the comparison 
 can only be one of remote analogy. 
 
 By viewing the human race, therefore, as a whole, or by 
 employing the inductions of sociology, which show the de- 
 pendence of human development upon its farthest surround- 
 ings, we are enabled to trace the principles of perception 
 from the simplest organic activities to the highest phases of 
 life ; and we are enabled to recognize in the gradual growth 
 of language and intellect the dawning of the moral nature 
 of man. Social life increases the harmony and definiteness 
 of ideas and actions, establishing language and conduct, and 
 we perceive, by studying this phase of life, that mind and 
 morality are concomitant developments. 
 
 To harmonize conduct with a true conception of God, to 
 perform an ultimate analysis of life or existence, and to 
 rebuild a synthesis which shall include and explain morality, 
 is the task of sociology. But how, then, can a sociology suc- 
 ceed which does not begin with an understanding of ultimate 
 terms? What have we to hope for from a treatment of this 
 science which regards consciousness or perception as a mys- 
 tery and the deepest principles of knowledge as unknowable? 
 
 Turning from these philosophical inconsistencies to the 
 same order of inconsistency in religious belief it will not do 
 for us to conclude that by the type of ultimate beliefs the 
 type of character or morality is declared. Categorical beliefs 
 depend almost entirely upon the education, and education 
 depends more upon fortuitous circumstances than upon char- 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 287 
 
 acter. But this argument is balanced by the fact that there 
 is a kind of ultimate belief, an appreciation of divine unity, 
 which is a true expression of character ; its language is that 
 of actions more than of words ; it is the genius for truth, the 
 natural integrity of life, which we call instinctive morality. 
 
 But instinctive or unenlightened morality has a limited 
 range ; it is too contracted, too feeble for a great social life. 
 
 The horizon of the unenlightened mind, like that of the 
 primitive man, is full of mysteries and portents ; it cannot 
 respond to the more delicate influences of life. On the 
 other hand, the mind which is sensitive to differences and 
 likenesses, which is active in reasoning, naturally revolts 
 against a narrow definition of God. This freedom of thought, 
 however, often asserts itself without seriously interfering 
 with settled religious beliefs, although these beliefs can be 
 clearly identified with primitive superstitions. This is the 
 latitude of belief which results from the vagueness of our 
 conceptions of ultimate terms. Thus we find many seem- 
 ingly educated persons, who would scorn to believe in a 
 ghost, clinging with pathetic reverence to the archetype of 
 ghosts the belief in a personal god. These same minds are 
 in possession of scientific truths, classes of facts, which if co- 
 ordinated, if followed out to their logical consequences, 
 would utterly destroy this superstition ; still they not only 
 cherish it but they regard it as in some way connected with 
 the moral integrity of their lives. Hence, although we are 
 able to trace our belief in a personal god to the savage faith 
 in the existence of ancestral ghosts, and our belief in the im- 
 mortality of the soul to the primitive belief in a surviving 
 duplicate, we are confronted with the strange argument that 
 to surrender these heirlooms of the unenlightened mind 
 would be to endanger the moral order of society. Thus phi- 
 losophy, whose aim it is to illuminate conduct, has to meet 
 the serious charge that by teaching the true meaning of ulti- 
 mate terms it attacks morality. 
 
 Morality is generally conceded to be the consequence of 
 pure conceptions of life. How, may it be asked, can pure 
 conceptions of life perpetuate primitive belief ? 
 
288 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 To the student of sociology it is clear that our religious 
 beliefs have been slowly evolved from the grossest supersti- 
 tions. If we would form pure religious conceptions, these 
 superstitions must be subjugated ; they must be recognized 
 as methods of the primitive mind. 
 
 The question, then, between philosophy and the represen- 
 tatives among us of these earliest beliefs of man, concerns 
 the degree of purification of which our religious beliefs are 
 susceptible. 
 
 A critic of undoubted ability, to whom these pages were sub- 
 mitted, objects to the use of the word God for the universal 
 principle Motion. He says that to the truly philosophic 
 mind, to the mind deeply learned in the history of human 
 culture, or the evolution of religious and philosophic be- 
 liefs, the word God is an obsolete term ; that the divine 
 unity of life and mind is symbolized by the principle Motion, 
 and that the word God is too closely connected with 
 idolatry to be used in the same sense. To this argument I 
 would enter the most decided protest, for the reason that 
 philosophy cannot afford to surrender the moral discipline 
 which is the natural inheritance of long ages of religious life, 
 however imperfect that life may have been. Religion, to the 
 savage as to the civilized man, is the type of his most general 
 ideas expressed in the best language that he commands. 
 
 Through the aid of that synthesis of facts which we call 
 the science of sociology, we recognize in our ideas of God 
 the lineal descendants of the childish notions of deity to be 
 found in the unformed mind. But on the other hand we see 
 in this development the natural progression of general ideas, 
 the development of the impersonal in thought and feeling, 
 which culminates in an ultimate generalization. 
 
 Philosophy would merely develop or purify our conception 
 of God, and our interest in a future life, making the one a di- 
 vine principle, the other an unselfish solicitude for others. 
 During this transformation of spirit, this amalgamation of 
 one culture with another, we cannot afford to surrender the 
 word which has served in all languages and all ages as the 
 symbol of an ultimate generalization. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 289 
 
 In arguing that all worship springs from ancestor-worship, 
 Mr. Spencer reminds us that Negroes, when suffering, go 
 to the woods and cry for help to the spirits of their dead 
 relatives, just as the Iranians in the Khorda-Avesta call upon 
 the souls of their forefathers in prayer ; that the sacrifices 
 of the ancient Egyptians, which were commemorated in 
 the three festivals of the seasons, the twelve festivals of 
 the month, and the twelve festivals of the half month, 
 all in honor and propitiation of their dead, have their 
 counterpart in the offerings which the Romans made to 
 their Lares, on the calends, nones, and ides of every 
 month ; that the Indian or Veddah asks the ghosts of his 
 relatives for aid when he goes hunting, just as the Roman 
 prayed to his Lares for a happy termination to a projected 
 voyage ; and that the sanguinary Mexicans, Peruvians, 
 Chibchas, Dahomans, Ashantis, and others who immolate 
 victims at funerals, are but imitators of the Romans who 
 offered up human sacrifices at tombs. It can be imagined 
 with what terrible effect comparisons which bring such re- 
 volting customs down to the immediate progenitors of our 
 language and culture are used against us. 
 
 By this study of religious evolution, beliefs which appear 
 to us innocent, and even refined, on account of their famili- 
 arity and associations, are unmasked and stand out in the 
 hideous forms of savage life. Our very language is shown to 
 be primitive, full of metaphors which lead inevitably to 
 low orders of intelligence. Our puny generalizations, which 
 appear so gorgeous to us dressed in the livery of heaven and 
 hell and spiritual beings, are found to be but efforts of 
 a childish imagination. This incompetence of thought and 
 word naturally extends from the religious to the metaphysical 
 sphere. A theology which is revolting for its inconsist- 
 encies is given us for a philosophy, and the jargon of priests 
 and rhapsodists is taken for the highest forms of human 
 thought. The purity and simplicity of truth are profaned by 
 these mummeries, these emotional drivellings, these ecstatic 
 fantasies of the unformed life and mind, which are made to 
 
2QO THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 assume among us the functions of divine light. So long as 
 we look to dealers in mysteries and portents and revelations 
 for our highest generalizations, we shall indeed live in a savage 
 age. 
 
 Language is the mind of society, and in its accuracy and 
 integrity are involved the amenities and possibilities of 
 life. The philosophic student of the future will look upon 
 our age as one of insuperable logical difficulties ; he will 
 read, with mingled pity and disdain, of men who applied 
 the word God indifferently to a vague idea of human form 
 and feelings possessed of universal power, to a trinity of still 
 more human characteristics, or again, to a universal prin- 
 ciple. He will not wonder at the misgovernment, the un- 
 necessary suffering, the general immorality of our age, when 
 he examines the indefiniteness of our ideas, the natural 
 accompaniment of our chaotic speech. 
 
 We look upon ages which had no differential calculus, no 
 algebra, no developed arithmetic, as unable to obtain any 
 definite ideas of obscure or involved phenomena. The stu- 
 dent of the future will regard the speculative thought of 
 our age in the same light. He will find, in this indefiniteness 
 in the use of ultimate terms, implied immorality, as well as 
 ignorance. What will even the children of the future think 
 of the way we employ such terms as Infinite and Absolute, 
 Space and Time, Matter and Force ? I read in the confes- 
 sion of faith of an eminent American divine, recently, these 
 words : " We believe in Christ as infinite within infinite 
 limits"; which, being translated, means, We believe in 
 unlimited limits, or in limits that are not limits ! This is 
 like those learned theologians of the middle ages who 
 reasoned about the ultimate difference between material 
 and spiritual substances, or, still worse, of existences which 
 transcend Space and Time. What can be more immoral in 
 its influence than such confusion of ideas as this? 
 
 The philosophy of Herbert Spencer can be charged with a 
 full share of these untruths. The theory of perception 
 which it promulgates is but a modern form of mysticism. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 And yet in its errors it is fathered by men who hold the 
 highest position in English thought. Not only in it3 gene- 
 ral form but in the minutest particulars can Spencer's theory 
 of perception be traced to the philosophy of John Stuart 
 Mill, and this in turn to the long line of mysticism and skep- 
 ticism that gave it birth. 
 
 In the introduction to John Stuart Mill's " System of 
 Logic" we find a frank statement of the difficulties of the 
 problem of perception. Such candor in a writer inspires a 
 wish to agree with him. In this spirit let us consider Mill's 
 assertion that there are certain ideas in the mind which be- 
 long to it, and are of a different nature from those ideas 
 which are known as inferences. The first class of ideas Mill 
 calls intuitive, and says the inferential ideas are drawn from 
 this original stock of the mind, and without this primordial 
 store of (intuitive) truth we could build up no inferences, 
 and could have no knowledge. 
 
 " With the original data, or ultimate premises of our 
 knowledge," says Mill, "with their number or nature, the 
 mode in which they are obtained, or the tests by which they 
 may be distinguished, logic, in a direct way at least, has, in 
 the sense in which I conceive the science, nothing to do. 
 These questions are partly not a subject of science at all, 
 partly that of a very different science. * * * Of the science, 
 therefore, which expounds the operations of the human un- 
 derstanding in the pursuit of truth, one essential part is the 
 inquiry, What are the facts which are the objects of in- 
 tuition or consciousness, and what are those which we merely 
 infer? But this inquiry has never been considered a portion 
 of logic. Its place is in another and a perfectly distinct de- 
 partment of science, to which the name metaphysics more 
 particularly belongs : that portion of mental philosophy 
 which attempts to determine what part of the furniture of 
 the mind belongs to it originally, and what part is constructed 
 out of materials furnished to it from without. To this 
 science appertain the great and much debated questions of 
 the existence of matter ; the existence of spirit, and of a 
 
THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 distinction between it and matter; the reality of time and 
 space, as things without the mind, and distinguishable from 
 the objects which are said to exist in them. For in the 
 present state of the discussion on these topics, it is almost 
 universally allowed that the existence of matter or of spirit, 
 of space or of time, is, in its nature, unsusceptible of being 
 proved ; and that if any thing is known of them, it must be 
 by immediate intuition. To the same science belong the 
 inquiries into the nature of Conception, Perception, Memory, 
 and Belief ; all of which are operations of the understanding 
 in the pursuit of truth ; but with which, as phenomena of the 
 mind or with the possibility which may or may not exist of 
 analyzing any of them into simpler phenomena, the logician 
 as such has no concern." 3 
 
 From the above it is clear that Mill thinks that there are 
 certain principles of truth in the mind which are not suscep- 
 tible of being examined by the reason ; that by some mys- 
 terious and unknowable combination these principles are 
 co-ordinated into certain primordial truths (called intuitive), 
 and that these truths, which, be it observed, are independent 
 of reason, form the major premise of every conclusion, the 
 source of every fact. 
 
 The theory of perception which we advocate as distin- 
 guished from that of Mill and Spencer is simply that the 
 ultimate fact is Motion ; that its aspects are Space and Time. 
 It will be seen at a glance that the fact of Motion is ultimate, 
 and that its aspects Space and Time are inferences drawn 
 from this fact. To follow out the process of thought from 
 these first inferences to the combinations of which all 
 knowledge is built up, is to establish the nature of perception. 
 The great simplicity of this undertaking is its greatest 
 difficulty. 
 
 Mill tells us that " to define is to select from among the 
 properties of a thing those which shall be understood to 
 be declared and designated by its name." A name is an 
 abridged definition ; a definition is an enlarged name. The 
 
 1 Mill's " System of Logic," vol. I., pp. 6, 7. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 293 
 
 description, name, or definition, therefore, of any thing 
 depends upon the functions, properties, or activities of the 
 thing named. When we would define mind, we describe its 
 properties, functions, or activities. The definition of the 
 retentive part, or aspect, of mental action is condensed or 
 abridged in the word memory ; the persistent and spontane- 
 ous aspect of mind is called the will ; that aspect of the 
 mental procedure which is a view of its reception of im- 
 pressions is designated perception ; but there are no demar- 
 cations in the activity of the mind which correspond to this 
 classification of its different aspects that is to say, this 
 enumeration of faculties is a superficial analysis or separation 
 into parts of the fact of mind. To imagine that these intel- 
 lectual faculties represent separate functional principles is 
 the same order of belief as that there are certain primal 
 intuitions, unknowable in their origin and nature, from which 
 knowledge is made up ; for if the principles of thought are 
 shrouded in impenetrable mysteries, what wonder that the 
 faculties of the mind should assume the character of appa- 
 ritions ? Apart from the limited and human sense in which 
 the word knowledge is employed in this mysterious doctrine 
 of the mind, there is an evident contradiction in saying that 
 intelligence springs from the unintelligible, which is the 
 initial error in the theory of perception offered alike by Mill 
 and Spencer. This theory builds the whole fabric of knowl- 
 edge upon principles which are said to be intuitional or 
 subconscious, and at the same time unknowable. 
 
 Every system of philosophy must offer an analysis of 
 the nature of perception as the foundation of a Religious 
 Synthesis. 
 
 The. claims which Mr. Spencer can make to success in this 
 particular have been carefully considered, his metaphysical 
 beliefs have been followed out, and we are enabled to judge 
 of the completeness of his ultimate analysis. 
 
 We would now turn to the culminations of his philosophy. 
 
 From the beginning of Spencer's system the promise is 
 made to establish a scientific basis for morality, but before 
 
294 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 the realization of this promise, which has been partially 
 fulfilled in the " Data of Ethics," our author builds up a 
 gigantic theory of society. 
 
 The plan of this sociology is to show the interdepend- 
 encies of organic and superorganic phenomena and to trace 
 their combined effects to the common principle which he 
 denominates the persistence of force. The subject of Ethics 
 is then introduced, the object still being to show that mo- 
 rality is relative, and that its laws are to be found in the hu- 
 man faculties, the submission of the individual to the general 
 mind. Nothing can be more profound than this theory. 
 In the persistency with which Mr. Spencer has labored to 
 establish it, from the articles he wrote when a young man, 
 now republished under the title of " Social Statics," a con- 
 tinuous thread of reasoning can be traced, a single purpose 
 recognized. 
 
 We have seen that the intellectual faculties are merely 
 names for the different phases of intellectual activity. A 
 great memory, a great reason, or a great perception, means 
 a mind that has acquired special powers by special cir- 
 cumstances. Balanced circumstances lead to balanced 
 faculties ; special circumstances, to special faculties. The 
 needs of war produce heroes; the needs of society pro- 
 duce special casts of mind. The decay of Greek manhood 
 produced Socrates ; the irreligion of the Jews and the suf- 
 ferings of humanity produced the prophets and Christ. The 
 anarchy of European thought in the sixteenth century pro- 
 duced Bacon and Descartes, and the popular longing to 
 unite pure reason with the love of God produced Spinoza. 
 The need of vindicating reason against skepticism produced 
 Kant and the German idealists, and the reaction of sentiment 
 and common-sense produced the French and English psy- 
 chologists. What, then, are faculties but the leaven of 
 human character working out social developments ? 
 
 As no deeper incentive to morality can be found than the 
 symmetrical activity of our whole natures, 1 the balancing of 
 
 1 See argument on Morality, ch. xxiii. 
 
HERBERT SPENCER. 29$ 
 
 human faculties which have their sources deep down in 
 organic life, the principle of activity added to the fact of in- 
 dividual life comes to us as the result of the most careful 
 analysis of our existence. Every synthesis begins with this 
 principle of universal activity and brings us to the facts of 
 social life. What limit does this suggest to perception but 
 the moving limits of personal existence ? 
 
 Sociology teaches us that there is an aggregate human 
 life and mind which springs from and is determined by the 
 lives of individuals ; that the atmosphere of this life is lan- 
 guage. The quality of language determines the quality of 
 the general mind, and reflects its influences upon every 
 individual. Thus the world at large has a direct interest in 
 the meaning of words, and this interest is proportionate to 
 the range of their significance. Metaphysics, therefore, is 
 closely associated with the science of Sociology ; its object 
 Is to familiarize the general mind with the meaning of 
 ultimate terms. In the success of this science over the 
 errors of agnosticism and idealism, morality is deeply con- 
 cerned, and the future will wonder at our slowness in reach- 
 ing so important a result. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 
 Belief in the Unknowable Its Influence upon the Study of Psychology. 
 
 THE philosophic system of George Henry Lewes has the 
 general title of " Problems of Life and Mind." The first 
 two volumes are entitled " Foundations of a Creed "; the 
 third deals with the problem of " Mind as a Function of the 
 Organism "; and the last two are posthumous publications, 
 one being a comprehensive treatise on the " Physical 
 Basis of Mind," and the other a comparatively short review 
 of the author's favorite subject, " The Study of Psychol- 
 ogy." In the preface to the opening volume Lewes says : 
 
 " In 1862 I began the investigation of the physiological 
 mechanism of Feeling and Thought, and from that time 
 forward have sought assistance in a wide range of research. 
 Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Insanity, and the Science 
 of Language, have supplied facts and suggestions to enlarge 
 and direct my own meditations, and to confirm and correct 
 the many valuable indications furnished by previous psy- 
 chological investigators. * * * When I began to organize 
 these materials into a book, I intended it to be only a series 
 of essays treating certain problems of Life and Mind ; but 
 out of this arose two results little contemplated. The first 
 result was such a mutual illumination from the various prin- 
 ciples arrived at separately, that I began to feel confident of 
 having something like a clear vision of the fundamental 
 inductions necessary to the constitution of Psychology ; 
 hence, although I do not propose to write a complete trea- 
 tise, I hope to establish a firm groundwork for future labors. 
 The second result, which was independent of the first, arose 
 
 296 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 297 
 
 thus : Finding the exposition obstructed by the existence of 
 unsolved metaphysical problems, and by the too frequent 
 employment of the metaphysical method, and knowing that 
 there was no chance of general recognition of the scientific 
 method and its inductions while the rival method was toler- 
 ated, and the conceptions of Force, Cause, Matter, Mind, 
 were vacillating and contradictory, I imagined that it would 
 be practicable in an introductory chapter, not indeed to clear 
 the path of these obstacles, but at least to give such precise 
 indications of the principles adopted throughout the exposi- 
 tion as would enable the reader to follow it untroubled by 
 metaphysical difficulties." 1 Here, then, is the great meta- 
 physical problem confronted at the very outset. 
 
 In the beginning of the first chapter, we have this signifi- 
 cant quotation from Mill : " England's thinkers are again 
 beginning to see, what they had only temporarily forgotten, 
 that the difficulties of Metaphysics lie at the root of all Sci- 
 ence ; that those difficulties can be quieted only by being re- 
 solved, and that until they are resolved, positively whenever 
 possible, but at any rate negatively, we are never assured 
 that any knowledge, even physical, stands on solid foun- 
 dations." 
 
 By this we are given in advance an idea of the direction 
 of Lewes' thought : he is going to offer a negative, not 
 a positive, solution of the Metaphysical problem ; he is going 
 to acknowledge the " existence of an unknowable " (which, 
 be it remembered, is a distinct contradiction in terms ; for 
 to acknowledge an existence is to know it in some degree, 
 and to know the unknowable in any degree is an absurdity). 
 Notwithstanding this he is going to extend the known, the 
 scope of definite knowledge, by means of a masterly physi- 
 ological and psychological analysis, until it embraces the be- 
 ginnings of organic life and shows a perfect interdependence 
 between what are known as the physical and vital activities. 
 His mind, however, is too sensitive to feel perfectly con- 
 tented with this achievement ; he is still haunted with the 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., Preface. 
 
298 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 idea that there is something yet to be done to complete an 
 ultimate analysis, to establish the divine unity ; and he 
 expresses his unrest in these words : 
 
 " Science itself is also in travail. Assuredly some mighty 
 new birth is at hand. Solid as the ground appears, and fixed 
 as are our present landmarks, we cannot but feel the strange 
 tremors of subterranean agitation which must erelong be 
 followed by upheavals disturbing those landmarks. Not only 
 do we see Physics on the eve of a reconstruction through 
 Molecular Dynamics, we also see Metaphysics strangely 
 agitated, and showing symptoms of a reawakened life. 
 After a long period of neglect and contempt, its problems 
 are once more reasserting their claims. And whatever we 
 may think of those claims, we have only to reflect on the 
 important part played by Metaphysics in sustaining and 
 developing religious conceptions, no less than in thwarting 
 and misdirecting scientific conceptions, to feel assured that 
 before Religion and Science can be reconciled by the reduc- 
 tion of their principles to a common method, it will be 
 necessary to transform Metaphysics or to stamp it out of 
 existence. There is but this alternative. At present Meta- 
 physics is an obstacle in our path : it must be crushed 
 into dust and our chariot-wheels must pass over it ; or its 
 forces of resistance must be converted into motive powers, 
 and what is an obstacle become an impulse." 
 
 This promised conversion of Metaphysics, as will afterward 
 appear, is but partially effected ; the question is, whether, 
 even as far as it goes, anything is accomplished by it. Lewes 
 adopts the ingenious method of inventing another name for 
 the science to which he attempts to attach all but the vital 
 and reasonable part of Metaphysics, and thus effects for the 
 old word Metaphysics a regeneration by freeing it from the 
 superstitions which have so long been attached to it. 2 This 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 4. 
 
 a " By way of preliminary, I will ask permission to coin a term that will 
 clearly designate the aspect of Metaphysics which renders the inquiry objection- 
 able to scientific thinkers, no less than to ordinary minds, because it implies a 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 299 
 
 new name suggested by Lewes is Metempirics or beyond 
 experience. That this term means identically the same thing 
 as metaphysics or beyond the physical is manifest. For 
 what is the physical world to us but the world of sensible 
 experiences ? And what is beyond the world of sensible* 
 experiences but the world of logical, mental, ideal, or spiritual 
 experiences ? Spiritual or ideal can mean nothing more than 
 logical or mental, and this is precisely the field of meta- 
 physics. The merit of Lewes' philosophy is therefore to be 
 found in his physiological and psychological studies. He 
 does not solve the metaphysical problem, but he furnishes us 
 with many valuable materials to be employed in its solution. 
 He leaves undefined the great ultimate terms which haunt 
 the pages of every philosophy and hover in the background 
 of every religion ; but he has performed the great work of 
 eliminating from this group of ultimates one term which all 
 writers up to him, not even excepting Herbert Spencer, have 
 included among them, namely, consciousness. Those who 
 study Lewes' system carefully will have no difficulty in un- 
 derstanding the genesis of mind, and will never have occa- 
 sion to refer its origin to the unknowable. They will also 
 find abundant reason to drop the term Cause from the 
 list of ultimate realities, as that term is clearly shown to be 
 but one face of every fact or phenomenon, the other or 
 opposite face being Effect. By this achievement Lewes be- 
 queaths to us a clearly defined list of ultimate realities, 
 namely, Space, Time, Matter, Force, and Motion. He 
 removes all confusion between these ultimates and such 
 other terms as Consciousness and Cause, which we find in- 
 
 disregard of experience ; by isolating this aspect in a technical term we may 
 rescue the other aspect which is acceptable to all. The word Metaphysics is a 
 very old one, and in the course of its history has indicated many very different 
 things. To the vulgar it now stands for whatever is speculative, subtle, ab- 
 stract, remote from ordinary apprehension ; and the pursuit of its inquiries 
 is secretly regarded as an eccentricity, or even a mild form of insanity. To 
 the cultivated it sometimes means Scholastic Ontology, sometimes Psychology, 
 pursued independently of Biology, and sometimes, though more rarely, the 
 highest generalizations of Physics." "Problems of Life and Mind, "vol. I., 
 p. 14. 
 
300 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 eluded among the irreducible principles cited by other 
 writers. The terms Consciousness and Cause, therefore, are 
 affiliated with Knowledge, and the five ultimates supposed 
 by Lewes to be irreducible principles, or " manifestations of 
 'the unknowable" are boldly and clearly isolated from all 
 other terms. Of Matter and Force, however, we are told 
 over and over again that the one is utterly indistinguishable 
 from Space, and that the other must mean Motion, or, if it 
 mean any thing less, it is Motion considered apart from its 
 material or space aspect ; or simply Time. 
 
 These assertions are far from being made in distinct terms, 
 but that they are fair inferences from his reasonings upon these 
 subjects the reader will have a full opportunity of judging. 
 An idea of the persistent longing which Lewes evinces all 
 through his work for the repose of a successful ultimate 
 analysis can be gained from these words : " Speculative 
 minds cannot resist the fascination of Metaphysics, even 
 when forced to admit that its inquiries are hopeless. * * * 
 No array of argument, no accumulation of contempt, no his- 
 torical exhibition of the fruitlessness of its effort, has sufficed 
 to extirpate the tendency toward metaphysical speculation. 
 Although its doctrines have become a scoff (except among 
 the valiant few), its method still survives, still prompts to 
 renewed research, and still misleads some men of science. In 
 vain history points to the unequivocal failure of twenty cen- 
 turies : the metaphysician admits the fact, but appeals to his- 
 tory in proof of the persistent passion which no failure can 
 dismay ; and hence draws confidence in ultimate success. A 
 cause which is vigorous after centuries of defeat is a cause 
 baffled but not hopeless, beaten but not subdued. * * * Few 
 researches can be conducted in any one line of inquiry with- 
 out sooner or later abutting on some metaphysical problem, 
 were it only that of Force, Matter, or Cause ; and since Sci- 
 ence will not and Metaphysics can not solve it, the result is a 
 patchwork of demonstration and speculation very pitiable to 
 contemplate. Look where we will, unless we choose to over- 
 look all that we do not understand, we are mostly confronted 
 
' 
 
 WNJ TY 
 
 ^ 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 3OI 
 
 with a meshwork of fact and fiction, observation curiously 
 precise beside traditions painfully absurd, a compound of 
 sunlight and mist." ' 
 
 The insistence of Lewes upon the necessity of a double 
 name for Metaphysics is clearly traceable to his belief in an 
 unknowable. The fault in this is, that it confuses the idea of 
 unexplored phenomena, or the unknown, with the fiction 
 called the unknowable. 
 
 Bearing in mind that he employs the word Metempirical 
 to signify the unknowable, let us carefully examine the 
 following : *' Every physical problem involves metempirical 
 elements beside those which are empirical ; but Physics sets 
 them aside, and, dealing only with the empirical, reaches con- 
 clusions which are exact, within that sphere. No disturbance 
 in the accuracy of calculation follows from the existence, out- 
 side the calculation, of elements which are incalculable. The 
 law of gravitation, for example, is exact, although its tran- 
 scendental aspect namely, what gravitation is in itself, 
 whether Attraction, Undulation, or Pressure is not merely 
 left undetermined, but by the majority of physicists is not 
 even sought. The law of Association of Ideas is equally ex- 
 act, although not quantitatively expressible. The depend- 
 ence of Sensation upon Stimulus is not less so, and has 
 received a quantitative expression. 3 The laws of Causation 
 may be formulated with equal precision. And exact knowl- 
 edge of Force, Cause, Matter, ought to be attainable, in spite 
 of their transcendental elements, by the one procedure of 
 eliminating these, and operating solely on the empirical. 
 Hence the conclusion : The scientific canon of excluding 
 from calculation all incalculable data places Metaphysics on 
 the same level with Physics." ; 
 
 What are these metempirical elements which are said to be 
 involved in every problem ? A problem is simply a compari- 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., pp. 6-8. 
 
 2 The ratio of the increase of a sensation to the increase of its stimulus is that 
 of a logarithm to its number. (Fechner, " Psychophysik," Bd. II., p. II, 1860.) 
 
 * *' Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 54. 
 
302 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 son of facts. A comparison of facts must be made with a 
 view to arriving at other more obscure or involved facts. 
 Now the ultimate fact is Motion, the last arrived at in every 
 analysis, the first adopted in every synthesis. If by the in- 
 calculable elements in every problem is meant Motion, or its 
 aspects Space and Time, or Matter and Force, it is certainly 
 incorrect to denominate them unknowable, for they are 
 merely appearances of a principle of which knowledge is 
 a consequence. It may be said that this word "metem- 
 pirical " is used to denote an erroneous method of investiga- 
 tion which has for its object impossibilities of perception. If 
 so, why are metempirical elements said to be present in every 
 proposition, or that there exist, outside of every calculation, 
 elements which are " incalculable " ? The words incalculable 
 and metempirical are used as equivalents, and here it is that 
 the error slips in and appears plausible. Gravitation is said 
 to have a " transcendental aspect " which is incalculable or 
 unknowable ; but surely gravitation is simply a relation, a 
 form of the ultimate relation, Motion. Here incalculable 
 refers plainly to Motion, and as Lewes has not declared 
 Motion to be the ultimate reality, in so many words, it is 
 easy to see how he felt the need of a word to express this 
 ultimate reality, and its unrecognized aspects, which form 
 the burden of every metaphysical problem. 
 
 He was therefore, in a measure, justified in trying to 
 remove what he supposed to be the incalculable elements 
 from metaphysics by consigning them to " met empirics" 
 
 But what are we to say of the second illustration in our 
 quotation, which declares that the quantitative expression 
 of the law of Association of Ideas is incalculable ; and of the 
 third, that the quantitative expression of the dependence of 
 sensation on stimulus is incalculable? Is it not manifest 
 that " incalculable " is here used in a different sense from 
 " unknowable " ? For the association of ideas, and the relation 
 between sensation and stimulus, are phenomena which are 
 quite comprehensible, but not quantitatively expressible, 
 because sufficiently exact explorations of mental phenomena 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 303 
 
 have not yet been made to enable us to express these 
 subtle changes in units of space and time. The whole 
 course of Lewes' subsequent reasoning is against a belief in 
 any transcendental aspect of physiological or psychological 
 phenomena. If, on the other hand, it is claimed that the 
 transcendental aspect of gravitation spoken of simply means 
 the unexplored remainder in problems of celestial dynamics, 
 which are quite possible to know, but are as yet undiscov- 
 ered ; then the metempirical element in each of the three 
 illustrations would be of the same nature, namely, the un- 
 known quantity which is the occasion of every problem, and 
 can be identified with the fact of individual existence. For 
 individual life is simply the movement of an organism, the 
 assimilation of the unknown by the known. If metaphysics 
 is an exalted name for an exalted aspect of this assimilation, 
 what kind of assimilation is designated by the term metem- 
 pirics? Is it the assimilation of the inassimilable, the per- 
 ception of the imperceptible, or the thinking of the unthink- 
 able? 
 
 If Lewes' object in bringing into the world this new term 
 was to caricature the idea of such a science, and thereby to 
 eliminate the superstitious element from metaphysics, it 
 would be an involved way of accomplishing a good result ; 
 but when he says that every physical problem involves 
 metempirical elements, in other words, when he uses the 
 word metempirical to denote something in which he be- 
 lieves, it throws the question into hopeless confusion, from 
 which it can only be extricated by removing the direct cause, 
 which is this very term metempirics. 
 
 The above shows what insuperable difficulties attend any 
 form of belief in the unknowable, whether it be called the 
 "metempirical," the " transcendental," the "essence," or the 
 " thing-in-itself." To illustrate this, we will select a passage 
 from Lewes in which he completely frees himself from this 
 superstition, and consequently, for the moment, becomes per- 
 fectly clear and rational. In trying to show that the same 
 methods of investigation should be pursued in both physical 
 
304 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 science and metaphysics, he says: "The reproach, if it be a 
 reproach, conveyed in the term ' ontological,' when applied 
 to Metaphysics, is shared by Science. In both the search is 
 after abstract Being, not after concrete individual fact. 
 Rightly understood, there is truth in saying that a meta- 
 physician may have a knowledge of Being as certain as 
 the mathematician's knowledge of Magnitude, as the chem- 
 ist's knowledge of Affinity, as the biologist's knowledge of 
 Life, as the sociologist's knowledge of Society ; and this 
 knowledge may be gained in the same way." 1 
 
 Again : in pointing out the irrationality of that species of 
 ontology which seeks entities or absolute essences, he says : 
 " A traditional perversion makes the essence of a thing to 
 consist in the relations of that thing to something unknown, 
 unknowable, rather than in its relations to a known or 
 knowable i. e. assumes that the thing cannot be what it is 
 to us and other known things, but must be something ' in 
 itself,' unrelated, or having quite other relations to other un- 
 knowable things. In this contempt of the actual in favor of 
 the vaguely imagined possible, this neglect of reality in favor 
 of a supposed deeper reality, this disregard of light in the 
 search for a light behind the light, metaphysicians have been 
 led to seek the ' thing-in-itself ' beyond the region of Experi- 
 ence. * * * But if such questions can receive no answer, be- 
 cause not put in answerable terms, how much more so the 
 questions which avowedly travel quite beyond all range of 
 experience, and ask, What is the thing in its relations to 
 something unknown? To know a thing is to know its rela- 
 tions ; it is its relations." a And yet, after making these clear 
 and unmistakable distinctions between a rational and an 
 irrational ontology, between a common-sense method of 
 thought and a foolish one, after taking the trouble to invent 
 a special name (metempirics) for the irrational method, in 
 order to purify the conception of metaphysics, he deliber- 
 ately returns to his idols by avowing that every physical 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 60. 
 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., pp. 58, 59. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 305 
 
 problem involves metempirical elements besides those which 
 are empirical. If he were to say that every physical prob- 
 lem contained metaphysical elements as well as empirical 
 ones, he would carry out the fine distinction he is endeavor- 
 ing to make. Then the proposition would simply mean that 
 there are involved in every possible question elements which 
 are beyond the sphere of sensible experience, but are within 
 the sphere of logical experience or perception. In other 
 words, nothing can be unnatural to perception, as the prin- 
 ciple of perception has for its aspects the Infinite and the 
 Absolute, or Space and Time. But this would be far too 
 much for Lewes to admit. Although he made a noble 
 effort to throw off the contamination of the unknowable, the 
 conception was too deeply rooted in his vocabulary and in 
 his thought for the feat to be possible. For a man in the 
 closing years of an active literary and scientific career, which 
 had been largely employed in establishing the unknowable as 
 a great philosophic tenet, a man who had formed the 
 habit of reasoning continually in this direction, making the 
 conception of the unknowable an accompaniment of every 
 analysis, for such a man to throw off this habit would 
 be equivalent to reforming his whole logical constitution. 
 Had he begun earlier in life, or had he been less active 
 in his reasoning by the old method, reform might have 
 been possible. But he wrote the " Biographical History 
 of Philosophy" in the interest of the unknowable; he de- 
 voted an enormous amount of study to interpreting every 
 known system of philosophy in this particular way ; and his 
 very language, which, be it remembered, is a constitutional 
 structure of the mind, was cast too firmly to be remodelled. 
 Thus we find this accomplished and powerful thinker in- 
 volved in the toils of a mistaken belief, and struggling vainly 
 to free himself from the old entanglements. In the more 
 tangible media of science, however, he rises superior to all 
 difficulties and develops truths of the greatest importance. 
 
 To further illustrate the belief of Lewes in the unknow- 
 able, we quote from the chapter on the " Scientific Method 
 in Metaphysics " : 
 
.306 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 " Kant asks : ' If Metaphysics is a science, how comes it 
 that she cannot boast of the general and enduring approba- 
 tion bestowed on other sciences ? If she is no science, how 
 comes it that she wears this imposing aspect, and fascinates 
 the human understanding with hopes inextinguishable yet 
 never gratified ? We must either demonstrate the com- 
 petency or incompetency ; for we cannot longer continue in 
 our present uncertainty.' 
 
 "The answers to these questions which Kant gave not 
 having been satisfactory, a new attempt, under more favor- 
 able conditions, is made in these pages. To render this at- 
 tempt satisfactory, we must first clearly understand the con- 
 ditions of metaphysical inquiry. The initial condition that 
 of separating the insoluble from the soluble aspects of each 
 problem would be accepted by all. But the question would 
 everywhere arise : What is insoluble ? How is this ascertain- 
 able ? There are problems which are recognized as insoluble 
 because of their conditions. For example, it is impossible 
 to extract the square root of a number which is not made by 
 multiplication of any whole number or fraction by itself. To 
 all eternity this must be impossible. Yet an approximation 
 is possible which may be made near enough for any practical 
 purpose. There are other problems, again, which do not 
 admit of even approximative solutions. No one really tries 
 to solve what he is already convinced is an insoluble prob- 
 lem. But one man thinks the problem soluble which another 
 pronounces not to be soluble. What, then, is our criterion? 
 We say the metempirical elements must be thrown out of 
 the construction. But what are the metempirical elements? 
 
 " Here we find ourselves fronting the great psychological 
 problems of the Limitations of Knowledge, and the Prin- 
 ciples of Certitude. To settle these it will be necessary to 
 examine the pretensions of the a priori school. Our first 
 labor, then, will be to examine the principles of positive and 
 speculative research, and then to show that the principles of 
 metempirical research must either be unconditionally re- 
 jected, or, if accepted, must be isolated from all depart- 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 30? 
 
 ments of Knowledge and restricted solely to the Unknow- 
 able." ' 
 
 With regard to the impossibility of extracting the square 
 root of a number that is not made by multiplying any whole 
 number or fraction by itself, which is cited as an insoluble 
 problem, I would submit that this is an impossibility only by 
 definition ; numbers are entirely arbitrary constructions, and 
 therefore their manipulations are matters of arbitrary defini- 
 tion. The square root of a given number is simply another 
 name for a number which, being added to itself as many 
 times as it contains the units of which it is composed, will 
 equal the given number. The half of four, the third of nine, 
 the fourth of sixteen, meet these requirements, because the 
 process which determines the square root of four, nine, and 
 sixteen can be abbreviated by these divisions ; but it is 
 clearly to be seen that the success of the process itself is the 
 cause of the selection of these numbers as examples ; and 
 the impossibility of the process is the cause of selecting num- 
 bers which will not yield to it, as examples of the impos- 
 sibility of extracting the square root of certain numbers. If 
 an object weighs one hundred pounds, the impossibility of 
 its weighing two hundred pounds is a matter of definitions ; 
 it is the function of its weight. No question can be ration- 
 ally stated that is insoluble, for every question implies con- 
 ditions or relations of which its solubility is the result or 
 function ; but by changing these conditions and holding on 
 to the result it is very easy to create an imaginary incon- 
 gruity which may, to a predisposed mind, suggest an unknow- 
 able. We would most emphatically assert, however, that an 
 incalculable calculation, an insoluble problem, imply a forced 
 juxtaposition of symbols, an incongruity of relations ; and 
 the impossibility which they suggest is the direct function of 
 an initial error. The conception of such problems is of the 
 same order as the inconceivable conceptions, the impercep- 
 tible perceptions, the unknowable objects of thought, super- 
 stitions which have grown out of the incorrect use of words; 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 79. 
 
308 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 mythical conceptions which men have endeavored to clothe 
 in the language of sense, producing the opposite of sense. 
 This is the unknowable. 
 
 If Lewes had not affirmed that there are metempirical 
 elements in every problem, we should be encouraged to 
 think that, by his assertion, " these elements must be thrown 
 out of the construction " of problems, he was about to de- 
 clare the unknowable a vain fiction, a self-destructive term. 
 But we have only to read a few lines farther on to find that 
 he is still dominated, in spite of all he can do, by this great 
 infelicity. As he promises to deal further with the sub- 
 ject in the realm of psychology, let us continue to watch the 
 struggle he makes with facts. 
 
 Following the foregoing metaphysical treatise, we find in 
 the volume under consideration a set of so-called Rules of 
 Philosophizing. These rules are fifteen in number, and form 
 a sort of logical code full of 'merit. They are excellent 
 suggestions, but the amount of training that would be needed 
 to enable one to apply them could hardly be obtained with- 
 out actually acquiring the knowledge to which they are 
 intended to be a guide. Metaphysics, for instance, is the 
 science of ultimate terms ; it deals with the meaning of 
 those words which have the widest possible significance. 
 To tell a student that "Any contradiction of fundamental 
 experiences of sense or intuition is to be taken as evidence 
 of some flaw either in the data or the calculation," * which is 
 rule second, would be to give him excellent advice ; but to 
 teach him how to apply this rule to the interpretation of 
 (say) the word Matter, would necessitate his taking a course 
 of study which would make him an expert judge of " flaws 
 either in the data or the calculation " of any philosophical 
 problem. To be more explicit, the surpassing difficulty in 
 the application of the above rule would be to know in what 
 a " contradiction of fundamental experiences of sense or 
 intuition " consists. In our opinion, for instance, it is clear 
 that the author of this rule fails to follow it in the interpre- 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 82. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 309 
 
 tation of Matter and Space ; for is it not a " contradiction of 
 fundamental experiences of sense or intuition " to say that 
 Matter and Space are separately ultimate or irreducible facts; 
 or, again, to postulate an unknowable object of thought. 
 The author himself admits, somewhat naively, that " the ap- 
 plication of this rule requires great tact and accurate knowl- 
 edge " ; and the question very naturally arises whether the 
 possession of this " tact and accurate knowledge " would not 
 include that of the " rule for philosophizing." We doubt 
 whether Lewes, if teaching philosophy, would begin with 
 abstract rules. ' Considered as feats of abstract reasoning, 
 these fifteen rules cannot but be admired ; but as it would 
 be difficult to find two persons who would agree on the sig- 
 nificance of the terms employed in them, they can hardly be 
 considered as aids to the study of philosophy. 
 
 In the treatise on Psychological Principles, which follows 
 the Rules of Philosophizing, Lewes tells us that it would be 
 premature to attempt a systematic treatise on Psychology, 
 as there are important metaphysical and biological questions 
 still open which it is essential first to have settled. In a 
 word, Lewes, who at the time of this writing was perhaps 
 one of the best-prepared men, if not the best, to deal with 
 the science of Psychology, frankly admits that he lacks some 
 of the most important materials for the undertaking. This 
 is in contrast with some writers who have built up imposing 
 and complicated systems of psychology in apparent inno- 
 cence of the fundamental difficulty of the subject. 
 
 It is, therefore, with renewed confidence and interest that 
 we approach what Lewes calls a " sketch of the programme 
 of Psychology." He begins with the now familiar assertion 
 that Man is not simply an Animal Organism, he is also a 
 unit in a Social Organism. Then comes a citation of the 
 starting-point of psychology, namely, Consciousness. Psy- 
 chology, we are told, occupies itself with the study of the 
 
 1 " The supreme importance of an education is directed toward the develop- 
 ment of aptitudes by their effective exercise rather than by the inculcation of 
 rules." Lewes, " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 109. 
 
310 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 factors of Consciousness. Consciousness is a fact beyond 
 which the psychologist is not obliged to look. It is the fact 
 from which he elaborates his science and for which he is not 
 obliged to account. 
 
 As the biologist accepts Life as an ultimate fact, or the 
 physicist builds his science on the principle of Force, neither 
 being required to explain what these initial facts of their 
 respective sciences are ; as the mathematician does not con- 
 cern himself with what " Quantity, Space, and Time are " ; 
 so the psychologist is not obliged to tell us what Conscious- 
 ness is. Here in the very beginning is that metaphysical 
 question the settlement of which Lewes so keenly felt the 
 need of ; and here we must disagree with him in his assertion 
 that the psychologist is not called upon to explain what 
 Consciousness really is. We can easily imagine a mathema- 
 tician content to follow the relations of numbers and quan- 
 tities without being able to explain whence these' principles 
 spring ; we can imagine a physicist dealing with problems 
 of the correlations of forces without feeling the necessity of 
 knowing the universal principle which these forces declare ; 
 we can even understand a biologist spending a lifetime in 
 the study of the interdependencies of organic life without 
 being able to tell how these activities which he witnesses in 
 every organism are affiliated with the same activities which he 
 sees in other directions relatively unorganized ; but we cannot 
 imagine a psychologist prosecuting the study of the functions 
 and structure of the mind without feeling the necessity of 
 knowing what Consciousness is, without feeling powerless to 
 proceed in the absence of a knowledge of the nature of 
 Perception. I do not mean to infer that great progress in 
 psychology is not possible without this knowledge, for great 
 progress in this science has already been made ; but I deny 
 that any psychologist can make himself clearly understood 
 in the principles of his science without first comprehending 
 the relation of mental to universal activity, without being 
 able to affiliate the principle involved in intelligence with 
 other known principles, the relation of knowledge to organic 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 311 
 
 life, and organic to universal life ; in a word, without solving, 
 at the very outset of his exposition, the metaphysical prob- 
 lem. How can a psychology be clearly understood which 
 teaches that mind is a function of an organism, that the or- 
 ganism is material, and still that matter is an ultimate fact ? 
 If matter is an ultimate fact, what is the activity of matter 
 which is called mind ? There can be but one ultimate fact, 
 and it must be universal. If, on the contrary, activity, life, or 
 motion, is acknowledged to be the ultimate fact, and matter 
 subordinate to it, a phase or aspect of it, materialism van- 
 ishes and life and mind become a living reality, an under- 
 stood fact. With this simple theory the vexed question of 
 Object and Subject is resolved. The relation called gravita- 
 tion, suggesting activities which are infinite, those subtle 
 chemical energies, the signatures of the still uncombined 
 elements, the adjustments of the primitive organism to 
 its environment, the evolution of sensibility, feeling, and 
 thought, from these lower orders of activity, rises before us, 
 an unbroken interdependence of cause and effect. Human 
 intelligence, which is taxed to its utmost to comprehend the 
 proportions of this truth, is recognized as an expression of 
 individuality, of the moving limits of personal existence ; 
 and a glimpse of the difference between the human and the 
 divine, the anthropomorphic and the universal, is obtained. 
 
 It will be interesting, therefore, to follow Lewes through 
 his programme of Psychology, and to observe how he 
 manages to meet the difficulties of his subject without the 
 aid of that ultimate analysis so essential to an understanding 
 of Mind. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES (CONTINUED). 
 The Principles of Psychology. 
 
 WE now enter upon the most original and instructive 
 portions of Lewes' philosophy. His deep study of the sen- 
 sorium of animals and of man has enabled him to carry us 
 dry-shod through that dismal swamp, the analysis of mind 
 from its physical side. Timid and conventional thinkers 
 have systematically avoided this route in their journeyings, 
 they have looked at the map, heard of the difficulties and 
 dangers of the way, and turned aside. On the whole, they 
 are to be congratulated for their prudence ; although it can- 
 not be denied that this prudence has led them to miss some 
 of the deepest and most stirring truths of life. 
 
 To explain the wonders of the intellect by a supernatural 
 principle is convenient, but it is not, in the best sense, philo- 
 sophical. This method may appear satisfying to our ideal 
 nature, but it partakes more of sentiment than of thought; 
 yet like many a sentiment, it has held in view exalted truths 
 until the slow methods of science have reached and verified 
 them. * 
 
 The intellectual and moral life of man cannot be ex- 
 plained by a biological analysis. The operations of the mind 
 cannot be successfully described as simply the activities 
 of a personal organism, for the meaning of the word organ- 
 ism has to be vastly extended before it can account for 
 the immeasurable difference between mere sentiency, and 
 thought. The wonders of organic development, as the 
 phrase is scientifically used, are utterly incapable of explain- 
 ing a moral intuition, an intellectual conception, or a reli- 
 
 312 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 313 
 
 gious sentiment. To fill in this break, however, in the chain 
 of cause and effect by the interposition of a " supernatural 
 principle " is only a makeshift ; it lacks all the dignity that 
 belongs to careful thought. 
 
 Although analysis is the instrument by which this logical 
 discrepancy has been removed, it has also been the indirect 
 cause of the delay in arriving at a rational solution of the 
 problem of Mind. Impressions, or simple perceptions, are 
 by their nature composite. In ascending a mountain, we 
 measure the distance into steps, but we are at the same 
 time building up a synthesis which we will call an ascension. 
 When we have reached the summit, we view the journey as 
 a single fact ; but it was effected by an analysis, and the 
 synthesis was accomplished as the analysis progressed. 
 Thus analysis and synthesis are interdependent processes. 
 The analyst or scientist, disdainfully refusing to be beguiled 
 with the synthetic splendors of the mind, has steadfastly 
 devoted himself to the physical procedures which have made 
 these splendors possible. He has surveyed the route while 
 others have enjoyed the scenery. The scientist has known 
 all along that these intellectual wonders have been reached 
 through sequences with which, in less extended vistas, he is 
 perfectly familiar. He has known all along that sentiency 
 is the activity of an organism, and that thought has depended 
 absolutely upon this foundation for all its achievements. But 
 in his laudable endeavors to extend definite knowledge so 
 that it might encompass the ideal, he has neglected an obscure 
 and involved factor in mental or spiritual development. It 
 is this factor which explains the difference between human 
 and merely animal life. As we accomplish distances by 
 measuring off progressions which are determined by our pow- 
 ers of locomotion, so we apprehend situations by combining 
 partial views, which are determined by our perceptive 
 faculties. The more thorough the analysis, the more truth- 
 ful is the conception formed, providing we are careful to 
 replace in the synthetic view all the products of the analysis. 
 In proportion to the number of neglected factors our concep- 
 
314 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 tions are imperfect. We are no better off, therefore, in 
 trusting those who insist upon viewing things in their 
 entirety without studying the parts, than in trusting the 
 analyst who clings to certain prominent factors and neglects 
 others. The former class may supply us with more sym- 
 metrical ideas, but they are largely only ideas instead of reali- 
 ties. Life is not a dream-voyage. Our charts must be the 
 result of actual soundings and observations ; and where they 
 describe unexplored regions, they should be distinctly so 
 marked. 
 
 When we listen, therefore, to the panegyrics of idealists 
 about such theories as " the miraculous inception of divine 
 thought," we should remember that they are merely filling in 
 the interstices in their education with generalities which they 
 are unable to define. These generalities, beautiful as they 
 may sound to the untrained ear, can never be made to take-the 
 place of those substantial and hard-earned conceptions which 
 can be obtained only by careful and patient investigation. To 
 this class of careful thinkers Lewes pre-eminently belongs, and 
 we may well listen to him when he insists upon a resolution 
 of the great fact of consciousness into its factors or condi- 
 tions, and upon the reunion of the isolated views thus ob- 
 tained into a symmetrical whole. The biological factors of 
 consciousness, we are reminded, afford but an incomplete 
 explanation of Mind ; they supply us, however, with the 
 fundamental conditions of its theory. These substructures 
 of the intellect Lewes thus describes : " Theoretically taking 
 the organism to pieces to understand its separate parts, 
 we fall into the error of supposing that the organism is a 
 mere assemblage of organs, like a machine which is put 
 together by juxtaposition of different parts. But this is 
 radically to misunderstand its essential nature and the uni- 
 versal solidarity of its parts. The organism is not made, 
 not put together, but evolved ; its parts are not juxtaposed, 
 but differentiated ; its organs are groups of minor organ- 
 isms, all sharing in a common life, i. e. all sharing in a com- 
 mon substance constructed through a common process of 
 
GEORGE HENR Y LEWES. 315 
 
 simultaneous and continuous molecular composition and 
 decomposition ; precisely as the great Social Organism is a 
 group of societies, each of which is a group of families, all 
 sharing in a common life, every family having at once its 
 individual independence and its social dependence through 
 connection with every other. In a machine, the parts are 
 all different, and have mechanical significance only in relation 
 to the whole. In an organism, the parts are all identical in 
 fundamental characters and diverse only in their superadded 
 differentiations : each has its independence, although all co- 
 operate. The synthetical point of view, which should never 
 drop out of sight, however the necessities of investigation 
 may throw us upon analysis, is well expressed by Aristotle 
 somewhere to the effect that all collective life depends on 
 the separation of offices and the concurrence of efforts. In 
 a vital organism, every force is the resultant of #//the forces ; 
 it is a disturbance of equilibrium, and equilibrium is the 
 equivalence of convergent forces. When we speak of Intel- 
 ligence as a force which determines actions, we ought always 
 to bear in mind that the efficacy of Intelligence depends on 
 the organs which co-operate and are determined : it is not 
 pure Thought which moves a muscle, neither is it the ab- 
 straction Contractility, but the muscle which moves a limb." 1 
 This luminous exposition of the difference between 
 mechanism and organism (a most important distinction in 
 the study of the physiological basis of mind) is supplemented 
 by an explanation of the metamorphosis which precedes 
 physical assimilation, as a preparation to the understanding 
 of the assimilation of ideas. 2 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., pp. 103-105. 
 
 * ' ' Between the reception of external materials and the assimilation of them by 
 the tissues (plant or animal) there is always an intermediate stage passed 
 through, the inorganic, unvitalized material becoming there transformed into 
 organizable, vitalized material. * * * Until this special change has taken place, 
 the inorganic material is not assimilable ; it must enter as a constituent of the 
 bioplasm to form part of what Claude Bernard calls the Physiological Medium 
 before it can become a constituent of the tissues. The supposition that plants 
 are nourished directly by inorganic substances drawn from the soil and atmos- 
 phere is now proved to be erroneous : the nutrition of plants takes place 
 
316 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 The crisis of the argument then comes in these words: 
 " That Life is Change, and that Consciousness is Change, 
 has always been affirmed. We have only to add that the 
 changes are serial, and convergent through a consensus deter- 
 mined by essential community of structure, and we have char- 
 acterized the speciality of organic change, demarcated Life 
 and Mind from all inorganic change." 1 Movements not 
 combined are /^organic. Serial and combined movements 
 or activities are organic or vital. 
 
 Now, rising above the difference between the most general 
 or inorganic activities, and the special or organic activities 
 known as vital, let us contemplate the difference between or- 
 ganic and suflerorganic activities. Biology is the study of 
 
 through processes similar to those in animals. The inorganic has in both to- 
 pass through the organizable stage, and form proximate principles, before it 
 can become organized into elements of tissue. * * * 
 
 " Let us now pass from Life to Mind. The vital organism is evolved from 
 the bioplasm, and we may now see how the psychical organism is evolved from 
 what may be analogically called the psychoplasm. The bioplasm is character- 
 ized by a continuous and simultaneous movement of molecular composition and 
 decomposition ; and out of these arises the whole mechanism, which is also sus- 
 tained and differentiated by them. If, instead of considering the whole vital 
 organism, we consider solely its sensitive aspects, and confine ourselves to the 
 Nervous System, we may represent the molecular movements of the bioplasm 
 by the neural tremors of the psychoplasm ; these tremors are what I term 
 neural units the raw material of Consciousness ; the several neural groups 
 formed by these units represent the organized elements of tissues, the tissues, 
 and the combination of tissues into organs, and of organs into apparatus. The 
 movements of the bioplasm constitute Vitality ; the movements of the psycho- 
 plasm constitute Sensibility. The forces of the cosmical medium which are 
 transformed in the physiological build up the organic structure, which in the 
 various stages of its evolution reacts according to its statical conditions, them- 
 selves the results of preceding reactions. It is the same with what may be 
 called the mental organism. Here also every phenomenon is the product of 
 two factors, external and internal, impersonal and personal, objective and sub- 
 jective. Viewing the internal factor solely in the light of Feeling, we may say 
 that the sentient material out of which all the forms of Consciousness are 
 evolved is the psychoplasm, incessantly fluctuating, incessantly renewed. 
 Viewing this on the physiological side, it is the succession of neural tremors, 
 variously combining into neural groups." " Problems of Life and Mind," voL 
 I., pp. 107-109. 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. in. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 317 
 
 the history of organic life ; it analyzes the organism, both as 
 a fact and as a gradual development ; it follows the sequences 
 of growth from primitive organisms to man, and from the 
 germ to the adult in each type. Its field, however, is the 
 organism and its physical environment. The spiritual me- 
 dium or surrounding of each organism is beyond the sphere 
 of biology. Psychology is the science which investigates 
 this higher or mental environment. The distinction between 
 these two sciences, therefore, can be broadly expressed as 
 follows : Biology studies the relations between the organism 
 and its physical medium ; Psychology studies the relations 
 between the organism and its mental medium, or the rela- 
 tions between subject and object. The primary law of 
 biology is : " Every vital phenomenon is the product of the 
 two factors, the Organism and its Medium." And the 
 primary law of psychology is, that " Every psychical (mental 
 or spiritual) phenomenon is the product of the two factors, 
 the Subject and the Object." 
 
 These two sciences, therefore, are clearly but studies of 
 different aspects of the single fact of personal existence. 
 Lewes tells us that this law of psychology " replaces the old 
 Dualism, in which Subject and Object were two independent 
 and unallied existences, by a Monism, in which only one 
 existence, under different forms, is conceived. The old con- 
 ception was of Life in conflict with the external ; the new 
 conception recognizes their identity, and founds this recogni- 
 tion on the demonstrable fact that, far from the external 
 forces tending to destroy Life (according to Bichat's view), 
 they are the very materials out of which Life emerges, and 
 by which it is sustained and developed." 
 
 It would be impossible in so short a sketch to give any 
 thing like an adequate idea of the factors of psychical life 
 (or mind), for such an undertaking would constitute a com- 
 plete psychology. It will not do, however, to shirk the 
 responsibility of the metaphysical position which this work 
 has assumed. Lewes declares a true or complete psychology 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 113. 
 
31 8 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 " premature until there is something like a general agree- 
 ment on many questions of fundamental importance, these 
 being partly metaphysical and partly biological." 
 
 Since we assume to have solved the metaphysical prob- 
 lem, we should be able to clear up some of the psychologi- 
 cal ambiguities of which Lewes complains. Does not the 
 difference between the fundamental facts of physical and 
 mental life, referred to above, give us the first opportunity to 
 employ the ultimate analysis which constitutes the solution 
 of the metaphysical problem ? When we consider that all 
 psychical phenomena spring from a primary contrast, and the 
 terms of that contrast are self and not-self, is not the fun- 
 damental nature of Mind revealed by this initial contrast? 
 
 When the banks of the southern Mississippi overflow, 
 any object which remains above the water may become the 
 common refuge of animals that are never found together 
 under less trying circumstances. The timid hare or equally 
 defenceless game, the dangerous snake and other reptiles, 
 cling together to some stray raft, dismayed into peaceful and 
 respectful behavior toward one another, and the traveller 
 finds it difficult to realize that any thing could have devel- 
 oped a dominant common nature in such opposite beings. 
 Apparently the principles which are combined in the fact of 
 personal existence, or perception, springing from the con- 
 trast of subject and object, are as strange to one another as 
 these frightened animals, and yet their unity of nature, the 
 fact that they represent but one fact, is forced upon us 
 when we view them in the plane of their widest significance. 
 Under no provocation, short of an intellectual deluge, will the 
 old-school metaphysician admit that Matter and Space are 
 synonymous, and that they form but one term of a funda- 
 mental contrast, of which Time is the other term ; or that, 
 considered in an impersonal light, or objectively, this con- 
 trast disappears in a single fact or principle. The ultimate 
 difference between self and not-self, or subject and object, 
 can only be found in the aspects of this single fact. 
 
 If we persist in the analysis, even this difference disap- 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 319 
 
 pears, and we are obliged to confess that there is no ultimate 
 or absolute difference between subject and object ; that they 
 are but phases or aspects of the indivisible fact of universal 
 existence, or Motion. 
 
 Intelligence, or perception, however, demands an explana- 
 tion : it insists upon knowing and understanding itself. 
 This intelligence or consciousness is not the ultimate fact, 
 but simply a relative fact; it is the function of individu- 
 ality, and therefore springs from the contrast of one life 
 with all life, or of subject with object. The difficult part of 
 this theory to understand is, how we identify Time with 
 subject and Space with object. The subject occupies space, 
 and therefore has space-relationships ; and the object occu- 
 pies time, and therefore has time-relationships. The idea of 
 space is generated by marking, or attending to, abstract 
 existences, or other existences, considered simultaneously 
 (or apart from time). The idea of time is generated by con- 
 sidering abstract serial existence, or existence apart from 
 other existences (space). Now it is clear that the only 
 existence that we can consider apart from other existences 
 is our own. Thus we get an idea of how these primordial 
 ideas of Time and Space, or Subject and Object, are formed. 
 But it is only an idea. To form a distinct conception, we 
 shall have to make a complete analysis of the phenomena 
 of thought. In trying to form this idea, we have been 
 employing symbols, or language, and this is the very factor 
 the bearings of which are so involved that it presents us 
 with the most complex problem of psychology. 
 
 Language springs from our attempts to communicate 
 images of the mind. The attempts of the child to speak, or 
 still better, of the savage, point to this fact. Upon this 
 subject Lewes says : " It is in Imagination that must be 
 sought the first impulse toward Explanation ; and therefore 
 all primitive explanations are so markedly imaginative. 
 Images being the ideal forms of Sensation, the Logic of 
 Images is the first stage of intellectual activity ; and is 
 therefore predominant in the early history of individual- 
 
320 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 and of nations. The first attempts to explain a phenomenon 
 must be to combine the images of past sensations with the 
 sensations now felt, so as to form a series. In the next 
 stage, words, representative of abstractions, take the places 
 both of images and objects. Thus the Logic of Signs (or 
 language) replaces the Logic of Images, as the Logic of 
 Images replaced the Logic of Sensation." 
 
 If the first stages of intellectual activity are to be found 
 in the " Logic of Images," and Language is the vehicle of 
 these images, it is clear that thought and language are inter- 
 dependent, and develop, or become more definite, together. 
 But if this is the case, why is it that language has to reach 
 an exceedingly high type of development before the cate- 
 gories of thought, or the metaphysical problem, can be stated, 
 as in Greece by Aristotle ; and a still higher development, 
 before the ultimate reality can be announced or the problem 
 solved ? And yet the aspects of this ultimate reality, name- 
 ly, Space and Time, are said to be the primordial inference, 
 the first comparison, from which all comparison, or thought, 
 springs. The calculations and thoughts of a mind utterly 
 ignorant of psychology or metaphysics are just as clearly 
 traceable to this same beginning as those of a Spencer or 
 a Lewes ; the difference being simply that the untrained 
 mind is unconscious of the great unity or simplicity of 
 thought. It is not necessary that we should understand the 
 fundamental principles of a subject in order to act correctly 
 in its sphere ; it is not necessary that we should perform a 
 complete analysis of the mind in order to reason correctly 
 within certain limits. The bank officer may know little or 
 nothing of economics, and still pass upon credits successfully ; 
 the priest or minister may know nothing of abstract ethics, 
 and still judge matters of conduct correctly. 
 
