* REESE LIBRARY ^
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
■■laesiioiis No. 6^6 ^ ^ CLn<. No.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/christianityideaOOwatsrich
CHRISTIANITY AND IDEALISM
j2^^
Christianity and Idealism
The Christian Ideal of Life in its Relations
TO THE Greek and Jewish Ideals and
to Modern Philosophy
BY
JOHN WATSON, LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY
KINGSTON, CANADA
NEIV EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1897
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1896,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Copyright, 1897,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped December, 1896. Reprinted, with additions,
August, 1897.
Norlnootr ^cees
J. 8. Cuihing & Co. - Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mail. U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface to the Second Edition vii
Introductory Preface xxi
Part I
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE IN RELATION TO
THE GREEK AND JEWISH IDEALS
CHAPTER I
Historical Connexion of Morality and Religion . . i
CHAPTER II
The Greek Ideal 23
CHAPTER III
The Jewish Ideal 45
CHAPTER IV
The Christian Ideal 60
CHAPTER V
Medieval Christianity no
V
Vi CONTENTS
Part II
MODERN IDEALISM IN ITS RELATION TO THE
CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
General Statement and Defence of Idealism . . .121
CHAPTER VII
Idealism in relation to Agnosticism and the Special
Sciences 153
CHAPTER VIII
The Failure of Materialism 192
CHAPTER IX
The Idealistic Interpretation of Natural Evolution . 216
CHAPTER X
Idealism and Human Progress 237
CHAPTER XI
Idealism and Christl^nity 256
PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION
In the present edition of this little work,
while the first part has been left unchanged,
the second part has been enlarged by the addi-
tion of three new chapters (the eighth, ninth,
and tenth) and the intercalation of a dozen
pages (pp. 268-280) in the last chapter of the
book. The eighth chapter seeks to exhibit the
inadequacy of Materialism, by showing that
the Atomism upon which it rests is inconsis-
tent both with science and with philosophy, and
that in its struggle to reach consistency it ac-
complishes its own euthanasia. It is from no
desire to gain an easy victory over the crudest
of all philosophical theories that space has
been occupied in discussing its pretensions,
but simply as a step in the orderly advance to
a more adequate theory, and as an illustration
of the double function which philosophy dis-
charges: firstly, in freeing the fundamental
viii PREFACE TO THE SECON-D EDITION-
ideas of science from inconsistency, and, sec-
ondly, in re-interpreting them from the point
of view of the whole. In the chapter which
follows, the same method is employed in the
estimate of the evolutionary account of the
world. In the tenth chapter an attempt is
made to distinguish human progress from the
prior stages of evolution, and to show that
it presupposes the existence of a self-conscious
or self-determining Principle as the ultimate
source and explanation of reality in all its
forms. The incidental discussion in this con-
nexion of the main thesis of Mr. Kidd's Social
Evolution — a thesis which I regard as demon-
strably false — will, I hope, help to throw into
relief the idealistic conception of human life
as the progressive evolution of self-conscious
reason. In the passage added to the last chap-
ter I have tried to explain why I cannot accept
the view that the Absolute may be super-
rational, and to indicate, more clearly than was
done in the former edition, what I regard as
the true relation of the human to the divine
spirit. I am only sorry that the plan of the
work does not allow me to enter more thor-
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION ix
oughly into the discussion of the last question,
which is perhaps the most pressing metaphysi-
cal problem of the present day.
The additional matter contained in this
edition will help to fill out the somewhat
meagre outline of Idealism given in the for-
mer edition. But I am still only too con-
scious of the inadequacy of the discussion.
The present work is merely the preparation
for a system of philosophy, and cannot but
share in the inevitable defects of every attempt
to present the results of philosophical reflec-
tion in a general form. At every step in its
onward march philosophy sets its foot upon
ashes beneath which fierce fires glow. Our
age, as Kant said of his own, is an "age of
criticism," when even the most cherished con-
victions must submit to the "free and open
scrutiny of reason"; and therefore any one who
apparently ignores or makes light of difficulties
which to some of his contemporaries seem of
a formidable character is apt to be charged
with superficiality, indifference, or dogmatism.
I do not deny that many of the objections
which have been urged against Idealism seem
X PREFACE TO THE SECOATD EDITION'
to me to be due mainly to misunderstanding,
but I think I may claim that I have in no
case been untrue to the free but austere spirit
of philosophy, — a spirit which is hostile to all
dogmatic utterances and acknowledges no
authority but reason. If Idealism is to become
but a new form of dogmatism, the life will go
out of it, and only an empty husk will be left
behind. We cannot even find an authoritative
basis for truth in what Mr. Balfour calls our
"ethical needs"; for these "needs" themselves
require justification. Nor can I believe that
any fruitful results can be reached by seeking
to reinstate the "primacy of practical reason,"
or by falling back upon the vague formula
that "life is more than thought." Reason
cannot be divided against itself without self-
contradiction, and the "life" which excludes
" thought " is so much the poorer for its ex-
clusiveness. Those who are fond of quoting
Goethe's
" Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und griin des Leben's goldner Baum,"
should remember that the words are put into
the mouth of Mephistopheles, "der Geist der
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi
stets verneint," when he is in a mocking
humour. To those who imagine, as Mr. Bal-
four in his Foundations of Belief seems to
do, that faith can be based upon a suicidal dis-
trust of reason, I would commend the words
of a great master in speculation, who is more
frequently decried than read.
"There is at present," says Hegel, "a strenu-
ous and almost impassioned effort to rescue
men, collectively and individually, from their
immersion in the life of sense, and to turn
their eyes to the stars ; as if they were entirely
forgetful of the divine, and were about to con-
tent themselves, like the worm, with dust and
water. Once they had a heaven, furnished
with a rich store of thoughts and images.
The significance of the actual lay in the thread
of light by which it was attached to heaven;
guided by this thread, the eye, instead of
dwelling upon what was immediately before it,
sped onward to the divine Reality, — to what
might be called the present yonder. The
eye of the soul had to be forced to look
towards the earth, and much time and effort
were needed to impart the clearness of heaven
xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
to the darkness and confusion in which the
sensible was enveloped. What seems to be
needed now is just the opposite: so firmly is
the soul attached to the earth, that an equal
force is required to lift it to the things above.
The spirit is so poor, that, like the traveller
in the desert, who thirsts for a simple draught
of water, it seems to long but for the bare
feeling of the divine to refresh it. When the
spirit can be satisfied with so little, we can
easily estimate how great has been its loss.
. . . But, in truth, spiritual force is to be
measured by its expression : its depth is only
so deep as it dares to expand and to lose
itself in its manifestations. When those who
claim that truth is revealed in an immediate
intuition pretend that they have penetrated
to the very heart of reality, and that they
alone are the exponents of a true and pious
philosophy, they are unaware that, instead of
offering up their desires to God, by their con-
tempt for precise and definite ideas they are
in reality the victim of their own arbitrary
conceits. Because they envelope their self-
consciousness in mist, and forego the use of
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
xiu
their intellect, they fondly imagine that they
are ' the beloved ' to whom God ' giveth wis-
dom in sleep.' It hardly needs to be said
that what comes to them in sleep are merely
dreams." ^
Philosophy, as I understand it, must refuse
all weak compromises. It is not a thing of
the chair, or even an instrument for preserving
the threatened interests of civilisation, but a
resolute and independent effort to grasp the
true nature of the real; and no one can
live in its spirit who is not willing to follow
the lead of ideas with docility and singleness
of purpose. This, however, does not mean
that it moves in a region of abstractions ; on
the contrary, it can be successful in its quest
for truth, only as it follows the maxim, " im Gan-
zen, Guten, Schonen resolut zu leben." In this
effort after comprehensiveness lies the special
difficulty of its problem. None of the phases
of human life can be ignored; yet each is so
complex in itself, while all are so intimately
related to one another, that it is hard to main-
tain the proper perspective and assign to each
♦ Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes, pp. 8, 9.
xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
its due importance. The task would, indeed,
be impracticable, were it not that the essence
of the past has been gathered up by succes-
sive philosophies and presented in the clear
medium of thought. At the present day, as
it seems to me, the main problem is to inter-
pret anew, by the aid of existing philosophies,
the purified results of science, the highest
intuitions of art, and the matured religious
consciousness in a comprehensive and self-
consistent way. The present volume is a
small contribution to the solution of that
problem.
To prevent misunderstanding, it may be as
well to add a few words as to the relation of
the first part of the work to the second.
The Christian ideal of life, as expressed by its'?
Founder, seems to me to require no adven-f
titious support, being in itself intrinsically)
rational; but we cannot say the same thin^
of every system of doctrine which claims to
be the sole representative of Christianity.
The precise degree of truth which is con-
tained in any given theological creed is a
matter to be determined by careful investiga-
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION- xv
tion, and would require rigorous and extended
treatment. In the last chapter and in various
passages throughout the work, I have indi-
cated, I hope with sufficient clearness, that in
my opinion the form in which the fundamental
ideas of Christianity are present in the popu-
lar consciousness is not adequate to the liv-
ing truth as it was expressed by the Master;
and one object which I had in view in writ-
ing the work was to disengage the essence of
Christianity from elements which for histori-
cal reasons have come to be regarded as in-
separable from it, though they are in reality
antagonistic to its spirit. On the other hand,
I do not sympathise with those who speak
of the development of Christian doctrine as
if it were nothing but an obscuration of primi-
tive Christianity; much less with those who
strangely hold that Christianity received its
ultimate formulation in the . Nicene creed.
These views logically lead to the acceptance
of the ideas of its Founder, or of the church,
on mere authority, and therefore contradict
the spirit and even the words of the Master.
The ideas of Jesus seem to me, I confess, so
xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
penetrative and profound that I am unable
to conceive of anything higher in principle;
but, like all fruitful ideas, their full meaning
can be grasped only when they are viewed in
the light of the whole development of human-
ity in all its phases. I cannot believe that
the Christian conception of life will ever be
transcended; but I should have to shut my
eyes to obvious facts, were I to deny that it
has undergone development and must undergo
further development as time goes on. For
development is not mere change, but the liv-
ing process by which a fruitful principle
reveals the breadth and depth of its power.
In this process the speculations of Christian
thinkers, from St. Paul downwards, have had
their place, and no mean or unimportant place;
and I do not think that a time will ever come
when philosophical reflection upon these high
themes shall have said its last word. Such
reflection must be fr^e and untrammelled, or
it is almost worthless. Philosophy, it is true,
is somewhat slow-footed, and to certain minds
its method is cold and distasteful, especially
when it is predominantly analytic, as Goethe
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xvii
complained that it is apt to be. I confess to
a certain sympathy with those who take this
view; but I think that what offends them is
not so much philosophy itself, as certain phi-
losophies which, from various causes, fall into
abstraction, and not least those which live in
the atmosphere of common sense or the rarer
atmosphere of the special sciences. It is be-
cause Idealism, as here set forth, seems to
me to express in terms of thought what in
religion and in the highest art is expressed
in terms of feeling and imagination, that I
venture to commend it to those who feel the
need, in an age of reflection, of being true to
the intellect as well as the heart. Surely it
is almost a truism that the only convincing
Apologia which in these days can be made
for a religion is to give adequate grounds for
holding it to be fundamentally rational. If
this thesis were really indefensible, there can
be little doubt that Christianity must some
day be added to the list of " creeds outworn."
The additional matter contained in this vol-
ume was recently given as part of a course
of lectures, delivered before the Theological
xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOJVD EDITION
Alumni Association of the university with
which I have the honour to be connected.
For the last few years it has been my duty
to give a short course of lectures on some
topic bearing upon the relations of philosophy
and theology. This lectureship was instituted
by Sir Sandford Fleming, C.M.G., the Chan-
cellor of Queen's University, and it is with
special pleasure that I take this public oppor-
tunity of thanking him for the stimulus which
it has given to my own studies. It is proper
to add that, as I am allowed perfect free-
dom in the choice of a subject, the lectures of
this session were written with a view to their
subsequent publication as part of this book,
should a second edition be called for. In their
preparation I have been indebted to Stallo's
Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics,
Herbert's Realistic Assumptions of Modern
Science, Paulsen's Introduction to Philosophy,
and one or two recent articles of Dr. Le
Conte. In a more indirect way I have re-
ceived great aid from Mr. Bradley's Appear-
ance and Reality, which seems to me the most
suggestive and original metaphysical work of
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xix
our day. While I agree with many of the criti-
cisms of defective theories made by these writers,
I am unable to accept their positive philosophy
as a whole, though I regard them as each in his
own way contributing to that general idealistic
view of the world, which, as I believe, is cer-
tain to survive by its intrinsic reasonableness.
I am happy to be able to supplement the
criticism of Transcendental Geometry con-
tained in Chapter VII by one or two passages
from a paper read before the Royal Society of
Canada by a distinguished mathematician. " It
is argued," says Professor N. F. Dupuis, " that
a four-dimensional space may possibly be pro-
jective into a figure of three dimensions." This
analogy " proves nothing whatever A plane
can be projected into a line only when the plane
to be projected is normal to the plane of pro-
jection. But it is impossible to know, from
anything in the nature of the projection itself,
whether the original was higher or of the same
dimensions as the projection. . . . Reasoning
from analogy, all that we are justified in saying
is, that, if there be such a thing as a four-
dimensional space, our solid figures may possi-
bly be projections from figures in that space,
XX PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION-
although we fail to conceive how such a projec-
tion could be effected. But we are certainly
not justified in assuming that there is a four-
dimensional space, unless we can first know
something about the nature of a figure in such
space. ... It is said that the mathematician
frequently works upon the assumption of a four-
dimensional space, as when he employs four
co-ordinates for the sake of homogeneity, and
in many similar operations. Now, in the oper-
ations here referred to, the mathematician is
employing the symbolic language of algebra, in
which the symbols stand for and denote quan-
tities or magnitudes and operations, which by
a circumlocution can always be expressed in
words. . . . To say that, because o^ denotes
the square on the line-segment x, and ^ denotes
the cube on the same, therefore x"" must denote
a four-dimensional figure of equal dimensions
on the line-segment, is no proof of anything,
unless we assume, to begin with, that every
homogeneous algebraic expression must have
an interpretation in real geometry, which is a
glaring example oi petitio principal
Queen's University, Kingston, Canada,
26th July, 1897.
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
The present work has grown out of lect-
ures recently delivered before the Philosophi-
cal Union of the University of California.
What is called Part I. is the expansion of a
lecture on "The Greek and Christian Ideals
of Life," and the remainder contains the sub-
stance of two lectures in defence of Idealism,
with a good deal of additional matter.
The historical matter of the first part does
not pretend to be a complete presentation of
the development of religion. It was my first
intention to attempt such a presentation, but
I soon found that it was impossible to com-
press so abundant a material within the limits
assigned to me, and I have therefore con-
fined myself to a statement of the general
course of religious development, with a more
particular consideration of the Greek and
Jewish ideals of life, as compared with the
xxii INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
Christian. In treating of these topics, I have
avoided all polemical discussion, aiming rather
to give the results of many years of reading
and reflection, than to occupy space with a
consideration of conflicting views. The chap-
ter on the Christian Ideal is based upon a
study of the synoptic gospels, as read in the
light of modern historical and philosophical
criticism. Here, above all, it seemed advisable
to avoid as far as possible all purely doc-
trinal topics, concentrating attention entirely
upon the conception of life which may be, as
I think, constructed from the sayings of Jesus
himself. I am by no means indifferent to the
development by theologians of the fundamental
ideas of the Founder of Christianity, but it
seems to me that the wonderful power and
persuasiveness of those ideas is most apparent
when they are exhibited in their naked purity.
It seems almost necessary to say a word
or two upon the use of the term " Idealism."
The objection has been raised that no school
of thought has an exclusive right to the title.
In answer to this objection perhaps I can-
not do better than try to explain why I
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxiii
think the term " Idealism " rfiay be fairly
employed to designate the general theory
which is here advocated.
I presume it will be admitted that the
originator of the philosophical doctrine of
Idealism was Plato, and that Plato conceived
of the first principle of all things as reason
(Noi)?), also maintaining that it is in virtue of
reason, as distinguished from sensible percep-
tion, that man obtains a knowledge of that
principle. Now, modern Idealism, as I under-
stand it, agrees with Plato on these two
points, and therefore its claim to the name
does not seem either arrogant or unreason-
able. No system has a right to call itself
" idealistic," in the Platonic sense, which does
not in some form accept the doctrine of
the rationality and knowability of the real.
Applying this test, we must exclude Agnosti-
cism, which denies that we can know the
real as it is in itself; Scepticism, which re-
fuses to admit that we can make any abso-
lute affirmation whatever, either positive or
negative ; and Sensationalism or Empiricism,
which finds in the sensible and its custom-
xxiv INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
ary modes of conjunction the only knowable
world. To call by the name of Idealism, as
is sometimes done, a doctrine which reduces
all knowable reality to individual states or
feelings, is surely an unwarrantable use of
the term.
If it is said that, interpreted in the wide
sense here given to it. Idealism must include
systems differing so greatly as those of Des-
cartes and Hegel, or of Spinoza and Lotze,
I entirely agree. The systems of Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel, and Lotze all seem to me to be forms
of Idealism, and the only question is how
far any of them can claim to be true to the
principle that "the real is rational." The
test, therefore, of an idealistic philosophy is
its ability to provide a system of ideas which
shall best harmonise with the principle upon
which Idealism is based; or, rather, the suc-
cess of an idealistic philosophy must consist
in its ability to prove that "the real is
rational," and that man is capable of knowing
it to be rational. I am very far from affirm-
ing that the hurried sketch of an idealistic
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxv
philosophy here presented fulfils that demand:
all that is attempted is to expose the irrele-
vancy of certain objections which have been
made from a misunderstanding of what Ideal-
ism affirms, and to indicate the main line of
thought which it must follow, and the main
conclusions to which it leads.
It may help to indicate the points in which
Idealism, as here presented, differs from some
of the great historical forms which it has
assumed, if I state wherein these seem to be
defective. In doing so, it will not be possi-
ble to enter into detail, or to support by rea-
soned proof the conclusions to which I have
been led. I shall therefore have to assume
a general acquaintance with the history of
philosophy on the part of the reader, and I
beg him to take the criticisms which I shall
make simply as results, the evidence for which
I hope to give in detail on another occasion.
Plato may be called the Father of Idealism,
though, no doubt, his doctrine was a develop-
ment from the Idealism implied in the Nou?
of Anaxagoras, and still more clearly in the
Socratic view of universals. How far, then,
xxvi /INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
may it be said that Plato was untrue to his
central idea of the rationality and knowability
of the real? His main defect, as it seems
to me, was in virtually opposing the real to
the actual or so-called "sensible." This
defect is obvious in his theory, or one of his
theories, that Art consists in the " imitation "
of ordinary " sensible " actuality. The simi-
lar defect in his Philosophy of Religion it
will not be necessary to exhibit here, as I
have dealt with it in the body of the work;
but a word may be said in regard to his
defective Theory of Knowledge. Just as
Plato at last rejects Art on the ground that
it only represents or imitates the "sensible,"
so he shows a decided tendency to separate
the universal from the particular. He does,
indeed, maintain that whatever is real must
be self-active ; but in separating reason, as
it exists in us, from sensible perception, he
virtually empties reason of all content, and
makes its objects pure abstractions.
The philosophy of Aristotle is beset by
similar defects, though in him the contrast
of the real or ideal and the actual is less
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxvii
rigid and is more obviously rfi process of
being transcended. Like Plato, he starts
from the " mimetic " theory of Art, but he
is led to make assertions which are contra-
dictory of his starting-point. Thus he
virtually asserts (i) that Art is such an in-
terpretation of the actual as serves to bring
out its deeper meaning, (2) that it gives rise
to a feeling of self-harmony, and (3) that its
object is spiritual forces in their deepest
reality. Yet, since he never abandoned the
view that Art is an " imitation " of the
sensible, it cannot be said that he attained to
a self-consistent theory. The reason for this
discrepancy comes to light in his Philosophy
of Religion, where he does not get beyond
the idea of God as a self-centred Being, and
is therefore forced to conceive of the world
as related to God in an external or arbitrary
way. Similarly, in his Theory of Knowledge,
he shrinks from the admission that the actual
is rational. There is always in things, as he
thinks, a recalcitrant element or "matter,"
which is the source of "contingency" or
"chance." It is not merely that human
xxviii mTRODUCTORY PREFACE
knowledge cannot completely comprehend
the actual, but the actual is itself imperfect,
and therefore the ideal " forms " as they
exist for the divine reason, being entirely
free from " matter," are essentially different
from the actual, in which " form " is always
more or less sunk in " matter."
When we pass from ancient to modern
philosophy, we find the same problem of the
reconciliation of the real and the actual con-
fronting us; but the antagonism seems more
difficult of solution, because the contrast of
the finite and the infinite has been sharpened
by the explicit claim of the individual to ac-
cept nothing which does not commend itself
to his reason.
By Descartes, two opposite methods are
employed, — the method of abstraction and
the method of definition. In the use of the
former, he is led to maintain that the only
permanent or unchanging attribute of body
is geometrical extension ; in employing the
latter, he assumes that there are a number
of real things, each having a definite or
limited amount of extension. Spinoza turns
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxix
the former view against the latter, pointing
out that there is nothing in the idea of pure
extension which entitles us to conceive of it
as broken up into parts. There can there-
fore, he argues, be no individual bodies, but
only a single substance without parts or
limits. Leibnitz, again, agrees with Spinoza
in holding that pure space has no limits,
but the inference he draws is that space is
not an attribute of real substance, but a pure
abstraction, derived from our experience of
the order which obtains among the confused
objects of sense. Thus all the spatial deter-
minations of things, as merely confused ideas,
have no existence from the point of view of
thought; a view which converts the actual
into pure illusion.
To Descartes it seemed that the human
mind cannot comprehend the ends which God
must be supposed to have in creation, and
therefore he maintained that we must give
up the vain search for final causes. " All
God's ends are hidden in the inscrutable abyss
of his wisdom." Descartes, however, tacitly
assumed that there are such ends, if only we
XXX INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
could discover them. Such a doctrine is mani-
festly self-contradictory, and therefore Spinoza
was only following out this side of the Car-
tesian doctrine to its lojijical result when he
denied final causes altogether. Leibnitz, on
the other hand, refused to admit that human
knowledge is limited to the orderly movements
of nature, as both Descartes and Spinoza as-
sumed, and therefore he maintained that, with-
out the idea of final cause, or activity directed
towards an end, we cannot explain the world
at all. We must therefore conceive of every
real being or " monad " as self-active and pur-
posive. Each " monad " is ever striving to
make explicit what is already contained ob-
scurely in it, and each " represents " the whole
world from its own point of view, so that all
"monads," without any actual connexion with
one another, harmonise in their perceptions.
Now (ci) it is a pure assumption that there
are absolutely independent "monads," in which
there already exists obscurely all that after-
wards comes to more or less clear expression ;
an assumption which has no better warrant
than the preconception that identity is incom-
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxi
patiblc with development. (Jb) It is equally an
assuinption that each monad " represents " the
world. On the l.eibnitzian hypothesis of
purely individual beings, each shut up within
itself, there can be no way of proving that
there is any world to " represent." The only
real individuality, as I should maintain, is that
of a being which knows itself because it
knows other beings, {c) When he comes to
explain the " harmony " of the monads with
one another, Leibnitz has to fall back upon
the idea of the selective activity of the divine
will. Out of all the possible worlds which
lay before the divine mind, that was chosen
which was the best on the whole. Here,
therefore, in the final result of the Leibnitz-
ian philosophy, we see the fundamental dis-
crepancy which vitiates his whole system.
The actual world after all is not rational,
but only as rational as God could make it;
a theory which leaves us no ground for in-
ferring the rationality of God at all, but on
the contrary presupposes an absolute limit
in the divine mind. Thus the Idealism of
Leibnitz, suggestive as it is, ultimately breaks
xxxii INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
down in contradiction. Can we, then, accept
the Critical Idealism of Kant ?
I cannot do more here than indicate the
defects in the philosophy of Kant which
prevent us from regarding it as final. Its
fundamental imperfection is the abstract op-
position of the empirical and the ideal, as if
the former were not implicitly the latter.
This opposition meets us first in his theory
of knowledge, in which a virtual contrast is
drawn between what is knowable and what
lies beyond the boundaries of knowledge.
Such a contrast is ultimately unmeaning.
The only reality by reference to which we
can criticise the knowable world of ordinary
experience is a reality which includes, though
it further elucidates, that world. Failing to
recognise this truth, the philosophy of Kant
is vexed by the perpetual recurrence of self-
contradiction in some new form, a self-con-
tradiction which is never finally transcended,
(i) In the Esthetic, Kant adopts the com-
promise, that space and time belong to the
subject, while individual things in space and
time are relative to an unknown object. But,
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxiii
as these individuals must enter into know-
ledge, he is compelled to regard the unknown
object as a mere blank, and such an object
cannot be contrasted with anything; it is, in
fact, merely the known w^orld stripped of its
determinateness and hypostatised. Kant is
here really criticising the known world by an
abstract phase of itself, and pronouncing the
former to be lower instead of higher than
the latter. The pure object can only be
regarded as higher than the known world,
in so far as the spatial and temporal world
is seen to be a lower form of the knowable
world. In this sense, no doubt, we may say
that the undefined object, or thing in itself,
indicates the world as it exists in idea, i.e,
the world as completely determined. (2) In
the Analytic, Kant takes another step in the
process by which he gives a higher meaning
to the thing in itself. The whole of the
knowable world is now shown to involve the
unifying activity of the knowing subject,
though with the reservation that the object
is conceived as the source of the undefined
"manifold of sense." But, in truth, there is
xxxiv INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
no undefined " manifold " for knowledge, and
hence the thing in itself is, even more pal-
pably than before, a magni nominis umbra,
(3) This is partly recognised by Kant him-
self when he goes on to consider the Un-
conditioned in its three forms, — the soul,
the world, and God. (a) His criticism of
Rational Psychology is virtually a recognition
of the truth, that the pure or unrelated sub-
ject is a mere fiction of abstraction. Yet he
does not draw the proper inference, that the
real subject exists only in and through its
relations to the object. Such a subject is
not mechanically determinable, being self-
conscious and self-active, but it does not
and could not exist, were not the system of
nature what it is. (b) Kant's criticism of
Rational Cosmology is valid, so far as it
points out that the reflective understanding
seeks to affirm one of two related terms as
if they were mutually exclusive; but Kant
does not see that the reconciliation of these
opposites is possible without recourse being
had to the unknowable region of " noumena."
(c) The criticism of Rational Theology is
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxv
valid as against the dualistic separation of
being and thought, the world and God; but
Kant's own solution is inadequate, because
he regards these oppositions as holding ab-
solutely within the sphere of the knowable,
whereas they are really oppositions which
carry their own refutation with them.
When he passes from the Theoretical to
the Practical Reason, Kant at last recognises
that the self-conscious subject is synthetic or
productive ; in other words, that here the
real object is not opposed to the subject as
something unintelligible, but, on the contrary,
is bound up with the very nature of the
subject. But the shadow of the " thing in
itself " still haunts him, and therefore he con-
ceives this objective world as merely an
ideal which demands realisation, but which
can never be realised. The way out of this
difficulty is to recognise that the ideal is the
real: that morality is not a mere "beyond,"
but is actually realised objectively in human
institutions, which themselves have perma-
nence only as they are in harmony with the
eternal nature of the world, or, in other
words, with the nature of God.
xxxvi INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
In the Critique of Judgment Kant makes
a final effort to overcome the duahsm with
which he started. In aesthetic feeHng he
finds a sort of unconscious testimony to the
unity of the phenomenal and the real, and in
organised beings he meets with a phase of
things which refuses to come under the head
either of the phenomenal or the noumenal.
Thus, " as by a side gesture," Kant points
beyond the abstractions of the sensible and
the supersensible to their actual concrete
unity; but the preconception with which he
started prevents him from identifying the
ideal and the real, and the most he can per-
suade himself to say is, that man is entitled
to a rational faith in God, freedom and im-
mortality, though these are objects which lie
beyond the range of his knowledge.
I should be sorry if what has been said
should suggest the idea that philosophy is
merely a series of brilliant failures, in which
each new thinker vainly strives to prove the
unprovable proposition, that the actual world
when properly understood is rational; rather,
as it seems to me, faith in the rationality of
INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxvii
the universe is the incentive and presupposi-
tion of all philosophical progress. Nor are
the failures of successive philosophies in any
case absolute; with each step in advance the
problem becomes clearer and more easy of
solution. How far the outline of Idealism
contained in the second part of this essay
is free from the objections which I have
tried to indicate, must be left for the reader
to determine. Perhaps I may venture to
say that, if it has any special value, that
value lies in the attempt to reconcile the
reality of individual things, and especially
the freedom and individuality of man, with
the fundamental principle of Idealism, that the
actual properly understood is a manifestation
in various degree of one self-conscious and
self-determining spiritual Being.
It would be difficult to enumerate all the
books to which I have been directly or in-
directly indebted, especially in the prepara-
tion of the first part of this essay; but I
must not omit to mention the various works
of the Master of Balliol, and of Professor
Pfleiderer, as well as Leopold Schmidt's Die
xxxviii INTRODUCTORY PREFACE
Ethik der alien Griechen, Mr. J ebb's Growth
and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry, with
the introductions in his edition of Sophocles,
Mr. Bosanquet's History of Esthetic, Dr.
Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the
Old Testament and Isaiah, Weber's System
der altsynagogalen palastinischen Theologie,
Schiirer's History of the fewish People, Keim's
fesus of Nazara, and Weizsacker's Das Apos-
tolische Zeitalter. In preparing the chapter
on the Christian Ideal I also received valu-
able assistance from my colleague, Professor
Macnaughton.
JOHN WATSON.
Queen's University, Kingston, Canada,
October i, 1896.
PART I
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE IN
RELATION TO THE GREEK AND
JEWISH IDEALS
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND
RELIGION
Christianity, as it issued fresh from the
mind of its founder, embodied a conception
of life which brought religion into indissol-
uble connexion with morality. The whole
human race was conceived of as in idea a
single spiritual organism, in which each man
gains his own perfection by self-conscious
identification with all the rest, and this com-
munity of life was held to be possible only
because man is identical in nature, though
not in person, with the one divine principle
which is manifested in all forms of being.
Man, it was therefore held, is unable to
come to unity with himself until he has
surrendered his whole being to the influence
UNIVERSITY
2 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
of the Holy Spirit. On this view there is
no basis for the moral ideal, and no possi-
bility of its realisation, apart from the relig-
ious ideal ; for man cannot accept as the
standard of his life an ideal which is not
in absolute harmony with the ultimate prin-
ciple of the universe ; nor, even if he did,
could his effort to realise it be anything but
the struggle with an alien power too strong
for him, — a struggle as futile as the attempt
of the Teutonic giant of the northern Saga
to lift the deep-seated earth from its foun-
dations. AiKrming that the life of man is
moral, just in so far as it is in harmony
with the divine nature, Christianity rests
upon the belief that "goodness is the nature
of things," and therefore it maintains that
evil, which it regards as positive and an-
tagonistic to good, exists in order to be
transcended, and must succumb to the all-
conquering power of goodness. Accordingly,
man's religious faith, which alone gives mean-
ing to his moral effort, is for the individual
the source of a joyous consciousness of unity
with himself, just because in overcoming the
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 3
world he overcomes his own lower self. It is
true that the evil which exists without and
within him can never be completely abol-
ished, but it is always in process of being
abolished; and therefore the Christian is en-
abled to preserve his optimism even in face
of the worst forms of evil.
No one will deny that in this triumphant
faith Jesus and his first followers lived, but
the objection may be raised, that the simple
faith of an earlier age is not possible for
us in these days, or at least not until the
doubts and perplexities, which the facts of
experience, the results of science, and the
deepened reflection of our time inevitably
suggest, have been fairly weighed and re-
solved. The wounds of reflection, it may be
said, are too deep to be healed by a child-
like faith in God and man, which rests rather
upon sentiment than upon rational evidence.
Many will go even further, and maintain that
morality not only can, but must, be divorced
from religion, and that in any case it does
not depend for its support upon any form
of religious belief.
4 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
Various reasons may be given for this sep-
aration of morality from religion, but they
will all be found to rest ultimately on the
assumption that it is not possible for man,
with his limited faculties and knowledge, to
get behind the veil of phenomena and grasp
reality as it is in itself. Thus the real be-
comes simply a name for that which lies
beyond the range of our finite vision, land
morality is therefore conceived as merely that
course of conduct which we must adopt in
order to make the most of the circumstances
in which we happen to be placed. So firm
a hold has this doctrine taken of the mod-
ern mind, that not merely those who reject
Christianity, but even some of its professed
champions, such as Mr. Balfour, regard moral
ideas as the only foundation upon which even
a " provisional theory " of life can be based ;
and we even find Browning, in one of his
moods, suggesting that the limitation of
knowledge is essential to the stability and
progress of morality.
An attempt will be made, in the second
part of this essay, to show that religion and
CONNEXION- OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 5
morality cannot be separated from each other
without the destruction of both, and that the
essential identity of the human and divine
natures, which is the central idea of Chris-
tianity, is the legitimate result of philosoph-
ical reflection. Meantime, it may be pointed
out that the whole history of man goes to
show that the connexion of morality with^
religion is so close that no advance in the
one has ever taken place without a corre-
sponding advance in the other. What is
distinctive of Christianity is not the union
of morality with religion, but the comprehen-
siveness of the principle upon which that
union is based. Every religion embodies the
highest ideal of a people, and the morality
which corresponds to it is the special form
in which that ideal is sought to be realised.
It follows that, when the religious ideal is
no longer an adequate expression of the
more developed consciousness of a people,
the moral ideal is also perceived to be in
need of revision. Thus the history of re-
ligion is inseparable from the history of
morality.
6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
That religion and morality have, as a mat-
ter of fact, always been connected in the
closest way, might be proved by a detailed
examination of the whole history of religion ;
but, as the proof would lead us too far
afield, one or two instances where the con-
nexion seems at first sight to be broken will
have to suffice.
(i) It has been maintained that in early
times religion had nothing to do with moral-
ity. That this view is untenable, it will
not be difficult to show. One of the earliest
forms of religion is the belief in a god or
totem, who is at once some being lower than
man, and yet is regarded as the ancestor of
a particular family or tribe. The theory of
Mr. Spencer, that this form of religion orig-
inated in the worship of ancestors and was
afterwards developed into totemism, cannot
be accepted, because it assumes that primi-
tive man was at a higher stage of devel-
opment than his descendants. If primitive
man was able to draw a clear distinction
between himself and lower forms of being, it
is inconceivable that his descendants should
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 7
have seen no fundamental distinction between
them. The truth seems to be that the
totem, which is ahnost always a plant, an
animal, or other natural object, is viewed as
divine because it forms the medium for that
haunting sense of something incomprehensi-
Sble and therefore divine, of which even early-
man is not entirely destitute. The totem is
. the form in which this feeling is objectified,
and it then becomes the vehicle for the ideal
union of the family or tribe. Thus the re-
ligion of early man is bound up with the
elementary moral ideas which rule his life.
The only social bond of which he can con-
ceive is that of the family or tribe. More-
over, the members of each family or tribe,
while they are closely related to one another,
are usually hostile to other families or tribes ;
and hence the morality which corresponds to
this phase of religion is based upon hatred of
all who fall beyond its limited range. Here,
therefore, the correspondence of religion and
morality is obvious: a religion in which the
object of worship is common to the members
of a certain stock naturally goes with a form
8 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
of morality which involves hatred of the
members of all other stocks. This hatred,
as it is inseparable from the moral ideas of
early man, finds its expression in his relig-
ion : and hence the totems of other families
or tribes are regarded as evil spirits, whose
baneful influence can be counteracted only by
cunning and magical spells.
