. t
r:V $ 'jfff

i

:i luqci/z

AGNOSTICISM

BY

pT. pEV.
J.

|a. ^SPALDING,
P.J.,

BISHOP OK PEORIA. ^ .X

“We are, it seems to me, guilty of negligence, if, after we have

been confirmed in the faith to understand what

we believe.’’—

S

t. AnselMI

. if v

£* tIBBABY * ;;

.'V

The Catholic Truth Society
OF AMERICA.

Pamphlet No. 10.

B
7 9 £>

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA.





REMISS

AGNOSTICISM

BY

l^T. I^EV.
J. Jj.

^PALDING,
J. J).,

BISHOP OK PEORIA.

“We are, it seems to me, guilty of negligence, if, after we have

been confirmed in the faith, we do not strive to understand what

we believe.”

—

St. Anselm.

The Catholic Truth Society
OF AMERICA.

Pamphlet No. IQ.

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA



.



BY

RT. REY. S, L. SPALDING, D, D.,

Bishop of Peoria.

To understand the present we must know the past,

and to get a clear and comprehensive view of a preva-

lent opinion or belief, we mast study the conditions from

which it has been evolved. If agnosticism, the theory

of nescience in whatever is not purely phenomenal,

prevails widely among intelligent men in our day, it is

not to be imagined that this is a new creed. It is but

a form of scepticism, of the doubt of the possibility of

objective knowledge. From the time when the Greeks

began to cultivate philosophy and to construct systems

of thought, criticism, as a reaction against the dog-

matic spirit, made its appearance, and in the conflicting

theories as to the nature of the real as distinguished

from the apparent, it found the conditions most favor-

able to its work. The primitive attitude of the mind,

is trust, and hence historically as well as logically af-

firmation precedes negation. The antithesis of sense

and reason is brought forward by Heraclitus and the

Eleatics in the pre-Socratic epoch. Among the soph-

ists Protagoras denies the possibility of objective truth,

and dissolves knowledge into momentary, individual sen-

sation. With the theory of nescience Gorgias combines

that of intellectual nihilism. Nothing exists, he affirms,

and if anything existed it would be unknowable. Dis-

belief in the validity of knowledge developed into moral



4

scepticism which recognized no good but pleasure, no

right but might. Pyrrho who gave his name to the

school of scepticism, teaches that we know nothing of

the nature of things, and that the wise man, in matters

of this kind, pronounces no opinion. His followers .ex-

tended their doubt to tha principle of doubt itself, and

thus sought to give to scepticism a universal import.

Carneades denied that there is a criterion of truth, for

impressions, sensations, perceptions testify only to

themselves, not to the nature of the objects by which

they are caused. They in many cases mislead us, and

consequently we can never be sure we are not mislead.

The arguments of the ancient sceptics are based on the

relativity of ideas. We can never know things as
they are in themselves, but only as they appear to us;

and every affirmation concerning them may be met by

its opposite.

In the writings of some of the early, as well as in

those of some of the later apologists of Christianity,

reason is disparaged in a way which implies a doubt of

the validity of knowledge. What else can we infer*

when Tertullian, for instance, says the death of the Son

of God is credible, because it is absurd
;
that his burial

and resurrection are certain, because impossible? And

is not Pascal a sceptic, when he declares that to mock

at philosophy is to be a true philosopher, and when he

calls reason impotent?

Modern philosophy, and modern science, too, prop-

erly begin with Descartes. When he appeared, the

efforts of scholasticism to reduce the teachings of the

Church to a theological system, and to demonstrate

divine truth by rigorous logical deductions, had, as far

as this is possible, accomplished their work. The ob-

jective method had had its day. A new spirit had
come over the Christian nations. It had been shown

that the earth moves round the sun; institutions and

beliefs which had been considered as immovable as the

earth itself, were shaken
;
and principles which had

been looked upon as the foundation of all proof, were

called in question. In the confusion of religious con-

troversies and wars, new doubts had risen, new views of



life had began to prevail, and new theories had been de-

vised. The appeal to the conscience of the individual,

as supreme in questions of faith, and the denial of the

freedom of the will, had led to inquiries into the value

of knowledge. Are we certain of anything, and if so,

upon what grounds does our certainty rest ? This is

the problem which Descartes undertook to solve. His

method is critical and begins with doubt. His doubt,

however, is active, and aims to overcome itself. It

seeks to find a ground of certitude which shall make

scepticism impossible. To begin, all confess that life

is full of illusions; that authority may err, testimony

be false, memory untrustworthy, the evidence of the

senses misleading, while reason lands us in contradic-

tions. Is it possible, then, to be certain of anything ?

Yes, of the fact that we think, feel, doubt. In all the

processes by wdiich we may seek to establish the prin-

ciple of scepticism, we are still certain that we think.

In self-consciousness, therefore, we have the primal

unity of thought and being, which is the definition of

truth; and this unity is not an inference, but an intui-

tion of the mind. But how can mere self-conscious-

ness give us a knowledge of what is not ourselves, of

an external world, which is independent of our percep-

tion? What we call the properties of matter are, as a

very little reflection suffices to make plain, but modes

of consciousness. When we say that an object is red

or hard or round, all that we really mean is that we

are conscious of the sensation of redness, hardness,

roundness. Even the very unity which we ascribe to

the object, is but the form our perception of it takes;

for every object makes various impressions, and tlrs

manifold of sense is bound into unity only in percep-

tion. Hence our knowledge of things is really only a

knowledge of states of consciousness. Is it not, then,

impossible to know that a world external to conscious-

ness exists ? Descartes answers that we could have no

certaintv of the existence of a real world outside of our-
•/

selves, if it were not certain that there is a God who

cannot deceive us. But God’s being, he maintains,

is involved in the principle of causality which is a self-



6

evident truth. The idea of the infinite, the absolute,

the perfect, we all have; and the principle of causality

makes us certain that this idea is not derived from our

own limited nature. Its origin must therefore be

sought in a being who actually contains all that our

idea of him contains. Thus the idea of God underlies

self-consciousness, and in knowing ourselves we know

God. This argument has often been impugned, and

to defend it is not here my purpose. I wish merely to -

point out that what saved Descartes from agnosticism

concerning the reality of nature was his reasoned

belief in the existence and varacity of God.