 In both of these cases intuitions or unconscious mental 
 co-ordinations supply the place of the elaborate synthetic 
 conceptions which result from much special study. The 
 truths which analysis reveals, and which synthesis unites 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 155. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. $21 
 
 into a whole, are abridged and vaguely represented in the 
 mind by intuitions. For instance, the whole science of 
 economics consists in the study of the production and dis- 
 tribution of wealth. The bank officer may be unable to 
 trace the generality, wealth, to its original factors, land, 
 labor, and capital ; but he knows the most enduring forms 
 of wealth, and the kinds of men and institutions to entrust 
 it to, and therefore arrives at the practice of economics 
 without performing an analysis of its principles. The hori- 
 zon of this practical knowledge is occupied by uninvestigated 
 truths, which would easily yield to analysis and assimilate 
 with the truths already possessed ; but in the absence of 
 this investigation, intuitions, or vague ideas, take the place 
 of definite conceptions. Again : the priest or minister may 
 not be able to reduce morality to its prime factors, indi- 
 vidual, social, and general existence ; but pure habits of 
 mind have endowed him with excellent moral intuitions, 
 enabling him to decide correctly in delicate questions of 
 conduct. His mind may be as far from grasping the funda- 
 mental principles of conduct as the magnetic needle is from 
 being conscious of the currents of energy which determine 
 its movements ; but the needle, in responding to these rela- 
 tions in the simplest possible sense, perceives them, and its 
 tiny adjustments, viewed from another standpoint, are ex- 
 pressions of certain relations or truths.. So the pure-minded 
 ecclesiast allows a healthful moral nature to perceive for him 
 the most obscure moral truths. These unconscious percep- 
 tions, called intuitions, are the natural or spontaneous induc- 
 tions, the irresistible, unwilled activities of our nature from 
 which Consciousness itself springs. Would the needle make 
 a better compass if it were conscious ; would the clergyman 
 be better fitted for his duties were he more profound ? Un- 
 questionably, yes. Given the natural truths which each 
 possesses, higher complexity would insure wider and more 
 delicate adjustments ; more knowledge would insure more 
 influence for good. Could we complicate the structure of a 
 mariner's compass so that it would not be deflected by the 
 
322 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 proximity of masses of metals, it would be more useful, 
 more reliable, for the purposes of navigation. If we could 
 convince the priest or minister that God is a principle, not a 
 person, he would be made still purer by the conception of 
 this divine unity ; his influence would be widened by giving 
 to his teachings the power which comes from a greater 
 command of facts. 
 
 Thus we have gradually reviewed the whole field of psy- 
 chology, the scope of language, and the nature of perception ; 
 the difference between the real and the ideal, and the affilia- 
 tion of the factors of mental with those of physical life, by 
 the discovery of the social factor in psychical development. 
 What is more manifest (if Time and Space are the first in- 
 ferences, and at the same time the representatives of Subject 
 and Object) than that the universal principle is only divisible 
 into aspects, and that these aspects, or appearances, are dis- 
 covered, or given, by the fact of individual life, the natural 
 consequence of that isolation, or separation, from general ex- 
 istence which is implied in a relative or personal existence ? 
 What is more manifest than that thought is the complex 
 activity of a sensorium which is a development of an organ- 
 ism, and that language is the structural process of the social 
 mind surrounding the individual mind ; the psychoplasm 
 which bathes the tissues of the intellect and carries to 
 them the common fund of ideas in an assimilable condi- 
 tion? What is more manifest than that, as this intellec- 
 tual medium called language is rendered more soluble, 
 more interdependent in meaning, better co-ordinated by 
 the perfection of higher generalities, it will bring a larger 
 and larger number of minds into communication, and a 
 greater and greater expanse of outlying truth within reach of 
 each individual? 
 
 When the highest generalization, the most powerful intel- 
 lectual solvent, shall have permeated language and thought, 
 the physical, mental, and moral development of the race will 
 be simply a question of vitality, not of method, for the ways 
 and means of this development will be universally under- 
 stood. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 323 
 
 It may be said that thus to bring the activities of a magnet 
 and those of a man under the same category, to call the adjust- 
 ments of the former to external influences a kind of percep- 
 tion, and to view the manifestations of this adjustment as 
 the expression of a fact or truth, is to give to the terms per- 
 ception and expression a breadth of meaning which has 
 no warrant in fact, and therefore proves nothing. This, 
 however, is precisely the question in point. We name a 
 fact of sentiency perception. Until we analyze perception 
 we see no resemblance between it and facts immeasurably 
 less complex, although of the same nature. The most 
 successful and widely accepted analysis of psychical life 
 discloses it to be the adjustments of an organism to its 
 environment, or the adjustment of inner to outer activi- 
 ties, which is also the best definition of physical life. The 
 deepest biological studies teach us that the first principle, 
 or condition, of the organism is a limiting membrane, some- 
 thing to define, separate, or contrast it with the surroundings. 
 The deepest psychological studies teach us that the first 
 principle of psychical life, or perception, is a contrast, differ- 
 ence, or demarcation, between two terms, the organism or 
 subject, and its surroundings or object. 
 
 " When it is said that animals, however intelligent, have 
 no intellect, the meaning is that they have perceptions and 
 judgments, but no conceptions, no general ideas, no sym- 
 bols for logical operations. They are intelligent, for we 
 see them guided to action by judgment; they adapt their 
 actions by means of guiding sensations, and adapt things 
 to their ends. Their mechanism is a sentient, intelligent 
 mechanism. But they have not conception, or what we 
 specially designate as Thought, i. e. that logical function 
 which deals with generalities, ratios, symbols, as feeling 
 deals with particulars and objects, a function sustained by 
 and subservient to impersonal, social ends. Taking intelli- 
 gence in general as the discrimination of means to ends, 
 the guidance of the organism toward the satisfaction of its 
 impulses, we particularize intelligence as a highly differen- 
 
324 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 tiated mode of this function, namely, as the discrimination 
 of symbols. * * * Intellect is impossible until animal devel- 
 opment has reached the human social stage ; and it is at all 
 periods the index of that development ; its operations are 
 likewise carried on by means of symbols (Language) which 
 represent real objects, and can at any time be translated into 
 feelings. 
 
 " It is obvious that the biological data can only resolve 
 one half of the psychological problem, only present one of 
 the foci of the ellipse, since by no derivation from the 
 purely statical considerations of man's animal organism can 
 we reach the higher dynamical products. Isolate man from 
 the social state, and we have an animal ; set going his 
 organism simply in relation to the Cosmos, without involv- 
 ing any relations to other men, and we can get no intellect, 
 no conscience. * * * The language of symbols [is] at once the 
 cause and effect of civilization." ' 
 
 Thus we see that mind cannot be explained without a 
 constant recognition of the relations of organism and social 
 medium. So important is the operation of the social 
 medium in the fact of mind, that the state of education to 
 which the race has attained at any given time is a determi- 
 nant of the individual mind. The subject must be adjusted 
 to this medium in order to act and to be reacted upon by it. 
 
 The absurdity of supposing that any ape, for instance, 
 could, under any normal circumstances, " construct a scien- 
 tific theory, analyze a fact into its component factors, frame 
 to himself a picture of the life led by his ancestors, or con- 
 sciously regulate his conduct with a view to the welfare of 
 remote descendants, is so glaring that we need not wonder 
 at profoundly meditative minds having been led to reject 
 with scorn the hypothesis which seeks for an explanation 
 of human intelligence in the functions of the bodily organ- 
 ism common to man and animals, and having had recourse 
 to the hypothesis of a spiritual agent superadded to the 
 organism." 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., pp. 142, 143. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 325 
 
 This spiritual hypothesis, however, is unscientific. It 
 offers a name for a fact without explaining it without con- 
 necting it with what we know. In a word, instead of solving 
 the question of life and mind, it simply reiterates the old 
 assertion that both of these facts are mysteries, giving us 
 no clue to their hidden relations. 
 
 It is these relations, however, that we are seeking, and in 
 this reach of comparisons, the response of a magnetic 
 needle to physical energies, the adjustment of a monad to 
 its environment, the slow growth of sentiency in ascending 
 organic types, the interposition of a social medium in the 
 surroundings of the highest type, the development of this 
 medium into a world of symbols radiating from a single 
 fact, we have a serial development which expresses the 
 interdependence, or mutual activity, of the subject and 
 object, the organism and its environment. 
 
 Mark, however, the vast difference between the signifi- 
 cance of these two pairs of antithetical terms, subject and 
 object, organism and environment. One is an expansion 
 of the meaning of self and not-self into the two great aspects 
 of the universe, Time and Space, the Eternal and the In- 
 finite ; the other is the contrast of individual and general 
 physical life. The distinction between the ideal and the 
 real, or the mental and the physical, therefore, is seen to be 
 but relative. The organism is great, not in itself, but in its 
 connection, or joint existence, with the external world ; the 
 subject derives its magnificent perspectives, not by drawing 
 absolute boundary-lines between itself and the objective uni- 
 verse, not by affirming that we are immaterial or spiritual, 
 but from the fact that we are an expression of a universal 
 principle. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES (CONTINUED). 
 
 The Unity of the Whole Organism as a Factor of Mind Lewes' Definitions of 
 Experience and Feeling. 
 
 IN following Lewes' explanation of the difference between 
 the metaphysical and the metempirical we have well-nigh 
 exhausted the question of the categories of thought. By 
 applying the solution of this problem to the principles of psy- 
 chology as set forth by our author, we have obtained still 
 more light upon the subject, and yet this metaphysical prob- 
 lem continues to confront us with unabated vigor through- 
 out the whole of the remaining portions of Lewes' philoso- 
 phy, and the same power and skill continue to be fruitlessly 
 exerted toward its determination. Such is the curse of 
 agnosticism. Following psychological principles, we have in 
 the same volume a long treatment of the " Limitations of 
 Knowledge." One might naturally suppose that this subject 
 would have been disposed of in a treatise on the Principles of 
 Psychology ; for if the word knowledge is used in the limited 
 sense of the product of mental activity (and it is in this 
 sense alone that Lewes and Spencer employ the word), 
 surely its limitations should be a part of the study of Psy- 
 chology ; and the principle of the " Limitations of Knowl- 
 edge " should be clearly laid down among psychological prin- 
 ciples. But, on the contrary, the subject is begun with as 
 much freshness as if nothing had been said in regard to it, 
 or at least as if the problems which it suggests were entirely 
 unsolved. 
 
 In the light of the principle which this work would estab- 
 lish, the question, What are the limitations of knowledge ? 
 
 326 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 327 
 
 can hardly be considered as rational ; for Knowledge to us 
 means the same thing as Life or Progress ; it is universal. 
 The absence of limits (the infinite) is one of the appearances 
 of this principle by which we apprehend it. The " Limita- 
 tions of Knowledge," therefore, is an impossible subject to 
 us. The solution of the metaphysical problem enables us 
 to regard human knowledge as a phase of human life. 
 We admit no limits to human life excepting individual 
 limits, which are purely relative. The limits of human 
 knowledge are to be found in the functions and structures 
 of the human and the social organism. We do not admit, 
 therefore, to the discussion of the " Limitations of Knowl- 
 edge " such questions as the contradistinctions of Mind and 
 Matter, or the meanings of Cause, Force, and Motion. 
 The solution of these questions depends upon an under- 
 standing of the meaning of ultimate principles, the knowl- 
 edge that they express but a single fact and certain clearly 
 denned aspects of this fact. Hence the best that Lewes can 
 do with these questions is to push them aside with vague 
 generalities whenever they interfere with his explanations, 
 this he is compelled to do throughout the whole course of 
 his philosophy. 
 
 We have before us a closely reasoned essay, forming the 
 greater part of the first volume of " Problems of Life and 
 Mind." Containing as it certainly does more advanced and 
 more clearly expressed views on the subject of human knowl- 
 edge than perhaps any other work of the kind, this essay 
 nevertheless bears a title which implies a contradiction in 
 terms, and so creates the difficulty which it is the purpose 
 of the author to remove. 
 
 One of the best sentences to be found in this essay is, 
 " The certainty of knowledge is not affected by its circum- 
 scription." It is immediately followed by one still more 
 suggestive, " The principle of relativity furnishes a crite- 
 rion which is coextensive with the domain of intelligence." 
 In these two sentences we have what is in effect the chal- 
 lenge and the defeat of agnosticism, the utter discomfi- 
 
328 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ture of " The Unknowable "; but the author passes on, ap- 
 parently unconscious of the significance of his own words; he 
 passes on to endless repetitions of the same questions and 
 the replies to them. In these sentences the question of Cer- 
 titude, or ultimate Proof, is answered ; and yet the first 
 hundred pages of the following volume of the same series 
 (" Problems of Life and Mind ") are devoted to the discussion 
 of the " Principles of Certitude " ; and even then the ques- 
 tion is left undecided. 
 
 In the above sentences we have two distinct assertions : 
 the first is, that the circumscriptions of knowledge do not 
 render knowledge itself less certain ; and the second, that the 
 principle of relativity is coextensive with intelligence. The 
 first simply affirms that human knowledge is subject to human 
 conditions, and that this fact does not affect its integrity, or 
 that knowledge, as we find it, is knowledge, and not illusion. 
 The second assertion means that knowledge, or intelligence, 
 has no absolute limits. For if the principle of relativity, or 
 the ultimate relation, is coextensive with intelligence, and 
 motion is the ultimate relation, the principle of intelligence 
 is universal ; or, which is the same thing, there is no absolute 
 distinction between Knowledge, Life, and Motion that is to 
 say, the ideas which these words represent can be produced 
 to a single logical focus. It follows from this that the prin- 
 ciple of Relativity, or Motion, is the criterion of knowledge ; 
 for a criterion is a fact by which other facts are measured, 
 or compared. The ultimate fact must be the measure of all 
 things, the criterion of knowledge. 
 
 It may be objected that every generalization can be thus 
 dissipated by reduction to the ultimate fact of motion. It 
 is, however, this very admission which it is the aim of phi- 
 losophy to obtain. As long as ultimate proofs are sought, 
 they must be sought in the ultimate fact, for in the universal 
 principle the proof and the fact merge in one. The prin- 
 ciples of certitude, therefore, are to be found in the basis, or 
 source, of all truth, the primordial fact ; and the principle of 
 individual certitude, or, as Spencer denominates it, the Uni- 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 329 
 
 versal Postulate, is to be found in the rule that facts express 
 themselves ; which is the simplest way of saying that we be- 
 lieve things when we are unable to disbelieve them ; ultimate 
 proof, or " the universal postulate, consists in the inconceiva- 
 bleness of the negation of a proposition." 
 
 Human perception is not a condition of ultimate truth, 
 but a product of it. We appreciate the universe through its 
 motions, or activities ; the principle of intelligence is there- 
 fore indistinguishable from universal activity. Isolated or 
 individual facts are but the function of individual existence. 
 The quality, or certitude, of an individual fact is but another 
 name for the existence of which the fact is an expression. 
 The idea of quality can be traced directly to the fact of 
 personal existence, disclosing the source of all ethical concep- 
 tions ; and the companion idea of quantity can be identified 
 with the fact of general existence ; thus giving us the remote 
 counterparts of subject and object, i. e. time and space, the 
 two great aspects of life. 
 
 Lewes, as will be seen from the following, freely acknowl- 
 edged the disadvantage he was under in not having deter- 
 mined the relation of subject and object. This occurs in 
 the essay on the " Limitations of Knowledge " : 
 
 " Metaphysics, in addition to its own obscurities, is over- 
 shadowed by the uncertainties hovering around its data. We 
 cannot, for instance, accept Force as the cause of Motion 
 unless Cause and Motion have already been clearly defined ; 
 and they are as obscure as the Force they are employed to 
 render intelligible. We cannot stir a step in the exposition 
 of the relation of Object and Subject without presupposing 
 to be already settled fundamental points of Psychology 
 which are still under discussion. No explanation can be 
 given of Matter which does not involve a conception of 
 Force. Thus the interconnections which are potent aids in 
 physical inquiry are so many obstacles in metaphysical re- 
 search." 
 
 In passing on to the further consideration of this essay, 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., p. 188. 
 
330 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 it would be well to mark the clear explanation of the word 
 Experience which Lewes offers, as it is so important in 
 discussions concerning the nature of mind : 
 
 " The main question must remain nebulous so long as 
 we are without a precise definition of Experience. The 
 term is very variously and very laxly used. I have defined 
 it * the Registration of Feeling/ And what is Feeling ? 
 It is the reaction of the sentient Organism under stimulus. 
 Observe, it is not the reaction of an organ, but of the Organ- 
 ism, a most important distinction, and rarely recognized. 
 This reaction is a resultant of two factors, one factor being 
 the Organism and the other being the Stimulus. We are 
 not to accept every response of an organ as a feeling; nor 
 every feeling as an experience. The secretion of a gland is 
 a response physiologically similar to the response of the eye 
 or ear ; but it is not a feeling, although entering as an ele- 
 ment into the mass of Systemic Sensation. Nor will the 
 response of a sensory organ, even when a feeling (through 
 its combination with other sentient responses), be an experi- 
 ence, unless it be registered in a modification of structure, 
 and thus be revivable, because a statical condition is requisite 
 for a dynamical manifestation. Rigorously speaking, of 
 course there is no body that can be acted on without being 
 modified : every sunbeam that beats against the wall alters 
 the structure of that wall ; every breath of air that cools the 
 brow alters the state of the organism. But such minute 
 alterations are inappreciable for the most part by any means 
 in our possession, and are not here taken into account, be- 
 cause, being annulled by subsequent alterations, they do not 
 become registered in the structure. We see many sights, 
 read many books, hear many wise remarks ; but, although 
 each of these has insensibly affected us, changed our mental 
 structures, so that 'we are a part of all that we have met/ 
 yet the registered result, the residuum, has perhaps been 
 very small. While, therefore, no excitation of Feeling is 
 really without some corresponding modification of Structure, 
 it is only the excitations which produce permanent modifi- 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 331 
 
 cations that can be included under Experience. A feeling 
 passed away, and incapable of revival, would never be called 
 an experience by any strict writer. But the feelings regis- 
 tered are psycho-statical elements, so that henceforward 
 when the Organism is stimulated it must react along these 
 lines, and the product will be a feeling more or less resem- 
 bling the feeling formerly excited." l * * * 
 
 The value of Lewes' study of Mind is not to be lightly 
 estimated. His command of the minutest details of the re- 
 sults of introspection is wonderful. He seems to have sum- 
 moned all his resources to the solution of the problem of 
 Mind, and to have fairly overridden the enormous obstacle 
 of an entangled metaphysical vocabulary. Thus throughout 
 the succeeding " Problems," although great space is given to 
 unsuccessful discussions of metaphysics, the theme of Life 
 and Mind is developed with an accuracy and thoroughness 
 which places the science of psychology upon a firm footing. 
 
 The carelessness observed in the use of the word mind, 
 even among the ostensibly learned, is thus dwelt upon : 
 
 " Mind is commonly spoken of in oblivion of the fact that 
 it is an abstract term expressing the sum of mental phe- 
 nomena (with or without an unexplored remainder, according 
 to the point of view) ; as an abstraction, it comes to be re- 
 garded in the light of an entity, or separate source of the 
 phenomena which constitute it. A thought, which as a prod- 
 uct is simply an embodied process, comes to be regarded in 
 the light of something distinct from the process ; and thus 
 two aspects of one and the same phenomenon are held to be 
 two distinct phenomena. Because we abstract the material 
 of an object from its form, considering each apart, we get 
 into the habit of treating form as if it were in reality sepa- 
 rable from material. By a similar illusion we come to regard 
 the process (of thinking) apart from the product (thought), 
 and, generalizing the process, we call it Mind, or Intellect, 
 which then means no longer the mental phenomena con- 
 densed into a term, but the source of these phenomena. * * * 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., pp. 193, 195. 
 
332 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 It is reflection and experiment which convince us that the 
 air is a material object capable of being weighed and meas- 
 ured. It is reflection and experiment which convince us 
 that Thought is an embodied process, which has its con- 
 ditions in the history of the race no less than in that of the 
 individual." ' 
 
 With this clear definition of Mind, let us revert to the 
 question of Experience. 
 
 The following lines by George Eliot are a poetical expres- 
 sion of the great psychological truth, that the experiences of 
 the race as well as those of the individual become embodied 
 in modifying the mental structure : 
 
 " What ! shall the trick of nostrils and of lips 
 Descend through generations, and the soul, 
 That moves within our frame like God in worlds, 
 Imprint no record, leave no documents 
 Of her great history ? Shall men bequeath 
 The fancies of their palates to their sons, 
 And shall the shudder of restraining awe, 
 The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, 
 Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine 
 Of fasts ecstatic, shall these pass away 
 Like wind upon the waters tracklessly ? " 
 
 Shall the physical propensities be faithfully recorded and 
 transmitted in the physical structure, and shall all the 
 emotions and thoughts of life fail to modify and shape the 
 mental or nervous structure? 
 
 Nothing can be more radically opposed to generally ac- 
 cepted teachings than Lewes' explanation of the interde- 
 pendence of physical and mental activities. In the analysis 
 of the terms feelings, thoughts, and actions given in the 
 previous review, the artificial nature of the distinctions 
 between the different orders of subjective activity was 
 pointed out. So fixed, however, has become the idea that 
 mind means something wholly separate from body, that too 
 much emphasis cannot be laid upon facts which explain 
 this error. In modern methods of teaching, every thing is 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. I., pp. 199, 202. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 333 
 
 prepared for the student of physiology so that he will have 
 no difficulty in becoming acquainted with the wonders and 
 obscurities of the sensorium. The study of the physical 
 activities is carefully demarcated from that of the mind ; 
 this division is more than analytical, for the distinctions 
 are made to appear ultimate ; they are never removed so 
 as to afford a synthetic view of the whole subject. 
 
 The cerebral hemispheres are believed to be the seat of 
 combination for all the senses. In them sensations are said 
 to be transformed into thoughts, emotions into sentiments. 
 Lewes severely criticises this assumption of exclusive func- 
 tions of the brain : 
 
 " The cerebral hemispheres," he says, " considered as 
 organs, are similar in structure and properties to the other 
 nerve-centres ; the laws of sensibility are common to both ; 
 [and] the processes are alike in both ; in a word, the Brain is 
 only one organ [a supremely important organ !] in a complex 
 of organs, whose united activities are necessary for the phe- 
 nomena called mental. * * * The assignment of even Think- 
 ing to the cerebral hemispheres is purely hypothetical. 
 Whatever may be the evidence on which it rests, it must 
 still be acknowledged to be an hypothesis awaiting verifica- 
 tion. This may seem incredible to some readers, accustomed 
 to expositions which do not suggest a doubt, expositions 
 where the course of an impression is described from the sen- 
 sitive surface along the sensory nerve to its ganglion, from 
 thence to a particular spot in the Optic Thalamus [where the 
 impression is said to become a sensation], from that spot to 
 cells in the upper layer of the cerebral convolutions [where 
 the sensation becomes an idea], from thence downward to a 
 lower layer of cells [where the idea is changed into a volitional 
 impulse], and from thence to the motor-ganglia in the 
 spinal cord, where it is reflected on the motor-nerves and 
 muscles. 
 
 " Nothing is wanting to the precision of this description. 
 Every thing is wanting to its proof. The reader might sup- 
 pose that the course had been followed step by step, at least, 
 
334 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 as the trajectory of a cannon-ball or the path of a planet is 
 followed ; and that where actual observation is at fault, cal- 
 culation is ready to fill up the gap. Yet what is the fact ? It 
 is that not a single step of this involved process has ever 
 been observed ; the description is imaginary from beginning 
 to end." l 
 
 Lewes goes on to explain that although the imagination 
 has had inductions to work on in constructing these theories, 
 all that the evidence vouches for is, that the integrity of the 
 nervous system is necessary for the manifestation of its mental 
 phenomena. 
 
 In the volume entitled " The Physical Basis of Mind " it is 
 abundantly shown that sensations, emotions, volitions, and 
 even instincts, may be manifested after the brain of an animal 
 has been removed. Hence the assertion made by so many 
 physiologists, that the brain is the exclusive organ of the 
 mind, or intelligence, or the Sensorium, or place of feeling, 
 cannot be sustained. 
 
 Now when we reflect on the great disturbance to the gen- 
 eral mechanism which must result from such an operation as 
 removing the brain, and how easily a comparatively slight 
 disturbance of a mechanism will abolish many of its manifes- 
 tations, we see decisive proof that the brain can only be one 
 factor however important in the production of mental 
 manifestations. 
 
 Thus, notwithstanding the endless proofs that Mind means 
 nothing more than an ideal separation of a certain view of in- 
 dividual life from the sum of individual existence, the analysis 
 by which our conceptions of physical and mental phenomena 
 are built up is made of itself an immovable fact, whereas it 
 is but a method of mental procedure, and should be borne 
 in mind as such. The great fact that unconscious states play 
 by far the greater part in mental life forces the conviction that 
 every activity of the body is a more or less remote factor in 
 consciousness. The familiar instances of mental aberration 
 directly traceable to physical disturbances, the frequent occur- 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," 3d series, p. 65. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 335 
 
 rence of different degrees of moral degeneration resulting 
 from different kinds of disease, are only prominent instances 
 among the great mass of personal experiences which teach us 
 that the operations of the mind are dependent from moment 
 to moment upon physical conditions. 
 
 Nothing, however, short of a close study of the sensoriunv 
 from the most intelligent standpoint, can reveal the fact that 
 thought, although the function of vastly more complex con- 
 ditions than those of feeling, contains no ultimate principle 
 which is not expressed in the simplest forms of life, and that 
 there is no organ or tissue in the human body which has 
 not a voice a direct influence in its mental and moral 
 determinations. 
 
 The brain therefore is not the sole organ of the mind, but 
 only a very important part of the sensorium, and it is need- 
 less to say that notwithstanding its vast importance in intel- 
 lectual phenomena the co-operation of the rest of the nervous 
 system, and indeed of the whole physical system, is at least 
 equally essential to the activity known as thought. Hence 
 we must no longer " isolate the cerebrum from the rest 
 of the nervous system, assigning it as the exclusive seat of 
 sensation, nor suppose that it has laws of grouping which. 
 are not at work in the other centres. * * * The soul is a 
 history, and its activities the products of that history. Each 
 mental state is a state of the whole Sensorium ; one stroke 
 sets the whole vibrating." ' 
 
 The Sensorium, in the broadest sense, is the whole living 
 organism. All attempts to localize the part of the organism 
 which reacts upon a stimulus are vain, so interdependent are 
 all parts of all organisms. Although nerve fibrils, fibres, and 
 cells, forming in different combinations, nerves, and ganglia,, 
 are easily distinguished, the nervous system has no exact 
 demarcations from the other tissues. It is impossible to say 
 exactly where the nerve ceases and the muscle begins, so- 
 insensible are the structural gradations in the connection. 
 The functions of the nervous system are even less sus- 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," 3d series, pp. 69, 71, 102. 
 
336 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ceptible of a positive separation from those of the rest of 
 the organism. 
 
 " The method of composition remains the same through- 
 out the entire fabric of Mind, from the formation of its 
 simplest feelings up to the formation of those immense and 
 complex aggregates of feelings which characterize its highest 
 developments." 
 
 The Sensorium, from a functional point of view, can be 
 described in general terms as that part of the organism 
 which is capable of the greatest molecular activity. This 
 idea becomes irresistible when we study the development of 
 nervous systems from their rudimentary forms in the sim- 
 plest types of animal life to higher grades of complexity. 
 
 Reflex action, or the isolation of the nervous arc from the 
 nervous system, considering the reflex act apart from its 
 preceding and succeeding states, is, therefore, but an ana- 
 lytical distinction of organic activity. The discovery that 
 the co-ordination of movements in the extremities and other 
 parts of the body can take place after the removal of the 
 brain, in certain animals, does not prove that were the brain 
 present it would not take part in some degree in the move- 
 ments. The central fact that " no single organ has a func- 
 tion at all when isolated from the organism," differently 
 expressed, is, that no activity can be separated (otherwise 
 than ideally) from the complex of activities known as indi- 
 vidual life. 
 
 " The brain is simply one element in a complex mechan- 
 ism, each element of which is a component of the Senso- 
 rium, or Sentient Ego. We may consider the several 
 elements as forming a plexus of sensibilities, the solidarity 
 of which is such that while each may separately be stimu- 
 lated in a particular way, no one of them can be active with- 
 out involving the activity of all the others. * * * When, 
 therefore, we reduce the abstract term Mind to its concretes, 
 namely, states of the sentient mechanism, the ' power of the 
 Mind ' simply means the stimulative and regulative processes 
 which ensue on sentient excitation. 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer : " Principles of Psychology," vol. I., p. 184. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 337 
 
 " We may now formulate a conclusion : Sensibility is the 
 special property of the nervous tissue. Every bit of that 
 tissue is sensitive in so far that it is capable of entering as 
 a sensible component into a group, the resultant of which is a 
 feeling i. e. a change in the state of the sentient organism. 
 The Sensorium is the wtwle which reacts on the stimulation of 
 any particular portion of that whole" 
 
 There is no doubt, therefore, that the aversion so generally 
 manifested toward the proposition, that all intellectual or 
 spiritual activities have mechanical principles, is simply the 
 result of a cramped and inadequate idea of the scope of 
 those laws or influences known as mechanical. 
 
 The most devout person would not object to the assertion 
 that all the activities of nature, from the evolutions of the 
 heavenly bodies to the life of microscopic plants and ani- 
 mals, are guided by the hand of God, and that this same 
 guidance is manifested in every human thought and feeling. 
 And yet these words, translated into more exact terms, 
 simply mean that the universal principle known as Motion 
 is the ultimate fact in all objective and subjective life, 
 uniting, in a single system of interdependent activities, the 
 body and the mind, or nature and consciousness. 
 
 If any other point or principle than that of general exist- 
 ence, and through it personal existence, be selected as the 
 focus of thought, our logical perspectives become confused, 
 and no effort can readjust them. It is in the failure to make 
 this adjustment of the perspectives of Knowledge, and to 
 thereby harmonize the principles which we call Knowledge, 
 Life, and Progress, that we have the failures of philosophy. 
 Thus it is easy to see how Lewes fixed upon feeling as the 
 ultimate fact of our existence, for each individual can only 
 appreciate general existence through the medium of the 
 activities of his own life. 
 
 We have already seen, in one of the psychological analyses 
 of the preceding review, that feeling is a name which, in its 
 broadest meaning, represents all internal changes ; or, what 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," 3d series, pp. 77, 82. 
 
338 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 is the same thing, the subjective side of life. To sensible 
 experience is traced the origin of every thought ; thus the 
 fact of personal existence is naturally in the line of our view 
 of general existence. The fact that Lewes did not perform 
 an ultimate analysis must explain to us the repetitions which 
 we find in his works. But this we find in all philosophy. It 
 is these repetitions which make philosophy so dull and un- 
 interesting to the majority of readers. . In Lewes, however, 
 the repetitions are merely repeated efforts, instituted from 
 different starting-points, to reach a common goal of thought, 
 and the union of these lines of investigation in a single point 
 can only be made by a bold and independent inference from 
 what he has written. 
 
 The whole purpose of his Problems entitled the " Limita- 
 tions of Knowledge," the " Principles of Certitude," and 
 " From the Known to the Unknown," is to establish Feeling 
 as the ultimate fact of life. 
 
 Thus the scope of language and the nature of perception 
 are revealed by the genesis of metaphor. Language and 
 perception are purely synthetic. If we would retrace the 
 course of their development to a first cause or ultimate prin- 
 ciple, both become dissipated by the ideal analysis (for all 
 analysis is an art, or an ideal procedure), and we come upon 
 the logical or potential source of all things in God, Motion, 
 or Life. Is it not clear that every perception and every 
 thought must be less than this great fact, must be but a 
 limited expression of it, the natural function of our indi- 
 viduality ? 
 
 When Lewes, therefore, affirms that Feeling is all in all 
 to us, he simply assigns to humanity the middle term be- 
 tween thought and the lowest forms of sentiency, and ex- 
 tends its meaning in both directions to include all phases of 
 life, from the simplest organic to the highest psychical ex- 
 istence. From the objective side of feeling, which is action, 
 he might have carried on the generalization until it became 
 universal. 
 
 That Lewes expresses the above ideas as clearly as it is 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 339 
 
 possible to express them without employing the instrument 
 of an ultimate analysis, can be seen from his argument on 
 the " Principles of Certitude," where we have the unknow- 
 able practically rejected in favor of the unknown. 
 
 ' ' I have repeatedly insisted on the memorable fact that Science is no transcript 
 of Reality, but an ideal construction framed out of the analysis of the complex 
 phenomena given synthetically in Feeling, and expressed in abstractions. In 
 all analysis there is abstraction, which rejects much more than is expressed ; 
 this rejected remainder may in turn be analyzed, but at each step there is an 
 unexplored remainder. As, in the speculation of Laplace, there are dark stars 
 scattered through space, but hidden from observation because they are dark ; so 
 in every phenomenon there are numberless factors at work which are hidden 
 from observation, and only speculatively postulated. Sometimes these specu- 
 lative inferences, which always have some basis in observation or analogy, sug- 
 gest the means of objective verification. Thus Newton inferred that bodies at 
 the earth's surface gravitated toward each other ; it was an inference from 
 analogy, but was then beyond experimental proof. 1 It has since been experi- 
 mentally verified, and thus exhibited, not only as an ideal truth, but one having 
 real application. 
 
 " It is requisite to bear in mind that no general statement can be real, no 
 ideal truth be a transcript of the actual order in its real complexity. ' Until we 
 know thoroughly the nature of matter, and the forces which produce its motions, 
 it will be utterly impossible to submit to mathematical reasoning the exact con- 
 ditions of any physical question,' and even then it will only be mathematical 
 relations which will be formulated. The approximate solutions which are 
 reached ' are obtained by a species of abstraction, or rather limitation of the 
 data,' and thus ' the infinite series of forces really acting may be left out of con- 
 sideration ; so that the mathematical investigation deals with a finite (and gen- 
 erally small) number of forces, instead of a practically infinite number.' a 
 
 " If, then, Science is, in its nature, an ideal construction, and its truths are 
 only symbols which approximate to realities, there is an internal necessity of 
 movement in scientific thought which transforms existing theories according to 
 ever-widening experience. We can never reach the finality of Existence, for 
 we are always having fresh experiences, and fresh theories to express them. 
 "We also need hypotheses to supplement the deficiencies of observation ; and 
 that hypothesis is the best which introduces most congruity among our ascer- 
 tained truths. Yet throughout this shifting of the limits there is a constant 
 principle of Certitude, and the truth of yesterday is not proved false because it 
 is included in the wider truth of to-day : the two truths express two limits of 
 Experience. 
 
 " In conclusion, we may say that various theories are ideal representations of 
 the External Order, and are severally true, in so far as the import of their terms. 
 
 1 Newton : " Principia," III., Prop. VII.. Corol. I. 
 * Thomson and Tait : " Natural Philosophy," vol. I., p. 337. 
 
340 , THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 includes no more than has been verified by the reduction of Inference to Intui- 
 tion or Sensation ; severally false, in so far as their terms include what is in- 
 consistent with such verified import ; and severally dotibtful, in so far as the 
 terms include what has not been thus verified. To express it in a more abstract 
 phrase : Truth is the equivalence of the terms of a proposition ; and the equiva- 
 lence is tested by the reduction of the terms to an identical proposition" J 
 
 An identical proposition is only another name for the 
 merging of difference in identity, the aspects of motion in 
 the fact of motion, the subjective and the objective in the 
 principle of life. Thus we see that the vexed question of 
 the principles of certitude can alone be solved by an 
 ultimate analysis, that nothing short of the reduction 
 of the categories of thought to a single principle will 
 remove its difficulties. Mr. Spencer says, the deepest test 
 of truth is negative, i. e. ultimate proof to us is our ina- 
 bility to believe a proposition untrue, or our inability to 
 disbelieve the truth of a proposition. What does this mean 
 but that truth itself is relative, and that our apprecia- 
 tions of relative truths are but adjustments, more or less ex- 
 tended, of individual to general existence ? The criterion or 
 measure of these adjustments is the fact of equality, the 
 balancing of forces, the establishment of equivalences ; 
 doubt disappears when this balance is reached. Thus our 
 test of truth is negative only in the sense that it is not 
 absolute, for conviction is the result of conditions, the ad- 
 justment of internal and external forces. Truth, then, is the 
 equivalence of the terms of a proposition, the meeting of 
 the individual with the general mind through the medium 
 of language. What room is there in this definition of certi- 
 tude for the unknowable ? Of what terms, of what proposi- 
 tion, is the unknowable the equivalence ? The unknowable 
 is not the unexplored remainder, for that is merely the out- 
 lying region of experience, the background of fact, from 
 which each apprehended truth stands out in relief. The 
 unexplored remainder is the unknown, the unassimilated 
 field of truth. The. unknown, therefore, is related to the 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. II., p. 77. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 341 
 
 known, its influence is felt in the equilibrium, the balance of 
 forces, which we call conviction. 
 
 The unknowable has no influence in truth ; it has no voice 
 in any proposition ; it is a term in no equivalence ; it has no 
 existence in fact. 
 
 Who can doubt that Lewes repudiates the unknowable 
 after reading his criticism of Spencer's theory of certitude ? 
 " I do not," says he, " quite go along with Mr. Spencer when 
 he argues for the necessity of some unproved truth, as a 
 fundamental postulate ; on the contrary, it seems to me that 
 every proved truth is ultimate, requires no foundation, 
 admits of none, though it may receive a logical justification 
 by being thrown into the form of an identical proposition. 
 The finality is Feeling, and a truth of Feeling needs no 
 external support. The same is to be said when the truth of 
 Feeling is expressed in Signs. Mr. Spencer's demand for 
 some unattainable depth to be postulated, but not plumb- 
 lined, may be compared with Hegel's position that Truth is 
 always infinite, and cannot be expressed in finite terms. 
 But leaving this and one or two minor points out of consid- 
 eration, I think his arguments are conclusive, and only prefer 
 the proposed formula of Equivalence because it is positive 
 and unambiguous." Hence Lewes sees a resemblance be- 
 tween Mr. Spencer's belief in the unknowable and the skep- 
 ticism of Hegel, the want of faith in the integrity of human 
 knowledge. To say that truth is infinite and cannot be 
 expressed in finite terms, is the same thing as saying that 
 knowledge springs from the unknowable, that truth or certi- 
 tude springs from an unattainable fact, or as arguing that 
 mathematical infinity cannot be expressed or discussed in 
 finite terms. This introduces, unnecessarily, the element of 
 mystery into our theory of consciousness, rendering vague 
 and uncertain what should be the simplest and most definite 
 of all solutions. 
 
 Lewes says that " all knowledge begins with the discern- 
 ment of resemblances and differences, it is necessarily polar, 
 resemblance being impossible except on a background of 
 
342 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 difference, and difference also impossible except on a back- 
 ground of resemblance. While knowledge begins here, it 
 ends with equations. What are equations ? The resem- 
 blances abstracted from all accompanying differences, and 
 reduced to the identity of equivalence." 1 
 
 What is this postulate of Nature's uniformity but the 
 conception of Motion as the ultimate reality ? All the 
 scholastic principles of logic, the logical principles expounded 
 by Mill and Bain (i. e. the Uniformity of Nature), the Uni- 
 versal Postulate of Spencer, the principles of Identity and 
 Equivalence of Lewes, lead us to the same fact, compel the 
 same conclusion. Our lives consist of the difference between 
 subject and object, and their quality and extent are 
 elaborations of this difference. 
 
 Now we enter upon the great question of the nature of 
 Matter. The philosophic literature of our age teems with 
 discussions on this subject, as though it were our chief logical 
 duty to come to an agreement about the nature of the 
 statical aspect of the universe. Why the dynamical aspect 
 should receive less attention is not clear, unless it is that 
 men have given up trying to define Force and have taken 
 up Matter for a change. The dynamical aspect of the 
 universe can best be symbolized by the conception of Time. 
 The moment we add the statical aspect, or space, to time, 
 motion springs into thought. 
 
 The chief wonder concerning Lewes' philosophy is, that 
 he could have been so explicit with regard to the nature of 
 matter and force, declaring them to be but phases or aspects 
 of motion, and yet that he should never have hit upon the 
 idea of identifying space with matter, and time with force, 
 thus bringing all these disputed terms into interdependence 
 and harmony. This wonder increases as we read such lumi- 
 nous definitions of Motion as this : 
 
 " Here arises a complication which will beset the whole 
 discussion unless we form distinct ideas of the separation of 
 Matter and Force as a purely analytical artifice. The two 
 
 1 *' Problems of Life and Mind," vol. II., pp. 79, 81, 83. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 343 
 
 abstractions are but two aspects of the same thing ; a separa- 
 tion rendered inevitable by the polarity of Experience, which 
 everywhere presents Existence under passive and active as- 
 pects. Force is not something superadded to Matter, it is 
 Reals viewed in their dynamic aspect ; Matter is not some- 
 thing different from Force, but Reals viewed in their statical 
 or passive aspect : either is unthinkable without the other. 
 Force is immanent in Matter, and Matter is immanent in 
 Force. The schoolmen called Matter potentia passiva, and 
 Force virtus activa. Logically distinguished, they require to 
 be considered apart ; and throughout the present problem 
 we shall strive to keep up this separation ; it cannot be thor- 
 oughly accomplished, but we shall endeavor to eliminate 
 Force, as the geometer eliminates every thing but Exten- 
 sion." * 
 
 Here Lewes clearly recognizes the ultimate fact of Motion, 
 the union of the dynamical and the statical aspects of the uni- 
 verse, the one fact of which time and space are respectively the 
 subjective and objective aspects. Our most advanced physi- 
 cists recognize this principle, but are far from rendering it in 
 simple and concise terms. Thus we read in the well-known 
 work of Thomson and Tait : " We cannot, of course, give a 
 definition of matter which will satisfy the metaphysician, but 
 the naturalist may be content to know matter as that which 
 can be perceived by the senses, or as tliat which can be acted upon 
 by, or can exert, force. The latter, and indeed the former 
 also, of these definitions involves the idea of Force." a 
 
 In the treatise of Lewes on the Nature of Matter, in Prob- 
 lem IV., we have an illustration of the lengths to which these 
 discussions are brought. Here the extension, impenetra- 
 bility, infinite divisibility, indestructibility, gravity, and inertia 
 of matter are considered without coming to any definite re- 
 sult. 
 
 A comprehension of the nature of perception, an apprecia- 
 tion of the ultimate analysis, shows the futility of treating Mat- 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. II., p. 206. 
 * Thomson and Tait : " Natural Philosophy," vol. I., p. 161. 
 
344 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ter as an ultimate fact. Lewes, without treating Matter as an 
 ultimate fact, however, fails to identify it in explicit terms 
 with Space ; and yet he considers it the symbol of all objec- 
 tivity, which is equivalent to its identification with motion ; 
 thus giving it alternately too little and too much meaning. 
 
 The logical consolation which results from a knowledge of 
 the merely relative significance of these terms, Matter and 
 Force, can hardly be overestimated. 
 
 Problems V. and VI. are respectively " Force and Cause/' 
 and " The Absolute in the Correlations of Feeling and Mo- 
 tion." The former explains conclusively that Cause and 
 Effect are simply the different points of view from which 
 we regard every phenomenon or event, and can therefore 
 never be more than ideally separated from the events of 
 which they are the expression. The question dear to so 
 many, What is Cause in itself ? is shown to be an absurd- 
 ity, and the enormous quantity of literature which has the 
 solution of this question for its object is rendered useless. 
 
 In closing Problem VI., we find Lewes again victorious 
 over all disadvantages. He strikes the key-note of universal 
 truth with a precision which enables us to forget the labored 
 explanations of the preceding chapters concerning discon- 
 nected ultimates. His deep knowledge of psychological 
 principles triumphs, and, independently of metaphysics, he 
 performs an ultimate analysis by a comparison of the fact of 
 consciousness with general existence. But his long service 
 in the unsettled disputes of metaphysics has made him the 
 slave of a certain vocabulary, has rendered him powerless to 
 rise above certain habits of expression and to restore order 
 to this chaos of ultimate terms. By another route, however, 
 namely, a scientific analysis of mind and nature, he reaches 
 the coveted result. Witness the closing words of Problem 
 VI.: 
 
 " Existence the Absolute is known to us in Feeling, 
 which in its most abstract expression is Change, external and 
 internal. The external changes are symbolized as Motion, 
 because that is the mode of Feeling into which all others are 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 345 
 
 translated when objectively considered : objective considera- 
 tion being the attitude of looking at the phenomena, whereas 
 subjective consideration is the attitude of any other sensible 
 response, so that the phenomena are different to the different 
 senses. There is no real break in the continuity of Existence ; 
 all its modes are but differentiations. We cannot suppose the 
 physical organism and its functions to be other than integrant 
 parts of the Cosmos from which it is formally differentiated ; 
 nor can we suppose the psychical organism and its functions 
 to be other than integrant parts of this physical organism 
 from. which it is ideally separated. Out of the infinite modes 
 of Existence a group is segregated, and a planet assumes 
 individual form ; out of the infinite modes of this planetary 
 existence smaller groups are segregated in crystals, organ- 
 isms, societies, nations. Each group is a special system, 
 having forces peculiar to it, although in unbroken continuity 
 with the forces of all other systems. Out of the forces of 
 the animal organism a special group is segregated in the 
 nervous mechanism, which has its own laws. If ideally we 
 contrast any two of these groups, a planet with an organ- 
 ism, or an organism with a nervous mechanism, their great 
 unlikeness seems to forbid identification. They are indeed 
 different, but only because they have been differentiated. 
 Yet they are identical, under a more general aspect. In 
 like manner, if we contrast the world of Sensation and 
 Appetites with the world of Conscience and its Moral Ideals, 
 the unlikeness is striking. Yet we have every ground for 
 believing that Conscience is evolved from Sensation, and 
 that Moral Ideals are evolved from Appetites ; and thus we 
 connect the highest mental phenomena with vital Sensibility, 
 Sensibility with molecular changes in the organism, and 
 these with changes in the Cosmos. 
 
 "This unification of all the modes of Existence by no 
 means obliterates the distinction of modes, nor the necessity 
 of understanding the special characters of each. Mind 
 remains Mind, and is essentially opposed to Matter, in spite 
 of their identity in the Absolute ; just as Pain is not Pleas- 
 
346 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ure, nor Color either Heat or Taste, in spite of their identity 
 in Feeling. The logical distinctions represent real differen- 
 tiations, but not distinct existents. If we recognize the One 
 in the Many, we do not thereby refuse to admit the Many 
 in the One." ' 
 
 Here the term absolute (or time) is used in the place of 
 motion or the ultimate reality, but the great unity of the 
 argument rises above these verbal defects. It is evident that 
 the idea which Lewes seeks to convey is that the most gen- 
 eral terms of life and mind point to a single fact and bear a 
 definite relation to it. 
 
 For those who may feel inclined to examine deeply into 
 the proposition that Matter and Space mean the same thing, 
 or that the meanings of these two terms converge in a 
 logical point, I insert an essay by Lewes entitled, "Action 
 at a Distance," which is by far the most learned and com- 
 pact treatment of the question which it has been my good 
 fortune to meet. It occurs as an appendix to the volume 
 under discussion. 
 
 ACTION AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 In spite of Newton's emphatic disclaimer, his opponents in old days, and 
 many of his followers in our own, have been unable to banish the idea that the 
 relation between bodies called Attraction is a mysterious something inherent in 
 Matter, seated among the molecules, so to speak, and stretching forth its grasp 
 to bind them into masses, and distant masses into systems. I do not pretend 
 that this is what any one avows ; I only say that it is a paraphrase of \vhat many 
 teach. Few doubt that there is a special Agent symbolized in the term attrac- 
 tive force (" Ce monstre metaphysique si cher a une partie des philosophes 
 modernes, si odieux a 1'autre," says Maupertuis), and that this Agent acts across 
 empty space. 
 
 " That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter," writes 
 Newton to Bentley, ' ' so that one body may act upon another at a distance 
 through a vacuum, and without the mediation of any thing else by and through 
 which this action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so 
 great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a 
 competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it." Nevertheless, even his 
 own editor, Roger Cotes, declares action at a distance to be one of the primary 
 properties of matter ; and many mathematicians and metaphysicians have 
 flouted the scholastic axiom, " A body cannot act where it is not," treating it as 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," vol. II., p. 449. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 347 
 
 a vulgar error. They urge that astronomical phenomena prove bodies to act at 
 enormous distances ; and moreover, that the molecules are never in actual con- 
 tact even when they act on each other. 
 
 The notion of action at a distance contradicts Rule II. It presupposes a 
 body to be moving through the space in which it does not move, existing where 
 it does not exist. Action is dynamic existence. The force or pressure by 
 which, in which a body acts, is ideally, but not really, separable from the active 
 matter, and the coexistent positions named space. Having thus ideally sepa- 
 rated the Agency from the Agent, men find it easy to suppose the Force acting 
 where the matter is not ; and some men materialize this Force, convert it into 
 an Ether interposed between masses and molecules, so that the matter acts on 
 this ethereal Force, and the Force transmits the action to Matter. 
 
 Experience does indeed seem to suggest action at a distance, and thus to con- 
 tradict the axiom. I am seated in my study, and can certainly act upon my 
 servant, who is distant from me in the kitchen. I have only to touch the bell 
 and she comes up-stairs. She is drawn toward me, as the apple is drawn toward 
 the earth, across a distant space. But the scholastic axiom, "A thing cannot 
 act where it is not," is undisturbed by such a fact, and only seems contradicted 
 by it when we suppress in thought all the intermediate agents whose agency 
 was indispensable. I acted directly on the bell-rope, which was continuous with 
 the bell, and set it vibrating ; the vibrations of the bell acted on the air, the air 
 on my servant's auditory organ, that on her intellectual organ, and that in turn 
 upon her muscles. In the fall of an apple the case seems different, because we 
 cannot so readily realize to ourselves all the co-operant conditions ; but the 
 phrase by which we express these, when we say the earth attracts the apple, is 
 not less elliptical than the phrase, ' ' I caused my servant to come up-stairs by 
 ringing the bell." 
 
 If bodies "attract" each other across empty space, we can only under- 
 stand this attraction as a moving toward each other in the line of a resultant 
 pressure, not as the dragging by immaterial grappling-irons thrown from 
 one to the other. " Equidem existimo gravitatem," says Copernicus, "non 
 aliud esse quam appetentiam quandam naturalem, partibus inditam a divina 
 providentia opificis universoruin." * And Euler says : "In attempting to dive 
 into the mysteries of nature, it is of importance to know if the heavenly bodies 
 act upon each other by impulsion or by attraction ; if a certain subtile, invisible 
 matter impels them toward each other, or if they are endowed with a secret 
 occult quality by which they are mutually attracted. Those who hold the 
 second view maintain that the quality of mutual attraction is proper to all 
 bodies ; that it is as natural to them as magnitude. Had there been but two 
 bodies in the universe, however remote from each other, they would have had 
 from the first a tendency toward each other, by means of which they would in 
 time have approached and united." 2 
 
 This fiction respecting two bodies alone in the universe, and their inherent 
 tendency to approach each other, is in open defiance of all experience. Let us 
 
 1 Copernicus : " De Revolutionibus Orbium," I., ch. IX. 
 * Euler : " Letters to a German Princess," vol. I., p. 211. 
 
348 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 grant the existence of only two bodies isolated in space : we must first declare 
 that, according to all the inductions from experience, they would not tend to 
 move toward each other, for they would not move at all ; some external motion 
 or pressure would be requisite, since their own internal motions would be in 
 equilibrium ; nor would an external force impel them to move toward each 
 other, unless the direction of that force were in this line and no other. Sup- 
 pose each body to be in motion, each would pursue its own direction, nor would 
 they ever meet, unless some third body in motion redirected them. Of course, 
 if the bodies are assumed to have an inherent tendency to rush together like two 
 water-drops, but without the external pressures which blend the water-drops, 
 they would inevitably meet ; but what evidence is there for such an assumption ? 
 
 It is obvious that we cannot explain the- phenomena of attraction by the 
 fiction of two isolated bodies in empty space, because that fiction presupposes 
 conditions wholly unlike those of the known universe, which is not an universe 
 of two isolated bodies, but of infinite and variously related bodies. 
 
 Mr. Mill is very contemptuous in his notice of Hamilton's reliance on the 
 axiom that one body cannot act directly on another without contact. " In one 
 sense of the word," Mr. Mill says, " a thing is wherever its action is ; its power 
 is there, though not its corporeal presence [a singular distinction in the writings 
 of so positive a thinker !]. But to say that a thing can only act where its power 
 is, would be the idlest of mere identical propositions. [An axiom is an identical 
 proposition.] And where is the warrant for asserting that a thing cannot act 
 when it is not locally contiguous to the thing it acts upon ? * * * What is the 
 meaning of contiguity ? According to the best physical knowledge we possess, 
 things are never actually contiguous. What we term contact between particles, 
 only means that they are in the degree of proximity at which their mutual 
 repulsions are in equilibrium with their attractions. [Are not these repulsions 
 and attractions hypothetic phrases to express the fact that, however closely 
 bodies may be pressed together, their molecules cannot be both made to occupy 
 the same space, each unit, as an unit, having its limit ? a fact also expressed by 
 impenetrability.^ If so, instead of never, things always act on one another at 
 some, though it may be a very small, distance. The belief that a thing can only 
 act where it is, is a common case of inseparable, though not ultimately indis- 
 soluble, association. It is an unconscious generalization, of the roughest possi- 
 ble description, from the most familiar cases of the mutual action of bodies 
 superficially considered. The temporary difficulty felt in apprehending any 
 action of body upon body unlike what people were accustomed to, created a 
 natural prejudice which was long a serious impediment to the reception of the 
 Newtonian theory : but it was hoped that the final triumph of that theory had 
 extinguished it [Newton, as we have seen, would have repudiated this conclu- 
 sion] ; that all educated persons were now aware that action at a distance is 
 intrinsically quite as credible as action in contact ; and that there is no reason, 
 
 1 " II paraitra par nos meditations," says Leibnitz, "que la substance cre'ee 
 ne recoit pas d'une autre substance creee la puissance meme d'agir, mais seule- 
 ment une limitation et determination de son propre effet pre-existant et de la 
 vertu active." 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 349 
 
 apart from specific experience, to regard the one as in any respect less probable 
 than the other." 1 
 
 The idea that a body like the sun, which is ninety-two millions of miles dis- 
 tant from us, can act directly on us across this distance, assumed to be a vacuum, 
 is absolutely inconceivable, since action involves motion, and the motion 
 through this space must be either the motion of the body itself, or of some body 
 to which it has been transferred. A mere crack in a glass extinguishes its 
 sounding property ; that is to say, the waves of molecular motion are no longer 
 propagated because of this solution of continuity ; and if between us and the 
 sun there were any solution of material continuity, the waves of ether would not 
 reach us from the molecular agitations of the sun ; or if we suppose them to 
 pass across this gap it would still be the actual presence of the wave which at 
 each point exerted its pressure. Action at a distance, unless understood in the 
 sense -of action through unspecified intermediates, is both logically and physi- 
 cally absurd. Logically, since action involves reaction, and is only conceivable 
 as the combination of forces ; physically, since the attraction said to act across 
 the distance is avowedly a function of the distance, which increases as the 
 distance decreases ; and this implies that the distance is an Agent. Now, if we 
 assume the space between two bodies to be empty, we make this nothing an 
 effective Agent, which offers resistance to pressure, and causes a decrease of 
 attraction. I therefore ask, with Professor Clerk Maxwell : " If something is 
 transmitted from one particle to another at a distance, what is its condition 
 after it has left the one particle and before it has reached the other ? If this 
 something is the potential energy of the two particles, how are we to conceive 
 this energy as existing in a point of space coinciding neither with the one parti- 
 cle nor the other? In fact, whenever energy is transmitted from one body to 
 another in time, there must be a medium or substance in which the energy 
 exists," 3 otherwise there would be energy which was not the active state of 
 matter, but an activity floating through the Nothing. 
 
 It should be observed, and the observation is suggestive in many directions, 
 that some of the most eminent physicists have not only adopted the idea of 
 action at a distance, but have constructed on it elaborate and effective theories 
 of electrical action. Gauss, Weber, Riemann, Neumann, and others, have in- 
 terpreted electro-magnetic actions on this assumption ; and the success which 
 has attended their efforts is another among the many examples of the truth we 
 have previously enforced, that no amount of agreement between observed 
 phenomena and an hypothesis is sufficient to prove the truth of the hypothesis. 
 Contrasted with the labors of these mathematicians and physicists, we have the 
 labors of Faraday, Thomson, Tait, Clerk Maxwell, and others, who start from 
 the hypothesis of a material medium. Not only are they able to explain all 
 the observed phenomena on this hypothesis, but they have the immense advan- 
 tage of not invoking an agency which is without a warrant in experience. Where 
 the mathematicians admitted only the abstraction pure Distance, and centres of 
 force acting on each other across this Distance, Faraday and his followers have 
 
 1 Mill: " Examination of Sir W. Hamilton," p. 531. 
 * Clerk Maxwell : " Electricity and Magnetism," vol. II. p. 437. 
 
350 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 admitted with the Distance its concrete Medium, and with the centres of force, 
 radii or lines of force ; where the one class sees the abstract power of action at 
 a distance impressed upon the electric fluids, the other class sees the actions 
 going on in the Medium, and these are the concrete phenomena. The supe- 
 riority of the second point of view seems to me to consist in its speculative and 
 its practical advantages. Although the two are mathematically equivalent, the 
 second has the speculative superiority of conformity with Experience ; and ac- 
 cording to Professor Maxwell it has the further practical advantage of leading 
 us to inquire into the nature of the action in each part of the medium. 1 
 
 The conception of a Plenum is simply the unavoidable conclusion from the 
 conception of Existence as continuous ; and this continuity is itself the cor- 
 relative of the impossibility of accepting the pure Nothing otherwise than as a 
 generalization of our negative experiences. But if continuity of Existence is 
 thus necessarily postulated, it does not interfere with the utmost variety in the 
 modes of Existence ; and with every variation in mode there is superficial dis- 
 continuity. When a feeling changes, it is because another feeling has replaced 
 it. My hand passing over a surface has one mode of feeling until it reaches the 
 boundary, and then a new mode arises to replace the former, the feeling of 
 solid resistance gives place to one of fluid or aerial resistance. The new mode 
 is unlike the old, discontinuous with it ; but it is nevertheless only a new form 
 of the fundamental continuity of Feeling. 
 
 The conception of a Plenum is further shown to be unavoidable when we 
 come to inquire into the nature of that void which is supposed to exist in the 
 interstices of molecules, and in the interplanetary spaces. Space is the abstract 
 of coexistent positions ; its concretes are bodies in the various relations of posi- 
 tion ; but in our abstraction we let drop the bodies, and retain only the relations 
 of position ; although a moment's consideration suffices to show that were there 
 no bodies, there could be no positions of bodies, consequently no relations of 
 coexistent positions, in a word, no space. If, therefore, by interspaces be- 
 tween molecules or planets we understand simply the relations of position of 
 these bodies, we may indeed conveniently abstract these relations from their 
 related terms, and treat of spaces irrespective of bodies ; but we may not from 
 this artifice conclude that between these related terms there is a solution of the 
 continuity of Existence, that between the bodies there is a void. 
 
 It is held that, were our senses sufficiently magnified, we might see the mole- 
 cules and atoms distributed throughout what now appears a mass, much as we 
 see the constellations distributed among the vast spaces of the heavens. Per- 
 haps ; but even then our magnified senses would discover no solution in the 
 great continuum. Necessarily so, since by no possible exaltation of an organ 
 of sense could the Suprasensible be reached. The void if it exist cannot 
 be felt, and the only Existence knowable by us is the Felt. 
 
 Hence the idea of action at a distance is absurd, if the distance be taken to 
 represent any solution in the material continuity, which is the continuity of the 
 Agent whose Agency is the action ; but the idea is intelligible and true if the 
 distance be taken to represent simply the relative positions of the body from 
 which the action is supposed to originate, and the body in which it is completed. 
 
 1 See his " Electricity and Magnetism," vol. I., pp. 58, 65, and 123. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES (CONCLUDED). 
 The Relation of Universal to Organic Activities Lewes' Theory of Perception. 
 
 To the reader who may have followed thus far the argu- 
 ment here presented, perhaps it will not be too much to say 
 that Metaphysics is a completed study. The problem of the 
 Ultimate Reality, which has puzzled thoughtful humanity 
 from Aristotle to the present day, has, owing to the vast 
 logical movement of this age of Evolution, at last achieved 
 its own solution, and we stand emancipated from the mys- 
 teries of idealism and the discouragements of skepticism, 
 with naught to fear for the integrity of human knowledge. 
 The logical position which an ultimate analysis occupies is 
 invulnerable. There is, perhaps, no keener pleasure than to 
 observe the resistance which it offers to the attacks of 
 trained men of science. If they reason from a statical basis, 
 postulating matter as an ultimate fact, " a substance which 
 remains after all properties have been accounted for," they 
 fall into the error of neglecting the very property by which 
 we appreciate facts, namely, their activity. If they postulate 
 this activity and deny to it extension or position, they again 
 involve themselves by first employing a symbol and then 
 withdrawing its meaning ; for no fact can be expressed with- 
 out conceding to it extension or position. The course to be 
 pursued in such a controversy is to watch carefully for terms 
 having the same meaning as Space, such as Infinite, Coex- 
 istence, Matter, Substance, Status, Position, etc. ; or the 
 equivalents of Time, such as Absolute, Abstract Sequence, 
 Force considered as the cause of motion, or Motion consid- 
 
 351 
 
352 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 ered apart from its space aspect; or the equivalents of 
 Motion, such as Life, God, Power, First Cause ; and, when 
 these terms are used, to insist upon giving them their full 
 significance. Nothing can withstand the force of such an 
 analysis. It is soon perceived that by employing abstrac- 
 tions, we recede from the particulars of life to the first or 
 simplest fact, the initial relation of personal and general 
 existence. 
 
 It is therefore with feelings of the utmost relief that we 
 take leave of the abstractions of metaphysics and take up 
 the remaining three volumes of Lewes' philosophic writings 
 purely as a scientific study, neglecting any thing we may 
 find in them pertaining to ontological questions. 
 
 Indeed Lewes seems to have written these last volumes in 
 much the same spirit as that in which we would review them, 
 for we find in them, after all, but little that is strictly 
 metaphysical. 
 
 The first of these is entitled the " Physical Basis of Mind," 
 and deals with the following problems : " The Nature of 
 Life"; "The Nervous Mechanism"; "Animal Automa- 
 tism," and " The Reflex Theory." The second contains the 
 problems : " Mind as a Function of the Organism " ; " The 
 Sphere of Sense and the Logic of Feeling " ; " The Sphere 
 of Intellect and the Logic of Signs." The last is the brief 
 work entitled " The Study of Psychology." 
 
 It is our purpose merely to select from the above prob- 
 lems the most striking lessons, so as to convey a general 
 idea of the results to which Lewes has attained, and to 
 define their relations to what has already been indicated as 
 a complete philosophy. 
 
