PERSONALITY

HUMAN AND DIVINE

HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PERSONALITY
HUMAN AND DIVINE

THE BAMPTON LECTURES
FOR THE YEAR 1894

J. R. ILLINGWORTH, M.A.

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MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1894

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EXTRACT
FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
OF THE LATE
REV. JOHN' BAMPTON,
CANON OF SALISBURY.
 " I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates
" to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the
" University of Oxford for ever, to have and to
" hold all and singular the said Lands or Estates
" upon trust, and to the intents and purposes
" hereinafter mentioned ; that is to say, I will and
" appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University
" of Oxford for the time being shall take and
" receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof,
;' and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary
" deductions made) that he pay all the remainder
" to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture
" Sermons, to be established for ever in the said
" University, and to be performed in the manner
" following :
" I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday
" in Easter Term, a Lecturer may be yearly chosen
" by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others,
" in the room adjoining to the Printing-House, be-
" tween the hours of ten in the morning and two in
" the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture
" Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in

n EXTRACT FROM REV. JOHN BAMPTON'S WILL
' Oxford, between the commencement of the last
' month in Lent Term, and the end of the third
' week in Act Term.
"Also I direct and appoint, that the eight
' Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon
' either of the following Subjects — to confirm and
' establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all
' heretics and schismatics — upon the divine autho-
' rity of the holy Scriptures — upon the authority
' of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the
' faith and practice of the primitive Church — upon
' the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
' Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost —
' upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as com-
' prehended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creed.
" Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight
' Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be always printed,
' within two months after they are preached ; and
' one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the
' University, and one copy to the Head of every
' College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city
' of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the
' Bodleian Library ; and the expense of printing
' them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land
' or Estates given for establishing the Divinity
' Lecture Sermons ; and the Preacher shall not be
' paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, before they
'are printed.
" Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall
' be qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture
' Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of
' Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Uni-
' versities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the
' same person shall never preach the Divinity
' Lecture Sermons twice."

PREFACE
An apologetic preface is always apt to savour
of unreality, as it naturally invites the criticism
that what requires an apology need never have
been printed. Yet it is difficult to publish any
thing upon a serious subject without some
expression of one's sense of its inadequacy.
I will merely say, therefore, that the following
lectures make no claim to originality ; they are
simply an attempt to arrange and summarize
what has already been expressed with greater
amplitude and fuller authority elsewhere; in
the hope of attracting some, whose leisure in
these eager days may be limited, to reconsider
the important question with which they deal.
Their main contention is that, whereas physical
science has nowise weakened, critical philosophy
has distinctly strengthened the claim — the im
memorial claim — of human personality, to be
a spiritual thing; and, as such, the highest

viii PREFACE
category under which we can conceive of God.
And as this conception would lead us to expect
a progressive revelation, the evidence of such
a revelation is briefly traced, and its culmination
in the Incarnation vindicated. Such notes have
been appended as may serve to illustrate and
emphasize the main position of the lectures, by
reference to authorities where their various
issues are more adequately discussed.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN
PERSONALITY.

r. The sense of personality a gradual growth .
2. Its pre-Christian recognition imperfect
3. Its final definition due to Christianity .
4. Epochs in its evolution marked by Augustine,
Luther, Kant .....
5. Personality the gateway of all knowledge

PAGE 6

14
25

LECTURE II.
ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN
PERSONALITY.

Characteristics of personality, (1) reason,
(2) will, (3) love
Its unity
Its identity .
Its reality .
5. Its spirituality
6. Its mystery

293°
40
4345 52

CONTENTS
LECTURE III.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF DIVINE
PERSONALITY. PAGE
i. The sense of Divine Personality (i) vague,
but (2) universal ..... 54
2. It is progressively refined by
(1) Greek Philosophers . . . 59
(2) Hebrew Prophets .... 65
(3) Christian Fathers . . . . 66
3. It culminates in the doctrine of the Trinity . 67
4. Belief in a personal God is therefore an
instinctive judgement progressively justified t^
by reason  .76

LECTURE IV.
ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPTION OF DIVINE
PERSONALITY.
1. Belief in a Personal God
(1) Primarily instinctive . . . 81
(2) Secondarily rational . . . 82
2. Thus the so-called ' proofs ' are analyses of
a fundamental instinct .... 83
3. They are
(1) Cosmological, i. e, argument from
a First Cause .... 84
(2) Teleological, i.e. argument from
design in nature . -93

CONTENTS xi
PAGE
(3) Ontological, i. e. argument from the
reality of thought . . . 1 00
(4) Moral, i. e. argument from the sense
of freedom, combined with that
of obligation . . . .103
LECTURE V.
MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL FOR THE KNOW
LEDGE OF A PERSON.
1. Moral disposition necessary
(1) For pursuit of science . . . 114
(2) For knowledge of a friend . . 116
2. Knowledge of God must follow the same
analogy, involving
(1) Sincerity ....
(2) Purification ....
(3) Penitence ....
3. Conversely, God's self-revelation must be
conditioned by man's moral and spiritual
capacity 
4. This analogy confirmed by the ' persona
experience ' of holy men in every age . 132
LECTURE VI.
RELIGION IN THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD.
1. Personality implies desire of self-communi
cation  138
2. Hence a revelation is antecedently probable . 139

120121
122

i24

CONTENTS

PAGE

3. Analogy points to its being gradual . . 140
4. The ' antiquity of man ' no obstacle to this
belief  143
5. The strength of ' customary ' religion a con
firmation of it . . . . .148
6. Myth a possible vehicle of primitive revela
tion . . . . . . .154
7. Polemical and philosophical views of pagan
religion contrasted . . . . . 161

LECTURE VII.
RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY.
1. The ethnic religions possess 'notes' of
revelation, e. g. ..... 168
(1) Their hold upon mankind . . 169
(2) Their religious books . . .170
(3) Their belief in inspiration . . 171
2. The Hebrew religion claims a pre-eminent
degree of inspiration, and justifies its
claim ....... 173
(1) By its contemporary character . 174
(2) By its teleological character in re
lation to Christianity . . . 175
(3) By the present influence of its
Scriptures. . . . . 181
3. Historical criticism cannot affect inspiration
as a fact of experience . . . 183

CONTENTS xiii
LECTURE VIII.
JESUS CHRIST THE DIVINE AND HUMAN
PERSON. PAGE
i. The Incarnation the crowning proof of
Divine Personality  192
2. The reasons for Its rejection really a priori . 192
3. These rest upon a materialistic conception of
human personality which is untenable . 193
4. The a posteriori evidences in Its favour in
vincibly strong . . . . .196
5. It involves the doctrine of the Trinity in
which our incomplete personality recog
nizes its archetype  212

NOTES. Lecture I.
Note i. Things new and old . . . .217
2. Science and Theology equally anthropo
morphic  219
Lecture II.
Note 3. The introspective method . . . 222
4. Self-consciousness . . . .224
5. Desire  226
6. Self-determination or freewill. . . 227

XIV

CONTENTS

Note 7. Unity of the Ego or self
8. Personality the ultimate reality
9. Matter an abstraction, and Materialism
therefore impossible ....
10. Personality a mystery ....

PAGE 233
236238240

Lecture III.
Note ii. Positive and Negative Theology . . 242
12. Personality predicable of God . . 243
13. Inadequate conceptions necessarily il
lusory ...... 246

Note

Lecture IV.

14.

Theistic arguments

249

i5-

The argument from the ' consensus

gentium ' .....

249

16.

The cosmological argument

• 251

i7-

The teleological argument .

¦ 255

18.

The ontological argument .

• 257

19.

The moral argument .
Lecture V.

260

Note 20. Morality the condition of spiritual
insight  264

Lecture VI.

Note 21. Primitive man
22. Natural religion .

265266

CONTENTS xv
Lecture VII. PAGE
Note 23. Ethnic inspiration .... 267
Lecture VIII.
Note 24. The Incarnation . . . . 268
25. The supernatural dignity of humanity . 270
26. The conceptions of Divine and human
personality vary together . . . 271
27. Psychological illustrations of the doc
trine of the Trinity . . . . 272

PERSONALITY
HUMAN AND DIVINE
LECTURE I
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN
PERSONALITY
WHEN Xenophanes, in a passage now almost
too familiar for quotation, first brought the
charge of what is called anthropomorphism against
religion, he initiated a mode of criticism which has
not yet grown old. Again and again in subsequent
history the same charge has been made and met ;
yet it survives, and in the present day is being
continually urged, as a plea for the adoption of
agnostic opinions. ' The lions, if they could have
pictured a god,' says the old Greek thinker, ' would
have pictured him in fashion like a lion ; the
horses like a horse ; the oxen like an ox ' ; and
man, it is implied, with no more justification, as
inevitably considers him a magnified man. In
our own day Matthew Arnold has employed his
graceful pen to the same effect, though with less
B

a DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
than his usual grace; and still more recent critics
have reiterated the complaint. Meanwhile, as the
phenomena of savage belief, with which we are
now so well acquainted, may be easily adduced in
favour of a similar conclusion, the reflections of
Caliban upon Setebos have come to be regarded
in many minds as at once an adequate illustration
and complete condemnation of all theology.
Now the plausibility, and therefore the malignity,
of this fallacy consists in the fact that it is half
a truth ; and as there can be no question of its
immense prevalence in contemporary thought, nor
of its disintegrating effect upon religion, and
through religion upon society, an apology will
hardly be needed for one more attempt to recon
sider the argument from human to divine person
ality. This can, of course, only be done in outline,
if it is to be done within moderate compass : but
outlines— mere outlines — are not infrequently of use,
as enabling us to estimate in a single survey the
number, the variety, the proportion, the reciprocal
interdependence of the diverse elements in a
cumulative proof. They supply that synoptic view
which, while immersed in the controversial pursuit
of details, we are apt to lose, and which is never
theless essential to our judging the details aright,
as parts of one articulate whole.
Accordingly, the object of the following pages is
to review our reasons for believing in a Personal

i] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 3
God ; reasons in which, from the nature of the
case, there is no novelty, and which have been
stated and restated time out of mind ; but which
each generation, as it passes, needs to see exhibited
afresh, in their relation to its own peculiar modes
of thought 1- This will involve a brief analysis of
what we mean by personality ; and as the present
fulness of that meaning has only been acquired by
slow degrees, we shall need first to cast a glance
over the principal stages of its development.
^ Man lives first, and thinks afterwards. Not only
as an infant does he breathe and take nourishment
and grow, long before the dawn of conscious
reason ; but his reason, even when developed, can
only act upon experience, that is upon something
which has already been lived through. He makes
history by his actions, before he can reflect upon
it and write it. He takes notice of the facts of
nature before he can compare and criticize and
shape them into science ; while history and science
in their turn supply material for further thinking,
and are examined and sifted and generalized and
gathered up into philosophy. And though, of
course, reason has an eye to the future, and works
with the view of preparing for fresh developments
of life, its foresight must spring from insight ; it
can only predict what is to come by discovering
the law of the phenomena, the formula of the
1 See note 1.
B a

4 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
curve, the lie of the strata in the past. It follows
* from this that thought is always in arrear of life ;
for life is in perpetual progress, and, while we are
reflecting on what happened yesterday, some further
thing is happening to-day. ' When philosophy,'
says Hegel, with a touch of sadness — ' when philo
sophy paints its grey in grey, some one shape of
life has meanwhile grown old : and grey in grey,
though it brings it into knowledge, cannot make it
young again. The owl of Minerva does not start
upon its flight until the evening twilight has begun
to fall.' Consequently no system of philosophy,
no intellectual explanation of things, can ever
become adequate or final. Reason is incessantly
at work, to render more and more explicit the
implicit principles, or principles which are implied
in life ; but there is always an unexplained residuum,
an unfathomed abyss in the background, from
which new and unforeseen developments may at
any moment, and do from time to time, arise.
On the other hand, it must not rashly be con
cluded from this, that thought is an impotent
abstraction, a pale imitation of the full-blooded
reality of life, like a faded flower, or sad memory
of pleasure past and gone. We do indeed in the
course of our thinking often deal with abstractions,
isolated aspects of things — such as quantity, quality,
and the like ; but only as a means to an end, a
subordinate phase in an organic process. Thought

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 5
as a whole does not tend towards the abstract, but
towards the concrete. It issues, as we have seen,
from the lesser to reissue in larger forms of life, as
fruit issues from a flower to reissue in fresh seed of
flowers. It penetrates the dull mass of life till the
whole becomes luminous and glows. It is an in
separable element of the highest life ; or rather it
is life raised to its highest power. Thus a man
lives, and as he lives reflects upon his life ; with
the result that he comes by degrees to understand
what is within him ; his capacities, his powers, the
meaning of his actions ; and as he does so he ceases
to be the creature of mere outward circumstance,
or mere inward instinct : he knows what he is
about, and can direct and concentrate his energies;
his life becomes fuller, richer, more real, more
concrete, because more conscious ; his thought is
not a mirror which passively reflects his life, but,
on the contrary, his life is the image, the picture,
the music, the more or less adequate language of
his thoughts. Or again, a great historical move
ment, in religion or in politics, will often begin
blindly ; stuttering, stammering, striking at random ;
till in process of time it gradually awakes to its
own true meaning, and grows intelligent, articulate,
effective, the recognized expression of a grand idea.
Thus in a sense we may say truly that thought
realizes or invests things with more complete
reality, and so that only what is rational is real.

6 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
Now in nothing, perhaps, is this order of de
velopment from life to thought, from fact to
explanation, better exhibited, than in the process
by which man has come to recognize what we call
his personality, all that is potentially or actually
contained within himself — in a word what it means
to be a man. Uneducated races, as we know, tend
to personify or animate external nature ; and
though this, of course, implies some consciousness
of their own personality, it is obviously an incom
plete and unreflective consciousness ; for it has not
yet reached that essential stage in definition which
consists in separating a thing from what it is not.
This distinction of the personal from the imper
sonal region, or, in other language, of persons from
things, would appear to have been a gradual
process. And even when we reach the climax
of ancient civilization, in Greece and Rome, there
is no adequate sense, either in theory or practice, of
human personality as such. This may be seen,
without at present pausing to define the term, by
looking at two of its obvious characteristics. Per
sonality, as we understand it, is universal in its
extension or scope— that is, it must pertain to
every human being as such, making him man;
and it is one in its intention or meaning — that is,
it is the unifying principle, or, to use a more
guarded expression, the name of the unity in
which all a man's attributes and functions meet

i] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 7
making him an individual self. And on both
these points the theory and practice of the ancient
world was deficient. Aristotle, its best exponent,
views some men as born to be savages (tptfo-et
/3<ip/3apoi), and others as destined by nature to be
slaves (<pv<rei SoSAoi), whom he further regards as
living machines (ejin/f^a opyava), and women, appa-*
rently in all seriousness, as nature's failures in the
attempt to produce men. And Plato before him,
despite of those flashes of insight which are
beyond his own and most subsequent ages, had,
on the whole, taught much to the same effect.
And this is an accurate philosophical summary of
the practice of pre-Christian society. On the other
hand, in his psychology and ethics Aristotle fails
to unify human nature. In the former he leaves
an unsolved dualism between the soul and its
organism, the active and receptive faculties (vovs
iroiTjrtKo'y and vovs 7ra07jriKos) ; while in the latter he
has no clear conception of the will, and hardly any
of the conscience — the two faculties or functions
which alone identify our various scattered emotions
and activities with our real self. And here too
he is only reflecting the facts of contemporary
society, which was characterized by a fatal divorce
between the various departments of life, the public '
and the private, the moral and the religious, the
intellectual and the sensual ; excellence in one
region being easily allowed to compensate for

8 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
licence or failure in another. Here and there may
be found sporadic exceptions to this as to all
other historic generalizations ; but they are few
and far between, and nowhere rarer than in the
class where we should most naturally have ex
pected to meet them — the professed teachers of
philosophy. As a rule it is beyond dispute that
(neither the universality nor the unity of human
personality, its two most obviously essential fea
tures, were adequately understood in pre-Christian
ages ; though stoicism was beginning to pave the
way for their recognition. But the advent of
Christianity created a new epoch both in the
development and recognition of human personality.
Its Founder lived a life and exercised a personal
attraction, but is expressly reported to have told
His followers that the full meaning of that life and
its attraction would not be understood till He was
gone : ' When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, . . .
He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine and
shall show it unto you.' ' He shall teach you all
things, and bring to your remembrance all that
I said unto you.' The fact of the unique life came^
first, the new personality ; and then the gradual
explanation of the fact, in the doctrine of the
person of Christ ; an order which is already
observable in the contrast that we see between
the synoptic and the fourth gospels. In the same
way the early Christians began by feeling a new

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 9
life within them, due, as they believed, to their
being in spiritual contact with the living person of
their Lord ; and enabling them to say ' I live, yet
not I, Christ liveth in me.' ' Let us therefore do
all things as becomes those who have God dwelling
in them V Then they went on, according to their
capacity and the necessities of the time, to give
a reason for the hope that was in them. And even
in so doing we notice that the first apologists
chiefly appeal to the striking contrast between the
life which Christians led and that of the cruel,
immoral, superstitious, sad, suicidal world around
them. Only as time went on, and Christianity
came to assume a place of prominence in the great
intellectual centres of the world — Antioch, Athens,
Ephesus, Alexandria and Rome — were the intellec
tual presuppositions of this life unfolded ; and the
Christian theology — that is, the authorized explana
tion of the Christian facts which had begun with
the writings of St. Paul and of St. John — was thus
by slow degrees developed.
Our present object, it must be remembered,
is purely historical, and we need not therefore
pause either to defend or criticize the precise
form which the development of Christian doctrine
assumed. Some development or other must have
taken place ; for the world cannot stand still.
Thoughtful men must meditate upon the things
' Ignat. Ep. ad Ephes. 15.

IO DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
which they believe, and endeavour to give articulate
expression to what is implicitly contained in the
principles by which they live ; while the missionary
desire to commend their creed to other minds, and
the consequent encounter with intellectual opposi
tion, will naturally increase the need of theological
definition. Questions must be asked and answers
given ; and sooner or later a great religious move
ment must be philosophically explained. But the
philosophical explanation of Christianity, despite of
all that has been crudely urged against its meta
physical subtlety, was eminently conservative,
sober-minded, slow. The air was full of wild and
seductive systems of speculation ; and individual
Christians were diverging into strange opinions
upon all sides. And when the general councils
were called together, to correct them, there was
indeed much to be deplored in the historical circum
stances of their assembling, as well as the tone and
temper of many of their members. Yet all this
does but emphasize the comparative moderation of
their collective voice. Their undoubted purpose,
as viewed by themselves, was to define and guard,
and to define only in order to guard, what they con
ceived to be the essence of Christianity, the divine
humanity of Jesus Christ, and that with a strictly
practical aim. For personal union with the living
Christ was felt to be the secret of the Christian
life. And had Christ been a mere man as with

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY n
the Ebionites, or a mere appearance as with the
Docetes, or a Gnostic emanation, or an Arian demi
god, the reality of that union would have vanished.
' Our all is at stake,' Athanasius truly said, in justi
fication of his lifelong conflict. This was the real
contribution of the general councils to human
history ; the more and more explicit reassertion of
the Incarnation, as a mystery indeed, but as a fact.
The various heresies which attempted to make the
Incarnation more intelligible, in reality explained
it away ; while council after council, though freely
adopting new phraseology and new conceptions,
never claimed to do more than give explicit expres
sion to what the Church from the beginning had
implicitly believed. And we may fairly maintain
that modern research has made the historic accuracy
of this claim even more apparent, than when Bull
defended it against Petavius, or Waterland against
Clarke. Thus, then, Christian theology arose, like
all other human thought, in meditation upon a fact
of experience — the life and teaching of Jesus Christ ;
and having arisen, reacted, also like other human
thought, upon the fact which it explained, illumi
nating, intensifying, realizing the significance of
that fact. Opinions, of course, differ upon the value
of this result, according as men believe or deny that
it was due to the guidance of the Spirit of God.
But our present concern is with a point of history,
which admits of no denial, an inevitable but indirect

i2 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
and incidental consequence of the theological fer
ment of the first Christian centuries, viz. the intro
duction into the world of a deeper if not an altogether
new conception of human personality. God had
' become man, according to the Christian creed, and
the theological interpretation and application of
this fact threw a new light upon the whole of human
nature. Men may deny its right to have done so,
but they cannot deny the fact that it did so, which
is all with which we are now concerned. Not only
had human nature in an unique instance been per
sonally united to God ; but the whole human race,
whether male or female, barbarian or Scythian,
bond or free, were declared capable of a communi
cated participation in that union ; and this at once
threw a new light upon the depth of latent possi
bility, not only in the favoured few, but in man as
such. Again, the holiness which this union de
manded, and which was emphatically a new standard
in the world, admitted of no dualism. Men were
bidden to bring their entire nature into harmony
with the law of conscience, focussing thereby their
various and divergent faculties and thoughts and
feelings in a central unity. The heterogeneous
elements were forced into coherence. Man was
unified. And further, the sense of responsibility
and accountability, which all this implied, led to
more elaborate examination of the will and its
freedom (rd avTe£ovcnov), while the clearer convic-

i] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 13
tion of immortality and judgement emphasized the
personal identity of man. Here, then, were the
various factors of what we call personality, being
gradually thought out. Nor was it only a work of
thought. Man's personality was being actually
developed. It was becoming deeper and more
intense. A new type was appearing, and attempting
to explain itself as it appeared. And meanwhile
the Trinitarian controversies were ventilating the
question of the relation of subject to object, the
question upon which the nature of self-conscious
ness, and therefore of personality, depends. This
took place mainly indeed in the ontological region,
as was inevitable from the state of philosophy at
the time, but still not without a sense that man was,
metaphysically as well as otherwise, made in the
image and likeness of God (eiK&>z> koX o^ouoo-is). And
though it was not till a later age that the results of
this analysis were at all fully transferred from theo
logy to psychology, yet the real foundations of our
subsequent thought upon the point were undoubt
edly laid in the first Christian centuries, and chiefly
by Christian hands.
It is, of course, impossible to trace minutely the
development of an idea whose elements gradually
coalesced, as floating things are drawn together in
the vortex of a stream. Many minds and many
influences contributed to the result, while the
monasteries provided homes for introspective

14 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
meditation. But for convenience of summary and
memory three names may perhaps be singled out,
as at least typical, if not actually creative, of the
chief epochs, through which the conception of per
sonality has passed — Augustine, Luther, Kant.
Augustine had his predecessors, especially Origen
and Tertullian, in their very different ways ; but in
introspective power he far surpasses them, as, for
instance, when in the Confessions he sounds the
abyss of his own being :
' I come to the spacious fields and palaces
of memory, wherein are treasured unnumbered
images of things of sense, and all our thoughts
about them. . . . There in that vast court of
memory are present to me heaven, earth, sea, and
all that I can think upon, all that I have forgotten
therein. There too I meet myself, and whatever
I have felt and done, my experiences, my beliefs,
my hopes and plans for the years to come  Great
is this power of memory, exceeding great, O God.
Who has ever fathomed its abyss ? And yet this
power is mine, a part of my very nature, nor can
I comprehend all that I myself really am. . . . Great
is this power of memory, a wondrous thing, O my
God, in all its depth and manifold immensity, and
this thing is my mind, and this mind is myself. . . .
Fear and amazement overcome me when I think
of it. And yet men go abroad to gaze upon the
mountains and the waves, the broad rivers, the wide

i] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 15
ocean, the courses of the stars, and pass themselves,
the crowning wonder, by1.' If we compare such
a passage with the famous Greek chorus in which
the wonder of man's nature is described, wholly in
terms of his external works, his stemming of the
tides, his taming of the horse, his inventions, his
contrivances, his arts, it may help us to realize the
change which had passed over men's thoughts. But
Augustine is no mere rhetorician; and elsewhere
he speaks with more philosophical accuracy : ' Go
not abroad, retire into thyself, for truth dwells in
the inner man V ' The mind knows best what is
nearest to it, and nothing is nearer to the mind than
itself3.' 'We exist, and know that we exist, and
love the existence and the knowledge ; and on
these three points no specious falsehood can deceive
us . . . for without any misleading fallacies or fancies
of the imagination, I am absolutely certain that
I exist, and that I know and desire my own exist
ence *.' ' In knowing itself, the mind knows its own
substantial existence (substantiam suam novit), and
in its certainty of itself, it is certain of its own
substantiality (de substantia sua) 5.'
Our present purpose is not critical but historical,
and we need not, therefore, pause upon these state
ments except to point out the distinct development
of self-analysis which they imply, and their natural
1 Aug. Confessions. 2 De ver. rel. 73. 3 De Trin. 14. 7.
4 De Civ. Dei, 11. 26. 5 De Trin. 10. 16.

16 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
tendency to bear further fruit, in the congenial soil
of those countless kindred minds which were to
throng the cloister for the next thousand years, and
issue at length in German mysticism and Luther.
The French mystics of the twelfth century and
their followers, in reaction from the somewhat thin
rationalism of their day, developed an emotional
rather than an intellectual type of mysticism —
which, with all its fervour and beauty, was not
widely influential on the progress of thought. But
with the German mystics, Eckhart, Tauler, Suso,
the case was different. To begin with, the time
was more fully ripe for their effective appearance.
And further, they sprang from the great preaching
order, and laboured, under the exigencies of the
pulpit, to bring their meaning home to the mass of
men ; while the fact, that both preachers and hearers
were of the subjective Teutonic race, gave that
intellectual cast to their teaching which enabled
it to influence all subsequent thought. We are
only concerned here with their contribution to the
development of personality ; which consisted in
emphasizing the intimacy and immediacy of the
union between the soul and God. This was no
more than had been taught in the earlier ages of
Christianity, or than was justified in the philosophy
of Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas.
But practically the tendency of the mediaeval
church, with its over-use of sacerdotal and saintly

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 17
mediation, had been to exaggerate the distance
between God and man. Hence the significance of
the mystical movement. But mysticism has always
had its attendant danger — the danger of seeking
union with God by obliteration of human limita
tions and human attributes on the one hand, and
on the other of underestimating the human sense
of guilt, that awful guardian of our personal iden
tity. Hence, though it begins by deepening our
sense of individuality, it often ends by drifting, both
morally and intellectually, towards a Pantheism in
which all individuality is lost. From this danger,
with all their merits, the German mystics were not
wholly free. And consequently Luther, who was
profoundly influenced by them, without falling into
their error, became the most effectual exponent of
their central thought.
In saying this we are not concerned with his
theology in general, but with the central thought
which lay at the root of it all ; a thought which he
expressed in a more intelligible and, perhaps, on the
whole a more guarded way than Eckhart, and for
which he consequently secured a popularity such
as Eckhart could never have attained. That.
thought was the natural affinity of the human
soul, through all its sin, for God ; and of God for
the human soul ; and the consequent possibility
of an immediate relation between the two. He
turned, as Dorner puts it, from the metaphysical
C

18 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
to the moral attributes of God and man, culminating
as they do in love ; and proclaimed that here was
the only ground for an intimate and in a measure
intelligible union of the two. For it is the nature
of a God whose essence is love to communicate
Himself, and the nature of a man whose essence is
the desire for love to be receptive of that com
munication (capax deitatis). The famous phrase
'justification by faith ' is an attempt to express this
thought. ' Faith,' he says in one place, ' is, if I may
use the expression, creative of divinity; not, of course,
in the substance of God, but in ourselves V ' Faith
has, strictly speaking, no object but Christ ....
and it is this faith which lays hold of' Christ and
is clothed with Him (ornator) which justifies2.'
' Christ lives in me, He is my formal cause (is est
mea forma) clothing my faith3.' 'I am wont, in
order to understand this better, to picture myself
as having no quality in my heart that can be called
faith or love, but in place of this I put Christ
Himself, and say, " This is my righteousness.'" This
intimacy and immediacy of possible union between
the soul and God was, of course, no theological
novelty ; but it had long vanished from the popular
religion. Luther re-emphasized it, with a vehemence to
which the circumstances of the age contributed yet
1 Luther, in Gal. ii. 16. 2 Id. ii. 20.
3 Id. ad Brent. Ep. (quoted by Newman, Lect. on fustification).

i] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 19
further emphasis ; and, above all, he proclaimed it
the basis of spiritual independence ; the soul, which
is the slave of God, being thereby free from all
other slavery, to religious or philosophic authority,
and external means of grace. The freedom of the
human spirit through union with God became thus
a familiar thought, a recognized principle, a con
troversial commonplace, in the mouths of many
who had no inner experience of its truth. But,
however paradoxically stated, abused, exaggerated,
misapplied, its publication made an epoch in the
world. It had previously been an esoteric doctrine.
Luther proclaimed it from the housetop ; and in
so doing dignified and deepened the whole sense
of personality in man.
So far, then, the development of the sense of
personality was due to religious influence, monastic
meditation continuing what the age of the great
councils had begun. Man had viewed himself
in the light of the Incarnation and all that the
Incarnation implied ; and as a consequence had
come to have deeper conceptions of his own nature
and its capacities ; his unity, his indestructible
identity, his inherent dignity, his wonderful possi
bilities and consequent worth. But the time came
when the dogmatic basis upon which all this rested
was cast into the crucible of criticism ; for the
question which in the middle ages had been seldom
asked, and if asked suppressed, forced itself at last
C 2

ao DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
to the front, with an importunate insistence — the
question, ' Can man know God ? ' To meet this by
reasoning, in any sort or form, from the personality
of man to the personality of God, would be obvi
ously impossible if the former conception itself
had been chiefly derived from an illegitimate belief
in the latter ; and therefore a critical review of our
faculties became necessary, which should discard
all traditional authority, whether philosophic or
religious, and examine human nature, by itself, to
see what was really in it, what essential capabilities
it possessed, and what were their inevitable and
necessary limits. It was a fresh instance on a
large scale of the universal order of development
from life to thought, from fact to theory. The
personality of man had been putting out new
powers, and making for itself new claims, throughout
the Christian ages ; and now the time for after
thought had come, to see how far the result was
justified. This brings us to the critical philosophy of
( Kant. He too had his predecessors ; notably, two
in this particular inquiry, Descartes and Leibniz.
Descartes, whether consciously or unconsciously,
following out the thought of Augustine, had
enunciated his famous maxim, ' Cogito ergo sum,'
I think, therefore I am — Thought, that is to say,
is the evidence of its own reality, and of the real
existence of its thinker, the individual man. And

i] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 21
Leibniz, in his Monadology, had further emphasized
the notion of individuality as involving both isola
tion from and relation to the whole outside
universe ; the isolation of separate, self-identical
existence; the relation of sensitive and mental
intercourse, as we should now say, though he
himself used the very different and much less
adequate term reflection, as in a mirror. But it
was Kant who inaugurated the modern epoch in
the treatment of personality. In the first place he
analyzed self-consciousness, the power of separating
oneself as a subject from oneself as an object, or, in
other words, oneself as thinking from oneself as
thought about ; and showed how all knowledge is
due to the activity of the subject, or ego, or self,
in bringing the multiplicity of external facts or
internal feelings into relation with its own central
unity, and thereby into correlation with one another;
with the important corollary that what the ego has
no means of thus relating to itself cannot become
an object of knowledge. And then in the moral
region he went on to show how the ego, or self, has
not only the power of making objects for its own
understanding, but also the power of making
objects for its own pursuit, motives for its own
conduct ; and is thus self-determining, or able to
become a law to itself, and in this sense free.
Further, despite of much subsequent controversy
upon the point, it may be affirmed, without doubt,

22 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
that he viewed these two aspects of personality as
united by the inherent primacy of the practical
over the speculative reason ; denying to the latter
the right of prosecuting its own exclusive interests,
or trusting its own conclusions, in independence or
contradiction of the interests and conclusions of
the former. And, finally, he pointed out that all
persons, in virtue of their inherent freedom, are
ends in themselves, and never merely means to
other ends. Their power of self-determination, of
becoming a law to themselves, is inalienable ;
irresistibly compelling them to regard themselves
as ends, ultimate objects of endeavour or develop
ment, and entitling them to such consideration
from others. However much, therefore, they may
minister to or sacrifice themselves for others, of
their own free-will, they may never be degraded
into passive instruments of another's power or
pleasure, as if they were impersonal things. A
person, then, for Kant, was a self-conscious and
self-determining individual, and as such an end in
himself — the source from which thought and
conduct radiate, and the end whose realization
thought and conduct seek. Subsequent thinkers
have thrown further light upon personality. But
they are at once too numerous and too various to
be briefly reviewed. Moreover, while differing
widely from each other, they have all agreed in
accepting Kant as their necessary point of depar-

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 23
ture. They have developed him both critically
and constructively ; but they have not gone back
behind him. It will be sufficient, therefore, for our
present purpose to pause with Kant.
Our reason for dwelling upon this process, by
which man has gradually arrived at the knowledge
of his own personality, its range, its limits and
its scope, is twofold. In the first place it is a
needful prelude to the description of personality
itself. Personality cannot be exhaustively analyzed,
and cannot, therefore, be accurately defined. It
can only be described from observation. And in
describing anything which has a history, that
history must be taken into account as constituting
part of the full meaning of the thing. And in the
second place the appeal to history is especially
necessitated by the character of the inquiry which
we have in hand, since the fact that human person
ality has been a thing of slow development, and
its conscious recognition of itself slower still, must
have an important bearing upon the inference from
the nature of man to the nature of God. For,
however instinctive and immediate that inference
may at times have been, it is plain that the
personality attributed to God can at no period
have been more distinctly conceived than was its
human analogue ; and we shall not be surprised
to find the former conception gradually modified
as the latter has grown more clear. In a word,

24 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
since man himself has been progressive, his notion
of God must have been progressive also, and we
must neither expect to find its later in its earlier,
nor be content with its earlier in its later stages.
Man, then, is a person or a being of a particular
constitution, which he has come to denote by the
term personality. He has made some progress in
self-analysis, yet is still far from understanding all
that his own personality implies. But one thing
is certain, that he cannot transcend his personality,
he cannot get outside himself. All his knowledge
is personal knowledge, and is qualified and coloured
by the fact. ' Our being,' as Dr. Newman forcibly
expresses it — 'our being, with its faculties, mind
and body, is a fact not admitting of question, all
things being of necessity referred to it, not it to
other things. If I may not assume that I exist,
and in a particular way — that is, with a particular
mental constitution — I have nothing to speculate
about, and had better leave speculation alone.
Such as I am, it is my air; this is my essential
standpoint, and must be taken for granted ; other
wise, thought is but an idle amusement not worth
the trouble. There is no medium between using
my faculties as I have them and flinging myself
upon the external world, according to the random
impulse of the moment, as spray upon the surface
of the waves, and simply forgetting that I am.
I am what I am, or I am nothing. ... If I do

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 25
not use myself I have no other self to use. My
only business is to ascertain what I am, in order
to put it to use. It is enough for the proof of the
value and authority of any function which I possess
to be able to pronounce that it is natural1.'
Personality is thus the gateway through which
all knowledge must inevitably pass. Matter, force,
energy, ideas, time, space, law, freedom, cause, and
the like, are absolutely meaningless phrases except
in the light of our personal experience. They
represent different departments of that experience,
which may be isolated for the purposes of special
study, as we separate a word from its context to
trace its linguistic affinities, or pluck a flower from
its root to examine the texture of its tissues. But
when we come to discuss their ultimate relations
to ourselves and to one another, or, in other words,
to philosophize about them, we must remember
that they are only known to us in the last resort,
through the categories of our own personality, and
can never be understood exhaustively till we know
all that our personality implies. It follows that
philosophy and science are, in the strict sense of the
word, precisely as anthropomorphic as theology2,
since they are alike limited by the conditions of
human personality, and controlled by the forms
of thought which human personality provides.
1 Newman, Grammar of Assent, ix. § 1.
' See note 2.

26 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
The fact that man is thus, in the phrase of Prota
goras, the measure of all things, has been urged
as a ground for scepticism from very ancient
days ; but such scepticism to be logical must
also be universal, and apply equally to all regions
of thought. Seeing, however, that science and
common-sense are both agreed to reject this ex
treme conclusion, and to maintain that personal
experience conveys true knowledge in their respec
tive spheres, no antecedent objection can be raised
against theology, on the ground that it rests on per
sonal experience, and is therefore anthropomorphic.
In all cases the experience in question must be
critically tested ; but in none is it invalidated by
the mere fact that it is personal. For, in the
words .of an English Kantian of the older school,
' It is from the intense consciousness of our own real
existence as persons that the conception of reality
takes its rise in our minds : it is through that
consciousness alone that we can raise ourselves to
the faintest image of the supreme reality of God.
What is reality, and what is appearance? is the
riddle which philosophy has put forth, from the
birthday of human thought ; and the only approach
to an answer has been a voice from the depths
of the personal consciousness : " I think, therefore
I am." In the antithesis between the thinker and
the object of his thought — between myself and
that which is related to me — we find the type

I] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 27
and the source of the universal contrast between
the one and the many, the permanent and the
changeable, the real and the apparent. That
which I see, that which I hear, that which I think,
that which I feel, changes and passes away with
each moment of my varied existence. I, who
see and hear and think and feel, am the one
continuous self, whose existence gives unity and
connexion to the whole. Personality comprises
all that we know of that which exists ; relation
to personality comprises all that we know of that
which seems to exist. And when from the little
world of man's consciousness and its objects we
would lift up our eyes to the inexhaustible 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 Am1.'"
1 Mansel, Bampton Lectures, Lect. iii.

LECTURE II
ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPTION OF HUMAN
PERSONALITY
WE cannot, strictly speaking, define personality,
for the simple reason that we cannot place
ourselves outside it. 'The " mystery " that belongs
to it,' as Professor Green says, ' arises from its being
the only thing, or a form of the only thing, that is
real (so to speak) in its own right ; the only thing
of which the reality is not relative and derived.
.... We can only know it by a reflection on it
which is its own action ; by analysis of the ex
pression it has given to itself, in language, literature,
and the institutions of human life ; and by con
sideration of what that must be which has thus
expressed itself.' Looked at analytically1, then,
V the fundamental characteristic of personality is
self-consciousness 2, the quality in a subject of be
coming an object to itself, or, in Locke's language,
'considering itself as itself,' and saying 'I am I.'
But as in the very act of becoming thus self-con-
1 See note 3. 2 See note 4

CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 29
scious I discover in myself desires 1, and a will 2, the
quality of self-consciousness immediately involves
that of self-determination, the power of making
my desires an object of my will, and saying ' I will
do what I desire.' But we must not fall into the
common error of regarding thought, desire, and
will, as really separable in fact, because we are
obliged for the sake of distinctness to give them
separate names. They are three faculties or
functions of one individual, and, though logically
separable, interpenetrate each other, and are always
more or less united in operation. I cannot, for
instance, pursue a train of thought, however abstract,
without attention, which is an act of will, and
involves a desire to attend. I cannot desire, as
distinct from merely feeling appetite, like an
animal, without thinking of what I desire, and
willing to attain or to abstain from it. I cannot
will without thinking of an object or purpose, and
desiring its realization. There is, therefore, a syn
thetic unity in my personality or self; that is to
say, not a merely numerical oneness, but a power of
uniting opposite and alien attributes and charac
teristics with an intimacy which defies analysis.
This unity is further emphasized by my sense of
personal identity, which irresistibly compels me to
regard myself as one and the same being, through
all changes of time and circumstance, and thus
1 See note 5. 2 See note 6.

3°

ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.

unites my thoughts and feelings of to-day with
those of all my bygone years. I am thus one, in
the sense of an active unifying principle, which can
not only combine a multitude of present experiences
in itself, but can also combine its present with its
past. At the same time, with all my inclusiveness,
I have also an exclusive aspect. ' Each self/ it has
been well said, 'is a unique existence, which is
perfectly impervious to other selves — impervious
in a fashion of which the impenetrability of matter
is a faint analogue V Thus a person has at once
an individual and an universal side. He is an unit
that excludes all else, and yet a totality or whole
with infinite powers of inclusion.
It is necessary to emphasize this unity of our
personality, on account of its controversial import
ance. Of course in ordinary life we all take it for
granted ; but this very fact only makes people the
more liable to be disturbed, when assured that it
can be decomposed and explained away by modern
physiological psychology. We cannot, therefore,
lay too much stress upon the fact of its recognition
by the general voice of both ancient and modern
philosophy, as distinct from that of a small minority
of scientific specialists, who have not really made
any advance upon the position of Hume, or dis
posed of Kant's answer to Hume. It is a point,
moreover, on which critical philosophy is at one
1 Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, p. 2 16.

