NEW YORK UNIVERSITY THE IDEA OF GOD AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE PRACTICAL CONTENT OF THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE RELATION OF THE IDEA OF THE OBJECT OF RELIGION TO CONSCIOUS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DOCTORATE IN PHILOSOPHY BY JAMES PALMER. NEW YORK 1904 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY THE IDEA OF GOD AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE PRACTICAL CONTENT OF THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE RELATION OF THE IDEA OF THE OBJECT OF RELIGION jTO CONSCIOUS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DOCTORATE IN PHILOSOPHY JAMES PALMER. \ i NEW YORK 1904 p TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. THE PROBLEM AND ITS RELATIONS : Religion Differentiated from Speculative Thought. Speculative Perversion of the Onto- logical Proof. Related to Religious Experience. Anselm's Identification of the Idea of a most Perfect Being with the God of Religion. Analysis of Consciousness. Internal Fac- tors. The Expression of the Religious Emotions. The Emotions and their Roots. The Work of Consciousness. The Idea. Its Purpose. The three Factors of Consciousness. The Historic Development of Religions. The Construction of Proofs. Outline of Discussion.... . 1-9 PAET I. THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF AND EPISTEMOLOGY. CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SURVEY : Augustine on Truth. An- selm's Discovery. Emotions Described. Key to the Argu- ment. Descartes' Appeal to Causality. Leibnitz, the Prin- ciple of Non-contradiction. Attitude of Different Schools of Philosophy. Kant's Criticism 10-14 CHAPTER II. CONCEPT AND BEING: Anselm's Apparent per Sal- turn. Royce's Analysis of the Concepts of Being. Realism, Mysticism, Critical Rationalism and Idealism Defined. Real- ism, Monistic and Pluralistic, Spinoza. Locke and Hume. Mysticism. Critical Rationalism, Kant, Transcendental Ideal- ism Combined with Empirical Realism. Isolating Single Fac- ulties. Phenomena and Things-in -themselves. The Concept of Validity. Kant's Criticism of the a priori Proof. Value of Kant's Work. Idealism. The Analysis of Consciousness. Relation of Idea and Object. Purpose of the Idea a Quest for its Other. Idealism and the Ontological Proof. 14-23 iii 286271 IV TABLE OF CONTENTS. PART II. THE ONTOLOGICAL PKOOF AND PSYCHOLOGY OF KELIGION. CHAPTER I. THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO PSYCHOLOGY : The Spheres of Religion and Psychology. Religion has a Psy- chology. Description of Experience. An Ulterior Value of the Ontological Proof. Descartes' Discovery. Psychology Separated from Religion. Efforts to Function Religion 24-28 CHAPTER II. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: Kant's Criticism. An- selm and Augustine. The God-idea and Religious Emotion. The Ontological Proof Directs to Introspection. Descartes. Religious Emotions Facts. Finiteness and Limitation. Rational and Material Self Distinguished in Consciousness. Religion Involves all Faculties. A Primary Religious Emo- tion. Development of this Emotion. Relation of Ontolog- ical Idea to. The Infinite, Max Miiller. Shamanism 'and Divination. Relation of Animism. Its Support to our Theory. Material and Mental Fields for Theogonic Material. De- velopment of Pantheism. It is a Philosophy. Illustration from Religion of Romans. Higher Forms of Religious Experience. Metanoia. The Testimony of Psychology. Worship. Development of Saintliness. Corrective Influence of Psy- chology. Religious Experience a Part of the Totality of Experience 28-48 CHAPTER III. EXPERIENCE AS KNOWLEDGE : Credo ut Intel- legam. A Corrective to Mysticism. Historic Revelation. Enthusiasm. Methods of Dreams, Intoxications, Trance. Psychology's Treatment. The Subconscious. Tests of Enthusiasm, Truth and Value. The Founder of Christianity. Mysticism. Buddhism. Social Self Consciousness. The Unfolding of the God-idea 43-52 PART III. THE ONTOLOGICAL PEOOF AND ETHICS. CHAPTER I. ETHICAL PRINCIPLES : Conflict of Theories. Ethics Related to Religion. Problem of Ethics. Purpose in Act and Idea. Meaning of Purpose and Idea. Science of Ethics. Light from Anthropology. Development of Ethics along TABLE OF CONTENTS. V with Religion. Limit to Ethical Force of Nature Religion, Fatalism. The Fields of Religion and Ethics. Light from Psychology. Hume. Functioning of Ethics. Psycho- logical Analysis of Conduct. Failure of Hedonism. Of Institutionalism. The Norms of Ethics, that Discovered by Religion 53-63 CHAPTER II. THE ONTOLOGICAL METHOD OF ETHICS : Our Atti- tude toward Metaphysics. The Reality of Things, Ideas and Events. Kant's Ethical Theory. The Good Will, the Moral Law, Conception of Duty. Origin of Moral Conceptions, Autonomy and Heteronomy. The Radical Evil, Restoration. Relation of our Theory to Kant's. Criticism of Kant. Autonomy in Saint Paul's Conception of His Relation to God. "Is the Good Good because God Wills it? " Calvinistic De- terminism. Our Agreement with Kant Concerning Autonomy and Heteronomy. Service of the Ontological Proof. 63-69 CONCLUSION : The Ontological Proof a Guiding Principle. Re- ligion the Tangible Proof. 69-70 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Anselmi Opera. Minge's Collection. Vol. 155. Bibliotheca Sacra. 1851 Translation of the Proslogion. Maginnis. Augustine. Schaff's Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Vols. 1-8. Buffalo. Shedd, W. G. T. History of Christian Doctrine. 2 vols. Scribners. Flint, Robert. Theism and Agnosticism. 2 vols. Scribners. Windelband. A History of Philosophy. Trans, by Tufts. Mac- mil Ian. Spinoza's Works. Bonn's Philosophical Library. 2 vols. Trans, by Elwes. Descartes. Discourse on Method, Meditations. Trans, by John Veitch. Blackwood. Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans, by Max Miiller. Macmillan. Locke. On the Human Understanding. Ward, Lock & Co. Leibnitz. New Essays on the Understanding. Trans, by Langley. Hume. Treatise of Human Nature. Selby-Bigge. Ed. Oxford. Hume. Essays, Greene and Grose. Longmans. Royce, Josiah. The World and the Individual. 2 vols. Macmillan. Pfleiderer. Religions-philosophic auf geschichtlicher Grundlage. Ver- lag von G. Reimer. Berlin. Religionsphilosophie. Von H. Hoffding. Ubersetzt von F. Bendixen. Leipzig. Ausgewahlte Werke. Edward von Hartmann. Das religiose Be- wusstsein. Philosophic des Umbewussten. Herman Haacke. Leipzig. Schleiermacher, F. On Religion. Speeches to its Cultured Despisers Trans, by J. Oman. Keagan Paul. Tiele, C. P. Outlines of the History of Religion to the Spread of Uni- versal Religions. Trans, by J. E. Carpenter. Keagan Paul. Lotze, Hermann. The Philosophy of Religion. Trans, by Conybeare. Macmillan. vii Vlll BIBLIOGRAPHY. Max Miiller, F. The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion. 4 vols* Longmans. James, William. The Varieties of Eeligious Experience. Longmans. Myers, F. W. H. Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. Longmans. Spencer, Herbert. Synthetic Philosophy. Principles of Sociology. 3 vols. Appleton. Wallace, W. Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics. Oxford. Martineau, James. Study of Religion. Macmillan. Rhys-Davids. Buddhism. Putnams. Aristotle. The Nicomachian Ethics. Trans, by Williams. Longmans. Martineau, James. Types of Ethical Theory. Macmillan. Kant. Theory of Ethics including the Critique of the Practical Reason. Trans, by T. K. Abbott. Longmans. Sidgwick, Henry. The Method of Ethics. Macmillan. Taylor, A. E. The Problem of Conduct. Macmillan. Seth, James. Ethical Principles. Scribners. Ellinwood, F. F. Notes on Comparative Religion. Edwards, Jonathan. Works in 8 vols., by Isaac Thomas, Jr. Paulsen, F. Immanuel Kant, His Life and Doctrine. Trans, by Creigh- ton and Lefevre. Scribners. INTRODUCTION. THE PROBLEM AND ITS RELATIONS. Religion. The differentiation of Religion from speculative thought took place in a process of historical development. To Schleiermacher belongs the distinction of being the first to point out that Religion has a sphere peculiarly its own. Speculative religious thought may take the form of Animism, Pantheism, Deism or Theism ; it may be dogmatical, skeptical or even atheistic, but in these ranges it diverges from Religion and is metaphysical rather than practical. It was to guard against the waste of energy in such dialectical performances that Kant thought out and gave to the world his Critique of Pure Reason. The "police duty," however, which he thought this work would serve, has not been and never can be successful. If life had no personal concern in the Object of pure reason's research, the human mind could well abandon its quest, settle down quietly to the humdrum of a routine life and content itself with empirical verities. This however is not the case. Religion is a vitally personal topic ; and, as an ever present experience, it keeps reason in touch with the Object of speculative inquiry on the practical side. Kant himself was aware of this fact and sought to develop it in the Critique of the Practi- cal Reason but the relation is too manifold to be summed up in a Categorical Imperative. Speculative Eeligion. It is the intention of this thesis to direct attention to the relation of the a priori proof of the existence of God, as it was formulated by Anselm, to Religion, as opposed to or different from, speculative religious thought. The Ontological Proof as a proof has been abundantly treated. It would take the space usually allotted to a monograph to sufficiently catalogue the discussion it has occasioned. But in all of this treatment by lead- 1 2*' THE IDEA OF GOD. ers of thought and men of less ability the argument has been given a speculative turn and the practical content, which is a matter of permanent value, has been overlooked. One needs only to turn to some books on Theism or treatises on Dogmatic Theology to verify the truth of this statement. It will be discovered there, that the discussion turns on necessary existence, perfection of being, exist- ence as a part of the concept of a perfect being, causality, etc. Descartes was the first thus to use and abuse Anselm's discovery. By so doing he rescued this form of proof from its obscurity but at the same time diverted it from Religion to Philosophy. Leib- nitz, Spinoza and Herbert of Cherbury agreed in following Des- cartes in this perversion. It thus entered into Theism, Deism, and Pantheism. And it was against these speculative forms of the argument that Kant hurled his powerful criticism. The position here taken in the face of this speculative use of the Proof is that Anselm discovered the argument in devout meditation, that it is inseparably linked, even in its speculative .parts, with religious experience, and, that it has a perennial force as an expression of the religious consciousness of mankind. And, while it may be true that only a few gifted minds grasp the signifi- cance of the words in which Anselm repeatedly expressed him- self, nevertheless, the Ontological Idea has ever been a constitu- tive principle in the development of historic religions. Since the days of Amselm many new fields of knowledge have been ex- plored, titanic efforts have been made to formulate a satisfactory theory of knowledge, the science of psychology has rendered definite service to the examination of all experimental phenomena, and anthropology has introduced new facts for the science of religion. The fruits of the labor in all these fields will be found to be of distinct service in our examination of the subject before us. With these preliminary remarks we will now enter upon the task of stating the Problem and its Relations. Consciousness is the inner mystery of experience. The thought world stands on one side and the world of things stands over against it. Consciousness, in between, is the transformation point. When Religion turns to consciousness for a verification INTRODUCTION. 3 of its facts, it has made its appeal to the highest court of human decisions. In its inception, preservation and continuation Reli- gion is always related to conscious experience. The problem arises when religious experience relates itself to an Object. This is not remarkable since a problem always arises when reason attempts to show the relation of any idea to its object. There is a heterogeneousness of object and idea which consciousness alone serves to link together. It was this apparent chasm between the idea and its object which Anselm overleaped when he said : " Sic ergo vere est aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest, et nee cogitari possit non esse : et hoc es Tu, Domine Deus noster." l The transition from the " aliquid quo majus cogitari non potest " to the " hoc es Tu " constitutes the great problem of epistemology, and the reasoning by which this apparent per saltum was removed formed the Ontological argument in its most complete statement. It runs as follows : " Et certe id, quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest esse in intellectu solo. Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re, quod majus est. . . . Existet ergo procul dubio aliquid, quo majus cogitari non valet, et intellectu et in re." 2 The argument itself is not what chiefly concerns us. From our point of view we are most interested to observe the conscious effort which the argument expresses to pass from what is " in solo intellectu " to an " esse in intellectu et in re " or the " Hoc es Tu " of experience. We perceive in this effort an expression of the fact that consciousness in religious experience as in other expe- rience recognizes internal facts with both internal and external meanings. So long as attention is restricted to the internal facts, Religion is a psychic state in which feeling and need, fear and hope, enthusiasm and submission play a great part. 3 Nevertheless these experiences are not without ideas which constitute a relation between the conscious self and all that is beyond. For this reason while all consciousness is unquestionably internal, a purely inter- 1 Anselm, "Proslogion 2." 2 Anselm, " Proslogium II Opera," Minge ed. 3 H6ffding, " Religions-philosophic," I. 4 THE IDEA OF GOD. nal Religion is excluded from the realm of possibility. Again these psychic states are composed of emotions which tend to express themselves either physically or intellectually. This brings Religion to the surface of life if it does not extend it further. It is the expression of the religious emotions rather than the emotions themselves and their roots which occupy a large part of the atten- tion of students who devote themselves to the study of Religion. The books on Religion and the customs of Religion are full of them. The attitudes, forms and symbols of worship are either external representations of internal states or the imitation of per- sons in whom such states are a reality. The same emotions under differing conditions may find expression in music, in poetry, in artistic symbolism or in a creed, each of which represents life's reaction upon its own conscious experiences. And last of all and best of all the most perfect expression of the religious emotions is to be seen in a life, so ordered, that the inner experiences are brought into harmony with the Universal Will. This I would call the ethical expression of the religious emotions. The fact is to be noted, in this connection, that it is the nature of the religious emotions to express themselves and that it is within the sphere of consciousness, when attention is directed thereto, not only to be aware of the outward facts of experience, but also, to know the emotions themselves from which these facts arise. It is also to be observed that the same emotions such as fear, faith and love which compel certain physical attitudes will, under changed conditions, constrain to ethical conduct. In this truth the hope of culture is enshrined. The dynamic is given. It is simply a question of how a present energy is to be directed. The power lies back of the emotions. It is when we turn our attention to these emotions themselves and their roots that we meet with the Problem which the Onto- logical Proof thrusts upon us. Here is a force which is known in consciousness which produces something in a matter of fact world. How can we get at it ? First of all it is to be asserted that consciousness is that function of intelligence whereby facts and ideas are combined. There is no consciousness without both INTRODUCTION. 5 of these elements and, in the case in hand, emotions would be simple facts or events which consciousness could not grasp if they were not linked inseparably with their corresponding ideas. Fear, faith and love are nothing without an object, however ideal that object may be. And it is the idea of an object, linked with them which constitutes them conscious emotions. This idea which the understanding involves with these simple emotions is the object or Other of which they are correlates. We are, therefore, in experi- ence never conscious of a pure emotion alone, or of an object alone, but of an emotion combined with the idea of an object. Thus in the Ontological Argument the emotion expressed in the words " Hoc es Tu " is not pure ecstasy but ecstasy combined with the idea of an object whose best description is " id quo majus cogitari nequit." So much then for consciousness. It reveals in an experience, a fact, that is, in the present case, an emotion and also an idea which represents, in the case under consideration, an Other " than which a greater cannot be conceived." Our entire theory depends on these two factors of consciousness. Neither can be taken up or abandoned without the other. The reality of the emotions is part and parcel with the reality of self. The idea, on the other hand, without which the emotions amount to zero so far as consciousness is concerned is the counterpart of the Other of the universe to which the self is related in various ways. In fact the relationship is so manifold that an infinite variety of objects and events is involved in the development of Religion. But since the individual self, as known in consciousness, makes use of an understanding, subject to the forms of thought, its rela- tion to the Other must be an historical relation, in so much as the relation of every idea to its object is successive and therefore historical. Idea. The next step after observing this inseparable union of emotion and idea in a living consciousness is to make a further analysis of our concept of an idea. The division of ideas accord- ing to their simplicity or complexity must ever be a relative division since the simplest idea is both sensory and motor, cog- b THE IDEA OF GOD. nitive and conative. Neither does the Cartesian notion of vivid- ness nor the Spinozistic determination of adequacy help us. Hume was nearer to our point of view when he spoke of the force and liveliness of ideas. Professor Royce in his Gifford lectures on the World and the Individual says : f ' An idea is any state of mind that has a conscious meaning." In another place he says : " Your intelligent ideas of things never consist in mere images of those things, but always involve a purpose of how you intend to act toward the things of which you have ideas." This use of the term he abundantly defends and makes the basis of his theory of knowledge. An idea without a purpose, an intention, a meaning is as little an idea as the image in a mirror. Holding fast then to this definition of an idea and returning to what we have already observed in consciousness we are prepared to assert that a state of consciousness containing an emotion with its idea involves the three possible psychical factors feeling, knowing and willing. In other words the act of consciousness involves the entire personality. And the fact that a religious consciousness has for its content an emotion directed to or awak- ened by a Supernatural Being does not isolate it from these psychical conditions. Thus our analysis has supplied us with a guiding principal whose significance will appear as the discussion proceeds ; for we find that speculative religious thought is ever tending to connect itself with one or other mental faculty and thus present an abnormal development. Deism and theistic systems are predominantly intellectual. Schleiermacher and the mystics give too much prominence to the emotions or feelings. And Kant followed by Schopenhauer and von Hartmann has given undue prominence to the will. The only corrective for such one sided- ness is a return to the religious consciousness. And it is the Ontological proof alone, as an expression of the religious conscious- ness, which gives due emphasis to the internal and external mean- ings of the religious life. Public Religion. Thus far, we have not gone beyond, the per- sonal and private limits of religious experience. We have been concerned with it as a psychological and internal affair. It is clear, INTRODUCTION. 7 however, that the expression of the religious emotions must be ex- ternal, and, to a certain extent, public. It is also evident that the religious idea, in going beyond self to find its Other, must also dis- cover new relationships in a world or universe. The mind accepts what it finds and reacts upon it, but, in so doing, it gives up its private character and recognizes self as one of many. The world is discovered to be full of things and events which either help or hinder the religious life in its progress. Historical Development of Religions, If our account, up to this point is accepted as a true analysis of the content of a religious consciousness, we need have no difficulty in accounting for the his- toric development of religions. In a very general description these may be grouped under three heads, as follows : (1) Fetishism and Animism, (2) Polytheism and Pantheism, (3) Henotheism and Theism., These groups each combine practical and theoreti- cal elements. In each of them a religious emotion, combined with its idea, is found seeking its object or Other ; and the Keligion is named according to the object seized upon. Taking the first group first, one can easily understand, how the mind of the primi- tive nature worshiper, not satisfied with the limited nature of his fetish, would seek to satisfy his idea, by increasing the number of his fetishes and philosophizing concerning their occult powers. Thus animism, which spiritualizes the objects of worship, would form a kind of philosophy of fetishism. In fact, Tiele takes the position, that no Religion is to be found, in which this process has not taken place. From this position, the transition is not great, after the mind has discovered that single objects of worship whether small or great however multiplied and idealized are not sufficient to satisfy the purpose of its idea, the transition is not great, I say, from Polytheism to Pantheism. It is readily seen, if we follow this line of thought, that Monotheism is not possible for any other than a spiritual Religion. Any or all material ob- jects could not fulfill the Ontological Idea. The mind is con- stantly asserting its superiority to material things ; how then, could it indefinitely look to them as masters ? " By an instinct earlier than any history can trace man sets the power in and behind 8 THE IDEA OF GOD. phenomena on his side. " l This is reason's reaction upon experi- ence. We may expect, therefore, and the facts of anthropology do not disappoint our expectations, that we shall find in Eeligion certain internal emotions with their ideas and a constant effort on the part of the intellect to adjust the rest of experience to harmo- nize with these ideas. It is the effort to adjust the rest of experi- ence which gives rise to the theoretical elements of Religion and causes it to halt in halfway places. A Theodicy is needed at almost every turn of life. Construction of Proofs. The events which call for a Theodicy also point to Atheism as a possibility. This fact may have given an impulse to the construction of proofs, which does not begin until a late stage has been reached in the development of religious thought. The basis of the proofs is found, either, in the nature of the universe, yielding the Cosmological and Teleological arguments, the nature of the soul, giving the Psycho-physical proof, or the the nature of Being leading to the Ontological idea. Our interest in this latter form of proof arises, from its internal and immediate nature, and the fact that it directs attention inward, thus preparing the way for the discovery of consciousness with its contents. We also find that " it expresses that impulse which we experience toward the supersensuous, and that faith in its truth which is the starting point of all religion." 2 This impulse toward the super- sensuous is such a practical element of life that it puts the mind always on the alert to verify its experiences, and, whatever other things experience may discover in the world of facts, reason con- tinues its search for the Object of Religion. In the following chapters some attention will be paid to the Theories of Knowledge which recognize the chasm between thought and things ; and, it will also be necessary to inquire further con- cerning the nature of ideas and their relation to Reality. In this connection the speculative religious ideas which have grown up in connection with various concepts of being will serve as illustrations of our theme. In the second part the Psychology 1 Wallace, "Gifford Lectures," p. 193. 2 Lotze, " Outlines of a Philosophy of Keligion," p. 12. INTRODUCTION. . 9 of the Religious Emotions will be drawn upon to support that part of the proof which connects with experience. And a third part will indicate the relation of the Ontological Idea to action and show the bearing of the entire discussion upon the Problem of Conduct and Life. PART I. THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. I. HISTORICAL SURVEY. A brief historical sketch will be useful, in setting our topic in its connection with other methods of knowledge. The analysis of consciousness, in the preceding chapter, revealed the subjects to which an a priori proof stands related. The idea must be sup- ported by a theory of knowledge, the emotion demands a psycho- logical support and the intention of the idea belongs to a theory of motives or ethics. Let us see, now, what the actual fate of the argument has been. When Augustine said: "There must be a truth. For if you deny there is a truth, you affirm there is no truth ; and thus you contradict yourself. The sum total of truth, conceived as a unity, is, however, the very essence of God," he was evidently preparing the way for Anselm's discovery. The preparation, however, was purely in method, not in substance. Augustine might be called the father of the introspective method. It was he who first forced doubt to pay tribute to certainty. And, by directing attention to the immediacy of consciousness, he furnished a method which, in the hands of Anselm and Descartes, prepared the way for valuable discoveries. The relation of the Ontological Proof to consciousness is made very clear in the preface to the Proslogion. 