The method of Locke, like that of Descartes, is sub-

jective. He, too, begins with self-consciousness, and

finds that it consists in sensation and reflection, which

are the tw
T

o fountain-heads of all knowledge. Reflec-

tion, though it be not sense, may not improperly be

called internal sense. “Since the mind,” he says, “in

all its thoughts and reasonings hath no other immedi-

ate object but its own ideas which it alone does or can

contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only

conversant about them. Knowledge, then, seems to

me nothing but the perception of the connection and

agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of

any one of our ideas.” The question of knowledge,

therefore, is a question of ideas, and in Locke’s opin-

ion, mere ideas are “neither true nor false, being noth-

ing but bare appearances in our minds.” It is not in

the power of the most- exalted wit or the most enlarged

understanding to form any simple idea which has not

been taken in through the senses. In proof of this, he

would have us try to fancy a taste which had never

affected the palate, or a scent which had never been

perceived; and if this is possible, he will admit that a

man born blind may have ideas of color, or one born

deaf notions of sound. When the mind turns its view

inward upon itself, it transforms sensation into ideas

of thinking and wdlling
;
of which remembrance, reason-

ing, knowledge and faith are but modes. How shall

the mind, since it perceives nothing but its own ideas,

know that they agree with the things themselves?



7

This is the problem Locke proposes to himself; and his

solution is that simple ideas are the necessary product

of things operating on the mind in a natural way, and

producing those perceptions which the wisdom and will

of our Maker ordained them to produce. They are

consequently not fictions of our fancy, but natural pro-

ductions of things without, really operating upon

us, and having with them all the conformity which is

intended or which our state requires. This is evidently

an avowal of our inability to transcend the sphere of

consciousness and to penetrate into the essence of

things. We are obliged to suppose substance, but
what it is we neither know nor can know. There is

nothing he holds, contradictory to reason in the sup-

position that our sense-perceptions are illusory, although

we are incapable of doubting their reality. Locke, how-

ever, is not, or at least does not believe himself to be, a

sceptic. “If I doubt all other things,” he says, “that

very doubt makes me perceive my own existence and will
not permit me to doubt of that.” Like Descartes, he

is more certain that God exists than that the external

world is real. “It is plain to me,” he says, “that we

have a more certain knowledge of the existence of God

than of anything our senses have not immediately dis-

covered to us. Nay, I presume I may say that we

may more certainly know there is a God than that there

is anything else without us.” For him as for Des-

cartes God’s being is involved in the principle of caus-

ality. To self-consciousness the cause is revealed in

its effect.

The problems suggested by these two great philoso-

phers awakened the speculative genius of Berkely. His

meditations led him to the conclusion that no existence

is conceivable or possible which is not either conscious

spirit or the ideas of which such spirit is conscious.

What we call matter is really a mental conception.

Mind, therefore, is the deepest reality. Externality in

the sense of independence of mind, has no meaning,

Descartes and Locke had looked upon matter as the un-

perceived background of experience, to which our ideas of

external things are to be attributed. As knowledge was

s



8

limited to the ideas thus produced, it could not extend

to the substance or cause which produced them. Hence

there could be no rational ground for belief in the ex-

istence of such a cause, and philosophy seemed doomed

to end in scepticism. In his efforts to avoid such a re-

sult, Berkely placed the problem in a new light. He

asked himself what the ideas of cause, substance and

matter really mean, and he found that they are incon-

ceivable, if they are supposed to represent something

which exists apart from all knowledge of it. External

things, as external, cannot enter into consciousness.

This might seem to be pure idealism, but in Berkely’s

mind it is essentially connected with the theory of

causality. Since matter, apart from its perception, is

inconceivable, and since sense ideas are not due to our

own activity, their cause can be nothing else than the

divine intelligence and will. This theory does not con-

tradict the evidence of the senses. “ That the things,”

says Berkely, “ which I see with my eyes and touch

with my hands, do exist, really exist, I make not the

least question. The only thing whose existence I deny

is that which philosophers call matter, corporeal sub-

stance.” All our knowledge of objects, he contends, is a

knowledge of ideas. The things we call objects are

really ideas. To the objection that though ideas can

have no existence save in the mind, there may be things

outside of mind, of which ideas are copies or resem-

blances, Berkely makes answer that an idea can be

like nothing but an idea. If these supposed things are

perceivable, they are ideas; if they cannot be perceived

it is lack of sense to say that color, for instance, can be

like something which is invisible, or that hard or soft

can be like what is intangible. For matter, Berkely

substitutes the living, ever active mind of God as the

center and source of the universe. Man’s irresistible

longing for knowledge springs from the need of bring-

ing his conceptions into harmony with the divine

thoughts. Things are the letters and words of a lan-

guage which God speaks to the soul. Our belief in the

permanence of something which corresponds to our sen-

sations and perceptions is simply belief in the uniform-



9

ity and order -of nature, and this is but the assurance

that the universe is informed and regulated by mind.

Locke maintained that all our ideas are derived

through the senses, and Berkely affirmed that the ob-

jects of knowledge are never anything else than ideas.

Experience gives us thoughts and we know nothing but

our thoughts. Hume took up this position and upon it
built the most complete system of scepticism human

reason has ever framed. If from ideas we cannot infer

the existence of matter, then, he argued, neither can we

from them infer the existence of mind. Ideas can give

knowledge only of ideas. Matter is but a collection of

impressions. Mind is but a succession of impressions.

Nature forces us to believe in the reality of things, but

reason is impotent to know that they are real. “ Thus

the sceptic,” he says, “ still continues to reason and be-

lieve, even though he asserts he cannot defend his rea-

son by reason
;
and by the same rule he must assent to

the principle concerning the existence of body, though

he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to

defend its veracity.”

