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RECENT ADVANCES 
 
 IN 
 
 THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 
 
RECENT ADVANCES IN 
 
 THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY 
 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES LINDSAY 
 
 M.A., B.D., B.ScJp.R.S.E., F.G.S. 
 
 CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 
 
 LETTERS, AND ARTS OF PADUA ', 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, 
 
 'ESSAYS, LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL,' 'THE SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 OF THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR MODERN THEOLOGY,' 
 
 ETC., ETC. J 
 
 AND MINISTER OF ST ANDREW'S PARISH, 
 KILMARNOCK 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCXCVII 
 
 All Rirhts reserved 
 
J> 
 
 . 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE unusually favourable reception accorded in 
 the most competent quarters to my former work 
 on ' The Progressiveness of Modern Christian 
 Thought' has led me to prepare the present and 
 much larger volume. As that work sought to 
 vindicate the Progressiveness of Christian Theol- 
 ogy in general, so this contends for the Progres- 
 siveness of Theism in particular, and seeks more 
 especially to prove the actual progressiveness of 
 recent theistic thought. This I have deemed 
 worthy of separate endeavour for reasons that seem 
 to me to be specially weighty in connection with 
 theistic thought. Besides, I certainly do not know 
 any more important inquiry in itself for our race than 
 that which concerns itself with those theistic beliefs 
 which are the basal truths of all religion ; and this 
 inquiry has in recent times become shifted from 
 the search after a revelation by an acknowledged 
 Creator, which marked the days of Deism, to the 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 prior and deeper problem whether there be indeed 
 any real personal Creator at all. I hope I may 
 be allowed to say that no conviction has for a 
 long series of years been more firmly rooted in 
 my mind than that the religious thought of our time 
 has no deeper needs than these two, first, to have 
 the bases of religious belief broadened, the theistic 
 foundations deepened, extended, strengthened ; and, 
 secondly, to have the abiding progressiveness of 
 such belief explicitly recognised and thoroughly 
 demonstrated. The second of these needs I took 
 first in my " Progressiveness " work as having 
 been practically an untraversed field. I now desire 
 to bear my part towards the accomplishment of 
 the first in such a manner that these two efforts 
 shall not be disconnected and unrelated. In both 
 cases I have tried to remember that, while there 
 is no lack of analytical power to-day, the great 
 need the prime want is, as I believe, synthetic 
 power and constructive intellect. I trust that the 
 discussions on the Being and Attributes of God, 
 the Causal, Ontological, and Teleological Argu- 
 ments, will be found not unworthy of one who 
 believes the post- Kantian depreciation of them a 
 huge speculative mistake. 
 
 I have judged it desirable to treat, in the course 
 of the present inquiry, of subjects of such deep spec- 
 ulative interest as Personality, Freedom, Reason, 
 the Reign of Law in Man, the Spiritual Nature, 
 Needs, and Goal of Man, the Philosophy of His- 
 
PREFACE. Vii 
 
 tory, and Immortality, the treatment of which, I 
 venture to hope, will be found not less suggestive 
 or new than other parts of the work. The Per- 
 sonality of God, indeed, I have deemed of such 
 surpassing importance as to call for a line of treat- 
 ment such as will not, so far as I am aware, be 
 found anywhere else, even though space-limits have 
 curtailed my treatment of this transcendent and 
 inspiring theme to a degree that little represents 
 my likings. Not less important, from some points 
 of view, will be found, I believe, the treatment 
 here given to Personality in Man. 
 
 Without entering into all the reasons which have 
 weighed with me in this attempt, I would point 
 out that the endeavour is one of paramount im- 
 portance and urgency, so long as theistic writers 
 of undoubted ability are to be found who certainly 
 succeed in creating an impression so unfavourable 
 to the Progressiveness of Theism as to be precisely 
 the opposite of that which it is my desire to deepen 
 and produce by trying to establish and exhibit the 
 progressive character of recent Theistic Philosophy. 
 For, progressive in a most real sense I maintain it 
 is, as I hope in succeeding pages to make evident 
 in a way different from what has before been done, 
 when we shall have viewed the new vast increase 
 of knowledge with its wealth of scientific result 
 for theistic thought, and surveyed the new views 
 of the methods of development of the physical 
 universe in their bearings upon the intellectual 
 
Vlii PREFACE. 
 
 exposition of the Cosmos. One may surely be 
 excused if in this connection he confesses to a 
 feeling of amazement and even dismay that dis- 
 tinguished writers on theistic themes should so often 
 seem to think that nothing of more modern interest 
 is needed than the belated treatment which only 
 loves to dilate on the oft - criticised positions of 
 Descartes, Hume, and Kant. Judging from almost 
 anything they make appear, the thought of the 
 world might since have relapsed into slumber, or 
 have become shorn of progressive power and ex- 
 panding content. Does it need to be said how 
 far otherwise it has really been how intense have 
 grown the activities, and how immense the results, 
 of thought, with the advance of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, so that the difficulties of the theistic phil- 
 osopher are even with the dearth of constructive 
 elements such as really spring from an embarras 
 de richesse ? It ought not to be necessary to say 
 that I am not here supposing anything so ab- 
 surdly optimistic as that all recent movement has 
 been towards strengthening theistic thought : the 
 case is simply that it is with the advances of the- 
 istic philosophy I have desired to deal that is to 
 say, with its continuity and development through 
 all checks and reverses. 
 
 I think enough has been said to show that, in 
 following a critico - speculative mode, it is not my 
 purpose merely to add another to existing exposi- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 tions of Theism or the Philosophy of Religion : 
 rather, the present work presupposes them, and, 
 taking critical account of them, proceeds to cast 
 its own distinctive contribution on to the slowly 
 rising pile of theistic knowledge. In addition to 
 the considerations already mentioned, I may say 
 that, while it has been a loud and incessant re- 
 proach against theistic works that they have quite 
 inadequately kept when keeping at all before 
 them the bearings of evolution on the form and 
 content of what they often presented, I have stead- 
 fastly sought, even while not unduly dealing in 
 detail with evolutionary bearings, to write as one 
 conscious of the evolutionary atmosphere in which 
 the thought of our time lives. For it might 
 almost be now asked, Who can think at all, and 
 not think thus to-day ? How else can present and 
 actual issues be faced, except along these evolu- 
 tionary lines of treatment ? I seek to yield to 
 science all that belongs to it : I only claim, at the 
 same time, for God on the one hand, and for 
 man on the other, what may be quite as rightfully 
 claimed for them. 
 
 The task I have set myself has been not less 
 difficult than distinctive, but I have not been 
 unmindful of the fact that thought, too, has its 
 risks which must be run. Further, I think I have, 
 with deeper consciousness of the imperfection of 
 my work, always more fully appreciated the spirit of 
 
 b 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 Goethe's saying that "the deed is everything," for, 
 far more than all else, its performance has become 
 a pleasurable necessity to me ; and if as I hope 
 my work should bring light, inspiration, stimu- 
 lus, to others, I shall therein find additional satis- 
 faction. Theistic philosophy has as it seems to 
 me one method and one hope, the same which 
 are expressed in the poet's line 
 
 " Painstaking thought, and truth its dear reward." 
 
 The three divisions of the work Recent Philos- 
 ophy of Natural Theology, Recent Philosophy of 
 Theism (God), and Recent Theistic Philosophy of 
 Religion (Man) are not meant to be taken in any 
 other sense than as a convenient general arrange- 
 ment, and are not designed to convey that what 
 stands under any one of these divisions may never 
 have real and intimate relations to either of the 
 other two divisions. An imperial chord subsists 
 through all, which is that of theistic principle. 
 
 One thing only remains for me to add. Though 
 the number of thinkers and writers referred to is so 
 great, yet these are but a small part of those who, 
 abroad and at home, have claimed my interest and 
 attention. But I have not found it practicable to 
 make explicit reference to them all without inter- 
 fering with the natural order and course of my treat- 
 ment, and, while maintaining its scientific and phil- 
 osophical character, I have not felt called to give 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 the work an unnecessarily mechanical and pedantic 
 appearance by resorting to appendices and foot- 
 notes. Deeply conscious of its defects, I send it 
 forth, not without deep thankfulness to God that 
 He has permitted me to take part in what is to 
 me the greatest of earthly causes. 
 
 JAMES LINDSAY, 
 
 KILMARNOCK, December 1896. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Progressiveness of Theism maintained . . . i 
 
 Current misconceptions touching theistic philosophy . . I 
 
 Desiderata of modern theistic philosophy ... 2 
 
 Its relation to the advances of scientific knowledge . . 2 
 
 Call for a thoroughly rational, and not merely ethical, theism . 2 
 
 The present positive task of theistic philosophy ... 2 
 
 The reason and relatedness of the World-Ground to be set forth 3 
 
 The real relation of God to the world in theistic philosophy . 3 
 
 Importance of the task here attempted .... 3 
 
 Ritschlian attitude towards Natural Theology ... 4 
 
 Vindication of the natural pieties . . . 4 
 
 Claims of a progressive Natural Theology urged . . 4 
 
 Theistic philosophy not lacking in intellectual humility . 5 
 
 Recent troubles of theistic philosophy .... 5 
 
 What Natural Theology really is . . . . . 5 
 
 What is its witness ...... 5 
 
 Professor Flint's view of its relevant facts ... 6 
 
 Relation of Natural Theology to Dogmatics . . 6 
 
 The actual Progressiveness of Natural Religion presented . 6 
 
 What a true Philosophy of Natural Theology will maintain . 7 
 
 William Law's view of natural religion .... 7 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 The category of substance as a starting-point . 7 
 
 Its relation to God the Absolute Personality . 7 
 
 Difficulties in this category ... 7 
 
 Place of real or ultimate Personality in our philosophy . 
 God as the Absolute Consciousness in relation to philosophy 
 and science ...... 
 
 The transcendence of Deity in the theistic philosophy . 9 
 
 Reality of the human self and its relations . . 10 
 
 Agnosticism not a possible halting-place 10 
 
 The sweep and range of the theistic philosophy set forth . 10 
 
 The categories of physical science and their metaphysical im- 
 plications ....... 10 
 
 Difficulties of theistic philosophy enormously increased . . 1 1 
 
 Quest of an Urgrund or fundamental ground its primal task . 1 1 
 What a thorough Apologetic will mean . . . .11 
 
 Its imperative necessity . . . . . .11 
 
 Its avoidance of the extremes of subjectivism and objectivism . 1 1 
 Rational religion not to be deemed a scientific impossibility . 12 
 Reign of Law and Freedom in man . . . .13 
 
 Theistic possibilities of a Philosophy of History. . . 13 
 
 Immortality in the synthetic philosophy . . . .13 
 
 View of it in theistic philosophy . . . . .14 
 
 Reflections on the scope, spirit, and method of theistic thought 
 
 and inquiry ....... 14 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 RECENT PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 RECENT PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 Method of History of Religion . . . . .21 
 
 Mozley on relation of natural and revealed religion . .21 
 
 Newman and Ritschl in relation to natural religion . .21 
 
 Need for reconstruction in Natural Theology . . 22 
 
 A less mechanical method adopted . . 22 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Universal religious experience to be consulted . . .22 
 
 Importance of the study of the ethnic religions . . .22 
 
 Teaching of the science of Comparative Religion . . 22 
 
 Professor P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye on natural development 23 
 Meaning of the nature-religions . . .. . .23 
 
 Psychological processes in the nature-religions . . .23 
 
 Religion wider than theistic conception . . . .23 
 
 Notion of self-existent Cause or Creator in Natural Theology . 23 
 Significance of the History of Religions for theistic study . 24 
 Hegel on the idea of God ...... 24 
 
 Place of the theistic conception of God in the history of the race 24 
 Defect of the nature-religions . . . . .24 
 
 Implications of Natural Theology . . . .24 
 
 Pure or natural theism inadequate . . . .24 
 
 Such natural theism lacks the dignity and inspiring powers of 
 
 real religion . . . . . . .25 
 
 Scientific study of nature and the transcendence of God . 25 
 
 Forces of nature demand the Infinite Wisdom and the Absolute 
 
 Power ........ 25 
 
 Ethnic inspiration beyond the bounds of Christianity's working 25 
 Rudimentary theistic belief ..... 26 
 
 Animism, Polytheism, Monotheism . . '. .26 
 
 Inadequacy of naturalistic explanations of religion . . 27 
 
 Critical remarks on Professor Edward Caird's scheme . . 27 
 
 Race-relation to the Absolute ..... 28 
 
 Attempts to trace out the theistic evolution of natural religions 28 
 Dr Kellogg on the thought of India . . . .28 
 
 Religious Spirit of the Vedas . . . . .29 
 
 Professor Pfleiderer and primitive naturism . . .29 
 
 Recognition of the Absolute Spirit or Reason in primitive 
 
 religion ....... 29 
 
 Principal John Caird on Religion . . . .30 
 
 Personal character of the religious relation . . .30 
 
 Critical remarks on Hegel's view of religion . . .30 
 
 The true determination of religion . . . .30 
 
 Schleiermacherian dependence eschewed . .31 
 
 Faith a basal activity of man's spirit . . . 31 
 
 One-sidedness of definitions of the nature of religion . . 31 
 
 The double aspect or total content of religion . . .31 
 
 Rothe on the religious self-consciousness . . . 31 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 Personal nature of the Absolute Spirit . . . .32 
 
 Criticism of Professor Edward Caird's principle of unity . 32 
 
 Lotze's ultimate in the explanation of things . . .34 
 
 Religion set forth as spiritual communion . . .34 
 
 Objective character of the religious relation . . .34 
 
 Criticism of Dr Bender, of Bonn . . . . -35 
 
 Principal Caird on the religious basis . . . -35 
 
 Religion as whole and perfect . . . . -35 
 
 God as its metaphysical Urgrund . . . -35 
 A higher fulfilment of Schopenhauer's contendings for religion 36 
 
 Dr James Martineau on the religious relation . . 36 
 
 Complex character and dynamic force of religious faith . 36 
 
 Widest acceptation of the term religion . . . 36 
 
 Parallel between the basis of science and that of religion . 36 
 
 Duty of recognising personal relation to the Highest . . 37 
 
 Religion in its highest form and reach to be considered . 37 
 
 Insufficiency of mere religious feeling . . . -37 
 
 Place and function of the Incarnation . . . -37 
 
 The task of anti-theistic theories . . . . . 38 
 
 Rev. James Tait, of Montreal, on the theistic conception . 38 
 Criticism of the theism of the work entitled ' Natural Religion ' 38 
 
 The supernatural in theistic philosophy . . . -39 
 
 Real outcome of the scientific study of nature . . -39 
 
 The synthesis sought by theistic philosophy . . .40 
 Its hold upon the supersensuous ..... 40 
 
 Natural Theology as a constructive science . . .40 
 
 What the evolution of life really means . . . .40 
 
 Strauss and his Glaubenslehre ... . . .41 
 
 Teleological aspects in theistic philosophy . . .41 
 
 Christianity the most truly natural religion . . .41 
 
 The services of pantheism in respect of immanence . . 42 
 Criticisms on John Fiske and on Principal Edwards, of Bala . 42 
 A true transcendence for Deity to be maintained by theistic 
 
 philosophy . . . . . .42 
 
 Criticism of the Deity presented in pantheism . 43 
 
 Mediations of the historic process of revelation . . .43 
 
 Necessity of the personal subjective activity of faith . . 44 
 
CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RECENT THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 Lack of data as to empiric origin of religion . . .46 
 
 The philosophy of religion goes deeper than outward historic 
 
 forms ........ 46 
 
 How it deals with the facts of religious history . . .47 
 
 Maintains the present philosophical value of religion . . 47 
 
 Naturalistic views of its origin rejected . . . .47 
 
 Views of Spencer, Tylor, and Strauss . . . .47 
 
 Criticism of Schleiermacher . . . . .48 
 
 Criticism of theories tracing religion to fear, ignorance, dread, 
 
 &c 48 
 
 Criticism of attempts to set the stages of religion in serial order 49 
 An objective reality related to religion in its cruder forms . 49 
 Speculations as to prehistoric origin of religion over-estimated 49 
 A more important inquiry here than the empirical or historical 
 
 beginning of religion ...... 50 
 
 Considerations urged towards a rational interpretation . . 50 
 
 Evolution of religion in the view of our theistic philosophy . 50 
 Recent philosophy on our normal self-consciousness and super- 
 natural revelation . . . . . .51 
 
 Professors Robertson Smith, Pfleiderer, &c., on place of 
 
 mythology . . . . . . .51 
 
 Relation of our natural or world-knowledge to origin of the 
 
 concept of God ...... 52 
 
 Views of Reville referred to . . . . .52 
 
 Views of Fechner ....... 53 
 
 Views of the question held by the present writer . . 53 
 
 Results of inquiries into tribes wholly without religion . . 54 
 
 Views of Roskoff, Peschel, Hellwald, Tiele, Quatrefages, 
 
 ReVille, and others ...... 54 
 
 Lotze's view of the attempt to base Divine Belief on the agree- 
 ment of mankind ..... 54 
 
 A higher and more relevant inquiry here . 55 
 
 Universality of the religious instinct how viewed . 55 
 
 Difficulties raised by the Naturvolker . 56 
 
 Distrust expressed in theories of origin . . . .56 
 
XV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 True naturalness of religious perception in man . . 56 
 
 Psychological and objective development in the race and the 
 
 individual ....... 56 
 
 Place for the personal element on the human side . . 57 
 
 Place for supernal advance on the Divine side . . -57 
 
 Revelation of the Divine in the finite spirit or consciousness . 57 
 Gods of the oldest religions really spirits . . -57 
 
 Religious aspects converging towards the theistic conception . 58 
 The palasontological races in relation to religion . . 58 
 
 What stable consciousness of the gods implied . . .58 
 
 Dr J. G. Eraser's ' Golden Bough ' .... 58 
 
 No adequate origin to be found without the attributes of the 
 
 superhuman being kept in view . . . .58 
 
 What Nature meant for primitive man . . . -59 
 
 C. I. Nitzsch on inward religious susceptibility as a primary 
 
 element in man ...... 59 
 
 The theism of nature alone insufficient . . . .60 
 
 Religion not the mere goings forth of man's finite faculty . 60 
 Reason sought for naturalistic theories as to its origin . . 60 
 
 Writer's view of recent tendencies of thought . . .60 
 
 Creative presence of the Urgrund to be maintained . . 6 1 
 
 Parallel between possibilities of scientific and of religious evo- 
 lution . . . . . . . .61 
 
 Inwardness of Hebrew monotheism . . . .61 
 
 Historic beginnings how antedated . . . .61 
 
 Relations of religion and morality . . . .62 
 
 Religion not to be merged in ethics . . . .62 
 
 Distinctive character of religion set forth . . .63 
 
 An exclusively religious basis not to be posited for morality . 63 
 Moral consciousness not at the mercy of religious beliefs . 63 
 
 Pfleiderer on the historic genesis of morality . . .63 
 
 Critical comments on Dr James Kidd's view of morality in re- 
 lation to religion ...... 63 
 
 Tendencies of Greek and Hindu thought . . .63 
 
 Ethical Hebrew pre-eminence ..... 64 
 
 Hebraism and Hellenism ...... 64 
 
 Professor Toy, of Harvard, on Hebrew immanence . . 64 
 
 Considerations as to Old Testament transcendence . . 64 
 
 Function of Christian thought to-day . . . .65 
 
 Man's development in the knowledge of God . . .65 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 Fitting synthesis in a pure anthropocosmic theism . . 65 
 
 Unification of Aryan and Semitic conceptions . . .65 
 
 Christianity as itself a direct and independent revelation . 66 
 
 Presence of supernatural elements . . . .66 
 
 View of Novalis on religion . . . . .67 
 Supernaturalism of the future ..... 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT AND THE PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 Numbing and retarding effects of sin on development of religion 69 
 Perpetuity and progress of Natural Theology . . .69 
 
 The future of religion .... 70 
 
 View of Theodore Parker ...... 7 
 
 Hartmann on the religion of the future . . . .70 
 
 Christianity the " fittest " religion to " survive " . . 70 
 
 View of Schweizer ....... 7 
 
 Teleological character of the Christian religion . . .70 
 
 Religion a human and abiding characteristic . . .71 
 
 The religious function a normal one in humanity's development 71 
 Principal Fairbairn on the subject . . .71 
 
 Claims of culture considered . . . . .71 
 
 Schleiermachei j s appeal to the cultured . . . .72 
 
 True religion conditions culture ..... 72 
 
 The altruism of the future ...... 7 2 
 
 Inadequacy of the Positivist ideal . . . -73 
 
 Possibilities of Christianity . . . . -73 
 
 Pains of Pessimism ...... 73 
 
 Goethe on progress of humanity ..... 73 
 
 Lewes on the persistence of religion . . . -73 
 
 Theistic philosophy has its own Weltanschauung of the future 74 
 Religion never to be displaced by science . . .74 
 
 The teaching of Spencerianism . . . . .74 
 
 Unsatisfactoriness of the Absolute of Agnosticism . . 75 
 
 Unreasonableness of conflict between science and theology . 75 
 Science and the supernatural .... 76 
 
 Needs of the intellect to be met in religion . 76 
 
 Worth of theoretic elements or values . . . .76 
 
 Place of ritual in a progressive system of religious thought . 77 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 Less emphasis on mere doctrinalism . . . -77 
 
 Greater ethical emphasis in religion of the future . 77 
 
 More of the progressive spirit also . 77 
 
 Permanence of the philosophy of religion . . 78 
 
 Trendelenburg on this philosophical permanence . . 78 
 
 Abiding essence and permanent elements in religious evolution 79 
 Foundations of the philosophical permanence . . .79 
 
 The contributory influences from Germany, Holland, France, 
 
 Britain, and America ...... 79 
 
 What the philosophical permanence will imply . . .80 
 
 A true idealism to be maintained . . . .80 
 
 Christianity as truth ...... 80 
 
 F. A. Lange on the permanence of religious doctrines or ideas 80 
 Spiritual harmonies await us in the future . . .81 
 
 Janet on the permanence of the religious sentiment . . 81 
 
 Not a permanence only, but also a perfection, of religion to be 
 
 expected ....... 82 
 
 Theodore Parker on its naturalness and progressiveness . 82 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 RECENT PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM (GOD). 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT ON THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 Power and implicates of Christian Theism . . .87 
 
 Larger apprehension and truer representation of the God idea . 88 
 Reasonableness and scientific character of the theistic hypothesis 88 
 Being an ultimate fact ...... 89 
 
 God as the Unconditioned Being ..... 89 
 
 Infinite and unconditioned reality as goal of theistic philosophy 89 
 The Kampf found in Nature in recent philosophy of theism . 89 
 Modern theistic philosophers on the knowableness of the In- 
 finite Being ....... 90 
 
 Why God is to be taken as the First Principle of all things . 90 
 Attitude of theistic philosophy towards agnostic, pantheistic, 
 
 and idealistic representations of Deity . . .91 
 
CONTENTS. Xxi 
 
 Criticism of recent attempts to explain the world as the self- 
 evolution of Absolute Being . . . .91 
 
 Attributes of the World- Ground . . . . .91 
 
 What metaphysics can do for us here . . . .91 
 
 On the treatment of God as the principle of unity . . 92 
 
 Theistic philosophy on the conception of Force . . .92 
 
 Bearings of the immanence of God . . . -93 
 
 Criticism of Hegel's treatment of being . . . -93 
 
 Contradictions of pantheism ..... 94 
 
 Purgation of anthropomorphism ..... 94 
 
 The Divine Attributes how viewed . . . .94 
 
 Criticism of Kant's treatment of the concept of God . . 95 
 
 The knowableness of Deity conserved as against Spencer . 95 
 Significance of attributes ...... 95 
 
 Pfleiderer on our knowledge of God . . . .96 
 
 Lotze on the mystery of being . . . . .96 
 
 Criticisms on Agnosticism . . . . .96 
 
 The speculative impulse not to be fettered . . -97 
 
 Presumptive evidence afforded by the theistic hypothesis . 97 
 
 Character of the question of origins . . . .97 
 
 How the theistic problem should be dealt with . . .98 
 
 Priority of mind to matter still maintained . . .98 
 
 Tyndall, Fiske, and Haeckel on the passage from matter to 
 
 mind ........ 98 
 
 Monistic interpretations of Professors Romanes and Lloyd 
 
 Morgan ....... 99 
 
 Scientific method of theistic procedure . . . .99 
 
 Irrationalities of primary impersonal force . . -99 
 
 Triumphs of philosophic theism . . . . .99 
 
 Criticism of the phenomenalism of Kant . . .100 
 
 Ultimate dualism of mind and matter untenable . . 100 
 
 Knowledge in what sense relative . . . . 101 
 
 Place for mind in the philosophy of theism . . . 101 
 
 God as Spirit the intelligent Force of the universe . . 102 
 
 Virtues of Hegelian speculation acknowledged . . .102 
 
 Reflections on natural and spiritual laws . . . 102 
 
 Considerations on the relations of matter and spirit . . 103 
 
 Value of the spiritual realism of Lotze .... 103 
 
 Professor Campbell Fraser on the theistic result . 103 
 
 Criticisms on Rothe and Weisse . . 104 
 
XX11 CONTENTS. 
 
 Criticism of Hegelian unity betwixt man and God . . 104 
 
 Positions of Ulrici, Chalybaus, and Giinther . . . 105 
 
 Criticism of monistic extremes ..... 105 
 
 Non-eternity of matter not to be surrendered . . . 106 
 
 Mind and matter how joined ..... 106 
 
 Superiority of theistic hypothesis over materialistic alternative 106 
 Monistic theories make a philosophy of nature impossible . 107 
 Belief in the eternity of matter as compatible with theism . 107 
 Creation out of nothing its interpretative significance . . 107 
 
 Criticism of the Entheism of Dr Paul Cams . . . 108 
 
 The personal and self-existent Being as transcendent . . 109 
 
 Theistic philosophy on the regularity and uniformity of nature 109 
 Considerations as to necessity of object to love in God . no 
 
 View of Franz Hoffmann . . . . . .no 
 
 Criticism of Principal Fairbairn's view . . . .no 
 
 Relation of attributes of Power and Love . . .Ill 
 
 Love of the Unconditioned . . . . .in 
 
 Rothe and Dr Fairbairn on the activity of Divine creative love 1 11 
 Divine Wisdom and Power not to be unduly subordinated . 112 
 Criticisms on Mill and Professor Schiller . . .112 
 
 Justice not a superfluous attribute of Deity . . .112 
 
 Necessity of Justice exemplified . . . . .113 
 
 Greatness of the theistic argument set forth . . .114 
 
 Importance of implicit proofs . . . . .114 
 
 Deductive demonstration of Divine Being impossible . . 115 
 
 F. W. Newman on such syllogistic reasoning . . .115 
 
 Elements in theistic conviction . . . . .115 
 
 Cumulative nature of the theistic proof . . . .116 
 
 Depth and variety of theistic sources of belief . . .116 
 
 Manifoldness of theistic methods and processes . . 116 
 
 Place and scope of the spiritual reason and the emotional 
 
 nature . . . . . . . .117 
 
 Emerson on the affectional nature . . . .117 
 
 Irrationality of scientific absolutism . . . .117 
 
 Professor William James, of Harvard, on the truth-seeking 
 
 spirit ..... .118 
 
 God is more than all our arguments . . .118 
 
 vGreatness of the proofs of His being . . . .118 
 
 Professor Flint on comprehensiveness of idea of God . . 119 
 
 Services of Ulrici and others in respect of theistic proofs . 119 
 
CONTENTS. XX111 
 
 Schopenhauer on theistic proofs . . . . .119 
 
 Kuno Fischer on the reality of God for Kant . . .120 
 
 Zeller on Kant and the Being of God . . . .120 
 
 Criticism of Kant's procedure . . . . .120 
 
 Pfleiderer on the theistic arguments . . . .121 
 
 How these proofs are related and are to be regarded . . 121 
 Not a mere synthesis to be sought, but a satisfying standpoint 
 
 in anthropocosmic theism . . . . .122 
 
 Agnosticism and the theistic proofs . . . .122 
 
 What alone renders Agnosticism possible . . .123 
 
 Professor Knight on the Intuitional Argument criticised . 123 
 
 Krause and Lowell on intuition . . . . .124 
 
 Criticism of Dr W. L. Davidson's theism . . 124 
 
 Function of the God-consciousness in man . . . 125 
 
 Value of our intuitive perception . . . . .126 
 
 In what sense God is the Infinite . . . .126 
 
 Unity and perfection of the Divine Being . . .126 
 
 Recent stress on personality . . . . .127 
 Historic treatment of theistic proofs .... 127 
 Difficulties in reconciling evil with the goodness and power of 
 
 God ........ 128 
 
 Undue stress on the pain and suffering of the world . .128 
 
 Life struggles of animal world sentimentally overdrawn . 129 
 
 Considerations urged in mitigation of painful aspects . . 130 
 
 Progressive forces in nature . . . . .131 
 
 Theistic philosophy appreciates pressure of Pessimism on us . 131 
 
 Criticism of the optimism of Rosmini . . . .132 
 
 Pantheism and meliorism . . . . . .132 
 
 Last word on world-imperfection not spoken . . 133 
 
 Hegelian treatment unsatisfactory . . . 133 
 
 Character of Christian optimism . . . . 133 
 
 Shortcomings of Pessimism . . . . 133 
 
 Merits of Schopenhauer . . . . . .134 
 
 His defects and those of his disciples .... 134 
 
 Results on theistic philosophy . . . . 135 
 
 Reality of natural evils . . . . . .135 
 
 Evolutionist argument capable of inversion . 135 
 
 Theism holds much in common with Pessimism . .136 
 Theistic considerations as to beneficent purposes subserved by 
 
 pain and suffering of the world . . . 137 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 These do not mean unreality of evil .... 137 
 
 Evil not good in the making, nor a necessity of development . 138 
 Our relativity carries only a liability to evil . . .138 
 
 Criticism of Biedermann's view of metaphysical aspects of evil 138 
 Moral evil to be interpreted in full light of such facts as free- 
 dom and moral responsibility . . . .138 
 
 Action morally evil in rejecting the ideal good for us 139 
 
 Real character of moral evil as rebellion against Divine Will . 139 
 That evil is overruled for good does not make evil contributory 
 
 to good ....... 140 
 
 The laws of our spiritual being point to God as Perfect Good- 
 ness ........ 140 
 
 The problem of evil has proved no unfruitful inquiry . . 140 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RECENT STUDY OF THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 -* Significance of this proof more acutely determined . . 142 
 
 Mansel on the principle of causality . . . .142 
 
 Real philosophical advances in the sphere of causality . . 142 
 
 The metaphy sic of causality ( Urgrund] . . . .143 
 
 Criticisms on Sir William Hamilton and J. S. Mill . . 143 
 
 ^Character of the proof from causality . . . .143 
 
 Relation of actual world to the Urgrund . . . .144 
 
 Evolutional science and phenomenal sequence . . . 144 
 
 The notion of power in causation . . . .144 
 Impotence of science as to causal idea .... 144 
 
 Arbitrariness and futility of the usual Causal Argument . 145 
 
 First Cause in a relative sense . . . . .145 
 
 Criticism of Spencer's view of the causal axiom . . .145 
 
 Romanes on Hume, Kant, and Mill, in respect of causality . 146 
 
 ^Criticisms on Kant's and on Mill's treatment of causality . 146 
 
 Virtues in the Kantian speculation . . . .146 
 
 Kant's advance on Leibnitz and on Hume . . . 147 
 
 Defects of Mill and Spencer in respect of causality . . 147 
 
 The problem of knowing and being . . . .147 
 
 Views of Maine de Biran and Hume noticed . . . 148 
 
 The causal law as necessary postulate of science . .148 
 
 Kantian apriorism in recent German thought on causality . 148 
 
CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 Need of a psychological basis for apriorisui . . . 148 
 
 Eternity of the universe discredited by science and philosophy 149 
 Criticisms on causal proof as usually presented . . . 149 
 
 Defects in the First Cause of this proof . . . . 149 
 
 Criticisms on Herbart and on Lotze . . . .149 
 
 Ulrici on causal energy . . . . . .150 
 
 Dr Martineau on notion of cause . . . . .150 
 
 Services of Wolff and Crusius . . . . .150 
 
 Kant and the work of his forerunners . . . .150 
 
 Superiority of Christian Theism to this proof of causation . 151 
 Defects of causal argument by itself . . . .151 
 
 Its relation to the ontological argument . . .151 
 
 Advances beyond the Kantian position . . . .151 
 
 Infinite Spirit as ground of sense-phenomena . . .152 
 
 Limitations of physical and mechanical categories . . 152 
 
 Absurdity of making the Absolute one of world-series of con- 
 tingent things . . . . . . .152 
 
 Wherein our aim outreaches Kant . . . .152 
 
 The Ur sprung and the Ursache . . . . .153 
 
 Difficulty of our conceiving the All-Perfect becoming Cause 
 
 at all . . . . . . . .153 
 
 As to impossibility of explaining the origin of causal action . 153 
 Aspects or phases of ontological and cosmological proofs . 154 
 Christian conception of God owes little to causation . . 155 
 
 Intelligence and self-consciousness in any possible First Cause 155 
 Causal proof points towards the path that leads to personality . 155 
 Principle of causality not enhanced in this very proof . .156 
 
 Infinite Spirit as immanent Ground of the world . .156 
 
 Insufficiency of syllogistic reasoning on cause . . .156 
 
 Synthetic unity for the finite and contingent . . .156 
 
 Need of Self-existent Cause . . . . .156 
 
 Illogical character of customary form of the causal presentation 157 
 Professor Minto on cause . . . . .157 
 
 Criticism of Professor Flint's treatment of causality . .157 
 
 Science and theistic speculation . . . . .157 
 
 Dr James Croll's theism . . . . . .158 
 
 Disadvantages of the causative notion applied to Deity . 159 
 
 Dualistic character of the causative principle . . 159 
 
 Diverse aspects of causation ..... 160 
 
 Immanent energy of the Absolute . . . .160 
 
 C 
 
XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 Unsatisfactoriness of James Hinton's view . . .160 
 
 Modern influence of the causative principle . . .160 
 
 Objective validity for the causal law . . . .160 
 
 Ends subserved by the Causal argumentation . . .160 
 Criticism of Kant's mode of using the Cosmological argument . 161 
 
 Abortive character of the causal argument . . .161 
 Theistic philosophy and the idealism of Professor Royce, of 
 
 Harvard . . . . . . .161 
 
 The category of causality not to be eluded . . .162 
 
 Recent treatment of the causal problem . . . .162 
 
 Criticism of Professor Riehl's results . . . .162 
 
 Attitude of other modern German thinkers . . .163 
 
 Result claimed for theistic philosophy . . . .163 
 
 The causality of self-consciousness . . . .164 
 
 The volitional type of causation . . . . .164 
 
 Romanes on causation . . . . . .164 
 
 Matter, cause, and effect in recent philosophy of theism . 165 
 
 Importance of ontological aspect . . . . .165 
 
 Metaphysical necessity and Personality . . .165 
 
 Emanative theory to be eschewed . . . .166 
 
 Presupposition of a Spiritual Absolute .... 166 
 
 Will as Ultimate Principle . . . . .166 
 
 An ever-present Ground of all things . . . .166 
 
 The natural as witness to the spiritual . . . .167 
 
 Defect of the category of causality . . . .167 
 
 Transcendent activity of the Absolute . . . .168 
 
 Progressive as well as regressive movement . .168 
 
 The thought of Evolution overpassed . . . .168 
 
 Plea for speculative flights of reason . . . .169 
 
 the Cosmological Argument still does for us . .169 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 Serviceableness of the Eutaxiological Argument . . 1 70 
 
 Defective presentations of final causes . . . .171 
 
 Undue stress to-day on efficient cause . . . .171 
 
 Aspects of the Paleyan argument . . . .171 
 
 Facts of adaptation and evolution . . . .171 
 
CONTENTS. XXV11 
 
 How the philosophy of theism must here proceed . . 172 
 
 Criticism of Professor Flint's dealing with order and design . 172 
 Relation of Teleological to Cosmological Argument . 173 
 
 Difficulty of dismissing design ..... 173 
 
 Loose scientific thinking here . . . . 173 
 
 Former faults of the teleological presentation . . -173 
 
 Criticism of Kant's mode of dealing with this proof . .173 
 
 Considerations as to the purport of this argument . . 174 
 
 Kant's ' Critique of Judgment ' . . . . .174 
 
 Theistic advances in view and in method . . .175 
 
 Ethological aspect of the proof . . . . .175 
 
 ^Etiological, nomological, and teleological lines of inquiry . 175 
 Misconceptions as to teleological argument removed . .175 
 
 Kant's * Critique of Pure Reason ' . . . .176 
 
 Considerations as to relation of form and essence or substance 176 
 Relation of Teleology to Eutaxiology . . . .177 
 
 Criticism of Kant's errors and confusions as to finality . .177 
 
 Immanent purposiveness of nature .... 178 
 
 Criticism of Professor Flint's attitude to purpose or intention . 178 
 Remarks on position of Rev. J. Morris . . . .178 
 
 Criticism of Professor Flint's treatment of analogy of nature 
 
 and art . . . . . . 178 
 
 Evolutional considerations to be allowed due weight . .179 
 
 Futility of the rejection of final causes .... 180 
 
 Criticism of the theory of natural selection . . .180 
 
 Its inadequacy perceived by John Stuart Mill . . . 180 
 
 Relation of design and evolution . . . . .180 
 
 Natural selection and contrivance or design . . .181 
 
 Question of environment . . . . . .181 
 
 Higher aspect of the survival of the fittest . . .181 
 
 Criticism of Lotze's teleological view . . . .182 
 
 The true tendency of the argument as expressed by Pro- 
 fessor Flint . . . . . . . 182 
 
 Trendelenburg's philosophy of design . . . .182 
 
 Possibilities of theism . . . . . .182 
 
 Breadth of the teleological vision . . . .183 
 
 Narrowness of earlier modes of view .... 183 
 
 Possibilities of questioning remain . . . .184 
 
 Criticism of Principal Caird's view .... 184 
 
 Moral aims of the Will in nature and in man . . . 184 
 
XXV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 The strange anomalies of Nature . . . .185 
 
 Arraignment of the order of nature by Mill, Hartmann, and 
 
 others ........ 185 
 
 The darkest facts must be faced . . . . .185 
 
 Discriminations and considerations in the problem of suffering 185 
 Teleological traces not lost in residual shadow or mystery . 186 
 The whole ground-plan of creation not ours . . .186 
 
 Relative character of the present . . . .187 
 
 Importance of spiritual evolution as against pleasure or 
 
 happiness . . . . . . .187 
 
 Criticism of Rev. J. Morris on the actuality of the universe . 187 
 Ideality in our view of the universe . . . .187 
 
 Bearings of the Darwinian speculations on creation as a pres- 
 ent process ....... 188 
 
 The origination of variations . . . . .188 
 
 Large synthetic movement of thought and final causes . .188 
 
 Criticism of Professor Royce on design . . . .188 
 
 Design in creation, taken in whole . . . .188 
 
 D esign argument purged of its accidental and external character 1 89 
 Science and the immanent rationality of nature . .190 
 
 Criticism of Professor Huxley's view of nature . . . 190 
 
 Direction of the Evolutionary Force by Intelligence . . 191 
 
 Criticisms on Professor Royce and evolution . . .191 
 
 Critical reflections on the phrase " final causes " . . 191 
 
 Is final cause an a priori principle ? . . . .191 
 
 The apotheosis of accident . . . . .192 
 
 Theistic philosophy not lacking in appreciation of natural 
 
 selection ....... 192 
 
 A true interpretation of the law of survival of the fittest . 193 
 
 Meaning and merit of the Darwinian teaching . . . 193 
 
 Theistic philosophy and variation . . . 193 
 
 Insufficiency of theory of natural selection . . . 194 
 
 Criticisms on Professor Huxley and others on variation . 194 
 
 Dr Romanes on Darwin's law . . . . .194 
 
 J. Arthur Thomson on Weismannism . . . .194 
 
 Darwin's modified notions of scope and power of natural selection 195 
 Criticism of Darwin's view- of variations . . . . 195 
 
 Theistic philosophy and variation . . . 195 
 
 Suggestions of End and Reason ..... 196 
 
 Criticism of theological search after final causes . . 196 
 
CONTENTS. XXIX 
 
 Development and design ...... 196 
 
 Criticism of scientific exclusive preference for efficient causes . 196 
 
 How the teleological plea for intelligence is to be maintained . 197 
 Blind forces associated with intelligence . . .197 
 Theory of " blind immanence " insufficient . . .197 
 
 Criticism of the philosophy of the unconscious . . . 197 
 
 Criticism of Paulsen's treatment of the theistic view . . 198 
 The real relations of law and design . . . .199 
 
 What world-governance by law really means . . .199 
 
 Absurdity of Comtean view of nature sequences . . 200 
 
 Trendelenburg on nature conformity .... 200 
 
 Nature of law and results of law ..... 200 
 
 Benignity of world laws . " . . . . 200 
 
 Beneficial effects of suffering ..... 200 
 
 Inadequate theological realisation of the difficulties involved . 200 
 
 Mistaken expectations from law ..... 201 
 
 Inwardness and naturalness of teleological working of nature . 201 
 
 Natural law as expression of purpose .... 201 
 
 Teleological reference of universe taken as a whole . . 201 
 
 Criticism of Agnosticism in relation to final cause . . 201 
 
 Pervasive Divine Reason in the world's beauty and order . 202 
 
 Proper attitude to be assumed to-day .... 202 
 
 Theism past and present ...... 202 
 
 Man as end and final form in creation .... 203 
 
 Professor Jevons on place of man .... 203 
 
 Dr George Matheson on the designing principle in man . 203 
 
 Criticism of Biichner's views ..... 204 
 
 The central power postulated by Trendelenburg . . 205 
 Order in, and Power behind, the protoplasmic evolutionary 
 
 process ....*.. 205 
 Psychological aspects as real as any facts of the physical and 
 
 protoplasmic order ...... 205 
 
 Criticism of Professor Knight's treatment . . . 205 
 
 An Intelligent Creator in theistic philosophy . . . 206 
 
 Dr Carpenter on Order and Cause in Nature . . . 206 
 What we claim for theistic thought on purposeful activity of 
 
 the Designing Intelligence ..... 207 
 
 Final cause and beauty, order, and harmony of nature . . 207 
 
 Weisse on the danger of the argument from order . . 207 
 
 Constructive working of the forces of science . . . 207 
 
XXX CONTENTS. 
 
 No scientific advances can sweep away teleological view . 208 
 
 Postulation of Supreme Intelligence demanded by well-ordered 
 
 intellect ....... 208 
 
 Larger claims for teleology than before .... 208 
 
 Criticism of Haeckel and Spencer . . . . 209 
 
 The teleological argument and implications of Personality . 209 
 Criticism of Professor Romanes on the evidences of design . 210 
 The universe as unfinished . . . . .211 
 
 Permanent guiding influences presupposed . . .211 
 
 Limitations of the argument and its implicates . . .211 
 
 Difficulties remaining in the presentation of this proof . .212 
 
 Mere intelligence insufficient, but intelligence need not be by 
 
 itself ......... 212 
 
 Agreement with Rev. J. Morris on nature as process . . 212 
 
 Nature processes to be more deeply studied . . .213 
 
 Dr F. E. Abbot on the bearings of teleology on personality . 214 
 Ripest results of the teleological argument still to appear . 214 
 Argument points to Immortality for man . . .214 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 RECENT THOUGHT AND THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 Ideal aspect of the ontological proof '. . . .216 
 
 The Absolute not a barren conception of metaphysics . . 216 
 
 Failure yet fascination of the argument . . . .217 
 
 Criticism of the Anselmic mode of presentation . . . 217 
 
 Criticism of Kant's treatment of the Anselmic position . . 217 
 
 Criticism of argumentation of Descartes . . . .218 
 
 Various forms of its presentation . . . . .218 
 
 Virtues and defects of Kant's criticism of the ontological proof. 219 
 Why Kant's criticism could not be final or conclusive . . 219 
 
 Kant's strange shortcoming in respect of a posteriori side of 
 
 the argument . . . . . . .219 
 
 Wherein the real shortcoming of the proof lies . . .219 
 
 Need of metaphysics ...... 220 
 
 Criticism of recent metaphysic ... . 220 
 
 Features of a true metaphy sic . . . . .220 
 
 Refutation of Comtean view of metaphysics . . .221 
 
 Ritschlian depreciation of metaphysic unavailing . .221 
 
CONTENTS. XXXI 
 
 Coleridge and Paulsen as to metaphysic . .221 
 
 Relation of theology and metaphysics . .221 
 
 Significance of the ontological principle . . 222 
 
 Criticism of the view that ontological conclusion lands us in 
 
 mere idealism ...... 222 
 
 Necessary idea of the Absolute more carefully differentiated 
 
 than by Kant .... .222 
 
 Fortunes of the proof in post- Kantian philosophy . 223 
 
 Merits and defects of Hegelian speculation . 223 
 
 Ontological lack of speculative warrant . . 223 
 
 Terminus of the argument . ' 223 
 
 Proof not sufficient to exclude Pantheism . 224 
 
 Thought and the Absolute . . 224 
 
 Reason for persistence of this argument . . 224 
 
 The real questions to be faced to-day on the subject . .224 
 
 RECENT ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION IN GERMANY . . 22$ 
 
 Excellence of Hegel's services to ontological thought . . 226 
 
 Advances since Hegel's time ... . 226 
 
 Criticism of K. Phil. Fischer's speculative thought . 226 
 
 Views of Hettinger and Luthardt .... 226 
 
 Ulrici and the results of his speculations from the scientific side 227 
 
 Rothe on speculative knowledge of the Absolute . . 228 
 
 Dorner and his differences from Pfleiderer and Biedermann . 228 
 
 advance of the ontological problem . . . 228 
 
 view of the relation of the a priori and a posteriori 
 
 arguments . . . . . . 229 
 
 Biedermann on this proof ...... 229 
 
 Theistic good accruing from Schopenhauer's teleological em- 
 phasis ........ 229 
 
 Professor Giinther Thiele on this argument . . . 230 
 
 RECENT ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION IN FRANCE . '. 230 
 
 Malebranche on all things as seen in God . . 230 
 
 Criticism of conclusions of Malebranche . 230 
 
 Fdnelon and his advance . . . .231 
 
 Further advance by Leibnitz . . . .231 
 
 The personal element in Maine de Biran's philosophy . .231 
 
 Criticism of the position of Cousin . 231 
 
 Theistic tendencies in Maret and Lerminier . . . 232 
 
XXX11 CONTENTS. 
 
 Gratry seeks the Infinite by negation of the finite . . 232 
 
 M. Saisset on Kant's treatment of the ontological proof . 233 
 
 Criticism of M. Vacherot's idealism .... 234 
 
 RECENT ONTOLOGISTIC SPECULATION IN ITALY . . 234 
 
 The subjectivity of Galuppi ..... 234 
 
 Criticism of the ontologistic positions of Gioberti . . 234 
 
 Criticism of the ontologistic presentations of Rosmini . . 235 
 
 Characteristics of Rosmini's philosophy .... 236 
 
 Rosmini's philosophical merits ..... 236 
 
 Anselmic influences in Mamiani ..... 236 
 
 Mamiani's positions on the Being of God . . . 236 
 
 Merits and defects of the positions of these Italian thinkers . 237 
 
 RECENT ONTOLOGICAL THOUGHT IN BRITAIN . . .237 
 
 Ontological cast of Terrier's thought . . . .237 
 
 Merits and defects of Principal Caird's treatment of this proof 237 
 
 Thompson, Tulloch, and Cazenove on the argument . . 238 
 
 Services of Professor Flint to ontological thought . . 239 
 
 Considerations here urged as to the recent course of philosophic 
 
 thought on this proof . . . . . -239 
 
 The idea of God in this argument .... 240 
 
 Values of the ontological proof ..... 240 
 
 Ideal character of this form of proof .... 240 
 
 What the proof really amounts to in its ultimate essence . 240 
 
 Deeper meaning of the proof . . . . .241 
 
 The a posteriori argument and the metaphysical process . 241 
 
 Can ontological proof be deprived of real significance ? . 241 
 
 The Belief in God as self-conscious and personal Spirit . 242 
 
 A rational conception of Deity deducible . . . 242 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RECENT PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 The growing importance attached to this argument . . 243 
 
 Limitations of the proof declared .... 243 
 
 Undue dependence on the argument by Schenkel, Newman, 
 
 and others ....... 243 
 
UN 
 
 CA 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 XXX111 
 
 Suggestions as to the presentation of moral faculty called 
 
 conscience ....... 244 
 
 Mansel on the moral argument ..... 244 
 
 Connection of this proof with the argument for final causes . 244 
 Kant's reasoning in the ' Critique of Judgment ' . . 244 
 
 Purport and scope of the proof ..... 245 
 
 Professor Rauwenhoff, of Holland, on the moral imperative . 245 
 Larger and more impressive grounds of the argument . . 246 
 
 Assumption of the moral sense and its ideals . . . 246 
 
 A moral or personal Lawgiver sought to be deduced . . 246 
 
 Kant's ' Critique of Practical Reason ' . . . 246 
 
 Merit of Kant's adhesion to the absolute worth of the moral 
 
 ideal ........ 247 
 
 Moralistic service of Kant's ' Religion within the Limits of 
 
 Pure Reason' . . . . . .247 
 
 Defects of Kant's system . . . . . .247 
 
 Kant's shortcoming in respect of the moral argument . . 247 
 
 Criticism on Professor Knight on place of felicity with Kant . 247 
 Merit and defect in Bishop Butler's treatment of conscience . 248 
 Nobleness of Kant's strain in the ' Critique of Pure Reason ' . 248 
 Conscience and revelation . . . . 249 
 
 Function of conscience in the theology of to-day . . 249 
 
 Criticism of Kant's ' Metaphysic of Ethics' . . .249 
 
 How far Kant is a destroyer ..... 249 
 
 Criticism of Kant on Divine Will and moral Law . . 250 
 
 Criticism of Kant's method of dealing with moral obligation 
 
 and Divine Existence ..... 250 
 
 Criticism of Wuttke's treatment of conscience . . .251 
 
 Newman on conscience . . . . . .251 
 
 Conscience as the vehicle of revelation . . . .251 
 
 Dr William G. Ward and Newman .... 251 
 
 Dorner on complexity of conscience .... 252 
 
 Conscience as a differentiating faculty in man . . .252 
 
 Conscience and reason or intellect .... 253 
 
 Aim of the philosophy of theism to-day . . . .253 
 
 Origin and value of conscience ..... 253 
 
 Implicates of the moral elements in man . . . 254 
 
 Evolutionary view of conscience ..... 254 
 
 God as Founder of Moral Law . . . . .255 
 
 Dr Chalmers on conscience . . . . .255 
 
XXXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 Theistic philosophy and conscience . . . .256 
 
 Erskine of Linlathen on this proof .... 256 
 
 Powerlessness of Science here . . . . .256 
 
 Significance of the ethical law operative in conscience . . 256 
 
 Dr James Martineau on conscience .... 257 
 Appraisement of Dr Martineau's contentions . . . 258 
 
 Critical reflections on the significance of proof from moral ideals 258 
 Relative values of morality and religion . . . .258 
 
 Worth of the moral argument set forth . . . .258 
 
 Professor Bavinck on undue stress on this proof in the 
 
 Netherlands ....... 259 
 
 A true value for this proof notwithstanding . . 260 
 
 Relation of Divine character and Divine existence . . 260 
 
 Shortcoming of Kant in respect of the imposition of moral law 261 
 A serious issue suggested . . . .261 
 
 Kant raises a dire alternative . . . . .261 
 
 How the moral facts and relations point to Personality . . 262 
 
 How mere phenomena are here transcended . . 262 
 
 Cumulative force of the theistic evidence . . . 263 
 
 The theistic postulate as demanded in our God-consciousness . 263 
 Nearness to God attained through the moral nature rather 
 
 than the intellect . 263 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 RECENT THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 Fundamental significance of the question . . 264 
 
 Unique character and greatness of personality . . . 265 
 
 Spirit as presupposition of personality .... 265 
 Parallel of our procedure with that of science . . .265 
 The problem of personality in Deity of fundamental moment 
 
 for all speculative interest ..... 266 
 
 A positive attitude here assumed ..... 266 
 
 Being interpretable only in terms of personality . . . 266 
 
 Vast and multiform character of the inquiry . . . 266 
 
 Primal Being in the light of Personality .... 266 
 
 Concern of reflective thought with Personality . . . 267 
 
 Fascinating power of Personality . . 267 
 
 Relation of Divine and human personality . . . 267 
 
CONTENTS. XXXV 
 
 What our idea of human personality does for our notion of the 
 
 Divine ........ 267 
 
 Divine Personality as essential to religion and virtue . . 267 
 A Subjective certainty of Divine Personality in the living re- 
 ligious consciousness ...... 268 
 
 Blind, unconscious world-mechanism transcended . . 268 
 
 Possibilities that lie in the Divine Personality . . . 268 
 
 Personality and the Unity of God .... 268 
 
 Thinking being or essence and personality . . . 269 
 
 Self-activity in Kant's Transcendental ^Esthetic . . 269 
 
 Criticism on Lotze as to personality .... 269 
 
 Criticism of Green's treatment of personality . . . 269 
 
 Self-active Being posited as Ground .... 270 
 
 Wherein an impersonal primitive Ground ( Urgrund) fails . 270 
 
 Elements and implicates of personality .... 270 
 
 Meaning and possibility of self-determination . . . 270 
 Personality and the manifestations of Deity . . .271 
 A psychology of the Eternal not attempted . . .271 
 
 Personality in the Highest in relation to all the theistic proofs . 271 
 
 Absurdity of treating the impersonal as higher than the personal 271 
 Impersonal and unconscious World-ground of Schopenhauer 
 
 and Hartmann rejected ..... 272 
 
 The non-personal regarded as sub-personal , . . 272 
 
 Ends here sought are living and rational . . . 272 
 
 The warfare one of pure thought . .... 272 
 
 Criticism of the Absolute of the Philosophy of the Uncon- 
 scious ........ 272 
 
 Justification of theistic philosophy in its rejection of this 
 
 Absolute ....... 273 
 
 Hartmann on the religious interest and the teleological prin- 
 ciple . ..... 273 
 
 Criticism of Hartmann's position ..... 274 
 
 Criticism of Fiske's treatment of Personality in his cosmic 
 
 theism ........ 275 
 
 Need for setting the Personality of God on truly philosophical 
 
 basis ........ 275 
 
 Harmony of the Absolute Personality with the postulates of 
 
 the religious consciousness ..... 276 
 
 Necessity of a personal Absolute . .... 276 
 
 Absurdity of treating personality as limitation . . .276 
 
XXXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 Absurdity of the mortality and corporeity postulated for Per- 
 sonality in the work ' Natural Religion ' . . 277 
 Misapprehensions of Personality corrected . . 277 
 Free, volitional, self-determination of Divine nature as well as 
 
 character . . . . . . . 277 
 
 Advances of theistic philosophy in apprehension of Divine 
 
 Personality ....... 278 
 
 Basal hold of personality on thought .... 278 
 
 Need for realisation of the Divine Presence as Person . . 278 
 
 View of Lipsius as to personality overpassed . . , 279 
 
 Personality since Hansel's time ..... 279 
 
 Lotze on personality and what it really involves . . . 279 
 
 Claim for theistic presentation of Personality in Deity . . 280 
 
 The quantitative infinite in modern philosophy . . . 280 
 
 W. S. Lilly on Personality in God .... 280 
 
 Bearings of Personality on the presentations of theistic philosophy 280 
 Position assumed in present work as to Personality in Deity in 
 
 respect of the scientific view of the Universe and the future 281 
 Historic treatment of the subject in Germany . . .281 
 
 Helpfulness of the Personality conception . . . 282 
 
 Critical appreciation of Kant's treatment of personality . . 282 
 
 Tendencies of Jacobi and Baader .... 283 
 
 Views of Fichte on Personality set forth in extenso . . 283 
 
 Criticism of Fichte's Absolute . . . ... 285 
 
 Criticism of Schleiermacher's treatment of Divine Personality . 286 
 
 Place of Personality in Deity of Krause .... 286 
 
 The latest phase of the transcendence question in Germany . 287 
 
 Elucidation of Personality by Julius Miiller . . . 287 
 
 Weisse on Divine Personality . . . . . 288 
 
 I. H. Fichte's speculative theism and Personality . . 288 
 Dorner's claim for Absolute Personality from sides of Will and 
 
 of Knowledge ....... 288 
 
 Dorner and Frank on Triune Deity and Personality . . 289 
 Earlier conceptions of Divine Essence by Nitzsch, Rothe, 
 
 Thomasius ...*... 289 
 
 The representations of Rothe . . , ... . 289 
 
 Views of Thomasius and Philippi .... 289 
 
 Virtues of Kahnis and Frank ..... 290 
 
 Significance of the concept of Div ne Aseity in later German 
 
 Theology . . . . . . 290 
 
CONTENTS. XXXvii 
 
 Lotze and Strauss compared and contrasted as to Personality 
 
 in God ....... 290 
 
 Criticism of Fechner's views ..... 290 
 
 Acknowledgments of Fechner's advances and merits . . 290 
 
 Personality in Deity as championed by Chalybaus and Ulrici . 291 
 
 Criticism of Hartmann's treatment of Personality in Deity . 291 
 
 Ritschl and the Divine Personality . . . . 292 
 
 Criticism of Professor Pfleiderer's mode of holding Personality 292 
 
 Phases of the problem in the speculative thought of America . 294 
 
 British developments of the theme , . . . . 294 
 
 Nature and value of Dr Martineau's contributions to Person- 
 ality ........ 294 
 
 Professor Andrew Seth on Personality .... 295 
 
 Dr Sterrett's criticism criticised ..... 296 
 
 Criticism of Mr Fairbrother on the Seth-Balfour positions . 296 
 
 Critical reflections on the recent course of thought . . 296 
 Elucidation of Personality by Professor Flint, Dr Matheson, 
 
 Mr Illingworth, and others ..... 297 
 
 Possibility of a psychic unity cosmic and higher than ours . 298 
 
 Criticism of Dr Bradley's work, ' Appearance and Reality 3 . 298 
 
 Ontological and historical aspects of personality . . 299 
 
 Worth of the historic treatment ..... 299 
 
 Question of the end of history ..... 299 
 
 Criticism of Spencer's treatment of the Personality of the 
 
 Absolute ....... 300 
 
 Pfleiderer and Paulsen on the Personality of Deity . . 300 
 Criticism of Lotze's positions on Personality in God . .301 
 
 In what sense God may be viewed as Ultra-Personal . . 301 
 
 Criticism of Scientific charges of subjectivism . . . 302 
 
 Grounds on which theistic philosophy retains Personality . 302 
 
 Criticism of German subjectivism . . . . 303 
 
 Criticism of Supra-personal mode of conceiving Deity . . 303 
 
 Professor James Seth, of America, on the true Absolute . 304 
 
 Personality and self-revelation ..... 304 
 
 Criticism of the Agnostic position .... 305 
 
 The question of Miracle . . 305 
 
 Personality of God imperilled by idealistic Evolutionism . 306 
 
 The scientific realism of our time .... 306 
 
 Meritorious function of the philosophy of Hegel . . 307 
 
 Criticism of the Absolute of Neo-Hegelianism . . . 307 
 
xxxviii CONTENTS. 
 
 Franz Hoffmann on the Personality of God . . . 307 
 
 M. Saisset on the defects of Pantheism in respect of Person- 
 ality ........ 308 
 
 John Fiske's "Idea of God" and Personality . . .308 
 
 Criticism of Vatke and Biedermann on Personality in God . 308 
 Arbitrary and inconsequential attitudes assumed by Bieder- 
 mann ........ 309 
 
 Criticism of the positions of Lipsius on the Divine Personality 310 
 Critical reflections on the religious relations as viewed by 
 
 Lipsius . . .310 
 
 Criticism of Pfleiderer's treatment of Personality in God . 311 
 
 Pantheistic representations and religious inwardness . . 312 
 
 Criticism of these pantheistic representations of Deity . . 312 
 
 Warrant for Dr Martin eau's Transcendency considered . 313 
 
 Transcendence of Deity as maintained in present work . 313 
 
 Criticism of pure immanence systems .... 314 
 
 Criticism of Absolute as Spirit but not yet Personality . . 314 
 
 Criticism of the pantheistic conceptions of Infinite Personality 314 
 Denial of Divine Personality as the true limitation . . 315 
 
 Infinity of being ..'.... 315 
 
 God and the world . . . . . . 315 
 
 Relation of finite and infinite . . . . .316 
 
 What the Infinite implies ...... 316 
 
 The Absolute and the relative . . . . .316 
 
 Criticism of the Absolute of Dr Paul Carus . . .317 
 
 Personality and reality (or illusion) . . . 317 
 
 Absoluteness of Deity forced upon us .... 318 
 
 Personal Deity to be preserved . . . . .318 
 
 Time-question in respect of Deity . . . -319 
 
 Pfleiderer and Lotze on temporal succession for Deity . .319 
 
 Criticism of Professor Veitch's " Dualism and Monism" . 319 
 
 On Time as necessary presupposition . . . -319 
 
 On Divine acting within the time-process . . .319 
 
 On the freedom of the absolute and independent Being . 320 
 
 Question of spatial form in relation to Deity . . . 320 
 
 Space category and things mental and moral . . . 320 
 
 On Divine working within world-space .... 320 
 
 Professor Royce, of Harvard, on space and time in relation to 
 
 Deity ... . . 321 
 
 Critical reflections as to the categories of space and time . 321 
 
CONTENTS. xxxix 
 
 On Kant's treatment of Spatial relation . . . .322 
 
 On Kant's treatment of Time . . 322 
 
 Criticism of Kant's procedure ..... 322 
 
 Can we know God out of all Space and Time ? . . . 323 
 
 Criticism of the objection that personality pertains to time . 323 
 
 Schiller's representation of Divine Personality . . . 323 
 
 Personal attributes in the Absolute purified rather than annulled 324 
 Helpfulness of Trinitarian conception to our apprehension of 
 
 Personality ....... 324 
 
 Spinozan conceptions of Substance avoided . . . 324 
 
 Fundamental grounds for the Absolute Personality . . 324 
 
 The Personality of God the crown and summit of our thinking 325 
 Criticism of the pantheistic rejection of Personality as involving 
 
 limitation in Deity ...... 325 
 
 The self-limitation of the Absolute Personality in theistic phil- 
 osophy ....... 326 
 
 Reality of the Absolute Personality of theistic philosophy . 326 
 A Being-for-Self claimed for this Personality . . . 326 
 Limitation involved in personality only in its finite aspect . 327 
 That Personality may not exist as absolute, speculatively un- 
 warranted ... . . . . . 327 
 
 Perfections of Personality in the Absolute . . . 327 
 
 Definite and positive character of the Absolute Personality . 328 
 
 Critical reflections as to Personality in God . . . 328 
 Personality as supposed limitation of Deity due to a radical 
 
 misapprehension ...... 329 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 RECENT THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (MAN). 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 RECENT THEISTIC THOUGHT ON FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 Professor T. H. Green on philosophy . . . '. 333 
 
 Reason in the ancient world ... . 333 
 
 Historic aim of reason ...... 333 
 
 Postulates of Reason to-day . ... 334 
 
 Witness of Reason in this time ..... 334 
 
xl CONTENTS. 
 
 Power and functions of Reason and their theistic bearings . 334 
 
 Relation of reason in man to the Supreme Reason . . 334 
 The Ultimate and Eternal Reason . . . -334 
 Professor Samuel Harris, of Yale, on finite and Universal 
 
 Reason ....... 334 
 
 Cousin's impersonal reason rejected . . 335 
 
 Merit of Cousin's psychology . . 335 
 
 Reason as personal at the heart of the Universe . . 335 
 
 Objective and Ultimate Reason as Ground and Cause of all . 335 
 
 Unity and conscious spiritual energy of the Absolute . . 335 
 
 Theistic philosophy and the Infinite Reason . . . 336 
 
 The constructive Reason of the Universe . . . 336 
 
 Immanent rationality of nature ..... 336 
 
 Rational interpretation of the intellectual and moral order of 
 
 the world . 336 
 
 The interpreting and synthetising reason . . . 336 
 
 Metaphysic and the perfection of the human reason . . 337 
 
 The amazing functions of reason ..... 337 
 
 Reason as central category of reality .... 337 
 
 Functions of dialectical thought ..... 337 
 Scientific character of Knowledge gained through reason's 
 
 pivotal movement ...... 338 
 
 Value of the pure or Knowing Reason .... 338 
 
 Advance on the Kantian view of Reason ( Vernunff] . . 338 
 Relations of the rational and the ethical . -338 
 
 Rationality of the spiritual and moral .... 338 
 
 Reason as characteristic of man ..... 338 
 
 Man's rational superiority to the animal world . . . 339 
 
 Reason or intelligence in animals .... 339 
 
 Professor Lloyd Morgan's researches .... 339 
 
 Professor Calderwood on Man's place in Nature . . 340 
 
 Man's connection with nature in theistic philosophy . . 340 
 
 The antiquity of man ...... 340 
 
 Man's inclusion within the boundaries of animal life . . 340 
 
 Professor Huxley on gulf between man and brute . . 340 
 
 Wallace on higher faculties of man .... 341 
 
 Grounds of differentiating man from the animal world . .341 
 
 Professor Calderwood on rationalised character of man's 
 
 physical life . . . . . . .341 
 
 Fiske on man's superiority . . . . .341 
 
CONTENTS. xli 
 
 Reason as highest power of spirit in man . . . 342 
 
 Professor Laurie on Reason in * Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta ' 342 
 
 Faith as a synthesizing power ..... 342 
 
 Relations of faith and reason ..... 343 
 
 Rational grounds of faith set forth .... 343 
 
 Reason involves faith element ..... 343 
 
 Faith as itself the highest reason ..... 343 
 
 Harmonious results attained between reason and faith . . 344 
 
 Time-elements in rational belief ..... 344 
 
 Faith and philosophy ...... 344 
 
 Reason and the unification of belief .... 344 
 
 Drs Christlieb and M'Cosh on faith and reason . . . 345 
 
 Advances of theistic philosophy in virtue of reason . . 345 
 
 Relations of Reason and Authority .... 345 
 
 Theistic philosophy and Positivism .... 346 
 
 Criticism of Reason in the idealism of Professor Royce . 346 
 Criticism of the Absolute in systems that resolve it into all- 
 devouring intellection or reason .... 347 
 
 Acknowledgment of Hegel's merit .... 347 
 
 Our Primordial Reason not the Absolute Reason of Hegel . 347 
 
 The Absolute or Universal Reason of theistic philosophy . 347 
 
 Rational processes throughout the spiritual realm . . 348 
 
 The endlessly progressive movement of reason in man . . 348 
 
 Amiel on the ideal and the real ..... 348 
 
 Reflections on basal workings of reason .... 349 
 
 Criticism of Ritschlian depreciation of reason . . . 349 
 
 Persistence of reason . . . . . 349 
 
 Reason and personality ...... 350 
 
 Reason and religion ...... 350 
 
 Place and primary functions of reason in Christianity . . 350 
 
 The Universal sway and sweep of Reason . . 351 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RECENT THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 Superiority of Man to Nature ..... 352 
 
 Mansel on personality ...... 352 
 
 A true ego rescued from subjectivism .... 353 
 
 Issues raised by genetic psychology .... 354 
 
 d 
 
xlii CONTENTS. 
 
 Self-active being in man ...... 354 
 
 What a philosophy of consciousness would imply . . 355 
 
 Forms and modes of the Ego . . . . -355 
 
 Mill on unconscious mental modifications . . . 356 
 
 Consciousness in the analysis of the ego .... 356 
 
 Cousin on consciousness ...... 356 
 
 Historical consciousness of the genesis of the conscious ego not 
 
 possible .... -357 
 
 The rise of self-consciousness ..... 358 
 
 Fiske on the origin of consciousness .... 358 
 
 The genesis of personality how to be accounted for . . 359 
 
 Consciousness grounded in the nature or essence of the Absolute 359 
 Lotze on the origin of the soul ..... 359 
 
 Personality as ultimate .... . 360 
 
 Nature of self-consciousness ..... 360 
 
 Du Prel on self-consciousness . . . . .361 
 
 The development of the ego . . . . .361 
 
 The true unity of the person . ... . .361 
 
 The self-activity of the soul . . . . .361 
 
 Directness of our knowledge of self . . . .361 
 
 Persistence of the individual or unit .... 362 
 
 Criticism of Professor James, of Harvard, in respect of consciousness 362 
 Untenableness of his conclusions as to thought being itself the 
 
 thinker ....... 363 
 
 Origination of idea of personal being in self-consciousness . 364 
 Professor Harris on personality in man . . . . 364 
 
 Race-consciousness not excluded ..... 364 
 
 Criticism of Lotze on personality ..... 365 
 
 Self-consciousness in modern philosophical idealism . . 365 
 
 Criticism of Kant on the self ..... 365 
 
 Science unable to explain personality .... 366 
 
 Evolution and personality ...... 366 
 
 Need of a philosophy of consciousness to positive science . 367 
 Criticism of monistic theories of the soul . . . 367 
 
 Professor Ernst Mach on personality .... 368 
 
 The psychology of M. Ribot crit.icised .... 368 
 
 Criticism of Identity theory of Professors Hb'ffding and Clifford 369 
 Relative importance of physio-psychological inquiries . . 370 
 
 Inferential character of our knowledge of beings or objects 
 
 other than self ...... 370 
 
CONTENTS. xliii 
 
 Anthropomorphism in science . . . . 371 
 
 Criticism of Dr Shadworth Hodgson . . . 371 
 
 Consciousness as the " undecomposable unity " . . 371 
 
 Criticism of Dr F. H. Bradley on the self or ego . . 372 
 
 Eduard Zeller on mental phenomena .... 372 
 
 Relation of the psychical to the physical .... 373 
 
 Testimony of consciousness both to the ego and to its states . 373 
 
 Criticism of Kant's treatment of the ego .... 373 
 
 Merits and defects of Kant's transcendental ego . . 374 
 
 Criticism of Professor Bain's disposal of the ego . . 375 
 
 M. Janet on the unity of the ego ..... 375 
 
 Dante on double ego or consciousness .... 375 
 
 Virtue of the transcendental ego ..... 376 
 
 Criticism of Dr Maudsley ... . 377 
 
 The human ego as a dynamic centre .... 377 
 
 Criticism of Dr Bradley on the soul .... 378 
 
 Lotze on the unity of the soul ..... 378 
 
 Personality as an organic unity ..... 378 
 
 The background of self-consciousness . . . . 379 
 
 Highest phase of self-consciousness .... 379 
 
 The ego and the non-ego ...... 380 
 
 The bases of self-consciousness and world-consciousness . 380 
 
 Development of our consciousness of God . . . 381 
 
 Criticism of Spencer's thought of the Absolute Being . . 382 
 
 Possibilities of a Philosophy of the Christian Consciousness . 383 
 
 Formation and vindication of the Christian Consciousness . 383 
 
 What rational psychology will do for us here . . . 385 
 
 Significance of the scientific treatment of the History of Doctrine 385 
 
 Advances on the subjectivism of Schleiermacher . . 385 
 
 Certitude in its last analysis ..... 386 
 
 Fearless and determined appeal to consciousness . . 387 
 
 The quality and conditions of consciousness . . . 387 
 
 Claims of the Christian consciousness to a true autonomy . 388 
 
 Criticism of Julius Miiller's position on the subject . . 388 
 
 Criticism of Dr F. H. Bradley on the personality of man . 389 
 
 Pantheistic identification or fusion avoided . . . 390 
 
 Maintenance of the integrity of the central self . . . 39 
 
 Criticism of Professor Royce on the individual . . . 39 
 
 Man as a true infinite . . . . 39 1 
 
 Prime significance of personality in man . . . 391 
 
xliv CONTENTS. 
 
 Dr Mulford on personality ..... 392 
 
 Witnesses to the reality of the mind or self . . . 393 
 
 Relation of the ego to the One, Absolute Personality . . 394 
 
 Complexity of the notion of personality .... 394 
 
 Its place within the sphere of experience . . . 395 
 Man's spiritual perihelion reached through personality . . 395 
 Mechanical philosophy and pantheistic philosophy alike over- 
 passed . . . . . . . 396 
 
 Personality as seen in our faith in the ideal and eternal . 396 
 
 Culmination of personality in the Person of the Son of Man . 396 
 
 Ritschl on Christ's Person ..... 396 
 
 Meaning and reach of our moral development . . . 397 
 
 Ideal moral personality our life's crowning achievement . 397 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 Theistic doctrine of freewill ..... 399 
 
 Historic hold of the freewill problem .... 399 
 
 Compatibility of Determinist view with a theistic position . 400 
 
 Fortunes of Freewill in recent philosophy . . . 400 
 
 Lotze on the reign of law .... . 400 
 
 Present philosophical position of theism . . . 401 
 
 Freedom and moral responsibility . . . 401 
 
 Mansel on the freedom of the will .... 401 
 
 Difficulties faced by modern philosophical theism . 401 
 The widespread Naturalism of to-day . . . .401 
 
 Our opposition to these naturalistic tendencies . . . 402 
 
 Determinism of Huxley, Spencer, Bain, and Mill . . 402 
 
 Necessitarianism since Edwards in America . . . 402 
 
 Espousal of the Libertarian side in present work . . 403 
 Positions of Lotze, Fischer, Zeller, Martineau, James, Balfour, 
 
 Upton, the brothers Seth, Schiller, and others . . 403 
 
 Professor James Seth on the question . . . 403 
 
 Indeterminism of Renouvier, Fonsegrive, and Dr Mach . 404 
 
 Character of Ribot's Determinism .... 404 
 
 Differentiation of man in respect of rational choice . . 404 
 
 Criticism of the Spencerian psychology as to freewill . . 404 
 
 View of F. A. Lange and others ..... 405 
 
CONTENTS. xlv 
 
 Criticism of Professor Huxley on freedom of will . 405 
 
 Huxley on man's ethical progress .... 405 
 
 Professor James, of Harvard, on Determinism . . . 406 
 
 Correction of the misconceptions of Diderot and of Tappan . 406 
 Claim for freedom of velleity ..... 406 
 
 Recent advance in Indeterminist presentation . . . 407 
 
 The reasonableness of relative Determinism . . . 407 
 
 On inhibition and self-realisation ..... 407 
 
 Freedom as highest form of causation . . . . 407 
 
 Presence of Law does not mean Determinism . . . 407 
 
 Freedom and the question of motives . ... . 407 
 
 Dr William G. Ward on our supreme volitional efforts . . 407 
 
 Advance in the discrimination of determinative and executive 
 
 acts of the will . . . . . . 408 
 
 Real contingency of voluntary decision .... 408 
 
 Position maintained in present work as to freedom . . 409 
 
 Dr Carpenter on will and body ..... 409 
 
 Criticism of Dr Maudsley as to body and mind . . .409 
 
 The theistic position nowise invalidated .... 409 
 
 Close relation of physical and mental activities . . . 410 
 
 Janet on rational Determinism ..... 410 
 
 Martineau on reality of self-determination by permanent self- 
 identical ego . . . . . . .410 
 
 Personality and freedom . . . . . .410 
 
 Advance beyond the phenomenalism of Kant . . .410 
 
 Real freedom of man as a spiritual personality . . .411 
 
 Merits and defects of Professor T. H. Green's teaching on 
 
 freedom . . . . . . .411 
 
 Critical reflections on the contingency issue . . .411 
 
 Criticism on Professor J. S. Mackenzie .... 412 
 
 Professor Caldwell on determinism in the individual . .412 
 
 Relation of man's volition to law . . . .412 
 
 Freedom and spontaneity in man as compared with the animal 413 
 Criticism of positions of Professors Royce, Hoffding, and 
 
 Romanes ....... 413 
 
 Mozley on freewill as not an absolute truth . . .413 
 
 Man's self-determination and the causative agency of God . 4*4 
 Renouvier on Divine foreknowledge and human freedom . 4 r 4 
 
 Trendelenburg and others on freedom as subject to development 414 
 Freedom as an unattained goal . . . .415 
 
xlvi CONTENTS. 
 
 Ethical emphasis on will by Kant and Herbart . . .415 
 Rothe on actual power of self-determination only through 
 
 moral development . . . . . .415 
 
 Physical and moral aids to freedom . . . .415 
 
 Relation of freedom to education, heredity, and environment . 416 
 
 Limitations of the doctrine of heredity . . . 4 J 6 
 Limitations in range of liberty ..... 416 
 
 Causal circumstance not ignored . . . . .417 
 
 Unsatisfactoriness of Professor Sidgwick's neutral position . 417 
 Freewill and evolutionary theories as to rise of freedom and 
 
 responsibility . . . . . .418 
 
 Persistence of true freedom . . .418 
 
 Positions of Hamilton and Mill referred to . . 4^ 
 
 Zeller on ourselves as cause . . .418 
 
 Advance by Green on Mill . . . . .418 
 
 Sidgwick on freewill and new Determinist senses of words . 419 
 
 Freedom as proved by history of humanity . .419 
 
 Will and the law of causality ... . 420 
 
 Pfleiderer on the place of character . . . 420 
 
 Schiller on negation of absolute freedom . . . 420 
 
 Professor James Sully and Volkmann on the action . .421 
 
 Balfour's criticism of the emphasis on character . .421 
 
 A real freedom to be maintained . . . . .421 
 
 Professor Alexander's undue stress on character . 422 
 
 Unsatisfactory attitude of C. E. Plumptre . . 422 
 
 Criticism of Professor Clifford on volition and matter . . 423 
 
 Dr George Matheson on man's sense of freedom . 423 
 
 Lotze on the incomprehensibility of this freedom . . 423 
 Criticism of Mr G. F. Stout's attitude to the contingency ques- 
 tion ........ 4 2 4 
 
 Criticism of Kant's inconsistent treatment of the question . 424 
 
 Reasons for the defect and inadequacy of Kant's doctrine of 
 
 freedom ..... . 424 
 
 Kant's sense of the worth of human personality . . . 425 
 
 Onesidedness of Kant's mode of conceiving freedom . . 425 
 
 Determinism of Schelling .... . 426 
 
 Freedom in Fichte . . . 426 
 
 Hegel on freedom ... . . 426 
 
 Hegel on universal and particular . . . 426 
 
 Hegel on the individual and the Absolute . . . 426 
 
CONTENTS. xlvii 
 
 Nature of Schopenhauer's determinism .... 427 
 
 Criticism of Schopenhauer's treatment .... 427 
 
 Professor James on Schopenhauer .... 427 
 
 Criticism of Dr Paul Rde on freedom .... 428 
 
 Misconception and absurdity of Re"e's absolute beginning . 428 
 
 Relation of character and physical necessity . . . 429 
 
 Critical reflections on character and freewill . . . 429 
 
 The question of repentance ..... 429 
 
 Place must be left for unexpected moves of will upward . 430 
 
 Criticism of Ree on responsibility as illusion . . . 430 
 
 Criticism of Professor Paulsen's positions on freedom of will . 430 
 
 Criticism of Professor Hoffding on freedom . . . 430 
 Misconception of Hoffding as to the individual . . .431 
 
 Minimising of responsibility by Hoffding . . . 432 
 
 Criticism of Professor Riehl on freedom .... 43 2 
 
 Riehl's novel treatment of responsibility .... 432 
 
 Riehl's treatment of consciousness animadverted upon . . 433 
 
 Critical reflections on consciousness and freedom . . 433 
 
 Fatalistic character of Riehl's determinism . . . 434 
 
 Beneficial aspect of determinist theory .... 435 
 Criticism of Dr F. H. Bradley on freewill . . -435 
 
 Criticism on Dr James CrolPs philosophical determinism . 435 
 
 On free self-activity, character, and mechanism . . . 435 
 
 Freedom and the law of causation .... 436 
 
 Dr Matheson on the necessity of freedom to the evolutionist . 436 
 
 Simmel on the unprovable character of Determinism . . 437 
 
 Professor William G. Ward on the place of training . . 437 
 
 Need of freedom to ethical and religious vitality . . 437 
 
 In what way our freedom is conditioned .... 438 
 
 Professor A. Dorner, of Konigsberg, on individual personality 438 
 
 Injurious tendency of present-day Determinism . 439 
 Man's freedom and personality in respect of both God and 
 
 Nature ..... , 439 
 
 Freedom not the ultimate category of life . . . 439 
 
 Need of grace and avoidance of evil . 439 
 
 The determinism of religion ... . 440 
 
 The ideal self and the actual . . 44 
 Freedom as forecast of the glorious liberty awaiting the sons 
 
 of God -440 
 
xlviii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RECENT SURVEYS OF THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 Widening conviction of the reign of law . . . .441 
 
 Consequent confusions of thought . . . .441 
 
 Fact of recognition of cosmic law .... 442 
 
 Laws of persons, ideas, and things .... 442 
 
 Kant on the philosophy of law ..... 442 
 
 The unity of law ....... 442 
 
 Zeller on divine law and natural law .... 442 
 
 Law as thought or relation ..... 442 
 
 Fichte's conception of law ..... 443 
 
 Law as it appears in modern jurisprudence . . . 443 
 
 Divergence of spiritual from physical law . . . 443 
 
 Reign of law in spiritual world ..... 443 
 
 Dr Carpenter on reign of law in the physical world . . 444 
 
 Relation of law and personality ..... 444 
 
 Law and a personal Lawgiver ..... 444 
 
 Law of right as moral law ..... 444 
 
 Dorner, Passavant, Auberlen, Schoberlein, and others, on law 
 
 of conscience ....... 444 
 
 Ethical obligation and Ultimate Reality . . . 445 
 
 Law as operative in rational beings .... 445 
 
 Hofmann on Conscience and duty .... 445 
 
 Critical reflections on moral law ..... 445 
 
 Relations of law and reason ..... 445 
 
 Reign of inner law . . . . . .445 
 
 Kant on moral fanaticism ..... 446 
 
 The Universality of ethical law ..... 446 
 
 Julius Miiller on law of the moral order .... 446 
 
 Theistic philosophy and ethical law under present aspects . 446 
 
 Internal law of duty and a Moral Governor . . . 447 
 
 Our claim for reign of spiritual law .... 447 
 
 Material laws and Deity ...... 447 
 
 The natural and the spiritual ..... 447 
 
 Mansel on morality and Divine command . . . 447 
 
 Reason and law ....... 447 
 
 Kant on personality and moral law .... 448 
 
 Personal Deity and ethical standards .... 448 
 
CONTENTS. xlix 
 
 Criticism on the Spencerian treatment of conscience . . 448 
 
 Conscience no expression of mere external law . . . 448 
 
 Martineau on sense of moral obligation and Higher Personality 448 
 Impersonal law no resting-place of thought . . . 449 
 
 Conscience in the individual and the objective law of right . 449 
 Theology and inherent character of law .... 449 
 
 Universe as grounded in reason ..... 449 
 
 Dr W. L. Courtney and others on ethical law and its pre- 
 suppositions ....... 449 
 
 Dorner on moral goodness and the personal God . . 450 
 
 Ethical law viewed as principle of life and love . . . 450 
 
 Spiritual source and authority of interior law . . . 450 
 
 Advance in recognition of ethical law .... 450 
 
 Need of reconcilement of religious truth with ethical law . 451 
 Kant on ethics and religion . . . . .451 
 
 True differentiation of rational life . . .451 
 
 Frank and Wuttke on moral conflict . . . .451 
 
 Wordsworth on law of duty ... . 452 
 
 Ethical tact or wisdom ...... 452 
 
 Vindication of man's powers of rational self-direction . . 452 
 
 Idea of right rooted in the Universe .... 453 
 
 Implications of a Supreme Governor in notions of duty and obligation 453 
 Need of conscience culture emphasised by Gass . . 453 
 
 Martensen and Hofmann on conscience development . . 453 
 
 Martineau on the validity of conscience in view of evolution . 453 
 The moral consciousness and Ultimate Reality . . . 454 
 
 Progress of the ethical spirit ..... 454 
 
 Higher region of law ...... 454 
 
 Reality of reign of spiritual law ..... 454 
 
 Law as promise of immortality ..... 454 
 
 Redemptive forces of Divine law in man . . . 455 
 
 Faith transcends thought of the worlds as ordered by law . 455 
 Deity not disavowed in our recognition of law . . .455 
 
 Law of love and its fulfilling . . . .455 
 
 Reality of spiritual laws . . . . -455 
 
 Compatibility of grace with law ... . 45 
 
 Absolute character of the reign of spiritual law . . 456 
 
 Christ and the physical and spiritual orders . . 45^ 
 
 Organic law of soul life . . . . -457 
 
 A true and spiritual survival of the fittest . 457 
 
1 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 RECENT RECOGNITION OF MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 Need and hope of redemption more clearly discerned . . 458 
 
 Rise of ideas of shortcomings and propitiation . . . 458 
 Deliverance less as external than moral . . . .458 
 
 William Law on ground and nature of Christian mysteries . 459 
 
 Theistic philosophy and the consciousness of God . . 459 
 
 Need of restoration and redemption .... 459 
 
 Redemption and its relation to sin . . . . 459 
 
 Redemptive culmination of religion of revelation . . 459 
 
 Spiritual elements in non-Christian religions . . . 460 
 
 F. W. Newman on theology and sin . . . 460 
 
 Redemptive methods not laid down in a priori manner . 460 
 
 Redemption of Jesus and its light on the revelation of God . 460 
 Reality of the fact of sin, in the race and the individual, to 
 
 be faced ....... 461 
 
 Our primary relation to personal Deity . . . .461 
 
 Moral evil the sore of the ages . . . . .461 
 
 Redemption not by mere self effort . . . .461 
 
 Man's capacity for redemption . . . . .461 
 
 Universal facts of sinful need and inability . . . 461 
 
 Deep-seated effects of sin . . . . . . 462 
 
 Moral evil in experience and observation . . . 462 
 
 Impossibility of self-forgiveness ..... 462 
 
 Remorse and repentance as present-day facts . . . 462 
 Need of redemption as deduced from study of non-Christian 
 
 religions . . . . . . . 463 
 
 Need of redemptive influence for society as for the individual . 464 
 
 Failure of the ethnic faiths in respect of the problem of evil . 464 
 
 Mozley on Christianity and natural religious needs . . 464 
 
 Christianity, par excellence , the religion of redemption . . 465 
 Negative aspect of redemption . . . . .465 
 
 Positive form of the redemptive working .... 465 
 
 The redemptive indwelling of God in man . . . 466 
 
 Infinite longing after purifying effects of redemption . . 466 
 
 The redemptive vocation in relation to man's spiritual ideal . 467 
 
 Pfleiderer on reverse side of sin and universal need of redemption 467 
 
 More than self-effort needed ..... 467 
 
CONTENTS. li 
 
 Criticism of Professor Pfleiderer on ethical conception of education 468 
 
 Merit of Schopenhauer's insight here .... 468 
 
 Revelation for redemptive ends, and not for education only . 468 
 
 Active working of God for our redemption . . . 468 
 
 Amiel on man's moral needs ..... 468 
 
 Science and the mediatorial functions of Jesus . . . 469 
 
 Insufficiency of mere subjective change in the sinner . . 469 
 
 Objective grounds of redemption ..... 469 
 
 Natural basis of mediation ..... 470 
 
 Need of moral recuperation ... . 470 
 
 A philosophy of atonement as possible and justifiable . . 470 
 
 Historical and ethical aspects of Christ's redemptive work . 470 
 
 Criticism of Ritschlianism in respect of sin . . 470 
 The historic basis in relation to our speculative and ethical 
 
 philosophy . . . . . . .471 
 
 The individual operation of redemption . . . .471 
 
 The redemption of the body . . . . .471 
 
 Unity of the great redemptive process . . 47 2 
 
 The conflict of flesh and spirit ..... 472 
 
 Futility of the notion that the redemption of Jesus was for the 
 
 creating of moral power . . . . . . 472 
 
 Godward aspect of the sacrificial work . . . . 47 2 
 
 God in midst of the principles of atonement . . . 473 
 Schleiermacher, Rothe, Macleod Campbell, Edwards, and 
 
 others, on Christ's sympathy with men . . . 473 
 
 Dante on the two complementary natures of Christ . . 473 
 
 Critical reflections on the redemptive process as now conceived 474 
 
 Twofold purpose of the redemptive process . 474 
 
 Character of Christ's vicarious suffering . . . 474 
 
 The principle of sacrifice in redemption . . 474 
 
 Schopenhauer on the Cross ..... 475 
 
 Criticism of Rev. C. Voysey on the God of the Christian . 475 
 Dr R. W. Dale on the God of the Theist . . -476 
 
 Christ Jesus as Ideal of Humanity realised . . 476 
 
 The spiritual harmony effected by Christ . 476 
 
 Criticism of Mainlander's philosophy of redemption . 477 
 Theistic philosophy finds the highest flowering of redemption 
 
 in development, not destroyal, of personality 477 
 
 God in an atoning attitude . 477 
 
 Facts of redemption as facts, and not speculative doctrines . 478 
 
Hi CONTENTS. 
 
 Possibilities of progress that remain .... 478 
 Fragmentary character of revelation in view of Mozley . . 478 
 Fear of Patripassianism dispelled . . . 478 
 Broken lights of redemptive principle .... 479 
 Transcendent and ideal character of redemption . . 479 
 Remedy for the wrestlings and perplexities of this time . . 479 
 Need of the sacrificial spirit ..... 479 
 Transfiguring influences await our speculative thought on re- 
 demption ..... . 480 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT ON THE SPIRITUAL NATURE, AFFINITIES, 
 AND GOAL OF MAN. 
 
 Recent difficulties in maintaining the spiritual nature of man . 481 
 Changed opinions wrought of science . . . .481 
 
 Effects on Church and Theology . . . . .482 
 
 Spiritual unity of the Cosmos ..... 483 
 
 Influences of modern Biblical Criticism .... 483 
 
 Theistic philosophy and the spiritual nature and capacities of 
 
 man ........ 484 
 
 Immanent relation of God to humanity .... 484 
 
 Professors Calderwood and Caird on Man's place in Nature . 484 
 The spiritual man and the natural . . . .485. 
 
 Carlyle on Nature . . . . . . .485 
 
 Virtue of the Hegelian conception of nature . . .485 
 
 Science and the greatness of things spiritual . . . 486 
 
 Mind and matter ....... 486 
 
 Nature as instinct with spirit ..... 486 
 
 God and Nature ....... 487 
 
 God as the unifying Spirit ..... 487 
 
 Spiritual and personal elements in Nature . . . 488 
 
 God as Personal Reason ...... 488 
 
 Signification of Nature ...... 488 
 
 The Creative Worker and His Work . . 488 
 
 Spiritualistic interpretation of Nature .... 488 
 
 Thomas Hill Green on nature and mind . . . 489 
 
 Novalis on Nature ...... 489 
 
 God as ground and centre of Nature's Unity . . . 489 
 
CONTENTS. Hii 
 
 Christ as needed Revealer of the Father . . . 489 
 
 The spiritual essence of Divine Fatherhood . . . 490 
 Unity of all things in the Divine Fatherhood . . .491 
 
 Superiority of theistic philosophy to fear of charge of Mysticism 491 
 
 Mysticism and essential religion ..... 491 
 
 Dialogue in spiritual communion . . . . .491 
 
 The essential meaning of prayer ..... 492 
 
 Free relation of God to the world .... 493 
 
 Our free spiritual thought not to be overridden by science . 493 
 
 Man's capability of transcending Nature . . . 493 
 
 Need for critical interpretation not superseded . . . 494 
 
 Moral greatness of man as indwelt by Christ's spirit . . 494 
 
 Gratry on the greatness and the growth of the soul . . 494 
 
 Partial truth of Pessimism ..... 494 
 
 Character of the Optimism of theistic philosophy . . 495 
 Quickening of religion, as of theology, through the advances of 
 
 the theistic faith ...... 495 
 
 Theistic idea in the Philosophy of History . . . 495 
 
 Unity of God and Unity in History .... 496 
 
 Scope and function of the philosophy of History . . 496 
 
 The philosophy of religion and the philosophy of History . 496 
 
 Predestined goal of men and nations .... 496 
 
 Thought of the world-future ..... 496 
 
 Criticism of race-future of Kant, Jouffroy, Herder, Guizot, and 
 
 others ........ 497 
 
 Difficulties that beset a true philosophy of History . . 497 
 
 The true end of History ...... 497 
 
 Criticism on Professor Clifford's position . . . 497 
 
 Faith in Providence . 497 
 
 Kingdom of God as goal . . . 498 
 
 The philosophy of History in its actual relations . . 498 
 
 Insufficiency of the world's history as the world's judgment . 498 
 History not to be divorced from Philosophy, and brought under 
 
 Physics ..... -498 
 
 Criticism of position of M. Thiers . 498 
 
 Necessity of a philosophy of History .... 499 
 
 Diversity of philosophies of History .... 499 
 
 Facts, as with Guizot, need not be visible and material in character 499 
 
 Theistic philosophy and positions of Comte and Buckle . 499 
 
 Hegel and Comte on the philosophy of History . . . 499 
 
liv CONTENTS. 
 
 Criticism of Comte's undue intellectualism . . . 500 
 
 Critical estimate of Hegel's treatment of progress . . 500 
 
 Advances claimed for theistic thought .... 500 
 
 Merits of Hegel as set forth by Pfleiderer . . . 501 
 
 The opposing estimate of Hegel by Karl Schwarz . . 501 
 Fruitfulness of Hegel's treatment of rational freedom . .501 
 
 Hegel's view of the justification of God in History . . 502 
 
 Broadening character of the historic movement . . . 502 
 
 History as process of education ..... 502 
 
 Advances in setting forth the necessity and rationality of the 
 
 world's historic movement ..... 502 
 
 Gloatz on History as presupposition of philosophy of religion . 503 
 
 History of Religion and History of the Philosophy of Religion 503 
 
 Freedom and necessity of the historic movement . . 503 
 
 Historic progress not even-paced and mechanical . . 503 
 
 Wherein progress is taken to consist . . . . 504 
 
 Reactionary moments or factors how viewed . . . 504 
 
 Consideration of theory of an absolutely continuous progress . 504 
 Stress on ethical freedom . . . . . .504 
 
 Bolingbroke on History ...... 504 
 
 Mechanical or material forces duly recognised . . . 505 
 
 Spiritual forces as the highest ..... 505 
 
 Dynamic Reason in the Universe .... 505 
 
 Ideal plan and law in the history of man . . . 505 
 Recent European history an insufficient basis for philosophy . 505 
 Irrationality of the denial of the Divine Revelation in History . 506 
 Claims for theistic interpretation of History . . 506 
 Presupposition of Personality as lever of History . . 506 
 Criticism of the Spencerian mode of treating History . . 506 
 Ultimate grounds of historic advance sought by theistic phil- 
 osophy ....... 507 
 
 Altruistic and harmonising influences from love in God . 507 
 
 Teleological view of History ..... 507 
 
 Belief in Immortality as rationally necessary and consistent . 508 
 
 Faith in Immortality as culmination of a spiritual philosophy . 508 
 Science not really adverse to spiritual nature and destiny of 
 
 man ........ 508 
 
 Relations of Immortality and Revelation . . . 508 
 
 Need of a future life ...... 509 
 
 Kant's treatment of the soul's immortality . . . 509 
 
 Joubert and materialism ...... 509 
 
CONTENTS. lv 
 
 Advance in recognition of the naturalness of man's longing 
 
 after immortality ...... 509 
 
 Vogt, Moleschott, Biichner, Spencer, and Huxley, on immortality 510 
 The real relation of science to the subject . . .510 
 
 Science and the soul . ... . . .510 
 
 Criticism of Hettinger's position on immortality . .510 
 
 Science and immortality . . . . . .510 
 
 Ethical elements in the quest of truth . . . .511 
 
 Metaphysics and psychology and Immortality . . .511 
 
 Tendency of recent scientific research . . . .511 
 
 Criticism of scientific objection to the soul . . .511 
 
 Professor Huxley on the aim of Science . . . .511 
 
 Impulses towards thought of Immortality . . .512 
 
 Herder on forces that make for Immortality . . . 512 
 
 Theistic philosophy and the law of the conservation of energy 512 
 The law of evolution and Immortality .... 513 
 
 Darwin on Immortality . . . . . 513 
 
 Immortality and the evolutionary interpretation of man's life . 513 
 Necessity of Immortality to future progress and culture . 513 
 
 Immortality and man's relation to God . . . 513 
 
 Growth of our knowledge of immortality . . . .514 
 
 Immortality at the basis of rational life . . . .514 
 
 Dr Elisha Mulford on immortality . . . . ' 514 
 
 Rejection of physical theories of the seat of the soul . .514 
 
 Difficulty raised by scientific thought . . . .515 
 
 The soul itself claimed as the seat of the soul . . 515 
 
 John Fiske on the soul . . . . . 515 
 
 Theistic philosophy and immortality in light of our rational and 
 
 spiritual constitution . . . . . 515 
 
 Fichte and immortality . . . . . .516 
 
 Faith in immortality and belief in God . . . .516 
 
 Benefits of our not having God and Immortality forced upon us 517 
 Man's true ideal more real and vivid in this time . . 517 
 
 Faith in immortality strongest where spiritual development is 
 
 largest ... 5 1 ? 
 
 Evolution and the development and capabilities of the race . 5*7 
 John Stuart Mill on the future life . 5 l8 
 
 Individual and race immortality . . . .518 
 
 Criticism of Emerson on persistence of personality . 518 
 
 Criticism of Haeckel's view of immortality . . 519 
 
 Immortality as the bloom of evolution . . . 519 
 
Ivi CONTENTS. 
 
 Motive power of Immortality for humanity . . . 520 
 
 Hettinger on man's immortal destiny .... 520 
 
 Fiske on materialism and immortality . . . .521 
 
 Professor Le Conte on Spirit-immortality . . .521 
 
 Defects of Materialism . . . . . .521 
 
 Metaphysical basis of the future life .... 522 
 
 Dr Matheson on Immortality ..... 522 
 
 Insufficiency of pantheistic and materialistic contention that 
 
 death ends all . . . . . . . 522 
 
 Criticism of recent pantheism . . . . . 522 
 
 Psychological aspect of the possibilities of immortality . . 522 
 
 Immortality not a fanciful possibility . . . . .523 
 
 Comtist subjective immortality . , . . . 523 
 
 A true Himmelfahrt for the spirit of man . . . 523 
 
 Doctrine of immortality as purified by modern influences . 523 
 
 Individualism and pantheism ..... 523 
 
 Criticism of Hegelianism and the individual . . . 524 
 
 Inadequacy of language for theistic fulness . . . 524 
 
 I> Inadequacy of mere argumentative theism . . . 524 
 
 Growth of the argument as it takes hold upon us . . 525 
 
 Reville on belief in the future life ..... 525 
 
 Lotze on faith in the future . . . . .525 
 
 Last word on subject not spoken ..... 526 
 
 Certainty of expansion and completion of our present . . 526 
 
 Necessity of immortality to our moral sense and rationality . 526 
 Criticism on the Conditional Immortality position . . 527 
 
 Man's nature prophetic of immortality .... 527 
 
 The only theory of conditional immortality possible . . 527 
 
 No contradiction to science . . . . .528 
 
 Personal immortality why maintained . . . .528 
 
 Supreme reasonableness of the belief in immortality . .529 
 
 Ulrici, Fechner, Lotze, and Teichmiiller, on proof of immortality 529 
 
 Criticism of Professor Pfleiderer's view of immortality . . 529 
 
 Criticism of Dr Bradley on the future life . . . 529 
 
 Possible reasons for future life being no more disclosed . 530 
 
 Divine Fatherhood and the future life . . . -53 
 
 ^ Advances of the theistic philosophy in this time . -S3 1 
 
 \Geibel's prayer and its theistic sentiment . . . 532 
 
 INDEX. ... . . . . . . 533 
 
RECENT ADVANCES 
 
 IN 
 
 THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE Progressiveness of Theism ! That is the 
 thesis which, in its modern aspects, we seek to 
 present and enforce as against the common but 
 loose assumption what should be ein uberwun- 
 dener Standpunkt that theistic philosophy has no 
 more inspiring function than ever-renewed presen- 
 tation of arguments whose cogency and content 
 remain for ever unchanged no more and no less. 
 Here, too, in the philosophy of theism, it must be 
 said that the schools have known no lack of com- 
 monplace was ^ms alle bandigt, unfortunately with- 
 out feeling it, like Goethe, das Gemeine. Our 
 knowledge of the deeps of Being in God is never 
 
2 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 perfect, is always human and progressive, and, while 
 consistent and intelligible, is subject to ever-increas- 
 ing enlargement as our insight grows into thought 
 of God always more accordant with objective truth. 
 That vast and cumulative proof of the Divine Ex- 
 istence which is but our spiritual exegesis and our 
 intellectual interpretation of the Universe, cannot 
 but be extended with every increase of our know- 
 ledge, and heightened by every advance in our 
 insight and. purity. We believe that theistic phil- 
 osophy is still far too scholastic, has come far too 
 little under the modernising spirit of science, and 
 has, in its basis, method, and mode of development, 
 too little followed any course that can be regarded 
 as thoroughly scientific. 
 
 If, however, as it has been said, " the whole spirit 
 of modern science is towards the extrusion of every 
 theistic interpretation of the world from the domain 
 of scientific knowledge," then assuredly it is time to 
 vindicate a rational, and not merely ethical, theism 
 to realise to what a chaotic condition thought 
 would become reduced without such vindication 
 of rational theism as a thoroughgoing scientific 
 hypothesis, supported by cosmical evidence no less 
 than by the moral evidence furnished by the nature 
 of man. It becomes the great positive task of phil- 
 osophy to show that, into whatever conventional 
 disrepute theism may have fallen, the conclusions 
 most in harmony with reason as with feeling are 
 still those which are termed theistic. It must not 
 
TASK OF THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 3 
 
 only set forth for us the Ultimate Ground of all 
 things, but must also show what eternal reason re- 
 sides in that World-Ground. That Primal Ground 
 does not stand unrevealed and unrelated to our con- 
 scious experience, and, when it is revealed, the 
 ground of religion in us is seen to consist not in 
 anything extrinsic. When we think of this Primal 
 Being, we think of Him as always and necessarily 
 related to us, no abstraction of pure thought, no 
 ultimate of simple homogeneous matter, but One in 
 Whom such fulness dwells as makes Him Source of 
 all this diverse universe and Strength of all our 
 conscious experience. When shall theistic philos- 
 ophy escape the injustice of being viewed as form- 
 ally defective, simply because it makes God "supra- 
 manent " as well as immanent ? By what right do 
 men speak of theistic philosophy as viewing God 
 outside of the world, as though that were ever at 
 any moment regarded as His sole or whole relation 
 to it ? When are men ever entitled to speak of 
 theism as binding us in a merely external way to 
 God ? Surely the theism of to-day never holds us 
 as only so bound, and should not be treated as if it 
 did. 
 
 We, for our own part, are certainly not to be de- 
 terred from undertaking our present task seeing 
 it is of so great consequence to rational thought, 
 being indeed one of prime living interest by any 
 possible indifference to it from any side. We have 
 in view, for example, the indifference that leads to 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 the agnostic denial by the Ritschlians of the right 
 of Natural Theology, and also any other that may 
 possibly spring up 
 
 " Cras ingens iterabimus aequor " 
 
 in the legitimate endeavour to build up theology on 
 truly Christian basis, freed from metaphysical con- 
 ceptions which may be alien to it, when we say that 
 the best theological thought of to-day cannot allow, 
 and will not, that the interests of faith and theoretic 
 reason should be sundered. What wisdom can 
 there be in treating the natural pieties with scorn 
 or distrust ? What is there to justify either dis- 
 trust in the processes of reason or disbelief in the 
 voice of conscience ? Yes, and what rational justi- 
 fication for the conventional contempt of Natural 
 Religion as a bare and lifeless metaphysical resi- 
 due ? Does a religion, because it happens to have 
 given us its light through natural processes, require 
 to remain as religion in its lowest terms, and be 
 incapable of a most real and spiritual progressive- 
 ness ? We, for our part, boldly meet Ritschl's dis- 
 avowal of natural religion by a more sublime faith 
 in its reality and possibilities, for it is the fault of 
 theologians, and not of natural religion, if such a 
 faith cannot be found to justify itself. It seems to 
 us high time for theistic philosophy, if it has any 
 worthy confidence left in itself, to gird itself for the 
 great work of self-justification before it, since it has 
 actually been maintained, from the Ritschlian side, 
 
PROGRESS OF THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 5 
 
 that, so far as the maintenance of the impulse to 
 religious faith is concerned, pantheistic or material- 
 istic conception will serve equally well with theistic. 
 We cannot admit that, in taking up the position 
 we do, we are exposing the theistic philosophy of 
 the day to any warrantable charge of lack of intel- 
 lectual humility. In this connection we rejoice to 
 believe that one of the remarkable recent advances 
 of theistic philosophy has been that those injunc- 
 tions to heed the utterances of the heart whereby 
 deeper truths might be voiced than by the deliver- 
 ances of the intellect which non-theistic writers 
 hardly a generation ago sometimes laid upon theistic 
 thinkers, have been carried to their highest fulfil- 
 ment by a theistic philosophy which, recognising 
 the pre-eminent place of the moral sentiment, has 
 sounded the moral difficulties and possibilities in- 
 volved more deeply than has before been done. 
 The course of the theistic philosophy of religion has 
 in recent times not run smooth ; but we claim that, 
 in its best trends and essays, it has been finding 
 higher paths of interpretation, larger adjustment, 
 reconcilement, and synthesis. Natural theology is 
 no more than ultimate human thought exercised 
 upon what man himself and his surroundings may 
 teach or imply as to the Primal Reality known as 
 God. We may surely say it has become more 
 clearly manifest that what such thought testifies to 
 is, above all else, the fact that such Inscrutable Re- 
 ality, or the Unknowable, does undoubtedly exist. 
 
