PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

BOOKS BY GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL.D.

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 THE

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
A CRITICAL AND SPECULATIVE TREATISE OF MAN'S
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND DEVELOPMENT
IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE •

AND REFLECTIVE THINKING

NY
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL.D.

FOBMBBLY PBOFESSOB OF PHILOSOPHY IN YALB UNIVEBSITY

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VOLUME II

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1909
 THE

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CiONS
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.* : Copyright'^ 1905,

S^ChABLES "SCBIBNEB'S SONS

Published, October, 1905.

 "

1-4-

"All living Things are indebted to Thy goodness^

. . . . It is Thou' alone, O Lord, who art the^
true Parent of all thingsV" * Prayer x"o Shang Ti.

"Among themselves all things

Have order; and from hence the form, which makes
The Universe resemble God." * * "
Dante.

"Is not God i' the world His power first made?
Is not His love at issue still with sin,
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?" Browning.

| cen"i •-; -«•"-.

 CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

PART IV
GOD: THE OBJECT OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
CHAPTER XXVI
importance of the conception
Page
The Change View
in Point of —
The Conception of Divine Being Its —
Influence on Morals —
and on Social and Political Life —
Positive
Content of the Christian Conception —
Influence on Philosophical
Development —
God, the Central Problem of Religion —
Indiffer-
entism, Syncretism, and Agnosticism —
The Removal of Prejudice 3

CHAPTER XXVII
NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE
The Two Problems involved —
Knowledge and Faith distinguished —
Conception of the "Unknowable" —
Theory of Rational Intuition
— The "Vision of God" —
The so-called "God-Consciousness" —
The Claim of Demonstration —
The Experience of the Race An- —
thropomorphism again 21

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED
Use of the — The Ontological Argument — Anselm and
Word "Proof"
Descartes — The Cosmological Argument — The Conception of a
World-Ground — The Teleological Argument — Conception of Uni-
versal Order — The Moral Argument — The Argument from Human
Ideals 45

CHAPTER XXIX
THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED
Necessity for Criticism —
The Nature of the Task —
Further as to the
Conception of a World-Ground —
The Unity of Reality Force—
expressive of Will —
Immanence of Mind —
Will and Mind as Con-
scious —
Negative Conception of the Unconscious —
Possibility of
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
an Absolute Self-Consciousness — Bearing of the Categories — The
Personal Absolute — God as Ethical Being — Conception of Per-
sonal Life 66

CHAPTER XXX
GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE
Purely Negative Notions Valueless —
The Absolute not the Unrelated
— The Infinite not the Unknowable —
Adjective Nature of the
Terms —
Quantitative Meaning inapplicable to Persons —
The Ab-
soluteness of Self-hood — Ideal Being of the World-Ground . . . 107

CHAPTER XXXI
THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES
Meaning of the Term —
Conception of Omnipotence —
of Omnipresence
— and of Eternity —
The Divine Omniscience —
Nature of Time-
Consciousness —
Self-Consciousness and Other-Consciousness of God
— The Unity of God 122

CHAPTER XXXII
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
— The Problem of
Deficiencies in the Conception of Personal Absolute
Evil unsolvable— Estimates Happiness and Misery — Estimates
of
of Moral Evil — Pain as Means of Development — The Defects of
the "Medicinal Theory" — Problem of Evil as a Theodicy — Help
from the Theory of Development — The Answer of Ethical Dualism
— The Answer Monistic Philosophy — Brahmanism and Bud-
of
dhism — The Christian Answer — The Individual and the World . 146

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES
God — The Divine Justice — Belief
as Ethical Spirit Perfectionin its
— The Attribute of Goodness — Christian Conception of God —
The Stoical Conception — The Logos Doctrine — Religious Pessi-
mism — Perfection of the Divine Moral Attributes 177

CHAPTER XXXIV
HOLINESS AND PERFECTION OF GOD

Unethical Conceptions of Holiness —

The Ideal of Ethics — Jesus' Con-
ception of Purity —
Defects of Historical Christianity — The Divine
Wisdom — Union of the Metaphysical Predicates and Moral At-
tributes — God as the Ideal -Real — Absolute Will as perfect Good-
Will 200
 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix

PART V
GOD AND THE WORLD
CHAPTER XXXV
the theistic position
Page
Reality of the Divine Relations— The Concept of Relation — The Rela-
tions of Dependence and of Manifestation — The Figurative Speech
of Theism — The Conflict between Theism and Science — The Rec-
onciliation of Science and Theology — The two Forms of Denial . 221

CHAPTER XXXVI
ATHEISM AND PANTHEISM

The Denial of Agnosticism —

Religious and anti-Religious Agnosticism
— The Content of Truth —
Materialism —
The modern Conception
of Mechanism —
Failure of Mechanism as a Principle —
A Develop-
ing Mechanism —
The Position of Pantheism —
The Conception of
Identification —
The Truth of Pantheism —
The Supremacy of Per-
sonal Being 237

CHAPTER XXXVII
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL

Complexity of theTerms employed —

The Existing Conceptions —
Distinction between the Two —
The Standpoint of Science —
Limits
to the Conception of Nature —
Deficiencies of the Naturalistic View
— God as the Supernatural —
Immanency and Transcendency —
Jesus' View of Nature —
Reconciliation of the two Conceptions —
Return to the Conception of A Personal Absolute 264

CHAPTER XXXVIII
THEISM AND EVOLUTION

The Tenet of — The Modern Conflict — The Two Forms of

Evolution
the Theory — Materialistic Evolution — Evolution as Descriptive
History — The Metaphysical Assumptions of Science — Reconcilia-
tion of Science and Faith — The Conception of Development as
applied to Divine Being — God as Personal Absolute and Ethical
Spirit 290
x TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER XXXDC

god as creator and preserver

Page
Early Beliefs in "Creator Gods" — Ancient — Special
Cosmogonies
Relation of Man — God as Creator, Upholder, and Destroyer — The
Old-Testament View — The Doctrine the Logos — Time and
of
Manner of Creation — Creation and Development — Idealism and
Realism — Progressive Making of the "Over-Man" 314

CHAPTER XL
GOD AS MORAL RULER AND PROVIDENCE

Necessity for Ethical Conceptions — Absolute and Finite Wills —

The
—
Fact of related Self- Activity Conception of God as Moral Ruler
— Nature of a Moral Unity — Theanthropic and Theocratic Re-
ligions— Deity as perfect Moral Reason — Perfection of the Divine
Rule — Method of the Divine Rule — God in Nature and Human
Society — Doctrine of Universal Providence — The Supernatural
in Nature —Corollaries as to the Place of Prayer 344

CHAPTER XLI
GOD AS REDEEMER

— Need of Redemption — The Conflict Human

Religions of Salvation in
Nature — Conception of a Mediator — Doctrines of Hinduism and
Buddhism — Divine Redemption Judaism — Christian View of
in
God as Redeemer — Significance of Jesus' Death — Reality of the
Divine Redemption — The Witness of Experience — The New Life
in God 382

CHAPTER XLH
REVELATION AND INSPIRATION

Religion as Revelation — Source, Subject, and Object of Revelation —

Its — The Psychology of Revelation — Means
Historical Nature
of Revelation — Significance of Human Speech — Inspiration de-
fined — A Relation between Persons — The Men of Revelation —
Christianity as Divine Self-Revealing — The Doctrine of Inspired
Scriptures — The Miracle as Means of Revelation — False and
True Conceptions of the Miraculous — Place of the Miraculous —
The Modus Operandi of Revelation and Inspiration — Religion as
the "Psychic Uplift" of the Race 410
 TABLE OF CONTENTS xi

PART VI
THE DESTINY OF MAN
CHAPTER XLIII

THE FUTURE OP RELIGION

Page
The two Forms Optimism
of —
Religion and Race-Culture —
Office of
the Christian Church —
"The Irreligion of the Future" —
The Per-
manence of Essentials —
Universality and Absoluteness of Chris-
tianity —The Rival Religions —
The Final Testing 453

CHAPTER XLIV
IMMORTALITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Belief in Existence after — Causes for this Belief — The "On-
Death
tological Consciousness" again— Connection with Ancestor-Wor-
ship — Various Conceptions of the Soul — Lower Historical Forms
of the Belief — The Doctrine of Karma — Egyptian Notions —
Other Ancient Views — Greek Doctrine of Man — The Early He-
brew Conceptions — Old-Testament Doctrine — Later Judaism —
The Doctrine of Jesus — and of the New-Testament — Later Chris-
tian Developments 479

CHAPTER XLV
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL [cONTrOTTED]
Naturalness of the Belief in Immortality — Separability of the Soul
from the Body — The two Ways Believing — Modern Objections
of
to the Doctrine — The Objections Answered — Conclusion from
the Biological Standpoint — The Primacy of Psychical Life — The
Problem of Developed Selfhood — Arguments against Natural In-
destructibility — Reality of the Self — Value of the Self — The
Positive Arguments — Significance of the Individual — The Guar-
anty of the Moral Being of God — The Witness Religious Ex-
of
perience — The Assurance of the Christian Hope — Concluding
Deductions 516

CHAPTER XLVI
THE FUTURE OF THE RACE
The Conflict of Different Religions— The Christian Conception of the
Divine Kingdom — The Conception of the Church Universal — Tb*
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Uncertainties of Scientific Prediction — The Social Ideal — Rising
Spirituality of the Race — The Triumph of the Divine Kingdom . 550

CHAPTER XLVII

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Man as potential Son of God — Reality of the Religious Ideal — The

Being of the World as perfect Ethical Spirit — The Harmony of
the Totality of Spiritual Experience 567
 PAET IV
GOD THE OBJECT OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
:
 "Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall see God." Jesus.

" Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory, and the honor
and the power; for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they
were, and were created." Apocalypse.

"/ will pass then beyond this power of my nature also, rising by degrees
unto Him who made me ... . Yea, I will pass beyond it, that I may approach
unto Thee, sweet Light." Augustine.

"Whom shall we worship but Him, who is the sole King of the seeing and
"
living creation f Rig Veda.

"There is only one thing needful; to know God." Ahiel.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
part iv ;

GOD: THE OBJECT OF RELIGION'S FAITH

CHAPTER XX Sri'-* 1

IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION

A certain obvious change in the point of view and in the

method of discussion now becomes necessary in order to make
further progress toward a systematic and satisfactory treatment
of the more important problems of the philosophy of religion.

The method phenomenology of man's religious experience

of the
is comparative, historical, and psychological. But the method
for determining the truth of these phenomena is critical, syn-
thetic, speculative. As was explained with sufficient fullness in
the last chapter, it is therefore proposed from this point onward
to subject the religious conceptions, beliefs, sentiments, and
practices which humanity has cherished —especially in the
form which they have attained as the result of their highest
development in the past — to the judgment of that supreme
court which universal reason provides.
It is fitting, then, that we should remind ourselves anew of
certain rights which may be considered as already guaranteed,
and not less of certain duties which are both enjoined and de-
manded. Among the former the chief and most comprehen-
sive is the right of the religious experience of the race to fair
4 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

and sympathetic treatment from the rational points of view

and by the method of systematic philosophy. Such treatment
guards the conclusions of historical and psychological study
against the more general objections of Agnosticism and Posi-
tivism. As to the abstract 'possibility of establishing any truth
whatever respecting the realities of man's religious knowledge
or religious faith., the philosophy of religion, is under no obli-

gation to argue. This important aspect of human experience

has the same rights as any other to be defended by the critical
studies of episteinology and metaphysics. And we cannot
keep on raising the question over and over again, whether man
can know anything worthy of being called "real," in the fullest
possible ontologicai signification- of that- very misty and much
abused word. What 'we "have said in other works, and in cer-
tain chapters of this treatise on religion, 1
must suffice to explain
our confidence in the possibility of attaining truth about God
and about man's relations to Him, through the complex but
disciplined activities of man's rational nature.
As to any more definite conception of the Object of religious
faith, whether framed from the point of view held by some one
of the world's great religions or by some one of its various
schools of religious philosophy, the case is by no means the
same. The appropriate and the supremely difficult task of
the critical and speculative method of philosophy is directed
toward every such conception ; the special purpose of the
philosophy of religion is accomplished when some one of them
all is seen to unite most harmoniously and perfectly with that
conception of the Being of the World which is particularly
favored by modern science and reflective thinking. For ex-
ample, doubt, or the agnostic position toward the problem of
attributing certain moral characteristics to this Being, and,
indeed, toward the effort to unite such conceptions as those of

1 Especially in the "Philosophy of Knowledge" (chap. XVIII and XXI),

and "A Theory of Reality" (chap. XVIII and XIX); and in chapters
XII-XIV of Volume I of this work.
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 5

" the Infinite," " the Absolute," with the fundamental attri-
butions of an ethically perfect Personal Spirit, must be met
by argument and as far as possible removed. It is, then, with
the faith of reason in itself, and yet with a faith which is

chastened by a knowledge of its own limitations, that all fur-

ther approach should be made to the discussion of the problems

before us.
Among the several investigations which the phenomena of
man's religious life and development imperatively demand,
that necessary for validating the religious doctrine of the Divine
Being stands preeminent. Is the conception of God as Abso-
lute and also perfect Ethical Spirit able to maintain itself in the

modern science and modern philosophy ? It is well

full light of

to enter upon this investigation with some preliminary apprecia-

tion of its importance for a system of religious philosophy.

The importance of the conception of Divine Being, both for
thought and for life, follows from the very nature of religion
itself. This is true whether we consider religion in its aspect
of belief, or of feeling, or of practice. It is also true if we
consider any particular religion from the point of view of its

development and of the reciprocal reactions between it and the

other related factors of an advancing race-culture. " Now the
character of a religion," says Tiele, " and, therefore, also the
1

direction of its development, depend chiefly upon the concep-

tion which people form of their god or gods, their conception
of what the deity is toward man, and conversely of man's re-
lation to the deity, and of the relation of God, and therefore of
God-serving man also, to the world of phenomena." In the
lower, and even in the lowest forms of religious belief, this in-
timate and influential connection is manifest. Wherever the
mysterious, bodeful, and harmful side of nature is deified, and
her superhuman powers are regarded as embodied in poisonous
serpents and ravenous beasts, in destructive storm, or blight
on the crops, or in diseases of men and animals, there we have
1 Elements of the Science of Religion, First Series, p. 752.
 ;

6 PHILOSOPHY 01^ RELIGION

superstitious and magical propitiatory rites, to restrict human

life in its activities by manifold tabus and to make it miserable
with sordid fears. Darkness and cruelty among men correspond
to the dark and cruel conceptions of the superhuman powers
which are over man. When, however, the conception of these
superhuman powers is more helpful and kindly, the beneficent
effect upon the entire life, even of savage or half-civilized

man, through this channel of religious belief is most obvious.

Among peoples who have attained a relatively high degree
of artistic and scientific development, the same important
influence from the conception which the multitude entertain of
their gods, or of their supreme God, remains in force. This
might be illustrated by a comparison of the attitude of mind
toward life, and of the social customs, prevalent in Japan
to-day, with those of the South-Sea Islands or of portions
of Central or Southern Africa. In the former country the
early conception of the gods answering to the word Kami,
while not of a lofty spiritual and moral character, was of beings
that awakened a certain respect, and kindly sentiments of a
mysterious and quasi-tssthetical quality. Our previous re-

searches have shown how in nominally Christian lands, great

multitudes of the people still cling to these more primitive
superstitions in their conception of the superhuman powers
and wa}r are their lives profoundly influenced.
in this
Special instances might be noticed to illustrate the influence
of the conception of Divine Being upon the morals of sex and
of eating and drinking ;
— for example, the effect of the ideas
respecting Astarte among Phoenicians and Aphrodite
the
"
among the Greeks ; or of phallic worship in " Old Japan
and of the worship of the lingam in India to-day. The
" liquor-cult " among the early Aryan peoples was undoubt-
edly more truly religious and less degrading morally than our
modern ideas on such subjects might lead us to suppose ; but
we can scarcely believe the worship of the intoxicating juice
of the Soma-plant as " wisest in understanding," and as a
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 7

guide " along the straightest pathway," to have been devoid

of baleful influence. As to the somewhat similar cult of

Bacchus among the Greeks there is even less doubt.

The influence of the conception of Divine Being upon all

the religious and social life of any people is illustrated in a

notable way by the worship of the greater nature-gods, — es-

pecially of the Sun. Among the early Aryans, where this

luminary was conceived of as the deva, or divine One, the
shining god par excellence, the god of life who bestows chil-

dren, " the active force, the power that wakens, arouses, en-
livens," and the giver of all good things to mortals and to
gods, sun-worship contributed a variety of uplifting spiritual
impulses to the entire life of the people. Thus he is prayed
to as a purifying force :
" Do thou from that (viz., foolishness
and human insolence), O Savitar, make us here sinless." So
in Egypt, the sun, deified as the god of light, became a sym-
bol, and to a certain extent a source, of moral illumination
and purifying. Among the unreflecting but warlike and cruel
Aztecs, however, the worship of the sun, regarded as lord of
life and death, bore quite different fruitage. It was to their

sacrifices to the sun that they attributed their successes in war

and the prosperity of the empire. Never did the " imperialis-

tic " conception of the Supreme Being among a warlike and

cruel race bear witness more unmistakably to its own potently
bad influence over social and political affairs. They " pushed

the superstitious practice of human sacrifice to absolute

frenzy." In " the abode " of this god the Spaniards could
count 136,000 symmetrically piled skulls of the victims sac-
rificed since the founding of the sanctuary. But even this

number is small compared with that which might be counted

on the battle-fields on which have fallen the victims of the
conception of Jehovah, or of the Christian God, as the relent-
less " God of Battles."
The important influence over all the social and political life

of the people, both for good and for evil, which flows from the
8 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

more elaborate forms of ancestor-worship in China and Japan

has already been sufficiently illustrated. 1
The conservative
power over the Chinese which their conception of Divine Be-
ing has exercised is almost incalculable.
The scope and strength of the relation between the concep-
tion of the gods, or of God, and all the other tenets of religious
belief and the practices of religious life, as well as the influence
of the same conception upon every important factor in race-
development
culture, increases with the height in the scale of
reached by any particular religion. The whole religious, so-

cial, and political history of Israel has justly been declared to

be " virtually a development in the idea of God." Where, as in
Buddhism and in much of Hinduism, this idea is characterized

by vagueness and mysticism, such as are descriptive of the

Oriental temperament and habit of meditative thinking, its
very negative character, when considered from the logical
point of view, becomes a powerful and positive influence over
the opinions and practices of the people. would be difficult It

better to describe all this for one who can read between the
lines than to reflect upon the declaration attributed to him who

became " enlightened." " There is, O disciples, something not

born, not originated, not made, not formed. If, O disciples,

there were not this not-born, not-originated, not-made, not-

formed, there would be no escape from the born, the originated,
the formed, the made." (In the Udana, viii, 3.)

Above all in Christianity it is the positive content of its con-

ception of personal life as applied to God, and of personal re-
lations as existing between man and God, which chiefly deter-
mines its superiority over all other religions. This is true,

as respects both the satisfactions which it affords to the intellect

and to the sentiments, and also as respects the influence which

it exerts over the social and political institutions and life of

the people. We have already seen (Vol. I, pp. 205jf.) how this

conception arose and developed. It derived from that branch

iVol. I, pp. 403tf.
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 9

of Semitic religions which Judaism produced, the conception

of Divine Being as the fount and guardian of righteousness.
It owes to the personal experience and unique religious insight
of Jesus that modification of its contents, as they had ripened
and matured in the later Judaism, which brought it near to the
affections of the human heart and immensely increased its

comforting and purifying power. But it also derived from

Greek reflective thinking certain elements which increased its

potency and charm as a stimulus to the imagination and a su-

preme satisfaction to man's aspirations after the highest truths
within the grasp of his rational activities. Where it has been
most free from those superstitious elements that emerge out of
the darkness of primitive times and linger in the beliefs, sen-
timents, and practices, even of Christian communities, and
from those defects of the Judaistic conception which religious
experience has hitherto not quite succeeded in displacing, this
conception of God as perfect Ethical Spirit has been a meas-
ureless influence for good to the modern world.
In subsequent chapters it will be made clear how the con-
ception of God logically and practically determines one's atti-

tude toward all the other principal problems of the philosophy

of religion. Its reciprocal relations with the problem of evil

are obvious at once and from the very nature of this problem.
Without attaining the knowledge or rational faith in the per-
fect divine wisdom and goodness, the problem of evil admits of
no hopeful answer, not to say satisfactory solution. But, on
the other hand, this very problem, when considered from the
historical and quasi-scientifiG points of view, is the most diffi-

cult obstacle in the path to such a faith. Hence it comes about

that all human conceptions of what is really good and really
evil, of the forces and laws which the ethical evolution of the
race exhibits, of the goal of this evolution, and of the prospect
of reaching this goal, are interdependently related to the con-
ception of God. All problems of good and evil — every kind
of good and every kind of evil —are influenced as respects both
10 PHILOSOPHY OF PvELIGION

the method employed and the conclusions reached in their at-

tempted solution, by our beliefs regarding the nature of that
Being of the World, which religious faith calls God.
The same important relation exists, as a matter of course,
to influence all such contentions of science and religion as are
raised over " nature " and " the supernatural," law and miracle,
order and so-called " intervention ;
" and to decide all such in-
quiries as concern themselves with revelation, inspiration, and
sacred scripture, in view of the conceptions which the contestants
entertain as to the Divine predicates and attributes. For these
predicates and attributes are little else than religion's way of
conceiving of the dependence of the physical universe and of the
history of the race upon the Divine Being. What God is, must
be judged by what God seems to be doing in the universe of
things and minds. And what the rational procedure in such
questions can conceive of him as doing, depends much upon
the conception already formed as to his Being, when the ques-
tions themselves are first approached. All this, to be sure, in-

volves a certain logical circle in conception and in argument.

But it is only the same kind of an apparent circle as describes
the form of all human advances in knowledge. It is the ap-
parent return upon itself of the uprising spiral curve.
The importance of the conception of God, in its influence
upon all religious thought and religious life, and even upon
the social and philosophical development of the race, will also
appear in a somewhat startling way when we come to say
the few words which can safely be said upon the problems of
the immortality of the individual and the destiny of the race.
The Universal Life can never be conceived of in any particular
way without carrying along with the process not a few as-
sumptions and factors which determine the tenets to which
our rational thinking must hold respecting the nature and
final purpose of human life. Neither the descriptive history of
the past, nor any deductive theory from the conceptions which
such a history supports, can afford a wholly satisfactory basis
 —
IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 11

for that hope and faith which the religious nature of man
craves and even demands. As a man conceives of God, the
Fountain and Author of Life, so will he believe, with more or
less assurance of conviction, respecting the life hereafter of
the individual and of the race.
But the importance of forming a rational and defensible
conception of God is even greater and more obvious for the
philosophy of religion than for the religious life and religious
development of man, so far as these can be considered inde-
pendently of philosophy. It is the unifying and systematizing
instinct and practice of the reason which makes itself felt here.

It is, indeed, a mistaken and narrowing view of the philosophy of

religion which defines it as the investigation of the foundations
of the conception of Deity "in the principles of belief as ap-
plied to the data produced by science and philosophy." x
Nor
is any complete identification of the philosophy of religion with
Theism and with the critical examination of anti-theistic theories
satisfactory. Yet this tendency to concentrate reflection and
speculation upon the treatment of the problem of the Divine
Being, as this problem appears in the light of modern evolu-
tionary science and agnostic or positivistic philosophy, is sig-

nificant of an important truth. It is, indeed, impossible to de-

termine the true conception of God by the critical and specu-
lative processes of philosophy, in independence of the facts and
laws of man's religious development. Emphatically true is it

— to repeat the conclusions of our study of the phenomena

that no man can separate himself from the race in his opinions
and sentiments touching the Divine Being and the Divine rela-

tions to the world of finite things and minds. To attempt this

in the name of reason is to commit reason to an effort which is,

historically and psychologically considered, impossible and ab-

surd.
The central problem of the philosophy of religion is afforded
by the conception of God. The question in debate between
1
So Caldecott, The Philosophy of Religion, p. 3.
12 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Theism so-called and the anti-theistic theories is the most im-

portant which the reflective powers of man can undertake to
answer. And the answer given to this question is the more
influential in determining the answers given to all the other
problems with which the philosophy of religion attempts to
deal, the more systematic and thorough such attempts become.
It is, indeed, impossible to develop a system of religious phi-
losophy which shall arrange its theorems after the manner of
the " Ethics " of Spinoza, or which shall successfully employ in
the solution of its problems the methodolog}' of geometry.
But every theorem in any system of theology or of religious
faith is influenced by the assumptions and tenets displayed
or concealed in its handling of the theistic problem.
The truth of this statement reaches its greatest intensity of
expression when we come modern
to consider, in the light of
science and philosophy, the possibility of uniting such concep-
tions as those subsumed under the terms " Absolute," " Infi-
nite," etc., with the conceptions described in the familiar lan-
guage of the domestic affections and of the popular beliefs and
sentiments on matters of ethics. The study of the phenome-
nology of religion has placed before us as our most important
problem the conception of the Being of the World as perfect
Ethical Spirit. But agnosticism contends that no knowledge, or
even rational faith, is possible regarding that Ultimate Reality,
or Infinite and Absolute Being, about which philosophy has
been accustomed, somewhat over-confidently and with excess
of details, to discourse. And if we dismiss — as we have agreed
to do — this extreme position of agnosticism, as belonging to
epistemology and to general metaphysics, we cannot so easily es-

cape in this connection the next attack from the agnostic posi-
tion. For when we ask ourselves the question which Professor
Howison has put in this form " Does a Supreme Being, or Ul-
:

timate Reality, no matter how

assuredly proved, deserve the
"
name of God ' '
simply by virtue of its Reality and Supremacy ?
we are obliged to give a prompt and negative answer to this
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 13

question. Certainly, No : if under the title, " God," it is

proposed to cover a conception that shall meet the intellectual,

emotional, and practical needs which all religion expresses to
some degree, and which every so-called " universal " or
w
'
greater " religion must measurably, at least, be able to satisfy.
The conception of God, which the highest development of the
race has adopted, is that of an Absolute or Infinite Being who
is also perfect Ethical Spirit. But not only the agnosticism
which denies the possibility of any philosophy of religion, but
also certain important schools of religious philosophy, deny the
possiblity of a rational union between these two sets, or classes,

of conceptions. It is this and kindred contentions, therefore,

which serve yet more heavily to weight the importance for the
philosophy of religion of the central problem of Theism.
Thus it comes about that from the philosophical standpoint,
as well as from that of history, the doctrine of God as both
Absolute Self and perfect Ethical Spirit, furnishes to the
philosophy of religion its most important and difficult problem.
To establish the conception of an Absolute Self, and the rela-

tions of dependence sustained to such a Being by the world of

finite Things and finite Minds, upon the basis of a critical sur-

vey of the facts experienced by the race, is the supremely

difficult task of metaphysics. The approximately successful
accomplishment of this task includes the discussion of the fol-

lowing questions : (1) What is it to be a person, or Self, as I, the

subject of religion, am a person ? (2) What is it to be a person,
or Self, as God the Object of religious faith and worship must
be conceived of as personal and (3) What
? are the most essen-
tial relations, conceivable and defensible in a rational way,
between me the dependent and finite Self and God the Abso-
lute Self? These questions embody and give form to the
very problems which the historical and psychological survey of
the phenomena of man's religious life and development has
forced upon our attention. But the truth in answer to them
is not of such a nature that either history or psychology can
14 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

either establish or refute it. And until we grapple with the

logical consistency and ontological value of the conception of

God as Absolute Self our studies of the religious experience of

the race seem to lead us farther and farther away from any
ultimate and systematic views on the entire subject of religion.
The more we dig into the history and the psychology of man's
religious development, the more heterogeneous does the ma-
terial thrown out by pickax and spade appear to be and the ;

more imperative becomes the demand for some kind of critical

testing, which shall separate the refuse from the rich ore and
fuse the ore into some worshipful image of Reality. It is " the
truth or untruth of the Whole " which our rational nature
seeks to know. 1
Unless the religious experience of the race
leads on in a helpful way toward the apprehension of the ulti-
mate truth of religion, the investigation of the details is of
comparatively small importance. In this respect the science of
religion is not like the other particular sciences ; if, indeed, it

is to be given any place among them. It is the knowledge of, or

rational faith in, the Reality which answers to the central con-
ception of religion, —the conception, namely, of God as Abso-
lute Self and perfect Ethical Spirit —which sets the goal of
scientific endeavor. And here we are reminded of the truth
of what Leibnitz affirmed :
" It is at once the easiest and hard-
est thing to become acquainted with God in this way ; the first

and easiest in the way of the light, the hardest and last in the

way of the shadow."

The practical importance of the conception of God in the
beginning of the individual's religious experience may be indi-
cated by the statistics collected by a recent writer on the
subject. Starbuck'-* found that from ninety to ninety-four per
cent, of the persons who reported to him regarded a belief in
God as the central thing in their religious experience. Next
in importance among the positive beliefs of religion, as tested

1 Compare Eucken, Der Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion, p. 8.

2 The Psychology of Religion, Table on p. 320.
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 15

by this somewhat shifty and uncertain but suggestive method,

stood the belief in immortality. " The belief in God," says
he, " in some form is by far the most central conception, and
grows in importance as years advance. . . . There is advance
likewise in the quality of the belief. . . . These younger per-
sons are often found in the process of awakening to the
significance of the idea of God. . . . Belief in God as a larger
unnamed Force or Spirit, or as a Power that works for right-
eousness, while common among the older persons, is almost
never given by the younger." These testimonies express the
similarity between the stages of intellectual development as
characterized by this central conception of religion, in the
individual and in the race.
That attitude of mind appropriate to the metaphysics of re-

ligion, or the speculative discussion of the conception of God,

which properly follows from the importance of the subject, has
to contend against a number of current tendencies of thought
and feeling. These tendencies may be somewhat roughly
classified under the three heads of Indifferentism, Syncretism,
Agnosticism. Neither of these tendencies is, however, either
rational or morally justifiable in view of the immense impor-
tance of the questions raised by the speculative discussion of
the conception of Divine Being. Indifference to this concep-
tion is not only the very essence of irreligion, but it is also
subject to the charge of being an intellectually unworthy and
morally wrong attitude of mind. By whatever name we call

the product of man's attempt to grasp and hold together in one

conception his most fundamental and ultimate convictions and
knowledge respecting the Being of the World, not to have an
interest in this conception is an irrational attitude of mind.
Granting all that can be said as to the difficulty of the process,
and as to the vague and uncertain character of the product,
this supreme effort of human reason to comprehend the Whole,
and to view and interpret the particulars in the light of the
comprehension of the Whole, can never be deprived of the
16 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

right to charm the mind and to command its supreme en-

deavor.
By Syncretism in this connection I mean that attitude of
mind which so frequently follows the first discovery of the
great variety of views with regard to the true and valid con-
ception of God, and of the undoubted general fact of an evolu-
tionary process as characterizing and conditioning this concep-

tion in all the places and periods of human history. A certain

confusion of thought, and a time of hesitation and doubt is

almost certain to follow this discovery. Such a result is not

necessarily discreditable to any inquirer. But when " poly-

theism, monism, and pantheism are supposed to cancel each

other, leaving the enlightened mind with no belief in God,"
the mental attitude of syncretism may become the opposite of
reasonable. In every form of progress in race-culture essentially
the same experience prevails. The phenomena are manifold,
complex, apparently self-contradictory. The truths which they
substantiate cannot be discovered by approaching them with a
tendency to this kind of syncretism. Reality is, indeed, no
patently logical system which appears as such to the first ob-
servations of the chance observer. The rather is it always, at
first sight, and even more at second and third sight, an infinitely

varied play of struggling existences, contending forces, and

diverse and mysterious modes of behavior.