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 31
with common-sense, while its opponents who
attempt to resolve the unity into a multiplicity of
impressions and desires, which, but for that unity,
would have nothing to be impressed upon or desired
by, maintain a paradox quite as incredible to the
multitude as to the philosopher. And, whatever
we may think of the ' argument from universal
consent ' taken by itself, it must distinctly be allowed
weight when it corroborates and is corroborated
by philosophic analysis. ' We meet,' says Lotze,
' with the word " soul " in the languages of all
civilized peoples ; and this proves that the ima
gination of man must have had reasons of weight
for its supposition, that there is an existence of
some special nature underlying the phenomena of
the inner life as their subject or cause.' Philosophers
have differed in the phrases by which they have
described this unity, as well as in their views of
the precise way in which we are aware of it.
But these differences do not alter their agreement
upon the fact. Kant, indeed, though the foremost
to assert the unity of self-consciousness, goes so
far as to deny that we can legitimately infer from
it the existence of the soul as a separate substance ;
but this denial, besides being qualified by what he
says elsewhere, in his critique of the practical
reason, turns upon his peculiar doctrine of noumena,
or things in themselves, the least satisfactory part
1 Lotze, Metaphys. § 238.

32 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
of his system. And, as Lotze remarks, 'The
identity of the subject of inward experience is all
that we require. So far as, and so long as, the
soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is, and
is named, simply for that reason, substance. . . .
That which is not only conceived by others as
unity in multiplicity, but knows and makes itself
good as such, is, simply on that account, the truest
and most indivisible unity there can be V But,
though we can afford to be indifferent as to
whether the word substance shall be used in this
connexion or not, we must be on our guard
against the fallacy which supposes that our notion
of substance is first derived from the external world,
and can thence have been imported into ourselves.
For this is preposterous in the strict sense of the
term. It puts the cart before the horse. There
can be no question whatever that our whole idea
of substance, as the permanent substratum which
underlies and connects a variety of attributes into
that unity which we call a ' thing,' is derived ex
clusively from our own experience of a permanent
self, underlying (or understanding) all our affections
and manifestations. Whether, therefore, we describe
this understanding self as a substance or not, it is
the only source from whence the conception of
substance can have been derived, and of whatever
meaning it may possess.
' Lotze, Metaphys. § 244.

II] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 33
Again, our self-consciousness involves freedom,
or the power of self-determination. Enough and to
spare has been written on the freedom of the will,
and it will be sufficient for our present purpose
simply to summarize the situation. The freedom
of the will, then, does not mean the ability to act
without a motive, as some of its opponents still
stupidly seem to suppose. But it does mean the
ability to create or co-operate in creating our own
motives, or to choose our motive, or to transform
a weaker motive into a stronger by adding weights
to the scale of our own accord, and thus to deter
mine our conduct by our reason ; whence it is now
usually called the power of self-determination —
a phrase to which St. Thomas very nearly ap
proaches when he says, ' Man is determined by
a combination of reason and appetite (appetitu
rationali), that is, by a desire whose object is con
sciously apprehended by the reason as an end to
be attained, and he is therefore self-moved.' For
instance, I am hungry, and that is simply an
animal appetite; but I am immediately aware of
an ability to choose between gratifying my hunger
with an unwholesome food because it is pleasant,
or with an unpleasant food because it is wholesome,
or abstaining from its gratification altogether for
self-discipline or because the food before me is
not my own. That is to say, I can present to my
mind, on the occasion of appetite, pleasure, utility,
D

34

ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.

goodness, as objects to be attained, and I can
choose between them ; nor is it to the point to say
that I am determined by my character, for my
character is only the momentum which I have
gained by a number of past acts of choice, that is
by my own past use of my freedom ; and even so
I am conscious that at the moment I can counteract
my character, though morally certain that I have
no intention so to do.
This is briefly what we mean by free-will ; and
it is a fact of immediate and universal conscious
ness, that is, of my own consciousness, corroborated
by the like experience of all other men. When
Bain compares it to a belief in witches (and the
comparison is typical of many more), as being
a fact of consciousness as long as it is believed, his
misapprehension of the point at issue is almost
ludicrous. For the sense of freedom is an im
mediate part of my consciousness. I cannot be
conscious without it. I cannot tear it out. It lies
at the very root of myself, and claims, with self-
evidence, to be something sui generis, something
unique. So obvious is this, that most even of those
who regard it as a delusion are obliged to admit
that it is a delusion from which there is no escape.
Further, upon this sense of freedom all law and all
morality depend. To deny this is to play with
words. And law and morality abundantly verify
the legitimacy of their basis by the progressive

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 35
development in which they result. For you cannot
gather figs of thistles, or a rational order of society
from an irrational disease of mind. And, finally,
the sense of freedom has maintained itself, from
the dawn of history, against a spirit far more
powerful than any which philosophy can raise — the
spirit of remorse. What would not humanity, age
after age, have given to be free from remorse ? Yet
remorse still stares us in the face, overshadowing
our hearts with sadness and driving its countless
victims into madness, suicide, despair, and awful
forebodings of the after-world. Men would have
exorcised it if they could ; but they cannot. And
remorse is only a darker name for man's conviction
of his own free-will.
We ground our belief in freedom, then, on two
things — its immediate self-evidence in consciousness
and its progressive self-justification in morality —
the way in which its moral results approve them
selves to the universal reason of mankind ; and
we are confident that no contrary argument can be
constructed without surreptitiously assuming what
it attempts to disprove. Lucretius was obliged
to allow his atoms the power of swerving. And
when Hobbes defines the will as ' the last appetite
in deliberation,' he concedes by the latter word
what he intends to deny by the former. And so
with the later necessitarians. Their analysis is
more elaborate and possesses the attraction for
D 2

36 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
certain minds of any attempt to explain the
primary aspect of a thing ingeniously away. But
they have been convicted again and again, either
of ignoring the point at issue, or begging, in one
phrase or other, the question to be proved ; while
their success, if it were possible, would only land
them in the old dilemma, that by invalidating
consciousness they invalidate all power of reason
ing, and with it the value of their own conclusions.
' Non ragioniam di lor.'
But will acts, as we have seen, upon the material
supplied by desire ; and this desire is a coessential
element in our personality. Desire is the form
which appetite necessarily takes in a rational
being; it is appetite consciously directed to an
end which reason presents, and may be called
self-conscious appetite (the ' appetitus rationalis ' of
St. Thomas). And desire is, broadly speaking,
of two kinds, desire of acquisition and desire of
action, or, in other words, of food and exercise. We
desire to incorporate and to assimilate with our
selves the various contents of our material, moral,
and intellectual environment — as our food, our
furniture, our property, our means of pleasure and
of virtue and of knowledge. And we also desire
to project ourselves into and modify that environ
ment, by exercising our wealth or power or skill
or influence or mind upon it. And, though these
two processes of reception and action are often

ii] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 37
regarded as independent functions, it is important
to notice that in fact they interpenetrate each
other. An activity of the organism is involved
in the simplest sensation, and more obviously in
our every emotional and intellectual acquisition ;
no experience being purely passive. And, on the
other hand, every action must be stimulated by
a motive ; and though reason, as we have seen,
plays an important part in the constitution of this
motive, the receptive faculties contribute the
material of which the motive is to be made. Now
this twofold process of desire, acquisitive and
active, irresistibly impels us into communion with
other persons. We are so constituted that we
cannot regard inanimate property, uncommunicated
knowledge, unreciprocated emotion, solitary action
otherwise than as means to an end. We press on
through it all, till we have found persons like
ourselves with whom to share it, and then we are
at rest. Thus all persons are ends to us, when
compared with impersonal things, but in different
degrees. For we have various desires, and each
of them conducts us into a different kind of con
nexion with other persons. We may be more
passive and receive sympathy from them, or more
active and exercise influence over them. We may
desire to share with them our pleasures, or our
perplexities, or our work, or to exchange with
them social amenities or intellectual ideas. And

38 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
in all these ways they may represent ends to us,
but still, in a sense, only partial ends ; satisfying,
that is, some one class of our desires, some one
mode of our activity, some one department of our
complex being. But we instinctively seek more
than this. We require to find in other persons
an end in which our entire personality may rest.
And this is the relationship of love. Its intensity
may admit of degrees, but it is distinguished from
all other affections or desires, by being the outcome
of our whole personality. It is our very self, and
not a department of us, that loves. And what we
love in others is the personality or self, which
makes them what they are. We love them for
their own sake. And love may be described as the
mutual desire of persons for each other as such ;
the mode in which the life of desire finds its
climax, its adequate and final satisfaction.
These, then, are the constituent elements ofl
personality, as such — self-consciousness, the power!
of self-determination, and desires which irresistibly
impel us into communion with other persons — orj
in other words, reason, will, and love. These are
three perfectly distinct and distinguishable func
tions, but they are united, as we have seen, by
being the functions of one and the selfsame
subject1, and gain a peculiar character from this
very fact. They are the thoughts of a being that
1 See note 7.

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 39
wills and loves, the will of a being that loves
and thinks, the love of a being that thinks and
wills ; and each attribute may be said to ex
press the whole being, therefore, in terms of
that attribute.
But in speaking thus of personality as a thing
that can be analyzed, as if it were inanimate or
abstract, we must not forget that in fact it is
essentially alive, and can only be known as living ;
so that it is, perhaps, better described as an energy
than as a substance. It lives and grows and
develops character, as the will selects and appro
priates to itself, or exerts its influence upon, the
various material supplied by reason and desire.
Consequently, there can be no stage in its existence
when personality does not imply character, for
which, indeed, in popular language it has almost
become a synonym — as when we speak of a strong
or weak or commanding personality. And the
usage is instructive as bearing witness to the fact
that a man's character represents his whole self.
He may be predominantly thoughtful or pre
dominantly wilful or predominantly loving. But
his character is not constituted merely by the
salient feature, but by the fact that he has chosen
to subordinate his other faculties to this one ; that
he is a thinker who has bent his will and affections
into the service of his thought, or a lover who has
subdued his thought and will to his love. Or, to

40 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
put the same thing in another way, the necessity
for division of labour makes our ordinary thought
and conduct mainly departmental. We specialize
ourselves upon a particular science or subsection
of a science, or an occupation which may be
as limited as the manufacture of one piece of
a machine — a wheel, a bolt, a screw. But we only
follow these partial pursuits with a view to the
ultimate satisfaction of our whole personality :
special studies as a step towards the complete
unity of knowledge; which can alone satisfy the
mind, as we say, meaning the will and desires of
the thinker ; and manual or other industries, to
gain the means of maintaining our life, and the
home in which all its interests and instincts may
find their scope ; while even the departmental
work itself will be a failure, unless we put our
whole heart into it, making it a moral and emo
tional as well as a merely mental or mechanical
act ; whereas, if we do this, the most limited and
finite occupation reacts upon and furthers the
development of our entire character.
Personality, then, lives and grows, but, in so
doing, retains its identity ; the character in which
it issues, however versatile or complex, being never
a disconnected aggregate, but always an organic
whole. Its unity may seem to vanish in the
variety of experience through which it goes, yet
only to reappear, enlarged, enriched, developed, or

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 41
impoverished and degraded, as the case may be,
but self-identical.
We have now said enough in general description
of a term that does not admit of being precisely
defined. And, in passing on to use it for contro
versial purposes, we must remember that this
incapability of definition is a sign, not of its
weakness, but of its strength ; being a characteristic
of all ultimate realities, just because they are so
real — as Locke saw in the case of what he called
' simple ideas.' Every man is certain of his own
personality, and has no need to be convinced of it ;
though not every man has reflected upon it, to see
what it implies. But its chief attributes are so
obvious that, when once attention has been called
to them, they cannot fail to be immediately recog
nized in their true light. And these, as we have
seen, are individuality, self-consciousness, self-
determination, love and, as the result of their
living interaction, character.
¦ Now personality is the inevitable and necessary
starting-point of all human thought. For we
cannot by any conceivable means get out of it,
or behind it, or beyond it, or account for it, or
imagine the method of its derivation from anything
else. For, strictly speaking, we have no know
ledge of anything else from which it can have
been derived. If we are told that it is the product
of pure reason, or unconscious will, or mere matter

42

ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.

or blind force, the answer is obvious — that we
know of no such things. For, when spoken of in
this way, reason and will and matter and force
are only abstractions, and abstractions from my
personal experience ; that is to say, they are parts
of myself, separated from their context and then
supposed to exist in the outer world ; or, to put
the same thing in another way, they are phenomena
of the outer world, which are supposed to resemble
parts of myself taken out of their context. But
it is only in their context that these parts of me
have any real existence. Will, in the only form in
which I know it, is determined by reason and
desire. Matter, in the only form in which I know
it — that is, in my own body — is informed by reason
and desire and will. Reason, as I know it, is
inseparable from desire and will. And when in
my own case I speak of my ' reason ' or my ' will '
apart, I am making abstraction of a particular
aspect of myself, which, as such, has only an
ideal or imaginary existence. Consequently, names
which are given to phenomena in virtue of their
resembling or being supposed to resemble these
abstract aspects of myself, must be equally ideal
and imaginary in their denotation. And I cannot
in any way conceive a living and complex whole,
like myself, to be derived from anything outside
me which can only be known and named because
it resembles one of my elements ; when the element

ii] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 43
in question must be artificially isolated and, so to
speak, killed in the process, before the resemblance
can be established. Abstractions must be less
real than the totality from which they are taken,
and cannot thus be made levers for displacing their
own fulcrum. Personality, therefore, is ultimate
'a parte ante.'
It follows from this that personality is also our
canon of reality1, the most real thing we know,
and by comparison with which we estimate the
amount of reality in other things. For, however
difficult the notion of reality be to define, we may
accept the evidence of language, in itself no mean
metaphysician, to the general view that there are
degrees of it. ' Quo plus realitatis ... res habet,
eo plura attributa ei competunt' is a proposition
of Spinoza on which Lotze rightly remarks that
its converse is equally true — 'The greater the
number of attributes that attach to anything, the
more real that thing is ' 2 ; which is equivalent to
saying, the greater the number of ways in which
it is related to my personality. For example,
a fear of ghosts may be a real enough obstacle
to prevent a man from traversing a certain path.
But a tree blown across it would be a more real
obstacle, a wild beast more real, and an armed
enemy more real still ; because their respective
oppositions would affect the man in an increasing
1 See note 8. 1 Lotze, Metaphys. § 49.

44

ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.

number of ways. So a living flower is more real
than a dead one, for it has more attributes ; but
if the dead one was given me by a friend it is
the more real of the two to me, because it wakes
more echoes in me and touches more of my entire
being. For the same reason whatever affects me
permanently or intensely is more real than a thing
whose relation to me is momentary or slight. And,
as nothing influences me so variously or intensely,
or possesses so permanent a possibility of influence
as another person, personality is the most real
thing which I can conceive outside me, since it
corresponds most completely to my own personality
within. Hence each person is, as we have already
seen, an end to me, and not a means to an end ;
something which in that particular direction I can
not go beyond, and in which I am content to rest ;
and the world of persons is in consequence more
real to me than the world of nature or of books.
Nor does this in any degree reduce ' reality ' to
a merely subjective experience ; because the same
principle can obviously be, and invariably is, ex
tended to what affects all persons and at all times
in a similar way. And, if there is any obscurity in
the above statement, it simply arises from the fact
that, for the practical purposes of ordinary life, we
are content with a more compendious view of
reality ; ascribing it to whatever possesses two
or three of its most prominent attributes, such

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 45
as persistence and the power of being seen or
touched. But, on analysis, this can be shown to be
only a convenient abbreviation for the more com
plete relationship to personality which we have
described. Now the significance of all this is that we are
spiritual beings. The word spirit is indeed un-
definable and may even be called indefinite, but
it is not a merely negative term for the opposite of
matter. It has a sufficiently distinct connotation
for ordinary use. It implies an order of existence
which transcends the order of sensible experience,
the material order : yet which, so far from exclud
ing the material order, includes and elevates it
to higher use, precisely as the chemical includes
and transfigures the mechanical, or the vital the
chemical order. It is thus synonymous with super
natural, in the strict sense of the term. And
personality as above described belongs to this
spiritual order, the only region in which self-con
sciousness and freedom can have place.
Historically, then, man has always believed
himself to be a spiritual being. Here and there at
intervals the belief has been reasoned out of him.
But there is no question that it represents his
normal conviction. It is stereotyped, under one
form or another, in every language ; it is assumed
in his earliest literature ; and is implied in the
burial customs of even the palaeolithic age. Here,

46 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
then, is a solid fact, scientifically ascertained. Man
believes himself to be spiritual.
Critical analysis justifies the belief. And it
should be borne in mind that an analysis which
justifies a universal conviction has an immense
presumption in its. favour, and therefore a cumu
lative force ; while one of an opposite tendency
must to a great extent be neutralized, if it cannot
after all discredit in the popular mind'the conviction
which it claims to have explained away. ' E pur
se muove.' In the present case, the unity of our
self-consciousness, with the further sense of freedom
that it involves, is its own evidence. It knows
itself to differ, toto caelo, from all that we call
material. Space and time, for instance, are necessary
conditions of material existence, including that of
my own material organism. But I am conscious
that in knowing things I take them out of space
and time, and invest them, so to speak, with an
entirely different mode of existence, which has no
analogue outside my consciousness. Multiplicity
and movement are essential characteristics of the
material world, whereas I am conscious of being
permanently self-identical and one. Otherwise
I could be no more aware of multiplicity and
movement than my bodily senses are of the earth's
revolution, as they are carried with it in its course.
Necessity or determination from without is charac
teristic of the material world, one event producing

II] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 47
another in endless continuity of causation ; whereas
I am directly conscious of being self-determined
from within — a source of original activity, a free
agent, a will.
These are not, of course, independent arguments
proving my spirituality as their conclusion ; for
if so regarded they would obviously beg the ques
tion. But they are reasons which my self-conscious
ness sees, on examination, for its own spontaneous
verdict about itself. (Man lives first, and thinks
afterwardsA He is implicitly aware of his spiritu
ality ; and, when cross-questioned, can only make
explicit the evidence which he finds within him
for the fact. Materialism, on the other hand, can
not explain away either this time-honoured testi
mony of consciousness, or the grounds on which
it is found to rest. All its attempts to do so are
mere efforts of imagination, whether we examine
them from the metaphysical or the physical side.
For the assertion that what we call spirit is a mode
of matter, or derived from matter, must mean from
such matter as we know ; otherwise it would merely
be dealing with the unknown, and have no meaning
at all. But matter, as we know it, is always in
synthesis with spirit, a synthesis in which each
of the two factors acts and reacts upon the other.
Objectivity, externality, extension, motion and
all such terms imply a subject as their necessary
correlative ; for to think at all is to relate an object

48 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
to a subject, and to obliterate the relation is to
cease to think. Consequently, to speak of matter,
or force, or generally of the objective element in
knowledge as existing by itself, or out of relation
to a subject, is to speak of it otherwise than as
we know it, and to use words without a meaning1.
Yet this is precisely what the materialist does;
and in so doing he is the dupe of his own imagina
tion. He first isolates by abstraction certain
elements of his total experience, and calls them
' force ' or ' matter '; he then substantiates or solidi
fies these ' abstract ideas ' through his imagination,
till they look as if they existed by themselves,
and so is able to picture them as creating the mind
by which, in fact, they have been created. The
same thing may be stated, in a way which is more
obvious to many minds, from the physical point
of view; and is so stated, with some authority,
by Du Bois-Reymond. ' The complete knowledge
of the brain,' he says, ' the highest knowledge we
can attain, reveals to us nothing but matter in
motion.' . . . 'What conceivable connexion exists
between certain movements of certain atoms in my
brain on the one hand, and on the other the, to me,
original and not further definable but undeniable
facts, " I feel pain, feel pleasure ; I ta&e something
sweet, smell roses, hear organ-sounds, see something
red," and the just as immediately resulting certainty,
1 See note 9.

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 49
" therefore I am " ? . . . It is impossible to see how
from the co-operation of the atoms consciousness
can result. Even if I were to attribute conscious
ness to the atoms, that would neither explain
consciousness in general nor would that in any
way help us to understand the unitary consciousness
of the individual V Lotze2 further enlarges upon
this last point, and disposes of the mechanical
analogy which would resolve the unity of con
sciousness into a resultant of a number of separate
forces, by reminding us that in mechanics the
various forces in question must act simultaneously
upon one and the same material point ; so that
in the present case the unity which is to be ex
plained will have to be already presupposed. This
impassable gulf, then, between matter and thought,
which all philosophically minded men of science
admit, is another aspect of their inseparable con
nexion as viewed by the metaphysician. And
when Cabanis, and others after him, call thought
a secretion of the brain, they merely conceal this
gulf under the cloud of an imaginative phrase which,
as Fichte says, 'has never conveyed a thought
to any man, and never will.' The witness of our
consciousness, therefore, to its own spirituality never
has been and never can be explained away by
materialism. From the physical point of view
1 Qu. by Lange, Hist, of Mat. ii. p. 311 (E. T.).
2 Lotze, Metaphys. § 242. E

50 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
we cannot, of course, say more than that it never
has been explained, because physical science cannot
go beyond its experience ; and if, therefore, the
physical point of view were the only one, there
might always remain the possibility of an explana
tion being some day discovered. It is, in fact, upon
this possibility that the materialist rests. The
process in question is as yet inconceivable, he will
admit, in the sense that it cannot be pictured by
the mind ; but that is merely because as yet we
have had no experience of it ; we have not gone
deep enough into nature's laboratory to see it at
work ; but meanwhile there are so many analogies
in its favour that we may expect its discovery will
one day come. If the major premiss of all this
could be granted the conclusion would be fair
enough. And hence the paramount importance
of emphasizing the metaphysical view of the ques
tion, which, by exhibiting the necessary limits of all
possible experience, can alone convert the ' has not
been ' into ' cannot be.'
It might indeed be thought that, after all which
Kant and his successors have said upon the subject,
materialism would be, by this time, a thing of the
past. But it is not so. ' Strictly considered,' says
Lange, its well-known historian, ' scientific research
does not produce Materialism ; but neither does it
refute it, . . . nevertheless, in actual life and in the
daily interchange of opinions, scientific inquiry by

n] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 51
no means occupies so neutral or even negative an
attitude towards Materialism as is the case when
all consequences are rigidly followed out. . . . After
all the " confutations " of Materialism, now more
than ever, there appear books of popular science
and periodical essays which base themselves upon
materialistic views as calmly as if the matter had
been settled long ago.' These complacent reitera
tions of an untenable position he goes on to attri
bute to ignorance of critical philosophy on the
part of many scientific specialists. And as no one
could accuse Lange of obscurantism his conclusion
should carry weight. ' There are only two condi
tions,' he continues, ' under which this (materialistic)
consequence can be avoided. The one lies behind
us : it is the authority of philosophy, and the deep
influence of religion upon men's minds. The other
still lies some distance ahead : it is the general
spread of philosophical culture among all who
devote themselves to scientific studies1.' And
until this spread of culture comes, the authority
of philosophy, represented as it is by an august
catena, reaching from Plato to the present day,
should command at least as much respect among
the students of science and their uncritical ad
mirers as is willingly conceded by. the layman to
the expert in all other departments of life and
thought. For the authority of philosophy is like
1 Lange, Hist, of Mat. ii. p. 332 (E. T.).
E 2

52 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
the wisdom of the aged ; it does not supersede
independent thought, but it supplies guidance and
protection to those whose leisure for thought is
limited or whose capacity is still immature ; while,
further, the general agreement of philosophers on
any point creates a very strong presumption of its
truth. In the present case, it may fairly be main
tained that there exists an overwhelming majority
of philosophers who, amid many differences, are
agreed upon the spiritual character of man. And
the object of the above survey has been simply to
give prominence to those fundamental points in
our personality for which there is at least enough
philosophic authority to give the ablest adver
saries pause, as well as to indicate the lines of
analysis, or of argument, on which they rest.
It should be noticed, in conclusion, that though
personality, as above described, is the one thing
which we know best in the world, it is also the
most mysterious thing we know 1. ' Grande pro-
fundum est homo.' There are ' abysmal deeps of
personality ' which startle us at times by the vast-
ness of the vistas which they half disclose. We
are dimly aware of undeveloped capabilities within
us — capabilities of energy, intelligence and love —
which we cannot conceive ultimately frustrated
and functionless ; germs without a future, seeds
without a fruit ; and which, therefore, irresistibly
1 See note 10.

II] CONCEPTION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY 53
point to immortality as the sole condition in
which a personal being can find scope. ' In point
of fact,' says Lotze — and the quotation will indicate
our whole subsequent line of thought — ' In point
of fact, we have little ground for speaking of the
personality of finite beings ; it is an ideal and, like
all that is ideal, belongs unconditionally only to
the Infinite. Perfect personality is in God only ;
to all finite minds there is allotted but a pale copy
thereof; the finiteness of the finite is not a pro
ducing condition of this personality, but a limit
and hindrance of its development V
1 Lotze, Microcosm, ix. 4, § 4.

LECTURE III
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF
DIVINE PERSONALITY
MAN'S belief in a personal God, from what
ever source it is derived, must obviously
be interpreted through his consciousness of his own
personality. We should naturally expect to find,
therefore, that it has gradually, like the latter,
grown articulate from an implicit and unreflective
stage. And before we can fairly criticize, or allow
it to be criticized, we must be familiar with the
steps of its historic evolution. For the inference
on which it rests, or by which, at least, it must be
justified when called in question, is of that highly
complex kind in which a multitude of probable
arguments converge and corroborate each other.
And foremost among these arguments is the fact
of the universality, or at least the extreme gener
ality of the belief, in an elementary form. This
is a fact of primary importance, not only for its
intrinsic value as an argument, but for the light
which it throws upon all subsequent arguments, by

CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 55
showing that they are not to be regarded as the
premisses of a conclusion, but as the analytical
explanations of a pre-established conviction. As
we live first and think afterwards, so we ar<
religious first and theological afterwards. Our*
religion anticipates all argument. And it may
be remarked in passing that this effectively dis
poses of the superficial objections which are often
urged against the evidences of religion, on the
ground of their subtle and complex character ; for
these evidences are plainly seen, in the light of
history, to be afterthoughts — ways of explaining,
but not of attaining, religious life.
' The statement,' says Tiele, ' that there are
nations or tribes which possess no religion rests
either on inaccurate observation or on a confusion
of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met
with, destitute of belief in any higher beings ; and
travellers who asserted their existence have been
afterwards refuted by the facts. It is legitimate,
therefore, to call religion in its most general sense
an universal phenomenon of humanity V Tylor
fully endorses this view ; while De Quatrefages,
approaching the subject from a totally different
direction, as a naturalist, is equally emphatic : ' We
nowhere meet,' he says, 'with atheism, except in
an erratic condition. In every place, and at all
times, the mass of populations have escaped it ; we
1 Outlines of H.ofR.i.6 (E. T.).

56 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
nowhere find either a great human race, or even
a division, however unimportant, of that race, pro
fessing atheism ... A belief in beings superior to
man, and capable of exercising a good or evil influ
ence upon his destiny ; and the conviction that
the existence of man is not limited to the present
life, but that there remains for him a future beyond
the grave. . . . every people, every man believing
these two things is religious, and observation shows
more and more clearly every day the universality
of this character V
Whether or not the beliefs of modern savages
are the nearest analogue of primitive religion is,
from the scientific point of view, an open question.
We must remember that moral and religious de
generacy is undoubtedly a vera causa, a process
that has operated widely and deeply in human
history; and that modern savages may, therefore,
have declined from a once higher level. Still
there is tolerably clear evidence that the religious
belief of our race has passed through a stage
which, if short of the extreme of savagery, was
very rudimentary. Of course this may have been
preceded by a primitive monotheism, and there
are distinguished specialists who still maintain that
the earlier forms of Egyptian and Indian religion
were more monotheistic than the later. But the
general tendency of the evidence is the other way,
1 Quatrefages, Human Species, p. 482.

Ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 57
and seems to point to a very gradual awakening
of the religious consciousness, though by no means
through such a definite series of stages as some
systematizers would have us suppose. Fetichism,
Totemism, Atavism, Polydaemonism, Polytheism,
Henotheism cannot really be arranged in a serial
order ; nor need we now pause upon the attempts
made so to arrange them. For our present pur
pose it is sufficient to notice the primitive philo
sophy which underlies them all — that is, animism.
Animism is the belief in souls or spirits animating
the external world, the first and most obvious
method of accounting for its various phenomena.
It is not in itself a religion, but in alliance with
the religious instinct gives birth to various forms
of religion according to the variety of objects in
which spirits are supposed to dwell— stones, trees,
beasts, winds, rivers, mountains, stars — being all in
their turn conceived of as the homes or bodies of
spiritual agents ; and this by no ' pathetic fallacy '
or poetic transference of attributes, but by an
intellectual necessity. Man's only certain know
ledge was of himself, and he was obliged to inter
pret the outside world, therefore, in terms of that
self, while language in its earlier stages inevitably
carried on the process.
'We always find the myth-constructing begin
nings of religion busied in transforming natural to
spiritual reality, but never find them actuated by

58 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
any desire to trace back living spiritual activity to
unintelligent Realness as a firmer foundation V
'Whatever had to be called and conceived had
to be conceived as active, had to be called by
means of roots which expressed originally the
consciousness of our own acts2.'
Personification, then, was the beginning of philo
sophy and theology alike, and that by a psycho
logical necessity ; for in all thinking we work from
the known to the unknown, and the ' known ' to
primitive man was himself. But we have already
seen that uncivilized man has a very dim and
obscure sense both of the limits and the content of
his own personality : his morality is limited, his
character impulsive, the elements of his nature
loosely coherent, and not yet welded together into
unity. And all this was naturally reflected in his
view of the outside world, with the result that his
gods were indefinite in number and in outline, and
their character ' vengeful, partial, passionate, unjust.'
But as time went on, and man learned to distinguish
between animate and inanimate, persons and things,
and again between what was essential and acci
dental, good and bad in his own nature, higher
conceptions of divine personality and character
arose ; culminating in what has been called Heno
theism, or monarchical polytheism — that is, in a
1 Lotze, Microcosm, ix. 4, § 3.
a Max Miiller, Nat. Religion, p. 390.

Ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 59
polytheism of which some one chief member, like
Varuna or Indra, Zeus or Apollo, Woden or Thor,
assumes such prominence in a given period or neigh
bourhood as to overshadow all his compeers and
virtually initiate a monotheism. ' For the slumber
ing faith in a highest God might,' as Grimm says,
' wake up at any moment ' ; and
'The beings so contrarious that seemed gods,
Prove just His operation manifold
And multiform, translated, as must be,
Into intelligible shape so far
As suits our sense and sets us free to feel1.'
This purifying process of criticism is fully exhi
bited in Plato and the Greek tragedians, and with
an intenser accompaniment of moral indignation in
the Hebrew prophets ; and there are traces of it
to be found in all religious literature — efforts to
'Correct the portrait by the living face,
Man's God by God's God in the mind of man1.'
while, as worthier conceptions of God came to be
entertained, they in turn reacted upon and raised
the standard of human character, and thereby
prepared the way for their own further purification,
yet still under the form of personality.
The process thus summarized is a long one, and
modern anthropology has made its details so
familiar to us that they need not be repeated.
But its significance is often misrepresented. It
1 Browning*. Ping and Book.

60 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
is often supposed that the early tendency to per
sonification was gradually outgrown with the
growth of enlightenment. But this is not the case ;
it was only rectified. Man finds the world outside
him to be intensely, unquestionably real. It warms,
cheers, supports, sustains, helps, hinders, obstructs,
hurts, terrifies, destroys him. And he personifies
it because it is so real, and personality is, as we
have already seen, his supreme canon of reality.
These external influences which so affect him are
not less real than himself ; therefore they must be
personal. Consequently, when on further reflection
he finds that his immediate environment is largely
impersonal, he only relegates personality to the
background, without ceasing to regard it as the
source of reality. His own personality acts daily
through inanimate instruments — the mill, the
hammer, the arrow, the spear; and he has no
difficulty in conceiving a similar process to be at
work in the outer world. Thus, however much the
conceptions of them may be rectified and refined,
the God or gods of the religious consciousness
remain ultimately personal. But there comes a
time when the religious consciousness demands
intellectual justification ; and this demand may
arise either from the scientific or the speculative
side. As the processes of physical nature come to
be better understood, their apparent independence
of all spiritual influence may suggest the thought,

Ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 61
that perhaps after all there is no such thing as
a personality behind them. On the other hand,
the contrast between God and man may seem so
complete as entirely to preclude the possibility of
including both under a common predicate or, in
other words, of knowing God at all. We have
ample evidence of this stage of development in
ancient India and elsewhere ; but it is nowhere
so compactly summarized, so adequately examined,
or so essentially related to ourselves, as in the
history of Greek philosophy — the lineal ancestor of
all European and Western thought. Greek philo
sophy begins with the distinct, though naturally
crude expression of both the above-mentioned
tendencies of thought — the physical speculations
of the lonians and Atomists rendering a God
superfluous, and the metaphysical and logical
reasoning of the Eleatics declaring Him to be
unknowable, as having no resemblance to humanity
either in body or in mind; so that we can only
conjecture about Him, whether we say ' Him ' or
' It.' Matthew Arnold has applied the term
' modern ' to Greek civilization ; and nothing can
be more ' modern ' than the pre - Socratic ex
pression of the negative stage in philosophic
thought. It is significant, therefore, to notice
the historical position of this negative stage. It
was the naive beginning, not the mature end,
of Greek speculation, and led inevitably to the

62 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
more positive and constructive work of Plato
and of Aristotle.
The precise theology of Plato and Aristotle is
exceedingly difficult to define; and the problem
has been rendered harder, by the fact that so many
subsequent philosophers have appropriated their
doctrines, and unconsciously modified them in the
process. But this difficulty must not be exag
gerated, and lies rather in their details than their
principles. The complete conception of a personal
God, in our sense, they did not, and probably could
not reach, for the simple reason that they had not,
as we have seen, a clear conception of human
personality. But we find in them the essential
elements of such a conception, and elements so
treated as almost to necessitate their subsequent
development in this direction — ' scattered fragments
asking to be combined.' Plato, as is well known,
regards the world as an embodiment of eternal,
architypal ideas which, though reached in human
knowledge by a process of abstraction, are in them
selves more substantially real than any of their
partial and therefore perishable manifestations in
the world of sense. Living in an age whose forms
of thought must have been largely influenced by
its plastic art, he speaks at first of these ideas as
immutable, stationary types. But later on — and
he lived to be old — he conceives these ideas to have
energy and movement, and relationship one with

ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 63
another. Further, he groups these ideas under one
supreme central idea, variously described as the
Good, or the idea of Good, or Goodness Itself,
which, he says, is the cause of all things right and
fair, of light and its parent, of truth and of reason,
and which is in one place identified with divine
reason, and possibly in another with the divine
beauty. This ideal theory is his philosophic answer
to materialism, and is deduced from the evidence
of reason, goodness, and beauty in the world. But
side by side with it he uses the ordinary religious
language of his day, speaking dogmatically of God
and the gods, without any attempt at their
demonstration. And in the Timaeus, the treatise
with which Raphael paints him, but which has
since been too much neglected, he speaks of the
Maker and Father of the universe, whom it is hard
to discover and still harder to describe, as fashion
ing the world in imitation of an eternal pattern —
and that because he was good and in him was no
envy at all. Now Plato's whole religious tone is
too earnest and enthusiastic to allow for a moment
of our regarding this theological way of speaking
as a mere accommodation to the popular mind,
a mythical presentation of abstract thought. Nor
is there any trace in him of the later distinction
between philosophic and religious truth (veritas
secundum fidem, and Veritas secundum philo-
sophiam), which is only a disguise for unbelief in

64 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
one or other of the two. Consequently, we must
suppose that he either identified the idea of Good
with the personal God, or that he viewed both
conceptions as true, without seeing how they
should be reconciled. In either case he substan
tially teaches the personality of God, for which we
must remember there was as yet no precise ter
minology existing ; and in the latter he is on the
verge of the profounder doctrine of eternal distinc
tions in the Godhead, for which he unquestionably,
as a fact of history, paved the way.
Aristotle exhibits far less religious feeling than
Plato ; but his theology is more scientifically worked
out, and not without traces of a suppressed enthu
siasm which has been compared to that of Bishop
Butler. He criticizes Plato for separating his ideas
so completely from the material world, and himself
regards the ideas or rational principles of things as
immanent in nature, like the order in an army,
while only the highest idea is wholly immaterial,
and exists apart, like the general of an army. This
highest idea or form is God, who is pure reason,
and whose eternal and continuous activity consists
in contemplative thought. And as this reason can
have no adequate object outside itself, it must be
its own object and contemplate itself. Hence the
divine life consists in self-contemplation. And
though God, therefore, does not actively influence
the world, He is the cause of all its life and move-

Ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 65
ment, as being the universal object of desire —
'Himself unmoved, all motion's source.' Plato
bridges the intellectual gaps in his system by his
enthusiastic faith ; and for want of this the Aris
totelian theology is more obviously defective ; but
it represents a distinct advance in thinking, and,
further, leaves the subject in a form which almost
necessitates its subsequent development. Plato
and Aristotle were succeeded by an age of philoso
phizing, but not of philosophers, an age of archae
ological revivals in thought, in which much was
done to popularize, but little to advance specula
tion, except in an ethical direction. For our present
purpose they stand alone, and their significance is
this : they answered materialism and agnosticism,
as far as it had then appeared, on the ground that
the world exhibits a rational order, and must, there
fore, have a rational cause; and this was really
a more important contribution to theology than the
fact, that probably the former, and possibly the
latter of them regarded this rational cause as what
we should now call personal. But, before the
conception of divine personality could be more
adequately developed, another influence was needed,
and one with truer and deeper ethical insight than
the Greek. The Hebrew prophets, from Moses
onwards, with their superior hold upon morality,
which is the very nerve of personality, purified
their popular religion, but without losing them-
F

66 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
selves in abstractions ; and it is a mere travesty of
criticism to speak of their God as an impersonal
tendency. From beginning to end He is essentially
personal. And to whatever extent Persian influence
affected later Jewish thought, and thereby flowed
into the general history of the world, it must have
been to the same effect. For the religion of the
Avesta comes nearest to the Hebrew, both in its
intense sense of righteousness, and its consequent
conviction of a righteous and therefore a Personal
God. Now the Christian conception of God was,
of course, the legitimate and lineal descendant of
the Hebrew ; it took up, that is, the religious
tradition of humanity, in the purest form which it
had yet attained. It came from the side of religion
and not of philosophy. But the belief in the
Incarnation, while it intensified and emphasized
the notion of divine personality, necessitated a
further intellectual analysis of what that notion
meant, and issued in the doctrine of the Trinity
in Unity — a doctrine which, plainly implied, as we
believe it to be, in the New Testament and earlier
fathers of the Church, did not attain its finally
explicit formulation till the fourth century. And
in this process Greek philosophy played an impor
tant part. We may now dismiss as wholly unten
able the notion that the doctrine of the Trinity
was borrowed either from Plato or any other ethnic
source. It was implicit in the Christian creed.

in] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 67
That creed could not be thought out without
reaching it. And it became explicit in the Christian
consciousness, under the double necessity for
explaining the creed to philosophic minds, and
defending its integrity against philosophic opposi
tion. But the men who conducted the process of
this development were trained in the philosophy
of Alexandria and Athens. Their language and
its connotation, their categories, their modes of
thought were Greek. The facts on which they
worked, the material they had to fashion was
Christian. But the instrument with which they
fashioned it, and the skill to use the instrument,
had come to them from Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and
their schools. And we may fairly say that Greek
philosophy only reached its goal when it thus
passed, under Christian influence, into the service
of a Personal God. And in this sense the doctrine
of the Trinity was the synthesis, and summary, of
all that was highest in the Hebrew and Hellenic
conceptions of God, fused into union by the electric
touch of the Incarnation.
Now the doctrine of the Trinity, as dogmatically
elaborated, is, in fact, the most philosophical attempt
to conceive of God as Personal. Not that it arose
from any mere processes of thinking. These, as we
have seen, all stopped short of it. It was suggested
by the Incarnation, considered as a new revelation
about God, and thought out upon the lines indicated
F 2

68 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
in the New Testament. Upon this the evidence of
the Fathers is plain. They felt that they were in
presence of a fact which, so far from being the
creation of any theory of the day, was a mystery —
a thing which could be apprehended when revealed,
but could neither be comprehended nor discovered ;
and their reasoning upon the subject is always
qualified by a profound sense of this mysteriousness.
Athanasius often figures in popular controversy as
the typical dogmatist. Yet it is Athanasius who
says, ' Nor must we ask why the Word of God is
not such as our word, considering God is not such
as we, as has been before said ; nor, again, is it right
to seek how the Word is from God, or how He is
God's radiance, or how God begets, and what is the
manner of His begetting. For a man must be beside
himself to venture on such points : since a thing
ineffable and proper to God's nature, and known to
Him alone and to the Son, this he demands to have
explained in words. It is all one as if they sought
where God is, and how God is, and of what nature
the Father is. But as to ask such questions is
impious, and argues an ignorance of God, so it is
not permitted to venture such questions con
cerning the generation of the Son of God, nor
to measure God and His wisdom by our own
nature and infirmity 1.' Such passages might be
multiplied indefinitely ; and St. John of Damascus,
1 Orat. c. Arian. ii. § 56 (Newman's trans.).

ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 69
who on many points sums up the Patristic teach
ing, says, ' What God is is incomprehensible and
unknowable 1.' Now this language, which was
afterwards developed into the negative theology
(via negationis) of pseudo-Dionysius, Erigena, and
the mystics, and which led the Fathers to protest
against the Gnostics, Arians and Sabellians, for
rationalizing mysteries, shows a thorough con
sciousness of the true element in Agnosticism ;
and teachers who thus carefully qualify their state
ments cannot certainly be accused of undue anthro
pomorphism. But, on the other hand, they lay
much stress on the thought of man's being created
in the image of God, and upon the illuminating
presence of the Spirit of God in the Christian
intellect, at times even describing His operation
as ' deifying.' And, starting from these premisses,
they freely apply human analogies to illustrate
the doctrine of the Trinity.
If we recur to our previous analysis of human
personality we shall see that it is essentially triune,
not because its chief functions are three — thought,
desire, and will — for they might perhaps conceivably
be more, but because it consists of a subject, an
object, and their relation. A person is, as we have
seen, a subject who can become an object to him
self, and the relation of these two terms is neces
sarily a third term. I cannot think, or desire, or will,'
1 De Fid. Orth. i. 4. 3 See note 11.

7o DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
without an object, which is either simply myself, or
something associated with myself, or dissociated
from myself considered as an object, in either case
involving my objectivity to myself. When I say
' / think this,' ' I like that,' ' / will do the other,'
I am considering myself as an object quite as much
as 'this,' 'that' and 'the other.' And I cannot
think of the world I live in, without thinking of it
negatively as outside me, or positively as including
me, in either case related to myself. We may
ignore this association for practical purposes, or we
may be entirely unconscious of it, but on analysis
it can always be detected. And it is through this
power of becoming an object to myself that all my
subsequent knowledge is attained. However various
and extended my objective world may become, it
is still one object in relation to me ; and however
complex my relations to it, they are still my own,
or one totality of relationship to that object. And
thus my personality is essentially and necessarily
triune. Further, we have seen that our personality
is at first a mere potentiality, which gradually de
velops or realizes itself, and that in this process of
realization it seeks association with other persons.
It needs to include other persons within the sphere
of its own objectivity, to fill, so to say, its blank
form of objectivity with personal objects, its blank
form of relationship with personal relations. And
the first shape which this association takes is the

in] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 71
family, the unit of society. The family is the first
stage in the development and completion of our
personality ; its abstract triunity being therein
adequately, because personally, realized in father,
mother, and child.
Of course this concrete social trinity is much more
obvious than its psychological counterpart and
cause, and could not fail from an early period to
mould men's forms of thought. Hence we find the
gods of polytheism continually grouped in triads,
sometimes as triumvirates, sometimes as families —
especially in India and Egypt — a fact which would
naturally familiarize men's minds with trinitarian
modes of thinking in theology. But as the sense
of human personality grew deeper, particularly, as
we have seen, under Christian influence, its triune
character was gradually recognized. Augustine
marks an epoch in the subject and is its best
exponent. ' I exist,' he says, ' and I am conscious
that I exist, and I love the existence and the con
sciousness; and all this independently of any external
influence.' And again, ' I exist, I am conscious,
I will. I exist as conscious and willing, I am con
scious of existing and willing, I will to exist and to
be conscious ; and these three functions, though dis
tinct, are inseparable and form one life, one mind,
one essence.' Neo-Platonism is full of kindred
thoughts ; but they were implicit in the philosophic
and religious consciousness long before Augustine

72 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
or the Neo-Platonists. And though Trinitarian
formulae were explicitly employed in theology
sooner than in psychology, applied to God sooner
than to man, it was, of course, from the latter that
they were really derived. The instrument was, in
fact, being fashioned in the using ; and human per
sonality was coming gradually to a clearer concep
tion of itself, by the very act of using its own
processes to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity.
Now the doctrine of the Trinity is often crudely
attacked, as being simply derived from the analogy
of the family, which, as we have seen, played an
important part in pre-Christian mythology and
theology. It should be remembered, therefore, that
since the family is an essential outcome of our
personality under its present conditions of existence,
this attack is only a restatement of the general
objection against arguing from our personality at all
— that is, against using what we have seen to be the
only argument that we possess. But, as a matter of
fact, the Christian Church did not press the family
analogy, at any rate further than the doctrine of the
Son. It probably saw early exhibited, among the
Gnostic sects, the dangerous practical consequences
which might ensue, from the introduction of a femi
nine principle into our thoughts about the Godhead ;
and therefore, while freely admitting feminine attri
butes, declined all thought of a feminine hypostasis,
though possibly this may have involved some

Ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 73
underestimate of an aspect of truth, which avenged
itself in the subsequent development of Mariolatry.
It is, therefore, under the more fundamental psycho
logical analogy that we find the doctrine of the
Trinity slowly defined, with the natural consequence
that the conception of the Word is completed sooner
than that of the Spirit, since a personal object is
easier to imagine than a personal relation. For the
former conception the ground had been prepared,
by the Platonic ideas, the Aristotelian view of God
as His own necessary object, the seminal reason of
the Stoics, the Apocryphal Wisdom, the Philonian
Word — all obviously due to psychological analysis.
And it was a comparatively easy transition from
these to the Christian Logos, who is both ' imma
nent and eminent ' (Theophylus), ' ideal and actual '
(Athenagoras), ' a living though immaterial person
ality, as contrasted with the abstract images of
human thought ' (Origen), ' the reason and intelli
gence that is God's counsellor ' (Theophylact), ' and
shares the solitude of God ' (Tertullian), and to
which Irenaeus, with his dread of speculation, says
men are too ready to apply analogies drawn from
the processes of human thought. But for the
doctrine of the Spirit, there had been but little, if
any, speculative preparation, and its development
was proportionately tentative and slow. St. Augus
tine, very possibly influenced by some hints of the
Neo-Platonic Victorinus, is the first to draw out

74 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
the thought of the Holy Spirit as the bond of
union, the coeternal Love, which unites the Father
and the Son, thus preparing the way for the accept
ance of the double procession, and for the specific
designation of the Holy Ghost as Love (St. Thomas).
Now all this was an attempt to make the divine
nature, and life, to a certain extent intelligible.
The Unitarian imagines his conception of God, as
an undifferentiated unity, to be simpler than the
Christian. But it cannot really be translated into
thought. It cannot be thought out. Whereas the
Christian doctrine, however mysterious, moves in
the direction, at least, of conceivability, for the
simple reason that it is the very thing towards
which our own personality points. Our own
personality is triune ; but it is a potential, un
realized triunity, which is incomplete in itself,
and must go beyond itself for completion, as, for
example, in the family. If, therefore, we are to
think of God as personal, it must be by what is
called the method of eminence (via eminentiae) —
the method, that is, which considers God as possess
ing, in transcendent perfection, the same attributes
which are imperfectly possessed by man 1. He
must, therefore, be pictured as One whose triunity
has nothing potential or unrealized about it ; whose
triune elements are eternally actualized, by no
outward influence, but from within; a Trinity in
1 See note 12.

ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 75
Unity ; a social God, with all the conditions of
personal existence internal to Himself.
Our present purpose is not to consider the doc
trine of the Trinity as a reasonable revelation, for
we are not now dealing with revelation at all, but
simply to point out the fact that Christianity, which
claimed to be the fulfilment of all that was true in
previous religion, announced a doctrine of God,
which was only intelligible in the light of the
analogy drawn from our consciousness of our own
personality, and which was dogmatically defined
by the assistance of that analogy ; and thus em
phatically reaffirmed the verdict of man's primitive
personifying instinct.
Looking back, then, upon history, we may say
that a tendency to believe in divine personality
(including polytheism as well as monotheism under
the phrase) has been practically universal amongst
the human race ; that, among other influences,
Greek philosophy, and Hebrew prophecy, the one
working chiefly from the intellectual, the other
from the moral side, strove to eliminate from this
belief all that was unworthily anthropomorphic ;
while in so doing the latter consciously, and the
former implicitly, retained the essential attributes of
personality, till finally the Christian Church united
and developed their results, in the dogma of the
Trinity in Unity; which, however much it tran
scends intelligence, distinctly claims to be the most

76 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
intelligible mode of conceiving God as essentially
personal. Turning, then, from history to apology, we start
from the fact that our belief in a Personal God is
founded on an instinctive tendency, morally and
philosophically developed. It cannot be called
simply either an intuition or an instinct, for it has
neither the clearness of the one nor the unerring
action of the other, and it is best, therefore, described
as an instinctive tendency. Man has an instinctive
tendency to believe in a God or gods. And it is
this instinctive basis which gives its true character
to our theology. Theology was no conscious in
vention, some of whose results have in the course
of time become intuitive, but an attempt to unfold
the significance of an already existing intuition or
instinct. Men first felt themselves, even if vaguely,
to be living in the presence of a God or gods, and
afterwards came to reflect upon the nature and con
sequences of that relation. This fact is of primary
importance for the theistic argument, for it at once
puts Theism in possession of the field, and throws
the onus probandi upon its opponents. When we
leave the conjectures of hypothetical anthropology,
and confine ourselves strictly to what historic science
has observed, we find that man has always and
everywhere tended to a religious belief. That is a
fact of experience scientifically ascertained, and, in
founding the external evidences of our faith on it,

ill] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 77
we claim to build upon a solid foundation of fact.
But we are at once met by the attempt to explain
away this belief, as a natural delusion, due to the
misinterpretation of dreams, to meteorological
ignorance, to the dread of animals, or the love of
ancestors, or a complex interaction of these various
causes. Now we may fully admit, that these various
influences affect uncivilized man to a very con
siderable degree, and yet reasonably deny their
adequacy to produce the persistent, irresistible,
practically universal belief in question. The im
potence of philosophy to create a religion is a
commonplace. Is it likely that savage philosophy
succeeded, and that completely and for ever, in
a work which civilized philosophy has been noto
riously unable to accomplish ? And yet it is pre
cisely this that we are asked to believe. To which
we answer that it is a very doubtful, and wholly
unverified, hypothesis. And it is no reply to
accumulate instances of these savage delusions.
We neither doubt their existence, nor their influence
on early thought, but only their causal connexion
with the origin of religion.
But many of us are quite willing to go further
than this, and grant that the phenomena of dreams,
and storms, and sunshine, and animal activity, were
the agencies, through which man's spiritual sense
was first consciously awakened, the first objects on

78 DEVELOPMENT OF THE [lect.
which, infant-like, it tentatively fixed ; without in
any way thereby compromising the authenticity
and authority of such a sense. It would seem to
be a necessity of human progress, that man should
regard the immediate objects of his apprehension,
or pursuit, as ends in themselves, ultimate ends ;
whereas, in fact, when once attained they turn out
to be only relative ends, means to other objects,
greater and grander than themselves, and, by con
trast with those greater things, unreal. Hence, as
has been often pointed out, man is always educated
by illusions 1.
Now since this principle of development through
illusion is thus a natural necessity, and pervades
even the most civilized life, we should expect it to
operate more powerfully still among ignorant and
uncultured races. The method of evolution need
not discredit the result evolved. And the feeling
after God need be no less veracious a guide, for
having first sought to find Him among the objects
of His creation — sun, moon, stars, tempests, memo
ries of the beloved dead.
. But illusion of this kind is utterly distinct from
delusion. An illusion is an inadequate conception ;
a delusion is a false one. And we may reasonably
argue that, if the sense in question was evolved at
all, it must have followed the universal law of
evolution, and survived because it corresponded
1 See note 13.

in] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 79
with its environment, or, in other words, was founded
on fact, and was therefore not a delusion. The
strictly animal instincts have been perfected, and
their possessors selected for survival, in exact
proportion to the accuracy with which they were
adjusted to external fact. ' Can we believe,' it has
been well asked, that ' at one point in the process of
evolution (and that, mark, at the dawn of the very
faculty which is now enabling us to criticize and
explore the distortions which follow) that faculty
suddenly goes wrong, not specifically in the moral,
but in the more general mental sense, and its whole
idea-world becomes untrustworthy -1 ? ' Yet nothing
less than this is involved in the attempt to explain
the spiritual instinct as a delusion ; an alternative
which becomes impossible almost to absurdity,
when we remember the part which religion has
played in the development of our race. When we
have eliminated the evil done in the name of
religion, which its opponents are somewhat too
ready to identify with religion itself, the fact
remains that religion has been the chief factor in
the higher education of our race. No consistent
evolutionist, therefore, can maintain that it is the
outcome of an instinct, which never from the first
had any real correspondence with external fact, and
was untrue. Such paradoxes were common in the
eighteenth century, with its tendency to base all
1 I.ady Welby, Brit. Assoc, 1890.

80 CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY
historic institutions upon fictions, but in the present
day they are merely survivals of an obsolete philo
sophy, which our science of historic evolution has
conclusively and finally exposed. Indeed, when
we consider the weight of the superstructure which
man's religious instinct has borne, it becomes
difficult to discuss with seriousness, for all their
ingenuity, these attempts to explain it away. It
remains, as it has ever been, the firm foundation
of our belief in a Personal God.
In proceeding to examine the intellectual justi
fication of this belief, we must remember that the
instinctive nature of its origin reappears at every
stage of its development. It is not, it never has
been, a merely intellectual thing ; for it is the out
come of our entire personality acting as a whole.
Our reason, our affections, our actions, all alike,
feel about for contact with some supreme reality ;
and when the mind, speaking for its companion
faculties, names that reality a Person, it is giving
voice also to the inarticulate conviction of the
heart and will — an instinctive mystical conviction
that is, in truth, ' too deep for words.' ' For the
heart,' in Pascal's language, ' has reasons of its own,
which the reason does not know.'

LECTURE IV
ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPTION OF DIVINE
PERSONALITY
OUR belief in a Personal God is, as we have.
seen, based upon an instinct, or instinctive
judgement, whose universal or practically universal
existence is a fact of historical experience, and
which we do not find that adverse criticism is
adequate to explain away. Consequently, when
we come to consider the various evidences, argu
ments', proofs1 by which this belief is commonly
supported, we must remember that these are all
attempts to account for, and explain, and justify
something which already exists 2 ; to decompose
a highly complex, though immediate, judgement
into its constituent elements, none of which when
isolated can have the completeness or the cogency
of the original conviction taken as a whole. ' The
truth of our religion, like the truth of common
matters,' says Bishop Butler, 'is to be judged by
the whole evidence taken together; for probable
1 See note 14. 2 Seenote if.
G

82 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
proofs, by being added, not only increase the
evidence but multiply it x ' — a thought which is
insisted upon at great length by Dr. Newman.
' Formal logical sequence,5 he says, ' is not in fact
the method by which we are enabled to become
certain of what is concrete. . . . The real and
necessary method ... is the cumulation of proba
bilities, independent of each other, arising out
of the nature and circumstances of the particular
case which is under review — probabilities too fine
to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous to be
convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and
various for such conversion, even were they con
vertible.' ' Thought is too keen and manifold, its
sources are too remote and hidden, its path too
personal, delicate and circuitous, its subject-matter
too various and intricate to admit of the trammels
of any language, of whatever subtlety and what
ever compass2. Bacon had the same idea before
him, though in another context, when he said, ' The
subtlety of nature far surpasses that of the senses
or the intellect ' ; and again, ' Syllogistic reasoning
is utterly inadequate to the subtlety of nature3.'
Now, nowhere will all this be so true as in the
study of a person. We have already seen that our
own personality is a synthesis, an organic unity of
attributes, faculties, functions, which presuppose
1 Analogy. a Grammar of Assent, pp. 277, 281.
3 Novum Organon.

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 83
and involve and qualify each other, and never exist
or operate apart ; and this may suggest to us how
inadequate all argumentative proof must be of
the existence, or the nature, or the attributes of
a Personal God.
There are a certain number of recognized proofs
or lines of argument upon the question, which have
been differently emphasized in different ages, and
by different classes of mind, but none of which
can be said to have lost general credit before the
time of Kant. And Kant has been compared by
Heine, in a shallow moment, to Robespierre, on
the ground that he disproved Theism, as com
pletely as the latter abolished royalty, by finally
disposing of these time-honoured proofs. No one,
of course, would now endorse such a comparison ;
but it is worth noting for its forcible expression
of the extreme view which might be taken of the
negative aspect of Kant's work. For Kant con
fessedly created an epoch in apology by showing,
at least more exhaustively than had ever been
done before, the entire inadequacy of the purely
intellectual arguments for Theism, considered as
attempts at logical demonstration. But he ad
mitted the need of retaining, as an idea of the
reason or working hypothesis for thought, this
very conception, which could not be logically
proved ; and, further, subordinated the intellectual
to the moral arguments, by which he was himself
G 2

84 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
convinced. Moreover, negations in thought are
never final ; they are only stages leading on to
some new form of affirmation. The persistence of
a belief, whose argumentative supports have been
removed, is an additional evidence of its inherent
strength ; and in the case before us the critical
modification of its so-called evidences has led to
a fuller recognition of the implicit necessity of our
belief in a Personal God. 'For these proofs,' as
Dr. John Caird says, ' . . . are simply expressions
of that impossibility of resting in the finite and of
that implicit reference to an Infinite and Absolute
mind . . . seen to be involved in our nature as
rational and spiritual beings. Considered as proofs,
in the ordinary sense of the word, they are open
to the objections which have been frequently urged
against them ; but viewed as an analysis of the
unconscious or implicit logic of religion, as tracing
the steps of the process by which the human spirit
rises to the knowledge of God, and finds therein
the fulfilment of its own highest nature, these
proofs possess great value1.'
First, there is the cosmological argument2, or
argument from the contingency of the world. This
may be stated in various ways, but is, perhaps,
most popularly known as the argument for a First
Cause. Man cannot rest content with the mere
spectacle of things, or procession of events, without
1 Introduction to Philos. of Religion, p. 133. 2 See note 16.

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 85
wanting to know how they were made, and why
they happen, or, in other words, their cause. And
this instinctive craving for a cause is as active in
the savage as the sage, being a necessary form of
human thought, a way in which we are compelled to
think by our very mental constitution. In primitive
ages men tend to satisfy this instinct, by attributing
natural phenomena to the immediate action of
personal beings like themselves — spirits of the air,
and the woods, and the waters, smiling through the
sunrise, and frowning in the storm. And it is the
usual thing to say that the progress of knowledge
has consisted in the substitution of natural for
personal agencies, of scientific fact for mytho
logical fancy ; so that, for instance, we no longer
regard thunder as the voice of God, or storm-
clouds as His armies, or lightnings as His arrows,
but as necessary results of an electrical disturbance,
which in its turn is due to previous atmospheric
conditions, that in their turn can be traced still
further back in endless causal sequence. Now, of
course it is perfectly true that science has effected
this change of view, and owes the whole of its
progressive existence to the fact. But we beg a
very large question, if we describe this change as
a substitution of material for spiritual causation,
rather than an interpolation of stages, or secondary
causes, between an effect and its first cause. For
scientific or secondary causes, are not causes at all,

86 ANALYSIS OF THE [LECT.
of the kind which our causal instinct demands ;
and, though it is the continuous pressure of the
causal instinct which has led to their discovery,
they only postpone but do not satisfy its need. For
secondary causes are only antecedents, or previous
states, of the phenomenon in question, pointing us
back to more remote antecedents, or previous states :
they have been sometimes called the ' sum of the
conditions ' of the phenomenon, which is obviously
only another name for the phenomenon itself.
Thus they call for explanation as much as the
thing which they profess to explain, and are not
answers but only extensions and enlargements of
the original question. For the original demands
of the causal instinct is, for a first cause, in the
sense of something which shall account for the
given effect without needing itself to be accounted
for ; something which is not moved from without,
and is consequently self-moved or self-determined
from within. Now we have a real though limited
experience of such a cause within ourselves, and
there alone. We are conscious of being able to
originate action, to initiate events, even in a measure
to modify the processes of nature, in virtue of our
free-will or power of self-determination. ' We are,'
as Zeller says, ' the only cause of whose mode of
action we have immediate knowledge through inner
intuition.' And what we demand, therefore, in a
first cause is analogous to what we find within

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 87
ourselves and nowhere else. Thus primitive man,
however unscientific, was not altogether unphilo-
sophical. Being ignorant of the world's organic
unity, he assumed for it a plurality of personal
causes, and as a natural consequence confused
what we now call first and secondary causation —
that is, the immediate action of personality with
the means through which it acts. But, though sub
sequent science has corrected both these errors —
and in so doing has been often thought to rele
gate personality into the background — it has not
affected, and cannot affect, our demand for a per
sonal first cause. If we pick a flower, and ask
ourselves how it came into existence, to be told
that it has been in making for a million ages, and
once existed as nebular dust, enormously increases
the interest of our question, but in no way supplies
us with its answer. A vast history is unrolled
before us, of which the flower is an inseparable
part ; but we are obliged by our causal instinct to
view the whole of this as one effect, and to ask
what was its ultimate or uncaused cause. And
this brings us to the common objection, that a first
cause, and an infinite series of antecedents, or
secondary causes, are equally inconceivable ; or, as
it is sometimes stated, that a first cause is a mere
negation of thought, a mere result of our inability
to go on thinking indefinitely backward — the point
at which we stop in our impotence, but which

88 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
involves no positive idea. It will follow from what
has srone before that this is a mistake. An infinite
series of antecedents is not only inconceivable, in
the sense that it cannot be pictured by the mind —
it is actually unthinkable, for it violates the very
nature of thought, which is to demand a cause that
shall have no antecedent. Whereas a first cause,
'in the sense of a self- moved mover, has been
recognized by philosophers, from Plato to Hegel, as
fa positive notion, not an impotence of thought,
and is illustrated by the analogy of our personal
self-determination, the thing of all others in the
whole world which we know best. The case stands,
therefore, thus : we are, by universal admission,
obliged to think a first cause ; we have ample
authority for asserting the thought to convey a
positive meaning ; and we can only interpret that
meaning as involving personality. It is, perhaps,
unfortunate, that we should have to use the word
' first ' at all in this connexion ; for a ' first ' cause
easily suggests the earliest member of a series, and
thus gives colour to the above-mentioned fallacy ;
whereas the cause in question is not merely a first
cause but the first cause — wholly different, that is,
in kind from others — supreme, independent, unique ;
the only cause which our causal instinct can re
cognize as such ; the necessary correlative of any
and every effect ; so that we cannot think of any
thing as an effect, or derived mode of being, without

IV] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 89
necessarily thinking of its original, underived cause.
This cause may or may not act through an inter
mediate series of agents ; but the thought of it is
as immediately presented to the mind, when we
pick a daisy, as when we contemplate the ageless
evolution of the stars. The same argument may
be otherwise presented, as from relative to absolute,
or finite- to infinite being. The empirical school
maintain that we have no positive conception of
the infinite. The infinite, they say, can only mean
the indefinite, the et-cetera beyond the finite, which
merely serves to symbolize our inability to go on
thinking any further — as when the savage counts
' one,' ' two,' ' three,' ' a great many ' : and, more
over, as the infinite is the negation of the finite, it
must obviously be limited by the finite, and cannot,
therefore, be infinite at all. This would be all
very plausible if the finite and the infinite were
only different in quantity, and not in quality or
kind ; if, in short, they were mere abstractions
from which all but quantity had been taken away.
But this is not, in fact, the meaning of the terms
as employed in the argument with which we are
concerned. For when we speak of inferring the
infinite from the finite, this finite, from which our
reasoning starts, is no abstraction, but the real,
visible, substantial, concrete world around us, quick
with all its palpitating life. Consequently, when
we argue that this finite implies an infinite, we

9°

ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.

do not mean that it implies an abstract fringe
of emptiness outside it ; but, on the contrary, that
it implies something infinitely more comprehensive,
and concrete than itself, something which underlies,
and includes, and sustains it, an infinite reality, an
infinite fulness, a totality of which it is a part.
For finite objects are unstable and have no per
manent identity ; indeed, in a sense they have no
identity at all, since they are determined by, and
therefore dependent on other finite objects, situa
tions, surroundings, atmospheres, contexts and the
like ; all of which are incessantly changing and
involving others in their change. Water evaporates,
air is decomposed, plants and animals die daily,
and are resolved into their dust : everything is in
process of becoming something other than itself.
Yet all the while we regard the world as real, and
substantial, and recognize a method and a system
in it all. And this could not be the case if its
dependency or relativity were endless, if all things
were dependent for their being upon other things
outside themselves, and these in their turn upon
others in literally limitless extent. Such a world
would not be a cosmos, but a chaos,
' ruining along the illimitable inane.'
The very thought, therefore, of the world's depen
dence involves, as its correlative, the thought of
an independent being undetermined from without.

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 91
There is no question of the inevitableness of this
conclusion ; we cannot avoid it, we cannot unthink
it. In Kant's phrase, it regulates all our thought.
The only question is whether it merely regulates
us as a boundary where thought is baffled, or
whether it stands for something that we can in a
measure conceive, or, in other words, for a positive
idea. Can we positively think of an independent
being, which shall sustain all finite and dependent
things, without thereby becoming dependent upon
) them and so losing its identity ? Here again
! personality, and that alone, assists us. As persons
we are identical in the midst of change, and on
account of our identity we are potentially infinite ;
for we can progressively appropriate the things
and influences outside us, and so transform them,
from being limits, into manifestations of ourselves.
Thus we are surrounded by other persons, who|
interfere with and impede our actions ; but can win
them by affection to become friends, who shall
transmit and multiply our own activity. We are
imprisoned by foreign languages ; but can acquire
and thereby transform them from obstacles into
instruments of wider access to our kind. We are
restrained by laws ; but through obedience can
make them the means of our development, by
making their principles our own. We can even
guide the elemental forces, like heat and electricity,
from opposing to subserve our will. And in each

92 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
of these cases the process is the same. We enter
spiritually into the alien forms of being that
surround us, without losing our identity the while ;
and so, instead of melting away into modes of
them, we make them additional modes of us.
While we can even go further in the same
direction, by freely creating external objects —
statues, pictures, books, machines — for the sole
purpose of giving expression and extension to
the inner content of ourselves, our feelings and
thoughts and wills. Thus though, as finite beings,
we too are limited by the outer world, as persons,
we can gradually make that world into our own ;
abolish, as it were, its externality, and make it
internal to ourselves ; a world within us instead of
without us, in which we are no longer slaves, but
free. And while we thus reduce alien things into
dependence upon our personality, our own inde
pendence is not alienated, but intensified by the
fact ; since, as the things whereon we depend
become internal to ourselves, we are increasingly
self-dependent. Following this analogy, then, wet
can conceive of an Infinite Being as One whose
only limit is Himself, and who is, therefore, self- )
determined, self-dependent, self-identical ; including
the finite, not as a necessary mode, but as a free
manifestation of Himself, and thus, while consti
tuting its reality, unaffected by its change — in
other words, as an Infinite Person.

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 93
The cosmological argument, therefore, is the
argument derived from the belief that we recog
nize in the universe without us certain qualities of
infinitude, reality, causation, independence, and the
like, which have no counterpart except in the
region of our own personality, and can only,
therefore, be interpreted as attributes of a person.
It does not profess to be a demonstration, and
would, of course, involve a fallacy if cast into
syllogistic form — the fallacy of drawing a conclu
sion wider than the premisses. It is rather the
intellectual justification of an instinctive intuition,
which, as Lotze says, ' has its origin in the very
nature of our being.' It is the analysis of the
deep conviction which prompts and has prompted
man, from immemorial ages, to appeal from the
storms of earth to One who sitteth above the
water-floods ; from the slavery and transiency of
earth to One who remaineth a King for ever.
'Change and decay in all around I see:
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.'
And this leads us to the teleological argument \
or argument from evidences of design in the world.
' Do you not think,' asks Socrates, ' that man's
Maker must have given him eyes on purpose that
he might see?' with the suggested inference that
the existence of eyes must be proof of a purposeful
Creator. This argument, from the date of its first
1 See note 1 7.

94 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
appearance in Greek philosophy, has been one of
the strongest supports of natural theology in the
ordinary mind. It has had a long controversial
history; but none of the objections raised against
it have really differed from those which Aristotle
saw and answered in his day. ' E pur se muove.'
It still retains a weight and impressiveness which
show that there is more in it than logical analysis
can either detect or refute. The modern doctrine
of natural selection, however, has led to the
reopening of the question once again. Nature is
full of instances of adaptation, and especially
adaptation to the future, too numerous, intricate,
and various to be the result of chance, and
therefore implies a mind. That has been the
time-honoured form of the argument ; and, conse
quently, the doctrine of natural selection has been
thought to discredit it, by showing that adaptation
may, after all, be due to chance. For if a hundred
varying organisms came by chance into existence,
and ninety-nine of them, being ill-adapted to their
surrounding circumstances, perish and are forgotten,
the single one which is better adapted to its en
vironment, and therefore survives, will appear to
owe to purposeful design what is really due to
accidental variation. And if we could conceive
this process of natural selection, by survival of the
fittest, to have operated exclusively throughout
the universe, the result would be an appearance

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 95
of design without its reality, and the argument
from final causes would vanish. Now, natural
selection is, of course, a vera causa, a principle
which undoubtedly obtains throughout the organic
world, and the discovery of which has revolutionized
our science. But of itself it does not touch the
philosophical question of final causes. It has been
borrowed for that purpose by materialism, and
there is no necessary connexion whatever between
its scientific use as an exhibition of nature's
method, and its materialistic misuse as a disproof
of nature's mind. To begin with, there are many
difficulties in the way of our recognizing natural
selection as the sole cause of even organic develop
ment ; while the possibility of its ever accounting
for the mechanical and chemical properties of
inorganic matter, that already ' manufactured '
material, as it has been called, out of which
organisms are developed, is, to say the least,
extremely doubtful. And, even if all this ground
should be one day occupied by natural selection,
the original variability of matter, not to mention
matter itself, would still remain to be explained.
Natural selection acts by selecting variations, and
the variations must exist before they can be selected.
They cannot of themselves be due to the operation
of a principle, of which they are the necessary
presupposition. Now, when we speak of chance
variations we do not, of course, mean uncaused

96 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
variations, but merely variations of whose cause —
that is, of whose antecedent conditions — we are
ignorant. As a matter of fact, the variations of
to-day have issued by necessity from those of
yesterday, and those of yesterday again from
others, carrying us eventually back to the original
variability of matter. The present state of the
world, therefore, is a necessary consequence of that
variability; and, if the present state of the world
is full of adaptations which suggest design, the
primitive variability from which those adaptations
have ensued must suggest it in no less degree.
But the materialist conceals this conclusion by
shuffling with the word chance, and speaking of
* chance ' variations as if they were really accidental.
In fact, all variations are rigorously determined ;
and, if the brains of Plato or St. Paul were results
of natural selection, they must none the less have
been potentially present in the first condition of
the material world. Chance, in the sense of accident,
can only have operated before the present system
began to be ; for there is no room for it inside that
system, or it would not be a system. In which
case, as Professor Mozley remarks, 'it must have
acted up to a certain time, and then issued in its
own opposite ' ; or, in other words, ceased to act.
But this is only a popular and pictorial way of
saying that chance is unthinkable. Our causal
instinct excludes it. And with the exclusion of

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 97
chance the illegitimate use of natural selection
vanishes. For when once we realize that adaptation
implies adaptability, and that definite adaptations
involve definite determinations of that adaptability,
or, in other words, that natural selection can only
act upon prepared material, the evidence of design
resumes its sway. Materialism in all ages has
borrowed its instruments from the physical science
of the day ; and the present is only one of many
similar attempts which have failed in like manner
— not from the unsoundness of the scientific in
strument, but from the untenable nature of the
materialistic position.
Meanwhile, the argument from design has
rather gained than lost through modern science.
For in its older form it was wont to compare
nature, and the various things in nature, to
machines or works of art — that is, to objects
created for a special purpose, and whose consti
tuent parts are meaningless except in their relation
to the whole. This involved an undue separa
tion between nature's means and ends, and often
led to strained and artificial conclusions, such
as that fruits were designed to feed bird or
insect life, when in so doing their more obvious
function was destroyed. It was this form of the
doctrine that Bacon and Spinoza especially attacked.
But we have now come to regard nature as an
organic unity, an organism, composed of organisms,
H

98 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
and therefore essentially alive. Now it is the
characteristic of life, that its every phase and
moment is, in a sense, complete in itself, and may
be regarded as an end, however much it may
conduce to further, fuller, fairer ends to come.
Consequently, the absoluteness of the old distinc
tion between means and ends has disappeared.
All nature's ' means ' are, relatively speaking, ends,
and as such have a value of their own. The leaf,
and the flower, and the fruit, and the animal's joy
in existence, are at the same time ends in them
selves, and yet minister to other ends. On the
other hand, all nature's ends are, relatively speaking,
means. The human eye, for example, considered
as an instrument of vision, may be called one of
nature's ends — the point where a long line of com
plex evolution finds its limit ; since the very
optical defects, with which it has been rashly
charged, are now admitted to improve its actual
utility. But the eye not only sees, it shines and it
speaks — and thus in turn becomes a means of
emotional attraction and spiritual intercourse, fairer
than the sapphire, more expressive than the tongue ;
while neither of these qualities can by any possi
bility be connected with its physical evolution as
an instrument of sight. Now a system whose
every phase and part, while existing for its own
sake, exists also for the sake of the whole, is, if
possible, more suggestive of rational design than

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 99
even a machine would be, especially when it is
a progressive system which culminates in the pro
duction of a rational being. And thus we may
fairly say that modern science, while correcting,
has enriched and emphasized the evidence for
design. That evidence may not amount to demon
stration ; and, indeed, logically considered, it is
only a section of an argument, for it looks back, for
its major premiss, to the previous argument for
a first cause, and forward, for its strongest confirma
tion, to the moral argument, which exhibits the
material world as subservient to moral purposes in
man. But, taken by itself, the mere spectacle of
nature creates an impression upon the imagination
which it is difficult to resist. We can often trace
purpose in a human creation — a picture or machine
— without adequately comprehending what that
purpose is. And so with nature. We are conscious
of living in the presence of innumerable, exquisite,
admirable adaptations, too complex to disentangle,
too curious and beautiful to disregard, too infinitely
various for any single mind to grasp ; which
irresistibly suggest the presence of a directing,
informing, indwelling reason, that obviously tran
scends and yet incessantly appeals to our own.
And the nearest human analogue for this is to be
found, not in the isolated act of reason which
creates a work of art, or performs a definite piece
of work once for all, but in the continuous con-
H 2

roo ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
sciousness which co-ordinates all the functions of
our being, manifesting "itself in every momentary
thought or word or deed, and thus investing each
passing hour with a value of its own, while still
controlling and subordinating all, as means, to the
attainment of its ultimate end. In other words,
we see in nature, not merely an artist or designer,
but a person.
r. Now both the above arguments rest upon the
underlying assumption that thought itself is valid,
and not a mere chimerical dream ; a position which
the ordinary Western mind, at least, is perfectly
ready to take for granted, but which carries with it
an important consequence that is neither so easily
accepted nor understood. To think is to know,
and the desire for knowledge, which prompts me to
think, is part of the very constitution of my mind.
But such a desire presupposes a conviction, on my
part, that there is something capable of being
known — that is, something intelligible. If I come
across a children's alphabet, piled up on a table,
I do not expect to gain any knowledge from it,
because the letters are not arranged ; they spell
nothing, and are, therefore, unintelligible. But, if
I find a book lying open, I at once expect to learn
something from it, because its letters are intelligibly
arranged and convey a meaning. Now this is the
same kind of expectation which underlies all our
desire to know the outer world — a conviction that

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 101
it is intelligible, and therefore can be known. And
as we put our desire into operation we find this
conviction justified. We find the universe to be
a system of mathematical, mechanical, organic,
vital, moral relations, which are intelligible and
not chaotic. Its letters are arranged. But intelli
gible relations can only exist through thought, and
as the relations in question are certainly inde
pendent of all individual human thinkers, they
must exist through an universal thought ; of which
we may say that the individual thinker enters into
it, or it into the individual thinker, as we might
say in reading a book that we enter into the spirit
of the author, or the spirit of the author into us.
And as we cannot conceive thought without a
thinker, universal thought must mean an absolute
or universal mind. Our constitution, as thinking
beings, therefore, necessitates our assuming that our
thought will correspond with things ; which can
only be the case if things are intelligible ; which,
again, can only be the case if they proceed from
a mind — and a mind which must be the source of
everything that is intelligible, (including all our
ideals,) and therefore be the highest which we can
think, and therefore, at least, be personal. This
initial conviction is, in fact, the beginning of our
contact with such a mind, or the beginning of its
self- revelation to us, a contact and revelation which
increase, as we proceed forward on the path of

io2 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
knowledge. This is the line of thought which is
commonly called the ontological proof1, and which,
though often associated exclusively with the names
of Anselm and of Descartes, underlies the Platonic
ideology, and is developed by Augustine. ' The
true meaning of the ontological proof is this,' says
Dr. J. Caird — 'that as spiritual beings our whole
conscious life is based on a universal self-conscious
ness, 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 2.'
Such, in outline, are the intellectual proofs of
the existence of God ; suggestions of a proba
bility, which to many minds seem all the more
weighty, for their inability to be expressed in
syllogistic form. And as the severest criticism of
them is associated with the name of Kant (though
it has been much qualified by his successors), it is
important to remember the object which Kant had
in view. It is quite untrue to say that he was
inconsistent in his two critiques of the Pure and
Practical Reason, feebly attempting to reconstruct
in the one what he had successfully destroyed in
the other. He definitely regarded the twofold
work as one whole, whose final issue was to vindi
cate the reality of freedom, and through it of God
and Immortality. And this work he sought to
1 See note 18. 2 J. Caird, Philos. of Religion, p. 159.

iv] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 103
accomplish, by first showing that our speculative
reason could not act beyond the limits of sensible
experience, and could not, therefore, ever either
prove or disprove the existence of a God ; and then
by going on to show that our practical reason,
moving in a region beyond phenomenal experience,
and consequently beyond the reach of criticism
from that region, contains in itself the consciousness
of freedom and a moral law ; whose realization in
the world is the strongest and sufficient evidence
of the reality of God, a thing which he never ' for
a moment denied or even only doubted.' And
whatever view, therefore, we may take of Kant's
philosophy, we must not allow the authority of his
name to be claimed in favour of an ultimate
agnosticism. This naturally leads us to the crowning argument
for the existence of God, and that is the moral
argument 1. It may be stated in a sentence, but
cannot be exhausted in a lifetime. It consists in
the fact that we are conscious of being free, and
yet under the obligation of a moral law, which can
only be conceived of as emanating from a personal
author. This is an argument which comes too intimately
home to us to need much explanation. 'Our
great internal teacher of religion,' says Dr. New
man, ' is our conscience.' 'Conscience is a personal
1 See note 19.

104 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
guide, and I use it because I must use myself. . . .
Conscience is nearer to me than any other means
of knowledge. . . . Conscience too teaches us not
only that God is, but what He is V It is this
practical familiarity that we all have with conscience
which makes the appeal of the moral argument so
strong. But clouds of controversy have gathered
round it and confused its outline : battle has been
joined upon irrelevant issues; and the ill-advised
retention of obsolete forms of defence has often
given its opponents an apparent advantage. There
may be some use, therefore, in a brief statement of
the case. The argument in question starts from
two facts of consciousness — freedom and obligation.
We have already referred to the fact that freedom
is rooted in our self-consciousness, but it will be
well to return for a moment to this point. I find
myself in a world whose events and phases are
causally connected in one indissoluble chain, and
my bodily organism is an inseparable part of that
world. I do not, therefore, profess to be capri
ciously independent of what is called the universal
reign of law. But I possess this peculiarity — that,
whereas all other things in the world are necessarily
determined by external agencies or causes, I have
the power to make the external influences which
affect my conduct my own, before allowing them
to do so, thereby converting them from alien forces
1 Grammar of Assent.