1 There the author declares : " I began to inquire whether it might not be possible to find in a single argument, which being complete in itself, would 1 Anselm, "Proslogion Preface," translated by Maginnis, Bibliotheca Sacra, 1851. 10 THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 11 need the aid of no other for its confirmation, and which alone would suffice to prove that there is indeed a God, that He is the supreme good and that He is in need of nothing an argument sufficient to prove all that we are accustomed to believe concern- ing the Divine nature. . . . But when I endeavored to banish this thought entirely, lest, by occupying my mind in fruitless search, it might detain me from my other studies in which I might make some useful progress, then it began to press itself upon me the more with a kind of importunity. In the very conflict of my thought, that presented itself to me which I had despaired of finding." The point of interest in this rather long quotation is the likeness it shows to what might be found in the expression of any scientific consciousness. The same restlessness and sense of compulsion is apparent which frequently anticipates discovery. It is true that Anselm l himself regarded his discovery as an " illumination." He said : " Thanks be unto Thee, O Lord, thanks be unto Thee, that which I at first believed through thine own endowment, I now understand through thine illumination, even were I unwilling to believe that Thou art, I cannot remain ignorant of thine exist- ence." We are not concerned, however, with his interpretation of his experience. The term religious consciousness was unknown to him and belongs to a more fully developed psychology. But his description of his inner experience is exceedingly interesting. It shows that to him at least the Proof had an emotional and re- ligious as well as a logical significance. Without repeating the argument as stated in the Proslogion and expounded in the reply to Gaunilo, let us note that the judgment " existet ergo ... in re," is analytic. In other words existence is a part of the content of the concept of the most perfect being. This statement is not introduced here for the sake of discussion, disputed as it is, but as a point of contrast in making the transi- tion from Anselm to Descartes. For while it is true that Des- cartes asserts : 2 " That we may validly infer the existence of God "Proslogion," C. 2, end. 2 Descartes, " Principles of Philosophy," trans, by J. Vietch, p. 199. 12 THE IDEA OP GOD. from necessary existence being comprised in the concept we have of Him," he still regards it as an inference and proceeds to follow the clue of causality. He says : l " The greater objective perfec- tion there is in our idea of a thing the greater also must be the perfection of its cause." The bald realism of the cartesian dualism here begins to shine through. In the third Meditation, also, after stating what the idea of God includes, he adds : 2 " The more attentively I consider them the less I feel persuaded that the idea I have of them owes its origin to myself alone." Thus in Descartes' hands the Ontological Proof began to assume an a posteriori character. This fact is the more remarkable when we consider the Carte- sian method. He was the philosopher par excellajis of conscious- ness. In this he may have been guided by Anselm and Augus- tine but the important fact is " that he reached by way of doubt the principle of self consciousness and made it the starting point of his system." 3 The value of this principle we will have occasion to note later in this connection ; we may simply remark here that it at first lent itself to Rational Psychology rather than Religion. It was Descartes, then, who began the preparation for the study of the psychological relations of religion, who, also, perverted the Ontological Proof to the channel of Speculative Religious thought. The three philosophers who directly succeeded Descartes were Locke, Spinoza and Leibnitz, the great representatives of empiri- cism, Pantheism and individualism. Locke gave up the Onto- logical Proof along with innate ideas, Spinoza turned it to the service of speculative Pantheism, and Leibnitz alone made any useful contribution to it. He said : 4 "It proves that assuming that God is possible He exists." In other words he introduced the principle of non-contradiction. " Being," according to Leibnitz, 5 " is that the concept of which, involves something positive, or that which can by us be conceived, provided that which we conceive is 1 Descartes, "Principles of Philosophy," trans, by J. Vietch, Sec. XVII. 2 Descartes, "Principles of Philosophy," p. 125. 3 Descartes, "Principles of Philosophy." Introduction, p. 24. 4 Leibnitz, "New Essays," Bk. 4, ch. 10, p. 540. 5 Leibnitz, "New Essays," Bk. 4, ch. 10, p. 717. THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 13 possible." Most important of all he worked out the demonstra- tion according to the principle of non-contradiction that the con- cept of God is possible and concludes that the a priori proof of his existence is valid. 1 The argument, with the names most closely identified with it, is now before us. Its requirements have not been satisfactorily ful- filled. This is all that an historical survey needs to show. One or two further facts, however, are of interest. In the first place a long list of celebrated names could be arrayed in favor of the cogency of this form of proof. They have accepted it in the interest of speculative inquiry either Theistic, Deistic or Panthe- istic. On the other hand Empiricists and the transcendental Idealists have consistently rejected it. In a general way it might be considered as acceptable to theologians and worthless to scien- tists. Our position is that neither dogmatism nor scepticism has grasped its full significance as an expression of the religious con- sciousness. Its original relation to practical religious experience has been forgotten. This is especially apparent in Kant's criti- cism. He included the Ontological Proof along with the Cosmo- logical and Psychophysical arguments under the Transcendental Dialectic. They are exercises of pure reason. Having performed this feat by what he had well named Transcendental Topic, he had rendered all alike sufficiently fruitless. Nevertheless by a method precisely similar to that followed by Anselm although infinitely narrower, he arrived at an Ontological proof of the existence of God, by way of the Practical Reason. Paulsen, in his recent life of Kant says : 2 " Whoever ascribes absolute intel- ligible reality and unity to the intelligible world, naturally cannot deny the Ontological proof of the existence of God." Kant's criticism applies to the proof, therefore, only in its speculative and not in its practical capacity. Yet, the weight of Kant's influence in the last half of the nineteenth century no doubt, did much to cause the Ontological Proof to be abandoned as a support of Speculative Theism. 'Erdmann, "Lib. Op. Philos.," pp. 443-445. 2 Paulsen, "Life of Kant," p. 223. 14 THE IDEA OF GOD. On the other hand the progress of the psychological and anthro- pological study of religion together with the observations of con- sciousness and the processes of religious development are forcing a return to this method of proof. Mr. A. E. Taylor claims l that " the religious experience in its permanent essence is an insepar- able element in a comprehensive human experience of the world " and " in the sense that the claims of religion to represent an in- tegral element in a full human experience of the world is justified by the facts of life, the ' Ontological Proof 7 seems valid and irrefragible." Our Problem now is before us with a sufficient outline of its historical connections. It is high time to address ourselves to the task we have outlined. The first part of the undertaking must be to find a self-consistent concept of being. The way at this point has been prepared for us by Professor Royce in his analysis of the four historic concepts of being and we will thankfully ac- cept his assistance. 2 II. CONCEPT AND BEING. Common sense perceives a difference between thought and things. The impression and the object which gives the impression, the idea and the ideate, what Anselm meant by " esse in intel- lectu " and " esse in re " or whatever terms may be used to express the difference, it is sufficiently determined. It was this difference which Anselm appeared to disregard when he passed from the " id quo majus, etc.," of his thought to the " Hoc es Tu " of his experience. The question arises how is this procedure to be jus- tified ? How can an object discovered by the mind ever be recog- nized as identical with an object known by experience? The answer to this question is far from being easy, it constitutes the es- sential difference between Realism and Mysticism, Critical Rational- ism and Idealism. It may be well at the beginning of our discus- 1 A. E. Taylor, "The Problem of Conduct," pp. 443-444. 2 Koyce, " The World and the Individual," Vol. I. THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 15 sion to set before ourselves briefly the meaning of these four theories of Being as Professor Royce has defined them. 1 . Realism asserts that Being is independent of ideas. 2. Mysticism defines Being as an absolute and simple unity which quenches thought through the presence of a single and ab- solutely immediate truth. It is a theory of the immediacy of true knowledge. It identifies Being with the true meaning of ideas. 3. Critical Rationalism is an attempt to identify the validity of the idea with the true being of the fact defined by the idea. 4. Idealism affirms that " Reality is a will concretely embodied in a life." " The object according to this theory is only the com- pletely embodied will of the idea." What is, presents the fulfill- ment of the whole purpose of the very idea that now seeks Reality. 1 Realism. With these definitions to guide us let us begin our examination of the various theories of knowledge which attempt to answer our question. Realism is the first to demand attention. It takes either the form of monism or pluralism. As an example of monistic Realism we may turn to Spinoza. He represents reality as one substance with its two attributes, thought and exten- sion. Now hear what he has to say : 2 "So long as we consider things as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the whole of nature . . . through the attribute of thought only. And, in so far as we consider things as modes of extension, we must explain the whole of nature through the attribute of extension only." Thus thought and extension follow two parallel lines which meet only in infinity. The question then arises " How can any one be sure that he has ideas which agree with their ob- jects ? " 3 To this question he replies : " Truth is its own stand- ard." The real answer, however, is the very substance of Pan- theism : "Our mind, in so far as it perceives things truly, is part of the infinite intellect of God ; therefore, the clear and dis- tinct ideas of the mind are as necessarily true as the ideas of God." 1 Royce, " The World and the Individual," I, pp. 143, 227, 355, 359. 2 Spinoza, " Ethics," Part II, Prop. VII, note. 3 Spinoza, "Ethics," Part II, Prop. 43, note. 16 THE IDEA OF GOD. In other words, God serves the purpose of a clearing house of ideas. This thought permeates Spinoza's discussion of the nature and origin of the mind. But it is scarcely necessary to say that we would search in vain in our consciousness to find anything which would correspond with this purely speculative theory of knowledge. The pluralistic branch of Realism is represented by the Em- pirical School of thought. Certain matters of fact are assumed and ideas are derived from them in the course of experience. According to Locke : " The understanding does not have the least glimmering of any idea which it doth not receive from sensa- tion or reflection." This renders the concept dependent upon the object. Hume, however, says with regard to the impressions received by the senses : " It will always be impossible to decide with certainty, whether they arise immediately from the object, or are produced by the creative power of the mind, or are derived from the Author of our being." 2 And in the chapter on the Idea of Existence he adds : " We never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can perceive any kind of existence but those per- ceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass." These then are the limits of Empiricism, Locke deriving all ideas from sensations and reflection and Hume shutting up all experience to perceptions. There is no hope then of finding an answer to our question either in Monistic or Pluralistic Realism. Thought and things stand independent of each other. As we have already seen the monistic answer is given at the expense of Pantheism. The Religion of empiricism is even worse. It banished the idea of God to the realm of pure reason where it survived as a form of meta- physical speculation. Locke and Hume both gave up the Onto- logical Proof, the one embracing a Cosmological or Teleological argument and the other abandoning all proofs. Religion under these circumstances lost its experimental significance and became an affair of Reason. Locke's Epistemology was necessarily fatal 1 Locke, "Essay on the Human Understanding," p. 84. 