He divides the contents of the mind into impressions

and their faint copies, which he calls ideas. The prim-

ary contents of the mind then are simply impressions,

the origin of which we cannot know. As all impres-

sions are strictly individual, it follows that all ideas are

strictly particular. We are conscious only of isolated
states, each of which is related to other states in a

merely external way. Real knowledge implies the

passing from a present impression to something con-

nected with it, and this something, as it is not itself

present, is represented by its copy or idea. The con-

necting link between an impression and an idea is what

we mean by cause. But since all our impressions and

ideas are particular and isolated states, it is impossible

to establish an internal connection between them. As

every impression is a contingent fact, which might not

be or might be other than it is, there can be no

necessary or causal relation between the facts of experi-

ence. The idea of cause is merely that of conjunction

or sequence. When certain impressions and ideas are



10

uniformly followed by other impressions.and ideas, we

imagine a causal connection between them. The sub-

jective transition, resting upon past experience, is mis-

taken for an objective relation. Since, according to

Hume, it is impossible to know That there is either a

subject or an object, it necessarily follows that no real

connection between states of consciousness can be es-

tablished. In what hopeless, confusion this theory of

cognition ends, Hume himself has pointed out. If per-
ceptions form a whole and become the groundwork of

knowledge only when they are connected, and if no con-

nection between them is discoverable by the human

understanding, the inevitable outcome is that we can

know nothing. “All my hopes vanish,” he says, “ when

1 come to explain the principles that unite our succes-

sive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I

cannot discover any theory which gives me satisfaction

on this head. In short, there are two principles which

I cannot render consistent nor is it in my power to re-

nounce either of them, viz.: that all our distinct per-

ceptions are distinct existences, and, that the mind

never perceives any real connection among distinct

existences.”

Since the time of Descartes, there has been a gen-

eral agreement among thinkers that philosophy must

necessarily begin with self-consciousness. The criti-

cism of the data of consciousness, as made by Hume,

ended in hopeless scepticism, in intellectual nihilism.

We are conscious only of isolated impressions and
their ideal shadows, and to establish an inner connec-

tion between the different states of consciousness is

impossible. Not only is the real nature of things for-

ever concealed from us, but wre cannot even know that

things really exist. To affirm that we know we can

know nothing is of course a contradiction, but the

sceptic urges that this is but a confirmation of his

theory that reason lands us in contradictions and is

therefore not to be trusted. Both the science of mind

and the science of nature work with images of the un-

derstanding to which nothing real corresponds. All

demonstration which is concerned with anything else



11

than figures and numbers is worthless sophistry. The

idea of cause is merely that of accompaniment or of

succession. A cause is assumed, but the assumption is
groundless The idea of substance arises when we are

conscious of the repeated occurrence of several ideas

in the same relation towards one another and at the

same time. We add to these the idea of something
wdiich sustains them and call it substance, that which

stands under impressions. Substance therefore is a

mere figment of the mind.

The reasoned scepticism of Hume led Kant to sub-
ject the mental faculties to a new and more thorough

criticism, and he is the first philosopher who fully

brought to light the necessity of a satisfactory theory

of knowledge. He undertook his great work with the

intention of refuting the arguments of the sceptical

school
;
whether or not he succeeded is disputed. The

mind, he teaches, can think but not know, unless the

senses supply the materials of knowledge. Hence his

criticism deals with the presuppositions of knowledge,

the conditions which make knowledge possible. Sen-

sations are given us; the mind unites the manifold of

sense and transforms it into perception or idea. The

content is given, the form is supplied by the mind. It

gives to all sensations the forms of space and time, for

the ideas of space and time are not received from with-

out, but are wholly subjective, the necessary forms of

thought which lie in us, and according to which we

combine our manifold sensations into unity, which con-

stitutes them things, phenomena. Space is primarily

the form for the outer sense, time for the inner. All

phenomena, therefore, are temporal; those of the ex-

ternal sense are also spacial. As time and space are

merely conditions of perception, they have no validity,

for what is not an object of sensation, for what is not

phenomenon or appearance. What is not phenomenon

Kant calls noumenon, or thing-in-itself. To the thing-

in-itself, time and space have no relation. The mind,

which gives to sense-experience the forms of space and

time, reduces the data of experience to unity and makes

it possible to classify objects under the categorical



heads of quantity, quality, relation and modality.

These are the pure forms of the understanding which

render thought possible. By the understanding Kant

means the faculty of judging. The conceptions it

forms are reduced to some general idea by the reason,

which he calls the faculty of inference. Reason has

three pure ideas, which are above the intuitions of time

and space, and above the conceptions of the under-

standing. These are the idea of the universe, the idea

of the soul and the idea of God. As space and time

are the forms of sensibility, as the categories of quan-

tity, quality, relation and modality are the forms of

understanding, so these three ideas are the forms of

reason. Neither space and time, nor the categories,

nor the three ideas of reason are derived from experi-

ence, nor can they be resolved into experience, but

they are the independent and necessary conditions of

knowledge. They are the fundamental laws of the

mind, and act, whether we observe them or not. They

are the first truths, the apriori principles which when

reduced to system constitute metaphysics. Cognition

begins with intuition, proceeds to conception, and ends

in the ideas of reason.

The ideas of reason deal with conceptions, as the un-

derstanding deals with sensations. They are not in-

tuitive, but discursive, and reason has validity, only

when it is used within the sphere of the understanding.

The thing-in-itself is unknown and unknowable, for to

be known it must be invested with the forms of space

and time and the categories, and then it is no longer

thing-in-itself, but appearance. The existence of an

external world is a necessary postulate, but it cannot

be proven, and consequently we can never say that our

knowledge has objective truth. Truth is the agree-

ment of thought with thought, not of thought with

things. The ideas of reason then have a merely sub-

jective value, and we cannot logically affirm that the

world, the soul and God really exist. Thus Kant’s

criticism of pure reason ends in scepticism, and he

seems not to have undermined, but to have strength-

ened the position of Hume. By no rational process



can things pass into thought, ideas remain ideas an d

can never be translated into fact. The only reality for

us is a reality in consciousness, which is but a phe-

nomenal and relative reality. How then is knowledge
possible, or how is an object possible, since an object

is something beyond sensation ? This is the problem

Kant seeks to solve, and he has put it in so strong a

light that he has caused the deeper philosophic thought

of the last hundred years to turn upon the meaning and

value of knowledge. It is a criticism of mind which

now tends to become an investigation into the physi-

ological conditions upon which thinking depends.