To conclude off-hand that one religion is as good and true

and worthy of a man's acceptance and adherence as another,
that all alike are coins of an equally genuine ring and of quite
completely interchangeable values, is to dismiss altogether too

summarily the obligation of human reason to prolonged and

searching criticism as a basis for its fundamental beliefs. The
conceptions of science and of philosophy respecting the Being
of the World have in the past exhibited no less baffling variety

and patent inconsistencies than have the conceptions of reli-

gion. The very metaphysical categories under which they
subsume the phenomena are scarcely less vague and indefinite
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION 17

than are those with which the religious experience is accus-

tomed to consort. Indeed, the categories which necessarily
claim validity in any Theory of Reality, whether its peculiar
point of departure be derived from science, from philosophy,
or from religion, are substantially the same. Being and at-

tribute, force and causation, law and order, number and quan-
tity, etc., when applied to finite things and finite minds, or to
the so-called infinite and absolute God, are, after all, essenti-

ally considered, equally anthropomorphic, equally valid or in-

valid ontologically. And this sort of loose syncretism is no

more, but rather less, justifiable in religion than in either sci-
ence or philosophy.
There is indeed truth in all religions ; because all religions are
essentially, and by their very nature, the expression in man's de-

veloping life, of an eternal and unchanging truth. But it be-

longs to the growing faculty of the race to criticise and synthe-

and to appreciate better the values, of its own experience
size, ;

and thus more and more clearly and comprehensively to appre-

hend what that truth is. This is the express task of the phi-
losophy of religion.
The attitude of mind toward the discussion of the ontologi-
cal nature and value of that conception of God which man's
obligations to his own rational nature seem to command, is, in

the third place, opposed to several of the many forms of Ag-

nosticism. Undoubtedly at the present time it is agnosticism,
rather than any form of so-called false religion or any school
of religious philosophy, from which come the principal ob-
stacles to a rational belief in God. In its extremer form the
agnostic attitude will not admit even the propriety or the hope-
fulness of any effort of human reason to attain such a be-
lief.

That the human mind refuses to remain quiet in the agnostic

attitude toward the conception of God, the history of religion
shows most convincingly. According to the earlier doctrine of
the Upanishads, Atman is the Alone Reality and is forever and
2
 ;

18 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

wholly uncognizable by man. But as Deussen well

1
says, the

investigating human spirit refuses to stop with this. And

Hinduism, " in spite of the unknowableness of Atman pro-
ceeded to treat of Atman as an Object of cognition in spite ;

of the non-reality of the World outside of Atman it proceeded

to busy itself with the world as a real.' " The same truth was
'

illustrated by the earlier history of Buddhism. Its original

agnosticism was, indeed, rather negative than positive ; it was

practical rather than dogmatic. Of philosophy about the Di-
vine Being there was then in existence enough and to spare
but the people were miserable and perishing because they knew
not " the Way." The new voice said to them all " It belongs :

to you of yourselves, and not through the medium of priestty

intervention or of schools of metaphysics, to attain the desired
good. The knowledge most necessary for this does not con-

cern the hidden nature of the gods, or indeed whether the gods
of Hinduism exist in reality or not ; it concerns the way to
live, the way of salvation."
This attitude of the practical religious teacher toward the
ontology of religious faith and religious philosophy has a cer-
tain warrant in the necessities of the religious life. To wait
for the full assurance of a reasoned metaphysics before enter-
ing upon the path of salvation would be for the great multi-
tude of the people, and indeed for every man of a most reflec-

tive turn, to postpone indefinitely the most pressing concerns

of religion. Yet more is true. A certain large measure of
agnosticism is, historically and speculatively considered, the
critic, the foil, and the cure, of a demonstrative and mathemat-
ical The metaphysics of the Divine Being must
theology.
grow out of human experience historically and reflectively
interpreted. But Buddhism itself soon constructed a positive
doctrine of the gods ; and it afterward gave birth to various
schools of religious philosophy. There are few more interest-
ing studies in the evolution of religious opinions than that af-
1 Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic, I, ii, p. 213.
 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONCEPTION. 19

forded by the wonderful process by which this agnostic reli-

gion — especially the Northern Buddhism —proceeded upon the

view of Voltaire :
" If we had no God, it would be necessary
to create one."
A certain agnostic attitude toward any attempt to unite the
conception of an Absolute Self with the conception of perfect
Ethical Spirit is, undoubtedly, appropriate to the difficulties

inherent in the very nature of the attempt. It is so easy to

juggle with words when reflecting upon such subjects. It is

so difficult to avoid mistaking the glitter of superficial but hol-
low abstractions for great and sublime ideas that have been
derived from a full and rich storehouse of human experience.
It is well not to affirm certain knowledge when only a some-
what hesitating faith is appropriate ;
—and this, without accept-
ing the validity of the Kantian effort to remove knowledge in
order to make room for faith. If by "agnosticism" be meant
a somewhat extreme caution about drawing hard and fixed lines
around the conception of God, or about venturing to affirm that
human distinctions and qualifications, negative or affirmative,
wholly avail to define, much more make comprehensible, its con-
tent; then every student of the philosophy of religion may
properly cultivate no small measure of the agnostic attitude.
Such a reasonable agnosticism, which wishes to adjust the
certitude of one's mental attitude toward the object, to the
agreement and clearness of the various lines of evidence, is a
quite different affair from much which goes by this name.
There are, however, two kinds of the agnostic attitude toward
the conception of God which deserve especially to be avoided.
Of these one is that dogmatic agnosticism which we have al-

ready twice or thrice rejected, and which is taught by those of

whom Schurman declares :
! " The burden of their message is
always the incapacity of the human mind to know anything
but the phenomena of the sensible world, or the contradictions
in which it is involved when it essays to reach Infinite and
1 Agnosticism and Religion, p. 86.
20 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Absolute Reality." Such dogmatic agnosticism, when con-

fined chiefly to questions of ethics and religion, and when
coupled — as it often is —with an uncritical credulity toward
the current metaphysics of the physical and natural sciences, is
the very opposite of a legitimate attitude of mind. Legitimate
agnosticism=" Removal of prejudice, intellectual honesty,
judicial temperament."
Yet more disturbing and irrational was the agnosticism which
resulted from the attempt, by Sir William Hamilton and Dean
Mansel, to unite the most negative results of the Kantian
Critique with the orthodoxy of the Church of England.
Fortunately on the whole for the philosophy of religion this
attempt soon spent itself.

It is a current opinion that modern science, historical criti-

cism, and critical philosophy, have placed the assumptions of

the extreme form of dogmatic agnosticism toward the concep-
tion of God upon unassailable foundations. It is true that the

recent advances in scientific discovery and reflective thinking

have made certain forms of this conception quite untenable.
But it is also true that the same science, historical criticism,
and philosophy, have enormously widened our acquaintance
with every sphere of reality, and thus have provided new ma-
terials for the thought of the race to combine in so incompar-
able and incomparably grand a conception. The lesson of the
hour is not thatwe should despair of framing any valid idea
of the Being of the World in a way to satisfy the religious as
well as the scientific and philosophical needs of humanity. The
lesson is, the rather, that we should so heighten, deepen,
broaden, and enrich this conception, by use of all the available
material, that it shall more adequately than ever correspond to
these magnified needs. For the relation which is sustained by
the way in which the race conceives of God to the entire de-

velopment of the race, and especially to the solution of the prob-

lems proposed to philosophy by the religious experience of man-

kind, is an essentially unchanging relation.
 —

CHAPTER XXVII
NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

In preparation for the critical and reflective examination of

the central conception of religion it is not simply desirable to
estimate adequately the importance of the ta.sk ; it is also

necessary to comprehend, at least in a preliminary way, the

nature of the evidence to be sought for, and reasonably to be

expected. Otherwise the student of the philosophy of religion

is liable to one of two errors. Either, on the one hand, he may
claim a degree or kind of proof for his conclusions which is

inappropriate to the subject and unreasonable to expect ; or

else, on the other hand, he may esteem too lightly the consensus
of evidence, and the robust tenure of the composite thread of
argument which can be woven to his command. Our present
inquiry may, then, be stated in the following way. Of what
kind and degree of evidence —of argument, or of so-called
"proof" —does the conception of God admit?
Any attempt to estimate the nature and value of the evidence
for the conception of God involves an intelligent opinion upon
these two subjects. In the first place, it requires a correct

view, in general of man's mental activities and products as re-

lated to the different classes of objects, — especially, of the
nature and the validity of knowledge, faith, science, opinion,
etc. But it also involves, in particular, the detailed apprecia-
tion and adjustment of the different lines of evidence which
converge upon the Object of religious belief and worship,
namely, the conception of God.
The former of these two problems is that attempted by the
21
22 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

psychology and philosophy of the cognitive processes. The net

result of the attempt is a body of epistemological doctrine which,
in order to be available for use in the discussion of any partic-
ular application of this doctrine, requires to be combined with
a careful observance of the principles of logic and an acquain-
tance with the methodology of the positive sciences. From this
body of doctrine we may profitably borrow the following three
tenets. And, first : Knowledge is from its very nature a mat-
ter of degrees, so to say. No degree of knowledge that amounts
to perfectly absolute and indisputable certainty of the reality
of its object can be reached otherwise than by self-conscious-
ness. Even here, the only object thus absolutely and indisputa-
bly known is the " he re-and-no w " existence of the Self, with
its concrete present object, whether envisaged as some state of
the Self or as some manifestation of a not-self. Various theories
of the intuition or intellectual vision of God, or of some mystical
union of the finite soul with the Divine Being, have attempted
to establish the knowledge of God upon this indisputable basis

of self-consciousness. But such a knowledge of God could

come only through a consciousness of the Object as a species
of Self-consciousness and this would seem to be intrinsically
;

impossible, both from the nature of self-consciousness, and also

from the nature of the Object which is alleged to be known in
self-consciousness. On the other hand, to refuse to consider
any degree of the cognitive attitude, any manner of knowledge,
as attainable with regard to the Being of God, is to overlook
the fundamental doctrine which regards the cognitive attitude
itself as admitting of an indefinite variety of degrees. 1
But, second, the distinction ordinarily made between so-called
knowledge and so-called faith is an unstable and vanishing dis-

tinction. Belief that rests upon no grounds of knowledge, if

such belief is possible even for human beings of the lowest in-
tellectual order, certainly is to be rejected by the philosophy
1 For a further discussion of this subject, see chapter VIII on "Degrees,
Limits, and Kinds of Knowledge" in the author's Philosophy of Knowledge.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 23

of religion, as without evidential value. On the other hand,

knowledge that does not involve large elements of belief —and
often elements of belief which are varied in character, sub-
tile in origin, and extremely difficult to estimate with regard to
their evidential value — is not to be had by human minds,
whether in the form of religion, or science, or philosophy. The
reasons why the term " faith," rather than the term " knowl-
edge," is appropriate with reference to the verities of religion
in general, and especially when treating of man's conception of
God, have already been made sufficiently clear. 1

By combining the two preceding conclusions we arrive at the

following position : In matters theoretical as well as practical,
our attitudes of mind, both those which we are pleased to call
" knowledge " and those which are often deprecated as only
" faith," can claim only a higher or lower degree of probability

with regard to the real existence of their objects. We do not

any judgment by bringing it
increase the ontological value of
under the category " knowledge " we do not necessarily ;

diminish the ontological value of any judgment by being con-

tent to let it rest under the rubric "faith." Some men's
knowledges are by no means so rational, or so certain, as other

men's beliefs. And much of the development of the particular

sciences, as well as of the evolution of religious faith, consists
in finding out that what was thought to be assuredly known is

no longer worthy even of belief ; but that many of the insights

of faith have turned out to be anticipations of future assured
knowledge, whether of law or of fact.

From this point of view again it is pertinent to call attention

to the kind of agnosticism which is appropriate to a critical
examination of the religious conception of God. In spite of
his reasoned agnostic attitude toward this conception as an
object of knowledge, and of his continued adherence to the
tenet of a fundamental distinction between the scientific and
the theological, and between knowledge and faith, we find Kant
i Vol. I, pp. 366/jf.
24 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

referring to " the supersensible substrate of all our faculties,"

and to " the intelligible substrate of nature both external and
1
internal, as the Reality-in-itself (Sache an sich Selbst)."

Thus, the other way of getting at God, through the postulates

of the practical reason rather than through a demonstrative con-
clusion based upon phenomena of an external and physical
sort, may lead to an attitude as truly and securely cognitive as
any that the fundamental conceptions and postulates of the
particular sciences can boast. And Kant himself, if we may
excuse a certain almost grotesque mixture of precision and
squearnishness in his use of terms, may be made to agree with
a recent writer in holding :
" Strictly, to be an Agnostic, is to
be a heathen " (this means, I suppose, a human being who has
not as yet been subject to the influences of religious race-
culture); " and we are not heathens, for we are members of
Christendom." All of which favors a critical and moderate
attitude toward the evidence for the Being of God, rather
than the attitude of an already convinced and dogmatic
agnosticism. 2
The same epistemological considerations may fitly guard us
against another mental attitude which not infrequently goes
under the name of agnosticism. It is the attitude of a vague
unreasoned mysticism, a sort of agnostic sentimentalism. Be-
cause it is held, previous to examination, that the idea attaching
itself to must always remain
the contemplation of the evidence
wholly negative and undefined, both knowledge and faith
are denied their rights in the central field of religion.

God as Reality, it is said, can neither be known nor believed

in but a certain stirring of sesthetical feeling is permissible
;

even in the presence of the conception of the " Unknowable."

1 See the Kritik of Judgment, Bernard's Translation, pp. 238 and 240.
2 The ground in debate between Theism and dogmatic Agnosticism has
been so thoroughly gone over by such writers as Flint, "Agnosticism,"
Fraser, "Philosophy of Theism," Schurman, "Belief in God," Ward, "Nat-
uralism and Agnosticism," and others, as not to require further treatment
at our hands.
 : ;

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 25

It is certainly obligatory upon the philosophy of religion to

furnish evidence for something more clearly rational than this
feeling. The case is surely one for argument, and for the con-
sideration and balancing of evidence. It cannot be dismissed
with the exclamation
" Alas! howis it with you

That you do hend your eye on vacancy,

And with the incorporal air do hold discourse ?
"

The outcome of a detailed examination into the theoretical

and practical problems in debate between Theism and Agnosti-

cism, ends in advice similar to that given in a declaration attrib-
uted to Confucius :
" When you know a thing, to hold that
you know it ; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that
you do not know it —
this is knowledge." Perhaps we might
modify this advice, as applying to the object of religious belief,

in somewhat the following way :

" To have a rational faith in
God, and logically to proceed from, and intelligently to hold

by, the grounds in experience on which that faith is based

and when any form of belief proves doubtful or untenable on
such grounds, to decline or postpone accepting it as your

faith ;
— this is to have all the ' knowledge '
which is appropri-
ate or possible with reference to such an Object." But is this

so very far, in the last analysis, from what science and phi-
losophy both advise with reference to the attainment and growth
of so-called knoivledge respecting all classes of objects ? Only
in this way, can religion be made as scientific and rational as its
intrinsic nature admits. But only in the same way, can science
and philosophy be committed to the cause of religion.

In attempting to co-ordinate and to appreciate the different

lines of evidence leading toward a rational faith in God, one is

met by several claims the testing of which is in a large meas-

ure dependent upon one's views in general, as to the nature of
faith and of knowledge. Among these claims is that of an
infallible intuition, or envisagement, of the reality of the object.
This claim may take either of two principal forms. One of
 —
26 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

these is the more mystical ; the other the more argumentative,

or even rational.
The claim to have an immediate vision of Deity almost un-
doubtedly originated in the experience of dream-life. It is this

experience that gives apparent warrant to the otherwise quite

untenable theory which finds in dreams the origin of the belief
in spirits and in immortality. In its most ancient, and by far

most frequent form, the vision is of some particular god

divine animal, deified ancestor, or individual member of the

pantheon. Such are the appearances to believers, in their

dreams, of Apollo, Minerva, Venus, and the other Greek

divinities, whether as narrated in the Homeric poems or in
the annals of historians. But it has been shown that such al-

leged visions of the divine beings imply an already existing

belief in the gods. They may confirm the belief ; they do not
originate it. Undoubtedly, however, when the tendency to
believe is undeveloped, or the dreamer has been in doubt, the
evidence of the dream may turn the scale with him. Thus
men have come in all ages of the world to trust the reality of
their conception of Divine Being, because some manifestation
of such Being has appeared to them, has seemed to be actually
envisaged by them, in a dream or in a vision.
Quite different in some important respects, although similar
is the intuition of God which is claimed by the doc-
in others,
trine ofYoga, or " mental concentration." " He that every- 1

where devotes himself to Him (that is, Atman as Lord), and

always lives accordingly ; that by virtue of Yoga recognizes

Him, the subtile One, shall rejoice in the top of heaven."
"
Again " He that devotes himself in accordance with the law
:

— i. to avoiding certain vices and attaining certain virtues

<?.,

— and "practices Yoga," "he becomes sarvagamin," or "one

belonging to the All-soul." The tradition as to the " illumi-
nation " of Gautama tells us that it was attained by the means
of contemplation, after the process of self-torture and the Yoga-
1 See Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 262.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 27

discipline had been found unavailing. In both these cases,

however, the envisagement of reality is reached not so much
by way of a vision, or any form of intuition precisely, as by a
kind of absorption into the essence of Reality itself. The
Yoga doctrine teaches that by a process, partly physical and
partly psychical, called " mental concentration," the human in-
dividual may attain union with God (jugum=yoke). He who
became " the Buddha," however, found out another equally mys-
tical path to a complete mental satisfaction in the object sought
by religious feeling. And both doctrines agree as to the possi-
bility of putting the faith of the individual upon a basis of ex-
perience which has the immediacy and certainty, up to the point
of an infallibility, which belong to a species of intuitive cogni-

tion. There is, then, a certain amount of truth in the statement

of Professor Flint To find intuitionists which in this connec-

i
1
"

tion really mean what they say, we must go to Hindu Yogi,

Plotinus and the Alexandrian Mystics, Schelling and a few of
his followers —or in other words, to those who have thought
of God as a pantheistic unity or a Being without attri-

butes."
It was chiefly under the influence of Greek thinking that
the conception of God was itself made more rational, and that
the way of verifying this conception by intuition became more
of a rational process. Outside of Christianity this doctrine of
God as the Object of knowledge by means of a rational intui-
tion came, perhaps, to its highest development, as judged by
ethical and spiritual standards applied to the conception itself,
in the writings of Philo Judaeus. As Bousset says :
2
"For the
Greek idealistic philosophy " (that is, as it culminated in Plo-
tinus and the other Neo-Platonists) " God remained, funda-
mentally considered, a pretty barren abstraction, a limiting
concept, the Highest, Unknowable, and Nameless. For Philo
God is, and remains, a highest living Reality." Much of the

i Theism, p. 356.
2 Die Religion des Judentums, p. 420.
28 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

best of the Old-Testament conception had united with the best

of the Greek philosophical thinking in the conception of Divine
Being held by Philo. "God only is the truest and actual
Peace ;" and although he is " One and All," He is also the
" Good God." Citing Plato in the Timaeus, Philo tells us 1

that " the Father and Maker " is good. And do we inquire of
Philo, "How do you know this?" We are elsewhere 2 in-

formed :
" I once heard a yet more serious story from my soul,

when seized, as it often was, with a divine ecstasy. ... It

told me that in the One really existing God there are two
supreme and primary powers (5i/wi/i«s)> Goodness and Might;
and that by Goodness, he begat the Universe and in Might he
rules that which hath been begotten." It is instructive to no-

tice in this connection that, without any claim to a mystical

intuition or any toleration for the method of ecstasy, but in the
cool and practical manner of his race, the great Confucian
thinker, Shushi, entertained a parallel conception of the Being
of the World, or the Ultimate Reality. But with the Chinese
philosopher Reason embraces the ethical conception of good-
ness, and more. The substantial or more primary Being of the
Universe is Reason ; its manifestation, or derived activity, is

Force. By a union of Ri or Reason, and Ki or Force, the

Universe and every particular thing in it exists. And wher-
ever there is Reason, there is also Force. Reason itself is im-
material and invisible; but all manifestations, whether of minds
or of things, are due to its activities. The Ultimate Reality
is, therefore, active Reason ; and this, of necessity, includes all
moral principles and all social order.

Now nothing is plainer from the historical point of view

than the contention that neither the most successful practicer
of Yoga, nor Gautama who became the Buddha, nor the Chi-
nese thinker Shushi, —not to mention Plotinus and all his more
ancient and modern disciples — did in fact arrive at the con-

1 De Opif. Mundi i, 5: 5o/ce? fiat. .... dyadbu elvat rbv iraripa. koX ironjTtjv.

2 De Cherubim, 9.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 29

ceptions they held (not now to speak of the claim to know the
extra-mental validity of these conceptions) by way of the in-
tuitive, or mystical, or ecstatic vision of God. They were all
like us, children of the race. The conceptions they came to
hold of God had their roots in the historical development of
humanity. However sudden and immediate their upspringing in
the consciousness of the individual might seem to be, it was
the growth of many centuries of toilsome reflection upon the
witnesses of experienced fact, which bore fruit in the form
taken by the conception.
In estimating the evidential value of the claims to a vision
of God, in the sense of an ecstatic or otherwise intuitive knowl-
edge, two contrasted, not to say antithetic truths must be borne
in mind. On the one hand, in no case does this form of evi-
dence, when critically examined, turn out really to be what it

claims, or at first even seems to be. The subjective convic-

tion is no guaranty to others of the reality of the object ;—
and this is true, all the way from the savage or half-civilized
man who dreams of the gods appearing to him in most gro-
tesque forms, and with the most extravagant messages, up to the
Indian Yogin, the ecstatic Philo, the devotional Christian saint.
Let it be remembered that the question at issue does not con-
cern the use of dreams, and visions, and even —or if you will,

even especially — the " mental concentration " of Yogism, or

the disciplined and self-forgetful contemplation of Buddhism,
as means of revelation. Indeed, from both the historical and
the psychological points of view, that the faith of man in God
has been confirmed and developed in this way is matter of fact.
But this experience is an individual affair. However convinc-
ing it may become to the individual, it can never, on account
of its own intrinsic nature as an experience, be converted into
a universally convincing, not to say indisputable kind of evi-
dence. Indeed, just the contrary is true. This kind of evi-
dence is inherently such as is most difficult to employ in de-
fence of any universal propositions with regard to the existence
30 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

and nature of its object. It is also most liable to all sorts of

impure mixtures and misleading and harmful elements.

Still further, if the concrete vision of God were always ac-
cepted at the full value claimed for it by the individual whose
experience it is, it could at best be considered as only one par-
ticular manifestation, —a religious phenomenon. But so varied
and conflicting are these manifestations that, unless they are sub-

jected to a critical testing, they furnish no trustworthy evi-

dence, not to say proof, on which to base a rational conception
of the Divine Being. That the Ultimate Reality, if it be eth-
ical Spirit, might graciously condescend to bring some rays of
a comforting belief about himself to the human soul through
dreams or visions, may be a tenable enough view. But to con-
struct one's conception of God by patching together these frag-
mentary and elusive individual experiences would lead in quite

the opposite direction from a rational procedure.

And, finally, there is no form of intuition or envisagement
of any sort of finite reality —
Things or Minds which cannot —
be subjected to analysis, seen to be composite, and to contain
factors of more or less doubtful inference. Immediate cogni-
tion of this sort belongs only to the finite and the particular.
It is only by rational procedure that the mind can obtain and
validate so subtile, complex, and changeful a conception as
is afforded by the Object of religious faith.
On the other hand, it would be unfair to the claims of re-
ligion, and indeed a violence done to the scientific and logical

way of treating similar facts in every sphere of knowledge, to

deny all evidential value to those experiences upon which the
intuitional proof, by way of a vision of God, or union with
God, is based. For here is certainly a pretty persistent and
by no means unimportant phase of man's religious life and
development. Even if this experience were much more largely
pathological than it is, a certain evidential value would still be-
long to it. But there are modified forms of this religious con-
sciousness, which to call " pathological " would be promptly to
 —
NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 31

go wide of the mark. Doubtless the saying of Jesus — " Blessed

are the pure in heart for the}r shall see God" — is figurative

and cannot be quoted in support of the intuitive theory, strictly

interpreted. But the truth which it does express lies deeper
still, — too deep and yet too high to be wholly covered by its

figurative expression. That the mind's grasp upon Reality

That it is, and What it is —
should be conditioned upon cul-
ture of the powers employed in the effort to grasp, is good
enough psychological and epistemological doctrine ; and it is

doctrine of universal applicability. The experiences which

have led many of the choicest characters of the race to be per-
fectly confident of the reality of Divine Being, and of the ac-

tuality of his spiritual immanence in their own souls, cannot

be considered devoid of all evidential value. It is not simply

the fanatics or extreme mystics in Christianity who have at-

tained to this sort of a vision of God. In the Confessions of

Augustine, as well as of Thomas a Kempis or St. Francis of
Assisi, and in the Memoirs of theologians like Jonathan Ed-
wards, as well as of men prominent in the developments of the
positive sciences, similar experiences are not infrequently re-
corded. After his vision of the risen Jesus —abnormal and
pathological as this vision may have been —the Apostle Paul
expressed the secret of his entire life as a perfect confidence
that he, the man, was in some real and vital way united with
God through faith in Christ. Nor are such experiences by
any means confined to the Christian religion.

That certain experiences should have a great, and even a

supreme evidential value for those minds whose experiences
they are, is not only to be expected as a fact ; it is also in
good measure to be justified in a ^Mast-scientific and philo-
sophical way. Their number and quality, and the connection
which they have had with the religious development of the
race, are such, as to constitute an argument for the reality of
the religious conception of the Being of the World. This
argument may, if one choose, be looked upon as a part either
32 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

of the ethical and psychological or of the historical proofs of

Theism. " Religious history," says ReVille, 1 is " one unbroken

attestation to God." All so-called proofs may be summed up

in this : Religion itself could not be accounted for without
God. There must be such a Being of the World as will
account for the religious life and development of humanity.
The claim to have an intuitive knowledge of God may take

yet another and more rational form ; it may become a theory

affirming what is known as a " God-consciousness " in all

men. If by this be meant that the human cognitive conscious-

ness has the power of making an immediate seizure, so to say,
of the Object God, as we envisage the Self in self-consciousness,
or the something not-self in sense-perception, then the claim is

psychologically indefensible. The argument against this view

of a so-called " God-consciousness " is substantially the same
as that already advanced against the other form of the intui-
tional theory. Neither the nature of conscious intuition, psy-
chologically considered, nor the nature of the object of reli-

gious cognition, historically and analytically considered, would

seem to admit of such a theory.
There is much important truth, however, in the evidence
for the Being of God which is customarily offered by the ad-

vocates of this view. What we do really find in the religious

consciousness of the race is a spontaneous interpretation of
experience both internal and external, both of things and of
selves, as due to other spiritual existences ; — with its accom-
paniment of confidence in the ontological value of the inter-

pretation. This process is, indeed, the ever-developing source

of the knowledge of God. Thus the One Other-Self comes to
be believed in, or mediately known, as implicated in all our
conscious cognitive acts. And it becomes the duty of a crit-

ical philosophy of religion to explicate and to estimate the

value of that evidence for the Being of God which is, indeed,
implicate in the very nature and working of the cognitive con-
i The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru (Hibbert Lectures, 1884), p. 6.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 33

sciousness of humanity, and of its progress in knowledge of

every kind.
By an easy and almost inevitable transition the claim to have
an intuitive knowledge of the reality and attributes of Divine
Being passes over into the claim to have demonstrative, or
what Kant called " apodeictic," proof on these matters. It

has for centuries been the ideal of philosophy and theology,

by a process of reasoning Avhich shall start from an absolutely
indisputable major premise, and shall proceed by equally in-
disputable logical steps, to establish deductively the conclusion
that God is, and —at least in some degree —as to What God is.

The author of the critical philosophy, 1

on the contrary supposed
himself to have demonstrated once for all the illogical character
of all the existing "proofs" of the reality of God; and to have
shown in an a priori way that the very nature of man's cogni-
tive faculty makes any knowledge of God impossible. But
like other demonstrations which were to settle for all time the
limits of metaphysics as ontology, this one has been quite per-
sistently disputed both by those who believe —as Kant himself
did —in God, and also by those who are either agnostic or scep-
tical toward the conception.
So far as the claim to demonstrate the Being of God has
taken the form of the so-called " ontological argument," it will

be discussed in its proper place. But two or three

there are
somewhat modified attempts at a demonstrative proof which
may fitly receive consideration in this connection. Of these
one may be called the mathematical or geometrical, par excel-

lence ; and this, either because it finds in the nature of pure

mathematics an argument amounting to a demonstration of
God ; or because it aims to demonstrate his Being more mathe-
matico but starting from some ^em-mathematical conception

1 Especially in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft; and see per contra the earlier
treatises, Dilucidatio Nova, and Der Einzig Mdgliche Beweisgrund zu einer
Demonstration des Daseins Gottes; and the position assumed in the later
work, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft.
3
34 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

its major premise.

or principle as In the latter of these two
cases,some conception of " Substance " as with Spinoza for —
—
example or of " Pure Being," as in the views of the early
Neo-Platonists, is customarily made the principle of the argu-
ment. Under this head may be classed the ancient Platonic
argument from geometry to God. "All the judgments of
geometry," says a modern advocate of this view, 1 " imply that
there are unchanging relations in the one system of reality which
alone is or can be known, and these unchanging relations con-
stitute the objectivity of that system, so far as it comes within
the view of geometry."
As to this claim to demonstrate God, out of the nature of
pure mathematics or by methods employed in the development
of mathematical conceptions and relations, the objections, if

we adhere to the strict construction of our terms, are quite de-

cisive. Religious conceptions in general are not formed after
the analogy of mathematical conceptions, nor are they arrived
at and confirmed by proof which can be presented in a form
similar to that of a mathematical argument. Indeed, this,

which is the Kantian conception of pure mathematics, and of

its a priori origin and nature, is now thoroughly discredited
among mathematicians themselves. " Pure mathematics," just

so far as it maintains and perfects its " purity," abstracts its

conceptions and propositions from all experience with concrete

realities and their actual relations. Yet, these same concep-
tions and propositions are themselves derived from experience.
Its demonstrations are therefore complete, are indeed, strictly
speaking, demonstrations, only when it is agreed to accept
some small group of postulates, of the actuality of which it is

impossible to arrive at an empirical proof, and proceed with

the strictest regard for the laws of logical deduction. In this
way nothing whatever is demonstrated as to the nature of
reality, except the mind's own possibility of being logical and,

if logical, of avoiding inherent self-contradictions. The moment,

1 Professor Watson, Christianity and Idealism, p. 158/.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 35

however, we try to picture reality in terms of these purely

mathematical conceptions and propositions, we find our attempt
developing not a few most stubborn contradictions. All this
might well enough convince us that reality is not constructed

according to purely mathematical conceptions, arranged in the

attractive form of a system of interrelated abstractions. As
Schurman has well i
said in contrasting this religious concep-
tion with the conceptions of geometry :
" God, on the other
hand, who is the ground and source and moving spirit of all

reality, must be the most concrete object of our thought. By

no possibility, therefore, can a theology or science of God fol-

low the demonstrative method of mathematics." 2

This conclu-
sion avails also against the somewhat looser opinion of Locke, 3
who regarded the demonstration not one whit inferior to
mathematical certainty.
On the other hand, the possibility of applying mathematics
to the experienced realities of the world of concrete existences
and actual relations, is one of the most convincing of argu-
ments for the position that the Being of the World is some
kind of an orderly and rational totality. Or if we take the
position of religious faith and regard the system of minds and
things, of which we have an ever-growing experience, and an
ever-improving conception, as related to God the Creator and
Preserver, we find in the procedure of mathematics, and in the

control which it gives the human mind over the understanding

of phenomena, a very convincing form of evidence that Rea-
son rules Force in the cosmic constitution and cosmic develop-
ment. There is, therefore, no conviction of modern science more
—
welcome to the philosophy of religion as it is indispensable to
—
modern science itself than the conviction of the unity and
systematic connection of all Reality.

i Belief in God, p. 39.

See also Flint, Theism, Appendix, 425/J. on the impossibility of demon-
2

stration, in mathematical or a priori fashion, of the Being of God.