2 Hume, " Treatise of Human Nature." THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 17 to Natural Religion which rested upon a theory of innate ideas and Hume's Scepticism was subversive of all Religion. Such a theory is not only destructive for Religion ; it would destroy the entire unity of the universe itself. If an idea and an object are entirely independent entities they can and must exist each without the other else their independence is an illusion. " They have nothing in common," says Royce, " neither quality nor worth, neither form nor content, neither truth nor meaning- No causality links them." And if this is true of the relation of concept and reality in a sensible world it must be equally true of an intelligible world. Concept and reality cannot exist in inde- pendence. Mysticism. If the facts of life in any way justified the theory of Mysticism it would not be necessary to continue our investiga- tions further. The immediate intuition of Reality would refute all gainsaying. Such a theory, however, is out of harmony with both history and experience. Try as man does, he so far has not been able to cease either his fragmentary method of perception or " his deadly doing." We have to take life as it is and the great task is to make it what we would like it to be. The Ontological Argument, therefore, acts as a corrective to Mysticism in that it shows due regard for experience and God's revelation of himself to man in the progress of history. The short way from concept to Being by means of intuition has not, so far, been successfully traveled. Critical Rationalism. The discriminating intellect of Kant perceived the strength and weakness of Realism ; he, therefore, sought to escape the difficulty by weaving together Empirical Realism with Transcendental Idealism. This combination ren- ders his system that much harder to understand. In the very beginning of the Critique of Pure Reason he links experience with sensation. At the same time he finds in experience other kinds of knowledge which must have their origin a priori. In addition to these two kinds of knowledge Reason introduces a third by means of concepts to which experience can never supply corresponding objects. This threefold division of the kinds of 18 THE IDEA OF GOD. knowledge to which there must correspond a like division in the knowing subject constitutes the foundation of Kant's great work. Having once established this division it is easy to proceed backward and forward from Empirical Realism to Transcendental Idealism. The understanding combines the facts of experience into a world which is absolutely phenomenal and therefore transcendental. At the same time the possibility of experience determines this phenomenal world to such an extent that it may be called empirically realistic. In other words, Kant never got beyond the boundary line drawn by Hume which limits knowledge to perception. It was without question a scientific procedure on the part of these two great thinkers to isolate a faculty of the mind and ex- amine it alone ; but, by so doing they severed its relations and rendered it to that extent mutilated. If we remember this fact when we are examining Transcendental Idealism we shall not be so easily carried along by its plausibility. Let it once be admit- ted, for example, that the possibility of experience is determined by sensation and the understanding, and that the concept of God is an ideal of Pure Reason, by which we understand the formal sphere of thought, then the possibility of giving a content to the concept of God is given up. Such an admission forever destroys the possibility of a connection between the God of Reason and the God of Religion. To say " Hoc es Tu " is always precluded. But when we remember that all experience has a validity accord- ing to its kind and that one faculty cannot stand alone, the severed connection is reestablished again. Now let us see how Kant attacks the Anselmic problem. How does he relate concept and reality ? Take a passage in which he is speaking of objects of sense. He says : l " Hitherto it has been supposed that all our knowledge must conform to the ob- jects ; but under that supposition, all attempts'" to establish any- thing about them a priori, by means of concepts, and thus to en- large our knowledge, have come to nothing. ... If the intuition had to conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see "Critique of Pure Keason," p. 693. THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 19 how we can know anything of it a priori ; bat if the object con- forms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I can very well conceive such a possibility." The burden of this argument is to show that since the mind introduces a priori concepts into objects of knowledge, therefore, these objects so far as known constitute phenomena and the thing- in-itself the Real is unknown. The conclusion is that "the unconditioned must not be looked for in things so far as we know them but only in so far as we do not know them." The phe- nomenal world embracing every possible object of knowledge is at hand, and outside and beyond the reach of experience stands the unconditioned constituting the intelligible world. In the Kantian epistemology knowledge is limited absolutely to the realm of concept and on the other hand Reality embracing the intelligible world is unknowable. At the same time Kant ever regarded the manifold of objects composing the phenomenal world as objects of experience. And while these objects of experience and possible experience, are not to be taken as things-in-themselves they are none the less real. In this latter sense Kant called himself an empirical Realist. But in the sense that all knowledge is phenom- enal he called himself a transcendental Idealist. Such a theory is an advance upon pure Realism. It introduces a relation be- tween concept and reality in the phenomenal world even if it does deny the possibility of communication between the Noumenal and Phenomenal worlds. It requires of a concept that it must be valid, that the concept and its object must agree, though both concept and object are alike phenomena. This then is the answer which Critical Rationalism gives to our question. It has received a tolerably general acceptance but not without hesitation. We are vaguely conscious of its insufficiency. The question asked by Spinoza " How can we know? " is avoided by limiting the sphere of knowledge. Therefore in spite of his transcendental Idealism Kant continued to be a Realist. The ding an sich for him was ever an independent Reality. When these facts concerning the Kantian theory of knowledge are settled in our minds we are prepared for his criticism of the Ontological 20 THE IDEA OF GOD. Proof. In such a system an ens realissimum could be necessary only as a formal condition of thought. It is a purely regulative concept. The conclusions concerning a greatest conceivable being are rational deductions of logic. But when an account of reli- gious experience is demanded the system breaks down as Kant was conscious of its break down in the presence of a categorical imperative. The Ontological Proof therefore has this advantage that while it does connect with the Ideal of pure reason it also connects with the conscious experience of a Religious life. Kant's Criticism. Let us look now at Kant's criticism of our Proof in the light of what we have here stated. He begins by asserting * that " the concept of an absolutely necessary Being is a concept of pure reason, a mere idea, the objective reality of which is by no means proved by the fact that reason requires it." Then he proceeds to inquire concerning the conditions which make it necessary to consider the nonexistence of a thing as absolutely inconceivable. The inadequacy of examples of absolute necessity such as that a triangle must have three angles is immediately ap- parent. The necessity is in the judgment not in the things. There is no contradiction in admitting the nonexistence of both the triangle and its angles. This is true, but to conceive of the nonexistence of the concept of a triangle when it has once been conceived is not possible. The reality of the triangle may be dropped but not the reality of the concept. On the other hand the very peculiarity of the Ontological concept is that we cannot conceive the nonexistence of either the concept or its object. Kant persists in putting the concept of God into the same category with the concept of things while the very nature of such a concept requires that it should be individual and not general, singular and therefore without comparison. The analogy of triangles, real and possible Thalers or mountains and valleys will not hold, for in the case of triangles we are dealing with mathematical concepts which are empty of content and in the case of mountains we are dealing with a general concept with a possible content, while in thinking of God we are dealing with an individual concept which must , "Critique of Pure Keason," p. 477. THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 21 have a real content. To conceive an individual concept without an object is impossible. So soon as the object disappears it is a general concept. I have already affirmed that the proposition God exists is an analytical judgment. When I make this asser- tion according to Kant I am compelled to determine whether the concept is God or whether I deduce his existence from internal possibility. In its purpose and intention my concept is God but that is not enough. Consciousness reveals to me that something exists. Anything is an ens realissimum in comparison with non- existence. The greatest conceivable being therefore is a real being because no figment of the imagination is so great as what is real. To be sure such an argument does not take us beyond Pantheism so far as the content of our idea is concerned but it gives us a foot- hold in Reality, and Religious experience must furnish a content to the concept. I am willing to admit therefore that for matters of fact in general every proposition involving existence is synthet- ical but I still assert that the concept of Absolute Being involves existence. To be more explicit our knowledge of things depends upon the possibility of experience but for our knowledge of self as Descartes discovered and our knowledge of God according to Anselrn's argument we are thrown back upon consciousness as an original faculty. In this examination of Kant we have allowed ourselves to become involved in the same speculative method which we have deprecated. This, however, is unavoidable in this part of our subject, the Proof must be sustained or it will have no place for a practical content. If Critical Rationalism does not tell us how to pass from concept to reality we do not therefore give up in despair. One favorable sign also is here to be noted. The critical philos- ophy is psychological. It looks for the possibilities of knowledge within, in the precincts of the mind. If this at first appeared to be fatal to Religion it was only apparently so. Religion also is within. It too has experiences which come clamoring into the manifold of phenomena. An increased attention to Psychology, therefore, could not fail to uncover the religious precincts of the soul. When we have finished our inquiry concerning concept and reality this subject will be attended to at greater length. 22 THE IDEA OF GOD. Idealism. Realism with its impossible independence of con- cept and object has failed to help us. Critical Rationalism sug- gests that the concept must be valid for the reality which it rep- resents but it shuts up concepts to sense and understanding thus circumscribing knowable phenomena. Mysticism on the other hand depreciates the usefulness of experience. We must turn, therefore, to Idealism as a last resort. But before listening to the answer of Idealism concerning the relation of concept and Reality let us revert to our analysis of a religious consciousness. We there discovered three original factors. Every religious emotion is inseparably combined with an idea. Fear and faith alike sub- tend the idea of an object to which they are directed. And every idea enfolds a purpose, a meaning, an intention or a will. It is at heart an intention with an end in view. With this threefold- ness of religious consciousness before our mind we are prepared more completely to study the relation of concept to Being or the religious idea to its Object in the light of Idealism. In the first place Idealism holds that an Idea is related to its object. The object itself may be material or imaginary, it may be sensible or only intelligible but whatever it is, some tie must connect it with its concept. And in the second place this theory holds that no objects stand alone. In some way or other there is a unity of all things a linkedness of all facts. Mere likeness, then, is not a sufficient tie to connect an idea with its object. Two things as like as coins struck from the same die may exist in ab- solute independence. In the third place then, Idealism finds the only sufficient account of the relation of the object and the idea in the purpose of the idea. It is the intention of the idea both to seek its object and to seek its point of likeness to its object. It is true that the object does determine the idea. It is the will of the idea to be determined but just because of this relation the idea and the object cannot exist independently. Experience. This brings us to the realm of experience. So long as we are dealing with the objects of sense the object deter- mines the idea in its validity. But experience reveals the impor- tant fact that the object found never fully satisfies the meaning of THE IDEA OF GOD AND EPISTEMOLOGY. 