6 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 As Professor Flint has very properly said : " The 
 relevant facts of Natural Theology are all the works 
 of God in nature and providence, all the phenomena 
 and laws of matter, mind, and history, and these can 
 only be ascertained by the special sciences. The 
 surest and most adequate knowledge of them is in 
 the form called scientific, and therefore in this form 
 the theologian must seek to know them." While 
 
 o 
 
 Natural Theology no more occupies its former 
 position of indispensableness to the investigator of 
 Christian Dogmatics since his starting-point is now 
 acknowledged to be such as raises him above such 
 help as Natural Theology can afford the study of 
 Natural Theology is yet seen to be both helpful and 
 needful in some senses as an introduction to Dog- 
 matics. For this reason we have deemed it desir- 
 able to treat of the recent philosophy of Natural 
 Theology, the God of whose partial and inadequate 
 revelation is the same God as the God of full-blown 
 Christian Theism. We maintain that, wherever the 
 subject has received careful attention, there has been 
 a growing sense of appreciation of the progressive- 
 ness of Natural Religion during the closing decades 
 of the century a progressiveness realised, as we 
 account the matter, in our increasing knowledge of 
 nature, with the proofs she affords of uniformity, 
 adaptation, interdependence, and combination. For 
 by these we are led up to enlarged knowledge and 
 conceptions of the attributes and of the providential 
 modes of working of the Deity. And, while such 
 
WORTH OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 7 
 
 a Theism, as the world without and within us may 
 reveal, is insufficient and awaits the filling up or 
 completion of a higher revelation, yet no true phil- 
 osophy of Natural Theology can fail to recognise and 
 maintain the truth and value of that revelation given 
 us in the inner world, wherein God is enshrined 
 in conscience, and in that outer world, wherein 
 causation and finality everywhere appear. If we 
 loose ourselves from conventionalism, a religion, as 
 William Law was able to say, " is not to be deemed 
 natural because it has nothing to do with revelation ; 
 but then is it the one true religion of nature when 
 it has everything in it that our natural state stands 
 in need of, everything that can help us out of our 
 present evil, and raise and exalt us to all the happi- 
 ness which our nature is capable of having." We 
 deem it now necessary, in the interests of theistic 
 thought, to start from the point of view of substance, 
 opaque though that be, and to lay new stress, in 
 our subsequent inquiry, on the conception of God 
 as the Absolute Personality which determines sub- 
 stance, and on the implicates of this doctrine, so 
 central and essential. Not that the category of 
 substance is without difficulties any more than that 
 of causation, for the permanent or substantial sub- 
 stratum assumed, in our notion of substance, so to 
 persist, is not an assumption free from trouble. It 
 is, moreover, attended with the disadvantage of 
 drawing thought off from the intellectual world of 
 relations or the thought world, to the substantial 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 world or that of being. And it must be confessed 
 that thought and its relations must do more and 
 higher things for us here than any study of sub- 
 stances and their nature can achieve. Thought 
 must remain a more transparent term than that 
 opaque thing called substance, and we do not see 
 any reason why we should not frankly and fully 
 allow that this is so. For to us it remains a su- 
 preme virtue of idealistic philosophy that it never 
 wavers in its faith in rational power and process. 
 But, that our thought may not become lost in the 
 endless flux of Becoming, the one real Ground of 
 all existence and action must be seized as presented 
 to us in the Absolute Personality. In fact, real 
 Personality is just the last word of our philosophy ; 
 but where shall we find a higher ? What other 
 central unifying principle can match it? Infinite 
 Personality, as base and bottom of all this wondrous 
 world we see have we not in this conception the 
 most real and the most rational open to our ad- 
 vancing knowledge and thought ? It has become 
 necessary to consider such questions as whether we 
 must speak of God as a consciousness ; whether 
 also we can, without inherent contradiction, speak of 
 Him as the Absolute Consciousness. We are not in 
 the least prepared to regard the philosophical con- 
 sideration of such matters as at all so barren as they 
 suppose, who seek to interpret the Universe only 
 with such aids as empirical science may furnish. 
 The implicates of consciousness consciousness 
 
THEISTIC INTERPRETATION OF UNIVERSE. 9 
 
 which is perceived to be an element in the origin of 
 the universe are in our judgment too significant 
 for the Divine Being and Attributes for them to be 
 put aside in this way, no matter what more may be 
 learned of Deity through other modes of inquiry or 
 appeal. Nor must such questions as that of the 
 transcendence of Deity be left unnoticed the 
 question of Some-transcendency in relation to that of 
 A II- Immanency. For if excesses have been too 
 often witnessed in the direction of transcendence in 
 the past, this would afford no ground for justification 
 if we allowed ourselves to be wholly swept away on 
 any crest of immanence waves in the present. Our 
 theistic interpretation of the Universe may find it 
 still needful to maintain that, while there is a sense 
 in which it is true that 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul,"- 
 
 there is yet real need to uphold the fact of a 
 Deity who is distinct and separate from us, and 
 to Whom we are responsible. Otherwise, it may 
 find the sense of guilt dissolved, and sin quietly 
 resolved away. But shall not the recovery and 
 maintenance of these, under the greatly increased 
 difficulties and complexities of the time, prove the 
 very power and triumph of theistic philosophy ? 
 There must be no shirking the full force of the 
 difficulties, so grave and real : the way out shall 
 be cut by a deepening process. It has grown 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 more incumbent upon us to inquire, in more 
 searching manner, into the Reality of the Self, 
 and the present relations of Man to God, to the 
 Cosmos, and to Immortality, as to which things 
 the possibility of real knowledge has been dis- 
 credited from so many sides as must be held none 
 too creditable to the thinking capacities of the age. 
 Thought must inevitably chase these problems in 
 their latest phases, in the sure conviction that, if 
 this knowledge be not possible, there awaits us, 
 not any halting-place called Agnosticism, but what 
 the Germans would call the Abgrund or deeper 
 abyss of Scepticism. And we do not know any 
 reason why, in this quest, theistic philosophy should 
 not, like many another to-day, reap in fields where 
 she has not sown, and gather where she has not 
 scattered. For all things are hers hers with a 
 propriety that none of earth's philosophies can feel, 
 in so far as she shall claim and make them her own 
 by actual conquest and possession. From such 
 pantheistic developments as those of Haeckel and 
 Paulsen she may gather truth and glean wisdom 
 no less truly than from the theistic teachings of 
 Ulrici and the spiritual aims of Lotze. Theistic 
 philosophy has been perfectly justified in taking 
 opportunity, amid the recoil from a priori attempts 
 at world-construction, to do better justice by the 
 categories of physical science in the way of educing 
 their metaphysical implications. For, in the vastly 
 enlarged area of scientific or empirical fact, the 
 
FUNDAMENTAL WORK OF PHILOSOPHY. II 
 
 task of constructive theistic philosophy cannot but 
 be a much less easy one than formerly. Its primal 
 task we shall find to be none other than the quest 
 of an Urgrund or fundamental ground of all other 
 proofs or grounds of religion. This is but to say 
 that it seeks some first principle of so universal 
 and organic character that from it our theistic 
 philosophy of religion becomes evolved. Clearly 
 nothing less than such a vital ground or generic 
 principle will suffice to-day. Retreating from any 
 merely abstract particulars or purely external evi- 
 dences, we must ground all our grounds in such 
 an organic, constitutive, and immanent principle 
 as the Urgrund of which we have spoken. Then 
 we shall have something like a true and thorough- 
 going Apologetic, giving religion its true and neces- 
 sary place in the life of man, and also giving 
 Christianity its real place as crown and flower of 
 all religion. Such a theistic philosophy of religion 
 as that of which we have spoken is an imperative 
 necessity, for what should our Christian faith do 
 in such a time without the thoughtful and rational 
 comprehension of experience on which we insist ? 
 It must steer a wise and thoroughly legitimate 
 course between the extremes of objectivism and 
 subjectivism a course, too, that is not in the least 
 impracticable. For it should not be unmindful of 
 the truth and force of what Professor Eucken, of 
 Jena, has said, in his judicially written work on 
 'Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart,' that "in the 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 final result we come to this, that a detached and 
 self -directed Subjectivity, even with the utmost 
 elevation (enhancement) of the conception, affords 
 our life neither a firm foundation nor a sufficient 
 content. Still less," he adds, " is this obtainable 
 from mere objectivity." It must transcend the 
 confusion and helpless despair of agnosticism, and 
 lay to heart the brave prophetic utterance of Emer- 
 son that " there is a statement of religion possible 
 which makes all scepticism absurd." No doubt, 
 we have been lately told that such a rational re- 
 ligion is a scientific impossibility and represents 
 an inherent contradiction of terms, and this attitude 
 has been based on the ground that religious beliefs 
 or doctrines are inaccessible to reason, and require 
 ultra-rational sanction. No popularity of the socio- 
 logical manuals in which such assertions appear 
 should for an instant make us forget that they 
 contain no more than the proverbial grain of truth 
 needful to give them a certain currency. Hence, 
 however, we must give some place to discussing 
 the functions of Reason in religious and theistic 
 philosophy, that religion may no more appear the 
 non-rational sort of thing it has been depicted to 
 be. For a true universality is to be claimed for 
 reason. Reason will neither be subdued nor 
 silenced, but will assert, through and after all, 
 the all - comprehending character of its powers. 
 The age of reason is not yet ; reason, in our 
 philosophy, is only becoming. So, too, the Reign 
 
THEISTIC IMPLICATES AND INQUIRIES. 13 
 
 of Law within, and not merely over, man, we must 
 consider, with a view to bringing out his free, 
 spiritual nature and characteristics. We say " free," 
 and indeed his Freedom we shall separately discuss, 
 for to those philosophers who cut away the ground 
 from the fundamental truth and reality of freedom 
 we can yield subjection, no, not for an hour. So far 
 as may be, we are anxious that all mere arbitrari- 
 ness be removed from the freedom of the will, 
 and that freedom be truly grounded in the spirit, 
 but we cannot allow man's free personality to be 
 merged in the mechanism of nature. As free 
 spiritual being, we claim to have real choice and 
 freedom, and to transcend mechanical necessity. 
 Notwithstanding the usurpations of prejudice and 
 opinion, we must also, in the course of our in- 
 vestigations, inquire into the theistic possibilities 
 of a Philosophy of History, a Philosophy which 
 shall take due account of the History of that 
 Spiritual Kingdom whose realisation theistic phil- 
 osophy takes to be the ultimate purpose of God. 
 Touching the goal of all things, we may not 
 shrink from uttering our voice on the great theme 
 of Immortality. The synthetic philosophy may 
 have seen fit to tell us of the gradual harmonising 
 of life with environment as the only goal to which 
 it can point, and its picture of endless evolutions 
 of eternally persistent force is one which lacks not 
 in daring and boldness. But the theistic philosophy 
 of religion reaches beyond to a faith in Immortality 
 
14 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 which sees the soul of man " survive the wreck 
 of material forms " and endure in a true spiritual 
 and eternal existence, which is one of fellowship 
 with the Father of an infinite majesty, but also 
 of an infinite tenderness and love. Its faith is 
 
 that 
 
 "Though suns stand still and time be o'er, 
 We are, and shall be, evermore." 
 
 Of that immortal fellowship it may find presages 
 here rather than proofs, but the coming glory 
 which these presages of immortality foretell it 
 will not allow us to mistake. No, not even if 
 "it doth not yet appear what we shall be," when 
 we shall be no longer " here in the body pent." 
 Such a programme as that we have now marked 
 out for theistic philosophy can only be realised by 
 its gathering all things all special disclosures and 
 partial truths or revelations in one, in the unity of 
 truth. Then the physical and the spiritual will 
 coalesce, and revelation will be one. Such a 
 philosophy can surely not be without vision ; and 
 is it not true that, where there is no vision, philos- 
 ophy must perish ? It is a vision of no monistic 
 reduction of all things to one, but a sublime theistic 
 fusion of all things in one. A forward unity is that 
 we seek, not the backward search of men who are 
 lost in thought of efficient cause. No striving after 
 the ultimate of all thought no endeavour to ascend 
 from varied phenomena to the ultimate unity of all 
 being has ever yet been crowned, inductively, 
 
VALUE OF PHILOSOPHICAL EFFORT. 15 
 
 with success. But these very strivings, these 
 theorisings and postulations and aspirations after 
 this x or unknown ultimate, all have their value, 
 and cast a light that upward slopes towards that 
 Perfect Being, of Whom all our conceptions are 
 but fragmentary and partial. There are no blind 
 alleys in our inquiries, but the rectifications and 
 the completions of our knowledge leave us as far 
 from finality as before. There is nothing dis- 
 couraging to the individual philosopher in this. 
 His work has its own place, and an abiding one 
 too a place of permanent value, as he is wise 
 enough to see. For he surely sees that there is 
 at least far more truth than men are, for the most 
 part, able or willing to believe in the words of the 
 philosopher who said that " even should future ages 
 transcend the knowledge which is revealed in his 
 work, still in that work he has not recorded his 
 knowledge alone, but also the fixed and settled 
 character of a certain age in its relation to know- 
 ledge ; and this will preserve its interest so long 
 as the human race endures. Independent of all 
 vicissitude and change, his pages speak in every 
 age to all men who are able to realise his thought ; 
 and thus continue their inspiring, elevating, and 
 ennobling work, even to the end of time." This, 
 we say, at least marks the faith in which we ought 
 to work. And it is not meant that the individual 
 philosopher, in so doing, should isolate the great 
 problems with which he is here called to deal, or 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 should fatuously limit the range and sphere of his 
 observation in any individual or technical manner 
 whatsoever. How should it be so, when he is 
 called to deal with the universal and eternal func- 
 tions of reason, functions even higher than inter- 
 national in truth supernational ? Theistic philos- 
 ophy must, of course, appropriate whatever being 
 true is local and temporal, but it does so only, 
 as demanded by the true philosophic spirit, to tran- 
 scend them. And we venture to say that the theis- 
 tic philosopher like every other true philosopher- 
 will regard his philosophy as rather less the creation 
 of his age, and more his own independent product, 
 than Hegel was willing to allow. " Its methods, 
 principles, formulae, arguments, are all philosophical : 
 the systems it criticises are the philosophies : the 
 authorities it invokes are philosophers." His claim 
 for it will be that it alone is adequate to the facts 
 of knowledge, being, life, change, progress, as we 
 witness these in the being, history, and movements 
 of the Universe. Yes, and, as touching those points 
 at which his theistic study must pass upward into 
 the truths and implications of a distinctively Chris- 
 tian Theism, he will maintain and pursue a method 
 not merely scientific but one which carries within 
 itself, in the highest possible manner, a rational 
 self-justification. And so he will perceive, in words 
 which Wilfrid Ward in his recent ' Witnesses to 
 the Unseen, and other Essays,' has used, a far 
 deeper truth and force than has always been un- 
 
TRUE VIEW OF THE EVIDENCES. 17 
 
 derstood or realised by those who undertook to 
 shape the course of theological thought : " Viewing 
 the evidences as consisting both of internal and 
 external evidences, of the personal examination of 
 one's spiritual nature as well as of history, of a 
 priori assumptions, of the necessity for a religion, 
 of the meaninglessness of life without one, of the 
 improbability that God, Whom we have learnt to 
 know, would leave us in hopeless darkness, of the 
 nature of the Christian law and Christ's character- 
 both felt by meditation and study to be unearthly 
 of these and the like motives for belief, added to 
 the historical evidences, and all felt to converge 
 upon the truth and knowableness of a fact of 
 supreme present importance to be known, and 
 calling, if true, for immediate and constant resulting 
 action, we have quite a different set of principles 
 to apply. It is both absurd and useless to ask 
 any one who is led to love Christianity and to 
 see reasons for thinking it not improbable that 
 it may be true, to be indifferent as to the result 
 of his further study : absurd, because if it offers 
 knowledge satisfying his whole nature, he must 
 hope that he shall find it true ; useless, because 
 if he realises the supreme importance to himself 
 of a true conclusion, he has a security for im- 
 partiality far higher than that afforded by indif- 
 ference." This is but "the concrete activity of 
 the abstract wish for religious knowledge," and 
 it seems to us an utterly untrue and unscientific 
 
 B 
 
18 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 procedure to treat religious inquiry as a thing of 
 simple logical apprehension and scrutiny of exterior 
 evidence, forgetful and inexcusably negligent of all 
 that lies in the region of fact beyond in the deep 
 sphere of personal realisation, inward appreciation, 
 and spiritual mastery. This spirit and method 
 may, no doubt, render our task more difficult of 
 perfect attainment, but we cannot but hold any less 
 deep and thorough a method as necessarily defective 
 and inadequate. And there is really nothing in 
 this to deter us from seeking in our philosophy 
 those two main requisitions laid down by Ferrier 
 in respect of every philosophical system namely, 
 that it should be both true and reasoned, indeed 
 by all means reasoned, as becometh a system. But 
 true and reasoned our method and system may thus 
 be, without being narrow and exclusive. In fact, 
 we claim for it that it is an ideal method we pursue, 
 when we seek to follow the clue of theistic principle, 
 in our search for a synthesis that shall satisfy the 
 demands for comprehensiveness and unity thrust 
 upon us by the facts of the universe. 
 
PART FIRST 
 
 RECENT PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL 
 THEOLOGY 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 RECENT PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 IF God's revelation of Himself has its commence- 
 ment in nature, it is fitting that we should first 
 notice the tokens of advance afforded by recent 
 philosophy of natural theology. For the history 
 of religion, in which we broadly include its host of 
 recent philosophic thinkers and inquirers in Ger- 
 many, Holland, France, Italy, Britain, and America, 
 renews for us the method of creation in thus bring- 
 ing to us first that which is natural, then that which 
 is spiritual. And, as Mozley said, the Christian 
 mind has perhaps no greater satisfaction than that 
 which comes of perceiving that the revealed system 
 is rooted deep in the natural course of things. This, 
 in our view, abides none the less true because of the 
 circumstance that it was Newman's dictum that to 
 deny revelation is the way to deny natural religion, 
 or because the denial of natural religion has been 
 seen, in the case of Ritschl, as it consorts with the 
 magnifying of revelation. Natural theology is pos- 
 
22 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 sessed of no critical apparatus whereby it is to 
 judge revealed theology. Revealed theology will 
 yet be found reasonable, and none the less so, we 
 believe, because it brings to us the mind of God. 
 In no department of theological science has the 
 need for reconstruction been more deeply felt than 
 in that of natural theology, for just here have former 
 notions been most completely overthrown. Modern 
 theistic philosophy of religion has very rightly felt 
 that it must follow a less mechanical method of in- 
 quiry. Knowing that it holds in hand the physical 
 and spiritual worlds, it has wisely not restricted its 
 attention to that religious knowledge or experience 
 which is distinctively Christian, but has turned its 
 scrutiny on the general or universal " universal," 
 we mean, in the only sense in which modern theism 
 feels any serious interest religious experience or 
 knowledge. Its sympathetic and systematic study 
 of the ethnic religions has been rewarded by the 
 discovery of the relations they sustain to each other 
 and to Christianity, of which, as their crown and 
 flower, they are taken to be prophecies. The view 
 formerly taken by natural theology of these religions 
 of nature as being unmixedly false the outcome of 
 credulity and imposture instead of really grounded 
 in spiritual wants and aspirations common to the 
 race, and developed in accordance with environ- 
 ment as they are now seen by the science of Com- 
 parative Religion to be has been increasingly felt 
 to have been inadequate. At the same time we be- 
 
THE NATURE RELIGIONS. 23 
 
 lieve the best of recent thought upon the subject to 
 be with Professor P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye 
 in explicitly recognising the insufficiency of purely 
 natural development to explain the phenomena of 
 religion, while yielding to nature what we may call 
 the " yearnings she hath in her own natural kind." 
 In the light of these nature-religions being thus the 
 natural product of the religious instincts of the race, 
 it has become more fully recognised how 
 
 " In even savage bosoms 
 There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
 For the good they comprehend not." 
 
 These religions are thus seen to be capsules in 
 which are hidden seeds of true religious thought. 
 Indeed it may almost be now said to be more clearly 
 perceived how the idea of Godhead or a Supreme 
 Power on which all creatures do depend appears, 
 whenever we pierce below the psychological pro- 
 cesses in search of the objective basis, to underlie 
 and give shaping to all these forms of religion. 
 This, however, is quite consistent with religion, as 
 what we may call man's underlying sense of the 
 Eternal Spirit in all 'things, being seen to be wider 
 in its nature, not merely than Christianity, but than 
 that theistic conception with whose explicit form we 
 are here concerned. We must indeed postulate for 
 all human life such a background as religion is. It 
 is not to be supposed that, in this idea of God any- 
 thing more is implied, on behalf of natural theology, 
 than the notion at present of a self-existent First 
 
24 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 Cause Creator and Ruler an idea valid enough 
 for the purposes of natural theology, however short 
 of the fulness of theistic conception. From the 
 recent interest in the science of the History of Re- 
 ligions have sprung advances in the study of the 
 theistic bearings of the world's ethnic religions, of 
 which religions the Christian Faith has been always 
 more distinctly seen to be the goal, not the denial, 
 the fulfilment and not the negation. Hence we 
 may say that the significance of such a saying as 
 Hegel's, that the idea of God constitutes the general 
 basis of a people, has, as we take it, come to be 
 more fully appreciated, for we think it cannot be 
 doubted that modern thought has increasingly found 
 the theistic idea to be central and vital in the his- 
 tory of the race, of which the proof lies in the newer 
 forms now more robust and now more refined in 
 which it has appeared. At the same time there has 
 been a clearer consciousness that natural religions, 
 no matter how monotheistic may have been sup- 
 posed their trend, are lacking in moral stability. 
 Their position, at the highest, has been always more 
 conspicuously seen to be one of unstable equilibrium. 
 And so, alike the need for natural theology, with its 
 suggestions at least of the wisdom, power, and unity 
 of the personal God, and the incompleteness of that 
 same theology the inadequacy of a system of pure 
 theism for the loftier ends of man's life have been 
 more abundantly acknowledged. This insufficiency 
 of natural theism has been, we think, more fully 
 
INADEQUACY OF NATURAL THEISM. 25 
 
 appreciated in recent philosophy of natural the- 
 ology, which has realised with what good reason 
 even the author of ' Supernatural Religion ' recog- 
 nised the presence of higher than strictly natural 
 elements in all great religions. Philosophic thought 
 has understood how a thoroughgoing natural theism, 
 denuding its Deity of all personal powers in its 
 enslaving adherence to the natural order of things, 
 and reducing the nature of man, in its psychological 
 aspects, purely to terms of law, can never minister 
 to the needs of faith and worship in any way worthy 
 to be dignified with the name of a religion. We 
 think that recent theistic philosophy has more clear- 
 ly observed that the study of nature, as pursued by 
 modern science, has been begetting a more distinct 
 sense of the transcendence of God of the truth that 
 God is above and beyond Nature. For, has not 
 science brought to light forces in nature which only 
 the Absolute Power can explain, disclosed reality 
 which reaches beyond the penetration of the finite 
 mind, and unveiled mysteries for whose solution 
 only the Infinite Wisdom will suffice ? The theistic 
 thought of to-day less than ever denies the light of 
 the Eternal Logos, as it shines through the forms 
 of the reason, to the nations and peoples unto whom 
 the Scriptures have not come. It less than ever 
 feels disposed to deny the fact of ethnic inspiration, 
 whereby may come to pious heathen, amid the 
 many millions who have never heard Messiah's 
 name, the guidance and illumination of God's Eter- 
 
26 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 nal Spirit in its universal and unrestrained working. 
 Its belief Tennyson has voiced, that men of every 
 
 race 
 
 " In some way live the life 
 Beyond the bridge, and serve that Infinite, 
 
 And vaguer voices of Polytheism 
 
 Make but one music harmonising c Pray.' " 
 
 The idea of theism with which we are at this 
 moment concerned includes, of course, only such 
 real belief in God as may be possible where the 
 truths of the Christian revelation have not come, 
 belief which may be real as implying in worship 
 communion in some sort between two living minds, 
 even where the expression of theistic belief seems 
 not very free of superstitious elements. We are 
 by no means sure of the wisdom of those pre- 
 sentations that seem sometimes unduly to press 
 inferences of a theistic character from observed 
 tendencies in primitive religions. We are not 
 anxious, for example, to make theistic capital out 
 of such a possible circumstance as that it might 
 be urged that even in the form of religion or primi- 
 tive philosophy called Animism the first theory 
 indeed of the world there has been more plainly 
 discernible, in its unconscious craving for ultimate 
 reality, a seeking after the supernatural that which 
 is above nature as an invisible and spiritual power 
 present everywhere. No : spiritual thought is here 
 though it be a religion of spirits still too chaotic 
 for religion in real theistic sense, and so it merges 
 
PROFESSOR CAIRD'S SCHEME. 27 
 
 into Polytheism, whence it may issue in Mono- 
 theism. It is enough for us more broadly to 
 remark that recent theistic philosophy has more 
 fully exposed the inadequacy of the naturalistic 
 explanations of religious facts and phenomena, and 
 has proved them explicable only through the pres- 
 ence of the self-revealing God. It does not even 
 find perfect satisfaction in such a philosophy of 
 development as that of Professor Edward Caird's 
 scheme or preconceived theory for vainly trying 
 to make of all religious history one vast evolu- 
 tionary process, with " necessary stages " supposed 
 to be traced through the world's variant forms of 
 religion. We are not to be thought, while speaking 
 thus, to deny a real evolution of religion, when 
 religion is taken in its broadest, most inclusive, 
 sweep both natural and revealed for we hold 
 such a progress perceptible towards the ethical 
 and spiritual, in midst of all reversions and catas- 
 trophic results. But whether it has been so 
 traced for us in any tenable and consistent way 
 is another matter. As in the individual, that was 
 not here first which is spiritual, but that which is 
 natural. What, in fact, seems to us of supreme 
 interest and moment for theistic philosophy of 
 religion is just the distinctive or differentiating 
 element present in all forms of religion in the 
 world, so far as that underlying principle or origin- 
 ating power not to be confounded with a merely 
 common element emerges in the personal relation 
 
28 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 that subsists and subsists anterior to, or apart 
 from, the advent of Christianity between the God 
 worshipped and the man who worships. The 
 humanity with which in its race -aspect we have 
 to do is a humanity which, in its own profoundest 
 interpretations of its existence, continually looks 
 up to the Absolute, and says 
 
 " All my springs are in Thee." 
 
 We say that we feel impelled for our present pur- 
 pose to leave quite aside consideration of such facts 
 as that recent religious inquiry has not shrunk from 
 the complex and intricate undertaking by which, 
 entering into the regions of ontological speculation, 
 it has sought to trace out the theistic evolution of 
 the better developed of these natural religions. Of 
 these Buddhism may serve as an example, whose 
 cult, developed through a long course of ethical 
 culture, has been at times declared to be in essence 
 theistic, though in character the theism is taken 
 to be incomplete or even unconscious. For we 
 cannot disguise from ourselves the fact that such 
 conclusions rest on far too slender and precarious 
 a basis to deserve to be mixed up with the solid 
 and weighty considerations that must occupy us 
 in succeeding divisions of our subject. It appears 
 to us the more desirable to abstain from introducing 
 such considerations since we have writers, like Dr 
 Kellogg of Toronto, who think the progress of the 
 highest thought of India has been from, not towards, 
 
RESIDUAL THEISTIC ELEMENT. 29 
 
 conceptions of God as one and personal, and since 
 it is not to be denied that such thought, in so far as 
 it assumed a pantheistic hue, gave but little colour 
 to real relations of moral and affectional sort. 
 
 When we turn to the Vedas, we see that no 
 beauty of the religious spirit which may be found 
 in them could avert what Bunsen terms the " great 
 tragedy of India and of humanity," for we cannot 
 but think that the Vedic poets came rather short 
 of grasping, in any clear manner, the God they 
 sought after. We come back to say that, apart 
 from the position Dr Kellogg assumes as to the 
 development of religion, he seems to postulate at 
 least a residual theistic element real enough to be 
 that which most concerns us here. So, too, the 
 primitive naturism which Professor Pfleiderer pos- 
 tulates somewhat gratuitously low in type, it 
 would almost seem as the original religion, must 
 be left as matter of speculative conjecture, theistic 
 philosophy of religion premising only that quick- 
 ened moral feeling or an indefinite calling forth of 
 the spiritual ideas was not without a place in re- 
 ligion as it existed prior to the earliest form of it 
 known to us. It is, however, hardly too much 
 to say, what we have just hinted, that not even 
 in those known forms of religion that seem to us 
 most primitive and incomplete, is wanting some 
 recognition, beyond the vague sense of the Infinite 
 unseen and Infinite Power and the bare notion 
 of the spiritual, of the Absolute Reason manifested 
 
30 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 in the Universe ; not even there is wanting some 
 impulse of the finite spirit to communion with the 
 Absolute and self-revealing Spirit, as a communion 
 which is felt, though dimly, to be the vital destina- 
 tion of man's rational nature. Hence Principal Caird 
 has spoken of religion as something which " may be 
 said to consist " in the capacity which is ours of 
 "self-abnegation and self-surrender to an Infinite 
 object." In fact, precisely as he so surrenders him- 
 self is a man religious. Religion, however it may 
 be mediated for us by the Church or community, 
 remains to the end a personal relation the sur- 
 render of the finite to the Infinite Person, so that, 
 not absorption and not annihilation of the finite 
 shall be the result, but intercommunion and mutual 
 commerce of the finite and the Infinite spirits. All 
 this in virtue of the indefeasible consciousness of 
 relation to God which we claim for man, to whom 
 the Power, by which all things consist, is inwardly 
 manifested. So truly has religion been seen to be 
 what Hegel said a relation of spirit to spirit, even 
 when Hegel's view may not be taken to be adequate. 
 By it religion, represented as perfect freedom, would 
 be too much confined to the volitional. Yes, al- 
 though the persistent tendency of Hegelianism is 
 to resolve the volitional into the intellectual. We 
 say, then, that religion is seen to be determined 
 by its springing from the nature of man as a 
 dependent, imperfect, progressive creature, living 
 not by his own life, but in strength derived from 
 
UNION OF THE RELIGIOUS FACTORS. 31 
 
 the Absolute. Not of course in any Schleiermach- 
 erian dependence, but only in virtue of that faith 
 which is the subjective side in the process of re- 
 ciprocal relations wherein revelation is the objective 
 form in which God stoops to show Himself to man. 
 A basal activity of our spirit is such faith, carrying 
 within it elements of willing and of thinking, as 
 well as of feeling. Those religious needs of which 
 we have already spoken, and man's sense of such 
 needs, must be said, certainly, to have been deepened 
 by the presence of sinful elements. What concerns 
 us primarily in definitions of the nature of religion 
 is their one-sidedness their tendency to look at 
 single characteristics rather than at total content 
 which is to-day as comically true of IngersolPs 
 making others happier, if it can be done easily, 
 as it was seriously true of Schleiermacher's resolv- 
 ing it into the feeling of dependence. But we 
 have just seen how the self -revelation of God 
 has been met by a complete self- relation of man 
 to God. Only in this union of the two factors is 
 religion's content complete. And so, taking for 
 the present no account of all that can be urged 
 against religion being restricted to explicit recog- 
 nition of God, we ask, Has there not in all this 
 been somewhat of a realisation of what Rothe 
 said when he affirmed that the religious self-con- 
 sciouness is immediate consciousness of relation to 
 God as a reciprocal fellowship, a communion with 
 God which, however, is possible only with a per- 
 
32 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 sonal God ? For, " only if God is an I, can He 
 be to us a Thou, as He always is to the religious- 
 even at the lowest grade of religion ; for at this 
 grade it is essentially praying." But it is precisely 
 as a Thou that God is known to us : no longer 
 does the universe signify for us merely an It; 
 and, as a consequence, all the free relations pre- 
 dicable between person and person may obtain 
 between us and the universe so personalised in 
 God. It can hardly be needful here to insist on 
 the intimacy of relation subsisting between this 
 knowledge man has of God, and his knowledge of 
 himself and the world. 
 
 Theistic philosophy, it seems to us, insists very 
 distinctly on this Absolute Spirit, Who is, in fact, 
 the absolute ground of the human soul, being per- 
 sonal and self-conscious being. It may be quite 
 true that we must begin with the bare fact of unity 
 as the universe may seem to witness of it to us, but 
 it does appear a very defective and halting result 
 to which we are led in the ' Evolution of Religion ' 
 by Professor Edward Caird, when we are brought 
 to " an absolute principle of unity " without the 
 essentially spiritual and personal character of this 
 unity being in any satisfactory form set forth. The 
 world of reality is of small consequence to Professor 
 Caird, if only he may reach his bare and abstract 
 principle of unity, and it sounds curious to find the 
 universal, supposed to be reached in such a manner, 
 gravely spoken of as " the ground on which we 
 
PROFESSOR CAIRD CRITICISED. 
 
 33 
 
 stand, the atmosphere which surrounds us, the light 
 by which we see, and the heaven that shuts us in " 
 (vol. i. p. 153). In no case could such a form of 
 knowledge, devoid of all real content, satisfy us ; 
 and when it does come to filling in with content, 
 Professor Caird has not realised that the idols of 
 space and time must be forgotten, and spiritual 
 unity be interpreted as becometh the spiritual. 
 Our " ultimate attitude towards the universe " is 
 an attitude towards something infinitely more in- 
 spiring than a mere abstract and impersonal unity. 
 Only the unity of the Infinite Spirit, the supreme 
 Personality, can possibly bind " all thinking things, 
 all objects of all thought," in one. We gladly allow 
 with Schiller, in one of his fine philosophical letters, 
 that " the Divinity is already very near to that 
 man who has succeeded in collecting all beauty and 
 greatness, all excellence, both in the small and great 
 of Nature, and in evolving from this manifoldness 
 the great unity." Certainly we make no objection 
 to this principle of unity " in the first instance," but 
 no worthy theistic philosophy can abide content to 
 have its ultimate unity a unity for it ethical no 
 less than intellectual invested with so little that 
 is explicitly personal and distinctively spiritual. 
 We gladly keep in view how far we are at one 
 with Professor Caird in his aim, as expressed in 
 the lengthy note of the second volume of his 
 ' Evolution of Religion,' to " think of God as He 
 must be thought of as the principle of unity in 
 
 c 
 
34 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 all things, and yet conceive Him as a self-conscious, 
 self - determining Beino-." But Professor Caird 
 
 o o 
 
 seems fearful of allowing too much to man's indi- 
 viduality, and his thought, while not welcoming 
 God as the absolute subject, yet fails to enter into 
 and penetrate the glories of personality, as we claim 
 it both for God and man. Such recognition of per- 
 sonality is not consistently possible to Absolute 
 Idealism. And though the term personality has 
 its difficulties in such a connection, yet we need 
 not be too easily scared by a word, especially since, 
 as Professor Caird himself admits, the matter itself 
 is the real and important thing. God is still God 
 to us, and there is none beside Him, when we set 
 our individual personality in relation to Him. We 
 think Lotze has done better, in making personality 
 his ultimate in the explanation of things, and in treat- 
 ing the highest being or the Absolute as personal 
 though unlimited no less than spiritual. Reli- 
 gion, then, may fairly be taken to be the com- 
 munion between God and man, or their reciprocal 
 relation. No mystical communion is this, such 
 that its tenuity need make it elude spiritual grasp ; 
 it is simply adoring intercourse or religion made 
 real ; it is no mere passiveness on our part, but 
 implies the intensest energy of all our being. 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion has been 
 laying needed stress on the fact that religion is 
 not illusion, but something which calls for a philo- 
 sophical showing of the objective character of the 
 
OBJECTIVITY OF THE RELIGIOUS RELATION. 35 
 
 religious relation. It cannot be said to rest with 
 any satisfaction in such efforts as that of Dr Bender 
 of Bonn, who, as becomes the left or radical Ritsch- 
 lian wing, in dealing with Das Wesen der Religion^ 
 treats of the psychological process of religion, as 
 though this last were something that lacks objective 
 basis or cosmic warrant. For it sees the question 
 of real importance to be what relation universal and 
 objective reality sustains to our religious ideals and 
 beliefs. Principal Caird truly says that "the basis 
 of religion lies in the very essence of man's nature 
 as a thinking, self-conscious being," and that the 
 religious appeal must be " to an objective standard. 
 That which enters the heart must first be discerned 
 by the intelligence to be true. It must be seen as 
 having in its own nature a right to dominate feeling, 
 and as constituting the principle by which feeling 
 must be judged and regulated." (' Philosophy of 
 Religion,' pp. 160, 174.) Religion is never whole 
 and perfect until the powers of the whole man 
 are thus called forth ; then only is it in affinity 
 with reason, no less than with feeling ; then also 
 has it brought us to know, no less than made us 
 willing to worship, the Infinite God who is the 
 Absolute Personality, eternal, just, and good. But 
 at least to God, as thus its ultimate Ground if you 
 like, its metaphysical Urgrund must it backward 
 come through all psychological processes and all 
 historical stages. Then shall it know, alike in 
 thought and for thought, what it had earlier known 
 
36 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 only in feeling. Then, too, shall theoretic cogni- 
 tion pass outward into willing or doing, for only in 
 such doing can we know the truth. In this best of 
 ways will thus be fulfilled all that is needful and 
 true in Schopenhauer's contendings for religion as 
 rooted in the will rather than the intellect, even 
 while we may not enlist under his banner in the 
 warfare against rational religion. All religion is seen 
 to be constituted, as Dr Martineau has said, by a 
 conscious relation to a higher than we, and on the 
 part of the rational universe at large to a Higher 
 than all. We find a more satisfactory recognition, in 
 recent philosophy of religion, of the complex nature 
 of religious experience. So apparently simple an 
 activity of man's spirit as faith, is seen to be yet 
 most complex of his activities. Without being 
 itself any special organ, it is seen to be the dynamic 
 for all his faculties. 
 
 We find, too, a broader recognition of the fact 
 that it is enough for religion, in the widest accep- 
 tation of the term, that it include man's relation, 
 as a being of feeling, intellect, and will, to an 
 Unseen Power or Powers able to affect his destiny, 
 and not to a clearly defined God or Gods. This 
 personal relation of man to the universe and the 
 Highest in it is the foundation or basis of religion. 
 To recognise this relation is clearly a prime duty 
 incumbent on all rational beings. Just as science 
 has the permanent relation of things for its basis, 
 so is religion based on this personal relation of 
 
FULNESS OF THE RELIGIOUS RELATION. 37 
 
 souls to the Highest. The saint, the savage, and 
 the seer, all alike find their inspiration in some 
 form of consciousness of this relation. Not far 
 from any one of them is the feeling of obligation 
 impelling to perfect fulfilment of the relation so 
 recognised. Yet we certainly believe that not 
 from any partial and inferior forms or manifesta- 
 tions of the religious feeling shall religion be most 
 truly understood by us, but only as we view it in 
 its highest terms and utmost reach in man. Nor 
 must we ever be swept away by the current of 
 religious feeling, but have the bases of our religious 
 life sunk deep in the mind's views of the truth of 
 God, in the heart's convictions of His holiness and 
 love, and in the fixed and firm determinations of 
 the will as made one with Him by faith and joy- 
 ous self-surrender. Religion thus becomes to us 
 a feeling of confidence, of trust, and of freedom 
 in God. It is thus evident with what truth Pro- 
 fessor Eucken remarks that " the growing life of 
 the spirit is fundamentally distinct from any trans- 
 lation of reality into mere feeling. It produces of 
 its own activity a new reality, and thereby strives 
 to change the existing situation. Only at the 
 height of such activity has man the full assur- 
 ance of truth." The Incarnation is just a medium 
 whereby we apprehend and realise as we could 
 not intuitively and directly do, the nature of " that 
 God which ever lives and loves." It must, in 
 fact, be claimed that the theistic conception is, by 
 
38 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 immemorial inheritance, in the seat or place of 
 possession, and that it is for anti-theistic theories 
 to displace it from the position which by natural 
 right it holds in man's normal faith. But that 
 place, it must be clearly remembered, is, as the 
 Rev. James Tait, of Montreal, in his ' Mind in 
 Matter' remarks, not that of "a mere conclusion 
 resting on a logical premiss. It is a truth im- 
 pressed" as we believe to be now better under- 
 stood " by the self-revealing God." Nor is there 
 any really valid reason why we may not go on to 
 add, with him, that "He who created the instrument 
 by which human spirits communicate, can penetrate 
 the seat of conviction and demonstrate Himself." 
 The strange and tenuous Theism, which, however, 
 in reality is mere aesthetic agnosticism, supposed 
 to underlie the attempt made in our time with, 
 it ought to be said, no small literary charm and 
 no lack of comprehensiveness of view to exhibit 
 a purely " Natural Religion," so called, cannot be 
 said to have greatly troubled the vigorous theistic 
 philosophy it was meant to affright. That phil- 
 osophy rather seems to have left it dying of sheer 
 inanition on the field. We think it hardly too much 
 to say that " Natural Religion " has been mainly a 
 contribution to the confusion which already exists 
 in the sphere of religious thought ; and that, while 
 psychology has been teaching us to recognise the 
 vague no less than the definite in the soul's life, 
 theistic philosophy has always more deeply felt how 
 
THE GOD OF NATURAL RELIGION. 39 
 
 impossible it must remain for religious thought to 
 rest in anything so vague, and even inconceivable, 
 as that which purports to be a purely " Natural 
 Religion " poised on the negative science of the 
 time. It cannot be content with this conception 
 of Nature, out of which when only personified 
 is conjured up such a Deity as is supposed to be 
 Inspirer of Kings, Revealer of Laws, Reconciler 
 of Nations, Redeemer of Labour, Reformer of 
 Churches. No ; for this Deity has come out of 
 only the physical order of things, and, all fine 
 phrases notwithstanding, can lead us to no higher 
 life than that which lies ensphered therein. Is it 
 only thus, we ask, that this wondrous age of ours 
 has been able to interpret its own needs ? If so, 
 theistic philosophy can find little to inspire and 
 satisfy in such worshipful scheme. Theistic philo- 
 sophy has, in fact, been realising the necessity of 
 the supernatural, of which it is itself the supreme 
 expression, and has been more vigorously assert- 
 ing and vindicating for it a true place and sphere, 
 in the face of those presumptions against the 
 supernatural afforded by the stress of science on 
 the universality of law. In fact, that philosophy 
 has been drawing thought towards a larger and 
 more inspiring Theism as the legitimate conclusion 
 of the vast unity and unbroken continuity of Na- 
 ture, and as the necessary culmination of scientific 
 thought. Its endeavour has been to take up the 
 problems of Natural Theology, in the light of 
 
4O PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 recent biological and geological science, and to 
 reach through study of man's nature within for 
 truth is found within, as Augustine said no less 
 than the world without, a true synthesis of Natural 
 Theism. To it religion remains, what Plato so 
 finely said of the Divine, the power of the wing 
 for the soul of man. It consists of some way or 
 form in which, in personal experience; there is 
 recognition of the supersensuous, so that emotion 
 is stirred and life reacted upon. Yea ; there is 
 stirred that Divine striving, that strange emotion 
 which mere Nature, as Matthew Arnold truly says, 
 does not avow 
 
 " There is no effort on my brow, 
 
 I do not strive, I do not weep ; 
 I rush with the swift spheres and glow 
 
 In joy, and when I will, I sleep. 
 Yet that severe, that earnest air, 
 I saw, I felt it once, but where?" 
 
 And, whereas Natural Theology was so long wont 
 to spend its strength in the study of form in nature 
 as seen in adaptation and design, the constructive 
 science of Natural Theology has in recent time 
 evinced a rather slowly growing consciousness that, 
 more important than form, is the force of nature. 
 It has come to see, in fact, that the question of the 
 evolution of life is, as we know it, really a question 
 of the evolution of life with the further question 
 involved of the adaptations of life, such power of 
 adaptation being clearly present as a conditioning 
 
FORM AND FORCE IN NATURE. 41 
 
 factor. By Strauss, in his ' Glaubenslehre,' it was 
 profoundly said that life is an end that creates its 
 own means from within and realises itself. Yes, 
 the life of the self is essentially teleological, and 
 justifies itself. Hence theistic philosophy has been 
 coming at length to feel that life is more than form, 
 that in the processes of life and the outworking of 
 its divinely inwrought energy we have revelations 
 of God, more real, more wondrous, than any pre- 
 sented by the structure of crystals, the wings of 
 insects, and the plumules of plants. 
 
 " Oh, yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill, 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 
 That not one life shall be destroyed 
 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete ; 
 
 That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
 
 That not a moth with vain desire 
 
 Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, 
 Or but subserves another's gain." 
 
 We do not wish to say more in anticipation of 
 those teleological matters which shall engage us in 
 a subsequent chapter ; but it seemed of consequence 
 to remark that it has been no slight advance which 
 has led natural theology beyond artificial and me- 
 chanical conceptions of the Deity and His working, 
 till Christianity is seen to be the most truly " nat- 
 
42 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 ural religion " in its complete restoration of the 
 immanent God in nature and in man. Yes, for in 
 such ways we are made to see how the final tend- 
 ency of things leads us towards God ; we are shown 
 not merely fitness and relation in this system of 
 things, but the tendency and purposive design of 
 which we have spoken. Theistic ' philosophy has 
 unquestionably accorded ampler recognition to the 
 immense service rendered by Pantheism in the re- 
 covery of this long-lost truth of the Divine Imman- 
 ence, though it sees no occasion to allow itself to be 
 overborne by the truth in question. We firmly 
 maintain the absurdity of what Fiske assumed, 
 when he lightly supposed as so many have done 
 with him that the conception of immanence must 
 do away with that of transcendence. Principal Ed- 
 wards, of Bala, puts it rather weakly when, in his 
 interesting lecture on " The God- Man," he says the 
 latter conception is "equally necessary"; it is, if it 
 came to that, the more essential truth of the two for 
 the Christian religion. For, when we have asserted 
 to the full the immanence of Deity in nature and in 
 man, we yet need a transcendence for God, who, in 
 the totality of His being, is more than any partial 
 and fragmentary revelations of Him can possibly 
 be. Such a transcendent existence we postulate for 
 Deity, Who is to us a true personality and must be 
 allowed such a real existence for Himself. What 
 right have any to say that such a transcendence 
 implies a gulf or dualism that must remain un- 
 
PANTHEISTIC IMMANENCE. 43 
 
 bridged save in a mechanical way ? His individual 
 personality we maintain, as we do our own, even 
 though we are in God, yea, move and have our 
 being in Him. We cannot allow the religious in- 
 terest to be simply swept into a pantheistic abyss as 
 the price paid for immanence : the Deity of pan- 
 theism we have too well learned to recognise as 
 invalid, indifferent, abstract, and unreal. Yes, and 
 this, too, while the world-process abides real. The 
 all-embracing whole of pantheism is clearly no real 
 whole, is not one whit more real, in fact, than the 
 parts of which it is simply the sum. Had it been a 
 real whole, it would at once have included all the 
 parts and been more real than they. We dare to 
 say that it was just in order that the religious 
 nature of man might find this Deity to be its true, 
 immanent, and transcendent environment that, as 
 the poet has so finely put it, 
 
 " Out of darkness came the hands 
 That reach through Nature, moulding men." 
 
 Yes, but " moulding" their faith, in the interaction 
 of self and its spiritual environment, not through 
 nature alone, but through countless mediations in 
 the historic process of revelation. When all due 
 value has been assigned to these objective and uni- 
 versal media, when the full opulence of the heritage 
 into which we have come has been recognised and 
 acknowledged, we must still hold fast and firm to 
 the prime significance of our subjective faith, where- 
 
44 PHILOSOPHY AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 by we seize and claim these as our own. Our own 
 subjective personal activity in such faith, wherein 
 we thus appropriate and realise, or, in other words, 
 the subjective self-affirmation of our own spiritual 
 consciousness, is still a thing of vital moment. For 
 it is in such faith that religion culminates. Its true 
 home is in the heart, however it may need to be 
 purified and made rational. 
 
 We account it a standing virtue of Hegel's phil- 
 osophy, that it has so emphasised the propriety of 
 resolving emotion into thought. We may yet escape 
 any blindness to the easily gained limits beyond 
 which the emotional cannot be translated in terms 
 of the rational. What cannot thus be put in terms 
 of thought may still, in its lack of rational equiv- 
 alents, be so interpreted in terms of feeling as to 
 cast light on the nature of that from which it has 
 sprung. Such feeling may sometimes furnish a clue 
 amid the bewilderments of thought. Not in any- 
 thing intellectual, volitional, or emotional, do we 
 locate its seat, but only in the spirit or the person, 
 in whom it is the power that gives colour and direc- 
 tion to all else. Religion, as denoting for us the 
 personal relation that subsists between God and 
 man, can only signify a communion with Him of 
 so deep-seated and spiritual a character, in which 
 we are both active and receptive. Not in our in- 
 dividual experience alone do we so seek God, but 
 also in the life and history of mankind. And the 
 
RELIGIOUS COMMUNION. 45 
 
 relations He sustains to us are such as no man can 
 number. Why then should we not seek to know 
 
 Him ? Is He not ni^h to us, and even with- 
 
 & 
 
 in our hearts ? Is He not always to be better 
 known by us in the ever - living, ever - enlarging 
 revelation that comes from Him ? Impavidi pro- 
 grediamur. 
 
4 6 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RECENT THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 THE insufficiency of data in the earliest historic 
 inquiry we can make, with a view of ascertaining 
 the empiric origin or genesis of religion, is now, 
 we think, frankly enough acknowledged, and the 
 need for inferential processes of thought, as to 
 the known and available facts, admitted. This is, 
 of course, a different thing from saying that its 
 origin can be determined by speculation. The 
 philosophical question of the origin of religion is, 
 of course, to be sharply differentiated from the 
 question of its historic appearance or genesis. 
 Beyond the empiric view of its origin with which 
 the philosophy of religion cannot take to do - 
 philosophy concerns itself with its ultimate grounds 
 or bases. It is with the significance of its interior 
 phenomena that the philosophy of religion presses 
 beyond its outward historic forms to deal. It is 
 not meant, of course, in saying this, that the phil- 
 osophy of religion must not work upon the facts 
 
NATURALISTIC THEORIES INSUFFICIENT. 47 
 
 of religious history which are indeed its presup- 
 position or must not educe from them the prin- 
 ciples of which they testify. These facts are the 
 staple of the philosophy of religion to be rigorously 
 dealt with apart from preconceived theory, so that 
 the principles which inhere in them shall be con- 
 strued, not constructed. It is to be remembered, 
 too, that no uncertainty of ethnographical theory, 
 and no crudeness of our knowledge of its origin, 
 can rob religion of its present philosophical value 
 for us. The theistic philosophy, discarding natural- 
 istic explanations of the origin as insufficient and 
 artificial, has more clearly seen what objective 
 reality even the presence and agency of God 
 Himself must be postulated behind the variant 
 forms and modes of religion as that, in fact, whereby 
 the maintenance of this true, original, personal 
 relation between God and normal man, of which 
 we have already spoken, is indefeasibly secured, 
 no matter how scarce the traces of religion may 
 sometimes be in empirical man. The ghost-theory 
 or ancestral worship of Spencer's * Sociology '- 
 founded on the widespread fact of ancestor-worship 
 with its failure to discriminate between the form 
 of worship and the religious feeling itself, or, in 
 other words, to account for the genesis of the very 
 category of divinity in which the dead are placed ; 
 the animism of Tylor, to which, as one of the 
 earliest, if also most crude, forms of religion, a 
 relative truth may be allowed ; and the God- 
 
48 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 begetting, though hardly man -honouring, fear of 
 Strauss, have all been felt and shown to be noto- 
 riously inadequate to explain " the complex feeling 
 of religious devotion." Recent theistic philosophy 
 of religion has been more percipient of how far 
 the origin of religion with its ideas of responsi- 
 bility and sin has been from being found when 
 religion, "dread arbitress of mutable respect," has 
 been ascribed to the fecit timor of Strauss just 
 alluded to, or set down to superstition or the 
 fraudulent inventions of priestcraft, or accounted 
 for by the Schleiermacherian feeling of absolute 
 dependence, or by resolving it, with Jacobi, into 
 a thing of the heart. Theistic thought recognises 
 that such a sense as that of dependence must con- 
 tinue to be an integral part of religion, but it also 
 sees how hypothetical, mysterious, indefinite, and 
 incomplete such state or stage of religious feeling 
 is. May we not say that it has distinctly felt 
 how much greater is man, transcending objects of 
 sense as religious, than any mere sensations or 
 feelings of fear can suffice to show him ? Does 
 it not find the real marvel to consist not in any 
 fear with which man was early inspired but in 
 the fact that, before the appalling magnitudes of 
 the universe which his eye beheld, he dared de- 
 clare a faith in his own superior greatness and 
 destiny, which a Pascal ages afterwards has been 
 no more than able fully to utter ? May we not 
 say that it has more deeply felt, with Fechner, 
 
OBJECTIVE ASPECTS OF RELIGION. 49 
 
 that "the grand fable of God and the life to 
 come" would never have attained the hold or 
 extent it has, " had it been but a fable"? 
 
 We claim that it has found all those theories 
 which ascribe the origin of religion on its objective 
 side to a phantom Deity born of ignorance and 
 dread, and on its subjective side to such inferior 
 faculties and feelings as fear, priestcraft, ancestral 
 reverence, sufficiently refuted by the way in which 
 religion not only persists, but becomes clarified in 
 conception and worthier in import, with every ad- 
 vance of knowledge and culture. We, for our part, 
 attach exceedingly little value to the attempts that 
 have been made to set the religious consciousness 
 in its fetichistic, totemistic, atavistic, polytheistic, 
 henotheistic stages in definite and serial order, for 
 they are vain and lacking in reality. We claim 
 that theistic thought has more decidedly repelled the 
 hypothesis that behind the variant forms of crude 
 religion, no objective reality related to them exists, 
 and has more laboriously traced the rise of religion 
 back to the sense of world confusion shall we 
 say ? and personal nothingness, out of which the 
 religious instinct leads man up through freedom into 
 communion with the Source of his being. And for 
 such an inquiry as the present it seems to us un- 
 wise and inexpedient to dwell so much as has often 
 of late been done upon unsatisfactory speculations 
 as to the prehistoric origin of religion in most 
 primitive man, where it appears so difficult to find 
 
 D 
 
50 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 terra firma for philosophic thought. Why should 
 there have been so little upon what we cannot but 
 regard as the much more important subject of the 
 relation of cultured man to natural theology ? To 
 put the matter plainly, it is of infinitely less moment 
 for us in our present purpose to think about the his- 
 torical or empirical beginning of religion since it 
 cannot be determined how far nature without reve- 
 lation can carry us than to know about its origin in 
 the thought and experience of enlightened and de- 
 veloped man. For the one Reality which theism 
 postulates in the enlightened conceptions of to-day 
 is surely the not less necessary presupposition of any 
 attempts to explain the origin of religion in primitive 
 man, and its evolutional stages of development. 
 
 Certainly the genesis of religion carries us back 
 to those primal deeps of feeling wherein the soul 
 is only learning to distinguish itself from the vast 
 non-ego without it. The latest and most enlight- 
 ened stages of theistic theory have been more freely 
 allowed to carry for us a far higher and more signi- 
 ficant clue to a rational interpretation than those 
 which were earlier : explanations of the genesis of 
 the idea of God, early and late, must all remember 
 that, whatever the occasions of the birth and de- 
 velopment of the idea, its genesis must certainly 
 be within the soul and mind of him who, opposing 
 his ideal of the good to the merely actual, so comes 
 to recognise the self-revealing God as God. It will 
 thus be seen how thoroughly we hold by the view 
 
TRUE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION. 51 
 
 that inquiries into the crude and rnystical notions of 
 the beginnings of belief are of small consequence 
 for the purpose of those who would make the re- 
 ligious sentiment justify itself in the living present. 
 Leaving to all such investigations of the historic 
 genesis their own importance, we are concerned, 
 not with how the beliefs arose, but rather with what 
 they are in themselves with their truth, validity, 
 and significance. No evolution of religion is, to 
 our theistic conception, possible which does not 
 proceed by the free play or intercommunion of 
 the soul of man, with its transcendent ground, that 
 Absolute Whose immanent spiritual energy de- 
 velops spirituality and evolves religious conscious- 
 ness in us. Without some such idea of communion 
 with God on the part of man there would be simply 
 no religion at all. Hence it is never wholly want- 
 ing even in the religions designated heathen. 
 
 Recent philosophy of natural theology has rightly 
 paused, as we believe, before postulating that 
 " original atheism of consciousness " which should 
 be involved in too great disregard of the normal 
 self-consciousness of mankind, and a too complete 
 dependence on supernatural revelation for the idea 
 of God. It sees, in fact, that its more essential 
 contention here is for an objective revelation in 
 some sort of the Supernatural Power to which 
 man stands related, as something so palpable 
 and persistent as to be past denial. Professors 
 Robertson Smith, Pfleiderer, and others who might 
 
52 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 be named, have sjupplied the needed correctives to 
 the mistaken importance so often attached to my- 
 thology in the scientific study of the ancient re- 
 ligions. Under the comparative method and the 
 idea of natural evolution, these mythical Products 
 have been increasingly shown to be merely natural 
 phenomena, explicable under the working of psy- 
 chological laws, however they may point back to 
 some primal idea of a divinity. Mythologic systems 
 are seen to have been, at best, but endeavours to 
 give some sort of formal expression to relations 
 that were obscurely felt to subsist between man 
 and unseen supernatural powers. We deem our- 
 selves justified in saying that recent philosophy 
 of Natural Theology has found more favour for 
 the position that the idea or concept of God is 
 originated in us by the natural knowledge which 
 comes to be ours as placed in this actual universe. 
 It has found the prevalence of the idea, on any 
 theory of its origin, a presumptive evidence of its 
 truth not by any means to be despised. The 
 validity and scientific character of such evidence 
 have been more correctly estimated by Reville 
 and others, who have exhibited the irrationality 
 of supposing such a need as the religious one to 
 be correspondent to nothing, and of assuming such 
 a tendency as that towards religion to be destitute 
 of a goal. We, however, have no wish or inclina- 
 tion to press such a line of argument too far. It 
 rests, of course, upon mere ground of analogy, and 
 
FECHNER'S VIEW OF ITS ORIGIN. 53 
 
 cannot be placed on the same plane as that which 
 admits of direct proof or scientific evidence. But 
 still it must be said that the forcible grounds of 
 argumentation of Fechner and those who, with 
 him, hold that religious faith would not be such 
 a need, as it is to man, did its objects not really 
 exist, seem not to have been always fully appreciated. 
 We say this without meaning thereby to place the 
 yearning after God or the testimony of conscience 
 on the same kind of footing for our knowledge of 
 the objects presupposed as we would the observ- 
 able functions or provable purposes of the bodily* 
 organisms. 
 
 Fechner's view of the origin of religion, as 
 traceable to divinely given revelation of a primi- 
 tive sort by means of nature and the soul, is not 
 without much to commend it. Supernatural rev- 
 elation, in some sort, is what seems to us to 
 lie at the root of the belief in God within the 
 furthest historic limits, and it seems to us always 
 more certain that, if we could burst these historic 
 limits and find the religion of prehistoric nature, 
 the philosophy of religion would get but little 
 reward for its trouble. So important is the his- 
 torical method here. A more truth-seeking spirit 
 and scientific attitude have been evidenced by 
 recent philosophical theism as to the inquiry 
 whether tribes do not exist without religious 
 sentiments. There can be no doubt that the 
 results of the recent researches have been re- 
 
54 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 markably unfavourable to the contentions of those 
 who claim that there are tribes wholly wanting 
 in religion. Roskoff has declared that no tribe 
 has yet occurred without trace of religious senti- 
 ments. Peschel has decidedly denied any tribe 
 having been found quite without religious emotions 
 and ideas. Hellwald, in like vein, affirms that no 
 tribes completely without religion have thus far 
 been met with. From these and similar declara- 
 tions by Tiele, Quatrefages, Reville, and others, 
 the real results of recent research on this interesting 
 and important question may be gathered. Lotze, 
 in the first volume of his ' Microcosmus,' says : 
 " We must give up the attempt to base belief in 
 the existence of God upon the agreement of man- 
 kind. Moods and presentiments that point to 
 something unknown and invisible are indeed de- 
 veloped in every human soul under the influence 
 of the experience of life ; but, except under favour- 
 able conditions of development, they hardly produce 
 more than a state of objectless fear, to which brutes 
 also would be subject if they were not too devoid 
 of thought to collect into a permanent group the 
 individual frights which they experience." 
 
 But it has now become, we take it, better re- 
 cognised how little really depends on whether tribes 
 occur without actually realised religious relation, 
 since it is the true relation and destiny of man as 
 evidenced in the positive and practically world-wide 
 phenomena of religion, with which theistic phil- 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF RELIGION. 55 
 
 osophy is concerned. It is, as we suppose, seen 
 to be a matter of no practical moment that there 
 has been a time in humanity's development when 
 religion has seemed to be a quantity ndgligeable. A 
 time there was when science and philosophy were 
 in a like state of crudeness. Such things but prove 
 that the glory of their later states has outshone 
 that of their earlier. The great power and hold of 
 primal religion on man are not in all this called in 
 question. This religion is just the wonder to him- 
 self in the case of primitive man. Of no slight 
 importance is this wider acknowledgment that the 
 universality of the religious instinct, called in 
 question by Gruppe and others, is no whit im- 
 paired or curtailed in its essentialness to man in 
 his normal development essential as an original 
 element of his being, and not merely as a fruit 
 of his development by any possible occurrence 
 of tribes without traces of religious sentiment. For, 
 it is surely of significance for the philosophy of 
 natural theology that it has come, as we believe, 
 to be more clearly realised that, even if such re- 
 ligionless people had been found as Azara, Crantz, 
 and the instances cited by Sir John Lubbock on 
 such really baseless grounds as Flint and Roskoff 
 have shown would represent, this fact of its abey- 
 ance or non-manifestation in such peoples would no 
 more invalidate the truth that man has really a 
 universal destination for religion than does the fact 
 that there are secularistic unbelievers at home who 
 
56 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 reduce religion from its place among the primary 
 instincts and powers of the soul. And, in sum, it 
 is to be said that, if the Naturvolker cause us the 
 greatest trouble and difficulty to reach their notions 
 or beliefs, the obstacles are, it seems, next to in- 
 surmountable when we try to pierce to the origins 
 of their theories or traditions, in hope of anything 
 like sober certainty. We confess ourselves haunted 
 by a wholesome distrust of attempts at interpreting 
 the world based upon theories as to origin which 
 have not the semblance of right to be treated as 
 assured truths, and on which far too much has been 
 rested. From all that has now been advanced, it 
 will be seen how, in the wider and truer recognition 
 of the universality of religion and in the firmer 
 place found for the spiritual faculty in man, the 
 subjective side or factor in the genesis of religion 
 has been more adequately recognised. We may 
 surely affirm that spiritual perception has, in recent 
 philosophy of religion, been more clearly seen to 
 be not less natural to man than either self-percep- 
 tion or sense - perception. We may surely say, 
 further, that, hardly less congenial and proper than 
 is the notion of self to the individual, is the pro- 
 priety which humankind in its race-aspect has in 
 the idea of God, a result inconceivable to us with- 
 out original aptitudes in the soul for Theism. 
 
 It has been well said that " there is more than 
 an analogy there is a real kinship between the 
 psychological and objective development in the 
 
MODE OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. 57 
 
 individual and the race. So we may trace a com- 
 mon outline for both. Indeed its development in 
 the individual is only rendered possible through 
 connection with a communal life." Need we say 
 that the personal element is not suppressed in this 
 interaction of the universal and the individual ? 
 We certainly deem ourselves justified in claiming, 
 on behalf of our late philosophy of religion, a 
 more decided utterance in favour of the univers- 
 ality, in a true and real sense, of spiritual percep- 
 tion or the religious sense. Can anything hinder 
 that the Divine, the supernal, should make ap- 
 proach unto man and be revealed in him ? In 
 our view it has grown more evident that nothing 
 advanced either by Pyrrhonism or by Agnosticism 
 can so hinder. That to which the whole philosophy 
 of religion is seen to witness is just this revelation 
 of the Eternal and Divine in the finite spirit or 
 consciousness. And it may not be amiss to recall 
 the remark of Tait that " direct revelation of a 
 spirit can never rise above self-assertion in the 
 conscience." We may here call to remembrance 
 what Tiele has properly emphasised that the 
 gods are, even in the oldest religions, really spirits 
 or lords that rule the phenomena of nature, and 
 are not the " natural phenomena themselves." 
 Deepening reflection, succeeding the personification 
 of objects in nature, separated spirit from object 
 and gave rise to fetichism. Such advances natur- 
 ally followed as are implied in worship of the 
 
58 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 spirits of ancestors, and of mythological divinities 
 or great nature-spirits. The dependence on nature 
 grew less, and on the moral and social institu- 
 tions of civilisation grew greater. These things, 
 with the fact that Waitz has affirmed "the religious 
 element " which races " in the lowest grade of 
 civilisation " in their beliefs " undoubtedly " pos- 
 sess, constitute aspects which might be taken as 
 converging towards, if not yet confirmatory of, 
 what we take to be the necessary theistic con- 
 ception of the phenomena of religion. We may 
 perhaps be suffered to say that it has been shown 
 how little that is unlikely resides in the sugges- 
 tion that " the palaeontological races either had no 
 religion, or apprehended only in dim fugitive out- 
 line the elements out of which religion was after- 
 wards to spring." Further, we may be permitted 
 to say it has been shown how good the reason to 
 suppose that, stable consciousness of the gods being 
 attained, " these gods were personifications of nat- 
 ural objects, conceived as superior to men, and, 
 to some extent at least, as arbiters of their destiny." 
 Dr J. G. Fraser, in his * Golden Bough,' avers 
 that to savage or primitive peoples " the world is 
 mostly worked by supernatural agents." We be- 
 lieve it is being more clearly realised how, in all 
 such attempts to explain the genesis of religion 
 which last is not to be taken as constituted by 
 such prehistoric belief in spirits the attributes of 
 the superhuman must be kept in view, no less 
 
RELIGTOUS SUSCEPTIBILITY OF MAN. 59 
 
 than the notion of spirits, if any adequate origin 
 is to be adduced. How could anything less be 
 able to inspire even germinal religion ? Such 
 superhuman power stood not far from primitive 
 man, as he looked on Nature, the visible garment 
 of Deity : the heavens declared it most of all for 
 his awakened self- consciousness for awakened it 
 first must be. The fact is, that men, in the child- 
 hood of the race, personified the things of nature 
 just becaue they in some dim fashion realised that 
 Nature meant for them a certain contact with 
 Will, with Personality, of transcendent sort. 
 
 But why should man so perceive and interpret 
 the facts of nature, and his nature-contact, but for 
 what is to us here the important fact that he has 
 a sense of the Divine, a certain power of religious 
 perception, in virtue of which nature brings to him 
 some revelation of the Divine ? Yes, it is this in- 
 forming influence of our own religious being that 
 makes Nature appear to us in the religious aspect 
 she wears. That inward susceptibility to which as 
 a primary element (ein ur sprung- lie kes Gottesbewusst- 
 sein) C. I. Nitzsch so well directed attention, is 
 now, we believe, far more intelligently perceived 
 as operative, in a deep and basal way, in religion. 
 With the growth of reflection co-operated the 
 growth of social order in fashioning the begin- 
 nings of religious belief. Still, passing up to 
 modern aspects of the matter, recent philosophy 
 of natural theology has, it must be said, only 
 
60 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 more clearly brought out the fact that, in face of 
 the pain, malignity, and waste to be seen in nature, 
 the theism of nature alone is insufficient to carry 
 us out of the region of suspense as to the character 
 of the God with Whom we have to do. It has 
 with very great clearness seen that nothing like 
 adequate or full conception of Him is to be drawn 
 from study of nature alone, but also that the real 
 teachings and true tendency of nature are ours 
 only as that study scientifically deepens. It has 
 more unequivocally declared its belief that religion 
 has had its origin in no mere goings forth of man's 
 finite faculty, but in the upbursting in the soil of 
 the human and finite, of the life and energy of 
 the Infinite Essence the soul and substance of all 
 things though we are inclined to claim for it 
 that it has not held this belief in any way that 
 should relax the need of the severest intellectual 
 effort to bring under scrutiny the parts played by 
 these two distinctive elements or factors. 
 
 It is the appearance of what man has, by his own 
 inward striving and effort, been able to reach, which 
 has led naturalistic writers to go whither theistic 
 philosophy has not been able, in a naturalistic sense, 
 to accompany them so far as to maintain that man's 
 whole religious beliefs can be traced back to their 
 origin in the human heart and mind, and can be 
 brought under rigorous laws of evolution like any 
 other product of man's intelligence. May we not 
 say, however, that the tendency of the most recent 
 
GODWARD ASPECT OF ITS GENESIS. 6l 
 
 and reliable Philosophy of Religion has been towards 
 grounding the genesis of religion, not alone in this 
 unaided effort of man, but also, and more deeply, 
 in God and the approach of His self - revealing 
 Spirit ? Has it not been with Baader and all who 
 since claim that never without God can we know 
 either God or truly about Him ? Has it not rightly 
 felt the need to maintain the creative presence of 
 the Urgrund before the rise of consciousness ? 
 " To desire to know God without God is impos- 
 sible ; there is no knowledge without Him Who 
 is the prime source of knowledge." But theistic 
 philosophy has not failed to keep in view, amid the 
 historic growth of religion, the non-progressive and 
 even retrogressive, possibilities in the course of the 
 evolution, just as has been done by science in the 
 organic world. 
 
 We shall revert to this point when, in our closing 
 chapter, we come to deal with the bearings of evolu- 
 tion on Immortality. Such monotheistic tendency 
 if not yet theistic philosophy as the Hebrews 
 reached, they are now more clearly seen to have 
 arrived at in ways that not without analogy among 
 the heathen races were increasingly inward, and 
 proceeded from the commandment of the moral im- 
 perative in deepened ethical directions. But theism 
 has not forgotten that these historical beginnings, 
 in which we see the rise of the recognition of the 
 immanence of God in the conscience, were antedated 
 by the image of God, in which man had been made. 
 
62 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 We are thus brought to allude to those relations 
 of religion and morality which have received so 
 great attention in our time. Theistic inquiry has 
 not failed deeply to recognise the personal and 
 responsible relation we in morality sustain to the 
 truth, and how objectively real and eternal morality 
 must be in the last and deepest view of things. It 
 has not lowered the place of ethical impulse and 
 energy in man, as part and parcel of his true being. 
 Nor has it been betrayed, by the clamourings of 
 those whose espousal of the cause of ethical thought 
 and feeling takes the form of merging religion in 
 ethics, into forgetting that religion has always more 
 conspicuously stood out as radically distinct dis- 
 tinct in origin and historic basis and permanently 
 separable from ethics. This need not hinder our 
 claiming the same ultimate and essential basis a 
 theistic one for religion and morality. It has 
 surely been better seen that to rob religion of its 
 distinctive character in the interest of ethics would 
 be to misconceive their immemorial relations, and 
 to do ethics no good service. It has surely been 
 learned that, essential as morality is to the reli- 
 gious interest, the moral consciousness cannot be 
 completed save in religion. Morality is but the 
 real manifestation of religion, which is ideal. The 
 ideal law revealed in conscience is fully realised 
 only as religion possesses the soul. Religion is 
 the deepest well of ethical inspiration. It may be 
 said that the moral problem is now more clearly 
 
CRITICISM OF DR JAMES KIDD'S POSITION. 63 
 
 seen to have its ultimate ground or metaphysical 
 basis in the Absolute. If we say that morality is 
 the deeper term in the sense explained, we should 
 also claim religion as a term higher and more in- 
 spiring. At the same time no exclusively religious 
 basis is to be posited for morality, for, while reli- 
 gion may still be the highest sanction of morality, 
 morality must be clearly maintained to possess 
 independent and, so to speak, extra religious sanc- 
 tions. There seems no real reason why religion, 
 as the highest development of our consciousness, 
 should not be allowed to rest on the certainties 
 of a moral consciousness which is no more at 
 the mercy of religious beliefs. We have no 
 great fault to find when Pfleiderer places the his- 
 toric genesis of morality in religion, though where 
 such religion is, morality is not generally wanting. 
 But we certainly regard Dr James Kidd's argument 
 on the subject as strained in the religious interest, 
 and as failing to do scientific justice to all that can 
 be urged on the side of the moral consciousness 
 as, when properly apprehended, setting religion 
 on stronger or securer basis. 
 
 Again, looking back upon such theism, or too 
 often pantheism, as Greek and Hindu thought 
 attained, we very plainly perceive it to have been 
 developed in ways that still too little found the 
 Divine resident in the course and constitution of 
 the world from the speculative side which saw 
 God as immanent in Reason or Thought. For 
 
64 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 here, in so far as theistic tendency was reached, 
 we apply the words of Schiller, in his " Gods of 
 Greece," to this ethical Hebrew pre-eminence, 
 
 "To enrich, amongst the whole, but One, 
 All this godlike world was doomed to death." 
 
 " Einen zu bereichern unter alien, 
 Musste diese Gotterwelt vergehn." 
 
 Hebrew history may have been marked by less 
 of " progressive expansion and orderly develop- 
 ment" than that of the Hellenes, but there is no 
 doubt as to the richly developed type of the later 
 ethical monotheism of the Jewish religion. Their 
 theism with the hope in God and coming destiny 
 which it carried was at least a thing by itself, 
 and without parallel elsewhere. And their theism 
 was one in which, as Professor Toy, of Harvard, 
 has rightly claimed, the Divine immanence was 
 accentuated, and small tendency shown to any- 
 thing like metaphysical dualism. And yet may 
 one not ask whether in Judaism God was not 
 too often conceived as existing beside the world ? 
 
 o 
 
 A one-sided transcendence must plainly be said 
 to have found its way into Judaism, even sup- 
 posing this did not attach to the Old Testament 
 idea of God itself. Its entrance was the result 
 of Israel's opposition to the confounding of God 
 and the world in the nature religions. The dis- 
 tinctive feature in Israel's development we now 
 clearly perceive to have been the fact of Israel's 
 
THE DEVELOPMENTS OF RELIGION. 65 
 
 making despite all retrograde tendencies recti- 
 linear progress towards a predestined goal. 
 
 Now it has become more patent that it is the 
 high office of Christian thought to harmonise, 
 unify, and perfect these different lines of develop- 
 ment of which we have been speaking, and this it 
 does in a way which Greek and Hebrew knew 
 not, in the undying hope that, through the idea of 
 God given to us in the consciousness of Christ, our 
 thought shall not be put to permanent religious con- 
 fusion. This perpetuation and expansion of what- 
 ever monotheistic belief did early exist has been 
 more clearly shown in late years to constitute the 
 crown of Hebrew and Christian religion. So have 
 we found more of man's development in the know- 
 ledge of God in lines that tell how 
 
 " Quickened by the Almighty's breath, 
 
 And chastened by His rod, 
 And taught by angel-visitings, 
 At length he sought his God; 
 
 And learned to call upon His name, 
 
 And in His faith create 
 A household and a fatherland, 
 
 A city and a state." 
 
 And it does not seem too much to claim for recent 
 philosophy of natural theology, that it has been 
 pressing on to such a pure and worthy anthropo- 
 cosmic theism as may prove a fitting synthesis of 
 the Aryan conception of God as Ground of the 
 world of nature and the Semitic stress on a God 
 
 E 
 
 TJNV 
 
66 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 Who is Lord over nature and Father of spirits. 
 Has not the Christian philosophy of our time been 
 endeavouring to show how truly the God of the 
 universe is one with the God of the religious con- 
 sciousness ? At the same time Christianity has been 
 more carefully although not always exhibited as 
 other and more than merely the consummation of 
 the world's other religions as itself, in fact, a direct 
 and independent revelation given in the manifold 
 wisdom of God. " Such a religion," as Professor 
 Edward Caird has well said, " must see God at 
 once without and within us, yet it must be able 
 to discriminate the higher sense in which He is 
 within and not without." We cannot think the 
 most spiritual and thoughtful philosophy of religion 
 has been able to do otherwise than, in a deeper way 
 than before, maintain the presence, in the evolu- 
 tionary process of revelation, of supernatural ele- 
 ments in the working of the one living Spirit of 
 God. Much, no doubt, has been achieved, but not 
 a little, we cannot but think, still remains to be done 
 in fully and satisfactorily setting forth the place and 
 nature of that revelation which constitutes the objec- 
 tive factor in the genesis of religion in what sense 
 objective, and within what limits supernatural. We 
 say " supernatural," for we agree with those who 
 think that this term may be advantageously re- 
 tained, so long, indeed, as we retain the term God 
 itself, to mark off that which does not belong to the 
 natural, as we view it. This is so even if the lines 
 
THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 67 
 
 of demarcation between these two cannot always be 
 clearly drawn. There is no reason why religion 
 even the highest should not partake of a double 
 nature, and evince a twofold aspect, an earthly or 
 natural side as truly as a divine and supernatural 
 one. When Deity appeared on the earth, did He 
 not do likewise ? Was He not all the more Son of 
 God for us because He was so truly Son of man ? 
 No doubt, He was from above, but He never could 
 have become for us the Perfect Saviour He was 
 had there not also been senses in which He was 
 from beneath. Of the earth earthy He became, 
 that we might become one with the Divine and 
 heavenly. When Novalis made religion embrace 
 in itself " the whole sphere of the so-called super- 
 sensible and super-terrestrial," he occupied (over- 
 strained nature as men have thought him) ground 
 substantially at one with that which the best phil- 
 osophy of religion has since taken. No spiritual 
 faculty on our part could possibly suffice for the 
 ends of religion without the self-revelation of Deity. 
 There is, as we must hold, a religion, no less than 
 a morality, of which Matthew Arnold's lines may 
 be used to express the view of Nature herself 
 
 " ' Ah ! child,' she cries, ' that strife divine, 
 Whence was it, for it is not mine ? ' } 
 
 But there is no reason why the supernaturalism 
 of the future should not as appears to us growingly 
 needful have its affirmation in the spirit of man, 
 
68 RECENT THEORIES OF ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 not less truly than in the objective evidences of 
 revelation. Yes, for man is creative no less than 
 created, co-worker with that Lord of the world 
 Whose sovereignty over nature he shares, and 
 shares so that he is shaping the great courses of 
 evolution. Thus, though the historic power or 
 Grosse, with which we have here to do, may not 
 be able, from any of its sources, to take us clearly 
 into the light of the absolute beginnings of religion, 
 we are able to maintain through all a place for pro- 
 gressive development on the side of man, and a 
 sphere for active participation on the part of God. 
 The Divine Father worketh hitherto : we also work. 
 And we have seen how the historic beginnings are 
 no sooner reached than these unfoldings or paths 
 of development grow marked and impressive, 
 whereby the mind of man increases in corre- 
 spondence with the Eternal Mind, and the Divine 
 Mind communicates of itself always more largely 
 to man. 
 
6 9 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT AND THE PERMANENCE OF 
 RELIGION. 
 
 IT may be allowed here, as the matter is one of 
 transcendent moment and interest, to give ex- 
 pression, under this division of our subject, to 
 some reflections on the recent course of thought 
 as to the probable permanence of religion. Theis- 
 tic philosophy has justly not suffered the recent 
 deepened study of the History of Religions to 
 remain unmindful of the great influence of sin, 
 with its numbing and retarding effects, on the 
 growth and development of religion. The per- 
 sistence and progress of religion have been seen : 
 what now of its perpetuity ? May we not say 
 that recent study leads to the belief that Natural 
 Theology will not only remain with Nature her- 
 self, but will also increase with the increase that 
 is of Nature, as she progresses towards manifold- 
 ness and perfection ? Though it doth not yet 
 appear what Natural Theology shall be, we know 
 
70 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 that it is not without an eschatology of its own, 
 from which the promise of an endless perfection 
 is not absent. Recent theistic thought has more 
 unequivocally, we think it must be said, declared 
 its belief that, however religions may fade, re- 
 ligion itself, in its spirit and power, will last- 
 nay, lead a transfigured life. And no wonder, 
 when it has found even a vaunted Monism, de- 
 claring that " dogmas will be forgotten but religion 
 will remain," and that "all the creeds will die 
 away, but faith will live for ever." So was it that 
 Theodore Parker said that as religion is the first 
 spiritual thing man learned, so is it likewise the 
 last he will abandon. In its inner and imperish- 
 able essence, it will abide, and that essence will 
 be what the living and reigning Christ shall make 
 it. Even Pessimism has been recognising, with 
 Hartmann, the need of a Religion of the Future, 
 which, in its own way, it thinks to supply. 
 Theistic thought has believed that the religion of 
 most transforming influence the " fittest" to "sur- 
 vive " will continue to be the Christian religion 
 in its living and purified essence. It has come 
 to hold more undoubtingly, with Schweizer, in 
 the closing paragraph of his ' Die Zukunft der 
 Religion,' that it is this religion which will to-day 
 as yesterday effect that elevation (Erhebung) of 
 nature or disposition (des Gemuths), which all need 
 more to-day than yesterday. It has seen that 
 Christianity is teleological as no other religion is, 
 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. 71 
 
 and carries with it the promise and the potency of 
 a future for humanity which make it singular among 
 religions in its power to inspire to progress. 
 
 It expects religion to remain as a human char- 
 acteristic, only with a newer sense of the Divine 
 within ourselves as forming the strength and sub- 
 stance of this world where the Immanent Reason 
 is ever working by law. The activity of the re- 
 ligious function will certainly continue in humanity 
 at its normal state : it will do so just because God 
 is the ultimate basis of man the continuously 
 sustaining power of man's being. Recent phil- 
 osophy of religion has been encouraged in this 
 view by the recollection of what an apparently 
 "indefectible and perfectible attribute" of man 
 religion in the past has seemed, so that every 
 suggested substitute for it has proved but a suc- 
 cedaneum that has failed to satisfy. To use words 
 of Principal Fairbairn, it sees that " what so per- 
 meates all sections and subjects of human thought, 
 has a deep root in human nature and an immense 
 hold on it. What so possesses man's mind that 
 he cannot think at all without thinking of it, is 
 so bound up with the very being of intelligence 
 that ere it can perish, intellect must cease to be." 
 Hence it abides calm before those claims of cul- 
 ture to supersede religion which are a patent and 
 serious sign of the age, for it knows that there is 
 no such impassable gulf between Christianity and 
 modern culture as Hartmanri and others repre- 
 
72 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 sent. It sees no reason merely to upbraid and 
 despair of its own time, for it believes in the 
 sure self-destructiveness of every attempt to which 
 can be applied " toute cause qui hai't son temps 
 se suicide." It has learned that antagonisms be- 
 long to the accidents, not the essence, of the case, 
 and, while concerned for religious depth and re- 
 ality, it accords all of freedom, breadth, and human- 
 ness, which culture may justly claim, in the sure 
 confidence that no researches of science or ad- 
 vances of culture can make the religious sense 
 wax old or decay. May we not add that it feels 
 the question of Schleiermacher to the cultured 
 still to have force : " Must you not rather long 
 all the more for that universal union with the 
 world, which is only possible through feeling, the 
 more you are separated and isolated by definite 
 culture and individuality ? " Hence it treats religion 
 in its essential sense its spirit, substance, or prin- 
 ciple, not its forms as even conditioning true 
 culture, far from opposing it. It does so the 
 more because it finds itself but too often com- 
 pelled to say concerning religion as it actually 
 appears, in the distich of Schiller, 
 
 " Welche Religion ich bekenne ? Keine von alien 
 Die du mir nennst. Und warum keine ? Aus Religion." 
 
 It has taken more careful note, in view of the 
 claims of those who think altruistic ideals and 
 sentiments might fitly supersede religion, of what 
 
POTENTIALITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 73 
 
 writers like Comte and Btichner have had to say 
 as to the strength and assertiveness of the egoistic 
 tendency in man, and has come, as we believe, to 
 the conclusion that the altruism of the future, soar- 
 ing beyond such socialistic ideals as may live by 
 bread alone, will have more, and not less, need of 
 the inspiration and support of religion. It is per- 
 suaded that the spiritual consciousness of man will 
 not be able to rest in the Positivist ideal, which is 
 content with a merely naturalistic basis. It is un- 
 able to shake off the significance of the fact that, as 
 it has been put, " une immense esperance a traverse 
 la terre." It is well assured that Christianity, hav- 
 ing survived so many changes of culture in the 
 past, will survive those storms that seem to await 
 this present time. Who shall say that, with its 
 infinite potentialities, new and vast developments 
 of its life draw not near ? Who shall say that out 
 of the pain and conscious need of the Pessimism of 
 to-day shall not be born a more vigorous use of the 
 religious sense, and a more richly developed type 
 of religious personality ? It may be as well to 
 remember that, when Goethe said of humanity 
 that it is always advancing, but in " spiral " lines, 
 he spake that which is more true of our actual 
 religious progress than may be to our credit, and 
 it must be ours to see to it that, in widening around 
 the past, and drawing inspiration from it, we do 
 not simply lean too much upon it. There have 
 been those Lewes may serve as example who, 
 
74 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 in opposition to others who have argued that re- 
 ligion has played out its part as a "provisional" 
 organ in the evolution of humanity, and must now 
 be displaced by a " final " organ, have clearly main- 
 tained that " religion will continue to regulate the 
 evolution,'' even though this may require widening 
 of the life and thought of religion in accordance 
 with the needs of enlarging experience. 
 
 We mean to claim for ourselves, as religious 
 philosophers, a Weltanschauung of the future, as 
 truly as do the high-priests of science, one, too, 
 which will continue to satisfy the demands at once 
 of conscience and of intellect. Our divergence is 
 only from the thought of such of these thinkers as 
 appear to opine that Theism may yet be tran- 
 scended in science, for we cannot overlook how 
 clear has been made the impossibility that science 
 should ever become possessed of such absolving 
 and consoling power as to supplant or overthrow 
 that universal sway and sweep of reason which, 
 besides being the very soul of Theism, is that by 
 which science itself lives and moves and has any 
 worthy being. Nor can we overlook how truly 
 Spencerianism has been tending to prove that no 
 progress of science shall be able to dispense with 
 supersensible Reality, or to displace metaphysical 
 intuition or belief. The problems of religion lie 
 outside the region of sensible proof belong to a 
 realm, in fact, into which science cannot enter. 
 They pertain to the deeper science of the heart. 
 
RATIONALITY OF RELIGION. 75 
 
 Yes, the science of our time may announce to us 
 what sensibly exists, and may enunciate her own 
 criterion of what is to be taken as truth or fact, 
 but she is simply powerless to estimate and decide 
 for us in respect of the worths of things, the kinds 
 of truth to be most sought after. There is nothing 
 in all this that makes for the depreciation of intel- 
 lect, but only the proper adjustment of our criteria 
 of the end or good in things men seek. A more 
 rational basis for religion must be sought than is 
 supplied in the unintelligible Absolute of Agnos- 
 ticism, with its ultimate refuge in the mere sense 
 of mystery. With reason in science, which, by 
 enlarging study, purifies and amplifies, and with 
 reason in theology, which, by means of the theistic 
 idea, interprets and integrates, it grows evident 
 with what good confidence recent theistic philos- 
 ophy has asked, How should these two mutually 
 dependent forces of human progress ever seek to 
 overreach or destroy each other, as together off- 
 spring of a Reason that is ultimate, transcendent, 
 one ? Is not real science itself natural theology, 
 with teachings and inspirations for us in our pro- 
 gressive mastery of truth ? Has not the super- 
 natural been seen to be no destroyer of the natural, 
 only its fertiliser and fulfiller ? Is not real religion 
 the religion of Jesus something which, as death 
 to self and sin, and life unto God and righteousness, 
 no true culture or science shall ever be able to 
 overpass ? 
 
76 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has, we take it, more freely 
 recognised that, between science and the super- 
 natural, there neither has been, nor will be, any 
 great mutual liking, and this fact so largely due 
 to loose and unphilosophical thinking has rightly 
 led it more carefully to define the abiding necessity 
 and true sphere of the supernatural. But it would 
 be another, and very different, thing to say that, 
 when science comes in at the door, religion should 
 fly out of the window. But what shall science tell 
 us of things that run up into the supernatural ? 
 The religion that remains will, we venture to think, 
 be more a thing of spirit living spiritual religion 
 and Christian no less than theistic. For, as 
 Emerson says, only that can now hope to abide 
 which is its own evidence. " The religion which 
 is to guide and fulfil the present and coming ages, 
 whatever else it be, must be intellectual. The 
 scientific mind must have a faith, which is science." 
 It need hardly be added that we do not thus mean 
 to make men Christian by intellectual compulsion 
 rather than by spiritual newness of life, but rather 
 to add to the deepest and fullest religious life the 
 strength and knowledge that come of intellectual 
 system or doctrinal demonstration. No ; but be- 
 cause we try to do justice by the claims of the 
 practical reason, and the demands for religion that 
 reside in our nature, there is no reason why we 
 should not also acknowledge the worth of theoretic 
 elements or values. In its intellectual growth and 
 
RELIGION AS LIFE AND SPIRIT. 77 
 
 movement, the religion of the future will more 
 distinctly relegate ritual or spectacular religion to 
 such place as its rudimentary position in the history 
 of religions or the evolution of religion can alone 
 claim for it in a progressive system of religious 
 thought. It v/ill even make less of " creedal " or 
 doctrinal religion, will accord larger freedom and 
 welcome to new interpretations, and will lay more 
 stress on spiritual religion the religion of life and 
 spirit. For it will surely not be unmindful of the 
 truth resident in certain words of Goethe that "it is 
 not always needful for truth to take definite form 
 (sick verkorpere)\ enough, if it hovers about us like 
 a spirit (geistig) and produces harmony.". With this 
 deepened spirituality shall be united in its inspira- 
 tion a larger measure of the progressive moral 
 spirit of the time. The Christian religion will still 
 be, what it hath ever been, the religion of the 
 progressive portions of the race, with whose pro- 
 gressiveness it has evinced a natural and true 
 affinity. Already indeed we seem to see how 
 
 " Upon the glimmering summits far withdrawn 
 God makes Himself an awful rose of dawn " 
 
 the dawn of a universal religion, the far-off shining 
 of whose perfect day cometh in the long course of 
 religious development, when the world's religions 
 shall have poured the rays of their relative values 
 into the central Christian sun. Now, the philosophy 
 of religion is something which is always and clearly 
 
78 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 the offspring and product of religion, not something, 
 therefore, which has any taint or trace of proud 
 superiority to religion, on which, in fact, it does 
 depend. We retain for religion its own primal value, 
 therefore, and do not merge it into philosophy. 
 
 But there is not only a permanence of religion ; 
 there is also a permanence of the philosophy of 
 religion, which is to be achieved like the perman- 
 ence of all philosophy. That philosophical per- 
 manence, as Trendelenburg properly pointed out, 
 must be the result of a growth like that of other 
 sciences, of a truly historic laying hold of the 
 problems, and an historic developing of them. 
 His exact words in the preface to his ' Logische 
 Untersuchungen' are: "Philosophy cannot regain 
 its former power until it acquires permanence, and 
 permanence it cannot gain until it grows in the 
 same manner as the other sciences, until it de- 
 velops continuously, not beginning and ending 
 in every head, but historically taking up the pro- 
 blems and unfolding them." This continuous 
 development is, then, the work which has been 
 given the philosophic mind to do, and nothing 
 but the philosophic mind can do it. Theology 
 liveth not by or unto itself: its roots are always 
 more clearly seen to lie deep in philosophical soil. 
 We are of them, however, that distinctly object 
 to any sacrifice of the present as a primary end 
 in itself before the evolutional shrine of the future. 
 Of course, we grant the great self-moulding process 
 
EVOLUTIONISM IN RELIGION. 79 
 
 that goes on in evolutionism, but we are not so 
 carried off our feet by it as to forget the per- 
 manence which this very evolutionism must main- 
 tain amid all change. Abiding essence or reality 
 there must still be, and an intrinsic value or worth 
 will thereby be given to the present. The per- 
 manence we seek for the philosophy of religion 
 has been pursued in recent times from the foun- 
 dations laid by Kant and Hegel, Jacobi and Fichte, 
 Schelling and Schleiermacher. 
 
 Among German contributors to an enduring 
 philosophy of religion have been such minds as 
 Lotze and Lipsius, Rothe and Dorner, Gloatz and 
 Zeller, Trendelenburg and Teichmuller, Bieder- 
 mann and Ritschl, Krause and Kaftan, Pfleiderer 
 and Fechner, Seydel and Siebeck. Holland has 
 furnished a Rauwenhoff and France a Reville. In 
 Britain, Mansel and Morell, Green, Seth, Caird, 
 and Campbell Fraser, Max Mliller, Martineau, 
 Stirling, and Wallace, Fairbairn and Flint, Mathe- 
 son, Bruce, and Orr, Cave and Banks, have main- 
 tained the quest. America has yielded Harris and 
 Royce, Bowne and Fisher, Kellogg and Sterrett. 
 It is, of course, with no idea that these names 
 are anything like exhaustive of the list of those 
 who have helped to give our modern philosophy 
 of religion the permanence it needs that they are 
 now mentioned, but only as indicative of the reason- 
 ableness of the expectation that such philosophical 
 permanence will be fully and finally attained. When 
 
80 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 it shall be attained, it will assuredly be by no re- 
 solving of ourselves and our activities in the present 
 into mere points, in the evolutionary time process, 
 that only minister to the future development, but 
 it will rather be by the exercise, within the sphere 
 of time, of our power as spiritual beings to contem- 
 plate the world-process from virtually non-temporal 
 standpoint. Of course, we realise what we spiritu- 
 ally are within the historic world-process, but that 
 does not make us merely of it and for it. No ; 
 with every justice to the realism of world facts 
 and processes, we must maintain the inner core 
 of reality which for an idealism substantial and 
 true abides in the timeless present of the spiritual 
 reason. Amid all apparent difficulties and dis- 
 comfitures of religious truth, our comfort is that 
 
 " Truth crushed to earth shall rise again ; 
 The eternal years of God are hers." . 
 
 Yes ; and if, as we are bound to maintain, Christi- 
 anity is truth no less than it is life, then no weak 
 dread of intellectualism must keep us from exercis- 
 ing thought and reason upon the Christian content. 
 Truly enough does F. A. Lange say, near the close 
 of his ' History of Materialism,' that "those simple 
 fundamental ideas of the redemption of the indi- 
 vidual man by the surrendering of his own will 
 to the will that guides the whole ; those images 
 of death and resurrection which express the highest 
 and most thrilling emotions that stir the human 
 
POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE. 8l 
 
 breast, when no prose is capable of uttering in 
 cold words the fulness of the heart ; those doc- 
 trines, finally, which bid us share our bread with 
 the hungry, and announce the glad tidings to the 
 poor they will not for ever disappear, in order 
 to make way for a society which has attained its 
 goal when it owes a better police system to its 
 understanding, and to its ingenuity the satisfaction 
 of ever-fresh wants by ever-fresh inventions." No; 
 
 from 
 
 " Siloa's brook, that flowed 
 Fast by the oracle of God," 
 
 there shall still and always flow forth those waters 
 that shall be as truth and life to men and nations 
 that are worn and weary. We refuse to believe 
 that our only advance is towards doubt, sterility, 
 and religious decay. Our face is towards the light : 
 the spirit of true search is with and within us ; 
 and where such seeking is, there also will true 
 finding be. Harmonies of the theological disci- 
 plines and of theoretic speculations still lie before 
 us : let us await them in patience and in joy. 
 We know no reason for none with any sem- 
 blance of substantiality has been adduced why 
 the religious needs of man should not persist, and 
 also deepen. Then will they support the philos- 
 ophy of religion, as it bravely tries to satisfy 
 them. Janet has said that the only truly philo- 
 sophical inquiry here is, whether religion is rooted 
 in the very nature of man, or is but a passing 
 
 F 
 
82 PERMANENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 and ephemeral state, to disappear as a higher 
 stage of civilisation is reached. But it has already 
 been made very manifest that, so rooted is religion 
 in the fundamental nature and constitution of man, 
 so related to his normal development, that it must 
 persist through every period of mortal progress, 
 and perfect itself with the growing perfection of 
 the life and personality of those in whom it dwells. 
 It will perfect its form with the perfection of So- 
 ciety, will renew itself from its own exhaustless 
 deeps, but perish never! And if it could perish, 
 where, then, would regenerative power be found ? 
 On what firm foundations would the social fabric 
 then rest ? As Theodore Parker, when speaking 
 of speculative atheism, said : " Religion is natural 
 to man. Instinctively we turn to God, reverence 
 Him, and rely on Him. And when reason becomes 
 powerful when all the spiritual faculties get en- 
 larged, and we know how to see the true, to will 
 the just, to love the beautiful, and to live the 
 holy then our idea of God rises higher and 
 higher, as the child's voice changes from the baby's 
 treble pipe to the dignity of manly speech. Then 
 the feeble, provisional ideas of God, which were 
 formed at first, pass by us ; the true idea of God 
 gets written in our soul, complete beauty drives 
 out partial ugliness, and perfect love casts out all 
 partial fear." There are always those who will 
 try to forget religion rather than fight with it, but 
 it will never be possible wholly to forget God. 
 
THE GUARANTEES OF RELIGION. 83 
 
 Nowhere is the saying, Naturam expellas furcd, 
 tamen usque recurret, in such place as here. Man 
 is destined for religion : eternity has been planted 
 in man's heart ; and the guarantee of man's con- 
 tinuance in religion lies not merely in man's remain- 
 ing man, but in God's free gracious communication 
 of the gifts and powers of His life Divine. 
 
PART SECOND 
 
 RECENT PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM 
 (GOD) 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT ON THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES 
 OF GOD. 
 
 WE have now to speak of the advances of recent 
 theistic philosophy, as touching the proofs of the 
 Being and Attributes of God, not confining our- 
 selves to " natural theology," or a priori natural 
 knowledge of God, but, passing outward and up- 
 ward at length into the impregnable positions, wise 
 interpretations, and rich moral demonstrations, of 
 Christian Theism. In them the true strength, and, 
 we will add, originality, of theistic thought, are 
 reached. For what indeed is Christian Theism 
 but Theism in the highest Theism, that is to say, 
 raised to its highest power ? Or who that has 
 followed the course of recent thought can feel other- 
 wise than that there have been both a deepening 
 sense of the impotence and insufficiency of Natural 
 Theism, and a quickened desire for a Theism that 
 leads not a still life, but is of such real and living 
 sort as is Christian Theism, with its ethical and not 
 
88 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 merely metaphysical attributes ? It was the phil- 
 osopher Braniss who said that " the conceptions of 
 speculative philosophy, where they are most pro- 
 found, come nearest to the Christian doctrine ; nor 
 need we be anxious lest speculative philosophy 
 should ever reach a height from which it may look 
 down and say that the Christian element is left be- 
 hind. No thought can transcend the Christian idea, 
 for it is truth in itself." There can be no doubt of 
 the advances made in recent theistic philosophy in 
 the larger apprehension and truer representation of 
 the God idea, for it has happened according to the 
 words of Goethe, in our late philosophy of theism 
 and it is no unimportant, though still incomplete, 
 result that it should be so 
 
 " That every one on the best of what he knows 
 The name of God, yea, of his God, bestows." 
 
 " Dass jeglicher das Beste, was er kennt, 
 Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt." 
 
 So necessary, indeed, is God to every man. " If he 
 does not believe in the Eternal Reason, he believes 
 in unreason ; if he does not accept as the truth the 
 living God, he believes in the idol of inanimate 
 matter." Nothing has been wanting in the way the 
 theistic hypothesis of a self-existent Deity has had 
 its reasonableness and scientific character set forth, 
 with a view to reducing the mystery of self-exist- 
 encewhich must meet us somewhere at last to 
 its lowest terms. There does not seem to be for 
 
& 
 
 UNIV 
 UNCONDITIONED BEING. 89 
 
 us any more ultimate fact than that of being : the 
 that of being is for us most certain of all things ; 
 but the how of being remains inscrutable. I, as a 
 finite being, may not be able to find out how being 
 comes to be, or is made, since for anything I know 
 only the Infinite may be capable of comprehend- 
 ing this. But thought has felt ever more surely 
 drawn to postulate the necessity of independent, 
 self-existent being, if the perceived fact of being is 
 to become intelligible. Hence it has held fast to 
 the unconditioned Being called God as, in fact, first 
 and deepest implication of our being. Fichte was 
 able to say : " We must end at last by resting all 
 existence, which demands an extrinsic foundation, 
 upon a Being the fountain of Whose life is within 
 Himself; by allying the fugitive phenomena which 
 colour the stream of time with ever-changing hues 
 to an eternal and unchanging essence." The ulti- 
 mate goal of theistic philosophy has been clearly 
 realised to be infinite and unconditioned reality, 
 which is found in God, Whose action is always 
 perfect. Than such perfect, unconditioned action 
 as we find in Him, there is for us nothing more 
 ultimate. We deem ourselves justified in saying 
 that, in recent philosophical thought, there has been 
 clearer emphasis laid on self-activity as the essence 
 of being, so far as the conception of being has in 
 philosophy reached its highest. Recent philosophy 
 of theism, in trying to deal with the ever-present 
 Kampf that is found in Nature, has advanced 
 
90 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 beyond a one-sided spiritualism or a merely abstract 
 Theism towards a conception of God more real, 
 more full, more complete an all-sided conception 
 which takes perfect cognisance of the results of the 
 empirical sciences, and treats spirit and nature no 
 longer in the former fashion, as distinct and separate 
 layers, but as together bodying forth the fulness of 
 the Deity in their close connection and harmonious 
 agreement. It has not forgotten Goethe's advice 
 that, if you would penetrate into the Infinite, then 
 must you press on every side into the finite ; in his 
 own words 
 
 " Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten, 
 Geh nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten." 
 
 It holds, with Trendelenburg, in his ' Logische 
 Untersuchungen,' that now the infinite appears to 
 us in the glass of the finite (im Endlichen wie im 
 Spiegel}. It has found a true knowableness of the 
 infinite and absolute Being advocated by Ulrici, 
 I. H. Fichte, Pfleiderer, Lotze, and others in Ger- 
 many ; by Ferrier, Martineau, Caird, Seth, Flint, 
 Balfour, Matheson, Calderwood, Bruce, Iverach, 
 Upton, among the many British writers ; and by 
 H. B. Smith, Diman, Harris, Littlejohn, Morris, 
 Abbot, Welch, Porter, and others in the American 
 phalanx. It sees God to be self-existent for us in 
 a way which the world no self-caused entity is 
 not, .for that He, as Being not Becoming, is its 
 cause. It takes Him not to be the First Principle 
 
THE ABSOLUTE BEING. 91 
 
 of all things merely in virtue of any abstract a priori 
 conception, but because it is driven to Him as the 
 ultimate and the presupposition of all that makes 
 experience possible to us, in the way we actually 
 find it. Its Absolute is " not mere indifference, or 
 substance homogeneous and indiscrete, but infinite 
 differences belong to His nature." Herein it differs 
 from Agnosticism, whose Deity cannot but be un- 
 known when it is so very abstract and unreal. 
 Shunning a self-destructive pantheism, theistic phil- 
 osophy has been pressing beyond idealistic repre- 
 sentations that would reduce God to an empty 
 abstraction by making Him the mere unifying 
 principle of Nature's multiplicity, or would merge 
 His Absolute Personality in that created whole 
 of the universe from which He still stands dis- 
 tinguished. It feels the futility of the recent 
 attempts to explain the world as the self-evolution 
 of Absolute Being, for it sees that an Absolute 
 which should so evolve itself could evolve only 
 the absolute, and would be incapable of explaining 
 why the universe is relative. It has, we think, 
 clearly seen that, so far as God may be conceived, 
 in a metaphysical manner, to be the Ground of all 
 existing things, He must possess, as attributes, 
 power, self -consciousness, self -existence. More 
 than this metaphysics, as the philosophy of the 
 real, may not give, but the importance of what 
 is so given is in our time often too little realised. 
 To rob spirit as absolute of its distinctive charac- 
 
92 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 teristics in the interests of a unitary consciousness 
 or an abstract spiritual substance is plainly to carry 
 through a procedure in disregard of the truth that 
 God has no right to be thus practically identified 
 with the principle of unity. Distinct and real in- 
 dividualities and consciousnesses are not to be 
 denied or dismissed or undervalued in the interests 
 of a unitary bond by which the dualism of subject 
 and object may be transcended. 
 
 Our recent theism has, without doubt, in its best 
 essays taken braver hold of the conception of Force 
 which pervades the universe everywhere, and mani- 
 fests itself in an infinite variety of forms, and it has 
 thus gained, we may say, a more scientific concep- 
 tion of God. A result, we say, not unimportant in 
 view of there being those whose mingled attitude 
 towards theism might be voiced in the words, Nee 
 tecum vivere possum nee sine. We believe it has 
 been helped to this by the increasing recognition, 
 with certain great scientific investigators themselves, 
 of the impossibility of natural science understanding 
 matter and force, on the one hand, or comprehend- 
 ing spiritual processes, on the other. " The forces 
 of nature/' as has said Le Conte, " I regard as an 
 effluence from the Divine Person an ever-present 
 and all -pervading Divine energy. The laws of 
 nature are but the regular modes of operation of 
 that energy ; universal because He is omnipotent, 
 invariable because he is unchanging." The uni- 
 formity of nature, as shadowing forth the steadfast 
 
HEGELIAN CONCEPTIONS DEFECTIVE. 93 
 
 purposes of a reasonable Being, theism now more 
 clearly apprehends as pointing to the existence of 
 an infinite and immanent Deity. It has brought 
 the immanence of God, then, more clearly to 
 light, so that He is seen to be an ever-present 
 and all -inspiring Force in the universe, in which 
 He is not yet pantheistically dissolved. Not 
 " pantheistically dissolved/' we say, for the philos- 
 ophy of theism courageously discerns and declares 
 pantheism to be logically as disastrous to religion 
 and morality as atheism itself. In all this, it must 
 be clearly kept in view that theistic philosophy, in 
 its conception of being in God, has shown itself ill 
 content to rest in the Hegelian translation of the 
 entire activity of being in terms of monistic and 
 immanent self-evolution being, under Hegel's dis- 
 robing hand, appearing but as a naked abstraction, 
 from which every attribute of reality has been 
 stripped. It has paused to consider how little the 
 imprisoned Deity of immanence can do for us in 
 respect of our spiritual needs, how little His pure 
 immanence can satisfy the demands of the spiritual 
 nature, in its cravings for grace and guidance, for- 
 giveness, help, and superintendence. It finds, with 
 Chalybaus, that Hegel assumes "a pantheistical 
 identity of man and God, in which, at least if 
 strictly and conscientiously carried out, the Deity 
 attains consciousness only by virtue of human 
 agnition a solution which indeed perfectly ac- 
 counts for absolute knowledge in us, but comes up 
 
94 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 so much the less to the religious representations, 
 and, let us add, the philosophical idea, of the Deity." 
 It has sought to escape the contradictions of a pan- 
 theism that supposes there can remain to us a 
 Supreme Being after all things have, as Professor 
 Caldwell has very recently remarked, been taken 
 to be one and to be God. It has also more un- 
 hesitatingly ascribed to Him certain attributes in 
 keeping with the properties of the one protean 
 Force behind all nature-manifestations, and which 
 serve to purge our conception of God of anthropo- 
 morphic elements of objectionable character. In 
 so doing, it has not been without even a quickened 
 sense of the justice also needful to that matter, which 
 is everywhere the basis of such energy. Recent 
 theistic thought has, in fact, continuously advanced 
 in its idea of God towards less anthropomorphic 
 notions, a most warrantable result not without its 
 parallels in the history of modern science. 
 
 Not, of course, that all anthropomorphism is done 
 away, for recent theistic philosophy, more open- 
 eyed, has with truer discernment, in reasoning up 
 to the Divine Attributes, ranked man, with mind 
 and conscience, first among the manifestations of 
 the great World- Force. That philosophy has not 
 made God so much a God of mere "attributes," 
 in the sense of casual increments, as was the former 
 wont, but has, as we conceive, dwelt in less exter- 
 nal ways on God as He in His essence is, and as 
 He in the multiplicity of His attributes is construe- 
 
THE ULTIMATE REALITY. 95 
 
 tively known by us. We take it to have avoided 
 associating its conception of God with the noumenon 
 of Kant's transcendental * Analytik,' for it regards 
 them as perfectly disparate notions. It does not 
 say that they both designate something that cannot 
 be known, for it is not so far left to itself as to 
 follow Kant in including the concept of God among 
 Noumena, and so set God out of all relation to us. 
 It prefers to remark of both merely that they do 
 not mark something perceptible. It knows better 
 how to conserve the knowableness of the Supreme 
 Reality (die Erkennbarkeit Gottes), than to lose 
 sight of the active, self-revealing God for a con- 
 ception fundamentally false. It very plainly sees 
 how much of the current Agnosticism of our time 
 ''possesses all the elements of a scientific world- 
 conception, but does not possess synthetic ability 
 enough to put them together or see the whole in 
 the sum of the parts." It has, in our view, very 
 properly refused to own for its Deity the ens 
 rationis or mere abstraction into which, as pure 
 Being void of attributes, Herbert Spencer unwar- 
 rantably resolves the Ultimate Reality, for it has, 
 we take it, very distinctly realised that it is its 
 attributes that make it what it is. It has seemed 
 to discern in deeper mode a spiritual substance 
 disclosed through its attributes as the underlying 
 and abiding essence behind all the manifestations 
 of force and energy. For, " if the Absolute is to 
 be mere substance, its idea remains incomplete ; 
 
96 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 because then the subjective spirit and the finite 
 personality of man appear as something higher." 
 It has felt, with Professor Pfleiderer in a recent 
 article, that "we comprehend only that side of God 
 which is turned toward us, His essence in so far 
 as it manifests itself as the active principle of the 
 Universe. The inner nature of God, His Being- 
 for-Himself, the inner reflection of His causality, 
 we can as little know as we can perceive the side 
 of the moon turned away from us." And it has 
 discerned more clearly how little we finite and 
 contingent beings shall ever be able to discover 
 
 o o 
 
 of the way in which essence or existence is called 
 into being, but at the same time how this is, as 
 Lotze has in a certain place remarked, of less 
 consequence for us, seeing we are called to deal 
 with a world already existent, and have not our- 
 selves to create with the result, however, that 
 being remains for us a mystery. Its grasp, then, 
 has grown stronger in its hold upon the fact that 
 dependent being has for its necessary presupposi- 
 tion Being that is independent and self-determined. 
 Even the doctrine of the correlation of forces is 
 seen to presuppose a personal power which tran- 
 scends the forces involved. There was certainly 
 neither occasion nor need that the abstract critical 
 activity of our time should, through having lost 
 faith in itself as the organ of truth, have displayed 
 the senility and dreary pedantry of Agnosticism. 
 Spencerianism, yielding what might prove a basis 
 
RIGHT OF METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. 97 
 
 for theism, but instantly prohibiting any process 
 of raising superstructure thereon, is clearly con- 
 victed of but too easily lending countenance to 
 that radical scepticism of our time which, as Pro- 
 fessor Pfleiderer puts it, sees in religion only an 
 irrational pathological phenomenon. What such 
 abstract thought or reason stands most in need 
 of is just the concrete reason which it spurns 
 that is presented to us in the Incarnation, for there 
 reason is seen healing the wounds that have been 
 made by reason. What we are here most anxious 
 to maintain is, as against metaphysical agnostics, 
 that " there may be no means of demonstrating that 
 a particular metaphysical theory is true, and yet 
 we may have a perfect right to speculate. Till 
 we are quite sure that we have no such right, we 
 ought to resist all attempts, whether in the interests 
 of a positive or of a negative creed, to fetter the 
 speculative impulse which is inherent in the higher 
 races of mankind." No question can be made of 
 the more forceful manner in which the presumptive 
 evidence, which the superiority of the theistic 
 hypothesis affords, can now be set forth for the 
 explaining of those origins whether of life, sensa- 
 tion, consciousness, personality with which science 
 abounds, in a way at least with which no other 
 interpretation may compare. We do not mean, of 
 course, in saying this, to dispute the really philo- 
 sophical, rather than scientifically interpretative, 
 character of the question of origins, for these 
 
 G 
 
98 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 investigations of ultimate origin cannot be said to 
 belong to the region of assured and definite truths, 
 scientifically ascertained. 
 