3 Comp. Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, chap. X.
36 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

The inner connection of all the so-called arguments for

the Being of God is shown again, — as it was shown in the
transition from the claims of the intuitional theory to the claim
of the ontological argument, —when we consider what is really
involved with reference to the nature of the human mind by
the application of mathematical conceptions to concrete reali-
ties and their relations. For another form of the demonstra-
tive argument sees in the very possibility of any knowledge
whatever an unanswerable proof of the Divine Being. That
all knowledge, whatever be its object or the method of its as-

certainment, and whatever the degree and nature of its so-called

evidence, involves a certain theory of reality, may be maintained
successfully from both the epistemological and the metaphysi-
cal points of view. For knowledge is always of reality. The
mind's cognitive attitude toward its object is essentially some sort
of a grasp — by belief, intuition, inference, primitive and unanaly-
zable feeling, or by and other hands and tentacles of the
all these
soul — upon the actuality of the existence and of the relations
of just this same object. Psychologists may try in vain to
agree, or they may quarrel eternally, over the nature of the
cognitive process. A sceptical theory of knowledge may carry-
doubt as to the extra-mental validity of knowledge to the ex-
treme of solipsism. But in religion which is invariably, as
we have already seen, a theory of reality, as well as in science
and in philosophy, the confidence in reason as a vital and effect-

ive commerce between the knower and the reality of the object
known will always prevail. Knowledge itself implies indubita-
bly the actuality of certain universal standards of a rational
order. This is true, whatever the specific object cognized may
be. The same thing is true of all reasoning, whatever the sub-
ject about which the reasoning is ; and whatever the subjective
condition of the cognitive and reasoning mind in which the
process terminates — whether it be affirmation, denial, or doubt.
To this extent a so-called proof of the immanence of Reason
in both minds and things may be drawn from that experience
 :

NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 37

which we call " knowledge." In this experience lie the grounds

of all argument and proof. But to say this is not equivalent to
affirming a demonstration of the Being of God.
We shall see subsequently, however, what a consensus of
evidence is reached by following to the place where they unite,
the particular and partial arguments for the conception of re-

ligion ; and as well by considering the relation in which all

these arguments stand to certain fundamental conceptions of

science — to the categories of Being, Cause, Law, Final Purpose,
etc. In this way the proof amounts to showing that certain
unchanging factors in the conception of God are essential, un-
changing, and necessary features of all human cognitive con-

sciousness. Stated in figurative and somewhat exaggerated

form, the argument then concludes that " To desire to know
God without God is impossible : there is no knowledge without
him who is the Prime Source of knowledge." Or, to employ
the more philosophical language of Hegel l " What men call

the proofs of God's existence are, rightly understood, the ways

of describing and analyzing the native course of the mind, the
course of thought, thinking the data of the senses. . . . The
leap into the supersensible which it takes when it snaps the
chain of sense, all this transition is thought and nothing but
thought." Here we encounter,
to be sure, the customary
Hegelian over-emphasis and extension of " thought " as con-
cerned in both faith and knowledge. But this is far truer to
the facts of the case, whether the objects of thought be those
proposed as problems to science, to philosophy, or to religion,
than is the sceptical epistemology of the Critique of Pure
Reason. And religious feeling, as well as the sentiment for
the ideal of philosophy, leads us to sympathy with Hegel when he
elsewhere a
asks : What knowledge would be worth the pains
"

of acquiring, if knowledge of God is not attainable ? " Indeed,

1The Logic of Hegel, Wallace's Translation, p. 103; and compare the re-
marks on the method of demonstration as applied to God, p. 72/.
2 Philosophic der Religion (Edition of Marheineke), I, p. 37.
38 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

all rivulets and larger streams may contribute to swell the river
that bears humanity toward that ocean of truth which is the
knowledge of God.
It is scarcely necessary to show that processes of induction
similar to those by which the particular conceptions or laws of the
chemico-physical and biological sciences are established do not
comport with the essential nature of the conception of God.
Yet in the larger, but no less true and valid meaning of the
words, this conception may be placed upon a basis of expe-
rience.
If the proof of the Being of God is to be found neither
in some infallible vision of an intuitive sort, nor in some form
of demonstrative argument, nor in an induction which pro-
ceeds upon a purely empirical basis Where is proof to be
:

found ? Or must the human mind renounce all effort to rea-

son its way to the truth about this central conception of reli-

gious faith ; not to say, all pretence of being able to prove the ob-
jective validity of the conception ? To such questions it may be
answered that the alternative which they imply is neither well
conceived nor fortunately expressed. There is a middle way
between exaggerated affirmations of proof and the negative
position of early Buddhism :

"No god of heaven or Brahma-world

Doth cause the endless round of birth;
Constituent parts alone roll on,
From cause and from material spring. "

But this is a childish philosophy, if philosophy at all it can be

called ; it is as inadequate to explain the religious experience
of the race as the childish theogony it would displace was inad-
equate to compete with modern physical science. The sci-

entific and philosophical, as truly as the religious nature and

needs of man, can never be satisfied with so barren a conclusion.
The one inexhaustible source of evidences for the true con-
ception of God is the experience of the race. But these words
must not be interpreted in any narrow and half-hearted way.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 39

This experience must be considered in its totality and as itself

subject to development. This experience is all we have on

which to base any kind of proof; but it is enough, and even
more than enough, to satisfy all the reasonable demands made
upon it. Indeed, in all the lines of evidence, the so-called proofs,
the attempt at a satisfactory understanding of the origin, laws,
historical course, and meaning, of the world can never disre-

gard the origin, nature, needs, destiny, and historical develop-

ment of man as chiefly necessary to its full account. The 1

proof of God for the individual searcher may, therefore, take

some such form of argument Whatever else
as the following :

really is, or is not really, in the world, I am here and I want ;

myself explained to myself, made self-consistent and helped in

self-development, in a satisfactory way. This " myself " in-

cludes not only my bodily organism and dependent connec-

tion with external nature and with the race, but also my own
truest and highest self, with its hidden potentialities and aspira-
tions, its hopes, fears, and ideals touching its own destiny.
" With the mass of faculties and capacities and experiences,
which constitute my personal nature," said Cardinal New-
man, " I believe in God."
The generalizations and courses of reasoning by which this

intelligent, but personal faith in God may be converted into a

quasi-scientific and philosophical proof of the validity of the
conception of God, have themselves no other source than the
experience of the race. We may say with Schultz 2
then :
" To
be certain of the existence of God means, fundamentally con-
sidered, to recognize as necessary the religious view of the
world." what is the truth of this view of the Being
But just
of the World, and how it is so to be stated and expounded as

1 As says Sabatier (Esquisse d'une Philosophie de la Religion, p. 120):

"Pour se representer le divin, l'homme n'a jamais eu que les ressources qui
sont en lui. C'est dire que, ces representations varieront avec le progres
general de l'experience et de la pensee."
2 Grundriss der Christlichen Apologetik, p. 73.
40 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

to harmonize with all the other cognitions and reasonable faiths

of humanity, is a task for the philosophy of religion to accom-
plish. The different lines of consideration which it pursues,
and which it endeavors to arrange in logical and at least approx-
imately harmonious and systematic form, constitute the argu-
ments for the trustworthiness of the religious view. But
this experience of the race to which philosophy looks for its

proof of the Being of God must be taken sincerely, sympathet-

ically, and in its totality. With regard to parts of it, that is

doubtless true which Schopenhauer asserted, namely, that the

proof is " Keraunological " rather than purely theoretic ; that
is to say, it is based on needs of the will rather than on notions
of the intellect. But this is only partial truth. The scientific

and logical considerations must not be separated from the eth-

ical, the aesthetical, and the more definitively religious. For as
Professor Howison has well said :
l
"There will be, and will

ever remain, an impassable gulf between the religious conscious-

ness and the logical, unless the logical consciousness reaches

up to embrace the relhjions, and learns to state the absolute Is

in terms of absolute Onyht." In a word, the implication of God

in human experience is not a simple intuition, nor is it a sin-
gle line of demonstrative or inductive reasoning. On the con-
trary —
counting only the " moments " which can be explicated
— it is an enormously subtile and complex net-work of consid-
erations. And reason cannot be content with the assumption,
or the conclusion, of an " impassable gulf " between any two
parts of the one experience of the one race.
From this preliminary survey of the nature of the evidence
which may reasonably be expected, and which is in fact attain-
able, for the validity of the religious view of the Being of the
World, we may derive these three practical considerations.
They will serve to guide the subsequent examination of the
so-called " proofs " to a safer, if a somewhat lower ground.
And, first : The final purpose of the argument is not to demon-
1 Introduction to Professor Royce's Conception of God, p. 124.
 NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 41

strate some particular conception of God, as though no history

of religious experience, and of rational endeavor to understand
this experience, lay back of us in the past of the race. We
are not going to assume the airs, or play the part, of "upstarts''
in this field of the philosophy of religion. This belief in God
has been in the world through untold centuries ; it has already
undergone a significant process of development. It has, at
least in certain quarters, been rising into nobler proportions
and purer form, for no inconsiderable part of these untold
centuries. The men of to-day did not create it; and they
cannot undo it. No individual can construct or understand
this conception by trying to separate himself either from the
racial experience which justifies it, or from the more or less

successful students of this experience. New proofs are scarcely

to be expected, except in so far as this ever unfolding experi-
ence affords an unfailing source of such proof. The critical

but constructive attitude toward the arguments for the Being

of God cannot escape from the historical limitations or dispense
with the historical helps. But neither can the sceptical or ag-
nostic attitude. If we men of the hour are not rational beings,
and potential sons of God, but only " moving shadow-shapes ;"
still we must stand in order, where we are " held by the mas-
ter of the show."
And, second, every conception of God must, as a matter of
course, be both anthropomorphic and inadequate. But, prop-
erly understood, the charges usually conveyed by these words
are neither deterrent nor wholly discouraging. The one pos-
tulated principle of an epistemological order which underlies
and validates all reasoning on this subject is, indeed, the right
to argue from the human personality to the Divine Person-
ality. Of course, such procedure is anthropomorphic. But,
of course, and in essentially the same way, those who attempt
to answer, to refute, or to criticise the arguments will be an-
thropomorphic, will also personify. Essentially the same pro-
cedure characterizes every form of argument, by which men
42 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

either advance their knowledge or lift up their faith to loftier

heights of purer air and brighter sunshine. It is anthropo-

morphic experience, human experience, which must be ac-
cepted in fact, and accounted for, evaluated, and explained.
It human thinking which accounts for and
is explains all this

experience it is human ethical and sesthetical

; feeling which es-

timates the varying values of the different experiences. Such

Anthropomorphism is as truly present in science as it is in reli-

gion. In a word, all growth of humanity in knowledge or ra-

tional belief is dependent upon the validity of a certain quasi-

personifying process. And when it is proclaimed that this

process may be valid to discover that God is, but can never re-
veal anything true about what God is, the mind is mocked un-
worthily. To establish by argument that mere undefined or
Unknowable Being is at the core of the universe, is to conclude
the dream about reality with a Fiction so grotesque that we
may fitly find ourselves awaking with an explosion of uncon-
trollable laughter.
Finally, every one of the so-called arguments for the Being
of God, and indeed every one of the natural sources of man's
religious experience, may lead to either valid or worthless
conclusions, according to the degree of rational elaboration, and
of ethical discipline and refinement which it receives. As
Oakesmith says ' of the " sense of personal dependence upon a
benevolent supernatural power" which Plutarch associated
with the teachings of Demonology :
" It may be identical with
the purest and loftiest religion, or may degenerate into the
meanest and most degrading superstition, according to its de-
velopment in the mind of the individual believer." In respect
of every moral attribute which religion ascribes to Deity, and
every metaphysical predicate which philosophy assigns to the
Personal Absolute, and indeed with regard to the entire subtle
and complex conception which answers in different minds, and
in different stages of race-culture, to the name of " God," the
i The Religion of Plutarch, p. 174.
 —
NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE 43

same thing is true. Both the monistic and the dualistic view
of God and the World may lead to their respective bad or good
results. Helpful truths or pernicious errors may be logically
joined to many of the factors which enter into either the pan-
theistic or the deistic conception of the Divine. Superstition
is not confined to savage or primitive man. But wherever it

occurs, its cure requires more light from reason and experience,
rather than agnosticism or the denial of the grounds and rights
"
of religious faith. Superstition is, indeed, a " dimming rheum ;

but we must not " knock the eye out for the sake of removing

the rheum." We must not, because false and inadequate views

of Deity accompany all the thought of the race upon the sub-
ject, " turn the sight of faith into the blindness of Atheism."
Both superstition and atheism, as Plutarch held, spring from
ignorance. And Goethe averred that " the profoundest, the
most essential and paramount theme of human interest is the
eternal conflict between atheism and superstition."
Our problem may then be stated anew in essentially its old
form but as seen from an advanced point of view. We seek
for a harmony between that conception of God which the high-
est religious experience of the race has brought into existence
the conception, namely, of God as perfect Ethical Spirit, the
Father and Redeemer of mankind —and that conception of the
Being of the World which is most tenable in accordance with
the conclusions of modern science and philosophy. We do not
dream of discovering this harmony by means of any infallible
intuition ; or of demonstrating it after the methods of pure
mathematics or of experimentation in the more restricted fields
of the physico-chemical sciences. We enter upon the attempt,
being aware of the limitations of our method and certain of
attaining, at best only a relative success. Our conception of
the Divine Being will be a human conception ; and it will
therefore be inadequate, incomplete, and possibly in some of
its elements lacking in a desirable self-consistency. But we
shall try to remain obedient to the voices of history, and trust-
44 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
ful of that light of reason which has been always illumining
the race. Yet more : We find warrant for regarding even such
a conception of God as a rational postulate on which converge
so many lines of evidence that it may be accepted with confi-
dence, and held with a firm tenure ;-and this, because it af-
fords the fullest attainable explanation
for the experience of
the race, and the fullest satisfaction
for the intellectual, ethi-
and spiritual needs of humanity.
cal, aesthetical,
 CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED

It has for a long time been the custom of believers in The-

ism to throw the different lines of evidence for the Reality
answering to the conception of God into the form of definite
arguments or so-called " proofs." '
The nature of these proofs
is manifold ; and each one of them corresponds more or less
accurately to some one or more permanent phase or aspect of
man's thoughts about himself and about the world in which
he lives. It has already been indicated, however, that the true
and conclusive argument is based upon the way in which the
conception accords with the sum-total of the experience of
the race, and thus assists us in understanding that experience
and in promoting the satisfaction of its needs.
These proofs have been so often and so ably presented and
criticised in their customary form, that any new examination
of this great problem may be excused from the effort to con-

tribute original and important material to their discussion. 2 But

they are all so important to an understanding of the nature of
the problem, and so essential to every attempt at its improved
statement and solution, that they cannot be wholly passed over
by the philosophy of religion. We shall content ourselves with
1 The so-called cosmological argument, as it has influenced Christian the-
ology, goes back to Aristotle; the teleological, to Socrates, etc.
2 Among the numerous books on Theism, perhaps none gives a more sat-
isfactory popular survey and criticism of the customary arguments for the
Being of God than that by Professor J. J. Tigert: "Theism. A Survey of the
Paths that Lead to God." The discussion of the Theologian J. A. Dorner,
System der Christlichen Glaubenslehre, I, pp. 173-330, is particularly valu-
able.

45
 ;

46 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

a brief attempt to estimate the value which they seem to possess

in their relations as factors to the reconstructed argument.
At the head of the arguments for the Being of God it has
been customary to place the so-called " Ontological." From
its very nature this argument in its more modern form implies
a high development of the speculative and metaphysical in-
terests and aptitudes of man. Historically considered it is,

therefore, of course a relatively late product of his reasoning

faculties. In that more positive statement in which it has in-
fluenced theology and the philosophy of religionwas shaped it

principally by The Church Father Anselm (1033-1109) and

by the philosopher Descartes (1596-1650). The distrust of it,
and the not complete overthrow of its independent (?)
partial if

influence, was brought about by the trenchant criticism of

Kant. "The conception of God to which, on cosmological
grounds, by a logical ascent from the particular to the univer-
sal, Anselm had arrived in the Mbnohgium, he seeks in the
Proslogium (originally entitled Fides querens Intellectum) to
justify ontologically by a simple development of the concep-
tion of God." The argument ran thus : Every man, even " the
fool," has in his mind the conception of, or belief in, a good
than which no greater can be thought. But that is not the
greatest thinkable good which exists merely in the mind, but
does not also exist in reality. Therefore this greatest good
must exist in human intellect and this
reality, as well as in the ;

greatest really existentGood is "our Lord God."

The argument of Anselm was considered unsound even by
some of his contemporaries among the believers in Christianity
it was estimated as a pure paralogism, especially by the monk
Gaunilo, Count of Montigni, in a controversial treatise, Liber
pro Insipiente. The critical Kant pointed out that the onto-

logical argument cannot be considered as an independent, much

less a demonstrative proof. It does, however, enter in an es-

sential way into the ontological validity of all the arguments.

It is —to use the phrase of Kant— their nervus probandi.
 —
CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 47

For the system of thought which Descartes elaborated, the

conception of God was not simply of supreme moral and re-

ligious significance ; the demonstrable ontological validity of

this conception was the bridge over which the human mind
must pass from the last inner retreat of consciousness to a

world of verifiable experienced realities. With this thinker

the ontological argument took more than one form. In the

Third Meditation, Descartes, in accordance with his general
doctrine of Method, proceeds to argue from the perfectly clear
idea of an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Being to the In-
finite Reality corresponding to the idea. Such an idea de-
mands a corresponding reality as its cause. In the Fifth Med-
itation the claim is advanced that, just as it follows of neces-

sity from the essence of a triangle that the sum of its angles =
2 right angles, so it follows from the essence of the idea of a
most perfect Being that such a Being really exists. Existence
in reality is a perfection ; hence God exists.

The essential thing about all these forms of the so-called

ontological argument is the claim that we may conclude with
a perfect conviction —Nay ! that we must conclude from the —
conception of the Divine Being, as it exists in human thought,
to the extra-mental reality of the same Being. In this very
fact Kant found its fatal defect :
—namely, that it did, without
additional warrant as it were, pass from idea to actuality ;

from the object as conceived to the Thing-in-itself. Thus all

the arguments of theology became the conspicuous instance of

that vain pretence of knowledge, of which metaphysics —in
the sense of ontological doctrine — is perpetually guilty. To
state the objection in the terse manner of Ueberweg t
1
The on-
tological argument is a " meaningless tautology
;
" and " the
only conclusion which is logically valid is this ; so surely as
God he a real being." On the other hand,
exists, so surely is

complained of such curt dismissal of the ontological argu-

it is

ment, and with reason, that the objection overlooks the very
i A History of Philosophy (English Translation of 1872), I, p. 384.
 —
48 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

consideration on which the argument is based ; and this con-

sideration is, t he peculiar nature of the conception itself. Cer-

tainly, to borrow the figure of speech with which even Kant
stooped to ridicule this so-called proof, the conceived hundred
dollars that are not in my pocket do not add a penny to the
sum that is really there. But if what Descartes set out to

prove is this
— " That God is the only sufficient source or
cause of the idea of God, i. e., the Infinite and the Perfect," 1 —
the alleged proof may fall far short of a demonstration with-
out by any means losing all claim to evidential value.
Differently understood and more fairly rated, this argument
can be so employed as to turn Kant's criticism of it against
himself. For with Kant — and the central positive
this is posi-

tion of the critical philosophy — Reality always apprehended

is

by the human mind under the formal conditions of a synthetic

judgment a priori. Only then, if we regard the judgment which
affirms the self-existence of the Absolute as a merely logical
and analytical judgment, a sort of equation between adjectives,
can we demolish it in so summary a fashion. But in fact, this
judgment is not merely abstract, logical, and analytical. It is,

affair, a summing
the rather, an exceedingly complex synthetic
up of many threads of argument, taken from the complex web
of Reality, and woven together by human thinking. The
grounds, the necessary conditions, and the substance of the
experience, which enter into the argument, belong to the con-
stitution of reason itself. Something like this Kant was him-
self forced to confess in his " Critique of the Practical Reason,"

and even more in his " Critique of Judgment."

In its peculiarly Cartesian form the ontological argument is

therefore, on the one hand, refuted as a demonstration of a

purely a priori sort, and on the other, confirmed as a necessary
and rational explanation of the historical conditions under which,

1
This argument is presented at length by Gratry in his Connaissance de
Dieu: "C'est-a-dire l'idee de Dieu, laquelle des qu'elle est obtenue, prouve
par elle-meme que Dieu existe." (2 vols., 5th ed., Paris, 1856.)
 CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 49

slowly and through the centuries and in dependence upon all

the ideal lines of human development, this conception of God

as perfect personal Being has come to the fore. We cannot,
perhaps, say with Principal Caird :
1
" 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 Ab-
solute Spiritual Life, which is not a mere subjective notion or
conception, but which carries with it the proof of its necessarj'
-

existence or reality." We cannot argue with Anselm and

Descartes that what I conceive of as worthiest of existence is

thereby proved actually to exist. But we may draw in sympathy

near to the truth as Fichte affirmed it :
" We must end at last
by resting all existence which demands an extrinsic foundation

upon a Being the fountain of whose life is within Himself by ;

allying the fugitive phenomena, which color the stream of time

with ever-changing lives, to an eternal and unchanging exist-

ence." The World is only intelligible to us, if our thinking is

true thinking ; if it brings us, so to say, into commerce with

Reality. Figurative and poetical ways of stating this meta-
physical postulate, which is entitled to reverse the entire scep-
tical conclusion of the Kantian theory of knowledge, are
abundant enough in the literature both of philosophy and of
religion. " The '
is '
between subject and predicate," said Herder,
" is my demonstration of God." " God is the truth in us,"
said Leibnitz. And Harms declared that " in all finite spirits

the idea of the truth is contained a p riori as an original thought

which arises out of the essence of the spirit itself."
In the opinion of Pneiderer a the argument from religion and
that from the theory of knowledge were both originally identical
— as seen in the Confessions of Augustine and in the writings
of Anselm — with " the kernel of the ontological argument."
The history of philosophy in its relations to religion seems to
suggest this view. Even in Buddhism, with its fundamental
1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 150.
2 Philosophy of Religion (English Translation, ed. 1888), III, p. 274/.
50 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

doctrine that " all the constituents of Being are transitory,"

"
the distinction has to be introduced between " Karma-existence
and " Originating-existence." ' " Existence is twofold ; there
is Karma-existence and an Originating-existence." The Wheel
of Existence is known beginning and yet, just
indeed without ;

as the ignorant and desiring Mind has made it to exist, so the

blessed and wise Mind may cause it to cease to be. Thus also
in the " Discussion of Dependent Origination " between Sakya-
muni and Ananda, where Name and Form are made the cause,
the occasion, and the origin of all dependent existence, both
are personified and deified in the fashion of Oriental mystical
metaphysics. Elsewhere, 2 however, in the effort to escape all

ontology, and playing with mere words and s}r mbols and figures
of speech, Buddhism assures us that Form itself is caused by
ignorance, desire, attachment, and Karma while Name depends
;

on the senses and attention.

Man, in a germinal form found everywhere existing but only
ripening along certain lines of development under the more
favorable conditions into the fruitage of a rational Theism,
conceives of and reasons about the Ground in Reality of his
own being and of the existence of things. His conceptions are
thus variously shaped by the effort to give such an account of
his varied experiences as shall satisfy the constitutional and
permanent demands of his own life. What the ontological
proof so-called amounts to is, therefore, this : It is difficult or
impossible, from the point of view of reflective and self-consistent
thought, to regard the conception of God as a purely subjective
development. This conception, as human reason has somehow
succeeded in framing it, seems to the same reason to demand
the Reality of God.
The gist of the Cosmological argument is found in the log-

ical and, as well, the practical necessity of referring the de-

1 The quotations are from Buddhism in Translation; Harvard Oriental

Series, vol. 3.
2 Visuddhi-Magga, Chapters XVII and XX.
 ;

CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 51

pendent and relative character of finite beings and events to

the Unity of some Independent or Absolute Ground. Its

point of starting is, then, to be located in man's concrete, par-

ticular knowledge of the world ; its impulse proceeds from the
feeling of dissatisfaction with the fragmentary and discrete
character of the explanation which this point of view affords
itsmovement is along the argument from causation onward
and upward towards a resting place in some ultimate or primal
causative Principle. Against this argument, as it has custom-
arily been employed by theology, two powerful objections may
be brought : First, that the argument involves the attempt
at an impossible regressus ad infinitum, a search for cause be-
T

3
ond cause, and other cause still back of this, the whole proc- —
ess being without power or prospect of ever reaching the end

of the chain of causation. It is also objected, secondly, that

any application of the law of causality under which man

knows the phenomenal world, to a region which is qualitatively
different from the phenomenal, involves a misconception of the
principle of causality itself. Both these objections do, indeed,

bear heavily against the cosmological argument, as it has been

customary to employ it ; but they both involve a misconcep-
tion of the principle of causality, and of the use which it is

proper to make of this principle in the reconstruction of the

argument.
The conception of a " World-Ground," or so-called " First

Cause " of all finite beings and events, has been an exceedingly
slow and painful evolution. But the conception is an important
product of man's mental development and any inquiry into ; its

validity requires a criticism which profoundly concerns not

only the faiths of religion but also the rational beliefs postu-
lated,and the conclusions confirmed, by science and by phi-
losophy. For untold ages the race existed without any clear
and reasoned conception of the unity and personality of the
Divine Being. Not until late did man aim at the position
from which to frame the conception of a Personal Absolute as
 :

52 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the Ground of all cosmic existences and events, the First and
the Final Cause of all human experiences. But all the way,
in its gropings after the true idea of God, as well as in its

growth of scientific and reflective knowledge, the human mind

has made use of the cosmological argument. This is simply
to say that man has been trying to explain his own expe-
rience, and to satisfy his own needs, by interpreting the world
of things and of selves in terms of a higher and more univer-
sal, real Principle.
In all such work of the interpretation of experience, the
human mind both posits and infers entities that act upon it

and upon one another. This is true of savage man ; it is true

of childish man ; it is true of insane man ; it is true of scientific
and cultured man. It is as true of the Berkeleian idealist, or
the Comtean positivist, as it is of the common-sense realist

or the so-called " reconstructed " realist. Without some such

intellectual movement of a metaphysical character neither
science nor religion could arise and develop.
Our study phenomena of man's religious life and reli-
of the
gious development has shown us the truth of the declaration
of D'Alviella " The savage, wherever he finds life and move-
J

ment, refers them to the only source of activity of which he

has any direct knowledge, namely the will." And this will is
never the " pure activity" of "non-being," but the will of
some spiritual agent. In this way mythology, whether of the
religious order or not, grows up and flourishes with its in-

structive and yet grotesque and monstrous contributions to

the cosmological argument with reference to the Being of the
World. Of the primitive man Roskoff 2
truly says : His con-
clusion is the joining of the phenomena together, according to
the laws of thought, in the relation of ground and conse-
quence ; he operates in general according to the principle of
causality." The same author adds : " This inner impulse has

1 Origin and Growth of the Conception of God p. 52.

2 Das Religionswesen der rohesten Volkerstamme, p. 129.
 ;

CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 53

been called a ' metaphysical instinct. '

" With chastened and
corrected imagination, and enlarged and more penetrating ob-
servation, modern science refers the same phenomena to phys-
ical entities, to masses, atoms, corpuscles, ions, or ether, etc.
and it weaves new connections between these entities, of a most
marvelous and incredible intricacy, according to the same
principle of causality.
In one of its oldest forms the cosmological argument led
Aristotle from motion in the world of things to a Being which

must be conceived of as a Prime Mover. Through the Middle

Ages, and in its most subtile and refined modern form, this

argument implies that the rational conceptions of cause,

ground, and law, may be applied to reality in the interests of
a better explanation of concrete human experiences. The im-
plication is undoubtedly true. There is no form of contesting
it that does not either employ essentially the same argument,
or else end in some absurd and self-contradictory form of scep-
ticism in matters of science as well as of religion.
At the same time any use of the cosmological argument
which relies upon the mere recoil of the mind from an in-

finite regressus, and upon the incomprehensible and absurd

nature of the infinite series of causal connections, in order
to justify the conception of a so-called First Cause, deprives
itself of all real cogency. " First Cause," in the cosmological

argument, cannot mean simply, at the beginning in time ; it

must mean, as Mr. Spencer admits — "Infinite and Absolute."

1

The moment this argument separates the Ground of the Uni-

verse from present human experience, and thus conceives of a
God that is aloof from the actually existing world, its ten-

dency is toward a Deism which science rejects as unnecessary for

an explanation of phenomena, and which religious feeling regards

as cold and unsatisfying. The God man needs, if he needs
any God at all, whether to come near to his heart or to quicken
and support his intellect, is not a Being whose living relations
i First Principles (edition of 1872), p. 38.
 :

54 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

with the world of things and selves lie chiefly antecedent to,

or run mostly separate from, this same known world of things

and selves. On this point it has been well said " Not a mere
1

foundation of Being in the abstract .... but a real, actually

existing, primitive Ground ( Urgrund) of all reality," is what

the cosmological argument seeks to establish.
In the use of the cosmological argument it is essential that

we should, on the one hand, guard against such agnostic prej-

udices as render both modem science and critical reflection
wholly doubtful about the nature of Reality ; and, on the other
hand, that we should not accept that extreme of dogmatic con-
fidence which concedes to either physical science or to current
theological systems the exclusive right to give a complete and
final form to their respective conceptions of this Reality.

Moreover, the very terms which both science and theology em-
ploy for the statement of their postulates and their conclusions
are greatly in need of a more fundamental criticism. " Laws

of nature " have no meaning in a world which is not essen-

tially orderly and teleological. " Efficient causes," or whatever

substitutes the most skillful scepticism may devise for this

complex notion, signify nothing for an exposition of facts that

does not repose upon the experience of intelligent wills. In-

deed, the detailed and elaborate recognition of causal connec-

tions everywhere in the world, taking place under so-called
laws, — this universal fact is the cosmological argument. " In-

telligence endowed with will," said Kant, " is causality." Bet-

ter said : Will, realizing its own immanent ideas, — this is what
physical science speaks of in such terms as cause, law, relation,
etc.

The Teleological Argument, or Argument from Design,

may be said in general to proceed from the obviously planful
nature, or orderliness, of particular existences and their rela-

tions, as man has an increasing experience of them, to the

conclusion that they all have their Ground in One Mind.
2 Lindsay, Recent Advances in Theistic Philosophy of Religion, p. 143.
 CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 55

From this point of regard it may be considered as based upon

the self-confidence of human reason in its ability to know the
cosmical forces, existences, and laws, as they really are and
actually operate. Thus the teleological is an extension of the
cosmological argument ; and both are supported by the onto-
logical postulate which underlies all forms of the argument.
On the value of this argument the
judgment of the founder
of the modern critical movement is well known. " It is,"
said Kant, " the oldest, the clearest, and most in conformity
1

with human reason " and he adds that it would be " not
;

only extremely sad, but utterly vain, to attempt to diminish

2
the authority of that proof." Socrates is represented as giv-
ing this argument naively when he convinces Aristodemus
that " man must be the masterpiece of some great artificer."
Plato presents it in detail in the Timseus. But Aristotle's
profounder view justifies us in saying that the recognition
which he gave to the immanent end of every object, and of
the Totality, made his doctrine of finality worthy to be " radi-
cally distinguished from the superficial utilitarian teleology of
3
later philosophers." Bacon, the reputed founder of the
modern theory of the inductive method, declares in his Essay
on Atheism that when the mind of man beholdeth the chain
of causes " confederate and linked together," "it must needs
fly to Providence and Deity." The fact that Kant rejected
the claims of the Teleological Argument to " apodeictic cer-
tainty " need not greatly disturb those who neither seek nor
expect such certainty in an argument for the Object of reli-

gious faith. And the confession — "The old argument from

design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to
me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection
has been discovered " — is even less disturbing for one who
1 Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, in the section, Von der Unmoglichkeit des
physiko-theologischen Beweises.
2 Xenophon, Mem. I, iv; comp. IV, iii.
3 For a note on the history of the teleological argument, see Flint, Theism,

pp. 387tf.
56 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

has passed quite beyond the philosophical standpoint of either

Paley or Darwin.
The phrase " superficial utilitarian teleology " may very
fitly give us our point of starting for an intelligent appreciation
of the nature, value, and cogency of the so-called argument
from design. It is an important introductory consideration
that the human mind has always, and of necessity, made use
of the teleological conception in finding its way to a belief ill

the object of religious worship. That which does not seem to

have a mind, and at least to some extent to show its mind, can-
not stir or guide the religious nature of man. All our histor-
ical study of religion illustrates this statement.
In order not only to reconcile modern science and philosophy
with the teleological view of the world, but also to commit
them to it, and to the proof which it affords of the truth of
the religious conception of the Divine Being, the teleological
argument must, indeed, be apprehended in a generous, broad-
minded, and magnanimous fashion (man muss die Frage im
grosser en Stil behandelri). For such a treatment modern science
has prepared anew the way. Its very efforts to intensify and
to extend the mechanical conception of the universe, and, in
spite of all its splendid success in these efforts, its complete
failure thus to furnish an adequate and satisfactory explana-
tion, have expanded and strengthened this argument. Nowhere
do we find any " dead mechanism," worked upon, as it were,

by blind forces that reside upon the outside. Even the kind
of mechanism which we do find, and of which the particular
sciences can make use for a limited and partial explanation of
phenomena, is itself unthinkable without an indwelling final

purpose. What modern science presents is a lively picture of

the ceaseless, indescribably intricate, and richly productive

Life of Nature, regarded as a system of interacting Things and

Selves. In this system there is everywhere present an im-
—
manent teleology a vast, complex, and all-comprehensive net-

work of final purposes.

 CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 57

Into a detailed exhibition of the facts upon which the con-

ception of this universal " immanent teleology " relies, there

is the less need to enter, because it has been so repeatedly and

so fully made. The criticisms which have been most recently
given to the conception in its modern form have abundantly
shown its power to adapt itself to such minor modifications as
the facts require, without losing anything whatever from its

inherent impressiveness. Indeed, the greater number of these

criticisms scarcely touch the nerve of the argument ; much
less do they weaken or destroy it. For example, when one
writer maintains that the proof from the observed adaptation
1

of means to ends, to the intelligence which adapts them, is

either tautological or false, because the very conception of ends

necessarily involves intelligence, his objection, when examined,
comes perilously near to being a mere verbal quibble. The
distinctions, which are then introduced in the effort to substi-

tute for this " argument from design " a so-called " eutaxio-
logicalargument " based upon the " reign of law," are, for
the most part, either superficial and unnecessary or inconclu-
sive as to the points at issue. To establish for the world of
human experience a reign of law it is necessary to deal with
the same facts to which the teleological argument appeals.
" Order " and " the reign of law " everywhere imply both

internal and external relations, really existing and actually

effective, among the different parts of the world's individual
beings, and also between those individual beings ; these rela-
tions themselves indicate that the beings do in fact serve, or
oppose, one another as means to the realization of common or
of different ends. The very conceptions of " Order " and
" Law " therefore involve the idea of the adaptation of means
to ends. Nor does the proposal to substitute the conception
of " function " for that of " purpose " either throw any glare of
new light upon the phenomena or avail to weaken the force of

1 Hicks, Critique of Design Arguments, p. vi/.

 :

58 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the teleological argument. For function, too, is a fact from

which we legitimately infer a purposing mind ;
just as order is

a fact from which we infer an ordering mind. And if things

cannot, without putting mind into them, be conceived of as
ordering themselves, or as performing their several functions
properly, then surely they cannot without putting mind into
them, be conceived of as adapting themselves to one another
with the result of constituting a vast system of apparent means
and ends. At this point, of course, it is the vast and even uni-
versal extent of the system which seems to human reflective

thinking to require the Unity of one intelligent First Cause.

Thus the teleological argument extends the cosmological and
ontological arguments.
The objections and concessions of another critic may be held
to affect, as little as those of the writer just noticed, the re-
statement of the argument from the observed " immanent tele-

ology " of man's experienced world to the Being of God con-

ceived of as Intelligent Will. " The argument," says this
critic,
1
" as popularly pursued, proceeds upon the analogy of a

personal agent, whose contrivances are limited, etc., .... an

argument leading only to the most unworthy and anthropomor-
phic conceptions." Yet we are soon told that " the satisfactory
view of the whole case can only be found in those more en-
larged conceptions which are furnished by the grand contem-
plation of cosmical order and unity, and which do not refer to

inferences of the past, but to proofs of the ever-present mind

and reason in nature." And elsewhere, 2 the critic of the tel-

eological argument already quoted, does not hesitate to say

" The instances in which we can trace a use and a purpose
in nature, striking as they are, after all constitute but a very
small and subordinate portion of the vast scheme of universal
order and harmony of design which pervades and connects

i Baden Powell, Order of Nature, p. 237/.

2 Baden Powell, Unity of Worlds (2d ed.), p. 142.
 ;

CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 59

the whole. Throughout the immensely greater part of nature

we can trace symmetry and arrangement, but not the end for
which the adjustment is made."
Now the truth which the modern developments of the par-
ticular sciences are enforcing and illustrating is this : Every-
where, in the large and in the small, in the parts of individual
things and in the relations of these things to one another, in
the past and in the present, in the realm of so-called matter and
in the realm of so-called mind, and as respects the relations be-
tween the two, there is increasingly manifest the evidence " of
universal order and harmony of design." At the same time,
the inexplicable facts, and even the facts which seem to con-
tradict the universality of this order and the harmony of this
design, are greatly multiplied. Nevertheless, the human mind,
working anthropomorphically but ever more and more after
the pattern of the Universal Reason, refuses to accept as final
that interpretation of such facts which does not relate them,
too, to the all-ordering and all-harmonizing purposes of the
" ever-present Mind and Reason."
Let it be granted, then, that the so-called teleological argu-
ment may more properly be called " the Argument from an
universal Order." Combined, as it always must be, if it is to
produce a rational conviction, with reasoning from the nature
of the effect to the nature of the cause, and implying the
validity of the ontological postulate, the argument from design
becomes a cosmological argument in a truer, pro founder, and
more complete form. It is an argument from cosmic existences,
processes, forces, as man has experience of them, to the Being
of the Cosmos in respect of its real nature. Briefly stated it

runs thus : (1) Man's experience with the world shows, and
shows increasingly, as the different positive sciences extend
the domain of human knowledge and bring their separate con-
clusions into greater harmony, that IT is an orderly totality
(2) The proper, rational, and only satisfactory explanation of
this general fact of experience is the postulate of a World-
60 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Ground, conceived of as an absolute Will and Intelligence —an

intelligent Will, a willing Mind.
"Among themselves all things
Have order; and from hence the form which makes
The Universe resemble God."

At this point, the purely negative and quite unthinkable

conception of the " Unconscious " intervenes. And doubtless,
the unconscious for us as individuals and for the whole race
of men is by far the greater part of what really is, and of what
actually happens. But the " Unconscious " in general, em-
ployed as an explanatory principle or as the conclusion of an
argument, is the mentally unpresentable ; it is the Unding, the
vast, the infinite envelope of night, in the center of which floats

the expanding daylight of man's cognitive strivings and cogni-

tive attainments. The same thing is equally true of such nega-
tive and mystical conceptions as are involved in Eckhart's dis-
tinction of "God and Godhead," which "differ as deed and
not-deed ;
" and of all the negative predicates assigned to
the "Godhead," such as "non-spirit," "non-good," "non-
moral," etc.
Emphatically true is it that the net result of the various
theories of evolution, all of which have tended to replace the
older mechanical conception of the world with the conception
of the physical Cosmos as a developing Life, has increased
rather than diminished the scope and the cogency of the tele-
ological argument. The Mind and Will which this evolution
of living forms manifests, indicate that the teleological principle
is so deeply bedded in the heart of Reality as to make it im-
possible for any individual existence to come actually to be,
or even to be conceived of as being, without an implied con-
formity to a plan. If biological evolution starts, as most
modern forms of the theory seem inclined to do, with the funda-
mental principle of variability assumed as a general fact of all

life, and as a resultant from the composite nature of the germ

and the infinitely varying forms of its environment, then science
 '

CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 61

must account for the plan-full, specific limitations of this vari-

ability.The principle of heredity must somehow co-operate,
and must direct the variable along certain lines of development.
But if biology start with heredity, and take for granted all
that goes with this principle in order to secure a plan-full
stability for living forms, then it must also discover some real

principle which will account for the obvious restriction of the

effects of inheritance. Only in this way can the progressive

order and continuity of development in the different genera-
tions having the same ancestor be satisfactorily explained. But
from whichever point of view science takes its start, the final
problem remains essentially the same ; —namely, to get all the
principles so adjusted to one another and to common ends, that
the actual, observed history of the development of life on the
earth shall be adequately explained. And this cannot be done
without the hypothesis of an immanent teleology, an indwell-
ing and ordering Mind. Surely, in the interests of every theory
of biological evolution we cannot say less, even if we cannot say
more, than Weismann * has said upon this point: " I neverthe-
less believe that there is no occasion for this reason to renounce
the existence of, or to disown, a directive Power." " Behind
the co-operating forces of nature which '
aim at a purpose
must we admit a Cause, which is no less inconceivable in its
nature, and of which we can only say one thing with certainty,
— viz., that it must be teleological."

The cosmological and teleological arguments so-called reach

supreme form of expression in what is denominated, with
their
asomewhat loose and expansive signification, the " Moral Ar-
gument" for the Being of God. In considering the evidence
of immanent final purpose which the world-order shows, it is es-

pecially important to comprehend, if possible, the teleology of

man himself, both of the individual and of the race. In some
sort, and in spite of no little confusion and much darkness, the
Universe as known to man seems to have realized in his pro-
i Theory of Descent (ed. London, 1882), II, p. 708; 712.
62 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

duction and development one of its most obvious final pur-

poses. But IT has made him moral and capable of pronouncing

judgments of value on things and on himself from the moral
point of view. What sort of a universe must " IT " be, which
can bring to actuality the moral being that man certainly
is?
According to Pfleiderer1 the moral argument falls into two
parts : (1) " From the existence of the absolute moral law in
our consciousness we arrive at God as absolute lawgiver ;" and
(2) " for the possibility of the realization of the moral law in
the visible world, we postulate God as absolute ruler of the
world." In one word, only absolute, or independent moral
Being, can serve as theGround of that ethical nature and eth-
ical development which man knows himself to have attained.

In a more tentative way Wundt2 finds in human ethical ex-

perience the proof of a principle which seems to demand a
source for itself that can neither lie in the individual animal
or the individual man ; nor in nature, considered as an un-
ideal and unethical environment. How such a principle can
be, Wundt thinks is " one of the questions which we shall in

all probability never be able to answer." We shall subse-

quently express more in detail our agreement with Pfleiderer in
thinking that the existence of such a principle demands the
postulate of an ethical World-Ground.
The so-called moral proof, like all the other arguments, is

not improved or made more theoretically convincing and prac-

tically effective by any of the various attempts to throw it into
a demonstrative or intuitive form. For example, when one
author 3 affirms, " What we are immediately conscious of is,

that the Ultimate Ground of all reality is asserting itself in us,

and revealing to us an objective norm of conduct which is felt

to possess a universality and an authority such as nothing fi-

i Philosophy of Religion, III, p. 264/.

2 Ethics, I, p. 130/.
3 Upton, Bases of Religious Belief (Hibbert Lectures, 1897), p. 37.
 ;

CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 63

nite or created could originate," —

he is leaping at a bound the
steps in the argument through which the race has slowly
found its way upward, in the evolution of moral and religious
experience. Neither can we accord the verdict of success to
Kant for his effort, in the " Critique of the Practical Reason,"
to connect the conception of God in a perfectly indisputable
way with the absoluteness of the moral law, conceived of as a
so-called categorical imperative. But undoubtedly, as Schultz
argues, 1 the teleological argument is greatly strengthened by the
facts and principles of man's moral life and moral develop-
ment. " Every man," says he, " who believes unconditionally
in moral obligation has in his heart an altar to the unknown
God." The moral argument in truth puts the crown on the
other forms of the cosmological and teleological arguments.
But it can do little or nothing to overcome a determined agnosti-
cism or materialism, because the citadel in which these views
entrench themselves lies on the other side of the moral domain,
so to say. It must, therefore, be taken by siege or by assault
before religious experience can approach the discussion of prob-
lems of an ethical sort in their bearing upon the proof for the
Being of God. " Unless a man really believes in God on other
grounds," says the Roman Catholic writer, R. F. Clarke, 2 " I
should be very sorry to have to convert him by means of the
argument from conscience."
In the conceptions of Deity which are formed by savage or
primitive man, the moral elements are either largely wanting
or else they are so uncertain and shifty as only slightly to in-
fluence his conduct or his cult. The same gods —whether con-
ceived of as natural powers personified or in a more definite

anthropomorphic fashion — may be regarded as well-disposed or

ill-disposed to the individual and to the tribe, without calling
into question the purity of the morals, either of themselves or of
their worshippers. But as the development of man raises him
1 Grundriss der Christlichen Apologetik, p. 82/.
* Existence of God, p. 43.
64 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

in the scale of morality, and elevates and purines his ideas of

the inviolability of moral principles and of the value of moral

ideals, it also compels him to improve his conception of God
as judged by moral standards.
The argument — if such it can be called —from man's sesthet-

ical sentiments and ideals for the religious conception of the

Being of the World as perfect Ethical Spirit is a part of the moral
argument, in the wider signification of the term. The con-
siderations which belong to this argument may be presented
from two related but not identical points of view :
(1) The stim-
ulus which these sentiments —the feelings with which man
greets his ideals of what is admirable, sublime, venerable, or
mysterious, etc., —furnish toward the belief in God ; and (2)
the stimulus and the shaping which the sentiments and ideals
themselves receive from the conception of God. Evidence for
the existence of God, as a Being fit to satisfy the higher reli-
gious ideals of humanity, cannot be obtained without taking the
facts of ethics and art chiefly into the account. In some real
and important way, then, it is true that the ethical and aesthet-
ical experience and development of man give God to man, and

in themselves prove the reality of the God whom they give.

They are forms of experience which will never rest satisfied with
a view of the cosmos, and of man's cosmic relations, which re-
duces him to a merely dependent piece of a universal Mechanism,
called " Nature," or what you The Cosmos itself must be
will.

interpreted so as to make room for all that is in man. For who

is it that interprets this cosmos in terms, whether of the cosmo-
logical, or other forms of argument and belief? It is man him-
self. From this truly human point of view, all arguments must
be regarded as only fragmentary parts of one argument ; and
that one argument may properly be designated " cosmological "
—based however, on the ontological postulate which expresses
the confidence of the race in its rational and cognitive develop-
ment. To give up the faith that man may know the Being of
the World, in a way, progressively the better to satisfy his own
 CUSTOMARY PROOFS EXAMINED 65

enlarged mind, is to adopt a discouraging and dishonorable at-

titude of scepticism.
The Historical Argument is in no respect a separate form of
evidence, or proof, for the Being of God. But, on the other
hand, all the arguments, in order to be presented in the

most convincing way, require the constant recognition of

the value of historical studies. They themselves are, in their

present most approved form, the results — each one — of an

historical process. The proofs are developments, dependent
upon the growing experience of the race, and upon its in-
creasing ability to interpret and evaluate this experience.
The motto of this argument may be stated in these words of
Augustine, which are said to have converted Newman: Se-

cur us judical orbis terrarum. From another point of view it

resolves itself, as evidence, into the objective side of the psy-

chological problems offered by the nature, origin, and develop-
ment of religions, as those problems have already been dis-

cussed. " Given man such as he is, and given the world such
as it is, a belief in divine beings, and, at last, in One Divine
*
Being, is not only a universal, but an inevitable fact."
1 See Max Miiller, Anthropological Religion, Lecture IV.
5
 CHAPTER XXIX
THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED

The reflective mind cannot remain uncritically " secure " in

the judgment of the multitudes of mankind (the orbis terrarum)
with regard to the being and attributes of God. This judgment
may be claimed for nature-worship in some form, as chronolog-
ically prior to Theism ; or for Buddhism, as to-day more
" multitudinous " than Christianity. " Collective humanity,"
considered as the subject of religious experience, believes in
the Object of religion, in God, in a very confused and unsatis-
factory manner. The content of its conception, " the accumu-
lation of centuries," is not such as to make it acceptable " in
the raw " to a cultivated reason.
We have, indeed, seen the truth of the declaration that
" The arguments in question (that is, for the Being of God)
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 continued adap-
tation to the ideas and idiosyncrasies of every successive age."
But this very declaration implies the claim that the same
arguments make upon the human reason a ceaseless demand
for reconstruction. The total proof will always be an un-
finished work. Its main outlines may remain, indeed, sub-
stantially unchanged in character ; but they are constantly
widening their scope, constantly accumulating the content
with which they are to be filled, and constantly challenging re-

newed examination from changing points of view. Indeed,

the Reality corresponding to the conception of God reveals
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 67

itself in no more convincing way than through a critical study

of the histor}' of man's religious development for this amply ;

proves that the essentials of the conception endure through

all the centuries of progressive rectification which the concep
tion itself undergoes.
Such a perpetual challenge to humanity never to give over
its attempt the better to sound the profounder depths of this
Ideal of the religious experience, and to discover more com-
prehensively and surely what Reality sustains and validates its

development, is enforced by powerful social considerations.

Life, in the noblest, broadest, and highest meaning of the term,
is impossible without that attitude of filial piety toward the
Being of the World which is the very heart and pulse of genu-
ine subjective religion. The social nature of man, therefore,
becomes an unceasing stimulus of the demand for so-called
proof upon this subject. Indifference is impossible. If I be-
lieve, why argue with myself ? If I do not believe, why argue

with another? Why should men generally strive so mightily

to convince their fellows that God is, or that he is not? It is
not my experience which alone needs to be explained. It is

the experience of the race, the universal and typical experience

of mankind. All the rational and social interests which belong
to humanity at large are concerned in the constant inquiry of
the race for a renewed investigation of the grounds on which
reposes its own undying faith in God.
On the other hand, the history of discussion, as well as the
nature of the problems discussed, warns us that no individual
thinker, however fruitful or bold his thinking may be, need
expect to make any considerable contribution toward the an-
swer to this problem of the ages. At most the individual can
only set forth his own view of the particular considerations
which should, in his judgment, most powerfully influence the
men of his own day to a more rational faith in the Object of
the universal religious experience. This work, like every
work of thought, must be done by the individual thinker ; for
68 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

there is no argument, either for the display or for the criticism

of any kind of evidence, which is not some individual's thought.
At this point it is necessary to recall the nature of the task

which is before us now, and which will remain before us until

the end. This task is (1) to establish the Unitary Being of
God in such manner as to meet the legitimate demands of
modern science and philosophy and, at the same time, (2) to
;

vindicate and expound the Spirituality of this Being in such

manner as to satisfy the higher sesthetical and ethical senti-
ments and ideals, and so to afford evidence for the essential
truth of humanity's religious experience.
In the accomplishment of such a task, no matter how par-
tially, we are, however, entitled to whatever advantages flow
naturally from certain considerations established by our histor-
ical and psychological studies, and by our previous criticism of
the arguments customarily proposed. One of these considera-
tions is the necessity of combining the historical and the phil-
osophical methods. But as says D'Alviella :* " These methods
do not exclude each other ; nay, each finds in the other its nec-
essary supplement." The rather is it true that these methods
represent different aspects of the one rational movement of the

race in its effort to attain and to justify a satisfying faith in God.

When the inquiry is raised, What conception of God, if it

can be established by evidence, whether of the indisputable or

of the probable sort, would best meet the intellectual, ethical,
sesthetical^ and social needs of men ? a tolerably sure clue to
the right answer is found in the nature and development of
the religious experience of the race. There is undoubted
2
truth in the observation of Pascal, that different minds both
1 Origin and Growth of the Conception of God, p. vii.
2 Pensees, Partie I, art. x, sec. 33: "Ceux qui sont accoutumes a juger
par le sentiment ne comprennent rien aux choses de raisonnement ; car ils

veulent d'abord pen^trer d'une vue, et ne sont point accoutumes a chercher

les principes. Et les autres, au contraire, qui sont accoutumes a raisonner
par principes, ne comprennent rien aux choses de sentiment, y cherchant
des principes, et ne pouvant voir d'une vue."
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 09

approach and estimate the truth of this conception in quite

different ways. Inasmuch, however, as the religious experience
of the race — religion when considered subjectively — includes
activities and attitudes of thought, of feeling, and of the life

of conduct, the Object toward which, considered as a Reality,

this experience is directed, must necessarily assume a form to

correspond with the subjective experience. It is desirable at

once, then, to define clearly in the interests of critical and re-

flective thinking, the goal which it is intended to reach. This

is the conclusion that the World-Ground may reasonably be con-
ceived of as personal, and perfect Ethical Spirit. The many
difficulties in the way of such a conclusion must, indeed, be
candidly and thoroughly examined. But to forejudge the
conclusion by warning us that " we must not fall down and
worship as the source of our life and virtue, the image which
our own minds have set up; " and to ask, " Why such idolatry

is any better than that of the old wood and stone?" is to re-
treat before the struggle, and fall back upon the otiose and
unreasonable positions of a worn-out dogmatic agnosticism.
" The image which our own minds set up " is our only standard
of any form of truth, our only medium of commerce with reality.
Man does fall down and worship such an image this is one of ;

the very things chiefly to be accounted for. But that other

image which takes its name from metaphysical babblings simi-
lar to those of the psuedo-Dionysius when he characterizes

Deity as " Super-essential Indetermination, supra-rational Unity,

super-essential Essence, the Absolute No-Thing above all exist-
"
ence," is quite as much comparable to " old wood and stone
as are the idol gods of the most intellectually degraded races.
Since the conception of personality, as well as the concep-
tion of Divine Being, has been and still is subject to a process
of development, the effort to combine the two into a self-
consistent and harmonious idea, such as that which is covered
by the term " personal Absolute," must also be, for its per-
fection and rationality, so to say, dependent upon develop-
 — ;

70 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ment. In religion the conception of God as perfect Ethical

Spirit marks the highest point hitherto reached by one form of
the evolution of mankind. In philosophy, so far as philosophy
deals with the fundamental problem proposed by this concep-
tion, its chief difficulties of the more strictly logical order con-

cern the Idea to be subsumed under such a term (i. e., personal
Absolute*). In order to overcome these difficulties two things
must be made to appear :
— First, that the conception of Per-

sonality, or self-conscious Spirit, is not necessarily limited from

without, ab-extra, as it were ; that it is, on the contrary, the
one positive standpoint (or Bliekpunhf) from which all con-
crete realities and actual relations are necessarily regarded
and that, when thought out in its most essential and highest
form, it is a seZf-limiting and se//-consistent conception. But,
second, it must also be made to appear that the Absoluteness

of God is not annulled, but the rather enriched, confirmed to

thought, and made intelligible, by the system of particular and
individual beings in which He is immanent, and through which
He manifests himself. Thus, in some sort, the problem for the
philosophy of religion becomes, not so much whether God ex-
ists or not, as what is the Nature of the Ultimate Reality.
And the best possible solution of this problem is attained, if

we are warranted in conceiving of this Reality as the Ground

of all that we hold true in science, of all that we admire in art,
of all that we esteem most worthy in morals and, as well, as ;

the valid Object of religious belief and worship.

The logical process of constructing, on the basis of man's
total and ever-developing experience, the conception of the

Ultimate Reality, or World-Ground, as an Absolute Person,

while this process in some sort constitutes a unity of argu-
ment, cannot claim for all parts of itself an equally convincing
kind or amount of evidence. Especially is this true when the
attempt is made to incorporate into the conception those ethi-
cal and sesthetical elements which are most important and dear to
the religious consciousness. It is comparatively easy to show
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 71

that all such categories as Force, Cause, Relation, and the more
complex categories Law, Matter, Nature, etc., imply for the
of
human mind One Absolute Will and Mind as constituting the
Ground of that system of things and of finite selves of which man
has experience. Certain metaphysical predicates, all of which
speak in terms that are meaningless as applied to beings devoid
of self-consciousness, may also be inferred. But at the point
where this conclusion from the data of experience to the
rational conception of a World-Ground, as Will and Mind,
meets the objections derived from the category of self-con-

sciousness, the difficulties of reconciling the absoluteness of

God with his personality culminate in a way to demand a more

searching analysis. It is, however, where reflective thinking
seeks to ascribe the perfection of so-called moral attributes
to the World-Ground, that the difficulties become most per-
plexing and acute. For at this point the dark problem of evil
seems to block the path of reason. And, indeed, this blocking
is effectual, unless it can be agreed to expand the scope of so-
called " reason, " and at the same time to throw the weight of
the argument over upon certain other aspects of human experi-
ence. Hence, while the candid investigator might be able to
say that he hnotvs the sum-total of the experience of the race is

best explained by reference to the unitary principle of one

intelligent Will, he would conform his language to his mental
attitude better if he only claimed that there seem to be good
reasons for his faith in the moral and spiritual perfection of
God.
In all that movement of reason, by which it seeks grounds
for a belief in God, it is important to keep the teachings of
history in view. The admonition to do this has already been
several times repeated. It is history which supplies us with
the knowledge of certain of the more constant elements in
man's conception of Deity. These elements, by virtue of their
very constancy, have a peculiar claim upon the student of the
philosophy of religion. They may be grouped under the fol-
 —
72 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

lowing two heads The " root-conception," always found on

:

digging down into human consciousness, is the super-humanity

of God. This conception must not, however, be confused
with that of the super-natural much less with the belief that
;

the Divine Being is so above man as to be unknowable or in-

communicable bj r way of relations of thought, feeling, or will.

In power, majesty, control over the conditions of space, time,

and causation, in wisdom, justice, and, finally, in goodness and
purity, the Divine is to be esteemed as more than human. At
the same time, and as the complement of the elements just
enumerated, the likeness of God and man is somehow or other,
always either tacitly assumed or openly advocated. Such a
likeness is the only conceivable basis on which any degree or
kind of communion between the two can take place. " That
God is a Spirit is, in brief," says Tiele, 1
"the creed of man
throughout all ages ; and religious man feels the need of as-
cribing to God in perfection all the attributes he has learned
to regard as the highest and noblest in his own spirit."

We shall now sketch in barest outline the argument for the

religious conception of the Being of the World as it presents
itself in modern science and philosophy, and of
the light of
modern life, leaving to subsequent chapters the work of com-
pleting the details, especially at those places where difficulty
and dispute chiefly arise.
" Does the world explain itself, or does it lead the mind
above and beyond itself ? " 2 Science, philosophy, and religion,
all have their birth in the negative answer to this question.

In some sort, unless we assume that things and selves, as they

appear to the senses under the conditions of space and time,
are not self-explanatory, neither science, nor philosophy, nor
religion, could even come into existence. 3 But all three
religion, science, and, especially, philosophy —have been con-

1 Elements of the Science of Religion, Second Series, p. 103.

2 So ProfessorFlint, Theism, p. 12.
3 Comp. Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte d. Philosophic I, ii, p. 204/.
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 73

stantly placing upon surer and broader convictions the knowl-

edge of the World's Unity as presented in all these forms of
human experience. The path of the progress of each of the
three is indeed strewn with hasty and over-confident generali-
zations. The various subordinate unities, whether they are
known as related species of things, or as those more or less

uniform ways of the behavior of things which we call laws,

have often enough been misapprehended. Thus it is essential
to progress that the old unities should be reduced to their con-
stituent elements and new conceptions should be formed. But
all the while there has been an increasing conviction, supported
by an accumulating mass of evidence, as to some sort of a Uni-
tary Being belonging to the manifold varied and incessantly
changing complex of existences and events. Indeed, all the
terms in which the growth of any kind of knowledge expresses
itself signify man's undying confidence in this truth. In
some sort, the many are connected ; they are in a system ; they
constitute a cosmos ; there is a " reign of law" ; there is a
real order underlying the apparent confusion ; the world of
man's experience is undergoing a process of interdependent
evolution. The Being of the World is One ; or at least, it is

on its way to becoming One.

That this conception of the unitary Being of the World is

a pleasing and helpful postulate for all the particular sciences,

there is no necessity to prove. That the conception corresponds
to the reality, the achievements of science tend either to assume
with more confidence or to show with an increasing amount of
evidence. In man's religious development we have already seen
what powerful forces have been successfully at work to compel
his mind to the belief in one God rather than in indefinitely
many gods. Even in the case of the ancient Egyptians who,
as Renouf affirms, 1 probably saw no inconsistency in holding
at one and the same time the doctrine of many gods and One
God, there was evolved the conception expressed — in however
*The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 96.
74 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

esoteric form —in the hymn to Anion Ra " The ONE, Maker
:

of all that is ; the One, the only One, the Maker of existences."
Philosophy may then appeal to both science and religion, and
may base its appeal upon the achievements in development of
both, when it claims that, either in the course of argument or
in the form of a postulate, some one real Principle must be
arrived at which shall assist in explaining the unitary nature
of our experience with the manifold world of things and of
men.
This explanatory Principle must be not merely logical but
real ; it must be believed in, or known, as having an existence
independent of the constructive activity of human imagination
and human thinking. It must serve as the Ground, both of
these activities and of the objects which they construct. To
use the abstract and often misleading, but expressive term of
the Hegelian philosophy, it must have its " Being-in-itself."

And this real principle must be One. It must have some unity
in reality. Since the world of fact and law is constantly re-
vealing itself in human experience as more and more an inter-
connected whole, the real Being which explains this whole in
a fundamental way, must also be conceived of as a unifying
actus. It is the Unitary Being of this principle which accounts
for the interconnection and orderly relations of the world of
man's varied experiences.
When, however, such metaphysical abstractions as the fore-
going are examined, it soon becomes obvious how unsatisfac-
tory, if left in their abstractness, they are to account for the
manifold, vital, and intensely real, concrete facts of daily life.

In spite, however, of this dissatisfaction which philosophy

shares with common sense and with popular feeling, let us
call for the present that Unitary Being which is to serve as a
real explanatory Principle of these varied facts, by the title of
" The World-Ground." Such a term has confessedly an un-
couth structure and harsh acoustic properties ; but it is, per-
haps, as well fitted as any other to express the conclusion of
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 75

the present moment in the argument. For, (1) it is imper-

sonal ; (2) it nevertheless expresses some sort of a unity ; and
(3) it indicates some sort of a real relation, a vital and pro-
ductive connection, between our experience of the world and
the explanatory principle which we seek.
It was Schopenhauer who more clearly than any other modern
philosopher brought forward a thought which, after all, is

necessarily regulative of all the attempts to explain experience

that depend upon the belief in, or knowledge of, a World-
Ground. No conception can explain this experience that does
not incorporate in itself our human but fundamental idea of
causative activity. The World- Ground cannot serve as a real
and unitary principle unless It is itself conceived of as Will.

This contention may be argued in the light of the psychologi-

cal study of that universal experience from which man derives
all his categories of Force, Power, Energy, Cause ;
—and what-
ever other conceptions seem necessary to distinguish being
from non-being, doing from not-doing, life from death. It is

in this knowledge of himself as essentially an active will that

man finds the warrant for all these categories as he applies
them to external things. The application is, indeed, made as
a kind of fundamental anthropomorphism. But it enters into
all knowledge ; and without it nothing can be known to act or
even to be. 1

The same conclusion may be argued on the authority of

modern science. The conceptions which it has embodied in
the so-called law of the conservation and correlation of energy
are in evidence here. This " energy " of the Being of the
World appears more and more of a kind to
to scientific insight
bring into orderly connections and sequences all the separate
manifestations of energy, whether these manifestations are
located, so to say, in selves or in things. To be sure, no one
specific kind of energizing, and no one established formula to

1 This truth is shown in detail throughout the author's treatises on the

"Philosophy of Knowledge" and "A Theory of Reality."
76 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

express the relations of the different centers of energy has

been discovered hitherto. Moreover, any expression for the
dynamic relations which seem to be maintained between selves
and things is as yet a formula so hidden, if indeed it exist in
reality at all, that the mind can scarcely imagine words in
which such an expression could be framed. Still further, the
behavior of radio-active substances, and other physical phenom-
ena, as well as the growing tendency to look on psychoses
themselves as active forces, and the difficulties of reconciling
so static a conception as the " conservation of energy " offers
with the evidences that the World is an evolving Life, are just

now shaking the confidence of the thoughtful in the finality

and supremacy of the scientific conception of Energy as a uni-

fying principle. Still the positive sciences cling, and very
properly cling, to their determination to regard the separate
forces as somehoAV resolvable into different forms of the mani-
festation of that which is essentially One. To fill the abstract
and barren conception of One Force with a vital experience

we are obliged to refer to the unifying actus of a single Will. 1

In some form the reflections of philosophy have, from time
immemorial, virtually endowed the Being of the World with
that capacity for causal energy which man knows in himself

1 A careful analysis of any of those terms in which modern science attempts

to summarize its views as to the nature of that substantial and ultimate
unity in which it wishes to ground all its explanations of physical phenomena
will illustrate this statement. According to a recent writer the latest con-
clusions as to what is known about this unity may be summarized as follows:
"Ether under strain constitutes 'charge'; ether in locomotion constitutes
current and magnetism; ether in vibration constitutes light. What ether

we do not know, but it may, perhaps, be a form or aspect of matter.

itself is

Now we can go one step further and say: Matter is composed of ether and
nothing else." [Address by Professor Edward L. Nichols on "The Funda-
mental Concepts of Physical Science," before the International Congress at
St. Louis; see Popular Science Monthly, Nov. 1904, p. 62.] The "in-itself"
being of this Ether, out of which Matter in the different forms of its manifes-
tation and activity is composed, so far as it is known or knowable is stata-
ble only in terms of Will and Mind.
 —
THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 77

as his will. On the basis of that irresistible experiential proof

to which we have already referred, man believes that such ca-

pacity, although limited and subject to development, is the

fundamental thing with himself. It is the very core of his
being, to will. So must it be, according to the testimony of
the world's reflective thinkers, after an enlarged and more
mysterious fashion, with the Being of the World. With Plato
the Good was conceived of as a fountain of quenchless and ex-
haustless energy. With Aristotle the Prime Mover was the
responsible agent for the changes of which men's senses and
reasonings took account. With Kant the Ultimate Reality was
personal Will. And Hegel's "Thought" is no passive entity
or merely abstract arrangement of dead categories ; it, too, is

the energizing of a self-revealing Will.