23 the idea. The possibility of experience therefore rather than the experience itself constitutes the determining power of objects over ideas. And since the idea has a purpose it can never find an ob- ject completely fulfilling the requirement of validity until it finds that purpose manifested in a vital reality. In other words the idea is the expression of a finite self seeking its fulfillment in an Absolute Self. And " the Being to which any idea refers is sim- ply the will of the idea more determinately and more completely expressed." l " The finite idea does seek its own Other. It con- sciously means this Other. And it can seek only what it con- sciously means to seek. But it consciously means to seek precisely that determination of its own will to singleness and finality of expression which shall leave it no Other yet beyond, and still to seek." Let us see now how this conception of the relation of Concept and Being agrees with the argument of the Ontological Proof. The idea there is called "id quo majus cogitari nequit," the greatest conceivable Being. The purpose of this idea is to find its object, its Other. It turns to the God of religious experience and says " Hoc es Tu. " In other words it identifies the God of faith with the God of Reason. Experience furnishes a content for the concept of God just as truly as experience furnishes a content for any finite reality. The process is precisely the same, the only difference is in the faculties involved. By this I mean that every experience is fragmentary. It only partly fulfills its concept. The possibility of experience is the only complete determination of a finite concept. And in a like manner religious experience does not fulfill the concept of God. It is only fragmentary. Never- theless it embodies the will of the Ontological idea, 1 Koyce, "The World and the Individual," p. 353. PART II. THE IDEA OF GOD AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. I. THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO PSYCHOLOGY. Religion and Psychology. The examination of the various theories of knowledge brought out the fact that the concept of a most perfect being is dependent upon religious experience for its content. It is necessary therefore to inquire what this experience is and to listen to the evidence of Psychology concerning its worth. The spheres of Religion and Psychology owing to their functions and subject matter always overlap. Every form of experience comes within the realm of Psychology and a Religion on the other hand without an experience is impossible. At the same time Re- ligion precedes Psychology and furnishes the facts for its investi- gation. Religion is a part of conscious life and Psychology is a science which treats of the laws and forms and methods of con- scious life. In a certain sense it might be said that Religion has a Psy- chology of its own. As an inner experience it requires reflection and introspection, and to some extent it always attempts to give definitions to those inner powers and seats of the emotions which we think of under the general term, soul. On the other hand a more fully developed Psychology serves as a guiding principle for Religion. In this way the two react upon each other and very much depends upon which has the predominating influence. Buddhism furnishes an example of a Religion in which the Psy- chological element predominates. In its pure form it is little more than a Psychology. Christianity, on the other hand, is a Religion 24 PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 25 which takes Psychology into its service. The Sacred Writings of the Christians and Jews show a deep psychological penetration. Body and spirit are distinguished, the value of the soul is declared and a valuable analysis of the inner life is apparent. But all this is in theservice of Religion and a part of religious develop- ment. It is quite another thing when all Religion is assumed to be pathological " a sick man's dream." " The psychologist, ob- serving the dependence of mental states on bodily conditions " and seeing the various psychic phenomena which Religion invariably includes, may be led to conclude that it is altogether an internal matter and that he can account for it as a psycho-genetic phe- nomena. To a person floundering in the vortex of such a conclu- sion Professor James says : l "It is not the origin with which we are concerned, but the way in which it works on the whole." Such a severing of the fruit from the root, however, must strike a serious reader as a violent proceeding. At such a time the Onto- logical Idea appears as a regulative principle and directs attention to the necessary connections between things psychical and the ultra psychical. In the examination of the relation of the Ontological Proof to the various concepts of Being a large part of our effort was spent in an endeavor to rescue Religion from rationalism. We saw how the various theories of knowledge rendered religious thought fruitless by turning it into speculative channels. Materialism, Deism, Theism and Agnosticism have appeared as the outgrowth of speculative inquiry severed from experience. The Ontological Proof there furnished us a clue by which these speculative diffi- culties could be avoided. It joins together what we must never put asunder religious thought and religious life. Now in the face of an attack by materialistic Psychology our Proof again serves us; since, it links experience with thought as well as thought with experience. Professor Flint in the Baird Lectures says 2 of the a priori arguments : " They help us steadily to con- 1 James, " Varieties of Keligious Experience," p. 13. 2 Flint, "Baird Lectures, Theism," p. 288. 26 THE IDEA OF GOD. template and patiently to consider such abstract and difficult thoughts as those of being, absolute being, cause, substance, per- fection, infinity, eternity, etc." Such mental gymnastics no doubt have their usefulness in developing an athletic mind but they are about as valuable as learning the Shorter Catechism backward, so far as practical Religion is concerned. They are worse than that because they pervert what they seem to contemplate from its true significance. If we are seeking an ulterior value in the Ontological Proof, it is to be found in the Psychological turn it gave to thought and the relation it establishes between thought and experience. It is introspective, and when attention is once directed to that which is within, a large field is at once opened for investigation. It is true that the first fruit of this research was largely the logomachy of Scholasticism, but later Descartes searched deeper than the ideas with which the schoolmen quibbled and discovered consciousness itself, the connecting link between thought and Being. The close connection between this discovery, which is the starting point of modern philosophy and psychology, and the Ontological Proof could not have been accidental. This is apparent in the Meditations. Hear what he says : l "Is there any truth more clear than the existence of a Supreme Being, or of God, seeing that it is to his essence alone that existence pertains ? And although the right perception of this truth has cost me much close thinking nevertheless at present I feel not only as certain of it as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it, that without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything perfectly." It was "the close thinking" called forth by the Ontological Proof which led by way of doubt to the discovery of consciousness and thus to the establishment of the truth itself. But Descartes' purpose was speculative rather than practical and instead of holding fast to the relation of consciousness and the con- cept of a most perfect being, he followed the concept to a cause which must be greater than its concept and used Consciousness as the starting point of a rational Psychology. 1 Descartes, " Meditations," V, p. 148. PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 27 The Psychologists. In this way Psychology was born of Religion and was separated from it. In the hands of Locke, Hume, Kant, et al., Psychology assumed the field of experience and religion was restricted to rational spheres of speculation. Hume classes himself with l " that Species of Philosophers which consider man in the light of a reasonable being and endeavor to form his understanding more than cultivate his manners. (Who) regard human nature as a subject of speculation, and with a nar- row scrutiny examine it, in order to find those principles which regulate our understanding, excite our sentiments, and make us approve or blame any particular object, action, or behavior." On the other hand he says : 2 " Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything but sick men's dreams." Thus human nature was magnified and Religion despised. It was impossible that such conditions should continue. A better Psy- chology and a more appreciative conception of Religion have suc- ceeded and their relation to each other is increasingly helpful. No reverent student of Religion can refuse to welcome the contribu- tions of such psychologists as Wundt, Hoifding, James and Meyer. Their work is invaluable and no solution of the Problems of Religion is now to be expected without a thorough psychology of religious experience. One other point is to be noted concerning the relation of Reli- gion to Psychology. Various authorities on the Philosophy of Religion have endeavored to connect Religion with one or other faculty of the soul. Schleiermacher's definition 3 of Religion as an absolute feeling of dependence on God gave undue prominence to the emotional element of Religion. Deism and Rationalism in general magnify the intellectual element. Von Hartmann gives prominence to the will. Such expressions 4 as " Der religiose Wille ist das A und Q aller Religion," or any definitions which give predominance to any particular faculty find a regulative in 1 Hume, " Essays," Vol. II, p. 1. Greene and Grose. 2 Hume, " The Natural History of Keligion," p. 362. 3 Schleiermacher, "Der christliche Glaubenslehre," p. 3. 4 Hartmann, " Beligions-philosophie, " vol. 2, p. 55. 28 THE IDEA OF GOD. our theory which gives to each faculty its place and prominence in a religious life. II. EELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. Introspection. When Kant said l of the Ontological Proof : " It leaves all experience out of account and concludes entirely a priori from mere concepts, the existence of a supreme cause," he certainly was not wide enough in his generalization. If sensuous experience is intended, the truth of the assertion might be admitted ; but experience is as broad and possibly broader than consciousness and in this sense the Anselmic form of the proof is rather an appeal to experience. By its very nature it withdraws attention from the world and directs it inward. It is a conscious appeal to the soul for a knowledge of God. In other words the Ontological Proof necessitated the development of Psy- chology. Here again Anselm received the mantle of Augustine. In a pure spirit of literalism Augustine sought to vindicate the doctrine of the Trinity by careful introspection. If God had said " Let us make man in our own image." And " in the image of God created He him," then it is reasonable to search in man for the image of God. Such was the reasoning that led Augustine to give to the world his De Trinitate. Without estimating the success of this work, so far as its object is concerned, we are much inter- ested in the worth of its method. It made inner experience the foundation of metaphysics. And Anselm was simply returning to this method when he sought in himself 2 " for a single argu- ment which would suffice to prove that there is indeed a God." In our analysis of consciousness we saw that emotions are in- separably linked with ideas. Without the idea of God religious emotions could not come into existence. " Kine Religion ohne Gottesforstellung die Gottesforstellung ist der bewusste Ausgang- spankt aller religiosen Funktion" is von Hartmann's 3 statement 'Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason," p. 476. 