 There has been a growing sense that, insoluble 
 as the origin of the universe may appear, the 
 problem must be faced in a positive and rational 
 manner, and not after the too purely negative and 
 destructive mode of creationist theories generally, 
 and of theistic expounders almost without exception. 
 Recent philosophy of theism, while it may have 
 dwelt in new ways not, some may still think, 
 without savour of ostentatious variation upon 
 the omnipresent Force which, in its constructive 
 agency, began from the spiritual Centre of all 
 things, has not less effectively maintained the 
 priority of mind to matter, alike in respect of 
 time and of importance, as the only theory in 
 which it can find rational satisfaction. It takes 
 the passage from matter to mind to be no more 
 thinkable to-day than it was when the late Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall pronounced it unthinkable. It has 
 even found the supposition of it relegated by John 
 Fiske to the limbo of absurdity, while it has noted 
 how Ernst Haeckel has found himself unable to do 
 without postulating qualities for matter which are 
 practically subversive of the materialist position. 
 It has observed the objection taken within recent 
 years by the late Professor Romanes to philo- 
 sophical spiritualism, because of its holding to the 
 precedence and independence of mind. He does 
 
ADVANCES ON KANT. 99 
 
 so in the interests of monism and the scientific 
 doctrine of the conservation of energy. Such 
 monistic interpretation makes mind, in Professor 
 Lloyd Morgan's phraseology, neither " extra-natural 
 nor supernatural, but one of the aspects of natural 
 existence." But we do not think theistic philos- 
 ophy is likely to abate any of its claims for mental 
 operations and phenomena, as being due to that 
 reality known as spirit or mind, for anything that 
 has yet been advanced from the monistic side. 
 In refusing to resolve mind into any material 
 elements or terms, and in postulating the reality 
 of mind itself as the only adequate cause of mental 
 operations and effects, it must be held as acting 
 in perfect harmony with scientific method. Recent 
 philosophy has repudiated the irrationalities that 
 would be involved in the notion of an impersonal' 
 force, and has sought the co-ordinating force of 
 the universe in the ever-living Will, the supreme 
 and originating Mind, which the theist calls God. 
 Not less certainly has the philosophy of theism 
 outgrown the agnosticism of Huxley than it has 
 the sensationalism of Hume and the equally one- 
 sided rationalism of Kant, for it has more trium- 
 phantly maintained the possibility of our knowing 
 God though Him no science has seen or handled 
 the all-embracing and Infinite Personality, not 
 less truly than we know finite persons, both of 
 whom indeed we know only in indirect and in- 
 ferential ways. We do not, in saying this, mean to 
 
100 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 exclude an immediate and real though mediated 
 knowledge : we only mean to exclude such immedi- 
 ate or direct intuition of God as would conflict with 
 the essential subjective conditions of our knowing 
 all objectivity. It has rejected the sheer phenom- 
 enalism of Kant so distinctly set forth by Fortlage, 
 Windelband, and other writers for it holds that 
 though there be objective realities which only per- 
 ception or consciousness has been able to discover, 
 these realities do not depend for their existence on 
 such consciousness or perception. Such phenom- 
 enalism must remain to it really subversive of 
 science, which, when it knows what it is doing, 
 maintains a real objectivity for relations not a 
 reality of them merely within the sphere of con- 
 sciousness. The activity of being rather than of 
 thought must be held by it to be the logical prius, 
 and the grand objectivism on which science tacitly 
 and practically proceeds must be more carefully 
 investigated and elaborated by philosophy than 
 modern phenomenalistic tendencies have ever yet 
 allowed. Theistic philosophy has dismissed as 
 untenable any such dualistic basis, for the ultimate 
 analysis of the universe, as would be implied in 
 the independence of mind and matter, and, taking 
 matter as the instrument and expression of mind, 
 has more convincingly shown, as against that 
 Materialism which even Blichner admits to be " far 
 from being universally accepted by scientists of the 
 present day," how futile must be every attempt 
 
MIND AND MATTER. IOI 
 
 to evolve mind out of matter, seeing that mind 
 is for us that without which matter has not even 
 an existence. Not, of course, that we mean to 
 resolve all knowledge into pure subjectivism, or 
 to deny an objectively valid knowledge of the 
 world, or to impugn the objective reality of rela- 
 tions, beyond the bounds of the objective experi- 
 ence of the individual, for this would be to succumb 
 to the prevailing unwisdom of philosophic tendency 
 to-day. We insist on the relativity of our know- 
 ledge only in a true sense, remembering, with 
 Ferrier, that non-relative knowledge is a contra- 
 dictio in adjecto, since, as he says, to know a thing 
 per se, or sine me, is impossible and contradictory, 
 the mind, by its own law and nature, knowing the 
 thing cum alio that is, along with itself in know- 
 ing it. We may surely say that the philosophy of 
 theism has made manifest how little mind is to 
 be confounded, either with matter, or with force- 
 activities, or even with life, or any vital activities. 
 No philosophical evolutionism has been able to 
 substantiate any postulation of the mental and the 
 physical orders being but subjective and objective 
 aspects of one and the same thing. With all its 
 dependence, in certain well -defined respects, on 
 matter, mind maintains a wondrous independence 
 of the physical order of things, in the exercise of 
 its own strangely unifying power. Tentative re- 
 mains any knowledge we think we have of matter 
 or its essential nature ; but of the world of thought, 
 
102 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 emotion, volition, within, we know there must be 
 cause, and adequate cause. That cause we call 
 spirit, and the intelligent force of the universe is 
 also such that the most advanced science no less 
 than the broadest human belief says, God is Spirit. 
 But it is not enough to listen to the voice of 
 mind on these matters : we must also heed what 
 the manifestations of mind tell us concerning the 
 Eternal, for these surely have their own message 
 to deliver. It has been in such corrective tend- 
 encies, exerted on the old views of matter as a 
 substance strangely diverse from mind, that we 
 have seen some of the virtues of Hegelian specu- 
 lation shine out. 
 
 According to Hegel Professor Henry Jones has 
 lately said " if reality reveals itself in thought, it 
 does so because it was thought from the beginning," 
 the real or existential relation between man and the 
 world revealing itself for him "as the relation of 
 thought to thought." May we not affirm that the 
 tendency of our present knowledge is towards the 
 thought that deeper and more spiritual relations 
 obtain between mind and matter than we as yet 
 know, and that, however little we may now identify 
 the laws of the physical and the spiritual worlds, 
 we can set no bounds or arbitrary limits as to pos- 
 sible identifications of them in the future ? May 
 we not say that matter is to theistic philosophy, 
 so far from something whose ultimate mystery lies 
 open to sense scrutiny, more than ever the passing 
 
PROFESSOR CAMPBELL ERASER'S THEISM. 103 
 
 aspect of an eternal process, indeed simply a form 
 of manifestation, the immanent God being the reality 
 thereof, and the ground of nature's spiritual unity ? 
 May we not affirm that, since matter seems always 
 to recede before the approaches of science, eluding 
 its grasp, it has seemed a less incredible thing to 
 late philosophy of theism that spirit may act on 
 matter, and that spiritual energy, focussed in a 
 Will invisible and supreme, may permeate the 
 whole exterior mechanism as its soul or vital 
 breath ? May we not say that the ultimate ele- 
 ments of the Cosmos have seemed to it always 
 more essentially spiritual or psychical in principle, 
 grounded as they are, each and all, in that perdur- 
 ing and invisible substance which we know as God 
 or the self-existent Life ? To such issues the the- 
 istic philosophy has been helped not a little by the 
 spiritual realism of Lotze, which, while doing less 
 justice, possibly, to thought than either Kantianism 
 or Hegelianism, has done better by the facts of our 
 spiritual experience and religious consciousness. 
 
 The total result is one which may be not un- 
 aptly expressed in the words of Professor Campbell 
 Eraser's recent ' Philosophy of Theism ' namely, 
 that in our deepest thought " the natural universe 
 is conceived as the immediate manifestation of the 
 Divine or Infinite Person, in moral relation to im- 
 perfect persons, who, in and through their experience 
 of what is, are undergoing intellectual and spiritual 
 education in really divine surroundings." When 
 
104 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 Rothe affirmed that matter is the non-ego of God, 
 and when the speculative theism of Weisse declared 
 matter to be the externalised will of God, which 
 has come into conflict with His personal will, they 
 took up positions which theistic philosophy has left 
 behind, because these involved a lack of real and 
 effective supremacy, on the part of Deity, over that 
 which He had called into being. To us it would 
 seem strange to withhold this from Deity, when 
 we find Fichte, in a bold saying, claiming even for 
 us that the world must be made to subserve what 
 we wish as really as our own bodies serve us en- 
 tirely as we will. And Schenkel claimed that " the 
 already existing harmony of nature is as little 
 annihilated by the appearance of an absolute cre- 
 ative act of God in the world, as is humanity itself 
 by the entrance of a new personality." It has been, 
 on the other hand, for the too great supremacy and 
 overshadowing influence of the Divine Mind and 
 Absolute Life, in respect of the finite mind and 
 human individuality, that theistic philosophy has 
 been compelled to reject what in other respects 
 has been most needful, most beautiful and true, 
 in recent Hegelian portrayal of the essential unity 
 betwixt man and God. Our individual selves, on 
 the philosophy of Hegel, are, and can be, no more 
 than simple moments or phases of His concrete 
 Universal. However any " coming-to-itself of the 
 Idea" might have been supposed to represent the 
 personality of God, any real claim for finite person- 
 
CRITICISM OF MONISTIC THEORIES. 105 
 
 ality becomes dissipated in a system which is marked 
 by such continual Becoming and such dialectical 
 passing over of forms one into the other. We can- 
 not allow that we should have an Absolute, which 
 so swallows up and consumes our selfhood or per- 
 sonality that we exist only for that 
 
 " One undivided Soul of many a soul 
 
 Whose nature is its own divine control, 
 Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea." 
 
 Ulrici, with a dualistic tendency meant to counteract 
 pantheistic influences, has maintained the indepen- 
 dence, and even superiority, of Deity over against 
 the creation, which latter is to him both rational 
 and real. With like dualistic leanings and with 
 anti - Hegelian tendencies, Chalybaus, and also 
 Glinther, make the world so little an emanation 
 from God that it is really rather a contraposition 
 of God objectively upheld by Him as a kind of 
 antithesis to Himself. Of course, speaking with 
 a general reference, extremes of monism have no 
 more been wanting than extremes of dualism. 
 
 But every form of monism is valueless which does 
 not turn its face towards the future rather than the 
 past, and seek a true harmonisation of the spiritual 
 and the material such as the God- Man gives in 
 the evolutionary course of things. Says Le Conte : 
 "To the deep thinker, now and always, there is 
 and has been the alternative materialism or theism. 
 God operates Nature or Nature operates itself; but 
 
106 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 evolution puts no new phase on this old question." 
 No, but what only too many have not understood 
 is just this separateness of evolution from material- 
 ism. Though haltings may sometimes be seen in 
 its thought upon the subject, our late philosophy of 
 theism has, we think, seen what disastrous result 
 must accrue to theistic thought from the surrender 
 of the non-eternity of matter, with its properties and 
 forms. It has, of course, treated eternal matter- 
 lying outside of Deity as a manifest contradictio in 
 adjecto, and claimed an absolute self-origination for 
 God alone. It has viewed the relinquishment of 
 the non-eternity of matter in the light of the issue 
 when, to matter already so furnished, the powers 
 and processes of evolution are added, so that God, 
 if " in His world" as Browning affirmed, is so as a 
 mere day-labourer rather than a true World-Ground. 
 Since, as we have affirmed, theistic philosophy firmly 
 maintains mind to be the logical prius rather than 
 matter, it has rejected the idea that matter though 
 a mode of the manifestation of Deity is to be 
 viewed as eternal. It refuses to put asunder the 
 matter which has been eternally joined together 
 with mind. If matter or creation is to be viewed 
 as eternal, it can only be as dependently eternal 
 the effect of Divine Will. The worth of the theistic 
 hypothesis of a necessary, personal, eternal, and 
 infinite Being, over the materialistic alternative of 
 matter as necessary and eternal has, in recent philo- 
 sophical thought, been set forth in more rational 
 
OF TH 
 
 UK: 
 
 ^PF C' 
 CRITICISM OF DR PAUL CARUS. 
 
 terms and on more explicit grounds, as being the 
 surest clue we possess to the interpretation of the 
 world's beautiful order and wonderful adjustments. 
 " Through the whole range of our experience the 
 active or ' quasi - spiritual ' principle has its con- 
 comitant in the material, and the material its con- 
 comitant in the active or ' quasi-spiritual.' ' It has 
 been growingly perceived, we believe, how impos- 
 sible a philosophy of nature, as finite and relative, 
 is on those monistic theories that set out by postu- 
 lating absolute being, and explain the world as the 
 self-evolution of such being. 
 
 Perhaps we should also say that recent philosophy 
 of theism has, at the same time, more freely recog- 
 nised that belief in the eternity of matter is not yet 
 incompatible with a theistic position, on which sup- 
 position the eternal universe, as the scene of God's 
 free creative activity, ever existed in esse as in posse, 
 the home and dwelling-place of God. We find 
 creation out of nothing more keenly felt by recent 
 theistic philosophy to mean, as Pfleiderer put it, an 
 enchanted nothing or an illusory phantasm, for the 
 ''nothing" out of which theological thought has 
 ordinarily made creation come is simply unable to 
 explain anything. But can the last fruit of philo- 
 sophic thinking remain the relegation of creation to 
 the region of mere unthinkable mystery ? We in- 
 cline to think that the theory which finds the motive, 
 will, and energy, of the creation entirely within the 
 Divine Nature has at least more to be said for it 
 
108 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 than is always understood where the supposition is 
 urged of primary and eternal matter. We take occa- 
 sion here to notice the recently published views of Dr 
 Paul Carus, who in his * Idea of God' propounds a 
 view of his own which he terms " entheism," and 
 for which he claims that it " contains all that is true 
 in the old views " of God, which are therein " puri- 
 fied by critique." Dr Carus takes God to be what 
 Kant contended " a noumenon which we must of 
 necessity conceive," but his monistic conceptions of 
 God in his so-called Entheism are less distinct than 
 his criticisms of the more prevalent views. When 
 he makes God in the " usual " sense an " idol," and 
 prayer to Him a " detestable" thing, he had need to 
 take much more full and thorough account alike of 
 the facts of the Christian revelation itself, and of 
 the needs also facts on which it is based, than 
 he here does. He gives us too little beyond the 
 mere assertion that Entheism, which appears to con- 
 tain a considerable infusion of Buddhistic sentiment, 
 " clearly denotes the conception of a monistic God, 
 Who is immanent, not transcendent, Who is in 
 many respects different from nature and yet per- 
 vades all nature." 
 
 Let it not be thought there is not a " truly per- 
 sonal relation " to this External of nature, for our 
 confidence in the unbreakable laws of existence is 
 to bring us into this intimate and scientific relation 
 of religion. We are in this work concerned with 
 what we believe to be " Recent Advances in 
 
CRITICISM OF PRINCIPAL FAIRBAIRN. 109 
 
 Theistic Philosophy," and cannot be expected to 
 follow a writer whose complaint against Seeley 
 and Arnold is that " they are not yet fully free 
 from [italics ours] the theistic conception," and who 
 himself betrays signal inability to do that concep- 
 tion justice. But we take leave to remark that it 
 has grown always more evident that no Philosophy 
 of Religion can be satisfying to the most clear- 
 sighted thought of to-day, which, while postulating 
 personal and self-existent being as the immanent 
 principle of the world and the world's development, 
 fails to pass outwards and upwards to the concep- 
 tion of this personal being as transcendent. Yes, 
 even though it be true, as Dr Ludwig Busse has 
 recently remarked, in his ' Philosophic und Erkennt- 
 nisstheorie/ that we shall never be able to describe 
 how God can be in the world and Ground of the 
 world immanent and transcendent at one and 
 the same time. Recent philosophy of theism has 
 more successfully urged, as against Positivism, the 
 significance for a true theism of the regularity and 
 uniformity of nature, in which contendings it has 
 had the support of Fiske and other thinkers. In 
 treating of the attributes of Deity, it has placed 
 the absolute ground of moral obligation in the 
 actual perfectness of God. It regards the attri- 
 butes, with Martensen, not as human modes of 
 apprehending God, but as God's mode of re- 
 vealing Himself. It surely sees how little real 
 need there is to give way to the anthropomorphic 
 
110 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 tendency to attribute a necessity for an object to 
 love in God, seeing His egoistic perfection is 
 capable of realising love's infinite ideal in itself, 
 and without dependence on such object. But 
 there is every reason why, being in Himself love, 
 He should create ; and the contention of Franz 
 Hoffmann is not without force, that, in the theistic 
 interest, creation should not be taken simply as a 
 contingent or accidental act of God. This view 
 Principal Fairbairn shares when he urges that 
 " creation was necessary while the Creator was 
 not necessitated," and it may serve to obviate some 
 of the difficulties raised by the poet Schiller, for 
 example, when he asks, " If the fabric of the world 
 is a perfection of the Creator, was His perfection 
 incomplete before the world's creation ? " At the 
 same time, we are by no means clear that Principal 
 Fairbairn, in desiring to gain an advantage over 
 pantheism, does not carry the theory of an ethical 
 necessitation too far, and make it unduly trench on 
 the Divine Aseitat or eternally independent and all- 
 sufficient existence. Dr Fairbairn at least grounds 
 creation in the Divine nature rather than the Divine 
 volition in a way we cannot quite accept. We can- 
 not ascribe the creative act to anything but the 
 self-conscious volition of Deity : this is not yet to 
 make it matter of absolute contingency or indiffer- 
 ence to Deity ; but it is both to conserve a true 
 freedom for God, and to escape the difficulties of 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR SCHILLER. ill 
 
 grounding cosmical existence in the nature of Deity. 
 Of arbitrariness or caprice there is none. Theistic 
 thought has more strenuously insisted that the 
 attribute of Divine Power or Will shall not take 
 its former precedence over the attributes of Wis- 
 dom and Love. It has become touched with the 
 spirit which, in Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound," 
 teaches 
 
 "To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; 
 To love and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates." 
 
 We cannot think of God as the unconditioned 
 Person, which we shall in a subsequent chapter 
 represent Him to be, without attributing to Him 
 love as an infinite quality. Only such love suffices 
 to represent His perfect nature or unconditioned 
 Being. His love is shown in His self-determining 
 action. God is to be thought of as more than the 
 Unconditioned : He is the all-conditioning power, 
 Whose perfect action works through love. Rothe 
 finely conceived the whole life and activity of Deity 
 ad extra as a loving, and Principal Fairbairn has 
 properly shown the consistency of such love in its 
 creative outgoings with non-physical necessity. We 
 claim that, even when it seeks to harmonise the good- 
 ness of Deity with His power, it does not always fail 
 to see how ill-advised and short-sighted it would be 
 to do so in a way or spirit that might seem to treat 
 
112 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 His Wisdom and His Power as of inferior account 
 or secondary moment. The effects, for the rela- 
 tions of religion and culture, could then only be 
 disastrous. We should need to know a great deal 
 more than is known of this imperfect universe 
 in its ultimate no less than its present unfinished 
 condition before we could be content to postulate 
 a Deity of limited power, as does Professor F. C. 
 S. Schiller, apparently in sympathy with John 
 Stuart Mill. There is no reason, however, why 
 we should not join the poet Browning in viewing 
 the conception of God, when taken to be one only 
 of Power and Wisdom, as an isosceles deficient in 
 the base. Love is, of course, the copestone and 
 completion. 
 
 We are not, for our part, prepared to follow those 
 recent theistic thinkers who treat justice as a super- 
 fluous attribute of Deity, and who postulate love as 
 the one needful moral attribute of God, on the 
 ground that He is our loving Father. "In pro- 
 portion as we grow in habits of obedience, far from 
 our vision of the eternal Justice of God vanishing 
 from our minds, and being disowned by our feelings, 
 as if it were but the useful misconception of a less 
 advanced virtue, doubtless it increases, as fear is 
 cast out." We are of opinion that they make a 
 large and unwarranted assumption in treating this 
 fatherly relationship as swamping all those con- 
 siderations by which necessity can be shown for 
 
THE DIVINE JUSTICE. 113 
 
 God remaining Absolute Justice just in Himself, 
 just in His relation to others, and Inspirer of the 
 love of justice in the world. The love which to 
 these thinkers is the Divine fulfilling of the law 
 is to us too empty of content if no room can be 
 found in it for Justice or the Divine Self- Preserva- 
 tion, that Justice which is, in fact, the guardian of 
 the Highest Ethical Goodness. Justice not only 
 spiritualises the Divine Omnipotence, but secures 
 for Divine Goodness its needful and absolute basis. 
 When God, as our Father, ordains what is best for 
 us, has He ceased to do other than compass for 
 us a justice which shall be perfect perfect in its 
 wisdom and its love ? We grant that such an 
 attribute recedes from view the deeper we look 
 into the spiritual nature of things, but we see only 
 that which is misleading in making Justice appear 
 to conflict with Love in God, which preserves and 
 perfects that Justice which is no transient and in- 
 compatible attribute. When we so predicate Justice 
 of the Absolute, we do so really in virtue of that 
 inner yearning of which George Eliot said that 
 justice is not without as a fact, but within us as a 
 great yearning. The truth is that " our very con- 
 sciousness of being free, and so responsible, includes 
 in it the idea of an unchangeable rule of Justice, on 
 which the judgment is hereafter to be conducted ; 
 or rather excludes, as far as it goes, the notion of 
 a simply benevolent Governor ; a simply benevolent 
 
 H 
 
114 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 end being relinquished by the Creator, so soon as 
 He committed the destinies of man to his own 
 hands, and made him a first cause, a principle of 
 origination, in the moral world." 
 
 We contend, then, that recent philosophy of 
 theism has been fully alive to the enlargement of 
 the data for building up its proofs for the Being of 
 God, which the advance of knowledge and the 
 evidence of history have brought. And it has, to 
 its credit, always more keenly felt the burden im- 
 posed upon its rationally constructive power in 
 giving proper interpretation to these facts of the 
 universe, and worthy presentation of the enlarged 
 and reconstructed grounds of belief, of which it has 
 come into possession. For, advance as it may in 
 the presentation of its great argument, it knows it 
 can always render but scant and partial justice to 
 the thought in God and concerning Him on which 
 rests the highest glow of reason. Hence its feeling 
 of the imperfection of language, akin to that of the 
 poet of the " Paradise " when he sings 
 
 " Trasumanar significar per verba 
 Non si poria," 
 
 since things Divine lie so high beyond the possi- 
 bilities of " words." It finds itself in agreement 
 with those thinkers who maintain that those proofs 
 of the Divine Being which are for us only implicit, 
 and do not belong to the ratiocinative process, are 
 both deeper and more satisfying than those with 
 
DEDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION IMPOSSIBLE. 115 
 
 which the discoursings of reason are concerned. 
 We have had occasion in a former work to point 
 out the growing recognition of the impossibility of 
 deductive demonstration of the Being of God, and 
 we are in agreement with the statement of a recent 
 able writer that "a science of concrete existences 
 cannot be demonstrative." God, who is "the 
 ground and source and moving Spirit of all reality, 
 must be the most concrete object of our thought. 
 By no possibility, therefore, can a theology or 
 science of God follow the demonstrative method 
 of mathematics." Logical demonstration is here 
 out of the question, for where should we find a 
 major premiss for such a conclusion ? This im- 
 possibility of syllogistic proof for God or for an 
 outer world was insisted on by F. W. Newman, 
 in his work on ' The Soul/ in connection with 
 which he remarks that " perhaps there is no outer 
 world, and our internal sensations are the universe." 
 Further, " There are persons who say that substance 
 and matter are illusive terms, and that a substance 
 is nothing but a congeries of forces, coherent and 
 repulsive." Yes, but the soul or thinking self at 
 least is real, and it were irrational to suppose the 
 Infinite Mind, the Energising Reason, to be other 
 than real. Theism has no wish to do other than 
 freely acknowledge how much of our theistic con- 
 ception we owe to tradition and inheritance, as well 
 as to education and personal reasoning how much 
 of it has been the result of gradual expansion for 
 
Il6 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 us and communication to us, as well as of our own 
 mental and moral evolution. The theistic argument 
 has more and more been seen to rest on solid basis 
 of cumulative proof, and to be reached by methods 
 of proof of most comprehensive, subtle, and un- 
 wonted character. Not forgetful is the philosophy 
 of which we speak of the truth of the poet's 
 words 
 
 " Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
 
 Which of themselves our minds impress : 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 In a wise passiveness. 
 
 Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
 
 Of things for ever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 
 But we must still be seeking ? " 
 
 Surely we have come better to appreciate the 
 fact that the proofs of God stand out for us not 
 along the mere lines of ratiocinative faculty, but 
 within the inner realm of spirit in man ; not within 
 the sole compass of the physical world, but much 
 more in the deeps of our own nature. Yes, until 
 we seek God in this inward way He must remain to 
 us a veiled Deity the so-called Deus absconditus 
 a hidden God. The manifold processes involved, 
 intuitive, empirical, reflective, inspirational, induc- 
 tive, deductive, intellectual, ethical, and emotional, 
 have all been more adequately recognised in recent 
 times in their partial but essential working towards 
 the one all-embracing conclusion. May we not say 
 
LARGENESS OF THEISTIC PROOF. 1 17 
 
 theism has come, largely through the wondrous feel- 
 ing of being which is ours, to ask, with Goethe 
 
 " The All-Embracer, 
 All-Sustainer, 
 
 Holds and sustains He not 
 Thee, me, Himself? " 
 
 " Der Allumfasser, 
 Der Allerhalter, 
 Fasst und erhalt er nicht 
 Dich, mich, sich selbst ? " 
 
 We believe it may be justly said that recent 
 philosophy of theism has more correctly appreci- 
 ated the fact that the proofs for the Being of God 
 are not to be understood in the mere lumen siccum 
 of reason, but through the insight of the spiritual 
 reason reason, that is to say, not as it might appear 
 in " an intellectual all in all." but as influenced in its 
 movement by the sweep of man's purest and largest 
 affectional nature. Emerson was not wrong when 
 he said that " the affections are the wings by 
 which the intellect launches on the void, and is 
 borne across it." The words of Pascal have lost 
 none of their truth, save for a sheer barren intel- 
 lectualism, when he says, " Le cceur a ses raisons, que 
 la raison ne connait pas," for reasons the heart still 
 has, of which reason, as such, may know nothing. 
 Truly has it been averred that our beliefs here 
 are built upon no dry strand of reason, but ride 
 upon the flood of our affections. Surely the 
 absurd and irrational character of the scientific 
 
Il8 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 absolutism that would allow no risks of belief, no 
 ventures of faith, however the heart might impel 
 or the will incline, save in so far as the scientific 
 method of verification or objective certitude may 
 be applied, has been made sufficiently manifest. 
 Are we really to come to this, that no truth shall 
 be of interest for us, save that which has been thus 
 verified ? If so, then, as Professor William James 
 has lately remarked, "the truth of truths might 
 come in merely oracular or affirmative form, and 
 she " (the spirit of scientific absolutism) " would 
 decline to look at it." 
 
 The philosophy of theism is surely bound to 
 maintain belief in things in this connection which 
 it may not be able so to raise from being matters 
 of faith as to make them matters of rational tab- 
 ulation or philosophical testing. God exists prior 
 to, and is more than, all our arguments, and noth- 
 ing less than Himself is able to prove Him to 
 us, which indeed He does by and in life. Theistic 
 philosophy sees and feels, as we believe, that if 
 God is God, the proofs of His Being and work- 
 ing must meet us, not here and there, but through- 
 out all time, and over all creation, so as to make 
 " one thing of all theology." Hence, as matter of 
 fact, we do find a strong stress laid by it on God 
 as the Prius, and the Immanent Principle, and 
 the Final Cause of all this mighty world we see. 
 To it all knowledge, as Professor Flint has said, 
 implies and may contribute to the knowledge of 
 
COMPREHENSIVENESS OF THE THEISTIC IDEA. 119 
 
 God. It understands, as he suggests, how liable 
 so comprehensive an idea as that of God is to 
 be assailed from such standpoints as those of in- 
 finity, or of being, or of causality, or of personality, 
 or of rectitude. Consequently it is not dismayed 
 if many fail to rise to the height of its great 
 argument. It remembers the words of Ulrici, that 
 " modern theology, which so readily gives up the 
 proofs for the existence of God, abandons thereby 
 not only its own position as a science ; but also, 
 in principle, annihilates faith, and the religion of 
 which it is the theology." And so it has taken 
 heart, believing that to it belongs that genuine 
 knowledge which is of God as 6 aXrjffivos the 
 true God and has sought to rescue the theistic 
 arguments, in the way Ulrici and others so nobly 
 exemplified, from the confusion of thought which 
 has so often rested upon them. It has, in so doing, 
 been more careful, at least in its wisest represen- 
 tations, to seek and exhibit the true and real in 
 which they have had their rise, and to be little 
 content with the treatment that left us nothing 
 but criticism of them as logical proofs, and even 
 that criticism as often as not of a rather cheap 
 sort. It thus tries to carry out what may be of 
 truth in Schopenhauer's contention, that the proofs 
 for the Divine Being are " keraunological " rather 
 than theoretic, based upon needs of will rather than 
 notions of the intellect. This place and import- 
 ance, for theistic belief, of will, affection, emotion 
 
120 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 equally with bare intellect must be evident to 
 all not clinging to garments of outworn scholasti- 
 cism. We venture to suggest that it may be 
 due to the memory of the destroying Kant that 
 Universal Crusher (zermahnen), as his country- 
 men call him that better remembrance should be 
 had of the contention of Kuno Fischer that, how- 
 ever Kant may have varied in his thinking about 
 the knowableness or demonstrability of God, " there 
 was not a moment in the course of the develop- 
 ment of his philosophical convictions when he 
 denied, or even only doubted, the reality of God." 
 Not less striking and emphatic is the testimony 
 of Zeller to the way in which Kant at every time 
 held thus to the Being of God (das Dasein Gottes). 
 Kant's own view of the matter was that " it is indeed 
 necessary to be convinced of the existence of God, 
 but it is not equally necessary to demonstrate it." 
 It should not be overlooked how, in the section 
 of the ' Critique of Pure Reason ' dealing with the 
 " criticism of all theology," he maintains the faull- 
 lessness of the ideal which the Supreme Being 
 affords to the speculative reason, even though 
 only an ideal. The fact remains that with a glori- 
 ous disregard of consistency or fitness of things 
 permissible only in philosophers, Kant avows his 
 belief in a God Who had, according to him, set 
 the pure and the practical reason at such vari- 
 ance, and Whose existence Kant had been at such 
 
UNIVERSIT 
 
 THE THEISTIC PROOFS. 121 
 
 pains to prove incapable of demonstration. These 
 proofs, so called, have, no doubt, since Kant's 
 day sunk to the position of being regarded as 
 more of the nature of confirmations of the idea 
 of God when already in the mind than as inde- 
 pendent proofs of the existence of Deity. With 
 the fine lucidity and directness characteristic of 
 all his writing, Professor Pfleiderer has defended 
 these proofs, alike in the interests of the historical 
 spirit of humanity and of the needs of reason. 
 " Kant notwithstanding, they will always occupy 
 human thought. And it is right that they should 
 do so. They certainly cannot, and are not in- 
 tended to, engender the faith of the heart ; yet 
 they certainly serve a need of reason, which re- 
 quires that faith be justified to thought." Kant's 
 arguments did avail against a Deity that stood 
 in mechanical and external relation to the world. 
 But such is not the God of theism, Who, as self- 
 conscious and personal Spirit, is at once immanent 
 and transcendent. It is not pretended that these 
 proofs are complete and final, for theistic phil- 
 osophy has increasingly realised that they are but 
 part of that whole and entire demand of man's 
 spirit, in which place must be found for our 
 moral yearnings and our aesthetic longings. It 
 has certainly been an advance that these proofs 
 of the Divine Existence are seen to be capable 
 neither of separation nor identification, and have 
 
122 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 come to be considered, in the way they have, as 
 organically related, as, in fact, constitutive elements 
 of one grand comprehensive whole of argument. 
 As Professor Diman, of America, put the matter : 
 " The argument for the Divine Existence is com- 
 plex and correlative. Not from one, but from 
 many sources is the evidence derived ; and its 
 force lies in the whole, not in any of its parts." 
 The true wisdom, then, is that which sees in this 
 final result, woven out of all the partial and sep- 
 arate evidences, the real theistic proof not some- 
 thing dependent on a single line of evidence but 
 the full sum of all that nature, history, and 
 thought can teach us of God. What we mean 
 to assert, in saying this, is not so much that any 
 mere synthesis of these different arguments, even 
 as complementary to each other, will suffice, as 
 that such a lofty viewpoint of anthropocosmic 
 theism must be gained as shall prove all-satisfying 
 and all-inclusive. 
 
 In recent times the Agnostic tendencies due 
 to Hamilton, Mansel, Spencer, and others, have 
 stimulated theistic thought to higher effort in re- 
 spect of these proofs, whose demonstrative force 
 has been so often disallowed, that it might in newer 
 forms of presentation redeem them from discredit, 
 might turn Spencerianism itself to account in laying 
 a basis for positive theistic belief, and, apart from 
 that, might better exhibit what truth and value they 
 possess. For, truth and value they do possess in 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR KNIGHT. 123 
 
 what they teach at least of immanent causality, 
 of immanent teleology, and of immanent rationality 
 in man as in nature. The God Who is here and 
 now known as the Infinite Spirit, the Absolute 
 Ground of all things, the Eternal Self indwelling 
 in all finite selves, is so infinitely knowable as to 
 render Agnosticism for ever impossible. But, as 
 Professor Flint has properly pointed out, the 
 very wealth of contents in the idea of God in- 
 evitably exposes it to Agnostic assaults. But in 
 our view Agnosticism is a possibility only where 
 hypertrophy in some aspect of the thinking capacity 
 exists. 
 
 The proofs of the Divine Existence we shall 
 in their recently advanced forms consider in sub- 
 sequent chapters devoted to them, but we take 
 occasion here to say of the Intuitional Argument 
 which is not to be separately so dealt with that it 
 has by Professor Knight and others been more 
 lucidly expounded of late years, though whether 
 with the result of showing itself able to bear by 
 itself all the strain sometimes put upon it, is a much 
 more doubtful matter, even to those who may be 
 disposed to grant, as we are, what a high criterion 
 of truth such spiritual intuition is. It is a rather 
 large order to ask us to surrender our knowledge 
 of Deity wholly to an intuitional theism, even 
 though we may feel the mystical attractiveness 
 of the u wise passiveness " needful to this end. 
 Recent theism has in its faith, as we think, been 
 
124 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 more clearly conscious of itself, through all, as no 
 result of a logical process, but of the inward seal 
 of the self-revealing God. For intuition implies 
 direct beholding or vision of the truth, and, unlike 
 reasoning, is an act rather than a process. This 
 is that Schauen vision or intuition of which 
 Krause loved to speak. It has no finer expression 
 than the poet's lines : 
 
 " As blind nestlings, unafraid, 
 Stretch up wide-mouthed to every shade 
 By which their downy dream is stirred, 
 Taking it for the parent bird ; 
 So when God's shadow, which is light, 
 My wakening instincts falls across, 
 Silent as sunbeams over moss, 
 In my heart's nest half-conscious things 
 Stir with a helpless sense of wings, 
 Lift themselves up, and tremble long, 
 With premonitions sweet of song." 
 
 The Intuitionalist position is so far clearly vindi- 
 cated that the soul is seen to sustain a closer cogni- 
 tive relation to Deity than should be implied in 
 knowing Him merely by remote inference as Dr 
 W. L. Davidson would make it appear in his 
 ' Theism ' even if its immediate but not unme- 
 diated consciousness of the Absolute be not with- 
 out elements of vagueness and indefiniteness. No 
 doubt, Dr Davidson asserts that the idea of God 
 inevitably arises in man, but he does extremely 
 little in the way of showing by psychological analy- 
 sis that theism is really " grounded in human nature,' 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR W. L. DAVIDSON. 125 
 
 which it is his professed aim to show. He brings 
 not out in its modern bearings and relations the 
 significance of the fact that 
 
 " Lebt' nicht in uns der Gottheit eig'ne Kraft, 
 Wie konnte uns die gottliche entziicken." 
 
 " If in my soul dwelt not God's might, 
 He ne'er could quicken me." 
 
 It has been by another truly enough noted that 
 " if it be said that faith in God is never actually the 
 result of reasoning, it may be replied that, as matter 
 of fact, such faith usually comes by instruction, and 
 is verified by reasoning ; not to insist that there are 
 implicit, unconscious acts of reasoning, in which 
 some of the steps are left out." Hence it is no 
 marvel that recent theistic philosophy has more 
 trustfully turned to that vague and somewhat ill- 
 defined yet real spiritual faculty in man, termed 
 the God-consciousness in virtue of which we have 
 the secret presage of the Infinite for its certifica- 
 tion of the Being of God, Who is increasingly veri- 
 fied to the soul through this God-recognising faculty 
 as He comes through the revelation that is in Christ. 
 Yes, for as one of strong reflective power has in our 
 time said, " the passionate religious tendency is not 
 a sentiment fluttering round a fancy, but is a feeling 
 rooted deep in the structure and mechanism of con- 
 sciousness." There can be no doubt that, with 
 more fruitful result, rational reflection has been 
 exercised on such content of the Christian con- 
 
126 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 sciousness as is given us in our intuitive perception 
 or primal mysterious notion of God, so that, our 
 idea of God having received explication, develop- 
 ment, and adjustment, God has become better 
 known to us as the Absolute Personality. And, 
 as Professor J. S. Banks has said, "The fact that 
 intuitive truths are involved in the proof, and that 
 we so seldom need to examine the grounds of our 
 faith, is perhaps the reason why the conclusion has 
 come to be regarded as itself belonging to this 
 class." God is to be less thought of as the Infinite, 
 in any sense that would imply that He is an empty 
 abstraction or such an indeterminate Being as Pan- 
 theism has made Him, and is to be regarded more 
 as the Infinite in the sense of the Absolute Being, 
 the Unconditioned Source of all existence. " In 
 real knowledge, Theism and it alone enables us to 
 comprehend the multitude of individuals in a system 
 in which we find at once the unity of thought and 
 the unity of being, and thus solve the ultimate and 
 inevitable problem of the Reason. It builds on 
 the knowledge of determinate beings ; not on 
 
 * Intuitions, grasps of guess, 
 That pull the more into the less, 
 Making the finite comprehend 
 Infinity.' " 
 
 Nay more, God is to be conceived as, in His 
 Divine Essence, the positive fulness and perfec- 
 tion of all goodness and truth the one infinitely 
 perfect Being in virtue of the internal interdepend- 
 
THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. I2/ 
 
 ence and unity of His attributes. No sesquipe- 
 dalian negations are the attributes of the Deity 
 Whose Divine self- revelation has made Him thus 
 known to us. It is no disparagement of metaphysics 
 to say that recent philosophy of theism has laid its 
 stress, in treating of the Triune Being, in terms that 
 savour of life and personality rather than of being. 
 Its God is a positive and infinite Personality, and 
 not a mere aggregate of attributes. Its completely 
 ethicised Deity, as it seeks to expound the Godhead, 
 mitigates, as Principal Fairbairn puts the matter, 
 the gravest of the initial difficulties of theism a 
 mitigation which, though no more than a mitiga- 
 tion, represents a great gain to thought. Not only 
 have the proofs for the Being of God been viewed 
 more helpfully and suggestively in their organic 
 relation, but, as we must also note, have been of 
 late more adequately recognised at least, if not 
 actually treated, on the historic side. This line 
 of treatment, whereby they have been examined 
 in the light of their genesis and development, and 
 of the historic evidence which they furnish of the 
 persistent endeavour of the race to grasp and 
 explain the transcendent reality the notion of 
 which they embody has already borne fruit, and 
 yielded much philosophical promise, from its study 
 of the arguments as they thetically appear in the 
 course of history. More or less historic approaches 
 have, it may be remarked, without going back upon 
 the labours in this line of Bobba, Bouchitte, and 
 
128 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 earlier workers, been made in late years by Dorner, 
 Pfleiderer, Dr Stirling, Professor Flint, and others, 
 both in Germany and Britain. 
 
 There can be no doubt that recent philosophy 
 of theism has acutely felt the difficulty of working 
 its way through the selva oscura of reconciling evil 
 with the goodness and power of God, especially in the 
 light of the contradictions of actual experience. It has 
 noted how absurd often are the pessimistic expecta- 
 tions from Omnipotence. It has, as we think, more 
 carefully discriminated existent suffering, however, 
 from the intentional plan and law of organic being, 
 and has more forcefully exhibited the rational and 
 moral grounds on which the permissive agency of 
 evil can be conceived as perfectly consonant with 
 an entirely benevolent Deity. We are bold enough 
 to claim that, to the most clear-sighted thought of 
 recent years, the suffering, which painfully obtrudes 
 itself everywhere in the world, has yet been allowed 
 to obscure the goodness, and to strain our belief in 
 the beneficence, of the Deity, to so needless and 
 unwarrantable extent, that these sufferings have 
 made this become to us no more a world in which 
 " thorns are mixed with flowers." 
 
 " Diffugimus visu exsangues, illi agmine certo 
 Laocoonta petunt." 
 
 We have, in consequence, a state of things, as 
 regards the race alike of animals and of men, 
 that may well serve to remind us of the dread 
 
THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING. 129 
 
 smitings and death agonies of which the 'Iliad' 
 spake 
 
 " Qvprja? fJiev Trpwrov eTrco^ero Kal Kvvas a 
 Avrap eVetr' avrolcn /3e\o<? e^enrevK 
 * alel 8e irvpal VSKVCOV /caiovro 
 
 " First attacked he the mules and the swift dogs, 
 but afterwards despatching a piercing arrow against 
 themselves [Greeks], he smote them, and thick 
 funeral - piles of dead were continually burning." 
 But there are facts of new life and beauty, of 
 rest and progress, no less than those of destruc- 
 tion and decay, and these we must carefully con- 
 sider, even in aspects and relations that may not 
 be fully known to us, before we give way to a 
 materialistic mode of interpreting the world as 
 charnel - house. Have not the life struggles, in 
 which the animal world has seemed to revel, been 
 seen to have been overdone, in their having been 
 contemplated, quite frequently, with an almost mor- 
 bid sensitiveness, in the light of our own higher, 
 more painful experiences, until resultant perfection 
 was lost sight of, and judgment remained no more 
 clear, nor thinking robust ? Has not the time 
 come to ask with the poet 
 
 " Who knows but that the darkness is in man ? " 
 
 Has it not been more open to observation what 
 an immense proportion of the sufferings of life 
 man himself may, if he will, prevent or avert, and 
 furthermore, what a large purpose the residue 
 
 I 
 
130 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 of real suffering serves in the way it ministers to 
 man's moral growth, his secular knowledge, and his 
 spiritual advancement ? The sensitiveness of ani- 
 mals to pain is far less than it has often been 
 pessimistically pictured, and the real pain experi- 
 enced by man is chiefly due to his being a person- 
 ality, capable of looking before, after, and upward. 
 It is time to note how suffering really leads man 
 to a knowledge of the way in which God cosmi- 
 cally manifests Himself; to recall how the evils of 
 our world -system are such simply as possibilities, 
 the actual result resting with man himself; and to 
 
 o 
 
 heed the poet's word 
 
 " Doubt no longer that the Highest is the wisest and the best \ 
 Let not all that saddens Nature blight thy hope or break thy 
 rest." 
 
 Even a Rousseau was able clearly to perceive how 
 little these physical evils would mean for us but 
 for our moral evils and shortcomings. 
 
 It is very possible that theistic philosophy may 
 have sometimes seemed insufficiently to reckon with 
 the suffering and pain of the world ; but, even if this 
 casual effect be not disallowed, it must still be un- 
 doubtedly held that recent theistic thought has 
 made noteworthy advance towards a sounder ad- 
 justment of modern modes of viewing the conflict- 
 ing moral attributes involved. A gratifying result 
 of the way in which in man's narrow 
 
 " circle of experience burns 
 The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness God." 
 
MODERN PESSIMISM. 131 
 
 It has, too, in the outlook on the progressiveness 
 of nature which, amid the pain and suffering of the 
 world, evolution has given it, more clearly seen that 
 the difficulties which seem to exist in creation are 
 being gradually surmounted 
 
 " For the loving worm within its clod 
 Were diviner than a loveless god 
 Amid his worlds." 
 
 This is quite compatible with our contention that 
 the philosophy of theism to-day perfectly appre- 
 ciates the difficulties of reconciling such a world 
 as ours with the fact of a Perfect Being for its 
 Creator, and of maintaining our freedom from the 
 world-woe (Welt-Schmerz) whose melancholy con- 
 tagion has caught and clouded so many noble spirits 
 of our time. Yes, it would be strange if it had been 
 otherwise if, that is to say, it had not so entered 
 into the divine meaning of the German poet's 
 lines 
 
 " Wie nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass, 
 Wie nie die kummervollen Nachte 
 Auf seinem Bette weinend sass, 
 Der kennt Euch nicht, Ihr himmlischen Machte." 
 
 For though Pessimism may not provide our resting- 
 place, it is impossible in this world of mania and 
 monstrosity, of frustration and fatuity, of misery 
 and microbe, not to see how much of the truth 
 it carries with it. And we, for our part, do not 
 think the pessimistic factors grow less or fewer as 
 one deepens his study of men and of institutions of 
 
132 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 every sort. We do not believe that, when we have, 
 with Dr E. Pfleiderer, charged home the pessimistic 
 trends of thought on the indolent eudaemonism of 
 the age, we have done anything like full justice to 
 the facts, or said all that is to be said. However, 
 we pass from that. Though we cannot forget that 
 the physical universe " has fixed, unaltering laws, we 
 cannot help seeing God's hand in events. Whatever 
 happens, we think of as His mercies, His kindness ; 
 or His visitations and His chastisements ; every- 
 thing comes to us from His love." We believe that 
 a patient study of all that can be philosophically 
 advanced in its favour will tend to modify our view 
 of what might otherwise seem the extravagant optim- 
 ism in which rested that most distinguished Italian 
 thinker, Rosmini, who in his ' Teodicea ' maintains 
 that this world is the sole one worthy of the good- 
 ness of God (degno della somma bonta and il solo 
 possibile are his expressions, 651). And yet it 
 would be a hard thing to agree to Rosmini's re- 
 strictions on the Divine possibilities and freedom. 
 It is in the love which is in God that the springs 
 of possibility for objective reality must be taken to 
 lie. Precisely in the lack of such altruistic power is 
 the shortcoming of pantheism seen. Theistic philo- 
 sophy has been content to claim the working of the 
 world, on the melioristic theory of an " increasing 
 purpose," as good in relation to the end for which 
 it has been destined. It forgets not that, imperfect 
 our world may be, and yet be thoroughly suited to 
 
THE TRUE OPTIMISM. 133 
 
 the purposes for which it has been ordered. No 
 more does it forget the saying of Strauss that a true 
 philosophy must naturally be optimistic, or it cuts 
 away the branch on which it sits. The last word is 
 yet very far from having been spoken by philosophy 
 as to why a world, grounded in the Absolute, is not 
 perfect; but at least it has given a less uncertain 
 sound as to the unsatisfactoriness of Hegelianism 
 in its mode of dealing with the opposite of Absolute 
 Being, and its making opposites pass as in this 
 system they do into each other. Christian theism 
 has been satisfied with such tranquillity of soul as 
 Christianity brings as its gift in virtue of its chast- 
 ened optimism, which does not tend to an always 
 greater flatness, but sees all things work together 
 for good only through suffering being turned into 
 sacred joy, loss into spiritual gain, misery into in- 
 terior happiness, pain into priceless power. This 
 it is which has averted for it the otherwise inevitable 
 seeming that earth is 
 
 " darkness at the core 
 And dust and ashes all that is," 
 
 even while it has felt the impossibility of theoretic 
 demonstration of its optimism. Yes, for, however 
 it may be with the theist, it is impossible for the 
 Christian theist to find rest in pessimism. That 
 mental disorder is, according to Max Nordau, one 
 of the philosophic forms of ego-mania, and certainly 
 the pessimist is prone to project his own dark 
 shadow on the world. 
 
134 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 We are not, for our part, disposed to admit that 
 the religious mind in its best outgoing will be con- 
 tent to rest in the equally real ego-mania of any 
 shallow, visionary, airy optimism. It is the glory 
 of Schopenhauer to have made any Leibnitzian, 
 happy-go-lucky optimism impossible for us. His 
 also has been the folly to set the entry of reason 
 and order so late in the world's day as to reduce 
 earth to a reign of irrationality and caprice, and his 
 the mistake to confound being with evil. We admit 
 the service he has done in laying stress on the 
 individual or finite existence as part of the will to 
 live, even while we share neither his apotheosis of 
 selfishness nor his hostility to a really rational re- 
 ligion. Such disciples of his as Bahnsen and 
 Deussen have not failed, with certain divergences, 
 to maintain the dark hues of their master, as has 
 also Frauenstadt, who has affinities with Hartmann 
 likewise. Nor has anything been lacking to the 
 thoroughness of the unreasoned Pessimism of the 
 Italian poet Leopardi, who has told us 
 
 " Our life is valueless ; for it consists 
 Of nought but ennui, bitterness, and pain. 
 This world of clay deserveth not a sigh ! 
 Now calm thyself; conceive thy last despair, 
 And wait for Death, the only gift of Fate." 
 
 There never were stronger temptations than in this 
 time for men to cry, as Shakespeare's sonnet has 
 it 
 
 " Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry." 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 135 
 
 It is something that theistic philosophy will no more 
 under-estimate the power of evil, the misery of man's 
 will, and the force of the struggle by which the god- 
 less world shall be overcome, in the teleological 
 movement by which all things conspire towards the 
 good. The reality of evil has been very seriously 
 faced by it, but without any giving way to absolute 
 and Parsee-like dualism, in which the unity of being 
 shall be violently rent and broken. It does not 
 forget how the pain and anguish, the fret and un- 
 rest, of life had been already declared by Kant, 
 Fichte, and Schelling. It has profoundly felt how 
 paradoxical the power and goodness of God must 
 appear in view of so much natural evil as this world 
 of ours presents, causing the escape from a despair- 
 ing Pessimism to be now no longer easy. Yes, for 
 it is bound to admit, as we hold, even the possibility 
 of the evolutionist argument being inverted in the 
 pessimistic interest, and the progress of the world 
 held, not without show of reason, to be at last 
 swept away. Then, from the cheerless summit of 
 our thought, we should find to be ours the vision of 
 the poet who sang 
 
 11 Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 
 
 From creation to decay, 
 Like the bubbles on a river, 
 
 Flashing, bursting, borne away." 
 
 It has, however, in its philosophy of evil, laid less 
 stress on the results or effects than on the principle 
 of evil. And, if the Pessimism of the time has not 
 
136 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 been able to shun a certain morbid sensitiveness in 
 its contemplation of such natural evils, our philos- 
 ophy of theism has, in more calm and frank manner, 
 acknowledged how far it can accompany the pessim- 
 istic philosopher, and has proceeded to point out, as 
 far and as effectively as its partial knowledge will 
 permit, how many are the compensations and how 
 weighty are the reasons that may be adduced to 
 justify the permissive agency of evil. We say how 
 far it can accompany the pessimist philosopher, for 
 it surely never entered more deeply than now into 
 the spirit that says 
 
 " Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate 
 I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, 
 
 And many a knot unravell'd by the Road ; 
 But not the Master- Knot of Human Fate. 
 
 There was the Door to which I found no Key ; 
 There was the Veil through which I might not see : 
 
 Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee 
 There was and then no more of Thee and Me. 
 
 Earth could not answer; nor the Seas that mourn 
 In flowing purple, of their Lord forlorn ; 
 
 Nor rolling Heaven with all his Signs revealed 
 And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn." 
 
 No vaunted enlightenments of our time have been 
 able to silence only to deepen the despairing 
 sounds of a creation that groans and travails in 
 pain, ever crying, How long, O Lord, how long! 
 But we have also said that there are compensations, 
 balancings that make our short-sighted conclusions 
 
REALITY OF EVIL. 137 
 
 not very safe or sure. And while Pessimism is not 
 the last term in our message to men, it will have a 
 place there to the end. Yes, and that because we 
 are spiritual, and spiritually idealist. 
 
 Our theism has recalled, with a modern poet, how 
 true it is of Nature that, despite these opposing 
 facts and pessimistic moods 
 
 " She sees with clearer eyes than ours 
 
 The good of suffering born, 
 The hearts that blossom like her flowers, 
 And ripen like her corn." 
 
 It has more forcefully, we think, set forth, for ex- 
 ample, the beneficent purposes subserved by pain 
 and suffering in the world as a safeguard, a stimu- 
 lant, and a cement of mutual sympathy. It has 
 been to it no Jesuitical task to set forth suffering 
 as, in fact, a really necessary condition of, and a 
 powerful incentive to, all higher growth, in which 
 growth and exercise of our moral powers our true 
 satisfaction is found. For, with Goethe, it says 
 
 that 
 
 " Was im Leben uns verdriesst, 
 Man im Bilde gern geniesst." 
 
 But, however true these things may be, no true 
 philosophy of theism will construe them into the 
 unreality of evil. Nor will it interpret evil as 
 simply good in the making or in the training, but 
 will hold to the reality of evil so that this last shall 
 be for it something that must be overthrown or 
 cancelled. It will see, too, how needless it is to 
 
138 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 confound evil with imperfection and development, 
 how unnecessary evil is to being that is relative, 
 though there be those who do not so view the 
 matter. All that our relativity ought to be made 
 to bear is the mere tendency, proneness, liability 
 to evil. Our imperfection, metaphysically taken, 
 is, as Biedermann has said, evil in a sense which 
 essentially belongs to the finite universe : " a uni- 
 verse without it is no longer a universe distinct 
 from God, but would be nothing but the universe 
 taken back again into the absolute being of God." 
 But to treat evil as simply the pressure of our own 
 finitude is surely to come far short of probing the 
 problem of evil, with its issues of profound moral 
 significance, for these moral aspects do not permit 
 us to rest in evil as simply inevitable. So to rest 
 would not be theodicy enough to satisfy any worthy 
 theistic philosophy. Recent theistic philosophy has 
 not relaxed its grasp on the clue to understanding 
 the presence and possibility of moral evil, which 
 is found in those facts that must be saved the 
 facts of freedom and true moral responsibility, the 
 former of which carries of necessity for us a liability 
 to evil. It thus very clearly sees how moral action, 
 with the optional character it implies, is, as Rothe 
 finely pointed out, constituted by our own self-de- 
 termination. It recognises how infinitely superior, 
 even with its implied possibility of evil or moral 
 transgression, is a system of freedom to any system 
 of automatism or mechanicalism, so that it is no 
 
A TRUE THEODICY. 139 
 
 ground for wonder if God did not care to reign 
 over a kingdom merely of this latter sort. It per- 
 ceives how luminous the problem of moral evil 
 grows as a truly ethical theism views it in the light 
 of its relation to the element of choice and to the 
 free causality of man, whose freedom Deity must 
 conserve to the highest possible spiritual ends. It 
 holds, with Busse, that freedom justifies the exist- 
 ence of moral evil, since freedom without the pos- 
 sibility of evil is not thinkable, and merit and 
 dignity are without it not possible. It must, of 
 course, take cognisance of the fact that only in 
 virtue of that mutability in us, which brings in 
 its train liability to evil, exists the contingency of 
 freewill in us any more than in the freedom of the 
 Absolute. No true philosophy of theism must fail 
 to observe how our action grows morally evil be- 
 cause of the fact that we reject the ideal good which 
 is yet the law of our being, and choose to drop into 
 a lower than our normal orbit. But this is not 
 to say that it regards our evil as only shortcoming 
 in respect of such ideal, or as mere mistaken course, 
 and not also spiritual disorder seen in the form of 
 real rebellion against the personal will of the Lord 
 of life. 
 
 No ; evil is real, and good is real, but it is the 
 good which we identify with the Absolute Being 
 Who is Ground of all things. Yes, for otherwise 
 the ideal or better self in us would be more in- 
 explicable to us than the mystery of evil itself. 
 
140 THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 The ethical verdict against moral evil sounds on 
 in the soul of man for ever. Out of our evil God 
 may, no doubt, bring good ; but evil is never, on 
 that account, of itself contributory to good. It 
 would be absurd to account it so. Our theistic 
 philosophy can give it no necessary place in the 
 plan and purpose of God : it is, as disobedience 
 to the law of God and our own spiritual being, 
 only evil and that continually. It holds this to be 
 so, no matter how God our Saviour, Merciful and 
 Almighty, may permit and overrule it for good. 
 It asks, too, how we could ever think of that 
 Primal Reality which called us into being, and 
 made love the supreme law of our life, as Itself 
 unloving, or other than Perfect Goodness. It says 
 with Whittier, in his " Eternal Goodness " 
 
 " Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
 
 And tossed by storm and flood, 
 To one fixed stake my spirit clings, 
 I know that God is good." 
 
 From all which it must surely be evident how 
 little disposition has been shown by recent philos- 
 ophy of theism to leave the problem of evil aside 
 as a mere unsolvable and unfruitful inquiry, though 
 it has a clearer sense, no doubt, that the final 
 judgment must, in such a problem, be a teleo- 
 logical one. Meanwhile, the world is for it so 
 far from a meaningless thing that "it means in- 
 tensely, and means good." Yes, and if we cannot 
 at present speculatively solve all the difficulties of 
 
THE THEISTIC ATTITUDE. 141 
 
 the case, that is only because here we know but 
 in part. But we know enough to give us refuge 
 from pessimistic despair, and inspire us with such a 
 faith in the future as will at least make it for us no 
 longer impossible that the pessimist's view of the 
 facts of life and the world should not be the only 
 true or possible one. To us all the issues and ends 
 of the present so run up into the future life that the 
 speculative terminus for our problem may not be 
 capable of being finally reached. But in our latest 
 philosophy of theism we find deeper cause for hold- 
 ing fast the confidence that the facts presented by 
 physical nature need not, and ought not, to over- 
 bear the suggestions of conscience, of revelation, 
 and of our own hearts, which bid us believe that 
 all things work together for our good. 
 
142 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 RECENT STUDY OF THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 THE Cosmological Proof has, in recent theistic 
 thought, had its true significance more acutely 
 determined, and the reasons for its miscarriage 
 more carefully defined. We regard the course 
 of recent speculation as tending to prove the wis- 
 dom with which Mansel spoke when he declared 
 the principle of causality to have been, and likely 
 always to be, the battle-ground on which phil- 
 osophy must fight for dear life in the struggle 
 with scepticism. We do not think there can be 
 any doubt of the real philosophical advances made 
 in the sphere of causality the progress in in- 
 terpreting natural law or the observed order of 
 Divine Action, and in laying down the logic of 
 scientific thought or conception. In fact, the con- 
 tinuity traceable in the philosophical development 
 is quite impressive. The self-evident character 
 of the principle of causation has been properly 
 insisted upon, and the metaphysic of causality has 
 
NATURE OF THE CAUSAL PROBLEM. 143 
 
 been more profoundly investigated with a view 
 to the bearing on theistic thought of substance 
 as the ground of phenomena. Not a mere foun- 
 dation of being in the abstract does it seem in our 
 view to have sought, but a real, actually existing, 
 primitive ground (Urgrund] of all reality. The 
 law itself has received more careful enunciation 
 as having for its terms that every event not 
 effect must have a cause. The validity of the 
 law has been more strongly vindicated alike as 
 against those who, with Sir William Hamilton, 
 gratuitously assume in oversight of the positive 
 character of its thought -affirmation the law to 
 be due to the impotence of the mind to transcend 
 experience, and in opposition to those who, like 
 J. S. Mill and others, have taken it to express 
 only a time -relation or observed order of succes- 
 sion, so failing to keep in view the active power 
 or efficient energy involved in relation to a real 
 result. The causal problem is to be viewed as 
 very different from any method of proof that 
 makes the Divine existence a postulate lacking 
 therefore in sure basis for the proof from caus- 
 ality grounds itself on given facts, and follows 
 the actual lines which causality leads, be they up 
 from individual facts to the universal order and 
 history of the world. The -law is seen to be 
 bound up in the bundle of fundamental knowledge 
 in the sphere of science. The causal and dyn- 
 amical power involved is discriminated as work- 
 
144 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 ing through all Nature, not as resident in its 
 single objects, and the antecedents brought into 
 play are differentiated as the conditions, but not 
 the real causes, of the results. The actual world 
 is taken to be but a perceptible unfolding, an ap- 
 pearance (Ersckeinung), of the Urgrund or Primal 
 Ground, but not for that reason unreal. With the 
 world, in which He exhibits or represents Himself 
 to us, He is, of course, not to be confounded. 
 
 The artificiality of our whole phenomenal sequence 
 has been thoroughly laid bare before our evolutional 
 science, with its correlation and convertibility of 
 forces. The inadequacy of any scientific interpre- 
 tation of phenomena, and the impossibility of any 
 philosophical explanation, have been irrefragably 
 shown to be the result, so long as power, creative 
 or formative, is excluded from our notion of causa- 
 tion. Hence the absurd and meaningless aspect of 
 cause when taken simply to signify antecedents, 
 rather than the relation of phenomena to that which 
 is real. The sheer impotence of science to do any- 
 thing more for us than take us to the succession of 
 antecedents and consequents cannot be too plainly 
 expressed, and metaphysics must come to the 
 rescue, if the idea of cause is really to be under- 
 stood at all. While she tarries 
 
 " Philosophy, that leaned on heaven before, 
 Sinks to her second cause, and is no more." 
 
 Power, and not mere antecedence, is what the meta- 
 
THE CAUSAL RELATION. 145 
 
 physical idea of cause proclaims, and even from the 
 scientific side recent writers like Le Conte have 
 held to our consciousness of will - power as the 
 source of the idea of causality rather than trace 
 it to observations of external sequences. It has 
 become always more evident that the transition of 
 the Causal Argument to what, by a self-contradic- 
 tory phrase, is designated a First Cause airXax; or 
 absolutely taken is impossible, since it is an arbi- 
 trary procedure to stop at any point in the endless 
 regress of finite causes, and make an unknown leap 
 of speculative reason. Theistic thought has seen 
 how the very notion of causation itself, with which, 
 in the plexus of causes and effects in the universe, 
 the reasoning began, is at length summarily dis- 
 missed, and that, too, without an infinite and neces- 
 sary Being having been reached. There is, of 
 course, nothing absurd in the conception of a First 
 Cause, in the relative sense merely of God's being 
 First Cause of the world-process, for the notion of 
 becoming or coming into being would in the case 
 of so remote and ultimate a presupposition as God 
 a case so different from that of the phenomenal 
 world be a simply inane and inapplicable inquiry. 
 We have no right to think, as do Spencer and 
 others, that the causal axiom can be deduced, in 
 respect of the sequences here involved, from the 
 law of conservation of energy, in forgetfulness of 
 the qualitative differences that may remain among 
 phenomena amid sameness of quantity of energy. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 We do not, however, in saying this, mean to deny 
 to laws of conservation a real importance for the 
 scientific interpretation of causation, expressive as 
 they are of nature's uniformity. The repugnant 
 character of the philosophical theories of causality 
 of Hume, Kant, and Mill, in the view of reason, 
 has been plainly expressed by George John Ro- 
 manes, when, in his ' Thoughts on Religion,' he 
 objects to their running counter to the very objec- 
 tivity in the relation of cause and effect which all 
 physical science is trying to discover. 
 
 We have come to recognise how Kant is not 
 to be thought of as always viewing causation in a 
 single consistent sense, for consistency has clearly 
 not been to him a jewel here : to Mill it was mat- 
 ter of indifference whether cause and effect be 
 synchronous or successive, while to Kant their 
 simultaneity was in some degree evident. But 
 recent philosophy of theism has not otherwise 
 than more severely treated the Kantian conception 
 of causal law when taken as mere phenomenal 
 sequence or order in time as lacking in genuine- 
 ness, and has more decisively repelled the Kantian 
 doubt of the objective validity of this form of 
 thought as utterly subversive of all knowledge. 
 Not that we are without need of return to-day 
 upon the Kantian positions, that influences from 
 Lotze, Mill, Comte, and Herbart may be rectified, 
 though it is to be claimed that large advances have, 
 in matters of detail, been made since Kant. Such 
 
CRITICISM OF KANT'S POSITIONS. 147 
 
 need there is, for philosophic rationalism has 
 with all that is praiseworthy in its method come 
 short in not keeping its study of natural process 
 in constant touch with experience. We certainly 
 take Kant to have made philosophical advance 
 on Leibnitz by his hypothesis of synthetic know- 
 ledge a priori in place of purely analytic mind 
 function, as he also did upon Hume in getting 
 rid of that thinker's scepticism, and making 
 causation necessary in a way it could never be 
 for the pure experientialist. What has been 
 seriously charged as defect in Mill and Spencer 
 has been their not seeking for the element that 
 lies, in the causal connection, beyond given ex- 
 perience, a logical no less than a psychological 
 justification. 
 
 Certainly we have with us that denial of causa- 
 tion which, in the interests of a pure phenomenal- 
 ism, insists that things as they are do not correspond 
 with things as they appear to us, and which sets 
 aside the law of our thought from being also a law 
 of things, but it has not gone without having had 
 the arbitrary and unwarrantable nature of the posi- 
 tion it takes up in discrediting our knowledge- 
 laid bare. Well might it be so ; for what greater 
 progress has philosophical thought made than to- 
 wards establishing the principle that the secret 
 and ground of our knowing (ratio cognoscendi) is 
 just real being (ratio essendi) in other words, 
 that all true knowing is fundamentally knowledge 
 
148 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 of real being ? Wundt has said that high as ex- 
 perience may be rated by our natural science, not 
 a few physicists hold that, in our knowledge of 
 nature, certain a priori elements particularly the 
 principle of causality are actively concerned. 
 Jevons, among others, has expressed a contrary 
 conviction for himself. We take it to have been 
 more clearly apprehended by recent philosophy of 
 theism that, whether, from a psychological point 
 of view, we accept such a theory as that either 
 of Maine de Biran or of Hume whether we root 
 the belief in causation in volitional experiences or 
 ground it merely in observed external sequences 
 the important fact abides that the causal law is 
 to be maintained as a necessary postulate of science, 
 one, too, confirmed by experience, even though the 
 logical possibility of departure from it cannot be put 
 away. The way of escape from this logical possi- 
 bility which has been sought in some of the most 
 competent German thought of recent years, has 
 lain in Kantian " apriorism." When such "apri- 
 orism " is held not to mark out the causal relation 
 or connection, even as to its form, apart from an 
 appeal to experience, it is obvious that a serious 
 obstacle to the acceptance of the Kantian position 
 is removed. But the need of a psychological basis 
 to such " apriorism," no less than to experientialism, 
 has not always been duly recognised. The eternity 
 of matter, it may be here said, is clearly seen to be 
 no necessary postulate of the cosmos. An eternal 
 
CRITICISM OF HERBART AND LOTZE. 149 
 
 spirit-factor is that which must be taken as really 
 necessary. The origin of the universe lies beyond 
 itself. The whole tendency and direction of recent 
 science and thought have been towards discrediting 
 the view of the eternity of the universe its eternal 
 succession or mere ceaseless transformations, as some 
 have supposed, on really slender warrant. It has, 
 no doubt, been more pointedly urged that personal 
 being at the end of the series of things or events 
 is an illegitimate displacement or unwarranted sub- 
 stitution that the argument, in fact, does not 
 suffice to set up the personality of the self-existent 
 First Cause ; and this is to be freely granted. And 
 it has been more explicitly shown that an infinite 
 Being, who is dp^ or causa sui, cannot be reached 
 by this process of merely negativing the finite. 
 
 Besides all which it has come to be more cor- 
 rectly understood than in the days of Hobbes, 
 Locke, Clarke, Grotius, Leibnitz, Wolff, and Cousin, 
 that this First Cause, even when reached, was but 
 an external Creator or Prime Mover, not the ever- 
 present Governor of all things, and the ever-active 
 World- Ground. Among post- Kantian views that of 
 Herbart was perhaps too strongly rationalist, reduc- 
 ing the causal connection to forms of strictly logical 
 thought. Nor can the metaphysic of Lotze be here 
 viewed as intellectually satisfying, for, in his limited 
 rationalism, his metaphysical comprehension of what 
 is given finds less favour in our eyes as it grows 
 evident that it acquires new ideas only as it re- 
 
150 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 cedes from rationalist and stays itself upon posi- 
 tivist thought. In fact, it does not seem open to 
 doubt that such departure, without sufficient moti- 
 vation, from rationalist direction to that which is 
 positivist, constitutes the weakness of Lotze. The 
 weakness of Lotze's grasp on Will or outgoing 
 causal energy is at once apparent if we turn, say, 
 to Ulrici, who relates finite existences, in a more 
 satisfactory way, to absolute and creative energy 
 than does Lotze with his whole-and-part method. 
 Dr Martineau has powerfully shown how the notion 
 of cause means always more than the sensationalist 
 notion of mere relation the uniform time-relation 
 of Hume, Mill, and Bain, among phenomena; 
 means, in fact, the presence of efficient power or 
 force, the notion of which " cannot be served with 
 a writ of ejectment," but is retained by the human 
 mind in its idea of cause in the most natural and 
 instinctive manner. 
 
 The rigour of the Leibnitzian rationalism was 
 relaxed under Wolffs more explicit appeal to ex- 
 perience, and under the co-ordination of Crusius 
 of the real ground with the ideal. It remained, of 
 course, for Kant to reduce philosophical rationalism 
 still further by setting out the causal connection, 
 even as to its form, as given in experience. That 
 the causal relation is a necessary one is simply an 
 a priori affirmation contributed by the mind above 
 and beyond such experience. W T hat is here a priori 
 is merely the inner constraint by which the causal 
 
CRITICAL ADVANCES BEYOND KANT. 151 
 
 order becomes converted into a necessary relation 
 or connection. Strictly taken, this argument from 
 the notion of causation, inadequate to bring us to 
 such an origin of the creation as is postulated by 
 Christian Theism, is in its idea unable to expound 
 creation for us in any spiritual and worthy sense. 
 It is surely a thing to be clearly now recognised 
 that the absolutely necessary being of this argu- 
 ment is a thing of many possibilities a dim Spen- 
 cerian Unknowable, for instance, or the world itself 
 taken in its totality so long as this proof remains 
 unconnected with the ontological argument. Con- 
 nected with the ontological argument it must thus 
 become, since the conception of a being in whom 
 all and real existence are found can alone be held 
 to determine that of a necessary being. We dare 
 to claim, however, in saying so much, a great 
 advance in our possibilities of thought to-day over 
 those of Kant, who restricted causality to sensible 
 phenomena, maintaining the impossibility of found- 
 ing any argument from a principle which, with him, 
 did not hold " except in relation to the world of 
 sense," for a world that shall lie, as he puts it, " be- 
 yond the world of sense." When Kant restricts the 
 validity of the principle of causality to the sensuous 
 world, he overlooks how synthetic thought is of itself, 
 and how unwarranted is his denial of every sort of 
 causality save that only which finds play within 
 the range of experience. For our thought is not 
 now content without piercing behind and beneath 
 
152 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 these sensible phenomena, until it reach, in fact, 
 infinite spirit as the one underlying Reality, the 
 ultimate Ground of these sense-phenomena. The 
 spiritual character of the infinite and all-causing 
 Force is thus brought into view a constitutive 
 mark of -the conception of God. When we enter 
 thus into the realm of spirit, purely physical and 
 mechanical categories cannot have place, and so 
 the Cosmological Argument does not set them to 
 do metaphysical and for them impossible feats. 
 These categories are real and valid so far as they 
 go, but they are not yet the highest categories 
 open to us, and the philosophy of theism rejects 
 as groundless the Kantian supposition that prin- 
 ciples are to be treated as only subjective, because 
 they happen to transcend the sensuous sphere. It 
 has left behind the obviously absurd mode of trying 
 to think the Absolute as we would one of that very 
 world-series of contingent things for which a basis 
 other than themselves is just the thing sought. No 
 more is our thought denied, with Kant, from ex- 
 tending the causal relation to the universe, taken 
 in whole ; its stand-still to-day is reached rather in 
 trying to find a point in time when this whole comes 
 into view as an effect a feat only abstractly pos- 
 sible to us. What is not only possible, but real 
 and necessary to our thought to-day, is such an 
 extra-mundane Cause or World-Ground as Kant, 
 in his strivings against an external World-Maker, 
 never knew. Kant, however, did feel the inevit- 
 
THE PRIMAL CAUSE. 153 
 
 able character of the question as to the Source 
 (Ursprung) of the Unconditioned. A Primal 
 Cause (Ursache) beyond itself and not the mere 
 being of the world itself the world must have, 
 for, as finite world, it cannot be its own ground, 
 and cannot be the cause of spirit. This material 
 want and ope&s we find fulfilled only in God, as 
 ultimate Source and Sustainer of the finite crea- 
 tion, which rests on the bosom, we may say, of 
 the Divine Potentiality. It is an inexorable law 
 of thought that such finite and dependent being 
 should have Being that is Absolute as its basis 
 and correlate. The law of causation leaves the 
 whole realm of spontaneity which overlies the 
 physical sphere, in the view of theistic philosophy, 
 untouched, for that philosophy has been as far as 
 possible from admitting the law of causation to 
 be universal in its application. 
 
 The philosophy of theism to-day is not without 
 a consciousness of the difficulty of our conceiving 
 a Being, taken as really perfect and all-sufficing, 
 becoming an active Cause at all. Such an absolute 
 cause explains nothing for us, for if anything we 
 can possibly think of should cause this Absolute 
 First Cause to act as cause, it should in being 
 so compelled cease to be First Cause. Nor has 
 there been wanting to recent philosophic thought 
 a clear consciousness of the impossibility of our 
 explaining the way in which causal action works 
 or comes into force. It has had to be content 
 
154 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 to accept the unquestionable fact of efficient 
 causation, and to postulate, on behalf alike of the 
 religious and the philosophical consciousness 
 as the ultimate Ground or immanent Cause of the 
 world an Infinite Spirit Whose Will is supreme. 
 
 W T e have seen it lately said that there is clamant 
 need for exposition of the genesis of the causal 
 idea, that its nature and jurisdiction may be better 
 determined. We shall welcome the exposition 
 when it comes, but it is meantime better to know 
 and realise what has been actually done. It is 
 well to remember that the causal principle does 
 not thus depend on its origin for its place of import- 
 ance to-day, but on its necessity and value as a 
 postulate of science one, too, which no experien- 
 tial test has overthrown. We cannot allow easy 
 and vague groping after desiderata to hamper our 
 appreciation of recent and fine attempts at analysis 
 of the idea of causality, here and in America, or 
 of masterly endeavours in Germany to exhibit 
 both the genesis and historical development of 
 the Causalbegriff. Let mention of such work 
 as that of Dr Koenig for the present suffice 
 as an example. Kant, while remarking the in- 
 completeness of the cosmological argument with- 
 out dependence on the ontological, failed to re- 
 cognise what, we believe, theistic philosophy is 
 now trying to do, that the cosmological proof is 
 just an objective mode of asserting such identity 
 between the idea of God and that of primal or 
 
VINDICATION OF THE CAUSAL PRINCIPLE. 155 
 
 self -existent being as we find, subjectively, in the 
 ontological proof. The idea of causality, no 
 doubt, is one which enters into the conception of 
 God as Author of the worlds, but the Christian con- 
 ception of God has of late been better recognised to 
 be ill served by having stress laid upon the prin- 
 ciple of causation. For when the element of mind, 
 self-conscious mind, in the universe is taken into 
 account, the First Cause we seek must be an 
 intelligent, a self-conscious one. Not as inferred 
 from causal sequences, but as a necessary postulate 
 of thought and an ultimate principle of reason, 
 do we present the Divine Existence. And we 
 present it as that of an Infinite Personality, 
 for rationality is so involved in the phenomena 
 that we can do no otherwise. Destructive of 
 all knowledge whatsoever must remain every 
 attempt to refute or discredit consciousness, on 
 which knowledge still must rest. Hence it will 
 be seen how the Causal Argument leads us up the 
 path that conducts towards the proof of personality 
 a self-existent some One, not merely something. 
 Can we blame reason if, dissatisfied with a Primal 
 Cause, which should be only abstract and unreal 
 and finding its own existence unaccountable, it 
 posits something rational in the First Cause ? But 
 it should be said that it has been always more 
 lucidly made manifest in recent thought that, in 
 reaching the Uncaused Cause, which this argu- 
 ment essays to reach, the value of the principle 
 
156 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 used is not enhanced, since it becomes at length 
 really superseded and dispensed with. For instead 
 of the ordinary law of cause and effect as found 
 among things finite, we pass upward to the uni- 
 verse as an expression of the Will of that God Who, 
 as the Infinite Spirit, is its immanent Ground. 
 
 Recent philosophical theism, it must be said, 
 not sharing the attitude of Mansel, has regarded 
 the Deity as Absolute Reason and Infinite Spirit, 
 Whose infinite power is spiritual and potential. It 
 must here be observed how persistently recent 
 philosophical theism has felt dissatisfied with judg- 
 ment of the causal argument founded simply on 
 laws of the syllogism, and has maintained a convic- 
 tion that not all involved in the principle of caus- 
 ation finds explication in the logical process. As 
 we have had occasion to remark elsewhere, theistic 
 thought has not discovered any invalidity in the 
 synthetic movement whereby thought seeks a unity 
 for such the Urgrund or primal cause must be, 
 though not a unity without quality or difference 
 to which the finite and the contingent may be 
 referred. For, an infinite series of dependent ex- 
 istences or things is, at least in the theistic and 
 philosophical sense, however it may be in the 
 scientific, unthinkable, and for such a series, and 
 for the universe taken in whole, an independent 
 and self- existent Cause or Ground must be pos- 
 tulated. This holds true for any stage in the 
 regress of antecedents to posit any one of which 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR FLINT. 157 
 
 as the primal link or beginning is illogical since 
 such cause stands as the noumenal to the phe- 
 nomenal. Professor Minto endeavours to show, 
 when dealing with Mill's definition of cause as 
 the sum-total of all things, that the term cause is 
 always used in one and the same sense. But it 
 may be both necessary and advisable to discrim- 
 inate between cause, as here, in a scientific and 
 a philosophical sense. Both in treating a self- 
 existent cause and an infinite regress of causes 
 as alternatives, and still more in putting nature, 
 as an effect whose cause is God, on apparently 
 the same level as any ordinary event, which is 
 the effect of some other like occurrence, we are 
 compelled to think Professor Flint less cogent in 
 reasoning and less successful in issue than is usual 
 with that distinguished theologian. It would be 
 hard to find any proper warrant for thus assum- 
 ing that to hold good of the relation of phenomena, 
 when viewed in their totality, to an external cause 
 or source, which happens to hold good in the case 
 of phenomena which are finite and interdependent. 
 Nor can we find any great conclusiveness in the 
 way it is sought to find by examination an absolute 
 beginning for the universe, in such a scientific age 
 as ours, by reasoning back from mere individual 
 effects or objects, or even from supposititious states 
 of the universe that end in pristine mist or ether. 
 It is hardly to be expected that science should 
 turn theist, and search for causes outside and be- 
 
158 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 yond the universe of things. It is only a higher 
 and more philosophic science, than that which is 
 commonly so designated, that will do so. 
 
 We are not saying that science may not bring 
 forth a theism of its own, born of realistic contact 
 with the actual universe, for we are by no means 
 sure that discredit does not attach to the science of 
 our time in having done so little in that direction. 
 We are simply pointing out that science, commonly 
 so called, is content to confine itself to the presenta- 
 tion of truths which it views as cosmical facts, and 
 grounds in realism of its own. And it is still true 
 too often of the tendencies of science that they 
 
 " Make Nature still encroach upon His plan, 
 And shove Him off as far as e'er we can, 
 Thrust some mechanic cause into His place, 
 Or bind in matter and diffuse in space, 
 Or, at one bound, o'erleaping all His laws, 
 Make God man's image: man the final cause." 
 
 Dr James Croll, eminent in geological inquiry, has, 
 in treating of the " philosophical basis of evolution," 
 argued to a beginning of the world from the ex- 
 treme difficulty, if not impossibility, of conceiving 
 an infinite past regress, and theism is then called in 
 by him to explain its determination. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has not shrunk from asking 
 whether it may not infer, seeing that will is the one 
 true cause, knowledge of which is ours, not only 
 causation in God, the self-related causality, but also 
 an Infinite Will as the necessary fundamental cause 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF CAUSATION. 159 
 
 of all things. Only, it must be remembered in a 
 way that has not always been done, that this will 
 of ours, taken as type of Cause, operates ab extra, 
 and hence we may carry over the notion of First 
 Cause to Deity in a way that may suggest a wrong 
 notion of His working, or give a defective idea of 
 His immanence. 
 
 We are inclined to think philosophical theism has 
 been more distinctly perceiving how unfortunate are 
 the physical associations of the notion of causation 
 in a region where such spontaneous and creative 
 power must be held to reign, as in the sphere of 
 that ens realissimum, the Absolute Life. Hence 
 it appears to us to have made a gain, in point of 
 clearness, when it has more carefully differentiated 
 its own philosophical view of cause or causation 
 from the scientific idea of it, on which latter, reason- 
 ably enough from its own standpoint, the First 
 Cause called God seems to be quite needlessly 
 assumed. There can be no doubt that the science 
 of our time, in its most thoughtful aspects, very 
 truly apprehends the dualistic character of the 
 causation principle, by which it is seen to mean, 
 on the one hand, sequence, dependence, manifesta- 
 tion, and, on the other hand, to signify substance, 
 continuity, a persistent dialectical core of being 
 through all phenomenal changes. Nor have ex- 
 plicit endeavours been wanting to set forth in 
 Germany and elsewhere the temporal aspects of 
 the causal problem, also its view as the causality 
 
l6o THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 of relation, whereby the world is no infinite sum 
 of isolated existences, and, once more, the lights 
 in which it is seen, as involving energy of being. 
 Why should we not see in this ultimate core of 
 being, to which reference has just been made, that 
 which our philosophic thought can connect with 
 the immanent energy of the Absolute in a world 
 like ours ? Retaining, in the theistic sense, a true 
 ultimate Ground or Cause, our thought has not 
 been able to rest in the view of James Hinton, 
 who, in the earliest and metaphysical part of his 
 ' Philosophy and Religion/ disposes of the category 
 of causality as " nothing real," but only "a form of 
 thought," in fact, an " absolute nonentity," so putting 
 the copestone on Kantian scepticism. There is for 
 it no mistaking the imperial sway of the idea of 
 causation, which, under the influence of modern 
 science, has more than ever become inwrought in 
 our experience as, in fact, an axiom of the reason, 
 to which, we cannot doubt, justice if not more 
 than its due has been done. 
 
 It has become more manifest that, if we would not 
 treat our own thought-activity, our own conscious- 
 ness, and the active subjects we ourselves are, as so 
 many illusions, we must recognise causality as an 
 objective law of the world. No logical demonstra- 
 tion of God was possible to the Causal Argument, 
 but it is now more freely recognised what helpful 
 ends it served in bringing into bold relief such 
 matters as the insufficiency of the materialistic ex- 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROYCE. 161 
 
 planation, the dependence of the world, and the 
 transcendence of the Deity. The law that depend- 
 ent being demands Being, which shall be absolute, 
 as its support and its correlate, is plainly seen to 
 be an inexorable one in human thought, and no 
 possibility here obtains of confounding the Primal 
 Cause with nature itself. Kant ought to have 
 seen that the Cosmological Argument is only an 
 inference to the existence of a necessary Being, 
 and he should not have piled the Ontological 
 Argument in its a priori aspect upon the Cosmo- 
 logical proof in the way he has done. It is another 
 and very different procedure, if the Cosmological 
 Argument should turn, from the mere existence of 
 its necessary Being, to the Ontological Argument, 
 that this latter may make some determination of 
 the nature of this Being as Infinite in its attributes, 
 should such a Being exist. In the endless regress 
 of the usual form of the argument, we reach an 
 end of efficient forces in the physical realm, and 
 therewith causation, as sharply distinguished from 
 spontaneity, ceases, leaving the attempt as ought 
 to have been seen to prove an Absolute Cause, 
 abortive. But, since matter could not yield us a 
 true Infinite, theistic philosophy, nowise discon- 
 certed by such recent efforts as that of Professor 
 Royce, in the direction of the rejection of the 
 category of causality in the interests of idealistic 
 thought, has turned to mind, in its unmeasured 
 spontaneity, alike for the unity of the universe in 
 
 L 
 
 TTTTTVERE 
 
1 62 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 the unity of Reason, and for the conception of 
 supreme Personal Being and Potency, wherein to 
 find rational satisfaction and repose. 
 
 It has, we may make passing remark here, 
 perceived how thoroughly futile must remain any 
 endeavour of modern thought to flee the category of 
 causality. Hence its perception of what a chief, or, 
 as the Germans say, Haupt problem in religion and 
 philosophy causation really is, and hence its more 
 adequate treatment of the causal problem in Ger- 
 many at least, where, as we have indicated, work 
 of notable excellence has recently been done from 
 the historical and systematic side, with which, how- 
 ever, we are here less concerned than with the 
 critical and speculative aspects. Not only the 
 metaphysical side of the causal problem has, as 
 in pre - Kantian days, received attention, but the 
 theoretic problem, from the side of knowledge, has, 
 in post -Kantian philosophy, received much more 
 adequate treatment. For Professor Riehl the 
 causality principle remains only a subjective one, 
 a necessary postulate to thought, as it seems, for 
 the working out of our experience problems, but 
 not a law of objective Giltigkeit or validity. He 
 distinguishes between the law of causality and the 
 concept of causality, the former being to him valid 
 only for appearances, the latter not being limited to 
 appearances. The causal law, with him, gives form 
 to our experience, and determines its universal 
 form (allgemeine Form) for natural law. But his 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR RIEHL. 163 
 
 thought oscillates between positions' somewhat akin 
 to those of Kant, on the one hand, and to those of 
 Spencer, on the other, with whom he subsumes the 
 causal axiom under that of the conservation of 
 energy, so that we have no thoroughgoing result. 
 Among those who are more or less with Riehl in 
 respect of the intellectual rise the logical (as by 
 Herbart) and not merely (as by Spencer and Mill) 
 psychological justification of the causal concept, 
 are Lotze, Wundt, Hartmann, and Volkelt. Comte, 
 and those who are to-day descended from him by 
 intellectual generation, regard, in their antagonism 
 to the intellectualist theory, the causal connection 
 as logically without value and superfluous from the 
 scientific side. Riehl stands with Trendelenburg, 
 Herbart, Goering, Spencer, and others, who bring 
 cause and effect into a relation of identity, and 
 make the highest of natural laws entirely matters of 
 course. 
 
 It would take a historico - critical survey, out of 
 keeping with our present purpose, to show with 
 what keenness the core of the causal concept has 
 in recent philosophical development been sought 
 in connection with the determination of the onto- 
 logical significance of the concept of causality. 
 Theistic philosophy has not, we come back to say, 
 found any more reason why God should not exist 
 through all the physical energies of that world-order 
 whereby God phenomenally presents Himself to 
 us, than why the spirit of man should not exist in 
 
1 64 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 controlling sway over his own physical powers, 
 correlated as these are to the world-forces. In 
 this necessary and natural rise to a Supreme Mind, 
 in which the thought and force of the world har- 
 moniously centre, as our mode of interpreting the 
 phenomena of the universe, we seem to have an 
 always increasing argument for the Being of God, as 
 the free First Cause and the self-determining Will. 
 " The causality of self-consciousness the causality 
 that creates and incessantly recreates in the light 
 of its own Idea, and by the attraction of it as an 
 ideal originating in the self-consciousness purely 
 is the only complete causality, because it is the only 
 form of being that is free." This is, however, very 
 far from the confinement or restriction of cause as 
 something which subjectivism allows not beyond 
 or without the sphere of subjective consciousness. 
 Nor should it remain unsaid that the emphasis 
 which has not been wanting on the significance 
 of the volitional type of causation, as that with 
 which we are in our own actual experience famili- 
 arised, has been justified by the needs of the time. 
 Yes, even though we grant that the validity of 
 the causal law may not be proved by such theories 
 of its psychological origin as that, for example, of 
 Maine de Biran the " French Kant." George 
 John Romanes has recently, in his * Thoughts on 
 Religion,' given decided adhesion to the doctrine 
 that all causation is volitional, "derived from that 
 known mode of existence which alone gives us the 
 
CRITICISM OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 165 
 
 notion of causality at all." The mystery of matter 
 theistic thought may have still with it, but, as it has 
 more fully studied the sway which finite mind exerts 
 over it, it has cherished a more reasoned conviction 
 that no limitations can by us be rationally placed 
 on the relations of matter to Being that is infinite 
 an infinite Personality. So that we feel justified in 
 saying that recent theistic philosophy has, to much 
 better purpose, kept in view the unfree nature and 
 merely physical connection of such relations as 
 those contained in the idea of cause and effect. It 
 sees of how little advantage the desired external 
 Prime Cause could here be. Such cause, if made 
 manifest to us in the effect, would no longer be 
 mere cause. Such cause, if not made manifest to 
 us in the effect, remains without being known or 
 understood. Because it may be doubted whether 
 the causal phenomena of the world exhibit in any 
 sufficiently intelligible manner the Divine objective 
 activities, this doubt has driven some to rest more, 
 by reason of such indeterminateness, in the onto- 
 logical sphere. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has better remembered the 
 fact that the world, as here, is to be referred to 
 Personality, and not to metaphysical necessity. 
 For this end it has held so firmly, spite of all 
 scientific depreciation of metaphysic, to the prin- 
 ciple of a Primal Force or Power, a Supreme 
 Energy or Essence, in, of, and unto which all 
 things are. It has not, we venture to think, felt 
 
166 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 under necessity to regard the Divine Causality 
 as working in Creation according to any modern 
 emanative theory and quantitative mode. It has, 
 in fact, treated the world as Christianised cos- 
 mology must do as other than an effect, and has 
 referred it in its ultimate principle to the self- 
 determined action of the Supreme Will. It has 
 thus postulated a Spiritual Absolute as the pre- 
 supposition of natural causation and mechanism. 
 And indeed we shall see, in a later chapter, in 
 connection with the personality of God, how 
 modern theological thought has been seeking to 
 advance from the Divine Aseity, by which God 
 is causa sui, and to retain for will a place as an 
 essential moment in its conception of Deity. The 
 truth, in our view, seems to be that our latest 
 philosophy of theism has been gradually perceiving 
 the value of the Cosmological Argument really to 
 lie far less in any logical presentation of past or 
 primal Cause than in its hold upon the mind's 
 search for an ever-present Ground of all things, 
 Whose self -determining causality conditions, from 
 the centre of the cosmos outwards, every other 
 cause. For it still abides true that, as the poet 
 of the " Paradiso " says 
 
 " The glory of Him who moveth everything 
 Doth penetrate the universe, and shine 
 In one part more and in another less." 
 
 " La gloria di Colui che tutto muove 
 Per 1' universe penetra, e risplende 
 In una parte piu, e meno al trove." 
 
THE EVER-PRESENT GROUND. 167 
 
 May we not say that too long has theistic thought 
 allowed the fact to be obscured that this argument 
 from causality really shows what a witness to the 
 spiritual may be found in the natural ? May we 
 not say that the real need of to-day is less a mirac- 
 ulous creation as from the outside of a world 
 that was not, than a true and rational interpretation 
 of the world which here and now is, with God in 
 the midst of it ? " Active eternally in the Trini- 
 tarian mode of His own glory, God also of His 
 free Will becomes active by calling into existence 
 temporal kingdoms, relative natures, and con- 
 ditioned personalities. Finite existences pre- 
 suppose the ground of finitude in the will of 
 Infinite Being. Absolute freedom is unchangeably 
 the condition of relative freedom ; self - existing 
 autonomy the condition unchangeably of the auto- 
 nomy of the creature. Thus related, the infinite 
 to the finite, as Christianity affirms and sound 
 philosophy unavoidably postulates, the nature of 
 God's activity ad extra necessarily transcends the 
 province of logical analysis." 
 
 The philosophy of theism looks, therefore, upon 
 the cosmos as the free and independent creation 
 of One Who is unconditioned save by the laws and 
 resources of His own personal Being a very differ- 
 ent connection, in point of quality, it must be said, 
 from that of the mere category of causality. It 
 finds not any ground of self-existence or true self- 
 sufficiency in beings or things finite. " We are no 
 
1 68 THE COSMOLOGICAL PROOF. 
 
 more able to believe of cosmical substance than, for 
 instance, of the sun, that it is per se a necessary 
 eternal being ; for this cosmical substance possesses 
 no understanding ; it is not spirit." And the ap- 
 peal of the Cosmological Argument never came to 
 us with more power than in its present craving for 
 such an ultimate rationale of the world as is found 
 in the transcendent activity of the Absolute such 
 an Absolute Ground as is found in God, the self- 
 existent Life and the Eternal Causality. 
 
 Hitherto we have been following the regres- 
 sive movement of thought in the Causation Argu- 
 ment as usually set forth ; but it is, as we think, 
 of no small consequence to keep in view its forward 
 or progressive aspect also, as that appears in theistic 
 evolution. This forward aspect lies, as we take it, 
 at the very basis of science, though science may not 
 often take time so to think of it. As for the phil- 
 osophy of theism, that must in our view remain in- 
 adequate, so long as it fails to reach forward to this 
 synthetic view of the future of the world's being 
 and development, in which teleologic development 
 the creative energies of the Absolute Being are still 
 that which grounds and rationalises all. Such a 
 philosophy has manifestly overpassed the thought 
 to which evolution yet remains the largest term 
 in the realm of reality. Why should we restrict 
 the causal principle to the actual, and not let it 
 run out to the conceivable ? Is our thought strait- 
 ened in God and His Divine Potentialities ? Is 
 
FORWARD ASPECT OF THE ARGUMENT. 169 
 
 all speculative flight of reason to be here restrained, 
 and all the possible discounted because it does not 
 narrow itself within the scope of the actual ? Surely 
 in this contingent world, where all is changing, tran- 
 sitory, and incessantly dissolving away, we might 
 well bear more vivid sense of God as Ever-present 
 Cause and Sustainer of Creation ; and it is this 
 swifter, more direct sense and vision of His ever- 
 lasting power and working that the Cosmological 
 Argument still brings to us. Him God of gods 
 and Potentate beyond all others it reveals to us 
 as the enduring but not impersonal Substance ; 
 in fact, as that Absolute Personality that lives 
 and works in all things as their very soul and 
 substance. 
 
I/O 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 IT appears to us a decided theistic advance that 
 the Eutaxiological Argument, drawn from the order 
 and harmony of nature, as betokening plan and 
 bespeaking intelligence, has had its relations and 
 its serviceableness, as a preliminary to the Tel- 
 eological proof, more exactly defined and more 
 fully described, ere this latter in its turn sets 
 out to seek the purposes subserved by such plan. 
 In a vastly higher way it has been seen by the 
 Eutaxiologist how, in the words of Dante 
 
 " Among themselves all things 
 
 Have order ; and from hence the form, which makes 
 The universe resemble God." 
 
 " Le cose tutte quante 
 Hann 'ordine tra loro ; e questo e forma, 
 Che 1' universe a Dio fa somigliante." 
 
 These twin arguments have better recognised each 
 other as theistic allies, and have dwelt in larger 
 unity. And as the strength of both these argu- 
 ments, in their recent forms of presentation, has 
 
SCIENCE AND FINAL CAUSE. I/I 
 
 been drawn from the resources of modern science, 
 so we cannot doubt that a yet fuller presentation 
 of them will one day result from the more devel- 
 oped science of the future. Recent philosophy of 
 theism has far more fully and frankly acknow- 
 ledged the just ground of offence too often given 
 formerly to minds of empirical turn by the uses 
 to which final causes were put, and the arbitrary 
 direction which such causes were made to give the 
 Divine working and procedure. But the engrossing 
 interest and attention which, through the progress 
 of modern science, have been bestowed upon 
 efficient causes have been leading to quite as un- 
 warrantable an excess in the opposite direction, 
 the result of which is seen in a defective appreci- 
 ation of the purposes subserved by things viewed 
 in the light of their constructive worth. This 
 
 o 
 
 holds true although we agree with those who 
 perfectly recognise the entirely changed aspect 
 of the Paleyan argument from adaptations, when 
 these adaptations are viewed in the light of their 
 being issues of a process of evolution in time. 
 Certainly Paley's facts belong to the case for 
 evolution, and as belonging to this case and ir- 
 radiated by this light they must be viewed. For 
 this former method of proof falls within the sphere 
 of things where the words of Schiller apply, that 
 "assiduous Form can sometimes cause the mas- 
 sive truth of Matter to be forgotten." We cannot 
 be allowed to detach the facts of adaptation from 
 
172 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 the main sweep of evolution, but must treat them 
 as bound up in the one great bundle of evolution- 
 ary life. We must believe it the need of the 
 philosophy of theism to-day to dismiss the idea 
 of design to begin with, and to lead up whither 
 the teachings of evolution may direct. We are 
 far more inclined to think than some are that, 
 so doing, we shall be led from study of condi- 
 tions and ends to a recognition of designing In- 
 telligence as the result. The defective view of 
 those whose evolutionary teachings come short 
 here is that which recent philosophy has been too 
 little seeking to rectify, and, though we are here 
 concerned with the results rather than with the 
 reasons and processes of its effort, we will yet 
 say that it has far too little shown the rational 
 and necessary interest in the relation of things 
 to the future, as implied in constructive purpose, 
 than it ought to have been doing, and doing 
 in always more cogent ways. Hence we cannot 
 follow Professor Flint, in according so much 
 stress to the presence of order, and practically 
 dismissing design from all real foothold. We 
 certainly insist on all rational caution in the 
 divining of final causes or intrinsic ends, but it 
 is another and larger demand which requires of 
 us practical abandonment of all belief in ends 
 that have been devised by intelligence. True, 
 we may not thus be carried far on our theistic 
 way, since such ends cast little or no light on 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR FLINT. 173 
 
 the nature of the conceiving or devising intelli- 
 gence say, as to the unity or the immanence of 
 said intelligence. For the argument here calls for 
 supplementing by the Cosmological argument, as 
 that leads us up to the one ground of all exist- 
 ence. Every attempt, however, to expel purpose 
 or design from the universe has proved vain : 
 too deeply graven it lies in the mind of man. 
 View the design argument anew in purest evolu- 
 tionary light, and we cannot doubt that design 
 will once again appear. There is good reason 
 to lament that not more has been done to enable 
 design to reassert itself amid all evolutions in 
 time. Only those who have followed the course 
 of recent theistic endeavour know how much loose 
 thinking has had to be cut away from scientific 
 sophistry as to final causes in order that those 
 composite and purposive results, without which 
 science itself would speedily crumble to pieces, 
 might be reached. 
 
 Theistic philosophy was till lately wont to lean 
 too largely on the teleological line of argument, as 
 founded on adaptation and adjustment to ends, as 
 these were seen, in a too direct and narrow appeal, 
 in connection with the phenomena of the external 
 world. Intelligence alone, it was thus contended, 
 sufficed to explain these appearances of the outer 
 world, as a product permeated with thought. 
 Recent philosophy of theism has recognised the 
 manifest unfairness of the Kantian treatment of 
 
1/4 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 this argument, which did not allow this proof to 
 rest content with evidencing Intelligence, but sought, 
 in fact, to make it fulfil the function of other proofs 
 as well. In fact Kant failed to perceive that, al- 
 though the argument . from final cause may seem 
 at certain points to touch and lean upon what is 
 to be found in the ontological and cosmological 
 proofs, it yet really proceeds not analytically as 
 they to build up its case in a synthetic way from 
 the principle of sufficient reason. It has recently 
 been the aim of theistic thought to concentrate 
 its attention mainly on the field of organic nature, 
 as being that wherein adaptations to internal ends 
 or evidences of will - purpose are most palpable. 
 Most carefully has it remembered that materialistic 
 explanations of ultimate reality are excluded by 
 such proving of Intelligence. Theistic philosophy 
 has clearly noted Kant's failure, in his ' Critique 
 of Judgment,' to keep in mind that the a posteriori 
 argument ought not to be expected to bring forth 
 Infinite Intelligence, but merely to show intelli- 
 gence in the Primal Cause of all things. It should 
 never have been forgotten that the argument does 
 not pretend to divine ultimate ends in nature, but 
 merely concludes from observed adaptations in 
 nature. And it concludes only to a finite cause 
 adequate to the phenomenal world, for that is all that 
 can be here legitimately inferred. It is a decided 
 advance which has recognised that the theistic idea 
 is no such simple and separate thing as this pro- 
 cedure supposed, and which has recognised, further, 
 
CRITICISM OF KANT. 175 
 
 how little relation a method that drew its theistic 
 conception of God from an appeal to exterior 
 nature had for the interior life of man for the 
 religious and not merely logical part of his nature. 
 As to this last point, may we not say that there has 
 been a more careful recognition of that ethological 
 aspect of the teleological mode of proof, in which 
 the ought of our aspirations as rational creatures 
 is set forth, and the end which is ours by indi- 
 vidual right is declared ? For if valid, this alone 
 of our first three arguments or proofs of Divine 
 existence would yield some real insight into the 
 nature of the Deity with Whom it has to do. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy has purified itself of 
 many former philosophical indiscretions in the sphere 
 of teleological inquiry, and has more cautiously pur- 
 sued its researches into the evidences of purpose or 
 design. It has, besides, shown keener appreciation 
 of the fact that all those lines of inquiry into the 
 causes, laws, and ends of phenomena which are 
 designated respectively aetiological, nomological, 
 and teleological, are needed in order to complete- 
 ness of investigation. The teleological argument 
 is now no longer made to carry a burden greater 
 than it can bear, as in days when, as a single argu- 
 ment, it was, according to Kant's representations, 
 expected to yield a direct and entire demonstration 
 of God. Now, at least, this argument is not con- 
 sidered apart from its organic connection with the 
 other arguments : the Teleological argument but 
 infers that the Necessary Being of the Cosmolo- 
 
176 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 gical proof is possessed of large intelligence so 
 large, indeed, that in the a priori Ontological proof 
 it is seen to be infinite. Theistic thought has not 
 been able to forget what Kant said in his * Critique 
 of Pure Reason/ to the effect that the order which 
 reigns in the world proves at most the existence of 
 an Architect, who fashions all with materials ready 
 prepared to his hand, not that of a Creator to 
 Whose idea all is subject, or Who is the Absolute 
 Master of all that exists. It perfectly recognises 
 the fact that the material with which he works must 
 have a limiting effect for the Designer. But it has 
 found time to remember that the form of things 
 here meant, as involving intention, is that inherent 
 and essential form of things which is bound up in 
 their very essence and inseparable from their idea, 
 and to remember, therefore, that One who impressed 
 form of such interior and substantial sort must have 
 fixed also substance or essence in other words, must 
 have been Creator no less than Architect. For, in 
 the spirit of the ethics of Aristotle, it sees purpose 
 combining with all action, sees some end or good 
 for every movement. So that here we are in 
 substantial agreement with Dr Hutchison Stirling 
 when he says : " Notion without perception is 
 empty : perception without notion is blind. This 
 he [Kant] said once, and it is identically the same 
 principle that is potent and at work when we say, 
 Form without Matter is empty, Matter without 
 Form is blind. A matterless form would vanish, 
 
FURTHER CRITICISM OF KANT. I// 
 
 and a formless matter never even be. Either, in 
 fact, is but an element of the other." As Eutaxi- 
 ology has been better seen to have but a partial 
 though definite aim to serve, in viewing the world 
 considered as a cosmos, so we believe it may be 
 said that Teleology has more clearly realised that 
 it, too, has a further, but still partial, purpose to 
 fulfil in viewing it under the category of finality, 
 and must not be expected, as before, to bear the 
 strain, practically, of the whole theistic proofs. 
 
 Recent philosophy of theism rejects the mode 
 by which Kant in his 'Critique of Judgment' tries 
 to derive for it really amounts to that the prin- 
 ciple of finality in nature from the a priori concepts 
 of morality. It does so because it sees Kant to 
 have unwarrantably confounded finality in nature 
 as an a posteriori thing, based simply on observation, 
 on probability, on inference, in presence of the 
 adaptations in nature with the a priori principle 
 which, drawn from the spiritual sphere, refers to 
 ultimate ends which are moral. Kant erred when 
 he began by connecting nature with freedom as 
 necessary to produce finality. Kant erred when 
 he ended for he never got further in real objection 
 to finality than the plea of its subjectivity by 
 making finality no objective result such as that 
 of which we have spoken, but a merely subjective 
 necessity. For the said subjective necessity existed 
 only in Kant's imagination. Kant lays himself open 
 to the contradiction, which has been so well pointed 
 
 M 
 
1/8 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 out by Trendelenburg, that the object itself is, 
 after all, needed, according to Kant, to say when 
 this wholly subjective principle of finality is re- 
 quired. Recent teleology has, wisely, we think, 
 restricted itself to proving volition in nature, the 
 rational product of such volition being properly 
 purpose. The immanent purposiveness of nature 
 we cannot doubt, but we may not assume the im- 
 press of an external will at some particular time. 
 Theism will be slow, as we believe, to admit any 
 justification or necessity for sitting so loosely to 
 such purpose or intention, as Professor Flint ap- 
 pears to do. Yes, even though it should take a 
 view of the design argument not so nearly pre- 
 evolutional as his must, in some respects, be ad- 
 mitted to be. We are in large agreement with 
 the Rev. J. Morris in his recent work ' A New 
 Natural Theology,' as to how little we know of 
 final purpose as bounded by the present, but we 
 are inclined to believe it quite likely that the full 
 evolutional view may lay more stress on purpose 
 plainly discernible now than Mr Morris thinks. 
 Theistic philosophy will also be slow to regard 
 Professor Flint's treatment of the analogy or " sup- 
 posed " analogy between the works of nature and the 
 products of human art his denial, in fact, that " the 
 design argument rests on the analogy between the 
 works of nature and the products of art" as alto- 
 gether satisfactory. For it will not forget that, in 
 the case of both of these, the reasoning really is to 
 
FURTHER CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR FLINT. 179 
 
 a conceiving intelligence, since both are with 
 whatever differences products permeated with 
 reason, which works through them, but are nowise 
 results of any self-conscious intelligence or reflec- 
 tion on their own part. We are not, in saying this, 
 forgetful of what Schelling once said, that ''the 
 peculiarity of nature rests on the fact that with all 
 its mechanism it is yet full of purpose. The dif- 
 ference between the products of art and those of 
 nature is, that in the former the notion is only 
 impressed on the surface of the object, while in the 
 latter it has entered into the object itself, and is 
 absolutely indivisible from it." Of course, the 
 reason of this last result is found in the immanence 
 of the world -reason. But we come back more 
 closely to the point in hand. We see the Intelli- 
 gence in nature working as from within, and in 
 ways that only the higher the mental, non-arti- 
 ficer-like works of men resemble. There is no 
 reason why the co-ordination of conditions which 
 we find in works of art under man's intelligence 
 should not lead us to the possibility that like results 
 in Nature should be due also to co-ordinating 
 Intelligence. The " designing intelligence," too, 
 which Professor Flint infers from order and adjust- 
 ment, must certainly, in fairness to the evolutionist 
 view, be viewed far more closely under the light of 
 the conditions that mark its manifestation than 
 seems to have been done by him, or indeed by 
 the customary theistic philosophisings of the past. 
 