Kant’s solution of the problem is that thoughts and

things are not diverse. Knowledge is the result of the

inter-action of mind and matter. Intelligence is pres-

ent from the first in the creation of objects. The uni-

versal and necessary element in all science springs from

the organizing unity of mind. Mind imposes its laws

upon nature and reads into it a rational meaning.

Kant’s great merit is to have shown beyond the possi-

bility of doubt that material data can never constitute

knowledge. Henceforth the theories of positivism and

materialism are seen to be not merely superficial, but

absurd. It is not possible to attempt to reduce mind

to a function of matter without supposing mind already

to exist. The principle of force or mechanical caus-

ality by which materialists seek to explain the phe-

nomena of the world is inapplicable to vital phenomena

and therefore utterly fails as an explanation of con-

sciousness. It is not possible to state the problem ex-

cept in terms of mind, and since we therefore neces-

sarily start with mind, the attempt to reach mind as a

result of merely material conditions inevitably fails.

It is to seek in the object of thought that which pro-

duces thought, in the body which reflects light, the

source of light. A mechanical equivalent of conscious-
ness is inconceivable, for in all mental phenomena, self

is present as opposed to and determining the data of

sense. When therefore consciousness is developed in
the midst of a material environment the cause can be

no other than mind controlling and directing matter.



But the idealism of Kant, which makes^the inade-

quacy of materialistic theories plain, seems to favor the

theory of nescience, which has become popular under

the name of agnosticism. His idea of time and space,

and of the categories, led him t& hold that the objec-

tive, is not being external to consciousness, but con-

formity to law. The pure reason deduces from the

understanding not reality, not things in themselves, but

laws. Nature is simply experience as determined by

the categories. The world of sense is a lawless aggre-

gate; nature is orderly coherence which the under-

standing arranges according to the categories; and if

the thinking subject were taken away nature would also

fall away. The critical philosophy, like the Coperni-

can astronomy, corrects the impulse to believe that

things are what they appear to be. The eye sees the

sun move; the mind perceives that the sun is station-

ary, and that the earth moves. So the eye sees that

objects are white or round or hard or large; the touch

tells us they are cold or hot, smooth or rough
;
the ear

that they are soundless or resonant; the palate that

they are sweet or bitter; but reflection makes it plain

that these qualities are in ourselves, and not in the ob-

jects: they are impressions, modes of perceiving, not

modes of being. This, it is held is also true of time and

space, which are not something real in which things

exist, but forms of thought, conditions which render

experience possible. Thus the objective world becomes

a world of appearances, a world relatively to us, not a

world in itself. As there is no real likeness between

a word and the thing it expresses, the word house for

instance, and the building itself; so the ideas of things

bear no resemblance to the things themselves. Indeed

Kant’s thing-in-itself, is assumed, not known, to exist.

It is a ghost in the reality of which the philosopher

does not believe. The result of Kant’s criticism is

seen in its further development in the system of Fichte.

“ I know absolutely nothing,” he says, “nothing of any

being, not even of my own. There is no being. I

know-nothing and I am nothing. There are figures,

appearances, shadows; they are the only things which



15

*

exist; they know themselves after the fashion of shadows

—fleeting shadows, flitting over nothing. Shadows of
shadows and related only to shadows; images which

resemble nothing, without meaning and without pur-

pose. I myself am one of these shadows, not a shadow

even, but a confused cloud-heap of intermingled shad-

ows. All reality is but a dream which has no life for its

object
4

no mind for its subject; a dream which holds to

nothing but a dream. Sight is a dream, and thought,

the source of the whole substance and reality which I

elaborate from my being, my strength, my destiny, is

the dream of a dream.”

In the thought of Fichte the critical philosophy led

to nihilism; in Schelling, it became pantheism and

Schopenhauer found in it the proof of pessimism; but

the opinions and beliefs of the English speaking world

have not been greatly influenced by any of these

systems; though here as elsewhere among the enlight-

ened portion of mankind, the force and significance of

Kant’s criticism have been felt and acknowledged.

Hamilton who first interpreted the new philosophy to

readers of English, holds with Kant that we know only

the phenomenal; that of which it is phenomenal, re-

maining unknown and unknowable. It follows that we

do not know things, but only their relations to ourselves

and to one another. This is the theory of the essential

relativity of knowledge which Mr. Spencer has taken

from Hamilton and Mansel, and which is the meta-

physical principle of his synthetic philosophy. The

clear and forcible style in which he has explained his

theory has made it popular, and the result is that a

multitude of writers and speakers have taken up the

“ unknowable,” as a catchword, and have made it the

basis of a creed which they call agnosticism.

It is plain from what I have thus far written, that

this creed is intimately associated with the deepest

speculations in which the human mind has engaged.

The problems that it raises are fundamental, and to

imagine that this is a question in which wit or sarcasm

can be of any avail, is to show one’s self ignorant of its

real import.



Some of the defenders of agnosticism, as for instance

Mr. Fawcett, the American novelist, write on this sub-

ject in a style of which neither a scholar nor a philoso-

pher can approve. “Truly, he says, the most extraordi-

nary idea which ever entered the brain of man is that

of a personal overwatching deity.” Again: “If he

(the agnostic) leans toward absolute atheism, he does

so because the vast weight of evidence impels him in

that direction,” and like one who might have circum-

navigated all the worlds of thought, he affirms “the

total insolubility” of the problems of life and death.

Such style is its own condemnation. This knowingness

and this dogmatism is the very last thing to which a

true agnostic will commit himself. His attitude is neg-

ative, he neither affirms nor denies the existence of God,

the soul and life in the unseen world. His profession

is that he does not and can not know anything of all

this. An overweening fondness for outrageous assertion

is also characteristic of the writings of Mr. Ingersoll,

wffio, though he is considered a champion of agnosticism,

does not hesitate to pronounce judgment off hand in

matters on which the greatest minds after a life-time

of patient meditation, speak dispassionately7 at least

and with hesitation. The confident assurance of an

amateur ‘is always suspicious; and to have lived with

deep and serious minds is to turn instinctively from

declaimers.

They who impugn the validity of every process and

operation of the intellect cannot be refuted by rational

arguments, because the faculties which alone make ref-

utation possible, are themselves called in question.