Although we have no experience from which to derive a con-
tent that shall give the conception of the World-Ground its
right to exist as an explanatory principle, which does not re-

fer to the core of its reality as an actual energizing, the con-

ception of mere Will is quite inadequate. It is both too meagre
and too abstract. Just as our experience is not an experience
of things and minds merely acting and interacting, so its ex-
planatory Principle cannot be a mere Being of the World con-
ceived of after the analogy of Will. Order and adaptation
as the so-called cosmological argument has already been justi-

fied in asserting —imply that the syntheses of Will which

everywhere abound must be directed by Mind. Order and
adaptation are facts. They are facts which require co-operating
energies that are somehow converged, as it were, upon the at-
tainment of an end. Such is the comprehensive conclusion of
the so-called cosmological and teleological view of the world,
from the beginning of human reflection down to the present
time. We have already seen (pp. 45^f.) that the nature of the
argument has not changed essentially, from first to last. Essen-
tially considered, it cannot change. When the world of man's
experience was conceived of as " dead matter," as a machine
 —
—
78 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

moved upon by forces from without, the Mind which it dis-

played, and on which it depended for its forms and laws, was lo-

cated ab-extra, and operated upon it from afar, as it were,

albeit through subordinate agencies and secondary causes and

intermediary existences. When, however, the subtler concep-
tion of a mechanism, molecular and atomic, had supplanted
the coarser notion of a world made like a machine, the intel-

ligent Will, the willing Mind, was conceived of as interpenetrat-

ing and immanent in every detail of the world's beings and
doings. Yet subtler is that more modern conception of the
world which likens it to an indwelling and unfolding Life.
With this conception, Mind becomes, not only that intelligent
force which makes things so to exist that human beings can
apprehend and understand them, but also that explanatory Prin-
ciple which gives the warrant to assert that things themselves
are manifestly all informed with mental life.

For centuries astronomy afforded both the most influential

line of thinking along which men were carried from mytholog-
ical nature-worship toward theistic views, and also the most
impressive argument for the Being of God. Of Confucius'
use of the vague term " Heaven," which he employed to win
the people from idolatry, Dr. Martin affirms r
1
" He ascribed to
the object of his reverence more of personality than they (his
followers of to-day) are willing to admit." In the Chinese con-
ception, Heaven has always possessed certain indwelling ca-
pacities of will and mind. The modern sciences of chemistry,
physics, —
and biology especially the latter with its microscopic
investigation of the evolution of cell-structure and cell-growth
directs our attention the rather to that immanent Life of the
world, whom religion worships as the "living and life-giving
God." On the level of the chemico-physical sciences, this
thought is put into realistic and highly figurative language by
a celebrated writer on physics, when he says 2 " The atoms are
:

!The Lore of Cathay, p. 43.

2Life of James Clerk Maxwell, p. 391.
 —
THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 79

a very tough and can stand a great deal of knocking about,

lot,

and it is strange to find a number of them combining to form a

man of feeling." And again r
1
" I have looked into most phil-
osophical systems, and I have seen that none will work without
a God."
This vitalistic view of Nature as implying an indwelling
Mind and Will is a return, in the name of science and in vastly
improved and more profoundly significant form, to the same
point of view from which so much of religious belief and prac-
tice took its rise. In this connection it should be noticed
that those categories under which all scientific research, and
all the expositions of the sciences, relate their discovered phe-
nomena, imply essentially the same conclusion. Causation
means nothing means active will endowed
intelligible unless it

with intelligence. Bare Cause, mere Force or Energy, causes

and and kinds of energy that are not directed toward
forces
some end, are not only inconceivable as having place in a sys-
tem of existences, but they also are quite unable to effect the
reality of such a system.
If, then, God is to be known or knowable as the Ground of
the World, it cannot be as bare Will, or as unconditioned Pri-
mal Cause, or as mere and indefinite Principle of existence.
For the world itself, as known or knowable, is not a mere
" lump," so to say, of existences and occurrences ; nor do its

existences, forces, and so-called causes, operate upon each other,

or stand together in the totality of the world, in an undefined,
unclassifiable, unspecialized way. This is to say that " causes "
are always, and of their very nature, teleological. They serve
their own and one another's ends. God is the Ground of the
co-operation of existences and causes to whatsoever ends are
whether we can discover what they are, or not —actually being
fulfilled. As I have elsewhere
conclusion of a detailed
said," in

discussion of the conceptions involved " This is, indeed, just :

ilbid., p. 426.
2 A Theory of Reality, p. 360.
 :

80 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

what a '
principle of causation '
necessarily means — Will energiz-

ing in conformity to ideal forms and aims."

On the one hand, then, this One Will, the Will of God, is

not something apart from, or wholly beside and above, the

many finite and concrete centers of energy — human wills and
willing things, considered as relatively independent centers of
activity, which by their co-operating bring about the manifesta-

tion of the One Will of God. Or as Professor Royce has

forcefully but not quite adequately stated the case
l
" The
Divine Will is simply that aspect of the Absolute which is ex-

pressed in the concrete and differentiated individuality of the

World." But, on the other hand, God as Will is not mere
undifferentiated Power ; in order to " get his will done," this

infinite Power must be translated into many finite powers.

The forms and laws of the translation, as we actually see it

constantly going on in the processes of so-called Nature, im-

plies the immanent presence of Mind. Thus much at least is

demonstrably true.
enough at this stage of the argument to say, that the
It is

very words and formulas which man is obliged to use in all his
attempts to construct a scientific and systematic interpretation
of his experience, shows him to be obliged to conceive of the

Ground of it all as an ordering and designing Will, or Mind.

But other experiences enable us to consider this Divine Will
as rising above the blind strivings and desires which the phe-
nomena of nature exhibit, and lead our thought beyond the more
definite specializations of energy, its kinds and laws, with which
the particular sciences make us familiar, upward to the con-

ception of moral will as choice and this moral will, blended

;

with emotion, is the Divine Love and the precondition of the

Divine Blessedness.
The argument for the Being of God still remains, however,
in the region of inadequate abstractions. May this Mind-Will
be conceived of as a self-conscious personal Life, an Absolute
i The Conception of God, p. 202/.
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 81

Self in the supremest meaning possible for these words ? At

this point the argument undoubtedly begins to grapple with
the objections of those who will go only so far as Schopenhauer
and Hartmann, and many others both in ancient and modern
times have gone. If it stops here, however, it rests in such a
largely negative and abstract conception of the Divine Being
as has seemed sufficient to Brahmanical and Buddhistic phi-
losopy, to most of what is called Pantheism in Western think-
in sr, and to not a little of both ancient and modern Christian
mysticism. But it fails either to explain or to satisfy the de-
mands of the religious consciousness, both psychologically and
historically considered ; and it denies or minimizes the onto-
logical value of the Object of religious faith and worship, con-
ceived of as perfect Ethical Spirit and so as the Father and
Redeemer of the race. We must, then, in spite of defects in
the cogency of the argument we are following, and of obstacles

from counter-arguments, accept still further the leadership of

the history of the race in its religious experience and religious

development. It may well be that we shall discover that both

science and philosophy, if not wholly able to accept and sub-

stantiate the convictions of religion, are at least unable success-
fully to dispute or to displace them.
It must at once be admitted that we cannot affirm the self-

consciousness, and so the complete Self-hood or Personality of

God, in quite the same way which we are led to
as that in
believe that the World-Ground must be conceived of as Will
and Mind. All reasoning about the interactions and relations
of finite things and minds, and all forms of mentally repre-
senting these interactions and relations, imply the immanence
and control of an active, teleological principle in the world.
This truth must be accepted, with all that it implicates, or else all
attempt to give a rational explanation to any form of human
experience must be abandoned. But there are many exhibi-
tions of this principle concerning which experience cannot af-

firm the presence of self-conscious; and personal Life, in the

6
32 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

fuller meaning of this term. Molecules, atoms, ions, as well

as everything animate or inanimate, from expanding iron to

growing cell, from flower in crannied wall to star overhead, are

individual beings whose actions and relations exemplify the
truth of immanent Will and Mind. But that each of these
beings self-conscious and personal, or even conscious so as
is

to have any awareness of the ends which it seems to us to serve,

or of any ends whatever, we cannot claim to know in any de-
monstrative way.
It has been claimed in the interests of the theistic position,
that the conception of a mind which is not self-conscious or at
least conscious, is like the conception of " wooden iron; " it

involves, that is to say, a contradiction in terms. Now it is

undoubtedly true that all knowledge of the nature of mind is

conscious experience. The results of such knowledge are pre-

sentable and intelligible only in terms of consciousness. More-
over, in order to know what it is to be a Self, or Person, in
the fullest meaning of the word, one must have had the ex-
perience of self-consciousness. It is also true that selfhood,

or personality, is impossible —cannot exist, cannot be con-

ceived of —without self-consciousness. Undoubtedly, too, the

measure of mind which is credited to the lower animals, as

well as to our fellow men, and even to plants and inorganic
things, is realizable for human minds, only in terms of conscious-
ness. All psychology, even that which assumes to deal with
the " unconscious," or the " subliminal," is descriptive and ex-
planatory of conscious states in terms of such states. And
yet there remains the undoubted fact that, so far as immediate
experience or observation can go, the greater part by far of
all the world's happenings take place without either the con-
sciousness, or the self-consciousness, of finite beings availing to
account for them as an immanent cause. These happenings,
too, all make upon the mind the irresistible impression of being
manifestations of intelligent will. This is the lesson of the
religious development of humanity, all the way from the low-
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 83

est stage of unreflective spiritism to the highest form of phil-

osophical monotheism.
Whenever, then, it is proposed to attribute the unifying actus
of a self-conscious Life to the world at large, or to justify re-
ligious faith in the Selfhood of God on grounds of the obvious
self-conscious and personal characteristics belonging to this
world, the proposal voices certain well-founded impressions,
which can be supported by credible proofs ; but the argu-
ment rests upon somewhat tentative and doubtful grounds.
For, in the first place, the enormous complexity and bewil-
dering variety of causes and happenings which the world, con-
ceived of as a totality, exhibits, seem to made it difficult or im-
possible to unite them in any one event, so to say, like that of
an act or state of self-consciousness. Each atom, molecule,
ion, ovum, thing, finite mind from the beginning to the end of its
development, surely cannot be said alwaj^s to be self-conscious
and so personal in the higher meaning of the term. Much
less would it seem that the totality of them all, in all their re-
lations, could be demonstrably proved to coexist — not simply
at some one time, but always and essentially — within the grasp
of the self-consciousness or other-consciousness of some one
Personal Life. That the Being of the world shall be explained
as the dependent manifestation of a Personal Absolute, who is

conscious and self-conscious ; that It shall be considered as

only the impersonal term for that Principle which is, essen-
tially considered, the Absolute Self ;
— this is, indeed, an ex-
alted conception and one worthy of the most serious and pro-
longed consideration. But there is no safe and sure short-cut
in the argument by which to justify the conception. On the
contrary, there are many and great difficulties which lie along
the way.
The contemptuous manner in which some writers have dis-
missed the rational postulate that the World-Ground is

self-conscious and personal Being is even less worthy of the

thoughtful mind than is the easy-going dismissal of the
84 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

difficulties involved in its proof. To affirm off-hand that " abso-

luteness " and" personality " are incompatible and self-contra-
dictory conceptions, or that an Infinite Being cannot be self-con-
scious, because this implies limitation, is again to mistake
mere juggling with abstract terms for sound criticism of an
impressive argument. Especially is this manner of procedure
impertinent, when it is accompanied by the proposal to make
some purely negative notion play the part of a valid explana-
tory principle. If God cannot be infinite and also personal,

it is a fortiori true that " The Infinite," " the Unconscious,"

" the Unknowable," cannot in any wise be made to take the
place of an infinite, personal God. Neither does it help either
head, heart, or conscience, to proclaim the dictum —so fashion-
able of late —that the Infinite and Ultimate Reality is some-
thing "more " and " higher " than personal. More and higher
than all human conceptions of his personal Being, God undoubt-
edly is. This truth has always been insisted upon by the high-
est religious experience, and by the most penetrating insight
and elaborate reasoning of the philosophy of religion. But, so
far as human imagination and thought can compass what
that something is like, it must be imagined and thought in
terms of the most perfect self-conscious and personal Life.
It is the Ideal of such Life which sets to humanity its stand-
ard of value. Anything higher and better than this ever-ad-

vancing Ideal is not to be spoken of as a substitute for the

Ideal itself. And all the negative and limiting conceptions
proposed as substitutes are quite devoid of either theoretical or
practical worth.
It is significant to note that the one form of religious philos-
ophy which has most keenly felt and boldly expressed the
difficulty of conceiving of God as both absolute and self-con-
scious, infinite and personal, has itself been exceedingly vacil-

lating and equivocal in the use of its terms. This form of the
philosophy of religion is customarily called pantheistical ; even
when it is not charged with being pantheism outright. Abun*
 —
THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 85

dant illustrations of this historical fact might be derived from

the treatment given to this conception, whether as embodied
in the Nous of Anaxagoras and Plotinus, or the Logos of Philo
and of much of Christian mysticism. Even Islam, with its

stern and fanatical assertion of the sovereignty of a personal

God, when its later theological developments brought it face
to face with this problem, fell into the same vacillation and
habit of equivocating. "The anthropomorphic God of Mu-
hammad, who has face and hands, is seen in Paradise by the
believer and settles himself firmly upon his throne, becomes a
spirit, and a spirit, too, of the vaguest kind." 1 This rejection
of personal qualifications as limitations inconsistent with the
absoluteness of the One God led such a theologian as Ibn
Hazm to the startling conclusion that all the human and moral
attributes ascribed to Allah by the Koran are mere names ; they
indicate nothing belonging to the real essence of the Infinite.
To regard these names as ontologically valid would involve
multiplicity in God's nature ; for there would at least be intro-
duced into the Divine Being the distinction of quality and the
thing qualified. Along this path the later Sufis come to the
wholly pantheistic position, which denies the self-conscious
personality of God and identifies God and the world. "It is

part of the irony of the history of Muslim theology," says a

writer 2 on this subject, "that the very emphasis on the tran-
scendental unity should lead thus to pantheism."
In the religious philosophy of India —the reflective thinking
which is, on the intellectual side, the religion of Brahmanism
the confusion caused by the efforts to unite the factors neces-
sary to the conception of an Absolute Person is conspicuous.
This philosophy, indeed, includes within its entire circuit
every important phase of belief respecting the nature of the
One Divine Being —from Theism to Pantheism, from Material-
1 Macdonald, Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory,
p. 145.
2 Macdonald, Ibid., 233.
86 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ism to monistic Spiritualism. But for this reason, and through-

out it all, it shows the characteristics of vacillation and equivo-
cation. Brahma is variously conceived of and defined in shift-
ing manner, with the obvious intention of escaping the charge
of limiting the conception, and at the same time securing a
fuller satisfaction both to the philosophical and to the religious
consciousness. 1
" All this (universe) is Brahma." " This
(universal being) is my ego, spirit, and is Brahma, force (ab-
solute being)." Brahma is "the self-determining principle
manifesting itself in all the determinations of the finite with-
out losing its unity with itself." It is " absolute thought and
being." The world of our experience, which is Maya, came
into existence because Brahma " thought
and willed to become
many and accordingly became many." 2 Brahma may even be
called, when the thought of the thinker escapes from the

leashes, "self-conscious spirit." But when the stricter inter-

pretation of the nature of this spirit, with its self-conscious
activity, is demanded, the fear of limiting the Absolute, defin-
ing the Infinite, calls the thought back to the necessity of em-
ploying more vague and flexible terms. Then Brahma is

incomprehensible and is to be described only by negatives.

That the more modern thinking over this problem finds itself

beset at this point with the same difficulties, and tempted to

the same mode of escape from them, there is no need to show
in detail, in the present connection.
It is therefore imperative for religion, if it proposes to recon-
cile that philosophical conception of the Being of the World
which is supported by the assumptions and discoveries of the
positive sciences, with the conception which it holds respecting
the Object of its own faith and worship, that it should arrive at

1 For illustrations, see Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 221/.

2Comp. theVedanta Sutra, 1-5; and, as a modern Hindu writer declares:
"Thus Rationalism (that is of the Vedanta philosophy) reveals the Supreme
Being both as personal and impersonal (The Hindu System of Religious Sci-
ence and Art, by Kishori Lai Sarkar, p. 19).
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 87

some clear understanding of its position in the face of these

difficulties. Is God to be conceived of, not simply as Absolute
Will and Mind, in the vague and shifty fashion in which The-
ism and Pantheism may be now antagonistic and now agreed ;

but, the rather, as a self-conscious Person, a true and complete

Self?
The more recent discussions of this problem have been ac-
customed to minimize its importance by passing it by on the
one side or the other. Those who take the left-hand path, as-

sume that the complete incompatibility of absolute and infinite

Being with the limiting conditions of self-consciousness has

been so established as to make unnecessary further discussion.
Those who pass the same problem by upon the right-hand side
are apt to shield themselves by an appeal to the claim of Lotze 1 :

" 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 producing condition of this Personality but a limit and

a hindrance of its development." We do not find it, alas ! so
easy on merely metaphysical grounds to settle this contention.
That the antinomies in the conception of an Absolute Self-

conscious Person are largely introduced there by those who

find them, or by their predecessors in the same line of research,

we have no doubt. On the other hand, it is well to remember

that Lotze himself came to his conclusion only at the end of a
lengthy discussion of related problems ; and that the conclusion,
as applied in the philosophy of religion, follows from a doc-
trine of the reality of things and of their dependent existence 2
which is by no means either a universally accepted postulate
of science or an undisputed principle of ontology.
What better, then, can philosophy do at this point for the con-
ception of religion than accord to it the favorable consideration
to which, on historical and psychological grounds, it is clearly
entitled? To such a consideration the following thoughts

1 Microcosmus (English Translation), II, p. 688.

2 As given at length in his Metaphysik, Book I.
88 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

prepare the way. And, first, there can be no doubt that the
more purely religious beliefs, sentiments, and practical life of
mankind are better satisfied with, than without, the conception
of God as self-conscious Spirit, a true Person, or Self. This
fact is evidenced by the form taken by the highest develop-
ments of religious experience in the past. It is, indeed, in-
volved in a very important way in the most essential charac-
teristics of this experience. The experience itself is one of
personal and spiritual relations ; the most important beliefs, sen-
timents, and practical life of religion cannot be understood or
justified in terms of a conception which denies self-consciousness
to the Absolute Will and Mind. If the undoubted conclusions
of the particular sciences or of modern philosophy should dis-

cover that the World-Ground cannot be, or rightfully be con-

ceived of as being, a self-conscious Spirit, then these sciences
and this philosophy could not be brought into a rational har-
mony with the supreme product of the religious experience.
But the persistence and development of religious experience,
with its beliefs, sentiments, and practices, is as much a funda-
mental fact as is the persistence and development of either sci-
ence or philosophy. And philosophy is especially charged with
the responsible task of a perpetual effort to bring about har-
mony in the total life of humanity.
But, second, a critical examination of the conceptions cur-
rently subsumed under such titles as Absolute, Infinite, The
Unconscious, Self-consciousness, Personality, etc., shows that
every one of them is in constant need of revision and improve-
ment. Especially is such need apparent in the case of those
vague, negative conglomerates of thought and imagination that
are wont to be clothed in some of these terms. Small wonder,
then, that they refuse to lie quietly side by side in the same
bed with any rational conception of a self-conscious and personal
existence. It may be possible, however, and we need not, —
at least antecedently to renewed trials, despair of this possibil-
ity, — to remove from these terms some of their more unwar-
 :

THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 89

rantable and objectionable factors ; and thus to make them

fitter companions for union with the factors really belonging to
the nature of a Self. Or, even in the last resort : What if one
should feel obliged to deny the absoluteness and infinity of
God, in the stricter meaning of these terms, in order to save
some intelligible and practical concept of his personality ? This
would, indeed, be a disappointing result. It might force the
mind back upon the Kantian position of a recognized power-
lessness to transcend the limits of the cognitive reason ; but, as
Kant held, we might be none the less compelled to believe in
God as Infinite Person, in the interests of moral and practical
reason. And to sacrifice —at least for the time being —some-
thing from our conception of God on the side of his absolute-
ness and infinitude, would not necessarily be more irrational
than to surrender all claim to a belief in Him as Self-conscious
Spirit.

Indeed, even on metaphysical and purely cognitive grounds,

the finger-point of the highest rationality would seem to indicate
that the path to Reality lies in the opposite direction. For, in
the third place, if it cannot be affirmed that all real Being must
be, and essentially is, self-conscious, it can be demonstrated
that man's best-known being, as well as the most highly de-
veloped and valuable form of being conceivable by man, is that
of a self-conscious Person. Whether other apparent beings
have any reality, real unity, or indeed real place in the Universe
of beings and events, or not, our own self-conscious selves are
known to be real and unitary, and undeniable
in a very special
way. And what is even more important for the argument
Self-conscious beings, so far as the human mind can know or
conceive of Reality, stand at its very head in the scale of values.
Or —to express the same truth in a more abstract way — to be
self-conscious, to be-for-oneself, to have " For-Self-Being," is to
have attained the very most distinguished and intensely actual
and profoundly worthy kind of existence. It is such self-con-
scious personal existence, which, in the example of man as a
90 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

species, and supremely in the example of the few most highly-

gifted and developed of humanity, is altogether the choicest

known or conceivable product of Nature's evolution through
the ages.
It is not of morbid, or of excessive and vain self-conscious-
ness, in the popular acceptance of the term, that we are speak-

ing in this connection. Neither does the argument depreciate

the value and significance of those artistic and constructive
activities in which the Self seems to lose itself; or even of
those states of religious contemplation or intuition, in which
a certain immediacy of the knowledge of the object seems
largely or wholly to exclude the reflective attitude. But that

a being who could form no conception of a Self, could never

know what was about, could only be mere intelligent Will
itself

without being a self-comprehending Mind, must not be re-

garded as vastly inferior to a developed self-conscious Person,
it is impossible to concede. Mind, without self-consciousness,
if such mind could really be at would not be self-com-pre-
all,

hending, s^-directing, ^//-determining —

all of which capacities

are most essential for the existence and development of a

Self, and themselves stand highest in the scale of rational

values.
It is in order now to notice that the existence and develop-
ment of selves are facts, the account of which must somehow
be found in this same World-Ground. Even to take the
scientific point of view is to accept the warrant for regarding
man himself as a child of Nature. A society of selves is to be

explained as the product somehow resulting, under the laws

which physics, chemistry, and biology have discovered, from
the forces that are conceived of as differentiations of Nature's
exhaustless Energy. For however the human species came
to be such, it is in fact composed of self-conscious as well as
intelligent wills. In the case of the individual man it is his own
psychical activities that construct the peculiar type of self-hood
which each individual has. A true person, or Self, cannot come
 a

THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 91

into existence, unless the forces and stimuli existing outside

serve to arouse the dormant will and inchoate reason to the full
measure of an energy that is something more and higher than
that of blind will, or unconscious mind. Only self-conscious

and self-determined activity can create a Self.

When, then, the conception of a Nature which can so bring
into co-operation the external and internal or psychical forces
as to create a Self is reflectively examined, this conception is

found to be no barren and meagre affair. Can an unconscious,

or a non-self-conscious Nature create and develop a race of self-
conscious personal beings ? Can mere willing Mind, or mere
intelligent Will, without experience of the nature, the method,
and the value of personality, serve as a satisfactory explanatory
principle for this human species which is, in fact, self-conscious ;

and for its historical evolution into even so high a grade of self-

hood as man has already attained ? It seems to us that the

only credible, not to say conceivably tenable, answer to such
an inquiry is a decisive No. In order to beget and to nourish
self-conscious existences the World-Ground, or some impor-
tant part of It, must itself be a self-conscious Personal Life, a
true Self. And by so much as the positive sciences are be-
coming confident about the real unity and absoluteness of this

World-Ground, by just so much the more should philosophy be

its real Unitary Being is that of an
confirmed in the opinion that
Absolute Self.

The logical conviction that it is impossible to derive the

personal from the Impersonal, a multitude of developing finite
selves from a World-Ground that is wholly lacking in the
possession and appreciation of Selfhood, is strengthened by
considerations which flow from the social life of humanity.
Now the problem which presses for an answer is this : What
sort of Being must the World have in order that it may serve
as the rational and real Ground of a community of selves —
network of common experiences, a social existence, between
one self-conscious Self and other selves? Here am I —
92 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Self ; but I am not, and I cannot conceive of myself as being,

a lone Self. Even my physical environment is, fundamentally
considered, a social affair. Even " Things " manifest them-
selves to me as not merely my objects, but as essentially the
same objects for others, whose conscious and self-conscious
experience is essentially like my own. The totality of phys-
ical existences is not for me, or for my fellows, an Absolute
that is a mere aggregate, or lump sum, of things. Much less

is the environment of other selves a mere multitude, or gross

number, of the human species. It is the rather a society, in
which individual persons are bound together by an infinite

number of bonds, both the so-called physical and the so-called

psychical, all of which are knowable and useable, only on the
assumption that the Being of the World in which they have
their Ground, has the nature of a social, a humanly Universal, an
all-embracing Self.
That this is anthropomorphizing, is preparing the image and
ideal of our own thought, in a way fit to be worshipped and
obeyed, may undoubtedly be charged against the argument.
But the word " anthropomorphism " should have ceased by
this time either to deter or to terrify our minds. For all

the sesthetical and moral values which characterize the

conception of God contribute to the weight of argument in
favor of the same truth. Undoubtedly, the reflective thinker
experiences a feeling of awesomeness and of mystery before
such vague conceptions as endeavor to represent the Divine
Being without limiting Him by any terms that apply to
human and finite, self-conscious existence. This feeling is

genuinely worthy and true to reality in the view of any at-

tempt to explicate and defend the conception of God. But it

is least of all appropriate when the very process of thought

which has framed the conception has neglected to introduce
into it those factors that are most appropriately greeted with
feelings of awe and mystery ; and they are just those factors
which can be actualized only in the lives of self-conscious and
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 93

personal beings. Respect for the mystery, the grandeur, and

the worth, of Personal Being is the most rational kind of re-
spect. For Things, as such, there is little or no reason to
have respect they are awful and respectable only in so far as
;

they are means and servants of persons. The religious feel-

ings are appropriate toward things, because religion regards
thera as somehow being partial and undeveloped selves, or else

as manifestations of the thought and will of the Absolute Per-

son. In living and conscious beings it is not the blind and
instinctive psychical stirrings and strivings which we observe
with most of respect. We feel the mysterious nature and
profound value of these lower forms of when we
soul-life, only
regard them as the beginnings of Nature on her way to the
production of self-conscious personality. And even among
men — who differ so enormously in the amounts of self-hood,
so to say, which they achieve — it is those individuals that at-
tain the heights of personal experience and personal develop-
ment, who seem most worthy of an awesome veneration and
of the regard appropriate to what is most sublime. Kant has
nowhere arrived at a more satisfactory position than that
which he assumes when he claims that our human " feeling of
the Sublime in Nature " implies a respect for what in less de-
gree we find in ourselves — the Personal—and which we then
by an irresistible law of our rational activities attribute in su-

preme measure to the Impersonal. It is plainly, to use his

own phrase, a " conversion of respect for the Idea of humanity
in our own subject into respect for the object." 1

There are many other similar considerations derived from a

study of the nature of human knowledge, and from an analysis
and criticism of those fundamental characteristics which the
mind attributes to all reality, — the so-called categories, — that
compel us, finally, to place the argument for the self-conscious-
ness of the World-Ground, the personality of God, upon a yet
surer and broader philosophical basis. No meaning can be
iKritik der Urtheilskraft, I, § 27.
 ;

94 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

given to such abstract terms as " the Absolute " or " the Infi-

nite," unless these adjectival words are further defined by being

attached to some Subject. The only kind of a subject to which
they can be attached in such manner as to make the completed
conception serve the purposes of a real explanatory principle
is that kind of a subject which is known as a self-conscious

Being, a Person, a Self. Unity amidst multiplicity and variety,

real Identity of some sort that is compatible with actual change,
Individuality that maintains its essential being through all

processes of becoming, Law that reigns over things or exists

as immanent idea in things, a Whole that admits of, and de-
pends upon, interactions and causal relations between its parts
— these and all like conceptions and principles under which the
human mind is obliged to view and to interpret its experience,
are, without exception, taken from the experience of a self-

conscious person with himself and with other things and selves.
To try to combine any or all of them in a description of the

Absolute, and to leave self-consciousness out, is to overlook

and to discredit that very experience in which they all origi-

nate ; and for the description and explanation of which they are
appropriate and serviceable. " Self-consciousness " is the one
category which is rich enough in content, and real enough in

its nature, to envelope and validate all the others. This cate-
gory we cannot, indeed, ascribe to all manner of things, organic

and inorganic, or even to all forms of animal life, as though

they were, each one, centers of self-conscious, or even of con-
scious, functioning. Individual self-conscious beings, or selves,
are comparatively rare ; finite persons, as we know them, are

always developments whose preconditions and antecedents

seem to belong to the realm of the — to us — Unconscious
that is=to the Unknown or the Unknowable. But, when the
mind tries to connect such unconscious individual beings with
those that appear to be conscious, and finally with self-conscious
beings, it can discover no active Principle that seems capable
of uniting them all into a self-consistent and self-regarding
 —
THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 95

system, except that which implies the reality of a self-

conscious Absolute Person.

If, then, the argument
is carried through it is found to estab-

lish this conclusionNothing can be known about the Unit-

:

ary and Real Being of the World, unless this knowledge be

known and stated in terms of a self-conscious Life. All the
terms in which science, philosophy, and the plain man's obser-
vation and reflection express themselves, are based upon this
awareness of self, of other selves, and of so-called not-selves.
These other selves are known or imagined after the analog}'
of the self-known Self ; the not-selves are either not-known
mere negative and barren abstractions ; or they are known
as imperfect and half-finished selves. And although human
knowledge does not guarantee the right to affirm that each
thing, or part of an individual thing, is a center of conscious
and self-conscious life, the human mind cannot imagine what it
really is to be an individual, as a dependent part of an intel-

ligible system, without using terms that have meaning only

for self-consciousness.
In conclusion, then, we are obliged to say that the concep-
tion of the World-Ground as unconscious will and mind does
not remove the limitations of human self-consciousness from the
conception. On the contrary, it deprives the conception of
what is clearest and most valuable in all the cognitive processes
of humanity. It proposes to substitute an attempt to conceive
the inconceivable for a thought which, although it is necessarily
limited by the nature of our finite human experience, is, never-
theless, representative of what is intellectually most well-
founded, and aesthetically and ethically most valuable, in this
experience ; its inevitable logical result is a return to dogmatic
agnosticism.
For these reasons the theistic argument is entitled to postu-
late the conception of God as the Personal Absolute, a Self in
the supremest possible meaning of that word. All the various
lines of argument converge upon this conclusion. It is, how-
96 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ever, a conclusion which needs still further critical examina-

tion with a view, if possible, to relieve the conception from
some of the internal contradictions with which it has so fre-

quently been charged. But the argument is strengthened in a

preliminary way by noticing the very terms employed by those
who deny self-conscious personality to the Being of the World.
What —Pray ! is the real meaning, the meaning for Reality, of
the oft-repeated categories applied to the totality of the cosmic
existences, forces,and processes ? On the basis of a confidence
in the modern chemico-physical sciences, styled a " self-
it is

explanatory," " se?/-contained," " se/f-maintaining " System.