180 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 And late theistic philosophy has shown how futile 
 and blind is the fight with final causes which has 
 been witnessed in the theory of natural selection, or 
 the doctrine compounded of accidental variation, and 
 that survival of those favoured ones termed " the 
 fittest" which has even been taken by some to 
 mean really the survival of those that do survive ! 
 Recent theistic philosophy has made what ap- 
 pears to us a very decided critical advance in the 
 way it has discriminated the principle of what is 
 known by the unfortunate phrase " natural selec- 
 tion " the rather negative principle, for so it really 
 is, of eliminating the unfit from a real producing 
 principle or true positive cause, and has shown 
 what good ground existed for misgiving, such as 
 John Stuart Mill was not without, as to the ''ade- 
 quacy" of natural selection to account for the ad- 
 mirable adaptations of nature. In fact, it does not 
 seem too bold a claim to put forward that theistic 
 philosophy has taught science to think what it 
 means by "natural selection"; if cafuse, what sort 
 of cause ; or if effect ; or if both, at once natura 
 naturans and natura naturata in Spinozan style. 
 And, now that recent philosophy of theism has 
 come more distinctly to see how needlessly anti- 
 thetical are design and evolution, it has grown more 
 evident how little altered the principle of natural 
 selection, which was supposed to have done so 
 much, by its processes of specialisation, for our 
 teleological wonders, has left the design argument. 
 
CRITICISM OF NATURAL SELECTION. 181 
 
 It has become more manifest how no possible de- 
 monstration of natural processes, whereby Design 
 might be dispensed with, would disprove the pres- 
 ence of an intelligent Creator, or do more, in fact, 
 than present another version of the same affair. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has sometimes seen Natural 
 Selection to be itself only a form or species of 
 contrivance, and has then vigorously driven home 
 the onus probandi upon those who deny that the 
 progressive issues of the harmonious working of 
 external and internal relations are the legitimate 
 results of design. It has, of course, in doing so, 
 more freely acknowledged how largely organisms 
 are shaped by their environment, but has more de- 
 cisively rejected the assumption that they are not, 
 for that reason, made for their environment. It 
 has not shrunk from seeing how greatly applicable 
 to the struggle for existence under natural selection 
 are the words of Schiller 
 
 " Meanwhile until Philosophy 
 Sustains the structure of the world, 
 Her workings will be carried on 
 By hunger and by love." 
 
 " Einstweilen, bis den Bau der Welt 
 Philosophic zusammenhalt, 
 Erhalt sie das Getriebe 
 Durch Hunger und durch Liebe." 
 
 Yes, for the persistence of true altruistic love is 
 for us the real " survival of the fittest." It has not, 
 let it be here remarked, denied that the strength 
 
182 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 of the design argument is, as Lotze said, the im- 
 probability of certain results being found in nature 
 if they were not designed a position which, of 
 course, is not without an open door for denial of 
 said improbability. But it has maintained, as against 
 Lotze, that the design argument rests upon un- 
 biassed observation of nature, and not upon this 
 preconception or that other presupposition. Thus 
 we are brought to see the significance of what 
 Professor Flint has so well expressed, when he 
 says that "the argument is not from but to design." 
 We suffer the real drawback of being liable to 
 uncertainty that the design we discover is that 
 which the Designer had in His mind, but at any 
 rate the right track lies in reaching towards design 
 rather than starting from it in the shape of adap- 
 tations of parts. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has felt the fact to be not 
 without significance, that thinkers like Trendelen- 
 burg and others of equal distinction have held a 
 philosophy of design to the effect that, as the 
 thinker just named put it, wherever design is found 
 realised in the world, it was preceded by thought 
 as its first Cause. But, of course, we must see 
 that there is design, and not the fact of actual 
 fitness or adaptation merely. It has to be pointed 
 out what an open door all this still leaves for 
 Theism ; and if we then leave the region of mere 
 externality, and take account of all we find within 
 man, the theistic result will not be doubtful. Says 
 
THE LARGER TELEOLOGY. 183 
 
 Fiske, in his 'Idea of God': "That which the 
 pre - Copernican astronomy naively thought to do 
 by placing the home of Man in the centre of the 
 physical universe, the Darwinian biology profoundly 
 accomplishes by exhibiting Man as the terminal fact 
 in that stupendous process of evolution whereby 
 things have come to be what they are. In the 
 deepest sense it is as true as it ever was held to 
 be, that the world was made for Man, and that 
 the bringing forth in him of those qualities which 
 we call highest and holiest is the final cause of 
 creation." It may be perfectly true that we are 
 called to reason from the present life and no 
 other ; but under what compulsion must our view 
 of the present life be confined to what is merely 
 external ? Why must I gaze on death and devas- 
 tation without, and not look on equally patent facts 
 of moral yearning and uprising aspiration within ? 
 And if I should even be told that this strange 
 world -order, with its pain and perplexity, plague 
 and pestilence, is for man, exists for his good or 
 growth, why should I give way to thinking of such 
 a teleology as petty, tasteless, and senseless, as 
 men have sometimes done who short-sightedly lost 
 vision of man's own teleological reference as a being 
 formed for eternity ? 
 
 It deserves to be noted, then, that recent philo- 
 sophical theism has steadily grown in the conviction 
 of the unwisdom of the former method of reasoning 
 on a narrow basis to a Contriver from observed con- 
 
184 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 trivance in nature, such appeal having been set in 
 far too exclusive a relation to the intellect as though 
 it were an isolated and self-sufficient proof. It is 
 inevitable that such inferior designs and purposes 
 should be for ever open to question, in view of other 
 phenomena that may appear antagonistic to the in- 
 ference of purpose or design. " Not only is it im- 
 possible," says Principal Caird, " to trace everywhere 
 the marks of design amidst the seeming imperfec- 
 tions and terrible anomalies of the present system 
 of things ; but, as we have seen, all the adaptations 
 and contrivances of which the argument speaks pre- 
 suppose the existence of matter or material forces, 
 of which it can give no other account than to ascribe 
 them simply to creative will or power." Now, the 
 first part of this is in a certain sense true and 
 relevant, but why should Principal Caird give way 
 to the incorrectness of dwelling with such strength 
 and exclusiveness on " will " or " power," when in- 
 telligence is really that which the argument essays 
 to prove ? Why does he insist on Infinite intelli- 
 gence being proved, when the aims and ambitions 
 of the argument do not professedly extend to in- 
 finity ? Is the proof of pure intelligence an unim- 
 portant element in days when impersonal and un- 
 conscious World- Grounds are so much in vogue ? 
 As little as may be can it be questioned that the 
 moral aims of the Will Supreme, alike in external 
 nature and in man, have had larger importance 
 assigned them, and have had their significance more 
 
CRITICISM OF PRINCIPAL CAIRD. 185 
 
 fully understood. Not, of course, that the strange 
 obtrusive anomalies with which nature, " red in 
 tooth and claw," is replete, have had more but 
 this is much than the moral uses they possibly 
 subserve more clearly discerned, and their anomal- 
 ous character more carefully defined. We are cer- 
 tainly inclined to think that those evidences of 
 natural evil which have led to such arraignments 
 of the actual order of nature as have come to us 
 from J. S. Mill, Hartmann, and others, have pressed 
 not less heavily on our late theistic thinking, which, 
 as it appears to us, has really felt more profoundly 
 than ever the perplexing problem so presented to 
 it. For recent theistic philosophy sees clearly 
 enough that the time has gone by when it can, even 
 if it would, shirk the difficulties presented in what 
 Nature, tormenting and devouring, with, according 
 to Mill, " the most supercilious disregard both of 
 mercy and of justice," offers to our view. It is to 
 be plainly said that there must be no blinking 
 the strange sad facts of plague and tempest, of 
 dearth and disaster, of disease and death, which 
 can, to no natural scrutiny, be evidential of any 
 particularly benevolent Deity. Even as to man, 
 we must behold him 
 
 " Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred, 
 Or mown in battle by the sword." 
 
 But we claim for that philosophy that it has more 
 carefully distinguished the suffering animal world 
 
1 86 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 from the world of suffering man, recognising in how 
 many different ways the former is exempt from 
 troubles that belong to man as a being gifted with 
 rational foresight, and beset with so many hopes 
 and fears. We believe it has more successfully 
 shown how the seeming rapacities and cruelties of 
 earth mean for man but such wholesome severity 
 as may compel him to spiritual advance. We claim 
 for it, too, that it has done more to vindicate and 
 explain these painful conditions as involved in the 
 slow working, towards good and worthy ends, of 
 the law of growth or progress. Nature, no doubt, 
 may seem to threaten or crush the good man 
 equally with the wicked, but it has surely come 
 to be better understood how little of sweet reason- 
 ableness there can be in our reaping the untold 
 advantages that spring out of nature's uniformity, 
 without making allowance for some disadvantageous 
 aspects and incidental evils in a world where all 
 things are finite. Recent theistic philosophy has 
 rightly protested against thought fixing its gaze 
 with such intensity on any possible residuum of 
 shadow or mystery which may remain after every 
 discrimination and abatement, that for it, purblind, 
 there shall exist in vain the multiplied and diverse 
 proofs of creative goodness, the exquisite and in- 
 finite tokens of end, harmony, and ideal purpose. 
 It has recalled us to the fact that ultimate ends 
 are not ours to scan, as though the whole ground- 
 plan of creation lay before our view. It does not 
 
OFTHK""?] 
 
 UNI VJL : 
 
 NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 suffer us to forget that it does not seem as if we 
 had any right to expect complete beneficence in 
 the life that now is ours, where everything is rela- 
 tive, and where God's final purposes with us are 
 so largely hid from view. It has more wisely in- 
 sisted upon the immeasurable importance of moral 
 discipline and spiritual evolution in the history of 
 the world, as against the mere background of 
 pleasure or happiness or justice. It has emphasised 
 the difficulty of those, who are such interested 
 parties, as we, being any impartial or capable 
 judges of what is wise and good in Divine methods 
 of compassing that moral and spiritual growth in 
 man which is of prime moment to an ethical phil- 
 osophy that stands about as high above the classic 
 utilitarianism of Mill as the heavens are above the 
 earth. This universe as conditioned in suffering, 
 waste, ignorance, and evil, is not only actual as 
 Mr Morris so strongly insists, but is, in ways which 
 we hardly think he and others fully realise, the 
 only ideal universe with all its progressive issues 
 that we can conceive. Yes, and extremely grave 
 as are the difficulties and anomalies presented in 
 such facts as sin and sorrow, disease and death, 
 famine and catastrophe, yet these all become more 
 intelligible to him for whom life means the sub- 
 jection of the actual to the ideal, and they are 
 illumined, as we believe, in forms that are higher 
 than any that lie open to mere argument, to him 
 who is enabled to live the life of progressive faith 
 
188 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 in Christ, precisely as he does so. In the fearful 
 strain between the ideal and the actual, we, for our 
 part, believe the conscious and unswerving devote- 
 ment to the spiritual and ideal a requisite of deep 
 and ever -pressing urgency. We believe we are 
 warranted in saying that such speculations on the 
 origin of species as those of Darwin have been 
 rightly caught up by theistic philosophy as really 
 emphasising creation as a present process, in accord- 
 ance with the better view of creation that prevails 
 in modern theology. Our philosophy of theism 
 has very properly insisted on the origination, and 
 not merely the preservation, of variations being 
 accounted for by any theory that would displace 
 the theistic hypothesis, which keeps ever steadily 
 before it the problem of the ruling Power in the 
 Universe that now is. For, as has been said, 
 "modification as modification is never a First, it 
 is always process, movement between movement 
 of something into something." Yes ; whereas the 
 real quest is still one of origin, not modification. 
 
 Recent philosophy of theism, knowing the neces- 
 sity of search into final causes to any large synthetic 
 movement of thought, has maintained a theistic 
 evolution in which design is not superfluous, at least 
 to any comprehensive and thoroughgoing interpre- 
 tation of the phenomena of nature and life. Pro- 
 fessor Josiah Royce, in his ' Religious Aspect of 
 Philosophy,' will have none of " empirical tele- 
 ology," and with, it must be said, no overplus of 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROYCE. 189 
 
 philosophic calm, spurns all such notion of design 
 as may be thought to be inwrought in the structure 
 and story of created things ; but while he has much 
 to say on the " confused hum " of nature's voices, 
 his own idealism has really gotten such invincible 
 mastery that he is nowise free to note the real 
 significance of voices that tell of unity and purpose. 
 And the teleological character of nature in its 
 totality is what recent theistic philosophy has with 
 especial care and power emphasised, with a view 
 to raising thought to the conception of one grand 
 design which reaches over unbounded space and 
 runs through unlimited time. This has been to 
 enrich thought, through the inner or essential 
 teleology involved in such a position, with a wider 
 and worthier teleological view of the world, as an 
 organism having an end in itself, than was possible 
 to the older theory of it as a machine of so many 
 parts, indwelt by no principle of life. Particular 
 events, individual organisms, difficult, it may be, to 
 reconcile with order and design, are seen to be less 
 deservedly allowed to conflict with the evidence of 
 harmony and design which recent thought has found 
 in creation, taken in whole. We are not saying 
 that teleological significance may not be attached 
 to these, but we certainly are affirming that present- 
 day philosophy of theism has found a more ex- 
 cellent way in the larger teleological sweep of its 
 thought. Modern thought has, as already we have 
 shown, purged the design argument of its old ex- 
 
190 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 ternal and accidental character, and has recognised 
 the immanence of design, though, as we shall see 
 later, not viewing this as settling the question of 
 intelligence. 
 
 While thus abolishing externality from Design, 
 it has duly kept in view the fact that the scientific 
 account of nature has more than ever become based 
 upon the assumption of purpose, upon the imman- 
 ent rationality of nature, whose signs of purpose as 
 seen in adaptations, contrivances, expedients, are 
 nowhere more strikingly exemplified than in such 
 writings as those of Haeckel, Blichner, and Darwin. 
 It has certainly found the cosmic processes of nature 
 marked by deeper purpose, greater rationality, and, 
 we venture to add, stronger ethical tendency, than 
 Professor Huxley represents in his recent Romanes 
 lecture, even though he talks of the " rational 
 order" which "pervades" the changeful processes 
 of nature. And, while it may have grown more 
 careful not to draw more out of this rationality and 
 purposiveness of nature this cosmic nature which 
 is " no school of virtue" than would be warranted, 
 it has yet laid firmer hand upon the aspects thereby 
 presented as confirmatory of the theistic trend or 
 ground. Such evolutionists as Spencer and Huxley 
 have not called in question the compatibility of 
 evolution with teleology of the newer or higher sort, 
 and theistic philosophy has, with increase of power, 
 contended that Divine ideal, end, or plan has not 
 been wanting, in accordance with which the Force 
 
FURTHER CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROYCE. 191 
 
 manifesting itself throughout evolution has been 
 directed by intelligence. A Designer who works 
 this evolution is one who, Dr Royce exclaims, with 
 an air of incredulity, " shows wonderful foresight 
 and mastery." But, we ask, why so wonderful in a 
 World-Designer ? Do not even our idealistic phil- 
 osophers themselves show the same ? Our theistic 
 thought of late has shown a decided inclination at 
 least entirely to discard the phrase " final causes," 
 since end is not properly cause at all, and since, 
 even in the hands of Janet, the distinction between 
 efficient and final cause cannot be said to be too 
 satisfactorily maintained. By this we do not, of 
 course, mean that reason has grown other than more 
 imperious in its demand or inquiry into single and 
 conjoint purpose, though it dwells less on the evi- 
 dences of small separate contrivance, and more on 
 those broad constructive lines along which the world 
 is upbuilt. Trendelenburg, Dorner, and others 
 among recent theologians and philosophers, have 
 regarded final cause as an a priori principle, but it 
 seems beyond doubt that recent theistic thought 
 has preferred to view end or purpose in an inductive 
 light rather than in an a priori aspect, and has, we 
 may perhaps say, more carefully differentiated the 
 design principle as lacking in the universal character 
 that pertains to the principle of causation. Still, 
 recent philosophy of theism has kept in view the 
 clue to the difference between causes and final 
 causes supplied in spontaneity as that which final 
 
192 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 causes demand. It has urged, with not a little 
 cogency, the part played by motive in mind-activity 
 open as that is to the scrutiny of rational insight 
 as placing the notion of final cause on like ground 
 of necessity in human thought with the idea of cause. 
 It has accentuated the truth that any absence we 
 may find of particular purpose or design, such as 
 would render luminous and intelligible to us the 
 parts of nature, nowise militates against the fact of 
 purpose in the whole, or against the existence of 
 one all-embracing design. But, whilst this is so, 
 it has also to be said that the latest philosophy of 
 theism regards the relegation of those innumerable 
 traces (^x^ 7 )) or sig ns of purpose selection, com- 
 bination, gradation which science is for ever in- 
 creasing, to the chapter of accidents, as quite be- 
 yond the bounds of rational probability. What an 
 apotheosis of accident, which has thus become the 
 great creative agency, our grand progressive power ! 
 Was ever knowledge like this, based upon accident 
 upon accident whose results are regular, definite, 
 curiously continuous, and strangely constructive ? 
 But we may as well remember that " a world of acci- 
 dent could not be an object of cogitation. If the 
 world around us be not a system of thought, whence 
 comes the need we feel for thinking about it ? " 
 True, in all this it may at times have seemed as 
 though theistic philosophy were rather wanting in 
 appreciation of the Darwinian discovery of natural 
 selection, but we cannot think this has been more 
 
THE LAW OF SURVIVAL. 193 
 
 than merely the result in appearance of a law so 
 potent and as Wallace has contended beneficent 
 as that of Natural Selection having been pushed to 
 such extreme lengths from the scientific side that 
 its limitations had to be rather sharply drawn from 
 the theistic standpoint, to which the " fittest " does 
 not mean the physical but the spiritual. The law 
 of survival of the fittest love, based on faith, re- 
 mains the true " fittest "-has been seen, we take it, 
 to be unrealisable so long as the powers of nature 
 are left to themselves, and the law is viewed as 
 really coming into play only under the ceaseless 
 supervision of intelligence which marks what is 
 fittest, not under the reign of accident. 
 
 We may here remark that recent philosophy of 
 theism, separating the essence of teleology from 
 its accidents, has clearly distinguished the Dar- 
 winian view as affecting really the mode in which 
 ends are realised, and not the real issue as to 
 purpose or intention. And theistic philosophy 
 must certainly give Darwinian teaching the credit 
 of having, in a negative manner, made the theory 
 of late materialism less tenable, as represented, 
 say, by Czolbe when (in his * Neue Darstellung 
 des Sensualismus ') he propounds the eternity of 
 species. It may do for science, possibly, to say, 
 with Wallace, that variation is the mere absence of 
 identity, and calls for no further explanation, but 
 it will not do for philosophy which wants to know 
 why the variations have always been so apt and 
 
 N 
 
194 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 profitable for life rather than otherwise. So in- 
 sufficient, indeed, has Natural Selection been shown, 
 in recent inquiry, to be to compass the results 
 attributed to it, that we see it have recourse to the 
 phrase " survival of the fittest," which, though little 
 better than a truism, has served as fig-leaf to hide 
 the nakedness of the theory,' which is virtually one 
 of chance. 
 
 The rather unwarrantable procedure has been 
 laid bare of those who like Huxley and others- 
 try to escape the irrationalities of this chance theory 
 by claiming variation as neither indefinite nor 
 fortuitous, the while that they seek to extract such 
 fortuity from the argument as may be to the detri- 
 ment of design. The difficulties, from the bio- 
 logical side, of accepting Darwin's law as the ex- 
 clusive one of the protoplasmic order have been 
 forcibly pointed out by the late Dr Romanes, who 
 has sought to supplement it by the hypothesis 
 of physiological selection, or " the segregation of the 
 fit." By other evolutionists also its insufficiency, 
 as the one and only cause of the transformation 
 of species, has been distinctly maintained. And as 
 for Weismannism, we may quote the words of J. 
 Arthur Thomson, in a recent paper before the Royal 
 Society of Edinburgh, that Weismann's theory, 
 carrying with it denial of all inheritance of acquired 
 characters, and excluding the direct assistance of 
 environmental and functional variations, " throws 
 a still heavier burden than Darwin did on the 
 
CRITICISM OF DARWINISM. 195 
 
 shoulders, of Natural Selection, which many believe 
 to be already somewhat overweighted." It is due 
 to Darwin, of course, to remember that he not only 
 
 recognised the benevolent intent of Natural Selec- 
 
 & 
 
 tion, but also modified his notions of the scope and 
 power of Natural Selection, as the law of the de- 
 velopment of adaptations, before the results of 
 Nageli, Broca, and others, who neither admitted 
 his original cause of mutation nor the " unlimited " 
 character of variability, thus contenting himself with 
 having helped, as he said, to overturn the dogma 
 of separate creations. Nor does Darwin appear 
 to us to have considered how those very variations, 
 which Natural Selection makes use of, may have 
 been subserving real intrinsic and predestined ends, 
 the while that they might also be turned to ex- 
 trinsic designs. May we not, then, say that recent 
 theistic philosophy has not been content without 
 seeking some higher principle of development 
 which, carrying with it, it may be, the presup- 
 position of conscious preconceiving intelligence and 
 creative cause, will determine the " direction " and 
 limit " the amount of variability " ? May we not 
 affirm that the notion of end inherent in the being 
 or essence of all struggling world-existences has 
 been more wisely shown to be something which 
 neither is, nor should be, evitable ? Yea, and that, 
 however the inexorable laws of causation have 
 been present in all the results reached by the way 
 of Natural Selection, there must be far more than 
 
196 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE, 
 
 blind mechanical necessitation of the whole, even 
 underlying, end-positing Reason as root and base 
 of all ? 
 
 It may, then, be now said that recent thought has 
 come to regard the former method of theological 
 movement after final causes as faulty, less on the 
 ground of its falsity than of its lack of due propor- 
 tion, the thought and the energy of God in it lacking 
 in fundamental depth. And that, further, the modern 
 theory of development, far from dispensing with de- 
 sign or intentionality, calls anew for it. In the 
 deepest view of it, evolution must mean, behind 
 order and change, those ideas which are really end- 
 forming and Divine. But these ends or purposes 
 which are being subserved by creation we have no 
 right to assume as lying completely spread out 
 before us in the order of things as at present known 
 to us. While recent philosophical theism has, as 
 we judge, freely admitted what good ground science 
 had to be hostile to final causes, with the insufficient 
 explanations that issued therefrom, it has yet set its 
 face more firmly against lending any countenance 
 to the summary and superficial dismissal of final 
 causes sometimes to be seen in scientific inquirers, 
 who would confine attention exclusively to efficient 
 causes in the interests of matter, as against mind in 
 its primary working in the universe. For it has 
 clearly seen what an arbitrary and irrational pro- 
 cedure it would be to stifle the presumptions in 
 favour of final causes which the world presents, 
 
THE TELEOLOGICAL PLEA. 197 
 
 and so it has sought a surer place for these more 
 comprehensive and remote ends by setting them in 
 juster relations to the efficient causes or causes 
 proper which they carry with them as their imme- 
 diate explanation. It maintains the teleological plea 
 for intelligence, but does not transcend the premises 
 from which it was formerly sought to extract nothing 
 less than intelligence, infinite, personal, free. It keeps 
 men fast to the essence of the argument, which is not 
 one of the Infinite at all, but really one of Mind 
 Mind as the inferred result of design. It has ac- 
 knowledged with more candour that intelligence here 
 can only be viewed as associated with, and depend- 
 ent upon, blind agents and necessary forces, not in 
 connection with the spontaneity and voluntary action 
 which are a primal feature of true personal con- 
 sciousness. Still, it has felt that to claim for the 
 purposes found in nature only a blind intelligence, 
 or to take refuge in a theory of "blind immanence" 
 for nature's designs, does not settle the question of 
 intelligence involved at all, since, if it is blind in its 
 working, we are the more necessitated to think fore- 
 seeing intelligence beyond, no matter whether that 
 intelligence has effected its ends from without or 
 from within. So we claim for the modern philos- 
 ophy of theism that, while it does not forget how 
 the modern philosophy of the unconscious rejects 
 the idea of conscious intelligence in nature, it yet 
 keeps in mind how contradictory must remain to 
 human reason the firm insistence of that philosophy 
 
198 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 on ends as being realised by nature in its blind 
 working, while there is rejected the conditioning 
 intelligence which alone makes those ends con- 
 ceivable to us. We must reject an unconscious 
 finality as foreign to all our experience. We must 
 postulate supreme self-conscious Intelligence as 
 immanent in nature and in man, while transcending 
 them. We retain a Deity who is, in fact, less the 
 Architect than the 7701777779 of the universe as now 
 known by us, shaping its endless developments by 
 laws of ordered and constructive intelligence. We 
 do not forget, with some present-day theistic phil- 
 osophers, that nothing in the world is single, not 
 even the teleological argument. But it is a rash 
 and illogical leap, to think that that argument may 
 have no function to fulfil because it must be related 
 to other proofs before a full effect is reached. We 
 deny Paulsen's right to any such mechanistic view 
 of the universe as would imply that the theistic view 
 postulates an Intelligence working only from the 
 outside : if he chooses such a one-sided view, and 
 regards not the Intelligence as immanent no less 
 than transcendent, he has no right to make it a 
 ground for rejecting theism. It has yet to be 
 shown why scientific or naturalistic pantheism, such 
 as Paulsen embraces, must, in the vaunted name 
 of evolution, have will which is blind. Yet a blind 
 striving of wills after an unconscious ideal is the 
 immanent tendency by which he metaphysically 
 interprets evolution and maintains his so - called 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR PAULSEN. 199 
 
 aesthetic teleology. The natural causes, one would 
 think, must be in a very bad way, when they are 
 best helped by blind will or impulse ( Trieb\ in- 
 stead of being allowed to have intelligence working 
 through them and not merely from without, as 
 Paulsen incorrectly apprehends the theistic view 
 no less than will. 
 
 Law, too, concerning which, let it be said, there 
 has been so much confused thought in this connec- 
 tion, has been more truly perceived to be, in its 
 recovered force and sweep, but the servant of de- 
 sign, not its antagonist. It has grown more evident 
 to recent philosophy of theism that design is not 
 excluded by any pre-ordained results being brought 
 about through the instrumentality of law, and that 
 what needs to be explained is just law itself. It 
 forgets not that what the law cannot do here is 
 just to tell us why the actual facts are what we 
 find them to be. We have still to know whether 
 they are due to chance or to purpose. And 
 may we not, from the regularity of law implying 
 plan, infer design in law ? Theistic philosophy 
 has not been betrayed into forgetting that, though 
 the world is ruled according to law, it is really 
 not governed by law, as though that were any 
 metaphysical entity, or were self-explanatory, but 
 by Will behind those unvarying sequences of 
 nature which are insufficient to explain themselves. 
 It remembers that Law is really a thing of method, 
 the method by which force works, and consequently 
 
200 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 a thing that tells us about the how rather than 
 the why. It has in recent years more decisively 
 rejected the Comtean absurdity that a Deity is 
 not necessary as the explanation of the sequences 
 of nature, merely because these are regular. It 
 has, with Trendelenburg, found the very fixedness 
 and conformity characteristic of nature's forces to 
 be, in fact, further argument for a determining 
 cause. It has more firmly demanded of those 
 who flout the idea of design in nature a reason 
 for the reign of law being so fruitful in order, 
 method, beauty, and harmony, if law itself, which 
 men have too often hypostatised, be not that which 
 has its seat in "the bosom of God." It has, more 
 pertinently than before, observed the benignity that 
 runs with prevailing purpose through the laws of 
 the world, reducing the fortuitous elements of life's 
 discipline to their proper place of subordination to 
 the purposes of virtue, moral growth, and training. 
 It has, too, we believe, more earnestly striven to 
 exhibit what a spring of constructive energy to the 
 minds and souls of men the suffering of the world, 
 which is incident to law, has been, and what a great 
 lack of insight and discriminating power has under- 
 lain much of the strongest modern writing of the 
 sentimental sort on the overdrawn subject of suffer- 
 ing in animals as in man. 
 
 At the same time we admit, though we thus 
 speak, what a vice it has so often been in the 
 presentation of the theological argument, that it 
 
SCIENCE AND TELEOLOGY. 2OI 
 
 has so little felt, or at least faced, the difficulties 
 suggested by the cases that appear of maladjust- 
 ment, wastefulness, and purposelessness. It mis- 
 takes not law, under the scientific idea of it, for 
 cause when it is only method, and it escapes the 
 folly of expecting law to explain a creation which 
 is inexplicable save on hypothesis of controlling 
 Intelligence, of which law itself, as something in 
 which reason leads us to find satisfaction, serves 
 as a proof. It militates nothing against what has 
 just been advanced if we say that the teleology 
 of our time has, to keep itself right with science 
 which everywhere postulates causality, viewed ends 
 as realised in nature, not in the former fashion of 
 interference with nature from without, but in ways 
 which are inward and natural. But there is no 
 sound warrant for supposing that the philosophy 
 of theism to-day does not take such natural law 
 as an expression of the purpose of the intelligence 
 that works behind and through it. And so we 
 deem ourselves entitled to say that, in the prin- 
 ciple of teleology considered with reference to the 
 universe as a whole, theistic philosophy has, with 
 fuller warrant, referred the reason or intelligence, 
 found as an objective product in nature in its 
 entirety, to a sufficient and final origin in Reason 
 as a subjective and personal power. Final pur- 
 pose or design, with its implicates of intelligence, 
 power, and will, those attributes of personality, has 
 been with but ill success impugned by Agnosticism, 
 
202 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 driven to the dernier ressort of ascribing to matter 
 in an inherent way those very qualities which every- 
 where presuppose personality. If we find coherent 
 rational construction everywhere in that world in 
 which we move and have our being, why should 
 we flee final causes and not feel the pervasive 
 Divine Reason, in all the mighty universe we see, 
 to be the explanation of its beauty and its order ? 
 There is no reason why our abandonment of the 
 old illustrations of special adaptation presented in 
 the theism of Paley with a skill that must always 
 appear for his time astonishing as less forceful 
 and less necessary under the march of science 
 and our extended knowledge of natural laws, 
 should leave us blind to a Wisdom, to Whose 
 scope we can set no lines of limitation anywhere 
 throughout Creation's extent, and Whose presence 
 we cannot evade in the world's great foundation- 
 laws. 
 
 If we have still those with us, who shall say, 
 with that great French critic Edmond Scherer, 
 " Does not, for instance, the theist also look at 
 her [Nature] from the outside, as at an object 
 which is exterior and foreign to himself ? " we 
 surely can have no difficulty in saying plainly 
 that they who so speak are dealing still with a 
 theism of the past, not that of to-day. Thought 
 may so contemplate Nature as ab extra, but theism 
 regards us as in Nature, and sees Nature as in 
 God, though not as God. Nor is there any 
 
NATURAL SELECTION TRANSCENDED. 203 
 
 reason why the philosophy of theism, in leaving 
 behind those narrow and contracted views of de- 
 sign, which made the great and increasingly ap- 
 parent waste in nature always more difficult of 
 explanation, should not more fully perceive, as we 
 believe it has done, how far such waste is from 
 being real in a system which makes for an end 
 so wondrous as man. Here Natural Selection is 
 at an end : we see that all things have been for 
 free self-conscious man ; we cannot complete our 
 thought of final cause without recalling that man 
 is all for God. For, what end has the universe 
 which may be compared with God's communica- 
 tion of Himself to man His life, His mind, His 
 Spirit ? By the late Professor Jevons it was asked, 
 "If men do act, feel, and live, as if they were 
 not merely the brief products of a casual con- 
 junction of atoms, but the instruments of a far- 
 reaching purpose, are we to record all other 
 phenomena and pass over these ? " This would 
 be to stamp our procedure with unfaithfulness to 
 scientific method. Hence the pertinence of what 
 Dr Matheson, giving a cosmological turn to the 
 argument, has said : " We find within ourselves 
 the operation of a designing principle so distinctly 
 selective and voluntary that we give to it the 
 name of will. We meet in that personal experi- 
 ence which is to us the final stage in the de- 
 velopment of nature, with a power whose dis- 
 tinctive feature is the conception of a purpose, 
 
204 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 and a faculty whose distinctive end is the ability 
 to select its own end." If Blichner, speaking in 
 the name of " modern natural science," has been 
 able, in face of such results as we have referred 
 to, to pronounce theological teachings to be 
 " empty notions " suited to those who contemplate 
 nature " rather with the eyes of the feelings than 
 with those of the intellect," one cannot but feel 
 curious to know of what sort scientific reason may 
 be. We have been wont to regard scientific reason 
 as having respect, before all, to theory which best 
 fits in with facts, and every hypothesis save the 
 theistic theory is to be taken as admittedly in- 
 sufficient. For the most rational theory has been 
 very clearly shown to be that of theistic evolution, 
 in which the presence of a spiritual agency renders 
 explicable the order of the organic world, the con- 
 tinuous character of the results of its growths amid 
 variation, and other phenomena which no other 
 hypothesis has been able to explain. And one 
 should like to ask, as touching Biichner's view, 
 whether it is only illusory feeling which has seen, 
 in the ineffable beauties of earth and the un- 
 matched sublimities of the heavens, that which 
 has in late times so inspired thinkers the most 
 diverse with reverence and wonder as to lead 
 thence, by deeper inference than before, to de- 
 vising and guiding Reason as the ultimate ground 
 of such beauty and order ? Is it to be wondered 
 at if recent theistic philosophy has preferred to 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR KNIGHT. 205 
 
 postulate what Trendelenburg, in the second vol- 
 ume of his 'Logical Investigations' (' Logische 
 Untersuchungen '), was pleased to call a central 
 Power (umfassende Macht] for such predetermined 
 harmony {praestabilirte Harmonie), a Power dom- 
 inating and uniting all, and a Power in which 
 thought (der Gedanke) is the prime power ? 
 
 Surely we do not mean to view the continuity 
 and progression in all the protoplasmic evolutionary 
 process and not see inherent and underlying order, 
 or feel need to postulate some such Power, as that 
 of which we have just spoken, superintending the 
 adaptative traits of the protoplasmic process. It 
 may be perfectly true that, so long as we confine 
 our scrutiny to the physical and protoplasmic 
 order of things, no trace of an occult and spiritual- 
 istic Power may be evident, but this scrutiny 
 does not exhaust the case, for there are psycho- 
 logical aspects or evolutions to be added - 
 aspects of mind certainly as real and ultimate as 
 those of matter which take us beyond where we 
 now stand, beyond the Power of Nature, infinite 
 and eternal, to the Power of Being, which is 
 spiritual and personal, of Love which is Divine. 
 Professor Knight has declared that this " ascent 
 and survey" can only be allowed "after we have 
 discovered, from some other source, that a Divine 
 Being exists" But what good purpose is served 
 by blaming this argument for not effecting what 
 it does not profess to accomplish ? It professes 
 
206 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 to give us Mind, and nothing else. Why then 
 should we rail at it because it does not furnish 
 other things the Divine Self -Existence or the 
 Infinite ? Professor Knight says " it is not ac- 
 cumulation of facts that we need, but relevancy of 
 data": it seems to us there is even greater need 
 of a just inference or legitimate expectation from 
 data perfectly relevant to what is proposed. The 
 presence of mind is one thing : the extent and the 
 character of the mind are other matters. Recent 
 theistic philosophy has, in our view, taken the 
 world, so brimful of purpose, to be a thought, 
 and has postulated, as the correlate of the thought 
 so involved in its ubiquitous design, a Thinker 
 who is Framer of the universe not necessarily 
 an infinite Maker, it is true, but, more relevantly, 
 an intelligent Creator. That philosophy has not, 
 we believe, forgotten that when science passes 
 beyond its own proper sphere, and thinks to erect 
 its own conception of the order of Nature into 
 a sufficient account of its Cause, it is, as Dr Car- 
 penter once observed, " invading a province of 
 thought to which it has no claim." We are bold 
 enough to claim, on behalf of theistic thought, 
 that its march has been a magnificent progress 
 in vividness and grasp of the glory and grandeur 
 of an illimitable working. Yes, one, too, the con- 
 formity to purpose (Zweckmdssigkeit] of whose 
 beauty and sublimity reason has stubbornly re- 
 fused to regard as explicable otherwise than as 
 
VIEW OF WEISSE. 2O/ 
 
 the expression (Ausdruck) objectively existent 
 after every allowance for what has been contrib- 
 uted by the mind of the subject of Designing 
 Intelligence. 
 
 We may take occasion here to note that philoso- 
 phical theism has gained a juster perception of the 
 unwisdom of pressing out the theory of final causes 
 to an interpretation so rigid that the spontaneity 
 and inherent worth, of the activity, beauty, and 
 sympathy, of nature, are lost. That is to say, it 
 has perceived that such things as the beauty, order, 
 and harmony of creation do not exist merely for 
 purposes beyond themselves, but carry their own 
 end and justification with them. It is still open to 
 us to ask, " Does not this harmony demand Another 
 besides the organic subject as its cause ? This 
 question we may leave on one side, as, if one grasps 
 the notion of an organism, this development of tele- 
 ological adaptation is a necessary consequence of 
 the vitality of the subject." Theistic thought ap- 
 pears to us also to have, in this newer and inner 
 teleological view, found a better door of escape 
 from that Deistic view of a hermit-like or monkish 
 Deity which Weisse declared to be the danger of 
 the argument from order. And because it has 
 not been able to overlook the fact that the order 
 which science has been more fully unravelling in 
 the world points to forces that have a relation- 
 ship to the future in that they are seen to work 
 constructively, it has held that we are, more 
 
208 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 clearly than perhaps ever before, though in a 
 different manner, led up to a theistic conclusion. 
 It seems to us to be of the utmost consequence 
 to remember what is so often overlooked, that 
 no scientific advances of the future can possibly 
 rob us of the teleological view of the world as a 
 whole. For no reductions of the phenomena of 
 life and mind in terms of the material world could 
 really render the need and the faith of one Infinite 
 and self-conscious Being at base of all, less urgent 
 or less rational than before, however they might 
 alter our modes of setting or interpreting the primal 
 elements of which self-conscious spirit is the efflor- 
 escence. It may very well be doubted whether, 
 in fact, any state of mind save that of a perverted 
 and petrified condition of intellect an aTroX^&jcris 
 TOV vorjTLKov can long remain without such postu- 
 lation of Supreme Intelligence in presence of the 
 order, harmony, adjustment, and ends, towards 
 which " the whole creation moves." 
 
 So little able has recent inquiry been to elude 
 the grasp of rational purpose or final cause in its 
 comprehensive researches into the world's structure, 
 that our late philosophy of theism has found the 
 theistic idea involved in final cause more persist- 
 ently present than was always from the scientific 
 side expected. For has it not more clearly found 
 the august processes of evolution to be so rational, 
 so eloquent of mind or intelligence, that we are left 
 with not less teleology than before only with tele- 
 
CRITICISM OF HAECKEL AND SPENCER. 20Q 
 
 ology of a vaster sort ? It quite remembers that 
 this argument is not one that makes the strongest 
 appeal to men's minds in this time, when, in fact, 
 the presence of Mind in nature is so widely re- 
 cognised, but it insists on the fact that the proof 
 is now stronger. And has it not, as we in per- 
 fect keeping with all this have tried to show, 
 more distinctly felt design to be the very presup- 
 position of that law of development which is the 
 basal law of all living beings ? The truth is, it 
 has found writers like Haeckel and Spencer the 
 former of whom is professedly so strong on the 
 purposelessness or dysteleology of Nature quite 
 unable to work out their fundamental conceptions 
 here without really assuming the very teleology 
 they profess to reject. Why did Spencer talk of 
 adjustment in the way he did when he wished 
 to banish teleology ? And why did Haeckel give 
 to adaptation and inheritance the really teleolog- 
 ical significance he has done ? But still, theistic 
 philosophy has more boldly and frankly acknow- 
 ledged, we believe, that no replacement of supposi- 
 tions of chance by purpose or law can suffice to 
 lead as of necessity up to a personal Deity. Yet 
 these evidences of the purposiveness exhibited by 
 nature may lead the way thitherward, and may 
 serve no unimportant function in theistic thought 
 in doing so. For still it must be asked, Is it so 
 easy to stop short of Personality, and rest in so 
 abstract a conception of Intelligence ? Are we not 
 
 o 
 
210 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 brought, in so far as we come into grip of reality, 
 to an acceptance of such intelligence as is really a 
 mode or aspect of an intelligent and self-conscious 
 Personality ? What possible conception can we 
 have of purposive design without a personality 
 which is its agent ? Neither experience, nor any 
 analogy derived from it, affords warrant for such 
 impersonal basis. If, as Professor Romanes re- 
 cently appears to think, the religious mind should 
 not care to preserve the evidences of design unless 
 they testify at the same time to the nature of that 
 design as beneficent, we hesitate not to say that 
 that could only be because the religious mind was 
 very ill advised, and retained too limited a horizon 
 to be able to interpret its own best interests and 
 needs. For, if the inference of our knowledge 
 taken in whole be, as he thinks, towards establish- 
 ing the fact that design if operative in nature- 
 makes for animal improvement or evolution rather 
 than for animal enjoyment or wellbeing, why should 
 such a conclusion appear so distasteful to theistic 
 thought as he presumes ? Has theistic philosophy 
 any interests more dear than improvement or growth 
 in the highest ? Are not the things which make for 
 such end to be thought of as beneficial? And, if 
 so, are they not better than beneficent in the sense 
 implied, even if theistic thought has been too little 
 wont to view the matter thus ? Things and reasons 
 there may be still hidden from us, and we admit that 
 there are senses in which, as Professor Romanes truly 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROMANES. 
 
 Jf ,' 
 
 
 and finely says, " it remains for Faith to answer now, 
 as she has always answered before and answered 
 with that trust which is at once her beauty and her 
 life Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself." 
 
 We think that philosophy of theism has not been 
 altogether remiss in suggesting the need for greater 
 caution in judging of the seeming failures, and ap- 
 parent wastes in nature, whose ends and uses may 
 only be hid from us for a season, as they have so 
 often been before, until knowledge grow from less 
 to more. May we not even ask whether it is not 
 irrational to indulge unspoken hopes of a full and 
 perfect philosophy of a universe which evolution 
 proclaims unfinished? But we have meanwhile 
 been concerned to show how, as a recent American 
 writer has said, " in the study of the successions 
 exhibited by animals and plants it has been per- 
 ceived that the march of events from the primitive 
 simplicity towards greater and greater complication, 
 culminating in man, requires us to assume the ex- 
 istence of something like permanent guiding influ- 
 ences operating in the world of matter " -permanent 
 guiding influences that bespeak Mind behind all we 
 thus see. But suppose these teleological effects in 
 nature be granted to have taken place, it has yet 
 been urged that the cause or intelligent being by 
 which we account for these need not be a personal 
 one. Whereas that intelligent being could only bear 
 a personal character if all nature -reality possessed 
 a final end or design, it has been declared that no 
 
212 RECENT LIKES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 such final purpose can be affirmed, or in general 
 maintained. 
 
 Without, then, detracting from such validity as 
 we have claimed for the teleolpgical principle 
 that is, in its inner view, its comprehensive sweep, 
 and its ultimate reach we may say that this path 
 is not one to be looked to by itself, to conduct 
 us up to certainty of the personality of God. It 
 does not seem a very possible thing for us to 
 know that the progressive ends and issues of a 
 creation which, for this purpose of ours, must be 
 taken over all space and through all time, have 
 been deeply laid with a view to compass those 
 higher ends we see and to compass this in such 
 an inherent manner that design can be inferred 
 That is to say, there seems left the possibility of 
 question here. Of course, even if we got so much 
 of personality as design implies, bare creative 
 energy, mere intelligence, in a Deity would be 
 a cold and unsatisfying thing to these hearts of 
 ours. At the same time, we regard it as mere 
 arbitrariness to assume, in a perfectly needless way, 
 that the intelligence behind all phenomena is in- 
 telligence simply by itself dissociate; that is to 
 say, from anything afiectional or moral We may, 
 in feet, express our cordial agreement with the 
 Rev. J. Morris, in his 'New Natural Theology/ 
 in respect of the need to view nature less as 
 product than as process, seeing that the drift of 
 all our argument lies towards full and explicit 
 
THE NEWER TELEOLOGY. 213 
 
 recognition of the fact that we are here, in an 
 evolutional state of things wherein we see but a 
 small way into the purposes and ends of God 
 that lie as yet all unfulfilled. We certainly be- 
 lieve that a less gnostic attitude becomes the teleo- 
 logical argument than has been prevalent ; we 
 recognise the liability to error and mistaken in- 
 terpretation in our finding the marks of Mind in 
 Nature ; we admit that larger scope must now be 
 found for the unintentional in the realm of nature. 
 It is Lotze who has said that " it is not in accord- 
 ance with the facts of experience that all parts of 
 nature point to ideal significance and definite aims. 
 Along with a thousand appearances which give this 
 impression go a thousand others which look like 
 aimless by-products of an accidental self- formed 
 combination of atoms, which by no means ought 
 to arise under a preconceived plan, and which 
 have arisen and maintained themselves in being 
 because they did not contradict the mechanical con- 
 ditions of continued existence." We are at one 
 with Mr Morris in thinking that the true path of 
 theistic progress lies to - day in trying to discern 
 the nature of the end for which things subsist by 
 deeper study of the nature of the processes that 
 make for the end make for it, too, in a world 
 that is quite unfinished, indeed is far more truly 
 progressive than almost any of us ever realise in 
 sufficiently vivid way. Such teleology, presuppos- 
 ing, as it does, feeling, thought, and will, is of the 
 
214 RECENT LINES OF TELEOLOGICAL ADVANCE. 
 
 very essence of spiritual personality : it is, as Dr 
 F. E. Abbot has said, /'the decisive battle-ground 
 between the personal and the impersonal concep- 
 tions of the universe. There is no such thing as 
 unconscious teleology." We agree with him when 
 he says that "ends and means are inconceivable 
 and impossible, except as ideal or subjective re- 
 lational systems which the creative understanding 
 absolutely produces, and which the will reproduces 
 in Nature as real or objective relational systems : 
 hence the recognition of Teleology in Nature is 
 necessarily the recognition of purely spiritual Per- 
 sonality in God." 
 
 What we have been showing in this chapter 
 has just been the utter impossibility or futility of 
 trying to escape a true and real teleology in Nature, 
 as it appears to any scientific or organically evolu- 
 tional view of the universe, and, consequently, the 
 place and purpose still subserved in the theistic 
 philosophy by the teleological argument. But it 
 must still be said that the ripest results of that 
 argument are yet to be found. That, however, 
 is no reason why we should not now rejoice in 
 that immortality for man to which its newer pre- 
 sentation, in its idea of Divine Eternal Purpose, 
 points. If the contact of God with individual 
 and fragmentary things of the world has seemed to 
 grow more remote or less direct, His presence and 
 agency have yet been shown to be, when taken 
 in respect of the whole, more real and more near. 
 
FORWARD ASPECTS OF THE ARGUMENT. 215 
 
 It was a true divination that enabled a great theo- 
 logical scholar years ago to say that the argument, 
 ancient as it is, would become " constantly more 
 forcible in the degree in which successive genera- 
 tions know the universe better. Thus nature, in 
 proportion as it unrolls before our eyes its diverse 
 aspects, gives us an accumulative revelation of the 
 harmonious life of the world." To which we add 
 that the accumulations of science render less reason- 
 able the position of Strauss that, though the world 
 has the highest reason for its goal, it was not 
 planned by a highest reason. For it would be 
 difficult to over-estimate the significance of those 
 pointings to a reason an Absolute Reason under 
 whose dominion all things are, and of which Nature 
 is for us the embodiment that lies beyond the 
 present sphere of things, for which eternal sway 
 and perfect sweep of reason the present upward 
 progress of reason is preparing the way. Of that 
 eternal day of reason we are as yet but at the 
 dawn, but dawn it still is, in which the world- 
 orderings are to our metaphysical philosophy more 
 than a playing of tricks upon reason. 
 
216 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT AND THE ONTOLOGICAL 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 THE last two chapters have been concerned with 
 arguments which have been very clearly seen to 
 belong to the real side of the world -order : that 
 order has been no less firmly grasped in recent 
 theistic thought on what is regarded as the ideal 
 side by the ontological argument. We do not 
 think that recent theistic philosophy can be justly 
 said to have regarded the conception of the Abso- 
 lute as a barren branch of metaphysics, or to have 
 become dissuaded, through Hamiltonian teachings 
 as to the limitations of our powers, from at least 
 learning all that the conception of the Absolute 
 can now suggest to the speculative reason. It is, 
 no doubt, perfectly true that the ontological or a 
 priori argument has with ever - increasing clear- 
 ness been seen to be utterly unable to bridge the 
 abyss between a mere idea and a fact, but still 
 and in spite of its ordinarily confounding concep- 
 
CRITICISM OF ANSELMIC PROOF. 2I/ 
 
 tual existence and existence in re its speculative 
 fascination abides. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy has quite discarded 
 the mode of passing, as in Anselm's famous 
 * Proslogion,' from the idea of perfect Being an 
 idea supposed to carry with it that of necessary 
 existence as this idea was found existing subjec- 
 tively in the mind to its existence objectively in 
 fact, under the logical penalty of leaving an objec- 
 tive Being one who exists not "in intellectu solo" 
 who should be greater than an existence in the 
 mind alone. Anselm's quantitative mode of con- 
 ceiving the matter was unfortunate, hence he missed 
 seeing that the self-existence, which is the original 
 datum or final presupposition of all philosophical 
 thought, is a thing which belongs to primal being 
 as spirit. The Anselmic mode of reasoning has 
 nothing greater wherewith to justify itself than 
 the impossibility which meets us when we try to 
 conceive its opposite. Hence we find it, for ex- 
 ample, said in the third chapter of the * Proslogion,' 
 " So truly, therefore, does something exist, than 
 which a greater cannot be conceived, that it is im- 
 possible to conceive this not to exist." And again, 
 " Thou alone, therefore, of all things hast Being in 
 the true sense, and consequently in the highest 
 degree ; for everything else that is, exists not so 
 truly, and has, consequently, being only in an in- 
 ferior degree." Kant is, we conceive, convicted of 
 setting out under misapprehension when he begins 
 
218 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 by criticising the Anselmic position as drawing the 
 correspondence between thought and things not by 
 examples taken from things but from judgments. 
 For, it is now better remembered that Anselm did 
 not really assert that what exists in intellect exists 
 also in re, but rather maintained that existence is 
 of necessity in the concept of God. Kant was 
 not without a sense of this, however, when he 
 directed himself towards showing with entire suc- 
 cess here that existence is not a real predicate, 
 and that analytic judgments must not be con- 
 founded with those that are synthetic. The elab- 
 orate argumentation of Descartes failed to recognise 
 that the question was one of connecting and identi- 
 fying the idea of God as self-active spirit with 
 that of His assumed self-existence, rather than of 
 establishing mere existence. We are not here 
 quite concerned, however, to review the modes of 
 presentation of the a priori argument by Descartes, 
 Spinoza, Cudworth, Leibnitz, Clarke, Wolff, Kant, 
 Hegel, Gillespie, and others, since its passage per 
 saltum from an inwardly coherent idea to the ex- 
 istence of corresponding fact of objective reality 
 has been so pronouncedly declared impossible. 
 Kant viewed the ontological argument on which, 
 be it remembered, he took the cosmological and 
 the physico - theological proofs ultimately to hang 
 as a simple begging of the question, covertly 
 introducing actual existence under an abstract con- 
 ception of a being that gathers into itself the sum 
 
CRITICISM OF KANTS POSITIONS. 219 
 
 of all reality. It is, of course, unquestionable that 
 Kant has 'for ever laid this spectre of abstract 
 thought as something that had no relation to the 
 realm of reality. Yet it seems needful to say that, 
 all-availing as Kant's reasoning was against the 
 Anselmian and Leibnitzian modes of presentation, 
 it is futile if we take the a priori aspect of the 
 argument, not to demonstrate existence a priori, 
 but merely to connect the idea of Deity as we 
 conceive Him in His Perfection with the Neces- 
 sary Being which the Cosmological Argument gives. 
 The truth of the matter is that Kant's criticism 
 could not be final or conclusive, just by reason 
 of the fact that his thought did not stand on a 
 plane where it could be seen that the argument, 
 with the relation of ideality it involves, can be 
 construed in terms of the self-assertion of spirit. 
 It argued, too, a strange shortcoming in Kant that 
 he dealt not with the a posteriori side of this argu- 
 ment which Descartes had emphasised. For it 
 cannot be doubted, we suppose, that the onto- 
 logical argument has given expression to the very 
 real truth that God is nigh the religious conscious- 
 ness that consciousness which in humanity carries 
 with it a Divinely given idea of God. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy seems to us to have 
 more firmly apprehended the fact that the onto- 
 logical argument has its shortcomings in not furnish- 
 ing full warrant and perfect certainty for the posi- 
 tion that we have, in no a posteriori manner, but, 
 
220 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 purely without consideration of contingent things, 
 an idea of an Infinite Being. For, has it not more 
 clearly perceived what a wide door of possibility 
 is left open on this supposition for our idea of an 
 Infinite Being becoming a screaming contradiction 
 or a patent impossibility ? 
 
 More than ever, we believe, has theistic phil- 
 osophy felt the need Ritschl, Comte, and Littre 
 notwithstanding of a philosophia prima, a true 
 Metaphysic, as, not less than in Kantian days, a 
 defence (Schutzwehr) for religion against the specu- 
 lation which, " since Metaphysics of late without 
 heirs (unbeerf) to its fathers is gathered," denies 
 God, freedom, and immortality. For such meta- 
 physic, as recent times have seen, has been but a 
 metaphysical abortion, consisting of a theory of 
 evolution which is almost all-embracing, but evolves 
 no possible communion with God. Such a Meta- 
 physic as we in this time crave will ground its laws, 
 not in any molecular movements of things physical, 
 nor even in any mere volitions of the Will Divine, 
 but in the Divine Nature or Essence. 
 
 An ethical metaphysic that ultimate metaphysic 
 must be, as part of its endeavour to be a true 
 metaphysic. For the Unconditioned Being with 
 Whom we have to do is One wholly ethical in His 
 nature. But in what has just been said we, for our 
 part, have no wish to suggest any pursuance of 
 metaphysics merely for the satisfaction of ethical 
 needs, and apart from their sheer intellectual worth 
 
VINDICATION OF METAPHYSICS. 221 
 
 and discipline. There is not the slightest sign that 
 theistic philosophy will allow such a metaphysic as 
 we desiderate, with its vision and faculty for what 
 we may here without misunderstanding call the 
 Divine Noumenon, to be displaced by Positivism. 
 We see, in fact, Comtean prophecy as to meta- 
 physics in course of strange refutation of late. We 
 see metaphysics, in face of the Ritschlian deprecia- 
 tion of its worth and function, in course of being 
 justified of her children, and gaining in strength and 
 solidity what it has lost in appearance and repute. 
 We see the need of the science of metaphysics still 
 more deeply felt, that it may determine for us, as 
 Coleridge so well put the matter, what can and can- 
 not be known of being and the laws of being a priori, 
 in other words, from those necessities of the mind, 
 or laws of being, which, though first revealed to us 
 by experience, must yet have pre-existed, in order 
 to make experience itself possible. Chastened and 
 critical, the metaphysic of the time is such that 
 Paulsen has said " there is to-day probably not a 
 metaphysician who believes that he has the key to 
 unlock the mysteries of the world." But, for all 
 that, it is well to remind ourselves that, when we 
 think we have done with metaphysics, we are 
 whether we understand it or not done with Deity. 
 We need the light which their metaphysical treat- 
 ment alone can shed on the basal problems of theo- 
 logy, just as truly as any perfect and thoroughgoing 
 metaphysic needs theology although in no servile 
 
 ,~E LIB/}, 
 
 OP" TTT K 
 
222 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 or unduly dependent way as its touchstone and 
 support. The rejecters of metaphysics will doubt- 
 less be found to mean the acceptance, as M. Fouillee 
 has put it, of a metaphysical system which is their 
 own. 
 
 We are here still called to consider what sig- 
 nificance the principle underlying the ontological 
 argument, notwithstanding the imperfection in the 
 logical form of its presentation, has had for recent 
 philosophy of theism in its quest for truth as to the 
 highest unity of thought and being. And, in the 
 first place, we must remark that, while the ontologi- 
 cal conclusion may be said to have been always 
 more distinctly affirmed to land us in mere idealism 
 to bring us an ideal end, but one without any 
 necessary validity in the realm of the real, this 
 affirmation has been very clearly shown to be made 
 in mental oversight of the fact that the idea involved 
 is, neither in itself nor even in its history, capable 
 of being classed with the ideas born of individual 
 fancy. That is to say, we feel bound to maintain 
 that such a conception as the necessary idea of the 
 Absolute has been more carefully differentiated 
 than by Gaunilo and Kant from the incidental 
 conception of something that is merely relative. 
 Kant's criticism about the conception of a hundred 
 dollars not implying a corresponding reality in his 
 purse is pointless, when it is remembered that these 
 do not represent necessary being at all, which is the 
 case in point. Hence, as touching the fact that the 
 
CRITICISM OF HEGELIANISM. 223 
 
 corresponding existence of a thing is not guaranteed 
 by its conception, it has been remarked that " the 
 proposition is true except in the case of this one 
 ontological thought of the totality of the thoughts 
 that can be logically deduced from it." In the 
 idealistic developments of post- Kantian philosophy, 
 the Kantian "thing in itself" is seen to have 
 been cashiered, and the ontological argument has 
 become rehabilitated so far at least as an Ab- 
 solute is concerned, if not a God of the religious 
 consciousness with thought's gradual recovery of 
 confidence in itself. We are of them that hold 
 Hegelianism to have touched the high-water mark 
 of modern speculation, yet we cannot but say that 
 the Hegelian effort to make the notion carry actual 
 existence with it has been felt not only to fail of 
 reaching more than a purely idealistic issue, but 
 also to avoid, with ill success, the objection of losing 
 finite and infinite in each other. The ontological 
 mode of dispensing with the facts given in actual 
 experience, in order that it may set out from the 
 bare notions of the intellect, has been seen to be no 
 proper start for any interpretation of the universe 
 that could be deemed even speculatively warranted : 
 its necessary entity, even if it could in this way be 
 found, would, it is most surely believed, still stand 
 at a vast remove from the Theistic God Who is the 
 Infinite Personality and the Absolute Intelligence, 
 although it must be allowed to take us beyond the 
 finite and contingent. As a modern apologist has 
 
224 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 said, " The perception of his own relativity leads 
 man to the idea of some higher Being on Whom 
 his own existence depends, and this Being he can 
 only conceive as One that is absolute above him- 
 self and above nature that is, God." This Abso- 
 lute Being is the necessary correlative of our own 
 finite and conditioned being, and our idea of Him 
 is developed along the lines of our personality and 
 world experience. The mode of reaching self-ex- 
 istent being would in this proof manifestly not suffice 
 to exclude Pantheism, for its reasoning does not 
 make the universe stand out with sufficient distinct- 
 ness from God. We are not admitting the discom- 
 fiture of the Absolute as necessarily known to our 
 thought ; we are, however, disallowing a world of 
 reality different from the world as it is to thought, 
 and to which thought-conditions might not be appli- 
 cable. Recent philosophy of theism has been in- 
 clined to regard the persistence of the argument as 
 accountable only on the supposition of its carrying 
 with it in some way, after every theoretic disclaimer, 
 the basal form of actual Reality, so that not merely 
 the idea, but also the existence of God, has been 
 found necessary to reason. Hence we think our- 
 selves justified in claiming that it has not been con- 
 tent with the procedure of those who have had much 
 to say of the oft-criticised Cartesian argument while 
 neglecting the weightier matters of the contentions 
 of those who think Kant missed seeing that Being 
 is given, not predicated, in this idea of God ; who 
 
ONTOLOGICAL CLAIMS. 22$ 
 
 allow the Tightness of Kant from the point of view 
 of abstract thought, but maintain his neglect of the 
 volitional element in the assertion of the actuality of 
 its infinite ideal by spirit ; and who claim reality 
 for what is a necessity to thought, a datum of feel- 
 ing, and a necessary offspring of reason in fact, 
 regard it as the great reality, in another than the 
 restricted Kantian sense of the term. It abides, as 
 the great merit of Kant, to have cut away defective 
 metaphysics, and paved the way for the juster con- 
 ception of the Divine Being which is ours. And 
 may we not still fitly apply to this conception the 
 words once used by Dr Scholten, of Holland, as 
 " the revelation of the One unique Infinite Being, 
 Who acts in fixed laws which the human mind be- 
 comes acquainted with and systematises ; Who mani- 
 fests Himself to our reason as the Supreme Reason ; 
 Who specially manifests Himself in the moral world 
 as Holy Love ; Who, without being abstractedly 
 separate from nature and man, lives and acts in 
 nature and man, in ten thousand indefinitely diverse 
 manners ; and, at the same time, superior to the 
 continual ebb and flow of finite forms, the Absolute 
 Mind, the self-conscious and Supreme Personality, 
 is all in all." Having said so much of the mauvais 
 pas recent ontological thought has had to face, we 
 now look on some of the more acute of its recent 
 representations. 
 
 The recent thought of Germany in the region 
 of ontological speculation has been fruitful of result 
 
 p 
 
226 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 as to the idea of God. Hegel had done excellent 
 service in criticising Kant's criticism of the onto- 
 logical proof. But the impossibility of any such 
 intuition of the Absolute Being as would enable 
 us thence to deduce the course of the world has 
 certainly been far more clearly seen than in Hegel's 
 time, and there has very properly been stronger 
 effort to do justice to the widened range of scien- 
 tific or empirical fact. Weisse, with the aim of 
 reaching all Being through freedom, put the con- 
 ception of the possible on a higher ontological 
 plane than that of Being. Weisse viewed the 
 ontological argument as unconsciously linking truth 
 and beauty in its union of existence and perfection. 
 German speculation, as represented by K. Phil. 
 Fischer, laid stress on that whole which is no sum 
 of the parts, but a qualitative thing a whole 
 under whose particularising the parts first have 
 being, and under which God is man's Ideal. But, 
 while God is thus duly exalted as the highest, it 
 does not seem as if justice were done to Him as 
 the all -grounding Essence. To Fischer the truth 
 and reality of the idea of God are derived by the 
 ontological argument from reason itself : that argu- 
 ment proves them by an inherent necessity of 
 thought : the truth of such thought for him includes, 
 on this argument, reality or existence in itself, else 
 we do not, he holds, escape inner contradiction. 
 Hettinger and Luthardt have taken somewhat 
 similar views as to God being found in our own 
 
GERMAN ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION. 227 
 
 minds. Hettinger has argued from truth as 
 objectively existent before and above our reason, 
 and therefore eternal and absolute in its nature 
 that truth, which has its abode in the human 
 mind, presupposes an Eternal Mind or Supreme 
 Intelligence, which is called God. Hence this 
 Supreme Reason is to Hettinger no mere ab- 
 straction, but something so real and independent 
 of the mind of man that to Hettinger truth is 
 God, and God is Truth. 
 
 With Luthardt, the idea of God, like other 
 ultimate truths, is held to be the work of truth 
 itself, the product within our minds of objective 
 reason. Our intuitive idea of God is thus to 
 Luthardt the proof of His existence, for we are 
 here engaged, he holds, with a real God and not 
 a mere idea. 
 
 Ulrici whom Erdmann blames somewhat heav- 
 ily for the British rather than German cast of his 
 work upholds the ontological Argument in the 
 manner of one to whom God is the Creative 
 Author of Nature and the absolute presupposition 
 of natural science itself. He takes the conditional 
 atoms which he postulates as the last elements of 
 existence as here given, necessarily to presuppose 
 an Unconditioned as Ground of their condition- 
 ally and existence. This conception of the con- 
 ditioned powers of nature and their effects leads 
 to the disclosure of an Unconditioned Cause, which 
 is the Original Force mediating and determining 
 
228 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 all that now is. But in such conception we are 
 brought by Ulrici up to the ontological Argument 
 as approached from the side of the scientific con- 
 ceptions of matter and force a result, it is to be 
 observed, which brings us no more than the nature 
 side of the Divine Essence, or, as it has been 
 termed, Nature in God. 
 
 Rothe clings to a speculative knowledge of the 
 Absolute, and thinks it strange that men find it 
 so hard to believe what to him is the kernel of 
 the ontological Argument in the original existence 
 
 o o o 
 
 of that which is perfect or God, since the perfect 
 is that which most nearly approaches the idea of 
 self-existence. 
 
 Dorner places the ontological Argument first in his 
 order of treatment, herein differing from Pfleiderer, 
 Biedermann, and others, in that he claims a de- 
 pendence on the ontological Argument for what 
 the other proofs may be able to accomplish, as a 
 reason for such priority. Hence the strength 
 Dorner puts forth in its presentation, which in 
 our view certainly marks a speculative advance. 
 He has, it seems to us, helped recent philosophy 
 of theism more surely to grasp the principle that 
 what we necessarily think, and think as necessarily 
 existing, has a title to validity. We are surely 
 entitled to say that, as it has become more clearly 
 perceived that not save in and through God are 
 we able to reason or to think, it has become 
 more evident how futile must remain our endeav- 
 
GERMAN ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION. 229 
 
 ours to set God over against ourselves and make 
 Him a wholly distinct and separate object of 
 our thought. Dorner maintains that the Supreme 
 Being can only be thought as Absolute or Un- 
 conditioned, as self-existing or objectively existent. 
 Further, to think an Absolute is to him matter of 
 necessity, and the Absolute so thought by us must 
 be thought if thought at all as existent or pos- 
 sessed of being. The very possibility of rational 
 thought is conditioned, with Dorner, by the Abso- 
 lute, so that without it intellect is no longer itself. 
 He goes on to show what a necessity of our 
 rational nature is the recognition of the basal 
 elements or ideas of the other proofs those a 
 priori elements in them, as he conceives ; and these 
 a priori and inherent elements or aspects of the 
 arguments, he thinks it perfectly natural and feas- 
 ible so to combine with the a posteriori aspects, as 
 that, in the presentation of the ontological proof, in- 
 tellectual dualism shall be transcended, and enrich- 
 ment shall ensue. 
 
 The incompleteness of the ontological Argument, 
 taken as a thing capable by itself of furnishing the 
 true conception of God, has been explicitly shown 
 by Biedermann, whose own conception of the argu- 
 ment was yet not very fortunate. We should like 
 to add in this connection that even Schopenhauer 
 has done some service in the way he has given to 
 ontological speculation a teleological turn, and the 
 needful stress he has laid on the regulative value 
 
230 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 of the concept Professor Glinther Thiele, of 
 Konigsberg, in his ' Philosophic des Selbstbewusst- 
 seins,' has very recently maintained a validity (gute 
 Berechtigung) for the cosmological proof, taking the 
 basis of all things (Urgrund aller Realitdt] to be 
 the self-subsisting, or substance as causa sui. Then 
 he connects this independence or self-subsistence of 
 the absolute Substance, with the absolute necessity 
 for an Unconditioned postulated by the ontological 
 argument in fact, the simple self -subsistence of 
 the absolute substance is taken as meeting the 
 necessity for an Unconditioned in the ontological 
 argument. 
 
 In France, it would take us too far back for the 
 purposes of this work to do more than make passing 
 remark on Malebranche, who, by his doctrine of all 
 things being seen " in God," took up a position 
 often enough severely criticised, but of which the 
 sufficiently accepted idea of God being the " master- 
 light " of all our seeing is in reality simply a modi- 
 fication. Malebranche held not that the truths we 
 see "are God," but that "the ideas on which these 
 truths depend are in God.' 7 The idea of the infinite 
 was to him the best proof of the Divine Being, Who 
 is Being universal and infinite. The idea of God, 
 to him inseparable from His existence, is clearly 
 seen to have been only haltingly carried out in 
 its implications in the thought of Malebranche, to 
 whom things are known only through the idea of 
 God. To him God is He Who is, and 'to him the 
 
FRENCH ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION. 231 
 
 idea of God was an immediate knowledge of Him, 
 Who touches us, he says, with His efficacious real- 
 ities. Fenelon advances on Malebranche by his 
 analysis of reason, in which, passing up from the 
 inferior in us to the Supreme Reason without us, 
 he concludes that this Supreme or Perfect Reason 
 must be " real " - must be God. We may here 
 interject the remark that to the process whereby 
 man thus rises to know the infinite it remained for 
 Leibnitz, whose impress on France is well known, 
 to give greater precision. In the philosophy of 
 Maine de Biran, based upon volo ergo sum, there 
 is a fine and growing personal element, a personal 
 power that was felt by minds like that of Cousin, 
 which need not be wondered at, seeing that person- 
 ality becomes, in fact, the central and vital concep- 
 tion in his system. We find the idealism of this 
 original and abstruse thinker outrun, however, the 
 bounds of eclecticism. Passing on to the eclecti- 
 cism of Cousin really, as Edmond Scherer said, 
 the negation of philosophy we find him hold that 
 " the single fact of the conception of God by reason, 
 the idea alone, of God, implies the certainty and the 
 necessity of the existence of God." This autocrat 
 in the philosophical sphere claims to reach the ab- 
 solute, the infinite, through what he calls the im- 
 personality of reason, in a way whereby he seems 
 to identify, in pantheistic mode, reason and God. 
 He shows not sufficiently, as to finite and infinite, 
 how one springs from the other, and in what way 
 
232 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 we are to think of the one as involved in the other. 
 M. Maret inveighs against Pantheism in general, 
 these eclectic philosophers sharing his sweeping- 
 condemnation. But he has not remained without 
 rendering philosophic service, despite his desper- 
 ately churchly tendencies. Among Cousin's fol- 
 lowers, Lerminier was able to see in the mind of 
 man a revelation of God at once necessary and 
 perpetual. Gratry, in his * Connaissance de Dieu,' 
 has lines of thought which may fitly follow those 
 to which reference has now been made. The 
 position he occupies will be seen when it is re- 
 membered that he declares that " the entire proof 
 (toute la preuve) consists in rising from the finite 
 to the infinite by the negation of the limits of the 
 finite." Again, he affirms that "we apply to the 
 finite this process of elimination, which gives us the 
 idea of the infinite ; that is, the idea of God, which, 
 so soon as it is obtained, of itself proves that God 
 exists." The last part of the sentence just quoted 
 runs, in his own words, " C'est-a-dire 1'idee de Dieu, 
 laquelle des qu'elle est obtenue, prouve par elle- 
 meme que Dieu existe." He goes on to say that 
 " from this point of view, there is but a single proof 
 of God's existence," and that " everything is that 
 proof" (tout est cette preuve). It is Gratry, too, 
 who, speaking of man's desire of the Eternal, says : 
 " I necessarily seek something greater than any 
 given greatness. But what exceeds all greatness 
 known or assignable is the Infinite alone. Thus 
 
FRENCH ONTOLOGICAL 
 
 my life leads ever to the Infinite, and it does so 
 because, being in myself finite and imperfect, I am 
 drawn towards Him Who is infinite and all-perfect, 
 as the primal centre of my being, and the source 
 of my life." M. Saisset, in dealing with modern 
 Pantheism, refers to Kant's treatment of the onto- 
 logical Argument with the view of showing that 
 Kant has clearly not proved the " inability of the 
 human mind to grasp the first principle of thought 
 and being." This he does by showing how the 
 practical reason exists side by side with the specu- 
 lative, and supplements it since man " is not pure 
 intellect "- with such a priori elements as the con- 
 ceptions of duty and liberty. Concerning which we 
 must be content here to say if we may introduce 
 such a reference while French thought is our theme 
 that Kuno Fischer has, in his ' Critique' on Kant, 
 remarked on the " logically consistent advance" 
 in the different views of Kant, those of the pure 
 and of the practical reason. With a spiritualistic 
 bent, Vacherot has, after the footsteps of Cousin, 
 tended to give an ontological turn to psychology, 
 and has sought to prove, as it has been none too 
 sympathetically put, that "the idea of perfection 
 is God, but that perfection has no existence." M. 
 Caro, in his ' L'Idee de Dieu,' has conclusively dealt 
 with Vacherot's positions, leaving to him only a 
 shadowy Deity a God Who is a figment of the 
 imagination. The infinite is, with Vacherot, simply 
 the all : it is the all, or it is nothing an alternative 
 
234 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 to which a vulgar pantheism has made us not 
 strangers. The Deity of Vacherot's idealism is, 
 when developed, a merely ideal one : he cleaves to 
 the notion of a perfect Deity Who does not really 
 exist, for a true God cannot, with him, be living 
 and real ! M. Caro, on the other hand, contends 
 that a God Who does not exist is no God at all. 
 As against Vacherot's contention that he yet guards 
 the objective reality of Deity as perfectly inde- 
 pendent of the mind, Caro retorts that Vacherot's 
 God as the Supreme Ideal is a purely abstract 
 and subjective conception, the mere product of 
 human reason, the pure and simple result of our 
 own intellectual operations. 
 
 Our late philosophy of theism has viewed as able, 
 but not yet satisfying, the speculative thought of the 
 chief Italian philosophers, which has partaken so 
 strongly of an ontological character. Passing over 
 the interesting theism of the too subjective though 
 realistic in tendency -- philosopher Galuppi, it is 
 necessary to indicate the grounds on which the 
 philosophy of theism has done so. It has done 
 so, because unable to follow the valorous lead of 
 the typical Italian ontologist, Gioberti, when he 
 takes up such positions as that " Being creates ex- 
 istences." So, too, is it unable to acquiesce when 
 this thorough realist gives us to understand that 
 existences or creatures are utterly dependent on 
 " Being" or the self- existing Deity, and do have 
 a direct intuition of the Divine Being Who is their 
 
ITALIAN ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION. 235 
 
 primal source or cause. Such is the judgment de- 
 fended by Gioberti in his * Introduzione allo Studio 
 della Filosofia,' and on the basis of which he pro- 
 ceeds, in his ' Della Filosofia della Rivelazione,' in 
 which latter it is again maintained that VEnte crea 
 Fesistente (p. 18). Theistic philosophy, so far from 
 having found man's knowledge of God to be such 
 plain sailing or effortless motion as Gioberti's non- 
 idealistic theory of an all-comprehending object sup- 
 poses, has rejected the hypothesis of this suggestive 
 writer as utterly at variance with the nature and 
 experience of man, to say nothing of its lack of self- 
 consistency. Other thinkers have here arisen who 
 have held to the direct intuition of the Infinite as 
 being natural to man's mind, only pursuing a modi- 
 fied path from Gioberti in regarding the idea of the 
 Infinite as, though born with us, formed out and 
 filled only in the course of reflection and the edu- 
 cative processes of life. We turn to the great 
 Rosmini, trained at Padua. Rosmini, with the ab- 
 stract ideality which characterises him, maintains in 
 his ' Theosophy ' (* Teosofia ') what we may perhaps 
 be allowed for the moment to call a softened form 
 of Ontologism when he propounds, in his quasi- 
 Malebranchian fashion, that the idea of being, 
 which, with him, is really innate, can only be the 
 idea of the Creative One by Whom finite beings 
 have been called into life. Not indeed that Ros- 
 mini postulates for man the direct perception 
 or vision of God, but only that self-subsistence, 
 
236 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 or reality, is to Rosmini an essential attribute 
 of Deity, for he cannot admit that God can be 
 thought save as real. The nature of that reality 
 of God Rosmini very strongly held to be something 
 which only in God's light could by us be clearly 
 seen. But he gave reasoning and reflection place, 
 and not simply natural intuition, in the way we come 
 to know the Infinite Reality called God. Reality 
 was, with him, the object of all our knowledge, and 
 the notion of being was fundamental in his phil- 
 osophy, in which it becomes, in fact, the womb 
 of all knowledge, the spring of all truth. In the 
 three books of his instructive * Theodicy ' (* Teo- 
 dicea'), the Divine attributes and the dependence of 
 the creature (limitazioni dell* umana ragione) are by 
 him developed (p. 39). It is no small philosophical 
 merit of Rosmini that he deals so suggestively with 
 the logic of Hegel, and its problems in the .sphere of 
 being. The idealistic-realist philosopher Mamiani, 
 who is not without intellectual kinship to Galuppi, 
 has been able, in his metaphysical confessions, to 
 approve an ontological position not unlike that of 
 Anselm, and to maintain for us ideas that are imme- 
 diately connected with the Absolute Reality the 
 most real Being (Ente realissimo). Mamiani posits 
 the being of God on the basis of primitive intuition, 
 but finds room for reflection as that through which 
 alone we come to know the Infinite Reality. Re- 
 ligion he works out in its subsequent bearings in 
 his interesting ' Religion of the Future' (' La Re- 
 
ITALIAN ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION. 237 
 
 ligione dell' Avvenire '), in which he again professes 
 to proceed in a manner " severo ontologico," and to 
 rise at once to the cause and reason of all things 
 (la suprema ragione e cagione di tutte le cose p. 52). 
 Interesting and ably sustained as such outgrowths of 
 Italian thought undoubtedly are, it cannot be said, 
 after the attentions which Kleutgen, Stockl, and 
 other writers have given to the positions involved, 
 that recent theistic philosophy has found, in the 
 ontologistic hypothesis, any firm resting-place for 
 the sole of its foot. It has, in fact, more decisively 
 proved how far we are from having found any 
 psychological basis for the notion that the spiritual 
 things hidden from sense-perception among which 
 must be reckoned the immediate vision of God 
 can by any manner of man's thinking be directly 
 intuited and immediately known, as things are per- 
 ceived in primitive acts of perception by the senses. 
 In Britain not only has Ferrier, in his acute 
 and forcible manner, given speculative thought an 
 ontological cast by his setting forth of the one 
 necessary Absolute Existence, which is the Ex- 
 ternal Mind " in synthesis with all things " ; but 
 Principal Caird, maintaining that " we cannot think 
 save on the presupposition of a thought or con- 
 sciousness which is the unity of thought and being, 
 or on which all individual thought and existence 
 rest," has, in his own powerful way, presented us 
 with that modified form of the ontological argu- 
 ment in which it appears as an inference from 
 
238 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 thought to being-. The ontological proof has, on 
 his interpretation, the meaning that " as spiritual 
 beings our whole conscious life is based on a 
 universal self-consciousness, an absolute spiritual 
 life, which is not a mere subjective notion or 
 conception, but which carries with it the proof of 
 its necessary existence or reality." For our own 
 part, hardly any portion of Principal Caird's work 
 has for us more interest than the rare ability and 
 skill with which he presents and endeavours to 
 sustain this view, in which we rise to " a universal 
 point of view, from which our individuality is of 
 no more account than the individuality of any 
 other object." At the same time we record, in 
 passing, our emphatic dissent from the way in 
 which it is here sought to depersonalise man and 
 make him no more than an aspect of Deity like 
 " any other object " in Nature. Man has then 
 no more than a phantom personality personality 
 becomes an appearance and nothing more in a 
 system with such tendency. To it, as we shall 
 later see, the Universal or Divine Self is really 
 all in all. 
 
 Of the Ontological Argument, Thompson, Tulloch, 
 and Cazenove are among those who have thought 
 favourably. We find R. A. Thompson, in his 
 two-volumed work on * Christian Theism,' able to 
 regard Kant's treatment of pure reason as un- 
 warrantable and unsatisfactory. Tulloch was able 
 to put the position so lucidly as to call it one in 
 
BRITISH ONTOLOGICAL SPECULATION. 239 
 
 which the infinite was " not logically but instinc- 
 tively given," apprehended indeed " as a fact in 
 the truthful mirror of intuition," and not in a set 
 of mere abstract ideas or as a mere logical neces- 
 sity. Dr Cazenove, in his ' Being and Attributes 
 of God,' claims a high value for the ontological 
 line of proof, more almost than is claimed for it 
 by Dr Flint, whom, in the main, he seems to 
 follow. Flint has, with his accustomed acuteness, 
 shown the Anselmic position to be by no means 
 so wanting in residual truth as has often been 
 imagined. It is Professor Flint, indeed, who has 
 said that this proof has "at least succeeded in 
 showing that, unless there exists an eternal, in- 
 finite, and unconditioned Being, the human mind 
 is in its ultimate principles self-contradictory and 
 delusive." It may not be too much, we think, to 
 say that recent philosophy of theism has rendered 
 it more evident that the theory which supposes 
 the existence of the particular thought or idea of 
 God here involved to be due to its existence " in 
 re!' is that which best accounts for the appearance 
 of the idea itself, when the true nature of that 
 idea is in the solitariness and uniqueness for 
 which Anselm contended completely remembered. 
 It can hardly be questioned that no faultiness of 
 this argument in its progress as a logical evolution, 
 no defectiveness of it as a demonstration, has kept 
 the philosophy of theism from more keenly discern- 
 ing how God is necessary necessary existence as 
 
240 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 implying actual existence being the point in question 
 to the reason no less than is the idea of Him. 
 For it has well pondered to what meaningless con- 
 fusion thought, in its ultimate principles and work- 
 ing, must be reduced if it should be held as 
 Anselm deemed impossible (nequit Eum non esse 
 cogitare) that God can be " conceived as non- 
 existent," and that an idea so indigenous to man's 
 mind as the idea of infinity can be treated in the 
 fictitious Kantian mode that makes it merely regu- 
 lative and thereby leaves it really unexplained. In 
 any case there has been clearer recognition of the 
 value of the ontological argument as testifying, 
 apart from any established metaphysical validity in 
 the way of proving the existence of the Infinite 
 Being, to the tendency of human reason in its search 
 for the absolute and unconditioned as being in per- 
 fect consonance with the idea of such an Infinite 
 Being. Indeed, it is to be observed that, from the 
 very form of the argument its hypothetical con- 
 dition as to what is a necessity to thought the re- 
 sult is seen to emerge that it must remain without 
 being proved, save under its assumed form, while 
 its ideal character is more clearly discerned. "If 
 the Greatest did not exist, there would be no 
 Greatest; and it is surely impossible that the 
 Greatest of all imaginable beings should not exist" 
 So it has come to be, as we take it, maintained that 
 this proof, stripped of all that does not belong to 
 its essence, amounts really to an assertion, on the 
 
PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE PROOF. 241 
 
 part of the human spirit, of the actuality of its ideal, 
 which is a self that is perfect and infinite. Not 
 without force has it been asked, " Is it not an im- 
 mediate certainty that the greatest, most beautiful, 
 and most valuable object must be a reality, and not 
 a mere matter of thought ; for it would be utterly 
 intolerable to believe our highest Ideal to be a mere 
 conception of our intellect, without actual existence, 
 power, or validity ? " Does not this feeling persist 
 though we have granted that actual existence may 
 not be logically inferred ? We take it that the 
 deeper meaning of the proof has been seen to be 
 that the self-existence it assumes is existence which 
 is spiritual. It deserves to be said that it has been 
 better observed also how the metaphysical process 
 here as indeed we have tried to show gains 
 proper supplement and strengthening, when to 
 logical or geometrical necessity are added the ma- 
 terial aids which the a posteriori argument affords. 
 For still the deepest and most spiritual conscious- 
 ness of man has its idea of God and its aspiration 
 after Him, and finds its abiding inspiration in His 
 fellowship as the Father of Spirits. Can we de- 
 prive the ontological proof of real significance so 
 long as we find that consciousness implies, in man's 
 case, a knowing of God in his very knowing of self ? 
 For such consciousness is, in an implicit form, a 
 knowledge of self with God or the Divine Spirit. 
 What semblance of ground is there for supposing 
 that humanity's apprehension and belief in God as 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 thus self-conscious and personal Spirit an encircling 
 Father was ever saner or stronger than it is to- 
 day ? We maintain that the philosophy of theism 
 finds that in the spirit of man which so transcends 
 Nature as to make it utterly irrational to rest in a 
 barren Rationalism, or in anything short of conscious 
 communion with that Universal Reason which is 
 the presupposition of all our thinking. And if the 
 ontological demonstrations have been frequently 
 carried further than was justifiable or legitimate, 
 that, as we have seen, is no good reason why a 
 rational conception of Deity should not be de- 
 ducible. 
 
243 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RECENT PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 WE believe it cannot be disputed that there has 
 been a growing sense of the importance of that 
 aspect of theism which among the deepest though 
 not earliest sources of theistic belief has its rise 
 in the moral consciousness of man, with its living 
 and progressive ethical ideals. Indeed, so strong 
 has grown the sense of its importance that to us 
 it seems now needful to recall what a mere por- 
 tion of the great cumulative proof for the Being 
 of God the moral argument is, and what a brief 
 survival ethical theism, standing by itself, would 
 be, when the God of rational theism should be 
 abstracted from the outer world of Nature. This 
 undue dependence, as we account it, on the Moral 
 Argument has not passed without reference, in the 
 case of Schenkel, Newman, and others, in the ex- 
 cellent chapter on this proof in Professor Flint's 
 * Theism,' where the authoritative character of con- 
 science is presented in, no doubt, wise, if any should 
 
244 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 think, sufficiently strong, terms, and its claim held 
 to be " implicitly admitted even by those who have 
 most interest in denying it." In our view, however, 
 and speaking with a general reference, there is need 
 to present conscience less as something external to 
 our personality, less as something detached from all 
 other parts of our ethical experience, less as some- 
 thing that we obey in a merely blind fashion, than 
 has been customary in theistic presentations. 
 
 Mansel it was who said that " those who lay 
 exclusive stress on the proof of the existence of 
 God from the marks of design in the world, or 
 from the necessity of supposing a First Cause of 
 all phenomena, overlook the fact that man learns 
 to pray before he learns to reason ; that he feels 
 within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being 
 and the instinct of worship, before he can argue 
 from effects to causes, or estimate the traces of 
 wisdom and benevolence scattered through the 
 creation." Hence more stress has been laid on 
 what is really a part the highest part of the 
 argument for final causes, for an end is, with the 
 fact of moral law in us, given for the world. As 
 Kant has it, in his * Critique of Judgment/ for this 
 world, with such end as it bears, a moral author 
 or God is to be acknowledged. Professor Edward 
 Caird has, in terms that need not be here repro- 
 duced, admirably set forth the way in which God 
 comes to be thus a postulate of the Practical 
 Reason, that He may satisfy a pure moral need 
 
THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT. 245 
 
 in us. No ultimate harmony of the natural and 
 moral worlds is conceivable to us save by the 
 Creator and Governor of the world being also its 
 moral Legislator. There can be no doubt of the 
 significance of the truth thus brought out by Kant. 
 
 So then we here take conscience to be a link 
 binding sinful man to God, and God-consciousness 
 to be something naturally enjoyed by every soul. 
 For in our moral intuitions we are borne beyond 
 the bounds of self, and beyond the scope of phe- 
 nomena, and pass into the sphere or realm of the 
 Infinite or Unconditioned. Surely from our moral 
 life the Highest is in self- evidencing ways not 
 excluded ; but, if the Infinite so reveal itself in 
 us, why should we not infer that it exists ? Or 
 why not even think Him at least personal' as we 
 are ? Moral He must be. This is that ethical 
 argument which sees the end of our being in the 
 inward law of right written with invisible ink on 
 the heart of man, and which perceives, with 
 Emerson, how 
 
 " near is God to man, 
 When duty whispers low, Thou must" 
 
 and how truly the revelation of God had come to 
 man when the candle of the Lord was lighted in 
 his conscience. This consciousness of duty, which 
 formed the subject of Kant's famous apostrophe, 
 has been finely shown by Professor Rauwenhoff, of 
 Holland, to be quite unique in us, and he depicts 
 
PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 how this Thau must passes into the imperative 
 Thou shaft. Larger and more impressive have 
 become the grounds on which recent philosophy 
 of theism has based its witness drawn from the 
 ethical argument In this argument we take, for 
 the Ground and Cause of all things, a Person, 
 righteous and supreme, making this Eternal Self- 
 Consciousness or Will the necessary assumption of 
 the moral sense and its authoritative ideals, and 
 we reach after that ideal spiritual world in which 
 His rule is perfectly realised, as it cannot be here 
 and now. Not that His righteousness is an un- 
 known ultimate to us, for that righteousness, which 
 is an absolute imperative in us, forms His nature 
 and secret and method. From the fact of moral 
 law in us this argument seeks to deduce a moral 
 or personal Lawgiver above us not from finding 
 Him in the sense-world, of which we are creatures 
 (Sinnenweseff), but in our active moral conscious- 
 ness. Yes, for He it is Who, in the difficulty of 
 getting happiness and its outward conditions to 
 correspond with virtue, must, as actual moral 
 Governor, compass the harmonious agreement of 
 the order of nature with the moral world. In 
 God being thus, as Kant puts it in his ' Critique 
 of Practical Reason/ a postulate of the moral law 
 in us, nothing is added to our theoretic knowledge. 
 So Kant insists, urging that we are thereby enabled 
 only to make for the moral aim. 
 
 We take it that the philosophy of theism regards 
 
CRITICISM OF KANT. 247 
 
 with satisfaction the way in which Kant in advance 
 really of some in our time held to the absolute 
 worth of the moral ideal. It cannot be said to be 
 \\anting in just and intense admiration of what Kant 
 did for the moralistic theory of religion, which he 
 held we must guard as the apple of the eye, in his 
 * Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason.' But 
 it has surely seen how impracticable it must remain 
 to ground any adequate philosophy of religion in a 
 system which, with its fine moral postulates, yet falls 
 sadly short on the metaphysical and speculative side 
 of its knowledge of God. It laments the mistaken 
 course Kant pursued in introducing into his system 
 of thought eudcemonistic considerations, which, im- 
 parting an aloofness to Deity in respect of the moral 
 life, were in perfect contradiction to his ethical posi- 
 tions. He laid himself open to the criticism of 
 Strauss that the harmony between happiness and 
 virtue which he sought is a proper enough aim, but 
 that the always imperfect realisation of this aim or 
 endeavour is not to be met by postulating a Deus 
 ex machind, but by taking a right view of the world 
 and of fortune. Hence he leaves us with no Deity 
 save one who deals out the rewards of virtue in an 
 eternal lulu re, and with no proof save one which is 
 manifestly hedonistic rather than moral. It is, no 
 doubt, true that Tightness and happiness must at 
 last coincide, but it would be another thing to agree 
 with Professor Knight that considerations of felicity 
 played no larger a part in Kant's system than he 
 
248 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 seems inclined to argue. The tendency of the most 
 recent research in Germany has just been to empha- 
 sise the part played by happiness (Gluckseligkeit) in 
 Kant's thought, where it at times appears as the 
 goal of our conduct or action. All we are con- 
 cerned now to say is that the more rigorous repre- 
 sentations of Kant's hostility to " happiness morals " 
 must become somewhat modified in view of the 
 difficulty in ruling out happiness as an end with 
 which Kant seems to have been haunted. 
 
 Noble were the foundations laid for the modern 
 superstructure of religious philosophy by Bishop 
 Butler, whose declaration was, as touching con- 
 science, that, " had it strength, as it has right ; had 
 it power, as it has manifest authority ; it would abso- 
 lutely govern the world." But Butler does not seem 
 explicitly to recognise the feeling of imperativeness 
 we find usually attributed to conscience in its work- 
 ing. We should like here to recall what Kant so 
 nobly says in his ' Kritik der reinen Vernunft ' (ed. 
 Hartenstein, p. 588) : " Belief in God and in another 
 world is so interwoven with my moral nature 
 (Gesinnung), that the former can no more vanish 
 than the latter can ever be torn from me. The 
 only point to be here kept in mind is that this 
 act of faith of the intellect assumes the existence 
 ( Voraussetzung) of moral dispositions. I f we leave 
 them aside and suppose a mind quite indifferent 
 with respect to moral laws, then the inquiry raised 
 by reason becomes merely a subject for speculation, 
 
FURTHER CRITICISM OF KANT. 249 
 
 supportable, as such, by strong arguments from 
 analogy, but not by such that to them the most 
 stubborn scepticism must yield." Here theology 
 as intuitive has been more lucidly shown to find its 
 ultimate basis and support in conscience as the 
 touchstone of revelation, though by no means its 
 sole source. The theistic intuition of the Infinite, 
 as so given in conscience, has had no lack of justice 
 done to its free, authoritative, and abiding nature, 
 and to its scientific credentials. 
 
 Is it too much to say that recent thought, in view 
 of the need that theology to-day be a theology of 
 conscience, has sought, in a worthier degree, to 
 escape deistic distance by viewing conscience as an 
 instinct declaring less the primitive agency of the 
 Deity in man's creation than the perpetual presence 
 of the Infinite Personality in man ? Undoubtedly 
 it views Kant's Deity as standing, in his ' Meta- 
 physic of Ethics ' and his ' Critique of Practical 
 Reason,' in a relation to ethics which is still too 
 external and, it must be said, superficial. This is 
 so, while we yet admit the real and final outcome 
 of the Kantian philosophy to be a moral, and, so 
 far, a personal and theistic interpretation of the 
 universe. Despite his damaging criticism of the 
 traditional theistic proofs, Kant is not to be thought 
 of as ultimately the destroyer he is often taken to 
 be, for it is just he who has helped us to the moral 
 confidence, to that trust in the universe, which 
 we of this time so much need. Kant has surely 
 
250 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 been seen to cherish, for all that, a quite too great 
 horror of bringing in the will of God to explain 
 moral law, as if such laws could be other than reflect, 
 or do other than harmonise with, His nature. Kant's 
 method is so arbitrary even though arbitrariness 
 seems to be the bete noire of the Kantian theism 
 as really to expunge rather than explain moral obli- 
 gation, and to introduce Deity merely in order to 
 effect a reconciliation or adjustment in dealing with 
 the difficult elements that go to make up the sum- 
 mum bonum. It was, in fact, just this desire to 
 determine and maintain the harmony between hap- 
 piness and morality which led Kant to postulate 
 the actual existence of God that is to say, be- 
 tween these two in what Kant represented as their 
 real, not their phenomenal, relation or connection. 
 Sounder than the instinct of the Konigsberg phil- 
 osopher was that of the Ayrshire poet who, yielding 
 to no hedonistic tendency, wrote in his " Epistle to 
 a Young Friend " 
 
 " Where you feel your honour grip, 
 
 Let that aye be your border : 
 Its slightest touches, instant pause 
 
 Debar a' side pretences, 
 And resolutely keep its laws, 
 
 Uncaring consequences" 
 
 Kant, however, has the merit finely to preserve 
 the worth and reality of personality by his postula- 
 tions for the moral consciousness. But it must be 
 
VIEWS OF CONSCIENCE. 251 
 
 said that his is a line of proof that takes us but 
 little into the theoretic sphere, and leaves us in the 
 realm of faith. 
 
 As for Wuttke, it should perhaps be said that 
 he took a too theological view of conscience as 
 being the revelation of God given in our rational 
 self-consciousness, thereby setting it too much in 
 relation to exterior authority. It cannot be for- 
 gotten that man bears, as Goethe puts it, "a God 
 within the breast." It cannot be said that theism 
 has turned a deaf ear to such voices as that of a 
 Newman saying that, "were it not for this voice, 
 speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, 
 I should be an atheist or a pantheist or a polytheist 
 when I looked into the world. I am speaking for 
 myself only, and I am far from denying the real 
 force of the arguments in proof of a God, drawn 
 from the general facts of human society ; but these 
 do not warm me or enlighten me ; they do not 
 take away the winter of my desolation or make 
 the buds unfold and the leaves grow within me, 
 and my moral being rejoice." Not, of course, that 
 it has taken conscience to be itself the voice of 
 God, or the maker of moral law, but that it has 
 more clearly seen what a vehicle of revelation it 
 is to us in respect of the All-Righteous One, Who 
 is thereby evidenced to us in our moral life. Dr 
 William G. Ward, in the beginning of his second 
 volume on the ' Philosophy of Theism/ tells us 
 
252 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 that he heartily follows Cardinal Newman in re- 
 garding " men's natural sense of right and wrong 
 as by far the strongest of those foundations on 
 which belief in God is reasonably built." What 
 a complex organism conscience is, and how com- 
 prehensive are the functions it fulfils, Dorner has 
 set forth with surpassing skill. He has given 
 needful reminder, too, that " if all natural moral 
 knowledge should be denied, the transition to 
 Christian faith could be made only by an act of 
 moral caprice. To reject redemption would be 
 excusable yes, natural." 
 
 Theistic philosophy now recognises more fully 
 the power of conscience in determining the ideal, 
 and how far it is from being the simple power it 
 was so often taken to be. But it declines to make 
 conscience come down, without any adequate reason 
 either in fact or in logic, from the pedestal on 
 which it stands, and to treat it as merely the 
 capitalised or consolidated experience of the tribe 
 or race. It sees how this superb faculty of con- 
 science in man has raised him above the animal 
 creation how, but for it, man had but known 
 the 
 
 " Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, 
 Or, in his coarsest Satyr-shape, 
 Had bruised the herb and crushed the grape, 
 Or basked and battened in the woods." 
 
 It perceives that conscience, if it is not to work as 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIENCE. 253 
 
 a mere irrational instinct, calls for a God who is 
 moral as its postulate and support. Yes, these 
 things are so even while it abides true that con- 
 science awaits the enlightenment of reason before 
 it commands. It is, in fact, illumination, and not 
 loyalty, that conscience in us lacks. When what 
 is right has been by the intellect perceived or 
 found, conscience supplies us we are, of course, 
 speaking ideally with the moral impulse we need 
 for the carrying of the right into effect. Con- 
 science just represents our ethical energy, and it 
 is an energy that impels us to know the truth 
 and the right as well as to do them functions 
 whose importance are thus not easily measured. 
 Conscience is not a cognitive faculty, but it is 
 yet able to be a proof to reason of moral law. 
 
 May we not say that the philosophy of theism 
 has been striving more earnestly to find whether 
 the universe be not really moral at heart, and 
 capable of evincing a perfect harmony with man's 
 ethical ideals ? It has more distinctly proclaimed 
 the worth of this argument to be unaffected by 
 any theories which may have been put forward 
 as to the origin and nature of conscience, since 
 conscience is a unique fact which it sets forth in 
 its eternal distinction of right and wrong a dis- 
 tinction which, passing beyond the bounds of the 
 individual, it has found so graven on the whole 
 moral life and order of the world, as to feel more 
 
254 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 fully warranted in joining with the poet who, 
 addressing Duty, said 
 
 " Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 
 And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong." 
 
 Those moral characteristics, which are but the 
 reflections of the Divine image in us, are clearly 
 perceived to have, as their implicate, a Divine 
 Something rather Some One corresponding in 
 spirituality and moral nature to what we find in 
 ourselves. They tend to conserve for us the per- 
 sonality of Deity. Hence they have been em- 
 bodied in an argument which has taken this form : 
 11 To mark the step of thought which crosses the 
 line into the hemisphere of religion, it is made when 
 we affirm that over us, and in relation to us, the 
 all-perfect Mind exists. Devout faith is a belief of 
 real Being on the strength of what oitght to be. If 
 you look at it from the outside, you may call it the 
 apotheosis of moral aspirations ; if you name it from 
 the interior, you will say, it is the revelation of God 
 in the conscience. The former expression describes 
 the ascent of my thought to its object ; the latter, 
 the descent of its object into my thought." 
 
 It must have become more apparent, we imagine, 
 that the very survival of conscience would, from an 
 evolutional point of view, be but a tribute to its 
 transcendent present value. May we hot dare to 
 say that theistic philosophy has been gradually 
 perceiving of late that no evolutionary teachings 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIENCE. 255 
 
 as to the development of conscience are of con- 
 sequence in comparison with the reality and char- 
 acter of conscience as it now appears, and stands 
 related to the actual universe, and is eloquent of 
 authority which is that for us at least of the 
 Author of nature ? May we not claim it as right 
 to affirm that in this great and significant fact of 
 conscience we have a far grea'ter obstacle to athe- 
 istic triumph than anything that can be presented 
 by intellect ? The Power not ourselves which 
 seems to be making for righteousness, in midst of 
 the apparent presence of moral law in the world 
 and the imperative voices of conscience in the 
 human breast, has been always more distinctly seen 
 to be quite raised above the powers of the physical 
 world to be by no possibility any other, in fact, 
 "from worlds not quickened by the sun," than God 
 as Absolute Founder of that moral law which claims 
 such absolute authority over us. Dr Chalmers was 
 able, when treating of " Natural Theology," in words 
 still significant to ask " Had God been an unright- 
 eous Being Himself, would He have given to the 
 obviously superior faculty in man so distinct and 
 authoritative a voice on the side of righteousness ? 
 Would He have so constructed the creatures of our 
 species as to have planted in every breast a reclaim- 
 ing witness against Himself? Would he have thus 
 inscribed on the tablet of every heart the sentence 
 of His own condemnation ? " Recent theistic phil- 
 osophy appears to have become more deeply im- 
 
256 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 pressed with the fact that this august authority of 
 the moral law is not set up by man himself, but is, 
 originally at least, imposed from without quite in- 
 dependently of him, and conditions his moral life 
 without his consent even against his will. Yes, 
 for it is a " practical commander" rather than a 
 ''theoretical instructor." How much of this was 
 already present to Erskine of Linlathen may be 
 inferred from the way in which he wrote : " When 
 I attentively consider what is going on in my own 
 conscience, the chief thing forced on my notice is, 
 that I find myself face to face with a purpose not 
 my own, for I am often conscious of resisting it, but 
 which dominates me and makes itself felt as ever 
 present, as the very root and reason of my being." 
 And he goes on to add that this is his first firm 
 footing in the religious region, and that the Divine 
 Purpose so impressed within him is an unmistak- 
 able indication for him of the Divine Character of 
 Him Who so imposed it. 
 
 The theistic philosophy of religion finds no 
 potencies to have been as yet discovered by science 
 in virtue of which the origination of moral idea 
 and righteous imperative can be explained. It 
 takes the ethical law operative in conscience, with 
 its ideal of moral perfection, to point us to the 
 Perfect Personality in Whom all ethical ideals are 
 supremely realised. It views the moral admin- 
 istration, which extends over all history and ex- 
 perience, as indicative of the presence and purpose 
 
MARTINEAU ON CONSCIENCE. 257 
 
 of a moral Lawgiver and Governor. The vener- 
 able Dr Martineau, in his own forceful manner, 
 once said : " No ethical conceptions are possible 
 at all, except as floating shreds of unattached 
 thought, without a religious background ; and the 
 sense of responsibility, the agony of shame, the 
 inner reverence for justice, first find their mean- 
 ing and vindication in a Supreme Holiness that 
 rules the world. Nor can any one be penetrated 
 with the distinction between right and wrong with- 
 out recognising it as valid for all free beings, 
 and incapable of local or arbitrary change. His 
 feeling insists on its permanent recognition and 
 omnipresent sway ; and this unity in the moral 
 law carries him to the unity of the Divine Legis- 
 lator. Theism is thus the indispensable postulate 
 of conscience ; its objective counterpart and jus- 
 tification, without which its inspirations would be 
 illusions, and its veracities themselves a lie." In 
 the second volume of his * Study of Religion,' 
 Dr Martineau puts the case for conscience strongly, 
 saying that the revelation of God to us through 
 conscience is not less real and direct than is the 
 revelation of an external world by means of sense- 
 perception. " The dualism of perception, which 
 sets ourselves in the face of an objective world, 
 and the dualism of conscience, which sets us in 
 the face of an objective higher mind, are," he 
 holds, " perfectly analogous in their grounds." 
 If it should be thought that his argument, power- 
 
 R 
 
258 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 ful in its presentation of "the externality in the 
 one case, the authority in the other, the causality 
 in both," fails of proving the Divine Existence 
 that He, the One Infinite Spirit, is there can 
 be no manner of doubt as to the luminous way 
 in which it shows of what sort He is, Who is 
 God of righteousness, if haply we have found 
 Him. That which here concerns us is the moral 
 character of the God with Whom we have to do : 
 other questions, such as those of His personality 
 and self -consciousness, are to be separately dealt 
 with. May we not just as well recognise that, 
 though we grant full claim of the moral conscious- 
 ness, yet from the line of our moral ideals, meta- 
 physical proof for the Divine Being there can be 
 none ? Must not the true path and course for 
 our philosophy of theism lie in taking conscience 
 to be a moral power or capacity pertaining to the 
 human spirit, as such, and for which a true ground 
 must be sought in the one eternal and Infinite 
 Spirit Who gives us being ? Must not the very 
 concept of morality be taken by us as possible 
 only under acceptance of such self-activity of the 
 human spirit ? Must we not say that the course 
 lies for our moral argument, with its promise and 
 presentiment of a Judge of all the earth, not in 
 seeking a retribution yet to come, but in the recog- 
 nition of the demands of retributive justice here 
 and now ? And must we not say that while our 
 self -activity persists before the mechanism of an 
 
THE MORAL IDEAL. 259 
 
 all-devouring Nature, it is yet from the religious, 
 rather than the moral, needs, that the advance to 
 a personal God must be made ? Yes, for there 
 can be no doubt that the range of Kant's practical 
 reason is ethical rather than religious. Conscience, 
 with him, was concerned with duty, to which the 
 categorical imperative impelled. But religion calls 
 us to devotion to that which is personal. All the 
 same, we must hold fast to the Absolute Moral 
 Ideal which we find in God, without Whom we 
 have no adequate goal for our earthly and imper- 
 fect morality. We cannot conceive that the Divine 
 Being who planted conscience or the moral faculty 
 in us can be Himself other than One Who is 
 righteous in all His ways and holy in all His 
 works. His moral nature makes it impossible that 
 He should do otherwise than what is perfectly 
 right. No such original and self-dependent being 
 is man, who feels and knows that he is neither 
 ground nor law to himself. The fact that this 
 argument or aspect of theistic truth has sometimes 
 been overpressed in recent times must not be 
 allowed to detract from what worth or value it 
 may bear. This undue stress has been conspicu- 
 ous in the Netherlands, where the tendency has 
 been described by Professor Bavinck, of Kampen, 
 in these terms : " Even though we should be able 
 to reach, by means of reason, God as the Abso- 
 lute, yet this Absolute would not be the God 
 which our heart stands in need of. Creation does 
 
260 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 not proclaim a God of love. The God we need 
 is not to be found outside of ourselves, but within. 
 Religion is consecration to the moral ideal, to the 
 power of the good, to the Thoii shalt of conscience. 
 Religion is not science, not a view of the world, 
 but a specific conception of life. Pure morality, 
 holiness is the content of religion." Or as a writer 
 of our own has put it : " The newest philosophy 
 of Holland deems it enough that the morality shall 
 be ideal ; not the prosaic will of duty that toils 
 under the burden and heat of the day, but the 
 free flight towards visionary perfection to which 
 midnight contemplation invites. Religion, we are 
 assured, is Moral Idealism. In this definition the 
 modern tendency finds its most exact expression/' 
 Easy as it may be to carry such positions to undue 
 lengths, we must not allow these excesses to keep 
 us from finding a real basis for theistic belief, and 
 a real vantage-ground for conflict with material- 
 istic thought, in the moral elements to be found 
 in man. We cannot but flee spiritual atrophy, 
 and follow after that faith of the heart which be- 
 lieves unto righteousness. Yes, and it is impossible 
 here to forget how men have persisted in mixing 
 up the very existence of God with His righteous 
 character, for they have strangely passed, in their 
 moral difficulties, from any disbelief in His right- 
 eousness to stark doubt of His existence. This 
 righteousness of the Divine character we trace to 
 those moral principles of the Divine nature which 
 
CRITICISM OF KANT. 261 
 
 make God what He is. There is here no thought 
 of any sort of necessity, but His will ever chooses 
 to be in action what He ethically is by nature. 
 And for ourselves, the ethical ideal in us, whose 
 absolute worth, we have shown, is to be maintained, 
 runs back into an Absolute Being in Whom it 
 is grounded, and in Whom it may become per- 
 fected. Yes, for Kant came short in so thinking 
 that we impose the moral law upon ourselves, 
 when it is really put upon us from without and 
 beyond us. And if it be from above us, then 
 we clearly must put ourselves into harmonious 
 relation with the higher order above us the 
 Divine Source of moral strength. Is not all this 
 most natural, most probable, most harmonious with 
 reasonable expectation ? Or would it be more 
 so if our moral consciousness and experience were 
 related, not to a Personality in the way we have 
 described, but to some abstract and impersonal 
 entity, as unlike ourselves as possible ? 
 