 A minute study of the procedures of organic growth shows 
 how difficult it is to avoid the theory of a design in nature. 
 All human efforts are so intimately connected with design, 
 that it is difficult for us to look upon natural sequences in 
 any other light. The great masters in biological research 
 have felt this difficulty, and, for the most part, yielded to it. 
 Thus " Von Baer, in his great work, has a section entitled 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 353 
 
 ' The Nature of the Animal Determines its Development ' ; 
 and he thus explains himself : ' Although every stage in de- 
 velopment is only made possible by its pre-existing condition, 
 nevertheless the entire development is ruled and guided by 
 the nature of the animal which is about to be ; and it is not 
 the momentary condition which alone absolutely determines 
 the future, but more general and higher relations.' " The 
 form that this superstition generally takes is the belief that 
 an organism is determined by its type, or, " as the Germans 
 say, its Idea." "All its parts take shape according to this 
 ruling plan ; consequently, when any part is removed, it is 
 reproduced according to the Idea of the whole of which it 
 forms a part. Milne Edwards, in a very interesting and sug- 
 gestive work, concludes his survey of organic phenomena in 
 these words : ' In the organism every thing seems calculated 
 with a view to a determinate result, and the harmony of 
 the parts does not result from any influence which they can 
 exert upon one another, but from their co-ordination under 
 the empire of a common power, a preconceived plan, a pre- 
 existing force.' ' " This," continues Lewes, " is eminently 
 metaphysiological (superstitious). It refuses to acknowledge 
 the operation of immanent properties, refuses to admit that 
 the harmony of a complex structure results from the mutual 
 relation of its parts, and seeks outside the organism for some 
 mysterious force, some plan, not otherwise specified, which 
 regulates and shapes the parts. * * * Let us note the logical 
 inconsistencies of a position which, while assuming that every 
 separate stage in development is the necessary sequence of its 
 predecessor, declares the whole of the stages independent of 
 such relations ! Such a position is indeed reconcilable on the 
 assumption that animal forms are moulded ' like clay in the 
 hands of the potter.' But this is a theological dogma which 
 leads to very preposterous and impious conclusions ; and 
 whether it leads to these conclusions or to others, positive 
 Biology declines theological explanations altogether. * * * 
 The type does not dominate the conditions, it emerges from 
 them ; the animal organism is not cast in a mould, but the 
 
354 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 imaginary mould is the form which the polarities of the or- 
 ganic substance assume. It would seem very absurd to sup- 
 pose that crystals assumed their definite shapes (when the 
 liquid which held their molecules in solution is evaporated) 
 under the determining influence of phantom crystals or Ideas ; 
 yet it has not been thought absurd to assume phantom forms 
 of organisms. The conception of Type as a determining influ- 
 ence arises from that fallacy of taking a resultant for a prin- 
 ciple, which has played so conspicuous a part in the history 
 of philosophy. * * * At first, the Type or Idea was regarded 
 as an objective reality, external to the organism it was sup- 
 posed to rule. Then this notion was replaced by an approach 
 to the more rational interpretation, the Idea was made an 
 internal, not an external, force, and was incorporated with 
 the material elements of the organism, which were said to 
 1 endeavor ' to arrange themselves according to the Type. 
 Thus Treveranus declares that the seed ' dreams of the future 
 flower ' ; and ' Henle, when he declares that hair and nails 
 grow in virtue of the Idea, is forced to add that the parts en- 
 deavor to arrange themselves according to this Idea.' Even 
 Lotze, who has argued so victoriously against the vitalists, 
 and has made it clear that an organism is a vital mechanism, 
 cannot relinquish this conception of legislative Ideas, though 
 he significantly adds : ' These have no power in themselves, 
 but only in as far as they are grounded in mechanical con- 
 ditions.' Why, then, superfluously add them to the condi- 
 tions?" 1 
 
 The imposing analysis which Lewes makes of organic 
 existence stops not at the latest biological discoveries, but 
 presses on to what, by comparison with the very best pre- 
 vious work on the subject, is a new and vastly extended 
 view of the origins of individual life. Not content with at- 
 tacking the " superstition of the nerve-cell," upon which is 
 built the theory of peculiar vital forces " wholly unallied with 
 the primary energy of motion," which is in itself an impor- 
 tant physiological reform, he addresses himself assiduously 
 
 1 " Physical Basis of Mind," pp. 104-107. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 355 
 
 to the task of widening the scientific understanding of the 
 whole subject of organic life. Beginning with the analysis 
 of Protoplasm, which discloses the exceedingly high molecu- 
 lar complexity of this basic substance of organisms, he 
 identifies the complex but definite activities which this sub- 
 stance exhibits with the less complex but no less definite 
 activities displayed by what we know as chemical substances, 
 the difference in the activities of the two classes of sub- 
 stances being purely one of degree of complexity, corre- 
 sponding with their respective degrees of molecular (or 
 structural) complexity. This generalization, the importance 
 of which is not easily appreciated, so far-reaching are its con- 
 sequences, is made to serve as a basis for the extension of 
 Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of species by Natural 
 Selection. " The survival of the fittest " is shown to be a 
 very anthropomorphic way of expressing the great truth 
 which Darwin brought to light. The struggle for existence, 
 or the competition and antagonism of organisms, is shown to 
 extend to the " competition and antagonism " of tissues and 
 organs for existence ; and for fear that the inconsistency im- 
 plied in the application of such exclusively mental terms as 
 competition and antagonism to the energies of organic sub- 
 stances (which can only be thought of as contributing to 
 consciousness as remote factors) should be overlooked, he 
 follows up the interdependencies of tissues and organs with 
 such remorseless vigor, that nothing is left but to acknowl- 
 edge that their potentialities are inherent in their chemical 
 composition. " When a crystalline solution takes shape, it 
 always takes a definite shape, which represents what may be 
 called the direction of its forces, the polarity of its constitu- 
 ent molecules. In like manner, when an organic plasmode 
 takes shape crystallizes, so to speak it always assumes a 
 specific shape dependent on the polarity of its molecules. 
 Crystallographers have determined the several forms possible 
 to crystals ; histologists have recorded the several forms of 
 Organites, Tissues, and Organs. Owing to the greater 
 variety in elementary composition, there is in organic sub- 
 
356 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 stance a more various polar distribution than in crystals ; 
 nevertheless there are sharply defined limits never over- 
 stepped, and these constitute what may be called the specific 
 forms of Organites, Tissues, Organs, Organisms. * * * Natu- 
 ral selection is only the expression of the results of obscure 
 physiological processes ; and for a satisfactory theory of such 
 results we must understand the nature of the processes. In 
 other words, to understand Natural Selection we must recog- 
 nize not only the facts thus expressed, but the factors of 
 these facts, we must analyze the ' conditions of existence.' 
 As a preliminary analysis we find external conditions, among 
 which are included not only the dependence of the organism 
 on the inorganic medium, but also the dependence of one 
 organism on another, the competition and antagonism of 
 the whole organic world ; and internal conditions, among 
 which are included not only the dependence of the organism 
 on the laws of composition and decomposition whereby each 
 organite and each tissue is formed, but also the dependence 
 of one organite and one tissue on all the others, the compe- 
 tition and antagonism of all the elements. The changes 
 wrought in an organism by these two kinds of conditions 
 determine Varieties and Species. Although many of the 
 changes are due to the process of Natural Selection, brought 
 about in the struggle with competitors and foes, many other 
 changes have no such relation to the external struggle, but 
 are simply the results of the organic affinities. They may 
 or may not give the organism a greater stability, or a greater 
 advantage over rivals : it is enough that they are no disad- 
 vantage to the organism ; they will then survive by virtue 
 of the forces which produced them." 1 
 
 In criticising the theory of the generic development of all 
 living things, which as held by the extreme school is, that all 
 animal life has descended from a single organic point, all the 
 subsequent differences being the result of modifications in 
 the environment or differences in the history of the descend- 
 ants of this first organism, the less extreme school holding 
 
 1 " Physical Basis of Mind," pp. 101, 102, 124, 125. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 357 
 
 that (to use Mr. Darwin's words) " animals have descended 
 from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants 
 from an equal or less number," Lewes pleads hard for 
 a deeper and more thorough analysis of the facts than 
 either of these schools offers. Notwithstanding an affec- 
 tionate reverence for Mr. Darwin, whose great work he 
 acknowledges to be invaluable as an explanation of that 
 aspect of organic development called Natural Selection, 
 Lewes clearly shows that the great theory accounts for but 
 a part of the facts. In it there is no room for any thing ap- 
 proaching an ultimate analysis of existence. The points of 
 resemblance between plants and animals are dwelt upon at 
 length ; and striking as these resemblances are, the differences 
 are irreconcilable with a theory of common descent from a 
 single cell at a single point upon the earth's surface. The 
 common chemical conditions of the earth at all stages of its 
 past metamorphosis suggest common organic conditions; 
 and although the theory of evolution teaches that all devel- 
 opment is rigidly serial, the simple leading to and making 
 possible the complex, yet no good reason can be given for 
 doubting that organic life was widespread and multifarious 
 in its terrestrial beginnings. The kinship which unites the 
 organic with the inorganic is quite as prominent a fact as the 
 relationship of the plant and animal kingdoms, or the inter- 
 dependence of organic and superorganic life. The law of 
 organic evolution, which is broad enough to indicate, for in- 
 stance, the history of the solar system, can surely account for 
 the changes which have taken place upon a single planet ; in a 
 word, if we will but take our stand at a sufficiently remote 
 point of view, it will not be necessary to introduce a mys- 
 terious beginning to organic life. " Upon what principle are 
 we to pause at the cell or protoplasm? If by a successive 
 elimination of differences we reduce all organisms to the cell, 
 we must go on and reduce the cell itself to the chemical 
 elements out of which it was constructed ; and inasmuch as 
 these elements are all common to the inorganic world, the 
 only difference being one of synthesis, we reach a result 
 
358 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 which is the stultification of all classification, namely, the 
 assertion of a kinship which is universal." 
 
 Passing from these generalizations of organic phenomena 
 to the physical aspect of mind, Lewes exposes the super- 
 stitions and unwarranted assumptions of many writers on 
 mental physiology ; and so vital are the principles involved, 
 that although the explanations are rather technical, for so 
 general a review, we cite some of the most important. 
 
 The most abridged expression we have of the action of 
 the sensorium, in which the motor, the sensational, and the 
 intellectual forms of activity are combined, is called the 
 nervous arc. Anatomists observe that the motor nerves 
 issue from the anterior side of the spinal cord (that which in 
 animals is the under side), and that the sensory nerves issue 
 from the posterior side (that which in animals is the upper 
 side). The spinal cord, like the cerebrum, is a double organ, 
 with the difference, however, that the gray structure is 
 mainly external in the cerebrum while it is internal in the 
 cord. Of the development of the nervous system from the 
 embryo, Lewes says : " In the outermost layer of the germi- 
 nal membrane of the embryo a groove appears, which deep- 
 ens as its sides grow upward and finally close over and form 
 a canal. Its foremost extremity soon bulges into three 
 well-marked enlargements which are then called the primi- 
 tive cerebral vesicles. The cavities of these vesicles are 
 continuous. Except in position and size, there are no dis- 
 cernible differences in these vesicles, which are known as the 
 Fore-brain, Middle-brain, and Hind-brain. * * * It appears 
 that the retina and optic nerve are primitive portions of the 
 brain a detached segment of the general centre, identical 
 in structure with the cerebral vesicle, and not unlike it in 
 form. * * * It thus appears that the primitive membrane 
 forms into a canal, which enlarges at one part into three 
 vesicles, and from these are developed the encephalic (brain) 
 structures. The continuity of the walls and cavities of these 
 vesicles is never obliterated throughout the subsequent 
 changes. It is also traceable throughout the medulla spi- 
 
GEORGE HENR Y LE WES. 359 
 
 nalis ; and microscopic investigation reveals that underneath 
 all the morphological changes the walls of the whole cerebro- 
 spinal axis are composed of similar elements on a similar plan. 
 The conclusions which directly follow from the above are, 
 first, that since the structure of the great axis is everywhere 
 similar, tJie properties must be similar ; secondly, that since 
 there is structural continuity, no one part can be called into 
 activity without at the same time more or less exciting that of 
 all the rest." 
 
 Lewes bitterly complains of the analytical tendency in the 
 study of the activities of the sensorium. This tendency, he 
 says, is to disregard the elements which provisionally had 
 been set aside, and not restore them in the reconstruction of 
 a synthetical explanation. Such familiar experiences as that 
 when a stimulus is applied to the skin it is followed by a 
 muscular movement or a glandular secretion (accompanied 
 by all degrees of consciousness as the case may be), are inter- 
 preted by the neurologist as exclusively neural processes ; 
 all the other processes are provisionally left out of account. 
 But even in the neural process the organs are neglected for 
 the sake of the nervous tissue, and the nervous tissue for the 
 sake of the nerve-cell. 
 
 The most abridged statement of the activity of the sen- 
 sorium, therefore, whether it be a muscular movement, a 
 glandular secretion, an emotion, or a thought, is to be found 
 in the theory of the nervous arc. Of the general form 
 which this theory takes, the conventional description would 
 be about as follows : " The nerve-cell is the supreme ele- 
 ment, the origin of the nerve-fibre, and the fountain of 
 nerve-force. The cells are connected one with another by 
 means of fibres, and with muscles, glands, and centres, also 
 by means of fibres, which are merely channels for the nerve- 
 force. A stimulus at the surface is carried by a sensory 
 fibre to a cell in the centre ; from that point it is carried by 
 another fibre to another cell ; and from that by a third fibre 
 to a muscle ; a reflex action results ; this is the elementary 
 nervous arc." The passage of an excitation, therefore, into 
 
360 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 the labyrinths of the sensorium and out again (until it 
 emerges in action) is said to describe the nervous arc. It is 
 well known that at some stage in this process, or at some 
 point in this arc, the phenomenon called consciousness min- 
 gles in some degree with the excitation ; for the structure of 
 the whole nervous system, including the brain, being not 
 only continuous but of the same substances, a wave of ex- 
 citement set up in any part of it must influence the whole, 
 however imperceptibly. All that we know of the reflex pro- 
 cess pictured in the above description of the nervous arc, 
 which pretends to trace the fibre from cell to cell, is, " that 
 one fibre passes into the spinal cord, and that another passes 
 out of it, and that a movement is produced usually preceded 
 by a sensation and sometimes by a thought." The con- 
 tinuity of the nerve-fibre, therefore, from cell to cell, through 
 the spinal cord, which is supposed to demarcate the simpler 
 reflexes from the realm of consciousness, is purely imagina- 
 tive. Hence, whether the action of the sensorium which 
 we observe be the effort of a frog, whose brain has been re- 
 moved, to repel the irritating point of the scalpel from one 
 leg by pushing it away with the other, or whether the des- 
 tinies of a race are being worked out in the mind of some 
 political or moral autocrat through the slow adjustments of 
 a lifetime, the same order of organic structures acts and reacts 
 with the same order of environment, the same potentialities 
 are called into play, and there is nothing to distinguish the 
 two events but the degrees of their complexity, which can be 
 expressed in terms of Space and Time. 
 
 The better informed among physiologists and neurologists 
 are beginning to acknowledge the impossibility of absolutely 
 separating the simplest reflex actions from sensibility and, in 
 turn, from thought. 
 
 Assuming that consciousness has its seat in the brain, sen- 
 sation in the base of the brain, or the medulla oblongata, and 
 the simpler reflexes in the spinal cord, which is a very me- 
 chanical way of subdividing the interdependent activities of 
 the sensorium, the manner in which the simpler movements 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 361 
 
 and sensations mingle with consciousness is thus explained. 
 The most widely accepted theory is, that the wave of excita- 
 tion must pass onward to the central convolutions of the 
 brain, and that there, in the excitation of the cells, it first be- 
 comes sensation, consciousness is first aroused. This theory 
 regards consciousness and sensation as nearly identical, and 
 locates them both in the brain. In all these theories sensa- 
 tion is made the middle term between the most unconscious 
 or simplest reflex actions, and thought, and the theories differ 
 only in the distance said to intervene between the central 
 convolutions of the brain and the supposed seat of sensation. 
 The following diagram and explanation will illustrate that 
 theory which locates both sensation and consciousness in 
 presumably the same neural tract in the brain. " The stimu- 
 lus wave from the sensitive surface 
 S is carried to the spinal centre S 
 
 1, which may either transmit it di- 
 rectly to M 3, and thus reach the 
 muscle M, or transmit indirectly 
 through S 2, M 2, in the subcere- 
 bral centre; or, finally, it may pass 
 
 upward through S I, S 2, S 3, and downward through M I, M 
 
 2, M 3. The reflex of S I, M 3, is purely physical', that of S I, 
 S 2, M 2, M 3, is psycho-physical, there being a sentient state 
 accompanying the mechanical process ; while that of S I, S 2, 
 S 3, M i, M 2, M 3, is a reflex accompanied by consciousness. 
 The initial stage is a peripheral stimulation ; but the same 
 reflex may be excited by central stimulation. That is to say, 
 the impulse may originate in S 3, and pass through M i, M 2, 
 M 3, or pass through S 2, M 2, M 3. This is when an idea 
 is said to originate a movement. Again : the stimulus may 
 be some state of the subcerebral centres and pass from S 2, 
 M2, M3." 1 
 
 All processes are therefore Reflex processes, the degree of 
 centralization, or dependence on the brain, determining the 
 degree of consciousness or volition which accompanies them. 
 
 1 " Problems of Life and Mind," 3d series, vol. II., pp. 431, 432. 
 
362 THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 Physiologists, however, would distinguish the relatively in- 
 voluntary as reflex, and are therefore obliged to invent a 
 special mechanism for this class. If physiologists could only 
 agree upon the facts by which they support the Reflex theory, 
 the path of the student would be smoothed. " Van Deen, 
 for instance, considers that Reflexion takes place without 
 Volition but not without Sensation ; and Budge, that it takes 
 place without Perception (Vorstellung)." "According to 
 Marshall Hall, who originated the modern form of this theory, 
 actions are divisible into four distinct classes : the voluntary, 
 dependent on the brain ; the involuntary, dependent on the 
 irritability of the muscular fibre ; the respiratory, wherein 
 'the motive influence passes in a direct line from one point 
 of the nervous system to certain muscles ' ; and the reflex, 
 dependent on the ' true spinal system' of incident -excitor 
 nerves, and of reflex motor nerves. These last-named actions 
 are produced when an impression on the sensitive surface is 
 conveyed by an excitor nerve to the spinal cord and is there 
 reflected back on the muscles by a corresponding motor 
 nerve. In this process no sensation whatever occurs. The 
 action is purely reflex, purely excito-motor, like the action of 
 an ordinary mechanism." ' Miiller also shares this view of 
 the Reflex theory with Hall. 2 Of all of which Lewes says : 
 " It is needless nowadays to point out that the existence 
 of a distinct system of excito-motor nerves belongs to im- 
 aginary anatomy ; but it is not needless to point out that the 
 Imaginary Physiology founded on it still survives. * * * We 
 have already seen that what anatomy positively teaches is 
 totally unlike the Reflex mechanism popularly imagined. 
 The sensory nerve is not seen to enter the spinal cord at one 
 point and pass over to a corresponding point of exit ; it is 
 seen to enter the gray substance, which is continuous 
 throughout the spinal cord ; it is there lost to view, its 
 course being untraceable." : 
 
 1 Marshall Hall, in " Phys. Trans.," 1883 ; " Lectures on the Nervous Sys- 
 tem and its Diseases," 1836 ; " New Memoir on the Nervous System," 1843. 
 2 Miiller : " Physiology," vol. I., p. 721. 
 8 " Physical Basis of Mind," pp. 480, 481. 
 
GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 363 
 
 With this hasty glance at these brilliant inductions of 
 Lewes, we must close our review of his system. Is it too 
 much to say that to Lewes we owe the most commanding 
 view of organic Perception that has thus far been offered to 
 the world ? But perception has a wider base than organic 
 life. It is the function of conditions which are universal. 
 Lewes sought to establish the harmony of the organic and 
 inorganic worlds by the manipulation of ultimate principles, 
 but, as I have already said, his mind had become biassed by 
 a conventional metaphysics which he was unable to over- 
 come, This metaphysics postulated an unknowable, and 
 Lewes never quite discovered that it was the subtle con- 
 tradiction implied in this term which vitiated his whole 
 system of introspection. He then turned to the study of 
 the functions and structures of organisms, in the hope of 
 leading up to Mind through its organic processes, of estab- 
 lishing a true psychology. This he has done. The achieve- 
 ment can be expressed in his striking dictum : " Motor 
 perceptions are condensed in intuitions and generalized in 
 conceptions." 
 
 This is the pivotal truth of the Nature of Perception, for it 
 discloses the Physical Basis of Mind. 
 
PART III. 
 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 365 
 
PART III. 
 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 
 
 Resemblance between Primitive and Modern Religious Beliefs Superstition 
 the Negative, Morality the Positive Form of Religion. 
 
 RELIGIOUS criticism is wholly a modern art. As language 
 reached a high state of perfection before the manner of its 
 growth was discovered, so the higher human sentiments 
 have grown into bonds of universal sympathy before the 
 race has been able to form any adequate idea of the laws 
 of thought and feeling. 
 
 It is the study of the development of language which 
 makes possible an intelligent view of the great subject of 
 Religion. The races of the world have unconsciously writ- 
 ten their emotional and moral history in the formation of 
 their speech. The comparative study of languages gives us 
 an insight into the origin of nations, so that we are enabled 
 to classify the races of mankind with far greater accuracy 
 than before the advent of this science. 
 
 The different races of men represent different classes of 
 ideas ; representative types of thought and feeling which 
 have their expression in certain forms of social organization 
 or Morality, and certain forms of the higher sentiments or 
 Religion. The morals and the religions of the world as we 
 find them are the products of the slow evolution of human- 
 
 367 
 
368 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ity, the results of past conditions, and they can only be ac- 
 counted for by studying the phases of development through 
 which they have passed. 
 
 The foregoing divisions of this work have been devoted 
 to establishing a clear understanding of the fundamental 
 principles of life, to building up a true conception of 
 knowledge. We have dealt, not with the circumstances 
 of social life, not with human history, but with the nature 
 of man himself, the interaction of his physical and psychical 
 nature, with a view to explaining the wonderful phenomena 
 of language and perception. We are now, in a measure, 
 prepared to deal with that highest aspect of human exist- 
 ence which we call Morality, and that vast emotional struc- 
 ture known as Religion. As the greatest logical achievements 
 have resulted from the ceaseless energies of metaphysical 
 investigation, notwithstanding the apparent hopelessness and 
 unreality of the pursuit, so our best conceptions of duty 
 and life have sprung from the emotions of religion, notwith- 
 standing the various degrees of degradation and misery to 
 which mistaken religious beliefs have subjected all races and 
 civilizations. 
 
 Where the tenets of logic are concerned, men have always 
 been comparatively free to contend without interference or 
 reproach ; the populace has taken but little interest in these 
 wars of abstractions ; but with the contentions of religious 
 faiths it has been very different, and it is natural that it 
 should have been so. To wantonly assail a religious faith is 
 a very serious matter : it may cause inestimable harm, and it 
 seldom if ever has a good influence. 
 
 As will afterward appear, religion and morality are but 
 the obverse aspects of the higher phases of human character. 
 To disturb the one is to disturb the other. 
 
 If there is one opinion with regard to the criticism of re- 
 ligion which is universal, it is that we have no right to destroy 
 a faith unless to supplant it with a better one. Proselytism 
 has never been condemned as immoral, however much it 
 has been resisted, for the missionary believes that he is im- 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 369 
 
 parting a better religion than the one which he opposes. 
 The iconoclast, on the contrary, has always been a dreaded 
 destroyer : he offers nothing to replace the objects of worship 
 which he ruins. 
 
 The Religion of Philosophy is the purest of all faiths, the 
 highest of all moralities. Its creed is the ever-brightening 
 zenith of human knowledge ; its precepts spring from the 
 deepest principles of our existence ; its understanding of 
 human life and destiny has nothing to yield to any existing 
 faith ; and its conception of God is so much purer and bet- 
 ter than that of any other religion, that a comparison be- 
 comes ungenerous. It requires no consecrated temples for 
 its worship, no priests or sacraments, no ritual for its dead. 
 Its followers can worship in any temple, learn of any priest, 
 and, as they honor all forms of religion, none of its cere- 
 monies can be inappropriate to their memory. 
 
 Each religion represents the highest or most general con- 
 ceptions of its believers ; for this reason the conventional 
 classification of faiths can give but the merest outline of the 
 actual religious convictions of individuals. Creeds are only 
 partially acquiesced in ; the same formulas of belief are in- 
 terpreted in widely different ways ; and there is, after all, 
 an innate independence in religious belief which only gives 
 formal acquiescence to the established forms of faith. The 
 spirit of organization, therefore, which pervades the whole 
 practical world, that strong sense of the necessity of har- 
 mony and co-operation as conditions of success, gives to 
 organized religion a dominion which in a logical sense it 
 does not possess. 
 
 The difference between the passive believer in any special 
 faith and the conscientious critic of religion may be thus de- 
 scribed : The believer holds that there are divine truths which 
 the simple and the learned can alike appreciate ; the careful 
 critic holds that all truths are divine in the sense that 
 they are related to universal truth, but that the quality 
 of each mind determines the degree of appreciation of that 
 truth. They both admit the existence of divine truth, but 
 
370 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 one believes that it belongs exclusively to a religion, while 
 the other believes it to be coextensive with all existence. 
 The chances for disagreement are infinite ; for there is clearly 
 no possibility of limiting the scope of a religion so that it may 
 not include all existence, or of limiting existence so that it 
 may not include all religion. The only possible chance for an 
 agreement is to fix, once for all, upon the meaning of divine, 
 and all words signifying God. This being accomplished, 
 the whole question becomes clear. Divine means the high- 
 est or most general ; God means the Universal Principle, 
 which is the same thing. To say, therefore, that all truths 
 are related to the divine is simply to admit that the universe 
 is an interdependent organon suggesting neither absolute 
 limits nor separations. With this understanding it becomes 
 possible to form some idea of the degree in which each type 
 of mind, from the most simple to the most complex, can ap- 
 preciate general truths. 
 
 It is only by a study of the facts of religious and moral 
 history that we can succeed in the logical attempt which is 
 here announced. Upon nothing less tangible than the frame- 
 work of these facts can the argument take form and avoid 
 those extreme attenuations which are more apt to confuse 
 than enlighten. 
 
 Our first assumption is, that religion and morality are not 
 only interdependent activities, but are the obverse aspects of 
 a single fact of development. The quality of life is but an- 
 other name for morality. The quality of the mind deter- 
 mines the quality of the religion. Superstitions are but the 
 negative side of religion, while right thinking, feeling, and 
 doing, or morality, constitute all that is real in religious life. 
 
 Worship is universally conceded to be a lifting up of the 
 heart to God. When we find the idea of God undeveloped, 
 therefore, we must expect to find no worship, or worship in 
 its most degraded forms. The term atheist (godless one) 
 has a purely relative meaning. If God is the universal fact, 
 if the conception of God is an appreciation of divine unity, 
 what life can be godless ? Tylor tells how ancient invading 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 371 
 
 Aryans described the aboriginal tribes of India as adeva, i. e. 
 " godless," and the Greeks fixed the corresponding term 
 aSsoi on the early Christians as unbelievers in the classic 
 gods ; also how, in later days, disbelievers in witchcraft 
 and apostolic succession were denounced as atheists ; and in 
 our own time, controversalists infer that naturalists who 
 support a theory of development of species are therefore 
 supposed to hold atheistic opinions. 
 
 In the same way the great term Religion is narrowed in 
 its meaning by numberless writers until the assertion that 
 such and such tribes and communities " have absolutely no 
 religion," is not to be trusted till we discover what the re- 
 ligion of the writer happens to be. From the dogmatist, 
 who " seems hardly to recognize any thing short of the 
 organized and established theology of the higher races as 
 religion," to such liberal writers as Herbert Spencer, who 
 defines religion as an a priori theory of the universe held 
 alike by savages and civilized men, and springing from 
 the need of understanding life, 1 we find a tendency to 
 make all worship the consecration of a fundamental 
 mystery. 
 
 If we would trace religious sentiment to its simplest be- 
 ginnings, we must identify religious with general knowledge, 
 and deny that either is the function of the unknowable. In 
 this investigation we should not allow ourselves to be over- 
 awed by the vast complexities of organized faiths, for as the 
 great developments known as language and perception ex- 
 press but the single fact of motion, so all religions, depend- 
 ing as they do entirely upon language and perception, 
 express but the attitude of man to the Universal Principle, 
 or God. In the dark mind of the savage, where undeveloped 
 
 1 " Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is in all cases a supple- 
 mentary growth, a religious creed is definable as an a priori theory of the uni- 
 verse. * * * Religions diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas are yet 
 perfectly at one in their conviction that the existence of the world with all it 
 contains and all that surrounds it is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation. 
 On this point, if on no other, there is entire unanimity." HERBERT SPENCER L 
 " First Principles," pp. 43, 44. 
 
372 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 language permits of no extended thought, there is no visible 
 approach to the idea of the divine unity of life. Objects 
 and sensations fill the mind, instead of sentiments and 
 thoughts. 
 
 No race seems too degraded to escape, no language too 
 inadequate to express, the belief in a divine mystery. In all 
 the length and breadth of human culture, from the poor 
 Fuegians and Andamans to the philosophers of England, the 
 idea of " an all-pervading mystery " seems to be a constant 
 principle ; yet, instead of admitting that this belief is a posi- 
 tive religious principle, we affirm that it is a purely negative 
 phenomenon, or, in other words, the measure of the inca- 
 pacity alike of the primitive and the civilized man, to form a 
 true conception of God. There can be no safer measure of 
 intellectual and moral development than the extent to which 
 the play of the mind in forming generalizations is interfered 
 with by the belief in mystery. Thus from the Andamans, 
 who alone among the lowest tribes are said to be so degrad- 
 ed as to have scarcely any superstitions, to such intellects 
 as Mill and Spencer, whose only superstition is a belief 
 that the mind is a mystery, we have the greatest ex- 
 tremes of mental development, and also the striking 
 fact that what is commonly called religion has not yet 
 appeared in the former and has practically disappeared in 
 the latter. The intermediate conditions of mind, viewed 
 from our standpoint, are simply different degrees of super- 
 stition. 
 
 In defining belief with a view to tracing out its beginnings 
 in the race, Mr. C. F. Keary says : " Belief is something 
 besides the recognition of what exists in outward sensation. 
 It is the answering voice of human consciousness, or con- 
 science, to the call of something behind [nature]. * * * For 
 what I have only called the recognition of something behind 
 the physical object is, in reality, a worship of the something 
 (or Some One) behind it. * * * Perhaps, therefore, if we were 
 pressed for a single and concise definition of that human 
 faculty called belief, which we have taken for our study here, 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 373 
 
 we could hardly find a better one than this, that it is the 
 1 capacity for worship.' For if you will consider the nature 
 of man you will find that with him it always has been and 
 still is true, that that thing in all his inward or outward 
 world which he sees worthy of worship is essentially the 
 thing in which he believes." : 
 
 According to this, belief is capacity for worship, and is at 
 the same time a faith in a mystery, or " something behind 
 nature." When in this connection we recall the well-known 
 agnosticism of Mr. Spencer, we have no choice but to con- 
 clude that both he and Mr. Keary agree in believing that all 
 worship and therefore all religion, all belief and therefore all 
 knowledge, depend upon a superstition. 
 
 The religion of philosophy acknowledges no mystery ; it 
 advances a conception of God which declares all mystery to 
 be a species of immorality, an impediment to the apprecia- 
 tion of divine unity. It ranks the superstitions of the lowest 
 races with the belief in an unknowable entertained by so 
 many enlightened minds of the present day, and finds in 
 both conceptions the same principle of irreligion. 
 
 When we find that the poor Fuegians believed in " powers 
 of sorcery, in demons, and in dreams"; that their notion of 
 a future life was confined to an aversion to mentioning the 
 dead ; that they had a notion of an actively malevolent 
 power identified probably with " a great black man," sup- 
 posed to influence the weather according to men's conduct ; 
 we deny that these mysterious beliefs constituted their 
 religion any more than the same beliefs which are so general 
 among modern Christians if we will substitute for the 
 " great black man " a personal God can be called in the 
 true sense of the word the religion of Christians. For the 
 religion of all men, whatever their condition, is the form 
 which their most general conceptions assume. The question 
 for us then to decide is whether such morality, such right 
 thought and action, as we find in any civilization is not a 
 truer index of its spiritual development, of the growth of 
 
 1 "Outlines of Primitive Belief." 
 
374 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 true and pure conceptions, than those superstitions which 
 we are accustomed to classify as religious ? 
 
 This assertion that Religion is the form which the most 
 general conceptions of an individual or a race assume, has 
 been objected to on the ground that by a large class of 
 thinkers science or definite knowledge is the name given to 
 the most general conceptions, and religious conceptions are 
 considered too vague for classification under the head of 
 knowledge. This objection brings up the important ques- 
 tion : Can there be any ultimate difference between religious 
 and scientific knowledge ? 
 
 Knowledge in its broadest sense means life. Human 
 knowledge means human life. There are many who suppose 
 that divine knowledge is entirely distinct from human knowl- 
 edge, whereas we protest that divine means most general, 
 and that divine knowledge means our most extended gener- 
 alizations or conceptions. If the man of science denomi- 
 nates all his superstitions, all his vague ideas of origin and 
 destiny, Religion ; and all clear and definite conceptions, 
 those of human duty as well as those of other classes of 
 facts, Science ; he will, no doubt, object to the statement 
 that Religion is the form which our most general concep- 
 tions assume. In fact, he will lose all respect for the word 
 religion ; and would, no doubt, define it as the science of 
 mystery, or the unknowable. 
 
 But religion, to us, represents something so real, so prac- 
 tical, so elevating, that we would rescue the word from its 
 connection with the supernatural, the mysterious, the un- 
 real ; we would have it represent what it really is, the high- 
 est phase of human knowledge. 
 
 A true philosophy must show that all phases of life and 
 mind are but parts of a whole, it must establish the unifica- 
 tion of knowledge. 
 
 The zenith of human knowledge is our religion (using the 
 word in its true sense) ; it is our appreciation of the divine, 
 or the most general. 
 
 What we wish to prove, therefore, is that the thoughts 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 375 
 
 and emotions which accompany right conduct are higher and 
 more general than those conceptions which we call super- 
 stitions ; that, in a word, a just conception of God is ap- 
 proached more nearly through right action than through 
 the undisciplined efforts of the imagination, however legiti- 
 mate custom may have made them appear. 
 
 We find nothing in the superstitions of the lower races, 
 such as the Fuegians, Andamans, Veddahs, and Australians, 
 which can justify the name of religion, although almost all 
 Christian superstitions have their counterpart in the beliefs 
 of these most degraded of human beings. We see much, 
 however, in the virtues ascribed to these savages, that sug- 
 gests religious life. Are not the emotions which accompany 
 the chastity, the honesty, and the kindliness found among 
 the lowest savages higher than those emotions which accom- 
 pany their ignorant dreads ? If superstition, or belief in 
 mystery, is but the negative side of religion, is it not in its 
 gradual disappearance that we find true religious develop- 
 ment ? Has not real religion more to do with conduct than 
 with merely formal beliefs, if a choice must be made ? If, 
 as can be demonstrated, Morality increases as superstition 
 disappears, why should we not define religion as morality in 
 its widest sense (i. e. right thought as well as right action), 
 and seek the dawning of religious sentiment in the dawn- 
 ing of moral life ? 
 
 We have a wealth of data to support the assertion that 
 the religion of each nation is to be estimated by the rectitude 
 of its action and thought. Let us begin with the relation of 
 language to morality. " Philologists may continue long to 
 dispute over the precise origin of language ; but philology 
 has brought us so far that there can be now no question 
 that the primitive speech of mankind was of the rudest char- 
 acter, devoid almost utterly of abstract words, unfit for the 
 use of any kind of men save such as were in the earliest 
 stage of thought. It is probably true that the mental and 
 moral attainment of any people, all that shows their progress 
 along the path of civilization, is (in mathematical phrase) in 
 
376 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a direct ratio with the number of their abstract words. If, 
 therefore, the history of language points back to a time 
 when man had no abstractions, what could have been his 
 mental condition then ? * * * It belongs to our mental con- 
 stitution that, without any distinct names for them, we can 
 entertain no clear ideas. Without language to give it form, 
 we can have at the best only the rudiments of thought." * 
 
 Again, it is a well-understood principle in ethics, that our 
 conceptions of right and wrong are limited by the scope of 
 human life ; that right means in its deepest sense human, 
 and wrong inhuman. No generalization, however extended, 
 can relieve us from this limitation of duty. Thus our 
 ideals of Justice and Mercy have no appeal from humanity. 
 When an issue arises between the good of our race and any 
 other order of creation, our inability to form ethical concep- 
 tions which are independent of humanity becomes apparent. 
 
 The scope of language brings us inevitably to the same 
 conclusion ; for words all spring at first from physical facts 
 or sensations, and the process of sublimation by which they 
 become abstractions is merely the addition to their original 
 simple meaning of larger and larger applications of the same 
 fact. The word Right, for instance, which is one of our 
 highest abstractions, " had once its place in the physical 
 body, and without the need of any deep philological knowl- 
 edge we can see what its first meaning was. We at once 
 connect the Latin rectus with porrectus, meaning stretched 
 out or straight. This brings us back to the German recken, 
 to stretch. We therefore get upon the scent of right as 
 meaning first straight, and earlier still stretched, stretched 
 and straight being originally really the same words, the 
 straight string being the stretched string. We have further 
 proof, if further proof were wanted, a Greek root, opzy 
 opeyrvaiy opeyei, with the same significance of stretched or 
 straight ; and, finally, we find that all these words are con- 
 nected with a Sanskrit arf, which means ' to stretch/ What 
 is stretched, then, is straight, and the straight way is the 
 
 1 Keary : " Outlines of Primitive Belief," pp. 6, 9. 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 3/7 
 
 right way. (Again) Will (Latin volo, voluntas) is a word 
 which seems remote enough from any physical thing ; yet 
 this, too, may be shown to be grounded in sensation. In 
 the first place, will is only the more instantaneous wish, and 
 is connected with the German wdhlen, to choose, and ulti- 
 mately with the Sanskrit var, to choose, ' to place, or draw 
 out first.' With this root we must connect the Latin verus, 
 veritas, the Lithuanian and Sclavonic ve'pa, vera, ' belief.' 
 Verus, or veritas, is, therefore, what is credible, or, earlier 
 still, the thing chosen ; and the old Latin proverb, reduced 
 to its simplest terms, stands thus : ' Great is the thing 
 chosen ; it will prevail.' ' 
 
 In thus tracing to the simplest physical experiences the 
 origin of moral ideas, the favorite theory of a mysterious 
 and inexplicable conscience or moral intuition is removed ; 
 and the interdependent development of language and 
 thought is shown to be the first condition of true relig- 
 ious life. 
 
 We must, of course, choose, at the very outset of the in- 
 quiry, between ceremony and right conduct as the measure 
 of religion, or we shall have no criterion to go by. 
 
 We are told that the ancient Mexicans were " most de- 
 voted to their religion and persistent in their superstitions." 
 They had numberless deities and a complicated mythology. 
 There were " gods of provinces, classes, trades, vices, etc. 
 * * * The chief gods of the main tribes of Mexico appear 
 to be deified men. * * * With the Zapotecs, worship of a 
 dead chief is positively ascertained." Worship of animals, 
 elements, and objects in nature, was common, as well as a 
 belief in three distinct heavens and four previous worlds 
 and mankinds. These most elaborate beliefs were accompa- 
 nied by a vast ecclesiastical organization. " The number of 
 priests among the Mexicans corresponded with the multitude 
 of gods and temples." The priests in the great temple, 
 some historians estimate, were over five thousand, and 
 " there could not have been less than a million priests in the 
 
 1 Keary : " Outlines of Primitive Belief," p. n. 
 
378 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Mexican Empire." As a counterpart to this vast religio- 
 ceremonial life, in which human sacrifice was one of the 
 principal features, we find a low grade of morality and mind, 
 an undeveloped language, no thought, no literature. The 
 people were abjectly submissive and very indolent. " They 
 had been accustomed to act only from fear of punishment." 
 They were cruel in war and practised cannibalism (though 
 upon members of other tribes only). " The influence of 
 religion (?) upon their life seems, on the whole, notwith- 
 standing many moral injunctions, to have been a pernicious 
 one, on account of human sacrifices, confessions, and fatal- 
 istic doctrines ; while apart from religion, the wish to have 
 the good opinion of the tribe was productive of noble 
 deeds." ' 
 
 The Veddahs of Ceylon, supposed to be the descendants 
 of the aboriginal inhabitants of that island, and who are said 
 to have preserved the same mode of life for thousands of 
 years, are thus described : " They have no idols, offer no 
 sacrifices, pour no libations." They have no knowledge of 
 God, no temples, prayers, or charms; in short, no instinct of 
 worship, except, it is reported, some addiction to ceremonies 
 in order to avert storms and lightning. The only evidence 
 of worship among them is the vague belief in the guardian- 
 ship of the spirits of the dead. " Every near relative be- 
 comes a spirit after death and watches over the welfare of 
 those who are left behind." This belief seems to be univer- 
 sal among savages, and has by no means disappeared among 
 civilized men. 
 
 The only religious ceremony which the Veddah performs 
 is to invoke the " shade of the departed." The spirits of 
 children are most frequently called upon. " The most common 
 form of this ceremony is to fix an arrow upright in the 
 ground and dance slowly around it chanting the following 
 invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm : 
 
 " * Ma miya, ma miy, ma deya' ! 
 
 Topang koyihetti mittigan yanda'h ? ' 
 
 1 How much more nearly correct it would be to use the word superstition 
 .instead of religion ! 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 379 
 
 ' My departed one, my departed one, my God ! 
 Where art thou wandering ?' " 
 
 And yet these benighted wild men are said to be temperate, 
 fond of their children, gentle, mild, and affectionate to one 
 another, rarely guilty of grave crimes. Their conjugal fideli- 
 ty is remarkable (the more so as their neighbors, the Sin- 
 ghalese, are very loose in this respect) ; they resent with 
 indignation any reflection on the honor of their women. 
 They are proverbially truthful and honest, and grateful for 
 favors. Murder is almost unknown among them. But we 
 are told they have no language properly so called. " Their 
 communications with one another are made by signs, 
 grimaces, and guttural sounds which be"ar little or no resem- 
 blance to distinct words or systematical language. * * * As 
 may be supposed, the vocabulary of such a barbarous race is 
 very limited. It contains only such phrases as are required 
 to describe the most striking objects of nature, and those 
 which enter into the daily life of the people themselves. So 
 rude and primitive is their dialect, that the most ordinary 
 objects and actions of life are described by quaint para- 
 phrases. As, for example, to walk is 'to beat the ground 
 with hammers ' ; a child is ' a bud ' ; the grains of rice are 
 1 round things ' ; an elephant is not inappropriately termed 
 *a beast like a mountain.' " 1 
 
 Thus we are warned against forming any hasty gen- 
 eralizations concerning the interdependence of moral and 
 intellectual development ; for we find many savage tribes 
 singularly virtuous and yet entirely without definite speech. 
 But as virtue cannot exist without at least some definiteness 
 of ideas, it would be interesting to know what amount of 
 reasoning is necessary to fix such principles as conjugal 
 fidelity, truthfulness, and honesty in the mind. It is plain 
 that the most primitive language admits of the necessary 
 amount of reasoning, for none of the savage dialects are 
 adequate to express with accuracy any ideas beyond the 
 monotonous details of daily life, and few of them are equal 
 
 1 Spencer's " Descriptive Sociology," Chart No. 3. 
 
380 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 even to this. Of the language of the Dyaks it is said : " At 
 a village of the Ida'an, North Borneo, we found the villagers 
 very careless of their pronunciation ; for instance, the word 
 * heavy ' was at different times written down magat, bagat, 
 wagat, and ogat ; for ' rice/ wagas and ogas ; for ' to bathe,' 
 fadshu, padsiu, and madsiu, and indifferently pronounced in 
 these various ways by the same people." And yet the 
 fundamental moral sentiments of this tribe seem to be quite 
 definite. The Dyaks " are mainly hospitable, honest, kindly, 
 humane to a degree which well might shame ourselves." 
 Chastity and private morality stand high among them ; 
 " infidelity to marriage is an almost unheard-of crime." 
 " Adultery is a crime unknown, and no Dyak (Land) ever 
 recollected an instance of its occurrence." : 
 
 We may read the history of the Christian nations in vain 
 for such an assertion ; and yet how can we compare the com- 
 plexity, the definiteness, and the beauty of the languages of 
 Europe with the dialects of the Malays or the lowest races? 
 
 Guizot tells us that the great distinguishing feature of 
 European civilization is its vast complexity of motives, its 
 juxtaposition of many and different types of a political, 
 social, moral, and religious character ; and that this cauldron 
 of conflicting activities has been seething and bubbling 
 through the dark ages, the crusades, the revival of learning, 
 the wars of the Reformation, and the French and the 
 English revolutions, until something morally great will yet 
 result from it. 
 
 Does the present attitude which the nations of Europe 
 preserve toward one another warrant this prediction ? Is 
 there any thing in the relations of the great Christian 
 nations which promises a cessation of the discords of our 
 civilization, which promises that equanimity, that balance of 
 forces, which alone can secure human happiness ? Let it be 
 our aim to discover in what degree the imperfections of 
 language account for the confusion in beliefs and sentiments 
 which we see about us. We cannot consider ourselves 
 
 1 See Boyle's " Borneo." * Low's " Sarawak." 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 381 
 
 much above savages until we put aside savage imperfections 
 of thought and feeling, and at least agree upon a definition 
 of Life and of God. 
 
 No one can read the chapters on Animism in Tylor's 
 " Primitive Culture " without being convinced that all sav- 
 ages and almost all civilized men believe in some form of 
 spiritual apparition or ghostly existence. From the negroes 
 of South Guinea, who are such dreamers and believers in 
 dreams that they have no control over their imaginations, 
 uttering falsehoods without intention and being unable to 
 distinguish the real from the ideal, to the German philoso- 
 pher who declares that the real is the ideal ; from the Tagals 
 of Luzon, who object to waking a sleeper on account of the 
 absence of his soul during sleep, to the Christian Father 
 St. Augustine, who devoutly believed in the reality of the 
 phantastic images of his dreams ; we have in our habits of 
 thought and in our language a clear inheritance of this 
 childish and savage belief in the existence of another self. 
 The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is but another 
 form of this same belief, and it so clings to us that those 
 who reject it on the highest philosophical and moral grounds 
 are regarded as unable to appreciate the full importance and 
 significance of life: as though to postulate a supernatural 
 existence could magnify or ennoble in any degree the facts 
 of actual life. 
 
 The savage belief in ghosts or shades is carefully taught 
 in all our theological seminaries, not excepting the Unitarian 
 seats of learning. It takes the form of a faith in the reality 
 of the hosts of heaven, which, as nearly as we can learn, are 
 supposed to be the surviving spirits of mortals of diverse 
 ages and civilizations who dwell in the cosmical vicinity of 
 a personal God. 
 
 To revert to other nations for a counterpart of this super- 
 stition about the impossible subdivisions of personality, we 
 have " the distinction which the ancient Egyptians seem to 
 have made in the Ritual of the Dead between the man's ba, 
 akh y ka, khaba, translated by Mr. Birch as his ' soul/ ' mind,' 
 
382 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 * existence/ ' shade ' ; or the Rabbinical division into what 
 may be roughly described as the bodily, spiritual, and celes- 
 tial souls ; or the distinction between the emanative and ge- 
 netic souls in Hindu philosophy ; or the distribution of life, 
 apparition, ancestral spirit, among the three souls of the 
 Chinese ; or the demarcations of the nous, psyche, andflneuma, 
 or of the anima and animus ; or the famous classic and 
 mediaeval theories of the vegetal, sensitive, and rational 
 souls." ' 
 
 We notice in the Sociological Charts containing the com- 
 pilations of facts of this order, classified by Herbert Spencer, 
 that the columns devoted to what are commonly called the 
 religious ideas of the lower races, the Malayo-Polynesian, the 
 North and the South American, the African, and the Asiatic 
 races, are all headed by the word " Superstitions," while the 
 columns of similar data belonging to the ancient Mexicans, 
 the Central Americans, the Peruvians, the Hebrews, the 
 Phoenicians, the English, and the French races are dignified 
 by the name of " Religious Ideas." In this distinction we 
 see the universal tendency to call those superstitions religious 
 which most resemble our own religion. 
 
 The writing of these lines was interrupted by a visit to a 
 Unitarian church, whose pastor is famed for his scientific 
 acquirements. He is widely acknowledged to be a man of 
 liberal attainments and fine moral perceptions. He preaches 
 from a pulpit which is supposed to be entirely untrammelled 
 by dogma of any kind. His discourse was upon the parentage 
 and life 'of Jesus. He declared his belief that the great 
 moral reformer of Galilee was born naturally ; and enlarged 
 beautifully upon the sanctity and purity of the marital rela- 
 tion, against which all the asceticism of Christianity is a 
 direct attack. He then spoke of the interest that the heavenly 
 hosts took in the birth of Jesus; and continued fluently to 
 discourse about the angels, who, he said, take an interest in 
 our lives and actually rejoice when we do right and weep 
 when we sin. He spoke of God as hearing and seeing us 
 
 1 Tylor's " Primitive Culture," vol. I., p. 435. 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 383 
 
 and enjoying all the advantages of the human senses and 
 emotions. He said, Jesus was not asleep in Nazareth, but 
 looking upon us with open eyes and taking an active inter- 
 est in our daily existence. 
 
 In listening to this sermon I could not help wondering what 
 sort of immortals the poor Veddahs and Dyaks were, and 
 whether their uncultivated morality was appreciated in para- 
 dise ; whether the twenty thousand human victims sacrificed 
 in the ancient Mexican Empire in a single year had, by vir- 
 tue of their death, any privileges in heaven ; and above all, 
 whether the knowledge of God which the angels enjoy 
 depended upon an earthly or a seraphic dialect for its devel- 
 opment. I could not help thinking that if, in America, in 
 this century, cultivated and liberal people are satisfied with 
 such logical co-ordinations as a discourse upon angels and a 
 distinctly human God, our language, with all its resources, is 
 little better than the drivelling speech of the Veddahs and 
 the Dyaks, and that little more can be expected from its use 
 in the way of morality than from the inarticulate mumblings 
 of these degraded races. Should not a reform in the higher 
 functions of language, or the use of general terms, which 
 would be sufficiently deep to insure any visible moral im- 
 provement in our nation, be of necessity so widespread that 
 our little children would be able to classify a discourse on 
 angels and a personal God with the stories of giants and 
 invisible princes with which they are so harmlessly enter- 
 tained ? 
 
 How is truth to be acted until it is more perfectly 
 thought ? How can logical crimes be detected while our 
 speech is so slovenly that such distinct principles as general 
 and individual existence can be hopelessly entangled with- 
 out exciting the attention of minds that rank far above the 
 
 average ? 
 
 The " Religious Ideas " of the Hebrews of the pre-Egyp- 
 tian and Egyptian periods are described as follows : " They 
 believed in revelations by way of dreams. The dead were 
 supposed to meet their kindred in the grave. A plural form 
 
384 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 '(Elohim) indicates a polytheistic belief. El Shadai (' the 
 powerful ') revealed himself to Abraham." There were 
 " sacred stones, trees, and groves. Teraphim (' the enrich- 
 ing ones ') were a sort of household gods. Many gods 
 (probably those of the several Semitic tribes assembled in 
 Goshen) were worshipped. Yahveh (a name of doubtful 
 etymological meaning) revealed himself as the God of Israel 
 to Moses. * * * In the period of wanderings, a motley variety 
 of religious phenomena prevailed. There were tribes, but no 
 nation. The names of tribal deities are perhaps preserved 
 in the names of some tribes. Moses conceived Yahveh in a 
 moral spirit ; he objected to the bull worship, yet he made a 
 brazen serpent (nehushtan). * * * After the establishment in 
 Palestine the Israelitish tribes adopted Canaanitish ideas and 
 practices (Baal, Ashera). Yet Yahveh was regarded as the 
 God of Israel and Israel as the people of Yahveh (i. e. he 
 was supposed to be one of many gods)." 
 
 It was during the period of the Two Kingdoms that the 
 belief in hosts of angels seems to have grown up in Israel ; 
 and, strange to say, it was about this time that the notion of 
 Satan, " a special evil spirit set apart," " the accuser of man- 
 kind," gained possession of the popular mind. The belief in 
 ghosts, spectres, and powerful men, and the worship of an- 
 cestors, are abundantly instanced in the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 and show us how faithfully all the lower orders of super- 
 stition were reproduced in the Hebrew mind. " Down to 
 the exile it evidently was quite common to conjure the dead 
 chiefs, and to imitate by ventriloquistic tricks the chirping 
 voice of the dwellers of the air, and the groaning one of those 
 ^residing in the underworld." 
 
 "And when they say unto you, ' Consult the ghost-seers and 
 the wizards, that chirp and that mutter; should not people 
 consult their gods, even the dead (mSttm), on behalf of the 
 living ? * Hearken not unto them." 
 
 " Nor did the Hebrews remain strangers to the belief in 
 demons and spectres ; they professed their faith in the exist- 
 ence of Shedim, that is, lords or masters, implying various 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 385 
 
 kinds of foreign deities or evil spirits ; and to them they 
 not only offered sacrifices (Deut. xxxii., 17), but slaughtered 
 their children (Ps. cvi., 37) ; they attributed reality to the 
 Lilith, a night-spectre, dwelling in desolate ruins (Isa. xxxiv., 
 14), and, according to Eastern legends, rushing forth in the 
 dead of the night, in the form of a beautiful woman, to seize 
 children and to tear them to pieces." ] 
 
 We have no difficulty, therefore, in tracing back to the 
 Hebrews many of the absurd superstitions which lurk in the 
 Christian faith. But we have good reason to feel discour- 
 aged when we find a prominent minister of the only Chris- 
 tian sect which makes any pretensions to a true literary 
 spirit (a true appreciation of human history), discoursing 
 about the angels in heaven and a personal God, and actually 
 worshipping the shade of a Hebrew prophet. 
 
 We are also at a loss to know why the " Religious Ideas " 
 of the Hebrews should not be classed with the " Supersti- 
 tions " of other nations, unless it be that their accompany- 
 ing ecclesiastical organization entitles them to rank with the 
 established religions of the Asiatics, the Egyptians, and the 
 ancient Mexicans. 
 
 We look in vain among the superstitions of the Asiatic 
 tribes for any thing more gross than the religious ideas of 
 the Hebrews contained. That universal ancestor-worship 
 unconsciously carried on by Christians is everywhere ap- 
 parent. The dead chief has given way to the personal God 
 of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, or the Yahveh of Moses ; 
 fetich worship has risen from the familiar earth to heaven, 
 where our dead ancestors and children live praising the 
 Lord of Hosts. We do not lay food and arms on the 
 graves of the departed, but we preserve the generic descend- 
 ant of this ceremony in the Eucharist. Instead of sacri- 
 ficing upon tombs we build altars in churches, and bury our 
 dead around the sacred edifice. Hardly a bell tolls in the 
 Christian world but we simulate to ourselves a human sacri- 
 
 1 For above quotations see Spencer's " Descriptive Sociology," book VII. t 
 part 2, B, Hebrews and Phoenicians. 
 
386 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fice, " Christ shedding his blood for the redemption of man- 
 kind " ; and we wonder at the ancient Mexicans, who merely 
 carried the same idea into practice. 
 
 We teach our children all sorts of distorted ideas about 
 nature, which would be childish if they were not criminal; 
 we pervert their natural intuitions of justice and humanity 
 by absurd doctrines of mystical retribution, unnatural par- 
 don and cancellation of sin ; the most savage notions of a 
 great spirit are perpetuated in the doctrine of a special 
 providence whose purposes are past judgment. Then we 
 classify the idolatrous and blood-thirsty Hebrews and our- 
 selves as religious ; we extend the courtesy of the same clas- 
 sification, with certain reservations, to the ancient Mexicans, 
 and to some of the Asiatics and the Egyptians; but all the 
 other ancestor-worshippers, to whom we owe almost every 
 religious notion which we possess, we relegate to the baser 
 level of superstition. 
 
 With all our railroads, steamships, and telegraphs, our 
 schools and universities, our halls of justice and legislation, 
 to say nothing of our priests and churches, we do not 
 possess the average morality of the Dyaks or the humanity 
 of the Veddahs. With all our boasted intelligence, language, 
 and religion, we are unable to bring the individual up to as 
 high a level of chastity, of honesty, and of general virtue, 
 as that occupied by these pitiable tribes of primitive men 
 and women. The reason is, that we are unwilling to believe 
 that there can be any real progress which does not rest 
 upon morality, any justice which does not point to the 
 divine unity of life, any humanity or religion which does 
 not rise above the conception of a personal God. 
 
 We are puzzled to define the term civilization, because 
 we find in the midst of our vaunted progress the lowest 
 orders of superstition, the most primitive conceptions of 
 life and duty; and we are thus unable to distinguish that re- 
 ligion which should be our most glorious achievement from 
 the childish beliefs of savages. Until we have so developed 
 our language as to place beyond the pale of possibility a re- 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 387 
 
 turn to these barbarisms of thought and feeling, are we not 
 in danger of handing down the vast structures of our civiliza- 
 tion as mere monuments of failure to the races to come ? 
 
 Thus we see that the darkness in which the primitive man 
 groped yields nothing to modern research excepting the 
 picture of his feeble generalizations, his first efforts to un- 
 derstand himself and nature, which are given in his rude 
 virtues and his ruder superstitions. 
 
 Upon the supposition that the religion of a people is the 
 portrayal of their most general conceptions can be built up a 
 complete theory of Knowledge ; but it is important to re- 
 member that language is the mind of society, and that in 
 relatively advanced nations there can be found what might 
 be called a high-water mark of induction, a highest logical 
 achievement, to which the tides of humanity make but a 
 distant approach. Until the researches of Sir William Jones, 
 in the year 1783, and of those who followed him in the study 
 of Sanskrit, the religious thought of ancient India was a 
 blank to the modern world. Through the insensible growth 
 of language the venerable philosophy, the best thought and 
 feeling, of an ancient people has been safely conveyed over 
 the boundaries of race and language into the very heart of 
 our era. The translations of Sanskrit seemed like a flood of 
 new light to Christendom, but it was only the uncovering of 
 an old mine which humanity had worked out ages before, 
 and whose glittering gems have been worn ever since, 
 descending as heirlooms through long generations. A great 
 truth, a refined sentiment, can be expressed in any civilized 
 tongue ; languages may be forgotten and rediscovered ; but 
 these facts of existence live on through the changes of race 
 and speech, each age reproducing them with unfailing accu- 
 racy. Observe, in proof of this, the dreadful monotony of 
 metaphysics. Read Plato, the writings of the Alexandrians, 
 the Christian theologians from the time of the Scholastics to 
 the present day, decipher Kant and Hegel ; then turn to the 
 oldest Indian philosophy, the oldest Egyptian speculations, 
 as they appear in the religions of these countries ; and we 
 
388 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 find the same struggle over being and non-being, spiritual 
 essence and material form ; the same attempted difference 
 between time and eternity ; the same divine unity, one and 
 eternal, contrasted with the changing variety of the senses. 
 The communication of these thoughts from one nation to 
 another has been an insensible process, which has in nowise 
 waited for the rediscovery of languages or the new literary 
 criticism of our day. But if language has preserved all these 
 truths and subjected them to that development which can 
 alone come from the general progress of knowledge, or the 
 growth of morality, how are we to account for the apparently 
 fixed and unyielding form which the higher speculations have 
 assumed ? Why is it that German, French, and English 
 speculations have not surpassed in metaphysical insight the 
 best thought of Egypt, India, and Greece ? Are the people 
 who embody the teachings of Kant, Descartes, and Spencer 
 to be compared to those who designed the pyramids, wrote 
 the Vedas, or questioned the Delphic Oracle ? How are 
 these nations to be compared ? 
 
 The difference between civilizations is best portrayed by 
 a comparison of the KNOWLEDGE of the respective races ; 
 but when the term knowledge is identified with life, the 
 comparison is lost in receding equations. When, however, 
 we put the proposition in a religious form, it will readily 
 gain acceptance ; for the assertion that races and civilizations 
 are to be measured by the spread of the divine spirit among 
 them, by the quality and extent of their knowledge of God, 
 is a truism for all devout minds. 
 
 Our proposition, then, is, that the completeness and sym- 
 metry with which a nation has performed that great induc- 
 tion which leads from particulars to generals, from the 
 lowest forms of sentiency to the highest generalizations, is 
 the only true measure of its life. 
 
 If we would rise above the past, therefore, if we would 
 place a permanent distinction between our civilization and 
 that of the lowest savages, or the great intermediate races, 
 we must improve our language so that its most general 
 
SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY. 389 
 
 terms will cease to be employed as the vehicle of supersti- 
 tion and mysteries. The question then arises : Can such an 
 understanding of language be made to harmonize with any 
 existing religion? Will not such light as this prove fatal to 
 Christianity? In order to answer this question, it will be 
 necessary to glance at the most prominent facts of general 
 religious history with a view to ascertaining the immediate 
 origin of our religious beliefs. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 
 
 In Egypt the Belief in Immortality Reached its Highest Development Mysti- 
 cism and Idealism. 
 
 THE Egyptians were the most pious people of antiquity. 
 They seem to have expended more time and energy in 
 religious observances, and to have had a more realistic con- 
 ception of a future life, than any other race. Their writings, 
 says M. Maury, " are full of sacred symbols and allusions to 
 divine myths, perfectly useless apart from the Egyptian 
 religion. Literature and the sciences were only branches of 
 the theology, while its books formed a sacred code, supposed 
 to be the work of the god Thoth, likened by the Greeks to 
 their Hermes. The arts were only practised to add to the 
 worship and glorification of the gods or deified kings. 
 
 " The religious observances were so numerous and so im- 
 perative that it was impossible to practise a profession, to 
 prepare food, or to attend to the simplest daily needs with- 
 out constantly calling to mind the rules established by the 
 priests. Each province had its special gods, its particular 
 rights, its sacred animals. Neither the dominion of the Per- 
 sians, nor that of the Ptolemies, nor that of the Romans, was 
 able to change this antique religion of the Pharaohs ; of all 
 polytheisms, it opposed the most obstinate resistance to 
 Christianity, and continued to live on up to the sixth century 
 of our era. It is because the Egyptian religion had pene- 
 trated so deeply into the mind of the people and the customs 
 of the country, that it became, so to speak, a part of the in- 
 tellectual and physical organization of the race." * 
 
 1 Alfred Maury : Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept., 1867. 
 3QO 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 391 
 
 The animal-worship of the Egyptians, which is the term 
 generally applied to their religion, was, of course, a form of 
 idolatry, but a far less materialistic form than is generally 
 supposed. The priests of the early dynasties taught (before 
 the practice of image-worship had grown up) that their con- 
 ception of the God of the universe could not be expressed by 
 any image made by hands, and that they therefore preferred 
 to take a living creature to symbolize the power and wisdom 
 of the Creator, a singularly pure and beautiful idea. The 
 conception of God as a person having human form and feel- 
 ings, exercising a divine will in his government of all nature, 
 and loving, punishing, forgiving, and caring for his children, 
 is surely as near an approach to making an image of God as 
 was the practice of setting up living creatures as symbols of 
 certain divine attributes. Where, after all, shall we find a 
 religion without idolatry ? Our very words and thoughts are 
 symbols. Even to say that God is the universal principle, is 
 to symbolize the most general fact, to create a sign that will 
 call up this conception in the minds of others. 
 
 Speaking of the innumerable gods of the Egyptians and of 
 the vast machinery of worship which they carried on, Mr. 
 Clarke says : " Every day has its festival, every town its god 
 and temple. Sacrifices, prayers, incense, processions, begin 
 and close the year. The deities, we discover, are innumer- 
 able. Great triads of gods, superior to the rest, are wor- 
 shipped under different names in the different provinces. 
 Every year the festivals of Osiris and Isis renew the mourn- 
 ing for the Divine Sufferer, and joy at his resurrection. The 
 tombs are resplendent with mosaics and brilliantly colored 
 paintings. The dead are more cared for than the living ; 
 their resting-places are carved out of solid rock and filled with 
 rich furniture and ornaments. One supreme being, above all 
 other deities, is worshipped as the maker and preserver of all 
 things." ' 
 
 So vast a subject as the morality of a nation whose exist- 
 ence can be traced back for seven thousand years would be 
 
 1 " Ten Great Religions," vol. II., p. 7. 
 
392 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 hazardous to deal with in any but the most general manner. 
 After the fifth dynasty a great calamity seems to have fallen 
 upon the people which destroyed for a time their civiliza- 
 tion. This calamity was probably a nomadic invasion, and 
 must have revolutionized the whole national life. It is diffi- 
 cult, therefore, to select moral characteristics which survive 
 throughout such sweeping changes in a nation's existence. 
 
 All authors agree that the notions of divine existence, the 
 ideas of the lives of the gods, and the general tenor of 
 prayer or the manner of addressing the gods, indicate a 
 singular purity of life in ancient Egypt. 
 
 Bonwick says : " An entire confidence in the goodness 
 and integrity of their deities is the most pleasing attribute 
 of the Egyptian mind. No Greek could trust his lying, 
 treacherous, unstable, and immoral gods. 
 