(2) Perhaps it may be conceded that the
morality of early man is a faithful reflex of
his religion, but it may be held that their
connexion is dissolved when an advance has
been made to a more developed form of
society. It is easy to understand that, in
the earlier stages of human history, whatever
is sanctioned by religion should be blindly
followed ; but at a more advanced stage, when
reflection begins to claim its rights, it may
seem that progress in morality is rather
hindered than aided by religion. Was it
religion, it may be asked, which led in Greece
to the higher morality of the age of Pericles }
Would it not be truer to say that the relig-
ion of Greece was far behind its morality, and
offered a stubborn resistance to its progress.'*
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 9
" The Greek poets," as Mr. Max Muller says,
" had an instinctive aversion to anything ex-
cessive or monstrous, yet they would relate
of their gods what would make the most
savage of Red Indians creep and shudder."
Does not this fact clearly show that morality
advances independently of religion, and may
even be in conflict with it ?
The answer to this argument for the sepa-
ration of morality and religion is not far
to seek. The moral ideas of the age of
Pericles were no doubt antagonistic to the
older religious ideas preserved in Greek my-
thology, but they were in perfect harmony
with the religious ideas which really ruled
the best minds. The sanctity which attaches
to religion long preserves traditional forms of
belief from being openly assailed, but this is
quite consistent with a transformation of the
whole spirit of the earlier faith. In estimat-
ing the character of a religion we must in all
cases make allowance for the survival of
ideas which have lost their power and mean-
ing, and concentrate our attention upon the
new content which is preserved in the old
lO THE CHRIST/ AN- WEAL OF LIFE
earthen vessels. The application of this prin-
ciple, which is universal in its range, is in
the present case obvious. The Greek relig-
ion, like the religion of every progressive
people, was in continuous process of develop-
ment; but in its later phases it retained
elements which, though they were not ex-
plicitly rejected, occupied a very subordinate
place and were practically ignored. The real
religious beliefs of Greece in the age of
Pericles were embodied, not in its mythology,
but in the interpretation of the legends given
by Pindar, ^schylus, and Sophocles. When
this is once seen, it becomes obvious that
the religion of Greece, so far from being at
any time on a lower plane than its morality,,
was in all cases an expression of the highest
ideal of which the Greek was capable, an ideal
which he was seeking to realise in the various
forms of his social life.
(3) As the morality of Greece seems at
first sight to be in advance of its religion,
so it may appear that the religious ideal of
the Jews is entirely divorced from their moral
conceptions. The continual refrain of their
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 1 1
great prophets, especially those of the eighth
century, is that Israel, while she accepts the
lofty ideal of God revealed long ago to their
fathers, has, in practice, forsaken the Lord,
and is governed by the lowest ethical ideal.
When, however, we penetrate beneath the
form of the prophetic utterances, it becomes
obvious that the Jews are no exception to
the rule that the moral and religious ideas
of a people are the precise counterpart of
each other. The Jewish prophet refers the
higher conception of God, with which he
is himself inspired, to an original revelation
given by God to his people in the past,
while in truth that conception has been
gradually evolved out of a lower and cruder
form of faith. It is no doubt true that the
religious ideal upon which he insists is far
in advance of the moral ideas of his time,
but it is equally in advance of its religious
ideas. The mass of the Jewish people had
never freed themselves from the earlier idea
of a tribal god who was gracious to Israel
and terrible to her enemies; and hence their
morality was not in harmony with that ideal
12 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
of an absolutely holy God, " of purer eyes
than to behold iniquity," which had disclosed
itself in the higher consciousness of the
prophets. The religious conceptions of the
Jewish people as a whole were, therefore, in
entire harmony with their moral conceptions.
The contradiction is not between a pure and
lofty religion and a low moral ideal, but be-
tween the lower ideal, religious and moral,
beyond which the people had not advanced,
and the higher ideal embodied in the pro-
phetic utterances. It is no doubt a radical
distinction between the Greek and the Jew-
ish religion, that the former was simply an
idealised transcript of society as it actually
existed, while the latter, in its higher form,
was a picture of a righteous kingdom that
was placed in some far-off future; but this
distinction, important as it is, does not im-
ply that the Jewish religion created a di-
vorce between the ideal and the actual. For,
though the prophets continually speak of a
time when Israel shall " return " to the Lord,
this " return " is in reality an advance to a
higher form of religion and morality. The
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 13
ideal of the future is always conceived to
consist in a religious reformation which will
manifest itself in a moral regeneration; and
though, at a very late age, the hope of de-
liverance from outward and inward evil by
a natural process of development had been
lost, the Jewish mind never entirely aban-
doned its belief in the triumph of good and
the destruction of evil. It is thus evident
that throughout the whole history of Israel
religion was in the most intimate connexion
with morality.
Without seeking further to elaborate a
point which seems almost self-evident, it
may now be assumed that as a matter of
historical fact there never has been any real
antagonism between the religion and the
morality of a people, but, on the contrary,
the most intimate connexion. How, indeed,
should it be otherwise, since every religion
is an attempt to prevent the life of man
from dissolving into a chaos of fragments
by referring it to a principle which reduces
it to order and coherence ? There can be
no morality without the belief in a life higher
14 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
than sense and passion, and this beHef must
draw its support from faith in a divine prin-
ciple which ensures victory to the higher
life. We must not forget, however, that re-
ligion, like morality, ia a process which can
reach its goal only when the divine princi-
ple is so comprehensive that it explains the
whole of life, and leaves no difficulty un-
solved. Thus the religious and moral ideals
of a people, though they sum up all that
is best and noblest in its life, may fall far
short of an ultimate explanation. That nei-
ther the Greek nor the Jewish ideal had
reached a satisfactory conception of the true
nature and relation of God, man, and the
world, it will not be hard to show; and it
is therefore obvious that a higher synthesis
was imperatively demanded. But the impor-
tant question, it will be said, is not whether
Greece and Judea failed, — a proposition no
one is likely to dispute, — but whether Chris-
tianity is not also another, even if it be a
more splendid, failure. That this is the only
really important question for us may be at
once admitted, but it will hardly be denied
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 15
that a clear conception of what the Christian
ideal of life in its permanent essence is, and
wherein its superiority to other ideals con-
sists, is a necessary preparation for an intelli-
gent estimate of its claim to be the ultimate
ideal of life. To answer these questions thor-
oughly would involve a critical estimate of
all the religions of the world. In the pres-
ent essay, nothing so ambitious will be at-
tempted ; but perhaps a careful examination
and comparison of the Greek, Jewish, and
Christian ideals of life may be as convincing
as a wider survey.
Before entering upon this task it may help
to illustrate somewhat more fully the thesis
of the present chapter, that religion and
morality have always developed pari passu,
if we glance at the different paths which the
religious consciousness has followed among
different peoples, and the goal which they
have severally attained.
There seems reason to believe that all re-
ligions are either totemistic or have devel-
oped from totemism. We may, therefore,
regard this form of religion as, if not the
1 6 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
earliest, at least a very early form of religion.
Traces of it are found even in those nations
in which civilisation originated, and which
reached a much higher ideal of life, such as
the Chinese, the Indian, the Greek, and the
Jewish ; and indeed it is, as we have seen,
the natural form in which the ideal of the
family or the tribe is embodied, since that
ideal is based entirely upon the tie of blood.
We may thus regard totemism as the orig-
inal matrix from which all other forms of
religion were developed.
Totemism, however, gives way to a higher
form of religion, whenever a people advances
to anything like a settled form of society.
This second stage of religion, among all the
great nations of antiquity, except the Jewish,
whose religious development is unique, con-
sists in the worship of the divine as mani-
fested in those universal powers of nature —
the heavens, the sun, the winds, etc. —
which exercise so large an influence upon
the natural life of man, while yet they are
altogether beyond the control of his will.
Now it is easy to see how a people, who
CONNEXION OF MORALITY JM) )fELIGION \J
embodied their religious ideal in these great
natural powers, should also have a higher
moral ideal than races which never got beyond
the stage of totemism. Early man found in
his totem something higher than himself, but
the divinity he ascribed to it was not so much
in the object as in his own mind, or at least
it was only in the object in the sense that
nothing can exist which is not in some way
a manifestation of the divine. But, when the
divine is found in objects, which in force or
splendour surpass the weak physical energy
of man, the object selected is not altogether
inadequate as a symbol of that spiritual power
which man is feeling after; and as it is a
universal object, it is not an inappropriate
medium of the new ideal of a social unity
embracing a number of tribes allied in blood.
Thus the worship of the great powers of
nature supplies a religious ideal which helps
to unite all the members of allied tribes by
the bond of a common faith.
From the worship of these natural powers
the higher races advance to the stage of what
is ordinarily called polytheism. The transi-
1 8 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
tion is effected by the tendency to personify
those powers, and thus to bring them nearer
to man. It is at this point that a highly
significant divergence takes place, a diver-
gence which determines the direction in which
the subsequent development takes place. The
Egyptian and Indian do indeed personify the
gods, and thus for the time lift them out of
the lower rank of mere powers of nature,
but they do not humanise them. Hence their
polytheism takes the form of what Mr. Max
Miiller has called henotheism. The ten-
dency to unity, as well as multiplicity, is in
operation from the very dawn of religion.
Even races who have not advanced beyond
the primitive stage of totemism always have a
god who is regarded as higher than the other
totems, and in nature-worship the heavens is
naturally taken as the highest embodiment of
the divine. The tendency to unification is
therefore present from the first, but in the
henotheistic phase of polytheism it assumes
the peculiar form that each god becomes at
the time of worship the only one who is
present to the consciousness of the wor-
CONNEXION- OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 19
shipper, and hence to him are attributed for
the time being all the attributes which at
other times are distributed among a number
of gods. Now the importance of directing
attention to this tendency to henotheism is
that it explains why the Egyptian and Indian
religions developed, not into monotheism, but
into pantheism. The Greek religion, on the
other hand, not only personified but human-
ised the gods, and the clearly cut types thus
formed became a permanent possession of
the race. Hence, when the Greek finally
abandoned polytheism, his religion developed
into monotheism, not into pantheism ; and
so long as he remained polytheistic the in-
stinct for unity was satisfied by conceiving
of Zeus as the Father and Ruler of the gods,
or later as the representative of their united
will. Now, whether polytheism assumes the
henotheistic or the Greek form, it is obvious
that it presents an ideal which serves to unite
all the members of a nation by a common
worship. Nor does it seem fanciful to say
that polytheism is the natural form which
the religious ideal assumes among nations
20 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
which have been either formed into a single
political unit by a combination of tribes allied
in blood, or into a number of independent
units united only by the bonds of a common
descent and a common religion ; in any case,
it serves as the vehicle for the religious
ideal of peoples who cannot conceive of a
wider bond than that of the nation, or of the
nation as other than a political unity based
upon the natural tie of blood. Polytheism,
therefore, tended to perpetuate absolute dis-
tinctions of caste, or of master and slave,
and it naturally fostered a proud contempt
for all who belonged to another nation, and
therefore could not claim descent from the
gods of their country. Here, therefore, we
have another proof, if further proof were
needed, of the close correspondence between
religion and morality.
Polytheism, as has already been indicated,
develops either into pantheism, or into mon-
otheism. When it is of a henotheistic type,
as in the case of the Egyptians and Indians,
it naturally takes the former direction ; the
Greek religion, with its definitely characterised
CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 21
human types, as naturally follows the latter
direction. Both the Egyptian and the Hindu
are deficient in that poetic and artistic fac-
ulty, which is characteristic of the Greek,
and hence they never succeed in imparting
freedom and spirituality to their gods. With
the rise of reflection the tendency to unity,
which has already shown itself in their hen-
otheism, carries them beyond the tendency to
multiplicity, and as their gods have not been
conceived as endowed with intelligence and
will, they come to conceive of the divine
as a purely abstract being, of which nothing
can be said but that it is. To this relig-
ious ideal corresponds the ethical ideal. If
the divine nature is absolutely without dis-
tinction, man can become divine only by
the destruction of all that constitutes his
separate individuality. Thus pantheism leads
to the dissolution of all fixed moral distinc-
tions, and therefore to the denial of any
radical distinction between good and evil.
" Whatever is, is right." It can therefore
look with perfect calmness upon the wildest
aberrations of passion, and it leads in men
22 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
of a higher type to asceticism, only because
it regards passion as a form of that universal
illusion, or Maya, which supposes the finite
to be real.
The Greek religion, as the product of a
♦ race of poets and artists, whose nature re-
sponded gladly to all the divine beauty and
order of the world and of human life, could
not thus pass into a joyless pantheism.
Hence, under the influence of its poets and
philosophers, it developed into a monothe-
ism, in which the divine was conceived as
a single spiritual Being, endowed with in-
telligence and will. It is significant that
the Greeks only reached this stage, when
their narrow civic state had already revealed
its inadequacy, and when the bond of nation-
ality, which had been hitherto preserved by
loyalty to the national faith, had lost its
power. Thus the wider conception of re-
• ligion was reflected in the virtual dissolution
of civic and national morality. It is time, how-
ever, to consider more carefully the strength
and weakness of the Greek ideal of life.
This will be done in the following chapter.
CHAPTER II
THE GREEK IDEAL
Starting, like the other Indo-European
peoples, from the worship of the great powers
of nature, the Greeks developed a form of
religion which is the highest type of poly-
theism. This religion was the embodiment
of that love of beauty, truth, and freedom,
which is distinctive of the Greek spirit. In
the Homeric poems, the transition from the
worship of nature has already been made.
The gods are not only personified, but hu-
manised. Turning his eyes to the expanse
of heaven, the early Greek expressed his
consciousness of the divine in the majestic
form of Zeus, whose nod shook the whole
heavens and the earth. The physical splen-
dour of the sun became for him the radi-
ant form of Apollo, shooting down gleaming
arrows from his silver bow. Thus was grad-
23
24 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
ually formed, not without the addition of
new elements and even new gods, sometimes
borrowed from Semitic sources but invari-
ably transmuted into higher form, the pan-
theon of glorious shapes which filled the
imagination of Homer. The divine nature
is conceived as manifested in distinct types,
each possessed of intelligence and will, and
embodied in human forms, which exhibit the
utmost perfection of physical beauty. These
gracious forms only differ from man in the
perfection of their spiritual and physical qual-
ities, and in their freedom from decay and
death. Thus the Greek expresses in his re-
ligion his ideal of perfect manhood as the
complete harmony of soul and body. Were
it possible to secure and retain for ever physi-
cal, intellectual, and moral beauty, the ideal
of the early Greek would be realised. That
ideal, however, was one which did not sepa-
rate the good of the individual from the
good of society. Achilles is distinguished,
not merely by splendid physical beauty,
powers, and eloquence, but by his burning
indignation against wrong: and, when he
THE GREEK IDEAL
25
carries his resentment against Agamemnon to
an extreme which threatens the destruction
of the whole Greek host, he is punished by
an untimely death. So Zeus is the imper-
sonation of a wise and just ruler, Apollo
the divine type of the poetic and religious
mind, Athena the ideal of valour directed
and kept in check by wise self-restraint.
The Greek gods are thus the expression of
the Greek ideal of a society in which the
highest natural qualities are valued as a
means to the realisation of a free community.
The Homeric king is not a despot, but the
guardian of the sacred customs on which
the rights of his subjects are based. He
does nothing without consulting his council
of elders, and the public assembly consists
of the whole body of citizens. The world of
the gods is an idealised counterpart of the
heroic form of society; and, in fact, the
early Greek could only conceive of the di-
vine as a community of gods, living in each
other's society, and sympathising with the
fortunes of men.
The Homeric gods are thus the embodi-
26 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
ment of that free and joyous existence which
was the ideal of life of the early Greek. The
Greek religion is essentially a religion of
this world ; for, though the Greek believed in a
shadowy realm of the dead, his heart was set
upon the beauty, the joy, the sunlight of this
world, and he looked forward to the future life,
without dread, indeed, but with a melancholy
resignation. With his intrepid intellect he
had a clear and sober apprehension of the
shortness of life and the limitations of hu-
manity, but he had not yet lost the fresh
exuberance of the youth of the world; and
in devotion to his country and faith in divine
justice, he found all that was needed to satisfy
his highest desires. Entirely free from a
slavish dread of the gods, he came into their
presence with joyous confidence. He did not
forget that his destiny lay on the knees of the
gods, but, having perfect faith in their justice,
he did not prostrate himself before them with
the abject submission of the Asiatic.
The charm of this conception of life has
never failed to exercise a peculiar fascination,
and indeed it contains elements which must
THE GREEK IDEAL 2/
be embodied in the modern ideal, though these
must be transmuted into a higher form. Its
fundamental defect is that it can be approxi-
mately realised only by those who possess
exceptional gifts of nature and fortune, and
that it conceives of the highest life as simply
the expansion of the natural life. The Greek
was destitute of that profound consciousness
of the Infinite which was characteristic of the
Jewish religion, and therefore of the wide
interval between man as he is and as he ought
to be. No doubt in his deepest nature man
is identical with God, but his deepest nature
reveals itself only when he turns against his
immediate self. Of this truth the Greek had
no proper apprehension, and therefore he
never got beyond the ideal of a perfect natural
life, in which the spiritual and natural were
in harmony with each other, and of a State
in which the individual citizen found his com-
plete satisfaction in devotion to the common
weal. That this limited ideal could not be
permanently satisfactory is shown by the grad-
ual emergence of a deeper conception of life,
which as time went on came more and more
2S THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
into the foreground, until it finally led, in the
poets and philosophers, to a complete trans-
formation of the earlier belief.
Though the Greek religion is the highest
form of polytheism, it has, like all polytheistic
religions, the fundamental defect of having
no adequate idea of the unity and spirituality
of the divine nature. This defect is, in the
Greek form of polytheism, made all the more
prominent by the individuality ascribed to the
gods. The gods, as embodied in sensible
human form, are limited in space and time,
and hence their relation to man is inadequately
conceived. There can be no proper compre-
hension of the unity and spirituality of the
divine nature, so long as the divine is con-
ceived as merely the perfection of the natural.
Beings who are regarded as limited in space
and time cannot be the source of all reality,
and their relation to man can only be external.
Hence the Greek gods themselves were con-
ceived as having come into existence at a
definite time, and their action upon men was
represented as their actual sensible appearance
to their favourites. Athena presents herself
THE GREEK IDEAL 29
in human shape to Achilles, and persuades
him to abandon his purpose of slaying Aga-
memnon ; Aphrodite hides Paris in a cloud
when he flees from the spear of Menelaus.
Thus the life of man is represented as directly
interfered with by the gods, so that man seems
to be merely a puppet in their hands. This
defect is inseparable from the pictorial form
of the religion, which necessarily represents
the spiritual as on the same plane with the
natural.
Even in Homer, however, there are ele-
ments which show that the Greek religion
must ultimately accomplish its own euthana-
sia. There was in it from the first a latent
contradiction which could not fail to mani-
fest itself openly at a later time. The very
concreteness and humanity of the gods was
at variance with the instinct for unity, which
could neither be suppressed nor reconciled
with the polytheistic basis of the traditional
faith. To a certain extent that instinct was
satisfied by the conception of Zeus as the
" Father of gods and men," whose authority,
though it is not absolute, is higher than that
30 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
of the other gods. But this conception could
only be temporarily satisfactory; and, indeed,
even in Homer, there is already indicated a
deeper sort of unity, which is inconsistent
with this mere unity of the pictorial imagina-
tion. For Homer, Hke his successors, was
strongly impressed with the belief that the
life of man is subject to divine control, and
that his destiny is determined in accordance
with absolute principles of justice. Paris
violates the sacred bond which united host
and guest, and punishment falls upon him-
self and all his kindred. The Trojans break
the oath to which they had solemnly sworn,
and draw down upon themselves the punish-
ment which they deserved. There was thus
an absolute faith in the righteous judgments
of the gods. Such a faith could not be
reconciled with the caprice, partiality, and
lawlessness, which were ascribed to the gods
in their individual character. For they are
represented as not only violating accepted
moral laws, but as at variance with one an-
other, and guilty of gross favouritism. This
unreconciled antagonism was partly due to
THE GREEK IDEAL 3 1
the survival of earlier and less elevated ideas
of the divine nature, to which custom and
tradition lent an adventitious sanctity, but it
was also inseparable from the anthropomor-
phism of the Greek religion. The conflict
of competing ideas is especially apparent in
the conception of Zeus, whose character as
an individual is widely different from what
has been called his official character as the
exponent of the common will of the gods.
Sometimes Homer speaks of Zeus as reward-
ing or punishing men; sometimes this power
is vested in the gods as a whole. In the
Iliad Zeus is called the guardian of oaths,
while yet Agamemnon speaks of the suffer-
ings inflicted by " the gods " upon those who
swear falsely. In the Odyssey there are even
passages in which an abrupt transition is
made from the gods to Zeus, as when Telema-
chus invokes the gods, " If perchance Zeus
will punish the wickedness of the suitors
(I. 378)." This tendency to conceive of Zeus
as the sole administrator of justice, which
is manifest even in the Homeric poems,
becomes more and more pronounced, so that
32 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
in the period between Homer and the Per-
sian wars, it is almost invariably Zeus who
is spoken of as the guardian of moral order.
Thus, without any explicit rejection of poly-
theism, there was a continual tendency to
transcend it. Isocrates, who is the spokes-
man, not of philosophers like Anaxagoras,
but of the educated common sense of his
time, explains the poetic representation of
Zeus as king of the gods by the natural
tendency to figure the divine government
after the fashion of an earthly state. Besides
this explicit criticism of the popular faith,
the striving after a higher idea of the divine
is shown in the reverential feeling which
led the worshipper, in calling upon one of
the gods to add, " or by whatever name thou
mayst desire to be called." But nothing
shows more clearly the tendency to go be-
yond the earlier mode of thought than the
indefinite terms by which the divine power
is designated by the prose writers. They
still, no doubt, speak of " the gods," but they
usually employ such expressions as " the
divine," "the god," ''the daemonic," when they
THE GREEK IDEAL 33
have to speak of the moral government of
the world.
There is thus in the development of Greek
thought a clearly marked tendency to unity,
manifesting itself, on the one hand, in the
conception of Zeus as the exponent of the
common will of the gods ; and, on the other
hand, in the conception of "something divine,"
which was not definitely embodied in the
gods of the popular faith. It has been held
that the Greek conception of a " fate," to
which the gods as well as men are subject,
indicates a certain pantheistic tendency in
the Greek mind, which was only kept in
check by the opposite tendency to conceive
of the divine as personal. This view seems
to imply that every attempt to transcend
particularism and anthropomorphism indicates
a movement towards pantheism. It seems
more natural to say that the movement be-
yond polytheism may be either towards pan-
theism or monotheism, and that the special
direction which the movement takes will be
determined by the peculiar form of the poly-
theism which forms the starting-point. In
34 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the Greek mind, which humanised the gods,
the reaction against particularism was nat-
urally towards monotheism. The idea of
"fate "was therefore conceived, not as a mere
external necessity, but as a rational law, and
the gods were regarded as subject to it only
in the sense that even the divine nature was
not beyond law.
The more firmly the conception of a moral
government of the world was grasped, the
clearer was the apprehension of the apparent
exceptions to it. In Homer and Hesiod, faith
in divine justice assumes the simple form of
a belief that the pious man is directly re-
warded by a happy and fortunate life. In the
Odyssey Ulysses says, that when a king is
pious and just, the land is fruitful and the
people prosperous. Hesiod declares that on
the just man, who keeps his oath, Zeus be-
stows more renown and a fairer posterity than
on the unjust. It was a popular belief that
impiety never fails to be punished by blind-
ness, madness, or death. To the objection
that the innocent were sometimes unfortunate,
it was answered that they were involved in
THE GREEK IDEAL 35
the misfortunes of the wicked. The similar
difficulty that the wicked are often prosperous
was met by saying that divine justice, though
it may be delayed, always overtakes them in
the end. The same idea is expressed in the
well-known saying of an unknown poet, that
" the mills of the gods grind slow but very
small." A further modification of the idea
of divine retribution was that, though the
wicked man may himself escape, misfortune is
sure to fall upon his posterity. We also find
among the Greeks a growing scepticism of
the reality of divine justice, but the best
minds surmounted this scepticism by a deeper
view of the relation between the divine and
human, — a view which was most fully devel-
oped by i^schylus and Sophocles. In these
poets, in fact, the current religious and moral
ideas were so deepened as to result in an
ethical monotheism, though they never con-
sciously surrendered the polytheism of the
popular faith.
^schylus, the poet of the men who fought
at Marathon and Salamis, has unbounded faith
in the gods of his country. At the same time
36 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
his plastic imagination works freely on the
mass of legendary material which he found
ready to his hand, and into the old bottles
he pours the new wine of a higher conception
of the divine nature and the destiny of man.
This transforming process is exhibited in his
reconstruction of the myth of Prometheus.
Zeus, the representative of intelligence and
order, when he has dethroned Chronos, finds
on the earth the miserable race of men. Their
champion, the Titan Prometheus, steals " the
flashing fire, mother of all arts," and conveys
it to men in a hollow reed. For his insolence
and deceit he must undergo proportional pun-
ishment, until he has repented and submitted
to the sovereign will of Zeus. Suffering but
intensifies his proud and rebellious spirit, and
it is only after long ages of punishment, and
through the influence of Heracles, the god-
like man, whose life has been spent in toil for
others, that he is at last induced to give up
his purpose of revenge. There seems little
doubt that here, as elsewhere, ^schylus seeks
to show that the world is governed with abso-
lute justice, and that the true lesson of life is
THE GREEK IDEAL 37
to submit to the divine will. When man sets
up his own rebellious will against the Ruler
of the universe, he must expect divine pun-
ishment. The triple Fates and the mindful
Erinyes jealously guard the sanctity of the
primal ties. The doom of Troy is the divine
punishment for violated hospitality. Aga-
memnon perishes because his hands are
stained with his daughter's blood, ^schy-
lus explicitly rejects the old doctrine of the
envy of the gods : it is sinful rebellion against
the divine law which brings punishment in
its train. The sins of the fathers are no doubt
visited upon the children, but the curse never
falls upon those whose hands are pure. The
house of Atreus seems the prey of a malign,
inevitable fate, but only because in each new
representative there is a frenzy of wickedness,
an infatuate hardening of the heart. When,
therefore, a pure scion of this accursed stock
appears, the curse is removed: he suffers in-
deed, but his end is peace; and at last he
returns in honour to reign over the house
which he has cleansed. Thus the Erinyes
become the Eumenides: the stern law of jus-
38 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
tice turns at last a gracious face to those who
fear and honour the gods.
But, while ^schylus conceives of Zeus as
the divine representative of the whole order
of society, the divine law is still conceived by
him as an external law to which man must
submit. Sophocles, on the other hand, while
he endorses the conception of a divine law of
justice, seeks to show that this law operates
in man as the law of his own reason. CEdipus
unwittingly violates the sacred bond of the
family, and punishment inevitably follows; but
his punishment is also the. recoil upon himself
of his defiant self-assertion, and therefore, when
he recognises that his suffering was not un-
merited, he is at last reconciled to the divine
will and comes to harmony with himself. Yet
even in Sophocles the limitation of the Greek
ideal of life is manifest; for, though he views
suffering as a means of purification from self-
assertion and overweening pride, he does not
reach the conception that in self-sacrifice the
true nature of man is revealed ; the highest
point to which he attains is the conception
that man can reach happiness only by vol-
THE GREEK IDEAL 39
untary submission to the divine will, which
is also the law of his own reason. It is only
in Euripides that we find something like an
anticipation of the Christian idea that self-
realisation is attained through self-sacrifice.
In Euripides, however, this result is reached
by a surrender of his faith in the divine justice.
Man, he seems to say, is capable of heroic
self-sacrifice at the prompting of natural affec-
tion, but this is the law of human nature, not
of the divine nature. Thus in him morality is
divorced from religion, and therefore there is
over all his work the sadness which inevitably
follows from a sceptical distrust of the exist-
ence of any objective principle of goodness.
This division of religion and morality could
not be final, and hence the attempts of Plato
and Aristotle to restore the broken harmony
by a higher conception of the divine nature.
Though the transformation of the Greek
religion by the great poets of Greece was a
continuous movement towards a more spiritual
view of the divine nature, it did not involve
an explicit breach with polytheism, except
in the case of Euripides. /Eschylus and
40 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
Sophocles, though they virtually affirm the
unity and spirituality of the divine will, are
not in conscious antagonism to the popular
faith. Such an antagonism was, however, in-
evitable, so soon as philosophical reflection
arose, and proceeded to ask how far mythology
could be accepted as historical truth. The
question could not be raised without pro-
ducing a temporary scepticism. The first
philosophers were therefore almost entirely
negative in their attitude towards the tradi-
tional faith.''^ It was only with Socrates and
his followers that a perception of the rational
element implied in mythology was appre-
hended. Hence, while Plato is severe in his
condemnation of the unworthy representa-
tions of the divine nature in Homer and
Hesiod, he recognises that the imaginative
form which that faith assumed was a neces-
sary stage in the education of the race and
of the individual. Poetry is a " lie," no
doubt, but it is a " noble lie." Plato is
here seeking to separate the form from the
* "Whether there are gods or not I cannot tell," said Protagoras;
" life is too short for such obscure problems."
THE GREEK WEAL 4 1
matter, the spirit from the earthly tabernacle
in which it is enclosed. The divine, as he
contends, is not immoral, malicious, or de-
ceitful. What he is really seeking to show is
that the divine nature transcends the sensible,
and is the ultimate source of all truth, beauty,
and goodness. Plato does not, in the first
instance, reject the pictorial representations
of the popular imagination, which he no doubt
regarded as inseparable from the poetic garb
endeared to the Greek heart by the hallowing
associations of ages; but he insists that the
gods must not be portrayed as violating the
sanctities of moral law, as inflicting evil upon
man from envy, or as appearing in lower
forms. The gods are absolutely good, truth-
ful, and beautiful, and therefore are eternally
and unchangeably the same. It is obvious,
however, that Plato does not at bottom believe
that the divine nature can be represented in
sensible form at all, and hence we cannot be
surprised that, with his imperfect theory of
art as an " imitation " of sensible reality, the
more he reflects upon the distorting influence
of all imaginative representations of the divine
42 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
nature, the more dissatisfied he becomes, until
at last he concludes, though with great re-
luctance, that there is no place for the poet
in that ideal city of which he dreamed such
beautiful, philosophical dreams. The prepara-
tion for this extreme view is already made
in the contention that poetry is a "lie," even
if it is a " noble lie," and in the denial that
evil can in any sense proceed from God, or
that the divine can ever be manifested except
in its own absolutely perfect form. For the
representation of what is false, though it may
be necessary as an educational device, has no
ultimate justification ; the Manichean separa-
tion of evil from the divine is at the same time
the exclusion of God from the actual world ;
and the only perfect form of the divine must
be the supersensible. Thus, by the natural
development of Greek thought, Plato is at
last led to maintain a spiritual monotheism, re-
sembling in its main features the conception
of God, which by an independent path was
reached by the Hebrew people in the later
stages of their history. In his revolt from
the pictorial representations of the divine, he
THE GREEK IDEAL
43
is led to conceive of God as dwelling in a
transcendent region beyond the actual world,
and this, though a necessary step in the
evolution of the religious consciousness, is
not the last word of religion. The Infinite
cannot be severed from the finite, God from
man, without becoming itself finite, unless we
are prepared to regard the finite as pure illu-
sion. Nor does Aristotle, though he protests
against the Platonic separation of the real
and the ideal, succeed in avoiding the rock
on which Plato's philosophy of religion makes
shipwreck; for he too conceives of God as a
purely contemplative being, alone with Him-
self, and self-sufficient in His isolation, who
acts upon the world only as the sculptor hews
and shapes the block of marble, which can
never be quite divested of its material gross-
ness.
If this is at all a fair account of the the-
ology of Plato and Aristotle, we must admit
that their solutions are not final. The nega-
tive movement by which the creations of art
and the products of the religious conscious-
ness in its imaginative form have been re-
44 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
jected, and the first unquestioning faith in
the outward manifestation of reason in nature
and human life "sickHed o'er with the pale
cast of thought," is only imperfectly supple-
mented by a positive movement in which
the real is virtually declared to lie beyond
the actual. For, so long as the world of
our experience is regarded as containing an
irrational element, the human spirit must
either fall back baffled upon the phenomenal,
or seek to fly beyond the " flaming walls of
the world " by some other organ than reason.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Plato
and Aristotle were succeeded, on the one
hand by the individualistic philosophies of
the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, and on
the other hand by the Neo-platonists and
Gnostics, who in despair of reason took ref-
uge in a supposed "immediate intuition" or
" ecstasy."
CHAPTER III
THE JEWISH IDEAL
The religion of Greece, as we have seen,
developed from a humanistic polytheism,
through the influence of its great poets and
philosophers, into monotheism. Even in its
polytheistic stage there was a marked ten-
dency towards unity, but this tendency was
not realised until Plato affirmed the unity
and spirituality of the divine nature. The
religion of Israel reached the same point by
a more direct path. There seems to be
clear evidence that Israel had passed from
a primitive totemism to the worship of
great powers of nature before the captivity
in Egypt. Evidence of the former stage is
to be found in the household gods or tera-
phim, and of the latter in the early concep-
tion of Jehovah as the God of the tempest,
who had His seat on Mount Sinai. What is
45
46 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
unique in the development of the religion
of Israel is that it passed without a break
from the worship of nature, to the worship
of Jehovah, without going through the in-
termediate stage of polytheism. This pecul-
iarity arose from the whole character and
history of the people. Unlike the Greeks,
the people of Israel had no artistic faculty,
and what moved them in nature was not
the beauty of the world, but the tremendous
energy manifested in its more terrible aspects.
The divine power they saw manifested in the
thunder, and in the tempest which broke on
the mountains of Sinai and rolled across the
desert. This great and terrible Lord was,
from the time of their deliverance from ser-
vitude in Egypt under their great leader
Moses, the common object of worship of
all the tribes. Thus even before their politi-
cal union, the behef in Jehovah was the bond
which kept them united as a people, and
after the loss of their national independence
it kept them separate and distinct from all
other nations. It is true that, after their
settlement in Canaan, there was a continual
THE JEWISH IDEAL 47
struggle between those who worshipped only
Jehovah and those who saw no harm in com-
bining His worship with that of other gods;
but the great name of Jehovah never failed
to reunite all the tribes in their struggle for
independence, and so to prevent them from
being merged in the surrounding tide of
Canaanite life. And when the monarchy was
founded, and the religion of Jehovah became
the national religion, the intense conscious-
ness of their great past and the anticipation
of a still greater future made it impossible
that their faith in Jehovah should ever be
completely lost.
Up to the time of the great prophets, Jeho-
vah was conceived only as the greatest of
all gods, the God of Israel, who went before
them in battle and led them to victory, and
who was pledged to aid His people in their
time of need. Thus the religious faith of
Israel was bound up with a belief in the
permanence of its nationality. It was the
work of the great prophets to free the con-
ception of Jehovah from its exclusively na-
tional character. In effecting this change.