2 Anselm, u Proslogion, " Int. 3 Hartmann, " Beligions-philosophie," Vol. II, p. 6. PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 29 of this truth. Now Religion itself is a fact. It is with us as certainly as any of the facts of conscious life. The religious emotions also are well determined elements of experience. We know them precisely as we know other forms of conscious ex- perience. Therefore the idea of God does not stand in isolation a product of the rational faculty but is inseparably yoked to conscious experience. We learned further in our study of ideas that they are vitalized by a purpose. An idea without an inten- tion does not arise. We must now appeal to experience to show that it is the intention, the meaning of the idea of God to mediate between religious experience and the existing Other of that ex- perience. Our method would have been more logical if we had taken up the religious experiences first and, after examining them in the light of Psychology, then had proceeded to our inquiry concerning the relation of the concept to being. But that method would not have been so natural, since experience always pro- ceeds from the objective to the subjective. We attend to the object with interest long before the psychical functions come to our notice. And in a like manner a study of the development of Religion verifies the statement that the idea of God precedes the idea of self in consciousness. Consciousness. Some of the steps in the development of Psy- chology in relation to Religion were noted in the last chapter. Our interest is centered in the connection of the Ontological Proof with this development. The nature of this proof requires intro- spection and while the attention of the mind is turned inward it finds ideas, such as the concept of a perfect being, but if such ab- straction is continued long enough it must perceive in addition to the ideas of the mind the fact of consciousness. This we are led to believe was what took place in the mind of Descartes. He was looking for a starting point which doubt could not remove a truth which would act or abide as his fulcrum that he might move the world of thought. He found this truth in the intuitive knowledge of self in consciousness. By this discovery of con- sciousness as the primary fact of knowledge he gave a valuable truth to the world and a great impluse to both Psychology and 30 THE IDEA OF GOD. Religion. Henceforth experience of whatever nature requires a scientific treatment. Sensuous experience at first, very reason- ably, claimed attention. In the hands of the Empiricists it for a time appeared that this was the only experience worthy of atten- tion but consciousness is broader than sensation and it was impossi- ble that other forms of experience should not sooner or later take their place along with the other facts of life. Without specifying the source to which Religious emotions are to be traced they must be recognized as facts. They form a part of the sum total of Reality. They are forces which have to be reckoned with, they can be dealt with and measured. In speak- ing of religious emotions in this way we are classifying them along with the real as opposed to the conceptual phenomena of the uni- verse. As having ideas inseparably connected with them they belong to rational quantities but as moving active forces they be- long to the world of facts. The realm of religious experience is now open before us. Primary Facts of Consciousness. There are two facts dis- covered by consciousness which resist further analysis. The first is existence and the second is finiteness and limitation. Affirma- tion and negation, I am, and I am limited, are the primary analyt- ical judgments of consciousness. These two facts of experience are the coordinates of all possible experience. In so far as I ex- ist under these conditions experience is necessary for me. On the other hand experience is impossible for nonexisting or an unlim- ited being. Thus it appears that a limited consciousness occupies some intermediate place between nonexistence and perfect being. Again consciousness reveals that the limitations of human nature are temporal and spatial in form. All human experience is sub- ject to these limitations. In content the limitation may be sensu- ous or nonsensuous, pathetic or antipathetic; they may either help or hinder the conscious individual. This constitutes the re- lation of an individual personality to all that is without or beyond him. The distinction between the rational and material parts of a self is also a very early work of self-consciousness. The mind by PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 31 means of its ideas transcends the limitations of the body. The ideas of the mind very definitely ally themselves with the non- sensuous limitations and seek to penetrate and master those which are sensuous. It is in this struggle for the mastery that Religion appears. To involve ourselves in the hopeless task of giving a terse definition of Religion is altogether outside of our purpose but it is within our topic to indicate that Religion in its psychological analysis is neither knowledge nor feeling nor will alone but that it subsidizes all these faculties in religious functions. It does not matter whether we accept this tripartate division of the faculties of the mind or follow some other division, it is the psychical con- sciousness which puts the mind in reciprocity with the world of sense and the religious consciousness discovers those facts and ob- jects with which Religion is concerned and relates the entire mind to them. The world is an object which experience accepts and identifies and reacts upon ; but, it has no finality in which a reli- gious consciousness can rest, for it is also subject to limitations. And a limited self, conscious of its own incompleteness, must seek beyond the world for the satisfaction of that lack which it knows in experience. Primary Religious Emotion. Here then one of the primary religious emotions is discovered ; one that makes its appearance in primitive or undeveloped stages of religious life and is most prominent in the most highly developed religions. It is not fear and it is not faith. It is an emotion which arises from a limited consciousness possessed of ideas which transcend its limitations. It is that attitude of longing which precedes expressions of faith and worship a reaching out for help, a quest for a helper in the struggle of life. Such an emotion must be traced back from its expression in the examination of low stages of Religion. In more cultured minds it gives utterance to the yearning cry : " As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God." It was to this emotion that Augustine gave a definite form when he said : " O Lord, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it find rest in Thee." l The sacred 1 Augustine, "Confessions," p. 1. 32 THE IDEA OF GOD. books of all religions are full of more or less definite cries of this kind. It is the conscious effort of an individual and limited self to escape the orphanhood of individuality, the restlessness produced by the consciousness or even the pain of limitations and the pur- pose of ideas to find their Other beyond these limitations. In this sense Religion must be as broad as humanity and all Religion is essentially, even if very indefinitely, monotheistic. Man is a religion-making being because he is a limited individuality and the limits which seem to hinder him become the stairway on which he ascends to communion and union with the unlimited. In other words where limits and ideas transcending those limits are com- bined in one being a Religion becomes a necessity. The limited one finding in himself ideas which go beyond^ himself is in so far related to the Object which the ideas represent. The" longing is for the confirmation of this relation. Thus the emotion which is still physical and expresses itself physically and the idea which is purely psychical and belongs to the nonmaterial representations of consciousness, almost coalesce, for the purpose of both the emo- tion and the idea is in the helpful relation of the Other of the idea to the need of the self. This emotion as it develops may take the form of fear or faith according to the predominance of the limitations or the idea in attention. It may selfishly concern itself with its own welfare or generously take thought for the unlimited to which it belongs. It may be submissive or defiant according to the temperament of the individual ; but whichever of these characteristics may belong to it, the root of such a religious experience so far as psychology is concerned is to be found in the limitation of the individual human life. We need not suppose that the Ontological Idea which our theory links with this primary religious emotion is necessarily definite or its concept completely analyzed. It is the very essence of our contention that an historical experience is necessary to give this idea a content and that nothing less than a perfect experience will complete its analysis. Nevertheless, the religious process of know- ing is not different from other processes of knowing. The simple PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 33 sensation does not come into consciousness unless it is joined with a percept. The percept does not stand alone but determines a concept and experience never completely fills the concept. Neither does religious experience ever fully satisfy the Ontological concept. There is, however, a content which may be derived from the mind in itself or may as well be derived from Reality itself. Either way its origin is equally mysterious. I refer to the beyond all that a limited consciousness recognizes as beyond its limitations. Professor Max Miiller calls l it " the perception of the infinite." He finds it in space and time and causality or what Kant calls the forms of thought. According to both, these forms are psychical. They are a priori so far as experience is concerned. With this admission it is difficult to see how the former can sustain his prin- ciple, " Nihil est in fide quod non antea fuerit in sensu." But that is aside from our argument, it is the historic data with which he illustrates his thesis that interests us. The dawn, the nightly sky, clouds, trees and rivers not only might furnish " Theogonic Elements/ 7 2 but they have furnished these elements as his exami- nation of many sacred books distinctly shows. These matters of fact in nature were each embraced by the infinite and being per- ceived as facts of experience carried the mind onward in its con- ception of the infinite. Thus we find the vague indefinite idea, perception of the infinite if you choose to call it so, but I prefer to reserve that term for the faculty by which we apprehend all that is not infinite, and the emotion made more intense by the very indefiniteness of the Object which arouses it. Shamanism and Divination. Along with this primary emotion there are certain practices of primitive religions which tenaciously survive even in cultured societies, such as Shamanism and Divi- nation, which may well be noticed in this place. The two prac- tices along with their functionaries are not peculiar or surprising in the light of what we have just said. They reflect the two greatest limitations of humanity a lack of power and a lack of foresight. The arts of the Shaman are used to constrain the un- 1 Miiller, "The Gifford Lectures, 1888, Natural Keligion," p. 188. 2 Muller, "The Gifford Lectures, 1888, Natural Keligion," p. 148. 34 THE IDEA OF GOD. seen powers to lend their aid to man. To make rain, to drive out inimical spirits or to give victory, will in so far, put the one aided beyond his limitations. Such contributions of aid are ever desirable. The methods by which it is thought that such aid can be constrained no doubt reflect crude anthropomorphisms ; but with that we are not concerned. And again, the uncertainty of the future is a time limitation which ever presses heavily on the understanding of humanity and those who feel these limita- tions seek to obtain from those who are not thus limited the secrets of the future, hence Divination. Idols. But the question arises in connection with the inter- pretation of Fetichism if we accept that as a primitive form of Religion Why do people in that stage of culture seek a multi- tude of gods and make use of objects of an inferior order if they possess anything of the nature of an Ontological Idea ? Or how is it possible to say that all Religion is in a sense monotheistic when polytheism is in such cases so apparent? One might with as much reason ask why the savage hunts in certain fields and fishes in neighboring streams of a bounded territory. His limi- tations make it necessary. It is a temporary makeshift. He seeks help first from that which is nearest at hand. If " he sac- rificeth unto his net and burneth incense unto his drag " l and makes a god of the charred end of that which has made him warm, he is at least acknowledging that the drag and the wood have played a godlike part in extending the bounds of his limi- tations. But the very fact that the Animist multiplies the objects of his devotion and idealizes his fetish indefinitely until multi- plicity gives place to unity, as in the Pantheism of Hinduism, renders it evident, that no limited object satisfies that primary emotion of longing with its idea, which is at the root of all reli- gious experience. Without its idea this emotion cannot appear in experience and however vague or illusory it may be consciousness bears witness to the fact of its presence. It is possible and the history of Religion shows that it is a fact that in the undeveloped condition of the human understanding at various stages of its 1 Habakkuk 1 : 16. PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 35 culture this longing and its idea attach themselves to this and that object, temporarily seeking satisfaction, but in no case is there evidence that in such conditions the mind finds rest. From these considerations we may conclude that an Animistic theory of the origin of Religion instead of confuting rather confirms the presuppositions of the Ontological Proof. Let it once be