Such scepticism however is meaningless and is thrust

aside by reason’s indestructible trust in itself. The

doubt of the agnostic is less radical. He believes that

we can know the phenomenal, and the phenomenal

alone; that the ultimate origin of all things, if there

be an ultimate origin, is unknown and unknowable

;

that God and the soul, if they exist, belong to realms

where affirmation and denial are meaningless. This is

but a form of Kant’s doctrine that the pure reason can-

not know the real, the thing-in-itself
;

it is but a new



17

application of the theory of the relativity of knowledge,

as explained in the writings of Hamilton and Mansel.

To think, they say, is to define, to limit, to place condi-

tions; and therefore the ‘unconditioned,’ the infinite

and absolute, is unthinkable and unknowable. The

very terms, infinite and absolute, are a negation of the

conditions which make thought possible. This is ag-

nosticism in its essence. It is a metaphysical creed,

and yet those who accept it have as a rule no faith in

metaphysics. It is not surprising however that it

should spread in an age like this in which problems

take the place of principles, in which increasing knowl-

edge brings us into ever-widening contact with infinite

worlds of nescience. In the light of advancing science,

as in that of faith, we feel that though we may not say

we know nothing, it is safe to affirm that we know and

can know but little. There seems to be a kind of re-

ligion in professing our inability to know the highest

truth. The avowed aim of Hamilton and Mansel, was

to give new force to the demonstration of the need of

faith and of a supernatural revelation, by showing the

impotence of reason as the organ of religious knowl-

edge, and Mr. Spencer writes with unwonted fervor in

defense of his theory of the unknowable, in which

alone he finds the possibility of reconciling religion

with science. His view of the ultimate cause of all

things is, in his own opinion, the only religious view.

It contains, he says, more of true religion than all the

dogmatic theology ever written. His book on Ecclesi-

astical Institutions, closes with the following words:

“Amid the mysteries wThich become the more myster-

ious the more they are thought about, there will re-

main the one absolute certainty, that he (the most

powerful and most instructed mind) is ever in presence

of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all

things proceed.”

It is this Infinite and Eternal Energy, which he

calls the unknowable, and yet he affirms that he is ab-

solutely certain that he is ever in its presence, and that

he knows that it is energy, infinite and eternal, and that

from it all things proceed. That of which so much is



18

known cannot be called unknowable. Mr. Spencer

himself perceives this. “Reality, he says, though not

capable of being made a thought, properly so called,

because not capable of being brought within limits,

nevertheless remains as a consciousness that is posi-

tive, is not rendered negative by the negation of limits.”

It is plain, in fact, that we may not hold that human

intelligence is limited to the finite, and that it is also

conscious of an existence beyond the finite. To say

that our knowledge is relative is to imply that we know

there is an absolute. To affirm that we know only the

phenomenal, necessarily involves the assumption that

we know there is something which is not mere appear-

ance, but is real. As subject implies an object, so the

relative implies the absolute, the finite, the infinite, the

apparent, the real. When Mr. Spencer maintains that

the Infinite Reality is unknowable, his words seem to

be meaningless. The unknowable is the non-existent,

since intelligibility is co-extensive with being. His

theory rests upon a false abstraction. It is an attempt

to conceive of absolute being, as existing independently

of any mind by which it is known to be absolute being.

He first declares this object, to be outside of thought,

and then proceeds to point outdhe impressions or ideas

which it produces in the mind. The relation of thought

to reality, of subject to object, of knowing to being is

essential; the bond which unites them is indissoluble;

we may distinguish between them, but we cannot think

of one without implying at least the existence of the

other. The only reality of which we can have any

conception is thinkable reality, and it is precisely this

which makes it impossible to conceive of the universe

as proceeding from an irrational cause. We do not
put thought in things, but find it there, and hence we

are driven to recognize thought also in the Infinite Being,

of which the sensible world is a manifestation. The

history of progress is the history of mind seeking and

realizing itself in its object.

The theory which maintains that the absolute has no

relation to thought, and that it is nevertheless a neces^

sary and ever-present condition of thought, is mani-



19

festly untenable. It cannot be said even that we have

a more vivid and positive consciousness of the finite

than of the infinite, of the relative than of the absolute,

of the phenomenal than of the real. Our conscious-

ness of both is a consciousness relative to thought and

involves the mystery which inheres in all knowledge.

Hence faith is the spontaneous act of the pure reason.

Inward inclination, more than rational grounds, com-

pels us to believe both in science and religion. The

evidence of the senses themselves is a kind of testi-

mony which requires the acceptance of faith. We
have certain primary beliefs which are at once irresist-

ible and inexplicable; certain underived ideas which

we must accept or see all our knowledge dissolve into

chaos. The self-evident cannot be proved, for all

proof depends ultimately on the self-evident. He who

doubts the testimony of the senses, cannot be persuaded

by words which reach him only through the senses.

To impeach the knowing faculties, because they involve

relations to what is not themselves, is to find fault

with the mind because it is not the object which it

apprehends. It is to seek not to know
,
but to be the

things we know. Once we recognize that this attempt

is vain, agnosticism ceases to have any reason for ex-

isting. Knowledge is not and cannot be the thing

itself. Because our ideas are not the things them-

selves, it does not follow that they are powerless to

give us a knowledge of things. Things cannot be

other than the laws of thought make them, and hence

we may know them as they are. The life of sensation

and the life of reason both lead us to a world which is

beyond the senses, and which for the intellect is full

of mystery. We do not know the whole of anything.
It does not, however, follow that we know nothing,

but it does follow that in all our knowledge there

is an element of faith which goes beyond the con-

clusions of the intellect, and which is faith precisely

because it is not clear knowledge. In perceiving the

limit of thought, we transcend that limit and find our-

selves in a higher and more real world. All true

knowledge contains an infinite element, which we can-



20

not perfectly grasp, but apart from which the whole

system of knowledge breaks into fragments. The

thought which is in mind and the intelligibility wdiich

is in nature are bound into organic harmony by the

infinite who is the unity of thought and being
;
and the

universal process which evolves the higher from the

lower is comprehensible only when we conceive the

highest energizing within the whole.