48 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
they were but developing what was impHcit
in the conception from the first. He who
was at first conceived to be manifested in the
great and terrible aspects of nature came to
be regarded as raised entirely above nature,
and the God of battles was transformed into
the God of holiness. Hence, though Jeho-
vah is still conceived as standing in a more
intimate relation to Israel than to other na-
tions, it is maintained that this relation can
continue only if Israel is pre-eminent in
righteousness. " You only have I known of
all the families of the earth, therefore I will
punish you for all your iniquities." Israel
must no longer regard herself as secure of
the divine favour, irrespective of her conduct:
if she continues to dishonour Jehovah, her
nationality will be destroyed. This is the
idea which Isaiah insists upon with such
fervour and power. Even when the king-
doms of Judah and Israel were in the full
tide of prosperity, the prophet discovered in
them the seeds of decay. The upper class
was materialised, and the lower class full of
superstition and practical unbelief. The re-
THE JEWISH IDEAL 49
suit was inevitable : their cities will be wasted
and the land left desolate, though, as the
prophet believes, there will always be a rem-
nant to form the nucleus of a new and re-
generate nation. Jehovah will employ the
great heathen powers as an instrument for
the punishment of Israel. A people who
fail in the practice of justice and mercy
cannot hope for the favour of a righteous
and holy God.
It is obvious that in this new conception
the old idea of Jehovah as the God only of
Israel has been virtually transcended. Ac-
cordingly the prophets deny that there is any
God but Jehovah, and, therefore, declare that
He has relations to other nations as well as
to Israel. He governs the world, not in the
interests of one nation only, but in the in-
terests of righteousness. He is the Creator
of all things, and the Ruler of the universe,
though He has specially revealed Himself to
Israel.
In the later prophets a further advance is
made. Jehovah is not only the God of na-
tions, but He is directly related to the indi-
' 01
UNIVERSITY
cauforh^
50 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
vidual soul. This advance followed as a
natural consequence of the conception of
God as a God of righteousness. A God who
is beyond nature, and is essentially spiritual,
cannot be permanently conceived as related
only to the nation. Holiness depends upon
the inner state of the soul, and therefore the
relation of man to God is a personal one.
Hence Jeremiah and Ezekiel assert personal
responsibility. " Every one shall die for his
own iniquity," says Jeremiah ; and Ezekiel
declares that " the soul that sinneth, it shall
die."
With the conception of God as absolutely
holy, and the demand for perfect purity of
heart and conduct, there arose the conscious-
ness of the opposition between the finite and
the infinite, the actual and the ideal. Thus
the religion of Israel, unlike the Greek, is a
religion of prophecy. The prophet, main-
taining that man was originally made "a little
lower than God," and contrasting with this
perfect relation his present sinfulness, looks
forward to a time when the unity with God
which has been lost shall be restored.
THE JEWISH IDEAL 5 1
The higher conception of religion and mo-
rality taught by the prophets was not imme-
diately accepted by the people, though the
successive reforms narrated in the histories
show that it had commended itself to the
best minds. It was only with the exile that
the people obtained a firm grasp of the idea
that they were the custodians of the one
true religion. This conviction finds its most
perfect expression in the second Isaiah, who
declares that the peculiar mission of Israel is
to make known the true God to the heathen.
There will always be a faithful "remnant"
entirely devoted to the service of Jehovah,
who, even if they suffer for the sins of others,
will be the means of leading many to right-
eousness.
With the cessation of the fresh spring of
prophetic utterance, the Jewish conception of
God tended to become more and more ab-
stract. The way was prepared for this change
by the formation, under Ezra and Nehemiah,
of a sort of theocratic commonwealth, a com-
pact and homogeneous little state, devoted
mainly to the worship of Jehovah. With the
52 THE CHRtSTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
establishment of this community, the separa-
tion of Israel from the rest of the world,
and the subsequent worship of the letter of
scripture, were inevitable. Jerusalem became
the universally acknowledged centre of the
religion and worship of Jehovah, to which
from time to time Israelites from all parts
of the earth flocked to offer sacrifice in the
temple. Though this centralisation of sacri-
ficial worship was a bond of union to the
despised race, it was not effective as a na-
tional bond, while on the other hand it was
hostile to the wider bond of humanity. Indi-
rectly, the centralisation of worship in Jeru-
salem gave rise to the institution of the
synagogue. This change had important con-
sequences. Religion became no longer merely
national, but individual. The most beauti-
ful flower of this personal religion was its
sacred lyrical poetry. Many of the psalms,
most of which are admitted to belong to the
centuries after the exile, express the pure and
pious feeling called forth by the reading of
the Law and the prophets in the synagogue.
There was, however, another consequence of
THE JEWISH IDEAL 53
the change. The importance of the sacer-
dotal cultus in Jerusalem receded into the
background. The Levite became of less con-
sequence than the Rabbi skilled in the Law.
Thus the Law came to be the centre of all
the thoughts of the pious Israelite. The
whole education of the people, in the family,
the school, and the synagogue, was intended
to make them a "people of the law." No
longer did Jehovah reveal His will through
the direct inspiration of a prophet. A final
revelation of Himself had been given in the
Law, and the sole duty of His people was to
find out by a careful examination of the words
of Scripture what had been revealed once
for all. Shut out from the direct conscious-
ness of God, the conception of His nature
became more and more abstract. He was
"the Holy One," the "Absolute," raised to
an infinite distance above the world and man,
even to name whom was profane. Religion
thus came to be regarded, not as the com-
munion of man with God, but as the right
relation of man before God. The Law took
the place formerly occupied by God. It is
54 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
identified with the eternal wisdom, which
arose from the unknown depths of the divine
nature ; it is the image or daughter of God,
which was before the creation of the world,
and in the contemplation of which the divine
life is passed. As expressing the whole nature
of God, the Law is the ultimate revelation,
valid for all time and even for eternity; it is
the true food of the soul, the tree of life, the
source of all knowledge. The essence of re-
ligion, therefore, consists in love of the Law,
as exhibited in its study and in observance of
its precepts. Thus the Law at once unites
Israel to Jehovah, and separates her from
the whole heathen world, which by its rejec-
tion of the Law at Sinai adopted a hostile
attitude toward Jehovah.
As conformity to the Law was the standard
and source of all righteousness, God was
bound by the terms of the covenant entered
into with Israel to recompense the pious
Israelite in proportion to his observance of
its precepts. As this proportion was not
always observed, it was held that at some
future time the balance would be restored.
THE JEWISH IDEAL 55
The whole religious life thus revolved around
these two poles, — conformity to the Law and
the hope of future reward. Under such a
purely external conception, religion and mo-
rality were emptied of life. For that free
and spontaneous devotion to goodness which
is of the very essence of the spiritual life, was
substituted the mechanical observance of rules
imposed by external authority. The Law was
to be obeyed, not because it expressed the
true nature of man, but because it had been
ordained by Him who had power to reward
and punish. As its various precepts were
not seen to flow from any principle, the
moral life was conceived to consist in strict
obedience to every detail of the Law. Where
all was equally imposed by God, every require-
ment of the Law had the same absolute claim
to obedience. Thus there was, in St. Paul's
phrase, " a zeal for God, but not according to
knowledge." To the conscientious Israelite,
life was made an intolerable burden, while the
rigid adherent of the Law could hardly escape
from a proud and boastful self-righteousness.
The logical consequences of this legalistic
56 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
religion and morality are most clearly seen
in the life and theory of the Pharisees, who
carried out to its extreme the spirit which
rules the whole post-exilic period. It has
sometimes been said that the Pharisees were
the patriotic party, as contrasted with the Sad-
ducees, who were always ready to sacrifice their
country and even the national religion from
motives of worldly prudence. It would seem,
however, that the main spring of action in the
Pharisees was not love of country, but love of
the Law. And by the Law they meant, not
so much the written as the " oral " law, which
had been gradually formed by the labours of
the scribes. " The Pharisees," says Josephus,
" have imposed upon the people many laws
taken from the tradition of the fathers, which
are not written in the Law of Moses." Such
an extension of the Law was inevitable. A law
accepted upon authority necessarily gives rise
to casuistry, the moment an attempt is made
to make it a complete guide of life; and the
precedents thus established naturally come to
be regarded as an unfolding of what is already
contained in the law. What distinguished
THE JEWISH IDEAL 57
the Pharisees was their claim to peculiar
strictness in the interpretation and observance
of the Law, or rather of the " traditions of the
fathers," and especially of the laws relating to
cleanness and uncleanness. They regarded
themselves as the true Israel, in distinction
not only from the heathen, but from the less
scrupulous of their own countrymen. That ex-
cessive zeal for the letter of the Law was their
ruling motive seems to be proved by their
attitude to successive dynasties. During the
Maccabean conflict, they adopted the popular
cause; but when the insurrection proved suc-
cessful, and the Asmoneans showed indiffer-
ence to the Law, the Pharisees turned against
them. Their zeal for the Law won the people
to their side, and henceforth they completely
ruled the public life. Even the direction of
public worship was in the hands of the Phari-
sees, though the priestly Sadducees were
nominally the head of the Sanhedrim. The
Sadducees were the wealthy, aristocratic party,
and therefore belonged mainly to the priest-
hood, which, as far back as the Persian period,
governed the Jewish state and formed its
58 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
nobility. They differed from the Pharisees
in acknowledging only the Pentateuch and
the prophets as binding, to the exclusion of
the whole mass of legal decisions which had
been established by the Pharisaic scribes.
The Sadducees held fast by the older faith,
mainly because they were averse to the big-
otry and exclusiveness of the Pharisees. As
a matter of fact their position as men of
affairs, and their contact with foreign culture,
had made them comparatively indifferent to
the religion of their fathers.
The Messianic hopes of the Pharisees
were the natural complement of their legal-
ism. They believed that, in terms of the
covenant made at Sinai, God was bound to
reward those who obeyed the Law, and there-
fore that the political and individual evils to
which the saints were subjected could only
be temporary. They therefore looked for-
ward to a time when the whole world would
be united under the sceptre of Israel into a
universal monarchy, over which the Messiah
should be ruler and judge. In this glorious
era, the pious individual would also be re-
THE JEWISH IDEAL 59
warded. The general belief was in a "res-
urrection of the just," though some also
expected a general resurrection, when the
wicked should be punished and the right-
eous rewarded. The reign of the saints was
to be ushered in by the direct intervention
of God, when the rule of Satan and his
angels should give place to the rule of God
and His anointed. The Messiah, the King
of Israel, chosen by God from all eternity,
should come down from heaven, where He
was already in communion with God, and
establish upon earth the reign of righteous-
ness and peace. While this was the form
which the Messianic hope assumed in the
minds of the scribes and Pharisees, there
were not wanting men of a finer type, in
whose minds it was accompanied by the ex-
pectation of the triumph of good over evil,
and of the deliverance of man from the evil
of his own heart. A consideration of the atti-
tude of Jesus toward the Law and the Mes-
sianic hopes of his time will help to bring
out the distinctive features of the Christian,
as distinguished from the Jewish, ideal of life.
CHAPTER IV
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
The first step toward the overthrow of
the whole set of legaHstic ideas, character-
istic of later Judaism, was taken by John
the Baptist. It is true that the Baptist did
not break with the legal piety of his time,
but his watchword, " Repent, for the king-
dom of heaven is at hand," was in essence
a denial of the principle upon which legal-
ism rested. For, according to that principle,
the delay of the kingdom of heaven was not
due to the unrighteousness of Israel, but to
the inscrutable designs of providence, which
permitted Satan with his host of angels to
afflict the saints and deprive them of the
reward to which their diligent observance
of the Law entitled them. The reign of the
saints could only come with the miraculous
advent of the Messiah. The Baptist, on the
60
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 6 1
other hand, found the explanation of the
delay in the manifestation of the kingdom
of heaven in the sinfulness of men, not in
the inscrutable designs of God. Hence he
called for repentance, and, by demanding
from every one a confession of sin, he vir-
tually denied that the Pharisees were justi-
fied in regarding themselves as righteous.
The evils from which men suffered were
not due to the malevolence of evil spirits,
but to their own corrupt hearts. No doubt
the blessings of the kingdom of heaven
could only come from above, but only those
need hope to participate in them who were
conscious of the evil of their own hearts, and
sought the righteousness of God. The king-
dom of heaven was at hand, and the neces-
sary preparation for it was a "change of
mind."
The effect of this message upon the Phari-
sees could only be to arouse their indigna-
tion and rancour; for, in demanding from
all a confession of sin and a change of heart,
the Baptist struck a powerful blow at their
self-righteousness and spiritual pride; and,
62 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
in virtually affirming that righteousness did
not consist in the scrupulous observance of
the Law, he denied the very foundation upon
which they based their expectation of future
reward. To those finer spirits, on the other
hand, who were painfully conscious of their
own weakness and sinfulness, the preaching
of the Baptist came as a welcome solution
of their spiritual perplexities, and helped to
restore their faith in the justice of God.
Among those who at once discerned the
significance of the Baptist's summons to
repentance was Jesus, who submitted to bap-
tism, as a sign of his belief in the funda-
mental truth of John's doctrine, and, indeed,
in the beginning of his ministry, adopted as
his own the watchword, " Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand." But, while
Jesus thus endorsed the new way of right-
eousness, it soon became evident that he
gave to it another and a deeper meaning.
In the Beatitudes this new point of view is
already indicated. Repentance is by the Bap-
tist conceived as the moral preparation for a
deliverance from evil which is still future;
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 63
by Jesus it is regarded as consisting in a
personal consciousness of the infinite love of
God. Thus the moral revolution is insepar-
able from the religious. The kingdom of
heaven is already present in the souls of
those who have an absolute faith in the
goodness of God, a faith which finds expres-
sion in unselfish devotion to their fellow-men,
and which rejoices in revilings and persecu-
tions as the process through which goodness
gradually overcomes evil.
The ideal of life which is indicated in the
Beatitudes was an entire reversal of the cur-
rent conception, especially as it had been
formulated in the teaching of the scribes
and Pharisees. Even the method of exposi-
tion was new; for, whereas the accepted
teachers in all cases sought to deduce con-
clusions from the letter of scripture, by a
laborious and ingenious system of exegesis,
Jesus threw out his ideas in the form of
aphorisms, which shone by their own light.
And if his method was thus free and un-
conventional, how much more revolutionary
seemed to be the substance of his teaching!
64 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
Ignoring the authority of the Law and the
prophets, he seemed to assert an independent
basis for the new truth which he proclaimed,
and, in making righteousness consist entirely
in a spiritual regeneration, he apparently
despised the whole body of truth which
had been revealed by God himself to Moses
and the prophets. It was, therefore, charged
against him that, in abrogating the Law, he
was destroying the very foundation of relig-
ion and morality. The objection is one
which never fails to be made when the princi-
ple of external authority is attacked. When
Socrates sought to trace back the customary
religious and moral ideas of his time to their
principle, he was accused of denying the gods
of his country, and corrupting the minds of
the youth ; and the similar charge was brought
against St. Paul, that in destroying the au-
thority of the Law, he was virtually the
advocate of licentiousness and impiety. The
answer of Jesus was, that so far from abro-
gating the Mosaic law he '' fulfilled " it ; i,e,
brought to light the principle which gave it
its binding force. The Law, as he contends,
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 65
is of eternal obligation, and cannot be abol-
ished so long as heaven and earth endure.
" Think not that I came to destroy the law
and the prophets; I came not to destroy but
to fulfil." The new way of life does not
abolish the Law, but shows that it cannot be
abolished. On the other hand, the old way
of basing it upon external authority and cus-
tom destroys its very foundation. The source
of all morality is to be found, not in the ex-
ternal act, but in the inner spirit from which
the act proceeds, and when this is once seen
it becomes evident that the legalism of the
scribes and Pharisees is antagonistic to any
genuine morality.
The Law which is thus declared to be eter-
nal and indestructible is the Law in its moral,
as distinguished from its ceremonial, part.
It is the Law as interpreted from the point
of view of the prophets. This distinction of
the ethical from the ceremonial part of the
Law is of itself an important advance. It is
a distinction which could have no meaning
for the scribes and Pharisees, who had no
criterion by which to separate between what
66 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
was based upon the unchanging nature of
man and what held good only under special
circumstances and at a given stage in the
development of humanity. For, as we have
seen, a law which is accepted purely upon
authority, is all equally binding. But this is
not all ; for not only does Jesus distinguish
the ethical from the ceremonial part of the
Law, but he goes back beyond the traditional
morality of his day to the fundamental moral
ideas expressed in the Law and the prophets,
and disengages the principle upon which
they rest. Thus he is enabled to grasp the
Law in its purity and universality, and to
contrast it with the unspiritual interpretations
of the scribes.
Take, e.g. the command : " Thou shalt
not kill." The scribes, in accordance with
their usual conception of morality as a sys-
tem of external rewards and punishments,
add the gloss: "Whosoever shall kill, shall
be in danger of the judgment." The sanc-
tion of the Law is thus made to consist,
not in the sacredness of human life, but in
the fear of punishment here or hereafter.
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 6/
The principle upon which the Law is based
is therefore destroyed. The appeal is to a
purely selfish motive, and with that appeal
the whole moral aspect of the Law disap-
pears. Jesus, on the other hand, insists that
the command rests upon the purely moral
principle of love, and that the Law is vio-
lated in its essence, not merely in this ex-
treme expression of hatred, but in hatred in
all its forms, or rather in that evil disposi-
tion which is the source of all hatred. The
outward act has no moral meaning in itself;
murder is not the mere taking away of life,
but the taking away of life from hatred to
one's fellow-man ; and therefore anger, want
of sympathy, and contempt, as springing from
the same corrupt source, the unloving heart,
are worthy of the most extreme punishment,
the "hell of fire." Thus the Law is seen to
exclude the whole range of malevolent pas-
sions and even the faintest taint of hatred.
Jesus was therefore justified in saying that
the righteousness of his followers must "ex-
ceed the righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees," and "exceed" it not merely in
68 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
degree, but in kind. The distinction, in fact,
is infinite. The scribes, in conceiving moral-
ity to consist solely in conformity to an ex-
ternal rule, irrespective of the motive from
which the act proceeded, virtually did away
with the whole principle of morality; and, by
their reduction of morality to a system of
external rewards and punishments, they vio-
lated the very essence of morality, which rests
upon the universal principle of brotherly love.
To this it is added that morality is the pre-
requisite of all true worship: no genuine re-
ligious act can be performed by the man who
nourishes in his heart a grudge against his
neighbour. Lastly, Jesus traces back the
ethical principle of love to one's neighbour to
a fundamental identity in the nature of God
and man : hatred brings upon the man who
nourishes it its own punishment, just because
he is violating what is his own real self; and
hence, though he may escape external punish-
ment, he cannot possibly escape the most ter-
rible of all punishments, — that which consists
in the loss of the blessedness which springs
from the consciousness of unity with God.
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 69
The same principle is applied * to other
moral laws; in all cases Jesus traces back
the command to its source in the nature of
man as identical in nature with God. At
the close of his treatment of this theme he
expands the principle of morality so as to
embrace all men, and he elevates it into in-
finity. The Law had said: "Thou shalt not
hate thy brother in thine heart, thou shalt
not be angry with the children of thy peo-
ple, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself
(Lev. xix. 17, 18)." From this precept came
the characteristic Pharisaic deduction : " Thou
shalt be angry with the stranger, thou shalt
hate thine enemies." Thus national hatred
was not only condoned, but was actually made
a principle of action, and surrounded with all
the sanctity and solemnity of a divine com-
mand. Now even Plato reached the concep-
tion that " it was better to suffer than to do
injustice." Jesus goes altogether beyond this
negative attitude. "Love your enemies, and
pray for them that persecute you." This is,
indeed, a " new commandment." It is the
very core of Christian ethics — that which
70 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
gives it its superiority, and makes it incon-
ceivable that its principle can ever be tran-
scended. Moreover, this supreme ethical
principle is immediately connected with the
distinctively Christian idea of God, as the
"Father" of men, whose love has absolutely
no limits. As a symbol of this all-embracing
love, he " maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and the good, and sendeth his rain on
the just and the unjust." " Therefore," con-
cludes Jesus, "Ye shall be perfect as your
heavenly Father is perfect"; ix, man, finite
and sinful as he is, is yet capable of living a
divine life, of repeating on an infinitesimal
scale the large all-embracing charity of his
heavenly " Father."
Jesus has thus vindicated the " Law " as an
expression of the fundamental moral ideas
which constitute the soul of society. It is
evident, however, that in tracing back those
ideas to their source, he has raised them to a
plane which was never dreamt of before ; in
other words, he has virtually abolished the
conception of man and God upon which the
Jewish religion rested. At the same time
THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL
71
the new way of life is not an absolute change,
but a development. The moral laws won
for humanity by the toil and suffering of the
Jewish people were not lost, though they
underwent expansion and specification by
the appreciation of the principle of universal
brotherhood. Of this double relation Jesus
was perfectly conscious. Hence, while on
the one hand he affirms the eternal obliga-
tion of the Law, he asserts with equal deci-
sion that the new principle which he brought
to light separates the new world from the
old as by an impassable barrier. " From the
days of John the Baptist until now the king-
dom of heaven suffereth violence, and men
of violence take it by force. For all the
prophets and the Law prophesied until John."
The '* kingdom of heaven," as he implies, is
for the first time revealed as it is, i.e. as
actually present, and men are pressing into
it now that it has been revealed. The
prophets spoke only of a future kingdom,
living merely in the hope that somehow and
at some time God would bring about the
reign of righteousness upon the earth. Now
72 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
men live in the glad consciousness that the
reign of righteousness, which to the prophets
seemed afar off, has actually begun. Hence
Jesus speaks of the Baptist as having reached
a higher stage of truth than the prophets.
" Verily I say unto you, among them that
are born of women, there hath not arisen a
greater than John the Baptist." But he
immediately adds: "Yet he that is but little
in the kingdom of heaven is greater than
he." So radical is the change introduced by
the new revelation that it lifts those who
accept it to a higher plane of truth than the
Baptist, who still conceived of the kingdom
of heaven as future, and who had not dis-
covered the central truth that the kingdom
of heaven was capable of being realised the
moment it was discovered to consist in an
unlimited love to God and man. Thus Jesus
was perfectly aware that old things had passed
away, and all things had become new. Nor
had he any doubt of the absolute truth of his
own doctrine. " All things have been deliv-
ered unto me of my Father; and no one
knoweth the Son, save the Father, neither
THE CHRISTIAN ibS^t ' yt^
doth any know the Father save the Son, and
he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal
him." The revelation which he had to make
to the world was an entirely new revelation.
" Verily I say unto you that many prophets
and righteous men have earnestly desired to
see what ye see, and have not seen it, and
to hear what ye hear and have not heard it."
Yet, while he declares that his gospel is new,
Jesus has too much insight into the pre-
sentiment of the truth, which half consciously
worked in the highest minds of the past, not to
be aware that the principle which he brought
into the full light of day had been vaguely
felt by religious men in all ages. The princi-
ple of evolution of which so much is now said
has never been applied more precisely to the
development of religious ideas than by Jesus.
The ideas of Jesus are all so closely
connected, flowing as they do from a single
principle, that it is impossible to treat of one
aspect of his teaching without some reference
to the other aspects. Hence it has not been
possible to speak of his attitude towards the
Law without to some extent anticipating what
74 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
has now to be said in connexion with his atti-
tude to the Messianic hopes of his country-
men. In what follows it will be advisable to
consider this question in relation to (i) the
general' view of the scribes, (2) the higher view,
rather felt than clearly formulated, by men of a
more spiritual type. The points of agreement
between these two classes of mind lay in the
conviction that the world had been given over
to wicked men and to the machinations of
the devil and his angels ; but that a time was
coming when this state of things would be
completely reversed, and a reign of righteous-
ness set up upon the earth under the Messiah.
But while there was a general agreement on
these points, there was a radical difference in
the conception of " righteousness," and as a
consequence in the conception of the Messiah.
Let us look first at the general view of the
scribes and Pharisees.
(i) As we have already seen, their dissatis-
faction with the evil of the present was closely
connected with their legalistic ideas. To them
it seemed that, by the terms of the covenant
made between God and His own peculiar peo-
THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL
75
pie, Israel had a right to national indepen-
dence, and even to sovereignty over all nations,
as a reward for her devotion to Jehovah; or
at least she was entitled to expect this reward
when she fully implemented her part of the
contract. Starting from this legal point of
view, the evil of the present was explained as
flowing from a failure to fulfil the terms of the
covenant. God "does not exercise His king-
ship to its full extent, but on the contrary ex-
poses His people to the heathen world-powers,
to chastise them for their sins." By " sins " the
Pharisees, of course, meant a want of conform-
ity to the Law. Because of this disobedience,
pain and sorrow prevailed, and especially
those mental diseases which were directly re-
ferred to demoniac possession. For the same
reason Israel groaned under the iron despot-
ism of Rome. It is obvious that the future
kingdom of God, which was to be ushered in
by the Messiah, could only be conceived as
consisting in the absence of pain and suffering,
in dominion over the heathen, and in the rule
of the saints, i.e. of those who were rigid in
the practice of the Law.
*j6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
Now the Pharisaic ideal of a kingdom of
heaven, consisting in the absence of pain and
suffering, in earthly sovereignty, and in the
rule of Pharisaic saints, was one which Jesus
could not possibly endorse. Denying in limine
the whole conception upon which it rested, he
could admit neither the Pharisaic conception
of the present, nor their vulgar ideal of the
future. The legalistic idea of a contract be-
tween God and Israel, the terms of which
were that the pious Israelite who conformed
to the letter of the Law had a right to freedom
from suffering and to external sovereignty, was
for him a profoundly immoral and irreligious
conception ; and the assumption that the gov-
ernment of God was not just and righteous
was to him blasphemous. The world had
never ceased to be the object of God's loving
care, and therefore the coming of the king-
dom of God could not mean a sudden and
miraculous manifestation of His power. The
spirit of God was present in the world of
nature and in the consciousness of man. The
obstacle to the reign of righteousness was in
the blindness and sin of man, not in God. It
THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL jj
was want of faith, and the sin which inevitably
flowed from it, that explained the suffering
and evil of the present.
We have seen how Jesus opposes to the
legalism of the Pharisees his conception of a
righteousness which consists in active efforts
for the moral purification of the individual
soul, a purification which could proceed only
from love to God and man. Absolute faith
in the goodness of God was the key-note of
all his teaching. But if, as Jesus maintained,
the essential nature of God is love for all
creatures, and especially for man, how did he
explain the existence of suffering and evil.?
How was the righteous government of God
to be reconciled with the apparent triumph
of evil } The optimism which shuts its
eyes to the misery and wickedness of the
world was to him a false and delusive creed.
The wretchedness and evil of man were only
too palpable. Jesus faced the facts with a
perfectly clear consciousness of their force.
No one was ever more sensitive to the suf-
ferings of others than he; but he refused to
see in suffering a proof of the indifference or
78 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAI OF LIFE
injustice of God. His explanation of suffer-
ing was that it is a necessary step in the
whole process by which man is lifted to a
higher plane. To the Pharisees suffering
was the result of the want of obedience to the
Law, and therefore it seemed to them that,
with the advent of the Messiah, and the de-
struction of all who transgressed the Law, suf-
fering would disappear. Jesus also believes
in the gradual disappearance of suffering, but
he refuses to connect it with external conform-
ity to the Law. The destruction of suffering
must come from the efforts of loving hearts,
not from any miraculous change in the con-
ditions of human life. Suffering is not, or
at least not merely, a punishment for sin, but
a divinely ordained means for calling out the
higher energies of the soul.
As in the view of the Pharisees suffering
was the result of transgression of the Law, so
also was the oppression of Israel by heathen
powers. Hence they believed that, when the
Messiah should come, the independence of
Israel would be restored, and the whole world
should come under the sway of " the saints."
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
79
Now, it has been maintained that Jesus, as
an ardent patriot, shared in the hopes of his
countrymen, and looked forward to the future
sovereignty of Israel. This view cannot be
accepted. For (a) even if Jesus cherished the
hope of the external sovereignty of Israel,
he could not possibly accept the ideal of the
Pharisees. An Israel in which the whole gov-
ernment should be in the hands of " saints "
of the Pharisaic type was something too dread-
ful to contemplate. No doubt Jesus was in-
tensely patriotic in the sense of desiring that
Israel should be the leader in the spiritual
regeneration of the world, and it is probable
that in the earlier days of his ministry he
cherished the hope of persuading his coun-
trymen to accept the new revelation. But,
whether this was so or not, it is manifest
that he came to see that the deep-rooted
prejudices and externalism of the mass of the
people, and the malignant opposition of the
ruling classes, were too strong to be over-
come. Recognising this clearly, it was im-
possible for him to believe that Israel should
be raised to a supremacy over the heathen.
So THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
(b) Belief in the future rule of Israel was in-
separably connected in the Jewish mind with
the advent of a Messiah, who should ascend
the throne of David and rule over a subject
world. When, therefore, Jesus admitted to
his disciples that the Messiah had already
come in his own person, he plainly acknow-
ledged that he had abandoned the whole set
of ideas upon which the future political su-
premacy of Israel was based. The kingdom
of heaven had already come, and it was not
an earthly but a spiritual kingdom. In this
kingdom he who was least was greatest, and
indeed the spiritual power of the true Messiah
— the power of loving service — was contrasted
with the earthly power which consisted in rul-
ing over a subject people, [c] While main-
taining that the kingdom of heaven has
already come, Jesus counsels submission to
the established power of Rome, showing that
in his mind the rule of righteousness was
not dependent upon the political supremacy
of Israel. His answer to the mother of Zebe-
dee's children has been strangely cited as a
proof that he looked forward to the earthly
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 8 1
rule of the "saints." Nothing, in fact, could
more clearly show that, in his mind, the king-
dom of heaven was entirely independent of
earthly power. To the naive materialism of
the good woman, who desired that her two
sons should sit, one on his right hand and
the other on his left, he answered: "Can ye
be baptised with the baptism wherewith I
have to be baptised?" In other words, he de-
clares rank in the kingdom of heaven to con-
sist in enlarged possibilities of loving service,
not in outward pomp and sovereignty. And
he significantly adds: "To sit on my right
hand or on my left is not mine to give," i.e,
the future is in the hands of God. The atti-
tude of Jesus, as we may be sure, was one of
such absolute trust in God, that he was quite
prepared to accept the continued political de-
pendence of Israel, if that were the will of
God; and indeed towards the end of his life
he seems to have seen perfectly clearly that
the popular conception of the Messiah, which,
in spite of all his efforts to turn it into a new
channel, had taken firm hold upon the public
mind, and was encouraged for their own ends
82 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
by the Pharisees, could only result in the com-
plete subjugation of Israel and the destruction
of the temple service. In any case, the king-
dom of heaven was so purely spiritual in its
character that it could not possibly be con-
nected in the mind of Jesus with the political
supremacy of Israel. No doubt he wisely
limited his efforts to "the lost sheep of the
house of Israel," but this limitation was never
in his mind connected with a belief in the
future political sovereignty or even indepen-
dence of Israel, but only with his ardent de-
sire to secure the spiritual salvation of his
countrymen, and through their instrumental-
ity of the whole human race. The bitter-
ness and hatred of the Pharisees, and of all
who cherished ambitious hopes for the future
of Israel, is largely explained by -the way in
which Jesus trampled upon all their cher-
ished prejudices and political expectations.
Not only did he tear off the garb of self-
righteousness which they had wrapped around
them ; not only did he denounce them as ene-
mies of true religion and morality; but he
counselled what they regarded as a tame sub-
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 83
mission to the oppressive heathen power of
Rome. Such a profound antagonism of ideals
could only have one issue : the worldly material
ideal must triumph for a time, only to be ulti-
mately overcome by the intrinsically stronger
ideal. Of this issue Jesus was clearly con-
scious, and therefore he warned his disciples
that he would be the victim of the unholy rage
of the rulers and their blind followers ; while
yet he announced with absolute confidence
that the good cause would ultimately prevail.
His optimism was therefore so profound and
so robust, that even the worst expression of
hatred and rancour did not destroy his faith.
The passionate hatred with which he was pur-
sued to the death was interpreted by him as a
perversion of the inextinguishable desire for
goodness which is inseparable from the con-
sciousness of self. " Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do," is the expres-
sion of an optimism which rises triumphant
over even the worst form of evil.
(2) The attitude of Jesus towards those
pious souls who were disturbed by the ap-
parent triumph of evil without and within,
§4 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
was very different from the stern and un-
compromising antagonism which he displayed
toward the Pharisees. What disturbed the
ordinary pious Jew was, not so much the
prosperity of the wicked, as the prosper-
ity of the heathen. Israel was the chosen
people of God, and yet the " sinners of the
Gentiles," Le, the unholy nations, who had
left Jehovah and given themselves up to
idolatry and unclean rites, seemed to receive
greater favour from God than the people
whom He had chosen and who had remained
faithful to Him. His special perplexity was
the apparent injustice of God. A partial
answer was no doubt found in the belief
that God was chastising His people for their
sins, and that He made use of the heathen,
wicked as they were, as the instruments of
His will. But the pious Jew never aban-
doned the belief that in some far-off time
the favour of God would be restored to
Israel, and that an awful day of reckoning
would come for the heathen.
Now, Jesus does not absolutely deny that
there is a certain justification in the con-
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
85
trast between the heathen and the Jew. To
him also, the moral wickedness of the heathen
and the grossness of their religious concep-
tions seem palpable; but he entirely denies
the assumption that the Jew has any claim
upon God to be freed from oppression, or
that there is anything incompatible with the
justice of God in the political oppression
of Israel. The first assumption arises from
conceiving of righteousness as obedience to
an external law; the second, from a mis-
apprehension of the true end of life. Hence
he seeks to show that the course of the
world is not to be explained on the legal-
istic supposition of an external system of
rewards and punishments, or of a special
claim on the part of the Jew to the favour
of God. The righteous man has no right
to an external reward for his righteousness;
the Jew has no claim as a Jew to the
favour of God. For the end of human life
is not external prosperity, but the develop-
ment of the spirit. When this is once ad-
mitted, the difficulty arising from the apparent
triumph of the wicked assumes an entirely
S6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
new aspect. External prosperity is no test
of spiritual elevation. " What shall it profit
a man if he gains the whole world and loses
his life } " The true nature of man is seen,
not in his desire for the perishable things
of this world, but in " hunger and thirst
after righteousness." Nothing can satisfy
man but the growth in him of the divine
spirit, and he in whom that spirit dwells
is not disturbed by the want of those things
which are the mere accidents of existence,
not its essence. What is called the pros-
perity of the wicked is not true prosperity.
This is the idea which Jesus enforces in
that part of the Sermon on the Mount
which he seems to have addressed to those
who came to hear him, attracted by some-
thing kindred in themselves. " Lay not up
for yourselves treasures upon earth; but lay
up for yourselves treasures in heaven." The
true life does not consist in the attainment
of finite and limited ends, but in the pos-
session of that which is eternal and im-
perishable. The beginning of spiritual life,
therefore, consists in an entire surrender of
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 87
the finite. But this is only the negative
side of his teaching: the positive side is the
direction of the whole being to the infinite
and eternal, or the laying up of "treasures
in heaven." This, of course, does not mean
that man is to separate himself from all
earthly concerns, and set his affections upon
the future life, in the sense of looking for-
ward to a reward which it is hopeless to
expect in the present life. The "heavenly
treasures " do not consist in outward quali-
fications, either there or here, but in a
"change of mind," which transforms the
whole spirit, and throws a new light upon
all things. " If thine eye be single, thy
whole body shall be full of light." So when
the " mind's eye " is single, the whole world
assumes a new aspect. This transformation
of the soul is the new creation of the world :
the mind to which everything seemed an in-
soluble riddle now sees the confused and
indistinct mass of objects fall into their
proper place in the organic unity of the
whole. All finite ends are universalised when
they are viewed by reference to God, and
88 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
all worthy action is then seen to consist in
the service of God. " Ye cannot serve God
and mammon."
^ Now, if the true life of man consists in the
service of God, the wicked must not be re-
garded as prosperous, but as miserable in the
extreme. They have lost what Dante calls
the "good of the intellect," — that rational
good which is the source of all joy and peace.