 " On a tomb of the eleventh dynasty, B.C. 3000, the de- 
 ceased is made to say : ' I have ever kept from sin, I have 
 been truth itself on the earth. Make me luminous in the 
 skies ! Make me justified ! May my soul prosper ! ' Upon, 
 a papyrus we read this touching appeal : ' My god ! My 
 god ! O that thou wouldst show me the true god ! ' * * * 
 
 " A prophet of Osiris says : ' I have venerated my father. 
 I have respected my mother. I have loved my brothers. I 
 have done nothing evil against them during my life on earth. 
 I have protected the poor against the powerful. I have 
 given hospitality to every one. I have been benevolent, and 
 loving the (?) gods. I have cherished my friends, and my 
 hand has been open to him who had nothing. I have 
 loved truth, and hated a lie/ * * * 
 
 " A prayer from their Scriptures the Ritual for the Dead 
 gives a part of the confession the soul must make after 
 death. * * * The I25th chapter of the Ritual contains this: 
 1 Homage to thee, great god, lord of truth and justice ! I 
 am come to thee, O my master. I present myself to thee, 
 and contemplate thy perfecting. I know you, lord of truth 
 and justice. I have brought you the truth. I have committed 
 no fraud against men. I have not tormented the widow. I 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 393, 
 
 have not lied in the tribunal. I know not lies. I have not 
 done any prohibited thing. I have not commanded my 
 workman to do more than he could do. I have not been 
 idle. I have not made others weep. I have not made 
 fraudulent gains. I have not altered the grain-measure. I 
 have not falsified the equilibrium of the balance. I have 
 not taken away the milk from the foster-child. I have not 
 driven sacred beasts from the pastures. I am pure. I am 
 pure.' " 1 
 
 Again Mr. Clarke thus testifies to the morality of the 
 Egyptians : " Many of the virtues which we are apt to 
 suppose a monopoly of Christian culture appear as the 
 ideal of these old Egyptians. Brugsch says a thousand 
 voices from the tombs of Egypt declare this. One inscrip- 
 tion in Upper Egypt says : ' He loved his father, he 
 honored his mother, he loved his brethren, and never went 
 from his home in bad temper. He never preferred the 
 great man to the low one.' Another says: 'I was a 
 wise man, my soul loved God. I was a brother to the 
 great men and a father to the humble ones, and never was 
 a mischief-maker.' An inscription at Sais, on the tomb of 
 a priest who lived in the sad days of Cambyses, says : ' I 
 honored my father, I esteemed my mother, I loved my 
 brothers. I found graves for the unburied dead. I instructed 
 little children. I took care of orphans as though they were 
 my own children. For great misfortunes were on Egypt in 
 my time, and on this city of Sais.' * * * The following 
 inscription is from the tombs of Ben-Hassen, over a Nomad 
 Prince : ' What I have done I will say. My goodness and 
 my kindness were ample. I never oppressed the fatherless 
 nor the widow. I did not treat cruelly the fishermen, the 
 shepherds, or the poor laborers. There was nowhere in my 
 time hunger or want ; for I cultivated all my fields, far and 
 near, in order that their inhabitants might have food. I 
 never preferred the great and powerful to the humble and 
 poor, but did equal justice to all.' A king's tomb at Thebes 
 
 1 '* Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought." 
 
394 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gives us in few words the religious creed of a Pharaoh, which 
 Moses seems hardly to have appreciated : ' I lived in truth, 
 and fed my soul with justice. What I did to men was done 
 in peace, and how I loved God, God and my heart well know. 
 I have given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, 
 clothes to the naked, and a shelter to the stranger. I 
 honored the gods with sacrifices, and the dead with offer- 
 ings. A rock at Lycopolis pleads for an ancient ruler 
 in the same unmistakable tones. Hundreds of stones 
 in Egypt announce, as the best gifts which the gods can 
 bestow on their favorites, ' the respect of men and the love 
 of women.' ' 
 
 Thus we see that the morality of the Egyptians had the 
 same direct and simple source as that of other races, namely, 
 those perceptions of justice and purity which are engendered 
 by measuring the feelings of others by our own. 
 
 The daily life of the Egyptian people seems to have been 
 a physical expression of their theology. Certain days in the 
 year were set apart for observances which corresponded to 
 events in the lives of their gods. " In an old papyrus 
 described by De Rouge it is said : ' On the twelfth of 
 Chorak no one is to go out of doors, for on that day the 
 transformation of Osiris into the bird Wennu took place. 
 On the fourteenth of Toby no voluptuous songs must be 
 listened to, for Isis and Nepthys bewail Osiris on that day. 
 On the third of Mechir no one can go on a journey, because 
 Set then began a war.' ' 
 
 The theology of Egypt indicates a great depth of thought. 
 The whole nation seemed to be physically employed in illus- 
 trating its conceptions ; but the vast majority were as 
 unconscious of the meaning of their religion as the physio- 
 logical units in a human organism are unconscious of the 
 genius of the life in which they take part. A great system 
 of myths and superstitions had grown up during an im- 
 measurable past. The best minds, no doubt, were able to 
 decipher in all this a great thought, a commanding general- 
 
 1 See " Ten Great Religions," pp. 221, 222. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 395 
 
 ization ; but the majority of the priests and the people, as 
 in our day, were content with the symbols, and never went 
 beyond them. The mysteries which the priests so carefully 
 guarded were connected with their scientific knowledge, 
 and were not unmixed with the art of magic, hence the 
 awe with which the people regarded them. 
 
 In the Egyptian theology there were two branches or de- 
 partments, the esoteric or internal, and the exoteric or ex- 
 ternal. The former was an interpretation of nature and life 
 which the priests built up among themselves ; it exhibited 
 remarkable knowledge and philosophic insight ; but, probably 
 for the want of a better language, it was for the most part 
 expressed in the form of deities and their attributes. We 
 can judge of the penetration of these inquiries from the fact 
 that they included among others the theory that " Matter is 
 but the rotating portions of something which fills the whole of 
 space" The latter was the more concrete and fabulous form 
 of religion taught to the people, and which was suited to their 
 understanding. There must have been a great disparity of 
 intelligence even among the priests themselves. In witness 
 of which mark the incongruity between their best inductions 
 and the clumsy symbolism in which we find them expressed. 
 
 Not to dwell too long on the complex subject of Egyptian 
 theology, suffice it to say that there were three orders of 
 gods, which corresponded to three orders of interpretation 
 of nature. The first dealt with general principles, and mani- 
 fested a remarkable power of analysis. The second and third 
 orders of gods descended from general principles to particu- 
 lars, and became thoroughly anthropomorphic, assuming the 
 minutest details of human life. 
 
 Looking at the history of Egypt from a distance, the 
 most striking features are the pyramid-building age, chiefly 
 confined to the fourth dynasty, and the reign of Rameses II., 
 the most brilliant epoch of the Empire. Since Champollion 
 (1822) deciphered the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the greatest 
 archaeological discovery of modern times, the history of 
 Egypt has gradually unfolded itself until a dim outline is 
 
396 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 discerned ; but scarcely more than this can yet be claimed. 
 The fact that the most ancient writers of the Egyptians re- 
 garded time in the cyclical light, fixing no era from which to 
 reckon events, makes it almost impossible to arrive at any 
 definite dates until the historical age is fairly begun by other 
 nations. It is generally conceded that at least four thousand 
 years would have been necessary for the development of the 
 civilization which appeared in Egypt at the beginning of the 
 fourth dynasty, when the Great Pyramid was built by 
 Cheops. Ages before this, Menes emerges from the mytho- 
 logical period, the age of divine reigns which precedes the 
 beginning of Egyptian history. It is agreed by all Egyp- 
 tologists, however, that Menes is no legendary personage, 
 but that he founded the Egyptian state by uniting its many 
 parts into one nation, and that he began the building of 
 the city of Memphis. 
 
 The first dynasty, beginning with the reign of Menes, is 
 estimated by Mariette Bey as 5004 B.C., and by Professor 
 Lepsius as 3892 B.C. The reign of twenty-six dynasties, or 
 families of kings, is counted from Menes to the conquest of 
 Egypt by the Persians ; but owing to the division of the na- 
 tion into as many as five kingdoms, these dynasties were not 
 consecutive, several royal families during certain periods 
 reigning at the same time. When the Assyrian Empire fell, 
 the Egyptians regained their independence under the Theban 
 Amenophis, who became king of the whole country, and 
 founded the eighteenth dynasty. But the nation was soon 
 again conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, and paid tribute to the 
 Babylonians until Egypt was absorbed by the Persian Em- 
 pire. Previous to this the separate kingdoms had been 
 overcome one by one by the invasion of a race of nomads, 
 which resulted in the rule of the Shepherd Kings, during 
 which Egyptian civilization suffered a long decline. It is 
 in the reign of the last shepherd king that Joseph, who is 
 acknowledged to be an historical character, is supposed to 
 have been in power. 
 
 It is almost impossible to obtain reliable details of the 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 397 
 
 sojourn and oppression of the Hebrews in Egypt and their 
 subsequent exodus. The legend, as it appears in the sacred 
 writings of the Jews, is one side of the story, which is gener- 
 ally admitted by scholars to be highly colored and largely 
 fanciful ; while from the detached references to the event 
 gathered from Egyptian inscriptions and other sources, it is 
 difficult to give to it any thing like the co'herency and rela- 
 tive historical importance which it assumes in the Hebrew 
 chronicles. 
 
 The theology of Egypt centres about the myth of Osiris, 
 which seems to be the oldest religious story in the world. 
 Five thousand years before the beginning of our era, Osiris, 
 a mythological king of Egypt, was worshipped after reigning 
 upon the earth, where he left such a remembrance of his 
 beneficence that he became the type of goodness, the chief 
 moral ideal of the Egyptians. He was betrayed, suffered 
 temporary death, ascended into heaven, where he became 
 the judge of the quick and the dead. The Greek author 
 Athenagoras " laughed gaily at the Egyptian absurdity of 
 weeping for the death of their god, then rejoicing at his 
 resurrection, and afterward sacrificing to him as a divinity." 
 Bonwick says, in speaking of Osiris : " It is idle for us, at this 
 distance of time, to talk of him as a solar myth, or a refined 
 intellectualism of the Egyptians ; he was a person who had 
 lived and died. They had no manner of doubt abo^t it. 
 Did they not know his birthplace ? Did they not celebrate 
 his birth by the most elaborate ceremonies, with cradle, 
 lights, etc. ? Did they not hold his tomb at Abydos ? Did 
 they not annually celebrate at the Holy Sepulchre his resur- 
 rection? Did they not commemorate his death by the 
 Eucharist, eating the Sacred Cake, after it had been conse- 
 crated by the priests, and become veritable flesh of his 
 flesh ? " The solemn strains of the Roman Miserere are but 
 the echoes of the Egyptian dirges representing the grief of 
 Isis. This devoted wife of Osiris, the chief maternal goddess 
 of Egypt, seeks her lost husband round the world and 
 
 1 " Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought," p. 162. 
 
398 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 through the regions of death. When she has at last recov- 
 ered his remains, her tears and prayers revive him, and the 
 faithful wife miraculously conceives a son. Then she flees 
 with her unborn babe from pursuing enemies. Some say 
 that she was caught up by the sun, others that she bore and 
 suckled the babe Horus in loneliness. Thus Horus, begotten 
 and born after death through tears and prayers, is but the 
 living incarnation of Osiris. Horus was the Egyptian saviour 
 of humanity. He was born in winter, and the annual 
 festivals in celebration of his birth were the beginning of 
 our Christmas rejoicings. This beloved god was the last 
 of the long line of divine rulers, and he was followed by 
 Menes, the first historical king. 
 
 Isis, the mother of Horus, who was worshipped six thou- 
 sand years ago, was styled by the Egyptians, " ' Our Lady,' 
 the ' Queen of Heaven/ ' Star of the Sea/ ' Governess/ 
 1 Earth Mother/ ' Rose/ ' Tower/ ' Mother of God/ 
 1 Saviour of Souls/ t Intercessor/ ' Sanctifier/ ' Immaculate 
 Virgin/ etc. * * * In the story of her love and devotion to 
 Osiris there is a pathos and a tenderness that speak well for 
 the domestic virtues of the Egyptian people who invented 
 and cherished the myth. Only those who believed in faith- 
 ful wives and honored women could have exhibited so noble 
 a specimen of female goodness as seen in their chief divinity. 
 * * * In an ancient Christian work, called the ' Chronicle of 
 Alexandria/ occurs the following : ' Watch how Egypt has 
 consecrated the childbirth of a virgin, and the birth of her 
 son, who was exposed in a crib to the adoration of the 
 people. King Ptolemy having asked the reason of this usage, 
 the Egyptians answered him that it was a mystery taught 
 to their fathers/ " ' 
 
 It is generally conceded by Egyptologists that Isis is the 
 Virgo of the zodiac. " One sees," says the Arabian writer, 
 Abulmazar, " in the first Decan of the sign of the Virgin, 
 according to the most ancient traditions of the Persians, 
 Chaldeans, Egyptians, of Hermes, and of Esculapius, a 
 
 1 " Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought," pp. 141, 143. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 399 
 
 chaste, pure, immaculate virgin, of a beautiful figure and 
 an agreeable face, having an air of modesty, holding in her 
 hand two ears of corn, seated on a throne, nourishing and 
 suckling a young child." 
 
 Thus, as most of the original Christian theology was for- 
 mulated in Alexandria, we see in its symbols but a repro- 
 duction of the mythology of Egypt. As Isis was carried to 
 heaven by her son Horus, so " the virgin Mary was declared 
 to have been carried there by her glorified son." The im- 
 maculate conception, the symbols of the cradle and the 
 cross, the ceremony of the last supper, the death, the res- 
 urrection, the ascension, and in fact the whole scheme of 
 Christian salvation, have counterparts in the superstitions of 
 ancient Egypt. As the Egyptians were undoubtedly the 
 first historic people, in the mythologies of all other nations 
 we trace a likeness to their beliefs ; just such a likeness as it 
 is natural to suppose was disseminated by the slow inter- 
 course of the earliest races of the world. All superstitions 
 are merely exaggerations of human experiences, consisting 
 for the most part of the incidents of family life. This is the 
 reason why religion is said to be an emotional government, 
 as its beliefs spring from the childhood of our race, in which 
 the emotions have ascendancy over thought. 
 
 The only emotions which we can trust are moral emo- 
 tions ; and if we deprive our sacred beliefs of every thing 
 that thought cannot approve of and morality can dispense 
 with, superstitions disappear and the religion of Philosophy 
 alone remains. Could a greater service be rendered to 
 humanity than to relieve it of the slavery of its hoary 
 superstitions ? 
 
 The monuments of Egypt teach the same lesson of myste- 
 rious beliefs. Notwithstanding the incalculable amount of 
 toil which they represent, they are almost wholly the work of 
 superstition, and therefore have contributed little or nothing 
 to the well-being of the race that built them. Such vast 
 structures as the pyramids of Ghizeh or the temples at 
 Karnac must have been national undertakings ; and so far 
 
400 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 removed were they from the useful, that their construction 
 must have meant the practical enslavement of large classes 
 of the population. It is difficult to imagine a state of society 
 in which labor could have been sufficiently redundant to 
 explain these enormous ideal enterprises in any other way. 
 The great public works of China and the Roman Empire 
 were national movements, but they were for the public good : 
 the building of the pyramids and temples of Egypt, and the 
 vast religious industry of the nation, on the contrary, must 
 have inflicted grievous burdens upon the people ; illustrat- 
 ing in a striking manner what superstition has cost the 
 world. 
 
 The literary monuments of this people only repeat the same 
 evidence. The antiquity of the Egyptian Bible is perhaps 
 the most wonderful fact connected with this oldest of nations. 
 Portions of these sacred writings are said to have been 
 written seven thousand years ago. As now collected, they 
 consist chiefly of a ritual of worship for the guidance of 
 the priests, and a " code of existence in the other world." 
 Deveria says : " Not only under the reign of Men-ka-ra, the 
 builder of the Third Pyramid, but even under the fifth king 
 of the first dynasty, certain parts of the sacred book were 
 already discovered, as antiquities, of which the tradition had 
 -been lost" At the Turin Museum is a copy of this wonder- 
 ful prehistoric " Book of the Dead." " It covers one side of 
 the wall. Though in four pieces, it may altogether measure 
 nearly three hundred feet in length. The breadth of the 
 papyrus is from twelve to fifteen inches. Parts are, how- 
 ever, incomplete or obscured by age. * * * Thereon one 
 seems to have the whole Egyptian theology at a glance. 
 Though there is every reason to believe the greater part of 
 the people were at least as well educated in reading as Euro- 
 peans at the beginning of this century, yet the perpetual 
 pictorial display could not fail to be instructive to those un- 
 able to make out the text. The Scriptures must have been 
 well known, as copies of chapters are found by the thousand 
 on the persons of mummies themselves, and on the walls of 
 
Ot 
 
 ffn 
 
 *& 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 40! 
 
 the thousands of tombs, which would not have been the case 
 were the living majority unable to read." 
 
 The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is supposed to 
 have been first elaborated in Egypt. The whole religion of 
 this first civilization is but a mystic reflection of actual life 
 in the form of a resurrected existence, and yet, there is not a 
 single fact of life or mind that can lend reality to this vast 
 dream of futurity. The belief in the immortality of the soul 
 has the combined authority of almost every religion the 
 world has ever known, and yet it is not only a mistaken belief, 
 but in common with all other superstitions it has a demoraliz- 
 ing influence upon life. 
 
 But how can we hope to overcome such religious supersti- 
 tions, which rest upon mysteries, while even science and phi- 
 losophy cling to the belief that all facts centre in an ultimate 
 mystery or the great unknowable? It would be difficult to 
 find in this century of intellectual progress a scientist or a 
 thinker who does not believe the First Cause to be an 
 unfathomable mystery ; and yet belief in any order of ulti- 
 mate mystery is a self-contradiction just as flagrant as that 
 which is implied in the word unknowable. It disregards the 
 limits of language and the nature of perception, and denies 
 the possibility of the unification of knowledge. 
 
 Almost every form of mystery can be traced to Egypt. 
 The solemn symbolisms of Freemasonry, which are but 
 efforts to give expression to divine truths, the art of 
 magic, which has been almost wholly associated with re- 
 ligion, and the mystery of immortality upon which all 
 religious superstitions depend, have all apparently come to 
 life in Egypt. Although a belief in magic is widely con- 
 ceded, in our time, to be not only false but vulgar, Chris- 
 tianity has been closely associated with the "mystic art." 
 The rite of baptism, the different degrees of superstition 
 connected with the Lord's Supper, the belief in the power 
 of prayer to convert souls, to cure sickness, and to obtain 
 forgiveness of sins ; the consecration of priests and churches, 
 
 li4 Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought," pp. 188, 189. 
 
402 THE RELIGION' OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and even the ceremony of benediction, are all forms of be- 
 lief in the magical or the supernatural. The life of Jesus is 
 full of instances of the same order of belief. It is true that 
 the more recent development of the black art known as 
 Demonology had an Eastern origin and was unknown on 
 the Nile, but the one hundred thousand witches " said to 
 have been destroyed in Protestant churches alone " show 
 that Christianity was not inhospitable even to this innova- 
 tion. 
 
 In a word, the belief in any form of mystery, from the 
 metaphysical tenet of " an unknowable " to all manner of 
 religious superstition, is diametrically opposed to the higher 
 appreciations of human life. To overcome this insidious 
 error is the first condition to the establishment of a true con- 
 ception of God. The foregoing glance at the beliefs of 
 Egypt, therefore, is intended but to give an idea of the 
 form which this error assumed in the earliest civilization, so 
 that we may recognize it as it reappears in the religions of 
 other nations. 
 
 We may now turn to another but almost equally ancient 
 faith. 
 
 The study of the civilizations of India, China, and Japan 
 is excluded from the range of what is generally termed 
 ancient history, because these nations were but little known 
 to the Greeks, who originated history for us. It is prin- 
 cipally through modern research that such knowledge as 
 we have of the life of these nations has been obtained. The 
 study of Sanskrit, begun by the English scholars at Calcutta 
 during the early part of this century, has developed so rap- 
 idly that now nearly all the important universities of the 
 world have established professorships *of this language. 
 It is through the efforts of these students of oriental 
 languages that we are enabled to trace out the history of 
 India and the East, which a short time ago was a blank to 
 the outer world. The literature of India, although very 
 voluminous, is utterly devoid of historical data. Consisting- 
 of poems, mythology, and sacred books, " no piece of 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 403 
 
 chronicle, no list of kings," breaks the monotony of these 
 emotional and abstract writings, and we are left to discern 
 the moral character of the people of India, to judge of 
 the thoughts and feelings of this great race, through the 
 agency of fable. These fables consist of a philosophy sus- 
 ceptible of the deepest interpretations, strangely mixed with 
 the most elaborate, grotesque, and even brutal idolatry, and 
 a vast mythology, the joint fruit of widespread religious sen- 
 timent and a gorgeous and unrestrained imagination. 
 
 It is by a recent movement in science, that the origin of the 
 Hindoo people, which was of late supposed to be undiscover- 
 able, has been made familiar to the reading world. As early 
 as the sixteenth century, Renan tells us, it was discovered that 
 the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Syrians, 
 Babylon, from a certain period at least, the Arabs, the Abys- 
 sinians, spoke languages wholly cognate. " Eichhorn, in the 
 last century, proposed to call these languages Semitic, and 
 this name, inexact as it is, may as well be retained. * * * The 
 philologists of Germany, Bopp in particular, laid down sure 
 principles, by means of which it was demonstrated that the 
 ancient idioms of Brahmanic India, the different dialects of 
 Persia, the Armenian, many dialects of the Caucasus, the 
 Greek and Latin languages, with their derivatives, the Sclavic 
 languages, the Germanic, the Celtic, formed a vast whole 
 radically distinct from the Semitic group, and this they 
 called Indo-Germanic, or Indo-European." 
 
 This division of the principal nations of the world into two 
 great groups? however, relies upon more than the generic 
 development of languages; the same division is disclosed by 
 a comparison of their respective literatures, customs, institu- 
 tions, governments and religions. Thus we see that the 
 philosophy of history, great as are its achievements, has 
 scarcely begun the work of portraying the conditions which, 
 are to explain human development. 
 
 The Aryans, to which name the modern Ivan for Persia 
 and the ancient Ariana for the region about the Indus are 
 traced, occupied those vast plains in Asia lying east of the 
 
404 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Caspian Sea. The division of this primitive race of warlike 
 shepherds into the family of Indo-European nations must 
 have been very gradual, as the results of their early migra- 
 tions are to be seen in the first dynasties of Egypt, a period 
 varying from one to two thousand years before the time at 
 which the Aryans are supposed to have lost their identity in 
 the formation of other nations. 
 
 The castes into which the Hindoo nation has been so 
 firmly crystallized are, first and highest, the Brahmans, or 
 priestly class, a spiritual aristocracy, which, viewed from 
 every standpoint, is beyond question the most wonderful so- 
 cial phenomenon presented by our race. Beneath them are 
 graded the landed military class, the commercial and agricul- 
 tural, and the servile classes, and the social status of each is 
 minutely provided for in the Vedic law, forming a civilization 
 entirely unique. 
 
 The oldest works in the Hindoo literature are the Vedas, 
 which, like all the earliest writings of the world, are religious 
 in character. They were composed and preserved by priests, 
 and it is through them alone that we are able to study 
 Hindoo history, as the two great epics are so legendary and 
 fanciful that they give but the vaguest idea of events. 
 
 " The last hymns of the Vedas were written (says St. 
 Martin) when the Aryans arrived from the Indus at the 
 Ganges and were building their oldest city, at the confluence 
 of that river with the Jumna. Their complexion was then 
 white, and they call the race whom they conquered, and 
 who afterward were made Soudras, or lowest caste, blacks. 
 The chief gods of the Vedic age were Indra, Varuna, Agni, 
 Savitri, Soma. The first was the god of the atmosphere ; 
 the second, of the Ocean of Light, or Heaven ; the third, of 
 Fire ; the fourth, of the Sun ; and the fifth, of the Moon. 
 Yama was the god of Death. All the powers of nature 
 were personified in turn, as earth, food, wine, months, 
 seasons, day, night, and dawn. Among all these divinities 
 Indra and Agni were the chief. But behind this incipient 
 polytheism lurks the original monotheism, for each of 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 405 
 
 these gods, in turn, becomes the Supreme Being. The 
 universal Deity seems to become apparent first in one form 
 of nature and then in another. Such is the opinion of Cole- 
 brooke, who says that ' the ancient Hindoo religion recog- 
 nizes but one God, not yet sufficiently discriminating the 
 creature from the Creator.' And Max Miiller says : ' The 
 hymns celebrate Varuna, Indra, Agni, etc., and each in turn 
 is called supreme. The whole mythology is fluent. The 
 powers of nature become moral beings. It would be easy 
 to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in 
 which almost every single god is represented as supreme 
 and absolute. Agni is called * Ruler of the Universe ' ; 
 Indra is celebrated as the Strongest god, and in one hymn 
 it is said, ' Indra is stronger than all.' It is said of Soma 
 that ' he conquers every one.' ' 
 
 To give an idea of the purity of thought and grandeur of 
 expression which these ancient Hindoos commanded, to say 
 nothing of their monotheism, we give a translation by Max 
 Miiller of one of the oldest Vedic hymns in which their idea 
 of the creation is set forth. 
 
 " RlG-VEDA x, 121. 
 
 " In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. 
 He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established 
 the earth, and this sky. Who is the God to whom we shall 
 offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He who gives life. He who gives strength ; whose 
 blessing all the bright gods desire ; whose shadow is immor- 
 tality, whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom 
 we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He who through his power is the only king of the 
 breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and 
 beast. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power 
 the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these 
 regions are as it were his two arms. Who is the God to 
 whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
406 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 "He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. 
 He through whom heaven was stablished ; nay, the highest 
 heaven. He who measured out the light in the air. Who 
 is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, 
 look up, trembling inwardly. He over whom the rising sun 
 shines forth. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our 
 sacrifice ? 
 
 " Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they 
 placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose he who is the 
 only life of the bright gods. Who is the God to whom we 
 shall offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds, 
 the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice ; he who 
 is God above all gods. Who is the God to whom we shall 
 offer our sacrifice ? 
 
 " May he not destroy us, he the creator of the earth, 
 or he, the righteous, who created heaven : he who also 
 created the bright and mighty waters. Who is the God to 
 whom we shall offer our sacrifice? " 
 
 The Vedic literature begins with the hymns called the 
 Rig-Veda; these are divided by Mu'ller into the Chhandas 
 and the Mantras periods. These writings are liturgic in 
 character. The earliest theological writings of India are the 
 Brahmanas. Later on, the philosophic writings called the 
 Upanishads make their appearance ; these are almost the 
 only Vedic writings which are read at the present day ; and 
 if the antiquity claimed for them can be substantiated, i. e. 
 800 to 600 years B.C., they show clearly that the speculations 
 of the earliest Greeks were anticipated in India. When we 
 think how Egyptian and Babylonian history, also, gives 
 evidence of philosophic thought vastly older than any thing 
 connected with Greece, it would seem possible that the 
 Aryans were not only the progenitors of the language, but 
 the thought, of the Indo-European nations. It may seem 
 venturesome, however, to attribute much philosophic insight 
 
 1 Mtiller's "Ancient Sanskrit Literature," p. 569. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 407 
 
 to the warlike shepherds who occupied the regions east of 
 the Caspian Sea, before the earliest dates of even legendary 
 history, and of whom nothing more definite is known than 
 what is suggested by the words traced through convergent 
 languages to them ; but is it more venturesome than to 
 suppose that all the details of metaphysical speculation 
 should be faithfully reproduced in different countries, at great 
 distances in time, without any generic connection ? This is 
 the same question with regard to psychology as that which 
 is presented by the contrasted theories of Darwin and Lewes 
 in biology. Darwin says that organic life began in not 
 more than four or five different points on the earth's surface, 
 and that all subsequent development has been a generic 
 divergence from these points of beginning. Lewes says that 
 the conditions of organic life are far too general to admit of 
 any such narrow beginnings. When we study the general 
 subject of the beginnings of life, and see how clearly organic 
 activities are affiliated with chemical and cosmical activities, 
 are we not irresistibly carried to the larger of these views ? 
 
 So with regard to the origin of philosophy. If thought is 
 the function of conditions, it is natural to suppose that cer- 
 tain civilizations produce inevitably certain types of thought. 
 The only question is, what constitutes the intellectual germ, 
 or logical type, upon which the social conditions of each age 
 have acted as merely a developing medium. Will not the 
 psychology of the future demonstrate that this logical germ 
 is as deeply seated in every sentient organism as the proper- 
 ties of its physiological units, and is in fact indistinguishable 
 from them ? Our inductions are as natural as the swinging 
 of the pendulum, or the response of the organic compounds 
 to light and heat. There is no break in development 
 between the cosmical and the organic activities expressed in 
 our race and its highest logical genius. An analysis, there- 
 fore, which seeks to discover some ultimate principle as the 
 basis of mind will have to relinquish one special fact after 
 another until it comes face to face with the ultimate reality, 
 the first principle of life. 
 
408 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 / 
 
 In the light of this induction, the thought of Aryan shep- 
 herds, Hindoo priests, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the 
 most modern European metaphysicians, will assume a level 
 which, in an unphilosophical view of history, would seem im- 
 possible. The thought of the human race, from its earliest 
 beginnings to its best attainments, forms but the base-line in a 
 sentient parallax of infinite proportions. With our compli- 
 cated vocabularies we imagine that we have risen far above 
 the level of those early inductions which mingled dim intui- 
 tions of divine unity with all manner of superstition ; but alas ! 
 after seventy centuries of reform, we find the inarticulate 
 gesture of the primitive man declaring the scope of language 
 and the nature of perception as unerringly as our most 
 scholarly analyses of mind ; and thus the fact of sentiency, 
 viewed through the long avenues of organic development 
 which lead up to it, presents a level scarcely broken by the 
 highest waves of civilization. In a word, so deep-seated in 
 nature are the facts of consciousness, that the difference 
 between the intelligence of races is rendered insignificant 
 when this intelligence is viewed in the true perspectives of its 
 development. It is only in that more complete view of knowl- 
 edge which identifies action with thought, morality with re- 
 ligion, practical with theoretical happiness, that our notions 
 of progress are justified. It is only by subjecting the " tran- 
 scendental properties of the modern intellect " to the disci- 
 pline of actual existence, by denying to the imagination all 
 the extravagances of mystery and superstition, that we are 
 enabled to really distinguish ourselves intellectually or 
 morally from the primitive types of man. The question 
 which presses upon us therefore is, Have we accomplished 
 this distinguishing logical feat ? 
 
 Following the Brahmana period in Hindoo literature, we 
 have the Sutras, coming from a word meaning string, and 
 consisting of a string of sentences concise and epigrammatic 
 in style, representing the thought of the Brahmans reduced 
 to the simplest form. These writings are supposed to have 
 appeared from 600 to 200 years B.C. The Brahmanas, which 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 409* 
 
 precede in order of time the Sutras and the philosophic 
 Upanishads, are very numerous. " M Ciller gives stories from 
 them and legends. They relate to sacrifices, to the story of 
 the deluge, and other legends. They substituted these 
 legends for the simple poetry of the ancient Vedas. They 
 must have extended over at least two hundred years, and 
 contain long lists of teachers." But when we call them 
 Vedic writings, we use a form of speech which is inconsist- 
 ent with fact, for the Vedas were not reduced to writing 
 until long after they appeared. They were memorized by 
 the priests and thus transmitted through many centuries. 
 
 The antiquity of the original Vedic hymns or Rig-Veda 
 cannot be determined with any certainty, although all au- 
 thorities agree in placing them as early as 1200 to 1500 
 years B.C., while Dr. Haug believes that the oldest hymns 
 were composed B.C. 2400. In the damp climate of India 
 no manuscript will last more than a few centuries, which 
 accounts for the fact that there are few Sanskrit MSS. more 
 than four or five hundred years old. 
 
 " Miiller supposes that writing was unknown when the 
 Rig-Veda was composed. The thousand and ten hymns 
 of the Vedas contain no mention of writing or books, 
 any more than the Homeric poems. There is no allusion 
 to writing during the whole of the Brahmana period, nor 
 even through the Sutra period. This seems incredible 
 to us only because our memory has been systematically 
 debilitated by newspapers and the like during many 
 generations. It was the business of every Brahman to 
 learn by heart the Vedas during the twelve years of his 
 student life. The Guru, or teacher, pronounces a group of 
 words, and the pupils repeat after him. After writing was 
 introduced, the Brahmans were strictly forbidden to read 
 the Vedas, or to write them. Caesar says the same of the 
 Druids. Even Panini never alludes to written words or 
 letters. None of the ordinary modern words for book, 
 paper, ink, or writing, have been found in any ancient Sans- 
 krit work, no such words as volumen, volume ; liber, or 
 
410 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 inner bark of a tree ; byblos, inner bark of papyrus ; or book, 
 that is, beech-wood. But Buddha had learned to write, as 
 we find by a book translated into Chinese, A.D. 76. In this 
 book Buddha instructs his teacher ; as in the ' Gospel of the 
 Infancy' Jesus explains to his teacher the meaning of the 
 Hebrew alphabet. So Buddha tells his teacher the names 
 of sixty-four alphabets. The first authentic inscription in 
 India is of Buddhist origin, belonging to the third century 
 before Christ." 
 
 The type of religion depicted in the Vedas has long since 
 passed away. At the present day, in India, there is a poly- 
 theism among the people very different from the written 
 religion of the priestly caste. The Brahmans acknowledge 
 the equal divinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, known as 
 the Hindoo triad ; but the great mass of the people worship 
 different gods according to the multitude of sects into which 
 they are divided. There is a large class of unbelievers in 
 India who doubt the inspiration of the Vedas, and even 
 deride the sacred books. The widespread religious feeling 
 of the people may be judged of from the fact that two thirds 
 of all the books sold in that country, according to a recent 
 report from Calcutta, are of a religious character. 
 
 There is a sect which corresponds to the Quakers of 
 England and America, the Kabirs, a part of whose creed it 
 is to oppose all worship ; there are Hindoo monks, Ramavats, 
 who live in monasteries ; and there is a prototype of the 
 polygamous Mormons, the Maharajas, whose religious ob- 
 servances are mingled with licentiousness. When these facts 
 are considered, it is difficult to determine to what extent the 
 great typical religion of India known as Brahmanism, which 
 succeeded the age of the elder Vedas, was ever observed by 
 priests or people. The text-book of Brahmanism is known 
 as the Laws of Manu. This is a very ancient religious code 
 supposed to have originated about 1000 to 900 B.C. Manu, 
 in the Vedas, is spoken of as the father of mankind and the 
 hero of a legend resembling somewhat that of Noah in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures ; the Brahmans regard him as the author 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 411 
 
 of their code. The laws of Manu, in their present form, are 
 a synopsis of a legendary poem, or metrical composition, of 
 one hundred thousand couplets, which represented the laws 
 and customs of the ancient Brahmans. These laws "may 
 possibly have been reduced to the form of a written code 
 with a view to securing the system of a caste against a 
 popular movement of Buddhism, and thus give a rigid fixity 
 to the privileges of the Brahmans." 
 
 The Brahmans represent the early Aryan civilization of 
 India. They have always been the great literary caste. 
 Their priestly power has often been assailed, and sometimes 
 overcome. On account of their comparative monopoly of 
 learning, however, they have been, until recent times, both 
 the counsellors of princes and the instructors of the people. 
 The whole history of India seems to be made up of the 
 resistance of this caste to religious and political innovations 
 from the early invasions of non-Brahmanic tribes to the 
 great religious movement which culminated in the establish- 
 ment of the Buddhist kingdoms. So determined was the 
 resistance of the Brahmans, that Buddhism was at last 
 dethroned and driven out of India. Some writers think 
 that the manner in which this victory over Buddhism was 
 achieved was by joining the worship of the two gods Vishnu 
 and Siva to Brahmanism. The worship of these gods had 
 gradually grown up in India as a sort of dissent from Brah- 
 manism long before the time of Buddha. These worships 
 were founded upon the ancient Vedas, and were simply the 
 forms which the popular religious ideals of two different 
 sections of the country assumed. In the valley of the 
 Ganges the Vedic god Vishnu was promoted to the chief 
 rank in the Hindoo Pantheon. He was given "the character 
 of a Friend and Protector, .gifted with mild attributes, and 
 worshipped as the life of Nature." In the west of India the 
 god selected was Siva, supposed to be derived from the god 
 Rudra of the Rig- Veda, who, " fierce and beneficent at once," 
 is the Storm-god and presides over medicinal plants. The 
 worship of this god gradually spread until under the name 
 
412 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of Siva, the Destroyer, he became one of the most prominent 
 deities of India. In harmonizing the worship of these two 
 popular gods with their own religion, the Brahmans were 
 able to unite India and successfully oppose Buddhism. 
 
 The origin of the Hindoo triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and 
 Siva, like all other divine trinities, 1 is probably a dim reflec- 
 tion of the three elements of thought, the ultimate reality 
 Motion and its subjective and objective aspects Time and 
 Space. There is, of course, no resemblance between the 
 deities composing the Egyptian, Persian, Hindoo, or Chris- 
 tian trinities and the principles known as Space, Time, and 
 Motion ; but the conditions of thought are common to all 
 humanity, and it is more natural to believe that the religions 
 of the world offer this distant reflection of an ultimate 
 analysis than that they bear no trace of it. 
 
 We will make no attempt to follow out the elaborate be- 
 liefs of this great race, whose distinct languages, states, and 
 peoples exceed in number those of all Europe, and whose 
 civilization was seemingly greater than now before writing 
 as we use the word was invented in any part of the world ; 
 suffice it to say that the illogical and extreme part of 
 Brahmanism is its mysticism. In the imagination of India 
 mysticism has had a high development. Its alluring prom- 
 ises have fascinated while its innate deceit has corrupted the 
 heart of man. Such morality, and hence such true religion, 
 as the world has seen, has come not from mystery, not from 
 impossible images of life and purity, but from generaliza- 
 tions of experiences, the healthful and natural extension of 
 human sympathies. 
 
 Plato derived his ecstasies of perception from the East, 
 and all subsequent idealism has been but an outgrowth of 
 these intellectual mysteries. Christianity has assiduously 
 fostered the mysticism of India ; witness her doctrine of 
 
 1 Egypt has Osiris, the Creator ; Typhon, the Destroyer ; and Horus, the 
 Preserver. Persia has Ormazd, the Creator ; Ahriman, the Destroyer ; and 
 Mithras, the Restorer. Buddhism has Buddha, the Divine Man ; Dharma, 
 the Word ; and Sangha, the Communion of Saints. Christianity has God, the 
 Father ; Christ, the Divine Man ; and the Word, or the Holy Ghost. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 413 
 
 <l Purification, of Illumination, and of ecstatic union with 
 God and absorption in divine contemplation." 
 
 Mysticism, in its various forms, constitutes the illogical 
 part of every religion and of every philosophy. In Chris- 
 tianity and other Catholic religions, this principle takes the 
 name of Spiritualism, as in philosophy it is called idealism. 
 The chief tenet of mysticism, as it appears in the ethnic re- 
 ligions, is contempt for human energy ; which is the belittle- 
 ment of the present life upon the supposition that there is 
 another and more important one hereafter. If it is admitted 
 that morality is the science of human conduct, then mysti- 
 cism, which in its most familiar form is a belief in immor- 
 tality, leads away from morality. It is upon this issue 
 concerning the relative importance of the present and the 
 future life that all religions must stand or fall. For the 
 influence of beliefs upon actual life is the measure to which 
 all systems of faith must sooner or later submit ; and it is 
 by this comparison that the Religion of Philosophy will 
 triumph. 
 
 The magnificence of the religious monuments of India has 
 been celebrated in every tongue. Her emblazoned grotto- 
 temples and matchless mosques tell us how universal her 
 worship has been, and how art has slowly refined it. The 
 most beautiful building in the world, the Taj Mahal at Agra, 
 is a memorial temple raised by a bereaved husband to a 
 princess of India. The most imposing column in the world, 
 the Kootub Minar, towers above the desolate site of ancient 
 Delhi, unequalled in design. But the most lasting monu- 
 ment which India has raised is her Mysticism. Who can 
 estimate the extent of its influence ? 
 
 Even in America, among the cultivated classes who have 
 become relatively independent of superstition, who have 
 given some heed to the recent achievements of historical 
 criticism, the deep roots of mysticism are still to be found. 
 When Dr. David Strauss published his " Life of Jesus," the 
 opposition which it encountered from the orthodox world 
 was not greater than that experienced, from the same 
 
41 4 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 source, by a small group of literati in this country known as the 
 Transcendentalists of New England. The critics of Strauss 
 were, for the most part, blind to the fact that he was an emi- 
 nent theologian, who distinctly taught a belief in a personal 
 God, and who, in dealing with the story of Christ as it is 
 found in the Christian Scriptures, merely tried to separate 
 the truly historical portions from what was unhistorical, and 
 therefore mystical. He brought to this labor a vast erudi- 
 tion, besides a minute conscientiousness with regard to judg- 
 ing historical data which is almost painful to those who 
 follow his work. The New England Transcendentalists were 
 the first people in this country who evinced, on any consid- 
 erable scale, a truly literary spirit, a disposition to study all 
 literatures from a comprehensive standpoint. They took the 
 liberty of casting " a free and bold regard upon the beauties 
 of the pagan classics and upon the deformities of books 
 hitherto held as above human estimate." But Strauss and 
 his followers in Germany, Renan and his school in France, 
 and the Transcendentalists in this country, have all griev- 
 ously sinned against philosophy. They one and all perpetu- 
 ate the mysticism of India. From the ideal mystic, who, 
 according to the Hindoo conception, passes his life on the 
 top of a column, abnegating all human relations, or earthly 
 feelings, so that he may come face to face with God, to the 
 Transcendentalist, who advocates " a philosophy which con- 
 tinually reminds us of our intimate relations to the spiritual 
 world," which aims to approach " the mysteries of man's 
 higher life," and affirms " the existence of spiritual elements 
 in his nature," 1 we have but degrees in subserviency to the 
 same doctrine of the unknowable. Nothing can be more 
 seductive than the language in which this doctrine finds ex- 
 pression. It is a worship of man's higher nature on the sup- 
 position that it has a counterpart in a divine nature. It is 
 an exceedingly refined anthropomorphism, so refined that 
 some of the best minds freely use the idioms and technical 
 terms which have become identified with this faith with- 
 
 1 See article in Atlantic Monthly of July, 1883, by O. B. Frothingham. 
 
THE RELIGIONS OF EGYPT AND INDIA. 41$ 
 
 out a suspicion that they are transgressing the laws of 
 reason. 
 
 Until the sin of idealism shall be laid aside, the idolatry 
 which we call orthodoxy will have a permanent excuse, and 
 materialism will be a natural reaction from the religions of 
 faith. For, strange as it may seem, materialism is the logical 
 accompaniment of Transcendentalism ; both rest upon the 
 acknowledgment of a fundamental mystery in life. 
 
 The Transcendentalist and the Materialist are both agnos- 
 tics : one represents the optimistic, the other the pessimistic 
 form of skepticism. One says life is material; let us reach 
 after the divine or spiritual, a mysterious type of virtue 
 which is above and beyond this life : the other says life is 
 material, and we cannot make it any thing else. The Tran- 
 scendentalist would make a mystery of a natural propensity 
 of human life. We have sympathies, or breadth and depth 
 of feeling ; we have aspirations for a wider and purer sphere 
 of existence, feelings perfectly natural and no more and na 
 less difficult to explain than the simplest sensation ; and 
 because these feelings are grand in their objects, taking in 
 the whole sweep of our existence, it is taken for granted that 
 they are mysteries, and represent " our intimate relations to 
 a spiritual world." 
 
 There is no absolute spirit, there is no mystery in life. 
 Every thing to which the word spirit can be applied means 
 also body. Every thing that has ever appeared mysterious 
 springs from and is indissolubly connected with the familiar. 
 The principle of perception, the dignity of life, are both 
 assailed by these substantializations of aspects of our exist- 
 ence, this confusion of relative facts with the universal prin- 
 ciple. What, in a word, will it avail us to reason about 
 divine unity unless we apply the principle to the laws of 
 perception or individual life ? 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF CONFUCIUS, ZOROASTER, AND BUDDHA. 
 
 All the Higher Ideals of Christian Morality Firmly Established Principles 
 throughout the World Ages Before our Era The Resemblance between 
 
 Christian Worship and The Worship of Earlier Faiths. 
 
 t 
 
 THE Chinese Empire is twice as large as the United States, 
 and contains a third of the population of the globe. Its 
 antiquity, by comparison, makes ancient Greece a modern 
 state, and the first centuries of our era familiar times. For 
 thirty centuries its oral language has remained the same, and 
 its writing dates from a far earlier period. 
 
 In China we have the only nation which has a purely 
 literary aristocracy, where office is obtained solely through 
 competitive examinations, and where there is no rank or 
 nobility apart from office. The Emperor has theoretically 
 absolute power, but is in turn rigorously governed by an 
 unwritten law of usage which defines his duties to his people 
 as those of a father to his family. So strong is this ideal of 
 government with the people that its open neglect is inevita- 
 bly followed by revolution, so that, as a means of retaining 
 their power, rulers have found it necessary to simulate the 
 higher virtues. 
 
 In the language of China we have a singularly truthful 
 portrayal of the national mind and character. It is mono- 
 syllabic, and therefore inflexible, incapable of that syn- 
 tactical motion which gives power and grace to expression. 
 The literature is unimaginative, and were it not for its pure 
 moral tone and philosophic spirit it might be called common- 
 place. 
 
 The Chinese nation has far excelled the West, until quite 
 
 416 
 
THE RELIGION OF CONFUCIUS. 417 
 
 recently, in the extent of its public works, 1 in mechanical skill, 
 in the refinement of the industrial arts, and in popular edu- 
 cation. With regard to some phases of social morality and 
 civil government, China is unapproached by any modern 
 nation. Religion with this nation is more ethical than theo- 
 logical ; philosophy more practical than metaphysical. 
 
 The classics of China are the sacred books and writings 
 upon law and history. All education consists in memorizing 
 the classics, and the whole national mind, as a consequence, 
 has fallen into a servile literary imitation. In exalted con- 
 servatism, in veneration for custom, China is without a peer ; 
 but in the competition of human genius, the struggle for 
 those new combinations of thought and feeling which consti- 
 tute progress, in short, in imagination, she is far behind many 
 of the younger nations. The civilization of China, like that 
 of Egypt, has a significance of which her people are apparently 
 unconscious. The design of her social and political life con- 
 stitutes a beautiful system of ethics, and yet abuses and in- 
 consistencies are admitted, which, when compared with this 
 design, appear grotesque. In a word, the individual has 
 become so highly disciplined that he is but a silent factor 
 in the spirit of his race ; he has become bewildered by the 
 proportions of his own civilization. 
 
 The religion of China centres around the life and teach- 
 ings of Confucius, one of the greatest moral teachers the 
 world has known. What is most admirable in the Chinese 
 faith is the absence of fable and superstition concerning this 
 man, who, judged by accepted standards, was holy and 
 inspired, and fully as worthy of being canonized or deified 
 as any of the great prophets. It is instructive to see, after 
 all, how little moral influence, or power for doing good, 
 depends upon belief in the supernatural. All that appeals 
 
 1 China was intersected with canals long before there were any in Europe. 
 The great wall was built for defence against the fierce tribes of the North, two 
 hundred years before Christ ; it crosses mountains, descends into valleys, and 
 is carried over rivers on arches ; it is twelve hundred and forty miles long, 
 twenty feet high, and has towers every hundred yards. In this country beauti- 
 ful books were printed five hundred years before the invention of Gutenberg. 
 
41 8 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to the hearts and consciences of mankind, however express- 
 ed, must be human. Hence the extravagances of faith are 
 unnatural, inartistic, irreligious. 
 
 Confucius was born, 551 B.C., in the province or state of 
 Loo, now called Shan-tung, during the reign of Ling-wang, 
 23d emperor of the Teheou. His parents were of high 
 dignity, but were poor, and the untimely death of the father 
 early subjected the son to the discipline of toil. He was 
 passionately attached to his mother ; and when she died, he 
 gave up a state office which he held, to mourn her. This, 
 however, was not without precedent in the customs of his 
 country. His character early attracted the attention of the 
 Prince of his State, who offered him the revenues of an office 
 without the duties, which he declined from a sense of honor. 
 
 Confucius was at length given the charge of a city, and 
 immediately applied himself to the institution of reforms. 
 " He punished false dealing, suppressed licentiousness, and 
 reduced brigandage and baronial ambition." Troops of 
 dancing-girls and fine horses were sent as bribes to the 
 Prince by those who were inconvenienced by these reforms 
 of the minister, which at last had the effect of securing his 
 dismissal. For thirteen years he was an exile, and wandered 
 from court to court teaching his principles of peace, national 
 unity, and self-improvement. Some of the friends whom 
 his principles had attracted followed him in these wanderings 
 and were known as his disciples. Among them was Men- 
 cius, himself a very able and profound teacher, although 
 entirely devoted to Confucius. 
 
 The incessant theme of Confucius, says Johnson, is the 
 balance of character, the danger of one-sidedness, the mutual 
 dependence of study and original thought, of sound sense 
 and fine taste ; that due observance of limits in which the 
 virtue of any quality consists. Being asked by one of his 
 disciples what constituted the perfect man, he drew no 
 impossible picture of virtue, but simply responded : " Seek- 
 ing to be established, the true man establishes others; 
 wishing enlargement, he enlarges others." 
 
THE RELIGION OF CONFUCIUS. 419 
 
 Confucius was renowned for his reverence and sympathy. 
 While receiving in high office he would rise when approached 
 by a person in trouble. Even at his time, which seems so 
 early to us, there were annals of a vast antiquity belonging 
 to his nation, filled with the lives of pure men. These 
 annals he assiduously studied, and constantly referred to 
 them as the source of his principles and knowledge. He 
 disclaimed all originality ; and it is probably due to this 
 marked honesty and unselfishness that he is regarded by his 
 nation as a man, not as a god. 
 
 Those who' study the social history of China cannot fail 
 to be impressed with the immeasurable advantage which 
 this simple and unassuming method of teaching morality 
 has over the more highly colored and imaginative systems 
 of other countries. The beauty of moral truth is more effec- 
 tual when unadorned by superstition. In morality as in all 
 else the best teacher is example ; hence the sublimity of 
 human nature is in no wise enhanced by the fanciful and 
 grotesque impersonations of it which we find in the mytholo- 
 gies and theologies of the world. 
 
 Confucius affirms that knowledge and belief should be the 
 same thing : " When you know a thing, to hold that you 
 know it ; and when you do not know a thing, to allow 
 that you do not know it ; this is knowledge." To this he 
 adds : " To see what is right and not to do it is want of 
 courage." Nor was Confucius unacquainted with the quali- 
 ties of the heart, for he says : " It is only the truly virtuous 
 man who can love or who can hate others. * * * Virtue is 
 not left to stand alone ; he who practises it will have 
 neighbors." Again he says : " It is not easy to find a man 
 who has learned for three years without coming to be good." 
 
 In his ethics we. find the golden rule : " What I do not 
 wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men." The 
 Brahmans, says Miiller, expressed the same truth in the 
 Hitopadesa " Good people show mercy unto all beings, con- 
 sidering how like they are to themselves." 
 
 Confucius also seems to have been conscious of the limits 
 
420 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of language. " Ke Loo asked about serving the spirits 
 of the dead. The Master said : ' While you are not able 
 to serve men, how can you serve their spirits ? ' Ke Loo 
 added : * I venture to ask about death.' He was answered : 
 'While you do not know life, how can you know about 
 death ? ' ' And again, concerning the same question, " The 
 Master said : ' I would prefer not speaking.' Tsze-Kung 
 said : ' If you, Master, do not speak, what shall we, your 
 disciples, have to record ? ' The Master said : ' Does Heaven 
 speak? The four seasons pursue their courses, all things 
 are continually being produced ; but does Heaven say any 
 thing?'" 
 
 Do not the ideas of virtue which Confucius promulgated 
 compare favorably with our best ethical conceptions ? " Vir- 
 tue is inquiring with earnestness and inwardly making appli- 
 cation." " Is virtue from a man's own force or from another's ? 
 How can a man conceal his character ? The superior man sees 
 the heart of the mean one. Of what use is disguise ? There- 
 fore the wise will be watchful when alone. * * * Distinction 
 is not in being heard of far and wide, but in being solid, 
 straightforward, and loving the right. * * * Filial piety is 
 supposed to mean the support of one's parents ; but brutes 
 can do that : without reverence, what difference between 
 these kinds? * * * Learning is fulfilment of the great rela- 
 tions of life (a luminous definition of culture). Manners 
 consist in behaving to each other as if receiving a guest, in 
 causing no murmurings, and in not treating others as you 
 would not be treated by them. * * * Propriety is that rule 
 by which tendencies are saved from excess. If one be 
 without virtue, what has he to do with the rights of pro- 
 priety, or with music ? " A quaint way of arguing that 
 morality is the expression of the highest harmonies of life. 
 " Language is not mere utterance, but keeping words to 
 the meaning of things." Hence the virtue of a wise reticence 
 with regard to what we do not know. 
 
 To one who said : " I believe in your doctrine, but am not 
 equal to it," Confucius said : " That would be a case of 
 
THE RELIGION OF CONFUCIUS. 42! 
 
 weakness, but you are limiting yourself. * * * Progress 
 must be gradual. Conceit and complacency are inexcusable 
 and fatal." 
 
 Confucius, says Johnson, demurs at repaying injuries with 
 the kindness with which we return benefits ; he taught rather 
 to " Recompense injuries with justice." 
 
 To the ideal character Confucius ascribes unlimited 
 powers : " It is everywhere appreciated." " It will subdue 
 barbarians." " Its appeal will do more than punishments 
 to reform the bad." "It settles strife with a word." It 
 finds " all men brothers." "Thus founded, a ruler's virtue is 
 irresistible." What chance have these poor Chinese, educated 
 under such high principles of morality, in dealing with the 
 less scrupulous Christian nations? 
 
 It is needless to dwell upon the purity of these ethics, or 
 to attest that they equal any thing to be found in modern 
 literature or example. They were imbibed from the oldest 
 writings of China, called the Kings, to which Confucius gave 
 much study, and which he spent the last years of his life in 
 revising and editing. 
 
 The religions of China are three in number : first and 
 oldest, the Tao ; then the great revival and reform of this 
 religion, known as the faith of Confucius ; and lastly, the 
 innovation of Buddhism. 
 
 The philosophy of the Tao religion is found in the great 
 work of the Tse-Lao, or the old teacher. It is a remarkably 
 good system of metaphysics, considering its antiquity, and 
 its morals, as above indicated, are of singular purity. In 
 the philosophy of Confucius the idea of Heaven and 
 God seems to be one. The word Teen, so frequently em- 
 ployed in the sense of the ultimate principle, seems to re- 
 semble our word divine. The devotions of Confucius do not 
 imply a belief in a personal god. " They were (says Clarke) 
 the prayer of reverence addressed to some sacred, mysterious 
 power above and behind all visible things. What that 
 power was, he, with his supreme candor, did not venture to 
 intimate. In the She-King, however, a personal God is 
 
422 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 addressed. The oldest books recognize a Divine person. 
 They teach that there is one Supreme Being, \vho is 
 omnipresent, who sees all things, and wishes men to 
 live together in peace and brotherhood. In these ancient 
 writings the Supreme Being commands not only right 
 actions, but pure desires and thoughts, that we should watch 
 all our behavior, and maintain a grave and majestic demeanor, 
 ' which is like a palace in which virtue resides ' ; but espe- 
 cially that we should guard the tongue. ' For a blemish 
 may be taken out of a diamond by carefully polishing it ; 
 but if your words have the least blemish, there is no way to 
 efface that.' ' Humility is the solid foundation of all the 
 virtues.' ' To acknowledge one's incapacity is the way to be 
 soon prepared to teach others ; for from the moment that a 
 man is no longer full of himself, nor puffed up with empty 
 pride, whatever good he learns in the morning he practises 
 before night.' ' Heaven penetrates to the bottom of our 
 hearts, like light into a dark chamber. We must conform 
 ourselves to it, till we are like two instruments of music 
 tuned to the same pitch. We must join ourselves with it, 
 like two tablets which appear but one. We must receive its 
 gifts the very moment its hand is open to bestow. Our 
 irregular passions shut up the door of our souls against 
 God.' ' Thus we see that the old Chinese idea of God was 
 that of a perfect man the union of all ideals of conduct in 
 one person. 
 
 Confucius instituted an advance upon these older teach- 
 ings. He separated the human from the divine, the particu- 
 lar from the general. He saw that idealized conduct was 
 but the natural forecast of a pure spirit, and that to worship 
 this human form, this creation of the mind, was idolatry 
 a kneeling before symbols. 
 
 The " Kings," which are among the earliest productions of 
 the human mind, resemble in their primitive character the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, although they are of a higher ethical 
 order. In the time of Confucius these ancient writings were 
 almost forgotten by the people and their precepts neglected. 
 
THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 423 
 
 Confucius revived them and brought about a religious and 
 moral reform which is still the chief impulse of his people. 
 
 The religion of Confucius has often been compared to 
 Christianity, which it resembles in the purity and sweetness 
 of its sentiments, and the vast influence for good which it 
 has exerted. But the idea of human sacrifice for the 
 expiation of sin, upon which Christianity is built, has no 
 counterpart in the faith of China. The savage custom 
 which this idea commemorates seems to be further removed 
 from the Chinese than from ourselves. At all events, the 
 bloody sacrifice as a means of salvation is not one of the 
 superstitions of this people, whereas it is our greatest super- 
 stition. Confucius was a literary man, an indefatigable 
 student, as well as a moral reformer. In his teachings the 
 mysticism and the mythology of Taoism, the old religion of 
 his people, were left out. Having re-edited the ancient 
 writings, with explanations and comments, " as one of the 
 last acts of his life, [he] called his disciples around him and 
 made a solemn dedication of these books to heaven." 
 
 The Buddhists of China are very numerous. To the 
 student of religion, the introduction of this religion into 
 China will ever be a question of interest. The inability of Chris- 
 tianity, notwithstanding its many and persistent attempts, 
 to gain a footing in the Celestial Kingdom, makes the success 
 of Buddhism the more remarkable. 
 
 What chiefly interests us in the religion of the Chinese, as 
 above shown, is the simplicity and purity of its moral percep- 
 tions. It is true that superstition abounds among this people-, 
 and that in this respect their religion has deteriorated ; but 
 if Christianity were added to their other faiths, the question 
 naturally arises, would their morals be exalted, or would 
 they simply have another prophet to worship, and another 
 and more complicated scheme of salvation to learn ? 
 
 The great prophet of the Persian faith, Zoroaster, is 
 believed to be among the earliest of religious teachers. 
 Although it is very difficult to fix any definite date, the 
 best authorities agree that he must have lived before the 
 
424 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Assyrian conquest of Bactria, 1200 B.C. This, however, 
 gives but little idea of the remoteness of the age to which 
 he probably belongs. The uncertainty of the whole question 
 of the date of (Jpitama Zoroaster (says Johnson) is indicated 
 by the differences between the almost equally valuable esti- 
 mates of Haug, Rapp, Duncker, and Harlez, which cover a 
 period of four hundred years between the eleventh and 
 fifteenth centuries before Christ. The first great struggle 
 for empire, of which detailed and authentic accounts have 
 reached us (says Prof. Spiegel), is the contest between the 
 Greeks and the Persians, B.C. 490, more than twenty-three 
 centuries ago ; and even at this early date the religion of 
 Zarathustra was already so old that the language in which it 
 was originally composed differed essentially from the lan- 
 guage spoken by Darius. This much we have learned from 
 the Cuneiform Inscriptions; but when we attempt to go 
 farther and fix the date of the Iranian Prophet, we are met 
 by difficulties, at present insuperable, and we can neither 
 deny nor confirm the statement of Aristotle, who places 
 Zoroaster six thousand years before his own time, or rather 
 that of Plato (about 360 B.C.). 1 
 
 The sacred writings of the ancient Persians are still read 
 and reverenced, and the faith which they represent still sur- 
 vives among scanty communities of Parsis in modern Persia 
 and India, the largest being at Surat. These sacred writings 
 are called the Avesta, which has been written in the literary 
 form of the oldest Iranian language, known as the Zend. 2 
 Hence, the Zend-Avesta is among the most ancient writings 
 remaining to us of the early history and religion of the Indo- 
 European family. 
 
 One portion of these writings is in the form of a revela- 
 tion from Ahura-Mazda (Ormazd), the Supreme Being, to 
 
 1 See Introduction to Avesta. 
 
 3 " The Zend idiom, in its widest sense, embraces two so-called ' Bactrian ' 
 dialects, which, together with the ' West Iranian ' languages, i. e. those of 
 ancient Media and Persia, form the stock of Iranian tongues. These tongues 
 were once spoken in what the Zend-Avesta calls the 'Aryan countries ' (Airyao 
 danh&ro)" 
 
THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 425 
 
 Zoroaster (Zarathustra), and through him to mankind. " It 
 is in great part a prescriptive, a moral and ceremonial code, 
 teaching the means of avoiding or of expiating sin and 
 impurity." The remainder of the Avesta is liturgic in char- 
 acter, being made up of prayers and praises to the 
 Divinity and to other beings ; these are principally metrical, 
 and give evidences of being by far the oldest portion of the 
 work, which is thought by Dr. Haug to go back to the time 
 of Zoroaster himself. The Avesta is clearly an assemblage 
 of fragments of a much more extended literature. The 
 Parsis hold that the writings of Zoroaster filled twenty-one 
 volumes, but were lost and destroyed during the conquest 
 of Alexander, and the consequent ruin of the Persian Empire 
 and religion. The present form of the Avesta is probably 
 what was recovered and preserved from the original writings 
 during the reign of the first Sassanian monarch. 
 
 It is to the devoted and intrepid French Orientalist 
 Anquetil du Perron that we owe the discovery of the Avesta, 
 which throws so much light upon the history and the religion 
 of the Persians. This discovery was the result of the most 
 determined enterprise in travel and research, efforts which 
 were promptly recognized and encouraged by the French 
 Government. He visited the Parsis at Surat, learned their 
 language, and brought back to Paris, in 1762, one hundred 
 and eighty Oriental manuscripts, which resulted in the pub- 
 lication, in 1771, of the Zend-Avesta, containing, besides the 
 selections from the sacred writings of the Persians, a life of 
 Zoroaster, and fragments of works ascribed to that sage. 
 
 The following passages are from the oldest part of the 
 Avesta, the Gathas, or Gahs, which are ancient hymns some- 
 what resembling the Vedas : 
 
 11 1 praise thee, O Asha, to whom belongs an imperish- 
 able kingdom. May gifts come hither at my call." 
 
 " I who have entrusted the soul to heaven with good dis- 
 position. So long as I can and am able, will I teach accord- 
 ing to the wish of the pure." 
 
 " Teach thou me, Mazda-Ahura, from out Thyself. From 
 
.426 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 heaven, through Thy mouth, whereby the world first arose. 
 Thee have I thought, O Mazda, as the first to praise with 
 the soul." 
 
 " In the beginning, the two Heavenly Ones spoke the 
 Good to the Evil thus: 'Our souls, doctrines, words, 
 works, do not unite together.' ' 
 
 " Now give ear to me, and hear ! The Wise Ones have 
 created all. Evil doctrine shall not again destroy the world." 
 
 " Good is the thought, good the speech, good the work of 
 the pure Zarathustra." 
 
 " He who holds fast to wisdom asks after the heavenly 
 abodes ; concerning this I ask Thee what may be the punish- 
 ment (for him) who through evil deeds does not increase life 
 even a little ? For the tormentors of the active, and those 
 who do not torment men and cattle?" 
 
 " Is he like Thee, O Mazda-Ahura, if he (resembles Thee) 
 in deeds?" 
 
 "Teach us, Mazda-Ahura, the tokens of good-mindedness. 
 May there come brightness, enduring wisdom through the best 
 spirit. Accomplishment of that whereby the souls cohere." 
 
 " I praise Ahura-Mazda, who has created the cattle, created 
 the water and good trees, the splendor of light, the earth 
 and all good. We praise the Fravashis of the pure men and 
 women, whatever is fairest, purest, immortal." 
 
 " We honor the good spirit, the good kingdom, the good 
 law, all that is good." 
 
 The following is from the " Khordah (or little) Avesta," 
 which consists chiefly of prayers and invocations intended 
 for the use of the people : 
 
 " Purity is the best good." " The immortal sun, brilliant 
 with swift horses, we praise. Purify me, O God, give me 
 strength to teach thy joy." 
 
 " Ormazd ! Lord, Increaser of mankind, of all kinds, all 
 species of men. May he let all blessings and knowledge, 
 fast faith and blessings of the good Mazdaya^nian law come 
 to me. So be it ! " 
 
 "Thou art to be praised, may thou ever be provided with 
 -offerings and praise in the dwellings of mankind." 
 
THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 427 
 
 " All good thoughts, words, and works are done with 
 "knowledge." " All good thoughts, words, and works lead to 
 Paradise. All evil thoughts, words, and works lead to hell." 
 
 " In the name of God, the giver, forgiver, rich in love, 
 praise be to the name of Ormazd, the God with the name 
 ' Who always was, always is, and always will be ' ; the heav- 
 enly amongst the heavenly, with the name ' From whom 
 alone is derived rule.' Ormazd is the greatest ruler, mighty, 
 wise, creator, supporter, refuge, defender, completer of good 
 works, overseer, pure, good, and just. 
 
 " With all strength (bring I) thanks ; to the great among 
 beings, who created and destroyed, and through his own 
 determination of time, strength, wisdom, is higher than the 
 six Amshaspands, the circumference of heaven, the shining 
 sun, the brilliant moon, the wind, the water, the fire, the 
 earth, the trees, the cattle, the metals, mankind. 
 
 "All good do I accept at thy command, O God, and 
 think, speak, and do it. I believe in the pure law ; by every 
 good work seek I forgiveness of all sins. I keep pure for 
 myself the serviceable work and abstinence from the un- 
 profitable. I keep pure the six powers thought, speech, 
 work, memory, mind, and understanding. According to thy 
 will am I able to accomplish, O accomplisher of good, thy 
 honor, with good thoughts, good words, good works. 
 
 " I enter on the shining way to Paradise ; may the fearful 
 terror of hell not overcome me ! May I step over the bridge 
 Chinevat ; may I attain Paradise, with much perfume, and 
 all enjoyments, and all brightness ! 
 
 " Praise to the Overseer, the Lord, who rewards those 
 who accomplish good deeds according to his own wish, puri- 
 fies at last the obedient, and at last purifies even the wicked 
 one of hell. All praise be to the creator Ormazd, the all- 
 wise, mighty, rich in might ; to the seven Amshaspands 1 ; to 
 Ized Bahrain, the victorious annihilator of foes." 
 
 1 The seven Amshaspands were the chief among the guardian spirits, of 
 whom Ormazd was first. The other six were King of heaven, King of fire, 
 'King of metals, Queen of earth, King of vegetables, and King of water. 
 
428 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The following are selections from a 
 
 CONFESSION, OR PATET. 1 
 
 1-2-3. " I praise all good thoughts, words, and works, 
 through thought, word, and deed. * * * I dismiss all evil 
 thoughts, words, and works. * * * I commit no sins. * * * 
 I praise the best purity. * * * I am thankful for the good 
 of the creator. * * * 
 
 4. " I repent of the sins which can lay hold of the charac- 
 ter of men, or which have laid hold of my character, small- 
 and great, which are committed amongst men, the meanest 
 sins as much as is (and) can be ; yet more than this, namely, 
 all evil thoughts, words, and works which (I have com- 
 mitted) for the sake of others, or others for my sake, or if 
 the hard sin has seized the character of an evil-doer on my 
 account, such sins, thoughts, words, and works, corporeal, 
 mental, earthly, heavenly, I repent of with the three words : 
 pardon, O Lord, I repent of the sins with Patet." 
 
 6. " The sins against father, mother, sister, brother, wife; 
 child, against spouses, against the superiors, against my own 
 relations, against those living with me, against those who 
 possess equal property, against the neighbors, against the 
 inhabitants of the same town, against servants, every un- 
 righteousness through which I have been amongst sinners, 
 of these sins repent I with thoughts, words and works, 
 corporeal as spiritual, earthly as heavenly, with the three 
 words : pardon, O Lord, I repent of sins," etc. 
 
 19. " Of pride, haughtiness, covetousness, slandering the 
 dead, anger, envy, the evil eye, shamelessness, looking at with 
 evil intent, looking at with evil concupiscence, stiff-necked- 
 ness, discontent with the godly arrangements, self-willedness, 
 sloth, despising others, mixing in strange matters, unbelief, 
 opposing the Divine powers, false witness, false judgment, 
 idol-worship, running naked, running with one shoe, the 
 breaking of the low (midday) prayer, the omission of 
 the (midday) prayer, theft, robbery, whoredom, witch- 
 
 J See Spiegel's Avesta (trans. Bleeck), pp. 153155, 
 
THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 429 
 
 craft, worshipping with sorcerers, unchastity, tearing the 
 hair, as well as all other kinds of sin which are enu- 
 merated in this Patet, or not enumerated, which I am aware 
 of, or not aware of, which are appointed, or not appointed, 
 which I should have bewailed with obedience before the 
 Lord, and have not bewailed, of these sins repent I with 
 thoughts, words, and works, corporeal as spiritual, earthly as 
 heavenly. O Lord, pardon, I repent." 
 
 Is it not evident from these extracts that the spirit of the 
 Avesta is pure, reverent, and hopeful ? The idea of a dual 
 principle in nature, however, representing good and evil, which 
 has its counterpart in the dual conception of God and Devil 
 in the Christian religion, was a fundamental superstition with 
 the Persians. 
 
 Ahura and Ahriman are respectively the good and evil 
 Spirits of the Avcsta. The Zoroastrians were known as the 
 creatures of Ahura by their creed and conduct, while the 
 children of Ahriman were recognized by their unbelief in the 
 pure law. In showing this Iranian dualism to be of a purely 
 ethical nature, a contrast of good and evil conduct, Samuel 
 Johnson says : " This service of Ahura, this hate of Ahriman, 
 is a living fire ; the symbol has mounted to the heavens 
 of conduct. * * * The hosts of spiritual forces, good and 
 evil, multiply around the central ideas of righteousness and 
 iniquity." * 
 
 As all moral influence springs from the force of example, 
 we may be sure that the moral element in every religion 
 emanates from the genius of some individual. In those re- 
 ligions which do not worship an individual as a founder the 
 moral element is inconspicuous. In such religions, theology 
 displaces the study of human conduct, the conduct studied 
 being chiefly that of a future or mystical life. The religions 
 of China and ancient Egypt are examples of the opposite ex- 
 tremes of this fact. Although between the indefinite and 
 variously interpreted faiths of nations during long periods of 
 their history it is difficult to make any clearly defined compari- 
 
 1 " Persia/' pp. 56-57. 
 
430 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sons, all doubt as to the historical reality of Zoroaster disap- 
 pears. We see the stamp of a great life in the literature 
 and the conscience of the race. 
 
 From the establishment of the Persian Empire by Cyrus, 
 and during his dynasty, which ended with the invasion of 
 Alexander, there was one definite system of worship through- 
 out Persia, which was simply an elaboration of the moral 
 code of the Avesta as interpreted by Zoroaster. 
 
 A peculiarity of this religion was its love of nature. Its 
 sacraments were not made in temples, but on rude altars on 
 hill-tops. Fire was regarded as the most powerful of the 
 elements, and was held sacred. Hence the name of fire- 
 worshippers so generally given to the Persians. 
 
 Nothing can be more significant of the life of a race than 
 the selection it makes of symbols of power. The fire sym- 
 bol is common to all religions, although there is but one 
 great instance of pure pyrolatry. The Christians have ex- 
 alted water and blood as symbols of divine power in the 
 treatment of sin, but the efficacy of fire, in the same con- 
 nection, is also distinctly believed in by almost every Christian 
 sect. The Persians were not baptists, nor did they believe in 
 bloody sacrifices, nor even in those burnt-offerings which we 
 are told in our sacred writings were so grateful to the God 
 of Israel ; but, in " the holy health flame (Hestia), parent of 
 the city, the homestead, the shrine, awful to gods and in- 
 violable by men/' the most useful servant of humanity, they 
 did believe. The name given to the Avestan priest (Athrava) 
 means " provided with fire." The Parsis still preserve the 
 fire altar (Atesh-gd/i), or "ever-burning naphtha-spring," as 
 the central rite of their faith. The celestial impersonations 
 of fire, which are celebrated in the solar mythologies, have 
 been reduced to images dwelling in temples, but the simple 
 fire altars of the Persians have always risen from mountain 
 tops or in open spaces of light, tributes to the grandeur 
 and simplicity of nature. 
 
 So completely was Persia conquered by the Mohammedans, 
 that its religion has almost disappeared. A recent account 
 
THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER. 431 
 
 estimates the Parsis of Persia, which with those of India are 
 the chief remaining representatives of the ancient faith of 
 Zoroaster, as but seven thousand. Many of these have fallen 
 into poverty and ignorance, but, it is said, they maintain a 
 reputation for industry, honesty, and chastity. Could a 
 more eloquent tribute be paid to the value of their ancient 
 faith ? 
 
 In trying to console the Christian missionaries for their 
 failure to convert the modern Parsis, Professor Muller says 
 that Christianity is not a gift to be 'pressed upon the unwil- 
 ling minds of natives by their conquerors ; it is the highest 
 privilege which the conqueror can offer. These natives, 
 would lose true caste, and consequently self-respect, by 
 renouncing the ancient faith of their forefathers," that rests 
 upon a foundation which ought never to be touched, namely, 
 a faith in one God, the Creator, the Ruler, and the Judge of 
 the World." However deplorable this conception of deity 
 may seem to us, it certainly corresponds closely enough with 
 the Christian idea of God to obtain from the most devoted 
 missionary a certain acquiescence. Again, when we are 
 told : " The morality of the Parsis consists in these words, 
 ' pure thoughts, pure words, pure deeds,' " we perceive at 
 once that the moral ideals of their religion are identical with 
 ours ; and that these ideals are the natural aspirations for 
 purity of life and mind, common to mankind. Another reason 
 that the Parsi has for preferring his religion to the Christian 
 is that he is not troubled with any theological problems or 
 difficulties. His faith in the inspiration of Zoroaster is not 
 made contingent upon a belief in the stories incidentally 
 mentioned in the Zend-Avesta. " If it is said in the Yasna 
 that Zoroaster was once visited by Homa, who appeared 
 before him in a brilliant supernatural body, no doctrine is 
 laid down as to the exact nature of Homa." In a word, the 
 Parsi trusts in the divine principles of his religion, and is 
 quite indifferent to the fate of the " fables and endless gene- 
 alogies " which occur in his sacred books. Another fact 
 which attaches the Parsi to his religion is its remote antiquity 
 
.432 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and former glory, pleas which are sometimes advanced in 
 behalf of very much younger faiths. 
 
 In thus comparing the Zoroastrian faith with Christianity 
 we must not too readily conclude that all the advantages 
 are on the side of the former religion. The pious Parsi has 
 to say his prayers sixteen times at least every day. These 
 prayers are all pronounced in the old Zend language, of which 
 neither the priests nor the people, as a rule, understand a 
 word. " Far from being the teachers of the true doctrines 
 and duties of their religion, the priests are generally the most 
 bigoted and superstitious, and exercise much injurious influ- 
 ence over the women especially, who, until lately, received 
 no education at all." For us, it is a truism to say that de- 
 votions should be acts of intelligence ; and that superstition 
 and ignorance are inexcusable in priests, since their teachings 
 belong to the highest sphere of knowledge. It would be 
 unreasonable for us to expect so high a standard of criticism 
 to prevail among the poor Parsis. So deep-rooted, however, 
 in the human heart are the forms of hereditary devotions, 
 that notwithstanding the many infelicities of the Zoroastrian 
 faith, we find it still professed by a handful of exiles 
 " men of wealth, intelligence, and moral worth in Western 
 India with an unhesitating fervor such as is seldom to be 
 ;found in larger religious communities." 3 
 
 In Buddhism we find the most correct metaphysical 
 induction which the history of religion presents. In this 
 religion conduct is united with thought in defining knowl- 
 edge, which is in effect to identify knowledge and life as one 
 fact or principle. This is to suggest the real scope of lan- 
 guage, by denying the absolute separation of body and 
 spirit, and recognizing all thought as the interactivity of the 
 individual and the social organisms. It also suggests the 
 true nature of perception, by affirming that all insight springs 
 from the natural procedures of life, and neither tends toward 
 nor emanates from the supernatural. 
 
 In making this great claim for Buddhism, we pay but a 
 
 1 " Chips from a German Workshop," Mttller. Vol. I., p. 165. 
 * " Chips from a German Workshop," Miiller. Vol. I., p. 161. 
 
THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA. 433 
 
 just tribute to the astuteness and high moral perceptions of 
 a Hindoo prince who lived at about the time of the earliest 
 Greek philosophers, only in a far more advanced civilization. 
 The father of this prince, the last of the line of Solar 
 monarchs so celebrated in the great Indian epics, ruled over 
 the kingdom of Oude at the foot of the mountains of Nepaul, 
 in the latter part of the sixth century before Christ. The 
 capital city, Kapilavastu, was the birthplace of Siddartha, 
 who afterward assumed the title of the Buddha (the en- 
 lightened). He was distinguished during early youth for 
 his intellectual attainments, religious fervor, and a deep 
 solicitude for his fellow-men. He criticised his age and felt 
 the need of a better knowledge of life than it possessed. 
 This conviction grew upon him until he decided to renounce 
 his position and devote his life to the search for truth. 
 Despite the entreaties of his father and wife, he determined 
 to withdraw from the world. At Vaisali he attended the 
 lectures of a famous Brahman teacher who had many pupils. 
 Then visiting the capital of Magadha, one of the principal 
 seats of learning in India, he studied under another Brahman 
 teacher whose lectures attracted great numbers of students. 
 Dissatisfied with these teachings, which did not contain the 
 principles of reform that he felt stirring within him, he with- 
 drew into a solitary hermitage, accompanied by five of his 
 fellow-students. Here they dwelt (near the village of Uru- 
 vilva) for six years, subjecting themselves to the severest 
 penances preparatory to appearing in the world as teachers. 
 But Siddartha at length became convinced that this manner 
 of life did not lead to the discovery of truth, and suddenly 
 resumed a more comfortable mode of living ; upon which 
 his hitherto faithful disciples deserted him. 
 
 The mind of this intense man at last grasped what he con- 
 ceived to be the true principles of life, upon which he 
 claimed the title of Buddha the one who has conquered 
 knowledge. In his long hesitation whether he would com- 
 municate to the world the great truths he had conceived, 
 Max Muller sees the fate of millions of human beings 
 
434 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 trembling in the balance, but " compassion for the suffer- 
 ings of man prevailed (says Miiller), and the young prince 
 became the founder of a religion which, after more than 
 two thousand years, is still professed by four hundred and 
 fifty millions of people," or more than one third of the 
 human race. 
 
 In setting out upon his mission of teaching, Buddha first 
 proceeded to Benares, the principal seat of learning in India. 
 Here he gained for disciples the students who had passed 
 with him the six years of asceticism. A deliberate crusade 
 against Brahfnanism, which had become a great religious 
 despotism throughout India, was then inaugurated. This was 
 begun by denying the inspiration of the Vedas, and opposing 
 the system of castes, by proclaiming that men differed from 
 one another not by birth but by their own attainments 
 and character. According to the accounts in the Buddhist 
 canon, the prophet was invited by king Bimbisara to Magadha, 
 the capital of one of the places at which he had studied after 
 leaving home. Here he lectured for many years in the 
 monastery of Kalantaka, which was built for him by his 
 followers. After the death of Bimbisara, Buddha went 
 to Sravasti, north of the Ganges, where a friend offered 
 him and his disciples a magnificent residence. Here most 
 of Buddha's lectures were delivered. After an absence of 
 twelve years he visited his father, and converted to his faith 
 all the Sakyas. His own wife and his foster-mother became 
 the first female devotees to Buddhism, and founded the 
 orders which have since grown into so vast a system. At 
 the age of seventy, while still engaged in teaching, this great 
 prophet peacefully died, or, as his followers would say, entered 
 into Nirvana. 
 
 Although much philosophical thought has become incor- 
 porated into the faith of Buddhism, there is no evidence that 
 its founder inclined much to metaphysical reasoning. His 
 aim was rather to produce practical reforms, to benefit and 
 enlighten the people, to remove the burdens of caste, and to 
 harmonize the interests of all classes. Those who have 
 
THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA. 435 
 
 written about this religion all alike pay tribute to the purity 
 and beauty of the life and teachings of Buddha. The Rev. 
 Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan missionary, author of " Eastern 
 Monachism " and a "Manual of Buddhism," testifies to the 
 purity of the Buddhist ethics. M. Laboulaye, one of the most 
 distinguished members of the French Academy, remarks in 
 the Debats of April 4, 1853: "It is difficult to comprehend 
 how men not assisted by revelation could have soared 
 so high and approached so near to the truth. * * * Be- 
 sides the five great commandments not to kill, not to 
 steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, not to get drunk, 
 every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger, pride, suspicion, greedi- 
 ness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is guarded against by 
 special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we find 
 not only reverence of parents, care for children, submission 
 to authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, 
 submission in time of trial, equanimity at all times, but 
 virtues unknown in any heathen system of morality, such as 
 the duty of forgiving insults and not rewarding evil with evil. 
 All virtues, we are told, spring from Maitri, and this Maitri 
 can only be translated by charity and love." M. Barthelemy 
 Saint-Hilaire is equally eloquent in his testimony to the 
 same effect, that the moral teachings of Buddha are unsur- 
 passed excepting by the revelations of Christianity ;* and as 
 these three writers are devout believers in supernatural 
 revelation in their own religion, the reservation which they 
 make has but little effect. 
 
 The meaning of Nirvana, the condition to which Buddhism 
 looks forward as the future state of man, has been the sub- 
 ject of much dispute. Max Miiller devotes an able letter to 
 this question in the London Times (April, 1857), in which 
 he sustains his opinion that Nirvana means " utter annihila- 
 tion." This letter is in answer to one from Mr. Francis 
 Barham maintaining that Nirvana means " union and com- 
 munion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by 
 the Divine essence," both of which interpretations of 
 human destiny, from the metaphysical standpoint, at once. 
 
43 6 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 appear as vain efforts to make an ultimate fact out of what 
 never can be more than the relative fact of personal exist- 
 ence. Buddha himself expressed the future state in terms 
 as free as possible from contradiction when he defined Nir- 
 vana as the cessation of change or life ; but observe how 
 deep the contradiction is when he goes on to explain that 
 the chief end of life is to pass into an existence of perfect in- 
 action. In declaring, however, that knowledge consists not 
 only of thought, but of action, he strikes the keynote of 
 metaphysical truth. In all theologies, in that of Christianity 
 as well as others, this logical helplessness in the use of ulti- 
 mate terms appears. Thus it is that in religious writings we 
 often find the deepest truths and the most absurd contradic- 
 tions mingled in the same sentence. The task which every re- 
 ligion sets itself is to solve the problem of existence, to unite 
 the highest or most general with the simplest truths. And 
 yet the method universally adopted is that of reaching after 
 mysteries (which are declared to be unknowable). In this 
 respect it must be admitted that philosophy, hitherto at 
 least, has had but little advantage over religion ; for although 
 the mystery of philosophy has been one instead of many, 
 although it has resulted from a refinement of speculation 
 instead of from gross and concrete superstitions, still the 
 methods of the most superstitious religion and the most 
 refined agnosticism are identical ; they both deny the unity 
 of knowledge ; they would both build up a divine truth, not 
 upon simpler truths, but upon a mystery which they call the 
 unknowable. 
 
 The speculations of Buddha, therefore, with regard to 
 human destiny, compare favorably for accuracy with any 
 thing to be found in other faiths. Seeing no perfect action 
 about him, he imagined that perfection could alone be 
 attained by reaching an existence which had no change. 
 Absurd as this proposition may seem, is it farther from the 
 truth than the modern theological reasonings concerning a 
 life which transcends space and time, the aspects of motion 
 or change ? 
 
THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA. 437 
 
 It will be asked, if Buddha paid more attention to moral 
 reform than to theology or metaphysics, how can the claim 
 be made that his religion expresses a higher metaphysical 
 induction than is found in any other faith? The reason 
 is, that Buddha distinctly taught that the highest aim of life 
 was to enhance knowledge, and that knowledge does not 
 mean learning alone, but that it includes conduct ; that it 
 consists of both moral and intellectual perceptions. Like 
 all deep thinkers, he was impressed with the universal pres- 
 ence of change, which made him feel that life was unreal. 
 " He cried out from the depths of his soul for something 
 stable, permanent, real," just as the Greek philosophers did ; 
 but no metaphysical abstraction gave him rest. He made 
 the discovery that personal existence is a relative fact point- 
 ing to the one ultimate fact beyond it, which is general 
 existence. He therefore strenuously denied the existence 
 of a personal God. He saw in God a universal principle, 
 not a subject of activity, not an object of worship, but the 
 source of activity, the cause or inspiration of worship. He 
 saw in personal life the only field of human activity, and in 
 the perfection of this life the only means of salvation. He 
 recognized no bargain with Deity .for salvation ; he recog- 
 nized only the obligation of man to his fellow-men and to 
 all surrounding life. It was in this recognition of duty, and 
 only in this, that he perceived God and worshipped him. 
 Does not a careful analysis of the principle of worship 
 clearly show that this is the only virtue which it contains, 
 the only practical idea which it represents? 
 
 To trace the growth of Buddhism would be to write 
 the religious history of the East from the sixth century 
 before Christ. After gaining a great ascendency in India, it 
 was practically driven from that country by the combined 
 efforts of the Brahman caste whose privileges it assailed. 
 Though expelled from India, it continued to exert a power- 
 ful influence^ converting to its creed the majority of the 
 Mongol nations. To-day it is the principal religion of China 
 and Japan ; the state religion of Thibet, and of the Burmese 
 
438 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Empire; as well as the religion of Siam, Napaul, Assam, 
 Ceylon ; in fact, of nearly the whole of Eastern Asia. 
 
 The sacred books of Buddhism are of two classes, those of 
 the Northern and those of the Southern Buddhists. The 
 former are in Sanskrit ; the latter, which are considered by 
 far the most important and reliable, are in the ancient Pali ; 
 the relation of the Sanskrit writings to the Pali resem- 
 bling, in many respects, that of the apocryphal gospels 
 to the New Testament. These writings have been made the 
 subject of several great conventions or councils of priests, 
 with a view to deciding upon their authenticity. The Tripi- 
 taka, which is the name gi^en to the Southern canon, was 
 finally determined upon by the Council of Pataleputra on 
 the Ganges, which was convened by the great Buddhist em- 
 peror Asoka, B.C. 250. This work consists of three parts: 
 the Sutras, or discourses on Buddha ; the Vinaya, or code 
 of Morality; and the Abhidharma, or the system of Meta- 
 physics. These three parts taken together are about twice 
 the length of our Bible, and are regarded by the Buddhists 
 with a superstitious reverence which Christians will readily 
 understand. The exalted spirit of Buddhism is by no 
 means appreciated by all its followers, the majority of whom 
 look upon the faith as a holy institution which it is their 
 duty to believe in and support, but not particularly to un- 
 derstand. 
 
 There is a sublime monotony in religion which lulls the mind 
 to sleep ; its beauties are so grand, its truths so deep, that the 
 intellect becomes dazed as by the contemplation of infinity. 
 No such perspectives, however, are necessary to overcome 
 the majority of minds to whom the unworthy appointments 
 of superstition assume the same legitimacy as the permanent 
 conditions of life upon which they have intruded. The 
 droning cylinders turned by water and filled with inscrip- 
 tions of the "holy sentence" are the Buddhist engines of 
 prayer. In these curious devices, varying in size from the 
 " rotary calabash " carried in the hand of the devotee, in his 
 walk through the villages when engaged in the ordinary 
 
THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA. 439 
 
 affairs of life, to the large cylinders used by lamas in the 
 service of the great temples and those erected by the road- 
 side to be turned by water or wind, we have what is, without 
 doubt, the oldest religious symbol in the world, the sacred 
 " wheel " which simulates the rotation of the seasons, the 
 events of life, and the divine power. 
 
 The laxity of thought in religion, which is so prominent a 
 feature in the Christian world, has its counterpart in this 
 greatest religion of the East. " The Buddhist monks of 
 Siam do not, as a rule, endeavor to make their sermons in- 
 teresting. They are satisfied to monotonously chant or 
 intone a number of verses in the dead language Pali, and to 
 add an almost incomprehensible commentary in Siamese. 
 Nor do their hearers care. Crouching on the ground in a 
 reverential posture, they make merit by appearing to listen, 
 and they do not believe that that merit would be one whit 
 the greater if they understood the language of the preacher. 
 They have been taught that ' blessed is he who heareth the 
 law.' " * It certainly would not require much imagination 
 to establish a resemblance between this kind of devotion 
 and that which distinguishes so many Christian congrega- 
 tions. 
 
 The resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity are 
 not confined to the unreasoning faith of the followers or the 
 well-known Catholic spirit of both religions; the symbols, 
 the ceremonies, the worship, are strikingly alike. As Bud- 
 dhism preceded the Roman Church by some six centuries, 
 It is not unlikely that a great many of the forms of Chris- 
 tianity have been derived from it. " Father Bury, a 
 Portuguese missionary, when he beheld the Chinese bonzes 
 tonsured, using rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue, and 
 kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment : ' There 
 is not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a 
 ceremony of the court of Rome, which the Devil has not 
 copied in this country ! ' Mr. Davis (' Translations of the 
 Royal Asiatic Society/ ii., 491) speaks of ' the celibacy of the 
 
 1 H. Alabaster : " Good Words," vol. XIII, p. 845. 
 
44 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of 
 both sexes ; to which might be added their strings of beads, 
 their manner of chanting prayers, their incense and their 
 candles.' Mr. Medhurst ('China,' London, 1857) mentions 
 the image of a virgin, called the ' Queen of Heaven,' having 
 an infant in her arms and holding a cross. 1 Confessions of 
 sin are regularly practised. Father Hue, in his ' Recol- 
 lections of a Journey in Tartary, Thibet, and China ' (Haz- 
 litt's translation), says : ' The cross, 3 the mitre, the dalmatica, 
 the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their journeys, or 
 when they are performing some ceremony out of the temple, 
 the service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exor- 
 cisms, the censer suspended from five chains, and which you 
 can open or close at pleasure, the benedictions given by 
 the lamas by extending the right hand over the heads of the 
 faithful, the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy, religious retire- 
 ment, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the processions, 
 the litanies, the holy water, in all these are analogies be- 
 tween the Buddhists and ourselves.' And in Thibet there is 
 also a Dalai Lama, who is a sort of Buddhist Pope. * * * 
 The rock-cut temples of the Buddhists, many of which date 
 back to two centuries before our era, resemble in form 
 the earliest (Christian) churches. Excavated out of solid 
 rock, they have a nave and side-aisles, terminating in an 
 apse or semi-dome, around which the aisle is carried, * * * 
 and Buddhist monks (centuries before our era, as now) took 
 the same three vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience,, 
 which are taken by the members of the Catholic orders." 
 
 If the Phoenician navigators in the Mediterranean, eight 
 hundred years before Christ, brought to the shores of Greece 
 the knowledge of the arts of Egypt, the manufactures of 
 Tyre, and the products of India and Africa, is it to be won- 
 
 1 Thought to be derived from the still more ancient Egyptian myth of Isis 
 and the miraculously conceived Horus. 
 
 a The Cross is one of the oldest of religious symbols, found in Egypt and the 
 East, thought to be derived from the ancient sex-worship. 
 
 8 " Ten Great Religions," Clarke, vol. I., pp. 139-142. 
 
THE RELIGION OF BUDDHA. 441 
 
 dered at that the religious forms and ceremonies of these 
 early ages should have been gradually transplanted from 
 one country to another ? It is true that there is no recog- 
 nized historical movement which indicates the growth of 
 Christianity out of Buddhism ; but is not the intercourse 
 which is known to have existed between the ancient nations 
 sufficient to account for the resemblance between their 
 religions ? 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF GREECE, ROME, SCANDINAVIA, AND ISLAM. 
 
 "Widely Contrasted Types of Religious Belief Showing Constant Principles of 
 
 Development. 
 
 THE religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct. 
 No living representative remains of the worshippers at the 
 Acropolis and the Pantheon. The gods of these places are 
 still an inspiration in art and poetry, but they have long 
 since ceased to be regarded as divine. A just comprehension 
 of the ancient mythologies, strange as it may seem, has been 
 gained but recently. The difficulty in reaching the true sig- 
 nificance of myths arises from the fact that the truths which 
 they contain are so evanescent that they are injured by any 
 thing short of the most delicate and sympathetic analysis. 
 In mythology, analogy is strained to the uttermost, poetry is 
 abused, symbolism overwrought, fiction overwhelms fact, and 
 yet truth survives in the form of real thought and feeling 
 throughout. To discover these truths, to discern the work- 
 ings of the social heart and mind under these dense accre- 
 tions of imagery, is the task of the student of mythology. 
 
 The Greeks had a wonderfully poetic cosmogony. Their 
 intellectual vigor is declared by the endless details with 
 which they worked out their imaginary surroundings. 
 Where other nations were content with a few abstrac- 
 tions, concerning the origin of things beyond the reach 
 of ordinary perception, the Greeks originated fable after 
 fable to satisfy their inquiring minds, until they were sur- 
 rounded with a world of semi-supernatural beings to which 
 all phenomena were traced and by which every conceivable 
 
 442 
 
THE RELIGION OF GREECE. 443 
 
 experience was explained. " Love issued from the egg of 
 Night, which floated in Chaos. By his arrows and torch he 
 pierced and vivified all things, producing life and joy." 
 
 Ophion and Eurynome ruled over Olympus until they were 
 dethroned by Saturn and Rhea. Then the rebellion of Jupiter 
 against his father Saturn and his brothers the Titans was suc- 
 cessful. The penalties inflicted upon the vanquished Titans 
 involved the imprisonment of some of their number in Tar- 
 tarus. Atlas was condemned to bear up the world upon his 
 shoulders, and Prometheus, the divine sufferer, is chained to 
 the rocks and at length delivered by the self-sacrifice of 
 Cheiron. Jupiter divided with his brothers his newly ac- 
 quired dominions, retaining the heavens, giving Neptune 
 the ocean, and Pluto the realms of the dead. Jupiter was 
 king of gods and men, and the earth and Olympus were re- 
 garded as common property. Juno (Hera), the wife of 
 Jupiter, was queen of the gods, the stately peacock was her 
 favorite bird, and Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, attended 
 upon her. Jupiter bore the shield called ^Egis, which was 
 the workmanship of Vulcan, and the eagle attended, carry- 
 ing his thunderbolts. 
 
 Vulcan (Hephaestos), the son of Jupiter, was born lame. 
 Juno, displeased at his deformity, flung him out of heaven. 
 A whole day in falling, he at last alighted upon the island 
 of Lemnos, where, in the interior of his volcano, he com- 
 manded the Cyclopes workmen at the forge. 
 
 Aphrodite, the frail wife of Vulcan ; Mars, the god of 
 war; Phoebus Apollo, the god of archery, prophecy, and 
 music ; Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and Cupid, 
 her son ; Minerva (Pallas Athene), the goddess of wisdom, 
 who sprang in full armor from the head of Jupiter, Mercury, 
 the god of eloquence, science, commerce, and theft ; these 
 usher in the long list of Grecian deities, a marvellous im- 
 aginative creation thronging with heroic personages the 
 world of fancy in which this nation dwelt. Such explana- 
 tions of the questions of existence are, no doubt, childlike; 
 but none but the most intelligent children have such im- 
 -aginations. 
 
THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The active life of the ancient Greeks was insensibly 
 blended with this vast mythology, giving it a freshness 
 and warmth which, owing to the unreality of our religious 
 conceptions, it is difficult for us to understand. 
 
 The joyous Greek civilization, rich in art, poetry, and 
 thought, formulated its theory of life, or its religion, under 
 the inspiration of its artists, its poets, and its philosophers. 
 
 Homer and Hesiod were the first Greek theologians ; they 
 named the gods and assigned to them arts and honors. The 
 great sculptors gave form to the gods and taught morality 
 and humanity by idealizing human grandeur and beauty. 
 
 The Jupiter of Phidias, occupying the Doric temple at 
 Olympia, was an object of veneration to the whole nation. 
 The games over which it presided "were a chronology, a 
 constitution, and a church to the Pan-Hellenic race. * * * 
 Here at Olympia, while the games continued, all Greece 
 came together ; the poets and historians declaimed their 
 compositions to the grand audience ; opinions were inter- 
 changed, knowledge communicated, and the national life 
 received both stimulus and unity. And here, over all, pre- 
 sided the great Jupiter of Phidias, within a Doric temple, 
 * * * covered with sculptures of Pentelic marble. The god 
 was seated on his throne, made of gold, ebony, and ivory, 
 studded with precious stones. He was so colossal that, 
 though seated, his head nearly reached the roof, and it 
 seemed as if he would bear it away if he rose. There sat 
 the monarch, his head, neck, breast, and arms in massive pro- 
 portions ; the lower part of the body veiled in a flowing 
 mantle ; bearing in his hand a statue of Victory, * * * and 
 on his face that marvellous expression of blended majesty 
 and sweetness." ' Speaking of the great difficulty of form- 
 ing a true idea of this wonderful statue, L. M. Mitchell 
 writes in her admirable work on Greek art : " Gladly would 
 we search the galleries of existing sculptures or ponder over 
 coins to find a clearer reflex of this great Zeus. One beauti- 
 ful Elis coin from Hadrian's time is thought to give the most 
 
 1 "Ten Great Religions," vol. I., p. 288. 
 
THE RELIGION OF GREECE. 445 
 
 faithful hint of the benignant head. * * * In the broad serene 
 brow, strong eyebrows, firm but gentle mouth, power seems 
 coupled with unspeakable mildness." ] An ancient writer 
 says : " Phidias alone has seen likenesses of the gods, or he 
 alone has made them visible." 
 
 All Greece was filled with statues of the gods ; and each 
 of these inspirations was an expression of the best sentiments 
 of the best men. Chastity was taught by the attitude, ex- 
 pression, and very nakedness of the human form. Thus Mil- 
 man describes the Belvedere Apollo : 
 
 " For mild he seemed, as in Elysian bowers, 
 Wasting, in careless ease, the joyous hours ; 
 Haughty, as bards have sung, with princely sway 
 Curbing the fierce flame-breathing steeds of day ; 
 Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep 
 By holy maid, on Delphi's haunted steep, 
 Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove, 
 Too fair to worship, too divine to love. 
 ******** 
 
 All, all divine : no struggling muscle glows, 
 Through heaving vein no mantling life-blood flows, 
 But, animate with Deity alone, 
 In deathless glory lives the breathing stone. " * 
 
 Another beautiful conception of Greek art is Diana the 
 twin-sister of Apollo, otherwise known as Artemis, the un- 
 touched one. In the celebrated statue of this goddess at 
 Versailles we see a huntress in swift motion accompanied by 
 a hind. She carries bow and quiver and reaches for an 
 arrow as she runs. A short tunic gives freedom to the limbs. 
 In this lovely guardian of the chase we have no difficulty in 
 recognizing the goddess of chastity and marriage, the Greek 
 ideal of womanhood. Of all the conceptions of Diana this 
 seems to be the noblest and purest. 8 
 
 Plato, the greatest theologian of Greece, reduced the 
 
 1 " History of Greek Sculpture." 1883. ' Milman, vol. II., pp. 297-298. 
 
 * Diana of Ephesus was only in rare instances accepted by the Greeks outside 
 of Asia Minor. The Greek Artemis was usually represented as a huntress, with 
 face like Apollo. 
 
446 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 many gods to one, and built a philosophy upon the idea of a. 
 personal God, supplementing the great mythology of his 
 country with a sublime theology, the purest and most con- 
 sistent ever known. The growth of morality in Greece, as 
 in all nations, took the form of a protest against the 
 immoral aspects of its religion. As already mentioned in 
 Part I., Xenophanes, the rhapsodist of Elea, protested 
 against the immorality of the Homeric legends. Pindar 
 taught that "Law was the ruler of gods and men " ; that "a 
 man should always keep in view the bounds and limits of 
 things." " The bitterest end awaits the pleasure that is 
 contrary to right." Sophocles, who constantly enjoined in 
 his tragedies a reverence for the gods, makes Antigone to 
 say, when she is asked if she had disobeyed the laws of the 
 country : " Yes, for they were not the laws of God. They 
 did not proceed from Justice, who dwells with the Immor- 
 tals. Nor dared I, in obeying the laws of mortal man, dis- 
 obey those of the undying Gods. For the Gods live from 
 eternity, and their beginning no man knows." 
 
 Greek mythology, although a curious phenomenon min- 
 gling the frivolous and the commonplace with things 
 divine, to an extent which seems grotesque from our 
 point of view, was yet full of grandeur and purity. It was 
 a religion in the sense that it was an appeal, a sentiment, 
 an inspiration. It was a religion because it expressed the 
 highest and most general conceptions which Greece formed 
 of her existence. It has passed away because the people who 
 lived it have passed away ; and we can only understand this 
 religion by putting ourselves in their position. It was not 
 a system of belief which could be adopted by other nations ;. 
 their gods were merely exaggerations of forms and qualities 
 of Greek life. The chronology of these deities was inter- 
 woven with Greek history ; their worship was an essential 
 part of the national or political life. The deities were also 
 largely local. Different parts of Greece had different pan- 
 theons, and the interprovincial courtesies which existed! 
 between the inhabitants were extended to their gods. 
 
THE RELIGION OF GREECE. 447 
 
 The Greeks had no sacred books, no doctrinal system.- 
 The works of their great poets, dramatists, and philosophers 
 formed the public mind, perfected the language, and were 
 revered, as were the works of their artists, on account of the 
 high influence which they exerted. 
 
 The most marked superstition which we find in Greece is 
 connected with the diviners and soothsayers, who were much 
 consulted. These oracles were often employed as a means 
 of persuading and imposing upon the credulous and ignorant. 
 Indeed, thepolitical intrigues connected with the great Delphic 
 oracle are an important part of the history of the nation. 
 The solemn and secret worship, known as the mysteries of 
 Bacchus and Ceres, seems to have been a thing apart from the 
 joyous and spontaneous religion of this people. The Bacchic 
 mysteries were a form of wild nature-worship, varying from 
 the intoxication, or nervous frenzy, which we find in some 
 degree in almost all religions, to sensual excesses of the 
 grossest kind. This savage worship was modified and 
 reformed by Orpheus, but even in its improved state it was 
 " distasteful to the best Greeks, suspected and disliked by 
 the enlightened, proscribed by kings, and rejected by com- 
 mimities." The mystery of Ceres, otherwise known as the 
 Eleusinian mysteries, seems to have been derived from the 
 Egyptian myth of Osiris and Isis. In Greece, it took the 
 form of Ceres or Demeter in search of Persephone, a sym- 
 bolism connected with the theory of the expiation of sin 
 and the salvation of the soul hereafter (which was the central 
 belief of the Egyptian religion), and never took any strong hold 
 upon the Greek mind. To this doctrine of remorse for and 
 expiation of sin, with a view to obtaining a future salvation, 
 can be traced all the exclusive prerogatives of priesthood, 
 from the unparalleled despotism of the Brahmans to the 
 mildest form of ecclesiastical pretension. Sacerdotal privi- 
 leges which are not derived from supremacy of knowledge 
 and virtue rest upon the inculcation of belief in mysteries 
 which accounts for the deep affection which all religions,, 
 display for the unknowable. 
 
.448 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The Greeks had no priestly class : kings, generals, and 
 fathers of families offered sacrifices to the gods. There were 
 priests, and sometimes the office was hereditary, but it was 
 not confined to a class, nor did its sanctity attach to the indi- 
 vidual, but belonged rather to the offices performed by them. 
 
 The life of the Greeks was a succession of religious ceremo- 
 nies spontaneously mingled with every thing that they did. 
 All their festivals were religious ; they prayed for every thing 
 that they wanted in a loud voice with their hands extended 
 toward heaven, and they even threw kisses to the gods. Is 
 it any wonder that humanity should love this wonderful 
 nation, revere its peerless literature, copy its art, and never 
 tire of the romance of its life? It has taught us the limits 
 of an exclusively ethnic development, the highest point to 
 which a nation can reach whose ideals do not express 
 universal principles. 
 
 The Roman nation, although coming from the same 
 original Aryan stock as the Greeks, was chiefly derived from 
 three secondary sources, the Sabines, Latins, and Etrus- 
 cans. The gods of these peoples form the beginning of the 
 Roman pantheon, and their worships that of the Roman 
 Teligion. The most elaborate polytheism ever known, 
 the most prosaic theology, was the religion of ancient Rome. 
 As it developed it borrowed its form and ideas from Greece, 
 but applied them in the Roman spirit, which made the 
 resemblance between the religions of the two nations but 
 superficial. As Rome was hospitable to all nations she was 
 hospitable to all religions. She expected all foreigners to 
 worship the gods of their own countries, and in the case of 
 some conquered nations even admitted their gods to her 
 pantheon, but the worship was to conform to the methods 
 of the national or state religion. So preeminent in the 
 Roman character, indeed, was this spirit of organization, or 
 government, that the beauties of religion were lost sight of 
 in the effort to reduce all worship to a public discipline. 
 
 In the Roman religion the element of monotheism was 
 jnanifested by the subordination of all gods to Jupiter 
 
THE RELIGION OF ROME. 449 
 
 (Optimus Maximus); all other gods being declared but 
 qualities or manifestations of this central deity ; yet they 
 carried further than any other nation the multiplication of 
 minor deities. It was the duty of the pontiffs to create 
 gods as they were needed by the increasing diversities of 
 life. For instance, there was the old deity Pecunia, money 
 (from Pccus, cattle), dating from the time when cattle were 
 a medium of exchange ; after this the gods ^Esculanus and 
 Argentarius were added, as copper and silver came into use 
 as coin. 
 
 The worship of such gods as Fides (Faith), Concordia 
 (Concord), Pudicitia (Modesty), and the gods of home gives 
 us a picture of the Roman moral life. There was no plan 
 of the universe, no creed, in the Roman religion ; it was a 
 ceremonial or ritual ; a utilitarian faith, a faithful picture of 
 the national character, practical, order-loving, unimaginative. 
 Gibbon tells us that the Roman provincials had been trained 
 by a uniform, artificial, foreign education, and were therefore 
 engaged in a very unequal competition with those bold 
 ancients who had gained honor by expressing their genuine 
 feelings in their own tongue. " The sublime Longinus * * * 
 who preserved the spirit of ancient Athens * * * laments this 
 degeneracy of his contemporaries," who, he says, remained 
 intellectual pygmies by the unnatural confinement of their 
 minds in youth. " It was not until the revival of letters in 
 Europe," continues Gibbon, "that the youthful vigor of the 
 imagination, after a long repose, national emulation, a new 
 religion, new languages, and a new world, called forth another 
 era of genius. * * * The diminutive stature of mankind 
 among the Romans was sinking daily below the old standard, 
 when the fierce giants of the north broke in and mended the 
 puny breed, restoring a manly spirit of freedom which in 
 time became the happy parent of taste and science." 
 
 It behooves us Americans to take warning of the con- 
 sequences of a uniform, artificial, and foreign education. 
 Whether our -moral and intellectual ideals are imported 
 from Athens as with the Romans, or from Palestine as 
 
45 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 with the Europeans, we should see that they do not make 
 intellectual pygmies of us by confining our minds in youth. 
 Unhappily there are no fierce giants of the north who are 
 able to swoop down upon us and release our minds by 
 destroying our civilization. 
 
 But it is not alone the religious ideals of the Europeans 
 (who are in truth the once barbarous heirs of the Roman 
 Empire) that are limiting us. Their political and social 
 aspirations are a dangerous example. The nations of Europe 
 have reproduced Roman characteristics with singular fidelity. 
 As Christian Rome sought to govern the world with the 
 sceptre of love through the spread of ecclesiastical dominion,, 
 so did political Rome seek through the power of organiza- 
 tion to make her empire universal. The horizon of the 
 Roman mind was bounded by political aspirations, so that 
 even its religious sentiment fell within the range of national 
 aggrandizement and supremacy. National aggrandizement 
 is the ruling passion of the European mind ; for what power 
 is really worshipped by these nations but the spread of indi- 
 vidual dominion? Do they not perpetually confront one 
 another with the most brutal passions? Are not all their 
 relations but feints in a struggle in which hate and jealousy, 
 cupidity, distrust, and arrogance predominate ? Is not royalty 
 the corner-stone of European society, and can any thing be 
 more barbarous than royalty, any thing a greater crime 
 against humanity? Is not the best thought of Europe 
 locked in a death-struggle with the national religion, and is 
 not the whole social and political power enlisted upon the 
 side of the religion which countenances and sanctifies these 
 barbarities ? 
 
 The Romans of the early period had no statues of their 
 gods ; the art of giving form to their deities they got from 
 the Greeks, upon whom they depended even in the matter 
 of augury, for they frequently sent to inquire of the 
 Delphic Oracle. After the current of Greek influence had 
 once set in, it was not long before the whole Roman religion 
 was transformed into an outward imitation of the Greek* 
 
THE RELIGION OF ROME. 45 I 
 
 notwithstanding that this tendency was strenuously resisted 
 by the senate and priesthood. As in Greece, there were gods 
 representing objects of nature, such as the sun, moon, ocean, 
 and rivers, the dawn, the tempest, the day, and calm weather. 
 There were deities representing faculties of the mind, senti- 
 ments and occupations, such as intellect, reverence for 
 parents, courage, fear and hope, the time of planting, the 
 harvest, war and peace. To the chief of these deities tem- 
 ples were dedicated ; and their worship studded the whole 
 calendar with holy days, and mingled with almost every 
 detail of private and public life. 
 
 In Rome there was a strange liberty of unbelief and 
 religious criticism. At the time of Catiline's conspiracy, 
 Caesar openly opposed, in the senate, the execution of the 
 conspirators, on the ground that death was the end of suffer- 
 ing, meaning that he regarded as false what the state religion 
 taught about suffering after death. And Caesar was at the 
 time the chief religious dignitary of the state. Again : in 
 Cicero's" De Natura Deorum," Cotta, the Pontifex Maximus, 
 refutes the belief in a special providence ; explaining that, 
 as a Pontifex, he believed in the gods on the authority and 
 tradition of his ancestors, but as a philosopher he felt per- 
 fectly free to deny them. These were merely instances of 
 that general lack of deep religious conviction which the 
 story of Roman life reveals. These people made a business 
 of religious observances, but their conceptions of the general 
 principles of existence were not sufficiently exalted to de- 
 serve the name of a spiritual faith. 1 Notwithstanding her 
 virtuous emperors, chief among whom was Marcus Aurelius, 
 Rome produced no great moral reformer who attained suf- 
 ficient preeminence to inspire any marked regeneration of 
 life, which gives us the striking picture of a civilization 
 unsurpassed for political power and internal discipline, but 
 
 1 Among the cultivated English and French ecclesiasts of the present day 
 we have many instances of such apostasy, the difference being that it is in 
 society, and in converse with critical minds, that their admissions of unbelief 
 are made, instead of in public tribunals. 
 
452 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 never reaching to the sublime height of the impersonal in 
 thought and feeling. Hence Rome had no philosophers; 
 and although she has been called the most religious nation 
 in the world, in the deepest sense she had no religion. 
 
 The most beautiful side of her religion was its worship 
 of home, its reverence for the family. Much as the his- 
 tory of Rome may cloud this sentiment, it was neverthe- 
 less the central feature of the devotional life of the nation. 
 From this veneration grew the institution of the Vestal 
 Virgins who watched over the sacred flame of the national 
 family life. 
 
 The mythology of the Scandinavians, as is the case with 
 that of all nations, was largely determined by their physical 
 surroundings and mode of life. This race was the most im- 
 portant branch of the Teutonic or German division of the 
 Indo-European family. They settled in the northern part 
 of Europe at a very remote period, and were numerous 
 enough to organize the great Cimbric invasion which threat- 
 ened the existence of the Roman Republic one hundred and 
 eleven years before Christ. The invading host, numbering 
 over three hundred thousand men, issuing from the Cimbric 
 peninsula now known as Denmark, after overwhelming four 
 successive armies of Romans, was. only repulsed at last by 
 the military genius of Marius. 
 
 In the fifth century these Scandinavians invaded and con- 
 quered England as Saxons, in the ninth century as Danes ; 
 and in the eleventh century, as Normans, they overran both 
 England and France. 
 
 Bishop Percy, in the preface to his translation of Mallet's 
 " Northern Antiquities," gives many reasons for believing 
 that the mythology of the Scandinavians had the same 
 source as that of all the other branches of the Aryan race, 
 and he sees traces of a pure monotheism behind the fabulous 
 adventures of the northern gods. 
 
 As, from our metaphysical standpoint, we know that a 
 pure monotheism can only be a realization of the ultimate 
 fact or principle of the universe, we, of course, cannot enter- 
 
THE SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 453 
 
 tain any theory which supposes this state of mind to have 
 existed among early and uncultivated peoples ; although we 
 regard every religion as the best attempt each race and age 
 have made toward this ultimate analysis. The Vedas and 
 the Zend-Avesta certainly breathe a spirit of monotheism ; 
 but it is a clouded monotheism obscured by many imper- 
 fections, as was also that of the early Hebrews. The favorite 
 doctrine, among so many modern writers, that there was a 
 pure monotheism among the ancient Aryans and Jews, as 
 will more fully appear hereafter, is not supported by facts, 
 even supposing that these writers had clear ideas of what 
 constitutes a pure monotheism. 
 
 Of the northern gods the chief was Odin, who received in 
 his palace Valhalla all the braves who were slain in battle. 
 The heroes, says their sacred legend, who are received into 
 the palace of Odin " have every day the pleasure of arming 
 themselves, of passing in review, of arranging themselves in 
 order of battle, and of cutting one another in pieces. But 
 as soon as the hour of repast approaches, they return on 
 horseback, all safe and sound, to the hall of Odin, and fall 
 to eating and drinking. * * * A crowd of virgins wait upon 
 the heroes at table and fill their cups as fast as they empty 
 them. * * * Such was that happy state the bare hope of 
 which rendered all the inhabitants of the north of Europe 
 intrepid, and which made them not only to defy, but even 
 to seek with ardor, the most cruel deaths. Accordingly, 
 King Ragnor Lodbrok, when he was going to die, far from 
 uttering groans or forming complaints, expressed his joy by 
 these verses : ' We are cut to pieces with swords ; but this 
 fills me with joy, when I think of the feast that is preparing 
 for me in Odin's palace. Quickly, quickly, seated in the 
 splendid habitation of the gods, we shall drink beer out of 
 curved horns. A brave man fears not to die. I shall utter 
 no timorous words as I enter the Hall of Odin.' This fanatic 
 hope derived additional force from the ignominy affixed to 
 every kind of death but such as was of a violent nature, and 
 from the fear of being sent after such an exit into Niflheim. 
 
454 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 This was a palace consisting of nine worlds, reserved for 
 those who died of disease or old age. Hela, or Death, there 
 exercised her despotic power ; her palace was Anguish ; her 
 table, Famine ; her waiters were Slowness and Delay ; the 
 threshold of her door was Precipice ; her bed, Care ; she was 
 livid and ghastly pale, and her very looks inspired horror." 
 
 Odin seems to have been an historical as well as a mythical 
 character. The chronicle of the Swedish kings begins by 
 giving an account of a people who dwelt on the river Tana- 
 quisl, who were governed by a pontiff-king named Odin. 
 This king resided in the city Asgard, and is believed by 
 some historians to have actually conquered Scandinavia at 
 the head of an army of Asiatics. This invasion is supposed 
 to have taken place about forty years before Christ. The 
 historical character of Odin, however, soon disappears in the 
 mythology of which he is the central figure. Although 
 there are verbal traces to this day of the worship paid to 
 Odin, in the name given by almost all the people of the 
 North to the fourth day of the week, 1 which was formerly 
 consecrated to him, nothing remains in Europe, either in 
 literature, customs, or beliefs, which gives any definite idea 
 of this ancient worship. The learned men of Scandinavia 
 had reason to be surprised, therefore, when about the middle 
 of the seventeenth century there was discovered in Iceland 
 a most extraordinary production of the Odin period. The 
 Eddas, or the sacred legends of the Scandinavians, had been 
 reduced to writing, it is supposed, about the eleventh cen- 
 tury. Iceland had been discovered and settled by the Scan- 
 dinavians in 860 to 874 A.D. And thus while political and 
 religious changes were sweeping away all traces of this 
 ancient faith in the mother country, excepting such as linger 
 in the sounds of our words, the literature of this distant 
 island preserved the story in all its details. 
 
 The Edda Rhythmica, or Edda of Saemund, was sent by 
 Bishop Sveinsson from Iceland to the learned Torfseus in 
 
 'Old Norse Odin's dagr ; Swedish and Danish Ons dag ; Ang.-Sax. 
 Wodane's dag; Old Ger. Wuotane's tac ; Eng. Wednesday. 
 
THE SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 455 
 
 1643 ; and soon after followed the prose Edda, supposed to 
 have been collected by Snorro Sturleson, the Wise, in the 
 eleventh century, from the lips of the Scalds. 
 
 When Harold Harfager determined to subjugate Norway 
 and reduce it to a feudal despotism, which he succeeded in 
 doing after twelve years' hard fighting, many of the nobles 
 of that country sought freedom in the Shetland and Orkney 
 islands, and some went as far as Iceland. Encouraged, 
 probably, by the long winters, which compelled in-door life, 
 these Scandinavians developed almost immediately an oral 
 literature, and Iceland became noted for her learning. An 
 order of sages kno\v,n as Scalds became numerous and were 
 sought after and honored by the courts of Europe. These 
 men were " living libraries of history and of the maxims of 
 experience," and passed as welcome guests from court to 
 court, even while the governments were in the highest state 
 of hostility. 
 
 The discovery of Iceland led to that of Greenland, in 
 982, and Mallet gives a description of several expeditions 
 which penetrated as far as Massachusetts Bay, built houses, 
 and traded with the natives on the southern coast of Cape 
 Cod, from 1000 to 1008 A.D. The runic inscriptions and the 
 numerous other vestiges of the early colonies scattered along 
 the eastern shore of Baffin's Bay confirm the authenticity of 
 the sagas of Iceland which relate the stories of the discovery 
 of Greenland and the American continent. 
 
 Not only did this race of Northmen first discover our con- 
 tinent, but their influence upon us, difficult as it is to trace, 
 has been very great. Almost all our popular nursery stories 
 come directly from the Scandinavian mythology. Our names 
 of days, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, come 
 from the names of their gods ; their popular assemblies, or 
 Things, were the origin of our Parliament, Congress, and 
 General Assemblies. Our trial by jury was immediately de- 
 rived from Scandinavia, and our love of freedom, and vener- 
 ation for woman, are clearly to be traced to the same source. 
 
 The Elder or Saemund's Edda is the chief depository of the 
 
456 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Odin mythology, and also contains a cycle of poems on the 
 demigods and mythic heroes of the North. Howitt says 
 that they show us what the Greek legends would have been 
 without a Homer to form them into one grand epic. These 
 writings contain every degree of emotion from tempestuous 
 passion to unselfish love ; they give evidence of deep wisdom 
 wrought into maxims, but throughout runs an almost childish 
 imagination strangely mixed with thought. An idea of the 
 mythology of this Edda can be had from the following de- 
 scription by the Howitts in their "Literature and Romance 
 of Northern Europe " : 
 
 " Amid the bright sunlight of a far-off time, surrounded by 
 the dimmest shadows of forgotten ages, we come at once 
 into the midst of gods and heroes, goddesses and fair women, 
 giants and dwarfs, moving about in a world of wonderful 
 construction. * * * The mysterious Vala, or prophetess, 
 seated somewhere unseen in that marvellous heaven, sings 
 an awful song of the birth of gods and men, of the great 
 Yggdrasil, or Tree of Life, whose roots and branches run 
 through all regions of space to which existence has extended ; 
 and concludes her thrilling hymn with the terrible Ragnarok, 
 or Twilight of the Gods, when the dynasty of Odin disap- 
 pears in the fires which devour creation, and the new heaven 
 and new earth come forth to receive the milder reign of 
 Baldur. Odin himself sings his high song, and his ravens 
 Hugin and Munin, or Mind and Will, bring him news from 
 all the lower worlds, but he cannot divest his soul of the 
 secret dread that the latter will one day fail to return, and 
 the power which enabled him to shape the sky and all the 
 nine regions of life beneath it shall fall from his hands. A 
 strange mixture of simplicity and strength, of the little and 
 the great, the sublime and the ludicrous, runs through this 
 ancient production, or rather collection of productions, be- 
 traying at once an age of primitive vigor and of almost infan- 
 tine nawett. Odin fights daily with his hero-souls in the 
 neighborhood of Valhalla, or goes forth on some curious 
 mission among giants and men ; Thor thunders with his ham- 
 
THE SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 457- 
 
 mer among the rocks ; Loki plays off his spiteful tricks on 
 high and low ; the leaves of Yggdrasil rustle in the winds of 
 heaven ; the waters of the ocean roll glitteringly between 
 Midgard and Jotunheim, the outer regions of the Giants and 
 of Frost ; the gods travel daily over the beautiful bridge 
 Bifrost, the Rainbow ; and men, the descendants of Ask and 
 Embla, claim kindred with the divine Asar, and doubt not to 
 reach Valhalla by deeds of hardihood and endurance. 
 
 " To the antiquity of some of these songs it would be vain 
 to attempt to fix a limit. They bear all the traces of the re- 
 motest age. They carry us back to the East, the original 
 region of the Gothic race. They give a glimpse of the 
 Gudaheim, or home of the gods, and of the sparkling waters 
 of the original fountain of tradition. They bear us on in 
 that direction toward the primal period of one tongue and 
 one religion, and, in the words of the Edda, of that strange 
 God 'whom no one dared to name.' " 
 
 The Younger or prose Edda may be regarded as a sort of 
 commentary on the poetic one, or as its translation into prose, 
 mixed with many extravagances in accordance with the taste 
 of the age. It is said to bear no comparison in literary and 
 philosophical value to the poetical Edda, which preceded it 
 by about one hundred and fifty years. 
 
 The idea to be gained of the morality of this hardy race of 
 Northmen from these sacred books, the only record which 
 we have of their life, is of the vaguest kind. All opinions 
 seem to concur in according to them a rude chastity, but 
 their great love of conflict must have entailed an untold 
 brutality. 
 
 Even in so savage a faith as that of the Scandinavians the 
 principles of religious development are seen to be constant. 
 Vague ideas of life and nature take on fantastic forms. 
 Every thing is reduced to imaginary personalities, around 
 which cluster the most extravagant beliefs. As the mind 
 advances, these personages range themselves with more or 
 less order under the government of a single person, who at 
 last gives way to a single principle. 
 
458 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Some sanguine modern writer, in attempting to voice 
 the higher aspirations of his fellow-men, has said that " all 
 earnest Christians desire a unity which rests upon the belief 
 that ' the children of one Father may worship him under dif- 
 ferent names/ that they may be influenced by one spirit 
 even though they know it not, that they may all have one 
 hope even if they have not one faith." This seems to be a 
 worthy sentiment, but its author has " counted without his 
 host," for Christians desire nothing of the kind. They desire 
 rather that the children of one Father may worship him un- 
 der one name, and that the world may have as soon as pos- 
 sible one faith and one hope. The name of this God they 
 insist is the Christian God, and the faith and hope which 
 they wish the world to have are faith and hope in Christ. 
 This is the real Christian spirit, and it is the better spirit of 
 the two. A true religious spirit means singleness of purpose, 
 steadfastness of belief, uncompromising loyalty to a certain 
 God, a certain church, and a certain creed. This is the only 
 spirit which accomplishes any thing in religion ; a spirit par- 
 ticularly evident in the latest religion which the world has 
 produced. 
 
 In Islamism we have a religion, the earliest beginnings of 
 which are within the broad light of history. We know from 
 many sources the minutest details of its inception and growth, 
 while the resemblance between it and the older faiths is so 
 close as to illustrate in a striking manner the universality of 
 religious sentiment and the uniformity of its development. 
 
 The true Christian who studies the religion of Mohammed 
 is unavoidably puzzled. It contains so much that the Chris- 
 tian acknowledges to be holy, that the natural resistance to a 
 rival faith is softened into a reluctant admiration. The puz- 
 zle of Mohammedanism is not its marvellous growth and 
 endurance, its near approach to universal truth, nor its doc- 
 trinal contradictions, but the want of harmony which exists 
 between its moral precepts and the life and methods of its 
 founder. The wonder is, how so vast and comparatively 
 pure a faith could have grown out of a career such as that of 
 
ISLAMISM. 
 
 Mohammed. This wonder is only increased by closely ex- 
 amining the events which immediately followed the death of 
 its founder. Those of his successors who were in sympathy 
 with his best aims, one after another fell victims to the hate 
 of opposing factions, until the power of Islam actually re- 
 sided with its enemies, who perpetuated the system solely 
 for the temporal advantages which it secured them : and 
 yet the faith arose from these spiritual ruins, surviving the 
 crimes of both the prophet and his enemies, and has exerted 
 a moral suasion over millions of lives for many centuries. 
 
 For forty years Mohammed led an exceptionally upright 
 life. During his youth having distinguished himself for 
 probity, and intelligence in business affairs, he was put in 
 charge of the property of a young widow of high character 
 and position. He executed his trust so well that he gained 
 her esteem, which afterward resulted in their marriage. He 
 was thoughtful and observing, and as his people, the Arabians, 
 were for centuries before his time a comparatively unorgan- 
 ized race, living in detached tribes or communities without 
 national unity, and suffering all the disadvantages of such a 
 condition, he felt deeply the need of a general and funda- 
 mental reform. The Arabs and Jews are not only related as 
 branches of the Semitic race, speaking cognate languages, 
 but Judaism, in an indistinct form, was the faith of the 
 Arabian tribes. A vague monotheism, combined with the 
 worship of local deities, and a reverence for the great Jewish 
 teachers, were the chief characteristics of the Arabian faith at 
 the time of Mohammed. Abraham was looked upon as their 
 physical and spiritual father ; and although the customs and 
 religious forms of the Jews were entirely distinct from Arabian 
 life, the essential doctrines of Judaism were common to both 
 nations. 
 
 Against this disorderly state of things the nature of Mo- 
 hammed rebelled. His thoughts gradually grew into the 
 most vivid convictions; his feelings, encouraged by the 
 examples of religious fervor so frequent among his race, be- 
 came morbidly intense and assumed the form of ecstatic 
 
460 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 visions. He began by believing himself a great prophet, and 
 his wife, impressed by his deep earnestness and the unques- 
 tioned loftiness of his aims, became his first convert and 
 encouraged him in his course. He then openly declared 
 himself a prophet of God, bent upon the establishment of 
 a universal religion, the substance of which was faith in one 
 Supreme Being, submission to his will, trust in his providence, 
 and good-will to his creatures. " A marvellous and mighty 
 work," says Mr. Muir, " had been wrought by these few pre- 
 cepts. From time beyond memory Mecca and the whole 
 peninsula had been steeped in spiritual torpor. The influ- 
 ences of Judaism, Christianity, and Philosophy had been 
 feeble and transient. Dark superstitions prevailed, the 
 mothers of darker vices. And now, in thirteen years of 
 preaching, a body of men and women had risen who rejected 
 idolatry ; worshipped the one great God ; lived lives of 
 prayer; practised chastity, benevolence, and justice; and 
 were ready to do and to bear every thing for the truth. All 
 this came from the depth of conviction in the soul of this 
 one man." 
 
 This is one side of the picture, viewing the religion from its 
 subsequent success. The other side, that which was pre- 
 sented at the time of the occurrence of these events, gives us 
 a view of the opposition and contempt which Mohammed 
 met on every hand : the niggardly results of the first thirteen 
 years of his preaching (only about two hundred converts, and 
 those principally slaves), the indignities and the personal 
 danger which his cause earned for him among the inhabitants 
 of his native city of Mecca, and at last the flight from that 
 place to Medina for safety, the Hegira, from which event 
 the Mussulmans date the beginning of their era. The story 
 of the thirteen years preceding this event contains all that is 
 purely religious, all that is inspiring, in the career of Moham- 
 med. From the Hegira, Mohammed became a great politi- 
 cal leader, a statesman, a general, but gradually lost, as his 
 ambition and success increased, all the dignity, simplicity, 
 and purity of a great reformer. 
 