IV] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 105
into inner laws ; so that when determined by them
I am not determined from without but from within.
This process is best exhibited in the case of bodily
appetites and desires ; because they so obviously
connect us with the material world and its inevit
able order, that there, if anywhere, I shall find
myself a slave. What, then, is the process of acting
from such a desire.'' We feel a desire and act
accordingly. But something intervenes between
our feeling the desire and initiating the act. The
desire does not draw the action after it as one
physical event draws on another. We must first
say to ourselves, however implicitly and half-
unconsciously, ' The satisfaction of this desire will
gratify me, and therefore I will satisfy it.' In
other words, I represent the satisfaction of the
desire, in imagination, as an ideal or end or
object to myself. I represent myself satisfied to
myself desiring, I picture myself to myself, myself
as object to myself as subject. And it is not the
physical effect of the desire, the mere pathological
feeling, but the metaphysical action of the mental
image that ultimately determines my action or is
my motive. Now it is impossible to maintain that
during this process the mind is only a passive
spectator of what is going on within it. It
consciously takes up the raw material of desire
into its own spiritual machinery, and there manu
factures it into motives. And this it can only do

106 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
through its self-consciousness, or power of turning
round upon itself, and looking itself in the face, thus
distinguishing itself into subject and object ; since
this enables it to transform its various subjective
feelings and affections into objects ; transferring
them, as it were, with a change of sign, from the sub
jective to the objective side of the equation, where,
as being objects, they can be discussed, compared,
rejected or pursued. In other words, we must cut
our physical feelings out of their physical context
before we act upon them, and cannot, therefore, be
governed by the necessity attaching to them ; since
they only retain this necessity while continuing in
their context as part of the material world. The
truth of this analysis will obviously not be affected
by the nature of the feeling in question. It ap
plies equally to all the materials out of which
motives can be made — bodily appetite, altruistic
sympathies and sentiments, and the sanctions of
positive law. For the rewards and penalties of
positive law can no more constrain us than our
physical desires. They cannot begin to act till
there is a self-consciousness which can present
them as objects to itself, and thus translate them
into motives, however incapable the savage mind
may be of analyzing such a process. In the very
fact of saying ' This is the law ' I separate myself
from it ; I put it outside myself ; I stand aloof from
it, and thereby break the inevitable necessity with

IV] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 107
which it may appear at first sight to enchain me.
If I then proceed to reunite myself with it by
obedience, or make it my motive, I do so of my
own accord. I act, as Kant says, not from the
law, but from the consciousness of the law. How
ever strongly, therefore, positive law may urge me
to act, I must appropriate it and make it my law
before it can do so. It is in this capacity for
creating, or co-operating in the creation of my own
motives, with the selective power which it inevitably
implies, that my freedom consists — being, in fact,
a conditioned or constitutional freedom. It rests
on the guarantee of my own self-consciousness,
of which, in truth, it is a necessary property ; and
in the nature of the case it can never be criticized
or explained by any science ; for science can only
deal with objects ; and freedom can never become
an object, being an inalienable function of my
subjectivity or self.
Freedom, then, is a point upon which we can
allow no shuffling or juggling in argument. It is
unique, but it is self-evident ; and every attempt to
explain it away can be shown to involve a petitio
principii or begging of the question.
It is otherwise with our next point — the sense
of duty or moral obligation ; for this has a history
behind it, whose early stages are obscure and
consequently leave room for conjecture. Still it
will simplify this history to bear carefully in mind

io8 ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
the distinction between the form and the matter
or contents of the moral law. The latter — that is
to say the sum total of particular duties which con
stitute the morality of a nation or a man — varies,
and has always varied, in different places and times.
But the very fact of these variations only throws
into stronger relief the constancy of the formal
element, or sense of obligation, which is common
to them all. For if a thousand people think them
selves to have a thousand different duties, their
divergence in detail does but emphasize the general
sense of duty wherein they agree.
Turning then to history, with this distinction in
mind, we find the sense of duty or obligation in
every civilized race. It has never been more
powerfully expressed than by the pre-Christian
moralists of Greece and Rome, and modern re
search has found it clearly recognized in the most
remote antiquity — of India, Persia, and China, of
Babylon and Egypt. Men may not have acted
up to it any more than they do now ; still there
it always was, explicitly accepted by the higher
minds, and capable of being addressed as implicitly
present in the lower. But it is suggested that the
case is different in what may be called hypothetical
history — that is, the history of primitive man as
reconstructed on the analogy of the modern savage.
The fact that the modern savage is still a savage
might fairly be urged as a considerable qualifica-

IV] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY 109
tion of his claim to represent primitive man, who,
ex hypothesi, must have been the parent of all the
progressive peoples. His condition is far more
suggestive of degradation than of primitive in
tegrity. Nor, even if this point be waived, is there
any sufficient evidence that uncivilized races are
unmoral. Their morality is not indeed the morality
of civilization — that is to say, its content is different
from ours. But it by no means follows, as is often
far too readily assumed, that they have no latent
moral faculty or sense of obligation. On the con
trary, there is a world-wide institution which points
in the opposite direction — namely, the system of
taboo. Taboo includes the twofold notion, of re
ligious reverence and religious abhorrence — awe
of trespassing upon certain places, and things, and
persons that are sacred, and fear of contact with
certain others which are profane. Now, if we
separate the content of this law of taboo — that is
to say, the details which it prescribes or proscribes
— from the sanctions on which it rests, we find the
latter to be closely analogous to, if not identical
with, the moral sanctions of civilization ; either
religious hope and fear, or an unaccountable sense
of obligation, so strong that its violation sometimes
issues in death. And, in face of this fact, it may
be fairly asserted, that uncivilized races give no
support to the theory of an unmoral condition of
humanity. Quatrefages goes so far as to say that

no ANALYSIS OF THE [lect.
' the fundamental identity of human nature is no
where more strikingly displayed ' than in the moral
region J.
There is really no necessity, however, in defend
ing our argument, to follow its opponents into this
obscure region. The verdict of authentic history
is enough. For ' things are what they are ' quite
irrespectively of how they came to be. The truth
of astronomical discoveries is not affected by the
fact, that the faculty which makes them could not
formerly count four. Neither is the inference from
the moral sense to be discredited, because the pro
cess of its evolution has been gradual.
The inference is this : man is conscious of an
imperative obligation upon his conduct. It is not
a physical necessity, disguised in any shape or
form, for he is also conscious of being free either
to accept or to decline it. It cannot originate
within him, for he has no power to unmake it ;
and it accomplishes purposes which its agent does
not at the time foresee — results to himself and
others which he can recognize afterwards as
rational, but which his own individual reason could
never have designed. It cannot be the voice of
other men, though human law may give it par
tial utterance ; for it speaks to his motives, which
no law can fathom, and calls him to attainments
which no law can reach. Yet, with all its indepen-
1 Human Species.

IV] CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY in
dence of human authorship, it has the notes of
personality about it. It commands our will with
an authority which we can only attribute to a
conscious will. It constrains us to modes of action
which are not of our own seeking, yet which issue
in results that only reason could have planned.
It educates our character with a nicety of influence
irresistibly suggestive of paternal care. The philo
sophers who have probed it, the saints and heroes
who have obeyed and loved it, the sinners who
have defied it, are agreed in this. And the in
evitable inference must be that it is the voice of
a Personal God.
Such is the moral argument in outline ; and it
must be viewed as a whole to feel its force. The
authority of the moral law must not be severed
from its rationality, for it is in their combination
that its evidential significance consists. It com
mands us, and we obey it blindly, as regards any
distinct foresight of its results ; yet this blind
obedience invariably issues in such personal de
velopment and social progress as imply provi
dential design. And it is this teleological character
of moral obligation that makes the mode of its
first appearance unimportant. Freedom, its pre
supposition, we must and can successfully defend.
But we are bound to no particular theory of the
historic emergence of the moral sense. For its
evolution is its vindication ; what it is proves what

ii2 CONCEPTION OF DIVINE PERSONALITY
it was. The spiritual results which it has realized
show the spiritual nature of its cause.
This argument obviously corroborates those
which have gone before, for it resumes them all
upon a higher plane. It increases our necessity
for believing in a free first cause ; it shows the
reason in the world to be, moreover, a righteous
reason ; and it intensifies the evidence of design.
It thus crowns the convergence of probable argu
ments which spring from the very centre of our
personal consciousness, and can only be even
plausibly refuted on the assumption that that
consciousness itself is fundamentally untrue.

LECTURE V
MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL FOR THE
KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON
IF the arguments in favour of belief in the
personality of God are as numerous and as
weighty as we have seen them to be, the question
naturally arises, How can speculative agnosticism
seem so plausible, and practical agnosticism be so
common as it is ? Self-communication is of the
essence of personality. If, therefore, God be per
sonal, why is He not universally known, why has
He not more conspicuously revealed Himself, as
such ? To answer this question we must examine
both past religious history and present religious
experience. But we must begin with the present
(irpoTepov fjp.lv) ; for otherwise we have no clue to
the phenomena of the past, no thread upon which
to string its facts ; and the attempt to interpret
religious history, without previous insight into
religious experience, is a fruitful source of error.
I

n4 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
What, then, do we mean by the knowledge of
a Personal God ? What do we expect it to be
like ? How do religious men describe it ?
To begin with, all knowledge is a process, or
the result of a process, conscious or implicit.
The simplest knowledge is founded upon sensitive
perception, and the ordinary man imagines that
sensitive perception is involuntary ; he cannot
help hearing or seeing or feeling a thing if it is
there. But a very little psychology will unde
ceive him. Not only do we read mental categories
or forms into the reports of sensation, before they
can become ' things ' at all, but sensation itself
involves attention, which is an act of will, and will
is always determined by more or less desire ; so
that even in sensitive perception there is an active
exercise of all the three functions of our person
ality — thought, emotion, and will. The process,
indeed, in common cases, has become so automatic
as to appear involuntary ; but if we watch children
beginning to take notice of things, or if we set
ourselves to observe any new class of phenomena,
for a scientific or artistic purpose, we at once dis
cover the activity, and the threefold nature of the
activity required. The sensible world is there ;
but our whole personality must co-operate in the
knowing of it.
The same thing happens on a larger scale in the
case of scientific knowledge. The unscientific

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 115
man and the sciolist are apt to think that it is
purely intellectual, and comes naturally to a certain
class of mind. But if we look at the world's real
thinkers, and the lives that they have led, we see at
once, that emotional and moral qualities, of no
mean order, are involved in the successful pursuit of
even the simplest science ; while the two men who
are most associated, in the English mind, with the
development of scientific method— F. Bacon and
J. S. Mill — are equally emphatic in tracing intel
lectual fallacies to ethical causes, in other words, to
the emotions and the will. If we take a physical
science, for example, we see at once what a call it
makes both on the character and conduct of the
student who would succeed in its pursuit. There
must be a degree of detachment, which may fairly
be called ascetic, from intellectual as well as social
distractions ; freedom from the mental indolence
that allows men to acquiesce in premature con
clusions, as well as from all prejudice, whether of
habit or inclination ; infinite patience ; unflagging
perseverance ; and the enthusiasm which alone
makes patience and perseverance possible. Here
again, then, though the subject-matter exists outside
the man, an active co-operation of all his faculties
is needful for its knowledge.
Again, if we turn from abstract to human in
terests, from natural to social science, the same law
is even more conspicuous. For the political or
1 z

116 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
social philosopher must be at least as patient, as
persevering, as independent, as enthusiastic as the
biologist or chemist. But social science is essen
tially practical. Practical utility is the object for
which it is acquired, as well as its only experimental
test. Its possessor, therefore, must naturally carry
it into practice, and this will involve sympathy and
courage; for he is not confronted, like the physical
experimentalist, by inanimate matter, but by
human beings with hearts and passions that react
upon his own. If he quails before their antagonism,
or is misled by respect of persons, and stands
aside, as Plato sadly says, ' unhelpful from the
storm behind the wall,' his theories will remain
untested, unverified, unreal, the dreams of a doc
trinaire. But if he determines to realize his
knowledge, whether as a statesman or reformer
or philanthropist, he must leave the study for the
market-place, and face the fate of patriots —
misunderstanding, misrepresentation, disappoint
ment, probable danger, possible death. Thus the
fact, that the subject-matter of the social sciences is
personal, intensifies their reaction upon the entire
personality of their student.
Now we go through a similar process in acquiring
the real knowledge of a person. This may not be
at first sight obvious, because men so seldom
attempt to know the inner nature of the people
who surround them. They are content to know

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 117
them in what may be called an abstract way — in
one or more of their various aspects, their business
capacities, or social habits, or scientific attain
ments, or political opinions, or poetical ideas. And
it is only once and again under pressure of reverence
or love that we crave to pass through these partial
manifestations to the character behind them. And
then, in proportion to the depth and greatness of
the character in question, is the difficulty of really
coming to know it. We may easily idolize, or
underestimate a man, but to know him as he is —
his true motives, the secret springs of his conduct,
the measure of his abilities, the explanation of his
inconsistencies, the nature of his esoteric feelings,
the dominant principle of his inner life — this is
often a work of years, and one in which our own
character, and conduct, play quite as important
a part as our understanding : for not only must the
necessary insight be the result of our own acquired -
capacities — which will have to be great, in proportion
to the greatness of the personality with which we
have to deal — but there must further exist the kind
and degree of affinity between us, which can alone
make self-revelation on his part possible. Plato,
for instance, the spiritual philosopher, saw more
profoundly into Socrates, than could Xenophon, his
companion in arms. Shakespeare and de Balzac,
in their different spheres, were unrivalled students
of humanity : yet the latter could not see in it pure

118 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
womanhood ; the former has never painted a saint ;
so essentially is even the intuition of genius qualified
by character.
We find then, upon analysis, that an element of
will, and emotion, is obscurely present in even the
simplest beginnings of knowledge. As we pass
from ordinary to scientific thinking, the action of
this moral factor is intensified ; while it becomes
more prominent still in those branches of study
whose object is humanity, and therefore whose
proper perfection involves their practice; and,
finally, in the process of acquiring the knowledge
of a person, assumes an entirely preponderant im
portance. Now, if we believe in a Personal God, we must
believe that our knowledge of Him will be analo
gous in method to our knowledge of human
personality. The various aspects of nature, with
which the different sciences deal, must indeed be
conceived of as thoughts of the divine mind, divine
ideas, and to that extent manifestations of the
divine character; but taken by themselves they
will no more adequately reveal the personality of
their Author than do the external habits, the
isolated acts, the occasional speeches of a man.
They may arrest our attention by their pregnant
suggestiveness, and lead us to look beyond them,
but by themselves they convey no knowledge of
what is beyond. All that the mathematician

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 119
knows is that the universe is mathematically
arranged ; while the biologist sees, further, in it an
immanent teleology, and the artist forms of beauty.
But, however much these things may suggest a per
sonality behind them, they do not, and it is obvious,
by the nature of the case, that they cannot, afford
any knowledge upon the subject. As branches of
knowledge, in the strict sense of the term, they
begin and end with themselves ; and the man who
claimed to have swept the heavens with his
telescope, and seen no God, was doubtless astrono
mically accurate. When, indeed, we pass from the
natural to the moral sciences, we come near to the
evidence for a Personal God ; but it is only a kind
of circumstantial evidence. Our inner recognition
of a moral law, and our external observation of its
inexorable justice, its severe beneficence, its ultimate
triumph, are, as we have already seen, among the
strongest arguments of natural religion. But still
they are only arguments ; they point to a Person,
but they are not that Person. Law is universal in
its action ; it does not individualize ; it has no
equity, no mercy ; it does not behave like a person.
And accordingly the history of speculation exhibits
many schools of thought which, while fully recog
nizing the moral law both in their theory and their
practice, have yet never regarded it otherwise than
as an impersonal power making for righteousness.
Moral philosophy, therefore, and even moral con-

120 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
duct, however near to Him they may lead us, will
not of themselves give us the knowledge of a
Personal God. There is still something abstract
and general about them ; whereas the knowledge
of a person is essentially individual and concrete.
Clearly, then, if we would know God as personal,
we must specialize our study with that view : we
must begin with a desire to know Himself, as
distinct from His manifestations in nature, or His
works in the world. And it is obvious that, in
proportion to the awfulness of His personality,
this desire must be both intense and sincere. We
have already seen the impossibility of trifling with
a natural, or moral science, or a human friendship,
and the seriousness with which they must be
approached ; and it will hardly be denied, that to
trifle with the study of the Infinite Source of all
these things, must be yet more impossible still.
This desire, therefore, must be sincere, in the sense
that it has no critical or experimental aim, such as
the justification of a theory or the refutation of an
opponent ; and it must be intense enough to
counterbalance the multitude of desires which
conflict with it, and enable its possessor, in his
measure, to make the words of the Psalmist his
own : ' There is none upon earth that I desire in
comparison of Thee.'
Further, moral affinity is an essential of personal
intimacy. A man cannot understand a character

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 121
with which his own has no accord. And affinity
with a Holy Being implies a progressive and lifelong
effort of the will. The moral virtues which we
have seen to be necessary for success in science are
departmental, and do not cover the whole range of
conduct : some are needed, and others not. But
to know a Person, who is perfectly holy, we must
focus our entire moral character upon Him, for
such holiness partakes of the unity of the Person
in whom it dwells, and, however various its mani
festations, is yet absolutely one. Now such an
effort of the will is not easy either of attainment
or of maintenance ; and still it is not all. We
have a past, and an inheritance of sin and infirmity
upon us, which the secular moralist counsels us to
obliterate, by the simple process of amendment.
But amendment is not enough, or rather it is not
a simple process, if we view sin as not only the
breach of a law, but as also disobedience to a Person
whom we now desire to know. 'Against Thee
only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy
sight ' has been the cry of religion the whole world
over ; and, so far from its bitterness being diminished
as religious views grow more refined, it is more
acutely terrible to realize that we have wronged
our Father, or our Lover, than our Master, or our
Judge. Penitence of heart, therefore, or contrition
would seem a necessary element in the purification
of those who would know God. And as this is

122 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
a point on which religion is often vehemently
attacked, in the name and supposed interests of
the higher morality, we may recur for its justi
fication to human analogy. Who that has ever
wronged a parent, a benefactor, a lover, or a
friend, does not know, as a matter of experience,
not only the naturalness of emotional as distinct
from 'ethical repentance' — of sorrow, that is to say,
as distinct from mere amendment — but also its
necessity, before mutual understanding can be
restored, and the increase of that necessity, in
proportion to the degree of the love wounded, and
the wrong done ? This is not a matter of external
propriety, but a psychological law which there is
no evading : without emotional repentance we must
part, or remain on a lower level of intercourse, but
we cannot grow in intimacy, and the insight which
intimacy brings. And the question with which
we are now dealing, it must be remembered, is
precisely this — not moral character by itself, but
moral character considered as a qualification for
the personal knowledge of a Personal God. Human
analogy, therefore, is in our favour when we maintain
that this character must be penitent as well as
progressive, sorrowful of heart as well as resolute
of will.
Finally, it is obvious that these moral and
emotional conditions will not only accompany but
influence the proper action of the intellect ; indue-

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 123
ing earnestness, energy, patience with adverse
appearances, susceptibility to slight impressions,
quickness to catch hints, appreciativeness, modera
tion, humility, delicacy, fineness. The pain and
sorrow of life, for instance, which, abstractedly
considered, are a perplexity, gradually cease to be
so, to the man who is sincere enough to recognize
their punitive and purifying effects in his own
history. The uniform laws, which from without
look so mechanical, are surprisingly adapted to his
individual condition when honestly viewed from
within. The obscurity of revelation, or the un
certainty of conscience, are no greater than he feels
'his due, after trifling with them so often in the past.
In this way intellectual difficulties, one after
another, fade away, or at least sink into subordi
nate importance, before a mind that has been duly
qualified by moral discipline for their investigation ;
while, on the other hand, evidences and arguments,
which in formal statement are only probable, assume,
for the individual, a colour and complexion which
ultimately raise them almost to the certainty of
an intuition. And this clarification, and control
of the intellectual by the moral faculties, is in
complete harmony with the analogy which we
have been following throughout. For the simplest-
minded friend or servant knows far more of a man's
true character, than a stranger or an enemy however
intellectually able.

124 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
So far we have been considering the knowledge
of God from its purely human side ; but the cogency
of our conclusion is still further emphasized when
we turn to the other aspect of the question, and
ask under what conditions His revelation of
Himself as personal would, on the same analogy,
be naturally made. The same limitations, which
qualify our power of knowing a person, qualify
also the possibility of his making himself known
to us. We have already seen how this is the case
in our human relations, and we should expect it to
be still more true of a divine revelation. For
a Person who is holy cannot reveal Himself as
such to the unholy, since they do not know
holiness when they see it ; and it appears to them
unintelligible, terrible, even hateful ; anything, in
short, but what it really is. A Person who is
loving, in the true sense of the word, cannot reveal
Himself as such to those who have no notion that
love must involve sacrifice, and has in it, therefore,
an awful element of sternness ; for to them love
would not appear love, but its opposite. An
Infinite Person cannot reveal Himself as such to
one who, unconscious of his own limitations,
persists in measuring all things by the standard
of a finite capacity, and denying the existence of
what he cannot comprehend. And again, even
where there is both desire and aptitude for the
revelation, a Person can only reveal Himself

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 125
partially and gradually, in proportion as these
qualifications progressively increase ; and we must
remember what searchings of heart, and agony of
will, that increase, as we have seen, must of necessity
imply. And if it be objected to all this, that we
cannot imagine, a priori, what the conditions of
a divine communication are likely to be, it is
sufficient answer that belief in a Personal God
means nothing else, than belief in One who acts
towards us as persons act, and therefore to whose
action human analogies may be applied.
Briefly to resume, then : if God is personal,
analogy would lead us to suppose that He must
be known as a person is known — that is, first, by
a special study ¦ distinct from any other, and
secondly, by an active exercise of our whole
personality, in which the will, the faculty through
which alone our personality acts as a whole, must
of necessity predominate ; while in proportion to
His transcendent greatness, will be the seriousness
of the call, which the knowledge of Him makes
upon our energies.
Now, it will hardly be denied that in much
modern discussion of religious belief these mo
mentous requirements are overlooked ; with the
result that negative opinions are prematurely
adopted, as the result not of profound but of
undisciplined investigation. It is continually taken
for granted that scientific or critical attainments,

ia5 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
or even their intelligent appreciation at second
hand, qualify a man for discussing the personality
of God, as if it were a corollary, positive or negative,
from one or more of the special sciences, and not,
so to say, a science sui generis, with prerequisites
and methods of its own. And it naturally follows
that the doctrine in question is viewed as purely
intellectual, and the ascription of its disbelief to
moral causes resented as an impertinence. Nor
can the blame of this mistake be said to lie wholly
on one side. Controversy may sometimes become
too courteous, and, in its righteous reaction against
bygone intolerance, forget that toleration has its
weak side also. And the fear of seeming to impute
motives to individual opponents, or the anxiety to
do full justice to an adverse point of view, often
leads to a degree of apologetic understatement,
which conceals essential differences beneath a
surface of agreement, and is in fact, therefore,
though not in intention, insincere. The principle
that character and conduct are the keys to creed,
and that we are, therefore, more responsible for our
intellectual behaviour than is often supposed, is
precisely one of those points which, amid the
civilities of polite debate, is apt to be insufficiently
maintained. All analogy, however, is, as we have
seen, unmistakably in its favour, and a very
moderate amount of introspection should suffice to
convince us of its truth.

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 127
Of course the blinding influence of such things
as indolence, or sensuality, or vanity, or pride, or
avarice, or deliberate selfishness in any form, is too
plainly obvious to be denied. But what is denied,
as we have already seen, is that a measure of this
blinding influence may continue, long after its
causes have been practically overcome ; and conse
quently that a penitential process, more profound
even than moral amendment, is in all such cases
necessary for the restoration of the spiritual vision.
And yet this is not only the universal teaching of
the Christian Church in every age, but of many a
pre-Christian and extra-Christian thinker; and it
cannot fail to be justified by sincere self-examination.
It is no burden complacently imposed upon the
human spirit by men who had not felt its weight.
It has been taught, because it has been expe
rienced, and its teachers have only required of
others the same discipline, which they themselves
have with much suffering gone through. ' He
must become godlike,' says Plotinus, ' who desires
to see God.'
Again, there are less obviously immoral tendencies
— such as intellectual ambition, the need of contro
versial consistency, the subtle desire to increase or
retain an influence, the speculative irreverence of
youth, the desponding tone of age — which easily
escape our notice, yet, unless detected and subdued,
will distort and deflect the action of our judgement

128 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
from its true course in examining the things of the
spirit. And again, there are still slighter defects, which
often pass as intellectual, and yet which on reflection
can be seen to be of moral origin, and, like the in
finitesimal aberration of an astronomical instrument,
vitiate our entire observation. For example, the
above-mentioned assumption, that the knowledge
of God is primarily intellectual, involves, on the face
of it, an undervaluing of His attribute of holiness.
The assertion that our faculties cannot apprehend
what they cannot comprehend, cannot feel what
they do not understand, implies a more complete
self-knowledge than we in fact possess. The
kindred denial, that spiritual experience may be
as real as physical experience, casts a slur upon
the mental capacity of many of the greatest of our
race, from which true humility would shrink. The
transference of the method of one science to the
pursuit of another, the neglect to distinguish clearly
between hypothesis and fact, the undue bias of the
imagination by special kinds of study, the premature
deduction of negative conclusions— the dangers, in
fact, of specialism in an age when knowledge is
increasingly specialized — are more often admitted in
word than really in practice avoided. And though
these and such-like imperfections may seem to
many to be trivial, when regarded from a moral
point of view, they are not so in the particular

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 129
context and connexion with which we are now
concerned ; and still less so in the case of teachers
(and every writer is a teacher) who would abolish
an august tradition, coeval with recorded history,
and involving the highest hopes and aspirations of
mankind. Of course it is not to be contended that these
moral dispositions are the exclusive cause of intel
lectual error in religion. As there are countless
professed believers, whose orthodoxy has never
touched their hearts, and who may therefore be
called spiritually dead, so there are unbelievers
whose conduct and emotions are in continual re
bellion against the limitations of their creed, and
who, for all their unbelief, therefore, are spiritually
alive. But, however numerous these cases, they
are the exception and not the rule, and do not
alter our conviction that average agnosticism is
in one or other of the many ways above described
of moral origin ; while the impossibility, as well as
the impropriety, of judging individual opponents,
makes it all the more necessary to emphasize
the importance of the principle in general. There
is no arrogance in so doing : the arrogance, on
the contrary, lies with those who expect to attain
a specific kind of knowledge without undergoing
its appropriate discipline1. At the same time,
so serious a statement, with the grave charge that
1 See note 20.
K

130 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
it implies, would never have been put forward, as it
has been by Christians in every age, if it rested
only upon probable reasoning. The analogy which
we have been pursuing a priori has been abundantly
verified in personal experience, and indeed in
many cases represents the analysis rather than the
antecedent of that experience. And this inductive
verification, as in logical language it may be
called, is an essential part of its argumentative
presentation. We must turn, therefore, to the
Christian or Theistic consciousness, and view the
operation, as seen from within, of the process
which we have hitherto been discussing from
without. Its point of departure, then, is the point to which
analogy has conducted us, the necessity of holiness,
and therefore of purification. True, there are the
Galahads and Percevals of life — those for whom
' the vision splendid ' of all that is lovely and of
good report has never lost its fascination or ' faded
into the light of common day' — as well as those
who have realized a measure of the bitterness
of Dante's words :
'Tanto gia cadde che tutti argomenti
Alia salute sua eran gia corti
Fuor che monstrarli le perdute genti.'
But the clear insight of the innocent, in proportion
to its purity, sees altitudes of possible attainment,
and detects degrees of contaminating evil, which

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 131
are alike beyond the range of ordinary eyes ; and
is only, therefore, the more acutely, sensitively con
scious of its own share in the universal human
need of purification. But this purification, when, in
independence of all inferior sanctions, it is viewed
as taking place under the immediate eye of God,
assumes at once a new extent and a new intensity.
For its standard is then perfection and its conse
quent inadequacy infinite. Attraction to the beauty
of holiness, or aversion from the spectacle of sin,
love of God, or hatred of self, may be the dominant
passion of the soul ; but the result in either case
is similar — a sense of hopeless, helpless impotence
to attain the one, or to avoid the other. This
sense of incapacity is specifically religious. It goes
beyond any analogy that can be drawn from human
intercourse. Nor can it exist in any ethical system,
whose standard is relative, or whose sanctions hypo
thetical. For a relative standard may be attained
with effort, and an hypothetical sanction may be
declined at will. But union with God can neither
be attained nor yet declined by man ; it is felt
to be imperative, yet seems to be impossible. And
hence issues the universal cry of all true religion —
' Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me.' That may be done from the
divine side which cannot be done from the human.
And from the conviction that this cry is answered,
comes the assurance that we are in contact with
K 2

132 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
a Personal God. The paths which may lead men
to this conviction are various, the circumstances
which surround it various, the modes of its de
scription various — differing in different religions,
and different individuals ; but the essential fact
is the same — that the human cry has been divinely
answered. Here, then, we are in the presence of a new fact,
which is usually called 'supernatural,' and may
most conveniently be called so still, in the sense
that it comes from the spiritual region, in contrast
with that which in ordinary language we are
accustomed to call natural. And a new fact is
simply a matter of experience. It may be argued
against as impossible, or argued for as probable ;
but neither argument can really touch it ; it either
has or has not been experienced, and with that the
question ends. What, then, is the evidence of the
reality of religious experience? Common sense,
and scientific criticism, and medical pathology may
freely prune its excentricities to the limit of their
will. But there remains an immense and unex
plained residuum, of the best and noblest of our
race, men and women, who in every age and in
every rank and station, and endowed with every
degree and kind of intellectual capacity, have liyed
the lives of saints and heroes, or died the death of
martyrs, and furthered by their action and passion,
and, as they trusted, by their prayers, the material,

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 133
moral, social, spiritual welfare of mankind, solely
in reliance on their personal intercourse with God.
Materialism is obliged to explain their experience
away, as a reflex action misinterpreted, or other
form of hallucination; with the awkward result
of having to attribute the finest types of human
character, as well as the greatest factor in the
progress of the world, to the direct action of mental
disease. But materialism already labours under
difficulties enough of its own. All, however, who,
on the other hand, admit the probability, or even
the possibility of a Personal God, must be arrested
by the spectacle of ' this great cloud of witnesses '
claiming to have known Him as a person is known.
It is a distinct additional argument, and one more
easily ignored than answered. The fact attested
is an interior certainty of personal intercourse with
God, and as such is quite distinct from any conse
quence or doctrine in whose favour it may be
subsequently used ; a purely spiritual fact. The
persons who attest it are a minority of religious
people, and not, therefore, to be confused with
those who merely believe in its possibility, without
professing its experience ; but though a relative
minority, they are strictly ' a multitude whom no
man can number' — competent, capable, sane, of
no one type or temperament, as old as authentic
history, as numerous as ever in the world to-day ;
a far more searchingly sifted and universally ex-

i34 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
tended body of observers than can be quoted in
behalf of any single scientific fact. We are fairly
entitled, therefore, to claim this accumulated mass
of consentient evidence, as a powerful confirmation
of all our other arguments.
The process which analogy suggests, then, is the
process which the saints have followed, and they
assure us that by following it they have reached
their goal — the personal knowledge of a Personal
God. It is a process which, as we have seen,
involves the action of our entire personality, both
in its extent and its intensity, its wholeness and
its oneness. 'God,' says Plato, 'holds the soul
attached to Him by its root' ; and it is not till
we get down to this root of the soul, the ' I,' that is
more fundamental than all its faculties or functions,
that we feel the need of that communion with
Him, which is in reality an evidence that He is
already in communion with us. 'Tetigisti me et
exarsi in pacem tuam.' Hence it is a process
whose every moment is instinct with life, and
which no amount of abstract language can ade
quately represent. To be realized in its full force,
whether of example or of argument, it must be
watched in those who are living it, or studied
as recorded in the Psalter, the Epistle to the
Romans, the Confessions of Augustine, the Ger
man Theology, the Imitation of Christ, and the
countless lesser spiritual biographies of holy and

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 135
humble men of heart, who have lived it and departed
in its peace.
Now an important consequence which follows
from all this is that religious knowledge, in the
sense above described— knowledge of God as dis
tinct from opinion about Him — is of the nature
of a personal and private property, peculiar to
its possessor, and which others cannot share. This
is a fact which in controversy is apt to be ignored ;
and its assertion is sometimes resented. Yet, again,
universal analogy is in its favour. Scientific truth,
too, is the personal possession of the earnest ex
perimentalist, who for the sake of it has ' scorned
delights and lived laborious days' ; and in proportion
to the degree of his advance in it he is alone.
Even when its discoveries, such as steam or elec
tricity or chloroform, are embodied for popular use
in practical appliances, we know the danger of
such appliances in ignorant, untutored hands ; and
its speculative results are equally unmeaning and
unsafe, in the mouth of the sciolist who knows
nothing of the method or discipline of their attain
ment. So, again, in the intimacy of friends there
are secrets shared, and privileges granted, and
sacred thoughts exhibited, of which no stranger
is allowed a glimpse. The privacy of religious
knowledge, therefore, is only the privacy of all
knowledge carried to a further degree. The reli
gious man cannot communicate the inner secret

136 MORAL AFFINITY NEEDFUL [lect.
of his life. He may be able to lay before inquirers
a reason for the faith that is in him, proofs of the
existence of God, and of the reasonableness of
revelation, and of its preponderant probability
over adverse theories : but he feels the while that
these arguments cannot of themselves insure con
viction, and have in his own case been supplemented
from other and more esoteric sources, too secret,
too subtle, too spiritual, too sacred to produce.
Influences that have been brought to bear on him,
events that have been controlled for him, strangely
occurrent voices of prophet, or of psalmist, speaking
to him suddenly in crises of his life ; prayers an
swered, efforts assisted, purposes thwarted, provi
dence felt ; warnings of God in disease and dreams,
judgements unmistakable of God on other men ;
punishments, consolations, moments of spiritual
insight ; memories of saints ; examples of friends
— these, and such-like things, as they have gathered
round his history, are the ground of his inner
certitude that he is living face to face with One
who ' knoweth his downsitting and his uprising
and understandeth his thoughts long before ' ; who
' is about his path and about his bed, and spieth
out all his ways.' Naturally the subject of such
experience as this does not expect others to be
convinced by it. It is his experience, and not
another's, and is conclusive to him alone. Now
and again a great religious teacher lays bare the

v] FOR KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON 137
secrets of his inmost spirit, less for the conviction
of opponents than for the confirmation of kindred
souls : but most men, who are at all conscious
of them, keep these things and ponder them in
their hearts ; with the result that both their force
and frequency are underrated by the external
critic, and things attributed to exceptional super
stition, or hallucination, that in reality are normal
episodes in the spiritual life. For the purposes
of our analogy we have been obliged to speak of
this spiritual life, as if the knowledge of it only
supervened at a certain stage upon the use of our
natural faculties. But in reality it is only ex
plicitly known at the end, because it is implicitly
contained in the beginning. As reason qualifies
and conditions our whole animal nature by its
presence, so that we are never merely animals,
spirituality also permeates and modifies all that
we call our natural faculties ; and our personality
itself is, in this sense, as truly supernatural as the
Divine Person in whom alone it finds its home.

LECTURE VI
RELIGION IN THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD
IT is natural that, in proportion to the strength
of our belief in a Personal God, we should
• expect that He would reveal Himself to man ; not
merely to a favoured few, but to the human race as
* such. For the desire of self-communication is, as
we have seen, an essential function of our own
personality; it is part of what we mean by the
word ; and we cannot conceive a Person freely
creating persons, except with a view to hold inter
course with them when created. So necessary,
indeed, is this deduction that, unless it were justi
fied by historic facts, a strong presumption would
be created against the truth of the belief from
which it flows. Yet there can be no question that,
on appealing to history, we do not at first sight find
this expectation at all adequately met. Hence the
importance of bearing in mind the many serious
limitations under which, as we have seen above,
any revelation must be made. For men often seem
to anticipate too much, and for that very reason

RELIGION IN THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD 139
to find too little evidence of a divine revelation
in history. Our analysis of the nature of person
ality certainly leads us to expect, that God will
reveal Himself as personal to every created person.
But all that this expectation can possibly involve
is an ultimate revelation. It carries with it no
further idea of how or when, of time or method.
And inasmuch as our belief in God is intimately
bound up with a belief in immortality, we have no
shadow of a reason, a priori, for limiting His
revelation to this world. Life on earth may be to
many but an infant-school ; and the savage may
be called to leave it with no calculable progress
made, no visible result attained ; and yet with
much inner preparation for the stage which is to
come, even if it be confined to the bitter negative
induction, ' by the means of the evil that good is
the best' /If the end of education is fitness for
fellowship with God, there is nothing surprising in
the slowness of its pace^ For the two great obstacles |
to all improvement of character are indolence and^
impatience, and a premature degree of revelation.
would minister to both — by giving men more than
their conduct as yet entitled them to ask, or their
capacities as yet enabled them to use. We have
already seen how many conditions, qualifications,
limitations, hindrances modify the spiritual insight
of all ordinary minds, even when in the presence of
the holiest traditions, and under the influence of

140 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
the highest moral code. It should be no cause for
surprise, therefore, that the signs of such insight
grow more rare, as we travel back into the remoter
regions of the past. And yet without insight
revelation is impossible ; for the fruition must
presuppose the faculty.
While, then, we naturally anticipate some kind of
universal revelation, we have no reason to be dis
concerted, on finding that its evidence is less clear,
or less abundant than we might have previously
supposed. But, on the other hand, we must not for
a moment allow the opponents of revelation to
beg the question, by interpreting history upon an
irreligious hypothesis, and thus neutralizing from
the outset all the evidence that may exist. It is
not unnatural that the collectors of religious pheno
mena — the religious archaeologists and antiquarians,
the founders and frequenters of museums of com
parative religion — should describe the facts which
they discover from a purely external or scientific
point of view : but we must remember that such
description, in proportion as it becomes habitual,
indisposes us to recognize a divine counterpart to
human creeds ; and thus requires a continual cor
rection of its bias. For only the religious can
legitimately estimate religion. And the religions
of the past can never be rightly understood, except
in the light of the religion of the present. Faith
and conscience must be known as they now are,

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 141
before their earlier manifestations can be recognized.
We are often, indeed, warned against the fallacy of
reading modern ideas into bygone ages ; and the
warning has its value. But it is equally fallacious
to suppose that we can isolate the past, and study
it without assistance from the present. For there
are no such things as isolated facts. The simplest
fact of observation is, as we have already seen,
partly created by the observer's mind ; and the
more complex a fact becomes, the more elaborate
is its intellectual setting. Now, the facts of the
far past, that have come down to us, are like frag
ments that have dropped out of their context ; and
to understand them properly we must reconstruct
their context by an imaginative effort, in which
analogies drawn from the present are our inevitable
guides. In cases which do not admit of controversy
this process often goes on unnoticed — as when we
find a flint arrow-head, and immediately infer its
purpose, and its author's habits. But in contro
verted questions it sometimes seems to be assumed
that we can avoid the operation altogether, whereas
all that we can really do is to be accurate and
heedful in its performance — discriminating the
element of fact from the element of imagination,
and taking care that facts shall not be first coloured
by a theory, and then employed as evidence of its
truth. The real danger lies, not in reading our own
presuppositions into history, but in doing so with-

]42 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
out being aware of it, and without calling attention
to the fact, so that due critical precautions may be
observed. When, for instance, we find it stated,
as the result of a comparison of religions, that all
religion is a human invention and therefore equally
false, or that all religion is equally inspired and
therefore equally true, or that the inspiration of
one is emphasized by the conspicuous falsehood
of the remainder, such extreme generalizations are
obviously due to the unguarded prepossessions of
their authors. The facts have been unduly quali
fied by the views which they are subsequently used
to justify.
Now, the science of religions is at present in the
position of all young sciences. Its accumulated
phenomena are numerous and at the same time
vastly incomplete ; while the interpretations of them
are various and, in the words of a high authority,
speaking of one section only, 'so fundamentally
opposed to each other that it seems impossible at
present to take up a safe and well-founded position
with regard to them V
The Theist, then, is entitled to approach religious
history with an initial presumption, provided that
he do so with care. He believes in a Personal
God ; and the need of self-communication is part
of what he means by personality. He believes
that persons were created that God might hold
1 O. Schrader.