 Of course, the moral argument of Kant does 
 not bring us to such a Personality as One whose 
 existence is, from the mere fact of man's highest 
 nature requiring it, demonstrated ; but it does bring 
 home to us, in most forcible manner, the dire 
 alternative that conscience and moral obligation 
 are shams or lies, and all our virtue the most 
 unreliable thing in the world. And if we cannot 
 choose but repel so dire an alternative, then the 
 strange authoritative sway of conscience, as it 
 
262 PHASES OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 works through all the exercise of our freedom 
 and self - determination, may drive us ever up- 
 wards towards an alter ego, an Infinite Personality 
 Whose mind is for us represented within us by 
 the moral imperative. Clearly, mere phenomena 
 are seen to be transcended in the resultant sacred 
 union with the Perfect Mind, and the ethical ideal 
 is perceived to work in us in the most living and 
 vital way. Yes, for nothing less than personal 
 relations can satisfy the workings of the moral 
 order : the relation we sustain to the truth is in 
 things moral a personal one : every impersonal 
 tendency is in the last result swept away by 
 theistic philosophy as defective and unsatisfying. 
 It postulates a Lord of the conscience, just as 
 conscience is lord of man, for it holds that sense 
 impressions, and intellectual reasonings, so blend 
 in us with the intuitions of the conscience that 
 our supposed autonomy gives way before a real 
 theonomy. Is it not with justice that the need 
 and importance of free ethical obedience on our 
 part to these eternal laws of righteousness have 
 been emphasised ? For how, save in this free 
 ethical region, shall man raise himself from mere 
 phenomena to the heights of moral personality ? 
 From the failures and defects of hedonism theistic 
 philosophy still turns to say, to that Supreme 
 Being who is its Ideal of Goodness no less than 
 its Power of Life, " In THY Presence is fulness 
 of joy ; in THY right hand there are pleasures 
 
THE MORAL DEITY. 263 
 
 for evermore." Yes, for God is more clearly seen 
 by it to be not only a necessity of man's reason 
 and a moral postulate, but also the indispensable 
 basis of universal human morality and of the 
 whole moral order of the world. It is, in fact, 
 on this cumulative aspect and not on mere tes- 
 timony of the isolated consciousness, that the force 
 of theistic evidence has been felt to depend. For, 
 as Mr Balfour has said, when "we have been 
 moved to postulate a rational God in the interests 
 of science," we can " scarcely decline to postulate 
 a moral God in the interests of morality." No, 
 the witness of conscience or our God-consciousness 
 will not allow us to do otherwise than postulate 
 the presence of One Who is not only the Oversoul, 
 the Architect of the universe, and the Overseer 
 of our activities, but also the Father of our spirits, 
 God of truth and righteousness. Whatever clouds 
 and darkness intellect may find round about Him, 
 the moral sense within us is still sure that right- 
 eousness and truth are the habitation of His dwell- 
 ing. And not the notions even the profoundest 
 of the intellect bring God near us, but only 
 those sighings of the heart and those outgoings 
 of the spiritual nature in which the soul becomes 
 lost in wonder, love, and praise. 
 
264 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 RECENT THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE 
 PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 THE question of the personality of the Infinite 
 God, with the modes of His manifestation to man- 
 kind, has, in recent philosophy of theism, more < and 
 more assumed the aspect of being one of funda- 
 mental significance, in view of the contentions of 
 those who have declared personality, in the case 
 of the Deity, a vague, unverifiable idea, and who 
 argue for a vapid, absurd, infinite non-personality. 
 Personality has always more manifestly appeared 
 to be no " incompatible attribute" of the Absolute, 
 but something which pours meaning into what 
 would otherwise remain meaningless and abstract. 
 Neither being, nor substance, nor force, nor cause, 
 nor extra-mundane forms of Deity, will suffice for 
 our conception of God such conception of Him 
 as may make great realities like creation and in- 
 carnation possible. We do crave, behind all these, 
 an Eternal Self-Consciousness or Absolute Person- 
 
DEFINITIONS OF PERSONALITY. 265 
 
 ality, of Whom, in man and the world, we have 
 manifestations. That personality by which we 
 philosophically signify selfhood, or self-realisation 
 by a true self, must always remain much more 
 than any formal definition of it : futile it must 
 be to render personality in any abstract terms, if 
 we would preserve its essence. Personality is, in 
 fact, that which alone can explain and interpret 
 itself. The activities of personality certainly pre- 
 suppose spirit, a presupposition quite as rational 
 as any of those to which we are accustomed in 
 science. " In each case that which science finds 
 as the essential reality of matter and energy is 
 that which is imperceptible by sense. The essen- 
 tial reality of the tangible is the intangible ; of 
 the audible is the inaudible ; of the visible is the 
 invisible ; of the divisible is the indivisible ; of 
 the perceptible is the imperceptible. Thus under- 
 lying or within the gross matter and its motions 
 which we perceive, is a world of atomic, molecular, 
 and ethereal matter which no human sense can 
 grasp. In this, science presents to our thought 
 a reality of which we can have no perception and 
 scarcely even a conception as matter." Perfectly 
 consonant with scientific tendency and procedure, 
 therefore, is the presupposition of spirit as at the 
 base of personality. Far more than the fact that 
 he thinks or wills, is the fact that man is a self 
 or spirit. His various capacities and activities 
 are only so many aspects or sidelights of this truth 
 
266 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 of his selfhood. The personality of God, so far 
 from having become a matter of mere abstract or 
 academic interest, is, we feel bound to say, still 
 one of fundamental moment for all speculative in- 
 terest of whatsoever kind, giving, according as we 
 posit a positive or negative attitude, a direction 
 to all else, as has been far from sufficiently under- 
 stood. We, therefore, assume a distinctly positive 
 attitude, and maintain that nothing but true per- 
 sonality constitutes substantial being. It is because 
 being can never become really intelligible to us so 
 long as we view it only in the light of cause or of 
 substance, or even as impersonal intelligence, that 
 a true philosophy of theism must interpret it in 
 terms of self-conscious personality. It is undoubt- 
 edly true that just in the personifying or personal- 
 ising process did such a philosophy, and that by a 
 psychological necessity, arise. The problem, affect- 
 ing, as it does, the colligating hypothesis of the 
 theistic philosophy, is now, we take it, seen to be 
 one so vast, so multiform, so capable of enlightened 
 inquiry from many points of approach, that its eluci- 
 dation can only be the work of many minds. 
 
 We believe it to have grown very evident to 
 theistic philosophy that the primal being which 
 we call God must remain to us a sealed book, 
 unless we are willing to read by the light which 
 the category of personality affords. The person- 
 ality of God may be no prime concern either to 
 the documents of Christianity or to the unsophis- 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF PERSONALITY. 267 
 
 ticated Christian consciousness, but it is clearly 
 seen, we believe, to be of vital moment for the 
 religious life in the view of reflective thought. 
 The truth is, there have seemed to be a power 
 and a fascination in personality, which have only 
 become the more strikingly apparent as science 
 has pursued its determined way with self-sufficient 
 air into the knowledge of the world, only to find 
 salvation from utter blankness by falling back at 
 last on some dim shadows cast of personal presence. 
 The supernatural, carrying in its bosom person- 
 ality, with all that of which personality is capable, 
 has been saved unto us in modern thought with 
 a great salvation. There can be no doubt that 
 recent theistic thought, piercing what our late 
 laureate poet calls "the abysmal deeps of per- 
 sonality," has, with far firmer grasp, apprehended 
 the fact that, in the consciousness of our own 
 personality, whence we rise to belief in the per- 
 sonality of God, theistic philosophy has found 
 
 "A tower of strength 
 That stands four-square to all the winds that blow." 
 
 For it has gained a new percipience of the way 
 in which the pregnant personality of man, that 
 personality with whose idea we are in experience 
 so conversant, saves the personality of God from 
 sinking for us into meaningless jargon. It has, 
 we claim, more deeply observed how essential is 
 the Divine Personality to religion and virtue, which 
 
268 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 are, in their very nature and development, really 
 impossible without the free, spiritual, and personal, 
 to which in Deity the personal in man pays homage 
 as to nothing beside. And indeed we take it that 
 it has found the living religious consciousness not 
 only crave the personality of God, but also carry 
 in itself a subjective certainty of the Divine 
 Personality. Such subjective certainty is a call, 
 of course, to theoretic reason to scrutinise its 
 bases, that it be not found to contain that which, 
 objectively considered, is contradictory or impos- 
 sible. 
 
 To a blind, impersonal, unconscious world- 
 mechanism, the free personality of man instinct- 
 ively and persistently maintains an attitude of 
 superiority : the very result of the Divinely per- 
 sonal is just contrary to what is so often imagined 
 that whereby issues of vast spiritual import are 
 made possible or verifiable to us. We venture to 
 think theistic philosophy has reached a richer ap- 
 preciation of the fact that Absolute Intelligence, 
 properly apprehended, carries with it, by implica- 
 tion, Absolute Will, or, in other words, Person- 
 ality. Does not the concept of personality carry 
 with it the bright possibility of the Deity making 
 full and practical proof to us of His love and 
 goodness ? And do not such concrete forms of 
 His goodness and love suffuse the concept of per- 
 sonality with the warm glow of life ? The perfect 
 indivisible unity of God has been more conspicu- 
 
CRITICISM OF LOTZE AND GREEN. 269 
 
 ously presented as consisting pre-eminently of per- 
 sonality personality signifying in this connection 
 a thinking being or essence, as something which 
 in itself (an sich^ is. It has been more evident, 
 particularly to German thought, how the concep- 
 tion of such a thinking being or essence carries 
 with it all that is most important in such customary 
 circumlocutions for personality as self-consciousness 
 and self-determination. We are thus with Kant so 
 far at least as when, in dealing with Transcendental 
 Esthetic, he lays the emphasis he does on the self- 
 activity of the soul's life ; and in self-consciousness 
 rather than consciousness in general do we find 
 the essential moment of personality. There is no 
 doubt great force in Lotze's contention that just 
 in "the true recognition of oneself as an /" does 
 personality consist, as soon as ever one knows 
 himself as unitary subject in opposition to his own 
 ideas and states. But this is still vague and un- 
 satisfying. So is Green's contention that self-ob- 
 jectification or self-consciousness makes up person- 
 ality, wherein the part is made to do duty for the 
 whole. Those qualities of personality which wear 
 a volitional or an ethical or an emotional character 
 are all sacrificed on the view of Green and others, 
 to those of a purely reflective cast. Surely a very 
 dwarfed conception of personality. The " root ele- 
 ment in all personality" is, no doubt, as Professor 
 Knight has remarked, "consciousness," and self- 
 consciousness was allowed to man by Spinoza, who 
 
270 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 yet denied him self-determination and free-will. 
 But we do not take self -consciousness to be the 
 all of personality that is, identical with it. For 
 self-determination is personality, and infinite self- 
 determination means for us the infinite personality 
 called God. 
 
 The theistic philosophy of our time properly 
 inquires, whether that self -activity, which is the 
 property of spirit, is something that may be thought 
 of by itself, or requires that we posit a self-active 
 Being for its Ground. So far as it consists of 
 mechanism, the outgoings of soul -life might con- 
 ceivably be due to their being the expression of 
 material workings dependent on an impersonal 
 primitive Ground (Urgrund] of things. But it 
 is otherwise with its self-activity, which cannot be 
 founded or based but on a self-active Being. We 
 take it to be now well understood that personality 
 is, to theistic philosophy, that which gives to man his 
 unity as an unanalysed self or individual conscious- 
 ness ; that its active elements are knowledge or in- 
 telligence, feeling or sensibility, and will or volition ; 
 and that its implicates are inclusive of self-conscious- 
 ness and self-determination or freedom. Personality 
 is to it, in our view, nothing but the capability of a 
 self-determination which shall include thought, self- 
 consciousness, and moral self-determination. The 
 self- consciousness is for us condition and presup- 
 position of this moral self-determination. And the 
 power by which man is able so to resolve and de- 
 
THE ABSOLUTE PERSONALITY. 2/1 
 
 termine, is just that freedom of his will which is 
 later to occupy our attention. 
 
 Now, the manifestations of Deity are, as we 
 judge, so grounded in self-determination as to pre- 
 suppose the personality of God. These things we 
 may surely say without professing to attempt a 
 psychology of the Eternal. Hence to the theistic 
 philosophy the Divine Personality, as ideal or abso- 
 lute, represents, as the Eternal Energy self-deter- 
 mined in His own Supreme Reason, the essential 
 elements in personality raised to their highest power 
 or perfection. It seems to find beginnings of this 
 personality in the Ontological proof of perfect being, 
 to gather strength for its conclusion in the apparent 
 cosmological craving for Will as the originative force 
 or power, to gain confirmation from the Intelligence 
 that marks the Teleological reasoning, and to reach 
 the highest seal of self -existent personality in the 
 evidences of man's mind and of moral law. As 
 little as may be can it be questioned that recent 
 philosophy of theism has stepped out in advance of 
 the inherent absurdity of the position assumed by 
 those thinkers who, in postulating that Deity, per- 
 sonally non-existent, may yet be higher than per- 
 sonality, place being plus intelligence below that 
 which has it not, and who, in face of the self- 
 evidencing power of the theistic idea, assign that 
 which is self-conscious and self-determining to a 
 lower platform than that which blindly moves on 
 to its ends. A perfectly absurd and even impos- 
 
2/2 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 sible conception is this of infinite impersonal being, a 
 conception which is quite incapable of being thought 
 by any human mind. This impossibility of resting 
 in any " World -Ground " that shall be impersonal 
 and unconscious, say, the unconscious Will of 
 Schopenhauer and Hartmann, as that with which, 
 in the religious relation, the finite spirit is to hold 
 commerce, has been strenuously declared by the the- 
 istic philosophy of late years, in opposition to pan- 
 theistic tendencies. What is non-personal it has felt 
 compelled to treat as for it sub-personal, since it can- 
 not suffice for the high ends and conscious relations 
 
 o 
 
 of religion. It has not suffered itself to forget that 
 the ends of which we have been speaking are ends 
 living and rational ; and it has not seen the wisdom 
 of a philosophy which should postulate the evolution 
 of spiritual qualities and the results of thought, while 
 there should be no conscious apprehension of the 
 former, and none of the attributes that should ac- 
 company the latter. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has been more sensibly 
 aware of how truly her warfare must be waged 
 on the field of pure thought, on which she must, 
 perchance, engage the philosophy of the uncon- 
 scious more seriously than has yet been done. 
 Even now it is to be hoped she has been duly 
 impressed with the wonderfulness of the uncon- 
 scious Absolute, with which, however little intelli- 
 gible, her thought has to do. For, has she not seen 
 it to be an Unconscious which, as " by sorcery," is 
 
CRITICISM OF THE UNCONSCIOUS ABSOLUTE. 273 
 
 at any moment "able to destroy matter and to 
 call it again into existence " ; an Absolute which 
 knows everything excepting always itself; an Un- 
 conscious "which is a spirit," and "not only pos- 
 sesses reason and intelligence, but is endowed with 
 a clear-sighted wisdom infinitely superior to any 
 conceivable consciousness," and which, without 
 being itself personal, does everything we are wont 
 to ascribe to personality ? There is, in view of 
 all this, perhaps little wonder that theistic philos- 
 ophy has found it to have been declared by Karl 
 Peters, of course that this philosophy of the Un- 
 conscious really represents a transition to theism. 
 We cannot but justify her refusal to recognise this 
 manifest self-contradiction called an Unconscious 
 Absolute, or to sanction the separation of will 
 the irrational will of Hartmann's Unconscious 
 under any form or circumstance from intellect, as 
 only part of the groundless and arbitrary proced- 
 ure of that philosopher. We think theistic phil- 
 osophy may well stand excused if she insists on 
 making her Deity more than a giant dreamer, 
 doing He knows not what. We cannot but in- 
 dorse her view of Hartmann's recognition of the 
 presence and evidence of mind as disclosed in the 
 universe, while he attributes them to nothing higher 
 than an unintelligent and unconscious potentiality, 
 as a contradictory and irrational position. What 
 do we know of intelligence and will acting as 
 severed from consciousness ? Certainly we have 
 
 s 
 
274 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 activities of our own which, thanks to habit, have 
 grown unconscious ; but these activities themselves 
 in their initial stages, and all our most real ac- 
 tivities, are conscious activities. And if we know 
 nothing of will and intelligence operating save as 
 inseparably associated with consciousness, what 
 warrant has our rational selfhood for reasoning 
 up except as it reasons up from what is known ? 
 According to Hartmann, it is sufficient for the 
 religious interest, which attaches itself to theism, 
 to postulate an intelligent first being or principle 
 ( Urwesen) without self-determination : a reflection- 
 less, intuitive intelligence is called in by him to 
 explain the immanent, unconscious, teleological prin- 
 ciple of the world. When he so tries to bridge 
 the gulf between the real theistic position and 
 the pantheistic leanings of his pessimism, we must 
 be grateful to him, we suppose, for regarding us 
 as products of an intelligence. But to the phil- 
 osophy of theism it can be no great advance on 
 a purely mechanical view of things if the intel- 
 ligence from which we are sprung is so uncon- 
 scious and unrelated to our life as neither to ap- 
 point its ends, nor impart its higher worth, nor 
 lend supernal aid in the fulfilment of its imposed 
 ends and aims. 
 
 We do not think theistic philosophy can be said 
 to have found its mind expressed in the " Cosmic 
 theism " of Fiske's ' Cosmic Philosophy,' in the 
 second volume of which he inveighs against postu- 
 
CRITICISM OF FISKE. 275 
 
 lating rationality and personality for God on no 
 better grounds than that he does not seem capable 
 of conceiving Deity without attaching to Divine 
 personality the merely contingent defects and limit- 
 ations that pertain to rationality and personality as 
 found in man. In consequence of this, he sacrifices 
 " the symbol of personality, because personality im- 
 plies limitation, and to speak of an infinite person- 
 ality is to cheat oneself with a phrase that is empty 
 of meaning." Not the only way, let it be said, 
 of cheating oneself so long as such a phrase as 
 " Cosmic theism " is allowed to dupe us by making 
 us believe that such things as reason and righteous- 
 ness, intelligence and freedom, cannot be ascribed 
 to Deity save under the "quasi -human" forms 
 Fiske would impute and assume. We believe that 
 theistic philosophy is to-day more thoroughly alive 
 to the necessity a necessity arising out of the 
 new unwonted endeavours to discredit theism on 
 grounds specifically religious of setting the con- 
 sciousness and personality of God, Who alone is 
 absolute end (Selbstziel and Selbstzweck\ on a truly 
 philosophical basis. Recent theistic philosophy has 
 at least begun to sift to the bottom the specious 
 arguments by which objection has now on specu- 
 lative grounds been taken to the contradictions 
 involved, as is alleged, in any possible construction 
 of a conscious Divine Personality. And it has, 
 as we think, more satisfactorily shown the real 
 harmony of such a Divine Absolute as God the 
 
2/6 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 self-conscious Personality the Personality with an 
 absolute consciousness (the VOTJCTLS vorjcrecos of Aris- 
 totle) with the postulates of the religious con- 
 sciousness. The feelings most characteristic of 
 religion and worship are such as simply cannot 
 breathe and act before a mere impersonal energy 
 or unconscious power in nature. Should the actual 
 results be by any accounted small, up to the present, 
 the extreme difficulty of the new burdens and under- 
 takings imposed upon theistic thought is not to be 
 forgotten. That thought has remembered the need, 
 of which Arnold spake, of our being " able to cleave 
 to a power of goodness appealing to our higher and 
 real self," but it has advanced into deeper insight of 
 the truth that the powers in the world that make 
 for righteousness, for goodness, never could be 
 impersonal, without an immediate lowering effect 
 on the aspirations and endeavours of the human 
 personality, which instinctively reserves its highest 
 homage for the personal. And so it has more 
 explicitly recognised the essentialness of personal- 
 ity in the Deity to man's true fellowship with the 
 Divine. 
 
 From this conception of personality the idea of 
 corporeity is, of course, to be banished, even if this 
 means a call to mental energy which not all are 
 willing to meet in this sphere. From Spinoza to 
 Matthew Arnold place has been found for the view 
 that we limit the infinite when we regard it as 
 personal an absurd result of treating the infinite 
 
' NATURAL RELIGION ' CRITICISED. 277 
 
 as a mere aggregate of things finite. When per- 
 sonality is viewed thus as necessarily limited, it 
 is so as the unfortunate result of viewing person- 
 ality after a quantitative mode of thinking. Here 
 we may say that nothing could exceed the com- 
 pleteness with which recent philosophical theism 
 has shown what gratuitous and unwarranted assump- 
 tion underlies such asseverations as that of the 
 author of ' Natural Religion,' that " personality in- 
 volves a body and mortality." It has surely seen 
 that personality, in its essential idea, involves noth- 
 ing of the sort, and that its conscious self-hood has 
 nothing essentially to do either with shape or out- 
 line or location in space, or any of the other con- 
 ceivable limitations that mark personality in the 
 usual sense. It has laid bare the contradiction 
 clearly involved in the supposition of those who 
 would condition Absolute Intelligence on corpore- 
 ality or the possession of a brain. It has, we 
 believe, been attaining firmer grasp of the fact 
 that personality is properly apprehended, neither 
 after quantitative dimensions nor qualitative de- 
 grees, but as a thing of free, original movement, 
 a result of self -determining power. Personality it 
 sees not to " depend upon a past or present con- 
 traposition of the ego to the non-ego ; but, con- 
 versely, it consists in an immediate esse per se y 
 forms the necessary prius of this contraposition 
 wherever it takes place/' Hence it reaches, in 
 the case of God, unconditioned because infinite 
 
2/8 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 personality. Only, such free, volitional, self-deter- 
 mination must be premised, in His case, to extend 
 to His nature no less than to His character. There- 
 fore we say that the greater stress on personality, 
 as it is claimed for the universal and omnipresent 
 God, and on personality, as it is in man, marks 
 for us a gratifying advance in the recent philosophy 
 of theism, which has indeed more clearly seen how 
 it is the very absence of personality in God the 
 lack of sensibility and self- determining power 
 which would really constitute limitation in Him 
 as the impersonal. We see, then, how personality 
 encompasses the path of our thought, and besets 
 it behind and before. If thought ascends up into 
 heaven, personality is there : if it makes its bed 
 in Sheol, personality is there : if it takes the wings 
 of the morning, and dwells in the uttermost parts 
 of the sea, there also personality meets and holds 
 it fast. 
 
 But, while personality thus lays hold upon 
 thought, it has become always more apparent how 
 possible it is for thought to rest in personality as 
 a metaphysical conviction, without corresponding 
 realisation of the encompassing presence of the 
 God Who is a Person. And may we not say 
 that this recognition has saved thought from re- 
 maining purely rationalistic ? May we not, with 
 the strongest reason, hope, too, that the Absolute 
 Personality has been able, in His untranslatable 
 fulness, to shake off the incubus of those specu- 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHICAL MISCONCEPTIONS. 279 
 
 lative limitations, with which non-theistic thought 
 has been pleased to invest Him, yea, to do so 
 " with as much ease as Samson his green withes " ? 
 Even theistic thought has advanced beyond the 
 view of Lipsius who retains so many points 
 of community with his precursor Biedermann, to 
 both of whom we shall again advert that the 
 Divine Essence is annulled when personality 
 which, on his philosophical presentation, means a 
 necessary finitising of the Infinite is predicated 
 of it in the interests of practical religious needs. 
 For, our late philosophy of theism has very clearly 
 perceived how, in such a view, thought is con- 
 founded with mental representation ( Vorstellung), 
 and definition with limitation or lack of reality. 
 Personality is still, as Mansel said, " the noblest 
 of all existence of which men dream, for it is that 
 which knows, not that which is known." Indeed, 
 since Mansel, whose serviceable though not satis- 
 factory representations may be acknowledged, the 
 philosophy of theism has, with an almost weari- 
 some iteration we mean no blame to it, for it 
 has been needed shown that personality need 
 not be finite, since the assumption that deter- 
 minateness, as the essence of being, means limi- 
 tation, is so unwarranted. Also since, as Lotze 
 according to Ladd has said, " it suffices for 
 laying the foundation" of personality "if a spiritual 
 being has the faculty of apprehending itself as ' I ' 
 in opposition to its own states, which are only its 
 
280 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 states, and not 'I.' A relation to an external 
 reality is not necessary ; and, consequently, ' per- 
 sonality' also is not bound to the condition of 
 finiteness to wit, to that of being limited by 
 another reality of the same kind." 
 
 Personality, then, in Deity has been very clearly 
 relieved of those accidental limitations which con- 
 fused thought had attached to personality, and 
 which would have ended by destroying all know- 
 ledge of Him whatsoever. The Infinite "alone, 
 therefore, is capable of a self-existence, which needs 
 neither initiation nor continuous development by 
 means of anything which is alien to it, but main- 
 tains itself in an eternal movement within its own 
 essence." Disastrous to theology as anthropo- 
 morphism, under some current conceptions, might 
 be, its charge clearly avails not in the light of all 
 that has now been advanced against the supposi- 
 tion of personality as a thing of quantitative limi- 
 tations. How difficult it is, however, to get rid 
 of this quantitative infinite, modern philosophy bears 
 abundant witness. We therefore believe recent 
 philosophical theism to be with W. S. Lilly when, 
 in his ' Great Enigma,' he has, in Lotzean strain, 
 remarked that, in the proper sense of the word, 
 " Personality (Fiir-sick-sein) can be predicated only 
 of the Infinite," and that " perfect self-hood means 
 immediate self-existence. What we call person- 
 ality, self-hood, in man, is but the dimmest shadow, 
 the faintest effluence from the source and fount 
 
PERSONALITY AND ITS POSSIBILITIES. 281 
 
 of Being, in whom alone is perfect Reason, perfect 
 Will." Further, "the Ultimate Reality contains 
 within itself the conditions of its existence. Man 
 does not ; for he needs the stimulus of non-self 
 to be conscious of his self -hood. He does not 
 need that stimulus to become a person, for the 
 non-self does not create consciousness ; it merely 
 manifests it ; it is an occasion, not a cause. The 
 idea of Personality, like all ideas, is realised only 
 in that self-existent the original of all existence 
 
 o 
 
 which transcends those ideas, indeed, but in tran- 
 scending includes them." To its deepened concep- 
 tions of personality, true, infinite, eternal, in God, 
 real, abiding, supreme, in man, must be attributed 
 much of the fulness and depth of recent theistic phil- 
 osophy, and we, for our part, see no reason why 
 greater richness may not yet gather around its con- 
 ceptions in this sphere. It is, in fact, just here in our 
 view that theistic thought has a great and inspiring 
 work to do, for it is here in personality that po- 
 tentiality, trueness, fulness, depth, infinitude, for us 
 reside, though as yet by us imperfectly known. And 
 we, for our own part, do not see how we can in the 
 future face the scientific view of the illimitable uni- 
 verse, except as we think more profoundly along the 
 lines of personality. This, it seems to us, we must 
 do, or give up the faith in fact, relinquish theology. 
 There is no need to make impossible attempt here 
 at historic treatment of this subject in recent theol- 
 ogy and philosophy, seeing the theme has received 
 
282 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 attention on its historic side in Germany from 
 Sengler, Wirth, Hanne, Pfleiderer, Drews, and 
 others in our time of scarcely less consequence in our 
 estimate, and since we are here concerned less with 
 mere historical and systematic exposition than with 
 critically estimating the advances made by theistic 
 philosophy. We shall take leave to say, however, 
 that the full results of recent German thought and 
 research in this connection do not seem to us to 
 have been at all fully assimilated in British theo- 
 logical scholarship and thought, which we account 
 matter of extreme regret. It may be remarked 
 that the older dogmatic interest in the perfection, 
 infinity, and spirituality of God has given way to 
 a more philosophic interest in the conception of 
 personality in Deity. The personality conception 
 was found helpful in bringing out the Divine super- 
 iority to, and independence of, the world, in the 
 revulsion that took place against Spinozism. What 
 in recent times has been most firmly held to in 
 personality is undoubtedly related to Kant Kant 
 sees in freedom and independence of the mechan- 
 ism of all nature the essential moment of person- 
 ality. One-sided as his view of self-determination 
 may be, there is yet more to be said for his than 
 for many more recent representations of person- 
 ality. He boldly elevates the notion beyond mere 
 intelligence to something in w r hich he sees the 
 proof of a new and higher order founded in free- 
 dom. Man is to him, in virtue of personality, a 
 
THE DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY. 283 
 
 being capable of life, of reason, and of forming judg- 
 ments. There is now associated with the reflective 
 subject, to which we attribute personality, such a 
 practical activity that we see it marked by self- 
 determination, and not by mere self-consciousness. 
 Recent philosophy of theism may, we suppose, be 
 said to have carried its thought along the theistic 
 lines of Jacobi and Baader, even though the posi- 
 tions of these thinkers may fall very far short of 
 present-day conceptions of personality and proofs 
 of the same. The former of these, Jacobi, was 
 able on occasion to assert his belief defective as 
 its objective grounds might be in an intelligent 
 and personal cause of the world (verstandige per- 
 sonliche Ursache der Welt). Fichte expressly held 
 that "in the conception of personality lie limits" 
 (Schranken) ; that what we in our finitude ap- 
 prehend never by any ascent (durch unendliche 
 Steigerung) can be "changed into an Infinite," 
 and that such ascent since it never can be rid 
 of limitation and finiteness may bring us to a 
 magnified man, but never to God. Both his 
 theistic tendencies and his shrinking from person- 
 ality in Deity appear in the sublime strains of 
 his ' Vocation of Man,' wherein he breaks out : 
 " Sublime and Living Will ! named by no name, 
 compassed by no thought ! I may well raise my 
 soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not divided ! 
 Thy voice sounds within me, mine resounds in 
 Thee ; and all my thoughts, if they be but good 
 
284 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 and true, live in Thee also. . . . That which I 
 conceive becomes finite through my very concep- 
 tion of it ; and this can never, even by endless 
 exaltation, rise into the Infinite. Thou differest 
 from men, not in degree, but in nature. In every 
 stage of their advancement they think of Thee 
 as a greater man, and still a greater ; but never 
 as God the Infinite Whom no measure can 
 mete. ... In the idea of Person there are im- 
 perfections, limitations : how can I clothe Thee 
 with it without these ? . . . Thou workest in me 
 the knowledge of my duty, of my vocation in the 
 world of reasonable beings : kow, I know not, nor 
 need I to know. Thou knowest what I think and 
 what I will. . . . Thou wiliest that my free obedi- 
 ence shall bring with it eternal consequences. . . . 
 Thou doest, and Thy will itself is the deed, &c." 
 With Fichte, indeed, when we have attributed 
 consciousness and personality to God, we have 
 not really thought God, as we wished to do, but 
 have simply multiplied ourselves in our thought, 
 and so finitised the Deity. The pure or absolute 
 Ego, which Fichte speedily identified with God, 
 is no determinate individual, but simply pure and 
 infinite activity. To his stress on this principle 
 of the ego, Fichte united emphasis on Will an 
 eternal, infinite Will as, in his later writings, he 
 did on Life the Absolute Life both of which 
 he identified with God. To this principle in any 
 of these forms determination is denied, and to that 
 
CRITICISM OF FICHTE. 285 
 
 extent, therefore, infinity may be predicated of them. 
 In short, determination is, on Fichte's system, syn- 
 onymous with finiteness. His pure ego is too 
 palpably conceived through abstraction ever to sub- 
 sist really for itself, and in his search for the funda- 
 mental principle or " fact-action " (Thathandlung), 
 which he sets out by seeking, he conducts us at 
 once to a vain and void infinite and outgoing 
 activity a Being absolute, impersonal, and incon- 
 ceivable. No satisfactory conception of personality 
 may be reached by his process of hypostatising 
 the Divine Self, but the honour is his of having 
 looked the problem of Divine Being in the face, 
 and grappled long and nobly with it. Having thus 
 indicated so clearly our own view of his position, 
 it will not be strange if we be found to agree with a 
 judgment which says : " Fichte, the sublime idealist, 
 was withheld from seeing God by no obtruding veil 
 of a material universe. Fichte, if any man ever 
 did, recognised the moral order of the world. But 
 Fichte living indeed the blessed life in God yet 
 annihilated for thought his own personality and that 
 of God, in the infinity of this moral order." This 
 practical denial of a personal Absolute by Fichte 
 is growing more apparent to philosophical criticism, 
 we certainly believe. Not less apparent ought also 
 to be the facts of Fichte's implication in illicit ways 
 of this very Absolute as personal, and the strange- 
 ness of such denial in a system that makes con- 
 sciousness so absolute. 
 
286 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 As for Schleiermacher, his speculative power 
 came short of wholly transcending the Spinozan 
 influence, which in its idea of substance still clave 
 unto him, causing him when dealing with God 
 Who is, to use a phrase of his own, "the absolutely 
 spaceless causality "- to oppose personality in fact 
 while not in name. He preferred stress on the 
 living causality of God, the term " personal " carry- 
 ing for him limitations of the Deity which he did 
 not attach to the epithet " living." His is the merit 
 of having rendered evident the need to construct a 
 doctrine of Deity that should possess the virtue of 
 consistency. The attractive and rational mysticism 
 of Krause was able, at the beginning of this century, 
 to embody a theism which recognised the Divine 
 Immanence in all the wondrous manifestations of 
 its life, as Krause's writings though unfortunate 
 in their terminology show. It was Krause's aim 
 to unite the pantheistic world-view of idealism with 
 the conception of Divine Personality. The Wesen 
 or Essence as he likes to term the Deity is to 
 him no indifferent Reason, but the living and per- 
 sonal World-Ground. For personality the thing 
 if not without a certain aversion to the name 
 he found a place in God, when like Baader he 
 would, in his " panentheism," seek a theism in which 
 justice should be done to monistic elements. When 
 Amiel, however, inveighs against what he calls the 
 fanatical adherents of transcendence, than whose 
 " dogmatic supernaturalism," he says, "the panen- 
 
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMANY. 287 
 
 theism of Krause is ten times more religious," it 
 becomes necessary to ask whether the fanatical tend- 
 ency why should such be ? has not become trans- 
 ferred in our time to the direction of immanence. 
 
 Not without some interest as preface or prelude 
 of personality have been certain very recent efforts 
 in Germany to view the consciousness of reality or 
 transcendence as a new kind of consciousness to 
 take consciousness for this end from its psychologi- 
 cal (Erfahrung) rather than its metaphysical (Vor- 
 gang) side, and find in the consciousness of reality 
 as a transcendent thing a strictly psychological dat- 
 um one, too, of prime significance. Of course this 
 consciousness is not the reality, but reality which 
 is the transcendent is that from which the con- 
 sciousness springs. Reality or transcendence is 
 taken on this view to be the something of conscious- 
 ness in its primary psychological aspect. On the 
 problem of personality on which we are here en- 
 gaged, there is good reason for gratefully recalling 
 the noble note sounded by Julius Mliller when he 
 showed how a philosophy which could not do justice 
 to " personality and freedom" as principles of real 
 life is the "born foe of Christianity and theology, 
 and excludes the idea of their harmonious progress 
 or their mutual enlargement." He declared that a 
 philosophy which truly realises the principle of per- 
 sonality in God and in man is " the natural ally of 
 Christianity." To him our belief in God springs 
 out of the consciousness of our own personality as 
 
288 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 finite, yet as wholly unlike the world without us, 
 and by him God is set above the laws of nature, 
 so free and personal is He. Such were his affirma- 
 tions touching theistic philosophy, even though it 
 should, he said, be sometimes found to harbour 
 contradictions respecting particular doctrines. 
 Weisse, again, in his speculation to which that of 
 Rothe was so near of kin held to an idea of Deity 
 which made Him personal, but threefold was the 
 personality in which He reached actuality reached 
 it in time as personality and love. I. H. Fichte was 
 able, in treating of speculative theism, to postulate 
 a rational and immanent, yet independent, Creator, 
 and to speak of personality as the only real exist- 
 ence, the one true reality (das allein wahrhaft exist- 
 irende). Dorner, Frank, and others have given 
 explication to the positions of those who, recognising 
 the merits of his idealism, cannot, with Hegel, make 
 God only the World-Spirit ( Weltgeisf), and withhold 
 from Him personality under fear of reducing or 
 limiting His absoluteness. Finely has Dorner 
 shown that definiteness in Deity does not mean 
 limitation or imply imperfection, but the reverse 
 perfection in Him on Whom all other existences 
 depend. A limitation, he contends, God may be to 
 us, but not we to Him, " the absolute Causality." 
 Dorner contends for the Absolute Personality of 
 God both from the ethical side of Will and from 
 the side of Knowledge as Absolute Intelligence; 
 and the guarantee of this Absolute Personality both 
 
GERMAN DEVELOPMENTS. 289 
 
 he and Frank seek in the truth of the Triune God. 
 This does also Sartorius, to whom " God is love 
 personal, primal love," after his own fashion. 
 This principle of love it was which Liebner also 
 invoked in order to solve the apparent contradiction 
 of more persons than one in the Godhead, and to 
 give them still full personality through their unity. 
 The Divine Essence had been already conceived by 
 Nitzsch as Spirit, as Love and as Lord, compre- 
 hended as personal goodness (unendliches person- 
 liches G^lte). "If God be conceived as the primal 
 Ego, and from this basis begets an objective alter 
 Ego, this thesis and antithesis still remain severed 
 or incomplete until a third Ego proceeds from the 
 Divine essence through the medium of the second, 
 and thus the personality is fully consummated." 
 Also, by Rothe and Thomasius, the Divine Essence 
 was represented as having absolute or perfect 
 personality entering into its definition. Starting, in 
 the Schellingian style, from the Absolute as Causa 
 Sni, Rothe works, from a Deity Who is primarily 
 indifferent Being, up to His actuality in a timeless 
 process in the twofold form of personality and 
 nature. In his later positions, Rothe made the 
 Divine potentiality and not nature as he earlier 
 held the spring of His personality, which person- 
 ality in its turn determined His further self-actualis- 
 ation. Thomasius laid emphasis on the will element 
 as an essential moment of the Absolute Personality, 
 while Philippi in an opposing spirit emphasised 
 
2QO THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 the notion of substance in connection with the Ab- 
 solute. Kahnis preferred to accentuate the idea of 
 infinite spirit in his conception of Deity, and Frank 
 had the merit to bring into prominence the absolute 
 unity and perfect reality of the Supreme Being. 
 
 It has been the concept of the Divine Aseity, or 
 Causality of Himself, which, in more clearly defined 
 form, has been the starting-point of the later the- 
 ology of Germany, in its maintenance of the Abso- 
 lute Personality. The great advance in the ground 
 covered is seen in the difference of the position, 
 say, of Lotze from that of Strauss, to whom an 
 Absolute Personality was something " incapable of 
 being thought." Of Fechner, the senior of Lotze, 
 and near of kin to him intellectually, mention 
 must be made, and of his brilliant work on ' Three 
 Motives and Grounds of Belief.' What here con- 
 cerns us in Fechner's dealing with his three 
 motives (drei Motive) the historical, the practical, 
 and the theoretic is the way in which he rises 
 from the ego which, in man's small world of 
 thoughts, feelings, and strivings, gives unity to 
 this manifoldness, to the thought of God as the 
 " I " which gives unity to the great completed 
 world of spirits. Just as our conscious ego stands 
 to our body, is, in fact, above it, so does God 
 stand to the world posited by Him above it like- 
 wise. This analogical line of thought, however, 
 as to this Divine Ego or " I " being the uniting, 
 comprehending principle, seems to us to issue in 
 
GERMAN DEVELOPMENTS CRITICISED. 291 
 
 so grave difficulties as to the relations sustained 
 to all these spirits by the life of God, and by the 
 life of these spirits to God, as to make satisfac- 
 tory representation of Personality in our view here 
 unattained. Still, Fechner marks an advance on 
 the position of those who, like K. Phil. Fischer, 
 maintain, from the presupposition of an absolute 
 unity, that the reality represented by this unity 
 must be a personal one. For their affirmation is 
 by Fechner metaphysically grounded, and the per- 
 sonality of God expressly included. Among those 
 who have stood for the personality of God should be 
 mentioned Chalybaus, who said, " The fundamental 
 presupposition of our personal existence, and per- 
 sonal self- consciousness, is the existence of the 
 Divine Personality." Again, we find him saying, 
 for example, in his ' History of Speculative Philos- 
 ophy,' that " God cannot be mere original ground, 
 mere potence or power, but we have already de- 
 veloped that notion so far as to have been con- 
 strained to acknowledge Him as freedom, as will, 
 and as spirit ; as true Deity, we have found that 
 in His existence and in actuality He is all that 
 we have now stated." Ulrici also champions the 
 personality of Deity, alike in relation to nature, of 
 which He is the creative Author, and to man, whose 
 human will is free. Hartmann plainly says that 
 " God is raised above all limitation (Beschrdnkung) 
 that lies in personality," so speaking in the interests 
 of his unconscious spirit, with its attributes of will 
 
2Q2 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 and idea. Potency he places above actuality, and 
 indeterminateness he identifies with infinity. Hart- 
 mann, like Fichte and Schleiermacher, sets out from 
 a preconceived notion of Deity, to which notion 
 personality could only appear in the restrictive 
 light it did to all three. But it does not seem to 
 us that such a really dogmatist position has any 
 good ground for assailing the theistic standpoint, 
 with its Absolute Being, intelligent, self-conscious, 
 free. It is a virtue in Ritschl.that he adheres to 
 the personality of God, Whose basal attribute for 
 him is Love, though, of course, his position is open 
 to the weakness arising from his theory of " value- 
 judgments." Pfleiderer, to whose notion of person- 
 ality in God we shall again advert, is anxious to 
 bring the will of God into closer agreement or 
 identification with the world's conformity to law. 
 Assuming a theistic position, personal Deity is not, 
 with him, to be identified with the world order. 
 God stands distinguished from the totality of His 
 manifestations in the universe, according to him, 
 though whether Pfleiderer's evacuating revelation 
 of all real supernatural content and his rejection of 
 miracle are, on such a view, warranted, are matters 
 on which there is need to be at least of doubtful 
 mind. God is, with him, now the ultimate law 
 of all the world's phenomena, and now a person- 
 ality seemingly capable of real personal com- 
 munion a not over - consistent presentation, it 
 must be said. We retain, in our philosophy of 
 
AMERICAN DEVELOPMENTS. 293 
 
 theism, an Actor not ourselves Who is conform 
 to world-law, only in the sense that He has chosen 
 to observe a regular order in His workings. What 
 Mr Balfour, in ' Foundations of Belief/ has well 
 described as a real experience against whose ten- 
 dency, however, he shows us how to rise seems 
 to us very applicable as a description of the 
 tendency of Pfleiderer's philosophy here : " The 
 overwhelming force and regularity of the great 
 natural movements dull the sharp impression of 
 an ever-present Personality deeply concerned in our 
 spiritual wellbeing. He is hidden, not revealed, in 
 the multitude of phenomena, and as our knowledge 
 of phenomena increases, He retreats out of all realised 
 connection with us farther and yet farther into the 
 illimitable unknown." Our only regret is in being 
 compelled to declare our belief that, notwithstanding 
 occasional references of this sort, the main defect of 
 Balfour's own book is just its lack of any adequate 
 recognition of a phenomenon so significant, homo- 
 geneous, and independent, as we take Personality 
 to be. 
 
 It might carry us too far into side-paths to trace 
 the courses of the thought of all who, in Britain, 
 Germany, and America, have dwelt upon aspects 
 of this great subject. The main current of thought, 
 as we apprehend it, must be kept before us, and 
 such remarks or individual references as we make 
 must be made in elucidation of that merely which 
 is to us highest and most essential. 
 
294 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 In America, it need hardly be said that Divine 
 Personality found, in the speculative theism of 
 Theodore Parker, far less clear and definite ex- 
 pression than might be wished. It may be re- 
 called what extremely valuable service has been 
 rendered, in the explication of the difficult and im- 
 mense problem of the Divine Personality by Pro- 
 fessors Harris and Fisher, both of Yale University, 
 and by Professor Ladd, of the same University, 
 from the philosophical side. And when we add 
 the names of Professor Bowne of Boston, Profes- 
 sor Bowen of Harvard, and Dr Cocker, we have 
 given but the barest possible representation of 
 those who, in America, have, by their speculative 
 power and metaphysical acumen, enriched the phil- 
 osophy of theism, as touching the personality of the 
 Absolute. Among the many recent American 
 writers who have touched on the theme, Dr Francis 
 E. Abbot, late of Harvard University, has insisted 
 on the universe as " at once infinite machine, in- 
 finite organism, and infinite person as mechanical 
 in its apparent form and action, organic in its 
 essential constitution, and personal in its inner- 
 most being." 
 
 In Britain, Dr James Martineau clarum et 
 venerabile nomen has, with his wonted brilliancy 
 and power, shown that there is not, in the known 
 cosmos, any higher fact than that of personality. 
 He has very finely shown the contrast between 
 the physical and the spiritual spheres, in the former 
 
BRITISH DEVELOPMENTS CRITICISED. 295 
 
 of which things tend to unity, in the latter to " new 
 centres of self-consciousness and causality," and has 
 strenuously resisted pantheistic depreciation of per- 
 sonality. He has guarded personality in created 
 beings in presence of the immanence of God, in- 
 sisting that it is not "He that, under the mask 
 of our personality, does the thinking " and the rest. 
 As against those philosophers who profess to be 
 jealous for the infinitude of Deity, he has argued, 
 on the very ground of His infinity, for power or 
 right on the part of Deity to limit His infinitude 
 in the interests of man's personality and freedom. 
 He has protected personal possibility in Deity, 
 Whose personality he takes to consist in His 
 " voluntary agency as free cause in an unpledged 
 sphere," against being measured by the actual 
 cosmos. Theistic philosophy has thus come better 
 to apprehend that there is no reason why we should 
 not welcome the thought of self-imposed limitation 
 or restraint in God. Do not we at least know how 
 often restraint or self-limitation may be a mark of 
 power, and a way to perfection of result ? The 
 ambiguity of Hegelianism as to the personality of 
 the Deity has been keenly analysed by Professor 
 Andrew Seth of Edinburgh, who holds it to fail 
 of ascribing to Him real existence, so issuing in a 
 breakdown of the system, which leaves us with "a 
 logical abstraction styled the Idea, in which both 
 God and man disappear.'' We are far from insen- 
 sible to the varied splendours of Hegel's system, 
 
296 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 and hence concede that Dr Sterrett's criticisms of 
 Professor Seth's positions are at points not without 
 skill and possible warrant, but we are compelled to 
 think his success more verbal than real, and likely 
 to have been not so partial had the influence of 
 Hegel been for one so finely gifted with the anima 
 naturaliter Hegeliana less manifestly overpower- 
 ing. Times at least there are when Dr Sterrett 
 delightful as his work must be to every philosophic 
 mind seems to fail of doing perfect justice to the 
 case for Seth's human personality, through bring- 
 ing it, without sufficient regard to Seth's emphatic 
 aspect of ^^/"-surrender, so much within the over- 
 shadowing influence of the Absolute Divine Per- 
 sonality. An able and still more recent writer of 
 our own, Mr Fairbrother, in like manner tells how 
 Green would have repudiated any philosophy in 
 which this " individual self- hood is obscured or 
 transformed into something else." Why, then, 
 should Mr Fairbrother be so wroth with Professor 
 Seth and Mr Balfour for insisting on this same 
 retention of the self? Why should the " feeling of 
 helpless bewilderment" on this writer's part fail 
 to see that he leaves untouched the Seth- Balfour 
 criticism in its most important points ? He has 
 done but little, if anything, to show that the self 
 or human personality is maintained as intact in the 
 Neo-Hegelianism as it should be, even in relation 
 to the Divine. He has done nothing whatever to 
 show that Green has done what Professor Seth 
 
BRITISH DEVELOPMENTS CRITICISED. 297 
 
 properly demands namely, maintained an essential 
 " subjectivity " for God, a " real consciousness in 
 God," a " Divine centre of thought, activity, and 
 enjoyment " such as shall amount to a true and 
 absolute Personality in God. Theistic philosophy 
 seems to us to have very unequivocally maintained 
 that what the human personality finds in the hour 
 of deepest surrender is just perfection of the true 
 self or completeness of personal being. It will 
 have no construing of religion as the consciousness 
 which the Absolute has of itself, and it will give 
 way to no Hegelian proneness to annul, in virtual 
 manner at least, the human spirit in its distinct 
 individuality. It decisively rejects any ontologic 
 idealism which sacrifices feeling and will on the 
 shrine of abstract thought, for it has spiritual in- 
 terests to be thus saved. Professor Flint has re- 
 called thought towards a speculative theism in 
 which the personality and transcendence of Deity 
 shall not be sacrificed ; and to a conception of 
 Deity in which are ably exhibited the completeness 
 and perfection of personality. Dr George Mathe- 
 son, in his original and suggestive manner, has, 
 in his reconcilings of theism with evolutionary 
 science, finely preserved " the personality of the 
 Power that transcends the world." Nor must we 
 fail to speak of Mr Illingworth's well-conceived 
 and beautifully written Bampton Lecture on the 
 subject, even while we might have welcomed much 
 stronger treatment on the speculative side. He 
 
298 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 has well declared how, while all around us seems 
 rigorously finite, personality alone suggests infini- 
 tude of life. Among other writers, Miss Cobbe 
 declares for the personality of God urging prayer 
 as an aid to the maintenance of this belief, as does 
 also W. R. Greg, but in less assured strain. 
 
 We believe that the deeper study of the psychical 
 and physical aspects or elements which coexist in 
 ourselves has been begetting a more real sense of 
 the possibility which exists of a psychic unity higher 
 than ours which may be viewed as cosmic, and which 
 may not be personal only on the supposition that it 
 is more than personal what is styled by Emerson 
 "the super-personal Heart." This is the position 
 advocated in Dr Bradley's recent ' Appearance and 
 Reality/ where it is declared that fortunately the 
 Absolute the representation of Whose nature and 
 relations to all things relative does not seem to us 
 here specially fortunate has so much more than 
 personality that to call it personal would be no less 
 absurd than to ask if it is moral. " It is better," 
 says Dr Bradley, "to affirm personality than to 
 call the Absolute impersonal. But neither mistake 
 should be necessary. The Absolute stands above, 
 and not below, its internal distinctions. It does not 
 eject them, but it includes them as elements in its 
 fulness. To speak in other language, it is not the 
 indifference but the concrete identity of all extremes. 
 But it is better in this connection to call it super- 
 personal " ('Appearance and Reality/ p. 533). We 
 
BRITISH DEVELOPMENTS CRITICISED. 299 
 
 think it would be distinctly better rather to avoid 
 calling it super-personal, and to make it simply full 
 or perfect personality. Dr Bradley's conception of 
 personality is lamentably defective and even con- 
 spicuously unjust, when he says we "want" a Deity 
 "of course finite a person much like" ourselves, 
 " with thoughts and feelings limited, and mutable in 
 the process of time." Defective, indeed, must the 
 comprehension be which does not understand that 
 we want nothing of the sort, but a Deity very unlike 
 ourselves because purged of every accidental limita- 
 tion we possess. That such a person can only, as 
 person, be finite, is no more than an unwarrantable 
 assumption that adds nothing to the credit of the 
 speculative powers of those that make it. 
 
 The need has emerged for more thorough treat- 
 ment of the ontological and not merely historical 
 aspect of personality, in view of the contentions of 
 those who, like Dr Bradley, profess to regard per- 
 sonality as illusion, and to view the question of 
 personality in the Absolute as of no intellectual or 
 practical consequence. But this is, of course, per- 
 fectly compatible with our acknowledgment of the 
 worth of the historic treatment of the category of 
 personality, the very wealth of which can only be 
 exhibited by adding the experience of the race and 
 its objective thought to the results reached, through 
 subjective analysis, by the individual. Personality 
 is a late result of prolonged experience and profound 
 reflection, and no deeper unwisdom marks the age, 
 
300 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 in our view of it, than any tendency to sit lightly by 
 personality. Could we see the immanent connec- 
 tion of history interrupted, or, better still, completed, 
 by the encroachments of a Higher Power, that 
 Power we might take as a personal one. But then 
 there is the question whether the end of history 
 need be set in relation to a Higher Guiding Power, 
 or only viewed as an end realisable in the richest 
 possible development of humanity. But the historic 
 inquiry we do not here pursue. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has not forgotten that Spencer 
 it was who knew enough of his Unknowable to be 
 able to assure us that choice " lay between person- 
 ality and something higher," and further, that there 
 may be "a mode of being as much transcending 
 intelligence and will as these transcend mechanical 
 motion." It refuses, on such grounds, to lose the 
 religious interest in the morass of the Unknowable, 
 where foothold is clearly impossible. It is not un- 
 mindful of the fact that if He were not personal in a 
 way to which we may not attain, then the progres- 
 sive apprehension of His thought by our minds 
 would be as meaningless as would the gradual em- 
 bodiment of His will in our progressive civilisation. 
 It recognises that it is in this high sense of person- 
 ality that Pfleiderer and Paulsen aver the impos- 
 sibility that God should be infra - personal. The 
 same, it need hardly be said, holds true in the case 
 of Lotze, who retains " perfect personality " as a 
 special preserve of Deity. Not, let it be said, that 
 
BRITISH DEVELOPMENTS CRITICISED. 301 
 
 we regard Lotze's treatment of personality as satis- 
 factory, for we think Pfleiderer effectively criticises 
 Lotze's speculative theism when he shows how the 
 finite parts dwindle, in Lotze's hands, into differences 
 of a merely ideal character in the Divine thought, in 
 order that the personality of Deity may be main- 
 tained. Lotze appears to us to have been smitten 
 with an excessive fear of conceiving the Divine 
 Being as an " extra- mundane personality/' which, 
 among other unsatisfactory results of his system, led 
 to finite spirits being subsumed under the one all- 
 embracing Whole in a strangely unreal manner. 
 An unsatisfactoriness, of course, resulting from 
 Lotze's treatment of the relation of absolute and 
 relative too much as though it were but one of whole 
 
 o 
 
 to parts, and leading to an oscillation between acos- 
 mism and pancosmism. But theistic philosophy, 
 keeping in view all that has now been advanced, 
 has also remembered, and yet more forcefully pointed 
 out, that, as against the objection to our likening 
 the Deity, as personal, unto ourselves, the personal 
 representation of God Who, in Christian Theism, 
 is the Triune God is the highest and worthiest, 
 the fittest and most intelligible, we can form, and 
 that, besides, in so forming it, we are still leaving 
 open the full possibilities of belief in any attributes 
 He may possess other and higher than those per- 
 sonal ones with which they yet cannot conflict. 
 Ultra- personal He may thus be, but not in such 
 sense that personality shall thereby be excluded. 
 
302 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 Dr F. H. Bradley says that " feeling, thought, and 
 volition have all defects which suggest something 
 higher." Yes, something higher, but not necessarily 
 something different : the Perfect Personality is such 
 just because these defects do not hide in Him. 
 When we say He is personal, we do not deny the 
 uncomprehended background of personality, to which 
 we have just alluded. But we do say that, however 
 certain scientific conceptions, such as force, law, 
 matter, substance, may have purged themselves of 
 anthropomorphic elements, they are yet no more 
 supra- personal than is theistic philosophy. What- 
 ever subjectivism is chargeable upon the one is 
 equally chargeable upon the other. Of course this 
 reference to the imperfection of scientific conception 
 is now made only as a passing matter, and because 
 it is so often but dimly perceived from the scientific 
 side how incomplete its own position is. The 
 needed completion or perfection of all our concep- 
 tions is that which religion professes to give, and 
 which theistic philosophy professes to seek in its 
 Urgrund or personal First Principle. 
 
 When we postulate the personal Deity, we know 
 what we worship : we know how partial is our 
 knowledge of Him, but yet how much more real 
 and rational is our knowing Him after the analogy 
 of all that is highest in our free, conscious, spiritual 
 experience, than any blind taking refuge in the un- 
 imagined sublimities of the Spencerian Inscrutable 
 Reality and Incomprehensible Power, which as- 
 
BRITISH DEVELOPMENTS CRITICISED. 303 
 
 suredly could only mean a grand spiritual and 
 philosophical anti-climax. Who would ever think 
 of ascribing personality to such Unknowable reality? 
 Or who could think of being satisfied simply with 
 power, as the ultimate of ultimates in the synthetic 
 philosophy? Reality remains for theistic philosophy 
 bound up in the bundle of life with personality, for 
 to that philosophy there is no more reality without 
 a person who determines it than there is thought 
 without a thinker who affirms it. Certainly the 
 relative is to it real, and is not to be regarded as 
 mere appearance mere schein of the Absolute. 
 And as to the Being of God, may we not say it 
 maintains an objective reality of the personality of 
 God, and is not content with certain German and 
 other thinkers to postulate for His personality 
 merely a subjective reality for the soul ? Is it not 
 just as our thought enters into those conceptions of 
 personality which are the highest attainable to us that 
 we come to any worthy sense of the transcendent 
 nature and untranslatable fulness of the Absolute 
 Being ? Is not theistic philosophy justified in re- 
 garding the supra-personal mode of conceiving God 
 as a way of dismissing Deity from human thought 
 and experience altogether, and of neutralising the 
 operations and sanctions of moral law ? Is it not 
 with reason that we have seen recent philosophy of 
 theism more keenly demanding at once the Spen- 
 cerian right to postulate super-personal life in such 
 a way for Deity, and the mode or sphere in which 
 
304 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 such super-personal Presence or Life can be held to 
 manifest itself? Is it any wonder that it should 
 insist on God being in His nature capable of enter- 
 ing into relations that are inter -personal, on the 
 ground that to think of Him otherwise would be to 
 leave Him a Being so entirely without relation to all 
 that is highest in us as really to be beneath, and not 
 above, human personality ? But in this connection 
 we may say, as Professor James Seth, in a recent 
 article, justly observes, that " surely the true Abso- 
 lute, the true Noumenon, should rather be found in 
 the completed system of relations than in the Unre- 
 lated ; surely in the progressive apprehension of 
 universal relations we are gradually advancing in 
 the knowledge of reality itself." 
 
 If, then, God is, as one has expressed it, "in some 
 high and intense sense personal in possession of 
 His own thought and character and will is there 
 no need that somehow at some stage His revelation 
 should take personal character ? " We venture to 
 think it has been more clearly realised, in our late 
 philosophy of theism, how it is of the essence of per- 
 sonality to overflow in self-communication, whence 
 the self -revelation of Deity becomes explicable. 
 Such outflow of the energy and the thought of the 
 Absolute towards the human soul is seen to be 
 possible, rational, and even probable. For, as it 
 has been put, "how should related Spirits, joined 
 by a common creative aim, intent on whatever 
 things are pure and good, live in presence of each 
 
CRITICISM OF COSMIC DEITY. 305 
 
 other, the one the bestower, the other the recipient, 
 of a sacred trust, and exchange no thought and 
 give no sign of the love which subsists between 
 them ? " Yes, and from the other or human side 
 the agnostic position is to be clearly taken as con- 
 sisting of an unwarrantable arrest of reason's move- 
 ment. For what right have we to maintain the 
 truth and fact of the Divine Noumenon or Abso- 
 lute Reality, as something that, though supersen- 
 sible, lies open to our knowledge and view, and 
 yet to ban all knowledge of the nature or char- 
 acter of said Noumenon ? What need is there to 
 give way to the imbecility of a philosophy that 
 rears such unjustifiable barriers to reason or sets 
 such bounds to knowledge, as though the universe 
 were of a kind not to be everywhere penetrable by 
 reason ? 
 
 We may not here go into the related question of 
 miracle, as the pledge of the reality of this revela- 
 tion of Deity, further than to say that theistic phil- 
 osophy has not failed to ponder in its heart the 
 saying of Zeller, that the miraculous is an imme- 
 diate consequence of theism. No, nor to retain in 
 view the word of Steffens, who, in his philosophy 
 of religion, says that " Christ could not be bound 
 by any condition of nature, His entire significance 
 consisting in this, that He proclaimed to us the 
 unconditional freedom of spirit." Personality, it 
 has been said, will express itself rather "by indi- 
 vidual words and deeds " than " by eternal pro- 
 
 u 
 
306 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 cesses." Much more will it do so by these than 
 by inanimate laws of gravitation and molecular 
 attraction, since these latter are less in keeping 
 with those analogies of personal life and conscious- 
 ness which may be corrected in what they teach 
 us as to how God may be worthily conceived, but 
 which may not be abandoned. We do not forget, 
 as has earlier in this chapter been made manifest, 
 how the real personality of God is being imperilled 
 by idealistic evolutionism : it were absurd to think 
 of an immanent Cosmic Consciousness as though 
 it were personal Deity. What other beings of 
 thoroughgoing reality does it recognise ? If it 
 cannot, does not, recognise them as personal 
 entities capable of reciprocal relations, wherein is 
 its own essential personality ? What psychic act- 
 ing is there in this Cosmic Immanent Mind leaving 
 to me, to all, the possibilities of real freedom ? We 
 maintain that modern science has only more fully 
 disclosed the wisdom, power, and goodness the 
 thought, will, and feeling which form the essen- 
 tial manifestations of personality in the Infinite. 
 The scientific realism of our time has certainly 
 tended to cast idealistic evolution, with its treat- 
 ment of the universe as purely phenomenal, into 
 the background as so far unsatisfactory. It is but 
 just to say, however, that it is precisely in depicting 
 the living process of absolute spirit, and in tracing 
 the inner movements of spiritual activity, that the 
 philosophy of Hegel stands pre - eminent. We 
 
CRITICISM OF HEGEL AND LOTZE. 307 
 
 account it a notable advance in Hegel that the 
 Absolute the Ding-an-sich was by him rescued 
 from the shadows of cloudland and made to stand 
 out in its reality, richness, and totality, to our won- 
 dering view. For, in his conception of the Absolute, 
 all the actual world-processes of evolution and de- 
 velopment are seen to be but externalisations of 
 pure immaterial thought, which, dimly perceived 
 by us, are, on the timeless view, fulfilments of an 
 order that is Divine. But surely our anthropo- 
 morphism will have carried us an extraordinary 
 length when it shall lead us to believe that only 
 in the world can the Absolute realise itself, that 
 only in man can it become self-conscious, and that 
 our consciousness is indispensable to the growth and 
 enrichment of the Absolute. A strange Absolute, 
 verily, that is reduced to such a position of virtual 
 dependence ! A merely potential Absolute than 
 Whom there must be higher actuality can be no 
 God of any thoroughgoing theistic philosophy. 
 
 We believe our recent philosophy has indorsed 
 what Franz Hoffmann so well pointed out, as to 
 the personality-pantheism originated by Schelling, 
 and exemplified in Lotze's not very self-consistent 
 personal pantheism, that " if God is personality, 
 the world cannot be His actuality or realisation, 
 because, whilst a person may work and bring works 
 into existence ad extra, He cannot have His own 
 actuality outside ; and if the world is the actuality 
 of God, God cannot be personality, because a per- 
 
308 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 sonal being cannot be constituted by an -infinitude 
 of transient unconscious and conscious existences." 
 By M. Saisset and others it has been rendered 
 more manifest how the personality of God is main- 
 tained by pantheism only and always at the ex- 
 pense of personality in man, owing to its false 
 emphasis or exclusive stress on the Divine term 
 or form of personality. Not without satisfaction 
 has recent philosophical theism found that ex- 
 pounder of late Spencerianism, John Fiske, say in 
 his ' Idea of God' that "the final conclusion is, that 
 we must not say that ' God is Force,' since such 
 a phrase inevitably calls up those pantheistic 
 notions of blind necessity which it is my desire 
 to avoid ; but, always bearing in mind the sym- 
 bolic character of the words, we may say that 
 ' God is spirit.' How my belief in the personality 
 of God could be more strongly expressed without 
 entirely deserting the language of modern philo- 
 sophy and taking refuge in pure mythology, I am 
 unable to see." We need not dwell on the vague 
 and imperfect theism of the philosophic Vatke, 
 whose concrete monism seemed to favour a supra- 
 personal view. 
 
 Recent philosophy of theism has been as little 
 able to rest content with such meagre, abstract 
 theism as that of Biedermann, to whom, in his 
 able and too little studied treatment, the Godhead 
 yet transcends the realm of Vorstellung, and in 
 whose train Pfleiderer and others follow. Bieder- 
 
CRITICISM OF GERMAN DEVELOPMENTS. 309 
 
 mann sharply distinguishes between spirit and per- 
 sonality, the latter of which he confines to finite 
 spirit. He does not regard spirit and personality 
 as identical conceptions, but attaches to the latter 
 an individual corporealness. Theistic philosophy, 
 however, does not transfer accidental limitations of 
 personality to Deity. Biedermann, with his un- 
 wonted clearness, great warmth, and rich speculative 
 power, dwells in his ' Dogmatik ' on the irrecon- 
 cilableness of absoluteness and personality, which 
 latter is reached via eminentice. He thinks that, 
 in the conception of personality, the mind objecti- 
 fies the absolute and eternal nature ( Wesen) of God. 
 In the individual he finds potential finite spirit; in 
 personality actual finite spirit. But absolute per- 
 sonality is to his view a contradictio in adjecto. 
 Now, it is sheer inconsequence or arbitrariness for 
 Biedermann to withhold predication of personality 
 from the Absolute, when his admission of conscious- 
 ness and self-consciousness those essentials of free- 
 dom and intelligence are considered. Nor does his 
 position grow less inconsequential when he in spite 
 of the impersonality of the Absolute Spirit asserts 
 the inability of the religious consciousness to do with- 
 out the personality of God. If thought forbids us 
 to view the absolute spirit as personal, why, we ask, 
 not boldly drop ihe illusive glass with which re- 
 ligious experience vainly thinks to view the absolute 
 object as objective fact ? Does it not belong to the 
 very essence of any living or worthy faith that it 
 
310 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 should not concern itself with mere subjective truths 
 or representations, but with a real Divine Ego One 
 who can hear, and help, and save us ? We have 
 surely now seen that Biedermann's assumed free- 
 dom from arbitrariness (nicht willkllrlicK) has not 
 kept him from arbitrarily, as we think ascribing 
 to spirit, since he so holds the Absolute to be 
 spirit, a freedom from limitation which he incon- 
 sistently denies to personality. But in this way is 
 it hoped to avert the reproach of pantheism while 
 thus denying the personality of God. But when 
 Biedermann allows personality to be the adequate 
 form of representation for the Christian idea of 
 God, is it not a poor Personality that is so easily 
 dissipated before the thought process ? 
 
 Lipsius holds to an infinite will and consciousness 
 as necessary to our thought to spirit which is 
 personal, self-conscious, and self-determining. The 
 thought of His personality we reach (via eminently) 
 on the path of gradation or ascent (Steigerung) : 
 the thought of His absoluteness we reach (via 
 negationis) by the path of negation. , Lipsius sets 
 forth at length the time and space difficulties in 
 relation to the absolute consciousness and will. 
 But he knows no way of reconciling the person- 
 ality of Deity with His absoluteness, since our 
 hold of the Absolute Personality is not due 
 to objective theoretic knowledge of the Divine 
 Essence a knowledge which transcends us. In- 
 deed, God's personality is to him a mere figurative 
 
CRITICISM OF GERMAN DEVELOPMENTS. 311 
 
 expression (bildlicher Ausdruck), whose objective 
 worth is not apparent to us. But then, the re- 
 ligious consciousness gives its testimony (Aussage) 
 to the Divine Personality, and does so in the 
 clearest possible manner, according to the language 
 employed by Lipsius. In religious relations, ac- 
 cording to him, God makes Himself known to the 
 pious as personal Deity, as a THOU over against 
 the human I, just as man in prayer places himself 
 over against God. Yes, but if we can by no 
 categories of thought lay hold of the transcendent 
 reality, no immediate religious experience can prove 
 the truth of the Divine Personality, or do more 
 than bring us under the influence of a purely 
 subjective illusion. Yet this is just the practical 
 result to which Lipsius must be held to lead us, 
 for he deems the critical understanding justified 
 in all the artillery it directs against the notion of 
 personality in God whenever that testimony of the 
 religious consciousness is turned to metaphysical 
 account in the interests of the objective being of 
 God in Himself. 
 
 There need be no insensibility to the worth of 
 Professor Pfleiderer's fine spiritualism in remarking 
 that, while ranking himself among those who hold 
 God as at least whatever more He may be per- 
 sonal, he straightway eviscerates personality in 
 Deity of such real content as we find in the per- 
 sonality of man, self - determining and free. As 
 to His freedom of agency, Pfleiderer's Deity stands 
 
312 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 related, in a system tinged with Naturalism, to the 
 world in such wise that He is precluded under any 
 circumstance from miraculous interference. Finely, 
 no doubt though with what self -consistency is 
 another matter has Pfleiderer said that "if we 
 are shut off from each other by the limits of indi- 
 viduality, in relation to God it is not so : to Him 
 our hearts are as open as each man's own heart 
 is to himself; He sees through and through them, 
 and He desires to live in them and to fill them 
 with His own sacred energy and blessedness." 
 
 Let it be here said that we find no great colour 
 of likelihood in the idea of those who think relig- 
 ious inwardness may be strengthened by the so- 
 called pantheistic representations of God. To point 
 to experience as showing the possibility of fervid 
 surrender through the pantheistic intuition is to 
 overlook of what weak sort such pantheism is. 
 Such intuition, fancy-fed, as we find, where relig- 
 ious inwardness reigns, must be quite unacceptable 
 to philosophic pantheism, which puts at a distance 
 every determination of Deity. But can any phil- 
 osophy of theism regard the religious interest as 
 surrendering itself to denuded or undetermined 
 Deity ? Can it do without an actual Divinity, 
 to Whom we owe not only life, but also the ab- 
 solute worth imparted unto life by its supreme 
 end being communion with the Deity ? Can it 
 forget that this implies such an active relation and 
 influence, on the part of Deity toward us, as shall 
 
CRITICISM OF IMMANENCE SYSTEMS. 313 
 
 overpass any mere relation of causality ? Theistic 
 Philosophy has pressed on to such conception of ab- 
 solute personality as shall, in a true elevation (Auf he- 
 bung) or reconcilement, satisfy the Christian concept 
 of God, the Scylla of the naked transcendence of 
 Acosmism being shunned equally with the Cha- 
 rybdis of the stale transcendence of Deism. We 
 do not find any conclusive force in the exception 
 which has been taken to Dr Martineau's doctrine 
 of Some- Transcendency, because of his holding cre- 
 ation to be an eternal act. We grant that tran- 
 scendence may, everything considered, be thereby 
 more difficult of conception ; but the reasons urged 
 do not seem to us to be sufficient to warrant theistic 
 philosophy in abandoning transcendence as belong- 
 ing to its complete conception of the personality 
 and freedom of God as the supra-mundane, self- 
 existing subject. We are, therefore, with Lotze 
 when he asks whether it is not effrontery to narrow 
 down the Spirit of the universe to a series of events 
 on this planet. Such a true and transcendent exis- 
 tence for Himself we must postulate for Deity, if 
 we would not have the immanence tendencies of 
 to-day leave us with no Deity but the impotent 
 God of pantheism. It does not seem as though 
 our spiritual life could rise to independence without 
 raising itself to a supernatural or transcendent con- 
 nection, although it must, for the maintenance of 
 real contents, instantly return to the world that is 
 here. In fact, it is this ceaseless movement be- 
 
314 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 tween the two which seems to fill our spiritual life 
 with real contents, and to bring a constant deepen- 
 ing of our being. Our fundamental conception of 
 reality must be so vast that the supernatural or 
 transcendent is no mere ulterior thing for us. 
 
 It should in this connection be borne in mind 
 that the votaries of pure immanence-systems have 
 not extricated themselves from the difficulty in 
 which the fact of evil has placed them. For what 
 place for evil should be found in a system of 
 immanent reason only ? It deserves to be more 
 specifically noted than has yet been done by us 
 that recent theistic philosophy has quite decidedly 
 left behind the haltings of those who in recent 
 years have predicated reason and freedom of the 
 Absolute Being, to which they apply the term 
 spirit, and from which they withhold true conscious 
 personality. For it sees how manifestly they have 
 failed as yet to distinguish with thoroughness be- 
 tween the accidents of personality and its essence, 
 to the latter of which the limitation supposed to 
 attach to personality does not belong. What more 
 absurd than this treating personality as a limita- 
 tion, when, in its self-developing and all-embracing 
 activity, it really forms the outlet by which limita- 
 tion is eluded ! We regard the objections to the 
 personality of God which have come from the pan- 
 theistic side as wanting in validity by reason of 
 the fact that they set out from a representation 
 of the infinity of God at once untenable as we 
 
PERSONALITY AS INFINITE. 315 
 
 have shown and unsatisfying to the religious need 
 and interest. We hold that such knowing and 
 acting as are involved in religious communion, 
 when that communion is viewed in a pantheistic 
 colouring - - say, from Spinozan, Schellingian, or 
 Schleiermacherian view - points are not to be 
 thought of without a fortunate subreption, an un- 
 perceived drawing upon theistic modes of repre- 
 sentation. The infinity of God an infinity which 
 here means not something positive, but merely, let 
 us say, the fact that God is not a finite entity 
 has been said to be endangered through person- 
 ality. But it is not realised that it is precisely in 
 denying Him the power of being personal, or of 
 so limiting Himself as to allow us to be personal, 
 that His infinitude is already parted with. This 
 self-limitation of the Infinite the great renuncia- 
 tion is yet really its self-assertion and its self- 
 revelation. We cannot represent to ourselves an 
 infinity of being, nor can we a qualitative infinity 
 of force. Force has, for realistic thought, no mean- 
 ing, so long as it remains a mere potence, and 
 assumes not determinateness somewhere. Taking 
 God as the principle in which the world is grounded, 
 what then is it, it may still be properly asked, but 
 a veiled dogmatism which proceeds from the con- 
 trast in which God stands to the world, to construe 
 His relation to it as one simply of difference on 
 every side ? Why should it appear so credible a 
 thing that God should sustain to the world a re- 
 
316 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 lation of simple difference on every hand ? Has 
 idealism no more truth for us when, in dealing 
 with the living reality of the world, it sets it 
 forth as what is known as objectified spirit ? What 
 sort of place shall yet be reserved for Him in our 
 thought when the highest essence shall really ap- 
 pear to be the vast system of world-reality, eter- 
 nally at rest, only appearing to us under guises of 
 change and causal event ? Is it only thus we have 
 pressed beyond the region of pure unintelligibility 
 to find in Nature the infinite organism which is the 
 product of the Infinite and self-conscious Mind ? 
 
 We do not profess to share the position of those 
 philosophers of our time who treat inquiry into the 
 theoretic aspects of infinite in relation to finite as 
 mere wandering in cloudland. We begin by accept- 
 ing the Infinite as meaning not the really negative 
 thing implied in mere indefinite extension beyond 
 limits, but the positive conception of it as ground of 
 all unity, root of all being, and condition of all con- 
 sciousness. It is as sharers in the Infinite that the 
 infinite is capable by the "cognitive leap " of 
 being perceived by us. And we go on to ask, 
 What valid title has ever been adduced to assume 
 that the absolute consciousness in God cannot co- 
 exist with His relative consciousness, which latter is 
 the source of all dependent being and result ? By 
 what right shall we deny this freedom of the rela- 
 tive to the Absolute, and that, too, without prejudice 
 to His absolute perfection ? Is He not still the 
 
PERSONALITY AS ABSOLUTE. 317 
 
 Absolute Personality, when we have allowed Him 
 in His objective action the freedom of the relative ? 
 And, if that be so, what is to be said of those who 
 hold, with Dr Paul Carus, speaking in the name of 
 monism, that "an absolute God, just as an absolute 
 soul, is not distinguishable at all from a ghost," and 
 that " the idea of a God, absolutely existing, 
 has become a superstition " ! Everything is thus 
 plainly " a part of the All " in a sense in which 
 the soul of theistic philosophy can take no plea- 
 sure. Undoubtedly the God set up by Dr Carus 
 as super-personal and as the Eternal of nature is a 
 Deity historically non-existent, even in the case of 
 those who thought the super-personal conception 
 was theirs. HE is set up, besides, as part of a 
 system which is self-destructive and irrational ; for 
 to it personality belongs not to God, exists for 
 science only as illusion, and yet mirabile dictu ! 
 forms the basis of man's moral activity. 
 
 Not thus has theistic philosophy forgotten that 
 it is just personality itself the thing questioned 
 which determines what is reality, and what illusion. 
 For to it, amid those shifting illusions and changing 
 theories which make up, in the world of thought, 
 
 " The infernal hurricane that never rests,"- 
 " La bufera infernal che mai non resta,"- 
 
 the personality of the Deity is that which abides 
 as changeless soul and centre of all things. See- 
 ing that we shall, in the chapter on the " Per- 
 
318 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 sonality of Man," build up an argument for the 
 personality of Deity on the ground of our own 
 true personality, let it be here said, to prevent 
 misconception, that, in so doing, we are indeed 
 far from wishing it to be thought that, in those 
 hours when the sense of our own personality 
 has least hold upon us, we may not adhere to the 
 absoluteness and personality of Deity as forcing 
 themselves upon us in fact, peering through every 
 pore of the universe. Woe is his who in those 
 hours shall not find it so ! The sense of self gone, 
 and no Absolute Personality pressing any sense of 
 Itself through the universe upon him, he, in a 
 universe so mindless, can but fall a prey to a 
 devouring Materialism or if any prefer an en- 
 gulfing Pantheism. He is, in any case, left with 
 nothing but what, in the most tragic issue that can 
 present itself to any human being under heaven, 
 the poet Shelley, not without touch of sublimity, 
 styles, 
 
 " The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world ! " 
 
 How then shall we represent to ourselves this 
 personality of God ? Do not the practical proofs 
 of Himself given by God to us as He works in 
 the world imply such a succession in these proofs 
 or effects as already involves a time course a 
 course in which God may be said to be the* mov- 
 ing impulse of 
 
 "Time's pauseless feet and world-wide wings "? 
 
SPACE AND TIME RELATIONS. 319 
 
 To the postulation of such a temporal succession 
 for the Deity both Pfleiderer and Lotze seem 
 to feel pressed, the latter by statements of his 
 own, although he has elsewhere advanced the 
 timelessness of Deity. We are free to confess 
 ourselves by no means so convinced of the incon- 
 ceivability of the spirit positing " itself out of 
 itself" and finding " itself submitted to the con- 
 dition of time," as Professor Veitch, when inveigh- 
 ing against the Hegelian view in his ' Dualism and 
 Monism,' seems to have been. This we say as to 
 the root-question of the spirit's passing into time 
 the manifestation of the Absolute in the time- 
 process, which else were illusion - - without, of 
 course, committing ourselves to the Hegelian phil- 
 osophy of history in its entirety. Surely it has 
 grown very clear that no evolution can really bring 
 forth Time, and that Time is the necessary pre- 
 supposition thanks most of all to Kant even of 
 our understanding evolutionary processes them- 
 selves, or the successions that appear in conscious- 
 ness. If the world-process must needs be in real 
 time time which is but the presage of eternity 
 and if God should act upon the world within this 
 time-process, what necessity exists for reason either 
 that we should deny Him the power of any but 
 an absolute mode of action, or make Him so 
 subject to change by His objective action that He 
 should be no more eternal while the time-process 
 lasts ? Is it to come to this that Deity shall not 
 
320 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 regard anything finite or do anything objective, 
 but He shall thereby render His own absolutely 
 self-determined nature subject to lessening change 
 or modification ? Is it only thus we have learned 
 to think the freedom of the absolute and independ- 
 ent Being ? The philosophical assumption that 
 there can be no relative consciousness in God is, 
 of course, a really gratuitous one. May we not 
 say the incompleteness involved in the world- 
 process disappears as we regard the ultimate and 
 self-determining principle therein manifested ? 
 
 The question, of course, also arises whether 
 spatial form is not as necessary to Deity as tem- 
 poral succession is, for how save in spatial move- 
 ment shall His working be conceived ? What do 
 we know of spaceless movement ? What has a 
 spaceless thing to do with reality as we know it ? 
 What power of movement, it might be asked, has 
 unextended being ? Not that space is any limi- 
 tation to Deity's working, for only of His free 
 self-activity have the working and intuition of Him 
 been set for us in spatial relations. Not that 
 spatial relations, strictly taken, are thinkable of 
 thought and things affectional, even in the case of 
 ourselves, for to these mental and moral phenomena 
 such a category as that of space can clearly not 
 apply. The world-process would not therefore be 
 meaningless, were its process not in space ; but we 
 cannot think whatever may be as to the real 
 world of His working save as to our imperfect 
 
SPACE AND TIME RELATIONS. 321 
 
 thought it appears in a world where space seems 
 infinite. Space may be no thing, in the ordinary 
 sense, but it does not follow that space does not 
 denote anything real. For real it certainly is- 
 real as a quality real in the only world known 
 to us. It is, according to the saying of Joubert, 
 "the stature of God." Whatever may be said 
 of the ideality of space and of ideal time-extension 
 a difficulty sorely felt by Biedermann, Lipsius, 
 and many other modern thinkers it will be ob- 
 served that we have made the foregoing remarks less 
 as abstract metaphysical discussions of the points 
 mooted than as indicating matters that must be con- 
 sidered in their bearings upon the great question 
 of the personality of God, as apprehended by us. 
 Of Space and Time, in their relation to Deity, 
 Professor Royce finely says, " He is their universal, 
 they are not His prison." Space and Time, indeed, 
 are never to be thought of save as the blank forms 
 of the possibility of Being, not as limitations of it. 
 They are the conditions of Being so universal that 
 we cannot even speak of God as existing " outside 
 of Space and Time/' without flinging ourselves 
 against a two-edged contradiction. In the very 
 notion that God " exists," there is presupposed that 
 element of Time which the thought of "outside" 
 was supposed to banish. And the conception of the 
 " outside " of space presupposes no less that element 
 of Space which was to be done away. We must, in 
 fact, never delude ourselves by supposing that ideal- 
 
 x 
 
322 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 istic philosophy has deprived the categories of every 
 sort of real and objective existence, for it is impos- 
 sible but that such forms of thought should continue 
 to be real. So, then, no other being, and no forms 
 in which the finite manifests itself, can limit Deity 
 or reduce Him to the finite. We do not enclose the 
 perfect Being Whom we call God in the infinite 
 extension of space : we do not include Him in the 
 infinite succession of time. No, we prefer to ground 
 Space and Time in Him, rather than appear to set 
 them above Him. Rooted in Him at last they 
 must be, if any sort of objective validity or exist- 
 ence should be claimed for them. In relation to 
 ourselves, we now recognise how, of these, Kant, 
 victim of various untenable assumptions, treated 
 space not as real mode of existence, but as its very 
 condition ; how he put all things for us in subjection 
 to the laws of spatial intuition, since space is for 
 him an a priori form of cognition, not derived from 
 objects in course of experience. As to time, how 
 he failed not to appreciate how primitive is the idea 
 of time which, with him, is a priori in the mind 
 as to experience, which for us is only its illumin- 
 ating power. No doubt, the finitude of the real can 
 accord with its infinity in thought, but what we are 
 now concerned with is the objective reality of space 
 and time, that Being may not become to us incon- 
 ceivable. For space and time, it must be said, are 
 not the exclusively subjective things which Kant 
 supposed, but are also, as actually perceived and 
 
TRUE VIEW OF DIVINE PERSONALITY. 323 
 
 known, objectively real. Obviously, for us, as being 
 ourselves in time, no real or definite conception can 
 be formed of timelessness, in the sense of out of 
 time. We know God in the time - evolution, and 
 this knowledge of Him is valid and real the only 
 one indeed possible to us. In fact, when we shall 
 have succeeded in setting God out of all Space and 
 Time, we shall have succeeded in banishing Him 
 from the universe altogether, and it is just as well 
 to realise the fact. 
 
 Our late philosophy of theism has profoundly 
 recognised the fact, therefore, that it is an utterly 
 invalid objection to Personality in Deity, when it 
 is urged that personality pertains to time, whereas 
 Deity is eternal in the sense of out of time. It has 
 more truly welcomed the fact of the Divine Person- 
 ality which in this connection has been so finely 
 voiced for us by Schiller in his poem, " Die Worte 
 des Glaubens" : 
 
 " And God is ! a holy Will that abides, 
 
 Though the human will may falter ; 
 High over both Space and Time it rides, 
 
 The high Thought that will never alter : 
 And while all things in change eternal roll, 
 It endures, through change, a motionless Soul." 
 
 " Und ein Gott ist, ein heiliger Wille lebt, 
 
 Wie auch der menschliche wanke ; 
 Hoch iiber der Zeit und dem Raume webt 
 
 Lebendig der hochste Gedanke, 
 Und ob alles in ewigem Wechsel kreist, 
 Es beharret im Wechsel ein ruhiger Geist." 
 
324 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 Our late philosophy has also more deeply recog- 
 nised the necessity laid upon theistic thought by the 
 exigencies of the time to complete its conception of 
 the Absolute, wherein personal attributes are puri- 
 fied rather than annulled, in the Christian doctrine 
 of God, and to find the abiding guarantee for 
 intellect of the self-conscious Personality of God 
 in those Trinitarian conceptions of Deity which, in 
 their amplitude and complexity, only mistaken 
 thought has ever found other than helpful to a truly 
 rational faith. May we not say that, resting rather 
 in the concept of substance than in the notion of a 
 Heraclitean flux or stream of being, recent theistic 
 thought has based its conception of the World- 
 Ground or Substance in the idea of the Absolute 
 Personality has indeed made the Personality of 
 God stand out for us always more clearly as its 
 fundamental or basal conception ? Why should we 
 not retain in such wise the notion of substance, 
 avoiding the Spinozan conceptions of infinite sub- 
 stance, with kaleidoscopically changing perform- 
 ances, but no real capacity, in its timeless constancy, 
 to prove the ground of a real and advancing devel- 
 opment ? What earlier metaphysical presupposition 
 can we retain than just this of the Absolute Who, 
 as self - existent Personality, is the supernatural 
 Ground of the world, with which and the natural 
 or phenomenal a synthesis is to be affirmed ? 
 Where, save in this personal conception of Deity, 
 shall we find such warm breath of life breathed into 
 
TRUE VIEW OF DIVINE PERSONALITY. 325 
 
 the Divine Actuality as shall make the self-deter- 
 mination we postulate for Him a thing of living 
 content ? May we not say that no reason has been 
 found why being as internally personalised and ex- 
 ternally individuated may not embrace a plurality 
 of distinctive and personal manifestations ? May 
 we not indeed doubt whether the conception of sole 
 and eternal, unique and unrelated, Personality, ever 
 assumes any perfectly real form for our thought so 
 long as it does not carry within itself the essential 
 conditions of Supreme Personality, conditions such 
 as may conceivably be satisfied in the workings and 
 satisfactions of Triune Love ? This unity of Love 
 Divine the Unity of the Spirit has surely been 
 grasped as a far richer, more real, more profound 
 unity, than any mere numerical oneness or arith- 
 metical singularity that can be predicated of the 
 Absolute. 
 
 In some such way, as we have tried to show, our 
 late philosophy of theism has presented absolute, 
 self-conscious personality in God as in Hegel's fit 
 and striking phraseology the steepest and loftiest 
 summit (die hochste, zugescharfste Spitze) to which 
 its thought has been able to advance, and has 
 maintained for Him an absolute consciousness as 
 a thing void of inherent contradiction. In doing 
 so, it has fully met the pantheistic contentions 
 that personality is a determination, and conse- 
 quently a negation a negation not fitly applied 
 to describe One Who of all beings is the most 
 
326 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 real. It has opposed the use of the Spinozan 
 saying, Omnis determinatio est negatio every defi- 
 nition is a negation in the hands of all who 
 dismiss absolute personality as a mere contradic- 
 tion in terms, and make it, with Strauss, a non-ens, 
 something really unthinkable. Theistic philos- 
 ophy has made it abundantly plain that person- 
 ality, as involving limitation, is no more to be with- 
 held from the Absolute than are some attributes 
 which have not caused the same hesitation. It 
 has shown, in fact, that it can be refused only 
 with the consistent result of reducing the Absolute 
 to purely indeterminate being, or to an empty ab- 
 straction, all the while that His supposed self-limi- 
 tation is only a real perfection. But such a merely 
 logical abstraction or being in no way definite, 
 theistic philosophy refuses to recognise as its Ab- 
 solute, for its Absolute, as we have elsewhere 
 maintained, comes into most real relations with 
 us, takes the form of concrete being, and evinces 
 its absoluteness by the fulness of its contents and 
 the infinity of its power of self-determination. For 
 its Absolute the Infinite Personality theistic phil- 
 osophy postulates a Being-for-Self, which shall be 
 wholly independent of anything that might be for 
 it a not -self. Why should it not do so? Why 
 should not the Mind of this Absolute be present 
 everywhere in Nature as cannot be in the case 
 of our limited and finite personality ? Why should 
 not the limiting and restrictive conditions of time 
 
TRUE VIEW OF DIVINE PERSONALITY. 327 
 
 and space, as we know them, be wholly wanting 
 to the movement of this Absolute and Omnipresent 
 Personality ? Why should we unwarrantably per- 
 sist in reading limitation into the notion of Person- 
 ality, as if it had any place in the notion except in 
 its finite aspect ? Why should it be so hard to 
 transcend our dualistic modes of thinking, and to 
 see how, in the case of the Absolute and Infinite 
 Being, the usual non-ego need not be called in, but 
 His own activities may suffice for object ? What 
 need is there to suppose that, in the case of 
 spiritual existences, the Infinite Being cannot per- 
 vade the finite, but He thereby becomes limited ? 
 Why suppose that the Absolute Being must be 
 Himself all-inclusive existence, that nothing may 
 so limit Him ? The truth is plainly to be declared, 
 that there is really no speculative warrant to assume 
 that personality may not exist as absolute or in- 
 finite. It would indeed be strange to deny to the 
 World-Ground Source of all our knowledge and 
 power the power to know Itself and Its own 
 cosmic or other activities. 
 
 Whatever force might be allowed to the conten- 
 tions of those who refuse personality to the Absolute 
 as bringing out the really incomplete character of 
 finite personality, we cannot but reject them as un- 
 substantial in respect of Absolute Personality. Only 
 in the Absolute Personality do self-determination, 
 self-knowledge, and self-possession appear as really 
 perfect and entire, wanting nothing, for our Abso- 
 
328 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 lute is a reality, and comes not in its infinite per- 
 fection under poor finite laws of development. Our 
 Absolute is not the sheer nonentity of pure indefi- 
 niteness, not a void and self-destructive abstraction. 
 It is an Absolute that feels no call to shun the 
 definiteness which, as characteristic of all reality, 
 never means limitation save in the most negative 
 and absurd of senses. An Absolute, moreover, 
 which claims only the absoluteness that reigns where 
 self-hood, wisdom, will, and power are absolutely 
 perfect and incapable of increase. Yes, intensive 
 infinity is His, and to His perfect Being no limi- 
 tation or imperfection can be attached. Mere logical 
 limitations are at length swallowed up in the abyss 
 of reality that sums the theistic conception of the 
 Absolute Personality, which is God. And why 
 should it not be so ? For, after all, why should 
 we practically treat Personality in Deity as so 
 different from personality in man ? 
 
 Now, do we in any of those great forms of 
 personal realisation or achievement that mean for 
 us some form of self-imposed limitation, ever stay 
 to murmur and complain of the so-called limitation 
 as though it were to us a bondage and a humilia- 
 tion ? Do we not joyfully recognise that the laws 
 of mind or of spirit under which we so rise to 
 the personal realisation or accomplishment are not 
 worthy to be thought or spoken of in their limiting 
 aspect for the glory of the positive self- fulfilment 
 and self-realisation which shall thereby be ours ? 
 
TRUE VIEW OF DIVINE PERSONALITY. 329 
 
 Is it not equally absurd that this spectre of limi- 
 tation should be so long in being laid with respect 
 to Deity ? The truth is that this bugbear of limi- 
 tation is due to a radical misconception of what 
 true personal being means. " Is it not a matter 
 of fact," asks a modern apologist, "that the greater 
 and higher a being is, the more perfect is his 
 personality ? Do we not see the creation strug- 
 gling towards personality, and mounting step by 
 step through the preliminary stages of the vege- 
 table and animal world, until in man it actually 
 attains to individual personality, and becomes a 
 self-conscious mind ? ' Whence this universal tend- 
 ency of all that lives towards personality, if it be 
 not the law of the world ; and whence this law, 
 if the Principle of the world is an impersonal one ? ' 
 And if personality constitutes the pre-eminence of 
 man over the inferior creation, can this pre-eminence 
 be wanting in the highest Being of all ? Can God, 
 the most perfect Being imaginable, be devoid of 
 personality, the most perfect form of being ? Is 
 God indeed the absolute and entirely perfect One, 
 if He be wanting in any one excellence?" So, 
 then, if we grant perfect existence to God, that 
 existence is never to be viewed as perfect so long 
 as we withhold from it absolute personality. By no 
 other being can He be limited, to Whom all such 
 being owes the very possibility of its existence. 
 We therefore are in agreement with a German 
 philosophical writer who has but lately said that 
 
330 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 
 
 4 'the Absolute can be thought to exist only as 
 Personality, as a Spirit, Who in His Thought 
 contains the Ground of all Truth, in His Feeling 
 the Source of all Goodness, in His inner psychic 
 Activity His Will the creative Ground of all 
 Being, and, inasmuch as He enjoys the harmon- 
 ious union of these three factors, He is also the 
 Fountain-head of aesthetic Beauty." With such 
 a Deity, we can, as theistic philosophers, look the 
 whole speculative world in the face, and say, 
 THIS is our GOD ; we have waited for HIM, and 
 HE will save us : HE will be our GUIDE even 
 unto death. 
 
PART THIRD 
 
 RECENT THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF 
 RELIGION (MAN) 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 RECENT THEISTIC THOUGHT ON FUNCTIONS OF 
 REASON IN MAN. 
 
 IT was very well said by Professor Thomas Hill 
 Green that philosophy is the result of a progres- 
 sive effort towards a fully articulated conception 
 of the world as rational. The ancient world seems 
 to us to present nothing more striking than its 
 faith in the greatness, power, and beauty of reason. 
 We do not admit any purpose of the Divine Reason 
 historically to dethrone reason in man from this 
 sceptred sway. We even maintain the end to have 
 been the stimulation of reason, " at the ultimate 
 bound of her wit," to new flights in her sovereign 
 greatness. To-day, no less than in Kantian days, 
 the postulates of the reason are those which in 
 this work we seek to maintain God, Freedom, 
 and Immortality. However splendid the testimony 
 offered by character and conscience in the past, 
 theistic philosophy has believed the time to have 
 come for that testimony to be supplemented by a 
 
334 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 nobler witness of reason as the universal element 
 in all things, the unity which harmonises diversity 
 than any since the world was. Recent theistic 
 philosophy has, we think it may be said, postu- 
 lated with more firmness that the power and 
 functions of reason in man its creative power 
 whereby it forms ideals intellectual, moral, and 
 aesthetic, which it never ceases in the effort to 
 realise, and its functions that disclose capacities for 
 science and art, philosophy and religion all point 
 to a theistic interpretation. It has more boldly 
 grasped the inherent force and universal sweep of 
 the laws of reason, the essential oneness of reason 
 in man with the higher reason in God, the Supreme 
 Reason, Whose idea finds expression in all truths 
 and laws. It has taken reason in us to imply an 
 Absolute Reason, believing that 
 
 " The truth in God's breast 
 Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed ; 
 Though He is so bright and we so dim, 
 We are made in His image to witness Him." 
 
 It has clearly seen the loving and eternal Reason 
 that resides in the Sufficient Reason or Ultimate 
 Ground it postulates for all other proofs or grounds. 
 It has more truly found reason to be that which, as 
 having its centre and source in God, hath no need 
 of the sun, neither of that " sweet regent of the 
 sky," the moon, for it is a light unto itself, and the 
 final light of all things that are in the world. Hence 
 the truth of what Professor Samuel Harris has said. 
 
REASON AS ULTIMATE. 335 
 
 " that man's reason sees the light of the universal 
 reason ; that what is the True, the Right, the Perfect, 
 the Good which has true worth, to the reason of 
 man, is the True, the Right, the Perfect, the Good 
 which has true worth, to the universal reason of God." 
 Theistic thought has always more firmly ground- 
 ed reason, as essentially active, in personality, for 
 Cousin's impersonal reason it holds not in any sense 
 that would rob us of responsibility for such gift. 
 We grant, however, the merit of Cousin's psychol- 
 ogy in his placing on reason, with its impersonal 
 insight and absolute activity, the crown of mind, 
 and in his endeavouring not completely succeed- 
 ing to lead Knowledge beyond its merely local, 
 relative, and personal character to forms that should 
 be universal. The world's newer Theism has, in 
 face of fearful odds, been seeking to enthrone 
 reason as personal at the heart of the universe 
 in fact, so to recognise the omnipresence of reason 
 as to render it co-extensive with creation and with 
 thought. For that which it has found writ large 
 over the whole of Nature's vast domain is just 
 Reason so large indeed as to lead our thought 
 at length and irresistibly to an Objective and 
 Ultimate Reason as Ground and Cause of all. 
 Reason is for us that which interprets the primal 
 self-activity, known as the Absolute, in terms of 
 personal being with the living unity which such 
 being implies and of conscious spiritual energy. 
 We affirm that theistic philosophy has more vigor- 
 
336 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 ously asserted itself as heir of the Infinite Reason, 
 and, as such, entitled to find in reason that which 
 forms the key at once of reason itself and of all 
 other things which the world can present. All 
 which we regard as the result of its having more 
 boldly believed, with Gratry, after Fenelon, that 
 reason is even more wanting on this earth than 
 religion. It finds, as touching all human and finite 
 reasons, that the Infinite Reason, in Emersonian 
 phraseology, carries them away as with a flood, 
 but yet so that they renew themselves inexhaustibly 
 by its inspiration. It has more clearly apprehended 
 the constructive reason found in the universe as 
 necessarily existent under such forms or conditions 
 of reason as space and time, under which the 
 Eternal Reason comes forth in Its constructive 
 acts. Hence rationality is for it, we may say, 
 something never fully reached, but to which it 
 moves onward. Hence, too, the intelligibleness or 
 immanent rationality of nature is for it always more 
 truly the guiding light in nature's interpretation. 
 It has more evidently seen the sway of reason 
 as the seat and spring of orderly relations through 
 which it finds expression for itself, and has more 
 abundantly discovered the power of reason in 
 the rational interpretation of the intellectual and 
 aesthetic order of the world. It has found the 
 interpreting and synthetising reason more than 
 ever making plain and that in no manner of an 
 easy-going Monism the ultimate unity of truth, 
 
THE UNIVERSAL REASON. 337 
 
 spite of the diverse elements and manifold forms in 
 which it appears. The separate moments and con- 
 flicting opposites of the understanding are in this 
 way taken up by reason and harmonised in a unity 
 that seemed impossible. 
 
 The perfection of the culture of the human 
 reason has been rightly sought by recent theistic 
 philosophy in a genuine Metaphysic, capable of 
 expounding for us that free and Universal Reason 
 in which we live, move, and have our being. It 
 has more wonderingly witnessed the functions of 
 reason whereby the rational value of the world- 
 system of interacting forces is apprehended, the 
 conception of the universe as the thought of God 
 assimilated, and the unity of general law grasped. 
 What more central category of reality can we 
 indeed suggest speaking, that is to say, from the 
 theoretic, rather than the ethical, view-point than 
 reason or thought ? Under what higher authority 
 or what more absolute obligations can man come 
 than as he puts himself under reason ? May we not 
 say that theistic philosophy has been more clearly 
 realising, and must still more clearly realise, the 
 importance of that conception of God the Omni- 
 present Ground and the indwelling Life of the finite 
 which is reached in obedience to rational and not 
 merely emotional and practical needs reached, that 
 is to say, through what aid Dialectic may furnish, 
 and not merely Apologetic and in which He is ap- 
 prehended as He appears in the timeless present 
 
 Y 
 
338 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 and eternal activity of reason, so far as He can be 
 thus apprehended by men who still stand within the 
 world of experience ? It claims such knowledge, 
 of which reason is the pivot, to be truly scientific, 
 since the process, by which the ideas of spiritual 
 intuition are developed, proceeds according to the 
 categories of thought, and is in character discursive 
 and dialectic, no less than intuitive and ethical. 
 However it may have joined hands with Kant in 
 holding to the " primacy of practical reason," it 
 does not so we claim sit loosely to the pure 
 deliverances of the knowing reason. It has, in 
 our judgment, advanced on the Kantian view of 
 reason ( Vernunft\ for we are not of them that 
 deny to theoretic or Pure Reason any of that onto- 
 logical insight or vision which is so freely claimed 
 for the Practical Reason. Nor is this to depreciate 
 by a single iota the peerless function and worth of 
 the Practical Reason. 
 
 Theistic philosophy does not allow that the 
 rational is superseded by the ethical, but only 
 that they dwell peacefully side by side as mutually 
 complementary the rational as much the comple- 
 ment of the ethical as the ethical is the condition 
 of the rational. In fact, not only has the ambi- 
 guity of the term " reason " been more specifically 
 brought out, but rationality has been more clearly 
 shown to inhere as of necessity in that which is 
 spiritual and moral, at least as much as in that 
 which is ordinarily spoken of as merely or dis- 
 
REASON IN MAN. 339 
 
 tinctively rational. Nor does our philosophy allow 
 otherwise than with Goethe that 
 
 " Man, and man only, 
 Achieves the impossible, 
 He can distinguish, 
 Elect and direct." 
 
 " Nur allein der Mensch 
 Vermag das Unmogliche ; 
 Er unterscheidet, 
 Wahlet und richtet." 
 
 It is not too much to say that it has lately, with 
 more skill and success, unfolded the immeasurable 
 superiority of man's life, in its rational unity, to 
 that of the animal, as that superiority is evinced 
 in those lofty and self-directed functions of reason 
 proper what Rousseau styled the anti- natural 
 state of conscious reflection beside whose working 
 within the sphere of truly spiritual law the so-called 
 reasoning of animals, by means of recognised signs 
 through laws of association, has not a shred of 
 claim to be placed. These rudimentary types and 
 foreshadowings presented by reason in animals it 
 finds to be no more than 
 
 " dim fragments meant 
 To be united in some wondrous whole." 
 
 " Ich sehe nicht die Spur 
 Von einem Geist, und alles ist Dressur." 
 
 Professor Lloyd Morgan, in lately dealing with 
 comparative psychology, has, while claiming intel- 
 ligence for animals, held that there is no proof of 
 
340 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 their perception of relations, and has denied to 
 them the power of logical reason or inference. 
 They may, in his view, inherit facilities for asso- 
 ciation, but no evidence is satisfactorily present of 
 anything like hereditary experience, the associations 
 being but individually acquired. Here in man, says 
 Professor Calderwood, speaking of Evolution and 
 Man's place in Nature, " in contrast with what is 
 observed in lower types of life, both unintelligent 
 and intelligent, reflection shapes the purpose which 
 the agent afterwards makes an effort to fulfil. 
 This is something entirely new in the activity of 
 life ; this presents the hardest problem in natural 
 history " ( ' Proceedings of Royal Society of Edin- 
 burgh,' 1890). Though it has more freely granted 
 man's connection, on his animal side, with nature, 
 by ties of derivation, structure, and function, yet 
 theistic philosophy has never found the animal 
 overstep the limits imposed by natural law in its 
 destitution alike of the unifying power and the 
 spiritual possibilities of man. For it the antiquity 
 of man has meant, not " the antiquity of the man- 
 ape, but of the man-Adam ; not of the man-like 
 monkey, but of the God-like man." Of course, we 
 do not mean that it has any hesitation or concern 
 about man's inclusion within the boundaries of 
 animal life or the range of animal inheritance. 
 Why should it ? Even Professor Huxley, while 
 contending for " no absolute structural line of 
 demarcation " between the animal world and man, 
 
REASON IN MAN. 341 
 
 and holding " the attempt to draw a psychical dis- 
 tinction " perfectly futile, asserts that " no one is 
 more strongly convinced " than himself " of the 
 vastness of the gulf between civilised man and the 
 brutes," and no one " more certain that whether 
 from them or not, he is assuredly not of them." 
 Theistic philosophy finds, with Wallace, in his 
 researches into Darwinism, that for the higher 
 faculties found in man an adequate cause is only 
 to be reached in the unseen universe of spirit. It 
 finds, as we claim, such animal reasoning as exists to 
 be quite lacking in the reflective ideality, and in the 
 conceptual character, of reasoning or intelligence as 
 it appears in man. It finds that not merely in virtue 
 of our finely articulated psychic mechanism, but also 
 in a qualitative manner through the capacity we 
 possess of self -activity, are we differentiated from 
 the animal world. 
 
 The rationalised character of man's physical life 
 it finds properly emphasised by Professor Calder- 
 wood in his work on ' Evolution and Man's Place 
 in Nature' a power of rational discrimination 
 whose significance is not to be mistaken. It has 
 indorsed, as touching this " enormous psychical 
 divergence," the position of Fiske when he affirms 
 that " it is not too much to say that the difference 
 between man and all other living creatures, in 
 respect of teachableness, progressiveness, and indi- 
 viduality of character, surpasses all other differences 
 of kind that are known to exist in the universe." 
 
342 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 That philosophy has been always more surely 
 finding reason, which is grounded in will and 
 forms the essence of personality, to be the highest 
 power of spirit in man, with an imperative of its 
 own which depends not on individual will but 
 carries, as part of the natural order, the authority 
 of objective truth. For, as Professor Laurie has 
 well said in his ' Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta,' 
 " it would be a strange thing indeed if the energy 
 of Reason seizing the external found that the one 
 did not answer the other that the datum of sense 
 defeated the process of dialectic, that the plastic 
 power of Reason encountered material which it 
 failed to mould." As he says later in the same 
 work, " the outer is not merely an x negating 
 my self-consciousness," but, on the contrary, " it is 
 Reason externalised"- "as universal reason, it is 
 one with the moments of my finite reason." The 
 theistic philosophy has been still discovering its 
 own vested interest in reclaiming every territory 
 lost to reason. Even faith is seen to be some- 
 thing that must no more remain as Mansel made 
 it, like so many others only receptive, but also be 
 constructive, in fact, must be a synthetising power 
 that brings reason and will and conscience together, 
 and out of their meeting finds ultimate and inex- 
 pressible ground for its convictions. 
 
 The march of theistic philosophy has been, and 
 must still be, towards an absolutely fearless faith in 
 reason, an unswerving confidence in the absolute 
 
REASON AND FAITH. 343 
 
 harmony of true reason with faith, since reason is 
 no more to be grounded in faith than is faith to be 
 grounded in reason. These twain are no separable 
 and independent not to say antagonistic organs 
 or faculties. Hence reason, recovering itself from 
 the intellectual impotence that settled on even Fich- 
 tean rationalism, now occupies a better defined rela- 
 tion to faith, which latter is always conditioned by 
 prior and justifying assent of reason to its exercise. 
 Yes ; our faith is a thoroughly rational thing, for 
 never do we allow it to rest in its reliance on the 
 reason, wisdom, goodness, of any other without the 
 sanction of reason to its confidence as based on 
 adequate grounds and sufficient evidence. For all 
 that faith receives on trust, a ground must instantly 
 be found by reason. Differing as they do in their 
 nature and scope, there is yet as little real antagon- 
 ism between faith and reason or faith and philos- 
 ophy as can be well imagined. 
 