understood that the Ontological Idea is not definite and analyzed in every human mind but that it is an idea with an infinite capa- city for analysis and the difficulty in accepting it is removed. The one element of the idea, however, which is primary, is that it in- volves existence objective to the thinker, otherwise Religion and being itself and even consciousness might be denied. There are two fields to which the Ontological Idea may turn in its quest for its Other or object. One is ike material world with its manifold forces and the other is the mind with its complex of phenomena. The combination of these two spheres is also pos- sible in religious thought. We have already seen how the nature worshiper as a temporary makeshift does obeisance to an inferior object. What object will become prominent in his pantheon is simply a matter of attention and a great step forward is taken when some superior man is fixed upon as the object of devotion and adoration. From henceforth the anthropomorphization of other objects of nature is an easy process, for the idea refusing to be satisfied with either the fetish or the hero as a final object of wor- ship, must continue the search further. The Gods. In the choice of objects of worship the great facts and objects soon claimed attention. The myths concerning the sun god, the rain god, etc., can be traced back to the Akkadians. These larger objects of nature had entered into their pantheon long before the dawn of history. * These myths represent an in- teresting stage in the progress of a search for the Object of Religion in the external objects of nature. They show the constant reac- tion between the mind's conception of the infinite and its percep- tion of the finite. These two mental processes were constantly at work harmonizing the facts of limited experience with the concep- 1 Tiele, ' ' History of Keligion. ' ' 36 THE IDEA OF GOD. tion of what is beyond experience. At this point of religious culture two steps were possible and were actually taken. One was the deification of all objects, or Pantheism ; and, the other dis- pensed with the temporal limitations of thought and postulated immortality. This development could hardly be escaped where material objects were deified. The perish ableness of objects and the conflicts of the forces of nature which gave material for the myths also indicated that these objects had temporal as well as material limitations. The death of the gods was always a possi- bility. But the mind having fixed upon the sky, the sun, the rain, etc., as objects of worship and at the same time perceiving their limitations, did not need to take a great leap when it com- bined all things into a Brahma. Its creed then becomes : " All this universe indeed in Brahma : from him it does proceed ; into him it dissolves ; in him it breathes." l To such a god immortal- ity may easily be ascribed. We must remember, however, that Pantheism is a philosophy rather than a Religion. Brahma was never worshiped in the all- absorbing way that Yahweh or Allah appeal to their worshipers. Neither has the intellectual love of a pantheistic deity which Spinoza suggested as the highest Religion appealed to humanity. All that the mind has been able to make of Pan is a great fetish which involves an appalling fatalism. Roman Religion. The history of the Religion of Rome presents a striking example of the transition, which the Ontological Idea makes in its search for its Other, from the physical to the psy- chical field. The old gods, the objective gods, were still rever- enced but MenSj Virtus, Pudidtia, Fides, and other internal faculties and graces were introduced into their pantheon. Temples were erected to these deities and they were adored along with the other gods. Max Miiller represents 2 that Regulus would rather die than dishonor Fides. And no doubt a similar religious motive prompted Yirginius to sacrifice his daughter rather than allow her allegiance to Pudicitia to be broken. Other examples 1 Quoted by Dr. Ellinwood in " Notes on Comparative Religions." 2 Miiller, "The Gifford Lectures, 1888, Natural Religion," p. 176. PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 37 might be cited but these are sufficient to indicate that the internal field is the ethical field of search for an object of religious worship. It will be better, however, to pursue our psychological in- quiries a little further before taking up this topic. Some of the higher forms of religious experience demand our attention in this connection. They do not differ in their final analysis from what we have already observed. The same con- sciousness of limitation and the same idealism is present accom- panied with a greater complexity and definiteness. 1 Such phe- nomena as Metanoia, Enthusiasm and Mysticism here claim our attention. These are experiences which are recognized as facts and forces in the world as well as in the lives of individuals. They have become constructive principles in determining the lives of men whom the world chooses to honor and as forces they have had a visible part in making history. In the conclusion of his Gifford Lectures, Professor James says : 2 " Religion includes . . . a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism. Also an assurance of safety and a temper of peace and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affection." Metanoia. One of these experiences is named in the Gospels Metanoia? This significant word occurs so frequently in these sacred books that we may well believe that it indicates a charac- teristic experience. It also points out the mind as the part of the individual in which the experience takes place. The well-known meaning of metanoia is a change of mind with a corresponding change of character. In such an experience a moral element is involved. The limitations of a sensuous kind which require the help of a God of power have given place to limitations of a 1 Professor James in his Gifford Lectures on "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and Professor Starbuck in his work on the "Psychology of Re- ligion," have made valuable collections of testimonies bearing on this topic and have subjected them to a psychological treatment, but we can only hope to make use of their conclusions in so far as they bear upon our subject. 2 James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 485. 3 1 have used the Greek word metanoia instead of its English equivalent repentance because the latter has a double significance. 38 THE IDEA OF GOD. spiritual nature which require the help of a God of holiness. But in the case of this higher experience just the same as in the case of the lower experience the idea anticipates the experience and prepares the way for it. I can quite understand the psychologist's description of the brain's function in this process. That such a change of mind as is indicated by the term metanoia and is commonly known as Conversion, should be accompanied and accomplished by a trans- ference of the habitual center of personal energy ; that religious ideas, previously peripheral in consciousness, take a central place, and religious aims form the habitual center of energy is quite intelligible. All this, however, is simply descriptive. It tells what takes place without the how and why. Psychology, there- fore, simply adds its testimony. Something does take place. How peripheral religious centers come to exist and why their content when once illuminated lends a new zest to character, which com- mon sense chooses to esteem valuable, has not been made known. Neither is the cause of the transference discoverable among the mind's peculiar forces. It is not within the sphere of psychology to furnish an escape from idealism any more than it is within its sphere to solve the problem of consciousness itself. And in the problem furnished by religious metanoia we are again thrown back upon the law of the inseparable unity of experience and ideas. The God-idea has only taken a more definite form. Its moral character unfolding itself over against the moral limits which the individual's growing consciousness discovers. Let us see if such an explanation is consistent with our theory of the Ontological Proof. The psychologist has told us of the transference of centers of consciousness. The idea of a most per- fect being has occupied an inferior place in consciousness. Other orders of being and other purposes toward them have occupied the center of illumination, but the mind's readiness to occupy itself with that which is more perfect is a clue to the fact that its quest is the most Perfect. In the experience known as Metanoia the idea of God in the Christian's sense has received a greater illumination and the one who experiences the metanoia oppressed PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 39 by his limitations is conscious of a transference of thought and affection from some inferior means of attaining his end to the superior means even to a fellowship and union with the unlimited Father. The consciousness of renewed strength accompanying this change becomes to the receiver an infallible sign of the reality of the Being to whom his idea led him. The purpose of the idea and the experience coincide. Such an one can truly say " Hoc es Tu Domine Deus noster." The relation is no longer looked upon as the relation between an idea and its other. The purpose of the idea is fulfilled. The relation is a fact a living experience. In such a stage of religious culture the immediacy of Religion is found not only in the emotions of the worshiper but also in his relation to the Object of his adoration. This brings us to the threshold of mysticism. We are ar- rested, however, by the very nature of worship. Mysticism seeks to transcend worship by ignoring its two-fold nature. It aban- dons the progressive method of unfolding the idea of God to which our Ontological Proof admonishes us to adhere and seeks by intuition to grasp reality in its totality. Before speaking of this matter more fully let us attend to worship as a religious discipline. Worship. This discussion is appropriate in this place because worship expresses the two-fold character of the highest religious experience. It manifests both sides of the consciousness of a soul which has entered into fellowship with the Divine and yet continues in a body of flesh. It has due regard for the " perse- verance of the saints " and the irresistible grace of God. " It is a mysterious thing," says Jonathan Edwards, 1 "and what has puzzled and amazed many a good Christian, that there should be that which is so divine and precious, as the saving grace of God, and the new and divine nature, dwelling in the same heart, with so much corruption, hypocrisy and iniquity, in a particular saint." And Paul who has set forth the doctrine of union with God in Christ in the greatest fulness, said 2 " We have this treasure in 1 Edwards, "Works," Vol. 4, p. 4. 2 2 Cor. 4 : 7. 40 THE IDEA OF GOD. earthen vessels." Worship consciously expresses both these facts. It combines humility with exaltation. The worshiper is in fel- lowship with the more perfect or most perfect being and to that extent he has passed beyond his finiteness. Yet as an individual he is still finite and conscious of his limitations. As a Polytheist man sacrifices to his drag because the drag had extended his power of sustaining life, so as a Christian he says 2 in pious devotion, " I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me," an assumption that fellowship with his God transcends all finite limitations. Worship does not appear in this treatment as a primary reli- gious function. It is rather an attitude after the fact a product of Religion. Nevertheless worship is a valuable activity and stands on the border line between religious and social functions. One cannot fail to be impressed with the similarity of the con- duct of courtiers, to that of worshipers. In fact the differenti- ation of rulers from deities is a late and to some extent an im- possible proceeding. Even in the highest religions the duties to rulers are enfolded in the duties to God. The man who has rev- erence for whatever helps him over an obstacle could not in reason overlook the duty he owes to his chieftain or ruler. But this is going outside of our sphere which is distinctly religious, it is more to the point to notice that worship and the spirit of worship as we find them in a religious life are altogether in harmony with our representation of the Ontological Proof. On the one hand they are rooted in experience and recognize the bounds of every- day life ; on the other hand they are ideal, reaching out with fear and faith to a more perfect if not the most perfect Being. Here we certainly have matter of fact. There is a great difference in range between the worship of a St. Francis or a Tolstoy and the worship of a peasant at a wayside shrine or the cringing of an animist before his fetish but in all that vast difference there is no by-way of escape from this two-fold nature of worship. The ex- perience and the idea live and die together. Saintliness. It has been our effort up to this point to show that the a priori proof of the existence of an Object of Religion is 2 Philippians4: 13. PSYCHOLOGY OF EELIGION. 