What, that is intelligible to human minds, can this mean un-

less it be to say : The Cosmos is a Self, whose explanation
comes not from without itself ? Its circuit and content are not
included, as our selves are, in Somewhat greater. Its indepen-

dence is absolute ; for no other than Itself has the task of main-
taining itself. But all this, as we shall see, is precisely what
must be understood by an Absolute Person or Self.
Certain predicates of that Absolute Person, " whom faith
calls God," seem to follow of necessity from the very nature
of the conception. The argument here is not a return to the
ontological argument in the form in which it has already been
rejected. The " proof " does not claim to move demonstra-
tively from the nature of the conception to the reality of the

object thus conceived. The rather does itseem certain that,

if the reality of a Personal Absolute as the World-Ground be
somehow proved or made a sure object of rational faith, then
certain predicates necessarily follow from the absoluteness of
this Personality. Among such predicates the following five

are chief : Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Eternity, Omniscience,

and Unity. These qualifications must be characteristic of an
Absolute Self which shall be so conceived of as to afford a sat-

isfactory real Principle explanatory of the world of things

and of selves. It is an important task of the philosophy of
religion to expound these predicates in a manner consistent
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 97

with the truths of fact and with the nature of the concep-
tion. 1

The conclusion that God is a Person in the sense that he is

self-conscious and intelligent Will is, at one and the same

time, the most original and fundamental assumption of the
cruder forms of religious belief, and the most mature and con-
clusive tenet of scientific and philosophical Theism. On the
one hand, the Dakota dialects express " the hidden and mys-
terious power of the universe " by the word wakan=" the
deification of that peculiar quality or power of which man is
conscious within himself, as directing his own acts or willing

a course to bring about certain results." In the Islands of the

Pacific, too, is found the conception of a wonder-working
power called mana= (apparently) " that which is within one,"
the principle of and motion consciously directed to an end.
life

But it is the higher religions, and above all Christianity, which

tj-round out this conception of God as self-conscious and per-
gonal Life with the fullness of moral attributes. "God is

C°Spirit," said Jesus, " and they that worship him must worship
in spirit and in truth."

A study of the ethical nature and development of man un-

doubtedly makes upon philosophy the demand that the Ground
of the phenomena of his moral life should be found in a self-

conscious Personal Absolute. But this is not the same thing

by any means as to say that this Personal Absolute must be
conceived of as perfect Ethical Spirit, in a manner to satisfy
the claims of the highest religious faith. The former conclu-
sion rests upon a tolerably firm and exceedingly broad specu-
lative basis. It is only a further and quite legitimate exten-
1 Pfleiderer's statement scarcely does justice to the nature of the problem
when he affirms that "these predicates do not arise out of philosophical

speculation on the nature of God, but out of the religious consciousness of

God which they seek directly to describe." They do arise "out of the reli-

gious consciousness," but they are more specifically adapted to treatment

in a speculative way. See his discussion of the arguments, The Philosophy
of Religion, III, sec. II.

^ENTftffpft ESgW
 ' :
;

98 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

sion of the cosmological argument, with its appreciation of the

principle of " immanent teleology," and its confidence in the
ontological validity of the work of human reason. In a word
Because the world of human experience is shot through and

through with facts, forces, and other manifestations, that have

an ethical, or, at least, a quasi-ethical significance, the conclu-

sion isdemanded that the real principle, in whose Being this

world has its Ground, must be so conceived of as to explain

these ethical facts, forces, and other manifestations. But the

further conclusion, which attributes the perfection of justice,
goodness, and holiness, to this same World-Ground, can only
appeal to one side of even the religious experience of the race
and this side is shown chiefly by a triumph of faith over many
seemingly contradictory facts, forces, and manifestations.
The undoubted truth of man's ethical history is that some-
how he has come to create for himself ideals of conduct and
character ; and that his conceptions of moral laws and principles
seem to him to have a very great, if not a supreme and absolutely
unconditional value. For these ideals and laws he has never
had — and he never can attain — a wholly satisfactory warrant
in his experience of the physical world or of his own social

and political environment. Moreover, religion and morality,

although they are by no means wholly to be identified, have
throughout human history exercised an enormous influence
each upon the other ; they have either aided or hindered each
other's development to an almost incalculable extent. " The
best religion as related to ethics is, then, the faith in an Ideal
Personality, whose real Being affords the source, the sanctions,
and the guaranty of the best morality and to whom reverential ;

and loving loyalty may be the supreme principle for the con-
duct of life."

If an examination be made of these " universals " in ethics

* Vol. I. chap. XIX, and for the following quotations not otherwise cred-
ited as well as a much fuller statement of the same argument, see the author's
Philosophy of Conduct, chap. XXIV and XXV.
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 99

which the philosophy of religion must chiefly take into its

account, they are found to be of two orders (1) Certain func- :

tions of human nature, and their products, which belong to all

men in whatever stage of moral evolution; and (2) certain
ideals which, although variously conceived in respect of their
details and always conceived imperfectly, are shared in by all

men, and are recognized as powerful forces in the moral evolu-

tion of humanity. This moral nature of man, with its func-
tions and their products, but especially with that sort of
activity of thought and imagination which creates moral ideals,

comes out of the larger Nature which has produced, environs,

and develops humanity. The experienced world of moral
facts, laws, forces, and ideas, no more " explains itself " than

does any other part or aspect of this same world. Just as

little, and even much less satisfactory to the demands of the
reflective reason, is it perpetually to revise and to recite the de-
scription of the mechanism, when we are seeking to account
for this form of the evolution of mankind. An unconscious,
impersonal, non-moral Nature cannot be conceived of as pro-
ducing a race of self-conscious personal and moral beings. A
Nature which has absolutely no capacity for appreciating the
value of moral ideals, and of character conformable to these
ideals, cannot serve as the explanatory real Principle of natures
which develop such ideals. A systematic study of those con-
ceptions and principles which control the activities of men's
cognitive faculties shows that " our human way " of knowing
the " Being of the World " conceives of it " after the analogy

of the Life of a Self, as a striving toward a completer self-

realization under the consciously-accepted motif of immanent
Ideas." * To Mr. Spencer's question, " If the ethical man is

not a product of the cosmic process, what is he a product of?"

it must undoubtedly be answered that the psychological and
historical sciences are sufficiently justified in maintaining
this view. But philosophy wants to know what is the last
i A Theory of Reality, p. 547; comp. Philosophy of Conduct, p. 598.
100 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

word as to the inmost Being of a Cosmos whose process results

in such a product. And it cannot rest satisfied in any answer
which denies to this Being a self-conscious apprehension, and
an appreciation of the value, of what it is about in going
through with From the point of view of ethics,
this process.

the best and most valuable known cosmic product is just

this same ethical man, —
what he now is but more especially ;

what he may become, when his moral ideals are raised to their
highest potency, and are realized in their best form by a re-

generated human society. That the World-Ground should

have got even as far as it has on its sad and weary way toward
the realization of these ideals, without knowing what it is

about, and without caring for its own success, and without ap-
preciating its own failures or triumphs, is a conclusion which
human reason refuses to entertain. Better no God at all than
one so unworthy of the respect, veneration, and service of " the
ethical man."
On this subject we can neither approve of the critical scep-
ticism of Kant in his treatise of the " Pure Reason," nor of his
critical dogmatism in the treatise of the " Practical Reason."

What our argument requires is not a compulsion to believe in

God as prepared to "back up " with reward and punishment
an impersonal law — itself apodeictically demonstrable —by
an appeal to human wills that may think of themselves as free,
although they can only know themselves as mechanism. What
the argument seeks, is a sufficient reason for the rational faith
in a God who knows and appreciates the value of righteous-
ness and who really is somehow the fountain, source, and
;

reality, of man's moral being and moral ideals. And this faith

is justified — although it must be confessed only in a partial

way, so far as the perfection of ethical spirit is concerned —by
the same sort of an argument as that by which the knowledge
of God as the World-Ground is reached.
The objections to the procedure of the theistic argument up
to this point are for the most part essentially those of a dog-
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 101

ma tic and uncritical agnosticism. The alleged contradictions,

and even the difficulties, which are found in the conception of
God as moral Personality, are chiefly due to the metaphysical
habit of juggling with abstractions. The absoluteness and
infiniteness of the Divine Being are not more inherently con-
tradictory of the characteristics assigned to him as the self-
conscious and rational Ground of man's moral nature and moral
development than of the position which assigns to him intelli-

gence and will. On the other hand, the interests of man's re-
ligious experience and religious ideals demand in a peculiar

way, and with a most imperative urgency, a rational faith in

the moral personality of God. In the view of those religions
which have reached the higher stages of development, God is

not God unless he is conceived of after the type of " the ethical
man." Indeed, chief among the works of God, the gesta Dei
in which a recent writer l
finds the " religious proof " for the
Being of God, is this same ethical man, with his history of a
moral evolution.
The one objection which may be urged most strongly against
any conception of God as ethical personality is undoubtedly
this: It attributes feeling to the Divine Being. And upon
this point much of Christian theology, as well as most of the
philosophy of religion, Oriental and Occidental, ancient and
modern, has been really, although not usually in a conscious
and avowed fashion, opposed to regarding God as, so to say,
through and through moral. Religion, as distinguished from
its philosophical and theological statements, has, on the con-
trary, always emphasized the feeling-full nature of God. This
is especially true of Judaism and of Christianity — the pre-
eminently ethical and practical religions of humanity. It is

true also — not less intensely but far less satisfactorily — of the
Muslim faith. It is even true in a vague and indecisive way
of Buddhism.
Of the assumptions which underlay the Catholic orthodoxy,
1 A. Dorner, Grundriss der Religionsphilosophie, p. 236/.
102 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

as it formed itself by the end of the third century, Hatch de-

clares '
: "It is assumed that rest is better than motion, that
passionlessness is better than feeling, that changelessness is

better than change." This view has been fortified in modern

as well as ancient times by the further assumption that weak-
ness, temptation, and the overcoming of these finite and limit-

ing conditions by an act of will, are indispensable to moral

character ; for morality is always and essentially a matter of
development and growth. God, therefore, cannot be both ab-
solute and infinite, and also moral.
The more complete answer to these objections must await a
fuller consideration of the meaning in which, and the extent to
which, moral attributes may be ascribed to God. We remain
for the present in the conclusion that if God is a rational, self-

conscious Will, active in the interest of moral ideals, or moral

ends, then he is properly called an Ethical Being. That he is

such a Being, all the ethical experience of the race contributes

to the argument to prove. And it is true, and grandly true,
that this conclusion necessarily implies that God is a Being of
feeling, as certainly as of mind and will. This latter conclusion
is so intimately connected with the argument, at every stage
and in every form, that if man's reflective thinking is valid for
any factor in the conception of God, it is valid for this factor.
The world of man's experience — things as well as selves, and nat-
ural events as well as occurrences in human political and social life
— is everywhere as truly a manifestation of feeling, and as vividly
an appeal to feeling, as of mind and will. Indeed, the affective
factors can no more be analyzed out of both the knowing subject
and the known object, than can the factors indicative of intelli-
gence and volition. Yet more : Personality itself is not such a
compound of intellect, feeling, and will, as that it could still pre-

serve its essential character if only it should happen to lose out

some one of these three groups of characteristics. To be a " per-
son," limited or infinite, dependent or absolute, implies self-con-
1 Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, p. 281.
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 103

scious feeling as truly as self-conscious thought, or will con-

sciously directed toward ends. But especially absurd is it to con-
ceive of ethical personality that has no feeling appreciative of
values ; that is neither approving nor disapproving of courses of
conduct and of the aims and ends of conduct. No contradiction
between the absoluteness and the affective nature of the Divine
Being can equal that which emerges in the attempt to think of this
Being as at one and the same time without feeling and yet an
ethical Spirit, —not to say a perfectly righteous, good, and holy
God.
The history of the treatment of this problem of the Person-
ality of God by the reflective thinking of mankind is exceed-
ingly suggestive. Its principal features are well illustrated in

the attempt at a philosophy of religion made by Plutarch.

This attempt, according to Oakesmith, was " a compound of 1

philosophy, myth, and legalized tradition." Plutarch had re-

spect for the conception of Deity embodied in the Demiurgus

of the Timseus, the One and Absolute of the Pythagoreans,
the HpG>Tov kivovv, the N67?<ris, or No7?V€ws t>6r)(ris of Aristotle, the im-

manent World-Soul, or A6yos bev rfj "T\y of the Stoics, etc. But
" the metaphysical Deity thus created from these diverse ele-

ments is made personal by the direct ethical relation into which

He is brought with mankind." " And I am of opinion," says
this ancient philosopher, 2 " that the blessedness of that eternal

life which belongs to God consists in the knowledge which

gives Him cognizance of away knowledge
all events ; for take
of things, and the understanding of them, and immortality is
no longer life, but mere duration." The Divine One must, then,
be conceived of as the life of a Knower who rejoices in his
knowledge, and who is on account of that knowledge an inex-
haustible fountain of feeling worthy to be called blessedness.
It must, indeed, never be forgotten that the difficulty of recon-
ciling a certain acceptance of the truths of the popular polythe-

i The Religion of Plutarch, p. 87.

2 Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 351 E.
104 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

ism with a somewhat highly spiritual monotheistic conception

of Deity was for the thought of antiquity, and is for the thought
of the great multitudes of Christian believers in the present
day, by no means the same as that encountered by the Western
philosophic mind. And yet for all minds, and all times, the
problem is essentially the same. Without feeling and moral
attributes the absolute Will and Mind cannot become an object
of religious belief, feeling, and worship. And the conception
of the Absolute as a " self-consistent " One falls apart as surely,
and becomes as intrinsically absurd, if we rule out of it all the
ethical factors as it does if we rule out of the same conception
1
the factors of rationality.
The cosmological argument as it advances along the lines
drawn by man's sesthetical conceptions, ideals, and develop-
ment, pursues a course similar to that of the so-called " moral
argument," —not identical with it, or strictly parallel to it, but
crossing it back and forth at many points. Here the facts are,
in important respects, essentially the same. That the race has
created for itself ideals of sublimity and beauty, and that in
thought the mind gives an objective character and apprecia-
tive estimate to whatever, in concrete forms, seems to embody
these ideals, are matters of undoubted fact. The reflective
treatment of such facts, in its search for a rational ground,
seems to make clear that the race recognizes in whatever is re-

garded as beautiful, or sublime, some manifestation of the

unchanging characteristics of an ideal Personal Life. The
necessity for finding the ontological source and ultimate ex-
planation of this experience in the World-Ground, conceived of
as an absolutely sublime and perfectly beautiful self-conscious
Spirit, is not, indeed, the same as that felt by the mind
when dwelling upon the phenomena of man's ethical develop-
ment. Yet somehow, the " cosmic process " has evolved " the

1 This is eminently true of Mr. Bradley's efforts to construct the Idea of

the Absolute as "self-consistent" and yet "non-moral." See his Appear-
ance and Reality, pp. 430$\
 THE ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTED 105

aesthetical man " as well as " the ethical man." And if man were
not aesthetical, as well as ethical, he could not be the religious
personality which he certainly The conclusion that the
is.

source of his aesthetical experience must be found in the

aesthetical Being of the World-Ground is certainly somewhat

vague and difficult to state in logical terms. iEsthetical expe-
rience itself is, essentially considered, largely a matter of inar-
ticulate emotions and sentiments. But the very mysterious,
expansive, and inexpressible character of these sentiments and
ideals fits them the better to suggest and to confirm faith in the
reality of the Object which goes farthest in the direction of
satisfying their demands. Humanity's thirst for the sublime
and the beautiful knows not, indeed, precisely what it wants :

it therefore none the less, but even all the more, is an un-
quenchable thirst.

At every turn, then, along the pathway of exploration into

the conception of God as perfect Ethical Spirit,it will be found

that the combined impulse of aesthetical and ethical feeling is

present in power, and that the ideals of moral goodness, and of

sublimity and beauty, tend to converge and to appear as, after

all, only different aspects of the One Ideal-Real.

In this attempt at a reconstruction of the argument for the
Being of God we shall for the present add nothing by way of
a so-called " historical argument." All argument, it has al-

ready been said, even the most speculative, must constantly

cling fast to the facts of history, and must proceed on its way
with full allowance of respect for the historical method. In-
deed, from a certain point of view it may be claimed that the
one and only argument is the historical. For the history of
the evolution in humanity of the belief in God as perfect Eth-
ical Spirit is the all-inclusive and satisfactory proof of the real-
ity of the Object answering to the belief.

In order, however, to make this argument, which is both

historical and speculative, the more convincing, it must be sub-
jected to a detailed examination —especially at several critical
106 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

points. In this examination two sets of considerations must

be given the great weight which they deserve. These are (1)
the evidences of a Development, as applied to the progressive
realization of the eudseinonistic, ethical, and eesthetical ideals

of the race ; and (2) the more permanent faiths, hopes, and
practical results of man's best religious Experience —above all,

of that which is embodied in the religion of Christ. Argu-

ment and reasoning, logically conducted, there must be but ;

the argument must, at every step in its advance, respect the

truths supported by these two sets of considerations.
 CHAPTER XXX
GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE

The which has been waged from antithetic points of

conflict

view, and between contradictory conclusions, through the at-

tempt to use the words " infinite " and " absolute " in relation to

the Object of religious faith, is one of long standing. This fact

is certainly indicative of difficulties inherent in the conception of
a Personal Absolute ; and these difficulties cannot be said to have
been wholly resolved at the present time. But to admit this
truth is by no means the same as to say that all the grounds of
the conflict render its perpetual waging inevitable ; even
less, that the continuance of the conflict hitherto shows the
conception to be self-contradictory or absurd. On the one
hand, history teaches us how the human mind, in its effort to

escape from the limitations, and even the degrading elements,

of that conception of Deity which the lower forms of re-

ligion have espoused has tried the extreme of negation. It has

shaken off contemptuously all the seemingly anthropomorphic

and anthropopathic factors. In this way progress toward a
purer and more defensible monotheistic conception of God has
been made possible. But on the other hand, the ethical and
sesthetical demands to which the experience of religion gives
rise, and to which this experience is itself in turn subject, lead

the mind to reject as unsatisfactory the barren and abstract

notion covered by such phrases as " The Infinite," or " The
Absolute." Thus polytheism and pantheism contribute irrec-
oncilable factors to the human conception of God. Periods
of that dogmatism which claims to have sounded to its depths
108 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

the Divine Being, and to have systematized for faith all his

attributes and his relations to the world, alternate with an ag-

nosticism which goes to the length of asserting that finite minds
do not know and never can know, anything about God.
Neither of these conclusions, however, satisfies for any long
time the great majority of thoughtful minds.
It is a reasonable claim when we are told 1 that Brahmanism,
with its doctrine of the Being of God, and its goal of religion
as a mystical union of the finite Self with God, has truth in it

which Christianity and the philosophy of religion must recog-

nize. What kind of Being, however, must be attributed to
God ? and, How, in view of the answer to this question, must
the supreme goal of religion be understood ? A " metaphysics-
shy, purely practical Christianity," or a purely " pragmatical
philosophy," cannot reply to either of these questions. The
reply which we are trying to establish, rejects the abstract Ab-
solute of Brahmanism and of all similar religious philosophies ;

on the other hand, it defines the Being of God as active, ethi-

cal, spiritual. It affirms that God is at one and the same time,
infinite and absolute, and also perfect Ethical Spirit. By this

affirmation it aims to avoid the errors of agnosticism and pan-

theism, on the one hand ; and on the other, it rejects all forms of
Dualism which find the ultimate Ground of any part of the expe-
rienced world of finite existences and events in some other Being

than God ;
—
whether in " Law," or the " Nature of things,"
or in some limiting personal existences, such as a kingdom of
evil, or a personal Devil, or what not.

The more recent discussions of such conceptions as are pos-

sible or tenable, under the terms " Infinite " and " Absolute,"

have undoubtedly helped to harmonize differences and to clear

up obscurities. In the field of pure mathematics, where the
notion of infinity has been most easily and properly allowed, as
it were, to roam at large, certain valuable restrictions have now
been put upon its use. As a purely negative notion it can no
1 See A. Dorner, Grundriss der Religionsphilosophie, p. 168/.
 GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 109

longer, even in mathematics, be involved in self-contradictions

that are introduced by applying to its treatment the methods
of an a priori and demonstrative proof. To show that Achilles
cannot overtake the tortoise, or that the arrow cannot fly, by
an abstract analysis of the notions of infinity and infinitesimals*
is to juggle with words, by shifting the content of their meanings,
in and out, with the dexterity of a practiced prestidigitateur. In
mathematics, then, one must always tell what sort of an infinite

—be it line, succession of separate points, series of numbers, or

extension of surface — one is talking about ; and without some
noun of positive content to qualify the negative qualification,
no denial of limit can logically take place. Moreover, in the
argument, the character of the infinity which is, so to say,
made the subject of the argument, must remain unchanged
throughout.
The advances of physical science in the knowledge of the
world as a system of interrelated and interacting things and
minds, as well as the psychological analysis of the cognitive
act itself, forbid all attempts to treat the conception of the
Absolute as purely negative and unlimited. First of all, and
in importance above all, must the true doctrine of God as In-
finite and Absolute be distinguished from the negative doc-
trine of the ancient Greek and Hindu philosophy; and as well
from the fast vanishing, purely agnostic or pantheistic type. 1
The motto of the latter is ever No, No ; and whatever goes
beyond this is held to be significant of illusion or self-deception.

The absolutism of the theistic conception is, on the contrary,

in the form of an ever enlarging, loftier, and more comprehen-
sive affirmation.

1 According
to Tigert (Theism, etc., p. 39/.), with one exception, "Per-
haps no competent thinker of the present day holds that our notion of the
infinite is (merely?) negative." Although there is no doubt much histori-
cal warrant for the charge of Max Miiller (Anthropological Religion, p. 101)
that Christian theology has held the negative conception of God, it cannot
now be urged against its more gifted teachers.
110 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

The harsher contradictions and graver difficulties which have

been introduced into the conception of God as Infinite and Ab-
solute Person are removed when the following three considera-
tions are borne in mind. Without some preliminary agreement
the disputants cannot, in any intelligible way, take even the
first steps in this argument. For it is only when starting from
points of view thus established, that argument is appropriate
to the problem at all ; or, indeed, that any problem can be set
clearly before the mind.
And first : To identify the Infinite or the Absolute with the
Unknowable or the Unrelated is absurd. To know is to re-
late and all knowing is, in respect of one group of
; its most
essential elements or factors, relating activity. Thinking is

relating ; and although thinking is not the whole of knowing,

knowledge and the growth of knowledge are impossible with-
out thought. Moreover, all human knowing is finite ; man's
knowledge of the Infinite and Absolute God is a very finite
and relative kind of knowledge. But to speak of the knowl-
edge of God, the Infinite, as impossible, because the knowing
mind is finite or of God, the Absolute, as
; impossible, because
knowing is essentially relating this is so ;
— to mistake the very
nature of mental life as to render the objection nugatory and
ridiculous. This strange psychological fallacy, although it so
frequently entraps writers to whom credit must be given for
ordinary acquaintance with mental phenomena, scarcely de-
serves other treatment than a reference to the most elementary
psychological principles. Man's cognitive capacity is not to
be compared with the capacity of some material vessel ; the
content of the mind is not to be likened to the contents of a
wooden measure. As to " The Infinite "=" the Unknowable,"
or " The Absolute "==" the Unrelated," we are indeed warranted
in affirming " Such a metaphysical idol we can never, of
:

course, know, for it is cunningly devised after the pattern of

what knowledge is not." 1

* Schurman, Belief in God, p. 117.

 ;

GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 111

But, secondly, the words " infinite " and " absolute " as ap-
plied to God cannot be used with a merely negative significance.
Absolutely negative conceptions are not conceptions at all

thinking and imagining cannot be wholly negative ; words that

have no positive meaning are not words, are not in any respect
signs or symbols of mental acts. Preeminently true is all this

of an Idea so infinitely rich in content as that arrived at by

thought, when, reflecting upon the significance for Reality of
man's total experience, it frames the ultimate explanation of
it all in terms of infinite and absolute, self-conscious and rational
Will. In arguing about the possibility of an Infinite Personal-
which forbids laying all the emphasis on the ne-
ity this rule,

gation, must always be rigidly observed. Personal qualifi-

cations do not necessarily lose their characteristic personal
quality, when it is affirmed that certain particular limitations,
under which we are accustomed to experience them, must be
thought of as removed. No removal of the limit destroys, as a
matter of course, the essential nature of the qualification it-

self.

Yet, again, — express

to essentially the same cautionary truth
in another way —the words " infinite " and " absolute " as ap-
plied to God must always be taken with an adjectival significa-
tion ; they are predicates defining the character, as respects its
limit, of some positive factors of the God-Idea. " The Infinite,"
" the Absolute," —these and all similar phrases, when left wholly
undefined —are barren abstractions ; they are, too often, only
meaningless sound. The negative and sceptical conclusions,
which it is attempted to embody in this way, are controverted
by all the tendencies of the modern sciences physical as well —
as mental. All these sciences, in their most comprehensive
conclusions and highest speculative flights, point toward the
conception of a Unity of Reality, a Subject (or Triiger) for
the phenomena. The Oneness of all beings that are "real,"
we may call the Being of the World. But, as has already been
seen, we can not rest in this abstraction. What really is this
112 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Being which has the manifold qualities, and performs the varied
operations ? This Subject of all the predicates, we desire more
positively to know. Meantime, we call it Absolute ; because,
Itself unconditioned, It is the Ground of all conditions. We
call it Infinite; because, Itself unlimited from without, or
Self-limited, It sets the limits for all finite and dependent exis-

tences.
In speaking, then, of God as Infinite and Absolute Person,
or Self, it is not meant simply to deny that the limitations
which belong to all finite and dependent things and selves ap-
ply to Him ; it is also meant positively to affirm the confidence

that certain predicates and attributes of Personal Life reach

their and are harmoniously united in the self-
perfection,
conscious and rational Divine Will. It follows from this that

the conceptions of infinity and absoluteness apply to the differ-

ent predicates and attributes of a person, in quite different
ways. Thus a Personal God can be spoken of as " infinite," in
an}' precise meaning of this term, only as respects those as-

pects or activities of personal life to which conceptions of

quantity and measure can intelligibly be applied. His infinite-

ness of power for example becomes his omnipotence ; his in-

finiteness of knowledge his omniscience ; his complete freedom

from control by the limiting conditions of forces that act in
space becomes his omnipresence, etc. To such moral attri-

butes, however, as wisdom, justice, goodness, and ethical love,

the negating aspect of the conception of infinity does not ap-

ply, except in a figurative way which, by being mistaken, may
become misleading. It is at once more intelligible, appropriate,

and safe, to speak of the perfection of God in respect of these

moral attributes. For the very conception of measure and

quantity, strictly understood, has nothing to do with moral
dispositions or attributes, as such ; but only with the number
of the objects toward which the corresponding acts of will

go forth. An infinitely wise person is one whose wisdom is

perfect as respects all other beings ; but this perfection of

 GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 113

wisdom could not be unless the same person were omniscient,

omnipotent, and perfectly good.
By calling God " absolute " it is meant, on the one hand, to
deny that he, in respect of Ins Being or of any of its manifes-
tations, is his own self-conscious,
dependent on any other than
rational Will. No others, no finite things and selves belonging
to the world of which man has experience, constitute the original

ground and reason of the divine limitations, whether of power,

knowledge, wisdom, or love. He is, in his essential nature,

absolved, absolute, as respects dependence upon others. But,

positively considered, his absoluteness is such that He is

the One on whom all beings, both things and selves, are

dependent. In his self-conscious rational Will, finite existences

and events have their Ground. Outside of this self-conscious

rational Will, no real uniting principle for the cosmic existences,

forces, and events, can anywhere be found.

In brief, by speaking of God as Infinite and Absolute the
philosophy of religion means to affirm that there are no limi-
tations to the self-conscious rational will of God which can
arise elsewhere than in this same self-conscious rational Will.
God is dependent on no other being for such limitations as
his will chooses to observe. God wills his own limitations.

And he would not be infinite, or absolute, or morally perfect,

if he did not. Will that is not self-controlled, or limited by
the reason or purposes known to the Self, is not rational, or
morally perfect will. On the other hand, all finite and de-
pendent beings and events do have the original ground and
final purpose of their being and happening in this same Divine

Will. All the many finite and dependent beings have the
only satisfactory explanation of their existence and their na-
tures in the Infinite and Absolute One ; and this infinite and
absolute Being is the Personality whom faith calls God.
The objections to so thoroughgoing a doctrine of the infinite-
ness and absoluteness of the Divine Being arise chiefly on
two grounds. They are either predominatingly metaphysical
 —
;

114 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

or —perhaps it would be more accurate to say psychological ;

or else they are ethical. The metaphysical objections revive the

claim that self-conscious personal Being cannot be infinite and
absolute ; the ethical objections interpose cautions and fears
connected with the integrity and practical value of the moral
and religious life. The former may be removed by a pro-
founder metaphysics based upon a truer psychological analysis ;

the latter may be reassured by showing the way to a more

philosophically satisfying and tenable kind of faith.
In considering critically the first class of objections the
thought is brought back to the point at which the argument
was left unfinished in the last Chapter (see p. 83/). It can now
be made clear that these objections derive their power to con-

fuse and deter the mind, largely through their misuse of the
terms " infinite " and " absolute." That a self-conscious and
personal being cannot be also conceived of as infinite and
absolute turns out by no means the self-evident proposition
which it is assumed to be. Indeed, certain indications point
in the opposite direction. Even our human, finite, and de-
pendent self-consciousness does not have its essential charac-
teristics described by such terms as finite and dependent
much less by such meaningless terms as wof-infinite or not-
absolute. In other words, there is nothing in the essential na-
ture of self-consciousness, as we know show that the
it, to
range of its grasp, either as respects the number of its objects
or its speed in time, determines the possibility of its very
existence. On the contrary, the more perfect our self-con-
sciousness becomes, the more manifold are the objects which it
clearly displays within the grasp of the one activity of appre-
hending the Self. Human self-consciousness is, indeed, a
development; and at its highest degree, whether considered as
respects the multitude of its objects, or their relations to each

other and to the Self, is a meagre, a limited affair. It is

always dependent upon conditions over which the self-con-

scious Self has no control, either direct or indirect. But in it
 GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 115

is and supreme example of clear, certain, and

the very type
ontologically valid knowledge. The amount of the small ap-
proaches, which the human mind can make in the direction of
becoming like the Infinite and Absolute Mind, is tested by the
increase, and not by the decrease, of the region covered by the
individual's self-conscious life. The richer and more compre-
hensive the individual's self-consciousness becomes, the more
do the limitations of his finiteness recede. The more the Self
immediately and certainly knows of itself, the more it is ca-

pable of knowing about other selves and things. Thus does

the individual Self become a larger and clearer " mirror of the
World." For example, in cases of intimate friendship between
human beings, the one person may come to know another per-
son with a suddenness, clearness, and certainty of intuition,
which converts the ordinarily slow, obscure, and uncertain
inferences that serve us men for knowing, or rather guessing
at, the thoughts of others, into the semblance of a satisfactory
and genuine self-consciousness. And great minds, who ob-
serve with a loving sympathy the transactions and laws of the
physical world, rise at times to experiences which seem to

approach, it they do not attain, the likeness of an intuitive

envisagement of Nature's deeds and of the meaning of those
deeds. In general, the more of objects and relations the
human mind can take up into its own apperceptive and self-

conscious experience, the more freed from limitations this

finite and dependent mind becomes. Tlie perfecting of self-

consciousness tends to raise the mind toward a more boundless

and absolute knowledge.

But it is urged that self-consciousness, since it involves the

distinction of subject and object, and implies the setting of the
Self over against the non-self, is essentially an affair of limita-
tionand of dependent relation to some other than the Self.

That self-consciousness is, in fact, for all human selves thus

limited and dependent, may be admitted as often as the ob-
jector will. Why need keep on repeating that, of course,
116 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

this is so? But when this human limitation and dependence,

in fact, is converted into an essential characteristic of Self-
Being as such, the argument violates every truth with which
the study of the phenomena seems to make us familiar. And
the use of the words infinite and absolute reaches the height
of their misuse, when the object of self-consciousness becomes
invested with a sort of mystical negating and limiting power.
Thus, my Self considered as object, is declared in some sort to
hedge in and confine the activity of my same Self, considered
as subject. Under this view, the more the extension of the ob-
ject is increased, the more the intensity and reality of the sub-

ject should be diminished. On the contrary, in the growth of

a Self, the subject becomes more real according as it is able to
unite in the grasp of its conscious life a greater number of ob-

jects, —whether these, its objects be its own states or so-called

" external objects." For in the cognitive act the relation of sub-

ject and object is not, essentially considered, one in which the

two limit each other ; it is, the rather, a relation whose essence
is commerce of realities. In the knowledge of self-
a living
consciousness this commerce is between different aspects of
essentially one and the same reality.
It is, therefore, the perfection of the self-consciousness of God
which makes it possible to predicate of Him that He is infinite

and absolute. Only this conception of Him as self-conscious

Spirit enables the mind to transcend the inscription on the
shrine of Athene-Isis at Sais " I am all that was, and all that
:

is, and all that shall be and my vail hath yet no mortal raised."
;

But this affirmation of the infinite and absolute character of the

self-conscious Personal Life of God is not the equivalent of an
identification of all particulars under some abstract term which
can only assert, but cannot account for, their unity. It is, the
rather, the positing of such an all-comprehending and unifying
Principle as only the conception of a Personal Absolute can sup-
ply. It permits the mind to conceive of God's knowledge as

always having that perfect immediacy, comprehensiveness, cer-

 GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 117

tainty, value for truth, of which man's faint, limited, and meagre
self-consciousness is, nevertheless, the highest type of our hu-
man experience. It also bids the mind to regard all finite

beings and events as essentially and constantly dependent upon

the self-conscious and rational Will of God. Thus all objects

become objects of the Divine Self-consciousness.