 Simultaneously with what has just been advanced, 
 reason, shunning the Nemesis that overtakes an 
 all-inclusive reason in the Schellincnan sense, has 
 
 o ' 
 
 been more fully understood to involve an ultimate 
 element of trust or faith, so that faith becomes what 
 Pascal said, "the last step of reason." It still holds 
 true that " faith is itself the highest reason, is simply 
 obedience to the highest reason the consummation 
 and the crown of our intellectual activity. There is 
 even more. Our primary beliefs, in the farthest 
 analysis, are capable of being resolved into an inde- 
 
344 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 structible conclusion of the understanding. The 
 deep, inward, ultimate ground, understood and felt 
 by multitudes who cannot express it in definite 
 words, is no other than this our perceptions, our 
 intuitions, our consciousnesses must be true, because 
 otherwise our nature is a falsehood and our Creator 
 a deceiver. This is the last, strong refuge of faith 
 in the primary convictions." Surely the shallow- 
 ness is past of men who deified knowledge and 
 flouted faith, and knew not the scientific absurdity 
 of what they did. Surely the day of faith in its 
 rationality and divining power has slowly dawned, 
 its light of knowledge born. Has not time been 
 making always more manifest how, as one has said, 
 " reason requires the nutriment and impulse furnished 
 by faith," while " faith requires the discreet elabor- 
 ation of reason " ? But such faith is not the mere 
 fruit of reason, as such : we must take account of 
 the time-elements, the educative-elements, and the 
 will-elements, which all go to build up rational belief 
 in the soul. Can it be doubted that the appeal to 
 this supreme faculty of faith the faith of reason- 
 is still only more intelligently, perhaps, than ever 
 before the final resort of philosophy ? But in all 
 this the ideal of reason as "the unification of all 
 belief into an ordered whole" which is "compacted 
 into one coherent structure under the stress of 
 reason," has been nobly as, for example, in Mr 
 Balfour's 'Foundations of Belief pursued in our 
 latest thinking, even if it remain, and must ever 
 
PROOFS AND TRIUMPHS OF REASON. 345 
 
 remain, imperfectly realised. Such unification is 
 to us at least a far more satisfactory thing to con- 
 template than merely such unity of a fancied spiritual 
 wedlock as Christlieb depicted between faith and 
 reason, so making faith the masculine partner of 
 the union, while Dr M'Cosh precisely inverted this 
 relation of things, making reason the masculine 
 power, without which faith would be facile and 
 impulsive. 
 
 Reason, intelligence,' mind it is this which the 
 theistic philosophy has, in the way and sense now' 
 indicated, more truly than ever enthroned ; it is by 
 such enthronement its largest advances have been 
 made ; it is with the numberless proofs of reason 
 in its ever-widening range that the strength of the 
 theistic argument has grown. For reason is, it 
 must here be said, always the newest term in this 
 world one which has come to combine, fuse, in- 
 terpret, and develop every existing term and it 
 has been the vast and fruitful undertaking of the 
 theistic philosophy to sum up these growing 
 triumphs of reason. There is no fear that, in doing 
 so, it will be misled by any tendencies and such 
 are not wanting to rob Reason in order to pay 
 Authority. So far, however, as Mr Balfour's aim 
 is concerned, we are in large agreement with 
 Professor Andrew Seth that Mr Balfour has really 
 sought to press home on science itself the need 
 of the theistic postulate as against naturalistic 
 assumptions. And whereas theistic thought has 
 
346 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 been witness to the " proud theologist" being told 
 that the modern man is a Positivist, who has left 
 the conception of God that "long parenthesis," 
 according to Positivist philosophy, between its two 
 so-called normal modes of thought, Fetichism and 
 Positivism behind as a fictitious, unverifiable 
 hypothesis, what it has really seen is the increas- 
 ingly proved incapacity of science, with its ab- 
 stractions so ostentatiously dear to Positivism, 
 either to outgrow the philosophy of theism, or 
 to stop short of the theistic conclusion as its rational 
 goal. Nor has the stress which the idealism of 
 Professor Royce as it has found expression in 
 his able and delightful work on the * Religious 
 Aspect of Philosophy ' has laid upon Reason or 
 pure cognitive Intelligence, at the amazing cost 
 of Will, proved any more satisfactory to philosophic 
 theism, which is to-day less than ever, we believe, 
 prepared to make any such absolute sacrifice of 
 the ethical attributes of the one Universal Will 
 at the shrine of the " one Universal Mind." For 
 theistic philosophy is well content to leave to Pro- 
 fessor Royce a philosophy confessedly of a world 
 other than the actual one which here and now is, 
 and is more thankful to know that behind the 
 shadow of the " Infinite Thought" of such tenuous 
 metaphysical idealism, abides for men to whom that 
 sort of idealism has brought but little light and 
 less inspiration, the reality of a Will that reigns 
 in righteousness, and makes Its agency actively 
 
CRITICISM OF ROYCE AND HEGEL. 347 
 
 and universally felt even in this strange sad world. 
 Will, and the ethical qualities of love, may own 
 thought as their logical prius, but not for that 
 reason as their parent. 
 
 Theistic philosophy must therefore seek a more 
 synthetic view than that which, in the alleged in- 
 terests of thought, resolves the Absolute simply 
 into an all-devouring intellection or reason. This 
 we say, although none may compute how much 
 we owe to Hegel for the splendid faith in reason 
 he has helped us to cherish. The primordial 
 Reason which theistic philosophy of religion pos- 
 tulates is also the primordial Force in such wise 
 that the laws of reason entirely accord with the 
 laws which we find in nature. But its primordial 
 Reason is not the " absolute Reason" of Hegel, 
 for all thought is to it that of determinate being, 
 so that, fleeing purely intellectual abstractions, such 
 absolute Reason as it believes in is definite and 
 self-conscious. Its going forth, as finite reason, 
 was to find reason immanent in nature, and it found 
 God as w r ell, Absolute Reason as He is Absolute 
 Being. It is in that Absolute or Universal Reason 
 alone that theistic philosophy finds man's reason 
 live, as it becomes in him. Reason is to it, there- 
 fore, no lawless thing, but it is yet so internal in 
 its rise as to pertain to the autonomy of the spirit. 
 No doubt, it finds man's natural reason share in 
 the vitiating results of sin his false ethical attitude 
 towards the Deity affecting for ill his native intui- 
 
34^ FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 tion, but it takes the whole realm of spiritual reason 
 never to have been more properly regarded as 
 subject to rational processes or the laws of thought. 
 From what precedes it will be easy to understand 
 how it finds reason in man marked by an endlessly 
 progressive movement towards the transcendent or 
 ideal, which is as a spur to our growth, since it 
 always lies in advance of our actual attainment. 
 Reason must, from its very nature, reject every 
 limitation that men set to it, and press on towards 
 the unattained goal in the spirit of Schiller's " pil- 
 grim " 
 
 " Und das Dort ist niemals hier ! " 
 
 The goal is still a dream or possibility of the future. 
 Hence is realised that which the poet voices, at the 
 close of ' Faust ' 
 
 " Im Weiterschreiten find'er Qual und Gliick, 
 Er, unbefriedigt jeden Augenblick." 
 
 " In joy or torment ever onward stride, 
 Though every moment still unsatisfied." 
 
 If this quest of the ideal is to be saved from ever 
 growing sickly and languid, that can only be by 
 our coming to see how truly the " gleaming Ideal 
 is the Everlasting Real, no transient brush of a 
 fancied angel wing, but the abiding presence and 
 persuasion of the Soul of souls." Yes, and the 
 words of Amiel are for our philosophy true, as 
 touching this ideal -forming power so essential to 
 man, when he says that "the ideal is a poison 
 
CRITICISM OF RITSCHLIANISM. 349 
 
 unless it be fused with the real, and the real becomes 
 corrupt without the perfume of the ideal," for we do 
 not admit such a necessary cleft between the real 
 and the ideal as the antithesis sometimes expressed 
 concerning them supposes. "It is only," as one 
 has said, " in the maturity of actuality that the Ideal 
 appears over against the Real, and that the former 
 builds up the same world, apprehended in its sub- 
 stance, in the shape of an intellectual World." 
 There is not a religious instinct such as that of 
 man's belief in immortality and not a moral feeling 
 such as that of moral responsibility of which the 
 ground and sanction are not to be found in reason. 
 However intuitively truth may be at last discerned, 
 such almost instinctive knowledge is reached only 
 as the ripest product of reason. 
 
 It may now be said that recent theistic philosophy 
 has shown little disposition to rest in the deprecia- 
 tion of reason and of the activity of thought which 
 marks the attitude of Ritschl, Kaftan, Herrmann, 
 and Kierkegaard, for there is for it no part of the 
 whole domain of religion and morality which is not 
 swept by the eye of reason, and over which the 
 sceptre of reason does not bear a true sway. For, 
 has it not known that reason is too deeply rooted 
 in the soil of man's nature not to return after every 
 expulsion, and assert its place and its dominion 
 more firmly than before ? And why are these 
 things so ? Is it not because, just as the insepar- 
 ability of conscience from all other parts of our 
 
350 FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. 
 
 ethical experience has been by us elsewhere main- 
 tained, so here reason is not to be treated as an 
 abstract thing so much as has been the wont, but is 
 to be regarded in relation to, and not as separable 
 from, our personality. What is my reason, indeed, 
 but just the reason of my personality when that 
 personality is viewed in its aspect of intelligence ? 
 And theistic philosophy has found reason to be by 
 no means so lacking in kinetic power as some have 
 imagined, for it has no sooner discerned the good 
 for man than it brings the sense of obligation 
 which is certainly not devoid of rational elements 
 to bear upon the will. Hence for it the content of 
 religion can be none other than " the truths, laws, 
 ideals, and ends of Reason." In fact, nothing do 
 we find more conspicuous in the Christian, as com- 
 pared with other religions, than just the way in 
 which the Christian revelation enshrines reason 
 from the first, for, in its first approaches to sinful 
 man, it will reach the conscience and the heart 
 only via the reason, as it utters, " Come now, and 
 let us reason together." Yes, it is in the secret 
 temple of Reason its light will be set up. How 
 precious, diverse, unrestrained, are the workings 
 of Reason ! How swift, bright, unexpected, are 
 its visitations! "It may be with the volume of 
 inspiration before us and its holy teachings lifting 
 up our minds it may be in the secret chamber, 
 when we are upon our knees, before the All- 
 Seeing it may be on the lone mountain or in 
 
THE FLIGHT OF REASON. 351 
 
 the deep forest wild it may be in the silence 
 and outspread darkness of midnight alone, far 
 from human fellowship ! The eye of Reason 
 sweeps the horizon all around, and the whole ex- 
 panse of the concave, overhead. Like as some 
 absorbed worshipper of science, in his solitary 
 tower of observation, while all the world is asleep, 
 directs his telescope, now to one quarter of the 
 heavens and again to another ; the eye of the 
 spiritual seer, the spiritual seeker, gazes forth and 
 upward. Thus it may have gazed, often and long, 
 but in vain. At length the moment comes when 
 a single, brilliant, glittering, spark - point, like a 
 precious star, a solitary jewel on the brow of night, 
 is descried. Perhaps another glints out, and per- 
 haps even another still. It is rapture, worth all 
 the gazing, and waiting, and watching, and dis- 
 appointment, and frequent sickness of heart ! " 
 Yea, even so, O Father of lights, shall we still 
 and ever in Thy light see light clearly ! 
 
352 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 RECENT THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY OF PERSONALITY 
 IN MAN. 
 
 WE proceed to notice, next, recent advances in 
 theistic philosophy as it relates to man, as we find 
 him in that Christian world where as Martensen 
 said the infinite craving for Personality has been 
 awakened, and as he appears in his essential con- 
 nection with the theistic doctrine of God. The 
 theistic conception of man theistic, it must be 
 clearly understood, because it is the correlate of the 
 theistic conception of God has, as voiced in recent 
 philosophy of theism, more nobly proclaimed and 
 contended that, while man is in and of nature, he is 
 yet, in an intrinsic and absolute sense, above nature, 
 superior to it in virtue of his spiritual qualities, 
 while not supernatural in the usual sense of the 
 term. In this endeavour, as against recent Materi- 
 alism and Agnosticism, it has been aided not a little 
 by Pantheism, though the parting of the ways is 
 reached when it demands of idealistic pantheism 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PERSONALITY. 353 
 
 explication of the Universal Reason, that airy phan- 
 tom of abstract thought, or of that pure and absolute 
 Being which, eviscerating Itself of all real content, 
 is seen to be resolved into impersonal and uncon- 
 scious Thought or Substance. To theistic phil- 
 osophy personality comprises, as Mansel said, " all 
 that we know of that which exists ; relation to 
 personality comprises all that we know of that 
 which seems to exist." And when, as he remarked, 
 " from the little world of man's consciousness and 
 its objects we would lift up our eyes to the inex- 
 haustible universe beyond, and ask to Whom all 
 this is related, the highest existence is still the 
 highest personality ; and the Source of all being 
 reveals Himself by His Name ' I am.' ' Just as 
 recent philosophy of theism has more nobly vin- 
 dicated the personality of God, and, in vindicating 
 personality, has opened the door for revelation, 
 communication, adoration, and supplication, so has 
 recent theistic philosophy of religion made, in our 
 view, a praiseworthy progress in proclaiming and 
 expounding the true personality it postulates for 
 world-compelling men. It has triumphed over those 
 philosophic influences which, flowing from Kantian 
 sources, would have made it a prey to subjectivism, 
 and has, in its severer analysis of the nature of 
 consciousness and its more patient following of it 
 through its less developed stages back to its rise, 
 more effectively maintained the reality of the cen- 
 tral self, the simple, indivisible ego. So, too, has 
 
 z 
 
354 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 it taken personality to be the ineffable quality- 
 indefinable, as Mansel said, because " superior to 
 definition" in which that ego does consist. We 
 are not going to be here overbalanced by the issues 
 which, in the philosophy of evolution, have been 
 raised by genetic psychology as to the genesis of 
 mind itself : mind, soul, self, personality, these 
 things are here, and are here to abide, and we are 
 not going to forsake a searching into what they are 
 for an inquiry into how they came to be, though this 
 last may be necessary and important top. We claim 
 that recent theistic philosophy has been more keen- 
 sighted than drop into the snare into which those 
 philosophers have fallen who, failing to appreciate 
 the full effects of will on the intellect, have treated 
 the ego as only some sort of logical symbol for 
 the unity of thought, instead of regarding it as 
 something that implied personality. 
 
 True philosophy of theism sees that man's being 
 is primarily and truly self -active, and that such 
 self- active being can only be self-conscious and 
 personal. It sees how little possible it is to pre- 
 serve a true and valid personality for man, if we 
 are content to follow those who claim not for man 
 self-consciousness and self-determination that are 
 really his own, and are not the mere projection 
 in man of the self- determining idea or principle 
 found in nature. No wonder it has set before it 
 the large and patient task it has, for we think it 
 may with truth be said to have been more percipi- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 355 
 
 ent of the fact that a philosophy of consciousness, 
 which should be perfect and complete, would, not- 
 withstanding " the narrowness of consciousness " 
 (die Enge des Bewusstseins\ afford a sure and cer- 
 tain clue to the solution of our profoundest prob- 
 lems. The growth of consciousness means the 
 increasing complexity of our problems, in the spirit 
 of the saying, " Qui accroit la science, accroit le 
 travail," and philosophy is seen to mean, as Ferrier 
 said, "consciousness sublimed." 
 
 It is no part of our purpose here to follow the 
 analysis of consciousness, as it yields its data in 
 the triple forms of self, the world, and God ; but 
 we may very serviceably recall some of the results 
 which that analysis of the Ego in its forms or 
 modes has brought forth with increasing clearness, 
 in so far as these results relate to that true per- 
 sonality with which we are here concerned. We 
 cannot but think that, in the view of recent theistic 
 thought, man is by all the processes of life driven 
 back at last upon his own inner life as " the Archi- 
 medean point " from which as centre he has to 
 unfold his world a consideration which has served 
 to make his need of a deeply grounded personality 
 more truly felt. Not yet is his personality, with 
 all its properties and implications, within near ap- 
 proach to being perfectly understood. But there 
 has been a deepening and a widening process at 
 work in our conceptions of human personality. 
 Among the things now perfectly certain is the 
 
PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 existence of those " unconscious mental modifica- 
 tions" which John Stuart Mill was able, three 
 decades ago, to regard as beyond the reach of ex- 
 periment. What is more, it is becoming rapidly 
 manifest that these subliminal strata or subconscious 
 elements in our being are vastly more important 
 than they have been thought. And other things 
 also we shall presently find to be more beyond 
 reach of doubt than they were. The analysis 
 of the Ego has taken consciousness to be the 
 " necessary knowledge which the mind has of its 
 own operations. In knowing, it knows that it 
 knows. In experiencing emotions and passions, it 
 knows that it experiences them. In willing or 
 exercising acts of causality, it knows that it wills 
 or exercises such acts. This is the common, 
 universal, and spontaneous consciousness." More 
 accurately defined, it is " the power and act of 
 self-recognition ; not, if you please, the mind know- 
 ing its knowledges, emotions, and volitions, but 
 the mind knowing itself in these." Consciousness 
 recent thought regards not simply as a "peculiar 
 faculty," by which we are cognisant of our own 
 mental operations, but views it as the universal 
 condition of intelligence, the universal basis and 
 inseparable element of human thought, the basal 
 form of all the modes of our thinking activity. 
 It accepts the words of Cousin : " We not only 
 feel, but we know that we feel ; we not only act, 
 but we know that we act ; we not only think, 
 
FACTORS AND FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 357 
 
 but we know that we think ; to think without 
 knowing" that we think, is as if we should not 
 think ; and the peculiar quality, the fundamental 
 attribute of thought, is to have a consciousness of 
 itself. Consciousness is this interior light which 
 illuminates everything that takes place in the soul ; 
 consciousness is the accompaniment of all our facul- 
 ties ; and is, so to speak, their echo." In the triad, 
 composed of self, the world, and God, as the neces- 
 sary factors the unchangeable elements of con- 
 sciousness, the consciousness of the last named, 
 that is, of God, has been regarded by recent 
 theistic philosophy as that wherein the conscious- 
 ness of the other two of self and the world 
 becomes completely realised, while at the same 
 time consciousness of self and the world has been 
 viewed as forming the path by which we rise into 
 consciousness of God. The relevancy and pur- 
 pose of this insistence on these forms and develop- 
 ments of the consciousness of the single, permanent 
 self that is, the essential or noumenal self, which 
 we take to be the indivisible unit in the sphere of 
 personality will speedily appear. It is not, of 
 course, held that any historical consciousness of the 
 genesis of the conscious ego has been possible to 
 philosophy : all indeterminate lies the beginning 
 an undifferentiated complex : forth from the abyss 
 of nothingness or, if any prefer, from the deep 
 sphere of feeling or impression, where sub-conscious 
 elements dwell philosophy has seen the ego spring 
 
358 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 to learn the import of the saying, " I am I," as it 
 sets itself to gather fruits of world - experience. 
 For the self-conscious subject, which forms in itself 
 the unity of thought and reality, knows itself as 
 now existing, but memory does not carry it to the 
 beginning of existence : there is a point beyond 
 which Memory can no further go. 
 
 " No memory-haunted ways 
 Take our first footsteps ; but in deep 
 And unremembered tracts of sleep 
 The immature creature dwells, nor can recall 
 Its former self or primal state at all." 
 
 Back to this point, however, at which we see 
 self-consciousness rise if we may be allowed so 
 to speak out of the loose sand-heap of unreflecting 
 consciousness, or upon the crest of wavy sensations 
 or, in other words, back to the point at which 
 we see the merely conscious individual emerge from 
 consciousness in general (Bewusstsein uberhaupi), 
 and first become transformed by the assertion of 
 will and reason into an ego or personality we 
 know that the self or unifying principle which has 
 persisted through the long train of remembered 
 experiences has been one and the same an ever 
 identical self. Even " the assertion of the evolu- 
 tionist," as John Fiske in a certain place has said, 
 "is purely historical in its import, and includes no 
 hypothesis whatever as to the ultimate origin of 
 consciousness ; least of all is it intended to imply 
 that consciousness was evolved from matter." Into 
 
PSYCHIC ELEMENTS OR ASPECTS OF BEING. 359 
 
 that we may not now inquire ; but we are led to 
 say that the genesis of personality with its rational 
 powers and its ancestral similitude is, in the view 
 of that philosophy with whose latest developments 
 we are concerned, due, not to physical force being 
 transmuted into psychic states, but to a stage of 
 development being reached at which the psychic 
 aspects or elements of being run up into that unity 
 which we call consciousness. But if consciousness 
 is such a unity formed of psychic elements, why 
 should we not say, as touching these psychic aspects 
 or factors, that already they were there truly pre- 
 conditioning our consciousness ? 
 
 We believe theistic philosophy has been always 
 more firmly grounding consciousness in that only 
 which is potentially conscious in fact, in the 
 world's immanent spiritual potentialities. Its ul- 
 timate basis, of course, must be found in the nature 
 or essence of the Absolute. This is not to say 
 that consciousness, as developed in us, is the con- 
 sciousness of the Absolute, which must be allowed 
 to have a consciousness of Its own, perfect and 
 entire, wanting no development. We recall the 
 words of Lotze, that " no necessity of reason con- 
 strains us to shun the thought of a beginning of 
 the soul. The organic body in process of being 
 formed, certainly does not educe it from itself; 
 but the living body itself is no incoherent heap 
 of atoms driven to a particular development by 
 a universal law, in an otherwise empty world. As, 
 
360 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 on the contrary, every physical process, even the 
 most minute apparently taking place between two 
 elements, is likewise an event within the Eternal, 
 on Whose constant presence all possibility of action 
 depends, even so the quietly advancing formation 
 of the organic germ is no isolated, independent 
 event, but a development of the Infinite itself. 
 Fostered by it, received by it into its own inner 
 being, this natural event there excites the creative 
 power to new development ; and as our human soul 
 receives stimuli from without and answers them by 
 the production of a sensation, so the consistent 
 unity of the Infinite Being lets itself be stimulated 
 by this internal event of physical development to 
 produce out of itself the soul appropriate to the 
 growing organism." (' Microcosmus,' vol. i. p. 390. 
 T. & T. Clark.) 
 
 Does not philosophy of theism, however, seem 
 haunted with a feeling that this very inquiry into 
 the origin of our selfhood or personality that 
 possible ultimate here may not be philosophical ? 
 If personality be such an ultimate, it must be vain 
 to seek to reduce or explain it, attempt this as 
 men may. It is only the person who can enter 
 into the terms I and THOU. We claim personality 
 for ourselves because we know, and think, and 
 feel, and will, as we do, and have the consciousness 
 of being able to do all these. Self-consciousness 
 is, then, just that intuitive knowledge of itself 
 which mind or self as a permanent power or ex- 
 
NATURE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 361 
 
 istence possesses amid its own operations or 
 activities. Of these mental acts and the mind's 
 states we have knowledge in virtue of self-con- 
 sciousness, which implies the knowledge, not of 
 mere baseless and vanishing states, but also of an 
 indivisible self or individual being, though a know- 
 ledge that is not complete. For, "self-conscious- 
 ness," as Du Prel, in his ' Philosophy of Mysticism,' 
 has strikingly said, " may be as inadequate to the 
 ego, as consciousness to the world; or the ego 
 may as much exceed self - consciousness as the 
 world exceeds consciousness." Our notion of 
 personality has thus become widened by the re- 
 cognition of the fact that our whole or total self 
 is so far from being fully manifested in any of 
 the forms of consciousness known to us. That 
 psychical phenomenon, which we designate the 
 ego, is now more distinctly seen to be a developing 
 rather than an original entity. The true unity of 
 the person was never more clearly recognised as 
 resting upon the unity of consciousness. This 
 real unity is viewed as due to the self-activity of 
 the soul in midst of the manifoldness of our im- 
 pressions and those influences that are borne in 
 upon us in experience. Our knowledge of self 
 or the ego, which, as we have just seen, is so far 
 from being an abstraction or mere ideal, is know- 
 ledge in a mode of consciousness which is immediate 
 though imperfect. I know myself with a directness 
 and positiveness which do not obtain in the case 
 
362 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 of my knowledge of any other. I do and must 
 perceive myself as the perceiving self that I am. 
 Hence I come to know myself as a centre of 
 conscious and active power. Certainly I have no 
 deeper or more abiding perception of my being 
 than as an active, persistent individual or unit 
 in midst of every change of feeling, thought, or 
 action. Mind is the great reality : for anything 
 I can know, matter and force may be no more 
 than the "mere names for certain forms of con- 
 sciousness." The consciousness of my knowing 
 is with that of my being the only certitude I 
 possess in the presence of reality. 
 
 Not alone the unity of our individuated being, 
 but also the permanence of its self-identical, con- 
 scious subject, our late theistic philosophy has 
 more successfully maintained against such recent 
 efforts to explain the permanent identity of the 
 conscious entity as that of the psychology of 
 Professor William James, of Harvard. Not that 
 it has any quarrel with the life of consciousness 
 being, by Professor James, made up of a con- 
 tinuous " stream," since he preserves, in each suc- 
 cessive consciousness, the truth of our self-identity. 
 But we ask, has it not very clearly perceived that, 
 in the stress which Professor James, in his reckoning 
 with the facts of consciousness, puts on the state of 
 consciousness by which the ego or subject is, on 
 his theory, brought forward and transmitted from 
 consciousness to consciousness throughout the long 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR JAMES. 363 
 
 succession, we have a hysteron-proteron, in which 
 the primacy of the subject has been shunted on to 
 the state ? Has it not kept in view, too, what 
 power the conscious mind of man possesses of 
 marking itself off in distinction from the " stream " 
 already spoken of? It surely sees that these states 
 are states of mine that is, of my consciousness and 
 that without me they can do nothing, in fact, do 
 not exist. Certainly it has viewed as a reasonable 
 expectation that Professor James and all who grant 
 as do not the followers of Hume the ego, 
 should go on to acknowledge how irrefragable has 
 grown the proof of the producing ego as the primal 
 and perduring reality. It plainly perceives that 
 without such primal unit or essence as that which 
 we call mind, with its unexampled unity, the very 
 notion of stream or series or succession would 
 in its dependence upon a constant be rendered 
 impossible to us. And it has very decidedly 
 regarded as untenable, and quite unsupported by 
 the facts of consciousness, such a position as that 
 in which Professor James draws, from the "veri- 
 fiable" character of the "passing thought," the 
 disastrous conclusion " that thought is itself the 
 thinker"! Unwilling as Professor James shows 
 himself to postulate a permanent ego or soul as 
 the basis of man's personality, he yet sends forth, 
 his " thought" clothed upon with what are virtually 
 so many of the wonted powers or rights of the 
 soul as serve to show how difficult it has been 
 
364 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 for him to keep clear of spiritualistic implications 
 and conceptions. There is absolutely no warrant 
 for his treating thought a mere faculty of mind 
 as though it were mind itself. It is utterly 
 absurd to regard thought the act or product of 
 our spiritual entity as the entity itself. The 
 very laws of thought and the sure facts of con- 
 sciousness proclaim it untenable and subversive 
 of all knowledge that thought should be held as 
 the thinker. 
 
 But to return to our own position. My idea of 
 personality or personal being originates in my self- 
 consciousness, and is realised in myself, in my own 
 intellectual personality as the ego that thinks and 
 knows itself; it does not spring merely from my 
 distinguishing it from the impersonal and irrational. 
 Professor Samuel Harris says : " In his personality 
 every man is individual and alone ; others can 
 approach the barriers of this solitude and send in 
 intelligence, influence, or sympathy ; but no man 
 can scale the barriers into the personality of another 
 to think, or feel, or determine, or act for him, to 
 take his responsibility, or to participate in his con- 
 sciousness " (' Philosophical Basis of Theism,' p. 
 414). No doubt my individual consciousness is 
 enlarged by continuous contact with the conscious- 
 ness of the countless selves of humanity making up 
 the race, which race-consciousness penetrates and 
 pervades mine, yet so as my own personality shall 
 never be frustrated or neutralised. But personality 
 
CRITICISM OF LOTZE AND KANT. 365 
 
 in others we can recognise only after we have, each 
 of us as a unitary power, found it in ourselves : 
 only when we have so realised personality in our 
 individual selves, as constituted by Will, can we 
 recognise it even in God. Herein we, for our part, 
 agree with the attitude assumed by recent philos- 
 ophy of theism in repudiating the position of 
 Lotze in reducing the finite personality to a pale 
 semblance. Our agreement with the Lotzean view, 
 however, is cordial in this respect, that, if choose 
 we must, we should prefer to regard man as 
 infra-personal rather than speak of God as supra- 
 personal, since, with Professor Upton in his recent 
 Hibbert Lectures, we do not feel need or warrant 
 to claim any further approximation to perfect per- 
 sonality than is compatible with such a view. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has not suffered itself to 
 forget, when modern philosophical idealism has 
 relied on " self-consciousness," as a term to conjure 
 with, that the word for it means crux no less than 
 lux ; but it has been able to hold more firmly by 
 the reality and integrity of man's personality, in 
 face of every perplexity. For it has felt, with 
 Lotze, the perpetual necessity which exists, in 
 virtue of the " generic dissimilarity " between all 
 physical processes and those of consciousness, to 
 derive the "life of the soul from a principle peculiar 
 to itself." We believe we are well entitled to say 
 that nothing advanced by Kant against this reality 
 of the self or personality avails to prove anything 
 
366 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 save the inadequacy of our abstract thought to 
 do justice to the self in its all-embracing reality. 
 What, to all primary intents at least, leads us to 
 maintain the unity of substance is just the con- 
 sciousness we bear of the unity of the self or ego. 
 What, we ask, can the philosophy of theism do with 
 such a supposition as that of Kant that, if we could 
 get out of ourselves, and see the Self or soul then 
 no more what it is it might be found composite, 
 but relegate it to the limbo of philosophical nonen- 
 tities or absurdities ? It is not simply because in 
 Kant's fashion I think, that I maintain I am. 
 No ; but because I am, I think, I feel, and I will. 
 No mere ratio cognoscendi can satisfy the implicates 
 of real being, however abstract thought may have 
 to content itself therewith. 
 
 Turning from philosophy to science, we venture 
 to say that here, too, our personality that fact 
 which science is helpless to explain has been more 
 clearly maintained, after every interrogation by 
 evolution as to the how and the when of man's 
 development. If he has been evolved, it has been 
 as the person he now, after evolution has done its 
 work, with undisputed right claims to be, freely 
 acting as a real, not phantom ego under that 
 moral government which is to him atmosphere and 
 environment. We take it that it has been more 
 adequately recognised, in recent thought, how 
 incomplete the scientific view of the universe must 
 be, dealing, as it does, with the phenomena of 
 
CRITICISM OF MONISTIC THEORY. 367 
 
 nature as objective realities, and taking no cognis- 
 ance of the priority of consciousness to matter. 
 No wonder that a philosophy of consciousness has 
 become a necessity of positive science, since it has 
 come to the impotent conclusion to view conscious- 
 ness as a " function of nervous matter when that 
 nervous matter has attained a certain degree of 
 organisation," instead of going, in a conscious search 
 for truth, to consciousness and that not merely on 
 its objective side for an explanation of matter. 
 
 But recent theistic philosophy has very clearly 
 shown how those monistic theories of the soul or 
 mind, which have sprung up in the course of the 
 psychological progress of the last quarter of a cen- 
 tury or rather more, have, when pressed to definite 
 issue, run into sheer materialism or a mere monistic 
 idealism. We have in view, in saying this, such 
 attempts to bridge the gulf between the material 
 and the mental as have been made, with varying 
 degrees of boldness, by such thinkers as Fechner, 
 Lewes, Clifford, Bain, Wundt, Taine, Carus, and, 
 less firmly, Hoffding, and Spencer, and others. It 
 would carry us too far afield to consider the posi- 
 tions of these thinkers in any particular or detailed 
 forms, but the monistic theory which they advocate 
 in common is neither so unsuggestive nor so un- 
 attractive as to warrant our omitting all reference 
 thereto. Our reference is to say that it has com- 
 pletely broken down in the effort to justify itself 
 at the bar of recent psychological inquiry. By a 
 
368 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 philosophical tour de force the monistic theory of 
 the soul treats attributes the most dissimilar as 
 only correlative aspects of one and the same thing. 
 To Du Bois-Reymond " the world is a mechanism," 
 and, to Dr Carus, consciousness is destitute of motor 
 power, while to M. Taine, when our series of mental 
 states ceases to be, " nothing remains of the mind 
 or ego." The achievement of the monistic phil- 
 osophy of to-day is seen in human personality 
 being presented by Professor Ernst Mach and his 
 sympathisers as "an indifferent symbolical thread 
 on which are strung the valuable pearls of our real 
 existence." Or, passing to France, it is seen in 
 psychology like that of M. Ribot and others, which 
 gives up the soul the thing if not the name by 
 reducing consciousness to a physiological accom- 
 paniment, by interpreting personality in terms of 
 purest heredity, or its equivalent, determinism, and 
 by making the ego no entity producing our mental 
 life. It becomes a mere result, as Dr Carus ex- 
 presses it, of " countless complicated nerve-organ- 
 isms in our body." So the only self or ego which 
 this pretentious, unpitying philosophy will spare to 
 us is, not that which is conscious of being an ego, 
 but that which consists simply of our ideas or 
 thoughts! Its advocates might have saved them- 
 selves a deal of trouble, for, as Lowell said, "the 
 soul is still oracular," to which we add that it is 
 altogether likely to continue so. As one has said, 
 "the very act of denying it implicitly affirms its 
 
CRITICISM OF MONISTIC THEORY. 369 
 
 existence." So far is man's personality still from 
 being resolved into the mere " synergy " of facul- 
 ties into which Comte curiously sought to turn it. 
 Our self or personality is so little to be confounded 
 with our organism or organic functions, that the 
 soul as indeed a separate existence is still the only 
 sufficient theory for the facts of human life. Our 
 latest theistic philosophy has, then, been success- 
 fully repelling the monistic teaching of the so-called 
 Identity theory, according to which body and mind 
 are not two substances, but only two aspects of 
 the one substance. Professor Hoffding, of Copen- 
 hagen, has finely set the theory forth in his ' Psycho- 
 logy/ where he represents their "material inter- 
 action" as "an outer form of the inner ideal unity 
 of consciousness," and shows the grounds on which 
 he holds this theory to furnish the only satisfactory 
 basis for mental science. The late Professor Clif- 
 ford drew a decidedly anti-theistic inference from 
 the theory before us, and Professor Romanes has, 
 in the theistic interest, very successfully assailed 
 the contentions of Clifford, even while coming far 
 short himself, logically, of the strength and glory 
 of theistic belief as to the relation of the physical 
 cosmos to self-determining Deity. The " double- 
 aspect" theory has been left behind by our latest 
 philosophy of theism as virtually ascribing so much 
 to matter that neither consciousness nor God nor 
 causality can have justice or thorough treatment 
 meted out to them. 
 
 2 A 
 
3/0 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 Theistic philosophy welcomes the relative im- 
 portance of all physio - psychological inquiries 
 minus the over frequent gasconade but it never 
 with more reason believed such teachings, as those 
 just alluded to, to be in loudest contradiction to the 
 unequivocal testimony of consciousness, and never 
 had better grounds for resting in the trustworthiness 
 of consciousness, since our knowledge of matter 
 is so clearly seen to be merely inferential. The 
 entrance of all knowledge, indeed, is distinctly 
 perceived to be through personality, whose limits 
 no man may transcend. The knowledge which we 
 have of ourselves in our own conscious and definite 
 unity is such as clearly settles for us the fact or 
 reality of being which is objective to God. Not 
 by the same direct perception that we have of our- 
 selves, but only by inference, do we conclude to the 
 reality of other objects or beings. But, of my own 
 individual being, of my dependence, and of my 
 freedom of these as lying without, or objective to, 
 Deity I have a knowledge so primary and direct 
 as to be warranted in affirming my true selfhood or 
 personality. It is, as has been said, " an indisput- 
 able truth that what we call the material world is 
 only known to us under form of the ideal world." 
 The studies of theistic philosophy in the organic 
 realm have, no doubt, duly impressed it with the 
 psychic or soul -bearing capacities of matter, which 
 are very possibly much greater than we at present 
 know. Its view of matter, however, is here very 
 
CRITICISM OF DR SHADWORTH HODGSON. 3/1 
 
 different from that of monistic realism, and its claim 
 to knowledge even of the psychic life of others is 
 that we know mind other than our own only in an 
 inferential way, not with the directness that we 
 know ourselves. 
 
 "We are spirits clad in veils ; 
 Man, by man, was never seen : 
 All our deep communion fails 
 To remove that shadowy screen." 
 
 Since, then, we know other persons and material 
 objects only through our own ego and its properties, 
 nothing has been made more thoroughly manifest 
 to theistic philosophy than the delusive snare into 
 which science falls when it fancies itself free from 
 anthropomorphism. In saying this, we are not to 
 be supposed to be falling into any solipsistic form 
 of subjectivism. Indeed such forms of serious and 
 universal contradiction as we find in Dr Shadworth 
 Hodgson and others, who assume such an inher- 
 ently self - contradictory view of the consciousness 
 of the ego, theistic philosophy must decisively re- 
 ject. It were logically better and more consistent 
 just to declare ourselves, in such a case, the votaries 
 of absolute egoistic idealism or solipsism pure and 
 undisguised. But our philosophy does not forget 
 that this would, of course, mean the total destruc- 
 tion or annihilation of science. That philosophy, 
 then, takes consciousness to be the " undecornpos- 
 able unity," as Kant styled it ; an absolute unity 
 of consciousness in the subject who knows. It 
 
3/2 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 finds, after every endeavour of recent years to 
 resolve consciousness into a stream of states or a 
 shifting of unconscious atoms, that a persistent 
 self, that what we know as inward and personal 
 identity, has affixed its seal to the whole troop of 
 fugitive and vagabond sensations that mark our 
 experience. It is this continuing self, this abiding 
 spiritual unity not Professor Clifford's " general 
 stream of consciousness," and not the mental pro- 
 cesses of Lewes which are only other aspects of 
 " physical " processes which theistic philosophy 
 has, with self-justifying perseverance, invested with 
 personality. And, after even the lavish endeavour 
 of the learned and acute author of ' Appearance 
 and Reality' to persuade us of the non-existence 
 of any swk. fixed nucleus > theistic philosophy rejects, 
 with him, those phenomenal selves which come 
 short every one of a self an-und-fur-sich, but still 
 explicitly retains, as that thinker has not done, the 
 reality of the thinking ego, and, we venture to 
 add, of that really higher self styled by some 
 philosophers the ideal or ontological self. For it 
 regards the efforts of late years to dispense with 
 consciousness as activity (Thatigkeit), and to ex- 
 plain mind-processes as merely phenomenal accom- 
 paniments (Begleiterscheinungen} of physical brain 
 processes, as having proved singularly abortive. It 
 finds no cause to disagree with what Eduard Zeller 
 has said, at the close of the second volume of his 
 * Vortrage und Abhandlungen,' that between mental 
 
FURTHER CRITICISM OF KANT. 373 
 
 phenomena and the movements of natural pheno- 
 mena in space, there is no such relation as to ad- 
 mit of their being compared (der Vergleichbarkeif], 
 and the former found mere modifications or com- 
 binations of the latter. Or, as one of our own 
 thinkers has said : " Since the psychical stand- 
 point the standpoint, that is to say, that the 
 psychologist studies is the real, if not the logical 
 presupposition of the physical, to resolve it into 
 the latter is tantamount to saying that there are 
 phenomena that appear to no one; objects that are 
 over against nothing, presentations that are never 
 presented." So truly must the reality of the Self 
 
 a self that transcends the phenomena presented 
 
 be here maintained. 
 
 We take Spencer's account of the ego as "the 
 permanent nexus which is never itself a state of 
 consciousness, but which holds states of conscious- 
 ness together," and we maintain not only this 
 identity of the ego through successive mental states 
 (in opposition to Kant), but also that consciousness 
 testifies both to these states of the ego, and to 
 the ego itself as existing in these states. We 
 reject the transcendental ego of Kant, with, we 
 believe, the best of recent theistic speculation, and, 
 while denying both its real existence and its neces- 
 sity to thought, we retain the undiscredited ego of 
 consciousness as real, rational, free, and sufficient. 
 For such theistic speculation has shown a grow- 
 ing disposition to agree with Dorner's attitude in 
 
3/4 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 his ' Glaubenslehre,' that, if we were to accept 
 Kant's doubt as to the reality of the ego which 
 is thought, self-consciousness itself would crumble 
 to pieces, and all certainty about self or anything 
 else would pass away. We do not of course mean 
 to deny the virtue of Kant's transcendental ego, 
 in so far as it may viewed as the form whose 
 content is the entire psychic life secure that per- 
 manent being which unites our phenomenal states 
 of being. It may, viewed as the ultimate reality 
 in contrast to the partial, actual, and phenomenal 
 self, prove a helpful conception. But this ultimate 
 ego must not be separated and made something 
 different from the self, which is supposed to ap- 
 proximate always more closely to the ego, for the 
 " I " cannot be so rent in twain. Harmless enough 
 as the transcendental ego may be when so viewed 
 as, in some sort, an entire and ideal self, reality 
 is yet something which pertains to the self as 
 actual, and no ego is to be postulated which is 
 so much a thing in itself as to be out of all rela- 
 tion to our faculties and their working. To make 
 such an ego the only real ego were utterly sub- 
 versive of all real knowledge, utterly fictitious and 
 unnecessary. Reason neither demands nor sanctions 
 it : the testimony of consciousness lends no warrant 
 for it. Our philosophy of theism therefore refuses 
 to have the ego of consciousness dismissed as a 
 mere synthesis of apperceptions : it holds by the 
 reality of the self or ego of consciousness as " the 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR BAIN. 3/5 
 
 fullest of all conceptions, with a content coextensive 
 with the whole world." Of course we leave the 
 transcendental ego to fulfil a useful enough and 
 necessary function for Epistemology, which, deal- 
 ing with knowledge as such in abstracto, finds 
 service for the formal unity of an abstract self. 
 
 True philosophy of theism sets aside the con- 
 fusions of thought that are stamped upon such 
 attempts to dispense with the real ego of personality 
 as that of Professor Bain, and refuses to be content 
 on his theory with a mind or ego which shall be 
 merely the observed sum of its own states. It 
 sees that this ego must be assumed as indeed the 
 very principle whereby any aggregate of sensations, 
 thoughts, emotions, volitions, can be ours. As M. 
 Janet, in his ' Materialism of the Present Day,' 
 contends, " The unity of the ego is an undoubted 
 fact. The whole question is to know whether that 
 unity is a result or a primary fact. But if the unity 
 of the ego is a result, conscience, which attests to us 
 this unity, is a result likewise ; and this is indeed 
 what is maintained, not only by the materialist, 
 but also by the pantheist, school. Yet this fact 
 has never been proved, nor even explained." In 
 the indivisible ego of consciousness, we find the 
 thinking ego as subject and the self which is 
 thought as object, the "ego" and the "me" which 
 make up this double ego being, not two, but one, 
 which double consciousness has been strikingly 
 represented by Dante who is not solitary among 
 
376 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 poets in the matter in the passage of the " In- 
 ferno " on Bertrand de Born, which concludes 
 
 " Di se faceva a se stesso lucerna, 
 
 Ed eran due in uno, ed uno in due ; 
 Com' esser puo, quei sa che si governa," 
 
 which A. J. Butler has been pleased to render, 
 " Of itself, it made a lamp to itself; and there \vere 
 two in one and one in two ; how it can be, He 
 knows Who so orders." By this double conscious- 
 ness "a double personality is not meant/' as Kant 
 rightly observes, despite his doubt of the objective 
 reality of the ego which is thought. Indeed, one 
 of the virtues of the Kantian transcendental ego 
 is just the way in which it preserves that ego as 
 sole and ultimate, so that, on this theory, which 
 we do not accept, the phenomena of changing per- 
 sonality and secondary selves are at least intelli- 
 gibly dealt with, for they are united and taken 
 up in the all-including ego of Kant's theory. We 
 do not quite admit the difficulty put forward by 
 some philosophers in distinguishing the primary self 
 or personality. Hence, with Dante this time in the 
 " Purgatorio " we can truly speak of man as 
 
 " An individual soul, that lives 
 And feels, and bends reflective on itself," 
 
 " un' alma sola, 
 Che vive e sente, e se in se rigira." 
 
 What therefore is meant, simply is that in self- 
 consciousness, consciousness has, as in other cases, 
 been capable of severance into subject and object, 
 
CRITICISM OF DR MAUDSLEY. 377 
 
 into thinker and thought, in virtue of the power 
 which the conscious subject has of beholding things 
 as opposed to itself, and of making itself its own 
 object. " The coexistence of the subject and object 
 is a deliverance of consciousness," says Spencer in 
 his ' Principles of Psychology,' which, " taking pre- 
 cedence of all analytic examination, is a truth tran- 
 scending all others in certainty." So, unaffected by 
 the lame endeavours of Dr Maudsley to resolve the 
 mind's intuitive conviction of the unity and person- 
 ality of the self or ego into a dream or a delusion, 
 we take this reality of knowledge both of self, 
 as moulding and organising principle, and of its 
 environment as a primitive datum of conscious- 
 ness that lies beyond dispute. 
 
 This fact of man's personality lies, no doubt, hid 
 from the analysis of the dialectician, but the fact of 
 the human ego as a dynamic centre whence radiate 
 powers psychical, pneumatical, and physical powers 
 which all presuppose the ego in its determinative 
 force is unquestionable. Through the manifold 
 and diverse functions of personality the ego remains 
 the one personal centre, related in a dynamical man- 
 ner to all these functions in ways which may remain 
 unexplained while the fact is spontaneously assumed 
 as necessary and real. No possible phenomena, of 
 which the mind or ego is the subject, can conceiv- 
 ably exist except for the central consciousness or 
 ego, which, as energising agent, stands in the re- 
 lation of the noumenal I to the phenomenal Me. 
 
378 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 And Dr Bradley has unwittingly done good service 
 to theism by showing so clearly that to which his 
 idealism would bring us, even to the position in 
 which the soul is treated as no such ultimate fact, 
 but as simple appearance. But though the Absolute 
 is everything, and everything is for the Absolute, 
 with Dr Bradley, we are not yet going vilely to cast 
 away the self in us our personality and freedom 
 as a simple term in the process of the self-manifest- 
 ation and self-realisation of the Absolute. Hence 
 we stand ready to admit the lucidity and point of 
 what Lotze has said, in the chapter on the existence 
 of the soul in the first (Eng. ed.) volume of his 
 ' Microcosmus,' that " our belief in the soul's unity 
 rests not on our appearing to ourselves such a unity, 
 but on our being able to appear to ourselves at all." 
 And again, " What a being appears to itself to be is 
 not the important point ; if it can appear anyhow to 
 itself, or other things to it, it must be capable of 
 unifying manifold phenomena in an absolute indivis- 
 ibility of its nature." Personality is to be taken as 
 an organic unity, the diverse attributes and functions 
 of which are indissolubly joined together in making 
 up the personal synthesis. The entity or unity 
 which, in the act of self-recognition recognises itself, 
 can be no adequate cause of mentality in us unless 
 it be indeed personal spirit. This we say in perfect 
 knowledge and recollection of all that has been 
 written of the correlation of such personal spirit 
 here and now with the physical forces of the brain. 
 
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AT ITS HIGHEST. 379 
 
 The scientific spirit itself sees how little the brain 
 can be taken as an adequate cause of the phenomena 
 of personality, since it remains material, no matter 
 how highly organised it may be. But we believe 
 we are warranted in asserting that recent philoso- 
 phical thought has advanced in the perception that 
 self-consciousness has at once true background and 
 real fastness in something higher than itself, even in 
 God-consciousness, since it is in the consciousness 
 of God Himself that self- consciousness comes to its 
 strength and completeness. 
 
 We are thus introduced to self-consciousness in its 
 highest phase, as the self appears, conscious of itself 
 in its relation to God. The contents of such self- 
 consciousness are mediated in many ways, and so 
 such self-consciousness cannot be regarded as purely 
 subjective. Self-consciousness in man is explicable 
 only on the presupposition of " an original, and un- 
 conditioned because original, self-consciousness ; " as 
 it has been expressed, " the consciousness of God 
 enters inseparably into the consciousness of self, as 
 its hidden background. The descent into our in- 
 most being is at the same time an ascent to God." 
 It has been borne in upon our fuller knowledge that 
 God, as Absolute Cause of all consciousness as of 
 all existence, lies nearer in to our true ego than that 
 ego does to its external self. 
 
 " Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 
 But to this we shall return more fully presently. 
 
380 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 Meanwhile, we proceed to say that, while the ego 
 can be experienced, it yet cannot be thought save in 
 distinction from, or contrast with, a non - ego, and 
 herein we agree, as to the way in w r hich in our 
 thinking we dichotomise the cosmos, with Lotze. 
 When the great outer world has let loose upon us 
 the stream of sensations, which marks our world- 
 consciousness, self-consciousness turns it to subjec- 
 tion and service of our will and understanding. The 
 world by itself, and apart from the mind, is certainly 
 no cosmos. The uncoordinated data of sensation 
 are brought to order and unity by the activity of 
 mind itself. We cannot rest in world-consciousness, 
 and seek no more ultimate reality than the world. 
 Our self - consciousness is founded, however, not 
 upon the contrasted external world which becomes 
 for it, but upon a prior and immediate certainty of 
 self which, as a central vision and supreme oversight, 
 is only more fully developed by later contrasts that 
 present themselves to our self-consciousness. Self- 
 consciousness the I is, no doubt, stimulated and 
 nourished from without, but it is not the product of 
 the world-consciousness the Thou the ego having 
 a certainty of self so immediate as not to wait in 
 dependence on the opposition of the Welt or non- 
 ego. The reality, identity, and continuity, however, 
 of this ego are attested, in what we think no unim- 
 portant manner, by the assured certainty of the 
 sameness of objects which is ours in objectively 
 recognising them, and ours because of the persever- 
 
OUR WORLD-CONSCIOUSNESS. 381 
 
 ing identity of our own ego as the knowing subject. 
 In our late philosophical thinking, it seems to us to 
 be more fully understood how necessary this world- 
 consciousness is, too, to our realisation of God- 
 consciousness, since we could not without it rise 
 above the animal creation. It is likewise seen that 
 the world -consciousness rests on securest grounds 
 only as it becomes interwoven with the God-con- 
 sciousness, since it is then that certainty of the finite 
 world reaches its highest. 
 
 " Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why ; 
 For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel ' I am I ' ? " 
 
 But recent theistic philosophy has been able to 
 find, in the unfoldings of consciousness in experi- 
 ence, a richer development of our consciousness of 
 God, as well as of the ego and the world, as part 
 of our normal development. Whatever opposition 
 we might be tempted to give, as against idealistic 
 tendency, to certain hazardous forms of transition 
 from our own consciousness to God's, has here no 
 relevancy or place. We shall take our own way 
 of briefly showing how, . in gaining the highest 
 knowledge possible to his enlightened conscious- 
 ness, man still maintains, through every stage of 
 his union with the Highest Consciousness, even 
 
 o 
 
 the Divine, as that is realised through the con- 
 tinuous loyalty of his will, the unity of that won- 
 drous self-hoocl in which consists his self-conscious 
 personality. " Though the Absolute cannot in any 
 manner or degree be known," says Spencer in his 
 
382 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 ' First Principles,' " in the strict sense of knowing, 
 yet we find its positive existence is a necessary 
 datum of consciousness ; so long as consciousness 
 continues we cannot for an instant rid ourselves 
 of this datum ; and thus the belief which this datum 
 constitutes has a higher warrant than any other 
 whatever." Spencer's thought of the Absolute 
 Being as a Power recent theistic thought has, of 
 course, retained, but under the conception of a 
 rational Power, capable, as "a necessary datum of 
 consciousness," of being truly thought and ration- 
 ally known. It has not been content to know that 
 He is without pressing on to know what He is. 
 God is regarded by it as the prius of the universe, 
 its Ultimate Ground and Fundamental Reality, as 
 the Absolute Being that must be the living, per- 
 sonal God. God is known to it as He reveals 
 Himself in the Universe ; but also as He reveals 
 Himself to the religious consciousness. Personal- 
 ity has now been more vividly realised, it appears 
 beyond dispute, as the highest blossoming of man's 
 conscious spiritual life. 
 
 Recent Christian Theism, we may remark, has, 
 it seems to us, very distinctly gone beyond the 
 declarations of the common religious conscious- 
 ness, and has lent a more attentive ear to the 
 claims of what calls itself "the Christian conscious- 
 ness," as a new consciousness which Christianity 
 has brought to our race. This has been, as we 
 think will hardly be questioned, a most warrant- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS. 383 
 
 able procedure, philosophically, since philosophic 
 thought cannot be exercised to highest purpose 
 save as it seeks and finds access to the highest 
 facts of knowledge and experience. To which 
 we add, that we make fuller allusion to the matter 
 because we are clearly of the mind that there has 
 been a rather unapostolic, and not over - worthy, 
 timidity, theologically, to face, in all its bearings 
 and relations and implications, the fact of the com- 
 mon Christian consciousness as it springs out of 
 specific experience and personal verification of the 
 truths of Christianity. But we claim for our late 
 philosophical thinking that it has, at the same 
 time, more distinctly apprehended and recognised 
 the impossibility of anything like what we will 
 venture to call a Philosophy of the Christian Con- 
 sciousness, except on the supposition of the natural 
 consciousness, based, of course, on natural revela- 
 tion. When it has cross-questioned man's natural 
 consciousness, it has found a more or less devel- 
 oped sense of sin, craving for righteousness, and 
 longing for harmony with God, and has perceived 
 that the so-called Christian consciousness is nothing 
 but the Christ-consciousness that supervenes on the 
 replacing of this orphanhood of the spirit by the 
 consciously realised sonship of the soul as it finds 
 that "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." 
 It has more carefully noted how this special 
 that is, Christian consciousness becomes formed, 
 in historical psychological manner as " that know- 
 
384 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 ledge which the Christian has in himself of spirit- 
 ual things," a more vital, less scholastic character, 
 being thereby imparted to theology. 
 
 We are, of course, well aware of the objection 
 taken to the phrase " the Christian consciousness," 
 by those who have thought the historical and ob- 
 jective bases of belief were being brought into 
 jeopardy. Whilst we look to scientific psychology 
 as ultimate arbiter for us in questions that concern 
 consciousness in any of its forms or modes, we yet 
 take leave to say that we regard the phrase as 
 scientifically legitimate and appropriate. More : not 
 only does no reason appear why there should not 
 be a thoroughly scientific psychology of the " Chris- 
 tian consciousness," but we are strongly inclined 
 to think that the materials and encouragements 
 for such real and thoroughgoing Philosophy of 
 the Christian Consciousness, as we should like to 
 see, have so greatly accumulated within recent 
 times that whoso will may make the high attempt 
 to show, as we think could be irrefragably proved, 
 that . the " Christian consciousness" has a title to 
 scientific validity not inferior to that of any other 
 form or mode of consciousness. Meanwhile, we are 
 concerned to record it as a gratifying feature that 
 recent theistic philosophy has shown itself more 
 open-eyed to behold how naturally it obtains that 
 the conscious life of the mind of man, when it has 
 become spiritually renewed and enlightened, has 
 a peculiar content, which, it sees no reason to 
 
ADVANCES ON SUBJECTIVISM. 385 
 
 doubt, must stand open to the scrutiny of trained 
 thought, must be capable of being brought within 
 the scope of scientific methods of psychological 
 investigation. It has grown in its apprehension 
 of the fact that it is not meant that rational psy- 
 chology or the philosophy of mind, applying itself 
 to the " Christian consciousness," will give us know- 
 ledge of God as mere subjective state of our con- 
 sciousness, for the very phrase in question imports, 
 as is now we take it better understood, the self- 
 revealing action of God in His objective reality 
 within the sphere of our consciousness. It is 
 surely a philosophical advance which recognises 
 that, in contending for historical and objective re- 
 velation, the fact need not be blinked that such 
 revelation comes to us, and is known by us, through 
 those human channels or processes of the subject, 
 the nature of whose contents and working it is the 
 office of scientific psychology to investigate. The 
 History of Doctrine, in its recent scientific treat- 
 ment, is just an attempt to interpret the experience 
 of revelation, gained in the way just described, by 
 the Church as a whole. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion has left 
 behind the subjectivism of Schleiermacher, and 
 reached beyond a consciousness of redemption that 
 concerned not itself with the objective contents of 
 Christian Doctrine. It has pierced to the objective 
 consciousness of God here presupposed, as the God 
 manifested in history becomes immediately mani- 
 
 2 B 
 
386 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 fest to faith. It has laid hold of the fact that 
 with the self - consciousness and the world - con- 
 sciousness we already possessed there has become 
 fused a God - consciousness, as consciousness has 
 been more profoundly developed. It has seen 
 Christianity seeking a point of union with man, 
 and finding it in his spiritual aspirations, whereby 
 an inner consciousness of the truth is begotten as 
 the Christian contents are seized in living grasp. 
 Certitude, it has been said, is, in its last analysis, 
 " the relation of truth to knowledge, the relation 
 of man to God, of ontology to psychology. When 
 the human intelligence, making its spring, has 
 seized Divine truth in identifying itself with reality, 
 it ought then, in order to finish its work, to return 
 upon itself, to individualise the truth in us ; and 
 from this individualisation results the certitude 
 which becomes, in some sort, personal as know- 
 ledge, all the while preserving the impersonal 
 nature of truth. Certitude, then, reposes upon two 
 points of support, the one subjective, the other ob- 
 jective man or the human consciousness ; the other 
 objective and Absolute the Supreme Being. God 
 and consciousness are the two arbiters of certitude." 
 Let it be said that recent theistic philosophy of 
 religion has been fully percipient of the weakening 
 of authority in matters of religion, which has been 
 characteristic of our age, and of the growing dis- 
 position to find the grounds of belief in the testi- 
 mony of consciousness as the true because the 
 
THE APPEAL TO CONSCIOUSNESS. 387 
 
 internal and immediate and unimpeachable auth- 
 ority. Let it be acknowledged that, in face of this 
 fearless and determined appeal to consciousness, 
 with which we confess ourselves to be in perfect 
 sympathy, it has freely allowed that consciousness 
 is the ultimate court of appeal, that consciousness 
 has in its normal state a faculty of recognising and 
 of unifying itself with all objective truth, all objects 
 of thought. But let us not be kept from recalling 
 how irrational it would be to think of conscious- 
 ness here otherwise than as open to every enlight- 
 enment nay, as losing its own life that it may win 
 the truth which will be the nourishing soul of its 
 existence. And we think recent theistic thought 
 has been more careful to remember that the testi- 
 mony of man's consciousness, in respect of religious 
 beliefs, -becomes of value only as we know the moral 
 enlightenment to which the depths of his conscious- 
 ness have been opened, and, what is still more, the 
 moral quality his consciousness has acquired by the 
 purity of its self-surrendering spirit in the quest for 
 truth. For, what value should it attach to the 
 testimony of consciousness where the forms of 
 truth may only appear in consciousness without 
 the subject making them his own in subtlest 
 spiritual union ? Or with what justice should 
 those psychological laws be shirked which cannot 
 but control a knowledge of the Personal God 
 which is, and must be, personal ? Or with what 
 right should the fact be ignored that such personal 
 
388 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 knowledge of Him must be conditioned by our 
 capacity for spiritual inspiration and insight ? 
 
 We venture to think that recent theistic phil- 
 osophy of religion has felt more deeply than before 
 that it had not sufficient reason to refuse the claim 
 of the Christian consciousness to a true autonomy. 
 For, may we not say that it has been more obser- 
 vant of the truth that it has not been, as Julius 
 Mliller and others have regarded it, a question of 
 establishing conclusions without Scripture by means 
 of the Christian consciousness, but a question of 
 authenticating the Scriptures, which we can only 
 do by means of a spiritually enlightened conscious- 
 ness. If consciousness is the only authentication 
 the ego needs for its own existence, there seems 
 no reason why an equally valid and irrefragable 
 self-authentication should not be claimed for what 
 we may call the dynamic centre of the Christian 
 consciousness : God becomes to us, in spiritual 
 union, a higher than merely self -consciousness 
 becomes, so to speak, a Divine Alter-ego of the 
 finite spirit, and His Being is authenticated to our 
 God-united consciousness precisely as is the ego 
 to our self-consciousness. God is thus known by 
 His spiritual signs and effects in our consciousness 
 thereby a Christianised consciousness and the 
 reality and immediateness of our knowledge of 
 Him are maintained, although we deem it far from 
 being unmediated, since we forget not the subjec- 
 tivity which is of the essence of our knowledge. 
 
CRITICISM OF DR BRADLEY. 389 
 
 While the complex character of the problem of 
 personality has been more clearly seen by recent 
 philosophy of theism, its real nature the " reality " 
 and not mere " appearance " of what we, with much 
 more truth than Dr F. H. Bradley, may call 
 those finite centres of experience meant when, by 
 a real duality, we speak of soul or personality- 
 has at the same time been more truly discerned, 
 and their rightful place assigned to conscious reflec- 
 tion and the free self-determining power of the Will. 
 Hence the refusal to follow Absolute Idealism in 
 making man no more than a term in the necessary 
 evolution of the universe. The tendency is well 
 exemplified in the chapter on " Goodness" in Dr 
 Bradley's ( Appearance and Reality,' where it is 
 said that " nothing is outside the Absolute " ; that 
 " the individual never can in himself become an 
 harmonious system " ; and that " in the complete 
 gift and dissipation of his personality, he> as such, 
 must vanish." It is here, in fact, that theistic phil- 
 osophy finds our self-consciousness at its highest, 
 as the ego reaches that completest knowledge or 
 highest consciousness of our own personality, which 
 knowledge or consciousness testifies to the true per- 
 sonality of man as that to which noblest witness is 
 borne in that very unification of the human con- 
 sciousness with the Divine, which only the self or 
 will is competent to make, and which the self, per- 
 sistent, real, unique, makes without sacrifice of a 
 self-consciousness of its own. 
 
390 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion has brought 
 out with more distinctness the freedom there is in 
 all this from any pantheistic identification or fusion 
 of the finite spirit with the Infinite, since the in- 
 dividuality of the human spirit here reaches " its 
 intensest specification," and its true personality is 
 neither absorbed in a Deity purely personal, nor 
 sublimated into an efflux of One with but quasi 
 Personality. For it has more jealously guarded 
 the reality of what Martineau styles the " causal 
 self" or human will, while and after it has become 
 in voluntary surrender unified with the Divine Will, 
 and has more zealously maintained the integrity of 
 the central self, through whose supposed extinction 
 the living individual, fleeing a morally indefensible 
 avToipKeua, really reaches, not extermination, and not 
 absorption, but perfection and supreme realisation. 
 It maintains, as we believe, in its integrity the soul, 
 which, in its end-positing power, yields us the possi- 
 bility of a spiritualistic metaphysic. It has not 
 been able to lend countenance to the line of thought 
 whereby Dr Royce seeks to suppress our individu- 
 ality in "a wholly impersonal devotion," and merge 
 our separate selves, as having "in this world no 
 rights as individuals," in the Life Universal, for its 
 ideal of perfection is one in which, on the contrary, 
 it can never be said that " the whole is perfect," so 
 long as the separate individualities do not find 
 freest scope for the development of personality, as 
 something wherein man is truly self-contained, in 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROYCE. 391 
 
 the harmony to be attained with the Universal 
 Will. That which is an ego stands on a higher 
 level than that materiality which is not, for, un- 
 like the non-ego, it is, so to speak, part of the Divine 
 Essence, existing at once in God and for itself. 
 
 We are well aware of the objection to our per- 
 sonality, urged by some able philosophers to-day, 
 that it appears to involve the contradiction of our 
 being finite and infinite, for infinite our ideal self 
 certainly is, at one and the same time. But it 
 seems to us that the contradiction arises in reality 
 very much from our conceiving progress of the 
 finite individuality as a progressus ad infinitum 
 rather than a progressus in infinitum. Why should 
 there not be senses in which man, in virtue of his 
 potencies and the earnest of his inheritance in the 
 infinite, should be viewed as a true infinite ? So, 
 then, with whatever metaphysical difficulties beset, 
 we hold fast to the fact of personality as, in our 
 case, the great reality, and no mere appearance or 
 transient phase. It is precisely through the depth 
 and fulness of our grasp of this reality of the 
 moral personality in us, that we come to an ever 
 more profound hold of the Personality of God in 
 all the glad strength of spiritual communion. And 
 we are quite free to confess, for our part, that when 
 our own thought has again and again confronted the 
 vast nature - system opened for us by our modern 
 science, which seemed ready to drop over spiritual 
 thought an awful night -cap or perpetual pall of 
 
392 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 purest naturalism, and to render all supersensible 
 realities as sheer a blank for us as for men covered 
 in death's dreamless sleep, we have felt driven by 
 always new and deeper necessities of thought and 
 being to find our stay and corrective in falling back 
 upon our own personality as for us the primal 
 reality in which we confide, and on which we build 
 a basis for our belief in the Divine Personality 
 postulated by our self - conscious and rational 
 thought. For if will, character, personality, belong 
 to man, by what right shall we withhold these from 
 that Eternal Self-consciousness which we call God ? 
 There is, in fact, nothing of greater consequence, 
 whether for metaphysics or for religion, than just 
 this maintenance through every difficulty of the 
 supreme or final category of personality. It is the 
 crown of theistic philosophy. Dr Elisha Mulford 
 says, " As the personality of man has its foundation 
 in the personality of God, so the realisation of per- 
 sonality brings man always nearer to God " (' Re- 
 public of God,' p. 28). Just as Corneille makes the 
 heroine of his ' Medee ' say, when confronted with 
 direst misfortune, that there remained to her at 
 least herself, so theistic philosophy claims, amid 
 the losses and fortunes of our modern thought, that 
 there remains to it the self or personality. Yes, for 
 all our science is simply helpless to explain this 
 great, persistent fact of personality in us. Our 
 embryological and structural connections and affini- 
 ties with nature may be traced to the utmost, but 
 
PERSONALITY AS REALITY. 393 
 
 the unexplained fact of personality abides, persists, 
 through and after all. If that which persists in 
 consciousness is to be taken as real, then nothing 
 is more distinctly testified to than the reality of 
 personality in man. Hence we find Ulrici, for 
 example, driven by a psychological procedure to 
 regard the self as the presupposition of the activity 
 which for him marks consciousness. 
 
 There follows that actualising of the capacity for 
 personality in the sphere of social life on which 
 Green and others have insisted. But we have been 
 here concerned first really to get the personal self 
 or ego. And it is in such ways, we venture to 
 think, theistic philosophy must still progressively 
 realise all that for it is implied in human person- 
 ality what Professor Seth calls the " infinite 
 progress of approximation." Hence we take it 
 that what we see in recent theistic philosophy of 
 religion is the more emphatic assertion of the fact 
 that no theory of the universe can be for it satis- 
 factory which does not take proper account of the 
 nature of the self-conscious, self-determining, self- 
 identical ego, which forms the reality of which 
 above all else we are sure. To man, as consisting 
 essentially of such ego or soul, all inductive inves- 
 tigation of the facts of consciousness and life does 
 certainly lead, and the recent witness of such pheno- 
 mena as hypnotism, telepathy, and the rest, to the 
 independence of mind has certainly not been less 
 emphatic. With this it must take full cognisance 
 
394 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 also of the relation which this finite but real per- 
 sonality of the ego sustains to that One, absolute, 
 self-conscious Personality, Which, as we have now 
 been insisting, becomes intelligible to it only as it 
 has recognised its own positive personality its 
 relation, in other words, to that One self-existing 
 Reality Which is the final resting - place of the 
 severest rational thought. That knowledge of the 
 being or self which is ours is a knowledge or per- 
 ception of simple existence of the self, but it is a 
 knowledge of the self which carries with it a con- 
 viction of self - existent being or self - sustained 
 existence somewhere. For we are too consciously 
 limited and dependent beings not to feel driven 
 to the necessity of thinking such independent being 
 on which the fact of our being depends. That 
 independent or unconditioned and perfectly self- 
 determining being is what we call God. As 
 Lessing once said, " If I am, God is also : He 
 may be separated from me, but not I from Him." 
 My personality, as matter of fact, depends on His 
 being a person. It is precisely here that the charge 
 of vagueness and unverifiableness in the notion of 
 personality in God has, as we believe, had its 
 absurdity, in some measure, more thoroughly ex- 
 posed, for the idea of personality is just one of 
 the most real, rational, intimate, central, and abiding 
 conceptions possible to us. No complexity of the 
 notion can for a moment be allowed to obscure the 
 fact that no notion stands more completely or more 
 
THE MORAL PERSONALITY. 395 
 
 certainly within the sphere of experience than the 
 idea of personality, which, at least in its centralness, 
 we continually comprehend and verify. Clearly, 
 then, there is no call to lay any such stress on the 
 self-centredness of man's moral personality as shall 
 obscure for us the pathway of self-realisation, which 
 lies along the line of its realised relations to the 
 Primal Personality, and to personalities that are 
 finite. 
 
 We close this chapter by saying, therefore, that 
 recent theistic philosophy has more than ever found 
 reason for affirming, in a true sense, with Goethe 
 
 " Wie das Gestirn, 
 Ohne Hast, 
 Aber ohne Rast, 
 Drehe sich jeder 
 Um die eigne Last " 
 
 which, being interpreted, runs, " Like a star, 
 without haste, but without rest, let each revolve 
 about his own weight," or, as we should like more 
 freely to say, " Let every man's life, starlike, turn 
 on the axis of his own real personality." For has it 
 not, as a spiritual philosophy, had a deeper sense 
 that, just as his awakened spirit does so, man comes 
 more near his spiritual perihelion ? Has it not more 
 clearly realised that, while the fashion of the world 
 passeth away, personality, as that whereby man is 
 able to will in conformity with the supreme Eternal 
 Will, is that which " endureth for ever"? Has it 
 not found always more reason for standing firm, with 
 
396 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 a poet of a late time, by those " high instincts," 
 " those first affections," which go to form " the 
 fountain-light of all our day " in making up for us 
 a wondrous personality ? Turning from the super- 
 ficialism of the mechanical philosophy, on the one 
 hand, and from the lack of real standing - ground 
 for man in the pantheistic philosophy surfeited 
 with Deity on the other, it has been more wisely 
 able than before to find a real place for personality 
 in man in man who is a personality which no 
 theory can shatter personality being still for it, 
 as for the peerless poet of an earlier time, " la 
 rosa in su la cima" "the rose upon its top." 
 Nowise shall personality show itself in us as it 
 will in our faith in the spiritual and eternal order 
 of things our faith in the ideal, which cannot be 
 broken or lost, for the ideal is no more to us a 
 visionary and exterior thing, but something which 
 is internal and immanent in our conscious and 
 aspiring life. 
 
 With the personality of Jesus Christ the crown 
 and climax of this problem of the active and orig- 
 inating power of personality are, for the philos- 
 ophy of religion, reached, for, as we contemplate 
 the Person of the Son of Man, does not a new 
 and everlasting glory of personality for, and in, 
 man burst upon our view ? Where shall we find 
 a life that so subjected, as did He, the actual to 
 the ideal ? Even Ritschl has been able, to his 
 honour be it said, to make a perfectly clear and 
 
IDEAL PERSONALITY. 397 
 
 peculiar place for Christ among religious founders 
 in virtue of Christianity, on his conception of it, 
 making His person an element or factor in its 
 philosophy of the universe or Weltanschauung. 
 Do we not then feel anew that not only must 
 " the ideal self" be, as Professor Lloyd Morgan 
 properly remarks, "an object of desire," but of 
 intense and all-consuming desire ? Yes, for what 
 perfection of finite personality can there be for us 
 save free and progressive companionship with that 
 Infinite Person, wherein freedom, harmony, and 
 security are alone for us to be found ? What is 
 the true and precise end of moral development 
 but just the development of that free, moral per- 
 sonality of which we have spoken, acting, of 
 course, in no isolated way, but in and through 
 society ? What other moral ideal could satisfy 
 alike the reason and the affections but just that 
 reality and perfection of the personal character of 
 which we have spoken an ideal, of course, pro- 
 gressively realised wherever true individuality is 
 found. This reality and integrity of the self or 
 individual and of a priori consciousness in the 
 individual as such we thus maintain, giving way 
 as little to the running of these rational elements 
 back into the Divine Mind with pantheistic ideal- 
 ism, as to resolving them into accumulations of 
 experience by agnostic evolutionism. And it is 
 because it rests with each one, as life's great 
 moral achievement, to constitute or erect himself 
 
398 PERSONALITY IN MAN. 
 
 such an ideal moral personality yes, to rear such 
 a moral fabric as this ideal self or person out of 
 all the unpromising material of natural feeling, 
 will, and impulse, that there is ethical force and 
 solemnity in the poet's word to every man 
 
 " To thine own Self be true." 
 
 True to that self we must be just because that 
 self is one so real and true. Never so true to 
 it are we as when we make it no self-centred 
 ego, but a self that seeks its home, its vital breath, 
 its native air, in God, even that God Who works 
 in and through the finite ego both to will and to 
 work for His good pleasure. The self is not then 
 lost, but only gone before : it has become, so to 
 speak, a pioneer of the ideal, to prepare a way 
 or upward track for all that remains of our unsub- 
 jected nature, and render it no more disobedient 
 to the heavenly vision that calls it to " come up 
 higher." 
 
399 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 THEISTIC philosophy locates the true life of man 
 in the alluring region of freedom, ruled by his 
 will. It sees that no other philosophy supplies 
 such personal relation betwixt God and man as 
 that theistic doctrine in which we find a true re- 
 sponsibility arise, and worthy conceptions of duty 
 and freedom spring up. It notes how the free- 
 will problem has seized hold on the theologic and 
 philosophic mind of the ages as hardly any other 
 has done, and has enlisted the interest also of 
 minds of juridical, philological, scientific, and medi- 
 cal turn. And, well-worn and profoundly perplex- 
 ing as may be the theme of freewill, it is yet too 
 obtrusive and of too transcendent moment, for the 
 theistic philosophy of religion, not to deserve our 
 attention to recent thought on the idea of freedom, 
 with its elements of power, independence, and spon- 
 taneity, and on the measure of its compatibility 
 with scientific determinism. Not that the deter- 
 
400 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 minist view is to be taken as other than compatible 
 with the theistic position, but that the significance 
 of freewill for belief in a personal Deity as against 
 any possible outcome of materialistic evolution or 
 physical necessity or force is more clearly realised. 
 In recent philosophy we sometimes find writers- 
 like Professor Siebeck, for example make freewill 
 a chief feature of their system, while others like 
 Professor Seydel allow no such freedom either to 
 God or man. We maintain for God that infinite 
 freedom which is the equivalent of a self-deter- 
 mination that is perfect. We believe, however, 
 that it is impossible to doubt that the thought of 
 a causal connection of all things has greatly grown 
 in strength and impressive force. It has certainly 
 to be admitted that the idea of moral freedom 
 has, during the last three or four decades, become 
 sensibly diminished. What we contend is that this 
 fact nowise impairs our position in maintaining 
 that this need not be so, and that man at his 
 truest is thoroughly free. We take recent theistic 
 thought to be in agreement with Lotze when he 
 allows a very widely extended sweep or tract for 
 the reign of law, and also when he urges that 
 that sweep is not all - inclusive : what it has in- 
 sisted upon as being not included is just the moral 
 self or personality. Hence it has recalled us to 
 a sense of the reality of the world of spirit, of 
 what does not pertain to mere mechanism, and to 
 an insistence on our real power of anti- impulsive 
 
DIFFICULTY OF THE FREEWILL PROBLEM. 401 
 
 effort. It believes the power of volition which is 
 ours to be far more tremendous in the greatness 
 of its issues than is almost ever realised. 
 
 Recent philosophical theism has, as we shall see, 
 not allowed itself to forget how, in our conscious 
 moral responsibility, our conscious freedom, of will 
 is presupposed. Freedom is still, as in Kantian 
 days, the postulate of morality. Freedom was, 
 with Kant, the central conception of his entire 
 practical philosophy. Mansel has in modern days 
 finely said that the freedom of the will, " so far 
 from being, as it is generally considered, a con- 
 trovertible question in philosophy," is indeed the 
 fundamental postulate without which " all action 
 and all speculation, philosophy in all its branches, 
 and human consciousness itself, would be im- 
 possible." It thus at once grows evident that 
 recent theistic philosophy has executed a nobler, 
 because harder, task in that its endeavour to vin- 
 dicate for man a real freedom immanent in his 
 volitional acts has been made in an age when 
 denials of freedom have been more bold and fre- 
 quent, and when these have claimed to be the 
 clear utterance of the scientific spirit. These de- 
 nials, in fact, tell of the wide surrender to a 
 naturalism, in which the one, exclusive reality is 
 the world of appearances and its chain of causal 
 connections. They tell of specious grounds on 
 which some have come to treat freewill as an il- 
 lusion, self-determination as mere appearance, and 
 
 2 c 
 
402 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 nature - necessity as base and ground of all our 
 thought and action. But theistic philosophy has 
 found no warrant for the assumption of the pas- 
 sivity of the will by those who carry over the 
 laws of nature - necessity to ethical territory. It 
 claims for the will a true lordship over motive, 
 and denies that it is placed under any unavoidable 
 compulsion. It holds that the will can will in this 
 particular way or otherwise. In inquiring thus 
 whether man is, indeed, in the poet's prescient 
 phrase, "a slave of nature," it has done so under 
 a profound sense that the question is vital and 
 central for man. Modern theistic thought has 
 always more fully recognised what call was pre- 
 sented to it in the physiological determinism of 
 Huxley and Spencer, not to speak of the mechani- 
 cal determinism of Mill, and the philosophical deter- 
 minism which, in America more than anywhere else, 
 has engrossed attention since the always to be re- 
 gretted necessitarianism of Edwards. There is no 
 uncertainty in the Spencerian " Principles of Psy- 
 chology," to which freewill is simply an illusion, 
 consisting of the supposition that "at each moment 
 the ego is something more than the aggregate of 
 feelings and ideas, actual and nascent, which then 
 exists." The teaching of Mill and Bain need not 
 be recapitulated, whereby, on the philosophical 
 necessity doctrine of the former, " we could fore- 
 tell his conduct with as much certainty as we can 
 predict any physical event." 
 
REAL STRENGTH OF LIBERTARIANISM. 403 
 
 There is certainly no room for a vague inde- 
 terminism or a mere groundless pleasure in action 
 or in abstention. Yet we may as well say that 
 we, for our part, are just as far as may be from 
 admitting the Libertarian side to be other than 
 stronger in recent philosophical thought, however 
 confidently some may speak otherwise. The re- 
 joicing of those who, from the scientific side, regard 
 Determinism as one of the conquests (Errungen- 
 schaft has been used in Germany) of our later 
 science is an innocuous and premature proceeding 
 with which real science does not trouble itself. 
 That cause has had no reason to droop which has 
 enlisted the support of Lotze, Kuno Fischer, Ed- 
 uard Zeller, Renouvier, Dr James Martineau, Pro- 
 fessor William James, the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, 
 Professor Upton, Professors Andrew and James 
 Seth, Professor Schiller, and many more hardly 
 less worthy names. As Professor James Seth, of 
 America, has properly said, theistic philosophy 
 has held to freedom as "the supreme category" 
 of the moral self, even against improved modern 
 renderings of Determinism, and has maintained the 
 proper place of contingency in our notion of free- 
 dom, differentiating such contingency from mere 
 caprice, or even indefiniteness. There need not, 
 we venture to think, be anything very Utopian 
 or fantastic in so doing. Of course, not all forms 
 of recent indeterminism are alike, as it would be 
 enough to show if we recalled the indeterminism 
 
404 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 of Renouvier with its phenomenist basis, and that 
 of M. Fonsegrive and Dr Mach, known as relative 
 not absolute indeterminism, not to speak of that 
 of still more recent writers. Nor are all forms of 
 Determinism of the same colour either, for there 
 are those who, like Ribot, adopt a scientific deter- 
 minism which should be viewed as relative rather 
 than absolute. 
 
 With particular power has recent theistic phil- 
 osophy proclaimed its differentiation of man, in 
 his exercise of rational judgment and choice, from 
 the animal, with which, on one side of his nature, 
 he is correlated, but which he transcends as a being 
 that cannot be holden of natural forces or confined 
 to constitutional spontaneities and automatic re- 
 sponses to environment. It has rightly judged 
 that, as nothing could be more fatal to the true 
 freedom of the will than the soul-cramping Spen- 
 cerian " Principles of Psychology," which no less 
 than Spinozism, later as well as earlier regard free- 
 will as illusory, so nothing must be more strenu- 
 ously conserved, in face of opposing tendencies 
 in science and philosophy, than that freedom of 
 ourselves, as choosers of our ultimate ends and as 
 centres of volitional execution, in virtue of which 
 we are able to transcend the region of necessity, 
 and to know that Infinite Spirit which is free with 
 a freedom that is absolute. For theistic philosophy 
 sees how little possible any real freedom is to the 
 physical fatalism which makes up the essential posi- 
 
CRITICISM OF SPENCERS ATTITUDE. 405 
 
 tion of Spencer, who recalls for us the scientific 
 materialism with which the world is weighted in 
 the view of F. A. Lange and others. It sees how 
 strangely the fact of man's free personality forces 
 itself on Spencer himself, when he, in treating 
 of psychology, so curiously speaks of active energy 
 as welling up from the depths of our consciousness, 
 and of the fountain of power within us " curi- 
 ously," we mean, if consistency with himself be 
 considered. 
 
 Theistic thought has discerned very clearly that 
 if, as Huxley has said, the progress of science has in 
 all ages meant, and now means more than ever, the 
 extension of the province of what we call matter 
 and causation, and the concomitant, gradual ban- 
 ishment from all regions of human thought of what 
 we call spirit and spontaneity, this expulsion of 
 freedom and spontaneity, than which man has no 
 more priceless powers, only shows how far such 
 science with its banishment of responsibility and 
 other moral elements is from being the last and 
 deepest note in human thought. But it has been 
 as far as could be from accepting such a dictum, 
 and has unswervingly maintained the compassing 
 of complete agreement and free interplay between 
 the antagonistic terms of thought just now specified 
 to be the end of true knowledge or science. It 
 has found Huxley himself, quite recently, declaring, 
 in the most unequivocal manner, what amounts to 
 saying that, however the vast evolutionary pro- 
 
406 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 cesses may cover the whole history of man, man's 
 ethical progress is altogether peculiar in that it 
 must be in opposition to the ''cosmic process," 
 must, in fact, be in freedom since under such self- 
 sacrificing motives and sentiments as prove it to 
 be no longer submerged under the process of physi- 
 cal evolution. That indeterminism which offends 
 only the " native absolutism " of our intellect has 
 been pronounced by Professor James, of Harvard, 
 in his own brilliant and forceful manner, less irra- 
 tional than the determinism which throughout and 
 utterly violates our sense of moral reality. This 
 is not, of course, to sit loosely to that synthesis 
 of the intellectual and the moral judgments unto 
 which we are, in choosing this horn of the dilemma, 
 not yet come. Theistic philosophy has, with less 
 tergiversation perhaps, and greater clearness, de- 
 fined freedom in recent years as consisting in choos- 
 ing not without motive, as Diderot and others 
 imagined, and not in entire indifference of the will, 
 as Tappan represented, but between possible al- 
 ternatives, the will being absolutely without com- 
 pulsion from the outside in the exercise of its 
 determinate preference in presence of the conditions 
 of choice. For it claims for freedom, such velleity, 
 or capacity of alternative choice, carrying, as velleity 
 does, spontaneity with it and adding the possibility 
 of alternative choice thereto. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has witnessed a marked 
 advance within the last decade in the psychological 
 
ADVANCES OF INDETERMINISM. 407 
 
 presentation of the indeterminist position, the old 
 independence of motives, and indifference, on the 
 part of the will, having been so largely left behind. 
 The reasonableness of a relative determinism it 
 may be said to have seen more forcibly demon- 
 strated, and to have found in it a place for the 
 principle of sufficient reason. It has held to 
 freedom, not only as volition which is really in- 
 hibition, but also more positively as self-realisation 
 or evolving of spirit. It has if any will so have 
 it clung to freedom only as the highest form of 
 causation, not as antithetical to it. Holding to the 
 fact of freedom in the more enlightened form under 
 which it need not mean causeless volition, it has 
 declined to give way to determinism, although 
 granting the more freely admitted presence of law, 
 as ascertained by means of social statistics. For 
 freedom has not meant for it an independence 
 of motives, but our choosing from the midst of 
 motives, and not acting merely as through motors. 
 So far from motive being absent, motive is, as 
 Green puts it, but the will in act, and the will in 
 act is but the assertion of the self as it chooses 
 and proceeds to realise an end and aim. And 
 we are at one with Dr William G. Ward in think- 
 ing that, in those transcendent moments when, 
 supreme volitional effort has borne us whither 
 we otherwise would not have come, such efforts 
 were fruit rather of what we ourselves are than 
 of the motives or reasons by which they are sup- 
 
408 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 posed to have been " caused." Rightly has Dr 
 Ward maintained that we know them to be due 
 in this way to ourselves. We take it that, for 
 theistic philosophy, God remains the supreme 
 motive, in the spirit of those sublime lines 
 
 " From Thee, Great God ! we spring to Thee we tend, 
 Path, Motive^ Guide, Original, and End." 
 
 We are free, but God is also free to will and to 
 work in us of His good pleasure. When He so 
 works in and through us, then is the rightful force 
 of the universe behind our acting as motive. When 
 
 o 
 
 we are so motived, we are on the summits of 
 spiritual being, acting in perfect accord with the 
 laws of our own being, but also with the laws of 
 God's nature and method. 
 
 It has also been a philosophical advance that 
 recent thought has been able to distinguish between 
 choice or the determinative acts of will, and volition 
 or the executive acts, as it has done, and that it has 
 assigned to self-conscious and responsible choice, 
 as obedience to restraint, its recognised importance 
 in the conditioning of moral freedom. What it has 
 properly maintained as its essential conception of 
 freewill is the real contingency of my voluntary 
 ^decision a decision, as we are very soon to show, 
 that must be just as little determined by an inward, 
 as by an external, necessity. For we are at one 
 with those philosophers who hold the one to 
 be just as really determinism as the other. We 
 
TJK 
 
 CRITICISM OF DR MAUDSLEY. 409 
 
 boldly face the break in the chain of causation, 
 whether physical or psychological. We cannot 
 allow that any identity of psychological condition, 
 or any uniformity of physical law, must mean un- 
 varying decision on our part. We are far from 
 saying that the practical exemplification of such 
 freewill is easy, but what we are concerned with 
 is that it is both possible and true. Theistic 
 philosophy has given freer recognition, on the one 
 hand, to that restricted, no doubt, but real power 
 which, as Dr Carpenter and others have shown, 
 will, rational and free, exerts over body, and, on the 
 other hand, to the partial and limited truth in those 
 physiological causes, which, as Dr Maudsley has 
 insisted upon amid much that is excellent as to 
 body and mind in a one-sided and incomplete 
 fashion, effect, under certain circumstances or con- 
 ditions, changes of character, without, however, 
 substantially affecting the position of theists in 
 maintaining the priority of will to character. 
 
 No doubt, the delicacy and the exactness of the 
 correspondences between mind and body are much 
 more keenly appreciated than they were, but noth- 
 ing that science has yet been able to set forth as 
 to these relations of " psychosis and neurosis " is 
 of a kind to invalidate the theistic position in the 
 remotest degree. From such effects of disease or 
 accident neither the non - existence nor even the 
 inaction of the mind has been proved. The un- 
 consciousness which these have induced simply 
 
410 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 emphasises, in a striking manner, the close con- 
 nection which subsists, in our present state of being 
 and knowledge, between the body and mental 
 activities. We take Theism to have been at one 
 with Janet in the deserved stress he has laid on 
 his third form of determinism that rational de- 
 terminism which consists in "the power of acting 
 in accordance with conceptions or ideas." As it 
 has held to the absolute freedom of God, the con- 
 dition of His active energy, so it has maintained 
 the true self-determining power of the human will, 
 in virtue of which man not only chooses his ends, 
 but also controls his life. This reality of self- 
 determination by a permanent self- identical ego 
 has been ably set forth by Martineau and others, 
 in opposition to Bain, and those whose empirical 
 psychology strips our personal causality of all being 
 save that of a series of sequences in time. The 
 reality of freedom, in fact, has been very clearly 
 seen to stand or fall with the reality of personality 
 in man, these two personality and freedom really 
 and truly standing or falling with each other. It 
 has thus grown more evident how far recent phil- 
 osophy of theism has advanced beyond the phenom- 
 enalism of Kant, which vitiated for his philosophy 
 the lofty " realm of ends " to which, in his fine 
 insistence on purity of volition as the goal of will, 
 he did not fail to give an abstract recognition. 
 
 We are disposed to claim for recent theistic 
 philosophy that, with greater power as a spiritual 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR GREEN. 411 
 
 philosophy, it has declared the real, and not merely 
 formal, freedom of man as a spiritual personality 
 of every man who has chosen so to live. This 
 actual freedom Professor T. H. Green, with his 
 acknowledged power, has brought into prominence 
 in a way for which theistic philosophy deserves, we 
 think, to be grateful, although it must see very 
 clearly how utterly this service is marred by the 
 way in which Green sacrifices freedom on the 
 shrine of character that thing of necessary causa- 
 tion in his view. For it certainly refuses to follow 
 Green and others who make of man's moral char- 
 acter what Professor Upton properly calls " an 
 inevitable growth," and who treat " heredity and 
 circumstances" as "the sole arbiters of his des- 
 tiny." But, tempered by regret as our admiration 
 may be, we cannot but admire Green's character- 
 istic presentation of the way in which the motive 
 lies within the man himself. His is a needed and 
 wholesome presentation in view of recent teachings 
 as to heredity and circumstance in their ethical 
 bearings. It will not do to gloze over the matters 
 we have just been dealing with by saying that self- 
 determination combines both the Libertarian and 
 the Determinist views, for the point on which 
 attention must be fixed is that the theistic view 
 as we apprehend it postulates a real contingency 
 in our action which is not annulled or effaced by 
 the uniformities or internal necessities of character. 
 To say that I am determined, but only by myself, 
 
412 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 is to come short of the full glory of freedom. There 
 must be perfect scope for moral process and free 
 initiative. This we say boldly, undeterred by the 
 fact that, though the " liberty of indifference" is 
 so far left behind that, while it might be passable 
 to have it singled out in Bradley's ' Ethical Studies/ 
 some recent writers Professor J. S. Mackenzie, for 
 example might have been expected to do better 
 than still turn attention to it rather than to the 
 real contingency issue. We can just as little ac- 
 cept this eirenicon as we could the determinism 
 that issued from Schelling's postulation of pre- 
 temporal and super-temporal acts of fjreedom. 
 
 We are not disposed to take so lenient a view of 
 determinism in relation to the action of the indi- 
 vidual as some recent writers Professor Caldwell, 
 for example, in his fine work on Schopenhauer's 
 system and we feel bound to maintain a real 
 subjective possibility of choice for man, a freedom 
 whose reality is no whit impaired by the fact that 
 such freedom is limited in its practical issues 
 by certain internal and external circumstances. 
 Theistic philosophy has more forcefully shown 
 that man's volitions, while accordant in a true 
 sense with law, differ from the changes we see 
 in the physical universe where necessity is the 
 correlate of law in being entirely initiated and 
 determined from within, and that, too, in another 
 way than the theory of the automatists supposes. 
 It has had a very clear perception of the freedom 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR ROYCE. 413 
 
 and spontaneity which mark man off from the 
 animal creation, which latter has, of course, a 
 spontaneity of its own as compared with the world 
 of things inanimate. Such consciousness as the 
 animal may be said to possess is a centre of move- 
 ment for it, but obviously not a centre comparable 
 to that found in man, reflective and free. 
 
 Theistic thought cannot be said to have found 
 any satisfactory rational ground for moral freedom 
 and responsibility in the attitude assumed by so 
 able and recent a writer as Professor Royce, of 
 Harvard, who, viewing us in our time-relations as 
 tied in a hopeless manner to our nervous mechan- 
 ism, sets forth the identity theory, whereby reality 
 is resolved into dissimilar forms or aspects, and 
 our responsibility is resolved into an unreal and 
 timeless participation in the free choice which he 
 postulates for the Eternal Self. Unlike Royce, 
 Hoffding, and Romanes, recent theistic philosophy 
 has, we venture to think, tended towards finding 
 free spirit more truly interpretative of matter. With 
 this freedom of man's will it sees that the absolute 
 knowledge or infinite prevision of God no more 
 conflicts than human prescience conflicts with our 
 own free agency. It acknowledges, however, with 
 Mozley, that the truth of man's freewill stands so 
 related to the idea of Divine Power that it cannot, 
 of course, become an absolute truth, any more 
 than in days when ^Eschylos declared that no one 
 is free save Zeus. Such an absolute liberty it 
 
414 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 does not venture to claim because it sees, with 
 Janet, the futility of claiming a liberty which would 
 be unmanageable by us, while we refused such a 
 liberty as we need. It is content with what he 
 calls " the power of emancipating ourselves from 
 the control of our inclinations." In fact, it cannot 
 postulate a strictly absolute freedom for Deity 
 even, if so be it maintains in their integrity our 
 own freedom and personality. It allows not man's 
 free moral self - determination to be swamped by 
 the causative agency of God, but, while holding, 
 as Martineau has well said, to God as Author of 
 all our possibilities, does yet not make Him re- 
 sponsible for our actualities. The door of phil- 
 osophical escape from the difficulty of the Divine 
 foreknowledge, in respect of human freedom, which 
 Renouvier has opened, is just to admit that the 
 prescience of Deity is not absolute in character. 
 
 Theistic philosophy recognises, as it never did 
 before, how truly this human freedom, as something 
 to be won, is subject to development, as all our 
 powers are. This aspect is properly remarked 
 upon by Trendelenburg, who points out that free- 
 will is no ready-made product any more than is 
 thought, but is a fruit of development (' Logische 
 Untersuchungen,' vol. ii. p. 94). Freedom is not 
 to be thought of only in the light of our immediate 
 actualities, but as that whereunto we may come. 
 The theistic philosophy of religion may be claimed 
 as recognising this aspect of things, whereby free- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM. 415 
 
 dom is that towards which we are advancing, not 
 merely that whereunto we have attained. "That 
 no mind is free until it becomes free, that moral 
 freedom, if possessed at all, is gained only after 
 a certain psychical development is passed through, 
 is an indisputable conclusion from the study of 
 psychology. If, however, the mind ever attains 
 to moral freedom, it does this in the forth-putting 
 of self-conscious and responsible choice." We 
 accept this fact of choice only to say that it is 
 whether our scientists have understood the matter 
 or not a more real, more potent, and more ex- 
 pansive fact, than their theories of heredity or 
 evolution suffice to explain. Hence the ethical 
 culture of the will is now, as the result of the 
 ethical emphasis of Kant to whom a good will 
 is the one thing of absolute value and Herbart, 
 more recognised, we believe, as the highest ideal 
 for our ethical personality. We surely better feel 
 the force of Rothe's strenuous ethical insistence 
 on the completely actual power of self-determination 
 as something only acquired in the thorough moral 
 development of the subject himself. For it has 
 become less doubtful to us that freedom grows 
 with every increment of moral power and physical 
 vigour and righteous life. 
 
 But, while recent theistic philosophy has ad- 
 vanced in its acknowledgments of the power and 
 scope of heredity, education, and environments 
 the leverage and auxiliary forces of the will it 
 
416 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 has, with no small skill, opposed the advocates of 
 the doctrine of philosophical necessity in their 
 unduly emphasising these, so that spontaneity be- 
 comes eliminated from psychology, and we are 
 left no more creators of our future. We object 
 to heredity, which we admit as an influence, being 
 turned into a fatality, for the race characteristics 
 and the physiological impulses it may bring us 
 cannot be allowed to dominate our moral person- 
 ality, and beget an irresponsible condition of things. 
 We maintain that life is for freedom, and that the 
 free personal is an irreducible element in the life 
 of man as a moral personality. Yes, an element 
 which has the power to resist and transcend the 
 law of heredity as a fatalistic thing. Heredity just 
 as little explains our free upward choices as it 
 does the outburstings of genius. Heredity, which 
 has so often been called out in this time to curse, 
 has still found voice at times to bless. And then 
 its speech may have been slower, but that which 
 it spake was all the more a strange, inexplicable 
 thing. 
 
 We hold that theistic philosophy has maintained 
 the reality of liberty none the less successfully for 
 having more amply acknowledged how that liberty 
 is less abstract in character, more limited in range, 
 more characteristic of the whole of life than of its 
 every act, more dependent than was formerly thought 
 upon environment, education, and the crystallisations 
 of character and experience. We maintain that true 
 
SIDGWICKS UNSATISFACTORY ATTITUDE. 417 
 
 theistic philosophy is seeing the need to take causal 
 circumstance, limitation, and temptation, all into 
 account if we are really to understand and do justice 
 to the law of freedom in relation to what the poet 
 
 calls 
 
 " the dread strife 
 Of poor Humanity's afflicted Will 
 Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." 
 
 But in all this it is only exemplifying 1 , in changed 
 and more real fashion, the quaint poet's words 
 
 " How much, preventing God, how much I owe 
 To the defences Thou hast round me set ; 
 Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, 
 
 These scorned bandsmen were my parapet. 
 
 I dare not overpeep this parapet, 
 To gauge with glance the roaring gulf beyond, 
 
 The depths of sin to which I had descended, 
 Had not Thou me against myself defended." 
 
 Thus it accords with one who said, " My freedom 
 is an island of small extent in an ocean of necessity 
 which opposes, on every side, an inexorable bar 
 to my finite power." But it is precisely within 
 those limitations against which our spirits chafe that 
 our true, free destiny is realised. 
 
 We contend that theistic philosophy has endorsed 
 the forceful manner in which Martineau has shown 
 how vain is the attempt of that distinguished 
 psychologist, Professor Sidgwick, to hold the 
 Determinist problem in neutral solution, when he 
 urges that freewill is a fact, or else moral judgment, 
 
 2 D 
 
418 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 with its " presence of a personal power of pre- 
 ference," becomes a " delusion." We maintain, 
 further, that it has been rightfully claiming true 
 freedom for man's will with all the powers and con- 
 sequences which such a claim implies, unhindered 
 in the least by any evolutionary theories as to the 
 time and the manner in which the sense of freedom 
 and responsibility become his. It finds that, when 
 evolution has finished its work, the fact of freedom 
 abides. It is the freedom of rational self-direction 
 attained through obedience to the emancipating law 
 of reason, as it frees from the sway of blind impulse. 
 It is, in our view, the perfectly realisable freedom of 
 a real self, not a self composed merely of a compact 
 majority of existent desires. 
 
 There can be no great occasion now to go into 
 the discussions of Hamilton and Mill, who were in 
 substantial agreement more so than the latter was 
 himself always aware as to whether we are in 
 freedom wholly free from causation. But we have 
 not got beyond the need to recall, what Zeller says 
 in the last chapter (of the second volume) of his 
 * Vortrage und Abhandlungen,' that " we are our- 
 selves the only cause ( Ursache) of whose mode of 
 action we have immediate knowledge through inner 
 intuition " (Anschauung). Green we take to have 
 made a noteworthy advance on Mill when he 
 emphasised the fact that, in contending for freedom, 
 we are not driven to shun the Scylla of determinism 
 only to fall into the Charybdis of indeterminateness, 
 
FURTHER CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR GREEN. 419 
 
 since there is that true via media in which freedom 
 in the self-conscious subject means freedom in, but 
 not from, motive. What we do here decidedly object 
 to in Green is the way in which he immolates the 
 self on the shrine of character. We object to be 
 told that " the action is as necessarily related to the 
 character and circumstances as any event to the 
 sum of its conditions." We object to being told 
 that " he, being what he is, and the circumstances 
 being what they are at any particular conjuncture, 
 the determination of the will is already given, just 
 as an effect is given in the sum of its conditions." 
 What right has the self to be sunk in the character 
 in this fashion, and made identical with it ? We 
 maintain that the man the self is always more 
 than the words, more than the works, more than the 
 character, and we give an emphatic non sequitur to 
 Green's absurd supposition that, because we do so, 
 the self therefore stands out of all relation or even 
 out of most real and intimate relation to character. 
 We certainly maintain for this self an original spring 
 and freedom of movement which cannot be gauged 
 by any record of its own past. We regard as signi- 
 ficant the statement of Professor Henry Sidgwick 
 when, in the chapter on Freewill in his ' Methods 
 of Ethics,' he says, " that, in fact, ' responsibility/ 
 ' desert,' and similar terms have to be used, if at all, 
 in new significations by Determinists." 
 
 We do not suppose it can be doubted that theis- 
 tic philosophy has been wisely led when it has in 
 
420 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 its recent stress planted firmer feet on the whole 
 history of humanity as its proof of human freedom, 
 whereof the very laws and languages of mankind 
 are witnesses. For our part, we are free to grant 
 that, not without some plausibility and force has 
 recent monism argued against indeterminism as 
 making every action scientifically indeterminable 
 and morally indifferent. But, admitting will in 
 its freedom to be not independent of the action 
 of spiritual law, to which it may offer obedience, 
 we yet cannot consent to determinism under an 
 overshadowing influence of the law of causality 
 as found by science in the material world, and as 
 bound in the very nature of the forces concerned. 
 
 Pfleiderer has, when treating of the philosophy 
 of religion, expressed, with his accustomed lucidity 
 and force, this increased psychological place which 
 has been found for character as against severe 
 indeterminist theory whereby freedom is no more 
 " an acting from the pure indeterminedness of a 
 merely possible or unreal ego," and its every act 
 no more " an uncaused decision from a state of 
 pure undeterminedness." It is in some such way 
 that we can allow a certain truth to Schiller's 
 fine negation in " Wallenstein " of an absolute 
 freedom of will : 
 
 " Hab' ich des menschen Kern erst untersucht ? 
 So kenn' ich auch sein Wollen und sein Handeln." 
 
 Have I the human kernel first examined ? 
 Then know I, too, the future will and action. 
 
A. J. BALFOUR ON CHARACTER. 421 
 
 Professor James Sully, in his ' Psychology,' 
 seems to follow Volkmann in respect of the " sem- 
 blance of indeterminateness," holding the action 
 to be always the resultant of the factors engaged, 
 or, as Volkmann has it, of the collective internal 
 movement. 
 
 All this sort of justice, which is, rightly enough, 
 claimed for character, is not, however, to be carried 
 to any lengths that would be incompatible with 
 the position of Mr Balfour. In his recent article in 
 ' Mind,' when speaking of the freedom of the man 
 of whom it is impossible to say " that he ought, 
 and therefore he can, for at any given moment of 
 his life his nex.t action is, by hypothesis, strictly 
 determined," Mr Balfour goes on to show how 
 man's responsibility is destroyed by a theory which, 
 though making his action the outcome of his char- 
 acter, treats his character itself as " the outcome 
 of causes over which he has not, and cannot by 
 any possibility have, the smallest control." What 
 spontaneity and grace, we ask, would be left to 
 human action, when we should be made so com- 
 pletely the creatures of habit and passion ? The 
 truth is, no inward necessity, such as character, 
 can for a moment be allowed to obscure or exclude 
 the real contingency in our acts of choice. Yet, if 
 things go on as they at present appear, this depend- 
 ence of will upon character must rapidly become the 
 conventional one. It seems to make the matter 
 easy of comprehension ; and it is well adapted to 
 
422 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 an age somewhat indolent, deeply imbued with 
 scientific habits of thinking, and not over strenuous 
 in its moral moods. 
 
 We find another instance of this treatment of 
 character in Professor S. Alexander, of Manchester, 
 to whom freedom's sense means sheer delusion, and 
 character is everything. This mechanical mode of 
 thinking we shall discuss and criticise presently in 
 connection with other recent writers who occupy 
 this position. Meanwhile we express our agree- 
 ment with Professor Upton when, in a recent 
 article, he says " While our character determines 
 the nature of our temptations, we are, I believe, 
 clearly conscious that it is not the character, but 
 the self which has the character, to which the 
 ultimate moral decision is due. In every moral 
 crisis of a man's life he rises in the act of moral 
 choice above his own character, envisages it, and 
 passes moral judgment on the springs of action 
 or desire which he feels present within him ; and 
 it is because a man's true self can thus transcend 
 and judge his own character, that genuine moral 
 freedom and moral responsibility become possible 
 and actual." 
 
 It will be seen how very far indeed is our posi- 
 tion from amounting to an unqualified endorsement 
 of the positions advocated or expressions adopted 
 by defenders of the doctrine of philosophical neces- 
 sity like C. E. Plumptre, in his recent ' Natural 
 Causation,' by whom spontaneity and the choices 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR CLIFFORD. 423 
 
 of reason are, virtually at least, eliminated, and 
 to whom man, as the resultant of the past, is no 
 free electing ego, but the mere creature of con- 
 ditions. It was a mere absurd and arbitrary a 
 priori materialism that led Professor Clifford to 
 maintain that volition has no power to influence 
 matter ; yes, it was " the mere omniscience of an 
 a priori materialism." As Dr George Matheson 
 has well said, " the ideas of cause and power 
 would never have been even suggested by the 
 objects of nature but for the presence within us 
 of a determinative will," and man's sense of free- 
 dom has been " most strongly felt " just " where 
 his power to recognise causes is the widest and 
 the most unerring." Theistic philosophy has not 
 been so walled in by any adamantine necessity 
 framed of pre - conditions and ambient circum- 
 stances as to be unable to sing 
 
 " Stone walls do not a prison make, 
 
 Nor iron bars a cage ; 
 Minds innocent and quiet take 
 That for a hermitage. 
 
 If I have freedom in my love, 
 
 And in my soul am free, 
 Angels alone that soar above, 
 
 Enjoy such liberty." 
 
 The incomprehensibility of this freedom, as 
 Lotze has, in his ' Philosophy of Religion/ in the 
 clearest manner pointed out, need cause no offence, 
 since it is of the very nature of morally free choice 
 
424 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 that it be not comprehensible flowing, that is to 
 say, from a set of pre-existing conditions in some 
 necessary way. 
 
 When we find so acute a thinker as Mr G. F. 
 Stout, the able editor of ' Mind/ but lately saying, 
 in reference to the contention for contingent free- 
 dom, that " we might as well argue that the fall of 
 a penny is not causally determined, because when 
 we throw it we do not know whether head or tail 
 will turn up," we seem to find only the traces of 
 those mechanical modes of deterministic thinking 
 which would be in place were man indeed a 
 "penny," and not a personality. 
 
 We pass over the strangely inconsistent attempt 
 of Kant to combine freedom and necessity in man, 
 so that he ended by making freedom which he 
 excludes from the external world, as subject to the 
 law of necessity a wholly ineffective thing, in 
 his anxiety to maintain freedom, while touching 
 natural necessity as little as might be. Man is, 
 with him, now an intelligence ( Wesen an sicti), 
 free, independent, supersensuous, and now a being 
 belonging to the world of sense (Sinnenwesen), 
 subject, as such, to the laws of nature or natural 
 causation. The nature of man is thus disrupted, 
 desire is reduced to mere natural appetence, and 
 the pure self -determining reason is divorced from 
 desire, which last assumes so necessary a character. 
 Defective and inadequate Kant's doctrine of free- 
 dom could only be : the serial self-determination, 
 
CRITICISM OF KANT. 425 
 
 of which we have spoken, Kant never knew, though 
 he sets the empirical will under the sway of natural 
 causation. Though he sought the noumenal, he 
 had chosen so to cleave the noumenal and pheno- 
 menal in two, that he was quite unable to attain 
 to a law of real freedom. Hence, while freedom 
 might be to him an abstractly conceivable thing 
 conceivable in transcendental fashion the com- 
 patibility of a certain place for natural causation 
 with a true doctrine of freedom never could be 
 his. It is due to Kant, however, to say as we 
 have in our chapter on the Moral Argument done 
 that the sacred worth of human personality found 
 conspicuous recognition in his system, which is 
 something to be thankful for, notwithstanding the 
 difficulty in which this dualistic tendency lands his 
 ethical treatment. This regard for personality is 
 evident from his insisting, when dealing with the 
 ' Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals,' that 
 humanity be always treated as end, never as means. 
 But as for freedom, we see the Kantian conception 
 of it to be one-sided, even in an ideal sense, for it 
 is on his conception realised only in an abstract 
 and purely rational manner. Because the Kantian 
 conception of freedom is so lacking in the con- 
 creteness of its reference, it is not the freedom of 
 the actual self, the sinning .and suffering self, that 
 we know so well in life's experience. No, only a 
 phantom or abstraction of it, even though it be a 
 rational one. 
 