Self-consciousness, if we rightly analyze it, involves

the existence of a being, who embraces within his own

unity all thought and existence. This is the implicit

knowledge of God which makes belief in Him as nat-
ural as belief in the reality of nature. To think is to

share in the universal life of reason, a life whose very

nature it is to be infinite and eternal; and to be an

atheist is as irrational as to be an absolute sceptic.

Hence religion springs spontaneously in the human

heart and may be found, like faith, hope, and love, in

the minds of the ignorant, who are unable to give a

reason for their belief: and since its principle is not

exclusively or predominately intellectual, its power is

felt and seen in the affections and deeds rather than

in the thoughts which it inspires. Its essence is found

in complete self-surrender; in the union of the soul

with God, which love alone can effect. Hence when we

are devout we are not critical, and when we are critical

we are not devout. Hence too, arguments, such as this

in which I am now engaged, though they may be ser-

viceable to the cause of religion, have little power to

make men religious. It is a vulgar error, however, to

imagine that the ultimate problems of knowing and be-

ing, can be discussed even superficially without the aid

of metaphysical conceptions. To understand that phy-

sical science itself rests upon a metaphysical basis, it is

sufficient to reflect that such terms as matter, force, and

law, are metaphysical. The impulse of thought fatally

carries us beyond sense-experience and the attempt to

confine knowledge to the domain of the apparent is

vain. Thought, though distinguishable, is inseparable

from its object, and hence we necessarily find a meta-

physical element in the material world. The finite



21

mind, nature and God, are ideas which belong to one

system of knowledge. The universe of thought is a

harmony, not a discord. Nature and mind do not exist

as independent realities. Each is related to the other;

they cohere in one system; they form an organic

unity, whose ‘bond and life-principle is the Infinite

Being. Mind finds its laws in nature and nature apart

from mind would be mere chaos. We can know and
love ourselves only in what is not ourselves; and the

merging of our particular self into a larger, is the law

of progress, making for that perfect union with the

Best and the Highest, which is the end of life. When

we surrender to the authority of truth or to the com-

mand of conscience, we give up the less for the

greater; the false for the real; and in doing so we are

conscious that we obey a law which bids us aspire to

the possession of absolute truth and goodness.

Thus the religious impulse is founded in the very

nature of man as a rational being. In all conscious-

ness there is an implicit knowledge of God, and were

this not so, thought would become chaotic. All

truth, indeed, is truth relative to thought, and this re-

lativity is found in the highest as in the lowest truth.

This does not however, as Mr. Spencer has clearly

shown, prevent our having at least a dim knowledge of

the Absolute and Infinite. Whoever thinks, finds that

he is in the grasp of something which is not himself,

and which is stronger than he is and abides while he

passes; and this he will worship whether he call it na-

ture or God. The difference lies here—he feels that
nature-, though stronger, is lower than himself, but that

God is both stronger and higher. Mr. Spencer be-

lieves that the alternative is not between a God who

thinks and loves and something lower, but rather be-

tween such a God and something higher. “Is it not

just possible, he asks, that here is a mode of being as

much transcending Intelligence and Will, as these

transcend mechanical motion?” To be higher than

Intelligence and Will, the Ultimate Cause must involve

intelligence and will. The higher subsumes the lower.

When we say the Eternal is One who knows and loves,



22

we utter the highest truth which human knowledge

permits us to affirm
;
and we at the same time gladly

confess that knowledge and love, when affirmed of the

Infinite are but shadows of a perfection which words

are powerless to speak. If our knowledge of God

were adequate, faith would not be a primary virtue of

religion. The objection that such a conception of the

Divinity is anthropomorphic, is meaningless. If we

think at all we must think like men, and our idea of

nature is as anthropomorphic as our idea of God.

Certainly Mr. Spencer has not sought to make God

greater than Christians believe Him to be. His Un-

knowable is, as we have seen, an unreality, a figment

of the brain, a shadowy back ground which gives form

and definiteness to phenomena. To seek to put this

phantom in the place of the highest reality, and to

make it an object of faith and veneration, is an at-

tempt to violate the laws which make rational and re-

ligious life possible.

Better “be suckled in a creed out-worn” than as-

sume an air of seeming devoutness in the presence of

a mock reality
;
better far find God in trees and stones,

than seek for him in the thinnest of logical abstrac-

tions. To worship the Unknowable is as impossible

as to worship the ideal of humanity, and agnosti-

cism, like positivism, logically leads to atheism.

If all reality were unknowable, Fitchte’s nihilism

would be the only sensible creed. We can understand
the man who looks upon himself, just as he looks on

any other fact; who has no theory as to the ultimate

cause of nature, no belief in God. He may strive to

make the most
v
of life, feeling that at the best it is

worthless; he may seek for knowledge, because knowl-

edge gives him pleasure; he may work because he

hopes thereby to save hirnse^ from ennui
;
he may

obey the laws of his country, because a criminal is

ridiculous
;
he may be kind and considerate in his inter-

course with his fellowmen, because gentle words and

polite behavior cost little, and promise much; he may

be sober, because a drunkard is a fool. He may take

delight in beauty, may have relish in the play of forces



23

which are brought into action by the rivalry of human

passions. But what he may not do is to pretend to

feel a thrill of awe in the presence of a phantom world.

Arguments from the consequences of his belief the

agnostic may refuse to consider. Truth should be

sought for itself, and we should bear witness to it,

though our confession should involve the destruction

of the world. If a doctrine of despair is the only

rational faith, it would be some satisfaction at least to

know that such is the nature of things. If it can be

proven that the individual lives a moment and then

wholly dies (and in the presence of illimitable time

and space, the life of the race is hardly longer or more

important than that of the individual), it were mere

weakness to refuse to look truth in the face, because

its aspect saddens and disheartens. If duty has no

meaning, if freedom is but a name, morality a preju-

dice; if love and aspiration are but shadows of the

mind’s throwing; humanity but a bubble and all nature

an illusive spectacle; if, in a word, all is a lie, what

gain is there in seeking to delude ourselves with other

lies? I find fault with agnostics rather because they

refuse to draw the conclusions which their assumptions

involve. Mr. Spencer’s talk of a religious emotion

with which a consciousness of the Unknowable fills the

mind, is .worse than cant. What stands out of relation

to thought, stands out of relation to conscious life in

all its phases. The Unknowable is the Incredible.