There can be no need to "justify the ways of
God" by any far-fetched attempt to explain
why wickedness is rewarded and righteous-
ness punished. Wickedness is never rewarded,
and righteousness is never punished. It is
no reward to " lose one's life " : it is no pun-
ishment to " save one's life." For he who
seeks the lower misses the higher, while he
who seeks the higher has the lower "added
to him." In other words, devotion to uni-
versal or impersonal ends — to all that makes
for the good of the whole — is the secret of
blessedness. By giving up his exclusive self
man gains a wider self, which is the true self.
And this true self is but another name for
life in God. For the only reason why in
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 89
this higher Hfe man is in unity with himself
is because he is in unity with the whole ten-
dency of the world, i.e. with the will of God.
In his earlier teaching Jesus seeks to com-
mend the new way of truth by showing that
the love of God is revealed in nature as well
as in human life. We have seen how, in later
Judaism, the decay of prophetic inspiration
and devotion to the letter of the Law resulted
in ultimately making God a name for an in-
definable Power, not revealed in the world,
but concealed behind an impenetrable veil.
Thus the tendency, which was always pres-
ent in the Jewish religion, reached its climax.
Now Jesus entirely reverses this conception
of a purely transcendent God. God is in-
deed the Creator of the world, but He is best
seen, not in the great and terrible forces of
nature, but in its silent and orderly processes,
and in the purposive energy which works in
the life of flower and bird and beast. He
does not stand apart from nature in lonely
isolation, but His spirit pervades all things
and quickens them by its presence. Hence
in his parables Jesus finds the evidence of
90 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
God's goodness in the ordinary occurrences
of the homely earth.- There is a tender and
solemn light on the most familiar things be-
cause God is felt to be present in them, not
hidden behind them. Especially in the life
and growth of nature Jesus finds evidence
of the continuous and loving care of God.
With penetrative imagination he sees the
formative activity of God working in the
beauty with which He clothes the grass of
the field, which to-day is and to-morrow is
cast into the oven ; in the lilies, clothed in a
glory exceeding all the splendour of human
art ; in the insignificant mustard-seed, which
expands in harmony with all the skyey influ-
ences into the organic unity of root, stem,
leaves, and blossoms, with the birds swaying
in its branches. Thus God works not upon
but through the things which have come
from His hands. Nature is not a dead ma-
chine, wielded by the hands of omnipotence,
but it is instinct with that eternal principle
of life which exhibits itself in the ever-recur-
ring cycle of changes, inorganic and organic.
To the eye of Jesus, nature is thus a mani-
THE CHRIST/AN- IDEAL 91
festation of the wisdom and loving care of
God; and he asks if it is credible that He
who takes such pains to fashion and provide
for the life of plant and animal is less inter-
ested in man. " Behold, the birds of the
heaven, that they sow not, neither do they
reap, nor gather into barns, and your heav-
enly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of
much more value than they?"
The "free and friendly eyes" with which
Jesus in the earlier years of his ministry con-
templated nature never deserted him; but, as
the malevolence and opposition of the scribes
and Pharisees with their blinded followers
increased, the problem of evil demanded even
a deeper faith. There was to him no real
trial of faith in the external prosperity of the
wicked, for he saw that the wicked received
precisely the reward which their acts de-
manded; but the apparent success of the op-
position to the work of God seemed to demand
another explanation. Having absolute faith
in the saving power of love, he yet found
that in the majority of his countrymen his
revelation only provoked a more bigoted be-
92 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
lief in their own unspiritual ideas and a
hatred of the truth that was growing in in-
tensity until, as he foresaw, the sacrifice of
his own life would be the inevitable result.
A similar result, it was evident to him, must
follow the diffusion of the truth in all ages.
The conflict of principles must ever call into
play all that is best and all that is worst in
man. "Think not that I came to send peace
on the earth : I came not to send peace, but
a sword." How is this weakness of the
good cause to be explained 1 Has God in
truth, as the majority believed, given over the
world to the rule of Satan.?
The answer of Jesus reveals the infinite
depth of his optimism. The triumph of the
evil cause is no triumph, but a defeat. For
in what does it consist.? It cannot kill the
truth itself, which is eternal, but only the
body of those whose lives are a witness of its
power. There is nothing in life so pathetic
as the temporary triumph of a bad cause;
for that triumph means that for a time men
in their delusion are shut out from the bless-
edness of unity with God, and therefore with
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAJL 93
themselves. On the other hand, those who
live in the truth have the whole tendency of
things on their side, and conscious of this
they cannot be touched in the centre of their
being. Still the problem remains: why does
evil apparently triumph? A partial answer
is, that its triumph is only apparent — it 'is
never complete, and it has no permanency.
But more than this : its temporary triumph is
essential to the full disclosure of all that the
truth contains. The false principle must
show its bitter fruits, and must accomplish its
perfect work before it completely reveals its
true nature. Hence, the more it outwardly
triumphs and shows its evil nature, the more
surely is the way prepared for its final over-
throw. "Where the carcase is, there are the
vultures gathered together." Man ca7i only
seek for truth and goodness, and if for a
time he turns his energies against the good
cause, it is not in the spirit of a being who
desires evil — for man is not a devil, but in
his real being a "son of God" — but in his
confusion of the true with the false. Hence
the outward success of the bad cause is a
94 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
real failure. Just as man cannot find rest in
any finite end, so he can never be satisfied
permanently with anything short of the truth.
It is the truth he is really seeking, and at
last the truth must prevail. Thus Jesus finds
in the worst form of evil a "soul of good-
ness." The world is through and through
the product of divine love.
Now, with this grasp of the principle that
the good cause must ultimately prevail, while
yet it implies a conflict with the opposite
principle of evil, Jesus saw that the kingdom
of heaven was a process, a development of
the higher in its struggle with the lower.
Nothing can ultimately withstand the princi-
ple of goodness ; but in his blindness and
evil will man may for a time turn his ener-
gies against it. Hence the slow growth of
the "kingdom of heaven," — a growth so slow
that it often seems to be arrest or even retro-
gression. This idea is expressed by Jesus in
a variety of figures. The kingdom of heaven
is compared to the leaven, which was "hid in
three measures of meal till the whole was
leavened." The mrst striking expression of
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
95
the idea, however, is given in that wonderful
parable preserved in the oldest of the gospels,
the gospel of Mark: "So is the kingdom of
heaven as if a man should cast seed into the
ground, and should sleep and rise day and
night, and the seed should spring and grow
up, he knoweth not how. For the earth
bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade,
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
But when the fruit is ripe, immediately he
putteth in the sickle, for the harvest is come."
The attitude of Jesus towards the Messianic
hope of his countrymen at once follows from
his conception of the kingdom of heaven as
already present, and yet as a process of conflict
with evil. Holding these views he could not
possibly believe in any sudden or miraculous
change which should break the continuity be-
tween the present and the future. Hence he
refused to attest his divine mission by signs
and wonders. When the Pharisees, in their
usual crass materialism, demanded a " sign," —
i.e, demanded that Jesus should virtually deny
the presence of God in the ordinary processes
of nature and in the normal experiences of
96 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
human life — his answer was : " An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and
there shall no sign be given to it but the sign
of the prophet Jonah." What he meant was,
as Luke saw, that no " sign " could authenti-
cate his mission but the truth which he pro-
claimed. Truth "shines by its own light," and
if men " will not hear Moses and the prophets,
neither would they believe if one were to rise
from the dead." Hence Jesus, though he em-
ploys the apocalyptic imagery current in his
day, entirely transforms the current conception
of the future success of the kingdom of
heaven. The triumph of good over evil, as he
affirms, is not to be effected by catastrophe
and revolution, but only by the persistent
labours of those who live in the truth. His
faith does not rest upon a superstitious belief
in a sudden interposition from heaven. In his
eyes good can be developed only through the
loving efforts of those in whom the divine
Spirit operates, and who "let their light so
shine among men that others, seeing their
good works, glorify their Father which is in
heaven." Thus his optimism flows from abso-
THE CHRIST/ AN WEAL 97
lute trust in the goodness of God, and in a rec-
ognition that man in his ideal nature is a " son
of God." For this reason he beHeves that to
the success of the kingdom it is essential that
each individual should have a personal experi-
ence of the truth. This is indicated by the
images of the leaven and the mustard-seed.
He does not expect the triumph of goodness
from any external arrangements of society, or
rather he conceives of these as but the par-
tial expression of a truth which must first
exist in those whose hearts are open to the
truth. At the same time, since the very
essence of Jesus' teaching is the essentially
social nature of man, the principle which he
announced could not but manifest itself in a
transformation of social and political institu-
tions, though these can never be more than
a partial expression of the idea of a king-
dom in which the spirit of God is present
in each, member of the whole, at once dis-
tinguishing and uniting them in an organic
unity.
In this conception of a spiritual commu-
nity, in which each has found himself by los-
98 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
ing himself, Jesus finds the answer to that
longing for deliverance from the evil of their
own hearts which was the saving salt in the
aspirations of the pious souls of his own
day. Just as he refuses to postpone the
kingdom of heaven to some far-off day, when
good shall conquer evil, maintaining that evil
is already overcome in principle ; so he tells
those who " labour and are heavy-laden," long-
ing for a deliverance in which they have but
faint belief, that the way to the conquest of evil
in themselves is now open. And the secret
is in identification with their brethren, the
sons of the one Father. This was the secret
of that triumphant optimism which nothing
could destroy in him. This idea is expressed
in the title which he most frequently applied
to himself, the " Son of Man." This term
is often used in the Old Testament, — for in-
stance, in Ezekiel, — to express the weakness
and dependence of man, as contrasted with
the power and majesty of God. In Daniel,
again, it refers not to a personal Messiah,
but to the collective body of the saints, as
contrasted with the great, victorious beasts.
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 99
the symbols of the powerful world-empires.
" The core of Daniel's Messianic hope is the
universal dominion of the saints." * Now
if, as seems probable, Jesus adopted the term
from Daniel, he meant by it to indicate, not
merely the spirituality of his kingdom, but
his own identity with the whole race. In
any case, the essential meaning of the title
is that Jesus conceived himself as part and
parcel of humanity: in other words, he found
the secret of life in complete identification
with its joys and sorrows, its successes and
sins. And because he was thus identified
with man, he is also called the " Son of
God." He was one with the Father in
nature, though not in person, since he was
conscious of himself as the medium through
which the eternal love of God was revealed
and communicated to men. Nothing can,
in his view, withstand the power of love.
Man, weak and sinful as he is, must suc-
cumb to the omnipotence of goodness, for
goodness is the spirit of the living God. It
was with a full sense of the importance of
♦ Schurer's History of the Jewish People, 2. 2. 138.
lOO THE CHRISTlAJSr IDEAL OF LIFE
the question that, towards the close of his
life, he asked the disciples : " Who do ye say
that the Son of Man is ? " And when Peter,
in a flash of insight, answered : " Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God," he
immediately goes on to warn the disciples
that he must " suffer many things of the
elders and chief priests and the scribes, and
be killed." He was the Messiah, just because
it was his mission to effect the deliverance
of mankind, not through outward triumph,
but through suffering and death. To the
disciples, with their preconception of a Mes-
siah who should come invested with miracu-
lous power and dignity, this was a "hard
saying " ; and the same apostle, who had for
a moment got a glimpse of the divine human-
ity of Jesus, now exclaims in horror : " Be
it far from thee. Lord: this shall never be
unto thee." Thus even Peter puts himself
on the side of those who imagined that a
suffering Messiah was a contradiction in
terms. He had not learned the lesson of the
divine life and teaching of the Master, and
therefore Jesus rebukes him for the mate-
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL ,o,
rialism of his conception : " Thou art a stum-
bling-block unto me: for thou mindest not
the things of God, but the things of men."
It is not by self-assertion and outward tri-
umph, but by suffering and death, that the
true Christ and his followers can save the
world: "Whosoever would save his life shall
lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for
my sake shall gain it."
As he transforms the ordinary idea of the
Messiah, so Jesus gives to the belief in a
final judgment of the world a new and
deeper meaning. The wicked and the right-
eous are no longer distinguished as those
who obey the law from those who violate it,
but as those who love from those who are
indifferent to their fellow-men. The whole
system of external rewards and punishments
is swept away, and in its place we have the
one fundamental distinction of those whose
lives are ruled by the spirit of brotherhood,
and those who live for themselves. Under
the guise of the current imagery of a Last
Judgment, when all men shall be gathered
together to receive their final sentence, Jesus
102 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
inculcates the truth that the spiritual status
of men is already determined by the prin-
ciple which is outwardly expressed in their
actions. " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of
these my brethren, even these least, ye did it
unto me." Thus while he leaves untouched
the current belief in a future judgment, he
brings to the test of human action an entirely
new standard. Not the pious works upon
which men pride themselves, but the unselfish
life, determines the eternal destiny of man.
He who lives the divine life is he who, like
the Master, has merged his own good in the
good of the whole, and who has proved his
love of man by the ordinary tender charities
which seem so little, but mean so much.
From what has been said we can understand
the sense in which Jesus speaks of " Faith."
To the scribes and Pharisees religion meant
acceptance of the teaching of the doctors of
the Law, as based upon their interpretations of
scripture. Thus for the ordinary Jew there
was a double wall of partition raised between
him and God. Not only had he no direct con-
sciousness of the divine nature, and therefore
THE CHRISTIAN WEAL ,03
of his own nature, but even the revelations of
truth which were contained in scripture came
to him through the distorted medium of tradi-
tion. No doubt it was impossible to read the
inspired words of legislator and prophet with-
out catching something of their spirit; but so
overlaid was the sacred text with the prosaic
and deadening interpretations of the scribes,
which were dinned into his ears at home, at
school, and in the synagogue, that it was hard
for him to pierce through the mass of tradi-
tional ideas to the truth which they over-
laid and obscured. One consequence of this
traditionalism was an incapacity to judge for
himself when a new revelation of truth was
presented to him. This was one of the great
obstacles which Jesus met in his effort to
bring his countrymen into living contact with
the truth. The leaden weight of custom lay
heavy upon the minds of "the people of the
Law," and only by a powerful effort could they
shake off the mass of prejudice and supersti-
tion which they had been taught to regard as
the revelation of God. And this intellectual
difficulty was intensified by the spiritual arro-
I04 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
gance which had been engendered in their
minds by the traditional belief in their unique
position as the people of Jehovah. Thus the
Jew had to free both his intellect and his con-
science from the fetters of traditionalism be-
fore he was in a position to look straight at
the truth. This explains why Jesus insists
upon " faith " as a child-like attitude. Only
those from whose minds and hearts the arti-
ficial veil of custom and pride of race had been
removed were in a position to accept the new
revelation of truth. It is in this sense, and not
in the sense of unreasoning credulity, that he
commends the " faith " of those who welcomed
the truth. Thus for him " faith " is that open-
ness to light which is a form of reason ; it is,
in fact, reason in its purest form. What Jesus
called upon men to believe he supported,
not by an appeal to authority, but by an ap-
peal to truth itself. He asked them to look
with open eyes at the evidences of God's good-
ness as exhibited in the world of nature ; to
examine their own hearts, and to read the say-
ings of the holy men of old with intelligence
and insight. To the persistent demand for
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
05
supernatural " signs " of his divine mission, he
refused to listen, seeing in them but another
form of that crude materialism which infected
all their ideas. A saving " faith " he found in
those few whose consciousness of their own
weakness and sinfulness was so strong that,
under the influence of his life and words, it
removed the mist of tradition from their minds,
and overcame the racial pride so natural in a
Jew. " Faith " is thus that union of intellect-
ual candour and moral simplicity which flows
from the vision of God. It cannot be trans-
ferred externally from one person to another,
but is possible only in him who has surren-
dered all that ministers to self-righteousness
and selfishness. It is thus another name for
the consciousness of unity and reconciliation
with God, and for that ''enthusiasm of hu-
manity" which flows from it. " Faith," in other
words, is the personal side of the whole con-
sciousness of the "kingdom of heaven," as
Jesus understood it : it is the spirit which
operates in every member of those who are
reconciled with God, and are therefore at
unity with themselves and with one another.
I06 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
No doubt this faith has various degrees, but
in essence it is always the same. It is also
recognised by Jesus that it grows from age
to age; for, while he speaks of the Law and
the prophets as giving a revelation of the
divine nature, he also maintains that he has
himself given a higher revelation of God than
was possible to them. " Many prophets and
righteous men have earnestly desired to see
what ye see and have not seen it, and to
hear what ye hear and have not heard it."
Here, as always, Jesus holds by both sides
of the truth: the essential identity of the
religious consciousness in all ages, and the
process of expansion which it undergoes as
it comes to a fuller consciousness of what it
contained implicitly from the first.
There is one other aspect of Christ's
teaching which must not be passed over.
Although the Messianic hope was usually
connected in the Jewish mind with the ap-
pearance of an earthly Messiah, and the
resurrection of the dead for judgment, it was
also held by many that after the long reign
of the saints there should follow an eternity
THE CHRISTIAN TD^AL ,07
of bliss or woe in another world. Now,
although Jesus gave a new meaning to the
kingdom of heaven, and insisted that it
already existed in the consciousness of those
who were reconciled to God and devoted to
the good of humanity, he also held the doc-
trine of personal immortality. When the
Sadducees came, demanding a proof of im-
mortality, he appealed to the words of script-
ure: "I am the God of Abraham and the
God of Isaac and the God of Jacob," add-
ing that "God is not the God of the dead
but of the living." There was an especial
appropriateness in this reply as directed
against the Sadducees, who prided them-
selves upon being faithful to the teaching of
scripture, as distinguished from the tradi-
tional interpretation accepted by the Phari-
sees. But, as we have seen, Jesus does not
accept even the teaching of the "Law and
the prophets " without first bringing to bear
upon it the light of his own higher con-
sciousness, and hence we may be certain
that these words were more than an argu-
mentum ad hominem, intended to silence the
I08 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
Sadducees. The meaning of Jesus seems to
be that, as the consciousness of the Hving
God involves the consciousness of man as
identical in his essential nature with God,
we must believe in the eternal continuance
of this fundamental relation. To see what
man is in his true nature is to know that
his life comes from God, and that only in
the consciousness of his union with God
does he learn what in essence he is. The
essence of man is his life, ix, his conscious
existence, and this must be as eternal as
God. The true destiny of man is to live in
union with God, and this destiny cannot be
taken from him by God whose son he is.
Thus Jesus, as he conceives of God as the
ever-living Father, also conceives of men as
beings with an immortal destiny. The future
existence of man he also conceives as a
higher stage of being, when they shall be
" as the angels," i.e, shall enjoy a clearer
vision of God, and when goodness shall at
last have overcome evil, and no longer be
forced to engage in perpetual conflict with
it. While Jesus thus maintains the personal
THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL
lO)
immortality of man, he does not base upon
it a proof of the reality of his view of life;
on the contrary, he bases immortality upon
the belief in God and the essential identity
in nature of God and man. For he asserts
that those who will not be convinced of the
truth by " Moses and the prophets " would
not believe " even if one were to rise from
the dead." The order of ideas in his mind
therefore is God, sonship, immortality. It is
our knowledge of the nature of God which
reveals to us his Fatherhood, and his Father-
hood is the proof of the immortality of his
children.
CHAPTER V
MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY
In the last chapter an attempt has been
made to present the Christian ideal of life,
as set forth by its Founder. No attempt
will here be made to deal with that impos-
ing edifice of doctrine which was built up
by St. Paul and the other apostles and
by the subsequent reflection of Christian
theologians; but it will help to throw the
teaching of Jesus into bolder relief, if we
contrast with it the Christianity of the Middle
Ages.
When we pass from the religion of Jesus
to mediaeval Christianity, we seem to have
entered into another world. The free and
genial glance with which our Lord contem-
plated nature, the triumphant optimism of his
conception of human life, and his absolute
faith in the realisation of the kingdom of
MEDIAEVAL CHRISTIANITY m
heaven here and now, have been replaced by
a hard and almost mechanical idea of the
external world, by a stern denunciation of
the utter perversity and evil of society, and
by the postponement of the kingdom of
heaven to the future life. How has this re-
markable change come over the Christian
consciousness? To answer this question
would be a long task, and I shall only state
three main characteristics in the mediaeval
conception of life, trying to indicate how they
originated.
(i) The first characteristic to which I shall
refer is the universal belief that the "king-
dom of heaven," to use the term which Jesus
so often employs, could not be realised in this
life, but was entirely a thing of the future life.
We can trace the gradual growth of this con-
viction. The crucifixion of their Lord was a
terrible shock to his disciples, and there is
good reason to believe that for a moment
it caused their belief in his Messiahship to
waver. But, as the divine life and sayings of
the Master came back to their remembrance,
they began to understand what he had him-
112 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
self always affirmed — that his kingdom was
a spiritual one, which could be realised only
by the destruction of evil and the triumph of
righteousness. Yet they still clung to the
idea that so great a revolution could be
accomplished only by a sudden and miracu-
lous change; and hence in the Apostolic Age
the Christian, imperfectly liberated from the
materialism of the ordinary Messianic concep-
tion, imagined that the complete triumph of
righteousness would take place in a few years
by the second coming of the Lord to estab-
lish upon earth the reign of peace and good
will. Living in this faith, the primitive com-
munity of Christians made no attempt to
interfere with existing institutions, civil or
ecclesiastical, but were content to prepare
for the imminent advent of the Lord. But
as time went on, and still the Lord did not
appear, his advent came to seem more and
more remote. Meantime the Christian found
himself living in the midst of the decaying
civilisation of Rome, and there was little won-
der that the conversion of the world should
seem an almost impossible task: —
MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY 113
Stout was its arm, each thew and bone
Seemed puissant and alive, —
But ah ! its heart, its heart was stone,
And so it could not thrive.
"How can these bones live?" he naturally
exclaimed. How can this mass of corrup-
tion be transformed into the divine image?
Moreover, try as they might to avoid collision
with the secular power of the Roman empire,
the Christians found that they could not
meet together for mutual encouragement and
stimulation, without drawing suspicion upon
themselves as a secret society plotting the
overthrow of the empire ; and, indeed, though
they had no such purpose, the Christian ideal
was antagonistic to the pagan, and must at
last meet with and overcome it, or be itself
subdued. The outward symbol of this war
of ideals was the persecutions to which the
Christians were subjected in the second and
third centuries. Thus the present world came
to appear more and more a wilderness through
which the little band of Christians was com-
pelled to march, sad and solitary, on their
way to the heavenly land. This sombre cast
114 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
of thought never vanished from the Christian
consciousness till the modern age, and per-
haps it cannot be said to have quite vanished
even now. One might have supposed that
the more hopeful spirit of an earlier age
would have come back when Christianity had,
by its resistless energy, compelled the Roman
empire, in the person of Constantine, to
make terms with it. But the inrush of the
fierce northern hordes into the Roman em-
pire, and their facile conversion to Chris-
tianity, confirmed in a new way the "other-
worldliness " of the Church. For Christianity,
to their rude and undisciplined minds, was in
all its deeper aspects unintelligible, and its
doctrines could only be accepted in blind and
unquestioning faith. A superstitious rever-
ence for the Church did not restrain them
from the wildest excesses of passion, and the
only curb to their brutal violence and self-
will was the hope of future reward or the
dread of future retribution. Thus mediaeval
Christianity, unable to overcome the barbar-
ism and lawlessness of the world, in a sort
of despair sought comfort in the future life.
MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY ijr
This is the spirit which rules the whole of
the Middle Ages, and it was one of the tasks
of the Reformation to awaken anew the con-
sciousness of the infinite significance of the
present life as a preparation for the future
life, and to quicken all the institutions of so-
ciety and all the powers of the individual soul
with the divine spirit of pristine Christianity.
(2) A second characteristic of the mediaeval
period is a belief in the absolute authority of
the Church in all matters of faith and wor-
ship, and the consequent distinction between
the clergy and the laity. This idea had its
roots in the same principle as that which led
to the conception of religion as essentially
the hope of a future world. The rude bar-
barian could not comprehend the doctrines
of the Church, nor could his self-will be
broken except by a power to which he was
forced to bend his stubborn will. Hence the
Church demanded implicit faith in its teach-
ing, and absolute submission to its authority.
Nor is it easy to see how otherwise the soil
could have been prepared in which the new
seed of the Reformation was to grow. The
Il6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
discipline of the mediaeval Church was, on the
whole, as salutary as it was inevitable ; but dis-
cipline is justifiable only as a preparation for
the exercise of independence and reason; and
hence the time inevitably came when men, hav-
ing outgrown the stage of pupilage, asserted
their indefeasible right to a rational liberty.
This was the claim made by Luther when he
unfurled "the banner of the free spirit."
(3) The last characteristic of the Middle
Ages to which I shall refer is the opposition
of faith and reason. To come to its full rights
as the universal religion Christianity had to
free itself from all that was accidental and
temporary in the conceptions of its first ad-
herents. The first step in this process was
taken when St. Paul disengaged it from the
accidents of its Jewish origin and presented
its essence in a clear and definite form. But
the process could not end here, for every age
has its own preconceptions and its own diffi-
culties. When Christianity went beyond the
boundaries of Judea, it had to meet and over-
come the dualism of Greek thought, as it had
met and overcome Jewish narrowness and ex-
MEDIEVAL CHRrSTIANITY 1,7
clusiveness. The victory was only imperfectly
accomplished. The reconciling principle of
the essential identity of the human and divine
could not be abandoned without the destruc-
tion of the central idea of Christianity, but
the Church did not entirely escape the danger
of making theology a transcendent theory of
the absolutely inscrutable nature of God. At
this imperfect stage of development Christian
dogma was for a time arrested, so that when re-
flection arose with Scholasticism the doctrines
of the Church were assumed to be expressions
of absolute truth, although they contained
certain mysterious and incomprehensible ele-
ments. There is indeed in the development
of Scholasticism itself a growing consciousness
of the antagonism of reason to the dogmas of
the Church as commonly understood, a con-
sciousness which in Occam even reaches the
form of a belief that there are doctrines which
are not only " beyond " but " contrary to " rea-
son ; but the schoolmen never lost their faith
in the truth of the dogmas, though they passed
from credo ut intelligam to iiitelligo ut credam,
and ended with credo quia impossible. When
Il8 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
i'v thus came to be explicitly affirmed that the
doctrines of the Church contained not merely
j/^/^rrational but irrational elements, the be-
ginning of the end was near ; for reason, frus-
trated in its attempt to find unity with itself
in an authoritative creed, could only fall back
in despair upon a universal scepticism or set
about a reconstruction of the creed itself.
Thus Scholasticism dug its own grave as well
as the grave of mediaeval theology, and pre-
pared the way for that great modern move-
ment which began with the Renaissance and
the Reformation and is still going on. Of one
thing we may be sure, that nothing short of a
perfect harmony of science, art, and religion
can permanently satisfy the liberated human
spirit. At such a harmony it is the hard task
of philosophy to aim, and only in so far as it
is secured can we hope for the return of that
half-vanished faith in the omnipotence of good-
ness with which Jesus was so abundantly filled.
It is therefore proposed, in the second part of
this work, to ask how far an idealistic phi-
losophy enables us to retain the fundamental
conception of life which was enunciated by
the Founder of Christianity.
PART II
MODERN IDEALISM IN ITS RELATION
TO THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
CHAPTER VI
GENERAL STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM
In his Foundations of Belief, Mr. Balfour
raises an objection to the idealistic theory
of knowledge, a consideration of which may
help to bring out more clearly what is here
meant by Idealism. This objection is di-
rected primarily against what is claimed to
be the doctrine of the late T. H. Green, but
it is thought to apply with equal force
against all who hold the idealistic view of
the world. In what follows no attempt will
be made to defend Green from Mr. Balfour's
attack. It does not appear to me true that
Green reduced the world to a " network of
relations " ; but it seems better to avoid all
disputes which turn upon the interpretation
of an author who is not here to defend
himself, and therefore I shall deal from an
independent point of view with the difficulty
121
122 THE CHRISTIAN- WEAL OF LIFE
which Mr. Balfour has stated with his usual
force and clearness.
The main charge made by Mr. Balfour
against Idealism is that it " reduces all ex-
perience to an experience of relations," or
" constitutes the universe out of categories."
Now, it is no doubt true, says our author,
that we cannot reduce the universe to " an
unrelated chaos of impressions or sensa-
tions " ; but " must we not also grant that in
all experience there is a refractory element
which, though it cannot be presented in iso-
lation, nevertheless refuses wholly to merge
its being in a network of relations } " If so,
whence does this irreducible element arise .^^
The mind, we are told, is the source of re-
lations. What is the source of that which
is related } The " thing in itself " of Kant
" raises more difficulties than it solves," and
indeed, the followers of Kant themselves
point out that this hypothetical cause of that
which is " given " in experience cannot be
known as a cause, or even as existing. But
"we do not get rid of the difficulty by get-
ting rid of Kant's solution of it. His dictum
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 123
still seems to remain true, that * without mat-
ter categories are empty.' And, indeed, it is
hard to see how it is possible to conceive a
universe in which nothing is to be permitted
for the relations to subsist between. Rela-
tions surely imply a something which is re-
lated, and if that something is, in the absence
of relations, ' nothing for us as thinking be-
ings,' so relations in the absence of that
something are mere symbols emptied of their
signification." *
Mr. Balfour, it would seem, rejects the
sensationalist theory that knowledge is re-
ducible to an association of individual feel-
ings, and he also rejects the Kantian refer-
ence of impressions of sense to a "thing in
itself"; but he is unable to see how the
world can be explained without the retention
of a "matter" to supply the concrete filling
for the otherwise empty categories. His own
view would therefore seem to be that the
knowable world involves two distinct ele-
ments, a " matter of sense " and the concep-
tions or relations by which that "matter" is
♦ Balfour's Foundations of Belief. Am. ed., pp. 144-5-
i24 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
formed. Where he differs from Idealism, as he
understands it, is in denying that all reality
can be reduced to relations of thought or
pure conceptions. The force of Mr. Balfour's
criticism, therefore, depends upon two assump-
tions : firstly, that it is possible to retain the
Kantian doctrine of a "matter of sense"
after the rejection of Kant's assumption of a
"thing in itself"; and, secondly, that Ideal-
ism seeks to construct the world out of
empty conceptions or relations of thought.
Both of these assumptions I venture to chal-
lenge.
(i) The Kantian doctrine of a " matter of
sense" stands or falls with the assumption
of a "thing in itself." In the Esthetic the
problem of knowledge is put by Kant in this
way: What is the element in the perception
of objects as in space and time which belongs
to the subject, and what is the element which
belongs to the object .?* Kant's answer is,
that the "form" under which objects are re-
lated spatially and temporally is due to the
subject, the "matter" so related to the ob-
ject. Now, in this contrast of " form " and
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 125
"matter," it is obviously assumed that the
subject has a nature of its own independently
of the object, and the object a nature of its
own independently of the subject; in other
words, that, as existences, subject and object
are unrelated to each other. On the other
hand it is admitted by Kant that there can
be no knowledge until the subject comes into
relation to the object.
Now, the assumption of the independent
existence of subject and object is no doubt a
very natural assumption, because, when we
begin to explain knowledge, we already have
knowledge. But we must not forget that, in
accounting for the origin of knowledge, we
have no right to assume the very knowledge
we are seeking to explain. We cannot start
from the independent existence of subject and
object unless we can show that an indepen-
dent subject and object can be known. Before
we ask what is contributed by the subject, and
what comes from the object, we must be sure
that the separation of subject and object is
admissible. If there is no known subject
which does not imply a known object, the ele-
126 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
ment belonging to the one cannot be sepa-
rated from the element belonging to the other.
When Kant asks " by what means our faculty
of knowledge should be aroused to activity but
by objects," he forgets that neither object nor
subject exists for knowledge prior to know-
ledge, and that to ask how the subject should
be '' aroused to activity " by the object is to
ask how a non-existent object should act upon
a non-existent subject. This question cannot
be answered, because it is self-contradictory,
for to a self-contradictory question no answer
can possibly be given.
But though Kant starts from the opposi-
tion of subject and object, he takes, in the
Esthetic, the first step to effect its over-
throw. The real object, he says, no doubt
exists apart from the subject, but the known
object does not. For, in the perception of
objects, the relations of space and time are
the manner in which the subject, when
" aroused to activity," comes to have a con-
sciousness of objects. So far, therefore, as
knowledge goes, the object is not an inde-
pendent existence, but an existence in and
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF. IDEALISM 127
for a conscious subject. Now this view leads
to an important change in our ordinary con-
ception of the world. When we assume an
objective world, fully formed and complete
in itself, apart from the subject, we manifestly
make the subject a mere passive spectator
of a world from which it stands apart; and
when we assume a subject with a complex
nature of its own, we make the world en-
tirely foreign to the subject. But the mo-
ment we ask how this objective world
becomes known to the subject, we find that
the independence of each alternately disap-
pears in the other. Thus, if the object is
apprehended by the subject, and only in this
apprehension exists for it, the whole objec-
tive world is absorbed into the subject. On
the other hand, if we ask what is the con-
tent of the subject, we find that it is the
object, and thus the subject is absorbed in
the object. Kant, however, does not carry
over the object as a whole into the subject,
but draws a distinction between the element
which comes from the object and the ele-
ment which is added by the subject. In
128 THE CHRISTTAJSr IDEAL OF LIFE
this way the identification of subject and ob-
ject is partially arrested, and an intermediate
region is assumed in which subject and ob-
ject enter into relation with each other. This
is the region of knowledge. But, while this
union of subject and object is the condition
of knowable reality, subject and object still
remain apart as existences. Here, then, we
have the " thing in itself," as it appears in
the Esthetic,
The compromise which Kant here adopts
is obviously untenable. If we are to as-
sume the independent existence of subject
and object, we must not at the same time
assume that the one is dependent for its reality
upon the other. Since the spatial and tem-
poral relations have a meaning only within
knowledge, they can no more belong to the
subject than to the object, but only to the
subject in so far as there has arisen for it
the consciousness of an object determinable
under those relations. Why, then, does Kant
maintain that space and time are forms of
perception, not determinations of the real ?
FJe does so because he has not completely
STATEMEATT AMD DEFENCE OF (PEALISM 129
freed himself from the dualism of subject and
object with which he starts. A subject as-
sumed to exist apart from the object must
be regarded as a pure blank so far as know-
ledge is concerned; and when it begins to
know we must suppose it to be affected by the
object. Thus it is regarded as purely recep-
tive in its relation to the object, and there-
fore it has to wait for the action of the object
upon it. Now when we ask whether the sub-
ject can be purely receptive, or whether it
must not be affirmed to be at once receptive
and conscious of being receptive, it becomes
manifest that the whole conception of a purely
receptive subject is unmeaning. If the sub-
ject is receptive without being aware of it,
it will simply exist in a series of individual
states, without referring those states either to
an object or to itself. For such a subject
there can be no objective world ; for; as Kant
himself tells us, the consciousness of objects
implies "the reference of sensation to objects
in perception." On the other hand, if the
subject not only exists in a series of affec-
tions, but is conscious of affections as coming
130 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
from the object, it must distinguish them as
its own and yet relate them to the object.
But so far as it does so, the object is within
knowledge, not a thing existing by itself.
Thus the object has no existence for the sub-
ject except as the subject distinguishes it from
and yet relates it to itself. The object is the
product of its own activity, and hence the
subject cannot be receptive in regard to it.