426 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 Nor do we dwell on the peculiar pre-destiny by 
 which, while professing to save freedom, the natur- 
 alistic theism of Schelling handed our earthly life 
 over, bound hand and foot, to determinism. It is 
 in Fichte we see the fact of the free will become 
 the chief and outstanding fact of the world. It is 
 in Hegel that we find the announcement that "the 
 truth of necessity is freedom/' which is not to say 
 that we find the Hegelian recognition of freedom 
 a real and satisfactory recognition of the freedom 
 of the will. With Hegel pure self-consciousness is 
 an absolute capacity of abstracting from every 
 determination, and is, consequently, an indeter- 
 minate thing, to which,* standing by itself, Hegel 
 gives not the name of freedom. He adds another 
 element to this abstract universal, which may be 
 designated the particular, as giving definite direc- 
 tion to the will, though not rescuing it from con- 
 tingency or caprice. 
 
 This particular must be so taken up into the 
 universal, as to issue in rational self-determination, 
 wherein freedom is realised. But Hegel, in so 
 doing, gives up care for the individual, and, in 
 attempting to bridge the chasm between reason 
 and desire, he subsumes the individual under the 
 Absolute in a way which leaves the active human 
 will lost in a dialectical haze. Because the Chris- 
 tian philosophy of religion seeks to have us, in 
 our impulses and desires, not simply intellectualised 
 or rationalised, but spiritualised or sanctified, it 
 
CRITICISM OF SCHOPENHAUER. 427 
 
 brings to us such a vision of goodness as begets 
 at least what the poet of the " In Memoriam" 
 
 finely styles 
 
 " the vague desire 
 That stirs an imitative will." 
 
 It restoreth the soul to a real freedom the 
 freedom of the spirit : it allows not to rest in a 
 merely formal freedom, though reason rule therein. 
 
 Recent philosophical theism has rigorously ex- 
 posed the thoroughgoing determinism of Schop- 
 enhauer, who, diverging from the mode of Kant 
 and Schelling, attributes freedom to man's entire 
 action or "free doing" rather than to his essence 
 or being, and assigns his action to the sphere of 
 necessity. It has been shown how he neglects the 
 obvious necessity of existence prior to operation, 
 and how he does not seem able to be quite fair 
 in treating of the part played by motives in our 
 freedom of choice not freedom of spontaneity in 
 his sense. The subserviency of reason to will, 
 which is so marked a feature in Schopenhauer's 
 philosophy, leads him to ground any spontaneity 
 we possess in will rather than in intellect. In 
 this way he easily comes short of doing justice to 
 freedom on its intellectual or theoretic side, and 
 his shortcoming is not less conspicuous as touching 
 man's free practical activity. He forgets that, as 
 Professor James has well said, "in these critical mo- 
 ments, what consciously seems to be in question is 
 the complexion of the character itself. The pro- 
 
428 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 blem with the man is less what act he shall now 
 resolve to do than what being he shall now choose 
 to become." Yes, for we certainly retain an ethical 
 freedom for man, and not merely for his will or 
 volition. It is " only," as one has said, "in the 
 schools that the freedom and correlative responsi- 
 bility of man are restricted to the will. The 
 moral judgments .of the race attribute to him an 
 ampler freedom and a wider responsibility. Indeed 
 those noble moral affections which are independent 
 of the will create, when expressed in acts, a far 
 warmer and intenser moral approval than any 
 similar acts of mere volition which are not inspired 
 by these affections." 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy not only rejects, as 
 we regard the case, the mechanical standpoint of 
 Dr Paul Ree, to whom the will is not free, and 
 should not be thought of as free in the sense 
 of an absolute beginning (ein absoluter Anfang), 
 but it also maintains that volition, so far from being 
 causeless, is only free from compelling causes. It 
 holds that the inciting motive may be perfectly 
 clear to us, and the influence of our free will be yet 
 clearer to us, as it prefers this motive to others, 
 and decides in face of opposing inward wishes and 
 contrary inclinations. Such an absolute commence- 
 ment as R6e represents for its " free " action it de- 
 clares to be a manifest misconception and absurdity : 
 the freedom it claims is, with Green, not some un- 
 motived and inexplicable willing, but only that of 
 
CRITICISM OF DR PAUL R^E. 429 
 
 action which is the free product of reflection exer- 
 cised in midst of diverse motives. This theoretic 
 freedom of the will it maintains inviolate, even 
 while granting the presumptive certainty of man's 
 action from the already formed character and con- 
 dition of the will with much greater readiness than 
 was formerly the case a readiness grounded in 
 the recognition that character, in so influencing 
 action, does so in a sense that savours not of 
 physical necessity. 
 
 Determinism is, no doubt, right enough in laying 
 stress on the way in which a man's character is 
 what his acts of will have made it, since these give 
 to the will a fundamental direction. But character 
 is not something that is ever at any time closed. 
 Man's most peculiar work is just the upbuilding 
 of character his main enterprise for splendour and 
 extent, as Emerson rightly said and he builds it 
 by conscious will. For this, personality equips and 
 befits him. Yes, and even from his failures he 
 may rise to its realisation through penitence and 
 repentance, for which determinism, it must be said, 
 leaves no real room. What indeed do we in our 
 repentance but just freely negate our own doings or 
 misdeeds, and charge upon ourselves the fault of 
 having placed our freedom of will, in uncompelled 
 fashion, at service of unrighteousness ? The sting 
 lies, of course, precisely in this, that we could have 
 willed otherwise. What we distinctly complain of 
 is the way in which the no doubt relative but 
 
430 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 incalculable element in character is overlooked, so 
 that place is not left for the free, unexpected moves 
 of will upward. We deny the right by which this 
 incalculable element is interpreted as a chance ele- 
 ment, and maintain that, in what is contingent, the 
 result is reached when true freedom is realised 
 along the highest lines of reason. We come back 
 to say that theistic philosophy finds, as we view the 
 case, that Ree's contention that responsibility is an 
 illusion, which ceases as soon as man sees that 
 actions are really necessary, is, while not without 
 a certain amount of truth in the reasonings urged 
 in its behalf, maintained by him in a way which 
 shows a lack of force or insight, inasmuch as the 
 consciousness of responsibility, as fact, abides or 
 persists. 
 
 Our philosophy has likewise found that Paulsen, 
 who has quite recently treated the freedom of the 
 will as a scholastic whim or a metaphysical phantom, 
 has been able to do so only because he has adopted 
 the falsity which lies in the significance he imports 
 into the term, and because he has, by a very pal- 
 pable misconception, regarded freedom as meaning 
 freedom from cause in a way and sense which all 
 will disown save the chosen " few " who follow Ree 
 and himself in foisting it upon unwilling adversaries. 
 
 Our latest theistic philosophy has not, we ven- 
 ture to think, experienced any hesitation in leaving 
 behind the positions of the Danish philosopher, H off- 
 ding, when, in this connection, he has construed 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR HOFFDING. 431 
 
 freedom of the will to be willing without cause in 
 independence of everything antecedent, and when 
 he has, further, represented the theory of freedom 
 as making man something merely accidental, since 
 not thus subject to the law of causality. Theistic 
 speculation maintains, as we believe, a more intel- 
 lectual ground for its doctrine of freedom than 
 Hoffding would allow, and it does not admit any 
 disharmony between the intellectual and the moral 
 life. It denies that freedom is rightly interpreted 
 by Hoffding as simple denial of the law of causality, 
 or that he is warranted in regarding the will as in 
 no sense creative, only modifying and selective, 
 because of the mechanised realm in which his 
 thought moves. When he further avers that free- 
 will severs man from his kind (Gattung\ breaks 
 up the unity of being, and does not regard being 
 in its totality (als eine Totalitdt\ theistic philosophy 
 has no difficulty in discerning the pantheistic totality 
 in whose interest his affirmation seems to be made, 
 and as little in repelling the suggestion of any 
 severance from human kind. Yes, of course, since 
 freedom really relates the individual to the whole 
 only doing so in freedom, and with such relative 
 independence as is allowed by those impulses and 
 laws that bind him to his race. 
 
 We hold, as a great form of limitation, that man 
 by his own individuality moves in a restricted and 
 determinate circle of possibilities. We have not 
 to think, however, of individuality as something 
 
432 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 finished and complete, but as a mere foundation 
 or groundwork, so to speak, out of which possi- 
 bilities shall arise. When Hoffding so greatly 
 minimises responsibility (ein Tausendstel der Hand- 
 lung), because the individual is so small a part of 
 the whole, theistic philosophy allows that only little 
 is determined purely by our self-determination, and 
 much effected through our diverting our inclina- 
 tions, but it yet preserves the fact of freedom, 
 which it has found Hoffding fail successfully to 
 impugn. 
 
 Professor A. Riehl, with his Spencerian tenden- 
 cies, or, more strictly, approximations to agnosti- 
 cism in the Kantian or Epistemological sense, has 
 also given the freedom of the will very decided 
 treatment, viewing it as illusion, though appearing 
 to the actor as free. Riehl shows Ree to have 
 been mistaken in thinking that, while philosophers 
 have shown the will to be not free, they had not 
 shown why it appears free. But Riehl, who is 
 here very penetrating, does not, like Ree, treat 
 responsibility as illusion, but argues that respon- 
 sibility is impossible on a theory of indifference. 
 It is precisely because we are not free that, on 
 his novel and striking presentation, we are respon- 
 sible, that is, to the universal mind or society, 
 which seems to provide a morality which some 
 philosophers are unable to transcend. With no 
 lack either of ability or of confidence, Riehl de- 
 livers his paradoxical utterances to the effect that 
 
CRITICISM OF PROFESSOR RIEHL. 433 
 
 action is freer, the more it is controlled ; that noth- 
 ing is less in our power than will ; that experience 
 is unable to confirm the freedom hypothesis, for 
 the self- consciousness is, with him, " necessarily 
 incomplete and at the same time partisan." Now, 
 Riehl is probably well-advised in impugning the 
 testimony of consciousness, if he can, since that 
 testimony has been so strongly in favour of free- 
 dom, but we demur to his inferences or suggestions 
 as to consciousness, involving, as they do, a lack 
 of understanding of the real grounds on which 
 freedom is held. Riehl, like many another, rides 
 off on an assumption of the matter, and will have 
 none of consciousness, in his eagerness to sacrifice 
 personality to phenomena. 
 
 We plainly assert that, all modern influences 
 and tendencies notwithstanding, these attempts to 
 turn consciousness into a liar from the beginning 
 do not carry for us a hopeful outlook. We should 
 like to know w r hat is to remain stable for us if 
 things are not to be taken for what they are if 
 the deeply-seated intuition that the will is free is 
 to be lightly dismissed as among the apparencies 
 of feeling ? What valid reason can be adduced 
 why such a congruous and harmonious fact as this 
 of freedom may not be truly and vigorously attested 
 by feeling or consciousness without any further 
 proof? Such demand for proof is simply futile 
 and absurd, and grounded in lack of understanding 
 of the conditions of the case. We use plainness 
 
 2 E 
 
434 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 of speech, because nothing is here more necessary 
 and desirable, however much we feel and appreci- 
 ate the desire of aloofness from the partisan spirit. 
 It is surely right that in such matters men should 
 know where we are to be found. We are bold 
 enough to affirm that, were the witness of con- 
 sciousness more complete, it would be to show that 
 the potentialities of freedom which are ours are 
 in reality greater than we have known. It is the 
 possibility, as Professor Sidgwick has said, of action 
 in conformity with practical reason, with which we 
 are here concerned, and it is thus impossible not 
 to maintain free choice, " however strong may be 
 my inclination to act unreasonably, and however 
 uniformly I may have yielded to such inclinations 
 in the past." 
 
 Indeterminism, in the sense of having no respect 
 to motive or pre-established character, is declared 
 by Riehl not to exist ; on which it is sufficient to 
 remark that if it did, it would not be that for which 
 we contend, and which Riehl has failed to refute. 
 For, as he desiderates proof rather than mere asser- 
 tion in others, we are entitled to expect the same 
 from himself, and not indeterminism of the " man 
 of straw" type. Besides, Riehl's determinism, 
 whose chains are of his own forging, has really 
 far more of a fatalistic tinge than he is himself 
 aware, and has poor warrant for the responsibility 
 he would retain. At the same time, let it not be 
 thought that, in saying all this, we are either for- 
 
CRITICISM OF DRS BRADLEY AND CROLL. 435 
 
 getful or inappreciative of all that may be secured 
 in the way of ethical result by attention to those 
 psychological conditions and exercises on which 
 deterministic theory has laid stress. 
 
 It is in a like tone to that of those deterministic 
 philosophers, of whom we have just spoken, that 
 Dr F. H. Bradley has recently allowed himself to 
 speak of Freewill as, " in short, a mere lingering 
 chimera," and as something which " can merely 
 mean chance," thereby proving only that there are 
 depths in the moral consciousness of freedom which 
 even Dr Bradley has not sounded. Yes, moral 
 glories in man's self-determination, whose very 
 greatness though unperceived by him largely 
 consists in that the issues cannot be foreseen or 
 foretold. Dr James Croll combats the indeter- 
 minist position on the ground that illusory belief in 
 an undetermined will is due in reality to determina- 
 tion arising from psychological states that come not 
 into distinct and conscious view, and which deeper 
 introspection, as he thinks, would lay bare. We 
 regard his presentation of the case for philosophical 
 determinism as far more able than convincing. 
 
 Let it now be plainly said that we are not going 
 to allow our thought to rest in the inadequacy that 
 feels not the self-activity of the soul so true and 
 essential in freedom. Already it must be very 
 evident what a will-o'-the-wisp is the freedom 
 which such deterministic writers are at vehement 
 pains to deny : we know no reason why theistic 
 
436 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 philosophy should not allow a series of antecedent 
 selves, and their determinative effect, on will and 
 its choices ; we know, however, that this does not 
 exhaust the problem, for character is not to be 
 merged in mechanism, and our free self- activity 
 is not to be blindly sacrificed at the shrine of 
 mechanical determinism. 
 
 Highly unsatisfactory and perfectly futile is the 
 way in which Dr Croll attempts, in the interests 
 of philosophical determinism, to escape this mechan- 
 ical conception, by treating necessity as the cer- 
 tainty that is in things themselves, and not imposed 
 from without. It is surely not a great thing if we 
 claim that the latest theistic philosophy has ad- 
 vanced with increasing confidence beyond the re- 
 cognition of the mechanical aspect of the process 
 true so far as it goes as being neither the 
 whole nor the highest part of all that is involved 
 in this moral problem. It has maintained the dif- 
 ference of immanent cause, as free, from that which 
 is mechanical, so that freedom is no more upset by 
 the law of causation, as some have so persistently 
 supposed. It has more successfully vindicated sub- 
 jective causation or subjective determinism, in the 
 interests of spontaneity or self-initiative, as opposed 
 to mechanical causation. It has postulated intelli- 
 gent Will as the primal Force of the universe, and 
 has pondered the alternative so well set before it 
 by Dr Matheson, that "if we reject this view, 
 we render every sphere of creation incomprehen- 
 
A REAL FREEDOM CONSERVED. 437 
 
 sible, but no sphere so incomprehensible as the 
 province claimed by the evolutionist, for we shall 
 be confronted by the spectacle of a creation out of 
 nothing unparalleled in the annals of religion a 
 creation which has brought the sense of freedom 
 out of the depths of slavery, and has fashioned the 
 consciousness of will out of those lifeless materials 
 whose distinctive feature is the absence of voli- 
 tion." We think it has not failed to note the 
 significance of such a contention as that of Simmel 
 in his Moralwissenschaft to which Professor J. 
 S. Mackenzie has properly directed attention in 
 ' Mind ' that Determinism never can be proved. 
 
 It will, then, be very evident that, in maintaining 
 the positive metaphysical doctrine of freewill, the 
 worth of virtuous training and habits is acknow- 
 ledged, to use the words of Professor William G. 
 Ward, as " not less inestimably great " from the 
 Libertarian side than on the Deterministic hypothesis. 
 In so maintaining the freewill premiss to the the- 
 istic conclusion, we only need, and only care, to 
 deal with actual psychical fact as we find it in our- 
 selves and in others, at their and our best. There 
 can, in our view, be no doubt of the deepening 
 conviction, on the part of recent theistic philosophy 
 of religion, that ethical and religious vitality are 
 only to be maintained by a real freedom of the 
 will being conserved, in face of every opposing 
 tendency, whether pantheistic, or positivist, or pes- 
 simistic. 
 
43^ RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 We say "real freedom," for, call it an abgeleitete 
 Absohitheit or derived freedom as you will, it is 
 with this we are concerned. We find no reason 
 to deny that our freedom is a conditioned one, for 
 its circle of possibilities is restrained by the nature 
 of our own individuality. This, of course, is some- 
 thing which every man brings into the world with 
 him. Not that our individuality is some ready- 
 made product, since we bring, so to speak, only a 
 first projection of it, which awaits developing, and 
 shaping, and correcting, under life's manifold in- 
 fluences. Besides his personal character, man has 
 a nature character of corporeal kind, springing out 
 of his connection with nature, which connection, 
 let it be said, has a limiting effect on his freedom. 
 No subsequent developments, indeed, which man 
 may make can escape the effects of this original 
 imprint of individuality upon him. 
 
 Every one has, as Professor A. Dorner, of 
 Konigsberg, has very properly insisted in his 
 lucid and massive volume of philosophical ethics 
 ('Das Menschliche Handeln') recently published 
 his own peculiar predispositions as an individual, 
 so that, not as man in general, nor as personality in 
 general, but only as individual personality can he 
 perfect himself to an harmonious totality. Not, 
 of course, that this individuality is to be con- 
 ceived as mere ready-made product, for it is rather 
 only a noble and swelling germ in the view of our 
 wisest philosophy of individualism. The sphere of 
 
FREEDOM NOT THE ULTIMATE CATEGORY. 439 
 
 its realisation of freedom is, of course, a social one, 
 and there is no denying the emphasis on the soli- 
 darity of man alike in the historical and the scien- 
 tific thought of to-day. In fact, the tendency is 
 towards a determinism that does injustice to the 
 individual. Surely we can maintain the freedom 
 of the individual, and yet do justice to such con- 
 crete forms of reason as we have in all that is 
 " creedal " and institutional. We can as little 
 allow man's freedom and personality to be merged, 
 by any philosophical idealism, in God, as we can 
 consent to their being dissipated by Determinism 
 in Nature. But even such real freedom, as we 
 hold, will be, as it is always in order for us to be 
 reminded, not the highest, not the ultimate cate- 
 gory of life : we await release from that resistance 
 which freewill still implies, and which will fade and 
 disappear before that perfectness of freedom which 
 comes through love and the enlargements of our 
 spiritual nature. Then the will, having done all, 
 shall stand perfect witness to our freedom. 
 
 Of a truth, it is practice, as Wuttke said, that 
 makes the master, and the morally mature is master 
 over his will. Every perfect gift is from above 
 this, we may not forget, is true of freedom. We 
 need power from above, for it must be plainly said 
 that the limitations to our freedom of greatest mag- 
 nitude are those which have been imposed by sin. 
 Its limiting hand is already upon us if we are not 
 free to behold and acknowledge how it has ham- 
 
440 RECENT STUDY OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 
 
 pered the thought and the will of man, and sent 
 its enfeebling darts through all his feelings, im- 
 pulses, strivings, experiences. Yes, religion, too, 
 has its determinism, and there its results may be 
 seen down to the deepest working of the will. But 
 it must be overcome by that higher nature in man 
 which, working under the law of conscience, draws 
 him towards God and goodness. This is that ideal 
 self towards which the actual self is rightly direct- 
 ed ever tending. When the power to make our 
 wills one with the Divine Will shall come in as 
 with a flood, we shall still freely and consciously 
 will the good. 
 
 Such free willing of the good, with the supreme 
 Entschluss or resolution it involves, remains for 
 us the highest here possible. Such freedom will 
 yet, at best, be but a forecast or foreshadowing 
 of the glorious liberty that awaits the children of 
 God. But it will still be freedom that is unim- 
 paired, amid the strange, unlimited ways in which 
 the grace of the Almighty Sovereign and Father 
 of men invests the hidden realm of freedom. Yea, 
 so true abide the lines of the German poet 
 
 " Man kann in wahrer Freiheit leben, 
 Und doch nicht tmgebunden sein." 
 
UNT 
 
 441 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 RECENT SURVEYS OF THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 WE do not suppose it will be questioned that, 
 in recent thinking, Law has not been regarded 
 as the narrow thing it would be so far as the 
 bounds of our experience go, but has been be- 
 lieved in as a vast principle reaching in its reign 
 to every region of the universe whither thought 
 can penetrate. Of course, this is the case, as we 
 have just said, rather as a mental conviction than 
 an induction from facts, which it can be said to 
 be only on a basis so small as to be merely frac- 
 tional in extent. This great conviction of the uni- 
 versality of law has been attended with no small 
 confusion of thought, not only among scientific 
 but also theistic writers. In some ways too, let 
 us add, with a weakening of ethical law or idea 
 itself such as was neither needful nor warranted, 
 even though we grant that the study of cosmical 
 laws may proceed without ethical preoccupation. 
 Still, there is the fact of this vastly increased 
 
442 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 recognition of cosmic law, with its principles of 
 uniformity, conservation, and evolution. Certainly 
 we reject that as an absurd obscuration of the 
 subject which tacitly assumes physical law as the 
 norm of law, and shuts the eye of reason to the 
 laws of persons and of ideas, real as the laws of 
 things. We are not concerned to deny the preval- 
 ence of law over inner as well as outer experience, 
 for it has become less surprising, since Kant ex- 
 pounded for us the philosophy of law, to find that 
 "the Moral Laws are undemonstrable, and yet 
 apodictic, like the Mathematical Postulates." If we 
 maintain the unity of law, we do so only as a 
 unity amid diversity. We are thus at one with 
 the poet, 
 
 " God is law, say the wise, O soul ! and let us rejoice ; 
 For if He thunder by law, the thunder is still His voice." 
 
 Zeller, speaking historically in an academic con- 
 tribution, utters the needful reminder that it was 
 the conception of the divine law which first led 
 over (hinuber-leitete) to that of natural law, the 
 representatives of which latter, we may add, do 
 not always realise what it owes to religious ideas 
 and representations. Law, as we take it, has been 
 more carefully distinguished as a relation, not an 
 entity as thought rather than thing. As Pro- 
 fessor A. Riehl has said, "there are not first laws, 
 then things and processes subject to them. Laws 
 are the relations of things." This is like the 
 
NATURE OF LAW. 443 
 
 conception of Law laid down by J. G. Fichte, 
 in his ' Science of Rights/ namely, as a " relation 
 between personal beings." So that law, in our 
 conception of it, must always be joined to being, 
 of which, in fact, it is just the expression. Theistic 
 philosophy has rightly resisted the hypostatising 
 of abstraction under the phrase natural law, for 
 it has not suffered itself to forget that all such 
 natural laws are results or consequents of reality, 
 and not its basis. These laws have their rise in 
 the nature of things, but men mistakenly fancy 
 that reality, whensoever it appears, must come 
 under the form of previously existent law. The 
 truth is, these natural laws spring simply from 
 what things are, and tell only of what things are, 
 not of what they must be. 
 
 Theistic thought may claim to have found itself 
 in happy agreement with the most eminent of 
 modern jurists when, in expounding the principles 
 of jurisprudence as a science, they yet have taken 
 law, in the true sense of moral law, as something 
 which can only be addressed to persons who are 
 capable, in virtue of intelligence and will, of obey- 
 ing or disobeying it at their pleasure. This fact 
 may help it to retain a clear vision of how divergent 
 is such spiritual law from physical laws, since spir- 
 itual law runs up into that higher sphere in which 
 a real however responsive in result dualism 
 subsists between two wills. 
 
 The reign of law in the spiritual world is really 
 
444 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 one whose kingdom is to come. The laws of con- 
 science or the moral faculty may not be allowed to 
 bear the stamp of axiomatic or mathematical cer- 
 tainty, yet they do exhibit a constancy accountable 
 only by the remarkable persistence of the moral 
 ideal. The reign of law in the physical world, Dr 
 Carpenter, the author of ' Mental Physiology,' thinks, 
 would be better spoken of as government according 
 to, than by, laws. For in Law the form in which 
 Ultimate Reality is manifested to our consciousness 
 by external phenomena we have, as one has well 
 said, but " another name for the union of Reason 
 and Will, wherein consists Personality." Recent 
 theistic philosophy of religion has advanced in 
 making good its contentions for a theory of ethics 
 that shall lead us from law up to an Agent or per- 
 sonal Lawgiver from what Chalmers styled "the 
 judge within the breast" up to the "notion of a 
 Supreme Judge and Sovereign Who placed it there " 
 not only as against modern materialistic and 
 agnostic systems of ethics, but also in the face of 
 the plausible ethics of Pantheism. As against this 
 last, it has more forcefully expounded the law of 
 right as for it an ethical law a moral law in the 
 real sense of the term, and not a natural law- 
 ethical because its ought lays moral obligation on us 
 with the hand of a Higher Will. It has found, with 
 Dorner, that man possesses conscience less than 
 conscience possesses him ; it has found, in fact, 
 Passavant, Auberlen, Schoberlein, and others, de- 
 
REALITY OF MORAL LAW. 445 
 
 clare in striking terms the upward path by which 
 conscience leads to the knowledge of God. With no 
 lack of power, it has driven home the necessity that 
 the spring or source of ethical obligation be sought in 
 nothing lower than some hyperphysical entity, which 
 shall be nothing less than the Ultimate Reality. 
 
 It is with law operative in us as rational beings 
 we have here to do, not as of necessity, but, under 
 the obedience of enlightened conscience, of voluntary 
 choice and acceptance. For, as Hofmann said, 
 conscience is our first and our final resort in the 
 field of duty. Let a man but doubt the reality of 
 such moral law as we have been speaking of in the 
 world, let him sit loosely to its claims upon his 
 homage and obedience, and life is emptied of moral 
 content and worth for him his moral world is 
 hopelessly shipwrecked. It is not to be thought of 
 as law created by man's reason a task to which 
 reason is quite unequal : it is that pre - existent 
 thing the majesty of whose authority reason does 
 but recognise. It is, in fact, that strange, ideal law 
 which conscience lays on us as something uncon- 
 ditionally obligatory, because by it, as true principle 
 of our being, we are to be impelled ever forwards 
 on the path of moral perfection, and advanced 
 beyond that which is towards that which ought to be. 
 It is the reign of the inner law of individual con- 
 science (das Gewissen), passing out into criticism of 
 the outer law or Sittlichkeit, as De Wette already 
 seems to have perceived. 
 
446 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 Whence, then, we may ask, hath man this ethical 
 law ? And the deep answers, "It is not in me " : 
 earth and sky alike know it not ; but whoso shall 
 search the spirit of man shall find it graven on 
 fleshly tablets of the heart. Whoso, let us add, 
 shall try to escape or supersede it, shall, as Kant 
 said, be guilty of moral fanaticism. For in the 
 true no less than eloquent words of another, " The 
 rule of right, the symmetries of character, the re- 
 quirements of perfection, are no provincialisms of 
 this planet : they are known among the stars : 
 they reign beyond Orion and the Southern Cross : 
 they are wherever the universal Spirit is : and no 
 subject mind, though it fly on one track for ever, 
 can escape beyond their bounds." 
 
 It was by Julius Mliller very properly pointed 
 out, in reference to Kant's apostrophe to Duty, 
 how very real in content, not mere unconditional 
 form is the moral order revealed by the law. 
 And our late theistic philosophy of religion has 
 maintained, with increasing skill and clearness, after 
 every appeal to evolution and every utterance of 
 agnostic ethics, that man is still and always a per- 
 sonal power and a responsible agent, conscious of 
 being bound by ethical law whose moral authority 
 for him no sophistries as to accumulations of ex- 
 pediency, or crystallisations of the experience of the 
 past, have been able to shake. And it has, with 
 unrelaxing moral force, insisted that this conscious- 
 ness of an internal law of duty, be the element of 
 
REIGN OF SPIRITUAL LAW. 447 
 
 obligation derived in whatever way it may, lands us 
 in the recognition of a righteous moral Governor, 
 who is God over all. 
 
 A Providence of natural law has plainly enough 
 been proved, but that is by no means sufficient. 
 We claim a reign of spiritual law, acting in accord- 
 ance with our needs as spiritual beings. Yes, and 
 a real reign it must be, in which the freedom of 
 God to act for and upon us shall in no wise be 
 unwarrantably fettered. We regard it as no other 
 than a most unwarrantable assumption to suppose 
 that the material laws of the universe must bind, 
 rather than subserve, the free action of God. If 
 there seems a chasm between the natural world and 
 the spiritual, of whose making is it but our own ? 
 Strangely true it is that, because we have dis- 
 joined the natural and the spiritual, we project 
 this sundered feeling or relation from ourselves 
 into God. That is anthropomorphism with a ven- 
 geance, and none the less is it so, that it claims 
 the sympathy of scientific materialism. Mansel did 
 not fail to point out how little absolute morality is 
 the result of Divine command, or even of Divine 
 creation, since it must be taken to exist co-eternally 
 with Deity. Law is seen to be, in the words of a 
 philosophical writer, " eternal in God the Supreme 
 Reason," and the will of God seen to act always 
 "in conformity with the law eternal in the reason of 
 God." The fact has been more clearly apprehended 
 that law, as conscience, belongs to the august realm 
 
448 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 of personality, and compels to a belief in corres- 
 pondent objective Reality. This working of moral 
 law through our personality was very explicitly 
 pointed out by Kant, who believed the life to 
 which such moral law calls us to be one that is 
 independent of animal nature, and even of the 
 whole world of sense. 
 
 Now, it has been better shown how ethical 
 standards have grown clear or dim according as 
 the idea of a personal God has become more or 
 less pure and vivid. We deem ourselves, then, 
 justified in claiming that theism has not been con- 
 tent to treat this authoritative thing called con- 
 science in the Spencerian mode of something merely 
 adventitious, but has insisted on regarding it as 
 something which, carrying with it the dread 
 sense of ethical obligation, rests on the facts of 
 personality, freedom, and responsibility. It has 
 found conscience to be no expression of mere 
 external law, but of law which is involved in the 
 fact and the freedom of our personality. It has 
 more nobly held, with one who has ably treated 
 of the ' Types of Ethical Theory,' that our sense 
 of moral obligation carries with it the postulate 
 of objective authority and is to be trusted, and 
 that this sense of the right consists not of mere 
 subjective suggestion, but carries in it the "solemn 
 persuasion" which belongs to any revelation of 
 right from a "higher personality." It has thus, 
 so far from leading thought to rest as it is so fre- 
 
INHERENT CHARACTER OF LAW. 449 
 
 quently content to do in impersonal law, brought 
 us a deepened sense of Personality supreme and 
 perfect as that of which Law in reality testifies. 
 
 But then we may say there has been a steady 
 advance in the perception that conscience is, as it 
 has been finely expressed, " the entering into the 
 individual of the objective law of right, the authority 
 of which is intrinsic and unconditioned ; which is 
 its own evidence, its own justification ; and which 
 would subsist to all eternity, as it has subsisted 
 from all eternity, though Christianity and all other 
 religions were swept into oblivion." For, has not 
 theology been gaining a surer hold of this inherent 
 character of law, as something which may be 
 thought of apart from its being imposed by the 
 Divine Will, to which, however, in its normal 
 exercise it is inalienably conformed ? Not in will, 
 indeed, but in reason, do we ground the universe, 
 and it is by His reason that the will of God is 
 energised. We accept the declarations of ethical 
 law when, as Dr W. L. Courtney and others have 
 well pointed out, moral law has so deeply felt " an 
 absolute and self-conscious Spirit" to be its own 
 presupposition, without which Absolute Personality 
 ethical law would lack its necessary sanctions, its 
 pinion, and its promise. 
 
 * The whole system of our belief," as Sidgwick 
 once said, " as to the intrinsic reasonableness of 
 conduct must fall, without a hypothesis unverifiable 
 by experience, reconciling the individual with the 
 
 2 F 
 
450 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 Universal Reason, without a belief, in some form 
 or other, that the moral order which we see im- 
 perfectly realised in this actual world is yet actually 
 perfect. If we reject this belief, the cosmos of duty 
 is thus really reduced to a chaos ; and the pro- 
 longed effort of the human intellect to frame a 
 perfect ideal of rational conduct is seen to have 
 been foredoomed to inevitable failure." The con- 
 siderations that inspired the writing of these words 
 abide, and make the truth they contain not less 
 real and binding to-day. 
 
 We accept the fine delineation of Dorner, in his 
 ' Ethics/ of the self-deification that should result 
 from the failure of morality to include in the love 
 of goodness also the love of the primal source of 
 goodness, the personal God. We take it that 
 theistic philosophy welcomes ethical law as a 
 principle of life and love rather than as a mere 
 imperative, with what Darwin styled its " imperi- 
 ous word ' ought.' " We believe that, with more 
 open vision, it recognises the spiritual source and 
 authority of that spiritual law by which man rules 
 himself and directs the natural forces within him, 
 which spiritual source and authority it finds again 
 in the personal God. And so we think it safe 
 to say that recent theistic philosophy of religion 
 has found fruitful advance in its enlarged recogni- 
 tion alike of the authority of ethical law, and of 
 the amazing multiplicity of its applications, calling, 
 as these do, for the deepest insight in endeavours 
 
RELIGIOUS TRUTH AND ETHICAL LAW. 451 
 
 to reconcile religious truth with ethical conception 
 and law. For we cannot but think that it has 
 more clearly discerned the capabilities of these 
 two as destined to dwell together in perfect re- 
 conciliation, while it has become more quick to 
 perceive their constant need of mutual adjustment. 
 On the side of ethical law, of which we are here 
 speaking, it has, for example, found itself in per- 
 fect accord with what Kant, in the Vorrede of his 
 ' Religion within the Limits of pure Reason,' was 
 able to urge, that " ethic issues inevitably (unum- 
 g&nglicK) in religion, by extending itself to the idea 
 of a sovereign moral Lawgiver, in Whose will that 
 is the end of creation which at the same time can 
 and ought to be the end of man." 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy has not suffered itself 
 to share the Spencerian forgetfulness of the great 
 and distinguishing feature of rational, as opposed 
 to animal, life namely, the adjustment of conflict- 
 ing principles, in the mighty endeavour after char- 
 acter and self - originated excellence, to inward 
 ethical law. Does it not more clearly perceive 
 such law of life and of growth to be 
 
 " Mirror of Earth, and Guide 
 To the Holies from sense withheld " ? 
 
 Frank has been at pains to show what conflict 
 there is ; as Wuttke said, it amounts to insoluble 
 contradiction, the higher and more distinctly the 
 moral consciousness is developed. We may not 
 
452 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 forget, however, that the law of duty, to which we 
 are to be subject, is really so glad and joyous a 
 thing that Wordsworth was able rightly to say 
 
 of it 
 
 " Flowers laugh before thee in their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads." 
 
 May we not say that it is just the crowning work 
 of that Christian personality, which Christianity 
 has come to develop in us, to call forth what 
 perhaps can only be termed an ethical tact or 
 wisdom that shall guide us aright amid the pres- 
 sures and confusions and complications that so 
 often make the way and knowledge of present 
 duty difficult and uncertain ? The theistic phil- 
 osophy has, we believe, felt the wisdom of the 
 Wordsworthian saying that 
 
 " to the solid ground 
 Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye," 
 
 and hence it has sought to put its religious rep- 
 resentations on stronger, because more natural, 
 grounds. But it has not allowed man's judgments 
 and choices to be robbed of their ethical character 
 by reducing his life to automatic movement within 
 the sphere of natural law, but has more success- 
 fully vindicated his powers of rational self-direction 
 under inspiration of the law of duty, "stern daughter 
 of the voice of God," as against the force of 
 impulsive principles or the stimulus of entourage 
 or environment. It has looked upon the solidarity 
 
MORAL LAW IN UNIVERSE. 453 
 
 of the universe, has found the moral law rooted 
 in its very structure, and has met the idea of 
 right as something undecomposable, sovereign, 
 unique in man. But this idea of obligation as 
 something in us, though not of us it seems to 
 find spring up within the human mind itself, even 
 though it has its ground in God, so truly has it 
 declared man to participate in the Divine Nature. 
 
 This implication of a Supreme Governor in the 
 notions of duty and obligation is already found 
 in the ' Ethics of Theism ' of Leitch and in other 
 British writers, but it has since been greatly elab- 
 orated and strengthened in the mode of its pre- 
 sentation. Nor have Gass and others in Germany 
 neglected to emphasise the process of culture re- 
 quired in respect of conscience. Martensen has 
 shown the dependence of this process of con- 
 science development on Knowledge and on Will, 
 and Hofmann has given expression to its need 
 of the revelation given in Scripture as its norm, 
 regulator, corrective, and co-efficient. We find an 
 advance to have been made in the vindication of the 
 validity of conscience, under the rigorous handling 
 of Dr Martineau, in view of evolutionary inquiry 
 into its origin. Theistic philosophy feels the signi- 
 ficance of what he says, in the second volume of his 
 ' Study of Religion/ to the effect that " the moral 
 law first reaches its integral meaning, when seen as 
 impersonated in a Perfect Mind, which communi- 
 cates it to us, and lends it power over our affec- 
 
454 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 tions sufficient to draw us into Divine Communion." 
 Hence the intimate relation with Ultimate Reality 
 into which it has found the moral consciousness 
 bring us : with the poet we are brought, in our 
 growing harmony with Divine Law, at length to 
 
 say- 
 
 " Our wills are ours, to make them Thine." 
 
 Yes, we will say that conscience still summons 
 men, in this late age, to repentance because of their 
 evil courses and their shortcomings in respect of the 
 moral ideal. May we not, then, say that our late 
 theistic philosophy has yielded, in accordance with 
 the spirit of its time, nobler recognition to the 
 presence and working in man of " the inward 
 sovereign spirit of the universe that has ever 
 moved onward from chaos to cosmos, from life- 
 lessness to life, from the outer to the inner " ? 
 May we not say it has passed out of the sphere 
 of those contradictions, in which the conceptions of 
 mere absolute law are so apt to be overtaken, into 
 the higher region where law seems a self-imposed or 
 self-originated thing, and the ethical is apprehended 
 as love ? May we not say it has found, for science 
 and for faith, for religion and for knowledge, a reign 
 of spiritual laws in the natural world, so real, that 
 each and all of these are led up to higher life in 
 " that God which ever lives and loves " ? May we 
 not say that this presence of spiritual law in man 
 carries within itself the promise and the potency of 
 immortality ? 
 
SPIRITUAL LAW. 455 
 
 We must, then, account that an unworthy philos- 
 ophy of religion which should not make ready and 
 ample recognition of the inspirations and upliftings, 
 nay, the redemptive and transfiguring influences, of 
 Divine law in man. At the same time, it is to be 
 acknowledged how great has grown the conflict of 
 faith the faith which transcends the thought of the 
 worlds as ordered by law, by law that virtually, in 
 the waxing light of science, takes the place of God. 
 But not after this fashion does our philosophy of 
 religion resolve all into law and disavow Deity, for 
 is He not to it the law itself, and law of all laws ? 
 What is law for us as spiritual beings but just truth 
 as it is in God the Supreme Reason ? Thus the 
 supreme law for us is that which we call love. That 
 which men call love is to be conceived as law, of 
 which it is the spiritual fulfilling. Not as fiat, nor 
 as arbitrary exercise of Divine Will, are these things 
 so, but as grounded in eternal reason. And if law 
 has no higher idea than the " respect - inspiring " 
 idea of personality, this is because the personality 
 behind it is that of the Absolute Reason. Not in 
 any mere abstractness or impersonality of law does 
 theistic philosophy rejoice, but in spiritual law which 
 is for us the will of a Supreme and Personal Being. 
 Hence the validity and reality of such laws as those 
 of prayer, of service, and of sacrifice, which are not 
 less truly laws because they are, from the standpoint 
 of Nature, supernatural. In fact, no perfect moral 
 action can be ours which does not so relate itself to 
 
456 THE REIGN OF LAW IN MAN. 
 
 One Who is basis and end of ethical law. And it 
 so relates itself that the perfect compatibility of 
 grace with law is always more fully confirmed in 
 experience. 
 
 How free man is we have elsewhere shown, but 
 that does not keep him from being under an ab- 
 solute reign of law. His is the dread power to 
 disobey the law written within him on sacred tablets 
 of the heart. His, too, the need and capability 
 of spiritual growth a need and presence of law 
 in respect of progress most clearly recognised by 
 Him Who had many things to say unto His fol- 
 lowers, which they at that time were not in fit 
 state to receive. Theistic philosophy is, then, just 
 as convinced of the reign of spiritual law in man 
 as it is of the physical providence or working of 
 God by natural law, which Dr John Young, in his 
 ' Creator and Creation,' and later writers have so 
 confidently maintained. The law that so reigns 
 within is law that Love has made, and therein 
 we may rejoice in law. Yes, to us, as to the poet 
 Browning, all may be love, yet all is still law. 
 Better than Browning's recognition is the remem- 
 brance of the unity presented to Christ in the 
 physical and the spiritual orders : they were one 
 to Him because God was One, and in and over 
 them both. And so for Him between them con- 
 tradictoriness there was none. As strange as it 
 is true abides the fact that love can be enjoined, 
 can be the object of law. When men tell us that 
 
SPIRITUAL LAW. 457 
 
 there is no speck of matter, no point in space, no 
 flowering blossom, no twinkling star, where nat- 
 ural law is not found, they tell us something that 
 is no more true than that 
 
 " Every virtue we possess, 
 And every conquest won, 
 And every thought of holiness," 
 
 are solely the result of the working of the law of 
 the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, making us free 
 from the law of sin and death. 
 
 The spiritual law of which we have been speak- 
 ing is nowise to be regarded as an arbitrarily im- 
 posed enactment, for it is really the organic law 
 of the soul's true life. Made we are for fellowship 
 with the Divine : nothing less is our destiny ; and 
 this is why we are under a reign of spiritual law 
 law that is so much larger than our earthly life 
 as to run onward and upward into the sphere of 
 endless existence. These things being so, theistic 
 philosophy finds in them abundant reason and justi- 
 fication for the reign of spiritual law under which 
 we have been placed. And that law means a true 
 and spiritual survival of the fittest, for whoso builds 
 the sacred edifice of his life by taking heed thereto 
 shall be as one that builds his house upon a rock 
 that never shall be moved. 
 
458 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 RECENT RECOGNITION OF MAN'S REDEMPTIVE 
 NEEDS. 
 
 THEISTIC philosophy of religion in these last days 
 has very clearly discerned alike the hope and the 
 need of redemption in some real and helpful sense 
 from without the race from above, while openly 
 acknowledging that it lies beyond its province to 
 pronounce on the nature and methods of the Divine 
 activity in the redemptive interference. It surely 
 cannot find any difficulty in seeing that the ideas 
 of shortcoming and of consequent propitiation must 
 soon arise in the experience of man, as he fails to 
 realise a purposeful obedience to the Deity dis- 
 closed to his dim and early conceptions. It has 
 more carefully recognised that, as we pass upward 
 out of the stages of nature-religion, the redemptive 
 interference, craved by man but issuing really from 
 God, becomes less conceived as deliverance from 
 external evils such as are found in nature and life, 
 and more as redemption from the moral evil found 
 
NEED OF REDEMPTION. 459 
 
 in man sad fruit of sin and disobedience. What 
 William Law, in his ' Spirit of Love/ said, with 
 the fine spiritual insight which characterised him, 
 remains true for the philosophy of religion in its 
 newer phases namely, that the ground and nature 
 of the Christian mysteries are understood by re- 
 membering that these mysteries " are in themselves 
 nothing else but what the nature of things" may 
 require, having "all their power" in a "natural 
 way or true fitness of cause for its effect," but 
 mysterious to us, because done in a way and 
 manner above what reason or nature can suggest. 
 The theistic philosophy of religion has not been 
 betrayed, by the necessary boldness of its philo- 
 sophical speculations, into losing its consciousness 
 of sin or treating as illusory the pangs of guilt, 
 for it has not relaxed, only enlarged, its con- 
 sciousness of God. Hence it owns that redemp- 
 tion and restoration of lost harmony are man's 
 needs, and not merely spiritual development and 
 communion with the Eternal. It perceives the 
 deep need the world still hath of "the crucifix 
 that came of Nazareth," and of a true Philosophic 
 der Erlb'sung, or gospel of redemption, if that 
 hydra-headed monster called sin is to be met and 
 overcome. Besides, it has more explicitly regarded 
 the Divine informing purpose which, in the religion 
 of revelation moved onward, always onward, in satis- 
 fying natural needs, to a redemptive culmination, as 
 that which forms its great distinguishing feature when 
 
460 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 compared with other religions. It sees in these other 
 religions, with Lenormant, the expectation of a 
 Redeemer, the aspiration towards a higher spiritual 
 law, a certain consciousness of the need of redemp- 
 tion, and a streak of hope of the same in their 
 sky. It sees, with Francis William Newman, in 
 speaking of * The Soul,' that " if theology is a 
 science of God, it cannot omit to treat of the 
 bright or sullied state of the mirror, in which 
 alone God's face is to be seen." It has certainly 
 found no valid reason why the creatures, who by 
 their thoughts of Him have wronged the Sovereign 
 Good, should not have their thoughts righted by 
 Him, and their transgressions covered by His his- 
 torical intervention. But theistic philosophy of re- 
 ligion holds that, in compassing these ends, we 
 may not lay down a priori the ways and bounds 
 in which the redemptive energy shall work through 
 and beyond nature's sequences. It has seen that 
 the only real restoration of sinful man has as its 
 postulate the revelation of God Himself, and not 
 of His mere truth or precept, as that revelation 
 appears to us in the redemption of Jesus mirror 
 of the love of God for man. For it has clearly 
 apprehended what Dorner distinctly declared that 
 the perfecting of the self-revelation of God meant 
 nothing else than the incarnation of God. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion has main- 
 tained with more informed intelligence the reality 
 
REALITY OF SIN. 4 6l 
 
 of the fact of s'mfons et origo malorum alike in 
 the race and in the individual, so resisting every 
 pantheistic tendency to reduce sin to a necessary 
 element in the Divine process. It has maintained 
 a chastened sense of sin's real relation to God, to 
 Whom as personal Deity we sustain our first 
 and, perhaps we should say, our only real rela- 
 tion. It has, in fact, found sin, or the problem 
 of moral evil, to be the sore of the ages. None, 
 perhaps, may fully solve it for us, least of all can 
 any who shirk the facts of its deep-seated hold and 
 universal sway. Side by side with this it has more 
 boldly faced the pessimistic aspects of man's pro- 
 gress, and has more simply and courageously de- 
 clared man's need of redemption in face of every 
 ineffective effort after self-redemption. It has done 
 so because it knows no despair either of man's 
 capabilities, or of God's powers of redemption. 
 Yes, and to be able in such a time to know and 
 believe alike in the Divinely redemptive forces 
 and in man's capacity for receptiveness of these 
 redeeming powers cannot be a thing of small 
 moment. It has more clearly perceived that no 
 abstract and air - drawn theories of the ultimate 
 perfectibility of mankind can suffice, while full and 
 thorough reckoning is not made with those uni- 
 versal facts of sinful need and inability, whereby 
 man's action has become perverted and the life 
 of his soul embittered. Because we have hope in 
 
462 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 the goodness of God, we must not shirk the weary 
 and the heavy weight of this sinful, unintelligible 
 world. 
 
 More unequivocal has now grown the testimony 
 of the philosophy of religion to the need of Divine 
 intervention and of spiritual aid, in virtue of the 
 vigour with which sin has worked its way into 
 the natures of man moral, physical, and intellec- 
 tual. Always more conspicuously has the truth 
 stood out, not as a doctrine of revelation, but as 
 a fact of observation and experience, that the very 
 earliest springs of our moral life seem tainted with 
 the presence of evil in such wise as to point for 
 its genesis or rise to something that lies behind 
 our own free conscious self. And the race is seen 
 to be as truly wound around to-day with a sense 
 of uneasiness and guilt like a Laocoon in serpent 
 embrace as in any less enlightened, less refined 
 time. " Remorse," it is seen and felt, "is not 
 repentance, and even repentance washes out no 
 stain. Self-forgiveness is impossible. The trum- 
 pet is always sounding ; every day is a judgment 
 day ; and every one of us goes to the left. Ge- 
 henna is only the logical goal of sin." This fact 
 of ceaseless judgment should hardly appear arbi- 
 trary or strange to men at least before whose bar 
 of mortal judgment the Maker and Lord of all is 
 being tried, "every day that passes, every hour 
 that flies." There is a world of inner fact none 
 the less real that it is inner in which we still, no 
 
REAL SENSE OF SIN. 463 
 
 less than the king in " Hamlet," have our being, 
 and wherein we say, with him 
 
 "What rests? 
 
 Try what repentance can : what can it not ? 
 Yet what can it, when one can not repent ? 
 O wretched state ! O bosom, black as death ! 
 O limed soul, that struggling to be free, 
 Art more engaged ! " 
 
 Let there be no mistake here. Remorse is a 
 plant that still, in this late age, springs up on the 
 soil of our violated moral ideals, and penitence is 
 still a hand that indicates the out-reaching of desire 
 after return to the true ideal. The soul that has 
 sought out delightful, but selfish, paths for itself 
 is still awaking to keen spiritual hunger and pro- 
 found self-abasement : 
 
 " * Make me a cottage in the vale,' she says, 
 
 1 Where I may mourn and pray. 
 Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are 
 
 So lightly, beautifully built : 
 Perchance I may return with others there, 
 When I have purged my guilt.' " 
 
 We therefore say, in a word, that no study of 
 the atonement or redemption wrought of Jesus has 
 at all enabled us to dispense with the sense of sin ; 
 it has rather deepened than destroyed it. Not that 
 there has not in our time been far larger and more 
 generous acknowledgment of the impulse towards 
 good, and the progress in politics and philosophy, 
 science and art, that have never been wanting in 
 the pre - Christian and non - Christian worlds, but 
 
464 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 only that just in our time, with its fuller acknow- 
 ledgment of these merits, have there been a more 
 distinct sense and a clearer recognition of their 
 insufficiency to compass the redemption of the 
 world, and a more emphatic witness of history 
 than ever before, that in every nation and in every 
 individual reside deep needs of a redemptive pro- 
 cess for the restoration of spiritual harmony. Not 
 less needful is the redemptive process seen to be 
 for every human society than for every individual 
 soul, for not otherwise can the life of self-renounc- 
 ing love only true and worthy ideal be really 
 attained. The sense of moral failure has been 
 too deeply graven on the world's heart, and the 
 community of moral need between men of every 
 nation has been too deeply felt, for any doubt to 
 remain of the appalling need of redemption to the 
 race, as to the individual. 
 
 Recent philosophy of religion has, in fact, found 
 the ethnic faiths so singularly unable to handle 
 the problem of evil in its nature, origin, and con- 
 sequences, as to make one feel almost like entering 
 a new and higher world when we pass into the 
 sphere of the teachings of Christian Doctrine on 
 sin, alike as it affects man and as it disorders 
 the realm of God's moral government. Here the 
 theistic philosophy of religion of recent times has 
 been met by the Christian theology of the period, 
 and by it has been taken up into those truths into 
 which of itself it could not come. With Mozley, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL RELIGION. 465 
 
 in his ' Lectures and other Theological Papers/ 
 it has then seen that " Christianity is founded upon 
 certain great primary wants and affections of the 
 human soul, which it meets, to which it corresponds, 
 and of which it furnishes the proper objects and 
 satisfactions." Among the things it has most plainly 
 seen have been that "there is the feeling after a 
 God ; there is the instinct of prayer ; there is con- 
 science and the sense of sin ; there is the longing 
 for and dim expectation of immortality." And it 
 has more carefully observed how " Christianity sup- 
 plies the counterpart of these affections and wants 
 of the soul," and how it is "as supplying this 
 counterpart that it recommends itself in the first 
 instance to us"- the religion of redemption. The 
 religion of redemption it is seen, /car' ego-xtfv, to 
 be, for very different in source and centre and 
 progressive principle it is from Buddhism or any 
 other suggested redemptive parallels. This is none 
 the less truly the case, if it be even so that " the 
 new gospel of self-redemption through resignation 
 and self-annihilation finds among the representatives 
 of modern culture more reverent hearers than the 
 Gospel ancient yet ever young of redemption 
 through Jesus Christ." The Christian philosophy 
 of religion has, as we think, more patiently viewed 
 the negative aspect or form of redemption whereby 
 it appears in the desire merely to escape the world. 
 The positive form it has more explicitly treated 
 as it shows itself in realised and harmonious union 
 
 2 G 
 
466 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 with the Divine or Absolute Life, in the sphere 
 where nought avails but the faith that works 
 through love. For it knows that such new and 
 larger consciousness of God, as springs out of 
 this redemptive indwelling of God in man, it was 
 the design of the redemptive work of Christ to 
 create. " But the sacred happiness of a heart 
 which knows it is known of God, is not derived 
 from approving its own attainments, but from the 
 very acting of its insatiable desires, and from its 
 sympathy with the sources of life and joy. Its 
 outcry is after Perfection. It longs after God's 
 own holiness : for this it would give earth and 
 heaven. It no sooner effects one conquest than 
 it aspires after another." Yes, and it is to be 
 added that " the consciousness of this infinite long- 
 ing to be more and more like to the Only Perfect 
 One seems to be the essence of a good conscience." 
 It is just these deep redemptive needs which the 
 Spirit of Jesus is here to satisfy, to meet in most 
 real and actual manner. But it will be in the 
 case of those whose needs are so real, and who 
 do not empty of real spiritual content such factors 
 as sin, repentance, moral responsibility, and free- 
 dom, that such redemptive process will have its 
 most glorious and perfect result. Further, we dare 
 to say that if any one can persuade himself that 
 such perfect issue is capable of attainment through 
 any Hegelian theories of immanence and unity 
 'twixt God and man, he is simply hugging to 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE PROCESS REAL. 467 
 
 himself a fond philosophic delusion. Fearless and 
 thoroughgoing must be our method here, and room 
 for dallying there is none. The interests of truth 
 and spiritual reality are before all names, even the 
 greatest. The redemptive vocation and perfect 
 redemption that await man have therefore been 
 more justly and largely presented in our time in 
 their relation to man's free unswerving effort after 
 a spiritual ideal, the redemptive process being 
 crowned at last by recovery of such nature as God 
 designed, and by such spiritual consummation as 
 the angel-song of Faust presents 
 
 "Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht, 
 Den konnen wir erlosen." 
 
 "Who ever strives forward, with unswerving will, 
 Him can we aye deliver." 
 
 In order to the accomplishment of this great 
 end, we are with Pfleiderer when he lately said 
 that the reverse side of universal sin and need of 
 redemption " is found in the universal ability of 
 all men to be redeemed, which is based on the 
 indestructible essence of the Divine Image that 
 is in every man, and, even amidst the thorn- 
 thicket of sin and worldly lust, never becomes 
 entirely extinct, but remains the living germ of a 
 better future, of a new man in God." Yet, not as 
 effected by natural power of our own, is the re- 
 demptive result in its positive aspects to be con- 
 ceived, but only as requiring the highest concur- 
 
468 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 rence of the self-surrendered will with the working 
 of the D'ivine Spirit of Jesus Christ. We may 
 freely allow that the moral senses, inward bearings, 
 hygienic and educational aspects of redemption, 
 have of late been much more properly emphasised, 
 without going so far as those who Pfleiderer, 
 for example in their stress on the ethical con- 
 ception of education, clearly seem to us to fail at 
 least of setting our self - sacrifice and voluntary 
 obedience in their proper relation of dependence, 
 for their practical power and real spiritual efficacy, 
 on the one sacrifice of Jesus and the virtue that 
 flows therefrom. Even a Schopenhauer has been 
 able to see clearly enough the utter inability of 
 man to achieve his own redemption or work out 
 salvation for himself in such a way. 
 
 To a Christianly theistic philosophy of religion 
 the revelation of God given in Christianity is not 
 a revelation for revelation's sake or instruction's 
 sake alone, but is also, and much more, a revelation 
 of love, a revelation designed towards redemptive 
 ends. Conditioned as salvation may be by man's 
 will, man is yet unable to restore the rent bond of 
 fellowship betwixt himself and God. If it de- 
 pended on him alone, he must remain without 
 redemption. God is working unchangeably for 
 the fulfilment of those spiritual ends which are 
 dearer to Him than any other. All things are 
 mediated by Christ, but God is to be thought of as 
 ceaselessly active. As Amiel has said, " To win 
 
THE REDEMPTIVE PROCESS REAL. 469 
 
 true peace, a man needs to feel himself directed, 
 pardoned, and sustained by supreme power, to feel 
 himself in the right road, at the point where God 
 would have him be, in order with God and the 
 universe." Yea, and though severe words have 
 been lately written as to what science may say 
 concerning the mediatorial and priestly functions 
 of Jesus, it will possibly be time enough to resolve 
 these into superfluities and profanities when we have 
 become rid of such sense of sin and guilt as are 
 still left to us in this time. We still expect science 
 to proceed in a scientific manner, and include the 
 most real facts and demands of the religious 
 interest and conscience in its consideration. That 
 is to say, in so far as such matters come within 
 the scope of its inquiry at all We certainly do 
 not believe that the spiritually enlightened con- 
 sciousness of man will be able to remain long with- 
 out postulating redemptive provision in a deeper 
 sense than subjective change in the sinner himself 
 merely would imply even in that true sense in 
 which a real change of relation betwixt the sinner 
 and Deity is effected by the strong Son of God ; 
 for, unless we are prepared to turn our backs upon 
 the unequivocal testimony of the collective ex- 
 perience of the Christian centuries, nothing can be 
 plainer than that the purest, saintliest, and most 
 spiritually illumined souls still crave, always have 
 craved in more or less conscious ways such an 
 objective ground of pardon, such an outer spring 
 
470 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 of cleansing, purification, and moral virtue, as is 
 afforded in the sacrifice of Jesus, Saviour of men. 
 
 We, for our part, are inclined to think that 
 modern philosophy of redemption does not always 
 sufficiently realise what a strongly natural basis 
 mediation has a basis bringing it within the scope 
 of Natural Religion as, in fact, the natural out- 
 come of one of the deepest spiritual desires of 
 men. Some effort after mediation is met wherever 
 religion enshrines a Personal Deity. And surely 
 the human need has grown always more manifest to 
 us of means whereby the conditions of moral and 
 spiritual recuperation shall be maintained, and this 
 need is plainly one not to be met by theory of any 
 sort, but by deep-seated atoning fact. Yes ; and so 
 not merely the need, but the Divine meeting of 
 that need, have grown always more conspicuous 
 under the developing disclosures of Love Divine, 
 so that a philosophy of atonement is now possible 
 and justifiable. 
 
 The Christian philosophy of religion rejoices in 
 the greater stress on the historical and ethical 
 aspects of Christ's redemptive work which recent 
 years have witnessed, without, however, succumbing 
 to the Ritschlian tendencies to sit loosely to the 
 relation of that redemptive work to sin. We can 
 surely say so much in agreement with Frank's 
 recent ' Geschichte und Kritik ' without needing to 
 commit ourselves to all his inveighing against the 
 sterility of Ritschlianism. For he is in our view a 
 
CRITICISM OF RITSCHLIANISM. 471 
 
 strange thinker who can find in Ritschl a satisfying 
 attitude towards the Divine displeasure in view of 
 sin as present, as palpable, and as perfectly real, 
 fact. We may maintain the ethical emphasis in 
 Christianity, may uphold the importance of mystical 
 union with God, and may yet feel that sin is not a 
 matter to be lightly passed over, nor Christ's rela- 
 tion to it a vague and unimportant thing, nor the 
 most exalted communion with God that can possibly 
 be depicted a secure possession and undoubted 
 possibility, until some radical and thoroughgoing 
 solution of sin and guilt has been furnished from 
 the redemptive work of the historic Christ. The 
 historic basis need be no occasion of stumbling, as 
 being but the/#f/ dappui on which our speculative 
 and ethical philosophy must of necessity rest, in 
 virtue of Christianity being essentially redemption 
 from sin through the man Christ Jesus, and of its 
 revelation having a continual tendency to become 
 inward and natural. 
 
 In its individual operation, the redemption pro- 
 ceeds from the sphere of the inner spirit from the 
 hological into the ethical, and, in certain ways 
 and degree, into the physical also. To this last, 
 to wit, the redemption of the body, belongs, in an 
 institutional sense, the redemption of the Church, 
 which is His Body, a redemption whose need is 
 deeply realised in Christian philosophy, if the 
 Church, as loyal to her risen and living Head, is 
 to become unworldly and spiritual All these are 
 
4/2 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 but parts of the one great redemptive process, and 
 the grace of God is here for the healing of all that 
 is rent and broken. It is here to impart energy 
 to the spirit in that warfare against the flesh from 
 which there is no sign of discharge to time, enlight- 
 enment, or culture. Still does the alien flesh con- 
 tinue to show that resistance to the Spirit which 
 recalls the lines of Goethe 
 
 "Dem Herrlichsten, was auch der Geist empfangen 
 Drangt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an." 
 
 This conflict calls to a positing of reason, spirit, 
 God, rather than body, flesh, nature. For still 
 those two, flesh and spirit borne, as said Plato, as 
 by steeds in opposite directions meet and clash 
 amid the quivering of our whole being. What man 
 is he who does not know how powerless in those 
 supreme hours of life is anything short of the grace 
 of Jesus Christ to enable us to triumph, and like 
 the poet's warrior " through the heat of conflict " 
 keep " the law in calmness made " ? 
 
 The Christian philosophy of religion is wise 
 enough to see very clearly how the notion of those 
 who take God's historical action in redemption to 
 have been put forth for the purpose of creating 
 moral power is a notion which simply destroys 
 itself. It puts into the action what should be put 
 into the Divine reason, character, and mind revealed 
 to us in and through the action. It fails to do 
 justice to the Godward aspect for such there is and 
 must certainly be of the sacrificial work by which 
 
THE MEDIATIONAL ASPECTS OF REDEMPTION. 4/3 
 
 the Redeemer frees us from our enthralment. In 
 the mediational work of redemption it is God Whom 
 we see in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, 
 and in the very principles of the atonement He 
 must be just as really present as He was in its 
 original spring or motive, so that into the mediation 
 shall enter nothing which " would only distress and 
 insult Him." For all that, there has been no lack 
 in our time of a deep entering with Schleiermacher, 
 Rothe, Macleod Campbell, Edwards, and others 
 into a sense of the fellow-feeling (Mitgefuhl} with 
 sinful men shown by Christ as humanity's Centre 
 and Representative a sympathetically vicarious 
 apprehension of sin on His part nothing short of 
 perfect. Like Dante, when he saw the two comple- 
 mentary natures of Christ human and Divine in 
 the eyes of Beatrice, we, under His moving power, 
 at once worship and follow Him Who, one coherent 
 Personality to us, is both ideal Man and " strong 
 Son of God." 
 
 " Come in lo specchio il Sol, non altrimenti 
 La doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava, 
 Or con uni or con altri reggimenti." 
 
 Of which for the present we shall adopt Dugdale's 
 rendering, " Like the Sun shining on a mirror, so 
 the double-natured creature threw its beams through 
 those eyes, now with the acts of one nature, now 
 with those of the other." 
 
 And the uniqueness of Christ as the sin-bearer 
 our late Christian philosophy of religion has found 
 to be as real and striking a phenomenon as ever it 
 
4/4 MANS REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 was to saint or thinker of an earlier time. Only, 
 His redemption is less mechanically conceived : 
 the redemptive process, by which forgiveness is 
 achieved, is thought of in a less arbitrary and 
 juridical fashion, and forgiveness itself is conceived 
 as but the gateway to life the life in God of which 
 we have spoken. Our religious philosophy and our 
 spiritual life have surely found courage enough 
 whole-heartedly to accept both facts or ends of the 
 redemptive process as brought out in the couplet, 
 
 " He died that we might be forgiven, 
 He died to make us good." 
 
 Without being careful to theorise overmuch, we 
 are with such acceptance pretty well content. Such 
 vicariousness as is implied in His suffering is seen 
 to be no arbitrary enactment, but part of a uni- 
 versal necessity or law that marks every step of 
 spiritual advance. Our world of to-day has no 
 more spiritual principle than that of redemption 
 by sacrifice no principle of greater potency and 
 promise. On that principle, the principle of sacri- 
 fice gateway to larger life the God who " gave" 
 His only begotten Son for us has set His seal, and 
 the purity, energy, fruitfulness, and attractiveness 
 of our lives can be derived from no other source than 
 this fount of sacrifice. It is that these ends of life 
 may be realised in us that the mighty consecrations 
 of God are upon us, and we bear in our bodies the 
 marks of the Lord Jesus. But who does not know 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF SACRIFICE. 475 
 
 the need for stern self -questioning here, that the 
 Divine glory and counsel in us be not hindered ? 
 
 Deeper than usual is Schopenhauer religiously 
 when he says that " the inmost kernel of Christi- 
 anity is the truth that suffering the Cross is the 
 real end and object of life," even if his under- 
 standing of the case be not quite ours. Such an 
 end suffering is, only because in the fiery ordeal 
 spiritual force will be set free for, and within, the 
 soul. Spiritual energy will be thereby generated, 
 spiritual freedom will be born. Yes, without suffer- 
 ing, in some shape or another, there is for us no 
 spiritual mint to make fresh and lasting endow- 
 ments possible for the enrichment of the soul. The 
 new births of spiritual power must ever have their 
 attendant pangs of pain or sorrow. And the 
 deeper the pangs the greater the power. Not 
 only, then, is the law of sacrifice for us the deepest 
 in the universe law of heaven and of God but 
 it is a law under whose actual experience and inner 
 working we must be continually coming, as we 
 reach after life's supreme realisation or attainment. 
 And, though the clear intellectual apprehension of 
 the significance of this spiritual principle or law is 
 no uncommon thing in our time, we are compelled 
 to the belief that any deep or striking exemplifica- 
 tion of it is the rare accomplishment of those who 
 are, alas ! always too few. 
 
 If, as the Rev. C. Voysey remarks in his recent 
 ' Theism,' " the Christian does not really worship 
 
4/6 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 and love the same God as the Theist does," did 
 it never we may ask, although his treatment is 
 practical rather than theoretical and scientific 
 occur to Mr Voysey, in his anxiety " to avoid 
 mistakes," how largely this may be the result only 
 when the God of the Christian has his repre- 
 sentation at Mr Voysey 's hands ? It may not be 
 amiss in this connection to recall what Dr Dale 
 has said in his ' Christian Doctrine,' that " Theism 
 may be as serious an obstacle to the reception of 
 the Christian Gospel as Atheism ; for the God 
 of many theists is a God so remote from man 
 that it is inconceivable to them that He should 
 have become ' flesh ' at the impulse of an infinite 
 love for our race, and should have lived a life 
 of conflict and of suffering, and died a death of 
 shame and horror for our salvation." Yes, it is 
 faith in the redeeming Christ that pours vigour and 
 reality into our belief in God. To the Christian 
 philosophy of religion there is for humanity one 
 perfect ideal that which has become real in the 
 person of Christ which it has found no sufficient 
 reason to give up. There is for it one ideal 
 Mediator, whose mediation and worship it has 
 found no adequate cause after the so-called evolu- 
 tion of the Christ myth to abandon. There is 
 for it, too, one ideal harmony or redemption, which, 
 individual, yet catholic, definite, and practical, is 
 that effected in Him. 
 
 We are fully conscious how far removed is all 
 this from such a "philosophy of redemption" 
 
CRITICISM OF MAINLANDER. 477 
 
 {Philosophic der Erlb'sung) as that propounded by 
 Mainlander, who would have us wait for that ideal 
 socialistic state in which the great longing will be 
 to have our names blotted out of the Book of 
 Life. For redemption, with him, really lies in the 
 path to non-being. The will to die is the strange 
 philosophy of redemption brought us by this dis- 
 ciple of the philosopher who gave us the will to 
 live. Of course, he would have us still retain life 
 that we might help the hastening of redemption 
 for others, even though redemption, full and final, 
 comes by death. Concerning which philosophy of 
 redemption it is to be said that, far removed from 
 it as east from west stands the theistic philosophy 
 of religion, finding its redemption, not by destroyal 
 or even disparagement of man's personality, but 
 by the very development of it as highest flowering 
 of the redemption that is by faith in Christ. 
 
 When God was, in the fulness of the time, made 
 manifest in Him, when the gift unspeakable, 
 
 " God's Presence and His very Self, 
 And Essence all-divine," 
 
 when, we say, such gift "did flesh and blood 
 refine," that we might become one with Him, the 
 most thrilling point was reached in the religious 
 evolution of the race. Yea, and never must it be 
 lost sight of, that behind and below all theorisings 
 of the schools is the fact that God really stands 
 to us in an atoning attitude that there is indeed 
 atoning fact in God. For sinners at least what- 
 
4/8 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 ever might have been the case with pure spirits- 
 such a God as might content the theist will not suf- 
 fice : God must be known as He appears in Christ 
 Jesus. If the facts of His earthly life and its inter- 
 cessory continuity are anything at all, they are facts, 
 and not merely speculative doctrines. They are 
 facts which make religion possible in the future 
 to the spirit of man at least the future of spiritual 
 man. 
 
 But all that has now been said neither was, nor 
 is, to supersede, only to start, movement of the 
 soul forward into light and life and order, and to 
 make boundless growths for it possible. For what 
 philosophy of religion can doubt that, after all, as 
 Mozley once said, justice and mercy and mediation 
 are each and all of them but fragments ? "What 
 indeed are they but great vistas and openings into 
 an invisible world in which is the point of view 
 which brings them all together ? " No fear of 
 Patripassianism must keep us from holding, as men 
 now more readily do, that the love of God does 
 suffer thwarting, defeat, and anguish at the hands 
 of sinful men. It has even been said that " theology 
 has no falser idea than that of the impassibility of 
 God. If He is capable of sorrow, He is capable 
 of suffering ; and were He without the capacity 
 for either, He would be without any feeling of the 
 evil of sin or the misery of man. The very truth 
 that came by Jesus Christ may be said to be summed 
 up in the passibility of God." Patience may here 
 
PROPITIATION OF THE IDEAL. 479 
 
 have a perfect work in respect of those " broken 
 lights" of redemptive principle and process which 
 must always come immeasurably short of the Lord 
 of Light and Truth Himself. A redemption which 
 shall be worthy of Him must always transcend our 
 poor representations of it, must always remain in 
 the region of love's ideal, and the sphere of atoning 
 fact that seeks to realise such ideal. Thus is the 
 ideal propitiated. Nowhere is it more permissible 
 to recall, with the poet, how overgrown all here 
 is with theory, but yet how " green " abides " the 
 golden tree of life." 
 
 " Grau, theurer Freund, 1st alle Theorie, 
 Und grim des Lebens goldner Baum." 
 
 " Grey, friend, is all theory ; green 
 Is the golden tree of life." 
 
 And we dare to say that the remedy for the 
 wrestlings and perplexities of this time must be 
 found in a deeper assertion of the Divine life within 
 the soul of the age. The soul of the age must be 
 more willing to lose all that it may find the life 
 in which is light. It must suffer itself to be more 
 penetrated with the Goethean sentiment 
 
 " Und so lang Du das nicht hast, 
 
 Dieses ' Stirb und Werde ' ! 
 Bist Du nur ein triiber Gast 
 Auf der dunklen Erde." 
 
 " Till this truth thou knowest : 
 
 ' Die to live again ' 
 Stranger-like thou goest 
 In a world of pain." 
 
480 MAN'S REDEMPTIVE NEEDS. 
 
 For who can doubt that when the redemptive grace 
 of God shall have more profoundly penetrated the 
 soul of the age, its speculative thought shall fulfil 
 its function with transfigured power ? Yea, there 
 shall no anti - theistic philosophy stand before it. 
 May its baptism of light and power speedily 
 come ! 
 
48 1 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 RECENT THOUGHT ON THE SPIRITUAL NATURE, 
 AFFINITIES, AND GOAL OF MAN. 
 
 RECENT theistic philosophy of religion has had no 
 light and easy task in cleaving a way of advance 
 for itself. It has often seemed so otiose, notwith- 
 standing the advances we have set forth, that the 
 difficulties do not always appear so great as they 
 have really been. The immensities of the physical 
 universe have, in the name of science, been thrust 
 upon the spirit of man by Agnosticism and Material- 
 ism, the evolutionary philosophy, so called, of the 
 Spencerian school, in ways by which man has not 
 only been cast down from the centre of the spatial 
 universe, but the kinship of man, so called " minia- 
 ture of God," with ultimate Divine Reality, has 
 been lost in terms of purely natural being. 
 
 What hath not science wrought ! Our notions 
 of origins of man and the cosmos it has simply 
 revolutionised ; the dislocation of the former hell 
 and heaven, those last resorts of realism, is another 
 
 2 H 
 
482 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 of the feats of star-eyed science : it has given us 
 a new heaven no closed solid vault with much 
 joy and no progress and a new earth no station- 
 ary stage dissociate from suns that blaze and stars 
 that whirl through infinite space. Science, up- 
 setting former notions of topographic sort, with 
 their sometimes crude and almost " peep - show " 
 character, has made imagination reel before the 
 magnitudes of the universe in time and space. It 
 has, with its astronomic synthesis of an uncom- 
 puted wealth of ultra-terrestrial life, dispersed the 
 lingering notion of the world-systems of the uni- 
 verse as only infinite mechanism. 
 
 " Think you this mould of hopes and fears 
 Could find no statelier than his peers 
 In yonder hundred million spheres ? " 
 
 It has brought home, even to the dense and un- 
 progressive thought of the Churches, such facts as 
 that nothing in the world is single, that nothing in 
 the universe is stationary, and that evolution may 
 possibly be an all - inclusive law of the universe, 
 since, as it is said in ' Faust '- 
 
 " Still quiring as in ancient time 
 
 With brother spheres in rival song, 
 The sun with thunder-march sublime 
 Moves his predestined course along." 
 
 " Die Sonne tont nach alter Weise 
 In Bruderspharen Wettgesang, 
 Und ihre vorgeschrieb 'ne Reise, 
 Vollendet sie mit Donnergang." 
 
THE FEATS OF SCIENCE. 483 
 
 It has made the theologic mind rub its eyes and look 
 out, and see creation evolved out of its morning 
 mist. It has stilled the soul into deepest awe 
 before its mighty disclosures of the sweep and 
 uniformity of law. It has wrested the rule of 
 the world, no more the small cabinet world of an 
 earlier time, out of the hands of God, and trans- 
 ferred it to physical law. All this hath science 
 done at least, nought of all this has been left 
 undone in the name of science. And, if our rever- 
 ence has outlived these disenchantments of science, 
 it has been to exclaim 
 
 " Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways, 
 And how small a whisper do we hear from Him ! " 
 
 If our vision has not become dimmed to the 
 unity of the Cosmos which science has established, 
 it has been that we might look on that unity and 
 see it to be spiritual. But first let us say that, 
 to the results of a science whose arrow " flieth 
 by day," it only needed that Criticism add the 
 reducing of the revelation records to a state of 
 fluid, and the devastation of former faith would 
 be complete. It only needed those defects and 
 flaws historical, literary, scientific, moral, and re- 
 ligious even, to which the attention of the age 
 has been directed, to be set forth in the way 
 they have been, for not only the hold on Biblical 
 theism to be relaxed, but also the real strength of 
 theism as grounded in pure or natural reason to 
 be left all unperceived. It has been in such an 
 
484 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 atmosphere that the theistic interpretation of the 
 world has been called in late times to vindicate 
 the spiritual nature and capacities of man his 
 imageship of the Divine, and right nobly has it 
 done so. Its metaphysic of man is one in which 
 the immanent relation of God to humanity that 
 immediate relation despite which the knowledge of 
 God yet comes to us mediated by our physical, 
 social, mental, and spiritual relations is held to 
 be the sustaining principle of all that man is. Yes, 
 God Himself is the ultimate basis of man's being : 
 it is God that worketh in man to will and to work 
 for His good pleasure. Theism has shown less 
 leaning to the former conception of those who 
 
 viewed 
 
 " Our natural world too insularly," 
 
 and has widened its view of nature as that which, 
 in a large sense, is inclusive of man, "the roof 
 and crown of things." It sees, with Professor 
 Calderwood, in a recent paper before the Royal 
 Society of Edinburgh, " that man belongs to 
 nature, and in respect of his whole being comes 
 within the scope of science," as it also perceives 
 that " an evolution theory must include man, or 
 acknowledge that it is not a theory of existence 
 as a whole." It thus takes man to be what Pro- 
 fessor Edward Caird, in his work on Kant, says 
 namely, a being who doubly presupposes Nature, 
 both because he is a spirit finding its organism in 
 an animal body, and because he finds the presup- 
 
MAN AND NATURE. 485 
 
 position and environment of his life in the system 
 of Nature. It sees the spiritual man to be but 
 the true blossoming of man as natural 
 
 " Man builds the soaring spires, 
 That sing his soul in stone : of earth he draws, 
 Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, 
 His purest fires." 
 
 It has set forth man's relation to nature in which 
 last it sees no reason to resent the intrusion of 
 personal elements so that to him, with Carlyle, 
 as child of nature, the universe is "not dead and 
 demoniacal, a charnel - house with spectres, but 
 Godlike and my Father's." Nature for it exists 
 not for itself, but for that which is spiritual. The 
 Hegelian conception of nature as seeking a certain 
 return into the spiritual is not to be thought of 
 as without any foothold in fact or reality. No ; 
 there is too much of God in it for that. In fact, 
 we go on, with the poet of the " Paradiso," to 
 affirm that 
 
 " If the world below would fix its mind 
 On the foundation which is laid by Nature, 
 Pursuing that, 'twould have the people good." 
 
 " E se il mondo laggiu ponesse mente 
 Al fondamento che Natura pone, 
 Seguendo lui, avria buona la gente." 
 
 If nature were all nature blind and unconscious 
 we mean then would Schopenhauer be certainly 
 justified in claiming that nothing here is worth 
 our effort, but that the world is bankrupt at all 
 
486 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 ends, and life a business which does not pay ex- 
 penses. We have seemed to hear our late theistic 
 philosophy asking, with an incredulous air, 
 
 " Are God and Nature then at strife 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams ? " 
 
 Of course they are not at strife ; but they speak of 
 separate themes in diverse tongues. We have found 
 science return to find that, spoil-laden and laurel- 
 crowned, for her " a thousand things are hidden 
 still." We do not account our recent theistic phil- 
 osophy of religion forgetful of a greatness beside 
 which astronomic immensities pale their fires the 
 greatness of the spiritual, the glories of revelation 
 and redemption, and the grandeurs of immortality. 
 We maintain the primacy of mind and its manifes- 
 tations undisturbed by measureless masses of matter. 
 We claim to be more and other than so many 
 pinions and wheels in some vast mechanism reach- 
 ing from minutest atoms up to mighty clusters 
 of suns. So much at least of spiritual law have 
 we found in the natural world. It is because nature 
 is so instinct with life, with spirit, that we can hold 
 converse with it : the goings forth of our spiritual 
 being are that they may meet the Divine or Eternal 
 Spirit which breathes in Nature. Thus, indeed, 
 has been realised in our theistic philosophy of 
 religion what Fichte was able so well to point 
 out when he said that " the dead inert mass which 
 choked up space has vanished, and instead thereof 
 flows and waves and rushes the eternal stream of 
 
NATURE AND GOD. 487 
 
 life and power and deed. All is quick, all is soul, 
 and gazes upon us with bright spirit - eyes, and 
 speaks in spirit-tones to the heart." For it sees, 
 with the poet of the " Inferno," how Nature ap- 
 pears, to a thoughtful philosophy, to take her course 
 not in one place only from the understanding 
 and thought of God, and from His workmanship 
 
 " Filosofia, mi disse, a chi la intende, 
 
 Nota non pure in una sola parte, 
 
 Come natura lo suo corso prende 
 
 Dal divino intelletto e da sua arte." 
 
 We venture to express the belief that it has 
 been coming nearer to a worthy conception of 
 Nature as rooted in the Divine the Infinite Life 
 which transcends Nature and as having the Spir- 
 itual for its bloom and flowering a spiritual blos- 
 soming seen in man who transcends nature while 
 remaining bound to it. For God, the God of 
 Love, is to theistic philosophy the unifying Spirit, 
 under Whose Leadership the world-process of de- 
 velopment is carried on. Hence to it, in Dante's 
 words, 
 
 " Thus do these organs of the world proceed, 
 As thou beholdest now, from step to step, 
 Their influences from above deriving, 
 And thence transmitting downwards." 
 
 " Questi organi del mondo cosi vanno, 
 Come tu vedi omai, di grado in grado, 
 Che di su prendono, e di sotto fanno." 
 
 It has more clearly brought out the conscious affin- 
 ity of man for this Divine Life so revealed in nature, 
 and has even sought to carry these spiritual and 
 
488 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 personal elements in which it believes the realm 
 of reality to have been reached up to the theistic 
 fulness to which they seem to serve as finger-posts. 
 For, not without this spiritual rendering of nature 
 by the theist can we reach a God who shall be 
 Personal Reason such theistic interpretation of 
 nature the only one which satisfyingly sets forth 
 the world, as spiritual, in its relations to us. It 
 would know by what right the name Nature is 
 given to nature minus God, as though Nature 
 any more than man were a soulless thing. It 
 takes the world to be one vast Whole, the Soul 
 of which is God. Still more would it exhibit this 
 affinity as manifested in Providence and Biblical 
 Revelation. And it has led us to ask ourselves 
 whether it was really a rational tendency that led 
 us, from the fact that science showed us the work 
 of the created universe to be so vastly more won- 
 derful than we had supposed, to suspect that there 
 was no Worker behind it all ? Of those two in- 
 terpenetrating, interacting worlds betwixt which we 
 move, but which do not exist merely for us, it has 
 bidden us ask 
 
 " What marvel, then, that their gigantic shades 
 Should cross each other ? " 
 
 It has keenly inquired whether the fact that the 
 world without us has to be interpreted in terms of 
 the reason or mind within us does not, as Spencer 
 has said, suggest a spiritualistic rather than a 
 
NATURE AND SPIRIT. 489 
 
 materialistic aspect of the universe. It has done 
 so, while keeping itself free of the Spencerian 
 waverings towards a purely materialistic homo- 
 geneity. Yea, it has believed, with Thomas Hill 
 Green, that without such mind nature would simply 
 not be, and has held to that spirituality of nature 
 in virtue of which it reveals the immanence of 
 eternal intelligence. 
 
 " One impulse from a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can." 
 
 It has not, as we suppose, viewed Nature as the 
 book of the revelation of the Spirit, but at least 
 it looks upon it as the illuminated table of its 
 contents which Novalis took it to be. It has 
 believed that for the varied facts and forces of 
 the world, such a ground and centre of unity as 
 must be sought in an organic whole of reason can 
 alone be found in God, the Infinite Spirit or 
 Absolute Personality. 
 
 But, while theistic philosophy has been more fully 
 demonstrating how reason is, more than before, in 
 some real senses finding God, it has been more 
 keenly realising how truly it takes One higher 
 than we to complete the lacunae of our knowledge. 
 For it takes a Christ to find for us the Father, 
 our relationship to Whom is for it the highest to 
 be found in man. Yes, what higher revelation 
 can there be for me than to know that the Spirit 
 
490 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 of the universe is my Father ? What more thril- 
 ling, ennobling, exalting truth can be mine than 
 to know that He, on Whose hand worlds on worlds 
 are hanging, sustains to me to the least of all the 
 saints all those unspeakably real and intimate, 
 all those ineffably sacred and tender, relations, 
 which are summed up in Fatherhood in its infinite 
 perfection ? True, this sacred and inexpugnable 
 conviction may be no mere result of my gazing 
 upon worlds that stand out in space -immensities, 
 but is it any less real because of that ? Is there 
 any rational justification for my putting this revela- 
 tion of Spirit Infinite Spirit to spirit finite but 
 real behind anything which the mere study of 
 Nature may teach me ? If not, then I am entitled 
 to oppose this positivism of spirit to any scientific 
 absolutism that would confine me within the un- 
 relaxing grasp of cold Nature, and within the 
 teachings of verifiable science. Yet it should be 
 observed that we insist on these spirit-revelations 
 as strangely ours when we stand in the presence 
 and are within the influences of Nature. We 
 have, in so doing, not been unmindful of the fact 
 that it is precisely in respect of this moral and 
 spiritual nature of God that the force of theistic 
 reasoning has been slowest of admission by scep- 
 ticism. Its vital importance, however, theistic 
 philosophy has well realised. For it has more 
 clearly apprehended the supreme thought of Christ's 
 theistic teaching to be this thought of God, not 
 
UJNTV 
 
 
 THE DIVINE FATHERHOOD. 491 
 
 as mere causa causarum, not as substance nor as 
 World - Governor, but as the Father everlasting, 
 in Whose love the spirit of man, yearning in its 
 orphanhood, finds rest and satisfaction. It has 
 not overlooked the all - embracing thought, the 
 loving will, and the sympathetic feeling, which 
 make up the spiritual essence of such Divine 
 Fatherhood. It sees in that Father, Who is the 
 Spirit of all things living, the unity or spiritual 
 bond whereby all thoughts and things are gathered 
 into one. It thus exclaims : 
 
 " Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name ? 
 Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same ? 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power 
 expands ? " 
 
 And it has remained too sane and rational, mean- 
 while, to be scared by the word mysticism, whose 
 meaning it sees rather sadly misunderstood. We 
 account it wise enough to perceive that the inner 
 essence and soul of religion always must be 
 that mysticism wherein religion moves and has its 
 being ; and to discern the essential glory of such 
 mysticism to be that it claims for the soul a com- 
 munion with the Divine so direct and high as to be 
 beyond the reach of sense or the logical understand- 
 ing ; best of all, claims this communion on grounds 
 of sheer and unquestioned fact. And so for it, as 
 for Amiel, austere monologue is found to have 
 passed into dialogue, reluctance into docility, re- 
 
4Q2 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 nunciation into peace, the sense of painful defeat 
 into that of recovered liberty. Not that it shares 
 any blindness to the weakness and defect of 
 mysticism, for it is impossible that it should not 
 perceive and lament the mystic lack of reasoning 
 power and of universal ground of appeal. But it 
 sees, for all that, the powerful and needful elements 
 of a rational mysticism without due recognition of 
 which any religious philosophy must remain defec- 
 tive especially when these elements of the religious 
 feeling or consciousness are purged of pantheistic 
 leanings or tendencies. In all this, therefore, it 
 eschews the mysticism that simply says, as it is in 
 1 Faust,' " feeling is all " (Gefuhl ist alles), for intel- 
 lect and thought are for it never so estranged from 
 feeling as such mystic stress on immediacy would 
 imply. It has attained a deepening sense that, in 
 our explicit recognition of our sonship to this 
 Divine Father, and in our realisation of true 
 communion with the Father of Spirits, will be 
 found the essential meaning of prayer a meaning 
 in which it includes action real, direct, and free, 
 of the Absolute Spirit on the finite Spirit as the 
 result of prayer and aspiration. 
 
 In relation to the position of those who hold that 
 prayer may be offered for spiritual benefit simply 
 because the suppliant's own heart will thereby be 
 influenced, it has been said, " What ! can a man 
 go, as if before God, and say, ' O God, I ask 
 Thee to subdue this or that evil desire, knowing 
 
GOD AND PRAYER. 493 
 
 that Thou hearest not, but hoping that by this 
 conscious fiction I shall call my own soul into 
 action' ?" If God is no more in Providence than 
 such prayer should imply, He is a manifest and 
 even ridiculous superfluity. And, looking* to the 
 way in which the natural world subserves the 
 spiritual, theistic philosophy has still postulated a 
 free relation to the world for God. Rightly so, for 
 no study of phenomena has ever yet brought out 
 any such really necessary connection in the events 
 or occurrences around us as would make the influ- 
 ence and action of an unseen and Almighty Will 
 an impossibility, any more than will and action are 
 impossible on our part in our limited degree and 
 finite way. The close affinity and interaction be- 
 tween faith and prayer is too important to be here 
 overlooked, and Bishop Monrad, in his ' World of 
 Prayer,' has finely insisted on the need to rise in 
 prayerful power through increased vigour of faith. 
 We do not know any reason for allowing science, or 
 anything else, to drive the basal thought of our 
 being from us, which is, that we are made in the 
 image of God, and which enables us to understand 
 how, amid His systems of inexorable law, God 
 remains that free and infinite Spirit Who can hear 
 and help us. Man's life is the riddle it is, because, 
 as Goethe said, man is offspring of two worlds the 
 finite and the infinite. But man can raise himself 
 above nature, can lift himself to God, and how then 
 shall he leave nature untranscended by his God, as 
 
494 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 hopelessly immersed in it ? Theism has found a 
 spiritual faculty in man, which makes him quite 
 other than agnostic, lacking the capacity to explain 
 the realm of spiritual things ; but it has not found 
 that, because this spiritual faculty is his, the need is 
 superseded that his knowing be critical in mode. 
 It finds in man, as a centre of spiritual life, God so 
 consciously realised as the true ideal of the human 
 spirit as to be called Father. It has passed out of 
 the old exclusive stress on man's nothingness apart 
 from God, that it might lay, in its optimistic spirit 
 grounded in this high relationship of man part 
 though he be of the great world -process new 
 emphasis on the unmeasured moral might of man 
 as possessed by Christ and indwelt by His Spirit. 
 It will thus be seen how firmly it has grounded 
 its faith in the soul, as what has been termed 
 " unitary substratum of all mental phenomena," in 
 face of agnostic denial here. Still it can say with 
 Gratry, in his ' Connaissance de 1'Ame/ " Mais, 
 d'un autre cote, et bien evidemment, mon ame n'a pas 
 toute Funite, toute la simplicite, toute la concentra- 
 tion qu'elle cherche " ; and, as he immediately adds, 
 " par la foi, Fesperance, et Pamour, et par le sacrifice 
 de Fego'isme, par Pattraction de la priere et la 
 pratique de la volonte de mon Dieu, je me recueille 
 vers Dieu, et vers les autres cceurs, et vers mon 
 propre cceur ; je me recueille vers ma source, et je 
 m'enracine dans la vie." It sees the partial truth of 
 pessimism to lie just in the incapacity with which 
 
A TRUE OPTIMISM. 495 
 
 the things of earth are stamped to satisfy the spirit 
 of man. In face not only of pessimism but also of 
 agnosticism, it has maintained, not alone as regards 
 the race but for individual man, an attitude un- 
 weariedly optimistic, and has more distinctly evinced 
 the superiority of its optimism to that of agnostic 
 evolution in the unwavering manner in which its 
 faith in the infinite capacities and possibilities of 
 the soul has kept before man, as the untouched goal 
 of his aspirations, the highest spiritual ends the 
 ends of spiritual perfection achieved through Im- 
 mortality. Yes, for it hesitates not to accept the 
 word of M. Secretan, that " perfection is eternal." 
 
 It has taught us to 
 
 " rest in faith 
 
 That man's perfection is the crowning flower 
 Towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree 
 Is pressing, seen in puny blossoms now, 
 But in the world's great morrows to expand 
 With broadest petal and with deepest glow." 
 
 Hence we deem ourselves justified in affirming 
 that the immense hopefulness, the intense spring or 
 impulse, and the inspiring thoroughness of the 
 theistic faith, have been so surely known and felt 
 that religion, no less than theology, has become 
 quickened. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion has, we are 
 inclined to think, laid more satisfactory hold on the 
 reality of a Philosophy of History, in which the 
 theistic idea is seen to carry with it the Spiritual 
 Presence which is the Spring of spiritual impulse, 
 
496 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 and the Source of organic growth. Yes, the 
 Spiritual Presence whereby the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is for ever coming amongst us whereby, too, the 
 harmonisation of the spiritual and industrial func- 
 tions of society, as it marches on to its most com- 
 prehensive development, is more completely secured. 
 We thus pass from the unity of God, as we have 
 seen it, to a resultant unity in History. For in the 
 great historic movement, as the philosophy of 
 history interprets it, or traces out its rationality, it 
 is to such unity we are led amid all the diversi- 
 ties of phenomena. And for the philosophical his- 
 torian, history is no history at all until there is this 
 rational comprehension of it. The great import- 
 ance of studying the rise and genetic connection of 
 facts was explicitly pointed out by Trendelenburg 
 ('Logische Untersuchungen,' vol. ii; pp. 388, 395). 
 It is upon such a philosophy of history as we 
 have spoken of that our philosophy of religion must 
 rest, and our justification of the multiform develop- 
 ments of religion proceed. The broad survey of 
 history suggests to theistic philosophy a predestined 
 goal towards which the ofttimes unconscious move- 
 ments of men and nations end. Just this future of 
 the universe indeed ought more to engage our 
 attention, for the world, as it now is, exists and 
 makes for that future, yes, makes for it with a 
 swiftness which at least ensures the instability of 
 the present. Nor has it been content with such 
 ill -defined and shadowy forecasts of the future of 
 
A PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY POSSIBLE. 497 
 
 the race as those marked out by Kant, Jouffroy, 
 Herder, Guizot, and others, but has sought the 
 true destination of mankind, as organised, har- 
 monised, and illumined by the Spirit proceeding 
 from the Power that makes for righteousness, truth, 
 and love in the world. We are by no means for- 
 getful, in saying this, what a deep natural sense it 
 has at the same time had of the difficulty of attain- 
 ing such a Philosophy of History in view of the 
 sophistries and subtleties that only too easily find 
 their way into such speculations, and of the too 
 frequent triumphs disclosed of might and rude 
 violence over virtue and right. Nor do we over- 
 look that, even if the setting up of a heavenly 
 kingdom upon earth were taken to be the end of 
 history, it cannot be so taken without due con- 
 sideration and disposal of the seemingly different 
 end to which the whole rich development of man's 
 own proud culture is making. We are not even 
 oblivious of the contention the unreasoned and un- 
 warranted assumption rather, of the late Professor 
 Clifford, in the interests of dogmatic atheism that 
 the notion of a guiding power or providence in 
 history is immoral, and constitutes a paralysis of 
 human effort, though it is too palpably at variance 
 with fact and human experience to deserve any 
 very serious attention. We remain keenly sensible 
 of the conflicting elements and obstacles in our faith 
 in Providence, as that sweet and puissant Force 
 by which the inexorable rigour of fate or destiny 
 
 2 I 
 
498 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 is softened for us. But if the universe is not to be 
 simply meaningless to us, then do we more firmly 
 maintain that only the spiritual world or Kingdom 
 of God, transforming rather than destroying, absorb- 
 ing rather than extinguishing, will suffice as its 
 adequate goal adequate to its toil, and pain, and 
 promise. Yes; and though we speak of "promise," 
 let it not be thought that we mean the philosophy 
 of history to signify any miraculous gift of prophecy, 
 rather than a divining of the plot of the historical 
 drama we see. As Bunsen remarks, in his ' God 
 in History/ only that which is can be satisfactorily 
 reduced to formulas. But, for all that, we see the 
 " history of the world " the whole present order of 
 things to be insufficient to prove "the judgment 
 of the world," and we take it to point onwards to 
 a completer vindication of the moral order. This 
 is so even while we admit the sense in which this 
 saying of Schiller is true that the world's history 
 is its judgment. 
 
 We certainly do not think theistic philosophy 
 has sympathised with the view of those who would 
 wrench History from all connection with Philoso- 
 phy, and who would bring its events within the 
 range of mechanical necessity, until History should 
 be virtually reduced to a department of physics. 
 Not even those who would tie history down to 
 narrative, leaving philosophy severely alone like 
 Thiers can escape philosophy of history any more 
 than did he. The theistic philosophy of religion 
 
DIVERSE PHILOSOPHIES OF HISTORY. 499 
 
 must find itself ill content without synthetic efforts 
 in the sphere of History. From the facts as mate- 
 rial sifted, marshalled, classified, set in due relations 
 there must result a philosophy. How diverse 
 these philosophies of history may be, such names 
 as Bunsen and Buckle, Comte and Kant, Taine 
 and Renan, Hegel and Schelling, Schiller and 
 Schlegel, may suffice to suggest. We are with 
 Guizot in holding that while history may be con- 
 fined to facts, facts are yet so little of a visible 
 and material character in all possible cases that 
 there are facts, hidden and moral, which are every 
 whit as real as any facts of battle or any acts of 
 government. Certainly in our historic dealings we 
 must see to it that goodness remains for us the 
 sovereign greatness. We see the theistic philos- 
 ophy of religion reject the defective theory of such 
 a materialistic civilisation as would have satisfied 
 Comte and the deterministic Buckle to whose 
 constructive synthetic work a value not small may 
 be allowed and assert the reality and primacy of 
 the spiritual. No doubt, Hegel and Comte are 
 right in viewing the question of a philosophy of 
 history so largely from the view-point of European 
 history, nor can it be doubted that the progress 
 involved would not have been to them the entity 
 it appears to be to some recent thinkers, but would 
 have remained an end calling for sorne more exact 
 definition. Though we do not forget his striking 
 reduction of the freedom involved, yet we find 
 
500 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 Comte leaning too much to the purely intellectual 
 side or condition of progress. Though we are not 
 unmindful of Hegel's arbitrary and illusive treat- 
 ment of subordinate processes or details for it 
 is not to be denied that such Willkiir manifests 
 itself in his constructive thought, which really fol- 
 lows what ought to be under dialectical treatment 
 yet we find Hegel doing better in defining the 
 progress in terms of freedom, and in showing how 
 such progress may be put to the proof as to 
 whether there has been a bringing nearer of what 
 ought to be. 
 
 Surely we may say that, with the enlarged ex- 
 hibition by modern thought of the historic tendency 
 of all things towards nobler conditions and the 
 investing of the principle of right with greater 
 respect and authority, the utter inadequacy of a 
 'philosophy of history on the basis of its being 
 viewed as the product of merely physical causes, 
 or treated as a purposeless ocean - swell of mortal 
 endeavour, has been made more thoroughly mani- 
 fest. " History without God," as Dr Pusey in 
 an eloquent passage once said, " is a chaos without 
 design, or end, or aim." And Niebuhr declared 
 History to be, of all kinds of knowledge, "the 
 one which tends most decidedly to produce belief 
 in Providence." Very finely has Pfleiderer de- 
 scribed what has been due to Hegel in this con- 
 nection by his setting forth of the working of the 
 Sovereign Reason of the world in all its devel- 
 
HEGEL S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 501 
 
 opments : it has been to Hegel we have owed the 
 " deeper insight " into historical life and orderly 
 development of " nations and ages," the " more 
 penetrating glance " through all confused phenom- 
 ena into the " essence of man and things," the 
 " unprejudiced appreciation " of the need for con- 
 flict and opposition, and the more " intelligent rev- 
 erence" for the great figures of history who, in 
 the hands of a Higher Power, have waked in us 
 the mighty hopes that make us men. Pfleiderer 
 does not think historians like Ranke, Baur, or Car- 
 lyle, " conceivable without the Hegelian philosophy 
 of history," which last is for him, it would seem, 
 a kind of fountain "whence," in Dante's phrase, 
 " all knowledge sparkles forth " (onde ogni scienzia 
 disfavilla). And the statement of Pfleiderer may 
 be fitly supplemented by our recalling how much 
 the history of philosophy, as exemplified in Erd- 
 mann, Kuno Fischer, and Zeller, has owed to 
 Hegelian impulse. Certainly Hegel's merits de- 
 serve these acknowledgments of Pfleiderer, even 
 ifi we be not unmindful of the measure of truth 
 in the estimate of Karl Schwarz whom Pfleiderer 
 so warmly eulogises when, in his ' Geschichte 
 der Neuesten Theologie,' he speaks of Hegel's 
 philosophy of history as having corrupted (yer- 
 unreinigen) the history of philosophy, and rendered 
 parched (ausdorren) the philosophy of history. It 
 has been a fruitful issue that Hegel has brought 
 out the evolution of rational freedom through idea, 
 
502 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 nature, and spirit, so that there shall be seen, as 
 he says, the glory of the idea mirroring itself in 
 the history of the world. The justification of God 
 in history, with Hegel, lies just in this world-process 
 of development and realisation of spirit ; if, to this 
 elimination of fortuitous or chance elements, we can 
 add a theistic interpretation of this Idea of Hegel, 
 our philosophy of history shall do well. 
 
 Certainly we now more vividly realise what a 
 broadening movement is the historic one, free from 
 fatalism and its false presuppositions. So true it 
 abides through the stages of its evolution and 
 broad but slow development, that, 
 
 " Wie die Welt lauft immer weiter, 
 Wird stets die Geschichte breiter " 
 
 but the history is still a process of Divine educa- 
 tion, the comprehension of which is our philosophy 
 of history. Surely we may affirm that the necessity 
 and rationality of the world's historic movement, 
 regarded as a spiritual result achieved by domina- 
 tion over mechanical forces, reached under the preva- 
 lence of spiritual law, regulated by the supremacy 
 of reason, and controlled by the Spirit of Truth, 
 have, in their progressive, struggling aspect, been 
 more forcibly shown, and the need more uniformly 
 exhibited of such a spiritual link or nexus as that 
 termed in ' Faust ' "das geistige Band." If God 
 is God at all, must not recognition of Him in his- 
 tory be a prime principle of any true philosophy 
 
FREEDOM OF THE HISTORIC MOVEMENT. 503 
 
 of history ? Is not God to be found there in time 
 as truly as in nature He is found in space ? Gloatz 
 has remarked on the way in which the philosophy 
 of religion has felt need for more explicit recog- 
 nition of history as its presupposition, such recog- 
 nition including the history of the immediate God- 
 consciousness present in the religions. Also, how 
 religion in its historical development, growing 
 always more clearly conscious of its own essence, 
 runs out really, taken in respect of the History 
 of Religion, into the History of the Philosophy 
 of Religion (' Spekulative Theologie,' Erster Band, 
 
 i- 23). 
 
 We take it to be now well understood how little 
 any branch of philosophical doctrine can be duly 
 appreciated and understood apart from its history. 
 The freedom, no less than the necessity, of all this 
 historic movement of which we have spoken, 
 theistic philosophy of religion has kept in the 
 essential place it merits. For there have not been 
 wanting those who have clearly felt that man is not 
 really free, so long as he is not completely master 
 of all that pertains to the region of natural character, 
 and who have consequently maintained, as we here 
 do, that less than such an idea of freedom as that 
 now depicted leaves him at the mercy of his mere 
 interests, submerges him under the course of the 
 exterior world, as though it were all matter of 
 necessity that these things should be so. Hence 
 the progress we depict is not even - paced and 
 
504 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 mechanical, for the spiritual ideals of mankind 
 are advanced, and the springs of their spiritual 
 energy are renewed, in such hours as men think 
 not. We find not the spiritual forces uniformly 
 victorious, nor all movement to mean progress, 
 but it traces some final triumph of the powers that 
 make for spiritual evolution. We, for our part, do 
 not pretend to adhere to the notion of a continu- 
 ously progressive historical movement in any sense 
 that would exclude the presence of reactionary 
 moments and factors : no, we account the historic 
 movement as at certain times too plainly cyclical 
 or gyratory to leave us with more than a balance 
 in favour of progress. Reversionary types of things 
 will, it would seem, be always too possible for any 
 such theory of an absolutely continuous progress, 
 though it is not, on the other hand, to be thought 
 that human life and history are but an aimless whirl 
 or " eddy of purposeless dust." No, it is precisely 
 the progress which is being attained through all the 
 advance towards a freedom, an ethical freedom 
 always better organised and more decisive which 
 is for us the providential stamp of the Higher 
 Agency at work in history. We lay this stress 
 on " ethical " freedom, for it is impossible to over- 
 estimate the significance of advance in ethical in- 
 sight and intuition for historical progress in general. 
 History is, in fact, more than philosophy teaching, 
 as Bolingbroke said, by examples ; it is ethics or 
 morality teaching after the same manner. 
 
SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION IN HISTORY. 505 
 
 In all the stress we have been laying on the 
 spiritual, it is not meant that mechanical or ma- 
 terial forces are unreal and of no account, but 
 only that the spiritual are the highest a " highest" 
 reached in and through the material, dull, and 
 inert, as matters may appear to us. Certainly no 
 power or force can, to theistic philosophy, assert 
 itself as the right save as it is spiritual no less 
 than it may be material. And it is far less with 
 conditions of material happiness than with moral 
 perfection we have here to do. The changes and 
 progress, of which ultimate historic movement is 
 made up, are, in its view, as we take it, dynamic 
 manifestations expressive of thought and its de- 
 terminations in virtue of its finding a Dynamic 
 Reason disclosed by its study of reality as it ap- 
 pears in the universe. Yes, for why should not 
 ideal plan and law obtain in the history of man 
 as in the development of the individual, though 
 he sin against them ? Why should we not pos- 
 tulate a presidency of Deity His directive agency 
 in all that reconstruction of society for which 
 our time is making, as surely as we may and do 
 for the great movements of past European history ? 
 Of course, a philosophy founded only on the most 
 recent period of European history would be so 
 imperfect, in its dissociation from the past, as to 
 be fallacious, and yet the philosophical aspect of 
 the most recent period may have its own instructive 
 teaching for us as to the conditions of religion and 
 
506 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 civilisation in such a new time. Our knowledge 
 of His way and purpose may remain incomplete, 
 but it is another and very different thing from 
 the irrationality of those who assert that no rev- 
 elation of Him is to be found in history, and deny 
 any accomplishment of His will Aios 8' ereXetero 
 PQV\TI in the great world drama. Knowledge, 
 power, social obligation and justice, spiritual life 
 and human sympathy and philanthropic endeavour, 
 are the results which we claim, in distinctly en- 
 larged measure, for the great spiritual development 
 of which we have spoken a development pro- 
 ceeding under fundamental moral law, and pointing, 
 as its necessary presupposition, to the activity of 
 a Personality not without likeness to our own. For 
 personality in this large sense we take as, in Bun- 
 sen's phrase, "der Hebel der Weltgeschichte " or 
 the lever of universal history, and the race is to 
 us inspired by inflow of spiritual energy from a 
 Being that transcends it. " The wisely ordered 
 march of history," as a modern apologist has said, 
 " through the midst of all the turmoil brought 
 about by the arbitrary conduct of so many millions 
 of free men, can only be explained as resulting 
 from the all-ruling providence of a personal God. 
 It would be impossible, in the face of human free- 
 will, for the unconscious wisdom of nature to retain 
 the mastery over the course of events." Hence 
 we regard theistic philosophy as having a right 
 to demand the warrant of the Spencerian philos- 
 
GOD IN HISTORY. 507 
 
 ophy to treat all history as but so many episodes 
 in the gigantic movement of Nature as only so 
 many meaningless and immaterial accidents in the 
 mighty and universal process which is to it the 
 main concern a right it is bound to exercise. 
 Beyond the complicating and counteracting forces 
 of evil it finds the spiritual forces that make ultimate 
 development in the religious evolution. Behind 
 our periods of social restlessness or lethargy, of 
 movement or stagnation, it finds some ground of 
 ultimate advance. And in so far as the theistic 
 philosophy of religion contends for a force in his- 
 tory not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, 
 it does and can contend for this only as there is 
 love in God which will not let the world go from 
 its altruistic and harmonising influences. For in 
 the philosophy of history if such there be there 
 is for it no more final note than that of Redemp- 
 tion, wherein God is seen reconciling the ages 
 unto Himself through that Son, Who lives along 
 and rules them all. It thus comes in its teleo- 
 logical view at length to say, with the philosophy 
 of history of the poet of the " In Memoriam,"- 
 
 " I see in part 
 
 That all, as in some piece of art, 
 Is toil cooperant to an end." 
 