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 143
intercourse with them and they with Him ; prayer
and its answer being two sides of one spiritual fact.
Consequently, he expects to find religion universal,
from the time that man first was man ; and assumes
that wherever its human manifestations occur, their
divine counterpart must have been present also.
This belief does not rest upon history, but upon
his analysis of his own personality and religious
experience ; and he brings it with him, not as a dis
guised induction, but as an antecedent expectation,
to the study of historical facts.
And here we are met at once by the supposed
objection to religion which is drawn from the anti
quity of man. The picture of man's slow evolution
is by this time too familiar, and has been too often
drawn to need repetition. Geology finds him exist
ing at a date immensely earlier than had once been
supposed ; and though this date can only be rela
tively determined, its distance from the dawn of
history would seem, on the most moderate computa
tion, to have far exceeded that from the dawn of
history to the present day. Further, he existed
during this long prehistoric period in a rude and
uncivilized condition, as regards his method and
appliances of life. Biology has added the conjec
ture that his physical frame, at least, was developed
from some lower animal form ; and this, if true, as
on the evidence seems to be extremely probable,
would almost necessitate a still earlier date for his

144 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
first appearance than we might otherwise have been
disposed to accept. Now, there is no question but
that a strong atheistic presumption is created in
many minds by this spectacle of the long savagery
of man. The religious world has long been accus
tomed to the existence of irreligion on its outskirts,
and is not seriously perplexed by the fact. For, at
any rate, the immense mass of mankind, throughout
the whole historic period, have been within the
reach of religious influence. Egypt, Babylon,
China and the great Indo-European family have
all possessed sufficient religion to justify the theistic
belief that, amid multitudinous human errors, God
left not Himself without witness. And, in com
parison with these great races, the scattered savage
tribes, who have seemed to know no God, are rela
tively insignificant in their effect upon the imagina
tion. Their state has been accounted for by gradual
moral degradation ; and though the religious mind
has been distressed by it, it has not been over
whelmed. But when the whole proportion and
scale of these things is suddenly transformed, and
savagery, instead of representing the mere fringe of
failure round human progress, is represented as the
normal condition of our race, during far the greater
part of its existence, the result is a stupendous
shock to all our preconceived ideas. It is plausibly
urged that those, who were no more civilized than
modern savages, can have possessed no better

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 145
morality or religious belief ; and the question forces
itself upon us with importunate insistence, ' Can
a race that has been left for such limitless ages to
itself really have been the object of divine solici
tude the while?' Even the survey of religious
development within the historic period has
prompted a Christian writer to ask, ' On the hypo
thesis that God had a gracious thought in His
heart towards the human race . . . how can we
imagine Him going about the execution of His
plan for the good of humanity with such wearisome
deliberation ? ... Is not the slow process too cold
blooded, so to speak, for the warm temperament
of grace ? ... Is the slowness of the evolution not
a proof that the alleged purpose is not a reality?1'
And such obstinate questionings come over us with
a thousandfold intensity as we gaze down the long
vista of the prehistoric ages. They do not really
constitute any logical difficulty ; but they raise an
imaginative presumption of considerable weight
and force, which leads many minds to approach
the history of religion with a strong anti-theistic
predisposition. Now, we must remember that the facts in ques
tion are for the most part absolutely neutral, while
such positive indications as they give point rather
in a religious direction. They are thus summarized
by a popular writer whose bias is distinctly untheo-
1 Dr. Bruce.
L

itfi RELIGION IN THE [lect.
logical 1 : ' As regards religious ideas they can only
be inferred from the relics buried with the dead,
and these are scarce and uncertain for the earlier
periods. . . . All we can say is that from the com
mencement of the Neolithic period downwards
there is abundant proof that man had ideas of
a future state of existence very similar to those
of most of the savage tribes of the present day.
Such proof is wanting for the immensely longer
Palaeolithic period, and we are left to conjecture.'
^Moreover, prehistoric man was not precisely in the
same situation as the modern savage. There is all
the difference between them of first and second
childhood. The one represents the remnant of
humanity that has failed to progress ; the other
must have contained in himself the germ of all the
progressive peoples. Even the implements and
weapons, which with the one are archaic survivals,
must have been original inventions with the other.
The similarity of their external condition need not,
therefore, indicate too close a similarity of capacity
and character. A man may have high thoughts
amidst very low surroundings ; and the most medi
tative nations have not always been the most
progressive — as witness ' the stationary East.' If,
therefore, we believe, as we do, that a divine influ
ence is distinctly traceable throughout the historic
period, there is nothing whatever to suggest its
1 S. Laing.

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 147
absence from the prehistoric races, and the pre
sumption is in its favour. ' It matters little,' as
M. Reville well says, ' that the dawn of the religious
sentiment in the human soul may have been asso
ciated with simple and rude notions of the world
and of the object of faith. The point of departure
is fixed and the journey begins. In substance it
comes to precisely the same thing to say, God
revealed Himself in the beginning to man as soon
as man had reached a certain stage in his psychic
development, as to say Man was so constituted
that, arrived at a certain stage in his psychic
development, he must become sensible of the
reality of the divine influence. In this sense ... we
would accept the idea of a primitive revelation V
Thus the picture of man's long infancy, which
science has unrolled, in no way affects the reality of
religion. It may modify our view of the method
which God has pursued in His intercourse with
men ; but it contains nothing to shake our belief in
the probability of that intercourse. And there is no
need to be alarmed at what turns out, upon examina
tion, to be no necessary verdict of facts, but only the
old atheistic hypothesis read again into the new
facts, without logical justification of any sort or form.
On passing from the prehistoric to the earliest
historic ages, we are at once met by the broad
distinction between cultus and mythology — that is
1 Proleg. to Philos. of Religion.
L 2

148 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
to say, between ceremonies, institutions, usages,
ritual observances on the one hand, and the
reasons given for them, their intellectual explana
tion or justification on the other — what we should
now call religious practice and religious belief.
Recent research has paid special attention to the
former of these two elements of ancient religion
— the ceremonial, or customary — as being older
than most recorded mythology, more popular in
extent and origin, more persistently tenacious of
life, and calculated, therefore, to throw more light
upon the spiritual condition of the early world.
Indeed this priority of custom to creed has been
utilized by a recent German writer l in the service
of a theory which would explain away religion, by
representing it as an artificial endeavour to account
for what at first was irrational habit. But the fact
that the reasons assigned for an ancient custom are
mutually inconsistent, and in some cases demon
strably untrue, is no proof whatever that the custom
in question had no original reason at all. Habits
may become irrational or instinctive, but they can
hardly begin by being so ; nor can any number of
habits which have no religious foundation possibly
originate religious ideas. And accordingly the
theory in question has to fall back for further sup
port upon the old notion that religion was at first
an artificial invention ; but this is only a survival
1 Gruppe.

VI] PREHISTORIC PERIOD

149

of those obsolete views of the last century, which
regarded society in all its forms as artificial, and
which modern historic science has discredited for
ever. Such a paradox, therefore, however ingeni
ously defended, is not likely in the present day to
do much harm ; while it may be of some use in
drawing attention to the basis of fact upon which it
rests — the extreme importance of ritual conduct in
early society. For instance, there was the world
wide institution of sacrifice, whether viewed as
a feast of fellowship and communion between gods
and men, or as a tribute, a propitiation, an atone
ment. There were annual and seasonal festivals,
whose customs of long-forgotten meaning linger on
into the world to-day. There were agricultural and
pastoral sacraments connected with the firstfruits
of the field or flock, the sources of many a surviving
rustic superstition and quaint provincial phrase.
Then there were all the observances attendant upon
birth and death ; ceremonies of initiation on adole
scence; marriage customs; funeral rites; fastings,
flagellations, penances ; scrupulous systems of taboo;
the solemnities of the kindling of fire, of the draw
ing of water, of the felling of trees. These and
other occasions and actions, too many and various
to enumerate, were matters of ritual regulation, in
which time, place, condition of body, posture,
gesture, language, dress were minutely and care
fully prescribed. Much of this customary religion,

150 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
of course, coincides with historic periods; but its
prevalence can be inferred from early literature
and folk-lore far beyond the horizon of recorded
history. It has all the marks of immemorial age
about it, and may well have dated from primeval
man. ' Political institutions are older than political
theories, and in like manner religious institutions
are older than religious theories . . . ritual and
practical usage were, strictly speaking, the sum
total of ancient religions. Religion in primitive
times was not a system of belief with practical
applications ; it was a body of fixed traditional
practices to which every member of society con
formed as a matter of course. ... A man was
born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely
as he was born into relation to his fellow-men ; and
his religion — that is, the part of conduct which was
determined by his relation to the gods — was simply
one side of the general scheme of conduct pre
scribed for him by his position as a member of
society. There was no separation between the
sphere of religious and of ordinary life. Every
social act had a reference to the gods as well as to
men, for the social body was not made up of men
only, but of gods and men : ... in every region of
the world, as soon as we find a nation or tribe
emerging from prehistoric darkness into the light
of authentic history we find also that its religion

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 151
conforms to the general type which has just been
indicated1.' What was the dominant tone of this early
religion ? ' The severe aspect of natural religion,'
says Dr. Newman, in a well-known place, 'is the
most prominent aspect' It is not ' a satisfaction or
refuge, but a terror and a superstition.' ' Its large
and deep foundation is the sense of sin and guilt.'
And again, ' wherever religion exists in a popular
shape, it has almost invariably worn its dark side
outwards2.' This view, for which Lucretius is
continually quoted— Lucretius, the avowed enemy
of all religion — is without doubt an overstatement
of the case. And Professor Robertson Smith is as
much in accordance with the facts as we now know
them when he says, 'The identity of religious
occasions and festal seasons may be taken as the
determining characteristic of the type of ancient
religion generally 3.' But the whole situation is best
described by M. Reville : ' Let us never forget,' he
says, ' that whatever might be the notion which he
formed in his own mind of the divinity, man has
always experienced and cherished a special sense
of comfort in being in normal relation with it,
and that even when this divinity presented itself
to him under terrifying aspects. ... In the religious
sentiment the sentiment of dependence is intimately
1 Robertson Smith, Religion of Semites.
2 Grammar of Assent. 3 Religion of Semites.

i52 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
mingled with the sentiment of union, of reciprocity
and of mutuality, which is no less essential to reli
gion than the former. We may see here a double
gamut or a double series of sentiments . . .
respect, veneration, fear, dismay, terror :
admiration, joy, confidence, love, extasy.
The two gamuts — one of which has fear for its
fundamental tone, and the other confidence — are
most frequently mingled in reality. It is some
times one which prevails and sometimes the other
but with an infinite variety of shades, of half-tones.
and, if we may say so, of quarter-tones V Much
of this customary religion, when examined in
detail, is crude, blundering, irrational ; and its
long dominion can hardly fail to suggest similar
misgivings to those which we have considered in
connexion with the antiquity of the race. But
one fact stands out from it with startling promi
nence — the powerful, the tremendous hold of
religion upon man. It is coextensive with his
conduct, about his path and about his bed. He
cannot shake it off. It comforts him, it controls
him ; it is natural, it is normal. He may feel him
self to be now in fellowship with, now in alienation
from his gods. But in either case he takes for
granted a divine interest in his affairs ; a response
to his acts and aspirations from the divine side ;
a divine desire for communication and communion
1 Proleg. to Philos. of Religion.

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 153
with himself. It may be granted that the intel
lectual conceptions which accompanied all this
were of the vaguest. At a time when man had
no clear notion of his own personality, as distinct
from nature on the one hand, and from his family
and tribe on the other, the outlines also of the
supernatural and superhuman would be indistinct.
But it is precisely this indistinctness which gives
its evidential value to early religion. Man did not
know what to think of it, stammered in the effort
to explain it, and yet allowed it to bind him hand
and foot. There was a reality about it which he
could not, a necessity which he would not, evade.
A power grasped him, and grasped him for his
good. Now, that power ultimately rested either
upon a fiction or a truth. However beneficial in
operation, it was in its last analysis a lie, or it was
God, amid and despite of superstition and ignorance
and error, claiming men's allegiance in the only
manner and degree in which, at that particular
stage of his development, it could be claimed.
If there were no organic continuity in history,
and the past were separated from the present by
a gulf, this dilemma might remain unsolved. But
the power in question is an earlier form of, and
essentially identical with, the power of religion as
we see it in the world to-day. We are, therefore,
entitled to judge it by what it has become. As
existing in the far past we can only view it from

154 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
outside ; but as existing in the present we can view
it also from within. And if the result of that inner
acquaintance with religion has been to convince us
of its truth, we may logically extend the conviction
to its every bygone phase. The early prevalence
of customary religion, with its subordination of
creed to conduct, will then become additional
evidence of its providential origin — as initiating
with irresistible power a course of spiritual develop
ment, which its subjects at the time could neither
foresee nor understand
To say this is not to force a fanciful theory upon
the facts : it is merely to assert that those facts are
more intelligible upon our own than upon any
adverse theory. Historic science discovers facts
which when once discovered are common property.
And we are manifestly within dur rights when we
claim that the facts of early religion are far less
compatible with its falsehood than with its truth ;
its crudity being no more than we should ante
cedently expect, while its hold upon life was too
powerful and purposeful to be other than divine.
But however clearly it may be established that
sacrifices, and observances, and rites of a religious
nature preceded the great mass of recorded
mythology, they still presuppose some kind of
elementary religious belief; and the question again
arises, Are the earlier forms of religious belief
compatible with the thought of revelation ? Three

vi] ' PREHISTORIC PERIOD

i55

views of the case are possible. There is, first, the
theory of a clear monotheistic revelation to primi
tive man, which was subsequently lost by the
majority of our race, and whose dim and distorted
fragments, floating mist-like over the earth, have
given rise to the various mythologies. This theory,
though it has met with a certain amount of
scientific support, was probably theological in
origin; being closely connected with that view of
history which was once thought to be contained
in Genesis ; but which, at any rate, we English,
as Professor Maurice pointed out, owe far more
directly and immediately to Milton1. It cannot
be better summarized than in the words of
Doctor South2: 'Adam,' he says, 'came into the
world a philosopher ' ; and again, ' Aristotle was
but the rubbish of an Adam.' We have only to
compare such statements with the opening chapters
of Genesis, to see at once how much arbitrary
assumption they import into the text. The very
form of the account in Genesis is too obviously
Oriental and mythical to be pressed into history, in
the Western sense of the word ; while even as it
stands it involves no one view more than another of
the nature of primeval revelation. Its spiritual
analysis of man is profoundly and eternally true, but
is as compatible with a low as with a high state of
1 See note 21.
'* Qu. in Maurice, Moral and Metaphys. Philos. ii.

156 RELIGION IN THE ' [lect.
intellect and culture ; and while it asserts the fact
of divine intercourse with the human conscience,
it cannot be said to indicate its method — ¦
' Whether of actual vision, sensible
To sight and feeling, or that in this sort
Have condescendingly been shadowed forth
Communications spiritually maintained
And intuitions moral and divine1.'
Nor has the theory in question more scientific
than Scriptural support. It has, indeed, been
maintained that the earlier stages of the chief
historic religions are more monotheistic than the
later, and point,- therefore, to an original mono
theism behind them. But the language in which
these early monotheistic tendencies are clothed, is
too obviously rooted in more primitive modes of
thought to admit of such an interpretation. It
has all the air of a growth and not a reminiscence ;
a development, not a degradation. And, further,
there are, imbedded in religious literature and
popular folk-lore, fossil fragments of earlier and
cruder mythological formations, which would seem
in all cases to have preceded the purer forms of the
great historic religions.
Hence has arisen the extreme converse of the
above theory — the view that the world's theology
began with the crudest and most childlike concep
tions, such as are to be found among the lower
1 Wordsworth, Excursion.

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 157
savages of the present day, and was thence gradu
ally refined and developed to the high level which
we find in the Vedas and Avesta, and in the earlier
religion of Egypt. The details of this theory, full
of interest as they are, have by this time become
too familiar to need repetition. At the same time
they have hitherto usually been represented as
arguments against the reality of any revelation.
But all that they could really disprove, if true, are
hypotheses like that above mentioned, as to the
method which a divine revelation has or ought to
have pursued. When, however, we bear in mind
the great law of education through illusion, to
which we referred above, and also the frequent
coexistence of strong personal religion with crude
theology, we can easily believe that, if man was
developed from a state of complete savagery, God
may have revealed Himself to him by correspond
ingly slow degrees, and through appropriately
limited intellectual conceptions, and yet all the
while with sufficient certainty to make some degree
of spiritual life possible.
' And those illusions which excite the scorn
Or, more, the pity of unthinking minds —
Are they not mainly outward ministers
Of inward conscience? — with whose service charged
They came, and go, appeared, and disappear,
Diverting evil purposes, remorse
Awakening, chastening an intemperate grief,
Or pride of heart abating V
1 Wordsworth, Excursion.

158 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
But this extreme theory, if true, is as yet very
far indeed from demonstration. There is an undue
simplicity about it; and all attempts to arrange
human progress in stages, whether empirically
determined as by Comte, or rationally as by
Hegel, have split upon this rock ; they are inade
quate to the subtlety and complexity of nature.
As a matter of fact, mythology has been evolved
from many sources — necessities of language, diseases
of language, stupid mistakes of language, poetry,
speculation, story- telling, priestcraft, inspired visions
and immoral dreams. It is partly a natural growth,
partly an artificial invention, partly the result of
conscious or unconscious borrowing from one race
by another. And it is a mistake to suppose that
as a whole it was ever very closely connected with
religion, even when we find it woven round the
names and histories of gods. In the Homeric
poems, for instance, a broad distinction may be
palpably felt between the implied religion and the
expressed mythology ; a high and pure and simple
and natural religious tone, such as could never
either have been suggested or sustained by the
celestial romance with which, nevertheless, it is
inextricably interwoven. There are many similar
cases in religious literature ; and we may well
believe, therefore, that in ruder ages a like difference
existed, between the inner feeling which accom
panied the prayer or rite or sacrifice, and the weird

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 159
fetichistic or totemistic fancies by which it was
often overlaid ; and that then too, as so often since,
the heart was nearer heaven than the head. If so,
we might adopt an intermediate view between the
two above-mentioned extremes, to the effect that
God did first reveal Himself to the mind of man,
under such simple mythical forms as seem to be
necessitated by the very nature of early language
and thought, but with sufficient clearness to make
those myths an inspiring, ennobling, elevating
influence, the beginning of a real religious bond
between the human and divine. After all, the great
natural sacraments of the evening and the dawn
must have had something of the same strange
spiritual attraction for the earliest man that they
still have for us, with all our scientific knowledge
of how their witchery is wrought ; and love and
death, the two great twin teachers, must have been
as potent then as now to strain the human heart
with yearning towards the mysterious sunset land.
The hypothesis that these higher stages of natural
religion were only reached after an age-long worship
of stocks, and stones, and ' four-footed beasts, and
creeping things,' is hardly so probable as the
Pauline view, that the exact converse was the case.
If the first of our two previously-mentioned theories
overestimated the action of degeneracy, the second
certainly very much underrates it. The moral and
spiritual degeneration of races is an important fact

160 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
in history, and acts immediately upon the religious
conceptions ; and we may safely infer that it was
equally active in prehistoric ages. And conse
quently when we meet with petty, grotesque, absurd,
obscene, horrible objects and forms of worship, there
is a reasonable presumption that they are largely
due, not to original limitation of intellect, but to
gradual moral deterioration and distortion. An
intermediate view, therefore, which regards man's
original conceptions, as neither so high nor yet so
low as is sometimes apt to be supposed, accords
most nearly with the facts of comparative mythology
as we at present know them ; while it still leaves
a wide margin, within which different minds will
continue to differ, unless fresh facts ever throw a
materially new light upon the subject. Thus myth,
but not unmoral or ignoble myth, would seem to
have been man's first fashion of thinking about
God — such myth as primeval thought and language
would inevitably suggest, in speaking of the storms
and seasons, the sun, the moon, the stars ; and if
so, myth may be regarded as God's first instrument
of revelation to the mind, as distinct from the
conscience and the heart of man. ' He left not
Himself without witness.'
Thus the survey of the subhistoric age, the age
of myth and custom, presents us with precisely
such a picture of religion as we should expect after
discovering the antiquity of man — a religion which,

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 161
though rudimentary, is recognizably real, since it
is a link in a continuous chain, an inseparable part
of a progressive system, whose later phases we have
stronger reason for regarding as revealed.
Christians, it should be remembered, from the
days of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, have
always been accustomed to take two broadly
different views of the pre-Christian religions of the
world ; views which may be called respectively the
polemical and the philosophic ; the one concerned
with the falsehood in them, needing contradiction,
the other with their relative truth, as preparing the
way for higher things. The contrast may be well
illustrated by a comparison of Milton's treatment
of the heathen gods in Paradise Lost, with that of
Wordsworth in the fourth book of the Excursion.
The natural tendency of our modern historic
method, and our increased knowledge of the world's
sacred literature, has been to emphasize the latter,
the Alexandrian, the Wordsworthian point of view.
For no reader of the Vedas or the Avesta, the
Accadian psalms or the Egyptian ritual of the
dead, can fail to recognize in them the true ring
of real religion. And the old form of apology,
therefore, which endeavoured to establish the truth
of Christianity by contrasting it with the falsehood
of all previous creeds, has for us become a thing of
the past. It lingers indeed still in certain quarters,
but is no longer really tenable ; as being not only
M

162 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
contradicted by the obvious facts of history, but
also in its very nature suicidal, since it seeks to
enhance the importance of a special revelation by
discrediting the natural religion, to which such
a revelation must appeal ; to elevate the super
structure by destroying its foundation x. But all
reactions may be carried too far, and we are perhaps
in some danger at the present moment of over-
facile acquiescence in doctrines of consistent reli
gious progress. Progress there has undoubtedly
been in the history of religion, but of a kind that
is more easily felt than defined. To begin with,
there is, as we have seen, no uniform agreement
among authorities as regards its precise level of
departure : nor can there be any more as to its
goal, since an Agnostic, a Theist, and a Christian,
with their different standards of religious perfection,
must have different criteria of progress. Again,
many of the dates, which would have an important
bearing upon the relative priority of different
systems, are at present unascertained, and perhaps
for ever unascertainable. And then, too, the effect
of degeneration is a wholly undefinable quantity,
on which the widest variety of opinion will continue
to exist. All these are considerations which should
qualify our acceptance of glib generalities about
religious evolution. Moreover, a still more impor
tant point to bear in mind is the distinction, pre-
1 See note 22.

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 163
viously noticed, between what we should now call
personal religion and theology. We are very apt
to overestimate, as a source of evidence, what may
be called the external element in early religion,
from the fact that it has survived in literature,
ritual and folk-lore, and consequently been handed
down to us ; while the personal religion which
underlay it has passed unrecorded away. We read
of seven thousand opponents of Baal-worship in
Israel, when the eye of the contemporary prophet
could see none. And the case is typical. There
was domestic piety in the Rome of Juvenal, and
Christian life in the ninth and tenth centuries,
those dark ages of the Church. And it must have
been so throughout all religious history. We con
tinually find among the uneducated poor of the
present day an amount of religion which controls,
comforts, and refines their whole life, combined
with few theological conceptions, and those often
of the crudest ; while the most religious minds
among the educated and cultured classes are the
most acutely conscious of the inadequacy of lan
guage to portray the object of their faith ; and
the highest personal religion always tends to
mysticism, a sense of spiritual communion which
'lies all too deep for words.' But it is precisely
by the extent and intensity of this hidden life, the
number whom it affects, and the degree in which
it affects them, that the real vitality of a religion
M 2

i64 RELIGION IN THE [lect.
should be judged ; while judgement is further com
plicated by the fact that spiritual revivals often
tend to recur to archaic methods of expression,
and present therefore to the eye of history an
illusory appearance of retrogression. Of the two
main factors of religion, therefore, we can only deal
with the more external, that is the mythological
and ritual remains. And this fact seriously de
tracts from the completeness of any generalizations
that may be made on the nature and character of
religious progress. We can gauge the intellect, but
not the spirit of the distant past, and it is to the
spirit that revelation is made. Separate races seem
to have been dominated by separate elements of
religious thought, each having its special type, its
characteristic idea ; but the isolation of these ele
ments has been much qualified in popular practice,
and by an easy reaction has passed over into its
opposite, leaving a general impression of fluctuation
rather than of progress upon the mind ; while
ritual has been substantially identical the whole
world over, and has persisted, with but little
change, through successive refinements of interpre
tation, reformations of religion, changes of creed.
But all these things tell us nothing of the inner
hopes and fears, amid which, one by one, men
lived and died.
In brief, then, we must remember that the
science of religions has only a partial access to

vi] PREHISTORIC PERIOD 165
the phenomena with which it deals ; and, further,
that it is still in the empirical stage, most of its
generalizations being as yet more or less hypo
thetical, and needing careful scrutiny before they
can become premisses, from which further con
clusions may be drawn.

LECTURE VII
RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY
WHEN we pass from the more or less con
jectural reconstruction of primitive religion
to the great historic creeds, we are at once on
more accessible and more familiar ground. From
the moment of their entry upon our horizon, the
historic nations of the world are in possession ot
definite religions, which, though distinguished by
many local and racial peculiarities, contain much
that is common property, both in modes of thought
and ways of worship. These religions have had to
encounter various disintegrating forces, patronage,
persecution, popular degradation and distortion,
schismatic disruption, infidel attack. Yet however
modified, they have persisted with a tenacious
vitality, that abundantly proves how natural reli
gion is to man. He cannot get rid of it, do what
he will.
Now we have already seen the apologetic value
of this universality of religion, as creating a pre
sumption of its truth. But that apologetic value

RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 167
would be seriously impaired if we did not believe
that all religion had its divine counterpart or
element of inspiration from on high. Consequently
there can be no greater mistake — from an apolo
getic point of view — than to depreciate the ethnic
religions in the supposed interests of an exclusive
revelation. For if it were granted that the majority
of the religions in the world had existed unsus
tained by any kind of inspiration, this would
constitute a strong presumption that the remainder
were in similar case. The world's religion is too
much of a piece to be torn asunder in this way.
There is too obvious a solidarity about it. Its
higher stages are inseparably joined with the lower
steps that have led up to them ; and if we held that
the mass of mankind had been deceived in supposing
themselves capable of intercourse with the spiritual
world, we should have no logical right to make
a particular exception. Of course this implies the
existence of degrees of inspiration or revelation ;
but that is neither a new thought, nor one likely
to be denied in an age whose characteristic
category is development. It was the absence of
the notion of development, and therefore of de
grees of inspiration which involved the Gnostics
in all their difficulties about the Old Testament.
For conceiving that the morality of all its char
acters, and the obvious anthropomorphism of
its language were to be judged by the highest

168 RELIGION IN [lect.
Christian standard, they had no alternative but to
reject the Old Testament altogether. Origen saw
in what direction the true answer to this must
lie, though he did not dwell on it at length. But
for us the notion of a relative and gradual revela
tion to the Hebrew race has become a common
place. And it is natural that the same principle
should extend to all other religions. We have
already seen, within the limits of the individual
life, how gradual the process of God's self-revela
tion is, and how dependent upon character and
conduct, even when what may be called its external
instruments lie ready to hand, in the shape of
a theology and ethic refined by the highest
religious tradition. Consequently we should still
more expect this to be the case, under the less
favourable circumstances of a time, When divine
personality could not be conceived except in terms
of polytheism, nor divine omnipresence except in
terms of pantheism, 'nor divine holiness except in
terms of dualism, or in the earlier ages for which
even such terms as these were too advanced. And
what is true of the individual must be equally
true of the individual 'writ large' in the family,
the class, the tribe, the nation, the race.
We expect, then, a priori, that wherever there
is religion there will be notes of inspiration or
revelation about it ; but we are very far from
expecting that these notes will be invariably clear.

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 169
And on turning to religious history this is what
seems to be the case. The picture is a confused
one, and patient of various interpretations, while
every increase in our knowledge of its details
makes generalization less secure ; each path ends
as we pursue it, each clue fails as we follow it up.
There is evidence enough on all sides of man
seeking God, if haply he might find Him, but far
less of God finding or being found of man. Still
superficial views of history are seldom accurate,
especially where the things of the spirit are con
cerned. Isolated events should no more be expected
to reveal God than isolated atoms, abstract history
than abstract matter. And in the present case
there will be found much which, on reflection,
tends to qualify our initial disappointment.
To begin with, there is the actual hold of
religion upon man, its grasp of him. We have
already considered this in relation to uncivilized
races, but it is no less evident elsewhere. The ritual
regulations of India, Persia, Babylon, Egypt, speak
for themselves. They are obviously human enough ;
minute, excessive, often puerile. Yet there is
something behind them ; they labour to formulate
something other than themselves, a power, an
order, an authority, of which man is vaguely but
really conscious, and which he craves to have
translated into words that he can understand.
We turn with impatience from the endless pages

170 RELIGION IN [lect.
of the religious law-books of the world ; but their
very mass is an indication of the divine super
intendence which they symbolize ; an effort to
express the sense of infinite obligation, by the
accumulation of infinitesimal rules.
Again, there is what may be called the internal
evidence of the world's religious literature, the
intellectual illumination, the high moral precepts,
the flashes of spiritual insight which it contains.
The proportion of these things has been often
exaggerated by detachment of them from their
context, their common-place, wearisome, even offen
sive context. They are rare gems in an earthy
matrix ; dust of gold in a base alloy. But still
there they are. The fact of them remains, and
must be taken into account. By themselves,
indeed, they would hardly convey the inspiration
of their utterers or authors to a mind otherwise
indisposed to believe it, and might easily be attri
buted to what is commonly called unassisted or
natural reason. But they are parts of a whole,
and help to link the lower and more human
seeming creeds, to those of whose divine origination
there is other and stronger proof; thus empha
sizing the ultimate unity of religion, as well as its
universality, and suggesting the presence in its
earlier phases of the same Spirit that has guided
its mature results.
Then, again, there is the extensive belief in one

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 171
kind or another of divine intercourse with man.
From the savage who is not yet consciously
separated from his crudely conceived divinities, to
the saint who is in conscious reunion with a holy
God, man has taken his religious relationships as
facts. That is to say, he has not only regarded
himself as related to God, but God, in one way or
another, as related to himself, and this has naturally
led to the recognition of inspiration or revelation.
Its organs have been various. Now the king, now
the sage, now the bard, the ascetic, the prophet, or
the priest, has been viewed as the favourite recipient
of communications from on high ;' but the fact of
the communications has remained undoubted, and
has powerfully influenced life. Of course it is easy
enough to set such things aside as hallucinations,
the older theory of imposture being somewhat out
of date. But as our knowledge of their power and
prevalence increases, this can hardly be done without
involving our whole 'rational make and constitu
tion ' in the same suspicion — a reductio ad absurdum,
which will give most men pause. While for all
who do not deny its possibility in this arbitrary
way, the existence of the belief in question is a fact
of weight ; for it would hardly have maintained its
hold upon our race throughout the ages, unless
verified in ways and degrees that we can better
guess than gauge. For it is the old, we must
remember, and not the young, who transmit the

1 72 RELIGION IN [lect.
traditions of religion ; those, that is, who have
acquired assurance by the inner experience of
a lifetime, and can add the comment of their own
conviction to the text. And the value of this
conviction cannot possibly be tested by the mere
amount of evidence now producible to us : the
slender basis on which, as seen down the long
historical perspective, it appears to us to rest.
For it is in the colour and complexion of that
evidence to contemporary eyes, its spiritual com
plement in the hearts and consciences of those
to whom it first appealed that all its real cogency
consists. And with this in mind, we may fairly
assert that the antiquity, the persistence, the con
tinuous transmission of man's belief in some sort
of revelation, inspiration, or other intercourse with
God is a powerful corroboration of its truth 1.
Thus the picture of the world's religion as a
whole impresses us with a conviction which it is
difficult to analyze, but difficult also to resist.
Infinite ingenuity has been expended in explaining
it away, but with infinitesimal result. It is- so
universal, its fundamental principles so similar, its
hold upon human life so strong, its influence upon
human history so incalculably great, that we cannot
believe there is nothing real behind it, and the
alternative to nothing is God ; God working far
more deliberately, far more obscurely, than we
1 See note 21.

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 173
might have expected, yet indicating perhaps by
that very fact that He is God.
This much at least might be said if the ethnic
religions stood alone ; but they do not stand alone.
There is the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew Scrip
tures are a part of the religious literature of the
world, and are linked and connected with the
remainder of that literature by countless analogies
of thought and form. Whatever further light,
therefore, the Old Testament throws upon religion,
must be used in the interpretation of all inferior
forms of belief; while they in turn, as, in that light,
their drift and meaning gather clearness, illustrate
the development of the creed which is their crown,
and in so doing assist the argument — the cumula
tive argument — for the common element of truth
which they contain. In saying this, one is taking
for granted, what no competent student is ever
likely to deny ; that our increased acquaintance
with the religious literature of the ancient world
has emphasized the supremacy of the Old Testa
ment Scriptures. They still stand in lonely eminence,
as they have always stood, immeasurably superior
to all else of their kind.
Now of the two elements which may be broadly
distinguished in the Old Testament, the prophetic
and the priestly, it is the former which gives its
peculiar, its unique character, to the book. The
priestly element closely resembles much that we

174 RELIGION IN [lect.
meet elsewhere ; but the prophetic at once differ
entiates Hebrew religion, and Hebrew history from
that of the remainder of the world, and has always
constituted one of the strongest special arguments
for belief in a personal God.
Hebrew prophecy has two aspects, its ultimate
and its contemporary aspect. Its ultimate aspect,
when viewed as a whole, is that of a preparation
for the Incarnation. As such it had immense
weight in the earlier days of Christianity, and is
of immense weight still. For though the modern
tendency is to limit the vision of the individual
prophets, every step in this direction of necessity
increases our conviction of their providential super
intendence. But this aspect of Hebrew prophecy
only affects our present subject indirectly, through
its connexion with Christian belief. It is otherwise
with its contemporary aspect. That has an im
mediate bearing on divine personality, as presenting
us with direct evidence of divine inspiration. Here,
too, in modern days, we have somewhat changed
our point of view ; but in a constructive, not a
destructive, direction. The change in fact resembles,
and strictly speaking is a part of, our changed
attitude towards the argument from final causes or
design in nature, of which design in history is at
once the corollary and crown.
The character of this change has been already
pointed out. There was a tendency, when design

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 175
was first observed in nature, to regard every object
in the world as having a definite final cause ; a
particular purpose or function which it was destined
to subserve ; an end outside itself. This was what
is called a mechanical teleology, or teleology which
viewed the world as a machine. It was inadequate,
and like all inadequate conceptions partly false ;
but at the same time it was an inevitable stage in
the development of our modern organic teleology.
We now recognize that a fuller and more com
plete view of nature is to be obtained, by looking
at things as in the first instance ends in themselves,
organisms destined to exist and to preserve and
perpetuate their own existence ; and, incidentally,
as it were, in so doing to fulfil other and further
purposes 'in that eternal circle life pursues.'
Now the argument from prophecy was at one
time presented as an argument from design of the
narrower sort. The prophets were regarded as
specially inspired to predict future events. The
prediction of the future was in fact their final cause,
and the fulfilment of the prediction, the proof of
their inspiration. But the progress of criticism has
modified this view, by showing how many political
and social predictions of the prophets were never
in any literal sense fulfilled at all ; and has further
called attention to the fact, that the recorded fulfil
ment of a prediction in the past depends for its
value upon the date of the record, and as long

176 RELIGION IN [lect.
as that is an open, or doubtful question, cannot
reasonably be used in controversial argument.
This criticism has led us to look closer at the
prophets, and resulted in a deeper insight into their
character and work. We now recognize that the
primary mission of a prophet is to his age. He
is a preacher of righteousness to the men of his
day. His sufficient reason is there and then. But
righteousness may be preached in many ways.
And the Hebrew prophets are distinguished by
their conviction that righteousness is the will of an
omnipotent Person, the Creator of the material
as well as of the moral universe ; consequently
that sooner or later, it must work itself out in
the material world, it must make the material
world its own, it must triumph visibly.
Thus their insight into the moral law enabled
them to predict, as the insight into physical law
enables a man of science to predict. Such prophecy
must be distinguished from the minute and detailed
prediction of historic times, and seasons, and per
sons and events. With the latter, and the count
less controversies in which it is involved, our
present inquiry has no concern. If universally
true, such predictions cannot be logically verified,
and therefore would not assist our argument. If
frequently false they would only illustrate the
human fallibility of the prophets, which we do
not for a moment deny, and in so doing would

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 177
emphasize the superhuman origin of their central
thought — the inevitable triumph of divine right
eousness in the world. This is their eternal pro
phecy; and however distant its complete realization,
every age has seen it partially fulfilled. Thus, in
speaking to their own, the prophets spoke to other
ages. Primarily they preached ; incidentally they
prophesied ; because they proclaimed a law which
operates in ever-widening circles. And though
the fulfilment of prediction, thus understood, may
seem to many minds less evidential than the
apposite occurrence of a name or date would be,
it carries with it a more profound conviction that
we have reached the spiritual heart of things, and
are in presence of the Power that moves the world.
Nor is this view of prophecy so novel as is some
times supposed. For, paradoxical as the state
ment may seem, it rests on the same principle
as that mystical interpretation which has always
had a place in the Christian Church. Mystical
interpretation, as applied by its real masters, was
no mere play of poetic fancy, no arbitrary reading
into history or prophecy of a meaning which it did
not contain. It rested upon the principle that
all true spiritual utterances, or spiritually circum
stanced events, are manifestations of a law which is
eternal ; and may therefore be regarded as symbolic
or descriptive of every subsequent operation of that
law ; while since history deepens as it develops,
N

178 RELIGION IN [lect.
deepens in complexity and scope, its later phases
express more fully what its earlier did but indicate,
and in this sense are the realities of which the
latter were the types.
But though this method of interpretation is true
in principle, its prevalence has tended to obscure
the facts of history from many minds. The literal
and the mystical fulfilment of prophecy have
become confused. And absorbed in the thought
of its spiritual realization, men have lost sight of
its innumerable historic failures. The prophets
have been regarded as infallible oracles, and thereby
emptied of their true humanity. Whereas it is pre
cisely in their true humanity that their significance
consists. They were not only liable to faint and fail
like other men, but also to err in their practical
application of that spiritual truth which they pos
sessed. They were akin to the religious leaders of
all other races ; they were men and not machines.
And it is their common humanity which throws
their exceptional character into such relief. They
are a series of men, ' of like passions with ourselves,'
in whom the conviction of intercourse with God
reached its climax and complete expression. As
a result of this intercourse they proclaim the unity
and holiness of God, in accents of unfaltering cer
titude. ' Thus saith the Lord,' is their continual cry.
In other words, they believe themselves inspired.
Further, they recognize their own inspiration, and

vn] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 179
its necessary revelation to their people, as consti
tuting a mission, a destiny, a call ; first to separate
themselves from other nations, and then to pro
claim, to other nations, the truth which they alone
possess. They thus progressively shape a people
and compose a literature, penetrated by monotheism,
and by the certainty of its ultimate triumph in the
world; the latter thought, as we have seen, of
necessity flowing from the former, as its inevitable
consequence when consistently thought out. Thus
the prophets have a place of their own in the
history of the world. Their existence and their
immediate work are unaffected by critical contro
versies. They stand out among the greatest of
our race. We have seen that the whole human
race has tended to believe in personal gods, and
in the possibility of intercourse with them ; and
that the higher degrees of that intercourse, by the
common consent of every nation, have been attri
buted only to the few ; while the few in divers
degrees have professed its experience and trans
mitted its tradition. It is in the company of these
few, though eminent above them, that the Hebrew
prophets stand. And this must be borne in mind,
in weighing their witness to our belief in God.
However abnormal their experience, it was of a
kind which the human race expected, and for which
it everywhere and always looked. It has the in
stinct of all humanity behind it, and is strengthened
N 2

t8o RELIGION IN [lect.
by that instinct, while it strengthens it in turn.
Now the prophets claim inspiration ; they profess
their conviction that God is personally speaking
through them. They exhibit the natural human
concomitants of such a condition. They shrink
back, they are abashed, they despond, they fly,
they agonize at the greatness of their fate. And
yet when they speak, they speak with the serene
authority of certitude. They are disinterested ;
they have nothing to gain and all to lose by their
vocation. They are sane ; there is no morbid
phrensy or fanatical excitement about them.
They proclaim a truth which they are sure by
its very nature must prevail. And in fact it has
prevailed. This is their great, their world-wide,
their undeniable fulfilment. And the significance
of it cannot, for our purpose, be more decisively
expressed than by quoting its most uncompro
mising critic. ' What,' asks Professor Kuenen, 'did
the Israelitish prophets accomplish ? What was
the result of their work, and what value are we
to assign to it ?
Ethical monotheism is their creation. They have
themselves ascended to the belief in one, only,
holy, and righteous God, who realizes His will,
or moral good, in the world, and they have, by
preaching and writing, made that belief the inalien
able property of our race V
1 Prophets of Israel.