A subject which is not self-active is for itself
nothing. In truth, a purely receptive subject
is a contradiction in terms. It is only be-
cause Kant does not distinguish between a
subject which is purely sensitive — and only
by an abuse of language can this be called
a " subject " at all — and a subject which is
conscious of its states as involving perma-
nent relations, that he allows himself to speak
of the subject as receptive in relation to the
object. Whatever the object is, it is for a
subject, and any other object is a fiction of
abstraction. We may legitimately contrast
the object as known in fuller determinateness
with the object as less determinate, but the
object is in either case a known object, not
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF ./DEAUSAf 131
a " thing in itself." To contrast a known with
an unknown object is the greatest of all ab-
surdities, because an unknown object is simply
nothing for the subject, and therefore cannot
b^ contrasted with anything.
It follows from what has been said that
there can be no opposition between the " mat-
ter " and the " form " of knowledge : no oppo-
sition, that is, between a " matter " which
comes from the object and a "form" contrib-
uted by the subject. We must therefore deny
that affections of sense as such enter into
or form any element in knowable objects.
Kant himself admits that such affections do
not exist as an object for consciousness, but
are merely the "manifold" out of which ob-
jects are formed: they are the "matter" which
becomes an object, when the subject combines
its determinations under the form of time
into an image or perception. But when the
"manifold of sense" becomes an object, it
is no longer a "matter" to which the subject
has to give "form," but is already a formed
matter. The subject does not first receive
the " matter of sense," and then impose upon
132 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
It its own forms ; only in so far as the " mat-
ter" is already formed does it exist for the
subject at all. The so-called " manifold of
sense " is therefore just the distinguishable
aspects of the world as these exist for the
conscious subject. This world is indeed
" manifold " in the sense of being infinitely
concrete ; but its concreteness is not that of
an aggregate of particulars, but of a " cosmos
of experience," in which all the particulars
distinguished are held together in the unity
of a single world, which exists only for a com-
bining self-active subject.
(2) The denial of the fiction of a "matter
of sense," entirely destitute of the unifying
activity of intelligence, is therefore a very
different thing from the denial of all differ-
ences and the reduction of reality to a "net-
work of relations." Mr. Balfour's charge that
Idealism reduces the world to relations, and
therefore involves the absurdity of relations
with nothing to relate, rests upon a misunder-
standing of the idealistic theory of thought
or intelligence as the constitutive principle of
all knowledge and all reality. What Ideal-
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF JDEALISM 133
ism maintains is that the knowablc world
exists only for a thinking or self-conscious
subject, and that even the simplest phase of
knowledge involves the activity of that sub-
ject. It is very inadequate and misleading
to speak of thought as if it consisted solely
in the relation of separate elements to one
another. When thought is thus conceived, it
is easy to understand why those who affirm
that the world exists only for thought are
supposed to be constructing reality out of
pure abstractions. It is not difficult to show
that this conception is a survival of the
old untenable opposition of perception and
thought, as dealing respectively with the par-
ticular and the universal. Let us take a
simple case by way of illustration. I perceive
a speck of light in the surrounding darkness.
Taking the old abstract view, we have here
the simple apprehension of a particular sen-
sible object, without any exercise of the activ-
ity of thought. The latter comes into play
only when I compare various perceptions with
each other. Such a doctrine was virtually
disposed of when Kant showed that the sim-
134 ^-^^ CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
plest perception already involves the synthetic
activity of thought. My apprehension of the
speck of light is by no means simple. The
moment I have the sensation, my mind goes
to work, seeking to put it in its proper place
in relation to the rest of my experience.
There are no doubt occasions in my indi-
vidual life in which this interpretative power
is almost entirely in abeyance, as when I
have just awaked from sleep, or emerged
from a swoon. But even in these states the
activity of intelligence is not entirely absent;
for I at least distinguish the speck of light
from the surrounding darkness; I locate it
with more or less accuracy; and I distinguish
it from myself as a particular object. Now
we have here one of the simplest forms in
which the thinking subject builds up for him-
self an intelligible world. Without the sensi-
tivity to light, there would be for the subject
no object at all; but without the interpreta-
tive activity of thought the sensitivity would
have no meaning, Le. it would not be grasped
as a particular phase of a single world. Per-
ception is, therefore, not the mere presence of
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF WEAUSM 135
a particular sensation or image, but the dis-
crimination of its elements, and the compre-
hension of these as involving certain fixed
conditions under which they occur. If we
exclude the interpretative activity of thought
there is for us no object; and, therefore, no
knowledge. It is only because this grasp of
the particular as an instance of fixed con-
nexion in experience is overlooked, that per-
ception is supposed to be possible without the
combined distinction and unification which is
due to the activity of the thinking subject.
But this activity is not the external relation
of individual sensations. Sensibility as such
is not an object of knowledge, but only partic-
ular sensations grasped as indicating fixed con-
nexions in their occurrence. Hence thought
is present in what is called sensation, in so far
as sensation enters into our experience; and
when present it interprets sensation by refer-
ence to its fixed conditions. The content of
sensation does not fall without, but within
thought; and it is this thought content which
constitutes the world of our perception. That
world is from the first a connected whole, in
136 THE CHRISTIAIV WEAL OF LIFE
which every element is on the one hand re-
ferred to a single world, and on the other
hand to a single subject. Nor can the one
be separated from the other, for the unity of
the world is made possible by the unifying
activity of the subject. It must also be ob-
served that this unifying activity is not the
activity of a principle which merely operates
through the individual subject: it is essen-
tially the activity of a self-determining sub-
ject, which is conscious of a single world only
in so far as in every phase of its experience
it is self-active. The degree in which the
world is comprehended is proportionate to
the self-activity of the intelligent subject; and
thus the world, while it never loses its unity,
is continually growing in complexity and sys-
tematic unity. There is a single self-consist-
ent world, because the world is a systematic
unity, and because reason in all self-conscious
beings is an organic unity, identical in nature,
but distinct in its individual activity. Mr.
Balfour assumes that the denial of a given
" matter of sense " is the same thing as the
denial of all determinate reality. But, in
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IQEALISM 137
truth, the denial of the former is essential
to the preservation of the latter. It is only
in so far as the sensible is discriminated by
thought, that there is any determinate object
of knowledge; and it is only in so far as
these discriminated elements are combined
by the activity of a single subject, that there
is any unity of experience. The thinking
subject cannot have before him any object
without grasping it by thought, or interpret-
ing his immediate feelings by reference to
the idea, explicit or implicit, of a connected
system of reality. What Idealism maintains,
therefore, is that the impossibility of having
the consciousness of any object which cannot
be combined with the consciousness of self is
a proof that the world is a rational system.
The whole process of knowledge consists in
the ever more complete reduction of partic-
ulars to the unity of an organic whole; and,
though it is true that a complete knowledge
of the world is never attained. Idealism affirms
that, were knowledge complete, the world
would be found to be rational throu^i^h and
through. Perhaps what has been said will
138 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
help to show that what Idealism denies is
not that the world is concrete, but that its.
concreteness can be explained by any theory
which starts from the fiction of an irreducible
"matter of sense," i.e, a "matter" assumed
to be absolutely opaque to a rational being.
Mr. Balfour assumes that thought deals
purely with abstractions or relations, and it
is on this ground that he charges Idealism
with "constituting the universe out of cate-
gories." The falsity of this view has already
been indicated, but the point is so important
that it seems advisable to dwell upon it
somewhat more fully, especially as even Mr.
Bradley seems to me to have lent the weight
of his authority to what I must regard as
the survival of an obsolete mode of thought.
There can be no thought whatever, whether
it takes the form of conception, judgment, or
inference, unless thought is itself a principle
of unity. This unity, however, must not be
conceived as working by the method of ab-
straction, but as manifesting itself in the dis-
tinction and combination of differences. We
can, no doubt, fix our attention upon the unity
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF WEAL/SM 139
which is implied in every act of thought, but
we cannot affirm that thought is a unity
which excludes differences. Thought is thus
the universal capacity of combining differ-
ences in a unity. Now, if thought is by its
very nature a unity, there can be no absolute
separation between the various elements which
it combines — no separation, that is, within
thought itself. It is perhaps not impossible
that there are real elements which thought
cannot reduce to unity, but within thought
itself there can be no such elements: ele-
ments which are not combined are not
thought. We cannot therefore regard the
organism of thought as made up of a num-
ber of independent conceptions or ideas hav-
ing no relation to one another; the whole of
our conceptions taken together form the
unity which thought by its activity consti-
tutes. Conception is thus the process in
which the distinguishable aspects of the real
world, or what we believe to be the real
world, are combined in the unity of a single
system. This process may be viewed either
as a progressive differentiation or as a pro-
I40 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
gressive unification. And these two aspects
are essentially correlative: conception reaches
a higher stage according as it unites a greater
number of differences, and it cannot unite
without distinguishing. It is of great impor-
tance to keep hold of this truth. To neglect
it is to make a consistent theory of know-
ledge impossible. If conception is a process
of abstraction, thought can by no possibility
comprehend reality. The importance of the
subject will excuse a few remarks upon the
nature of "conception" and its relation to
judgment.
Conception may be regarded as the termina-
tion or as the beginning of a judgment, accord-
ing to our point of view. In the former case
conception condenses, or holds in a transpar-
ent unity, the distinguishable elements which
have been combined in a prior judgment, or
rather it is the synthetic unity of a number
of prior judgments. Thus the conception
"light" comprehends the prior judgments
by which the object "light" has entered
into the world of our thought. Hence it is
that judgment has been supposed to be
STATEMENT AMD DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 141
merely the analysis of a given conception.
But no analysis of a conception can yield
more than has previously been combined.
The name "light" stands for more or fewer
judgments according to the stage of thought
of the individual who employs it. A so-called
analytic judgment is simply the explicit state-
ment of judgments already made, and adds
nothing to the wealth of the thought- world.
It is true that the resolution of a conception
into the judgments which it presupposes may
be the occasion of a new judgment. It is so
when we for the first time observe that a con-
ception does presuppose a number of judg-
ments; but in this case we have done more
than merely analyse the conception into its
constituent elements : we have brought to
light the nature of conception and its relation
to judgment.
It is characteristic of every real judgment —
every judgment which is more than the repro-
duction of a judgment formerly made — that
it combines in a new unity elements not pre-
viously combined. Can we then say that judg-
ment is the combination of conceptions } Not
142 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
if we mean by this that the conceptions remain
in the judgment what they were prior to the
judgment. A conception being the condensed
result of prior judgments in which distinguish-
able elements of reality have been united, it
forms the starting-point for new judgments,
but each of these new judgments is the
further comprehension of the real, and there-
fore the conception grows richer in content
with each judgment. Thus if, starting from
the ordinary conception of " light," we go on
to judge that it is "due to the vibration of
an aether," we do not simply add a new
predicate to the subject, but the conception
is itself transformed and enriched. Judg-
ment is thus conception viewed as in pro-
cess, and a conception is any stage in that
process. The distinction is purely relative.
In judgment thought unifies the elements
which it discriminates ; in conception the
elements are viewed as united even while
they are discriminated. For it must be
observed that thought never unifies with-
out discriminating: the whole process of
thought is concrete throughout, and, as
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 143
knowledge develops, becomes more and more
concrete. We are therefore entitled to say
that for the thinking subject reality is in
continual process, and we are also entitled
to say that there is neither thinking subject
nor thought reality outside of the process of
thought. A real world which is not capable
of being thought is for the subject nothing,
and a subject which is not capable of think-
ing the real world is also nothing.
If this view is correct, it is misleading to
say, with Mr. Bradley, that "in judgment an
idea is predicated of a reality." * For the
reality of which we judge is a reality which
exists only for thought, and it has no content
except that which it has received in the pro-
cess by which it is constituted for thought.
Mr. Bradley tells us that whatever we regard
as real has two aspects, (^) existence, (^) con-
tent, and that "thought seems essentially to
consist in their division." Now, it is no doubt
true that, if we suppose the real to be some-
thing which exists apart from thought, we
shall have to divide or separate the " what "
♦ Appearance and Reality, p. 163.
144 ^-^^ CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
from the " that." But there is for us no
real in addition to the real which is thought.
Such a real is a pure abstraction, and means
no more than the empty possibility of the real.
We cannot separate in this hypothetical real
between the " that " and the " what," because,
having no content, it is neither a " that " nor a
"what." The real only comes to be for us
in so far as there has gone on a process of
discrimination and unification within a sin-
gle reality, by means of which the real has
been constituted as a thought or ideal reality.
What Mr. Bradley calls the " that " seems to
me merely a name for the unity which is in-
volved in every phase of the process by which
reality is thought ; and what he calls the
" what " is a name for the elements which
thought distinguishes and combines in the
unity of the real. The " that " has therefore no
determinateness when it is separated from the
" what " ; it is simply pure being, or the bare
potentiality of a thought reality. Mr. Bradley
allows himself to speak of the " what " as if it
were first " presented " in unity with the " that,"
and of judgment as if it consisted in the
STATEMEJ^T ANP DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 145
" division " of the " what " from the " that." But
surely there is no " what " except that which
thought has already made its own. The sub-
ject of any judgment has already a content, it
is true, and this content we may express in the
form of a series of judgments ; but these judg-
ments will merely reproduce the judgments
formerly made : they will add nothing to
knowledge. Every new judgment, on the
other hand, determines the conceived reality
from which we start : it transforms the reality
for thought, and thus enriches it by a new
determination. There would be no reason for
judging at all if judgment merely consisted
in detaching a "content " from " existence," and
then proceeding to attach it to "existence."
The " existence " and the " content " are one
and indivisible, and as the one grows, so also
does the other. Mr. Bradley says that "an
idea implies the separation of content from
existence." And no doubt in every judgment
the " content " is held suspended in thought
before it is predicated of the subject. But, in
the first place, so long as it is so held, there is
no judgment: judgment consists in determin-
146 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
ing the subject by the predicate. And, in the
second place, the content which is thus predi-
cated of the subject is not the content which
is already involved in the subject, and there-
fore we cannot say that judgment consists in
the separation of the " what " from the " that."
When the scientific man affirms that light is
due to the vibration of an aether, he does not
separate the " content " already involved in the
conception of the luminous object, and then
predicate this " content " of the subject ; what
he does is to determine the already qualified
subject by a totally new " content " which it
did not previously possess, and in this deter-
mination of the subject the judgment consists.
It thus seems to me that- Mr. Bradley gives
countenance to two fallacies ; first, that the
subject is a mere " that " instead of being the
condensed result of the whole prior process of
thought ; and, secondly, that judgment con-
sists in the separation of a given content from
the " that," a content which is then attributed
to the "that"; whereas judgment consists in
the predication of a new content, which de-
velops and enriches the " that." Whatever
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 147
difficulty attaches to this view arises, as it
seems to me, from the assumption that reahty
exists apart from the process by which it is
thought. And no doubt reality is not made
by thought in the sense of being the creation
of the individual thinking subject, but it is
made for the subject in the sense that nothing
is or can be real for him which is not revealed
to him in the process by which he thinks it as
real.
When Mr. Bradley says that "the subject
has unspecified content which is not stated in
the predicate" (168), he is evidently confusing
" the subject " with reality, as it would be
could it be completely determined by thought.
But such a subject is not the "that" which is
distinguished from the " what," for the " that " is
merely the abstraction of reality, — the abstract
idea of reality in general which is no reality in
particular. Such a subject has no " unspecified
content," because it has no content whatever.
But if by the " subject " is meant the complete
system of reality, it is no doubt true that it has
" unspecified content which is not stated in the
predicate." No single judgment can express
14S The christian ideal of life
the infinite wealth of the totality of reality.
And not only is this true, but no single judg-
ment can express the wealth of reality even as
it exists for the subject who frames the judg-
ment. We can only express the nature of
reality in the totality of judgments which ex-
press the nature of reality as known to us, and
it is manifestly an inadequate or partial view
which seeks to limit known reality to that as-
pect of it which is expressed in a single judg-
ment. But we must go still further; not only
is known reality not expressed in any single
judgment, but it is not expressed in the whole
system of judgments which embody the know-
ledge of man as it exists at any given time.
Our knowledge is not complete, and I do not
see how it ever can be complete. In that sense
reality or the absolute must always be un-
known. But unless reality in its true nature
is different in kind from the reality which we
know, it must be thinkable reality. Any other
reality than that which is thinkable can have
no community with thought reality, but must
be absolutely unknowable. It is not main-
tained that there is no reality which is not
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM 149
thought by us, but only that the reality which
we know is thought reality. This reality
enters into our thought and forms its content,
and as the content continually expands for us,
so the reality continually expands. Reflecting
upon this characteristic of knowledge, we get
the notion of a completely determined reality,
a reality which would be present to thought
if thought were absolutely complete. Such a
reality we do not possess, and it is therefore
natural to say that there is a defect in the
character of our thought which prevents us
from grasping reality in its completeness.
This explanation seems to me to rest upon
the assumption that reality cannot be thought
because thought deals only with abstractions.
But, as I have maintained above, thought is
never abstract; it contains within itself the
whole wealth of reality, so far as reality is
known to us. The defect is not in the char-
acter of thought, as distinguished from feeling
or intuition, but in the very nature of man as
a being in whom knowledge is a never-ending
process. What I contend for, then, is not that
man has complete knowledge of reality, — a
I50 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
contention which is manifestly absurd, — but
that reality in its completeness must be a think-
able reality. Any other view seems to me to
lead to the caput mortuum of the thing-in-itself,
the reality which cannot be thought because it
is unthinkable. When, therefore, Mr. Bradley
says that it is an untenable position to maintain
that " in reality there is nothing beyond what
is made thought's object" (169), I agree with a
caveat. That there is nothing which is not
made " thought's object " is manifestly untrue,
if the "thought" here spoken of is thought
as it exists for man. But, if it is meant that
there is in reality something which cannot be
made the object of thought, because it is
unthinkable, I do not see what sort of reality
this can be; to me it seems to be merely a
name for a metaphysical abstraction. Reality
that cannot be thought is a sort of reality
to which I find myself unable to attach
any meaning, and until I find some one
who can give a meaning to it, I refuse to
admit its possibility. But I feel certain that
such a person cannot be found, for the obvi-
ous reason that if this supposititious reality
STATEMENT AND DEFENCE OF IDEALISM \ 5 i
had a meaning, it would no longer be un-
thinkable.
If these considerations are at all correct, the
only reality which has any meaning for us is
reality that is capable of being thought. And
this reality is not for us stationary, but grows
in content as thought, which is the faculty
of unifying the distinguishable elements of
reality, develops in the process by which
those elements are more fully distinguished
and unified. The reality which thus enters
into and constitutes our thought is therefore
not abstract but infinitely concrete. For, as
we have seen, the process of thought is not
the mere transition from one conception to
another, but it is the internal development
of conception, which is at the same time the
development of the conceived world. The
reality, therefore, which thus arises for us in
the process of thought is a system, in which
there is revealed an ever greater diversity
brought back into an ever more complete
unity. And this reality is the absolute, so
far as the absolute enters into and consti-
tutes our known world. To seek for the
152 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
absolute beyond the thought reality, which
alone exists for us, is to seek the living
among the dead; if the absolute is not
revealed to us in the reality that we know,
it is for us nothing.
CHAPTER VII
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO AGNOSTICISM AND
THE SPECIAL SCIENCES
I. AGNOSTICISM
In the preceding chapter an attempt has
been made to explain and defend the gen-
eral doctrine of Idealism, which affirms that
the knowable world is identical with the
world as it really is, and is a systematic or
rational unity. This doctrine is of course
diametrically opposed to Agnosticism. In a
former work* it was maintained that Agnosti-
cism is a self-contradictory theory, because in
affirming an absolute limit to human know-
ledge, it assumes the knowledge of a realm of
reality distinct from the realm of phenomena,
and tacitly affirms that there are two kinds of
intelligence, corresponding to these two realms.
Two objections have been raised which it may
* Comte^ Mill^ and Spencer, Chap. II.
153
154 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
be well to consider. It is objected, firstly, that
my criticism applies only to a dogmatic affir-
mation or denial of a noumenal reality; and,
secondly, that even if such a reality is ad-
mitted, it is not a legitimate inference that its
advocates are bound in consistency to assume
two kinds of intelligence.
(i) As to the first point, it must be an-
swered, that a purely sceptical attitude is
impossible. Such an attitude would mean,
presurnably, that he who assumes it refuses
to say whether there is any reality other
than that which is known by us: there may,
or may not, be such a reality, but we are not
in a position to give any answer either positive
or negative. Now, it is hard to see how any
one can affirm that we are unable to say
whether that which we call reality is or is
not reality, without basing his affirmation
upon some limitation in the nature of our
faculty of knowledge. Surely the inability
on our part to determine whether we have
any knowledge of reality or not, implies that
our faculty of knowledge is by its very nature
unable to distinguish between truth and false-
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO AGNOSTICISM 155
hood. But if we cannot distinguish between
truth and falsehood, no proposition whatever
can be held by us to be either true or false;
and therefore our affirmation that we cannot
distinguish between truth or falsehood can-
not be accepted as true. If it is not true,
there is no affirmation whatever, but only
the delusive appearance of affirmation; and
to such a delusive appearance we can attach
no meaning; it may be either the affirmation
or denial of reality or some tertium quid ; it is,
in fact, that logical monster, an affirmative-
negative proposition. In short, if you make
any judgment whatever which means any-
thing, you have assumed the reality of your
judgment, though not of what you affirm
or deny in your judgment; and thus you
have assumed that so far at least you have
touched solid reality. A purely sceptical
attitude is thus a contradiction in terms, —
an affirmation which affirms nothing, or a
denial which denies nothing. The most
complete sceptic that ever lived assumed
that his scepticism was real, and to that
extent he was a dogmatist.
156 THE CHRISTIAN WEAL OF LIFE
(2) It is further maintained that even if the
distinction between the phenomenal and the
real is admitted, it does not follow that there
must be two kinds of intelligence corre-
sponding to these two realms. After what
has been said, it must be obvious that this
objection is unsound. For, if our intelligence
is not capable of knowing reality, it must be
because of an absolute limit in the character
of our intelligence, and if that limit were re-
moved reality, admitting it to exist, would be
capable of being grasped by us. Now, the
dogmatic phenomenalist, and even, as has
been shown, the so-called sceptical phenome-
nalist, assumes that there is reality. No
western thinker, so far as I know, has had
the courage to affirm that there is no reality
whatever: that sublime height has been
reached only in the east. Now, if there is
reality at all, it must be comprehensible by
some intelligence. It may be said that there
is no such intelligence, or at least that we
cannot know that there is such an intelli-
gence. But surely we are entitled to de-
mand that no affirmation should be made
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO AGNOSTICISM 157
which is meaningless. The phenomenalist,
then, admits that there is reahty, and in so
doing he assumes that he fs saying some-
thing which has a meaning for himself, and
for others who hear or read what he says.
Now what is a reality which is not a real-
ity for some intelligence .^^ Make any predi-
cation you like about it, and you will find
that, if you mean anything at all, you mean
that it is present to an intelligence. If you
refuse to make any predication about it, it
is not reality but pure nothingness. Hence
you cannot say: "There is reality," without
assuming that reality has a meaning, and to
say that it has a meaning is to say that it is
relative to some intelligence. Now the phe-
nomenalist affirms that reality is not the
object of his intelligence, and therefore it
must be the object of some other intelli-
gence, or it is nothing at all. And this other
intelligence cannot involve an absolute limit,
as our intelligence is assumed to do, because
if it did it would not grasp reality but only
appearance ; in other words, the phenomenalist
in affirming the absolute limitation of his own
158 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
intelligence has tacitly assumed an intelli-
gence free from limits. I was therefore right
in saying that from the doctrine of the rela-
tivity of knowledge it is a legitimate infer-
ence that there are two kinds of intelligence,
one absolutely limited and the other abso-
lutely unlimited. The absurdity of this doc-
trine I shall not again insist upon: I shall
only repeat that an intelligence which is
absolutely limited would never know that it
was absolutely limited, since in that case it
would be beyond the assumed limits.
Now if it is admitted that there is a ra-
tional or intelligible system of things, it is
obvious that with this single system all the
sciences must deal. Reality is one, and to
suppose it split up into bits by the concen-
tration of attention upon one phase of it, is
to be the victim of an abstraction. When in
geometry we define a point or line, we are
not dealing with a "mere idea," but with a
fixed relation holding for every subject for
whom there is any reality whatever. Simi-
larly, all the judgments of geometry imply
that there are unchanging relations in the
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO AGNOSTICISM 159
one system of reality which alone is or can
be known, and these unchanging relations
constitute the objectivity of that system, so
far as it comes within the view of geometry.
This does not mean that there is a world
constituted of nothing but geometrical rela-
tions, but it does mean that a world from
which all geometrical relations are eliminated
is unthinkable. If geometrical relations are
not determinations of the real world, all the
sciences of nature are made impossible, and,
as a consequence, the whole of the philo-
sophical sciences as well. What is said of
spatial relations, of course, holds good also of
temporal relations. And when we pass from
the mathematical determination of reality
to the dynamical — from space and time to
matter and motion — the same principle of
explanation still applies. For dynamical re-
lations are real aspects of the one system
of reality, while yet they do not exhaust its
nature. It is as great a mistake to deny
that those relations are determinations of the
absolute as to aflfirm that in them we have
reached an exhaustive definition of it. A
i6o THE CHRISTTAN IDEAL OF LIFE
world of matter and motion is real in the
same sense that a world of space or a world
of time is real; without dynamical relations
there could be no reality whatever, but a
reality consisting of these relations alone — a
world of pure matter and motion — is as im-
possible as a world of pure space or pure
time. They are real, unchangeable aspects of
existence, but they are no more than aspects.
For, though there would be no real world
were the relations or laws of dynamics not
unchangeable, there are other aspects of real-
ity which still further define existence. Cer-
tain of these aspects are brought to light by
physics, chemistry, and biology. Here again
we may say that what the sciences affirm
they affirm of the absolute, but we cannot
say that now at last we have reached the
ultimate or complete determination of it. All
the sciences, from mathematics to biology
inclusive, are abstract in this sense, that
there are other aspects of reality which they
presuppose. These new aspects of the one
single system of reality form the subject-
matter of the philosophical sciences, which
\ IDEALISM IN RELATION TO MATHEMATICS i6l
again presuppose logic or metaphysic as
the science which deals directly with the in-
terrelation of all the principles upon which
the other sciences are based.
II. MATHEMATICS
The view which has just been indicated
implies that mathematics is a science, i,e,
contains propositions which are true or hold
of reality. These propositions are, as I be-
lieve, true formulations of fundamental condi-
tions or relations by which the real world is
characterised, though they are certainly not
a formulation of all those conditions. What
is held is not that mathematics formulates
" the intellectual conditions of sensible real-
ity," if this means that there is an absolute
separation between " sensible reality " and an-
other reality which may be defined as non-
sensible. There are not two realities, but
only one. What is called " sensible reality "
is either the fiction of a world supposed to
be given in immediate sensation, or it is a
term for certain aspects of the one reality.
1 62 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the only reality there is. To speak of "sen-
sible reality " as contrasted with non-sensible
or supersensible reality is to fall back into
that untenable phenomenalism, the contradic-
tory character of which has already been main-
tained. Mathematics, then, concentrates its
attention upon certain very simple conditions
or relations of the one and only reality, and,
as I believe, is successful in formulating their
nature.
It may be objected, however, that this view
of mathematics takes no account of the re-
cent doctrine that Euclidean geometry merely
states the conditions of our space of three
dimensions. Now it might fairly be answered
that it is incumbent upon the advocates of
imaginary geometry to reconcile their doctrine
with any tenable theory of knowledge. Does
their hypothetical space of four or more di-
mensions contradict our space of three dimen-
sions? If it does, they deny the principle
of contradiction, contradict themselves, and
can prove neither the reality of a space of
four nor a space of three dimensions, since
they cannot prove the reality of any space
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO MATHEMATICS 163
whatever, or of anything else. It seems ad-
visable, however, to deal more directly with
the question. The discussion will necessarily
be brief, but I shall try to indicate the main
points. Let me repeat that I do not for a
moment deny the value of imaginary geome-
try as a system of mathematical symbols. I
should as soon think of denying the value
of the Cartesian co-ordinates. What I deny
is the philosophical doctrine based upon the
symbolic constructions of mathematics, — the
doctrine that a space of four or more dimen-
sions is a possible reality. I must also warn
the reader that I cannot deal with the mutu-
ally discrepant philosophical views of those
who argue for the phenomenality of our space
of three dimensions. I shall further limit my-
self mainly to Riemann and Helmholtz. I may
mention, however, that I find the conclusions
which I reached several years ago endorsed
by such eminent logicians as Sigwart and
Wundt, not to speak of Lotze.
(i) I find Riemann, then, arguing in this
way : Space is a logical species of which the
logical genus is extended magnitude or mul-
1 64 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
tiplicity {Mannigfaltigkeit) ; hence, though our
space is the only one of which we have actual
experience, it is not the only possible space.
If it is objected that Riemann is "antiquated,"
let me cite Bruno Erdmann. I have not read
Erdmann's treatise, having ceased to take any
interest in the question after my study of
Riemann and Helmholtz, but I quote the state-
ment of his view from Wundt's Logik (I. 440).
His view is, then, that " modern geometry has
been able to find a more general conception,
under which space may be subsumed as a
particular species, and from which therefore
by the introduction of determinate conditions
the fundamental properties of space may be
developed analytically." Now I have no hesi-
tation in saying that this supposed sub-
sumption of space under a logical genus is a
blunder, which the best modern logicians have
clearly exposed. The whole idea of determin-
ing the real relations of things by the forma-
tion of an ascending series of abstractions
is utterly untenable, resting as it does upon
the mediaeval idea of logic as a purely formal
science. The real world as it exists for our
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO MATHEMATICS 165
conceptual thought is not obtained by abstrac-
tion from full-formed individuals given in per-
ception, but by a concrete process in which
the first immediate judgments of perception
are transformed by the comprehension of the
fundamental relations, implied in those judg-
ments, and brought to light in the complex
process in which knowledge is developed. To
run up and down a logical " Porphyry's tree "
is a travesty of the process of thought, which
corresponds to nothing " in heaven above, or
the earth beneath, or the waters under the
earth." But, even if we grant that the subsump-
tion of logical species under a genus is a valid
process, it would not prove that our space is
only one of several possible species of space.
For the whole account of the formation of logi-
cal species rests upon the presupposition that
the ultimate datum from which we start is the
individual. Now the individual in this case
is our three-dimensional space, and hence we
cannot reason from the general conception of
extended magnitude to the possible reality of
several species of space. We can get nothing
out of the conception of extended magnitude
1 66 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
but what we have put into it ; hence, when we
descend the logical tree which we have pre-
viously ascended, we shall find at the end just
what we had at the beginning, and what we
had at the beginning was an individual space
of three dimensions. Riemann so far admits
this as to say that our space of three dimen-
sions rests upon " experience," but he still
supposes that conception is wider than " ex-
perience," and hence that there is nothing to
hinder us from supposing a space of four or
more dimensions. There is, of course, noth-
ing to hinder us from thinking of a space of
four or more dimensions, but the possible
reality of such a space cannot be deduced
from the abstract conception of extended mag-
nitude. That conception is limited by what
is already contained under it, and there is
only one space contained under it, not several
species of space. I hold, then, that in rea-
soning from logical genus to logical species,
Riemann has fallen into the logical mistake of
supposing that possible reality can be deter-
mined by logical possibility. In support of
what I have said let me quote a few sentences
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO MATHEMATICS 167
from Wundt. Referring to Erdmann, he says:
" This view must at least be so far corrected,
that the question cannot be in regard to a
relation of genus and species in the ordinary-
logical sense. If a genus is to be formed,
several species must be given which possess
certain common marks. But in this case only
one space is given to our perception." And
then he goes on to point out that " we can
never possess an actual image of spaces differ-
ent from ours." " An opposite view," he con-
tinues, " seems to be maintained by some
mathematicians, who hold that we can make a
sensible picture of spaces of another kind, as
e.g. a space which consists merely of a plane
or of a spherical or pseudo-spherical surface."''^
This brings us to what I regard as another
fallacy of those who maintain the possible
reality of a space other than ours.
(2) Helmholtz seeks to commend his view
that a space other than ours can not only be
thought but presented to the imagination, by
the fiction of beings living in a plane, or
a sphere, and limited in their consciousness to
* Wundt's Logik: I. 440-1.
1 68 THE CHRrSTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
the plane or the sphere. The whole supposi-
tion seems to me absurd and self-contradictory.
There is no difficulty whatever in thinking of
beings limited to a plane or sphere; for such
beings are to all intents and purposes identical
with the plane or sphere ; but what we cannot
do is to think of their consciousness as super-
ficial or spherical. A superficial or spherical
consciousness has no meaning whatever that I
can discover. Now, if our supposititious beings
have not a superficial or spherical conscious-
ness, we must suppose that the plane or the
sphere is an object which they can think and
reason about. But, if they have before their
consciousness only a plane or a sphere, they
will not have any geometry such as we pos-
sess, because a plane is the boundary of a
solid, and a curve is relative to a tangent.
Such beings would therefore have no geome-
try whatever. This seems obvious if we
carry out Helmholtz's suggestion, and suppose
beings limited to 2i point. Will any one affirm
that a point has any meaning except as the
boundary of a line } In short, a plane or sphere
is intelligible only because it is a figure in our
IDEALISM JN RELATIOIV TO MATHEMATICS 169
three-dimensional space. To reason from the
curvature of a plane or sphere to the curvature
of space seems to me a palpable fallacy. Space
has no curvature, though figures in space have.
Let me again support my view by a quotation
from Wundt. " When we deal with the geome-
try of the plane," says Wundt, "our spatial idea
is no other than in the geometry of space ; we
merely leave out of consideration all spatial
relations except the plane ; we do the same
in the investigation of the geometrical proper-
ties of spherical or pseudo-spherical surfaces.
Those relations of space from which we thus
abstract have no existence apart from our
idea; on the contrary, we require our com-
plete space-perception, not only for the idea
of a curved surface, but even for the idea of
a surface or a line, for we can no more im-
agine the surface than the line except as in
space : we imagine both not as independent
spaces, but as figures in space." "^
(3) It is supposed that because functions of
magnitude can be converted into geometrical
relations of a thinkable space, there may be
* Ibid. I. 441.
170
THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
beings who enjoy the consciousness of a space
of n dimensions. Surely this is an untenable
inference. We can think of systems in which
four, five, or any number of elements are re-
quired, instead of the three elements which
space demands for the determination of the
position of a point. But, in order to give a
geometrical meaning to analytical operations,
we have to refer to our space of three dimen-
sions. " It is self-evident," says Wundt, " that
mathematical speculations, which infer that our
space must be related to a four-dimensional
magnitude in the same way as the surface is
related to our space, cannot of themselves be
the basis for the imaginability of a space of
four or more dimensions. This question
stands upon precisely the same level as that
with which the older ontology occupied itself,
viz. whether the actual world is or is not the
best of all possible worlds."* I will conclude
with a passage from Sigwart. " The result of
these enquiries," says Sigwart, " is not that it
is left to experience to decide whether we
are to assume the plane space of Euclid, or a
* Ibid. 1. 443.
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO THE SCIENCES i/i
space which is in some way curved ; but only
that from the purely logical standpoint of
analysis the quantitative relations of space
are not to be derived as the necessary form
of a manifold which varies in three directions,
but that on the contrary they are actual, be-
cause based upon an unanalysable necessity of
our space-perception, which is essentially dif-
ferent from any law which can be expressed
in numbers and numerical relations. They
open up no possibility of extending our space-
perception, or of representing a non-Euclidian
geometry not merely in analytical formulae,
but also for actual perception ; we remain sub-
ject to those laws of space according to which
we first think of it, and it is as certain that
Euclid will remain unrefuted in geometry, as
it is that Aristotle in his principle of contradic-
tion has outlived the Hegelian logic'
» #
III. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES
I conclude, then, that there is nothing in
the speculations of " pangeometry " to support
* Sigwart's Logic. English tr., II. 566.