We can neither love it nor fear it, nor believe in it.
The agnostic’s God is a mere phantom, which as Jean

Paul says of the atheist, leaves him alone in the world,

“with a heart empty and made desolate by the loss of

his creator and father. He mourns bv the side of the
•j

huge corpse of nature which no spirit animates, as it

lingers in the tomb; and his sorrow shall continue to

the moment when dissolution severs him from this

corpse of which he is but an atom. The world poses

before him like an Egyptian sphinx, half buried in

sand; and the universe is but a mask, the iron mask of

a vague eternity.”

The fountainhead of the speculative errors of the



24

modern age is an imperfect or a wrong view of the data

of consciousness. If, with Descartes and the whole

school of idealists, we make mere self-certainty the be-

ginning and basis of all knowledge, we shall never get

beyond a purely subjective world; for if consciousness is

confined to impressions and ideas, for the philosopher

no object can exist. But self-consciousness is a con-

sciousness of the not-self, also; to know ourselves as

subject, is to know what is not ourselves, as object. To

know ourselves as finite and contingent is to have passed

beyond the realm of the finite and contingent. Our

knowledge is thus a participation in the divine self-

knowing, it is a knowing with God which is the meaning

of consciousness and conscience. The primary intui-

tion is not of forms and ideas, but of being. With the

dawn of consciousness we recognize that we are and

that we are in a real, and not a merely apparent, world.

Our ultimate idea of both spirit and matter is that of

energy, and this idea, originating in our consciousness

of will-power, impels us to conceive of nature as a

manifestation of absolute will. A thing is energy mani-
festing itself in definite ways : God is infinite energy,

pure act manifesting itself in man and in nature. Our

knowledge of both is a knowledge of their relation to

us, which is simply to say that subject is not object.

To know the thing-in-itself is to know its relation to us;

since whatever is, exists necessarily in relation to

thought. We know God then not as He is apart from
consciousness, but as He is related to us, and we cannot

imagine even that any other kind of knowledge of Him
is possible. We cannot, in a word, know anything as
though it were not known. We are conscious of the
reality of the objective world, but only as it is related

to a thinking subject. To know it in any other way

would be not to know it. We cannot affirm that any-
thing is apparent merely, except by contrasting it

with what is real, and this holds good also of finite and

infinite, particular and universal, effect and cause. We
see from the start that both our inner and our outer

world is real, not illusory: and reflection is powerless

to destroy our underived faith in the truth of this prim-



25

ary intuition. There is, however, even in the clearest

knowledge an element of mystery, and consequently

there is a universal need of faith.

The real object of our knowledge is not a world of

things-in-theinselves; but the system of things as it

exists for a perfect intelligence. Individual experiences

are judged by their coherence with experience in gen-

eral: and experience, as a whole, is an ultimate principle,

not to be judged by reference to anything else. So in

the sphere of conduct, the love of life is not a blind

impulse which seeks to realize itself in definite objects,

but it is a yearning to bring one’s self into harmony with

the intellectual, moral and esthetic order of the universe,

and finally with the Divine Nature of which the visible

world is a symbol. Knowledge, like love, is not a con-

scious external standing in the presence of some incon-

ceivable thing-in-itself, but it is a living union and

communion with things in their organic relationship

with the thinking mind.

The proofs of God’s existence are but an analysis of

the data of conciousness, a statement of the transcend-

ence of thought, of the inability of the thinker to rest

in the finite and the contingent; and when we look

upon them in this light, the objections, so frequently

urged against their conclusiveness, lose their force.

When we affirm the contingency of the world, as a fact

of immediate experience, we, by implication, affirm the

existence of absolute Being. Its transitoriness implies

a permanent, its phenomenal character, an absolute

substance. It can be seen to be an effect only in the

light of the idea of cause, and the analysis of the idea

of causality leads us finally to a First Cause. The

evanescence and insufficiency of the finite, which is

the starting point of religion, would make no impres-

sion on us, if we had not at least a latent consciousness

of tile Infinite. That there is no good more solid than

the gilded clouds, more lasting than the vernal flowers,

is a plaint, which, rising in the heart of man and re-

sounding through all literature, as the note of its most in-

spired and pathetic utterances were meaningless were not

human life enrooted in the Eternal. The feeling of the

illusiveness of the world comes from the presence in the



mind of the idea of God. He is thu^made known to
us as the real, the permanent, the eternal, who, while

the many pass, abides. If we were wholly finite, we

conld not be conscious of th& fact, and if there were not

in us a god-dike principle, the vanity of all things would

be hidden from us. However difficult it may be to

give to thoughts like these a satisfactory syllogistic

form, they remain forever as a determining cause of

our belief, and he who fully understands their force

and meaning, must perceive that religion is as inde-

structible as human nature.

Again, we know, as a fact of immediate experience,

the intelligibility of the world. We find that thoughts
and things are co-ordinate. Ideas have their counter-

parts in facts. Everywhere there is law and order.

In the vegetable and animal organism we discover a

power at work which builds its own habitation and builds

it in definite ways, a something which, though uncon-

scious, does its work with cunning and forethought.

In the minute cell there is the potency which creates

the most perfect form. And, if it could be proven that

the infinite variety of nature is but the result of the

manifold evolution of a single elementary substance,

we should still inevitably see the work of reason in it

all. Hence when we know the world as an effect we

necessarily think of its Cause, as having knowledge

and wisdom
;
though the knowledge and wisdom of the

Infinite are doubtless something inconceivably higher

than what these terms can mean for us. And we can

therefore readily believe that the antinomies of reason

and the dark mysteries of moral life find their solution

in that Highest Self-Consciousness, in which thought

and being are one. As the laws of the mind are the

expression of the Divine Intelligence, the laws of the

conscience are the expression of the Divine Will: for

though a syllogism to prove God’s existence, with the

fact of conscience, as its major, may be found to halt, yet

a true analysis of the meaning of conscience shows that

it involves the recognition of a Supreme Living Power,

toward whom man stands in the relation of a free and

responsible agent. It is to the testimony of conscience,



27

to the Categorical Imperative, founded on the judgment

of the practical reason, that Kant trusted to deliver us

from the illusions and contradictions of the Speculative

Reason, and though his criticism of the pure reason, if

applied rigidly to the practical reason, might have cut

the ground from under his feet, he nevertheless, held

fast to belief in God, in moral freedom and immortal-

ity, as principles of the spiritual life and deep-laid reali-

ties beyond the challenge of the critical intellect.