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 181
What then are we to think of the psychological
phenomenon which these men present ? An
opponent who, in the face of all the other lines
of evidence, still disbelieves in a personal God,
may perhaps not find much additional difficulty
in regarding the prophets as deluded ; though by
so doing he will be landed in the awkward position,
to which we have already had occasion to refer,
of attributing a predominant factor in human
progress, and by implication human progress it
self, to a delusion. But, on the other hand, if we
approach the prophets with the opposite presump
tion, we cannot but feel that they confirm our
belief. They claim inspiration ; it is a claim which,
as we have seen, the majority of mankind has
never thought unnatural. They claim an experi
ence which, if true, is by that very fact above and
beyond the power of any other men to analyse.
And in virtue of this claim they have accomplished
in the world, precisely what they professed them
selves commissioned to accomplish. The simplest
hypothesis about them is that they spoke the truth,
and are a crowning evidence of God's personal
intercourse with men.
But the significance of the prophets does not
end here. The Old Testament, the prophetic
book, remains ; and when we speak of its inspiration,
we do not merely mean that it was once inspired,
but that it is still inspired as a present, an ever-

18a RELIGION IN [lect.
present fact, which admits of experimental veri
fication to-day. As there is a vague apprehension
in many minds that modern criticism, in questioning
our traditional views of the Bible, may invalidate
its claim to inspiration, it is necessary that we
should distinguish clearly between criticism and
spiritual interpretation. Literary criticism — using
the phrase in its most comprehensive sense ; —
literary criticism is a science, and its object is to
find out facts ; as for example, when, where artd
by whom a book was written ; what precise words
its author used, and what precise meaning he
intended to convey. Its problems are complex ;
its methods subtle and somewhat subjective ; many
of its conclusions, at present, tentative. But it is
a perfectly legitimate science, with a profoundly
important end in view ; and ought no more to be
discredited than any other science, by the fact that
its various exponents are not all equally wise, nor
always in mutual accord. This science investigates
the Bible, as it investigates the Avesta or the Vedas,
and is as supreme within its province as it is im
potent beyond. But inspiration is a phenomenon
wholly and entirely beyond its province ; a spiritual
voice which can only be heard by the spiritual
ear. The words and events of the Bible are its
material medium of expression, its human organ
of utterance ; but when none are listening, they re
semble a silent instrument of music, which may be

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 183
handled, examined, criticized, classified, explained
without thought of its latent power to stir the soul.
Thus criticism and inspiration do not move in the
same plane, and can never meet or interfere with
one another, and the notion that they do so is due
to a confusion of thought, from which the more
polemical partisans of neither are quite free. In
one case, indeed, this mistake may command our
sympathy, though not our approval ; in the case of
the really religious man, who has come to associate
spiritual truth with the particular form of thought,
or words, in which it has habitually come home to
himself, and sensitively shrinks from any severance
of the two, as from the disruption of his very soul.
Yet, however natural, this is a weakness, and a
weakness in whose conquest the essence of spiritual
progress oftentimes consists. Meanwhile, the
existence of such men is a cloke for the far larger
and less earnest class, whose religion consists in
holding fast the form of sound words without its
substance ; the religious materialists of all time,
who, knowing nothing of the interior life of the
spirit, imagine that in grasping its externals they
grasp all ; and are proportionably alarmed at the
very notion of examining what, with only too sure
an instinct, they call the grounds of their belief.
These men in turn play into the hands of the open
opponents of all inspiration, by so intimately
amalgamating the letter and the spirit that every

184 RELIGION IN [lect.
criticism of the- one shall seem a disparagement of
the other, and thus enabling the results — the
legitimate results of critical science — to be adroitly
and plausibly misused for an illegitimate end.
The result of this misapplication of criticism on
the one side, and of the nervous alarm which at
once dreads it and yet contributes to cause it on
the other, is to obscure the unassailable strength of
the primary evidence for inspiration. For the
highest evidence is self-evidence, which is inde
pendent of proof or demonstration from without.
In the case of those abstract truths, like the
mathematical axioms, which we intuitively recog
nize as soon as they are stated, this is obvious.
But it holds equally good of concrete truths, or
facts, of immediate experience. Our belief in the
reality of an object, which we see before our eyes,
can neither be diminished nor increased by argu
ment. Our perception of beauty cannot be
heightened by analysis, or qualified by explanation.
Our conviction of an intimate friend's goodness is
wholly independent of what other men may say of
him in praise or blame. And it is upon such
evidence that our belief in inspiration ultimately
rests. Tradition may teach it, or criticism com
mend it, or authority command it ; but experience,
personal experience, can alone assure us of its truth.
Such experience may take various forms, and pass
through various degrees. We may begin by being

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 185
struck with the spiritual power of the Old Testa
ment, as contrasted with the other literature of the
world ; and then with its unity of tone, through
all diversity of composition, its wonderful transcen
dence of the local and temporary elements that
make it up ; and then with its universality, its
penetrating comprehension of every phase and
condition of life. Thoughts of this kind will, in
their turn, be confirmed and intensified, when we
proceed to use the Bible in the conduct of our life,
by its minute, its marvellous applicability to our
every secret need ; while now and again we are
arrested, as with a lightning-flash, by sudden
personal addresses of consolation or of warning
that almost seem to rise into articulate speech.
What we have had occasion to say already of
the argument from experience in general applies, of
course, equally to this experience in particular.
It is incommunicable, and we can no more reason
from it, with those who do not possess it, than
reason from music with the deaf, or from colour
with the blind. But at least we may make our
meaning clear, and insist that the argument in
question shall not be deprived of its due weight,
either by misunderstanding or misrepresentation.
Belief in the inspiration of the Bible may mean no
more than the acceptance of a tradition on au
thority ; like belief in a scientific statement that we
cannot personally verify. But we mean more by

1 86 RELIGION IN [lect.
the phrase than this, when we use it as one of our
reasons for faith in a personal God. We then
mean that, whatever influence may have led us to
the Bible, we have personally verified its claim, at
least in one of the degrees above described ;
further, that we have witnessed that verification in
others ; and further, that with this double evidence
before us, we are certain that such verification has
gone on in every age, and given life to the authori
tative tradition which has handed the Bible on.
This is a fact of human history which cannot
complacently be set aside ; and a fact which, strong
as it is in itself, becomes incalculably stronger, when
taken in the cumulative context of the other lines
of evidence, philosophical, historical and moral,
that all converge upon the selfsame point.
Any criticism of the human element in the
Bible, which makes it more truly human, more
analogous with the workings of the human spirit
other-where, tends without question to enhance our
sense of its reality and worth. But even if the very
converse were the case, and such criticism were
really destructive, its only effect would be to throw
this fact of spiritual power into stronger relief.
Spiritual truths are always immeasurably greater
than their vehicles of utterance, and are often
best expressed where this disproportion is most
clearly seen. More than half the force of language
consists in its associations ; the hints, the side-lights,

vii] . PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 187
the suggestions, which its words do not imply, yet
habitually convey. And language itself is often
a far less adequate medium of expression than
many inarticulate things ; sighs, smiles, tears,
glances, gestures, sacraments, symbols, signs. And
' truth in closest words shall fail,
When truth embodied in a tale
Shall enter in at lowly doors.'
This has always been notoriously the case with the
Bible. Its power over the peasant is not diminished
by his ignorance, nor its power over the scholar
increased by his knowledge ; for it is independent
of the region in which ignorance and knowledge
disagree. It flashes on the soul, through distorted
or through clear conceptions ; and in either case
with equal ease. Doubtless when it spoke to
Jerome and Augustine, its grammar and its history
were less known than now. But it speaks to the
modern student, of spiritual things, with neither
increased nor diminished force. And this power
in the Bible, which its believers attribute to
inspiration, is a phenomenon that cannot otherwise
be easily explained.
Further, this train of thought will throw a reflex
light upon the other sacred books of the world.
With all their imperfection and manifest inferiority,
there is that in them which we can well believe to
have been a vehicle of divine teaching to the
nations they addressed, and if so to have been

1 88 RELIGION IN [lect.
inspired as their possessors believed. The Old
Testament, we must remember, before it passed
into Christian hands, was exclusively a national
book ; and our belief in it does not of necessity
commit us to any particular theory, for or against
the relative inspiration of other national books,
however much we may regard them as ultimately
destined to fade in its larger light. So far, there
fore, from allowing the inspiration of the Old
Testament to be discredited, by the fact that other
and inferior books made a similar claim, we invert
the reasoning, and argue that the claim of the
books in question is corroborated by the inspira
tion of the Old Testament, which rests, as we
believe, on such conclusive proof. Nor is there
any novelty in such an idea ; for it is only a special
application of those principles of the Alexandrian
school, to which we have already had occasion to
refer. ' Perchance,' says St. Clement of Alexandria,
' philosophy was given to the Greeks, directly and
primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks.'
And again, ' The barbarian and Greek philosophy
has torn off a fragment, not from the mythology of
Dionysus, but from the theology of the Eternal
Word1.' Briefly, to resume : in considering the prehistoric
and subhistoric periods of human existence, we
came to the conclusion that the picture they
1 Strom, i. 5 and 13.

vii] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 189
presented was nowise inconsistent with a belief,
that, behind the hidden scenes of life, God had
always been revealing Himself, in however limited
a measure, to the minds and hearts and consciences
of men. The survey of pre-Christian history
confirms the probability of such a belief. For
we there find, throughout all races, not merely
a tendency to seek after God, but a conviction that
God or the gods have revealed and do reveal
themselves to men ; while in the history and litera
ture of one race the evidence of such a revelation,
the intrinsic spiritual evidence, is overwhelmingly
strong. It has, of course, been impossible, in so
brief a compass, to trace the outlines of this process
in any other than an abstract way ; but it is one
which a detailed study of religious history, with
the ample materials now at our command, cannot
fail to substantiate in an impartial mind. The
human side of religion is, of course, more open
to observation than the divine, and hence its
history is easily apt to be misrepresented, and
misread, as merely the record of a gradual human
discovery ; but in the eyes of any serious theist,
who will be at the pains to think out his cieed,
this can only be regarded as a subordinate and
secondary aspect of a gradual divine revelation.
Nor is the gradual nature of the process, as we
have seen, any argument against its being divine.
Personal intercourse between men, to recur to our

190 RELIGION IN [lect.
previous analogy, is of necessity conditioned, quali
fied, limited, restrained by their respective capacities
for appreciating and comprehending one another.
' No man is a hero to his valet,' not — as Hegel well
explains the proverb — because the hero is no hero,
but because the valet is only a valet. When we
extend this law into the region of our intercourse
with God, and consider what qualification such
intercourse must demand on the part of man, the
facts of history, so far from surprising us, will
coincide with what we should expect. Among races
whose average morality is low, and spiritual insight
dim, few only, very few, will be capable of any
inspiration ; while these few, in proportion to their
fewness, will take long to raise the tone of others ;
but as the general tone rises and men start from
a higher plane, the relative number of religious
minds will imperceptibly increase, and react with
corresponding power upon their age. While as
races differ in their pace of development, in
their opportunities and in the use of them, in
their capacities and in the drift of them, in their
faithfulness to their own best light, the race which
first attains the clearest moral and spiritual con
ceptions will tower aloft by that very fact ; as the
man of character towers at once over the man of
strength, or intellect, or art, and thereby becomes
the qualified recipient of a higher degree of revela
tion. This is in our judgement the course which

vn] PRE-CHRISTIAN HISTORY 191
history has taken ; and, moreover, it is the only
course which we could antecedently conceive, that
the self-revelation of a personal God would be likely
to take, since a person can only be revealed, as
such, to other persons, in graduated response to
their own personal state. And it is immaterial
whether we describe this process in terms of human
merit or divine election ; since merit and election
are essentially correlative, two aspects, the obverse
and reverse, of one thing.
In the above remarks we have somewhat studi
ously understated our case, in order to avoid all
questions that would inevitably lead off into side
issues, and divert attention from the central point.
Even so, we cannot, of course, expect an anti-
theistic opponent to accept at once our interpreta
tion of facts. All that we can do is to point out
those facts, as undeniable in their occurrence,
unquestionable in their historic importance, sugges
tive, if not decisive, of their own spiritual inter
pretation, and in any case demanding to be very
seriously weighed. Meanwhile, when we advance
our other argumentative reasons for believing in
a personal God, we can not admit the superficial
but still common rejoinder that history is against
us ; since history, in our view, makes for us, in no
uncertain terms, although, like the other elements
of a cumulative argument, it must be read in its
complete context to be seen in its true light

LECTURE VIII
JESUS CHRIST THE DIVINE AND HUMAN
PERSON
THE line of thought which we have been
pursuing leads us on to the Incarnation 1, as
I the adequate and final revelation of the personality
of God. Of course the Incarnation presupposes
that personality, and cannot, therefore, be adduced
as an independent argument in its favour. But in
the accumulation of probabilities it has nevertheless
an important place, as fulfilling the natural antici
pation, to which belief in a personal God gives rise,
and thus rendering our doctrine harmonious, self-
consistent, complete.
Now there can be no question that the most
serious objections raised against the Incarnation
are really of an a priori character. It seems too
strange, too paradoxical, too utterly stupendous to
be true. Men are staggered as they try to realize
it, and half inclined to doubt whether the majority
of its professed believers have ever actually thought
it out. Thus there is a tendency to approach its
1 See note 24.

THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 193
evidence, as contained in the New Testament, with
a negative bias, which insensibly necessitates the
deduction of negative conclusions. The case is
more or less unconsciously prejudged.
But if we ask wherein the intrinsic improbability
of the Incarnation consists, we find that it rests
upon the open or disguised assumption, that man's
rank in nature is determined by the size and situa
tion of his abode in space. We no longer view
our planet as the centre of the universe, and our
cosmical insignificance is supposed to argue our
personal unimportance. It seems inconceivable
that amid the limitless immensity of space, and the
endless possibilities of time, our earth should have
been the scene, and our race the witness, of an
unique divine event.
The effect of this line of thought upon the
imagination is undoubtedly great, and impairs the
faith of many whom it does not explicitly convince.
Nevertheless, upon analysis, it may easily be seen
to be essentially imaginative, as distinct from
rational ; and further, it can only be maintained
on materialistic grounds, for it makes magnitude,
material magnitude, the sole criterion of worth.
Whereas, ' If the entire physical universe conspired
to crush a man,' as Pascal says, ' the man would
still be nobler than the entire physical universe, for
he would know that he was crushed V Man, as we
1 See note 25.
O

194 JESUS CHRIST [LECT.
have already seen, knows himself to be spiritual.
His thought out-soars space ; his love overcomes
time ; his freedom transcends the laws of merely
material existence. He moves in another world
than that of sight and sound — a world wherein he
feels himself to be still but a beginner ; quick with
aspirations and faculties and powers, that claim for
their due development an illimitable life. The
home which he now inhabits may be but one of
many mansions that he is ultimately destined to
possess. But if this, which is man's instinctive judgement
of himself be true, the attempt to estimate his value
by material modes of measurement, or criticize his
history by material calculations, is manifestly absurd.
If materialism, as we have seen once for all, cannot
explain the origin of personality, neither can it
forecast or prejudge its destiny, or the events which
the course of that destiny may possibly involve.
Nor is this all. For in the act of declining to be
thus mechanically weighed, our personality lays
claim to a loftier method of appreciation ; based
upon its infelt capacity for intercourse with God,
and the consequent conviction that life in that
intercourse is its appointed end. The sense of
divine nearness, it will have been already noticed,
is no invention of Christianity. We have found it
in every stage of human development, in every
form of human religion. It is rudely conceived by

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 195
the savage, refinedly by the saint. At times it
is a welcome thought, at times overwhelmingly
oppressive. But it is persistent enough to be called
a characteristic feature of humanity. The gods of
Epicurus, lying beside their nectar, are products of
abstract reflection, not of unsophisticated instinct.
And when all due allowance has been made for the
intermittent operation of this mode of thought, it
remains historically true that, on the average, man
has regarded his gods as near. Sacrifices, tribal
communions, systems of taboo, oracles, sacred
mysteries with awful rites ; the union with Osiris
of the Egyptian soul, the avatars of India, the
theophanies of Greece, even the blasphemous
apotheoses of imperial Rome, are indications of
this widespread feeling, which may be separately
criticized, but cannot be collectively despised.
And in the face of these things it is impossible to
say that such an approximation between God and
man, as the Incarnation implies, is at all an un
natural thought. If astronomy raises an imaginary
presumption against it, psychology bears powerful
witness on its behalf, as lying at the very root of
the personality of man. The most familiar things
seem strange when we pause to make them objects
of reflection, from the spelling of a word to the
existence of the world. And in this way the
Incarnation is surpassingly strange, but not in the
sense of contradicting any fundamental necessity of
O 2

i96 JESUS CHRIST [lect,
thought. If it be replied that this is only true of
the earlier world, and that in fact it does contradict
our modern notion of the uniformity of law, we
answer, that, (waiving the question of the precise
value of that notion,! the Incarnation is in reality
the most consummate exhibition that we can con
ceive, of God's own obedience to the laws of His
creation. So far, therefore, from admitting any presump
tion against the Incarnation a priori, we contend
that the natural human presumption points the
other way. For we find the desire for union with
1 God to lie at the very basis of our being, and when
'once the story of the Incarnation has dawned upon
our horizon, we recognize that under the conditions
of the world of sin in which we live, nothing else
could have so adequately satisfied this inmost
aspiration. It must be true we say, because it so
incomparably meets our need.
This, however, leads us from a priori to eviden
tial considerations ; and though we cannot, of course,
enter upon Christian evidence in detail, it will be
necessary to point out, briefly, its general bearing
upon our present inquiry. And in so doing, the
first position which it is of importance to maintain
is that the Christian religion is one phenomenon,
a totality, a whole, of which the New Testament is
only a part. We of to-day are in actual contact
with a living Christianity, which has persisted

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 197
through nineteen centuries of human chance and
change ; and though hindered, now as ever, by
schism, treachery, hate, flattery, contempt, presents
the same essential features which it presented
nineteen centuries ago ; miracles of penitence,
miracles of purity, miracles of spiritual power ;
weakness strengthened, fierceness chastened, passion
calmed and pride subdued ; plain men and philo
sophers, cottagers and courtiers, living a new life
through the faith that Jesus Christ is God. Further,
when we have distinguished the Christian spirit
from its human corruptions — a distinction which
is perfectly legitimate and plain — the verdict of
impartial history is unquestionably with us, in
asserting that Christianity has justified its claim to
be the salt of the earth. For it, and it alone, gave
men the ideal and the impulse, which once and for
all made progress possible, and parted the modern
from the ancient world. Abstract thinkers may
say otherwise, but few, who have studied the lives
of men, are prepared to deny that Christianity has
been the greatest fact in human history.
Yet if this be so it must be obviously impossible
to appreciate the New Testament apart from its
result — its result in the lives, and deaths, and
deeds of Christian men. The New Testament
asserts the advent of a fresh power into life ; and
there are countless Christians now alive who pro
fess experience of that power. The founder of

198 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
Christianity is reported to have said, ' Lo, I am
with you always, even unto the end of the world.'
And serious, sober-minded men may still be found,
the whole world over, who say they are conscious
of this presence as a fact ; while, as a result of this
power and presence, the same things are being
done and suffered, which were done and suffered
in the apostolic and every after-age. The Epistles
and Gospels are thus intimately, indissolubly linked
with the whole vast movement whose beginning
they describe. And any criticism which would
radically invalidate their worth, would render the
greatest event in history an effect without a cause.
Now to construct out of the Gospels an imaginary
portrait, of One who neither worked wonders nor
claimed to be divine, is to invalidate their worth,
for it is to tear them literally into shreds. The
conception of Christ, as superhuman, is too com
pletely incorporate in their substance, too subtly
inwoven into their tissues, too intimately present
in their every line, to be removed by any process
short of their destruction as a whole. Moreover,
if there were an unknown Christ behind the
New Testament, a Christ whom its writers unani
mously misrepresented or misunderstood, it would
not be on this unknown Person, but on His mis
representation that Christianity is built. For the
absolutely central doctrine round which Chris
tianity has always moved, and which has been

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 199
the secret of its unique hold upon the hearts and
consciences of men, is not simply the loving Father
hood of God, but the proof that He has given
of His loving Fatherhood, by sending His only-
begotten Son into the world. Faith in the Incarna
tion, with all that it involved, has been the sole
and exclusive source of our historic Christianity.
Yet if Christ were merely man, this was precisely
the one point, on which either He or His reporters
were profoundly wrong. The case therefore is
narrowed to a simple issue. Christianity cannot
be due to the goodness and wisdom of a man,
marred by a pardonable element of error ; for it
is simply and solely on the supposed element of
error that it rests ; and its missionaries, its martyrs,
its holy and humble men of heart, all of strongest
that human souls have done, all of saintliest that
human eyes have seen, will have derived their
inspiration either from folly or from fraud.
But if the world is a rational order, as scientific
predictions conclusively prove, and a rational order
which makes for righteousness, as philosophy and
history attest, we cannot attribute the chief episode
in its moral development to chance. A cosmos
cannot have a chaos for its crown.
Thus we approach the life of Christ, with its
deeds of wonder and its words of power — the
writings which relate it, themselves a literary marvel
— the Jewish expectation which in disappointing

200 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
it fulfilled — the pagan aspirations which it unex
pectedly answered — the secular preparation for its
effective appearance — its apposite occurrence — its
paradoxical success — and all the various arguments
that multiply each other in its behalf, with an
antecedent presumption that they must be true.
This process is strictly scientific. We have present
experience of an unique fact, the Christian life ;
and we infer an unique cause for its production.
(The nature of a thing, as Aristotle truly says, is
that which it has become, when its process of
development is overy And whenever we forget
the vital connexion between the present and the
past, and study origins without a reference to the
things which they originate, our historic method
at once degenerates into pedantic antiquarianism.
The fact of what man now is proves that his
ancestor, however appearing, must really have
been more than an ape. The fact of what con
science now feels and does proves that its source,
however obscure, was really something other than
mere pleasure or utility. And so, the fact of
Christian experience is sufficient to convince the
Christian, that the founder of his faith was more
than man.
We find, then, that Jesus Christ, as depicted in
the pages of the New Testament, threw a totally
new light upon the personality of man. He took
love as His point of departure, the central principle

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 201
in our nature, which gathers all its other faculties
and functions into one ; our absolutely fundamental
and universal characteristic. He taught us that
virtues and graces are only thorough when they
flow from love ; and further, that love alone can
reconcile the opposite phases of our life — action
and passion, doing and suffering, energy and pain,
since love inevitably leads to sacrifice, and perfect
sacrifice is perfect love. It may be granted that
previous teachers had said somewhat kindred
things. But Jesus Christ carried His precepts
home by practice, as none had ever done before.
He lived and died the life and death of love ; and
men saw, as they had never seen, what human
nature meant. Here at last was its true ideal, and
its true ideal realized. Now the content of man's
own personality is, as we have seen, the necessary
standard by which he judges all things, human
or divine ; his final court of critical appeal. Conse
quently one effect of the life of Christ upon our
race was to provide us, if the phrase may be
allowed, with a new criterion of God. Man had
learned that love was the one thing needful, and
had looked into the depths of love, as he had
never looked before. And thenceforth love be
came the only category under which he could be
content to think of God.
Religious minds of every race had long been
accustomed to conceive of God as possessing in an

202 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
eminent degree the attributes which they valued
most among themselves, and thus as being wiser,
mightier, holier than man ; and as soon as they
saw that love was the true source of all these
attributes, men were ready to recognize that God
must possess transcendent love. And how could
such love be proved except by sacrifice. This
thought, however, did not at first arise from
abstract reflection; it stole over men's minds un
consciously as they watched and followed Jesus
Christ, and was accompanied by the conviction,
the slow, gradual, progressive conviction, that Jesus
Christ was more than human ; was the Son of
God ; was God, offering Himself in sacrifice for
man. The revelation, and the education of man
kind to understand it, were inseparable aspects of
the selfsame fact.
To estimate or criticize the power of the evidence,
which first led men to accept this stupendous belief,
is in the present, far later, age impossible. Signs
and wonders were plainly a part of it, but signs
and wonders can only be conclusive to contem
porary eyes ; the time, the place, the surroundings,
the state of the beholder's mind, are a necessary
part of this convincing power. And obviously this
context cannot now be reconstructed, either in the
interests of proof or doubt. For this reason the
miracles in question can never be disproved, except
by the assumption of a priori premisses which

viii]. THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 203
Christians do not grant. While we who believe
them, as rooted in our records and congruous with
our creeds, still do not rest our faith upon them, or
feel serious concern when they are attacked. For,
once brought home to the minds of men, the
Incarnation is its own evidence. It is there ; and
how did it come there, and why has it remained
there, except by being true ? Power was the
watchword of its earliest preaching, power over the
hearts and consciences of men ; and the efforts of
nineteen centuries to explain it, to crush it, to
corrupt it, have left that mysterious power unim
paired to-day. Even its opponents cannot quietly
ignore it, so strangely does it fascinate alike both
friend and foe.
We cannot now attempt even to summarize the
arguments which converge upon the Incarnation
with cumulative force ; but we have indicated the
framework into which they fit, the map of the
region whose details they supply. On the one
hand there is the expectation of a personal revela
tion, historically founded on our religious instincts,
and philosophically justified by our analysis of
personality. There is the gradual refinement of
this expectation till it culminates in the demand for
a God of love. And then, at the precise moment
when the expectation culminates, and through the
same instrumentality by which its final refinement
is affected, a revelation purports to come ; which,

204 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
if true, miraculously fits the facts, and in virtue of
so doing has moulded history ever since ; and which,
if in any degree or form untrue, falls hopelessly to
pieces, crumbles into fragments, vanishes in air;
and yet despite of so doing continues the while to
mould mankind, and to mould them for their
progress, and their good.
The weight of this dilemma must obviously rest
upon the value of man's verdict on himself. Are
his religious instincts to be trusted ? Are his
rational deductions from them true? Are his
moral judgements of their issues just? Is he, in
fine, that spiritual being, which from ages imme
morial he has thought himself to be? We have
indicated the reasons for answering this question in
the affirmative ; nor are they obsolete because they
are old. Resting mainly as they do upon intro
spective analysis, they have been always within
reach of philosophic minds ; and though perhaps
clearer to us than they were to Plato, were yet
as convincing to Plato as they are to us. Physical
science cannot affect them, for they are essentially
metaphysical ; but inasmuch as physical science
relies upon the validity and veracity of thought,
and issues, in virtue of that reliance, in calculations
that are daily verified, and predictions that are
constantly fulfilled, it bears witness indirectly to all
the phenomena of consciousness with which thought
is inseparably bound.

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 205
But if once we accept what may fairly be called
man's natural self-estimate as true, the series of
inferences that we have traced begins to follow.
His religious instinct points to a Person informing
and sustaining material things. His reason and
conscience justify this instinct, by demanding a first
and final cause and moral governor. He anticipates
that this Person will reveal Himself to man, in
proportion to man's capacity for receiving His
revelation. And when faced by an event which
claims to be that revelation, and which, while
baffling his every forecast more than fulfills his
every hope, he is prepared to accept it as true ;
and if true, as the final vindication of all his
previous processes of thought.
Thus the Incarnation is the crown and climax
of all that has gone before ; and a Christian cannot
possibly separate his creed from the other argu
ments for a personal God. The validity of those
arguments is, of course, unaffected by disbelief in
the Incarnation. But they raise, as we have seen,
an expectation, which, apart from the Incarnation,
is not adequately met ; while the Incarnation so
completely meets it as to clinch the entire circle
of proof.
This, then, is the main outline of our reasons for
believing in a personal God ; and it suggests two
or three reflections. In the first place, these reasons
are concrete and not abstract. They rest upon

2o6 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
countless and complex facts, which must be known
by experience to be judged aright. The moral
argument, for example, or the ideological argu
ment, or the value of universal consent, must be
realized in imagination before their weight can be
felt. And this is a work of patience and of time.
Again, these separate arguments unite in one
cumulative proof, and what is true of them apart
is doubly true of them together : for to appreciate
a cumulative argument we must not only realize
its elements, but we must further realize the
peculiar force of their combination ; the way in
which each fresh factor makes it harder to reject
the rest, till at last they coalesce into one imme
diate, indissoluble whole. Further, the argument
in question is of immense antiquity ; and, to feel
the strength of its appeal, we must remember the
minds that it has satisfied; not merely their number,
but their philosophic ability and moral worth;
together with the searching controversies, which
have modified its statement, while leaving its
substantial identity untouched. It is thus no mere
chain of reasoning with which we are concerned ;
it is our whole attitude towards the world ; the
historic attitude of mankind ; a thing which count
less currents, from countless sources, through count
less ages, have imperceptibly gone to form ; brooks
flowing into streams, streams swelling into rivers,
rivers meeting in oceans, till the earth has become

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 207
' full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea.'
But what abstract logic has not created, abstract
logic cannot destroy. The ease with which we
criticize a picture, or a statue, or a building which
we should never have had the genius to construct,
may bring home to us the immeasurable distance
between abstract and concrete thought. So here,
we have before us a theory of the universe ; time-
honoured, coherent, concrete, positive, august ; and
abstract criticism is powerless against it. The
mere suggestion of a doubt here, and a difficulty
there, an uncertainty in this place, or an obscurity
in that, is futile, unless supported by some positive
hypothesis, to take the place of what it seeks to
remove ; seeing that, after all, the universe is a fact,
and some account of it must needs be true. What,
then, are the positive hypotheses which are offered
us as substitutes for a personal God? There is
Hegel's Idea, as understood — though some of us
think misunderstood — by the Hegelians of the
left, and misunderstood at the cost of charging
their master either with intellectual or moral error.
There is the blind Will, which Schopenhauer sought
to substitute for the Hegelian Idea. There is the
Supra-conscious Unconscious, with which Hartmann
sought to improve on Schopenhauer's Will. There
is the Moral Order of Fichte, Matthew Arnold's
Eternal Not-ourselves, that makes for righteousness.

208 JESUS CHRIST , [lect.
.Now, we have shown above that not one of these
notions is conceivable apart from personality.
They are derived by abstraction from the various
functions of personality, and when severed from
their source they become not merely hypothetical,
but absolutely meaningless ; ' words, mere words ;
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' To
say this is not to depreciate the brilliant insight,
and suggestive thought, which accompanies the
exposition of the theories in question. They are
undoubtedly works of genius, but of genius which
at times recalls the cynical epigram, that ' meta
physicians are poets run mad.' For, however
logically deduced and systematically arranged, they
cannot really be called systems, since the central
principles, on which they hang, are mere imaginary
fictions, unsupported in mid-air ; while we feel as
we peruse them, that their authors, and adherents
alike, have unconsciously personified these cardinal
abstractions ; and that to this surreptitious re-
introduction of personality all their plausibility is
really due.
Materialism looks at first sight more solid. But
materialism, as we have also seen, is in precisely
similar case ; since matter regarded by itself is
another meaningless abstraction. We only know
matter at first hand in our own bodies ; there and
. there alone we are inside it, and can view it from
(within. But matter in our own bodies is in

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 209
intimate union with personality. And we have /
no reason therefore to suppose that matter ever
exists or can exist, or that there is such a thing as
matter, unsustained by spirit. And what is true of
matter is even more obviously true of energy and
force. Thus no positive hypothesis can be offered as
a substitute for a personal God, which is not
either an abstraction from personality, and there
fore demonstrably unreal, or an abstraction in
consistently personified, and therefore demonstrably
untrue. Hence the attraction of Agnosticism, which
includes a wide range of opinion, from hypothetical
atheism to hypothetical theism ; being in fact com
patible with any tendency, so long as the tendency
in question does not issue in dogmatic belief. The
term has been several times defined with an attempt
at precision ; but its negative nature eludes defini
tion, and it may best therefore be taken in its
widest extent. Now the last thing in the world
with which Agnosticism desires to be identified is
Pyrrhonism, that is the thorough-going scepticism
which even doubts that it doubts. On the contrary,
it draws a sharp distinction between the known
and the unknown, rejecting the latter and accepting
the former; as being respectively incapable and
capable of proof.
But if there is any truth in the whole course of
P

210 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
our previous thought, this distinction is untenable.
and the logical Agnostic cannot in the end escape
from Pyrrhonism. For Agnosticism professes to
rest upon physical science ; but physical science
makes two assumptions which, after what has been
said before, may be very briefly summarized, and
which are incompatible with the Agnostic position.
In the first place it takes for granted that the
universe can be known, or in other words is in
telligible. This assumption or conviction is so
obvious and universal that it may easily escape
notice altogether. But it involves the important
I conclusion that the universe is a work of mind,
'! since we cannot attribute intelligibility to any
source except intelligence. Thus the initial pre
supposition of physical science is metaphysical, and
carries us at once beyond the region which the
Agnostic calls 'the known.' Again, physical
science assumes that our reasoning faculties are
trustworthy. But our reasoning faculties do not
stand alone. They are inseparably bound up with
our emotions and our will, as part and parcel of
our one personality ; and the conviction of their
veracity must by consequence imply that our other
faculties are equally veracious. But our other
faculties as inevitably lead us to see moral purpose
in the universe, as our reason to see rational
arrangement ; and here again we are beyond the
limits of what the Agnostic ' knows.' To accept

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 211
these conclusions is to abandon Agnosticism, to
reject them is to make any kind of certainty
impossible, and reduce all knowledge to mere
opinion ; in other words to abandon science. In
fact to deny divine, is to deny human personality,
and this is what the Agnostic really does. He
ignores or explains away the elements in man
which point to God ; and thus while professing to
trust experience invalidates its very source, by
discrediting the primary instincts, and natural
operations of the mind through which experience
conies 1.
There remains the hypothesis of a personal
God, a Being whose mode of existence is indeed
beyond our power to conceive ; but who, in however
transcendent a manner, thinks, wills, loves, and
holds personal intercourse with persons. If our
human personality were a fixed and finite thing,
it would supply us with no analogue for conceiving
such a Being; but we have seen that it is not
a fixed and finite thing, but a seed, a germ,
a potency, a ' herald of itself in higher place.' We
can imagine it existing, almost infinitely magnified,
in capacity and character, in intensity and scope :
and we have a presage that such existence is its
destined goal. Thus while all else around us is
rigorously finite, personality alone suggests infini
tude of life ; and however much, when applied to
1 See note 26.
P 2

212 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
God, it out-soars the field of our vision, we feel
that in using the term we are using words that
have a meaning. We are thinking, not refusing
to think ; in other words, that a Personal God is
a positive conception. Further, we have seen that
personality is triune, and is met by the revelation
of a triune God. Of the first point there can be
no question. The relation of a subject to an
object is absolutely fundamental to the notion of
a person, and thus lands us in triunity at once.
The only question that can plausibly be raised is,
not whether human personality is triune, but
whether that triunity gave rise to our triune con
ception of God ; so that the latter is in fact an
invention, not a revelation. The answer to this is
that beyond question we can trace the process by
which the doctrine of the Trinity took theological
form. It started in the concrete, with the baptismal
formula of the Christian Church, a practical pro
vision for a practical need, emanating from Jesus
Christ. And throughout the history of its dogmatic
formulation, we are confronted with this fact. It
was regarded as a revelation by the men who
shaped its intellectual expression ; and it was only
in the process, the very gradual process of that
expression, that its congruity with human psycho
logy came out ; that psychology in fact being
distinctly developed in the effort to give it
utterance. No one contributed more to this

viii] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 213
philosophical work than St. Augustine ; yet the
words of the prayer with which he concludes his
treatise on the Trinity show plainly what he be
lieved to be its source.
' O Lord our God, we believe in Thee, the
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. For the
truth would not say, Go, baptize all nations in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, unless Thou wast a Trinity. Nor
wouldest Thou, O Lord God, bid us be baptized in
the name of Him who is not the Lord God1.'
The same is the case with Origen, Athanasius,
Hilary, Basil, and the Gregories. They did not
accommodate Christian religion to their philo
sophy, but philosophy to their Christian religion.
Thus we are met by what claims to be the self-
revelation of the Personal God. It appeals first to
elemental humanity in the hearts of unsophisticated
men ; far removed from Alexandria or Athens ;
yet the very words in which it does so, turn out,
upon analysis, to involve a view of personality
which the world had not attained, but which, once
stated, is seen to be profoundly, philosophically
true. But if a view of God which is so consonant
with philosophical analysis, as often to have been
mistaken for a product of philosophy, can be shown
to have entered the world, among the fishermen of
Galilee, in wholly unphilosophical disguise, its
1 De Trin.

2i4 JESUS CHRIST [lect.
claim to revelation is immensely strengthened by
the fact. Moreover there was a sufficient reason for
such a revelation. For the truth which is revealed
was what made the Incarnation possible, and gave
entirely new meaning to the thought that God is
Love. Since love is of two kinds : the love of
inferiors, and the love of equals; the love of
condescension, and the love of mutual affection.
And however much in pre-Christian ages men had
thought of the love of God, they could not regard
it otherwise than as the love of condescension ; of
the infinitely greater for the infinitely less ; in
technical terms, an accident contingent on creation ;
not the essence of God Himself. But a God,
within whose Being are personal distinctions, can at
once be conceived as essentially, eternally, abso
lutely Love; love of which the human analogue
is passion and not pity; the intensest, mightiest,
holiest thing we know.
And this new insight into the divine nature,
threw a new light upon the destiny of man, as
capable, through the Incarnation, of being made
holy in the Beloved, and so raised from the level
of pity to be partaker of the eternal love of God.
Thus the actual Trinity of God explains the
potential trinity of man ; and our anthropomorphic
language follows from our theomorphic minds 1.
These considerations bring us round again to
1 See note 27.

VIII] THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON 215
the point from which we started, and from which
we will briefly resume. u
Human personality has attributes, self-conscious
ness and freedom, which distinguish it in kind
from the world of mere animals and things, and
relate it to a spiritual order, of whose eminent
reality it is itself at once the witness and the
proof. With this conviction in his mind, man
looks at the universe outside him, and divines
there, with an instinct which age or argument
cannot eradicate, the presence of a Person, whom
he feels, but may not see. On reflection this grows
more certain ; for the world is rational, harmonious,
beautiful ; it works out moral purposes ; and must
therefore have a spiritual cause; and these are
notes of personality, and of personality alone.
When he asks why, if this be so, God has not
made Himself more manifest, he is met by the
analogy of human intercourse, and the restriction
which sin imposes, even on the knowledge of a
saintly friend. This qualifies the views with which
he enters upon history ; and history presents the
picture that he is led to expect ; ignorant ages
dimly aware of deity around them ; national
progress answered by national enlightenment ;
increase of personal insight met by increase of
inspiration ; the race that is eminent in desire of
holiness selected for eminence in degree of revela
tion. At length, as is meet, from the holy race,

216 JESUS CHRIST THE DIVINE AND HUMAN PERSON
comes forth the Holy One ; guiding man into
the life of love, wherein his true perfection lies ;
and revealing God as the source of love, and Him
self as God incarnate ; in union with Whom our
finite, imperfect personality, shall find, in the far
eternity, its archetype and end.

NOTES

LECTU RE I
NOTE 1. Page 3.
Things new and old. ' To us the history of philosophy
has become a part of philosophy itself, because we have
learned to look on the speculations of earlier times, not
as dogmatic systems to be accepted or rejected, but
rather as the first stages in the progressive evolution of
a thought of which, in a further stage, we ourselves are
the organs and interpreters. Hence follow two impor
tant consequences. On the one hand, we are freed to
some extent from historical partisanship, since we do
not expect to find direct support for our own ideas in
any past system ; yet, on the other hand, we are enabled
to feel a living interest in all such systems, as containing
aspects or elements of the truth which we seek to dis
cover. We are pledged to show that the system which
we regard as true is the result of a synthesis in which
those aspects or elements are combined.' (E. Caird,
Phil, of Kant, i. 68.)
This general attitude of mind, which our modern

218 NOTES
historic method has produced, is as important in theology
as in, philosophy. There, too, we are at once the children
and the critics of the past, — the past which is never
obsolete, or of merely antiquarian interest, but a neces
sary element in the life and knowledge of to-day. In
the present case, both the antiquity and the adaptability
of the arguments for a personal God must be borne in
mind. The arguments in question are so fundamental
as to have commended themselves to man, as soon as
he began seriously to reflect upon religion ; and at the
same time so inexhaustible as to admit of continual
adaptation, to the ideas and idiosyncrasies of every
successive age. They thus combine the authority of
age with the versatility of youth ; and the fact of this
combination multiplies their force. If the patristic and
scholastic passages, in the following notes, are compared
with those from later writers, it will be noticed that they
indicate a substantial identity of doctrine; remaining
unaltered in its essence, though continuously modified
in form.
'L'esprit humain, sans doute, va s'etendre a des ob-
jets nouveaux, et briller avec plus d'eclat dans quelques-
uns de ses rayons ; mais il ne changera pas ses lois.
II approfondira ses acquisitions anterieures ; il compld-
tera, verifiera ce qu'il avait dejk trouve^ et, selon une
admirable expression de la Sainte ficriture, il renouvellera
la sagesse ; mais nous verrons que la lumiere n'a pas
changd, et que la sagesse renouvelee est, en effet, tou
jours ancienne et toujours nouvelle.' (Gratry, Con. de
JDieu, i. 356.)

LECTURE I. NOTE 2 219

NOTE 2. Page 25.
Science and Theology equally anthropomorphic. ' There
are but three forms under which it is possible to think
of the ultimate or immanent principle of the Universe, —
Mind, Life, Matter : given the first, it is intellectually
thought out': the second, it blindly grows : the third, it
mechanically shuffles into equilibrium. From what
school do we draw these types of conception ? from our
home experiences ? if it is because we are rational, that
we see reason around us, no less is it because we are
alive, that we believe in the living, and because we have
to deal with our own weight and extension, that we
make acquaintance with material things. Take away
these properties of the ego, and should we ever find
what they are in the non-ego ? Assuredly not. Man
is equally your point of departure, whether you discern
in the cosmos an intellectual, a physiological, or a
mechanical system : and the only question is whether
you construe it by his highest characteristics, or by the
middle attributes which he shares with other organisms ;
or by the lowest, that are absent from no physical things.
... In every doctrine, therefore, it is still from our
microcosm that we have to interpret the macrocosm :
and from the type of our humanity, as presented in self-
knowledge, there is no more escape for the pantheist or
the materialist, than for the theist. Modify them as you
may, all causal conceptions are born from within, as
reflections or reductions of our personal, animal, or
physical activity : and the severest science is, in this
sense, just as anthropomorphic as the most ideal theo
logy.' (Martineau, A Study of Religion, i. 336.)