172
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the view of phenomenalists either that our
consciousness has certain forms of perception
pecuHar to itself, as Hehnholtz maintains, or
as others hold that there may be an external
world which lies in a space of four or more
dimensions. To set forth all the objections
which beset these views would be to write a
whole system of philosophy, but I hope I
have at least succeeded in indicating some
of them. The world of the mathematician is,
however, very far from being reality in its
completeness; it exists only as the construc-
tion of the mathematician, though that con-
struction rests upon unchangeable relations
or conditions of the one reality which alone
exists. Hence, when we pass to the physical
sciences we have made a considerable advance
in the determination of those relations or con-
ditions. There are, however, two fundamen-
tal mistakes which we must here seek to
avoid: the mistake of supposing that science
merely " describes " the world of sensible per-
ception, as Kirchhoff seems to say, and the
mistake of imagining that the laws of science
are more than an abstract or partial determi-
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO THE SCIENCES 173
nation of reality. The theory of knowledge
which many scientific men advance, when they
leave their proper task and assume the role
of the logician, is usually a curious mixture
of these opposite errors.
Our first view of the world naturally is that
things lie before us in perception, and that,
in order to know them, we must take them as
they present themselves, carefully excluding
all preconceptions, and accurately observing
their qualities and determining the quantity
of each quality. Without observation of this
kind there can be no science of nature, but
it can hardly be said yet to be science ; or,
at least, it can be called science only when
the observer is guided in his selection of
facts by ideas of relation. What underlies
scientific observation is a faith in the pres-
ence in nature of conditions or relations
which remain permanent under all the
changes of particulars. It must be observed,
therefore, that science transforms the ordi-
nary view of the world by penetrating to
those permanent conditions or relations which
are not obvious to perception, but are only
174
THE CHRISTIAN WEAL OF LIFE
brought to light by the persistent endeavour
to find the identical in the different. The
reality which science discovers is in one way
an ideal world, a world which exists only as
a construction of the scientific intellect, but
it is at the same time a much truer appre-
hension of reality than that ordinary view
of things from which science is developed,
though it may be said that the ordinary view
contains implicitly more than science does
justice to. Thus the physicist and chemist
virtually set aside all the sensible relations
of things, — not because these fall outside of
the real world, but because they do not
come within the scope of their science, —
leaving them to be dealt with by the more
concrete sciences of physiology and psy-
chology. If, therefore, we fail to observe the
transformation which science effects in our
ordinary view of the world, we shall fall into
the mistake of supposing that it is merely a
"description" of sensible objects, and if we
insist upon the reality of the abstract world
of relations upon which science, for its own
purposes, concentrates attention, we shall fall
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO THE SCIENCES 175
into the opposite mistake of hypostatising
this abstract world, and identifying it with
the real world in its completeness. These
two defects are closely related to each other;
for it is just because we overlook the partial
or abstract character of the laws of science
that we convert relations into vague and
shadowy things ; and it is because we do not
see that science adopts a negative attitude
towards immediate perception that we suppose
it to leave sensible reality as it was before sci-
entific insight has broken it up, and are led
to regard laws of nature as a refined tran-
script of the sensible, instead of being, what
they are, a purely conceptual world of fixed
conditions and relations, implied no doubt in
the world of ordinary observation, but not
brought into clear consciousness and made
an object of direct consideration. Thus
Comte tells us that science confines itself to
the investigation of the laws of the resem-
blance, coexistence, and succession of phe-
nomena, and he assumes that these laws are
simply the generalised restatement or descrip-
tion of the phenomena themselves. But a
176 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
law is something more than a generalised re-
statement or description of phenomena, if by
" phenomena " we mean the objects of ordinary-
observation. For a law is contrasted with
phenomena as the permanent relation in the
changing particular, as that which is identical
in spite of all differences, as the principle by
reference to which particulars are seen to be
more than mere phenomena or transitory
phases of reality. Were it not possible to
penetrate to such permanent, identical, or
unchanging relations, we should have no
science of nature. It is nothing to the
point that no law is final, for the develop-
ment of science, like all other developments,
consists in an ever fuller comprehension of
fixed relations, or what are usually called
" uniformities," a development which does not
simply set aside the relations already discov-
ered, but combines them in a higher syn-
thesis; indeed, if this were not the case,
science would at every fresh advance throw
down all that it had laboriously built up
and start de novo.
Now, if we keep in mind these two aspects
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO THE SCIENCES lyy
of a scientific law, — that it is, on the one hand,
the revelation of a principle which is estab-
lished only by a necessary but in a sense an
artificial simplification of reality, and that this
principle is, after all, only a permanent rela-
tion of the changing, — we shall, I think, be
led to see that a law of nature, as it is not a
" description " of phenomena, so it is not a
description of "uniformities." A "uniformity,"
if we are to give the word anything like its
ordinary meaning, is naturally regarded as a
customary or frequent repetition of a given
resemblance, sequence, or coexistence ; and it
is in this sense that Mill and many scientific
men who make an incursion into the field of
logic are disposed to interpret a law. It was
in contrast to this doctrine that I ventured to
challenge Mill's view of induction as based
upon " resemblance," instead of " identity." *
The "identity," of course, as any one who
reads what I have said with ordinary care will
see, is not that of a changeless " substance " or
" thing," — I do not admit the reality of such
fictions at all, — but of a relation. No two
* Comtet Millt and Spencer ^ pp. 92-3.
N
178 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
individuals are alike ; but in all their differ-
ences they may agree in a certain feature, and
this agreement is the basis of induction.
Now, when we ask what bearing this view
of a law of nature has upon the question of
the relativity of knowledge, it is no answer to
say that science is entirely neutral. In one
way that is a bare tautology. Science as such
is not a theory of knowledge ; and, of course,
having no theory of knowledge, it does not tell
us what the ultimate nature of reality is ; but
the question is whether the view of reality,
which in the pursuit of his special object the
scientific man naturally adopts, can be re-
garded as ultimate. The attempt to answer
this question leads us into the region of phi-
losophy, and compels us to ask what is the
general view of reality upon which science is
based ; and the answer, as we may be certain,
cannot fail to be coloured by the general the-
ory of knowledge which commends itself to
those who seek to answer the question. A
phenomenalist theory of knowledge will find
support in science for its doctrine, because it
will interpret scientific conclusions from that
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO THE SCIENCES 179
■.J'
point of view, and so in other cases. I have
tried to explain why I cannot accept the phe-
nomenalist interpretation. I cannot accept it,
because, as it seems to me, it does not do jus-
tice to the real advance beyond ordinary obser-
vation which science makes, and because it
does not take due note of the abstract or par-
tial character of the scientific view of reality.
On this last point I should like to say a word
or two.
We are too apt to talk glibly of "laws of
nature " or " uniformities of nature," not seeing
that two discrepant views of reality are con-
cealed beneath this ambiguous phraseology.
Is " nature " simply a term for an aggregate of
phenomena? or is it a real unity or organic
system ? Mill tells us that we cannot properly
speak of the " uniformity " of nature, but only
of " uniformities" of nature. Now, waiving the
objection I have already made that science
deals with identities and not with uniformities,
and interpreting the term " uniformity " in its
higher sense, it is obvious that to deny any
identity or unity in nature is to deny that
reality is an organic system. But this is the
I go TH^ CHkIST/AI\r IDEAL OF LIFE
same as saying that all we can know of reality
is that in point of fact we find certain relations
which, so far as our experience goes, have not
changed, but which, for aught we can show,
might change at any moment. Thus, under
the denial of the uniformity or unity of nature,
Mill and others assume the phenomenalist
view of knowable reality; and when they are
asked to substantiate their assumption, they
fall back upon a sensationalist theory of
knowledge, and a metaphysical theory of the
absolute limitation of our knowledge to phe-
nomena. To one who rejects the sensation-
alist epistemology and is convinced of the
self-contradictory character of the phenome-
nalist metaphysic, the denial of the systematic
unity of the real seems a denial of all know-
ledge and of all reality. I content myself with
pointing out this result of the ordinary view
of laws of nature as implying nothing but
observed uniformities, having already dwelt
sufficiently upon what I regard as the defects
of sensationalism and phenomenalism. To me
it seems to be one of the gifts which a true
philosophy conveys, to bring to light that
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO BIOLOGY i8l
organic unity of nature which is implicit in
science. For " nature " has no meaning apart
from a unifying intelligence, and to deny the
unity of nature is to deny the unity of intelli-
gence and to make all knowledge impossible.
I admit, however, or rather contend, that the
organic unity of reality lies beyond the horizon
of the specialist in physics, and even in chem-
istry ; but the biologist, from the character of
the objects with which he deals, is almost inva-
riably more readily disposed to hold that the
real world is an organic unity. In proof of
this it is enough to refer to Darwin himself,
whose whole doctrine is inspired by the idea
of such a unity, though he fails to give a
philosophical formulation of it; and to the
recent developments of biology, which have
been more and more in this direction.
IV. BIOLOGY
The doctrine of natural selection, while it
compels us to abandon the external or me-
chanical idea of teleology associated with the
name of Paley, is incompetent to explain
1 82 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
knowledge or morality. To this view it has
been objected that the doctrine of evolution,
as held by Darwin and many of his followers,
cannot be identified with the doctrine of
natural selection, and that I have therefore
confused true Darwinism with the views of
Wallace and Weismann. This objection
does not seem to me to affect in any way
the point which I sought to establish. My
aim was to show that, without assuming any-
thing but what is admitted by all biologists,
a certain philosophical conclusion, not con-
templated or even denied by certain biolo-
gists, must yet be reached. That conclusion
was that an immanent teleology may be legiti-
mately deduced from the doctrine of natural
selection. It was not necessary for my pur-
pose to embroil myself in the questions at
issue between Wallace, Weismann, and others,
while by doing so I should have given occa-
sion for the retort that teleology has nothing
to do with the biological doctrine of evolu-
tionary descent. That this is no fanciful dan-
ger may be shown by a single extract from
Huxley's account of the reception of the
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO BIOLOGY 183
Origin of Species in Darwin's Life and
Letters. "Having got rid," says Huxley, " of
the belief in chance and the disbelief in de-
sign, as in no sense appurtenances of evolution,
the third libel upon that doctrine, that it is
anti-theistic, might perhaps be left to shift for
itself. . . . The doctrine of evolution does
not even come into contact with theism, con-
sidered as a philosophical doctrine." * To
this view I entirely assent ; but, as it seems to
me, we may, accepting the scientific doctrine
of evolutionary descent, go on to base upon it
a philosophical argument in favour of a teleo-
logical view of the world. It may be said,
however, that it is illegitimate to speak of
Darwinism as synonymous with the doctrine
of natural selection. And no doubt it is
true that, in the wider sense of the term, the
biological doctrine of evolution, as held by
Darwin, admitted other factors than natural
selection; but it will be admitted that the
great achievement of Darwin was the destruc-
tion of the old rigid separation of species by
the theory of natural selection. This was all
* Darwin's Life and Letters : Am. ed., I. $55-6.
1 84 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
that I contended, and all that my argument
required me to deal with. In taking this
view I might have supported myself by the
authority of Huxley. In the essay already
quoted, that eminent biologist says : " The
suggestion that new species may result from
the selective action of external conditions
upon the variations from their specific type
which individuals present ... is the central
idea of the Origin of Species and contains
the quintessence of Darwinism^ ^ And again,
a few pages further on: "Whatever may be
the ultimate fate of the particular theory put
forth by Darwin [the "particular theory," as
the context shows, being natural selection], I
venture to afiirm that, so far as my know-
ledge goes, all the ingenuity and all the learn-
ing of hostile critics has not enabled them
to adduce a solitary fact, of which it can be
said this is irreconcilable with the Darwinian
theory." t Here Huxley tells us that natural
selection is " the quintessence of Darwinism,"
and that opponents have not adduced " a soli-
tary fact, of which it can be said this is irrecon-
* Ibid. I. 548-9. t Ibid. I. 552.
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO BIOLOGY 185
cilable with the Darwinian theory," meaning
the theory of natural selection. Surely what
Huxley here means is that what was dis-
tinctive of Darwin was the doctrine of natural
selection. It seems unnecessary to dwell fur-
ther upon this point, but it may be worth
while, for other reasons, to cite a few of
Darwin's own expressions. To begin with,
what did Darwin call his first great book ?
He called it The Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection. In the autobiography
he says : " The old argument from design
in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly
seemed to me so conclusive, fails, 7tow that
the law of natural selection has been discovered.
. . . There seems to be no more design
in the variability of organic beings, and in
the action of natural selection, than in the
course which the wind blows." * This pas-
sage leaves no doubt whatever that in Dar-
win's own mind his theory was incompatible
with teleology. On another occasion Dar-
win writes : " It is not that designed varia-
tion makes, as it seems to me, my deity
* Ibid, I. 278-9.
1 86 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
' natural selection ' superfluous, but from seeing
what an enormous field of undesigned varia-
bility there is ready for natural selection to
appropriate." Now I have no desire to nar-
row Darwin's theory more than he narrowed
it himself. I know that Darwin, with his large
candour and what may be called his uncon-
scious idealism, follows the facts wherever they
lead him, and suggests modifications of his
doctrine which, as he says on one occasion,
" lessen the glory of natural selection " ; but I
think no one can deny that he always and
consistently rejected teleology, and rejected it
mainly " now that the law of natural selection
has been discovered." Now, my argument
was, rightly or wrongly, that the law of natural
selection itself, when we see all its philosophi-
cal — not its scientific — implications, compels
us to aflirm an immanent teleology, and that
it is from not taking note of these implications
that Darwin himself and many of his followers
suppose that knowledge and morality may be
explained by the method of science. It there-
fore seems to me that science does not estab-
lish teleology, but that a comprehensive view
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO BIOLOGY 187
of living beings, and much more of man, does
establish teleology. But, after all, it is mainly
a question of definition whether we call a
theory scientific or philosophical; and I am
quite contented to rest my case on the broad
view that Darwin and many of his followers
are wrong in denying teleology, though they
are perfectly right in denying that mechanical
form of teleology which is associated with the
name of Paley.
It is important to observe that a teleological
view of the world does not exclude but pre-
supposes the law of natural causation. We
must therefore be careful to avoid regarding
" purpose " as a sort of deus ex machina, which
is to be invoked when the ordinary scientific
explanation has not yet been discovered. Such
a conception of " purpose " in nature seems to
me a survival of the obsolete idea of external
teleology, from which the doctrine of develop-
ment has helped to free us. I have no belief
in a teleology which does not presuppose the
inviolability of the natural law of causation.
If a break could be found in that law, we
should have to fall back upon the idea that
1 88 THE CHRISflAN IDEAL OF LIFE
there is no system of nature, but merely a par-
tial and imperfect arrangement of parts. The
teleology which is here maintained is based
upon the recognition of a fixed order in nature.
What is held is, that living beings by their
very nature contain in them a principle of
unity which is realised within the inviolable
system of natural law.
The theory of natural selection assumes,
firstly, that the laws of nature are inviolable.
This is at bottom another way of saying that,
when we come to the study of nature, we pre-
suppose that it is a system of facts, so perfect
that there is no break or flaw in it. Hence
living beings, as well as inorganic things, are
within this system, and there can be no such
dissolution of continuity as that which is sug-
gested by the view of purpose as external or
mechanical. Secondly, natural selection as-
sumes that in each living being there is a
tendency or impulse to maintain itself and to
continue the species. In saying that the doc-
trine of natural selection rests on this assump-
tion, it is not meant that the biologist need be
aware of it, or that he employs it in his specific
IDEALISM IN RELATION TO BIOLOGY 189
enquiries. The specialist is hardly ever aware
of the preconceptions from which he starts.
What is maintained is, that reflection upon
the theory of natural selection compels us to
take this view. It has been said that the
impulse to self-maintenance is "something
wholly conditioned upon and resident within
the material nature of the organism." What
is to be understood by the " material nature of
the organism " } Is it meant that the craving
for food, for example, can be attributed to " the
material nature of the organism " ? If so, that
impulse must be capable of being expressed in
terms of matter and motion. This seems to
me a mere confusion of thought, resting upon
a physical metaphor which conceals the char-
acteristic fact that sensibility does not belong
to the " material nature of the organism," but
is the differentia of a certain class of living
beings.
Thirdly, if there were no adaptation what-
ever between organisms and their environ-
ment, it would be impossible for them to
exist at all. It is objected that there is
also harmony between "a piece of ice and
90
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the water in which it floats." No doubt ; but
the kind of harmony to which I refer, as is
implied by the two preceding characteristics,
is one which exists only in a being which
is internally purposive, and that cannot be
said of the piece of ice. It is no doubt true
that when we have discovered that living
beings are purposive, we can no longer speak
of nature as if it were merely a mechanical
system ; but, as Kant points out, it is living
beings which first clearly suggest to us that
nature is purposive. And if it is true, as I
have maintained, that we cannot differentiate
living from non-living beings without apply-
ing the idea of purpose, we are entitled to'
say that reality as a whole must be inter-
preted from the new point of view of an
immanent teleology. It is only by an arti-
ficial truncation of reality, such as is a neces-
sary device in the pursuit of the physical
sciences, that we are led to suppose that
nature is merely a mechanical system. The
peculiar phenomena of living beings compel
us to revise our first inadequate view, and to
say that real existence is not merely a me-
IDEALISM IJV RELATION TO BIOLOGY 19 [
chanical but a teleological system. Having
gone so far, we can hardly refuse to take
the last step, and admit that the existence
of self-conscious beings again compels us to
revise our view of reality, and to admit that
the only completely satisfactory explanation
of it is that which refers the world to a self-
conscious, rational, and spiritual principle. "^
* Though I still think that teleology may be established simply
from the principle of natural selection, I have, in this second edition,
sought to show that, if we accept the view of those biologists who hold
that organic evolution involves other factors, — a view with which I
agree, so far as a layman in science has any right to an opinion, — the
argument receives additional strength. See Chapter IX.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM
In the last chapter we have been mainly
occupied in the consideration of certain inad-
equate conceptions of reality which are the
natural result of a limited view of the world.
Success in the pursuit of any one of the
special sciences demands intense concentra-
tion of energy, and almost inevitably leads
those engaged in it to overlook other aspects
of reality without which a consistent view of
the world as a whole is impossible. In the
present chapter it is proposed to consider
what is really a metaphysical doctrine, though
it is apt to claim for itself the combined au-
thority of all the sciences. This doctrine, to
which the general name of Materialism may
be given, is now, as it always has been, con-
nected with the belief in the existence and
indestructibility of certain ultimate particles
192
THE FAILURE OF MATERTALISM 1 93
or atoms. It maintains, in the words of
Haeckel, that " all natural phenomena without
exception, from the motion of the celestial
bodies and the fall of the rolling stone up to
the growth of the plant and the conscious-
ness of man, are subject to the same great
law of causation, being ultimately reducible
to atomic mechanics.'- "^ It is obvious that
such a theory as this, when pressed to its
logical consequences, is incompatible with the
conception of any reality which cannot be
resolved into ultimate atoms and the forces
which operate between them, and is therefore
diametrically opposed to the idealistic view,
that the world is the expression of self-con-
scious reason.
The conception that there are indivisible
and indestructible atoms, and that all the
changes which take place in the world are
ultimately reducible to the transposition of
these atoms, seems to me merely a survival
of our first uncritical interpretation of experi-
ence. It is supposed that there exist an in-
finite number of particular things, lying side
* Haeckel, Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre^ pp. 9, lO.
194 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
by side in space, each of which has an inde-
pendent existence and a peculiar nature which
is inseparable from it. Those things no doubt
enter into relations with one another, and are
therefore subject to change ; but these relations
and changes do not affect their real nature.
Now science, in its efforts to determine the
essential properties of things, soon discovers
that it must abstract from the immediate
sensible properties which they seem to pos-
sess, and concentrate its attention upon those
fixed relations between things, which are con-
stant in all their changes, and can be ex-
pressed in precise mathematical formulae. If
the new conception of reality demanded by
this changed point of view were frankly ac-
cepted, the assumption of the independent
existence and nature of particular things
would be discarded, and the world would
now be regarded as a system of mutually re-
lated elements, none of which has any reality
apart from the rest. But there are two rea-
sons why this conclusion is received with
hesitation. In the first place, it is instinc-
tively felt that the reality of a thing can-
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 195
not be resolved entirely into its relations to
other things: that, in Mr. Balfour's words,
"it is hard to see how it is possible to con-
ceive a universe in which nothing is to be
permitted for the relations to subsist between."
The truth lying at the basis of this conviction,
as I have already tried to show, is, that the
world must be conceived of as an individual
system, in which the distinguishable elements
do indeed possess reality, but not separate
and independent existence. But this truth is
apt to be misinterpreted to mean that each
element has a residuum of reality after all its
relations to other things have been set aside.
Hence, secondly, it comes to be supposed that
there are real things, which, though they are
destitute of all sensible qualities, are yet sep-
arate and independent, and possess an abso-
lutely unchanging nature. Finding that all
sensible objects are capable of indefinite divis-
ion and transformation, the scientific man is
apt to assume that this division and transfor-
mation must stop somewhere, and hence that
bodies are composed of indivisible and un-
changeable atoms. These, then, are the real
196 THE CHRlST/AAr IDEAL OF LIFE
or substantial things. The relations into
which they enter in their intercourse with
one another do not affect the atoms them-
selves. Atomism thus retains the original
assumption of common sense, that there are
real individual things which are unaffected
by the accidental or unessential changes
which they undergo, merely substituting in-
visible atoms for ordinary sensible objects.
This doctrine is not Materialism, but it is
the foundation of the simplest and most con-
sistent form of Materialism.
Atomism, both in its ordinary form and in
the more refined theory of Lord Kelvin,
seems to me to involve the fallacy of sub-
stantiating an abstraction. If we attempted
to determine the nature of a centre apart from
a circumference, we should manifestly fall
into the mistake of assuming that a centre
is conceivable apart from a circumference; an
assumption which is as absurd as to suppose
that a stick may have only one end, or that
a thing may have an inside without an out-
side. A centre is relative to a circumference,
one end of a stick to the other end, an in-
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 197
side to an outside. Now the same principle
applies in the determination of the physical
world: mass is real, but it is no more con-
ceivable apart from force or motion than a
centre apart from a circumference. Separate
mass from motion, either actual or possible,
and it can neither be known nor thought.
Why is it affirmed by the man of science
that " mass " is a necessary element in the
world as known to us? The answer is, that
if we take any two bodies of the same vol-
ume and the same degree of solidity and im-
penetrability, it is found that they may differ
in their accelerations, or changes of motion,
under the action of the same force or the
transference of the same motion. '* Mass," in
other words, is but another name for " inertia."
The measure of mass is the amount of force
or motion which must be communicated to a
given body in order to produce a determi-
nable rate of acceleration or deflection, and the
measure of a force is the rate of change of
momentum. There is therefore no inertia
apart from force or motion ; the inertia and
the force are correlative. Mass and motion
198 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
are no doubt real, but they are real only in
union with each other. It is also true that
without these inseparable elements there would
be no reality whatever, just as there can be
no reality apart from the spatial and tem-
poral relations which they presuppose. Hence
it is utterly illegitimate to separate mass and
motion, and to suppose that either could
exist without the other: they are correlative
aspects of that system of bodies which we
call the physical universe, but apart from
that system or from each other they have no
meaning whatever. For just as mass has no
reality except in union with force, so force
has no reality apart from mass. If we sup-
pose the mass of a body reduced to zero,
any force must produce a motion infinitely
great, and the body would be everywhere, i.e.
nowhere. The atomic doctrine, in substan-
tiating mass or inertia, and conceiving it as
an independent reality, contradicts the fun-
damental ideas of science. There are in
the physical world no ultimate unchangeable
units: there is a perpetual transformation of
energy, and in this transformation its total
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 199
quantity is constant, but this constancy is
due, not to the unchangeabihty of ultimate
units, but to the perfect correlation of the dis-
tinguishable elements of mass and motion.
The mass of a body is always relatively, but
not absolutely, the same ; the energy of a
material configuration is constant, but it is
the constancy of a balanced system.
It follows, from what has been said, that the
physical sciences, in virtue of the fundamental
ideas with which they operate, are limited to
that aspect of the world in which it is con-
ceived of as a mechanical system, i.e. a system
in which nothing is considered except mass
and motion. Hence the laws of physical sci-
ence cannot explain what is characteristic of
living and conscious beings, — unless, indeed,
the activities of these beings can be ex-
pressed in terms of mass and motion. But,
as the sentence quoted from Haeckel shows,
there is a class of thinkers who maintain
that not merely the growth of the plant and
the sensitivity of the animal, but even the
consciousness of man, must ultimately be
"reduced to atomic mechanics." It is this
200 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
application of the atomic doctrine which is
usually called Materialism. In the scientific
sense of the term, Materialism is the doctrine
that the ultimate elements of the world are
mass and motion, a doctrine which naturally
suggests the philosophical theory that all the
phenomena of the world must be explained by
these elements alone. Many thinkers, how-
ever, who maintain the scientific doctrine, re-
fuse to draw the necessary inference from it,
preferring to say that matter and mind are
parallel and independent, but equally real.
How this modified form of Materialism arises
in the effort to avoid the difficulties of the
more logically consistent form, we shall imme-
diately see; at present I propose to consider
Materialism in its extreme form, as formulated
by such men as Buchner and Max Nordau.
Materiahsm, as thus understood, maintains
that mental processes are, in reality, physical
processes, the former being in the last analy-
sis functions of the nervous system. The
antecedent and concomitant phenomena of
conscious states are certain physiological
processes in the brain and nervous system,
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 201
and these states must therefore be regarded
as a special form of motion, which does not
differ in kind from other forms of motion,
and is, therefore, subject to the law of the
conservation of energy. Sensation is that
mode of motion which arises in the brain as
the result of the stimulation of a peripheral
organ; impulse is the translation of a move-
ment in the brain into the movement of
muscular fibres.
In dealing with this theory, the first thing
we have to do is to be perfectly clear as to
what it means. Does it mean (i) that mental
processes are the effect of physical processes .f*
or (2) that mental processes are themselves
physical processes .^^ These two views are by
no means identical, and yet no clear distinc-
tion is drawn between them by the exponents
of Materialism. Buchner, for example, tells
us that "matter in motion acts on the mind
through the mediation of the sense-organs,
and causes motion in it," and that "this in
turn produces material movements in nerves
and muscles." The meaning of this state-
ment would seem to be that mental states
202 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
are the effect of movements in the brain, but
are distinct from those movements. But we
find in this writer another class of statements,
in which mental processes are identified with
physical states of the brain. Thus he says:
" Thought can and must be regarded as a
special form of the general motion of nature,
which is as peculiar to the substance of the
central nerve-elements as contraction is to
the muscles, or the motion of light to the
world-ether." In support of this conclusion
he appeals to the experiments which show
that mental processes require time for their
occurrence. The " necessary conclusion fol-
lows that the psychical act, or act of thought,
occurs in an extended, impenetrable and
composite substratum, and that such an act
is, therefore, nothing but a form of move-
ment." =^
Now if Materialism is understood to mean
that thought is simply a movement in the
brain, it does not seem worth one's while
wasting many words in refutation of it.
* Buchner's Kraft und Staff, as quoted in Paulsen's Introduction
to Philosophy t Am. tr., p. 8i.
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 203
Whatever thought is, it is certainly not
motion. No doubt mental processes occupy
time, but it is absurd to assume that nothing
occupies time except that which is in motion.
Time is a form in which all changes occur,
and as mental processes involve change they
of course occupy time ; but, unless on the
untenable supposition that the only possible
form of change is motion, there is no reason
whatever for affirming that mental processes
are movements. To this view it is suffi-
cient to answer, with Professor Paulsen, that
" thought is not motion, but thought." * And
yet it will be found that the main strength
of Materialism lies in the assumption that
thought is a mode of motion. For it is main-
tained that to mental as well as physical pro-
cesses the law of the conservation of energy
is applicable; and that law, as we have seen,
has no meaning except as applied to the rela-
tive movements of bodies.
If, then, thought is not a mode of motion,
the only refuge of Materialism is to say that
physical movements are related to mental pro-
* Paulsen's Introduction to Philosophy, p. 83.
204 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
cesses as cause to effect. Now if we adopt
this view, we must surrender the doctrine of
the conservation of energy. According to
that doctrine, all energy manifests itself in
motion, and only upon this supposition can
it be shown to be incapable of increase or
diminution. But if nervous movement is the
cause of sensation, in the latter a new product
is generated which is distinct from the former;
and this requires us to suppose that, in addi-
tion to the energy expended in producing the
nervous movement, there is another source of
energy in the universe. Materialism, however,
cannot admit the existence of more than one
form of energy without becoming dualistic,
and hence it must maintain that nervous
energy is transformed into sensation, in the
same way as mechanical energy is transformed
into heat or light. But in that case the total
quantity of energy in the universe must be
lessened by the amount transformed into sen-
sation, and the law of the conservation of en-
ergy will break down when it is applied to the
total process of motion, actual and possible,
as exhibited in a physical system. We are
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 205
therefore reduced to this alternative: either
there are two sources of energy in the uni-
verse, — one giving rise to mental states and
the other to motion, — or the scientific doc-
trine of the conservation of energy is false.
If we adopt the former view, we must aban-
don the theory of the interaction of physical
and mental processes, and maintain that
there is no causal relation between them ;
if we adopt the latter view, the whole super-
structure of physical science falls to pieces.
It was not to be expected that the very foun-
dation upon which science rests should be
abandoned, and hence we find that, though
they unwarrantably continue to speak of body
acting upon mind, the advocates of Material-
ism are usually led to put forward a doctrine
which is really a surrender of Materialism, —
the doctrine that mental states are not effects,
but concomitants, of nervous movements. In
this way they seek to maintain the constancy
of the total quantity of energy without doing
open violence to the nature of mind. Is it
true, then, that mind is merely something
which accompanies, without influencing or
206 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
being influenced by nervous movements ? Do
mental processes, in other words, lie entirely
outside the chain of physical events, corre-
sponding to, but entirely independent of them ?
This is the view maintained by Clifford, who
writes : " The two things are on two utterly
different platforms — the physical facts go
along by themselves, and the mental facts go
along by themselves. There is a parallelism
between them, but there is no interference of
one with the other. . . . The mind, then, is
to be regarded as a stream of feelings, which
runs parallel to and simultaneous with a cer-
tain part of the action of the body."
It seems obvious that, on this theory, there
are in the universe two independent sources
of energy, — that which manifests itself in
physical changes, and that which is ex-
pressed in mental changes. And these two
series of changes, though they have no con-
nexion with each other, are yet precisely
correspondent: so that we must assume a
pre-established harmony between them. We
thus reach the strange conclusion that two
absolutely independent series, in some utterly
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 207
inexplicable way, always change concurrently.
But if each series is entirely independent of
the other, the physical changes would evi-
dently be precisely what they are, even were
there no mental changes : and, conversely, the
mental changes would go on even if the physi-
cal changes were annihilated. This conclusion
is so paradoxical, that we cannot be surprised
to find an attempt made to show that, though
the two series are distinct, they yet are in-
separably associated, so that neither takes
place apart from the other. " When any
one is pleased, stimulated, cheered, by food,
wine, or bracing air," says Professor Bain,
"we call the influence physical; it operates
on the viscera, and through these upon the
nerves, by a chain of sequence purely physi-
cal. When one is cheered by good news,
by a pleasing spectacle, or by a stroke of
success, the influence is mental; sensation,
thought, and consciousness are part of the
chain; although these cannot be sustained
without their physical basis. The proper
physical fact is a single, one-sided objective
fact; the mental fact is a two-sided fact, one
208 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
of its sides being a train of feelings, thoughts,
or other subjective elements.'"*'
Here it is implied that conscious acts are
only occasional concomitants of nerve-changes.
Up to a certain point there is a single physi-
cal series, then the series becomes two-sided,
and once more it becomes single. What, then,
gives rise to the mental side of the twofold
fact } It cannot be the physical energy of the
organism, for that energy expresses itself only
in motion. Hence the mental aspect must
be due to a new source of energy, entirely
independent of the physical. But this brings
us back to the old difficulty of two parallel and
independent series, corresponding but having
no real connexion with each other. To speak
of these two series as identical is to use words
without meaning ; it is, in fact, to affirm iden-
tity and separation at the same time.
We have now dealt with the various forms
which Materialism assumes, and in every case
we have found that it leads to insuperable
difficulties, (i) A consistent Materialism is
forced to the conclusion that mental processes
* Bain's Mind and Body ^ p. 134.
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 2O9
are not different in their fundamental nature
from physical processes, but, like them, are
a mode of motion. This doctrine explains
mental processes by assuming that they are
what they manifestly are not. (2) Hence Ma-
terialism is led to maintain that acts of mind,
while they are not movements, are effects of
movement. But this view is incompatible
with the scientific principle of the conserva-
tion of energy. (3) To obviate this objection
it is ai^rmed that mental and physical pro-
cesses are entirely independent of each other,
and yet perfectly correspond. (4) But some
explanation of this correspondence is required,
and it is suggested that mental acts and nerve-
changes are a single fact with two "faces" or
" aspects." This doctrine, however, does not
get rid of the diflficulty that mental acts are
an entirely different product from physical
movements, and must therefore be referred to
an independent source of energy. Thus we
are driven back upon the theory of parallelism,
— the theory that there are two independent
streams of changes, which have no known
connexion with each other, and which there-
210 THE CHRIST/A AT WEAL OF UFE
fore, to all intents and purposes, constitute two
separate and independent worlds. Under the
stress of this difficulty, writers like Mr. Spen-
cer take refuge in the idea of a reality, to us
unknown, and even unknowable, which mani-
fests itself in two disparate ways, but which
in itself is an absolute unity. Such a view
leads to the conclusion that our intelligence is
by its very nature incapable of reducing to
unity the two independent spheres of mind
and nature. We are, indeed, compelled to
assume that in itself reality is one, but the
limitations of our knowledge prevent us from
understanding how it can be one. We are,
in fact, asked to admit that what appears to
us as absolutely distinct is yet somehow, we
know not how, absolutely identical. This is
nothing less than the assumption that our
intelligence is in contradiction with itself:
that in the region of knowledge we find an
absolute dualism which can never be overcome,
while yet reality, as it is in itself, must by its
very nature transcend that dualism. Surely it
is a much less intolerable alternative to sup-
pose that the asserted "fundamental incohe-
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 211
rence" in our knowledge is due, not to the
nature of knowledge itself, but to a false
theory of knowledge. We have therefore to
ask whether the unity of knowledge cannot be
preserved at a less cost than the sacrifice of
all knowledge of reality. Is it true that mind
and nature are absolute opposites, and that we
can only maintain their ultimate unity by a
leap into the dark abyss of the unknowable .^^
Can we say nothing of reality except that we
can say nothing of it.f^
Now we have seen that the scientific view
of the world rests upon the two ideas of mass
and motion, and that these two ideas are
strictly correlative. There are no independent
realities corresponding to the conception of
ultimate atoms : there is but one system of
nature, in which each element possesses reality
only in its relations to other elements. But
this idea of a system of mutually related ele-
ments still leaves us with a very inadequate
comprehension of reality as a whole. As
Materialism is forced to admit, there lie out-
side of it the whole of the mental processes,
since the system of nature is limited to those
212 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
changes which are expressible in some form of
motion. It is impossible to avoid the conclu-
sion that the conception of nature as a system
of actual and possible movements presupposes
a unity of a deeper and more comprehensive
kind. The inadequacy of the scientific view,
when it is taken as an ultimate explanation
of reality, it is not hard to show. That view
explains all the changes which occur in the
world by referring them to other changes.