The ethical recoil from certain conclusions, to leap to which
from the standpoint of such a postulate of the infiniteness and
absoluteness of God seems required by logical consistency, is

deserving of the utmost tenderness and patient consideration.

Further treatment of this objection must be deferred to the
discussion of the moral qualifications, and of the ethical rela-
tions to the world, which religion attributes to God. But one
most fundamental truth should be stated in this connection.

No one of the predicates or attributes of personal being can

be conceived of in a perfectly unlimited or absolute way. No
one of them is a solitary affair. Of necessity, they limit each
other ; and both in their essence, and in their manifestation,
they are mutually dependent. Selfhood is not a merely unre-
stricted aggregate of independent activities. And instead of
its perfection requiring or permitting the increase of the un-
limited and independent exercise of any of these activities, the
truth is quite the contrary. No finite Self makes progress to-

wards an escape from its limitations by letting its psychic

forces loose from the control of wisdom and goodness. Neither
can wisdom and goodness grow in any human Self while the
core of selfhood, the control of will, is slipping away. The
very constitution of personality is such that its different attri-
butes are mutually dependent, reciprocally limited. And the
nicerand more harmonious the adjustment becomes, in which
wisdom and goodness guide power, and power greatens under
their control, and for the execution of their ends, the nearer
does personality approach toward the type of the infinite and
the absolute. Or —to cease from so abstract a manner of
speaking — growth toward the perfection of personality can be
118 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

attained, only as the various forces of personal activity, not only

become greater in amount, but also more harmoniously active
in the unity of the one personal life.

On applying these considerations to the Divine Being our

conclusion is not hidden, nor does it lie far away. Because
God is essentially personal, a self-conscious and rational Will,
the different predicates and attributes under which he must be
conceived, are Sf(/-limiting and se(/"-consistent. This is to say
that they limit each other according to that conception of per-
fect personality which is realized alone in God. But the ground
of this limitation is, in no respect, essentially considered, outside
of, or independent of, God himself. God's infinite power is not
blind and brutish force, extended beyond all limit whatsoever
in a purely quantitative way ; God's infinite power is always
limited by his perfect wisdom. Neither is the divine omnis-
cience an ability to know, or mentally to represent, as real and
true, what is not real or what is irrational. God's knowledge is

limited by the laws of reason ; but in the case of the omnis-

cient One, these " laws " are only the forms of his absolute, ra-
tional Life ; Reality is only that to which this Infinite and
Absolute Will imparts itself according to these rational forms.
But, in even a more special way, it is to be said that the
moral attributes of God are self-consistent limitations of certain
of the metaphysical attributes. If the divine justice or good-

ness is to be considered as perfect, then these moral attributes

must constantly and completely qualify the divine omnipo-
tence. And to say that God "cannot" do wrong, when once
one is satisfied that his righteousness is perfect, is not to limit
the divine power from without, or to render it any the less

worthy to be called omnipotence. In all discussion of the

problems evoked by the attempt to apply such terms as " infi-
nite " and " absolute " to God, it is the unifying and harmo-
nizing nature of his Personality — or perfect self-dependent, and
self-consistent Selfhood —which affords both the theoretical and
the practical solution of the same problems. How can God be
 GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 119

infiniteand absolute, and at the same time personal ? To this

inquiry one may answer Just because he is personal. How
:

shall self-consistency be introduced into this complex of meta-

physical predicates and moral attributes with which man's
religious feeling and philosophical thought have filled the con-
ception of God ? By more and more expanding and perfecting
this same conception as that of a perfect, and therefore infinite

and absolute Self.

The growth of that Ideal of the Being of the World, which

is represented by the conception of God as Infinite and Ab-
solute Personal Life, has its roots deep down in religious feel-
ing and also in philosophical reflection. The impression made
upon the mind of man by his total environment is one of mys-
and illimitable extent of force, in space and in
tery, majesty,

time. What is greater than all his eye can see, or his hand
touch, or his intellect measure and comprehend, but this Being
of the World ; in the midst of which he is set, and of which he
seems to himself so significant a part ? In these vague feelings
religion and art have their common impulse ; and later on, if
not at once, philosophy as well. But science and philosophy
aim not simply to feel, but also to comprehend, this mysterious,

majestic, and infinitely extended Being of the World. And

by their studies of IT, through centuries of time, they arrive at
the conviction of the Unity of its Reality. This Being of the
World is not only real, but it is the exhaustless Source of all
that is actual ; and It gives laws and life to all the forms and
relations of finite realities. Such is the reasoned conviction that
comes to enforce the feeling of mystery, majesty, and limitless
power and extent, in space and time, that is called forth by man's
experience of the cosmic existences, forces, and processes.
In what terms, then, shall the mind best express its grasp
upon the Object of this " reasoned conviction " ? That it is a
perfectly comprehensible, not to say a perfectly comprehended,
conception, cannot, of course, be maintained. The most dog-
matic theology, or self-confident philosophy, or boastful science,
120 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

would scarcely venture to affirm as much as this. "With some-

what different meanings, and yet in substantial unison, they
all confess :
" There
was the door to which I found no key."
Inasmuch as no finite thing, however mean, and no casual
event, however trifling, offers itself to man's mind in a way to
ensure a complete comprehension, one may be the more ready
to hasten the admission " It is as high as heaven
: what canst ;

thou do ? deeper than hell what canst thou know ? " This at-
;

titude of reflection is everywhere met in the history of human

experience ; it is the inevitable and logical result of contem-
plating the problems offered by this conception of God as in-
finite and absolute ; it is found alike in pantheistic theosophy
and in Christian mysticism. Hence it is that Pistis Sophia,
whose very title is significant of the determination to resolve

faith into an esoteric theory of the Divine Being, makes Mary

Magdalene, when Jesus has solved for her the first mystery, in-

quire :
l " Now, therefore, O Master, how is it that the first mys-
tery hath twelve mysteries, whereas that ineffable hath but
one mystery?" And the Upanishads, whose discovery, says
Professor Hopkins, 2
is " the relativity of divinity" abound in
passages declaring the incomprehensible character of God.
Scarcely less true, however, is this of the Biblical writings.
" But men," declares a modern Hindu writer, " for the practical
3

purposes of their existence, need to get God and not merely to

have a knowledge of Him."

Neither this, nor any other rational view, regarding the in-

comprehensible nature of the conception of God as Infinite and

Absolute is the equivalent of the doctrine that the tenet itself
is " inconceivable," in the meaning in which this word is so fre-
quently employed. The infiniteness of God cannot, indeed, be
conceived by repeated cumulative activities of the mind in a
1 See the Translation published by the Theosophical Society (London,
1896), p. 235.
2 The Religions of India, p. 224.
3 Kishori Lai Sarkar, The Hindu System of Religious Science and Art, p.
137.
 GOD AS INFINITE AND ABSOLUTE 121

time-series ; or by pushing imagination, as it were, to transcend

at a bound the limitations of spatial perception or of the numer-
ical expressions for sums of energy. But the relief from such
futile attempts is by no means to be found in a sluggish re-

pose of intellect, or in so-called faith in a Reality which is

inconceivable, because such faith implies the effort to grasp to-

gether, in a single ideal, mutually exclusive or self-contradic-
tory ideas. An irrational faith is no worthy substitute for an
irrational thought.

The valid conclusion of our discussion is, the rather, that we

may —nay, must— both believe in God, and think God, in terms
of self-conscious and rational, that is, personal Life. And this

we may do without fear that the course of our believing and

thinking will be compelled to end, either against an impassable
wall at the end of a blind alley, or in a bottomless and dark-
some bog, where shadows of abstractions allure the mind on to
increased dangers, but can never lead it out into a region of
light and safety. The conception of God as Infinite and
Absolute is, indeed, an ideal which can never be exhaustively
explored, or fully compassed by the finite mind. But just
as modern science, while it is learning more and more the limi-
tations which beset its utmost efforts to expound its own
fundamental conceptions and postulates, nevertheless un-
derstands better and better these conceptions, and continually
validates more satisfactorily these postulates may it be with
; so
the philosophy of religion. From similar efforts, when directed
toward the Object of religious faith, the reflective thinking of
mankind can never be deterred, whether by agnostic fears, or
by awe in the presence of incomprehensible mysteries. This
conception of God justifies, while it does not destroy but the
rather enhances, the profoundest sesthetical and religious feel-
ing. And it is at the same time so increasingly satisfactory
to the reason, as the reason is employed in the growth of science
and in the speculations of philosophy, as to entitle its conclu-
sions to the position of an accepted theory of reality.
 CHAPTER XXXI
THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES

A distinction has already been made (p. 96) between those

ascriptions which, in the aim to define the conception of God,
arise out of the reasoned conviction that He is an Infinite and
Absolute Person, and those which have their origin rather in
the attempt to satisfy the emotional and practical interests of
religion. The former we have called " metaphysical predi-

cates ;" the latter, "moral attributes." And these predicates,

which our thought must ascribe to the Divine Being, in order

to conceive of Him as Infinite and Absolute, are chiefly his

omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, omniscience, and unity.

Each of these predicates, since each involves an attempt of the
human mind to render certain characteristics of human per-

sonal life in terms that imply the removal of the limits of

human experience, leads to what is essentially mysterious and

not fully comprehensible. But each of them has, and retains,
its positive character and so contributes its quota of the ele-

ments necessary to the complete conception.

All religions, which have developed beyond the very lowest
stages of that vague belief which characterizes an " unreflect-

ing spiritism," attach the same predicates to their divine be-

ings, while not in an infinite or absolute degree, at least in a
degree relatively superior to that in which human beings pos-
sess the same attributes. The gods are universally esteemed
to be powerful, superhu manly so ; they have means of getting
about, so to say, and thus of being immanent in things and
near at all times to the worshipper, which are superior to
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 123

those ordinarily in use among men. The gods also know cer-

tain matters which are hidden from man and the knowledge ;

of these matters may best be obtained by petition and propitia-

tory offerings, either directly by revelation from them, or
through some one of their specially favored means of communi-
cation. If the gods are not immortal, in the stricter meaning
of this word, they are at least blessed with lives more enduring
than are human mortals ; the generations of the gods are supe-
rior to those of mankind. It has, indeed, required a long and
painful process of reflection to bring the mind of the race to

the conception, in any worthy and intelligent way, of the unity

of God. This conception, even as applied to the human and
finite Self, is shifty and late in its attainment of any rational
form. But the growth of man's belief in the Oneness and
Aloneness of the Divine Being is the most notable thing, from
the intellectual and scientific point of view, about his religious
development. In power and knowledge, in escape from the
limiting conditions of space and time, the divine beings are
held to be superior to man. And, indeed, it is chiefly for this

reason that they are esteemed and worshipped.

It has already been shown that the idea of Power is the cen-
tral idea of the beings regarded by mankind as worthy to be
considered as divine. Among primitive peoples, says Brinton, 1
" thegod is one who can do more than man." The exciting
and nourishing source of this belief is found in those natural
phenomena which exhibit energy and in the cruder stages of
;

religion, especially in such happenings as thunderstorms,

earthquakes, and tidal waves, where the manifestations of
enormous energy are most impressive, most completely beyond
the control of man, and most fatal to his interests. To see
infinite power displayed in the dewdrop, the living cell, the
growing child, the corpuscle or ion sending out its emanations,
and especially in the spiritual control and elevating of human
souls, requires a scientific development and an insight quite
1 Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 81.
 ;

124 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

beyond the possibilities of the uncultured mind. It is not

strange, therefore, that we find the Australians saying that

Murapal, the Thunderer personified, is the universal creator
or that Parjanya, the rain-cloud personified, is the " mighty
one " among the Vedic gods. In Hebrew, Elohim or the
" strong ones " becomes the title of Israel's God ; and Yahweh
is extolled for his might and majesty which are superior to
that of all other tribal divinities. In Egypt and Assyria the
deity is clothed with the attributes of a mighty monarch. In
the former country this conception is degraded to the extent
of providing the god with a royal harem and other equipments
of royalty as known among men In this most ancient re-
1
.

ligion the local divinity might be called " Lord of Abj'dos," or

" Mistress of Senem ; " or might be hailed as " the Mighty,"
" the August," or " the Beneficent " not ethically, but from —
the point of view of a grand and lavish monarchy. Thus
Osiris was " the Great One " at Thebes and " the Sovereign "
at Memphis. On each of the massive blocks of limestone,
with which the broad way leading from the East side of the
palace of Nebuchadnezzar is paved, centuries ago was inscribed
this witness :
" The highway of Babylon for the procession of
the great Lord Merodach." The gods of the Greek and
Teutonic mythologies were the " powers of nature," or the
" strong ones," etc. In the nai've monotheism of Islam the
omnipotence of God is affirmed in the question :
2
" Is not he
who hath created the heavens and the earth able to create the
like thereof ? Yea He is the knowing Creator
! ; His bidding
is only, when he desires anything, to say unto it : Be, — and
it is."

That conception of the Omnipotence, or unlimited and ab-

solute power, of the Divine Being, which is warranted not
only by physical science but also by the reflections of philosophy,
and which supports and satisfies religious experience, has both

1 See Erman, ^Egypten und .<Egyptiscb.es Leben in Altertum, p. 400.

2 Koran, Sura XXXVI.
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 125

its negative and its positive aspect. Negatively taken, this

predicate denies that there is any limitation to the divine
power which arises, or can arise, from without the Divine
Being. Conceived of as Power, God is absolute and infinite.
For the possession and for the exercise of his energy he is de-
pendent on no other he is bounded by no other.
; This is
true of its amount, direction, occasion of expenditure, and
whatever other conditioning characteristics belong to all finite

displays of energy. Negatively taken also, the conception of

the divine omnipotence denies that all the hitherto actual, or
all the conceivable exhibitions of power, exhaust this source
of them all. The Divine Energy is to be thought of as not
limited. It never has, nor will,come to its limit or its end.
It is only, however, when the predicate of omnipotence is
positively conceived that it affords the requisite satisfactions
to the emotions and practices of the religious life of man. By
calling God omnipotent it is meant to acknowledge that all the
actual and possible energy of finite beings, Things and Selves,
has its source in Him. The inexhaustible fountain of all the
cosmic manifestations of energy, from the innumerable suns
rushing with incredible velocity through boundless spaces, to
the radio-active performances of those beings whose magnitude
lies far below the highest powers of the microscope, is the Will
of God. From same source comes all the energy which
this

characterizes the experience and behavior of the human Self.

In the Will of God, and only in His Will, our finite wills find
the explanation of their secondary and derived energizing.
They are not omnipotent: the potency they have is from the Om-
nipotent. In a word, all the self-limiting and self-determining
as well as reciprocally determining, activity of finite beings
is a derived power — a loan from the inexhaustible resources
of energy which belong, of native and inalienable right, only

to the Being of the World.

In the experience of religion this view excites and supports
those feelings and that conduct which are appropriate to each
126 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

particular case. If the experience is filial piety, trust, and

hope ; then the human heart finds its most rational and satis-

factory support in this view. If the experience, however, is

one of opposition, distrust, or despair, then the painful disci-

pline necessary to bring the subject of the experience into a

right adjustment toward his cosmic, social, and ethical environ-

ment is inevitable. For the Omnipotent "Will is sweet or bit-

ter to the taste according to the way it is taken. And the

essential good of religion is the increasingly better "squaring"
of the human Self, to the larger, the environing and supporting,
Infinite and Absolute Self. 1

The very nature of the metaphysical predicates of God is

such that they are, like the so-called categories of Being and
Thought, both mutually dependent and yet, each one, irre-

solvable into any other. This is especially true of the divine

omnipotence and the divine omnipresence. Negatively taken,
the Omnipresence of God denies all limitations from space and
spatial conditions, to his will and to his knowledge. Nothing
is, and nothing happens, where God is not in the fullness of all

his divine attributes. This process of freeing the Divine Be-

ing from the limitations under which the conditions of the
spatial attributes and spatial relations place the human body
and mind has gone on throughout the centuries of man's reli-
gious development. It is a process contributed to by the
scientific requirements and philosophical aspirations and re-

flections of the race. It has been sometimes checked and

hindered, and sometimes favored and refined, by those religious
feelings which demand the nearness of God to the human soul.
The earlier and cruder forms of religion conceive of the
gods as, temporarily at least, embodied in some extended ob-
ject, or as especially present here, to the impairment or the
exclusion of their presence there. The gods may be thought
of as local divinities. Only in this way can the untutored

1 This thought is admirably wrought into Professor Royce's discussion of

"The Union of God and Man," The World and the Individual, chap. X.
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 127

mind satisfy the heart's craving for some very special and def-
inite manifestation of God. Men want their god to be in their
neighborhood. Even Yahweh was conceived of as a local
divinity by his worshippers — present especially, and partic-
ularly powerful, in certain localities. His people could not
offer sacrifices to him in Egypt, for they were in a " strange
land." The prophets themselves considered it offensive to
God to worship him away from the appointed place. And
Jesus proclaimed a heresy, when he told the Samaritan woman
that the true worship of the Father was " neither in this moun-
tain nor at Jerusalem."
When the growth of scientific knowledge and the conquests
of reflective thinking have succeeded in banishing, even par-
tially, from the minds of man, the conceptions which are con-
trary to the belief in the omnipresence of God, his thinking is apt
to take either a deistic or a pantheistic form. The deistic con-
ception virtually denies the divine universal presence by con-
ceiving of God as over against the World, separated from it

in a <?Masi-spatial and temporal way. There is, indeed, the

World and God ; but the former is, at least so far as our knowl-
edge about it goes, the construction and reconstruction of beings
and forces, that, whatever their original source may have been,
are now to be thought of as independent of the universally
present Will of God. The pantheistic conception, on the con-
trary, identifies God and the World in such manner as to save
the omnipresence and omnipotence of his Being, at the sacrifice
of his self-conscious, ethical, and personal Life. All attempt
to adjust the claims of so-called " naturalism " and " super-
naturalism," in their efforts to define the relations of God to
the sum-total of finite things and finite selves, must be for the
present postponed. It is enough in this connection to repeat
that a self-consistent conception of God as Personal Absolute
is impossible without involving the denial of ail limitations of
a spatial order to his power and to his presence.
Positively taken, the predicate of omnipresence as applied to
 — ;

128 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

God repeats the truth already stated from other points of view
everywhere is the present power and co-conscious mind of the
Divine Being. Poetically stated, 1 He is the One,
" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."

But the deeper significance of this truth is seen only when the
ontological value is recognized of those mental activities, and
of those constitutional forms of mental life, in which all human
space-perceptions and space-notions have their origin. These
perceptions and notions compel the assumptions: (1) That a cer-
tain way of construing the being and the relations of all things
and all selves is native and inevitable for the human mind ; and,
therefore, (2) that this way has its ground, not solely in the
human mind, but in the nature of that reality which is thus
construed. " In these two assumptions we recognize again the
Self as a constructive and differentiating principle, which acts
according to its own nature in its apprehension of a World of
Things." And when the final ground and explanation of this
agreement between Self and the World is sought, the conclusion
is confirmed :
" The category of space must be referred for its

trans-subjective ground to a World-Force, that arranges in a

determinate way all the different beings of the world, including
each Self whose pictorial representation of the spatial qualities
and spatial relations of things is determined by this same Force." 2
Or, in the words of Pfleiderer 3
:
" God is neither in space, nor
outside of space, but himself spaceless, founds space — that is,

embraces in himself all that is in space as mutually related, and

connects it in himself to the unity of the articulated whole."

iSo Lucan (?), IX, 578, Cato is made to ask:

in the Pharsalia of

"Estque Dei sedes, ubi terra et pontus et aer

Et coelum et virtus. Superos quid quserimus ultra?
Juppiter est quodcumque vides quocumque moveris."
For these quotations and a detailed discussion of the category
2 of Space,

see the author's "A Theory of Reality," chap. IX.

3 Philosophy of Religion, III, p. 297.
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 129

Rightly understood, this view of the omnipresence of God is

the only rational and satisfactory explanation and support of

the highest and most valuable religious feeling. The shock of
vulgar prejudice which follows the definite application of this
profound and holy truth to concrete instances passes away,
when the reason is lifted to the loftier and diviner point of
view. Is God indeed here, in the fullness of His presence,
in this stone which I build into my dwelling ; in this clod
which my ploughshare turns or on which my careless foot is

treading ; in this bodily system of pulsating brain and beating

heart and — it may be —even disordered and diseased system,
which I am myself so likely to prostitute to uses unworthy of
its divine origin and significance ? Yes, indeed, this is so.

And modern science is doing royal service, as it explores more

profoundly with microscope and physical and chemical analysis
the nature of these " common " things, to extract all sting of

degradation or frivolity from such admissions as these. That

stone, that clod, or even that diseased bodily organ, is no dead,
insignificant bit of worthless " matter " so-called. It is instinct

with the universal Life ; it embodies all the mysteries of exist-

ence ; it may at any moment become a most important factor
in shaping the history of the Universe and of the race of
man.
As body of man, nothing can be more salutary from
to the
the point of view of practical religion than the reminder of
the eminently Christian doctrine that it is the temple of the
Holy Ghost. And he who can intelligently say, and live as
though he knew the meaning of what he is saying, — All my
life of body and soul is in God, is a manifestation of his in-
dwelling presence in wisdom and in power, —has conquered
the inner citadel of obstacles to complete filial piety. " Dost
thou not see," says the Koran, " that God knows what is in
the heavens and what is in the earth ? and that there cannot
be a privy discourse of three bat he makes the fourth ? " "If
I ascend up into heaven," says the Psalmist (cxxxix, 8/.),
o
130 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
" thou art there ; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art
there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me."
Negatively taken, the predicate of Eternity does much the
same thing with the temporal limitations of Divine Being,

which the predicate of omnipresence does with the spatial

limitations.And yet there is an important difference between
the two. God is eternal, because his Being, attributes, and
activities, are not subject to the limitations of time. He had
no beginning in time ; nor will He cease to be in time. The
conception of a " coming to be," a development in time, does
not apply to the Infinite and Absolute, as it certainly does
apply to the entire system of finite things and finite selves.
" Lacking the idea of eternal duration," says Frazer, 1
" primi-

tive man naturally supposes the gods to be mortal like him-

self." But so-called "primitive man," although he knows
that he is himself mortal, does not believe that death ends all

with him. On the contrary, he has little doubt that he shall

survive death, as he believes his deified ancestors have done.
Nor does the divine soul perish, even when the sacred tree or
stone, or the animal body, which was worshipped because of
its indwelling there, ceases to exist. The divine ones may in-

deed die ; that is, they may, like other invisible spiritual ex-
istences, be driven out of their temporary abodes. But they
die hard, as it were ; or they are regarded, as they rise in the
scale of life which corresponds to the improved and exalted
conception of their nature, as essentially immortal. And
when this conception attains the moral dignity and the philo-
sophical consistency of a Personal Absolute, the eternity of
God becomes one of those predicates which are inevitably in-

corporate in the conception itself. To make Him subject to the

limitations of time would be to sacrifice all the essential char-
acteristics of his infiniteness and absoluteness. Therefore the
iThe Golden Bough, II, p 1.
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 131

mind denies that these limitations are applicable to its idea

of God.
The denial, however, does not mean that the self-conscious
Life of God is to be described as an " eternal now " ; or that
the time-concept has no applicability whatever to man's neces-
sary and true thought about the nature of this Life. Let it

be confessed at once that in its negative aspect this phrase, an

" eternal now," covers a thoroughly vain and foolish attempt
at thinking away one of the most indispensable and absolutely
immovable conditions of all thought. To conceive of God's
Life as an eternal-now is as impossible as it is to conceive of
God's Being as essentially unrelated to the cosmic processes
and to human history. Indeed, such an attempt, if it could
succeed, would result in the destruction at once of all the es-
sential characteristics of personality. " Wooden iron " is not
a more intolerable conception than " eternal now," in the nega-
tive meaning which theology and philosophy have too fre-

quently attempted to attach to this phrase.

It is in dealing with the thought of the divine omniscience
that this conception of the divine freedom from all time-
limitations has its most important influence. Taken in the
negative meaning which denies any application of the time-
concept to the self-conscious Life of God, the conception of
his eternity would at once annihilate the conception of his om-
niscience. Knowledge, whether of self or of things, is incon-

ceivable apart from their time-form. God's consciousness of

the world could be true, could be knowledge, only if God knew
the world as He wills it actually to be, —namely, a develop-
ment in time. But what is meant — if anything even abstractly
conceivable is —
meant by denying that the divine knowledge
is limited by time, is the assertion that all this knowledge is

after the type, in its perfection, of that which in man's case

reaches its highest pitch in Self-knowledge ; and this is imme-
diate knowledge of what is the here-and-now object of cogni-
tive activity. It is demonstrably certain that it takes time for
132 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

us to come to self-consciousness, or to achieve a so-called sense-

intuition of any particular thing. But with God it is not so.

In its positive significance the predicate of eternity expresses

the confidence of the human mind in two truths which are of
great importance, both for its own theoretical self-consistency
and also for the assurance of religious faith. Whatever God
is essentially, that He is in an original and unchanging way.
This is not the attribution of an inconceivable and practically
worthless statical nature to the Divine Being. Science and
philosophy, as well as religion, require a living God. Life in-
volves activity ; and activity involves change. But the succes-
sive manifestations and phases, if we may so speak, of this liv-
ing God are all self-consistent, self-regulated, and independent
of the compulsions and limitations which affect our human life

in time. " God is eternal," says the Koran, 1 in that chapter

which is declared to be equal in value to a third part of it all.

He is " the everlasting God ;

" He is God " from everlasting

to everlasting ;
" He is the " living God, and an everlast-
ing king ;
" " the King, eternal, immortal, invisible :
" — if,

say the writers of the Old Testament, the Personal Absolute 2

is ever omnipotent, omniscient, just, wise, holy, etc. ; then he

is this, and is all that he essentially is, in an unchanging and
original way.
There is, however, a yet profounder significance, in a posi-
tive manner and from the point of view of an ontological phi-
losophy, which belongs to the predicate of eternity as applied to
God. The ground of all the happenings in a time-series of
that world of things and selves, of which the race has expe-
rience,and which science aims to know and philosophy to ex-
pound fundamental way, must be posited in the Divine
in a
Being. These finite beings and events condition and, from
man's point of view, produce one another in the order of a
time that applies to them all —a universal category, so to say,

i Sura CXII.
2 Gen. xxi, 33; Ps. ciii, 17; Jer. x, 10; 1 Tim. i, 17.
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 133

of a serial order. That there should be any time-order at all,

and that the time-order should be in each particular just what

it is, as well as that this order should be apprehended in the

same way by different minds, and as a matter of objective

certainty and validity, — all this must have its ultimate expla-
nation in the nature of the World-Ground.
Facts of universal experience, therefore, compel the ques-
tion : "What sort of a Being must the World have in order
that it may satisfy the conditions imposed upon it by this
category of Time ? " In answer to such a question it would
seem that no better conclusion could be reached than that
which requires statement in somewhat like the following
terms :
'
" The world's absolute and universal time is the actual
succession of states in the all-comprehending Life of God. If

then one is willing to substitute for the mathematical symbol

of go the conception of the Life of an Absolute Self, one may
validate both the popular and the scientific assumption of an
absolute time in which all the events of the world are ever
taking place. This conception is that of a series which must
be conceived of time-wise and yet involves the denial of a be-
ginning or end to itself ; a series that, from every ' now ', or go 1(

reaches both backward and forward to go n. The transcenden-

tal reality of time is the all-comprehending Life of an Absolute
Self"
" Our time-consciousness is, indeed, limited ; its present grasp,
its recall of memory, and its anticipatory seizures of the future,
are all feeble and defective enough. But really to be in time is

not per se to be finite and limited. And surely the conception

symbolized by a simple go (the eternal now) is no grander or
more absolute than that symbolized by a series, go i, go 2, oo s,

. ... con. human thought about Reality

Just as surely is all

made grander and more worthy to stand, when for this sym-
bol, go , there is substituted the conception of the Life of an

1 Quoted from A Theory of Reality, p. 212/., in which Treatise, chap. VIII,

the whole subject is discussed in detail.
134 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Absolute Self. At any rate, only this conception seems able

to validate the category of time in that trans-subjective and
universal application of it which the development of human
knowledge presupposes, demands, and perpetually confirms."
There is much to justify the contention of Professor Royce l

that the Omniscience of God constitutes not simply a, but the

most fundamental predicate of his Divine Being. It is not

possible, indeed, to derive the other predicates from this, or to

resolve them all nor does omniscience alone fully

into it ;

serve the purpose of even a " preliminary definition " of God.

From the point of view of science and of naive religious ex-
perience alike, it is power which constitutes the central factor
in man's conception of Deity. But omniscience is so related
to the other metaphysical predicates, on the one hand, and to
all the moral attributes, on the other, that it seems, in some
sort, to include the possibility of them all within itself. God
could not be omnipotent if he did not know all ; nor could he
be perfectly just and good, without perfection of knowledge,
in his position as moral ruler of the world.
Like all the other metaphysical predicates, that of omniscience
has its negative as well as its positive aspect. It involves,

first of all, a denial that any of the limitations, which apply to

finite cognitive processes, apply to the knowledge of the Per-
sonal Absolute. In making and interpreting this denial, how-
ever, we are to beware of the sophistry which finds in the essen-
tial nature of knowledge, whether as cognitive Self-consciousness
or as Other-consciousness, such internal and irremovable con-
tradictions as make it absurd or unmeaning to apply this

predicate of omniscience to God.

The historical development of the belief that God is om-
niscient has followed essentially the same lines as those which
mark out the program of thought concerning all the other
divine predicates and attributes. This conception also has
been dependent upon essentially the same conditions of ad-
1 See The Conception of God, pp. 7ff.
 —;

THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 135

vancing race-culture. As has already been repeatedly pointed

out, the most important of these conditions are determined by
the stage in self-knowledge and self-culture at which the race
has arrived. What it is to be a Knower —a person, as respects
the cognitive activities and attainments of personal existence
is an inquiry which can be answered only with increasing full-

ness and depth, as the experience of self-conscious beings pro-

vides the answer to themselves. As far back in history as the

time of Esarhaddon, the priest who acted as mediator for this

monarch when he was hard pressed by a group of nations to
the Northeast of Assyria, inquired into the future with
the prayer :
* " Thy great divine power knows it. . . . Is it

definitely ordainedby thy great and divine Will, O Shamash ?

Will it come to pass ? " The Koran has reached the
actually
conclusion with respect to Allah 2 " With him are the keys of
:

the unseen. None knows them save He He knows what is ;

in the land and in the sea and there falls not a leaf, save
;

that He knows it nor a grain in the darkness of the earth

;

nor aught that is dry, save that this is in his perspicuous

book."
The doctrine of the divine omniscience denies that the
limitations of space and time apply to the knowledge of God.
Thus, the omniscience becomes interdependently connected
with the omnipotence and the omnipresence of God. Distance
puts no obstacle in the way of his knowledge. Being equally
present and powerful everywhere, he is also cognizant of all
events and causes, as man, on account of his spatial limitations,
cannot possibly be. Since he is eternal, the time-limits of
human cognitive activities are not applicable to him.
Again, limitations of content, and of clearness and accuracy,
to which all finite experience of knowledge is subject, do not
apply to the absolute and infinite knowledge of God. The
grasp of human cognitive consciousness, whether its activities

1 See Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 334.

2 Sura, XXXVII.
 ;

136 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

are regarded as intuitive or ratiocinative, perceptual or con-

ceptual —and whatever form of knowledge or so-called
so-called
faith isinvoked — narrowly circumscribed.
is has a certain It

capacity for extending its range ; and certain men have, when
they are compared either with their fellows or with the lower
animals, a relatively large range of cognitive experience.
Aristotle and the Bushman, or Aristotle and his dog, are in-
deed far apart in their intellectual powers and accumulations.
But as compared with the knowable, the known by Aristotle
is as a drop to the ocean, a corpuscle to the universe. So, too,
is all human knowledge infected with obscurities, and charged
with the risk of errors. All man's clearest seeing is in part

all his surest knowing falls short of the infallible. "

B.ut in the
self-conscious, rational Life of the Personal Absolute, these
limitations, too, are thought of only to be removed.
In attempting, however, to form a positive conception of the
Divine Omniscience, certain peculiar and, indeed, irremovable
difficulties stand in the way. These difficulties, when prop-
erly understood and fairly criticized, do not indeed avail to in-

volve the conception in hopeless confusion through convicting

it of inherent contradiction ; but they do emphasize its in-

comprehensibility in respect of certain of its most essential

factors.
If the conception of omniscience is not to remain purely
negative, and so of little use for the attempt to establish a
rational faith in the object of religion, all itsmore positive
factors must be derived from our most highly developed ex-
perience with ourselves as self-conscious beings. It is only in

this experience that human knowledge reaches the highest

possible, and even conceivable type of immediateness, cer-
tainty, clearness, and fullness of content. It would seem,

therefore, that the omniscience of God must be conceived of,

if positively conceived of at all, as infinite, absolute, and per-

fect Self-consciousness. This is to affirm that God's knowl-
edge has in perfect degree those qualities of absoluteness,
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 137

which in man's case reach their highest form in the develop-

ment of his self-conscious experience and that this knowl- ;

edge extends to all actual and conceivable objects of knowledge.