220 NOTES
' That knowledge, or what passes for knowledge, soon
gets . . . beyond the data of perception and the powers
of imagination, is a fact which comes to the surface more
prominently in Theology perhaps than in Science. I am
not aware that this is because there is any essential
philosophic difference between these two great depart
ments of knowledge. It arises rather from the fact that,
for controversial purposes, it has been found convenient
to dwell on the circumstance that our idea of the Deity
is to a certain extent necessarily anthropomorphic, while
the no less certain, if somewhat less obvious, truth that
our idea of the external world is also anthropomorphic,
does not supply any ready argumentative weapon. . . .
The world as represented to us by Science can no
more be perceived or imagined than the Deity as repre
sented to us by Theology, and ... in the first case,
as in the second, we must content ourselves with
symbolical images, of which the thing we can most
certainly say is that they are not only inadequate, but
incorrect.' (A. Balfour, Defence of Philosophic Doubt,
xii. 244.)
' We recognize . . . psychological anthropomorphism,
from the Ideas of Plato, to the immanent dialectic of
the cosmical process of Hegel, and to the unconscious
Will of Schopenhauer.' (Helmholtz, Thought in Medi
cine, Popular Scientific lectures, vol. ii.)
' By the necessity of language it would seem that any
definition of the conception of God must, so far as it is
not pure negation, suggest either a being human in
respect of the highest attributes of humanity, or else
some being inferior to humanity. Take, for example,
the well-known definition (how skilfully and gracefully
advocated every one knows) that God is "the Eternal,

LECTURE I. NOTE 2 221
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." Now,
what is meant here by the word makes ? For the word
necessarily calls up three, and only three, kinds of
"making"; either "making" voluntarily, as a man
makes ; or " making " instinctively, as a beast makes ;
or " making " neither voluntarily nor instinctively, but
unconsciously, just as an eddy or current may be said
to " make." Of these three kinds of " making," which
is meant ? If the first, you are anthropomorphic ; if
the second, you are zoomorphic ; if the third, you are
azoomorphic. Supposing each of these three hypo
theses to be dangerous, I should prefer the first as the
least dangerous. But if you say that you prefer not
to define what sort of " making " you mean, and that
you will leave this an open question, then I should
reply that such a use of words rather conceals than
reveals thought, and conveys (as perhaps indeed it
is intended to convey) no revelation whatever of the
nature of God.' (Abbot, Through Nature to Christ,
i. 44.) ' . . . Those who, out of a conscientious regard for
the interests of Science, have felt themselves compelled
to derive Organic Life from blind chance, and purpose
less matter . . . have invested their original principles
with so much reason and power of internal development,
that nothing but the caprice of their terminology which
keeps to the names of Matter, Mechanism, and Accident,
for what other people call Spirit, Life, and Providence,
seems to prevent them from relapsing into notions which
they had before strenuously opposed.' (Lotze, Metaphysic,
§ 236, E. T.)
' Surely it is too plain for words that all our thought
and all our feeling must be anthropomorphic. The pro-

NOTES

posal to avoid anthropomorphism is as absurd as the
suggestion that we should take an unbiassed outside
view of ourselves by jumping out of our skin.' (Riddles
of the Sphinx, by a Troglodyte, p. 145.)

LECTURE II
NOTE 3. Page 28.
The introspective method. ' Internal observation has
for its matter intuition and the objects intuited, the
feelings, the perceptions, and all that a man perceives
within himself. Hence internal observation is the source
of the initial sciences of philosoplry, Ideology and
Psychology. External observation is the starting-point
of all the physical sciences. To the faithful, practical
application of this principle must be ascribed the
wonderful progress made by the physical and mechanical
sciences in modern times ; and it is to the neglect of
internal observation that is due the backward condition
of those sciences which rest on it. The strangest feature
in the case is, that these sciences were even dwarfed and
loaded with most superficial prejudices by those very
persons who with most ostentation proclaimed the method
of observation and experience. The reason was that
they prized external observation, but did not know
internal observation. They preached and lauded ob
servation in general, at the same time ignoring that
species of observation which would have been most
useful to them. Directing their attention only to ex
ternal observation, which is valid only for material things,
and not for mind (spirito), they arrived at two unfortunate

LECTURE II. NOTE 3 223
results: (1) They sterilized the metaphysical sciences by
rejecting certain things not supplied by external expe
rience ; (2) They materialized and wasted these sciences,
transferring to the sphere of spiritual things what was
derived from external observation, and could belong
only to material things.' (Rosmini, Logic, § 951, qu. by
T. Davidson.)
' As we recede further back, we pass more and more >-
into the dark : of our childhood, a few broken gleams
from vivid moments yet remain : of our infancy all trace
is gone ; and of that human period we can affirm nothing
psychological, except by inference or conjecture from
observations newly made on others. As this is a much
more precarious source of knowledge, we are warranted
in saying that our confidence in it should be graduated
accordingly ; and that our imaginary constructions drawn
from it should be severely tested by the immediate con
tents of our existing or unforgotten self-consciousness.
Instead of this superior deference to our most assured
inner experience, I find a disposition ... to take liberties
with the testimony of our present thought and feeling,
and put it out of court, or give it a colouring not its
own, on the ground that it has grown old and is no
longer what it was, and that it is of very little use
appealing to so altered a state of psychological facts 
The empirical analysis assumes an amount of alteration
in our ideas from first to last, and takes the benefit
of it, which I believe to be wholly unwarranted; and,
in trusting the form which they present in our matured
intelligence, we are less likely to be deceived, than in
reverting to the crude type of even their rightly
construed germs.' (Martineau, A Study of Religion,
ii. 213.)

NOTES

NOTE 4. Page 28.
Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness may be called
the form of personality. It is that which converts
animal appetites into human desires (see note 5) and
which alone makes freedom possible (see note 6) ; while
its self-diremption, its combination of unity with plurality,
of identity with difference, separates it, toto caelo, from
the material order, and therefore from the jurisdiction of
the sciences which deal with that order, and constitutes
it a spiritual thing. The introspective Augustine de
veloped the significance of self-consciousness more fully
than any of his predecessors in the Western world ; while
the schoolmen did little more than clothe his thoughts
upon the subject, in more accurate and appropriate
phraseology. ' Quo pacto se aliquid scientem scit, quae se ipsam
nescit? neque enim alteram mentem scientem scit, sed
se ipsam. Scit igitur se ipsam, etc. etc' (Aug. De
Trin. x. 3.)
The following scholastic passages are quoted by
Kleutgen. ' Anima rationalis secundum actum proprium nata est
super se reflecti cognoscendo se et amando.' (St. Bonav.
In lib. ii. dist. xix. a. 1. q. 1.)
' Intellectus intelligit se ; quod non contingit in
aliqua virtute, cujus operatio fit per organum corporale.'
(Id. Ib.)
' Nullus sensus se ipsum cognoscit nee suam opera-
tionem : visus enim non videt seipsum nee videt se
videre; sed hoc superioris potentiae est. Intellectus

LECTURE II. NOTE 4 225
autem cognoscit seipsum, et cognoscit se intelligere.'
(St. Thom. Contr. Gent. lib. ii. c. 66. n. 4.)
'Un' alma sola,
Che vive e sente e se in se rigira.'
(Dante, Purg. 25, 73.)
'The Ego is not a mere fact, which exists as the
Dogmatist conceives a "thing" to exist; it is existence
and knowledge of existence in one. Intelligence not
only is ; it looks on at its own existence. It is for itself,
whereas the very notion of a thing is that it does not
exist for itself, but only for another — that is for some
intelligence.' (Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, p. 43.)
' In all consciousness of self we know ourselves as
persons; in all knowledge of other objects we know
them as different from ourselves, and ourselves as
different from them. Every man is convinced of this ;
no man can be made to think otherwise. If there be
a God, then, as all His works proclaim, He must be
different from at least one part of His works, He must
be different from me. In the construction of his arti
ficial system of a priori forms, Kant most unfortunately
omitted the knowledge of a personal self, and thus
speculation, in the hands of his successors, was allowed
to flow out into a dreary waste of pantheism. When we
restore the conviction of the separate existence of self,
and the belief in our continued personality to its proper
place, we are rearing an effective barrier in the way of
the possible introduction of any system in which man
can be identified with God or with anything else.'
(McCosh, Intuitions of Mind, p. 453.)
'Is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel
" I am I." ' (Tennyson, Higher Pantheism^
Q

226 NOTES
NOTE 5. Page 29.
Desire. ' Appetitus est inclinatio cognoscenti's in cogni-
tum.' (St. Thom. Aq. Sum. i. 80. 1.)
'Desire is feeling accompanied with the additional
sense of self-hood — the self extends ideally beyond its
limit. The self should be a synthesis of its real organism
and its environment, and desire expresses this.' (W. T.
Harris, Hegel's Logic, p. 393.)
' Self-consciousness seems ... to take into itself the
content of a sensitive individuality without making it
other than it was as such content. But it is obvious,
from the transcendental point of view, that this concep
tion, according to which the consciousness of self is
simply filled with a content which it leaves unchanged
and to which it adds nothing, is inadequate and mis
leading. A conscious subject cannot take into itself
any particular content which it does not distinguish
from itself as such subject, and which again it does not
connect with all the other content present to it in its
objects. Thus, the self as subject, in being conscious
of the desires that belong to its individual sensibility
as desires that determine it as one object among others,
necessarily separates itself from those desires and from
itself as such an object. In other words, while it deter
mines itself as one object among others it by that very
fact ceases to be simply one object among others. In
the consciousness of my desires as particular impulses
which determine me as an object in relation to other
objects, there is, therefore, a separation of my will from
such desires ; and as a consequence, a necessity for
distinguishing between the simple feeling of pleasure,
which comes of the satisfaction of such desires, and the

LECTURE II. NOTE 6 227
consciousness that I am satisfied. In this way, tran
scendental reflexion forces us to recognize that the
conscious self as such is not in immediate identity with
the natural impulses; and therefore that its yielding
itself to them is always an act of self-determination.'
(E. Caird, Critical Phil, of Kant, ii. 199.)
' In the consciousness of desire the self is withdrawn
from immediate union with the desire ; it has the desire
before it as a motive, which stands in relation to all
other motives through its relation to the self.' (Id.
ib. p. 217.)
'So soon as any desire has become more than an
indefinite yearning for we know not what, so soon as
it is really desire ./w- some object of which we are conscious,
it necessarily involves an employment of the under
standing upon those conditions of the real world which
make the difference, so to speak, between the object as
desired and its realization. ... It is only the fallacy of
taking the pleasure that ensues on satisfaction of a desire
to be the object of the desire, which blinds us to this.'
(T. H. Green, Proleg. to Ethics, §§ 134-5.)

NOTE 6. Page 29.
The freedom of the will is the very nerve of personality;
and the variety of the terminology used by its different
advocates, in different ages, must not be allowed to
obscure the great philosophic tradition in which they
agree. It is a case, indeed, in which the appeal to ' the
authority of philosophy ' is of especial use. For the
freedom of the will is really attacked on a priori grounds,
and defended on grounds of experience ; i. e. it is
attacked as being inconsistent with various natural
Q2

228 NOTES
analogies, or theoretic presumptions, and defended as
being a fact of which we are directly and immediately
aware. Now many a man, when he finds acute thinkers
discrediting a primary verdict of his consciousness, is
apt, with superfluous humility, to think they must be
more clever than they seem, and therefore to defer to
their authority. It is important, therefore, to draw
attention to the fact that the immense weight of philo
sophic authority is beyond question on the other side.
Sahopenhauer, the ablest of modern determinists, has
also appealed to his predecessors in his own support;
and a glance at his list alone should suffice to justify
the above statement. Among the not very numerous
names occur Jeremiah, Shakespeare, and Sir Walter
Scott. 'All the Greek Fathers, as well as the apologists
Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and the Latin
author Minucius Felix, also the theologians of the
Alexandrian school, Clement and Origen, exalt the
avTegov<nop (the autonomy, self-determination) of the
human soul with the freshness of youth and a tincture
of Hellenistic idealism, but also influenced by a practical
Christian interest. . . . Even Irenaeus, although opposed
to speculation, and the more austere Tertullian, strongly
insist upon this self-determination in the use of the
freedom of the will, from the practical and moral point
of view.' (Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctrines, § 57.)
' TZXevdcpov Ka\ avTe£ovcriov eTTolrjixev 6 deos avdpcairov.'
(Ath. ad Autol. ii. 27.)
'Liberum et sui arbitrii et suae potestatis invenio
hominem a Deo institutum.' (Tert. ad Marc. ii. 5.)
' Definimus animam . . . liberam arbitrii.' (Id. De An. 22.)
' Homo rationabilis et secundum hoc similis Deo,

LECTURE II. NOTE 6 229
liber in arbitrio factus, et suae potestatis ipse sibi causa
est' (Irenaeus, iv. 4. 231.)
'Voluntas nostra nee voluntas esset, nisi esset in
nostra potestate. Porro quia est in potestate, libera est
nobis.' (Aug. De lib. arb. iii. 8.)
' Noli mirari, si caeteris per liberam voluntatem utimur,
etiam ipsa libera voluntate per earn ipsam uti nos posse,
ut quodam modo se ipsa utatur voluntas quae utitur
caeteris, sicut se ipsam cognoscit ratio, quae cognoscit
et caetera.' (Id. ib. ii. 51.)
' Arbitrium idem est, quod judicium, ad cujus nutum
ceterae virtutes moventur et obediunt. Judicare autem
illius est, secundum rationem completam, cujus est
discernere inter justum et injustum, et inter proprium
et alienum : nulla autem potentia novit, quid justum et
quid injustum, nisi ilia sola, quae est particeps rationis
et nata est cognoscere summam justitiam, a qua est
regula omnis juris : hoc autem solum est in ea substantia,
quae est ad imaginem Dei, qualis est tantum substantia
rationalis. Nulla enim substantia discernit, quid proprium
et quid alienum, nisi cognoscat seipsam et actum suum
proprium : sed nunquam aliqua potentia seipsam cognoscit
vet supra seipsam reflectitur, quae sit alligata materiae.
Si igitur omnes potentiae sunt alligatae materiae et
substantiae corporali praeter solam rationalem, sola ilia
est, quae potest se super seipsam reflectere ; et ideo ipsa
sola est, in qua est plenum judicium et arbitrium in
discernendo.' (St. Bonav. In lib. ii. dist. xxv. p. in,
qu. by Kleutgen.)
' Nihil in homine sublimius, nihil dignius libero arbitrio
... in quo ad imaginem Dei creatus est. Principatur
omnibus liberi arbitrii ultroneus consensus' (R. de St.
Victor, De Stat. Int. Horn. i. 3. 6.)

230 NOTES
' Natura rationalis, quae est Deo vicinissima, non
solum habet inclinationem in aliquid sicut habent in-
animata, nee solum movens hanc inclinationem quasi
aliunde ei determinatam sicut natura sensibilis ; sed
ultra hoc habet in potestate ipsam inclinationem, ut non
sit ei necessarium inclinari ad appetibile apprehensum,
sed possit inclinari vel non inclinari ; et sic ipsa inclinatio
non determinatur ei ab alio, sed a se ipsa.' (St. Thom.
Aq. De Verit, q. 22, a. 4.)
' Ista est generalis differentia hominis ex una parte,
et omnium aliarum rerum et operationum illarum ex
parte altera, quia homo, in quantum homo operatur ex
libero arbitrio, sed aliae res operantur ex necessitate.'
(Raymond de Sabunde, Theol. Nat. 82.)
' La substance libre se determine par elle-meme et cela
suivant le motif du bien appergu par l'entendement qui
Fincline sans la necessiter.' (Leibniz, TModic'ee, § 288.)
Cf. Shakespeare — 'A free determination
'Twixt right and wrong.' (Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3.)
' In every act of will there is an essential freedom,
of which the mind is conscious. The possession of
a free will is thus one of the elements which go to
constitute man a moral and responsible agent . . . This
truth is revealed to us by immediate consciousness, and
is not to be set aside by any other truth whatever. It
is a first truth equal to the highest, to no one of which
will it ever yield. It cannot be set aside by any other
truth whatever, nor even by any other first truth, and
certainly by no derived truth. Whatever other proposi
tion is true, this is true also, that man's will is free.'
(McCosh, Intuitions of Mind, iv. 308.)

LECTURE II. NOTE 6 231
' I have a real power of resisting my will's stable
spontaneous impulse. I am not its slave ; though
neither am I in such sense its master that I can at once
compel it to desist from its urgent solicitations. I can
exercise " self-government " and " self-restraint." While
my will's spontaneous impulse remains both stable and
powerful, I can, nevertheless, refuse to do what it
prompts. I see plainly the very serious evils which will
befall me, if I blindly follow its solicitation. And I feel
that I can act in a way which is on the one hand
accordant with reason, while on the other hand it is
opposed to desire and impulse. However vehemently
impulse may press me to the unreasonable course, at
that very moment, in the teeth of that very impulse,
I can exercise what we call "anti-impulsive effort.'"
(W. G. Ward, Philosophy of Theism, ii. 7.)
'Though we now most commonly apply the term
"will" to the direction of the conscious self to action,
as opposed to a mere wish not amounting to such
direction, yet the usage has been by no means uniform.
. . . But though we cannot fix the usage of words, it is
clear that the important real distinction is that between
the direction of the self-conscious self to the realization
of an object, its identification of itself with that object,
on the one side, . . . and, on the other side, the mere
solicitations of which a man is conscious, but with none
of which he so identifies himself as to make the soliciting
object his object — the object of his self-seeking — or to
direct himself to its realization. . . . These other "desires"
. . . are influences or tendencies by which the man, the
self, is affected, not a motion proceeding from him.
They tend to move him, but he does not move in them ;
and none of them actually moves him unless the man

232 NOTES
takes it into himself, identifies himself with it, in a way
which wholly alters it from what it was as a mere influ
ence affecting him.' (T. H. Green, Proleg. to Ethics,
§§ 143-4- )
'Far from admitting that the play of our motives
constitutes a necessity and carries off our personality,
we are well aware that they are subject to our estimate,
and that we choose for ourselves. We are not the
theatre, and they the agents ; we are the agents, and
they, the data of the problems which we solve,' (Mar-
tineau, Study of Religion, i. 248.)
' No one can sincerely deem himself incapable by
nature of controlling his impulses and modifying his
acquired character. That he is able to make them the
objects of examination, comparison, and estimate, places
him in a judicial and authoritative attitude towards them,
and would have no meaning if he were not to decide
what influence they should have. The casting vote and
verdict upon the offered motives is with him, and not
with themselves; he is "free" to say "Yes" or "No"
to any of their suggestions : they are the conditions of
the act; he is its agent' (Id. /. c. ii. 229.)
Cf. Riddles of the Sphinx (Appendix), where the
fallacy of deriving will from causation, instead of caus
ation from will is well pointed out; e.g. 'The will is the
original and more definite archetype, of which causation
is a derivative, vaguer and fainter ectype. ... So far
from being an exception to the universal law of causation,
the freedom of the will is the only case in which caus
ation denotes a real fact and is more than a theory.'
(R. of S., p. 462.)
Cf. Maine de Biran, 'L'idee de cause a son type
primitif et unique dans le sentiment du moi, identifie'

LECTURE II. NOTE 7 233
avec celui de I'effort.' (CEuvres Inedites, i. 288.) See
also Chandler, The Spirit of Man, chap. iv.
NOTE 7. Page 38.
Unity of the ego or self. ' Definimus animam dei
flatu natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, sub
stantia simplicem, de suo sapientem, varie procedentem,
liberam arbitrii, accedentiis obnoxiam, per ingenia muta-
bilem, rationalem, dominatricem, divinatricem, ex una
redundantem.' (Tertullian, De Anima, xxii.)
'Hoc modo anima definiri potest juxta suae proprie-
tatem naturae : anima seu animus est spiritus intellectu-
alis, rationalis, semper in motu, semper vivens, bonae
malaeque voluntatis capax. . . . Atque secundum officium
operis sui variis nuncupatur nominibus : anima est, dum
vivificat ; dum contemplatur spiritus est ; dum sensit
sensus est ; dum sapit animus est ; dum intellegit
mens est ; dum discernit ratio est ; dum consentit
voluntas est ; dum recordatur memoria est. Non tamen
haec ita dividentur in substantia, sicut in nominibus ;
quia haec omnia una est anima.' (Alcuin, De An.
Rat. 149.)
'Le moi est la seule unite1 qui nous soit donnee immedia-
tement par la nature ; nous ne la rencontrons dans aucune
des choses que nos facultes observent. Mais 1'entendement
qui la trouve en lui, la met hors de lui par induction, et
d'un certain nombre de choses coexistantes il crfe des
unite's artificielles.' (M. Royer Collard, qu. in Jouffroy's
Reid, iv. 350.)
' The union of individuality and universality in a single
manifestation, with the implication that the individuality
is the essential and permanent element to which the

234 NOTES
universality is almost in the nature of an accident, is
what forms the cardinal point in Personality.' (Wallace,
Proleg. to Hegel, c. xviii. p. 234.)
' A knowledge of sequent states is only possible when
each is accompanied by the " I think " of an identical
apperception. Or, as it has been otherwise expressed,
there is all the difference in the world between succession
and consciousness of succession, between change and
consciousness of change. Mere change, or mere suc
cession, if such a thing were possible, would be, as Kant
points out, first A, then B, then C, each filling out
existence for the time being and constituting its sum,
then vanishing tracelessly to give place to its successor —
to a successor which yet would not be a successor,
seeing that no record of its predecessor would remain.
The change, the succession, the series can only be known
to a consciousness or subject which is not identical with
any one member of the series, but is present equally to
every member, and identical with itself throughout.
Connexion or relatedness of any sort — even Hume's
association — is possible only through the presence of
such a unity to each term of the relation. Hence, while
it is quite true, as Hume said, that when we enter into
what we call ourselves, we cannot point to any particular
perception of self, as wc can point to particular percep
tions of heat or cold, love or hatred, it is as undoubted
that the very condition of all these particular perceptions,
given along with each of them and essential to the
connecting of one with another, is precisely the self
or subject which Hume could not find — which he could
not find because he looked for it not in its proper
character, as the subject or correlate of all perceptions
or objects, but as itself, in some fashion, a perception or

LECTURE II. NOTE 7 235
object added to the other contents of consciousness.'
(Seth, Hegelianism and Personality, i. p. n.)
'It has been required of any theory which starts
without presuppositions and from the basis of experience,
that in the beginning it should speak only of sensations
or ideas, without mentioning the soul to which, it is
said, we hasten without justification to ascribe them.
I should maintain, on the contrary, that such a mode of
setting out involves a wilful departure from that which is
actually given in experience. A mere sensation without
a subject is nowhere to be met with as a fact. ... It is
thus, and thus only, that the sensation is a given fact ;
and we have no right to abstract from its relation to its
subject because this relation is puzzling, and because we
wish to obtain a starting-point which looks more con
venient but is utterly unwarranted by experience. In
saying this I do not intend to repeat the frequent but
exaggerated assertion, that in every single act of feeling
or thinking there is an express consciousness which
regards the sensation or idea simply as states of a self ;
on the contrary, every one is familiar with that absorption
in the content of a sensuous perception which often
makes us entirely forget our personality in view of it.
But then the very fact that we can become aware that
this was the case, presupposes that we afterwards retrieve
what we omitted at first, viz. the recognition that the
perception was in us as our state. Further . . . any
comparison of two ideas, which ends by our finding
their contents like or unlike, presupposes the absolutely
indivisible unity of that which compares them. . . . And
so our whole inner world of thoughts is built up ; not as
a mere collection of manifold ideas, existing with or
after one another, but as a world in which these indi-

236 NOTES
vidual members are held together and arranged by the
relating activity of this single pervading principle. This
then is what we mean by the unity of consciousness ;
and it is this that we regard as the sufficient ground for
assuming an indivisible soul.' (Lotze, Metaphysic, bk.
iii. c. i. § 241.)
For some remarks on the criticism of the 'Self con
tained in Bradley, Appearance and Reality, see J. S.
Mackenzie, Mind, New Series, No. xi.

NOTE 8. Page 43.
yi Personality the ultimate reality. 'There is nothing
else except itself, by which we can understand or explain
personality. . . . The word suggests, not so much the
presence of intelligence, will, &c, but more eminently
the fact of being a centre to which the universe of being
appears in relation, a distinct centre of being, a subject,
whereof reason, affection, will, consciousness itself, are
so many — (not separate parts, but) — several aspects or
activities. . . . Consciousness is not the ultimate fact in
man except when it is tacitly taken as equivalent to
self-consciousness, the realization of his own personality.
Not the fact that he thinks, but the fact that he is that
of which thought-capacity is an aspect or corollary, is
the primary datum of all knowledge and thought. He
thinks, indeed, likes, wills, acts ; but that central fact of
which these all are but so many partial aspects is the fact
that he is a self. . . . Personality, involving, as necessary
qualities of its being, reason, will, love, is incomparably
the highest phenomenon known to experience, and as
such has to be related with whatever is above it and

LECTURE II. NOTE 8 237
below it by any philosophy based on experience.' (R. C.
Moberly, Church Congress, 1891.)
'This self-personality, like all other simple and im
mediate presentations, is indefinable ; but it is so, because
it is superior to definition. It can be analyzed into no
simpler elements, for it is itself the simplest of all ; it
can be made no clearer by description or comparison,
for it is revealed to us in all the clearness of an original
intuition, of which description and comparison can furnish
only faint and partial resemblances,' (Mansel, Prolego
mena Logical)
'The cogito of Descartes is not designed to express
the phenomena of reflection alone, but is co-extensive
with the entire consciousness. This is expressly affirmed
in the Principia, p. 1, § 9. " Cogitationis nomine intelligo
ilia omnia, quae nobis consciis in nobis fiunt, quatenus
eorum in nobis conscientia est. Atque ita non modo
intelligere, velle, imaginari, sed etiam sentire, idem est
hie quod cogitare." The dictum, thus extended, may
perhaps be advantageously modified by disengaging the
essential from the accidental features of consciousness ;
but its main principle remains unshaken ; namely, that
our conception of real existence, as distinguished from
appearance, is derived from, and depends upon, the
distinction between the one conscious subject and the
several objects of which he is conscious. The rejection
of consciousness, as the primary constituent of substantive
existence, constitutes Spinoza's point of departure from
the principles of Descartes, and at the same time, the
fundamental error of his system.' (Mansel, Bampt. Lect.
3, note 25.)
'When Descartes took his cogito ergo sum as alone
certain, and provisionally regarded the existence of the

238 NOTES
world as problematical, he really discovered the essential
and only right starting-point of all philosophy, and at
the same time its true foundation. This foundation is
essentially and inevitably the subjective, the individual
consciousness. For this alone is and remains immediate ;
everything else, whatever it may be, is mediated and
conditioned through it, and is therefore dependent upon
it.' (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, bk. i.
chap, i, E. T.)
See also Momerie, Personality the Beginning and End
of Metaphysics.

NOTE 9. Page 48.
Matter an abstraction, and therefore Materialism an
absurdity. ' The fundamental absurdity of materialism is
that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate
ground of explanation something objective, whether it be
matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it
has taken form, is empirically given — that is to say is
substance, the chemical element with its primary rela
tions. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely
and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature
and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain
them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all
that is objective is already determined as such in manifold
ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing,
and presupposes them ; and consequently it entirely dis
appears if we think the subject away. Thus materialism
is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us
by what is given us indirectly.' (Schopenhauer, World
as Will and Idea, bk. i. chap, vii, E. T.)

LECTURE II. NOTE 9 239
' Realism (materialism) which commends itself to the
crude understanding, by the appearance which it assumes
of being matter-of-fact, really starts from an arbitrary
assumption, and is, therefore, an empty castle in the air,
for it ignores or denies the first of all facts, that all that
we know lies within consciousness. For that the objective
existence of things is conditional through a subject whose
ideas they are, and consequently that the objective world
exists only as idea, is no hypothesis, and still less
a dogma, or even a paradox set up for the sake of dis
cussion; but it is the most certain and the simplest
truth.' (Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea, bk. i.
sup. chap, i, E. T.)
' Let it not be supposed that matter per se, can be
reached by the way of inference. Whatever can be con
ceived inferentially, must be conceived as the object of
possible, though not of actual cognition. But there is no
potential knowledge, in any quarter, of matter per se. . . .
It can be conceived only as the object of no possible
knowledge ; and therefore it cannot be conceived as an
inference, except on the understanding that this inference
is a finding of the contradictory, or" of that which cannot
be conceived on any terms by any intelligence.' (Ferrier's
Institutes of Metaphysics, xii. 10.)
' If it could be admitted that matter and motion had
an existence in themselves, or otherwise than as related to
a consciousness, it would still not be by such matter and
motion, but by the matter and motion which we know,
that the functions of the soul, or anything else, can for
us be explained. Nothing can be known by help of
reference to the unknown. But matter and motion,
just so far as known, consist in, or are determined by,
relations between the objects of that connected con-

240 NOTES
sciousness which we call experience. . . . What then is
the source of these relations . . . the principle of union
which renders them possible ? Clearly it cannot itself
be conditioned by any of the relations which result from
its combining and unifying action. Being that which so
organizes experience that the relations expressed by our
definitions of matter and motion arise therein, it cannot
itself be determined by those relations. It cannot
be a matter or motion.' (T. H. Green,- Proleg. to Ethics,
c i. § 9-)

NOTE 10. Page 52.
Personality a Mystery. Hartmann's Philosophy of
the Unconscious contains much that is very suggestive
on the ' unconscious ' element in human personality, to
which he considers that Leibniz was the first to call
due attention.
' We attribute far too small dimensions to the rich
empire of our Self, if we omit from it the unconscious
region which resembles a great dark continent. The
world which our memory peoples, only reveals in its
revolution, a few luminous points at a time; while its
immense and teeming mass remains in shade . . . We
daily see the conscious passing into unconsciousness;
and take no notice of the bass accompaniment which
our fingers continue to play, while our attention is
directed to fresh musical effects.' (J. P. Richter, Selina,
qu. by Hartmann, Introduction.)
Cf. also Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea,
though both these writers precisely invert the significance
of the facts in question, by attributing them to Divine

LECTURE II. NOTE 10 241
unconsciousness, instead of human limitation. Contrast
the following passage from Lotze : —
' The finite being always works with powers with which
it did not endow itself, and according to laws which it
did not establish — that is, it works by means of a mental
organization which is realized not only in it, but also in
innumerable similar beings. Hence, in reflecting on
self, it may easily seem to it as though there were in
itself some obscure and unknown substance — something
which is in the Ego though it is not the Ego itself, and
to which, as to its subject, the whole personal develop
ment is attached. And hence there arise the questions —
never to be quite silenced — What are we ourselves ?
What is our soul ? What is our self — that obscure being,
incomprehensible to ourselves, that stirs in our feelings
and our passions, and never rises into complete self-
consciousness ? The fact that these questions can arise
shows how far personality is from being developed in us
to the extent which its notion admits and requires. It
can be perfect only in the Infinite Being which, in
surveying all its conditions or actions, never finds any
content of that which it suffers or any law of its
working, the meaning and origin of which are not trans
parently plain to it, and capable of being explained
by reference to its own nature.' (Lotze, Microcosmus,
ii. 9. 4.)
Cf. Newman's Sermon on ' The mysteriousness of our
present being.' (Par. Sermons, vol. iv.)

R

a42 NOTES

LECTURE III
NOTE 11. Page 69.
Positive and Negative Theology. ' 'Ek dvo yap tovtcov olovel
XapaKTrjp tu r/piu eyyiverai tov GeoO ex re rrjs tcov djrep(patv6v-
to>v dpvr)crea>s Kai in rrjs Tasv virapxovTav opoKoyias.' (St. Basil,
torn. i. Adv. Eun. 1. 10.)
This distinction, which afterwards crystallized into
positive and negative (Kara^ariKf) and dircxpaTiKr)) theology,
is constantly emphasized by the fathers and schoolmen ;
and in face of the crude objections which are often
urged against dogma, it is important that its existence
should be borne in mind. Patristic references to the
subject will be found in Thomassin (Theol. Dogm. lib. iv.)
who summarizes their teaching in the following passage : —
' Intexta implicataque sunt inter se haec omnia
mysticae Patrum Theologiae capita ; quod nil proprie de
Deo intelligi aut dici possit, quod sciri possit quod sit,
non quid sit ; quod sciri possit quid non sit, non vero
quid sit ; quod affirmari de eo multa possint, imo
omnia per modum causae, quod omnium causa sit ;
quod aequius sit eadem omnia de eo negare, quod
causa sit longe praecellentissima, cujus vix tenuissi-
mam umbram assequuntur omnes ab ea promanantes
naturae ; quod omnes negationes positionem aliquam
implicent, non negantur enim de Deo quaelibet perfec-
tiones, nisi ex sensu et conscientia perfectionis cujusdam
longe eminentissimae, cujus hae sint extrema quaedam
et fugientia vestigia; et vicissim positiones omnes de
Deo ad negationes tandem resolvi debeant, propterea

LECTURE III. NOTE 12 243
quod nil proprie sciri aut affirmari de divina essentia
potest; quod denique natura divina majore intervallo
superet naturas intellectuales, quam istae corporeas.
Quocirca si corpora omnia corporeasque imagines
amoliri necesse est, ut natura spiritalis mentium intelli-
gatur ; peraeque omnes mentium dotes removendae sunt,
ut summa Dei natura intelligatur. (Thomassin, Theol.
Dogm. lib. iv. 8. 1.)
See also, the ' Testimonies of Theologians ' prefixed to
the fifth edition of Mansel's Bampton Lectures, and id.
lect. iv, notes 18 and 19.
For the ethical dangers to which an abstract use of
the distinction may lead, cf. Dorner on Dionysius
Areopagita. (Person of Christ, ii. 1. pp. 158 et seq.,
E. T.) ' Wer darf ihn nennen ?
Und wer bekennen :
Ich glaub' ihn?
Wer empfinden
Und sich unterwinden,
Zu sagen : ich glaub' ihn nicht ? '
(Goethe, Faust.)
NOTE 12. Page 74.
Personality legitimately predicable of God. The common
objection — that since personality involves the contrast
between an ego and a non-ego, a self and what is out
side self, it cannot be predicated of God without implying
that He is limited by something which is not Himself—
is fully answered by Lotze, who maintains with undoubted
truth, that we can clearly distinguish in thought between
that immediate sense of self-existence which constitutes
R 2

244 NOTES
our Ego or self, and the various forms of the non-ego
which are the conditions of its realization; and can
conceive the latter, which do not constitute, but only
call out the attributes of the Ego, to be necessary merely
on account of our finite nature, and not inseparable from
personality as such. He illustrates this by the analogy
of the way in which a human person, as he gradually
incorporates the results of external stimuli in his memory
and character, becomes in a measure self-sufficing, and
can produce much both of thought and action without
recourse to the external world. Thus, what is ' only
approximately possible for the finite mind, the condi
tioning of its life by itself, takes place without limit
in God, and no contrast of an external world is necessary
for Him.' The function of the non-ego, in short, on
human personality, is not to define its circumference,
but to stimulate its activity. And as any possible view
of God involves His containing His own principle
of activity ; He can unquestionably be conceived as
Personal without any reference beyond Himself. (See
Lotze, Microcosmus, bk. ix. c. 4, and S. Harris, Self-
revelation of God, pp. 174 et seq., 210 et seq.)
At the same time it is obvious that the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity, with the possibilities of Divine
self-determination which it involves, is a further assist
ance towards the conception of a Personality which is
at once Infinite and yet definite. This thought is drawn
out at great length by the obscure but suggestive writer
Victorinus Afer (for whom see Thomassin, Theol. Dogm.
Tract, ii. c. 32, and C. Gore, art. 'Victorinus' in Smith
and Wace, Diet, of Christian Biography).
' Quod est esse, Pater est. Quod species Filius . . .
Quom autem se videt, geminus existit et intelligitur ;

LECTURE III. NOTE 12 245
videns, et quod videtur: ipse qui videt, ipsum quod
videtur ; quia se videt, hoc est igitur foras spectans, foris
genitus vel existens, ut quid sit intelligat. Ergo si foris
est, et sic genitus, Filius . . . omnia ergo filius ut omnia
pater.' (Vict. Afer, Bibl. Patr. iv. 1, pp. 188, 227, qu. by
Thomassin.) Cf. Irenaeus, 'Bene, qui dixit ipsum immensum
Patrem in Filio mensuratum ; mensura enim Patris
Filius, quoniam et capit eum.' (Haer. iv. 2. 2.)
Also Origen : ' YLeTtepao-pevr\v yap elvai Kal Tr)u bvvapiv tov
6eo0 Xeiereov, Kal pr) npocpdaeL eiKpr/plas Tr)v Ttepi.ypatf>r)v ai>Tr}s
TrepiaipereoV lav yap 7; aneipos r) 6eia 8vvapw, dvdyKrj avTr)v pr]de
iuvTr)v voelv.' (De Princip. ii. 9.)
As we follow this train of thought, it becomes increas
ingly apparent that, as Lotze says, ' Perfect personality
is in God alone.'
' It is not that human personality is a realized com
pleteness to which we desire to make our conceptions
of Divine Being correspond, but rather that human
experience gives us indications of what Personality, in
its fuller realization, would mean. Personality that lives
only under material conditions in a world of dying,
personality whose existence and origin are alike wholly
independent of its own thought and will, and which only
by degrees discovers a little as to the conditions of its
own being — whatever rank it may hold in relation to
other present phenomena — is plainly a most limited and
imperfect form of personality. Only, then, the Supreme
Being can attain the full idea of Personality. The ideals
which hover behind and above human experience are
suggestions, are approaches, more or less, towards that.'
(R. C. Moberly, Church Congress, 1891.)
Cf. Augustine : ' Non audemus dicere unam essentiam.

246 NOTES
tres substantias : sed unam essentiam vel substantiam,
tres autem personas. Tamen cum quaeritur quid tres,
magna prorsus inopia humanum laborat eloquium.
Dictum est tamen tres personae, non ut illud diceretur,
sed ne taceretur.' (De Trin. v. 9.)
Also St. Thomas Aquinas : —
' Persona significat id quod est perfectissimum in tota
natura, sive subsistens in rationali natura. Unde, cum
omne illud quod est perfectionis, Deo sit attribuendum,
eo quod ejus essentia continet in se omnem perfectionem,
conveniens est ut hoc nomen, persona, de Deo dicatur,
non tamen eodem modo quo dicitur de creaturis ; sed
excellentiori modo : sicut et alia nomina quae creaturis
a nobis imposita Deo attribuuntur.' (St. Thom. Aq.
Summa, 1. 29. 3.)

NOTE 13. Page 78.
Inadequate conceptions necessarily illusory, but not there
fore delusive. 'What is the theological imagination of
early times ? It is essentially this — that man transports
himself into nature— endues the great objects or powers
of nature with human feeling, human will — and so prays
and worships, and hopes to propitiate, and to obtain
aid, compassion, deliverance. Well, this primitive imagi
nation is in the line of truth. We begin with throwing
a man's thought there into nature ; we purify and exalt
our imaginary being; we gradually release him from
the grosser passions of mankind. We are, in fact,
raising ourselves above the domination of those grosser
passions ; and as we grow wise and just, we make the
good wise and just, beneficent and humane. Meanwhile

LECTURE III. NOTE 13 247
science begins to show us this goodly whole as the
creation of one Divine Artificer. And now we recog
nize, not without heart-beatings, that God is indeed not
man, but that He has been educating man to com
prehend Him in part, and to be in part like Him.
' Are not the Imagination and the Reason here strictly
affiliated? We begin, as it has been boldly and truly
said, by making God in our own image. What else
could we do? Nature had not yet revealed herself to
us in her great unity, as one whole, as the manifestation
of one Power. We make God in our own image, but
by-and-by, as our conceptions on every side enlarge, we
find that it is God who is gradually elevating us by the
expansion of our knowledge into some remote similitude
with Himself. He is making us, in one sense, in His
own image. This correspondence between the human
and the Divine is the key-note of all religion ; and
Imagination, in her apparently wild and random way,
had struck upon the note.
'God is making man in His own image, when He
reveals to him the creation in its true nature, when
He inspires him with a knowledge of the whole, and
a love for the good of the whole. But the first step in
this divine instruction was precisely the bold imagina
tion by which man threw out into nature an image of
himself. The form that imagination threw into the air
was gradually modified and sublimed as man rose in
virtue, and nature was better understood, till at length
it harmonizes with, and merges into, a truth of the
reason. Was man to wait for his God and his religion
till his consciousness, in all other respects, was fully
developed? Or was the revelation of the great truth
to be sudden ? Apparently not. Man dreamt a god

248 NOTES
first. But the dream was sent by the same Power, or
came through the same law, that revealed the after-
truth.' (W. Smith, Thorndale, v. ii. § 6.)
' The whole material world is a beneficent illusion to
the intellect. . . . The very air that we breathe, and
through the medium of which we see, cannot be trusted
to present objects correctly to our sight. Even in the
purest atmosphere the process of refraction must go on,
and the sun must appear each day to rise before its time
and with a slightly distorted orb. If, then, the different
layers of our atmosphere, our medium of sight, have
been so ordained by God that they shall always reveal
to us the truth, yet leave part of the truth distorted or
unrevealed, how is it unlikely that God may likewise
have so constructed the several strata of the medium
of His spiritual Revelation that the truth might be
always more or less refracted and concealed, thus merci
fully making us ever discontented with our modicum of
knowledge, and, as we correct sight by the aid of Reason,
so leading us to correct our interpretation of Revelation
by the aid of Conscience.' (E. A. Abbot, Through
Nature to Christ, v. 73.)
I venture to differ gravely from some of the conclu
sions which Dr. Abbot draws from this principle ; chiefly
in consequence of what I cannot but consider an un-
philosophical view of the relation between what we call
spirit, and matter; but his illustration of the principle
itself and of its true bearing, is essentially important, in
face of the popular tendency to treat the illusions of life
as delusions, and base upon them pessimistic conclusions
like those of Schopenhauer and Hartmann.
(Cf. also F. W. Robertson's Sermon on The Illusive-
ness of Life.)