But in this way we are referred from one
change to another, without ever reaching an
ultimate explanation. We fall into an infinite
series, whether we attempt to reach com-
pleteness in the way of coexistence or of
succession : the world of nature, as we soon
discover, has no completeness either in ex-
tension or in time; we cannot find an infi-
nitely small or an infinitely large unit, nor can
we find an absolute beginning or end in the
process of the world. The true reality, as we
are forced to conclude, is only partially appre-
hended when it is conceived as a mechanical
system. It is, however, a fundamental mistake
to fall back upon the idea of an indefinable
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 213
something — we know not what — lying be-
yond the system of nature ; for on that suppo-
sition, the system of nature is a pure illusion ;
what we must hold is, that a conception of the
orderly process of change, as presupposing
constant relations in the way of quantity, is the
first inadequate grasp of the truth that the
universe is a rational or intelligible system.
Thus, on the one hand,, the scientific concep-
tion of the world is partial or relative, while,
on the other hand, it is absolute in the sense
that the fixed relations of moving bodies to
one another must be presupposed in any true
theory of the universe. The tacit presuppo-
sition of science is that the world is one, and
yet the unity which it reaches is never com-
plete. Thus, it may be fairly said that the
scientific view of the world contradicts itself.
The contradiction, however, springs from the
struggle between the explicit conception of
the world as defined in the idea of energy, and
a deeper conception of it which is only implicit.
For, though the world as defined by science is
not a complete unity, we cannot discard the
presupposition that the world really is a com-
214 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
plete unity without falling into hopeless incon-
sistency. It is impossible for us to know that
the universe is not a unity, since we cannot lift
ourselves out of the universe we know, any
more than we can jump over our own heads.
What we have to observe, therefore, is, that
the scientific view of the world as an ordered
system of movements presupposes a single
principle to which all movements must be
referred. We have experience of certain
changes, which are relative to other changes,
but ultimately all these changes imply a prin-
ciple of change which is self-originating. This
self-active source of all motion is tacitly implied
in the doctrine of the conservation of energy.
Energy manifests itself as a perpetual process
in varying forms of motion, but these manifes-
tations in no way diminish or exhaust it. Pres-
ent in all these forms, it yet remains identical
with itself, or perpetually goes out of itself
without losing its self-identity. Thus, while
the doctrine of the conservation of energy em-
phasises the permanence of energy in all the
changes of the world, it yet tacitly implies the
outgoing of energy in an eternal process of
THE FAILURE OF MATERIALISM 215
change. Now it is this latent aspect of the
doctrine which is brought to light and em-
phasised in the principle of evolution. The
transition from the one idea to the other,
which has taken place in the development of
modern thought, is therefore not an accident,
but is itself an illustration of the evolution of
ideas. It will, therefore, be advisable to con-
sider what are the philosophical implications
of the evolutionary view of the world.
CHAPTER IX
THE IDEALISTIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURAL
EVOLUTION
That the doctrine of the conservation of
energy naturally leads on to the idea of the
world as involving a process of development,
is instinctively felt even by those who are the
most ardent adherents of the atomic or me-
chanical theory of the world. Thus Tyndall,
who firmly believed that atoms were " real
things," and spoke of the "clear, sharp, me-
chanically intelligible atomic theory," yet " dis-
cerned," in what he calls " matter," " the
promise and potency of every form and qual-
ity of life." Now it is obvious that if "mat-
ter" is conceived of as ultimate indivisible
atoms, it cannot contain the "promise and
potency " of anything whatever. For the very
conception of such atoms implies that, in all
the changes of the world, they are absolutely
216
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 21/
unchangeable. They were present in the
primitive nebulous mist in the same unchang-
ing rigidity and completeness as now, and they
must remain unaltered so long as the world
endures. They are, in the language of Mr.
Balfour Stewart, "immortal beings," and in-
deed the only " immortal beings " of which
the atomic doctrine has any knowledge. There
is, therefore, on this view no possibility of
" matter " developing into anything ; what it
is in the beginning it must remain to the end.
It may perhaps be answered that what Tyn-
dall meant to say was, that the primitive atoms
were ca'pable of ever new transpositions and
groupings, and that " every form and quality
of life " arises in this way. But even if we
admit that there is nothing in the nature of
a living organism which cannot be explained
in terms of atoms and their relative move-
ments, — a very large admission, indeed, — the
atomic doctrine is confessedly incompetent to
account for the simplest mental act. This is
maintained by Tyndall himself, when he tells
us that " the passage from the physics of the
brain to the corresponding facts of conscious-
2l8 THE CHRISTIAN- WEAL OF LIFE
ness is unthinkable." But if there is an im-
passable gulf between physical and mental
changes, how can it possibly be affirmed that
"matter" contains "the promise and potency
of every form and quality of life " ? Is it not
obvious that what is here called "matter" is
a name for reality as a whole ? What Tyn-
dall must mean is that the world, even in its
earliest form, contains implicitly all that is
involved in its subsequent stages. We have
therefore to ask what is implied in this new
way of regarding the world. This question
has, to some extent, been dealt with in con-
nexion with the doctrine of Natural Selection ;
but it is proposed in this chapter to examine
the scientific doctrine of evolution in its widest
sense, as held by those thinkers who seek to
connect the successive stages in the history of
the world in an unbroken series, and who deny
that Natural Selection of itself is adequate to
the explanation of biological evolution.
The principle of evolution, it is held, when
it is taken in a sufficiently comprehensive sense,
explains the whole process of the world. The
present universal cosmical order has been
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 219
gradually evolved. The details of the process
are not precisely known, but the generally ac-
cepted view is that known as the Nebular
Hypothesis, which explains the origin of the
present stellar, solar, planetary, satellitic, and
meteoric systems in accordance with known
laws of motion. This first stage of evolution,
which may be called the cosmical, was fol-
lowed by the chemical stage. In the former,
the action of chemical affinity was prevented
by the dissociative activity of intense primal
heat ; but as the earth gradually cooled, chemi-
cal affinity came into play, and compounds
were formed. By repeated combinations and
recombinations, these compounds became more
complex and unstable, and finally resulted in
protoplasm, the most complex and unstable
of all known substances. Thus protoplasm is
the last product of chemical evolution, and the
beginning of organic evolution. The third
phase of evolution consists in the new process
of organisation, which is effected by the co-
operation of at least five factors, and results
in the gradual formation of higher and higher
forms, culminating in man. These factors are :
220 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
(i) the pressure of a changing environment,
(2) use and disuse of organs, (3) natural selec-
tion, (4) sexual selection, (5) physiological
selection. The last phase of evolution is that
of human progress, which is distinguished
from the others in being rational or self-
conscious*
I propose to ask what are the philosophical
implications of this doctrine, admitting the
scientific evidence for it to be satisfactory.
If it is accepted, there can be no doubt that it
makes the purely mechanical or materialistic
conception of the world incredible. For,
whereas in the mechanical theory all the
changes in the world are reduced to ultimate
atoms and their movements, in the evolutionist
view we must maintain that the world can be
explained only by conceiving it as a unity
which contains within itself the principle of its
own development. There was a time, it is
held, when chemical action was in abeyance.
This state of things was followed by the opera-
* The details of this evolutionary process are given with great clear-
ness and impressiveness by Dr. Le Conte in the Monist, for July, 1895,
pp. 481-500.
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 221
tion of chemical affinity and the formation of
compounds. It is thus obvious that we can
no longer speak of the world as a mechanical
system, but only as a system which is at once
mechanical and chemical. Hence the attempt
to explain the world on purely mechanical
principles must necessarily end in failure.
But this attempt is made by those who hold
that all forms of existence are reducible to
"atomic mechanics." The evolutionist view,
on the contrary, admitting that the world origi-
nally appeared as a mechanical system, holds
that it developed into a system in which a new
form of energy came into play, — the energy
of chemical affinity. Now this new form of
energy is not added from without, but is in-
volved in the system of the universe; and
hence we must hold that the world is a self-
developing unity, ' — a unity which is not a dead
unchanging identity, but an identity which
originates new forms of energy. The idea of
evolution, in other words, combines the ideas
of identity and difference, and combines them
in such a way that the identity originates the
difference, without ceasing to be identity.
222 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
There is thus at once differentiation and inte-
gration, with the result that the world exhibits
more perfect unity and greater variety. And
if we follow the process of evolution into its
next stage, we find the same truth exemplified.
Chemical compounds are succeeded by organ-
isms, which are self-maintaining and self-propa-
gating. But, according to the evolutionist
doctrine, this new form of energy is involved
in the one single system, and to that system
we must attribute the power of creating life.
Nor can we identify life with chemical affinity,
much less with mechanical force : we can only
state the facts by saying that, as the world
developes from a mechanical into a chemical
system, so it developes from a chemical into an
organic system. It is thus manifest that we
can discover the true nature of the world only
by following it through all its phases, and that
the attempt to define it in its completeness by
leaving out the later and more developed forms
can only result in a partial and distorted con-
ception of its real nature. Upon such an ab-
stract view Materialism is based, and hence an
evolutionistic Materialism is a contradiction in
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 223
terms. This will become still clearer if we
consider what is implied in the various so-
called " factors " of organic evolution.
(i) The first " factor " is said to be the "pres-
sure of a changing environment." Now it
should be observed that the " changing envi-
ronment" must not be conceived as acting upon
the living being in a purely mechanical way.
When it is said that the changes of function
and structure are "produced" by the environ-
ment, the whole effect seems to be ascribed to
the environment. For the special purposes of
biology this may be adequate, but in seeking
to interpret the fact in its full significance, we
must remember that the effect would not take
place at all, unless the thing acted upon were a
living being, and indeed a living being having
a certain specific nature. The true " cause,"
therefore, is not the environment, but the
environment as relative to the specific nature
of the living being. There is, in fact, no
"environment" apart from the living being.
What is really meant by the "pressure of a
changing environment " is the change which
takes place in a living being under certain con-
224 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
ditions, internal and external ; in other words,
the adaptability of a living being to changing
conditions. But this adaptability implies the
capacity on the part of the living being of
maintaining itself under changing conditions,
or its power of recovering itself from the action
upon it of forces that would otherwise destroy
it. Thus the seemingly mechanical relation
of organism and environment is not really
mechanical: it differs from mechanism in im-
plying a tendency to individuation or self-
maintenance. Apart from this tendency, —
which Plato and Aristotle called the " idea " or
"form," — there is no life; and hence to speak
of the " pressure of a changing environment "
is really to imply that a living being converts
the environment into the means of its own life.
(2) The second "factor" employed in expla-
nation of the evolution of living beings is
that of "use and disuse." Here again the
biologist naturally looks at the question from
the point of view of external causation. What
he wishes to explain is the fact that organs
increase or diminish, and it is enough for
him to point to the fact that the change is
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 225
concurrent with use or disuse, and may be
partially transmitted to descendants. But it
is none the less true, that the use or disuse
of an organ is but another aspect of that
tendency to self -maintenance or individuation
which we have already seen to be inseparable
from the living being. It has indeed been
even said that the use of an organ implies
"consciousness and voHtion." To this state-
ment I should demur, on the ground that " con-
sciousness " and " volition " only exist where
the knowing or willing subject distinguishes
itself from the object known or willed, whereas
organs are used by living beings which make
no such distinction. But what is meant prob-
ably is, that no living being uses or disuses an
organ except under the impulse to self-main-
tenance. The use or disuse of an organ
implies that the being possessing it is an
individual with a differentiation of parts, en-
abling it to make the environment an instru-
ment of its own life. It is in the effort after
self-maintenance that the living being uses an
organ, and it is because an organ has ceased
to minister to that end that it ceases to be
226 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
used and finally disappears or becomes rudi-
mentary. It thus seems to me that the two
first " factors " are in essence the same. The
pressure of the environment is at bottom the
same principle of adaptation to external con-
ditions as the use or disuse of an organ, the
latter being merely a more specific case of
the former.
(3) Natural selection, unlike the first two
factors, brings into prominence the connexion
of living beings with one another. By the
principle of inheritance certain variations occur
in offspring, and where they are favourable
to the existence of the beings possessing
them, these beings tend to survive and to per-
petuate the variations in their descendants.
After what has been said above,* the reader
need only be reminded that natural selection
presupposes the tendency to self-maintenance
and the adaptability of the organism to the
environment, and therefore the evolution of
ever higher forms of being. For though the
variations in offspring are due to obscure con-
ditions, no one doubts that the conditions are
♦ Chapter VII., pp. 181-191.
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 22/
there, and are therefore inseparable from the
system of nature. There is nothing "for-
tuitous" in the variations which arise from
inheritance, in the conditions which make
certain variations favourable to the perpetua-
tion of the beings possessing them, or in the
transmission of such variations when they
occur.
(4) The factor of " sexual selection " is mani-
festly a special way in which the higher evolu-
tion of living beings is secured and perpetuated.
It operates only in the higher animals, and
therefore appears only in the later stages of
biological evolution. It does not seem to me
to involve " consciousness and will," in the
sense in which we employ these terms in
speaking of man, but it certainly involves
feeling and impulse. The animal is the me-
dium of the tendency to race-maintenance
and to the perpetuation of higher forms.
Here, in fact, we see the tendency to the
evolution of more perfect beings becoming,
so to speak, inward, — a tendency which is
exemplified in the whole process of evolu-
tion.
228 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
(5) The last factor, the "segregation of varie-
ties within the limits of inter-fertility," brings
into prominence the fact that there is a fixed
limit to the possible varieties of living being.
The unity of nature not only implies the de-
velopment of ever higher forms of being, but
it also implies a formative tendency which
operates in fixed ways, and tends to that in-
dividuation of type which is as essential to
an organic system as the tendency to the
formation of new types. Thus we are once
more brought to the conclusion that nothing
in nature is merely accidental ; that, on the
contrary, wide as is the range of possible
variations, there are fixed limits which cannot
be transcended ; in other words, that living
beings only differ from lower forms of exist-
ence in being the embodiment of a higher
and more complex law.
To the question whether we can speak of
the various stages of evolution as differing
in kind, or only in degree, it has been answered
that what we call a difference in kind is merely
a "great difference in degree." This seems
to me only a half-truth. The distinction, for
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 229
example, between human progress and animal
evolution cannot be called merely a difference
in degree, because the former is possible only
under condition of the formation of ideals.
This point will be considered more particu-
larly in the next chapter; meantime it may
serve to show that in the process of evolu-
tion there are well-marked stages which can-
not be explained away. On the other hand,
it must not be forgotten that the principle of
evolution does not allow us to interpolate
arbitrary breaks in the process of the world.
If evolution fails at one point, it logically fails
at all points. At the same time the principle
of evolution does not demand that the transi-
tion from one stage to another should occur
without qualitative differentiation. The world
is an organic system, but for that very reason
its various members are qualitatively distinct.
It is the same principle which expresses itself
in all the phases which we distinguish, and
which have presented themselves one after
the other, but we cannot resolve the later and
higher phase into the earlier and lower. For
the higher does not abolish the lower, but in-
230 777^ CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
corporates it in a higher unity. Hence the
later phase introduces a new element not
found in the earlier. Any attempt to resolve
the one into the other will simply abolish the
distinction between them, and the whole idea
of evolution will disappear. If chemical affinity
introduces no element not already present in
mechanical force, there is no distinction be-
tween them, and therefore no evolution. There
can, in fact, be no evolution unless there is pro-
gressive differentiation. Neglect of this dis-
tinction leads to some such doctrine as that of
Leibnitz, which rests upon the idea of prefor-
mation rather than evolution, and all the at-
tempts of recent speculators to prove the
rationality of the world by a revival of monad-
ism, seem to me an abortive effort to abolish
the qualitative distinctions without which there
can be no genuine organic unity of the world.
It is true, on the other hand, that the progres-
sive differentiation exhibited in the process of
the world does not destroy the unity of the
whole ; it is the same unity which is revealed
in the earlier as in the later stages, but this
unity only reveals its perfection as it gradually
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 23 1
unfolds itself. In the cosmical stao^e of evolu-
tion we have the unity of a mechanical system,
in which every part exhibits the equal and in-
different stress of gravitation ; in the chemical
stage, there is a selective activity of certain
elements for one another; in the biological
stage, the principle of individuation prevails,
at first in an uncertain and indefinite way,
and then, as we rise in the scale of life, in a
more and more perfect form.
It thus appears that the attempt to reduce
the successive phases in the evolution of the
world to a distinction of degree is due to
the false assumption that the later stage con-
tains nothing which is not already operative in
the earlier stage, whereas evolution by its very
nature consists in progressive specification.
The unity which evolution demands is origi-
native or creative : it is a unity which by its
own self-activity generates new forms of reality.
Nor need we shrink from admitting such a
unity, when we consider that, even if we con-
fine our attention to the cosmical stage, we are
ultimately compelled to refer the process of
change which is perpetually going on in the
232 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
world to an eternal, self-active, and creative
energy. This is the truth which lies at the
basis of the theological doctrine, that the con-
servation of the world is a continual creation.
The mechanical doctrine, which hypostatises
" matter," seems to get rid of this self-determin-
ing principle only because it assumes the eter-
nity of " matter " ; but as " matter " is nothing
but an aspect of the changing world, unwarrant-
ably substantiated as an independent reality by
the analytic activity of thought, — that "tre-
mendous power which gives life to the dead,"
as Hegel well calls it,* — we are entitled to say
that in its isolation it is pure nothing. What
we actually know is a world in which there is
perpetual change, yet no exhaustion of energy ;
a world, in other words, which exists only be-
cause there is an infinite source of energy
which is eternal and indestructible. This being
so, the process of evolution merely makes more
explicit the nature of that inexhaustible energy
which reveals itself, not only in the constancy
of mechanical force, but in the origination of
new forms of finite reality, as exhibited in
♦ Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes, p. 25.
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 233
chemical affinity and in the production of higher
and higher modes of Hfe.
It is evident from what has been said, that
any one who properly realises what the prin-
ciple of evolution involves has transcended the
whole point of view which is occupied by the
special sciences, including the science of biol-
ogy. For the object of these sciences is to ex-
plain the special conditions under which certain
changes occur. It is true that science is im-
plicitly beyond itself, if one may put the matter
in this paradoxical way. The presupposition
of every science, not excluding that which
operates with the mechanical ideas of mass and
motion, is that there is one system, within which
all changes occur, and apart from which they
could not take place. But though this is the
presupposition of all the sciences, it is not made
a definite object of reflection. It is for this
reason that the scientific man is apt to endorse
a philosophical view of the world, which, if it
were true, would make an end of his science.
Occupied in tracing the transformation of one
form of energy into another, he is led to sup-
pose that he can apply the same method of
234 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
explanation to the whole, and hence he treats
the world as if it involved no principle of unity.
The same method is applied to living beings,
with the result that no differences are found in
them but those of degree of complexity. He
speaks of the evolution of living beings, but he
thinks of it as simply the successive appearance
of new and more complex beings, produced by
the mechanical interaction of the organism and
the environment. Now the principle of evolu-
tion, when we recognise what it really implies,
compels us to view the process of the world in
an entirely different way. Instead of looking at
the successive forms which arise one after the
other, and dealing only with their external
relations to the environment, we have to con-
ceive the whole process as the development of
one principle, the true nature of which can be
understood only in the final form which it
assumes. From this vantage-ground, we look
back upon the various stages in the process,
and view them as steps towards a predeter-
mined goal. Thus it becomes evident that the
meaning of the earliest stage is partially re-
vealed in the stage which succeeds it, and that
IDEALISM AND NATURAL EVOLUTION 235
ultimately the last stage explains all the rest.
Hence none of the earlier stages can be re-
garded as expressing the nature of the whole,
while yet each is a prophecy of the next.
The mechanical view of the world is therefore
inadequate, not merely because it fails to explain
the highest stage, but because it fails to explain
even the lowest stage. Just because it treats
the lowest stage as if it were ultimate, it fails to
grasp the truth that this stage is but the im-
perfect revelation of a principle not fully dis-
closed. When we look at the matter in this
way, we see that cosmic evolution is the first
step toward the creation of forms which con-
tain in themselves the explicit meaning of the
whole. Hence we find, as we should expect,
that the higher animals already suggest that
self-conscious comprehension of the meaning
of the world, which is characteristic of man;
nay, the whole creation " groans and travails "
toward the goal which in man is attained in
idea. In the cosmical stage, the principle of
unity manifests itself in the law of gravitation,
by which every particle is kept in its place ; in
the second stage, it is seen in the more explicit
236 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
form of chemical compounds ; in the plant and
animal, we have the unity of an organism ; in
man, we find the unity of a personal self. We
have therefore to ask what is implied in this
last and highest stage of evolution.
CHAPTER X
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS
If the philosophical interpretation of evolu-
tion which has been outlined in the preceding
chapter is sound, it is obvious that there is
no escape from the conclusion that the world
must be conceived as in its temporal process
the gradual manifestation of a principle which
is at least an ever-living and self-determining
reality, and that these finite forms of reality,
as they successively emerge, assume more and
more the form of an organic unity in which
the life of the whole is realised in each. But
though we are thus compelled to conceive the
ultimate principle as creative and living, and
therefore as so far truly revealed only in the
highest form of life, we have not yet been led
to maintain that it is self-conscious or rational.
Only when we pass to man, the last term in
237
238 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the process, do we begin to see that no other
conception is adequate. The higher animals
no doubt foreshadow the self-conscious reason
of man, but there seems to me no evidence
that they possess reason, in the sense that
they are capable of comprehending the prin-
ciple which gives meaning to nature in all
its forms. No being can properly be called
"rational" which is not capable of explicitly
grasping the universal in the particular, or,
what is the same thing, which is not capable
of abstracting from the immediate life of feel-
ing and making that life in its ideal tendency
the object of intelligent purpose. Reason
therefore implies the capacity in man of re-
turning upon himself and making himself an
object. And, as he cannot contemplate him-
self as an object without becoming aware that
as an individual he is but a "part of this par-
tial world," reason implies the more or less
explicit consciousness of a unity which is the
presupposition of all selves and all objects.
These three ideas — the world, the self, and
God — are inseparably united in the self-con-
sciousness of man, and all human develop-
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 239
ment or progress consists in their progressive
specification by reference to one another.
Now if it is true that the life of man is car-
ried on in the medium of reason, it is obvious
that human progress cannot be adequately in-
terpreted by any theory which fails to allow
for the transformation effected by the pres-
ence of reason. If the rational life consists
in making the immediate life in its ideal ten-
dency or meaning an object, the evolution of
man begins on a higher level than the other
stages of evolution which precede and prepare
the way for it. As rational or self-conscious,
human evolution not only cannot be explained
mechanically, but it cannot even be explained
biologically, especially when biology speaks in
terms of mechanics. At the same time, the
rational life of man rests upon and presup-
poses his natural life, and can be realised
only by a comprehension of that life, and a
subordination of it to ideas which are in har-
mony with the whole nature of things. The
rational life thus implies insight into the
laws of nature and of human nature, and
this again means that it is social. We may
240 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
therefore say that the whole process of hu-
man evolution consists in the gradual reali-
sation of reason in the individual and in
society, and the gradual comprehension of
the meaning of both when viewed in their
relation to the world and God. The pro-
gress of man is thus from one point of view a
transcendence of nature ; from another point of
view, it is simply the self-conscious develop-
ment of the end toward which evolution was
tending from the first. It is a transcendence
of nature, because in grasping the meaning
of natural law, including the law of his own
sensitive life, man is enabled to create a
higher nature within nature ; it is a develop-
ment of nature, because man is himself the
highest product of nature, or rather of that
universal principle which is manifested in
nature. Nevertheless, we have to recognise
that the higher life of humanity is not an
original endowment, but must be won by con-
tinual toil and effort. The easy optimism,
which finds the world a very comfortable
and pleasant place to live in, is as superficial
as the pessimism which condemns the world
IDEALISM AMD HUMAN PROGRESS 241
because it is full of pain. No doubt the
rational life must bring satisfaction, but only
because it lifts man into union with the prin-
ciple of all existence ; and this elevation can
only be the result of strenuous effort, involv-
ing the sacrifice of all that, however pleasant
in itself, hinders the development of the race.
The world is by its very nature fitted for the
development of the rational life, but we must
accept the conditions under which alone that
life can be realised. The past history of
man shows us that human progress is a con-
tinual subordination of the immediate con-
ditions of life to higher ends. " Men in
society," says Huxley, " are undoubtedly sub-
ject to the cosmic process. As among other
animals, multiplication goes on without ces-
sation and involves severe competition for
the means of support. The struggle for ex-
istence tends to eliminate those less fitted
to adapt themselves to the circumstances of
their existence. The strongest, the most
self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker.
But the influence of the cosmic process on
the evolution of society is t he gre ater, the
y^^ OF THK * y
UNIVERSITY
242 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIF^
more rudimentary its civilisation. Social pro-
gress means a checking of the cosmic process
at every step and the substitution for it of
another, which may be called the ethical
process ; the end of which is not the survival
of those who happen to be fittest, in respect
of the whole of the conditions which exist,
but of those which are ethically the best." *
These are perhaps the wisest, as they are
almost the latest, words which Huxley ever
wrote. Without attempting to reconcile them
with his other utterances, we may take them
as a late admission that human progress is
not a mechanical, but a rational process. If
social progress consists in "checking the cos-
mic process," there must be in man a higher
nature which enables him to discover the
hidden meaning of that process and to work
in harmony with it. Hence I cannot endorse
the language in which Huxley subsequently
characterises the relation of man to the uni-
verse. " In man," he says, " there lies a fund
of energy, operating intelligently and so far.
akin to that which pervades the universe,
* Huxley's Evolution and Morality ^ p. 32.
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 243
that it is competent to influence and modify
the cosmic process. In virtue of his intelH-
gence, the dwarf bends the Titan to his
will." ^ It is strange that a writer who
comes so near to the idealistic conception of
existence should fall back upon the agnostic
idea of an inscrutable Power, which is con-
ceived as irrational and hostile to man, though
somehow man is so cunning as to outwit it.
Is man, then, not the product of this Power?
Could the "dwarf" bend the "Titan" to his
will, if the " Titan " were determined to thwart
him ? Is it not manifest that, if man can
subdue nature to himself, it must be be-
cause nature is meant to be subdued.'^ The
conception of a struggle between man and
the principle which sustains human life as
well as nature, involves the absurdity of a
principle which is at war with itself. Obvi-
ously this new Manichaeism is no more satis-
factory than the old. The rational process of
human life implies that nature and human
nature are not opposed ; in other words, that
the principle manifested in both is reason.
♦ Ibid. p. 35.
244 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
It may help to bring into clearer relief what
is here contended, namely, that human pro-
gress consists in the gradual realisation of rea-
son, if we consider the most recent attempt to
interpret social evolution from the point of
view of the biological law of natural selection.
In his Social Evolution, Mr. Kidd claims to
have discovered the " natural law " of human
progress, — a law which he even thinks may
effect as great a revolution in sociology as the
law of gravitation in physical science. Man,
he contends, is "absolutely subservient to a
fundamental physiological law," the "law of
retrogression " ; and this law can be counter-
acted only by " the prevalence of conditions
in which selection can prevail." Reason urges
man to suspend the "struggle for existence,"
which is the necessary condition of progress;
and were it not that religion proves too strong
for reason, and " supplies the ultimate sanction
for that effort and sacrifice necessary to the
continuance of the process of evolution," the
progress of man would be arrested.
(i) Mr. Kidd, then, contends that natural
selection, which he identifies with a " struggle
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 245
for existence," is the sole principle of progress
both in man and in beings lower than man.
Now, even if it is admitted that natural selec-
tion is the sole factor in organic evolution, it
is not hard to show that Mr. Kidd has inter-
preted it in a sense which entirely changes its
meaning. Natural selection, in the biological
sense, is a principle which operates indepen-
dently of individual effort. It is based upon
the inheritance of favourable characteristics,
and the transmission of these to descendants.
But human progress does not depend upon the
inheritance and transmission of such charac-
teristics, but upon the ideas developed by
reason and communicated through the ra-
tional medium of language and social insti-
tutions. Strangely enough, Mr. Kidd himself
enters into an elaborate argument to show that
the development of reason is the necessary
condition of progress, and yet he seems un-
aware that he has thus taken the ground from
under his own feet. Reason is not accumu-
lated by inheritance, but constitutes a spiritual
medium which is independent of or rather
transcends inheritance. And when Mr. Kidd
246 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
assumes that " natural selection" and "struggle
for existence " are convertible terms, he is
plainly confusing what is accidental with what
is essential. In biological evolution it is true
that numerous beings are sacrificed, but there
is no " law of retrogression " such as Mr.
Kidd invents to suit his preconceived theory.
Beings " survive," not because of the " struggle
for existence," but in spite of it, as is proved
by the fact that in artificial selection, where
individuals are placed in the most favourable
conditions, the rate of progress is much more
rapid than in nature, where the " struggle for
existence " is unchecked. The development of
higher and higher forms of being is due to
the inheritance of favourable variations, and
hence the law of biological evolution is a law
of progress, not of retrogression. But even if
it were true that living beings in a state of
nature are subject to a "law of retrogres-
sion," it would not follow that man is under
the same law; for the "advantages" which
enable individuals and societies to progress are
not inherited, but are developed and commu-
nicated irrespective of inheritance. No doubt,
IDEALISM AATD HUMAN PROGRESS 247
in imperfect forms of society, the social heri-
tage is communicated unequally, but in no
form of society is the individual left to struggle
with nature on the basis purely of his inher-
ited tendencies. Even slaves participated in
the advantages secured by the combined rea-
son of the race.
(2) Mr. Kidd 's special contribution to soci-
ology, however, is his assertion that in man
there are two opposite factors, — reason and
religion, — and that progress consists in the
subordination of the former to the latter. By
"reason" Mr. Kidd means a purely intel-
lectual faculty, the function of which is to
determine what is of advantage to the indi-
vidual, as distinguished from what is of advan-
tage to the race. Man has certain natural
inclinations, which are purely selfish; and
reason points out the means by which these
may be satisfied. Now it is of course true
that reason enables a man to be selfish : it is,
in fact, the prerogative of a rational being
to be capable of selfishness. To be rational
is to be a self, and to be a self is to be capable
of selfishness. But no being is capable of
248 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
selfishness who is not also capable of unself-
ishness. When Mr. Kidd, like Hume, makes
reason the "slave of the passions," he seems
to be totally unaware that any one has ever
challenged this palpable fallacy. The "pas-
sions," or "natural inclinations," are not selfish.
It is only when they are interpreted by reason,
or made a self-conscious end, that they become
selfish. To eat when one is hungry is not
selfish, but it may become an instance of self-
ishness if a man eats what belongs to some-
body else. To be selfish or unselfish is,
therefore, a rational form of activity, and is
possible only to a rational being. Mr. Kidd
first assumes the natural inclinations to be
selfish, and then assumes that a rational being
will forfeit his reason if he looks beyond his
natural inclinations. But if he is rational, he
must look beyond his natural inclinations;
and when he does so, his reason will be of a
very narrow and irrational type, if he is unable
to learn from experience that he can find sat-
isfaction only in the development of all his
powers, and that this development is possible
only by seeking the good of all Moreover,
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 249
■.A
on Mr. Kidd's own showing, the natural incli-
nations of man have been inherited from his
animal progenitors. But the animals care for
others as well as themselves, and hence if
reason is merely an instrument for the satis-
faction of the natural wants, must its function
not be as much social as selfish }
If Mr. Kidd's conception of " reason " is in-
adequate, how shall we characterise his idea
of " religion," which he describes as " ultra-
rational " or "supernatural"? These epithets
do not mean, in Mr. Kidd's mouth, what they
are apt to suggest to the unwary reader. Re-
ligion is not, in his view, of divine or ultra-
human origin. " The religious feeling," as he
explains, " is not only just as much a part of
man's nature as any other, but it is the most
characteristic part of it. . . . It is not beyond
him : it is only beyond his reason." * What,
then, is religion? Finding the definitions
hitherto given unsatisfactory, Mr. Kidd gives
one of his own. " A religion is a forrA of
belief, providing an ultra-rational sanction for
that large class of conduct in the individual
* Nineteenth Century, February, 1895, P- 232, note.
2 so THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
where his interests and the interests of the
social organism are antagonistic, and by which
the former are rendered subordinate to the
latter in the general interests of the evolution
which the race is undergoing." * Now, in the
first place, this is not a definition of religion
at all ; it attempts to tell us what religion does,
not what it is. But, secondly, the explanation
of this defect is that religion is conceived
simply as a blind impulse, and is therefore
indefinable. For we are told that a religion
"must necessarily maintain itself by what is
often a vast system of beliefs and ordinances,"
but which " fall under the head of theology." t
But when we have purified religion of all its
" beliefs and ordinances," what remains ? Ob-
viously every object of religion will disappear,
and in the absence of an object there can be
nothing but an unreasoning impulse, operating
blindly in the direction of the social good. It
is not surprising that Mr. Kidd should speak
of religion as " beyond reason " ; one is only
surprised that he did not describe it as "be-
neath reason."
* Kidd's Social Evolution^ p. 103. f Ibid. p. 104.
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 251
Now we have already seen that " reason " is
for Mr. Kidd the organ of the purely selfish
inclinations. Combining our two results, we
reach the conclusion that human progress is
the resultant of two blind tendencies, — a
selfish and a social, — the latter being stronger
than the former. If this is true, we need not
trouble ourselves about the future of the race,
and indeed to do so would be superfluous,
since the future will be determined by the stress
of the stronger impulse. The only refutation
such a doctrine needs is to be plainly stated.
It would be hard to say whether in it reason
or religion is most degraded ; and, in truth,
the degradation of the one is the necessary
counterpart of the degradation of the other.
Reason must be religious and religion rational,
or human progress is inconceivable.
A clear conception of what is meant by
calling man " rational " is so important that I
may be excused for adding a few words on
this point. It is a fundamental mistake to
assume that " reason " is absolutely exclusive
of feeling. To be " rational " is not to be a
purely intellectual machine, the function of
252 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
which is to manipulate what Mr. Bradley calls
"bloodless categories." Such a being cannot
be conceived as even possible, for it is mani-
fest that, having no interest in one object
more than another, his intellect would never
get into play at all. Nor, again, is " reason "
exclusive of will: in truth, will is the activity
of a rational being, and only of a rational
being:. Hence the fundamental mistake of
writers like Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann,
who speak of the " will " of a plant or animal,
and even of a stone, not seeing that no being
has will that is not self-conscious. And of
course " reason " implies knowledge, i,e, the
conception of a real object as present to a
subject. Thus "reason" involves the three
correlative aspects of feeling, willing, and know-
ing ; and no living being can be " rational," or
indeed can be conceived, who merely feels, or
merely knows, or merely wills. It is therefore
manifest that " reason " is not a special faculty
possessed by self-conscious beings, but ex-
presses what is implied in their nature as
self-conscious. And as in man self-conscious-
ness is not an endowment, but a process, the
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 253
rational life is necessarily progressive. Com-
plete self-consciousness is the goal of all
human effort; and complete self -consciousness
would consist in experiencing the world, the
self, and God in the totality of their relations
to one another. As none of these objects can
be separated from the others, we are compelled
to infer that the principle which gives mean-
ing to all existence must be self-conscious or
rational. And as this principle must be con-
ceived as ultimate, the only conception of
reality which is beyond doubt is that of a
self-determining, self-conscious, and self-mani-
festing reason.
This conclusion, as it seems to me, cannot
be avoided by any one who takes a comprehen-
sive view of evolution. From the evolutionist
point of view the meaning of the earlier stages
must be interpreted in the light of the final
stage, for it is only in the final stage that reality
as a whole reveals what it truly is. But as the
last stage, that of self-conscious reason, is incon-
ceivable without the prior stages, we must
refer these prior stages as well as the last to a
single principle. Nor is it difficult to see that.