I SLA MI SM. 461 
 
 During the early part of his religious life, the period of 
 obscure efforts to establish a great truth, we find in Moham- 
 med a commanding moral character. His thought and his 
 methods were imbibed from Judaism and Christianity. His 
 people were peculiarly ripe for such a religious movement as 
 followed ; and no sooner had he established the nucleus of 
 the faith than it grew with astonishing rapidity. This growth 
 completely entangled the great prophet in its luxuriance, 
 and he became in many ways a weak and worldly man ; 
 stooping to subterfuges, showing cruelty and arrogance, and 
 yielding to sensuality. His temptations, however, were 
 great, and his education rendered him peculiarly liable to 
 such weaknesses. Had he, for instance, known Christianity 
 from its better side, he would have seen less to encourage 
 him in his original undertaking. He would very likely have 
 been the St. Paul of Arabia, and the strange phenomenon of 
 a vast Semitic nation becoming Christianized might have 
 taken place ; for there is scarcely a principle which Moham- 
 med taught which has not its counterpart in the Christian 
 religion. Philosophy, however, had mingled with Chris- 
 tianity, and built up the complicated theory of the Trinity. 
 It is from this metaphysical side that Mohammed had 
 learned our religion ; and this side, as many devout Christians 
 admit, being by far the less imposing and attractive, 
 Mohammed was uninspired by the great faith, and never 
 evinced more than a courteous respect for it. 
 
 Before Mohammed had gained the political power which 
 made the progress of his religion, for the most part, a military 
 conquest, an incident occurred which throws light upon the 
 difficulties of his undertaking, upon his character, and also 
 upon that of the people with whom he had to deal. It is 
 thus related by M. Renan : 
 
 " There is a curious episode belonging to the first period of 
 Mahomet's mission which very well explains the icy indiffer- 
 ence which he encountered in all about him, and the extreme 
 reserve which he was bidden to maintain in the use of the 
 marvellous. He was seated in the square of the Caaba, at a 
 
462 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 short distance from a circle formed by a number of Koreisch 
 chiefs, all opposed to his doctrine. One of them, Otba, son 
 of Re"bia, approaches him, takes a place by his side, and, 
 speaking in the name of the rest, says : 
 
 " ' Son of my friend, thou art a man distinguished by thy 
 qualities and thy birth. Although thou causest disturbance 
 in thy country, divisions in families, although thou dost out- 
 rage our gods, taxest our ancestors and sages with impiety 
 and error, we would deal discreetly with thee. Hear the 
 propositions I have to make to thee, and consider if it does 
 not become thee to accept one of them.' 
 
 " < Speak/ said Mahomet, ' I listen/ 
 
 " ' Son of my friend,' resumed Otba, ' if thine object be to 
 acquire riches, we will contribute to make thee a fortune 
 larger than that of any of the Koreisch. If thou aspirest to 
 honors, we will make thee our chief, and we will take no 
 resolution without thine advice. If the spirit that haunts 
 thee clings to thee and sways thee so that thou canst not 
 withdraw thyself from its influence, we will call in skilful 
 physicians and pay them to cure thee.' 
 
 " ' I am neither greedy of property, nor ambitious of dig- 
 nities, nor possessed by an evil spirit,' replies Mahomet. ' I 
 am sent by Allah, who has revealed to me a book and has 
 ordered me to announce to you the rewards and punishments 
 that await you.' 
 
 " ' Very well, Mahomet,' said the Koreisch to him, ' since 
 thou dost not agree to our propositions, and pretendest to 
 be sent by Allah, give us clear proofs of thy qualification. 
 Our valley is narrow and sterile, prevail on God to enlarge 
 it, to push back these mountain chains that shut us in, to 
 cause rivers like those of Syria and of Irak to flow through 
 it, or else to bring from the tomb some of our ancestors, and 
 among them Cossay, son of Kilab, whose word had such 
 authority ; let these illustrious dead, revived, acknowledge 
 thee as a prophet, and we also will recognize thee.' 
 
 " l God,' replies Mahomet, " has not sent me to you for 
 that ; he has sent me merely to preach his law.' 
 
ISLAMISM. 463 
 
 " ' At least,' resumed the Koreisch, ' ask thy Lord to cause 
 one of his angels to appear, and avouch thy veracity and 
 bid us believe thee. Ask him, likewise, to publicly ratify 
 the choice he has made of thy person, by relieving thee of 
 the necessity of seeking thy daily subsistence by trade, 
 like the rest of thy fellow-countrymen.' 
 
 "'No,' says Mahomet, 'I will make none of these re- 
 quests ; my duty is only to preach.' 
 
 " ' Very well ; your Lord may cause the sky to fall on us, 
 as you pretend that he can ; for we will not believe thee.' 
 
 " It is clear that a Buddha, a son of God, a high-flown 
 magician, were too high for the temperament of this people. 
 The extreme delicacy of the Arab mind, the frank, plain 
 way in which he takes his stand on fact, the license of 
 morals and of beliefs that prevailed at the epoch of Islam- 
 ism, forbade grand airs to the new prophet. * * * Arabia, 
 especially, had lost, perhaps never had, the gift of inventing 
 the supernatural. In all the moallakdt? and in the vast re- 
 pository of anti-Islamic poetry, we hardly find a religious 
 thought. This people had no sense for holy things ; but as 
 compensation it had a very lively sentiment of things finite, 
 and of the passions of the human heart. This is the reason 
 why the Mussulman legend outside of Persia has remained 
 so poqr, and why the mythical element is so absolutely 
 wanting in it." 
 
 With regard to the difficulty that Mohammed had to 
 create stories of miracles, the same author says : " The only 
 time that Mahomet allowed himself to indulge in an imita- 
 tion of the gorgeous fancies of other religions, in the night- 
 ride to Jerusalem, on a fantastic beast, the affair turned out 
 very ill ; the story was greeted with a storm of merriment. 
 Many of his disciples swore off, and the prophet made haste 
 to withdraw his troublesome idea by declaring that this mar- 
 vellous journey, given out at first as real, was only a dream." 
 
 1 They term moallakdt, or suspended, the pieces of verse which had taken the 
 prize in the poetical tourneys, and were suspended by gold nails to the door of 
 the Caaba. Seven of them are extant, to which two or three other poems of 
 the same character are attached. 
 
464 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Apart from a few miracles, about the details of which, as 
 we have indicated, Mohammed was very particular, this great 
 prophet really asked his friends to believe nothing which 
 could not with perfect propriety be offered to the Christian 
 world to-day as a valid faith. All the great principles of 
 Christian belief are rigorously complied with in his appeal. 
 Mohammed solemnly declared himself to be the true prophet 
 of the one true God. He offered as credentials a book of 
 revelations, the authenticity of which can hardly be disputed, 
 since he wrote it himself. He gave up the greater part of 
 his time to rewarding his adherents and providing punish- 
 ments, both temporal and spiritual, for all who refused to be- 
 lieve in him. He made the most complete arrangements in 
 heaven to correspond with his plans upon earth, and he took 
 all his friends into this arrangement and excluded from it 
 all his enemies. He appointed his apostles, founded his 
 church, formulated creed and ritual, and virtually created a 
 bible. In fact, no man ever worked harder to establish a re- 
 ligion, and few have succeeded any better. Mohammed was 
 a good organizer ; he knew how to make the best of circum- 
 stances. Finding that he had to deal largely with Jews and 
 Christians, he proclaimed that the Jewish law and the Chris- 
 tian gospels were all equally the Word of God, and he in- 
 culcated belief in them all on pain of hell-fire. Any con- 
 fusion which might arise in the minds of the faithful on 
 account of the variety of beliefs set forth in these holy books 
 he removed by the luminous doctrine that " as the Koran 
 was the latest, in so far as it pleased the Almighty to modify 
 his previous commands, it must be paramount." Moham- 
 med lost no opportunity of affirming that his writings were 
 concurrent with the Jewish and Christian scriptures, although 
 of the latter he knew so little that he supposed the Gospel 
 was a direct revelation from God to Jesus. No doubt he 
 possessed a minute knowledge of the facility with which such 
 a literary transaction could be arranged. 
 
 " When his own work was condemned as a ' forgery ' and 
 ' an antiquated tale ' his most common retort was, ' Nay, but 
 
ISLAMISM. 465 
 
 it is but a confirmation of the preceding Revelation and a 
 warning in simple Arabic to the people of the land.' The 
 number and confidence of these asseverations secured the con- 
 fidence or at least the neutrality of both Jews and Christians." 1 
 Thus we see that the analogy between the Christian and the 
 Mohammedan religions is not accidental. " The New Reve- 
 lation of Arabia " was persistently offered as the Arabian 
 form of both Judaism and Christianity, the chief innovation 
 being confined to the substitution of an Arabian fora Jewish 
 prophet. 
 
 The death of Mohammed was a severe shock to the faith 
 of his followers, many of whom had gradually come to 
 believe him immortal. This disaffection, added to the 
 triumph of those who had refused to believe in him, or had 
 only half believed, well-nigh caused a general apostasy. 
 Rival prophets at once appeared all over Arabia. Numerous 
 sects sprang into existence, some of them bordering on 
 avowed infidelity. There had been a few proud families of 
 Mecca, the Omeyyades, who had never made more than the 
 merest semblance of belief in Mohammed. They by degrees 
 came into possession of the chief administrative power of 
 Islamism ; and we have the strange spectacle of the primi- 
 tive and pure generation of Mohammedan leaders extermi- 
 nated and replaced by a party who had never been in sym- 
 pathy with the faith. Thus Islamism grew into the power 
 and unity which later distinguished it, from a relative be- 
 ginning of scarcely any religious faith. 
 
 Mohammed was no more the founder of monotheism than 
 of civilization or literature among the Arabs. M. Caussin 
 de Perceval says that the worship of Allah the supreme 
 (Allah taala) seems to have been always the basis of the 
 Arab religion. " The Semitic race never conceived of the 
 government of the universe otherwise than as an absolute 
 monarchy. Its theodicy has made no progress since the 
 Book of Job; the sublimities and the aberrations of poly- 
 theism have always been foreign to it." 
 
 Life of Mahomet," Muir., p. 154. 
 
466 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The Mohammedan bible, the Koran, is entirely unique 
 among the sacred books of the world, both in its form and 
 in its manner of production. It is a collection of the preach- 
 ings of Mohammed (not lacking in beauty of thought and 
 expression), and the daily orders which he issued to his 
 followers bearing the date of the places in which they ap- 
 peared. " Each of these pieces was written, from the prophet's 
 recitation, 1 on skins, on shoulder-blades of sheep, camels' 
 bones, polished stones, palm-leaves ; or was kept in memory 
 by the principal disciples, who were called Bearers of the 
 Koran" These pieces were collected into a single book 
 soon after the prophet's death, and copied in the order of 
 the length of their contents without any regard to the sense 
 or connection. This want of arrangement in the Koran is 
 regarded by scholars as an evidence of its authenticity : a 
 forgery would have had more method in it. 
 
 The Moslem sects are as numerous as the Christian. Be- 
 tween these sects, which are grouped in two principal 
 branches, cruel wars and persecutions have long prevailed. 
 The most zealous Moslems are the Turks, who observe the 
 fasts and holy days with rigor, and have no desire to make 
 proselytes, but cordially hate all outside of Islam. So many 
 hard things have been said of the Turks of late years, that it 
 is refreshing to meet with testimonials of their religious and 
 moral character. 
 
 Bishop Southgate says : " I have never known a Mussul- 
 man, sincere in his faith, * * * in whom moral rectitude did 
 not seem an active quality and a living principle. In sea- 
 sons of plague the Turks appear perfectly fearless. They do 
 not avoid customary intercourse and contact with friends. 
 They remain with and minister to the sick with unshrinking 
 assiduity. * * * In truth, there is something imposing in the. 
 unaffected calmness of the Turks at such times. It is a 
 spirit of resignation which becomes truly noble when exer- 
 cised upon calamities which have already befallen them." 2 
 
 1 The word Koran means recitation. 
 11 Southgate's " Travels in Armenia," vol. I., p. 86. 
 
ISLAMISM. 467 
 
 Allah is constantly on the lips of the Mohammedans, both 
 men and women ; but it has become with them a mere form 
 of speech. The incidents of their daily and religious life 
 prove that they do not regard God as a person, but rather 
 as a divine unity of will. 
 
 The attempt, so often made by Christians, to account for 
 all the imperfections of the Moslem governments by the 
 error of the Mohammedan conception of God is an exalted 
 method of criticism, but one which can hardly be consist- 
 ently employed by believers in a personal deity. The con- 
 ception which a civilization forms of God indicates the stage 
 of its development, but this conception is the consequence 
 or function of the whole civilization, not its cause. To 
 improve it would be to remould the life of a race. As 
 morality is shown to be a logical phenomenon only by first 
 establishing the interdependence of thought and feeling, so 
 the effect upon individual and national conduct of the belief 
 in a personal God can alone be made clear by tracing knowl- 
 edge and belief to their humblest beginnings, which is to 
 take the widest possible view of religious development. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE HEBREW RELIGION. 
 Semitic Monotheism The Jewish Conception of God. 
 
 WHAT can be more instructive than the diverse opinions of 
 our great religious critics and historians concerning the origin 
 of our ideas of God, especially when we remember that no 
 two of them agree as to the nature of Deity ? If by the term 
 God is meant the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, it 
 would seem but natural to credit the Jews with the origin 
 of the conception ; but we are by no means sure that it is 
 the God of Israel that we are seeking. In the preface to the 
 great work of Ewald on the history of Israel, Russell Marti- 
 neau tells us that the author is a devout theologian, and that 
 no one could have labored more sincerely than he did to 
 defend the belief in a personal God, and a supernatural 
 revelation coming from him to Israel, against the contrary 
 evidence which an intelligent study of tradition would supply. 
 A careless reader might understand this to mean that Ewald 
 had not studied tradition intelligently; but had this been 
 the meaning of Mr. Martineau, is it likely that he would 
 have written an eloquent preface to Ewald's great work ? 
 With regard to Ewald's treatment of tradition, Mr. Martineau 
 says : " If we penetrate further back than the age of mythic 
 heroes, we come only to a time when the gods themselves 
 were imagined to people the earth with their kind. If this 
 is true everywhere alike, we might expect to find it in Israel 
 also, where, indeed, we do find the very same ideas and 
 stories. We cannot treat the Assyrian, Persian, and Greek 
 .deluges as mythical, and refuse the character to the Hebrew, 
 
 468 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 469 
 
 Hence Ewald treats the Hebrew myths of Genesis in the 
 same spirit as he would those of any other nation ; nor does 
 he deem it necessary to justify such treatment any more 
 than an historian of Rome would apologize for the myth of 
 Romulus." 
 
 If we would gain an idea of how Ewald really has treated 
 the sacred traditions of Israel, we have but to look a little 
 farther into the same preface. Here we are reminded of the 
 difficulties which the conscientious historian has to contend 
 with in deciphering the truths which lie hidden in those 
 legends and myths that have until recently been treated as 
 actual history. "The value of history does not depend upon 
 the vividness of its colors, or, in other words, the positiveness 
 of its assertions. * * * The earliest period of the lives of all 
 nations is now acknowledged to be mythical, but the myths 
 cover events or thoughts generally grander than themselves. 
 * * * Dorus and ^Eolus were not single men, but represent 
 the whole nation of Dorians and ^Eolians ; Shem and Ham, 
 the whole population of their respective regions, the south- 
 west of Asia, and the north of Africa. So when Ewald shows 
 us Abraham as a ' representative man,' and his wanderings as 
 those of a large tribe, the quarrels between Jacob and Esau 
 as great international struggles between the Hebrews and 
 the Arabian tribes, rather than the petty strife of a few 
 herdsmen, the history assumes a grander scale than we had 
 any idea of before. Stories which before amused us with 
 their pettiness now tell of the fates of empires and the 
 development of nations, and we see why they have been 
 preserved from an antiquity so high that the deeds of indi- 
 viduals have long been obliterated. The mythical system, 
 therefore, as understood and wielded by the chief masters, 
 is any thing but destructive of history; it rather makes 
 history where before there was none." 
 
 But the same careless reader might think that whatever 
 fine distinctions the "devout theologian " Ewald may make, 
 he has certainly forfeited the confidence of Christians by 
 declaring the Bible, so far as it deals with early Jewish 
 
470 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 history, and the conceptions of God which it describes, not 
 only uninspired but thoroughly unreliable, a mere mass of 
 undigested tradition. We are naturally amazed, therefore, 
 to find that such eminent Christian scholars as Dean Stanley 
 and Dr. Rowland Williams concede Ewald's universal learn- 
 ing and " spiritual insight," although differing with him on 
 "general principles," with regard to the authorship of several 
 of the books of the Old Testament. Dean Stanley testifies 
 to " the intimate acquaintance which Ewald exhibits with 
 every portion of the sacred writings, combined as it is with a 
 loving and reverential appreciation of each individual char- 
 acter and of the whole spirit and purpose of the Israelitish 
 history." The same writer acknowledges the vast influence 
 which the book has had, not only in the author's country, 
 but in France and in England, and cites as an example the 
 constant reference to it throughout the new " Dictionary of 
 the Bible," "which is one of the greatest and best Christian 
 books of reference of our time." 
 
 To an unprejudiced reader it would seem but natural to 
 place the sacred writings of the Jews, at least up to the 
 Persian Period, say B.C. 538, in the category of barbaric 
 lore. 
 
 The reign of David (about rooo B.C.) is supposed to have 
 been the zenith of Hebrew religious life, and yet what do we 
 find this life to have been ? We are told that " the zeal for 
 Yahveh being national, it manifested itself in persecution of 
 the Canaanites. Samuel was believed to be a rain-maker. 
 Saul put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards; 
 yet in one instance he caused the dead to be called. David 
 apparently believed Yahveh to dwell in the ark, to be confined 
 to Canaan, to be appeased by the smell of sacrifices, and 
 to admit of human sacrifices, though he conceived him to 
 be a righteous God. In David's house teraphim were kept. 
 Yet he fought the ' battles of Yahveh ' (Yahveh of Hosts 
 Tzebaoth). David also believed in angels. Solomon did 
 not recognize Yahveh as the only true God : he erected 
 sanctuaries in honor of foreign gods. The brazen serpent 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 4/1 
 
 continued to be worshipped." 1 And still " Christian scholars " 
 who are perfectly aware of these facts unblushingly teach 
 that these people had a knowledge of the true God, and that 
 theirs is the God we are to worship. But why should we 
 complain of this, when we find even such liberal scholars as 
 Renan clinging to the same superstition, that the Israelites 
 had in some way been intrusted with a supernatural or 
 special knowledge of God ? We must admit that the poor 
 Christian scholars have a certain justification in standing 
 upon the defensive and in admitting as 'little as possible, 
 when the boldest investigators seem to quail before this 
 common Israelitish myth. 
 
 Philology tells us that each race has had its mythic age, 
 and that from this primitive stage of development has come 
 its language, its thought, and its religion. The characteris- 
 tics of this age are the same the world over. The causes 
 which have led to it, and the results attained, are governed 
 by the conditions of social development, which are in the 
 main constant. If among the younger nations, such as the 
 present peoples of Europe, or among the Greeks and Romans, 
 whose beginnings can be traced through the aid of history, 
 we know that there was no period of greater illumination 
 which preceded this age, why should we believe that such 
 a period existed in Canaan or Judea ? And yet all the well- 
 known theories of Semitic monotheism rest upon a belief in 
 a " period of greater illumination " which, in some form, 
 either preceded, or took the place of, the mythic age of 
 Jewish history. It is true that some of the most enlight- 
 ened of these theories confine this " illumination " to the 
 minds of a few individuals, such as Abraham and Moses, 
 not being willing, perhaps, to take the responsibility of 
 asserting that the barbarous and idolatrous Hebrews enjoyed 
 any especially exalted conception of God. 
 
 The belief in the Hebrew knowledge of God, to which the 
 Christian mind clings with such tenacity, appears in its worst 
 light when we compare it with the conception of God as a 
 
 'See Spencer's "Descriptive Sociology," book VII., table II. 
 
47 2 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 principle; although the personality which the Jews gave to- 
 the Deity must certainly be repulsive enough even to the 
 modern Christian. 
 
 This tendency of the Christian mind is aptly illustrated by 
 the plaintive appeal of the Record, in speaking of Ewald's 
 work : " We sincerely hope [says the Record'} that the English 
 mind will long recognize the true grandeur of early Hebrew 
 history to consist, not in the wanderings and squabbles of 
 various Arab tribes, but in the presence of the living God 
 forming for himself that people through which all nations 
 of the earth are blessed." Thus Christian mythology 
 fights hard for its life, and only inch by inch yields its 
 superstitions. The very man who has done the most to give 
 us a rational view of the Hebrew Civilization, holds to the 
 most irrational myth of which Israel has been the author. 
 It is hard to forgive such men as Ewald and Max Muller for 
 their belief in a concrete personal God ; a belief so utterly 
 beneath the logical dignity, the scientific knowledge, of 
 their age. But the brilliant Renan, who represents the 
 purest, the least ethnic, the most cosmopolitan culture in 
 the world, who speaks a language which has shown the 
 least hospitality of all developed tongues to the vagaries; 
 of metaphysics, it is still harder to forgive this man, great 
 in almost every other particular, his failure to conceive God 
 as the universal principle, to rise above those childish and 
 limited interpretations of Deity which belong so clearly to 
 past and inferior civilizations. 
 
 Thus, in his essay upon the history of the people of Israel, 
 Renan says, with regard to the reign of Solomon : " We feel 
 how far we are from the pure ideal of Israel. The calling of 
 Israel was not philosophy, nor science, nor art (excepting 
 music), nor industry, nor commerce. In opening these 
 secular paths, Solomon, in one sense, caused his people 
 to deviate from their peculiarly religious destiny. It would 
 have been all over with the doctrine of the true God if such 
 tendencies had prevailed. Christianity and the conversion 
 of the world to monotheism being the essential work of 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 473 
 
 Israel, to which the rest must be referred, whatever turned 
 it aside from this superior end was but a frivolous and dan- 
 gerous distraction in its history. Now, far from having 
 advanced this grand work, we may say that Solomon did 
 every thing to embarrass it. Had he succeeded, Israel 
 would have ceased to be the people of God, and would 
 have become a worldly nation, like Tyre and Sidon. * * * 
 While the successor of David was passing his time playing 
 at riddles with Saba's infidel queen, there were seen on the 
 Mount of Olives altars to Moloch and to Astarte. What 
 more inconsistent with the first duty of Israel ? Guardian 
 of an idea about which the world was to rally, charged to 
 substitute in the human mind the worship of the supreme 
 God for that of national divinities, Israel was bound to be 
 intolerant, and to affirm boldly that all worship except that 
 of Jehovah was false and worthless. * * * 
 
 " We see exhibited here the grand law of the whole his- 
 tory of the Hebrew people, the struggle of two opposing 
 necessities which seem almost to have drawn in contrary 
 ways this intelligent and passionate race : on one side the 
 expansion of minds eager to understand the world, to imi- 
 tate other people, to leave the narrow enclosure in which the 
 Mosaic institutions confined Israel ; on the other side, the 
 conservative thought to which the salvation of the human 
 race was attached." 
 
 It is hardly possible to read all this and still believe that 
 M. Renan yielded to no superstition with regard to the 
 " sacred career of Israel," that " the conversion of the 
 world to monotheism was the essential work of Israel," 
 or that " the salvation of the human race was dependent 
 upon Israel," all of which theories are fast disappearing from 
 the most enlightened historical criticism. In Prof. Max 
 Muller's essay on " Semitic Monotheism," this favorite 
 theory of M. Renan is warmly criticised. "The Semitic 
 family," says Mr. Mu'ller, "is divided by M. Renan into 
 two great branches, differing from each other in the form 
 of their monotheistic belief ; yet both, according to their 
 
-4/4 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 historian, imbued from the beginning with the instinctive 
 faith in one God : 
 
 " I. The nomad branch, consisting of Arabs, Hebrews, and 
 the neighboring tribes of Palestine, commonly called the 
 descendants of Terah ; and 
 
 " 2. The political branch, including the nations of Phoe- 
 nicia, of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Yemen. 
 
 " Can it be said that all these nations, comprising the 
 worshippers of Elohim, Jehovah, Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, 
 Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal or Bel, Baal-peor, 
 Baal-zebub, Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, Annamelech, 
 Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succoth-benoth, the 
 Sun, Moon, Planets, and all the host of heaven, were en- 
 dowed with a monotheistic instinct? M. Renan admits 
 that monotheism has always had its principal bulwark in the 
 nomadic branch, but he maintains that it has by no means 
 been so unknown among the members of the political branch 
 as is commonly supposed. But where are the criteria by 
 which, in the same manner as their dialects, the religions of 
 the Semitic races could be distinguished from the religions 
 of the Aryan and Turanian races ? We can recognize any 
 Semitic dialect by the triliteral character of its roots. Is it 
 possible to discover similar radical elements in all the forms 
 -of faith, primary and secondary, primitive and derivative, of 
 the Semitic tribes? M. Renan thinks that it is. He im- 
 agines that he hears the key-note of a pure monotheism 
 through all the wild shoutings of the priests of Baal and 
 other Semitic idols, and he denies the presence of that key- 
 note in any of the religious systems of the Aryan nations, 
 whether Greeks or Romans, Germans or Celts, Hindoos or 
 Persians. * * * As it is impossible to deny the fact, that the 
 Semitic nations, in spite of this supposed monotheistic in- 
 stinct, were frequently addicted to the most degraded forms 
 of polytheistic idolatry, and that even the Jews the most 
 monotheistic of all frequently provoked the anger of the 
 Lord by burning incense to other gods, M. Renan remarks 
 that when he speaks of a nation in general he speaks only 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 475 
 
 of the intellectual aristocracy of that nation. * * * The fact 
 that Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah were firm be- 
 lievers in one God, could not be considered sufficient to 
 support the general proposition that the Jewish nation was 
 monotheistic by instinct. And if we remember that among 
 the other Semitic races we should look in vain for even four 
 such names, the case would seem to be desperate to any one 
 but M. Renan. * * * 
 
 " We cannot believe that M. Renan would be satisfied with 
 the admission that there had been among the Jews a few 
 leading men who believed in one God, or that the existence 
 of but one God was an article of faith not quite unknown 
 among the other Semitic races ; yet he has hardly proved 
 more. He has collected, with great learning and ingenuity, 
 all traces of monotheism in the annals of the Semitic nations ; 
 but he has taken no pains to discover the traces of polythe- 
 ism, whether faint or distinct, which are disclosed in the same 
 annals. In acting the part of an advocate, he has for a time 
 divested himself of the nobler character of the historian." 
 In short, M. Renan is struck with the religious instincts of 
 the Jews and Arabs, and seeks to account for this remarkable 
 instinct from a philological standpoint. There are other 
 races besides the Arabs and Jews that belong to the Semitic 
 group ; and although these other nations as the Assyri- 
 ans, Babylonians, and Phoenicians are not monotheistic, still, 
 for the sake of the theory, they must be shown to be more 
 monotheistic than the Indo-European group of nations. 
 
 Max Muller, and other orientalists, protest that the facts 
 of religious history cannot be made to sustain M. Renan's 
 theory ; but M. Renan replies by offering a learned argu- 
 ment, in the form of a comparison of the etymological con- 
 stitutions of the Semitic and Aryan languages, with the 
 object of proving that the idea of one God is the natural 
 tendency of the Semitic mind and speech. 
 
 To the details of this argument Mr. Muller takes no ex- 
 ception, but to its aim, which is to prove the natural origin 
 of the monotheism of the Jews, he opposes a theory which 
 
4/6 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 depends upon a belief in the Bible story of the personal re- 
 lationships between Abraham and God. " Of the ancestors 
 of Abraham and Nachor, even of their father Terah, we 
 know that in old time," says Mr. Miiller, " when they dwelt 
 on the other side of the flood, they served other gods 
 (Joshua xxiv., 2). At the time of Joshua these gods were 
 not yet forgotten, and instead of denying their existence 
 altogether, Joshua only exhorts the people to put away the 
 gods which their fathers served on the other side of the 
 flood and in Egypt, and to serve the Lord : l Choose you 
 this day/ he says, t whom ye will serve ; whether the gods 
 which your fathers served that were on the other side of the 
 flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell : 
 but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord/ 
 Such a speech, exhorting the people to make their choice 
 between various gods, would have been unmeaning if ad- 
 dressed to a nation which had once conceived the unity of 
 the Godhead. Even images of the gods were not unknown 
 to the family of Abraham ; for, though we know nothing of 
 the exact form of the teraphim, or images which Rachel stole 
 from her father, certain it is that Laban calls them his gods 
 (Genesis xxxi., 19, 30). But what is much more significant 
 than these traces of polytheism and idolatry, is the hesitat- 
 ing tone in which some of the early patriarchs speak of their 
 God. When Jacob flees before Esau into Padan-Aram, and 
 awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess his 
 faith in the One God, but he bargains and says : ' If God 
 will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and 
 will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I 
 come again to my father's house in peace ; then shall the 
 Lord be my God : and this stone, which I have set for a 
 pillar, shall be God's house : and of all that thou shalt give 
 me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee ' (Genesis xxviii., 
 20-22). Language of this kind evinces not only a temporary 
 want of faith in God, but it shows that the conception of God 
 had not yet acquired that complete universality which alone 
 deserves to be called monotheism, or belief in one God. * * * 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 477 
 
 And yet this limited faith in Jehovah as the God of the 
 Jews, as a God more powerful than the gods of the heathen, 
 as a God above all gods, betrays itself again and again in the 
 history of the Jews. The idea of many gods is there, and 
 wherever that idea exists, wherever the plural of god is used 
 in earnest, there is polytheism." 
 
 Now, after these evidences of the narrow personal idea 
 which the Jews had of divine unity, how does Mr. Miiller 
 enlighten us with regard to that pure original monotheism 
 from which he seems to regard all forms of polytheism as a 
 retrogression ? How does he introduce to the minds of his 
 readers that stupendous event when the ruler of the universe 
 came " face to face " with a certain man and revealed him- 
 self unto him, establishing a knowledge of God among men? 
 It is in these words : " And if we are asked how this one 
 Abraham possessed not only the primitive intuition of God 
 as he had revealed himself to all mankind, but passed through 
 the denial of all other gods to the knowledge of the one God, 
 we are content to answer that it was by a special Divine 
 Revelation. We do not indulge in theological phraseology, 
 but we mean every word to its fullest extent. The Father 
 of Truth chooses his own prophets, and he speaks to them 
 in a voice stronger than the voice of thunder." 
 
 Before closing his argument, however, Mr. Miiller seems 
 to have a craving for a logical or philological basis for mono- 
 theism. 
 
 The theory of a " Special Revelation to Abraham " does 
 not seem to quite satisfy him, so he suggests also a natural 
 way by which Abraham attained his idea of one God ; which 
 is not unlike the intellectual procedures observed through- 
 out the history of philosophy, tending to the reduction of 
 the categories of thought to a single principle. " Whatever 
 the names of the Elohim worshipped by the numerous clans 
 of his race, Abraham saw that all the Elohim were meant 
 for God, and thus Elohim, comprehending by one name 
 every thing that ever had been or could be called divine, 
 became the name with which the monotheistic age was 
 
4/3 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rightly inaugurated, a plural conceived and constructed 
 as a singular. Jehovah was all the Elohim, and therefore 
 there could be no other God. From this point of view, 
 the Semitic name of the Deity, Elohim, which seemed at 
 first not only ungrammatical but irrational, becomes per- 
 fectly clear and intelligible, and it proves better than any 
 thing else that the true monotheism could not have risen 
 except on the ruins of a polytheistic faith." 1 
 
 Mr. Miiller leaves it to his readers to identify the " ruins 
 of a polytheistic faith " and a " Special Divine Revelation 
 to Abraham," as the sources of monotheism, and the knowl- 
 edge of the true God. Any confusion which these widely 
 differing sources of the same event might give rise to would 
 probably be removed by declaring that Abraham kept 
 the knowledge of the true God to himself, and that mono- 
 theism has been a divinely inspired effort of humanity to 
 share it with him. We think, on the whole, we should pre- 
 fer M. Kenan's interpretation of the origins of our belief in 
 One God ; for, although it deprives human history of some 
 of its grandest outlooks, it certainly leaves us on much bet- 
 ter terms with the great father of the Hebrews. 
 
 After all, is there any necessity for these forced explana- 
 tions of the monotheism of the Jews? Does not this dis- 
 pute between two of the greatest scholars of our century 
 illustrate the futility of the attempt which they both make ? 
 Would it not be well to remind these learned gentlemen 
 that when it is found impossible to explain a supposed fact 
 by natural causes, the fact itself is impeached and must be 
 examined? M. Renan very naturally asks: How could a 
 civilization like that of Israel, which was confessedly inferior 
 to almost all the other civilizations of antiquity in every 
 thing excepting one phase of religious belief, how could 
 a Semitic people, who, " compared with the Aryan nations, 
 were deficient in scientific and philosophic originality," 
 whose " poetry never rose above the lyrical and was with- 
 out excellence in epic and dramatic composition," whose 
 
 1 " Chips from a German Workshop," vol. I., Semitic Monotheism. 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 479 
 
 " art had never gone beyond the decorative stage/' whose: 
 political life had remained " patriarchal and despotic," whose 
 " incapacity for organization on a large scale has deprived 
 them of the power of empire," whose " inability to perceive 
 the general and the abstract, whether in thought, language, 
 religion, poetry, or politics," limited their horizon to the 
 individual or personal, how could this people bequeath to 
 the world a perfect religious ideal or truth ? 
 
 This is indeed a question worth considering, and the 
 simplest answer to it is, that Israel has done nothing of the 
 kind. This nation has not bequeathed to humanity a 
 perfect religious ideal or truth ; and here the whole difficulty 
 ends. If the Christian religion is a generic development of 
 Judaism, it is certainly a digression from the alleged mono- 
 theism of Judaism ; for the doctrines of the Trinity and the 
 divinity of Christ are diametrically opposed to the belief in 
 one God, unless Christ and the Holy Ghost are acknowledged 
 to be but relative facts, or aspects of the universal principle 
 called God. The Christian metaphysicians have not as yet 
 advanced this theory, although there is no telling how soon 
 they may. 
 
 Israel, up to the establishment of Judaism proper (about 550- 
 B.C.), worshipped the God of Abraham, but its ideas of this 
 God are not to be compared to those which Christendom has 
 formed of him. Judaism presents, if possible, a still lower 
 conception of God, correct in a numerical sense, but utterly 
 unworthy in every other. To Greece and Egypt, to Persia 
 and India, and even to Rome, we owe much of our knowl- 
 edge of God. If we will acknowledge the insensible in- 
 fluences of races upon one another, we shall see that the 
 growing conception of divine unity is the product of past 
 civilizations, and that it finds expression in the actions as 
 well as the words of men. Hence, although we are indebted 
 to Israel for faithfulness to the conception of One God, we 
 cannot forget the ingrained selfishness and narrowness which 
 their concrete conception of a personal God has bequeathed 
 to our civilization. In vain the voice of Xenophanes, six 
 
4^0 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 hundred years before our era, protested against this anthropo- 
 morphism. In vain the dialectics of Plato, and Kant, and 
 Hegel have tried to dissolve this materialism from our 
 minds. From one reaction to another the progress of 
 knowledge has made its way ; and if we are to become con- 
 scious of a divine unity, it is not by ascribing a supernatural 
 influence to one class of the many progenitors of our culture, 
 but by recognizing in our beliefs the varied and combined 
 influences of an immeasurable antiquity. 
 
 The history of the Hebrews is instructive when studied 
 as a part of the general progress of humanity. Relieved 
 from superstition, the narrative has a peculiar charm in the 
 Christian languages ; for in its simple events we see the 
 origin of countless metaphors by which we express our 
 highest emotions. A literature " sparkling with originality " 
 and possessing all the charms of a young and earnest life, is 
 surely entitled to rank with the classics of other nations. 
 We should regard, then, all forced interpretations of Hebrew 
 lore as impediments to a true understanding of its value. 
 None of the sacred compositions of the world, excepting the 
 Koran, appeared at first in writing. A searching criticism 
 has long since established the fact that the documents which 
 serve as the basis of the history of the Jews, and especially 
 the five oldest portions of their annals which we are in the 
 habit of grouping together as the Pentateuch, were formed 
 by collecting historical fragments of diverse authorship. 1 
 
 These fragments of history were handed down as oral 
 tradition until about the eighth century before our era, 
 when they were reduced to the definite form in which we 
 know them. This fact has been discerned by the discovery, 
 side by side with the ancient fragments, of more modern 
 pieces, to which very different principles of criticism must 
 be applied. 
 
 Renan tells us that Hebrew history has passed through 
 analogous stages with that of Arabia. " Deuteronomy pre- 
 sents to us the history at its last period, worked over with a 
 
 1 This theory has been adopted by all the enlightened critics of Germany. 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 481 
 
 rhetorical intention, the narrator proposing not merely to 
 recount, but to edify. The four preceding books disclose 
 visibly the seams of older fragments, set together in a con- 
 nected text, but not assimilated. We may differ as to the 
 division of the parts, as to the number and character of the 
 successive editions ; and it must be confessed that M. Ewald, 
 in aiming at an unattainable exactness on all these points, 
 has passed the limits which severe criticism should impose 
 on itself ; but we can no longer be in doubt in regard to 
 the process which brought the Pentateuch and the Book 
 of Joshua to their final state. It is clear that a 'Jeho- 
 vistic ' editor that is, one who in his narration used the 
 name Jehovah has given the last form to this grand his- 
 toric work, taking for the basis of it an Elohistic writing, 
 a writing, that is, in which God is designated by the 
 word Elohim, the essential parts of which may even now 
 be reconstructed. 
 
 " As to the opinion which ascribes the editing of the Pen- 
 tateuch to Moses, it is outside of criticism, and we have 
 nothing to do with its discussion ; moreover, this opinion 
 seems to be quite modern, and it is very certain that the 
 ancient Hebrews never thought of regarding their legisla- 
 tor as an historian. The stories of the old times appeared 
 to them absolutely impersonal ; they attached to them the 
 name of no author." 
 
 This analysis of the Pentateuch, which agrees substanti- 
 ally with every thing that is regarded by scholars as 
 authoritative upon the subject, shows us how primitive is 
 the Christian idea of the first five books of the Bible. The 
 most striking feature of the question is, that there is hardly 
 a well-read priest or minister among us, who is not perfectly 
 familiar with these results of modern historic criticism. 
 
 The annals of the Judges, the Kings, and of the Captivity 
 as far as Alexander, bring us to the confines of modern his- 
 tory. " No people can boast of so complete a body of 
 history, or archives so regularly kept." 
 
 'Renan : " The History of the People of Israel." 
 
482 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The best authorities agree that Abraham was an Arab 
 sheik, of a type which is common at the present day. 
 Some writers regard him as a distinct historical character, 
 while others incline to the view that he is but a repre- 
 sentative man who figures in tradition as an individual. 
 There are many reasons for believing that the art of writ- 
 ing was not employed among the Jews until the time of 
 Moses, and that it did not become sufficiently general to 
 inaugurate any important literary or historical movement 
 until the reign of Solomon, which was the time of the 
 greatest literary activity among the Hebrews. It is to be 
 remembered, however, that this Hebrew literature, from 
 every point of view, was of the most primitive character. 
 Such was the destruction of the Jewish state, at the time 
 of the Babylonian captivity, that only a few fragments of 
 this literature have reached us. These are the Song of 
 Songs, the Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Proverbs. 
 
 The traditions of Israel attribute to Abraham the begin- 
 ning of their knowledge of the true God. So prominent 
 has this idea become, that one naturally looks for some 
 mark of this knowledge which shall distinguish it from the 
 many conceptions of a supreme being which we find among 
 other nations. The chief characteristic of Abraham's con- 
 ception of God is that of the father of a tribe or family ; or, 
 in other words, this conception was merely an enlargement 
 of his own existence. God, to him, was a friend, a friend 
 of his friends, and an enemy of his enemies. Abraham sup- 
 plies us with no cosmogony ; his God is in no sense the God 
 of nature. He abruptly introduces us to his family and tribal 
 affairs as pictured in his relations with the Deity. Far from 
 being the historical beginning of the Semitic race, Abraham's 
 was one of many Arab tribes occupying the country extend- 
 ing from their ancient home in Chaldea to the borders of 
 Egypt. The simple life of these Arab tribes bears evidence 
 of being of a great antiquity. When Abraham meets Mel- 
 chisedec, we find him belonging to a confederation of Arab 
 tribes of which Melchisedec was a sort of arbitrator, or pas- 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 483 
 
 toral governor, exercising judicial powers and exacting trib- 
 ute. The name Melchisedec means King of Justice, and 
 his title, King of Salem, means King of Peace. 
 
 Abraham met Melchisedec on his return from the success- 
 ful pursuit of Chedorlaomer and his allies, which he had 
 undertaken for the rescue of Lot's wife. Abraham gave 
 him tithes of all the spoils, thus acknowledging his official 
 superiority. The Jewish traveller, Wolff, states that " in 
 Mesopotamia a similar custom prevails at the present time. 
 One sheik is selected from the rest on account of his superior 
 probity and piety, and becomes their ' King of Peace and 
 Righteousness.' * * * This ' King of Justice and Peace ' 
 gave refreshments to Abraham and his followers after the 
 battle, ' blessing him in the name of the Most High God/ 
 of whom Abraham recognized him as a true priest." 
 
 Thus we see that the knowledge of the true God, which is so 
 devoutly believed to have been a special revelation to Abraham, 
 was shared by a number of Bedouin tribes, to whom Mel- 
 chisedec was both High-Priest and Judge. When to this is 
 added the well-known fact that the Assyrians, Babylonians, 
 Phoenicians, and Carthaginians all possessed religions almost 
 identical with that of the Jews, worshipping a supreme being 
 under the various names Ilu, Bel, Set, Hadad, Moloch, 
 Chemosh, Jaoh, El, Adon, Asshur, 1 the originality of Juda- 
 ism, or the "purity " of its monotheism, becomes more and 
 more doubtful. 
 
 It is supposed that Abraham settled in Canaan (Palestine), 
 about 2000 B.C., from Mesopotamia beyond the Euphrates. 
 The term Hebrew is said to have been given these settlers 
 by the Canaanites. Whatever meaning attached to the 
 word Hebrew before the time of Jacob, it appears afterward 
 to have been applied to his descendants exclusively. The 
 story of the entry of the Israelites into Egypt, their settle- 
 ment there, their gradual enslavement by the Pharaohs, and. 
 their exodus under the leadership of Moses, is susceptible of 
 
 1 Milman : " History of the Jews," vol. II., p. 417. McClintock and Strong, 
 vol. IV. 
 
484 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a perfectly natural interpretation. The chief wonder is, how 
 these events, so simple and unobtrusive when compared with 
 the general history of the times, should have acquired so 
 important a place in our retrospect of antiquity. The 
 wonder ceases, however, when we remember that until quite 
 recently our knowledge of antiquity has been principally 
 limited to the Hebrew scriptures. 
 
 The great fault in studying Hebrew history is in regarding 
 the Israelites as a formed nation at the time of Moses. It 
 was not until long after this that the national life really 
 began. Their life under Moses had been the first to awaken 
 the feeling of solidarity among the tribes which afterward 
 constituted the nation ; but this feeling took no decided 
 form until the conquest of Palestine proper, and then, strange 
 to say, it gradually disappeared. The national unity of 
 Israel was based upon a common religious belief or govern- 
 ment which, although it has received the name of Theocracy, 
 was simply that primitive form of organization which is 
 found in all the early civilizations. The tribal faith was 
 summed up in the formula " Jehovah is the God of Israel, 
 and Israel is the people of Jehovah." The spirit of nation- 
 ality among the Jews never developed much beyond this 
 primitive form of religious unity, the most feeble type of 
 political life. The cause of this suspension of national 
 development is certainly one of the most interesting ques- 
 tions of sociology. From what Dean Stanley calls the 
 Mosaic Revelation dates the establishment of the "Jewish 
 Theocracy, the government by God, as well as his worship." 
 This simply means that the tribal leader Moses legislated 
 and taught under the form of a divine authority ; and when 
 we remember to what a recent date the belief in the divine 
 right of rulers prevailed among us, it is easy to understand 
 how the course adopted by Moses might have been the only 
 practical one at the time. 
 
 The heroic age of Hebrew history, beginning after the 
 death of Joshua, the successor of Moses, was barbaric from 
 every point of view. The land of Palestine was divided 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 485 
 
 among the tribes which, as a body of warrior shepherds, had 
 invaded Canaan. In the measure in which they conquered 
 the Canaanite cities and passed on to agriculture, they left 
 tent life for fixed abodes. They believed in the direct action 
 of Yahveh. The Judges, who had administrative as well as 
 judicial powers, gave their judgments always in the name of 
 God, or Yahveh. They had no fixed sanctuary. They sac- 
 rificed on altars of unhewn stone wherever they saw fit. 
 " Human sacrifices were rare, but especially meritorious." 
 Yahveh worship was not without its images, sacred stones, 
 and trees. " The sanctuaries of the Canaanites were often 
 resorted to." The ark, the moving sanctuary of the time of 
 wandering, with its tablets of stone, was held in superstitious 
 reverence. The priests, besides managing the worship, were 
 soothsayers. Private people took omens. Divi-ning was 
 done by means of " holy lots," or of teraphim. The ecstatic 
 prophecy of the Canaanites was imitated. The armies were 
 held together by " vows," commanded by the " strongest 
 men," and disbanded at the death of the leaders, the Elders 
 commanding the contingents, which were kept separate. 
 They had neither the horsemen nor the chariots of their 
 more civilized neighbors. Writing had scarcely passed 
 beyond " cutting on wood and stone." It was not until the 
 end of this period that the code was reduced to writing, 
 probably in archaic Phoenician characters. There was no 
 permanent union of the tribes. " In times of danger, 
 valiant men occasionally succeeded in getting together their 
 own and perhaps one or more neighboring tribes for common 
 resistance, and the authority thus gained would sometimes 
 pass to their sons within the tribe." ' The dialects used 
 varied between the tribes, and gesture-language was often 
 resorted to. The possession of the Promised Land by the 
 tribes was largely theoretical, however much Yahveh is sup- 
 posed to have supported them. The Midianites, who have 
 their prototype in the Bedouin Arabs of the present day, 
 
 1 For above facts, see Spencer's " Descriptive Sociology, "book VII., Hebrews 
 and Phoenicians. 
 
486 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 were in the habit of making marauding expeditions from the 
 desert, " leaving no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor 
 ox, nor ass.'* Only in the mountain strongholds, in dens 
 and caves among the hills, could the people preserve their 
 lives and the produce of their fields. Gideon, who makes 
 his appearance in history " threshing wheat by the wine-press 
 to hide it from the Midianites," by his valor and military 
 genius rids the country from these invaders for a period of 
 forty years, driving them back into the Syrian desert. The 
 deep interest which God took in these battles is well under- 
 stood by the Christian world. 
 
 When Jephthah, the natural son of Gilead, was driven 
 from home by his brothers, he became a successful brigand, 
 " a profession not destitute of honor in the East, if practised 
 in moderation and against national enemies." He was 
 chosen captain of the Israelitish forces in their opposition to 
 the Ammonites. He distinguished himself for diplomacy 
 and generalship, and was one of the greatest of the Judges, 
 because most successful in resisting the enemies of the tribes 
 of Israel. The compact which he made with God to sacrifice 
 the first innocent person who might come out of his house 
 to meet him, on condition that the Lord would help him to 
 slay the Ammonites, has become historical because the evil 
 fate fell upon his daughter. What can be clearer to the 
 Christian mind than the joy of the Lord upon the fulfilment 
 of Jephthah's vow, unless it is the satisfaction which the 
 Deity experienced at the human sacrifice offered on Calvary, 
 when, according to our illustrious scheme of salvation, the 
 sins of humanity were atoned for by the blood of Christ? 
 
 The respective pictures of Deborah uttering her judicial 
 oracles from her tent under a palm-tree in Mt. Ephraim, and 
 the natural statesman and patriot Samuel yielding at last to 
 the wish of the people to exchange the tribe-life, or Theo- 
 cratic Rule (?), for a more united and stable form of 
 government by nominating a king, open and close the 
 Heroic period, known as the time of the Judges. Then we 
 have the reign of Saul, with its comparative success over the 
 
THE HEBREW RELIGION. 487 
 
 Philistines and the other enemies of Israel ; the conspiracy 
 of David, the genius of his rule, and the splendid failure of 
 Solomon, who impoverished the nation by his extravagances. 
 Then comes the period of the two kingdoms (about two 
 hundred and fifty years), during which nineteen dynasties 
 reigned in Israel, " few of whom succeeded to the throne 
 excepting by the murder of their predecessors." During 
 this period there is a succession of bloody civil wars, in which 
 Jehovah is made to take an active interest. The "will of 
 God " is represented by a line of Prophets, inaugurated by 
 Samuel, who seem to have derived their policy from the tra- 
 ditions of the tribal life or the theocratic regime established 
 by Moses. They seem to have been utterly unable to keep 
 the people from the grosser forms of nature and image-wor- 
 ship ; and the God of Israel as defined by these prophets is 
 systematically neglected. There is no doubt that the moral 
 influence of Moses and Samuel gives to the teachings of the 
 prophets a certain dignity and purity, but it is also clear that 
 the religions of surrounding nations which the prophets 
 characterized as heathen are not fairly judged in the Hebrew 
 scriptures ; for when we approach these religions through 
 other sources w r e find that they contain a great deal that is 
 good, and that on the whole they compare very favorably 
 with the faith of the Hebrews. 
 
 All accounts agree that the Canaanites were far more civil- 
 ized than the invading Hebrews ; and we risk but little in 
 supposing that the gods they worshipped were as humane 
 and just as the God of Israel. 
 
 To follow the history of this remarkable people through 
 their four great captivities, their brief independence, and their 
 final absorption into the Roman Empire, would throw but 
 little additional light upon the origin of our religious beliefs. 
 When Alexander the Great, however, carried one hundred 
 thousand of the inhabitants of Jerusalem captive to Alex- 
 andria, an epoch of Hebrew culture began which accounts 
 almost entirely for the form Christianity has taken. Many 
 of the early Christian writers were these learned Israelites of 
 
488 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Alexandria. To their speculative genius the elaborate creed 
 of the Gnostics is due, and it is to their religious thought 
 and feeling that we owe the fervent spirit of Judaism which 
 breathes throughout our civilization. 
 
 One of the best reasons for supposing that the Christian 
 civilization will be ranked as barbarous by the historians of 
 future races is the character of our sacred books. How it is 
 possible for us to believe that " the Jews were the people of 
 God," in the sense in which we use the word, or that the 
 Jewish conception of God was ever an exalted one, is as 
 great a mystery as that we should regard the Hebrew 
 scriptures with superstitious reverence, or as in any sense 
 divine. 
 
 For an understanding of these anomalies of religious 
 belief we must look to the study of the origins of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 
 
 The Origin of the Faith The Doctrines of Jesus A Glance at the Present 
 State of Christianity in America. 
 
 THERE is a painting by Munkacsy called Christ Before 
 Pilate, which gives at a glance a more truthful conception of 
 the origin of Christianity than we might be enabled to form 
 by years of careful study. All the minute researches of the 
 great German theologians and religious historians of the 
 present century, which have done so much to distinguish for 
 us the historical from the ideal Christ, the critical studies of 
 Renan, the scholarly and eminently devout treatment of the 
 subject which such men as Channing, Parker, Frothingham, 
 Clarke, and Emerson have advanced, all this great and good 
 effort to dispel the fictions and still retain for the world the 
 inspiration of Christianity has been voiced in this striking 
 picture. Confronting the Roman Judge, calm, thoughtful, 
 and determined, with blanched and even haggard face, a 
 coarse, uncouth dress, surrounded by clamorous adversaries 
 representing the different classes of the Jews of Palestine, 
 this man of Galilee awaits his fate. There is nothing ideal 
 about the picture. It carries us back to the event itself, and, 
 banishing for the instant the accumulations of superstition 
 through which we are accustomed to view it, gives us a 
 glimpse, startling but true, of what actually took place. 
 
 The art of the world has done its best to portray Jesus. 
 The resources of the human face have been exhausted to find 
 expressions of benignity, moral power, and sweetness, and all 
 the nobler attributes of manhood, in trying to do justice to. 
 
 489 
 
49 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the portraits, real and ideal, of this great man. This artist 
 simply tried to tell the truth, and has surpassed them all. 
 
 Jesus as a man is immeasurably grander than as a God. 
 As a God, faith in him is so unnatural that it cannot be 
 reconciled with the better views of history, of science, and 
 of life ; but as a man he is one of the most commanding per- 
 sonages of our race. 
 
 When we criticise the writings which describe the life of 
 Jesus, our object is not to decide whether Christ was God, 
 but whether Jesus thotight that he was God, and what concep- 
 tion of Deity was possible to him. His education, his social 
 and moral surroundings, the ideals of the civilization to which 
 he belonged, were all factors in the conception which he 
 formed of God. His moral worth can only be estimated by 
 considering the time and circumstances of his life. Moral 
 character consists in an individual's relations to actual sur- 
 roundings. These surroundings are factors in his life, and 
 largely determine its quality. Many of the principles of so- 
 cial reform promulgated by the hero of the Gospels would 
 have been entirely out of place in such mature civilizations as 
 those of China, India, or Egypt, in the time of Jesus ; and they 
 have since been demonstrated to be utterly impracticable in 
 any civilization. But the ideals of personal purity which Jesus 
 advocated were based on a clearer and better view of life. 
 They had been taught in other nations ages before the time 
 of Jesus, and have invariably been found practical and benefi- 
 cent. There is every evidence which a sincere inquiry can 
 demand that the conception which Jesus formed of God was 
 cast in the mould of Israelitish thought and feeling, and was 
 an inevitable consequence of the circumstances and history 
 of his race. God to him was a person, not a principle. His 
 mind had been little exercised in those methodical classifica- 
 tions which the thoughtful in Egypt, Greece, and other na- 
 tions had carried to such perfection, and which constitute the 
 germ of modern science. Jesus was not only entirely uncon- 
 scious of the vast achievements of Greek culture, but he was 
 ignorant of the only truly liberal Jewish culture of his own 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 491 
 
 time. The beautiful philosophic essays of Philo, his contem- 
 porary, a representative Jew of Alexandria, in which we find 
 many moral and religious precepts at least equal in value to 
 the teachings of the Nazarene, were not only unknown to 
 Jesus, but belonged to a body of learning which was strictly 
 interdicted by the religious authorities of Palestine. The 
 virtues which we so much admire in the character of Jesus : 
 his deep-laid moral purpose, coming as it did from an earnest 
 and sincere nature, in which there is a constant play of the 
 broadest and most delicate human sympathies ; his patience 
 and cheerfulness under the hardships of poverty ; his stern 
 opposition to the hollowness and hypocrisy of the established 
 religion of his time, were not original with him, but had been 
 set as an example to the Jews by Hillel, the moralist and re- 
 former of fifty years before, who promulgated maxims which 
 correspond, to a marvellous extent, with the best teachings of 
 Jesus. 
 
 The atmosphere in which Jesus lived was charged with 
 mysteries and superstitions. His crushed race, unable to 
 maintain independence among the stronger nations sur- 
 rounding it, gave vent to pent-up feelings of sorrow and 
 vague hope by forming a religion which has few parallels in 
 history for passionate imagery and sublime selfishness. Ju- 
 daism is the religion of a race whose destiny is held to be of 
 much greater importance than that of the rest of humanity, 
 whose God is not only exclusive, but the violent enemy of 
 all other nations who for any reason oppose the Hebrews. 
 The canons of the sacred books of this religion were wrought 
 into a vast allegory, fantastic, provincial, unenlightened, and 
 breathing throughout a longing for some physical deliverer 
 who should re-establish the Jewish state and give to the 
 nation another lease of independence. That Jesus was not 
 unaffected by these longings for a national deliverer is 
 manifested in his life and teachings, as far as they can be 
 discerned through the mists which surround them. The im- 
 passioned dreams and eloquence of the prophets, the legends, 
 .such as the Book of Daniel, which professes to see in the rise 
 
492 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and fall of empires but movements in a great drama which 
 was being performed for the exclusive benefit of the Jews, 
 cannot but have inspired him with that Semitic dream of 
 dominion called the kingdom of God. 
 
 The countrymen of Jesus were continually looking forward 
 to a universal catastrophe, in which their deliverance was to 
 be the central figure. Nothing was lacking in the details 
 which their imaginations bestowed upon this looked-for 
 event. The most gorgeous cosmical phenomena were to ac- 
 company it, and to the mind of Jesus this programme, with all 
 its marvellous superstitions, appeared simple and natural. 
 " The earth to him appears still to be divided into kingdoms 
 which were at war ; he seems to be ignorant of the ' Roman 
 peace ' and the new state of society which his century inaugu- 
 rated. He had no precise idea of the Roman power ; the 
 name of l Caesar ' alone had reached him. He saw the build- 
 ing, in Galilee or its environs, of Tiberias, Julius, Diocesarea, 
 and Cesarea, pompous works of the Herods, who sought by 
 these magnificent constructions to prove their admiration for 
 Roman civilization and their devotion to the members of the 
 family of Augustus, whose names, by a freak of fate, serve 
 to-day, grotesquely mutilated, to designate the wretched 
 hamlets of the Bedouins. * * * But this luxury of power, this 
 governmental and official art, was displeasing to him. What 
 he loved was his Galilean villages, confused medleys of 
 cabins, of threshing-floors and wine-presses cut in the rock, 
 of wells and tombs, of fig and olive trees. He always con- 
 tinued near to nature. The court of the kings seemed to 
 him a place where people wear fine clothes. The charming 
 impossibilities with which his parables swarm when he 
 puts kings and mighty men upon the scene prove that he 
 had no conception of aristocratic society save that of a 
 young villager who sees the world through the prism of his 
 own simplicity." * 
 
 The idea of immortality, as we use the word, was first 
 developed in Egypt. It was for a long time a stranger in 
 
 1 Renan : " Life of Jesus, " pp. 78, 79. 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 493 
 
 Palestine. Future life to the early Jews was the projection 
 of their natural life, just as to the man of science and phi- 
 losophy, future existence is the life of the human family 
 passing through its generations. The ancient Hebrew writ- 
 ings contain no trace of future rewards and punishments. 
 In the time of Jesus Judaism had its Sadducees, who main- 
 tained the old belief in the identity of body and soul, and 
 the Pharisees, who believed that the just would live again. 
 Between these parties or sects there was a controversy as to 
 the correct principle of immortality, the one teaching that 
 virtue should be its own reward, and the other that the soul 
 is immortal in order that it may be rewarded or punished. 
 The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, as it is now 
 generally held by the different Christian sects, did not exist 
 among the Jews of the time of Jesus, but was an outgrowth 
 of the Pharisaic idea of the resurrection ; the theory of the 
 return of the just to Abraham's bosom, and of the New 
 Jerusalem, with all its minute plans, varying from a re- 
 organization of the nations of the world into a Jewish 
 kingdom of God, to a new world which was to follow a 
 season of universal wrath and destruction. It was a con- 
 firmed habit of the Jews of Palestine to torture the simple 
 narratives of the old Hebrew scriptures, in order to make 
 them yield all sorts of predictions concerning their race. 
 Messianism was the pre-occupying subject of the national 
 mind. The great principles of history were but poorly 
 appreciated, if understood at all, by the Jews of the time of 
 Jesus ; and yet we are confronted with the unwelcome but 
 incontrovertible fact, that their insufficient theories of life 
 form the groundwork of nearly all of our religious con- 
 ceptions. Into this narrow mould of Hebrew thought and 
 feeling the minds and characters of millions of our fellow- 
 countrymen are yearly cast, which accounts for much of the 
 moral and intellectual imbecility which we see about us. 
 Still we continue to teach the pernicious doctrine of future 
 rewards and punishments as an incentive for virtue ; still we 
 detract from the awful responsibilities, the high privileges of 
 
494 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the hour, by promising a future life which we are unable 
 even to describe ; still we advocate a philosophy of history 
 which represents all human events as the play of a divine 
 will (formed on the plan of human volition, with the differ- 
 ence that it feels no need of justifying itself). 
 
 Is it because the great Galilean taught us some precious 
 moral precepts that we feel bound to transplant the whole 
 genius of an undeveloped and benighted race into our new 
 civilization of humanity ? This exotic is so ill-suited to our 
 surroundings, so out of sympathy with the dearly-bought 
 experiences of our people, so unable to supply us with any 
 adequate principles of life, that our nation in the first flush of 
 youth is already showing startling symptoms of moral decay. 
 If we would see this disease fastened upon us, let us continue 
 to instil into American minds the pitiful views of life which 
 were dominant in Palestine during the first century of our 
 era, and which were largely assimilated by the mind of Jesus. 
 
 In order to distinguish Jesus from others of the same 
 name, he was called the son of Mary. His widowed mother, 
 soon after her husband's death, moved to Cana, a small town 
 about eight miles from Nazareth. Here Jesus plied the 
 trade of carpenter during his youth, and gradually developed 
 that character which afterward made him one of the greatest 
 of moral reformers ; great because his teachings have influ- 
 enced a vast civilization, although they contain nothing 
 either purer or higher than had been taught before. The 
 sublime earnestness and courage of the young prophet, 
 the pathos of his teachings, strongly appealed to the sim- 
 ple-minded people who flocked about him. His life and 
 sentiments have been made the beginning of a religion of 
 humanity, for this is what Christianity has tried to become. 
 Jesus lived in a time of moral reformers and prophets, and 
 belonged to a nation that had been accustomed to look for 
 its higher instruction to this class of men. Hillel will never 
 be considered the real founder of Christianity ; but he enun- 
 ciated aphorisms as lofty and pure as any to be found in 
 the Gospels. The great principles which Judaism had estab- 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 495 
 
 lished concerning " alms, piety, good works, gentleness, the 
 desire of peace, complete disinterestedness of heart," have 
 but been revived in Christianity. Jesus the son of Sirach, 
 Schemai'a, Abtalion, Schammai, Juda the Gaulonite, and 
 Gamaliel, were also prophets of the same people at nearly 
 the same time ; and their teachings, which constitute in great 
 part the Talmud, are incontestably of the highest moral 
 excellence. Jesus, therefore, was literally surrounded by 
 examples of the very life which he afterward chose. Going 
 about preaching to the multitude was not an innovation, but 
 a common practice, in his country and time. The idea of 
 the kingdom of God, which seems to have been the ruling 
 one of Jesus' life, is explained by him in many conflicting 
 ways. In no sense was it a clear and consistent conception. 
 The details change from time to time until it becomes im- 
 possible to fix upon more than the vaguest principles which 
 are common to all his descriptions of this ideal state. The 
 ruling sentiment in these descriptions seems to be a complete 
 subversion of the existing order of nature and society : the 
 first shall be last ; the poor shall inherit the earth. At all 
 events, the dream was Utopian, ideal in the extreme. The 
 shape that it took varied from that of a democracy, from 
 which all forms of authority and luxury were abolished, to a 
 kingdom of souls, whose only activity was to be the worship 
 of the Father. It is easy to read in these ideas of Jesus the 
 influence of his surroundings, the ominous Roman power 
 which he only partially comprehended, and to which he ren- 
 dered a disdainful submission ; the confusion in his mind of 
 the pastoral simplicity of the Galilean life with all virtuous 
 existence ; and the confusion also of governmental discipline, 
 of which he seems to have had but the crudest conceptions, 
 with wickedness and enmity to the power of God. Far 
 from appreciating the true sources of morality, Jesus taught 
 that this life was ordered by Satan, and that all its conditions 
 must change before the " children of heaven " could regard 
 it otherwise than as a tiresome ordeal. No thought of re- 
 generating the world through natural and existing agencies 
 
496 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 'occurred to his mind. And, above all, there was not the 
 remotest appreciation of the fact that the feelings of love, 
 humanity, and justice, with which his pure soul was overflow- 
 ing, were as natural as the other beauties of nature which he 
 never ceased to admire. What could have convinced Jesus, 
 for instance, that the power of political organization, for 
 which he had so unfeigned a contempt, was merely a higher 
 phase of the very restraints which gave him control over his 
 own passions ? What could have convinced him that the 
 God whom he so sincerely imagined that he represented was 
 not a person full of the same emotions which he experienced, 
 but the principle of universal life ? What would have con- 
 vinced him that the drama of life which he saw from afar, 
 ignorant of its past, unconscious of its extent, was but the 
 passing procession of a universal empire of cause and effect ? 
 How narrow his conception of God, of life, of eternity! 
 How utterly unable was he to teach, excepting in the most 
 indirect manner, those civilizations which were contempo- 
 raneous with him, and which stretched far beyond the range 
 of his knowledge ! How much less able is he to instruct us 
 who live in a vastly more complicated world ; who know 
 that love is not so high a sentiment as that of humanity, nor 
 humanity, as that of justice ; who know that lives which 
 represent vast power of rank, of wealth, or of knowledge, 
 can be sublimely virtuous, touchingly humane, -supremely 
 just ; who know that submission to unjust political power is 
 not a virtue, but a crime ; who would scorn to pay to Caesar 
 his tribute, had we no voice in the imposition ; who, if we 
 are unjustly deprived of our coat, have no idea of enriching 
 the plunderer with another garment ; who, if we are struck 
 upon the right cheek, would straightway resist the assault 
 under the divine right of self-protection ; who, in a word, 
 see no virtue in a cringing humility which can come only 
 from a crushed political existence in which all natural feel- 
 ings of independence have to be exercised in an ideal world, 
 or postponed until a supernatural catastrophe inverts all 
 known relations. The gospel of Jesus is pathetic, when we 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 497 
 
 consider the conditions of its birth ; but it is uninspiring to 
 our age, it is contradicted in the lives of all men and women 
 who can be said to have formed a true conception of the 
 dignity, the opportunities, and the responsibilities of life. 
 