LECTURE IV. NOTES 14, 15 249

LECTURE IV
NOTE 14. Page 81.
Theistic arguments. The patristic and scholastic argu
ments may be found in Petavius, Thomassin, or Suarez ;
and are examined in their modern reference by Kleutgen,
\Philosophie der Vorzeit; Gratry, Connaissance de Dieu.
Among more recent books may be mentioned, Flint's
Theism (see also the references given in his note xxxvi.
p. 423) ; Purinton's Christian Theism ; Fisher's Grounds
of Theistic and Christian Belief (chaps, i-iii) ; Ward's
Philosophy of Theism ; Martineau's Study of Religion ;
J. Caird's Philosophy of Religion ; Ebrard's Apologetics
(§§ 85-89, E. T.); Knight's Aspects of Theism ; Bruce's
Apologetics ; Strong's Manual of Theology.

NOTE 15. Page 81.
The argument from the consensus gentium. In speak
ing of the common-sense philosophy, Hamilton remarks
that ' the argument from common sense ... is not an
appeal from philosophy to blind feeling. It is only an
appeal from the heretical conclusions of particular philo
sophers, to the catholic principles of all philosophy.'
(Reid's Works, note A. § 3.) And the same may be
said of the Theistic argument from universal consent,
which is in fact a special application, or departmental
section of the same great principle.
The fact discovered by induction that man (with
insignificant exceptions) is everywhere and always re-

250 NOTES
ligious, may be legitimately translated into the inference
that man is instinctively, i. e. naturally or constitutionally,
religious ; in the sense in which St. Thomas says, ' Dei
cognitio nobis innata dicitur esse, in quantum per prin-
cipia nobis innata de facili percipere possumus Deum
esse' (Opusc. 70 super Boeth. de Trin.), and accordingly
we find the argument stated in both these forms. It
would appear to have had influence even with Epicurus.
'Solus enim (Epicurus) vidit, primum esse deos quod
in omnium animis eorum notionem impressisset ipsa
natura. Quae est enim gens aut quod genus hominum
quod non habeat sine doctrina anticipationem quandam
deorum.' (Cic. N. D. qu. by Zeller, Stoics and Epicureans,
c. xviii. note.) And its frequent use by the earlier fathers
is, as Kleutgen points out, of especial significance, from
their wide acquaintance with the pagan life and literature
of their time. Cf. passages quoted in Kleutgen (Philos.
der Vorzeit), and Hagenbach (History of Christian Doc
trine, § 35, E. T.) e. g.
' To Qeos . . . Tvpdyparos 8vo~e£r]yr}Tov ep<pvros tyj <pvo~ei tcdv
avdpimwv 8o'£a.' (Justin, Apol. ii. 6.)
' Udo-tv yap aira^arrXas dvBpamois . . . iveo-raKTai tis dnoppoia
8eiKr).' (Clem. Alex. Coh. vi. 59.) Other of his phrases
are 'eptpacris cpvo-LKr) — ip<pvTa>s Kal dSiSdirrtas.'
'ndo-i yap r) yva>o-is tov elvai 8ebv in airov cpv<riKa>s
iyKaTeo-napTai.' (John Damasc. De Fid. Or.L 1.)
'Quod colimus deus unus est . . . vultis ex animae
ipsius testimonio comprobemus ? quae licet carcere cor
poris pressa . . . quum tamen resipiscit . . . et sanitatem
suam patitur, deum nominat, hoc solo, quia proprie
verus hie unus. . . . O testimonium animae naturaliter
Christianae.' (Tert. Apol. c. 17 ; cf. De Test. An. c. 1.)
Modern investigation, as stated in the text, has im-

LECTURE IV. NOTE 16 251
mensely strengthened the inductive basis of this argu
ment. See the works there quoted ; also Flint's Theism,
note 8, and the references there given.

NOTE 16. Page 84.
The cosmological argument. The kernel of this argu
ment in all its forms, is that we have a positive notion of
unconditioned or independent being. Such being is
a presupposition of all our consciousness ; something
which on reflection we find to lie at the root of our
perceptions as well as our conceptions, and which thus
guarantees its own reality. We discover — we do not
infer — that it exists, and exists as positive and concrete.
This is well stated in the following passages.
' The conception of unconditioned being is given us,
whether delusively or not, by the senses themselves ;
every stable object stands out at first complete in itself,
and every agent acts apparently with a power of its own ;
we learn from observation and experiment that it is
otherwise. The conceptions of unconditioned being
and power are driven out of the material world to find
their place in theology. Take, for illustration, the idea
of Absolute Rest. ... It was a favourite expression of
some of the ancient philosophers, that God "was the
cause of all motion, but partook of none." Modern
philosophers do not use this expression, but no one can
object to it on the ground that we have not the idea of
absolute rest, or that, because it is nowhere in the world,
it may not be exemplified in God. Such ideas as those
of eternal permanence, unconditioned being, self-origin
ating act or power, are found to be misplaced when

252 NOTES
applied to anything in the arena of ever-moving, change
ful and conditioned existence; but show us that there
is a legitimate arena for these ideas (as is done by
demonstrating the necessary pre-existence of the idea of
the whole), and we forthwith transfer them to that arena.'
(William Smith, Thorndale, p. 440.)
' Everything of which his senses cannot perceive
a limit, is to a primitive savage, or to any man in an
early stage of intellectual activity, unlimited or infinite.
Man sees, he sees to a certain point ; and there his eye
sight breaks down. But exactly where his eyesight
breaks down, there presses upon him, whether he likes it
or not, the perception of the unlimited or the infinite.
It may be said that this is not perception, in the ordinary
sense of the word. No more it is, but still less is it
mere reasoning. In perceiving the infinite, we neither
count, nor measure, nor compare, nor name. We know
not what it is, but we know that it is, and we know it,
because we actually feel it and are brought in contact
with it. If it seems too bold to say that man actually
sees the invisible, let us say that he suffers from the
invisible, and this invisible is only a special name for the
infinite. . . . The infinite, therefore, instead of being
merely a late abstraction, is really implied in the earliest
manifestations of our sensuous knowledge.' (Max
Miiller, Hibbert Lectures, i. 37.)
' The true idea of the infinite is not a negation nor
a modification of any other idea. The finite, on the
contrary, is in reality the limitation or modification of
the infinite, nor is it possible, if we reason in good
earnest, to conceive of the finite in any other sense than
as a shadow of the infinite.' (Id. Lect. on Lang. ii.
p. 596. Cf. Natural Religion, p. 125 ; Anthropological

LECTURE IV. NOTE 16 253
Religion, p. 106.) Cf. also McCosh, Intuitions of Mind,
pp. 214-30.
Historically the argument dates from Plato and Aris
totle. It is used by Diodorus of Tarsus (qu. by Hagen-
bach, H.ofD.% 123), by Boethius, and continually by
the schoolmen, e. g.
' Omne . . , quod imperfectum esse dicitur, id diminu-
tione perfecti imperfectum esse perhibetur. Quo fit, ut
si in quolibet genere imperfectum quid esse videatur, in
eo perfectum quoque aliquid esse necesse sit. Etenim
perfectione sublata, unde illud quod imperfectum per
hibetur extiterit, ne fingi quidem potest. Neque enim
a diminutis inconsummatisque natura rerum cepit exor
dium, sed ab integris absolutisque procedens, in haec
extrema atque effoeta dilabitur.' (Boethius, De Consol.
Phil. iii. 10.)
' Quicquid est per aliud, minus est quam illud, per
quod cuncta sunt alia et quod solum est per se : quare
illud, quod est per se, maxime omnium est. Est igitur
unum aliquid, quod solum maxime et summe omnium
est.' (Anselm, Monol. iii.)
'Ex illo esse quod non est ab aeterno nee a semet
ipso ratiocinando colligitur et illud esse quod est a semet
ipso et eo quidem etiam ab aeterno. Nam si nihil
a semet ipso fuisset non esset omnino unde ea existere
potuissent, quae suum esse a semet ipsis non habent
nee habere valent.' (R. de St. Victor, De Trin. 18.)
It is given in three aspects by St. Thom. Aq. : ' Pro
bata per motum dari primum movens, secundo primum
efficiens, tertio semper aliquid fuit quod est necessarium
et non possibile ' (Summ. 1, 2, 3) ; and lies at the root of
all the philosophy of the seventeenth century, e. g.
' Dum in me ipsum mentis aciem converto, non modo

254 NOTES
intelligo me esse rem incompletam et ab alio depen-
dentem remque ad majora et majora sive meliora
indefinite aspirantem, sed simul etiam intelligo ilium
a quo pendeo majora ista omnia non indefinite et
potentia tantum, sed reipsa infinite in se habere atque
ita Deum esse, totaque vis argumenti in eo est quod
agnoscam fieri non posse ut existam talis naturae, qualis
sum, nempe ideam Dei in me habens, nisi re vera Deus
etiam existeret' (Descartes, Medit. 3.)
' Quas absolute format infinitatem exprimunt. . . .
Ideas positivas prius format quam negativas.' (Spinoza,
De Intel. Emend, xv. 108.)
'Tout ce que l'esprit apergoit immddiatement et
directement est ou existe . . . j'apergois imme'diatement
et directement l'infini. Done il est.' (Malebranche,
Entret. d'un phil. chret. p. 365.)
' Qu'est-ce qui a mis l'idde de l'infini dans un sujet si
borne ? . . . Supposons que l'esprit de l'homme est
comme un miroir . . . Quel £tre a pu mettre en nous
V image de l'infini, si l'infini ne fut jamais ? . . . Cette
image de l'infini, e'est le vrai infini dont nous avons la
pensde. . . . S'il n'dtait pas, pourrait-il se graver au fond
de notre esprit ? . . . Dieu, est veritablement en lui-meme
tout ce qu'il y a de reel et de positif dans les esprits, tout
ce qu'il y a de re"el et de positif dans les corps, tout ce
qu'il y a de reel et de positif dans les essences de toutes
les creatures possibles, dont je n'ai point d'ide"e distincte.
II a tout l'etre du corps, sans 6tre bornd au corps ; tout
l'etre de l'esprit, sans etre borne' a l'esprit ; et de meme
des autres essences possibles. II est tellement tout etre,
qu'il a tout l'etre de chacune de ces creatures, mais en
retranchant la borne qui la restreint. Otez toute borne ;
otez toute difference qui resserre l'etre dans les especes ;

LECTURE IV. NOTE 17 255
vous demeurez dans l'universalitd de l'etre, et, par conse
quent, dans la perfection infinie de l'Etre par lui-meme.'
(Fdnelon, Traite de I'Exist de Dieu, i. ii. 53 ; ii. v. 66.)
For the fuller treatment of it, see Gratry, Connaissance de
Dieu, passim. And for its criticism, E. Caird, Philosophy
of Kant.

NOTE 17. Page 93.
The Teleological argument. This argument falls natu
rally into two divisions : use and beauty ; of which
latter Mozley says (Sermon on Nature): 'When the mate
rialist has exhausted himself in efforts to explain utility
in nature, it would appear to be the peculiar office of
beauty to rise up suddenly as a confounding and baffling
extra, which was not even formally provided for in his
scheme. . . . Physical science goes back and back into
nature, but it is the aspect and front of nature which
gives the challenge; and it is a challenge which no
backward train of physical causes can meet.'
It should be noticed that this aesthetic aspect of the
argument from design is that to which the Fathers, with
their evidently intense appreciation of nature, chiefly
appeal, e. g.
' OiSe XPV ™ TOiavTa neipao-dai a7ToheiKVvvai, (pavepas ovcrr;s
¦rrjs Betas irpovoias ?K Te Tr)s oijreas tu>v 6pa>peva>v iravraiv Te^yiKav
Kal o-o(f>S>v iroirjpaTWV, Kal Tav pev rd£ei yivopJvov tuv Se Ta£et
(pavepovphav.' (S. Clem. Alex. Strom, v.)
' Tot) pev yap elvai Qebv Kal Tr)v irdvrav iroirjTtKrjv re Kal
0-vveKTiKr)v dhiav Kal o\jfis 8i8dovca\os Kal 6 tpvo-iKos vopos' r) pev
to'is opapevois Trpoa^aKkovo-a Kal 7r«nryden (caXfis Kal oftevovo-i
Kal aKtvrjras, ha ovtois e'lirai, lavovpevois Kal (pepopevoi? 6 Se &ia

256 NOTES
twv opapivtov Kal Teraypevasv tov dpfflybv tovtcov o-vX\oyi£6pevos.'
(St. Greg. Naz. Orat. 28. n. 6.)
' . . . ecm irakiv Kal dnb twv (fiaivopivav ty)v irepl rov 6fo€
yvaaiv KaTakafielv, ttjs KTio'eajs &o~nep ypdppao~t Sta rrjs Ta£ea>s
Kal dppovlas tov eavnjs Seo-TroTrjV Kal iroirjTr)v o~r]paivovo~qs Kal
fSoao-rjs.' (St. Athan. Ad Gen. 34.)
' 'Ek peyeBovs Kal KaKkovr)s KTiapaTuiv dvaXoyas 6 yeveaiovpybs
BeapeiTai.' (Id. Ib. 44.)
'Deum quippe Patrem ex magnitudine et pulchritudine
creaturarum potest quis intelligere, et a conditionibus
conditor consequenter agnoscitur.' (St. Jerom. In Gal.
3, 2.)
' Quis mundum intuens Deum esse non sentiat ? '
(St. Hilar. In Psalm. 52.)
For further quotations, which might be multiplied in
definitely, see Landriot, Le Christ de la Tradition, and
Hagenbach, H. of Doctrine.
The later schoolmen would seem to have thought more
of the utilitarian aspect of design, and hence laid them
selves open to the attacks of Bacon and Spinoza. Cf.
' Necessitas naturalis inhaerens rebus, qua determinan-
tur ad unum est impressio quaedam Dei dirigentis ad
finem . . , necessitas naturalis creaturarum demonstrat
divinae providentiae gubernationem.' (St. Thorn. Summ.
i. 103, a. 1.)
'Naturalia tendunt in fines determinates. . . . Quum
ergo ipsa non praestituant sibi finem, quia rationem finis
non cognoscunt, oportet quod eis praestituatur finis ab
alio, qui sit naturae institutor. Hie autem est, qui praebet
omnibus esse et est per se necesse esse, quem Deum
dicimus. Non autem posset naturae finem praestituere
nisi intelligeret. Deus igitur est intelligens.' (Id. Conlr.
Gent. i. 43. 6.)

LECTURE IV. NOTE 18 257
The real strength of the argument consists in the way
in which, as pointed out by Mozley, these two absolutely
independent things are inextricably interwoven. 'Na
ture, while she labours at her work, sleeps like a picture;'
a fact which is fatal to dysteleology. For modern
treatments of the question, see Janet, Final Causes;
(E. T.) Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious (whose
array of facts may be safely trusted to refute his infer
ences) ; Le Conte, Evolution ; Mozley, Essay on Design
and Sermon on Nature; Ebrard's Apologetics, §§ 144-155;
Flint (esp. Notes 13-21); J. Croll, The Philosophical
Basis of Evolution (esp. c. 19); Riddles of the Sphinx
(c 7. §§ 17-22).

NOTE 18, Page 102.
The Ontological Argument. This argument, which
might perhaps best be described as the argument from
the reality of thought, must be distinguished from the
cosmological argument which in fact it underlies, but
with which it has often been confused in statement.
Anselm, for instance, runs the two into each other, and
is neither the first nor the best exponent of the Onto
logical argument, with which he is sometimes exclusively
credited. St. Augustine is its best early exponent in his
treatise, De libro arbitrio. The following quotation will
illustrate his reasoning, though it is somewhat diffuse and
difficult to condense.
' Si quid melius quam id quod in mea natura optimum
est (sc. ratio) invenire potuero Deum esse dixerim. . . .
Nullo modo negaveris esse incommutabilem veritatem
haec omnia quae incommutabiliter vera sunt continentem,
S

258 NOTES
quam non possis dicere tuam vel meam, vel cuiusquam
hominis, sed omnibus incommutabilia vera cernentibus,
tanquam miris modis secretum et publicum lumen, praesto
esse ac se praebere communiter : omne autem quod
communiter omnibus ratiocinantibus atque intelligentibus
praesto est, ad ullius eorum proprie naturam pertinere
quis dixerit ? . . . Promiseram autem, si meministi, me
tibi demonstraturum esse aliquid, quod sit mente nostra
atque ratione sublimius. Ecce tibi est ipsa Veritas. . .
Tu autem concesseras, si quid supra mentes nostras esse
monstrarem, Deum te esse confessurum, si adhuc nihil
esset superius. ... Si . . . aliquid est excellentius, ille
potius Deus est : si autem non est, iam ipsa Veritas Deus
est' (Aug. De lib. arb. ii. 14-39.)
Cf. Anselm, ' Cum Veritas quae est in rerum existentia
sit effectus summae veritatis, ipsa quoque causa est
veritatis quae cognitionis est, et eius quae est in propo-
sitione.' (De Ver. ix.)
'Ex superioribus habemus quod ipsa sapientia idem
sit quod divina substantia.' (R. de St. Victor, De Trin.
i. 22.) Cf. the following modern statements :
'The ontological argument — the argument from
thought to being — when relieved of its imperfect syllo
gistic . . . form, is simply the expression of that highest
unity of thought and being, which all knowledge
presupposes as its beginning and seeks as its end.
Idealism, in the sense that all things and beings consti
tute a system of relations which finds its unity in mind,
that every intelligence contains in it the form of the
universe, and that, therefore, all knowledge is but the
discovery of that which is already our own — the awaking
of a self-consciousness, which involves at the same time

LECTURE IV. NOTE 18 259
a -consciousness oi God — this idealism is the real meaning
of the ontological argument, and the only meaning in
which it is defensible.' (E. Caird, Crit. Phil, of Kant,
ii. 13.)
' The real pre-supposition of all knowledge, or the
thought which is the prius of all things, is not the
individual's consciousness of himself as individual, but
a thought or self-consciousness which is beyond all
individual selves, which is the unity of all individual
selves and their objects, of all thinkers and all objects of
thought. Or, to put it differently, when we are com
pelled to think of all existences as relative to thought,
and of thought as prior to all, amongst the existences to
which it is prior is our own individual self. We can
make our individual self, just as much as other things,
the object of thought. We can not only think, but we
can think the individual thinker. We might even say
that, strictly speaking, it is not we that think, but the
universal reason that thinks in us. In other words, in
thinking, we rise to a universal point of view, from which
our individuality is of no more account than the indi
viduality of any other object. Hence, as thinking beings,
we dwell already in a region in which our individual
feelings and opinions, as such, have no absolute worth,
but that which alone has absolute worth is a thought
which does not pertain to us individually, but is the
universal life of all intelligences, or the life of universal,
absolute intelligence.
'What, then, we have thus reached as the true meaning
of the ontological proof is this : 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
S 2

26o NOTES
carries with it the proof of its necessary existence or
reality.' (J. Caird, Introd. to Phil, of Ret. v. § 3.)
Cf. E. Caird, Kant, chap. xiii. and Green's Prolegomena
to Ethics, §§ 26 et seq. ; W. T. Harris, Hegel's Logic,
chap. xxxi. NOTE 19. Page 103.
The Moral Argument. ' It is the circumstance that
man is possessed of a distinct will which suggests the
idea that God is not a mere law or principle, but a
person with a power of voluntary determination. It is
in consequence of his possessing an inherent and posi
tive freedom that man is led to look upon God as also
free, and this in a higher and more absolute sense, inas
much as there can be nothing to lay restraint upon his
liberty. May we not go a step further, and maintain
that the possession of voluntary power and freedom on
the part of man, is not only fitted to suggest, but is
a proof, that the God from whom they proceeded has
a will, and that this will is free.' (McCosh, Intuitions
of the Mind, p. 453.)
This argument is powerfully stated by Cardinal New
man. ' It is obvious that Conscience is the essential principle
and sanction of religion in the mind. Conscience
implies a- relation between the soul and a something
exterior, and that, moreover, superior to itself ; a relation
to an excellence which it does not possess, and to a
tribunal over which it has no power. And since the
more closely this inward monitor is respected and
followed, the clearer, the more exalted, and the more
varied its dictates become, and the standard of excel-

LECTURE IV. NOTE 19 261
lence is ever outstripping, while it guides our obedience,
a moral conviction is thus at length obtained of the
unapproachable nature, as well as the supreme authority
of That, whatever it is, which is the object of the mind's
contemplation. Here, then, at once, we have the ele
ments of a religious system ; for what is religion but the
system of relations existing between us and a Supreme
Power, claiming our habitual obedience.' (Newman's
University Sermons, ii.)
' Conscience ... is something more than a moral
sense ... it always implies what that sense only some
times implies . . . the recognition of a living object,
towards which it is directed. Inanimate things cannot
stir our affections ; these are correlative with persons.
If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed,
are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience,
this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible,
before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we
fear. If, on doing wrong, we feel the same tearful,
broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms us on hurting
a mother ; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same sunny
serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight
which follows on our receiving praise from a father, we
certainly have within us the image of some person, to
whom our love and veneration look, in whose smile we
find our happiness, for whom we yearn, towards whom
we direct our pleadings, in whose anger we are troubled
and waste away. These feelings in us are such as require
for their exciting cause an intelligent being : we are not
affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before
a horse or a dog ; we have no remorse or compunction
on breaking mere human law : yet, so it is, conscience
excites all these painful emotions, confusion, foreboding,

262 NOTES
self-condemnation ; and, on the other hand, it sheds
upon us a deep peace, a sense of security, a resignation,
and a hope, which there is no sensible, no earthly
object to elicit. " The wicked flees, when no one pur-
sueth " : then why does he flee ? whence his terror ?
Who is it that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the
hidden chambers of his heart? If the cause of these
emotions does not belong to this visible world, the
object to which his perception is directed must be
• Supernatural and Divine.' (Grammar of Assent, p. 107.)
It may be interesting to notice that the relation be
tween this and the Teleological argument, of which so
much has been made since Kant, is forcibly expressed
by Raymond of Sabunde, e. g.
' Quoniam homo, in quantum homo, est talis naturae,
quod facit opera sua talia ad quae de natura sua sequitur
meritum vel demeritum, et per consequens debetur eis
praemium vel poena . . . necesse est quod sit aliquis
supra hominem maior, qui possit hoc remunerare vel
punire, et correspondere sibi secundum opera sua. Si
enim non esset aliquis, qui posset hoc facere, sequeretur
quod homo esset frustra et in vanum, quia opera eius
essent frustra, quia ultra alia opera aliarum rerum sunt
praemialia et punibilia, et si nullus sit qui correspondeat
operibus suis praemiando, sequitur, quod totum univer-
sum est frustra et inordinatum, quia omnia inferiora
serviunt homini, et sunt propter hominem, et homo est
pars principalis universi. Et si homo est frustra, se
quitur, quod totum residuum est frustra. Et tamen
videmus ad sensum, quod omnia inferiora usque ad
hominem sunt ordinata, et tamen homo non ordinavit
ilia. Sequitur ergo, quod etiam homo erit ordinatus.
Et etiam sequitur quod aliquis respondebit homini se-

LECTURE IV. NOTE 19 263
cundum eius naturam.' (Raymond de Sabunde, T. Nat.
Tit. 83.)
'Homo in quantum homo habet liberum arbitrium,
per quod facit opera meritoria seu demeritoria. Et
ideo necesse est, quod in natura sit aliquis praemiator
vel punitor: . . . hoc autem clamat totum universum,
cuius homo principalior pars existit : et etiam opera
hominum hoc requirunt, qui volunt habere debitum,
scil. poenum vel praemium.' (Id., Tit. 86.)
In this connexion it is important to recognize the
unquestionable primacy assigned by Kant to the prac
tical reason, as he is sometimes misrepresented on the
point. ' The doctrine of freedom, and the absolute supremacy
of the moral order of the world, or the doctrine of the
primacy of practical reason, rests with Kant upon firm
ground. The moral proof for the existence of God
stands or falls with this doctrine. Regarding the theo
retical demonstrability of God's existence, Kant held
different views at different stages of his philosophical
inquiry. . . . But, however differently he may have
thought on this point — namely, the knowableness of
God — there was not a moment in the course of the
development of his philosophical convictions when he
denied, or even only doubted, the reality of God.'
(Kuno Fischer's Critique of Kant, c. ii. § 3, E. T.)
' We have to remember that the Critique of Pure
Reason, after all, is only the first stage in the process of
Kant's thought, and that its main value is to prepare the
way for the second stage, which is contained in the
Critique of Practical Reason. If knowledge of the ob
jects of the Ideas of reason is denied by Kant to be
possible, it is only to make room for faith. We can

264 NOTES
think the noumenal, and we can believe in it, though we
know only the phenomenal. And this exclusion of know
ledge, if, in one aspect of it, it means the limitation of
our intelligence, as capable only of understanding that
which is given to it through sense, in another aspect of it,
points to the infinity of our nature, as subjects who are
conscious of themselves, and who, as so conscious, are
not subjected to the limitations which they impose on
all the objects they know. The limitation of knowledge
to phenomena is thus the liberation of the noumena,
and especially of the noumenal subject, from the con
ditions to which all phenomenal objects are subjected.
Experience is not a closed circle ; for the very principles
on which it rests point to something that is not included
within it; and alongside of the realm of nature and
necessity, or rather as an opposite counterpart to it,
Kant forthwith proceeds to set up the realm of morality
and freedom.' (E. Caird, Philosophy of Kant, ii. p. 141.
Cf. also i. pp. 228 et seq.)

LECTURE V
NOTE 20. Page 129.
Morality the condition of spiritual insight. ' Teveo-Ba
Sr) irpwTov 8eoeiSr)s ffSj ei peWei BedcraaBai 6e6v Te Kal KaKov.'
(Plotinus, Enn. i. 6. 9.)
'Fideli menti multae undique rationes occurrunt,
multa denique argumenta emergunt' (R. de St. Victor,
De Cont. 3.)
'Vera fides liberat et magnificat ipsum intellectual,

LECTURE VI. NOTE 21 265
quia non constringit eum intra terminos, intra quos ratio
habet eum terminatum.' (R. Lulli, De Con. Dei, x. 36.)
Cf. passages qu. by Hagenbach (H. of Doct. § 35. 7.)
This principle should be too axiomatic to need state
ment, but is in fact continually ignored in popular con
troversy. The following statements from grave reasoners
may, therefore, be worth quoting.
"Tis not, therefore, for want of sufficient evidence
that men disbelieve the great truths of religion; but
plainly for want of integrity, and of dealing ingenuously
and impartially with themselves.' (Clarke, Evidences,
p. xv. Cf. Being and Attributes, ad init.)
' Inattention, among us, to revealed religion, will be
found to imply the same dissolute immoral temper of
mind, as inattention to natural religion.' (Butler, Analogy,
Conclusion.)

LECTURE VI
NOTE 21. Page 155.
Primitive man. The theory of evolution has raised
questions respecting the primitive condition of man,
which had never occurred to earlier thinkers. For
passages bearing on the theological treatment of the
subject, cf. Hagenbach (Hist, of Christian Doct. §§ 61,
175, 245). It will be noticed that some of the earlier
writers are much freer and more philosophical on the
point than the later ; e. g. Origen, ' 'Ex nU Sokovo-i nepl
tov 'Adap eivat (pvcnoXoyel Mavarjs ra irepl Trjs tou dvdpumov
qjio-eas.' (Conf. Cels. iv. 40.) While, among the later,
the unwarranted position referred to in the text is more

266 NOTES
common among the Protestant writers, whose tendency
to exaggerate the effects of the fall, led them also to
exaggerate the elevation of the unfallen state. With
these contrast the language of Bellarmine : ' Non magis
differt status hominis post lapsum Adae a statu eiusdem
in puris naturalibus, quam differt spoliatus a nudo, neque
deterior est humana natura, si culpam originalem de-
trahas, neque magis ignorantia et infirmitate laborat,
quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibus condita.'
(De Gratia, torn. iv. c. 2, Pr. 4.)
NOTE 22. Page 162.
Natural Religion. (Christianity) 'is a religion in ad
dition to the religion of nature; it does not supersede
or contradict it; it recognizes and depends on it, and
that of necessity: for how possibly can it prove its
claims except by an appeal to what men have already ?
be it ever so miraculous, it cannot dispense with nature ;
this would be to cut the ground from under it ; for what
would be the worth of evidence in favour of a revelation
which denied the authority of that system of thought,
and those methods of reasoning, out of which those
evidences necessarily grew ? ' (Newman's Grammar of
Assent, p. 383.)
Cf. Augustine. ' Res ipsa quae nunc Christiana religio
nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nee defuit ab initio
generis humani, quousque ipse Christus veniret in
carnem, unde vera religio quae iam erat coepit appellari
Christiana.' (Retract, i. 12. 3.)
The translation of the Sacred Books of the East (ed.
M. Miiller) will enable the ordinary reader to form
a fairer estimate of the oriental religions— their weakness,

LECTURE VII. NOTE 23 267
and their strength — than can possibly be gathered from
any manual or summary, or collection of elegant extracts.
Cf. also the various Hibbert and Gifford Lectures,
Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites (and, in con
nexion with the latter, Fraser's Golden Bough). For
a Bibliography, see Tiele's Outlines, and Schrader's
Manual. For a comparison between Christianity and other re
ligions, see Hardwick, Christ and other Masters (which
would require modifications in the present day) ; Words
worth, Bampton Lectures, The One Religion ; Copleston,
Buddhism in Ceylon.

LECTURE VII
NOTE 23. Page 172.
Ethnic Inspiration. For numerous passages illustrat
ing the Indian and Greek views 01 Inspiration, see Muir,
Sanskrit Texts, vol. iii. c. 2. The principle upon which
the recognition of such inspiration rests, is stated by
Cardinal Newman in the following passage :
' When religion of some sort is said to be natural, it
is not meant that any religious system has been actually
traced out by unaided Reason. We know of no such
system, because we know of no time or country in which
human Reason was unaided. Scripture informs us that
revelations were granted to the first fathers of our race,
concerning the nature of God and man's duty to Him ;

268 NOTES
and scarcely a people can be named, among whom there
are not traditions, not only of the existence of powers
exterior to this visible world, but also of their actual
interference with the course of nature, followed up by
religious communications to mankind from them. The
Creator has never left Himself without such witness as
might anticipate the conclusions of Reason, and support
a wavering conscience and perplexed faith. No people
(to speak in general terms) has been denied a revelation
from God, though but a portion of the world has enjoyed
an authenticated revelation.' (Newman's University Ser
mons, ii.)
Cf. Bede : ' In quantum vero vel gustum aliquem
sapientiae cuiuslibet vel virtutis imaginem habebant
totum hoc desuper acceperunt; non solum munere
primae conditionis, verum etiam quotidiana eius gratia,
qui creaturam suam nee se deserentem deserens, dona
sua, prout ipse iudicaverit hominibus et magna magnis
et parva largitur parvis.' (Exp. in Cant. Cant., Opp.
ix. 197.)

LECTURE VIII
NOTE 24. Page 192.
The Incarnation. It has been impossible, within the
compass of the present lectures, to do more than indicate
in outline the relation of the Incarnation to their general
argument. But this deficiency may be more than sup
plemented by reference to the treatment of the subject
in the Bampton Lectures for 1891. (C. Gore, The Lncar-
nation.)

LECTURE VIII. NOTE 24 269
The following passage contains a concise summary of
the argumentative position :
'The evidence for the authority of Jesus Christ is
essentially of a cumulative character ; ... we decline to
consider any portion of it in entire isolation from the
rest. It is true that when He entered on His work, and
made His first appeal to one nation, He based that
appeal very largely on the Scriptures of the earlier Dis
pensation. But even then His fulfilling of the Scriptures,
His concentration in His Person, and His teaching of
every ray which had enlightened His Jewish ancestors,
did not constitute more than a small portion of the
evidence which convinced His first followers ; the appeal
of those first followers to the Gentile world of their day
travelled far beyond the narrower region of His fulfil
ment of the earlier Dispensation ; the Roman world
submitted itself to Him on the ground of the correspon
dence of His work, of the appeal of His Death and
Resurrection, of the exact adaptation of His teaching
to primary needs of human nature, independent alto
gether of the Jewish Scriptures ; and our own belief in
Him and His Religion appeals, again, to what I would
call with all reverence, His actual, historical contribution
to the advance of human progress, to the permanence of
all that He has done for human life under aspects the
most varied, individual, national, world-wide; to His
ability tested through the centuries, to supply every need
of humanity — whether those of individual souls in the
spiritual wants of their inmost being, or those of society
at large, on the highest scale of its organization. It is
by taking all these things into account that we arrive at
our belief in His Person.' (Churchmen and the Higher
Criticism : a Charge, by L. G. Mylne, Bishop of Bom
bay : Bombay, 1893.)

270 NOTES

NOTE 25. Page 193.
The supernatural dignity of man. ' The earth is a point
not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that
heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of
flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That
surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot
persuade me that I have any. . . . Whilst I study to find
how I am a microcosm or little body, I find myself
something more than the great. There is surely a piece
of divinity in us ; something that was before the elements,
and pays no homage to the sun. Nature tells me I am
the image of God, as well as scripture.' (Sir Thomas
Browne, Ret. Med.)
Cf. Pascal. ' Tous les corps, le firmament, les etoiles,
la terre et les royaumes, ne valent pas le moindre des
esprits, car il connoit tout cela, et soi-meme ; et le corps,
rien. Et tous les corps, et tous les esprits ensemble,
et toutes leurs productions, ne valent pas le moindre
mouvement de charity, car elle est d'un ordre infini-
ment plus elevd. De tous les corps ensemble on ne
sauroit tirer la moindre pensee : cela est impossible, et
d'un autre ordre. Tous les corps et les esprits ensemble
ne sauroient produire un mouvement de vraie charite :
cela est impossible, et d'un autre ordre tout surnaturel.'
(Pensees, ii. 10. 1.) Cf. Browning (Paracelsus, pp. 1.85-
192.) 'All tended to mankind,
And, man produced, all has its end thus far :
But in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God. Pronostics told
Man's near approach; so in man's self arise

LECTURE VIII. NOTE 26 271
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendour ever on before
In that eternal circle life pursues.'
Such statements may be called rhetorical, but rhetoric
in this case merely means the emotional statement of
a rational conviction. This conviction, as argued in
the text, is the necessary presupposition of the Incarna
tion. ' He is worthy that Thou shouldest do this for
him'; and was so regarded by the Fathers, who con
tinually emphasize the thought of man being created in
the image and likeness of God. Cf. passages in Hagen
bach (H. ofD. § 56).
NOTE 26. Page 211.
The conceptions of Divine and human personality vary
together. ' Belief in the personality of man and belief in
the personality of God stand or fall together. A glance
at the history of religion would suggest that these two
beliefs are for some reason inseparable. Where faith in
the personality of God is weak, or is altogether wanting,
as in the case of the pantheistic religions of the East,
the perception which men have of their own personality
is found to be, in an equal degree, indistinct. The
feeling of individuality is dormant. The soul indolently
ascribes to itself a merely phenomenal being. It con
ceives of itself as appearing for a moment, like a wavelet
on the ocean, to vanish again in the all-ingulfing essence
whence it emerged. Recent philosophical theories which
substitute matter, or an " Unknowable," for the self-ccn-
scious Deity, likewise dissipate the personality of man as
ordinarily conceived. If they deny that God is a Spirit,

272 NOTES
they deny with equal emphasis that man is a spirit. The
pantheistic and atheistic schemes are in this respect con
sistent in their logic ; but of man's perception of his own
personal attributes, arises the belief in a personal God.
On this fact of our own personality the validity of the
arguments for theism depends.' (G. P. Fisher, The
Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. i.)

NOTE 27. Page 214.
Psychological illustrations of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Numerous physical illustrations of the Trinity are em
ployed by the Fathers (for which see Thomassin, Theol.
Dogm., Tract ii. c. 26), but they can never be pressed,
without risk of passing into Sabellianism ; whereas the
psychological illustrations, which are obviously the more
fundamental, have no such attendant danger. Cf. pas
sages quoted in Hagenbach (H. of C. D., §§ 42, 43), to
which the following may be added.
'"SlajTep de tov Adyov ex t£>v Kaff r)pas dvat\oyiKa>s cVl rrjs
vTrepKeipevj)s eyvapev (pia-eas, Kara tow airbv Tprmov Kal ttj nepl
tov Hvevparos evvoia irpoo-axBrjo-opeBa crKids nvas Kal ptprjpaTa
Trjs dcppdcTTOv dvvdpecos iv rfj Kaff rjpds Beapovvres (pio-ei.'
(Greg. Nys. Oral. Cat. 2.)
' Ante omnia Deus erat solus . . . quia nihil aliud ex-
trinsecus praeter ilium. Ceterum ne tunc quidem solus ;
habebat enim secum quam habebat in semetipso rationem,
suam scilicet. . . . Quae ratio sensus ipsius est. Hanc
Graeci Xo'yoi/ dicunt, quo vocabulo etiam sermonem ap-
pellamus. . . . Idque quo facilius intellegas ex teipso
ante recognosce. . . . Vide cum tacitus tecum ipse con-
grederis ratione, hoc ipsum agi intra te, occurrente ea
tibi cum sermone ad omnem cogitatus tui motum, ad

LECTURE VIII. NOTE 27 273
omnem sensus tui pulsum. ... Ita secundus quodam-
modo in te est sermo, per quem loqueris cogitando, et
per quem cogitas loquendo ; ipse sermo alius est.
Quanto ergo plenius hoc agitur in Deo . . . quod habeat
in se etiam tacendo rationem, et in ratione sermonem ?
. . . quem secundum a se faceret agitando intra se.'
(Tert Adv. Prax. c. v.)
'Nos quidem in nobis, tametsi non aequalem, imo
valde longeque distantem, neque coaeternum, et quo
brevius totum dicitur, non eiusdem substantiae, cuius
est Deus, tamen qua Deo nihil sit in rebus ab eo factis
natura propinquius, imaginem Dei, hoc est summae
illius Trinitatis, agnoscimus, adhuc reformatione per-
ficiendum, ut sit etiam similitudine proxima. Nam et
sumus, et nos esse novimus, et id (nostrum) esse ac
nosse diligimus. In his autem tribus quae dixi, nulla
nos falsitas verisimilis turbat Non enim ea, sicut ilia
quae foris sunt, ullo sensu corporis tangimus, velut colores
videndo, sonos audiendo, odores olfaciendo, sapores gus-
tando, dura et mollia contrectando sentimus, quorum
sensibilium etiam imagines eis simillimas, nee iam cor-
poreas, cogitatione versamus, memoria tenemus, et per
ipsas in istorum desideria concitamur: sed sine ulla
phantasiarum vel phantasmatum imaginatione ludifica-
toria, mihi esse me, idque nosse et amare certissimum
est' (Aug. De Civ. Dei, xi. 26. Cf. De Trin. L. ix.)
' Habet anima in sua natura imaginem sanctae Trini
tatis in eo quod intelligentiam, voluntatem et memoriam
habet. Una est enim anima quae mens dicitur, una
vita, et una substantia, quae haec tria habet in se : sed
haec tria non sunt tres vitae; sed una vita; nee tres
mentes sed una mens : consequenter utique nee tres
substantiae sunt, sed una substantia ... in his tribus
T

274 NOTES
unitas quaedam est : intelligo me intelligere, velle, et
meminisse ; et volo me intelligere et meminisse et velle ;
et memini me intelligere et velle et meminisse.' (Alcuin,
De An. Rat. 147.)
' Habet igitur mens rationalis cum se cogitando in-
telligit, secum imaginem suam ex se natam, id est cogi-
tationem sui ad suam similitudinem, quasi sua impressione
formatam, quam vis ipsa se a sua imagine non nisi ratione
sola separare possit, quae imago eius verbum eius est.
Hoc itaque modo, quis neget summam sapientiam, cum
se dicendo intelligit, gignere consubstantialem sibi simi
litudinem suam, id est verbum suum ? Quod verbum,
licet de re tarn singulariter eminenti proprie aliquid
satis convenienter dici non possit, non tamen incon-
venienter sicut similitudo, ita et imago, et figura et
character eius dici potest' (Anselm, Monol. c. xxxiii.)

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