Such a conception is not, indeed, picturable or fully compre-
hensible by the human mind. But it may be elucidated in a
way by the following considerations.
Since all that is and that happens depends, without limita-
tions of space or time, upon the Infinite and Absolute Will of
God; and since nothing can arise, or exist, or occur, in inde-
pendence of, or separation from, this Will ; there is a profoundly

significant and true meaning to the declaration that, with God,

all knowledge is essentially self-conscious. All beings and all

happenings are in Him ; all beings and all happenings are known
by him as in Him. With God all knowledge is self-conscious

knowledge. After having gained, for the defense of a rational

faith in God as perfect Ethical Spirit, the position that the
World-Ground must be self-conscious and personal, we can-
not relinquish this position in the face of the difficulties
caused by the attempt to comprehend the Divine Omniscience.
That God knows what he wills, and feels, and thinks, — to

speak after the only manner which can give positive content
to the conception of Him as Person, — is now no longer to be
denied. God knows Himself — to the very depths of his, to us,

incomprehensible being, and to the utmost extent of his infi-

nite activities.
But the Other-consciousness of God, or his knowledge of the
existences, relations, interactions, and changes, of the universe
of finite things and finite selves, is embraced in the infinite

grasp of his self-consciousness. The world-consciousness of

God, too, is self-consciousness. Indeed, since the world has,
without ceasing, its dependence upon God's Will ; and since
its indwelling forces are forms of the manifestation of this
Will ; and since its immanent teleology —the world-order— is

the expression of his Mind ; God, in order to know all truly,

as things and souls really are, and as events actually happen,

138 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

must know them all as being and happening " in Him." In

whatever sense they really are in Him, in that same sense they
are truly known as in Him.
Objections to that positive conception of God's omnis-
cience which identifies it with his infinite and absolute self-

consciousness, apart from those which arise from a false concep-

tion of the nature of a Self, are chiefly three : One is mainly
ethical, one psychological, and the third is more definitely meta-
physical. These objections can best be answered, so far as answer
at all is possible, only when all the evidence has been examined
which bears upon the religious doctrine of God as perfect
Ethical Spirit.
None of our ideas of value are disturbed, and none of the
ethical, sesthetical, or religious feelings are hindered or de-
graded, by regarding Things as so dependent upon God's will
that his knowledge of them may be thought of by us as a spe-
cies of self-consciousness. But undoubtedly the case of other
selves is by no means precisely the same. To preserve the in-
tegrity and ^wasi-independence of man's selfhood seems to the
highest forms of religious experience a matter of the utmost
ethical importance. How can the human being be so related
to the Divine Being as that his self-conscious, cognitive life and
development shall all be open to the divine self-consciousness,
without impairing, or even destroying, the reality of his

moral and religious character? In reply to this question it

may be said that, so far as the conception of omniscience is

concerned, the difficulty is scarcely an ethical one at all. Man

certainly can, and certainly will, have just so much, and no
more, of independent and self-conscious existence as God wills

that he should have. Whether this shall be enough to con-

stitute him a truly moral being, and to make it possible to re-
gard his relations to God as truly moral, in so far as these re-
lations affect the independence of man's will, this, too, depends
upon the same Divine Will. If God's Will is " Good Will,"
— in the supremely ethical meaning of this term, and if this —
 ;

THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 139

Good- Will wills that man should have and exercise such at-
tributes, including moral freedom, as are necessary to moral
relations between the two ; then God may know man as a true
finite Self and at the same time as a dependent factor in his
own all-embracing Self-consciousness. In a word, the true
ethical problem is one that concerns a relation of wills.

From this point of view, therefore, the entire objection to

making God's omniscience identical with his perfect and abso-

lute self-consciousness becomes, the rather, a psychological dif-
ficulty. The inquiry becomes one of a modus operandi. How
can the Infinite Self-consciousness embrace the consciousness
of a finite self-conscious being, in such manner that both con-
sciousnesses shall, from their respective points of view, corre-
spond to the reality ? I am conscious of myself as thinking, feel-
ing, willing thus and so. In spite of all psychological juggling
with this complex and yet fundamental experience, I am certain
that this knowledge is of a Self, that is my Self and no Other
and that it is immediate, certain, and indubitably true. After
the pattern of this experience I construct —feebly to be sure, and
yet as best I —
may the ideal of an Infinite and Absolute Self-
consciousness. But now I am asked to believe that this Other
conscious Being, whom my self-consciousness refuses to iden-
tify with me, is after all conscious of me as a " moment," so
to say, in his own all-embracing self-conscious Life. Thus the
psychological objection resolves itself into a metaphysical puz-
zle. Can a multitude, a social community of finite selves exist
and develop in ontological dependence upon, and in truly moral
relations with, an Infinite and Absolute Self? The more de-
tailed argument in defense of an affirmative answer to this
question requires the reflective study of all those problems

which are raised by the religious doctrine of " God and the
World." But the conclusion of the argument may be antici-
pated by saying that just this ontological relation is the ground
and the guaranty of all truly moral relations. Only an
Infinite and Absolute Self, embracing in his omnipotence and
140 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

omniscience all other selves, could be God over, and God in,

all beings existing in the one World.

If it were necessary to leave this puzzle as it is stated in the
most harsh and uncompromising way, it would not even then
amount to an inherently self-contradictory conception of man's
complex experience with himself and with other selves. For
in the essentially mysterious, subtile, and tangled web of this
experience, the whole of it may be regarded from several points
of view. The individual's self-consciousness is everywhere
penetrated with factors which are often spoken of variously
as " social consciousness," or " race consciousness," etc.; and at
its base, even when its apex is in the highest heavens and
clearest sunlight, there is always a vast deal that requires to be
classified as " instinctive," " subliminal," or under other similar
obscure terms.
In general, it is psychologically true that oconsciousness and
^(/-consciousness are by no means mutually exclusive experi-
ences ; they may be regarded as different aspects of one undi-
vided experience. Even in man's limited way of knowing,
there is that which illustrates this possibility. In the case of
any two most intimate and familiar friends, for example, the

cognitive consciousness of each tends to become more immedi-

ately and surely representative of the other ; and this tendency,
instead of limiting or destroying the self-consciousness of each,
may even have the effect of enlarging and reenforcing it.

For self-consciousness is not an abstract awareness of the Self

as out of all relation to other selves. Without other con-
sciousness, self-consciousness cannot develop. In man's case
this other-consciousness is of things and selves that exist in-

pendent of his will, and that are therefore known, not only as
related to the Self, but as somehow essentially not-self. But
as we have already said, the more intimate becomes the indi-
vidual's knowledge of those who are most completely of his own
kind, or kinship, the more does his self-consciousness tend to
blend perfectly with the objective consciousness which has ref-
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 141

erence to other self-consciousness. I know my fellow in know-

ing myself; because of the perfection which my knowledge of
him has attained. At one and the same time this state of
knowledge is self-consciousness, and also consciousness most
perfectly representative of another Self. In a word, the slow
and doubtful process of interpreting signs from the outside, as
it were, is being replaced by an intuitive knowledge, a sympa-
thetic consciousness, or co-consciousness.
What is somewhat dimly adumbrated in certain choicest
human experiences may well enough be thought to be perfectly
realized in the self-conscious Life of the Personal Absolute.
Is there consciousness, or self-consciousness, anywhere in the
wide world of things and selves, from star to starfish, from
starfish to man, and from the most degraded savage to the
most comprehensive, spiritual individual among men ? In this
consciousness, or self-consciousness, God is co-conscious. From
one point of view, every state of the finite being, if it has
attained the sufficient degree of development, may be realized
by this being as his own state ; but from another point of view,
every such state is also to be regarded as known by the Abso-
lute Being through this, His universal and all-embracing co-
consciousness. Here, again, the mind is thrown back once
more upon the ethical difficulty, only when the attempt is

made to adjust the relations of human wills and the Divine

Will, so as to save both the moral freedom of the former and
also the absoluteness of the latter. But this problem is, ulti-

mately, not the concern of the metaphysical predicate of om-

niscience, but the care of the moral attributes of justice, good-
ness, and ethical love.
The conception of the Divine Omniscience as a species of
cognitive activity which is at one and the same time " Self-
consciousness," and " Other-consciousness," in the form of an
all-embracing co-consciousness, meets with its supreme psy-
chological objection when it is applied to God's knowledge
of the future. What has been, and what is, may, with com-
 —
142 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

parative self-consistency, be regarded as all known in every

" moment " of that omniscient and eternal Life which has been
figuratively represented asooi, oo 2, oo 3, . . . . aon. But how
can God know the future in any such manner as to warrant
us in representing this knowledge as having the immediacy,
certainty, and perfection of self -consciousness ; and if He
knows the future in this way, how can man be free, and how
shall be preserved the ethical interests about which religion
is chiefly concerned ? In answer to all such inquiries, the
mind is compelled to resort to a species of thinking which
suggests a real truth that, however, cannot be pictorially repre-
sented in its perfection by the imagination or fully compre-
hended by the intellect.

In man's case we hesitate about speaking of his mental atti-

tude toward the future as one of knowledge in the fullest mean-

ing of that word. On the other hand, an analysis of any act
of cognition shows that without a reference to the future, and
indeed to the " timeless " character of the cognitive judgment,
no knowledge of any sort can take place. 1 Nor is this future,

or timeless character, of the reference to reality which belongs

to every cognitive judgment, an affair wholly of hesitating and
doubtful calculation. The more human knowledge grows, the
more does become a sort of insight into the nature of
all of it

Reality, which makes the certainty of what is known inde-

pendent of the limitations of time. To say this is in no way
to deny the growth of knowledge ; or to depreciate the develop-
ment and mental achievements of the
of the mental activities
human race. But the very principles which underlie this
growth, and the fundamental postulates of this development,
are themselves evidence of man's undying conviction that it is
possible to put knowledge on a basis which shall not leave it,
as respects the future even, what it now most evidently is,

namely, a species of more or less probable calculation as to what

is more or less likely to be and to take place.
1
See the author's Philosophy of Knowledge, p. 263/.
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 143

We are not, then, to regard the divine omniscience in its

reference to the future as a kind of calculation, which is made
accurate only by the extent of the same omniscience with ref-
erence to the present and to the past. God — to speak more
humano — does not need to take account of his present stock of
information, and to figure out a balance sheet, when he wishes
to know how the business of his world is coming out. We
may, indeed, be unable pictorially to represent or fully to com-
prehend the modus operandi of a knowledge of the future
which takes the shape of an immediate, certain, and perfect
cognitive attitude in the self-conscious Life of the Personal
Absolute. But the possibility of such knowledge cannot be
denied on grounds that belong to the inherent nature of
knowledge. On the contrary, certain human experiences
suggest its possibility. In the highest flights of the finite

mind, in the intuitions of genius, — whether they occur in

prophecy, science, or art, — something approaching this seizure
of the truth of Reality which escapes the limits of time, becomes
an affair of actual experience. That it should always be so
with God we are lead to affirm, both in the interests of the
self-consistency of our conception of Him as the omniscient
One ; and also in support of our religious feelings as they are
appealed to by the idea of an all-sufficing moral government
of the World. And here again the difficulty of making the
predicate of omniscience square with the valid ideal of moral
government becomes the problem of adjusting the relation of
finite free-wills to the Will of the Personal Absolute.

All the metaphysical predicates are gathered together and ex-

pressed in their mutual relations, and in harmony, by the con-
ception of the Unity of God. This unity is the unitary being
of an Absolute Self. At this most comprehensive idea of
Selfhood the race has been slowly arriving through many cen-
turies of religious, scientific, and philosophical development.
" He is God Alone," says the Koran " Nor is there like unto
:

him any one." So far, however, has this process of evolution

144 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

now been completed that the negative aspect of the doctrine

of the Divine Unity needs comparatively little consideration.
Negatively taken, this predicate denies all polytheistic or dual-
istic conceptions of God. It is this denial which a philosophi-
cal monotheism puts forth as the confident conclusion of its
survey and interpretation of the facts of the religious history
of mankind ; it is the goal of man's speculative endeavor to
give a rational explanation of the world that shall harmonize
the conflicting elements. There cannot be two or more In-
finite and Absolute Beings.
But positively taken, the conception of God as the Personal
Absolute is the conception of One, the Alone God. And this

involves much more than the denial of a plurality of divine

beings in the absolute sense. No other being is to be put be-
side Him as comparable with Him in respect of the relations it
sustains to the world of finite things and finite selves. When,
however, the inquiry arises, What kind of unity, or oneness, is

that which characterizes the Divine One? there is no other

satisfying or even intelligible reply than this : God's Unity is

the Unity of a Person ; and it is perfect because He is the one

Infinite and Absolute Person. All those abstract and imper-
sonal conceptions of oneness, which some philosophical systems
have ascribed to the Divine Being are quite as powerless and
inappropriate as are the crude notions of animism or of polythe-
ism. The same thing must be said of those trinities of divine
beings which either implicitly, or obviously, deny the personal
Unity of God. They all show their instability by their con-
stant vacillation between a doctrine of different aspects, or
manifestations, of One Divine Being, and a relapse into the
tenets of a virtually polytheistic theology. 1

i This truth is curiously illustrated by the conceptions and practices of the

Chinese. In the Buddhist temples of China, the common people suppose

that the three gigantic images of the "San Pao" ("Three Precious Ones")
are representations of three different divinities; in reality, however, accord-
ing to Legge (The Religions of China, p. 166/.) they represent (1) "Intelli-
 THE METAPHYSICAL PREDICATES 145

All, therefore, that this predicate of Unity guarantees and

expresses can only be conceived of, in terms of the Infinite and
Absolute personal Life. But it is and only such
such life,

life,in whose native activities and experiences any true unity,

whether of subject or object, whether of Self or of Things, or
of the one World of many selves and things, can possibly be
found. To expound this Unity is to elaborate the doctrine of
the Being of God and of his relations to the Cosmos to com- ;

prehend fully this Unity would be to know the Infinite and

the Absolute through and through ; and this is not knowledge
accessible to finite minds. But to know about this Unity in
any degree is to lay the basis in knowledge for a rational faith

in the Object which is presented to man for his supreme ado-

ration and service in the religious experience of the race. 1

gence personified in Buddha; The Law, and (3) The Church." In the
(2)

Taoist temples of the same San Ch'ing (or "Three Pure

land, however, the
Ones") are, each one, called Shang Ti, or God. They are (1) Chaos person-
ified; (2) the "Most High Prince Lao" deified; and (3) the "God of mysteri-

ous existence." That is, they are not trinities in any proper meaning of the
word.
1 Says Sir Isaac Newton in the celebrated scholium at the end of his Prin-
cipia: "Deus est vox relativa, et ad servos refertur; et deltas est dominatio Dei,
non in corpus proprium, uti sentiunt quibus deus est anima mundi, sed in ser-
vos. Deus summus est ens atternum, infinitum, absolute perfectum; sed ens ut-
cunque perfectum sine dominio non est dominus deus."
10
 CHAPTER XXXII

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

It is well yet again at this point to recall the goal toward

which our entire course of reflection has been leading. The
conclusion which has already been reached affirms that the only
real Principle, worthy to be considered as a World-Ground, must
be found in the unity of an absolute and infinite Personal Life.
This conclusion seems to involve the following four important
philosophical tenets : (1) All beings and events are united, in
respect of their real relations and actual history, in the Will of
Cod; (2) All physical beings and events are immediately
known to God, are " moments " in the cognitive consciousness
of God ;(3) Of all the conscious and self-conscious life of
finite beings, God is co-conscious for his omniscience is an
;

essential of his Unity as a Person ; and, therefore, (4), the

World, or Universe of tilings and selves, with all their inter-

relations and changes, lies " mirrored " perfectly in the unity
of the rational self-consciousness of God.
But the ultimate purpose of our study, lies yet beyond all

this. It is to test the reasonableness of a faith in the Object

of religious experience, as this Object is conceived of by the
highest reflective developments of that experience. In other
words, it is to establish, if possible, a rational belief in the
Being of a God, to whom may be attributed in perfection the
moral attributes of justice, goodness, holiness, and ethical love.
Across the pathway to the realization of this purpose lies the
problem of evil. And it cannot be denied that the philosophi-
cal conception of God as absolute and infinite self-conscious

146
 —
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 147

Person, makes, in several important respects, the completed

realization of this purpose increasingly difficult. This state-

ment will become more obvious, the further the discussion of

the problem of evil proceeds.

Another important feature, if it be not a defect, in the argu-
ment by -which religion supports its faith in God as perfect

Ethical Spirit, is its plainly " circular " character. No satis-

factory approach to a solution of the problem of evil can be

made without giving a generous confidence to the evidential
value of the faith of the highest religious developments, that
there is indeed a perfectly just, good, holy, and loving God.
But on coming to examine the grounds on which this faith it-

self depends, it appears that the evidential value of the faith

is not wholly or chiefly objective, but is chiefly subjective,

that is, consists in the faith itself. Or, to state the case of
this clrculus in arguendo more bluntly : When we ask, How
do you solve, even partially, the problem of evil ? the answer
of religion is : By the faith in a perfectly good God. And,
then, when we further ask : How do you arrive at and justify
this faith ? we are virtually told that it is because the faith
either solves, or greatly relieves, the problem of evil.
It may as well be confessed at once that the relation be-
tween the problem of evil and the problems offered by the faith
of religion in the moral perfections of the Absolute Self, whom
this faith recognizes and worships as God, is a relation of re-
ciprocal dependence. If evil is actually supreme, or even on
a par with the good, then no man can reasonably believe in a
perfectly good God. But if one cannot believe in a perfectly
good, as well as an omnipotent and omniscient God, then how
shall one believe in the supremacy and final triumph of the
good? All this shifting of the argument's point of view shows
that religious faith in the Divine Being as perfect Ethical Spirit
is a postulate which cannot be placed on independent grounds
so as to afford a strictly scientific solution of the problem of
evil. It does not follow, however, that it cannot be made rea-
148 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

sonable ;
— chiefly on the ground that it most perfectly satisfies

man's ethical, sesthetical, and religious sentiments, and most

effectively secures the ontological value of his ethical, sestheti-
cal, and religious ideals.

Does, then, the problem of evil admit of any solution ? Cer-

tainly not ; if by its solution we mean to indicate the possi-
bility of explaining by any scientifically established law, or
general truth, the actual experience of the race with the really
existing amount and kinds of evil. If, however, one becomes
willing to accept at their full evidential value the sentiments
and ideals, which both produce and justify the faith of religion,
then one may find the solution which this faith proposes, the

best attainable, not to say the perfectly satisfactory, answer

to this dark and meaningful problem. Nor will evidence in
favor of this solution, which lies somewhat outside of the ex-
perience of religion, be wholly wanting. " Solutions " (sic) so-
called, which go beyond this modest claim, are sure to be un-
tenable as theories, and likely to prove injurious to practical
morality.
As to the fact of the existence of evil, in vast amount and
widely, or even universally distributed, both temporally and
territorially, there can be no dispute. From the point of view
of the impartial investigator, as well as from the religious
point of view, the customary distinction may be maintained
between the two related, but by no means identical, forms of
evil. This problem, then, faces the facts of evil as either
suffering, or else as moral failure ; or — to use the term of re-

ligious experience —as sin.

If inquiry be made whether, on the whole, the amount of

evil as suffering exceeds the amount of good as happiness, it
seems, on examination, to prove not only unanswerable, but
even vain and idle. The estimate for which it calls, must al-
ways be made from the point of view of some individual's
experience. Thus the result, since suffering is essentially sub-
jective and no adequate objective and universal measure of its
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 149

amount can be obtained, is liable and ex

to both exaggerations
cessive minimizing, in dependence upon temperament, mood,
personal experience, and, especially, the adopted point of view.
How can the opinion of the comfortable well-fed Englishman,
who is perfectly certain that, if any future after death is in
store for him, it is immediate entrance into a condition of beati-

tude, or the judgment of the successful American man of busi-

ness, whose highest ideal is no other than just this sort of
success, agree with the opinion and judgment of the ascetic
Brahman or of the starving millions of India? As a matter of
fact, the two opinions do not agree. Again, with the Buddhist,
existence itself seems so fraught with inescapable evil that to
get out of it, to get " off the wheel," is esteemed the supreme
good. And to attain this good, the way is not through the
gratification but, the rather, through the extinction, of desire.

Valid considerations, based upon facts, may be opposed to

both extreme views of this problem. To those who estimate
the evil of suffering as greatly preponderating, itmay be op-
posed : (1) That the physiological and psychological constitu-
tion of animal life is such as to set limits, both of time and of
degree, to the endurance of suffering ; (2) that, on the contrary,
there is everywhere a more abundant provision for the ease-
ment of pain and for the promotion of a variety of kinds of
pleasure ; (3) that the animals, the lower races, and the chil-
dren of the more sensitive races, do not in fact suffer at all as

the hypersesthetic observer imagines that they do ; or, when

reflecting in quiet and ease upon the unutterable woes of
total humanity, the confirmed aesthete imagines that they must.
In fact, the fearsome burden of unrewarded and unappreci-
ated toil and service, of egoistic or sympathetic pains, of dis-
appointed ambitions and hopes, of superstitious or well-founded
fears, does not prevent the life of the multitudes from be-
ing, on the whole, an experience of prevailing comfort and
large and somewhat varied happiness. While those who seem
to have been especially selected victims of an unusual and
150 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

seemingly intolerable load of suffering, most often manage to

secure that greater measure of cheerful endurance and trium-
phant faith, which might well enough make them the objects
of envy by ordinary mortals.
But, on the other hand, let one maintain that, after all, hu-

man suffering is in amount relatively insignificant and greatly

exceeded by the gross sum of human happiness : then one
stands convicted, either of an insensitive and unsympathetic
mind, or of a lack of varied and comprehensive experience.
For (1) that very physiological and psychological constitution
which, asit were of necessity, sets limits to the sufferings of

animal and human life, is so elastic and enduring that these

same limits admit of a quite unbearable amount of suffering
as judged by finite capacity. In other words, most men have
about all of suffering they can bear. (2) The same pro-
vision of a nervous system, however rudimentary or highly
developed, which is made for the enjoyment of a suitable en-
vironment, when itself in healthy condition, is just as certainly
adapted for painful reactions whenever the environment is

unsuitable or the apparatus itself is out of tune. And (3) there

is much evidence in support of the contention of Schopen-
hauer ; — namely, that the very conditions which favor the ad-
vancement of the race in what is called civilization are essen-
tially such as to provide for a large increase in certain forms
of suffering. They who vibrate most rapidly and intensely be-
tween the opposite poles of painful craving and painful satiety
and ennui, are not the lower animals, or the lower races, or the
children of the more sensitive races. In a word, the develop-
ment of the capacity for happiness is also, in even greater degree,
a development of the capacity for suffering. Moreover, the very
motif and desired end of religious faith, so far as thisfaith takes
account of this two-sided human capacity, is to furnish satisfac-

tions for the soul in such manner as to increase the one and
abate the other. For this filial attitude toward the omnipo-
tent, omniscient, and ethically perfect Will of God (" sweet"
 a

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 151

and "holy" Will), brings the finite spirit into such relations
with the Infinite Sufferer, that the woes of mankind are more
keenly and painfully felt. It was just this highest refinement

of altruistic suffering which made that Apostle, who was al-

ways ready " to be offered," declare :

" The whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now," —
figure of speech taken from the extreme of human anguish.
It was the same experience which wrung a bitter cry from
Jesus, and forced the temporary obscuration of his sense
of complete union with God, as he hung upon the sacrificial

cross.
The facts, then, furnish sufficient reason for that vacillation
of mind with which one passes from observing certain kinds
of experience to the observation of other and seemingly con-
tradictory kinds, —in the lower animals and in men, — as inter-

preted by a variety of so-called laws, physical, physiological,

psychological, economical, and social. Confusion seems to be
rife in the phenomena. The sympathetic soul is torn asunder
by the evidences of this cosmic strife.
The difficulty of estimating amounts of happiness and suffer-
ing, of making up a satisfactory balance sheet, and of debiting
and crediting the appropriate sums to the different kindly or
malignant forces of nature, is made more profound, if not more
unanswerable, by the discoveries of modern science. Biology
reveals the astonishing fact that innumerable destructive liv-
ing forms —bacteria, bacilli, and germs of various kinds —have
been provided for all sentient, and especially for human life ;

these instruments of torture and death have made for man an

inescapable environment of incredible suffering. The constitu-
tion of the world in which man lives has monstrous pain firmly
embedded in its very texture. What biological science has
demonstrated in its most convincing way, the anthropological,
economical, and social sciences have also adopted as a theoreti-
cal tenet. The evolution of animal life, the progress of the
race in every form and degree of race-culture, is purchasable,
 "

152 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

only by the payment of enormous sums of suffering. The his-

tory of art confirms the testimony of the sciences. The poets
"learn by suffering what they teach in song." The greatest
painters, sculptors, and musicians proclaim the same truth.
The highest art culminates in tragedies, in passion music, in
the graphic or plastic delineation of suffering heroes. That
this must be, all modern science is agreed in proclaiming.
More slowly, and same
as yet not quite so surely, has this
science been making clear that similar instrumentalities for an
increased amount, and higher kind, of happiness are embedded
in the same constitution of the world. Biology is talking of
the beneficent, as well as of the maleficent, bacteria and other
forms of lower life, very much as " unreflecting spiritism
was wont to talk of good and bad spirits, of kindly and hate-
ful gods. So do the other sciences of human life try to dis-
cover how the evils of iniquitous government, the inequalities
of social life, the horrid barbarities of war, and the monstrous
suffering inflicted by the severer " acts of God," by earth-
quake, volcanic eruptions, pestilences, etc., somehow " work
together " for the greater good. And with these sciences,
" greater good " means more of human happiness.
When, again, the mind tries to estimate the fact of moral
evil, and to do sums in its measurement with precision some-
what approaching the mathematical, its failure is even more
complete. It is no mere liking for a defunct Augustinian
theology, in its excess of judgment over the Pauline type,
which compels the moral consciousness, when viewing certain
classes of facts, to feel : " There is none that doeth good, no,
not one ;" " They are all gone out of the way, they are together
become unprofitable." But, given more of insight and of
human sympathy, there are other classes of facts which show
how much native capacity for certain virtues, and for a re-
sponse to any appeal made in the name of the higher moral
and religious ideals, characterizes human nature in general.
Thus the arguments for " total depravity," in the theological
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 153

meaning of this term, serve very largely to cancel those for the

native goodness of humanity. Taken together, they leave our

judgment as to the relative amounts of moral evil and moral
goodness in the same uncertain state. The conclusion seems
inevitable ; the problem as to the preponderance of good and
evil, in fact, is unanswerable by any species of calculation.
Whether there is more of happiness, and of essential moral
goodness, in the human race now than was four thousand
years ago is no easy sum in arithmetic or algebra it is much :

too big and abstruse a problem to be solved by collections of

economical and social statistics.

When the different abstract solutions of the problem of evil,

which leave largely out of account the religious experience of
humanity as enforced by the doctrine of development, are ex-
amined, they are all found to be very far from satisfactory.
Especially true is this of an}' theory which denies the reality of
evil — whether of suffering or of sin. Such theories are accus-
tomed to start out with the sonorous declaration that evil, both
suffering and sinning, is only relative and negative. To this

one might oppose the equally untenable declaration of Schopen-

hauer that pain is the only positive thing, and that pleasure or
happiness is only negative. Man's experience with suffering
and with moral obliquity is, like all his experience, a relative
and, in some sort, a negative affair. Both pain and pleasure
imply relations ; they depend upon reactions that are relative
to the condition of the subject in his objective environment.
In this meaning of the words, it is not true that " Mind can, in
itself and of its own place, make a heaven of hell, a hell of
heaven." Pain negates pleasure ; suffering negates happiness ;

moral badness negates moral goodness ; and sin negates holi-

ness. Even these unproductive and figurative uses of the terms
" relative " and " negative " are subject to the undoubted fact
of human experience that, for the individual and for the race,
life is always a strange and confusing and largely inexplicable
mixture of good and evil, of suffering and happiness, of wrong-
154 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

doing and right-doing, in the same individual, the same com-

munity, the same social status ; and even in the same conscious
state.

To actual human experience, and to the reflective thinking

which deals seriously with this experience, all solutions of the

problem of evil which deny the reality of evil must always seem
no better than juggling with words. With the religious point
of view such optimism, and its opposite of pessimism, are alike
untenable. The conclusion of religion is substantially ex-
pressed in Voltaire's poem, Le Desastre de Lisbonne : —
" All will one day be well, we fondly hope;

That all is well to-day, is but the dream

Of erring men, however wise they seem,
And God alone is right."

Much more helpful is that attempt at the solution of the

problem of evil which regards both suffering and moral failure,

or sin, as instrumental, as means, and even as necessary means,

to a higher good of happiness and of moral purity. This view
undoubtedly seems to relieve the problem of some of its more
difficult and dark features ; but it does not afford a completely
satisfactory solution, especially of the problem of moral evil.
Indeed, unless the postulates of religious experience, and the
anticipations of a theory of evolution which shall give the
fullest expression to the value of the religious ideals, are both

taken into our confidence, the " instrumental theory " of evil
fails of offering even a partial solution of its problem.
That pain is a necessary means to the development, and
even to the existence, of all finite, spiritual, and self-conscious
life has been held by various writers. " Without it," says Sa-
batier, 1 " it does not seem that the life of the spirit could arise
from the physical life." Indeed, there is reason for declaring
that, with man in his present environment, the consciousness
of self and the separation of the soul from the organism, as a
1 Esquisse d'une Philosophic de la Religion, p. 15
 ;

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 155

self-cognitive reality with interests and ideals that somehow

transcend the organism, could not take place without pain.
Thus the thought is led on to estimate highly the value of
suffering of various sorts as disciplinary, and as means to the
arousing and cultivation of the higher powers of man's spiritual
life. Such a solution of the problem of evil seems to agree, of
necessity, with religion in rejecting a purely eudsemonistic
ethics. It affirms the value of happiness, either positive or as

freedom from suffering, to consist largely in its instrumental

relations to the realization of a higher form of Good. Pain is

means to an end that is higher than happiness. Thus this

theory reverses the position of all utilitarian systems of ethics

only thus does it prepare the ground for considerations which
help to establish a theodicy from the religious point of view.
" It is difficulties," says an ancient writer, " which show what
men really are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you

remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched

you with a rough young man. For what purpose ? you may
say. Why that you may become an Olympic conqueror but ;

it is not accomplished without sweat."

"We have already seen how the theory of evolution, as ap-
plied to every form of life and of human progress, emphasizes
the instrumental value of arrangements which are inevitably
connected with an overwhelming amount of suffering and of
death. Science, the philosophy of art, and the philosophy of
religion, are all coming to agree as never before, in realizing
the immense and seemingly indispensable utility of struggle
and pain and also the ontological value of ideals, the effort
;

to reach, and even to approach, which has caused the race so

much of struggle and pain.
The instrumental worth of moral evil, or sin, is a much more
difficult thesis to maintain. Man learns, indeed, by trials in ;

trials, mistakes are inevitable ; and where conduct, or action

that has moral concernment, is the stake, undoubtedly the
facts justify the contention that much conduct which is moral
 — —
156 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

failure, or sin, is the inevitable conco