 Who can overestimate the baneful influences of that favor- 
 ite plea of Jesus that the world is on the point of coming to 
 an end ? Although much ingenuity has been displayed in 
 explaining away this prediction by those who have perceived 
 its absurdity, it rings throughout the entire gospels ; it opens 
 and closes the Apocalypse ; it is not only the leading belief 
 of the first Christian centuries, but it was almost their whole 
 belief ; and it is by far the most important tenet of the first 
 sixteen hundred years of the Christian church. The con- 
 flicting opinions as to the time at which Jesus said this event 
 would take place are all lost in his assertion. " There be 
 some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they 
 see the Son of man coming in his kingdom " ; " This genera- 
 tion shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled." 1 
 The source of this unmistakable belief can be traced to the 
 Jewish apocalyptic writings, upon which the overwrought 
 imaginations of the Hebrews of the century before Christ 
 had fed, until the whole nation lived in a morbidly unreal 
 world. The immediate consequences of this doctrine are to 
 be seen in the early Christian Apocrypha, which give us the 
 truest picture extant of the inward life of the new church. 
 These apocrypha were rejected by the Greek church at the 
 Council of Laodicea (A.D. 360), and since by all the Protes- 
 tant churches in England and America, excepting the Church 
 of England. They are too mystical and absurd to withstand 
 even the very pale light which has been allowed to enter our 
 sanctuaries. In repudiating this dream of Jesus, the Protes- 
 tant church has taken away the whole superstructure of his 
 teachings, and that which constituted the entire vitality of 
 Christianity during the first two Centuries of its existence. 
 
 1 Matt, xvi., 28 ; xxiii., 36, 39 ; xxiv., 34 ; Mark viii., 38 ; Luke ix., 27 ; 
 Tod., 32. See also Matt, x., 23 ; xxiv., xxv. entire ; Mark xiii., 30 ; Luke xiii., 
 .35 ; xxi., 28, ft seq.; Matt, xvi., 24 ; Luke xii., 54-56 ; John xxi., 22, 23. 
 
498 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Thus it is that the word Christianity has been made to do 
 service for all sorts of mutilated beliefs, until, in these days 
 of scientific and historical criticism, when culture and unbe- 
 lief have become convertible terms, we are calmly told that 
 Christianity does not necessarily imply a belief in the divin- 
 ity of Christ, a personal God, heaven or hell, baptism, the 
 scheme of salvation, or the sanctity of the church ; that Jesus 
 and his disciples, the early Fathers, all the Christian coun- 
 cils, the Bible, and every form of ecclesiastical authority, 
 were mistaken ; that they gave but symbolic utterances to 
 the great truths of a religion of humanity which is now 
 voiced in the language of science and thought ; that, had 
 all these mediums of Christian enunciation spoken more 
 plainly heretofore, they would not have been understood ; 
 but now that the world has been enlightened, Christianity 
 suffers nothing by accommodating itself to the latest in- 
 ductions of evolution, and by preaching not the gospel of 
 the Nazarene, but that of humanity. Whether this is an 
 utter rout of Christian dogma, or a disingenuous method of 
 retaining possession of the emoluments of a church after 
 renouncing its creed, we leave it to the fair-minded to judge. 
 Infinitely more respectable are those Christians who stand 
 or fall by an honest interpretation of the doctrines of Christ. 
 
 It is generally conceded that the beatitudes of Jesus con- 
 stitute the most beautiful part of his teachings. 1 The Lord's 
 prayer, which is a manifest attempt to generalize supplica- 
 tion, to rescue it from grovelling particulars by asking for as 
 little as possible in the briefest manner, is a production which 
 it is literally impossible for Christians to justly estimate ; 
 for to them it has a mystical holiness which makes it appear 
 profane to criticise it. 
 
 The solemn injunctions of the sermon on the mount, when 
 analyzed, give us but familiar maxims of practical life, a few 
 
 1 It might be mentioned here that the English version of the New Testament 
 has far more literary form and charm than the original Greek has. This fortu- 
 nate accident has made the King James version a considerably more important 
 book than the original. 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 499 
 
 moral precepts, and some absurdities of Jewish law : " Ye 
 are the salt of the earth : but if the salt have lost his 
 savour," etc. ; " Ye are the light of the world " ; " Let your 
 light so shine before men," etc. ; " Whosoever shall say [to 
 his brother], Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." Then 
 follows the beautiful injunction of forgiveness : " First be 
 reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." 
 "Agree with thine adversary," or avoid lawsuits. "Thou 
 shalt not commit adultery," ' either in mind or in act ; which 
 emphasizes the subtle relation between thought and action, 
 either for good or for evil, and is therefore a most valuable 
 ethical suggestion. " If thine eye offend thee pluck it 
 out. * * * If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast 
 it from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy 
 members should perish, and not that thy whole body should 
 be cast into hell." Some critics think that these injunctions 
 declare war against nature ; others, that they advocate a 
 rigid self-control. Then comes the declaration that divorce 
 from one's wife for any thing short of unfaithfulness is a 
 crime ; and again, " Whosoever shall marry her that is 
 divorced " also commits a crime. This is a social question 
 which has more than one side, and cannot be subjected to 
 any absolute rule without inflicting cruel injustice in some 
 cases. All oaths are said to be productive of evil. This is 
 also a question which has more than one side, and is open to 
 discussion. Then comes the command to suffer injustice 
 and injury without resistance ; which is so repugnant to our 
 ideas of duty that it finds no sincere adherents even among 
 the most devout Christians. The principle of forgiveness 
 and patience under trying circumstances, which we would 
 call making a virtue out of necessity, is beautifully expressed : 
 "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to 
 them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully 
 use you, and persecute you ; that ye may be the children of 
 your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun 
 to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
 
 1 See Matt. v. 
 
500 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 just and on the unjust." No one will deny that this spirit 
 can be exaggerated. The medium course, an equilibrium 
 between love and hate, aggressiveness and benevolence, 
 where both feelings are constantly under control, gives us 
 the best and most admirable characters. The injunction to 
 be modest in the exercise of virtues, not to advertise one's 
 own benevolence and piety, were canons of good taste in 
 ancient Egypt as they are in our own day. Our national 
 virtues of prudence and thrift, made necessary by our climate 
 and way of living, impel us to believe that to lay up no 
 treasures on earth would be a criminal neglect of our welfare 
 and that of others. We prefer to emulate the bee, not the 
 lily. 
 
 The great question of how much wealth an individual can 
 acquire without becoming immorally rich is one which we 
 are earnestly discussing, and which the sermon on the mount 
 has by no means settled. The virtue of singleness of pur- 
 pose, illustrated by the impossibility of " serving two mas- 
 ters " ; the injunction not to be hasty in judging others, but 
 rather to criticise ourselves, so aptly illustrated by the figure 
 of the mote in our brother's eye and the beam in our own ; 
 the invaluable advice not to " cast our pearls before swine," 
 are particles of knowledge which we have no difficulty in 
 recognizing as human. " Seek and ye shall find ; knock and 
 it shall be opened unto you," are encouragements to effort 
 expressed in general terms ; and the figure of the bread and 
 the stone, and the fish and the serpent, are particular in- 
 stances. " The strait and narrow way which leadeth unto 
 life," is a beautiful aphorism, reminding us that virtue is 
 attainable only by self-discipline or intelligent restraint. 
 The false prophet or preacher, whom we are to recognize 
 by attending to his conduct rather than to his words, is a 
 familiar character in modern life ; and the warning of Jesus 
 in this particular, so far as his own church is concerned, 
 is on an equality with any of the evidences of his prophetic 
 vision. 
 
 This memorable sermon closes with the parable of " a wise 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 5<DI 
 
 man, which built his house upon a rock " ; which reminds us 
 that the author of " Gesta Christi " has neglected to affirm 
 that the universal prevalence of this rule in architecture is a 
 direct consequence of Christianity. 
 
 To return to the Beatitudes. Who can resist their gentle 
 influence ? They call up our earliest recollections of purity 
 and holiness. They contain a mother's accents, the solemn 
 voice of a pastor, the vague impressions and charms of re- 
 ligious devotions. 
 
 " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is the kingdom 
 of heaven." " Blessed are they that mourn ; for they shall 
 be comforted." " Blessed are the meek ; for they shall in- 
 herit the earth." 
 
 The familiar melody of these words steals over the soul 
 like the music of the prayer in " Zampa," beguiling us away 
 from thought into a dream. Who will be cold enough to 
 measure their ethical value ? Let some one analyze these 
 sentences who has not been taught them by a Christian 
 mother; who has not suffered those terrible reactions to 
 which all thoughtful and earnest Christians of our time are 
 doomed. 
 
 A careful criticism of the New Testament by able and 
 conscientious scholars seems to have established the fact 
 that our knowledge of the life of Jesus rests principally 
 upon two original documents : first, his discourses collected 
 by the apostle Matthew ; second, the collection of the remi- 
 niscences of Peter concerning Jesus, which were transcribed 
 by Mark, who was a follower of Peter and had never seen 
 Jesus. The gospel of Luke is supposed to have been writ- 
 ten at the same time as the Acts of the Apostles, and by the 
 same author. This was soon after the siege of Jerusalem. 
 Clement of Rome, A.D. 100, and Justin Martyr, A.D. 139, 
 declare that Luke wrote under the general superintendence 
 of Paul, and all authorities agree that this gospel is a compi- 
 lation from anterior writings, and does not compare in 
 authority with that of Matthew or of Mark. With regard 
 to the gospel of John, suffice it to say that the best authori- 
 
502 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ties find many reasons for doubting its authenticity, so much 
 do the life and sayings of Jesus which it recounts differ 
 from those given in the synoptics. There is abundant mate- 
 rial in the other two gospels, however, to give us a clear idea 
 of the principal facts in the life of Jesus. 
 
 The greatest mistake that can be made in studying the 
 life of this great prophet is to attribute all that appears un- 
 natural and absurd in it, to mistakes or exaggerations in the 
 gospel narratives. It is quite common to hear people say 
 that Jesus never proclaimed himself God, in the sense in 
 which the Church uses the term ; that he never laid any 
 claim to supernatural powers, or made promises to his disci- 
 ples of position or power in heaven. In short, they reason 
 that, at all events, Jesus must have been an honest man, and 
 that because he was honest, he could not have done these 
 things ; therefore the accounts which declare that he did, are 
 false. Had Jesus lived in our time, these reasonings might 
 hold, but as he lived in an atmosphere of almost indescribable 
 ignorance and superstition, he believed many things about 
 himself which we are unable to understand, unless we enter 
 into his position, and remember the language, the literature, 
 the associations of his immediate people. 
 
 The narrative of the gospels, we are told by high authori- 
 ties, is substantially a true picture of what Jesus said, his 
 method of life and teaching, the people he associated with, 
 the places he visited, the claims he made for himself. The 
 miracles, of course, are fabulous, and are doubtless, in some 
 cases, attempts which Jesus made to exercise supernatural 
 or mystical powers which others would have persuaded him 
 that he possessed. The description which Renan gives of 
 the first converts which Jesus made among the fishermen of 
 Capernaum is a touching picture of the artless simplicity, 
 childlike ignorance, and admirable sincerity of a people who 
 were shut off from every means of enlightenment, and who 
 saw in the moral and humane purpose and the singularly 
 fascinating character of Jesus, what they were content to 
 believe was the realization of their national myth, the prom- 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 503 
 
 ised " Messiah," a prophet of God. We may look to the 
 Jewish sacred writings for the source of this belief ; for 
 those writings and the traditions of the Jews held a distinct 
 theory of a Messiah ; and once this Messiah was found, all 
 control over the credulity of the people was lost. Be- 
 tween the sacred writings, the traditions, and the words of 
 the Messiah himself, what theories about him could not be 
 advanced ? We are not surprised, therefore, to find Salome, 
 the mother of two of the disciples, taking Jesus aside and 
 inquiring about the places of honor that her sons were to 
 have in the kingdom of God ; nor that there were many and 
 bitter disputes among the disciples about the share of power 
 and glory which each was to enjoy when their master came 
 into power. The Christian church seems to have settled 
 these disputes among the disciples by assigning to each of; 
 the twelve a distinct standing and occupation. Was ever 
 such a picture of simplicity presented to the world (for th 
 foundation of a great religion), as a prophet decrying th 
 pride of the world and his most intimate pupils cultivating 
 the pride of heaven ! Does it not appear as though this 
 pride might be, after all, a very estimable sentiment, if sub- 
 jected to proper restraints ? 
 
 Nor was the kingdom of God merely a figure with Jesus. 
 He continually gave his disciples the most definite assurance 
 that they would sit near him on thrones, and govern the 
 twelve tribes of Israel in a kingdom which was soon to come 
 about. " The fundamental idea of Jesus was, from the first 
 day, the establishment of the kingdom of God. But this 
 kingdom of God, as we have already said, Jesus seems to 
 have understood in very different senses. At times he would 
 be taken for a democratic chief, desiring simply the reign of 
 the poor and the disinherited. At other times, the kingdom 
 of God is the literal accomplishment of the apocalyptic 
 visions of Daniel and Enoch. Often, finally, the kingdom of 
 God is the kingdom of souls ; and the approaching deliver- 
 ance is the deliverance by the spirit.'* " It is clear that such 
 a religious society, founded solely upon the expectation of 
 
504 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the kingdom of God, must be in itself incomplete. The first 
 Christian generation lived entirely upon expectations and 
 dreams. On the eve of seeing the world come to an end, 
 they thought useless all things which serve only to continue 
 the world. Property was forbidden. 1 Every thing which 
 attaches man to earth, every thing which turns him aside 
 from heaven, was to be shunned. Although many disciples 
 were married, there was no marrying, it seems, after entrance 
 into the sect. 8 Celibacy was decidedly preferred ; even in 
 marriage, continence was commended. 3 At one time, the 
 Master seems to approve those who should mutilate them- 
 selves for the sake of the kingdom of God. 4 He was in this 
 consistent with his principle." 
 
 Christianity, therefore, as Christ taught it, was, according 
 to overwhelming evidences, a community of Latter-Day 
 Saints, as Buddhism was at first a society of monks and nuns. 
 In both cases the theologies, or subsequent elaborations of 
 belief, have made these faiths applicable to wider fields. 
 
 The rite of baptism, or ablution, is of very high antiquity. 
 All degrees of superstition were attached to it by the nations 
 of the East. Long before the appearance of the anchorite 
 John the Baptist in Judea, baptism was an ordinary cere- 
 mony on the introduction of proselytes to the Jewish 
 church. There was much less originality in the procedures 
 of John the Baptist, therefore, than one would suppose from 
 simply reading the descriptions of his marvellous doings 
 and his success in making converts, which we find in the 
 gospels. 
 
 The despair of the Jews in reflecting upon their national 
 destiny caused them to seize upon any thing that promised 
 a deliverer; the lives of the ancient prophets were con- 
 spicuous figures in their history. Representing the God of 
 Israel, criticising the course of kings, and advocating the 
 
 1 Luke xiv., 33 ; Actsiv., 32, et seq. ; v., i-ii. 
 
 a Matt, xix., 10, etseq.; Lukexviii., 29, et seq. 
 
 8 This is the constant doctrine of Paul. Comp. Rev. xiv., 4. 
 
 4 Matt, xix., 12. 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 505 
 
 policy of the Theocracy, these prophets had risen to the level 
 of supernatural beings in the minds of the Hebrews. 
 
 Elias was considered the greatest of the prophets. He 
 who dwelt in " the solitude of Carmel, sharing the life of 
 wild beasts, living in caves of the rocks, whence he emerged 
 like a thunderbolt, to make and unmake kings," had become 
 their ideal deliverer; and when John the Baptist, imitating 
 the rigorous life and methods of Elias, appeared in the wil- 
 derness of Judea, a loud-voiced reformer denouncing the rich 
 priests, the Pharisees, the Doctors, and all official Judaism, 
 the despised classes naturally enough flocked to him. The 
 prejudices of the aristocratic Jews were set at naught by the 
 loud assertion of John that God could create "children of 
 Abraham out of the stones of the highway." So democratic 
 a notion could hardly fail of applause among the oppressed 
 classes. 
 
 Jesus was a very obscure man when he first heard of this 
 evangelist preaching in the wilderness. A few disciples 
 had gathered around him, and with these, and others who 
 followed from curiosity, he went to hear John. In pursuance 
 of his method of baptizing every one who would submit to 
 the ceremony, as an initiation to his band of followers, John 
 immediately baptized Jesus and his disciples. 
 
 Renan tells us that the great service which John rendered 
 was that of " substituting a private rite for the ceremonies of 
 the law to which the priests were essential, much as the 
 Flagellants of the middle ages were the precursors of the 
 Reformation, by taking away the monopoly of sacraments 
 and of absolution from the official clergy. The general tone 
 of his sermons was harsh and severe. The expressions which 
 he used against his adversaries appear to have been of the 
 most violent character. They were rude and incessant in- 
 vective. It is probable that he did not remain aloof from 
 politics. Josephus, who almost touched him through his 
 master Banou, hints this in hidden phrase, and the catastro- 
 phe which put an end to his days seems to suppose it." 
 After, as before, the mystic rite of baptism, the disciples of 
 
506 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Jesus remained distinct from those of John, but between the 
 two young leaders ' a friendship sprang up so that they 
 remained together for some time. 
 
 When Jesus returned to Galilee, he also began to practise 
 the popular rite of baptism, and soon his baptism was sought 
 almost as much as John's. We are told that the Jordan, for 
 a considerable distance, was covered on either side with 
 baptists, whose discourses met with greater or less success ; 
 which gives an idea of the amount of time people had in 
 those days to devote to religious observances. 
 
 The arrest of John, who was a railer against the established 
 powers, was to have been expected, and his tragic end is 
 known as one of the dark crimes of history. Some believed 
 him to be the expected Messiah, others thought that he was 
 Elias risen from the dead : both were very common super- 
 stitions among the Jews of Palestine at the time. The sect 
 which John established, and which still survives, entertained 
 the latter belief. That the reformer Jesus was believed in 
 by the common people and rejected by the educated classes, 
 and finally, like John, put to death for the sedition, however 
 pacific it may have been, which his teachings spread, is 
 not to be wondered at, when we consider the religious and 
 political state of Palestine at that time. 
 
 The incidents of the death of Jesus can never be appreci- 
 ated when viewed from a superstitious standpoint. All 
 our natural feelings of admiration for the great devotion of 
 this man to his principles, are perverted by the contradic- 
 tions and absurdities which postulate him as a God of 
 infinite power. It is the man, not the God, upon whom 
 we look with admiration and sympathy ; nor can we regard 
 his actions as perfect during the closing days of his career. 
 There is a certain recklessness and aimlessness about 
 them, which it is difficult to harmonize with a lofty and 
 calm intelligence. They irresistibly suggest the blind self- 
 
 1 The best authorities declare John's age to be about the same as that of 
 Jesus, although some writers have endeavored to make the former appear much 
 older. 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 507 
 
 abnegation of the fanatic. We may safely admire, however, 
 the firmness which enabled him consciously to submit to his 
 cruel fate ; for there are many reasons for believing that like 
 Socrates he deliberately chose to die in order to emphasize 
 and immortalize the principles which he had so faithfully 
 advocated. Most justly did he estimate 'the power which 
 such an example would have upon the world. What can 
 be a more eloquent assertion, than the position which his 
 name has held for so many centuries, of the humanity of the 
 man, of his unselfishness, and (in the true sense) of his divine 
 inspiration? For these qualities are merely other names 
 for an appreciation of the vast power of moral influence, 
 a vision of the utter dependence of man for happiness upon 
 the highest principles of life. 
 
 Jesus had been a source of endless trouble to the conserva- 
 tive religious party at Jerusalem. Coming from the prov- 
 ince of Galilee, followed by ignorant enthusiasts, who actu- 
 ally believed they were supporting the mythical Messiah of 
 their nation, there is no language to express the hatred and 
 contempt which these pretensions inspired in the haughty 
 official classes at Jerusalem. 
 
 Jerusalem was indeed an " unbelieving city " to Jesus. A 
 council convened by the high-priest discussed whether Juda- 
 ism and Jesus could both live. Such was his popularity 
 among the common people, that the question answered 
 itself. They decided upon his arrest, knowing that, once in 
 the hands of the law, they could do with him as they pleased ; 
 for the acquiescence of the Roman magistrate in the judicial 
 decisions of this fanatical people, when the question at issue 
 was one among themselves, could be counted upon. Jesus 
 came to Jerusalem from Bethany. This, according to the 
 fourth gospel, was after the miracle of Lazarus had been 
 noised abroad, and had given him a still greater importance 
 in the minds of his followers. It is to be remembered, how- 
 ever, that the raising of Lazarus is not mentioned in the 
 synoptic gospels. The feast of the Passover was allowed to 
 pass by the conspiring party, as they feared a riot ; but on 
 
508 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the following night, aided by the perfidy of one of the dis- 
 ciples, he was apprehended. On entering Jerusalem, and up 
 to the time of his arrest, he seemed to be perfectly aware of 
 the danger which threatened him. He knew that he had 
 powerful enemies, and that they had been driven to despera- 
 tion by the anarchical influences of his teachings. This same 
 party had caused the brother of Jesus, called James, to be 
 stoned but a short time before, under circumstances not 
 unlike those attending the death of Jesus ; and there is no 
 doubt that the defenders of the ancient religion had the 
 precedent of law, and the authority of their own consciences, 
 to support them in the course which they pursued. 
 
 In thus tracing to the simple events in the life of Jesus the 
 chief beliefs of Christianity, philosophy has accomplished its 
 task. The principles of knowledge have nothing to do with 
 the internal disputes of a religious organization. 
 
 No sooner was the body of Jesus laid away in his sepulchre 
 than these disputes began, and the tale of blood and misery 
 that has followed them proclaims their inhumanity. Whether 
 the popes of Rome were the true representatives of Peter, 
 the Galilean fisherman, or whether the liturgy now used in 
 the Church of England was employed at the Last Supper ; l 
 whether the theology invented by the Alexandrians is Roman 
 Catholic or Protestant ; whether forms of worship should be 
 complex or simple, artistic or rude ; whether the wars of the 
 Reformation, the cruelties of the Inquisition, or the narrow- 
 ness of Puritanism, are Pagan or Christian, or what consti- 
 tutes the exact difference between Paganism and Christianity, 
 are questions which in no sense depend for their solution 
 upon the knowledge of the scope of language or the nature 
 of perception. Even to feel interested in them requires a 
 party spirit which is entirely outside of philosophy. The 
 initial error of Christianity, its conception of God, is to be 
 found in the mind of Jesus, and is clearly a product of the 
 Hebrew life and religion. Through this medium the super- 
 
 1 I recently heard a sermon by a young Episcopal clergyman, which aimed to 
 establish this doctrine. 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. $09 
 
 stitions of prehistoric times have been disseminated through- 
 out our civilization, and we thus have the terrible conscious- 
 ness of not only inheriting the conceptions of savages, but of 
 regarding them as divine. 
 
 The most striking examples of ignorance which we meet 
 are sometimes the most instructive. When we find a mind 
 of average intelligence ignorant of very important facts of 
 history, we naturally conclude that the society in which 
 that mind has been developed is, in a measure, dead to the 
 influence of these facts. I once heard an intelligent business 
 man, who had lived in one of the principal towns of Con- 
 necticut for the greater part of his life, say, that Roman 
 Catholics were not Christians. When he saw the surprise 
 which his remark occasioned, he qualified it by saying that 
 they were not recognized as Christians by the Protestant 
 denominations. The ignorance of the true history and na- 
 ture of Christianity which this opinion demonstrated pre- 
 vails to a greater extent among even cultivated Americans 
 than one would readily believe. The wars and controversies 
 which have marked the relations of the Roman and Protes- 
 tant branches of the church are so interwoven with the his- 
 tory of Europe during the last four centuries, the opposition 
 between these parties has become so deeply rooted, that 
 they are both physically incapable of seeing how very little 
 difference there is between them. The pomp and ceremony 
 of Christian worship, which were, for the most part, devised 
 as a means of attracting and converting the barbarians of 
 Europe who overcame the Roman Empire, do not fail still 
 to charm and please the ritualists of England and hundreds 
 of fashionable congregations in this country. The art of this 
 worship is imitated, as far as denominational precedents will 
 allow, by the great majority of the ultra-Protestant sects. 
 Thus the power of art asserts itself in worship as in every 
 other sphere of life. The differences to be found between 
 the theologies of Roman and Protestant Christianity are in- 
 significant, simply because all legitimate Christian theology 
 was formulated long before the church was divided. The 
 
510 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 great lights of Protestantism, therefore, as is well known, are 
 not dissenters from the fundamental canons of Christian 
 theology, but from certain minor details of worship and 
 belief, and from certain methods of ecclesiastical govern- 
 ment, which to their minds had wrought harm to the 
 church and to the world. It is the ambition of both 
 these great branches of Christianity to go back to the time 
 of Christ and his apostles for the authority for all their 
 beliefs and practices, and as a consequence they vie with 
 each other in torturing the significance of the simple events 
 of the life of Jesus. When, therefore, through the agency 
 of historical criticism, the veil is lifted from the first acts 
 in the drama of Christianity, and we see a man of high moral 
 purpose, but many delusions, employing imperishable moral 
 principles and narrow, inadequate ideas of life in the forma- 
 tion of a religion, we can see how truly the errors of 
 Christianity have emanated from Christ himself ; and we 
 can see that all the great principles which enter into the 
 formation of a true religion were powers in the world 
 long before his time, or even the beginning of that civ- 
 ilization of which his mind was so faithful a type. 
 
 But let us look around us and see to what extent Chris- 
 tianity is really believed in, in America. 
 
 On every hand we hear apologies for Christian beliefs, and 
 these apologies are growing more frequent, more elaborate, 
 more sweeping in their renunciation of the old faith. Promi- 
 nent among the more recent of these is an article by the 
 Rev. Dr. J. H. Rylance, in The North American Review of 
 January of the past year, entitled " Theological Readjust- 
 ments." " No intelligent man," says Dr. Rylance, " believes 
 now in the right or the competence of the church to impose 
 the opinions of her scholars, touching matters of which 
 they were often densely ignorant, as articles of belief, 
 upon the reason and conscience of mankind. All men 
 of right reason concede to-day that modern science must 
 therefore be left free to prosecute its researches whitherso- 
 ever it will, and to formulate the results at which it may 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. $11 
 
 arrive ; the church accepting in a spirit of proper submission 
 all such discoveries and conclusions as shall be shown to be 
 duly authenticated ; theology accommodating its prescrip- 
 tions and demands accordingly." This is a graceful admis- 
 sion that religion is but an aspect of knowledge, that it 
 enjoys no special privileges in matters of belief, that its facts 
 must accord with the universal canons of truth ; an admission 
 which it would seem impossible to question, and still which 
 is fatal to all those special revelations and other mysteries 
 upon which the Christian faith absolutely depends. 
 
 Touching the absurdities of Christian theology, of which 
 it must be admitted that Jesus was, for the most part, inno- 
 cent, the same writer says : " We must not confound the 
 speculations of our scribes with the doctrines of the Divine 
 Master ; for this confusion, the Christian church is responsi- 
 ble, in claiming equal reverence from men, for the speculations 
 as for the doctrines." 
 
 But what is the nature of these doctrines of the Divine 
 Master ? Will they bear criticism any better than the " specu- 
 lations of the scribes " which have been regarded by all 
 Christians until very recently as inspired ? Is it not fair to 
 ask whether there were not many " matters " of which Jesus 
 was " densely ignorant," and whether his theories of the 
 "kingdom of God" were not speculations? Is it fair to 
 apply the methods of a conscientious criticism to the writings 
 of all the great and good men who have contributed to the 
 mass of Christian beliefs, and to fail to apply the same tests 
 of truth to the teachings of the first prophet of Chris- 
 tianity? Can any one read the "DOCTRINES" which Jesus 
 promulgated without detecting in them the elements of 
 thought or speculation ? No theological readjustments can 
 ever harmonize the doctrines of Jesus with the knowl- 
 edge of life which our age possesses, however earnestly such 
 a result may be wished for. Instead of "theological read- 
 justments," the Christian church must crumble away under 
 the weight of its venerable untruths, and it behooves the true 
 men and women who belong to it to prepare for the change. 
 
512 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 No one can listen to the best class of Christian preachers 
 in this country without being impressed with the fact that the 
 conception of God is gradually becoming purified among us; 
 that it is assuming the form of an ultimate generalization. 
 Cultivated or sensitive minds naturally shrink from the logi- 
 cal sin of attributing the limits of personality to a conception 
 which unites the infinite and the absolute. 
 
 I remember recently listening to a sermon by a Christian 
 minister (a Congregationalist) upon the worthlessness of 
 repentance itself. The discourse aimed at exposing the false 
 belief, so prevalent among Christians, that a mere state of 
 mind which the world calls regret, has any intrinsic value. 
 This minister argued that morality is righteous action, not a 
 subjective state, and that it is demoralizing to teach that any 
 thing short of actual reform is meritorious, or that any 
 amount of repentance can cancel even the slightest sin. All 
 repentance which falls short of this standard of action is 
 imaginary, and a mere mockery of virtue. This man was 
 an indifferent speaker, but his words had the ring of common 
 sense, and carried conviction. He was unconsciously preach- 
 ing the religion of philosophy, that life is action, not 
 imagination, and that God must be worshipped through 
 deeds, not words. It was observable that every reference he 
 made to God was purely an ultimate generalization a fact 
 expressed in terms as far as possible removed from particu- 
 lars. He no doubt would have been very much surprised 
 had he been told that his simple, manly discourse (which 
 had nothing of the metaphysical about it) was a very ac- 
 ceptable solution, from a practical standpoint, of the great 
 problem of the categories of thought, and that his words 
 had impeached in unanswerable terms the mysticism of 
 Christianity. 
 
 The deepest truths assert themselves through the senti- 
 ments, long before they are clothed in symmetrical language 
 and receive a definite form. 
 
 If we would get into difficulties with theologians, we have 
 but to demand of them a more refined and logical expression 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. $13 
 
 of their beliefs than they are capable of giving. If we would 
 live in harmony with them, we must submit to the more 
 sensuous expressions of truth to which they are accustomed ; 
 for instance, Mr. Clarke, in trying to justify the practice 
 of conceiving God as a person, says : " No doubt there 
 is anthropomorphism in Moses. But if man is made in 
 God's image, then God is in man's image too ; and we 
 must, if we think of him as a living and real God, think of 
 him as possessing emotions like our human emotions of love, 
 pity, sorrow, anger, only purified from their grossness and 
 narrowness. Human actions and human passions are, no 
 doubt, ascribed by Moses to God. A good deal of criticism 
 has been expended upon the Jewish Scriptures by those who 
 think that philosophy consists in making God as different 
 and distant from man as possible, and so prefer to speak of 
 him as Deity, Providence, and Nature. But it is only be- 
 cause man is made in the image of God that he can revere 
 God at all. Jacobi says that ( God, in creating, theo- 
 morphizes man; man, therefore, necessarily anthropomor- 
 phizes God.' And Swedenborg teaches that God is a man, 
 since man was made in the image of God. Whenever we 
 think of God as present and living, when we ascribe to him 
 pleasure and displeasure, liking. and disliking, thinking, feel- 
 ing, and willing, we make him like a man. And not to do 
 this may be speculative theism, but is practical atheism." ! 
 
 Here is the plain assertion from an eminent American theo- 
 logian, that we have the choice of denying God or of regard- 
 ing him as a person. The authority Mr. Clarke has for 
 placing the world in this dilemma is the familiar dictum that 
 " man is made in the image of God." The most cursory ex- 
 amination of the facts of morphological development, how- 
 ever, compels us to extend this comparison to so many 
 species of the vertebrate kingdom, that the argument loses 
 all force. The image of man is one of the most prosaic facts 
 in nature. As we succeed in tracing the peculiarities of 
 his structure to the simplest mechanical laws, we find it more 
 
 1 " Ten Great Religions," vol. I., p. 416. 
 
514 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and more difficult to perceive any mystery in the human 
 form. " This fundamental tenet of theology " may imply a 
 vast compliment to the Deity, but if this is so, why should art 
 so invariably endeavor to represent the movements of " divine 
 beings " as independent of those laws which are so faithfully 
 expressed in our physical developments ? Does not this 
 show that our ideals of the Universal Principle naturally 
 rebel against the tendency to confine them within the limits 
 of the statical or structural aspect of life ? 
 
 Some years ago, a large and influential congregation in one 
 of our Western cities was presided over by a minister who was 
 celebrated for his ability. The mind of this man was cast in 
 the mould of Presbyterian theology, but his sentiments were 
 so elevated and his culture so liberal, that he was continually 
 trying to push out of sight the infelicitous and angular beliefs 
 of his sect in the hope of making religion more attractive 
 and instructive to his people. He believed in Christ, a per- 
 sonal God, and the immortality of the soul ; but in a manner 
 so indefinite that his teachings could not be made to conform 
 to the type of theology which he was supposed to uphold. 
 A sort of modern inquisition was therefore organized, and he 
 was excommunicated. This greatly increased his popularity. 
 Some of his own people followed him, many others joined 
 them, and he has preached to a full house ever since. His, 
 friends are unable to define his religious beliefs ; which is 
 very good evidence that he is unable to do so himself ; and 
 yet, they feel that they are morally and intellectually bene- 
 fited by hearing him. Such is the power of a good life, such 
 is the influence of example in thought and feeling, that one 
 need not be categorical in order to teach the highest truths. 
 
 The beautiful church-building remained, however, and the 
 congregation maintained its organization by filling the places* 
 of the absentees with people of more definite, if not truer, 
 conceptions of God. They called different ministers, but for 
 various reasons they did not stay ; and at last a committee of 
 the church decided to get a regular orthodox man, one 
 who knew what he believed, and who believed the creed of 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 515 
 
 their church. They found the man. He was minister- 
 ing over a faithful flock in the East, and had won a reputa- 
 tion as a stout defender of the faith. They called him. He 
 declined. Then such was their longing to be freed from the 
 unrest of unsettled religious belief, that they went and took 
 him almost by force. To look at him, you would have 
 thought that he was a great teacher, and, in a way, he was. 
 A craggy countenance, with lines and ridges which laughed 
 at all kinds of opposition, lighted by moral purpose and 
 self-discipline. He was a man of convictions, and, if unable 
 to convince others, he was, at all events, utterly incon- 
 vincible himself. He preached Christ crucified, as a means 
 of salvation for all who believed in him, and perdition 
 to those who did not. This scheme of salvation was laid 
 down in detail, and was declared to be the central feature of 
 existence. The Bible was sacred and absolutely true. God 
 was a person of alternate wrath and love, to be propitiated, 
 loved, and obeyed. Christ was God, not metaphysically, but 
 actually. God was infinite and absolute ; to know him 
 was eternal life, providing we knew Christ also ; but this 
 latter knowledge was of a peculiar kind, partaking more 
 of blind trust than deliberate conviction. Actions were of 
 no avail, excepting the action of belief, or faith, which must 
 be pure and free from personal motives, and yet the in- 
 centive was declared to be the desire to save ourselves from 
 eternal perdition. This and many other eminently logical 
 doctrines the good man preached. He was not only con- 
 sistent, but aggressive, championing the cause of Christian 
 faith against all assailants. His congregation at first rallied 
 about him in admiration of his firmness and courage ; then 
 some of the gentlemen began to lose interest, and sought 
 other kinds of instruction on Sunday morning. The children 
 became less frequent at church, and at last the faithful 
 women lost heart under the terrible monotony of his appeals. 
 The committee then saw their mistake; and finally their 
 pastor, one of the most prominent examples of Christian for- 
 titude in America, resigned his post. He was an accom- 
 
5l6 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 plished man in many ways, and not an ungraceful speaker ; 
 but he was so honest in expounding Christianity, that he 
 became repugnant to the most devout Christians. 
 
 There was a Unitarian minister, who held his charge for 
 many years, also in a great Western city. He was highly 
 esteemed at home and abroad. At last he yielded to per- 
 suasion and went to another church. His congregation was 
 desolated, and in vain, attempts were made to fill his place. 
 Candidates succeeded one another, but to no avail. The 
 deep-minded man, schooled in Germany, and having great 
 resources of metaphysics at his command ; the earnest man, 
 who preached about the beauty of the mind, and in fact the 
 beauty of every thing ; the fiery reformer, who sought to 
 voice modern thought in Christian metaphor ; the man of 
 wide scientific acquirements, who could beguile the mind 
 away from too difficult questions by employing such ultimate 
 terms as God, life, and eternity, so deftly as to produce no 
 noticeable logical discords ; all these failed to please. At 
 last came a man of great organizing power, who declared 
 that the church was a society for ethical culture, for social 
 and moral co-operation and encouragement, and that the 
 object was not to agree upon religious beliefs, but to promote 
 the amenities of every-day life. This man was accepted, and 
 at once created an interest. A year afterward I heard him 
 preach his anniversary sermon to a large congregation. After 
 a description of his methods and aims, which were almost 
 entirely confined to the details of parish work, he declared 
 that morality and religion were separate departments of 
 life ; that if by any act of his he could make all his congre- 
 gation of one mind with regard to religion, he would with- 
 hold the act for fear of destroying their individuality. I 
 could not help thinking that it was fortunate he had sepa- 
 rated religion from morality, for otherwise he would have 
 been obliged to advocate the same confusion in ethical, 
 as in religious principles. Upon asking one of the most 
 enlightened members of the congregation what he thought 
 <of this separation, he replied that it was perfectly right ; 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. $17 
 
 that there was no use in trying to make people agree upon 
 the ultimate questions of religion, and that the usefulness of 
 the church was quite independent of religious belief. Wish- 
 ing to discover whether this wonderful independence of the 
 benign influences of divine unity of life and mind was any 
 thing more than a compromise with difficulties, I asked a 
 young lady of the same congregation whether all Unitarians 
 were not agnostics. She seemed very much surprised at the 
 question, and replied that she thought scarcely any of them 
 were. I then asked her to define agnosticism, to which she 
 replied that she had understood, it signified a want of faith in 
 any knowledge, which was not confirmed by the senses. I 
 then asked her if all our knowledge and all our beliefs were 
 not indissolubly connected with the evidences of the senses. 
 A gentleman present suggested that the Unitarians believed 
 in an infinite God, but as the mind was finite, we could not 
 understand this infinite God, we could only believe in him. 
 I then asked him if this was not pure agnosticism, or ancient 
 skepticism ; for how can there be any belief that is indepen- 
 dent of the understanding ? In a word, we cannot believe 
 in God and not know him. Agnosticism is simply the asser- 
 tion of the unreality of human knowledge ; and Unitarians, 
 like the skeptics of old and the agnostics of our day, may 
 think it impossible to unite life and mind, or morality and 
 religion, in a divine synthesis ; but no argument can remove 
 the fact that the deepest need of life is the realization of 
 this harmony. 
 
 A short time before this I visited an Episcopal church, 
 accompanied by a friend who was a devout member. We 
 heard the minister read, in impressive tones, the story of 
 Daniel in the lions' den, then the parable of the lord who 
 forgave his servant a debt of about twenty million dollars 
 (10,000 talents), and was outraged because the released 
 debtor imprisoned some one else who owed him eighteen 
 dollars (10 pence) ; whereupon the lord delivered the unfor- 
 giving man "to the tormentors until he should pay all." 
 At the allotted time in the service, the following declaration 
 
518 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of belief was made in a solemn manner by the congregation, 
 who bore every evidence of being cultivated and sincere peo- 
 ple, capable at least of understanding that, with a well-ordered 
 mind, knowledge and belief should be the same thing: 
 " I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven 
 and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord ; who 
 was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ; 
 suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried ; 
 he descended into hell ; the third day he rose again from the 
 dead ; he ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand 
 of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to 
 judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, 
 the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the for- 
 giveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life 
 everlasting. Amen." Imagine the knowledge which such a 
 stupendous belief as this should require ! 
 
 The text was Matt, xviii., 22 : "I say not unto thee, until 
 seven times, but, until seventy times seven." 
 
 A picture of divine forgiveness was drawn according to the 
 ideals of holy writ. We were told that God reckoned with 
 us as he reckoned with Nineveh when Jonah walked its 
 streets ; that there was a limit to the forgiveness of God, al- 
 though the figure of the text and the enormous debt can- 
 celled by the lord in the parable made it appear practically 
 infinite. " We are hopeless debtors to God," continued the 
 minister, " by the fact of our existence." " God's forgiveness 
 was given to Christ for all the world, and by the death of 
 Christ, God's reckoning with his son was satisfied ; but his 
 reckoning with us is not satisfied, unless we accept this for- 
 giveness. Now, how is this acceptance to be made ? By 
 believing that Christ is God, and by forgiving others as we 
 are forgiven." "Thus the principle of reckoning is com- 
 pleted throughout the divine economy, and in accordance 
 with the same principle * Ye shall be judged without mercy 
 who do not show mercy.' ' 
 
 I looked around to see what effect this reasoning had upon 
 the minds of those present. No one seemed to show any 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 519 
 
 signs of discontent, or surprise, or even to be conscious that 
 they were listening to about as grovelling a theory of the 
 universe and the relations of God to man as it would be 
 possible to imagine. Who could help seeing that the whole 
 scope of the religious thought and feeling pictured by this 
 minister hardly rose above the emotions experienced in an 
 ordinary business transaction? Excellent feelings, no doubt, 
 but hardly general enough to serve for a religion. While 
 walking home, I asked my friend whether he believed the 
 creed that he had recited. He replied rather dejectedly: 
 " I am supposed to." Nothing more was said upon the 
 subject, but I felt very deeply that it was not real religion 
 that I had seen, but only the dead form of what was once a 
 religion, and that it was preserved, not because it was really 
 believed in, but because those who professed it knew of 
 nothing better. 
 
 It is hard to deal with these facts with the reverence 
 which the religious knowledge of the age imperatively 
 demands; for the knowledge of religion among Christians 
 has hardly risen, as yet, above the intangible form of sen- 
 timent ; hence the almost universal separation of what 
 -should be the same thing knowledge and belief. The 
 least we can do, however, is to demand that the sentiment 
 of religion shall be elevated above the commonplaces 
 of life, and that the relations of man to God shall not 
 be illustrated by inadequately conceived commercial transac 
 tions. 
 
 What is the sentiment of Religion? What, after all, is 
 this feeling of adoration which springs alike from the savage 
 and the civilized breast, this religious impulse expressed in 
 so many ways, animating the whole human race? Is it not 
 that view of life which accompanies the thought or worship 
 of God? Whether the Mussulman cries to Allah from the 
 minarets that dot his empire, or the Angelus summons the 
 Christian worshipper to prayer ; whether the canticles of 
 praise are intoned in the gorgeous cathedrals of Europe, or 
 the patient minister doles out his quota of theology from 
 
520 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the unassuming pulpits of America ; is not that which remains 
 constant in it all, after the historical particulars of each faith are 
 laid aside, a thought of human life magnified by the thought 
 of God ? How striking that savage men should attempt this 
 great induction ! How natural that civilized men, of every 
 race and nation, should imagine, each in his own sphere, that 
 he has perfected it, and that his thoughts of life and God are 
 as broad and intelligent, as humane and true, as they should 
 be ! How little any of us appreciate the development of 
 which these higher sentiments are capable ! 
 
 Those who discover in religions logical infelicities, and are 
 without the grand inspiration of faith, pit their undeveloped 
 facts against the sublime force of religious sentiment, and 
 wonder that the world of faith does not capitulate. Those 
 who have learned religion by rote, and are powerless to dis- 
 tinguish symbols from ideas, regard others who are outside 
 their special beliefs as severed from them, in the purest and 
 highest of human relationships, the sympathies of devotion. 
 And thus we have powerful elements of discord counteract- 
 ing the benefits of faith and the moral force of knowledge ; 
 elements of discord which will only yield to the commanding 
 synthesis of a universal religion. 
 
 On a beautiful morning during the past autumn, while en- 
 joying an early walk, I came in view of a church, which, from 
 the side approached, had a somewhat sombre and forbidding 
 appearance. The masonry was of granite, and massive, the 
 windows small and apparently insufficient to light such a 
 structure, and the walls flanking the corners were embrasured 
 in a way that gave a vague idea of defence. The front of 
 the building was in the Grecian style, with fluted columns 
 running to the roof, which was surmounted by towers and a 
 dome of no mean proportions. 
 
 Although it was Monday morning after eight o'clock, the 
 doors were open and the voices of the choir were audible in 
 the street. Atttacted by the strange contrast presented by 
 the bustle of the beginning week, children going to school, 
 men hurrying to business, and this unusual worship, I en- 
 
THE RELIGION OF CHRIST. 
 
 tered and found myself in the Roman Catholic Cathedral 
 of Baltimore. 
 
 The priests and acolytes were celebrating mass ; the 
 worshippers were few and scattered throughout the audi- 
 torium. The measured tones of the celebrant rose and 
 fell, and the responses of the choir and organ re-echoed the 
 invocation and praise. 
 
 Although conscious of the surrounding art, I was im- 
 pressed. The calculations of the effect of light and sound 
 were plainly visible, but scarcely interrupted the dreamy 
 revery which the place invited. The picturesque robes of 
 the priests called to mind the reforms made by Michael 
 Angelo in sacerdotal vestments ; the flaming crucifix, the 
 swinging censers and ascending incense, the altar bells, the 
 holy sacrament, and the movements of the priests, all sug- 
 gested the worship of a civilization thousands of years an- 
 terior to Christ ; but this only increased the interest of the 
 ceremony and added to its mysterious charm. Still there 
 was an earnestness about it which was unusual, and bending 
 forward I perceived a pall-covered coffin lighted by candles 
 at the extremity of the aisle, and suddenly realized that I 
 was witnessing the solemn ritual of the dead. 
 
 There lay a human being, whether man, or woman, or 
 child, I knew not, but as far as humanity was concerned it 
 was dead. Yet how unwilling the mourners would have 
 been to admit this indisputable fact ! 
 
 If there is any language in motions, the attitude of the 
 congregation and the movements of the priests bespoke sup- 
 plication to some power, propitiation of some will. They 
 were praying that the soul of the departed might pass 
 safely through purgatory and thence ascend to heaven, the 
 realm of eternal bliss. 
 
 I knew that all I saw about me, from the massive cathe- 
 dral, with its wealth of symbols and devotional devices, to 
 the thoughts and feelings of the worshippers, were the 
 consequence of beliefs, and that these beliefs were so far re- 
 moved from the facts for which they stood as to be prac- 
 
"522 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tically untrue ; and yet the ceremony so harmonized with 
 the natural feelings of commiseration for the bereaved that 
 it was almost a pleasure to take part in it. 
 
 Then I wandered from the scene, and through the medium 
 of memories retraced the development of our feelings toward 
 the dead. I thought how, in those areas of humanity which 
 the tides of civilization have passed by, where man has pre- 
 served that mental and moral condition which preceded all 
 social reform, and language has remained so undeveloped as 
 to admit of scarcely any generalizations, the belief in the 
 existence of a soul after death is almost without exception ; 
 how the advancing definiteness of language, following upon 
 enlarged human experiences, or the actions and reactions of 
 civilizations, has made possible the distinction between 
 the idea of individual and of general existence, between 
 the idea of personality and of God. Then I asked myself : 
 Would it be possible to impart to these worshippers this 
 higher knowledge of life, to teach them the religion of phi- 
 losophy? And the purity and sincerity of the surroundings, 
 and the deep significance of the occasion, answered, Yes. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 
 
 An Ultimate Analysis Essential to an Understanding of Morality The Scope 
 of Moral Perceptions The Effect upon Conduct of the Belief in a Personal 
 God and a Future Life Language and Intelligence as Factors in Morality 
 The Origin of the Idea of Duty or Obligation The Questions of Personal 
 and of National Purity. 
 
 AT the very outset of the great problem of morality we 
 have need of a knowledge of the limits of language and the 
 nature of perception ; for we cannot proceed until we de- 
 termine the relation of thought or individuality to general 
 existence. In this problem, above all others, a most 
 delicate and accurate understanding of ultimate terms is 
 required. Universal life or divine existence must be dis- 
 tinguished from human life taken as a whole, and the sum of 
 human life must be distinguished from individual existence. 
 Thought must be recognized as the relation of humanity to 
 God, and language as the vehicle of this relationship. In- 
 dividual life or conduct, it must be remembered, is not an 
 ultimate fact ; for God is the ultimate fact, in which all lines 
 of thought and feeling converge. Hence we must not seek 
 to express conduct in ultimate terms, but rather to show 
 that each action has a place in the unity of life. It is by 
 this analysis alone that actions can be properly classified, 
 that conduct can be truly estimated. It will not do to 
 say that God inspires goodness or that sin is opposed to 
 God ; for if we insist upon identifying goodness with God 
 we are compelled to call all activity good, and the distinc- 
 tion we would make is lost in an ultimate generalization. 
 Good, to have any meaning, must signify less than God or 
 
 523 
 
524 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 general existence ; it must be a relative term, employed to- 
 designate the sum of human life. 
 
 The conventional way of studying morality has been to 
 divide conduct into four classes of relations, the relations 
 of the individual to God, to nature, to man, and to 
 himself. These divisions, it can be seen at a glance, are 
 superficial ; they are all included in the first and also in 
 the second, and the third and fourth include each other, 
 leaving us but one moral relationship which it is possible 
 to express, to perceive or make intelligible, which is 
 that between humanity and God, or between human life 
 and general life. If good means human life, the distinc- 
 tion between good and bad, or morality and immorality, 
 corresponds with our notions of what promotes or opposes 
 human life. We cannot conceive of any thing better or 
 more moral than the progress or life of humanity. To 
 this end we are to direct individual conduct, and by this 
 measure we are to judge all the activities of nature. Im- 
 agine, for instance, if we doubt these limits to language 
 or perception, the difficulty of estimating the moral value of 
 a cosmical catastrophe which should sublime the earth by 
 the heat produced. We know whether cyclones are good 
 or bad with regard to ourselves, but we cannot otherwise 
 determine their moral qualities. Morality, therefore, means 
 humanity. We cannot give it a wider meaning; we dare 
 not give it a narrower one. 
 
 The deepest and most interesting question of morality 
 is that of the latitude of individual conduct. Have we a 
 choice between good and evil, and what is the range of 
 that choice ? To what extent is it free ? Here again an 
 understanding of ultimate terms comes to our assistance. 
 Freedom, in this case, means the activity of individual 
 life ; hence it must be relative or conditional freedom, 
 for individual life is the function of certain conditions. The 
 limits of moral freedom are measured by man's ability 
 to oppose or to favor humanity. The most degraded type 
 of conduct is the opposition of the individual to society 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. $2$ 
 
 for his own imagined good ; for, conscious injury of both 
 self and society is not properly called conduct ; it is con- 
 sidered so abnormal as to be placed, by common consent, in 
 the category of insanity. The highest type of conduct is 
 happiness in the good of others, the benefiting of society for 
 society's sake, this we call impersonal happiness. The 
 lowest meaning of good, therefore, is purely personal happi- 
 ness ; the highest meaning of good is impersonal happiness. 
 Thus in selfishness and unselfishness we have the antitheses 
 of sin and virtue ; neither of them being an ultimate fact, 
 for they are both relations which begin and end with human 
 life. Hence it is readily seen that the freedom of the will, 
 or, " moral agency," is the function of well-defined condi- 
 tions. Its limits are individual and social existence. The 
 whole current of life sets toward happiness ; it is a move- 
 ment in the direction of personal and impersonal good. 
 Even the suicide indirectly seeks this end by destroying 
 pain. We have the opposite extreme of conduct in the 
 one who destroys himself to benefit others (not an un- 
 common event in life), this act affording the greatest of 
 all luxuries, the consciousness of imparting existence to 
 others. 
 
 To those who have made a study of the different systems 
 of ethics which have been offered to the world, the value 
 of this ultimate analysis of being will at once appear. A 
 just conception of God is the only key to the problem of 
 morality. If we imagine that God means a person, we 
 are bound to attribute to him personal motives, a divine 
 willy and in the exercise of this will we are compelled to 
 recognize a special providence. These beliefs at once throw 
 the question of morality into hopeless confusion, and the 
 difficulties to any understanding of conduct become insuper- 
 able. For example, we speak of a divine goodness, and when 
 we analyze good we find that it is but another name for hu- 
 man life. To postulate good and bad as ultimate principles 
 or facts, therefore, is to distort all the higher logical 
 perspectives, to descend to the level of such beliefs as a per- 
 
526 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sonal good God and a personal bad Devil, (for they are 
 necessary correlates) to represent all the solemn harmonies 
 of existence, in the imaginary relations of preposterous 
 beings. 
 
 Then to postulate an infallible moral sense or conscience, 
 " a special and original power of distinguishing right and 
 wrong," is another instance of mistaking a relative for the 
 ultimate fact. Conscience is merely the name given to 
 the capacity of intuitive judgment. Our unconscious rea- 
 sonings concerning actions (which reasonings are them- 
 selves actions) are indistinguishable from the complex or 
 sum of individual existence. The individual is clearly a 
 centre of activities which we may denominate will, or con- 
 science, or life, as we regard it from different standpoints ; 
 but none of these names suggest an ultimate fact, they are 
 clearly the function of many conditions, moving equilibria 
 related to universal life. Conduct, therefore, must be both ex- 
 plained and measured by its conditions : the freedom of the 
 will is relative, and simply means the latitude of individuality 
 to which the most positive restrictions arise on every hand. 
 To appeal to the moral sense, to cultivate habits of right liv- 
 ing, is to bring the individual into better harmony with his 
 surroundings, to advance his knowledge of God. 
 
 The Utilitarians and Intuitionalistsarethe materialists and 
 idealists of moral philosophy. The former regard usefulness, 
 or conduct designed to ameliorate human life, as an ultimate 
 principle, and the latter regard the moral sense as an ultimate 
 principle ; whereas universal life, or God, alone is ultimate, 
 and the amelioration of our existence, and moral sense, 
 are but relative facts, the expressions of familiar condi- 
 tions. 
 
 The Utilitarian school is right as far as it goes, but it stops 
 short of that ultimate generalization which satisfies the 
 highest ideals of life and mind. The Intuitional school en- 
 counters a metaphysical difficulty before it has fairly embarked 
 in its analysis, and never gets beyond it. This difficulty is 
 the erroneous assumption that a faculty of the mind justi- 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 52; 
 
 fies itself, or is ultimate. "The Utilitarians proudly remind 
 us that no dignity, however sacred or august, however ready 
 to take its stand on unquestioned or superhuman authority, 
 can conceal its weakness when required to produce as 
 credentials a proof that the world is ascertainably the 
 better for it." 1 Is conduct the less dignified because it 
 can only justify itself by proving that it is a benefit to 
 humanity ? The limits to the meaning of morality are 
 described by the limits of humanity; but our ideas of life 
 extend beyond these limits, and show us that morality is the 
 human figure of divine unity. This supplies to morality that 
 dignity or superhuman justification which devout minds 
 so long for. Such statisticians as Quetelet and H. T. Buckle 
 would show us that all human conduct is the function of 
 physical conditions ; that marriages and births and the 
 different orders of crime follow the values of the crops and 
 the influences of the seasons with unerring regularity ; in 
 short, that the highest moral inspirations are akin with the 
 movements of the tides of commerce, and of the ocean. 
 
 This induction is imperfect, the synthesis is not complete. 
 Who doubts the presence of physical causes in moral phe- 
 nomena ? But who will be satisfied with them as an expla- 
 nation ? If either matter or spirit were an ultimate fact, we 
 might have to accept one or the other as an explanation of 
 all human phenomena ; but as in the simplest cosmical 
 event there are infinite perspectives, so in every human ac- 
 tion we can trace the presence of divine influences ; hence, 
 instead of degrading life by reducing it to the level of 
 mechanics, we see in all nature, whether viewed from a ma- 
 terial or spiritual standpoint, an exalted co-operation and 
 sympathy. 
 
 Passing from these first principles of moral science, we 
 confront the great problem of society. We must judge hu- 
 man misery by ultimate principles ; we must determine the 
 cause which the poor, the ignorant, and the suffering have 
 before the bar of God. If there be no personal God to ad- 
 
 1 " Mind," vol. XXX., p. 231, Prof. W. Wallace. 
 
;528 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 judicate upon our lives, where are the oppressed to find 
 redress, when will the virtuous be justified or the wicked 
 punished ? 
 
 These conflicting sentiments are but the murmurs which 
 come up from the great ocean of human life: when its sur- 
 face is troubled, they are louder, when it is calm they sub- 
 side, but they have no meaning to the universe beyond. 
 The weal of humanity is its own affair. We must gain a 
 knowledge of those inevitable conditions of which our race 
 is but the expression, and we must make the best of them. 
 All the control we can gain over life, is over that portion of 
 its activities which centres in our own existence. We have 
 no power over the world excepting that which we derive 
 from power over ourselves. 
 
 If the spirit is at rest, there is no trouble which can hide 
 from it the outlying calm ; there is no grief which has not 
 a horizon of hope and joy. Happiness and misery are not 
 entities, they are not absolute facts which we can control ; 
 they are respectively but the harmony or the discord with 
 which our natures respond to the activities of life ; they are 
 but other names for the quality of our existence. 
 
 First in the order of the great social problems constitut- 
 ing practical morality, we have that of the influence of re- 
 ligious beliefs upon conduct. As explained above, the belief 
 in a personal God implies a contradiction in terms, a fact 
 which, in itself, is certainly a sufficient condemnation. To 
 postulate a " divine will " as a guide for action confuses the 
 whole question of conduct. Who is to interpret this divine 
 will ? Who is to find language for it ? Is it those who 
 think so poorly that they are still lisping the earliest super- 
 stitions of our race ? 
 
 Again, Will is a complex, derivative, or relative fact ; the 
 function of certain conditions. God is the ultimate fact. 
 Is it not clear, therefore, that the " will of God " is a contra- 
 diction in terms, an impossibility ? What can be more im- 
 moral than to build our ideas of duty and self-control upon 
 so illogical a foundation ? 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 529 
 
 Then comes the question of the effect upon conduct 
 of the belief in a future life. If morality is well-rea- 
 soned conduct, conduct which expresses harmoniously 
 the conditions of life, a just appreciation of the great 
 facts of existence is an advancement of morality. It is a very 
 common faith among Christians that the belief in a future 
 life is a help to virtue. The conventional way of reasoning 
 upon the subject is about as follows: " What ! believe that 
 I am to die like a dog ! that this life is to be the last of 
 me ! What encouragement have I to deny myself any thing 
 here if there is no heaven to strive for ? Why not ' eat, 
 drink, and be merry,' why not disregard #//the future, if we 
 are sure of no life beyond the grave? In a word, what is the 
 use of being virtuous if we are to have no reward for it in 
 another life ? " And these arguments are supposed, by a 
 large class of intelligent men and women, to be conclusive. 
 They are reiterated over and over again in the pulpit, in 
 conversation, in literature ; and so decisive are they held 
 to be, that unbelief in immortality is looked upon as 
 an abandoned state of mind, which leads directly to reck- 
 lessness. To state the case of the immortalists plainly, 
 they reason that a disbelief in a future life engenders 
 a disregard of the consequences of our actions in the present 
 life. They do not say how much future life we have to 
 believe in, in order to enable us to exercise prudence, fore- 
 thought, and self-denial. I have never found an immor- 
 talist yet who would say, when made to think carefully 
 about it, that the future life was to be absolutely eter- 
 nal. A personal life must suggest some limits to the 
 most reckless thinker. When we consider it, it will be 
 found that the future part of our acttial life is but a very 
 vague conception. We count over the years which it would 
 be natural for us to live, and think we fully comprehend our 
 future ; but when we try to fill in this empty symbol of time 
 with events, we find that we have practically an infinite time 
 before us after all. Is it not a question whether those who 
 have their minds constantly fixed upon an imaginary future 
 
530 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 state, do justice to the present ; whether they have a full 
 appreciation of actual life, of the tragical reality of each day, 
 each hour of their existence ; of the enormous consequences 
 which their daily actions involve ; of the boundless oppor- 
 tunity for good or for evil which the humblest existence 
 commands ? The realization of the limits of individuality 
 which a rational view of life cannot fail to fix in the mind, is 
 a talisman of the highest order, not a gloomy forecast of 
 a dreaded catastrophe awaiting us, dampening joy, lessen- 
 ing hope. This fate has the power of magnifying time 
 (not of belittling eternity as the immortalists do), of calling 
 us from the ravings of fancy into the stirring presence of 
 reality, showing us a life teeming with activities and oppor- 
 tunities which we at best can but imperfectly appreciate. 
 Knowledge does not threaten us with death, it makes us con- 
 scious of life. As for the argument that ignorance of the true 
 nature of personal existence is conducive to virtue, it is so at 
 variance with all the great canons of morality, that it is a mat- 
 ter of amazement how it has influenced so many minds and 
 endured so long. What is morality but unselfishness, a vastly 
 extended sympathy, a sublime devotion to the welfare of 
 humanity? Are we to suppose ourselves indifferent to the 
 future of our race because we are not to share it ? Are the 
 lives of our children and our children's children nothing to 
 us because ours are not to accompany them ? All our better 
 thoughts and feelings rebel against so gross a theory of 
 virtue as that which demands a perpetual existence in order 
 to be upright, to do good, to be humane. When we ex- 
 amine this theory in the light of the scope of language and 
 the nature of perception, it is found to be utterly without 
 excuse ; for to confuse the subjective aspect of motion (time) 
 with the fact of individual life is a logical monstrosity. To 
 postulate that such an assumption is essential to the harmo- 
 nious development of our nature is a sin against life as well 
 as mind. 
 
 The mandates of nature do not spring from intelligence or 
 thought ; their support is universal. They merely find ex- 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 531 
 
 pression in mind. The power of example is as omnipresent 
 as crystallization or gravitation. It rules in consciousness 
 and out of consciousness. It is as deep seated in nature, as 
 widespread in its procedure, as the relative form and weight 
 of bodies. " For the great bulk of mankind," says Prof. 
 Wallace, " the validity of their moral * * * principles must 
 depend, not on their scientific acquaintance with the prin- 
 ciples of morals, but on constant familiarity and contact 
 with great and good examples, on the generation in them 
 of a moral taste which instinctively recoils from evil and 
 aspires to live with the fair and good. * * * The sense of duty 
 is the recognition that every act, instead of standing alone, is 
 confronted, as soon as it emerges into being, with the laws of a 
 great spiritual kingdom, of which man, as a reasonable being, 
 is a citizen, and to whose general aims and regulations he is 
 bound to conform. It is this feeling of a higher and better 
 world, of a truer self, which conscience bears evidence to. 
 * * * Here in the conception of a universe, to which every 
 act must be relative and subordinate, the human soul seeks 
 a law to limit its extravagances and to consolidate its efforts 
 after right. * * * Very early in the growth of conscious- 
 ness, in most men, the character settles into a condition 
 of stable equilibrium, or of adaptation to the immediate en- 
 vironment. The mind becomes moulded in a stereotyped 
 form which resists any attempt at modification. The reaction 
 of this fixed self against new influences is what we call con- 
 science." The meaning of this is, that the individual is 
 an exponent of certain powers. The enormous complexity 
 of these individual powers is such as to raise the idea that 
 nothing but a superhuman power can control them, whereas 
 it is only by an approach to, or imitation of, the more perfect 
 individual types that imperfections are lessened, and the. 
 harmonious life of the whole, or humanity, is secured. 
 
