* 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., 
 
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 .i2mo. Cloth. Price $1.50. 
 
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 broad, and brave, and one that will be welcomed by thinking people." — 
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