41 in harmony with psychology and anthropology. These two sciences have been greatly developed in recent years and the facts which they have discovered must be accepted and affiliated in any theory of life. So far we have found no cause to abandon our theory on their account. There remains to be examined under the present topic what could be termed the development of saintli- ness. In its more exact significance saintliness means a life separated from the world and consecrated to the pursuit of godli- ness. It is my intention to use the word in the broader evangeli- cal sense of " growth in grace " life in contact with the world and in communion with God. In this sense the knight as well as the hermit is a religious person and the unwarranted distinction between the sacred and the secular life is broken down. This is the form that Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, has taken at the present day. Religion is cultivated in and in har- mony with a life of affairs. Union and communion with God are accepted in the subjugation of a material world. Such a view of life is optimistic. Instead of looking upon the material world as antipathetic and subversive to piety it accepts all things, as servants to the soul, though they may be at times insubordinate. With such a view of life, development is almost a postulate. The conception of a metanoia which brings the soul into union with the Object of Religion in no wise dispenses with the process of development. The current theory of religious experience follows the analogy furnished by Biology in supposing that each religious life passes through the stages represented in the historic development of Religion. This analogy is no doubt over- worked but at the same time the development of saintliness is a well authenticated process. Our treatment of this form of religious experience falls in line with our treatment of worship and our entire theory. The idea of God stands over against an ever unfolding life but the un- folding of the religious life is always toward the God-idea which has anticipated it. Thus an ever-increasing knowledge of the content of the God-idea serves to make conscious of the manifold limitations of finite individuality and " growth in grace " is the 42 THE IDEA OF GOD. process of making real the transcendence of limitations which faith has apprehended in the ideal. Crises. A lack of knowledge concerning the psychology of religious experience has been a fruitful source of controversy on this point. What are known as crises in experience are more ob- vious and striking than the regular every day experiences of life. I refer to sudden conversions and deluges of enthusiasm. Like all extraordinary events such facts rivet attention. Those who build upon such experiences fail to recognize the cumulative proc- esses of the mind which are well known to the psychologist. Comforting as these extraordinary processes are, to the person who has realized them, and useful as they have been in the develop- ment of the religious life, we are compelled to look upon them as abnormal and to classify them with other well-known natural events of an unwholesome character. The healthy, religious mind finds that it does well not to expect a sudden flood of knowl- edge or of character stuff but to grow in grace and increase in the knowledge of the Lord. In such a growth experience and faith are the coordinates of knowledge. We have now examined some characteristic religious experi- ences. They are in no way out of harmony with what our inter- pretation of the Ontological Proof would lead us to expect. We have confined our attention perhaps too closely to the Christian Religion. This, however, is not intended as a disparagement of the science of Comparative Religion. Examples of mdanoia and saintliness could as well be taken from Mohametanism or Buddhism. The results obtained no doubt differ but the process of Religion as an experience is in no way different. It would be interesting to push our investigations into an examination of the psychology developed along with Buddhism and the Yogi phi- losophy of Hinduism. There is a field of research open, also, to anyone who will classify the various expressions of religious emo- tions in the lower orders of human society and examine the ideas which give them vitality and potency. The greatest part of the service which psychology can give to a philosophy of religion and a proof of the existence of the Object of Religion is yet to be ren- PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 43 dered, but it is gratifying to see that the tendency of thought at present is to compel this branch of science to render its full tale of service. And this tendency is in line with a return to experi- ence as a basis of knowledge in Religion as in other affairs. In this connection Professor James says: 1 "The inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one. A conscious field plus its object as felt or thought of plus an attitude towards the object plus the sense of a self to whom the attitude belongs such a concrete bit of personal experience may be a small bit, but it is a solid bit as long as it lasts; not hollow, not a mere abstract element of experience, such as the object is when taken alone." By object he means the object of science : 2 " To describe the world with all the various feelings of the indi- vidual pinch of destiny, all the various spiritual attitudes, left out from the description they being as describable as anything else - would be something like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent of a solid meal." Religion makes no such blunder. Monism. It is this recognition of the totality of experience which we hail as hopeful. The totality and oneness of reality appeals to us. There are advantages in taking isolated objects and viewing them in their isolation as though they contained finality, but such piece work is unreasonable if it has not in view the relations of the object even in the completest possible isola- tion. It is this very completeness, this most perfectness of being which the Ontological concept constantly holds before us. Thus Religious Experience is the door through which life enters into the knowledge of this most perfect temple of reality. III. EXPERIENCE AS KNOWLEDGE. Anselm adopted the principle " credo ut intelligam." This pre- cept contains an appreciation and a protest. It does not sever Religion and knowledge as Scepticism and Transcendental Ideal- 1 James, " Varieties of Keligious Experience," p. 498. 2 James, "Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 500. 44 THE IDEA OF GOD. ism do and it does not accept blindly the ecclesiastical "credo quia absurdum." The protest consists in an admitted restlessness under faith as a finality. Experience which includes faith has as its goal knowledge. Religion cannot be satisfactorily tied to an isolated faculty of a trinal facultied soul. It is not "a feeling of absolute dependence " alone and it is not " the will to live " alone much less is it " knowledge " in the Hegelian sense. Any attempt at a definition l along these lines must prove abortive. The entire being is a unit in a religious state. But this is not to deny that there is a religious function in each of the faculties of the mind taken individually. The contention of Abelard for the thesis " Ratio prsecedit fidem " was intended to free reason from the bondage of tradition. To the extent that this bondage was real the work of Abelard was valuable, but the reaction which he in- troduced soon passed to the other extreme of Rationalism. One of these extremes is as bad as the other. To be sure irrational tradition must be excluded. At the same time no intelligent phi- losophy of life can be constructed which severs rational from sensi- ble experience. I have all along interpreted Anselm's method as a natural method of proceeding from experience to knowledge. He discovered the identity of the idea of God in the intellect with the God of faith in experience. To deny one would be to doubt the other and to doubt consciousness is impossible. There are two very significant verifications of Anselm's method which remain to be noticed. In the first place it harmonizes with the fact of historic revelation and in the second place it serves as a regulative to Mysticism. We have two great human phenomena one a fact and the other a theory confronting and antagonizing each other. Mysticism has had a wide currency both in ancient and in modern times. It has doubtless exercised a more or less whole- some influence on the development of Religion but its claims are out of harmony with the facts of history. Its root is likely to be found in those floods of enthusiasm which we have had occasion to notice in the last chapter. Let us again postpone its discussion until we have given more consideration to Historic Revelation and Enthusiasm. iCaird, "Int. Phil. Eel." PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. 45 Revelation. Every Religion has a history. It must be ad- mitted, however, that the sacred books of no other Religion can be compared with the sacred books of Christianity and Judaism in their identification of the revelation of the Object of Religion with the historic development of a nation and an individual. Take the life of Jesus and the history of Israel out of the Old and the New Testament and there remains a chaos. Buddha was an enlightened one who pointed out the eightfold path, the Vedas contain the principles of a philosophy, theogonies and ethical teachings are found in other sacred writings, but Christianity is a life and a his- tory. Lessing was one of the first to draw attention to this fact in his Education of the Human Race and its importance has been magnified along with the development theory of history. His- torical revelation goes along with the historical development of Religion. It is accumulated experience on the spiritual side of life. Such a theory of Revelation is verified by Psychology. A rev- elation in whatever way it is given must be received by the understanding and the understanding is limited by time, space and the categories. Whatever truths are received or communicated are subject to these forms. Neither does experience ever deny them and for this reason a revelation or a theory of revelation which is conformable to experience is most acceptable. Let us see how this applies in the examination of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm. When we pass to the method of Revelations, the claims of experience take a manifold form. I use the word En- thusiasm in its etymological sense as broader than the theological term Inspiration. It signifies all that could be determined by the expression God-consciousness. A confused multitude of arahats, mahatmas, mediums, pythons, seers and witches rush to our imag- ination at the mention of these terms. Unless it is intended to abandon our search we must at this point again turn to psychology for a guiding hand. The reproach of the blatant atheist that all these creatures have experiences is immediately upon us. And it is unquestionably a fact that religions best and worst have not despised this fellowship. Visions, dreams, ecstatic states, epileptic fits, intoxications and all kindred psychical phenomena have been 46 THE IDEA OF GOD. used by religiously disposed persons as a means of getting into contact with the unseen world. All sacred books and many sacred performances bear witness to these statements. And it is having fellowship of this character which gives some ground to those who class Religion with other manifestations of degeneration. How are we to meet the scoffs of those who make such charges? Cer- tainly neither with a denial nor an apology. In the first place putting aside the objectionable features of such manifestations of Religion we hold to their positive content. They bear witness to the presence of religious emotions and ideas. " He that cometh unto God must believe that he is." All of these efforts to get into contact with the spirit world are direct evidence of a belief in that world. The best answer, by way of illustra- tion, to those who deny that the Israelites believed in immortality is the story of the Witch of Endor. Such a bit of folk-lore out- weighs volumes of doctrine. And all those objectionable features such as necromancy, witchcraft and frenzy, possess such a kernel of veritable experience. They represent crude methods by which the idea seeks to fulfil its purpose by finding its Object. Methods of Enthusiasm. Perhaps it will not be amiss to ex- amine some of these methods. The dream is no doubt the earliest mediumistic process. The Hebrew Sacred writings are true to nature in putting this method of revelation in its historic place as primitive. Abraham, Jacob and Pharaoh received revelations in dreams and Joseph achieved a reputation for wisdom as a dream interpreter. In this respect the Israelites were not singular. I mention them because they incorporate this method of revelation in its historic place. But even Paul, a cultured religious spirit, did not despise the gate of dreams as a means of access to the spirit world. Dreams, however, do not offer a sufficiently pliant means of enthusiasm. A revelation is needed for a certain time and the dream power cannot be depended upon to furnish it. There were other methods early discovered by which religiously disposed minds sought to extend the limits of consciousness. One of these means was the use of intoxicants. The deification of Sn UtPT, 15 LD 21A-50m-8,'61 "/ON DEPT. General Library University of California ' 67 7> * UNIVERSITY OF CAI.IFORJSIIA LIBRARY