 Thus the activities of the moral world are akin to uni- 
 versal activities, they are purely natural phenomena, and the 
 more we study them, the less need have we for a funda- 
 mental mystery, or a supernatural will, by which to explain 
 them. 
 
532 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Instead of this being a mechanical view of morality, it 
 is the most spiritual view that is possible, for it rises to a con- 
 ception of the general through the particular, the whole 
 through its parts, which is the highest order of thought or 
 induction. The study of practical morality includes all 
 phases of duty, and therefore of life, but only in the sense 
 in which religion includes all phases of life. The great 
 social problems are largely questions of expediency ; ques- 
 tions of how to reform society without dissolving it ; ques- 
 tions of the degree in which the end can justify the means, for 
 it is precisely this degree which determines the moral quality 
 of all actions, the beneficence of all reforms. 
 
 Looking at the experiences of other nations, it is clearly to 
 be seen that our only hope is in religion; but in order to 
 make this proposition intelligible, religion must be identified 
 with morality. Morality and knowledge, using the latter 
 word in its broadest sense, are the same thing. To act and 
 think according to the laws of man and God, 1 is knowledge as 
 well as morality. Men and women who allow themselves to 
 be imposed upon are indirectly imposing upon others. In- 
 dolence of mind is closely allied to indolence of body, 
 and that neglect of the higher orders of facts, so often 
 found in what passes for religion and virtue, is a vicious 
 element in society, and borders upon what might be called 
 criminal ignorance. As we are all judged according to 
 our opportunities, it becomes an interesting question how 
 obtuse or dead to facts a mind may be without incurring the 
 charge of immorality. There are thousands of families of 
 culture and refinement in the United States who are be- 
 lievers in the mysteries of Christianity; the question arises: 
 How many of these families are intellectual criminals ? how 
 many are endangering the morality of their children and the 
 safety of their country, by failing to open their minds to 
 established truths ? Are they to be judged by their oppor- 
 tunities ? 
 
 The most prevalent mistake made by the professional 
 
 1 A common metaphor. 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 533 
 
 reformers of society, from Plato to the well-known Christian 
 socialists of England, is that they are unable to see that the 
 whole world is a social experiment, and that evolution itself 
 is feeling its way along the path of time. Considered as ex- 
 periments, the Chinese and Egyptian civilizations may seem 
 a little tedious, but they have been only vast experiments ; 
 and unless we would fall to the level of teleologists, we 
 are compelled to believe that the whole life of the race is 
 but a huge trial of causes and effects. This should not 
 deter us from making plans of life both for individuals and 
 societies; but it should remind socialists that it is not 
 practical to plan out in the mind a complete set of 
 conditions for any civilization, or to isolate a community 
 by cutting it off from those natural relations with the world 
 upon which, after all, its moral life depends. 
 
 The chemist who watches a small quantity of carbon or 
 oxygen react over and over again in definite ways without 
 showing the least variation becomes a thorough believer in 
 the integrity of the forces of nature, although he may never 
 have thought of applying the rule to society. Common- 
 sense, or the " genius of humanity," seems to be the only 
 faculty which enables man to fully appreciate the reality of 
 natural forces in society ; as a consequence, severely common- 
 sense people very seldom become reformers of any kind. It 
 is well known that it is impossible to represent an effect to 
 the mind without supplying to it a cause. The value of a 
 reformer's suggestions can be measured by his grasp of con- 
 ditions or causes. Common-sense carries with it an intuition 
 of the fact that the causes of social phenomena are so firmly 
 established as to be practically immovable. This teaches 
 that a society cannot be reformed from without. All hope 
 lies in elevating the moral character of its individuals. This 
 end should be accomplished by disturbing as little as possible 
 the structures of society, for they have natural causes beyond 
 our control, and to disturb them produces but artificial 
 effects. If you would reform a nation, convey to it a knowl- 
 edge of the true God by removing the thraldom of supersti- 
 
534 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion, the darkness of mystery, from its high places. The 
 true God can only be addressed through actions. We 
 need not approach the universal principle through hymns of 
 praise or self-abasements, which are but indirect and artificial 
 forms of worship. Morality is a deeper and truer symphony, 
 a more divine language. 
 
 To continue the study of practical morality in the direc- 
 tion of the individual, we come to the problem of personal 
 purity. With regard to this question, it is difficult to speak 
 with sufficient delicacy and yet with the needed frankness. 
 
 What is the great evil of our society ? Immorality ! 
 And what is the first idea which this word suggests? It calls 
 up a host of offences ; but which of them is the foremost ? 
 The word immorality does not necessarily suggest general 
 crime, but it always suggests the greatest evil that society is 
 heir to, namely the crime against chastity. This is the 
 greatest crime, not because it is the most revolting, or that 
 it suggests the greatest degree of abandonment, but because 
 it is the widest in its range ; and notwithstanding the misery 
 which it engenders it is the most generally condoned. To 
 look at society as it really is, no one but a dreamer would 
 think that this crime could be successfully attacked, much 
 less brought under control. It is so closely connected with 
 the deepest instincts and the highest sentiments, that not- 
 withstanding the fact that we find among the most degraded 
 savages a recognition of the difference between physical 
 purity and impurity, in what we call our higher civilization 
 there is a general lack of clear ideas upon the subject. It is 
 true that promiscuous intercourse between the sexes before 
 marriage is not regarded by some savages as wrong, although 
 there are many tribes that do condemn the practice, but in- 
 fidelity to the marriage vow is regarded by almost all savages, 
 where there is any approach to family life, as a distinct crime. 
 In short, even the most degraded races acknowledge in their 
 laws and customs that immorality attacks the basic institu- 
 tion of the race, which is the family. The honor of women 
 is a perfectly distinct ideal among us. No one imagines that 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 535 
 
 this honor is less delicate before marriage than after, or that 
 it is less binding in youth than in maturity. Neither widows 
 nor spinsters nor divorced women claim any exemption from 
 the rigor of the moral law upon any pretext ; but the chastity 
 of men seems to be a question about which our minds are 
 not made up ; society lacks clear conceptions upon the sub- 
 ject. Not that Christian ethics, or any other accepted code 
 of morality, hesitates to condemn all forms of impurity in 
 either sex, but there is a public opinion which seems to 
 condone certain orders of incontinence among men. For 
 instance, among men of the world, a young man who 
 preserves to the married state the same continence which is 
 a condition of respectability with young women, is almost a 
 curiosity. I have heard it confidently asserted by men that 
 no such being exists. Of course this is a gross mistake. We 
 all know that there are pure young men, but do we realize 
 the shocking state of things which makes the question pos- 
 sible ? Do we realize that we live in so barbarous an age 
 that our boys are compelled to grow up under examples 
 which are almost certain to corrupt them ; that the corrupt 
 man is the rule, not the exception, among all classes alike ? 
 Do we realize that our daughters are compelled to marry 
 men who have not even clear ideas concerning personal 
 purity, who only acknowledge to themselves in the vaguest 
 manner the sacred vows they make? The misery which this 
 state of things produces is beyond description. The disease 
 which is almost the inevitable accompaniment of unclean lives 
 is alarmingly prevalent among Americans and Europeans. It 
 is a common thing to find men carrying this disease a in their 
 
 1 What can be more horrifying than the following incident, recounted to me 
 recently by a physician, who affirmed that it was not an unusual occurrence in 
 our large cities ? A beautiful woman married a "man of the world." They 
 had two lovely children, who grew up in perfect health. The third child was 
 an imbecile, the fourth a cripple. The father, after trying several physicians, 
 at last went to a doctor of great reputation with this crippled child, and asked 
 for a written opinion on the case. The doctor examined the little sufferer and 
 sent in the opinion that it was a case of degeneration of the heart, and of other 
 organs, caused by congenital syphilis, a disease indescribably insidious and 
 loathsome, which never invades a pure home excepting by the rare accident of 
 
536 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 system for years, perhaps for a lifetime, as the result of a lack of 
 proper principles. There are differences of opinion as to 
 whether it can be thoroughly cured ; but there are none con- 
 cerning its revolting and insidious nature, and its liability to 
 be communicated from generation to generation, providing it 
 assume certain forms. It is of little use to address young men 
 upon the subject. They admit the danger, but if they are cor- 
 rupt they are practically unconscious of it. There is but one 
 class who can successfully attack this crime. They may not 
 be able to eradicate it, but they can oppose it by demanding 
 the same standard of respectability from men that is required 
 of themselves. If they doubt their power let them consider 
 their own lives and the lives of their children; if they doubt 
 their ability, they should remember that it is woman who has 
 the most reliable intuitions concerning morality. 
 
 The laws which underlie family life are too simple to 
 require any extended generalizations. They are the expres- 
 sion of the most familiar facts of our existence. 
 
 Upon the relation of man and wife our whole civilization 
 depends. This is one of those great truths which escape us 
 on account of their very simplicity. The true principle of 
 union between man and woman is that of equality ; any 
 assumption of superiority on the part of either militates 
 against the family institution. Upon this principle of 
 equality is based the law of chastity, from which spring all 
 the virtues, and without which morality cannot exist. 
 
 In perfecting language we have the most direct method of 
 purifying life. By the help of an ultimate analysis we dis- 
 cover the source of life or conduct in God, or general exist- 
 ence, and its end in personal existence extended so as to- 
 embrace humanity. The part which intelligence plays in 
 morality is obscured in individual cases by the action of 
 example, the reactions of acquired habits, and the force of 
 
 inoculation, a misfortune which can be compared in its consequences to death. 
 Soon after the child died. It had never seen a day of happiness, and its father 
 was indirectly its murderer. But this is not all. The faithful wife, who had 
 been a fresh, bright, and strong woman, fell a victim to the consequences of the 
 same crime and became a wretched and hopeless invalid. 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 537 
 
 inherited tendencies. If it were possible to place two indi- 
 viduals in exactly the same position with regard to antece- 
 dents and surroundings, the swiftness and accuracy of their 
 judgments would determine the question of moral ascendency 
 between them : but so varied and complicated are the condi- 
 tions of life, that the only means we have of judging con- 
 duct is by its influence upon the individual and society. 
 This, of course, is a very imperfect measure, as it leaves too 
 great a latitude to the individual. The high value which is 
 placed upon what are called good impulses, irrespective of 
 their completion in conduct, is a recognition of our inability 
 to estimate conduct solely through its consequences. 
 
 Moral success depends largely upon power and accuracy 
 of representation, in the calculation of future events. We 
 have an example of this in the inability of children to esti- 
 mate the consequences of conduct. Two little brothers, 
 very fond of each other, are playing at archery. The 
 younger happens to stand in front of the target at which his 
 brother wishes to shoot. He calls to him to stand aside, but 
 for some reason known only to the mental economy of little 
 boys, he persists in keeping his position. He is warned 
 again, but to no purpose. The elder boy lets fly his arrow, 
 surely not at his brother's head, but, as he afterward insists, 
 at the target. The arrow strikes his brother just over the 
 eye, cutting the skin and only just missing the organ of 
 sight, and sending him crying to his mother, who finds the 
 intrepid archer as much overwhelmed with grief as his 
 wounded brother. 
 
 The mollusc enjoys his life while sparkling on the crest of 
 a furious wave. This scarcely sentient organism has no fear 
 of being dashed, a moment later, on the rocks and desiccated 
 in the sun. The humming-birds of South America alight 
 again and again upon the flower that is being peppered with 
 dust shot by the hunter, too innocent to suspect any harm 
 to themselves. Young men meet in the evening ; the 
 restraints of the day are joyfully thrown aside ; the tide of 
 conviviality rises. One thing leads to another, and they 
 
538 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 sally forth with the avowed intention of having a good time. 
 Away they go, risking their social position by visiting gilded 
 halls where lewd women come and go. Their personal dis- 
 cipline may keep them aloof as mere spectators ; but they 
 ignorantly hover on the brink of vice, enjoying the very 
 danger. If these men possess any refinement they readily 
 admit, in their better moments, the utter emptiness of dissi- 
 pation or vice as a means of enjoyment ; and still they 
 would feel very much injured if informed that they were 
 incapable of reasoning upon the subject of conduct ; that 
 they were incapable of representing to themselves the full 
 consequences of actions, or of even connecting the day and 
 the night in their minds. If they were charged with lack of 
 -co-ordinating power, they would say : " We did not reason 
 at all ; we were merely moved by the force of example ; we 
 drifted along with the current." We will admit the plea : 
 they were aiming at pleasure, and their reputation, their 
 real happiness, stood in the way. It was not a brother, it 
 might have been a sister, a mother, or a wife, that they 
 risked wounding ; but what matter ? The imagined pleasure 
 of the moment rules their lives ; their powers of representa- 
 tion are so feeble that they cannot adequately co-ordinate 
 such spaces as the club-room and their homes, such inter- 
 vals as night and morning. They are molluscs or humming- 
 birds, tossed about in the currents of life, guilty because too 
 innocent of the world as it really is, too ignorant of the laws 
 of true happiness. 
 
 Was there ever so great a fallacy as the idea that men 
 must be dissipated in order to know the world ? One can 
 learn more of the world as it really is from children than 
 from the rout ; for the mind of the child is newly strung by 
 the hand of nature, and vibrates to the most delicate influ- 
 ences, while the mind of the " man of pleasure " has lost its 
 power of answering to the higher harmonies of life. 
 
 There are all degrees of mental incapacity. The con- 
 firmed immoralist may deeply feel the beauty of purity, so 
 -deeply that he is ready to worship it ; but habits determine 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 539 
 
 his actions, and he is powerless. If he cannot sufficiently 
 awaken his imagination to make it perform its natural office 
 of lighting his path a little way ahead, he is lost. His doom 
 is not a future hell, he need not wait so long for his punish- 
 ment ; he occupies and has the full benefit of the only hell 
 that is prepared for him, the dire limits of an immoral life ; 
 for discipline of the mind and character alone opens to us the 
 full measure of existence. 
 
 The importance of culture as a factor in moral life is con- 
 spicuous. " Education," says Taine, " draws out and disci- 
 plines a man ; fills him with varied and rational ideas ; pre- 
 vents him 'from sinking into monomania or being excited by 
 transport ; gives him determinate thoughts instead of eccen- 
 tric fancies, pliable opinions for fixed convictions ; replaces 
 impetuous images by calm reasonings, sudden resolves by 
 the results of reflection ; furnishes us with the wisdom and 
 ideas of others ; gives us conscience and self-command." 
 
 It cannot be denied that the best culture is that which is 
 begun in childhood. Children who are accustomed to hear 
 questions of wide and remote interest discussed at home, 
 unconsciously acquire large sympathies and elevated tastes. 
 When our fathers explain to us the living questions of the 
 day, or describe the course of ancient politics ; when we hear 
 from our mothers the story of Dido's love, or of the sad fate 
 of Hector ; when we fight over in our boyish imaginations the 
 classic wars and personate in play the mediaeval heroes, suffer- 
 ing, hoping, and loving with centuries passed ; in maturer 
 years the drama of life breaks upon us with a freshness and 
 interest only possible to trained hearts and minds. 
 
 True culture does not necessarily belong to those who read 
 Latin "without tasting it," or who write Greek with ease; 
 for culture, like morality, is simply a vastly extended sym- 
 pathy ; but in order to feel for our race, we must know the 
 story of its life ; in order to give play to our sympathies we 
 must acquire knowledge. 
 
 If intelligence is a factor in morality, how clearly does 
 the perfection of the relations between the sexes depend 
 
540 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 upon education ! The superstition that the knowledge of 
 nature is injurious to young women is slowly yielding to a 
 more truthful notion of what womanly purity is. The 
 healthful action of the mind is the first requisite of integrity ; 
 for integrity is simply rectitude, or right conduct, conduct 
 which is not perverted by ignorance or superstition. There 
 is no mystery in sex. As soon as a young girl is able to ap- 
 preciate the sentiments of family life, she is prepared to 
 study organic life in all its phases. If she is under the influ- 
 ence of a true mother, she can never fail to regard all the or- 
 dinances of nature in a wholesome manner, and she will 
 thus gain a true moral command over herself and others. 
 
 One of the marvels of our civilization is the perfection to 
 which woman has attained, if we consider her past oppres- 
 sion. Slowly and patiently she has conquered our brutality 
 and ignorance by her instinctive loyalty to the highest needs 
 of life. Is it because of her moral superiority that we fear to 
 accord to her social equality ? 
 
 How much the race owes of that physical discipline known 
 as purity to the example of woman ! The nature of woman 
 is such as to enable her to co-ordinate the causes and effects 
 of certain orders of conduct more perfectly than man. The 
 power of example is such as to inspire in man the refined 
 ideals of the more delicate sex ; and thus, by living in the 
 presence of women, we are elevated and humanized. What 
 an imposing chemistry is this, which imparts to all the in- 
 dividuals of a race the magic personality of its highest types ! 
 
 A little boy, who had heard his companions talking disre- 
 spectfully of some of the physical economies, asked his 
 mother, who happened to be a physician, whether it was true 
 that he was once a part of her. The mother took the child 
 upon her lap and said : " Yes, my son, you were once a part 
 of me ; you were close to my heart ; so close, before you were 
 born, that even if you were to become the most wicked of 
 men, I could never cease to love you. That is why, if you 
 are not good, my love will be a sorrow ; otherwise it will be 
 a joy." Is it not likely that this boy will grow up with a due: 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 541 
 
 reverence for the simple truths of nature, and an appreciation 
 of the evil results which spring from a disregard of the funda- 
 mental restraints of manhood ? 
 
 It is widely believed that morality cannot be taught theo- 
 retically, that it must be communicated by example ; but 
 an example which is supported by correct reasoning is 
 always more powerful. Woman is the most prominent 
 example in our universe of a pure life. From this example 
 have sprung the ideas which have developed into moral 
 philosophy. To live in the presence of this example is to 
 feel a tremendous influence for good which can be seconded, 
 but never replaced, by thought. 
 
 The idea that woman is a tempter or demoralizer, which 
 plainly underlies the myth of the Garden of Eden, and the 
 idea that family relationships are impure, which originated 
 the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, are barbarous. 
 The sex-worship of the ancients, which regarded generation 
 as a divine mystery, was more religious than the Christianity 
 of Origen, 1 the prudery of asceticism, or the theory of a 
 divinely ordained celibacy ; for sex-worship honors nature, 
 while these perverted beliefs, so deeply rooted in Chris- 
 tianity, degrade the life and influence of woman. 
 
 The question of Commercial Morality has long been in an 
 unsatisfactory condition. Not that there is any wide-spread 
 confusion of ideas with regard to duty in the business 
 world. On the contrary, it is in the business world that 
 we find one of the best schools for practical morality. In 
 no field do we find integrity, self-control, and even intelli- 
 gent benevolence more fully appreciated and richly re- 
 warded. A comprehension of the real nature of business 
 would readily expose the sophistries about its deceit and 
 selfishness. The first principle of organic life is a limiting 
 membrane, the principle of separation or resistance between 
 units which we call individuality. Morality could not exist 
 without this fulcrum of conduct. It is not the purpose of 
 
 1 Origen supposed that the form of self-mutilation which he adopted was 
 recommended in Matt, xix., 12. 
 
542 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ethics to destroy individuality, but to secure to this first 
 principle of life a true development. It is only by perfect- 
 ing individuals that society can be perfected. The social 
 state implies social obligations, but they in no wise militate 
 against individuality. The first sign of organic life is given 
 by the process of assimilation. Is it immoral for the 
 " speck of protoplasm " to exercise its affinity for surround- 
 ing substances, or, in other words, to assimilate or grow? 
 There is no danger that it will grow too large for the wel- 
 fare of its neighbors ; the laws of generation which account 
 for its tiny structure will cause it to fall into pieces, to divide 
 itself into other individuals, as soon as its time has come. 
 These processes of assimilation, growth, and reproduction 
 are too simple and natural to suggest any of the vices of 
 human life. The idea of suffering or selfishness has no 
 place in the primitive organic economies. It is only when 
 organisms achieve a vast complexity, when their structures 
 and functions become complicated, that the idea of duty or 
 obligation springs into existence. Duty, therefore, is not a 
 mystery, but the result of many and apparently conflicting 
 conditions. To act according to the laws of our nature, to 
 complete our true destiny, is acknowledged to be right. As 
 life for us rests upon individuality, morality must study 
 the weal of individuals, or the good of all. Selfishness 
 is a forgetfulness of this first principle of life, and is, there- 
 fore, in the broadest sense, self-destructive. To see that our 
 lives are true assertions of our nature, to feel that that nature 
 cannot have a full expression in one individual, but that it 
 must be studied from the collective side, which we call hu- 
 manity, as well as the individual side, this is morality. 
 
 He who is careless of assimilation must rely upon the 
 assimilation of others ; he who does nothing but assimilate 
 is very apt to interfere with the rights of others. Enormous 
 powers of assimilation must be balanced by other and higher 
 powers in proportion, or the individual becomes a menace 
 to society. 
 
 The thoughtful philanthropist admits that it is an exceed- 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 543 
 
 ingly difficult thing to do good by giving, for so delicate are 
 the adjustments of society, that to take from others, directly 
 or indirectly, the exercise of any of their natural functions, 
 is apt to create demoralization instead of good. Again : the 
 wealthier classes are beginning to find that a plethora of 
 resources limits the development of many of the higher fac- 
 ulties; and that a few generations of idleness produce an 
 aristocracy of unmanly men and unwomanly women. What 
 successful man, whether in art, or science, or affairs, will not 
 testify to the enjoyment he has derived from well-planned 
 and sustained endeavor, a pleasure which is entirely apart 
 from that of acquisition? It is the enjoyment of well- 
 directed effort. When one's affairs assume great propor- 
 tions, and the individual becomes an autocrat, this enjoy- 
 ment does not cease, but it seeks wider and wider fields of 
 activity, until a business magnate, if he be truly human, 
 insensibly becomes a great philanthropist. If the mind 
 and character of a great assimilator are built upon too small 
 a scale to admit of these higher developments, he becomes 
 an enemy to society; for large resources give to purely 
 selfish men the power of doing harm. Thus it is that a 
 public opinion is growing up which punishes the undevel- 
 oped voluptuary by neglect, and the inhuman capitalist by 
 restricting his operations. 
 
 For the poor man of this country to hate the rich is an un- 
 speakable folly, since the wealthy classes contain a majority 
 of his wisest and truest friends. Besides, are not the higher 
 enjoyments of life within the reach of all who are capable of 
 self-discipline ? In- a free country, all the capital an individ- 
 ual requires is a high-born nature, for freedom is merely the 
 removal of all hindrances to self-control. 
 
 The deception and selfishness so much decried in the 
 business world are relics of barbarism, but the general state 
 of society is responsible for them. The ignorance and 
 prejudices of consumers are a direct premium placed upon 
 all forms of commercial deceit. Frauds in business are no 
 more frequent than in society, in proportion to the number 
 
544 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of transactions, and, if any thing, they are more severely 
 dealt with when exposed. 
 
 Already, among truly developed people it is safe to live 
 in a perfectly generous mood ; for the more one tries to do 
 for the best people, the more they try to do in return, which 
 makes it necessary to be guarded in dispensing kindnesses 
 for fear of being overwhelmed with kindness. It will require 
 a great development for the social world to rise to this 
 level, but there are abundant signs of the presence of the 
 same order of feeling throughout the whole human race, a 
 disposition to give to merit its full reward. The feeling, 
 of course, can never gain ascendency until it becomes as 
 difficult to persuade men to accept unmerited advantages 
 as it now is to obtain for services to society a just recom- 
 pense. What is chiefly needed is a greater intelligence or 
 social sensitiveness, and a higher standard of independence. 
 
 This study of the chief questions of morality would be in- 
 complete without an impeachment of the superstitions con- 
 nected with the sentiment of love. What demands a higher 
 logical discipline than love ! How can we hope to control 
 this mightiest of passions, unless we can test conduct by uni- 
 versal principles ? Long before we arrive at that maturity 
 of thought which can be said to constitute a full conscious- 
 ness of being, we find ourselves moved by feelings too deep 
 to be understood, having an apparent legitimacy, a command 
 over destiny, which leave us powerless to criticise them. And 
 so insidiously do these feelings blend with our most exalted 
 ideas of life, that we become morally helpless when under their 
 influence. If the circumstances of the passion happen to be 
 propitious, we never discover that we have overestimated its 
 sanctity, that we have accepted too easily the wide-spread 
 delusion that love is a divinely inspired feeling which justifies 
 itself. If the circumstances of the passion prove unpropitious, 
 we make the discovery at the bottom of some abyss into 
 which we have plunged, and in our dismay and disgrace we 
 may be happy if we have not dragged another with us. 
 
 Nothing can be more demoralizing than thus to overesti- 
 mate the sancity of love. Love is not a thing apart from 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 545 
 
 life, it is the emotional tendency of our being, and depends 
 absolutely for its justification upon the physical, the social, 
 .and the moral laws of life. No thought or feeling can be 
 right which will not bear completion in conduct ; hence the 
 quality of no life can rise above the quality of its actions. 
 Thus philosophy opposes idealism in every phase of life. 
 The great moral canons are so omnipresent in the social 
 atmosphere, that, like the colors of the sunlight, they are 
 invisible until refracted. Thousands of imperfectly moral 
 lives pass away without even suspecting the stupendous 
 power of these forces, so well are they equipoised, so seldom 
 really challenged. But the soul that, doubting their existence, 
 provokes them to activity, is seared by their vivid power. 
 If you doubt that there are magnetic currents which course 
 in the veins of society in the right lines of virtue, do not 
 thwart their path, for the lightning may dry up in you all 
 susceptibility to truth, and you will never know that you 
 have been destv oyed. All the movements of life are groups 
 of personal phenomena in which the ultimate principle is 
 but remotely discerned. We must not, therefore, confound 
 a human sentiment with the divine principle. No feeling can 
 be so exalted as to justify itself ; it is at best but the func- 
 tion of conditions, and must depend on these conditions for 
 its justification. To enjoy constant love, constantly recur- 
 ring conditions must be provided, for in these it is that the 
 love really exists. 
 
 Passing from the greatest of personal to the greatest of 
 impersonal sentiments, from the love of individuals to 
 that of right government, the same principles apply. A 
 recent experience will illustrate my argument. While 
 seated in the office of a leading business house in 
 Chicago, recently, a gentleman entered, and as he hap- 
 pened to fall into conversation with me, I noticed that 
 he had been followed in by an individual whose actions 
 were somewhat mysterious. The new-comer went through 
 a pantomime which plainly indicated that he was solicit- 
 ing money from my interlocutor. This performance was 
 accompanied by the question : " Do you want the nomi- 
 
546 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 nation for alderman in our ward ? " The man who repre- 
 sented his ward so disinterestedly was apparently of Irish ex- 
 traction, and had an unmistakable air of the dissolute about 
 him, a lack of the dignity belonging to legitimate occupa- 
 tions. No one can confuse the appearance of an honest 
 workman, however besmirched his person, with the unclean- 
 liness of idleness and vice. The man thus approached was 
 a well-to-do manufacturer. He seemed to be acquainted 
 with the ward magnate, and, rather pleased at the question, 
 " Yes," he said, " I want to run for alderman in our ward,, 
 and I think if I do I will be elected." 
 
 "Well," said the other, "it will cost you one thousand 
 dollars to get the nomination, but there is the best chance 
 for an alderman, this election, that we have had for some 
 time." 
 
 " How is that?" 
 
 " Why the Railroad wants to get into Chicago, and 
 
 they are going to spend one hundred thousand dollars to do- 
 it. Of course that makes a nice divide for the aldermen." 
 
 " Well," said the manufacturer, in an absent sort of way, 
 as though he had not heard the last remark, " \ will give the 
 one thousand dollars, and I would just as lief pay you to 
 work for me as any one I know of." 
 
 At this juncture I interposed the remark : " What a pure 
 government you have in Chicago ! " This only provoked a 
 good-natured retort from both men, and, shaking hands 
 warmly, they parted. 
 
 The whole thing was done so openly, and with such ap- 
 parent innocence, that it took me some time to realize that 
 I had witnessed an instance of that deep-laid corruption for 
 which our country has become so famous, and which threatens 
 its existence. The clerks who overheard the conversation 
 evinced no more surprise than if the men had consummated 
 an ordinary business transaction ; the manufacturer resumed 
 his conversation with me in perfect unconcern, and the pot- 
 house politician went on his way rejoicing. The former was, 
 as I afterward ascertained, an American ; the latter, the son 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 547 
 
 of Irish parents, who had brought him to this country when 
 a child. Neither of these men had any notion of the duties 
 or true nature of citizenship. 1 The uneducated Irishman who 
 comes to America is not so much to blame. He has no high 
 ideals of government. To his people, government has been 
 a symbol of enmity and oppression for ages. He regards it 
 as a power that plunders him, and he is only too. glad to 
 plunder it. He comes among us and assumes the functions 
 of citizenship, but he does not realize that in so doing he 
 becomes an integral part of our government, and if he be 
 corrupt he poisons our national life. But the American who 
 has no ideals of pure government has no rag to cover his dis- 
 grace. His nature is too narrow and grovelling to take in 
 his true status in the world. He is dead to the pathos, to 
 the appeal of human history. The rightful heir to inesti- 
 mable privileges, the son of a race who freed themselves and 
 established a great civilization upon the imperishable prin- 
 
 1 While this is going to press, six months after the occurrence related above, 
 a condemned murderer, who had the indiscretion to shoot one of Chicago's 
 specimen aldermen in his own drinking-saloon, revenges himself upon his com- 
 panions in political vice, who he thinks ought to have enabled him to escape, 
 by disclosing a truly frightful state of corruption in the voting of this great city. 
 He describes methods of wholesale repeating of the boldest description, the 
 altering of municipal records to suit the purposes of the party in power, and the 
 open co-operation of the police in securing fraudulent balloting. Upon the 
 day this is written, October 12, 1884, a leading Chicago journal announces that 
 "out of one hundred and sixty-five polling-places ninety-four have been located 
 in saloons, some of them very disreputable." (Is it any wonder that women 
 shrink from universal suffrage ?) I am informed that in this city it is impossi- 
 ble to elect any member of the party not in power, when the office is needed 
 by their opponents, even in wards where an overwhelming majority is known to 
 exist in favor of the candidate. 
 
 I am assured that a majority of the aldermen are disreputable characters, 
 gamblers, and dissolute men. True " fathers of a city ! " 
 
 A stockholder in a gas company in the same place informs me that they pay 
 one hundred thousand dollars per annum to the board of aldermen to keep out 
 electric-light companies, but the moment the electric-light companies will pay 
 a larger sum they will be allowed to enter ; while the president of the same : 
 company admits that they paid a large sum to the same board of aldermen to 
 secure the privilege of laying their pipes. These business men, in making 
 these admissions, did not seem to be aware that they had committed crimes 
 against the community they were living in. 
 
548 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ciples of purity and freedom, he is corrupt himself and is 
 willing that all his liberties shall be endangered by his self- 
 ishness. He knows no public good which does not in some 
 way exalt his powers of assimilation. He does not know that 
 purity and honor in public affairs are as essential to the life 
 of a nation as virtue is to the life of a family. He excludes 
 from his idea of government all moral, all humane sentiments. 
 He is a torpid, impure, poisonous member of society. 
 
 And what are the ramifications of this impurity? Corpora- 
 tions make deliberate appropriations to buy dishonest votes 
 in municipal, state, and national government. They say they 
 cannot get their common rights without employing corrupt 
 means. Railroads raise corruption funds to buy their way 
 into cities, and competing lines raise other corruption funds 
 to keep them out. Where does it end ? The spectacle is 
 appalling; we are rotten throughout the entire structure of 
 our society, so rotten, that our very ideals of purity are 
 disappearing. With vast accumulations of wealth, we have 
 no recognized class of young men growing up who are pre- 
 paring themselves to devote their lives to the public good 
 upon high and unselfish principles. In a country teeming 
 with opportunities for education, we have no concerted effort 
 to educate men either morally or scientifically for the respon- 
 sibilities of office. Our universal citizenship is employed in 
 a vast struggle for the spoils of office, for the opportunity of 
 sucking the public blood. We are a nation of parasites, and 
 the poor frame which we are preying upon is dying of the 
 great American disease of public corruption. No appeal to 
 history will avail. Americans have no fear of history ; they 
 regard their country as a new departure in humanity, and as 
 not subject to any of the great maladies of which other na- 
 tions have suffered and died. Thousands seek our shores 
 who have no ideals of pure government. They come to as- 
 similate ; and, too ignorant to distinguish the luscious fruit 
 from the limb that bears it, they eat into the structures of 
 our body politic and set up a national decay. Too many 
 Americans, who have forgotten the high principles of their 
 
THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY. 549 
 
 forefathers, join in this unholy carnival. The sound of our 
 church bells is powerless to call them off ; they are dead to 
 the inspirations of culture, to the grand sympathies of moral 
 life ; they are content to bequeath to their children a cor- 
 rupted state, diseased by the impurity of their own lives. 
 
 I have visited a great many Roman Catholic churches and 
 listened attentively to the sermons, but have never heard a 
 priest denounce to his congregation the political corruption 
 from which we are suffering. I have heard Protestant min- 
 isters speak upon the subject but very rarely, and never with 
 the warmth which it demands. The Roman Catholics 
 cannot be blamed for not becoming political reformers. The 
 great stem of the Church of Christ which they represent has 
 always had distinct political ambitions, impossible to recon- 
 cile with the highest ideas of government, and they cannot 
 be expected to resign these ambitions in America. The 
 Protestant denominations are too divided to control any 
 great political influence ; so that, so far as religion takes an 
 interest in our politics, we are in the power of the Church of 
 Rome. 
 
 But the Church of Christ has no great and pure political 
 ideals. To Jesus, politics was a thing apart from the king- 
 dom of God, which he represented. He believed that a 
 supernatural change of all earthly conditions was necessary 
 to the establishment of a great moral life. His conception 
 of life was so primitive and unreal that it has ever since 
 been an impossible ideal. The interest which his church 
 has taken in politics through the reign of the popes of Rome 
 has been of such a narrow and selfish order that Protes- 
 tantism has sprung into existence, mainly as a protest against 
 it ; and so inadequate are the Christian ideals of human 
 government, so little do they answer to the real conditions 
 of life, that the separation of church and state has become 
 a fundamental tenet with a large body of Christians, a ma- 
 jority of whom are Protestants. 
 
 What have we, then, to look for, from Christianity, in the 
 way of ideals of pure government ? With the great Roman 
 
550 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Church actuated by selfish plans for ecclesiastical dominion ; 
 with the Protestants jealous of any interference in state 
 affairs on the part of their religion, holding up the sickly 
 visions of a sect of Latter-Day Saints as a model for human 
 life ; what have we to look for, from Christianity, in the 
 way of ideals of pure government ? 
 
 Political ideals are but enlargements of personal exist- 
 ence. Purity in the sphere of government must spring 
 from personal purity, hence the high value which is placed 
 upon character in public life. 
 
 A true religion can alone give us true politics ; a great and 
 good national life can come only from discipline of char- 
 acter and mind. 
 
 Morality is the study of divine law with respect to social 
 duties. It is the casting of the true perspectives of life and 
 mind. There is a popular notion that religion is something 
 higher and even purer than morality. 
 
 Religion and morality are different views of the same 
 thing; true religion is the highest thought and feeling; 
 morality, the embodiment of both in action. The religion 
 of philosophy is broad enough to shape the future of hu- 
 manity, to secure to our children the advantages of freedom 
 and the true glory of a moral life. This religion would exalt 
 principles, not persons ; methods of life, not individuals ; it 
 enshrines no saints, it bows to no mystery, for it gathers its 
 inspiration from the general life and mind. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA IN BEHALF OF THE 
 RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The Question Considered with Regard to Nations and Men The Question 
 Considered with Regard to Children Religion is the Highest or Most Gen- 
 eral Thought and Feeling ; Morality, the Embodiment of Both in Action 
 The Home is the Citadel of Individual and National Purity. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY claims no prerogatives; its organization is 
 purely intellectual and moral ; it is the critic of succeeding 
 civilizations, of social progress, and of moral development. 
 Occupying this position, it has a right to demand reasonable 
 reforms. Not unmindful of the slow methods of actual life, 
 or of the disparities of intelligence and sensibility between 
 nations and classes, it regards organized religion as indis- 
 pensable to the world, as the central feature of every civili- 
 zation. But religion must always represent the highest 
 knowledge of the race, the purest view of life interpreted in 
 the most fitting language for each nation of worshippers. 
 As the thought and feeling of the world learn to respond to 
 those symphonies of life which declare the human race to be 
 a great unit, and its origin and destiny but obverse aspects 
 of the single fact of development, religion must take up this 
 refrain and repeat it to its followers. It must repeat it in 
 language which has the dignity of simplicity, the power of 
 truth. A religion which under any pretext falsifies life is 
 immoral and must decay. As the realm of religion is that 
 of thought and feeling voiced in language, purity and integ- 
 rity of speech should be its first consideration. It has no 
 right to employ vague symbols when the ideas which they 
 represent can be more truthfully expressed by the use of 
 
552 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 direct terms. If a creed has life, it must progress; if it is 
 wholly dead, it must be discarded. Philosophy would do no 
 violence to living faiths, but it will ever seek to remove 
 those decaying structures of belief which encumber society 
 and threaten its welfare. The extent of the religious reform 
 which each age demands can be measured by the degree of 
 confusion which prevails among the people with regard to 
 their most general conceptions. However simple and primi- 
 tive the religious ideas of a people may be, providing 
 harmony prevails, morality is comparatively unaffected. 
 But when from great disparities in intelligence and educa- 
 tion there is a continual clashing of religious opinion, 
 morality, which is the expression of the highest logical 
 harmony of our lives, is sure to suffer. Above all, when 
 that class which represents the widest culture and deepest 
 thought of a nation withdraws from its dominant faith a 
 reaction is sure to follow, for this class embraces the true 
 religionists of each age. In response to their deeper 
 thoughts and purer feelings creeds must yield, beliefs must 
 widen and deepen ; nothing can resist the silent energy of 
 their reforms. The language, the sentiment, the life of their 
 epoch they unconsciously control ; they fix the ideals, pass 
 the judgments, determine the scope of their civilization, for 
 their convictions and their lives constitute the philosophy, 
 the morality, and the religion of their time. In the past, 
 this class has belonged chiefly to the church : in our time, 
 through the medium of general culture and the higher 
 refinements of life, this class is entering and transforming 
 the homes of America ; and the day is approaching, if it has 
 not already come, when women shall constitute its most 
 numerous members. 
 
 The Christian religion is widely understood to be a re- 
 ligion of love, and is therefore supposed to have peculiar 
 claims upon women. It is by no means manifest, how- 
 ever, that woman has had a greater share in the senti- 
 ment of love than man, for history shows that she has 
 wielded .its power rather than submitted to it. But can a 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 553 
 
 religion be successfully based upon this sentiment of love ? 
 Does experience show that in this respect Christianity has 
 succeeded ? Have the passions of men and the intrigues of 
 nations been controlled by its power? Is it not rather to 
 the broader sentiments of justice and humanity that we are 
 slowly yielding? Are not justice and humanity truer names 
 for that universal solicitude for our race which makes it 
 physically and morally a single being? In a word, does not 
 that affection which extends itself until it recognizes no 
 individuals, until its object is the single individual of human- 
 ity, cease to be what we call love? For the purpose of 
 illustrating this principle, contemporaneous events are quite 
 as useful as history. Let us, therefore, look about us and 
 examine the degree of moral authority which the religion of 
 love exercises over Christian nations. 
 
 The practice of bleeding, which was once so popular in 
 medicine, has been discontinued, because the doctors came 
 to the conclusion that the physical strength of a patient 
 could be utilized in his treatment, and was seldom if ever an 
 obstacle to his recovery. Might not the same reform be adopted 
 in the domain of international pathology ? It is well known 
 that no Christian people ever engage in a war which has not a 
 distinct humanitarian principle at bottom, or, at the least, 
 which cannot be clearly identified with some of the designs of 
 Providence. Is it not a well-known fact that modern wars 
 are principally undertaken for the spiritual amelioration of 
 the weaker nation ? Have we not abundant evidence for 
 this view of the case in the justifications which Christian 
 nations almost always offer for such wars as they may feel 
 called upon to wage ? To be impressed with the prevalence 
 of this belief, we need but to glance at that part of contem- 
 porary literature which deals with international relations. A 
 striking proof of the existence of this tacit understanding 
 between the nations of Christendom, that all national policies 
 are at bottom humane, and even religious, is to be found in 
 the speech of the Emperor of Germany in commemoration 
 of the results of the benevolent interest which his people so- 
 
554 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 recently manifested in France. In one of the leading New 
 York journals of last September the following notice ap- 
 peared : 
 
 A GERMAN MEMORIAL. 
 
 THE NATIONAL MONUMENT UNVEILED. 
 THE CEREMONIES WITNESSED BY CROWDS. 
 
 Great crowds gathered at the Niederwald, Germany, yester- 
 day, to witness the unveiling of the National Monument, which 
 has been erected as a memorial of the German victory [over 
 France] of 1870-71. The Emperor William was present, and 
 expressed much satisfaction with the arrangements. He was en- 
 thusiastically cheered by the people as he passed through Wies- 
 baden to attend a banquet at the royal castle. A counter- 
 demonstration was held in Paris at the statue of Strasbourg. 
 
 POPULAR CELEBRATION AT NIEDERWALD. 
 CASTLES AND VILLAGES ILLUMINATED. 
 
 RUDESHEIM, Sept. 28th. The Germania Monument was unveiled 
 to-day at Niederwald, in the presence of a great crowd of per- 
 sons, who came from all parts of the empire ; besides, the Ger- 
 man Princes, the Princesses, the Mayors of Hamburg, Bremen, 
 and Lubeck, and nearly every prominent person connected with 
 the military and civil government, were present. All the German 
 Sovereigns and Princes assembled before the monument, and the 
 ceremonies proceeded in accordance with the programme. The 
 villages and castles along the Rhine were illuminated, and bon- 
 fires and blue-lights were burned on all the heights. The total 
 cost of the statue was over one million marks. The inscription 
 upon it says : " In memory of the unanimous and victorious 
 rising of the German People, and the reestablishment of the 
 German Empire 1870-1871." 
 
 SPEECH OF THE EMPEROR WILLIAM. 
 
 The following is the text of the Emperor William's speech 
 at the Niederwald unveiling : 
 
 " When Providence desires to signify its will with regard to 
 mighty events upon the earth, it selects the time, countries, and 
 instruments to accomplish its purpose. The years 1870 and 1871 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 555 
 
 were a time when such purpose was indicated. Our threatened 
 Germany arose in its love for the Fatherland as one man, and, with 
 princes at the head, stood in arms as the instrument. The Al- 
 mighty conducted these arms after sanguinary conflicts from vic- 
 tory to victory, and United Germany takes its place in the history 
 of the world. Millions of hearts have raised their prayers to God 
 and given Him humble thanks, praising Him for esteeming us 
 worthy of accomplishing His will. Germany, to the remotest time? 
 desires to give constant expression to this feeling of gratitude. 
 In this sense the monument standing before us was erected. In 
 the words spoken at the laying of the foundation-stone, words 
 which my late father, after the wars of liberation of 1813-15, be- 
 queathed in iron to posterity, I dedicate this monument : ' To the 
 fallen, a memorial ; to the living, an acknowledgment ; to coming 
 generations, a source of emulation. May God vouchsafe it ! ' ' 
 
 On concluding his address the Emperor unveiled the 
 monument. 
 
 COUNTER-DEMONSTRATION IN PARIS. 
 
 As a counter-demonstration to the unveiling of the statue of 
 Germania on the Rhine by the Germans, a crowd of Parisians 
 assembled around the statue of Strasbourg, in the Place de la 
 Concorde, and indulged in patriotic cries. The demonstration 
 passed off without any disorder. 
 
 The question naturally arises : What were the feelings of 
 these citizens of France with regard to the German designs 
 of Providence ? Mark how familiar and natural the language 
 of this speech sounds to us ! how little we suspect its full 
 significance ! The facts are, that France and Germany act 
 and feel toward each other as hostile feudal lords did in the 
 middle ages. They are enabled to wield vast military or- 
 ganizations through the agencies of national revenue, and 
 debt, and indemnities from conquered nations, instead of an 
 army of retainers supported by levies upon the surrounding 
 country and the plunder of their neighbors. Instead of 
 family feuds, with a chain of murders and pillages to avenge, 
 we have the history of nations, with defeats to turn into vie- 
 
556 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tories, and cities and provinces to recover ; instead of legends 
 of war and love, recounted over mediaeval hearths, and sung 
 to knights and ladies by wandering bards, our feelings of 
 avarice and hate are idealized and vivified by the public 
 voice, the literature, and even the art of our time. What was 
 courage in the olden time, is now patriotism ; for a sublimer 
 sentiment is needed to sustain the more mechanical mode of 
 death ; what was once allegiance to a lord, is now national 
 pride or spirit ; but worse than all, religion is made subser- 
 vient to the most brutal passions of men, and it is in the 
 name of God that the worst national crimes are committed ; 
 and this with the sanction, not of half-civilized men and 
 ignorant women, but of nations who boast of the greatest 
 culture, the highest refinement in the world. 
 
 The removal of these great evils is not to be accomplished 
 through courts and legislatures ; the cause must be pleaded 
 at the bar of the divine unity of life, or God. We must not 
 look for the reform of these abuses in the mandates of tribu- 
 nals ; they must be achieved in the minds and hearts of in- 
 dividuals by the development of a truer knowledge of life 
 and humanity than is expressed in our civilization or taught 
 by our religion. The religions of faith and love may be em- 
 ployed to inflame passions and perpetuate the discords of 
 humanity, but the Religion of Philosophy is based upon too 
 deep a knowledge of life and history ever to be perverted to 
 such ends. 
 
 If the right of the stronger nations of the world to carry 
 out their ideas of the "designs of Providence" cannot be 
 successfully tried before the bar of any existing religion ; is 
 it not time to establish a faith which can enlighten the 
 world upon such questions, and which will, in time, create a 
 public opinion, in the form of universal sentiments of human- 
 ity and justice, too strong for any power to disregard ? 
 When the history of Europe of the nineteenth century shall 
 be written, the responsibility of Christianity for our failures 
 will appear greater than we are now willing to believe. The 
 designs of Providence, which are being so faithfully carried 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 557 
 
 out by each nation according to its own understanding, will 
 be seen to belong to an idea of Deity which is little better 
 than savage. Should it not be the ambition of all well- 
 meaning people to see the closing pages of that history 
 brightened by the dawn of a broader and clearer under- 
 standing of life ? 
 
 The great question before us is, What are the conditions 
 of a religion that can become universal ? In the first place, 
 it must be founded upon an understanding of life which 
 shall command the respect and adherence of the cultivated 
 and intelligent world. The sciences furnish us abundant 
 data for such a comprehension of life, and their unification 
 into a single organon of truth, which shall be proof against 
 the delusions of any possible combination of words, is to be 
 achieved by establishing a common understanding with 
 regard to the significance of ultimate terms. The beginning 
 of this achievement is the solution of the metaphysical 
 problem, which we venture to hope has been successfully 
 performed in the foregoing pages. This, however, is but 
 the beginning of a movement which is subject to all the 
 accidents and misfortunes of human progress. To accom- 
 plish any great moral reform, the lives of individuals, not of 
 nations, must be the arena of activity. Literature must 
 hold up purer ideals of taste and sentiment, art must sec- 
 ond this attempt by enlisting in the struggle for truth and 
 beauty, and the religions of faith must rise above the dark- 
 ness of superstition and the misinterpretations of history, to 
 a fuller appreciation of the facts and possibilities of life. 
 Through these established channels alone can the populace 
 be reached ; and it would be unnatural to believe that those 
 who preside over the higher departments of knowledge, 
 should refuse their sympathy to so needed a reform. As yet 
 the aristocracy of learning have but a distant influence upon 
 the masses, especially in Europe, and reformations which 
 with them are practically immediate are slow in working 
 their way into the national life. 
 
 In America, the chief hope of such a reform is with its 
 
55$ THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 women. It is becoming a recognized fact that the women 
 of this country, as a class, are better educated than the men. 
 This is a natural consequence of the comparat .iter 
 
 amount of leisure which the women of the middle and upper 
 classes enjoy. It h.. acknowledged that our most 
 
 disinterested reforms, our unobtrusive chanties and intellec- 
 tual enterprises, are chiefly encouraged and sustained by 
 \en ; and it is a rule, not only in this country, but 
 throughout the Christian world, that organized religion, not 
 virtually but actually, depends upon woman for support. 
 
 Recognizing, therefore, the ascendency which woman is 
 gaining in the intellectual, and which she has always had in 
 the moral, world, it is with the women of America that we 
 would plead the cause of Philosophy, which is the only true 
 religion. We would submit to them the question whether 
 they can afford to disseminate through the medium of their 
 influence, incon\ - of life, inadequate theories of morali- 
 
 ty ; whether they fully estimate the consequences of such a 
 course. We would ask them whether they are not aware 
 that the religion of our country is losing the affection and 
 respect of the men, and is ceasing to be, to them at least, a 
 moral inspiration. 
 
 The remedy for this greatest evil of our age, the divorce 
 of thought and action, of intellect and morality, is in her 
 hands. She should demand a more strict accounting from 
 those who assume to teach religion to the world ; and in 
 order to do this effectually she should acquaint herself 
 with the history of religion, of science, and of thought. 
 From the facts thus acquired she can draw all the conclusions 
 necessary for the guidance and inspiration of society. It 
 is true that it requires some courage to inaugurate and sus- 
 tain such a criticism, but the hearts of women have never 
 failed humanity; it is now a question whether her mind shall 
 prove wanting. 
 
 The need which woman already feels for a higher mental 
 discipline is shown by her demands for admittance into our 
 colleges. If she but knew her power, she could establish 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 559 
 
 universities which would soon outshine any that we now 
 h;ivi .-, and afford her an opportunity of returning good for 
 evil, by throwing open their doors to all seekers of knowl- 
 edge without regard to sex. 
 
 Hut now that we have considered the ability of the reli- 
 gion of faith and love to make men and nations moral, and 
 have pointed out how woman can use her power to benefit 
 the world in this respect, let us consider what are the 
 claims of children upon society for a higher religious educa- 
 tion. 
 
 There is no mystery in a mother's love ; it is as natural 
 and boundless as the sunlight. Who ever heard of a child 
 reproaching its parent for the defective character or consti- 
 tution which it has inherited? The belief that these condi- 
 tions of life are beyond the parents' control exonerates them 
 from responsibility; but there is a limit to this exoneration. 
 All those who think about what they are, or what they 
 might be ; all who are not hopelessly satisfied with them- 
 selves, or who have not lost interest in life, know that what 
 they are is chiefly due to their early education, to the direc- 
 tion which was first given to their thoughts and feelings. 
 Who can over-estimate the influence of a mother? The 
 child is but a perpetuation of her existence, and if she be a 
 woman of sentiment, of deep feeling, she stamps the impress 
 of her life upon her offspring. She is not only a most pow- 
 erful example to them; her opinions and her sentiments 
 constitute for her children, unconsciously, a religion. Thus 
 it is that the accidents of life determine so largely our happi- 
 ness. But accidents are only relative chances; there is no 
 absolute uncertainty. Far beyond the reach of ordinary 
 perception the inevitable laws of development control the 
 averages of events, and to these obscure influences can be 
 traced all the changes of our existence, however fortuitous 
 they may seem. 
 
 In considering the duties of a mother, therefore, we must 
 allow for all those circumstances which are so far be- 
 yond her control as to be practically fore-ordained. I have 
 
560 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 seen a mother struggling under difficulties to possess her 
 soul in peace for fear of affecting the disposition of her un- 
 born child ; and long afterward I saw in the face of that 
 child the hope and victory of a brave woman. Such experi- 
 ences as these, which are multiplied on every hand, forbid us 
 to be fatalists, which is but a name for those who believe in 
 some mysterious control of their existence, a control in which 
 they have no voice. Philosophy teaches us that we have a voice 
 in every measure that affects us, and if we but study to gain 
 an influence in the enactments which prescribe our career, 
 the power to be gained over ourselves is practically infinite. 
 
 When our existence is passing out into that of others, when 
 our types of character and mind are silently determining the 
 lives of children too young to take any part in the legislation 
 of life, our responsibility manifestly grows in an increasing 
 ratio. The men and women of a nation are chiefly what 
 their mothers have made them ; it is in the minds and char- 
 acters of our women that we are to read the future of our 
 people. If our mothers cling to primitive superstitions, we 
 must grow up with the beliefs of savages, and all the after- 
 learning which we can control will be powerless to eradicate 
 these rude mysteries from our lives. 
 
 But what hope have we in appealing to women? They, 
 of all members of society, are respecters of constituted 
 authority. To them, organized religion, no matter how 
 accidental may be its beliefs, is a despotism which is almost 
 beyond the comprehension of men. 
 
 I have seen men who, to all intents and purposes, were 
 scoffers at religion, who would reject, when reasoned with, 
 every important dogma of the Christian faith, attend church 
 regularly because their mothers had asked them to, because 
 in so doing they felt that they were perpetuating the hal- 
 lowed influences of early life ; and still they disagreed from 
 beginning to end with the creed and the whole religious 
 polity of their church. Of what avail is knowledge against 
 such a power as this ? And if it is sufficient to control the 
 actions of men who have become disaffected in every true 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 561 
 
 sense with their religion, what must be the power from which 
 emanates this influence ! What must be the reverence in 
 which women hold religion ! 
 
 There are many instances, in such great religious centres 
 as Mecca and Rome, of functionaries of the church laughing 
 at the innocent devotion of pilgrims, although their reverent 
 offerings are never rejected. If woman would look up from 
 her prayers into the faces of the great ecclesiastical dig- 
 nitaries who are the autocrats of her beliefs and the beliefs 
 of her children, she would see a compassionate smile ; not be- 
 cause these men are insincere, but because all despotisms are 
 in themselves an expression of contempt for the oppressed. 
 Give to man an illegitimate power, whether it be in religion, 
 or in society, or in civil life, and he accepts the gift by sur- 
 rendering his respect for the giver; and it requires far more 
 character than even our men of God possess, to decline this 
 homage of the multitude. 
 
 We are constantly reproaching the cultivated and socially 
 decorous Jews of Palestine for not believing in Christ. What 
 were John the Baptist and Jesus if they were not railers against 
 the constituted authorities in the name of humanity ? Their 
 conceptions of life were narrow, but they had the weal of 
 humanity at heart ; and none of us will dare to say that they 
 were not truer exponents of all that is worth emulating in 
 life than the orthodox classes of their country. The mothers 
 of Judea taught their babes the sacred mysteries of Judaism, 
 and through all the vicissitudes of their people this influence 
 has lasted, and in our own country the same Moses and the 
 same God that were worshipped in Jerusalem are adored by 
 the children of Israel. Will the mothers of America thus 
 cling to the superstitions of Christianity, and shall we have to 
 wait until another people arise out of the failures of our own, 
 to see our best thought and feeling become a religion? 
 Have wars and pestilences and the death of nations always 
 to intervene between the oscillations of our religious pro- 
 gress ? 
 
 But what are the constituted authorities that govern the 
 
562 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 beliefs of our women ? They are the official sectaries of 
 Christianity. Do they agree among themselves ? Only suf- 
 ficiently to allow their followers to live in comparative peace ; 
 a condition of society upon which even superstition depends 
 for sustenance. Are they seekers after truth, or are their 
 best energies absorbed in striving to enlarge the sway of 
 their separate convictions ? If all these sects are worshipping 
 one God, is it necessary that religion should be so divided ? 
 Has not each denomination its own prophets, and are they 
 not all regarded as inspired men ? Have not these petty sub- 
 divisions grown up among us until our religion has lost all 
 the dignity and simplicity of a universal faith ? Do not 
 these accidental influences, operating through the religious 
 instincts of mothers, make heathens of us in our cradles ? 
 Are we not all duly labelled according to the denomina- 
 tion in which we are born ? 
 
 If the light of God is to be so refracted among us, what will 
 become of those delicate principles of morality which appeal 
 to us only through the divine unity of existence ? 
 
 But who are the autocrats of our mothers' beliefs, and 
 what do they teach ? They are our " men of God," and 
 they teach the grossest superstitions. If our mothers believe 
 in a personal God, a God-Christ, and a God-Spirit, and are 
 told that their union into one being is a mystery which they 
 must not question, what better are they than the Hindoo 
 mothers, who worship Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva? If our 
 mothers believe in an eternal life (a flagrant contradiction in 
 terms), what better are they than the mothers of ancient 
 Egypt, who were more anxious that their children should 
 pass the judgment after death than that they should become 
 true men and true women ? 
 
 The life which a mother gives her child is its only life. 
 This is the verdict of science and of thought ; it is the law 
 of nature ; it is the law of God. When a fabulous life is be- 
 lieved in, it detracts from the hopes and possibilities of actual 
 existence. If we are taught to look to heaven for justice, 
 (which is the highest human sentiment,) shall we not be less 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 563 
 
 apt to accord it, and to demand it, upon earth? If we are told 
 that our natural ideals of love, purity, and humanity can 
 only be realized in some distant world, what courage shall 
 we have to strive for their realization here? And thus it is 
 that our mothers, from whom we are supposed to gain our 
 best principles, and truest conceptions of life, dedicate us to 
 the slavery of superstition, almost before we are born. 
 
 And who are they that conspire with our mothers to teach 
 us narrow and imperfect views of life ; who advocate a puny 
 morality which has been proved insufficient for the use of 
 men and nations ; who pretend to represent the highest 
 intelligence and virtue, and who really teach us savage 
 beliefs and the morality of primitive races ? They are the 
 priests and ministers of the religion of Christ, and they 
 stand impeached before the bar of humanity for this great 
 crime. They may plead ignorance, but it will be of no 
 avail. The laws of thought and feeling are universal, and 
 they have not studied them. They know that God is not a 
 fiction, but a great fact, and they have closed their eyes to 
 that science which builds its truths upon facts, discounte- 
 nancing all mysteries. They know that morality does not 
 rest upon a superstition, but that it springs from the simplest 
 experiences of life, and they have been content to question life 
 at the oracle of a personal God. They know that literatures 
 are the work of man, and they would have us believe that 
 their primitive literature is the fiat of a God. They accept 
 the emoluments of sacred office, the homage which we offer 
 to our greatest benefactors, and they live in darkness and 
 superstition, and would cast disgrace upon those who refuse 
 to follow their example. They profess to represent an 
 infinite love and a sublime humanity, and they are the 
 Pharisees, who in the pride of office and the stiffness of cus- 
 tom, would stone those who seek the truth for its own sake. 
 " Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! " If 
 Christ were among us and had escaped the slavery of your 
 education ; if he had drunk the clear draught of knowledge 
 from the best and purest minds of his race, he would indeed 
 
564 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 condemn you, and you would be just as innocent, and as. 
 outraged, and as clamorous for his disgrace, as the con- 
 servative doctors and sacred priests of Judea. Among those 
 doctors, there were sincere and pure men, who thought 
 that they were doing right in perpetuating the dogmas of 
 the Theocracy. You are perpetuating this same Theocracy 
 among us. 
 
 To the priests and ministers of the religion of Christ I c 
 make no appeal. They hate reforms and despise reformers. 
 
 It is with the mothers of America, who look to the estab- 
 lished Church of Christ for their inspiration and their guid- 
 ance, that I would plead the cause of our civilization. I 
 would warn them against the despotism to which they are 
 submitting. There is only one despotism which justifies 
 itself, to which man can with honor and safety intrust his 
 happiness, this is the absolute despotism of morality. To 
 the power of this autocracy alone, can we surrender our 
 freedom of action and of will, for in its laws are expressed 
 the principles of free agency, of absolute duty, of divine con- 
 trol. In its conditions we recognize inexorable fate the 
 predeterminations of existence, and in rendering homage to 
 it, we can alone accomplish our destiny. In the enactments 
 of this despotism, duty and happiness are harmonized; 
 egotism and beneficence become but opposite phases of the 
 fact of personal life ; for morality is the only power which 
 can unite the instincts and the intelligence of man under a 
 single government. 
 
 That the mothers of America should believe that they 
 require the aid of superstition or mystery to teach their 
 children morality, is a proposition too absurd to be enter- 
 tained. This would be an instance of modesty surpassing 
 even womankind. Can woman, who has set the example of 
 purity to the race, from whom all moralities have taken 
 their inspiration, can she be so unconscious of her power ? 
 There is not a tenet in Christianity which can surpass in 
 moral value the natural impulses of a mother's heart for her 
 children's welfare ; or the sacred influences of home. 
 
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA. 565 
 
 It is to be remembered that all the great writers upon 
 ethics, from Plato to those of the present day, seek to find 
 the source of morality in the nature of man. Some call it 
 a moral sense or intuition, some a divine instinct, others 
 think it is one of two conflicting elements of life ; but 
 none believe it to be an external fact. They may all regard 
 the source of morality as a mystery, but they think that 
 mystery lies somewhere within us. Following this universal 
 suggestion, we must seek for moral principles in the natural 
 activities of life, viewing life in its widest sense ; and in 
 deference to the age we live in we must disown the common 
 belief that these principles are unknowable, and that their 
 secrets are in the keeping of men who deal in mysteries. 
 
 There are no generalizations in moral science which have 
 a deeper or higher source than the simple idea of Justice 
 universally symbolized by the device of the balance. There 
 are no ideas of right conduct which are more than enlarge- 
 ments of the natural relations of family life. All crimes are 
 crimes against humanity, all virtues are but developments of 
 life which consider the well-being of others. How few there 
 are who can imagine the moral order of society progressing, 
 or even surviving, without the great machinery of religion 
 which we see about us. Who is able to separate in the 
 mind, the solemn for<ns of worship, and the sentiment of 
 duty ? Think for a moment what worship is. Why is it 
 that your heart warms to the appeal of your priest or minis- 
 ter ? Has he touched some of your human sympathies ? 
 Has he aroused your indignation at the sin of others, or 
 your repentance for your own shortcomings ? Has he 
 painted for you some picture of heaven in which your ex- 
 periences of life reappear in brighter colors, or has he fright- 
 ened you by some threat of mysterious vengeance, which 
 you vaguely feel that you deserve ? Or is this man of God 
 compelled, by the intelligence of his audience, to keep in 
 the background his myths and mysteries, and appeal to your 
 altruistic sentiments, your love in ever-widening circles for 
 your fellow-men ? Does he, in a word, simply awaken that 
 
566 THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 infinite sympathy in which we find the principles of love, 
 humanity, and justice? Lift from him, then, all the appur- 
 tenances of superstition, and he stands before you simply 
 a man pleading the cause of humanity ; appealing to those 
 sympathies which begin at home and develop into universal 
 benevolence. Infinitely more dignified and powerful for 
 good would this man be without his superstitions. 
 
 Has not the world tried the religions of mystery long 
 enough ? Has not the time come, at least in our land, 
 when we can dispense with this dishonesty ? Do not think, 
 therefore, that you are advancing the cause of right-living 
 by perpetuating the superstitions of the world ; do not flatter 
 yourselves that by so doing you are serving your family, your 
 country, or your God. 
 
 The religions of mystery have been tried, and they have 
 been found wanting. Egypt lived under their influence 
 for ages, and she has left but monuments of oppression and 
 misery. India has believed in mystery, and her people are 
 crushed and divided by the iron rule of caste. China has 
 turned away from the simple morality of Confucius, and in 
 childish ignorance her millions of people worship artificial 
 gods. The savages are superstitious, and they believe in 
 and fear the shadows of their dead. The Christian nations 
 have perpetuated the mysteries, and they worship a human 
 God. Their history has been one of ignorance and blood- 
 shed, and we are still living under the same regime. Is it 
 not time, at least in America, to try some other religion ? 
 Will not every phase of our existence be exalted by the 
 formation of a true conception of God ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
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