The inference from the idea to the reality, involves a

paralogism, and if the ontological argument of St. An-

selm and Descartes, is to be taken in this sense, it is

certainly inconclusive. But if we examine our con-

sciousness of the infinite and eternal, we find that it

is more than a bare idea. The individual is not con-

scious of himself, merely as an individual, but he knows

himself as belonging to a world which is related to

thought. He thinks as a participator in the Universal

Reason, in the light of which all things are seen to

be bound together in intellectual harmony. He per-

ceives the workings of a thought higher than his own,

and since thought implies a thinker, he necessarily in-

fers the existence of a supreme mind. In other words,

individual self-consciousness involves a universal self-

consciousness, an Absolute Mind, who reveals Himself

in the conscious life of finite minds. In the light of

Absolute Spirit we perceive that the world and man

have a being of their own, for they are the reality

whereby God manifests Himself: and we also under-

stand that they do not limit his infinity, because to re-

veal Him is their very essence.
The objection of Mr. Spencer, Matthew Arnold and

other agnostics, that personality is limitation, and con-

sequently that it is a delusion to suppose that “God is

a person who thinks and loves,” and that the most we

can say is that He is “the Unknowable Power behind

phenomena,” or “the Stream of Tendency by which

all things fulfill the law of their being,” or “the eternal

not-ourselves which makes for righteousness,” seems

indeed to be formidable. We have, as we have already
seen, no adequate conception of anything, for the



28

merest atom adheres in a universal system, and can be

understood only as an effect of an infinite and therefore

imperfectly known cau^e. Since our knowledge is a

knowledge of things iri their relations to a thinking

subject, it can never be absolute, and hence whatever

we predicate of the Supreme Being, is predicated ana-

logically. He is more than we can know; more, there-
fore than we can express. To say, as Mr. Spencer

says, that the Absolute is a power, that he acts, is to

impose limits upon the infinite; and when we affirm

, that he thinks and loves we merely affirm that he acts

in the highest way conceivable by us. The ideas of

“stream” and “tendency” manifestly involve limita-

tion, while they seem to be a negation of thought and

will. When some philosopher shall discover for us a
mode of existence higher than that of thinking and lov-

ing, we shall listen with profound interest to what he

may have to say; but, in the meanwhile when we teach
that “God is a person who thinks and loves,” the in-
finite, in whom thought and love and being are one, we
utter the highest and the divinest truth known to man.

This was the faith of the greatest and most enlightened

minds of the ancient world, and this is the faith that lies

at the root of modern life and civilization. It is hope
_ -JL.

and joy and strength and light. It sheds gladness

through the earth. It is the wisdom of the unlearned,

the courage of the timid, the breath of life of those who

die. It is the keen mountain air of those who love lib-

erty and truth; it is the compass of the soul; it is an echo

of a voice from unseen worlds, filling us with a di-

vine discontent until we reach the Eternal, with whom
is repose and peace.

•

“ Here then we rest, not fearing for our creed
The worst that human reasoning can achieve
To unsettle or perplex it; yet with pain

Acknowledging and grievous self-reproach

That though immovably convinced, we want
Zeal, and the virtue to exist b}r faith

As soldiers live by courage
;
as by strength

Of heart, the sailor fights with roaring seas.

Alas ! the endowment of immortal power

Is matched tmequally with custom, time,

And domineering faculties of sense,

In all; in most with superadded foes,

Idle temptations; open vanities,

Ephemeral offspring of the unblushing world.’

’











of AMERie^

LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
PAMPHLETS AT NOMINAL COST.

POSTPAID.

No.l.—Refutation of Some Calumnies—Rev. J. C. Byrne, per..100. ..$1.00

2.

—Vail-Burgess Debate—Roger Vail—O. F. Burgess, per.. 20... 1.00

3.

—How Catholics come to be Misunderstood—Rev. Thos.
O’Gorman, D.D., per 100... 2.00

4.

—Who can Forgive Sins?—Rev. Patrick Danehy, per 100... 2.00

5.

—Church or Bible—Rev. Arnold Damen, S. J., per 100... 2.00

6.

—The Catholic Church and the American Republic

—

Wm. F. Markoe, per 100... 1.50

7.

—Sacrificial Worship Essential to Religion—Rev. P. R.
Ileffron, D.D., per 100... 1.50

8.

—The Catholic Pages of American History

—

J. L. Macdonald, per 100... 2.50

9.

—Our Rights and Duties as Catholics and as Citizens

—

Wm. J. Onahan, per 100... 2.00
10.—Agnosticism—Rt.Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D., Bishop of

Peoria, per 100... 2.00

Assorted Dots of 100, same ratio.

Leaflet.—Things Catholics do not Believe, per 1000. ..$2.00
Leaflet.—Things Catholics do not Believe, per 500... 1.00

If larger quantities of the Pamphlets are desired, the same should
be sent by express, up to 600 copies; more than 600, to distant points,
should go by freight.

Please send funds with orders for postpaid quantities.

F. O. B. quantities, to be sent by express or freight, range from 20c.
to 50c. per 100 under postpaid rates (No. 2 excepted, being $3.50 per
100 ).

Single copies by mail 5c.; any seven, at any time, by mail 25c.

Sample copies mailed free, to the Rev. clergy, upon application.

Address,

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY,

218 East Third Street, St. Paul, Minn.

N.B •—Rational Religion, by Rev. John Conway,—paper, 1 75 pages,
special C. T. S. edition, postpaid 30c; quantities of 10 or more, express

charges to be paid by buyer, 25c.
'

PAMPHLETS PREPARING.

Infallibility by Archbishop Ireland
The Priesthood by Bishop Keane
Purgatory by Rev. H. A. Brann, D. D.
The Conservative Power of Catholicity by Condb B. Pallen



%