254 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
in a universe which is the expression of reason,
the inviolability of natural law is a necessary
presupposition. A universe without law is a
contradiction in terms : it would be a universe
in which there was no order or coherence.
Reason, it is true, is not mere conformity to
law, but without conformity to law there can be
no reason. And as in the supreme rational
principle there can be no evolution from a
lower to a higher form, — which would involve
the absurdity of an infinite principle which was
finite, — there can be no evolution in the world
which is inconsistent with the fundamental
condition of there being a world at all, namely,
that it must be a cosmos. It is the tacit recog-
nition of this necessity of thought which leads
the scientific man to attach so much importance
to the inviolability of natural law. To deny
that inviolability, as he feels, is to make all
science impossible. Thus he conceives of
nature as a system of laws, the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever. What dominates his mind
is at bottom the same idea as that which in
another form led the Hebrew prophet to speak
of " the law of the Eternal." But, as " natural
IDEALISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS 255
law" is, from the evolutionist point of view,
nothing but a form in which the divine reason
is partially expressed, it is obvious that it can
no longer be regarded as an external necessity
imposed upon man from without, to which he
must submit because he cannot escape from its
remorseless grasp. Why should he desire to
escape from the very principle without which
he could not even exist ? Without the fixed
order and system of physical nature, the subse-
quent stages of evolution would be impossible ;
and hence the attempt to find breaks in the
order, or in the evolution of the world, is a
blind attempt to convert the universe into
chaos.
CHAPTER XI
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY
The conclusion to which we have been
brought is that the ultimate conception by
means of which existence must be explained
is that of a self-conscious and self-determin-
ing principle. Now it is important to see
precisely what is involved in this conception,
and to remove from it all elements which
are inconsistent with its purity and with the
position assigned to it as the only adequate
explanation of the world as a whole. A
thorough discussion of this topic would de-
mand a complete system of metaphysic, but
it may be possible in brief compass to show
the inadequacy of certain definitions of God
or the absolute, and to indicate the defini-
tion which it would be the task of a com-
pletely reasoned system to establish. When
this has been done, an attempt will be made
256
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 257
to give an outline of the relation of the
world, and especially of man, to the abso-
lute. A consideration of these two questions
will of itself be sufficient to show that Ideal-
ism is in essential harmony with the Chris-
tian ideal of life, as held by the Founder of
Christianity, however it may differ, at least
in form, from popular Christian theology.
(i) The absolute is very inadequately con-
ceived when it is defined simply as sub-
stance. This view is the inevitable result of
opposing mind and nature, or thought and
reality, to each other as abstract opposites.
For, if mind excludes nature and nature
mind, we are compelled to seek for the unity
of both in that which is neither, but is some-
thing beyond both. This "something," how-
ever, cannot be further defined, and hence it
remains for knowledge absolutely indetermi-
nate. Now it is strangely supposed that such
an elimination of the distinction of nature
and mind is the logical result of the idealis-
tic conception of the absolute. When it is
maintained that there can be no abstract
separation of mind and nature, subject and
258 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
object, it is argued that mind and nature are
identified, and hence it is said that we must
fall back upon a unity which is manifested
indifferently in both. This objection seems
to me to rest upon a misconception of what
Idealism affirms. What is really maintained
is that the conception of nature as an inde-
pendent reality is a conception which, if
taken in its strict sense, contradicts itself. If
nature is an independent reality, it can have
in it no principle of unity. For the highest
principle by which it can be determined is
that of the interdependence of its parts, and
this principle still leaves the parts external
to one another, while it explains the process of
nature as the changes which are produced in
each part by the action upon it of the others.
But such a conception does not take us be-
yond the idea of an aggregate of parts only
externally or mechanically related to one
another. On the other hand, when mind is
separated from nature, it can only be con-
ceived as an abstract unity which, as having
no differences within itself, must for ever
remain in its abstractness. Now Idealism re-
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 259
fuses to admit that nature and mind are thus
separated. It regards nature as the manifes-
tation of mind, and mind as the principle of
unity implied in nature. Hence, for the me-
chanical conception of nature as a system of
interdependent parts undergoing correspon-
dent changes, is substituted the organic idea
of nature as a system which develops towards
an end. This view transforms the concep-
tion of nature, not by denying that it is a
system, but by regarding it as a system
which is rational, and therefore is intelligible
to all beings in whom reason operates. Now,
if we have to interpret nature from the point
of view of reason, the key to nature is to be
found in mind. Hence the absolute cannot
be adequately conceived merely as the unity
which is beyond the distinction of nature
and mind, but only as the unity which is
implicit in nature and explicit in mind.
When, therefore, we seek to determine the
relation of particular forms of being to
the absolute, the question is how far each
is the explicit manifestation of rationality.
No form of reality can be regarded as " mere
26o THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
appearance," but only as the more or less
adequate manifestation of the principle which
is the source and explanation of all reality.
When, therefore, we speak of an " individual "
reality, we must remember that its individu-
ality is constituted by its relation to the whole.
On the other hand, an individual reality can-
not be defined as nothing but the sum of its
relations to other individual realities. The
conception of reality as determined purely by
the relations of one thing to another over-
looks the principle of unity which is present
in all alike. This is true even of inorganic
things. Each atom of oxygen or hydrogen is
nothing apart from its relations, but each par-
ticipates in the universal, so that an atom of
each is always determined by the relations
into which it is capable of entering, while
yet it manifests the character peculiar to all
atoms of its own kind. The individuality in
this case is of a very simple character. Much
more obvious is the principle of individuality
in the case of living beings, which do not
persist in the same unchangeable relations,
but exhibit a whole series of relations to the
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 26 1
environment. Hence we can only describe
the nature of a living being by pointing out
the cycle of changes through which it passes.
The living being is thus distinguished from
the non-living by the greater complexity of
its relations, and by the more express exhibi-
tion of its individual unity. But it is espe-
cially in self-conscious beings that individuality
and universality reach their higher stage.
Speaking generally, we must therefore say
that a being is more truly individual, the more
perfectly it contains within itself the principle
of the whole. We cannot therefore say that
the absolute is manifested equally in all be-
ings; indeed, strictly speaking, it is only in
self-conscious beings that the true nature of
the absolute is revealed. Now, if it is true
that only as reason is developed in a being
does it express what is the true principle of
the whole, it is manifest that the absolute
cannot be realised, as it truly is, in beings
lower than man, and that even in man it is
not realised in its absolute completeness.
By this conception of the immanence of the
absolute in all forms of being, together with
262 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the recognition that in man at his best the
absolute is most fully manifested, we are en-
abled to see that the conception of the abso-
lute as merely the unchanging substance
which persists in all forms of changing
existence is quite inadequate. Such a con-
ception, on the one hand, abolishes all the
distinctions of one being from another, mak-
ing them all equally unreal; and, on the other
hand, it denies that the absolute is a self-
revealing subject, immanent in all forms of
being, but manifested truly only in those that
are self-conscious.
(2) The absolute is inadequately conceived
when it is defined as the power which is
manifested in all particular forms of reality,
or, in other words, simply as the first cause
or creator of the world. The conception of
power or force is that of a negative activity
which manifests itself in overcoming some
other power which is opposed to it. The
mechanical conception of energy is the " power
of doing work," and is always explained as
manifested in opposition to that which resists
it. All energy is therefore by its very nature
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 263
limited. When, therefore, we speak of infinite
power, we virtually transcend the conception
of energy, for " infinite " power must be the
energy which includes in itself all forms of
energy. Such a conception takes us beyond
the conception of power altogether. The
only kind of power which can be called infi-
nite is that power which is self-determinant,
and such a power is found only in self-con-
scious energy, which is truly infinite because
it returns upon itself or preserves its unity
in all its manifestations. In self-conscious
energy, object and subject are identical. In
man this energy of self-consciousness is not
complete, because man is not completely self-
conscious. But in the absolute there must
be complete self-consciousness. Now, if we
are compelled to conceive of the absolute as
complete self-consciousness, there is in the
absolute the perfect unity of subject and ob-
ject. And as such a unity admits of no
degrees, there can be no absolute origination
of reality, for this would mean the absolute
origination of some phase of the absolute.
The ordinary conception of creation as the
264 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
origination of the world out of nothing con-
veys a truth in the form of a self-contradiction :
it expresses the idea of self-determining activ-
ity in the imaginative form of a transition from
nothing to reality as taking place in time.
A blank nothing is imagined, which is at
bottom merely the abstraction from all deter-
minate reality, and then it is imagined that
this blank nothing is succeeded by determi-
nate reality. The conception of causality, as
it is employed in determining the relation of
one phase of reality to another, is transferred
to the relation between the absolute and de-
terminate reality. Now, as we have seen, the
conception of causal connexion has no mean-
ing except as expressing the dependence of
particular phases of reality upon one an-
other, and ultimately we are compelled to rec-
ognise that such interdependence of particular
phases of reality presupposes a self-determin-
ing principle. When we have reached this
point of view, we have transcended the cate-
gory of causality, and it is therefore inadmis-
sible to employ it in seeking to explain the
relation of the parts to the whole. But this
IDEALISM AND CHRTSTf^miTY 265
is what is done in the ordinary conception
of creation, though the inadequacy of the con-
ception is virtually admitted when the creation
of the world is figured as the origination of it
from nothing. For "nothing" is represented
as if it were a material to which a definite
form was given by the action upon it of an
external cause. It is obvious that this crude
way of conceiving the relation of the world to
the absolute must be discarded. The world
cannot be separated from the absolute, but
must be regarded as the manifestation or ob-
jectification of the absolute, or, in other words,
as the absolute itself regarded in its abstract
opposition to itself. This opposition, how-
ever, is merely a distinction ; for that which is
opposed to the absolute is the absolute itself.
. (3) The absolute is not adequately con-
ceived as a person, although no doubt the
conception of personality is much more ade-
quate as a predicate of the absolute than that
of power. By a " person " we mean a being
that is an individual, and, further, an indi-
vidual who is capable of conceiving himself
as a self. But personality emphasises the ex-
266 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
elusive aspeet of self-activity, and thus one
person is separated frdm and opposed to
another. On this basis of exclusive selfhood
all rights are based, a right being the expres-
sion of the self in that which has no self.
Now, so far as the absolute is affirmed to be
a person, the main idea is that the absolute
is self-conscious, and to this extent it is true
that the absolute is a person. But the abso-
lute is not properly conceived as a person in
the sense of being an exclusive self-centred
individual. The conception of personality is
inadequate even when applied to man, for it
is not true that man is merely a person. The
first consciousness of exclusive or adverse re-
lations to others must be supplemented by
the conception of man as essentially spirit,
that is, as a being whose true self is found
in relation to what is not self. Man is there-
fore not adequately conceived as an exclusive
self, but only as a self whose true nature is to
transcend his exclusiveness and to find himself
in what seems at first to be opposed to him.
In other words, man is essentially self-separa-
tive: he must go out of his apparently self-
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 267
centred life in order to find himslelf in a truer
and richer life. This conception of a self-
opposing subject must be applied to the ab-
solute. The absolute is not an abstract
person, but a spirit, i.e, a being whose essen-
tial nature consists in opposing to itself beings
in unity with whom it realises itself. This
conception of a self-alienating or self-distin-
guishing subject seems to me the fundamental
idea which is expressed in the doctrine of the
Trinity. We can conceive nothing higher
than a self-conscious subject, who, in the in-
finite fulness of his nature, exhibits his per-
fection in beings who realise themselves in
identification with him. What Schiller ex-
presses in a figurative way seems to me to
be the necessary result of philosophy: —
" Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister,
Fiihlte Mangel, darum schuf er Geister,
Sel'ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit.
Fand das hochste Wesen schon kein Gleiches,
Aus dem Kelch des ganzen Wesenreiches
Schaumt ihm die Unendlichkeit."
There is at present a tendency to main-
tain that the absolute must -be defined as
268 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
something higher than a self-conscious sub-
ject. This view seems to me to rest upon
the false assumption that the distinction of
subject and object is a mark of limitation.
But it can only be a mark of limitation on
the supposition that the object is in some
way disparate from the subject, i.e. contains
an element which is incomprehensible. The
view which is here maintained is that, in the
absolute, subject and object are absolutely
identical ; in other words, that the subject is
its own object. If it is objected that in that
case there is no distinction between them,
the answer is that as the subject compre-
hends all reality, there is in the absolute no
distinction between subject and object, but
there is an infinity of distinctions within the
absolute. The absolute, in other words, is
essentially self-distinguishing.
To this conception of the absolute an objec-
tion may be raised, based upon the idea of
evolution. According to the philosophical in-
terpretation of evolution given above, the true
nature of the absolute is revealed only in the
last stage of evolution, and as, in this stage.
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 269
rational or self-conscious life emerges, ration-
ality or self-consciousness, as it is fairly main-
tained, must be predicated of the absolute.
But if the world has already gone through
yarious stages, — the cosmical, chemical, bio-
logical, and rational, — why should it not have
still other stages to go through ? Why should
not the absolute reveal itself to future ages in
higher forms, forms as much beyond the self-
conscious as the self-conscious is beyond the
stages prior to it ? There is nothing in the
principle of evolution, it may be said, to pre-
clude this supposition. Man, at every stage in
his development, has been prone to imagine
that he had reached the ultimate conception of
reality, and therefore the majority of men have
always for a time stubbornly resisted the new
and higher conception to which the best minds
of the age have been irresistibly drawn. Must
we not, then, refuse to admit that the concep-
tion of the absolute as self-conscious is ulti-
mate.? It is not meant that the absolute may
in future ages be discerned to be lower than
self-conscious, but that it may then be con-
ceived, and to some extent is now conceived, as
270 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
higher than self-conscious. Can we, in any
case, conceive of the absolute as it is in itself?
Must not even our highest idea of it be analogi-
cal? Surely the absolute must in its inner
nature infinitely transcend its manifestations as
known to us.
This new argument for the unknowability of
the absolute seems to me to lead to the same
abyss of emptiness as the old. If the absolute
is super-rational or beyond self-consciousness,
we can form no conception whatever of its
nature ; for with the abolition of the distinction
and unity of subject and object, all definite
thought disappears in an abstract being which
is for us pure nothing. It is a gratuitous as-
sumption that a super-rational absolute is higher
than a self-conscious absolute. How can we
possibly speak of an object of which we know
nothing, as either higher or lower than that
which we do know? Such predicates have a
meaning only within the sphere of our know-
ledge, not beyond it. It is not possible to limit
a conception by a mere negation. If I say
that the conception of the world as a purely
mechanical system is inadequate, I do so
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 27 1
because I possess the higher conception of
the world as the manifestation of a self-crea-
tive principle. I examine the conception of
a world in which one element is referred to
another, this second to a third, and so on ad
infinitum; and I come to the conclusion that
such a conception of the world is inadequate,
since ultimately I must posit a reality which is
self-dependent and therefore self-originative.
But, unless I had the higher conception, I
should never discern the inadequacy of the
lower. Any one, therefore, who maintains that
the absolute must be conceived as beyond the
distinction of subject and object, must have a
positive conception of this higher unity, or he
is rejecting the only conception which has mean-
ing for him in favour of a conception which is
perfectly indefinite. In truth, a perfectly indefi-
nite conception is not a conception at all, since
all thought implies distinction. To maintain
that the absolute may be beyond the distinction
of subject and object is to say nothing whatever.
This simple consideration seems to me to
dispose of the objection to the conception of
the absolute as self-conscious, which is drawn
272 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
from the idea of evolution. To suppose a stage
of evolution to arise when the distinction of
subject and object will be transcended is self-
contradictory, because with the disappearance
of that distinction there would also disappear
the distinction of one stage from another. The
principle of evolution has meaning only for a
rational or self-conscious being, and unless we
are capable of comprehending the nature of
reality we cannot affirm that there has been any
evolution. A recent writer has gone so far as
to suggest that, as our intelligence has been
evolved from non-intelligence, we have no
right to deny that, in some subsequent age of
the world, our intelligence may develope into
a form in which the principle of contradiction
will be overthrown, so that what are now to us
abstract opposites may then be seen to be iden-
tical. But surely we have a right to deny what
is absolute nonsense. Apparently the writer
does not see that, in the hypothetical stage sug-
gested by him, in which our intelligence has
transcended all the distinctions which we now
make, it will have transcended the distinction
between one stage of evolution and another,
IDEALISM AND CHRlSTlAmTY 273
and will therefore deny that there lias been any
evolution. But if all evolution is an illusion,
what meaning can there be in saying that our
intelligence may evolve into a higher stage, in
which the law of contradiction is transcended ?
Any one who judges at all — and even to set
up a false theory is to judge — must presuppose
that his judgment means something; but it
cannot mean anything, if to affirm may be to
deny, and to deny may be to affirm.
The supposition that the absolute may be
super-rational is obviously untenable. At the
same time there is a certain amount of truth in
the contention that the absolute is not fully re-
vealed in man. For in man the rational life is
a process, and a process which is never com-
plete, and indeed never can be complete ; in the
absolute there must be process, because there
is infinite self-conscious energy, but there can
be no transition from lower to higher. We
must agree with Mr. Bradley, that " progress
and decay are alike incompatible with perfec-
tion." "^ " The improvement or decay of the
universe," as he says, " seems nonsense, un-
* Bradley's Appearance and Reality y p. 499.
T
274 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
meaning or blasphemous." ^ The absolute is
self-complete, and apart from such self-com-
pleteness it could not be self-originative or
creative of other forms of being. But the per-
fection of the absolute is destroyed if we either
separate it from any form of finite being or give
independent reality to any form of finite being.
To suppose that the absolute is self-complete
apart from the finite, is to fall into the absurdity
of an absolute which is limited ; to affirm the
independence of the finite is to set up a finite
absolute. Thus we are brought face to face
with the difficulty, that if human reason has no
reality apart from the divine reason, we seem
to be affirming that the former is merely a par-
tial aspect of the latter, so that man is but tfie
passive medium of the divine reason. Now
Christianity solves this difficulty by the doc-
trine of the Holy Spirit. It affirms *at once
that man is the author of his own destiny, and
yet that he cannot realise his true life unless
the spirit of God works in him. The Christian
consciousness has always held fast by this idea,
and the church has persistently refused to
* Ibid. p. 501.
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 275
accept any compromise which would separate
the unity of the divine and the human spirit.
The language of St. Paul : " I am crucified
with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me," has been echoed by pious
minds in all ages: such language is in truth
the spontaneous utterance of the religious con-
sciousness. We have therefore to ask whether
philosophical reflection does not enable us to
see that we have here an idea which reason
pronounces to be absolutely true.
The main obstacle to an acceptance of the
truth which is embodied in the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit seems to me to arise from the
mechanical way in which we are wont to con-
ceive of the relation between the human and
the divine spirit. Now this mode of concep-
tion is inadequate even when applied to the
physical world, and it becomes more and more
inadequate the higher the object to which it is
applied. As we have seen, the physical world
is inexplicable except on pre-supposition of an
eternal creative energy, which expresses itself
in the incessant transformations constituting
what may be called the life of nature. This
2/6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
creative energy is unthinkable apart from its
manifestations, and yet these do not exhaust it,
but constitute the phases in which its nature is
expressed. On the other hand, no single phase
is possible apart from the absolute nature of the
whole, and therefore we have to conceive even
this stage of the world as implying an organic
unity or system, in which the whole determines
the parts, while the parts are essential to the
whole. If we treat any part as self-complete in
its isolation, we fall into the untenable doctrine
of atomic Materialism ; if we deny the reality
of the parts, we commit ourselves to an equally
untenable Pantheism; we have therefore to
affirm at once the reality of the parts in the
whole, and of the whole in the parts. And
when we pass to the second stage in the process
of the world, we find the idea of organic unity
forcing itself upon us still more persistently.
Here we have a distinct advance towards in-
dividuation and organic system, for chemical
elements are not related to each other in the
same indifferent way as particles which are
viewed simply as exhibiting the stress of gravi-
tation: certain elements will combine and
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 277
others will not, and they combine only in defi-
nite proportions. A still more marked indi-
viduality is displayed in living beings: here,
in fact, we first have an individual in any well-
marked sense. But living beings more per-
fectly realise the idea of individuality, just
because they contain the whole in themselves
in a more explicit form. For the living being
presupposes the whole system of the world as
physical and chemical, and in its own organism
it unites physical and chemical changes with
the new and higher form of unity which consti-
tutes its life.
When finally we pass to rational beings, we
find not only the manifestation of individuality
in a higher sense, but we find also a closer
relation to the whole. It is the special pre-
rogative of the self-conscious being that for
him not only his own individual life, but the
life of all forms of existence, and even the
ultimate principle of all existence, can be re-
produced in idea. Thus he is at once the
most truly individual, and the most truly uni-
versal. The whole is present in him, not
merely in the sense that he is affected by it.
2/8 THE CHRIST/AN- IDEAL OF LIFE
but in the sense that by his own self-con-
scious activity he is capable of living in it
in an ideal way; it does not operate through
him, but in him. It is true that he would
not be self-active were not the whole what
it is. Without gravitation there would be
no system of nature, without chemical affinity
there would be no life, and without life there
would be no mind. And yet mind is not
a mere external synthesis of physical, chemi-
cal, and vital forces, but a new form of reality
including and transcending these. Man is
thus a self-active or self-determining being,
not because he is separable from the whole,
but because he is capable of living in the
whole. The creative activity which is pres-
ent in all forms of being is present also in
man, but in man it is present through his
self-activity. Thus while he can know noth-
ing which is not a manifestation of the abso-
lute, and realise nothing which is contradictory
of its nature, and experience no permanent sat-
isfaction which is not the reflex of his unity
with it, he could neither know, will, nor feel,
were he not self-determinant or free. The
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 279
absolute, in other words, in the case of man,
expresses its originative activity in the pro-
duction of beings, who are themselves self-
active or free, though not self-creative. Man
is not free in the sense of being self-originat-
ing, but he is free in the sense of being able
to comprehend the nature of the absolute,
and to bring his life into harmony with it;
he is also free in the sense of being able to
live in opposition to that revelation of the
absolute which in more or less explicit form
is inseparable from his self-consciousness.
Human life is, therefore, a life of moral re-
sponsibility. The divine spirit can be present
in man only as man is conscious of it, and
identifies himself with it. Thus we can see
how the Holy Spirit may be immanent in
man, while yet man lives in the freedom of a
"son of God." It is in this sense that I
should maintain the immanence of God in
man ; what is affirmed is the union of spirit
with spirit, not the external and mechanical
relation of one force as acting upon another.
If the mechanical conception is inadequate
to express the unity of the distinguishable
28o THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFE
elements in the physical world, how much
more inadequate must it be to express the
self-conscious unity of man with God.
I think we may now conclude that the Chris-
tian conception of God and man is not only in
harmony with the results of modern science
and historical criticism, when these are inter-
preted from the comprehensive and self-con-
sistent point of view of an idealistic or spiritual
philosophy, but that the principle of Christian-
ity thus acquires a definiteness and persuasive
force which is attainable in no other way, and
which is missed by those who shut themselves
up within the narrow circle of traditional forms
of thought. The results of science and phi-
losophy are no doubt hostile to many cherished
prejudices which are due to the survival of
pagan or mediaeval superstitions, but they can-
not touch the living heart of Christianity itself.
It has already been maintained that the
world, as the manifestation of God, is pur-
posive. It must be observed, however, that
this purpose is not something superadded to
the world, but is implied in its very nature.
It is important to make this observation, be-
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 28 1
cause the whole objection to the teleological
view of the world arises from confusing
mechanical with immanent teleology. The
idealistic view is therefore hostile to the con-
ception of Providence as the external adapta-
tion of events to an end. Mr. Balfour tells
us that one cannot "think of evolution in a
God-created world without attributing to its
Author the notion of purpose slowly worked
out."* It is of course obvious that the con-
ception of God implies that the process of
evolution is towards an end ; but this process
cannot be adequately described as a "prefer-
ential exercise of divine power." We cannot
conceive of the world as first created, and
then directed towards an end. The reality
of the world implies the continuous self-
determination of God, and this self-determi-
nation involves the process by which the
world is maintained as an organic whole.
We cannot, therefore, separate the evolution
of the world from its existence. If we do
so, we fall into the difficulty urged by Kant
against the argument from design, that we
♦ Foundations of Beliefs p. 328.
282 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
presuppose a "matter" to which the divine
Architect gives shape. Such a "matter" is
unthinkable. The nearest approach we can
make to it is in some such conception as that
of the primitive matter from which, according
to the nebular theory, the complex forms of
our solar system have been evolved. But in
this nebulous matter there is already implied
the " promise and potency " of all forms of
life, and hence it can only be called " matter "
in the relative sense of being a less developed
form of the world than is realised in the sub-
sequent stages of evolution. The purpose,
then, which must be affirmed is not exter-
nally added to the world, but is already im-
plied in the very existence of the world. The
world is an organic whole, in which each part
exists and has its proper nature only in and
through the others. Hence the evolution
from lower to higher forms is not a matter
of accident, but is inseparable from the exist-
ence of the world. A distinction, however,
must be drawn between different orders of
being. It is only in the case of man that we
can speak not only of evolution, but of con-
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 283
scious evolution or progress. "The scientific
doctrine of evolution has enabled us to see
that the law of all finite forms of being is a
law of development; in other words, that the
real is not the actual as it first appears in
time, but the ideal which is implicit in the
actual, and which is present in it as the
active principle determining the process in
which it is manifested. In the case of beings
lower, than man this process does not reach
the stage of a self-conscious development ; or,
at least, even the highest animals have only
an indefinite consciousness of self, and, there-
fore, can hardly be said to be capable of
ideals. Man, however, not only develops,
but he is capable of grasping the law of
his own development, and, therefore, of con-
trasting with his immediate self an ideal of
himself in which is embodied his conception
of what he ought to be, as distinguished
from what he is. This capability of return-
ing upon himself and setting up ideals is
the fundamental condition of human progress.
The ideal, however, while it is contrasted
with the actual, is never in contradiction to
284 ^^^ CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
the actual ; it is but the actual grasped in its
ideal nature, as that end towards which all
prior development has been striving. Were
it otherwise, the progress of man would be
impossible. It is thus obvious that, on the
one hand, progress consists in conformity to
the purpose which is involved in the whole
nature of things, and, on the other hand,
that this purpose can be realised only through
the free activity of man. The spiritual life
of man cannot be imparted to him from
without ; it consists in the conscious realisa-
tion of the ideal. It is, therefore, a very
inadequate conception of life which is ex-
pressed in the formula that there is a " Power
not ourselves which makes for righteousness."
The " Power " which makes for righteousness
is the conscious willing of righteousness, i£,
the conception and realisation of the meaning
of the world. It is true that righteousness
can be realised only because it is the true
law of man's being; but it is a law which
operates only in and through his self-con-
scious life.
It is, then, the very nature of all finite
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 285
forms of being that their reality consists in
a process by which they come to be what in
idea they are. In the case of man, whose
development is a self-conscious process, the
development of goodness consists in the tran-
scendence of his immediate or natural life.
So far as the life of man is merely natural,
he is neither good nor evil ; it is only because
he is capable of abstracting from the imme-
diate life of feeling that he is moral. And
with this capacity is bound up the possi-
bility of willing evil. The question as to the
existence of evil has been obscured by the
manner in which the problem has been put.
The church fathers, conceiving of man as
independently created, maintained that he
was originally perfect in wisdom and holi-
ness, and that evil was introduced into the
world by the sin of the first man. It need
hardly be said that this explanation not only
explains nothing, but is self-contradictory and
out of harmony with all that we know of
primitive man. It explains nothing, because
moral evil cannot be externally transferred
from one person to another ; the very idea of
286 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
moral evil being that it proceeds from a free
act. It is self-contradictory, because a perfect
being could have no disposition to will evil.
And it is incompatible with the results of
scientific discovery, which make it certain
that primitive man began at the lowest and
not the highest stage. The state of perfec-
tion ascribed to primitive man is, therefore,
the goal and not the starting-point of human-
ity. Man was, therefore, in his original state
evil, in the sense that evil is inseparable from
the life of a being who can attain to good
only through freedom, which involves the
freedom to fall into error and evil. The
original state of man was one in which he
had the most inadequate conception of the
world, himself, and God. The progress of
man has involved a continual struggle with
the cruder ideal of an earlier age. The spir-
itual life is not a primitive endowment, but
the result of long-continued pain and travail.
Evil is not an accident ; it is inseparable from
the process by which man transcends his im-
mediate life. It is only through the ex-
perience of evil that man has obtained a
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 287
consciousness of the depths as well as the
heights of his nature. On the other hand,
the process of human life has been a contin-
ual transcendence of evil. The desire of man
is for goodness and God, and his experience
that evil is in contradiction to his true self
makes it impossible for him to rest in it.
Hence even at the earliest stage man is
never absolutely evil ; he hates his enemy,
it is true, but he sacrifices his natural im-
pulses, and even his life, for his family or
tribe. Thus the imperfect development of
his moral life is the counterpart of his im-
perfect knowledge of himself.
The deliverance of man from the evil which
belongs to his nature, as a being whose life
is a process, is possible only through the
comprehension of himself as in his ideal
nature identical with God. The mediaeval
conception of salvation cannot be accepted
in the form in which it is stated. Man, it
was argued, might conceivably have been
liberated from sin in two ways : either God
might have pardoned him out of pure mercy,
or man might have expiated his sin by a
288 THE CHRISTIAN' IDEAL OF LIFE
humility correspondent to the magnitude of
his guilt. But the former, it was held, con-
flicts with the justice of God; and the latter
is impossible, because man could not undergo
a humiliation proportionate to the self-asser-
tion implied in disobedience to the will of
God. Hence God offered up his Son in
man's stead, thus reconciling infinite justice
with infinite mercy.
It is impossible to state this highly arti-
ficial doctrine without seeing that it is the
product of conflicting ideas which are not
properly reconciled with each other. The
starting-point is the conception of personal
sin, one of the central ideas of Christianity.
Sin is then identified with crime, and there-
fore God is conceived as an inexorable judge.
But sin is not crime, nor can God be re-
garded as a judge. Crime is a violation of
the personal rights of another ; it is an offence
against the external order of the state, which
must be expiated by an external punishment.
Sin, on the other hand, is not a violation of
rights, but a desecration of the ideal nature
of the sinner, the willing of himself as in his
iDEALiSM AKtD CHRISTIANITY 2^9
essence he is not. Hence sin requires no
external punishment to bring it home to the
sinner: it brings its own punishment with it
in the destruction of the higher life, the real-
isation of which is blessedness. In man, by
virtue of the divine principle in him, the con-
sciousness of God is bound up with the con-
sciousness of himself, and he cannot do violence
to the one without doing violence to the other.
Hence God is not a judge, allotting punish-
ment according to an external law, but the
perfectly holy Being, by reference to whom
man condemns himself. No external punish-
ment can transform the inner nature. The
criminal, after undergoing punishment, may
be more hardened in crime than ever, and
yet society must punish him, because its func-
tion is to preserve the social bond, which by
his act the criminal has assailed. But reli-
gion has in view not the preservation of social
order, but the regeneration of the individual:
it deals with the inner nature of man, not
with the result of his act upon society; and
hence, unless it transforms and spiritualises
him, it entirely fails of its end.
290
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE
The sin of Adam, according to the mediae-
val theory, consisted in pride, or the attempt
to equalise himself with God. The truth im-
plied in this view is that in so far as man
seeks to realise his true self in separation
from God, and therefore in willing his own
good in isolation from the good of his fellow-
men, he brings upon himself spiritual death.
But this truth is obscured by the vulgar
notion that sin is the attempt of man to
equalise himself with God, — a notion obvi-
ously based upon the conception of God as
a Ruler whose majesty must be asserted.
This pagan conception, drawn mainly from
the idea of Caesar, as the representative of
order and law, is entirely foreign to the Chris-
tian idea of God. Even Plato saw that "in
God there can be no envy ; " and mediaeval
thinkers themselves virtually deny this false
conception of God, when they speak of the
incarnation as an expression of the infinite
love of God. Here, in fact, we come upon
the only purely Christian idea in the whole
doctrine. Stripped of its artificial form, what
is affirmed is that it is the very nature of
IDEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 29 1
God to communicate himself to finite beings ;
that, loving his creatures with an infinite love,
he can realise his own blessedness only in
them. Man can therefore be saved from sin
only as he realises in his own life the self-
communicating spirit of God. In taking upon
himself the burden of the race, he lives a
divine life. This is the secret which Jesus
realised in his life, and to have made this
secret practically our own is to be justified
by faith.
The Christian ideal of life, as here under-
stood, is broad enough to embrace all the
elements which in their combination consti-
tute the complex spirit of the modern world.
Every advance in science is the preparation
for a fuller and clearer conception of God ;
every improvement in the organisation of
society is a further development of that com-
munity of free beings by which the ideal of
an organic unity of humanity is in process
of realisation ; every advance in the artistic
interpretation of the world helps to individu-
alise the idea of the organic unity by which
all things are bound together. The ideal of
29^ THE CHRIST/AN- IDEAL OF LIFE
the Church has tended to limit Christianity
to the direct promotion of the moral ideal,
to the exclusion of the more comprehensive
ideal which recognises that the goal is the
full development of all the means by which
the full perfection of humanity is realised.
The Christian ideal, as embodied in the teach-
ing of Jesus, was free from this limitation. It
saw God in the orderly processes of nature
and in the beauty of the world, as well as in
the loving service of humanity. In principle
it therefore embraced all that makes for the
higher life. The Christianity of our day
must free itself from the narrow conception
of life by which Protestantism has tended to
limit its principle. , It must recognise that
the ideal of Christian manhood includes
within it the Greek ideal of clear thought
and the love of beauty, as well as the Jewish
ideal of righteousness, and the Roman ideal
of law and order, harmonising all by the
divine principle of love to God and man, on the
basis of that free spirit which has come to
us mainly from our Teutonic ancestors.
OUTLINES OF SOCIAL THEOLOGY.
By WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE, D.D.,
President of Boivdotn College.
.i2mo. Cloth. Price $1.50.
" It is a most thoughtful, wholesome, and stimulating book. It is
suggestive and thought-provoking, rather than exhaustive, and that is a
merit of only good books." — Evangelical Messenger.
"Altogether it is a book for the times — fresh, vigorous, intelligent,
broad, and brave, and one that will be welcomed by thinking people." —
Christian Guide.
" President Hyde does not aim to upset established religion, only to
point out how the article we now have may be improved on its social
side, as to which there will be no dispute that it is wofuUy lacking. His
argument is sound and sensible, and his book DESERVES TO BE WIDELY
READ." — Pkila, Evening Bulletin.
HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN
PROBLEMS.
By AMORY H. BRADFORD, D.D.
i2mo. Cloth. Price $1.50.
" It is a most timely corrective to the drift of popular exaggeration,
and it is a most clear and forcible presentation of many widely misun-
derstood truths." — From a letter to the Author from Bishop Potter.
" A popular and instructive discussion of the vexed question of her-
edity. . . . Dr. Bradford discusses it in a robust, intelligent, straightfor-
ward, and thoroughly Christian way, and his book will be a solid help to
every student of human nature." — The Christian Advocate.
" The really fine and characteristic feature in the scheme of reform
presented by Dr. Bradford is his faith in Christianity as a divine and
spiritual power in the world, set to operate along the lines of certain
intelligent methods." — The Independent.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORIC_
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS
WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN
THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH
DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY
OVERDUE.
JUH 28 m^ « 933n'58GRX
Oct
1934
^•Jan'SOC.
MAR 5 1956
LIBRARY USE
JUN 1 9 1956
RECD LO
JAN 6 19SB,
JUN 1 1 1968 fS
I.ECEJVED
25'68-5PM
LD 21-50m-l '3;
TB /M87