 Yes, for otherwise the workings of God in history 
 would become for it, in the words of the poet of 
 the " Paradiso," " not works but ruins" 
 " Non arti ma mine." 
 
508 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion, in pur- 
 suance of its lofty spiritual view of man's nature 
 and destiny, as we have in this chapter sought to 
 present it, has not 'only been unable to abandon 
 the belief in Immortality, but has even held it 
 with new light and breadth. Looking at immor- 
 tality in the light shed upon it by reason or the 
 unaided human intellect, we find that philosophic?! 
 thought has viewed the belief in it as more than 
 ever rationally necessary and consistent the most 
 consistent hypothesis in view of all the facts of 
 the world and of man's nature and life. It has 
 more firmly grasped this faith as the culmination 
 of a spiritual philosophy, and, notwithstanding the 
 pretensions of some of the more thoroughgoing 
 evolutionists, it has not found modern science 
 adverse to the spiritual nature and destiny of man. 
 Its hope for the future life 
 
 " Derives it not from what we have 
 The likest God within the soul ? " 
 
 Or are we to treat that in us which is likest to God 
 as a lying thing ? It agrees, as we suppose, with 
 an American writer on the philosophy of religion, 
 who maintains that the foundations of a future life 
 do " lie outside of revelation," and who holds immor- 
 tality to give " promise of revelation" rather than 
 revelation to lay the "foundations of immortality." 
 It holds, as against those who, with Goethe, take 
 existence to be a duty, were it but for a moment, 
 
FOUNDATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 509 
 
 that life here can never be morally and spiritually 
 satisfying at least in any permanent way with- 
 out relation to the future life. It has never yet 
 seen or found any satisfactory way or mode by 
 which man's present life can be made wholly self- 
 enclosed in respect of the world to come. Kant 
 for this very reason dealt with the soul's immor- 
 tality as a postulate of the pure practical reason, 
 since perfect accordance with the moral law, 
 such as is commanded and as must therefore be 
 attainable, calls for a duration adequate to "an 
 infinite progress towards perfect harmony with the 
 moral law" -a progress " possible only if we 
 presuppose " the existence of a rational being to 
 be "prolonged to infinity." When the material- 
 ism of to-day tells us that our bodily organisation 
 is all that we conceivably are, we prefer to remind 
 ourselves of the saying of Joubert : "I, whence, 
 whither, why, how ? These questions cover all 
 philosophy, existence, origin, place, end, and 
 means." We do not regard it as open to 
 doubt that there has in our time been clearer 
 recognition of the naturalness of man's long- 
 ing for immortality as something rooted in 
 his condition as seen in his sense of progress 
 and individuality, his desire for real and right 
 reputation, his craving, nay, ineluctable demand 
 for justness in the judgments of his work, his 
 yearning for moral perfection, and his necessity 
 for love, as that which is at least imperishable as 
 
510 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 the force or matter which is to the materialist 
 eternal. The confident assertions of Vogt, Mole- 
 schott, and Buchner, that science scorns belief in 
 the future life, have grown more discredited, and 
 have given way before the more modest contentions 
 of Spencer and Huxley that science is, in the 
 matter of immortality, powerless, for lack of evi- 
 dence, either to affirm or deny. The truth of the 
 matter is that science cares only for phenomena 
 for Werden or becoming among which things 
 the soul is not to be classed. The soul belongs 
 to a higher order of changeless and abiding reality 
 than the order of science, commonly so called. 
 It does not seem to us, however, either possible 
 or wise to make quite so much as Hettinger does 
 of the argument that "the very idea of immortality 
 which the soul possesses, and its intense longing 
 for its possession, prove the fact." 
 
 We are in midst of that scientific temper of 
 mind in which the spiritual vaticinations, the sen- 
 timental longings, the moral aspirations, and the 
 intuitional convictions, are being simply crushed 
 out by the agnostic attitude that disclaims any 
 knowledge of, and denies any place to, such things. 
 It is not easy to meet this gran rifiuto of life and 
 spiritual advance, this craving for positive demon- 
 stration, and every attempt to meet it must proceed 
 on lines moral as well as intellectual. Must not 
 the aim of a true philosophy of religion be to 
 conjoin, to the scientific quest of truth of purely 
 
THE METAPHYSIC OF IMMORTALITY. 511 
 
 intellectual kind, a power of absorption and assimi- 
 lation of all new knowledge in which ethical ele- 
 ments shall have free play and large scope ? 
 Clearly patience will have a perfect work ere this 
 state of mind at last be met and satisfied. Mean- 
 while, theistic philosophy has been patiently con- 
 sidering the bearing of all known facts, whether 
 of metaphysics or of empirical and rational psy- 
 chology, on the belief of immortality. The whole 
 tendency of recent researches in science has been 
 towards the position that life is before organisation, 
 which it impels and directs on rational lines that 
 the soul is, in that " yonder-minded " being, man, 
 to be by no means regarded as inseparably bound 
 up with the body. 
 
 Theistic philosophy, at any rate, has not for- 
 gotten how strangely out of place have been the 
 objections to the imponderable and immaterial soul 
 from the side of a physical science which seems to 
 have been wonderfully oblivious of the fact that, 
 as Lewes pointed out, the forces of modern science 
 itself are as transcendental as anything in the 
 scholastic philosophy. The main object of science 
 is, according to Professor Huxley, to reduce the fun- 
 damental incomprehensibilities of the world to the 
 smallest possible number, but, when science shall 
 have done her best, there will remain wherever 
 no arbitrary limit or unmeaning arrest is laid upon 
 thought a desire to know which will and must carry 
 us beyond the possibilities of the present, and will 
 
512 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 point to immortality. The mysteries of the world 
 of nature without, no less than the mysteries within 
 the soul, press upon the thinking spirit of man, and 
 impel to thought of immortality. Who then shall 
 say that the stars of modern astronomic science 
 do not, in their stately march, send forth hints 
 of infinity, and radiate light on the progress and 
 diversified occupation that belong to immortality ? 
 Who shall say that the veil which hides the life 
 immortal from our view is not so near and thin 
 that our vision cannot pierce it through ? May we 
 not, with newer light and greater cogency, ask in 
 words that Herder was able to use, " Shall that 
 force be lost which we are compelled to regard 
 as the purest, the most active of all the forces 
 of which we have any knowledge ? Shall the 
 power be annihilated that overcomes and makes 
 subordinate to itself the forces deployed in lower 
 forms of organisation the power that can behold 
 and even overrule itself that can know, love, 
 imitate God?" 
 
 In perfect keeping with the scientific doctrine 
 of the conservation of energy, theistic philosophy 
 has maintained the persistence and permanence of 
 that substratum or entity, which we call the soul, 
 in the super-terrestrial life, for there that law, if 
 a law of the universe, ought most of all to hold. 
 Recent theistic philosophy has even, it may be 
 said, found, in the matter of immortality, science 
 itself setting about the task of deducing "the pro- 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY. 513 
 
 gressive existence of the soul as an inference from 
 the law of evolution." Has it not found a Darwin 
 declaring it to be to him "an intolerable thought" 
 that a belief so strong and instinctive as that of 
 immortality should give way to that of " complete 
 annihilation after such long - continued slow pro- 
 gress " ? It has not found the argument for immor- 
 tality, which it discerns lying hid in the evolutionary 
 interpretation of man's life, to be a thing developed 
 as yet in any full or satisfying way, but it sees in 
 it the promise and the potency of more convincing 
 things to come. Why should the law and spirit 
 of progress be held down to the narrow limits of 
 this earthly existence ? Or what sort of evolu- 
 tionary thought is it which is content to lay such 
 hand of restraint upon the ascending thought and 
 spirit of man ? Or what but the hope of immor- 
 tality as lived in God can redeem our future 
 personal progress and culture from being a miser- 
 ably selfish, fruitless, and unnatural thing ? Wel- 
 come is every light of science that may help to 
 correct our conceptions of the life immortal, but a 
 bootless task have they undertaken who think, in 
 the name of science, to promulgate a truncated 
 evolution, and cancel belief in the world to come. 
 Recent theistic philosophy has connected its doc- 
 trines of immortality, in opposition to the non-theistic 
 philosophies that would resolve it into what, to use 
 a phrase of Renan, seems to us but a " simulacrum 
 of immortality " the mere expression of man's 
 
 2 K 
 
514 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 desire to live more closely with man's relation 
 to God as originally made in the Divine image, 
 so that immortality is his instinctive quest. It 
 has not, for all that, expected the full-blown know- 
 ledge of immortality in man ab initio, as something 
 that did not share in the growth and progress of 
 all things else. Such an expectation it sees to be 
 highly unscientific and unwarranted. Yet it has 
 been more swift to recognise how native to man 
 really is the longing alter immortality of which 
 we have been speaking, amounting, one might 
 almost say, to a rational instinct, since the idea 
 of immortality* has been better seen to lie at the 
 basis of rational life. There is, says Dr Mulford, 
 in his 'Republic of God,' a "will that in its pur- 
 pose does not yield to mortal wrong. There is 
 a joy that is not of emulation. There is a free- 
 dom that is other than the mere struggle for 
 existence in physical relations, and is not deter- 
 mined in its source or end by the finite conditions." 
 Perhaps it may not be amiss here to say that, 
 whatever might be urged in favour of such attempts 
 as have sometimes been seen in recent years to 
 set the persistence of the soul after death in what 
 might seem firmer theological foundation by finding 
 for it a physical or material seat, theistic philosophy 
 has very decidedly discountenanced such conten- 
 tions, by reason of the utter insufficiency of 
 scientific support for such definite localisation as 
 these physical theories postulate. No doubt, 
 
THE SEAT OF THE SOUL. 515 
 
 modern scientific thought makes it always harder 
 to conceive conscious psychic existence without the 
 connection of a brain, by which our conscious states 
 are determined, but then our philosophy is quite 
 opposed to the too current mode of setting matter 
 and spirit into real opposition. Because we hold 
 to the basal spiritual character of that which is 
 material, we reject a material seat and find the 
 seat of that spiritually developing principle called 
 the soul in the soul itself, with its grand potencies 
 both spiritual and material. John Fiske, in his 
 ' Destiny of Man,' says that " the Platonic view 
 of the soul as a spiritual substance, as an effluence 
 from Godhood which under certain conditions be- 
 comes incarnate in perishable forms of matter, is 
 doubtless the view most consonant with the present 
 state of our knowledge." 
 
 Theistic philosophy of religion has more dis- 
 tinctly felt that the theme of immortality, though 
 one outwith the region of physical science, as be- 
 longing to a sphere where science has as yet no 
 foothold, grows more certain as an inference of our 
 own rational and spiritual constitution, which craves a 
 further chance of development than the present life 
 affords an inference taken, that is to say, in con- 
 junction with the character of God as known by us. 
 
 " Du hast Unsterblichkeit im Sinn, 
 Kannst du uns deine Griinde nennen? 
 Ja wohl, der Hauptgrund liegt darin, 
 Das wir sie nicht entbehren konnen." 
 
516 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 That is to say, " Can you tell the grounds of your 
 belief in immortality ? The weightiest is just this, 
 that we cannot do without it." Or, in the words 
 of a poet of our own 
 
 " Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 
 No life that breathes with human breath 
 Has ever truly long'd for death. 
 
 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
 Oh life, not death, for which we pant ; 
 More life, and fuller, that I want." 
 
 When the harp of life becomes here broken, what 
 reason is there that the soul should not find for 
 itself other ways or modes of showing its inherent 
 energies and activities in perpetuated life ? We 
 know no reason why we should not make our own 
 the words of the philosopher Fichte when, speaking 
 of " The Vocation of the Scholar," he says : " My 
 work must go on to its completion, and it cannot 
 be completed in time ; hence my existence is 
 limited by no time, and I am eternal : with the 
 assumption of this great task, I have also laid hold 
 of eternity." And he continues : " My will, secure 
 in its own firm purpose, shall soar undisturbed and 
 bold over the wreck of the universe : for I have 
 entered upon my vocation, and it is more enduring 
 than ye [the elements] are : it is eternal, and I 
 am eternal, like it." 
 
 There surely can be no doubt that the Christian 
 philosophy of religion has in recent times linked 
 our belief in immortality to our faith in God in 
 
QUICKENED FAITH IN IMMORTALITY. 517 
 
 a way that is perfectly natural and normal. Not 
 only so, but the actual advantages accruing to our 
 unselfish ideals, in matters of morality and religion, 
 from such facts as those of God and Immortality 
 not being more obtrusively thrust upon us have 
 been very explicitly and forcibly set forth, and 
 cannot legitimately be brushed aside. It surely 
 must be allowed that, as the true or infinite ideal 
 for man has, as we hold, been made more real and 
 vivid in this time, so as a double consequence his 
 ideal aspirations must have become quickened, and 
 his apprehensions of the idea of an immortal life 
 strengthened. It has, we suppose, been more 
 cordially welcomed as an accepted fact that the 
 impulse towards immortality reaches its highest 
 strength only as man attains his largest spiritual 
 development, where the desirableness of life as 
 itself a good is most felt. Hence, though we grant 
 that there may be nothing in the conception of 
 evolution, abstractly considered, which is incom- 
 patible with the extinction of the race and the 
 cessation of its history, may we not very well 
 question whether it would be at all consistent with 
 rational possibility to postulate such an issue in face 
 of the actual development and the spiritual capa- 
 bilities of the race ? We, for our part, regard the 
 true philosophy of religion as having borne a deeper 
 feeling of persuasion that "to deny the everlasting 
 persistence of the spiritual element in Man is to 
 rob the whole process of its meaning." Even so 
 
5l8 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 unprejudiced a writer on this score as John Stuart 
 Mill has expressed the possibility of such existence 
 in the clearest terms. 
 
 " If the present contain all man's treasure, 
 
 How light were his loss or his gain, 
 Though he ransacked the roses of pleasure, 
 Or gleaned all the gall-nuts of pain." 
 
 The loss of individual immortality has been loudly 
 proclaimed, no doubt, from the extreme evolutionary 
 side, which has yet allowed a certain race-immor- 
 tality ; but recent theistic philosophy has, we venture 
 to think, more unequivocally affirmed the insepara- 
 bility of the race from the individual, for which last 
 it claims a sacred and eternal worth, and has more 
 emphatically declared its belief in personality after 
 death a true personal immortality, not an immor- 
 tality of vital force or impersonal life. When 
 Emerson says that " everything connected with 
 our personality fails/' he simply makes a sad 
 mistake. For the individual life is not to be 
 simply lost in God merged in Him in some 
 pantheistic sort. So far is personality from failing 
 that it is just that which because it is true per- 
 sonality and has a really altruistic character must 
 endure for ever, and increase with the increase that 
 is of God. Immortality is not simply some vague 
 and isolated existence that awaits us, but is some- 
 thing with which history must reckon, for the pro- 
 gress of the present must run on beyond the gulf 
 
CRITICISM OF MONISTIC THEORY. 519 
 
 of the grave, and the perfection of the race must 
 be found in its unity in Jesus Christ. 
 
 When we turn to Haeckel, we find his naturalistic 
 pantheism affirming, in the interests of a supposed 
 monism, that immortality in a scientific sense is con- 
 servation of substance, and therefore the same in 
 his view as conservation of energy or of matter as 
 defined by physics or chemistry respectively. We 
 say ''supposed" monism, for who knows whether 
 a system is really monistic or not which takes the 
 liberty to unite energy to matter and does not take 
 the trouble to tell us of what sort this energy is, 
 or whither it may go ? The theistic philosophy of 
 religion certainly fulfils Haeckel's expectation that 
 his view be rejected as materialism, whose God is 
 only the infinite sum of forces purely natural. In- 
 stead of sharing the uncertainty of a recent writer 
 who thinks it matters nothing whether theism is 
 true or not should it be that we perish helplessly 
 with our organisms, it feels profoundly sure that 
 being cannot be broken as Goethe said, " Kein 
 Wesen kann zu Nichts zerfallen." 
 
 If our evolution is to be of a rational sort, theistic 
 philosophy sees it must demand, in view of the 
 discords, woes, confusions, maladjustments, of the 
 present, such ulterior issue and completed result as 
 only that bloom of evolution, Immortality, can yield 
 the freedom of the Jenseits, the Beyond. So 
 that it is as far as may be from seeing any such 
 pantheistic triumph as that foreshadowed in the 
 
520 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 words of Strauss, when he said that " the Beyond 
 is the One in all, but in the form of a future it is 
 the last enemy which speculative criticism has to 
 fight with, and if possible to overcome." It sees it 
 will not do to leave each of us standing before this 
 great Beyond, in Mephistophelean helplessness, ex- 
 claiming, 
 
 "And though I fret and worry till I'm weary, 
 When? How? and Where? remains a fatal query." 
 
 " Und wenn ich Tag und Stunden mich zerplage, 
 Wann? Wie? und Wo? das ist die leidige Frage." 
 
 It sees such hope of harmony to come, as Im- 
 mortality affords, to be the motive power or main- 
 spring of all human activity, and so cannot consent 
 to any view of the universe on which it should, 
 looked at in the highest light, be able to dispense 
 with man as essential to it. " His destiny," as 
 Hettinger has said, "is to occupy the borderland 
 where matter and spirit meet, the lowest in the 
 order of Spirits, the highest of corporeal forms, 
 in whom the marriage between Spirit and nature 
 is consummated. Man was to be the keystone 
 in the arch of God's creation, binding together the 
 two worlds of Spirit and matter in a close and living 
 union. Therefore he was not created for a momen- 
 tary existence on earth, and then to disappear for 
 ever, or only to survive as an incomplete being. 
 He dies, but he will rise again to be the living 
 link, the harmonising chord of these two great 
 

 CRITICISM OF MATERIALISTIC SCIENCE. 521 
 
 realms throughout eternity" ('Natural Religion,' 
 edited by Bowden, pp. 252, 253). 
 
 Theistic thought has had the satisfaction to find 
 Fiske declare that " the materialistic assumption 
 that there is no such state of things, and that the 
 soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is 
 perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless as- 
 sumption that is known to the history of philos- 
 ophy." So with Professor Le Conte and others 
 who approach the subject from the scientific side. 
 Says Le Conte, in his ' Evolution and its Relation 
 to Religious Thought': "Without spirit-immortal- 
 ity this beautiful cosmos, which has been develop- 
 ing into increasing beauty for so many millions of 
 years, when its evolution has run its course and 
 all is over, would be precisely as if it had never 
 been an idle dream, an idiot tale signifying noth- 
 ing." When theistic philosophy has been confronted 
 with materialistic science as represented by Btichner 
 and the like, who dismiss all thought of the future 
 life on purely negative and inferential grounds, it 
 has been with great power shown how severely 
 deficient were the notions of human personality on 
 which the materialistic assumption rested. Also, 
 that what materialistic evolution leaves all unex- 
 plained is just the native tendency and inherent 
 instinct in man, in respect of personal existence 
 beyond the grave. 
 
 Recent theistic philosophy of religion has cer- 
 tainly not shown any lessening grasp of the im- 
 
522 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 pregnable basis on which rests its faith in man's 
 survival or a future life. That basis is clearly 
 grasped, in its metaphysical aspect, as grounded 
 in the fact that, because God ever lives and we 
 live here in Him we shall live in Him hereafter 
 also. Of Immortality taken in this sense, Dr Math- 
 eson very rightly asserts that it is " unopposed by 
 any law of physical science, uncontradicted by any 
 testimony of evolution," and effected by the " main 
 agent in the process of development that primal 
 force of the universe which is everywhere persistent 
 and immortal." We have had no semblance of 
 sufficient reason either from the materialistic or 
 the pantheistic side for supposing that death ter- 
 minates our personality or self-hood : we have an 
 inexpugnable conviction of such capabilities of larger 
 life as cannot be satisfied here, but demand an eter- 
 nal sphere. Pantheism, too polite and wise to 
 dismiss the term immortality, has in recent times 
 shown how little care in its inadequate psycho- 
 logical hold on the persistence and significance of 
 self-hood it has to preserve the real self-conscious 
 personality of individual man. The possibility of 
 immortality for mind has, we believe, been, from 
 the psychological and metaphysical side, more clearly 
 seen to call for yet deeper study of the nature of 
 the World-Ground, and of the relations of mind 
 to this Universal Being. 
 
 In its great upward striving and endeavour, 
 theistic philosophy regards the modern tendency 
 
THE DIFFICULTIES REAL. 523 
 
 to reduce the future life to a mere fanciful and 
 inconsequential possibility with feelings somewhat 
 akin, perhaps, to those with which Napoleon is 
 reported to have said concerning the circumscribed 
 life - .duration of a great picture, " Quelle belle 
 immortalite " ! Yes, unsubstantial it is as the 
 Comtist subjective immortality, and it leaves man 
 on our hands as himself vanity of vanities. But 
 the difficulties of maintaining faith in the life im- 
 mortal a true Himmelfahrt or ascent for the spirit 
 of man are yet real and great, and may not be 
 minimised, meeting us, as they do, from the side 
 of science, the side of morality, and the side of 
 religious sentiment itself. On the other hand, 
 while the doctrine of immortality may have been 
 cast into the caldron of speculation, it is to be said 
 that it has come forth purified and strengthened by 
 philosophy, by religious thought, and not least 
 though seldom so presented by modern science 
 itself. Even though our peering into that illimit- 
 able world is through the bars of our present prison- 
 house, we see what may stimulate to hope, to effort, 
 and to progress. 
 
 Theistic philosophy has very clearly perceived 
 what as Stahl remarked a refutation of pantheism 
 that individualism is which, disclosed in nature, 
 shines pre-eminently in man. It surely sees that, 
 as De Tocqueville said, the Almighty does not 
 generalise, but to Him " one ever counts for one." 
 Has it not always more clearly seen, when Hegel- 
 
524 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 ianism would carry us away, as with a flood, the 
 personality of the depreciatingly termed mere 
 individual though theistic philosophy ascribes a 
 universal side or nature also to every finite exist- 
 ence to find no real or proper resting-place in 
 that philosophy, where it seems to lie outwith the 
 absolute idea which Hegel so fascinatingly ex- 
 pounds ? We, for our part, are bold enough to 
 claim for recent theistic philosophy a more keen- 
 sighted recognition of the fact that here, in the 
 matter of immortality, as earlier in the case of the 
 Being of God, the full proofs and real evidences 
 can never be poured into the theoretic moulds of 
 language, which is but a poor inadequate interpreter 
 of the vaticinations and experiences of the spiritual 
 nature of man. We do not care to conceal our 
 view that a very inadequate service is performed 
 when theism is left as a thing of mere argumenta- 
 tive form, for, besides those demonstrations which 
 as Dante said are " the eyes of philosophy," 
 theistic thought has its hours when, caught up 
 into regions of transcendent speculation, it dreams 
 dreams and sees visions of supreme reality and 
 supernal purpose which it is not lawful for it is 
 not possible to utter. 
 
 " Here sits he, shaping wings to fly ; 
 His heart forebodes a mystery ; 
 He names the name Eternity." 
 
 Possibly we may not reckon ourselves of them that 
 hope to add one cubit to the height of the argument 
 
HOW THE FAITH IS REACHED. 525 
 
 for immortality, which, however it may and ought 
 to be articulated and cherished by us, grows in its 
 hold upon us less by the power of reasoning from 
 without than by inward revelation or spiritual reflec- 
 tion on the living movements of the Providence 
 that encompasses us on every side. We have 
 found Dr A. R6ville, in a critique of the part of 
 the ' Dogmatik ' of Strauss bearing on this theme, 
 saying that " a belief in immortality is a result of an 
 intuition of the future, and not the conclusion of a 
 syllogism. If I am to have a firm hope of my own 
 personal immortality, I must have reached that 
 height in the spiritual life that moral and religious 
 attitude in which this earthly life, and all that it 
 can offer me, is with me inferior to the destiny to 
 which I feel myself invited." We regard Lotze as 
 rightly interpreting the tendency of modern religious 
 thought, when, in his philosophy of religion, he 
 maintains that it is content with the general faith in 
 future existence, in retribution, and in a constant 
 process of perfection. It may do, possibly, for a 
 poet of to-day to say 
 
 " We children of Beneficence 
 Are in its being sharers ; 
 And Whither vainer sounds than Whence 
 For word with such wayfarers." 
 
 But it will not do for the philosophy of religion, 
 and yet we must be content here to say that where, 
 and with what environments, our future life, in- 
 destructible in its communion with God, will be, 
 
526 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 theistic philosophy, in its consciousness of how 
 far the last word on the subject is from having 
 been spoken, may not now tell. But to the modern 
 voices which ask 
 
 " What need have we 
 Of thoughts that wander through Eternity ? " 
 
 we can at least affirm the need and certainty that 
 such life will be, as the natural expansion and 
 completion of the present ; we can more firmly 
 assert this as a corollary of the truth of the Being 
 of a personal God, carrying with it its implication 
 of a spiritual government. Our whole moral sense 
 would be shocked, and our faith in the rationality 
 of the theistic evolution outraged, if such a deeply- 
 rooted conviction as that of immortality were to 
 prove without real ground or eternal part in the 
 process of the suns and the aims of the universe. 
 This we say while not forgetful how apt the 
 case is to appear as one of obscurum per obscurius 
 to that scientific habit of mind which finds in God 
 no more than a tendency in the universe. " Mais 
 qui osera dire qu'une telle forme est impossible 
 a 1'art divin ? " 
 
 " I, being simple, thought to work His will, 
 And have but stricken with the sword in vain ; 
 And all whereon I lean'd in wife and friend 
 Is traitor to my peace, and all my realm 
 Reels back into the beast, and is no more. 
 My God, Thou hast forgotten me in my death : 
 Nay God my Christ I pass, but shall not die." 
 
CRITICISM OF CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY. 527 
 
 It is impossible that they who utter such longings 
 of man's heart should perish. What, indeed, should 
 all that is best in us rise up to exclaim against a 
 God or Creator who should leave us, with these 
 infinite yearnings, to perish ? And so the theory 
 of those who the Conditional Immortality School 
 would make Immortality an importation into 
 man's own spirit from without, has for us seemed 
 always less rational, and less consistent with the 
 natural spring and impulse of personal spirit in 
 the progressive life of man. Above all conditions 
 or states in which he may be found must be placed 
 in primary importance the essential and transcend- 
 ent powers of man as, in the intrinsic nature of 
 his spirit, we find him. It were an utterly im- 
 probable thing that that deep-seated and intrinsic 
 nature of his should be annulled in virtue of cer- 
 tain conditions in the short span of his earthly 
 life. The theistic philosophy of religion believes 
 in the prophetic element it finds in man, and, 
 rising on the wings of his aspirations after the 
 ideal and the perfect after God and truth and 
 goodness soars towards his eternal destiny. To 
 it between terrene and post - terrene virtue, dis- 
 continuity there is none, and therefore the only 
 rationally possible possible, of course, it is and 
 no more theory of conditional immortality is that 
 which makes man lose immortality in course of 
 time through the self - destroying power of sin. 
 
528 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 Quce cura fuit vivis eadem sequitur tellure re- 
 postos. Say we with George Herbert, 
 
 " Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
 
 A box where sweets compacted lie, 
 My music shows ye have your closes, 
 And all must die. 
 
 Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 
 
 Like season'd timber, never gives ; 
 But though the whole world turn to coal, 
 Then chiefly lives." 
 
 It will thus be seen how the cry of immortal 
 life voiced by our deepest nature makes another 
 thing of our philosophy than " a meditation on 
 death and annihilation." That voice transcends, 
 but does not contradict, any utterance of science : 
 it is a voice which speaks of harmony, of inter- 
 pretation and of adjustment in respect of all the 
 strange, sad facts of man's spirit and life. May 
 we not say that, though recent theistic philosophy 
 has had a clearer discernment of the abstract 
 possibility of theistic thought being constructively 
 reared without this reference to immortality, it has 
 yet more deeply felt that, for vivifying and inspir- 
 ing power, the note of personal immortality must 
 still, in the face of those who would end the 
 cosmos in a grand anti-climax, be the last utter- 
 ance of a true and thorough spiritual philosophy ? 
 May we not affirm that it has seemed to it a 
 strange, irrational, and impossible supposition that 
 just here, in the highest, should real correspondence, 
 
BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY REASONABLE. 529 
 
 real harmony, real development, fail and come to 
 naught ? May we not say that, when it has been 
 sought to draw forth a non liquet on the subject of 
 personal immortality, theistic philosophy has found 
 the possibilities and probabilities founded on the 
 many presumptions in its favour along the lines of 
 recently strengthened analogical evidence and of 
 metaphysical and teleological argument, so over- 
 whelming as to be unable to do otherwise than 
 declare it, not, perhaps, an ordinarily demonstrable 
 truth, but a supremely reasonable belief? If, 
 therefore, we grant, with Ulrici, Fechner, Lotze, 
 and Teichmtiller, among philosophers of recent 
 date, that proof or demonstration is, in the strict 
 sense, impossible here, yet we cannot, while agree- 
 ing with Professor Pfleiderer as to personal im- 
 mortality being a hope, regard all statement of this 
 conviction and the grounds on which it is based, as 
 quite so tentative and wanting in scientific character 
 as Pfleiderer represents. The proofs for immortality 
 may not be of the exact kind which we call demon- 
 strative, but that does not keep them from being so 
 convincing and rational that in their strength man 
 may yet, to use the words of the poet Campbell, in 
 sablest hours of earth 
 
 " The darkening universe defy 
 To quench his Immortality, 
 Or shake his trust in God." 
 
 Still less can we agree with the cheerless result of 
 Dr Bradley's idealism when, at the close of his 
 
 2 L 
 
530 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 thoughtful work on 'Appearance and Reality,' he 
 says, "a future life must be taken as decidedly 
 improbable." On the contrary, we hold that, to 
 a purely natural theism, immortality is pledged by 
 the goodness of the Deity, and it is demanded 
 by the disorders and unexplained confusions of 
 the world that now is. Surely it is no great un- 
 deserved compliment to the wisdom of the Deity 
 to believe that this world is more than a comedy 
 of errors. Shall we dare pronounce this universe 
 of ours one huge blunder, which, had the power 
 been ours, we should have blotted out for ever ? 
 More keen-sighted has our recent Christianly the- 
 istic philosophy of religion been to perceive what 
 good reasons there may be for no more minute or de- 
 tailed insight having been granted us into the nature 
 of the life to come. It has, too, been more content 
 to rest in the love of the Divine Father, of Whose 
 ordering that life will be, and to cherish a firmer 
 faith in that law of spiritual continuity whereby 
 the eternal morrow shall mean the perfecting of 
 the unfinished salvation and character of to-day. 
 Hence it has been gradually recovering the con- 
 fidence in a future life which the excessive dogma- 
 tism of so-called Christian systems had weakened 
 in the minds of men. It has, in fact, maintained 
 so deepening a hold, through every darkness and 
 obscurity, upon the love of the Living Father, as 
 to be able to say that, as for it, its unquenched 
 hope is to behold His face in righteousness, and, 
 
THE GOAL OF IMMORTALITY. 531 
 
 in awaking after His likeness, to be therewith 
 satisfied. 
 
 " And shall I find no Father? Shall my being 
 
 Aspire in vain for ever, and always tend 
 To an impossible goal, which none shall reach 
 An aim without an end ? 
 
 Or, shall I heed them when they bid me take 
 No care for aught but what my brain may prove ? 
 
 I, through whose inmost depths from birth to death 
 Strange, heavenward currents move ; 
 
 Vague whispers, inspirations, memories, 
 Sanctities, yearnings, secret questionings, 
 
 And oft amid the fullest blaze of noon, 
 The rush of hidden wings ? 
 
 Nay ; my soul spurns it ! Less it is to know 
 Than to have faith : not theirs who cast away 
 
 The mind God gave them, eager to adore 
 Idols of baser clay. 
 
 But theirs, who, marking out the bounds of mind, 
 And where thought rules, content to understand, 
 
 Know that beyond its kingdom lies a dread 
 Immeasurable land." 
 
 Because the theistic advances of recent times 
 have been what in this and previous chapters we 
 have tried to portray, we close this work with the 
 comforting reflection that, although philosophy is 
 more than the individual philosopher, the theistic 
 philosopher can yet to - day, with more piercing 
 glance and more penetrative insight, with greater 
 sweep of vision and more dauntless confidence of 
 faith, make his own, notwithstanding those per- 
 
532 SPIRITUAL NATURE, ETC., OF MAN. 
 
 plexities of the cosmos that remain, for still, as 
 Dante says, " insensate he who thinks with mortal 
 ken to pierce Infinitude," 
 
 " Matto e chi spera, che nostra ragione 
 Possa trascorrer la infinita via,"- 
 
 the beautiful prayer of Geibel, with its fine spiritual 
 daring and rich theistic sentiment, of which we 
 venture to subjoin a rendering of our own in the 
 form in which it was long ago cast off in leisure 
 moments : 
 
 " Herr, den ich tief im Herzen trage, sei Du mit mir ! 
 Du Gnadenhort in Gliick und Plage, sei Du mit mir ! 
 Im Brand des Sommers, der dem Manne die Wange braunt, 
 Wie in der Jugend Rosenhage, sei Du mit mir ! 
 Behiite mich am Born der Freude vor Uebermuth, 
 Und wenn ich an mir selbst verzage, sei Du mit mir ! 
 Gieb deinen Geist zu meinem Liede, dass rein es sei, 
 Und dass kein Wort mich einst verklage, sei Du mit mir ! 
 Dein Segen ist wie Thau den Reben ! Nichts kann ich selbst ; 
 Doch dass ich kiihn das Hochste wage, sei Du mit mir ! 
 O Du mein Trost, Du meine Starke, mein Sonnenlicht, 
 Bis an das Ende meiner Tage, sei Du mit mir ! " 
 
 Lord, Whom in depth of heart I bear, be Thou with me ! 
 Thou Fort of grace in peace and plague, be Thou with me ! 
 When shine of summer sun the cheek of man doth brown, 
 As when with roses fenc'd in youth, be Thou my crown ! 
 Preserve me, Well of Joy ! lest I should haughty be, 
 And if I of myself despair, be Thou with me ! 
 Thy Spirit to me give, that pure my song may be, 
 And that no Word may e'er accuse, be Thou with me ! 
 Thy blessing be as Vine-dew ! Self can nothing be ; 
 But that I may the highest dare, be Thou with me ! 
 O Thou my Consolation, Strength, and Sunlight free, 
 On to the end of life's brief day, be Thou with me ! 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS. 
 
 Abbot, Dr Francis E., 90, 214, 294. 
 
 Abgeleitete Absolutheit, 438. 
 
 Abgrund, 10. 
 
 Absolute, the, 28, 30, 51, 75, 91, 95, 105, 
 133, 152, 222-224, 229, 259, 273, 275, 
 285, 289, 297-299, 304, 307, 309, 310, 
 324-326, 328, 359, 378, 381, 382, 389, 
 426. 
 
 Absolutism, scientific, 118, 406, 490. 
 
 Accident, apotheosis of, 192, 409. 
 
 Acosmism, 301, 313. 
 
 Adam, 340. 
 
 Adaptations, 180, 190, 202, 209. 
 
 Adjustment, Spencer on, 209. 
 
 ^Eschylos, 413. 
 
 ^Esthetic, 38, 121, 199, 269, 330. 
 
 yEtiological inquiry, 175. 
 
 Affections, the, 117-119, 320, 396, 397, 428, 
 
 45 6 > 465- 
 
 Agnosticism, 38, 57, 91, 95, 99, 122, 123, 
 139, 201, 352, 481, 494, 495, 510. 
 
 Huxley's, 99. 
 
 impossibility of, 122, 123, 494, 495. 
 
 the Absolute of, 75, 91, 96, 123, 303, 
 
 381. 
 
 aAT}0u/6?, 6, 119. 
 
 Alexander, Prof. S. , of Manchester, 422. 
 Altruism, 72, 73, 132, 181, 507, 518. 
 Amiel, 286, 348, 468, 491. 
 Analogy, 52, 56, 61, 290, 302, 529. 
 ' Analytik,' Kant's transcendental, 95. 
 Ancestor-worship, 47, 58. 
 Animal intelligence, 339-341, 413, 448. 
 Animism, 26, 47. 
 Annihilation, 465, 513, 528. 
 Atischauung, 418. 
 Anselm, 217-219, 239, 240. 
 Anthropocosmic theism, 65, 122. 
 Anthropomorphism, 94, 109, 280, 302, 447. 
 Antiquity of man, 340. 
 Anti-theistic theories, 38, 369, 480. 
 A:t-nnd-fiir-sich, 372. 
 
 U vorjTiKoC, 208. 
 
 Apologetic, n, 337. 
 
 'Appearance and Reality,' Dr F. H. 
 
 Bradley's, 298, 372, 389, 530. 
 Apperceptions, 374. 
 "Apriorism," 148. 
 Aristotle, 176. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 40, 67, 109, 276. 
 Art, 463. 
 
 Aryan conception, 65. 
 Aseitdt, no. 
 Aseity, no, 166, 290. 
 Astronomy, 482, 486, 512. 
 Atavism, 49. 
 Atheism, 82, 251, 497. 
 
 of consciousness, Schelling's, 51. 
 Atonement, 459, 461, 464, 467, 468, 470, 
 473, 477, 478. 
 
 philosophy of, 459, 465, 470, 475, 477. 
 Atrophy, 260. 
 Attributes of Deity, 94. 
 Auberlen, 444. 
 Aufkebung, 313. 
 Augustine, 40. 
 Ausdruck, 207, 311. 
 Aussage, 311. 
 avrapKeta, 390. 
 
 Authority, reason and, 345. 
 
 religion and, 386. 
 Automatism, 412, 452. 
 Autonomy, 262, 344, 347. 
 Azara, 55. 
 
 Baader, 61, 283, 286. 
 
 Bahnsen, 134. 
 
 Bain, Prof., 150, 367, 375, 402, 410. 
 
 Bala, 42. 
 
 Balfour, Arthur James, 90, 263, 341, 345, 
 
 403, 421. 
 criticism of, 293. 
 Banks, Prof. J. S., 79, 126. 
 Baur, 501. 
 
 Bavinck, Prof., of Kampen, 259. 
 Beatrice, Dante's, 473. 
 
534 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Becoming, 90, 105, 510. 
 
 Begleiterscheimingen, 372. 
 
 Being, 89-91, 93, 96, 100, 103, no. 
 
 Absolute, 90, 96, 103, no, in, 326, 
 
 327- 
 
 Hegel on, 93, 94, 102, 104, 105. 
 Bender, Dr, of Bonn, 35. 
 Bertrand de Born, 376. 
 Beschr dnkung, 291. 
 Bewusstsein uberhaupt, 358. 
 Biedermann, 79, 228, 229, 310, 321. 
 
 evil and, 138. 
 
 personality and, criticised, 279, 309, 
 
 310. 
 
 Biological science, 40, 183, 194. 
 Bobba, 127. 
 Body, mind and, 377, 409, 484. 
 
 redemption of the, 471. 
 Bolingbroke, 504. 
 Bonn, 35. 
 Boston, 294. 
 Bouchitte, 127. 
 
 Bowen, Prof. Francis, of Harvard, 294. 
 Bowne, Prof. Borden P., of Boston, 79, 294. 
 Bradley, Dr F. H., 298, 302, 378, 389, 412, 
 
 435, 53- 
 Braniss, 88. 
 Broca, 195. 
 
 Browning, 106, 112, 456. 
 Bruce, Prof. A. B., 79, 90. 
 Blichner, 73, 100, 190, 204, 510, 521. 
 Buckle, 499. 
 Buddhism, 28, 108. 
 Bunsen, history and, 498, 499, 506. 
 
 on India, 29. 
 Burns, 250. 
 
 Busse, Dr Ludwig, 109, 139. 
 Butler, A. J., 376. 
 Butler, Bishop, 248. 
 
 Caird, Principal John, 79, 90, 184. 
 
 on basis of religion, 35. 
 
 on design, 184. 
 
 on religion, 30. 
 
 on the ontological argument, 237. 
 Caird, Prof. Edward, 27, 484. 
 
 criticism of, 33. 
 
 on Christianity, 66. 
 
 on the moral argument, 244. 
 Calderwood, Prof. Henry, 90, 340, 341, 484. 
 Caldwell, Prof. W., 94, 412. ' 
 Campbell, Macleod, 473. 
 Campbell, Thomas, 529. 
 Carlyle, 485, 501. 
 Caro, M., 233, 234. 
 Carpenter, Dr, 206, 409, 444. 
 Carus, Dr Paul, 108, 317, 367, 368. 
 Causa causarum, 491. 
 Causal axiom, Spencer on the, 145, 160, 163. 
 
 idea, the, 145, 150, 153-155, *57> 192. 
 
 law, the, 149-151, 153, 154, 157, 160, 
 162, 163. 
 
 problem, the, 146, 149, 153, 159, 160, 
 162, 163. 
 
 Causalbegriff, 154. 
 
 Causality, freedom and, 407, 409. 
 
 Hume on, 146. 
 
 Kant on, 146, 150-152, 154, 161. 
 
 Lotze on, 149, 150, 163. 
 
 Mansel on, 142. 
 
 Martineau on, 150. 
 
 metaphysic of, 142, 144, 149. 
 
 Mill on, 146, 163, 180. 
 
 Prof. Riehl and, 162, 163. 
 
 Prof. Romanes and, 164. 
 
 Prof. Royce and, 161. 
 
 Science and, 144, 154, 157. 
 
 Ulrici on, 150. 
 Causation, efficient, 143, 154, 176, 196. 
 
 principle of, 142, 153, 155, 162, 405, 
 407. 
 
 volitional type of, 148, 164. 
 Cause and effect, 145, 153, 156, 165. 
 
 efficient, 143, 154, 171, 196. 
 
 Prof. Flint on, 157. 
 
 final, 174, 177, 191, 192, 208, 212, 214. 
 Cave, Principal Alfred, 79. 
 Cazenove, Dr, 239. 
 Certitude, 386. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr Thomas, 255, 444. 
 Chalybaus, 105. 
 
 on Hegel, 93. 
 
 on personality of God, 291. 
 Chemistry, 519. 
 Christ, 396, 456, 465, 466, 468, 470, 472, 
 
 473, 476, 489, 494. 5 X 9- 
 Christ-consciousness, 382, 383, 388. 
 Christian Doctrine, 385, 464. 
 ' Christian Doctrine,' Dr Dale's, 476. 
 
 history of, 385. 
 Christianity, 41, 66, 73, 80, 382, 465, 471. 
 
 as teleological, 41. 
 
 sin and, 465, 468, 471, 478. 
 Christlieb, 345. 
 Church, redemption of the, 471. 
 
 thought of the, 482. 
 Civilisation, 499, 506. 
 Clarke, 149, 218. 
 
 Clifford, Prof., 367, 369, 372, 423, 497. 
 Cobbe, Miss, 299. 
 Cocker, Dr, 294. 
 
 Cognition, theoretic, 36, 316, 346. 
 Coleridge, 221. 
 Communion, 312, 471, 525. 
 Comparative method in mythology, 52. 
 
 psychology, 339. 
 
 religion, 22. 
 Complexity of modern problems,' 355. 
 
 of personality, 324, 369, 394. 
 
 of religious devotion, 48. 
 Comte, 73, 146, 163, 200, 220, 221, 369, 499, 
 
 Soo, 523. 
 
 Concreteness, 97, 104, 268, 439. 
 Conditional immortality, 527. 
 ' Connaissance de Dieu,' Gratry's, 232. 
 ' Connaissance de 1'Ame,' Gratry's, 494. 
 Conscience, authority of, 243, 249, 261, 445. 
 
 Butler on, 248. 
 
 
INDEX. 
 
 535 
 
 Conscience, Chalmers on, 255. 
 
 cognition and, 253. 
 
 dignity of, 252, 254. 
 
 Dorner on, 252, 444. 
 
 Erskine on, 256. 
 
 ethical energy of, 253, 454. 
 
 Gass on, 453. 
 
 Hofmann on, 445. 
 
 Martensen on, 453. 
 
 Martineau on, 257, 448. 
 
 moral, the, 451. 
 
 Newman on, 251. 
 
 origin and nature of, 254. 
 
 reason and, 253. 
 
 theology and, 249, 260. 
 
 Wuttke and, 251. 
 
 Consciousness, 8, 353, 356-360, 362-365, 
 37L 377- 382. 
 
 Absolute, the, 8, 285, 297, 316, 325, 
 
 379- 
 
 Christian, the, 382-384. 
 
 Cousin on, 356. 
 
 matter and, 367-369. 
 
 origin of, 357, 358, 383. 
 
 philosophy of, 355, 367, 383. 
 
 Prof. James on, 362, 363. 
 
 race, 364. 
 
 relative, 316, 320. 
 
 religious, the, 379, 382. 
 Conservation of energy, 512, 519. 
 Contingency in freewill, 410, 411, 421. 
 Continuity, spiritual, 527, 528. 
 Convertibility of forces, 144. 
 Copenhagen, 369. 
 Corneille, 392. 
 Cosmic consciousness, 306. 
 
 process, 190, 306, 406. 
 
 theism, 273, 275. 
 
 ' Cosmic Philosophy,' Fiske's, 273-275, 306. 
 Cosmological proof, the, 158-161, 163-166, 
 
 168. 
 
 Courtney, Dr W. L. , 449. 
 Cousin, 149, 231-233, 335. 
 
 eclecticism of, 231. 
 Crantz, 55. 
 Creationism, 98, 104, 106, 107, no, 186, 
 
 288, 456, 483. 
 ' Creator and Creation,' Dr John Young's, 
 
 45 6 - 
 
 Creed, 77, 439. 
 Criticism, Biblical, 483. 
 ' Critique of Judgment,' Kant's, 174, 177, 
 
 244. 
 ' Critique of Practical Reason,' Kant's, 246, 
 
 249. 
 'Critique of Pure Reason,' Kant's, 120, 
 
 176. 
 
 Croll, Dr James, 158, 435, 436. 
 Crusius, 150. 
 Cudworth, 218. 
 
 Culture, Christianity and, 71, 72. 
 Cumulative character of theistic arguments, 
 
 116. 
 Czolbe, 193. 
 
 Dale, Dr R. W., 476. 
 
 Dante, 170, 375, 376, 473, 487, 501, 524, 
 
 532. 
 Darwin, 183, 188, 190, 192, 195, 450, 513. 
 
 on origin of species, 188. 
 Darwinism, Wallace on, 193, 341. 
 Das Dasein Gottes, 120. 
 Das geistige Band, 502. 
 Das Gemeine, i. 
 Das Gewissen, 445. 
 'Das Menschliche Handeln,' Prof. A. 
 
 Dorner's, 438. 
 
 ' Das Wesen der Religion,' Dr Bender's, 35. 
 Davidson, Dr W. L., 124. 
 De Biran, Maine, 148, 164, 231. 
 De Born, Bertrand, 376. 
 De la Saussaye, Prof. P. D. Chantepie, on 
 
 religion, 23. 
 De Tocqueville, 523. 
 De Wette, 445. 
 
 Deductive demonstration of God, 115. 
 Deism, 207, 313. 
 'Delia Filosofia della Rivelazione, ' 
 
 Gioberti's, 235. 
 Der Gedanke, 205. 
 Der Hebel der Weltgeschichte, 506. 
 Descartes, 218, 219, 224. 
 Design, evolution and, 205, 208, 209. 
 
 immanence and, 179, 190, 197, 198. 
 
 law and, 199, 200. 
 
 Lotze on, 182, 213. 
 
 personality and, 212. 
 
 principle of, 179, 182, 190, 191. 
 
 Prof. Flint on, 178, 179, 182. 
 
 Prof. Royce on, 188, 191. 
 
 Rev. J. Morris on, 178, 187, 213. 
 
 Romanes on, 210. 
 
 Strauss on, 215. 
 
 Trendelenburg on, 182, 191. 
 Destiny, 457, 520, 527. 
 ' Destiny of Man,' Fiske's, 515. 
 Determinism, 399, 403, 411, 417, 419, 434- 
 
 437, 439- 
 
 Dr James Croll's, 435, 436. 
 
 Dr Paul Ree's, 428, 429. 
 
 Prof. A. Riehl's, 434. 
 
 Ribot's, 404. 
 
 Schelling's, 412, 426, 427. 
 
 Schopenhauer's, 427. 
 Deus absconditus, 116. 
 Deus ex machina, 247. 
 Deussen, 134. 
 Development, 54, 109, 196, 326, 359, 487, 
 
 5 I 5- 
 
 Dialectic, 337, 342, 377, 426, 500. 
 Dichotomy, 380. 
 Diderot, 406. 
 
 Die Enge des Bewusstseins, 355. 
 Die Erkennbarkeit Gottes, 95. 
 ' Die Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart,' n. 
 ' Die Worte des Glaubens,' Schiller's, 
 
 323. 
 ' Die Zukunft der Religion,' A. Schweizer's, 
 
 70. 
 
536 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Diman, Prof., 90, 122. 
 Ding-an-sich, 307. 
 Doctrine, History of, 385. 
 Dogmatics, Natural Theology and, 6. 
 Dogmatik, 309, 525. 
 Dogmatism, 315, 497. 
 
 Dorner, I. A., 79, 128, 228, 252, 373, 444, 
 450, 460. 
 
 on conscience, 252, 444. 
 
 on ethics, 450. 
 
 on final cause, 191. 
 
 on ontological proof, 228. 
 
 on personality in God, 288. 
 Dorner, Prof. A., of Konigsberg, 438. 
 ' ' Double-aspect " theory, 369, 413. 
 Dowden, Prof. E., quoted, 285. 
 Drews, Dr Arthur, 282. 
 Du Bois-Reymond, 368. 
 Du Prel, 361. 
 
 Dualism, 64, 92, 100, 105, 257, 327, 389. 
 ' Dualism and Monism,' Prof.Veitch's, 319. 
 Dugdale, 473. 
 Dysteleology, 209. 
 
 Eclecticism, 231. 
 
 Edinburgh, 194, 340, 484. 
 
 Education, 468. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, necessitarianism of, 402. 
 
 atonement and, 473. 
 Edwards, Principal, of Bala, criticism on, 
 
 42. 
 
 Ego, transcendental, 373-375. 
 Egoism, no. 
 
 Ein absoluter Anfang, 428. 
 Ein iiberwundener Standpunkt, i. 
 Ein urspriingliches Gottesbewusstsein, 59. 
 Eliot, George, 113. 
 Emanationism, 105, 166. 
 Embryology, 392. 
 Emerson, 12, 76, 117, 245, 298, 336, 429, 
 
 518. 
 
 Empirical psychology, 511. 
 Ens rationis, 95. 
 Ens realissimum, 159. 
 Ente realissimo, 236. 
 Entheism, 108. 
 Entourage, 452. 
 Entschluss, 440. 
 Environment, 43, 181, 366, 404, 415, 416, 
 
 5 2 5- 
 
 Epistemology, 375. 
 
 "Epistle to a Young Friend," by Burns, 
 
 250. 
 
 Erdmann, 227, 501. 
 Erfahrung, 287. 
 Erhebung, 70. 
 Errungenschaft, 403. 
 Erscheinung, 144. 
 Erskine of Linlathen, 256. 
 Eschatology, 70. 
 
 Essence of being, 91, 93, 95, 258, 270, 286, 
 309- 
 
 of God, 91, 93, 95, 286, 309. 
 
 of personality, 270, 314. 
 
 Essence of religion, 30, 32, 35, 36, 40, 43, 
 44. 
 
 of teleology, 197, 201. 
 Eternity of matter, 106, 148. 
 Ethical freedom, 504. 
 
 law, 442, 444, 446, 448, 450, 456. 
 
 theism, 2, 243, 256, 257, 260, 261, 263. 
 ' Ethical Studies,' Bradley's, 412. 
 Ethics, agnostic, 444, 446. 
 
 metaphysic and, 220. 
 
 of Dorner, 450. 
 
 of Leitch, 453. 
 
 pantheistic, 444. 
 
 reason and, 445, 447. 
 
 religion and, 62, 63, 257, 259, 451. 
 Ethnic religions, 22, 25. 
 Ethnographical theory, 47. 
 Ethological aspect of teleological proof, 175. 
 Eucken, Prof., of Jena, n, 37. 
 Eudaemonism, 247. 
 European history, 499, 505. 
 Eutaxiology, 170, 177. 
 Evil, moral, 138, 139. 
 
 natural, 136, 137. 
 
 problem of, 140. 
 
 reality of, 137. 
 Evolution, conscience and, 446, 452, 453. 
 
 design and, 208. 
 
 immortality and, 513. 
 
 man and, 339-341, 487, 493- 
 
 natural, 52. 
 
 of life, 40. 
 
 of religion, 33, 51. 
 
 philosophy of, 354, 437, 521. 
 
 theistic, 504, 507, 526. 
 ' Evolution and its Relation to Religious 
 
 Thought,' Prof. Le Conte's, 521. 
 ' Evolution and Man's Place in Nature,' 
 
 Prof. Calderwood's, 341. 
 ' Evolution of Religion,' criticism of Prof. 
 
 E. Caird's, 33. 
 Evolutionism, 80, 101, 106, 306, 397, 400, 
 
 437, 446, 495. 
 Experientialism, 147, 148. 
 Extra-mundane Deity, 152, 301, 307. 
 
 Fairbairn, Principal, 71, 79, no, 127. 
 
 Fairbrother, W. H., 296. 
 
 Faith a basal activity, 31, 44, 343, 344. 
 
 complexity of, 35, 36, 43. 
 
 conflict of, 451, 472. 
 
 theoretic reason and, 4, 342-345. 
 Fatalism, 404, 416, 434, 502. 
 Fatherhood, the Divine, 489-492, 494. 
 'Faust,' 348, 467, 482, 492, 502. 
 Fechner, 48, 79, 290, 291, 367, 529. 
 
 on origin of religion, 53. 
 
 on religious faith, 53. 
 Feeling, the religious, 492. 
 
 thought and, 35, 44. 
 Fenelon, 231, 336. 
 Ferrier, 18, 90, 101. 
 
 consciousness and, 355. 
 
 ontological cast of, 237. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 537 
 
 Fetichism, 49, 57, 346. 
 Fichte, I. H., 90, 288. 
 
 personality and, 288. 
 Fichte, J. G., 79, 104, 135, 426, 486. 
 
 freewill and, 426. 
 
 idealism and, 285. 
 
 immortality and, 516. 
 
 law and, 443. 
 
 personality and, 283, 292. 
 
 rationalism and, 343. 
 Final cause, Dorner on, 191. 
 
 Trendelenburg on, 191. 
 Final causes, 174, 177, 191, 192, 208, 212, 
 
 214. 
 
 Finiteness, 280, 389, 490. 
 First Cause, the, 145, 149, 153, 155, 164. 
 ' First Principles,' Spencer's, 382. 
 Fischer, Kuno, 233, 403, 501. 
 Fischer, K. Phil., 226, 291. 
 Fisher, Prof. G. P., 79, 294. 
 Fiske, Prof. John, 98, 109, 183, 273-275, 
 308, 341, 358. 
 
 criticism of, 274. 
 
 on the soul, 515, 521. 
 Flint, Prof. Robert, 55, 90, 128. 
 
 cause and, 157. 
 
 design and, 172, 178, 182. 
 
 idea of God and, 118, 123. 
 
 moral argument and, 243. 
 
 Natural Theology and, 6. 
 
 nature and art and, 178, 179. 
 
 ontological argument and, 239. 
 
 speculative theism of, 297. 
 Fonsegrive, M., 404. 
 Force, conception of, 94. 
 
 Le Conte on, 92. 
 
 matter and, 94, 98, 102-104, 106, 108. 
 
 omnipresent, 98. 
 
 psychic states and, 359, 370, 371, 373, 
 
 374- 
 
 reason and, 337. 
 
 Foreknowledge of God, freedom and, 413. 
 Form, force and, in nature, 40, 171. 
 Fortlage, 100. 
 Fouillee, M., 222. 
 ' Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals,' 
 
 Kant's, 425. 
 ' Foundations of Belief,' A. J. Balfour's, 
 
 2 93 344- 
 
 Fragmentary character of revelation, 478. 
 Frank, 288. 289, 451, 470. 
 
 personality and, '288, 289. 
 Fraser, Dr J. G., 58. 
 Fraser, Prof. Campbell, 79, 103. 
 Frauenstadt, 134. 
 Freedom, causality and, 407, 431. 
 
 Dr Paul Ree on, 428-430. 
 
 Green and, 411, 418, 419, 428. 
 
 Hegel and, 30, 426, 500. 
 
 history and, 500, 502-504. 
 
 Kant on, 415, 424, 425, 427. 
 
 Lotze on, 423, 424. 
 
 man's, 13, 311. 
 
 Mansel on, 401. 
 
 Freedom, personality and, 400, 416. 
 
 psychology and, 415, 416. 
 
 Riehl on, 432-434. 
 
 Schelling on, 412, 426. 
 
 science and, 399. 
 
 theistic philosophy and, 438-440. 
 Freewill, Dr F. H. Bradley on, 412, 418. 
 
 evolution and, 416, 420, 437, 501. 
 
 Fichte and, 426. 
 
 Prof. Hoffding on, 431, 432. 
 
 Prof. Sidgwick on, 419. 
 
 significance of, 401, 427. 
 Fursichsein, 280. 
 Future life, 518, 519, 520, 522, 525, 527, 530. 
 
 science and the, 513, 515, 519. 
 
 Galuppi, 234, 236. 
 Gass, 453. 
 Gattung, 431. 
 Gaunilo, 222. 
 Gedanke, 205. 
 Gefiihl, 492. 
 Gehenna, 462. 
 Geibel, Emmanuel, 532. 
 Genesis of evil, 137, 462. 
 
 of mind, 354-359. 
 
 of morality, Pfleiderer on the, 63. 
 
 of religion, 50, 66. 
 Geological science, 40. 
 ' Geschichte der neuesten Theologie,' by 
 
 Karl Schwarz, 501. 
 
 'Geschichte und Kritik der neueren Theo- 
 logie,' Frank's, 470. 
 Gesinnung, 248. 
 Gillespie, 218. 
 Giltigkeit, 162. 
 Gioberti, 234, 235. 
 Glaubenslehre of Dorner, 374. 
 
 of Strauss, 41. 
 Gloatz, Paul, 79, 503. 
 Gliicksetigkeit, 248. 
 God as Moral, 245, 259, 260. 
 
 as Spirit, 102, 308. 
 
 God-consciousness, 125, 381, 386, 388, 459. 
 'God in History,' Bunsen's, 498. 
 God-Man, the, 105. 
 
 Principal Edwards on the, 42. 
 " Gods of Greece," Schiller's, 64. 
 Goering on cause, 163. 
 Goethe, 117, 137, 251, 339, 395, 472, 508, 
 
 5 l 9 ' 
 on the commonplace, i. 
 
 on the infinite, 90, 493. 
 
 on truth and form, 77. 
 
 progress and, 73, 479. 
 'Golden Bough,' Dr J. G. Eraser's, 58. 
 Goodness, Divine, 128, 389, 440, 462. 
 
 eternal, 140. 
 
 sovereign, 499. 
 Grace, 440, 456, 472, 480. 
 
 freedom and, 440. 
 
 law and, 456. 
 Gratry, 232, 336, 494. 
 ' Great Enigma,' W. S. Lilly on the, 280. 
 
538 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Greek thought, 63, 65. 
 
 Green, Prof. T. H., 79, 333, 407, 489. 
 
 merit of, 411, 418. 
 
 criticism of, on freedom, 411, 418, 419, 
 428. 
 
 criticism of, on personality, 269, 393. 
 Greg, W. R., 298. 
 Grosse, 68. 
 Grotius, 149. 
 
 Growth, 345, 359, 360, 496, 502, 504. 
 Gruppe, 55. 
 Guizot, 497, 499. 
 Giinther, 105. 
 
 Haeckel, 10, 98, 190, 209, 519. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 122, 143, 216, 418. 
 
 " Hamlet," 463. 
 
 Hanne, 282. 
 
 Happiness, 248, 466, 505. 
 
 Harris, Prof. Samuel, 79, 90, 294, 334, 364. 
 
 law and, 447. 
 
 reason and, 334. 
 
 Hartmann, 70, 71, 134, 163, 185, 272-274, 
 291, 292. 
 
 unconscious Will and, 272, 273. 
 Harvard, 64, 294, 362, 406. 
 Heaven, Kingdom of, 496. 
 Hebrews, the, 61, 64, 65. 
 Hedonism, 250, 262. 
 
 Hegel, 16, 79, 104, 218, 226, 295, 306, 325, 
 347, 426, 499, 500, 502. 
 
 Chalybaus on, 93. 
 
 on being, 93, 94, 102, 104, 105. 
 
 on emotion and thought, 44. 
 
 on freedom, 30, 426, 500. 
 
 on idea of God, 24. 
 
 on nature, 485. 
 
 on ontological argument, 223, 226. 
 
 on personality of God, 104. 
 
 on philosophy of history, 500, 501. 
 
 on Spirit, 30. 
 
 on the Absolute, criticism of, 288, 307. 
 
 on thought and reality, 102. 
 
 on Universal, 104. 
 
 Rosmini on, 236. 
 Hegelianism, 103, 104, 133, 223, 295, 297, 
 
 319, 426, 466, 485, 501, 524. 
 Hell, 481. 
 Hellenes, 64. 
 Hellwald, 54. 
 Henotheism, 49. 
 Heraclitus, 324. 
 Herbart, 415. 
 
 causation and, 146, 149, 163. 
 Herbert, George, 528. 
 Herder, 497, 512. 
 Heredity, 411, 415, 416. 
 Herrmann, 349. 
 Hettinger, 226. 
 
 immortality and, 510, 520. 
 Himmelfahrt, 523. 
 Hindu thought, 63. 
 Hinton, James, 160. 
 Historic Christ, the, 473, 476, 478. 
 
 History, Bunsen on, 498, 499, 506. 
 
 Comte on, 499, 500. 
 
 difficulties of, 497. 
 
 European, 499, 505. 
 
 freedom in, 500, 502, 503, 504. 
 
 genetic study of, 496. 
 
 Guizot on, 497, 499. 
 
 personality and, 506. 
 
 philosophy of, 496, 497, 498, 499, 502. 
 Gloatz on, 503. 
 Hegel on, 500, 501, 502. 
 necessity of, 496, 498, 499. 
 Schwarz on, 501. 
 
 predestined goal of, 496. 
 
 progress of, 502, 504, 505. 
 
 rational comprehension of, 496. 
 
 Spencer's treatment of, 506. 
 
 Thiers on, 498. 
 
 unity in, 496. 
 
 universal, 506. 
 
 witness of, 502. 
 History of Doctrine, 385. 
 
 of Philosophy, the, 496, 498, 503. 
 
 of Religion, the, 21, 69, 503. 
 ' History of Materialism,' Lange's, 80. 
 ' History of Speculative Philosophy,' Chaly- 
 baus on, 291. 
 Hobbes, 149. 
 
 Hodgson, Dr Shadworth, 371. 
 Hoffding, Prof., of Copenhagen, 367, 369. 
 
 freedom and, 413, 430-432. 
 Hoffmann, Franz, 307. 
 Hofmann on conscience, 445, 453. 
 Hume, 146-148, 150, 363. 
 
 sensationalism of, 99. 
 Huxley, Prof., 99, 190, 194, 340, 402, 405, 
 
 Si?, S- 
 Hygiene, 468. 
 Hypnotism, 393. 
 
 Ideal, the, 241, 258, 348, 396-398, 463, 
 
 54- 
 
 the moral, 258, 262, 397, 398, 463. 
 
 the spiritual, 241, 396, 398, 504. 
 Idealism, 80, 137, 286, 529. 
 
 absolute, 34, 371, 389. 
 
 Hegel's, 288. 
 
 moral, 260. 
 
 ontological, 234-236. 
 
 pantheistic, 397. 
 
 Rosmini's, 235, 236. 
 
 Royce's, 346. 
 Idealistic philosophy, defect of, 288, 307, 
 
 .367- 
 
 virtue of, 223. 
 
 Idea of God, 24, 108, 183, 308, 329, 330. 
 ' Idea of God,' Dr Paul Carus on the, 108. 
 ' Idea of God,' Prof. John Fiske on the, 183, 
 
 308. 
 
 Identity theory, 369, 413. 
 ' Iliad,' 129. 
 Illingworth, 297. 
 Immanence, conscience and, 9, 61. 
 
 Deity of, 9, 42, 64, 93. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 539 
 
 Immanence, fact of evil and, 314. 
 
 Fiske on, criticism of, 42. 
 
 Krause on, 286, 287. 
 
 pantheism and, 93, 397. 
 
 purposive design and, 42, 190, 197, 198. 
 
 the ideal and, 397, 398. 
 
 Immortality, 13, 214, 349, 465, 508, 509, 
 512-514, 528, 529. 
 
 Comte on, 523. 
 
 conditional, 527. 
 
 evolutionism and, 6r, 511-513, 515. 
 
 faith in God and, 516. 
 
 grounds of, 508-511, 516. 
 
 Herder on, 512. 
 
 Hettinger on, 510, 520. 
 
 individual, 518, 519. 
 
 Kant and, 509. 
 
 metaphysic of, 511, 522. 
 
 mind and, 511, 522. 
 
 natural, 465, 514, 517. 
 
 necessary, 515, 516. 
 
 personal, 518, 528. 
 
 Pfleiderer on, 529. 
 
 Prof. Le Conte on, 521. 
 
 race, 518. 
 
 revelation and, 508. 
 
 science and, 486, 528. 
 Impassibility of God, 478. 
 Impersonal, the, 169, 185, 266, 278, 298, 
 
 309. 335- 364. 390, 449, 5 l8 - 
 " In Memoriam," the, 427, 507. 
 Incarnation, the, 37, 97, 460. 
 Indeterminism, 403, 407, 420, 434. 
 
 Dr Mach's, 404. 
 
 Fonsegrive's, 404. 
 
 Renouvier's, 414. 
 India, 28, 29. 
 Individual, the, 104, 397, 426, 439, 518, 
 
 5 2 4; 
 
 Individualism, 386, 438, 523. 
 
 Individuality, 104, 312, 364, 386, 438, 509. 
 
 Induction, 116, 441. 
 
 Industrialism, 496. 
 
 Inferential knowledge, 370, 371. 
 
 " Inferno," 376, 487. 
 
 Infinite, the, 279, 280, 285, 295, 314-316, 
 
 391, 487, 490, 519, 532. 
 Infra-personal, the, 300. 
 Ingersoll, 31. 
 Inhibition, 407. 
 ' Introduzione allo Studio della Filosofia/ 
 
 Gioberti's, 235. 
 Intuition, 124-126, 239, 312. 
 
 Prof. J. S. Banks on, 126. 
 Intuitional Argument, Prof. Knight on the, 
 
 criticised, 123. 
 Inwardness, 312. 
 Israel, 64. 
 Iverach, Prof., 90. 
 
 Jacobi, 79, 283. 
 
 religion and, 48. 
 
 James, Prof. William, of Harvard, 118, 362, 
 403, 406, 427. 
 
 Janet, M. Paul, 81, 375. 
 
 final causes and, 191. 
 
 liberty and, 410. 
 Jena, n. 
 Jenseits, 519. 
 
 Jesus, 75, 460, 463, 466, 468. 
 Jevons, Prof., 148, 203. 
 Jones, Prof. Henry, 102. 
 Joubert, 321, 509. 
 Jouffroy, 497. 
 Judaism, 64. 
 Juridical mind, the, 399. 
 Jurisprudence, 443. 
 Justice, attribute of, 112, 113. 
 
 retributive, 113. 
 
 Kaftan, Prof. Julius, of Berlin, 79, 349. 
 
 Kahnis, 290. 
 
 Kampen, 259. 
 
 Kampf, 89. 
 
 Kant, 79, 108, 120, 135, 146-148, 150, 151, 
 
 163, 176, 217-219, 222, 225, 226, 233, 
 
 282, 365, 366, 373, 410, 415, 427, 442, 
 
 446, 451, 484, 497, 499. 
 cosmological proof and, 154, 161. 
 freedom of, criticism of, 401, 415, 424, 
 
 425- 
 
 immortality and, 509. 
 metaphysic of, 220, 249. 
 moral argument of, criticised, 424, 425. 
 moral ideal and, 247, 259, 448. 
 ontological argument and, 218, 219, 
 
 222. 
 
 personality and, 282, 366, 376. 
 
 phenomenalism of, 100, 410. 
 
 rationalism of, 99, 333. 
 
 relation of ethics and religion in view 
 of, 451. 
 
 space and time with, 322. 
 
 teleological proof and, 174, 175, 177. 
 
 Transcendental ^Esthetic of, 269. 
 Kantianism, 103, 146-148, 152, 160, 173, 
 174, 223-225, 238, 240, 246-250, 354, 371, 
 376, 401, 425. 
 Kant's ' Analytik,' 95. 
 
 ' Critique of judgment,' 174, 177. 
 
 ' Critique of Practical Reason,' 246, 249. 
 
 'Critique of Pure Reason,' 120, 176. 
 
 ' Metaphysic of Ethics,' 249. 
 
 ' Philosophy of Law,' 442. 
 Kellogg, Dr, of Toronto, 79. 
 
 on development of religion, 29. 
 
 on thought of India, 28. 
 " Keraunological," the, 119. 
 Kidd, Dr James, criticism on, 63. 
 Kierkegaard, 349. 
 Kinetic power of reason, 350. 
 Kingdom of Heaven, 13, 496. 
 Kingdom, the spiritual, 13. 
 Kleutgen, 237. 
 Knight, Prof. William, 123, 269. 
 
 and Kant, criticism on, 247. 
 
 personality and, 269. 
 
 teleology and, criticism of, 205. 
 
540 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Knowledge, faith and, 344. 
 
 Koenig, Dr, on causality, 154. 
 
 Konigsberg, 230, 250, 438. 
 
 Krause, 79, 124, 286. 
 
 ' Kritik der reinen Vernunft,' Kant's, 248. 
 
 Ladd, Prof. George T., of Yale, 279, 294. 
 Lange, F. A., 80, 405. 
 Laocoon, 462. 
 
 Laurie, Prof. S. S., of Edinburgh, 342. 
 Law, 146, 148, 152, 153, 157, 160, 162, 163, 
 199. 340, 359, 441-443. 446, 447. 456, 
 483, 493- 
 
 absolute, 441, 442, 444, 446, 449, 453, 
 482, 483. 
 
 cause and, 149 - 151, 153, 154, 162, 
 163. 
 
 cosmic, 441, 442, 450, 493. 
 
 design and, 199. 
 
 ethical, 450-452, 456. 
 
 Fichte on, 443. 
 
 grace and, 456. 
 
 inward, 442, 462. 
 
 love and, 456. 
 
 material, 443, 447. 
 
 moral, 442, 444, 446, 447. 
 
 natural, 340, 443, 447, 456. 
 
 objective, 443, 445, 493. 
 
 personality and, 447, 448. 
 
 philosophy of, Kant's, 442. 
 
 physical, 442, 483. 
 
 Prof. Samuel Harris on, 447. 
 
 reason and, 445. 
 
 Riehl on, 442. 
 
 spiritual, 443, 447, 455, 457, 486. 
 
 theology and, 449, 451. 
 
 uniformity of, 449. 
 
 unity of, 482. 
 
 universality of, 39, 359, 400, 482, 483. 
 Law, William, natural religion and, 7. 
 
 spirit of love and, 459. 
 Lawgiver, moral, 444, 451. 
 Le Conte, Prof., causality and, 145. 
 
 force and, 92. 
 
 immortality and, 521. 
 
 theism and, 105. 
 'Lectures and other Theological Papers,' 
 
 Mozley's, 465. 
 
 Leibnitz, 134, 147, 149, 218, 219, 231. 
 Leitch, 453. 
 Lenormant, 460. 
 Leopardi, 134. 
 Lerminier, 232. 
 Lessing, 394. 
 Lewes, 73, 367, 372, 511. 
 Libertarianism, 403, 411, 437. 
 ' L'Idee de Dieu,' 233. 
 Lilly, W. S., 280. " 
 Lipsius, 79, 279, 310, 321. 
 
 on Divine personality criticised, 279, 
 
 310. 
 
 Littlejohn, Dr, 90. 
 Littre, 220. 
 Locke, 149. 
 
 ' Logische Untersuchungen,' Trendelen- 
 
 burg's, 78, 90, 205, 414, 496. 
 Logos, Eternal, 25. 
 
 Lotze, 10, 79, 90, 146, 163, 269, 279, 290, 
 313, 319, 365, 379, 400, 403, 423, 
 
 belief in God and, 54. 
 
 design and, 182, 213. 
 
 freedom and, 400, 403. 
 
 metaphysic of, criticism of the, 149. 
 
 personality and, criticism of, 301. 
 
 realism of, 103. 
 
 the soul and, 359. 
 
 the ultimate of, 34. 
 Love as attribute, 110-112, 325, 487. 
 Lowell, 368. 
 Lubbock, Sir John, 55. 
 Luthardt, 226, 227. 
 
 M'Cosh, Dr, 345. 
 Mach, Prof. Ernst, 368. 
 Mach, Prof. F. J., 404. 
 Mackenzie, Prof. J. S., 412, 437. 
 Mainlander, 477. 
 Malebranche, 230, 231, 235. 
 Mamiani, 236, 237. 
 Man, final cause and, 183, 487. 
 
 ideal, 396-398. 
 
 metaphysic of, 220, 221, 392, 484. 
 
 nature and, 352, 484-487, 489, 490. 
 
 prophetic element in, 527. 
 Manchester, 422. 
 
 Mansel, 79, 122, 142, 156, 244, 279, 353, 
 354,. 401. 
 
 causality and, 142, 156. 
 
 freedom and, 401. 
 
 moral argument and, 244. 
 
 morality and, 447. 
 
 personality and, 279, 353, 354. 
 Maret, M., 232. 
 Martensen, 109, 352, 453. 
 Martineau, Dr James, 79, 90, 150, 294, 390, 
 403, 414, 417, 453. 
 
 Divine Personality and, 294, 295. 
 
 ethics and religion and, 257. 
 
 freedom and, 403, 410, 417. 
 
 moral obligation and, 257, 448, 449. 
 
 religion and, 36, 257. 
 
 transcendence and, 313. 
 Materialism, 100, 318, 352, 400, 447, 481, 
 
 489, 510, 519, 521, 522. 
 ' Materialism of the Present Day,' M. Janet 
 
 on, 375. 
 
 Mathematics, 115, 442, 444. 
 Matheson, Dr George, 79, 90, 203, 297, 423, 
 
 436, 522. 
 Matter, energy and, 519. 
 
 eternity of, 106. 
 
 forms of, 40, 171. 
 
 mind and, 102, 196, 362, 486. 
 
 mystery of, 102. 
 
 Rothe on, 104. 
 
 spirit and, 103, 391. 
 
 Weisse on, 104. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 541 
 
 Maudsley, Dr, 377, 409. 
 Mechanicalism, 13, 22, 41, 43, 166, 196, 
 198, 396, 400, 402, 436, 482, 498, 502, 
 504, 505. 
 
 ' Me"de,' Corneille's, 392. 
 Mediation, 469, 470, 473. 
 Medical mind, the, 399. 
 Memory, 358. 
 
 ' Mental Physiology,' Carpenter's, 444. 
 Mephistopheles, 520. 
 ' Metaphysic of Ethics,' Kant's, 249. 
 ' Metaphysica nova et vetusta,' Prof. Laurie 
 
 on, 342. 
 
 Metaphysics, 91, 220-222, 337, 390, 511. 
 ' Methods of Ethics,' Prof. Henry Sidg- 
 
 wick's, 419. 
 
 ' Microcosmus,' Lotze's, 54, 360, 378. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 112, 143, 147, 150, 157, 
 180, 185, 356, 402, 418, 518. 
 
 causation and, 146, 163. 
 
 utilitarianism of, 187. 
 Mind, 196, 197, 362. 
 
 matter and, 102, 196, 362, 486. 
 ' Mind,' A. J. Balfour in, 421. 
 
 G. F. Stout in, 424. 
 
 Prof. J. S. Mackenzie in, 437. 
 ' Mind in Matter,' Rev. J. Tait of Montreal, 
 
 on, 38. 
 
 Minto, Prof., 157. 
 Miracle, 305, 312. 
 Mitgefuhl, 473. 
 Moleschott, 510. 
 Monism, 14, 70, 105, 108, 286, 308, 319, 336, 
 
 367, 371, 420, 519. 
 Monotheism, 27, 65. 
 Monrad, Bishop, of Denmark, 493. 
 Montreal, 38. 
 Moral argument, Chalmers on, 255. 
 
 Erskine on, 256. 
 
 Flint on, 243. 
 
 Kant on the, 244, 425. 
 
 Mansel on the, 244, 447. 
 
 Newman on, 243, 252. 
 
 rise of the, 243. 
 
 Schenkel on, 243. 
 
 value of the, 243. 
 Moral consciousness, the, 261, 263, 451. 
 
 Deity, 245, 259, 260. 
 
 evil, 138, 139. 
 
 ideal, Kant on the, 259, 261. 
 
 imperative, 245, 246, 249, 448, 453. 
 
 law, 442, 444, 446, 447. 
 
 order, the, 285, 450, 464, 493. 
 
 personality, 391-396, 400. 
 
 sentiment in idealistic philosophy, 8. 
 Morality, freedom and, 401. 
 
 happiness and, 248, 250. 
 
 Mansel on, 244, 447. 
 
 Religion and, 62, 451. 
 ' Moralwissenschaft,' Simmel's, 437. 
 Morell, 79. 
 
 Morgan, Prof. Lloyd, 99, 339, 397. 
 Morris, Dr, 90. 
 Morris, Rev. J., 178, 187, 212. 
 
 Morris, Rev. J., design and, 178, 187, 212. 
 Motive, 407, 408. 
 Mozley, 21, 413, 464, 478. 
 
 on Christianity and man's primary 
 needs, 465. 
 
 on natural and revealed, 21. 
 Mulford, Dr Elisha, 392, 514. 
 Miiller, Julius, 287, 388, 446. 
 Miiller, Prof. Max, 79. 
 Mutability, 139. 
 
 Mysteries, the Christian, 459, 512. 
 Mysticism, 34, 286, 491, 492. 
 
 defects of, 492. 
 
 need and virtue of, 491, 492. 
 Mythology, 52, 308. 
 
 Nageli, 195. 
 Napoleon, 523. 
 Natura naturans, 180. 
 Natiira naturata, 180. 
 Natural, revealed and, 21, 22. 
 
 selection, 180, 188, 193-195, 203. 
 
 spiritual and, 447. 
 ' Natural Causation,' Plumptre's, 422. 
 
 evil, 136, 137. 
 
 law, 442, 443, 447. 
 'Natural Religion/ criticism of the work, 
 
 38, 277. 
 ' Natural Religion,' Hettinger's, 520. 
 
 mediation and, 470. 
 
 no lifeless metaphysical residue is, 4. 
 " Natural Theology," Chalmers on, 255. 
 Natural Theology, Ritschlianism and, 4. 
 
 what it is, 5. 
 
 Nature and, 69. 
 
 Naturalism, 312, 345, 392, 401, 519. 
 Nature, art and, Prof. Flint on, 178, 179. 
 
 God and, 202, 486, 488. 
 
 Hegelian conception of, 485. 
 
 intelligence in, 190, 489. 
 
 man and, 185, 186, 203. 
 
 Matthew Arnold on, 40, 67. 
 
 mysteries of, 186, 512. 
 
 organic, 484. 
 
 Religions, 23, 458. 
 
 spirit and, 90, 489. 
 
 Ideological character of, 178, 183, 189. 
 
 uniformity of, 200. 
 
 unity in, 39. 
 
 volition in, 178, 184. 
 Naturism, primitive, 29. 
 Naturvolker, 56. 
 
 Necessary datum of consciousness, 382. 
 Necessitarianism, 402. 
 Neo-Hegelianism, 296. 
 ' Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus, ' by 
 
 Czolbe, 193. 
 Neurosis, 409. 
 ' New Natural Theology,' Rev. J. Morris on 
 
 a, 178, 212. 
 Newman, moral argument and, 243, 251. 
 
 natural and revealed and, 21, 252. 
 Newman, F. W., 115, 460. 
 Niebuhr, 500. 
 
542 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Nitzsch, C. I., 59, 289. 
 vorjats vojjaews, 276. 
 Nomological inquiry, 175. 
 Nordau, Max, 133. 
 Noumenon, 95, 304, 305. 
 Novalis, religion and, 67, 489. 
 
 Objectivism, 34, 47, 49, 66, 68, 100, 101, 165, 
 283, 299, 316, 317, 323, 342, 380, 385, 
 387, 448, 449. 
 
 Obligation, sense of, 37, 350, 444, 445, 447, 
 
 448, 453- 
 
 Old Testament, 64. 
 
 Ontological proof, Anselm on the, 217, 219, 
 239, 240. 
 
 Descartes on, 218, 219. 
 
 Dorner on, 228. 
 
 Hegel on, 223. 
 
 Kant on, 218, 219, 222. 
 
 Principal Caird on, 237. 
 
 Prof. Giinther Thiele on, 230. 
 
 Rothe on, 228. 
 
 significance of, 241, 242. 
 
 Weisse on, 226. 
 Ontologism, 234-237. 
 Ontology, 386. 
 Optimism, 494, 495. 
 6peis, 153. 
 Organic function, 378, 519. 
 
 growth, 496. 
 
 Origin of conscience, 251-254. 
 Origin of religion, empirical, 50, 53. 
 
 Fechner on, 53. 
 
 naturalistic theories of, 27, 60. 
 
 philosophy and, 46, 78. 
 
 species, 188. 
 Origins of science, 97. 
 Orr, Prof. J., 79. 
 
 Padua, 235. 
 Pain, 128-131, 137. 
 Palaeontological races, 58. 
 Paley, 171, 202. 
 Pancosmism, 301. 
 Panentheism, 286. 
 
 Pantheism, 43, 93, 198, 232, 233, 286, 312, 
 3*8, 325, 352, 396, 397, 444, 518, 519, 
 522, 523. 
 
 defects of, 43, 93, 198, 312, 390, 397. 
 
 service of, 42. 
 
 " Paradiso," 114, 166, 485, 507. 
 Parker, Theodore, 70, 82, 294. 
 
 religion and, 70, 82. 
 Parseeism, 135. 
 Pascal, 48, 117, 343. 
 Passavant, 444. 
 Patripassianism, 478. 
 Paulsen, 10, 198, 199, 221, 300, 430. 
 Perception, 224, 257, 340, 370, 394. 
 Perfection, ultimate, 445, 466, 495, 509, 519, 
 
 525- 
 
 Permanence of religion, 70, 73, 76, 77, 82, 83. 
 Personal character of the religious relation, 
 32. 36, 37, 40. 
 
 Personality, design and, 212. 
 
 genesis of, 366. 
 
 law and, 447, 448. 
 
 Maine de Biran and, 231. 
 
 real, 7, 266, 267, 269, 278, 283, 293, 303, 
 
 365- 
 Personality of God, Biedermann on, 308-310. 
 
 Chalybaus on, 291. 
 
 Dorner on, 288. 
 
 fact and significance of, 266. 
 
 Fichte on, 283, 292. 
 
 F. H. Bradley on, 298, 299. 
 
 Flint on, 297. 
 
 Frank on, 288, 289. 
 
 History and, 506. 
 
 I. H. Fichte on, 288. 
 
 Julius Miiller on, 287. 
 
 limitation and, 314, 326, 327. 
 
 Lipsius on, 310, 311. 
 
 Lotze on, 300, 301. 
 
 Martineau on, 294, 295. 
 
 Matheson on, 297. 
 
 Nitzsch on, 289. 
 
 Pfleiderer on, 300, 301, 311. 
 
 Rothe on, 288, 289. 
 
 Schleiermacher on, 286. 
 
 self-determination and, 270, 271, 326, 
 327- 
 
 Strauss on, 290. 
 
 Thomasius on, 289. 
 
 Ulrici on, 291. 
 
 Weisse on, 288. 
 Personality of Man, basis of, 265-267. 
 
 Christian, 452, 477. 
 
 Comte on, 369. 
 
 Divine personality and, 268, 394. 
 
 fact and significance of, 266, 353, 354. 
 
 freedom and, 400, 448. 
 
 Kant on, 282, 366, 374, 376. 
 
 monism and, 367-369. 
 
 organic unity of, 374, 376, 378. 
 
 origin of, 358, 366, 377, 379. 
 
 Prof. A. Dorner on, 438. 
 
 Prof. S. Harris on, 364. 
 
 real, 266, 267, 353, 354, 365, 378. 
 
 science and, 366, 377, 385. 
 
 Ulrici on, 393. 
 Personification, 57, 59. 
 Peschel on religion, 54. 
 Pessimism, 70, 73, 131, 134, 135-137, 141, 
 
 461, 494, 495. 
 Peters, Karl, 273. 
 Pfleiderer, Dr E., 132. 
 
 Pfleiderer, Prof. Otto, 79, 90, 97, 228, 282, 
 292, 301, 308, 312, 319, 467, 500, 501. 
 
 creation and, 107. 
 
 freedom and, 420. 
 
 God and, 96. 
 
 morality and, 63. 
 
 mythology and, 51. 
 
 naturism and, 29. 
 
 redemption and, criticism of, 468. 
 
 the Divine Personality and, criticism of, 
 300, 311. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 543 
 
 Pfleiderer, Prof. Otto, theistic proofs and, 
 
 121, 128, 529. 
 Phenomenalism, 100. 
 Philippi, 289. 
 
 Philological mind, the, 399. 
 Philosophie der Erlosung, 459, 477. 
 ' Philosophie des Selbstbewusstseins, ' 230. 
 ' Philosophie und Erkenntnistheorie,' 109. 
 Philosophy of atonement, 459, 465, 470, 
 
 477- 
 
 of consciousness, 355, 367, 383. 
 
 of evolution, 354. 
 
 of nature, 485. 
 
 of Religion, 78, 79, 420, 496, 503. 
 
 of religion, Christian, 384, 385. 
 
 religion and, 78, 79. 
 
 speculative, 88, 97, 162, 288, 297, 503. 
 
 synthetic, 13. 
 
 theistic, goal of, 89. 
 
 task of, 2. 
 
 ' Philosophy and Religion,' Hinton's, 160. 
 ' Philosophy of Law,' Kant's, 442. 
 ' Philosophy of Mysticism,' Du Prel's, 361. 
 'Philosophy of Religion,' Caird's, 30, 35, 
 238. 
 
 Philosophy of Religion,' Lotze's, 423. 
 ' Philosophy of Theism,' Eraser's, 103. 
 ' Philosophy of Theism,' Ward's, 249, 251. 
 Physics, 498, 519. 
 Physiological aspects of consciousness, 370. 
 
 determinism, 402, 416. 
 
 selection, 194. 
 Plato, 40, 472, 515. 
 Plumptre, C. E., causation and, 422. 
 Troops, 198. 
 Politics, 463. 
 
 Polytheism, 26, 27, 49, 251. 
 Porter, Dr Noah, 90. 
 Positivism, 73, 109, 221, 346. 
 Post-Kantianism, 149, 162, 223. 
 Prcestabilirte Harmonie, 205. 
 Prayer, 455, 465, 492, 493. 
 Pre-Christian religion, 463. 
 Pre-historic religion, 49, 53, 58. 
 Primitive datum of consciousness, 382. 
 
 naturism, 29. 
 
 religion, 47, 50, 55. 
 ' Principles of Psychology, Spencer's, 377, 
 
 402, 404. 
 Progress, Comte on, 499. 
 
 Goethe on, 73. 
 
 Hegel on, 499, 500, 501. 
 
 historical, 496, 502, 504, 505. 
 
 law of, 192, 360, 393, 456, 500, 504. 
 Progressive life, the, 341, 391, 397, 509, 
 
 511, 513, 516, 517. 
 Progressiveness of Christianity, 77. 
 
 of Natural Religion, 6. 
 
 of Theism, i, 212, 391, 393. 
 
 of the universe, 112, 181, 213. 
 Progressus ad infinitum, 391. 
 Progressus in infinitum, 391. 
 " Prometheus Unbound," Shelley's, in. 
 Proofs, theistic, 88, 114, 116-119, I2I I22> 
 
 Propitiation, idea of, 479. 
 
 ' Proslogion,' Anselm's, 217. 
 
 Protoplasm, 194, 205. 
 
 Providence, 447, 456, 488, 493, 497, 500, 
 
 504, 506, 525. 
 Psychical, the, 341, 359, 361, 370, 371, 374, 
 
 437, 5*5- 
 Psychological aspects of consciousness, 287. 
 
 basis of things spiritual, 148, 385, 386. 
 
 of nature, 205. 
 Psychology, 35, 386, 415, 416, 420, 421. 
 
 character and, 420, 421. 
 
 comparative, 339. 
 
 Cousin's, 356. 
 
 empirical, 511. 
 
 freedom and, 415, 416. 
 
 genetic, 354. 
 
 Hoffding's, 369. 
 
 monistic, 367-371. 
 
 Prof. James on, 362-364. 
 
 rational, 385, 511. 
 
 Ribot's, 368. 
 
 scientific, 367, 384, 385. 
 
 Spencer's, 373, 377, 382. 
 
 Sully's, 421. 
 Psychosis, 409. 
 ' ' Purgatorio, " 376. 
 Pusey, Dr, 500. 
 Pyrrhonism, 57. 
 
 Quatrefages, 54. 
 
 Race guilt, 461, 462, 464, 465, 470. 
 
 Ranke, 501. 
 
 Ratiocination, 116. 
 
 Rationalism, 99, 114, 116, 149, 150, 242, 
 
 278, 343- 
 
 Rauwenhoff, Prof., of Holland, 79, 245. 
 Realism, 80, 103, 306, 315, 349, 371, 481, 
 
 Lotze's, 103. 
 
 scientific, 80, 306, 315, 371. 
 Reality, basal form of, 224, 281, 303. 
 Reason, absolute, 334, 335, 337, 347. 
 
 authority and, 345. 
 
 Christianity and, 350. 
 
 conscience and, 253. 
 
 constructive, 336. 
 
 creative, 334. 
 
 dynamic, 505. 
 
 functions of, 334. 
 
 immanent, 71, 336, 347. 
 
 interpretative, 336. 
 
 law and, 337. 
 
 nature and, 335. 
 
 practical, 259, 337, 338. 
 
 pure, 338. 
 
 real and concrete, 337. 
 
 religion and, 347, 349, 350. 
 
 science and, 339-34 1 . 345- 
 
 speculative, ^145, 342, 343, 345, 347, 
 
 349, 350. 
 
 spiritual, 340, 342, 348. 
 supreme, 334, 344, 345. 
 theoretic, 4, 342-345- 
 
544 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Reason, ultimate, 333, 335, 336, 343'345- 
 
 universality of, 12, 337, 342, 347. 
 Redemption, 385, 459-461, 464-471, 473, 
 
 474, 479. 
 Jesus and, 460, 463, 468, 471, 473, 
 
 478. 
 
 philosophy of, 470. 
 religion of, 465. 
 Ree, Dr Paul, 428-430, 432. 
 Reign of Law, 13, 44*-444> 44$, 447> 454? 
 
 456, 457. 
 
 Relativity, 101, 138, 316, 320, 404. 
 Religion, essence of, 30, 32, 35, 36, 40, 43, 
 
 44- 
 
 Hegel on, 30. 
 
 history of, 21, 69, 503. 
 
 morality and, 62, 254. 
 
 nature of, 32, 35-37, 40, 44, 45. 
 
 of nature, 23-25, 28, 29, 40, 43. 
 
 of redemption, 465. 
 
 origin of, 48, 53, 57, 62, 66-68. 
 
 permanence of, 69-71, 73, 74, 76, 78. 
 ' Religion of the Future,' Hartmann's, 70. 
 ' Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason,' 
 
 Kant's, 247, 451. 
 
 ' Religione dell' Avvenire,' Mamiani's, 237. 
 ' Religious Aspect of Philosophy,' Royce's, 
 
 188, 346. 
 Renan, 499, 513. 
 Renouvier, 403, 404, 414. 
 Repentance, 429, 454, 463, 466. 
 ' Republic of God,' Dr Mulford's, 392, 514. 
 Responsibility, moral, 419, 422, 430, 432, 
 
 466. 
 
 Retributive justice, 258, 525. 
 Revealed theology, natural and, 22. 
 Revelation, 468, 471, 488-490, 508. 
 Reversionary types, 504. 
 Reville, 52, 54, 79, 525. 
 Ribot, psychology of, 368, 404. 
 Riehl, causality and, 162, 163. 
 
 freedom and, 432-434. 
 
 law and, 442. 
 
 responsibility and, 434. 
 Right, idea of, 453. 
 Rights, Fichte on science of, 443. 
 Ritschl, 4, 21, 79, 220, 221, 292, 349, 396, 
 
 470. 
 Ritschlianism, natural theology and, 4, 21. 
 
 sin and, criticism of, 470. 
 Ritual, 77. 
 
 Romanes, 98, 146, 164, 194, 210, 369, 413. 
 Roskoff, 54, 55. 
 Rosrnini, 132, 235, 236. 
 Rothe, 79, 138, 288, 289, 415, 473. 
 
 love Divine and, in. 
 
 matter and, 104. 
 
 ontological proof and, 228. 
 
 personality and, 288, 289. 
 
 religious consciousness and, 31. 
 Rousseau, 130, 339. 
 
 Royal Society of Edinburgh, 194, 340, 484. 
 Royce, Prof. Josiah, 79, 321, 413. 
 
 causality and, 161. 
 
 Royce, Prof. Josiah, human individuality 
 
 and, 390. 
 
 idealism of, criticism of, 346. 
 teleology and, 188, 191. 
 
 Sacrifice, 470, 473-475- 478. 
 
 Jesus and, 472-475, 477, 478. 
 Saisset, M., 233, 308. 
 Sartorius, 289. 
 Scepticism, 10, 12, 249, 490. 
 Schaiien, 124. 
 Schein, 303. 
 
 Schelling, 79, 135, 179, 307, 315, 343, 412, 
 427, 499. 
 
 freedom and, criticism of, 412, 426. 
 Schenkel, 104, 243. 
 Sche"rer, Edmond, 202, 231. 
 Schiller, 33, 64, 72, no, 171, 181, 323, 348, 
 
 420, 498, 499. 
 
 Schiller, Prof. F. C. S., 112, 403. 
 Schlegel, 499. 
 Schleiermacher, 31, 48, 72, 79, 286, 292, 315 
 
 385. 473- 
 Schoberlein, 444. 
 
 Scholasticism of theistic philosophy, 2. 
 Scholten, 225. 
 Schopenhauer, 119, 134, 229, 468, 475, 485. 
 
 Determinism and, 412, 427. 
 
 religion and, 36. 
 
 Unconscious Will of, 272. 
 Schranken, 283. 
 Schutzwehr, 220. 
 Schwarz, Karl, 501. 
 Schweizer, A., 70. 
 Science, aim of, 484, 486. 
 
 conscience of, 252, 256. 
 
 disenchantments of, 482, 483. 
 
 freedom and, 399. 
 
 immortality and, 510, 511, 513, 515, 
 521. 
 
 personality and, 366. 
 
 theistic philosophy and, 74, 75, 208. 
 ' Science of Rights,' Fichte's, 443. 
 Scriptures, the, 388. 
 Secretan, M., 495. 
 Seeley, 109. 
 Selbstziel, 275. 
 Selbstziveck, 275. 
 
 Self, the, 354, 357, 362, 365, 366, 368, 372- 
 374, 390, 424. 
 
 -activity, 258, 270, 320, 341, 354, 361, 
 
 435- 
 
 -authentication, 388. 
 -communication, 304. 
 -consciousness, 51, 59, 91, 164, 269, 
 
 283, 342, 354, 358, 360, 361, 365, 374, 
 
 379.. 38o, 386, 388, 389, 426, 433. 
 -consciousness, Eternal, 246, 392. 
 -deification, 450. 
 -determination, 270, 283, 326, 354, 389, 
 
 401, 414, 424, 426. 
 -evolution, 93. 
 -existence, 91, 167, 280. 
 -identity, 393. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 545 
 
 Self-knowledge, 327. 
 
 -limitation, 315, 326. 
 
 -objectification, 269. 
 
 -possession, 327. 
 
 -realisation, 328, 378, 395, 407. 
 
 -recognition, 378. 
 
 -redemption, 461. 
 
 -revelation of God, 31, 38, 50, 124, 304, 
 460. 
 
 -sacrifice, 468, 474, 475. 
 
 -surrender, 387. 
 Semitic conception, 65. 
 Sengler, 282. 
 Sensationalism, 99, 380. 
 Sense-perception, 56. 
 Seth, Prof. Andrew, 79, 90, 345, 393, 403. 
 
 personality and, 295, 393. 
 Seth, Prof. James, 304, 403. 
 Seydel, 79, 400. 
 Shakespeare, 134. 
 Shelley, in, 318. 
 Sheol, 278. 
 
 Sidgwick, Prof., 417, 419, 434, 449. 
 Siebeck, 79, 400. 
 Siloa, 81. 
 Simmel, 437. 
 Sin, 69, 439, 459, 461, 462. 
 
 pantheism and, 29, 461, 462. 
 
 ravages of, 69, 462, 464. 
 
 reality of, 459, 461, 462, 464. 
 
 religious development and, 69, 464, 470. 
 Sinnenwesen, 246, 424. 
 Sittlichkeit, 445. 
 Smith, Prof. H. B., 90. 
 Smith, Prof. Robertson, 51. 
 Socialism, 73, 447. 
 Sociological aspects, 393, 439. 
 
 manuals, 12. 
 Sociology, Spencer's, 47. 
 Solidarity, 452. 
 Solipsism, 374. 
 Son of Man, 396. 
 
 Soul, the, 359, 360, 366-369, 494, 511, 512, 
 5*4, 5*5- 
 
 F. W. Newman on the, 115, 460. 
 Space, 310, 320-323, 482. 
 
 Kant on, 322, 323. 
 
 * Spekulative Theologle,' by Gloatz, 503. 
 Spencer, 95, 122, 147, 163, 190, 209, 300, 
 367, 377, 381, 402, 404, 405, 451, 488, 
 506, 510. 
 
 causation and, 145. 
 
 psychology of, 377, 402, 404. 
 
 sociology of, 47. 
 Spencerianism, super - sensible reali-ty and, 
 
 74, 95, 122, 302, 303. 
 Spinoza, 180, 218, 269, 276, 282, 286, 315, 
 
 3 2 4' 
 
 Spirit, characteristics of, 102, 306. 
 ' Spirit of Love,' Law's, 459. 
 Spiritualism, 90, 102, 306, 311, 364, 387, 
 388, 391, 408, 411, 426, 447, 471, 488, 
 494, 495. 499, 504, 505, 508, 517, 526. 
 Stahl, 523. 
 
 Steffens, 305. 
 Steigervng t 283, 310. 
 Sterret, Prof. M., 79, 296. 
 Stirling, Dr H., 79, 128, 176. 
 Stockl, 237. 
 Stout, G. F., 424. 
 Strauss, 520, 525. 
 
 design and, 215. 
 
 Divine personality and, 290, 326. 
 
 fear and, 48. 
 
 life and, 41. 
 
 philosophy and, 133. 
 
 'Study of Religion,' Martineau's, 257, 453. 
 Subjectivism, n, 12, 43, 96, 100, 101, 164, 
 177, 268, 297, 302, 303, 322, 354, 379, 385, 
 436, 469, 523. 
 
 Substance, category of, 7, 8, 103, 115, 286, 
 324, 491. 
 
 unity of, 366. 
 
 Suffering, 128-132, 136, 137, 140, 200, 475. 
 Sully, Prof. James, 421. 
 Summum bonum, Kant's, 250. 
 Supernatural, the, 67, 76, 267. 
 
 natural and, 66. 
 
 necessity of the, 66, 267. 
 
 revelation and, 51, 53, 67. 
 
 science and, 76, 267. 
 ' Supernatural Religion,' 25. 
 Supernaturalism, 67, 76, 267. 
 Superpersonal, the, 298, 300, 302-304. 
 Supramanent, God as, 3, 313. 
 Survival, law of, 180, 181, 193, 194, 254, 
 
 457, 522. 
 
 Synergy, Comte's, 369. 
 Synthesis of apperceptions, 374. 
 
 of natural theism, 40, 65, 324. 
 Synthetic philosophy, 13. 
 
 thought, 40, 324, 342, 347, 406, 499. 
 
 Taine, 367, 368, 499. 
 Tait, Rev. James, of Montreal, 38, 57. 
 Tappan, 406. 
 Teichmuller, 79, 529. 
 
 Teleological argument, 168, 175, 189, 208, 
 213. 
 
 character of Christianity, 70. 
 
 of the self, 41. 
 Teleology, aesthetic, 199. 
 
 essence of, 197, 201. 
 
 unconscious, 198, 199, 214. 
 Telepathy, 393. 
 Tennyson, 26. 
 
 'Teodicea,' Rosmini's, 132, 236. 
 ' Teosofia,' 235. 
 Thathandlung, 285. 
 Thdtigkeit, 372. 
 Theism, abstract, 264, 265, 308. 
 
 anthropocosmic, 65, 122. 
 
 Biblical, 483, 488. 
 
 Christian, 238. 
 
 cosmic, 273. 
 
 ethical, 243, 246, 249, 257, 259, 261, 
 263. 
 
 Kantian, 245, 247-250, 261. 
 
 2 M 
 
546 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Theism, natural, 24, 40. 
 
 philosophy of, 103, 109, 246, 271, 374. 
 
 progressiveness of, i, 212, 391, 393. 
 
 pure, 2, 266, 485. 
 
 rational, 99, 114, 150, 263, 278, 343, 
 488, 492. 
 
 Schellingian, 343. 
 
 science and, 208, 297. 
 
 speculative, 104, 141, 288, 297, 301. 
 
 tenuous, 38. 
 
 Theistic evolution, 168, 178, 213, 526. 
 Theodicy, 132, 138, 236. 
 
 Rosmini's, 132, 236. 
 Theology, 280, 384, 449, 460, 483. 
 
 law and, 449. 
 Theosophy, 235. 
 Thiele, Prof. Giinther, 230. 
 Thiers, history and, 498. 
 Thomasius, 289. 
 Thompson, R. A., 238. 
 Thomson, J. Arthur, on Weissmannism, 
 
 194. 
 Thought, feeling and, 35, 44. 
 
 laws of, 348, 362-364. 
 
 Prof. James on, 362-364. 
 
 substance and, 363, 364, 366. 
 
 the Absolute and, 102, 224, 268, 347. 
 
 will and, 342. 
 'Thoughts on Religion,' by Romanes, 146, 
 
 164. 
 'Three Motives and Grounds of Belief,' 
 
 Fechner's, 53. 
 Tiele, 54, 57. 
 Time, 307, 310, 319, 322, 333. 
 
 Kant on, 322, 333. 
 Toronto, 28. 
 Totemism, 49. 
 Toy, Prof., of Harvard, 64. 
 Transcendence, 9, 42, 287, 313. 
 
 need for, 9, 42, 313. 
 
 science and, 25. 
 Transcendental ego, 373. 
 Transformation of species, 194. 
 Trendelenburg, 79, 90, 163, 178, 205, 414, 
 496. 
 
 causal relation and, 163. 
 
 philosophical permanence and, 78. 
 
 philosophy of design and, 182, 191. 
 Tribal religion, 54-56, 58. 
 Trieb, 199. 
 
 Triune God, 301, 324. 
 Tulloch, Principal, 238. 
 Tylor, animism of, 47. 
 Tyndall, Prof., 98. 
 ' Types of Ethical Theory,' Martineau's, 448. 
 
 Uberwundener Standpunkt, i. 
 Ulrici, 10, 90, 105, 119, 150, 227, 529. 
 
 on Personality of God, 291. 
 
 on the self, 393. 
 Ultimate Ground, 382. 
 
 Reality, 281, 303, 305, 382, 444, 445, 
 
 454, 481. 
 Ultra-personal, the, 301. 
 
 Umfassende Macht, 205. 
 Unconditioned, the, 96, 230, 239. 
 Unconscious, the, 198, 272, 273, 292. 
 Unendliches personliches Gute, 289. 
 Uniformity of nature, 186, 442, 483. 
 Unity, psychic, 370, 371, 374. 
 
 of consciousness, 371. 
 
 of God, 32, 33, 91, 94, 265. 
 
 of law, 483. 
 
 of nature, 103, 489. 
 
 of self or ego, 374, 375. 
 
 of substance, 366. 
 
 of truth, 334, 335, 338. 
 
 of universe, 33, 325, 489. 
 Universal, the, 12, 56, 57, 105, 278, 321, 337, 
 
 342, 347, 4 2 6, 44.1- 
 Universality of religion, 12, 56, 57. 
 Universe, theory of the, 149, 157, 213, 366, 
 
 489, 530. 
 
 unfinished, 112, 213, 530. 
 Unknowable, the, 300, 303. 
 Unumgdnglich, 451. 
 Upton, Prof., 90, 365, 403, 411, 422. 
 Urgrund, n, 61, 270, 302. 
 
 causal, 143, 144, 156. 
 
 metaphysical, 35. 
 Urgrund aller Realitdt, 230. 
 Ursache, 153, 283, 418. 
 Ursprung, 153. 
 
 Urspriingliches Gottesbewusstsein , 59. 
 Urwesen, 274. 
 Utilitarianism, 187. 
 
 Vacherot, criticism of, 233, 234. 
 
 Variations, origination of, 180, 188, 193. 
 
 Vatke, 308. 
 
 Vedas, 29. 
 
 Veitch, Prof. John, 319. 
 
 Velleity, 406. 
 
 Vergleichbarkeit, 373. 
 
 Vernunft, 338. 
 
 Vicariousness, 473, 474. 
 
 'Vocation of Man,' Fichte's, 283. 
 
 ' Vocation of the Scholar,' 516. 
 
 Vogt, 510. 
 
 Volition, power of, 148, 225, 407. 
 
 purity of, 410. 
 
 Volitional, the, 30, 44, 148, 401, 404. 
 Volkelt, 163. 
 Volkmann, 421. 
 Volo ergo sum, 231. 
 Voraussetzung, 248. 
 Vorgang, 287. 
 Vorrede, 451. 
 Vorstellung, 279, 308. 
 'Vortrage und Abhandlungen,' Zeller's, 
 
 372, 418. 
 Voysey, Rev. C., 475. 
 
 Waitz, 58. 
 
 Wallace on Darwin, 193, 341. 
 on natural selection, 193. 
 Wallace, Prof. William, 79. 
 " Wallenstein," Schiller's, 420. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 547 
 
 Ward, Prof. William G. , 251, 407, 408, 
 
 Ward, Wilfrid, 16. 
 Weisse, 104, 207, 226, 288. 
 
 on the ontological argument, 226. 
 Weissmannism, 194. 
 Welch, Dr, 90. 
 Welt, 380. 
 
 Weltanschauung^ 74, 397. 
 Weltgeist, 288. 
 Weltschmerz, 131. 
 Werden, 510 
 Wesen, 286, 309, 519. 
 
 Krause on, 286. 
 Wesen an sich, 424. 
 Whittier, 140. 
 Will, the human, 13, 399, 401, 402, 406-410, 
 
 413, 415, 421, 423, 426-428, 433, 436, 439, 
 
 440. 
 
 Willkiir, 500. 
 Windelband, 100. 
 Wirth, 282. 
 
 Witness of history, 464, 502. 
 
 ' Witnesses to the Unseen, and other Essays,' 
 
 16. 
 
 Wolff, 149, 150, 218. 
 Wordsworth, 452. 
 World-consciousness, 380, 381. 
 World-Ground, 272, 286, 324, 327, 522. 
 
 as related and revealed, 3, 315, 320. 
 
 impersonal and unconscious, 184, 272. 
 ' World of Prayer,' Bishop Monrad's, 493. 
 Wundt, 148, 163, 367. 
 Wuttke, 439, 451. 
 
 on conscience, 251. 
 
 Yale, 294. 
 
 Young, Dr John, 456. 
 
 Zeller, Edward, 79, 120, 305, 372, 403, 418, 
 
 442, 501. 
 Zermalmen, 120. 
 Zeus, 413. 
 Zweckmdssigkeit, 206. 
 
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